The Never-Ending, Four-Color Festival: Shows And Events
By Tom Spurgeon
* this weekend is one of the grand festivals of the North American circuit: Alternative Press Expo in San Jose. I wish Dan Vado all the luck in the world in bringing the show back under his control and relaunching it closer to its original home. There is no shortage of alt-talent at that show, but I believe for a vigorous, mass buying of recent comics Alternative Comics is exhibiting so that would be your best. Or at least that's my understanding that they'll be there; I'm not there to double-check. Marc Arsenault's revival of that 1990s alt-comics stalwart blanket-represents for distribution and retail not just their own books but also books from a variety of interesting imprints. You could spend all day there.
* Brian Heater writes about the Baltimore show from last weekend, one of the well-loved regional mainstream shows on the circuit.
* it's going to take a few days for it to appear as a forthcoming event because the way I have those posts set up to run through the busy week I'm having right now, but you should know that the Locust Moon Festival in Philadelphia is scheduled for October 31. That should be a great alt-comics weekend with Short Run happening on the west coast.
* I'll be here this weekend. I hope if you're within driving distance you'll consider a short jaunt over. Find me; I'd love to say hello.
* finally, MICE 2015 is gearing up as we speak; as mentioned, I'm doing the forthcoming posts a little different this week so I can't correct my mistake in not having this one listed until next Tuesday... but it's a significant show and I hope everyone with traveling distance knows about it.
* Kim O'Connor addresses all the ills that Marvel's hiring of Ta-Nehisi Coates doesn't and couldn't ever begin to address. I suspect part of what happens is that we start to see real-world issues as abstract arguments on the Internet pretty early on, and that this distorts the issue in that winning an argument or scoring rhetorical points become more important than substantive improvement or change.
* Heidi MacDonald reports from the Diamond Summit. There's growth, but not enough growth, and Image Comics is going to be the first to back away entirely from the industry's slow suicide by variant.
I Don’t Know From Bundles, But I Like All Of These Comics In This Forbidden One A Lot
Here it is and here's the CBLDF piece about it. I think the bundle phenomenon is kind of fascinating, this very specific way of making use of backstock items in a way that encourages the buying of a bunch of them at once.
Zunar Claims Further Harassment At Hands Of Malaysian Police
Zunar sent out a press release about a sales assistant handling online sales of his latest book being called into a police station over issues related to selling the cartoonist's new book, Sapuman, Man Of Steal. You can get an idea of what's being claimed through that initial link. Zapiro is currently facing charges under Malaysia's Sedition Act in an oft-delayed trial, so a further charge seems like it would have to be linked into that particular bit of seriousness. The idea that anything Zunar does would cause the kind of reaction that would even raise itself up to serious investigative work by authorities seems absurd, but here we are.
Richard delighted several people by visiting SPX this year. I just ran across some original art of his, and it's stunning. As always we wish Richard Thompson and everything having to do with him our absolute best.
* Andy Warner walks us through the situation facing Syrian refugees via comic. I don't think I've ever seen "cartoon infographic" used in that forthright way. Sounds like something you could sell even the most skeptical editor.
* a new direction for the Spectre character created by Bernard Baily. I can't imagine that character was doing them much good in its classic incarnation as a kind of pissed-off super god, although this one sounds even less commercial in a sense and the comic they show seems kind of clumsy to me. I don't know! Radical change can work for these character. Comics is an art form of execution.
* speaking of that kind of move, I'm kind of lost as to what exactly Marvel intends end-game wise with its reworking of the Inhumans into a more prominent place in the overall Marvel universe including a bit of overlap with its X-Men properties. I know that when I was a kid I liked the idea of a advanced civilization storing weapons in the form of super-beings on a backwater planet; hell, I still that's a pretty clever pulp concept. But once you put them into contact with that wider universe, and Marvel is far past that, you kind of have to find other things for them to be. Again: execution.
* the cartoonist Daryl Cagle writes about the Times' relationship to editorial cartooning. It's a weird one.
By Request Extra: Tony Breed And His Husband Could Use Help
The cartoonist Tony Breed and his husband Eric could use some relief financially from the onslaught of bills they've faced via Eric's continuing illnesses. Breed is by all accounts a nice man, and I've enjoyed his comic in the past. I hope you'll consider a donation if that's something you're able to do.
Comics By Request: People, Projects In Need Of Funding
By Tom Spurgeon
* it's still fascinating to me to look at the Kickstarter comics page and see all of the projects that people believe are ready to be published. That sounds mean, but I recognize that line can be set anywhere someone wants and that no one is likely to agree which projects are on which side of that line.
* there have been a few recent, successful projects over there that could have found a place with most traditional alternative publishers: Chief O'Brien At Work, Eat More Comics! and Rules For Dating My Daughter. That seems worth noting, especially if you didn't catch here that they did well.
* a pair of local-to-me comics-makers (or at least facilitators) are winding up successful crowd-funders: Ken Eppstein and Elissa Leach. Both of those projects look fun, and I know as publishers both Eppstein and Leach make paying artists what they can/when they can/if they can a major priority.
* charity-sounding things can be a tough-sell as crowd-funders; money to send people to shows was part of crowd-funding's early years but those kinds of projects almost never get over now.
* Rus Wooton is one of the few names I recognize from what's left -- Rus' crowd-funder has reached its initial goal.
* it's nice to see Bob Wiacek's GoFundMe campaign double its initial goal. I get the sense from that last, distressing update that James Hudnall could use more funding if anyone out there is willing.
* finally, this Mr. Monster project will end soon. Hard to imagine that one being seen in a lot of places outside of this project's mailed-to-you parameters.
* congratulations to new Black Panther writer Ta-Nehisi Coates, one of the few people with a comics element in their professional lives to win a MacArthur Grant.
* not comics: Al Columbia draws a house. His craft chops are ridiculous, and everything he draws suggests disturbance and terror.
* Noah Berlatsky would like to tell you why xkcd is the 21st Century's best comic. I'm not sure that's true, but it's fun to hear the argument and I think that's a considerable comic, far more so than a lot of people realize.
* not comics: they should just hand these out in giant bowls on the lighted table in the North Bethesda Marriott lobby, like a kind of nerd Olympic village.
* not sure how these got into my folder, but I enjoyed looking at these two pieces of art from Tatsuyuki Tanaka.
* here's a comic about that very odd "vote to kill robin" promotion DC did once upon a time. It was certainly memorable, and at times I wonder if that would play differently now.
* Valerie D'Orazio's a talented writer and significant figure in the recent cultural history of the American comic book industry: she says goodbye to comics in a final chapter here. I wish her the best moving forward, and I'm more than certain a significant number of people join me in that sentiment.
* it's hard for me to imagine there are a lot of values out there in the comics-correspondence realm of things than a course from Tom Hart on creating comics memoirs that costs less than what it would take to buy a drink in a New York City bar.
* I missed announcing the opening, but I can't imagine a Cyril Pedrosa show would be anything short of a fun, fun night at a gallery.
* finally, I enjoy my friend Gil Roth's literary podcast Virtual Memories and was excited to see that the Scott McCloud talk he and the author had Sunday evening of SPX weekend has already been scheduled.
The awards are named for the late Harvey Kurtzman. Nominees and winners are selected by a vote of qualifying professionals.
Jules Feiffer was inducted into the Hall of Fame. Denis Kitchen received the Dick Giordano Hero Initiative Humanitarian of the Year Award. It looks like Russ Heath won a lifetime achievement award.
Categorical winners are in bold.
*****
BEST LETTERER
* Aubrey Aiese, Lumberjanes, BOOM! Box, BOOM! Studios
* Deron Bennett, Hacktivist, Archaia Black Label, BOOM! Studios
* Ed Dukeshire, The Woods, BOOM! Studios * Jack Morelli, Afterline With Archie, Archie Comic Publications
* Josh Reed, Damsels In Excess, Aspen
*****
BEST COLORIST
* Elizabeth Breitweiser, Velvet, Image Comics
* Jordie Bellaire, Moon Knight, Marvel Comics
* Laura Martin, Armor Hunters, Valiant Entertainment * Dave Stewart, Hellboy In Hell, Dark Horse Comics
* Matthew Wilson, The Wicked + The Divine, Image Comics
*****
BEST SYNDICATED STRIP OR PANEL
* Dick Tracy, Joe Staton and Mike Curtis, Tribune Media Services
* Dilbert, Scott Adams, Universal Uclick
* Fox Trot, Bill Amend, Universal Uclick
* Get Fuzzy, Darby Conley, Universal Uclick
* Mutts, Patrick McDonnell, King Features Syndicate
* Beautiful Darkness, Drawn & Quarterly * Blacksad: Amarillo, Dark Horse
* Corto Maltese: Under The Sign Of Capricorn, EuroComics/IDW
* The Collector, Archaia/BOOM! Studios
* The Killler Omnibus Vol. 2, Archaia/BOOM! Studios
*****
BEST INKER
* Roger Langridge, Jim Henson's The Musical Monsters Of Turkey Hollow, Archaia/BOOM! Studios * Danny Miki, Batman, DC Comics
* Mark Pennington, Armor Hunters: Bloodshot, Valiant Entertainment
* Joe Rivera, The Valiant, Valiant Entertainment
* Wade Von Grawbadger, All New X-Men, Marvel Comics
* Steve Bryant, Athena Voltaire Compendium, Dark Horse Comics
* Daniel Warren Johnson, Ghost Fleet, Dark Horse Comics * Chad Lambert, Kill Me from Dark Horse Presents, Dark Horse Comics
* Babs Tarr, Batgirl, DC Comics
* Jen Van Meter, The Death-Defying Doctor Mirage, Valiant Entertainment
*****
SPECIAL AWARD FOR HUMOR IN COMICS
* James Asmus, Quantum And Woody, Valiant Entertainment
* James Asmus & Fred Van Lente, The Delinquents, Valiant Entertainment
* Ryan Browne, God Hates Astronauts, Image Comics
* Fred Van Lente, Archer And Armstrong, Valiant Entertainment * Chip Zdarsky, Sex Criminals, Image Comics
*****
BEST ORIGINAL GRAPHIC PUBLICATION FOR YOUNGER READERS
* Jim Henson's The Musical Monsters Of Turkey Hollow, Archaia/BOOM! Studios * Lumberjanes, BOOM! Box (BOOM! Studios)
* Sisters, Scholastic-Graphix
* Spongebob Comics, United Plankton Pictures
* This One Summer, First Second Books
*****
BEST GRAPHIC ALBUM PREVIOUS PUBLISHED
* Hit: 1955, BOOM! Studios * Mouse Guard: Baldwin The Brave And Other Tales, Archaia/BOOM! Studios
* Rai Volume One: Welcome To New Japan, Valiant Entertainment
* Six-Gun Gorilla, BOOM! Studios
* The Love Bunglers, Fantagraphics
*****
BEST ANTHOLOGY
* Dark Horse Presents, Dark Horse Comics
* In The Dark: A Horror Anthology, IDW
* Little Nemo: Dream Another Dream, Locust Moon Press
* Masterful Marks: Cartoonist Who Changed The World, Simon & Schuster
* Wild Ocean, Fulcrum Publishing
*****
BEST DOMESTIC REPRINT PROJECT
* Harvey Kurtzman's Jungle Book: Essential Kurtzman VOL. 1, Kitchen Sink Books/Dark Horse Books * Steranko Nick Fury Agent Of S.H.I.E.L.D. Artist's Edition, IDW
* The Complete Quantum And Woody Classic Omnibus, Valiant Entertainment
* Valiant Masters: H.A.R.D. Corps Volume One: Search & Destroy, Valiant Entertainment
* Walt Disney Donald Duck And Uncle Scrooge: The Of The Son (Don Rosa Library Volume One, Fantagraphics
*****
BEST COVER ARTIST
* Mike Del Mundo, Elektra, Marvel Comics
* Francesco Francavilla, Afterlife With Archie, Archie Comic Publications
* Jenny Frison, Revival, Image Comics
* Chris Samnee, Daredevil, Marvel Comics * Fiona Staples, Saga, Image Comics
*****
BEST BIOGRAPHICAL, HISTORICAL OR JOURNALISTIC PRESENTATION
* Back Issues, Comic Pop
