Better Than Immortal Hulk? Ghost Rider #2 Comic Review
Review – Ghost Rider #2. Who is this so-called Ghost Rider, and what does he want? They follow rumours. They follow wreckage.
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Is the New Ghost Rider Good? Issue #1 Review & Verdict
Review -Ghost Rider #1. Johnny Blaze has a perfect life: a wife and two kids and a job at an auto repair shop but his nightmares are tearing him apart
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Batman Last Knight on Earth Review: A Modern Masterpiece
Review – Batman: Last Knight on Earth brings us the epic conclusion to Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo’s Batman saga. But did they stick the landing?
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Gordon Rennie Interview: Writing for Judge Dredd & Star Wars
INTRODUCTION: A Scottish Creative Powerhouse Hey folks! Welcome to another BGCP creator interview. We are lucky enough to be chatting today with Gordon Rennie. Gordon Rennie is an incredibly talented writer from Scotland. He has worked in the comic book and videogame industries for the last 30 years. His impressive credits include: You can find multiple other cool titles of his over on Amazon. Let’s dive into the interview! INTERVIEW: The Early Days of a Pro Writer BGCP: Hi Gordon, thank you for speaking with us. Would you mind starting with your background and career? Gordon Rennie: My education? I got a useless arts degree from a Scottish redbrick university in the late 80s. It guaranteed to get me nowhere at the time. I started doing interviews and reviews for the UK comics press. Back then, they paid actual money for that. Most frustrated writers end up doing that. Warren Ellis started out at the same time for the same people. One magazine was Speakeasy. It morphed into Blast comic during the early 90s surge of ‘mature’ comics like Crisis and Revolver. I pitched some comic strip ideas to the editor. He bought just about everything I offered him. That was it. I was a professional comics writer. It seemed much easier in those days. BGCP: You began your career with Sewer Patrol in 1991. How did that first gig come about? What did you learn from it? Gordon Rennie: It was the first thing in print, but not the first professional thing I wrote. By then, I had written the first chapters of White Trash and Sherlock Holmes. Both appeared in the last issue of Blast before Tundra picked them up. Trust me, those were much better stories than Sewer Patrol. That was just a dumb and disposable Future Shock thing. However, Sewer Patrol taught me one notable lesson: I didn’t get paid. The people in charge sent me three post-dated cheques. All of them bounced. I learned early on not to work for spivs. SUCCESS AT 2000 AD: The Birth of Missionary Man BGCP: A few years later, you scored a gig writing for 2000 AD with Missionary Man. How did that happen? Gordon Rennie: Well, it was the Judge Dredd Megazine, not 2000 AD. At that time, I was still blacklisted from 2000 AD. I had written too many mean reviews of it. I sometimes think editor David Bishop hired me mainly to spite his colleagues. I pitched David a few things. He rejected most in his famously blunt style. However, he liked Missionary Man. It was an apocalyptic western set in the Cursed Earth. My main stroke of luck was David giving it to Frank Quitely. It was his first mainstream work. Those first stories aren’t very good, but they keep getting reprinted due to Quitely’s artwork. BGCP: You worked with 2000 AD for many years. How was your experience with them as a company? Gordon Rennie: Great. They pay regularly and on time. After my early experience with bounced cheques, that is the main thing. I get to do fun stories in the comic I grew up reading. We still laugh about the time they told me I’d never work for Tharg. WORKING WITH LEGENDARY IPs: Star Wars and Warhammer BGCP: You have written for many licensed properties. How does that affect your creative control? Gordon Rennie: It depends on the IP and the holder. Some holders just want the license money. They don’t care what you do. Others have very definite ideas on what you can and can’t do. Games Workshop is possessive with Warhammer. However, Lucasfilm is the most ferocious. I worked on a Star Wars game. Lucasfilm looked at everything I was doing. They liked my work, though. They even told the developer to bring me back for extra dialogue work. BGCP: Do you have a favorite IP that you enjoyed working with the most? Gordon Rennie: Judge Dredd, Doctor Who, and Star Wars. They were the holy trinity of my youth. Trust me, you haven’t lived until you see your name scroll up the screen on a Star Wars project with John Williams’ music playing. TRANSITIONING TO VIDEOGAMES: Killzone and Beyond BGCP: You wrote the script for the first Killzone game. What is your background with gaming? Gordon Rennie: I had been playing games since the Sega Mega-Drive days. I knew the tropes well. However, the jump to making them is a big one. It was a real eye-opener to see the complex business of making a game. My favorites are Tomb Raider and GTA. Generally, I like games where you blow stuff up. BGCP: Why did you move into videogames? Gordon Rennie: The Killzone guys came looking for me. They were fans of my Rogue Trooper work. Basically, I got an email asking me to come to Amsterdam for a meeting. The Killzone project finished without me. It was the first game I worked on and the first I was fired from. But it taught me how to make a game. Gaming paid much better than comics. I’ve worked on about 40 games over the last twenty years. I’ve done everything from laying down the basic story to polishing dialogue on Korean RPGs. DEVELOPMENT CHALLENGES: The Good, The Okay, and The Ugly BGCP: How does someone land a gig for a Sony exclusive IP? Gordon Rennie: I got my first games work because of my comic experience. These days, dedicated games writers begin directly in the industry. I’m afraid I have no idea how they do that now. BGCP: Does the story change based on the script, or are aspects already established? Gordon Rennie: It varies. In the early days, writers were an afterthought. Designers built the game and then brought in a writer to make sense of it. It was like putting up wallpaper after the house was built. Thankfully, that is rare now. Developers want writers early for world-building and plot ideas. BGCP: You also wrote for
