2018 Club JLI

The Cranboyz have covered a lot of  themes the last few years and we thought we were pretty much done.  Then one day Eric and Shane were talking about the "glory days" of the Keith Giffen,  J.M. DeMatteis, Kevin Maguire Justice League! When the League was in her glory with Blue Beetle, Booster Gold and Guy Gardner leading the charge! When "Bwahahaha!" was in every story and the Martian Manhunter was sneaking off to eat Oreos!

 Ok, maybe there are a few versions of the League more popular out there but at a time when "Dark and Gritty" was all  the rage in comics, a little "Bwahaha!" really hit the spot! 

So why "Club JLI?" Well, there's a story arc where Blue Beetle and Booster Gold  decided to  start a casino, on a living island, open a resort there and call it, CLUB JLI!  Hijinks and hysteria were out of control! The story has always been considered an instant classic, at least by us! 

 Now you might think there aren't that many characters in this stellar era of the Justice League and you'd be wrong! There were guest appearances, cross overs and membership drives! They even expanded to a second team!

Since Eric and Shane were spearheading this thing they decided to try something different. They got together and had a character draft! They made a list of some  of the more likely characters to get sketches of and took turns picking! The rest of the group was free to get anyone they liked and Eric and Shane agreed that the draft was flexible,  just for  fun.

As soon as the draft was completed they got online and started looking for artwork! The convention season was months away and these boys wanted some sketches! This took  them to the Fraimworks, online home of Brian and Brendon Fraim! There they found a couple of sketches that worked for both of them, Shane got a Wally West Flash and Eric got Wonder Woman, both founding members of Justice League Europe! Not how they expected to start off  but that's how  the JLI works!

 Moving on to the self proclaimed stars of the Justice League, Eric had Blue Beetle and Booster Gold drawn by Phil and Jeff Moy!

Shane picked up some Blue Beelte and Booster sketches that Chris Kasmar had available at his table!

Shane then collected sketches of the the League's leading ladies! Fire by Tressa Bowling and Ice by Nate Lovett!

 

Eric then commissioned this unbelievable Mister Miracle by Tressa Bowling and Shane added Big Barda by James Giar to the collection!

You can't have any Justice League team without the Martian Manhunter! Eric had the Mahnunter drawn by the legendary Arvell Jones! Shane got the Mahnhunter by superstar Darryl Banks!

If the Justice League had a black eye (was that a "One Punch" Joke??) it was Guy Gardner! The JL's resident Green Lantern and pain in the ass! Being a Guy Gardner fan Shane got sketches of him from Martin Egeland and Ron Frenz!

Kurt didn't mess around with his Justice League sketch! He got founding member Doctor Fate by Arvell Jones! Shane got  his Doctor Fate by  Aaron Archer!

"The Big Red Cheese" "Captain Whitebread" "Shazam" "Captain Marvel" His innocent nature played well against Guy Gardner and the others but made the JL a tough fit for Captain Marvel. Eric got his sketch by Tim Switalski at Free Comic  Book Day! Shane picked up a Captain Marvel sketch that Nate Lovett had for sale!

 Two more founding members of this team, Eric got Black Canary by the Fraim brothers and Shane picked up this Batman from Martin Egeland at Free Comic Book Day!

When the Justice League upgraded to Justice League International,  the first two members they added were Captain Atom and Rocket Red! Shane got his Captain Atom sketch from Craig Rousseau and Eric got his  Rocket  Red from Andy Bennett!

Justice League International led the way to Justice League Europe (which later became Justice League International but that's another story!), which featured these two guys! Shane got another sketch of Wally West as Flash (this time in his  shiny costume) and Eric had Scoot McMahon draw Elongated Man! 

Brandon Franklin  drew JLE member Animal Man for Eric and Lobo for Shane! Lobo wasn't really a member of the League but they let him join because they thought he was a friend of Big Barda's. He was actually hired to kill her but that's how things worked with the league! 

Kilowog was a long time friend and member of the team! Eric got his Kilowog sketch from Darryl Banks! Shane also picked up a Kilowog from Nate Lovett!

