The Comics Reporter

July 22, 2014

OTBP: Eik

posted 8:30 am PST | Permalink

By Request Extra: Justin Green Pays Birthday Tribute To S. Clay Wilson, Offering Art

The underground great Justin Green pays birthday tribute to another iconic figure of comix, S. Clay Wilson, on the occasion of the latter's birthday. Green is also offering some nice incentives for anyone that donates to Wilson's trust.

Between Green and Wilson you have about 68 percent of taboos broken in terms of comics content as they existed by the mid-1960s. If you read and enjoy this site, or the vast majority of the comics covered, you have those two men to thank.

posted 8:25 am PST | Permalink

Go, Look: Star*Reach #6

posted 8:20 am PST | Permalink

Missed It: Homeless Advocate Accuses San Diego Police Of Rousting Street Sleepers Pre Comic-Con

Here. I assume one of the majors had this so that people could find it and e-mail it to me, so I apologize to whichever of my peers found it first.

I'm not sure what to think of the story. That police would be doing this a week before the show does indeed seem kind of odd, so the police rep makes a good point there. I've done homeless advocacy before and used to argue with people about this kind of policy -- it's horrifying on a human level, but I also sort of understand the impulse.

As a longtime SDCC attendee, it seems to me that most of the homeless population has in recent years scattered to the frontier of gentrification in that part of town -- whether there's an artificial, temporary aspect to that or not, I couldn't tell you. That frontier is further away than it used to be, but it's still there if you amble off north or east. To get slightly old-man about it, it used to be you could park a couple of blocks off of the main strip and then step over homeless people on your way to con stuff -- but that was when that part of town had a much narrower nice section.

posted 8:15 am PST | Permalink

Go, Look: Jijé In America

posted 8:10 am PST | Permalink

Not Comics: Al Columbia-Made Music Video, Song

Here. That's Al with the hatchet -- and I can't tell you how many times I typed that particular phrase in the '90s. It's very reminiscent of his comics.

posted 8:05 am PST | Permalink

Go, Look: Frankenstein #3

posted 8:00 am PST | Permalink

Dave Lasky Just Sent Me The Best SDCC Personal Appearance Notice I've Ever Seen

Bonus points for using 2012 version of me as photo reference: several pounds lighter than 2014 me, and with a nicer suit. Still bald, though.

At any rate, go see David Lasky. Comic-Con International is a strange event on a lot of levels, but at its core is a really good to excellent comics show. The fact that they'd have a David Lasky and an Eleanor Davis and a Jim Rugg on hand speaks to that fact.

posted 7:55 am PST | Permalink

Go, Look: Bruce Timm Draws The X-Men

posted 1:30 am PST | Permalink

Bundled, Tossed, Untied And Stacked: Publishing News

By Tom Spurgeon

* there was a bunch of publishing news that came out before San Diego Con this year, particularly from not Big Two publishers. Archie, for instance, provided a name for the revamp of their superhero characters into a line, one that's already been slowly rolling out. I have an interview with Alex Segura that's giving me brain fits of some sort whenever I try to transcribe it, but he's heavily involved and promises a lighter touch with the creators on the individual books having their way.

* Josh Kopin appears to approve of the forthcoming Jason Aaron/Ron Garney collaboration Men Of Wrath.

* here is what the covers will look like on the forthcoming Zenith reprint project. I know a lot of people that are looking forward to that one.

* missed this announcement of Lucy Knisley's next book with First Second; it's wedding-related.

* a couple of you sent me this link, to an article about artist Ronn Sutton's involvement with a 2015 graphic novel in collaboration with an author and former Hell's Angels member.

* the nice folks at ComicsAlliance speculate on storytelling solutions for Marvel being able to head back to the Superior Spider-Man well. That's been probably been figured out by the time this post rolls out.

* missed this trailer for The Shadow Hero. That's a fun project.

* Hope Larson announced a while back that she and Rebecca Mock will be joined on the Four Points project by colorist Shari Chankhamma.

* Tony Millionaire shares a letter received as a way of noting a short run for his Maakies in a Florida newspaper, now ended. It's hard for me to think of Maakies running anywhere that people would have this reaction to it. Then again, there aren't a whole lot of papers left that are willing to run this kind of material, period.