* Comic Book Creator, TwoMorrows Publications
* Heroes Of The Comics: Portraits Of The Legends Of Comic Books, Drew Friedman, Fantagraphics
* Masterful Marks: Cartoonists Who Changed The World, Monte Beauchamp, Simon & Schuster * Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Ultimate Visual History, Andrew Farago, Insight Editions
*****
SPECIAL AWARD FOR EXCELLENCE IN PRESENTATION
* Armor Hunters, Josh Johns and Warren Simons, Valiant Entertainment
* Harvey Kurtzman's Jungle Book: Essential Kurtzman Volume One, John Lind and Philip R. Simon, Kitchen Sink Books/Dark Horse Books * Little Nemo: Dream Another Dream, Andrew Carl, Josh O'Neill, and Chris Stevens, Locust Moon Press
* Jim Henson's The Musical Monsters Of Turkey Hollow, Scott Newman, Archaia/BOOM! Studios
* The Valiant, Kyle Andrukiewicz and Warren Simons, Valiant Entertainment
*****
BEST GRAPHIC ALBUM ORIGINAL
* Athena Voltaire Compendium, Dark Horse Comics * Jim Henson's The Musical Monsters Of Turkey Hollow, Archaia/BOOM! Studios
* Seconds, Ballantine Books
* The Wrenchies, First Second Books
* This One Summer, First Second Books
*****
BEST CONTINUING OR LIMITED SERIES
* Afterline With Archie, Archie Comic Publications
* Daredevil, Marvel Comics * Saga, Image Comics
* Southern Bastards, Image Comics
* The Valiant, Valiant Entertainment
*****
BEST WRITER
* Jason Aaron, Southern Bastards, Image Comics
* Jen Van Meter, The Death-Defying Doctor Mirage, Valiant Entertainment
* Brian K. Vaughan, Saga, Image Comics * Mark Waid, Daredevil, Marvel Comics
* G. Willow Wilson, Ms. Marvel, Marvel Comics
*****
BEST ARTIST
* Clayton Crain, Rai, Valiant Entertainment
* Roberto de la Torre, The Death-Defying Doctor Mirage, Valiant Entertainment
* Chris Samnee, Daredevil, Marvel Comics * Fiona Staples, Saga, Image Comics
* Jillian Tamaki, This One Summer, First Second Books
*****
BEST CARTOONIST
* Steve Bryant, Athena Voltaire Compendium, Dark Horse Comics
* Howard Chaykin, Bloodshot #25, Valiant Entertainment
* Farel Dalrymple, The Wrenchies, First Second Books * Terry Moore, Rache Rising, Abstract Studios
* Dan Parent, Kevin Keller, Archie Comic Publications
* Andy Runton, X-O Manowar #25, Valiant Entertainment
*****
BEST SINGLE ISSUE OR STORY
* Armor Hunters #1, Valiant Entertainment * "Breaking Out", Dark Horse Presents #35, Dark Horse Comics
* Jim Henson's The Storyteller: Witches #4, Archaia/BOOM! Studios
* Multiversity: Pax Americana, DC Comics
* Rai #1, Valiant Entertainment
Bundled, Tossed, Untied And Stacked: Publishing News
By Tom Spurgeon
* the cartoonist Jan Elliot is suspending the daily Stone Soup strip. She'll continue to do the Sunday, which if you don't know that about the newspaper strip busines is on a wholly different track than the dailies -- every cartoonist with a seven-day reach is essentially sellilng two products: a Sunday and a package of six dailies. After 20 years, Elliot will no longer do the latter. That was a very solid performer and its creator continues to be well-liked.
* David Press looks forward to the next iteration of Marvel's Daredevil comic book, which he notes is like a return to the super-grim style that was successful in runs by writers such as Frank Miller, Brian Bendis and Ed Brubaker working with talented artists like David Mazzucchelli, Alex Maleev and Michael Lark. I suspect the reception given the Mark Waid/Chris Samnee run on that comics -- generally positive and sometimes extremely so, but never quite steamrolling into a hit -- says as much about the current audience for superhero comics books as anything that's happened over the last half-decade. One would assume getting something on the stands that looks more like the TV show is a concern as well.
* in contrast, James Whitbrook mournsSensation Comics Featuring Wonder Woman and Batman '66, quality comic book series in the latest group of cancellations.
* the biggest news story this week in terms of the kind of story that generates social media interest around itself is that the prominent essayist Ta-Nehisi Coates will write Marvel's Black Panther comic. Brian Stelfreeze is either providing covers with another artist to be named or is doing interior art chores as well, I can't tell. Coates is an excellent writer with a long personal history of reading comics; he's recently started reading them again and occasionally writing about them. He writes with a great deal of moral insight, which would be welcome in that genre. There was not a better get for Marvel out there.
* comics-maker Hope Nicholson promises updates on The Secret Loves Of Geek Girls at this Facebook account.
* finally, there's going to be a 16-page booklet detailing some of what Frank Santoro teaches in his well-liked correspondence course and, soon, his "comics dojo" and physical teaching space. I look forward to seeing it.
The Never-Ending, Four-Color Festival: Shows And Events
By Tom Spurgeon
* veteran cartoonist Evan Dorkin writes at length about the recent convention he and his family attended in Cincinnati. That seemed a potentially strong show to me; there are a lot of comics readers with driving distance of that city and they had a strong guest list.
* Salt Lake City gets underway today. That's been an interesting show in that it's humongous -- even those that regularly scoff at ludicrous attendance claims by comics show seem to freely admit that the Salt Lake audience is a pretty big audience -- and that it's been legally wrassling with Comic-Con International for a while now. While that conflict and those like it will be resolved according to what the law says about the use of terms in question -- or the desire of actors to avoid the finality of such an outcome -- I've always been of the mind that CCI's success for about a decade now has provided the basic template for this new generation of shows in such a thorough way one can understand much of the sentiment involved.
* this year's Kenosha Festival Of Cartooning has come and gone. I like small-town cartoon and comics festivals, and I like shows that are primarily engaged with the newspaper strip. That one's also of interest because they crowdfund at least part of the operating costs.
* finally, I haven't seen a bunch of stuff on Rose City Comic Con, but it definitely happened. There are a lot of shows out there right now.
* I'm on this podcast with my younger, more talented peers Zainab Akhtar and Joe McCulloch, talking about the latest comics. I remember being surly, spacey and exhausted, so please forgive me.
* for some strange reason likely locked into my DNA I found this article tracking a random, super-minor minor character kind of fascinating. I also like the reminder that in the early X-Men Nightcrawler was the guy who fought above his weight class and Wolverine got beat around a lot.
A Few Quick Notes About Small Press Expo (SPX) 2015
* this is going to be all over the place. I apologize in advance.
* I don't write as many show recaps as I did for a couple of years ago. A pair of reasons. One is that I wrote about shows in thorough fashion for a while as a way of understanding the more dramatic role they were playing in comics culture. It didn't really work, but that was the intent. The other reason is that I have a show of my own so everything I write about other successful shows is going to be spiteful and biased.
* my trip to SPX this year was constrained by commitments to CXC, so I got to go Saturday morning until Monday morning. If you're suffering a bit of burnout but still have to attend a show, doing a different time frame gives a whole different rhythm to your weekend, can limit your exposure to the factors causing your temporary distaste, can make the weekend cheaper, and hardly ever feels like a shorter show in memory. I recommend it.
* I no longer have extensive travel notes because I live in a town that exists in civilization now. Getting up at 2 AM for a trip to ECCC is no longer a part of my life, thank God. I'm sure one of you weirdos is disappointed not to hear about the hash browns I had in Willcox, Arizona, but I'm equally certain you'll all survive. With SPX, it's always worth a mention that the transition from Reagan to show and show to Reagan is really easy. That's a smaller airport to begin with, so less hassle all around, and the Metro is like 40 yards outside the front door. It costs $6.90 from airport to White Flint station, and the transfer's easy.
* later in the show I described being left on the White Flint metro station platform as the train continued on and suddenly surround by a crowd of young, gaunt, oddly dressed people. My people, a generation removed! The person to whom I spoke noted that unlike people our age there seemed more of an unwillingness from today's version of comics geek to participate in mainstream culture -- in other words, this was a more curated identity than a default one that I and other assumed in the 1980s and into the 1990s. I'm not sure I totally agree with that, but it was interesting to mull over.
* the first comics person I saw was Bill Kartalopoulos. I hope I remembered to link to the announcement that he's doing a general history of comics for Princeton University Press, but whether I did or not, we talked briefly about that and his shifting away from programming the show. I look forward to Bill's book.
* I went directly the floor show. Picked up my badge. I found out when you're older and heavy and your back's messed up and you're sweating and you didn't sleep the night before, you don't project an image of confidence and health.
* part of my reason to go to the show at all this year with my own show impending was to clear my mind and get a break in and see a show to become inspired what a fun show can mean for people. So I set my brain on low last weekend. My notes are a bit of a mush because I wasn't processing information that way. I'll see what I can remember now, here, typing.
* it looked like pretty good attendance to me, with the crazy period being the first half of Saturday. Second half of Saturday was either actually slow or just felt that way after the first half; Sunday was steady all day.
* my impression is that a lot of people did pretty well very well. I heard of/from two individual vendors doing $5K plus; I heard of/from two other vendors doing $2K when SPX was generally a $1K show for them. I heard about a lot of sales in the 25, 40, 65 range. I heard about a lot of sellouts, although my Completely Unfair And Poorly Researched Theory of this particular show is that some vendors aim for sellouts in order to have the cathartic experience of selling out at SPX -- the idea being it's better to sell 25 books and take home zero and be able to have that high-five moment than sell 40 books and take home 10. That would fall in line with the tremendous value placed on the social experience of SPX, and match up with some of what I'm told by individual vendors, but I can't really defend it.
* Kate Beaton had longer lines that I'd ever seen at SPX, lines that were capped immediately by D+Q staff. Julia Pohl-Miranda noted that Beaton has some of the most polite fans in comics, and when two lines formed the fans policed themselves into going from one line to another. D+Q also sold out of the new Adrian Tomine book, which did not have the on-hand support of its author but did sport a fine bookplate.
* the other two lines I saw that were long enough I asked someone in them who they were waiting for were a Scott McCloud/CBLDF line and a Noelle Stevenson line.
* in the same way that few books broke into triple digits there were few surprise big books of the show to my eye but a lot of personal favorites for different people. My own favorite weird book of the show was a 1989 anthology linked to a Toronto art show, a comic that Chris Butcher found in the basement of the Beguiling and brought to sell for $5 a pop: Kromalaffing. I'm DYING for SPX to develop into a place to pick up highly curated alt-comics back issues, but I think the forward-focus will keep that from ever happening, Frank Santoro's longboxes be damned.
* speaking of Frank, he was moving through the first week of I think a projected eight-week public fundraising phase for his school/dojo in Pittsburgh. It sounds like it's going pretty well so far.
* one book that more than five people mentioned to me having bought was Jennifer Hayden's The Story Of My Tits. But in general, the picks were all over the place, and that's healthy, too. This may be where the show missed amiable small-press review master Rob Clough the most, his ability to sort through 30 books of note and spotlight five or six. I'm no Rob Clough.
