Creators: George Herriman; Derya Ataker, Jacob Covey Publishing Information: Fantagraphics, hard cover, 200 pages, August 2007, $29.95 Ordering Numbers: 1560978546 (ISBN10)
I believe that just about everything concerning personal expression in comics can be traced back to impulses that parade through George Herriman's Krazy Kat, and this freakishly beautiful and surprisingly modest art object from editor Derya Ataker and designer Jacob Covey puts that notion into full display. A suite of episodes chiseled from Herriman's great work whose highlight is a 1920 sequence featuring a group of famous "panoramic dailies," The Kat Who Walked in Beauty may be the best book I've ever seen in helping explain the feature's many virtues. The earliest strips reprinted spotlight Herriman's formal playfulness and genre tweaking, a group of restored sequences run in vertical fashion put on display the cartoonist's ability to string together sustained moments of whimsy, the beautiful and jaw dropping sequences will give the reader a sense of visual poetry and staging, while a final group of cartoons linked to a popular stage show allow the strip's gentle power to be reflected back onto newsprint in a way that seemingly enhances their essential loveliness and vibrancy. That breakdown may sound oddly brusque, and perhaps sort of ridiculous, but I have a hard time speaking about Krazy Kat. I find its virtues rather self-evident, and I'm just beginning to be able to take in the entirety of what made it great. It feels like its own desert setting that way, a strip that almost too hard to drink in with eyes fully open.
Various Friday News Story Updates
* Reporters Sans Frontieres continues to monitor political reaction to the Swedish newspaper Nerikes Allehanda running the Lars Vilks cartoon of Muhammed with the body of a dog. Pakistan followed Iran in summoning a Swedish diplomat to receive their official protest, while the Organization of the Islamic Conference called for the cartoonist and editor to be punished.
* The banned Opus story heads into its second of two weekends where one eighth of the strip's client base decided not to run a pair of cartoons having a go at Islamic themes and humor. Editorials like these I think show just how confused the issues have become, and how easily they're manipulated to make a weak political point about biased media or to assert the general superiority of a certain culture. I mean, after you've vomited the notion up on the table that something about the confused reaction to the 2006 Danish Cartoons Controversy somehow means that nobody should ever do cartoons about Christians, either, do you go anywhere with that, or are you just making a strident point for the sake of making a strident point?
* The Chicago Reader follows up on some of their media beat coverage of the story with a full profile of Scott Nychay, the cartoonist whose paper entered him in contests and used the results for publicity after laying off the cartoonist.
Daryl Cagle presents groupings of editorial cartoons according to the popular news stories they cover, which is often a great way to look for emerging themes and broad conclusions on a controversial subject. As his gallery of cartoons about Senator Larry Craig shows, Cagle's round-ups can be equally compelling when a story touches on so many potential issues without commenting in effective fashion on seemingly any of them.
Comics Retailer's Magic Check Scam
In yet another odd story about a comics retailer running afoul of the law, police in Altoona, Pennsylvania were earlier this week issued a warrant for the arrest of George Newton Hampton Jr., the operator of an Altoona, Pennsylvania comic book shop, for several charges related to an altered check he received from a local judge. According to the local media report, Hampton took a check for the amount of $16.98 and altering it into a check for the amount of $1500. He then used the check to pay a variety of bills and to make a few cash transfers, maxing out at about $10,000.
Hampton's store, Excalibur Collectibles, was locked and empty at the time of the newspaper story's filing.
* When I wrote that Mark Evanier's sure to be excellent, forthcoming biography on Jack Kirby, Kirby: King of Comics was such a major event as to make it the only book of its type this Fall worth considering, I clearly was harboring some sort of odd resentment against Charles Schulz biographer David Michaelis, whose equally anticipated Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography will also debut in the weeks ahead. Peanuts guru Nat Gertler has an early review. One thing I want to see is if Schulz's marital drama will be the centerpiece of how the book is presented through the press, and if so, how that notion will be tied back into his work or the progression of his career. Or if it will be.
Shaenon Garrity draws a line between cartoonist Edward Gorey and one of his favorite shows, and receives bonus points for not going with a Gashlycrumb Tinies set-up. As a bonus, Garrity reprints an article about what might be Gorey's first TV obsession. Gorey would later be quoted enthusing on behalf of some odd shows, enough of them that we made fun of it at The Comics Journal.
Go, Read: Superhero Line Analyses
* Newsaramatakes a look at event fatigue, the notion that comics fans are over time becoming tired with mainstream comics companies' mega-events and crossovers, and that such books are locked into a cycle of diminishing returns. It's a very important question because of how such series drive the industry at this time. While the article proves to be a quality survey of different viewpoints from the retailer community, I feel that comics retailers are so wildly diverse in terms of approach and culture that drawing industry-wide conclusions from them, or even a group of them, may prove impossible.
* here's a litmus test: do you read this article by Tom Bondurant about things DC could do to more effectively secure his business and think a) those are largely sensible things and I don't really understand why they aren't already in effect, or b) screw you, old man! It's a fascinating question, and one without an easy answer. On the one hand, the vitality of mainstream American comics has traditionally been rooted in its ability to reach a continually refreshing swathe of young people. On the other hand, that audience faded significantly starting with the advent of television and in accelerated fashion after the collapse of newsstand comics distribution that one could make the case that comics like these are a specialty niche that needs to cater to its audience much more than make phantom grabs at an audience that hasn't been there since Eisenhower was president.
