I try to hold down the plugs for stuff that makes me money but I have some comic books out or coming out. The first issue of the new Groo mini-series, Groo: Play of the Gods will be released to coincide with Comic-Con. It's a four-issue series in which, you may find it hard to believe, Groo does some stupid things and causes vast amounts of destruction. Surprising, I know but we thought it would be a novel change from all those issues in which Groo causes vast amounts of destruction and does some stupid things.
I continue to write Garfield stories for the occasional Garfield specials that Boom Studios issues. And Boom has partnered with Dynamite Comics for a Garfield & Grumpy Cat crossover mini-series and I wrote that, too. That'll be out in a few months. I'll let you know when we have a precise release date.
One or two e-mails a week ask me why I so rarely mention these things here and one guy just asked if I was ashamed of them. Certainly not, guy. I just sometimes find the pushing of one's own products on the Internet a bit tacky. When I see a really egregious example of it — and it's hard not to — it make me uncomfy to be doing that myself. I probably need to get over this.
Meanwhile, DC Comics has collected in one volume, Superman Meets Bugs Bunny, a mini-series I wrote for them back in the year 2000. I didn't mention that here before it came out because I literally didn't know about it until I got a box from them filled with copies. It's a nice little series, owing largely to fine illustration work by Joe Staton, Tom Palmer and Mike DeCarlo.
I dunno if I've mentioned this here before but there's an interesting difference for me in writing a character like Superman as opposed to a character like Bugs Bunny. This is above and beyond the fact that the latter is supposed to be funny. It's that famous cartoon characters all speak with familiar voices, whereas characters who are primarily from comic books or strips do not. We all know what Bugs Bunny sounds like. He either sounds like Mel Blanc or someone imitating Mel Blanc. But Superman has had dozens of voices and no one of them is definitive.
When I write Bugs, I hear his voice in my head and when you read a Bugs Bunny comic, you probably hear that exact same voice. We agree on what all those animated characters sound like. You might have a voice in mind for, say, Batman. You think he sounds like Adam West or Kevin Conroy or Michael Keaton or Someone Else but the writer probably doesn't have that same voice in mind. I'm not saying any of this is good or bad or anything; just that it's something I find fascinating. (And there are exceptions. I never thought the Donald Duck of the comic books sounded anything like the voice Clarence Nash did for the Donald Duck cartoons. The cartoon voice was semi-unintelligible, whereas I could understand every word the Donald of the comics uttered since it was right there in print.)
Moving on: August is the month when Jack Kirby would have been 100 years old. Here's a paragraph I swiped off this website…
DC Comics recently announced six special one-shot comic books set to release throughout August, the month of Kirby's actual 100th birthday. Each issue will tell a new story about one of Kirby's famous DC creations: Darkseid (from Mark Evanier and Scott Kolins), the Newsboy Legion (Howard Chaykin), Sandman (Dan Jurgens, Steve Orlando, John Bogdanove, and Rick Leonardi), Manhunter (Keith Giffen, Dan DiDio), Orion and the New Gods (Shane Davis and Michelle Delecki), and the Black Racer (Reginald Hudlin and Denys Cowan).
Each issue will also contain some Kirby reprints and an essay by Yours Truly. Some of the issues, by the way, have a couple of new stories and other creators are involved beyond those named above. It looks like a fun and highly appropriate project and I was pleased that they asked me to be involved.
Also, Abrams Comicart Books is issuing an updated, revised edition of Kirby: King of Comics, the book I did about Jack in 2008. It has smaller pages, softer covers, a better cover, a new chapter, some new art and I've rewritten a few hunks of it based on the realization that I could say some things clearer than I did the first time around. Copies will be available at the Abrams booth at Comic-Con next week (next week!) and maybe at other places in the hall, as well. My longer, more in-depth bio of Jack is almost finished but I'm not making any more guesses as to when it will be out.
And that concludes our personal plugging on this blog for the next month or two. Thank you for your patience and we now return you to stuff that I don't make any money off of.