Dead Men Link No Blogs

On Stranger Tides



Artist James Gurney talks about how he created the new cover to Tim Powers' 1987 pirate novel On Stranger Tides. Publishers Weekly describes the book as a dark fantasy about a puppeteer who's forced to join a pirate crew and eventually encounters Blackbeard, voodoo, and the Fountain of Youth.

Yep. I'll be getting that.

"Pieces of 8ight"

Another shanty to sing around the tavern.

Compensation for Missing Limbs

When you get a break in your singing, please take a moment to review our corporate guidelines on financial remuneration for lost appendages.



The Ghosts of Pirate Cove

You still have about a week to get to Newport, Kentucky (right across the river from Cincinnati, Ohio) for the Newport Aquarium's Ghosts of Pirate Cove event. I have but three words for you: Underwater Sword Fighting.

Booty Juggler



Yes, it's as awesome as it sounds. Just in a completely different way. You're an octopus and you have to keep a bunch of pirate treasure in the air.

Homemade Pirate Haunted House

I love those families who turn their homes into haunted houses and let people come through. They're even better when they're pirate-themed.

Treasure Island art



Golden Age Comic Book Stories has a ton of Frank Godwin's illustrations for Treasure Island.

Ahoy there

It's been a while since we've talked about pirates and we've had an International Talk Like a Pirate Day since, so lots of pirate stuff to link to. Which means that I'll be doing this again tomorrow. Arr.

Pirate Movies



One of the nice things about Talk Like a Pirate Day is that people also like to talk about pirates. And make pirate lists. Like this one of the Top 10 Pirate Movies of All Time. I'm going to disagree with his (admittedly half-hearted) inclusion of Hook, but he certainly got Number One right. No Treasure Island, though? That's just wrong. I'm gonna have to make my own list.

Pirates of the Caribbean 4

I know everyone knows about this already, but I can't very well not mention it, no matter how late I'm getting to it. Johnny Depp has signed up for another Pirates of the Caribbean movie. And I'm hearing rumors that they've got Geoffrey Rush as well.

It's strange, but shortly before this news, I was reading about how Keira Knightley isn't interested in any more Pirates films. I thought that was kind of a stupid story at the time. Sort of like asking Carrie Fisher if she's up for another Star Wars film. What's she going to say? "Oh, yes, I'd love to be in this hypothetical movie that'll likely never get made."

Now, the Keira story doesn't seem as stupid anymore. Which makes me sad, because as cool as Jack is, Elizabeth was my favorite part of those films.

Blackbeard movie

Pirates 4 isn't the only new pirate flick planned. One of the guys behind Men in Black is planning a biography of Edward Teach's life.

Pirate Mirror

Because she's cool and because it's Halloween, my friend Kelly Sue has a pirate mirror.

Pirate Books



Yet another Talk Like a Pirate Day list. This time it's Scholastic with a list of pirate books they publish, including Airborn, which has sky pirates.

Pirat Tales



Wanna know how Dan Taylor's Pirat Tales comic is? It's really darn good.

1001 Arabian Nights: The Adventures of Sinbad

So we're three issues in and I absolutely love the story Dan Wickline is telling in his Sinbad comic. It's only fair to tell you that Wickline's a pal of mine, but if I didn't like Sinbad, I just wouldn't post about it. I'm telling you about Sinbad because I think you're missing out on an awesome story if you're not reading it.

It strikes all the right notes that I'm looking for in a Sinbad story: mystic artifacts, strange creatures, a diverse crew with various supernatural powers, a roguish hero, double-crosses, hidden islands, and lots of beautiful women.

I'm not as fond of the art on the first couple of issues as I am of the writing though. Paolo Pantalena has an angular, stylized look that I'm not sure was right for the story. As soon as I type this I'll think of an exception, but my favorite fantasy comics are usually ones that ground the wildness of the setting in a straightforward style. That's not to say that every fantasy comic should be drawn like Cary Nord - art doesn't have to be realistic to be grounded - but Pantalena's work is unsettling in its exoticness. I was never able to sit back and just enjoy the story. I always felt like I was interpreting his pictures.

Still, the man draws some awesome action sequences. He's dynamic as hell.

But back in the negative column, Pantalena's Sinbad sometimes looks malevolent when I think he's supposed to be cocksure. I saw this same expression on Sinbad a lot in Pantalena's issues.



Sinbad looks like his ideas may have as much to do with carving her up and dressing in her skin as they do with fooling around with her. Rest assured though, he's thinking about fooling around.

