the bronx kill

DC COMICS Celebrates 75 Years

Fri, 05/21/2010 - 11:00am | DCE Editorial

Over on THE SOURCE, The DCU is celebrating 75 years of DC Comics by revealing a bunch of amazing variant covers. But these aren’t just any variant covers, they are of some of the most classic and iconic images from DC’s illustrious history re-imagined by some of the biggest names in the industry.

Well, GRAPHIC CONTENT couldn’t just sit back, so, along with THE SOURCE and THE BLEED, we’re all taking a look back today. We’ve asked some of our current writers and artists to pick their favorite DC COMICS cover, be it from the DCU, Vertigo or Wildstorm and tell us what it means to them.

So, without further ado, let’s read what they have to say!

My favorite cover would be ANIMAL MAN #5. Grant Morrison's early Vertigo work blew my mind in a way no comic ever had. And this issue of ANIMAL MAN, and this cover in particular, are perfect examples of the craziness and irreverence that inspired me to wanna write comics of my own. –Jason Aaron, writer SCALPED

Ronin Book One - Frank Miller. The comic shop was small and dark, located in the mall's basement, and this book, high up on the wall in the back, kept calling out to my 10-year-old brain. The color and design promised something strange and new, and when my older brother finally bought it, it didn't disappoint. For me, comics couldn't just be about superheroes any more. --Cliff Chiang, artist NEIL YOUNG’S GREENDALE

My fave is this or any other Basil Wolverton cover for PLOP Magazine from the 1970s (though Sergio Aragones designed the boarder images). I bought every issue of this title JUST for the cover, with no regard to what was inside -- the ONLY time I bought something regularly for the cover alone! --Peter Bagge, OTHER LIVES

I'm going to go for GREEN LANTERN #70, which I think dates from 1968. The cover, which was by Gil Kane, showed a tall, slender, subtly inhuman alien standing over the body of Green Lantern, and lamenting "But I only wanted to make him laugh... not die!!" The cover itself, which I saw long before I ever got to read the story, suggested in itself some terrible cosmic irony, and it preyed on my mind to the point where I must have gone through a couple of dozen scenarios in my head before I got to read the actual issue. That was what reading comics was like for me as a kid: an explosion of ideas vivid enough to derail reality. My mind was psychotically focused to the point where the actual story was sometimes frustrating because it killed a million possible alternatives. And cover artists played shamelessly to my demographic by producing images which were sometimes only tangentially relevant to content... --Mike Carey, co-creator and writer, THE UNWRITTEN

So many covers to choose from. Really impossible to choose a definitive favorite. There are so many contemporaries who light me up today, and so as not to alienate any of them I'll dig into the farthest deepest corners of my little kid memories to the Rose Elementary School carnival where I threw a fishing line over a wall and pulled back a rolled up copy of TEEN TITANS no.17 with a very psychedelic trippy character called the Mad Mod. Like a british and ghostly King Kong he loomed over London with Wonder Girl, Robin, Kid Flash, and Aqualad in his gigantic grip. It blew my mind Daddy-O! And continues to resonate in my fevered brain today. --Mike Allred, co-creator and artist I,ZOMBIE

KAMANDI #28 APRIL 1975 Art by JACK KIRBY
I missed all Jack’s DC comics in the 70's. DC imports were hard to find in the UK and I was only 8 when this came out. However in the late eighties, whilst I was at college and working on small press strips in my spare time, my friend/collaborator Chris Ski gave me a bunch of Kirby's DC comics. KAMANDI #28 was one of them. I fell in love immediately with it's style, dynamics and the vast cast of animal characters. This comic has been a treasured possession ever since. It frequently influences my work, most obviously in FABLES : THE GOOD PRINCE. As I write this it is still sat atop a pile of comics next to my desk. –Mark Buckingham, artist FABLES

