Have I said I'm very much looking forward to working with Tony Lee? Click the link to listen to an interview with Tony on the excellent Fanboy Radio podcast, where he has an exclusive announcement about the project. I'd tell you what it is, but that breaks the exclusive, doesn't it?

+++++

Longtime readers of the Daily Update here know the missus and I are big fans of Lost, and last night's Rosencrantz-and-Guildenstern ep with Nikki and Paulo was great, and it finally allowed me to beg The Homeless Channel's Matt Silady to tell his Kiele Sanchez story in public at Your Mom's Basement, which he did.

H over at The Comic Treadmill hits us with a one-two punch: first up, his review of Giant Robot Warriors: "Never was there a comic book I was more inclined to dislike because of its title than Giant Robot Warriors (although if DC ever publishes The Erotic Adventures of Jean Loring, Giant Robot Warriors will place a distant second in this category).

"As I noted yesterday, the Transformers and G.I. Joe are both concepts that fail to interest me. Spectacularly fail. And the title of this story by Stuart Moore and Ryan Kelly suggests a combination of those two concepts.

"But rarely does AiT/Planet Lar head honcho Larry Young publish anything that doesn’t entertain.

"Giant Robot Warriors features giant robots, soldiers and the hardest type of story-telling to pull off in a comic book format-political satire. This mix suggests a smash ‘em up story with cardboard dialog and heavy-handed preaching. But this comic is none of those.

"This is a light-hearted joy ride with just enough substance that pleasantly reminds me of movies you could catch on a Saturday afternoon on UHF back in the old days, successfully finding the middle-ground between all-noise, no-plot action and pompous moralizing."

...and if that's not enough for you, H peels away the mystery of the Jax Epoch appeal: "Reading it invoked memories of 'fantasy' stories where the primary joy in the tale was anticipating what outrageously novel character or event was going to pop up next. I use quotes for the term 'fantasy' because the scope of the term is so broad that it can be misleading. This is Alice In Wonderland, not Lord of the Rings-level fantasy.

"I'm going to call it Zot! meets Alice in Wonderland. It’s a story with meat and conflict, but told in a light-hearted manner where fun gets first priority.

"The cover is a perfect representation of what a reader can expect from the story-the protagonist’s head will turn into a balloon in the course of the tale. And we’ll see the hallway between worlds, our heroine stuck in a fish tank, a puppet show performed as evidence against Jax at her trial and the art of negotiating with mice.

"And I’m just skimming the surface of discoveries. I don’t want to spoil everything, because the fun in reading this story is turning the page to find the next imagination-inspiring image. An excellent escape into the joys of reading."

Boy, that's the way to start the day.

+++++

Confidential to Jason McNamara...

+++++

The affably warm-and-fuzzy Greg Burgas gives me and Ryan Kelly the credit for his state: "I always like getting stuff from Larry in the mail. It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside... Kelly’s art is the real star of the show. His robots are hulking beasts, clunky yet fluid, and he jams details into every panel in the book, bringing this wild world to full-blown life. His drawings are a bit more cartoony than they are these days, but in a book like this, that’s a plus. He has a wonderful sense of scale and perspective that makes the book interesting and unusual to look at without being disconcerting. And his robot battle near the end is truly magnificent. It’s mostly Kelly’s book, and all Moore does is hang a tale on his art and get out of the way."

"Dennoch finde ich das Konzept interessant genug um mir zumindest diese erste, 6-teilige Miniserie ins Abo zu nehmen (das bereits 2005 erschienene Einzelheft The Black Diamond: On Ramp vom selben Team ist mir durch die Lappen gegangen). Ob das ganze jetzt richtig Gummi auf der Straße lässt oder eher der tuschegewordene Opelclub ist kann ich dann im Mai sagen."

+++++

ALA Booklist's Kaite Mediatore Stover takes a look at the perennial favorite Smoke and Guns: "Ready to kick some butt with the boys? Then you need Smoke and Guns, by Kirsten Baldock. Hotsy-totsy cigarette girl Scarlett dons her French maid’s outfit and peddles smokes on the dingy streets of New York. Her-pistol-packin’ sidekick, Annie, a sexy Dirty Harriet, blows away Scarlett’s competition while astride a Harley. Great black-and-white drawings of killer babes who never smudge their lipstick even as they rub out the competition."

+++++

Ryan Kelly likes the new cover to his book and thanks me. Hey, Ryan, you did all the hard work, man. I just let the kids know about it. Very much worth hitting that link to see the progress of the cover design, and Ryan's original art offer.