February 28, 2005
Would you Pay $131,000 for This Page?
Someone e-mail if I have the decimal point wrong, but it seems that the above original page from Herge's
Tintin series
went for over $131,000 (US) to an unnamed bidder in a recent auction, according to reports on various European comics sites. The page is from 1939, and is in the "Sceptre d'Ottokar" story. According to the news brief, the bidder is unknown to cartooning and collecting circles.
That would seem to absolve Albert Uderzo, who as the ninth biggest money-winner in France certainly could afford it. The 77-year-old cartoonist and talent behind Asterix
made the list on the heels of a massive royalty check and some work with an amusement park. He earned just under 10 million Euros last year, or as the report had it, more than the combined salaries of Jean-Jacques Goldman, Jean Reno and Gerard Depardieu.
posted 6:01 am PST |
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PW: CCS to Publish With Hyperion
Kevin Melrose
breaks down a story in the latest issue of
Publishers Weekly that indicates James Sturms' Center for Cartoon Studies will be packaging comics to publish with Hyperion. First up in Fall 2006: a Nick Bertozzi-drawn biography of Harry Houdini to be written by Sturm and cartoonist Jason Lutes. Lutes' first major work,
Jar of Fools, featured a pair of magicians; both Sturm and Bertozzi have worked on historically-based comics. The partnership calls for two books a year.
Also from Mr. Melrose,
an astute pick-up on discrepancies between statements by Joe Quesada and press release info regarding a recent hire on the subject of Marvel's interest in the production of original graphic novels.
Seth's depiction of the town in which the Center is located, in the 1920s. From their web site.
posted 5:48 am PST |
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English-Language Manga Beyond U.S.
This
rambling message board thread at animeondvd.com gives a lot of decent first-hand accounts about the status of English-language manga outside of the U.S. marke. The most interesting nugget is the suggestion that Diamond may be ignoring the wishes of a few of its publishers by providing manga to accounts in Great Britain.
posted 5:44 am PST |
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Quick hits
Thief Steals Comic Books; Deputy Loads Bullet Into Gun
Neil Alien Blog Turns 5; Wong Bakes Cake
Local Cartoonist Profile: Tony Harris
Wiley Miller Criticizes George Will
Anthropomorphic Festival Slotted for Bastia
Laugh While You Can Tour: Hart, Sorensen, Kreider
Mr. Dithers Round-Up
That's Some Photo
Cartoonist Owns Ugly Sweater
Ted Rall Doesn't Like Conservative Blogs
Admiral Bauman, Obsessive Strip Collector (SR)
Mallard Fillmore Takes on FDR
Jeffrey Brown Profiled
Scott Adams Discusses Dilbert House
Kids Learn About Memorial Day Through Comics
February 27, 2005
CR Sunday Magazine
Reading a bunch of writing on comic book shops vs. bookstores has reminded me of the strange emotional content that often drives such discussion. Thus,
A Few Words on the Latest Round of Bookstore/Comic Shop Chatter.
posted 7:05 pm PST |
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February 26, 2005
Go, Read: Joe Sacco in Iraq
The Guardian has an eight-page Joe Sacco story available
via this page on its site in what seems to be a massive PDF.
It's worth the wait.
posted 9:58 am PST |
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Conversational Euro-Comics
Bart Beaty on another book in the Expresso line, Gregory Mardon's Incognito: Victimes Parfaites.
posted 7:38 am PST |
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CR Week In Review
Top Stories
The week's most important comics-related news stories, February 19 to February 25, 2005:
1. Turkish cartoonists
unite in objection to a legal ruling against one of their own for a cartoon depicting the Prime Minister, a man who has engendered some journalistic reforms but routinely sues the press.
2. Essayist and author Hunter S. Thompson, an icon of late 20th century popular culture and an influential figure in comics circles,
dies from self-inflicted gunshot wound.
3. Little Sisters
loses access to funding with which the Vancouver store planned to fight Canadian Customs concerning its practice of keeping certain books from entering that country.
Winner of the Week
Creators, for
its eyebrow-raising showing on a recent awards nominee list.
Loser of the Week
Print, given a vote of no-confidence by its current caretakers.
Quote of the Week
"Someone asked what we were up to. 'Oh, just looking at the boats,' said Hunter. Then he whispered: 'We've got to get out of here Ralph, we must flee. We've failed. We've failed, Ralph.' He set off two distress flares in the harbour and set fire to some boats to cause a distraction so we could get away, which meant going to a coffee bar and pretending we were ordinary people." -- Illustrator Ralph Steadman in
The Guardian, on
working with Hunter S. Thompson.