Hawkman and Hawkwoman teamed up with the team before briefly joining their ranks. Hawkwoman fit right in! Hawkman spent all of his time complaining about the teams antics while reminding them they would never find Hal Jordan or Barry Allen acting like that! Shane got his Hawkman sketch from Landon Franklin and his Hawkman sketch is from Chuck Patton! Chuck Patton drew some JLA comics but he worked on JL Detroit, which is a whole nother story!

The final Justice League art comes again from Chris Kasmar.  When Shane met him at a con, he had these little colored sketches already done. they were fun and of some key JL characters so Shane couldn't pass them up! Martian Manhunter,  Captain Atom, Kilowog and G'Nort all by Chris Kasmar! 

And if you don't know who G'Nort is, that's reason enough to check out these stories.

But if you're looking for G'Nort, he's  probably in the can!

Popa's Favorite Comics of 2018 (In No Particular Order)

I decided to get back into the regular comics buying habit this year.  I'm not sure what inspired it exactly, other than missing the fix.  Plus there's so much good stuff coming out that I was tired of feeling behind the curve on everything.

What follows is my favorite comics from 2018.  It's not in any order, it's just the books that stuck out to me and that I look forward to the most.

I even tried getting back into Marvel Comics with a couple of their relaunches from earlier in the year but, well, those books just aren't my cup of tea anymore.  I'm not sure why and I don't say that from the usual fanboy pit of despair ("HOW DARE THEY NOT MAKE A WOLVERINE STORY I LOVE! THEY HATE AMERICA!!)  It is what it is.  There's way too much cool stuff out there for me to worry about not liking super hero comics I liked more 25 years ago.  There's always Essential editions to relive the classic stuff.

Again, in no particular order ...

ARCHIE 1941 and VAMPRIONICA

Archie's done a pretty great job of reimagining their line for the modern world.  ARCHIE 1941  puts Archie on the cusp of enlisting into WW 2.  Mark Waid's a master comics writer and the story so far is clipping along at a perfect pace.  The real star, though, is Peter Krause's art that harkens back to classic art of that era, creating a world that's perfect for the sincerity of the period.  Great stuff.

The Archie reinvention really seemed to begin with the AFTERLIFE WITH ARCHIE zombie book from a few years back and as that book's struggled to come out, they fleshed out the line (heh) with a small group of other horror books, the best of which is VAMPIRONICA which sees Veronica turned into a vampire.  Fun stuff that's serious horror without forgetting that it's based on long-standing characters.  The art by Greg Smallwood is terrific too (to the point that I think he's been snapped up by Marvel.)

(Unfortunately, the shipping bug hit "Vampironica" too and it took an awful long time to put out 5 issues and has now gone on hiatus.  Still, track down the trade.)

SARA

Speaking of World War 2 - Garth Ennis has long been one of the top war comics writers out there.  I don't love war comics, to be honest, but when a new publisher partnered Ennis with Steve Epting, I had to give it a look.  I'm glad I did.  SARA is the story of a team of Russian snipers in the second world war, taking out Nazis.  It's based on a real story.  This is a deeply affecting story with a heavy and complicated protagonist, defending a Russia that was hardly the heroes of history.

Steve Epting can draw anything.  This book only continues to prove that truth.

(SARA is from a new publisher called TKO Studios, who are trying to change the way comics are produced and distributed.  You can read the first issue for free online - and then you can either buy the entire series as singles at one time, or buy the trade.  Everything is available at once, so whether you want to binge or buy it in pieces is up to you.  I hope this new model works, for the sake of comics!

DARK ARK

Cullen Bunn took one of those million dollar ideas that was right under all our noses and ran with it.  What if alongside Noah's ark there was another ark full of MONSTERS?  What an idea!  The book's as good as the idea as the monsters and a few trapped humans try to navigate the end times and come out on the other side.  Juan Doe's art brings each of the critters to life in style too.  It's a real end of the world epic.

CROWDED

Christopher Sebela and artist Ro Stein have also taken a sort of solid gold modern idea and turned into comics magic.  In "Crowded" you can crowdfund an assassination and, in this story, a seemingly random irritatingly perky dingbat of a young woman, is targeted with a million dollar plus bounty - but we're not sure why, and she's not exactly coming clean.  She's protected by an angry bounty hunter who's basic claim is being the cheapest protection money can buy.

