COMIC CON '09 - MADMAN

Back in 1994 i started to get sick of comic books. I was a junior in high school and would rather create comic books as opposed to reading whatever Big Boobs, Big Guns and Big Shoulder Pad characters were doing at the time. Every comic book seemed to have characters with giant guns, with a billion shell casings spilling all over the page. All of the comic pages were filled with so much "detail" that it would turn everything into a giant sketchy mess.

It got to the point where i was reading magazines about comic books, which is when i came across a new book from Dark Horse. The creator was Michael Allred and his creation was MADMAN, a comic book that had a "pop art" style that brought back the comic book art style of the good old silver age! Over the last 15 years i fell away from comics and back again, a few years ago MADMAN returned to IMage comics and the new series has been really great. No matter how much the world of comic books have changed over the years, MADMAN has pretty much remained the same. There is that great pop-art and light hearted existential adventure stories. Sometimes it gets a little heavy, but for the most part it is a ton of fun.

A year ago, i had the opportunity to interview the creator Mike Allred for Geekscape (click here to download the audio version). After years of reading his books, i could not believe that i had the chance to actually talk to my favorite comic book creator. I was excited at how easy it was to get a long with Mike. He is a very down to earth guy.

Last November Stevi and i had the opportunity to meet Mike and his wife/colorist, Laura, in San Francisco at an artist signing at a comic book store called Neon Monster. Once again, we were welcome with open arms. Mike and Laura had signed my copy of MADMAN Gargantua as well as a copy of Madman Atomic Comics #3 for my friend Ryan.

For those of you going to Comic Con this year, Mike and Laura are going to be there doing some book signings, as well as making some big announcements for the future of MADMAN. Be sure to hit up their table and meet these awesome people!