...also, congrats to Ursula creators Gabriel Bá and Fábio (Smoke and Guns) Moon and to Warren (Switchblade Honey, Available Light, Come in Alone) Ellis for hitting this year's EW 100 list. Nice work, gents!

Just sent The Black Diamond #3 off to Lebonfon, which, with any luck, means it'll make San Diego. This one features as its back-up story in Tales From The Black Diamond a great story by my good pal Jared Guenther called "Dead Stop," and which is illustrated by the talented Dan Warner. I was jawin' with Jared at the Isotope, and told him I thought it'd be cool if he wrote a story and I'd draw it and we'd throw it in the back and it'd be good for a laugh. I didn't count on Jared writing something so good that having me draw it would do his little slice-of-life a disservice... so that meant getting an artist with some skills.

Fortunately Dan had just sent me a query email with a link to his work, and it didn't take much to put the two together, ya know? Check out Daniel's LJ post about it. I particularly liked "AiT/Planet Lar has put out some of the coolest books of the last three or four years. Generally they do graphic novels, and art books but occasionally they'll fling down a mini-series. When they do, it's good (i.e. DEMO). Larry's got the love... there's no question. The guy loves making comics, and it comes through in his books." and the fact he picked up a copy of The Black Diamond #1 at my old place of employment, the Eisner-award-winning world-class shop That's Entertainment in Worcester, Mass.

It's just a bonus Dan included a scan of the Dum-Dums wrapper from which he sampled the colors for his story. I used to love going to WCIS and picking up a couple Dum-Dums with my cash...

+++++



There's a nice big article about the company in the latest Comics Buyer's Guide. Thanks to Ray Sidman for writing it and to all the folks who gave Ray quotes for his piece. I'd particularly like to thank DC writer-extraordinaire and Hollywood veteran Adam (Countdown, Robin) Beechen for graciously saying that he owes his comics career to me and Mimi. I gotta feeling he'd have figured something out eventually, even if we hadn't published Hench, but it sure is gratifying to hear a rocket giving an "attaboy" to the launch pad.

+++++

Lisa Fary over at Pink Raygun looks at The Black Diamond: "We learn about the Black Diamond, we learn about McLaughlin and meet the 1973 Mercury Cougar he’s going to be spending a lot of time driving (although it looks closer to a 1970 model). Nothing terribly exciting, but I like the idea of a mild mannered dentist behind the wheel of a Cougar in the drive of his life.

"I’m expecting the dentist to transform into either Frank Bullit (ahhhh, Steve McQueen) or Orin Scrivello, DDS (the crazed dentist from Little Shop of Horrors). Either way, I think The Black Diamond is going to be interesting."

+++++

....and to finish off today:



...H over at The Comic Treadmill sends such a love letter to The Black Diamond that I almost feel a little funny pointing you all to it. But anything that says "And a tip of the hat to Larry Young for his expertise in timing the publication of this issue the same week that the Vatican has issued the Ten Commandments of Driving. There could be no clearer way of the Lord letting his people know that he wants a story involving the Pope Mobile on the Black Diamond and he wants it now. I can hear the sequel ideas churning in Young’s brain even now-and I’m all the way on the other side of the continent." ...which, when Ken Lowery and Ben and Marlena Hall's back-up "That Old Time Religion" sees print next issue, will reveal H to not only be discerning but downright precient.

"This is precisely what the doctor ordered. In the near-future, the government has constructed a giant highway to contain all the misfits and gearheads. Now a mild-mannered dentist has to hit the road in a souped-up muscle car to save his kidnapped wife. It's like comic publishers are making comics specifically for me." We are, Crawbear; we are.

Ambush Bug from AICN on The Homeless Channel: "One of the things that I have admired about AIT/Planet Lar is the fact that not one book published by them resembles another, and yet the one thing that ties them all together is that they are all spectacular reads. THE HOMELESS CHANNEL is the perfect example of this. This book sets its sights on an up and coming television producer whose idea to form a channel that revolves around the homeless sounds crazy, but it may just be crazy enough to work." ...and then Humphrey Lee on The Black Diamond: "It pains me to say this, but while I was really looking forward to it, this first issue of THE BLACK DIAMOND really didn't do much for me. Now, I'm sold on the premise, that being the unusual but intriguing idea of a transcontinental roadway designed to keep all the miscreants, misfits, ne'er-do-wells, and other unseemly types separated from your everyday Joe. Sounds fun, sounds like it could make for some damn fine explosions and adrenaline tapping sequences right? Yeah, but none of those are present here because this particular issue is pretty much just set up."

I guess it's true what they say about writing-for-the-trade. :)

+++++

lefty Brown digs it, though: "It's the comic I've been waiting months and months for. Well, it was well worth the wait. You know what first comes to mind with this comic? Mad Max meets Aaron Sorkin. No, strike that, this it is more like Escape from New York meets Mad Max meets Aaron Sorkin. It's another high concept action-adventure from Larry Young. Set in the near future, Mad Max D.D.S. must take the super-deadly superhighway across the country to search for his kidnapped wife. Jon Proctor's art creates a hyper-action environment of fast cars, deadly guns, and future urban decay. I have to say I wish the comic used a heavier set and gloss paper to really give Proctor's work some pop, but I am so onboard this high octane thrill ride."