If I were going to list a book as my favorite from this year, CROWDED would be it.  The book is fast- the dialogue is blazing banter, the art has a sort of curvy jazz to it, it feels like a mix of classic animation with a splash of Al Hirschfeld.  The two protagonists are a perfect odd couple, one random and motor-mouthed, the other cold and serious.  It puts a lot of fun conflict underneath the bigger conflict - namely trying to stay alive as all sorts of misfits try and collect the ever-increasing bounty on our main girl.

Comics are always trying to be cutting edge and modern.  CROWDED pulls it off.  It's sassy and bright, with a story that's constant motion and action.  It takes the modern world and amplifies it a thousand times.

GIDEON FALLS

Sort of the opposite of CROWDED is GIDEON FALLS by Jeff Lemiere and Andrea Sorrentino, which is more of a David Lynch sort of horror story - abstract, sad, it takes a handful of damaged people and drills down into their pain, all with the looming specter of a myserious Black Barn that somehow is going to tie everyone and everything together, but probably not in a good way.

More than most other books, GIDEON FALLS feels like episodic television, but uses the advantages of the comics medium to carve out its own path.

A COUPLE ONE-SHOTS

These are two books that were one-shots, not series, but were worth their weight in comics gold.

DR HORRIBLE: BEST FRIENDS FOREVER

Dr. Horrible came back in 2018 in a one-shot comic written by Joss Whedon himself!  Jose Maria Beroy's art brought all the characters back and in fine form.  A new character called Hourglass made her first appearance as did Moist's henchwomen, The Towelettes.  At the center, of course, was Dr. Horrible and Captain Hammer being unusually friendly.  It was a fun one-shot that felt like the original movie, all it needed was songs.

The world NEEDS DR. HORRIBLE.  Now more than ever.

WYTCHES: BAD EGGS

Whatever year the original WYTCHES mini-series came out, it was the best comic from that year.  WYTCHES is a tremendous horror comic and the only frustration has been waiting for more (Scott Snyder and Jock have been doing Batman instead, but that's a rant for another day.)  Finally we got a taste this year with the BAD EGG Halloween Special that had all the depth, drama and horror of the original series.

Snyder has promised the next big WYTCHES story in 2019.  In the meantime, BAD EGG showed us that he and Jock can take control of this world whenever they want, which is pretty damn exciting for comics fans.

MY FRIENDS ARE MORE TALENTED THAN YOUR FRIENDS

THE BEAUTY and THE REALM

My friend Jeremy Haun has been putting out two great books for a year or two now.  One is THE BEAUTY, science fiction police drama set in a world where beauty is passed around as an STD. The other is THE REALM, an apocalyptic adventure set in a world where the creatures of Dungeons & Dragons invaded our reality and made a big mess of everything.  Both books deliver their action in very different ways from one another.  Jeremy's collaborates with Jason Hurley writing THE BEAUTY (with art by Thomas Nachlik) and Seth Peck co-writing THE REALM.

THEY'RE NEW TO ME

These are books that have been out longer than 2018, but I just discovered them.

PAPER GIRLS

I mean, it's probably not surprising that Brian K. Vaughn and Cliff Chiang created a top notch comic but, still, PAPER GIRLS is as good as it gets.  It's a crazy time-travelling science fiction story set in the '80s that keeps piling mystery on top of mystery as the characters get closer to the truth, but further away from where they started.

It's a book I liked so much I made Andy read it :)

The only sad part about PAPER GIRLS is that apparently the next arc is the final one.  It's one of those books that even though it clearly set out to have an ending, I hoped it would take as long as possible to get there.

Also, Cliff Chiang is one of the best artists in the business.

THE BLACK MONDAY MURDERS

Dude, this book is in its own world.  Jeff Lemiere and Tomm Coker have created a story that makes all of the world market crashes into an insidious plot by nefarious forces.  What seems like a simple murder mystery, turns into a lot more and goes deeper and deeper.

What makes the book SO special though, is the style.  I read it in trades but the individual issues are 40-50 pages long and are a mix of traditional storytelling, newspaper articles and abstract images.  It's a book that rewards re-reading and lingering on the pages for as long as possible to see what's in the background.

The third arc comes out in 2019 - I can hardly wait!