SHADE THE CHANGING MAN #1 drawn by Brendan McCarthy. I know it’s terribly self-indulgent, but I’m going to choose a cover of one of my own books, by the inimitable Brendan McCarthy. It’s number one of Shade The Changing man and it brings back so many memories, not least of travelling across America looking for the “madness” of the country. I remember Brendan telling me he was putting in some Twin Peaks style picket-fences, representing the surface normality that the book so feverishly ripped apart. I don’t think he’d even seen the show at the time… --Peter Milligan, writer HELLBLAZER and THE BRONX KILL

ANIMAL MAN #5: The Coyote Gospel
Not just because of the amazing Bolland imagery that launched the most well-known meta-story arc in comics, but also because The Coyote Gospel is one of the most important single issues in my development as a creative person. This comic book still speaks truth directly to my soul. –Josh Dysart, writer UNKNOWN SOLDIER and NEIL YOUNG’S GREENDALE

SUPERMAN RED SON 3. I can’t tell if it’s my favorite DC cover ever, cause, well... I haven’t seen them all, but I saw this one a long long time ago, and it’s still fresh in my mind, even after all those years. Dave Johnson is a complete master on the cover art craft, and the way he uses design, colors, and comic language here, is just too phenomenal. –Rafael Albuquerque, artist AMERICAN VAMPIRE

Favorite cover? It's a tie- Dave Johnson's 100 BULLETS cover for the Once Upon a Crime trade paperback and issue #98 of 100 Bullets! Graphic, incredible and iconic! Dave Johnson is the best cover artist out in comicsland!” –Jill Thompson, DELIRIUM’S PARTY: A Little Endless Storybook

This one--not because it showed the "shocking truth about drugs!" but because when I was a young kid reading comics, Neal Adams was the first artist that really blew me away and made me realize there were actually real artists with names who drew these books. I devoured everything I could find by Adams and my goal of being a comic artist was set! –Peter Gross, co-creator and artist THE UNWRITTEN

My favorite is BATMAN #205. This included everything essential on the cover but completely broke the mold of the covers that came before and after. Totally stands out, even today. –Matt Kindt, REVOLVER

My favorite DC Comics cover was Joe Kubert's first DC Tarzan cover. I'd always been an Edgar Rice Burroughs fan and to see his greatest character realized so wonderfully in the comics format was just a special moment for me. And this issue was contemporary with a terrific DC Renaissance. Neal Adams and Denny O'Neal were doing their run on Green Lantern and Green Arrow. Jack Kirby had just come over to DC to do his Fourth World. It was a magic moment for DC in particular and comics in general. --Bill Willingham, writer FABLES

Peter Milligan at Forbidden Planet London this Saturday

Fri, 05/07/2010 - 6:10pm | DCE Editorial

Peter Milligan, author of the current series HELLBLAZER and GREEK STREET will be signing copies of his original graphic novel THE BRONX KILL at Forbidden Planet in London on Saturday, May 8 at 1pm.

So go meet him if you’re in the area and tell him I sent you. If you can’t make it, pick up a Milligan title and get caught up on your reading!

Tags:

greek street, hellblazer, peter milligan, the bronx kill

Peter Milligan on THE BRONX KILL

Tue, 03/23/2010 - 8:00am | DCE Editorial

THE BRONX KILL – myth, mystery, map.

The very name caught me. Hooked me and wouldn’t let me go. I saw it on a map of New York. I like maps. I particularly like maps of this part of the world, with its resonant, iconic place names.

The Bronx Kill.

That tiny place shoved to some dark recess of the map, like a dirty secret pushed to the back of a mind.

Of course, for a writer (for a writer like me anyway) dark secrets have a special kind of allure.

I knew what kill meant in this context – a body of water - but even so, its other meaning screamed out at me too. Kill. Thinking about death and maps made me think about time, how maps are fixed points in time, political and historical snapshots. This made me think about history, the weight of history. How pain can be handed down through the generations, along with names and genes.

