Hey Guys, as we continue to speed through the month of January, (seriously where has the month gone???) the news and announcements continue to come at us fast and furiously. So let’s get right to it in this week’s installment of The Impact. DC Comics Unveils New Logo, New Brand Identity After last week’s Impact was published Bleeding Cool broke the news that DC Comics had just trademarked a new logo. On Thursday DC officially unveiled it to the world on their blog The Source. “The new identity is reflective...

As 2011 comes to a close, I can say with a bit of relief that the amount of quality content being published within the world of comics continues to increase steadily. The interest in recent years in high-end, lavish, oversized archival editions and spiffy comic related art books signifies that people are not just reading comics for their obvious entertainment value, but also seeing the medium more and more as the valid literary and artistic arena it’s been since day one. As such I’ve assembled a list of 2011’s...

Hi Everyone! I’m  Matt. Welcome back for another installment of The Impact. After what has felt like a never ending stream of announcements from the comic world, things have slowed down a bit this week. I have a feeling this is mostly due to the Labor Day Holiday weekend. Nonetheless, here is the news making it’s way around the comic book world. Superman Fan Robbed of Super Collection. Courtesy of stltoday. Everyone should take a moment and send some good thoughts to Mr. Mike Meyer.  Mike is a 48 year old Superman...

It is that time of the month, when you pay your rent and your phone bill, but it is also the time to look back at some of the best covers from that past month. My favorite was Detective Comics #880 - Cover by JOCK. Amazing Spider-Man #665 - Cover by Paolo Rivera & Michael Lark “INFESTED” ENDS WITH SPIDEY AT THE “CROSSROADS” As Spider-Man, he’s a member of the FF and TWO different Avengers teams. As Peter Parker, he works all hours on his dream job at Horizon Labs. That doesn’t leave him...

Looking for a great, fun read with fantastic art that requires almost zero backstory but has some of the most talented creators in the industry?  Then look look no further than Rocketeer Adventures #2! Rocketeer Adventures is a four part mini-series that carries on the iconic character created by Dave Stevens in 1982.  It takes almost no knowledge of Rocketeer’s backstory (or even the last issue) because each issue of this mini is a collection of short stories by some of the biggest creators working in comics today. ...

Did you guys check out Ian’s article on the 20th anniversary of the release of the movie adaptation of Dave Stevens’ The Rocketeer? If not, check it out. Anyway, if you couldn’t tell, Ian is a big fan of the Rocketeer and he was nice enough to loan me his copy of The Rocketeer: The Complete Adventures so that I could feature it on this week’s edition of Trade Tuesday. That’s right, IDW was able to get the rights and release the whole collection in one book. I think at this point, we all know the...

At the tender age of seven, my dad took me to see a film called The Rocketeer.  Being the dumb kid I was, I had little to no idea what I was getting myself into or the lifelong impact this film would have on me.  To this day, it remains one of the best and most true to the source material comic book movies ever made.  What’s that?  You didn’t know that The Rocketeer was a comic book movie?  Well, read on and learn some more! The Comic The Rocketeer, an homage to classic pulp-fiction magazines, tells the story...

Let me take a moment to recognize all the amazing horror that has come out this month. I felt like April was a little slow and I was scrounging, but May has been a smorgasbord of wonderfully delicious blood and monsters to choose from and I have slurped up all of it! I have really enjoyed the fun titles like Danger Girl and the Army of Darkness and the books with the super gore like Edge of Doom. However, I will be discussing those in the “Are You Scared Yet?” segment of Comic Impact’s newest show, “Did You Catch...

A few months back,I found out that the pop culture phenomenon,The Suicide Girls you know,those hot,tattooed,naked chicks were headed to the pages of comic books,courtesy of IDW Publishing. I told myself I needed to read this comic when it comes out. Now this past week, we got the first issue of Suicide Girls.Was it all that, or was it just another bad comic on the shelves? Find out,in my review of Suicide Girls #1 by Brea Grant,Steve Niles,Missy Suicide and artwork by David Hahn, and Cameron Stewart. In this first issue,we meet...

