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1. • CommentAuthorLamont Cranston
   • CommentTimeApr 11th 2011

    
   DARK HORSE PRESENTS returns on 20th April 2011!
   
   Q: What is Dark Horse Presents?
   
   A: Dark Horse Presents is like The Wild Geese of comics (except not rubbish)!
   
   Frank Miller/Richard Burton (Col. Allen Faulkner )
   Howard Victor Chaykin/Roger Moore (Lt. Shawn Fynn)
   Neal Adams/Richard Harris (Capt. Rafer Janders)
   Richard Corben/Hardy Krüger (Lt. Pieter Coetze)
   Harlan Ellison/Stewart Granger (Sir Edward Matherson)
   Paul Chadwick/Frank Finlay (Fr. Geoghagen, the Priest)
   Michael T Gilbert/Ronald Fraser (Sgt. Jock McTaggart)
   Carla Speed McNeil/Rosalind Lloyd (Heather)
   
   Do you see what I did there! Do you SEE!
   
   (For people under 60 The Wild Geese was like The Expendables but instead of ‘80s action stars with faces like surgical roadkill and bad joints it had English thesps who could drink their own bodyweight in alcohol before breakfast and then still hit the mark. Today they would be worshipped as Gods.)
   
   FRANK MILLER - lifts the hem of his historically accurate man-skirt and gives you a peek at his dangling 300 sequel XERXES! This way everyone can practice getting upset at the sight of it before it even hoves fully into view!
   
   HOWARD VICTOR CHAYKIN – writes and draws a new episodic serial fiction. There are two ways to tell if HVC is going to stop watching DIAGNOSIS MURDER long enough to actually produce something someone other than a lifelong fan will like: 1) He’ll be writing AND drawing and2) It will contain the phrase “moral cripple”. He’s writing AND drawing this. Dunno about 2) yet.
   
   NEAL ADAMS – expands his mind until the crust gives a little and parps out an all-new tale. I think it’s called Blood or something. It doesn’t matter. It will certainly be some kind of thing if BATMAN:ODYSSEY is anything to go by. Yes, he’s writing AND drawing! And by ‘writing’ I’m not even sure what I mean.
   
   MICHAEL T GILBERT – resurrects MR. MONSTER! How long has it been? Too long, baby! Everyone loves MR MONSTER except people who haven’t read MR MONSTER. If you buy DARK HORSE PRESENTS you’ll read MR MONSTER and you’ll love MR MONSTER too!
   
   RICHARD CORBEN – will be doing something creepy and gibbous no doubt. It will probably involve men with muscles like loaves of bread and ladies with knockers like space hoppers. It will not look like other things but it will look like this: awesome!
   
   HARLAN ELLISON – writes a ‘prose piece’ I don’t know what that is? A story? A list of his favourite dry cleaners? An appreciation of Lady Ga Ga? It doesn’t matter. It’s HARLAN freakin’ ELLISON!
   
   CARLA SPEED McNEIL - gifts us with an all-new colour FINDER story. I don’t know owt about that. Warren Ellis said FINDER was good if anyone listens to Warren Ellis. Anyway, I’ll be finding out, won’t I?
   
   PAUL CHADWICK – unveils a new CONCRETE story. I don’t know about this either. I bet OKOliver does. It looks like an OKOliver joint. Ask him next time you’re in OKCOMICS! He flipping loves it I bet!
   
   There’s some other stuff as well including a STAR WARS CRIMSON EMPIRE story. My 5 year old likes STAR WARS. So good news there for any 5 year olds who are thinking of picking this up – STAR WARS!
   
   Oh, the age of the contributors is deterring you? Well, you could think about it this way: each of these folks has decades of experience in honing and crafting graphic sequential entertainment in a highly idiosyncratic style which, while it may have cost some of them a high personal price, has in any decent evaluation only been to the betterment of the art form as a whole.
   
   Or you could remember that the defining aspect of old people is that they are old and you don’t get old by being weak; you get old by surviving! And as Elvis sang, before cunningly avoiding old age by dying in an embarrassing fashion, Only The Strong Survive! These are the survivors. These are the strong. Comics strong. Nourish yourself on the hard won fruits of their labour. Or don’t, it’s your money.
   
