B.N. Duncan, a cartoonist, editor, publisher and distinctive personality who for years was a fixture of the Berkeley street scene, passed away on Saturday according to this post at the Comics Journal message board by former collaborator Ace Backwords. Duncan would have been 66 on July 9.
"Duncan was a ubiquitous figure in Berkeley -- and certainly one of the strangest-looking apparitions to grace its streets," the writer Bob Levin told CR. "I hadn't seen him in recent months and, knowing he'd been in poor health, I'd feared the worst. Coincidentally, his passing comes only a couple weeks after that of his good friend Claire Burch, the film maker (and author) whom I mention in my original piece."
Duncan was born in 1943 in Rochester, New York. His parents broke up before he was a year old. Duncan and his mother relocated to Berkeley, California, where he spent the majority of his childhood. It was during this period he developed an appreciation for cultural material of a kind that attracted disaffected youths, including comics efforts such as MAD and Li'l Abner. Duncan's family moved downstate to Pasadena when he was in high school. After graduation, he attended Pasadena Community College. While a student, he suffered the first of several mental breakdowns. He spent the next several years bouncing from educational institutions to mental institutions. He moved back to Berkeley in 1966, unsure as to his future.
Duncan was married for two years before separating from his wife and moving to Telegraph Avenue. With the encouragement of an art teacher he began to pursue cartooning for publication. The results was a strip called Hank and Hanna, which ran in both porn newspapers and newave 'zines. He also did the strip Beserkeley Blues for the Daily Gazette. It was through the local strip that he met future collaborator Wild Billy Wolf. BN Duncan provided art for the first cover of The Tele Times in 1978, and did much of the grunt editorial work. When Wolf left the publication, the Tele Times grew in page count and price and as a general vehicle for all things B.N. Duncan, including his appreciation for true outsider art and writing almost no one else appreciated in quite the same way. The publication ceased operations at the end of 1982.
Duncan received his biggest comics fame as a contributor to the anthology Weirdo during the 1980s. In many ways, Weirdo and Raw served as the twin poles around which various ideas about art comics would coalesce in that decade. Certainly Duncan's work fit in with the Robert Crumb-instigate west coast effort more than it ever would in Art Spiegelman and Francoise Mouly's magazine. Peter Bagge was one of Duncan's editors at Weirdo, and note that overtly sexual nature of Duncan's work could be alarming in any context.
"His work was all about his obsessions," Bagge wrote CR, "specifically sado-masochistic sex, but he also was a compulsive philosophizer and art critic. He would babble on forever (both in person but especially in letters or in print) about what struck his fancy and why. This was especially true of comic art, though hardly limited to it. Many found his SM-inspired work distasteful (people were generally very uptight about such things back in the '80s -- especially women, who found such images much more threatening than they do these days, where the trappings of bondage and discipline have become common fashion accessories), and his crude drawing style didn't help to endear his work to many folks either. Still, I think his drawings had an odd charm to them, and I also thought he was a pretty good gag writer, even if his 'jokes' were almost always mere projections of his own quirks and obsessions."
Unlike many of his fellow Weirdo contributors, Duncan wasn't able to use his appearances there as a springboard to a higher-profile venue. In the 1990s he found a small group of clients such as Bitches With Whips willing to buy his cartoons, tried a community-based magazine about comics called Point Drawn, organized art shows featuring artists that were usually cut out of such opportunities, and worked with cartoonist Ace Backwords on a series of Telegraph Avenue Street Calendars, spotlighting local street denizens and out-sized characters.
He also continued to correspond with cartoonists and comics people when he had the opportunity. Says Bagge: "Bruce used to share his thoughts with me on every issue of HATE as soon as one came out, and he would always try to limit his thoughts on one postcard to save on precious funds, but usually would continue his train of thought on another postcard, then another... I think his 'record' was seven postcards, at which point I'm sure he wished he just wrote all his thoughts down in letter form and shoved it in a single envelope! His critiques of my work were chock full of projections, where he would often assume that my own personal obsessions and motivations were the same as his. Still, even when he was way off I was always flattered by his comments, simply because my comics seemed to inspire such a strong reaction out of him." He was profiled by the Comics Journal's Bob Levin in 1996 and contributed an interview with Sophie Crumb to the magazine in 2006.
In 1995 Duncan published a collection of SM cartoons through Greenery Press called "Mercy??" "No!!". Bob Levin described Duncan's humane approach to the situations presented in his 1997 review of that book for The Comics Journal. "His drawings are gentle, muted, sweet. They are neither graphically precise nor grotesquely exaggerated. Unanchored by any details linking them to any terrain beyond their own actions, his figures float angelically upon the page."
In more recent years, Duncan joined a number of underground-era cartoonists and personal favorites in becoming a contributor to Mineshaft. "I don't know if any artist in the United States, in my mind, embodies the true spirit of the underground like B.N. Duncan," Mineshaft Co-Publisher Everett Rand told CR. His magazine Tele Times made a big impact on R. Crumb & Weirdo, I think, and it has served as an inspiration to Mineshaft as well. Duncan was very politically incorrect, but he was harder on himself than he was on any other people and he had a true love of "truth" and nature and was interested in sex, especially S & M, not as it's portrayed in the media, but as it really is, though with humor & satire...
"After R. Crumb, B. N. Duncan was the first comics artist to begin contributing to Mineshaft regularly -- four SM drawings in Mineshaft #9 -- and he continued contributing art, writing, and letters to Mineshaft until he died... he was always offering words of encouragement to Mineshaft which meant a lot to us. To Duncan life was meaningless without art and the spirit of creativity. Duncan was a pioneer oe little magazine and he promoted art and artists that otherwise would have never been heard. I'm only happy that he was able to continue being creative until the end. But he will be dearly missed." Rand mentioned that at least one future issue of Mineshaft would contain Duncan art.
Bob Levin's profile of Duncan contains within it a quote from Duncan about childhood favorite Al Capp. Like many such quotes, and especially from someone like Duncan, it could be about the work of the artist speaking as much as the one being described. "Al Capp did something very special. He presented people you laugh at because they're foolish or stupid or preposterous; at the same time your heart goes out to them for their pain and innocence and difficulties. Life is taken seriously for the suffering, but there's always something ridiculous and laughable... The writing, the dialogue, is on a lower, look-down-on-them, burlesque level; but the drawing is done with depth and dignity and humanity. There are real human beings to care about."
Levin remembers the late artist and editor as much for his efforts with others as for his own cartooning. "Duncan labored seriously and with much effort to produce work of good quality himself, and he made an extraordinary effort to promote the work of others. He fervently believed that even the most apparently off-center among us were of value, had much to contribute, and should not be cast aside. He tried, through The Tele Times, reviews he wrote, books he published, recordings he produced, and the calendar he and Ace Backwards turned out annually to call attention to the inner essences of these people and to honor their output."
"He was the giant of guy you could point to with pride and say, 'Yeah, that's Berkeley! That's why I live here.'"
A memorial service will be held on Sunday on Haste & Telegraph in Berkeley.
this article owes a crucial, overwhelming and obvious debt to Bob Levin's excellent 1996 essay on Duncan, "Outsider Cartoons: BN Duncan Goes To The Museum," The Comics Journal #185. That essay is available in the collection, Outlaws, Rebels, Freethinkers & Pirates
Honduran Cartoonist Kidnapped, Released, Cartoons Destroyed?
Jonathan Lemon passed along the following note. I've had no luck confirming it but learning that there is an editorial cartoonist by this name, but then again I'm not sure how to. I'll post it here, leave it up to your rational judgment as to how to process it and hope that someone can bring me second word. It begins with the content of the note by Mr. Lemon. I've deleted his contact information and the political phone numbers at the bottom of the note he received.
I heard this morning that my friend and editorial cartoonist Allan MacDonald [sic] has been kidnapped in Honduras and then released and all his cartoons destroyed. I had direct email contact with him and he confirmed to me that the below story is completely true and accurate. He is currently going with his family to seek safety in another country.
FYI I lived in Honduras for two years and know the cartoonist personally. His website is:
Is there any way you can post this or get this out to the press?
*****
Kidnapping and detainment of Allan McDonald and his 17 month old daughter, April. (translated on 6/30/09 by Marla Conrad)
To all -
Through this letter I am communicating to you that at 11 am in the time of Sweden and at 3 am in the time of Honduras, ALLAN MC DONALD, the Honduran cartoonist, communicated with me by Chat saying that he had been detained by the Honduran Armed Forces in a hotel. His house was ransacked and his cartoons and drawings were burnt in a bonfire en his home in Santa Lucia. He was detained with his 17 month old daughter who had not eaten and was only given water.
The communication did not last even 5 minutes and he was communicating via a portable with little battery that belonged to the accredited consul of Venezuela in Honduras who was also detained together with him, and next to them were two female journalists, a Spaniard and a Chilena, whom he did not know. He also told me that he was with the Honduran journalists Eduardo Maldonado and Esdras Amado Lopez, but they had been taken away to an unknown place.
At the moment that Allan was saying goodbye, he said RESIST and DENOUNCE THIS DEED, I've only seen this in the television when there was a coup in 1973. The communication was cut off because he said THEY'RE COMING FOR US. Apparently, they would be driven in a bus and taken out of the country through the border of El Espino, in this moment the destination and whereabouts of ALLAN MC DONALD, HIS DAUGHTER APRIL AND THEIR COMPANIONS were ignored.
This letter is the DENOUNCEMENT, and also a call to AWARENESS, it is not possible that there are some that are applauding this coup and the deprival of the most elemental rights of our population. This period seemed to be overcome but we have gone backwards to the decade of the 80's en a clear disregard of human rights which also reflects the small democratic vocation or our political class.
***
Hopefully, all involved are safe. In fact, I wouldn't mind at all finding out this is a prank.
The nominees for the 2009 Harvey Awards have been announced. The Harveys are voted on by eligible professionals and industry members, as opposed to the juried nomination process employed by the Eisner Awards. Multiple nominations went to Nat Turner, All-Star Superman, Zuda Comics and Buzzboy.
In fact, I'll freely admit I was most confused by the five nominations afforded Buzzboy, which I didn't know was still being done but I guess collected an older mini-series in 2008? The way that the nominations list the title suggests an ongoing -- can someone help with that? Was there an ongoing? Did the third issue of the Sidekicks series come out in 2008, maybe? I couldn't figure out from the site. I was also a little confused as to how quickly they had so much Harveys-related stuff actually on multiple pages of their site as opposed to something up via a blog or twitter, which makes me think the nominations must have been up for a few days...? I apologize for the lateness of this post, if that's the case. There's really no contextual help from the awards themselves, which seem to have tagged some odd books in odd ways -- Al Jaffee receiving individual nominations is awesome, but for work that appeared from 1957 to 1963? I'm confused.
Update:Buzzboy nexus and multiple nominee John Gallagher was able to clear up some of the confusion via e-mail this morning. As to what he had out, he sent the same reply to me he had e-mailed to Comics Worth Reading:
"Last year, I had two books that came out-- Kids Love Comics: Comic Book Diner which got most circulation through FCBD, and Buzzboy Sidekicks Rule #3, which was for sale at conventions and select shops across the country. Certainly not my fullest year for content. It did come out across the country last month through Diamond, but honestly, most of my books are not sold trough them-- so it is even possible that #2 was perceived as a 2008 book, as I was lucky enough to sell quite a few at Heroes Con, San Diego, Baltimore, The Miami Book Festival, and The Richmond Comic-Con, in your neck of the woods, in '08.
"I didn't complain about not being nominated in the past, so I certainly won't complain about being nominated now, I'm honored. But, personally, I think me being nominated for best writer against someone as fantastic as Grant Morrison is pretty silly, but I am proud that some of my fellow Sky-Dog creators and friends are nominated in their categories."
Asked if the FCBD effort contained Buzzboy material, Gallagher said it did. He also confirmed that although listed as a 2008 book, the collected Buzzboy Sidekicks volume did not come out in 2008, making the basis of the nominations the FCBD book and possibly material that was sold by hand.
Asked if they had encouraged voters or anything along those lines -- something past surprise nominees have done -- Gallagher said that they did nothing beyond the general encouragement of friends to get out the vote that they had done in the past, in years they were not nominated. He did point out that a lot of nominations went to all-ages material like Buzzboy, so that some of the voting may have come to his comics along those lines.
As to the how they got word up on their site so quickly, Gallagher explained that he saw that the Harvey site had the news at about 10:30 or so last night, and he got excited and got the notices up in the burst of adrenaline that followed.End Update
Ceremony host Scott Kurtz was nominated in two different categories.
The deadline for voting -- the process for which is described at the initial link -- is in late August. The winners will be announced in conjunction with the Baltimore Comic-Con, October 10-11.
I don't really understand the Harveys the way I used to understand and recognize their place in the comics firmament as 1) a process in contrast to the Eisners and 2) a collective, cohesive snapshot of nominees and winners, but it's nice to see an award nomination go to Jay Lynch's recent cover for Mineshaft, which has to be seen up close and in real-life to be appreciated.
BEST WRITER
* Kyle Baker, Nat Turner, Abrams Books
* Ed Brubaker, Captain America, Marvel Comics
* John Gallagher, Buzzboy, Sky Dog Comics
* Jeff Kinney, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Amulet Books
* Grant Morrison, All-Star Superman, DC Comics
BEST ARTIST
* Gabriel Ba, Umbrella Academy, Dark Horse Comics
* Kyle Baker, Nat Turner, Abrams Books
* Jimmy Gownley, Amelia Rules, Renaissance Press
* Jason Kruse, World of Quest, Yen Press
* Frank Quitely, All-Star Superman, DC Comics
BEST CARTOONIST
* Lar deSouza, Least I Could Do, www.leasticoulddo.com
* John Gallagher, Buzzboy, Sky Dog Comics
* Al Jaffee, Tall Tales, Abrams Books
* Jeff Kinney, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Amulet Books
* Thom Zahler, Love & Capes, Maerkle Press
BEST LETTERER
* Jimmy Gownley, Amelia Rules, Renaissance Press
* Rob Leigh, The Spirit, DC Comics
* Doug Sherwood, Local, Oni Press
* John Workman, Marvel 1985, Marvel Comics
* Thom Zahler, Buzzboy, Sky Dog Comics
BEST INKER
* Rich Faber, Buzzboy, Sky Dog Comics
* Jamie Grant, All-Star Superman, DC Comics
* Jeff Kinney, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Amulet Books
* Mark Morales, Thor, Marvel Comics
* Ryan Winn, The Darkness, Image Comics
BEST COLORIST
* Frank Cammuso, Otto's Orange Day, Raw Junior, LLC
* Jamie Grant, All-Star Superman, DC Comics
* Laura Martin, Thor, Marvel Comics
* Wil Quintana, The Mice Templar, Image Comics
* Dave Stewart, Umbrella Academy, Dark Horse Comics
BEST COVER ARTIST
* Frank Cho, Buzzboy: Sidekicks Rule! #3, Sky Dog Press
* James Jean, Fables, Vertigo Comics
* Jay Lynch, Mineshaft #23, Mineshaft Publishing
* Ken Rocafort, Pilot Season: Core #1, Top Cow
* Alex Ross, Justice Society of America, DC Comics
BEST NEW SERIES
* The Dreamer, IDW
* Echo, Abstract Studios
* High Moon, www.zudacomics.com
* Night Owls, www.zudacomics.com
* Supertron, www.zudacomics.com
BEST CONTINUING OR LIMITED SERIES
* All-Star Superman, DC Comics
* Captain America, Marvel Comics
* Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Amulet Books
* Mice Templar, Image Comics
* Umbrella Academy, Dark Horse Comics
BEST BIOGRAPHICAL, HISTORICAL OR JOURNALISTIC PRESENTATION
* Draw!, edited by Mike Manley, Twomorrows Publishing
* How To Make Webcomics, Brad Guigar, Dave Kellett, Scott Kurtz, and Kris Straub, Image Comics
* Kirby: King Of Comics, Mark Evanier, Abrams Books
* Scorchy Smith and the Art of Noel Sickles, edited by Dean Mullaney, IDW
* Wordless Books: The Original Graphic Novels, edited by David A. Berona, Abrams Books
BEST SYNDICATED STRIP OR PANEL
* Brewster Rockit: Space Guy!, Tim Rickard, Tribune Media Services
* Get Fuzzy, Darby Conley, United Features Syndicate
* Mutts, Patrick McDonnell, King Features Syndicate
* The Norm, Michael Jantze, Uclick Gocomics
* Pearls Before Swine, Stephan Pastis, United Features Syndicate
BEST ANTHOLOGY
* Comic Book Tattoo, edited by Rantz Hoseley, Image Comics
* Flight Vol. 5, edited by Kazu Kibuishi, Villard
* MOME Vol. 10, edited by Eric Reynolds, Fantagraphics Books
* Pixu #1, edited by Gabriel Ba and Fabio Moon, Self-Published
* Popgun Vol. 2, edited by Joe Keatinge and Mark Andrew Smith, Image Comics
BEST GRAPHIC ALBUM -- ORIGINAL
* Bottomless Belly Button, Fantagraphics Books
* Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules, Amulet Books
* Essex County: The Country Nurse, Top Shelf
* Skim, Groundwood Books
* Too Cool To Be Forgotten, Top Shelf
* World of Quest: VOL. 2, Yen Press
BEST GRAPHIC ALBUM -- PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED
* Amelia Rules!: Funny Stories, Renaissance Press
* M, Abrams Books
* Nat Turner, Abrams Books
* The Mice Templar: VOL. 1, Image Comics
* Queen and Country, Oni Press
* Skyscrapers Of The Midwest, Adhouse Books
BEST SINGLE ISSUE OR STORY
* ACME Novelty Library #19, Self-Published
* First Born: Aftermath #1, Top Cow
* Love and Rockets Vol. 3 #1, Fantagraphics Books
* M, Abrams Books
* NASCAR Heroes #5, NASCAR Comics
* Nat Turner, Abrams Books
* The Amazing Remarkable Monsieur Leotard, First Second
* Y: The Last Man #60, Vertigo Comics
BEST DOMESTIC REPRINT PROJECT
* Astounding Space Thrills, IDW
* Complete Peanuts, Fantagraphics Books
* Complete Terry And The Pirates, IDW
* Scorchy Smith And The Art Of Noel Sickles, IDW
* Wacky Packages, Abrams Books
BEST AMERICAN EDITION OF FOREIGN MATERIAL
* Gus and His Gang, First Second
* Pocket Full Of Rain, Fantagraphics Books
* Red Colored Elegy, Drawn and Quarterly
* Solanin, Viz
* Witchblade Takeru Manga #s 11-12, Top Cow
BEST ON-LINE COMICS WORK
* Black Cherry Bombshells, Tony Trovarello and John Zito, www.zudacomics.com
* High Moon, Scott O. Brown, www.zudacomics.com
* Least I Could Do, Lar deSouza and Ryan Sohmer, www.leasticoulddo.com
* Night Owls, Bobby & Peter Timony, www.zudacomics.com
* PVP, Scott Kurtz, www.pvponline.com
SPECIAL AWARD FOR HUMOR IN COMICS
* Lar deSouza, Least I Could Do, www.leasticoulddo.com
* John Gallagher, Buzzboy, Sky Dog Comics
* Al Jaffee, Tall Tales, Abrams Books
* Jeff Kinney, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Amulet Books
* David Malki, Wondermark, www.wondermark.com
SPECIAL AWARD FOR EXCELLENCE IN PRESENTATION
* Complete Local: Hardcover Edition, Ryan Kelly and Brian Wood, Oni Press
* Kirby: King Of Comics, Mark Evanier, Abrams Books
* Queen And Country Vol. 3, Greg Rucka, Mike Norton, Steve Rolston, and Chris Samnee, Oni Press
* Tall Tales, Al Jaffee, Abrams Books
* Wondermark Volume One: Beards Of Our Forefathers, David Malki, Dark Horse Comics
BEST NEW TALENT
* Matt Cassan, NASCAR: Heroes, NASCAR Comics
* Bryan J.L. Glass, The Mice Templar, Image Books
* Laura Innes, The Dreamer, IDW
* Tim Sievert, That Salty Air, Top Shelf
* Bobby Timony, Night Owls, www.zudacomics.com
Random Comics News Story Round-Up
* the cartoonist and major editorial cartooning on-line presence Daryl Cagle, a member of both the AAEC and NCS, offers up a bunch of compelling advice to the former on the eve of their annual convention.
* here's a highly complimentary summary essay on Lynda Barry's work well worth your time.
