With the Lubbock Comic Book Expo over for another year, it’s time to try to catch up on some of the comics reviews I’ve been neglecting. And lo and behold, there’s been a passel of “Green Lantern” comics piling up.

Green Lantern #39

We get our introduction to Agent Orange, the sole guardian of the Orange Lantern in this issue. The Controllers, old rivals of the Guardians of the Universe who run the Green Lantern Corps, visit the planet Okaara in the Vega system, which is off-limits to the Green Lanterns. The Controllers hope to control the Orange Lantern to power their schemes, but Agent Orange and his minions effortlessly take them apart. Meanwhile, Hal Jordan is still stuck wearing both a Green Lantern ring and a Blue Lantern ring. He has a big argument/discussion with the Blue Lanterns and their guardians, Ganthet and Sayd, about power and/or weaknesses of hope — in other words, hope needs willpower to work, just as the blue rings need green rings to function. The Guardians on Oa aren’t happy that Jordan has two rings, but when the robotic Green Lantern Stel chases a Sinestro Corps member to the Vega system, Larfleeze, the greedy Agent Orange, attacks Stel and the Guardians for breaking their oath to leave Vega alone.

Verdict: Ehh, thumbs down. Mostly boring stuff. Too much talky-talk, which I could excuse if it were interesting talky-talk.

Green Lantern #40

The Guardians decree that the Vega system is no longer off-limits to the GL Corps, and they all go off to invade Okaara and take out Larfleeze. But things don’t go as easily as they’d hoped — when Agent Orange kills someone, he’s able to steal their identity and create an orange-light construct of them to fight on his behalf.

Verdict: I’ll give it a thumbs up for the fairly nifty identity-stealing gimmick of Agent Orange, but other than that, there’s a whole lot of shootin’ and shoutin’ and not a whole lot to show for it.

Free Comic Book Day: Blackest Night #0

Our focus here is on Hal Jordan and Barry Allen as they review some of the high-profile recent deaths in the DCU — Batman, the Martian Manhunter, Aquaman — with the implication that they’ll be some of the zombies rising under the control of the Black Lanterns whenever the “Blackest Night” crossover gets started this summer.

Verdict: Thumbs up, mostly for the great dialogue and interplay between Hal and Barry. Sure, the “Blackest Night” hints are fairly cool, as are the pinups of the seven color-coded corps, but really, it’s just nice to see GL and Flash interacting again.

Well, not a hangover exactly. Alcohol in large enough concentrations is a poison, and there weren’t nothing poisonous about Saturday’s Lubbock Comic Book Expo.

We had at least 2,500 attendees, which was a heck of a lot more than last year. Part of that was because the Lubbock Arts Festival was downstairs, and some folks climbed the stairs to see what was going on. But I’m good with that. A lot of those curiosity-seekers left with a few free comics, thanks to Free Comic Book Day. They enjoyed the presentations we held. They had a blast watching the costume contest. They got to talk to a lot of wonderful artists and vendors, and they picked up a few old comics they remembered from their childhoods, or they got a sketch from someone, or at the very least, they left saying, “That was fun. What a great group of people.”

As far as I’m concerned, this was a huge success. When I left, I was actually in physical pain, and I was so tired, I went to bed at 9 p.m. and slept for about ten hours. But I would do the whole thing over again in a heartbeat.

Here’s a bunch of pictures from the event:

We’re doing it again this November, from the main exhibit hall in the Science Spectrum. Watch for more announcements about the West Texas Comicon as we get closer to fall!

Wow, I sure do talk about the Lubbock Comic Book Expo a lot…

Actually, I really just wanted to direct your attention to this great article about the Expo that appeared in today’s edition of the A-J.

Go read it, then come on down to the Civic Center and see the show!

If I haven’t mentioned it before, this has been a heck of a week. So let’s just get straight to what we all came here for: FRIDAY NIGHT FIGHTS!

From March 1985, here’s Action Comics #565 by Keith Giffen, Robert Loren Fleming, and Bob Oksner, in which Superman ejects Ambush Bug from the Fortress of Solitude:

And that’s that. This week’s been so busy, I’m gonna go grab a little early shut-eye, for once. Y’all don’t forget the Lubbock Comic Book Expo, tomorrow at the Civic Center!

Are you ready for the Lubbock Comic Book Expo? Well, get ready. Get your costume together, get some bucks scrounged up to buy some comics, get your head in gear to meet and talk with some of the comic artists from Lubbock. ‘Cause it’s all happening tomorrow.

