The Comics Reporter

February 3, 2012

Five For Friday #281 -- Industry News

Five For Friday #281: Name Your Five Favorite Comics Industry News Stories Of The Last 30 Years

1. The People Vs. Mike Diana
2. DC Signs A Secret Deal With Diamond
3. Disney Buys Marvel
4. Jack Kirby Wants His Art Back
5. Michael George Found Guilty

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as always, please no stand-up

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You Know, That Whole Boulet Site From Yesterday Is Pretty Fun

there's a ton of content, too; poke around

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Víctor José Arriagada Rios, 1934-2012

The prominent and highly-regarded Chilean Disney comics cartoonist Víctor José Arriagada Rios, known to multiple generations of fans as Vicar, died on January 3. One of the most highly-regarded cartoonists working in that specific and rich comics-making territory, he was 77 years old.

Víctor José Arriagada Rios was born in Santiago in 1934. His journey into comics, specifically the duck comics for which he was best known, was a long and involved one. He attended to the Universidad Técnica del Estado, the newest of that country's public universities, in order to study electronic engineering. His first major comic assignment was the Mampato feature in El Mercurio's supplement of the same name in the mid 1950s. He then created the features Hipolito y Camilo and Locutin for the magazine Barrabases. By the 1960s, Rios, now ensconced at Bardon Art Studios, had become one of the more popular and dependable talent in Chilean newspaper and magazine comics -- some of which were also published in European markets such as Spain and Germany. His clients within Chile included the magazine Topaze, El Saquero and Viejo Verde; he also worked a number of art gigs for foreign publishers through the his studio contacts, including clients in Denmark.

Rios was hired by Egmont in 1971 for the specific assignment of working on that company's various duck comics. He would develop a facile style that hewed closely to the general look and timing favored by legendary Disney comics cartoonist Carl Barks. Barks would later specifically cite Rios' comics as among the best ever done on the various duck characters. His reputation may have varied more among duck comics fans, particularly as his career continued into the 1990s and 2000s, but certainly the sheer number of comics bearing his imprimatur made him an artist to be reckoned with by readers of those books. Rios was even for his most sever critics a reliable, professional presence; his work's general high level of craft and its connection to classic Disney comics art gave it a legitimacy that a more stylized approach might not have enjoyed.

Rios proved popular enough early on in his duck career he was able to create a studio around his Disney work, forming Vic-Art in Santiago and eventually producing a few hundred pages in a year. His most popular addition to the duck canon character-wise was probably found in his role as the first, primary illustrator for Princess Oona. At the time of his passing, Vicar had by one count created the second most stories in Disney comics history, and was in the top 10 in terms of number of pages (11,200) bearing his name.

Rios continued work throughout the latter phase of his career for non-Disney clients, including strips in the humor magazine Ganso and collections of his El Huaso Ramon feature.

Rios suffered from leukemia, which is believed to be the cause of death. He was living in the Netherlands at the time of his passing.

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Go, Look: Disney Duck Comics From Vicar

this site strikes me as a too perfect combination of out-in-the-open obviousness and general lack of sophistication to not be approved by someone; I apologize if it isn't

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Al Rio, 1962-2012

The prolific Brazilian comics artist Al Rio committed suicide on January 30 after a long period of battling depression. He was 49 years old. Rio was best known for his "good girl" comics art and illustration, working for a variety of publishers including Marvel, DC, Dark Horse, Image, Avatar, Angel Entertainment, WildStorm, Malibu, Vertigo, Crossgen, Trinity, Zenescope, Harris and Chaos.

Alvaro Araujo Lourencio do Rio was born in 1962 and raised in Fortaleza, the massive coastal city in northern Brazil. Rio described himself in later interviews as a consumer of animation and comics from an early age. Rio moved from Fortaleza when in his early twenties in order to increase his chances at a career in art. His first major arts assignment was a book illustration gig in Rio de Janeiro in the early 1990s. He became an animator, working on a cartoon for the ubiquitous Brazilian children's entertainer Xuxa and then for Disney on their 1994 television spin-off of the movie Aladdin.

Rio was a longtime client of the art agency Glass House Graphics, the source of a report that the cause of death was hanging. It was through the agency that he started to work for various mainstream publishers in the mid-1990s. He may have been best known in that period for work on later issues of the extremely popular Gen13 title, for which he provided pencils and inks. His most significant publishing partner in recent years was Zenescope, for whom he did a number of covers. He had relocated to his hometown at the time of his passing. Rio would step away from comics in 2004, plunging into the pin-up and commission business, where he remained active for the remainder of his career. He also taught a pair of art courses, an experience he said he enjoyed very much.

