Keep dangling that carrot LKH...

[shadwing.livejournal.com]

Straight from Newsarama;

LAURELL K. HAMILTON'S ANITA BLAKE - VAMPIRE HUNTER: THE FIRST DEATH #1 (of 2)
Written by LAURELL K. HAMILTON & JONATHON GREEN
Penciled by Wellinton Alves
Cover by BRETT BOOTH
Her fans have been asking for it and now Laurell K. Hamilton is going to deliver. Laurell K. Hamilton, Dabel Brothers Productions, and Marvel are coming together to give readers a look into Anita Blake's past. Written by Laurell K. Hamilton herself, along with Jonathon Green, this July will see the release of part one of a two issue limited series that takes place almost a year before the events currently being chronicled in Guilty Pleasures. You will get to see the first time Anita and Jean-Claude meet, Anita's first time inside Guilty Pleasures, her first serial killer case, and a very early encounter with Edward. Prepare to be thrilled by this original story produced especially for comics.
40 PGS./Parental Advisory …$3.99

And now the cover...one of the better ones Booth has done IMO and WOW Anita isn't china white for once!

http://www.newsarama.com/marvelnew/july07/images/Anita_1stDeath.jpg

Now for the commentary-

This sounds good, sounds plotty, sounds like old Anita...however looking at whose writing this thing makes me quake in fear x_x. Also 80 pages of comic total (2 issues 40 pages each)? That is farking expensive they must have allot of faith that the tru fanits will buy it.

Comments

[tooimpurenangel.livejournal.com]

Anita looks as if she's been sucking on lemons the last three days. Couldn't she have been given a more convincing scowl?

[delphinapterus.livejournal.com]

That doesn't look bad a lot. Compared to the earlier stuff they look almost normal. This is picky but the curtain in the background looks like it has puppy prints on it - what happened to Jean-Claude being obsessed with a B&W colour scheme - not that puppy-paws aren't just the cutest thing evah for a 300+ vampire to use for accents. *eye roll*

[dwg.livejournal.com]

*dies laughing*

Oh man, why does it look like JC and Anita have matching his and hers hairdos? Srsly, JC's fondling her hair and thinking how he's going to send her some product for her birthday right after he gets an appointment for the salon so he can get new layers.

But oh, Anita, you glare girl. You glare good. BECAUSE FRINGE JACKETS NEVER GO OUT OF STYLE...at least, not if you're a cowboy or biker and our heroine is totally both. *points and laughs at art some more*

Is It Just Me....

[bluesimplicity.livejournal.com]

Or does Anita look like she's carrying more, um, "package" than JC?

And WTF with the thighs?? Seriously.

*goes off to have a fit of giggles*

[rhiannon24.livejournal.com]

At least LKH is staying true to herself and totally messing up her own creations lmao.

[briary-flower.livejournal.com]

Written by Laurell K. Hamilton herself, along with Jonathon Green


...meaning written by Jonathon Green?

[pith]

I guess we should be grateful that Anita at least has a skin tone.

But... yikes. That jacket. Those curtains. It looks like a bad high school play.

[allova.livejournal.com]

Her fans have been asking for it and now Laurell K. Hamilton is going to deliver.

I'd be happier if the "it" in that sentence stood for "more plot", "less sex", "ritual destruction of everything after Obsidian Butterfly", "Edward's mass murder of Podward and all of Anita's yes-men" or even "an apology for treating fans like trash".

[artemis-rex.livejournal.com]

Anita took my motorcycle jacket.

I want it back.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

...Kill her.

First distract her with words that are more than two syllables long a long-haired, large penised naked guy, then garotte her as she goes in for the blow-job.

Voila, coat returned.

[missamii.livejournal.com]

Yesh! The art still looks horrible.

[melaniedavidson.livejournal.com]

Napoleon!Anita!

Why is Jeane-Claude grabbing Anita's hair? (Lol, they have exactly the same hair.)

[brandiweed.livejournal.com]

Actually, it is possible to asphyxiate someone during fellatio. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_the_Stripper)

[alondra-del-sol.livejournal.com]

Somebody needs to send Marvel Comics a letter and tell them they are making a big mistake.

[summersdream.livejournal.com]

Dear Aristes,
I'm happy to see you have discovered skin tone. This is good progress. Now. Please take an anatomy course. Maybe 20. I would like to be able to tell the difference between Anita and an antropomorphic pug, thnx.

Just a couple questions...
Anita's donated her nose to Michael Jackson, yes? And this is the temporary replacement?

Is it just me, or are JC's hands in fact larger than his face? And why is one of them tangled in Anita's snakes hair? Speaking of JC, is he actually some ancestor of Arnold Schwarzenegger? Or did he just steal the Governator's thighs?

Have Rafael and co been chewing on the curtains again?

When did Anita get breast implants? Why does she have killer thighs of zombie doom? What happeend to her face? And why is she dressed like she's living in 1986 (and not even in a cool retro fashionista way)?

[jadelioness.livejournal.com]

The description actually sounds decent. It sparked my interest, but then I remebered the last several things she wrote. I think it is an interesting idea, and I would like to hear about pre-Guilty Pleasures Anita, but unfortunately I know I won't be getting pre-Guilty Pleasures Anita. It saddens me that not only does she have to ruin the series, she has to go back and ruin what was actually good.

