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SETH’S PICK :: COMPLETE CUL DE SAC BOXED SET: I’m happy to remind you all that this week finally sees the release of the Complete Cul de Sac! Some of you may not know the work of artist Richard Thompson, but comic strip fans around the country know him to be a national treasure. But it’s not just fans who appreciate Thompson, it’s writers and artists who are rightly blown away by the genius-level writing and art that he infused into not only the Cul de Sac strip, but also his Richard’s Poor Almanac series. The level of humor, heart and skill readily available in Thompson’s work is truly astounding, and I can’t think of many books I’d rather have in my home library than this one. 
Some of you may know that for the past several years we’ve celebrated Thompson’s work at our HeroesCon Drink and Draw event. We’re thrilled to once again be working with Team Cul de Sac at this year’s event, which will take place on the Friday night of HeroesCon. I’ll be letting you know more specifics about it soon, but if you haven’t been to our Drink and Draw before, it’s a fun event where artists from hobbyists to professionals hang out at a nice bar and create art. We then auction off that art that very night, with all the money we raise going to Team Cul de Sac and the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research. It’s the best way to celebrate the greatness of the comics community and help us raise money for a worthy cause. Kick off the celebration by picking up The Complete Cul de Sac this week!
Here’s your guide to the FREE COMICS we’ll have on hand this Saturday, May 3rd at our FCBD event! Doors open at 10AM; get here early to make sure you get the books you want! *Please be respectful of others when making your selections, supplies are limited and we want to make sure as many people as possible get the comics they want. Taking multiple copies of one title is not nice! Neither is pushing while in line. Be respectful of the people around you and we will all have a great time!
Our incredible list of comic creators will be signing and sketching from 1 – 5 (or longer at the creators’ discretion). Remember that free sketches are done at the discretion of artists, and are not guaranteed.
In addition to all the Free Comics and great artists, we’ll also be debuting a brand new, never before touched sale stock on Saturday! More specifically, this is a 27 box dollar stock that happens to be in alpha-numeric order. That’s right, it’s all in alpha-numeric order! Buy single books for $1 or fill a long box for $250. We haven’t debuted anything like this in quite some time, so bring your back issue want lists and enjoy the ease of shopping through an organized stock.
PARKING: This is always a big question for FCBD attendees. We want you to know there are plenty of parking options for Saturday. You can park anywhere in the lots directly beside or behind Heroes without the threat of being towed. This includes in front of any of the businesses from Dollar General down to the former Florist, including the small lot on the other side of the Florist. Our neighbors are kind to let us use their spaces for their event, so please patronize them on Saturday. We would love for them to see a little extra business from our FCBD crowd. This is our largest store event of the year, and these lots may fill quickly. The good news is that Saturday’s weather is supposed to be perfect for the event. If and when these lots fill up, remember that you can park on any of the surrounding streets behind Heroes. 8th Street and beyond has plenty of on-street parking, and it’ll be a beautiful day to walk a block or two to Heroes.
There are a few places you cannot park. Those are the four spaces directly in front of the Laundry in the lot next to Heroes, and in any of the spaces across Pecan at Pecan Point. This includes all of the parking spaces in the shopping center including businesses like Anntony’s Caribbean, Bang Bang Burgers, and around to Sunflour Bakery. You will be towed at your own expense if you park in any of those spaces, so heed that warning now, and remember it on Saturday.
We expect hundreds of people to pass through Heroes on Saturday, but there are many more parking options for you this year. As with your actions in the store, we would appreciate you being respectful of our neighbors, parking lot, and neighborhood. This is a large and busy event, but it’s one designed to be enjoyed, and we can all work together to make sure that happens for everyone.
RICO’S PICK :: BATMAN ’66 #10: In comics there are hidden gems. Short stories that generations of artists seek out for inspiration. Inside Batman ’66 #10 is one of these stories. Together, David Williams and Kelsey Shannon have crafted some of the most beautiful art you’ll ever see. Here’s a small tease, pick up the issue to see it in all it’s glory.
Set aside 8.00 and pick up the $ 1.00 reprints of the first issues of these white hot series from Image Comics:
I arrived at Southern Bastards #1 with plenty of high hopes. Jason Aaron has long been one of my favorite writers, with his creator-owned Scalped being one of our great modern crime epics, and his mainstream Marvel work on Wolverine and Wolverine and the X-men being of reliable entertainment and quality. Jason Latour is an artist/neighbor whose work I’ve had a chance to see develop and flourish over the past 8 years. He’s proven himself as an accomplished writer on the creator owned Loose Ends and Marvel’s Winter Soldier, and as an artist on everything from B.P.R.D. to Captain America. Needless to say, I had a lot of expectations riding on this book. 
Upon my first reading of Southern Bastards, I quickly realized it was hitting close to home. I’ve lived in Charlotte my entire life. There aren’t many of us who can say that anymore. North Carolina isn’t the South of Southern Bastards’ Craw County, Alabama, but my Dad hails from Jackson, Mississippi, so I’ve got some deep south in my blood. Southern Bastards pulled up some of my memories of Mississippi and made me angry and wistful at the same time. The Mississippi of my memory is quiet and spacious, and seemingly hot all the time. There’s all kinds of beauty surrounding you, but it’s not always easy to see it, because there’s plenty there to offend and infuriate. It’s an odd juxtaposition, the vast expanse of natural beauty and the racism and violence that occurs within it. It’s all part of what modern southern songwriter Patterson Hood refers to as “The Duality of the Southern Thing,” and it’s always there. Southern Bastards does a better job of encapsulating this duality that just about any comic I’ve ever read. 
