I weel follow yoo to thee ends of thee errth, and wee weel make love at thee CasBAAAA ...

[briary-flower.livejournal.com]

We've already seen some preview scans from First Death#1, co-authored by LKH and former fanboy Jon.  I thought a few more scans wouldn't be out of order, especially since they include the infamous first meeting of Anita and Jean-Claude:

This was back in the days when Anita was a delicate flower who barfed on crime scenes.





So ... whenever JC calls Anita "Ma Petite," does anyone else have a Looney Tunes flashback?



I guess what I'm trying to say is that JC really isn't very credible as a French character, and giving him one hackneyed French phrase doesn't help.  And it particulary doesn't help that he trots it out at every occasion and - how do you say?- slathers it on Anita like like a bunch of fat kids slathering butter on corn at a Fourth of July picnic.



See what she did there?  She jinxed herself!  Next issue they're promising a Famous First with Edward, so I'll bring over more scans when it rolls off the presses.

Comments

[kitsu.livejournal.com]

What the hell is up with the lack of facial expressions?

[recovered-dream.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I noticed that too.

But hey, hack writer gets hack artiste to draw for her... what do you expect? *chuckle*

[recovered-dream.livejournal.com]

I freaking LOVE the Looney Tunes reference!!!

This comic will suck worse than the books. AB does WAY too much internal dialogue and they're putting little boxes everywhere to show it.

The way they drew JC is not at all how I pictured him either. He looks like HER! Well, at least now we know why AB and JC got together...

[ladymuttly1.livejournal.com]

The two characters couldn't look more alike if they were *trying* to draw fraternal twins

[vmisery.livejournal.com]

The bad thing is, I actually got the comic, and the art is significantly better than the Guilty Pleasures comic.

The interview in the back with Jon made my gorge rise, though. And the fact that he and LKH apparently read some of the same comics I do made me twitch like a roach on a griddle.

[knomey.livejournal.com]

They posted the names of some of their favorite webcomics recently. Discovering that Larita read some of the same stuff I did made me shiver.

[lastshotringing.livejournal.com]

That cross scar is making me LOL a little too hard.

[randomsome1.livejournal.com]

I'm just having Buffy S1 flashbacks.

[witchwillow.livejournal.com]

My Complaints:

If there's a picture of a bar saying 'GUILTY PLEASURES', you don't need to have captions going 'And this is the bar, GUILTY PLEASURES'

If dialogue infers JC is the owner or head honcho of said bar then you don't need a caption saying he's the manager.

If the PICTURES show a CROSS shaped mark on his chest. You don't need the dialogue to say it's cross shaped. Just establish that it is a scar and not a tattoo.

And that thing where JC suddenly shows fangs? It so had me hearing every bad black and white and some color movie vampires doing that fake cat hiss when they try to be scary.

The Anita Blake Comics make me want to smack everyone involved and go PICTURES, it's about PICTURES dumbasses. PICTURES mixed with WORDS.

You don't have to -write- out all the fucking text, you absolute losers! Are you asleep when you approve this shit?!

There was a previous scan, with the boy and the blood and the cops milling around the crime site and it totally pissed me off how half the things said in captions could have been random dialogue from those on the scene naturally discussing it while filling the reader in at the same time.

Good Effing Monkey Krist! If she ever got a movie deal, you mean to tell me on fucking screan we'd see someone pointing and going 'Where'd you get that cross shaped scar on your chest' as if the make up people couldn't do their effing jobs?


Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh. HATE HATE HATE HATE. I know some folk find it funny and hilarious and horribly bad to parody. But on first viewing of each scan I just keep wanting to say 'Get the hell out of my fandom LKH'.

*breathes*

[cicipsychobunny.livejournal.com]

You reminded me of a girl I knew who was doing a diploma in graphic design and advertising media. Watching television was hilarious as she kept exclaiming, "If you SHOW it, you don't need to SAY it!!!"

[randomsome1.livejournal.com]

Anyone else in favor of renaming Jean-Claude "Captain Overbite"?

[tsubaki-ny.livejournal.com]

I second this motion.

[delphinapterus.livejournal.com]

Omg those stone faces are just too perfect. I really love that holy item check girl has a cross tattoo; now doesn't that just seem like a bad accident waiting to happen?

The best part is how Anita comes off as really naive over a strip club when the stripper seems to be wearing full Roman Centurious a la Astrix strip gear - not exactly looking like the most provocative guy in the world. Yet Jean-Claude is refering to her work as though she isn't fairly new and unkown to the paranormal world.

[amamelina.livejournal.com]

I really love that holy item check girl has a cross tattoo; now doesn't that just seem like a bad accident waiting to happen?

Ooooh, that would be funny. Would her skin glow, or just go up in flames? Is she safe because the cross appears to be upside down? Or does it matter?

[killnotic.livejournal.com]

What gets me is how good Dolph looks. The whole time I'm looking at the scans all I can wonder is am I supposed to think JC is the sexiest guy in the scene? The art's pretty clean though, nary an abnormally large thigh to be seen.

[daphne-gateau.livejournal.com]

I totally agree. Hell. The Centurian stripper looks fine, even the security guy. JC just looks like... Anita. :s Maybe it's the hair but I am missing where he's uber sexy.

I imagine LKH and Jon are driving the artist crazy over getting JC and Anita 'just so'. Maybe they are fighting back by making the background characters look sexier than the supposedly sexy Anita and JC.

[lunachickk.livejournal.com]

This is the first I've seen of the comics, but the single random wisp of hair in Anita's & Jean Claude's faces is making me nuts.

[onyx-noir.livejournal.com]

You too?

[nightangel486.livejournal.com]

What gets me is how in every panel where Anita isn't in the foreground, she looks Asian or something.