Let’s summarize the particulars: The Lubbock Comic Book Expo will be held tomorrow, May 2, at the Lubbock Memorial Civic Center, at 1501 Mac Davis Lane. This is held in conjunction with the Lubbock Arts Festival, so expect a crowd. Bring yer walking shoes, ’cause the parking lot is going to be jam-packed. Entrance to the Comic Book Expo is free (we’re upstairs in the Civic Center’s mezzanine), but if you want to get into the Arts Festival, too, it’s gonna cost you two bucks. If I were you, I’d bring two bucks, ’cause the Arts Festival is great fun, and they got lemonade.

What’s there to do once you get there? Well, you can meet tons of exhibitors who will be selling comics, drawing sketches, shaking hands, and making contacts. You can enjoy Free Comic Book Day (but you better get there early, ’cause the free comics will probably disappear very quickly). You can get your picture taken with Batman, the Silver Surfer, the Headless Horseman, or any of your fellow comic fanboys and fangirls.

You can enjoy a wide variety of presentations, including:

• 11 a.m.: “The Reality of Spider-Man” with Rob Weiner – in which Rob will attempt to convince us that Spidey is real and is probably going to bite us and inject us with radioactive spider-man eggs.
• 12 noon: “Lubbock’s Comics Connections” with Scott Slemmons – in which I read off a bunch of my old blog posts, but you should come see it anyway, ’cause I’ll be using my beautiful radio voice, which can soothe savage goats.
• 1 p.m.: A demonstration by the Texas Tech Library 2D Lab – the first of three programs about computer aids for artists.
• 2 p.m.: A demonstration by the Texas Tech Library 3D Lab – The folks from the Tech Library also wanted to do something with their 4D Lab, but it got lost somewhere in the Jurassic. Maybe we’ll get to see that one last year.
• 3 p.m.: A Flash animation demonstration with Paul Davidson from South Plains College – a huge number of cartoons nowadays are animated using Adobe Flash, so this should be a good resource for aspiring animators.
• 4 p.m.: The Costume Contest – Are you gonna let that sweaty guy in the trenchcoat, fedora, and homemade Rorschach mask beat you? NO WAY! It’s ON LIKE DONKEY KONG, BABY!
• 5 p.m.: “The Future of Comics in West Texas” with Will Terrell and Robert Mora – in which Will and Robert emerge from the Texas Tech 4D Lab and destroy us all with Atomic Killbots from the 29th Century.

We’re gonna have a blast, and we want all of you to come say howdy. Remember, that’s tomorrow, 10 a.m., at the Civic Center! If you miss out, your future grandchildren will laugh at your lameness.

I’ve been writing about nothing but the Lubbock Comic Book Expo for a couple of weeks, and we all need a quick palate-cleanser.

• The opening cinematic of the new Ghostbusters video game.
• “The Sound of Music” in a train station.
• Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” as performed by a bunch of old computer parts.
• A giant centipede eats a bat.
• Can’t go wrong with the classics: Monty Python’s “Galaxy Song”.

And that’s that. You may now return to your usual workaday schedule.

To my complete surprise, yesterday’s move went extremely well — I’d originally planned to take ’til the end of Wednesday to get my stuff moved, then spend Wednesday evening cleaning the old apartment. But it turns out, thanks to some timely assistance from my brother, that 99% of everything has been moved into the new house. Now tomorrow, I can get the place cleaned up, toss my vacuum cleaner in the trunk, and get gone ’til checkout on Thursday morning.

Of course, there’s a downside to all this — namely, the new house is much, much smaller than my old apartment, and it’s looking like my entire stay here will be plagued by stacks of boxes that I’ve got no room to store elsewhere.

But enough about me — let’s take one more look at a Lubbock artist who will be appearing at this Saturday’s Lubbock Comic Book Expo at the Lubbock Memorial Civic Center: Rachael Simmons.

Rachael was born in Plant City, Florida, and moved to Lubbock when she was 10. Discovering manga and then Spider-Girl, she threw herself into reading all the comics she could and abandoned her plans to become a veterinarian so she could become a cartoonist. She even moved back to Florida to study at an arts high school, but gravitated more toward sequential art than the fine arts and painting taught in Florida.

After moving back to Lubbock, she got involved with the Lubbock Sketch Club and began sending samples of her work to comics companies. With a lot of rejections in the mailbox, Rachael eventually got a call from Red 5 Comics — they had been following her blog and were interested in working on a project with her. Soon, another new project was offered — in this case, a commission for a Harvard business professor for an educational comic book.

Rachael used to work at the Children’s Art Academy, where she taught kids about art and illustration, but she’s taken a hiatus from teaching to work on her freelance comics work.

Y’all have probably heard me say a few times how impressed I am with the artwork produced by the folks at the Lubbock Sketch Club, but I gotta say Rachael’s stuff blows me away. I got to flip through her portfolio a week or so back, and she’s doing absolutely world-class stuff. I think she’s gonna make a breakthrough to Marvel or DC sooner rather than later.