* did I mention my back? I saw a lot of programming. The programming this year shifted away from Bill Kartalopoulos' ambitious approach and to my eye was a big broader- and younger-focused. A lot of the panels were quite well-attended. I thought Chris Mautner did a fine job with an engaged Bill Griffith (and it was nice to see Chris' full family; Chris even banged on the door to the room next to his to get them quiet down -- they weren't SPX attendees). I spoke to Griffith later, who was complimentary. Griffith's answers were considered, patient and revealing. He's in full book push mode with Invisible Ink, and enjoyed solid lines when he did signing. Jacq Cohen said they were greatly pleased with how the book did there. That book was discussed by my peers more than any other; there's a definite curiosity there.
* Griffith mentioned that he was teaching, and that one thing he noticed that a lot of the younger cartoonist -- some of whom are extremely talented -- don't have much of a sense or maybe even use for a lot of comics history. I find that fascinating, and I think it reflects something bigger than a pushback against great works orthodoxy because I'm not seeing people settling on a lot of idiosyncratic older comics, either despite our access to so much more material now. At any rate, I hope you'll consider supporting Griffith at the tour stops he makes and perhaps consider reading his book. One thing that comics does better than maybe any other art form is provide a place for older cartoonists of note to try new things, and this is definitely a new thing for Griffith, even as much as page to page it's sort of like a return to the underground era of comics making.
* progamming! The Phoebe Gloeckner panel was another good one, ably run by Dan Kois. Gloeckner's willing to engage almost any topic up on stage, so that's always a lot of fun. Very funny panel, too. Dylan Horrocks and Bill Kartalopoulos had a fine conversation. Horrocks seemed a bit jet-lagged, but talked in lovely fashion about the different ways Hicksville has been read by different creative communities and how much pressure he put on himself with those three issues of Atlas to make a work that matched Hicksville in ambition and impact. It was amazing to have Dylan around all weekend. He hadn't been since 1998 -- nearly everyone who attended both shows was at Horrocks' panel -- and it was fun to catch up with him at periodic moments to get his thoughts on what he was seeing and what he thought of it. I was glad to see him enmeshed in conversation Sunday night with Scott McCloud; I want talks like that to happen, whenever and wherever they can.
* I thought the programming was well-received from the people to whom I spoke. I think as the show changes it will be good for them to have new blood developing programming that best matches what's important to people on the floor. I would have loved to have seen something maybe explicitly on one of the themes of the show, cartooning that's emerged after 2000, but I assume that was a part of lot of the panels I chose not to attend.
* about the end of Saturday I got a real sense of things shifting once again at SPX, as the first generation of CCS-era comics school graduates moves into that 28-32 period where people transition from regular to occasional or even intermittent show guests -- with a few exceptions. Life happens, and the time and opportunity to spend so many weekends deep in the wild territories of Comics Land is a privilege that slips away from a lot of people. I heard a lot of talk about people "taking care of themselves" during the weekend in various ways: more sleep, better food, working out. Laugh if you want to, but people taking care of themselves is another sign that some will soon leave, because not doing so many shows is the ultimate healthy move. That will be an interesting generational change, for sure.
* there was a lot of the usual talk about the nature of SPX and how that's best served. I'm crippled by nostalgia, even as an abstract. I used to attend all of the "San Diego Memories" type panels at Comic-Con, even though my first show there was 25 years in just because I find how comics has developed in a cultural way deeply fascinating. I think it's okay to fight for the value of certain expressions you value, ways of making comics and ways of looking at art. I think for instance cartoonists under 35 don't make as strong a distinction between working on your own material and working on corporate material you love as the first SPXers did. So I think it's good to find fellow-travelers and argue for ways of making comics, and the relative artistic power of what you think are good comics. You're fighting a sucker's game if you ever think the SPX you experienced at 25 years old is ever coming back, and it's deeply problematic to discount meaningful experiences had by others just because they're not your own. Trust me, just embrace that bit of regret. It fades and before it does it makes you realize what a blessing thoe time were. You eventually get to the point where you wouldn't climb into a time machine for $10M dollars and are happy to find new experiences to enjoy.
* the floor was a bit cold on Sunday; some folks layered up.
* the social scene was interesting, at least as I experienced it. I saw a lot of the usual enthusiastic embrace of being able to party hard in a controlled environment. I've yet to hear of an accident that crossed legal lines, but I did hear of a couple where people overstepped social boundaries and had to be invited or even shoved back into the light. There were a couple of incidents late in the weekend that seemed to reflect considerable stress in everyday living more than the spirit of the show. I'd never been asked to walk anyone to an elevator before.
* I didn't attend prom, but pretty much the whole first floor from the lobby on and extending outside is a sprawling afterparty on Saturday evening.
* I did get some shitty Tex-Mex, and we're all better people for that. I'm even better than that, having ordered and paid for a burrito with ground beef and having eaten a burrito with steak. My friend Gil Roth ate my hamburger burrito yet did not protest until later that evening. I was tired enough to think while eating my burrito, "Man, this is a weird definition of 'ground beef' but okay."
* in general I ate well, with fantastic company, but missed all my chances to eat on someone else's credit card, so we'll call that weekend a wash. More people than I ever heard about chose to eat at the hotel than venture out. Don't know if that means anything.
* got to talk briefly to the Immonens, who are continuing their reverse-aging process. Matt Bors had the first copies of the book collecting cartoons from The Nib. I kept running into Ryan Cecil Smith, who I enjoy very much. I like the way his work seems to improve by becoming better versions of itself with every iteration.
* saw Josh Cotter, who had an excellent show. That's a great thing because his new book drops in I think February, so if he was going to have a fallow period, this would be it. A lot of people to whom I spoke oohed and aahed over his original pages. Warren Craghead is settling into his new gig; he's another veteran of the late 1990s that happened to be on hand, and I'm happy he's been attending the show in recent years. He's a very intriguing, prolific comics maker. Talked to Tom Kacyzinski about finding time to make comics of his own. Got a copy of a mini from Mickey Z -- whose book last year was pretty much the book of that SPX. Got calming advice about CXC from a very helpful Warren Bernard and Chris Butcher. Made vague plans with Phoebe Gloeckner to look into doing creators retreats at various place in the Midwest starting on her turf in Ann Arbor. Ran into 1990s TCJ writer John Kelly. Saw Cole Closser briefly; I'm dying to interview that guy. Had a nice, short chat with Whit Taylor, but did not find her to look at her comics. Sorry, Whit.
* I was glad to hear they let Chip Mosher speaking during the Ignatzes rather than right at the end when everyone's brain had disconnected from anything up on stage. Lot of great winners in the Ignatz slate -- that being sweep for female creators. Given the ratio of formidable under-32 female creators to males is something like 19 to 1, this shouldn't surprise anyone, but it is definitely a milestone worth noting and celebrating. I am of the firm belief that empowering female creators in their own individual acts of creations is a far more powerful engine of change than the proper management of entertain properties, and SPX does a fine job of helping facilitate this.
* it was nice to see Sean T. Collins and Julia Gfrorer in the first stage of their engagement, both seemingly very happy. I was told there could be a couple more engagements and maybe one or two announcements going the other way this Fall. At just about any measure of remove, life moves in cycles. Two comics folks are pregnant and not ready to announce it more publicly than face to face.
* the SPX volunteers who helped carry boxes to the car I was in Monday all-day were super great, and thanks to them.
* caught up with Julia Pohl-Miranda right after the show, and talked about the shift at D+Q in terms of employees like herself and Tracy Hurren being allowed to take on more responsibility.
* had a nice chat or three with Jacq Cohen, who had no chance of matching her last SPX. I didn't know this, but she got an in-house promotion. I am all about in-house promotions.
* talked to multiple people going through career changes in their day jobs -- a couple gigs ending, one beginning. I hope everyone stays safe and active and finds some way to fund themselves. I didn't hear a lot through the secret alarm pipeline about anyone doing super-poorly in a way they needed help: maybe one or two, which is very light. So that's good. I heard about two new people publishing comics, both of whom would be potentially really good at it.
* Gil Roth got to do a two-hour chat with Scott McCloud for his great Virtual Memories podcast. Scott was a fan going in, and was very happy with the result. That should be good. Roth also told me that while at the show he arranged to Keith Knight at some future date. I think Keith Knight has a jaw-dropping interview in him at some future date -- just a hunch. I saw Keith a bunch of times over the weekend. Hadn't known he was in Chapel Hill now.
* I recruited three people for a forthcoming secret project. Secret comics projects should always be launched in a bar near SPX.
* the lingering afterparty ended at 4 AM Monday morning, with near-fights, table games and long discussions of race and sex along the way. People made out. People took walks. I found out which cartoonist chose to have imaginary sex with Richard Nixon. I found out which cartoonist and con organizer tours Washington, DC sans irony. If you walked in after the afterparty was over you ran into another little party of people still drawing at the lobby glowing table, led by Brandon Graham. Let's draw, let's draw, let's draw.
* I left the hotel the next day surround by con-goers saying goodbye and hugging each other. I didn't know a soul. You know what? No reason I should.
* six-hour drive to get home; as frequently noted in a previous era for this site's show reports, I used to drive more than half that to get to the airport. Viva La Columbus.
* so good show.
* there's still room for older people at SPX, although this year's crew of over-40s seemed to carry a bit more personal baggage to the place than might be advised. Myself included! I'm not sure that SPX is a place to find personal meaning in your 40s the way it might be in your 20s -- for one thing, your peers that continue to go to the show are more arbitrarily selected by time and circumstance than universally present because of devotion and enthusiasm. But it's a fine art comics show and can be a real fun time. If you're young enough, it could probably change your life.
* the most interesting attendee of the show was far older than 40.
* so hats off to SPX on their continuing run of quality shows. I remain most impressed by the SPX attendees, the audience, and how committed they are to individual works of expression and how much they're deeply into their favorites. That's a group that knows to come to this show and knows to be prepared to buy things from their favorite cartoonists. I got a lot of stories from people all weekend but the general shape I heard about the most was an artist's astonishment at being told something they made was personally meaningful to this real-life human being standing in front of them. It doesn't get much better than that.
* for some reason, this fairly old on-line comics work about Syria keeps popping up in my social media. That's usually because it explains something people feel need explaining.
* Gary Tyrrell passes along the suggestion that people make versions of show maps with on-line icons utilized to designate location. I think that might work best -- and maybe only -- with Topatocon.
The Ignatz Awards ceremony was held last night in conjunction with the Small Press Expo (SPX) in Bethesda, Maryland. The room was packed with witnesses to an historical moment: a sweep of all categories by female nominees. Sophia Foster-Dimino confirmed her arrival on the alt-comics scene with three awards for her Sex Fantasy comics. Sophie Goldstein won two for The Oven.
The awards triggered a huge wave of good feeling and positive buzz at the various afterparties spread about the Marriott complex.
The writers about comics to whom I spoke agreed that as an overwhelming number of the most interesting cartoonists 35 and younger or otherwise emerging talents are women, this is a milestone worth celebrating and not a shocking moment that demands deconstruction. Excellent comics won awards, and it's about time it worked out so that they were all female creators. An additional question may be whether or not this was the most talented overall winners' slate in recent comics awards history.
2. DC Entertainment announces an agreement between itself and the family of Bill Finger, in terms of details focusing on credit the writer of many of the early Batman stories will get on two Batman-related media properties. This is #2 only because we can't measure it in its entirety.
3. Graymalkin and Uncivilized merge, with Jordan Shiveley becoming associate publisher at the latter company and Alec Berry being Uncivilized's new publicist.
Winner Of The Week
Zunar
Loser Of The Week My wallet at TCAF. (I always wanted to do that dumb wallet joke: mission accomplished...)