It’s the 13th and you should all know what that means (you know, since we established this would be happening once a month last month). It’s time for the monthly dose of HORROR! Muahahaha! Ok, so that doesn’t work as well when I type it, but I can assure you that I have an excellent evil laugh. Just wait until you have to see me do this on video! I gave a lot of amazingly scary suggestions as to what to read last month in the horror department. This month is no different, but I am not here to summarize. I feel that skimming...

Horror – the genre has been around since the movie industry started, because who doesn’t love a good scare, right? Guess what. There are also horror comics, and they have been around a long time, too. The problem with horror comics is the exact same problem that horror movies have. There are so many of them made all the time, and there is no way to tell whether or not they are going to be awesome or terrible. That is where I come in. My name is Susan, and I am here at Comic Impact to be your guide through the truly terrifying...

Last month, we here at ComicImpact.com started a new feature called Best Comics Book Covers Of The Month. On the first day of the month I will be posting some of my favorite covers of the past month, so let’s take a look back at some of  the best covers of February, 2011. My favorite cover of the month was Brightest Day #20. I don’t read this book in individual issues, but I’m going to pick up the hardcover.But, I love this cover! It is some of the best David Finch artwork I have seen in a long time. The...

A year ago this week, I was having a tough time of compiling a scaled down “Best of the Year” list due to the unexpected flurry of note-worthy material released during 2009. Now I find the task even harder considering the avalanche of great releases that saw print in 2010. A chief reason for this is the recent explosion of exceptional archival comic strip collections, lavish artist career overviews, and beautifully produced art books by publishers like Fantagraphics, IDW, and Flesk Publications. Add to this numerous...

Welcome to Part 2 of Sequential Sunday’s look at the highly varied and completely mind-blowing work of 3-D processing master Ray Zone! In part 1 we saw numerous examples of depth-defying art from early issues of Zone’s self-published title The 3-D Zone. Though this series constitutes a sizable chunk of his 1980’s output, Zone applied his skills to the comics of numerous other publishers from the decade of the independent publishing boom as well, including Eclipse Comics. In addition to working with Eclipse characters...

The second annual Long Beach Comic Con has now come and gone and it is with a huge measure of relief that I can say that it has not merely bested last year’s event, but gave me every reason to believe it will continue to move in a positive direction as well. And, as strange as it sounds, I’d say it topped last year’s inaugural LBCC just by simultaneously growing larger yet staying essentially the same: by keeping the focus on sequential art, the people who make it, and the fans who love it. The comic book Gods...

There are only a few movies that come close to being as entertaining as Jurassic Park in my book. Unfortunately for me and other fans of this series the sequels just don’t match up to the original, no matter how much I want them to. But I love dinosaurs and I love to see them in movies so I keep on seeing the movies, and I would gladly throw down another ten or twelve bucks on a fourth movie. I was hoping that IDW’s new comic book series would be a suitable continuation of the series since Universal can’t seem...

Pixar Animation Studios has always had a keen eye for finding truly unique and individualistic artistic talents to create visually stunning ways to drive their stories forward. In the highly stylized opening title sequence for their fourth film, Monsters Inc., the notable influence of 1950’s animation began to appear. Of the many talented artists working at the studio, four names are most commonly associated with pushing this distinctive look forward: Lou Romano, Don Shank, Nate Wragg and, last but certainly not least, Scott...

In last week’s installment of Sequential Sunday we took a look at the work of the great Al Williamson who passed away on June 12. As an addendum to that article I’d like to give some suggestions to those who’d like to explore the work of this comic art master via some of the books currently in print as well as those that are soon to be released. Al Williamson’s Flash Gordon: A Lifelong Vision of the Heroic by Mark Schultz (Flesk Publications) One of Williamson’s greatest influences was Flash Gordon,...

Independent publisher IDW is currently celebrating its 10th anniversary and their current slate of releases says much about how far they’ve come as a company in terms of scope and overall variety. The steadily churned out comics based on licensed properties such as Transformers and G.I. Joe has been (and likely still is) their bread and butter. Yet in the last few years their titles have started to also include top-notch horror and sci-fi (The Ghoul and Starstruck), classic comic strip reprints (Little Orphan Annie and...