Go meet Rachael at the Lubbock Comic Book Expo this Saturday before the major comics companies whisk her away to New York…

Well, I spent all day yesterday getting moved into the new apartment. All the furniture is moved over, but I’ve still got a lot of little odds-and-ends to try to get moved. And I need to vacuum and scrub the bathrooms. In other words, I spent all day yesterday working like crazy, my feet hurt, and I gotta move a bunch more stuff over the next couple of days.

But even moving day madness cannot stop the highly necessary promotion of this Saturday’s Lubbock Comic Book Expo — nor can it stop me from giving a shout-out to yet another talented Lubbock artist who’ll be appearing at the Expo! Today, let’s meet Marc Watson.

Marc was born in Aurora, Colorado, and has lived in numerous places around the Lone Star State. He is a 2006 graduate of Texas Tech and current Lubbock resident. He operates Stranded Studios here in the Hub City. He does a lot of work on murals around the city — he’s painted murals at RC Wheels and Props, Dave’s Need 4 Speed (that’s the picture below), PetSmart, the main branch of Covenant Medical Center (and that’s the pic above), and the new Covenant Women’s and Children’s Hospital.

In addition to murals, Marc has also worked in jewelry, sculpture, ceramics, sketch art, and life drawing. His latest project is a children’s book called “Apples the Rat.” He’ll have a six-page black-and-white promo ready for the Expo, but the finished product will be fully painted in watercolor and 48 pages long. Here’s a little of what Marc had to say about it:

As for the story, it follows our main character as he finds himself in a new place as well as a new sense of belonging. I tried to balance a book that had both a cute side but also a side that kids would think was cool and exciting. I want to also maintain an overall good moral, while still including the aspects of pirates that kids love, such as sword fighting.

Folks, he’s talking about sword-fighting pirate rats, and I think that’s something we can all get behind. The only way to make that more awesome would be to add gorillas or rocketcars, and that might be too much awesomeness for one children’s book.

Again, Marc and Stranded Studios will be at the Lubbock Comic Book Expo this Saturday at the Lubbock Memorial Civic Center. Stop by and see him, as well as all the other local artists.

Okay, folks, it’s Moving Day. I’m not going to be getting all my stuff into the new house until the very end of the month, but this is the day I’ve got set up for moving all my large furniture — the bed, bookshelves, dresser, hideabed, etc. I’m also getting my gas turned on today and switching my Internet service to the new address. So I won’t have a lot of time to hang out unless y’all wanna rush down here and help us get the dresser shoved into the truck.

But I’ve got at least one more of this series on local comics talent to get online before the Lubbock Comic Book Expo this Saturday! Today, we’re going to focus on Ginny Case.

Ginny was born and raised on Long Island, New York. She attended the State University of New York in Fredonia for Illustration and Theater, but moved to Lubbock a few years ago with her fiancée — now husband — Christopher.

She works as a full-time artist, writing and illustrating comics and doing private commissions. She has a self-published comic, “Athenaeum,” from Flaming Hand Comics, which is Ginny and Chris’ personal studio. It’s a fantasy adventure that takes place in a strange world where artists are brought to revive their lost creativity. “Athenaeum” is set to premiere at the Comic Book Expo on May 2.

She’s also working on a project called “Requiem for Innocence,” which is an immense science fiction epic. The prologue will be published this fall, with subsequent volumes every six months. How large is “Requiem for Innocence” going to be? Each volume of the series will be around 100 pages long.

Want to see more of her artwork? Check out her DeviantArt page. And don’t forget to come meet her at the Lubbock Comic Book Expo this Saturday, May 2, at the Lubbock Memorial Civic Center! Ginny and a lot of other artists will be there!

It’s been one heck of a week. If I ain’t mentioned it before, I’m in the midst of moving. No, haven’t gotten a job yet. (Starting to doubt that’s ever going to happen) I’m moving into my brother’s spare apartment here in Lubbock. I won’t be paying $600+ every month in rent, though I’ll still be paying a ton for various bills. Anyway, we’ve had family in town all week long trying to get the apartment liveable and trying to get all my stuff moved over. We aren’t done yet, not anywhere close. So there’s been the stress of moving, combined with the stress of doing prep work for the Comic Book Expo. I’m worn plumb out, and the weekend won’t be much of a break — I’ve still got lots of stuff to pack and move. But if I can’t have a proper weekend, I can at least have a proper dose of FRIDAY NIGHT FIGHTS!

Today’s bit of brutality comes from June 1971’s Amazing Spider-Man #97 by Stan Lee and Gil Kane, as Peter Parker smacks a drug pusher around.

Remember, kids, don’t do drugs, or some radioactive spider-powered nerd is going to ZOMP you good.