Kidding?

J/k?

Srsly?

Just got this in the mail. It's in the same format as the DC Kirby and Ditko Omnibus books. Flipping through it, I must say -- this looks awesome. Wish Kubert could have done some Conan stuff as well.



http://www.amazon.com/dp/1401227775/?tag=imwan-20

Interesting, I didn't know the Fourth World influence on Masters of the Universe.


http://www.comicbookresources.com/artic ... -of-he-man

This looks like it might be pretty cool.


http://www.newsarama.com/23952-scott-ko ... dam-3.html

This interview has more details.

http://comicsbulletin.com/exclusive-int ... on-adam-3/

Here's a nice long preview of the reprint of Scioli's American Barbarian comic. Besides how awesome the comic is, look at the page color -- I wish Marvel and DC would do this for their Masterworks / Archives / Omnibus Editions so the Silver Age coloring didn't look so garish.








Much More: http://comicsalliance.com/tom-scioli-am ... n-preview/

That coloring looks garish.

I was wrong about this one. I flippes through it and thought the art worked. Read the first two issues -- recommended.

Especially to Simon. One word, buddy -- Apelantis.

My copy of American Barbarian is in the mail. I'll be reviewing it in this thread once I've read it.

Okay, I'll be checking this out - thank you! I guess it's the law of averages or something - you hang around long enough and one of these companies is bound to do something you're going to like. I've totally lost interest in superheroes and based on those pages this really looks like something I'm the target audience for.

I read American Barbarian...then I read it again right away. Then, about an hour later, I read it again.

It's the most enjoyable thing I've read since Afrodesiac, and although it's the same kind of mash-up/homage thing it's so totally perfect that it transcends that and becomes its own thing very quickly.

I even liked the introduction by Rob Liefeld (like his artwork, it was sloppily done but filled with berserk enthusiasm), which seemed to fit perfectly with the tone of what followed - Liefeld clearly got what Scioli was doing and was filled with admiration. I was surprised when it occurred to me that I was in total agreement with Rob Liefeld about something....but it's that law of averages thing again, I suppose.

The elements that place it in the same genre as Kamandi or Thundarr are clearly there and made blatantly obvious on purpose (sometimes in a comedic way) but it never seems derivative or predictable. Scioli has managed to create the sense that literally anything could happen next, and he seems to have tuned his brain to Kirby's wavelength to such an extent that you really feel like you're reading something from the Bronze Age; only the swearing really stops it from being indistinguishable from a code-approved comic of that era. There's no sex or nudity, only constant action, so if you removed that one element, the illusion of authentic Kirbyness would be flawless.

The whole thing is somehow more than the sum of its parts; the look is Kirby, so is the action, and the way the story lurches from one insane idea to the next, but the sensibility also reminds me of early Richard Corben stuff like Den (without the pr0n elements). There's a touch of pretty much everything in the mix - hints of Star Wars, Almuric, The Atomic Knights, He-Man, Killraven, Conan, Devil Dinosaur, and a whole bunch of other mythological things - that evoke the 70's, but it has a Joseph Campbell style "Hero with a thousand faces" aspect at its heart. Liefeld, of all people, sums it up as being 'the hero's journey' (quoting Campbell) and it is. It's primal storytelling done to perfection, as well as being a love letter to all things Kirby.

If you've got even a passing interest in Kamandi, or anything sword & sorcery related - or if, like me, you really feel that comics attained pop-cultural transcendence during the Bronze Age - you're going to enjoy this. If you like comics even just a bit, you'll enjoy this. I really can't imagine anyone who posts here not liking this, to be honest. You may not love it as much as I clearly do, but you won't regret reading it, and you may even laugh out loud.

So yeah...I don't recommend many things, as my tastes are eclectic even by comic book fandom standards, but I'm recommending American Barbarian. It really is the most enjoyable thing I've read all year, and I think everyone here would like it.

The only problem with American Barbarian is that it's the comic I want to do. But since I'll probably never actually do it, it's good someone did.

Simon, I own the previous HC release but am intrigued by any possible extras the new edition might have.

Can you tell me what's there besides the main story and introduction?

Also, Simon -- you should be reading Scioli's Transformers v. GI Joe. Not sword and sorcery, but I'll post the pages here anyway --

There's some art pages at the back - a pic of Meric fighting his brother (who's astride a pterodactyl), and a pencil sketch of one of the fight scenes with Two-Tank's horde, a picture of Meric as a native American chief with red white and blue feathered headgear, a pic of he and Two-Tank fighting inside the black hole (with weird geometric shapes floating around them against a black background, with Two-Tank holding Meric's foot), and a picture of Meric and Two-Tank staring at each other angrily (in profile) but I'm not sure exactly what was in the first edition.

At the start, there's a drawing of all seven Yoosamon brothers standing there, and then a sort of frontispiece with a dragon curled around the Star Sword.

So just a little gallery? Scioli doesn't have any notes or essays on his thoughts on doing AmBarb?

Brilliant!

I'll probably get that when it's collected in book form. I'm about six hours away from a comic shop these days, so it's good to get a bit of a report on things that are out there. IMWAN is really my main source of news about comic related stuff. I appreciate the heads up - I should be reading that.

I've got most of Godland (as books, not the original issues), and it's great. His art is extremely bold, and he's not afraid to include crazy imperfections of anatomy (as Kirby did). Things don't look lifelike, but they're always stylised in a way that's appealing and enjoyable. He's also the master of drawing robotic dinosaurs, which is a good thing to be.

I'll keep an eye out for that. It's almost like he's downloaded Kirby's sensibility from the collective unconscious or whatever. He really captures that feeling of crazy adventure, and the sense of things being about to kind of leap from the page.

He's not quite Kirby for me, but he has this wonderful vibe of being a cross between an Indie creator and a nutty high-school kid doing his best Kirby impersonation (if that makes any sense).

His books look like they were drawn in a treehouse or on his mom's kitchen table -- and I absolutely love that feel.

Yep, the indy/underground thing is palpable - He's clearly drawing like that on purpose, but it looks haphazard and crazy in a sophisticated way.

And you're right - nobody can really be just like Kirby, but Scioli somehow manages to get so much right that I feel like he's tuned to this weird frequency that allows him to come up with stuff that Kirby might have done (the moving city powered by a black hole, for example). He gets more right than he does wrong. It's more than just an imitation of Kirby's art, I think, because so many people have drawn on Kirby's visual language and sense of design and page layout, and we've seen all that before from so many others. Scioli gets the sensibility right, which is far less commonly seen.

Here's an interview with Scioli on that Transformers v GI Joe book, BTW --

http://comicsalliance.com/tom-scioli-tr ... -part-one/

http://comicsalliance.com/tom-scioli-tr ... -part-two/


I really love this cover to Transformers v GI Joe #6 (except for the awful computer-generated lightsaber.

Who is it that you think Sienkiewicz wants to be?