Hopefully 2019 will deliver more great comics for me to read.  2018 certainly did its job.

Try new things, folks.  There are too many good comics to just read the same old crap you read 30 years ago that you've stopped enjoying.

10 Years of Titans Sketches!

In November of 2008 I had a rather serious surgery (things obviously worked out fine) and my friends Adam Hauenstein, John Popa and Andy Varcho, surprised me afterwards with a brand new sketchbook! Andy airbrushed the Titans logo on the cover, which as you can see is incredibly sharp!

In case that wasn't cool enough, they had our pal Darryl Banks start off the book with a sketch of my favorite Titan, Wally West as Kid Flash!

Kid Flash actually ended up on page 2 though. Darryl Banks is not only a superstar comic book penciller but a friend we've known for many years, so he made his own contribution on the first page with a sketch of ME with Donna Troy and Starfire! I was blown away! What an amazing gift! The problem was that now the pressure was on! I had an entire sketchbook to fill with Titans sketches that lived up to the awe-inspiring start!

I decided to start I would continue on with the original, Fab Five Titans! I added Robin by Bob McLeod, Aqualad by Kelly Yates, Speedy by Gene Gonzales and Wonder Girl by Cliff Chiang! As you can see, the bar remained set very high!

I went onto collect sketches from Titans creators such as Nightwing and Kid Flash by George Perez and Troia by Phil Jimenez!

The book is filled with one phenomenal sketch after another! Through my travels to conventions I was lucky enough to become friends with Jeremy and Kelly Dale, two of the most fun people anyone could know! Sadly, Jeremy is no longer with us but I'm quite fortunate that Jeremy and Kelly drew possibly the greatest sketch ever of Impulse, in my book! It's perfect!

The book ranges through a wide collection of heroes and villains and I tried to incorporate characters from around the Titans universe including the Young Justice comics and animated series, Doom Patrol, Kingdom Come, Titans of Tomorrow, the Teen Titans cartoon and even the Protector from the Keebler Drug Abuse issues!

Characters I love like Wally West, Donna Troy and Roy Harper obviously show up a lot! It's my book! Meanwhile, characters like Starfire, Bumblebee and Jericho only show up once.

As time went on the book filled up and somehow it started to run out of blank pages. I wanted to end the book with some kind of theme, go out on a high note but nothing was really coming to me. The next thing I knew, there were only 5 pages left and I decided to end it how it started,with the original Titans in some of their adult costumes.

Here are the final sketches in my Titans sketchbook! Troia by Paul Pelletier (his run on Titans was far too short!), Arsenal and Nightwing, each by Tom Grummett (Tom may be my favorite Titans penciller of all time!), Tempest by Martin Egeland (Martin's work put Aquaman on the map in the 90's and he's a Cleveland boy!) and finally, the last page of the book, Wally West as The Flash by Darryl Banks!

This book ran from November 2008 until November 2018 and every page is a memory, every page is a story. It's far too sad that Adam can't be here to see the completed book but I think Andy and Popa will agree that while Adam would find plenty of reasons to harass me about some of my character choices, this book was a massive success!

I can't thank my friends enough for starting this book for me! That alone will always mean the world to me! So many friends also drew in the book and brought these characters to life, without all of you , this book not only wouldn't have happened but it wouldn't mean as much!

You can check out all of the art from my Teen Titans sketchbook and the stories behind them, over at Comic Art Fans: https://www.comicartfans.com/galleryroom.asp?gsub=72582

Popa's Favorite Warren Ellis Comics

Few writers in modern comics have pushed for new ideas in the medium like Warren Ellis.  For years he swore off company-owned work in favor of only doing new, creator-owned things.  He hoped the industry as a whole would follow.  Maybe they did.  So many top creators these days are doing their own thing instead of just being content to work for Marvel and/or DC.  Of course, it wasn't ALL Warren but he played a part for sure.  He called out his friends.

In the late 90's, when comics were still recovering from the atrophy of the early 90's boom, Ellis was there trying to blow things wide open.  He challenged his fellow creators, he tried to do comics differently.  He experimented with formats, structures - he worried about how comics looked and felt.  He wanted them to last longer.  He stayed ahead of things.  When comics were wordy and shrinking, he created 'widescreen' comics in "The Authority," big stories told in splash pages and daggers of dialogue.  He stripped away needless description and captions, threw out anything excess to make his comics lean and mean.  As with any innovation, most of his peers lost the point and just saw the flash, but not the substance.