And seriously, what is up with their hair? It is exactly the same. It looks like J-C is trying to fondle his sister.

[sevariusjr.livejournal.com]

Glad I'm not the only one who noticed that. This art is absolutely horrid.

[arclights.livejournal.com]

I remember running into the ABVH series at my local comic shop, and bursting out into gales of now-I've-seen-everything laughter, much to the confusion of the new guy behind the counter -- especially when I bought what he had available, after explaining the car wreck theory.

But then I thought about it, and figured comics would probably be a much more suitable format for her "stories", especially the older ones before Anita was a mindless pornbot -- they had decent stories with interesting characters back then, but in the old days Anita Laurell had all the writing talents of a fourth grader. The shitty writing is easily sidestepped with the format, however; she's descriptive enough, and since it's all first-person anyway, that just makes it easier to fill in those little speech balloons. After Obsidian Butterfly, though, they're going to have to invent some plot or start selling them in little black plastic bags in the porn section, haha.

I kind of thought she'd go less hybrid and more straight manga style, though -- my ex-roommate and I were pretty convinced she got her start writing fanfic of some kind (the anime/manga thing seemed fairly obvious to me; half her weres sound like something yanked from a yaoi boy-harem -- floor length hair and violet eyes, oookaaaay), and I can totally imagine her getting all pumped up on fanfiction.net's 14-year old reviewers flooding her awful fics with wai wai continue!!!11one.

I'll probably end up buying this just to see how LKH deals with oldschool prim-and-proper Anita as opposed to all-powerful-skank-queen-of-preternatural-shit-lolz Anita, of if she's completely forgotten how. Part of what I originally liked about the series (and another one of those things she crushed with the all-consuming plot murdering device ardeur was Anita's eventual erosion of her sense of morality, and I'm kind of wondering if Laurell remembers how to writer her as a non-skank-queen.

OR MAYBE I'M JUST STILL GIVING THE WOMAN TOO MUCH CREDIT, COMPLETELY.

[karmyn75.livejournal.com]

That curl of hair around the nose still makes me laugh. That would irritate me to no end. I can't stand having my hair in my face like that.
If the papercutz artists ever get like this, I will have to hurt somebody.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

I had the theory that when they start getting into the sex parts, Dabel Brothers just need to have the one panel drawn and then get the colourist to do different shades of hair for different guys.

So in a way, AB:VH will become quite economical for them to produce.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

See, now there's an AB:VH book that I would read possibly to even enjoy.

But if Anita can deep throat Micah, she can deep-throat anyone. And that scares me.

[deire.livejournal.com]

Why can't he learn to draw human legs?

[cicipsychobunny.livejournal.com]

Uuuuuuuuuuuuugly.

[frabjously.livejournal.com]

Srsly, JC's fondling her hair and thinking how he's going to send her some product for her birthday right after he gets an appointment for the salon so he can get new layers.

That is EXACTLY what he is doing.

[ravenclaw-devi.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, Anita actually has some colour to her! (Though she still has that "I frown because I got a lock perma-stuck to my face" look.)

[ravenclaw-devi.livejournal.com]

It's her "Help! I got a JC stuck in my hair and it'll be a bitch to get the tangles out" look.

[brandiweed.livejournal.com]

Wait, she's deep-throated Mr. "Big around as a beer can?"

Man, it must look like that Jane Badle dinner scene in V.

[nightangel486.livejournal.com]

Okay, I will give Booth some points on this one. Anita isn't as white as the paper! JC's skin is a different color than his shirt! That said, when I looked at their experessions I laughed. Anita looks like some kind of caveman...and to me JC seems to be smirking over her choice of attire. I mean, fringed leather jacket? For reals?? The theme song for this picture is Pat Benatar's "Love is a Battlefield"

[witchwillow.livejournal.com]

Anita looks a bit like a grumpy hound of some sort on the cover. She's also significantly darker than JC? Did Anita used to be half Mexican and then she killed a big bad and he bleached her skin for her?

[cicipsychobunny.livejournal.com]

On second glance, it appears to be pseudo-leopard-print. Which is only mildly more appropriate.

[delphinapterus.livejournal.com]

Well it at least suits the p0rn-theme of the latest books. Could it be a subtle warning?

[therosewilde.livejournal.com]

Anita has, for a long long time in the books, made a big deal about the fact that her mother was "dark", but *she* could pass. It was a bit of a thing - one page she would be insisting that she had china doll skin, and took after the German blood in her family, then later on she would be on about how the police were prejudiced against her because she was half-Mexican.

So, her skin tone changed depending on whether she wanted to be "lovely" or "oppressed".

Which is convenient.

[therosewilde.livejournal.com]

Btw, random off topic icon-admiration - who is she?

[witchwillow.livejournal.com]

Rachel True (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0874086/)

[therosewilde.livejournal.com]

Oh! My mind kept giving me "Rachel", and I knew that wasn't right - i've only seen her as Rochelle, in The Craft. God she's gorgeous.

[nutsandwhiskers.livejournal.com]

I've just noticed something: What the fuck is going on with their ears? Me and my other half are just plain confused and unimpressed with such a mistake!

It's just a tad sloppy.