Posts Tagged Dark Horse

30 results.
Apr26

Cowboy Up: Dark Horse Releasing New Chapter of Darrow’s Shaolin Cowboy

by Rob on April 26, 2013 at 8:58 am
Posted In: Comic Book News

shaolin_cowboy_1_promo_cover_2Artist Geoff Darrow is a personal favorite here at the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office. We’ve got a first print copy of Hard Boiled with a sketch by Darrow in it from the Boston Comic Con a couple of years ago – I walked up and waited while he was talking to somebody else, and he grabbed the issue out of my hands and started sketching in the front cover to illustrate a point to the guy, without even having to be asked – and we also have a big inked sketch of Nixon from Hard Boiled, the Big Guy from Big Guy And Rusty The Boy Robot, and Shaolin Cowboy.

Sadly, Shaolin Cowboy was the big gap in my actual reading of Darrow’s books. We missed it when it was initially released by Burlyman Comics back in 2005 (only one store in the area carried that imprint in any numbers, and it wasn’t our local comic store, where they know me by name and ask me to stop begging the paying clientele to show me their Burlyman), and it has been pretty out of print for a while since.

However, that is now a thing of the past. Dark Horse Comics announced this week that they’ll be releasing a new installment of the story this coming October.

There aren’t a lot of details available at this point beyond that, but Dark Horse has release the first two variant covers to the series, which you can check out after the jump.

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Jan20

The Gun’s The Thing: The Black Beetle #1 Review

by Rob on January 20, 2013 at 5:06 pm
Posted In: Comic Book Reviews

black_beetle_1_cover_2013I’ve always believed that the difference between a superhero comic book and a pulp hero story is a gun, and the willingness to use it for its intended purpose. Sure, they have costumes and gadgets and secret headquarters in common, but in the end, the gun’s the thing. Batman has a batarang, The Shadow has a gun. Iron Man has repulsor rays, The Spider has a gun. Everything else is just setting, antagonist and motivation.

If you accept that fine, bright line – and there’s no reason you necessarily should, since my own acceptance of it varies depending on what I’m reading and how much whiskey was involved beforehand – then writer / artist Francesco Francavilla’s The Black Beetle, despite having the word “pulp” on the cover, is very much a superhero comic. The hero has a Beetlemobile, a gyrocopter backpack, and a secret headquarters… but he also defines himself as not being a killer, and he uses tranquilizer darts instead of bullets.

But he has a gun. Two of them, actually. Sweet-looking Colt M1911s that he wields and shoots two handed, like, well, The Shadow. So while this doesn’t technically meet my definition of “pulp,” it’s close enough. And it is one hell of a lot of fun… if a little light on some of the details.

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Jan12

I Have A Bad Feeling About This: Star Wars #1 Review

by Trebuchet on January 12, 2013 at 7:25 pm
Posted In: Comic Book Reviews

2012-12-30-star_wars_01Just a few hours ago, in a town, not so far away…. I picked up my copy of Brian Wood’s Star Wars at my local comics shop, where they know me by name and keep begging me not to bring Rob there, ever again.  Getting the issue is apparently no small feat since even our fearless leader Rob couldn’t get his hands on a copy of this mutha.

Wood is tackling an interesting time in the Star Wars timeline. His focus is on the original characters during the several years between the destruction of the Death Star at the Battle of Yavin, and where Empire picks up on Hoth. It truly surprises me that this period is rarely addressed, with the absolute breadth and depth of expanded universe novels, comics, cartoons, and slashfic. There’s an awful lot of un-addressed character development that takes place off-screen between the movies. Luke has gone from whiny farm boy to a confident and able fighter. Han has shed his “only looking out for number one” attitude, and emerged as a real leader within the rebellion.  Leia has transformed from a mouthy princess to… well, a mouthy princess.

Kid, I’ve flown from one side of this galaxy to the other. I’ve seen a lot of strange stuff, but I’ve never seen anything to make me believe in spoilers…

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Jan01

How Low Can You Go? – Amanda’s Picks For The Comic Book Low Points Of 2012

by Amanda on January 1, 2013 at 6:06 pm
Posted In: Comic Book Reviews, Editorial

ComicBookGuy2012 is firmly at our backs. Congratulations, everyone. We made it.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but we had some real time encounters with abject, stinking failure in 2012 that make me all the more grateful to move on and away from it. From the weird decision to fire and then almost immediately rehire Gail Simone, to the baffling continued employment of Greg Land, to the need for some high profile comics creators to make odd and unnecessary comments about Batman’s sexuality because they can’t seem to stop giving Playboy interviews while in the thrall of a mescaline bender, there was plenty to color the comics enjoyment experience last year. And, after all the dust settled from the complaints of former employees about creator rights and other assorted Twitter bitching, sometimes, just sometimes, there were the comics themselves that were the problem.

