PREVIEW: Dziva Jones Cover art

 Here's Stanley Weaver Jr's cover art for Aminah Armour's comic about the bodyguard and crimefighter with the brickhouse frame, Dziva Jones. Peep the pencils below...

Weaver (Street Team) is the cover artist for the four issue series (this is the cover to #3, I think), which is written by Armour with art by Ashley A. Woods (Millenia War). The first issue of Dziva Jones is already out. You can click here for a SWEET 3 page preview, or just go cop it on Indyplanet! I will keep you posted on new Dziva Jones news when I get it, and write you a review of the comic once I get my hands on it!
holla!
-samax

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Cage get the Money like...

I recently bought a copy of Essential Luke Cage Vol 1, mainly because I had a great article about Luke Cage's debut submitted for the GhettoManga Quarterly Luke Cage tribute issue, and I needed some scans to go with it. Not being familiar with those early Cage stories, I was surprised how good a read the book is...

I posted this sequence because the issue it comes from is a real high-water mark for the character, in a book full of what I consider great story. Not just the fact that he runs up on arguably Marvel's greatest villain, Doctor Doom, but he shows a similar lack of awe for the Fantastic Four.  While respecting Reed Richard's intelligence, he talks Marvel's premier super team into lending him a super-sonic jet so he can journey to Latveria and get the $200 that Doom (his former client) owed him for services rendered.

After assisting an alien-led robot uprising and beating Doom to a standstill, Luke manages to get the biggest tightwad on Earth to come up off the Benjamins so he can get back to the business of not getting assassinated and/or deposed by a mass of angry robots*.  Then to add insult to injury, when he returns the Fantastic Four's plane, he refuses to discuss his personal business with them, and heads to the crib to clean up, giving Ben Grimm the cold shoulder when he wants details on the robot coup.

Good stuff, for sure... anyways, like I said, there will be tons of great analysis of Cage in the new issue, which will be done soon. until then, if you see a copy of Essential Luke Cage Vol 1 in your comic shop, I suggest you cop it! It's great to see the old-school artwork and dense writing, not only from household names like Roy Thomas, Archie Goodwin and John Romita, but also lots of great work by cats I wasn't at all familiar with. Since there probably won't be room for my review of this book in the tribute issue, I may post a few more nuggets of it here.

holla!

-samax.

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*yeah, that got the robophobic tag added to the post. If Doom can't hold the machines down, who CAN? 

Scream Phoenix...

yeah, I drew some Phoenix Jones fan art...

Dark Phoenix by Samax Amen
This piece will mean more to you if you've read this, but the short version is that Phoenix Jones is a real live costumed crimefighter who runs around foiling petty crimes and such in Seattle. Already something of a folk hero in Seattle, Jones was actually interviewed on Good Morning America, alongside other members of the Rain City Superhero Movement. 
After the art auction last night, I hung out with friends at an all-night cafe and we had the most hilarious conversation ever about this dude (two words: Bathrobe Ninja). If someone would have videotaped that conversation, we could'a won an award or something! But one of the things that was said was, no matter how this ends (and I'm convinced it will end badly), it is definitely pretty awesome...
Anyways, I drew this last week as a warm up. Hope you like it!

holla!

-samax.

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PREVIEW: Thunderbolts # 152

I love Thunderbolts. It's pro'lly my favorite Marvel comic.If you like Luke Cage, this is definitely a book you should be reading...

The T-Bolts leap into HULK’s “Scorched Earth”! At the request of Steve Rogers, Luke Cage must take his hardened team to deal with a doomsday scenario unleashed in the pages of HULK! And now that the squad is a man short, Cage finally uses his power to recruit another prisoner to duty—and his pick will shock you! Will the Thunderbolts accept this new member as a part of their force? Or will this heavy duty wild card destroy the balance of power?

Kev Walker's art is right up my alley, and I particularly enjoy his depiction of Luke Cage. I also think Jeff Parker writes Cage way better than Bendis... Anyways, hope you enjoyed the preview. Thunderbolts #152 will be in stores January 26th

holla!

-samax.

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"Blackguard" -Making Stereotypes look Good?

When Will and Jerrod Smith decided to create a super team, they knew they didn't quite want to do a straight superhero book. So they created a scenario wherein a civil-rights era superhero is resurrected and takes four supervillains and attempts to reform them. The result is the action comedy webcomic Blackguard...

Blackguard is the flagship of the Smith brothers' (aka The Brothers of Spontaneous Combustion) website BOSCcomics.com. "Will and I have so many ideas that we can’t fit everything into one type of comic." says Jerrod Smith. "We decided to launch the site with Blackguard, which will probably be our main attraction for awhile." Blackguard started out as a series of one-page gag comics, designed mostly to flesh out the characters, before they proceeded into Monkey See... Monkey Free?! the series' first actual story arc. The characters and stories of Blackguard so far feels like a sitcom about black superheroes and villains rather than a straight superhero comic, and I think that is where the potential of the series lies. When so many superhero comics portray all black people as being alike, Blackguard gives a diverse cast of weirdos who have their skin color in common, and not much else.

