Welcome to the definitive guide for every comic book term you ever need to know. Since there are a lot of new readers/inexperienced readers out there, we here at PAC are spilling the beans on the entire lingo, hand jive and nerdy dialect that is found on message boards, in comic shops or spewed out on a weekly podcast. Sure we might miss some or even create some (not that we’ll tell you which is which), so look for updates or leave a comment telling us your own.
With Scott Pilgrim vs the World doomed to be an indie cult classic but the soundtrack destined to be another Juno hit. It makes me wonder if Sex-Bob-Omb — the band Scott Pilgrim plays bass for — can bridge that gap between fake band to real band. Sure there’s Spinal Tap and Eddie and the Cruisers (sort of) but what about something that’s closer to Sex-Bob-Omb… like Dethklok?
If there’s one genre that comics lends itself to perfectly, it’s horror. That being said Archaia Press is releasing it’s first horror theme graphic novel entitled Moon Lake. Being a fan of horror I was intrigued by the concept of the book. Moon Lake is the setting for all of the stories contained in the novel and essentially ties them together. Like a lot of classic horror TV shows and comics not all of the horror is shown, in fact a few of the stories end just as the real horror is beginning.
With the success of recent movies like Ironman, the X-men Franchise, and Spiderman, movie studios have now started to get their hands into as many properties as possible to make the big bucks. The list of characters that are now coming up to the big screen is a big example of Hollywood trying to capitalize in this genre, next year we will get a Thor and Green Lantern movie and the year after that The Avengers and Captain America will make their debut. But what other characters would be great on the big screen.
Comics are big right now, probably the biggest they’ve ever been with the help of Movies and TV. The problem with comics is that people feel that there not very accessible, and to be honest see an issue number 700 on a cover isn’t exactly welcoming. So where do you begin if you want to read comics?
The easiest choice is the indie market. These are smaller press books that are usually limited to miniseries or are easily collected in trade paper backs making them easy to digest. Scott Pilgrim is a great example of an indie book, with a self-contained plot that really only requires you to read six issues to get the entire story. Vertigo’s books are usually the next thing that people pick up. They’re easy to find and very accessible. Things like Fables, 100 Bullets, Y the Last Man and Ex-Machina are great starter issues and usually anyone that is already reading comics, will recommend one or all of these titles to read. They’re safe, fun and different from what people typically think of when it comes to comics.
In the world of comics you get the benefit of having cornucopia of characters. Some are fairly new but when dealing with Marvel and DC, some of them have been around for a very long time. As such they are subject to the hands and voices of different writers, editors and artists. Often times those said characters can take many different shapes and forms. Deathstroke: The Terminator, aka Slade Wilson, is one of those characters.
He was introduced in The New Teen Titans back in 1980. He showed up in the second issue to help his son Grant Wilson, aka the Ravager capture or kill the Titans. Thus he has been one of the Titans main antagonists ever since. After leaving the military he defied orders to rescue his friend Wintergreen, who had been sent on a suicide mission. Slade became a mercenary for hire but kept it a secret from his family until his son was kidnapped by a villain named The Jackal. Using his younger son Joseph as leverage, The Jackal demanded Slade to tell him the name of the person who hired him as an assassin. Slade refused because it’s against his code of honor. Joesph’s throat was slit destroying his vocal cords, leaving him a mute. Pissed that Slade let this happen to her son, Slade’s wife, Adeline who has some military traing of her own, takes Slade’s right eye.
The Thunderbolts are a group of Villains attempting to reform their evil ways. What makes them interesting is that sometimes they resort to their villainous nature to get the task at hand finished. The team has had several rosters over the years of the comic book giving it an ample stable to pick through. The base of the team is that most of these villains no longer want to be villains. They’re tired of being on the losing side. While others on the team are using it to benefit themselves by playing the hero only to distract the world from their evil plots.
We could have gone with any of our other comic con photos which are all awesome (Thursday, Friday 1, Friday 2, Saturday 1, Saturday 2) but just for Neil, we went with War Machine! Why? Because Neil loves War Machine! Same deal as last month, but this time we’ve added some categories, but with no further delay here’s our staff picks for the month of July.
We here at PAC are all about giving. We give you awesome reviews and interesting features every week, but really felt like we should give something more to the readers. So Kevin and I put our swag together (and even a few things that I bought) to give away. You might have noticed that brand new copy of Super Pro K.O.! sitting pretty in the middle. You may have also noticed that its format resembles that of Scott Pilgrim. You may want to know that it’s really nothing like Scott Pilgrim regardless of what Oni says. But it’s a new book that we’re offering to you for free!
So how do you win this contest?
Saturday had a ton of people dressed up! Not everything was comics and that made it even better! We’ll start with Supergirl, nah, we’ll start with the best Supergirl at the show…possibly EVER! Sure she was technically working handing out free dvd’s to some movie, but she was the best! Enjoy!
