KYLE LATINO

Free Gold

2009-03-05T08:02:00.001-08:00

by: Kyle Latino

The term “digital comics” has become almost synonymous with webcomics, or iPhones comics, or Kindle comics. It’s the banner under which the digital age revolutioneers rally and march to the future. Digital distribution of current monthly floppy copies is a primary concern as well. Any other application of digital comics, and one must be talking about illegal copies, right? Golden Age Comics has a thing or two to say about that.

“Welcome to Golden Age Comics. The #1 site for downloading FREE copyright free golden age comics. All files here available for download have carefully been research by our users and staff to make sure they are in the public domain. To start downloading free comic books now you will need to register an account on our forums and then verify it by visiting link in the email we send you."

That’s what the disclaimer says right under the title bar. There are decades worth of comics that are yours by virtue of copyright laws. That’s right, copyright laws have finally worked out for us, virtual stacks of excellent comic magazine entertainment, just waiting for you to click on. At Golden Age Comics, it’s free comic day everyday. Check out the original appearances of the characters from Dynamite’s Project Superpowers or ABC’s Terra Obscura. Matt Fraction even brought back Amazing Man in Iron Fist. If you are overwhelmed by the choices, you can find a little help with your selections at Don Markstein’s Toonapedia or Jess Nevins’ Golden Age Heroes Directory. A few of my favorite characters I’ve found are Bozo the Iron Man, Amazing Man, and Doc Strange.

Have you wanted to write a story about a character that isn’t just fan fiction? Anything you write or draw with most of the characters on Golden Age Comics is just as legitimate as what Krueger and Ross are up to at Dynamite. These stories and characters are ripe for the picking, so fill up a basket and make us some pies. In fact, we’ll make a promise that if you start a webcomic site using some of these characters and properly credit the original creators as best you can, we’ll run a blurb on it right here. Send your links to brainstormingcomics@gmail.com

Cashmillion Kids #2

2009-02-26T13:15:00.000-08:00

As seen on NEWSARAMA

When last we left the children, they were planning to search for Daisy's parents in a mysterious sunken jungle. But whatever dangers befell the previous expedition may well prove their doom as well...

Source Wall #9

2009-02-26T06:11:00.000-08:00

On a very special SOURCE WALL today, I'd like to acknowledge the life and death of one of my greatest writing heroes, Philip "Pip" Jose Farmer. He passed yesterday, on the first day of Lent, 2009.

When I was looking up the sweet wealth of references in books like TOM STRONG and LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN, I stumbled across Farmers work. Alan Moore was admittedly aware of Farmer's work on Tarzan and Doc Savage and mentions the Hoosier born writer in a forward to the leather bound edition of THE COMPLETE FRANK MILLER'S BATMAN. Farmer had a way of looking through the sometimes clunky, paid-by-the-word vessels for the pulp age characters and saw true inspiration and possibility. He not only observed the works of his heroes, Edgar Rice Burroughs and Lester Dent, but also plugged into their stories with authorized biographies and novels. Went I myself ordered the volume of TARZAN ALIVE I've sampled below, it was told to me that is was the last of the six remaining American copies.

In the Dreaming #1

2009-02-20T06:45:00.000-08:00

It occurs to me that I should keep a dream journal. I have lots of dreams, and I can remember many of them from years ago. I causes me too have sincere sense of deja vu at least twice a week. Let's see what I've been doing in the Dreaming:

09.02.19-20.11-5

I have a sense that either I was saying, or someone was saying to me, the most profound two sentences I've ever heard. It was like the words of Jesus, a concise morsel of wisdom that immediately made sense of the world and everything in it. I remember smiling and thinking that with these words I could live a happy and fulfilled life.

Then I was returned to the waking world and forgot everything.

Source Wall #8

2009-02-19T13:19:00.000-08:00

Source Wall #7

2009-02-16T18:04:00.000-08:00

Okay, to those of you who, like me, have tried to read Neil Gaiman's SANDMAN and just couldn't get it, there's a secret: YOU HAVEN'T READ ENOUGH KIRBY. That's right, Gaiman references Kirby work constantly in the first couple volumes of SANDMAN, though it bares no truly direct connection to Kirby's short run of the series of the same title. The FOURTH WORLD is all about hope, and triumph over the forces of Antilife, and that is what Gaiman is really trying to communicate. Dude, check it, it's there!