* not comics: it's hard to find a framework to discuss proposals like the one made in this column by Connie Schultz whereby copyright law should be changed in order to better protect a newspaper's interests in a story it reports. On the one hand, it is a "real solution" when compared to the vague allusions to mostly discredited revenue models that passes for such in journalism circles. On the other hand, it's hugely problematic. That it doesn't solve all the problems -- well, that's obvious, and arguing as much is usually a nasty, over-facile Internet construction whereby it's strongly asserted all proposals solve all problems. No the problems here are more on the ground. One, newspapers themselves depend heavily on re-purposing information. Two, while it's true production costs haven't gone down the fact is that maybe they should have, which means sustaining that model may not be necessary or desirable. Third, it's hard to turn facts into proprietary information, and doubly so in an era moving forward where companies will produce their own news in an effort to control what's said about corporate action A, B, or C. My guess is that this is maybe something that could be explored and might have benefits, because there are abuses, but by the time all the nettlesome aspects are figured out the way people process news will have continued to change to the point where such laws will guard information few people will be interested in accessing.
* not comics: I just know when I show up at the Pearly Gates, there will be a quiz for entry regarding verb agreement.
* finally, the retailer Mike Sterling wonders out loud why there can't be a single title for a single character or team of characters, and discusses some of the virtues of that approach. I would prefer it that way, too, and I'll continue to make fun of comics with names like "Road To Hammergeddon, Absolution: Red Bee and The Creeper" until I stop writing about comics. The answer is money, of course, with a bit of related issues like market share pressing in. Mainstream comics companies decided a long time ago that it's preferable to grind as much money as possible from a devoted audience than pursue a strategy that emphasizes greater participation from casual buyers. The last time a company seriously considered a strategy like the one Sterling is proposing was early in the Shooter era at Marvel.
India Bans Comics Porn Site An article emanating from Reuters India indicates that governmental authorities in India have taken steps against the porn comics site Savita Bhabhi. All ISPs were asked by a government office to block the web site in a memo dated June 3. The government agency responsible confirmed the move, citing complaints. This throws the spotlight on more general issues of Indian government censorship over on-line material. A higher court challenge is being mulled over. The comics-driven web site, featuring an erotically-driven Indian housewife, was launched in 2008.
* exiled Iranian cartoonist Nikahang Kowsar is profiled by The Star; Kowsar lives in Canada.
* Stephff explains a recent cartoon on Neda Soltan by asserting that all cartoons needn't be funny, and that if you give the cartoonist enough credit to not be saying the monstrous thing, another meaning may make itself known.
A Smattering Of Comic-Con Updates
* so I guess CCI is getting rid of memberships returned to the show through their rebate program by putting a few up at a time on eBay. They go quickly, but at least something purchased from the show would be legitimate.
* a few of the blogs are pointing to this article as saying Hayao Miyazaki will be visiting CCI in support of Ponyo. Official news of this should hit with enough of a splash you'll know if these articles are right or not.
* this is the week you dump your extra hotel rooms before you're charged a deposit. Also, remember that if you picked up a room here, a room there, the deposit mechanism probably won't track this. In hotel news generally, there have been several single-day room opportunities rolling out on the site since mid-May. One thing that was up for grabs this weekend was a Friday night room at the new Hilton.
* I'm moderating two panels on Friday (July 24th) of the Con: the Comic Strip Reprints panel from 1:30-2:30 PM and one called Graphic Novels from 4:00-5:00 PM. Those should be super-informative and because they're set at an hour pop right along. I'm not allowed to say who's on each one until the con folks confirm, but right now they're both stuffed with interesting names. I think I may also be on a manga panel moderated by someone else at some point on Thursday, which sounds odd to me, too.
Random Comics News Story Round-Up
* there are two stellar posts over at Comics Comics right now. The first is a terrifying Star Chamber of Smart Comics People (Dan Nadel, Frank Santoro, Lauren Weinstein and CF) all interviewing Yuichi Yokoyama. The second is another compelling Frank Santoro essay on 1980s comics, this time on coloring techniques employed by Pacific Comics.
* the cartoonist Colleen Coover liked the new Darwyn Cooke graphic novel The Hunter so much she not only posted so but created a piece of art to go with it. Speaking of which, if you draw you should think about entering the Draw Parker contest.
* the writer, historian and critic Jeet Heer discusses the use of nostalgia as a critique of the present. I always thought there was an element of this in the way many people are nostalgic in comic books, although what comes to mind first is the way classic rock was extolled in the 1970s into the 1980s. If you listened to classic rock stations of that era, their overriding message was that you had missed out on the good stuff, that everything coming out at that moment was a pale imitation of some Stones/Beatles/Hendrix/Doors golden age. The application of this argument didn't hold up to a lot of scrutiny, and I don't think the argument does, either, but it was a pretty powerful argument because it was based in the listener's dissatisfaction with the here and now -- a here and now with a limited interface when it came to experiencing what was really out there.
* not comics: I guess Andromeda's all right and everything, but they're no Mayhem.
* there's not much in the way of remaining comics-related reactions to the passing last week of pop singer Michael Jackson. The biggest news is that editorial cartoonists did go after the haunting, horrifying legacy of the singer's relationships with various strangers' children. I would have bet $100 that aspect of Jackson's life would have been passed over by all but one or two people, maybe. Cagle's round-up of editorial cartoons on Jackson is here. A few folks keep finding Michael Jackson-related comic book references, like the one that's up here (found by Gil Roth). My initial round-up of links is here.
* finally, the journalist Bob Andelman did a series of well-selected, comics-related interviews last week. I had a bad experience once with an embedded media player provided by Bob and his twitter feed is currently on the fritz, so you might approach the following with some caution, but the content should be of a high quality. His interviews were: Gary Groth and Kim Thompson, Paul Fitzgerald, Brendan Burford, Jonathan Rosenberg and Denis Kitchen. Not a stinker in the bunch.
Trina Robbins is one of the icons of the underground comix generation, a cartoonist and creative person always pushing forward in ways that have influenced and inspired her peers and admirers. She has become in the decades since an equally valuable advocate for the recognition of great female cartoonists. Her latest book in that vein is The Brinkley Girls: The Best of Nell Brinkley's Cartoons 1913-1940, which was released in March of this year by Fantagraphics. While many have long been aware of the general attractiveness of Brinkley's work, Robbins' book forces us to look at her art in a way -- and at a size -- where some of the specifics of Brinkley's appeal and the basis for her popularity become more apparent, such as the sweep of her page design and the enthusiastic way many moments, even ordinary ones, are rendered. Robbins' book also asks for a reconsideration of Brinkley's writing when she was allowed to pursue this element on her own, and paints an overall picture of a fiercely independent cartoonist who learned over the years to work within a system to great reward without ever becoming dominated by it. It's really great to have The Brinkley Girls, and I was pleased when Robbins agreed to answer some questions about it. -- Tom Spurgeon
*****
TOM SPURGEON: Trina, what was the genesis of this specific project? Was this something you wanted to do, or was this presented to you as a potential project? Why a book with such a heavy focus on Brinkley's serials rather than a straight-up art book, or do you feel it plays both those roles?
TRINA ROBBINS: Wanted to do! I've wanted to do this for years! Although my MacFarland book stands up as a good biography, there's no way from just reading that book that anyone can know just how gorgeous Nell's work was. As for the focus on her serials, I love her serials, and I'm so glad the book is a large enough size to read them. Anyway, her illustrated stories are her art!
SPURGEON: Was all the material drawn from your own collection? I'm particularly fascinated by the fan art and where you found that. Did you go to any outside collections on this one?
ROBBINS: Most of it is from my own collection, and some very nice collectors lent me the rest. Isn't that great about the fan art? One day I was waiting on line at the post office and some guy whose name I have forgotten asked me if I was Trina Robbins, introduced himself, and told me that since he knew I was interested in early women cartoonists he had some art he'd like to give me. And it turned out to be that fan art! If he reads this or sees my book, I hope he'll get in touch with me, because there's a big thank you and a book waiting for him.
SPURGEON: You said in an interview that you first saw this work through Bill Blackbeard. Why do you think Bill presented you with this work? What was your initial connection with what Brinkley was doing, and has that changed at all in terms of emphasis in the years since?
ROBBINS: Bill is a very sweet guy and he had some doubles, and he knew enough about me, even in 1970, to know I'd like to have them. The trouble was, seeing Nell's work out of context, all I could tell was that she drew gorgeously, but I didn't know what she said! I didn't know she wrote these great serials, or her daily panels/commentary, much of which was quite feminist.
SPURGEON: Newspapermen like Steve Duin and myself can't help but see this book and shake our heads in wonder that this splendid-looking material used to appear in weekly newspaper supplements. Did you give any thought to the massive contrast between then and now while assembling The Brinkley Girls? Do you think there's a lesson to be learned here about papers abandoning something that was once very successful about them, or the state of newspapers generally?
ROBBINS: Newspapers have definitely gone downhill. The SF Chronicle is pathetic these days and in danger of folding, and I don't think we can chalk it all up to the economy. After all, during the Great Depression the papers were at their best. A big mistake was downgrading the comics so that they are run so small one can barely read them, and eliminating continued adventure strips, so all that's left is three panels and a gag.
SPURGEON: I notice that some of the masthead material suggest appearances in papers between the coasts. Was there any difference as to how her work was received by people in different parts of the country? Was there a certain social class to whom she appealed? I assume and I take it from your work that she appealed to women and girl readers.
ROBBINS: She was nationally syndicated, so her work appeared everywhere. Hearst's papers appealed to the middle class and the working class, so I'm guessing Nell was not read by the Vanderbilts. Yes, women and girls were her greatest fans and collectors.
SPURGEON: I may be wrong about this, but you seem much more fond of the first section than the other two -- not so much from a technical standpoint but perhaps in terms of the qualities that come out through the drawings and the kind of stories being told. Is that a fair assessment? What is it about the first section's stories that you find particularly memorable or laudatory?
ROBBINS: You're right! I have no problem with the art -- Nell's art was always great -- but her earnest and feminist serials are such fun to read, while those flapper comics, written by Carolyn Wells, are so negative! After writing about brave and beautiful women, she suddenly was illustrating comics about air-headed flappers. But she returned to her feminism, when she wrote those great Heroines of Today.
SPURGEON: I'm having a hard time reconciling the initial biographical portrait you provide, of this young cartoonist and artist who's willing to return home if she's forced onto the comics page, with her making changes in the art to keep up with a popular style. What is your take on her making these changes later on in her career? Does it surprise you as well? Was it just professional survival? A desire to sustain a certain kind of popularity? Do you think she was self-critical in terms of her art?
ROBBINS: Nell was a great artist, but she also knew what side her bread was buttered on, and I think that when she had to change with the times, she was willing to make that change. Remember, at the same time she was doing some very feminist, even political, stuff in her daily panels.
SPURGEON: I thought it was interesting how you spoke of Brinkley's genuine interest in women and how that drove a lot of her illustration/reportage. Was that a common attitude among certain newspaper people at the time, this idea of really looking at what women were doing and then bringing to that to the newspaper page, or was she rare in that regard?
ROBBINS: Us women are usually interested in women. I don't think the male journalists were writing about women in quite the same way that Nell did.
SPURGEON: As you mention, the shift from Brinkley's admittedly pedestrian prose to Carolyn Wells' doggerel is almost painful to read -- do you know if there was any reaction from the readers either way?
ROBBINS: Alas, I don't! I only know my -- and your -- reaction.
SPURGEON: I think highly of designer Adam Grano's work... was there any back and forth between the two of you on the project or did you find common ground quickly? In general, Fantagraphics has shifted to doing more and more art books... are you happy with the way The Brinkley Girls turned out?
ROBBINS: Adam Grano is wonderful, and I am deliriously happy with the book! This is the first time I have opened one of my new books without becoming horrified at a typo or a caption misplaced or a caption-less illo! When I found a couple of errors in the galleys, they went out of their way to correct them, whereas other publishers might have (Indeed, have!) said, "Sorry, there's no time."
SPURGEON: I was reading a blurb for the Cartoon Art Museum show done in conjunction with this book and it talked about the need to rediscover history through figures such as Brinkley. You've been an advocate for women in comics for years and years now. How do you think female cartoonists both past and present have fared in this latest resurgence of comics art?
ROBBINS: How are we doing? We could be doing better, but I'm not complaining. On one hand, there are more women creating comics than ever -- ever! -- before, but on the other hand we still see male editors hiring their drinking buddies.
SPURGEON: Speaking of your Cartoon Art Museum show, what is it like seeing these works as originals? Is there a quality to the originals that maybe doesn't come all the way through in the reproductions?
ROBBINS: It's great to study Nell's work close-up. She used such delicate, fine lines, that even with the great repro methods used in newspapers in those days, something was bound to be lost in the printing process.
SPURGEON: Trina, you're also a well-known, key figure of the underground comix movement. I've been thinking recently of the legacy of that era and those comics. Are you happy with the way those comics are perceived today? Sometimes I think people have kind of put them out of mind. Is there anything you wish more people knew or valued more about that generation of comics makers?
SPURGEON: How do you mean? Do you mean in the sense of what you were doing with your art was different than the bulk of the material? Is this a recent realization, and if so, how did it come about?
ROBBINS: Well, yeah. I mean, I tended to do stories, sci fi often, rather than tales of sex and drugs. That plus the fact that I was a woman writing and drawing from a woman's perspective, and most everyone else was a guy (look at the book, Underground Classics!), and I really was not accepted by most of the guys. Yes, there were exceptions (Thank you, Denis Kitchen, for inviting me into your books back in '71!), but they were the minority. It wasn't until Wimmen's Comix came along, and even that had to run for a quite few issues, before I felt I had found a place to fit in.
SPURGEON: I think of you for your advocacy of Rose O'Neill and Nell Brinkley, Trina -- are there artists that you feel are in their class that you simply haven't had the time or the number of opportunities to advocate on their behalf? If there's a historian out there looking for a subject, where would you direct them?
ROBBINS: There's a woman who's just come out with a book on Rose O'Neill, and another woman working on a book about Fanny Y. Cory. But surprisingly, there's nothing out there about Grace Drayton -- I couldn't even find a Wikipedia page! And she needs a book of her own!
SPURGEON: There's a real exuberance to the art in Brinkley's earlier serials that almost made me laugh out loud because of the energy -- she's really drawing the heck out of those scenes, all the lines everywhere. Did people respond to that element of her work, do you think?
ROBBINS: At the opening of Nell's exhibit at the Cartoon Art Museum, I heard people commenting on all those little lines, and at least one of them used that very word: exuberance.
SPURGEON: What in Brinkley's work do you think people respond to now? I take it by approaching the book this way through such a concentration on the work itself you feel that people may react to reading these pages -- what's there for the modern reader? Do you perceive a sensibility common to manga directed at a female audience, perhaps in the decorative elements or the way plots are constructed?
ROBBINS: What Nell's work and manga -- especially shojo manga -- have in common is they're both so damned pretty! And yes, girls and women like pretty, and all too often male critics and art historians have scorned pretty (they call it "draws like a girl") and have though it trivial and unimportant (not important, like, say, war and people fighting each other). I think that this is why Nell has been forgotten, because the mostly male comics and art historians have not written about her. Look at all the great women cartoonists who were left out of that "American Masters" show -- they all drew "pretty!"
SPURGEON: You made a fascinating point in a recent interview that maybe some North American attempts to connect with a female audience have lacked elements you find in Brinkley.
ROBBINS: Are there North American comics that reach out to this kind of audience that you think work well? There must be some, but I think they're probably indies or non-superhero graphic novels.
SPURGEON: What's next for you, Trina?
ROBBINS: My next book that will come out in the Fall is something completely different. It's a history of the Golden Age of Chinese Nightclubs, most of them in San Francisco's Chinatown. You know, when you watch those old movies from the 30s and 40s, there's often a scene in a nightclub, everyone's glamorous and some woman in an evening gown is singing while a big band plays? That's what the Chinese nightclubs were like, from 1937 to 1964, except that all the entertainers were Asian. The book is an oral history, with interviews with 22 retired entertainers, the oldest being 97 (and one woman, a singer, I'm sorry to say has already passed away). There are 200 illustrations, photos of gorgeous Asian women with pompadour hairstyles and dark lipstick, dancing in evening gowns or fishnet tights, and handsome Asian men with their hair slicked back, crooning or tap dancing in tuxedos, as well as great art deco menu covers and ads. The book is titled Forbidden City: the Golden Age of Chinese Nightclubs. I've also just finished an updated, rewritten and revised, full-color history of superheroines, titled The Great American Superheroines, and that should be out in 2010.
*****
* cover to and images from The Brinkley Girls, provided by Fantagraphics; tiny sample of underground comix work from one of the various indexes of such material
*****
* The Brinkley Girls: The Best Of Nell Brinkley's Cartoons From 1913-1940, edited By Trina Robbins, hardcover, 136 pages, 2009, $29.99
FFF Results Post #170 -- Wait! Don't!
On Friday, CR readers were asked to "Name Five Decisions You'd Like To Talk The Comics-Related Person Who Made Them Out Of Doing." Here are their responses.
Tom Spurgeon
1. Harvey Kurtzman, Disengaging From MAD The Way He Did
2. Joe Maneely, Not Taking a Cab
3. Wally Wood, Getting Original Art Back Commando-Style Before I Could Build Time Machine To Go Back In Time And Watch
4. Jack Kirby, Not Getting It In Writing
5. Jim Steranko, Hosting the Harveys
*****
Tom Bondurant
1. Bob Kane -- taking all the credit for creating "Batman"
2. Denny O'Neil -- using that phone poll instead of something more classy, like flipping a coin
3. Kevin Dooley -- nixing Gerard Jones' original idea for what became "Emerald Twilight"
4. The Miracleman intellectual-property owners -- not nailing down the reprint rights
5. Carmine Infantino -- not cutting Jack Kirby more slack so he could finish up the Fourth World books
*****
Christopher Duffy
1. Milt Gross -- eating that eclair.
2. Charles Schulz -- taking that first Met Life meeting.
3. Gary Larsen -- quitting his strip.
4. Bill Watterson -- quitting his strip.
5. Jack Cole -- killing himself.
1. Hernandez Brothers from ending Love & Rockets vol. 1
2. Todd McFarlane from buying that baseball
3. Joe Matt from squandering his talent
4. Whoever was responsible for casting the Watchmen movie from hiring Matthew Goode instead of Aaron Eckhart as Ozymandias
5. Christoper Reeve from getting on that horse
*****
Andrew Mansell
1. Milton Caniff-- for going ahead with the disastrous Vietnam Storyline, "The Critics"
2. Dave Sim--For not taking his divorce/misogyny/conversion and pounding it down his readers throats for 10+ years
3. EC Segar, being with him on his death bed and preventing him from signing the shysters contract
4. Jim Shooter-- from going through with Secret Wars 1 and 2-- it has wrecked mainstream comics to this day
5. George Wunder--persuaded him that there were better ways of distancing himself from Caniff instead of adopting those horrendous profiles.
*****
Ben Schwartz
1. Steve Ditko, turning down Frank Miller on that MR. A book;
2. Jerry Siegel, every decision made after 1937;
3. Schulz, shoulda gone with Hostess over Dolly Madison;
4. Dan Clowes, not pushing harder for a Needledick the Bugfucker movie;
5. Stan Lee, not a thing, pal, not a thing.
*****
Buzz Dixon
1 - For God's sake, Mark McClellan, give me a call even if I am on the other side of the country.
2 - The first one is free, George Caragonne, but the rest of them will cost your self-respect, your talent, your friends, your family, your soul, and your life.
3 - Put the cigarette down, Steve Gerber.
4 - Get it in writing, Jack Kirby.
5 - You need a different hobby, Vaughn Bode'.
*****
Ben Towle
Stan Lee -- Pissing off Steve Ditko
Seth -- Adding gray-tones to Charles Schulz's artwork
Bill Gaines -- Staying up all night all hopped up on amphetamines before that congressional hearing
Wizard World -- Continually scheduling conventions at the same time as Heroes Con
??? -- Whatever caused the fall-out between ICAF and SPX
1. Stop Frank Miller from taking whatever it drug it was that suddenly made him suck.
2. Dave Sim hating women.
3. Get 12-year-old Art Spiegelman to read some Kirby (does making someone do something count)
4. Greg Irons going overseas
5. Chester Brown doing Underwater.
*****
Eric Knisley
1. Dave Sim, getting too damn serious about the religion.
2. Stan Lee... well, a lot of things.
3. Larry Marder, stopping work on "Beanworld" for so long.
4. Jerry and Joe, not getting better legal advice.
5. The Electric Tape Girl who used to come to Comic-Con, wearing a costume made from about $1.10 worth of electric tape.
*****
Gerry Alanguilan
1. Frank Miller and Dave Gibbons, for killing and discontinuing Martha Washington.
2. Bill Watterson, for ending Calvin and Hobbes way too soon.
3. Jack Kirby, for discontinuing OMAC before he had the chance to resolve the unbearable cliffhanger that I'm still bearing for more than 30 years.
