* Hermes Press will be collecting the Steve Canyon comic books into two volumes.
* Gerry Alanguilan's strange and touching series about sentient chickens, Elmer, will be published this Fall through SLG. As of last Saturday morning, there was a free PDF download of 40 pages on the front page of the SLG site.
* via PR without a link where I could see one comes word that Del Rey will publish two more graphic novels starring Dean Koontz's Odd Thomas character.
* there's a beautiful preview of the next Palooka-Villehere.
* the big publishing news in mainstream comics this week is J. Michael Straczynski's refashioning of DC's Wonder Woman character, with actual costume refashioning by Jim Lee. I know without looking there's a New York Times article. After the gentle mocking that resulted when it was announced JMS' take on Superman involved him walking across America -- any Superman plot line that would be more interesting if it was some random dude in the real world doing it in the costume should be automatically rejected -- this has not been a good fortnight for the writer's DC comics return.
I respect the degree of difficulty involved in working with Wonder Woman. She's an older character, she has a hardcore fanbase that's very protective of her, and the enthusiasm for her comic book adventures has failed to match her licensing power for decades now. Also the comics industry proper has developed in a way that makes it difficult if not impossible for her to sustain in successful fashion a serial comic book of the kind that legalities demand. When about 15 years ago the mainstream comics made an even deeper, more fundamental switch to fighting over market share and thus the eyeballs of this profit-generating core readership rather than balancing that against pursuing new or even casual readers, things were going to get difficult for the characters that might do better with a broader, more general audience.
Still, I always suspect that these iconic characters work better closer to their core concepts and, just as importantly, how those core concepts intersect with the values of adventure comic books, than they do further away from either or both. I mean this in an almost over-facile way, which is a key to Wonder Woman because her "core" as defined by Marston and reflected back by some troubling comic books over the years gets you into some dark water. I suspect that there's a sizable audience that wants to see the recognizable elements that have endured over time -- the lasso, Paradise Island, the invisible jet -- and that they want these effectively applied in an action-adventure comic framework. I like Gail Simone, but her Wonder Woman seemed like an endless string of change-of-pace issues -- if Simone had written a season of the Xena, Warrior Princess television show, I suspect every episode would have been one of the musical ones.
JMS' take as announced strikes me a duller, less byzantine, and less connected to the classic elements version of what Greg Rucka was trying to do with the character a few years back: take it seriously, and find constructs within modern comics by which one can utilize all these story elements at once. JMS version seems to be extra-burdened a bit by having to find solutions in-continuity to older plot elements that seem not to appeal to him personally and that also have been tossed around so much through a light hand at editorial as to lose all meaning as narrative factors. I don't read Wonder Woman regularly enough to know for sure, but I have an image of Paradise Island being put through the wringer over the last decade or two, experiencing in several instances what should have been shattering change that because that individual plot didn't get over, the change didn't quite take. This can be death for a modern comics character -- TV show characters, too -- and I have serious doubts whether JMS' take has enough going for itself not to be yet another thing that's moved away from in a couple of years. Would anyone want to read a new character with this exact narrative configuration? If someone described to you the potential narrative to be employed without the stamp of approval from publishing, would you think that it was a break from a character's standard plotline or a stand-alone reconfiguration for the ages?
As for the costume change, it's a good idea. As sports teams have learned, if your new costume stinks you can go back to the classic but if it works you now have two to sell. It's just that execution-wise this one already looks dated to me, with that weird X-Men movie reminiscent half-jacket. You have to execute that costume well because 1) the first one is very iconic, and 2) it also has that Sub-Mariner factor of "I showed up to beat your ass in my pageant swimsuit and tiara" that actually makes Wonder Woman more terrifying than a standard costume might. Anyway, Jim Lee isn't a well-known costume designer, at least not to my knowledge, so I'm surprised he got that call. JMS' public distaste for the Mike Sekowsky version, which I recall being a few outfits perfectly in line with an Emma Peel-style take on the character, just seems unfortunate to me on an aesthetic level. I liked the way those costumes looked.
I think I have now exceeded my lifetime's allotment of talking about Wonder Woman. One last thing -- why doesn't that character have an all-ages title? That seems to me like it would be more important than bouncing it up 20,000 readers on Mel Thompson's charts. Wonder Woman is one of the few characters girls (and their parents) know. Wonder Tot is just sitting there waiting to have demented back-up adventures. Best of all, allowing multiple takes on the character outside of standard mainstream tropes and influences and the judgment of the CBR thread commenters might result in a way of looking at Wonder Woman that works for way more than 20,000 new readers. I'd argue those kinds of books really helped Batman -- why wouldn't they help Wonder Woman?
* this sounds like a fun Marvel Comic I'll buy a year after it's published for $1 an issue, but I find that it was announced on a TV show kind of odd. Does that really work? I mean, I guess all things considered I'd want my comic book series announced by a pretty girl, too. Still, it just looks weird, like there was this arbitrary comics announcement on a random show, even though I know it's not a random show.
* finally, the previews are up for the seventh volume of Flight. It's the last volume for the solid and influential series -- which although not exactly the industry-changer some folks predicted when they started coming out is among the few comics projects that had outright imitators that could only be traced to its success and will continue to have them for years.
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 no-doubt largely accurate list of books shipping from Diamond Comic Distributors, Inc. to comic book and hobby shops across North America.
I might not buy all of the works listed here. I might not buy any. But were I in a comic book shop this week, I'd buy any comic book that would help me avoid my second yellow card.
*****
APR100974 WEREWOLVES OF MONPELIER GN $12.99
New Jason. I know of many people that look forward to these books in this format as much as anyone has ever anticipated anything in comics.
AUG090056 HERBIE 7 INCH VINYL FIGURE $39.99
Not comics, and I'm not really a toy person, but if you're going to have one vinyl figure it might as well be Herbie. Or that Jimbo one. But today, Herbie.
APR100669 ULTIMATES TP ULTIMATE COLLECTION $34.99
So popular and such a confluence of factors driving a ton of popular superhero comics of its time that it's hard not to want there for its museum value. The comics themselves I find kind of dreadful, really, distilling the work of several comics master down to their essence and then burning through that work as quickly as possible for a re-contextualized oomph.
FEB100920 PRINCE VALIANT HC VOL 02 1939-1940 $29.99
Oh, these are so gorgeous it's not even funny. We're on an upswing in terms of the legacy enjoyed by Hal Foster's legendary creation -- people are reading it again, and enjoying it, especially these pre-domestic comedy editions -- although I think the days where it's automatically tossed out there in greatest comic ever discussions are very much over.
APR101112 CHI SWEET HOME GN VOL 01 $13.95
This looks freakishly adorable and is staring at me from the new comics pile on my desk.
MAR100029 NEXUS ARCHIVES HC VOL 11 $49.99
I'm glad these are published and I'm told they're pretty although I'm perfectly happy with my old comic books. It saddened me that the attempt a couple of years back didn't take even if only in viking funeral fashion, but there have been a lot of really good Nexus comics and I can see how people might not have an appetite for a lot more of them. Not me, I could read it forever. But maybe most people.
APR100041 USAGI YOJIMBO #129 $3.50 APR100054 ABE SAPIEN ABYSSAL PLAIN #1 (OF 2) DAVE JOHNSON CVR $3.50 APR108255 BATMAN RETURN OF BRUCE WAYNE #2 (OF 6) 2ND PTG $3.99 APR100283 NORTHLANDERS #29 (MR) $2.99 MAR100431 INVINCIBLE #73 (MR) $2.99 APR100846 MUPPET SHOW #7 $2.99
This is my take on this week's comic books in the classic format that I'd pick up and scan just because they might be pretty good (as opposed to being novel in some other way). The Muppet Show is written but not drawn by Roger Langridge, I believe. Two solid genre offerings from Dark Horse. I wonder if I were still a frequent comics shopper how big a percentage of old-timey comic books I'd buy from Dark Horse.
FEB100181 BATWOMAN ELEGY DELUXE EDITION HC $24.99
This should be almost as gorgeous in its way as the Foster, and certainly full of interesting ideas as to how to employ powerful and complex page design techniques. Considering how much of comics lurching forward comes out of these technique being employed in commercial comic books, this could be a far more important book 10-15 years down the line than we can see right now.
APR100134 WONDER WOMAN #600 (NOTE PRICE) $4.99
This one is important because it involves yet another re-launch of the character. I'll talk about this more in this week's "Bundled" column.
APR100592 INVINCIBLE IRON MAN ANNUAL #1 $4.99
While this one is important because it's the book Marvel is offering up in sections for digital distribution at roughly the same time it hits comics stands. I believe it's Matt Fraction's re-imagining of their Mandarin character.
JAN100648 MMW ATLAS ERA STRANGE TALES HC VOL 03 DM VAR ED 140 $59.99
Am I to take it that Marvel is releasing almost random clumps of Atlas-era material in hardcover form? Oh, to be rich.
MAR101241 100 GREATEST LOONEY TUNES CARTOONS HC (RES) $24.95
Not comics, and I'm not really a cartoon guy, either, but I do recall Shaenon Garrity and Andrew Farago are among the contributors here.
APR101066 KRAZY KAT CELEBRATION OF SUNDAYS HC $100.00
This is bound to be really good looking and Krazy Kat remains one of the two or three best comics of all time in most polls conducted by CR research staff during brunch at comics conventions.
APR101195 ALTER EGO #94 $7.95
Your 2010 Eisner Award winner. Or Comics Alliance. Or TCJ. I can't tell this year.
*****
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 here, that's because your midfielders were out of position.
Your Danish Cartoons Hangover Update
* a very strong but unsubstantiated rumor of another attack planned against Danish Cartoons Controversy cartoonist Kurt Westergaard.
* wire stories report that one of the projected targets of recently captured Indonesian terrorist Abdullah Sunata was the Danish embassy in Jakarta, in response to the publication of the Danish Muhammed cartoons almost five years ago now. Everyone is taking this threat very, very seriously.
* this is partially but definitely related: Pakistan has announced it will monitor select web site for content upsetting to Muslims.
* this is barely related, but I thought worth noting. The British were very focused on prosecuting protesters after 2006 demonstrations about the 2005 publication of the cartoons, which left some observers fairly baffled. This article provides a bit more clarity about British concerns regarding certain radical groups.
Joseph Hugh Messerli, a prolific cartoonist who worked a number of high-profile assistant and ghost jobs in addition to primary credit work on a variety of humors features, passed away on June 23. He was 79 years old. It is believe that cause of death may have been complications from cancer.
Messerli was born in Kingsville, Texas, a military town southwest of Corpus Christi. His first work in comics came as an assistant to fellow Texan and notorious, serial employer of talented artistic assistants Charlie Plumb on the sturdy Ella Cinders in the last couple of years of Plumb's collaboration with the writer Bill Conselman. Messerli served in the US Army in Korea from 1950 to 1952, then attend Los Angeles' Chouinard Art Institute -- a school with perhaps the broadest range of comics-related alumni operating in North America -- on the GI Bill. While at Chouinard he took on his first ghosting assignment, on Napoleon and Uncle Elby, this time for another Ella Cinders alum, Roger Armstrong (the strip's creator had died in 1950).
Over the next several years, Messerli worked on a number of high-quality assignments, some in his name, some assisting other artists. Highlights included assistant work for Al Wiseman on Dennis The Menace comic books in the mid-1950s, inking and lettering work in support of Gene Hazelton's fine Flintstones comics in the 1960s (he also worked on Yogi Bear), and a bunch of comics for Western that were either published in the 1970s and early 1980s or inventoried from past assignments and re-run through that time: Baby Snoots, Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Pink Panther, and Yosemite Sam among them. He also did a smattering of work for Marvel's book and children's comics lines.
A concurrent career in television and animation from 1957 to about 1973 brought Messerli his most famous credit: designing the logo for the television show Twilight Zone. Other TV shows that benefited from his contributions of art were The Tonight Show and Bonanza.
Trudeau Continues Veteran Advocacy
While cartoonist Garry Trudeau has become a surprising but strong advocate of care for US veterans, other than devoting long storylines in Doonesbury to veteran care issues and making the occasional press statement it's been somewhat unclear what Trudeau's advocacy actually involves. This feature article gives one answer: devoting family resources and space to a symposium on issues of importance to soldiers returning from war.
* the writer and critic David Brothers reiterates that he's not buying crappy comics any more. This may seem weird if you've mostly lived outside the powerful influence of Direct Market mainstream comics buying habits, and not strange at all if you've spent any time in that general neighborhood.
* finally, I get the sentiment displayed here that webcomics represent artists with a completely different set of influences than one might feel typical arising out of most print comics communities. However, I suspect that bit of conventional wisdom misrepresents the number of alt/art only fans out there, or strip-only fans out there, and artists for these areas as well, that really don't understand or view superhero comics in the way that we omni-nerds do as we pop between these sub-cultural traditions and come at the form with a wide variety of idiosyncratic influences.
Go, Read: Homeopathy another one of Darryl Cunningham's recent run of medical-related comics; this may be available in another place and I apologize to Darryl for my forgetting where that is
Edward J. Ashley, 1922-2010
Edward J. Ashley, who fell into the role of editorial cartoonist at the Toledo Blade in the early 1970s and kept the job for almost 15 years, died on June 26 in his north-central Ohio home. No cause of death was reported. Ashley was a student cartoonist and drew cartoons for the base publications in Clovis, New Mexico where he served in the Air Force in World War II, but instead of immediately falling into a career in cartooning first spent several years in illustration and related jobs. He initially worked for the Blade after the war in their advertising department, before heading to New York and Brooklyn's Pratt Institute for formal training. Ashley fell into the editorial cartoonist role when his presence at the paper happened to coincide with that position being filled by a variety of staff contributions. As a cartoonist in the 1970s, he got to draw most of the issues of that tumultuous period, from turmoil in the Middle East to trauma at the gas pump, at a time when the daily newspaper was still a massively profitable and very potent mirror of the world in most Midwestern homes.
He was preceded in death by his wife, and is survived by a sister.
Egyptian Paper Criticized For Carlos Latuff Cartoon Using Nazi Imagery To Criticize Israeli Policy
According to an article posted to Jewish Chronicle On-Line, the Egyptian daily Al-Watani al-Youm ran the above Carlos Latuff cartoon featuring an aid ship being accosted by an octopus wearing a nation of Israel flag as a rocker-style bandanna, albeit transformed from the standard design to prominently feature a swastika. A complaint from the Israeli embassy in Cairo quickly followed its June 15 publication. Editor Mohammad el-Alfy and Latuff both defended the cartoon, while the political analysis in the article seems to be focused on its publication as a gateway to understand the latest round of regional tensions brought on by the aid blockade. I don't know if the paper's use of the cartoon can be seen as provocative or not -- well, I mean it's obviously provocative to depict someone as a homicidal Nazi octopus, but I couldn't tell you if this was an explicit and specific choice made by the editors to piss off Israeli officials or if they just ran a bluntly severe cartoon. The Brazilian cartoonist Latuff is a well known maker of cartoons like this, and hiring him you're pretty much know what you're going to get. He's also about as subtle as a lap dance, so I guess we're all lucky the Octopus wasn't sporting a Hitler mustache and reading passages from Mein Kampf in Hebrew while goosestepping around the ocean floor to Klezmer music. Where exactly the intentions of the editor and publisher lie, that's slightly more difficult to discern.