Quote Of The Week
"I wish we could have more impact on the thinking of the people who own newspapers." -- Jack Ohman (this is a week old, but it's the quote I've thought about most)
*****
the comic image selected is from the brief but notable 1970s run of Seaboard/Atlas
Bill Finger Family, DC Entertainment Announce Agreement
DC Entertainment announced through the Hollywood Reporter's "Heat Vision" blog that it has come to an agreement with the family of the writer Bill Finger about his contributions to DC's Batman property -- both the character and the extended universe in which the character lives. Bob Kane was listed as sole creator on all things Batman for years. One of the comics industry's ugly secrets, and still just as ugly as it became less of secret, was the overwhelming number of contributions that Finger made to that milieu and that character without a humane, moral recognition of that work. The fact that Finger had a tough time in life, particularly later on, exacerbated the tragic aspects of his story.
The blog post concentrates on credit going to the creator on the Gotham TV show and the forthcoming Superman Vs. Batman movie, whose name escapes me. A wider arrangement is implied though not detailed.
This sounds like a really good thing in that it's better that it happens than it not happen, but a less impressive act when you consider the harm done for decades by the policies being reversed or at least mitigated against and their general unnecessary quality. One hopes that the entirety of the arrangement be released, although it's likely the company will be given maximum credit for this step regardless if we learn the size of its stride.
Bundled Extra: Grimalkin Press Joins Forces With Uncivilized Books; Shiveley, Berry In New Positions
Grimalkin Press and Uncivilized Books have announced their merger in the most recent Uncivilized Books newsletter, here. Books from Grimalkin in the deal include the Simon Moreton debut Plans We Made, due later this Fall. You can read about the other books that will now bear the Uncivilized imprimatur through that link, but they all sound like appropriately-conceived Uncivilized works, nothing about the nature of that publisher or the tone of their offerings would seem to change with these books added to their list.
Jordan Shiveley will now serve as Uncivilized's associate publisher, while Alec Berry will be the company's publicist. We wish the newly forged partnership every good fortune.
Missed It: Interview With Outgoing AAEC President Jack Ohman
Michael Cavna had a nice interview up late last week with the cartoonist Jack Ohman, a talented veteran who spent the last year as president of the Association Of American Editorial Cartoonists (AAEC). If you're not keeping up on editorial cartoonist issues, most of them are hit here: the declining number of staff positions, the reverberations of the Charlie Hebdo murders, the shift from national to international models for cartooning.
Two things that he mentions in passing I failed to report. One is that Adam Zyglis will be taking over as president. Zyglis is still in his early thirties, but this year's reigning Pulitzer winner is more of a traditional success story than a new media. He seems well-liked by his peers so it should be interesting to see how things go under his watch. The other news is that Ann Telnaes will be president after Zyglis -- AAEC elects a president a year ahead of time, which I've always liked -- and she is also super-smart and much admired. Ironically, although she's of a generation to Zyglis', Telnaes has enjoyed success recently for her ability to adapt to an animated model.
I'm a huge fan of editorial cartoons, and it's been fascinating to watch them over the last two decades and doubly so after the 2008-2009 Great American Newspaper Wipe-Out. That field has always seemed like there's tons to do in just getting back to their traditional role, and making good work across the board -- for instance, I don't think anyone distinguished themselves with work in either of the last two presidential elections, which seems odd -- while there's also a ticking clock to find new ways to ply that trade as the media landscape changes. And despite all this attention, I don't think we've seen the solution or series of solutions that we might have hoped for in the mid-1990s.
Assembled, Zipped, Transferred And Downloaded: News From Digital
By Tom Spurgeon
* Bully on hiatus. I realize this is a highly nuanced area of cultural appreciation, but I've enjoyed watching the various long-time on-line commentators deal with the sheer length of time they've been doing this -- whether that's a shift in focus, leaving altogether or some time off. It's not hard like heart surgery or working in a foundry, but the drip drip drip aspect of supplying content for years and years has its specific difficulties.
* finally, congratulations to Tom Bondurant on his long with his "Grumpy Old Fan" column. That was a very old-school column in shape and tone, the kind of thing that could have run in a 1970s or 1980s fanzine with names and titles swapped in. I wonder if all of those similar columns are on their last legs as social media further dismantles the idea of reading large amounts of text regularly presented to us in roughly the same manner as a print publication might. I hope CBR finds a way to streamline Bondurant's voice into the bulk of what they do, if that's in the cards.
* here's a preview of a forthcoming Guardians Of The Galaxy relaunch, which seems really weird to me in that the movie seems like it came out three days ago and they're already doing massive in-continuity riffs on what should be a viable structure for years and years considering that movie's success. The whole thing seems exhausting to me, and while my old-man money isn't the target, it certainly keeps from spending any in that direction. It's like carrying an umbrella when you know it's going to stop raining in 120 seconds.
* so I'm guessing this Fall, probably at the time of the DK3 assault, will be when the second round of fascination with variant covers will begin to turn on itself. I like the idea just fine that that there are some issues that might facilitate a second cover or even programs for multiple covers once in a while. The downside this time around seems to be settling in on the ideas that this represents a distortion of the overall sales figures and is basically diverting resources from fans and DM retailers that could be better spent elsewhere -- even though the retailers of right now are too smart to do too much self-damage.
* finally, Glenn Walker would like to explainCrisis On Infinite Earths from a Flash-centric point of view, which I guess works right now because of the TV show.
Koyama Press Announces Its Spring 2016 Line-Up: Johnson, Koch, Kyle, Rokudenashiko, Sears
Anne Koyama of Koyama Press announced early today her publishing line's ambitious and wide-ranging Spring 2016. The line-up consists of books from Patrick Kyle, Cathy G. Johnson, Aidan Koch and Ben Sears, as well as a graphic memoir by the artist Rokudenashiko translated and presented editors Anne Ishii and Graham Kolbeins, translator Ishii and designer Chip Kidd. That means with its select number of market entries, Koyama will hit on both a serious mediation on obscenity in art (Rokudenashiko) and a book they're describing in their PR as "puts the Saturday morning cartoon into adventure serial." (Sears)
Covers, publishing information and publisher's descriptions folow. It looks like a sold season. I look forward to all the books, and maybe in particular the wonderfully-titled Rokudenashiko work.
*****
* What Is Obscenity? The Story Of A Good For Nothing Artist And Her Pussy, Rokudenashiko (translation by Anne Ishii), Anne Ishii and Graham Kolbeins (Editors), Chip Kidd (cover), softcover, 168 pages, 9781927668313, May 2106, $20.
Publisher's Description/Bios:
Rokudenashiko's mission is to demystify female genitalia, a mission that has led to a vulva-shaped kayak and her arrest.
A graphic memoir of a good-for-nothing Japanese artist who has been jailed twice for so-called acts of obscenity and the distribution of pornographic materials yet continues to champion the art of pussy. In a society where one can be censored, pixelated and punished, Rokudenashiko asks what makes pussy so problematic?
Edited by Anne Ishii and Graham Kolbeins and translated by Ishii, a writer, translator and proprietor of the gay manga paraphernalia brand MASSIVE, and with a cover by Chip Kidd, arguably the most well-known and influential designer of the past two decades. This is an incredible package for an incredible story.
Rokudenashiko ("good-for-nothing girl" or "bad girl") is a Japanese sculptor and mangaka. She is known for her series of decorated vulva moulds, or Deco-Man, a portmanteau of "decorated" and "manko," which is Japanese slang for vagina. The moulds have taken the shape of dioramas, kawaii characters and a kayak based on a 3D scan of her genitalia, which she dubbed the "pussy boat." The scan led to her arrest in 2014 for alleged violation of Japanese obscenity laws.
*****
* Don't Come In Here, Patrick Kyle, softcover, 256 pages, 9781927668283, May 2016, $15.
Publisher's Description/Bio:
A nameless protagonist takes up residence in a Kafkaesque apartment where the rules of space and time do not apply.
Looking for an inexpensive live/work space, an anonymous character settles on a supernatural apartment that has a seemingly unlimited number of identical rooms and manifests distracting illusions and other psychological hurdles. The story unfolds in vignettes that voyeuristically document the character's domestic activities in an increasingly disorienting environment respectively.
Patrick Kyle lives and works in Toronto, ON. He is the co-founder and editor of Wowee Zonk, a contemporary comic book anthology featuring up-and-coming international artists. He has been previously nominated for Doug Wright and Ignatz awards for his comic book series Black Mass and Distance Mover.
*****
* Gorgeous, Cathy G. Johnson, softcover, 64 pages, 9781927668276, May 2016, $12.
Publisher's Description/Bio:
Ideologies and cars collide when a minor accident brings a pair of punks and a college student tumultuously together.
Sophie has tried to stay out of trouble, but tonight trouble has found her. On a lonely stretch of highway under a star-studded sky, she meets anarchist punks in a crack-up of metal and emotion that proves sometimes the freedom of youth causes damage along the way.
Cathy G. Johnson is an artist in Providence, RI. She grew up in Minnesota and graduated from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2011. She was awarded the Small Press Expo 2014 Ignatz Award for Promising New Talent. Her inspiration is drawn from community and critical theory.
*****
* After Nothing Comes, Aidan Koch, softcover, 144 pages, 9781927668320, May 2016, $20.*****
Publisher's Description/Bio:
A collection of early zines that present comics at their most painterly and poetic.
Aidan Koch makes comics about moods and moments, marks and symbols. They are drawn in a diaphanous, haptic style that suggests dreams and memories. In washes of ink, pencil smudges, white paint, and traces of drawings removed, Koch creates resonate tone poems on paper.
Aidan Koch was born in Seattle, WA and currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She received her BFA in Illustration at the Pacific NW College of Art in Portland, OR, and works in a variety of mediums, often blurring their conventions. Her work has appeared in a variety of group exhibitions, as well as The Paris Review. Past books include the Xeric Award-winning The Whale (Gaze Books, 2014), Field Studies (Floating World Comics, 2012) and the anthology Astral Talk (Publication Studio, 2011), which she edited.
*****
* Night Air, Ben Sears, Koyama Press (Koyama Press Comics For Kids), softcover, 64 pages, 9781927668290, May 2016, $12.
Publisher Description/Bio:
The boundless adventures of an unruly boy, his rational robot and their great gadgets filled with fantastic science stuff!
Plus Man is a roguish knave without equal, an antihero in his own mind. His coolheaded robot, however, knows better. This odd couple has just been given a break: a tip on a score of valuable alloy. The catch? The alloy is in a haunted castle. One really haunted castle.
Ben Sears is a cartoonist, illustrator and musician born and raised in Louisville, KY where he continues to live and work. His Double+ characters have appeared in a number of zines and online anthologies, where the protagonist is usually in over his head.
*****
With these publication dates, it seems likely that most of these will be out in time to debut at Toronto Comic Arts Festival in mid-May.
The Never-Ending, Four-Color Festival: Shows And Events
By Tom Spurgeon
* Jack Ohman discuesses the just-completed AAEC yearly meeting and some of the security measures taken by host Columbus College Of Art & Design given that there was a Charlie Hebdo panel and an art show of response cartoons. I saw a couple of dogs and some security people, but I walked right in and sat down and didn't really notice anything that disrupted the flow of the show.
* it's SPX this weekend, which means that's all anyone in that world of comics is talking about. In the more mainstream world you're seeing shows like Baltimore being discussed, and rumblings of NYCC. But the SPX whirl is intense, if only for Tumblr-related proclomations from cartoonists with new work to sell. See you down there. If you see me, please say hi. I'm bearded, bald and very large right now; SPX is one of comics' few shows where that isn't a default look.
* I got to the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum just slightly too late on Tuesday to see Jessica Abel's speech in the Eisner Seminar Room that she has out on the road right now in support of her new book -- the place was jammed! Everyone I spoke to was impressed by the presentation, though, which lasted just over an hour. I'm told the books designated for that Columbus event sold out. She'll be at SPX, too. I hadn't seen the Billy's classroom used in this way, and it seemed to work very well -- the galleries and the reading room were closed, but that open area of the lobby up into the balcony near the classroom work quite well for that kind of event.