4. For John Byrne and everyone else, for trying to continue OMAC.
5. Chris Claremont, for leaving New Mutants.
1. Marvel trying to be their own distributor
2. DC pulping the Elseworlds 80-page Giant
3. George Perez, Mark Waid, Barbara Kesel et al. going to work for CrossGen
4. Dark Horse printing Lone Wolf & Cub in that tiny pocket-sized format
5. Siegel & Shuster signing away the rights to Superman
1. Bill Mantlo, Don't take up rollerblading
2. Martin Goodman, Don't close down your distribution company
3. Bill Finger, Don't let Kane steal your thunder
4. Siegel & Shuster, Don't sign away everything without at least a percentage
5. Bill Gaines, Do not -- I repeat, do not -- volunteer to testify
1. Steve Ditko quitting Spider-Man after #38
2. Mort Weisinger firing Wayne Boring
3. DC and Marvel switching to smaller size original art in 1967
4. John Byrne leaving Superman after #22
5. Jeanette Kahn deciding to increase DC output prior to Blizzards of '77-'78 leading to the DC Implosion
*****
Danny Ceballos
1. Jack Cole from "quitting" the business
2. Frank Miller from making movies
3. Art Spiegelman from discontinuing RAW
4. Charles Schulz from never letting Charlie Brown kick that football
5. Wimbledon Green from dispersing the Wilbur R. Webb collection
1. Denis Kitchen -- Selling controlling interest in Kitchen Sink Press
2. Jack Cole -- You know
3. The person who nominated Jim Shooter for the position of Editor-In-Chief of Marvel Comics.
4. Bill Sienkiewicz -- Quitting Big Numbers
5. Frank Frazetta -- Taking a job assisting Al Capp
Submitted with great respect for Mr.'s Kitchen, Sienkiewicz, & Frazetta, in recognition that some of these decisions may have been unavoidable.
2. More departures from Wizard, even as they pull off a convention in Philadelphia, and Gareb Shamus keeps adding companies to his personal ownership portfolio (as opposed to having Wizard purchase them).
The collective memory for HeroesCon 2009 will be run one more time, on Monday, so please get me anything of yours that hasn't been posted yet (you don't have to send it again if you've already sent it).
You know, I had no idea Don Rosa was there (that's him with Alec Longstreth in a photo I stole from here). We should make a bigger deal of Don Rosa. He's an international cartooning star, that guy, and his work is a lot of fun to read. I always enjoy seeing him at shows, too: he's cordial and smart.
Andres Cascioli, the Argentinian artist and caritcaturis best known as the editor of magazines such as Humor, Satiricon and Fierro, died on Wednesday due to complications from cancer. He was 72 years old.
Cascioli was born in the Avellaneda district in 1936. As a younger man, he split work between the fields of graphic design and advertising, while occasionally placing work in comics publications.
In 1972 he and Oskar Blotta founded the magazine Satiricon. In 1978, the same pair started Humor a satirical magazine that presented some of the best cartoonists working in Argentina, developed others and quickly became a publication that bravely criticized military dictatorship. Cascioli would later write about that time period in the book La revista Humor y la dictadura. The magazine won a distinction in 1982 as the best international satirical magazine from an Italian source, the same year Cascioli was recognized by Asociación de Dibujantes de la Argentina as their caricaturist of the year.
That magazine's success allowed Cascioli to create a magazine label called Ediciones de la Urraca, which published up to ten magazines at a time. In the 1990s he moved into more formal magazine publishing, first with La Nacion de los Chicos for the La Nacion (1996), then the Argentinian edition of Rolling Stone (2001), and finally El Cacerolazo for Editorial Perfil. In 2005-2006, Cascioli released a best-of for Humor and a best of his own work, which was accompanied by a show at Palace de Glace in Beunos Aires featuring over 100 originals.
New CEO At Archie, But Familiar Name: Jon Goldwater Buys Ownership Interest
In what has turned out to be a very good week for sons adopting the mantles of father, Jon Goldwater, son of Archie comics empire co-founder John Goldwater and brother to the late, longtime company-runner Richard Goldwater, will take over as Archie Comics Company CEO. He also purchased an unspecified ownership interest. Goldwater plans to aggressively push the company's various properties over what looks to be just about any medium that can use them. Johanna Draper Carlson, who follows Archie much more closely than I do, has an initial reaction here.
* one thing that's good about having wasted your life is that you end up putting two and two together, like the fact that Tom Toles is one of the best editorial cartoonists and he's really interested in transportation issues. His Washington metro train wreck cartoon is as lacerating as you'd expect.
* finally, the writer and editor Joel Meadows has posted the latest Tripwire cover, and will be posting pages in the future, all in the hopes of encouraging US retailers to buy directly for their stores. I'm saddened that Joel and the gang haven't found the audience you think might exist for a glossy semi-annual like Tripwire, but I also know that this latest back-and-forth isn't about a publication being strangled in the crib by new policies as much as it is a publication that's struggling to stay in there. I think there's a big difference both in terms of the anger I bring to the issue but also in that I think we should maybe stop looking at whether or not books make whatever benchmarks and more atwhy the marketplace for certain professional-standard work has shrunk to the point of insignificance.
Random Comics News Story Update
Placeholders/Quick Links, for which you have my further apology:
* Ismet Vehit Guney, a prominent cartoonist and designer of the Republic of Cyprus flag, died on Tuesday at age 77.
* although best known as a prominent and influential animator, obituaries for the late Jaime Diaz suggest a newspaper strip among his many accomplishments and that his studio also performed Disney comics work.
* a recent interview with Jim Borgman over shrinking strip size garnered some attention. It's a subject worth engaging, although I'm not sure how much blame for the current state of newspaper cartooning I'd lay at its feet.
* finally, Gareb Shamus buys the troubled Toronto Comicon, which although suggested in arch terms as a kind of revival mechanism for the beleagured Wizard Entertainment business could also be a next step in Shamus' business career following Wizard, as this makes another show he's purchased rather than facilitating a purchase under his best-known company. All eyes -- well, all eyes that take in the convention business -- should be on WizardWorld Chicago, a big show with numerous potential difficulties. It not only has to come off, but one would imagine as the Wizard longtime convention flagship, come off well.
* an announcement on the site of embattled entertainment company Wizard tells the reader all about new magazine/brand Funfare, but also lets slip that like the previously announced New York city convention project, this is something that will be published by Wizard founder Gareb Shamus, not necessarily the company with which he's most closely identified. This could be a mistake in the PR's wording, a sign that Shamus may be building a list of projects for a post-Wizard lifetime, or a kind of Schroedinger's long-boxed cat thing where such decisions will be made further down the line.
* the columnist Bart Croonenborghs says that Drawn and Quarterly will publish an English-language version of Brecht Evans' Ergens waar je niet wil zijn in 2010.
* the writer/Hollywood producer Jeff Katz announces the first four titles for his comics company/license launch-pad project American Original.
* the writer Sean T. Collins is right: the forthcoming Criminal: The Deluxe Editionlooks gorgeous. (image bottom)
* this bit of news is going to be way out of date by the time this post rolls out, but it's the best place for me to put it so I can find it later: the new creative team on the DC potential flagship title JLAis writer James Robinson and artist Mark Bagley.
* probably the big news of the week in terms of established properties is the acquisition of the Disney duck comics (and Mickey Mouse comics) by Boom! I can't imagine there isn't a huge wait and see element involved here given the current shape of the comics market and the success of these books over the last 30 years, but I also can't imagine a comics fans that wouldn't feel better with these comics having at least a little market penetration.
* in similar news Archaia has signed a deal with the Henson company for deals on established properties like Fraggle Rock and The Dark Crystal and for future co-created, co-branded comic books. It's hard for me to imagine there's much if any interest in Mirrormask comics and the like, but maybe I'll be wrong about that.
South Korean Cartoonist Fired For Weaving Two Insulting Messages To The President Into Patterns
Wonju police have asked that cartoonist Choi answer a summons regarding his placement of two phrases insulting to South Korean President Lee Myung-bak into the patterns of a cartoon. Choi has already been fired and has apparently also already publicly defended the appropriateness of such a message being conveyed through cartooning. While the story bears watching in terms of free expression, it's also worth noting that mainstream American comic book fans may recall instances where artists on those books wove a message or two into the background visuals of a comics panel -- some bearing the consequences of said actions, some not, although perhaps none with the potential impact or severe circumstance that may be visited upon Choi.
I wasn't able to attend the comics show HeroesCon this year. Since CR lacks the resources to run a lot of panel coverage and the publishing news that comes out of such programming, I asked Dustin Harbin if he would answer a few questions about this year's event. That way I could focus on HeroesCon as an event on the calendar and its own unique arc these last years as it's developed a national reputation as a regional show done right. Happily, the longtime Heroes employee and cartoonist agreed t speak to me. -- Tom Spurgeon
TOM SPURGEON: Can you describe as explicitly as possible how much work you do to help put on the show? What's the general division of labor like between you guys? Are you specifically in charge of anything as compared to what other people might do? When does it really gear up -- six weeks out? Four weeks out?
DUSTIN HARBIN: You'll get me hung in effigy if I leave out the massive effort the entire staff puts on for the show, before, during, and after. Maybe I'm still in the afterglow of how awesome our staff is, but wow, super awesome. Okay but in advance of the show a lot of the work is done by me and Shelton Drum, the show's owner and founder and my boss.
Shelton does all the stuff that involves the checkbook, the decorators, hotel contracts, dealing with a convention center that hates us, et cetera. Not to mention raising all the insane amounts of money it takes to put the show on, etc. I'm sure I'm leaving something out, but I've been outside trying to get my truck to start and I failed and I'm grumpy so shut your mouth.
I do most of the wrangling of pros, a metric ton of e-mailing, all the design work, site maintenance, program book, etc. Everything you see on our web site or in any print document associated with the show is hand-keyed by me, with the exception of our New Releases page which our store manager Shawn Reynolds handles. Also the marketing and press release writing. Oh and a lot of the show running on-site, putting out fires and trying to gingerly handle the many many many complaints people have about where they were seated and why this or that is an affront to their dignity and/or place in the industry.
But I really need to stress here: it is easier for me to enumerate what I do because I just did it, but it makes it sound like I do more than Shelton does -- that guy is a monster and a workhorse and works me under the table every year despite his advanced age of 54. We start way early but about two months out are spending most of our time on it, and about a month out the late nights and weekends start.
SPURGEON: What can you tell us about this year's attendance figures and general financial picture? Did you have as many exhibitors as last year? As many attendees? Did the general economic fortunes of the area impinge on the show at all? How did the art sale do?
HARBIN: I think last year we estimated our numbers at between 10,000 and 12,000 through the weekend. We don't have the complete numbers back yet, and even then they're never complete -- there are the hundreds of pros and dealers and guests and press and all that to think about, and we give away a lot of passes throughout the year. Shelton thinks we were about even with last year, which was a pretty good year attendance-wise. It's hard for me to estimate, as last year we were in an 80,000 square foot hall and this year moved to a 100,000 square foot hall. I thought Friday was down, but dealers seemed pleased with the traffic and if there was anyone who would complain about numbers it's the dealers.
Saturday seemed much more robust to me, although I think Sunday traffic was down from last year. I heard a lot of reports of people doing crazy good sales on Friday, from dealers to pros to small press, but I know some people didn't do as good. I just read Liz Baillie's con report and it sounded like she didn't do as well as last year.
We had the same or better exhibitors this year, and about twenty percent more small press tables sold, despite price hikes on both booths and tables. Knock on wood, but little evidence of a down economy at this year's show, however cheeky that may be to say.
SPURGEON: Am I correct in my assumption that you scaled back a bit from 2008's ambitious art-comics presence? Can you talk about your devotion to having folks from that arena of comics at the show, what your plans are for the next few years?
HARBIN: Well, I didn't purposefully scale back Indie Island, but after last year I was pretty demoralized and I just didn't put the same energy into it to be perfectly frank. Last year was like a dream for me, so many amazing people I'm a huge fan of in my hometown, by far the best perk -- I mean, I got Sammy Harkham and Kevin Huizenga and Jaime Hernandez plus about 50 other amazing guys out to a basically mainstream show! So it stung a lot when a lot of those guys had disappointing sales, although I can't really blame them for being honest about it. I may have overreached last year, maybe? Who knows -- Shelton is really cool to just let me kind of do my thing with Indie Island, even though it's his money, so this year I was a little gunshy about throwing a lot of bread at it.
Having said that, having Jeff Smith and Jason Lutes surrounded by guys like Alec Longstreth and Roger Langridge and Guy Davis is still pretty amazing, you know? Roger told me he did way way better than last year -- our show is maybe a little singular in that a lot of the attendees come every year and are repeat buyers for repeat guests. I know Alec told me he saw a lot of return business this year, although I'm not sure how successful his overall show was.
Next year I am planning on returning to the optimistic if-you-build-it-they-will-come model. There's a pretty good chance Fantagraphics is coming, although I don't want to announce it until we have dates locked in, because unannouncing stuff is strictly for the birds. I will be knocking on a lot of doors in the fall and winter, both on the Indie Island and mainstream fronts.
It's not so much that I'm devoted to the idea of an Indie Island, although I think it lends the show something that it was lacking. It's more that I just really like indie comics and the people I invite are like a who's who of the people I love in that world. It's very selfish, but I think ultimately it will be a jewel in our crown.
SPURGEON: You guys have been awash in good feelings over the last couple of years. Has that shaped your attitude towards the show at all. Does anything about the goodwill shown the show translate in real terms to how the show comes off?
HARBIN: Hm. My feelings about the show are hard to pin down just now, with my throat still hoarse and my legs still rubbery. Shelton and I pull a month's worth of late nights in the month before the show, and it can get you down sometimes. But I will say that reading all the complimentary con reports is a real pick-me-up -- it's nice to feel like you really busted your hump for something and it worked, you know? I think maybe that's why I hated the post-show so much last year, when some of the new indie guys were surprised they didn't sell more their first show. I can be pretty petty, I guess.
In terms of goodwill translating to the actual functioning of the show though: definitely, and specifically the goodwill of our guests. They're pretty much the best -- I think we had upwards of 100 pieces of art donated by guests for our Art Auction, the proceeds of which go straight to our hospitality costs. In a lot of cases, this was big name painter guys doing original paintings onstage -- Frank Cho, Stephane Roux, Brian Stelfreeze, Eric Canete, Mark Brooks -- all these guys did full color work that brought thousands of dollars in, all out of the goodness of their hearts. So humbling. And I really think that vibe is the core of the larger "friendly" vibe we have -- fans pick up that the pros are having a great time, and the feeling just multiplies I guess. That sounds pretty silly I guess, but I think it's true.
SPURGEON: I'm counting on you to come up with something specific, but what distinguished this year's show from the past few? I'm not getting anything specific from the reports I've read. Was it really just another year?
HARBIN: This makes me look bad, but the show was just not planned as well this year as last year. Last year was so smooth it was crazy. This year I misprinted a ton of small press seating locations in the program book and spent the first 6 hours of the show rearranging my own painstakingly planned diagram on the fly. Most people were pretty patient about it, but some people were shooting me dirty looks all weekend.
Like I say, we have a good staff, and we're all pretty good at handling complaints and putting out fires, but I wish I could blame some of those fires on other people, which is my preference. Other than screw-ups, the big standout this year for me was the Art Auction, which earned 20% more than last year, due mainly to the excellent auctioneering of Allison Sohn. I was originally going to do it, but Allison agreed to help, and by about 1/3 of the way through I'd been booed offstage in favor of her. She's super amazing at auctioneering, and I super-hate auctioneering, so this was definitely a don't-throw-me-in-the-briar-patch kinda problem, you know? Shelton had foolishly given me a ton of drink tickets to hand out to pros too, so the briar patch was well lubricated on Saturday night.
Oh, and Jeff Smith -- can Jeff Smith count as something distinguished? I hung out a ton with Jeff and Steve Hamaker, and it's hard to imagine two cooler people to hang out with, especially if Alec Longstreth is nearby, saving you the trouble of imagining him.
SPURGEON: This is one of the first shows since the comics community's embrace of Twitter reached a tipping point: was there any discernible change in the show because of the prevalence of that technology?
HARBIN: I don't think Twitter changed the way the show was run, per se; for instance, I wasn't informing people of seating changes via tweets or anything. But I do think it expanded our network a lot, both for fans and pros a lot -- when I would post new changes to the guest list I would see them re-tweeted a lot, which was encouraging. Most of all Twitter provided me a platform to namedrop for four days and bemoan the fact that I'd forgotten to pack any socks. Thanks, social media!
SPURGEON: Are there already plans for next year, things that you know you have to do or want to do to have another one of these?
HARBIN: The big thing each year is "next year we'll start earlier," ostensibly to cut down on the number of things you find yourself doing at 4 in the morning 2 days before the show. Right now we're concentrating on locking down dates. We almost never have not had dates to announce at the show, and it basically sucks to not have that done, but the convention center is not easy to work with and the dates they have offered us aren't great. We're working all that out now -- Shelton is a good talker and can usually get stuff done, and we want to have dates that make sense and don't coincide with something else, whether it's another show or a local event (this is a Nascar town, so anything scheduled near a race weekend guarantees every hotel room in the city will be booked).
As far as improvements go, I'd like to do a better job of getting the word out locally -- I really think there is a large untapped potential fanbase around here for us, but things get so hectic close to the show that I just can't find the time to go out and beat the bushes, you know? Again, the earlier we start the more things we can do, and better.
SPURGEON: You've seemed to have really deepened your devotion to your own cartooning -- how is that going? What's the end result there for you, ideally?
HARBIN: This is easily the best psychological perk for me about the show. Hanging out with cartoonists, especially guys like Jeff Smith and Joe Lambert and Alec and Guy Davis just gets me excited about making comics, you know? Especially Joe -- that dude is so amazing, and makes it look so easy, and is so prolific. And Guy Davis is so complimentary you walk away from his table thinking you're Alex Toth or something. So yeah, I've got a lot of plans for SPX in the fall.
The end result for me in my own cartooning is to eventually be a "real" cartoonist, doing it full-time, working on books, long stories, even MORE fart humor than I am already capable of packing into a week. I have been doing my weekly strip since December, and while only some of them are any good, they all have been monstrously educational, and are great practice while I get ready to start more serious work. And then some seriously complaining about how solitary and lonely being a full-time cartoonist is. That's when I'll know it's for real.
In the meantime, I'm still new enough that I'm learning all the time. I'm fortunate in that I have some very good friends who are also fabulous cartoonists and have been generous with their own knowledge. While I prefer to keep my day job and my cartooning separate -- most people at the show have no idea I even draw, and I like that -- the show has provided me access to a pretty amazing group of cartoonists over the years.
SPURGEON: Where do you see HeroesCon five years from now? Are you still a part of it?
HARBIN: I think we're nearing a terminal size -- the show kind of depends on Shelton being at its center; he's been a figure in comics since pretty much the start of the direct market, and a lot of the pros are old old friends of his. If we grow too much more we'll lose some of what makes us special and just turn into a big concrete room full of people and money. Having said that, I think we could grow a teensie bit more in the next few years and get a little more frugal with our budget, and the show would actually be a perennial moneymaker for us.
As for my place, this HeroesCon was my 14th; I was hired back in '96 as a clerk at Heroes Aren't Hard To Find, the shop that organizes the show. I was 21 years old! I guess I'd like to say that I hope I'm on the other side of the table in five years, y'know? But there are worse things than working for a great comics shop and organizing a well-loved comics convention. And Shelton lets me do things my way most of the time, which is a rare trait in a boss (I hear, I've only worked a couple of other places as an adult). I suspect that HeroesCon will be a part of my life in some way for good or ill for awhile, yeah.
SPURGEON: how would you describe Heroes as a profit-generator? I've always heard that you guys did okay but maybe weren't all that aggressive when it came to maximizing profit.
HARBIN: Hm. I would say that we aggressively want to turn a profit, but are aggressively bad at it. It's how we run our shop, too -- Shelton will 10 times out of 10 err on the side of having a book if he thinks a customer will want it. Ditto for the convention -- if there's something Shelton thinks we should do, he will do it regardless of the cost. We print our own custom badges, print fancy incentive prints to just straight-up give away to everyone who buys a ticket, then print fancy huge 7' x 15' banner to hang all over the place like college basketball pennants of those prints.