Adventure Serials As Web Comics

2009-02-12T08:37:00.000-08:00

As seen on BLOG@NEWSARAMA.

Adventure Serials As Web Comics

It’s no secret that the web comic world and the print comic world are vastly different, and there is nothing at all wrong with that. Though the visual language is the same, the optimal format and distribution is not. The same things that bring people to a comic store every week/month are not always going to be what causes someone to search for comics on the internet. With the immediacy of distribution on the web, it makes much more sense to go with strip formatting at a hirer frequency of publishing. Like most strips in the newspaper, the majority of web comics are gag strips, likely because it is easier and more effective to tell a joke in 4 to 8 panel intervals than it is to tell an on-going story. These factors, among others, have many believing that the adventure serial is a hopeless sell to the internet crowd.

It is true that the web is more suited for shorter installment strips, but let’s look at our newspaper strip history, as it seems to serve such an appropriate model. This year we not only celebrate the 70th anniversary of Batman, but also the 75th of Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon, and the 104th of Winsor McCay’s Little Nemo, two of the greatest newspaper comics ever published. The fact that you recognize either of those strips, and I sincerely hope you do, is a testament to the success that adventure strips can have. Zuda.com’s (DC’s online imprint) top strips have all been adventure strips, most notably the very first comic to go up: High Moon.

The web comic audience maybe different than the print comic audience, but that doesn’t mean that such an audience only desires one kind of web comic. They may not go to the comic store, but statistically speaking, they probably bought tickets for the Dark Knight. The web audience enjoys adventure just as much as anyone, but just like the funny pages, web comics seem to offer little in variety of genre. Of course there are many examples out there of long running adventure and drama serials, but they are nearly buried under the avalanche of humor strips.

The challenge seems to be finding a natural pace and phrasing for the story so it works in bite-sized intervals as well as from beginning to end. The same is true of print comics, however, a person who purchases an issue of Spider-Man is likely to finish all 22 pages of story in that issue. With a free web comic, the reader has nothing invested in the reading experience and is just as likely to never read the next strip as he is to follow it. Also, the internet browsing mentality is more geared for quick, pizzicato perusal than it is for reading page after page in sequence.

In the dawning age of print comics releasing digital contingents, more comic store goers are looking for what web comics have to offer them. Humor me as I post my own adventure strip, Cashmillion Kids, on a biweekly schedule on this blog as an experiment.

I'm on Tom Brevoort's Blog!

2009-02-11T16:12:00.000-08:00

So today, I made Tom Brevoort's Blog! It rules. I can't say it like a long time dream fulfillment or nothing, but it doesn't suck.

It's a picture of Mr. Fish, the best Luke Cage villain ever. I gave it to him in a comic trade. It was X-Men #12 & Black Panther #1 that I traded him for a Marvel Premier #13 (the comic debut of 3d Man!) He's trying to trade for an issue of Fantastic Four #1 by the end of the year, so if you got something good, let him know!

I Beleivoort!

Motion Comics?

2009-02-09T09:40:00.000-08:00

original article at: NEWSARAMA

Mr. Sequential Presents: Motion Comics Comics?

Source Wall #6

2009-02-02T05:18:00.000-08:00

See Eternals is a perfect example of how others read about ideas and thought about those ideas, while Kirby read about ideas and thought about stories. Not that Eternals is his greatest work, but it shows what happens when you let a man write about Gods for a few years, then tell him to work on superhero books.

All of this apparently came about when Kirby heard about the book "Chariots of the Gods", which was a nonfiction work on the theory of life on this planet being seeded by extraterrestrial forces. Why, How, and When are the questions that Kirby choose to ask of this idea. He asked, "what if..." in true Marvel style. You want to think of a story, just pick a theory of science that you don't believe in and ask that question. See what you come up with.

Source Wall #5

2009-01-29T17:26:00.000-08:00

In the age of Trade Paperbacks, Essentials, Omnibi, Showcases, etc. the back issue is a neglected avenue of entertainment. When you go for the collection, you miss the rest of the comic that isn't the story: advertisements and letter columns. Often times, the letter columns for the first issue or three were filled with articles, essays, and mission statements written by the creative team. Check this one out:

Hey, sorry for the break everyone. I've been busy, but I know it's criminal to depriive you of your updates, so here we are, back with another Source Wall on Joe Simon's greatest creation! PREZ: The First Teenage President!