* the cartoonist Matt Bors says his first print collection is running out of its first print. I thought that was a good book, both the cartoons selected and the extensive supporting prose.

* finally, the artist and cartoonist Roman Muradov has a one-page preview of work up from the forthcoming Yellow Zine #5.

posted 1:25 am PST | Permalink

Go, Look: Magno

posted 1:20 am PST | Permalink

Forthcoming Comics-Related Events, Through August 2014

Go, Look: Abyss #1

posted 1:10 am PST | Permalink

Random Comics News Story Round-Up

* Henry Chamberlain on Saltire. Don MacPherson on various comics. Lauren Davis on The Economics Of Webcomics. Rob Clough on The Shadow Hero. Todd Klein on Justice League #31. David Brothers on Dorohedoro.

* speaking of MacPherson, he has a post here about people overvaluing original comics art in eBay auctions. I always figure that's just some random page that an estate holder has or something similar, and they'd just take a chance they could sell it for a tremendous amount. But who knows?

* Natasha Robinson profiles Bill Leak. Bradley Campbell profiles Gene Luen Yang.

* finally, Brigid Alverson takes a shot at licensing news from Anime Expo; I thought that report had a great deal of clarity.

posted 1:05 am PST | Permalink

Happy 30th Birthday, William Cardini!

posted 1:00 am PST | Permalink

July 21, 2014

Go, Look: Tyler Landry

posted 8:30 am PST | Permalink

Go, Read: Al Nisbet Cartoons Case Being Heard This Week

I haven't seen a ton about these Al Nisbet cartoons since the initial furor about their depiction of people taking advantage of a government school system in what seems like the most brutally dumb and obvious and insulting way, but it looks like a human rights case is being heard this week.

It also looks like that case has lurched into borderline absurdity from the start, focusing on whether or not the depiction of red hair on some of the crudely-designed figures may slip them out of being depictions of the peoples involved. If I'm getting it right, the basic argument is that something in these depictions that may not be a whopping, goofy stereotype may somehow absolve the cartoons despite everything that is. Although I guess that red hair is being argued tribe to tribe, so who knows? I don't believe that free expression should be curtailed even when it's insulting speech, but I certainly don't enjoy seeing a case tried by people dancing around authorial intent in such a bizarre manner. My preference would be cartoonists claiming their work says what it seems to be saying without having to back away from it for fear of legal evisceration, even if what that work says is dumb and viciously upsetting.

The cartoons appeared last year in the Marlborough Express and Christchurch Press.

posted 8:25 am PST | Permalink

OTBP: Happiness #4

posted 8:20 am PST | Permalink

By Request/Assembled Extra: Katie Skelly Launches Operation Margarine Follow-Up My Pretty Vampire

The cartoonist Katie Skelly, whose Operation Margarine launched successful for AdHouse Books this Spring at the MoCCA Festival and was the first book in that publisher's 2014 new-release youth movement, has announced a new project for digital and potential eventual print publication.

My Pretty Vampire launched yesterday on Skelly's Tumblr. It's digitally colored, and employs limited animation effects, both of which may be somewhat of a surprise for fans of a cartoonist best known in print for her stark black and white work. The on-line release of the material in part facilitates the use of both of those effects, Skelly says in introducing the new series.

A black and white print mini-comic version is set to debut at this year's Small Press Expo.

No formal publishing home beyond Tumblr and that mini-comic was announced. Both of Skelly's previous books, this year's Operation Margarine and 2012's Nurse Nurse (with Sparkplug), enjoyed a life previous to collection as numbered series of black and white, self-published minis.