Forbidden Planet International reminds that the Max And Moritz awards were given out during this year's Erlangen Festival, whether or not people like me actually noticed and reported on it as we should have. The results, as listed at the Goethe Institut site posting to which FPI directed its readers, seem to represent a field of comics generally nominated (20 in all) which were then given awards in various categories:
Best Draftsman: Nicholas Mahler Best Comic Strip:Prototyp, Archetyp, Ralf Konig (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung) Best German Comic:Directions, Jens Harder Best Foreign Comic:Pinocchio, Winshluss (Avant-Verlag) Best Children's Comic:Such dir was aus, aber beeil dich! Kindsein in zehn Kapiteln, Nadia Budde (Avant-Verlag) Best Student Comic Publication:Strichnin (Hochschule Augsburg) Lifetime Achievement: Pierre Christin Discretionary Jury Prizes: Salleck Publications (for Die Spirit Archives); Carlsen Comics (for Ein Vertrag mit Gott) People's Choice:Heute is der letzte Tag vom Rest deines Lebens, Ulli Lust (Avant Verlag)
Mahler's award came with a 5000 Euro prize. The awards go to German-language publications and has been awarded since 1984 at the every-other-year Festival.
The Florida coastal news site TCPalmreports that sportswriter and cartoonist Walt Steinsiek died at his home in Micco, Florida on June 27 after heart failure.
Steinsiek began work in a bowling alley as a pin boy in the late 1930s in Passaic, New Jersey. He would later serve in the merchant marines during World War II before attending New York University on an art scholarship beginning in 1946.
He later founded the Bowling Cartoonist Of the Year Award, which was given to cartoonists who employed the sport in their comics. Winners included Jim Davis, Dean Young and Charles Schulz.
According to his author's bio, Steinsiek placed bowling-related cartoons into dozens of publications. Books featuring Steinsiek's bowling cartoons include 2007's The Funniest Approach!, a sequel to, naturally, the books A Funny Approach and A Funnier Apporach. His first book was likely 1973's Balls -- Bowling Of Course!
Steinsiek served as a president of the Bowling Writers Association of America in the late 1980s, and was a life member of the Southern Bowling Writers Association. He was eventually inducted in the NCABA Hall of Fame.
Immediately preceding his death, Steinsiek had been preparing to attend a Bowling Writers Association of America meeting in Los Angeles where he was to present a cartoon to Sarah Palin for her signature and subsequent auction. The organization revealed that Steinsiek was set to receive their John Davis Award, given for outstanding service, at that same meeting.
He is survived by a wife of 55 years, Jane Steinsiek, and a daughter. He was preceded in death by a brother. Services are scheduled for July 6.
* not comics: the writer of both comics and television shows Jeph Loeb will be working on Marvel Comics' foray into television shows via a nice Executive Vice-President position. Here's some analysis from Graeme McMillan because I don't have any. Wait, maybe I do. It occurs to me that a lot of Marvel's non-superhero properties in particular might be ideally suited to television. One of the fascinating things about many of the superhero properties is that so many are also strong pitches conceptually, but the dominant mode at the company for most periods wasn't projects that made for strong pitches but comics that would wear well over time.
* it looks like we've officially entered the season where returned or otherwise not-used Comic-Con International memberships are going to pop up for sale, however briefly; if you need help in this department, keep an eye out accordingly.
* newly-minted Reuben Award winner Dan Piraro talks influences in the return of Alan Gardner's fine feature "Cartoonist's Cartoonists."
10. Demo
9. Scalped
8. Viking
7. Punishermax
6. Spider-Man: Fever
5. Batman and Robin
4. American Vampire
3. Joe the Barbarian
2. S.H.I.E.L.D.
1. Daytripper
Because I'm mean enough to spoil his list, you should click through on the link above and check out his reasons. Also, Callahan answers the question if people were still digging Joe The Barbarian.
* finally, congratulations to Charles Vess and Dark Horse for the Locas Award Finalist status granted their book Drawing Down The Moon: The Art Of Charles Vess. It's participating in the Non-Fiction/Art Book category.
Zunar: "They Can't Ban My Mind"
Left out of last week's notice that the Malaysian Home Ministry had banned a book and two comics by the cartoonist Zulkifli Anwar Ulhaque were further statements from a government official and, more importantly, reaction from the artist much better known in his country as Zunar. Both shortcomings are rectified in this article. The government official notes that the banning was on the basis of social order concerns, meaning that they might foment political opposition. Zunar lets the reporter know he's heard of the ban but not as of their contact been officially informed by the Ministry. He then pretty much draws the very encouraging and brave line in the sand in terms of his fundamental responsibilities as an artist -- part of which makes up this post's headline -- that should make just about anyone respect his position in this case and, perhaps, fear for his career.
Midfielder Simone Pepe of the Italian national team, defending champions of the ongoing World Cup tournament that were sent home after failing to make it out of group play, apparently had a poor reaction to the above cartoon. You can read the substance of his comments in the article linked to previously, but it's in this article where it gets more entertaining. First, it looks like the athlete marched to the part of the plane he was on where some reporters were sitting looking to confront anyone from the paper involved (il Giornale). That must have been hilarious, terrifying or both. Second, I think that article has reactions from the cartoonist, which if real -- it could be an imaginary dialogue, I can't tell -- are a pretty convincing "bite me" response, including the suggestion that politicians take this kind of thing much better than athletes.
Go, Read: Nigar Nizar Interview There's nothing that's particularly newsworthy about this interview with Pakistani cartoonist Nigar Nizar, but a bunch of fascinating glimpses into her cartooning career flash to the front of the room via the profile. This includes the cartoonist's work in textbooks, the support she's found through international cartooning organizations, how she's embraced the role thrust upon her as an ambassador for Pakistan and for Pakistani women, the dearth of formal training available to her even after establishing herself, and the frustration she's felt in having newspapers in Pakistan license foreign material rather than running her own. If you share my fascination with cartooning as a job and what that means for various artists out there, this is a good one.
Mousavi Cartoon Reaction Round-Up
It's always a little precarious to dip into political news sources because without the context of daily reading it's hard to tell how the thrust of the publication might influence any one news story, but this round-up of Iran news that touches on the Nik Kowsar Mousavi cartoon flap seems like a pretty fair write-up of available opinion. It's sourced, too.
To reiterate the basic storyline, well-known exiled Iranian cartoonist Nikahang Kowsar did a cartoon mocking opposition leader Mir-Hossein Mousavi for his proclivity towards political pronouncements. The opposition-supportive news source that carries Kowsar cartoons decided to take this one down. The sitting political forces spun it as a sign that the opposition is divided and weak; the opposition that they allow for differences in opinion but that maybe this one wasn't the best idea.
Random Comics News Story Round-Up
* not comics: a slightly belated but still-vigorous congratulations to Neil Gaiman for winning the Cilip Carnegie Medal.
* Matt Seneca has a bunch of notes up on Driven By Lemons, a work that will likely grow in reputation over the next several years. Providing a bunch of notes is an appropriate way to engage that book, I think.
* I don't know that I gave this Howard Cruse tour report the attention it deserved the moment it posts, but it's pretty fun. Segues are for kids!
* here is some more discussion about the notion that for whatever reason, Direct Market funnybook shops can be hostile to female customers: Jennifer de Guzman, Brigid Alverson.
* finally, the great Brian Chippendale has one of his intermittent reviews up, this time on the Avengers books currently undergoing a re-launch at Marvel.
The comics herd where I'm typing this, that is. That's the long way around of saying I have too many comic books and my studio is just about at full capacity. I'd love to make a component of such a clean-up project a charitable donation but it looks like the last people I used for that are no longer providing that service. Any ideas? I'd appreciate no matter how out there or wacky. I'd appreciate not-wacky and right-here suggestions, too. For instance, one thing I might do is a promotion where one of the outcomes is I send random participants boxes of comics. I'm open to anything.
Just to be clear: this is more a random boxes of nonsense with some nuggets of gold type thing than it is a time to start your university's perfectly organized collection of great books in the comics realm type thing. People sometimes think that anyone that gets to read a lot of comics is sitting on the comics version of the Library of Alexandria when it's more like sitting on the comics section at the Public Library of Alexandria, Indiana. I wish the former were true in my case, but I don't have the collecting/curating gene so many of my awesome friends in comics have, and of which I am jealous.
for no particular reason, I have three copies of the above comic; that's just the kind of collector I am: capricious and addled
I first became aware of Ian Boothby as one of the talented wave of Vancouver mini-comics creators that sprung up in the mid-1990s, a group that for its proximity to a few prolific Comics Journal contributors of the era had their work reviewed in the magazine. Fast-forward a decade or so later and I discovered that Boothby was one of the writers at Bongo responsible for their Simpsons comics, a fine place for someone with his combination of television and comics writing experience. I'd read a few Boothby Bongo efforts over the years since, but had my first prolonged exposure to that work through Abrams' collection of his Simpsons/Futurama comics in a handsome slipcase called The Simpsons Futurama Crossover Crisis. I enjoyed reading the comics, I liked Boothby's writing in them and I thought they exhibited different qualities than most comics have these days -- all of which added up to something worth talking about. -- Tom Spurgeon
*****
TOM SPURGEON: When I was doing my research, one thing I thought would be easy is figuring out your comics career, how you started doing comics in a way that led you to where you are now. But actually, I still have no idea how you started writing comics. I know you were doing mini-comics in the 1990s. Is there an easy way to describe how you went from there to working for Bongo?
IAN BOOTHBY: I went to the first Alternative Press Expo, I believe it was San Jose. I was selling my mini-comics there. I ran into Terry Delegeane and Scott M. Gimple. Bongo was fairly new out of the gate. I was handing out my minis to whoever was there. I didn't want to carry them home with me; I shouldn't have crossed the border with them. I already had the border guards basically try to kick me back home when I was going down, so I didn't want to carry them back with me. I gave them a couple of the comics and asked if they were taking submissions, and at that time they were. They got back to me really quick. Said, "We love these, these are great, we'd love to have you do something." About three years later they got around to it. [laughs] Very slow, slow, slow, slow process.
SPURGEON: I remembering enjoying your mini-comics, but I don't remember them being like the material you're doing now. They were well written and accomplished in a way they'd be a nice showcase for you, but was getting work writing comics the goal of doing the minis?
BOOTHBY: Oh, no. No. At that time I was just coming off of working on a television series. When I was 14 I became the youngest writer, the youngest union writer in Canada for TV. I was working on a show called Switchback for the CBC, writing sketches and performing in them. When that kind of wrapped up, I was at loose ends, and so decided to make my own stuff. I was creating plays and that kind of thing as well. I was also doing some stand-up. But yeah, Kinko's just started being in our area, so you could actually Xerox stuff on the cheap. I got my stuff into local comic book stores and record stores.
SPURGEON: You're one of the few guys in comics I know where I bet in an article somewhere you've been described as a funnyman, [Boothby laughs] by which I mean you have this nicely rounded resume and these different creative experiences. Do you have a sense of how you might write comics differently for your specific career path?
BOOTHBY: I also have an improv background, and I think that's really where it comes from. I listen quite well to people's voices. And in improv, the idea is to make the other person look good. To make the other person look good, you have to know their voice. So I'm really good on picking up people's voice and character voices. So when you got a show like The Simpsons, which has so many distinct voices, I'm pretty good at writing in a character's voice. So even if you don't necessarily like the joke that I'm putting down, it does sound like the person. That's a bit of an advantage.
It's a disadvantage to me reading comics, because if I read a typical DC comic, I'm one of those guys going, "Lex Luthor would never say that." Because I'm pretty good at picking up a character's sound, whether I'm reading it or hearing it. It's served me pretty well in doing some animated series in the past. I'm pretty good at that sort of thing.
SPURGEON: Is there a specific school or approach to improv that you come from, or does the improv world even break down that cleanly? Is there a Del Close school... ?
BOOTHBY: People like to break it down into short form and long form. Games is the short form. Long form is something along the lines of what Del Close created called the Harold. But I've been doing this for so long, and the people have been doing it so long with me, that we've made our own mishmash and pulled the elements that we like from both forms together and just do our own thing now.
On my blog I have a series of essays on improv and my problems with the Del Close and Keith Johnstone methods. On Facebook they're on a group called "No And..."
SPURGEON: It says in the Abrams hardcover that this was your pitch, that it was your idea to do the crossover saga. Is that true? Did it start with you?
BOOTHBY: Yeah. I was writing most of the Simpsons comic books at the time, and they had just come out with a Futurama comic. I wanted to do some work on that, but they already had writers, primarily from the TV show, working on it. So I couldn't break into that book. I thought the obvious thing was to have a crossover between The Simpsons and Futurama [Spurgeon laughs]. Since I'm already doing this book, I can show them I can write these other characters. Matt wasn't game for that at first. He had kind of a worry that they'd crossover in a kind of "Flintstones and Jetsons" bit of business. Also, it didn't make any sense. They were in different universes. I found a way of pulling that off. Bill Morrison -- my editor -- really liked it, ran it by Matt, he was game, and we went and we did it.
SPURGEON: I don't know anything about Bongo other than a bit about Bill Morrison and then a bit of familiarity with some of the creative people that have been involved over the years. It has a reputation as a nice place to work, a professional place to work. You hear from the occasional creator going, "That was a good experience." And I've not heard any corresponding grind against Bongo. Is Bongo a supportive place to work? Are you encouraged to make pitches like your crossover idea? I guess I'm just asking if it's a good place to work.
BOOTHBY: Yes, it's definitely a good place to work. You'll hear repeatedly from people that the folks from Bongo are nice. The reason for that is they know what they're doing. [Spurgeon laughs] You find out in television that when people are assholes is because they're freaking out because they fucked up. And the thing is, Bill Morrison was the art director for Futurama; he knows Futurama, Terry Delegeane knows The Simpsons. They all know what they're doing over there and they do what they do very well. Matt Groening is the boss. They report to him. He keeps things on track. He's hands-off, but when it comes to something big he gives it the yay or the nay. These are his babies. So they're very, very good at what they do, and because of that they have the freedom to be nice. They're confident and they enjoy what they're doing. That makes for a very good environment.
When you're starting off at Bongo -- and I was talking to another person who worked there: we both had the situation where you get a lot of notes off the top. You get lots and lots of notes. As time progresses, and they realize what you can do, you get next to none. That's the situation I'm sort of in right now. As for are they open to new ideas? Yes, they are. They're all very creative people, they all love comics, they all love the history of comics as well. So you get a book like Radioactive Man, which may not sell really well, but it's really clever. It's doing parodies of things that you're going, "What? That? From that one '50s comic... you're making fun of that? You're spending this much of an issue on that?" It's just because they love the medium. That comes through in the books and in the work environment.
SPURGEON: Do you have a sense of your audience for the original comic books? When you were doing these crossovers, were you hearing back from people? Is it different audience than the other companies out there have?
BOOTHBY: Yeah. It's a mainstream audience. [Spurgeon laughs] And that's how it's different. We've been lucky enough to have been flown all over the world. We've been to Spain, Germany. I've done signings in England. People love The Simpsons. So they're approaching it, one, with that. They love those characters. So you're already a little bit of the way there. With most mainstream comics now, I think what's been happening is that it's getting too insider baseball. Their big events currently are bringing back characters that if you haven't been reading comics for 20 years you wouldn't give a damn about. Like Hawk? What are you talking about?
But The Simpsons, people know. They like them. And so you have a nice playing field to tell a story. Often I'll get the people who were dragged to a comic-con; they didn't necessarily want to come. But this is something they like. I'll give them a book or something and they'll dig it. Also kids go nuts for it as well. It's one of the few legitimate all-ages comics. Not the all-ages where it's just for kids. It's the all-ages hopefully like Pixar where it's actually all-ages.
SPURGEON: I'm trying to figure out where the comics exist in the constellation of Simpsons fans. Certainly not all Simpsons fans read the comics, so I was wondering what subset of Simpsons fans you think you're getting?