I mean, how can you lose? This is one of the most kickass comics I've ever read! In it's brief four issue run, Prez wrestles a gorilla, gets assassinated, fights a Russian chess master, and punches out George Washington over a disagreement on the right to bear arms. YEAH! "Get on with it,"indeed.

Plus, years later, Ed Brubaker would grace the world with one more issue, picking up the story half a decade after Prez's disappearance from society. This is why I love comics. (watch out for the swearword down there, folks)

Source Wall #4

2009-01-19T05:42:00.000-08:00

Source Wall #3

2009-01-15T11:28:00.001-08:00

From the Aethernet #1

2009-01-12T05:26:00.000-08:00

I was going to do another SOURCE WALL today, but the particular selection I intended on doing was not to be found. I must have placed it among the articles of research and education I'm letting my brother borrow for his J-term Comics class at Huntington College. So, I'm swiping from an existing internet interview. Grant Morrison answers some questions in August of last year:

PW Comics Week: You are a practicing magician, with your comics works sometimes taken as your spells. For you, what relationship do magic and mysticism and religion and spirituality have?
Grant Morrison: Big question. But I guess it is intrinsic to my life. They obviously are all important to me, and it all defines how I see the world. It’s a big deal to me, which is why it turns up in all the stories I do, because I’m constantly thinking about that stuff. As a human being on Earth, as someone given a brain, you have to start asking these questions, you know? We live and we die, and there’s interesting questions to be asked about all that.

PWCW: Is there a particular relationship you see between all of that and comics as a medium?

GM: Comics specifically seem to be quite magical to me—in the sense that they are directly drawn onto paper. They relate back to the very first drawings that people did on cave walls, and people believe now that those things were meant to be magical, that by drawing and creating a model of the bison, you could affect what happened to the real bison. Your hunt would be more successful the next day. So the idea of drawing and creating representations is the very first notion that we had of magic, that you could make an image of something and affect the image and, in turn, affect the reality of the thing. Like sympathetic magic, when you make, for instance, a little doll of someone and then stab it, they will experience something. So that idea of representation, I think, is the first magical idea, and comics is still very close to that.

The thing I love about comics is the actual guy sitting there—with pens and tools and drawing all this stuff in a little room. Actually working on the paper directly with pencils. There’s something really quite strange about that, I feel.

PWCW:“Strange” in that it carries some particular qualities?

GM: “Strange” in the sense that I think there’s so much concentration that goes into the point of those pencils and that line that it’s a magical act. It’s a Zen thing to sit and actually create a comic book. It’s very hands-on. I think it’s got a magical element to it, anyway, and so, for me, it became a way to do voodoo, using... Well, I could create things in the comics that would have affects in my own real life. I found that it would work.

What did you think of that? Is this guy serious? Comics are suddenly magical because he wants to make his job sound cool and important? WHOA THERE. I happen to agree with him to a certain extent.

So, you sit down by yourself, one day, you concentrate and think really hard, then you write down some words and draw some lines on a paper in a special combination. Other people read what you've done, looking just at the mundane ink on paper that was mass produced for them, and have an emotional reaction. They hate it, they love it, they laugh, they cry, they pin it up on their wall, the protect it so they can enjoy the same experience years later, they gather in hundreds or thousands to celebrate it and other such work. What else to you call that but magic... art, I suppose.

See you all Thursday!

New Light #1

2009-01-08T07:13:00.000-08:00

Okay, a little story time first. The below is a free preview of my iPhone/iPod Touch comics coming out any second now. It's supposed to be published by iVerse Comics on App Store, but Apple hasn't put it up quiet yet. I wanted to put it up here in a ZIP file, but free file hosting ain't what it used to be around here, so until I figure that out, you'll just have to download each panel individually.

NEW LIGHT is a regular segment on this site showcases my own original comic work. This week we have GIDEON'S TRIP #1. Please download the panels and view them, if possible, on and iPhone or iPod Touch.

To view this optimally on an iPhone/iPod Touch, sync them in its own album, make sure the order is correct, then just hit play and watch. If you scroll with your finger, it will add big ugly gutters. The iVerse version will not have this problem, and will have another few surprises in it, so stay tuned for more news.

