Caine's Digital Comic Watch

Note from Jim - I am discontinuing the title Paper Comic DeathWatch. I feel it's time to move on, as the title, once provocative and humorous, has become quaint and passe. Since starting PCDW over 2 years ago, many comic book sites have followed suit and now have some form of Digital Comics or *Death Watch* column, many tipping their hat to PCDW in their title...

I also feel the age of disappearing paper comics is already upon us with many comic publishers going under and DC's comic sales at it's lowest point in 6 years. And while it's exciting to predict such change, it's not necessarily fun to watch the agony. So, I'd like to change the direction of this column a bit, focusing no longer on the doom descending on the paper comics industry but rather concentrating on Digital Comic news and technology.

With all that said, I present to you a new era in Digital Comics Commentary with the first of many Caine's Digital Comic Watch...

Future Favorites of the Digital Delivery Age of Comics

As MARVEL and DC strugle to reach their full potential, no doubt shaping and reshaping, what may become known as the DIGITAL DELIVERY Age of Comic Books there are many less well known publishers out there already using digital distribution methods.


Today we are going to highlight a few comics from these other companies - comics we predict will be SHINING STARS of the DIGITAL AGE of Comic Books.

Note: If you would like to have your comic featured in a future article, please send us a link to your comic.

The following are in no particular order:

CHIMAERA STUDIOS
ARMORX

Carson Deeds is a 17-year-old, emotionally troubled time bomb with a loaded shotgun underneath his bed and a list of classmates firmly in his aim. When a mysterious suit of armor falls into Carson's unstable hands, he finds himself wielding the power to live out every revenge fantasy he's ever dreamt against a world that he feels has done him wrong.

INDYPLANET
THE VENGER

Crime and despair. Violence and fear. The city is under siege. Years ago it had a protector, the Venger, who brought his justice to those who brought evil. Now he is old and memories of him have faded from the minds of the people. But the enemy and his brand of evil have returned and no one else understands. He will be needing help this time. A new Venger will take up the fight. But how far will he go to destroy the enemy. And will he destroy his family in the process?




MOONSTONE'S
THE INFINITEENS

War! Mankind is at the very brink of extintion as mindless Event Freaks, powerful humans infected by alien superparticles, destroy everything in their wake.

And as the flames threaten to engulf the globe, hope is reborn anew in the tiny coastal village of Cape Ruseur, New England, where four childhood friends unite to turn the tide of destruction and fight for life and justice. Infiniteens is a superhero saga about the end of the world.

It's a touching tale about human hearts and how the best in us can emerge in our darkest hour.

For 8 chapters you´re invited to join Nadia, Luther, Julian and Beverly in a heroic struggle to save their tiny community from an apocalyptic threat.




ORANG UTAN COMICS
ALPHA GODS

In the year 2086 humanity faces a new threat, Extra Humans.

The government is struggling to cope with the growing number of mutants, aliens and supernatural beings who are living amongst us. People are beginning to panic and so, in 2050, the Department for Extra Human Affairs was established with a remit to try and contain the problem. By 2086 the situation has escalated, so they have formed a new rapid response strike force, the Alpha Gods. Who better to police the Extra Human community than Extra Humans themselves?

This group of young misfits and rebels must learn to work together despite facing confliict from within and from without. How can they follow a leader they have no faith in? How can they fight people they used to count as allies?

ZUDA COMICS
HIGH MOON

Werewolves (and a whole lot more) in the Old West.

A grumbly, bounty-hunter, Matthew Macgregor, investigates a series of strange happenings in the dusty Texas town of Blest - where drought has brought famine and hardship to most of the town and surrounding ranches. Unfortunately, that's the least of the town's worries! While the summer heat pushes the mercury toward further unbearable degrees during the day, the nights are haunted by strange, unnatural creatures roaming the darkness.

While Macgregor, a former Pinkerton agent, seeks to uncover the towns dark secrets, he tries desperately to keep his own hidden - secrets of a past steeped in witchcraft and the supernatural. When the sun sets it'll be a showdown at High Moon.

