Pass the Comics: Thrilling! Exciting! Educational!

Captain Daring vs the Alliance of Evil



[Pappy's Golden Age Comics Blogzine]

The Kilgore Monster



[Golden Age Comic Book Stories - you'll need to scroll way down, but there's other good stuff in there too]

Jungle folks, Machine Gun Kelly, and a space girl after the break.

Pass the Comics: Tarzan vs Machine Gun Kelly

Tarzan Rescues the Moon



[Diversions of the Groovy Kind]

Sheena vs the Entitled Bitch



In which I lose all respect for Sheena in the final panel. [The Comic Book Catacombs]

Public Enemy



While Alex Ness and I are still working on getting our Machine Gun Kelly story ready for publication, here's another comic featuring my favorite gangster. [Pappy's Golden Age Comics Blogzine]

Friday Night Art Show: Batman should be this weird...

Sunken City



Not sure who the artist is, but it was found during the travels of Admiral Calvin.

The Boats of the Glen Carrig



By Lawrence [Poulpe Pulps].

Creature from the Black Lagoon



By John Richards.

Jungle Girl



By Steve "SKE" Ellis.

The Lost World



By Joseph Clement Coll [Golden Age Comic Book Stories].

Dryptosaurus



By Charles Knight [Love in the Time of Chasmosaurs (a blog that Siskoid introduced to me) and Golden Age Comic Book Stories. It takes a village to find a link.].

Kim Possible



I'm not sure who the artist is, but this is another one found by my other half, Admiral Calvin.

Batman and Robin



By Sam Hiti. Batman should be this weird all the time.

Tommy Gun



By Gene Gonzales.

Zatanna



By Hoa Phong [Admiral Calvin again].

Uchucaesar



By Yasushi Torisawa [Giant Monsters Attack!].

No Machine Gun in Public Enemies?

I thought I was going to have some cool Machine Gun Kelly news to share, but no such luck. In spite of initial hints that Kelly was going to appear in Michael Mann's upcoming Public Enemies, the newest info about the film doesn't mention him, nor does he appear in IMDB's cast list.

That sucks, but it only decreases my interest in the movie by about 0.001%. Michael Mann and Johnny Depp trump all other considerations.

Image Comics in May

Some good-looking stuff coming out from Image in May.

Pretty Baby Machine #1 (of 3)



Jesse James vs. Machine Gun Kelly isn't the only action Machine Gun Kelly's seeing in the near future. Pretty Baby Machine covers what happens when Pretty Boy Floyd, Baby Face Nelson, and Machine Gun Kelly have to join forces against Al Capone. And Kody Chamberlain's illustrating it. Awesome.

Frank Frazetta's Swamp Demon one-shot



Josh Ortega + Josh Medors + another Jay Fotos colored/edited Frank Frazetta comic = a nice, warm, swampy, demony feeling.

Monster Zoo



Everything I need to know is in the title.

Proof, Volume 1: Goatsucker



Bigfoot as monster-hunter? Sold.

Jesse James vs. Machine Gun Kelly

Look what's gonna be solicited in the next issue of Previews!

Jesse James vs Machine Gun Kelly: Dust to Dust

Story: Alex Ness, Michael May
Art: Joel Vollmer
32pgs, b/w tone, $3.50

A MOONSTONE WILD WEST EVENT

Jesse James has survived an assassin’s bullet and the long arm of the law. Now a deranged man of the cloth, people are paying attention to his fervent fire and brimstone!

Born under a bad sign, outlaw Machine Gun Kelly steamrolls into town, a scorched earth in his wake, and he’s ready to slash and burn for kicks.

The incendiary-thermite of two psychopaths in one small town only lights the fuse to an explosive conflagration…and one blazing holy war, where there are no laws, just Old Testament fiery curses. See who’s not roasting when the dust clears!

32pgs of story! NO ADS! NO FILLER!

It's all part of Moonstone's Wild West Month, which will also feature a Wyatt Earp/Cisco Kid crossover, a Western legends graphic novel team-up spectacular, and a collection of some of the best of Moonstone's previous Westerns projects. And maybe one more project that Moonstone hasn't announced yet. I'll post more about that and these other projects over the next few days.

And Jesse vs. Machine Gun. You'll hear a lot more about that.

Awesome Stuff: Shark-Man, Hobbit rumors, When Drive-Ins Attack, Lost Season 4, Crime Wave, and the Hulk movie

Shark-Man

Shark-Man #1 comes out tomorrow and I'm really excited about it. I may have mentioned it before. That's the cover for #3 above. Man, I hope the insides are as cool as those covers.

Hobbit Movie Rumors

I try not to speculate on rumors too much, but there's so much going around about the Hobbit movie that I feel like I should at least mention it. Reports are coming in about how Peter Jackson may be producing, but he's definitely not directing, so the speculation is that Sam Raimi will be. And apparently everyone thinks that they're not dividing the story into two movies, but one will be The Hobbit and the other will span the 60 years between The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. Heidi does a great job of not only collecting the rumors, but analyzing them as well.

When Drive-Ins Attack!

ComicMonsters.com has an interview with When Drive-Ins Attack! editor Rich Stahnke. If you don't remember, Jess Hickman and I are contributing a story to that anthology, and the interview includes an illustration of a familiar-looking jungle girl.

Lost Season 4



Crime Wave

The History Channel is running a documentary starting this Sunday called Crime Wave: 18 Months of Mayhem. It's about a spree of robberies, killings, and kidnappings perpetrated by the likes of John Dillinger, Machine Gun Kelly, Baby Face Nelson, and Bonnie and Clyde during an 18-month period from 1933 to 1934.

