New York Comic Con is a week away, and let's just say I don't feel prepared at all. I'm just wrapping my mind about the scope of it all, and doing my best to not give into feelings of overwhelm. On Friday, I'll be attending several private events, a few panels, and conducting at least 2 interviews on the convention floor. I'm doing my best to reserve Saturday to just explore Artist Alley and meetup with past guests like Morgan Hampton, Nikolas Draper-Ivey and Trevor Fernandes-Lienkiewicz. It'll be awesome to meet these guys in person (again in the case of TFL). There are several other creators I'm excited to meet, but you'll have to wait for the video recap to see them. If you're coming to NYCC and would like to meet up, send a reply to this e-mail so I can make a note. Once I get a lay of the land, I'll tweet about a potential meetup spot/photo op for the Dope Fiends on Saturday. On The Channel A family emergency shut down my video production this week. Needless to say, I'm behind on a lot. Be on the lookout for back-to-back uploads all next week. In addition to The Pull List, I'll be covering some upcoming Marvel trade paperback releases, and a really special announcement you'll want to watch out for on Tuesday. Thursday morning, I'll break down just how I plan to have a successful NYCC. Then when I get back, we can see how well it all worked out. On The Podcast This week, comic artist Anna Marazova is in the guest chair! We talk about how she gave up on a lucrative tech career to chase her comic dreams, being discovered and making a name at 2000 AD, and now working on Barbarella for Dynamite Entertainment. We also have an interesting discussion about the buying habits of European vs American comics fans. It's a delightful listen that I hope you'll enjoy too! I can't believe we'll be hitting 50 episodes in just 2 weeks! It's gonna be a double sized anniversary issue. Get hype!
An Absolutely Useless Review Have you ever read a comic so amazing, you get mad you can't spoil it? How long is the moratorium on Absolute Batman #1? Because we HAVE TO talk about it. Scott Snyder and Nick Dragotta absolutely KILLED IT! Without spoiling, I'll say this. Batman is an extremely malleable character. No matter what writers take him through, you always have a general feeling of 'that makes sense'. But it's rare that you get moments with Batman that feel fresh. This new take on Bruce feels FRESH in the best ways. Dragotta's art with Frank Martin's colors make it even better. There's nothing I can say without spoiling that would do this comic justice. So RUN to your comic shop and buy it, so we can have a fun discussion on Discord! Until then... Read Something Dope Today, BJ KICKS |
Celebrating everything Dope about comics. Curated by BJ KICKS.
This week, we crossed the 20,000 subscriber mark on the Comics Are Dope YouTube channel. As I said on Threads, I don't think I've met 20 thousand people over my lifetime. The idea of that many people clicking the subscribe button after seeing me talk about fictional heroes in capes and tights is crazy to me. While I think every YouTuber (including me) dreams at least a tiny bit about having one of those 100,000 subscriber plaques; every subscriber on this journey feels like a gift I couldn't...
One of my heroes is the late Congressman John Lewis. As one of the co-founders of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, he was on the front lines of the Civil Rights Movement at an age when most kids are trying to decide which super easy elective they're going to take to boost their Freshman GPA. He often talked about the days of sit-ins and marches, recalling all his arrests during those demonstrations as getting into "Good trouble. Necessary trouble." Car trouble is neither of...
Today, I'm mustering up the courage to do something I never thought I would. For the last few weeks, I've been promising some ambitious videos. A deep dive into the Ultimate Universe. Power Rankings for all the digital comics subscription services. A long-awaited Q&A video fielded from subscibers on social media. Then comes a bunch of silence and missed deadlines. What you don't see between uploads are all the struggles of trying to make things happen. For example, last week's Graphic Novels...