There's been a lot of talk about digital comics, web comics, and such. What can they do that floppy comics can't? How can they move the industry forward? When will they totally replace the floppy copies? I don't know the answers to much of the questions being asked, except for that first one. On the iPhone, you can create a comic that steams continuously, this has been done before in floppy, but the digital contingent can snap to the proper panels, increasing the aesthetic opportunities in composition.

Now, in the latest episode of my favorite podcast, Wordballoon, Scottie Young, of MARVEL's new WONDERFUL WIZARD OF OZ comic, said that he, liked art too much to enjoy a comic on the iPhone. Sad, but probably mostly do to the fact that only adaptations of floppy copies have gone up so far. Indeed, the world still waits for what an iPhone original comic will actually look like. If creators take into account what the iPhone can do, and capitalize on that instead of trying make a digital version of a floppy, we will see what the future really has to offer.

Source Wall #2

2009-01-05T04:59:00.001-08:00

In the age of Trade Paper Backs, Essentials, Omnibi, Showcases, etc. the back issue is a neglected avenue of entertainment. When you go for the collection, you miss the rest of the comic that isn't the story: advertisements and letter columns. Often times, the letter columns for the first issue or three were filled with articles, essays, and mission statements written by the creative team. Check this one out:

Sad story about this article by Jack Kirby. He was trying to branch out in comics, attempting to become an editor or writer instead of an artist. His boss, Infantino, had asked him to put together issue 1 for such a book that someone would take over the art on after that. In the time it takes to order a hamburger, Kirby had outlined an issue or three of the DEMON an thought of all of its characters. The pitch was such a hit that the powers that be canceled the FORTH WORLD books so Kirby could to the writing and art for the DEMON. This was a tough blow for the Countriless King of Comics; the FORTH WORLD was everything he wanted to do, and he never really got to finish it (that's what Grant Morrison is trying to do in FINAL CRISIS, I guess).

And so it was that in DEMON #1, Kirby essentially writes A TIME TO BUILD as a eulogy for friends taken from him too soon. His New Gods of New Genesis and Apokolips had no temples in the world, just like Kirby's kingdom had no countries. They were icons battling in the minds of the public, for the minds of the public. Could the New Gods in his cosmic opera dethrone the DC's own trinity: Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman? No. The war for men's minds (or the war of art against industry, in some ways) wasn't lost, but it set back and the weapons and warriors switched out. And the King of Comics? Perhaps his pride in his New Gods earned him the same fate as King Nebuchadnezzar: years in the wilderness roaming as a wild beast, a Demon if you will, through the DCU, and the bleak futures of OMAC and KAMANDI...

THE DEMON is property of DC Comics.

Source Wall #1

2009-01-01T10:18:00.000-08:00

I'd like to open this blog with a regular feature, something I'm calling the 'Source Wall.' I'm not totally clear on the legality of this feature, but I'll happily take it all down if the powers that be want me to.

In the age of Trade Paper Backs, Essentials, Omnibi, Showcases, etc. the back issue is a neglected avenue of entertainment. When you go for the collection, you miss the rest of the comic that isn't the story: advertisements and letter columns. Often times, the letter columns for the first issue or three were filled with articles, essays, and mission statements written by the creative team. Check this one out:

The 'New Seed' that Kirby refers to in the above selection is the 'Star Child' you may be familiar with from the book or movie. If that doesn't narrow it down for you, then stop reading and I'll see you next week.

Still here? Good. In 'Monolith Mail' #1, Kirby hits on his fascination with cosmic intelligence interacting with earth life. It may be interesting to note that this issue was published 5 months after ETERNALS #1, which explored essentially the same thing, with one big difference: the Monolith of 2001 seems to be on our side, and the Celestials of ETERNALS have an agenda more convoluted and mysterious.

"Now that we're here... where are we going?" That is the question that Kirby posed not only with his words, but his art too. He was always trying to articulate this question with a different nuisance in much of his later work. His choices in story telling continues to challenge the industry today. By the time he had returned to Marvel after his legendary run at DC, he clearly didn't want to tell the same old superhero stories. That's why in 2001 the most notable characters are the Monolith, a Space Fetus, and Machine Man. It may have been why 2001 only ran for about a year, but hey, what a crazy year it was. Machine Man and the Monolith were revisited most successfully in Krueger, Ross, and Leon's EARTH X. Check it out.

2001 A Space Odyssey comics are property of Marvel Comics.