The main character of the story in a typical comic would surely be Eli Mercer, the civil-rights-era superhero who finds himself resurrected in  modern times, only to find the black community horribly fractured and self-destructive.  But so far, the Smith brothers have avoided establishing Mercer as the no-nonsense alpha-male, instead floating around, establishing the personalities of the team of slightly out-of-control villains Mercer is supposed to be reforming. It's clear that the villains have enough respect for Mercer to keep them in line, but they are definitely testing his patience as much as humanly possible.

What makes this comic work so far is the interplay of the supposedly reformed villains. Jonnie Staples is equally adept with guns or blades, but doesn't care for unarmed combat. He's a contract killer and mercenary, but I'm sure he'd be happy to kill his teammate ODAN for free under the right circumstances.

ODAN (which is short for One Dope Ass Ninja) is equal parts stealthy assassin and a loud-mouth rap gangsta. That means everyone he meets probably wants to kill him, but he lives to tell the tale because his ninja skills are on point. 

 

Nubian warrior princess Afia Melanin uses her sun-fueled superhuman strength tirelessly in her struggle against the "European white devils"... and she doesn't mind smacking up her brothers and sisters either when they get outta line. By the way, I don't recommend asking her why she uses a spear as a weapon, unless you're hoping to get a closer look at it...

Darius Doom is the team's evil genius. He refers to himself as a "mad black scientist" and creates technology that is as wild and crazy as possible. Robot dopplegangers. Exploding devices of all sizes. That's his cup of tea. And monologuing. He loves monologuing.

Anchoring Blackguard is Sequoia, the resident criminal psychologist and black historian who serves as a source of information for Mercer and the voice of reason for the team. From what I can tell, Sequoia is the comic's star, with Mercer coming off more as an angry uncle so far. 

Whatever the ultimate roles the characters will play, the tone of Blackguard is snarky, hip and fun. Amid all the digitally enhanced comics on the web, I enjoy the hand-drawn look of Blackguard, which has gotten better as the strip has progressed. Eight pages into the comic's first story arc, it's still moving too slowly to really critique the writing. So much about the story and background in this comic remains unclear, but I feel comfortable recommending it anyways. To get a look at Blackguard's so-called Pilot chapter (culminating in an explanation of the team's name), click here, or just jump right into Monkey See... Monkey Free.

holla!

-samax.

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Are You feeling the NEW HEROES FOR HIRE?

 I have a good feeling about the new Heroes for Hire series, even though it doesn't star Luke Cage, the original Hero-for-Hire (he's in enough books right now, I guess...). The new team has a new premise, wherein H4H alum Misty Knight acts as a handler of heroes she hand-picks for missions as she sees fit. "I'm owed a lotta favors by some useful people..." Knight says in Heroes for Hire #1 "I figured it was time I got creative..." I posted up some preview pages from the first couple issues below, so you could geek out with me...

Seems like Misty is graduating from baller to shot-caller status on this book, but I'm sure she will step out the booth and get her hands dirty from time to time. If these preview pages can be believed, this book is gonna be AWESOME! Abnett & Lanning (THE THANOS IMPERATIVE, PUNISHER: YEAR ONE) are known for dope outside-the-box writing, and Brad Walker (GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY) is beating up the pencils like they stole somethin'... I gotta get my hands on these issues next time I roll to the comic shop.

holla!

samax.

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PREVIEW: STEEL One-Shot

 Anyone else think it's funny that I did my first ever Steel fan art almost exactly one month before DC drops a new Steel one-shot by Steve Lyons (Dead Men Walking) and Ed Benes (Justice League of America: The Second Coming)? Somebody pass my info to the bosses over at DC, 'cause I don't believe in coincidences... plus, I got bills. So anyways, here's some preview pages...

I'm thinking Doomsday taps both their jaws on the next page...  I mean, let's face it, Doomsday beat Superman down to the white meat, so ole Steel here is gonna hafta go cerebral if he's gonna get out of this one without brain damage. One of those 'use it or lose it' deals...

yeah, so you can thank my man Wallruss for this. I had no idea at all about this book until I saw it on his blog. I may pick this up next time I'm at the comic shop. It's out now, so if you've read it, feel free to chime in... (if you missed my Steel drawing, peep it here)

holla!

samax.

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PREVIEW: Bring the Thunder #1 & 2

 Pulled these preview pages for the first couple issues of Dynamite Entertainment's new book Bring The Thunder off of CBR.
Here's the Sales Pitch:
Wayne Russell is an elite pararescue jumper in the Air Force serving in Afghanistan. He leads the most rigorously trained troops on the most dangerous missions into enemy territory. During a deadly mission, Wayne's team is ambushed. Mortally wounded, Wayne finds and fires an experimental weapon, but the weapon malfunctions. The result will change Wayne and warfare forever.

Sales Pitch for issue #2
Wayne Russell unravels the mystery of how he got back to Chicago, and how a year passed without him noticing. Declared dead in Afghanistan, Wayne’s family is under incredible stress and they’ve had to move back to the inner city. His oldest son is in a gang and they don’t like the new stranger who has come to town. They picked the wrong man to mess with.

These previews show just enough for me to decide I wanna check this out... and I guess that's what previews are for so, a win for Dynamite... Alex Ross covers help of course, but this dude Wilson Tortosa appears to have the gift. Next time I hit the comic shop, I need to check this out! Bring The Thunder #1 is in stores now, and #2 drops Wednesday January 5th.

holla!

samax.

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