The Comics Reporter

March 17, 2010

CR Review: Shitbeams On The Loose #2

Creators: Ron Rege Jr., Jason Overby, Dave Nuss, Andrew Smith, Hector Serna Jr., Brent Harada, Robyn Jordan, John Hankiewicz, Grant Reynolds, Ryo Kuramoto, Amane Yamamoto, Rusty Jordan, Luke Ramsey, Andy Rementer.
Publishing Information: Revival House, softcover, 64 pages, October 2009, $9
Ordering Numbers:

On first flip-through, Shitbeams On The Loose #2 took me back to the heady days of 1997, when cartoonists you liked seemed to publish every other week in destined-to-be-lost, handsomely dressed anthologies like this one, when several such volumes a year came out that seemed dominated by fun-looking drawings over actual comics at a time you didn't 100 percent know how you felt about that, when the books in your to-read pile frequently didn't even have page numbers to help you figure out which cartoonist was which.

The good news is that this is a pretty good representative of that sub-form. Andy Rementer's cover is attractive in a way that doesn't quite communicate via jpeg, and he gets the issue's final pages for a brief slice-of-life cartoon with a curiously excitable core. There are pieces by Ron Rege Jr. and John Hankiewicz, artists that one would suppose have fans interested in every single thing they do. I liked best a short story by Grant Reynolds that combined grotesque imagery with these wonderful, single-page visions where the letters of some strident statement or another bleed right into the background. There's nothing here that I would follow into another comic and buy on its own, but there's certainly a lot of fun drawing throughout. I grew more fond of it just flipping it back open for this review. The bad news is I'm not sure where you can find it. Probably at the Stumptown Festival, maybe through one of the artists, likely at one of Portland's small-press cognizant stores. If you can unearth one, and this sounds like your kind of thing, and if you're not looking for anything transcendent in terms of overall artistic effect, Shitbeams can hold its own against anything similar that came out when Clinton was president.

posted 4:00 pm PST | Permalink

Bundled, Tossed, Untied And Stacked

By Tom Spurgeon

* the Amazon.com listings are starting to fill in through the 2010 holiday seasons, and some quick googling can reveal a cover or two -- mostly because of a combination of book distribution catalog requirements and artists active on-line. That's Ray Fenwick's initial shot at a cover for his December Fantagraphics release Mascots, which may or may not be what's actually used when the book comes out. He explains his thinking here.

* the artist Tom Richmond reports that MAD will be bumping up from quarterly production to bi-monthly production, an increase of 50 percent in terms of published pages in a year. He extols nearly all the conceivable virtues of the move in his post, actually.

* Michel Fiffe is spearheading a run of indie/alt cartoonists taking on Erik Larsen's Savage Dragon character, which will run in the comic book of the same name starting in issue #160. All the press material and statements can be found here.

* a company I've never heard off is bringing back the Charmed property through comic book publication, I guess because there wasn't enough Charmed during its 33 seasons on the air. Although I'd buy it if Gilbert Hernandez were doing it.

* it's always fun when people have fangasms over properties in which you're too old to have participated on any level, and thus it was with the announcement that Boom! is doing a Darkwing Duck comic book.

* the series/property Hack/Slash is moving from Devil's Due to Image. It makes total sense for a book like that to make that move, I'd think -- it seems like an Image book already, the creators can control the publishing schedule to their liking, and they're unfettered on the Image end to make outside deals for the property if any come up.

* I somehow missed this the first time around, but busy Dean Haspiel is putting together a comics section for the new, twice-yearly literary journal Cousin Corinne's Reminder. The first issue features a collaboration by Dean Haspiel with Jonathan Lethem.

* if you follow mainstream comic books, you already knew this, but the team of Palmiotti, Gray and Conner is off of their Power Girl sort-of revamp. Conner moved first and the writing team followed. That title had a bit of traction with some fans, about as much as can be expected in this day and age, I'd guess.

* here's a couple of nice editorial cartooning gigs announced: Drew Litton will be supplying cartoons to ESPN; Rob Tornoe is back in Editor & Publisher after their closing scare and ownership change.

* just a bit more on the Matt Thorn-curated manga works at Fantagraphics, including expected print runs.