Cartoonist Jeff Smith notes that Scholastic's edition of Bone 6: Old Man's Cave has gone into a third printing for a total of 260,000 copies, while the overall series has pushed past the two million mark in sales. This is astonishing, even more so when you consider how the work in question was released in multiple iterations before this one.
Creators: Marc Bernardin, Adam Freeman, Lee Garbett, Jonny Rench, Rob Leigh, Brian Steelfreeze Publishing Information: DC Comics/Vertigo, comic book, 32 pages, June 2007, $2.99 Ordering Numbers:
The first issue of the five-issue Vertigo mini-series The Highwaymen reminds me of one of those movies that wants to celebrate a genre while at the same time satirize some of its excesses. I'm not sure how much of the latter we're talking about here. The characters and set pieces are broad enough to suggest a parody; there's even a guy with an English accent who calls people "mate." More significantly I think, the plot is set at some future year with references to the rich, glorious past represented by Bill Clinton's presidency, which indicates the prime-time of Vertigo's ascendant period is there to be utilized and celebrated. The execution, however, is more on line with The Big Hit (Hong Kong action films) than it is with Shaun of the Dead (zombie movies); too much at least in this first outing remains unexamined, and there's not enough dissonance between approaches to keep the reader from becoming a co-conspirator in terms of wallowing in the cliches. I found much of the issue kind of boring; I've been there before, and merely putting the tongue a bit in cheek this time around doesn't change the essential nature of the narrative landscape. This is going to require a massive shift in tone to recapture my interest, and I'm not waiting up.
I Hear Trumpets... Trumpets in the Sky The shift for the mega-popular strip For Better or For Worse from real-time soap opera into a hybrid strip of frozen-in-time framing sequences around older runs of the feature will come sooner rather than later. Really sooner. Universal Press Syndicate has announced that the new format begins Monday, September 3.
That the strip's current format would end soon had been a rumor for a couple of years and an announced reality since last Winter. A September date for the shift had been bandied about for quite some time. Still, nothing had been 100 percent confirmed until this week. In fact, Johnston's recent talk about giving the controversial Anthony/Liz romance plot more space had led some folks -- myself included -- to believe that the strip would continue for at least a few weeks longer. Oddly, Johnston has continued to assert that the Anthony/Liz relationship needs more time to develop. Whether this makes it something she wants to do within the hybrid format, or if we're supposed to believe the cartoonist simply hasn't wrapped her mind around the forthcoming change or if it's supposed to indicate that tomorrow, Saturday and Sunday will cover an astonishing amount of ground, I couldn't pretend to know.
The first flashback will use Michael and his kids as a framing device and cover the romance between leads John and Elly.
Editor & Publisherhas a lengthy article about the various issues around the shift and on Lynn Johnston in general, folding an older and informative piece about the switchover into its body.
Update: This will teach me to read all of my daily sources for links before posting and going back to bed. Brad McKay writes in to inform me that Alan Gardner at Daily Cartoonist has already solved the Anthony/Liz fate problem:
Today's Publishing News Round-Up
* a lot of comics commentators out there noticed before I did that DC Comics has delayed or canceled or virtually canceled by way of delaying a bunch of their Showcase titles. The released list of not-gonna-see-its in the discount line include a second Jonah Hex volume and one featuring Captain Carrot. This is worth noting as one of the greatly appealing things about having a line of discount trades emanating from a big publisher like DC is the possibility for the more obscure characters or concepts like Suicide Squad to receive their one trade's worth of reprints in this format.
* Johanna Draper Carlson takes a look at the new publisher Transfuzion deciding on a publishing strategy that includes not accessing the direct market of comics and hobby shops through their traditional supplier, Diamond Comic Distributors, Inc. She actually warms up to it by post's end. I'm a bit more conflicted. While I see the virtue in recognizing market realities and devoting one self to your comics beyond that market's ability to immediately make a place for them, I do think there's a danger in bringing comics into the market through whatever door without the kind of marketing and publishing support that gives them a chance to succeed.
* Here's press copy from Viz's Naruto Nation effort, where they're accelerating the production of the popular series of graphic novels in order to kind of re-boot it at a more popular point in the serial this winter. I think that bears watching, as there's just not enough of a track record to determine whether or not manga fans will buy three episodes of a serial in a month, and the effect on the market in general is unknown. Direct Market shops seem to have traditionally done poorly with a sudden flood of material, but the more important bookstore market Not only is the immediate effect on sales worth watching, but one should also keep an eye out for a hangover effect come the new year -- it's usually the sales effort after the one hitting strangely with fans that suffers, not the divergent effort itself. On the other hand, this could be a roaring success. Still, with the size of that properties fan base, those are some giant dice being rolled.
Indie Publishers Wooed In Odd Fashion
Calvin Reid's article at Publishers Weekly on the New York Comic-Con may have surprised some in the number of confessional moments in regards to show improvements it wrung from organizer Greg Topalian. Comics isn't exactly an industry that embraces self-criticism, something that's seemed apparent in aspects of previous coverage and commentary on the growing New York show.
The piece also struck about a half-dozen readers who e-mailed this site as odd for the way it broached the subject of wooing independent/alternative publishers to the show. This element caught the attention of Chris Mautner, who subsequently pointed out on Blog@Newsarama that it's one thing to pledge the devotion of resources to bringing on board publishers like the article's name-dropped Fantagraphics and Drawn and Quarterly and another thing to show you're doing this by announcing you've signed someone. Turns out that Mautner was right in seeing something weird. Talking to sources at Fantagraphics and D&Q yesterday, neither one of them has plans at this time to exhibit at NYCC in 2008, and both expressed to me they were kind of surprised to see their names pop up in the article. I believe that if you compare Mautner's pulled quote to the PW article as it now exists, you'll find a bracketed aside in the PW piece noting Fantagraphics won't be there.
