TP Comics

  I Visited... THE HALL OF JUSTICE! "One of the last great American train stations built, Union Terminal is a Cincinnati icon and one of the most widely regarded examples of the art deco style.  Since its opening in 1933, Union Terminal has had a long and storied history, from welcoming soldiers home from World War II to becoming the home of three museums. an Omnimax Theater and the Cincinnati History Library and Archives."  --Cincinnati Museum Center website. A few more facts:  Union Terminal still serves as a train station, servicing the Amtrak "Cardinal" line.  The station is open in the middle of the night for passengers departing and arriving on The Cardinal (New York to Chicago). Union Terminal was featured on a postage stamp.  A set of four Railroad Stations "Forever" Stamps were released in 2023, with a First Day of Issue ceremony held at Union Terminal on March 9 (photo above). Union Terminal was the inspiration for the "Hall of Justice,...

I Met... Trina Robbins For a number of years, Cartoon Crossroads Columbus (CXC) has been on my radar.  CXC is not a gathering of comic book nerds like a typical comic con.  It's like a gathering of the nerdiest of nerds within nerd-dom.   To me, at least, it has a very academic feel.  For example, one of the panels this year explored "how graduate students in comics studies experience and work toward representation within their research and the comics studies community." When I saw that Trina Robbins was one of the special guests scheduled for this year's festival (the first in-person festival since 2019), I carved some time out of my schedule to attend.   Ms. Robbins has an impressive comics resume.   She has been writing books, comics, and graphic novels for over fifty years. In 1969, she designed the costume for Vampirella for Frank Frazetta Her strip "Sandy Comes Out" in Wimmen's Comix #1 featured the first "out" lesbian.   ...

I Met... Phil Jimenez In the early days of Wonder Woman’s comic book, Mars was one of her archenemies. The cartoony, 1940s version of Mars was a clean-shaven, muscular god dressed in Roman armor. A Nazi sympathizer, his base of operations was the Iron Palace on the planet Mars... get it?  His minions were the Earl of Greed, the Count of Conquest, and the Duke of Deception.  Mars was featured in Wonder Woman #2, dated Fall 1942. The splash page reads, “Today the Spirit of War rules supreme over the entire earth. Whence does it come? Why do human beings every generation or so, since the beginning of history, feel an uncontrollable urge to fight and kill one another?" Decades later, when George Pérez and company relaunched the Wonder Woman comic book for a 1980s audience, Mars, now known by his Greek name Ares, played prominently in the first story arc. Dressed in dark blue armor, this version of Mars was more frightening, due in part to Pérez’s more naturalistic style of drawin...

I Met... Don Kramer and Tom Nguyen  Today I attended the Fanboy Expo in Columbus, Ohio.  It was supposed to happen last year... but COVID.  It's been a number of years since I've been to a "con."  There were just a handful of comic book professionals there, including Don Kramer and Tom Nguyen.  Both were at their booths working on commission sketches.  You could walk right up to them and talk with them.  Neither charged for autographs (the television and movie celebrities at the event charge a hefty fee).  I did a little research before I went and found two comic books in my collection that they worked on, which they autographed for me.   Don Kramer penciled a story in Wonder Woman #600, which was written by J. Michael Straczynski and inked by Michael Babinski (their names rhyme, if you didn't notice).  Big things tend to happen in issues that are multiples of 100, and the big thing that happened in this issue is that Wonder Woman ...