DRAGON'S BREATH

The Official Newsletter of Heroes and Dragons

http://www.heroesanddragons.com

Issue # 8.2 — June 1, 2003

Fantagraphics Needs Your Help

Fantagraphics, publisher of some of the best graphic novels and independent series of the last 25 years, is in financial trouble.

From the Fantagraphics web site:

If you’ve respected what Fantagraphics stands for and what we’ve done for the medium, if you’ve enjoyed our books, and if you want to insure that this proud tradition continues into this new and ominous century, we’re asking you to help us now in our especial hour of need by buying some books. Put simply, we need to raise about $80,000 above our usual sales over the next month, and the only way to do that is to convert books into cash.

We’ve spent the last quarter century trying hard to produce the best comics the world has ever seen. You’ve rewarded us over the years with your loyal patronage, your moral support, your praise, your intelligent and honest feedback, all of which are more than we could ever have hoped for. We know we have tens of thousands of loyal readers: if even a fraction of you come forward and order two or three books that you’ve been meaning to buy, we’ll be over this hump.

If you weren't planning to buy any Fantagraphics books, that's O.K.  But if you'd like to take a chance on something new — or if you've been waiting for just the right time to build a library of your favorite cartoonists — NOW IS THE TIME TO ORDER!

Here's a sampling of the great Fantagraphics books you can order from us:

• Love & Rockets trades by Los Bros. Hernandez

• Eightball trades by Daniel Clowes (including Ghost World)

• Acme Novelty Library by Chris Ware (including the popular Jimmy Corrigan graphic novel, now available in softcover)

• Charles Burns's Black Hole, Skin Deep, and others

• All sorts of incredible R. Crumb material, including the famous Sketchbooks and Waiting for Food series

• Various graphic novels by autobiographer Joe Sacco, including Notes from a Defeatist, Safe Area Gorazde, and Palestine

• Peter Bagge's complete Buddy Bradley stories from Hate!

• Roberta Gregory's Bitchy Bitch graphic novels

• Jessica Abel's La Perdida, Radio: An Illustrated Guide, and her Artbabe graphic novels

• The first three volumes of George Herriman's Komplete Krazy Kat and Ignatz

• Bill Griffith's Zippy the Pinhead

Lord only knows who I'm forgetting from that list.

Bottom line:  Fantagraphics publishes great books, and they won't be able to unless we buy up a lot of Fantagraphics books really quickly.

Call us at (803) 731-HERO to place your orders. 

Comics Club Meets This Thursday

H&D Comics Club has its second official meeting this Thursday, June 5, at 7:30pm.

Our graphic novel of the month is The Golden Age, by James Robinson and Paul Smith.  If you haven't already picked up a copy, we still have a few available at the front counter of Heroes and Dragons.

Remember:  If you've already paid you $20 annual dues, you'll get 20% off The Golden Age — or any other graphic novel in the store, including Fantagraphics books like the ones mentioned above.

To learn more, visit Comics Club > About the Club at heroesanddragons.com.

In the News

Lots of news from this week.  So much that we've broken out a separate section of headlines from Wizard World, based on Comics Continuum's reports.  That section appears below our regular news briefs.

The long-anticipated JLA/Avengers mini-series by Kurt Busiek and George Pérez starts in September.  Hoo-hah!

Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso, the creative team behind Vertigo's critically-acclaimed 100 Bullets, will take over Batman for a six-issue run later this year.  Their run will come hot on the heels of Jeph Loeb and Jim Lee's 12-part "Hush" storyline.  (Loeb and Lee are rumored to return for a second stint on Batman following the Azzarello/Risso arc.)

We lost another Silver Age great this week:  Artist Al Hartley passed away at 81 years of age.  Hartley was best known for his work at Archie comics and his Marvel romance collaborations with Stan Lee (including Night Nurse and Linda Carter, Student Nurse).

Sony Pictures posted two new photos from the upcoming Hellboy movie to the official site:

Ron Perlman as Hellboy
Doug Jones as Abe Sapien

Captain America # 17-20 will feature a long-anticipated story by Dave Gibbons and Lee Weeks, titled "Captain America Lives Again!"

Writer, filmmaker, and retailer Kevin Smith assured readers that his Marvel titles Spider-Man/Black Cat: The Evil That Men Do and Daredevil: The Target have not been cancelled.  They're just really, really late.

Paul Dini discussed The Witchblade Animated Comic, an upcoming project from Top Cow that will feature Witchblade, the Darkness, and the Magdalena in an "animated-style" adventure.  The art team includes Darwyn Cooke, David Bullock, and J. Bone.

Mark Waid talked about his current run on Fantastic Four with Mike Wieringo.  Big stuff is in store before FF becomes the first Marvel comic to reach # 500.

