Imagine how Charlie Brown feels now

Eighty years old now.  Happy Birthday, Mr. Dylan.

Cartoon by Charles Schulz from fifty years ago, of course.

Good Miracle Monday

A quick reminder to remember to set a place at the table for Superman tonight, the classic Miracle Monday tradition, as seen in this story from SUPERMAN #400 [1984] by Elliot S! Maggin and Klaus Janson.

Next year in Metropolis!

And if for some reason you've never read them, pick up Maggin's two Superman novels, LAST SON OF KRYPTON and MIRACLE MONDAY, now available in new editions self-published by Maggin.

(Superman created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster)

RESIDENT ALIEN OMNIBUS vol. 1 by Parkhouse & Hogan

RESIDENT ALIEN has been a series that Steve Parkhouse and Peter Hogan have been putting out since 2012, with five 4-issue miniseries collected in individual volumes, with a sixth and possibly concluding 6-issue series currently being serialized and to be collected soon after.

It's also been recently adapted to a TV show, so with the extra attention on it from that it got a recent omnibus collection of the first three minis, with the balance presumably set for an eventual volume two.

The series is the story of Doctor Harry Vanderspiegle, a retired doctor living in seclusion until the murder of a local small town doctor in Patience, Washington presses him into service. Oh, and he's also an alien, stranded on Earth for the last three years waiting for rescue, with mental powers that allow him to make almost everyone see him as human.

Along the way there are also brief flashbacks to his life before coming to Earth, the time right after his revival, and the ongoing FBI search for him, which had run cold until his new job brings him out into the open.

Fun little series, I’d read some of it before, but it definitely works better in one big solid chunk.  Parkhouse’s artwork is subtle and expressive, mostly dealing with realistic small town settings and characters in the Pacific northwest, with sudden splashes of fantasy/science-fiction fitting in seamlessly.

Looking forward to eventually reading the second half.

John Paul Leon, R.I.P.

Very sad to wake up to the news that comic book creator John Paul Leon has passed away at the far too young age of 49, after a long battle with cancer.

Like a lot of people, I first encountered his work back in 1993 when he was the artist on STATIC #1 from Milestone. Incredible to check the dates now and realize he was 20 years old when he drew that issue, already remarkably good and getting better with every issue of his too-short initial run on the book. Might be the first time I was regularly buying a comic by an artist younger than I was. Also kind of sad to note that both the writers he worked on that book with, Dwayne McDuffie and Robert L. Washington III, also passed away before the age of 50.

That first year of STATIC, and his subsequent returns to the character, that's some special stuff. Very much a fresh and exciting take on classic comic book and comic strip storytelling, standing in stark relief to the common trend in young artists of the era to rely on excessive noodling and linework.

 

He did a lot of interesting stuff in the years since. The three career defining works are probably EARTH X (with Jim Krueger, Alex Ross and Bill Reinhold), THE WINTER MEN (with Brett Lewis) and BATMAN: CREATURE OF THE NIGHT (with Kurt Busiek).

He was also, understandably, very much in demand as cover artist for books he didn't draw, coming up with lots of striking images over the years.

There's a fundraiser for his family over here.