Earlier this evening I heard the sad news that one of comics’ great legends, Ernie Chan, has passed away. Ernie was set to appear at the BigWow Comicfest in San Jose this weekend, so his death comes as a real surprise to those of us who expected to see him there.

I wanted to post a tribute in the form of my favorite Chan images. You can see that tribute right here. Some of these he painted, some he penciled and inked, and some he only inked — but Ernie’s inks were some of the most powerful in the world of comics.

When I was a kid I couldn’t get enough of Conan the Barbarian and its black-and-white companion magazine The Savage Sword of Conan. But I was incredibly picky about the art in my comics — if the art didn’t blow me away, I wouldn’t buy the comic. Plus, I had the seriously limited budget of a child, so I had to be impressed by the art or I left the book sitting on the rack.

Whenever I found a Conan book that was drawn (or inked) by Ernie Chan, my money hit the counter immediately.

Rest in peace, Ernie. You will be missed…

“Freeland” was the second installment of Austin Briggs’ Flash Gordon daily comic strip serial for King Features Syndicate. Originally published between February 24 and August 21, 1941, “Freeland” was the second story in the daily companion to Alex Raymond’s celebrated Sunday strip. It is the second of two Briggs strips available in a reprint collection from Kitchen Sink Press.

“Freeland” gets underway with the ship bearing our motley crew making its way toward the Promised Land free from Ming. Flash and Dale set out in a rocketship to scout for a safe harbor and encounter a hostile tribe of what appear to be Native Americans.

Once more, Austin Briggs demonstrates his version of Mongo is more attuned to contemporary American experience or American history than the prehistoric or Medieval Europe model chosen by Alex Raymond. Briggs may also be borrowing a page from Edgar Rice Burroughs (one of Raymond’s primary inspirations) in transplanting Native Americans to another world.

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So begins my long trip through the genre movies of the Summer of ’12 for Black Gate and benefit of several readers. I’m glad that things got off to a tremendous start.

As in a recording-shattering $207 million dollar take at the U.S. box-office, for a total of $640 million globally — so far. Oh, what a menacing term: “so far”!

The Avengers is not the end product of five movies and five years of preparation from Marvel Studios. It’s a beginning. While the two Iron Man films (2008 and 2010) were smash hits, the other three superhero films in the Avengers roster (The Incredible Hulk, Thor, and Captain America: The First Avenger) were more standard successes, and they meant more to the comic book fan-base than to general audiences. Now, the general audience is pumped to get more from these characters. All the Avengers are now major public stars, and with this insane success, Marvel is poised to truly unleash their stable of heroes on a public than will be drooling and clawing to get more.

I have watched The Avengers twice in theaters on its opening weekend, something I haven’t done since The Lord of the Rings films. That’s a review in itself, but a since I am 1) a Marvel zombie and Avenger fan since childhood, and 2) inaugurating this series of movie reviews for the summer, I have an obligation to go in-depth on this stupendous piece of entertainment cinema. I will avoid big spoilers as much as I can, since this is technically still a “review,” but some tidbits about the massive set-pieces will leak out. But you’ve seen the film already at least once, right? Three times, anyone? (I know plenty who are “three times and counting.”)

Okay, let’s assemble and do this.

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Disclaimer: This article will reference some scenes from The Avengers film. While I’ve tried to avoid specific spoilers about major twists, there are some things that give away plot elements and twists from the other Marvel Comics movies, such as Thor.

If you are a writer, be sure that you get a receipt when you go to The Avengers, because you should be claiming it as a work-related research expense on your taxes this year. (This should not be considered tax advice. Please consult with your tax preparer before making financial decisions.)

There has been no shortage of digital ink spilled gushing over how great the movie is. I’ll provide a link to some of the highlights below if you want to delve into the film itself. However, I wanted to go beyond discussing The Avengers as purely a viewing experience, but to focus on a couple of elements that writers can best take away from it.

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Two versions of Snow White, TV sitcoms remade for the big screen and (stop me before I hurt myself) the re-release of Titanic…

Think there’s no originality left in Hollywood?

Microsoft apparently agrees with us but is thankfully smart enough not to try and fix it themselves.

Instead they enlisted the talents of Shaun of the Dead director Edgar Wright and Marvel and Lucasfilm illustrator Tommy Lee Edwards (famous for his work on the Batman and Hellboy comics) to create a very cool entertainment concept in the form of an interactive animated story called The Random Adventures of Brandon Generator, launched April 12^th.

Think of it as a Choose Your Own Adventure story for the multi-media generation.

