The Bum’s Rush #67

WARNING! None of the news or rumors you see here in The Bum’s Rush should be considered FACT until it actually happens. It might never happen. How do you know I’m not just making all this crap up? I could, you know. You’ve been warned!

A Man Called Calamity!

Near the end of May the multi-talented king of cartooning, Calamity Jon Morris, announced
The Calamity! Project, a comic jam linked by a common theme… CALAMITY! Artists were invited to submit short comics (no more that 3-pages long) about “chaos, cataclysm, conflict and catastrophe, disasters, death, doom and destruction, mishaps and misadventures, wrecks, ruins and fuck-ups, trials, tragedies and tribulations, bad luck, unfortunate happenstance, and downright all-encompassing kerfluffles.” The gauntlet was thrown down and I decided to pick it up. Very, very slowly.

Almost immediately after The Calamity! Project was announced I emailed my good buddy and constant collaborator, Dave Sherrill to see if he’d be interested in doing something Calamitous with me. After several harassing emails, in which I threatened, lied, begged and revealed the existence of several incriminating photos, Dave relented… I mean agreed to draw a story if I wrote one. And so I set about… not doing anything at all. For weeks possible stories flitted in and out of my brain, none of which struck me as being any good whatsoever.

I’d all but abandoned the idea of participating the jam. Strangely enough, that was when inspiration struck. I quickly plotted out an idea, took a few hours to bang it into a script and shot it off to Dave, hoping that he still remembered who possessed what photos. I honestly felt bad, as I hadn’t left Dave all that much time to get the thing done before the July 15th deadline. That’s when Dave decided to bring
Touched By A Bum’s Neal Langham aboard to ink the pages.

Thankfully, Jon extended the project’s deadline until the end of the month and so it was that at midnight of July 30th I sent the finished pages of our story off, in hopes that I was not too late. And fortunately for you, I wasn’t! Our story, “Nothing Important Happened Today”, was one of the last to go up and features The Swell Bunch of Guys, who also starred in the story Dave and I did for The Big Ol' Book Of BIZMAR from Young American Comics. So go check out the story by a trio of Stumblebum’s Jon refers to as “a blockbuster team” and while you’re there take a look at some of the other amazing comics that were contributed to the Calamity!


And The Eisner Goes To…

I must apologize. Last week I wrote all about the news and craziness that went down at the
San Diego Comic-Con and I completely neglected to mention that the 18th Annual Eisner Awards (the Oscars of comics) were held there on Friday. Man, I’m going to have to stop drinkin’ when I do this column. And I will… next week.

For now, here’s a list of the award winners:

Best Short Story
"Teenage Sidekick," by Paul Pope, in Solo #3 (DC)

Best Single Issue (or One-Shot)
Solo #5, by Darwyn Cooke (DC)

Best Serialized Story
Fables #36-38, 40-41: "Return to the Homelands," by Bill Willingham, Mark Buckingham, and Steve Leialoha (Vertigo/DC)

Best Continuing Series
Astonishing X-Men, by Joss Whedon and John Cassaday (Marvel)

Best Limited Series
Seven Soldiers, by Grant Morrison and various artists (DC)

Best New Series
All Star Superman, by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely (DC)

Best Publication for a Younger Audience
Owly: Flying Lessons, by Andy Runton (Top Shelf)

Best Anthology
Solo, edited by Mark Chiarello (DC)

Best Digital Comic
PVP, by Scott Kurtz, www.pvponline.com

Best Reality-Based Work
Nat Turner, by Kyle Baker (Kyle Baker Publishing)

Best Graphic Album-New
Top Ten: The Forty-Niners, by Alan Moore and Gene Ha (ABC)

Best Graphic Album-Reprint
Black Hole, by Charles Burns (Pantheon)

Best Archival Collection/Project-Comic Strips
The Complete Calvin & Hobbes, by Bill Watterson (Andrews McMeel)

Best Archival Collection/Project-Comic Books
Absolute Watchmen, by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (DC)

Best U.S. Edition of Foreign Material
The Rabbi's Cat, by Joann Sfar (Pantheon)

Best Writer
Alan Moore, Promethea, Top Ten: The Forty-Niners (ABC)

Best Writer/Artist
Geof Darrow, Shaolin Cowboy (Burlyman)

Best Writer/Artist-Humor
Kyle Baker, Plastic Man (DC); The Bakers (Kyle Baker Publishing)

Best Penciller/Inker
John Cassaday, Astonishing X-Men (Marvel); Planetary (WildStorm/DC)

Best Painter/Multimedia Artist (interior art)
Ladronn, Hip Flask: Mystery City (Active Images)

Best Cover Artist
James Jean, Fables (Vertigo/DC); Runaways (Marvel)

Best Coloring
Chris Ware, Acme Novelty Library #16 (ACME Novelty)

Best Lettering
Todd Klein, Wonder Woman, Justice, Seven Soldiers #0 (DC); Desolation Jones (WildStorm/DC); Promethea, Top Ten: The Forty-Niners, Tomorrow Stories Special (ABC); Fables (Vertigo); 1602: New World (Marvel)

Talent Deserving of Wider Recognition
Aaron Renier (Spiral-Bound)

Best Comics-Related Periodical
Comic Book Artist, edited by Jon B. Cooke (Top Shelf)

Best Comics-Related Book
Eisner/Miller, edited by Charles Brownstein and Diana Schutz (Dark Horse Books)

Best Publication Design (tie)
Acme Novelty Library Annual Report to Shareholders, designed by Chris Ware (Pantheon)
Little Nemo in Slumberland: So Many Splendid Sundays, designed by Philippe Ghielmetti (Sunday Press Books)

Hall of Fame
Judges' Choices: Floyd Gottfredson, William Moulton Marston
- Vaughn Bodé
- Ramona Fradon
- Russ Manning
- Jim Steranko

My heartfelt congratulations go out to all of this year’s winners. Especially the ones I like.