* finally, Stan Saki has a cover image (below) and a few details about the next Usagi collection at his chat board.

posted 11:00 am PST | Permalink

Go, Look: Happy Monday

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Your Danish Cartoons Hangover Update

There's only major update today, but it's a huge one. It's been announced that David Coleman Headley is expected to plead guilty this week. Headley was one of two Chicago men arrested for conspiring to bring harm to Danish Cartoons Controversy stalwarts Flemming Rose, Kurt Westergaard and the newspaper Jyllands-Posten. While in custody, partly through Headley's cooperation, it became known that he did advance scouting on behalf of the 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai. It makes sense given how much Headley has cooperated with authorities both here and from other countries that a plea deal might follow, and if it's made public as expected there may be some salient information as to how serious their efforts were against the DCC targets. The other Chicago man arrested, Tahawwur Rana, has been much more strident about proclaiming his innocence.

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Go, Read: A Short Note On Hal Foster

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Niqab Cartoon Draws Criticism; Aislin Turns Around, Does Another One

The much-lauded cartoonist Terry Mosher, who works as Aislin, made news this week for a cartoon from last Friday depicting jail bars and a lock through the slit in a niqab. The cartoon refers to the case of Naima Atef Amed, a new immigrant to Canada, who filed charges related to what she believed was discrimination against her during her participation in a French-language class in Montreal. Mosher was not openly confessional in terms of opposing the woman, he followed through this week with another niqab-related drawing, seen at right, above. I don't have the ability to find out the particulars and understand the context of the incident involved, although just mentioning it here will likely result in an accusatory letter, but I did think Mosher's matter-of-fact stand and the paper's willingness to support him worth noting.

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Go, Read: Lengthy Gabrielle Bell Piece

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Your Quality Feature News Round-Up

A few articles out there I'd suggest as either better than the average Internet posting, touching on an important issue, or both:

* if there's one historical/soft news/feature piece you need to be reading right now, it's Steve Bissette's ongoing look at the censorship wars of the 1980s -- so far in parts one, two, three, four and five. I've long thought this important, too, not only for the issues raised by the schism that resulted between various camps over how they negotiate the mainstream comics culture of their time period. I'm in full absorption mode right now on this, although I'll express an opinion on this material at some point, but that doesn't mean you should fall behind in keeping up with what Steve is putting out there.

* Johanna Draper Carlson brings our attention to Tyler Page's breakdown of how much self-publishing has cost him under a certain strategy that involves a lot of con appearances to drive publicity. I think the thing that's interesting here in an historical sense is that while it's funny to say, "Don't go to so many conventions, dude!" I think there was definitely a point at which some sort of direct outreach was absolutely crucial to small- and self-publishers that wanted their work to reach readers, and that this wasn't always the case. When people make relative different ways of getting work out there, they're missing the boat that some methods are far more costly than others, and that all of these methods shape the kind of work readers get to see and how they view them.

* Ada Price of Publishers Weekly talks to a small sample of working retailers about Life During Recession. Direct Market retailers and prominent indy book stores do so much to shape their individual markets that it's hard to find agreement between them and even harder to make much of any shared threads you might discover, but the range of solutions and strategies on display in this piece sure is fascinating. One seeming area of agreement: it was a good year for top-end sellers in terms of books from the regular book publishers, which is something that not all comics shops are set up to sell, and which was an under-reported new story from people like me that if certain books hadn't hit between summer and Christmas last year I have a hunch the commitment from such publishers might have changed. That Yen Press Twilight book should do very well, although I wonder if that isn't a completely different subset retailer-wise from the kind of stores that sell things like Genesis.

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Go, Look: Mort Walker Cartoons

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Collective Memory: ECCC 2010

*****
*****

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Go, Look: Heat Lightning

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Go, Look: Clare Briggs Obit

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Go, Look: 1979 Neal Adams Profile

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Not Comics: August Schomburg

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Go, Look: MOKF #19

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Random Comics News Story Round-Up

* TCAF is looking for programming suggestions.

* Thursday passes have sold out at Comic-Con International, with the initial burst of hotel reservations through the con becoming available tomorrow. I think much more consideration should be given by all parties to my being able to rationally schedule the CR Comic-Con Guide, because right now it's really confusing.

* Kevin Church is right: there are a lot of decent-to-fun action sequences in Marvel comics in the company's earlier days.

* I can't imagine too many people will want to wait until the weekend to watch Richard Thompson draw.