Visitors to the site will get a seven-minute video that explains the story of our hero Brandon Generator, who is having severe writer’s block.  One dark night after too much coffee, Brandon wakes from his caffeine-induced blackout to discover prose, sketches and ideas on his Dictaphone that he did not remember leaving.

And you get to provide one or all of those elements.

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Amazing isn't it? Is originality dead, or is someone in Hollywood smarter than we give them credit for?

I had a question proposed to me in my Saturday blog here on Black Gate concerning the multiple covers of Howard Andrew Jones’s The Desert of Souls. I’ll repost the question here.

I see a lot of photo-manipulation covers and hybrid photo/3D/digital painted covers, and I feel that a lot of them actually look pretty cheap and nasty. If I was Howard Andrew Jones, for example, I would be very happy with the first The Desert of Souls cover (100% digitally painted, stirring, full of life and movement, etc) and very unhappy with the second cover (a mish-mash of photo elements and, I don’t know? 3D elements? What’s going on with those faces? It almost looks like a romance novel cover.) What do you think about this trend?

I’m going to break this down into two different answers. The first will deal with The Desert of Souls, and the second on the current state of science fiction/fantasy covers in general.

The question immediately reminded me of Hollywood and their great marketing machine. In 1990 Paramount Studios released Hunt for the Red October. The movie cost roughly $30 million to make and grossed $200 million worldwide, which is to say it was an enormous success. The movie poster featured a shadowy submarine, Sean Connery’s face, all in black and red, and the title in white lettering.

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Far back in the mists of time (March 2002, if you want to be picky), I picked up an intriguing black and white independent title at my local comic shop. It was Courtney Crumrin and the Night Things #1, written and drawn by Ted Naifeh and published by Oni Press.

The first few pages featured cold and uncaring parents, a spooky house, young bullies, sinister night creatures, and a protagonist who was clearly an aspiring criminal and juvenile delinquent. Before the end of the first issue, young Courtney Crumrin had trapped a goblin and forced it to cruelly devour one of her school mates, bones and all.

Man, this was just what I was looking for. I brought it home and read it to my three children, and they immediately clamored for more.

More is what they got. Over the next few years Naifeh produced over a dozen issues following Courtney and her Uncle Aloysius, a powerful warlock who reluctantly teaches her magic. Courtney’s adventures involved the helpful (but hungry) goblins Butterworm and Butterbug; Boo & Quick, talking neighborhood cats who assist the young aspiring witch; a local Coven of witches and warlocks who frequently turn to Aloysius for help with dread problems; night things from the Twilight Kingdom — including The Dreadful Dutchess, Courtney’s friend Skarrow, and The Twilight King — and the terrible Tommy Rawhead, a giant hobgoblin feared by the Coven, and everyone else.

The various issues of Courtney Crumrin were collected into four handsome trade paperbacks, followed by the short-lived spin-off series Courtney Crumrin Tales in 2005. But that was all, and fans were left waiting while Naifeh turned to other projects, like Polly and the Pirates.

The long drought ended two weeks ago with the arrival of Courtney Crumrin Volume 1: The Night Things, the first hardcover edition of Courtney Crumrin. More importantly, it’s also the first time the issues have appeared in color, and the newly colorized pages look terrific. Volume One reprints the first four issues with special bonus material including sketches and covers of all four issues. The second volume, Courtney Crumrin & The Coven of Mystics, reprinting the next four issues in color, is due Aug 29, 2012.

Courtney Crumrin is one of the finest comics produced in the 21st Century. Don’t miss the opportunity to have these early issues in a handsome permanent edition. Courtney Crumrin Volume One: The Night Things is 144 pages in hardcover; it is published by Oni Press for $19.99.

More than a decade after I read them the first issue at bed time, all three of my children are still ardent Courtney Crumrin fans. But they’ll have to wait for this volume, because Dad wants to read it first.

Years ago, before I started Black Gate magazine, I worked with David Kenzer in the Commerce Drive offices of Motorola here in Chicago. Dave is the founder of Kenzer & Company, publishers of the award-winning Hackmaster role playing game and the brilliant Knights of the Dinner Table comic.

KenzerCo was the first investor in Black Gate, and without Dave’s early advice and guidance I never could have gotten off the ground. But perhaps the most important contribution he made to our success was his offer to include an original Knights of the Dinner Table strip in every issue. It was an incredible gesture of faith in my fledgling enterprise, and it helped bring my new magazine to the attention of thousands of gaming fans. Brian Jelke at KenzerCo wrote a proposal for a strip centered around a coffee shop, Steve Johansson signed on to do the art, and The Java Joint was born. It has appeared in virtually every issue of Black Gate, and in July of last year KenzerCo packaged up all the stories — together with a brand new 8-page strip — in Knights of the Dinner Table: The Java Joint Strips, published in print and PDF format.

