Art Thibert and some Other Stuff

Hey all,

Sometime tomorrow (Tuesday) my interview with Art Thibert will run at silverbulletcomics.com! It was really a pleasure to conduct the interview and I'm anxious to see it in print. Mr. Thibert is very personable and humble to say the least. There was no ego involved, which was very cool. I have to say that so far the majority of pros I have had the pleasure to converse with are all fairly nice and easy going types that are just like you and I; fans who got lucky because of their mad talent and got to do what they love for a living. I hope someday soon I can truly hang my hat next to theirs.

This month is Midnite Comics (http://www.midnitecomics.com/index.php) one year anniversary, and in commemoration of that and because of their excellent stories, I'll be doing features with them all month long at several sites. There will be completely different content at each, so I'll keep you posted how it all goes down. Call it a crossover. :) Seriously, I just hope these guys get the exposure they deserve. They have some really talented people over there.

I taped Prison Break tonight, so I haven't gotten to watch it yet. I'm anxious to see what happens now that the crew is off PI duty. That totally messes up their escape plan!

This is a good time to be a comics fan from my perspective. There are so many good books out right now...I haven't been this excited about comics since the early to mid nineties when all my favorite fanboy comics were out (New Warriors, X-Force, Scarlet Spider, etc.). Every time I pick up a comic or an issue of Wizard Magazine I get all giddy like a schoolgirl with a crush. It's quite sad, really, but I'm not ashamed to admit it. I love comics, and more importantly, I love well constructed plots and story lines involving characters I care about.

I have never really been a DC fan. Back in the day I would pick up an occasional Batman related title, and I did get into the whole Armageddon 2001 story line, but all in all I was a Marvel Zombie. Even last year the only DC titles I read were Teen Titans and Superman/Batman. But lately I can't get enough. I've of course read the Crisis involved books, but those prompted me to pick up back issues to see what I had missed up to that point. So I've been reading everything from Green Arrow (a character I don't really even care for...or didn't) to Wonder Woman! DC has really picked up their game in my opinion and I am glad, because even though I wasn't a DC guy I always loved the members of the Justice League. Blame it on 80's cartoons and 70's live action shows if you will, but Batman, Superman, The Flash, Green Lantern and Wonder Woman were among my favorites even if I didn't like the stories over at DC.

And Marvel has also picked up their game. When I left comics for 5 years or so I would occasionally pick up a title in a grocery store and flip through it, and nothing really excited me. It's no secret that it was Crossgen that brought me back to comics, not Marvel, DC or even Image. But since then Marvel has gotten brave enough to tell all kinds of wild stories and they really have reinvented themselves in my opinion, and now there are so many titles out there I enjoy it's so hard to keep up!

Now Image, I am not sure how I feel about them. There are some great books coming out of the big I, no doubt. But for me there's still something missing from the flavor that was Image at its inception that made me a fan in the first place. As I have stated I am a huge fan of cohesive universes, so maybe that's it. The Image 'verse titles are few and far between these days, and the ones that are there you hardly know they are related in any way. I miss the days when things were a little different and I hope someday soon they work a core group of titles into a cohesive universe.

And that finishes my rant for the evening. I didn't even anticipate talking about all that, it just sort of came out. I guess I'm just so excited about comics right now. I love indys now, but the Marvel and DC characters will always be at the top of my list because I have much love for them. But indys are a big part of that too and I'm thrilled there are as many good indy titles out there as there are mainstream.

B-Out