BOOTHBY: Well, the Simpsons audience is so huge that you only get a miniscule portion of them. The books don't sell particularly well in the Direct Market. But they sell really well on the newsstand. It's very similar to Archie in that way. If you saw the sales of Archie in comics stores, Archie's not doing that well. But all these people know Archie, all these people read Archie. That's the same boat we're in. If you look at us over here, oh, not doing so well; if you look at us over here, we're doing very well. Whenever they have a free comic book day the Bongo stuff flies off the shelves. The people bring such a love for The Simpsons to the book, when they know about it, it's like "Oh -- yoink!"
SPURGEON: I've read Bongo books here and there but to read a whole bunch of once, one thing that stood out for me is that it seems like you're not afraid of dialogue in these comics. There can be chunks of comedic dialogue. You're not whipping people through the comics with a cinematic approach designed to make the eye skim across the page.
BOOTHBY: Marvel loves splash pages, yeah.
SPURGEON: You're not afraid of telling a joke that way; you're not afraid of having 50-75 words on a page or making someone read 15 words to get to the funny part of the word balloon.
BOOTHBY: I do try to throw the visual in there, but The Simpsons at its beginnings was a limited-animation situation. It was on The Tracey Ullman Show, Matt Groening was animating it, and he didn't have a lot of animation skills -- or the drawing skills, to be honest. But he did have the dialogue skills. That was the start of The Simpsons. It was always dialogue-heavy. You never watched The Simpsons and went, "Whoo, look at that art!" The comedy came from the dialogue. You'd get a few visual gags, but the dialogue carried it. I think a lot of Simpsons episodes you could run on the radio and not miss too much.
It did become a thing where they'd throw a lot of gags into the background. We still try to do that: we put funny signs up, and if you have a store name or a mall, you want to fill it with as much stuff as possible. It's a little harder to do in a comic where you have a seven-panel page; you can only jam so much in there and have the reader be able to pick it up. You gotta choose your battles, and what I pick is dialogue over the visuals. Also, I have lot more control over dialogue. I don't know what the artist might do.
SPURGEON: Taking something from animated form and putting it into comics form, is there anything harder to do on the comics page? Is there an effect you lose that's harder to replicate than others?
BOOTHBY: Yeah, you lose the voices. And the voices are hilarious. You lose the nuance of the voices. People do have Homer's voice in their head when they read the dialogue. But there might be a little pause, or a going up: they're such skilled vocal artists. You do lose that when you put it into comic book form. Something like a pause: you might do a panel where someone is just staring at another person, play that beat out. They're totally different media.
SPURGEON: So you find ways to compensate.
BOOTHBY: So much of delivering a joke is the pacing. When a new writer comes into Bongo, quite often the mistake they make is they make things -- you were saying things were dialogue heavy -- they make things too dialogue heavy. They don't give any room to breathe. They try to jam as much as they can in, and in doing so you lose the pacing of the joke. At some point you need to pull back a little bit, relax a little bit, and give the joke enough set-up.
One of the most frustrating notes I get not from Bongo but when I work in television is you write a comedy piece and they will like the piece but then go, "But this part doesn't get enough laughs."
So you go, "Well, that's the set-up."
"Can you throw a joke in there?"
"Not without ruining the punch-line." Because you're now not setting the stage for what comes later. I think that's something that new writers do: they try and jam so much in there, make it so dense, that you don't really give people a chance to relax. You need to a little bit of space in structuring a joke or, really, any kind of dialogue.
SPURGEON: I was impressed with the number of visual gags that were in these comics and the way that many of them were seemingly for texture, say, and not necessarily germane to the plot. There are a number of science fiction parodies later on that flash by really quickly; there's a scene early on where something drops through the various levels of reality all the way to Hell.
BOOTHBY: That wasn't in the original. That's from the two pages of bonus material that you get in the book.
SPURGEON: Do you have to be aware of making sure that's there enough funny business going on? It almost seems like a texture or tone issue, where you have a certain number of gags that stand apart from helping move things along. I assume you write all of those, because they seem too specific to develop organically.
BOOTHBY: Yeah.
SPURGEON: So is there a way you pace yourselves with such sequences?
BOOTHBY: How I write is I'll write an outline that gets approved by Bongo. I'll draw the comic out myself with very rough figures. I'll then read it over and see what's missing. If there's a page where I go, "There's no jokes on this page; this just pushes the plot along." Then I gotta gag up that page. If a page is just jokes, and doesn't move the story along, then I have to throw a little story in there. I'll also look to throw in heart, emotional beats. It all becomes a real balancing act. If I just wrote it in straight script form, I don't think I'd be able to do that. But when I sort of create the comic first myself and flip through it, I can see what's missing and what's needed.
Of course, when you mention that page where the poo falls through the floor to hell and hits Stalin on the head [Spurgeon laughs] you couldn't really do that in television. You could have a pan down, but it works best in comics because panels in comics also look like floors and you could pull that off. There are things you can do in comics that you can't do in the television series. I try to think of what can't they do. An example of that would be earlier on in the comic where we have a Charles Atlas parody. Those have been done a lot, but it's something where if you did it on television it wouldn't have the same impact than doing it in a comic where that kind of thing originated.
When I talked to David X. Cohen, one of the co-creators of Futurama, he said that was the page where he started to like the book. I think that's the page where it becomes its own thing. This is why we're doing this as a comic; you can do this.
SPURGEON: As the writer that mashed the two universes together, is there anything about doing so that surprised you? For instance, as might be expected you paired off a lot of the characters for different scenes; is there an effective pairing that you didn't see going in?
BOOTHBY: When I got into the second series, I thought we had pretty much done the major matches with people. But then you go, "What do I do with Moe?" And you go, "Oh, they do have that bartender that looks like Isaac from The Love Beat." And then it's like, "If they're doing that, there should be a crank call, and it should come from both Bender and Bart..." I'd say the characters write themselves, but I still want to get paid. [Spurgeon laughs]
It's basically like when I was a kid and I read Superman Vs. The Amazing Spider-Man. I still have that comic here in the office. It's one of my favorite comics. It was such a kick to go, "Yeah, that's right, Clark Kent and Peter Parker do have similarities." But you get to see the differences as well: Perry White is a great guy compared to J. Jonah Jameson. When I was doing this book, my guide was to make it as cool as Superman Vs. The Amazing Spider-Man was for me.
SPURGEON: Did you contribute directly to this current hardcover, slip-cased collection? Did Abrams' interest in these comics come as a surprise?
BOOTHBY:James Lloyd and I both supplied some extra material for the book. One of the things that didn't end up making it in there was I had some script for the comic and some commentary on it as Harold Zoid, Zoidberg's uncle. That didn't make it in there. We put in a couple of extra pages, like the one where Stalin gets hit on the head. But aside from that? No, not much. We're both pleasantly surprised at how it turned out.
SPURGEON: Are you getting a different audience than you do with the serial comic, do you think? Because I'm not sure I would have read these comics in any other format.
BOOTHBY: It's selling quite well. It's the kind of thing that if you're in a bookstore, and I see them in basically every bookstore around here, you put it in a fairly prominent place. It leads you to look at other books. People like The Simpsons and Futurama. It might get picked up by people who wouldn't buy the softcover Harper-Collins trades. The Wall Street Journal list of Best Selling Graphic Novels had it in the #2 position just below Kick Ass. It's currently #3.
SPURGEON: Ian, you're still a comics reader, aren't you?
BOOTHBY: Yes, I am.
SPURGEON: Some of your comments earlier made me realize you're working out of a different comics culture than general comics culture. You also have a perspective you bring from other entertainment fields. I wondered if you had anything to say on how things are going in comics generally. It occurs to me it's an entirely different field than it was when you were doing your mini-comics and I was reading them. Are you a happy comics reader, Ian?
BOOTHBY: [laughs] I'm not necessarily -- no, I'm not a happy comics reader. [Spurgeon laughs] I don't read Spider-Man anymore, because some major mistakes have been made to that character. I'm hardly the only person saying that. But what I used to like about Spider-Man was that he was the character that stuff happened to and then he moved forward. Superman stuff happened to, but nothing stuck to the guy. Spider-Man was the guy whose main villain killed his girlfriend and they both stayed dead. Can you imagine Lois Lane being killed by Lex Luthor? That's what made Spider-Man different. He was a working class hero. If he and Johnny Storm walked out of a building, Johnny would see an alien attack, Spider-Man would see a mugging or an animal-themed villain robbing a bank. That's who Spider-Man was.
Somehow along the way they decided to give him a satanic divorce. [laughter] They decided, "You know what Spider-Man is? He's young. And people need him to be young." And that's a mistake because Spider-Man's main theme is responsibility. If your character's main theme is responsibility, as a writer you want to give him as much responsibility as possible. He was going to have a baby once, and they just made that baby disappear. I know there's a worry where there's a point where you never get them back. But any responsibility you give to the guy should work.
Spider-Man was a role model for me and your role model shouldn't be making deals with the Devil. Don't worry about taking responsibility for your actions kids, your problems will magically go away eventually.
They've lost the mission statement of the character. Nothing can really happen that'll have any effect and so the heart of the book has been torn out. The stories might be clever but that's all they can be. And that's a real loss.
It seems like right now, Marvel and DC have lost their balls. They make big decisions, they kill a bunch of characters, they rape a bunch of characters, and then they do pullbacks on everything. They bring those characters back, or they won't take responsibility for what they've done. It's just shock, shock, shock. And in doing so you lose your mainstream audience. Completely. You lose your new readers. I love comics. I have some friends with children that are 11 and 12, and I can't give these comics to them because Dr. Light is raping people. It's horrible, gory, shock stuff. The kind of stuff you'd see in Vertigo ten years ago is mainstream now. And where are you going to go from there?
SPURGEON: It occurred to me that The Simpsons has been on the air for about as long as Marvel's superhero universe had been around by the time they started doing things like Contest Of Champions and Secret Wars. Is there something to be said for the difficulty of managing an interconnected property when it gets to be that age?
BOOTHBY: For most people, Spider-Man will be the movies. More people will see the movies than will ever read a comic. More people will see the image on the t-shirt than will see the comic. Same with The Simpsons: more people will see the television show or the movie or the images on the lunchboxes. So I can't make the comic book too inside. I'm reminded there's a mainstream audience I should be serving, and I think that's what mainstream comic books have lost. They're tending to people that are already in the clubhouse. The only thing that can happen is that the audience will shrink. There's no way for it to expand.
One thing I think might save comics -- and again I'm not the only person saying this -- is something like the iPads and what have you. Because people love comics. They're nuts for comics. You give a good books to someone and they're crazy for it. Like my wife's comic Y: The Last Man. People who've never read comics love that one. They have no beef with the medium; it's just the continuity that holds them back. When you have something like the iPad, you can see any comic that's been done in history. You don't need to know what's going on now. You can read a great arc of Spider-Man, or The Simpsons, or Little Lulu or Wonder Woman. I think one of the things that will save comics is ditching the continuity and relying on the huge library we now have access to of all the great stuff that's come before.
* cover to The Simpsons Futurama Crossover Crisis
* photo snagged from Facebook with Boothby's permission
* cover to Simpsons comic featuring Boothby work
* cover to first issue of Futurama Simpsons Infinitely Secret Crossover Crisis, the first of the two mini-series collected in the new volume
* Smithers dressed as Captain Harlock, one of a constant stream of gags in the book
* in the comic, you lose the distinctive voices (even though you hear them in your head)
* the poo/Stalin gag
* a panel from the Charles Atlas parody
* Bender and Bart, a natural prankster pairing
* Peter Parker, Mary Jane Watson and their marriage counselor
* I like this panel with Giant Homer, again from the Abrams book (below)
FFF Results Post #216 -- Comebacks
On Friday, CR readers were asked to "Name Five Kinds Of Comics That You Wouldn't Mind Seeing Have A Comeback, No Matter How Inexplicable." This is how they responded.
Tom Spurgeon
1. Baseball comic books
2. Comic books starring medical personnel
3. Funny Animals
4. Comics With Nothing But The Equipment Of Superheroes In Them
5. Comics Starring Consumer Items, Like Computers
*****
Matt Seneca
1. Sunday pages (as opposed to Sunday strips)
2. Comics with the color done in Benday dots
3. Comics that warn readers about the dangers of VD
4. Tabloid-sized reprints of pamphlet comics ("Treasury Editions")
5. Manga pamphlets
1. Humor anthologies
2. Girl's comics like Polly Pigtails, with articles and non-fiction/instructional/craft comics
3. Promotional comics like Smilin' Ed's Gang given away at Buster Brown stores, featuring back-up features unrelated to the promotion
4. Comics starring actors/comedians having misadventures, modern equivalents to the Bob Hope and Jerry Lewis titles
5. Music/pop culture hybrid comics magazines like Deadline and Escape
*****
Uriel A. Duran
1) Comics about superhero pets
2) Giant monster comics
3) War comics
4) Black & white horror comic magazines
5) Mexican Lucha Libre photo comics
*****
Adam Casey
1. Romance comics
2. Pop culture fad based comics
3. Original creation kids comics
4. Parody/spoof comics
5. Big Two superhero original graphic novels
1. Celebrity Adventures
2. Professional Wrestling Manga
3. Police Procedurals
4. 100-page Super-Spectaculars
5. Proselytizing Archie Comics
*****
Ali T. Kokmen
(1) Mystery comics about (non-superpowered, non-supernatural) private investigators
(2) Classics Illustrated-type abridged adaptations of literature
(3) Biography comics of important historical (rather than current) figures
(4) Medical/doctor comics
(5) Comic books set in state fairs
*****
Andrew Mansell
1. Comics with an accompanying Album (Avengers #4, I had in my youth)
2. DC 100-Page Super-Spectacular w/No Ads
3. Gold Key Disney Comics Digest (featuring Barks and Murry)
4. The Marvel (Curtiss) Black and White Magazine line
5. Menomonee Falls Gazette (or MF Guardian or Comic Strip News etc.)
1. 80-Page Giants
2. Comics that only cost a quarter
3. Promotional mini-comics that came packaged with action figures
4. Comics about pirates (not that they were ever really popular in the first place, but...)
5. Comics sponsored by Radio Shack
*****
Bill Matheny
1) Fat kids
2) Comics based on sitcoms
3) Dramatic hot rod stories
4) Funny hot-rodding characters
5) Comics with the word "Pal" in the title
*****
Aaron White
1. Airbrushed comics
2. Comics about popular comedians (like Jerry Lewis, Bob Hope etc.)
3. Romance comics
4. Comics about inspiring real people (like Corrie Ten Boom)
5. And definitely funny animals
1. sequential narratives woven in tapestries or carved from stone
2. comics that use dialect talk balloons with phonetic spellings
3. fashion model comic books with paper cutouts
4. Tijuana Bibles
5. newspaper comic strips with small, lengthy, typeset, serif caption texts, numbered in sequence, under each panel
1. Hostess snack cakes comics ads
2. Sitcom TV show inspired comic series
3. Bootleg Disney comics from China
4. Cleaning products ads
5. Comic magazines for kids
1- Comic books that sell 500,000 copies a month
2- Comic books that sell 400,000 copies a month
3- Comic books that sell 300,000 copies a month
4- Comic books that sell 200,000 copies a month
5- Comics drawn by Brian Bolland
*****
Michael Grabowski
1. Single creator anthology series appearing with regular frequency
2. Sunday full page adventure serials
3. Alternative press weekly strips
4. Comic book-sized catalogs of superhero-related mail-order merchandise illustrated by cartooning school artists
5. Historical comics
1. 'Adult' Periodical Comics Anthologies
2. DC Digests
3. Marvel Treasury Editions
4. Supermarket distributed kids magazines that regularly contained comics
5. Monthly collections of current newspaper comics
*****
Stephen Leach
1. Archie Comics knockoffs
2. Soap opera comics
3. Comics based on popular newspaper strips
4. TV show adaptations
5. Magazine-sized independent comics (like the original L&R, Neat Stuff, Lloyd Llewellyn)
1. Superman fights crime and criminals, gets stopped by Kryptonite but perseveres, flies, bends metal bars, hangs out in the Fortress of Solitude, covers stories as Clark Kent and eats Beef Bourguignon with Lois. And winks.