This is why most creatives don't read reviews, you know. Who's right, Humphrey or Lefty? Answer: both.

Black Diamond - Difficult trails that are for advanced skiers. Black Diamond trails can be steep, narrow, or ungroomed. Other challenges, such as icy conditions, may cause a trail to be marked as a Black Diamond. Most glades and mogul trails are Black Diamonds.

Augie De Blieck, Jr's take on our latest: "You know how The Gilmore Girls has a tendency to meander? How characters talk an awful lot to each other about relatively little? How little pop culture references find their ways of sneaking in there?

"You know how Quentin Tarantino made it cool to go off on wild digressions about tangential things in the middle of action scenes?

"Larry Young and Jon Proctor's new The Black Diamond series begins like that."

+++++

"In the first issue of The Black Diamond very little happens.But it does so in a charming fashion and promises action with car chases a plenty in the coming issues. From the tongue-in-cheek text on the inside cover, to the greedy look in the eyes of a dentist turned road warrior as he sits behind the wheel of an illegal 1973 Cougar, The Black Diamond knows what it is delivering: free-wheeling, visceral fun."

+++++

Jay McKiernan: "First, the concept. It’s simple, direct, and almost entirely plausible. It’s got elements of Escape from New York and Deathrace 2000 (compliments, I assure you) and it’s really science fiction with solid ties to reality. Since the U.S. is, in fact, planning a huge super-highway to span the nation, would it be so inconceivable that such a construction could end up being perverted into a crime-ridden wasteland? And is it even more insane to buy into the idea that the President of the U.S. would abandon such a problem when it doesn’t bother the normal, tax-paying citizens of his nation?"

The Black Diamond arrests Johnny B's attentions: "...and right off the bat one thing that The Black Diamond has going for it is Larry's specialty, the high concept... and this one's 1970's Grindhouse/Drive-in all the way, with (of course) Death Race 2000, the Mad Max films, and even The Searchers or perhaps The Vanishing figuring into the mix... " Johnny Bacardi also takes a look at The Homeless Channel: "More and more comics and graphic novels, it seems to me anyway, are coming across as TV show pitches; so it's not all that surprising that we now get a graphic novel that's about TV show pitches."

+++++

Scott Cederlund: "If this were a movie, this issue ends at the point where you grab your popcorn and coke, get comfy in your chair and wait for the rock’n’roll soundtrack to kick in. This issue is the set-up. Though great, quick and catchy dialogue, Young pulls you into the story. The dialogue is witty and smart and does a nice job of distracting you from the dangers of the world in The Black Diamond.

"Just don’t really question the story at this point. Don jumps into the car and takes off a little too easily. Maybe it’s shock but he seems to readily accept R.J.’s information but he needs to. This kind of story doesn’t allow for characters to act 100% logical and real at all times. In any good car story, you need to get the character into the car as quick as possible and that’s what Young has done– gotten Don into the car and speeding onto an on-ramp of the Black Diamond.

"Jon Proctor’s artwork adds a grounded unrealness to the story. I’m reminded of the rotoscoping animation used in those investement commercials or in Richard Linklater’s The Waking Life and The Scanner Darkly. Proctor fills in just enough information on the page to let you know what’s going on without over doing it. And the coloring (it’s uncredited as far as I can tell so I assume it’s done by Proctor) is bright and colorful. What Young found in Proctor is an artist who can draw the real world around him. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen cars that look better than they do in this book. The final two-page spread, seeing the rear of the Cougar driving off, next to a train track with a train racing in the opposite direction toward the reader, against the backdrop of a slightly futuristic San Francisco, leaves you wanting to see much more of this story. If this is what San Francisco looks like, I wonder what the rest of the country will look like."

+++++

View From the Cheap Seats: "The genius and splendor of Daniel Merlin Goodbrey’s Last Sane Cowboy comes across in a paragraph of his liner notes: 'The answer, when it finally presented itself was of course very simple; the ball-catching dolphin was mentally retarded and believed itself to be a dog. Conversely, the need to justify how the dolphin might be capable of flight never even crossed my mind.' The world he has built (the Unfolded Earth) is sublime, surreal, and utterly coherent within its own confines. His use of stark lines and multiply copied images evokes Red Meat and My New Filing Technique is Unstoppable, but this is explicitly a world that’s informed by Borgia, not Tarantino. I need to write Goodbrey a letter of appreciation, and buy more of his comics. Maybe someday he’ll transition into mainstream comics, and be the guy who can pick up the more batshit crazy ideas of Grant Morrison and Peter Milligan and make them work again. The beauty of a man who bleeds scorpions, a sideways king who’s sister replaces stolen houses, just stuns me. I want to read this book again. I just read the Mr. Nile Experiment again. I want to write comics like this."