Today at The Comics Journal, we're ready to turn the spotlight on Frank Miller and Dave Gibbons. Finally! It's Marc Sobel with that long look back at Give Me Liberty.
Despite its long gestation period, Give Me Liberty was actually conceived in the summer of 1988 at the height of the Watchmen and Dark Knight hysteria. As Miller explained, “Dave and I were at the San Diego convention, walking around the San Diego Zoo, and we started talking about working together. He had just finished Watchmen, I had just finished Dark Knight—I suspect we were both taking our press awfully seriously and had yet to calm down.”
But despite their initial enthusiasm, the series was shelved for a couple years. Miller recalled that he was “just writing scenes at random” without a clear idea of what he wanted to say and, eventually “Dave quit.” “It was originally going to be a huge portentous series of 150-page graphic novels, the first of which I scripted (but) the wind just went right out of our sails. We lost interest.”
Our review for today comes from Patrick Dunn, and he came away pretty pleased with the recent Image Comics horror book Infidel, from Pornsak Pichetshote and Aaron Campbell.
Infidel’s plot revolves around two lifelong friends and women of color, Aisha and Medina, who both live in an apartment building where a mysterious bomb blast recently killed several people. Both grew up in the Muslim faith, but have taken different paths in adult life. Aisha still dons a hijab, takes comfort in prayer, and makes excuses for the casually racist opinions espoused by Leslie, her boyfriend Tom’s mother. Medina is more overtly radical. “Racism’s a cancer that doesn’t get cured,” she tells Aisha. “The best you get is remission.”
This past weekend saw a healthy percentage of the comics world descend upon New York City's Jacob Javits Center for New York Comic Con, and multiple announcements regarding the next batch of DC, Marvel & Image Comics were announced. For more detailed coverage of that show, I'd recommend Bleeding Cool's coverage. Over the weekend, I received multiple texts from people attending the show, none of which were positive.
Prior to the show, Oni Press launched a free all-ages webcomics site. At this point, the site has a small number of books, but multiple titles are planned for later release on the site. It's an interesting venture, and part of what looks to be a continued redefinition of the Oni brand.