2. Batman fights aliens and costumed criminals, trades quips with Robin and goes to high society parties as Bruce Wayne with Kathy Kane and/or other hot chicks.
3. The Flash runs fast, fights evil gorillas and hangs out with benign intelligent ones, too.
4. Green Lantern hangs out in the future with a different identity and girlfriend.
5. The Justice League of America fights a giant starfish or malevolent plants and Wonder Woman takes the minutes of their subsequent meeting.
1. British Sports Comics
2. Comics For Girls
3. Comics For Tomboys
4. Outré Comics In Mainstream Newsagents
5. "Look-In"
*****
Iestyn Pettigrew
1. Mainstream comics written by Steve Ditko that feature people in suits holding clenched fists at their side -- I always think an underrated aspect of Ditko's drawings is the way he can make people's hands seem like immense weights swinging at the end of their suit or shirt, whilst also making it seem like they have no arm. I think mainstream comics needs some more anger driven drama and not the current crop of neurotic teenage/ middleclass smash everything in a sulk pap that’s put out at the moment.
2. Cheap throw away trash comics produced in a hurry -- I'm fascinated by the whole pulp writers churning out content era, simply because some of the stuff produced was just so weird and off the wall just so space could be filled. I personally believe this allowed a lot of very personal and unconscious genius to flourish.
3. Caliber comics -- I just really liked a lot of their line of comics; I feel they set a lot of trends for the current mainstream market and that this is something not well-examined at present.
4. The Atlas comics of the '70s -- I just have an unfathomable affection for some of those -- especially The Destructor and The Tarantula -- that artwork was fantastic.
5. More comics as tourist items -- when I came over from the UK to visit America and found comics about the Grand Canyon with a really rubbish superhero team, it made my trip -- I guess that makes me sound sad -- but in my defence, we couldn't walk anywhere because there were forest fires so there wasn’t much to look at!!
*****
James Langdell
1. Comic books put out by restaurants
2. Comics explaining how to do household tasks
3. Comics in the local newspaper that present vignettes of local history
4. Comic book stories that expand on current comic strips and panels
5. Comic books starring real-world celebrities in fictional adventures
*****
William Burns
* Comic books that compile newspaper strips
* Comic books about the hilarious misadventures of army privates
* Comics about shambling muck monsters
* Comics about the fantastic adventures of famous people who actually exist
* Comics giving a reasonably realistic take on wars this country is actually fighting right now
*****
Justin Colussy-Estes
1. Sports trivia comic strips
2. Restaurant chain mascot give-away comics
3. Large-scale adventure comic strips (are there any left other than Prince Valiant?)
4. Bugville/Insect comic strips (yes, I'm going waay back for that one)
5. '80s b&w boom comics that smelled of newsprint & cheap ink
Loser Of The Week
San Diego, who may have to pay that much more to keep CCI.
Quote Of The Week
"The thought of not being able to be with my family. I wasn't even able to see them and say goodbye because of the way I was forced to leave the country. These are all pains that one has to experience to understand what it means to be a refugee and why refugee status is usually associated with pain and sadness." -- Kianoush Ramezani
*****
today's cover is from the 1940s-1950s mainstream comics publisher Avon
The original Comics Reporter, Jack McGee somehow convinced an editor to put him full-time on "Hulk Beat" despite consistently frustrating but admittedly guest-star filled articles. Today, Hulk beat reporting would be one of the first things excised from the struggling modern newspaper, right after comic strips.
Go, Read: Drawn and Quarterly's Chris Oliveros On Supporting Your Local Independent Bookstores
Publisher and all-too-occasional cartoonist Chris Oliveros types up a short but sweet message after hearing about the travails of a long-time supporter of his company, D+Q. I think if a retailer has value to you, you should definitely support it partly on the basis of that value rather than dismissing such factors in favor of a straight-up cost-benefit analysis. Part of the problem is that the dominant ethos in comics is buying ALL THE COMICS even more than buying the good comics or the comics that make you the most happy, so the readership is vulnerable to shifts in behavior that maximize one's chances to get more, more, more. Believe it or not, I think this is going to be a bigger issue once comics self-grown protectionism of certain retail models begin to fade in the next two years here.
South African Human Rights Commission Declares Zapiro Lady Justice Cartoon Not Hate Speech
The South African Human Rights Commission has cleared Jonathan "Zapiro" Shaprio's most famous cartoon -- that of President Jacob Zuma about to rape Lady Justice -- from official accusations of it being hate speech, a human rights violation or unfair discrimination. They further went to praise the cartoon as an example of positive journalism of the kind that generates debate. The Zapiro cartoon first appeared in September 2008 and because of its immediate notoriety has been recycled in several cartoons since.
Funky Winkerbean Escapes Auto Death I don't have too much to say about a feature column that notes that the namesake character of Funky Winkerbean somehow escaped a much hinted-at death: I just really like writing headlines with comics characters' names in them. I guess I might additionally note what a bizarrely unique thing Tom Batiuk's greatest creation has become in that wiping out the character the strip is named after would not surprise anyone even slightly familiar with the feature these days. A blackened panel, newsroom shooting, or fanciful cancer dance with Death Himself awaits us all. Go Scapegoats.
Your Next Great Cartoonist Finalists
I nearly missed this, but Michael Cavna announced five finalists this week for the Washington Post's unfortunately named "America's Next Great Cartoonist" contest. They are:
The five finalists as the contest goes forward are:
The finalists are all being asked to submit example Sundays, which will be the basis of the next round of voting in July. Each of the entries has judges' comments in them, and some of them are appropriately harsh. I think the Walch submission is the most intriguing -- plus she's apparently super-young -- and there are flashes with Mullany's. One of the submissions is so bad that if this were a reality TV show I'd know it was the submission from the housemate that got into the most altercations with his/her roomies and the show was keeping that person around just for more fights.
Missed It: Your Best Comic/Graphic Novel Category Nominees For The 2010 British Fantasy Awards Something called the British Fantasy Society dropped word of its award nominees nearly a week ago while I was apparently out drunk roaming the countryside and throwing rocks at local cattle. The nominees in the Best Comic/Graphic Novel category were:
The winners will be announced at September's FantasyCon. Eligible voters are described and provided with some basic linkage and information through the primary link at top of post. I think it's a compelling list not just for the blend of publishers represented but also for folding in without comment the primarily web-based FreakAngels, albeit through its print iteration, and the significantly web-focused Girly Comic.
Good News For CCI In Impact Survey As part of their ongoing coverage of the dance between Comic-Con International and the cities of San Diego, Los Angeles, Anaheim and Las Vegas for hosting honors regarding the post-2012 version of the show, the San Diego Union-Tribune revealed the results of a study intensely favorable to CCI: an economic impact survey based on information collected in 2008 that estimates the con's contribution to the local economy at over $163 million.
Now granted, economic impact surveys have a somewhat dubious reputation based on two basic factors. The first is the sometimes-hard-to-track accuracy of the information-gathering step on which such numbers are formed, which in this case is apparently a 2008 survey of attendees by the convention center people I've never heard about or been exposed to before now. The second is that a multiplier or several multipliers are used to compound the impact of money spent up the line -- say if Mark Waid tips his waitress at the Hilton bar $20, she then spends $10 at Ralph's for some crabcakes on the way home. Complicating matters further, the article claims that this report actually under-estimates overall impact by not dealing with non-hotel attendees and other locals that might spend money in San Diego without that hotel-room home base. If a standard economic impact survey was something that had to be given the stamp of approval or disapproval via a comments-thread battle on the Internet, that comments thread might go on for 7,500 years without resolution.
I still think the survey has to be a boon, because all such reports share potential problems and this one is way ahead of expectations. Also, a hugely positive set of numbers like these fits a script that the convention has largely been ill-served by past estimations -- expect a majority of "we told you so"-type rhetoric from comics people, and a minority of "of course that's what they're going to say" comebacks -- which fits the further storyline that's been advanced during the negotiation process that San Diego is just now waking up to how much CCI means to the city and is making moves accordingly. If there's anything in the way of further screws that CCI can put to its potential suitors at this late date, this survey provides the means.
Random Comics News Story Round-Up
* Politics and Prose, a well-liked DC-area independent bookstore and occasional comics signing host, has a number of buyers interested in purchasing the place.
* I'm having one of those mornings where I can't remember if I've never seen this advertisement for Action Comics #1 before, or if I've seen it like 10,000 times.
* the second cartoon here should be funny to anyone that follows editorial cartooning -- unless they're really, really defensive about it.
* eight cartoonists have launched something called "The Cartoonist Studio" with the idea that you will eventually buy stuff from them. I think that's what's going on there. I don't think they're actually working together.
The Never-Ending, Four-Color Festival: News On Cons, Shows & Major Events By Tom Spurgeon
* so why hasn't there been a decision from Comic-Con International yet on where they're holding future versions of the Big Show? David Glanzer tells CR it's because of the late-period addition to the original proposals, which meant for additional time taken in reviewing those additions. "I guess the easy answer is we're in the home stretch," the con's promotional and publicity point man says, although he declined to make any prediction regarding timing. "My expectation is that an answer will come before the show. Again we're not tied to a time-line, but I know that we are hoping for a decision sometime before Comic-Con." Comic-Con International starts exactly four weeks from today.
* this weekend there's a one-day indy show in Sacramento with a bunch of guests I know, a small show in Knoxville where I recognize none of the guests and maybe one or two shows more like the Knoxville event than the Sacramento event sprinkled around the rest of North America. We're basically in the period between the early summer shows (primarily the ones in Charlotte and Florida) and the juggernaut that is Comic-Con International in late July.
* this weekend also sees the ALA Annual conference in Washington, DC, with folks like Gene Luen Yang and Raina Telgemeier in attendance. Basically, all our nice people plus Leigh Walton. I'll try to make a separate post of ALA appearances and put it up tomorrow.
* there is also something called the New Haven Summer Comics Fest, but I'm having a hard time finding an official site. Some of those in attendance have put up a lot of information, though.
* Chris Butcher recaps TCAF 2010. He makes official they'll be going annual for the foreseeable future. That's awesome. I hope to attend a future edition of this first-class show in a first-class city.
* as Comic-Con gets closer, I expect there to be some fan pushback against what it likely to be a number of announcements about television shows and movies being promoted through Comic-Con International that aren't working genre areas these fans are comfortable claiming for comics. For me, a movie like Avatar and a television show like Glee have the same amount of crossover interest with comics: none. Your comics may have vampires and werewolves in them but my comics have aging local talk show hosts and southern California post-punk culture in them. I don't understand why your interests are more legitimate than mine when it comes to claiming the "-plus" part of "comics-plus." The truth is Comic-Con has always had non-comics elements and they're certainly not going to stop having them now that there's a huge demand for what Comic-Con can do for such properties. I invite you to join me on the ground of the show in ignoring all of that stuff and focusing on the comics. I very much doubt Jane Lynch will get between us and Emile Bravo's spotlight panel. And if she does, she better get out of the way.
* the reported cross-promotion between the San Diego Padres and Comic-Con does not exist.
* I would love it if comics in the cultural/social sense would accept the challenge of competing with a bunch of dopey TV shows and movies by throwing down the gauntlet and doing everything they do at San Diego better and with greater vigor -- as opposed to the current, popular plan of vaguely bitching about not being loved enough while standing around a hotel bar complaining about the entities actually throwing parties. We have the smartest and funniest and most talented creators, we have by far the best art form going in terms of consistently intriguing and entertaining output, and we have enough of a head start scene-wise we should be able to work San Diego much better than the various show-biz latecomers. In other words, the comics part of the convention should still be the best part of the convention.
* in more personal news, my Comic-Con moderating schedule is shaping up. I haven't received confirmation from the con folks yet and they haven't returned by most recent e-mail inquiry, but I believe I'm at least verbally committed to playing Wink Martindale at: a best of/worst of manga panel, an International Graphic Novels panel with a demented and awesome guest list, the comic strip reprint panel, spotlights for Gabrielle Bell and James Sturm.
* finally, you can access the latest issue of Comic-Con magazine here; there's a long WonderCon report festooned with photos, including those of all the TV/Movie folks I totally missed.
Malaysian Home Ministry Bans A Book And Two Comics By Zunar
According to English-language wire articles focusing on the part of the world in which Malaysia rests, that country's Home Ministry has used the 1984 Printing Presses and Publications Act to ban a book and two comics by popular cartoonist Zunar, whose real name is Zulkifli Anwar Ulhaque.
The book banned was Perak Darul Kartun while the two comics named were Isu Dalam Kartun and the wonderfully-titled 1 Funny Malaysia. All three were banned for specific contents within the covers. The 1984 act is designed to keep the public order, which indicates the content was somehow commenting on current government policy or conditions for which the current government might be held responsible.
Those found guilty under provisions of the 1984 act can be imprisoned for up to three years and be subject to a fee in the country's currency that I believe is approximately $6100 in US dollars.
Zunar saw his Gedung Kartun magazine seized in summer 2009, followed by a seizure of an earlier edition of 1 Funny Malaysia. While the latter was declared to be because of outright violation the 1984 publishing act, which Zunar called to be abolished, officials maintained the seizure of Gedung Kartun was because the publication lacked a license called for in law as opposed to content.
Christian Desbois, 1951/1952-2010
Christian Desbois, the Parisian gallery owner and publisher that helped develop the French-language public's appreciation for a subset of comics authors as image makers and visual artists, died on June 21 from complications due to cancer. He was 58 years old.
Desbois owned the Galerie Christian Desbois, best known for its exhibitions and lithographs in support of skilled European cartoonists including but certainly not limited to Jacques Tardi, Ted Benoit, Enki Bilal, Joost Swarte, Jacques Loustal, Lorenzo Mattotti, Francois Schuiten, Andre Juillard, Manu Larcenet and Clarire Bretécher. Desbois opened his gallery in 1986. He seemed less interested in these artists for their function as cartoon authors and more as a set of talented image makers -- thus the concentration on books about these cartoonists art as opposed to books about comics, and the focus on prints and original art. This obituary suggests that the seriousness of Desbois' intent and the tonier qualities of his gallery (its location and overall look) did a great deal to bring a second consideration of certain artists in a time when their literary merit may have been at separate issue.
Desbois had in recent years apparently mounted a few well-received exhibits outside of his gallery walls, including an Enki Bilal show that traveled to Belgrade and India. At the time of his passing, the gallery was scheduled to feature a Juanjo Guarnido exhibit in the Fall; as far as I can tell there is no word on the fate of that show of the disposition of the gallery. There will likely be greater attention paid to Desbois' legacy in the days and weeks ahead, which will hopefully result in more information here.
* Bully offers up the longest post I could ever imagine on the subject of an in-continuity Marvel technological device called the Image Inducer. This was a device by which the most freakish-looking of the All-New X-Men could operate in public without someone staring at them, which eventually become the focal point of tiresome speech after tiresome speech -- one of which Bully includes -- over how using the device meant that the character in question was hiding their true self from the world. I actually liked it the original way it was used, but one of the obvious shifts in the X-Men mythology in the 1980s was that the X-Men were no longer victims constantly getting their asses kicked and needing every advantage not to be stoned to death in public but instead were separate-society badasses who could will things on the wider world through their noble actions. I found the latter much less interesting, and given the basic metaphors in play, potentially ugly. Although I will admit that as a reflection of the real X-Men metaphor, nerds and nerds culture, it's probably apt.
