The BAMF Podcast

Mike Lafferty, good friend and drunkard, hosted a podcast last evening and we had a couple of wonderful co-hosts including Green Ronin freelancer, political science professor, and cynic Chris McGlothlin, and IDW veteran and comic creator and game designer Dan Taylor.

I learned a lot, as I always do at these round tables. And we shared our thoughts on the latest round of DC comics. Both Dan and Chris had read far more of them than I had, but we still managed to find some gems and some duds.

Check it out here.

The Book is Out

I am very pleased to note that my first academic book, "Superheroes of the Round Table: Comics Connections to Medieval and Renaissance Literature", is now out. It is published by McFarland, and went to print last week. I got a stack of ten in the mail today.

McFarland assures me an electronic version of the book will be available through Amazon, but there is no sign of it yet. In fact, Amazon still reports the book as coming out in January. But interested parties can buy directly from McFarland. When the digital copy comes out, I will spread the word.

ENG 12S: Comics go to War

So just to prove you can't keep a good War down, my summer course which was cancelled at the last minute lives again as a last-minute addition to a Fall quarter with too many students and not enough courses.

The final reading list is a very painful compromise.

Captain America Comics (1941)

Truth: Red, White & Black

Blazing Combat!

Blackhawk: Blood & Iron

Enemy Ace

It Was a War of the Trenches

The 'Nam

Safe Area Gorazde

Unknown Soldier: Haunted House

The great tragedy is Fax from Sarajevo, which is out of print and not in Dark Horse's digital comics library. With 60 students, I can't rely on a single personal copy put on reserve. UCR's Eaton Collection is very hit-or-miss with war comics, and it's usually miss. We have one issue of Two-Fisted Tales, for example. I wanted to at least look at Haunted Tank, but it and the other DC collections are all out of print; even Enemy Ace is going to be a real gamble, and it is the least popular of all those books.

But my students will be able to pick another war comic of their choice for their research paper, so there is some flexibility in there and I am sure that someone will do the other great war comics which we don't have access to in large quantities, or cannot get in time for a class which started one week into the quarter.

Tip of the Hat to Corey Creekmur, who recommended War of the Trenches and Blazing Combat. My old friend Dan Brophy reminded me of Chaykin's Blackhawk, and Nicole suggested Truth, which is especially useful as it can be read through Marvel's Digital Comics library, which means we can read it right away and we don't have to worry about ordering from Amazon.

Vigilance Press Nominated for Ennie Award

For a couple of years now I have been publishing game material through the fine folks at Vigilance Press, who have this week been nominated for "Fan Favorite Publisher".

Vote Here

I first wrote to Charles Rice, the captain of this ship, when I was looking for a publisher to help with Arthur Lives! I chose Chuck because of all the books he had done over the years; he has a great love of the hobby, and he's prolific as hell. I knew I didn't want to deal with the business end of game publishing and I knew I could trust him. He took a chance and gave AL a home; we have put out three books for that game and I remain very proud of all of them. I would love to do more, as Arthur and modern magic are personal faves of mine. But, more importantly, Charles' reputation has been validated time and again since that first book. He's super supportive, knows what works, and is as honest as the day is long.

Vote Here!

I was tinkering on the next book in the AL saga when Chuck asked me if I had anything I wanted to write for ICONS. It took me 24 hours to realize that I could finally bring to print a book I had wanted to do for something like ten years, the Field Guide to Superheroes. We've done three of the four volumes and, once again, Chuck, together with Dan House and Mike Lafferty and Jessica, have allowed me to complete a long time project. It looks phenomenal and reception has been pretty positive. My biggest challenge is that the characters Dan has made up all look cooler than the ones I have made up; if that's my biggest problem I will take that any day.

Vote Here!

In between all of this, Mike has graciously invited me in to participate in various podcasts, in which we talk to authors and artists. I can talk about gaming and comics all day long, but in addition to plugging Vigilance books we've also gotten to talk to people like writers Ron Marz and Dan Abnett, or up and coming artist Ulises Farinas. It's wonderful to be part of a group that has such a positive reputation and which is embraced by fans. I am wise enough to know that my few books have nothing to do with this fact. Mike, Chuck, Steve Perrin and the rest far overshadow me through their creation of a complete World at War filled with super-Nazis and their lantern-jawed foes. But it is righteous company, and I am fortunate to be counted among them.

Stay Vigilant, everyone!

Interview with Ron Marz

Last week I got together with Mike Lafferty of Vigilance Press to do an interview with Ron Marz. Ron is a distinguished writer and editor whose comics cred includes many, many books including the last 70+ issues of Witchblade, some of my favorite CrossGen titles (Mystic and Sojourn), a long run on Green Lantern (in which he helped create the character of Kyle Rayner), and on and on.

Ron very graciously allowed us to ask not only about his recent work at Top Cow, but also his experiences at CrossGen and the fact that he wrote the scene which Gail Simone's infamous "Women in Refrigerators" tagline is named after. I learned a lot about writing and the creative process, and found Ron's thoughts on DC's relaunch to be quite interesting. He's writing their new Voodoo book, by the way.

You can listen to the interview here.

Field Guide to Super Heroes, Volume 3

It took a while for the third volume of this book to come out, but it is very exciting to see it on sale, and the fourth and final volume should take much less time. I hope to do a podcast with Dan, who provided all the art for this book as usual, sometime soon. You can find volume 3 of the Field Guide at RPGNow.

There's only one volume left; we have the last ten archetypes to cover and I am starting on that project tomorrow. With any luck, the entire Field Guide will be out by GenCon, and then I can start on the M&M 3rd edition version and the Field Guide to Super Villains.

Which should be very useful to everyone, since you can never have too many villains.

Frank Miller vs. William Blake

Today Comics Alliance posted this wonderful piece by Louie Joyce, a portrait of Frank Miller made up of quotes from his work. Perhaps because I was trained by Robert Essick, one of the world's leading Blake scholars, the moment I saw this portrait I immediately thought of Blake's Laocoon. This piece, perhaps his last artistic work before his death, depicts the famous statue surrounded by Blake's thoughts on art, God, science, and money. According to Essick, the story goes like this:

[Samuel] Palmer was showing [John Clarke] Strange an impression of the print [in 1859] and told Strange that, when Blake gave Palmer the print, Blake said "you will find my creed there." Thus the comment is second hand, but the authority is pretty good; I doubt that either Palmer or Strange made it up. This statement was first recorded in G. E. Bentley, Jr., Blake Records, 2nd ed. (2004), p. 726. 

The connection between Blake and comics has been examined before. Blake's work is not comics, but it is an amazing body of text + image in combination that has influenced comics scholars like Donald Ault and comics creators like Alan Moore. Blake appears in Moore's From Hell, but really stars as the subject of Moore's five part poetry sequence Angel Passage in which he, and I shit you not, attempted to conjure up the spirit of William Blake during a live performance in the Tate Gallery.

As to who would win in this ultimate psycho political throw down, all I can say is that Blake had a temper, worked with his arms every day of his adult life, and almost got thrown in jail when he roughed up a soldier of the King. Miller is kind of a wimpy kid. So I'm just sayin.

If you can't read Blake's lines, you can find a good transcription here.

You can see more of William Blake's amazing text/image combinations at the Blake Archive.