CR Review: Stumblers Episode One Creator: Jeff LeVine Publishing Information: self-published, mini-comic, 28 pages, 2008, no price listed Ordering Numbers:
This is the latest Jeff LeVine mini-comic, which he sent with a note of apology that soon he'd have a more substantial work done. It's split into three stories: one a portrait of a day in LeVine's pared-down life, the second ruminatins from a weekend hike, and a second a flash of LeVine playing a videogame. It's done in a mix of the shading and more complicated line and pattern work that has come to light in his Watching Days Become Years series and a very confident-looking, straight-forward cartooning that depends a lot on staging and the quick way that he's drawn his figures. It's very visually appealing in a way that I never would have guessed based on his '90s work, and the overwhelming notion that comes out of the work entire despite the fact that its narrator seems to be searching for an answer is how content LeVine seems, at least as portrayed. It's way too facile an observation, perhaps, but I can't help but see this as the reduction of complications in the cartoonist's life matched to a similar effort with his cartooning, to impressive result.
Your Danish Cartoons Hangover Update This article appeared on international wires this morning, talking of an imminent terror threat in Denmark stemming in part from the 2005 publication of caricatures of Muhammed in the Jyllands-Posten newspaper. I wanted to mention it because I'm not sure why on earth any government would issue such a dire, general warning, and also I'm pretty certain that something like this came out the week before three men were detained for plotting to kill cartoonist Kurt Westergaard and his wife.
Not Comics: Editor & Publisher On Reports About Time Spent Site Figures
This isn't comics in any way, shape or form, but I think it's worth paying attention to studies about newspaper site time-spent figures. The ability of newspaper to retain eyeballs is going to be a huge factor in deciding whether or not they make the transition into on-line media in a way that's able to sustain itself, and will definitely have an effect on how they might use licensed material like comics.
Random Comics News Story Round-Up
* Justin Bilicki has won this year's Science Idol contest. Its apparent full name is the Science Idol: Scientific Integrity Editorial Cartoon Contest. The winner, a Livonia, Michigan native now in Brooklyn, New York, has been put up for auction to benefit the contest's sponsor, the Union of Concerned Scientists. Over 20,000 people voted. The winner gets a cash prize, a trip to Washington, DC, and their cartoon will grace a calendar feature the 12 finalists.
* this interview with Scott Mitchell Rosenberg of the not really a comics company comics company Platinum is completely terrifying, and, I think, very much not good history. Speaking of which, does anyone out there have any idea what he's talking about in terms of a company that supposedly switched distributors on him in his distribution business days?
* I had a dream last night and in part of it I was reading a huge, over-sized issue of Legion of Super-Heroes featuring Jaime Hernandez on the art in a retro-'50s style. I don't want Jaime doing anything other than his own stories, but that would be sort of freakishly adorable, don't you think? Also: I need better dreams.
* the yearly ICv2.com interview with Paul Levitz is a must-read, if only to take the temperature of one of comics' more influential executives: part one, part two, part three. A lot of it is broad strategy-speak, but one thing worth noting is the undercurrent of praise for the Random House distribution deal and the offhand revelation that it has apparently had a noticeable effect on a trade series as far along in its volume numbers as Fables. That distribution switchover isn't yet six months old, I don't think. A few other things stand out for me. First, like I wrote earlier this summer, I don't think comics have always done well in a recession -- not even the cheap comics. Second, I've seriously never heard of Watchmen being touted as a gateway comic, let alone am willing to join Levitz and acknowledge that fact as widespread industry conventional wisdom. I've heard more people mention GI Joe than Watchmen as a book that got them from not reading comics to reading comics. Third, someone out there is likely to interpret Levitz suggesting that it's not editorial policy or general direction but execution that has put Marvel's series ahead of DC's this summer as Levitz blaming the talent. That's not what he's doing, but I'm certain someone will see it that way.
* finally, here's a fascinating essay by Steven Grant that uses as a jumping-off point the recent Robert Kirkman video exhorting folks to readjust their careers with self-directed creation at its core. I don't agree with a lot of it, but it's well-stated. The only thing I'd really object to outright is his assertion that smaller companies don't have effective promotional arms. I think some of them do. I actually think folks like Peggy Burns and Eric Reynolds are more effective than big company PR people in most cases. Their creators get just as much press as many big companies get for their creators, and in many cases these creators enjoy a just-as-high profile despite not moving nearly as many copies in the overall scheme of things. Part of this is that they're good (especially in relation to functionaries in your average big-book publisher PR departments, who can be nightmarish), part of it is that they're allowed to be good and don't have to function as a cog in various inter-company political games, and part of it is that they aren't also being asked to promote some goofy fictional character and/or the company as much as they are allowed to focus on creators.