* when posting a few notes on last week's filing by the Kirby Family for termination of various Marvel copyrights, I was confused by a time and character discrepancy in regards to one or two of the characters, particularly the Rawhide Kid, who were invented before the period the suit claimed to cover. A couple of knowledgeable comics pros and one comics historian-type person all wrote in to say that the Kirby revamp on Rawhide Kid was so sweeping and complete that it could be said to be a new character, and that may have been the reason they were included. (Plus there was one of the occasional skips in publication numbers you had back then by the periodical featuring that name.) Since my knowledge of Marvel's western heroes extends to a few time-traveling issues of Avengers and climbing over them at the local flea market to get at comics I wanted, I'll defer to those much more knowledgeable than I am. Sorry, Marvel Westerns fans. Hey, I need something to read in my old age.

* Woman's Day has a feature up on funny comic strips to reconsider. I never thought I'd be typing that sentence.

* this made me smile.

* so did this. (thanks, Devlin Thompson)

* finally, the comics business news and analysis site ICv2.com has a preview of the forthcoming Diamond Retailer Summit, scheduled to coincide with the Reed convention C2E2.

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Happy 58th Birthday, Richard Pachter!

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Happy 54th Birthday, Patrick McDonnell!

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Quick hits
Craft
Roger Langridge Sketches
Sean Phillips Makes A Cover

Exhibits/Events
Festival Of Cartoon Art News
Bob Greenberger Went To Spain

Interviews/Profiles
CBR: Harlan Ellison
CBR: Tom Brevoort
All In A Day: Jeff Parker

Not Comics
Whitney Matheson On Kick-Ass

Publishing
Big Name Fans
Paul Gravett On May 2010 In The DM

Reviews
Tucker Stone: Various
Johnny Bacardi: Various
Grant Goggans: Exit Wounds
Brian Warmoth: Batman #686
Johanna Draper Carlson: Rip Kirby

March 16, 2010

CR Review: Twin Spica, Vol. 1

Creator: Kou Yaginuma
Publishing Information: Vertical Inc., softcover, 192 pages, May 2010, $10.95
Ordering Numbers: 9781934287842 (ISBN13), 1934287849 (ISBN10)

This is I think the first in a new wave of contemporary, quality manga series from Vertical for which it is hoped they prove successful enough to improve that publisher's reach and to support its admirable-to-the-point-of-me-weeping support of classic Osamu Tezuka series. I don't know if Twin Spica can do that for Vertical. I don't know that any series can. But I did find Twin Spica to be a surprisingly compelling read, darting in and out its broad character types and standard set pieces with a light touch, offering up just enough that's different and comparably off to the side to hold my attention. Creator Kou Yaginuma displays a wonderful sense of when to push forward with his narratives and when to let them rest against the broad spectrum of character experience and odder-than-usual social themes against which any and all immediate dramas are played out. There's a cogency to the final package that has a good chance of carrying it through to the final volume with some of what I like about this book surviving the trip. The likelihood is that it's one of those works where if an adult reader grows bored of any soap opera in the foreground, there's a backdrop of space programs and national identity and the way kids process death on which to focus one's attention. And if the character-driven drama material improves -- watch out.

Twin Spica throws its spotlight on Asumi Kamogawa, a promising and under-sized student with a devotion towards space exploration that sets her towards a vocational school for future astronauts set up by Japan in author Yaginuma's fictional, future space program. She has three major, additional connections to that program: a father who used to design rockets that now works as a laborer, a mother killed after a long coma caused by a horrific and potentially defining space program disaster, and the ability to communicate to a deceased astronaut from that effort, who almost always wears a fake lion's mask-head as a reminder of that failed mission's codeword. Two standard, domestic drama elements followed by something super-weird and idiosyncratically compelling is about par for the course with this book. Asumi's experiences at school -- her classmates encompass approximately the same 2:1 ratio of boring to intriguing -- is dominated in this first book by a sterling example of the kind of set piece that would be one page of a North American comic book but make for 50 pages of drip-drip-drip drama in a quality manga series. The challenge is more interesting than the characters and their interrelationships, but not by much. The limited setting lets Yaginuma stretch his artistic legs a bit. His panel to panel progressions are again, fairly standard: pages with bigger panels tend to correspond to emotional high points, a fairly standard technique. What he does well is vary the depth of his panels in addition to shifting his perspective within them.

