Summer Reading week 4

This week let's put a serious tone on our reading, coming out of one of my favorite independent comic companies, Onipress comes a book about espionage, political thrillers and personal struggles.

Queen and Country : The Definitive Collection Vol. 1
Written by Greg Rucka, Illustrated by Steve Rolston, Brian Hurtt, Bryan Lee O'Malley, Christine Norrie and Leandro Fernández.



Queen and Country : The Definitive Collection Vol. 2
Written by Greg Rucka, Illustrated by Jason Alexander, Carla Speed McNeil, and Mike Hawthorne.



For Fans of : James Bond, The West Wing

Now I have been a huge fan of Greg Rucka before reading these and I never thought of picking this up even after reading the two novels based on the main character.I have also heard on plenty of podcasts (Ifanboy, Around Comics, etc) that this was a great series and I could wait any longer to pick this up.

The series is centered on Tara Chace, an operative of the Special Operations Section of SIS or the "Secret intelligence Service" of United Kingdom, known as the Minders.
It shows us the ins and outs of the Agency with all the bureaucracy and politics and the occasional missions of the spy genre.

I recommend these books to anyone who is interested in a smart, exciting character like Tara and stories filled with action, adventure and intrigue.

Welcome to the 1st Annual Windy City Comicon

Chicago has always been a comic book town, Chicago has hosted one of the largest show in the Midwest, even before it was purchased by Wizard Entertainment.

But truth be told, Wizard world Chicago is kind of a False Advertisement with not actually being in Chicago, WW Chicago has been running in Rosemont for several years, even joked about in many podcasts.

So When I got a newsletter from one of my Favorite Podcast, Around Comics telling me that they are sponsoring the 1st Annual Windy City Comicon is coming this October, i couldn't to write about how excited I am for this.



So far the list of creators is starting to look very promising...

Special Guests are:

Gene Ha
Gene is best known for his work on Top 10 and Top 10: The Forty-Niners, the Batman graphic novel Fortunate Son, The Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix, Global Frequency and his many Wizard Magazine and Marvel covers.



Jason Howard
After years of drawing pictures for a variety of independent comic publishers, Jason Howard met up with writer Robert Kirkman in 2005. Together they created The Astounding Wolf-Man. Launched on Free Comic Book Day 2007.



Chris Burnham
Don't let the smile and the beard fool you, Chris was not a member of the folk rock group, America. He has however worked on Nixon's Pals, X-Men Divided We Stand 2, Fear Agent and Elephantmen.



Mike Norton
In February 2007, Mike signed an exclusive contract with DC Comics and has worked on the All New Atom, Green Arrow/Black Canary, Countdown to Final Crisis, Blue Beetle and DC's weekly series, Trinity.



Skottie Young
Skottie is best known for his work on New Warriors, Human Torch, Spider-Man Legend of the Spider Clan and New X-Men. He's currently working on an adaptation of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz for Marvel Illustrated.



And Many More...

If anyone is interested you can go to The Windy City Comicon website, and I hope to see everyone there, I will be the one with the cheesiest smile.

P.S.

I forgot to mention that it's only $5 to get in.

Summer Reading Week 3

Since there was a delay in my summer reading blog post, with this blog I offer you TWO First Volumes trades to read and hopefully enjoy. The two trades are Y: The Last Man Vol.1 & The Walking Dead Vol. 1




The first trade is Y: The Last Man Vol. 1 - Unmanned written by Brian K Vaughan with art by Pia Guerra, first volume was released in Sept 2002.

The story is about the only man to survive the mysterious simultaneous death of every male mammal on Earth. It starts on July 17,2002 where every mammal with the Y-chromosome is simultaneously killed except for a young escape artist slacker named Yorick Brown and his monkey Ampersand.

The story continues for several years as we try to find out how "the Plague" came about all the while we follow Yorick to Australia to find his girlfriend Beth. Along the way we meet allot of interesting characters like the ultra feminist group calling themselves The Amazons and Agent 355 who was sent by a mysterious US agency to keep Yorick alive to find out why he was the last man.

The Story just recently finished with issue #60 and with all 10 volumes out on trades and I can assure you that once you read the first trades, you will not stop until you read the whole series.

Also, they are releasing the whole Y: The Last Man in 6 Hardcovers volumes The first one will be out in 10/28/2008 you can pre-order it here.
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The second Trade is The Walking Dead Vol.1 - Days Gone Bye written by Robert Kirkman with art by Tony Moore

The Story is about a police officer named Rick Grimes who wakes up from a coma to find that a plague of the dead has swept through all civilization and the living dead walk the earth now. With ammunition and a squad car, he heads to Atlanta to look for his Wife Lori and his son Carl only to find that most of the major cities has been overrun by zombies.

We follow the stories of Rick and the survivors he comes across trying to live and survive in this new world, The story has always been about survival, we never find out was causes "the plague" but in the end, that doesn't matter because as rick says
in the end of volume #4 by making the assertion that they, not the zombies outside, are the Walking Dead.

the story is an ongoing series with the 8th volume(Made to Suffer) just came out in June of '08 with the rest of the trades coming out about every 6 months.

Hope you guys can enjoy these series as much as i have.