CR Review: The Complete Little Orphan Annie, Vol. 1
Creator: Harold Gray Publishing Information: IDW, hardcover, 368 pages, June 2008, $39.99 Ordering Numbers: 1600101402 (ISBN10), 9781600101403 (ISBN13)
There are many comics I admire, several more than that I like, and a few that I think highly of as art. Little Orphan Annie is a comic I love. This is hard to explain to most comics fans, let alone those whose only experience with Harold Gray's creation is the musical. I fell in love with Little Orphan Annie after hearing my mom and her mother one Christmas visit talk about how much incidental but very real comfort they took in its recurring presence in their home, how Annie's embrace of hard work and her unwavering loyalty and frequent kindnesses represented a series of signposts in times where external and internal forces pressed themselves against Mom's post-war generation and Grandma's survivors of World War II and the hard decade that preceded it. Like many of my favorite strips, Annie reveals something about the American character without intending to do so, in its case something that's hopeful yet realistic, something that appeals despite some of the more excessive political constructions on display as the strip grew older.
The Little Orphan Annie shared by my mother and grandmother was different than the one we get here, in this first volume of IDW's reprint projects. Happily, it's not as radically altered as I thought it might be. Gray had yet to perfect the occasionally picaresque background and context that provided spice to Annie's later adventures; there's more domestic comedy at the heart of the early strips than the kind of rollicking travelogue and exquisite melodrama that came later. The cartoonist's awesome, sometimes terrifying employment of space and his unique staging is probably the furthest away of all his virtues in this incarnation, but the strip remains attractively drawn. It wouldn't be too long for Annie to get up to the speed that it enjoyed for its best 10-15 years, and certainly that strip is recognizable in this one. The reprinted dailies are ably supported by several pages of writing festooned with well-chosen art. I always get a little exhausted by the size and scale of these voluminous efforts in their currently fashionable full flowering, but what I've read here and there seemed compelling. Like Daddy Warbucks at various time in the print's run, I'm just sort of glad to welcome the character and her wonderful comic strip vehicle back into my home.
please note: these are my scans, not the book's. the book's are nicer
This Isn't A Library: New And Notable Releases To The Comics Direct Market
*****
Here are the books that jump out at me from this week's probably mostly accurate list of books shipping from Diamond Comic Distributors, Inc. to comic book and hobby shops across North America.
I might not buy all of the works listed here -- I might not buy any -- but were I in a comic book shop I would likely pick up the following and look them over, and this might be not a good thing as far as my retailer is concerned.
*****
HERBIE ARCHIVES HC VOL 01 $49.95
I think the whole comics-in-trade-form revolution has been leading up to this moment: Hardcover Herbie.
JUN080180 FINAL CRISIS LEGION OF THREE WORLDS #1 (OF 5) $3.99
I'm not much of a follower of big superhero events, and haven't been following this latest one, but a bunch of the Legion reboots fighting in a casualty-producing style with an evil Superboy might be fun. Huh. That's interesting. Suddenly I have a hankering for Mountain Dew and Cheetos.
MAY080258 SANDMAN PRESENTS DEAD BOY DETECTIVES TP (MR) $12.99 JUN082319 CAPTAIN AMERICA #41 $2.99
Your week in Ed Brubaker.
JUN082361 INCREDIBLE HERCULES #120 SI $2.99
Your week in well-liked second-tier Marvel books.
JUN082327 MARVEL 1985 #4 (OF 6) $3.99
This is still coming out? I wish it had photos, although I'm told the art is very nice.
JUN083955 ABANDONED CARS HC $22.99
Tim Lane's powerful debut book, sporty a lovely design and several muscular stories.
JUN083973 AMAZING REMARKABLE MONSIEUR LEOTARD SC $16.95
New Eddie Campbell! In my world, people greet the new Eddie Campbell by holding it at arm's length and dancing round and round in circles.