A story was forming. A dark, convoluted inter-generation tale about the crushing weight of history. Our hero would be a young man who for most of his life has tried to escape from the sometimes brutal history of his family, of his race. But is forced to go back, is forced to uncover more than he wants to.

And the Bronx Kill still only existed for me as a place on a map. A name. An idea.

In the early days of this project I had a number of opportunities to visit the Bronx Kill. I came really close. I think Bronx Kill artist James Romberger was going to go there one day and I almost went along with him. But I didn’t.

I didn’t because I realized that the Bronx Kill had became a mythical place for me. And I was concerned that if I saw the reality it would lose some of its fictive power and become…well, just another place. So I stayed away. And traveled to the Bronx Kill only in my own imagination.

Now that the story is written and published I suppose there’s nothing stopping me visiting the Bronx Kill the next time I’m in New York. But I’m still reluctant. Maybe some places, like some dark secrets, are best left alone, unvisited.

Tags:

james romberger, peter milligan, the bronx kill

From The Editor’s Desk: Karen Berger on Peter Milligan

Wed, 03/10/2010 - 9:00am | DCE Editorial

March is the month of Milligan or Milligan is the march of the Month

Whichever way you look at it, for all you Peter Milligan fans out there (and I am first in line, though I have to fight off many!) there are sensational stories galore every week of the month from one of Vertigo’s first and finest.

March 3rd: GREEK STREET #9: The world of Greek Street often feels very self-contained — almost a street out of time — but this issue, all the horrors of the real world circa 2010 rear their ugly, bloody heads when a terrorist plot unfolds inside the Furey's club...with explosive results. Meanwhile a vision of Sandy’s that we saw all the way back in issue #1 finally gets played out...but not in the way she saw it... With art by Davide Gianfelice

March 10th: GREEK STREET Volume 1: BLOOD CALLS FOR BLOOD
Finally the first collection of the mind-blowing modern mythological series featuring a cast of characters that will either touch your soul or shock you senseless. Nobody writes a beautifully layered tale rife with suspenseful mystery and human emotion better than Milligan. If you’re one of many readers who “wait for the trade” here it is: Present-day London adrift with Oedipus as Eddie Rex, Cassandra as Sandy, Agamemnon as Lord Menon plus many more, all entwined in this urban horror drama that’s like EASTENDERS meets THE WIRE. With art by Davide Gianfelice.

March 17th: THE BRONX KILL: A Vertigo Crime original graphic novel that crime authors are raving about! A dark history and darker secrets plague Martin Keane, a struggling writer from a family of policemen whose life begins to unravel when his wife goes missing. A generational saga with a truth more shocking and monstrous than Martin could ever imagine, is all finally revealed on a lonely stretch of godforsaken land aptly named the Bronx Kill. With special excerpts from Martin’s novel, this thrilling graphic novel gives you an extra dose of Milligan’s prosaic flair. With art by James Romberger

March 24th: HELLBLAZER #265: Constantine lives up to his true punk calling in NO FUTURE when he reluctantly becomes embroiled with a group of anarchic punks who worship a powerful effigy of Sid Vicious. With guest art by the one and only Simon Bisley.

March 31st You’ll need this week to recuperate!

--Karen Berger

Tags:

davide gianfelice, greek street, hellblazer, james romberger, karen berger, peter milligan, simon bisley, the bronx kill

READ CHAPTER 1 of GREEK STREET NOW!

Wed, 02/24/2010 - 9:30am | DCE Editorial

Sex and violence. The Greek dramas were epic tales filled with unforgettable characters, bloody betrayals and, yes, more sex and violence than even an HBO original series.

