Nerds With News & Links - 5/22/09

So now we're on that Twitter thingy. When you click the nerd bird link up in the corner you can get a buncha news and links to cool stuff on the internets. Every Friday we'll compile all the tweets for a big old weekly round-up of comic book fun and shenanigans.

Proving that they still love promoting bullshit comic book gimmicks, the mainstream media has picked up the story about Archie Andrews getting married. The Archie news blog reported that they will celebrate ARCHIE #600 by running an imaginary story that takes place five years after high school graduation. The story hit the bigger comic sites before making it to the national news. When I tweeted about it earlier this week I thought the most interesting aspect was that it's being written by Dark Knight producer Michael Uslan. But for all the normals and squares at MSNBC the big question is- who will Archie finally choose? The obvious choice is Jughead, but my money's on Reggie. That intense rivalry they shared was nothing more than misdirected sexual tension.


Bluewater Productions proved our national nightmare was still ongoing when it announced their next wretched Political Power comic book- PUPPY POWER: BO OBAMA. Yes, the story of the White House dog. This one is geared toward kids. Unlike previous issues focusing on Sarah Palin and Michelle Obama which were geared toward morons who eat up worthless "collectible" garbage.







And the biggest WTF item of the week was the announcement that Fantagraphics will publish a brand new kids comic called RIP, M.D. Now, even though they specialize in artsy, cutting edge adult fare, Fantagraphics is no stranger to kids material. Granted all of their kid friendly stuff is by cartoonists who have been dead for 50 years, but still. You see, the mind boggling part of this news is that RIP, M.D. is actually a tie-in for an animated series. This is your basic commercial franchise start-up. Crazy shit for a publishing company built on a counter culture ethos. Next you'll be telling me that MAD MAGAZINE accepts advertising.

What?



In less surprising franchise news, Disney's successful Fairies characters are getting their own graphic novel series next year with Papercutz. My daughter's read a few of the prose books and their not half bad. Maybe editor Jim Salicrup can swing some quality artists for this gig and make it more than just a piece of a corporate brand. Article HERE.

Also according to that article, Papercutz is working on their own zombie parody- DIARY OF A STINKY DEAD KID. What the article doesn't explain is why they think it's a good idea to join the zombie trend so long after it has completely played itself out. Apparently it's part of their crappy TALES FROM THE CRYPT revival series. I guess it makes sense to shoehorn a tired parody of a modern kids book into a lousy series that's 50 years past it's time.

Moving on.

There's a couple of good graphic novels out this month:

JELLABY: MONSTER IN THE CITY is the second book in Kean Soo's fun series about a girl and her monster-dragon-thingy friend. This is a fun and funny book that hasn't gotten enough play as far as I'm concerned. Check out a preview and other Jellaby stories HERE.









The one you probably have heard of is G-MAN: LEARNING TO FLY #1 by Chris Giarrusso. It's a compilation of his superhero comedy shorts that's worth checking out. And it's digest sized, which is the best format for this kind of light material.









Full disclosure: I know very very very little about manga. This is kind of a big deal since manga is immensely popular with those crazy kids today. But I'm eager to learn! To that end, I'm following this brand spanking new blog from Viz Media- http://www.sigikki.com/

From Viz's press release:

In partnership with VIZ Media and its “VIZ Signature” line of graphic novels, IKKI is bringing the works of some of its top creators to the English-language audience via a groundbreaking online monthly manga magazine.The first series featured in this launch is CHILDREN OF THE SEA by Daisuke Igarashi. Each month, new chapters will be offered online in their entirety, for free. After the completion of the online serialization of the first volume, CHILDREN OF THE SEA volume one will become available as a VIZ Signature graphic novel.

I checked out the CHILDREN OF THE SEA preview and it looks like an impressive young adult comic. See for yourself HERE.