The Warrior's Comic Book Den: Alan Moore

Showing posts with label Alan Moore. Show all posts

Monday, February 8, 2010

For Julie Schwartz, Obituary by Alan Moore

THE DEAN OF DC COMICS

Julius "Julie" Schwartz (June 19, 1915 – February 8, 2004) was a comic book and pulp magazine editor, and a science fiction agent and prominent fan. He was born in the Bronx, New York. He is best known as a longtime editor at DC Comics, where at various times he was primary editor over the company's flagship superheroes, Superman and Batman.

He was inducted into the comics industry's Jack Kirby Hall of Fame in 1996 and the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 1997.

Julius Schwartz.com
Biofile: Julius Schwartz
Schwartz, Julius: Man of Two Worlds: My Life In Science Fiction and Comics (2000)
DC Comics Presents tribute comics to Julie Schwartz (2004)

Download Amazing World of DC Comics #3

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Batman: The Killing Joke (Deluxe Edition)

Batman: The Killing Joke is an influential one-shot superhero graphic novel written by Alan Moore, drawn by Brian Bolland, and published by DC Comics in 1988. It has in its original form continuously been held in print since then. It has also been reprinted as part of the DC Universe: The Stories of Alan Moore-trade paperback

The story would affect the mainstream Batman continuity in that it features the shooting and crippling of Barbara Gordon by the Joker, an event which would lead her to adopt the role and identity of Oracle, a vital source of information for Batman and other superheroes.

In 2008 DC Comics reprinted the story in a deluxe hardcover edition. This Deluxe Edition features new coloring by Brian Bolland, meant to illustrate his original intentions for the book, with more somber, realistic, and subdued colors than the intensely-colored original.

Download Batman: The Killing Joke (Deluxe Edition)

This new edition ($17.99) is of note for the top-notch packaging as well as Bolland's re-coloring (see the differences between new and old right here). I'm sure there are those who hate the changes simply because it's different, but the new colors really do improve the book, giving it a subtlety and grimness not present in the original.

Friday, November 20, 2009

Omega Men #26 & #27: Alan Moore Back-up Stories

Download Omega Men #27

Download Omega Men #26

Alan Moore does the four-page back-up story "Vega: Brief Lives," in which the Spider Guild find that they are powerless to conduct an invasion of a planet whose inhabitants are too long-lived to notice them. In "Vega: A Man's World," an alien biologist studying the Culacon race seeks to learn how the males manage to make babies without females.

Download Foreigner's Urgent

Monday, August 10, 2009

Saga of Swamp Thing #32: The Greatest Comic Book Story Ever Told?

Download Saga of the Swamp Thing #32

I once gave up on my beloved comic book collecting hobby for girls in my teen years. After I graduated from high school, I became curious as to the state of the comic book medium and Swamp Thing had been an old childhood favorite. So, I snapped up an issue of Saga of the Swamp Thing off the racks in a liquor store. If not for this fortuitous encounter enabling me to discover the genius of Alan Moore, I might not have had a second love affair with comic books—at all. I mean, how many bad comics, such as Saga of Crystar and ROM: Spaceknight, can one take? Those were horrid, wretched magazines, to be blunt. However, by the time I read the excellent Swamp Thing #24, I had been hooked on my collecting hobby all over again. Things hadn't changed: one simply had to look for the good stuff as Sturgeon's Law is impossible to escape.

There was no doubt that Moore deserved a reputation as a master wordsmith, which he soon went on to earn. While I thought that most of Moore's work on Swamp Thing had been very good up to that point, this particular issue deserved to be called a masterpiece. Simply put: it was a work of creative genius that was unparalleled in quality. Perhaps the only comic book story that rivals this one in quality is a Warpsmiths of Hod story published in the British magazine Warrior, which was reprinted in Axel Pressbutton #2 by Eclipse Comics called "Cold War, Cold Warrior." The beautiful art was by guest illustrator Shawn McManus and the entire thing was a brilliant pastiche of Walt Kelly's Pogo.

I have decided to add the Warpsmiths stories I mentioned above in this post, which includes the stories "Cold War, Cold Warrior" and "The Yesterday Gambit" by Alan Moore. The Warpsmiths are fictional aliens in several science fiction comics created by Alan Moore when he was a teenager for a small publication by an arts lab in his native Northampton, England. He and artist Garry Leach expanded on the characters for the UK magazine Warrior, and figuring into a fictional timeline and universe developed by Alan Moore and Steve Moore (no relation), the Warpsmiths only appeared in two stories before the end of Warrior. The first appearance of a Warpsmith was in the 1982 'Summer Special'. Leach retained ownership of the characters, and lent them to Moore's series Miracleman (which Leach had illustrated earlier in Warrior) in which they became a major part of the story, with art by John Totleben based on Leach's designs. In 1989 Leach began a new anthology title, A1, the first issue of which included the Warpsmith short story "Ghost Dance," which was written by Alan Moore. Subsequent issues would feature stories by other writers.