![Daniel Johnston Releases ‘Space Ducks: An Infinite Comic of Musical Greatness’ [Preview]
By Andy Khouri
On sale this week from BOOM! Town, the alternative comix imprint of BOOM! Studios, is Space Ducks: An Infinite Comic Book of Musical Greatness #1. The book is created by none other than Daniel Johnston, the prolific and influential musician and subject of the award-winning documentary, The Devil and Daniel Johnston, which chronicled Johnston’s career and his struggles with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Although best known for his decades-long music career (with songs covered by Tom Waits, Beck, TV on the Radio, the Flaming Lips and more), Johnston’s early aspiration was cartooning, a dream he finally realizes in this idiosyncratic graphic novel about sci-fi ducks and Satan.
Read more.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m3eodgTrEC1qcw9rdo1_1280.jpg)
Daniel Johnston Releases ‘Space Ducks: An Infinite Comic of Musical Greatness’ [Preview]
By Andy Khouri
On sale this week from BOOM! Town, the alternative comix imprint of BOOM! Studios, is Space Ducks: An Infinite Comic Book of Musical Greatness #1. The book is created by none other than Daniel Johnston, the prolific and influential musician and subject of the award-winning documentary, The Devil and Daniel Johnston, which chronicled Johnston’s career and his struggles with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Although best known for his decades-long music career (with songs covered by Tom Waits, Beck, TV on the Radio, the Flaming Lips and more), Johnston’s early aspiration was cartooning, a dream he finally realizes in this idiosyncratic graphic novel about sci-fi ducks and Satan.
![Fan Recreates Han Zimmer’s Score from ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ Prologue [Music]
By Andy Khouri
Fans of the upcoming film The Dark Knight Rises has recreated the Hans Zimmer score, removing dialogue and sound effects from multiple sources to recreate a six-minute long piece.
Hear the music.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m0hbkmbZva1qcw9rdo1_1280.jpg)
Fan Recreates Han Zimmer’s Score from ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ Prologue [Music]
By Andy Khouri
Fans of the upcoming film The Dark Knight Rises has recreated the Hans Zimmer score, removing dialogue and sound effects from multiple sources to recreate a six-minute long piece.
My poster for Kirby Krackle and Adam Warrock’s upcoming West Coast Twenty Twelve tour!
NERD NOTE: The illustration’s an homage to Frank Miller’s incredible cover for The Dark Knight Returns #4.
‘The Invisibles’ Theme Song: ‘Mogadishu’ by Luke Haines’ Baader Meinhoff [Music]
By Andy Khouri
Known for its excellent programming devoted to eclecticism, introspection and general artsy fartsyness, public radio station KCRW welcomed none other than Grant Morrison to its Los Angeles studios to spin five favorite tracks and discuss in detail why they are so near and dear to his heart. Among the selections is “Mogadishu” by Baader Meinhof aka Luke Haines, a 1996 track that Morrison said “would have been the theme song of The Invisibles,” his cult classic Vertigo series, and is “the sexiest song about terrorism that you will ever hear.” …this particular song is just so cool, for me it’s this is the essence of cool, this song, and it’s a really sexy, slow, kind of iconic song. And what it made me feel, it was very much of a time where I was doing The Invisibles comic, which was about a group of sexy terrorists, you know occult terrorists. And this would have been the theme song of The Invisibles. You know I think it says everything about that outlaw glamour, the life lived on the fringes of the law, and on an international scale, and I really love it for that. It’s the sexiest song about terrorism that you will ever hear. The thing about comic book writing, I mean the writer Denny O’Neil once said, ‘It’s headlines written by a poet’ which I thought was a great description. It’s about the same idea of compressing a big idea into the smallest amount of words. You know a comic balloon, you can’t really have more than 35 words in it or it starts to over balance the artwork.
Speaking with KCRW’s Eric J. Lawrence, Morrison pointed out the thematic similarities in Haines’ Baader Meinhoff album, which was named after and based on the German terrorist group also known as the Red Army Faction, and The Invisibles, whom the writer described as “sexy terrorists.”
Lawrence also asked Morrison about the similarities between writing comic books and writing songs.