And JC in profile is reminding me of someone, but I can't figure out who...

[sister-ananke.livejournal.com]

The 'no nicknames' panel has both of them staring at the reader, like they know we're twitching at the concept of calling someone 'my little' and what will eventuate.

[amamelina.livejournal.com]

Uh, am I the only one that remembers that JC once talked about when he first "fell in lust" with Anita? It was in one of the books (one of the later ones, I think). She asks him, "When did you first fall in love with me?" and his answer was something like, "When I heard you on the phone". If this is their first face-to-face meeting, then they should have talked on the phone once. At least, if that post-it note hadn't commited suicide behind the computer.

[misery-girl.livejournal.com]

Yeah, he says something along the lines of falling in love with her the first time he heard her. Because just from hearing her talk he knew he'd never have to save her.

Which gave me the impression that he was around the corner from her bragging about cutting vampires into little tiny pieces or something. Not sure if that was the authorial intent.

[subtle-shades.livejournal.com]

I've never picked up an AB comic (or what's passing for them at any rate) but based on the scans I've got to say....
1. - Show don't tell. It's why people LIKE comics. (And movies...and books...But this way lies digression.) It's like killing the 'visual' in 'visual media'.
2. - This reads almost EXACTLY like a fanfic I read several years ago....just not as amusing.
3. - Amamelina is right....there's a phone call missing. (Although I didn't remember it until it was pointed out above.)
4. - I want to brush Anita and JC's hair and maybe apply hair care products b/c their hair is annoying me....and it's not even in my face. (And Dolph is by far the better looking man in those frames he shares with JC.)
5. - Is it just me or does that hissing JC scene scream "manga" to anyone else?

[recovered-dream.livejournal.com]

5 - NO WAY! Manga vamps at least TRY to look dangerous. JC just looks like he needs a dentist with a tooth file. Those fangs aren't big enough to bite with either.

Nip, maybe, but bite and puncture? The shape and size are all wrong!

[daphne-gateau.livejournal.com]

Didn't JC have shorter hair too? He grew it out for Anita because she likes long hair. And, apparently, so they could have matching crazy curls dangling in their faces.

[ayako.livejournal.com]

Yeah but I think he went from shoulder length to something like waist/hip length.

The hair similarities between him and Anita seem really creepy to me. Siblings much? Incest? D:

[reticentric.livejournal.com]

I'm surprised Anita and JC aren't permanently cross-eyed because of that lock of hair. You know the eyes just can't help focusing on it.

[ex-naomi-ja.livejournal.com]

They have matching hair-dos! That's shooooooo shweeeeeet! And yet I feel slightly nauseous.

[kathrynthegr8.livejournal.com]

This was so entertaining...Now I need to go watch cartoons!

Hehehe

[hippie-lover.livejournal.com]

The fact that lipstick is the only clue who's who between Anita and JC is rather sad.

[ladymina.livejournal.com]

for the facial or face and shoulder pics ... how the fuck am I supposed to even get which one is jc and which is anita
they look totally alike (apart from the lock of doom that switches sides, and what is up with that anyway, something like that would drive me totally insane hanging in my face touching my nose ....

[no-ron.livejournal.com]

this shit is so ugly it makes me wince. >_>

btw, why does everyone have a "regular" face, only JC's is ripped out of the Booth comic??

[knomey.livejournal.com]

In my happy fantasy land, Alves tried to draw JC several times, until Laurell started cracking the whip, screaming about how Mama needs her Frenchy Boy to look Just Right.

[maladaptive.livejournal.com]

Oh god. We're going to start seeing the ridiculous outfits everyone wears. JC's outfit is already pretty dumb.

What gets me is that there's not nearly enough action and way too much jabber for a comic. Lots of panels of people with unchanging expressions and doing nothing but talking? That should be a novel, not a comic. If Anita's gonna become a comic book it needs to be written like one! *flail* The only remotely visually interesting panel here is the one with the centurion stripper.

[the-ellcrys.livejournal.com]

I swear to you, I'm going to jump into these comics and cut off that piece of hair that's always falling in her face.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

AHH HA HA! I've read the whole damn thing now, and really...all I can think is that this scene right here sets up Dolph/JC slash. And Anita would be too thick to realise it.

But oh god, the entire thing goes like this with stupid repetition and Anita's sentence fragments of nonsense. *headdesk* It's pretty terrible, yet so very lolworthy.

[knomey.livejournal.com]

What killed me was how it seems like the artist was pointed towards brett booth's JC sketches and told to COPY THAT FACE. The style is so out of sync with the rest of the comic I wanted to scream.

Also, I find Dolph's blue vest to be hilarious. I don't know why. I never saw Dolph as a vest sort of guy.

And thank you so much for posting this! I... did not have the courage! And I couldn't choose among the pages. It was all so horrible.

[no-ron.livejournal.com]

and if Dolph's supposed to have grown-up children, isn't there supposed to be an apparent age difference between him and, let's say, AB?
i've long given up on ranting about the "casting" in the Booth comic (which suxxxx some major hairy ass), but now the crap keeps spreading..

[tsubaki-ny.livejournal.com]

Is that a cross burned into JC's skin?

Which makes me wonder -- if you are a vampire, and you've unfortunately encountered a religious artifact, and the shape of it is burned into your skin -- does it ever stop? Because it's STILL a cross. He's technically still in contact with it. I'd want it removed, it seems like it would be a kind of feedback loop.

(yes I am avoiding work.)

[amamelina.livejournal.com]

Say, good question. That would suck if a cross-shaped scar continues to burn because of the shape. And, in that vein, would a cross have any effect on a Jewish vampire?