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When you come to Baltimore Comic-Con, one thing you see a lot of in Artists Alley is the commission artist. But Robert Quill was a little different than the others. For one thing, his booth wasn’t full of images of the usual characters. For another, he looked somewhat like the Dread Pirate Roberts and watching him interact with convention-goers was its own form of entertainment. Without looking at any of his sketches, what drew me to want to talk to him was the following form: ...

What’s the best part of any comic convention? Cosplay! Here’s the cosplay I saw on day 1! Quentin Quire Dorothy of Oz Moogle in a Tutu Psylocke Nightwing and Wonder Woman Female Victorian-Era Captain America Court of Owls Huntress Teen Titans Cosplay

I have a huge soft spot for manga. There was a time where I’d grown tired of the usual Super Hero output from the Big Two, but we didn’t have an easy outlet for indie publishers like we do now. Manga provided all those genres that used to exist in the USA in the 1950s, but disappeared as the decades passed and the market consolidated. Sure, now we’re starting to have more high school-based western comics like Morning Glories, In the Woods, and Deadly Class, but it was manga, particularly Shoujo that showed us it could be done. (There are some high school Shonen, but the drama of high school seems to be best captured by Shoujo).

One of my favorite things about Baltimore Comic-Con is that, unlike some of the larger cons, it’s still all about comics. And Baltimore Comic-Con is organized so that the indie creators and established creators are in the same spaces. This allows attendees to learn about neat, up-and-coming creators.

There’s only one more Wednesday between now and Baltimore Comic-Con! (5-7 Sept) If you live nearby you REALLY should come. There are top talent creators coming, but without the over-crowding of New York Comic-Con. Here’s a blitz of Comic-Con updates to get you excited about coming! Christina Blanch is coming back this year. She taught the great Gender in Comics SuperMOOC that led to this site’s revamp and she’s teaching another this summer. She also write The Damnation of Charlie Wormwood on Mark Waid’s Thrillbent Comics and Dynamite is going to be providing it in print. I interviewed her two years ago for Player Affinity and look forward to talking to her again.

As I mentioned during the announcement of Top Shelf’s DRM-Free store, I really like Comixology’s patented Guided View way of viewing comics. It is the best way to view comics that weren’t made with the expectation of being digital (eg The Private Eye, Lil Gotham) short of rotating a large computer monitor. Guided View isn’t perfect, but I find it works close enough to perfect. However, as I’ve mentioned over and over in different articles, I’ve been badly burned by digital restrictions management (DRM) over and over again. So I stopped buying comics on Comixology.

Dynamite is in an interesting place in the comic book marketplace. While Marvel and DC are constantly striving to update their characters, Dynamite embraces the pulpy past of comics. So they publish titles like Green Hornet, The Shadow, Vampirella, Jungle Girl, and Red Sonja. It was this pulp that contributed to the comics code back in the 50s. And it certainly is an aesthetic that aims to please the male gaze. It’s for this reason I never cared to check out Red Sonja before. Look at her, does this look like a heroine that will have stories worth reading or will, like porn, be all visuals with no substance.

This is not something I plan to do often, but I feel this book is something anyone who reads this site should check out. --- Comics: A Global History, 1968 to the Present by Dan Mazur My rating: 4 of 5 stars Disclosure: I received this book as part of the Goodreads.com First Reads program in which the winner recieves a copy of the book in exchange for a review. (It’s slightly more complicated than that, see the Goodreads First Reads terms for all the details) I love reading these types of histories about culture. I have read similar books about photography and animation published by Taschen. This isn’t my first time reading about the history of comics, I also read 10 Cent Scare and Grant Morrison’s Supergods. Anyone who’s been reading my reviews for a while knows that I love comics and actually run a comics analysis site, www.comicpow.com. The best thing about this book is that it starts from the 1960s. So far everything I’d read about comics can be compared to the way I learned US history growing up. Every year we’d start with Christopher Columbus. We’d learn about the Pilgrims and Jamestown and so on. Every year, when February rolled around we’d learn about the Civil War. We rarely made it past World War I. As a result I barely know anything but the pop history version of events from the 60s to now. I know more about America’s founding than I do about the decade in which I was born. The same often happens with comics. We start off learning about newspaper comics and The Yellow Kid. We learn about the 1930s and how revolutionary Superman and Batman were. Then there’s the creation of Marvel. Then some Brits came over and things got edgy in the 80s.

I mentioned last November that I was excited about the upcoming release of Black Science. Although I didn’t like Uncanny Avengers, I think that was more a casualty of being a flagship title that had to bear the burden of the whole Avengers vs X-Men storyline. I thought Remender had done an amazing job with Uncanny X-Force where he was allowed to do whatever he wanted because it was a title outside the constant event cycle (even thought it ended up affecting the other X-Men titles). I am happy to report that Black Science does not disappoint. At the time at which I’m writing this (a couple weeks before it’s published), I have finished reading the first six issues - which will make up the first trade

I wanted to read Rat Queens because it seemed to tick a few boxes that made it seem like something I would enjoy: Women you don’t want to mess with (bonus for seeming like all the principles are women) Irreverent humor Fantasy Tropes Looked like it might be quest-y like Magic Knight Rayearth, RPGWorld, or Slayers Well, it certainly encompassed nearly all of those. There are a lot of fantasy tropes hit: dwarves, elves, magic, skimpy female outfits - but there’s one key trope that it does not touch upon: a band of heroes (or anti-heroes) thrown together who have to learn about each other and how to get along. When Rat Queens starts the women already know each other. In fact, we quickly learn they are one of five adventuring groups operating out of the city of Palisade. The world of Rat Queens is one in which cities pay these adventuring groups to go out and protect the city or go on other quests. In fact, as a huge fan of the traditional jRPG, it’s very easy to see Palisade as the quest giver and then we get to follow the women around while they work through the quest before they return to Palisade to get another. As of the time at which I am writing this up, issue #6 has been released and the women have been on two quests and saved the city from attack, but the main storyline or super-arc is still resolving itself. (Compare to Buffy the TV show and the Big Bad and the little skirmishes that happen until the final battle with said Big Bad)