You can hear the rest of Morrison’s selections and listen to or read more of his remarks at KCRW.
In the same way, that in a song, you’ve got meter, you’ve got your lines, and you really have to make sure that what you’re saying is honed down to an essence. So yeah, I mean definitely I think there’s a lot of similarities between them, and I think the best comic writers do take a lot from lyricists and, you know, even from beat poets. I think my favorite lyricists took a lot from Ginsberg and from Burroughs and those guys as well.
![Peavy’s line of Marvel junior acoustic guitars are up for preorder for around $60 and are expected to ship in April. [Peavy]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lx6o6xGYnq1qcw9rdo1_500.jpg)
Peavy’s line of Marvel junior acoustic guitars are up for preorder for around $60 and are expected to ship in April. [Peavy]
The Archies - “Sugar, Sugar”
![War Rocket Ajax #24: Alex Segura Talks ‘Archie Meets Kiss’ [Podcast]
By Chris Sims & Matt Wilson
Before Chris gets around to freaking out a guy whose actual job is to make people like Archie Comics with how much Chris likes Archie Comics, he takes you through Thrasher magazine’s amazing King of the Road competition. Meanwhile, Matt has one of the most exciting pieces of news we’ve ever heard on the show! Plus, a return to Thrasher with a letter that asks just how girls are like skateboarding.When Alex joins us, he gets to talking about what it was like to bring KISS to Riverdale:
KISS is pretty much everywhere, comic-wise and beyond that. I was talking to some people in the office today and everyone was bringing up those Phantom of the Park connections, and one reviewer even said “oh, he’s clearly playing in the Marvel continuity.” And that’s cool, obviously I did my research, but it’s very much its own thing. I wasn’t trying to continue anything.
But I also didn’t want to… I always thought it was absurd to have the characters calling each other by their first names. Like, you want it to be this larger than life thing, and to have them be these supernatural characters, it’d be silly if they were like “Hey, Paul.” It just struck me as odd, so from the beginning, from the pitch on, I as like “This is the Demon, this this Starchild — they’re mystical creatures.”
Maybe I was just waiting to enlist, but now I’m officially in the KISS Army. I’m a big music nerd, so KISS is a big part of that. I love the costumes, I love the theatrical side of it. Some of their stuff is really solid pop rock, and there’s heavier stuff. I had to listen to a lot of it just to get into the right mindset. In revisiting their catalog, I’ve come to appreciate them even more, which is kind of cool.
Alex also talks to us about Archie Comics as a company, and the new strategy that’s seen them become the most progressive comic book publisher around:
A lot of it points to Jon — Jon Goldwater, our CEO. He basically came in with a mandate, he told creators “Look, try new things. Don’t be afraid.” Because Archie for years was very locked in, these are the characters, these are the stories we can tell, these are the stories we can do and can’t do.
You’re a fan, you know the older stuff. I remember as a kid reading the DeCarlo stories, and they were pretty wholesome but there was always an edge to it. Cheryl Blossom would show up and she was such a wrecking ball for Archie, just this random character. There was this kinetic energy to it that, I don’t want to say it got lost, but it just became a little more templated.
Jon just told people like Dan Parent and Fernando Ruiz and Alex Simmons and Paul Kupperberg, the core creators, “go crazy.” And out of that came Kevin Keller, and out of that came Life With Archie. In a way, “Archie Meets KISS” probably couldn’t have happened if Jon wasn’t there to take that call.[…]
With anything that takes any kind of political slant, you’re going to get people that are critical. Even with Kevin, when Kevin came out. But for every critical email or phoine call we got, we got hundreds of positive ones. For all the subscribers we lost on Kevin, we gained a hundredfold. It’s an exciting time. I really don’t know if I would’ve been suitable for Archie if it was just this thing where they were super-conservative.
All that, and find out why ComicsAlliance won’t be doing a Worst Comics of 2011 in this week’s episode!