I’ve written about my days with Dave at Commerce Drive, the multi-million dollar software deals and creative projects we did together, a few times now, including in  ”How To Succeed in Business,” my editorial for Black Gate 11, and in my portion of the Tribute to Gary Gygax here on the blog in 2008. In my introduction to this new collection I tell the full story of our adventures together for the first time. Concerning the comic, James Lynch at The Armchair Critic had this to say in his review:

Knights of the Dinner Table is primarily a bunch of buddies sitting at a table and playing games — but what happens when several of them sit around a table and talk about books? This is the premise and setting of Java Joint… Most strips have the trio sitting around and discussing (or trying to discuss) a fantasy book; there are a few exceptions, as when Eddie enters into extended dealings with a Nigerian internet scam, or when he confronts Neil Gaiman about stealing all the ideas Eddie wrote in a notebook in seventh grade that got lost at “Sister Eileen’s Discount Summer Camp for Laconic Youth.”

As with the Knights of the Dinner Table comic, this is about the dialogue… this is often very funny. Most of the humor comes from Eddie who, like Cartman on South Park, is a character you seldom agree with but usually laugh at. He has a resistance to anything out of the ordinary (”So what you’re saying is… reading books I don’t like will get me women?”), loves a Danielle Steel novel after imagining the main character as a vampire, and bemoans the supernatural in romance novels. (”Publishing today is all about getting hot and heavy with the unholy.”)…

The Java Joint has plenty of laughs — and a surprisingly touching final story. This is an enjoyable little comic book collection that’s a nice read for anyone who likes discussing books — even with that one person who always manages to go off in a bizarre direction.

Knights of the Dinner Table: The Java Joint Strips is 64 pages in comic format. The print version is nearly sold out, but you can buy the PDF for $9.99 directly from Kenzer & Company.

The Good of Kickstarter... The Order of the Stick

The pillaging of Kickstarter… Dramatic huh? Well, it might not exactly be the case, but I’ve seen a couple shocking trends happening out in the world of Kickstarter that disturbed me enough to talk about it here in my regular Kickstarter postings.

You see, Kickstarter at its very base level is about money, and that’s not a bad thing because it takes money to make cool things happen. Kickstarter, as a platform, helps thousands of independent minded artists, writers, musicians, inventors, and all other manner of creative people connect with fans to create projects that they love. How can that be wrong? Well, it’s not, but unfortunately corporations have now discovered the power of Kickstarter, and what was once a grass roots movement is quickly changing into a large scale money grab.

To illustrate this, I’m going to take you all through a couple of examples that I’ve seen in the past few months. First off I’m going to start with this little ‘Honest Man’s Kickstarter’ that introduced me to Kickstarters in the first place, the initial art recreation project by former TSR artist Jeff Dee. Dee, a forward thinking guy, was understandably put out that TSR threw away all his original art from his work on Dungeons & Dragons from 1979-1981. Who could blame him, right? So he goes to Kickstarter and asks folks to help him recreate those original pieces of art, as well as add some new ones if pledging was high enough. Jeff asked for $2,500 to do this and received funding to the tune of $5,750, which is a great thing to see for a guy who struggles with bills as much as anyone else in America today.

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When I was invited to write a guest post, I immediately turned to manga. To my knowledge, Black Gate has never had a post dedicated to Japanese comics before, and I think that absence needs to be rectified.

The series I am about to recommend to you are as good, as dramatic, and as entertaining as any American comic book or even fantasy and science fiction novel.

What follows is a list of some of my personal favorites, as well as those that are must reads. At the end, I will list some of the series that I have not gotten to yet, but am looking forward to.

Fairy Tail by Hiro Mashima

Ongoing. Kodansha has released 17 volumes in translation with vol. 18 due in March.

Lucy Heartfilia, a celestial spirit wizard, and Natsu Dragneel, a fire dragon slayer, form the nucleus of Team Natsu. Stealing a book from a corrupt noble and crushing dark guilds are just some of the adventures that Team Natsu and their friends find themselves in as they ensure Fairy Tail’s reputation as the strongest and most infamous wizard guild in Fiore.

Though the series starts out with a heavy does of comedy, the series has steadily gotten darker and more serious with each succeeding story arc yet still maintains an upbeat feel. Indeed, the series really starts to pick up with the Galuna Island arc. The great thing about Fairy Tail is that Mashima does not neglect minor characters. They all have moments in the spotlight. I personally find the series fun and enthralling, and it is without question my favorite series.

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