Mark Brassington

C was actually going to be a completely different subject altogether however I have decided to combine that subject with the letter E so you will have to wait a couple of days to find out what I had planned.

The first two days have been comic related posted in the A to Z Challenge and I have received so very positive comments and one comment from Kathy Matthews of oregongiftsofcomfortandjoy.blogspot.com regarding ongoing storylines in comics, made me think that perhaps everyone doesn’t have the same knowledge of comics that I do. Since Blade and Toby Maguire’s Spiderman movie the public have seen more and more comicbooks turned into live action movies and this year will be no different although after 17 years of comicbook reading and collecting I am still no expert but I thought I would try to get some information as comics are more than just for kids or geeks (although I am definitely a geek and probably act like a kid, I am a male).

• Comics are for all ages and I would even say that they are mainly aimed at adults.
• Comics are more than just superheroes, checkout many fabulous titles such as Y-The Last Man, Fables, DMZ, Saga, Preacher, Witchblade, The Darkness and many more.
• Marvel and DC Comics are the two largest American publishers of comics but there any many more such Image Comics which is made up of different studios such as personal favourite Top Cow, Dark Horse the home Hellboy and publishes the continuing story of Buffy and now Angel, IDW which publishes many licensed comics such as Transformers, True Blood, Doctor Who and Star Trek.
• Many comics that have the same characters have the ongoing stories and history, stories can be referenced many years in the past and they even spend many years building up to big events.
• Although comics have been published and realised in paper form for many years most Marvel and DC Comics are also published in digital form as well and even on the same day of release as the printed original, check out  www.comixology.com if you are interested in downloading digital comics.
• Many celebrities have written comics such as Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance called Umbrella Academy, Rosario Dawson has written O.C.T.: Occult Crimes Taskforce which also her likeness was in and meant to be turned into a film although I have now heard this may be heading to the small screen instead. There are many others including Jonathon Ross.
• Marvel, DC Comics and Top Cow and a few others all have thing called a “shared universe” this is where Spiderman can show up in the X-Men or Superman can have a cameo in a Batman comic. It’s the equivalent of CSI where they tend to do team-ups with Miami and New York.
• The best news and reviews sites for comics are Newsarama.com and ifanboy.com 
• Watchmen is probably the biggest graphic novel of all time.
• No character in a comicbook is every truly dead.