Cartoon from Chip Bok, one of Creators' editorial cartoonists.
posted 7:16 am PST |
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Extras, PR and Other Raw Material
PR -- Brodie's Law Release:
Brodie.doc
PR -- IDW PR on Metal Gear Solid:
IDW_PR.doc
EX -- Top Shelf Newsletter:
TopShelfNewsletter0205.doc
PR -- Alias Lethal Instinct Release:
Lethalinstinctpr.doc
PR -- Marvel Release:
Marvel_PR.doc
posted 7:00 am PST |
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February 25, 2005
Bill Yoshida, 1921-2005
Comics historian, writer and essayist Mark Evanier
has posted word that longtime Archie Comic Publications letterer Bill Yoshida passed away last week. Evanier notes the span and general shape of Yoshida's career, which began in the late 1960s. The industry veteran was nominated for the Eisners' lettering awards in 1996 and 1999. Additional information will be posted here if any is received.
posted 7:38 am PST |
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Creators Leads Opinion Award Nominees
Although it's a very new award, and I really can't judge its import, it's interesting to note that
Creators has three of the finalists in
the second annual Opinion Awards' editorial cartoonist category. I didn't even know Luckovich was with Creators, so I think that might be new.
Copley News Service has another, which makes Tom Toles of
Universal the only cartoonist with one of the more traditionals given the nod. The nominees:
Chip Bok of the
Akron Beacon Journal (Creators)
Steve Kelley of
The Times-Picayune (Creators)
Mike Luckovich of
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (Creators)
Gary Markstein of the
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (Copley News Service)
Tom Toles of
The Washington Post (Universal Press Syndicate)
Cartoon from Steve Kelley, the cartoonist on this list with whom I'm the least famliar.
posted 7:23 am PST |
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Go, Look: Otto Gabos
posted 7:20 am PST |
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Citizen Melrose Notes Crime Spree
Concerned citizen
Kevin Melrose at Thought Balloons has been tracking a
comics-related crime spree with
funny commentary I won't try to replicate here. Flashing lights on the big crime map in
Steve Geppi's office (I'm guessing on that) include
North Carolina,
Iowa,
Arizona, and
Tokyo. It's probably a good sign if people are stealing comics again, although a bad sign that fencing them seems to bring back pennies on the dollar.
posted 7:10 am PST |
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Peter Bagge Interviewed as Seattle Icon
Cartoonist Peter Bagge
compares Seattle then and now as part of a series of interviews with "icons," which the
Seattle P-I defines as people who were around before the mid-1990s. "Even in the alternative cartooning scene that I'm in ... a lot of young cartoonists came here right out of college. I don't know what they thought was going to happen, that some fairy dust would be sprinkled on them and they would become rich."
posted 7:05 am PST |
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Quick hits
Neal Adams Joins Messner-Loebs Efforts
Ted Rall Vs. Frontpagemag.com
Sierre Not Thrilled about Lausanne Festival
New Doonesbury Book: 2004 Amputee Storyline
ShaBot6000's Speaking Voice Brings Joy
Objection to Raeburn Claim Re: Chris Ware
Personalized Comics Pages: Limit Our View?
Mandarake Business Breakdown: Otaku Emphasis
Local Business Profile: Coliseum of Comics
Cartoonists Challenge Each Other to Daily Grind
ANN Seeks Manga Reviewer
Dark Horse Ends 3 X 3 Eyes Series
February 24, 2005
Turkish Artists Protest Legal Action
In a story of cartoonist solidarity with political ramifications, the Turkish Cartoonists Association
has gathered in Istanbul to protest a lawsuit filed by the prime minister against a cartoonist. Last week a court returned a $3500 charge against
Cumhuriyet, the newspaper that in May ran Musa Kart's cartoon featuring Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan as a cat in a ball of yarn. It is one of more than 50 lawsuits filed by the prime minister against the press. Another cartoonist, Sefer Seli, was previously convicted and fined.
The cartoonists hope to add to international pressure to keep Erdogan from impeding what they feel is free speech, a potentially useful political lever because of Turkey's attempts to join the European Union. Strangely, Erdogan has enabled any number of journalism reforms since taking office.
Here's
an article about the recent decision.
posted 8:05 am PST |
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ICv2.com Releases their January 2005 Direct Market Numbers and Analysis
The comics business analysis site ICv2.com has stepped up with their usual array of numbers and analysis concerning the direct market of comic shops and hobbie stores. This includes their
general news story, an
analysis story, a
list of top 300 comics with the site's arrived-at numbers, and a similar list featuring the
top 100 graphic novels. The slight declines continue, Marvel enjoys top of chart dominance while DC catches its breath between mega-series, and retailers like manga if Dark Horse sells it.
ICV2.com can offer
monthly numbers that go back several years, which means it's easy to start to notice things. Like comparing January 2002 to January 2005: the number of comics selling over 70,000 and over 50,000 seems to have stayed the same or gone up slightly, but the numbers on comics selling over 20,000 and over 10,000 have gone down. The sales of the #25 and #50 comic have stayed relatively the same, but the number of comics sold by the 100th best selling comic have gone down. The lower part of the comics market seems to be dropping off and spreading out.