I think this is intriguing beyond the e-mails asking for follow-up in that it shows the role that such publishers can play in the overall perception of a show beyond what they likely add to the bottom line. Heck, if help is to be offered to get such publishers to attend, I guess they may have value when they take away from the bottom line. I also think it's worth noting that we're now at the point where the convention schedule is diverse enough that mid-major publishers can decide to attend one of only five of the top shows, or two of the five, perhaps concentrating more of the tightly-focused arts shows, and not feel a significant, negative impact.
Team Comics Discredited For All Time
Because really, if the combined forces of comics can't be mustered behind voting Dame Darcy onto Flavor of Love, what good are they?
CR Review: Forever Nuts: The Early Years of Mutt & Jeff
Creators: Bud Fisher; Jeffrey Lindenblatt Publishing Information: NBM, hard cover, 192 pages, July 2007, $24.95 Ordering Numbers: 9781561635023 (ISBN13)
Jeffrey Lindeblatt's presentation of Bud Fisher's seminal comics strip might frustrate the casual comics fans who by now have grown accustomed to complete runs and larger than life -- or at least nearly as large as original publication -- presentation of older strips. This is definitely more survey than slab; the editors pick and choose sequences from several years in the run. For those of us that like to drop in and are interested in the strip's historical significance, Forever Nuts ends up being a smart, extremely well-illustrated essay on character development and comics' sometimes uncomfortable dialog with tone. You can see both characters develop, and what makes each one special, the way that figure design not only reveals character but almost guarantees this person or that person's ultimate fate. By fusing the anything goes nature of cartoon with the proscenium-focused staging of vaudeville, Fisher was one of the first to envision the tightly-wound tensions that would help drive interest in the medium for years to come. And when Fisher relaxed into his characters a bit and developed skill with shading to match the humor of his direction, Mutt & Jeff was as readable and entertaining as anything out there.
This Isn't A Library: New and Notable Releases to the Comics Direct Market
*****
Here are those books that jump out at me from this week's probably mostly 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 following -- I might not buy any -- but were I in a comic book shop I would likely pick up the following and look them over, potentially resulting in mean words and hurt feelings when my retailer objected.
*****
JUN070035 USAGI YOJIMBO #105 $2.99
Don't hate Stan Sakai because his comic book comes out regularly. Celebrate him.
JUN072235 ESSENTIAL DAREDEVIL VOL 4 TP $16.99
I have a fondness for that period of Marvel comic books between Kirby and Claremont, where the sales were still high enough to justify certain books being published seemingly without end in sight, but there was really no imperative that they be any good or receive a jump-start to make them a hit. There's a shabbiness about them that appeals to me. My favorite comic of this type is early-'70s Sub-Mariner, but a close second is Daredevil from the period represented here, which I believe includes the character's move to San Francisco. I would have once upon a time bet money that the move was because a Daredevil TV show was in the works during that period, but I was told by a much better comics historian than I am it was probably due to the fact that a lot of the company's writers were moving west.
MAY073713 ASTHMA GN (MR) $17.00
I buy John Hankiewicz work unseen, because 1) it's very good, and 2) good luck finding a description that makes a lick of sense. (His publisher does a pretty good job of the latter, actually.)
JAN073615 CHANCE IN HELL HC (MR) $16.95
I buy everything Gilbert Hernandez does, too, and this is a fascinating work on a lot of levels, including but not restricted to the fact that the story exists as a movie in Gilbert's main ongoing narrative in Love & Rockets.
MAY073774 INCREDIBLE CHANGE BOTS GN $15.00
Jeffrey Brown doing his own version of the Transformers. If you just went "Awww..." or "Cool!" I'm suggesting you buy it. If you just went "Ick!" or had no reaction at all, I'm suggesting you don't. I'm guessing this is fun, but forgettable.
JUN073913 SUPER SPY GN $19.95
I have this to read. What seems like a series of one-offs by Matt Kindt detailing various adventures in the lives of a group of spies apparently begins to cohere in unexpected ways. That certainly sounds like my kind of thing.
APR073681 TOKYO IS MY GARDEN GN (RES) (MR) $18.99
I've sort of lost track of what Frederic Boilet efforts have and have not been translated into English. I think this effort, in partnership with Benoit Peeters and Jiro Taniguchi, actually precedes the terms "nouvelle manga" by a couple of years.
*****
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.
To find your local comic book store, check this list; and for one I can personally recommend because I've shopped there, 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.
If I didn't list your new comic, you're welcome to assume the worst of me, but it's likely I just missed it. I am not a good person.
A few more stories and opinions have surfaced on the decision by approximately 25 newspapers not to run last and this week's Sunday installments of Opus, by Berkeley Breathed.
* Editor & Publishernotes the Catholic League's objection, which is probably better stated that papers are more solicitous of the feelings of Muslim readers than they are of Catholic readers than it would be that they should get to it and start pulling Catholic-related cartoons, too.
* this mini-editorial asks the same question, although they use a broader basis for the comparison and focus the decisions on the Washington Post deciding not to run it.
* video version of the story, some sane commentary, and what one hopes is a really old promotional photo of Berkeley Breathed can be found here.