* not comics: a fun part of a Doctor Strange movie in its early stages will be the number of Hollywood stars 35-50 who will put themselves out there quietly or publicly for a potential Robert Downey Jr.-style career-crystallizing franchise lead role in an era where those things are starting to skew younger. Comics fans read a lot into such casting. When I wrote a post for NeilAlien's blogday a while back that suggested there was an established A-list star out there for such a film, those few folks that commented assumed I meant Johnny Depp, which was sort of fascinating in that I actually meant Leonardo DiCaprio. I would imagine the script and the money involved will drive them in a pretty specific direction, though, once it comes to that.
* finally, the writer and editor Bob Greenberger talks a bit about DC's memorial services for longtime employees and prominent freelancers once passed. I think that's a good tradition, and I wish more corners of comics were mindful of such things.
As seemed pretty obvious a few weeks ago, it didn't take very long for one of the two big companies to make a major digital comics initiative announcement, one that includes a simultaneous day-and-date component paced arguably ahead of the traditional industry's comfort zone when it comes to completely embracing that kind of offering. Go here for DC's Digital Publishing announcement. It's a bit of a surprise from a comics-history perspective that it's DC instead of Marvel, and with DC going first you don't have the classic Marvel Goes First/DC Goes Immediately After/DC Figures Out What They Just Did dynamic, but digital comics publishing took a significant step forward today. As I think I stated when Marvel made their positive pursuit of digital programs known, the chances that the same-day programs expand are pretty good for the reason that any huge success enjoyed by the pilot program means probably program expansion to chase that success while a quiet plot program also drives companies towards expansion because worries of laying waste to the Direct Market become allayed.
Check out that "go here" link for the news. There will be a lot of instant analysis up that may or may not good; certainly the same initiatives will still be here 24, 36, 800 hours from now. I think it will be interesting to see the reaction. For now, CBR has the pride of place in the mainstream comics industry right now to rustle up two of the DC executives in charge for an interview -- as I'm still waiting to get to interview Diane Nelson, you're probably not going to hear from those gentlemen here.
* Abrams is excited enough about its Audrey Niffenegger picturebook/comic The Night Bookmobile that it sent out some advance imagery late last week. The 40-page/40-illustration work is due in September.
* the cartoonist Scott Stantis has ended a decade-plus long run at USA Today. Stantis is a syndicated strip cartoonist and works for the Chicago Tribune as a cartoonist in various creative capacities, so he's keeping busy. The way that these cartoonists settle into certain publications or for long runs at same is an under-examined way of how the major cartoonists make a living.
* in Kickstarter projects news, it looks like T. Edward Bak's request for funds for a research trip is heading to a happy ending by July 1, although I guess you can't be too sure about these things; I like that one, though, because it's weird and isn't something that would be funded by traditional outlets. Tony Murphy's coffeehouse project will hit its deadline pretty soon as well.
* the writer Paul Cornell has gone exclusive with DC Comics. I'm not sure what he's going to be doing with them (he's currently doing Action Comics and DC either isn't talking or doesn't know. Still, I'm guessing this means more DC Comics from Cornell than you might have thought otherwise, and not so much with a continuation of the Captain Britain stuff he was doing at Marvel.
* the great Gus Mastrapa profiles the Pokemon-commentary mini-comic Letters To An Absent Father.
* the cartoonist Craig Thompson assures us that work on Habibi progresses.
* finally, according to Gary Tyrrell the Octopus Pie collection Octopus Pie: There Are No Stars In Brooklyndrops today. It will be supported by the creator touring.
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 no-doubt largely accurate list of books shipping from Diamond Comic Distributors, Inc. to comic book and hobby shops across North America.
I might not buy all of the works listed here. I might not buy any. But were I in a comic book shop this week, I'd buy any comic book that could get me into the round of sixteen.
*****
FEB100057 BEASTS OF BURDEN HC $19.99 FEB100040 ODDLY COMPLELLING ART OF DENIS KITCHEN HC $34.99 FEB100021 LIFE & TIMES MARTHA WASHINGTON IN 21ST CENTURY TP $29.99 MAR100020 TUROK SON OF STONE ARCHIVES HC VOL 06 $49.99
That's a lot of book from Dark Horse this week. I would buy them all if I had unlimited funds to buy comics works. As it is I'll seek out the first two: Evan Dorkin and Jill Thompson's supernatural detective neighborhood animal stories and Denis Kitchen's anything I write after the Beasts Of Burden description is going to make it sound boring collection of past comics work. I'd also probably prefer to read the Turok stuff in comic book form whenever possible, but that's just me. Still, nice week for the gang in Milwaukie.
APR100268 AIR #22 (MR) $2.99
This is over pretty soon, I think. Let the bargain bin diving begin.
FEB100180 COVER RUN THE DC COMICS ART OF ADAM HUGHES HC $39.99
I'm not a huge fan of Hughes' covers because the subject matter bores me to death, but they certainly pop on the page.
APR100277 JOE THE BARBARIAN #6 (OF 8) (MR) $2.99
So is this good? Have we entered a stage where comics only get talked about when they don't exist and when they do they're off the table.
MAR101052 ARCHIE BEST OF DAN DECARLO HC VOL 01 $24.99 MAR101058 FAMILY CIRCUS LIBRARY HC VOL 02 $39.99
I'm not sure what is in either book -- what's been selected for the DeCarlo; what the Family Circus looked like a couple of years in -- but I'd sure love to check out both works and would do so if I were in a comics shop that carried them.
APR100691 DAREDEVIL BY BENDIS & MALEEV TP ULT COLL BOOK 01 $34.99
For some reason I think this material has been collected a bunch of times and it's still fairly purchasable as comics with a bit of effort, but my brother likes these stories so much I'll be taking a look at it in various formats for the rest of my life.
APR100696 ESSENTIAL CAPTAIN AMERICA TP VOL 05 $19.99
This should be the book where they go from the tail end of Steve Englehart's straight-forward, proto-'00s espionage/soap opera material to Frank Robbins' much-hated but super-boss mini-run of artwork (his Deadly Nightshade was the all-time batshit-insane looking disturbingly hot lady of 1970s superheroes) to the lunatic splendor of Kirby's return to his first major creation. In other words, it should make no sense at all and be a heck of a lot of fun.
APR100575 FANTASTIC FOUR #580 HA $2.99 FEB100398 KING CITY #9 (MR) $2.99 APR100733 MOUSE GUARD LEGENDS O/T GUARD #2 (OF 4) $3.50
This is a small sampling of this week's periodical comics offering, and the only three I'd take a closer look at based on my not-very-close look at the Diamond listings. That King City in particular is a lot of fun.
MAY101288 DOONESBURY SIGNATURE WOUND ROCKING TBI TP $9.99 DEC090990 MODESTY BLAISE TP VOL 17 DEATH IN SLOW MOTION (RES) $19.95
These are two series I don't really understand from a publishing strategy standpoint, but if I either saw one just sitting on the racks I'd definitely check it out.
APR101114 OCTOPUS PIE TP VOL 01 NO STARS IN BROOKLYN $17.00
Another popular webcomic leaps into print and into a comic book shop near you.
*****
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 here, that's because of your bad coaching.
* the Somali man arrested for breaking into Kurt Westergaard's home early this year is part of a growing worry that thousands of Somali immigrants that fled into upper European countries are at risk for radicalization.
* Professor Saleem Ali speaks to Vermont public radio about what he sees as the collision between hypersensitive Muslims and insensitive provocateurs, this time through the lens of "Everybody Draw Muhammed Day."
Daily Cartoonist: Mobile, Alabama Editorial Cartoonist JD Crowe Scouts Oil Disaster From Helicopter
It's pretty much all in the headline, and I wanted to give Alan Gardner the credit because I didn't even know JD Crowe was blogging: the Press-Register cartoonist got a first-hand look at some of the encroaching oil and has posted a few of the photos he might use for reference. That's not really a story about comics, or much of a story at all, but I sure enjoyed looking at the photos.
There is a story here in a broader sense, which is how cartoonists are going to cover BP's disaster over the long-term. I think it's instructive that at Cagle's site, which is always a great place to take the temperature of editorial cartoonists because proprietor Darryl Cagle will group cartoons together for your perusal, there isn't one oil-related category but alreadytherearethree.
More AAEC Convention Coverage
Alan Gardner of Daily Cartoonist wraps up his coverage of last weekend's yearly meeting of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists, held in Portland this year, with a Saturday report and a wrap-up. Gardner's been around this organization long enough to be able to report on something that never would have occurred to me: the difference between the weekend as it exists right now and as it existed in the flush period that newspapers and their staffers enjoyed in the late 1990s. You can't read some of what he writes and not wince a little bit, even as he extols the virtues of the modern version.
The AAEC site has their own post-con links round-up here. One question I have is that I thought the AAEC announced their next slate of officers as this convention. It looks like Steve Kelley is incoming president, but I can't remember if I already knew that or not.
Random Comics News Story Round-Up
* longtime industry observer Augie De Blieck has harsh words for the arbitrary restrictions that Direct Market retailers can place on publishers through the extreme narrow focus of what they'll carry and why.
* I tried to read this Kiel Phegley interview with DC Co-Publishers Jim Lee and Dan Didio three times before quitting out of boredom and slight frustration. There's very little of substance there. The duo won't talk about anything concrete, anything that's a success they (surprise) want to see more of and anything that's perceived as not a success is either shrugged past or explained as a failure of imagination (or contextualization) by the people making that judgment. They seem like nice men, but unless you have a baseball hat fetish, or until they start making public plans for the future that have proper nouns in them, I don't see how things like this interview and the round of "town hall meetings" they represent would lead anyone to believe that DC is a substantially different place than it was a year ago, or have confidence that it will be a substantially different place by actions of their own making three, five, seven years from now. In fact, I bet you could change a dozen words with save and replace and pass it off as a 1998 interview with Paul Levitz and Bob Wayne.
* come on, Mike Manley! For some of us, summer doesn't start until we get to watch you put a steel toe to the fleshy male posterior that is Wizard's con in Philadelphia.
* another satisfied customer dept.: Dear Southwestern US Comic Book Shop. If I'm in a super-hurry and I ask for modern comic bags and boards and you repeat, "you want the modern ones, right?" back to me, and I say "yeah, not the silver ones but the modern ones" and then you very quickly stuff a package of silver age comic bags into my bag anyway, it's on me for not double-checking. And they work, sure. It's not a big deal. I still won't buy anything at your store ever again.
* the writer and critic Graeme McMillan talks about the number of really good comics works that go out of print. I think I'd disagree with Graeme in that comics has a pretty good record of keeping things in print, and that this is even a particular strength of the traditional, pre-1990 comics publishers. Still, there are always some books that slip through the cracks.
Ekneligoda Family Asks Sri Lankan Court To Present Long-Missing Cartoonist
The family of missing Sri Lankan cartoonist Prageeth Ekneligoda has apparently asked the Court Of Appeal to produce the missing family patriarch, who disappeared many believe for reasons pertaining to the politics of a presidential election. The wife and two children of the cartoonist filed against a number of officials as well as the court asking for the missing man to be presented. I have no idea what this means exactly: it's unclear to me if the family really believes that Ekneligoda is being held somewhere, or if this is a spur to get the official police investigation restarted and headed towards whatever official conclusion reality dictates. It's heartbreaking to see, though, and it's hard not to admire how passionate and firm the family has been in holding civic authorities to the task of resolving this situation.
Kianoush Ramezani is both one of the latest in a long line of political cartoonists that have fled the country of Iran after unbearable political pressure was placed on their work and person, and one of the latest class of refugees generally, this time fleeing because of actions taken after last year's unrest within that country's borders. He talks to Golnaz Esfandiari about why he felt he had to leave, how much he misses his homeland, and the circumstances that led him to France. A slide-show of Ramezani's cartoons is presented in conjunction with the article.
In one of those things that makes me routinely go "Why can't we do that?" until I remember I hate everyone and wouldn't join a North American version of the French critics and writers-about-comics group that makes this summer reading list possible, the Association des Critiques et journalistes de Bande Dessinée has named its 20 indispensable books of summer 2010. Included are Urasawa's Pluto, the latest from well-known quantities like Manu Larcenet and Étienne Davodeau, Seth's rough-to-slip-into-a-beach-bag George Sprott and the new "why is Daddy scowling?" classic Footnotes In Gaza.
Some Cartoons You Just Know Are Going To Get Folks Riled Up * sole remaining major Seattle P-I asset David Horsey talks about a Father's Day cartoon that drew criticism and what he was thinking when he drew it. I'm not a big fan of that cartoon myself -- a different thing than protesting it -- but I love the way Horsey draws some of his figures and his work is always very clear.
* a reader of a Florence, Alabama newspaper reminds a fellow reader that a character drawn by Garry Trudeau to say something is different than Garry Trudeau saying something, in the latest cartoon from the august comics-page personage to make everyone go "Oh, that's going to leave a mark."
Random Comics News Story Round-Up
* not comics: this will have probably been linked to death by the time this post rolls out, but Art Spiegelman has been collaborating on a dance-based, multi-media extravaganza based on the older comics he so dearly loves.
* the always-intriguing Matthias Wivel looks at Tintin and the lack of inquiry into comics as a sophisticated system of visuals.
* when Jeet Heer goes to war with a book, he doesn't do it on his site, he does it on their site. That's why he's Jeet Heer. Speaking of critics battling other critics, this post lost me.
Big Wally Wood Exhibit Announced For September In Spain
after the Kirby exhibit at Fumetto, this could put Europe up two when it comes to major exhibits for important American comic book cartoonists; of course, it has to be good
Alan Gardner of Daily Cartoonist has been all over the meeting with daily reports: he already has notes up for Thursday and Friday as I'm writing this, and probably has more up easily accessible by the link at the beginning of this paragraph. Three of the cartoonists attending appeared on a radio show called "Think Out Loud." Willamette Weekpreviewed the show.
Analysts: May 2010 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 2010.
The big news story I'd guess is that comic books seem to be doing well this year when compared to last year. While there's more than a few books selling over 100K, which is something that was worrisome a couple of months back, there still doesn't seem to be much year to year movement in the number of comic books selling over, say, 55,000 copies. I'm not sure that a willingness from the major publishers to sell serial comic books at a level that would have ended in cancellation even in the Direct Market era once upon a time is the kind of market strength for which anyone is looking
A few other things jump out at me. The first is that the graphic novels chart is led by the latest collection in the Ex Machina series and the first Sweet Tooth collection, which strikes me as good news for those series and maybe not-great news for a lot of other material. Marvel's Siege event comic book maintained its audience in sturdy fashion from first issue to last, which could be a sign that retailers are becoming smarter about how many they can sell of such a title. I know Marvel has groused about criticism of the sales on that title, but none of the people suggesting that were the ones that built the mini-series up as the end to Marvel's over-arching storyline of the last seven or eight years. Marvel did that. Also, it's still only Batman, Green Lantern and events with Batman and Green Lantern putting DC into decent-selling comics range. That has to be a concern.
Telgemeier's Smile Named Honor Book In 2010 Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards According to a post at Raina Telgemeier's web site supported by the official press release to which the cartoonist links within the post's body, Telgemeier's recent graphic memoir Smile was named an Honor Book in the 2010 Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards for Excellence in Children's Literature program. The story of Telgemeier's coming of age structured around various travails with her teeth but certainly not limited to that subject, Smile is the first comics work to be included in those awards. The post mentions the author plans to be in Boston in October when the awards are formally given out, which are followed by a one-day symposium on the winning works. The awards have been given out since 1967. Smile has also apparently sold extremely well for Scholastic/Graphix, and should be included in any accounting of comics best-sellers made at the end of this year.