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Creator Interview – Chris Evenhuis
Introduction Hey folks and welcome to the first ever written BGCP creator interview. We are lucky enough to be chatting today with Chris Evenhuis. Chris Evenhuis is an incredibly talented artist from the Netherlands. He has worked in the comic book industry since the late 1990s. His credits include: Darkness: Resurrection Wynonna Earp Monstro Mechanica GI Joe And concept art for Overlord 2 As well as multiple other cool titles that you can find over on his socials: Insta: https://www.instagram.com/chris_evenhuis/?hl=en Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/chris.evenhuis Twitter: https://twitter.com/ChrisEvenhuis?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor Interview BGCP: Hi Chris, thank you for taking the time to speak with us. Would you mind starting off by telling us a bit about yourself, your educational background and your career? Chris Evenhuis: Hi there, I’m Chris Evenhuis and I’m a comic artist and illustrator based in The Netherlands. My education wasn’t art-related (I started out as an Environmental Scientist), so as an artist I’m self-taught. BGCP: How did you go from studying Environmental Art to becoming a full time illustrator? CE: I’ve been drawing comics ever since I was a kid and had some indie shorts published by age seventeen. However, teachers convinced me to also pursue a ‘real job’, something with better career prospects. So, I ended up graduating as an Environmental Scientist instead. But by that time, the social climate in The Netherlands had shifted and jobs in that field kinda dried up. This meant that I ended up mostly jobless anyway. Thankfully I was able to move on to video games, where I worked as a concept artist for several years. Until I moved on again to Franco/Belgian comics, and eventually US comics as well. BGCP: Who are your main influences when it comes to your art? CE: This one’s difficult to answer because for a large part it depends on what type of project I’m working on. I do tend to see influences from Alphonse Mucha and Steve Dillon in my own work, but I’m not sure others would agree? BGCP: You have a really distinct art style in all of your work. Did you intentionally hone this style or is that how you have always drawn? CE: Thank you so much, that’s one of the nicest things I could hope for as an artist. It’s a combination of gradually developing a style that all at once feels natural, tells a clear story and helps making deadlines. Over the years I’ve found myself mostly looking for things to remove from my rendering, trying to find a style that has the least amount of ‘distraction’. It used to have a lot more details and cross-hatching, things like that. Lately my focus has shifted more to bold lines and shapes, and clear movements and emotions. It’s an ongoing process which I really enjoy. BGCP: Do you have a favourite part of the illustration process? CE: My favourite parts are coming up with ideas and then at the end, finishing them. Everything in between is usually a terrible struggle and oftentimes almost like solving math problems. BGCP: I have always been amazed at how talented comic artists like yourself are able to capture detailed expressions and convey complex emotions in a still frame. How do you go about tackling this? CE: Thank you! This is possibly my favourite aspect of drawing comics. First of all, I’ll ask the writers I work with as many questions as feels appropriate about what their characters are like other than what the scripts says about them. Anything could be helpful: favourite breakfast, pet peeves, weird habits, taste in music, type of friends etc. Everything else I will then make up on my own. So I’ll just imagine how each individual character would move and react to different situations. Sometimes, I’ll physically act out scenes on their behalf to figure out the expressions, gestures, movements across a sequence of panels and such. What I’m hoping to achieve by this is to create characters that – just from the way they look, move and express themselves – reveal parts of their personal stories on top of the one that’s in the script. BGCP: Out of the multiple different comics that you have worked on, which was your favourite? CE: I’ve been lucky enough to have worked with some of my favourite writers in the industry. I’ve gotten the chance to work on some of the most fun books I can imagine. I have loved every single one of them, and also did some of my proudest work in each of them. Especially Wynonna Earp and GI Joe, but overall my favourite is probably still Monstro Mechanica. This is my creator-owned series with G.I. Joe writer Paul Allor and colour artist Sjan Weijers. The series is about Leonardo da Vinci, his female apprentice and their wooden robot bodyguard. There’s something special about getting to create every single thing from the ground up. BGCP: When it comes to working on a licenced comic such as GI Joe, do you have to stick to a certain art style, or is your own unique art style embraced? CE: The art style can be pretty flexible; GI Joe had already seen quite a diverse range of styles throughout its different runs at IDW before I came on board. The most important thing is how well the art and writing style mesh together and I think Paul and I make a pretty great team in that regard. BGCP: Are there any comic book titles that you would like to work on in the future? CE: I’ve always felt Paul and I would do a killer Rocketeer run. Another dream project I can think of would be a licensed comic series based on the 2001 video game ‘Clive Barker’s Undying.’ BGCP: You have also worked as a concept artists on a couple of videogames, how did that come about? CE: I had made a few friends in comics who later started a game developing studio and were looking for artists. Both the comics and games
Review – We Only Find Them When They’re Dead
Review – We Only Find Them When They’re Dead Vol. 1. THE GODS ARE ALWAYS BEAUTIFUL… …AND THE GODS ARE ALWAYS DEAD.