* Reasonlooks at the story, again from the Post angle, and ties it into the DCC-reminiscent Vilks thing over in Sweden.
I would say this isn't a big story, and that newspapers being overly cautious probably isn't a story at all. What it does, though, is pick at a tidal wave of insecurity and anger just below the surface having to do with 1) what many feel was outright capitulation in terms of press coverage during the Danish Cartoons Controversy, and 2) a more general feeling that media shouldn't embody or promote or facilitate any kind of opinion except some idealized, fantasy-land, perfectly balanced series of opinions that happen to work out so that they portray one's personal views in the most positive light.
It does strike me as a bit weird that the Post and the syndicate which bears its name have such different policies on what's acceptable to put out there -- I know I had strips rejected by my syndicate when I was doing one, so I honestly don't know why a syndicate would distribute material its flagship paper wants nothing to do with -- but to be honest, I don't know the details of those two companies' relationship.
Connecticut Comic Shop Owner Pleads Guilty to Selling Pirated CDs, DVDs Local media reports indicate that Robert Miller, the owner of Sarge's Comic Store in New London, Connecticut, has pleaded guilty in federal court to selling pirated CDs and DVDs. Miller will be sentenced in November, and may end up serving a year in prison and facing stiff fines. Apparently, Miller was caught by an undercover agent, sales to whom led to a search warrant and discovery of such material. Court documents available by following the link. Accusations of pirated CD and DVD sales are part of the comics landscape, although it's something that usually surfaces at conventions when people believe the show has on their floor a retailer or two devoted to material of that type.
Diamond: Moves Warehouse to Mississippi; Steps Away From Valiant
* According to this short piece at the comics business news and analysis site ICv2.com, Diamond has decided to not to solicit Valiant Entertainment's hardcover Harbinger: The Beginning because of a trademark dispute between that company and a company called Valiant Intellectual Properties LLC. That book contained "digitally colored and re-mastered" versions of the stories in the 1992 Harbinger comic book series issues #0-7 and a new Harbinger story written by series creator Jim Shooter. The book will still be available directly from the publisher.
* Diamond will move its Memphis warehouse facility approximately 20 miles away to Olive Branch, MS and into a facility that has more than double its current warehouse space, says the Memphis Commercial-Appeal. The paper points out that the company was granted financial incentives to move its Sparta, Illinois operations to Memphis in 2001. According to the article, the Memphis warehouse serves 1500 stores. As the number of regional warehouses has been consolidated into I think three larger warehouses by Diamond, the size and effectiveness of the physical plants has become more of an issue in terms of shops getting all of the material they're due on the dates they need them.
Recent Comics History Coverage
* Roger Green talks about the Fantaco Chronicles series, a kind of specific permutation of the early Direct Market that shines a light on how things worked just 25 years ago.
* Tim O'Neil looks at the problems Marvel has with their Spider-Man property in terms of the character being married when many believe the character probably functions more effectively as a single person. This kind of thing fascinates me. Unlike a character like Mickey Mouse, Spider-Man and the other Marvel characters have to function as broad plug-in archetypes with which you can make movies and toys and as characters buffeted by change and growth on the level of progressive soap opera that engages fans paying close attention on a monthly or even weekly basis over the course of several years. There's no good way to solve the problems that causes that isn't eventually exhausted as the decades pile up, so Marvel has to kind of perpetually fudge matters, letting the character change and then scaling things back to the status quo in a demented cycle of innovation and aphasia.
* Holy crap! A series of home movies from 1986 about Forbidden Planet NYC were added to YouTube a couple of weeks back with little fanfare. I could watch videos like these all day:
Creators: Guy Endore-Kaiser and Rodd Perry Publishing Information: Andrews McMeel, soft cover, 128 pages, September 2007, $12.95 Ordering Numbers: 0740768409 (ISBN10)
I know that the thing that you're supposed to do with the one-panel strips that have followed in the wake of the monolithic Far Side is to slam them automatically for not exhibiting the specific writing genius and strange, squirrelly qualities that made Gary Larson's feature a signature newspaper comic of the second half of the 20th Century. However, if one were to apply that standard to, say, stand-up comedy, you could watch one of the better Bob Hope films and listen to That Nigger's Crazy and safely wash your hands of 98 percent of everything that's come since. That's a lot of laughs to leave on the table.
I think the telling factor with Brevity is that Guy & Rodd, a cartooning team that sounds like a country-western act, put on their cover a gag featuring old people instead of a parody of a popular style or a proclamation of their pop culture-soaked wackiness or even a panel featuring some take on a dubiously relevant, recent piece of entertainment news. Their feature has a workman-like charm along those same lines, and as their craft improves, you start to see fewer mouthful-type rambles through something weird and more sharply staged, to the point, hits. I really liked a tennis joke that involved not just a guy watching the opposite direction of the crowd following the ball, but a woman focused on that man, smitten with his oddball ways. In other words, I like some of their gags, and I like the fact they're focused on the gags, and they're clearly becoming better at presenting them. Sometimes you want to leave the fringe festival and its perfomers' admittedly admirable destruction of tropes and see a guy in a tie come out on a stage and present solid material in a 20-minute set.
Jack Kirby Would Have Been 90 Today
The late Jack Kirby, one of the five foundational comics artists of the 20th Century, would have turned 90 today. Click through the image for a tiny sampling of his visual genius.