As you might expect from a Zenescope comic, the series is pretty bawdy. There are lots of barely dressed women and plenty of leering and groping from the fellas. That's not a complaint - it is what it is and the women give as good as they get in the series - but since most of the stuff I talk about here is fairly kid-friendly, I thought I should mention that this isn't. But even though I wouldn't read it to my six-year-old, it's great fun for me.

I mentioned the diverse crew with supernatural abilities. One of the main ones is Wilhelm, a cursed sailor whom Pantalena draws beautifully. Witness this entrance:



That's a great design. I'd buy a Wilhelm series if Pantalena drew it.

For the most part though, I prefer Tone Rodriguez's art in the third issue. He's got a more realistic style and he also gets Sinbad's grin right.



There's still some danger to that smile, but it doesn't look like he's about to cook and eat you.

Some of my fondness for the third issue may also have to do with the action's really picking up in it. There's nothing wrong with the pacing of the first two, but Sinbad and his crew do spend a lot of time sneaking around and gathering information. It's necessary and Wickline makes it interesting with lots of sword-play and intrigue and secret passages and whatnot; it's just especially nice when the dragons and flying lions show up in #3.

All-in-all it's a cool series. There are more artistic changes coming in future issues and I'd like to see Zenescope get that settled quickly, but Wickline's story is awesome. I'll be sticking with it.

Jason and the Argonauts TV series

Definitely not the Argo, but a cool ship nonetheless.

There's another Argonauts project in the works in addition to the two Argonaut movies we learned about a couple of months ago. This one is a green-screen TV series developed by NBC.

I don't know what all the Argonauts to-do is lately, but I'm not complaining.

Del Toro's Further Adventures of Frankenstein's Monster

Apparently, Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein movie isn't an adaptation of the book. It's an adventure movie about the continuing saga of the Monster.

I'm down with it. The world doesn't really need another adaptation of the novel and it sounds like del Toro has a story he wants to tell. I'd like to hear it.

I tend to like Further Adventures-style storytelling anyway. Although it doesn't always work out well...



Still, I'm looking forward to seeing del Toro's interpretation of the Monster.

He also promises that unlike Kenneth Branagh, he will not appear shirtless in his version.

Adventureblog Gallery: Giant Robot vs. Giant Monster

Giant Robot!



By Steve Epting.

Giant Monster!



By Chris Appelhans.

They're both heart-stoppingly beautiful pieces, but in a fight I don't think there's much of a contest.

I don't know though. I bet that monster absolutely snaps when he's hurt.

The Cownt

I hope another writing update is okay, because I'm resurrecting the Cownt and want to talk about it. Tomorrow we'll go back to talking about other people's stories.

If you've known me for a while, you know that I've got this vampire cow character called the Cownt that I created with my brother-in-law. Yes, there's a superficial similarity to Hell Cow from that Howard the Duck story, but I swear that Dave and I didn't read Howard the Duck (thanks to George Lucas) and anyway, the "vampire cow" concept is where the likeness ends. With all respect to Steve Gerber, the Cownt is much, much cooler. And anyway, Gerber wasn't the first to come up with the idea either.

The lead story in Tales from the Inner Sanctum #1 is actually a Cownt story. The artist on that one is Scotland's own Gavin Spence who's responsible for most of the visual look of the bovamp (though the version above has evolved dramatically from the Inner Sanctum version).

Anyway, for various reasons, Gav and I have never been able to get a Cownt comic off the ground, but we love the character and everyone we talk to loves the character, so we've brought in some assistance to help us get a book going.

Jess Hickman came up with the idea for a Cownt anthology a FallCon or two ago. She's always been the Cownt's biggest fan and my strongest encouragement to do something with him. Witness, for example, the Halloween card she and Grant sent me this year.



For whatever reason, I was dead set on getting a full, 22-page one-shot done before I wanted to start thinking about short stories. A large part of it was because I was still trying to figure out just what kind of character the Cownt ought to be.

But then Warren Ellis came up with that idea about forming a band and I really wanted to try it. Pretty much as soon as the idea of an anthology comic written by me with three different artists hit my head, I knew it had to be a Cownt book.

It wouldn't be a Cownt book without Gav, so he obviously needed to be on board. And he is.

Jess was the easy second choice. She showed me her design of the Cownt at FallCon.



No wait. That's a picture Jess took of me at my table during FallCon. Here are her sketches.



Jess and I spent a lot of time at FallCon hashing out ideas for the Cownt book. I said before that I struggled with what kind of character I wanted the Cownt to be. I waffled between a Casper-esque kids' character, a dark homage to Hammer films and Marvel's Tomb of Dracula comic, or some kind of weird combination of the two. What Jess (and Jason and Darla and others who were hanging out at FallCon) helped me work through was that the Cownt isn't any of those. You can't compare him to other properties, because he's unique. Trying to tie him to those characters in my head was stifling me and making me try to change the character. They convinced me to just let the Cownt be the Cownt.