One thing I worry about continuing Twin Spica is that the psychologically rich solo stories near volume's end may have been an accident of how this work was published -- Twin Spica didn't get off the ground right away as a series, and my understanding from the promotional material is that it wasn't until the short stories worked that a series was commissioned. These aren't supplementary works but captures of the wider work's thematic spectrum in definitive short stories. The effect this has on reading a longer narrative is odd. On the one hand you get this school and home drama with some pretty unexceptional character types practicing standard although solidly-executed, locked-room dialogue. Then on the other hand one of those characters is reintroduced to you pages later via this moody, extended look at the trauma she experienced processing her mother's death with the help of her spirit friend. Our appreciation for Asumi may never be this keen again. Certainly what we'll learn from her over several volumes isn't likely to match the intensity and occasional elegance of that original short story. I suppose it's a good problem to have. I'll be back to look in on this one.

posted 5:00 pm PST | Permalink

Joe Sacco Wins Ridenhour Prize

Cartoonist and journalist Joe Sacco has won the 2010 Ridenhour Book Prize for his Footnotes In Gaza, a late 2009/early 2010 release from Metropolitan. Calling Footnotes a "work of profound social significance," the prize committee will give Sacco $10,000 in conjunction with the prize.

thanks, Peggy Burns

posted 4:30 pm PST | Permalink

This Isn't A Library: New And Notable Releases To The Comics Direct Market

*****

Here are the books that make an impression on me staring at this week's no-doubt largely accurate list of books shipping from Diamond Comic Distributors, Inc. to comic book and hobby shops across North America.

I might not buy all of the works listed here. I might not buy any. But were I in a comic book shop tomorrow I would be reading aloud from many of the following, in a loud yet lovely voice.

*****

JAN101202 BACKING INTO FORWARD JULES FEIFFER MEMOIR HC $30.00
It's Feiffer's memoir! Of course you want this. Most underrated cartoonist of the 20th Century, that guy.

NOV090223 BRONX KILL HC (MR) $19.99
This is one of those Vertigo Crime comics I haven't seen yet, one by Peter Milligan and James Romberger. I would have to imagine that it will help this line if they can sell books with a comics writer rather than an established crime writer; plus giving their better creators the chance to work on all the different lines could go a long way towards solving some of DC's talent development issues. On the other hand, I've heard next to nothing about this book and it's coming out tomorrow.

DEC090247 MYSTERIUS THE UNFATHOMABLE TP $17.99
I'm glad this one is coming out in a trade, as I thought it kind of lost as a WildStorm comic book when it came out as a limited series -- I think Jeff Parker wanted to punch me in the jaw for saying that back when the series was out, but I really did think it was an odd book out there and maybe would have been better served by a different publisher. It's not like I meant anything bad by it, I swear! Publishing is tough right now.

JAN100571 DOOMWAR #2 (OF 6) $3.99
This is a dopey Marvel comic book at least $1 too expensive for my plebeian tastes. I like the sound of that title, though, and Dr. Doom is certainly the Belle of the Bad Guy Ball right now, judging in terms of how many people want to use the armored monarch. Remember, Marvel writers, it's the fact he's as powerful as he is but still packing heat that makes Doom the villain he is today.

NOV090861 KRAZY & IGNATZ HC TIGER TEA $12.99
Not as many folks as 25 years ago think as highly of Krazy Kat, but it's always worth noting when any new publication comes out, even if it's the "Tiger Tea" sequence you might already have in an issue of RAW.

NOV090763 MOME GN VOL 17 2010 $14.99
Hey, the new MOME is out. It's an odd issue, and vaguely dissatisfying as a whole, but the comics by Renee French, T. Edward Bak and Oliver Schrauwen are stop and stare good.

DEC090032 GROO HOGS OF HORDER #4 (OF 4) $3.99
DEC090729 DIE HARD YEAR ONE #7 $3.99
DEC090755 MUPPET SHOW #3 $2.99
JAN100356 JOE THE BARBARIAN #3 (OF 8) (MR) $2.99
A smattering of old-fashioned comic books, the kind that used to drive a lot more of our comics-related shopping experiences. It's all about the creators here: Aragones, Chaykin, Langridge, Morrison.

*****

The full list of this week's releases, including some titles with multiple cover variations and a long, impressive list of toys and other stuff that isn't comics, can be found here. Despite this official list there's no guarantee a comic will show up in the stores as promised, or in all of the stores as opposed to just a few. Also, stores choose what they carry and don't carry so your shop may not carry a specific publication. There are a lot of comics out there.

