CR Sunday Magazine

Preview: Crickets #1, Sammy Harkham



I Totally Want to See This



Sunday Distractions

* Neil Gaiman talking about the Absolute Sandman series and basic strategies surrounding those volumes' treatment of the material
* Gene Kannenberg Jr. making a list of comics-related items on a British TV show
* Larry Young at The Engine talking about pitching
* Heidi MacDonald telling you why you didn't get a room in San Diego
* Evan Dorkin and Warren Ellis discussing the demise of Deadline

That Weird Box



I'm a fan of Bill Everett, the creator of the Sub-Mariner and an all-around uniquely odd voice in comics history. I'm particularly fond of his return to the 1968 series iteration of the character he created. By that time Everett had developed this really pretty, high-energy style that looked totally out of place in the now John Buscema-led Marvel art assault. Everett also employed some of the weirdest catchphrases ever, like "Sufferin' Shad," and "Off with thy piscatroid pate." Also, since the Sub-Mariner had this undersea-kingdom aspect to it, half of the hero's fights were with bad guys with non-descriptive names that didn't exactly rock one's young imagination, like "Byrrah" there. I can't imagine much of any of it got over with the very somber, anal-retentive Marvel fan of the 1970s.

Despite well-regarded mini-runs by Buscema and then later Gene Colan, the 1968-starting Sub-Mariner series in general was a total backwater of early 1970s Marvel comics, using characters and situations that rarely if ever repeated themselves in Marvel comics of the 1980s and 1990s. In fact many of the series' plot developments are absent from later efforts starring the lead character himself. And yet, a lot of those comics still have that nice balance and tone that Marvel's output of that period offered, the doesn't-give-a-shit logic of having Dr. Doom show up at someone's apartment to beat them up, or a World War II bad guy employing an island of Japanese soldiers in short-shorts. They have a definite oddball charm.

Anyway, my real reason for posting the above is I wondered if anyone out there knew about the particular cover design element on display, the small box thing that Marvel did for a while where the title and subtitle were against sold backgrounds rather than just dead spaces in art. Was that a Romita-ism? Did Marvel do this in the '60s, too? .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

that looks like slightly hurried Gil Kane art on the cover, incidentally; it's not Bill Everett

Missed It: New Kings In Disguise



I somehow missed word of a new edition of Kings In Disguise, a seminal graphic novel from the 1980s by James Vance and Dan Burr (WW Norton, 208 pages, paperback, April, 0393328481). What I remember most about the series and resulting book is that it really put a lie to a strange myth of the time period in which it originally appeared, that the only possible way to see serious comics work of a certain type was to expect it from artist/writers, when all it really takes is any individual or combination of individuals willing to apply themselves in that direction. I look forward to re-reading it.

Initial Thought of the Day

Last night I had a nightmare that I was so stressed by deadlines I spent a chunk of time last week writing Captain America movie pitch fan fiction. And then I woke up... and it was true!
 
posted 11:40 pm PST | Permalink
 

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