Congratulations to the McCloud Family On completing the 50-states part of their 50-state tour in support of Scott McCloud's Making Comics. This is remarkable in that I once destroyed my relationships with 53 friends and family members during a single 17-hour trip to New Orleans. My thanks to the McClouds for all the jokes about Scott having his wife and kids leaving him back in October and deciding to make up their on-line contributions for the remainder of the trip, and about the kids, if interested, having immediate grounds to seek emancipation.
Various Chat & Theory News Updates
* This article still has Lynn Johnston ending the current real-time incarnation of the For Better or For Worse strip in September.
* Eric Burns, once and perhaps still the most widely-read writer about comics on the Internet, weighs in on newspapers dropping Opus from a useful angle: what it means in the history of the strip, once presented to editors as a savior of newsprint.
* Matthias Wivel responds to my assertion that scholarship on cartoonists like Rodolphe Topffer aren't really debunking a widely-held, firmly-argued myth that comics started with The Yellow Kid. I'm not all that convinced by Wivel's restatement, and I find a lot of his rhetoric slippery. For one, I very obviously didn't show in my original argument that Gary Groth is ignorant of 19th Century comics-making in favor of a view of Yellow Kid as the genesis of everything. What I pointed out is that Gary was unfairly portrayed that way in a film trailer when I thought it pretty clear he was looking at Yellow Kid as a landmark starting point in terms of industry impact and locking into place a firm path of development at that point forward -- the way Christopher Columbus discovered America for modern Europe despite entire civilizations already being here, or the way you can point to seven or eight American college football games as the first one depending on your standards for doing so.
I think the Topffer scholarship is valuable and Kunzle's work admirable and enlightening, but I don't think learning about Topffer has ripped the scales from anyone's eyes or shattered anyone's view of comics, and I think that's the basis of a claim being insinuated on its behalf. Even as a college student with a half-assed interest in comics, I knew about artists like Wilhelm Busch and William Hogarth. Even a promotional interview at Newsarama contains language qualifying Yellow Kid as a seminal work, and an American one, and clearly using the industry cohesion construction when making it more sweeping historical claims. I wonder sometimes if there isn't an underdog mentality to comics that makes people want to state all achievement in terms of casting down a nefarious orthodoxy.
* Steve Flanagan takes up the same issue, with a specific example:
You asked, "Did anyone worth considering ever really take the Yellow Kid seriously as an artistic starting point?"
I have in front of me "The Yellow Kid: A Centennial Celebration of the Kid Who Started the Comics" (Kitchen Sink, 1995) in which Bill Blackbeard argues
just that, using a definition of comics (multi-panel, word balloons, no text outside the frame) designed to exclude all predecessors. It's as hugely unconvincing as his assertion that the Yellow Kid was cancelled because the Spanish-American War made the colour yellow unpopular with New Yorkers (it's in the Spanish flag, you know).
Okay, I'll confess, some people do believe this. There's all sorts of theories people have, like the one that Peter Arno was the first to do third-meaning cartoons and thus is either a progenitor or an exemplar of the form, or that it's useful to split the history of comic books into Olympic medal categories according to developments in one genre. But I don't think it's a widespread, bedrock notion among serious writers, not anymore.
* I think I totally skipped another recent flare-up of comics argumentation, or, as R. Fiore put it, another instance of several bald men fighting over a comb, in this panel from San Diego about comics not being literature. Neil Cohn comments. T Hodler comments.
CR Review: Where's Dennis? The Magazine Cartoon Art of Hank Ketcham
Creators: Hank Ketcham; Shane Glines and Alex Chun Publishing Information: Fantagraphics, soft cover, 200 page, September 2007, $19.95 Ordering Numbers: 1560978538 (ISBN10)
The wonderful thing about Fantagraphics' small series of books focused on pin-ups, gags and magazine cartooning is that it fills in the blanks for careers and periods of comics where those outlets played a huge part. In the introduction to Where's Dennis?, we not only get a smart, short history of Hank Ketcham's early career, we find out Ketcham received art advice from Noel Sickles, that he was friends with Virgil Partch, and that there was a community of cartoonists in the Monterey Peninsula. This utility extends to the book itself. While we know that many of the cartoonists who came of age in the 1950s grew out of gag and magazine cartooning, except for Charles Schulz few of the greats have had this work collected.
Editors Alex Chun and Shane Gline splice in a few direct descendant Dennis panels next to their magazine progenitors, the entire book presents itself in relation to what is to come in a more profound and subtle way. The 1940s Ketcham roams from style to style, rattling within the confines of rigid gag set-ups in his early features to a broader take on post-World War II life, bouncing back and forth between dozens of ways to make people laugh. Where's Dennis? could be read entirely for how Ketcham slowly and rigorously perfects the way his bodies lean against and away from each other in slight and telling ways, an approach to describing human relationships that when with paired with the Dennis feature's beautiful line work locked into place one of the exquisite, recurring stage shows in comics history.
"Ho" Cartoonist Will Keep His Job
Ed Gamble will apparently not be let go from his job at the Florida Times-Union despite controversy and calls for his firing last week related to a cartoon about the "Don't Snitch" phenomenon where a character used the term "Ho" in addressing a child witnessing a crime.
Controversies Simmer About History of Comics and Its Modern Nature
Two conversations spread across the Internet worth noting: Eddie Campbell on the graphic novel and how more sloppily conceived definitions fall short of the mark; the Metabunker fellas on Rodophe Topffer as the earliest cartoonist.