Aaron and Latour wisely don’t acknowledge this equal parts blessing and curse with a slap-you-in-the-face, didactic approach. Instead, they use open space and quiet moments to intended effect. These are storytellers seasoned in Hank Williams, Willie Nelson, William Faulkner, and Flannery O’Conner. They know a little can go a long way. They also know that the South is full of spiritual things that can be as unsettling as they are revelatory. Southern Bastards’ protagonist Earl Tubb sees this all too well in the first issue when he sees a giant tree growing right out of his father’s grave. Earl surmises that it sprouted from the legendary stick that his daddy used to clean up Craw County. It’s quite a sight, but for all the mystery it represents, it’s not necessarily something Earl wants to see. Earl comes back to Craw County for the first time in forty years, and you see in his face that home can be a place full of memories and still somewhere you don’t want to go. It’s like North Carolina writer Thomas Wolfe said: “You can’t go home again.” 
When we first meet Earl, he’s been in the big city (Birmingham) for years now, and he quickly realizes why he left his hometown. For all the good memories, there are plenty of things difficult and terrible about Craw County. While the series will surely tell us more about all of these things, it strikes me that it’s not an accident that Aaron and Latour chose Alabama as the locale for their story. Aside from the obvious fact that Aaron hails from the state, it’s worth remembering that Alabama is notable for several things other than football. On the cultural front, Muscle Shoals’ Fame Studios was a place where black and white musicians came together to make some of the most enduring American records, even in the midst of the unrest around them. And then you have Birmingham itself, where the violence of the Civil Rights struggles came to a head in 1963. Southern Bastards seems to be very conscious of so much that makes the South a wonderful and troubling place.
There’s a phrase applied to music that says “always serve the song.” It refers to the idea of pushing your ego out of the way in a performance and letting the song’s inherent soul be revealed to the audience. Though a different medium entirely, Aaron and Latour clearly serve the song in Southern Bastards, and it’s one that will get stuck in your head if you let it. This is a comic of deft storytelling and uncommon soul. I, for one, can’t wait to see how it all plays out.
MATT’S PICK :: CLEOPATRA IN SPACE: Hey kids (and adults with distinguished tastes) there is a new book coming out this week that I want to tell you about! Its called Cleopatra In Space Volume One. It contains some of the most dynamic and appealing artwork you will find in any book this week (two aesthetics that I look for in a comic book or graphic fiction). The narrative part of this book is pretty awesome as well! Ancient Egypt meets outerspace, genius!
Another Friday another HUGE HeroesCon guest list update! We hope you can join us for 3 days of everything we love about comic books along with the people who make them at the Charlotte Convention Center June 20-22, 2014. Tickets for Heroes Convention 2014 are on sale now!
CREATORS! Artists Alley tables are still available but they are going fast! Reserve your space today!
JEREMY BASTIAN – Artist: Cursed Pirate Girl
JOHN FLOYD – Inker: Batman: Mortality, Django Unchained, Treatment: Seoul
GABRIEL HARDMAN – Artist: Hulk, Star Wars: Legacy, Kinski
TED NAIFEH-Artist/Writer: Courtney Crumrin, Polly and the Pirates, Ame-Comi Duela Dent
DAVID PETERSEN – Artist: Mouse Guard, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
KHARY RANDOLPH – Artist: Techjacket, Deadpool, Justice League Beyond
CRAIG ROUSSEAU – Artist: Avengers, Perhapanauts, Batman Beyond, Impulse 
RON SALAS – Artist: Existence 2.0/3.0, Dracula: Company of Monsters
TOM SCIOLI – Artist/Writer: Transformers vs. G.I.Joe, Godland, American Barbarian
CAT STAGGS – Artist: Smallville, Vampire Diaries, Star Trek, Star Wars
ALSO ADDED TODAY: CORINNA BECHKO, TODD DEZAGO, NICK FILARDI, KEVEN GARDNER, MEG GOLDING, VAN JENSEN, KEVIN MELLON, SAM SPINA, IRENE STRYCHALSKI, DOUG WAGNER
Heroes Convention takes place in Charlotte, North Carolina, June 20-22 2014. Get your 3 day passes today! The full guest list (so far) is here.
RICO’S PICKS :: THE ELTINGVILLE CLUB #1: Evan Dorkin has been exposing and skewering the dark recesses of fandom since the days before the internet existed. I love to hate these guys and this book comes at a time when tolerance for this kind of entitled fan is at an all time low. If you read this and think it’s about you, it’s time to make a change!
ELEKTRA #1: When a creative thinker who has been turning in brilliant cover after brilliant cover for years at Marvel is let loose on the inside of one of their comics you shouldn’t take it for granted. Mike Del Mundo has been producing some conceptual cover masterpieces for Marvel and I can’t wait to see what he does on this book!
ANDY’S PICK :: Walt Disney’s Donald Duck: “Trail Of The Unicorn”: I will not rest until everyone is reading these reasonably priced and beautifully designed and edited volumes of Carl Barks’ Disney Duck masterpieces. This is the 6th volume to be published by Fantagraphics and every one of them are great. You can purchases ANY single one of them and read them in any order. Fantagraphics is not even bothering to number the series, so readers can just jump in anywhere they want. Gasp! That goes against everything our passion/hobby usually requires. But these are arguably some of the greatest comics ever published. And they are as vital and funny today as they were when they were first published over 65 years ago. Each volume includes a handful of the Donald duck full length adventures and the, marvelous 10 pages as well as a number of single page gag cartoons. And each volume contains short essays about each story from some of the best critics and comic writers around. Please buy this volume–Trail of the Unicorn or any other volume Justin keeps on the shelf. You can’t lose!
