Anya's Ghost

Welcome to another guest reviewer, Becky Hawkins.  Becky dew her first minicomic in 2007, right before landing a job as a cruise ship musician. Since then, she has kept a travel-journal online,  self-published eight more minicomics, and contributed to The Zinester’s Guide to NYC. She especially loves drawing food, old buildings and quirky bodies. If she had a spouse or a cat, she would mention them here.  Becky is the creator of French Toast Comix (which we reviewed here).  You can follow her on twitter using @hawkins_becky.
On to the review..

Art and Words by Vera Brosgol
Publisher: First Second

Aquaman 101 sale continued

Following on from my previous post on the Aquaman 101 sale, I bought several issues and now feel able to wax lyrical about why you should buy them.  Read on!

Aquaman 101 digital comics sale

In leiu of an actual review (yes, real life is still very hectic) we thought you'd like to know about an Aquaman 101 sale on comixology, starting 19th May (Saturday).  The comics are all 99 cents each (dirt cheap, about 50p in English money) for 3 days.

Aquaman is the King of Atlantis.  He gets a lot of teasing in popular culture, which really isn't right because he's a great character.  He's has several incarnations over the years - clean cut King, husband and father, bearded, hook handed, water handed, back to clean cut, grumpy, heroic, fun loving...he's done it all.  He's been in Smallville, as a sort of frat boy version.
Here's the promo poster for the sale:

If you click the picture it should get bigger and more readable.

I particularly recommend any title from 1986 onwards, particularly the ones titles 1994 to 2001, written by Peter David. The 2003 to 2006 issues are also well worth picking up for the Sub Diego storyline, where San Diego falls into the sea, issues 15-20.
Aquaman: Sword of Atlantis has beautiful art and a real dreamy feel to it.
Flashpoint: Emperor Aquaman was awful. Don't bother with that.

If you want to read any more of him, there is currently an ongoing Aquaman series, also available on comixology.  Also check our Aquaman and Justice League tags for other books with him in.

It's generally worth checking out Comixology's sales as they regularly have good stuff for rock bottom prices.

Vanguard

Vanguard

A web comic by Dan Butcher

http://vanguardcomic.com

Today's guest post is brought to you by Rob Turner.  Rob is a writer/producer for Polycomical Studios, the creators of Reynard City. You can download the comics for free and find out more about the project at www.reynardcity.com.

(You can also read our review of Reynard City here).

What's it about?

How many British superheroes can you name? For the average “man in the street” this is quite difficult. An older generation may name Dan Dare. For the younger generation they may strain and wonder if Lara Croft or James Bond count (at times their acrobatics/gadgetry is borderline superhero). Some might argue Dr Who might be a good example, given that he has both supernatural abilities and his quirky nature makes him distinctly British.

For comic fans there are of course people such as Captain Britain or Emma Frost of the X-Men (though her status as superhero is debatable, seeing as she has veered from hero, anti hero to outright villain.) The Vanguard looks set to change this. Not only do we get one British superhero but a whole team’s worth!

The Vanguard are the stars of Vanguard, a comic written by top online comic artist Dan Butcher, who has worked on a variety of projects and whose style has helped to boost the appeal of numerous different titles.

Comics for teens

I am often asked for recommendations for comics for children and teenagers.  I am asked so often, I thought I'd do a couple of posts rounding up all the books I usually point people towards.  So, this post will focus on comics on children, (say up to about age 11 or 12) and a second post will focus on comics for teenagers (aged 12 or 13 and upwards).

Comics for kids

I am often asked for recommendations for comics for children and teenagers.  I am asked so often, I thought I'd do a couple of posts rounding up all the books I usually point people towards.  So, this post will focus on comics on children, (say up to about age 11 or 12) and a second post will focus on comics for teenagers (aged 12 or 13 and upwards).

Update

Hi everybody.

We're overhauling the label system on this here blog to make it easier to use.  The new labels each have a category - Char (for character), Writer, Genre, Art, Publisher, etc.  However, we're only halfway through this somewhat mammoth task.  Today we've gone through all 248 published and scheduled posts and sorted out most of the labels, but a few more (e.g. the LGBT, Disability, CoC and About tags) have yet to be given an overall category.  Also, all links to labels within blog posts are not yet updated.

So, please bear with us if links are broken and labels seem a bit strange.  Hopefully we can get this all fixed within the next few weeks.  When completed, I'll put up a post saying it's all done.

Thanks for your patience.

Sequential Art

 Sequential Art

A webcomic by Phillip M Jackson

What's it about?
It's a webcomic that started out slice of life-ish, then branched out more unusual topics like aliens and laboratory testing of intelligent scientist squirrels.  It about a group of people, Art (an artist),  Kat (a cat and photographer), Pip (a penguin, makes his money by buying and selling on Ebuy), Scarlet (a squirrel with a very short attention span), the denizens (black blobs) and Leonard/Ducky (a platypus).

It's told in strip format, with a gag in each instalment and it's British.

Free Comic Book Day!

Saturday May 5th is Free Comic Book Day!  It's an opportunity to discover lots of new comics, including a lot of kids comics, for free!

Shops all over the USA take part, as do ones in the UK and other countries.  For more information on the initiative see the website.

To find a participating shop near you, either see the above website, ring your local shop, or if you don't know any shops near you, take a look at this list we put together, and give one close by you a ring

Free Comic Book Day is one of my favourite days of the year.  Celebrate with us!   :)