I find Topffer interesting in all the same ways as everyone else does, but did anyone worth considering ever really take the Yellow Kid seriously as an artistic starting point? I see that mentioned whenever someone brings up Topffer -- Gary Groth gets beaten with that argument construction in this movie trailer as if the other comics people caught him in a goof-up. I remember writing about 19th century German cartooning as comics when I was a graduate student in 1992, and I wasn't exactly rich in my comics knowledge. I always thought it was pretty clear that the Yellow Kid began comics the same way Christopher Columbus discovered America -- not in any literal sense, but in a sense where the economic and cultural forces were now combined behind it to lock into place a certain kind of future development for the industry. Did anyone after 1974 or so think otherwise?
From the person nice enough to send me this photo: "On Saturday, August 25, 2007, cartoonist Colleen Coover (Banana Sunday, Small Favors) and writer Paul Tobin (Spider-Man Family) were married at Laurelhurst Park in Portland, Oregon."
Tobin's writing credits also include Banana Sunday, as Root Nibot.
A Short Interview With Comic-Con Director of Marketing and Public Relations David Glanzer Every year I try to end the summer with a look back at the summer's convention season via a short chat with Comic-Con International spokesperson David Glanzer. Comic-Con puts on WonderCon and the Alternative Press Expo (APE) in San Francisco and the massive Comic-Con International in San Diego. This year's show saw sell-outs three of four days and multiple caps on ticket options throughout. A huge boom in interest stemming from Hollywood studios, manga publishers, traditional New York publishing houses and toymakers has pushed the San Diego show over the top and into pop culture event status.
While there has been on several tracks a corresponding rise in interest in comics-related material -- I know that I moderated panels that were three times the size of such panels five years ago, all with smart, attentive question-askers -- the overall financial investment required by the show and changing market strategies at several companies have called into question some folks' commitment to such a big event. Some comics booths had their best year ever, but I also spoke to multiple medium-sized exhibitors on the comics end who told me they were seriously considering making 2007 their last show. A couple of those were considering not coming back despite having a great year. With the convention in San Diego through 2012 and not likely to change very much in terms of attendance capacity over the next five years, and a changing calendar that effectively gives the corporation the first major show and the last major show of the season, I really wanted to talk to someone from CCI this year.
Do we make too much of conventions, particularly San Diego's? Maybe. Still, they're important comics businesses and a key access point into the culture and state of industry health for comics as well. Having made my goal for next year to be invited to no parties, sit in the audience at the Eisners and pay for all my own dinners, I'm less interested in the social outlet factors of cons -- although those have changed, too, as the Internet has become what cons used to be in terms of a place to meet like-minded fans, making conventions more of a place to continue/crystallize/consummate such relationships -- and more interested in their role of providing a public pop quiz to comics folks in terms of their priorities and ability to put a certain face forward. The fact that you can practically define some companies' current approach to comics by simply noting they don't exhibit at the show tells you just how large such events loom.
I appreciate Mr. Glanzer's time, and note that his employer is (at least for now) an advertiser here.
TOM SPURGEON: I want to ask you a couple of questions about the 125,000 attendance figure you gave Jonah Weiland Comic Book Resources, which I assume is rigorously accurate as I know you guys really work the numbers when the show is over. First, how exactly does a full sell-out three out of four days as opposed to last year's less dramatic one-day temporary shutdown only result in overall attendance gains that small?
DAVID GLANZER: Well, the short answer is we placed caps on attendance for each day this year and once those caps were met we basically shut down. And while our official number is 125,000 I think the actually number is plus that by a few hundred.
We opted, some time back, to forgo the money generated by selling exhibit space in Hall H (which is a pretty big hall) by turning that into a theater and filling it with chairs. Were that hall utilized as exhibit space, it might have resulted in us having to place these attendance caps much sooner.
In the past we sold a variety of different packages; Four-Day, Three-Day, One-Day etc., and while those were popular, the majority of sales happened at the door.
When we got to a point last year when we had to halt sales, we decided to look at registration in terms of how many different packages we sold, as well as registration from different departments and what was done at the door.
The caps we placed this year allowed us to accommodate at least as many people as came last year, as well as a small increase. So while we stopped registration we were well within our comfort zone of the center not reaching capacity.
SPURGEON: Did you curtail things too much? Could you have handled more people?
GLANZER: No and yes. I don't think our caps on attendance were too conservative. I know this will sound like a line, but honestly one of our main concerns for people attending the show is safety. There's a tremendous amount of people congregated in one place for four and a half days and we want to be sure that those who attend can do so in relative comfort. I know many will claim it was anything but comfortable at times, and I would agree. But safety is paramount so no I don't think we were overly conservative in our caps.
The answer to the second part of your question is yes, I think we could have accommodated more people, and generated additional income. But it really isn't about the bottom line. It is about providing as safe and comfortable atmosphere as possible. The attendance caops was an experiment in that direction and I think it worked well.
SPURGEON: To give an idea how you compare to some of the other festivals in terms of congestion, how many people do you figure are on site on your busiest day?
GLANZER: Wow. Well, conservatively I'd say at least 50,000 + on each day.
SPURGEON: How many four-day participants were there as opposed to 2006? How many of the special three-day passes were you able to sell?
GLANZER: There was a jump in four-day memberships this year compared to last year. And when the four-day's sold out, some bought three-days and a Saturday only. So some people mixed and matched their packages.
SPURGEON: Three thousand press passes sounds like a lot of press passes to me. In fact, David, that's the same figure I've seen for press passes issued for the Super Bowl. I'm not seeing a Super Bowl-level of press saturation. In fact, I'm not sure that I'm seeing three thousand stories. How would you explain the discrepancy?