   DARK HORSE PRESENTS #1. 80pgs. April 2011. £6.99 (probably)
2. •  
     CommentAuthorMike Infinitum
   • CommentTimeApr 19th 2011

    
   Wild Geese was not rubbish!
3. • CommentAuthorLamont Cranston
   • CommentTimeMay 12th 2011

    
   You're right, Mike! I was wrong! I watched it t'other night and it was awesome. I watched Richard Harris promise his son that there "would be other Christmases" and I got all teary. "No, Richard Harris, don't go! Stay with your man-child! There won't be any more Christmases if you go! Sometimes a man just runs right out of Christmases! Damn your eyes, man! Damn them all to Hell!" I got quite upset actually.I think it's The Change I'm going through or something. Wild Geese was hilariously bad yet at the same time really quite stirringly good. I don't know how that works. Well, I watched some of it because apparently My Fair Lady thinks it is rubbish and switched over when I left the room for two minutes. Sneaky!
4. • CommentAuthorLamont Cranston
   • CommentTimeMay 12th 2011

    
   Didya, see? Didja? Huh? Huh? In DARK HORSE PRESENTS #1 - Frank’s back!
   
   Franklin (Delano) Miller bursts back in black (& white)! Three sweet preview pages from XERXES! (pre-order it NOW!) and some beefy babble and he’s (BANG! BANG! BANG! (on the door, yeaaaaaaaah!)) gone! Off the grid! Into the night! Running silent! Running deep! And what’s it like?!?! It’s Frank-tastic! It’s Frank-gasmic!
   
   Remember that time DKSA came out and The Fanternet just starting bawling and asking for its crosshatching back? This XERXES stuff makes the DKSA stuff look like Jim Lee. It looks like The Franklin Mint’s just smashed his drawing chair to pieces dipped a splintered leg-end (LEGEND! Geddit!) in a bath of ink and gone at the paper like a man who has mistaken it for the face of Satan! Hey, honestly, for a second I though Frank had lost it. I thought maybe Fandora’s Box was right and he’d just been spiralling down ever since (when? SIN CITY? DKR? MARVEL TEAM-UP? Those Charlton comics he did when he was, like, nineteen? WHEN!?!). It was touch and go, comrades. But then I paused and looked at the art. And…l
   
   …look, in the interview Frank’s asked if he does any research. The Frank responds with something like (I’m paraphrasing from memory here but I’ll try and retain some of the FrankyFlava):
   
   “Yeah, I research. I research like Ali boxed. Like Smokey sang. Like Jared sells. I research so hard and so deep The Past never gets over me and pines itself to death. I research to the point where people in the past build time machines to visit me to ask me what they did, and what they do/did next. I research, sweet potatoes. I research. Look in the dictionary, lovechunks! Next to “research” there’s a picture of my magic face! No, there isn’t! There aren’t any pictures in the dictionary, just words! What are you, nuts?! Research? Yeah, I do that. I’m all over that research stuff. Research. Loads.”
   
   Then I just make it all up anyway.”
   
   Besides being hilariously awesome and stamped with Frank all the way through is exactly how his art works now. It looks like a scribbly mess but only if you aren’t really looking at it. If you’re just glancing, sure it’s gonna look like Hell barfed all over the page. But if you’re just glancing whaddya expect, huh? Do you think he drew this for glancers? I don’t think so. D’y’ever see the pencils for DKSA? No? Well, they were totally intense, my fellow Frank-o-philes! Every figure had every muscle defined, every line denoting the position of every element of the page’s configuration was detailed and accurate, everything was all right there. Those pencils were things of splendour and delight. Then he just drew a big chunky outline round everything and erased all the detail. Just took it away. And he probably laughed while he did it, too!
   
   All that detail and accuracy - gone. But not gone. Because the sweat and graft he put into the foundation of the remaining art informed it and buttressed it. It looked simple and messy but it was anything but. The work had flawless artistic integrity because of all the work that preceded its final awesome reality. O! My happy eyes! Took a whole lot of graft to get to the point where it looked like anyone could have done it. But they couldn’t. Not anyone. See, I’m saying the pencils are like the research: none of it’s on the page but it’s all on the page. Just because you can’t see a thing doesn’t mean it isn’t there and isn’t having an effect. Like the moon! Like gravity!
   
   So, yeah, his art is awesome on XERXES! It’s just three pages but it’s three pages of FRANK! He’s out there now. Making the new with his two old hands. Burning, burning in the night. Like a TIGER! A TIGER TANK! FRANK! FRANK THE TANK!
   
   XERXES!
5. • CommentAuthorLamont Cranston
   • CommentTimeMay 12th 2011

    
   Oh yeah.
   
   In DARK HORSE PRESENTS #3 will contain a 13 page preview of RED TIDE.
   
   That is RED TIDE by STERANKO.
   
   STERANKO!
   T
   E
   R
   A
   N
   K
   O
   !
   
   You have been informed.
6. •  
     CommentAuthorOK Comics
   • CommentTimeJul 6th 2011

    
   The last time I saw Wild Geese I was about 10 years old. I haven't seen it since so can only assume that it's still one of the most awesome movies ever made. It inspired me to make some awesome Lego helicopters.