Here are my picks for the top five comic book disappointments of 2012, after the jump.
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Jan01

Hangover: Rob’s Biggest Comic Disappointments of 2012

by Rob on January 1, 2013 at 3:33 pm
Posted In: Comic Book Reviews, Editorial

nicolas_cage_supermanIt is New Year’s Day, and thanks to about fifteen glasses alternating between Milwaukee’s and Lynchburg, Tennessee’s finest products last night, it feels like my brain has been taken over and occupied by Doctor Octopus. Or at least part of Doctor Octopus. Part of Doctor Octopus after a meal of bad sushi and piss-warm Chango. And to add insult to injury, I flipped on the TV this morning to be subjected to Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, which, as comic book movies go, certainly is one (man, Stringer Bell and Sailor Ripley sure have let themselves go).

Chuck on top of that steaming mess that there are no new comics until tomorrow, and nothing whatsoever apparently going on in the world of comics, and what we have is a new year that, so far, is… disappointing. And with that feeling in mind, and 2012 at our backs, it seems like as good an opportunity as any to revisit the biggest disappointments in comics and geek culture that occurred in 2012.

And given that the memory is so fresh, we might as well start with (although this list is in no particular order):

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Dec31

Dropping Balls: Rob’s Top 10 Comics of 2012

by Rob on December 31, 2012 at 1:29 pm
Posted In: Comic Book Reviews, Editorial

new_years_ballIt is New Year’s Eve of the first complete year of the existence of Crisis On Infinite Midlives. We have all the comics we’re going to get in 2012, so it is time to publish my list of the best comics of the year… mostly because with no new comics, there isn’t much to review, and the biggest comics news we’re likely to get between now and Wednesday is likely to be “Frank Miller Publicly Intoxicated, Yells At ‘Hippies.’ Must Be Tuesday.”

So here’s my list; Amanda’s will appear later today. It is in no particular order, it encompasses everything from single issues to multi-issue story arcs to series that started in 2011 and ended this year. And I know what you’re thinking: “Rob,” you’re thinking, “Why don’t you organize things a little more? And use some consistent criteria for your list?” Well, because fuck you, that’s why. Look: it’s New Year’s Eve, and I intend to be recklessly intoxicated within about 90 minutes from the time I press the “publish” button.

So without further (or any) ado: here’s my list!
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Dec20

Take Her Away: Disney / Marvel To Take Star Wars License From Dark Horse

by Rob on December 20, 2012 at 8:40 pm
Posted In: Comic Book News

A long time ago (sometime around 1986) in a galaxy far, far away (presuming you are reading this from somewhere in Andromeda, and if you are: please send flying cars and jetpacks), Marvel Comics decided, four years after Return of The Jedi had left theaters and with enthusiasm for Star Wars dwindling after years of no word of a fourth movie forthcoming, to stop publishing Star Wars comic books.

A less long time ago (figure around 1991), writer Timothy Zahn published a Star Wars novel named Heir to The Empire, which rumor had it was authorized by George Lucas and reflective of the plots originally planned for the Star Wars Episode VII movie promised to us back around 1980. The book and its sequels were a hit, and revitalized interest in Star Wars for the first time in years. And by the end of that year, we walked into comic stores to find Dark Empire, the first new Star Wars comic book in about five years, written by Tom Veitch and drawn by Cam Kennedy, expanding on Zahn’s work and published by Dark Horse Comics. This began a run of Dark Horse-published Star Wars comics that have spanned two decades, three new Star Wars movies, and, depending on your point of view and impulse control, four to six George Lucas childhood rapes (depending on if you count the non-Genndy Tartakovsky Clone Wars cartoons.

A couple weeks ago, in Los Angeles, Disney bought Lucasfilm. And you might remember that three years ago, Disney bought Marvel Comics. And yet, to this day, Dark Horse publishes several Star Wars comic books (including reprints of many of the old Marvel issues). But hey, that’s okay! What could possibly happen? I mean, look at Star Wars itself! When Senator Palpatine took over the Senate, everything stayed a-ok and the status quo was maintained, right?

Right?