From the horrors of Blest, Texas to the mountainous mysteries of Ragged Rock, Oklahoma, werewolf-hunter Macgregor investigates a series of murders following a bizarre train robbery. But, do his true motivations belie a sinister past? Soon, the town murders become the least of his worries as he finds himself caught in a vendetta, forced to do battle with a technological monstrosity. As he confronts his own dark origins, Macgregor must make the ultimate decision: live like a beast, or die like a man?

Go check out some of these great comics today!

- Caine

Pierre's Battle of the Cowl?

I came up with the idea for Battle for the Cowl.

I swear I did. ;)

Two decades before the “Battle for the Cowl” at DC, Heck even before Knightfall,
I came up with my own “Battle for the Cowl”.

I wish I could claim to have some merit… but I guess that as soon as there was a second Robin, someone would ask the question;

“Who will replace Batman when he dies?”

At the time, Robin was Jason Todd.

Whenever I was making a comic submission… or heck, even just some pages just for fun, I would always try to come up with some sort of twist.

I am pretty sure that pretty much everyone would have made Dick the new Batman with Jason acting as his Robin.

But I wanted to twist things around.

So I asked myself… How could Jason come out on top in a fight between him and Dick?

At the time, it was established that Jason had been living on the street when Batman found him. So I figured that he may not be the acrobat or the detective that Dick is, but he could be a better street brawler, and heck he could have learned to fight dirty on the street.

So I decided to make him the winner of my “Battle for the Cowl”.

Here are the pages I made all them years ago.

Hope you guys will get a kick out of them pages. (Click to see full size versions.)

I was pretty surprised when I read that DC were planning their “Battle for the Cowl”.

No not because they were using/stealing MY idea. ;)

But because they had already made Knightquest/Knightsend/Knightswhatever not that long ago.

I can understand when they remake stories from the Silver Age. I can understand that they expect that most people never read them Silver Age stories and can re-use some of them from time to time.

But to re-use a story from the Image Age (or is that the Dark Age??... What the heck do we call the 90s anyway when it comes to comics??)?? Surely most comic readers still remember Knightquest?  Heck the TPB is still available.

But then again, once again we have a World without Superman. So maybe someone at DC is tired of redoing stories from the Silver age, and it was decided to tap some stories/ideas from the 90’s instead?

Maybe they are trying to reproduce Marvel’s successes when repeating the “Age of Apocalypse” (House of M) and Acts of Vengence (Dark Reign)??

Does this mean that we will soon have a “Superman purple/Superman yellow” story? Or “Hal Jordan going mad and destroying the Green/Blue/Yellow/and all the other colors Lantern Corps”? (Okay that is unfair since Green Lantern is DC’s best book right now, and heck, maybe even the best comic book out there right now).

But then again, the real question is;

No… No… not…

“Who will be the NEW Batman?”…

But…

“How long until the REAL Batman (or the REAL Captain America for that matter) is back from the dead?”

(Yes I know that Batman/Bruce Wayne is not dead, we saw him in the past in the last issue of Final Crisis… but you know what I mean).

Until next time.

Mr Crimson Returns!

Mister Crimson Returns!
In this episode, we meet the lovely Ms. Crimson.
Check it out .:

Thanks to everyone for bearing with us while Seth and Diego worked on the new pages!

Free Comics Monday: Cat-Man

If you follow DC comics, you may be familiar with their version of a character named Cat-Man, but long before he showed up, that named was used by a golden age superhero.

From wikipedia:

Cat-Man and Kitten (also Catman and Kitten and The Cat-Man and the Kitten) were a pair of superhero characters created by Charles M. Quinlan and Irwin Hasen (who also created Wild Cat and Dondi) and first published in 1940 by now-defunct Holyoke Publishing. Due to circumstances in World War II, a radically-altered version of the characters would be published in Australia during WWII and reprinted in the 1950s. AC Comics would later revive the characters in the 1980s.



