While at CMRC 2010 I found out about this range of books from Continuum. Looks really interesting – especially the ‘Graven Images’ book.

“Graven Images: Religion in Comic Books & Graphic Novels” (Continuum)

“Comics and the City: Urban Space in Print, Picture and Sequence” (Jorn Ahrens, Arno Meteling)

“The Power of Comics: History, Form and Culture” (Randy Duncan, Matthew J. Smith)

“Secret Identity Crisis: Comic Books and the Unmasking of Cold War America” (Matthew J. Costello)

And related to the religion and comic books theme, Newsarama has had a number of brief articles on interaction of the Islam inspired comic book series “The 99″ with DC Comics mainstream titles and characters.

• Newsarama.com : Islamic Archetypes THE 99 Meets DC’s JUSTICE LEAGUE This Fall
• Newsarama.com : THE 99 Part 2: Who Are These Islam-Based Superheroes?
• Newsarama.com : East Meets West As Comic Book Pros Bring THE 99 TO DC

Tomorrow in the Bible and Popular Culture course we begin to look at ethics and how interpretation of the Bible (esp. origin stories) functions in that. At some point we’ll intersect with comic book narratives as contemporary morality plays. While surfing around the web today thinking about that, I came across this course that deals with superheroes – looks interesting.

COM 4849 Mythic Rhetoric of the American Superhero
Course blog: SUPERHERO RHETORIC FORTRESS OF BLOGITUDE!

Picked up a copy of the new Serenity one-shot comic focusing on the late character of Wash. I’m a big Firefly/Serenity fan and have read all the other comics that the series spawned, but this one left me pretty much cold (except for a feel-good moment at the end). Hopefully the next one focusing on Shepherd’s past will be better.

There’s a preview at Serenity: Float Out :: Profile :: Dark Horse Comics

I’m not a big Marvel comics fan, though I’ll read them if they’re around (and I quite like Spider-Man), but I do like DC and Vertigo. So reasons to acquire an iPad just increased. See Newsarama.com : DC Does DIGITAL: iPhone, iPad App Premieres on iTunes

And, even with exchange rates, the comics will cost about a third to a half less than their paper equivalents, and as publishers put their back catalogues online we should be able to access issues etc. that never made it to NZ. Not the same as having the paper version, but it’d help some of my research and teaching (really!)

Today is Free Comic Book Day and so, with my eldest in tow and all kids’ sports fixtures accounted for, I headed off to Gotham Comics (one of the two comic shops I frequent regularly) to see what was happening. [I headed off to Gotham Comics rather than Heroes for Sale because of the free parking in Onehunga and the possibility that I'd pick up the new release of The Magdalena I'd contacted them about. You can read about my positive experiences of Heroes for Sale over at Greenflame · The personal touch]

The free comics given away are typically one-shots or promotional issues the lead into whatever big events that the publishers are introducing. And I have to say that they weren’t as impressive as before. However, they were having a 50% off new releases so I managed to pick up the lead in to ‘Brightest Day’ and ‘The Magdalena #1′. The latter was particularly welcome as I’m presenting on religious authority in comic books as CMRC later in the year and I’m using the warrior nun motif as my lens to do that.

Related to all this comic book stuff have been the threads I’ve been following on digital comics and in particular how they might work on Kindles, iPads and similar. I’m wondering if something like Comic Life combined with tablets might be an interesting way to work with educational material. The following links provide some thoughts on this:

• Newsarama.com : ComiXology, Marvel & the iPad: Can Comic Shops Co-Exist?
• Future of the Comic: The Digital Reality – Comics Bulletin
• Format Part 2 with a Little iPad Thrown In: The Digital Reality – Comics Bulletin
• Marvel Opens For Business On The IPad – Comic Book Resources
• Marvel Comics for iPad: Hands-on Review – Boing Boing

A more detailed interview with Dylan Horrocks that picks up some of the things I mentioned back in Greenflame · New version of Hicksville!.

See On the edge of the world – Entertainment – NZ Herald News

Quite possibly the most useful little application I’ve come across in a while – Jomic – a viewer for comic book archives

Not sure how I feel about this, but Marvel is resurrecting Marvelman (AKA Miracleman). I think of the character as a British figure, reminiscent of some of the UK comics I grew up with, so how will this pan out? (See Newsarama.com : MARVELMAN Returns Via Marvel Comics in June)

Anyway, it’s been a while since I read anything like this (see Greenflame · Miracleman and Captain Sunshine), so I might pick up the primer and see what it’s like. (I liked the Dan Dare comic that was redone in the last couple of years)

For more details on the character see: Marvelman – Wikipedia

The Green Lantern movie can’t get here soon enough for me (unless it sucks, in which case that’ll be really disappointing), and it was nice to see two Kiwi connections to the film today: Temuera Morrison is going to play Abin Sur and Taika Waititi is going to play Thomas Kalmaku. Another space opera for the Kiwi accent!

See Jango Fett To Play Green Lantern’s Abin Sur – green lantern – io9

There’s a new 10th anniversary edition of Dylan Horrocks’ “Hicksville” coming out!

You can read more about it here – Newsarama.com : Dylan Horrocks Welcomes Readers Back to HICKSVILLE.

And there’s a book launch and exhibition for it on Friday, 19th March, here in Auckland. See Hicksville at the High Seas! « Hicksville Comics

I loved ‘Hicksville’ (Greenflame · Mapping the land and ourselves and Greenflame · Dylan Horrocks on comics, games and world-building) but I have never gotten around to purchasing a copy. Looks like this might be the time, though given how much I’m out of home in the evenings and weekends for work things at the moment, I’m not sure I’ll be able to get to it.