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The boys from Mr Murder is Dead and Archaia sent out a pretty damn awesome holiday card this year! Steege wanted me to change it to “sex worker” but like hell I am censoring a fine piece of art like this!

Let me just start off with a a little disclaimer. Just shy of two years ago, I was introduced to Accent UK by a group of great guys over at the Tales From The Parents Basement Podcast (find them on Twitter at @tpbpodcast , tell them John sent you if you want them to block you). When I say “introduced” I mean to say “had them violently forced upon me, with no mention of a safe word” by the TPB guys. They sent our little ol’podcast a copy of Whatever Happened To The World’s Fastest Man, and everyone pretty much loved the book.

What else can we get our grubby little hands on? Oh look, there is the mostly wordless and powerful story being told about the loss of a child to a couple in MAN OF GLASS. Our love of thick lines and snarling werewolves was rewarded with the wonderful WOLFMEN/FALL OF THE WOLFMEN books. We even ran to the computer to check out the web offering of STRANGE TIMES.  Then we were told the company also makes anthology comics . . . and we love anthology comics! Well, gotta get those, right?

We tore into the wonderful collection of stories found inside of ROBOTS, and pulled on our best and fanciest chaps to saddle up to WESTERNS, and even got the shotgun ready to take on ZOMBIES. Weed, Bo and I all had our favorites from each book, and they did tend to overlap, but were not exclusively the same stories. It is true, in anthology comics, there is a little bit of something for everyone, and in Accent UK anthologies, there is a whole lot of something for everybody. So yeah, we have a lot of love for the products Accent UK puts out as you can tell a lot of work and love goes into them making these very books.

I heard their newest anthology was going to be called “Predators” and had a sabre-tooth tiger on the front. Cool image, but really, how many stories of crazy animals can I endure? I was a little bummed and just hoped Zombies 2 would be coming out soon. Then a funny thing happened. A few preview images were posted for the book, and some panels snuck out. Well, this instantly got my attention because it look like there was war comics. Okay, why didn’t I trust these guys to deliver?

The amount angles of storytelling in the past books was vast, why shouldn’t this Predators book be the same? I felt a little silly looking past this for the next one at this point, and got more excited about it. Now I have PREDATORS sitting right in front of me. Pardon my language, and I hope my grandmother doesn’t end up reading this, but holy shit is this book great!

It’s a simple mistake to hear the word “predators” and simply think of lions, tigers, bears (no, no “oh my” joke) and even sharks. But what about the predators in everyday society. The maniacs, the sociopaths, and even the woman or gent at the bar looking to score? People are some of the most fierce and cunning predators on the planet. Soldiers, boxers, and pilots all take center stage in their stories. Okay, and yes, some dinosaurs, tigers and other viscous animals show up, but in a way you may not expect, the book is full of surprises!

So what are you going to find exactly? One of my favorite stories was ” THE DRILL” by Morgan Pielli and Jon-Mikel Gates about a playground full of children who frantically set up the playground and school with burning moats and camouflage to defend against giant, elongated alien monsters! Gorgeous art, and a powerful and heartbreaking story told in only a few pages. This is what a good story in an anthology can do: instantly hook you, squash it all into a few memorable pages, and force you to flip back to it every once in awhile to soak in a small, clever detail you may have missed. Great stuff.

PREDATORS is full of different art styles and storytelling methods, so if the preview below doesn’t entice you, I would be willing to bet you can find several other varieties in the book that do hook you into enjoying the book and checking out more.

We talk about more of the issue on EPISODE 94 at about the 47:50 mark. Bo and Weed really loved the anthology as well, talking about the wonderful job done by nearly every creator in the book, where I gush about the wonderful pinups and such in the back as I didn’t get my copy yet to check out.

Bottom Line: If you like anthology comics, this is a no brainer to me. Pick up PREDATORS (and hell, check out ROBOTS as well). If you have never tried out an anthology comic or it has been awhile, this is a great place to jump back into the world of the short stories collected in a graphically compelling package of fantastical awesomeness. The last sentence made no sense, but you should still give the book a look.