GLANZER: Honestly, I'm sorry to say that I think some who attend as press probably aren't filing stories about the show.
SPURGEON: Does this concern you at all? Is there a benefit to a liberal policy when it comes to giving those out?
GLANZER: Yes, it does concern me, but it's a difficult beast to tame. We have always been fairly liberal in issuing press passes though with capacity concerns, I don't know if this is a policy we can continue.
I have to say it's very disconcerting to find websites that give instructions on how to thwart our very thwartable press registration system.
It really is a cause of concern.
Also, I can't believe I used the word -- or made up word -- "thwartable".
SPURGEON: You told me something very interesting about how you value a variety of press sources, from on-line to print to film media. Can you talk a little bit about your organizations general take towards the press?
GLANZER: Well as you can imagine we welcome a variety of press from a number of organizations, from major magazines and newspapers to online press and bloggers.
We have always held online press in high regard. I can't tell you how many conversations I've had where people refer to major publications as "legitimate" press, while insinuating that online press are not. For us, we probably hold online and fan press in higher regard that what some might consider "legitimate" press.
While a major publication or newspaper may write about us once a year, it's the online press and even bloggers who tend to write about us throughout the year. For us that is extremely important.
This year we had a very impressive guest list. But I have no doubt that of those 40 or 50 names, major press and publications would probably only know about a hand full. Online and fan press, on the other hand, not only know who they are, but their importance to this industry and they may write about their coming appearance at Comic-Con. And even if they don't, they know that those people will be there and may decide to cover a panel they may be on.
SPURGEON: I saw a few people complain about press not being able to access certain panels, and yet when I asked around, I couldn't find anyone who was unable to get access to events they were covering. While I'm all for a general ramping up of the press pass power to superhuman, immediate access levels, was this a legitimate issue from your perspective?
GLANZER: Trust me, no one would like to infuse the press badge with Gamma Radiation more than me and, by the way, how cool would that be? But I guess with 3000 press, it really isn't possible to allow all press special access to every panel. Some rooms don't even hold that many people. And with over 350 hours of programming, it's a safe bet that a reporter is probably not going to be able to cover everything they may hope to.
That being said, no one wants to turn away someone who wants to cover a panel. I don't know what the answer is yet, but it's something we're definitely looking into.
SPURGEON: Could you maybe go to a targeted press pass that allows comics press instant access into comics events but makes them stand in line to gawk at actors from Lost?
GLANZER: We are looking to some changes, but I don't know that it will be changes to the pass itself.
I have an idea that I've kicked around, it might work, it may not, but it's going to have to be taken apart, and discussed further. I really don't mean to be coy about this, it's just we do take this very seriously and I would hate to give a half answer before we've looked at the issue from a variety of angles.
SPURGEON: Assuming you're going to be working at near full capacity for the next few years, what can you now do to generally improve the experience knowing you're going to be working a variation of the same crowds from here through 2012?
GLANZER: My personal hope is that we can entice some people to work with us to program some off-site events. I know there was an event on Friday evening at PetCo Park , which we had no involvement with, but an big event like that, during the day, might be a partial solution to the crowding situation at the center.
Granted, one event won't alleviate the problem, but a number of events? It's something worth exploring and that might allow us to re-examine the attendance caps we utilized this year.
Again, this is just my personal take on things and is truly off the top of my head at the moment.
SPURGEON: I've seen you give some kind of vague answers about maybe pursuing off-site facilities for some of aspects of programming, like maybe finding a separate home for the big movie/TV preview track. More concretely, can we reasonably expect a new venue next year? When would you know? Is it a priority for the convention?
GLANZER: Currently there is no off-site facility that can accommodate the 6500 people that would normally see a presentation in Hall H. While PetCo Park may be able to accommodate the crowd, I don't know that they can present the clips and program in such a way as to rival the screens and sound of Hall H.
Another issue we are facing is limited resources. As you can imagine the show is an expensive one to produce. And we are, conceivably, at a point now where we can't accommodate very many more exhibitors or attendees so revenue probably won't increase very much in the future. However our expenses do.
This year alone, we saw some dramatic increases in some of our expenses. And I can only assume, that will continue.
But yes, it is a priority for us to see how best we can accommodate all those who want to attend the show.
SPURGEON: Speaking of which, what is the priority for the convention coming out of the 2007 show? What one thing would the convention like to see different at the 2008 show, or what one thing is most important stay a high priority?
GLANZER: Well certainly safety is a primary concern as I mentioned earlier and of course space. In regard to space, every department is touched by this one issue of how to accommodate the people who want to attend and those who want to exhibit.
I have read some reports that question why we didn't think of this or why we didn't think of that. And in many cases we may have, but for whatever reason it just wasn't possible to implement.
We have a big show on our hands, and thank goodness people want to return year after year. It really is up to us to try and accommodate them as best we can. And I can promise you that while it may not seem like a lot is being done in this area, we truly are working on it from so many different angles.
SPURGEON: There will be some adjustments in the convention calendar next year. Does any of this schedule shakeout have an impact on your plans for WonderCon or APE?
GLANZER: No I don't believe so. Especially with WonderCon and APE (and to a much smaller degree Comic-Con) we are really at the mercy of the convention facilities to give us dates that will work for us. But ultimately, it is up to them as it relates to the dates they offer.
SPURGEON: Is there anything the convention can do to alleviate some of the enormous crowding concerns on the floor itself? I have to be honest with you, David, there were times I was scared for some of the small children I saw, that somebody large or several somebodies might fall on them.