Cover art from New Avengers #2; the king of comic books.
posted 7:37 am PST |
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Missed It: New Dr. Master Releases
Like the perpetually troubled teen given to sudden dye jobs on a bad soap opera, the company essentially formally known as ComicsOne
announced a slew of future releases, giving almost none of them release dates and not including the most popular title available to it. Heidi MacDonald goes into some of why this is weird
here, and a quick scan of
this article will clue you into how baffling this company has played it for a while now.
posted 7:20 am PST |
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Go, Look: Edmond Baudoin
posted 7:15 am PST |
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Lausanne to Pursue Its Own Festival
When the Sierre Festival
looked like it was over for good, a
few other Swiss cities stepped up to profess interest in hosting the 50,000-plus comics festival, perhaps the second most importan in Europe. One such city was
Lausanne, who apparently got used to the idea to the extent that now that Sierre
is back on track in that city for 2006
they're now interested in doing a show of their own.
posted 7:04 am PST |
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Quick hits
Claiming Mr. Dithers as a Positive
Brussels Shop Plumbs Past for Worthy Reprints
Wordless Comics Sought for Olympics Publication
Tokyopop's Library Market Bestsellers
February 23, 2005
Former Cartoonist Accuses Churchill of Once Having Curtailed His Free Speech
In one of the odder jump-in-and-add-ons to an ongoing political hot-button issue, Grant Crowell, a one-time campus cartoonist, has charged the controversial professor
Ward Churchill of not supporting his right to free expression while he was a student at the University of Hawaii-Manoa in 1994. The charge surfaced as part of heated debate about Churchill being invited back to Hawaii to speak.
According to this article in the Rocky Mountain News, Churchill, visiting for a speech back then, joined a chorus of educators and students decrying a Crowell cartoon as racist, putting pressure on editors and administrators to punish Crowell in some way.
Leaving aside the continent's worth of emotional issues regarding Churchill, what's interesting to me is that Crowell claims Churchill compared him to Phillippe Rupprecht, a cartoonist who did anti-Semitic drawings for the loathesome Nazi paper
Der Sturmer, of which you can
see a few here, and asserted that Crowell's fate and Rupprecht's may be similar, meaning, Crowell assumed,
death by hanging.
The
Rocky Mountain News points out it was
Julius Streicher and not Rupprecht who was hanged after the war tribunal, but still, it's hard to imagine speech more strident than what Crowell accuses Churchill of using (
even though roughly the same accusation has popped up elsewhere), and it's doubly hard to imagine any cartoonist simply more obscure than Rupprecht popping up in the news at all. I mean, what's next, a major newspaper profile of Hak Vogrin?
posted 9:10 am PST |
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UG Comix Pioneer Hak Vogrin Profiled
The Newark Star Ledger checks in with
Hak Vogrin on the occasion of his participation in a New York group show and finds a very engaged 84-year-old artist and activist living a fruitful if not ever quite contented life in one of those nice parts of New Jersey that rarely gets mentioned in stand-up comedy.
Vogrin was a contributor to
Yellow Dog and
The Realist (as an illustrator), and looks to have done at least one solo comic with Print Mint called
The Captain. I'm not great with underground comix history, but I find Vogrin's age interesting. He's about 20 years older than Robert Crumb, and I wasn't aware of a lot of participation from older artists in that first wave of UG publishing. It also sort of looks like his cartoon art was more reminiscent of Herb Gardner cocktail napkin type art than other cartoonists of that period.
It looks like you can get a movie or two about Vogrin
here. You can read a biography
here and view some of his more recent work
here.
posted 9:04 am PST |
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Brussels To Feature Travel Drawings
I'm not sure this is newsworthy beyond it being very cool-sounding and one of those significant differences between celebration of the art form here and abroad, but if I'm reading
this article correctly, the upcoming comics festival in Brussels will feature as part of its "travel" theme an original project whereby ten cartoonists were sent to different world locations, with the drawings they make to be presented at the festival with descriptive accompaniment.
The heavy-hitting line-up:
Jose Munoz in Paris,
Christophe Blain in Teheran,
Francois Boucq in Mexico,
Philippe Dupuy and Charles Berberian in Tangiers,
Nicolas de Crecy in Recife (Brazil),
Andre Juillard in the U.S.,
Jacques de Loustal in the Marquesas Islands,
Lorenzo Mattotti in Angkor (Cambodia),
Francois Schuiten in Mt. Fuji and
Moebius in Luxor (Egypt).
posted 8:55 am PST |
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Wizard Edge Now Special Section
Wizard Edge, the popular mainstream magazine and convention company's independent comics focused publication,
will now be an insert in a Wizard movie magazine.
Wizard Edge has been praised by some industry observers as a gateway magazine for young mainstream comics fans and criticized by others for its, well, unique perspective on what makes up non-mainstream American comic books. I'm sure there are arguments why the move to insert status is a good thing (more people will read it) and a bad thing (it's an insert now).
posted 8:46 am PST |
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