Jamie McKelvie
Ecce libri cum picturis: Young Avengers #4, among other books
You know, I hate living in a world where Kelly Thompson is even a little right, confound it!!!
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Sunday brunch: Links for the week of 27 January-2 February 2013
What do you want? LINKS! When do you want them? NOW! Is there some sort of big football contest today? Don’t watch that – check out some links!
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Trade paperbacks, older editions, and miscellaneous for January 2013
Oxford comma in the title of this post: Yay or nay? I love Oxford commas, myself, but I enjoy hearing opinions about grammatical minutiae!
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She Has No Head! – Why ‘Young Avengers’ Is The Future Of Superhero Comics
Young Avengers #1 variant cover by Bryan Lee O'Malley
I reviewed Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie’s Young Avengers for CBR this week and gave it an – apparently controversial for some – 5 stars. Given the title of this post I’m sure you can guess that I’m standing by that rating. But as I’ve said before, you have a limited word count (rightly so) on reviews, and I have lot more to say about this book, the ideas behind it, its nearly perfect execution, and how excited it makes me for the future of comics when I read a book like this. Because lists are so damn effective, I’m doing a list again…so let’s start by ticking off the boxes of what this book gets oh-so-right.
Sunday brunch: Links for the week of 20-26 January 2013
It’s another week of links! I could probably have more of these, but we should not gorge ourselves – that’s not good for anyone!
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Sunday brunch: Links for the week of 6-12 January 2013
I decided to revive Bill Reed’s “Sunday Brunch” link-post because I was going to do a link-post and thought he had a perfectly good name lying around and he hasn’t been using it. So if Bill wants the name back, I’ll be happy to give it to him, but for now, let’s check out some links! Some of these are comic-related, but there’s also some pop culture stuff in there too. Some weeks I may have more, some less, but this is what I found interesting across the wacky World Wide Web this week!
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Review time! with X-Men: Season One
Kelly beat me to the punch with a review of this, but that’s why we have different perspectives, right?
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She Has No Head! – Jean Grey Sheds Mary Sue Image, Becomes Awesome & Complex!
X-Men Season One. Dennis Hopeless (writer). Jamie McKelvie, Mike Norton (artists). 
Matthew Wilson (colors). Clayton Cowles (letters). Julian Totino Todesco (cover). Marvel Comics. Hardcover, full color, 136 pages (includes a preview of Uncanny X-Men). $24.99
As someone always on the lookout for strong layered portraits of female characters, I was delighted to find just that in Dennis Hopeless & Jamie McKelvie’s X-Men: Season One (terrible title) in the form of their re-imagining of Jean Grey. I have never been a big fan of Jean Grey in any of her incarnations; she was always the definition of a Mary Sue to me. Too nice, too smart, too powerful, too kind, too beautiful (I mean she was a model at one point…gimme a break), too perfect, and everyone too in love with her. I mean, she was that character that when asked “what is your greatest weakness?” would have to be all “Um…my obsession with perfection?”
Sure there were portrayals of her over the years that I liked and stories I found interesting – like any X-Men fan I enjoyed The Phoenix and Dark Phoenix Sagas, and I never hated her or anything extreme, but she was never a character that worked for me as so many others did. Jean Grey never had that moment for me where a character you didn’t care for one way or another suddenly became amazing – like for Cyclops it was when he led the nearly helpless Acolytes out of the Australian desert without bitching once in X-Men #44 – I never saw Scott Summers the same after that issue. But all that changes today. Jean Grey and I have finally had that moment, and it was not just one moment but a slight tweak to her in general throughout X-Men: Season One, that has finally made her very compelling to me and dare I say, for the first time, she feels human to me.
Comics You Should Own – Phonogram
Yeah, you knew it was coming. In advance, I apologize for something in this lengthy essay – I’m going to repeat something I wrote in a post a few years ago. Can’t be helped! (Well, sure it can, but I want to re-write it.) Plus, this is going to be … a bit different. I hope you enjoy it!
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Committed: Airplane Reading for Funerals
Taking eight flights and traveling something like 14,000 miles in the last two weeks I’ve had some reading time on my hands. Thankfully I had friends with me, including Batwoman, Buffy, Hellblazer, Supergirl, Unwritten, Secret Avengers, and Wolverine. A girlfriend once told me that she loved to fall asleep with a book, it felt like company. Similarly, I was happy to have my comic books with me. The familiar faces were a comfort and a distraction.
You know you’re a comic book nerd …
When the first thing you notice and the only reason you buy a CD is because you can recognize Jamie McKelvie’s artwork almost from across the record store:
Dang, McKelvie rocks
It’s not a bad CD, either. It’s very “English,” and the lead singer doesn’t have the greatest voice (not that that’s every stopped great bands from existing, I know), but the lyrics are pretty keen and the music is good, so there’s that. But yes, I bought a CD strictly because of the cover art. I didn’t know McKelvie was doing the artwork for it (he’s been promoting it on his tumblr, but I didn’t see it), but it was enough to get me to buy the recording! Yay, comic book artists!
Committed: Inadvertently Brainwashing Babies
Media input in early childhood can have a lasting effect on adult tastes. If I hadn’t grown up with so many art, design and comic books around me, would I love them as I do now? Would I be so involved in the arts and communication profession? All of the imagery and information that we absorb as infants can influence us for the rest of our lives. For this reason I’m increasingly grateful for all of the things I was exposed to in my childhood.
Committed: SDCC 2010 (1 of 2) – The Year of Classic New Comic Art
This has to be the year that I really got the most out of Comic-Con International. For many reasons, this years Comic-Con in San Diego was incredibly busy, mind-bogglingly diverse, and startlingly friendly. Continue Reading »
I spent two days walking the floor of Comic-Con (not unlike a nerd David Carradine) …
And now I’m gonna write about it!!! You gotta problem with that?!?
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She Has No Head! – Wonder Woman #600: A Lot Of Promise, Not Enough Delivery
WONDER WOMAN #600. Gail Simone, Amanda Conner, Louise Simonson, Geoff Johns, and J. 
Michael Straczynski (writers). George Perez, Amanda Conner, Eduardo Pansica, Scott Kolins, Don Kramer (art). Scott Koblish, Bob Wiacek, and Michael Babinski (inks). Hi-Fi, Paul Mounts, Pete Pantazis, Michael Atiyeh, and Alex Sinclair (colors). Adam Hughes, Nicola Scott & Jason Wright, Ivan Reis, Oclair Albert, Rod Reis, Gullem March, Greg Horn, Francis Manapul & Brian Buccellato, Phil Jimenez & Hi-Fi, Jock, Shane Davis, Jamie Mendoza, Nei Ruffino (pin ups). Lynda Carter (introduction). DC. 56 pages. $4.99.
All right, let’s jut talk about the costume briefly and get it out of the way since we’ve kind of beat this horse dead already.
No, I don’t like the new costume. But it’s not just because I don’t like the look of it (though I don’t). It’s because it simply doesn’t feel like Wonder Woman. I don’t like the way it looks, but that’s fine, everyone has different tastes and we’re never ALL going to agree so it’s a fools errand anyway. Yes, I would prefer if the costume was more “fashion forward”, more modern and clean-lined rather than feeling like a fussy design throwback to 80’s fashion and 90’s comics. And while we’re here I’ll flat out say that I think this Jamie McKelvie design comes really close without even trying.
