Tom Shapira

1 week ago | tcj.com | Tom Shapira

At this point - at any point during the 21 st century really - getting into Love and Rockets seems like more trouble than its worth. The reviews are still good, they've always been good, but there's just so much of it. And unlike one of these long-running manga serials with hundreds of collections, the Love and Rockets publication model is a rather convoluted affair.

1 week ago | solrad.co | Josh Bayer |Hagai Palevsky |Tom Shapira |Elias Rosner

Christina Lee, a busy illustrator whose work regularly appears in both new (Vox) and traditional media (Business Week, Wall Street Journal), introduced their comics to the wider world relatively recently, with a pretty solid beginner cartoonist’s mini which was followed shortly after by a major evolution with her books The Method and Object. Often at shows, I’m given work or traded comics but, sadly, I read less and less of it.

3 weeks ago | solrad.co | Tom Shapira |Elias Rosner |Hagai Palevsky

It seems impossible to imagine comics without Milton Caniff. It’s not just that he was popular during his time; many comics strips that were extremely popular in the first half of the 20th century are all but forgotten today. Not Caniff, though, his name and style lived on in the works of followers, which included talents like Kirby and Toth;  therefore, his name lives through their modern decedents as well. His influence, as both an artist and a writer, wasn’t limited to the United States either.

4 weeks ago | tcj.com | Tom Shapira

I have three copies of Tintin in America. These are: The 2018 softcover color edition from Egmont (bought as a part of the massive Tintin Box Set, which contains all books bar Tintin in the Congo), henceforth America 1; the 2018 black and white facsimile edition (meant to represent the "original" version as drawn by Herge in 1932) from Last Gasp, henceforth America 2; and the 2020 version from Moulinsart, which features colors over the original black and white art, henceforth America 3.

1 month ago | tcj.com | Tom Shapira

A new book by Mike Mignola. By that I mean an actual new book, not another Hellboy spin-off/prequel/sequel/re-imagining/whatever. It has been a while, hasn't it? To be clear, when I write "by Mike Mignola" I mean a book by Mike Mignola, not: "A book by Mike Mignola and some other people who do their best to kinda look like Mike Mignola." , the work which made him a star, started out as one man's creative expression and with time grew and grew into a publishing empire of its own.