It all sounds so obvious now, but what I needed to do was come up with ideas based on reactions (mine as well as fans') to the Cownt drawings. People were laughing, but they were mostly adults and they were mostly giggling over his udders (and asking the inevitable question: how can he be a "he" if he has udders?). I could go on pulling this apart and thinking about it all night, but I'm already dangerously close to ruining the joke by explaining it, so I'll shut up. The point is that we've got the Cownt figured out now and he's ready to make his debut.

The third artist in our band is none other than the one-and-only Paul Taylor from Wapsi Square. I'm thrilled (and somewhat stunned and disbelieving) that Paul's interested in contributing. He's a wonderful cartoonist with an equally wonderful webcomic and he'll be perfect for Tales of the Cownt (or The Dark Cownt of Forbidden Love or whatever we end up calling it). I've actually got a Cownt drawing Paul did for me a year or so ago, but I'll save that for another time. Expect to hear a lot more about the Cownt as we progress.

Lancelot of the Lake (and other writing updates)

Arthurian peoples by Frank Godwin.

If you blinked you missed it, but I said something earlier about an essay on Lancelot that I was working on. It's done now and I hope I can tell you what it's about, because I'm going to.

My sometimes co-writer Alex Ness has written a series of poems about Arthur's right-hand man Lancelot that will be published alongside a French fellow's Lancelot poetry with lots of illustrations by both US and French visual artists. It's going to be very classy and cool, but for some reason they asked me to contribute an essay anyway.

They wanted a piece about the historical Lancelot to accompany their artistic impressions of him and I said, "Sure." To be absolutely candid, I wasn't sure how it was going to come out because I sort of have some problems with Arthur's traitorous friend. But the research helped me appreciate Lancelot in a new way and I'm really happy with how the article turned out.

The publisher is too, which is nice. Her exact words were, "Oh my, this is wonderful." And she's going to make it the foreword.

So, yay, Lancelot. I'll give you more details about the book when they're available.

I've also got a little news from the Jesse James vs. Machine Gun Kelly beat. I mentioned before that low preorder numbers killed the one-shot before it had a chance to reach stores, but that my co-writer Alex and I were trying to figure out what we wanted to do with it. Well, we've got a plan.

It's too early to go into a lot of detail, but we've got a new artist who's excited about the project. He's on for at least the Jesse vs. Kelly story, but we'll see if we can't keep him around for longer because we have a lot we want to do. A series of graphic novels, probably, based on the further adventures of one of the characters. That's all I'll say for now, but I'm way excited about the ideas Alex and I have been tossing back and forth.

I'll share more when I can about that too.

Action Girl News: Sheena, Red Sonja, and Valkyrie

Sheena movie?



No, unfortunately, that's the not the art for it. The place that I stole it from thought that maybe it was concept art from an abandoned Sheena film in the '60s that was going to star Raquel Welch, but I can't confirm that.

The film I'm talking about - if it gets made - will be written by Steven de Souza (Commando, Die Hard) and will star - if de Souza gets his way - someone like Jessica Alba or some other "multi-ethnic Latina." Which would be pretty cool. Sheena's always been blonde as far as I can tell, but she's also a South American heroine. I think the latter should trump the former.

De Souza's pretty serious about it too. He's even writing the next Sheena comic for Devil's Due. It'll be interesting to get a preview of his take on her, but I'm going to have to be sold. I hated the first issue of the Devil's Due version, mainly because they seemed intent on taking Sheena out of the jungle. De Souza doesn't seem to disagree with the decision:

“When people have these characters who understand that they have roots in civilization and in the jungle, they’re not going to go back and live in a treehouse,” said de Souza. “They’re going to want indoor plumbing.”

That may be true, but it's not the reason I pick up a jungle adventure comic.

Adventureblog Gallery: Red Sonja



By Chris Butler (whose blog is now on my regular rounds).

Valkyrie



I mentioned before that I dig Valkyries. Actually, I thought I'd mentioned it more than once, but a couple of those times may have been in emails.

Anyways, Valkyries combine two of my favorite things: Viking culture and Action Girls. And if we're talking about Marvel's version, then she also includes another favorite category: people who hang out with the Hulk and Sub-Mariner.

After that post I linked to above, Matt Maxwell (whose werewolf Western comic Strangeways you really should read) emailed me with a little more information about the Marvel character. With his permission, I'll quote him:

Marvel's Valkyrie has an... interesting lineage ... Most of her earlier appearances were reprinted in the Essentials Defenders Vols. 2+3, which are essential reading, simply because it's Steve Gerber at his most off-the-rails-crazy.