In "Planetary" he reconsidered the individual issue, taking a long twenty-some part story and breaking it into unique issues that were tied together but still stood alone as individual stories.  He jumped genres from issue to issue, from story to story.  When he finally convinced other creators to work long form and look at bookshelves instead of spinner racks, he jumped back and did a book like "Fell," that was a sleek and nasty little book aimed squarely at comic shops.  He sold it at a lower price, put the extras in the individual issues instead of the trades.

Ellis has written a lot of stuff, that's for sure.  So much of it is some of my favorite stuff in comics, I decided to throw together a list of my favorites.

The one book that will be noticeable by its absence is probably "Stormwatch."  Frankly, I've only read it in bits and pieces and don't have it on hand to even re-read.

Otherwise, I've read (and RE-READ) most of Ellis's comics.  At this point he's also written novels, screenplays and most anything else.

A lot of people react to the sort of over-the-top violence and sarcasm in Ellis's books.  They see the Spider Jerusalem-types everywhere and he certainly plays to the tropes of the biting British character a lot.  But, for me, there's always a deep emotional pull in Ellis's work.  There's sadness, which is something I always react to.  There's tragedy that isn't just 'oh, the noblest hero sacrificed himself to save the universe.' His protagonists fight and they lose and they accept a fate that isn't always meant to involve riding off into a sunset.  More than anything, Ellis's protagonists keep going, even when their mission or role brings them nothing but misery and isolation.

10. FRANKENSTEIN'S WOMB

Again, when comics were getting longer and everything was becoming six-part sagas that were easily blocked into TPBs, Ellis went off and did a small handful of independent one shots that were about 48 pages.  Thin books with a real spine that would be an inexpensive alternative on the bookshelf. 

In "Frankenstein's Womb," Mary Shelley visits Castle Frankenstein (before she's written the "Frankenstein" story) and encounters a monster.  They have a long dialogue about life, electricity and creation. There's no action whatsoever.  

ART BY: Marek Oleksicki

9. MINISTRY OF SPACE

Ellis has a love for space travel, both in science fiction and as it relates to world history.  It's the 60's quest by nations to be the first and best nation in space that drives "Ministry of Space."  Again, not an action story so much, but one gorgeously visual, especially as drawn by Chris Weston.  "Ministry" is about the seedy side of World War II and post-war politics

ART BY: Chris Weston

8. GLOBAL FREQUENCY

"Global Frequency" was a high concept book that would have allowed Ellis to tell one-off stories forever.  There was no real cast or specific plot, it was built around an invisible organization that when needed would rise up and handle situations that needed them.  The stories were Ellis's mix of end of the century paranoia, shady government organizations and wild science fiction comics.  It was grounded, though.  The threats were immediate to us, not to some fictitious world of science and fantasy.

Each issue was illustrated by a different top comics talent, written specifically by Ellis to highlight their skills.

7. NO HERO

Ellis has long said he doesn't love super heroes and tries to write stories about them that interest him.  "No Hero" is one such story.  In it, the world is monitored (and controlled) by a small group of super-powered individuals.  They're not necessarily nice about it.  They're also an elite organization that find you and then decide you're worthy of getting powers, assuming you can handle the physical demands of converting your body into one capable of moving mountains.   While there are certainly sexy super heroes in the world of "No Hero," their souls are corrupt, overrun by power and ego.  When our protagonist becomes a hero and his body crumbles into something horrifying, a power struggle ensues with the safety of the world at its core.  "No Hero" is a story about power and whether or not heroism is even needed in a world with so much power.

ART BY: Juan Jose Ryp

6. NEXTWAVE

NEXTWAVE! NEXTWAVE! 

As modern Marvel and DC Comics have become earnest to the point of atrophy, Ellis came out with "Nextwave," a book that laps up the sheer ridiculousness of the Marvel super hero universe.  Who wins and loses is completely irrelevant to the foolishness of the characters trying to save the world.  That they succeed is entertainment enough.  Ellis took a bunch of mostly forgotten Marvel heroes and villains and made them into modern vapid pop heroes.  It couldn't have been more irreverent or more entertaining.  