Since I've only ever worked for one convention before, I didn't realize until just a few years ago that other big shows charge most of their guests for table space. I was like "whaaat?" I maybe shouldn't be saying this, but I think it's pretty cool of Shelton -- while we definitely sell a lot of table space, we don't charge any of our invited guests for tables. It can lead to some bruised egos from people who think they're on the wrong list, but I think it's part of the vibe among the pros that we're not just bleeding them dry.
In a good year we do a little better than break even, and this was a good year. We have definitely lost money some years, even years with great attendance -- sometimes the stars just don't line up, and you have to take your lumps. On the other hand, we don't carry big stacks of books around in Artists Alley to get signed by everybody so we can eBay them, we don't encourage people to charge for autographs, we don't invite a bunch of TV actors to draw that crowd, we just don't make money the focal point of the show. Whether or not this is sound business policy is hard to say, but I think it's part of the vibe. We don't invite anyone we don't like, either, you know?
I think you had it pegged in your very kind pre-HeroesCon post, in that the absence of money as a prime motivating factor had a kind of calming effect, although I bet I'm misremembering that.
I'm going to link to as many of these as possible; I found the retailer/blogger's last trip series to be invaluable in terms of insight as to what the comics/customer interface in Japan looks like
Andrew Wheeler talks about the Longbox digital effort in terms of how it might serve certain appetites for comics consumption. I'm not sure I have the same experience he does. For instance, my personal interaction with mainstream comics is pretty sweet right now. I don't read them when they come out, I pay some slight attention to what rises to the top in terms of people liking whatever series or run, that series or run ends, and then maybe six months after the fact I start buying those comics in big chunks in local retailers' dollar boxes and/or through an on-line retailer in order to get whatever it is that I really want over the free shipping price point. In other words, I already get 95 percent of everything I want from those companies for $1 an issue. That's not to say a lot of people share my approach, but it may be that there are a lot of different approaches out there. I'm going to have to think about this a whole lot before I have a coherent opinion to share, but I suspect we're going to learn a whole lot about how people relate to comics, how it's assumed they relate to comics, and how they'd like to relate to comics as digital solutions begin to muscle in.
* so there's an Eisner Awards iPhone app that will tell you about the Eisner Award nominees. Because it will update after the Awards with winners, it's also, I'm guessing, something for people that want to know the results of the Eisners before noon on Saturday or whenever the sites update that don't want to track it down on Twitter or whatever. It wasn't so long ago that people found out about this stuff a week after the fact, or if you were a Journal-only reader, two and a half months after the fact. I'm not sure instantaneous knowledge of comics stuff is an absolute necessity, or even adds all that much to the overall experience, but it's not like things are going to change back if I get all Abe Simpson about it.
* comic-cons and sex: two great tastes that taste great... wait, no, those things taste awful together.
* the writer Kristy Valenti comments on the ways that going to CCI is like going to High School. I was drunker in high school and had more discretionary income, but everyone's experience is different.
* finally, a bit of not comics: does the lack of a print newspaper on a specific day really mean that an on-line newspaper has to bridge the gap between the two days? This seems to me a fairly crazy way to look at it. Would anyone really want a daily paper that switches media as opposed to a not-daily newspaper that really kicks ass at its chosen mission?
This Isn't A Library: New And Notable Releases To The Comics Direct Market
*****
Here are the books that make an impression on me staring at this week's 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. But were I in a comic book shop tomorrow I would more than likely spin them around in my chair and give them a full shampoo and styling.
*****
JAN092559 ULTIMATES BY MARK MILLAR & BRYAN HITCH OMNIBUS HC $99.99 MAR090083 TUROK SON OF STONE ARCHIVES HC VOL 02 $49.95
Comics I would definitely buy were I independently wealthy, although they may be much further up on your personal preference chart, even in the must-have category. The first asks, "what if superheroes were more R-rated movie kind of real?" The second asks, "What would happen if Indiana met dinosaurs." These are perfectly reasonable questions in comics circles.
APR090051 USAGI YOJIMBO #121 $3.50M
According to testimony from a couple of you that read this site, the only serial-comic reason for many to go to the comic book shop.
MAR090174 ALL STAR BATMAN AND ROBIN THE BOY WONDER TP VOL 01 $19.99
All the good "goddamn" jokes have been done. I've barely read this series so I've been looking forward to its collection.
APR090620 CEREBUS ARCHIVE #2 $3.00 APR090621 CEREBUS ARCHIVE #2 ZOMBIE & OBAMA VAR $15.00
I bet Dave Sim draws a bitchin' zombie, so I'd certainly want to see the second. Probably buy the first, though.
APR090787 GOATS INFINITE TYPEWRITERS TP VOL 01 $14.00 MAR094249 LOW MOON $24.99
The latest webcomics turned print comics, with the first being a classic series and the second an anthology built around one of the New York Times Sunday Magazine comic.
APR090953 TREASURY 20TH CENTURY MURDER HC VOL 02 FAMOUS PLAYERS $15.95 FEB090207 JLA DELUXE EDITION HC VOL 02 $29.99
Two much-loved comics makers with second volumes collecting career-defining works. And that's about it for similarities, really.
APR090595 PATSY WALKER HELLCAT TP DM ED $16.99
I thought this was funny and charming and it's entirely possible that at some point in the near future Marvel will stop doing mini-series with second- or lower-rung characters of any kind so maybe we should enjoy them now.
FEB094480 TEZUKAS BLACK JACK TP VOL 05 $16.95
Of 17. Seventeen!
MAR094041 REMAKE GN VOL 01 (MR) $12.95 FEB094018 REX LIBRIS TP VOL 02 BOOK OF MONSTERS $17.95 APR090806 PRAYER REQUESTED GN $15.95
Here's a trio of books that might slip under your radar: AdHouse Books' latest discovery, the second trade from James Turner's funny and sometimes hard to parse Rex Libris series, and the latest in D&Q's modest, sort-of art books line.
*****
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 didn't list your comic, I'm not sure what to say.
UK Prison Paper Levitzes Edition With Pig In Turban; Feared Insulting System's Muslim Population
A prison newspaper servicing facilities in the United Kingdom pulped a recent issue out of a concern that it might upset the system's Muslim population, which may make up approximately 10 percent of the total inmate population. The cartoon in question featured a pig in a turban in service of a joke about the swine flu being an Osama Bin Laden-led plot to rid the world of pork. I imagine that commentary will be split between calling the move overly politically correct and pointing out that fake cartoons relating Muhammed to a pig were a significant part of what drove initial, hostile reaction to the Danish Cartoons. Also, as I recall, the UK was one of the few places -- maybe the only place? -- where protesters made their way into the general prison population on charges related to those demonstrations.
* now that it's easier/possible to access the Reporters Sans Frontieres site, we learn that the cartoonist reportedly among the two dozen or so journalists arrested and/or imprisoned was Behzad Basho, and that he was actually taken about a week before the list was released, back on the 14th. I have to admit, I don't know who that is. There's no such cartoonist listed at Iran Cartoon, and I can't find a distinct google mention before this arrest. That's not to cast aspersions on the veracity of the report, just to point out how many cartoonists there are working over there. Also, the timing of the arrest would fit in with this person being the cartoonist at the provincial paper Velayat shut down early last week for a cartoon.
* cartoonist and on-line syndication specialist Daryl Cagle talks to Nikahang Kowsar and publishes work from Mana Neyestani (above), two of the best cartoonists from Iran. Both cartoonists had left Iran in previous years because of a clash with the government on a political issue -- Neyestani sat in Tehran's most notorious prison for a while.
* I've been looking around for American cartoonists that were able to find a second story in this mess. That's a strength that cartoonists overseas seem to display more frequently than their North American brethren -- in fact, I had a couple of e-mails from people baffled by a couple of European cartoons that commented on something more specific than "they stole the election." The two avenues for follow-ups in the States seem to be something on the role of Twitters as a communicative hub and a few that got into the political details of the American response. Tom Tommorow's, excerpted below, is probably the best of the latter.
CBC: Zapiro Has Been Served A Summons In Both Jacob Zuma Lawsuits
This CBC story profiling the award-winning cartoonist Jonathan "Zapiro" Shapiro and the lawsuits filed against him by current South African President Jacob Zuma contains some important from-his-perspective news, primarily that he has been served summons in both cases. This means the case is continuing to move forward despite recent overtures from the cartoonist, and although not scheduled at this time there's no reason to think it won't eventually be tried. The article also highlights Zapiro's side of the story in attractive, matter-of-fact terms: the cartoons in question -- including the famous rape of the justice system cartoon, above -- were simply strong expressions of political ideas he thinks are crucially important as the country moves forward.
Your Summer 2009 Indispensable Books As Selected By The ACBD
As is their tradition -- or at least as I'm told is their tradition -- the French-language comics critics group L'association des Critiques de bande dessinee (ACBD) has picked 20 books for their summer reading list. I believe these are books released in French-language editions between November and June, but don't quote me on that. Included is the French-language edition of Bottomless Belly Button.
* A bord de l'etoile Matutine, Riff Reb's (Soleil: Noctambule)
* Alpha ...directions Jens Harder (Actes Sud/L'An 2)
* Animal'z, Enki Bilal (Casterman)
* Bottomless Belly Button, Dash Shaw (Ca et la)
* Le Chant du pluvier>, Erwann Surcouf, Amandine Laprun and Joseph Behe (Delcourt (Mirages)
* Dans mes yeux, Bastien Vives (Casterman: KSTR)
* Droit du sol, Charles Masson (Casterman: Ecritures)
* L'Enfant maudit T.1: Les Tondues, Arno Monin and Laurent Galandon (Bamboo: Grand Angle)
* L'epervier T.7: La Mission, Patrice Pellerin (Soleil: Quadrants)
* L'Heure la plus sombre vient toujours avant l'aube, by Emmanuel Moynot (Futuropolis)
* Ines, Jerome d'Aviau and Loic Dauvillier (Glenat: Drugstore)
* Je mourrai pas gibier, Alfred (Delcourt: Mirages)
* Jeronimus T.2: Naufrage, Jean-Denis Pendanx and Christophe Dabitch (Futuropolis)
* Jolies tenebres, Kerascoet and Fabien Vehlmann (Dupuis)
* Lulu femme nue T.1, Etienne Davodeau (Futuropolis)
* Paracuellos, Carlos Gimenez (AUDIE: Fluide Glacial)
* Pinocchio, Winshluss (Les Requins Marteaux: Ferraille)
* Putain de guerre! T.1: 1914-1915-1916, Jacques Tardi and Jean-Pierre Verney (Casterman)
* Rosalie Blum T.3: Au hazard Balthazar !, Camille Jourdy (Actes Sud)
* Spirou et Fantasio (Une aventure de... par) T.5: Le Groom vert-de-gris, Olivier Schwartz and Yann (Dupuis)
Family Reacts To Racy Scene In Batman Comic In Calm, Rational Manner
A trio of you e-mailed me this link to a story in the Charlotte Observer about the Spivock family and a sequence in Batman Confidential #18; I apologize to whatever person had it where folks likely saw it first. Stripped of the normal overly-hostile reaction to having given their kids material that was inappropriate, this story actually makes DC look sort of creepy for having that kind of material in there in the first place. At least it does to me: once you take that step back, a scene like the one described really does seem like more of a racy throw-in than a mature expression of anything, like a scene in a Nickelodeon show set in a strip club. Also, because they don't insist on it, the parents look not-crazy for thinking a Batman comic might be for kids (their kids are fans of the cartoon iteration of the character). It'd be weird to function in a world where 98 percent of the animation offerings were like South Park and only a handful of shows were for kids.
* the cartoonist Laura Park will draw for you. Park is one of the cartoonist/illustrators that has likely been most hit by the contraction in the market with publications like Nickelodeon heading for the stone nap. She's also very talented, and I imagine that commissioned work from her would look swell.
* the AAEC posted something like 20 articles over the weekend. I'm sure some of them are important articles, and when I can find an extra 90 minutes to devote to a single web site, I'll let you know what's in there. I figure I shouldn't keep you from the task yourself, if you're so inclined.
* is it wrong that my first reaction when I heard about a Penthouse article on hooking up at comics conventions was that this was going to lead to a lot of people talking about their sexual experiences at cons and I'd rather set my forearms on fire than read that kind of thing?
* here's an interesting article describing feedback to a Don Wright cartoon used by one of his syndication clients. One of the little-discussed reasons why editorial cartooning is in decline is because as a culture we are less able to process strong opinion-making, to the extent that some folks don't even want to see it in their papers, let alone use it to kick-start dialogue.
* finally, I'm always happy when people profile Ed Piskor -- he's an interesting young cartoonist -- and I'm doubly happy when it's Tony Norman doing the profiling. He was a really nice guy that kind of stepped away from writing about comics right when I came on board at The Comics Journal in the mid-1990s.
Cartoonist Among Arrested In Iran
According to an Associated Press report, a cartoonist was among 23 journalists, bloggers and similar persons listed by Reportres Sans Frontieres as having been arrested in Iran over the weekend. The cartoonist was not named in wire reports and it's been almost impossible to get on the RSF English- or French-language web sites, one would guess given the current high level of international interest in the story. It was reported early last week that a cartoon insulting to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad run in the newspaper Velayat from the Qazvin provice caused that publication's offices to be closed, although little in the way details were reported and I didn't even see independent confirmation.
A Look Back At The Convention Weekend Just Past In Philadelphia, Charlotte
The first big weekend of summer convention season saw two shows that fairly straddle the line between regional (where they draw attendees) and national (overall notoriety professional guest list) prominence: HeroesCon in Charlotte, and Wizard World Philadelphia.
* Mike Manley's yearly obliteration of the Philadelphia show is a tough read this time around but, as always, it's an entertaining one. Manley doesn't just suggest that a lack of big-name exhibitors, what seems to him declining attendance and a deflated air indicate a reeling convention, he pretty much throws it out there that comics itself is in danger of dying from the same disease, that the Wizard World show is an organ failing due to a cancer that may kill the entire body.
* in lieu of repeating myself, I'll stand behind this site's early Sunday wrap-up of buzz and initial stories from the floor. Expect to hear a bit more from the Longbox digital comics service launch as something that came out of HeroesCon; the Steven Hoveke being barred from WWP story will also probably get a more thorough workout from someone -- it just sounds to me like one of those things that happens when a company collapses and people with an intimate working knowledge of one another start to have resentments and agendas that clash in public.
* this post by Heidi MacDonald indicates that DC was promoting its Wednesday Comics project at the WWP show. That's a compelling publishing news story, as DC goes off-format in a way that its primary market has a hard time digesting. The DC comics crowd has been trained through years of interconnected titles and crossovers to maximize their interface with the DC Universe, which a special format makes difficult. Within earshot of a pretty standard build-up focused on format offerings lopes along a discussion of whether or not this material will be made available in a more collectible format and when.
More Staff Departures From Wizard?
From the time I got word of the first one of these to the time I was able to post it on this site, I received word of a second personnel change at the comic-book based entertainment company:
* this first one's less clear than usual: I'm told that Kate Napolitano, Managing Editor of ToyFare, may have given her notice on Friday, with a date of departure as yet unknown. Napolitano is a more recent hire -- I believe 2008 -- and may have worked in other positions higher up the chain as staff needs required between formal stints at ToyFare.
* the same sources are reporting this morning that designer Jairo Leon was fired on Sunday evening. Former Wizard employee Steve Hoveke, who was barred from Wizard's Philadelphia show on Saturday morning, speculates. Someone wrote in that Leon is the company's last in-house designer, which sounds potentially dire.
Go, Read: Alt-Comix Twitter IDs
Sean T. Collins does something that I was going to have to do by the end of the year for the Resources section of this site: lists a bunch of alt-comics professionals' twitter accounts. You should also add Collins' -- @theseantcollins -- and this site's: @comicsreporter. I'm sure there are dozens more. I won't list them here, but you can comment and post yours on the linked-to thread.
Beyond information gathering, I have no idea what I'm going to do with mine. I'm definitely in the "no one cares when I get on a plane" camp, which is convenient because I don't go anywhere, and when I do I don't have anything with me that might provide me access to the service. I'm also pretty locked into a limited amount of time during the day to think about comics, which kind of runs against what Twitter seems to do really well. I'm probably going to do short reviews, major story links and look-at-thats, but if anyone has an idea what I should be doing instead or in addition I could use your help.
A Pair Of Quick Publishing Notes
* the comics business news and analysis site ICv2.com confirms word that BOOM! has acquired the Disney duck license, which is comics historical terms is sort of like getting "Bochco Cop Shows" or "James Burrows Directed And Developed Sitcoms" for your network.
* this site's long-time fellow-traveler in the covering-comics world and a specialist when it comes to covering the high-end mainstream and indy-genre aspects of the market, Tripwire, has finally been rejected outright for distribution to the direct market accounts served by Diamond. It's an interesting bit of news because you can see it as an inability of Diamond and its account to make use of a high-end, glossy magazine about comics the kind of which would have flipped many of our lids as 1980s kids, or you can see it as a sign that magazines just don't work in the current market, and both options are depressing. You can find out how to get the magazine directly through information provided in the linked-to posting.
Random Comics News Story Round-Up
* the great Chester Brown's very fine comics work Louis Rielmade the Toronto Star's top ten books of the decade. The Toronto Star has made this site's "publications who do their lists too damn early" list.
* at the risk of sounding like an old man, comments like this can't be all that great a sign for the general health of comics buying. Funny, though.
* there have almost certainly been interviews with Chris Wright of Inkweed before now, but I can't remember one. This one at a site called Exquisite Things is long and involved and would be a nice complement to any that exist, I'm sure.
* not comics: as of now, I'm officially unable to tell if newspaper pundits are completely clueless or the industry they serve is just that far behind the times. With all the focus on on-line solutions, a significant consideration of voluntary is just now happening, or at least is a new enough subject so that people can write about it? How is that possible?
* the infrequent blogger Paul Karasik provides comics-related tips on reading a great artist's work in a beautiful cathedral.
* the prominent retailer Brian Hibbs analyzes the recent Marvel single-issue promotion of note.
* finally, the very funny Shaenon Garrity describes the very not-funny state of the modern comics message board. She notes that at one point a few years back I was apparently writing about Aaron Sorkin shows on one of Warren Ellis' message boards, which is further proof that for several months mid-decade my usual dark cloak of depression became a full-bore wackadoo three-piece suit.
This series of exercises eventually led Cannon to attempt a graphic novel through a series of monthly 24-Hour Comic experiments -- the 288-Hour Comic. This almost worked in terms of his following the rules, and it more than worked in terms of the results. That comic became Far Arden, collected this month by Top Shelf Comics into a hardcover edition. Far Arden is an arctic sea adventure where every single person involved seems to have the emotional make-up of a tipsy, spiritually fragile graduate student. Since this also describes most of the people in my circle of friends, I found Far Arden affecting as well as being impressive for its lunatic narrative flow and the unbelievably well-crafted, overall look to the thing. Cannon has also contributed to several of the splashier Big Time Attic projects and has done a number of notable, super-sized illustrations for the Minneapolis area alt-weeklies. I might be convinced by the right malevolent spirit to trade my past for his future, and I like my past. -- Tom Spurgeon
*****
TOM SPURGEON: As I understand it, you didn't think about doing comics until the opportunity to do some came your way in college. Is that true? Do you think the process was different for you in making your first comics than for someone who maybe always wanted to do them? Have you since developed an interest in the art form and other practitioners of same beyond making your own TMNT comics once upon a time? Did you connect back to that early exposure? Do you think your aesthetic is different than other cartoonists as a result?
KEVIN CANNON: I grew up reading newspaper strips and for a long time I thought that's the career path I wanted to take. But as soon as I started researching what that would take -- i.e. the long-shot odds of getting published, the lengthy contracts, the stultifying editorial oversight -- I lost the drive. I continued reading the dailies every morning, because they were there on the kitchen table, but after age 15 or 16 I no longer thought that being a cartoonist was in the cards. My heroes then were Kafka and Kerouac, so through most of high school I thought I would be a novelist. [laughs] I even wrote a novel back then -- imagine a very sappy, poorly written The Road. I punched that thing out a few pages a night for about a year, so I guess that experience was a precursor to Far Arden, although I haven't made that connection until just now.
My exposure to comic books and graphic novels seems bizarre when I look back on it. I consumed every bit of TMNT I could get my hands on, but for some reason never felt the need to pick up other mainstream titles. I read a lot of MAD, and my grandma had a stack of old '50s romance comics that I leafed through on holidays, but that was it. I think I'm drawn to unique art styles, the way you you look for music that has a unique sound. Maybe that's what kept me away from mainstream comics for so long. As an outsider looking at superhero comics -- and manga, too -- it looks like all the artists are desperately trying to draw exactly the same style. I don't understand that way of thinking.