(cue Darth Vader’s Imperial March)

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Dec18

Before The Betray Crows, You Will Cock Me Three Times: The Goon Christmas Carol Motion Comic

by Rob on December 18, 2012 at 9:16 pm
Posted In: Comic Book News, Geek Culture

Update, 12/19/2012, 10:05 p.m.: Part 2 is now available after the jump…

It is the time of year when the days grow shorter, your neighbors put on their holiday finery, and you spend an inordinate amount of time trying to decide how many airings of Christmas Wrapping by The Waitresses is enough to constitute an affirmative defense for either Justifiable Homicide or a Not Responsible verdict for the arson of your local oldies station, which went All Christmas All The Time sometime around Memorial Day, as far as you can now remember.

All the lights and the TV commercials and the guys in Santa suits ringing a sanity-piercing bell and begging for change outside your local liquor store like the common winos those Santas actually are the other 11 and a half months a year might be enough to make you throw in the Christmas towel and shout “Bah, humbug!” (or, “Allahu Akbar!” if you were actually able to synthesize explosives without blowing up your basement). But before you turn your company holiday party into some kind of sordid little hostage situation, take a deep breath and enjoy this excellent, well-produced, and most importantly: funny little motion comics adaptation of The Goon #10: The Goon Presents: Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, courtesy of Dark Horse Comics and Geek and Sundry.

It is a (semi) faithful adaptation of the Dickens classic, assuming that Bob Cratchit wanted Christmas Day off to spend with Tiny Tim… assuming that “Tiny Tim” is a small-batch bourbon, and that Scrooge is more willing to accept that the appearance of Marley’s Ghost is more to do with a small bit of a childhood beating from his mother’s tack hammer than the supernatural.

So remove that Santa mask, lay down that chainsaw, relax and enjoy part one of the show, which you can see right after the jump.

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Dec07

Plague Bunny: Stan Sakai On Usagi Yojimbo Hiatus

by Rob on December 7, 2012 at 1:00 am
Posted In: Comic Book News

Crisis On Infinite Midlives contributor Trebuchet has been dealing with some health problems over the past few months, and is about to undergo a surgical procedure to resolve them (although we who have known him for a long while believe that the most beneficial surgery he could undergo would be the one that locates his balls).

While Trebuchet swears that the procedure is minor with a good prognosis, we have been looking for a Get Well gift for him. Since we know that he is not the world’s biggest superhero comics fan, and we further know that he is a fan of the Dark Horse comic Usagi Yojimbo, it would seem that a few new issues of that book would be a gimme. Problem is: Usagi Yojimbo creator Stan Sakai has taken a break from that book to work on 47 Ronin with Dark Horse Comics publisher Mike Richardson. Now that is some crappy timing.

Thankfully, rather than putting us into the position of having to explain the lack of Usagi Yojimbo comics to Trebuchet, Sakai has jumped into his own creation to explain the break to its title character. An partial explanation of which you can get a taste after the jump.

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Dec02

Alien Resurrection: Angel & Faith #16 Review

by Rob on December 2, 2012 at 8:05 pm
Posted In: Comic Book Reviews

Editor’s Note: If I ever want to hear your spoilers Spike… come to think of it, I’ll never want to hear your spoilers.

Well, I certainly didn’t see that coming. I probably should have, given how similarly weighty events have recently played out in Buffy The Vampire Slayer, but what the hell. We’ll get to that in a minute.

We’ve spent sixteen issues watching Angel and Faith off in England, trying to work out how to bring Giles back from the dead. And during that time we’ve met some interesting new characters and we’ve come across some old familiar ones, and some weird shit has gone down, but that first statement has been our core mission: Angel and Faith are trying to resurrect Giles. And that has made Angel and Faith, to me, more compelling than the core Buffy Season Nine title, because of what that mission entails: doing some dark shit, shit that the Buffy TV show, in Season Six, showed us was difficult on a good day, impossible on a bad one, and dangerous, ill-advised and rife with bad, bad unintended circumstances on every day. And this story has worked for me because if anyone knows the dangers behind raising the dead, it’s members of Buffy’s Scooby Gang, and yet they were doing it anyway. And the promise has been that we will eventually see them on the precipice of darkness, with Giles’s body and some magical McGuffins, and having to make the conscious decision as to whether to proceed or not, and face those consequences.

Well, that’s over now. While the conclusion of Angel & Faith #16 delivers one hell of a twist and teases a possible big bad for Faith and Angel that I didn’t really see coming and which could well wind up with an emotional and affecting climax. However, by taking that course, writer Christos Gage has let the air out of the story so far. He trades the weird, sick momentum of the story so far for a twist and an “oh shit!” moment. And while that moment has some promise, it doesn’t trade even in my ledger.

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