Hulk Smashy

The Stumblebum Crew’s love of Katie Cook predates Stumblebum Studios itself. And we’re not the only one’s who love her. The cute, quirky and insanely talented artist behind
The Monsters’ Republic of Monstairia webcomic has been a fan-favorite on LiveJournal and across the internet for a few years now. But just when we thought we couldn’t possibly dig her more she goes and creates one of the best new webcomics around, The Smashy Adventures of The Hulk. Just watch as The Hulk looks for love, gets a MySpace account, watches clouds with The Thing, goes to Comic-Con and meets his father. It’s like Katie herself says, she doesn’t own The Hulk, she just makes him cute.

Speaking of Katie, Stumblebum and Comic-Con, check out the latest edition of The Weigh In for Katie’s own account of going to the San Diego Comic-Con.

Dark Horse Versus The Martians

Dark Horse Comics is under attack! Not by little green men, but by Pendragon Pictures who claim that Dark Horse’s hardcover adaptation of H.G. Well’s War Of The Worlds replicates a number of scenes and images from their own movie version, also entitled H.G. Well’s War Of The Worlds.

To that end, Pendragon Pictures have created the Martian Invaders website which details the complaints featured in the lawsuit and features a vast number of still images from the movie compared to frames of the comic book, along with analysis of both. The site also prominently features a poll in which readers can judge for themselves whether their appear to be significant similarities between the comic and Pendragon’s movie.

Now let’s look at that question for a second. “Do you see significant similarities between the DARK HORSE COMIC and PENDRAGON PICTURES' "H.G. WELLS' THE WAR OF THE WORLDS?” That question is quite obviously worded in such a way that the majority of visitors to the website, whether they believe that the comic is actually ripping off, shot for shot, actual scenes from the movie or not, will answer that yes, they see significant similarities. How could you not when both the comic and the movie are both faithful adaptations of the same original source material? Whether they are significantly similar shouldn’t really be the issue should it?

I’ve looked at the images presented by Pendragon and while I certainly do see a number of similarities in terms of layout and composition of shots I cannot bring myself to believe that this is anything more than coincidence. Look hard enough and I’m sure you could do almost the same thing with any number of different media ventures that were based on a single source material. Hell, I bet you could compare the Pendragon movie to the Spielberg’s big-budget War of the Worlds and find a number of “significant similarities”.

Another thing that makes me doubt the validity of Pendragon’s claims is who worked on Dark Horse’s book in the first place, namely Ian Edginton and D’Israeli. It’s not as if these two are brand new talents in the industry who are so new to the game that they must resort to copying directly from what is, at best, a direct-to-DVD, B-movie. These guys are critically acclaimed talents who have been creating comic books for several years. I know, I know… that never stopped Rob Liefeld. But seriously, these guys are talented and it’s strikes me as bizarre that they would need to stoop to copying off of a movie that I, until I came across this story, had no idea even existed.

But perhaps that’s the point of the lawsuit in the first place. Could it be that Pendragon is merely trying to gain more attention for its movie? They certainly seem to have a penchant for overstating the facts (once claiming the movie had a budget of $42 million!) and creating controversy. Not to mention that, while Edginton and D’Israeli have gone on to create sequels to their adaptation, like Scarlet Traces and
Scarlet Traces: The Great Game, the Pendragon movie has met with a mostly negative reaction. It’s entirely possible that this is all a publicity stunt hoping to cash in on the fact that there is no real way to prove whether the comic book version ripped off the movie or not. It’s all a matter of opinion.

What’s yours?


Better Late

Image Comics Solicitations for October 2006



The Only Comics That Matter

Last Week –
Batman #655 by Grant Morrison and Andy Kubert

This Week –
Agents of Atlas #1 by Jeff Parker and Leonard Kirk

Battler Britton #2 by Garth Ennis and Colin Wilson

Y: The Last Man #48 by Brian K. Vaughn and Goran Sudzuka

Next Week –
Casanova #2 by Matt Fraction and Gabriel Ba

Beyond #2 by Dwayne McDuffie and Scott Kolins

Nextwave: Agents of H.A.T.E. #7 by Warren Ellis and Stuart Immonen



If you know of any interesting news, rumors, lies, etc. about comics and think I should know about it too just email me at thesuperleezard@yahoo.com.

Read more dumb crap written by me at www.livejournal.com/users/superleezard.

My semi-daily webcomic, Der Wundervolle Bean, will be coming to an end soon. But you can still check it out here www.livejournal.com/users/der_magic_bean.



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