Anyway, so in college I started drawing a weekly strip called Johnny Cavalier for the school paper -- I had gone in to the office looking for a job as an illustrator, but they said they needed a cartoonist, so that's how that started. It wasn't until midway through my college career after I discovered Hate and Eightball that I realized that this is where I was taking Johnny Cavalier and that this is what I wanted to do professionally. However, I'm glad I had a grounding in the dailies, because I think that gave me a good sense of timing, and how to deliver a solid punchline.
SPURGEON: A theme that seems to dominate your young career is how much you've benefited from tight feedback loops. I believe you're a private school kid, your Grinnell work would have been mostly read by people in your same general circumstance, and now you have a tight core of fans and fellow artists that follow what you do now. Is there something that appeals to you about this kind of attention as opposed to the more diffuse kind that you'd have if you'd signed a contract with United Media right out of school and were doing Johnny Cavalier in 200 papers and getting back six e-mails a year? Has feedback been generally important to you as a way to develop?
CANNON: Yeah, that's so true, I've always had really small, tight feedback loops. On any day of the week I'd rather have honest, harsh criticism from a few people whose opinions I care about than get a hundred gushing emails from complete strangers. In college I had a group of friends who read my weekly strips and would give me feedback. A lot of times it was harsh, maybe overly critical, but I matured a lot based on their reactions. Plus, when they laughed at a joke you know they meant it, and that was incredibly satisfying.
I'm in a similar situation here at Big Time Attic. Zander gives me incredible feedback on anything I put in front of him, and this guy is one of the best comic book writers in the business.
SPURGEON: How do you feel about the Johnny Cavalier work right now? I know that for a lot of college cartoonists that can be a very intense experience because it's part of a lot of a specific period in folks' lives. What do you recall when you think of that work now?
CANNON: Some of the art is a little embarrassing to look at, but that's a pretty superficial reaction. Mostly I'm excited by how the book has touched young cartoonists. Carl Nelson (Outwise), Tim Sievert (That Salty Air), and Julia Vickerman (Yo Gabba Gabba) have all told me that the collected Johnny Cavalier strips meant a lot, or influenced them in some way. And these weren't Grinnell students, so I'm not really sure how they picked up copies of the book.
Mostly, looking at old Johnny Cavaliers makes me realize what a great learning experience they were. Zander and I talk about this a lot, that we think doing a strip for a newspaper should be required for anyone considering a career in comics. You're forced to learn about scanning, layout, reduction, etc., but the most important lesson is how to hit a deadline. We've met a lot of art school students who have no idea what a real deadline is because their professors never enforce them. These students will turn in pencils and say, "Oh, I didn't have time to do inks, but here's what I've got," and the professor is like, "Okay, that's fine, great job." Obviously, that's a gross generalization, but based on real anecdotes! With a newspaper strip, you either get the finished product in on time or you don't. There's no pat on the ass for a job half done.
SPURGEON: What were your other college strips like?
CANNON: There was a political cartoon called Third Party, a gag panel cartoon called Heaters, an acerbic three-panel strip called Art Guy, and a dada cartoon called absent. Most of these ran for one semester each, alongside Johnny Cavalier. But Cavalier was the anchor, and ran for all four years.
SPURGEON: The one thing I find interesting about your not being Zander Cannon's brother is that this was the basis for your contacting him, which means there was enough institutional memory at Grinnell that people would bring up Zander. Am I getting that right? Can you talk in more explicit terms how that relationship developed?
CANNON: When I was a freshman I ran into a guy named Xander (the first in many bizarre coincidences). Xander had graduated the year before, but was on campus working in the art building. He was a freshman when Zander Cannon was a senior, and it was Xander who concluded that I must be Zander's brother. I immediately read all of Zander's old strips in the school's microfilm archive, and concluded that Zander was some kind of god. So I nervously introduced myself via email. He responded, but I let the conversation die. That was freshman year.
Jump ahead to junior year and I needed a job over the summer. My mom, in her infinite wisdom, convinced me to write a letter to Zander asking if he ever had interns. So I wrote the letter, and Zander agreed. I ended up spending four hours a day in his little Minneapolis studio, helping out on Alan Moore's Smax, which Zander was just starting to illustrate. In all honesty, we didn't get a lot done. Zander was getting ready for his wedding that August, and we were constantly (and fortunately) distracted by all the other cartoonists in that building. Sam Hiti, Adam Wirtzfeld, and Shad Petosky worked one door over, and King Mini shared Zander's space. Seeing all of their art in progress and hearing their thoughts on process and the comics industry was pretty priceless.
SPURGEON: You used to do really detailed pencil portraiture, which is interesting to me in that it seems an enterprise completely divorced from the kind of symbolism and simplification I think of when I think of communicating in comics form. Does that kind of art -- or even your painting, you studied painting -- influence your cartooning in a way that might not be apparent to someone taking that work at face value?
CANNON: The portraiture thing happened because at that time (high school years) I believed in objective value in art, specifically that the more realistic something looks, the better it is, and the more praise should be heaped upon the artist. My neighbors saw that I was doing realistic pencil drawings for school, and were more than willing to part with a few hundred bucks for me to draw pictures of their kids. It was hard to say no to that, and for a long time I enjoyed it. But college killed my "representational art = good art" ideal, specifically via two art classes. The first class surveyed three hundred or so years of American art from the hyper-realistic stuff back in the day to post-modernism and beyond. I cheered for representationalism at the beginning of the class, but that part of me was slowly beaten down -- not by force (the class had no agenda, per se), but by being exposed to modern art, piece by piece.
Senior year I was in a seminar on German Expressionism, and those pieces, especially the woodcuts, blew me away with their wild figures. Most of these artists were basically non-sequential cartoonists. The life and energy and complete not-giving-a-shit about realistic human proportions are the foundation of all my comics work today. If I'm the product of my influences, it's Pete Bagge meets Lyonel Fieninger, or R. Crumb meets Ernst Kirchner. At least, that's what I'm striving for!
SPURGEON: I apologize for not knowing this stuff, and I think it might be more fun for me to just ask rather than try to nail down the information before doing so. You and Zander and Shad Petosky created Big Time Attic earlier this decade. I was wondering if you could talk about that experience in broader terms, because it's the kind of business enterprise a lot of folks consider doing. First of all, is it still around? I always get a little bit confused with you guys. What's its status? How has it developed in ways that were maybe different than your original conception? You were such a young artist that it seemed to me odd that you would join this kind of group because your ambitions might settle anywhere -- has that been a good structure for you in terms of development?
CANNON: Big Time Attic still exists, but it has molted several times. Let me lay down the history, as I remember it. So back in the summer of 2001 I was Zander's intern, and Shad worked next door, so we hung out a lot. After that summer Zander moved to Japan, Shad became a freelance web developer and Flash guru, and I finished school and tried to keep doing portraiture. Jump to summer '04: Zander was moving back to Minneapolis from Japan and he and Shad and I were looking to join forces, because we thought that if we pooled our resources and diverse talents, that we could be more successful than we were as three lone freelancers. Actually, there were seven or eight cartoonists and artists talking about forming a group, but Shad, Zander and I were the only ones who gelled. I was incredibly young and naive, but that turned out to be great for me because I learned from Shad and Zander's experience. And what they got from me was a workhorse, someone who would stay late and make sure the jobs got done.
Our dream -- my dream -- was for Big Time Attic to be a comic book studio, to try and put out a book a year and eventually make a living off royalties. Shad, I think, wanted something bigger from the beginning, and that created a little tension. I mean, Shad had always envisioned having employees, and that was a big shocker to me and Zander. It was like a weird three-way marriage or something. Shad was the visionary, and Zander and I were the conservative voices of reason. So as far as I see it, that balance meant that we grew, but not too wildly. Thanks to Shad's connections in the new media realm, we started getting animation jobs for Target and Cartoon Network, and at one point we had maybe a dozen employees. Eventually Big Time Attic was a lopsided company with no unified direction: on one side, Zander and me drawing comics, and on the other side, Shad and the animation department doing animation and new media stuff.
So in 2007 Big Time Attic split into two separate companies: the animation department became Puny Entertainment, and Big Time Attic shrank back down to me and Zander doing comics. We separated, but it wasn't a divorce -- it was more like a cell splitting in two. Puny -- headed up by Shad and King Mini -- is now wildly successful. They're doing most of the animation for Nickelodeon's Yo Gabba Gabba. And Zander and I are finally reaching our "one graphic novel a year" output goal, with publishers like Hill & Wang and Simon & Schuster, so we're pretty happy.
Whew. And that's not even the long version of the story, but hopefully that clears up what Big Time Attic is. If someone came up to me on the street and said, "My friends and I want to start a studio like BTA, should we do it?" I'm not sure what my answer would be. It was great for me, as a young artist with no experience. But it was only great because Zander and Shad knew what the hell they were doing, and already had a solid client list. And even then, we barely made it. I'm still paying off credit cards from the first few years of BTA. So I guess my answer would be yes, do it, but be flexible, be long-sighted, and get ready to be poor.
SPURGEON: I was wondering if you could talk about some of the non-glamorous jobs you've done since joining up with those guys, say some of the background drawing you've done, or maybe some of the teamwork projects... has any of that work been particularly instructive, or is it just applying the lessons of craft, a kind of day job?
CANNON: When we started Big Time Attic, we took every single job that came our way. It was nuts. Even if we had absolutely no idea how to do a job, we'd take it. That included designing a pizza restaurant, character animation, professional photography touch-ups, digital illustration, book design... it goes on. But every time we got a job, we researched the hell out of how to do it, hired people to help if needed, and got the job done.
Our classic example of jumping in headfirst was when we took on a job to design a family fun center called "Action City." The contractors for the park wanted to hire us because we, as cartoonists, would give the place a fun, original feel. These contractors had spent years driving around the country and researching similar parks, and knew that they wanted theirs to stand out from the pre-made murals and generic designs that you can buy off the shelf. So we were in on this project from the blueprint stage, designing everything from themed birthday rooms to a 30-foot fiberglass back-lit volcano climbing wall. Shad and I even lived on site for three weeks before the opening. I got up at 5am every morning to guide construction crews and muralists, and Shad was on site late every night working on identity, marketing, the computer systems, etc. etc.
I was burnt out after that, but mostly I missed drawing comics, so as soon I got home I drew a story called "Our Endangered Cartoonists" just to help me come down from the nervous high I'd been on for three weeks in Action City.
SPURGEON: What was the extent of your contribution on the GT Labs book Bone Sharps, Cowboys and Thunder Lizards? That was a fascinating book in many ways that I thought never quite coalesced as sharply as some of Jim's other works. How you do feel about that book?
CANNON: Yeah, the reaction to Bone Sharps has been less positive than we'd hoped. Part of that may be that Jim tried something new, weaving more narrative among the facts than in his previous books. So in that sense maybe it was riskier. I love it, but obviously I'm a bit biased! My role on that book was lettering and backgrounds, and I also did some of the layouts and acted as project manager.
SPURGEON: You've spoken in positive fashion about Jim Ottaviani and GT Labs. What is it that you think is admirable about Jim's enterprise, his approach to comics? What appeals to you about what he does?
CANNON: During the first few years after college I remember feeling like I was "getting dumber." My brain was atrophying. For most of our young adult lives, we're forced to read the greatest books in the Western canon, forced to write papers that sharpen our critical thinking and communication skills, and forced to listen to and talk to people with interesting, divergent viewpoints. And then -- boom -- you're 22 and you get your diploma and you're on your own in regards to what you feed your mind. I didn't feed mine very well, and I felt emptier and emptier because of it, although I couldn't pin down the cause at the time.
Then Jim Ottaviani comes along with the script for Bone Sharps, and all of a sudden I'm at the library again, digging up books on paleontology and dinosaurs. I'm being a little over-dramatic, but having an excuse to learn again was really exciting. The same thing happened a few days ago, walking to the library to pick up some books on evolution for a graphic novel Zander and I are doing with Jay Hosler. And it's not as though I can't read weighty books in my free time, but it's great to be able to marry those books with comics ... and get paid for it, to boot.
So getting back to Jim, he's got the best business model: he finds something he likes -- Niels Bohr, paleontology, the moon race -- and makes a graphic novel out of it. And Jim has a day job, so there's no temptation to muck with the integrity of the work just to make it sell better. If that were the case, Bone Sharps would've had a lot more babes in it.
SPURGEON: You're going to do this a bunch of times as the book's out, but can you describe in specific terms how Far Arden went from that initial 24-Hour comic to this multiple 24-Hour comic graphic novel. Because that just seems insane to me. Were the stunt aspects -- the time limit, for instance -- rigidly adhered to?
CANNON: The whole thing started as a dare from my friend Steve Stwalley. We and most of the members of the Minneapolis Cartoonist Conspiracy have been doing 24 Hour Comics Day since 2004. Shanks actually made his comics debut during the 2005 event, in a story called "Exit Strategy," and that story wound up in Nat Gertler's "24 Hour Comics Day Highlights 2005" anthology. Anyway, after the 2006 event was over, Steve dared me to do one 24-hour marathon a month for a whole year, with each month's output being a chapter in a 288-page graphic novel.
The first four chapters of Far Arden were legitimate 24-hour marathons, minus being surrounded by people. It was pretty lonely. After the fourth event my body felt ragged and my sleep schedule was messed up and was impacting my day job, so I gave up the marathons in favor of smaller, shorter spurts. So each page was still taking about an hour, and until the very end I was still producing a chapter a month. Now I think I can only handle one 24-hour event a year.
After chapter seven was finished I bundled up those chapters and mailed them to Chris Staros at Top Shelf. Tim Sievert was working on That Salty Air in a little corner of the Big Time Attic studio and I guess that made me eager for my own Top Shelf book. Chris called me up a little while later to tell me that he was passing on Far Arden, but we had a really good chat and I don't have a ton of experience with unsolicited manuscripts, but I don't imagine that a lot of publishers would have called like that. He gave me really good notes about what wasn't working for him, and I think those notes were always in the back of my head as I wrote the final eight chapters. About a year later, not wanting to give up on Top Shelf, I sent the finished Far Arden to both Chris and Brett [Warnock], and to my surprise they picked it up.
SPURGEON: Was it hard for you at all to find a level at which you could create in such a short time span with as much detail as you bring to the project? Because there were moments in which you drew an entire boat or otherwise provided a more elaborate illustration where I and likely many others felt the same impulse that led Marge Simpson to yell at Homer during the trucker episode, "Don't fill up on bread!" Did you adjust your approach at any point during the initial project or project entire?
CANNON: But bread is great! The trick is to do an easy page in 40 minutes, so you have 80 minutes to do your big detailed splash page. Actually, it's even more complicated than that, because you've got to factor in restroom breaks, eating, quick jogs, socializing... so each page really takes 40-50 minutes, not 60. But yeah, it took a few years to develop a style that I knew I could pull off in an hour and still look decent. If you compare a page from Far Arden to a page from "Exit Strategy," you can easily see the rough beginnings. It's not that there are fewer lines on the page in Far Arden, it's that the lines are more confident because I knew how much I could get away with.
SPURGEON: When did it begin to coalesce for you in terms of a project that you thought might work as one massive comic book? Was that different than a project you might work on all the time for a shorter period of time, or is that sense of something coming together the same?
CANNON: I knew the scope from the get-go. Shanks' last line in Chapter 1 is me basically telling my future self what I need to try and establish and ultimately wrap up over the next eleven chapters. Usually when I write a comic I'll get a germ of an idea, and that snowball will either melt immediately or turn into an avalanche. There's not a lot of middle ground. If it's an avalanche idea I'll have to sit down and write a full script immediately. With a short comic, like my Chapter 99 one-pagers, it's easy to get the spark and then sit down and produce a finished comic in the same day. But it's obviously tougher with longer projects. I have notebooks full of plot points and character sketches for various graphic novels that are hard to execute because I usually only have a free hour or two a day, and it's difficult to find your bearings when there are tons of notes to sift through. So the chapter-a-month marathon style of Far Arden was nice because it gave me a framework in which to organize my thoughts. Plus it was maybe a little like writing for television in that once a chapter was done and "aired" there was no going back to fix things. With my longer projects there's a tendency to change a thing at the end of the script, and then need to sift through all the earlier notes to set up that change better. I suppose everyone goes through that.
SPURGEON: One of the fun flourishes is your use of elaborate sound-effects. If I had to hazard a guess, I would suppose that this a visual shorthand you latched onto, but were there other influences? Do you have a favorite from the ones you used?
CANNON: I'm sure they were inspired in some way by the old Batman TV show. I like how the sound effects in that show are a little cheeky, a little ridiculous. They lighten the mood and hopefully break the fourth wall a little bit.
I also latched onto them because they're incredibly utilitarian. In Far Arden, David's "THROW UP A LITTLE IN MOUTH" sound effect really cuts right to the core of what he's feeling and doing, and it only took one panel to accomplish. If I used a normal sound effect like "HRMPH" I suppose some people might deduce that David had thrown up a little in his mouth. But how do we know he hasn't thrown up a lot in his mouth? Or what if he has merely belched, without any throw-up at all? One solution would be for the character to have the "HRMPH" sound effect, and then to tell another character, "I've just thrown up a little in my mouth." But given the fact that he's got to spit out the throw-up first before he can attempt to say anything, we're looking at three, four panels just for that one gag. That's just wasteful.
SPURGEON: You've spoken how Far Arden kind of scratches an itch for you both in terms of its specific subject of arctic exploration and a more general sense of being in the outdoors that's stuck with you since you were a kid. Can you give an example of a specific story element that draws on that more personal sense? Were both of those things explicit influences, or were they things that you see now that the work is done? In general, is there anything in there that you're surprised reveals itself in the comic?
CANNON: I think my interest in the arctic can be traced back to a few separate childhood experiences. One is that I grew up in Minnesota, which meant long winters spent skiing and tracking animals in the woods behind my dad's house. So the memories of brutally cold winds and frozen boogers are fond ones. Also, I spent a lot of my summer vacations on a small island off the coast of Connecticut. The island was in a chain of maybe thirty other inhabited islands, and each island had their own character and bizarre histories (one involved the pirate Captain Kidd and another involved the circus performer Tom Thumb). So when I was in college and becoming really interested in polar history, I spent a lot of time looking at the strange islands of the Canadian High Arctic and imagining that each of them had their own bizarre personalities, too.
Another big influence was Jon Krakauer's book Into the Wild which I read at age 16. I guess someone could make a case that Army Shanks is really Chris McCandless, had he survived and was living in an abandoned whaling station instead of an abandoned bus.
As far as a surprise reveal, I think that would be the character of Anger -- the half man, half beast. He was really just a throwaway character drawn into the first few pages. In fact, he was such a throwaway character that all we see of him initially is his big, shackled forearms. But he kept popping up later, probably because I identified with his vague "raised in the wild" history. His friendship with Alistair was a surprise, too. Alistair worships him, to the point where Alistair's brain chooses Anger as the one person he wants to walk into the unknown with. Without getting too Psych 101, I think that maybe Anger represents the nature/urban dualism I experienced growing up, and Anger's flight to Vancouver to be a movie star -- and his ultimate demise -- mirrors how I've completely lost touch with nature as an adult.
SPURGEON: Given the comic's final outcome, I think it's also fair to say that there are critical elements in it, too: everything from a distrust of blindly following dreams of the kind one has in school to people being generally disappointing to a very specific conception of Eden myths. Were you aware of this critical vein in Far Arden when you were doing it? Is there any element of it you'd be willing to unpack a bit and talk about what you were trying to do?
CANNON: I don't want the take-away message from Far Arden to be "don't follow your dreams." We all have ridiculous dreams that we follow, and I'd be a hypocrite to criticize that. I think the criticism is aimed at the means we take to achieve those ends. The backstabbing and the trampling over one another really amount to nothing. And the rewards, if and when we receive them, can never live up to our expectations.
That being said, there was never any specific goal in my head to lay down a critical vein throughout the book. That just came out naturally. Maybe the one pre-meditated idea was that I wanted the indifferent and harsh personality of nature to shine through every aspect of these characters' lives. The few journals I've read from polar explorers often mention their awe of both Nature's extreme beauty and extreme cruelty. They paint a landscape of a place that giveth more and taketh away more than anywhere else on earth, and I wanted to try and capture a little bit of that in Shanks' world.
SPURGEON: The sheer brutality evident in your conclusion seems like a whole thing in and unto itself. Were you aware that's where you were going? How might you ask the reader to consider this super-severe, shattering outcome in light of what's gone before?