By Request Extra: Frank Santoro’s Rowhouse Residency Moves Into The Public Fundraising Stage
Cartoonist and teacher of comics Frank Santoro would like to buy the house next to his and set up a small academy there, along the lines of a martial arts dojo as much as you might think of it as a school, for cartoonists to come and do comics and learn the techniques he's been teaching in a series of intense on-line courses for years now. He'd be doing some invite-only auctions in the first stage of his plans; he's now moved into a more public stage, with one of the crowd-funding sites.
I plan to give myself when I wake up a little more. I think Santoro's way of teaching has been of significant use to a lot of cartoonists, and I think it's something in which the larger community might invest because of that previous success in another, this case on-line, form. I hope you'll consider it, anyway.
Here's the project again. Here's Santoro's post about it.
* James Whitbrook walks through Hawkgirl's concept-history in summary fashion. It's interesting to see how convoluted and even tedioius the multiple "universe relaunches" and reboots and the like can make a pretty simple, exotic, fun concept. It's usually telling when a character works in other media and doesn't seem to work in comics that some element of comics' overarching fussiness is in play.
* the writer Ben McCool provides tips for entry into the comics industry as a writer.
* the Trouble With Comics writers pick powerful and affecting graphic novels. That's a fun list, mostly because I'm not sure I'd even consider half of the choices let alone place them on my own list. I don't have time to think through the question, but I do know two of the recent works that spring to mind as working on me that way are The Love Bunglers and Footnotes In Gaza. Two short stories that stopped my heart when I read them were "The Hannah Story" by Carol Tyler and "Minnie's 3rd Love" by the great Phoebe Gloeckner. I'm sure there are more.
* finally, there's a pretty good oral history article/video/pop-up Internet creation to be done in the year 2030 about how Marvel is right now managing their X-Men and Inhuman franchises in terms of their movie/TV deals and, I suspect, just a dash of narrative burnout in regards to the X-Men characters.
* DC has canceled a batch of poor-performing print comics. There's a narrative based on rumors run by various web sites that this fits into a "return to basics" strategy being promoted at DC as a repudiation of some recent narrative flourishes that are more modern than classic. I'm not sure I see that totally with this batch -- and in general DC's line is a bit all over the place, with titles that represent 2015 but also 2011 and also the late '90s generally -- but a DC that is canceling titles is always of interest and if they're going to adhere to bottom line publishing, that's way more important I think than whatever strategy is employed. Another thing that interests me is that if Lobo is being canceled, I wonder about the 2011 rebranding efforts as a general thing.
* finally, this article about a newspaper's comics feature switch is entertaining if only because rarely do editors show this much contempt for departing features.
Missed It: Jailed Cartoonist Atena Farghadani Won CRNI Courage In Cartooning Award
For some reason I totally missed posting about the actual announcement, but Atena Farghadani won this year's Cartoonist Rights Network International Courage In Cartooning award, announced late last week during CRNI's meeting in Columbus, Ohion in conjection with the yearly Association of American Editorial Cartoonists gathering.
Farghadani is the cartoonist who made a comic about Iranian lawmakers restricting women's rights that happened to depict those lawmakers as animals. She was jailed. She protested her stay and eventually reported on the harsh and inhumane conditions of her jail term, and thus was jailed again. She is currently being held in Evin Prison -- one of the few jails in human history with something approaching a brand it's so horrible -- and also sick. She was told of the win by her father during a visit and expressed gratitude.
It's difficult for me to fathom someone in a more awful situation than Farghadani, or someone that's approached a similar situation with more class and insistence. It should be part of our everyday hopes that she have this sentence reduced or suspended by whatever means are available to her.
The Malaysian cartoonist Zunar has been named one of the winners of this year's Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) International Press Freedome Awards. It is the first time that a cartoonist has been honore. Zunar is a past recipient of the CRNI Courage In Cartooning Award for his fight against authorities in his home country to restrict, harass and bar the publication and dissemination of his comics works. Some of those works are criticial of sitting politicians.
While publicly exonerated by court decision of the charges for which Zunar first came to international attention, Zunar has received a second virulent round of government checks on both his work and his advocacy more generally. He currently faces 43 years in prison for a selection of tweets charged under an outmoded sedition act, the latest hearing of which has been moved to November.
One painful irony of the Zunar sitution is that his arrests, indictments and harassment paint such an unflattering portrait of the government's fears and behavior that they give his cartoons that much more weight and make their own argument for the arrogant and abusive behavior he criticizes. I wish him every advantage in the weeks ahead.
By Request Extra: Nix Comics Starts Latest Crowd-Funder
I missed out on the By Request column yesterday due to technical difficulties on a hosting level, but I wanted to mention one that's local to Columbus: Nix Comics' latest. Ken Eppstein runs an ethical publishing house here in town -- he pays when he probably wouldn't have to -- and his talent is a mix of regional, national and downright local in an appealing way. It's very old-school indy, and I hope every city eventually has a Nix.
* Phil Jupitus celebrates Calvin and Hobbes and Bill Watterson. That's a great comics work, and I'm not sure that the understanding we have of it now is the same understanding we'll have of it ten years from now, which is a really interesting place to be with a work that's a couple of decades behind us now.
* Cynthia Clark Harvey would like to recommend these 10 graphic novels for your Fall reading. Those are some very high-profile books, and I look forward to reading them all.
* there's some interesting material in this article on the rise in female comics readers, although it still seems like there's some way-too-easy conflation between superhero and related action-adventure genre comics and all of comics.
Comics By Request: People, Projects In Need Of Funding
By Tom Spurgeon
* I get a lot of e-mail from people asking for consideration on their Kickstarter. This one I knew has written the site more than once. That seems modestly conceived, which you certainly can't seay about many crowd-funders.
1) The Webcomic Site Where You Most Recently Spent Substantial Amounts Of Time
2) Name Your Favorite No-Longer Running Webcomic
3) Name A Comics-Related Site You Visit Everyday
4) Name A Site You No Longer Visit As Much As You Used To And You're Not Sure Why
5) Recommend A Comics-Related Web Site Or On-Line Feature That You Think More People Should Visit.
1. Space Mullet by Daniel Warren Johnson
2. Dr. Who: The Ten Doctors by Rich Morris (currently only available as a PDF)
3. NetVibes (It's actually just a portal, but I have mine loaded with comic news and PR feeds. There are very few comics sites I actively visit these days, as I'm able to pull most all of the same info through the portal.)
4. I honestly can't think of any that I don't know why I stopped reading them. Probably the most notable comics site that I no longer visit is Newsarama, but that's expressly because I found so little content there that interested me and, on the off chance they do an article I might want to read, odds are that someone will link to it in my Facebook or Twitter streams.
5. Besides plugging where my own stuff shows up, I suppose I would probably cite the First Second blog. They have a lot of good pieces on the publishing end of things, and much of it is broadly written so that it's valid beyond just them.
* forgot to mention this piece from a couple of weeks back, that indicates Marcos Martin and Brian K. Vaughan will pursue a project to follow their high-profile, idiosyncratically funded The Private Eye.
* Mikki Kendall talks about a number of things, but the thing that sparked my interest was her description of social media being her entry point into comics.
The Never-Ending, Four-Color Festival: Shows And Events
By Tom Spurgeon
* Jessica Abel is one of the comics folks appearing at Brooklyn Book Festival this year -- it conflicts with SPX more directly, so it doesn't look like a big flood of talent is going to be there. They will still get their share, though.
* it's all SPX for most people now, to the point where my twitter feed has a lot of booth numbers in it. I guess that signals more that you're going than the actual booth number -- at least I couldn't remember booth numbers that way. Or at all. That show does a really god job of building anticipating with its core audience to the point it greatly assists in cartoonists getting work done. Anyway, that's just a week off.
* this weekend sees Cincinnati Comicon, which has quietly put together a loaded line-up of guests. That's not far away, and I will likely make that a yearl visit if they keep up with the names.
* not comics: a few people sent along this short essay about the uses of Twitter as a sales mechanism for books, and how it just doesn't work the way that people would prefer it to work. I agree with the author's assertion that the publisher needs to get behind a book no matter the social media profile of their creator for just about any of this to work.
* here's a lengthy response-type essay from Glenn Head on his day during the later days of the underground comix movement and its major player. They've done a good job getting Head out there on behalf of a rich book that nonetheless may not be for everyone, Chicago, and I hope it's lead to some sales.
Bob Wiacek, a finishing artist in mainstream comics who inked over pencils for big players in the late 1980s and early 1990s including Paul Smith, John Romita Jr. and John Byrne, has put up a GoFundMe site to help him through a rough patch this month. His art is what mainstream superhero comics look like for a lot of people five to ten years younger than I am.
It sounds like this particular call for aid has the advantage of going up when it might do some good in terms of avoiding penalties and damages that would come with non-payment. It's also a custom-art solictation for anyone with over $40 to give. I hope you'll consider pledging a small amount, or even take him up on the drawing offer.
This Isn’t A Library: Notable Releases Into Comics’ Direct Market
*****
Here are the books that make an impression on me staring at this week's no-doubt largely accurate list of books shipping from Diamond Comic Distributors, Inc. to comic book and hobby shops across North America.
I might not buy all of the works listed here. I might not buy any. You never know. I'd sure look at the following, though.
*****
JUN151197 LEONARD STARRS MARY PERKINS ON STAGE TP VOL 14 $25.95
I like this work from the late Leonard Starr and I admire this publshing project. I've worked in comics for more than two decades now and I'm not sure I know anyone who's buying these comics, worthy as they are. I'm grateful for how much of comics publishing is willful denial, in the service of beauty.
JUL150569 WALKING DEAD #146 (MR) $2.99 FEB150593 BITCH PLANET #5 (MR) $3.99 JUL150064 ABE SAPIEN #26 $3.50 JUN150542 DEADLY CLASS #16 (MR) $3.50 JUL150561 INJECTION #5 CVR A SHALVEY & BELLAIRE (MR) $2.99 JUL150562 INJECTION #5 CVR B SHALVEY & BELLAIRE (MR) $2.99 JUN150572 OUTCAST BY KIRKMAN & AZACETA #12 (MR) $2.99 JUL150564 PHONOGRAM THE IMMATERIAL GIRL #2 (MR) $3.99 JUL150570 WICKED & DIVINE #14 CVR A MCKELVIE & WILSON (MR) $3.50 JUL150571 WICKED & DIVINE #14 CVR B GRIMES (MR) $3.50
Strong week in serial comics for Image. One of the underappreciated aspects of The Walking Dead is that it offers multiple ways to read the story. Two of them are getting play right now: 1) a permutation of the zombie genre forumula in the form of new bad guys, 2) fans expecting something big and likely awful to happen because we're nearing issue #150. Bitch Planet is another one of the mega-books to hit this week; it's one of the few Image titles at the $3.99 price point, too. From there you get a little Mignola-verse, Rick Remender's teenage years-informed Deadly Class (drawn by Wes Craig), another Warren Ellis series playing out its initial and introductory storyline this time with Declan Shalvey, a book with Robert Kirkman's involvement heading into TV territory soon, and then two from the Kieron Gillen/Jamie McKelvie pairing. I can't make sweeping statements about Image because I'm naturally inclined to look at the worlds in a creator-first way, which eliminates a lot of what makes certain books popular at places like DC and Marvel. It does seem they do pretty well in terms of issue to issue sales for a number of their titles right now.
MAY150488 CHRONONAUTS TP VOL 01 (MR) $9.99 JUL150554 DESCENDER TP VOL 01 TIN STARS (MR) $9.99 JUL150565 SAGA TP VOL 05 (MR) $14.99 MAY150505 SKULLKICKERS TP VOL 06 INFINITE ICONS O/T ENDLESS EPIC $16.99
Note that this strong group of Image trades features first trades at a less than $10 price point, which is a general publishing strategy for that line. That's the most recent Mark Millar (with Sean Gordon Murphy) and Jeff Lemire (with Dustin Nguyen). Saga is one of Image's top-tier books and I imagine does well in trade: Skullkickers is more of a middle-tier book for them, but this is the last issue of the current run so I though I'd note it here.
