Category: Crime

American Vampire #1

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The Pitch: Cowboys and Vampires, oh and did I mention Stephen King wrote one of the stories?

The Overview: Two stories [one written by Scott Snyder and the other by Stephen King, both with amazingly good art by Rafael Albuqerque] combine to tell the tale of Skinner Sweet.  In 1880, Sweet was an outlaw in the wild west.  That was also the year that he became a vampire.  Jump forward 45 years.  A young woman named Pearl comes to Hollywood to make her fortune in the movies.  Things are rough, but she has no idea how bad things can get until vampires are thrown in the mix, and I’m not just talking about Summer Sweet.

The Good: Both stories are excellent.  The concept works.  Rafael Albuquerque’s art is a joy.  Love the characters, especially Pearl.  Summer Sweet’s appearances in Pearl’s story is well done.  I am looking forward to more about the vampires in Hollywood.  Alburquerque draws a great western!  Love the foreshadowing with the big, bald guy.

The Bad: Going to a Hollywood party hosted by vampires.  Shooting a vampire and it only ticks him off.

The Ugly: What happens to guests at parties hosted by vampires.  What happens when you tick off a vampire.

The Summary: I loved the first issue. Everyone involved did a bang-up job and I look forward to the second issue. American Vampire #1 is available now.

Iron Man 2: Black Widow

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After busting on the last Iron Man 2 poster, I am happy to report that I really like THIS new Black Widow character poster.  It has a dramatically cropped photo of the very curvaceous Black Widow.  The big “2” created in the “Iron Man” colors and style clues us in to the fact that it’s an Iron Man 2 poster… and for anyone who doesn’t pick up on it, there’s IronManMovie.com listed below it.

Yeah, this poster is a winner!

Elmore Leonard Feels Justified

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TVGuide.com just posted a piece titled Elmore Leonard: Justified Gets It Just Right.  I’m happy that Elmore Leonard, who wrote the novella that the series is based on, is as happy with the show as the rest of us [on the night it premiered it ranked No. 1 on cable in overall viewers and in its time slot beat the broadcast networks among men 18-to-49].  I was was even happier to learn that…

…Leonard has begun work on a new Raylan Givens story which he hopes might inspire plots for the show’s second season, if FX renews the series… And if they don’t, Leonard says he will pen a couple more Raylan stories and publish a collection.

Darwyn Cooke & The Man with the Getaway Face

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Richard Stark fan?   Check.

Darwyn Cooke fan?   Check.

Crime stories fan?   Check.

Comic Book fan?   Check.

Loved Darwyn Cooke’s adaptation of Richard Stark’s Hunter?  Check.

Okay.  If that’s the case, and you have two bucks and are going to attend WonderCon next week, then you may be one of the lucky folks who can pick up an…

…exclusive prelude to The Outfit, the second of Richard Stark’s Parker novels that Cooke is adapting… This 8″x12″ preview book offers one entire chapter of The Outfit and will be included in the finished graphic novel, coming in October.

What’s that?  You won’t be able to attend WonderCon?  Well, don’t fret because…

…the preview will be available in comic stores everywhere in July at the same low price and large size.

Be sure and let your local comic shop manager know that you’re going to want a copy.   Check.

Win a Copy of The Deputy

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You’ve heard me singing the praises of Victor Gischler many times before.  It’s no secret that I’m really looking forward to his soon-to-be-released crime/noir novel, The Deputy.

If you’re feelin’ lucky [said in my best Clint Eastwood voice], then you might want to enter a contest that Keith Rawson is running over at his Bloody Knuckles, Callused Fingers site.  If you win you’ll get an advanced reading copy of, you guessed it, Gischler’s The Deputy.

Of course you can also order The Deputy from the publisher and use the promo code “twitter” to  get three bucks off and free shipping!  And if you prefer Amazon, here’s a link for that as well.  The cool thing about ordering the book is that you’re a guaranteed winner!

SouthLAnd is Back, Baby!

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From Entertainment Weekly’s The Must List for March 19, 2010:

“SouthLAnd on TNT:

It’s been more than nine months since we last saw new episodes of this blood-and-grit cop series, but now it’s back and we couldn’t be happier.  It’s the best drama since the NBC fiasco that led to its cancellation.”

I’d just add two things: 1] I totally agree and 2] Thank you TNT for bringing SouthLAnd back!

Crime/Noir: “The Deputy”

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I’m a big Victor Gischler fan.  I’ve enjoyed everything that I’ve read by him and am really looking forward to his latest novel, The Deputy.  Fans of crime/noir can look forward to a worthy read.  I know I do.  Here’s part of the publisher’s summary…

Toby doesn’t have a lot going for him. Twenty-five, a couple of years of junior college, married to a girl he got pregnant and living in a trailer on the edge of town. He’s working part time for the police department, hoping the budget comes through and they can put him on full time, so he can get health benefits. His wife is a waitress at a little crap diner near the railroad tracks. When he gets the call about the dead body, he pins his tin star to his Weezer t-shirt, slips into a pair of sweatpants and grabs his revolver…

As you can imagine, it’s all downhill from there.