Kent Worcester Puts Out Call For Lev Gleason Information For History Of The American Literary Left Over at The Comics Journalan interesting historical question pertaining to comics has scuttled to the surface, as if by accident. What do we know about publisher Leverett Gleason, especially beyond the surface elements of his publishing history and his eventual run-ins with Congressional committees seeking to smoke out communist influence and perhaps control comics publication? The question is asked by Kent Worcester, one of their veteran writers, who provides a rundown of the major things most of us already know about Gleason. It's woefully undercooked, that information, so anyone with some grounded first-person research -- a relative, perhaps -- that could step in and answer some questions would be doing all of comics history a favor. You can contact Kent through the TCJ article linked-to above or me
Random Comics News Story Round-Up
* Scott Edelman wonders if anyone out there has a photo of he and his now-wife standing near one another at an early Sueling con. Because that would be really cool.
* there's a great "days of the fanzine editors" story starring John MacLaughlin, Gary Groth and the late Al Williamson in the first comment under this post.
* for reasons that should be obvious for anyone reading a couple of posts rolling out on this site after this one today, I was looking at the wikipedia entry for the Association of Comics Magazine Publishers, a precursor to the CMAA that rattled apart in quick and impressive fashion soon after releasing its own version of the comics code. I like the phrase "sexy, wanton comics." I also like the fact that it was likely Dell not wanting to join the ACMP that was the first nail in its coffin.
* the writer and cartoonist Shaenon Garrity names ten defining manga. Okay, 11. Seems like a fine list to me.
* this is sort of like finding out some of your friends from 3rd grade are working as strippers and pot dealers, but I'm sure it will sell gangbusters. Plus, come to think of it, some of my best friends are either strippers or pot dealers.
* finally, my friend Gil Roth saw that there was a small comics convention taking place about 10 minutes from where he works and since he had to be in the office on that day made time to stop by for a little break. He took photos. This is shaping up to be the year of the convention, and when you think of stopping by a show to meet a few solid pros like Joe Staton and to dig through some longboxes, that's not a bad way to spend some downtime on a weekend afternoon.
It's been only a few years since Gene Luen Yang roared to a kind of cartooning success emblematic of new ways of fashioning a comics career. His American Born Chinese became the first graphic novel to receive a nomination for a National Book Award (in the young people's literature category). The book would go on to win the ALA's Michael L. Printz award for young-adult literature, another first. It also sold like the dickens throughout. I don't know anyone who didn't root for Yang when he was picking up the honors, and I know few people interested in the world of comics that haven't tracked his attempts to build on that rush of success since.
TOM SPURGEON: I don't want to give you as impossibly as broad a first question as how American Born Chinese might have changed your life, but I wonder how such a big and obvious success on the resume might have had an impact on the way you work. Was there any time at all where it might have felt like a hindrance to work under that book's considerable shadow? Do you feel like there are expectations for your work that might not be been there before?
GENE LUEN YANG: Well, there are expectations in that more than my mom and my cartoonist friends read my comics now. To be honest, I do feel some pressure. I think a lot of it comes from the advance system that the book industry uses, that the comics industry is slowly adopting. Not to complain about the money that a publisher is willing to invest in me, but with money comes pressure. If you make a sucky mini-comic, nothing really prevents you from making your next mini-comic. If I lose a lot of money for my publisher, I don't know... I can't imagine them wanting to continue giving me advances.
Practically speaking, the success of American Born Chinese has allowed me to devote more time to making comics. I've been able to go part-time at my day job, so I get 2-3 full days each week at my drawing table. I used to have to do comics in the early morning, at night, and on the weekends.
SPURGEON: For that matter, have you been able to fully enjoy that book's success, do you think? Now that you've had a couple of years, is there anything about the experience in terms of how well that book did that stands out to you?
YANG: Sure, I've been able to fully enjoy the success of American Born Chinese. I got to go to Angouleme with my French-speaking editor Mark Seigel. I got to go to Washington D.C. for the National Book Festival. I got to serve as a judge for the National Book Awards last year. I got to be a special guest at Comic-Con. I got to shake Neil Gaiman's hand when I accepted the Eisner. If you told me five years ago that American Born Chinese would result in any one of these things, I would've laughed myself silly. But for all of them to happen? It's so amazing that it almost feels like some kind of practical joke.
I remember being really worried right before my panel at Comic-Con that no one was going to show up. It's happened before at book signings and such. I did this one at my local Borders after the NBA nomination that was like that. The staff were really nice. They put out this coffee/frosty/smoothie-type drink in little sampler cups on my table, and they had a beautiful display of my books in the corner. One person came up to talk to me. Nobody asked me to sign. Several people waited until I wasn't looking in their direction to sneak a sampler cup.
But the Comic-Con panel was totally different. People showed up. A lot more people than I expected. They asked great questions and seemed genuinely interested in my comics. An experience that stands out? That was probably it.
SPURGEON: You probably did the healthiest thing available to you as a same-publisher follow-up to ABC in that The Eternal Smile was almost radically different -- in fact, the short stories in that book all break in different directions from each other, let alone from past work. Was that a satisfying work to put together, these different stories in different modes and with different tones, all in color, after such a sustained graphic novel effort? It looked like you guys were having fun but at the same time I could also see the book as being laborious in terms of its execution.
YANG: We were having fun. Eh. I should say, I was having fun. It was laborious, but Derek was the one providing all the labor. All I had to do was send him a script and then wait for these incredible pages to show up in my inbox.
Derek is one of my closest friends, so working with him is always fun. "Duncan's Kingdom," the first story in The Eternal Smile, was originally published by Image Comics in the late '90s as a two-issue mini-series. At the time, Derek was going through a bout of writer's block. He told me he wanted to draw some fantasy-type stuff, but couldn't think of a story. He asked me to write for him and I jumped at the chance.
We both eventually moved on to our own projects, but "Duncan's Kingdom" had a special place in our hearts. When we got hooked up with First Second, we wanted to collect "Duncan," but it was too short to stand on its own. We fleshed it out with two more stories dealing with the same theme and ended up with The Eternal Smile.
I'm very proud of the work for the reasons you mentioned. It's the most beautiful book I've ever worked on, mostly because Derek handled all the visuals. I got to experiment with different writing voices because I knew Derek's art could embody the differences in a way that my own art could not. He really did an amazing job.
SPURGEON: There are what I would say are obvious cautionary elements to The Eternal Smile in terms of how it presents fantasy vis-a-vis reality. What I couldn't tell -- and maybe you don't want to tell -- is where your personal sympathies lie. Is it enough to pick up a kind of critical ethos to the stories in that book, or is there a specific criticism of fantasy and its limits you'd like the reader to consider?
YANG: I think "Duncan's Kingdom" is particularly anti-fantasy. I'm a geek and I've certainly consumed more than my fair share of fantasy pop culture. "Duncan's Kingdom" might've been the result of geek self-loathing, that feeling you get after you've missed four consecutive meals because of videogames or when you realize that for the amount of money you spent on comics you could've bought a decent car.
As I've gotten older and less involved in fantasy pop culture as a consumer, I've softened in my self-loathing. Years ago, I had a student in one of my programming classes who never said a word. Whenever I asked him a question, he would look down at his feet and mumble. I used to keep the computer lab open after school, and this kid would come in regularly to work on his projects. We started talking.
I remember the conversation when he lost his mumble. He told me that he played one of those online fantasy games, World of Warcraft or EverQuest or something like that. Supposedly, in that game he was The Man. He was awesome at killing dragons or whatever, and he ran a guild that was made up of players who were much older than him, 20- and 30-somethings. When he talked about that game, he got this confidence in his voice that I hadn't heard before. He became a guild leader. He became The Man.
That was my first real experience of one of those benefits of fantasy culture that fantasy apologists are always talking about. But it's true. Those leadership skills and that confidence were always in my student. It just took a videogame to bring it out. As he got older, more and more of his dragon-killing guild-leader self emerged in his real life.
I see that a lot as a teacher. A lot of students find their confidence in some sort of subculture. Maybe it's anime club or a sports team or some sort of virtual environment. They find their voice there, and as they get older they learn to bridge the gap between that subculture and the wider world. They bring their confident alias out into the open.
That was in the back of my mind when I was writing "Urgent Request."
SPURGEON: I'm really fascinated by the use of white space in "Urgent Request." Supposing that was your contribution, is there a thematic component in terms of the isolation the character feels, or were you perhaps more interested in how that imagery floating in space read? How cognizant are you of page design and the quality of the experience of reading that you're offering an audience?
YANG: Man, I wish I could take credit for that, but the white space was all Derek. I write in thumbnails, and the script I gave him was basically laid out on six-panel grids. He told me he wanted to try out this technique that was inspired by Chester Brown, where he'd draw all the panels first and then lay them out on the pages. He thought it would make for more controlled pacing. He was right. In that story, the white space becomes a part of the storytelling voice.
SPURGEON: I want to make sure to ask a bunch of questions about Prime Baby, which is the book that made me send you an e-mail. First of all, this was one of the New York Times Sunday Magazine Funny Pages comics, the last one if I'm not mistaken. I don't know anything about how that project worked. How were you contacted? How much editorial back and forth was there between that time and when the work began to be printed? Did you enjoy the process of making the book?
YANG: Yep, it was the last one. They canceled the feature after my story finished.
The New York Times contacted my agent, my agent asked me, and I said yes because, you know, it's THE NEW YORK FREAKING TIMES. There was some editorial back and forth in the beginning. I proposed one or two story ideas that they didn't think was appropriate for the paper before landing on Prime Baby. Originally, I wanted to do a story about a porn addict who is visited by leprechauns.
SPURGEON: [laughs] So what ended up being your interest in doing Prime Baby for this gig? Was this a story you'd been thinking about doing or is this something that was more of a direct response to the specific publishing opportunity?
YANG:Prime Baby was a direct response to the New York Times gig. It came from three different sources. First, my wife and I had recently had our second child and we were dealing with sibling rivalry at home. Second, I assign this prime numbers exercise to my programming students every year, and they often ask what the point of prime numbers is. Finally, I wrote this short story a couple of years ago about a baby who spoke in prime numbers. I used to do 15 minute free-writes as a way to warm up before scripting something, and the short story was the result of one of those free-writes.
SPURGEON: Were you aware of what other cartoonists had done in the series by the time you were working on Prime Baby? Was Prime Baby in any way a reaction to what had previously been published?
YANG: I'd read both Jason's and Seth's stories. Prime Baby wasn't a conscious reaction to them, but I felt very, very intimated about being in a space they'd once occupied. They're very different from each other, but they're both so polished, you know? And they both have these deep, effecting storytelling voices. Actually, maybe the "lightness" of Prime Baby was a reaction to them. I knew I couldn't compete in the same ballpark.
SPURGEON: You mention lightness... I think more than any of the other comics that ran in the Times, yours was humorous in a way that we think of comic strips being humorous: was that intentional? Are you a strip fan, is that a mode of expression that you enjoyed inhabiting for a while? Were the constraints of the strip useful to you as a creator in any way?
YANG: I love comic strips the way the vast majority of people love comic strips. I read them whenever I can. I have a couple of collections of Calvin and Hobbes at home. I just don't obsess over them like I do long-form comics.
I realized long ago that I am not a strip cartoonist. I can't handle the pressure of having to be funny every three panels.
That said, I do rely heavily on the rhythm of the page turn when I write comics. I try to have something that entices the reader to turn each page, maybe a question to be answered or a mild punchline. My love for the page turn is why I'm reluctant to do Scott McCloud's Infinite Canvas thing, despite being a computer nerd and very McCloudian in my thinking about comics.
Doing a comic for the New York Times was difficult. Those were the most constraints I'd ever had on a project. Each page had to essentially function as a chapter, and I had to have between 18 and 20 chapters, no more and no less. I learned a lot from that project, and I have renewed respect for cartoonists working in formats that are determined by someone other than themselves.
SPURGEON: In collected form, Prime Baby has this sort of bouncy energy that makes it hard to remember that it was ever serialized. Was it hard for you at all to maintain what you were doing over the life a serial strip, even a relative short serial like this one?
YANG: Some of the pages are definitely bouncier than others. I guess that's true of any work. Thaddeus's voice was pretty loud in my head, so coming up with all the jerk-ish dialog wasn't hard. Getting everything to fit into an 8" x 8" square was.
SPURGEON: Is there anything to the way you construct the individual pages that's important on a project like this one? For instance, is it important that every individual story segment have a certain sort of gag, or that certain characters are voiced every time out? What is the intended effect of so much dropped detail in your panels, how so much of Prime Baby takes place against a single-color background?
YANG: I have a pretty simple style to begin with, but the visuals of Prime Baby are especially simplistic. I drew dots for the eyes and very few background details. All those decisions were a response to the limited space. Thaddeus is a pretty wordy kid, at least in his own thoughts, so the pages would already be crowded with text. I was worried that competing details in the images would be off-putting to the reader, so I simplified even more than I normally do.
SPURGEON: How much sympathy do you have for Thaddeus? He's a comically disagreeable character in a lot of obvious ways, but you're also upfront about him working from these positions of real pain and fear. Plus it ends up he's largely right.
YANG: Derek tells me that of all my characters, Thaddeus is most like me in real life. I'm not sure how to take that. I tried to build sympathy for Thaddeus, both in my reader and myself, by making him relatively young. When a third grader suggests that his baby sister needs to be dissected, it's kind of funny. If a sixth grader were to do it, you'd want to call in the professionals.
I do like him a lot. As I said before, his voice is very clear to me. I hope to use him again in a future project. I've been batting around a couple of ideas in the back of my head as I've worked on my other stuff, but I don't have anything concrete yet.
SPURGEON: Is it fair to see the strip as critical of a certain kind of parenting? The parents seem to accept Thaddeus' apparent similar state a bit too quickly for me.
YANG: Yes, it's fair. I think modern parents are encouraged to over-parent in this very... I don't know... chic way that tries to hide the real difficulty of parenting. I'm particularly susceptible to over-parenting because I tend towards paranoia, especially where my kids are concerned. I feel the pressure to read the latest studies on nap time and buy the latest BPA-free bottles and install the latest organic car seats.
But you can do all this stuff and still find that a grumpy baby is a pain in the butt. New technology doesn't relieve parents of the hardest parts of parenting, but as modern people we sort of expect it to.
Thaddeus's parents are a send-up of modern parents. I don't know how much of it comes through the final pages of Prime Baby, but I definitely had all this in mind when I was writing those two characters.
SPURGEON: The Sunday Times Magazine was a humongous platform for any comics work. Did you hear back from people as the comic was serialized? Did what you hear have any effect on how you presented the print collection?
YANG: I did hear back from some folks. There were some prime number fans who wrote me, and some parents of kids named Thaddeus. It was pretty much all positive feedback. I suspect that the folks who didn't like it were not passionate enough in their dislike to write me about it. That has not been true for my other comics.
Reader feedback didn't really have an effect on the print collection at all. The presentation of the print collection was designed by First Second, with some input from me. They did an amazing job, in my opinion.
SPURGEON: Has anyone blamed you for killing that feature, Gene?
YANG: I asked the Times folks over and over again about this and they've assured me that it's not my fault. But I have my doubts. Thanks for bringing it up, Tom.
SPURGEON:Your Airbender boycott: were you comfortable using your comics-making skills in that fashion? I thought that mode of presentation really suited your style, but I wondered if you felt that way. When you do a comic like that, do you think in terms of changing minds or is it more about the personal satisfaction of staking out a position that important to you, no matter what others think? How controlled a piece of rhetoric is that comic?
YANG: For that one I used my teacher-self (which is basically me doing my best Scott McCoud impression) because the strip is about teaching rather than arguing. I wanted to raise awareness about a particular issue without beating the reader over the head with it. Righteous indignation is really, really fun, but there's just too much of it these days, you know? I wanted to share my line of thinking while respecting the reader's decisions and free will.
SPURGEON: Gene, I have no idea what you have coming up in future months. Is there a next major project?