JUL151359 LITTLE ROBOT GN $16.99
This is the new Ben Hatke, and I think makes for a third potential series? Hatke works for the all-ages market, and his books have a direct appeal to younger readers I haven't been able to totally figure out.
APR151235 LUMBERJANES #12 ECCC EXC $9.99 JUL151135 LUMBERJANES #13 DENVER COMIC CON EXC $9.99
There is something wise to be said about selling con-exclusive cover printing via the regular direct market, but I'm certainly not the one to articulate it. It is one of the odd signs of the moder variant cover apocalypse.
JUN151314 NIJIGAHARA HOLOGRAPH HC $29.99
This is both your book back in print and your mana work of the week: I think it's been out of print for a reasonably long time by this point, so I'm happy to see it return to the marketplace.
APR151308 JON SABLE FREELANCE OMNIBUS TP VOL 01 $39.95
This is another kind of a book where I wonder after its audience, but with that price point it's almost certainly older, nostalgic fans. Mike Grell's John Sable was a distracting action-adventure series thorugh much of the 1980s, targeted at thos ethat loved gene work just not fantasy-genre work.
MAY151850 HOGANS ALLEY #20 $6.95
Finally, all hail the comic strip (mostly) focused magazine of southern comics leisure making it to twenty issues in print. I'll always read an interview with Patrick McDonnell, at that phase in his career some 21 years in with Mutts where he's due a boost from critics and readers alike.
*****
The full list of this week's releases, including some titles with multiple cover variations and a long, impressive list of toys and other stuff that isn't comics, can be found here. Despite this official list there's no guarantee a comic will show up in the stores as promised, or in all of the stores as opposed to just a few. Also, stores choose what they carry and don't carry so your shop may not carry a specific publication. There are a lot of comics out there.
To find your local comic book store, check this list; and for one I can personally recommend because I've shopped there, albeit a while back, try this.
The above titles are listed with their Diamond order code in the first field, which may assist you in finding comics at your shop or having them order something for you they don't have in-stock. Ordering through a direct market shop can be a frustrating experience, so if you have a direct line to something -- you know another shop has it, you know a bookstore has it -- I'd urge you to consider all of your options.
If I failed to list your comic, that's because I hate you.
* Chris Sims writes about the love and regard that peers of Archie Goodwin had for the late writer/editor, and some of the in-comic floruishes that resulted.
Bundled, Tossed, Untied And Stacked: Publishing News
By Tom Spurgeon
* Screw Job #3 is the next work from Hidden Fortress Press. That one debuts at this Fall's shows, starting with SPX.
* Steve Brodner spoke at the AAEC yearly meeting last Friday, and the bulk of his presentation was on a forthcoming book of presidential illustrations, starting with McKinley onward. There were a lot of amazing images in there; some are this more complete article about the book, due in 2018.
* there's a nice piece up at Comics&Cola about DC's plans to release an omnibus collection of its Gotham Central series. That was a fun mainstream comic book series during the time it was running, and I imagine will work for years to come.
* Bob Temuka notes that the new publishing recalibration of Marvel likely means no "Ultimate" Marvel Universe. I wasn't a fan of those books, although I recognize the qualities that made The Ultimates for a time the industry "it" book.
* this is the first I've seen image-wise of the new Chip Kidd Peanuts art book, which he made with the help of a deep dive into archives at the Schulz Museum. A book based on comics art minimalism could be really interesting in Kidd's hands.
* not comics 01: this article on heroism from someone that taught alternatives visions of heroism at West Point may have some material in there for those wishing to created or understand heroic literature in comics. Having just recently celebrated Kirby Day, I'm always reminded how the Fourth World gained some emotional resonance, by switching the players around on this particular field of meaning.
* not comics 02: I would imagine this Sean T. Collins interview with Tod Campbell about shooting the TV show Mr. Robot might have something to say to comics-makers about faces and framing within panels.
* Drew Friedman's post about visiting the MDA Labor Day telethon as a guest of Jerry Lewis comes to mind this time of year for obvious reasons. I think it's one of the great cartoonist blog posts ever.
* finally, Todd Klein recalls a lettering gig where the design was intended to convey a largely forgotten way of presenting work.
... I'm just behind. My arrogance in thinking that transitioning into InDesign (even given a template) would be easy even though I haven't done interior magazine layout since 1998 was -- let's say ambitious, approaching asinine.
I have the full issue #0 done which should go up as soon as possible, and I think there's some really good stuff in there. I think I can be on a monthly schedule right away. I will owe subscribers an issue, which I can also take care of pretty quickly in an honorable way. The stumble at the launch is all on me, and if you want to adjust or bail I understand and I apologize and I remain indebted to you. I think you'll be pleased if you stick around, though.
The patreon saved my life. It re-energized me after almost 11 years of working on the site, which if you've ever done a job like that involves a specific kind of creeping burnout that no other job really provides. It's never a hard job or even a difficult one -- it's a walk in the park compared to what most people do -- but it is specifically tough in that one way. The money from readers stablized things here at the office at a scary time, and the site reflected that: we had more substantial posts up on the CR site in August than during any month going two years back.
I remain super-excited about curating a written project about the best art form in the world at a crucial time in its history and hope you'll keep with me. I was terrible at doing this blog at first, terrible at doing a comic strip for about a year and terrible at doing The Comics Journal for nearly 18 months. Things will get better.
* here's a random one that sent me PR. I always lilke looking at those, the wide variety of comics out there for which people are willing to ask for money.
* two days left with a significant amount of grounds to cover best describes the Last Gasp effort to get Barefoot Gen into the hands of schoolkids that could benefit from that potent piece of work. Hopefully there's a white knight or several out there reading.
* my hunch is that this Jane Bowles-related crowd-funder is past the point where its completion is in doubt, but nothing's over until the money is raised.
Festivals Extra: Does Any Friend Of Mine Need A Bed For SPX?
I have an extra bed to share Thursday to Monday, or some significant subset thereof, of SPX 2015. A buddy canceled. I'm not dying for a roommate but I just realized I could probably spend the saved money more effectively back home. .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) I do all of my writing downstairs in the lobby.
* this article on comics in the Middle East reads like one of those pieces where random paragraphs are strung together until the writer can't find anything else on which to report, but a lot of the paragraps are really interesting.
Bradley J. Anderson, the creator and longtime cartoonist of the weekday/panel sunday/strip feature Marmaduke, has died. Anderson was one of the last World War 2 veteran cartoonists, having served in the Navy from 1943 to 1946. He attended Syracuse University thereafter, graduating in 1951 with a BFA. Anderson cartooned throughout those years via opportunities provided by both institutions and on a freelance basis since his mid-teens. He was a significant contributor the the SU publication The Syracusan during his time there.
After a couple of years in Utica at an advertising firm plying his talent as a commercial artist in a manner for which he was explicitly trained by schooling, Anderson shifted full-time to freelancing for magazines in 1953. He had already gained some elements of notoreity and market penetration there for clients like Saturday Evening Post, mostly do panel cartoons of the kind that sold best. He was particularly known for cartoons about family life, which led him to develop two syndicated feature, each one built a classic fount for domestic comedy: a child known for outsized behavior (Grandpa's Boy) and a family dog (Marmaduke).
Anderson's skill set was well suited to the post-war transformation of the comic strip, where dimnishing strip sizes required a strong visual sense conveyed with a minimum of fuss and flattered gag writers whose cartoons could be consumed in a hurry as one swallow on an hors d'oeuvres table of sunny moments. Grandpa's Boy seem likely to have benefited from the market taking to Dennis The Menace. Grandpa's Boy, could look almost dashed off in its directness, and Anderson the gag writer didn't always do Anderson the artist the favor of a compelling visual to go along with that day's joke. Still, Anderson's visual chops held the strip together.
Anderson worked on Grandpa's Boy from 1954 to 1966, concurrent to the first dozen years or so of his creation Marmaduke. Marmaduke would become an undeniable foundational hit for the comics page in the second half of the 20th Century, and would carry the bulk of Anderson's career. It was also the source of the first of his two major cartooning award wins, a category acknowledgment for best panel at the 1978 Reubens. He would in 2013 take home the Milton Caniff lifetime achievement award.
Marmaduke shared with Dennis The Menace one major element that Grandpa's Boy did not: it was a panel, with a Sunday strip attached. It could therefore be placed on different parts of the page by editors who were looking to more creative ways to build a rewarding comics page. The character Marmaduke boasted a great design, a great dane breaking with shaggier, smaller dogs.
Anderson's final choice of breed allowed the cartoonist to work with Marmaduke's expressive, accessible face. The running gag in Marmaduke was that Marmaduke's size and boisterous canine energy frequently made his forays into areas where a dog might break with acceptable behavior an overwhelming hazard. Anderson and his assistants worked every last bit of juice out of that fairly basic set up and learned to walk a fine line so that the dog's affection and boisterousness were never overwhelmed by the physical aspects of the humor. By the end of the 1960s the feature was a more than solid hit, and reports suggest still enjoyed approximately 500 clients at the time of Anderson's passing.
The success of Marmaduke was very much focused on its lead; it's in question whether even a majority of the strip's admirers could identify the family as the Winslows.
Marmaduke enjoyed collection runs with Scholastic, Signet and Tor. A 50th anniversary book was released in 2004 and a live action comedy film pulled in $85 million in worldwide box office in 2010. By that time Anderson had shifted into a partnership with son Paul on the feature. By virtue of its ubiquity and easy to explain nature of its set-up, Anderson's comic creation has also been a target of those satirizing the comics page in general. The relative minor dip in its client base from a top number somewhere in the 600s testifies to its endurance.
A run of 300 Grandpa's Boy strips constitutes the Brad Anderson Cartoon Collection held by Syracuse University. In addition to his NCS honors, Anderson won a George Arents Pioneer Medal from his alma mater in 1999. His work was shown at the University, and also in San Francisco at their Museum of Fine Arts.
Brad Anderson was 91 years old. He is surved by three sons and a daughter.
On Friday, CR readers were asked to, "Name Four Comics People Good On Their Feet, Presenting Or Speaking. Defend Your Weakest Choice In #5."
*****
David Allan Duncan
1. Sergio Aragonés
2. Scott McCloud
3. Jon Chad
4. Dan Piraro
5. I've only seen Piraro speak once. I am under the impression that the talk was very rehearsed and frequently given. Even so, it was enjoyable. I have seen the others unrehearsed several times.
*****
Jamie Coville
1. Neil Gaiman
2. Scott McCloud
3. Chris Butcher
4. Chip Zdarsky
5. Joe Jusko. A couple of years ago I was at a panel were Joe was supposed to a sketch duel but the other artist did not show up, and there was no moderator. Joe had no problem switching gears, getting crowd suggestions for a sketch and doing a really engaging open Q&A with the audience while sketching. He's very good on his feet and multitasking.
*****
Andrew Mansell
1. Kelly Sue DeConnick
2. Dustin Harbin
3. Craig Fischer
4. Steve Bissette
5. Dusty is so busy drawing he doesn't present as much as he should. He is a compelling and hilarious speaker.
1. Howard Chaykin
2. ATAK
3. Benjamin
4. Isabel Kreitz
5. Benjamin is my weakest choice. During an interview I did with him he appeared to be shy and introverted while the services of a translator were needed. But if you follow the captured demonstration of his artistic capabilities on drawing pad and paper you might come to the conclusion that this would be a great lecture about the importance of your sleight of hand, no matter whatever you will choose as your working tool.