CANNON: Actually, the ending was the only thing I knew about from the beginning. All the other plotlines and characters -- except Shanks and Hafley -- were made up as I went. I suppose that, knowing the ultimate outcome, I built up readers' expectations along the way so that the ending would be that much more shocking -- a bit of emotional pornography, I guess. But in another sense, I actually don't think that the ending is that harsh, if you consider the truly wonderful things the characters go through leading up to that point.
You're right, though, the ending will probably bother anyone who's a sentimentalist. It's no Meg Ryan movie. Let's be clear, I wrote the book for me, and I'm a person who doesn't like a lot of magic or fantasy. I like things to confine to reality, at least reality as we know it or can imagine it.
SPURGEON: You seem to be fond of your main character, at least enough so you've considered doing other works with him. One thing a couple of people mentioned to me upon reading Far Arden is that Armitage Shanks seemed a tiny bit slippery, that a sense of him was out of their grasp. What is it that appeals about him to you, do you think?
CANNON: Shanks is slippery because I haven't quite figured him out myself. Part of the fun of the book was creating Shanks' habits and back story as I went along.
I think what appeals to me about Shanks is that he's a sort of nightmarish extrapolation of myself -- someone who excelled during his school years but somehow got off track and ends up living alone in a whaling station looking at old Polaroids, reminiscing about the people he's hurt or given up on along the way. So in that sense, Far Arden is a kind of autobiography of the future, a tale of how not to spend the next 20 years of my life.
SPURGEON: Can you talk a bit about some of the insanely detailed single-image comics you've done for City Pages? I think there was more than one. I really liked the one I saw. That seems an entirely different enterprise. Is there something you looked at as a model? How hard is it to maintain an overall visual impression given the detail and even clarity between those details?
CANNON: You probably saw the "Rock Atlas" one, which is a big two page spread showing a lot of rock clubs around Minneapolis, but surrounded by lots of little details. I guess I like the map quality of it. I think I'd be a cartographer if I'd been born a hundred years ago.
The thing those City Pages illustrations have over regular narrative comics is that you can enter at any point, stay as long as you like, and always find something new when you return. Those illustrations are just big Easter egg fields. I love Easter eggs. I try to throw in as many Easter eggs as possible, and that's especially true in Far Arden -- if people are going to drop twenty bucks on a book I think they should be able to read it a few times and find something new each time.
SPURGEON: I'm terrible at that kind of thing -- can you give me one "Easter egg" example from Far Arden?
CANNON: Toward the end of the book, Fortuna tells Shanks that she's "going outside now and may be some time." These are the famous last words of Captain Lawrence Oates, who sacrificed his life for the good of the failed British South Pole expedition. Fortuna doesn't kill herself like Oates did, but I wanted to give astute polar buffs a sense of dread. There are also a couple of little neuroscience Easter eggs, but I'd rather wait and see if anyone out there is nerdy enough to find them. My cousin is a geneticist and she figured out the code at the end of chapter 3 right away!
SPURGEON: What do you have planned for the immediate and not-so-immediate future project-wise?
CANNON:T-Minus: The Race to the Moon is coming out soon -- that's Zander's and my second book with Jim Ottaviani. And we're about to start illustrating Jay Hosler's Evolution: A Progress Report, which is the sequel to Mark Schultz's The Stuff of Life. I've got a few short comics in anthologies, like Ed Moorman's Ghost Comics and the upcoming nod to old-timey newspaper strips, Big Funny. Other than that I'm trying to decide on what to do for a follow-up to Far Arden, but nothing's solid yet.
* cover to the new Top Shelf hardcover version of Far Arden
* photo provided by Kevin Cannon
* three different pieces of art from the Johnny Cavalier strip
* three different pieces of art from art guy
* from Kevin Cannon's sketchbook
* recent magazine strip
* photo from the Action City gig stolen from one of the BTA blogs
* from the T-Minus gig for Jim Ottaviani
* section from Cannon's massive strip about the 24-Hour comic and what led to Far Arden
* one of the elaborately-done panels that made me worry for Cannon finishing the comic
* one of the sound-effect panels
* more really elaborate drawing
* some of the loose action
* a section from one of Cannon's cartoon maps
* more Far Arden
* a final, fun Far Arden page (below)
FFF Results Post #169 -- Con Fun
On Friday, CR were asked to "Briefly Describe Five Fondly-Remembered Convention Experiences." This is how they responded.
Tom Spurgeon
1. Sitting on the Porch of the Hyatt after the Eisners, shooting the late-night breeze with Pete Sickman-Garner and Jeff Smith
2. Driving to Chicago, hungry to see the new comics they didn't tend to sell in Indiana
3. Trying to explain to the rental car company agent how I got so much sand in the car
4. Having a cartoonist ask me if I wanted to write an article for the Comics Journal about him beating the shit out of an unscrupulous publisher, and following him for the next 90 minutes as he stomped around like Lee Marvin trying to track him down
5. Dennis DeYoung's command performance
*****
Russell Lissau
1. Doing my first signing in the DC Comics booth at Wizard World Chicago (2006, I think)
2. Going to an old Chicago Comicon (before it was WWC) in the early 1990s and meeting, all at one all-star table, Frank Miller, Mike Mignola, James O'Barr and Art Adams. I have the autographed books to prove it wasn't a dream!
3. Being on my first Wizard World panel (last year)
4. The first time a fan handed me a book I wrote, that he brought from his own collection, for me to sign. (I choked up, I really did.)
5. Buying a copy of "The Shy Creatures" from David Mack for my daughter at WWC in 2007. It's since become one of our favorite picture books. Then, last summer, she got to thank David for the book in person. It was precious.
1. A lady came up to my table at last year's Birmingham International Comics Show and presented me with a cushion, upon which she (a fine artist) had painted a picture of my dog/mascot/muse Hondle.
2. Drawing a squirrel for a punter, and not having it balled up and stuffed down my throat, like "Cheetara" shoulda done.
3. Meeting Kev F. Sutherland, comico, comic and teacher, and dancing with his socks.
4. The moment when my best mate and his family turned up at Brumacon, out of the blue and somewhat out of place. I mean, okay, his daughter wanted to meet Sonia Leong, but the rest of the family was there to say hi to me!
5. Impressing some forensic science students with my degrees in molecular biolo - oh, who am I kidding: my UV-fluorescent "CSI" pen.
1. being on a panel about continuity with Peter Sanderson and Paul Levitz at the Comics Arts Conference
2. being stuck on the wrong side of the train tracks in SD along with Jeff Smith, Mark Evanier and Sakai (among others)
3. playing on the winning side of the softball game at SPX vs Diamond
4. getting a wedding sketchbook done for friends back home that were being married about a week after the show
5. getting a Psycho Pirate sketch from Grant Morrison
*****
Adam Casey
1. Attending my first one, a dealer oriented show, in a hotel conference room in Raleigh in 1992 and being astounded to see all of the rare comics for the first time.
2. Visiting my first HeroesCon in 2005, and getting a fire lit under me to make comics by seeing a panel discussion with Andy Runton, Rob Ullman, J. Chris Campbell, and Ben Towle focusing on mini-comics.
3. At the same HeroesCon, discovering Brien Wayne Powell's Magnet Man mini-comics.
4. Setting up for my first convention, Fluke, in 2006 and making my first sell ever.
5. Meeting two artists from Canada, Lisa and Arletta, at SPX 2008 and on the last day of the show, we went to a campground and sat around a fire and I explained to them why I was certain Barack Obama would win the election.
*****
Buzz Dixon
1 - Staying awake for 72 hours straight at my first WorldCon.
2 - Chatting with Jack and Roz Kirby at San Diego, and suddenly realizing we were standing alone and unmolested in the middle of a 20-ft wide ring of Jack's adoring fans.
3 - Smoking Cohibas, drinking scotch, and talking with Steve Gerber, Flint Dille, and Frank Miller through the wee morning hours on a balcony at the U.S. Grant.
4 - Watching a Satanist pick up a Jack Chick tract at the Christian Comics Art Society table, flip through it, then recoil in horror and literally drop it like a hot potato.
5 - Laying in my bed at the El Cortez and listening to a dramatic reading from Robert Gover's "One Hundred Dollar Misunderstanding" performed on the sidewalk just below my window by an erotic services worker and her personal manager.
1. Booze run at ChicagoCon with my new best pal Frank Plowright, culminating in a wild, happy, screaming hotel-room party packed with friends, phoning and shouting at Harry Broertjes, who couldn't make it.
2. Osso Bucco with Howard Chaykin at a restaurant during MiamiCon (then Art Adams at my house for dinner the next night.)
3. Shaking hands and getting a pat on the back from Jack Kirby at San Diego ComicCon.
4. Meeting Will Eisner (and Bob Cummings!) at OrlandoCon, then dinner with Fred Hembeck and Lynn Moss.
5. Having Kyle Baker curse at me (with a smile) for asking where the end of The Shadow was at a dinky, nameless con in Ft. Lauderdale. ("Ask Helfer," he said.)
*****
Paul Karasik
1. 1971: Going up to my then idol, Frank Frazetta's, hotel room above the con in D.C. with con organizer, Gary Groth, flipping through original Johnny Comet dailies, watching a ball game, drinking cokes, and swiping Frazetta's hand-signatured name tag.
2. Uhm... does it get any better than that?
editor's note: Paul Karasik can do that because he's Paul Karasik; the rest of you I'll bounce right to the letters column.
*****
Michael Grabowski
1. Right at the point where my dad had gotten tired of driving me (45 minutes each way) to San Francisco Creation Cons, a comics convention was held at a local private college so close I could bike to it. So I did.
2. Two years in a row. (Probably '83-84.)
3. With a friend my age from my high school who actually read comics, too.
4. Leaving the con in the middle of the day to bike over to Comics & Comix in order to comparison shop.
5. Seeing a Dave Sim presentation for the first time at that same local con right at the point where he was becoming a New God in my comics pantheon.
*****
Brandon Graham
1. seeing the tiny coffin Drew Hayes kept his art supplies in.
2. Talking to frank Miller about country music.
3. Ross Campbell greeting Klingons in their own language.
4. Spilling coffee on Bob Shreck.
5. Trading badges with Mr Justin "Moritat" Norman and pretending to be him.
1. Seeing Marc Ellerby eat pavement in the middle of the street at 3:00 in the morning outside the San Diego Marriott.
2. Marc Ellerby being carried around in a giant Dark Horse bag.
3. Having to pull Marc Ellerby off of Joëlle Jones after he tackled her in a hotel hallway for no good reason.
4. Marc Ellerby's British appetite being introduced to the concept of a "burrito."
5. At the Eisners, having Gabriel Ba confuse me with Marc Ellerby after Marc bought copies of Five off of him earlier that day.
I'm gonna miss Marc not being at San Diego this year. Especially since it means I won't be making any new appearances in Ellerbisms.
1. The 1972 E.C. Convention in N.Y.C., the first one I ever attended: where I was awestruck at seeing Harvey all the other legends all in one place, speaking on the dais and just wandering around the halls.
2. The first San Diego Convention I attended, at the El Cortez Hotel in 1974: where I was amazed at seeing such a huge, diverse gathering of comics celebrities, all easily approachable for casual conversation in the halls as well as fascinating to hear in their formal presentations.
3. The 1987 San Diego Convention at the Convention Center: where I engaged in a stimulating conversation with Art Spiegelman which became the impetus for my lengthy eight-page analysis of "Two-Fisted Painters" in Comics Journal #128.
4. The 1990 San Diego Convention: where I enjoyed conducting my first panel discussion, with Kelly Freas.
5. The 2006 San Diego Convention: where I initiated and moderated four panel discussions to talk about recently opened "Masters of American Comics" exhibition in Los Angeles and to promote my new book. My panelists included Rick Geary, R.C. Harvey, Chip Kidd, Tim Biscup, Isabel Samaras, Shag, Mark Todd, Esther Pearl Watson, Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez, Ivan Brunetti, Mary Fleener, Roger Langridge, Souther Salazar, Denis Kitchen, Craig Yoe, and Brian Walker, who invited me to sit at his table during the Eisner Awards.
*****
Michael Aushenker
Five For Friday #169 -- Briefly Describe Five Fondly-Remembered Convention Experiences
1) Meeting one of my all-time favorites, Jack Kirby, and his wife Roz, at my very first San Diego Comicon (1992), shortly before Jack passed away, and giving him a copy of my first (and just-)published comic book, BOUND & GAGGED (Caliber Press/Iconografix). This took place on the top level of the convention center, that open deck where they hold the official Comicon party. I'll never forget it.
2) Back in the 1980s, when I was about 13, befriending Denys Cowan at one of the monthly Los Angeles comic conventions at the Ambassador Hotel (a classy, elegant, Old Hollywood hotel near downtown L.A. where Robert Kennedy was assassinated; unfortunately since torn down). Cowan spent several hours letting me hang out at his table while he met fans, giving me tips about cartooning in between, and, by the end of the day, I took home an 8 1/2" x=2 011" red-ink portrait of his signature Luke Cage and Iron Fist (which I still have). This experience really made an impression on me as a budding cartoonist, as I was huge fan of the Mary Jo Duffy/Denys Cowan "Powerman/Iron Fist" run.
3) Meeting fellow cartoonist Jose Cabrera ("Crying Macho Man") during one APE Convention in San Francisco a couple of years ago. Turned out he also lives in Los Angeles and I now consider him one of my best friends.
4) Witnessing Glenn Danzig going from friendly to almost taking down some poor dealer after he showed him some bootleg Danzig stuff he was selling.
5) While working my table at one SD Comicon, out of boredom and apparently suffering from costume fatigue, I drew giant googlely eyes with a Sharpie on paper and taped them to the lid part of a cherry top red-and-white trash receptacle, along with a sign that read "Meet the robot from Disney's 'The Black Hole!" It evidently made for a pretty authentic V.I.N.C.E.N.T. People laughed, posed with it and took pictures.
1) Drinking dirty Newfoundland rum with Randy Lander on the balcony of our hotel room, chatting about comics and life in general.
2) Apologizing to the guys at IDW for my behavior the night before at their con party.
3) Listening to Mark Alessi rant like a madman as I and other online comics journalists drank his booze and ate his food.
4) Watching Jim Mahfood create a piece of painted art in a bar and buying it when it was auctioned off.
5) Politely turning down Jeph Loeb's offer to buy two pages of Mike McKone art from his first issue of the ongoing Superman series that I'd just purchased less than an hour before from the artist.
*****
Alan David Doane
1. Having Thai food with FantaCo alumni Roger Green and Rocco Nigro in Saratoga Springs. I broke a tooth biting down on a peanut during that lunch, so you can bet I was having a good time if I still remember it fondly.
2. Taking it all in as as I accompanied Barry Windsor-Smith and Alex Bialy to a convention in White Plains, NY almost a decade ago. Amazed by Barry's class and composure and willingness to share his knowledge with his fans. Also got to meet Marie Severin and the Nodells at that show.
3. My five- or six-year old daughter's disappointment when we arrived at a western New York comic book show ten or more years ago and she realized there was no "show." An early parenting lesson in perception and expectation! The guy that played Major West on Lost in Space was at that one, but I remembered him more as a bad guy from General Hospital.
4. Meeting Carel Struyken at an Albany science fiction convention not long after Twin Peaks ended (he was The Giant that appeared to Agent Cooper in visions, and also played Mr. Homn on Star Trek: TNG). As I recall, he had invented some sort of primitive holodeck-type video game and was hyped about promoting it. We shook hands and mine was like a baby's compared to his. Man, he was just huge, and a sweet, gracious man.
5. Finally meeting Joe Staton at an Albany Comicon earlier this year, after being a fan of his dating back to the first issue of E-Man. He's a gifted artist whose most recent work, Femme Noir, is a lot of fun. And the drawing he did of the Archie characters made my wife very, very happy.
*****
Scott Dunbier
* Calling Kevin Nowlan from the stage of the Eisner Awards after I accepted his award for best artist of the year.
* Spending an evening in a Detroit hotel room with Mark Nelson and Mike Mignola after some lousy show, just telling stories and laughing our asses off.
* Garry Leach, staying with my family during the 2004 SDCC, the only one he has ever attended. He spent a lot of time in his room (given up by our the three year old son, Alex), and didn’t go out much, not even to the show. I couldn’t figure it out, even got a little pissy with him over his coming all this way and not making the most of it. When he left he surprised the Hell out of my wife and I by presenting us with a painting of Alex.
* Walking over to an art dealers booth on preview night at SDCC six or seven years ago and seeing a Wally Wood Spirit in Outer Space page hanging up -- the very one that I always hoped I would own, and now do.
* Flipping coins for comic art.
*****
Booksteve
1- Noting that Gil Kane looked like he was drawn by Gil Kane as he walked by me, I acidentally bumped into Will Eisner and nearly knocked him into Jack Kirby!
2- Following Stan Lee down the street for six blocks on a windy day to see if it really was a toupee!
3- Watching the world premiere of SPACE 1999 in a room with only a handful of people when a filled auditorium right next door started chanting the STAR TREK opening whilst watching an episode on the big screen. Halfway through SPACE, we all defected to TREK.
4- Watching black and white SUPERMAN TV episodes in a room for Superman's 50th birthday only to have the lights come up and Phyllis (Lois Lane) Coates and Robert (Inspector Henderson) Shayne be in the room with us!
5- Talking to Fantagraphics' Gary Groth for twenty minutes before realizing who he was and being surprised he was so much nicer than his reputation!
*****
Mark McMurray
1. Creation Con NYC circa 1979 -- Watching amazing images repeatedly fall from John Byrne's pencil throughout the day.
2. A.C.E. Vermont 1995 -- Man... that whole day was just great.
3. San Diego Comic Con 1998 -- Meeting John Severin, then helping him find his way to the Eisner Awards.
4. SPX 1999 -- the party after the Ignatz awards in the room with the bathtub full of beer.
5. MoCCA 2005 -- Patrick McDonnell saying (after seeing my comic Dumb Jersey White Boy), "Hey... I'm a dumb jersey white boy, too!!"
A Quiet (Mostly) Convention Weekend?
Here's a few things I'm seeing around the Internet from Wizard World Philly and Charlotte's Heroes Con, the two big conventions taking place this weekend.
* former Wizard staffer Steven Hoveke of Square 1 Press was thrown out of WWP on Saturday morning after attending a full day on Friday. It sounds like he was at the show with at least two guests, Howard Chaykin and Walt Simonson.
* there are a number of title and creative team type announcements at such events, and both CBR and Newsarama cover them in thorough, almost breathless fashion as is their news mandate. This one stood out to me just because Marvel (and DC) could arguably stand to pay a lot more attention to their secondary licenses. It's not like future movies are dependent on fully-functioning comic book characters operating within their own comic books, but I have to imagine it wouldn't hurt. Dr. Strange has the best traditional Marvel origin story that's not Spider-Man's, and he's their best yet-to-be-used character for the age range of the traditional Hollywood leading man. Why shouldn't he have some juice on the page?
* finally, I'm having almost no luck getting a handle on crowds from this flickr set of Heroes Con photos or this one from WWP, but if I had to guess neither one looks jammed. The first set works best right now as a nice look at the HC infrastructure; the best thing about the second set is a look at Hall of Fame comics convention media guest Virgil. This blog post says crowds are smaller at Philly this year. Wizard has a horrid reputation when it comes to releasing attendance figures, so we may never know.
The bulk of the weekend seems to be progressing in pretty normal fashion thus far in both locations. I'll likely repeat the majority of this post on Monday along with a Collective Memory entry on Heroes and anything else that's newsworthy.
The top comics-related news stories from June 13 to June 19, 2009:
1. Unrest in Iran expressed through cartooning component: massive interest worldwide from cartoonists, special focus on Iranian cartoonists, street cartooning, Marjane Satrapi in Brussels.
2. Comic sales in the Direct Market for May 2009 suck a bone, particularly when compared to a relatively robust May 2008.
Quote Of The Week
"Now this is how you write a post-artcomix-festival thank-you letter: TCAF's Chris Butcher shows us how it's done." -- Sean T. Collins, referencing the warm moments and minor glitches letter in a way that hadn't occurred to me.
*****
today's cover is from one of the great publications of the underground comix era
In Your Face, KE7: Limited Edition Of Crumb's Genesis Set For Sale At $500
Judith Hansen of Hansen Literary Agency just wrote in to mention that WW Norton is now taking orders for its limited edition of legendary cartoonist Robert Crumb's The Book Of Genesis Illustrated By Robert Crumb. It's in the usual places, like Amazon.com.
This is a slipcased edition with a signed print matching the book number -- only 250 will be printed. If my life had gone in the direction where I was only buying a few copies of comics that were potentially great, or important, or meant a lot to me rather than making an attempt to buy and read all the comics, I'd likely be fighting you for a place in line. I'm not certain I won't be, anyway.