Rio was in the midst of a relative comics revival the last few years, even ending his course work in order to concentrate on his art assignments. The two most recent, soon-to-be-completed projects on his plate at the time of his passing were art chores on a graphic novel based on the popular urban fantasy "Fever" prose series by Karen Marie Moning (David Lawrence was working on the comics version as a writer). Rio was also serializing his Exposure comic on-line; a Kickstarter project to raise money for a print edition is ongoing, with any money over the goal going to Rio's surviving family.

The announcement of Rio's death on the Exposure site cited three books also in the works: a collection of science fiction art, a book on how to draw the good girl art for which he was best known, and a straight-up art book of the coffee table variety featuring a range of work.

Rio is survived by a wife, Zilda, and three children. He was buried on Wednesday in Fortaleza.

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Go, Look: The 1986 New Woman Calendar Gag Cartoons

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Go, Read: Seth On The Moment He Knew She Was The One

There's probably something to be said in a mainstreaming of comics culture way about a cartoonist being asked to participate in a feature like this one, but mostly I just thought it was sweet and comics could use some undeniably nice stories this week. (The "she" is Seth's wife of ten years, Tania Van Spyk.)

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Go, Look: Sam Henderson On Sick Magazine #40

1, 2

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Collective Memory: FIBD 2012

*****
*****

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If I Were In East Lansing, I'd Go To This

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If I Were In San Francisco, I'd Go To This

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Forthcoming Comics-Related Events, This Month And Next

Go, Look: Early Jim Mooney

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Random Comics News Story Round-Up

* Gary Tyrrell continues to track Rich Burlew's Kickstarter dominance.

* Nicolas Labarre writes about the style employed by Steve Dillon in Preacher.

* not comics: there will apparently be a Footnotes In Gaza movie. I always thought an animated version of what Joe Sacco does could be really compelling.

* Peggy Burns and Guy Delisle report on Angouleme.

* Todd Klein on Dark Horse Presents #5, Dark Horse Presents #6 and Swamp Thing #4. Andrew Shuping on Any Empire. Ed Sizemore (and Christopher) on Howard Lovecraft And The Undersea Kingdom. Kristy Valenti on Habibi and Paying For It. Sean Gaffney on Wandering Son Vol. 2. David Brothers on Wolverine: The Best There Is. John Parker on Spawn.

* I missed Diamond's 30th. Also this year's Hourly Comics Day.

* Bob reads comics.

* Martin Wisse, J. Caleb Mozzocco, Abhay Khosla and Eric Stephenson on DC's new publishing initiative.

* someone at DC Women Kicking Ass talks to Janelle Asselin. Dave Richards talks to Ed Brubaker.

* Alan Gardner reviews the new Stephan Pastis app -- and there's a lot there to review.

* if I were to read only one article today, and that one article ended up being Seth's excerpted piece at TCJ on design, that would be a fine day.

* ooh, that's nice-looking.

* finally, Jen Vaughn writes about Jeff Kinney's visit to the Center For Cartoon Studies campus.

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Happy 63rd Birthday, Richard Marschall!

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February 2, 2012

Guess Which Cartoonist/Artist Is About To Be Worth $200 Million?

Interesting artist; interesting life.

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Go, Read: Darkness

via Kate Beaton

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Indian Cartoonist Charged By Mumbai Police; Hearing Today

It's always difficult for me to tell when there are actual developments in a slowly spiraling case like we're seeing in Indian right now with government officials and police officers making claims against the work of various cartoonists, but this looks like a real, unfortunate step forward. The young cartoonist Aseem Trivedi has apparently been booked on recent charges made against him regarding work that appears on his web site. He will face a hearing today. If I'm reading the article correctly and understanding its context, charges had been formed but not acted upon before now. Perhaps there will be some particulars of this case that emerge that could potentially change my initial, cursory view of it, but pursuing actions against a cartoonist engaged in some sort of truth-telling and opinion-making through their art on the basis that this has some sort of treasonous element merely by being criticism, that seems to me a hugely alarming thing for any democracy of any kind. The fact that it's the same police department that seems to be facilitating these recent moves seems very much worth noting as well.

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Go, Look: More Alex Schubert At What Things Do

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This Isn't A Library: Notable Releases To The Comics Direct Market

Here are the books that make an impression on me staring at this week's no-doubt largely accurate list of books shipping from Diamond Comic Distributors, Inc. to comic book and hobby shops across North America.

I might not buy all of the works listed here. I might not buy any. You never know. I'd sure look at the following, though.

*****

OCT111193 KRAMERS ERGOT HC VOL 08 (MR) $32.95
The alt-comics release of the week; the release of the week generally. I imagine that some people will see this latest issue as a sign of the publication's maturity and lament the time when it felt more cutting edge. I just think it's a lot of really compelling cartoonists doing work in one place. I liked this issue a lot.

