Cowboy Up: Dark Horse Releasing New Chapter of Darrow’s Shaolin Cowboy

Artist Geoff Darrow is a personal favorite here at the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office. We’ve got a first print copy of Hard Boiled with a sketch by Darrow in it from the Boston Comic Con a couple of years ago – I walked up and waited while he was talking to somebody else, and he grabbed the issue out of my hands and started sketching in the front cover to illustrate a point to the guy, without even having to be asked – and we also have a big inked sketch of Nixon from Hard Boiled, the Big Guy from Big Guy And Rusty The Boy Robot, and Shaolin Cowboy.

Sadly, Shaolin Cowboy was the big gap in my actual reading of Darrow’s books. We missed it when it was initially released by Burlyman Comics back in 2005 (only one store in the area carried that imprint in any numbers, and it wasn’t our local comic store, where they know me by name and ask me to stop begging the paying clientele to show me their Burlyman), and it has been pretty out of print for a while since.

However, that is now a thing of the past. Dark Horse Comics announced this week that they’ll be releasing a new installment of the story this coming October.

There aren’t a lot of details available at this point beyond that, but Dark Horse has release the first two variant covers to the series, which you can check out after the jump.

Remain Calm And Carry Comics: Boston Comic Con Taking Place As Scheduled

After the wretched and depressing events at yesterday’s Boston Marathon in Boston’s Copley Square, there was some speculation about whether or not this weekend’s scheduled Boston Comic Con would still be held, what with the fact that it is being held at the Hynes Convention Center – roughly three blocks from the, as of this writing, still-active crime scene.

The question was up in the air until a few hours ago, when the convention emailed attendees with advance passes to tell us that not only is the convention still on, but that all scheduled guests are apparently confirmed to still be there.

You can check out the full release from Boston Comic Con, including the names of all the confirmed guests, after the jump.

Fruit Forbidding: Apple App Store Refuses Sale of Saga #12

Update, 4/10/2013, 5:50 p.m.: As contributor Lance Manion pointed out in the comments, it turns out that Apple isn’t the party that censored Saga #12. It was Comixology themselves. Details at the end of the original story, after the jump.

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The Internet is an interesting place. It’s a place where, by simply closing your eyes, pounding on your keyboard with your fist and pressing the Enter key, you can see pictures, in living color, of a woman with a substance abuse problem blowing a horse.

It is also a place where you can obtain anything that can be turned into ones and zeroes that you want, completely for free, much to the consternation of major media producers. But thankfully, most of those media producers have embraced the possibilities of the Internet, making their content instantly available to anyone with a credit card – you know, adults – instantly, and at a reasonable price. And all across a medium that only fifteen years ago was best known as a delivery vector for animal pornography and autopsy photos.

Well, unless you’re trying to ply your wares through Apple’s App Store. A company and a store who have, in their infinite wisdom, decided not to accept Image Comics’s Saga #12 for sale via the iOS Comixology app due to two images of gay sex. Because God forbid that a consenting adult be allowed to decide to purchase a cartoon that includes two panels of sex acts on their iPad – a device widely used to make it possible to view and masturbate to high-definition pornography in a public toilet stall.

So, what with Apple acting in a manner similar to Wal-Mart and other prudish, yet powerful, corporate overlords who want to tell you what you can and can’t read or watch, I imagine Saga creators Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples, and their little publisher Image, have agreed to self-censor their book in order to gain access to iPads, yes?

Yeah, no.

Freedom Is Free Again: Comixology Ready To Deliver On Marvel’s SXSW Free Comics Offer

Once upon a time in a magical land known as Austin, during a festival known as South By Southwest where the peasants celebrate the coming of spring by paying nine bucks a beer to their corporate betters, the benevolent kings of Marvel Comics announced that they would bestow a boon upon the common folk: 700 classic and new tales of knights and heroes, delivered instantly into their homes, notebooks and even their pockets, all thanks to the magic of their House Wizards at Comixology, known far and wide as the most proficient magicians in the delivery of these tales (or at least amongst the last ones standing).

But alas, no sooner did the Day of Giving arrive than the secret magicks of the Wizards of Comics Delivery failed, leaving hundreds without their promised boon, and some wondering just what in the hell they had been paying the magicians for in the first place.

Which is a long and stupid way to go to say that, about a month after Comixology was forced, due to server load, to suspend Marvel’s offer of a few days of free comics, they have told those who emailed them to say that yes: they wanted the free comics, fer Christ’s sake, that they will soon see their patience rewarded.

Glimpse of The Golden Age: Miracleman Triumphant Pages Released By Inker

Back in the halcyon days of 1993, (not the Halcion days, at least not that I’ll admit on a public Web site), when Kurt Cobain was alive (if you can call cohabitating with Courtney Love living), a man could light a cigarette in a bar where people were disintegrating their livers with cheap domestic bourbons without someone getting all self-righteous about their health, and Eclipse Comics was still a going concern. A going concern with, on paper at least, the free and uncontested right to publish Miracleman.