GREEK STREET re-imagines those brutal and visceral tragedies of Ancient Greece as a contemporary crime drama. GREEK STREET culls from some of the most provocative works of Greek mythology as Oedipus Rex, Medea, the Illiad, and the Odyssey. Those fantastic stories—of incest, homicide, beautiful oracles, kings, monsters and gods—play out now, not in Athens, but on the mean streets of modern-day London. Boasting a cast of sexy strippers, murderous gangsters, body-snatching mad women, and a disturbed young girl who can see the future, GREEK STREET is all about the intersection of sex, violence, destiny and human tragedy.

GREEK STREET Volume 1: Blood Calls For Blood, is the first in an ongoing series of graphic novels written by legendary scribe Peter Milligan, best known for such eyebrow raising comics as Shade the Changing Man, X-Statix, and Human Target and illustrated by artist Davide Gianfelice (Northlanders). Together they have created a visionary work that's smart, sexy, and timely. GREEK STREET offers an amalgamation of crime fiction and classical tragedy, with Oedipus re-cast as a rootless drifter, the Furies as a notorious crime family and Daedalus as a hardboiled detective hell-bent on solving a series of murders.

Welcome to GREEK STREET, where the old stories aren’t through with us yet.

Read Chapter one here.

Get the collected edition March 10, 2010 comic stores, March 16, 2010 book stores (Vertigo / 144 pgs / color / $9.99 pbk / collecting issues 1-5).

And be on the lookout for Peter Milligan’s Vertigo Crime original graphic novel THE BRONX KILL on March 17th.

Tags:

davide gianfelice, greek street, human target, james romberger, peter milligan, shade the changing man, the bronx kill

Lee Bermejo talks Vertigo Crime Covers

Thu, 12/24/2009 - 9:00am | DCE Editorial

Lee Bermejo talks Vertigo Crime Covers:

I'm going to spin a yarn here. People always say that every story has a beginning, middle, and end so let's start at the beginning.

Act 1: A couple years back, Will Dennis approached me about doing covers for a new, somewhat experimental line for Vertigo. The line itself sounded fucking awesome, but there was something he said about the gig that both frightened and intrigued me. It was pretty simple, 'We don't want anything that looks like a comic book cover'. For a guy who does comic books for a living, and specifically COVERS of comic books, that statement is the proverbial laying down of the gauntlet. He also wanted to keep the images simple. Anyone who knows me or my work may now release the snorting laughter you're trying to suppress. SIMPLICITY?!?!?! Yeah, not really my bag as much as I wish it was. This wasn't going to be about just breaking out of my box, I was going to have to find a whole new box. Could I have been more wrong for the job?!?!?! That in itself was every reason to accept.

Act 2: They also say that in every good story, the main character goes through some kind of significant change brought on by conflict. In this business, you almost NEVER get offered something you're clearly not right for but desperately want to do anyway. When it does happen, the difficult thing is pushing through some of your own limitations to prove that the powers that be didn't fuck up by giving you this chance. Let's face it, you also want to prove it to yourself. In the case of these covers, my challenge was more in the idea phase than in the final execution. What is the idea phase, you may ask? Sketches, sketches, and more sketches. Let me tell you something, if the recycle bin outside my house was a hungry animal, the process of doing the Vertigo Crime covers has kept it well fed. I seem to toss out as many sketches as I finish, and try to be pretty hard on myself in terms of what I eventually show to my editor. Here is a smattering of some of the failed ideas. Hey, any storyteller will say that the main character can't succeed all the time. Where's the drama in that?!?

FILTHY RICH

THE BRONX KILL Coming in 2010

FOGTOWN Coming in 2010

A SICKNESS IN THE FAMILY Coming in 2010

A major part of Campbell's 'A Hero's journey' involves the main character of the story aquiring some kind of boone that helps he/she on their quest/journey. In the case of this story, that boone would have to be Mr. Josh Beatman, graphic designer extraordinaire. He's the Doc Brown to my Marty McFly. I can drive the time machine, but if he doesn't fix it, I don't go where I need to go. You can check out his magic on the cover finals, and see how the picture finally starts coming together.