OCT110341 JOHN ROMITA AMAZING SPIDER-MAN ARTIST ED HC PI
This doesn't have a price, but I assume it's pretty expensive. I really like this series of oversized books featuring original art, and John Romita is super-flattered by the treatment of his work in this volume. It's also just a solid, primetime, Lee/Romita-era Spider-Man collection, drawing deep from the heart of that period when Peter Parker interacted with campus radicals and outsized local crime figures and generally looked handsome between moments of trying to convince his super-pretty girlfriend he wasn't a scaredy-cat (when we know full well he isn't; he's Spider-Man!). I'm not sure if he wears an arm sling in any of these particular issues, but it feels like he should have.

NOV118137 FATALE #1 VAR CVR 2ND PTG (MR) $3.50
DEC110551 FATALE #2 (MR) $3.50
NOV110047 DARK HORSE PRESENTS #8 DONALDSON VAR CVR $7.99
NOV110046 DARK HORSE PRESENTS #8 FEGREDO CVR $7.99
NOV110798 SERGIO ARAGONES FUNNIES #7 $3.50
These were the individual comic books that made an impression on me from this week's list of releases. The Fatale is the Brubaker/Phillips comics mixing noir and horror elements. The Brubaker/Phillips comics are pretty thoughtful conceived; they included text pieces and Brubaker's comics are pretty meaty in the first place; they always feel like a good off-the-stands bargain, if you know what I mean. The Dark Horse Presents title has been intriguing in that it seems to skew older in a less apologetic way than publications of that type tend to skew. I think there's a place for a publication like that on the stands, and I think if I were less involved in terms of staring at comics I'd be super-grateful for DHP's ability to gather a lot of a specific kind of comics-making into one place.

OCT110062 ARCHIE ARCHIVES HC VOL 04 $49.99
OCT110429 MADMAN 20TH ANNIVERSARY MONSTER HC $100.00
What the super-rich folks are buying this week, along with the Romita. As always, I'm not exactly sure what distinguishes this particular collection of Archie material from other program out there, but I would certainly look at it were I in a store. I think the Madman book collects a lot of the fellow-professional art that's appeared in the various comics over the years, both comics and pin-ups. My interest in Madman is pretty limited, but I have friends for whom the series is a comics touchstone, so an expensive edition sounds about right to me in terms of matching fan to book.

NOV110209 XOMBI TP $14.99
I lost track of this one after a first issue that was mailed to what I'm guessing is DC's biggest press list (meaning I got one). Frazer Irving is always worth a look, and having a trade show up in your shop is a time-honored way of reacquainting yourself with a series, even if it's just to make a mental note to buy the individual issues when they hit the dollar box.

*****

The full list of this week's releases, including some titles with multiple cover variations and a long, impressive list of toys and other stuff that isn't comics, can be found here. Despite this official list there's no guarantee a comic will show up in the stores as promised, or in all of the stores as opposed to just a few. Also, stores choose what they carry and don't carry so your shop may not carry a specific publication. There are a lot of comics out there.

To find your local comic book store, check this list; and for one I can personally recommend because I've shopped there, albeit a while back, try this.

The above titles are listed with their Diamond order code in the first field, which may assist you in finding comics at your shop or having them order something for you they don't have in-stock. Ordering through a direct market shop can be a frustrating experience, so if you have a direct line to something -- you know another shop has it, you know a bookstore has it -- I'd urge you to consider all of your options.

If I failed to list your comic, that's on me. I apologize.

*****

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Go, Look: Three Later Jack Kirby Original Art Pages

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The Never-Ending, Four-Color Festival: Cons, Shows, Events

By Tom Spurgeon

* for some reason, I keep avoiding this article about the basic payment plan for San Diego convention center improvement falling into place. The two things that flash at me from that story is the recognition that there's a time limit before Comic-Con International starts looking at other serious suitors again, and a feeling I can't shake that some of the resistance on San Diego's part could fuel some grumpiness and resentment towards the con over the next couple of years. I don't think that gets displayed in a serious way, and isn't something that will touch you and me and the other attendees, but is more of an undercurrent that will stand in slight relief to the strong reconsideration of the economic benefits of the show that took place during the last round of negotiations.

* Naoki Urasawa will be the manga guest of honor at this summer's Japan Expo in Paris.

* Stumptown Comics Fest named a few more guests in a press release dated January 31: Ted Naifeh, Brian Hurtt, Nate Powell, Steve Lieber and Brian Churilla. Thirty-one minutes earlier, Image Expo announced another special guest: Ed Brubaker.

* missed it: Johanna Draper Carlson went to one of the Charlotte mini-cons from a couple of weeks back.

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Go, Look: A Few Choice Gags From The Circus Of PT Bimbo

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Collective Memory: FIBD 2012

*****
*****

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If I Were In Berkeley, I'd Go To This

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