GLANZER: Yes, the first is limited attendance. The second I think would be some off-site programming.
We've always been able to move our attendees around pretty well. They're a seasoned bunch and are pretty familiar with how best to enjoy the show. But with the number of people at the show, and the number of children, yes, it's a major concern and one that we take very seriously.
Limited attendance means less people on the floor, and off-site programming space means the same thing.
This year there were several events that were held off-site and they proved pretty effective. I think we'll look more to that in the future.
SPURGEON: Can you speak to continuing rumors you might add a Monday or go a full week? You pretty much shot this out of the sky when we spoke at the show, but if you could do so here, I'd love to have it on the record. Can I take it you're committed to the four day plus preview night formula from here on out?
GLANZER: Yes. We will not add a Monday or go to a full week. And we are in San Diego until 2012.
Adding days is much more complicated than it might otherwise appear. The first issue would be trying to book the center for additional days.
Typically facilities book several years out and San Diego is no different. Because there are typically shows right before we move in and right after, I would imagine the soonest we could even entertain something like that would be several years down the road. But, again, it's not something we're entertaining.
The other is expense, both in terms of facility rental and expenses for exhibitors as well. Once you add a day, or a few days, you're talking about additional cost for space, additional hotel nights, additional food and, in the case of retailers, additional time away from their stores.
And this isn't even taking into consideration that anyone, whether they are organizers or exhibitors, or press for that matter, would want to spend any more time at the show than they already do.
There really can be too much of a good thing.
SPURGEON: Was it important for the con to get Marvel back a full exhibitor?
GLANZER: Sure. I mean, from a purely fan perspective absolutely. And I honestly hope it was as good for them to be back as it was for us to have them.
SPURGEON: At what point do you plan to start talking to San Diego about 2013 and beyond? Is there any one factor that you're looking at before you sign another extension?
GLANZER: Well to be honest a five year contract is pretty long. It's typical to have a three year contract and see how things progress. This year was a little different in that there was someone else looking at summer for those years. So we had to make a decision.
With 2013 some years away, I would think any serious talk about location would happen around or after 2010.
SPURGEON: I talked to almost seven medium-sized exhibitors who were seriously considering making 2007 their last year. Is there any thought from the con's views of doing things of doing some things that might make it easier for those exhibitors that don't have dedicated staff or a lot of resources? Would you be willing to hear feedback and suggestions from such exhibitors? Or is this just a case where the market will bear out?
GLANZER: Of course we would be willing to listen to exhibitors. I think there's a perception out there that we just do what we want, when the tuth is we really do try to do what is best for those who attend, whether they be exhibitors or attendees.
I know we go to some lengths to try and assist exhibitors with breaks on move in and such, but certainly, I would hope any exhibitor knows they can contact Justin (our exhibits manager) to discuss any issues they may have had, or suggestions for a smoother running event.
SPURGEON: Were there any complaints about the smaller artist's alley? Can you guarantee there won't be more space lost in that part of the show? Does the show follow up to see that those spaces are used?
GLANZER: By moving the Art Auction upstairs we were able to add more spaces to Artists Alley. Were there complaints about space? Yes there were.
SPURGEON: I'm sorry, I'm not quite following your response. It was my understanding that the number of artists alley slots were reduced this year. Are you telling me they increased?
GLANZER: Artist Alley (as well as some booth spaces) were to be reduced in that section of the facility this year to make space available for consessions. We were able to move the Art Auction upstairs to the Sails Pavilion so we didn't lose any tables in AA. In fact, I believe we increased space by by about 25 tables over 2006.
Can I guarantee there won't be more space lost in that part of the show? No I honestly can't. Not because we're planning on cutting space, but because the floor is always fluid. Artists Alley wasn't always in that location. It has moved around, as has the entire floor. It really depends upon the layout of the floor, and the layout is based on a great many things including aisle ways, space and the like.
The shift for the mega-popular strip For Better or For Worse from real-time soap opera into a hybrid strip of frozen-in-time framing sequences around older runs of the feature will come sooner rather than later. Really sooner. Universal Press Syndicate has announced that the new format begins Monday, September 3. 
Every year I try to end the summer with a look back at the summer's convention season via a short chat with Comic-Con International spokesperson David Glanzer. Comic-Con puts on WonderCon and the Alternative Press Expo (APE) in San Francisco and the massive Comic-Con International in San Diego. This year's show saw sell-outs three of four days and multiple caps on ticket options throughout. A huge boom in interest stemming from Hollywood studios, manga publishers, traditional New York publishing houses and toymakers has pushed the San Diego show over the top and into pop culture event status. 
TOM SPURGEON: I want to ask you a couple of questions about the 125,000 attendance figure you gave Jonah Weiland Comic Book Resources, which I assume is rigorously accurate as I know you guys really work the numbers when the show is over. First, how exactly does a full sell-out three out of four days as opposed to last year's less dramatic one-day temporary shutdown only result in overall attendance gains that small?
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SPURGEON: I talked to almost seven medium-sized exhibitors who were seriously considering making 2007 their last year. Is there any thought from the con's views of doing things of doing some things that might make it easier for those exhibitors that don't have dedicated staff or a lot of resources? Would you be willing to hear feedback and suggestions from such exhibitors? Or is this just a case where the market will bear out?
SPURGEON: Were there any complaints about the smaller artist's alley? Can you guarantee there won't be more space lost in that part of the show? Does the show follow up to see that those spaces are used?