Image Comics
It’s Wednesday! That means a new batch of comic books, trade paperbacks, and graphic novels are coming your way. At Geeks in Art, we know it can be hard to keep up with weekly series, as much as you may want. Thankfully, you can still enjoy your favourite stories through trade paperbacks and graphic novels.
Marvel
Staying on top of your favourite comics can be difficult, especially if you have an otherwise incredibly busy life. I know I can barely remember to put on pants when I meet the medicine delivery person at the door (because I also can’t remember to actually pick stuff up when I am out). For those of us with scattered brains and busy lives, trade paperbacks and graphic novels are the best way to enjoy comic books and the medium as a whole.
A few months ago, Neil Gaiman released a collection of essays and other works of non-fiction. This work, called The View From The Cheap Seats, was hotly anticipated by many fans, myself included. I was lucky enough to have a copy gifted to me, by a then-stranger (Steve Cleff, a kind human being and an amazing artist). The work is filled with insightful, interesting, and sometimes humours essays and observations on the world. However, the main draw for me, and the work I re-read time and time again, is Make Good Art. Make Good Art is the text of a commencement speech given by Neil Gaiman in 2012. The whole speech/transcript is filled with quotable phrases, but one in particular stands out:
Life is sometimes hard. Things go wrong, in life an din love and in business and in friendship and in health and in all the other ways that life can go wrong. And when things get tough, this is what you should do.
Make good art.
While I had always been interested in superheroes and science fiction, it was fairy tales that pushed me to explore other geeky interests. I loved stories based on fairy tales, or featuring those fantasy-style villains. As a pre-teen fairy tales were especially influential – both in the types of books I chose and the television I watched.
Like most adolescents in the 90s, I devoured every Lurlene McDaniel book as soon as it was released, and I eagerly awaited each installment of the Fear Street series. But I also read fair tale retellings, which eventually led to historical fiction. Through historical fiction I read works like There Will Be Wolves, The True Confessions Of Charlotte Doyle, and The Nine Days Queen, all of which gave me a hunger for more strong yet flawed female heroes. Continue reading
