John R. Parker
The Ten Best Alan Moore Stories You’ve Probably Never Read
Any look back over Alan Moore's career is likely to overlook a lot of really great comics. Beyond the usual works that are typically rattled off as the highlights of his career are British works that never got big in America, independent comics that never got wide distribution, and reams of short stories that have fallen between the cracks. You might have read a few of them, but they're all worth a look.
Alan Moore's greatest hits include Watchmen, Saga of the Swamp Thing, From Hell, Marvelman, The Killing Joke, V for Vendetta, Tom Strong, Supreme, Top Ten, Promethea, the hundreds of pages of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and a couple of the best Superman stories of all time, but as this list proves, there's a lot more to Moore.
Bodies: An Autopsy Of Vertigo’s Cutting Edge Murder Mystery Across Time
Who doesn't love a good postmodern murder mystery? Boring people, that's who. Dull, uninspired, abandoned buildings pretending to be human beings who prefer their detective stories to be streamlined and logical, with a series of clues that can be interpreted to lead to a definite answer, and no funny business with fragmentation, parallel narratives, or the sudden appearance of the author in their own story.
If, however, you're an interesting, exciting, attractive person with an undeniable elan, Vertigo's Bodies might be more your style. Written by Si Spencer and drawn by a team of four artists, Bodies takes place in four distinct time periods ranging from the 19th century to the far future, where four detectives investigate four identical murder cases. Not just identical in that it's the same M.O., with the exact same injuries and found in the exact same spot throughout time; identical in that, over a span of 160 years, it's the same body.
Despair At Its Finest: David Lapham’s ‘Murder Me Dead’ [Review]
When discussing the oeuvre of David Lapham, the comic that comes up again and again is obviously Stray Bullets. As great as Stray Bullets is, though, it tends to overshadow the rest of Lapham's body of work rather unfairly in some cases. Despite the several very good comics that Lapham has produced besides his most famous title – including the incomplete Young Liars, the raucous Juice Squeezers, and of course WWF Battlemania – none can match the near-mythic level of quality and reputation of Stray Bullets, and tend to just get left out of the conversation.
The new trade paperback collection of Murder Me Dead, available July 23 from Image Comics, could help change that trend. A dark, stirring, and emotionally manipulative noir about self-destruction, lies, and guilt, it may be the best “other” Lapham comic in his catalog.
Ellis And Howard Imagine A New Kind Of Alien Invasion In ‘Trees’ #1 [Review]
Alien invasion stories have always been fertile ground for allegory. Throughout the history of the sub-genre, spaceships filled with arachnid creatures, little green men, shape-shifting Skrulls, omnipotent super-beings, and brain-eating slugs have come to represent oppressive and militaristic governments, Communism, the disenfranchised, and several more variations of the great and unknowable Other, usually influenced by politics or social issues. Yet with all the metaphoric territory the alien invasions have covered, in Image Comics' Trees, Warren Ellis and Jason Howard prove there's still plenty left unsaid.
Mark Millar And Duncan Fegredo’s ‘MPH’ #1: Awesome Art, Just Interesting Enough Ideas [Review]
MPH, the new super-speedster book from Mark Millar and Duncan Fegredo, debuts from Image Comics this week. And apparently it's pretty awesome, because it's already getting its own movie, optioned by Lorenzo Di Bonaventura just one week after Fox bought the rights to Mark Millar and Leinil Francis Yu's Superior. If Millar didn't already have a tight-enough grip on the nexus of Hollywood and comics,
‘Herobear And The Kid: Saving Time’ #1 Shows How All-Ages Comics Are Done [Review]
A common lament among comics lovers is that there aren't enough books for kids anymore, and it's a valid one. The average comic is written to be understood by preteens and up, while the average reader hovers somewhere around the age 30, and it’s unlikely that this trend is going to reverse anytime soon. But most of those 30-year-olds aren’t readers today because they started in their late teens or
Nitz And Smallwood On The Fear-Driven Perfectionism Behind ‘Dream Thief: Escape’ [Interview + Preview]
In a year full of great comics, Dream Thief by Jai Nitz and Greg Smallwood was one of 2013's most compelling new books. After finding an aboriginal mask in a museum, John Lincoln discovers that while he sleeps, the dead possess his body in search of vengeance. A tricky and intense horror-crime hybrid, Dream Thief routinely played on readers presumptions, delivered waves of surprises, and featured
Ennis And Cermak Get Serious With ‘Red Team: Season One’ [Review]
Look, we all know it's okay for comic book characters to kill people. It's just that when cops do it, it's something of a grey area. Garth Ennis and Craig Cermak's Red Team, recently collected by Dynamite, takes an old idea and makes it new again, exploring the moral conundrum of taking the law into your own hands. One of the least-talked-about great comics of 2013, Red Team is tense, real, and de
Aaron And Latour’s ‘Southern Bastards’ Feels Like Going Home Again [Review]
It was beginning to feel like Jason Aaron and Jason Latour were holding back. Not holding back their talents, obviously, but not showing us just how savage they could be. In the year and a half since the conclusion of Scalped, Aaron has written a slew of great Marvel books. After the last issue of the razor-sharp Loose Ends, Latour penned an arc of Winter Soldier and is now taking on Wolverine an
‘The Walking Dead’ Season 4 Recap, Episode 16: ‘A’ [Spoilers]
Season four of The Walking Dead, AMC’s television adaptation of the Eisner Award-winning Image Comics series launched by Robert Kirkman and Tony Moore and now drawn by Charlie Adlard, has finally reached its end. ComicsAlliance’s John Parker has been following along the whole time to see who lives, who dies, and all the other stuff that fills out a 1,500-2,000 word post that needs to be written in
‘The Walking Dead’ Season 4 Recap, Episode 15: ‘Us’ [Spoilers]
Season four of The Walking Dead, AMC’s television adaptation of the Eisner Award-winning Image Comics series launched by Robert Kirkman and Tony Moore and now drawn by Charlie Adlard, is well into its second half, and the despair has been turned up to eleven. ComicsAlliance’s John Parker is following along to see who lives, who dies, and who appears for one scene.
It’s all smiles on The Walking De
Planet Comicon 2014 Comic Creator Photos
Kansas City's Planet Comicon has steadily grown into what may be the biggest comics and pop culture convention in the Midwest. After spending several years in the Overland Park Convention Center, a mid-sized facility in a suburb of Kansas City, last year Planet Comicon moved to Bartle Hall, a much bigger facility in the heart of downtown. This year, the convention doubled in floorspace, drew cospl