This is the best part of the Amazon.com listing, where it's discounted to $315: "Customers buy this book with The Wolverton Bible by Basil Wolverton; Price For Both: $331.49."
Federal Appeals Court Declines To Re-Hear Dwight Whorley Case Wired has a concise piece up on the decision Monday by a federal appeals court not to rehear the case of Dwight Whorley. The court decided 10-1 not to rehear the case, where Whorley was convicted in 2006 for a variety of offenses including but not limited to possession of obscene manga.
A silver lining may be that the dissenting vote by Judge Roger Gregory was extremely strong, hitting on the idea of the government regulating private thoughts, decrying a conviction regarind wholly imagined beings, and stating that the interstate commerce part of the conviction did not reflect modern practices where the Internet is common. He urged the Supreme Court to consider the case and reverse it.
A previous panel including Gregory had voted 2-1, Gregory again dissenting, to uphold parts of the original conviction including the possession of manga portion.
Both the Wired writer and other observers believe there is a direct link between portions of Whorley's conviction and the decision by authorities to pursue a case against Christopher Handley concerning possession of manga. Handley eventually accepted a plea, and awaits sentencing.
Bill Bates, the long-time cartoonist at the Carmel Pine Cone and a one-time artist for the San Francisco Examiner, died on May 21 at the Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula from complications that arose out of a 2008 heart attack. While the work was carried in local publication and on web sites at the time, it looks like it just made it to regional/national publication in the last few days, or somehow otherwise jumped into current news circulation.
Bates was from Texas, and according to the various obituaries spent some time as an artist for various cruise lines after a stint in the military. During the cruise line job he sketched passengers and other details of individual trips and then presenting customers with a chance to buy the resulting work. He would later keep a sketchbook of his travels to over 125 countries around the world.
Bates became attracted to the Carmel area after attending a cartoonist function there. In the 1980s, Bates attended weekly meetings in Carmel at Cardinale's Coffee Shop with other area cartoonists such as Hank Ketcham, Gus Arriola and Eldon Dedini -- all of whom preceded Bates in death. Bates supplemented his Carmel Pine Cone work with the operation of a local cafe until 2001, cartoons for The Monterey Herald, and book collections and other uses of his cartoon art.
A stand-alone page remembering the artist, including some of his work, can be found here.
He is survived by his wife and eight children. Bill Bates was 79 years old.
And They Will All Live Like Cartoonists: The US Economy And Comics, Post #42
* this article at Wall Street Journal is the first one I've seen -- not that I've been really looking -- about the state of plans at Barnes and Noble in terms of opening new stores and closing old ones. The upshot is they'll be doing less of the former than they thought and more of the latter.
* the top 30 news site and top 30 newspaper site lists are always fun to read. All they really say to me is that this is an arena that's far from settled in terms of what's going to attract customers and keep them long-term.
* since Heroes Con starts today, that means it's the one-year anniversary of the May 2008 DM numbers, where the first issue of DC's long-planned Final Crisis came in a weak second to a not-premiere issue of Marvel's less-at-stake Secret Invasion series. One thing I remember hearing at the time is that the order of the finish wasn't as important as the fact that a lot of these top comics enjoyed quite healthy sales, thank you very much, a line of thinking that was definitely not revisited when the May 2009 serial comic book numbers dropped.
Frank Jacobs is a long-time freelancer for MAD Magazine who has worked on a variety of that publication's features since coming on board in 1957. He is perhaps best known for his well-regarded poems and song parodies. Jacobs is also the author of The MAD World of William M. Gaines, one of the earlier popular comics histories.
John Broome (1913-1999) followed his agent Julius Schwartz into comics from science fiction. He wrote for DC Comics from 1946 until 1970 on a variety of features including foundational Silver Age superhero properties like The Flash, Green Lanter, The Atomic Knights and Detective Chimp.
The Bill Finger Award was created in 2005 at the urging of longtime creator, historian and rights advocate Jerry Robinson. They are named after William Finger (1914-1974) the first writer on the Batman comics. This year's board was chaired by Mark Evanier, who reported via the press release distributed that the choices were unanimously selected. That committee was Evanier, Charles Kochman, Kurt Busiek, Tony Isabella and Marv Wolfman. The award will be presented as part of the Eisner Awards ceremony this July at the Hilton Bayfront hotel as part of San Diego's Comic-Con International.
I would like a site of information about FOOM: like this one, or this one, but with giant cover scans. Is that out there anywhere? Someone should do that. The Marie Severin bullpen, the Jarvis and the Romita Spider-Man gang covers are all great and I'd like to stare at them.
Random Comics News Story Round-Up
* it's good enough news to repeat it today after posting it as its own deal last night: not only did TCAF have a successful 2009 by their internal measures, they're going to have a show next year, 2010, to see if they like putting one on every year. For those of us that were totally chicken to travel this Spring because of vague economic anxiety and would love a chance to tromp around Toronto, this could even be said to be great news.
* the retailer Mike Sterling answers my question about Watchmen and what I think we should call The Sterling Effect, a phenomenon the prolific blogger's frequently talked about in past posts where sales for a graphic novel peak before a movie is released and then drop precipitously soon afterward.
* by the way, I think we should call this phenomenon The Sterling Effect because a) Mike's the one who talked about it the most and I believe noticed it first, b) it sounds like a Sidney Lumet film and more things in comics should sound like Sidney Lumet films, and c) Mike knew exactly what I was talking about although provided very little context.
* you know, I linked to a Tekno Comix post from James Vance earlier this week, but I didn't wait for the astounding picture it features up top to load before I clicked away. Wow.
* finally, the Eisner Awards are moving to a new location for 2009 -- the Hilton San Diego Bayfront. The Eisners had been held for the last several years in a giant room at the convention center, which always felt to me a bit like those times when you were a kid and you'd go to an event held at your elementary school gym at night. I have fond memories of moving from the awards room to one of those ridiculously nice San Diego nighttime balconies with a bar nearby when the awards were previously held at a hotel, so this may afford the same opportunity.
In its obituary, the blog for the alumni association of the Savannah College of Art and Design mentions that a scholarship in the name of the late professor in the sequential art department Jeremy Mullins (also a 2005 SCAD MFA grad) has been established. Donations can sent to Jeremy Mullins Sequential Art Scholarship, Savannah College of Art and Design, P.O. Box 3146, Savannah, GA 31402-3146. Anyone wishing additional information about the scholarship can phone the school's institutional advancement department at 912-525-5868.
I hope you'll consider sending something to what seems like an extremely appropriate way to remember and pay tribute to such a devoted professor.
As I thought, the initial battery of e-mails from publishers and those with insider knowledge of Diamond indicate with fervor and certainty that there's no money problems in evidence whatsoever in the functioning of that company, and that whatever complaints out there that might exist -- and no such complaints have been confirmed to me -- almost certainly came from a switchover in business terms whereby the accounting takes place in a slightly different way. My inbox looks like the phone tree of a Star Chamber of comics heavy-hitters.
So until I hear way, way, way, way differently -- and you'll be the first ones to know -- I don't see any reason why any rumors along those lines should be believed or given any thought at all.
A couple of you expressed concern that I would spotlight a rumor like that. I appreciate your concern and I apologize: I probably didn't think that through all that well. My thinking was that Alan Gardner is so widely read and so well respected in certain circles that his engagement of the story meant something much different than the usual message board stuff, and that this idea comes after a round of Geppi personal finance reports that were confirmed but had an element of unspoken speculation to them, and that the rumor contained with it a pernicious explanation for why this wouldn't be covered, so in general I thought it would be better to step up and deal with the rumors in straight-up fashion rather than let them fester without comment.
I will continue to take all news and rumors of news and deal with them if and as they're sent to me. No one knows what tomorrow will bring. But in a month where comics and graphic novel sales took a dip, in period of time where I believe a lot of news stories are influenced in ways we may not even realize by general fears and anxiety concerning the economy in general and the comics economy specifically, let's be honest and forthright and make inquiries and not participate in a culture of worry and speculation where the former needn't exist and the latter is unnecessary and harmful.
Our Best Wishes To The Cartoonist Derf After Quintuple Bypass Surgery
Via the SLG blog comes word that the cartoonist Derf, one of the best alternative weekly strip cartoonists of the last several years and the creator of the enormously sweet and good-natured graphic novel Punk Rock and Trailer Parks (apparently a newly-minted CBG prize-winner) has had bypass surgery following as a result of radiation treatments. He talks about the experience and his current mindset with a great deal of clarity at his non-permalink ready blog (June 16 entry).
* looks like there is a cartoonist on the ground in Tehran, slowly coming to the attention of outside observers: here and here.
* Steve Bell is one of the half-dozen or so editorial cartoonists to whom we pay attention on a regular basis. His sober treatment of the crisis' effect on Iran's international reputation as seen above is more of a close reading of events than other cartoonists have done (it's about a summit in Russia attended by the current Iranian president as opposed to another summary statement on recent events). This portrait, however, is more directly brutal.
* Jens Robinson wrote in to say that you can also search for cartoons about Iran by those cartoonists represented by the New York Times Syndicate, including several international cartoonists not represented anywhere else.
MySpace Comics Effort Out With Latest Round Of Cutbacks At Networking Site
It's not something to which I paid a great deal of attention, but the effort to provide comics through the social networking site MySpace.com has ended with the latest round of cutbacks at the News Corp. enterprise. The two most prominent components to my mind were the Joe Quesada column, which has already moved to the Comic Book Resources site, and the Dark Horse-directed on-line version of its Dark Horse Presents, which I imagine has a good chance of finding traction either somewhere else or as a stand-alone offering through the Pacific Northwest publishing house.
The Worst Thing About Marvel Comics There's an interesting discussion on the blog of The Atlantic's politics and culture blogger Ta-Nehisi Coates about Marvel's recent PR spotlight on one of their ongoing narratives. Cole Moore Odell's point in the comments that defeating death is part of the texture of superhero comics is a smart one, as is the general point that characters in fantastic literature that aren't about superheroes do this, too (Sherlock Holmes, Gandalf the Grey/White).
However, I do have some sympathy for the position that this weakens Marvel's general claim to being the more realistic comics company, which is how that company exists in the minds of many casual fans. I also think there's not enough scrutiny as to how these sorts of plots work in specific titles (I don't care for any of the uses for Jean Grey after those X-Men comics where she killed herself after her friends fought very sweetly -- and very badly -- on her behalf despite monstrous claims as to what she had done). Mostly, though, I'm not certain the Marvel writers (or the DC ones) as a collective have ever handled well how astounding it would be to have certain people in any fictional world even half-way designed to resemble our own outright cheat death.
To that end, I'd be more than happy to take whatever names anyone out there would like to send me of folks that aren't being paid, whether it's your own troubles or someone you've heard about. My suspicion is that this story would actually rip to the surface of comics pretty quickly because Diamond's prompt payments are a big part of what makes most of the companies go, buttressed by the widespread assumption that DC's contractual options with Diamond are enough of a stabilizing factor that comics wouldn't be in any real danger. I'll try to confirm and have no problem publishing any bad news.
If this it turns out not to be true, I think it's interesting as part of the free-floating anxiety that exists in comics right now, a combination of general economic worry and a more typical cycle where a whole generation of hopeful cartoonists begins to hit the ceiling in terms of what it's likely they'll make from their comics efforts.
Update: As I thought, the initial battery of e-mails from publishers and those with insider knowledge of Diamond indicate with fervor and certainty that there's no money problems in evidence whatsoever in the functioning of that company, and that whatever complaints out there that might exist -- and no such complaints have been confirmed to me -- almost certainly came from a switchover in business terms whereby the accounting takes place in a slightly different way. My inbox looks like the phone tree of a Star Chamber of comics heavy-hitters.
So until I hear way, way, way, way differently -- and you'll be the first ones to know -- I don't see any reason why any rumors along those lines should be believed or given any thought at all.
A couple of you expressed concern that I would spotlight a rumor like that. I appreciate your concern and I apologize: I probably didn't think that through all that well. My thinking was that Alan Gardner is so widely read and so well respected in certain circles that his engagement of the story meant something much different than the usual message board stuff, and that this idea comes after a round of Geppi personal finance reports that were confirmed but had an element of unspoken speculation to them, and that the rumor contained with it a pernicious explanation for why this wouldn't be covered, so in general I thought it would be better to step up and deal with the rumors in straight-up fashion rather than let them fester without comment.
I will continue to take all news and rumors of news and deal with them if and as they're sent to me. No one knows what tomorrow will bring. But in a month where comics and graphic novel sales took a dip, in period of time where I believe a lot of news stories are influenced in ways we may not even realize by general fears and anxiety concerning the economy in general and the comics economy specifically, let's be honest and forthright and make inquiries and not participate in a culture of worry and speculation where the former needn't exist and the latter is unnecessary and harmful.
New Way To Score Comic-Con Entry
Someone forwarded me the following note from a casting service searching Southern California for rugged-looking booth bunny dudes:
Wednesday, Jun. 17, 2009, 5:35 PM Pacific
COMIC CON (Promo Models)
Live Project
NON-UNION
Casting Director: XXX XXXXX
Wardrobe Fitting Date: July 11th
Shoot/Call Date: July 22nd --July 26th
Pay Rate: $XX/hr plus incentives.
Location: San Diego Convention Center
SUBMIT ELECTRONICALLY
MUST LIVE WITHIN THE SAN DIEGO AREA - NO EXCEPTIONS!
Must be available July 22nd-26th -- Approximately 7 hrs per day. Both Morning and Evening Shifts are available, so please indicate your preference.
[PHYSICALLY-FIT MALE PROMO MODELS]
Good looking but rugged types are preferred. Must have an athletic build think Hugh Jackman. Must have the ability to stand for long periods of time. Must be a dependable team player. **Be available for all shifts (including a fitting prior to the event-date TBD) Flexible schedule a plus! Promotional experience a plus! Have an outgoing personality with exceptional people skills. Duties will include engaging with the public, relaying talking points, posing for pictures and distributing promo merch. Ambassadors will be provided a costume and may be in character.
Hey, I can stand up for long periods of time, have the body of former Green Bay Packer Gilbert Brown and I was thinking about Hugh Jackman not 20 minutes ago... wait, I think that means I have to look like Hugh Jackman. Never mind. Anyway, that's not a world into which many of us are privy, so I thought it might be worth posting here. (I'm assuming this is a public posting but if I'm violating something, that's my fault and I'll be happy to take it down immediately.)
Close Reading Of Ken Avidor Cover There's a series of comic books out there featuring women in and sort of in politics that has received an inexplicable amount of attention for how clumsily they're done. A similar comic PR-wise with almost nothing in common with those comics content-wise is False Witness, a comic about Congresswoman Michele Bachmann by Bill Prendergast and a number of other Minnesota cartoonists. It has a bit of an edge about it concept-wise as well, as in underground comix tradition Prendergast asserts that the book is a corrective to local media coverage. Here's one of those editorials-as-promo pieces, where Prendergast dissects an astounding-looking cover by Ken Avidor.
* it looks like Drew Weing is going to return to his Set To Sea webcomic. He'd been gone so long I was beginning to wonder if what was up was actually a complete story -- and maybe it is, as the comic looks shut down right now, so perhaps what Weing's talking about is a re-do rather than an extension. It's worth checking out when it gets started, no matter what he's doing to it.
* publisher Brett Warnock mentions that Top Shelf has sent the new Alec omnibus off to press. Of all the books coming out in the second half of this year, I'm maybe looking forward to that one the most.
* finally, DC has announced that a broadsheet of its first Superman adventure intended for the tabloid Wednesday Comics will appear in USA Today, although disappointingly further installments will be on-line at USA Today's site.
More On Iranian Unrest, Cartooning
* here's a video report on Marjane Satrapi and fellow film director Mohsen Makhmalbaf's appearance in Brussels to decry the announced election results, including footage of the cartoonist giving testimony.
* Daryl Cagle has a section up on Iranian cartoons by various cartoonists who work through his site, including heavy-hitters like Mike Luckovich and Steve Benson. My disappointment that it took a couple of days wasn't meant as implied criticism, but as it turns out Cagle had been in Japan. Matt Bors was nice enough to send me a direct link to his cartoon on the matter.
* the BBC has the briefest of updates on the suspension of the newspaper Velayat, which an initial release via a Canadian presswire said was due to the publication of a cartoon. Apparently the newspaper that wrote about the suspension was also suspended. Here's the IFEX update on general journalist suppression.
Christian De Metter's adaptation of Dennis Lehane's Shutter Islandhas won the Prix des Libraires given out by an association of librarians specializing in comics. The book was also one of the official selections of the Angouleme Festival just past and is part of Casterman's new noir line of novel adaptations. I was a little bit confused as to why the article brought up another book -- and I still am -- but it's a book through which Metter shared in a 2005 Angouleme prize for Best Scenario, under I believe the old voting system. Anyway, given Lehane's recent effectiveness as a source for Hollywood movies (Mystic River, Gone Baby Gone), and the fact that this a film adaptation of this one is this Fall's Martin Scorcese picture, I would have to believe there might be some interest in bringing this comics adaptation to the English-language market.
Swann Foundation Recipients Named
According to a press release, the Caroline and Erwin Swann Foundation for Caricature and Cartoon has announced its fellowship awards for the academic year 2009-2010: Yasemin Gencer, Amanda Lahikainen and Jason E. Hill. The number of application led to a split award between the three recipients. Gencer will use her award for research on her dissertation covering political cartoons in Turkey from 1918 to 1928. Lahikainen will study how graphic satirists in England used the French Revolution to make commentary on domestic politics. Hill hopes to complete his dissertation on the role of cartooning in the visual strategies employed by PM Daily in the 1940s. All three are expected to use holdings at the Library of Congress, the organization that administers the fellowship awards.
Random Comics News Story Round-Up
* the writer James Vance has returned to his series of posts on 1990s license farm Tekno with this piece on Mr. Hero.
* a politically conservative writer (I think) with a fundamentalist background defends Garry Trudeau by going all New Standard Version on the ADL. I'm not sure why I found this compelling. Okay, I actually know why, but I think some of you might find it interesting, too. Also, he's probably not using an NSV.
* reading this article about how stores may under-order the forthcoming Wednesday Comics and that previous serialization and folds may have some vague effect on value is horribly, horribly depressing.
* the comic strip-focused blogger Michael Cavna asks: if you were the editor of the comics page in a newspaper with a comics page and a kids page, would you a) put Family Circus on the kids page, b) keep Family Circus on the comics page, c) spend every spare moment at work when your boss isn't staring directly at you not working on the Family Circus dilemma but looking for a university position on-line hoping you can score something, anything, before you're laid off. Okay, he really just wants you to decide between a and b.
* finally, I really liked this picture of Jed Kemsley accepting the National Cartoonists Society's Silver T-Square award on behalf of his late father, James. I don't know; it just seems nice.
It is my ongoing privilege to publish Bart's writing about the European comics scene here at CR, and I wish him nothing but the best on his 40th birthday.
Marjane Satrapi And Filmmaker Present Election Fraud Document To European Parliament In Brussels
I've received about a dozen e-mails asking if anyone had heard or seen anything from one of the more prominent recent Iranian-born celebrities, cartoonist Marjane Satrapi. I hadn't come across anything other than scattered suggestions from people to read Persepolis until I saw this piece.
This Isn't A Library: New And Notable Releases To The Comics Direct Market
*****
Here are the books that make an impression on me staring at this week's 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. But were I in a comic book shop tomorrow I would more than likely pick up the following and give them a full read before my retailer complained and forced my hand.
*****
MAR090210 SLEEPER SEASON 1 TP (MR) $24.99 APR090492 CAPTAIN AMERICA #600 $4.99 FEB092597 INCOGNITO #4 (MR) $3.50
Big Ed Brubaker week: a more substantial-per-volume reprinting of his Sleeper work begins, an anniversary edition of Captain America with broad media coverage, and the latest issue of his Incognito serial with Sleeper co-creator Sean Phillips.
FEB090214 STARMAN OMNIBUS HC VOL 03 $49.99
More of the James Robinson/Tony Harris/other talented people superhero series, much-loved during a mostly fallow period for the men in costumes punching each other books.
APR090384 INVINCIBLE #63 $2.99
Arguably Image's current flagship title, in the midst of a multiple-issue summer punch-up.
APR090362 MICE TEMPLAR TP VOL 01 $17.99
There was something a little to pre-packaged about this comic, but a lot of people love their anthropomorphic, just-outside-of-human-sight fantasies.