*****
Sean Kleefeld
1. Jeff Smith
2. Brad Guigar
3. Tony Millionaire
4. Mark Waid
5. I've only seen Millionaire speak once and while he had some great anecdotes and seemed pretty engaging, he was also noticeably inebriated. Since he was drinking while on stage, he also got more intoxicated as things wore on.
*****
Marc Arsenault
1. Neil Gaiman
2. Jason Little
3. Jillian Tamaki
4. Frank Santoro
5. Little is sitting. He has that top-knot thing. He ums and ahs a bit. I love this presentation for the info and presentation. He is totally endearing.
1. Mark Evanier
2. Matt Frank
3. Stan Lee
4. Scott Shaw!
5. Stan -- If you can get him to actually talk about something, he can give you some really insightful commentary, but if you're not careful he'll slip into one of his large number of canned anecdotes and if you're really unlucky all you'll get will be variants of "Excelsior! Face front, true believers!"
*****
Philippe Leblanc
1. Becky Cloonan
2. Jillian Tamaki
3. Kelly Tindall
4. Michael Deforge
5. Although I've always appreciated Michael Deforge talking about comics when I've seen him present at TCAF, one can sense his reservations, or even a nervousness on talking about his own work in front of large group. However, I've always registered this as the marks of a talented but also very humble artist. Once you can understand that, his presentations can be quite remarkable.
*****
Tom Spurgeon
1. Mike Peters
2. Dylan Horrocks
3. Art Spiegelman
4. Francoise Mouly
5. Horrocks is my weakest choice because it's been so long since I've seen him, and it could be he was just better than his peers back when I saw him in front of an audience. Still, I want it to be true, and I want people to anticipate the fun that will be a North American book tour starring Horrocks, so there it is.
1. J. Stuart Blackton
2. Winsor McCay
3. Rube Goldberg
4. Robert Reich
5. Although Professor Reich is known as a political commentator, anyone whose “chalk talks†can make economic issues both comprehensible and engaging to someone as numbers-averse as me is an expert cartoonist-presenter in my book.
*****
thanks to all those that participated; every single person photographed is 10x better looking than I captured them, and I beg their forgiveness for using some old photos
Go, Bid: Frank Santoro’s Private Auctions Continue Tonight
Here. Frank will hook you up with an invite. The money's going to his effort to buy the house next door and convert it into a physical schoolhouse to match the virtual schoolhouse he's been running for a few years now.
2. Discussion of a Milt Priggee cartoon reveals that even a polite conversation may seem to have an undercurrent of ill will.
3. The building that houses individual copies of Cerebus -- over a thousand of some issues -- is being closed and razed, forcing a potential massive comic book giveaway.
Winner Of The Week
comiXology
Loser Of The Week
Anyone that insists, even gently, that a newspaper or cartoonist must make public its loyalty to anything it also criticizes.
Quote Of The Week
"You don't have to let your dream murder you." -- Steve Brodner
*****
the comic image selected is from the brief but notable 1970s run of Seaboard/Atlas
Go, Look: On-Line Petition Up Against Censorship Of Dernier Cri, Pakito Balino And Others
I'm pretty sure this is not comics, although there's a lot of crossover in terms of the players involved and visual art. I hope that you'll take the time to read it and perhaps sign if you're so moved. I wonder after free speech these days; it feels like there are disagreements and objections in such a wide variety of locations on the rhetorical map that the borders don't even touch. This likely isn't art for me, but it's art for someone, if only its creator.
Go, Read: R. Fiore On A New Bunch Of Mainstream Comics
I enjoy reading R. Fiore whenever I got the chance. Fiore was the most important critic in Comics Journal history -- not a history that everyone's interested in, I'll admit -- because he showed that the contrarian stance that the magazine took towards corporate output and material that adhered closely to corporate output could be applied over and over again, via humor and insight, to a dozen comics a month. It seemed likely this would be the case from Marilyn Bethke forward, but Fiore was the one who served on point the longest. His is the default voice for all of comics reviewing, including for many people who have no idea he exists.
Fiore may be a bit unsuited for social media-driven comics culture because a lot of his constructions are personal ones, and pulled out squiggling into the sun on their lonesome can be surrounded and hectored to death with a million modern rhetorical antibodies. For someone who's been reading him as long as I have, though, it's a joy to see new material. I found this latest column fascinating, both for its undercurrent of self-criticism and for the usual array of cleverly written but super-solid insights into the work discussed. He praises Matt Fraction's wit, which is an excellent avenue into that writer's work that rarely gets consideration. And he's still good with the asides like when he describes David Aja: "he is after all like Alex Toth with a good writer." I know people might blow past something like that, but for me it's a stop and stare at the screen moment. Is that who David Aja is? Does that sound right? Does that hold up to what I know?
When I talk to people that wrote about comics in the 1980s and 1990s, they often claim their superiority; the 1980s folks in particular. I always thought that writing comics criticism of that confrontational type was a lot easier when the job was comparing the latest run of All Star Squadron to a few issues of Love And Rockets, all for an audience primed to believe the direction you were probably going to go. Today there's a relatively high level of craft and artistic effort on the best mainstream books, alternative books where the subtle differences in quality thwart easy one-liners, and considerable work in all sort of revived genres that has to be processed on its own terms. To have a Bob Fiore drop in for a few words is great; that he's genuinely engaging with this work and questioning past assumptions, that's such a wonderful thing even if you disagree with him on both ends.
Assembled, Zipped, Transferred And Downloaded: News From Digital
By Tom Spurgeon
* Bill Holbrook's Kevin & Kell turns 20 this week. That one is widely recognized as one of the first on-line strips of the modern variety, and the one that's run longest in continual fashion. Congratulationis to Holbrook. In an equivalent time in print comics history entire "ages" had passed and the only features still running continuously were books that featured characters like Superman.
* one thing I hadn't noticed with the relaunch of Trouble With Comics is exactly what Chris Allen would be doing for the site. I wondered, as he's the most associated with editor/publisher Alan David Doane and hasn't done a whole lot of writing at all since the last time Doane has an ongoing effort on the front burner somewhere. Here's my answer: a column called Journey Into Marvelry.
* finally, Gary Tyrrell provides commentary and context on Randall Munroe's latest mind-alterating cartoon, in a long series of such cartoons.
* the thing that's fascinating about this superhero article is that there are more than five permutations of a pretty basic plot point: a "death" horseman for a villain called Apocalypse. If you want to argue that superheroes can be exhausted as a genre, this is the kind of thing you might point to.
No one's ever liked being criticized. I think an interesting thing that's happened recently that may be different is that as more rewards of status and finance are bled out of creative arts industries there's a lot of pressure put on artists to maximize their careers. Every dissenting opinion hurts, and every bit of attention, good and bad, is processed on a personal level to an astonishing degree -- a 24-hour-a-day ethos of seeing everything as a potential act of someone taking food off of your plate. This makes criticism extra tough because positive notices are seen as being part of the story of each project, and negative attention can make you a villain. It's generally more fun to be a participant than a contrarian, to have someone laud your getting it than crush you for being stupid and biased and failing to understand anything at all.
My own solution to all of it is to write what I want to write, decline to apologize for that writing nor inflate its importance, and to generally seek out connections within an industry of which I feel a part that aren't scrutinized according to brand advancement. I'm not sure I'm doing it right, but I'll continue to try to figure it out. It's very intriguing for me to read a point of view like Wheeler's, a different conception that takes criticism just as seriously.
* here's some photos from Derf Backderf of a museum-sponsored 'zine fair that took place in Cleveland last weekend.
* finally, it's great to hear about an event featuring Bob L. Crabb. I had to scan the postcard in because I couldn't find a match on-line, so I want to use it more than once!
* cartoonist Ed Piskor notes that Frank Miller's classic run of Daredevil was like many Marvel comics sold as a black and white in certain European countries. That would seem very much worth collecting if you were obsessively into those comics. I wouldn't mind seeing them, and save for the later Mazzucchelli run as collected by IDW I haven't read them in any format for years.
* I always like looking at David Lasky's work: here he posts a rough and a final for one of his more well-known works, a polar bear cartoon that appeared in the Chicago Reader.
* it's nice to see cartoonists enjoy enough cultural penetration that they're lauded for their work when they make appearances. It wasn't always like that.
Digital Service comiXology Announces Deal With Kodansha
Anime News Network has the press release up from digital comics platform comiXology about its deal with Kodansha, and the significant number of comics it will eventually allow them to offer. This includes a comic covered very thorougly in that release: hot series of the moment Attack On Titan.
The release went out yesterday afternoon.
I'll be interested to see how they do the discount structure on that one. A lot of comiXology purchases outside of New Comics Wednesday arrive in the company of sales, and this newest deal should involve enough backstock to potentially make that an interesting choice for a certain kind of manga reading experience.
This exchange between a local Fraternal Order Of Police head and a newspaper that ran a Milt Priggee cartoon that reference the Charleston AME murders -- I think this one -- has a respectful back and forth feel to it. What's weird is that the editor doesn't have to just address that particular cartoon but the context of the newspaper's general policy towards cartoons and towards supporting the police.
I find that kind of language fascinating because it show how much we process issues according to frameworks established by social media. A criticism of any public agency, including a police force, shouldn't somehow constitute a withdrawl or diminishment of support in the same way a positive cartoon shouldn't mean full endorsement. That's commercial language, that's not how we used to process ideas, and it's distressing to see that kind of thinking seep into what should be a standard, respectful enterprise: people disagreeing about the issues as presented by a media publication.
This Isn’t A Library: Notable Releases Into Comics’ Direct Market
*****
Here are the books that make an impression on me staring at this week's no-doubt largely accurate list of books shipping from Diamond Comic Distributors, Inc. to comic book and hobby shops across North America.
I might not buy all of the works listed here. I might not buy any. You never know. I'd sure look at the following, though.
*****
JUN151313 CHICAGO HC $24.99
This one encompasses comics out on the stands today; there's one a bit down the page which is last week's. Glenn Head's autobiographical tale moves away from the recent trend towards issues-oriented memoir and explores two of comics' strengths in the area: the ability to depict small details of everyday living and the opportunity to display flashes of interior life along with those physical moments.
JUN150568 LAZARUS #19 (MR) $3.50 JUL150065 BALTIMORE CULT OF THE RED KING #5 $3.99 FEB150596 CASANOVA ACEDIA #4 (MR) $3.99 JUL150533 MINIMUM WAGE SO MANY BAD DECISIONS #5 (MR) $3.99 JUL150545 PLUTONA #1 (MR) $2.99 JUL150548 WE STAND ON GUARD #3 (MR) $2.99 JUN150847 RACHEL RISING #36 $3.99
Fun week for comic-book format comics. I enjoy Lazarus in a very direct, very surface-oriented way; I don't think I've even read the back material included issue to issue, which looks really fun. There's a Mignola-verse, of course. This time out with Casanova felt like one of those pacing-disruption issues, but that creative team does those kinds of stories better than anyone. I think that makes for another trade's worth of material for Bob Fingerman, although I could be wrong. Jeff Lemire and Emi Lenox bring us Plutona; I would check it out for either and certainly will for both. We Stand On Guard is the one with giant robots and the US fighting Canada, which always delights me to type out. And with Rachel Rising at #36 I would urge fans to appreciate having productive cartoonists around that want to create work after they've laid their career-defining project to rest.
JUL150788 DAREDEVIL #18 $3.99
Twitter tells me this is the last of the Mark Waid-written, Chris Samnee-drawn comics featuring the Daredevil character. I thought that was an ideally entertaining superhero comic book of the kind I wished a million of when I was a teen. Congratulations to those creators.