Listen now at ComicsAlliance.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lw4abajOF21qcw9rdo1_500.jpg)
War Rocket Ajax #24: Alex Segura Talks ‘Archie Meets Kiss’ [Podcast]
By Chris Sims & Matt Wilson
Before Chris gets around to freaking out a guy whose actual job is to make people like Archie Comics with how much Chris likes Archie Comics, he takes you through Thrasher magazine’s amazing King of the Road competition. Meanwhile, Matt has one of the most exciting pieces of news we’ve ever heard on the show! Plus, a return to Thrasher with a letter that asks just how girls are like skateboarding.
When Alex joins us, he gets to talking about what it was like to bring KISS to Riverdale:
KISS is pretty much everywhere, comic-wise and beyond that. I was talking to some people in the office today and everyone was bringing up those Phantom of the Park connections, and one reviewer even said “oh, he’s clearly playing in the Marvel continuity.” And that’s cool, obviously I did my research, but it’s very much its own thing. I wasn’t trying to continue anything.
But I also didn’t want to… I always thought it was absurd to have the characters calling each other by their first names. Like, you want it to be this larger than life thing, and to have them be these supernatural characters, it’d be silly if they were like “Hey, Paul.” It just struck me as odd, so from the beginning, from the pitch on, I as like “This is the Demon, this this Starchild — they’re mystical creatures.”
Maybe I was just waiting to enlist, but now I’m officially in the KISS Army. I’m a big music nerd, so KISS is a big part of that. I love the costumes, I love the theatrical side of it. Some of their stuff is really solid pop rock, and there’s heavier stuff. I had to listen to a lot of it just to get into the right mindset. In revisiting their catalog, I’ve come to appreciate them even more, which is kind of cool.
Alex also talks to us about Archie Comics as a company, and the new strategy that’s seen them become the most progressive comic book publisher around:
A lot of it points to Jon — Jon Goldwater, our CEO. He basically came in with a mandate, he told creators “Look, try new things. Don’t be afraid.” Because Archie for years was very locked in, these are the characters, these are the stories we can tell, these are the stories we can do and can’t do.
You’re a fan, you know the older stuff. I remember as a kid reading the DeCarlo stories, and they were pretty wholesome but there was always an edge to it. Cheryl Blossom would show up and she was such a wrecking ball for Archie, just this random character. There was this kinetic energy to it that, I don’t want to say it got lost, but it just became a little more templated.
Jon just told people like Dan Parent and Fernando Ruiz and Alex Simmons and Paul Kupperberg, the core creators, “go crazy.” And out of that came Kevin Keller, and out of that came Life With Archie. In a way, “Archie Meets KISS” probably couldn’t have happened if Jon wasn’t there to take that call.[…]
With anything that takes any kind of political slant, you’re going to get people that are critical. Even with Kevin, when Kevin came out. But for every critical email or phoine call we got, we got hundreds of positive ones. For all the subscribers we lost on Kevin, we gained a hundredfold. It’s an exciting time. I really don’t know if I would’ve been suitable for Archie if it was just this thing where they were super-conservative.
All that, and find out why ComicsAlliance won’t be doing a Worst Comics of 2011 in this week’s episode!
Tara McPherson Compiles the Beautiful ‘Bunny in the Moon’ [Art]
On sale in March is Bunny in the Moon, the third hardcover compilation of paintings, illustrations and other artwork by the esteemed Tara McPherson. Known to comics readers for her contributions to projects like Fables: 1001 Nights of Snowfall and MySpace Dark Horse Presents, McPherson’s work is seen by music fans everywhere for her wonderfully idiosyncratic concert posters for bands like The Melvins, Faith No More, Liars, Kings of Leon, Beck and The Decemberists. McPherson is a master of mixing the cute, the dark, the sexy and the surreal, and is certainly one of my favorite illustrators.
Featuring an introduction by Super Size Me filmmaker Morgan Spurlock, Bunny in the Moon is published by Dark Horse, who’ve also released a great deal of cool merchandise based around McPherson’s work. With the new art book available for pre-order now, ComicsAlliance takes an advance look at some of the work compiled in Bunny in the Moon.
See more McPherson art at ComicsAlliance.
Dap Bros. 45 - Daft Punk aka Dap Punk.
Suggested by Andy Khouri.
OUR WORK IS NEVER OVER OVER OVER OVER OVER OVER OVER OVER