YANG: I've got a few things in the works. Early next year, First Second will be releasing a graphic novel I did with Thien Pham, a fellow Bay Area cartoonist. Thien is actually one of three cartoonists teaching at my school, so we see each other pretty regularly. (Brianna Miller is the third.) Our project is called Level Up, and it's about a videogame freak who gets a divine calling to go to med school. I handled the writing and he handled the art. This one has been a long time coming. It was originally called Three Angels and slated to come out the year after American Born Chinese, but the story was sucky so we redid it. I've written more drafts of this story than any of my other ones. After American Born Chinese started getting some attention, I freaked out a little bit because I realized that I'd been constructing my stories on pure instinct. I never really understood story structure. So I read a bunch of books on story and plot and character and wrote Three Angels. It was a stiff and terrible thing. I'm much happier with Level Up.
I've also been working on a historical fiction project about the Boxer Rebellion in late 19th Century China. In the early 2000's, Pope John Paul II canonized a couple hundred Chinese saints. These were the first Chinese ever to be canonized by the Catholic Church. The church I grew up in, a Chinese Catholic Church in the South Bay, made a big deal out of this, naturally.
I looked into these saints and discovered that many of them were martyred during the Boxer Rebellion. These Chinese Catholics were killed by the Boxers -- poor Chinese peasant boys who were angry at the European presence in China -- because the Chinese Catholics were seen as traitors to their own people for embracing a foreign faith. The Communist government in China actually protested the canonizations on these grounds.
I found that this historical conflict embodied a conflict Chinese and Asian Christians sometimes feel between our cultural heritage and our faith. As I read more about both the Boxers and the Chinese Christians, I became less and less clear about who to root for. So that's what this project is about. It will be two different graphic novels. The first will feature the Boxers as the protagonists and the second the Chinese Christians. There will be shared characters. I'm writing and drawing everything myself, and Lark Pien has agreed to color it. I've already been working on it for a couple of years. I'm about 3/4 of the way through the first volume. It's just taking forever.
* Prime Baby, Gene Luen Yang, First Second Books, hardcover, 64 pages, 1596436506 (ISBN10), 9781596436503 (ISBN13), April 2010, $19.99
*****
* cover to First Second's Prime Baby collection
* two panels from American Born Chinese
* cover from The Eternal Smile
* panel from "Duncan's Kingdom"
* page from "Urgent Request"
* seven panels from Prime Baby hopefully appropriate to the conversation at hand
* panel from Yang's formal Last Airbender boycott comic
* panel from forthcoming Level Up
* one more panel from Prime Baby (below)
* Sandman 5 -- Because of the weirdness of the Justice League meeting Dream
* Animal Man 5 (Coyote Gospel) -- Because it's the most beautiful parable against violence since... ohh the last Gospel
* All-Star Superman 5 -- For the perfect encapsulation of Luthor's relationship to Clark/Superman
* My Monkey's Name is Jennifer 5 -- Because his name is Jennifer!
* Scott Pilgrim 5 -- Because it's the most recent one I've been able to read.
1. The Spirit #5 (Kitchen Sink) (The first time I owned anything by Eisner)
2. Dark Horse Presents #100 #5 (I just like the concept of 5 #100 issues)
3. Hellboy: Wake the Devil #5 (whoa)
4. B.P.R.D.: The Dead #5 (great monsters)
5. Milk & Cheese's First 2nd Issue (their fifth issue)
*****
Scott Dunbier
* Weirdo 5
* Shadow 5 (1974)
* League of Extraordinary Gentlemen 5 (Vol. one)
* Hot Wheels 5
* Swamp Thing 5 (1973)
1. Transmetropolitan #5
2. Automatic Kafka #5
3. Avengers (vol. 3) #5
4. All-Star Batman and Robin, the Boy Wonder #5
5. Marvel Boy #5
*****
James Langdell
1. Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD #5 (Steranko's "Whatever Happened to Scorpio?")
2. Legion Of Superheroes #5 (an extreme "Now what next?" ending early on in the "Five Years Later" series)
3. Beware the Creeper #5 (seemed to establish Proteus as a substantial antagonist for the long haul)
4. Weirdo #5 (featuring "Unsung Heroes In The History of Humor," launching more attention being paid to outsider art in comics)
5. Nexus #5 (you're so right--"The Drinking Man's Tour Of The Galaxy" is one of the all-time greats)
*****
Don MacPherson
1) Justice League #5
2) Starman #5
3) Alias #5
4) Crisis on Infinite Earths #5
5) All-Star Squadron #5
1. Comic Art 5: Art Spiegelman
2. Fanfare 5: The Record Album Cover Art of Jack Davis
3. Ganzfeld 5: Japanada!
4. Kabuki 5: Metamorphosis
5. Nozone 5: Poverty
To All You Lovely PR People Out There
I'm a big fan of publicity people: both of my parents worked in the field, each at one time owned their own agency, and my first work as a writer was penning radio ad copy for a local office-supply company.
However: it's 2010, and that's about five years past the point where you should be sending out giant press releases and automatically expecting web sites to host them, frequently having to take the time to reformat them, and then drawing attention to your announcement for you via a closed loop on their dime.
Here's what seems to be the bare minimum industry standard right now when it comes to nearly every news story in the product announcement, exhibit and event and personnel move categories: companies start their own web sites and on their web sites they post this news. You can get a place for this purpose in about 30 seconds through a free blog provider, but you probably already have one. The vast majority of PR people then include a link with the press release so that the other web sites out there have the option of linking to that news -- not spending 10 minutes reformatting it, not using their own bandwidth to host it, not being responsible for getting the information right, but running a link to what you want to say, how you want it formatted, how much information you want to host. If the PR person involved is running an event, they frequently make a poster or graphic announcement in the form of a JPEG to send along as well.
It's all easy to do, and I'm guessing you'll get a lot more coverage that way -- I know I'm pretty much done with doing that part of your job for you. If that takes me off your PR list, that's fine, I apologize for the affront, and I'll pick up the information as best I can elsewhere.
Thank you for your continued interest and support.
(I've already had some questions in the 20 minutes since I put this up. I'm not trying to dictate terms, all I'm saying is that if getting your news out depends solely on me copying and pasting the entirety of what you've sent me into its own document on my site and then drawing attention to that new document, you're missing out on opportunities where I might not have the time or the inclination to do all of that for you, but I might have the time and inclination to run a link to your web site that says "Eric Wince New Brigadoon Comics VP" or "Phantom Dog Newest Add to Brigadoon Digital Effort" or "via PR comes word that Brigadoon mainstay John Burgess has an art exhibit opening up January 24 at the Columbia Club in Indianapolis.")
Little Mikey's refusal to kowtow to popular cereal tastes lent his endorsement of Life Cereal astonishing, transformative power. Today it would be, "Oh, now he likes something. Whatever, Mikey!"
Nik Kowsar Cartoon Pulled From Site A cartoon from exiled Iranian cartoonist Nikahang Kowsar has been removed from a site focused on Iranian news similarly based out of that country, according to a post at the Persian Letters blog by Iranian news analyst Golnaz Esfandiari. The cartoon pulled from Rooz On-Line was apparently critical of reformist leader Mir Hossein Musavi, extrapolating from the politician's recent release of political guidelines for the Green Movement that years and years from now he would still be releasing such political guidelines. Kowsar is a contributor to the publication that removed his cartoons, and declined Esfandiari's request for comment. Once jailed for his cartoon featuring a political figure then in power, Kowsar has been an eloquent spokesman for the specific pressures facing cartoonists in Iran and those that have since left the country but remain enmeshed in its political outcomes.
When political forces are caught in moments of flux and change, processing criticism of the home team as it were is always a difficult matter. The post suggests that the cartoon has since been employed by more conservative forces within Iran, although in what capacity beyond the obvious aping of the criticism and suggesting that the difference in opinions within the opposition are a political weakness, I'm not exactly sure.
Rik Levins, 1950-2010 According to a full obituary at ComicMix, artist Rik Levins passed away on Saturday, June 12, in a Tampa, Florida hospital from complications due to cancer. He was 59 years old.
Levins was a relative latecomer to comics, and according to the ComicMix remembrance had a career as a civil servant before entering art school. He caught on as a pencil artist with Florida-based AC Comics, the former publisher Paragon which under a new name had devoted itself to color genre comics in the early flush period of the comics Direct Market. He worked at first on the company's (briefly) eponymous Americomics series but would go on to fulfill scripting and pencil artists on a wide variety of their titles: Dragonfly, The Armageddon Factor, Nightveil and even their flagship, FemForce. He also worked briefly on projects with similar publishers Innovation and Comico.
As 1989 became 1990 (meaning Levins likely worked on his first such project in the former year to see it published in the latter), Levins began to pick up work at Marvel Comics. Assignments in various locales across their expanding line led to a short run on Avengers and a longer one on Captain America with the late writer Mark Gruenwald, then a rock of traditional fan to pro values at the House of Ideas. His run of art came in the character's title from issues in the late #380s through about #425.
In 1994, Levins made what would have been at the time a sideways step, from the bigger, bloated and heading into trouble Marvel to the up-and-coming Acclaim line, primarily on the X-O Manowar title. He would be all but out of serial comics making by the next year, in order to pursue opportunities in gaming. He notes in a 2004 thread at the Byrne Robotics message board that he eventually took a full-time job with Full Sail University teaching art, was taking digital media classes himself, and that this left little time to make comics. The ComicMix piece mentions that Levins worked on a smattering of graphic novel projects in recent years.
Go, Read: French Publishing Perspective On Manga Sales And Scanlation Sites
I'm not sure that every statement made in this article at the French-language comics news clearinghouse ActuaBD.com regarding the effect of scanned comics would be my own, or at least not with the same level of certainty, but a few ideas popped out at me. The first is the article's description of a drop in sales in manga in Europe, which doesn't seem near as significant as the drop in the US but is I guess enough that publishers are concerned. The second is that the history of efforts against scanned comics eventually stops being European-specific and starts being international. The third is that the move to digital media by the publishers themselves may have led them into a stronger stance against digital appropriation of the works they control.
Random Comics News Story Round-Up
* at the end of this shipping report, the retailer Brian Hibbs rips into publishers for something they routinely do, something he and I both think has limited the potential for the Direct Market for years: stacking same-appeal comic books into the same publishing week instead of scheduling them at rational intervals.
* this long con report from Roger Langridge is a pleasure because it's a show with which I have zero familiarity: Kids Read Comics. Also, I wanted to type the sentence, "Jim Ottaviani owns an original Krazy Kat."
* I am very much in love with this drawing by Renee French. French posts with such regularity it's easy to take her for granted, but usually one out of every eight all-very-good postings is so good and so startling I stop to stare at it for at least the length of an elementary school lunch period.
* this weekend is Florida Supercon, which was nice enough to switch dates with HeroesCon this year, I forget why. They're more of a "all the colors of the geek rainbow" type convention, but they have a number of comic book guests, too. There are also smaller conventions of varying size in Texas, Illinois and New Jersey. That one in Texas looks fairly sizable, actually. You just know someone's going to caught making out with Joyce DeWitt on the elevator. It's hard for people to remember, but Texas used to be at home for a top five convention every single year for a couple of decades there. Strong fandom presence in that state.
* CBRis looking for reporters for the forthcoming Comic-Con International. I'm looking for drinking buddies at the same event. Please apply for the drinking buddy position at the same place CBR is collecting information for their reporters.
* via PR comes word that Wizard's Gareb Shamus has bought another small con. This time it's one called ComiCONN, which will become Wizard World Connecticut Comic Con in 2011. As per the standard agreement, the con organizers will continue to organize local events. The WW Connecticut event joints events in Cincinnati, Cleveland and Nashville as Wizard World-planned shows without a formal date on the convention calendar.
* also via PR comes word that Stan Lee has been added to the guest list at NYCC.
* via Eddie Campbell comes this article about an August festival in Australia that will include a performance piece featuring never-before-heard words from Neil Gaiman paired with never-before-seen artwork by Campbell. I think there needs to be comics things to attend in every part of the world I wish to visit, and this sounds like a pretty good one.
Your Danish Cartoons Hangover Update
* while one would imagine that attacks on the Danish World Cup team and that team's fans due to the perceived insults of the Danish Cartoons would be on everyone's minds already, comments made by the recently-arrested Abdullah Azam Saleh al-Qahtani have definitely heightened concerns. No significant changes have been made to the team's itinerary, however. Doesn't look like that team will be around long, either.
* that promised period of interrogation for Indian officials interested in David Coleman Headley's involvement in the Mumbai attacks has taken place, and lasted for seven days. Headley pleaded guilty to various conspiracy-type crimes, including a plot to blow up the Jyllands-Posten newspaper that originally published the Danish Cartoons. Here's more on what he reportedly told officials.
Your 2010 Prix Asie ACBD Nominees
The members of the Association des Critique et Journalistes de Bande Dessinée, a French-language association of writers about comics, are preparing to vote on their 2010 prix Asie winner. They will do so from the following list of nominees.
* Deux Expressos, Kan Takahama (Casterman)
*****
* Folles Passions Kazuo Kamimura (Kana)
*****
* L'ile Panorama, Maruo Suehiro after Edogawa Ranpo (Sakka/Casterman)
*****
* Juge Bao, Chongrui Nie and Patrick Marty (Editions Fei)
*****
* Pluto, Naoki Urasawa after Osamu Tezuka (Kana)
The winner will be named on July 1st at the Japan Expo awards ceremony.
"We Had A Short Gun Battle With Him And He Lost And Died" Laura Onstot tells the story of Seattle-area college cartoonist and wannabe graphic novelist turned stalker and murderer Jed Waits, and remembers, after some prompting, having him on her student newspaper staff. This story was a pretty big local/regional crime story, apparently, although this is the one that pushes the college connection between murderer and victim and the comics that Waits was doing. There's nothing overly lurid declared about the cartooning, in case you were wondering, and few insinuations that aren't either pretty obvious takeaways (the cartoonist felt unsuccessful with the ladies) or directly countered within the narrative. (via Dirk)
I've got a couple bits of news you might enjoy... Firstly, I got the SMURFS gig! HUGE thanks to you for re-posting my flog entry -- that's where Jim Salicrup of Papercutz saw my plea. The first cover is attached here and will be available soon (in both soft and hardcover).
Secondly, as of this past Sunday I am engaged to my lovely girlfriend, Jenny. I had already been squirreling away cash, but the SMURFS job (which I got, again, in large part thanks to you) provided me with the necessary boost of funds to by a ring and pop the question! We're both very excited, as you can imagine. A small pic is attached here -- you can see them larger on my Flickr page.
Thanks again for all the support over the years (I've been doing this almost a decade now, if you can believe it). I think having a more grounded, happy home life is only going to make my design work better.
Now, as generous as Adam's being I obviously can't take any credit for actually doing anything here. Adam put himself out there, and Jim Salicrup was smart enough to take Adam's offer seriously. I'm happy as hell to have been the conduit for their actions, though, and I hope the joy of Adam's note comes through and brightens someone's day the way it brightened mine. Congratulations to the happy couple.
* it figures that two cartoonists to take note of Bloomsday would be Dave Lasky and Richard Thompson, both of whom seem to me smart, funny and kind souls.
* either this is the first review I can recall seeing of Joe Daly's first Dungeon Quest book, or I'm forgetting where I first saw a first one. That book is deeply, deeply weird and at the same time really fits into that general King City/Prison Pit grouping that's reasonably popular right now.
* Sandy Bilus revisits the Best Of 2009 Meta-List and adds information about the number of lists on which various comics appear. I did a list about comics some ten years ago and that was a tough measure -- I think we finally just included everything that reached a certain threshold. Or something.