The Incredible Hulk

Stills have been released from the Incredible Hulk movie and they look great. The Hulk looks awesome and damn if that machine Banner's in doesn't look like an homage to the one in the TV show.

New Stuff to Watch For: Dan Taylor mech, Prince Caspian, RASL, Perils on Planet X, and Public Enemies

Dan Taylor (Hero Happy Hour) and Don Figueroa (Transformers) are working on a new mech comic together.

There's a trailer out for Prince Caspian.

Jeff Smith's new adventure comic RASL is available for pre-order.

Christopher Mills has announced that his web comic Perils on Planet X (which I reviewed a looooong, long time ago) is coming to print. I keep thinking that Ape Entertainment can't get any more awesome, and they keep proving me wrong.

Apparently, Michael Mann is working on a gangster film based on Bryan Burrough's non-fiction book Public Enemies. Johnny Depp is attached to play John Dillinger, but if I'm reading the article right, the movie is also supposed to feature Baby Face Nelson, Pretty Boy Floyd, Ma Barker, Bonnie and Clyde, and the one that's nearest and dearest to my heart: Machine Gun Kelly.

The real Jesse James

Your Dust to Dust-related news of the week:

I can't believe I live this close to Northfield and have never been to Defeat of Jesse James Days. It was last weekend though and I needed a break after spending the previous two weekends at the Minnesota State Fair and the Renaissance Festival. At least Rough Draft has the report on DJJD to console me. I'll have to plan better for next year though.

Related to that, Travel & Leisure has a list of other places you can go visit in the footsteps of Jesse James.

A couple of other articles on Jesse went up this week thanks to the movie. Since the movie premiered Brad Pitt's been talking about the link between the events of Jesse's life and the celebrity-worship that still goes on today. The Assassination of Jesse James is mostly about that and how the phenomenon turned deadly for Jesse. The Washington Post covers that part of the story pretty well and also talks about how Jesse's legend -- even during his lifetime -- was exaggerated by the dime novels of the day. Not only was he made famous; his exploits were glamorized to the point that he became known as a Robin Hood figure. I mean, he was played by Roy freakin' Rogers, for crying out loud.

But, as U.S. News and World Report points out, "James himself would have considered this notion a great joke. He more likely would have agreed with a famous bandit of a later generation, Willie Sutton. When someone asked Sutton why he robbed banks, he supposedly replied: 'Because that's where the money is.'"

The article goes on to analyze Jesse's motives in depth and connects them to the Civil War: "These guerrillas were anything but the poor farmers of folklore. Many of them (like James) came from families that were three times more likely to own slaves and possessed twice as much wealth as the average Missouri family. James fought during the war against emancipation and after the war against the Republican Party that freed and enfranchised the slaves. Many of the banks and express companies struck by the James gang were owned by individuals or groups associated with the Republican Party. Like the Ku Klux Klan in former Confederate states, the James gang did its best to undermine the new order ushered in by Northern victory in the Civil War."

That's something that Alex Ness and I latched onto in the backstory for Dust to Dust. Our Jesse is no hero. He's not even an anti-hero. He's a ruthless bigot who's grown more dangerous with age. He may be old, but he's more than a match for poor Machine Gun Kelly (another man whose legend was distorted by the media of his day) who makes the mistake of wandering into Jesse's town to set up a still with a Black man in his gang.

Anyway, Jesse's celebrity is interesting and all, but more than anything else, it's this idea of him as a Southern patriot that I'm most curious to see if the movie portrays.

Machine Gun Kelly Day, Tikify your space, and Wonder Woman's inspirational billboard

Dust to Dust-Related

Yesterday I liked to some speculation that Brad Pitt's Jesse James movie may have some problems. Today I have a link with a more positive outlook (you have to scroll down a bit), even predicting a Best Picture Oscar win. Which makes me think that the real problem is that some folks are hoping for Young Guns when the movie is probably more Legends of the Fall.

Not to leave "Machine Gun" Kelly out of things, today is the anniversary of both his birth (in 1895) and his death (in 1954). Happy Birthday, George. RIP.

Adventure

I've been thinking about how I eventually want to decorate my office. Disney and More has the answer: tiki-fy it!

Mystery

My buddy Joe forwarded to me a newsletter from Jasper Fforde, an author I'd never heard of, but really want to check out now. The "Thursday Next" series sounds bizarre and funny with titles like The Eyre Affair, Lost in a Good Book, The Well of Lost Plots, Something Rotten, and the latest one: First Among Sequels . According to the newsletter, "The latest Next adventure takes place fourteen years after Something Rotten ends, with Thursday running disbanded SpecOps divisions from behind the front of Swindon's Acme Carpets. Not only can you have Dickens, Werewolf and mammoth problems expertly dealt with, but you can also buy an exceptional woolen carpet at a discount price which includes underlay and fitting."

With so many books going on my To Read list, it's nice to be able to take one off every now and then. In Secret Service connects "mysteries concerning the abdication of King Edward VIII, WWII and the death of Princess Diana" all by way of a secret letter written by Ian Fleming. Sounds good, right? According to Bookgasm, not so much: "Though not incompetent, (author Mitch) Silver’s novel is an all-too-fractured mess and a jumble of ideas, with an action heroine as unappealing as she is unlikely." How disappointing.

Superheroes

I've been debating whether or not to review the latest issue of Wonder Woman (#10), but now I don't have to. Mad Thinker Scott's done it for me: "And the worst was that in the middle of a life-and-death fight, WW spots a billboard with the slogan 'Live life!' She thinks to herself how insipid the phrase is, but then apparently adopts it as her mission statement and has (a) transformative moment."