Matrix star Keanu Reeves talked to MTV about his upcoming role as John Constantine in the Hellblazer film:  "He's angry, but he's got a good heart," says Reeves.

In addition to voicing Wolverine for the game Wolverine's Revenge, Mark Hammill is hard at work on his newest labor of love, Comic Book: The Movie.  Comic Book is a due out from Miramax "this fall," with a 2-disc DVD already on the slate for October.  Comic Book is an improv "mockumentary," a la Christopher Guest's This Is Spinal Tap or A Mighty Wind.

More News, from Wizard World Philly

Rob Allstetter of Comics Continuum has posted all sorts of news from this weekend's Wizard World convention in Philadelphia.  Here's a quick overview:

Fables writer Bill Willingham will take over Robin from current scribe Jon Lewis.

Patrick Zircher will be taking over the art on Nightwing when current artist Rick Leonardi moves to Batgirl.

Pantheon Books will release a coffee-table book titled The DC Comics Art of Alex Ross in November.

Brian Azzarello and Joe Kubert will collaborate on a new Sgt. Rock graphic novel, Between Hell and a Hard Place, later this summer.

Paul Jenkins and Jae Lee (the creative team behind The Sentry and Inhumans) will turn their eye toward Batman's relationship with Two-Face in a 6-issue mini-series called Jekyll & Hyde.

Jason Blood and the Demon Etrigan find themselves split apart in Driven Out, a 6-issue mini-series written by Joshua Dysart with art by Pop Mhan.

Darwyn Cooke's upcoming Final Frontier mini-series will consist of 6 64-page issues.  Each issue will focus on a different core super-hero from the DC Universe and their relationship to American culture at the time they were created.

Kyle Baker will be writing and drawing a monthly Plastic Man series. (!)

Howard Chaykin will be doing a new graphic novel for DC called Mighty Love.

Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning will be offering a new monthly series from DC called iCandy.

Salvador Larroca will be the new regular artist on Uncanny X-Men next year, working with writer Chuck Austen.  Igor Kordey will take over the art on X-Treme X-Men.

The X-Men may be returning to more colorful, "classic" costumes in the near future.  (With any luck, we'll get one costume and one haircut for Wolverine ... .)

The X-Statix will go head-to-head with "another high-profile team in the Marvel Universe" before facing the return of the original X-Force later in the year.

Joe Quesada has hinted that Aunt May and Uncle Ben will appear in Mark Millar's Epic series Trouble, possibly in a not-so-wholesome light.

Amanda Conner will pencil an upcoming WildStorm mini-series from Warren Ellis, titled Two-Step.

Jimmy Palmiotti's 21 Down will be back for second mini-series in 2004.

For complete stories, visit Rob's Wizard World news page at ComicsContinuum.com.

Coming Events

Our Lord of the Rings CCG League meets this Tuesday, June 3, at 4:00pm.  If you're interested in joining, contact Ben.

AFI's 100 Years ...:  100 Heroes and Villains airs on CBS this Tuesday, June 3, at 8:00pm.  Hosted by Terminator 3's Arnold Schwarzenegger, the program profiles the top 100 heroes and villains in cinema.

H&D Comics Club has their monthly meeting this Thursday, June 5, at 7:30pm.  Our Comic of the Month is The Golden Age, by James Robinson and Paul Smith.  If you haven't already picked up your copy, they're waiting for you at the front counter.

DC Comics' softball team will play Team Onion East (the East Coast softball division of The Onion) this Friday, June 6, at DeWitt Clinton Park in New York City.  Team Onion is coached by Onion editor Stephen Thompson, son of Comics Buyer's Guide editor-in-chief Maggie Thompson.

Site to See

Last week, we referred you to the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, where you can surf sites as they used to exist on the web.  This week, take your WWW nostalgia trip one step further — surf the web using old browsers!

This week's Site to see is DejaVu.org:

DejaVu's browser emulator gives you the old-browser experience without making you download the software.  Give it a try!

If you try surfing heroesanddragons.com with Internet Explorer 2.0 — like we did — you won't even get a display.  You can view this newsletter in the emulators by copy-and-pasting this address: 

http://www.heroesanddragons.com/Newsletter/Archive/Volume08/8.002.htm

Question of the Week

This week, we'd like your feedback on the new HTML format of Dragon's Breath.  We've got three quick questions for you, to help us make this newsletter accessible to as many different platforms and e-mail clients as possible.  Just click to here to answer this week's question:

Question of the Week:
HTML Newsletter Format

ABOUT THIS MAILING LIST

Dragon's Breath is written and administered by Scott Simmons.
Copyright © 2003 Heroes and Dragons.
All rights reserved.

To contact us, please visit this page.
DO NOT REPLY DIRECTLY TO THIS E-MAIL.
Your message will not reach us.

SUBSCRIBE | UNSUBSCRIBE | ARCHIVE