APR090495 CAPTAIN BRITAIN AND MI 13 #14 $2.99
Marvel's current below-the-radar, well-liked, already-canceled comic that folks have already started to buy in the discount bins.
APR090682 FART PARTY GN VOL 02 (MR) $13.95
Julia Wertz is funny.
MAR094447 NAOKI URASAWA 20TH CENTURY BOYS GN VOL 03 $12.99
Your new volume from a well-liked manga series of the week.
APR090982 NEXUS AS IT HAPPENED TP VOL 01 $9.99
A sort-of manga-style repackaging of the 1980s independent superhero title. It worked well for Love & Rockets.
MAR094038 WHATEVER HAPPENED TO WORLD OF TOMORROW HC $24.95
Brian Fies follow-up to Mom's Cancer and quite the fancy-looking book, I understand.
APR090843 LEGACY $14.95
The great Jack Katz will lay you down and make you sleep, sleep, sleep like a puppy.
*****
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.
The comics educator, podcast creator and webcomics cartoonist Jeremy Mullins has passed away, according to several alumni and those of an awareness of that program. He died on Saturday from multiple injuries while climbing in the Catskills near Kaaterskill Falls. Mullins held an MFA from the sequential art department at Savannah College Of Art And Design (SCAD), where he won an outstanding thesis award in 2005 for his "Digital Delivery and the Empowerment of the Sequential Artist" and where he would teach.
A profile of his thesis says that Mullins was a political cartoonist who came to SCAD to learn how to tell stories with his art, and that his thesis was in part a response to worsening conditions in the comics industry. His webcomic, Sweetwater Is An Asshole, frequently depicted events that were comics-related or from the late Mullins' life related to comics, and he ran the school's Seqalab podcast. He previously worked for the Savannah Morning News.
Mullins was a popular professor who connected with his students by virtue of his personality, his heavily enthusiastic passion for the comics medium and his belief in the ability of his students to contribute to the art form. A mini-comic by one of his students given the educator at the end of a mini-comics class here. He spent the winter of 2009 in France, teaching for the school.
Former student Michael Jewell wrote CR: "He was not necessarily a comics celebrity, his career in teaching had even only begun, but I'm writing through tears to tell you that his presence has impacted a chunk of this generations' young cartoonists. He oversaw the birth of my first graphic novel last winter in the wind-swept valleys of Southern France and it breaks my fucking heart to tell you that he was just a week shy of seeing it finished. He was generous with all his students, but it meant so much to know that he believed in me."
There's a fine line between pointing out the aspects of a world event related to cartooning and seeing the world through comics eyes, and if you have a choice between reading comics news today and reading about whatever the heck is going on over there I hope you'll choose the latter, but there are a few aspects worth pointing out.
* something called the CNW group reports that the newspaper Velayat, that serves the Qazvin province north of Tehran, has been suspended by government authorities for publishing a cartoon featuring the embattled Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
* hugely influential political blogger Andrew Sullivan has been pointing people towards Iranian cartoonists like Nikahang Kosar/Kowsar (cartoon below) and Mana Neistani/Neyestani (above), although I think he may mis-identify the latter as female. You may remember Neyestani as the cockroach cartoonist from a few years back.
* according to the Telegraph, cartoons had played a role in the presidential election being questioned through a series of monkey-related cartoons aimed at the incumbent.
* Daryl Cagle doesn't have an index up yet, so that's disappointing. I'm not aware of any other indexing services so that we could get an idea as to how US cartoonists are handling the story -- if they're handling the story. Here's Pat Oliphant, Jim Morin and Tom Toles, so that's pretty much the only folks I care about. I looked at about 30 to get those three, and for what it's worth there was only other cartoon on Iran.
Analysts: May 2009 DM Estimates
The comics business news and analysis site ICv2.com offers their usual array of lists, estimates and analysis regarding the performance of comic books and graphic novels in the Direct Market of comic and hobby shops, this time for May 2009.
The big news this month is a sudden drop in the sales of comic books, both as measured in comparison to last year's figures -- the most utilized measure by comics industry watchers -- and in terms of sales from earlier this year. Sales of comics were down around 20 percent and sales of graphic novels were down about 13 percent for an overall 18 percent drop or so. This after an April that looked promising and featured a surge in sales, although some had warned of two extraordinary circumstance holding up the charts January-April: the extreme popularity of the Obama/Spider-Man team-up as it topped the charts not once but twice, and the strength of Watchmen trade sales as anticipation for the movie went through its final stage.
I think I'd tend to support John Jackson Miller's general take as to what this means. This is obviously a drop at the top of the charts, although a reason why titles on down the charts might be doing better than in past years is because they're more likely to be big company titles than they used to be. I would put it like this: this is a market that's been shaped to deliver top-of-charts success, events series and first issues, and there just aren't a whole lot of them right now. That's something that's been underlined in recent years by the attempts of the two big mainstream companies to revitalize or keep vital their mid-list performers. I also imagine there could be something to JJM's supposition that this could reflect trouble at a very specific kind of suburban store that anecdotal evidence suggests has long served as an avenue for a certain kind of high-income spender to buy a lot of comics all at once.
So I'd say the drop is worrisome, if not outright scary. Just look at the top of the serial comic book market in 2008 as compared to 2009. In 2008, there were seven titles selling above 100K; in 2009, none. In 2008, there were 42 titles selling above 50,000 copies; in 2009, there are 24. And what's even more worrisome is that the biggest companies tend to treat the Direct Market as a resource to be exploited rather than a partner to be supported; they're not traditionally the kind of agencies in times of trouble for focused change and market reform. It's enough to make one nostalgic for a year ago, when all people had to worry about and comment on was the under-performance of Final Crisis #1.
(Although the trends story dominates and I think does so with good reason, kudos to Top Shelf's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen re-launch for top of the chart placement via unit sales and dollar amount.)
Google Wants To Trade With You Alan Gardner and Mike Lynch pick up on a story that's firing through illustration circles whereby multiple billion-dollar company Google has solicited illustration work in exchange for exposure rather than pay. This is interesting because Google is so huge and can so obviously pay and pay well and yet, on the other hand, can arguably provide value through exposure. It really forces people to confront the core issues and principles. I think companies should pay for work they buy, although in this day and age people will not only give their work to them for free but feel like they're a bit smarter than everyone else for doing so.
* want to hear something odd? In the last two weeks I've had two people that live on opposite coasts tell me that the only reason they regularly visit their local comics shop is to buy new issues of Usagi Yojimbo. That's pretty good for a comic that's been running for 25 years. With the news that will roll out in the form of a post here in 20 minutes or so about the loss of sales in comics shops this May compared to last May, that double-testimony struck me as a nice tribute to the power of serial comics literature when it's done right.
* Don MacPherson, the comics business news and analysis site ICv2.com and Sean Kleefeld all look at yesterday's mainstream comics publishing news story/publicity-driven event so I don't have to.
* finally, the Robert Crumb/Genesis hype machine is surging to life... just not in the US all the way yet. That's the first time I've seen anything from later in the book.
Heroes Con in Charlotte is taking place this weekend. I recommend the show. I was a guest in 2008, I was invited back this year and it gave me a stomach ache for three days to have to turn it down. I had a really good time last year. It's a nice show, an old-school show, like San Diego and Chicago were when I was attending them in college. If there were a half-dozen shows like this one in various places across the country, I'd seriously think about doing a tour.
Here are a dozen things I enjoyed about last year's Heroes Con, in the hopes that you'll perhaps be convinced to head over to the show yourself.
1. It's A True Regional Convention
Although there were plenty of people that I had known from previous shows and other professional stops in comics, all of whom I was happy to see in this new environment -- cartoonist and Wow Cool Publisher Marc Arsenault was there, and I hadn't seen him since 1997 -- a lot of the pros and certainly a lot of the attendees were from towns and states with which I've had little interaction since graduating from college. I liked the fact that people made trips, even stayed overnight, to support the show as much as to indulge in some aspect of their chosen hobby and favorite medium. It was also one of the few shows I've been to where I felt like I actually visited a different part of the country in addition to the Land Of Comics. If there were more convention experiences like it, I'd follow comics on tour.
2. It Has A Unique Drawing Culture
Everybody at this show draws. Nearly every single person with a table facing outward was drawing: commissions, sketches, front-piece drawings. I drew two sketches. Although attention to original art and sketching has seemed to me to grow at every show in North America, I've never seen it to the extent that I saw it last year at Heroes. I'm told attendees come back every year for new pieces of art from specific artists that come back every year to give them what they want. At times, walking the aisles of the show during con hours was more like visiting some strange hotel lobby late at night filled with cartoonists drawing and chatting. I like the fact that there's one show out there that embraces the fact that original art and sketches and commissions are one of the truly great things about the chance to meet comics professionals face to face.
3. Its Guests Return Year After Year
Not only is a vote of confidence in the show that many of the attendees seemed to be hardy veterans, it was clear those that had been there before had a leg up on newbies in that people remembered their previous appearances and came back for more. I found that nice.
4. The Attendees Seem To Cherish The Personal Interaction
I had great conversations with fans about the show and the ability to meet with favorite creators. A lot of the young men reminded me of myself as a young man in that they seemed to enjoy comics as a largely solitary pursuit in a way that the bonus of casual interaction with creators at Heroes Con meant a great deal to them. A lovely bonus. I talked to one guy who insisted on telling me a story about how one prominent Image creator threw him a free trade paperback because he and his brother had already spent all their cash. He spoke of it as this really nice, unexpected reward that was specifically for them because they read comics and went to this show. It was incredibly endearing.
5. I Liked The "Physical Plant" Of The Show
Heroes Con is basically three buildings and two satellite locations. The three buildings are the convention center, the hotel where everyone drinks in the bar, the hotel where nobody drinks in the bar but which has the killer health club in the same physical structure. The satellite locations are wherever they have the art auction and the Heroes Aren't Hard To Find comics shop where the final party takes place. Everything fits. Even the town works. The first night we were in town, my brother and I took a cab to Lupie's Cafe. Stuffed to the gills, we decided to work it off by walking back to the hotel. We hit the Heroes store about ten blocks down, and after walking around and staring at books and annoying the Immonens for a while shuffled the rest of the way into the city. We didn't hurry. We chatted with a couple of locals walking the same direction and bent down to meet their cairn terrier. We stopped to watch part of a baseball game. The stars were out. It felt like summer.
6. Art Comics Were Welcome
I'll be honest with you: this is a mainstream American comics comics show, and the art comics people on hand in 2008 did haphazard business. Those with customers that remembered them from previous years seemed to do well to extremely well, hardcore arts and punk comics publishers and those who hadn't exhibited before seemed to do much less well. But everyone felt welcome, I think, if they weren't too stressed about breaking even for the trip. For the attendee who likes such comics, you not only have a fine guest list of folks that work your favorite area, but ample opportunity for interaction, both informal and formal. There was an inordinate amount of alt-industry and focus-on-arts programming. I got to talk to Richard Thompson (he's returning) and all of the eight people in attendance at the panel got to ask questions until they were physically exhausted. I got to talk to Evan Dorkin and Jaime Hernandez in a room with 20 other people in it and both of them were charming and funny. These are great memories for me, at least, and I think made for quality programming overall. They'll keep trying to keep the arts comics flame alive, and any arts comics fan will continue to benefit by their doing so. Here's Shannon Smith's guide to that element of the show.
7. It's Always Going To Be Its Own Thing
There's a quality to the show that difficult for me to communicate, but let me try. I got the sense that there wasn't a grander scheme involved, that the organizers would be perfectly happy running better iterations of what they were already doing from now until they stopped doing it. There was a confidence that what they were doing had value, which you sometimes don't get out of a not-huge show, and that what was valuable was inclusive -- it could be a good time for the pros and for the fans in attendance, not one or the other. Anyway, after attending shows with grand and sometimes callow ambitions, it was nice to be at a show that seemed startled at its own success. Talking to the Heroes Con shop personnel and the core volunteers felt like sneaking in a conversation with a host near the end of a really good party, in the kitchen, with jackets off and ties loosened.
8. It Was A Good Cheap Comics-Buying Show
If there was one thing I could have done over in 2008 that wasn't having my brother take more hilarious pictures of Tim Hodler, it was that I didn't bring enough money to spend on comics. It was a killer show for 1970s and 1980s junk, in particular, the kinds of books that many folks won't take to a national show because of limited appeal. My art comics friends kept leaving their tables and coming back with more deliciously obtuse mainstream comics material, beaming as they showed off their treasure. I did manage to buy some late 1960s Marvel books starring Ka-Zar and The Inhumans -- just not enough. I don't know if the same opportunities will always be there, but it'd be fun to find out. When I go back, I'm budgeting more cash.
9. It's The Same Weekend As The Dub Show Tour
I have no comment except that last year the interactions between comics fans and attendees of the dub tour were among the most hilarious I've ever experienced at a convention. That is two vastly, vastly different fanbases.
10. The Hosts And Volunteers Are Extremely Nice
This includes Shelton Drumm and Dustin Harbin and the other con organizers, all of whom seemed in a constant state of wanting to charge off to take care of some problem but also wanting to slow down and spend the next two hours talking to you about everything under the sun. Nice people. It also includes people like Andrew Mansell, who was really helpful to me personally (and it's not like I'm the sort of guest that should qualify for a lot of attention). Heck, even the people that drove the van from the airport were nice, and answered dumb questions about their city of choice, and generally enthused over the previous occupants of the shuttle. Even if you didn't like the show, I can't imagine not liking the people at the show.
So there it is. I hope maybe you go.
If you do, here's my con advice: eat at places that aren't good for you like Lupie's and Mert's, visit the main Heroes store (I thought it even better than its more-than-solid reputation), if you stay at the hotel with access to the YMCA use it because nothing beats working on your post moves before heading to a funnybook show, have cocktails at the Westin, take money to buy comics, watch Dustin Harbin perform at the Art Auction, go to all the programming that interests you (including the Ditko programming advertised below), take your sketchbook or your looking-for-commissions list and, perhaps most importantly, give yourself enough time to get through the most absurd lines in the history of absurd regional airport lines at the airport flying out or you could miss your flight. Mostly, though, get in a good year of Heroes Con-going and I'll meet you back there in 2010.
*****
*****
all photos by Whit Spurgeon. in case you have the ads turned off, Heroes Con is an advertiser, and there's always the chance that the above is biased nonsense that came about solely because of that relationship
As events in Iran surrounding the disputed election continue to unfold, I've been keeping my eyes open for an Iranian election turmoil equivalent to the dispatches from cartoonist Mazen Kerbaj during the 2006 Lebanon War -- that is, a cartoonist on the ground and/or deeply focused on the events via personal insight that's expressing themselves via cartoons or comics. I thought there might be a chance for someone like that: Iran has any number of editorial cartoonists and features an aggressive blogging scene. I also wonder if the rise of Twitter and more instantaneous forms of communication eliminate that hitch step that might allow someone to make and post cartoons about what's going on. The best candidate so far is Nikahang Kowsar (sometimes Kosar), whose cartoon up top is one of the most reprinted and whose site seems to carry a number of cartoons commenting on the events. I'm not sure exactly where Kosar is located or for whom he makes cartoons; if I recall correctly, he was one of the artists jailed this decade who relocated to Canada.
In the meantime, below is one of the color-coded cartoons that made a splash in the days up to the election: the Guardian explains. I'm surprised Cagle doesn't have a clearinghouse of such cartoons up yet, but it should pop up on that page when it does. Thereareseveralcartoonistsdigging into it. The LA Times looks at the reaction of regional press, including cartoon makers.
Comic Den In Renton: Fire Victim
If I'm reading this piece correctly, the downtown Renton, Washington comic book shop Comic Den was the victim of a large fire that started in one of the upstairs apartments on the block. After typing and linking up that sentence, I see the comics business news and analysis site ICv2.com has a short piece up, too. The owner hopes to relocate temporarily and suffered limited inventory losses because of his focus on new comics rather than expensive collectibles. Comic Den was the comic shop of choice of many employees at the nearby Wizards Of The Coast gaming company during that company's late '90s heyday, and I assume remains a popular stop for folks that continue to work there.
A Pair Of Comics-Related Sales Notes
* the number guru John Jackson Miller has a few things to say here about his first look at the charts for May. He's primarily interested in a new chart, for small press and indie publishers, and what that says about comics sales below the top 300.
* the release of the new Insider's Guide by comics business news and analysis site ICv2.com means an accompanying summary article on the web site, including a bunch of summary charts by category that should give you their idea of what perennials are doing battle with which newer books and series. The takeaway is that they estimate growth improved by five percent in 2008 for the overall category, despite the slightly terrifying discombobulation of the general economy that generated a ton of news in the second half of the year.
Dan Wasserman On His 23% Cartoon After posting about the usually reliable Chip Bok's horrible Sonia Sotomayor cartoon for several days ending early last week, it's nice to draw attention to an editorial cartoon receiving praise: Dan Wasserman's 23 percent cartoon, which has apparently struck a nerve with Boston newspaper readers. Michael Cavna talks with Wasserman. I'm not sure I agree with the logic of Wasserman's piece, at least as it might be generally. I believe many newspapers were bloated. But at least no one is wearing a sombrero.
* the writer Ken Parille 
* a few of the blogs are pointing 
* the cartoonist Colleen Coover liked the new Darwyn Cooke graphic novel The Hunter so much 
* there's not much in the way of remaining comics-related reactions to the passing last week of pop singer Michael Jackson. The biggest news is that editorial cartoonists did go after the haunting, horrifying legacy of the singer's relationships with various strangers' children. I would have bet $100 that aspect of Jackson's life would have been passed over by all but one or two people, maybe. Cagle's round-up of editorial cartoons on Jackson 
SPURGEON: Trina, you're also a well-known, key figure of the underground comix movement. I've been thinking recently of the legacy of that era and those comics. Are you happy with the way those comics are perceived today? Sometimes I think people have kind of put them out of mind. Is there anything you wish more people knew or valued more about that generation of comics makers? 
* Paul Pope looks 
* the columnist Bart Croonenborghs 
TOM SPURGEON: Can you describe as explicitly as possible how much work you do to help put on the show? What's the general division of labor like between you guys? Are you specifically in charge of anything as compared to what other people might do? When does it really gear up -- six weeks out? Four weeks out?
Andrew Wheeler 
* the cartoonist 
* Mike Manley's yearly obliteration of the Philadelphia show is 
* there have almost certainly been interviews with Chris Wright of Inkweed before now, but I can't remember one. 
I first became aware of 
SPURGEON: You've spoken how Far Arden kind of scratches an itch for you both in terms of its specific subject of arctic exploration and a more general sense of being in the outdoors that's stuck with you since you were a kid. Can you give an example of a specific story element that draws on that more personal sense? Were both of those things explicit influences, or were they things that you see now that the work is done? In general, is there anything in there that you're surprised reveals itself in the comic?
* the retailer Mike Sterling 
There's 
There's a series of comic books out there featuring women in and sort of in politics that has received an inexplicable amount of attention for how clumsily they're done. A similar comic PR-wise with almost nothing in common with those comics content-wise is False Witness, a comic about Congresswoman Michele Bachmann by Bill Prendergast and a number of other Minnesota cartoonists. It has a bit of an edge about it concept-wise as well, as in underground comix tradition Prendergast asserts that the book is a corrective to local media coverage. 
* a few nice personal reminiscences of the late artist Dave Simons have popped up on-line since Simons' passing: 
* it looks like Drew Weing 
* it's... 
* 
I think I'd tend to support John Jackson Miller's general take as to what this means. This is obviously a drop at the top of the charts, although a reason why titles on down the charts might be doing better than in past years is because they're more likely to be big company titles than they used to be. I would put it like this: this is a market that's been shaped to deliver top-of-charts success, events series and first issues, and there just aren't a whole lot of them right now. That's something that's been underlined in recent years by the attempts of the two big mainstream companies to revitalize or keep vital their mid-list performers. I also imagine there could be something to JJM's supposition that this could reflect trouble at a very specific kind of suburban store that anecdotal evidence suggests has long served as an avenue for a certain kind of high-income spender to buy a lot of comics all at once.
* want to hear something odd? In the last two weeks I've had two people that live on opposite coasts tell me that the only reason they regularly visit their local comics shop is to buy new issues of Usagi Yojimbo. That's pretty good for a comic that's been running for 25 years. With the news that will roll out in the form of a post here in 20 minutes or so about the loss of sales in comics shops this May compared to last May, that double-testimony struck me as a nice tribute to the power of serial comics literature when it's done right.
1. It's A True Regional Convention
6. Art Comics Were Welcome
8. It Was A Good Cheap Comics-Buying Show
10. The Hosts And Volunteers Are Extremely Nice
After posting about the usually reliable Chip Bok's 
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