Comic Artists Direct

I hope your summer is as wonderfully busy as mine - between our local Summer Celebration (11 days of beer, corn dogs and big name concerts), coloring and assembling product ideas for Aaron Warner's Cartoon Studios (from Adventures of Aaron fame), "producing" a monthly, full color, local magazine (producing means handling everything) and putting together a plan for a top secret, cool comic book project (you will all be the first to know when it gells), I have seriously neglected Comic Artists Direct. But NO MORE!

VISIT ANTHONY'S SITE! As you read this, I am adding three new commissioned drawings to the Commissions section, four new prints to the Prints pages and - drum roll, please - a KASO COLLECTORS EDITION CD-ROM, with The Indestructible Man e-comic as a full length graphic novel, 48 pages in full color, plus two free preview comics from Innvervision (I just hate it when others take advantage of new techno-ideas before I get around to it).

Xena: Warrior Princess is no more! Going down in true Conan the Barbarian fashion, everyone's favorite leather-clad tough girl died battling 20,000 samurai, pierced with arrows, beheaded and strung up on display. Well, you can only die once. I've been reading George Perez's Wonder Woman relaunch from 1986 to my youngest daughter, Maleah, borrowing from oldest daughter Lisa, now 21, who owns the whole new series. Sorry, reader, but I really prefer storytellers that at least attempt to learn some history before using pantheons of gods and famous people from the past. Sure, Xena was fun, but Wonder Woman's "world" is, and continues to be, more interesting in its respect for the past. DC recently reprinted the Wonder Woman #1 - find it! Also, check out Wonder Woman 170 (July 2001) for a well crafted story by Phil Jimanez - no gratuitous violence, just pure story, with so many layers to the personalities it's worth several reads. Oh, this paragraph was about Xena. Okay, the show was fun, right? But lots of things are fun. I think too often we settle for JUST fun, without finding the more rewarding alternative. Sure, the premise for Xena was excellent, a warrior woman from antiquity, but if you're anything like me, you didn't mind getting up during the boring parts to pop a beer. Loved the costumes. I am reminded of how friends and I used to watch Charlies Angels - sound off, stereo blaring.

On the other hand, I have big time hopes for the new UPN series Enterprise. Executive Producer Rick Berman said the fourth spinoff of Star Trek is set in the 22nd century, only 150 years from today. "we wanted to go back to a time when space exploration was truly new. The terrific thing about this for longtime fans is that they'll get to see the development of all the technological gadgetry...in their infant, trial and error stages." Awesome, some adventure without the Star Fleet trappings. The new captain is Scott Bakula (Quantum Leap, Earth: Final Conflict). Berman describes him as a laid back, down to earth adventurer. Charles "Trip" Tucker III (Connor Trinneer) is chief engineer, "a bit of a cowboy" with "a certain wit and charm that is disarming even to our Vulcan first officer, T'Pol" (Jolene Blalock). Lt. Cmdr. Malcolm Reed (Dominic Keating) is a British tactical security munitions officer, who sounds like an interesting combination of proper and explosive. Japanese genius linguist Hoshi Sato (Linda Park) will make up for the fact that universal translators don't work very well yet "I can envision the tension while she tries to figure out whether an alien vessel is inviting Enterprise to war or tea. Young helmsman, Ensign Travis Mayweather (Anthony Montgomery) is what Berman calls a "space boomer," whose parents worked on transport vessels, someone with more time in space than any of them. The ship's doctor, Phlox (John Billingsley) comes on board in the pilot.

According to UPN national, Enterprise is scheduled for Wednesdays at 8:00, but UPN is one of those maverick, up and coming stations, so check your local listings, or even call your local station, for dates and times.

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