I'm interested in cartoonists turning around with new material so quickly after previous publication, although of course several cartoonists work on overlapping projects, particularly in serial form. I do believe that digital avenues facilitate a tighter turnaround between book projects, or at least our public perception of them -- this is another way they fulfill the role previously head in art comics by one-person alt-anthologies.

posted 8:15 am PST | Permalink

Go, Look: Plopular Poetry (A-U)

posted 8:10 am PST | Permalink

Festivals Extra: Beguiling Representing This One Summer Art At Comic-Con International This Week

This was just announced via e-mail, so I hope this link might get you there. Apparently The Beguiling will have pages of Jillian Tamaki art from The One Summer at their area this year, a side table at the Drawn and Quarterly booth. That's a frequently stunning-looking book, with pages I imagine work quite well as stand-alone images. I hope you'll go and look at them if not purchase several for yourself.

posted 8:05 am PST | Permalink

Go, Look: The Ghost

posted 8:00 am PST | Permalink

Not Comics: Tech Crunch Article That Absolves Amazon.com Of Harming Writers; Blames General Market

A few of you have sent along this article arguing its way through the changes in the book market brought about by the Internet, using the announcement of the Amazon Kindle Unlimited plan as the trigger event for the piece.

I suppose this is where I should have some sort of sweeping proclamation to make. I don't. In fact, this article is a big jumble of arguments barely corralled together by its author. I wouldn't be surprised if more than a few of you wonder two or three times during the piece if arguments being made support or disprove what seems to be its general premise. I know I wondered.

Me, I think the old system was horrible and the new system is likely to be just horrible and maybe even more so in terms of the bottom line of number of artists making a sustainable living. This is a disappointment because it would be nice if a new system could be not horrible. Otherwise, it's like installing dirty carpets.

Unfortunately, we don't put much of a value on anything other than maximized profit at all times for whatever agency or actors can seize it. Admitting that to ourselves doesn't mean the old days were wonderful, because they were horrible, too. It would be nice if we could scale back some of that transformative zeal. I am certain several authors will escape the horrors involved with that kind of increasingly crass and harsh value system. I am also sure most won't. Incomes will continue to go down for a lot of working creators. In response, folks will argue potentialities like they're practicalities, as if all artists can do what Lady Gaga does. And so on.

One thing I worry about in comics is that the recent past has been pretty well served from an arts standpoint by the option of there being a strong relationship of artists to publisher in a way that both entities can sustain themselves economically. If the heart of the sustainable relationship shifts from artist/publisher to artist/audience, I'd worry a bit for the quality of the art created over time. In my view, comics doesn't have the same kind of artistic pedigree in terms of work created that way, and it certainly hasn't done so efficiently. I worry about assigning the role of savior to a system still in development. They rarely look like messiahs once the details gets filled in.

posted 7:55 am PST | Permalink

Go, Read: National Review On Marvel's Thor Comic Book

Here. I was a crazy obsessive National Review reader at about the same time in my life I was last a reader of Thor comic books, so I wanted to read this one. It made me nostalgic for eighth grade study hall, but that's about it.

The American conservative movement has never been able to muster much of a fight in any sort of cultural war, perceived or real (it's sort of both). An elitist's position was probably available to them a few decades ago, but they're sort of rigorously anti-intellectual now. What's left is sneering and rolling your eyes, which this writer, Jim Geraghty, admirably avoids for the sake of exploring the basic context from which a decision like this might develop.

Two major problems with the piece should be familiar to readers of articles about comics that appear in non-industry media. First, it treats the superhero comics companies as the entirety of the industry, as opposed to a dominant market force in one of that medium's industries. Second, it treats segments of that audience as having monolithic taste. I'm not sure if National Review falling in line with most mainstream media treatments is a step forward or a step back. It's been a while.

Women have always been a significant part of comics' wider readership. I suspect the difference we're feeling now is the growing voice of many women within specific elements of a variety of focused, engaged readership groups. That's a different although equally welcome thing. In the wider view, there are few secrets as to making comics that appeal to a broad audience, and very few of them involve the almost arcane moving around of cultural elements with which Marvel is engaged. Many are just about making great comics exploring a variety of views, employing a variety of identifiable characters, and freeing the resulting entertainments from outright hostility and pandering to creepy elements which might actively repel giant swathes of a potential audience. Companies like Marvel and DC are latecomers adjusting to a wider industry standard more than they ever define one.

posted 7:55 am PST | Permalink

Go, Look: Elektra: Assassin Interior Pages

posted 1:30 am PST | Permalink

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