APR083839 DELPHINE #3 $7.95 APR083845 GROTESQUE #2 $7.95
Your Ignatz offerings of the week, both of them beautiful installments in attractive series.
MAY083867 MOME VOL 12 GN $14.99
Maybe the best issue of the anthology yet, with compelling work by five or six cartoonists and not an outright dud from anyone.
MAY084228 NAOKI URASAWAS MONSTER TP VOL 16 $9.99
The only manga that leapt out at me this week. That sounds kind of spooky, but I really just meant the idea of it leapt out at me not that the book launched itself off the shelf in my direction.
APR083922 SCORCHY SMITH AND THE ART OF NOEL SICKLES HC $49.99
The size and scope of this book would be incredible if it featured a really bad artist instead of a frequently thrilling one. A really nice book.
MAR083709 WHERE DEMENTED WENTED THE ART AND COMICS OF RORY HAYES $22.99
A great artist, a great comic book artist and a great American artist gets a little bit of his due.
JUN084472 JEWS & AMERICAN COMICS ILLUS HISTORY OF AMERICAN ART FORM $29.95
This is the latest from Paul Buhle, I think.
MAY084264 TRIPWIRE 2008 ANNUAL $14.95
As this magazine's 25th most powerful person in comics and by my count therefore the most powerful person per-dollar-earned in entertainment history, I command you to consider buying this resurgent publication about comics and pop culture.
MAY080061 MYSPACE DARK HORSE PRESENTS TP VOL 01
Is it weird to anyone else that DHC would want to replicate the anthology feel of its MySpace.com comics offerings with a print anthology? I think for most people the on-line anthology means those works get to print that step going to print.
MAY083868 TALES DESIGNED TO THRIZZLE #4 (MR) $4.50
The best comic book of the week. I don't know, Frank, I think I could walk out of the store this week having thrown a $20 bill at the Sala, this book, the Captain America maybe and I guess the one where I might get to see Brainiac 5's arms pulled off and I'd be a satisified serial comics customer.
JUN080289 AIR #1 (MR) $2.99
This seems to me an interesting concept executed poorly. Kind of like the Bill Richardson presidential campaign.
*****
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.
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 and probably drunk, 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.
If I didn't list your new comic, it was on purpose. How do you like it, chump?
Are Syndicate Reps Misrepresenting For Better or For Worse Changes for Gain?
Editor & Publisher's Dave Astor talks about the changeover coming for Lynn Johnston's juggernaut For Better or For Worse as it shifts from its current state into a new strips/old strip mix centered on storylines marked from the strip's beginnings to the August 31 end point. I think. Astor astutely captures this blog mention that suggests that sales representatives from other syndicates may be misrepresenting the upcoming changeover in order to convince people to drop FBOFW, and, one supposes pick up one of their strips as a replacement.
This is a really bad thing if it's happening as claimed. Lying about another syndicate's offering is an awful sales tactic, and it's doubly so in this case if it's being used against a generally thought-of class act and hugely successful member of her profession like Lynn Johnston. In fact, I'm not sure how even mentioning another syndicate's offering can work as a sales technique; that just seems way too skeevy and pushy for that relationship as I've seen it exist in newsrooms past. But if it does, there's a huge danger with declining papers and slots that things could get ugly quickly despite the overwhelming number of honorable people working as syndicate sales staff.
On the other hand, I'm not even 100 percent sure what the hell is going on with For Better Or For Worse and part of my job is to know stuff like this. I haven't heard how long Universal Press Syndicate salespeople have been going out on this changeover and what they're saying to editors, but the "New Run" strategy wasn't made public knowledge until recently, well after the syndicate had to have known about it if deadlines provide reasonable parameters by which to measure the timing. So while lying is wrong and Lynn Johnston should be celebrated (and not second-guessed, you bozos) for doing whatever the heck she wants to do, I'm sympathetic to the idea that misinformation out there about FBOFW may exist or persist because the actual information has been so fluid and the last burst of it seems to me was delivered in ham-handed fashion.
Your Danish Cartoons Hangover Update
* Danish Cartoons Controversy, the TV show.
* here's an article about the Human Rights Commission taking a pass on Ezra Lavant's republication of the Danish cartoons that suggests that the article passing muster isn't the issue; that fact that it's asked to is.
