Friday, April 28, 2006

Pittsburgh Comicon—Jimmy Palmiotti & Amanda Conner

As you may have been able to tell from our most recent two posts, FanBoyWonder and Kemosabe enjoyed ourselves quite a bit at the Pittsburgh Comicon last weekend.

Although we are still waiting for our pictures of the event to come in, we’ll wrap up our coverage of Pittscon with an accounting of the panel given by “the first couple of comics” Jimmy Palmiotti and Amanda Conner.

It was a pretty relaxed session overall. JP did most of the talking about his various projects, including the one he’s working on with Amanda—but they were both very nice to the fans.

So nice in fact that FBW left the session feeling bad that we really haven’t liked the majority of JP’s work, including his work on Hawkman and our most recent panning of his Crisis Aftermath: The Battle of Bludhaven mini-series.

We weren’t all that familiar with AC’s work but our introduction with her rendition of Power Girl in JSA Classified issues 1-4 left a very favorable first impression to be sure—plus Kemosabe and FBW agreed that AC was pretty easy on the eyes (we love you Mrs. FBW…please don’t hurt us).

Among upcoming projects they are working on include a yet-to-be announced limited series which will spin out of DC Comics’ 52 weekly series. According to JP, the yet-to-be revealed character will be introduced mid-way through 52, sometime between issues/weeks 30-40.

We did our best to squeeze a few hints and got JP to reveal that this character isn’t exactly new but a dramatic relaunch of a previously existing character.

“I can say that she existed in the Teen Titans at one point, but it’s not exactly her,” said JP.

Upon further cross-examination, we got JP to reveal that the female character was from the Wolfman/Perez era of the Titans. Look for Power Girl to guest-star in the first issue.

JP is also working on The Secret Six, the sequel to last summer’s smash mini-series Villains United with writer Gail Simone. JP, who is inking the book, praises artists Brad Walker for his pencils on the book.

JP hasn’t gotten any scripts for the book but based on the artwork he’s received, the Six are doing a lot of globetrotting and Simone is working up to something big.

Another project JP talked about is the Freedom Fighters, which he is co-writing with frequent collaborator Justin Gray. JP praised the art by Daniel Acuña as “stunning.”

Kemosabe asked how he planned to develop this team since readers last saw the Fighters in Infinite Crisis, they were dead, dying or bleeding—including the lovely Phantom Lady who was impaled through the chest.

Suffice to say, he said, the team as been “completely re-worked.”

Among the characters JP spotlighted included The Human Bomb—everything about him is completely explosive and everyone but Doll Man is afraid of him, while the new Phantom Lady is all attitude.

Uncle Sam is embodied as the spirit of America. If you believe in him, JP explained, he has the power to do it—the ultimate power of positive thinking.

JP explained that he and Grey are trying to accentuate the positive by showing what works in America. He didn’t provide this example but we likened it to something like they way Marvel Comics’ Captain America used to be.

JP says they have eight issues to make it or break it.

BTW: Mile High Comics’ Newsarama has a preview of Freedom Fighters here….http://www.newsarama.com/forums/showthread.php?t=68775

1 Comments:

Blogger Matthew Guerrero said...

Amanda Conner is one of my favorite artists in comics right now: have you seen The Pro? Sick and hilarious, she has a loose animated style that really works for fun action books.
And (we're all pigs for mentioning this) she is just adorable.

10:26 AM, April 29, 2006  

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