Matt then asked if I'd be in Baltimore and I told him that I wouldn't, but that I'd tell people that they should look for him there and then of course I didn't get around to talking about any of this until just now... well after the convention. So, I'm sorry about that, Matt.

Anyway, after asking if I'd be in Baltimore, Matt gently reminded me, "But really, get those Defenders books."

Which, of course, I did. Or one of them anyway. I'll get Vol. 3 too, but for now I have lots of Defenders to read and tell you all about. So, thanks, Matt, for the push. And I'm way looking forward to the next Strangeways book.

Princess Powerful back in the house!

So I was pretty disappointed with how Molly got shoved to the sidelines in the Secret Invasion: Runaways/Young Avengers mini-series, but Terry Moore and Humberto Ramos make up for it in the new volume of Runaways.

As with any team book, Molly can't be the only focus of attention, but Moore gives her one great scene in the first issue that perfectly illustrates why 12-year-old Molly's such a cool character. Of course, Ramos' cover illustration pretty much shows that all by itself. That's Molly in the koala hat showing her guns.

The scene I'm talking about though starts with the Runaways checking out a new hideout that used to be owned by the parents of one of their members, Chase. Chase and Xavin (a shape-changing Skrull) check it out for any booby traps Chase's folks may have left.



Fortunately, Molly has Chase's back.



The math is simple. Molly = Awesome.

FallCon Report

Originally uploaded by MichaelMay.

I've got my FallCon photos up at Flickr, finally. As usual, I didn't take nearly as many pictures as I wanted to. In fact, I completely forgot my camera on Saturday.

I picked Jason up at the airport on Friday, then we went to Famous Dave's for dinner, and then headed late over to a shindig at Brent Schoonover's place. It was nice to hang out with Brent and his Horrorwood cohort Brandon Terrell and their wives. They had a fire going and some great food in the garage. There were a few people I didn't know, but after a while Martin Powell showed up and - after the premiere of Clone Wars was over - Grant did too.

Saturday morning we met Grant, Jess, Darla, Corbett, Jen, and Paul for breakfast at McDonald's, then headed over to the fairgrounds to set up. This was FallCon's first year in the grandstand and everyone I talked to hopes that it can become the con's permanent location. Judging from the line to get in (it was still snaking around an hour after the con opened), there had to have been a record crowd there, but the space easily absorbed us all. There was even room for a reading area and a Mini-Comic Creation Station complete with copy machine.

I spent most of the day at my table on Saturday. Jason was on one side of me and we gave away preview books for the all new Kill All Monsters. On the other side of me was Jess Hickman, who showed me some concept art for the Cownt. If you haven't heard me talk about the Cownt before, I'll catch you up in another post and show you Jess' art. It's a fun concept and we've got a great team lined up for a Cownt comic. I was also giving away prints of Gav Spence's interpretation of the Cownt and people loved them. If we can make the comic live up to the expectations set by Gav's drawing, we'll have a hit.

Sunday breakfast was at Perkins. A lot of the gang had been drawing commissions all night and slept through breakfast, but Otis Frampton and his wife Leigh showed up, so Jason and I had a great time getting to know them better. Otis has been working very hard and I'm excited to see the fruits of his labor. I've linked to his stuff enough here that you know how much I like his work.

We'd given away just about all of our previews and prints on Saturday, so I didn't push them as hard on Sunday. Because of that I came home with some, but it was a slow, rainy day anyway and I was coming down with a cold. Neither of those helped my motivation.

I spent a lot of time away from the table on Sunday. I was good and only bought two things at the show: Essential Defenders, Volume 2 and an Adam Hughes Black Canary poster that Adam signed for me. Ten bucks total. Most of my wandering was just to see who was there and what they were up to.

I totally embarrassed myself in front of Dwayne McDuffie by gushing all over him about Milestone and how excited I am he's bringing those characters back. He was so awesome and nice and gracious, but I felt like an idiot anyway. I thought I was beyond getting all ga-ga over creators, but apparently not. I should probably do a Milestone post at some point if I can figure out how to make it on-topic.

The best part of Sunday though was when I actually was at my table and we spent some time brainstorming ideas for the Cownt comic. I've got three, solid stories for it now and have finally nailed the tone I want them to have. All I've got to do is write them.

It was also great seeing so many friends again. My buddy was Charles was there sitting next to his hero Don Rosa. My brother-in-law (and Cownt co-creator) Dave showed up for a while. It's always good talking to Sam Hiti and hearing how his projects are coming. And some other friends and family stopped by as well. My son David was as sick as I was, so he didn't feel like coming, which was too bad. He would've had a blast.