* Westergaard is also doing about being subpoenaed by Jordanian authorities to appear at trial in that country; he's sort of worried that such a trial might not be fair.
You Asked, They Answered: Tim Lane on Plans For Happy Hour In America Sammy Harkham: "Is 'Belligerent Piano' going to continue as a comic book? It sounded like that's what [cartoonist Tim Lane] wants to do, but I was unsure if that's what's going to happen."
Tim Lane: "Yeah, hopefully as installments in Happy Hour in America. Of course, affording print costs and everything else is another matter. Diamond pulled out as a distributor for Happy Hour after the second issue because sales were lower than they were for the first issue. I really haven't known what to do about it since then. I have no head for business or salesmanship or any of that. But I hate having it end there -- I just haven't figured out how to solve that riddle yet.
"Belligerent Piano is the complete opposite of the short stories making up Abandoned Cars, and the next two books of short stories. It's a vehicle for opposite interests -- a very, very long story as opposed to collected shorts. I'm trying to make a decision about how to continue producing Belligerent Piano, and Happy Hour in America, the comic in which Belligerent Piano would continue as installments. Belligerent Piano is going to continue one way or another, in some form. Right now it is taking the form of a serialized strip on my weblog.
I'm producing it that way for two reasons: One is because I really want to do a serialized strip, in the tradition of Dick Tracy, etc...I love that part of the tradition of comics; the other is because I want to keep the story going. The story itself is very long -- I always imagined it to be this huge, textured story that meanders and indulges in digressions and substories...on and on like that. But you have to take one step at a time, one panel at a time. I don't mind publishing it only on my weblog, but I'd love to have some alternative weekly papers want to publish it. I'd love to see it as a traditional strip -- among the clutter of news and ads surrounding it...just in print, in general. My tastes are too old fashioned to be completely satisfied with the internet. Again, like comic books, it's a shame that serialized comic dailies or weeklies are dying out. Not just one-time gag dailies or weeklies, but extended stories. I think Belligerent Piano works well as a strip, partly because it takes place in my surreal, absurd version of late 1940s America -- a time when serialized dailies were prevelant. There's that connection or link. There's also something great about having a deadline.
"The way I imagine it, the Belligerent Piano strips would be collected into stories that'd run in larger installments of Happy Hour, along with other stuff -- pieces from Folktales, for example, or experimental work. I really don't know what to do about Happy Hour. I want to keep it going because there's something personally very satisfying about fitting into that tradition of comics, however minimally.
"But the story of Belligerent Piano has developed over the years. I just need to figure out how to keep it alive, and right now it's kept alive on the weblog. There are also several short stories based on the characters of Belligerent Piano -- I don't know what to do about those."
Random Comics News Story Round-Up
* the cartoonist and prominent blogger Gerry Alanguilan alerts his readership to an anti-obscenity law being debated in the Philippines that if passed could have dreadful consequences.
* I totally missed this John K post on composition in the work of Harvey Kurtzman, Howie Post and Milt Gross.
* this analysis of the decline of the traditional comic book format is pretty much all supposition, no analysis, and it doesn't get into how important serial comic book sales are to the big American mainstream companies, which gives them a vested interest in seeing they continue above and beyond their general market prospects. Still, it's worth reading if you're interested in an outlook shared by a lot of comics readers.
* various comics professionals respond to Robert Kirkman's video from earlier this week that painted a vision of the American comic book industry he'd like to see.
* finally, that list of quality 1990s superhero comics has been supplemented with your suggestions, at least where I could through a dim memory of my own or through knowledge of the suggesting party's taste have at least a tiny bit of assurance that the suggested work was arguably good. It's funny, I'm not sure you'd come up with such a wide list of non-superhero works were you to ask about another grouping of comics.
* the yearly ICv2.com interview with Paul Levitz is a must-read, if only to take the temperature of one of comics' more influential executives: 
"Belligerent Piano is the complete opposite of the short stories making up Abandoned Cars, and the next two books of short stories. It's a vehicle for opposite interests -- a very, very long story as opposed to collected shorts. I'm trying to make a decision about how to continue producing Belligerent Piano, and Happy Hour in America, the comic in which Belligerent Piano would continue as installments. Belligerent Piano is going to continue one way or another, in some form. Right now it is taking the form of a serialized strip on my weblog. 
Here's something I wish I'd thought of: 