Some people see Jesus in their toast . . . while others the devil in their cement patio. Some even see Bob Barker on the leathery skin folds of their grandmother. But Bo, he finds dicks . . . everywhere. This one was found in a port-o-johnny, where he traced exactly what he saw. I wish there would have been a before and after pic, but sadly, when dick is seen, Bo must connect the dots and draw it out.

This is Not Safe For Work! Hence the small size of the wang above (I swear, it was cold when I posted this!). Click it and make it grow if you truly want to see it!

*snicker*

Wang!

From The Website:

Battlepug: The Web Comic was born out of desperate scramble to appease iFanboy. They contacted Mike to create a signature t-shirt for a new line of merch. However, Mike had been working exclusively with DC Comics for 4 years and had no original properties that he could reveal to the world yet. He drew the image you see above and had Allen color it. And lo, a BATTLEPUG was born!

Mike Norton has impressed the crap out of me on some of his previous projects like Runaways and Queen & County (which as a side note, I would recommend Runaways to anyone, and Q&C to fans of espionage), so when I heard he was doing a web comic, I was on board. Thing is, I had heard about Battle Pug before I had heard Mike was doing a web comic . . . and was not thrilled with the thought of a cheesy concept like that.

I am ready to eat my words, because the comic is fantastic! In the comic you will find a spunky, sexy and adorable teller of tales, who is reciting the story of Battlepug to a couple pups in her bed chamber (yes, and it is sexy for her, cute because of her and the pups). And yes, that is a wonderfully well endowed (muscles you perverts) barbarian riding the might bug-eyed stead!

Of course the art is going to be fantastic as Mike also snagged colorist Allen Passalaque (JSA, Spider-Man), and they do a great job at creating a lush, fantasy dripping, monster stomping world for the heroes to romp about in. Check it out!

Click here to check it out!

Click the above to check out a wonderful piece of work from Jim Steranko, then click here to be taken to a pretty cool writeup both about Steranko and this particular piece of work.

Visit Charles’ site here

One of the best parts of running a blog and podcast about comic books and illustrated work is most of the time I would spend cruising the internet, checking out websites and random things is actually time well spent and constructive. So when we were searching around for web comics for our recent web comic show, I hit a lot of sites . . . some great, some bad and just about everything in between was found during several long web crawls.

Charles Cutting’s website and webcomics while short, were some of them that stuck with me. First up we have The Dream Quest of Randolph Carter , which is the first chunk of a planned upcoming graphic novel. Based upon “The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath” from HP Lovecraft, it is far from what I expect visually when I think of anything from Lovecraft. I was expecting dark, heavily inked pages that so many people citing his stories as a source often do. But this was vibrant, explosively bright and lush, swapping the grey/green/red/black palette I imagined in my head for lemon yellow, sky blue, meadow green and fire-raging orange!

It really makes for gorgeous reading experience, and I really can’t wait to see more!

And for his other project, I am just going to let him explain what it is all about and why you should check it out:

The Doings Of Vincent John Mckeown

From The Website:

Crossroads Care’s website features the ongoing fantastical graphic biography of the Oxford poet Vincent John McKeown who died in 2009. It is written by Christian David and illustrated by myself, and will deal with his early life, his poetry and how he came to terms with multiple sclerosis. The Vincent John McKeown Memorial Fund has been created by Crossroads Care to enable carers and their disabled relatives or friends to enjoy the arts. We hope that our graphic novel will help generate interest in the fund as well as being a fitting tribute to Vincent’s life and work. The web address is www.vincentfund.org.uk/comic

Just a little bit of complete awesome brought to us from Northern Banshee on Deviant Art! Love the look of this piece, so calm and relaxing, elegant and bright, but retains the basic love/loathing relationship oh so well . . .

It also makes me think of a very special lady who called me Mistah J