At the retailer’s summit occurring in Chicago before C2E2 last weekend, Diamond Comics, distributor of weekly comic book issues, floated the idea of moving the release day for comic books to Tuesday, with the comic book retailers paying 5 dollars a week more. They put the idea to a show of hands vote to the retailers in the audience, and Tuesday releases narrowly won out. Now it sounds as if this is all speculation and discussion amongst Diamond. Why do they want to make comics come out on Tuesdays? Because of Hollywood....

Are you a fan of Jurassic Park like my four year old nephew Titouan? Then you may enjoy the new IDW comic. That’s right, Jurassic Park is now a comic book. Yet this isn’t the first time, as I recall when I use to work at a baseball card shop in the 1990’s there was a Topps Jurassic Park comics and it was BAD. Sure, I know your asking yourself, why would they make a Jurassic Park comic book? Well Comic Impact readers, let me tell you a story about IDW. If you look at most of the books they put out a lot of their...

It’s safe to say that lately I have had zombies on the brain. From reading over 1,500 pages of The Walking Dead in a week to the recent spectacular art show Zombies In Love there has been no shortage of the shambling dead in my thoughts. Given this it was without hesitation that I picked up the recently released first issue of the new IDW series We Will Bury You written by brother and sister writing duo Brea & Zane Austin Grant with art supplied by Kyle Strahm. We Will Bury You #1 - Cover By Ben Templesmith The year...

With Halloween right around the corner and all the spooky connotations that come with it hanging in the air it seemed like a good time to scour the shelves of my favorite comic book store for some seasonally appropriate material. The store in question is Comics Factory in Pasadena, CA where, if you’re an indie reader like me, you’re in luck as their selection of independents is so wide it almost rivals all the stock of the Big Two put together. Another huge plus for my ghoulish spree is that there seems to be more horror...

Now that it’s been a few days since the end of the first annual Long Beach Comic-Con I’d thought I’d chirp in with some thoughts on the event. Firstly, it took place in the clean n’ cheery part of Long Beach as opposed to the “run, motherfucker, run!” areas which would have been not only an odd choice of locales, but potentially a complete disaster for us sensitive artistic types. An entire afternoon passed in Long Beach and no one had to use their A-K. Today was a good day. I was happy to see many independent publishers...

Since the G.I Joe film comes out today and it was first a comic book by Larry Hama (Barack the Barbarian,Wolverine) . Back in 1982 first publish by Marvel comics. Then later on by Image, Devil Due and now IDW.I wanted to share with you the Comic Impact readers. My top 10 covers of the great marvel comics run of G.I. Joe. Stay tuned to comic impact sometime this weekend we will have a special G.I Joe review podcast of the film. Let’s  hope the film does not suck. Simon Daoudi Simon@comicimpact.com

So I took a lot of photos this weekend at San Diego Comic Con.  I am going post more later, but right now I wanted to post photos of Sheldon and I with some of our friends… and you never know  maybe some of your favorite people working in comics! Sheldon and Scott Pilgrim. Wow it’s Trina Latrine aka G33K T4LK N3RD R0CK!11!1. Sheldon talking with his god, Ed Brubaker (Daredevil, Captain America). The ladies (Dana, Chris) love Sheldon. Tom Nguyen (Green Lantern, Adolescent Radioactive Black Belt Hamsters) trying...

We have a double dose of action in this episode for you Comic Impact listeners as Andy, Simon, and Sheldon get the ins and outs of the new I.D.W. series, Fallen Angel: Reborn! Join the guys as they talk to series artist J.K. Woodward and writer Peter David about everything Fallen Angel, how the two came to work together, Joss Whedon, and more! Plus, J.K. goes in-depth on how he broke into the comic biz, his time with Marvel, and the dream projects he’d love to paint at some time in his career. All of this and more when...

Fallen Angel: Reborn #1 published by I.D.W. came out in comic shops on Wednesdy and I have a special e-mail  interview for you with series writer Peter David! The comic is an awesome noir story about the Fallen Angel, an outcast from Heaven, who has come to the city of Bete Noir to help those in need by delivering justice to the beings who deserve it. Think The Preacher meets X-Factor blended with Christian mythology and you’ve got Fallen Angel. Plus, Peter even takes the time to talk a little bit about what’s coming up...