MAY150072 CONAN HC VOL 18 DAMNED HORDE $24.99
Eighteen volumes of this material is interesting to me. I think it's varied a lot in quality, and I think that Conan suffers more than most characters in terms of finding a way for him to work when storytelling is spread out over dozens of pages that used to spend four to six. But they've certainly done well the license, and I like the thought that there are still people around waiting for adventures like these. It's a classic part of the overall comics-reading experience.
JUN150460 WALT DISNEY DONALD DUCK DAILY NEWSPAPER COMICS HC VOL 01 $39.99
I'm totally unfamiliar with the Donald Duck newspaper material and the team of Al Taliaferro and Bob Karp sounds promising to me. It'd be interesting to see how quickly that commercial crucible boiled the feature down to its core elements.
JUL151715 NARUTO 3IN1 TP VOL 12 $14.99
I'm always for manga being repackaged in a way that encourages more readers. I also like this particular feature for the idiosyncratic, special attention paid to fighting scene to scene.
JUN151380 HEAVY METAL #276 CVR A KIRBY (MR) $7.95
Jack Kirby on the cover of Heavy Metalis certainly something I'd love to see on the stands without having been warned. Of course, I've just now ruined that for you.
JUL151816 COMIC BOOK PEOPLE HC VOL 02 PHOTOGRAPHS FROM 1990S $34.95
Jackie Estrada has a second crowd-funded work of photographs from over the years at various conventions but mostly Comic-Con International. If you spend any time going to cons that decade, to see Marty Nodell on the cover will definitely bring back a few memories.
*****
The full list of this week's releases, including some titles with multiple cover variations and a long, impressive list of toys and other stuff that isn't comics, can be found here. Despite this official list there's no guarantee a comic will show up in the stores as promised, or in all of the stores as opposed to just a few. Also, stores choose what they carry and don't carry so your shop may not carry a specific publication. There are a lot of comics out there.
To find your local comic book store, check this list; and for one I can personally recommend because I've shopped there, albeit a while back, try this.
The above titles are listed with their Diamond order code in the first field, which may assist you in finding comics at your shop or having them order something for you they don't have in-stock. Ordering through a direct market shop can be a frustrating experience, so if you have a direct line to something -- you know another shop has it, you know a bookstore has it -- I'd urge you to consider all of your options.
If I failed to list your comic, that's because I hate you.
Not Comics: Warren Craghead Accepts Executive Director Position At Second Street Gallery
The cartoonist and artist Warren Craghead has accepted the position of Executive Director at the Second Street Gallery in Charlottesville, Virginia. Craghead has been involved at the gallery in a variety of capacities since moving to the that community a dozen years ago.
The accompanying PR describes the gallery as one of the oldest contemporary non-profit spaces in the US.
I don't have much to say about this, but I like Craghead as a cartoonist and one thing I admire his comics output is that it has this fine-arts context to it in a matter-of-fact way. This seems a perfect extension of a lot of what he's done with his admirable career. If he attends SPX this year, I hope you'll congratulate him.
This Isn’t A Library: Notable Releases Into Comics’ Direct Market
*****
Here are the books that make an impression on me staring at this week's no-doubt largely accurate list of books shipping from Diamond Comic Distributors, Inc. to comic book and hobby shops across North America.
I might not buy all of the works listed here. I might not buy any. You never know. I'd sure look at the following, though.
*****
JUN151374 SPACE DUMPLINS GN HC VOL 01 $24.99 JUN151373 SPACE DUMPLINS GN VOL 01 $14.99
This is actually last week's list, which I forgot to post but very much did. I'd been skipping a lot of column over the last year just from having no time, but the money received in the patreon campaign has let me stablize the web site a bit as a kind of first step along with gearing up for PDF publishing at a brisk pace from now on. As for this comics, Craig Thompson is a super fun artist and he's had an admirable career in terms of doing the projects he wants when he wants to do them. This one looks gorgeous, and we're about to reacquainted with the man as he'll be touring extensively behind it.
JUN150079 HELLBOY IN HELL #7 $2.99 JUN150045 ZODIAC STARFORCE #1 $3.99 JUN150182 CYBORG #2 $2.99 JUN150255 GRAYSON #11 $3.99 JUN150215 PREZ #3 $2.99 JUN150375 GODZILLA IN HELL #2 $3.99 APR150531 EAST OF WEST #20 $3.50 JUN151150 ADVENTURE TIME #43 $3.99 JUN151090 OVER THE GARDEN WALL #1 $3.99
An odd week for serial comics, at least from my natural point of view. There's the Mignolva-verse comic right up on top but it's one drawn by the creator, so it gets special attention. Zodiac Starforces is an all-age comic of the kind that we should be seeing debut over the next couple of years, based on market penetration for similar work. I haven't see this particular effort. Cyborg, Grayson and Prez all have vocal fans, which is something DC hasn't always had across a bunch of titles before the last 18 months or so. The appeal of Godzilla In Hell is eithe immediate or non-existent. East Of West is beginning to show some signs of a work that is viewed in contrast to writer Jonathan Hickman's efforts in mainstream comics, and also as a value-added proposition for any fans he might be making with the Marvel stuff. Adventure Time I noted because it's a 43rd (!) issue; Over The Garden Wall because it's a first -- that one seems amenable to comic book expansion, I think.
APR150043 USAGI YOJIMBO SAGA LTD ED HC VOL 04 $79.99 APR150042 USAGI YOJIMBO SAGA TP VOL 04 $24.99
I will always, always, always look at Usagi Yojimbo even though most people I know that read Stan Sakai's comics are trade followers and I'm actually a single-issues guy. It's weird for me to see multiple editions of the same day, but I guess that's the new conventional wisdom now.
APR150324 SCALPED HC BOOK 02 DELUXE EDITION (MR) $29.99
At some point I think this is a book that a lof of people will have in some form or another, but I think it's much less certain which one will take.
JUN150835 NEXTWAVE AGENTS OF HATE COMPLETE COLLECTION TP NEW PTG $34.99
A new printing for these very funny superhero comics, which came out from an editorially generous Marvel at one time. The fun thing with this one is that they did a good job of hiding everything except the broad background stuff and I'm prettty sure these could be published right now without a lot of rewriting -- I don't mean that as a compliment to its tone or modern feeling, but as it fits into continuity.
JUN151401 ATTACK ON TITAN GN VOL 16 $10.99 JUN158141 ONE PUNCH MAN GN VOL 01 $9.99 JUN158140 ONE PUNCH MAN GN VOL 02 $9.99 APR150076 KUROSAGI CORPSE DELIVERY SERVICE OMNIBUS ED TP BOOK 01 $19.99
These are all sold manga titlesof the moment; I'm glad that Kurosagi Corpse Deliver Service will get that bigger packaging; I think that's a book that format might flatter.
JUL151273 E-MAN EARLY YEARS TP $27.95
I am totally old, so I'm into collections of things like the fun character E-Man, although it's hard for me to believe that $28 judiciously spent wouldn't nab you all of these comics in their original form.
JUN151510 SNOWDEN GN $16.95
I believe this is Ted Rall's new comic, and I'm surprised he's been so quiet in the ramp-up to its publication. That's certainly a worthy subject.
MAY151510 ZENITH HC PHASE ONE APEX ED PI
Someday I'll figure out these book and own a complete run of its story.
MAY151055 GLENN FABRY SKETCHBOOK VOL 03 (MR) $12.99
I'd look for sure; Fabry's very talented.
JUN151181 OUT ON WIRE STORYTELLING SECRETS NEW MASTERS RADIO GN $17.00
The comics world is better with Jessica Abel in it, and I"m looking forward to the next 12 months in comics almost strictly on that basis.
*****
The full list of this week's releases, including some titles with multiple cover variations and a long, impressive list of toys and other stuff that isn't comics, can be found here. Despite this official list there's no guarantee a comic will show up in the stores as promised, or in all of the stores as opposed to just a few. Also, stores choose what they carry and don't carry so your shop may not carry a specific publication. There are a lot of comics out there.
To find your local comic book store, check this list; and for one I can personally recommend because I've shopped there, albeit a while back, try this.
The above titles are listed with their Diamond order code in the first field, which may assist you in finding comics at your shop or having them order something for you they don't have in-stock. Ordering through a direct market shop can be a frustrating experience, so if you have a direct line to something -- you know another shop has it, you know a bookstore has it -- I'd urge you to consider all of your options.
If I failed to list your comic, that's because I hate you.
* Alexander Lu walks readers at The Beat through a Sean Gordon Murphy interview and some of the work that David Harper's done to call attention to the distressing levels of income made by people that spend a significant amount of time on all different kinds of comics, including what were once considered good jobs with mainstream companies. The ability to generate income that benefits not just an abstract industry bottom line or stockholders or well placed executive or even star talent but the rank and file creator, I think that will become more and more of an issue here. It has been an occasional issue here and in other great comics markets of the world, and it has been an issue for isolated segments, like alt-comics, but maybe it needs to be on our minds in a sustained, catholic fashion.
* not comics: Hollywood Reporterre-runs its first review of The Simpsons. That show didn't hit until late Spring at which point it went bananas, mostly through the Bart Simpson character, but I remember there actually being some anticipation for a full show due to the Life In Hell books, which were popular with my college-age smarty-pants friends in a significant way.
Bundled, Tossed, Untied And Stacked: Publishing News
By Tom Spurgeon
* Heidi MacDonald notes and speculates on the life and quick death of a comics magazine called ACE, from award-winning editor/packager/publisher Jon B. Cooke. The occasion is this piece by Johanna Draper Carlson. ACE seems to have been what we used to call a generalist comics magazine -- mainstream + flourishes -- with a price guide element. Cooke shows up in the comments and disagrees with some of MacDonald's summary takes. I think it's tough to write that kind of analysis about anything anymore. I'm not even sure there's a center of comics where you can easily characterize certain conceptions of the medium as broad and general, what with a continuing market presence for manga and a generous spectrum of webcomics available. It may be all niche markets now. It does seem clear that the Direct Market did not support this print publication, although four issues of anything is a really short exposure period. I'm sad when anyone's project goes under. I hadn't heard of the magazine until Heidi's article, but that's on me. I wish all involved the best.
* the business news and analysis site ICv2.com has a brief but packed article here on a new book for Peter Kuper and a new line, both from SelfMadeHero. The Kuper book is a massive, 328-page tome about his time in Mexico; a few compelling comics pages from that time period have appeared here and there so it's awesome to get a big book. The new line is called "Graphic Freud" and focuses on Sigmund Freud's case work. First up is one of the most widely know, Dora: An Analysis Of A Case Of Hysteria, shortened in this form to a punchier Hysteria. That adaptation is coming from Richard Appignanesi (words) and Oscar Zarate (pictures).
* here's a pretty standard release-driven story about a new Guardians Of The Galaxy-related series. That's the kind of story that confuses old-time industry observers. It seems like Guardians Of The Galaxy as a comic book coming off of the movie was barely given a chance to establish itself as a player in the comic book market and now it's already one series with a partly unfamiliar line-up and another series with a different concept and an unfamiliar line-up, at least for that title. It doesn't mean we're right -- no one lets us run comic book companies for a reason, if not several. It just means that the game has changed a bit and that you can constantly form and reform things now, or at least smart people think so.
* in May 2016, First Second Books will launch its Science Comics series with Dinosaurs (MK Reed; Joe Flood) and Coral Reefs (Maris Wicks) in the Spring, followed by Volcanoes (Jon Chad) in the Fall. The line should look like that (twice a year; specific subjects; familiar creators) on a regular basis. Pair that with their announcement that they'll be doing Jason Shiga's bloody and propulsive Demon as a stand-alone, and that makes First Second one of the more interesting publishers of 2016 just four books in.
* finally, Newsarama has a standard press-release driven article on Dark Horse publishing Giganto Maxia from Kentaro Miura. Dark Horse has published over 35 translated volumes of Miura's long-running hit Berserk in the last dozen years. This newer work began serialization in Japan in 2013.