ART BY: Stuart Immonen

5. DESOLATION JONES

Comics history has all sorts of unfinished projects.  None break my heart like "Desolation Jones."  What was supposed to be a 36 issue story, ended up only being 8 issues.  But what an 8 issues!  Counter to the notion that Ellis's protagonists were always bad ass, Desolation Jones is a broken ex-agent who keeps busy taking side jobs in the seediest sides of Los Angeles culture.  It's a story about porn stars and cult victims and people who fight because they don't know how to do anything else.  Of all Ellis' work, Jones is, to me, his most sensitive.  The characters are broken and hurt and emotionally drained.  And all they have is each other.  Powerful stuff, for sure.

ART BY: JH Williams and Danijel Zezelj

4. BLACK SUMMER

At the peak of George W. Bush's America, Ellis wrote a story where a super hero kills the President in the name of the greater good.  It was designed to piss people off without reading it.  Really, as was a common theme in the super hero stories Ellis was doing at this time for Avatar Press, this was a story about the limits of power and where super heroes might fall in that if presented more aggressively than they normally are.  Again, the powers are technological, the powers aren't gifted from some fluke of magic or karma.  Instead of power falling to the right people at the right time, the characters in "Black Summer" know they have more power than one person should.

In "Black Summer" a super hero puts himself above the law to the level that he assassinates the President.  Most of the book, though, is the fall-out.  John Horus, the assassin, is not presented as a hero, he's an outcast who's own team turns against his extremism.  In the end, the remaining heroes have to redefine themselves and accept the consequences of their power and what prices they paid to get and maintain that power.  

ART BY: Juan Jose Ryp

3. THE AUTHORITY

In "The Authority" Ellis and Bryan Hitch redefined the action hero comic for the new century.  Instead of dealing in small panels and excessive exposition, Ellis opened comics wider than they'd ever been opened and told all out action stories with massive splashy images and daggers of dialogue.  As is often custom, though, people missed the point.  In the wake of "The Authority" Marvel and DC Comics became dumber and less complex, ignoring that "The Authority" was a complicated social and political story, told with a great deal of nuance and character.  The Authority fought a man, a race of men and then a God of men.  They had no problem fighting power with power.  They weren't worried about collateral damage.  They understood that winning was the only option.  And sometimes they won by being willing to just annihilate their enemies.  The Authority ignored the dim witted morality of mainstream super hero comics in favor of a modern, explosive story of the end justifying the means.

ART BY: Bryan Hitch

2. PLANETARY

Sort of the opposite of "The Authority," "Planetary" is a quiet meditation on the heroic fiction of the 20th century.  There's action, sure, but that's not the point of it.  In fact, the action sequences are sometimes almost an afterthought to the analysis of the tropes.  In "Planetary," Ellis showed off what he knew about pulp fiction, science fiction, horror, b-movies, all of it.  And he took it all and weaved it into a story that was a celebration of the past but also the closing of the book of the 20th century that opened up comics to the future.  It was a love letter and a eulogy all at once.   

ART BY: John Cassaday

1. TRANSMETROPOLITAN

Those of us who love Spider Jerusalem are a brotherhood.  Spider was the pissed off hero we all needed in the late 90's.  He cussed, kicked and fought anyone and anything that got in his way, all in the name of seeking the truth.  He looked out for his allies and spat in the face of his enemies, and there was no in between.  You were either with him or against him.  

Gloriously illustrated by Darick Robertson, "Transmet" took place in a breathing, thriving city of the future that was as hopeful as it was tragic and filthy.  As with reality, the winners were huge in "Transmet" but the losers were brushed aside and fighting amongst themselves in the much.  Spider Jerusalem stayed in the muck, looking for his answers.  

And, man, he was funny.  For five years, Spider stomped through The City.  Over the course of his story his body and brain gave out on him but he kept pushing until the job was done.  That's why Spider Jerusalem was a hero.  

ART BY: Darick Roberson

Anyway, those are my 10 favorite Ellis comics.  All are worth a read and hold up to MULTIPLE re-reads!