I know it’s not Thursday, but I want to show you some pages for the upcoming G.I Joe # 6 from IDW since Comic Impact friend, Robert Atkins is doing the artwork. I love his work. The description for G.I Joe # 6 goes something like this: The first epic story of G.I. Joe draws to an explosive conclusion as Snake Eyes hunts for the man who can lead him to the secrets of COBRA. But first the Joes’ silent warrior has to face down Destro, who’s willing to risk a fate worse than death to prove his worth. Make sure...

Comic Impact friend and reader, Michael Colbert, needs our help with a serious issue that is very close to my heart and the rest of the CI staff. His wife April has just lost her grandmother from advanced  stage cancer. The Colbert‘s want the comic community to know that J.K. Woodward (artist  for IDW’s “Fallen Angel” and “Star Trek Alien Spotlight: Klingons”) has  donated an original page from the “Klingons” book to auction on EBAY. The auction  is for April’s “Relay for Life”- an organization...

Join Simon, Sheldon, and Robert Atkins (IDW’s GI JOE) for the Artist spotlight of April with former Batman(1987-1992) artist Norm Breyfogle !! We get the great oppertunity to talk Neal Adams,Trek, Archie Comics and Politics with a personal fan favorite of the site not only that but you get two artist in one as we have Robert Atkins on as a special guest asking questions as well! This is a show you DON’T WANT TO MISS as a true legend of the comic world talks to the Comic Impact staff for two plus hours. Also find...

Join Simon and Sheldon as they talk about there picks of the week for the past week. Also found out  what Sheldon has been reading  and he can’t stop talking it about all this and also something you don’t want to miss if your a fan of ComicImpact. Simon Daoudi Simon@comicimpact.com DOWNLOAD EPISODE (Right-click and choose “Save As…” and save locally) HOW TO SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST Thank you to everyone who downloads, subscribes, listens to and tells their comic book stores about this show. We really appreciate...

Join Sheldon and I (Simon) as we talk with comic’s artist Robert Atkins for this month’s Artist Spotlight interview. Robert talks about his work on the new G.I JOE book from IDW. We also talk about a few of his future projects; podcasting, conventions, digital comics, Google searches, and how Snake Eyes can break dance and a lot more. His other work includes”Forgotten Realms: Legacy,” “Legion of Superheroes of the 31st Century,” ”Elders of the RuneStone,” and several Marvel stories. Make sure to also check out...

This week I don’t have a lot of books but there a few that I can’t wait to read .Here are the top five that I (Simon) am the most excited to read. Also this months Artist Spotlight Robert Atkins G.I Joe number 2 is coming out !!!. Action Comics, Amazing Spider-Man,Batman,G.I. Joe,Nightwing Simon Daoudi Simon@comicimpact.com

Here’s some highlights of the IDW To celebrate the 10th anniversary of IDW publishing, the company will release two books; one that features every cover ever printed by the company ( I WANT THAT ONE ), and the other full of interviews A new Angel series is on the way  co-written by Juliet Landau. Fallen Angel ends with issue #31, It will relaunch with a new #1, which will feature a character from the Buffy universe.  The story will take place during the season five of the Buffy television series. Doctor Who becomes a monthly...

Super-talented comics artist Robert Atkins joins us for this month’s Artist Spotlight. Atkins is best known for his art in issues of “Rift,” “New X-Men: Academy X,” “Snake-Eyes: Declassified,” several “GI Joe” titles, and even penciled “Dreadnoks: Declassified, Issue #3.” His other work includes”Forgotten Realms: Legacy,” “Legion of Superheroes of the 31st Century,” ”Elders of the RuneStone,” and several Marvel stories....

New comics will be hitting your stores on Wednesday January 21. We get a book that is five months late and some other stuff. Here are the top five that I (Simon) am the most excited to read. Amazing Spider-Man #584,Dark Avengers #1,Doctor Who Forgotten #6,Final Crisis Superman Beyond #2 (OF 2),Spawn #188 What is on your pull list for this week ? Simon Daoudi Simon@comicimpact.com