Todd Klein's Blog, page 377

Creating F THE ENCHANTED LETTER Part 1

Bill Willingham at the Eisner Awards, 2009

Like my last print with Mark Buckingham, the idea for this one began at the San Diego Comicon in 2008, at a dinner with some of the creative staff of FABLES. I had published my A and B prints with Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman at that point, and told the story of how I had accidentally embarked on a series of alphabetical signed prints when the first two came in beginning with those letters. Talk went around as to who I might call on for later ones, and ...

New Klein Signed Print with Bill Willingham

© Bill Willingham & Todd Klein, all rights reserved.

I'm pleased to announce my latest signed print with my partner this time being award-winning FABLES writer Bill Willingham. The print is titled "F The Enchanted Letter" and celebrates a wide range of subjects beginning with F, from Fantasy and Fable to Friend and Foe. It's printed on 11 by 17-inch parchment-like card stock paper in roughly the style of a mediaeval illuminated manuscript, hand-lettered by me with a large decorative initial F ...

And Then I Read: INCORRUPTIBLE Vol. 1

Images © Boom Entertainment, Inc.

Continuing the theme of his IRREDEEMABLE, writer Mark Waid flips the idea in this related series, following a supervillain inspired by the swath of destruction left by The Plutonian (the hero turned villain in the other series) to join the fight of the few remaining forces bent on destroying that superpowerful being. In other words, here we have a villain turned hero. The very nature of a villain makes his sincerity suspect, so he has a much tougher time of...

Creative Fireworks

Yesterday, after a few hours at the beach, Ellen and I drove to The Borgata in Atlantic City. There was some stop-and-go traffic on the entrance route to the city, but once we reached the exit for the Marina district we left that behind, and found a parking space in The Borgata's outside lot, the viewing area for the evening's fireworks display. In the casino we had an excellent dinner at Izakaya, the Japanese restaurant there. The eggplant appetizer and sushi were both great. There was some ...

Porch Cats

As summer continues, Tigger and Leo spend as much time as we'll let them on our screened porch, chasing bugs, as seen here…

…or just hanging out in the sunshine. A cat's natural desire for a high perch gets them up on this 2×4 railing a lot, where they're just a little closer to the creatures they'd most like to catch:

Good thing they don't know it will never happen, it gives them something to hope for.

We had our house power-washed by someone this past Friday, and it was a trying day for all...

3 Years, 1000 posts!

Yup, it's the third anniversary of this blog and website today, tomorrow we begin our fourth year. On my blog administrator pages I noticed a few weeks ago that I was also approaching 1,000 posts. "Wouldn't that be interesting to have it hit exactly 1,000 on the anniversary," I thought in a geeky way. Then I counted forward, assuming a post a day, which is what I aim for, and…without any special jiggering, there it was, hitting 1,000 today. Weird how those things work sometimes. How close...

And Then I Read: THE SEA OF TROLLS

© Nancy Farmer, illustration © Tim O'Brien.

This is the third book I've read by Farmer, and all have been excellent. Each has been very different from the others, with the first, "The Ear, the Eye and the Arm" being science fiction, the second, "A Girl Named Disaster," more of an adventure story in Africa. This one is a mix of high fantasy and history, taking place in the year 793 AD on the coasts of England and Norway (the historic part) and the fabled lands of Norse mythology (the fantasy...

And Then I Read: ASTRO CITY DARK AGE BK 4 2-4

Images © Juke Box Productions.

It has been a long road, as writer Kurt Busiek has acknowledged, but the 16-issue ASTRO CITY epic concludes with these issues, wrapping up the saga of brothers Charles and Royal Williams. Their entire lives have been shaped by a thirst for revenge against the super villain who killed their parents, and the question here is whether the payoff will be rewarding for them and for us, the readers. Along the way, of course, we get to see lots more of the cool...

And Then I Read: MASTERPIECE COMICS

Images © R. Sikoryak.

A great idea executed brilliantly, this hardcover from Drawn & Quarterly collecting the comics work of writer/artist R. Sikoryak is a delight! Sure, there have been comics adaptations of classic literature since the 1940s, and both MAD and NATIONAL LAMPOON (and probably others I'm forgetting) have used a variety of comic strip and comics styles to satirize a wide range of topics, but I can't recall anyone following this particular path with such dedication and at such...

And Then I Read: THE CREEPER

I've already posted about the printing quality, design and contents of this hardcover reprint of the original 1968-69 series and later short stories HERE. While I usually don't like to reread old comics, I decided to read these, as the Steve Ditko art still appeals to me and I was curious to see how the stories would hold up.

In essence, they don't hold up all that well. It's hard to be sure at this point, but I think most of them were plotted and drawn first by Steve, then scripted over his p...