Friday, June 12, 2015

2005 Comic-Con International: San Diego Souvenir Book art by Duncan Crawford

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Duncan "Skullboy" Crawford is a sculptor who has worked in the art department of major geek cred motion pictures like The Avengers, Green Lantern, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides and Thor. You can use his blog as a gateway to sites devoted to his design studio, art, Marquettes, and photos of film work. Here, he's offering dual congratulations to J'Onn J'Onzz's half century celebration and indie darling Johnny the Homicidal Maniac's tenth (now twentieth as of this month. I bought the first issue new, for I am now old.)

There were a number of such anniversaries highlighted in the SDCC convention book, but I'd say these two and Krypto were the most legit. Lil' Archie was just the proto-Muppet Babies of Riverdale, but got four pages of art and articles. The New Teen Titans turned 25, meaning they were neither new nor teen, and were only a revamped line-up of a property that debuted in 1964. Adding to the dissonance of devoting 16 pages of art to a questionable landmark was the tendency to showcase designs from the Teen Titans cartoon, then only a couple of years old. A decade of David Lapham's Stray Bullets earned two pages.

JTHM got a two page article and thirteen pages of fan art, with the last quarter page (108) featuring the Manhunter guest appearance above. While The Spirit turned 65, his 19 page section was centered on the passing of his creator, Will Eisner. John Jones would have made for a good team-up partner in theory, but probably not in the diminished spirit of the proceedings.

2 comments:

will_in_chicago said...

Hi, Frank!

I am sorry that I have been out of touch, but I have been swamped with work and checking on a full-time teaching job. (There is a LOT that I plan to catch up on here, including the podcasts.)

Tomorrow, I am picking up Martian Manhunter #1. In the interim, here is an interview with Rob Williams, writer of the new series. I hope that he can raise J'Onn's profile while being true to the core of the character - someone who is truly alien yet a true friend to humanity, whether we love him or not.

will_in_chicago said...

Oops, this is what I get for trying to do stuff when I am worn out. Here is the link. http://www.newsarama.com/24796-martian-manhunter-r-i-p-new-series-writer-on-j-onn-s-alleged-death.html and here is a preview of the first issue: http://www.dccomics.com/reader/#/comics/364081

It seems that Rob Williams has a grasp of what J'Onn is about. My hope is that the series is a success and that we can see J'Onn and the other heroes of the DC Universe begin to understand each other. It is hard to keep hope after the botched jobs so far in the DCnU but I have learned to keep hope in this world even when logic would call it irrational. Perhaps that is one of the things that I like about the Martian Manhunter: despite being alone and the odds being against him in so many ways, he never gives up.