* finally, I love the look of early Peanuts more than it's rational to love lines on paper. Also: Lucy Van Pelt has to be the most underrated character in comic strip history.
Washington Post Contest I Haven't Written About Yet Posts Top 10
I haven't written about it yet because I haven't had the chance to look at the rules and see if it's a fair contest; at this point, my endorsement clearly doesn't matter. I have to admit, at first glance I'm not in love with any of these.
* while multiple magazines purporting to fill that magical aesthetic space between Wizard and The Comics Journal have come and gone, Joel Meadows and Team Tripwire keep on publishing, in print, year after year, Diamond's bizarre solicitations standards and the general apathy of the North American comics Direct Market be damned. They're doing another one, and if you're a store owner or distributor that can give them a hand in getting more of their magazines into the hands of attentive summer readers, I'm sure Joel would appreciate your inquiry.
* if I'm understanding his e-mail correctly, Thomas Scioli came home from a weekend of talking comics at Heroes Con and promptly refigured his American Barbarian and Unmortals: The Myth Of 8-Opus properties into more of a classic webcomics format.
* Dark Horse talks about the finale of its Buffy Season 8 project. For some reason, it seems totally weird to hear a company talking about wrapping a project up instead of it just ending. That can't be good.
* Howard the Duck is coming back in September. I like Stuart Moore, but I have no idea why they don't just give that character to Evan Dorkin or Johnny Ryan or someone like that. What about Kyle Baker? I'm sure he could draw a fine duck.
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 no-doubt largely accurate list of books shipping from Diamond Comic Distributors, Inc. to comic book and hobby shops across North America.
I might not buy all of the works listed here. I might not buy any. But were I in a comic book shop this week, I'd buy any comic book that could slip past me "Hand Of Clod" style.
*****
OCT090055 CREEPY ARCHIVES HC VOL 06 $49.99
I'm way behind on these, but has there ever been a time when you ran across an early Warren magazine story and didn't think to your self how freaking gorgeous it is? Me, neither.
APR100174 AZRAEL #9 $2.99 APR100197 MAGOG #10 $2.99
I'm hoping that these weird bible-title books from DC will generate enough momentum that they split off the DCU into their own Vertigo-like division. The possibilities are endless. Like you could have a title called "Amriel," but it would only come out once a year, or "Anpiel," who would run around a more Bible-y version of the DC Universe doing errands for Robin and the Black Canary.
FEB100191 SEVEN SOLDIERS OF VICTORY HC VOL 01 $39.99
I found this work to be real hit and miss but if you're a fan of the textural feel of an interconnected superhero story pulled off by a group of capable smarty-pants, you probably want every version of Grant Morrison and Company's overlapping saga including this newest one.
APR100180 SPIRIT #3 $3.99 APR100450 AGE OF BRONZE #30 (MR) $3.50 MAR100438 WALKING DEAD #73 (MR) $2.99 APR100553 NEW AVENGERS #1 HA $3.99
These are the individual comic books I would consider buying were I still a weekly, habitual serial-comic buyer. I haven't seen any of the Spirit books yet and my interest in New Avengers is along the lines of wanting to know what they're up to in one of the multiple company flagships (I'm guessing it's a company flagship), but the other two I read and collect when I see them.
APR100639 CRIMINAL TP VOL 05 SINNERS (MR) $15.99
Guys, it's not fair to spend all these years pressing for the companies to release more quality genre books to the market and then not support them when they finally arrive.
APR100606 LOCKJAW AND PET AVENGERS UNLEASHED #4 (OF 4) $2.99
Someday a few years from now I'm going to look up and there will have been 160 of these pet books published. It is on that day that I will turn off my computer and set fire to my studio, doing a slow motion walk-away as my comics burn.
FEB100922 ARTICHOKE TALES HC $22.99
I'm still digesting this, the oddest book I've read all year. Even odder, I read a lot of the earlier material that went into this book that you think would prepare me for reading it all together. Nope.
MAR100950 BILLY HAZELNUTS & CRAZY BIRD (RES) $19.99
The release of a new Tony Millionaire stand-alone book is an overall world good. There's not even that much to say about it.
JAN100951 BOOK OF MR NATURAL HC (MR) $19.99
This is one of the better Christmas-gift books Fantagraphics ever made, if I'm thinking of the right volume. A kind of Crumb-primer, or Crumb for people who might want to get at him from a more standard comics stories standpoint.
FEB100763 I THOUGHT YOU WOULD BE FUNNIER SC $19.99
This is new Shannon Wheeler, right?
FEB100919 MEATCAKE GN (MR) $22.99
Dame Darcy is the canary in the cage as alt-comics makes its way through the catacombs of modern comics publishing. As long as she has a publishing presence, something must going at least semi-okay.
DEC090860 TEMPERANCE HC $22.99
I'm looking forward to this one because a) I know absolutely nothing about it, and b) I went into the cartoonist's previous book Percy Gloom with every expectation I'd hate it until my legs fell off from the acidic bile collected in them from my hating of it, but ended up super-charmed by like page eight.
*****
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 here, that's all part of the plan.
Missed It: Apple Asks For Changes In Non-Sexual Nudity In Comic, Relents I totally missed the story of Rob Berry and Josh Levitas running up against being asked to make changes in non-sexual nudity for their book to be made available on the iPad, and of all the stories out there I think Brigid Alverson's interview with the creators makes the best one-and-done on what went on. When I think back to the months and months of flopping around like crazy on content issues when comics made what is on the surface a much easier-to-grasp and less openly dramatic transition from newsstand to comic book shop racks, it doesn't surprise me at all that the medium moving into a more dramatic, publicly well-known avenue for publication is going to come with some weirdness and hesitation; slow and steady and professional and deliberate and responsible wins the race here, I think.
Neil Gaiman/Todd McFarlane II Generates A Metric Ton Of News Articles, Analyses, General Pointing
Luckily, the legal battle that was renewed this week in Madison between the two 49-year-olds, twin success stories of comics' last flush period is pretty easy to follow by reading only one of the 500 or so articles and blog posts out there. Take this one for example. The one thing that's compelling to me about the renewed battle isn't so much the massive and ridiculous delay in McFarlane accounting for and then paying Gaiman what he won last time they tussled -- no surprise there -- but that by going after characters he claims are pretty much playing the same role with the same features as the characters for which he's owned money, Gaiman could be picking at the corners of a longtime, widespread practice of comics creators using doppelgangers when a rights situation denies them use of the original character.
The Pre-Armageddon Version Of When We Used To Catch Radar O'Reilly Reading Comic Books On MASH
The name of one of the ships loading at port in Lebanon expected to heighten tensions in the Middle East when it attempts to break a blockade around Gaza? The Naji al-Ali.
CPJ Claims Moroccan Authorities Using Civil Law To Punish Editor From 2009 Wedding Cartoon Incident
This is only tangentially related to comics, but the original story kind of came and went without any follow-up at the time, so I was intrigued to hear about the awful echoes related to what at the time was as severe a cartoon-related persecution as we'd seen that calendar year. The Committee To Protect Journalists is blasting the judiciary in Morocco and calling on them to overturn a recent six-month and related fee sentence of Editor Taoufik Bouachrine on real estate and sales fraud. They claim that the charges were brought against the editor of Akhbar al-Youm, an independent daily, in part because of residual anger towards the editor over a 2009 Khalid Gueddar cartoon he ran depicting the wedding of Prince Moulay Ismail. Because of the cartoon the paper was shut down and both the cartoon and editor received suspended sentences. Not only does CPJ see these charges as an extension of those charges, it sees them as a new strategy to hit key journalists with unrelated criminal charges, all in the context of an overall crackdown on free press in the country.
Random Comics News Story Round-Up
* when I was a kid, I really hated the design of teen-aged Bam-Bam, and I was upset he lost his super-strength. Just sayin'.
* I can't quite figure out the nature of this apparent roundtable with Fantastic Four creators about the property, but I imagine no matter where it came from or how it was done it'd be of interest to someone out there.
* the writer David Brothers talks race and comics. I don't really have a firm opinion on this beyond my already oft-stated desire that mainstream comics companies take matter-of-fact notice of their traditional whitebread qualities, recognize the unique value of any character of color that gains any sort of traction due to the kind of identification they're begging readers to have, and then make informed creative decisions according to their best, long-term advantage. I don't think it's so bad if there has to be a few more minutes of deep and sometimes difficult thought on these matters, just as I trust people over the long haul to make the right decisions once all factors are considered.
Al Williamson, the youngest of the major EC Comics artists and a longtime veteran of the comic book and comic strip fields, a well-loved industry figure best known for his classic approach to comics illustration, died on June 12. He was 79 years old. A message from the family released after his passing indicated that Williamson had suffered from Alzheimer's over the last few years of his life.
Williamson was born in New York City. He spent a significant portion of his childhood in Colombia -- his father's homeland -- before moving back to the United States for his teen years. He and his mother settled briefly in San Francisco before making their way back to New York City. By this time Williamson had already taken an interest in adventure comic strips, including features he would have only seen in Colombia and an anecdotally famous viewing of a Flash Gordon serial. It was no surprise that he eventually settled onto Alex Raymond and his titanically successful Flash Gordon as aspirational favorites.
Williamson was among the early students of Burne Hogarth's Cartoonists and Illustrators School, having been one of the irascible Tarzan cartoonist's students in a more informal setting that preceded the school's establishment. While at Cartoonists and Illustrators, Williamson met several working or soon-to-be working cartoonists, including Wally Wood. Williamson would later cite his friendship with Roy Krenkel during this period as a key factor in his career, as Krenkel was systematically interested in the same kind of art as Williamson and was therefore able to introduce him to several illustrators with whom Williamson had only a dabbler's familiarity.
For the obviously talented like Williamson, the line in comics' exuberant mid-1940s between art student and working cartoonist was gossamer thin. Williamson's first professional work in comics may have been for Famous Funnies, a well-known and generally kind recipient of many artists' early comics and spot illustration submissions. Williamson's first comics narrative artwork may have come in New Heroic Comics #51 (Eastern Color, November 1948), Wonder Comics #20 (Standard, October 1948), or even assisting his teacher, Hogarth, as much as he demurred from making that a more formal partnership. Williamson also gained another group of acquaintances, the Fiction House cartoonists that included Mort Meskin, and met his artistic inspiration and longtime idol Raymond.
The first burst of professional productivity in Williamson's career came in the still relatively industry flush period of 1949 to 1951. During these years Williamson worked for a variety of clients, including AGC, Avon and Eastern Color. He worked with at least two future hall of famers, Frank Frazetta and Wally Wood, as occasional inkers and had not yet settle on a genre. His assignments were of the seven to nine-page
* Hermes Press 
As for the costume change, it's a good idea. As sports teams have learned, if your new costume stinks you can go back to the classic but if it works you now have two to sell. It's just that execution-wise this one already looks dated to me, with that weird X-Men movie reminiscent half-jacket. You have to execute that costume well because 1) the first one is very iconic, and 2) it also has that Sub-Mariner factor of "I showed up to beat your ass in my pageant swimsuit and tiara" that actually makes Wonder Woman more terrifying than a standard costume might. Anyway, Jim Lee isn't a well-known costume designer, at least not to my knowledge, so I'm surprised he got that call. JMS' public distaste for the Mike Sekowsky version, which I recall being a few outfits perfectly in line with an Emma Peel-style take on the character, just seems unfortunate to me on an aesthetic level. I liked the way those costumes looked.
* 
.jpg)
* 
There's nothing that's particularly newsworthy about 
* Matt Seneca 
_thumb.jpg)
I first became aware of 
SPURGEON: I don't know anything about Bongo other than a bit about 
SPURGEON: Do you have a sense of your audience for the original comic books? When you were doing these crossovers, were you hearing back from people? Is it different audience than the other companies out there have?
SPURGEON: Taking something from animated form and putting it into comics form, is there anything harder to do on the comics page? Is there an effect you lose that's harder to replicate than others?
SPURGEON: So is there a way you pace yourselves with such sequences?
SPURGEON: As the writer that mashed the two universes together, is there anything about doing so that surprised you? For instance, as might be expected you paired off a lot of the characters for different scenes; is there an effective pairing that you didn't see going in?
Somehow along the way they decided to give him 
I don't have too much to say about 
Something called the British Fantasy Society 
As part of their ongoing coverage of the dance between Comic-Con International and the cities of San Diego, Los Angeles, Anaheim and Las Vegas for hosting honors regarding the post-2012 version of the show, 
* Frank Santoro has 
By Tom Spurgeon
The book banned was Perak Darul Kartun while the two comics named were Isu Dalam Kartun and the wonderfully-titled 1 Funny Malaysia. All three were banned for specific contents within the covers. The 1984 act is designed to keep the public order, which indicates the content was somehow commenting on current government policy or conditions for which the current government might be held responsible.
Desbois owned the 
If I'm reading 
* the artist Fabio Moon's sketches 
* the cartoonist Scott Stantis 
* I can't vouch for it, but apparently 
* sole remaining major Seattle P-I asset David Horsey 
* the always-intriguing Matthias Wivel 
* 
According to 
Over at The Comics Journal 
* you can buy 
SPURGEON: For that matter, have you been able to fully enjoy that book's success, do you think? Now that you've had a couple of years, is there anything about the experience in terms of how well that book did that stands out to you?
SPURGEON: You probably did the healthiest thing available to you as a same-publisher follow-up to ABC in that The Eternal Smile was almost radically different -- in fact, the short stories in that book all break in different directions from each other, let alone from past work. Was that a satisfying work to put together, these different stories in different modes and with different tones, all in color, after such a sustained graphic novel effort? It looked like you guys were having fun but at the same time I could also see the book as being laborious in terms of its execution.
SPURGEON: There are what I would say are obvious cautionary elements to The Eternal Smile in terms of how it presents fantasy vis-a-vis reality. What I couldn't tell -- and maybe you don't want to tell -- is where your personal sympathies lie. Is it enough to pick up a kind of critical ethos to the stories in that book, or is there a specific criticism of fantasy and its limits you'd like the reader to consider?
SPURGEON: You mention lightness... I think more than any of the other comics that ran in the Times, yours was humorous in a way that we think of comic strips being humorous: was that intentional? Are you a strip fan, is that a mode of expression that you enjoyed inhabiting for a while? Were the constraints of the strip useful to you as a creator in any way?
SPURGEON: Is there anything to the way you construct the individual pages that's important on a project like this one? For instance, is it important that every individual story segment have a certain sort of gag, or that certain characters are voiced every time out? What is the intended effect of so much dropped detail in your panels, how so much of Prime Baby takes place against a single-color background?
SPURGEON: 
YANG: I've got a few things in the works. Early next year, 
A cartoon from exiled Iranian cartoonist Nikahang Kowsar has been removed from a site focused on Iranian news similarly based out of that country, 
* 
Laura Onstot 
Secondly, as of this past Sunday I am engaged to my lovely girlfriend, Jenny. I had already been squirreling away cash, but the SMURFS job (which I got, again, in large part thanks to you) provided me with the necessary boost of funds to by a ring and pop the question! We're both very excited, as you can imagine. A small pic is attached here -- you can see them larger on 
* it figures that two cartoonists to take note of Bloomsday would be 
* while multiple magazines purporting to fill that magical aesthetic space between Wizard and The Comics Journal have come and gone, Joel Meadows and Team Tripwire keep on publishing, in print, year after year, Diamond's bizarre solicitations standards and the general apathy of the North American comics Direct Market be damned. They're doing another one, and if you're a store owner or distributor that can give them a hand in getting more of their magazines into the hands of attentive summer readers, I'm sure 
I totally missed the story of Rob Berry and Josh Levitas running up against being asked to make changes in non-sexual nudity for their book to be made available on the iPad, and of all the stories out there I think 
* I can't quite figure out the nature of 
Williamson was among the early students of