[ Catman 29 ]

In 1940, Holyoke published Crash Comics Adventures #4 and 5, which first showed Cat-Man. Cat-Man was David Merryweather, a man raised in Burma by a tigress after his parents had been killed. From living with tigers for years, he gained superhuman abilities, such as super-strength, enhanced agility, natural night vision and the legendary "9 lives" of cats. Eventually, David returned to the U.S., where he was horrified by criminals preying on the innocent. To stop this, he became a private investigator; later, he would become an officer in the Army. Assigned to stateside duties, he donned an olive and orange costume with a black cat's-head symbol and became Cat-Man.

Cat-Man proved popular enough to earn his own series in May, 1941. In #5, Cat-Man encountered Katie Conn, a young girl raised by her uncle, a villain who unsuccessfully tried to kill Cat-Man, at the cost of his own life. With no one else to turn to, David became a legal guardian to Katie, who eventually designed matching red and yellow costumes, fighting alongside Cat-Man as the Kitten. As the series continued, Katie matured and David was promoted to the rank of captain.

Cat-Man Comics ran for 32 issues, until 1946, when Holyoke folded. Eventually, the characters fell into the public domain.





[ Catman 32 ]

- Enjoy!

Catch All Post

Today, I'm running a sort of catch all post as I was up late last night watching the new JJ Abrams Star Trek movie. BTW if you get a chance the weekend, go see the movie. It's really quite amazing just how much they were able to rejuvinate the Trek franchise!

Wolverine vs Star Trek

In a way, it's sort of how I wish they would approach more superhero movies. It's got action, sure, but it's not all about action. There is a lot of humor and great character moments as well. Also, I think the movie provides just enough fan service to get us all to smile at the right places, without overdoing it.

The best part, and I think this might be a sticking point for some fans, is that in taking the direction they did with story, it allows the writers to challenged our expectations of the storyline and characters.

In the past, Trek movies, like 40 year old comic franchises, have sort of been tethered to themes and storylines that made them seem a little dated. It wasn't so much the characters that were broken, but the way writers approached the characters. Like glass unicorns, writers would carefully move Kirk/Picard through the movies without really doing anything with them. I think Star Trek 5 and Star Trek 9 are probably good examples of this. And no, I don't call characters dying in a movie character development. It's actually the reverse as now the character is forever frozen behind the veil of death.

On the flipside, the Wolverine movie seems to be all about action and fan service but with no real direction or purpose. Characters show up left and right. They say their lines, but nothing they say really carries any weight because we don't really know who the are.

Perhaps the thing most people seem to be having a problem with with the Wolverine movie is the end where, in an attempt to make the movie jive with what we've seen in the X-men movies, the writers use a completely rediculous story mechanic to explain Logan's lost memories in X-men 1. Was that really necessary? I mean the movie persumably takes place 30 years before X-men 1 so something could have happened in the interim to explain the memory loss. (That's right - it's a 1970's movie, but damn if you'll see one shred of 1970's in the entire movie.)

I think the most interesting part of the Wolverine movie is the 10 minute montage of Logan and Creed fighting in various different wars over the years. Not because of the action, but because it seemed like an interesting avenue to explore with the character. What would their lives have been like all that time?

On the flipside - Wolverine Origins was better than Van Helsing.

But just barely.

Bronze Age Spotlight Fan Mail!

The Bronze Age Spotlight articles that Trey Causey and I have been running have been pretty popular, but last night I received some fan mail that really blew me away...

Hi, Jim.

I ran across your article on Deathlok on your site Flashback Universe. It was dead on, and I thank you for your insight. Just thought I should touch base. Take care --RICH BUCKLER

Yep, that's Deathlok Creator Rich Buckler! I was sorta surprised to see he had read the article, but I guess it really should come as no surprise that a guy who was writing about cyborgs in the 70's would be right at home on the interweb! :)

Here is the Deathlok Bronze Age Spotlight, for those of you who missed it the first time. :)

PCDW Bit - The Amazon Kindle DX vs Scott McCloud

In case you missed all the hoopla, last Wednesday, Amazon unveiled their newest in the Kindle line of Digital Readers, the Kindle DX Digital Reader.