Review – Immortal Hulk Time of Monsters #1
Review – Immortal Hulk Time of Monsters. Al Ewing joins with writer Alex Paknadel for this one-shot, which explores the horrific tale of the first Hulk!
Review – Teen Titans Academy #1
Review – Teen Titans Academy #1 Writer: Tim Sheridan Penciller: Rafa Sandoval Inker: Jordi Tarragona Colorist: Alejandro Sanchez INTRODUCTION: Six of the original Teen Titans team members have reunited in order to teach a new generation of teens at the Roy Harper Titans Academy! Nightwing, Starfire, Raven, Cyborg, Beast Boy, and Donna Troy are sharing their skills that they learned while growing up as Titans to show new superpowered teens how to be heroes. But with the lingering mystery of who is parading around as Red X, Nightwing and the rest of the team are uncertain how to approach this specific topic. STORY: Throughout this first issue, the six original Titans introduce themselves as teachers and show the students what their time at the Academy will be like. As they welcome in a wide variety of super powered kids, we learn about the abilities and draw to the large cast of new characters being brought up by the original heroes. Characters like tech-genius Gorilla Gregg and the EMP powered hotshot named Brick stick out as fun new ideas while others like cylindrical shapeshifter named “Tooby” will assumedly be more fleshed out as future issues release. The most shocking inclusion however, is that of previously established DC alter-ego to Shazam, the young Billy Batson. Batson is the only previously known character of these new Titans and he is barely in the issue, but his inclusion is very shocking. Issue one encapsulates the first day of school feeling by showing the new kids moving in and getting introduction lectures from Titans as friendships and cliques begin to form. The intrigue to this story mainly comes in 2 different forms. The first of which is seeing the original Teen Titans members interact and embark on a new journey of teaching new kids that were in the same spot as them years ago. The second is that of seeing all these new characters being introduced and getting to learn more about their powers and personalities. These two things are mainly tied together by the intrigue of the mysterious Red X. This character is one deeply rooted in the Titans past while at the same time very ominously a large part of these new Titans’ future. Throughout the book, we see a lot of charming moments of the original Titans together again. As a big Titans fan, seeing them come together in teaching/leadership positions is a real treat. Also, seeing the current Teen Titans team as upperclassmen being out in the field is really cool. It gives fans of these new characters something to look forward to as they go through their enrollment and honors the older teens that have served as superheroes before the school was made. Out of thew set of characters, the main focus seems to be on the hotheaded ginger named Brick. Brick seems to have energy blast related power that includes electromagnetic pulses, but comes across as one of the much more powerful kids. He seems to have quickly grabbed the attention of Donna Troy who is greatly interested in his capabilities and seems to specifically have a fascination with the Red X. As the first day winds down, we see this Red X discussion come to its’ head as someone gifts Nightwing the original Red X mask that he wore years ago during his birthday celebration, warranting a speech. And the loss of this mask later on is what leaves this issue off on a dramatic note. ART: The artwork throughout is very good overall, as the powers displayed and action within are done very dynamically. I will say that Brick does look very similarly to another student that shows up late, the only difference being their hair color. I don’t think these two are supposed to be related, so the similarity may prove to be more confusing as the series continues. Characters like Stitch and Gorilla Gregg are drawn very well in a more detailed way that their characters warrant without looking out of place in the rest of the artwork. Some of the artwork within is good enough to warrant them being made into a poster, such as Nightwing’s birthday party and the upperclassmen fighting as Teen Titans. Overall, I’m looking forward to seeing this art style benefit the series as we get more issues. IN CONCLUSION: There are a few nitpicks I do have with this issue. Some small things that don’t come anywhere near ruining the issue, but still come across as very strange. The first of these things is Starfire’s eyes. This is something I didn’t notice on the first read through, but once I looked into her eyes I could never unsee it. Her eyes are completely white and comes across as blank windows into her soul. It comes across as a mistake that was forgotten rather than a stylistic choice. There are other artistically unique depictions within that make sense as artistic differences such as Nightwing’s unusual thickness as well as Cyborg’s fully silver depiction, but this specific Starfire change is borderline unsettling. Starfire also seems to be