Category: Comics

The Strange Life of the Man Who Created “The Addams Family”

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Charles Addams, the creator of The Addams Family,  was a strange bird.  Although Addams had a normal childhood, his cartoons hinted at a darker side…

 …Instead of a standard coffee table, Addams used a Civil War-era embalming table. He also kept a collection of antique crossbows above his sofa, and he used a young girl’s tombstone (“Little Sarah, Aged Three”) as a perch for his cocktails…

Addams married two different women who looked like the character Morticia from his cartoons (and his second wife even had her nose fixed to look more like the character).  Addams married his third wife in a pet cemetery.

Over the course of his career…

“Addams illustrated 68 covers for The New Yorker and contributed more than 1,300 cartoons to the magazine” — His most popular creation the comic strip The Addams Family “spawned two live-action television series, two animated cartoons, and two blockbuster feature films.”

Surprisingly The Addams Family  tv show got his cartoons banned from The New Yorker and after his divorce his second wife controlled the rights to the tv series.

You get the full details of Addams interesting life if you click over to the very interesting piece Light Heart; Dark Humor: The Man Behind The Addams Family  by Bill DeMain at Neatorama.

James O’Barr: “The Crow” and Much More

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Sean CW Korsgaard posted a great interview with The Crow creator James O’Barr.

O’Barr discusses what got him on board the new Crow movie [O’Barr hated and had nothing to do with the sequels and was against a new Crow film]…

…We’re not remaking the movie, we’re readapting the book. My metaphor is that there is a Bela Lugosi Dracula and there’s a Francis Ford Coppola Dracula, they use the same material, but you still got two entirely different films. This one’s going to be closer to Taxi Driver or a John Woo film, and I think there’s room for both of them…

a new Crow comic that O’Barr is writing and drawing called The Engines of Despair…

…features a woman who was killed on her wedding day and comes back for revenge…

…a war comic…

…It’s a true war story from the Korean War, about a group of Marines – I was in the Marines, and I’d heard about this group called “the real 300″, Fox Company, 235 of them held a mountaintop in Korea for five days against thousands of well-armed Chinese troops in subzero temperatures. Unlike the Spartans, against all odds, they held the mountain, and 82 of them lived to tell the tale…

…and a pet project O’Barr has been working on called Sundown…

…it’s a gothic spaghetti-western that I’ve been working on for about five years in my spare time. It’s following four characters, each on a journey across post-Civil War America, each have different motives, goals and back stories, and Sundown is like any good story, about their journeys, not their destination. I’d describe it as theWizard of Oz if it had been directed by Sergio Leone…

Korsgaard’s O’Barr interview is really well done and I recommend it to all.

Mike Torrance and Snaps

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Mike Torrance aka The Krayola Kidd is back and he’s brought Angelo “Snaps” Provolone with him!

Over the coming weeks/months I’ll be posting more of Mike’s sketch card commissions.  My goal is to eventually get a card for every character Sly has played.  We’re well on our way!

You can see more of Mike’s art at his Deviant Art site. Mike is available for commissions and his prices are very reasonable.

 

Victor Santos’ Polar Headed to the Big Screen!

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Polar: Came from the Cold by Victor Santos began life as a free online web comic.  Dark Horse later published Polar: Came from the Cold as a 160 page hardback.

Constantin Film and Dark Horse Entertainment announced this week that they plan to bring Santos’ tale of a retired assassin who finds he and his child the target of assassins to the big screen.  I plan to keep tabs on this one!

Source: Coming Soon.

Mike Torrance Locks Up Sly!

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Mike Torrance aka The Krayola Kidd is back and he’s brought Frank Leone with him!

Over the coming weeks/months I’ll be posting more of Mike’s sketch card commissions.  My goal is to eventually get a card for every character Sly has played.  We’re well on our way!

You can see more of Mike’s art at his Deviant Art site. Mike is available for commissions and his prices are very reasonable.

 

Brubaker and Phillips: Criminal One Shot

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Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips are taking Criminal back to Image Comics and they’re kicking off the move with a 48 page one shot…

It’s 1976, and Teeg Lawless is doing 30 days in county jail with a price on his head; his only safe company from the savagery: a beat-up old comic magazine his dead cellmate left behind. It’s CRIMINAL like you’ve never seen it before, with a comic within the comic and all those slick ‘70s thrills!

Click over to Comics Beat for the full report.

 

Mike Torrance Takes Us “Over the Top”

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Today Mike Torrance aka The Krayola Kidd takes us Over the Top!

Over the coming weeks/months I’ll be posting more of Mike’s sketch card commissions.  My goal is to eventually get a card for every character Sly has played.  We’re well on our way!

You can see more of Mike’s art at his Deviant Art site. Mike is available for commissions and his prices are very reasonable.

 

Cooke Ushers in King Features Greatest Heroes!

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The Phantom  art above is just one of five new Darwyn Cooke covers that appear on IDW’s first issues for the return of King Features greatest comic strip heroes.

Each hero will appear in his own five issue mini-series with the creative talent of…

  •  Flash Gordon will be written by Ben Acker and Ben Blacker, with art by Lee Ferguson.
  • Mandrake the Magician  will be written by Roger Langridge with art by Jeremy Treece. [Congrats Jeremy!]
  • Prince Valiant  will be written by Nate Cosby with art by Ron Salas. [Congrats Ron!]
  • The Phantom  will be written by Brian Clevenger with art by Brent Schoonover.
  • Jungle Jim  will be written by Paul Tobin with art by Sandy Jerrel.

 

Sources: ICV2 and Almost Darwyn Cooke.

Mignola’s “Frankenstein Underground”

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Mike Mignola [Hellboy] is going to write a five issue Frankenstein mini-series for Dark Horse comics.  Mignola says…

“This version of the Frankenstein monster has the same thirst for knowledge readers will remember from Mary Shelley’s novel… I’m trying to do something that’s true to the origin Mary Shelley created for the creature but also captures a bit of the feel that Boris Karloff brought to the role in the classic Universal films.”

Mignola’s mini-series will called Frankenstein Underground and will be part of his Hellboy universe.