So I know what I'm doing this fall...

One of my favourite parts of the current television season coming to an end is the adverts for upcoming shows starting this fall.

Lets take for example Gotham (airing on Fox) - a prequel series to Batman which focuses on young detective Jim Gordon and his early days as a cop in Gotham City.

Although I will happily admit to being a long-time Batman fan, one of my favourite series is Gotham Central, which focused on the police in Gotham City and how exactly they would interact with the Batman and all of his terrifying enemies - it took something most people were quite familiar with and looked at it through another lens (also if you haven't read Gotham Central - go do that now).

I'm sure there will be a lot more stuff coming out this fall that will peak my genre-loving interests, but I've got to say that right now, I'm pretty darn excited to see what Gotham is going to be doing this fall.

Things I've Noticed: Coming up with a research paper can be tricky

As part of my Comic book course I'm taking this fall, I'm required to do a research paper project on a topic that interests me about comics and graphic novels.

The tricky part now is narrowing it down to just one.  As a horror fan, I'm definitely interested in how horror comics are handled in terms of school and public library collections aimed at youth.  People tend to get touchy on the idea of scary things being made available to their kids, so I'm sure I'd find a lot of existing papers on the project, but it may be a case of biting off more than I can chew.

Next up is a look at comics that focus on Superheroes, but from non-traditional directions - think Gail Simone's Welcome to Tranquility or Kurt Busiek's Astro City, heck even Greg Rucka's Gotham Central, to get an idea of what I'm talking about.

Finally, I'm really interested in comics crossing over with other styles of stories; fables, urban legends, even nods to the pulps (which is where comics really came from).  In the end it's pretty tricky, but I need to make a decision this week, so I've got some thinking to do.

Book Review: Whiteout

One of my favourite things about comic books is how versatile they are; how they can be super hero comics, horror comics, romance comics or even textbooks about comics. Although my favourites tend to be fantasy and horror comics, I am a huge fan of a well done story. Today we'll look at one of my favourite graphic novels of the last two decades, Whiteout.

First off, when I say graphic novel, that's what I mean - it is not a collection of issues of an ongoing title (I have a lot of those I love as well, so I wanted to make this distinction at the start), so it has the benefit of having a clear beginning, middle and end.

My first impression of the story is how visually impressive it is; it takes place at McMurdo Station in Antarctica, is a murder mystery with a time limit (the murderer will likely be off continent in 3 days), and has an incredible main character in U.S. Marshal Carrie Stetko.

Carrie is definitely one of my favourite characters in comic books - I just find that she has a very distinctive voice as well as a lot of personal depth. Plus she is very good at her job.

Part of what I like best about the story is the fact that there is a lot of obvious work being put into it by both the writer and the artist, I've read a lot of Greg Rucka before (His run on Gotham Central may have been my favourite Batman title in a really long time), and Steve Lieber's artwork is really, really good; considering his subject is a location with a lot of white and very little shadow, I was simply blown away by the way he conveyed the vastness and loneliness of Antarctica.

The comic does have a sequel, Whiteout: Melt, which I also strongly recommend, and was adapted into a movie in 2009 - I haven't seen it yet, but apparently it went in it's own direction. This comic is really great, and if you haven't tried the works of Greg Rucka before, it is an excellent place to start.