To find your local comic book store, check this list; and for one I can personally recommend because I've shopped there, albeit a while back, try this.

The above titles are listed with their Diamond order code in the first field, which may assist you in finding comics at your shop or having them order something for you they don't have in-stock. Ordering through a direct market shop can be a frustrating experience, so if you have a direct line to something -- you know another shop has it, you know a bookstore has it -- I'd urge you to consider all of your options.

If I didn't list your comic here, that's because it's cold out and my fingers don't work. It's really March?

*****

posted 4:00 pm PST | Permalink

Authorities Arrest Man Suspected Of Killing Brazil's Glauco And His Son

According to wire reports and picked up by a variety of arts advocacy organizations, a man was arrested while crossing into Paraguay that has since confessed to killing Glauco Villas Boas and his adult son last Friday. The 53-year-old Glauco were shot to death in their home in a Sao Paulo suburb early Friday morning. How this squares with initial reports that two men were involved, I'm not certain.

This article suggests additional detail, such as that the man's name is Carlos Eduardo Sundfeld Nunes, and that like the younger Boas he was a college student, and that there was a shootout involved that wounded a police officer. The article also explains the gossip that ran rampant on Friday and over the weekend that some sort of cult activity was involved: the student was a member of a spiritual center founded by the elder Boas and his wife, and the killer had access to the home of the center's patriarch.

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Go, Look: Yak Yak #2

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A Few Notes On The Kirby Family Suing For Termination Of Copyrights

* you can look at the new filing here. You should read it; it's not so bad.

* your plaintiffs are: Lisa Kirby, both as an individual and as a trustee of something called The Rosalind Kirby Trust; Barbara J. Kirby; Neal L. Kirby; Susan M. Kirby. Your defendants are the usual Marvel companies, plus the usual John Does, plus Disney.

* this comes on the heels of a December lawsuit from Marvel seeking a set-aside on September request for copyright termination on 45 Marvel characters.

* I'm not sure I understand the inclusion of characters like Rawhide Kid, that were revamped under Kirby but actually precede his return to the restaurant. I'm also not sure why we get a Wertham-driven history lesson or have to hear about the art returns, but I'm certainly not a lawyer.

* I think it's fair to say that a lot of this will come down what the legal proceeding eventually decides was Jack Kirby's relationship to Marvel while doing the work in question, whether he was a freelancer or whether he was in the kind of supervised relationship that many feel proves a work-for-hire style relationship. That should prove... interesting, especially if it comes from really nailing down Kirby's relationship with Stan Lee and Martin Goodman during the Marvel surge.

* as has been the case with Stan Lee's various legal maneuverings vis-a-vis Marvel -- and now even vis-a-vis SLM -- what was said in later agreements and how those arrangements could conceivably have an impact on how the court sees the arrangement that existed.

* finally, I usually get more upset at the fans that rage against family members suing on behalf of a deceased family members as greedy. That's still a horrible thing to say about a person of whom you actually know very little, and I still think in many cases it's a combination reaction fueled by the fear of losing one's favorite superheroes and the guilt/entitlement a certain kind of fan may feel by those companies' efforts to "share" the characters with fans.

That contempt is still there, trust me. My main objection, to be honest, is the lack of intellectual rigor it takes to presume that some violation is occurring by seeking this kind of legal outcome, because a) you don't like it, b) you see some hidden message like they've included Spider-Man whose creative pedigree is much more in doubt than that of many other characters. Just stop it. I'll argue the morality involved concerning comics' long-term relationships with creators like Jack Kirby with anyone who'd care to argue the other side, and I'm confident I'd win. But let's not presume that this is something being tried in Nerd Court. What I'm saying is that whether or not there's an ability to sue on these grounds and whether or not this suit is justified is exactly what gets resolved with these motions up to and including a trial and appeals.

Still, I do see more people looking at the Kirby Family's side of things, if not outright rooting for them. That gives me just enough breathing room to feel, well, sorry for people that can't see past a money motivation here or in similar cases, or that can't put a money motivation in its proper and relative context. In the end, these issues won't be resolved according to the devotion of comic book fans or the certainty of creators rights advocates; it'll turn on the law.

posted 2:00 pm PST | Permalink

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