If you order The Deputy from the publisher and use the promo code “twitter” you’ll get three bucks off and free shipping!  Prefer Amazon?  Here’s a link for that as well.

Steranko’s Chandler Returns

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This month’s Previews featured a full page ad for a new printing of Steranko’s classic Chandler: Red Tide.  Originally published in 1976, Chandler: Red Tide is sometimes referred to as the first graphic novel.  At the time it was published, Steranko called it an illustrated novel.  I think a more accurate description is the one used by Dark Horse in the press release:

After emerging as Marvel Comics most controversial superstar, Jim Steranko tackled his greatest artistic challenge: creating an entirely new medium, the visual novel -not an illustrated novel or novel-length comic book, but a seamless fusion of interdependent graphic and prose narratives forming a powerful and original new method of telling stories.

But why stop there?  Let’s go on… Chandler: Red Tide is an…

… artistic tour-de-force, Red Tide is hard-boiled detective fiction in the bare-knuckle tradition of Hammett, Cain, and Chandler, as well as the dark, atmospheric milieu of film noir.

Although I own an original printing that’s been in my collection since it was first published, I will be picking up the Dark Horse edition since it…

has been remastered with state-of-the-art digital colors by Eisner Award-winner Dave Stewart, in a collector’s quality hardcover edition.

How can I resist? How could anyone?

F. Paul Wilson & Repairman Jack

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Jonathan Maberry has a nice interview with bestselling author F. Paul Wilson that sadly is no longer online.  Wilson writes about a character called Repairman Jack that Wilson describes as…

…an urban mercenary in Manhattan, a self-made outcast who lives in the interstices of modern society.  A ghost in our machine: no official identity, no social security number, pays no taxes.  He has a violent streak he sometimes finds hard to control.  He hires out for cash to “fix” situations that have no legal remedy.

If this sounds like something you’d like then you can learn more about Repairman Jack and F. Paul Wilson here.

More “Killer Inside” Controversy

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A couple of days ago I posted about the  controversy that director Michael Winterbottom’s adaptation of Jim Thompson’s classic novel The Killer Inside Me received at the Sundance Film Festival. Several people walked out of the screening due to the amount and depiction of violence, especially against women.

The film starring, Casey Affleck, Kate Hudson, Jessica Alba, Simon Baker and Bill Pulman is set to be shown at the Berlin Film Festival.  Of course questions about the controversy at Sundance and the level of violence came up.  I like Winterbottom’s response:

“A lot of noir books and films show violence as something which is entertaining… What I liked about Jim Thompson’s books is that… he doesn’t use the violence as entertainment — there is something shocking about the violence… For me that was the point of the violence in the film in a way — it is something very repulsive. In terms of how we depicted it, we were just trying to make it as close to the book as possible. The book is very shocking.”

Although I like Winterbottom’s response, I wonder how I’ll enjoy his movie.  There are ways to depict violence that is shocking without dwelling on it or being overly graphic.   Some times, many times in fact, the more left to the imagination, the more shocking the result.  It’ll be interesting to see the response The Killer Inside Me gets in Berlin.

The Killer Inside Me

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It’s hard to believe that it’s been nearly eight years since we posted that Jim Thompson’s classic novel The Killer Inside Me was set to become a major motion picture.  Of course a lot has changed since then.  Dominic “Swordfish” Sena was set to direct and no stars had been named.  The reality is that Michael Winterbottom ended up helming the feature with Casey Affleck, Kate Hudson, Jessica Alba, Simon Baker and Bill Pulman co-starring.

A Killer Inside Me is my favorite Thompson book and I hope that everything comes together to make it a good film.  Unfortunately, there’s already been a lot of controversy coming from it’s screening at Sundance.  I guess we’ll know how good it is soon enough… once the distributor decides on a release date.

Gangsters, Vampires and Aliens

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I was already looking forward to Turf, a four issue mini-series by writer, Jonathan Ross and artist, Tommy Lee Edwards, before I read this interview with them over at Newsarama.  As you may recall, Turf is set in New York in 1929 and involves gangsters, vampires and aliens.    Or as Turf is described on the Image site:

A 4-issue hard-boiled noir crime thriller with girls, guns, fangs and aliens.

New York, 1929. The height of prohibition. The cops turn a blind eye while the mobs run the city, dealing in guns, girls and illegal liquor. But the arrival of the mysterious Dragonmir Family from Eastern Europe with more of a taste for blood then booze coincides with a series of brutal attacks on the gangsters themselves. As the gangs fall before the fangs, only a handful of mobsters survive. But an unlikely alliance formed between tough guy Eddie Falco and a character from a long way from New York City – a long way from Earth in fact – offers the humans a glimmer of hope. As the strong willed young reporter Susie Dale from the Gotham Herald tries to survive in the middle of the maelstrom, and an ancient prophecy unfolds, no one can guess who’s going to win the battle for this particular slice of Turf.

I’ve already put in my order for the series.  You may want to as well.