Back then, Neil Gaiman had blessed a miniseries to fill in some of the gaps as to what happened between the end of Alan Moore’s run and the start of Gaiman’s The Golden Age arc. The miniseries, Miracleman Triumphant, was to be written by Fred Burke – the writer of, well, some stuff you’ve never heard of –  with art by recent New Avengers artist Mike Deodato and inks by Jason Temujin. Here’s what the story was to cover:

Miracleman Triumphant #1, entitled “Oracles,” begins where Miracleman #22 leaves off, focusing on the aftermath of the annual Carnival memorializing Kid Miracleman’s slaughter of London in Miracleman #15. The opening pages were to show Miracleman, disguised as an ordinary human, surveying the closing moments of the Carnival, wondering to himself if the changes he has brought to the world were the right ones. While ruminating, he stumbles onto a flier advertising a family of fortune-tellers and, interested in their opinion, seeks them out.

That miniseries was in the works when Eclipse Comics choked on its own debt, going down with all hands and throwing the rights to Miracleman into a legal black hole that would make Stephen Hawking scream in existential horror were he to contemplate it.

And that was pretty much that; sure, the odd partial page has popped up now and again, but not much in the way of completed art… that is, until this morning. That’s when Temujin posted the latest of four pages that he had finished inking before Eclipse went out of the comics business and into the asset auctions business. There’s no dialogue attached, but considering that these are pages from one of my favorite comic sagas, drawn by one of my favorite comic artists, I figured they’re worth making note of. And you can check them out after the jump.

What The…: DC Reveals WTF Gatefold Cover For Batman #19

Several months ago, DC Comics announced that April would be their official “WTF Month,” in which every issue would include a special gatefold cover and a guaranteed moment to make readers say, “What the fuck?”

We here at Crisis On Infinite Midlives did not report on this exciting new development in the implied use of the word “fuck” when it was announced back in January because:

• We are busy people with a limited number of hours in the day to write about comics news, and not every marketing move by a major publisher is exciting news just because it implies the use of the word “fuck.” We are not immediately impressed by the word “fuck.” We fucking use “fuck” all the fucking time, for fuck’s sake.
• There have been plenty of moves by DC Editorial that have made us say, “What the fuck?” without requiring a special stamp on any special cover.
• The whole thing sounded pretty fucking contrived. We could just picture scripts being sent back to writers with “bigger fuck!” written in classic “Harras Red” ink.
• Fuck it.

Well, despite our initial feeling of, “meh,” DC has continued with their plan, and today they released the first complete gatefold “WTF” cover, for Batman #19, by artist Greg Capullo. And you can see the full cover, gatefold and all, after the jump.

No Comics For You: Comixology Suspends Marvel’s Free Download Offer

Wow, remember the good old days when Marvel announced their Marvel #1 initiative? And they they were offering around 700 different first issues as free downloads from their comic store and from Comixology until Tuesday? You know, those good old days that started, oh I don’t know, 30 or so hours ago?

Yeah, like most time periods we call “The Good Old Days,” those days are over, at least for now. It turns out that, once the word about the free downloads got out, Neither Comixology nor Marvel’s own digital comics store was able to handle the load from the demand. Marvel’s comic store is, as of this writing, completely down, and Comixology has announced that they need to suspend their part of the giveaway until they can figure out how to handle the demand.

Oops.

Hipster Outreach: Marvel Announces Free Digital Comics, Music For Comics At SXSW

We are not currently at South By Southwest, partly because we have already pissed our meager convention budget on preparations for San Diego Comic-Con in July, and partially because I learned during a visit in 1998 that Austin’s motto of “Keep Austin Weird” does not constitute a legal defense. Let’s just say that, somewhere in a computer in Austin Police Headquarters, there is an active arrest warrant for “Batroc Z. Leaper” that I wouldn’t want compared to my current driver’s license photo.

However, Marvel Comics is at SXSW, and earlier today that ran a panel that included a few announcements, including whatever the hell they were talking about last week with that whole “#1” teaser poster.Turns out they were talking about some free first issues.

Digitally, anyway.

For a little while.

Marvel To Make “#1” Announcement At SXSW

Just what on Earth is “#1”?

Spoilers Incorporated: DC, New York Post Spoil Events of Batman Incorporated #8

Editor’s Note: While I will try to avoid including any spoilers for Batman Incorporated #8 in this piece, it is a story about DC and The New York Post spoiling Batman Incorporated #8. It is a difficult task, like trying to defuse a bomb while looking at a green wire with a yellow stripe, and a yellow stripe with a green stripe.

Yesterday, my co-Editor Amanda asked me idly why there wasn’t the same kind of mainstream press coverage of the events of last week’s Batwoman #17 as there was last May when Northstar did something similar in Astonishing X-Men. She had theories about the public perceptions of lesbians versus gay men, or the widening public acceptance of gay marriage in even the last nine months, but my theory? “Dan DiDio didn’t bother to pick up the phone and call a newspaper to tell them about it. Period. Full stop. It’s not like mainstream newspaper reporters make the comic store part of their local beat, hoping for a page four feature story.”

Well, this morning, it looks like my theory was proved correct. Because DiDio, or someone at DC Editorial, has called The New York Post and spoiled the living shit out of Batman Incorporated #8.

And, while I promised not to spoil the events of the book as reported by The Post, more detailed information that could spoil the book, including the link to the original Post story, will appear after the jump.