strangely into the Red X mask, alluding that she is attracted to it and its allure when having a personal conversation with Nightwing. Lastly, it’s kind of strange for Donna to exclaim to her student that she is gonna “kick his $#&”, which makes me a bit curious as to how Sheridan is going to handle the female characters of this series. I know these are small things, but I couldn’t go without at least bringing them up. Issue #1 of Teen Titans Academy does a very good job overall at setting up storylines and intrigue for the future of the series. It is clear that the allure of Red X is the main hook of the book’s narrative currently. And as long as the new teens and their dynamics with other heroes are better developed and established before this Red X storyline comes to an end, this series should do well at
Review: Earth-One: Wonder Woman Vol 3
Review: Earth-One: Wonder Woman Vol 3 Story: Grant Morrison Att: Yanick Paquette Colours: Nathan Fairbairn Covers: Yanick Paquette, Nathan Fairbairn Released: March 2021 Introduction This concludes the critically acclaimed story arc unique writer Grant Morrison (Doom Patrol, Animal man etc..) crazily brought to Wonder Woman. Gloriously proud, fantastically feminine and here to take down the boring patriocracy with Girl (or should I say Woman power!) After the death of Hippolyta at the hand of Paula Von Gunther, Diane must lead her people against the forces of men both today and a thousand years in the future. So let’s grab our tiara and lasso of truth, put on our knee-high red boots and start the review of Wonder Woman Earth-One’s triumphant final Volume! Jumping between the future and current timelines we find the world is a Paradise, all war eradicated and all genders and sexualities proudly working for the greater good of the world. But watch out! Let’s cut to the past and the evil Maxwell Lord who wants to bring the war to the Amazons using his A.R.E.S. mark 1 suits (corny but subtle clue Mr Morrison!) These mecha-men won’t stand for this and have had enough of women protesting and complaining about harassment. Can Steve break out of prison? Can Diana unite the tribes of Amazon women? Will there be death by Snu-Snu? Why is the queen’s heart still burning? And will I stop asking questions and get on with this review..? All the answers are in this issue….and a few you didn’t even think of If you are going to end on a high why not have Diana riding a giant kangaroo while an army of cold unfeeling menbots descends on the Amazons to stop their very way of life? Story/Writing As with the previous two volumes, Grant’s vision of Earth One’s Diana is stunning with the story jumping from the pages into your imagination. You find yourself flicking back a few pages in case you missed a text bubble or two. This finally is Diana triumphant, ruling her people and bringing peace, love and equality to the world whether men want it or not! Men have not bargained on her using the ultimate threat! All women will withhold sex if men do not succumb… Death by no Snu-Snu? I can imagine Grant smiling as he finished this novel and then dedicated it to his sister Leigh. If you are going to write a bonkers battle of the sexes, this is how you do it! I doff my cap to Mr Morrison! Art/Visuals Yanick’s art style is perfect for this we move from fairy wings and female empowerment motifs to the stern, cold world of men where Maxwell Lord sits on a symbolic throne watching and directing the action. The fight sequences are great, sometimes a little confusing with the armies of Amazons and Robots hard to distinguish key characters. But if that is my only complaint it is a small one and I’ve already read it twice now from cover to cover!Some of the images such as the cover are a homage to great works of art depicting strong women and anything that can get kids excited about art is worth it! Overall thoughts This could drift have drifted into a lecture on female empowerment. Instead, Grant and Yanick skillfully handle the current drive to strengthen female characters beyond the bosoms and bodices that the industry is far too guilty of. From me the father of a strong, proud daughter and husband to an even stronger wife there needs to be more of this type of book. My only slight criticism of this is that there still seems to be a small amount of Body Dysmorphia represented here with traditional tight revealing outfits and standard gravity-defying huge chests on most females. So let’s finish this review of Wonder Woman triumphant legacy and allow you to grab your significant other! Buy a copy at your Local Comic Book Shop, brew a tea and cuddle up to the joyous conclusion to one of the freshest titles to come from the Earth-One universe. If you enjoyed our Review of Earth-One: Wonder Woman Vol 3 then comment below or leave your own rating below. Join us on Discord, Instagram, Twitter etc – linktr.ee/BGCPComicCon [yasr_multiset setid=1] [yasr_visitor_multiset setid=1] Buy tickets for BGCP Comic-Con in and around Glasgow Scotland – BUY TICKETS Check out all of our Comic, Movie, Television and Videogame Reviews HERE and our Podcasts/Interviews HERE