This version comes with some nice enhancements over the previous version:

9.7" diagonal screen (vs 6 inch)

Auto Rotate feature for wide viewing

Built in PDF reader

4 gig storage

Still sadly missing are a color screen and a netbook friendly price. Currently the Kindle DX is $489 which seems like a lot when you can get a Dell Mini 9 netbook for $300. Still, I would not want to discourage early adopters from getting out there and buying the heck out of this thing so they can inspire Amazon to create a color version!

So far, most comments on the new Kindle have been very positive, except for that luddite (jk) Scott McCloud, who made the unfortunate mistake of stating his opinion on the internet. :D

What’s the default shape of our art forms?

Cinema is wider than it is tall. TV is wider than it is tall. Theater is wider than it is tall. Laptop and desktop monitors are wider than they are tall. In fact, with the advent of widescreen TVs, there’s little difference in the shapes. They’re all around 3×5 or 4×5 range. Wider than tall. All of them.

And print? Well, print is taller than it is wide right? The printed page is the exception to the rule, isn’t it?

Wrong.

If you want to see some interesting opinions to the contrary, scroll down through the numerous comments following Scott's post. Like me, most of the posters think the shape of the Kindle is fine and that there are some very practical reasons for its vertical design.

Anyway, that's all for today - I hope you all have a great weekend and remember Sunday is Mother's Day, so if you are able, give you mom a call. :)

- Jim

Pierre Speaks: Learning to Draw

Like many other artists, I am mostly self-taught.

Although I later took some art classes in college, I mostly learned to draw from reproducing the artwork of the artists that I was admiring as a kid.

So you could say that I had the best art teachers in the world. ;)

Ross Andru, Sal and John Buscema, George Perez, John Byrne, Dave Cockrum, and wayyyy to many others that I fail to mention.

At first I would reproduce some poses that I liked.







But then, things escalated.

I would then reproduce entire panels.



Then I would make a page mixing some of my favorite panels in a comic.





Then I started reproducing entire pages.







And ultimately, I started drawing my own stuff.



Although when you draw all alone in your room, you have no idea how things are supposed to be done.



So like many, I had no clue as to what was proper art supplies. So I was using whatever supplies that I could get my hands on.







I was drawing on lined paper, and once I tried my hand at inking, I was using ballpoint pens since I had no idea as to what was actually used to ink.

And although later I improved the materials I was using by drawing on non-lined paper and was using some sort of technical pens to ink, I still had no idea that comic artwork was done on a bigger illustration board.

So I would still draw the artwork the same size the comic was printed on 8.5 X 11 paper.

And even once I realized that the size of the original artwork was much bigger, I had a tough time finding some 11 X 17 paper.

Heck I once used some 11X 17 tracing paper since it was all I could find of the proper size.

Ahh… the memories.

But eventually I went to college in Arts. A big waste of time. We were making ink blots and sculpting stuff in wood. Very little drawing involved.













Sadly, the first book on how to draw I got was “How to draw the Marvel way”.

Why sadly??

I was about 18 at the time, which I can’t help but think that it was pretty late to start learning that stuff. If only I had found those books sooner.

The first thing I learned from those was how little I knew.

I learned so much about things I did not have a clue that existed like volumes or about composition and other such stuff. Or heck just something like roughing out the artwork lightly in pencil then properly inking that drawing.

For too long, inking a drawing for me meant drawing it directly in ink.

Damn how ignorant I was.

But better late then never I guess.

I later learned a few things in Graphic Arts, but my time studying in Illustration & Design was the best time I spent in college. At last I would learn to improve my drawing power. ;)

Although once more that was pretty late, I was around 22 or 23 at the time.

Once again, if only I had known about that program when I first came out of high school, I would not have wasted my time in Arts or in Graphic Arts.

Well…. Once more…. Better late then never I guess.

Although, even today, I am still learning. I like to think that I am still improving, and from the feedback that I am getting, I seem to be.

But I will let you guys be the judges of that. ;)

Until next time.

Silver Age Mister Crimson

Hey guys, Diego sent me an email saying new pages of Mister Crimson are getting finished so expect new story this week.

However to tide you over while we get the new pages ready, Pierre Villeneuve was kind enough to scan this cover from one of his favorite Silver Age Mister Crimson comics.

Check out the classic Silver Age Cover here .: