The top comics-related news stories from October 24 to October 30, 2009:
1. Two men arrested in Chicago for plotting the death of Kurt Westergaard and Flemming Rose, perhaps with Al Qaeda assistance.
2. 2010 Angouleme Festival in danger because of municipality's refusal to pay full amount of expected $600,000 (USD) utilized for infrastructure and security.
3. Award-winning, iconic The Comics Journalre-formatting into two semi-annuals with a beefed-up online component.
Could They Really Cancel Angouleme? According to articles like this one, a challenge to the funding of technical services by the local municipality has cast the future of the 2010 Festival International de la Bande Dessinee into doubt and suggests potential difficulties for future years if this year's festival comes off. At the heart is approximately $600,000 (USD) in monies that go to infrastructure and security costs, and, more broadly, the city's contractual investment in future editions of the event. While the Festival has itself been profitable the last couple of years and is the very definition of leisure destination travel that is the hottest category in tourism, a worldwide recession, friction between national and local expenditures on such matters, and the occasionally fiery nature of European politics all indicate a counter-possibility to those of sitting over here in North America and without any knowledge of the specific situation suggesting that a cancellation would never happen. To be honest with you, I'm usually wrong when I make assumptions about European comics.
So I asked Bart Beaty, the noted North American expert on the European comics scene who writes this site's "Conversational Euro-Comics" and who is a frequent, devoted attendee of the Festival for his thoughts on the matter. He gave me this thoughtful response.
I am so not privy to the high stakes negotiations that would take place between the town and the Festival, that I am almost tempted to just keep my mouth shut and listen to the signals. The essential problem for the moment seems to be the idea that Angouleme does not want to take on the cost (400,000 Euros) of erecting the tents and the security barriers that allow the Festival to function. Like every other government in the world, they're faced with declining tax revenues and a financial crisis. This has led them to question whether or not the city really derives that much economic benefit from the Festival, and the suggestion that the costs of erecting tents so that publishers can sell comics should be borne by the publishers. There is also concern moving forward about future funding for the Festival for 2011-2013.
This is not really surprising to me. Things are tough all over, and it has seemed for several years that the Festival has had a sword of Damocles hanging above its head. There was talk of moving it out of Angouleme during the construction downtown and the displacement that that caused, and in recent years I hear more and more about publishers who don't think that it is financially worthwhile to set up stands at Angouleme, with the costs of bringing all sorts of employees down there for the week. One would suspect that there will be publishers -- both large and small -- who would balk at added costs if the Festival has to pick up the cost of the tents. At the same time, the town has to know that if the Festival leaves it's not coming back, and I don't think they want that (no matter how disgruntled the locals occasionally get about the event).
At this point, and knowing nothing first hand about ongoing negotiations, I would think that this is public posturing and possibly brinksmanship, but that some accommodation will be worked out. Having said that, let me be the first to say that while I have a hotel room booked, I'm not buying my plane ticket until things are a little more clear. And I would guess that I'm not the only one in that position.
As Bart suggests, I'm hearing of a higher level of concern from European publishers as opposed to the contingent of North Americans that attend. I would expect the fate of this year's show to come to a head pretty quickly, as cultural officers and Festival organizers begin their slow build to late January. Neither outcome would shock me.
Friday AM Update: Bart wrote in about a half-hour before this post is to roll out to say that I should confirm he sent us the "sword of Damocles" comparison well before it was used this morning as part of this article's headline. Consider it confirmed. You should read that article, too, if this is a story that interests you. It's an interview with Franck Bondoux, the "delegate general" of FIBD and the person whose statements on radio have driven this story. This article gets into the city's response a bit, but it's written in ActuaBD.com's usually looping style that I have difficult parsing.
OTBP: Warlord Of Io #2 the James Turner comic whose early cancellation led many folks to question the future of the Direct Market is part of the Internet Market, with an affordable pay-for download at publisher SLG
Your Danish Cartoons Hangover Update
* it looks like lawyers for Tahawwur Hussein Rana are trying to play him off against the other and perhaps more directly involved figure, David Coleman Headley. Makes sense to me.
* a couple of semi-clashing articles about India's interest in the recently arrested Chicago men: One says Mickey Mouse plot central figure David Coleman Headley's mention of a prominent Indian actor as one of his international contacts is enough for India to dispatch an interrogation team to Chicago, where Headley's being held. Another says Headley was going to be used in a major strike on Indian soil and that the FBI shared documents with them to that effect. I guess they don't really clash, but the second one makes the first one look kind of unimportant. According to my record with predictive news analysis, that likely means it will end up being the more important story.
* finally. Jytte Klausen spoke at Brandeis this week. No specific mention of the new arrests. The content of her comments -- and what gets left to other speakers -- sure is interesting. There's a pretty good student editorial here that again punches Yale in the kidneys for the decision to censor any imagery portraying Muhammad from Klausen's book.
Marvel Makes Major Mobile Move
According to the comics business news and analysis site ICv2.com, Marvel has released about a hundred titles in various, overlapping ways through major digital download platforms. One would assume that this represents both a notable move on Marvel's part as well as indicates they're going to be still sifting through results for answers, feedback and relevant information they can apply to a broader strategy. My guess reading ICv2.com's article much earlier than this post will roll out is that there will be a lot of "major milestone" talk, but despite my jokey headline for me there's not enough grind or surprise there to catch my attention in quite that way. Clearly Marvel like all comics companies should be moving forward in a matter-of-fact way with some sort of digital offering or series of same, and I would imagine at this point they feel the same way. I'm probably more optimistic than some that there's an additional audience to be had rather than an existing one to be lost, but more to the point, I'm not sure those worries are all that relevant anymore.
There are a lot of repulsive aspects to the collectible comics arena, but I love the idea of finding all of these comics in some building when they're likely worth five to ten times what the building was.
Random Comics News Story Round-Up
* so Wizardis dropping its price guide, maybe? I have to imagine that's an overall good given how corrupt and awful those kind of enterprises can be. At the same time, when I was at The Comics Journal in the mid-1990s it was hard not to also see that section of the magazine as their providing a service greatly desired by their core audience.
* one thing that may have been lost in the news about The Comics Journal moving the bulk of its regular output on-line is the final line-up of interview pairings for its forthcoming #300 as printed on the cover for that landmark issue: Art Spiegelman-Dash Shaw, Jean-Christophe Menu-Sammy Harkham, Frank Quitely-Dave Gibbons, David Mazzucchelli-Dash Shaw, Alison Bechdel-Danica Novgorodoff, Howard Chaykin-Ho Che Anderson, Denny O'Neil-Matt Fraction, Jaime Hernandez-Zak Sally, Ted Rall-Matt Bors, Jim Borgman-Keith Knight, Stan Sakai-Chris Schweizer. I'm in love with all of those pairings except two, and figure they could all make for good interviews.
* the new web site from Fantagraphics art direct Adam Grano may delight or infuriate you.
* there's an interesting post by Jason Miles up at Comics Comics about Gil Kane that not only provides a couple of killer quotes from Kane but perhaps provides some insight as to why a young artist with decidedly art comics interest might find Kane appealing as an artistic figure and what sets that same kind of young artist looking at books in the bargain bin.
Your Danish Cartoons Hangover Update
* in case you missed yesterday's explosive revelations of arrests in the case of two Chicago men who wanted to bring terror upon those they felt responsible for the Danish Cartoons Controversy in 2005, the Chicago Tribunehas a decent general article to catch you up.
* for some reason, I totally spaced on the fact that the other target of the general assassination plot was Flemming Rose.
* finally, Matthias Wivel looks at the Mickey Mouse plot as a jumping-off point for a wider discussion of re-publishing the Danish Cartoons. I've always rejected the notion of publishing them for solidarity, yet I still strongly believe that publishing them back when people were dying and there was a lot of mystery as to what those cartoons looked like should have been part of many more journalistic missions than it was.
Crumb Genesis Book First Print Sell-Out? It should come as no surprise to anyone that Robert Crumb's The Book Of Genesis Illustrated has been a big hit with the media. The combination of the Bible, comics, and a 1960s icon best known for breaking artistic taboos about sex and human relationships paves the way for everything from a two-line twitter post to an extended feature article. Here's this morning's contribution: a piece in the LA Times entertainment section about research sources and methodology. I've heard unofficially from a couple of sources that it's hard to get a hold of the book at the distribution level right now, indicating strong sales on the first printing. It's difficult to gauge the veracity of such claims without the book publisher jumping in to trumpet it, and sometimes that just confuses things further. Why I think it's worth noting is that if it's selling well, this makes the second half of 2009 a potentially pretty strong comics in bookstores sales period after some book to book softness in late 2008, early 2009.
List In Progress: 2009 YALSA Nominees List Of Great Graphic Novels For Teens
The Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) has released its nominees list -- to date -- of "Great Graphic Novels For Teens," which is pretty much what that sentence promises. The full list is 53 titles, about 1/3 of the books nominated. They are broken down into "top 10" and then "nonfiction" and "fiction" lists. The YALSA committee list of responsible persons is available through the link above. The final list will be named in the new year.
Top Ten
* Abel, Jessica, Gabriel Soria and Warren Pleece. Life Sucks. First Second. 2008. 9781596431072. $19.95.
* Ashihara, Hinako. Sand Chronicles, Vols. 1-3. VIZ. 2008. 9781421514772, 9781421514789, 9781421514796. $8.99 apiece.
* Clevinger, Brian and Steve Wegener. Atomic Robo: Atomic Robo and the Fightin' Scientists of Tesladyne. 2008. Red Five Comics. 9780980930207. $18.99.
* Inoue, Takehiko. Real Vols. 1-2 VIZ. 2008. 978421519890, 9781421519906. $12.99 each.
* Ito, Junki. Uzumaki Vol. 1. VIZ. 2007. 9781421513898. $9.99.
* Landowne, Youme and Anthony Horton. Pitch Black. Cinco Puntos Press. 2008. 9781933693064. $14.00.
* Steinberger, Aimee Major. Japan Ai: A Tall Girl's Adventures in Japan. Go Comi. 2007. 9781933617831. $16.99.
* Tamaki, Mariko and Jilliam Tamaki. Skim. Groundwood Books. 2008. 9780888997531. $18.95.
* Way, Gerard and Gabriel Ba. Umbrella Academy: Apocalypse Suite. Dark Horse. 2008. 9781593079789. $17.95.
* Wilson, G. Willow and M. K. Perker. Cairo. Vertigo. 2007. 9781401211400. $24.99.
*****
Full List, NonFiction
* Buhle, Paul and Sabrina Jones. Isadora Duncan: A Graphic Biography. Hill and Wang. 2008. 9780809094974. $19.95.
* Hennessey, Jonathan and Aaron McConnell. The United States Constitution: A Graphic Adaptation. Hill and Wang. 2008. 9780809094707. $16.95.
* Landowne, Youme and Anthony Horton. Pitch Black. Cinco Puntos Press. 2008. 9781933693064. $14.00.
* Pink, Daniel H. and Rob Ten Pas. The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You'll Ever Need. Riverhead Trade. 2008. 9781594482915. $15.00.
* Schultz, Mark, Zander Cannon and Kevin Cannon. The Stuff of Life: A Graphic Guide to Genetics and DNA. Hill and Wang. 2008. 9780809089383. $18.98.
* Steinberger, Aimee Major. Japan Ai: A Tall Girl’s Adventures in Japan. Go Comi. 2007. 9781933617831. $16.99.
*****
Full List, Fiction
* Abel, Jessica, Gabriel Soria and Warren Pleece. Life Sucks. First Second. 2008. 9781596431072. $19.95.
* Ashihara, Hinako. Sand Chronicles, Vols. 1-3 VIZ. 2008. 9781421514772, 9781421514789, 9781421514796. $8.99 each.
* Bialik, Steve. Minister Jade. Cellar Door Publishing. 2008. 9780976683131 . $14.99.
* Black, Holly and Ted Naifeh. The Good Neighbors: Book One, Kin. 2008. Graphix. 9780439855624. $16.99.
* Brubaker, Ed and Steve Epting. The Death of Captain America, Vols. 1-2. 2008. Marvel. 9780785124238, 9780785124245. $14.99 each.
* Clevinger, Brian and Steve Wegener. Atomic Robo: Atomic Robo and the Fightin' Scientists of Tesladyne. 2008. Red Five Comics. 9780980930207. $18.99.
* David, Peter, Robin Furth and Jae Lee. Dark Tower: The Gunslinger Born, Vols. 1-2. Marvel. 2008. 9780785121442, 9780785127093. $14.99 each.
* Diggle, Andy and Jock. Green Arrow: Year One. DC. 2008. 9781401216870. $24.99.
* Flight, Vol. 5. Villard. 2008. 9780345505897. $25.00.
* Fujisawa, Yuki. Metro Survive, Vols. 1-2. DrMaster Publications. 2008. 9781597961257, 9781597961264. $9.95 each.
* Hale, Shannon, Dean Hale and Nathan Hale. Rapunzel's Revenge. Bloomsbury. 2008. 9780345503305. $18.99.
* Hicks, Faith Erin. The War at Ellsmere. Slave Labor Graphics. 2008. 9781593621407. $12.95.
* Hotta, Yumi and Takeshi Obata. Hikaru no Go, v. 1213. VIZ Media. 2008. 9781421515083, 9781421515090. $7.95 each.
* InWan, Youn and others. DejaVu: Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter. Tokyopop. 2008. 9781427803184.
* Inoue, Takehiko. Real, Vols. 1-2. VIZ. 2008. 978421519890. $12.99 each.
* Inoue, Takehiko. Slam Dunk, v. 1. VIZ. 2008. 9781421506791. $7.99.
* Ito, Junki. Uzumaki, Vol. 1. VIZ. 2007. 9781421513898. $9.99.
* Johns, Geoff and Dave Gibbons. Green Lantern: The Sinestro Corps War, Vols. 1-2. DC. 2008. 9781401216504, 9781401218003. $24.99 each.
* Johnson, Mat and Warren Pleece. Incognegro: A Graphic Mystery. Vertigo. 2008. 9781401210977. $19.99.
* Kabei, Yukako and Shiori Teshirogi. Kieli, Vol. 1. Yen Press. 2008. 9780759528512. $9.99. Kieli, v. 2. Yen Press. 2008. 9780759528529. $10.99.
* Kawahara, Kazune. High School Debut, Vols. 1-2. VIZ. 2008. 9781421514819, 9781421514826. $8.99 each.
* Kirkman, Robert and Jason Howard. Astounding WolfMan, Vol. 1. Image Comics. 2008. 9781582408620. $9.99.
* Kirkman, Robert and Ryan Ottley. Invincible, Vol. 9. Image Comics. 2008. 9781582408279. $14.99.
* Kishimoto, Masashi. Naruto, Vols. 28-31. VIZ. 2008. 9781421518640, 9781421518657, 9781421519425, 9781421519432. $7.95 each.
* Kiyuduki, Satoko. ShoulderaCoffin Kuro, Vols. 1-2. Yen Press. 2008. 9780759528970, 9780759529014. $10.99 each.
* Kusakawa, Nari. Two Flowers for the Dragon, Vols. 1-2. CMX Manga. 2008. 9781401215262, 9781401215279. $9.99 each.
* Moore, Terry. Echo: Moon Lake. Abstract Studio. 2008. 9781892597403. $15.95.
* Nakaji, Yuki. Venus In Love Vols. 1-3, DC Comics/CMX. 2007. 97810401213459, 9781401217303, 9781401217723. $9.99 each.
* Pak, Greg and Carlo Pagulayan. Planet Hulk. Marvel Comics. 2008. 9780785120124. $34.99.
* Park, Hee Jung. Fever, Vol. 1. Tokyopop. 2008. 9781427805324. $9.99.
* Rich, Jamie and Marc Ellerby. Love the Way You Love, Vols. 1-2. Oni Press. 2007. 9781932664669, 9781932664959. $11.95 each.
* Sakai, Stan. Usagi Yojimbo: Tomoe's Story. Dark Horse Comics. 2008. 9781593079475. $15.95.
* Shitou, Kyoko. Key to the Kingdom, Vol. 1. CMX. 2007. 9781401213930. $9.99.
* Simone, Gail and Neil Googe. Welcome to Tranquility, Vols. 1-2. Wildstorm. 20072008. 9781401215163, 9781401217730. $19.99/$14.99.
* Straczynski, J. Michael and Esad Ribic. Silver Surfer: Requiem. Marvel. 2007. 9780785128489. $19.99.
* Takaya, Natsuki. Fruits Basket, Vols. 20-21. Tokyopop. 2008. 9781427800091, 9781427806826. $9.99 each.
* Tamaki, Mariko and Jilliam Tamaki. Skim. Groundwood Books. 2008. 9780888997531. $18.95.
* Tamaki, Mariko and Steve Rolston. Emiko Superstar. Minx. 2008. 9781401215361. $9.99.
* TenNapel, Doug. Monster Zoo. Image Comics. 2008. 9781582409115. $14.99.
* Tezuka, Osamu. Black Jack, Vol. 1. Vertical. 2008. 9781934287279. $16.95.
* Tezuka, Osamu. Dororo, Vols. 1-3. Vertical. 2008. 9781934287163, 9781934287170, 9781934287187. $13.95 each.
* Umino, Chica. Honey and Clover, Vols. 1-3. VIZ. 2008. 9781421515045, 9781421515052, 9781421515052. $9.99 each.
* Way, Gerard and Gabriel Ba. Umbrella Academy: Apocalypse Suite. Dark Horse. 2008. 9781593079789. $17.95.
* Whedon, Joss and Michael Ryan. Runaways: Dead End Kids. Marvel. 2008. 9780785128533. $19.99.
* Wilson, G. Willow and M. K. Perker. Cairo. Vertigo. 2007. 9781401211400. $24.99.
* Yagami, Yu. Hikkatsu! Strike a Blow to Vivify!, Vols. 1-3. Go Comi. 2007. 9781933617572, 9781933617589, 9781933617596. $10.99 each.
* Yazawa, Ai. Nana, Vols. 8-12. VIZ. 2008. 9781421515397, 9781421517452, 9781421517469, 9781421517452, 9781421518794. $8.99 each.
A couple of folks have e-mailed me this posting that suggests a reduction in public support for the Festival International de la bande dessinee could endanger this year's festival. It makes total sense there'd be less public money forthcoming, but I don't see much to the posting beyond the assertion that there could be trouble. One has to think that any real danger to the show would be such a PR disaster that something would work itself out, although I can imagine plenty of drama up until that point.
Random Comics News Story Round-Up
* the newspaper industry bible Editor & Publisherconfirms that Walt Handelsman's cartoons are behind the pay wall erected at Newsday.
* yesterday's announcement of a multi-book deal between Fantagraphics and Greg Sadowski sent me scrambling for my copy of Supermen! -- Matthew Brady has an itemized series of observations here. That is one deeply weird and occasionally wonderful book.
* the writer and inker Charles Yoakum analyzes a recent David Gabriel interview in terms of Marvel's publishing strategies. Michael Doran does a play by play.
* go, bid: it looks like the Hero Initiative's charity auction of Wolverine covers has begun.
* I'm a little confused in that Wizard shut down its WizardUniverse.com site to almost bare bones functionality, and then announced that they'd moved their stuff to WizardWorld.com, but it basically looks like the old WizardUniverse site and functions about as well, by which I mean not well.
* here's something I hadn't noticed in the recent coverage of the new Asterix volume tied into that character's 50th anniversay: Albert Uderzo wants volumes to continue after he dies. That article is worth it for Hugues Dayez's brutal critical appraisal of the later volumes. Tell us what you really think, Mr. Dayez.
* C. Spike Trotman is funding her second self-published project Poorcraftthrough a Kickstarter page. The Templar, Arizona cartoonist and her Iron Circus Comics is teaming with Diana Nock for a lengthy disquisition on options for stretching one's spending cash to, says the PR, "teach readers how to live well on less, expanding their options and freeing them from the paycheck-to-paycheck living that defines so many modern lives."
* in the announcement this week likely to cover the most future books, Fantagraphics sent out a release that they will partner with editor/designer and former full-time Fanta staffer on a series of seven new book collections collecting classic material. Sadowski's previous books with the company are Supermen: The First Wave Of Comic Book Heroes 1936-1941, B. Krigstein and B. Krigstein Comics. The new books, to be released twice a year, will start with Four Color Fear: Forgotten Horror Comics Of the 1950s in collaboration with historian John Benson (June 2010). The second book will be on Alex Toth's work at Standard Comics in the early '50s (to be released Fall 2010). Subsequent books will cover Jack Cole's Golden Age work 1937-1941, EC artists at other comics companies, Basil Wolverton's science ficition and horror comics from 1938 to 1955 and a Dick Briefer Frankenstein book.
* one might say that the big publishing news of the week is DC in partnership with Stephen King on a book. I'm told it's a bit different than the King/Marvel partnership in that King will be writing his own character for a few issues after which point the publication will continue with another of its launch characters in a solo slot. Anyway, I hope it's good.
* despite its recent deal with Nickelodeon for the overall property, Mirage has kept the right to do a certain number of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle comics and will exercise a portion of that right through May of next year for sure.
* the writer Clifford Meth sent an e-mail to tell me that The Invincible Gene Colan, a project to benefit the great American mainstream comic book creator whose name is in the title, will be published by Marvel in February. You can track its progress here, I bet. I have an essay in the book.
* I also wrote the introduction for this book, if anyone's interested. That's right, this blog is all about my awesome accomplishments from now on.
* Kazu Kibuishi says he's getting into the deep end of the production schedule for Amulet Vol. 3, which is nice given how well that book's first two volumes have done.
* the great PictureBox Inc. has a bunch of new items for sale. If that link doesn't work, the post announcing those items should be somewhere findable here.
* finally, Kurt Busiek is as surprised as anyone that a new trade of his work on the Iron Man character has been collected in trade form, and runs through some of the reasons such a book might be coming out now.
Danish Cartoonist Kurt Westergaard Targeted In Foiled Assassination Plot
In a bizarre and distressing twist on a story over five years old, two Chicago men have been arrested in what is being described as a plan to attack employees of the Jyllands-Posten newspaper that published the Danish Muhammad Cartoons in 2005.
David Coleman Headley, who used to be called Daood Gilani before changing his name in 2006, is a US-born citizen who once lived in Pakistan and now calls Chicago's north side home, was arrested at O'Hare airport on October 3 as he planned to make a trip to Pakistan. He held an additional ticket to Copenhagen.
A longtime acquaintance of Headley's and a travel agent who helped him arrange trip this year to Denmark and Pakistan, Tahawwur Hussain Rana, was arrest on October 18. Rana is a Pakistani-born Canadian citizen living in Chicago.
Headley's charges include conspiracy to murder and maim in a foreign country. The New York Times has reported that Headley informed FBI agents that his plans initially consisted of harm to the Jyllands-Posten building, and then moved towards killing the paper's cultural editor and cartoonist Westergaard. Westergaard was informed of the plot yesterday, and reportedly feels safe yet angry.
Reports indicate that Mr. Headley had contact with members of a terrorist group affiliated with Al Qaeda, where his plans were referred to as the "Mickey Mouse Project."
What's interesting about these arrests from a domestic standpoint is that both men are in their late 40s and each, especially Rana, is a working member of a community -- a far cry from the standard portrait of young people and drifting souls getting the not-so-bright idea to take action on behalf of an abstract political notion like this one.
Both men are scheduled to appear in federal court in Chicago today.
Gary Groth On TCJ Post-#300 Moves
Fantagraphics co-publisher and longtime Comics Journal editor Gary Groth was kind enough to answer a few questions about the Journal's forthcoming move to a mostly on-line model with two print editions a year, a move that was recently announced to current subscribers through a letter. He says that the move has been discussed for a relatively short period of time -- approximately, three months, with much of that time spent on refining the proposal. If things go according to their plans the revamped site should launch in late November. Groth says this will not have an effect on the magazine's current news blog Journalista! or its infamous message board -- "Dirk [Deppey] will continue the fine Journalista tradition, and the message board will, alas, remain much the same" -- and the staff will remain Groth, Mike Dean, Deppey and Kristy Valenti, although it's uncertain at this time how individual work time will be apportioned.
Asked about the direct impetus for making the move, and if there were financial motives involved, Groth, who has been editing the publication since 1976, admitted it was a mix of editorial and financial concerns and spoke to the nature of publishing in the new century in a way a lot of print publishers facing similar decisions may recognize.
"It was always a strain to assemble eight commercially viable issues that were also aesthetically pleasing -- balancing that fine line -- every year. I feel much more comfortable concentrating our resources on fewer print editions each year and spending some of those resources on our web presence. It's no secret that newspapers and magazines are suffering because so much of what they've traditionally done can be done on the web, faster and cheaper. We decided therefore to redesign the editorial and physical format of the magazine to take advantage of what print's best at -- upscale production values, longer prose, more permanent content -- and bring the Journal's mandate for criticism and commentary to the web with a vengeance.
The details of how the Internet and print versions will interact under this new set-up Groth is happy to discover as his editorial team moves forward.
"I haven't the slightest idea at this point. I suspect that little of the material on the website will be reprinted in the print edition; rather, I'm anticipating that short pieces that appeared on the website may be expanded for the print edition -- or the reverse, an excerpt of something we plan for the print edition may be previewed on the website. But there's going to be a learning curve while we figure out the different editorial requirements for both the website and the print edition. My main goal is to maintain the editorial impetus of the magazine on the website, making it an intelligent and sometimes provocative source criticism and commentary.
Although he wasn't asked in a follow-up, Groth also spoke to the strategy described in the subscriber letter of new bloggers working out of the TCJ framework.
"You forgot to ask, but, yes, to that end, Ken Smith will be blogging."
*****
additional: Dirk Deppey follows up yesterday's revelation of the move (made here at CR) with his own take on the matter, including official PR.
My New Favorite Industry Pundit
"The comic-book industry, in general, is kind of in trouble. It's going the way the music industry is. I had a meeting with Stan Lee about a year ago to talk about doing another comic book -- he's always been a big fan of Elvira -- and he said -- and this is coming from Mr. Comic Book himself -- 'Get out of comic books! Forget it! It's over! It's done! All people want to do is get on the Internet!' I'm happy that I did all those comic books; I have them all, and it was a really cool thing to do. I still, of course, go to Comic-Con every year. But even Comic-Con is less about comic books now and more about Hollywood. It's a freaking nightmare." -- Elvira, Mistress Of The Dark
Your 2009 Prix Ouest-France Winner Lulu, femme nue by Etienne Davodeau received this year's prix Ouest-France during a ceremony Saturday. Previous winners Matthieu Blanchin and Christian Perrissin of Martha Jane Cannary. The juried award is associated with the Quai des bulles Festival, and the article indicates that it was a close win. We're just about at that time of the year where French-language comics awards begin to pick up as France's cultural focus begins to lean towards Angouleme.
* not comics: Gary Tyrrell calls our attention to the horrifying case of John T. Unger. Stories like these should remind us that there are people out there that think it's their god-given right to rip off artists, and are willing to go to the mat for it.
* I think everyone in comics needs to post embarrassing pictures of themselves in Halloween costumes right now.
* you know, for as much beating up as I've done on the Vertigo slate -- which doesn't come close to matching the nasty words you'll hear from comics creators about their impressions of the imprint if you just sit around a bunch of them long enough -- I do think they've done a good job in the post-Y world of nursing some of their series into solid performers.
* finally, a grant to help libraries build their graphic novel holdings seems like a nice idea to me, and I hope the program is executed with skill to match the good will such an idea engenders.
Subscriber Letter: TCJ Moves More Dramatically On-Line; Print Version To Come Out Two Times A Year
Fantagraphics' The Comics Journal has announced via subscriber letter (scanned version above; large scanned version available by clicking through the above) that they'll be moving more of their coverage on-line after the forthcoming issue #300. This will correspond to making the print version of the magazine a larger, apparently more substantial publication that will come out twice a year. Included in the longtime, award-winning magazine's efforts on-line will be more of the features through which the magazine made its name known -- including its interviews -- and what appears to be a number of staff bloggers added to the roster.
The magazine, first published under its current leadership in 1976, currently offers several things on-line including a well-known message board, a number of archived articles, and Dirk Deppey's Journalista!. A competing, on-line version of the magazine with separate content ("TCJ On-Line") was published briefly in 1997-1998.
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 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 take them all and build a little comics fort out of them, demanding of the proprietor sandwiches of mayonnaise and Buddig ham on white bread be brought to my castle.
*****
AUG090468 FANTASTIC FOUR #572 $2.99
This is the superhero comic of this exact moment in time.
AUG090475 INCREDIBLE HERCULES #137 $2.99 AUG090012 ABE SAPIEN ONE SHOT (OSW) $3.50 AUG090030 GROO HOGS OF HORDER #1 (OF 4) $3.99
Here are a few more mainstream comic-book comics sporting a halfway decent pedigree.
MAY090566 MMW ATLAS ERA MENACE HC VOL 01 $59.99
I would buy these odd collections of Atlas material had I the money to do so. I'd love to take a look at one, but I don't have a nearby comic shop, either. Man, this is depressing.
JUL090645 ROCKPOOL FILES GN $6.95
A collection of Glenn Dakin and Phil Elliott strips, which makes this the out of left field surprise publication of the week.
SEP091066 1000 COMIC BOOKS YOU MUST READ HC $29.99
This is Tony Isabella's book, I believe, and it's his take on exactly what the title would have you think it covers.
JUL090984 FAT FREDDYS CAT OMNIBUS (MR) $29.99 SEP090805 KEY MOMENTS FROM THE HISTORY OF COMICS SC (MR) $10.00 SEP090806 MAP OF MY HEART GN (MR) $24.95 JUL090848 RED SNOW HC (MR) $24.95
These don't really belong together in any significant way, but I wanted to bundle them closely because as far as I can tell they're the four best books out this month. The Fat Freddys Cat Omnibus features material that's not exactly form-expanding, but there's a lot of fine cartooning there and having it all in one place will be nice. The Ayroles Key Moments book also feature a ton of clever, funny material. The Drawn and Quarterly books pretty much encompass a lot of what makes that company great. Susumu Katsumata's collection of short stories is the latest step in the publisher's ongoing efforts to release classic gekiga cartoonists to an increasingly sophisticated manga audience. The belle of the ball this week, however, is the latest John Porcellino effort Map Of My Heart. He's a great cartoonist, and we're lucky to have him. All in all, this is one of those weekends you might end up paying $100 for your library as opposed to $30 for your longbox.
*****
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, it may or may not exist.
Heidari runs the web site linked to above, contributes to several newspapers firmly in the political reform camp and was recently cultural editor at the banned newspaper Etemad-e Melli. A number of that publication's contributors are also in prison. RSF says that Heidari was picked up during a religious ceremony honoring political prisoners in the home of one such prisoner. Many of those picked up have since been released.
Heidari was born in 1970; a gallery of his work can be seen here.
Go, Look: Blutch Drawing Flickr Set from Sarah Glidden: "More french comics stuff... here's a set of photos and videos from a recent event at the Fondation Cartier where Blutch drew about six drawings live, projected onto a screen inspired by the music of Sun Ra."
La Monde Vs. Morocco: “All Cartoonists Seem To Be Cursed Forever Globally”
An article on the English-language portion of the Pravda site not only carries maybe the best headline of the week but also sorts through the Le Monde picking a fight with Morocco portion of the Khalid Gueddar affair, where the French newspaper hammered officials by repeating Gueddar's caricature of a royal family member and running further commentary of its own. Spain's El Paishas been blocked as well.
Random Digital Comics News Round-Up
I'm going to start gathering these pieces into one place somehow and in some way, so forgive me these occasional, transitional posts. Beyond the usual barrage of "I'm doing digital comics now" press releases, which as a group have me baffled, two stories about readers pop a bit. The first is Simon Jones' straightforward and casual review of B&N's new portable reader Nook as a way to potentially read comics. As Jones unpacks in a few, brief sentences, there's a lot more to how these things are developed beyond simply adding color to make it a place to store and host funnybook pages -- there are things like which formats are acceptable for transfer and which files can be read at what settings. The second is that Amazon.com remains bullish on the Kindle in a way that indicates the market may still bend itself around that device. The bullishness, however, does not include specific numbers. I am personally looking forward to the day when the bulk of at least my new junk comics reading can be done on-line, and expect that day to be here in 36 months.
Remo Forlani, 1927-2009
According to the French-language market news clearing house ActuaBD.com, film critic Remo Forlani, who for decades sidelined in comics criticism and historical work in addition to the work for which he was better known, recently passed away. He was 82 years old.
According to that report, Forlani enjoyed screen credits with a pair of the 1960s efforts to bring the iconic character Tintin into the cinematic world. In terms of the wider comics readership he was likely best known as the author of a series of articles known as "Le roman vrai de la bande dessineé" that ran in Pilote starting in 1961. That early attempt to tell the history of the comics art form included interviews with a number of major figures including Hergé and Milton Caniff. The brief obituary also mentions as small press effort featuring illustrations by Edmond Baudoin, Un chat est un chat, published in 1994.
Random Comics News Story Round-Up
* the much-liked comics-focused, mainstream-oriented yet indie-friendly show HeroesCon has announced its dates for 2010: June 4-6. I think that's a nice date for them because it pushes them a couple of weeks further away from Comic-Con International, sort of putting themselves on an island between TCAF and CCI and potentially positioning themselves as an early summer getaway show. I hope I can attend. These are the dates held by Florida Supercon, which moves to June 18-20 in a classy move. Make tradable mailing lists, not war.
* a company called TopTenREVIEWS bought all of the Imaginova consumer sites including comics' own Newsarama, the site announced through obtusely-worded press release yesterday. I don't know enough about how Newsarama operates to even guess how this might have an effect of their doing what it is they do. On the other hand, I remind all potential buyers that we're up for sale for what it takes to settle my local bar tab.
* finally, I'm never sure what to do with cartoons of note that feature unfortunate racial stereotyping. In fact, I'm almost certain that I have a standard for even recognizing that kind of thing that some people would find too harsh and others too lenient. Plus in some cases the presence of the caricatures makes the art more interesting. Anyway, I figure the presence of such a drawing is probably enough so as to not spotlight them via their own post, but I was still interested in this page of cartoons by Otto Soglow and this series of not-comics illustrations by Norm McCabe and Cecil Beard. (thanks, Eric Knisley)
District Court Recommends South Korean Cartoonist Pay $17,000 Fine The Korea Timeshad an update last Friday on a story that first came to my attention in June: that of the cartoonist Choi and an insult of President Lee Myung-bak woven into incidental design in a cartoon.
It was recommended by a branch of Chuncheon District Court that the cartoonist settle with the city by paying approximately $17K (USD) in damages. The money would go to the city because the cartoon was done as part of a promotional effort for Wonju City. The city had sued the cartoonist for six times that amount. The linked-to article reports that he is likely to pay the amount asked. June's news items had reported two insults and said that Choi had already lost his job over the matter.
A Few Thoughts On Con Wars 2010
* so here's the very short version: Reed Exhibitions (Reed), Comic-Con International (CCI) and the Company Still Sort of Known As Wizard (the fighting Shamuses) are beginning to fight over dates, resources, terminology and branding in the increasingly prominent major comics and comics-related convention schedule. For the longer version: read Sean T. Collins.
* it's worth noting the entities have been bumping into one another for a while now. All off the top of my head [deep breath]:
+ although impossible to confirm, all three major con organizers seem to have, at some point in their past, scheduled shows with an eye on what the other two entities had planned.
+ CCI and the Shamus-led Wizard group (and/or their respective fans) used to compete over the right to call themselves America's most important comics show (CCI's San Diego, the Shamus-owned Chicago) until that became an obvious and lopsided win for CCI.
+ the Shamus group had been reportedly building to an eventual move into New York for several years; Reed got there first.
+ CCI (San Diego) and the Shamus camp (Anaheim) both have Southern California shows now.
+ Reed is widely perceived to have entered the comics convention business in part because of the success of CCI's San Diego show.
+ Reed has a new show for Chicago (C2E2), a region that had for years been almost entirely ceded to the Shamus group and its Chicago Comic Con (formerly Wizardworld Chicago) since they bought and refurbished the then-failing old Chicago shows (and I do think Shamus and his group saved that show; it was just miserable its last few years in the old incarnation, a corpse with visible flies) in the late 1990s.
+ the Shamus camp has switched to terminology for their shows that seems suspiciously close to CCI's.
+ the Shamus camp preceded their move of Big Apple Comic Con to NYCC's weekend by moving other shows to other Reed-selected weekends.
+ Reed and especially the Shamus camp have been accused of inflating attendance figures.
+ the Shamus group has recently kicked individuals aligned with Reed and a pair of potentially competitive independent shows out of their conventions. [exhale]
So clearly these entities have been rubbing up against one another for months and years now. Add in all the side fighting that occasionally pops up with smaller shows that have a bone to pick with the bigger ones (or vice versa), and it becomes clear that if comics has a con war, it has one with multiple nation-states and a half-dozen fronts.
* however, save for 1) the appearance of dirty tricks along the line of one show misrepresenting themselves at another show's expense, and 2) a move from CCI to more concretely protect certain terminology to which it has rights, there's very little practical grind to be viewed between the major shows. It's like a game of RISK with the majority of the continent-to-continent borders closed. All three entities seem to have the ability to execute successful con seasons without that season having one iota of an effect on anyone else's shows -- more importantly, there's seemingly little to be gained by a hostile approach from one show to the other. Most of the con war is going to be the shows knocking themselves out to look the best they can regardless of the competition. Maybe think con pageant, not con war... ?
* something I think bears repeating is that the primary measuring stick for each show's success is not based on a Vs. scenario. Most of each show's issues involve matters particular to that show. What can CCI do to negotiate the demand for attendance and resulting infrastructure issues in and out of the San Diego convention center? How will C2E2 attract traffic and attendance into the sometimes-difficult Chicago downtown? Can the Shamus camp do something with that extra BACC Friday and continue to attract enough guests? Even when they compete, each entity brings very different standards to the able in terms of what makes their shows successful. Take NYCC vs. BACC. One supposes that Reed needs their shows to work according to the standards of successful trade shows. Based on anecdotal evidence gathered from the Big Apple Comic Con, Shamus and crew can have the kind of last-minute cancellations and confusion regarding programming and instances of acting out that might be a black eye on someone else's show, but can still claim victory if the general energy and attendance figures and press coverage all develop at least somewhat in their favor. Again: these shows have internal pressures they react to with more concern than any external ones they might face. Comic-Con International has to compete with the last two or three years of mega-successful shows before anyone will think to compare it to Anaheim. And so on.
* I would suggest that any reporters covering these shows either as stand-alone entities or as part of a storyline featuring "shows in conflict" keep in mind these distinct standards for what makes each successful. It will also help I think to constantly make clear the difference between moves that might be unsporting -- the notion of "drafting" off of another show's publicity efforts, any distaste we might feel for elements of individual shows, whose feelings are hurt by what poster, what they're saying at BACC meeting before everyone high-fives -- and those that could be flat-out unethical, such as misinformation being knowingly disseminated on a specific show's behalf or against another show.
* I hope that the "con wars" storyline doesn't dominate the bigger con story, which is that we're awash in a general flowering of conventions on a national and regional and even local level. Too few sites reported that the perfectly-pitched local show The Stumptown Comics Fest named its 2010 date recently. Regional conventions Heroes Con and Florida Superconannounced dates today. This put six shows of size and stature (WonderCon, C2E2, Anaheim, MoCCA, SPACE and Stumptown) into an April that used to be known for one or two worthwhile shows at best. You could conceivably buy one $800 set of one-way airplane tickets and exhibit or attend shows every weekend that month. I run hot and cold as to whether comics shows are always what they could be or even how much they're necessary, but the flip side to my sour way of thinking would likely note that any platform for comics to shine can be useful and that given a generation of hardcore enthusiasts likely counts a convention that consisted of nothing but 38 longboxes in a Holiday Inn banquet room as a seminal experience, the thought that developing readers and artists today might have the opportunity for a first-class show to shred their minds, show them comics and start them dreaming is a noteworthy thing. It's a phenomenon worthy of closer study and more focused journalistic inquiry.
Newspaper Circulation Drops 10+% From 2008-2009: Decline Hastening?
Sean T. Collins draws my attention to a couple of articles at Talking Points Memo. The first takes notice of an over 10 percent drop in circulation figures over a six month period comparing 2008 to 2009; the second is Josh Marshall's analysis that this isn't an industry taking a hit but a medium in accelerated decline.
I'm not sure exactly what to make of it. I think you'd have to pull in whatever the latest numbers are on newspaper web site traffic and make some allowances for places where papers have dropped days to get a fuller reckoning. Still, any drastic loss in circulation is bothersome, and as I'm one of those that think part of the problem right now is that newspapers are drastically ill-equipped across the board to serve a changing modern audience in a way that's profitable, sustainable, and attractive in the long term, any factor that increases the pressure makes it that much harder for print journalism entities to keep their pants up. I see a lot of weathering the storm and very little building an ark.
I Think I Like It Better With Fewer Librarian-Related Comics News Stories
I suppose there's some novelty in this day and age that two librarians claim they were fired for not giving an 11-year-old access to a League Of Extraordinary Gentleman volume, but the fishy smells leap off of this thing in a way I can't quite quantify. First, due to library policy we only have the librarians' -- or circulation desk help employees', depending on who's talking -- word for it. Second, while I'm all for a policy that leaves these things in the hands of parents, I know a lot of reasonable people who wouldn't mind having a librarian ask them "are you sure?" when it comes to this sort of thing, so firing someone over it seems sort of harsh to me. Heck, at my first comic shop the owner asked if he could meet my mom just to make sure it was okay with her if I was buying certain kinds of comics -- it didn't seem like an assault on my free speech, although I know the situations are different in ways that count. I don't know -- it feels like there's something remaining here that might emerge later on.
Random Comics News Story Round-Up
* the retailer and industry critic Brian Hibbs has a nice article up at CBR analyzing the problems with Diamond and suggests, quite sanely, that the problem isn't as much Diamond as a corporate entity but Diamond as a agent that must live up to the promises it made and allowances it provides gigantic brokers and sometimes bad partners in business Marvell and DC.
* in the latest installment of what I think is a recurring feature, Chris Mautner recommends how people might start reading Jack Kirby. It's funny in that he completely blows by Thor, which was probably the third-best Marvel comic during its remarkable mid-'60s heyday -- a testament to the depth of Kirby's career. I think Mautner gives good advice that when working with already-established comics fans that it might be easiest to work from the primetime Fantastic Four stuff and then spin outwards in various directions from there. I've had luck with non-superhero fans just giving them a stack of 2001 to start. There's no right answer, of course.
* the writer and retailer Chris Butcher has sharp words for one of those people who wants to be a publisher but don't seem to have any desire to learn the basic business mechanisms involved.
* Dan Nadel takes a hammer to a recent review of Crumb's Genesis by writer David Hajdu.
* it's interesting how little service has been paid to the Gold Key Painted Cover, surely one of the iconic visuals of 20th Century comic book publishing. I think you could put those colors in abstract and they'd be recognizable as a Gold Key cover.
* Daddy Warbucks (who once remarked, "you should be able to count your good friends on the fingers of one hand--even if you're missing a couple of fingers")
* "The Baron" from Derf's Punk Rock and Trailer Parks
* Buddy Bradley
* Rob from "Get Fuzzy"
* Peter Parker
1) Popeye: for entertainment mainly, but also, seriously--dude’s tough
2) Richie Rich: to buy drinks, seems like a nice guy, knows how to get out of a pinch using only head-sized rubies
3) Charlie Brown: it’s good to have a friend to take care of a little
4) Colossus or Nightcrawler: I love strange people with accents
5) Lewis Trondheim: nuff said. Not to mention, falls under #4 as well.
*****
Michael DeForge
* Woozy Winks
* Cutter John
* Ikegaki from Drifting Classroom
* Foggy Nelson
* Shrimpy from Shrimpy and Paul
*****
William Burns
* Mo Testa
* Tom Strong
* Sara Felton
* Harvey Pekar
* Dogbert
1. Goat (from Pearls Before Swine)
2. Alfred Pennyworth
3. The Shoveler (especially as played in the film by William H. Macy)
4. Rev. Sloan (in Doonesbury)
5. Gyro Gearloose's Little Helper
*****
Bill Matheny
1) Jughead
2) Woodstock
3) Tonto
4) Big Boy
5) Conchy
*****
Stergios Botzakis
1. Ben Grimm
2. Heraclio
3. Linus Van Pelt
4. Flaming Carrot
5. Betty Cooper
First Thought Of The Day
There are many, many, many more miserable ways to wake up in the worning, but "Random, Inexplicable Charley Horse at 4 AM" would make anyone's top 100. Especially when you're totally hydrated.
The top comics-related news stories from October 17 to October 23, 2009:
1. A distressing middle finger raised by Morocco to the rest of the world in terms of Free Press principles to which many countries of similar size and influence adhere: more papers banned carrying a cartoon depicting of a cousin of the king; trial of original offenders continues.
2. A bump in September Direct Market number indicates a static 2009, an amazing thing given this economy.
3. Lines are drawn in the sand regarding a growing war of wills, press coverage and public perception between Wizard (or a post-Wizard entity yet to be named) and Reed Exhibition over various issues in the former group moving its Big Apple Comic Con to New York Comic Con's already-selected October 2010 weekend.
Minneapolis-based cartoonist Will Dinski was the winner of this year's Isotope Award for Excellence in Mini-Comics, announced last weekend in conjunction with the Alternative Press Expo and the focus of a party hosted by the award's organizers at their well-regarded comics emporium. Dinski won for a recent, longer work Covered In Confusion, about a horrific series of events in a high school setting told through the prism of its years-later aftermath.
TOM SPURGEON: Congratulations on the win. How did you find out? Were you able to celebrate your victory?
WILL DINSKI: Thanks! I knew that I was a finalist shortly after hitting ground in San Francisco. That was the Thursday before the event. But I didn't know for sure that I would need a speech until that day of the event. Kirsten Baldock stopped by my table at the end of the day and gave me the good news. I was pretty shocked.
The APE aftermath party was basically one big celebration. James Sime knows how to throw an amazing event and it made me feel like a total rock star. What a great night.
SPURGEON: You submitted two comics, as I recall correctly. Covered In Confusion won, but I also greatly enjoyed Mind-Mapping. There's an actual, honest-to-goodness special effect involved with Mind-Mapping that reminds me of some of the European minis Bart Beaty discussed in his book Unpopular Culture: where did you come up with that idea? Was it difficult to produce that book?
DINSKI: That book was a lot of ideas I had been kicking around all coming together at once. I had an idea for a story that could involve glow in the dark ink, and another idea about a book folding out like a map. It's funny, though. It really wasn't that difficult to make. I've screen printed some books that were a real pain in the ass to make.
There was a poster done by some local designers (Aesthetic Apparatus) that I have hanging in my kitchen. It was done to promote a Raconteurs show. And that poster glows in the dark. I probably got the idea from there. Later I heard, that they didn't even know that it glowed. The ink was just contaminated from a previous project where they intended to use glow in the dark ink. Surprises like that are priceless.
SPURGEON: You suggest that Covered In Confusion has a basis in real life -- seeing as it's likely been some years since some of those incidents, what was it that caused you to do this comic right now?
DINSKI: The main part of that story was told to me a long time ago. It's about a teacher I once had. As soon as I heard it, my heart nearly broke. And then it was one of those situations where the conversation continued and changed topics but that story stuck with me.
Whenever something silly happens, there will sometimes be that one person who knows I make comics and say, "Hey! You should do a comic about that! Right?" This must happen to cartoonists all the time. Whenever that would happen to me, I would remember that really heartbreaking story my friend told me about my old teacher and think, "No. I should do a comic about that. I can't stop thinking about it."
I wrote the full script about two years ago. Put it in a drawer for some reason. I don't think I was interested in drawing a longer story at the time. Then I took it out earlier this year and drew it over a period of three months.
SPURGEON: Because of the sensitive nature of two of the plot lines, did you ever second-guess doing the story once it started, or did it change your process as to how you completed the material. Was there an emotional component to seeing the story done?
DINSKI: That's a good question. Yeah, I worried a lot. Lots of second guessing. There were certain people that I knew whom I didn't want to read it. People who where starting new families of their own. They did and their reaction wasn't great.
However, it was important to me that this story wasn't just a retelling of a terrible thing that happened, but about how people react to those things. At what point can you not forgive yourself? Can you forgive someone who makes such a terrible mistake?
But it's hard for me to worry too much about those things by the time I'm already drawing the story. I'm pretty busy thinking about the visuals. I kind of have to just trust that it's all been considered when I wrote it.
SPURGEON: Do you have plans to publish the story in a different format, either as is or by expanding it or making it part of a group of similar stories? What's the next step?
DINSKI: I've thought it would be great if Covered in Confusion was collected with my short stories in one volume. I'd like to try and make that happen once I'm sold out of the mini-comics.
Update On Moroccan Situation Centered On Caricature of Royal Family Member
I totally missed the fact that after the closure of the newspaper Akhbar al Youm for its caricature of Moroccan royal Prince Moulay Ismail that not only was the editor willing to apologize and not only (according to what I can find) has the newspaper remain closed, and not only has the government rejected any kind of free speech formulation in the matter, but that the editor Taoufik Bouachrine and the cartoonist Khalid Gueddar have been on trial for the last couple of weeks, a trial that continues today. They represent the third lawsuit against journalists in recent weeks in what has to be called a dismaying period of hostility against the press in that country. Even as the trial continues, today's wire reports indicate that issues of La Monde commenting on the story that include the offending cartoon and an additional cartoon on the matter have been blocked from distribution in Morocco as well.
ICv2.com: ABA Asks Justice Department To Look At X-Mas Book Pricing “War”
I suppose this story is partly comics but definitely so, as at this point those distinctions are blended on a bookselling level and I can't see how this wouldn't have an effect on some comics as well as prose books. Anyway, the American Booksellers Association -- made up of independent booksellers -- has apparently asked the Department of Justice to take a look at what is developing into a massive Christmas season price war between the big chains that they claim involves a lot of selling below cost as a kind of economic cudgel. That's one worth watching, as I think aspects of the traditional book market is getting more and more into the habit of discounting the holy heck out of books that might be a valuable income source for that industry generally.
Random Comics News Story Round-Up
* if I were to start some blustery speech as to the ramifications of people launching graphic novels through Kickstarter.com I'd be lying to you and annoying, but I thought it worth noting that Jamie Tanner has exceeded the goal he established for himself through that service, and I assume is working on his premiums and the project itself full speed ahead. I would also assume he could put to good use any more money that comes in in the time remaining.
* totally missed it: Portland's Stumptown Comics Fest has announced for April 24-25, 2010, placing it in a very crowded April (C2E2, Anaheim, MoCCA, SPACE, WonderCon), but on a date that should work for that very regional if not outright local comics show.
* the creator Scott McCloud asserts that a certain kind of reportage from a convention can become a snapshot of a community, and that communities in comics are a common but ephemeral thing.
* missed it: E&Phas an interesting story up about that presupposes an eventual recovery for newspapers and then 1) suggests that where they spend money at that time is going to be super-important, 2) implies by corrective that those profits aren't likely to go to vital newsroom functions.
* finally, same author as that last piece Sean Collins continues sifting through various statements that might enlighten as to the feelings and motivations of those involved in the convention tussle between Reed and whatever the Gareb Shamus-led group should be called. His best catch is a slightly spread-out announcement by writer Brian Bendis where he cancels plans to attend the Shamus Anaheim show going up against Reed's C2E2 next spring in favor of staying home and writing.
Jozef "Jef" Nys, the Belgian cartoonist best known for the strip Jommeke, has died according to a rash of newspaper reports from the Flemish region in which his creation was hugely popular. He was 82 years old.
Nys was born in Berchem in 1927, where his family had located after living in coastal regions before World War I. The future cartoonist had three siblings, two of which died at an early age. His father died while he was a teen. Nys was initially influenced by his maternal grandfather, who painted part-time, and by the Disney Studio movies. At the age of 11, he began evening art classes, and at age 13 he began to prepare for live as a technical engineer. In 1943 he began study at the Royal Academy of Arts of Antwerp. He supported his studies with work at an animation studio.
Nys' first comics camed at the weekly satirical newspaper 't Pallieterke, where he served as a kind of jack of all trades. He was refused employment at the Disney Studios in 1947, and spent the early part of the '50s doing a number of isolated comics works and fulfilling his military obligations. His first series was a comedy-adventure during this period called Kadodderke.
His life's work Jommeke enjoyed a modest start in 1955 as a gag comic for the Catholic newspaper Kerkelijk Leven, for whom he would later make a number of more realistic-looking religious-themed anthologies. That initial burst of Jommeke comics ran for three years and were collected into books, along with other work he was doing at the time. In 1958, Jommeke moved to the daily Het Volk and became a story-strip, with two strips a day feeding 44-page stories. Through most of the 1960s he made Jommeke comics and continued to do fill-in work on other serials and launch supplementary features of his own. By the 1970s, he had focused much of his attention on his most successful feature. By the late 1970s, over two million copies of Jommeke books were selling each year, and initial printings of new works were in the six-figure range.
It was also in the 1970s that Nys began to farm some of the Jommeke work out to other creators, first in terms of additional inkers, then to artists and writers, work that eventually scaled back as the feature fell from the absolute height of his popularity. He was still contributing work to the feature shortly before his death.
It is estimated that the over 200 albums in the Jommeke series sold over 200 million copies, and there are statues of Jommeke in Middelkerke and Temse. Although translated into French early on and into English and German periodically, he enjoyed the vast majority of his success in his native country. Nys was honored with a lifetime achievement award at the Strip Turnhout Festival in 2005, the same year the Centre Belge de la BD celebrated the international aspects of the character with an exhibition. For generations of children born in the geographical region of Flanders, Nys remains one of the great cartoonists who ever lived, and his creation a rite of passage for many young readers.
A 248th album, Jommeke, Fifi Kampioen, is due by the end of the month.
Not Comics: Newsday Erects Paywall
According to industry bible Editor & Publisher, the publishing entity Newsdayis going to move most of its involved content behind a paywall in what is certain to be a much-watched experiment in the recently dormant, ongoing issue of how journalistic enterprises are going to make money off of putting content on the web. Actually, this story might have an element of comics to it, in that I have no idea despite reading five different articles on the move what they're doing with Walt Handelsman and any other cartoonists they might use.
Your Danish Cartoons Hangover Update
* the group Reporters Without Borders had in previous years punished Denmark for its role in the Danish Cartoons Controversy, but in its most recent survey the country was #1 on their list of free-press friendly countries. The curious thing is that legal precedents instigated by the Controversy contributed to the positive appraisal.
* here's a fairly standard and straight-forward recent indictment of the decision by the Yale University Press to not publish any imagery of Muhammad in their new book on the Danish Cartoons Controversy.
* and here's a much-longer and more detailed version of the same kind of indictment, including the alarming and lingering charge that the Press made their decision so as not to piss off potential Near Eastern contributors to their endowment. If you spaced out during or consciously skipped the whole Yale University chapter of this cultural story, and you don't mind the polemical aspects being pushed in your face, that's a good catch-up article.
An Argument For Holding Copyrights?
The comics business news and analysis site ICv2.com reports that Nickelodeon has purchased the now nearly venerable kids property Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for $60 million. And I really don't have much to say beyond that, although I hope it was the kind of deal everyone involved hoped for.
Random Comics News Story Round-Up
* no one on the comics Internet has been more dependable in recent weeks than Jog, and this piece about the Crumb Genesis project and a very different kind of Crumb project is about par for the course. A very, very tough course.
* the writer Sean T. Collins continues to follow the Reed/Wizard "con war" into nooks and crannies where only a very brave person might go. Guest star: Scott Kurtz.
* has anyone ever heard of a "Jack Cribbs" that was acquainted with the late Allan Kurzrok? .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
* if nearly a thousand lunatics are able to afford $1000 motorcycle bat suits, does that mean the recession's over?
* I don't really follow the NY Times graphic novels bestsellers list -- I maintain a slight distrust of the methodology in terms of where it might put the list entire on the positive good/positive bad specture -- but that Bloom Countybook hit #1, which is nice for them. That was a project with some degree of worry to it in terms of the amount of work put in and if sales would justify reprinting that work right now.
* the Robert Kirkman-written Astounding Wolf-Manis going to end its run with issue #25. That was an Image title written by Kirkman and drawn by co-creator Jason Howard that never caught on to the extent his two other series written by Kirkman (Invincible, Walking Dead) with the publisher have found audiences. It also stayed around longer than most.
* I know should have written something about the re-launched Valiant Comics, but every time I start I have to go lie down for 20 minutes.
* according to this interview, the great, pioneering arts cartoonist Edmond Baudoin has applied for a grant that may allow him to do a comic on the drug-related violence in and around Juarez, Mexico. Whatever Baudoin wants to do is of interest, but as someone who used to eat lunch twice a year and go shopping with his mom in a Mexican border town where the mayor was just burned to death, I can assure you that the Juarez story is a fascinating and horrifying one.
* the comics business news and analysis site ICv2.com reports that Marvel is going to adapt the first volume of Stephen King's Dark Tower series, after previously adapting flashback work from later volumes in the series and producing new material related to the series.
* the strip feature In The Sticksis making its Go.comics debut with a heavy in-development component. That makes a lot of sense someone would try that, actually.
* that looks quite lovely. You know, if Fantagraphics only published that Humbug collection and this book in the calendar year, that would be a very good calendar year.
Rand asked me to give you something on George Tuska.
Unfortunately, it's a frustrating, very short story. When I was a kid in the Bronx I used to shine shoes on Prospect Avenue. I bought very few comics because I never much liked -- still don't -- superheroes.
Captain Marvel was a favorite, as was Crime Does Not Pay.
The only reason I bought that book -- with my hard-earned dime, was because George Tuska was in it. I used to copy his gangsters with their fedoras and thug faces.
Fast forward about a hundred years, and I'm an editor at DC--a lofty positions I held for one year, two weeks and three days. Within that time, I met some of my heroes--none more valuable to me than Tuska.
Well -- in he walks into my office, portfolio in hand, looking very like a slightly moulting eagle -- in fact, the double of Samuel Beckett.
He was looking for work, Tom. That was shock number two. The first was seeing this imposing hero of my youth walk through the door. It was too much for me. I couldn't tell him how much he'd meant to me as I dreamed of becoming a cartoonist, copying his work line for line. I simply gave him the assignment, watched him leave, then sat for a long time doing nothing but being sad.
Analysts: September 2009 DM Estimates
The comics business news and analysis site ICv2.com offers their usual array of lists, estimates and analysis regarding the performance of comic books and graphic novels in the Direct Market of comic and hobby shops, this time for September 2009.
In fact, it's Miller's analysis that I found the most interesting, as he feels comfortable at this point extrapolating for the year and barring a disastrous Fall and Christmas-shopping season, he sees things in that market remaining stable. Given the fears that folks had going into the year-long recession, I would imagine that's good news. It's not like things couldn't turn sour in a hurry, but I think most people given this option and an industry status report behind a curtain would take the relative stability.
I think I agree with the analysts that the top story for the month itself is the rare performance by certain Blackest Night comics: both the main title only dropping a tiny number of issues moving from issue #2 to issue #3 to various tie-ins actually growing in circulation. This is I imagine a good thing because the series and it tie-ins are finding their level which is 1) reasonably high, 2) doesn't come after burning off some numbers that indicate early issues were over-ordered. Also: I would have guessed that the well-regarded Incredible Hercules sold about 10,000 more copies -- I had no illusions that one was a hit, but but I didn't imagine it selling quite that poorly, either.
The notion that $3.99 pamphlets are having a severe effect on ordering of issues past a first issue is an interesting one, and makes a lot of sense. If any retailer out there would like to share their experience in that sense, .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
I thought the graphic novel chart was generally interesting, too, in that some titles seem to do strong supplementary business in comics shops while their main sales are elsewhere (Walking Dead, L&R, according to anecdotal evidence) while other entries on the list are very standard comics favorites (Batman-related stuff). And then there's Buffy, which I think may be performing over expectation in both markets.
Go, Look: Pierre Feuille Ciseaux this is from Sarah Glidden: photos and art from a comics festival that includes an exquisite corpse/comics storytelling type game whose rules are explained in the last image of the set
Random Comics News Story Round-Up
* why are you here instead of looking at this?
* the cartoonist Evan Dorkin deserves his reputation as a word and concepts guy, but I sure like the way he drew this dog in a panel from one of his gag strips.
* not comics 01: here's an article about not fighting the revolution in art and culture that comes with recent technological innovation and instead re-focusing that energy on puzzling through the implications.
* this semi-longish interview with veteran comic book illustrator Steve Lieber is frequently funny and provides a lot of working-artist details that most interviews don't get into.
* not comics 04: I have a hard time enjoying even well-meaning articles about print dying like this one because the standards they use are so bizarre -- people willing to go to conferences, books on paper meaning the same thing as writing generally when maybe they're not interchangeable -- and yet so ill-defined that I'm not sure what they feel is in danger of extinction except everything staying the exact way it is right now or going back to some idealized past. I used to think only comics people were so invested in the exact shape and form of an industry as it exists at any one moment in time, but I'm reconsidering that position.
* finally, because Tom Devlin is a kind man, he's posted one more Judy Junior story before getting back to work. Thank you, Tom.
Everybody's yelling "Con War," which is fun when you don't have to fight in one. The competitive rivalry between Reed Exhibitions and whatever entity under which longtime Wizard Entertainment honcho Gareb Shamus is organizing his convention business these days entered into a new phase this weekend when the Shamus group announced their intention to run their just-completed Big Apple Comic Con the same weekend in the year 2010 as the New York Comic Con.
Having two conventions in the same city on the same weekend calls into questions a lot of interesting, long-developing stories in comics: Reed's attempt to become a major player in comics conventions building on their success in trade shows (they're also launching a Chicago show in Spring 2010), the Shamus' group attempt to retrench as a convention organizer and general pop culture web presence after staggering losses (in personnel terms) at their print magazines, the increasing important of such shows to comics entities and professionals, that New York will host two such shows after years of organizers circling the waters afraid to take the major-investment plunge, and the success of the two models of such shows as represented by each organization's track record.
It also becomes an interesting story because having two conventions in the same city on the same weekend practically guarantees the smaller show -- the Shamus show -- will gain in press opportunities may have the ability to seek out advantages in terms of general branding, guests and exhibitors. At the same time, each show's standard of success will be their own and no one fully knows how those standards will feel the impact of a nearby show, not to mention the pressure of the ramp-up, until the shows come off in 2010.
Reed Exhibitions VP of Books, Publishing and Pop Culture (and acknowledged NYCC show-runner) Lance Fensterman was nice enough to exchange e-mails interview-style. I appreciate him taking the time to do so.
TOM SPURGEON: Can I ask how surprised you were they'd go the same weekend? The way I see it, they had to announce sometime in the same general window, and going the same weekend made sense given their decision to have an Anaheim show the weekend of your Chicago show. Had you been operating with this latest sort of move in mind at all?
LANCE FENSTERMAN: I am not surprised in the least. They have launched two previous events, Anaheim, as you mentioned, on C2E2's dates and Toronto is on our PAX East dates (Penny Arcade Expo). There is a clear trend that even I can make out happening there.
SPURGEON: For that matter, does realizing there will be a large show in proximity -- whenever you did -- change anything about your strategy and work planning at all? Do you lock down guests more quickly? Will you be more careful about pricing strategies? Do you make general plans differently with a competitor very focused on a certain audience for comics? Or do you just do what you do?
FENSTERMAN: We believe we have a pretty good strategy towards our events and I think our track record indicates that. We put the industry, fans, exhibitors and guests first. If we please them we'll be rewarded with a stellar event and yes a good business proposition for ourselves. It's start with those entities. We have been in high growth mode for five years now, so we are always looking at how to grow the show and give the fans a great experience, but no, we won't alter our plans dramatically.
SPURGEON: The elephant in the room is dirty tricks, Lance. Or at least unsavory ones. Do you know of any attempts by any of your competitors to confuse potential guests as to which show they're attending? Is this a concern? Do you feel that there's a line to be crossed where someone can use terms or a kind of branding that occludes clear consumer choice? Does Reed have experience with this kind of thing and policy in terms of how to deal with it?
FENSTERMAN: I don't think there is any question when someone puts a similar named event, in the same city as the market leader on the same weekend, they are counting on drafting off our success and confusion as part of there business model. To me that's without question. We are aware of guest issues and exhibitor issues that are not what we would consider "above board" on the part of other events and we've chosen not to take action because, frankly, we believe we have a better business model because we consistently put the industry, the exhibitors, the fans and the guests first. That's a headache we don't need, we'd rather focus on our customers and growing this industry.
SPURGEON: How much will you welcome the press -- particularly local and regional press -- covering their show along with your show? Do you have a preference they not do this? Can you work with your press partners to ensure your show is covered in a way that doesn't allow another show to piggyback on press coverage you've earned? Is this an issue at all?
FENSTERMAN: That gets to be tricky. We have always had a very liberal press credential policy and embraced all forms of media, new and old, and I do not see that changing.
SPURGEON: Same question, but with your guests attending both shows?
FENSTERMAN: We have never employed any kind of "exclusive" clauses with our guests or our exhibitors nor will we. We think our events speak for themselves and will be the clear choice of where guests will want to spend there time the weekend of October 8th.
SPURGEON: Have there been any further developments in NYCC personnel being asked to leave the show last weekend? How do you feel about that now that you've had a couple of days to mull it over? Will that have any lingering effect, do you think?
FENSTERMAN: We've had a good time retelling the story here at the office! No, it's an illustration of how they chose to do business. We have always welcomed staffers from other shows to our events as we would any other professional -- free badges and freedom to conduct business.
SPURGEON: Does anything about the events being on the same weekend change any of your goals or benchmarks for that weekend? Where might adjustments be made? If not, why are you so confident in the lack of impact?
FENSTERMAN: We will not adjust our expectations at all. I firmly believe that when you are dedicated to the growth of an industry as we are, and focused on delighting the fans, the exhibitors and the guests (professionals) you cannot have a better proposition for success. We are well organized, professionally staffed, well funded and a strong track record. As I stated above, my most important task is assuring the audience knows that New York Comic Con is in 750,000 square feet of space at the Javits Center, not down the road.
SPURGEON: This may be a stab in the dark, but am I right in that Wizard and Reed had a relationship that extended to the first show or pair of shows that you did in New York? Can I assume any and all vestiges of that relationship are now terminated? Is there any lingering Wizard influence on the floor of NYCC, any Wizard left in your DNA?
FENSTERMAN: We advertised with them and they may have had a booth at one point, but nothing more than that.
SPURGEON: My bad. Hey, we're about six months away from C2E2, and as in a way that also represents a "turf battle" between yourself and the Wizard/Shamus camp, I wondered if I could sneak in a question there. I'm a former Chicago resident, so I recognize many of your upsides. The one thing I'm intensely curious about is one potential downside of having it out by Lake Michigan as opposed to Rosemont -- namely, the basic logistics and housing issues, getting people in and out of the show in a hard-to-negotiate city as opposed to highway-accessible suburban sprawl and the relatively easy parking out there. Can you sketch in broad terms how you expect people to come to the show? Do you expect regional attendance? Will there be shuttles, convention hotels, guaranteed parking at the show…? Do you foresee this as something about which the show's concerned?
FENSTERMAN: The upside is we will actually be in the city of Chicago, one of the greats cities in the world and we plan to use the city as a part of the con. The challenge is that yes, for some it will be a new routine or more costly, but I think when we educate our customers, they'll find that it is really not that expensive. We have a large stock of reasonable hotel rooms, the EL Train and the Metra (suburban lines) both run to McCormick, there is parking attached to the building, and cheaper parking a few blocks away and we will run shuttles. Shuttles will also be running form all the major hotels.
We expect very broad regional attendance and we plan for C2E2 to be a Midwest Wide Con. We'll be offering coach buses at a discount from major feeder cities (and major college cities) like Madison, South Bend, Milwaukee, etc. We are prepared for C2E2 to be a con that draws from all reaches of the Midwest and we've done our research on demographics and retail strong holds to plan for that.
a couple of the questions were tweaked for clarity in posting. Mr. Fensterman has yet to answer follow-ups on the Wizard con's extra day and a redirect on making the two shows distinct in the public's eye. I'll add them here if and when they come in; they weren't crucial to the end result.
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 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 stroke the spines of each and every one of these suckers.
*****
AUG090044 BEASTS OF BURDEN #2 (OF 4) $2.99 AUG090225 AIR #14 (MR) $2.99 AUG090355 INVINCIBLE #67 $2.99 AUG090019 CITIZEN REX #4 (OF 6) $3.50 AUG090542 DOMINIC FORTUNE #3 (OF 4) (MR) $3.99 AUG090365 UNDERGROUND #2 (OF 5) $3.50
Here's a small group of well-regarded standard comic books from various comic book creators. Air has sure hung in there.
MAY090058 NOIR TP VOL 01 $12.95
It used to be you could make a joke that projects like this were instituted just to garner Eisner nominations, but that's not so much the case anymore. This seems like it could be a reasonably strong snapshot of crime-related material from various working cartoonists. It's one of those books where a comics shop works really well, because I'd love to have this in my hands before buying.
JUN090206 FINAL CRISIS LEGION OF THREE WORLDS HC $19.99
There was so not enough pulling off of arms in this series. It was like all this cannon fodder everywhere, but not much cannoning.
AUG090853 BOOK ABOUT MOOMIN MYMBLE & LITTLE MY HC $16.95
This is the direct market debut of the D+Q-related children's book effort, so while it's not comics it should be swell-looking and should feature some lovely cartoon art.
AUG090859 TALKING LINES HC (MR) $29.95
I haven't jumped into this necessary collection of RO Blechman's work yet, but it has one of the most clever cover and appropriate designs I've seen in a long, long time. Check it out if your shop has one.
AUG090698 CTRL+ALT+DEL TP VOL 02 DARWIN WOULD BE PROUD $12.95
One of the better-performing gaming webcomics out there. It caught my attention here because I wasn't aware there was a volume one, although it makes sense.
AUG090607 DREAD & SUPERFICIALITY WOODY ALLEN AS COMIC STRIP HC VOL 01 $35.00
Hard to think of a time when Woody Allen was such a powerful cultural totem that the idea of turning his life/work/humor into a comics strip felt like a counter-culture victory when it appeared in your newspaper. I remember liking it just fine, but I was pretty young and desperate for adults to like me.
JUL091109 NAOKI URASAWA 20TH CENTURY BOYS GN VOL 05 $12.99
The best of the mainstream manga series out this week. I think.
SEP090891 FAMILY CIRCUS LIBRARY HC VOL 01 $39.99
I've been joking with the series editor that these books would be worth doing from a gig in the workplace standpoint just so you could occasionally call up and talk to the genuinely funny and charming Bil Keane on the phone. I look forward to seeing one of these just for the differences in art.
JUL091007 STORY OF O HC (A) $24.95
Guido Crepax: popular enough to have an entire half-shelf in the Fantagraphics library, circa mid-1990s; not popular enough to have his books stolen by the interns. This is no doubt very, very, naughty.
AUG091044 NEXUS SPACE OPERA TP $14.95
I couldn't quite follow the release schedule on this latest Mike Baron and Steve Rude return to their iconic 1980s indy comics character as it was coming out, and judging from the failure of the title to drive plans for more such series, I wasn't alone. Still, I'm going to be all over the trade.
AUG090737 STUART & KATHRYN IMMONENS NEVER BAD AS YOU THINK HC (O/A) $15.99
This book offers some crisp, smart cartooning. Also, I think the Immonens should host a selection of books every week.
*****
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, it's probably because our realities diverge on the existence of your book.
* the great Steve Duin runs a great essay by Gary Groth pooping all over Superman. We all need to do our part to make "lintheads" part of the general comics vernacular.
* not comics 02: everyone deserves one foul-mouthed teacher who the moment you graduate begins telling you all sorts of humiliating stories about the other faculty members. Goodbye, Mrs. Wasson. You would have had something funny and mean to say about this blog.
* not comics 03: about five of my friends have sent me the link to this profile of James Cameron in The New Yorker. It's filled with enough jaw-droppers you'll soon see why. He seems like an awful, awful man, although I imagine the kind of self-belief he evinces is necessary to function in that world a certain way. A line from Linda Hamilton made me laugh.
* finally, this line in a DC solicitation as republished here sort of captures the self-regard and madness of many titles today. "After things heated up in a firefight with the Red Tornado and Red Torpedo, Red Volcano has gone solo, abandoning his 'little brother', the Red Inferno." Words cannot describe how little that makes me want to buy this comic.
Your Last Weekend’s Prize Winners
* the cartoonist Will Dinski's Covered In Confusionwon this year's Isotope Mini-Comics Awards. Kudos to James Sime and the gang for pulling off the awards in a period of high-stress. It was apparently announced, as usual, at the Sunday night post-APE party. I was a judge; I had both of Dinski's entries in the top five I submitted, and I'm happy with the final choice.
* Hermann won something called the Grand Prix de la bande dessinee du Brabant wallon, which I believe is tied into a Belgian festival that is there to specifically promote Belgian comics and cartoonists and should therefore be seen in the context of other civic efforts on behalf of that tradition as much as it is another award. A best foreign album award went to the Italian book Medz Yeghern: Le grand mal by Paolo Cossi; best album went to Jolie Tenebres by Sebastien and Marie Kerascoet with Fabien Vehlmann. The real reason to go look at the link is that the prize design is an obvious one I've nonetheless not seen before.
* the great cartoonist Lat was one of six Malaysians named a 1Malaysian Icon in service of a cultural initiative that sounds both major and daunting.
Maryland Kids Safe From Goku’s Peeny
After the complaints of a local politician about the content of Dragon Ball Vol. 1, the series has been removed from all school libraries in Wicomico County, Maryland, that locale's superintendent office announced late last week. I'm a great fan of that series, so I'm distressed by its dismissal as trash during the kerfuffle and the apparent orientation of educators involved that comics have value as reading matter for stupid and/or reluctant people as opposed to value of their own. I also despise culture warmongering in general, and this has elements of that.
At the same time, I find something it almost more encouraging that the system is making a choice on a series rather than their previous state of having no idea what was in their library. The fact that the book didn't seem to find an eloquent, on-the-ground defender -- I'd be happy to make that kind of defense, but I don't live there -- just makes me wonder after how they and organizations like them routinely procure books. I'm also sympathetic to people not wanting their younger children to have access to the brief nudity and sexual discomfit jokes in at least the book in question. I guess my ideal would have been for them to keep the series for older readers and to stumble towards some sort of recognition of its value based on why they shelved it in the first place.
There's an interesting post here by guide author and English-language manga expert Jason Thompson on the difficulty of editing content with those kinds of books, namely way devoted fans reject what they perceive as an inauthentic experience of those books.
Auction And Sketches At Komikon 2009 Raises Money For Flood Victims
There is a series of lovely-looking photos form the just-past Komikon 2009 here, the top one of which informs us that organizers were able to use the event to raise about $1700 USD for victims of recent flooding throughout the nation. You can find more information through links available at that posting. Kiel Phegley's well-written article late last week reminded me of the then-forthcoming effort.
Two other less-important pieces but still fun pieces of news I can see in the photos is that international comics expert John Lent does appear to travel to those things. There was a tiny percentage of my soul fearful that when I ran article about cartoonists in Turkey or wherever John was just having a laugh making them all up. How would I know? The other is that Gerry Alanguilan's Elmer, the best comic ever about sentient chickens and their ability to find a place in the new world created by their awakening, has apparently been collected.
If You Must Read A PR-Driven Story…
... I liked this one on R. Crumb's Genesis book by Frank Browning at NPR, even though it seems awfully silly for him to suggest that no comics have print runs of 100K when the next Asterix will have a three million print run in the French-language version alone. What I liked about it was the quote work: pretty good ones from Crumb and peer Gilbert Shelton, and a very good one from Jean-Luc Fromental that describes the way I think most people will see Genesis as a valuable work.
As far as it being news that Robert Crumb is driving feature articles with his first major book, I'm not sure how that's a story at all!
Fairey Amends Obama Suit Papers
I'm not sure this is really a comics story although the famous image at the center of the story has cartoon elements to it and certainly much of the artist Shepard Fairey's work has such elements. Anyway, Editor & Publisherhas a lengthy update and further links about Fairey copping to altering some potential evidence, asserting that another AP photos was the basis of the image and admitting that his lawyers wanted out. What's strange is that I always thought his original claim, that the image as used was drastically altered to the point of becoming its own thing was a strong enough stance with which to go into any of the related legal battle.
* I don't get it -- just because they close your post office branch doesn't mean you stop getting mail. Pluggers don't understand how mail works?
* the cartoonist Eddie Campbell's march through modern graphic novels continues with a look at Exit Wounds.
* finally, more than a couple of people are taking note of this Fall's price war, driven by Wal-Mart or Amazon depending on which article you read, as a bad thing for booksellers in general.
I wanted to write something positive today. One thing I feel most positive about when it comes to comics is our collective ability to find and purchase them. This may sound silly, but surely one of the transformative experiences of comics culture over the last 30 years is a move from scarcity (not being able to find or perhaps even learn about the comics one desires) to sorting (finding the comics one truly wants in a sea of availability). The comic shop with all its faults is best understood by looking at a spinner rack in your local Osco's. A convention's identity as a gathering of tribes or fulfillment of on-line social networking seems more grounded and less frivolous when you realize that it used to be the place you went to find comics you wouldn't see otherwise. In the promise of a small-press show, or when one hears about a certain kind of convention sketchbook, it may still be that way.
A final step in bringing all of the comics into play has been ease of access to various seller via on-line sources. Comics fans today frequently make use of publisher sites, cartoonist sites, old-comics sites and mail-order sites with an on-line component. They may even judge their brick and mortar comics shop against the discounts, ubiquity and ease of service of Amazon.com.
These are all great; I use them, too. But the one service that has changed the way I buy comics more than any other and the one where I think there's the most potential growth in terms of its everyday use by serious, devoted comics readers is the used bookstore listing service AbeBooks.com. There are similar services out there; much of what I like about AbeBooks applies to them, too. I'm sure folks' experiences vary, and there are those out there with bad experiences in terms of that kind of service, specific or general. I'm also quite certain that there is something about the purchase of the site by Amazon.com a couple of years ago that people find alarming or distressing either in practice or on principle. It even seems likely to me that this kind of on-line listing has had a horrific effect on people keeping brick and mortar stores of the kind you used to find a flat dozen or so worthy representatives in every major city. I can't speak to those things, partly from ignorance, and mostly because I almost always have a good experience that suits my needs perfectly. It may not be an overall boon for everyone, and I'll explore anyone making that case, but it's been a general boon to me.
Here are few words on each of seven ways I use that site -- and similar sites -- to supplement my comics buying needs.
1. It's a place to collect all those cartoonists who still exist mostly in older, forgotten book form.
I don't know if there are any comics being published today better than the best Peter Arno or Charles Addams books, two New Yorker cartoonists I think are best served by classic collections of their material. While we wait for the Barnaby deal to be struck, there are two great hardcovers from the 1940s and a handful of paperbacks from the 1980s that are out there ready to be brought home. The image at the top of this post is from a cartoonist turned kinetic sculpture artist named Rowland Emett -- the interest in most of his books died out with the train culture they gently satirized, but they're still out there to be had and enjoyed by fans of delicate linework and clever cartooning. Anne Cleveland, Chon Day, Abner Dean, Oliver Harrington... they're all out there waiting for you to read them ahead of any publisher who may or may not give them back to you in as full, lively or well-designed form. It's worth hitting that search button at least.
2. It's a way to access single volume needs or fill-ins -- reading copies, in particular -- and flat-out lost books.
I don't buy my standard comics trades through the sellers who list on AbeBooks, but I have certainly filled holes and bought single-volumes I needed in a hurry. For instance, I purchased an Essential X-Men trade for an essay I wanted to write on Dave Cockrum and received a sturdy copy about four days later for less than $5 total. The problem with a lot of buying these kinds of books this way is that you build up a lot of postage charges, so I've relegated the service in this case to my need-soon pinch-hitter and buy in fits and flurries elsewhere, qualifying for free postage. AbeBooks has an excellent on-base percentage, though, in terms of those single opportunities, and I use it about once a month this way. The sites also provides an easy way to find outright obscurities that aren't likely to be found in your local comic shop, or, really, any such store. For example, James Vance recently linked to an article that profiled the 1980s furry scene comics figure Kevin Duane and mentioned his anthology The I Hate Unicorns Book. I snagged a copy for less than $5 total off of one of the four booksellers offering that title.
3. It's a place find all those sort-of comic books out there.
The used bookstores and book sellers left out there don't make the same distinctions we do between books that are obviously comics and books that aren't quite what we think of when we think of that word. It is therefore very easy through AbeBooks to locate copies of Terry Gilliam's book of animation art, Animations Of Mortality, pictured above, or one of the joke captions over photos books that Stan Lee has done intermittently throughout his career, more than one under the basic title "You Don't Say." I once spent six years taking a few seconds in every bookstore I entered to see if I could locate a copy of the artist Tony Fitzpatrick's poetry and paintings book Hard Angels; it took the site less than six seconds early today to track down more than a few, plus copies of the same artist's Max And Gaby's Alphabet. With more and more sort-of comics hybrids hitting the market, this could be the place where I buy the one or two a year that catch my interest.
4. The search engine may inform you of an appearance with which you're not familiar.
I like the AbeBooks.com search engine much more than that offered by the other used bookstore listing mechanisms. A few of these sellers sell comic books, and while I tend not to buy comics from these sellers having them listed as books with an emphasis on the authors involved rather than condition or grade or character yields an advantage when working with obscure cartoonists. If you look up the late Pacific Northwest cartoonist Paul Ollswang, for example, you'll be reminded not just of his long out-of-print collections but a few of his anthology appearances, like the one in the comic above. If you're a completist, it's a place you should stop just to be sure.
5. It's a great place to check out other publishing efforts on behalf of comics you may already collect.
One of the growing joys of comic strips that are now being offered in these massive and admittedly wonderful complete volumes is that they absolve earlier and less complete attempts at publishing that work from failing to do so. They can thus be enjoyed as stand-alone works on their own, with a more rigid beginning and end, perhaps at a size or with a design that personally appeals to you. I've talked in the past about my fondness for 1970s Doonesbury collections, and noted that Barnes and Noble still seems to do a bang-up business with less-than-complete strip volumes like the original Calvin and Hobbes books and Peanuts Treasury, originally published I believe in the late 1960s. Sometimes it's not only about getting all of the comics, but the comics you like, presented in a way you like for reasons all your own.
6. It's an easy way to check out illustration and children's book gigs by your favorite cartoonists.
As is the case with the obscure books published by your favorite cartoonists, the search engine will also throw up the occasional illustration or even children's book gig. Searching Lorenzo Mattotti tosses up Eugenio and The Cranky Sun right alongside the comics Fires and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Look up the wonderful MAD artist Jack Davis and one of the common entries is his great-looking mid-'60s kids' book with Barbara Cary, Meet Abraham Lincoln. There are artists from whom each of us likely wants to see everything, not just the comics work.
7. And sometimes you see one or two things that make you wish you were really, really rich.
I've been tempted by a few of the very expensive things I've seen in standard comic book shops, but I tend to be more attracted to the things that drive values up in bookstores. Gross oversimplification: In a comic shop, a comic book that looks like it's never been touched is more valuable; in books, a volume that seems as if it were signed to and then manhandled by a noteworthy personality is worth more cash. If someone were to give me $1797 to spend on comics there's an 80 percent chance I'd come home with 1797 issues of Thor, I'd sure consider a copy of Passport signed by Saul Steinberg to designer Paul Rand complete with two pages of Rand's Steinberg-like doodles (!) before I'd ever look seriously at 18 selections from DC's Absolute Editions library. And I like those books.
*****
20 Comics Or Comics-Related Books I Own I've Bought Through An On-Line Service
* Animations Of Mortality, Lucinda Cowell and Terry Gilliam, Eyre Methuen: 1978.
* Barnaby and Mr. O'Malley, Crockett Johnson, Henry Holt: 1944.
* Curious Avenue, Tom Toles, Andrews McMeel: 1993.
* Emett's Domain: Trains, Trams, and Englishmen, Rowland Emett, Harcourt/Brace: 1953.
* Hard Angels, Tony Fitzpatrick, Janet Fleisher Gallery: 1988.
* Harlem as Seen by Hirschfeld, Al Hirschfeld and William Saroyan, Hyperion Press: 1941.
* It's a Long Way to Heaven, Abner Dean, Farar and Rinehart: 1945.
* It's Better With Your Shoes Off, Anne Cleveland, Tuttle Co.: 1955.
* Max and Gaby's Alphabet, Tony Fitzpatrick, Museum Of Contemporary Art: 2001.
* Night Becomes Day, Richard McGuire: Viking Juvenile: 1994.
* Peter Arno's Circus, Peter Arno, Horace Liveright: 1931.
* Peter Arno's Hullabaloo, Peter Arno, Horace Liveright: 1930.
* Peter Arno's Parade, Peter Arno, Horace Liveright: 1929.
* Richard's Poor Almanac, Richard Thompson, Emmis: 2004
* Sizzling Platter, Peter Arno, Simon & Schuster: 1949.
* The Best Ride To New York, Bob Levin, Harper & Row: 1978.
* The I Hate Unicorns Book, Edited by Kevin Duane, Protostar: 1984.
* There Are Ladies Present Helen Hokinson, Dutton, 1952.
* They'll Do It Every Time, Jimmy Hatlo, Avon: 1951.
* You Don't Say, Stan Lee, Non-Pareil: 1963.
FFF Results Post #185—4th Estate
On Friday, CR readers were asked to "Name Your Five Favorite Characters that Work in the Media." This is how they responded.
1. Brenda Starr
2. Billy Batson
3. Lois Lane
4. Vicky Vale
5. April O'Neil
*****
Paul Stock
1) Donald Dduck (career at Disney)
2) Clark Kent
3) Peter Parker, photographer
4) I'll go with Studs Kirby, too.
5) - NO! NUMBER ONE!: Philbert Desanex
1. Tintin, supposed reporter (has he ever filed a goddamned story?)
2. J. Jonah Jerk Jameson, publisher/crank
3. Reuben Flagg, owner of pirate station Q-USA
4. Billy Batson, boy radio reporter
5. Popeye, "star reporter"/co-owner of the Daily Blast and iirc, also an editor in another storyline
*****
Will Pfeifer
1. Jimmy Olsen
2. J. Jonah Jameson (an obvious choice, but c'mon!)
3. Dan Pussey
4. Vic Sage
5. Steve Lombard
*****
Russel Lissau
1. Meredith Van Zeyl (The Batman Strikes)
2. Ben Urich (Daredevil)
3. JJJ (Spidey)
4. Rick Redfern (Doonesbury)
5. Kermit the Frog
1. Matty Roth
2. Spider Jerusalem
3. Ben Urich
4, Robbie Robertson
5. Kent Brockman
*****
Thomas Scioli
1. Clark Kent
2. Vic Sage
3. Billy Batson
4. Johnny Flagg
5. Lois Lane
*****
Michael Grabowski
1. Robbie Robertson
2. Peter Parker
3. Mike Moran
4. Morgan Edge
5. Lois Lane
*****
Mark Waid
1. Scribbly Jibbet
2. Oscar Asherman
3. J. Jonah Jameson
4. Iris West
5. Rush Limbaugh
*****
Andrew Mansell
1. Lester Gooch creator of Fearless Fosdick (Li'l Abner)
2. Jimmy Olsen For A Day columnist
3. Snap Hunter International Photographer (Johnny Hazard)
4. Poteet Canyon reporter for FLAM magazine (Steve Canyon)
5. Brenda Starr outsourced Reporter
*****
Tom Bondurant
1. Lois Lane
2. Mark Slackmeyer
3. Hilton Krieger
4. Billy Batson
5. J. Jonah Jameson
*****
Scott Dunbier
* Milo Bloom
* Clark Kent
* Billy Batson
* P. Martin Shoemaker
* R. Crumb (as a reporter for Mother Jones or The New Yorker)
*****
Matt Blind
1. Kermit the Frog
2. Spider Jerusalem
3. Matty Roth
4. J. Jonah Jameson
5. Brenda Starr
1. J Jonah Jameson
2. Milo Bloom
3. Tenzil Kem
4. April O'Neil
5. Dennis Hough (The American)
*****
Justin J. Major
1. Kent Brockman (The Simpsons)
2. Steve Lombard (Superman)
3. Morbo the Annihilator (Futurama)
4. Jack Ryder (The Creeper)
5. Johnny Chambers (All-Star Squadron)
First Thought Of The Day
It's very much throwing a calcified tater tot from a house made of peanut brittle and sporting a ranch dressing moat, but Muncie sure is putting the middle in Middletown, USA these days.
2. Stitchesbecomes second graphic novel up for National Book Award; there's some huffing and puffing about it being in a Young Adult category that mostly goes away when word came out that it was the publisher's decision.
George Tuska, a comic book artist who was one of the few of his peers to have measurable success in both the the initial 1930s-1940s flood of comic book production and during their revival as more of a specialty publishing form in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, passed away near the stroke of midnight between October 15 and October 16.
Tuska was born in Hartford, Connecticut in 1916. His parents were Russian immigrants who met in America. Tuska's father died when the future comic book artist was a teen, and his mother worked two shifts as a cook in a restaurant she established on her own. It was as a child that Tuska suffered the fever that initially damaged his hearing.
Like many future comic book artists, Tuska saw more general training as an artist before moving into that field. His lambiek.net entry has him finishing studies at the National Academy School Of Art in 1937, while an initial obituary asserts he may have attended classes the National Academy of Design as late as 1939; I would favor the latter. In an interview from 2001 conducted by PC Hamerlinck, Tuska describes his move into art thusly:
After high school I visited my aunt in New York City, where I ended up working a few odd jobs. One was designing women's costume jewelry. It was fun, but I soon found out that it just wasn't my thing. Shortly thereafter, a friend of mine invited me to work out with him, lifting weights at a local gym. I exercised for five hours that day. The next day I was so sore I couldn't get out of bed. My friend came over, and we dropped in to visit a friend of his who was a sculptor. His studio was on one of the West 70s Streets, overlooking Central Park. I never got to know his name, but he knew I was interested in art, so he recommended me to the National Academy of Design. At the time it was located at 104th Street and Amsterdam Avenue. Thus began my art career!"
Better documented than the length and location of his schooling is that Tuska began his comics career during the industry's initial burst of publishing activity, joining the Eisner/Iger studio and working as an assistant on the newspaper strip Scorchy Smith in roughly the same time period. For Eisner/Iger he worked on the titles Jungle, Mystery Men, Planet Wonderworld and Wings. He joined the Harry "A" Chesler Studio for a while, where he contributed work to features such as Captain Marvel, Golden Arrow and Uncle Sam. He would later work for Eisner after his separation from Iger. Other publishers for whom Tuska worked in this initial period included Quality Comics -- for whom he created the character "Hercule" -- Fiction House, Harvey, Fox and Standard.
Tuska was drafted into military service during what looks like the latter phase of World War II. Although comics artists of that period didn't always find a deployment that took advantage of those skills, Tuska served his country at South Carolilna's Fort Jackson as an artist. He drew military plans, and found time to provide illustrations to army magazines.
Tuska returned to comics after the war, and enjoyed his first major success as a reliable performer on a variety of features in the best-selling Crime Does Not Pay title, splitting time between that work and on solid adventure titles of the period such as Black Terror and Doc Savage. He also did his first sustained work for Marvel, turning in pencil work on a variety of gigs into the early 1950s.
Tuska was one of many comics artists to see his workload in comic books decrease due to circulation and censorship issues in the 1950s. He found work in comic strips. Tuska returned to the adventure strip Scorchy Smith as its primary artist from 1954 to 1959. He then took over on both dailies and Sundays with Buck Rogers, a job he kept well until the 1960s (he dropped the Sundays a couple of years after the dailies, in 1967).
A drop in the popularity of adventure strips and a more stable market than that which existed in the previous decade began to entice the veteran illustrator back into the comic book fold. Although his re-entry into comic books came through Tower Comics, perhaps the most famous entity that tried to capitalize on the success of new superhero books at DC and Marvel, he is best known for his work at Marvel during this period. One early assignment that grew in stature over the years was inking Jack Kirby on the Captain America "Sleeper" storyline that appeared over several issues of Tales Of Suspense. He worked fill-in slots on various titles, before setting in on the Iron Man character for a decade-long run. Tuska also found work with the Luke Cage character, as well as performing duties on Ghost Rider, X-Men and Daredevil.
Earlier this year, the AV Club examined his work during this time period for the article "Reinventing The Pencil," and singled him out as the embodiment of a certain kind of uninspired craftwork:
"It's hard to find anyone who would say a bad word against [Tuska] as a man. But as an artist, his Silver Age work for Marvel Comics... Well, it wasn't exactly bad; Tuska was perfectly competent, and his art for titles like Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk is decent, though unspectacular. But his drawing was so quickly assayed, and so essentially flavorless, that he became the King Of The Fill-In Issue, hopping in to provide bland, forgettable work whenever someone else blew a deadline. He thus played an inadvertent part in setting up the Big Two's creed of speed over quality, and helped establish the Marvel house style, which nurtured some young artists, but acted as an artistic straitjacket for others."
Another way to look at Tuska's work during this period was that he did so many fill-in comics because the expansion in the Marvel line put a significant strain on the available talent pool; a versatile artist who could produce professional work on short notice must have been a huge boon to that company's bottom line. It's unclear if Tuska suffered a bit in terms of overall ease making the transition from strips back into comic books, and whether he felt entirely comfortable working under the basic model established by Jack Kirby: his layouts were certainly more imaginative than the standard at the time, and the way in which characters like Luke Cage held a lot of their strength in their shoulders and punched from their legs up through their torsos betrayed his knowledge of strength and fitness. His signature flourish may have been characters in arrested motion, coiled in preparation for violence like so many pulp heroes of an earlier generation, legs splayed in the form of a near-base ready for what might come next. While perhaps slightly diminished in otherworldly power that many comics artists milked from the contrast of stillness and exaggerated movement, Tuska's heroes almost certainly suffered fewer muscle pulls.
In the 1970s, Tuska took one last journey into the world of newspaper strips, becoming the artist on the World's Greatest Superheroes effort featuring DC Comics heroes. He also worked for that company's comic book line on various titles in much the same plug and play manner in which -- save for Iron Man -- he was employed by Marvel.
Tuska retired from comics in the middle 1980s, but remained active in commissions up until several weeks preceding his passing. As more and more attention began to be paid to the comic book artists of the past through the development of magazine sources, Tuska received attention as a physically impressive memorable presence to many in that first generation of comic book artist. Dewey Cassell's book, The Art Of George Tuska, was published by TwoMorrows in 2005, documenting various phases to his long career. A thinly disguised version of Tuska, a character called "Gar Tooth," appeared in Will Eisner's 1986 paean to the early days of comics, The Dreamer. Like many personal reminiscences of Tuska, that portrayal was of someone physically imposing -- as noted above, Tuska began to lift weights at about the same time he entered into art -- but of a friendly, even gentle nature. He has recently been an Eisner Hall of Fame nominee.
One of the stranger and surprisingly telling tributes paid Tuska in recent years has been the occasional Internet posting either including or outright centered around a panel from his short run on Hero For Hire, where in that title's ninth issue Luke Cage brazenly asks Dr. Doom for monies owed with the line "Where's My Money, Honey?" While that issue may be best remembered for that oddball bit of street slang from Steve Englehart, the story itself turns on Tuska's ability to depict comic book violence in a way that blends fantasy and reality: namely, the character's decision to strike a specific point in the bad guy's armor until it's weakened and begins to malfunction. In that sequence, Luke Cage certainly came across as a man with the ability to punch his way into Marvel's upper tier of superheroes, and through his portrayal of a corrective, "what if?" situation that added to rather than subtracted from the general storyline of a still wobbly Marvel Universe, Tuska cemented his reputation as one of the more iconic superhero artists of that decade -- two full generations after entering comics.
George Tuska was 93 years old. He is survived by his beloved wife of over 60 years, Dorothy, their three children and a number of grandchildren and great-granchildren.
Day By Day Cartoon Draws Attention, Ire And Even Inferences Of Threat
Blogimus Prime Andrew Sullivan got there first and flexes his usual efficient writing muscles to point out a weird Chris Muir Day By Day cartoon and the equally weird responses to it at some super-sensitive nodes around the Internet. Basically, Muir put a rant about the growing dictatorship infrastructure into the mouth of one of his characters holding a knife, which some people took as a subtle suggestion of violence. I think that's pretty silly, but I'm not sure it's any more silly than the rant itself, which is presented with the comics equivalent of a straight face. I envy the drama and sense of purpose that must come in a life that is perceived by its agent to be living in stalwart resistance to various Washington D.C. diktats.
All Eyes Toward The American Coasts
* the Alternative Press Expo gets going tomorrow in San Francisco, California. There have been so many dramatic stories in terms of conventions and convention-going over the last 12 months that one forgets we're still very early in an experiment by APE's mothership company, which includes WonderCon and Comic-Con International, to bracket its San Francisco show on either side of its San Diego one. There are other ways to look at APE, too: in terms of whether or not with an increased nationwide convention schedule if San Francisco can support two shows, how this show relates to a show like SPX perhaps in terms of drawing more west coast talent, whether or not the vendors favor comics or is more generally predisposed towards handmade art. Robot 6 has a breakdown of who is doing what where.
* if I were going to APE, I would 1) buy a copy of John Pham's Sublife #2 -- I saw the pages last summer and they're super-pretty and Pham should be encouraged to make more comics in every way possible; 2) take a look at what Anders Nilsen might have for sale at the Drawn and Quarterly booth; 3) buy the new Rina Ayuyang comic from Sparkplug; 4) go see Jeff Smith's spotlight panel and his participation in a quick draw activity; 5) find out something about the publishing future of the great Phoebe Gloeckner; 5) visit as many of the local comics shops or at least their booth set-ups if I could, culminating in Isotope's big party with their mini-comics award winner. If I hadn't been invited to a wedding this weekend, I'd certainly be there.
* early word from the show itself indicates that the con will be held next year from October 7-10, 2010. Watch for a spate of headlines noticing this from various blogs and news sites. Why? Well, for one reason, next year's New York Comic-Con is October 8-10. This is great news for those of us who like to sit back and watch gigantic comics entities beat on each other and try to out-compete each other, and particularly good news for those of us who thought Wizard would get only as close as a week away from the Reed Exhibitions show on either side. This puts the two shows in direct competition, with anything resembling a draw favoring the smaller Wizard show. Also, with an extra day, Wizard may be able to convince even NYCC attendees to also do their show. This will all be watched very, very closely.
Go, Look: Stick In The Mud I know some of you feel that many of the stories at the other end of these horror links are almost unreadable, but I love the individual panels like the one above and the overall oddball coloring schemes and cheap garishness that so many of these comics offer.
* speaking of SLG, Dan Vado objects in the comments section of a Sean Collins post about his attitude towards and efforts on behalf of Street Angel.
* Google announces its on-line book strategy. This is one of those things where the possibilities drive the interest rather than the realities, but definitely something to which everyone must pay some attention.
* finally, Ben Towle writes about the Stitches National Book Award nomination. The e-mails I got with this link led me to believe he was going to suggest it was nominated in a youth category because it was a graphic novel, when it was the publisher pushed it there, but I didn't see that argument at all. What I did see was an interesting piece of the opening salvo variety about the lack of general fiction successes and an assertion that this means that comics hasn't arrived yet. I think it's an interesting observation, and I would like to see more successful comics fiction falling somewhere between Bone and Dan Brown, sure, but I'm not sure I'm ready to make any sweeping pronouncements. I think the book market is kind of a shambling leviathan on its best days (and gross besides), so there are bound to be peculiarities if not outright dysfunction when it comes to making comics work through that market. The book market's lack of imagination and tendency to front-run on genres is one reason I think it's very important comics maintain its own market and try to make that market much more diverse.
I've been teaching two classes on comics at the University of Calgary this term (one undergraduate and one at the graduate level), and so have been thinking more than I normally do about issues surrounding communicability in comics. My students have been particularly interested in the way that cartoonists make things legible for readers. For instance, they've been put off by the Gary Panter material that they've read, while strongly attracted to the Adrian Tomine. At the same time, they've been deeply fascinated by some of the formal experiments of Richard McGuire, Chris Ware and Art Spiegelman. And I think they'd also be interested in Henninger for similar reasons.
I know little about Henninger other than he's a graduate of the comics school in Angouleme, and that he seemed very nice when I bought this book from him. His hyper-thin lines, empty or minimal backgrounds, and lack of character detail align him, in this work at least, with artists like François Ayroles and Ruppert and Mulot, and thematically the book echoes the kinds of alienated mystery that typify Jean-Pierre Duffour or Martin tom Dieck. Cent mètres carrés (the title refers to the size of the apartment in which most of the action takes place) isn't filled with characters so much as archetypes, and doesn't have a plot so much as it contains incidents.
As I said, I'll admit to getting lost a few times in the narrative, but I was also thrilled to see some things I had never seen before. For instance, as early as the second page Henninger places a word balloon behind the window in the foreground, thereby re-spacing the letters. I'm sure that he's not the first to do this, but I couldn't immediately think of another artist who had. The effect is mildly disturbing, albeit perfectly logical. It sets an early mood for a book that traces the "adventures" of an architect who is randomly pulled into several non-sequitur murder mysteries.
The plot is so thin here that it occasionally threatens to collapse in on itself, but it is kept erect by the lightness of the drawings. The framing is often unusual, and entire pages pass that are initially inscrutable before a new piece of information makes everything if not plain, at least comprehensible. Still, absurdities abound (a murder victim is buried in the floor of an apartment building; boats sit at an impasse when a new bridge is airlifted into place; a sex scene goes disturbingly awry), and they are ably structured by the visual grammar.
Cent mètres carrés is one of those interesting books that I'm glad to have picked up, and one that will keep my looking for more in the future. As I tell my students, sometimes it's good to be a little confused about the things that you read.
*****
To learn more about Dr. Beaty, or to contact him, try here.
Those interested in buying comics talked about in Bart Beaty's articles might try here or here.
Joe Rosen, a longtime letterer at Marvel whose career stretched back to the late 1940s, has passed away. Rosen began work with Harvey in the relative 1940s flush period enjoyed by comics publication before moving to DC and then Marvel later in the decade. Although nearly 2000 of his lettered stories are tracked by the Grand Comics Database, that list excludes much of his work preceding the middle 1970s, including apparently a period of sustained output for Marvel during its 1960s superhero-driven heyday.
The well-liked, gentlemanly Rosen enjoyed a number of career highlights whose particular achievement may have been lost to history and the appraisal of a rapidly diminishing group of direct peers. He is credited on the letterer on the Spider-Man/Superman crossover project, an important book during a relatively fallow publishing period in the history of comic books generally. He was also the letterer during the highly influential Frank Miller run on Daredevil, joining a murderer's row of supporters on that book including colorist Lynn Varley and editor Denny O'Neil. Rosen's work managed to combine a certain hushed quality with routine clarity and even, one could say, a muscularity achieved through the crowded precision of the kerning. He enabled Miller's unique voice in a way that was quite unique, and the work would have been slightly but I think perceptibly different without him. The long-time letterer's work continues to be seen through Marvel's increasingly aggressive reprint programs.
More On Wizard Con Maneuvers
Heidi MacDonald made a couple of great catches in her article yesterday similar to my own on how Warren Ellis was being advertised in a way that strongly, strongly suggested his attendance at a convention in Toronto next year when he hadn't been even contacted about any show on the Shamus-owned, post-Wizard World slate. She notes that the New York Post article in advance of this weekend's Big Apple Comic-Con has an attendance claim that may be impossible given the capacity of the venue, and that one of the providers of celebrities for this kind of show, including several heavily advertised at earlier stages of advertising for the show, has bailed.
I'd say that both stories add weight to the notion that there should be much watching of how these shows are conducted in order to make sure they're done in an honorable way. I don't know from whatever gossip is around, although I'm sure it's spicy, but what we know that's out in the open suggests there may possibly be some shenanigans to watch for. This includes fostering public dissonance when it comes to making distinction between the shows by adopting similar names, but certainly isn't limited to it. This should be an even a bigger issue next year when NYCC is on the calendar in close proximity to the Big Appel show. Where the next Big Apple show of the kind we're seeing this weekend is placed o the calendar in relation to NYCC -- an announcement we're likely to get at the conclusion of this weekend's show -- should speak volumes. If it's close, expect a lot of attention to be paid to things like poaching guests (which tends to mean having one show take the bulk of expenses in getting someone to the city but the second show trying to get this person to make a nominal appearance) and other aggressive, potentially ethically dubious strategies.
Go, Read: Jeff MacNelly Appreciated David Apatoff; Mike Lynch. MacNelly was the editorial page equivalent of a five-tool ballplayer: he drew well, he drew funny, he drew smart, he drew without malice, and he elucidated his positions with great clarity.
Stitches Becomes Second Graphic Novel Nominated For National Book Award Ron Hogan has a nice write-up at Mediabistro.com on word that David Small's BEA-breakout Stitches was among the works nominated for National Book Awards this year. Hogan was as curious as I was to hear that it was nominated as a Young Adult work even though very little was made of that work being for Young Adults during that initial burst of publicity. Turns out there was more confusion with the Awards Committee than with the publisher, although the publisher's reasoning sounds more like a PR strategy of the kind where this actor gets a Supporting Actor push and that actor gets a Best Actor push at the Oscars than it does anything about the work itself.
No Apology For Shoeshine Boy Cartoon
The Providence Journalhas eschewed an apology for a Jim Bush cartoon depicting emerging state politician Gordon Fox as a shoeshine boy working on the shoes of House Speaker William Murphy in favor of an assurance that the cartoon was not meant as racial commentary. Fox is of mixed race heritage; Murphy is white. Although the local NAACP representative seems initially encouraged by the issuance of said statement, and the progression of local complaints is what's important to the paper here, it's kind of astonishing that anyone can use a shoeshine boy as visual shorthand and not know there's a racial component for many people concerning that particular image. Maybe they can run a cartoon where a train porter accepts the explanation.
Random Comics News Story Round-Up
* there's a fine interview with the very interesting cartoonist Benjamin Marra here; commentary on that interview here. For contrast, run this interview with Edmond Baudoin through a translator; there's a bunch of good stuff there, too. He's been teaching in Quebec?
* I enjoyed Bill Kartalopoulos' review of Genesis, here.
* the writer Steven Grant continues his walk through North American mainstream comic book art through the years with a look at the 1970s and the flood of permutations of style that decade brought with it.
* the longtime webcomics entrepreneur Joey Manley talks about promoting webcomics in terms of their being more significantly streamlined into the various entertainment and art options available to people on the Internet.
* not comics: here are a bunch of the more effective and funny one-liners from Scott Kurtz's hosting gig at the Harvey Awards. It seems the webcartoonist went down the audacious path of actually sitting down and working up a bunch of jokes for his night under the lights, and it paid off for him.
* here's some unfortunate and potentially distressing news: AdHouse has canceled FCHS, a title by Vito Delsante and Rachel Friere that seemed as if it would be a straight-forward fiction work of the kind of which comics doesn't see enough, because of low sales. I hope they find a second life for it, perhaps as a more high-profile on-line project. They should certainly be 1-Day mailing the Viz people, too.
* you ever get news that you feel bad you didn't know already, but you're so happy about its substance that you don't care? That's how I feel to learn that Big Fun has continued to publish and the last two issues have it looks like solo-featured the Frank Robbins-era Scorchy Smith. (thanks, Rodrigo Baeza)
* as expected, Scott Stantis' newspaper strip Prickly Cityhas returned to the Chicago Tribune following Stantis moving to the Tribune to take up the paper's long-neglected editorial cartoonist banner.
* the Paul Grist title Jack Staff is being rebranded and relaunched as The Weird World Of Jack Staff. I have no idea what that means, but I imagine you can find out in this article.
* I don't usually write about French-language comics in this column, but the American Splendor series planned by Editions Çà Et Là look awfully cool. There are going to be three volumes of about 200 pages each, stretching from 1976 to 2002 with a lot of stuff reprinted that didn't make North American collections.
* speaking of the French-language market, it's about to experience the dropping of a new Asterix volume, the last few of which have sold extremely well even given the standards set by the series overall. There's really nothing like this kind of event book in American comics publishing. This book will be tied in directly to various Asterix at 50 celebration efforts, and there's an initial print run of three million.
* a new comics-related message board, BeyondTheBleed.com, debuted on Saturday. Details here.
* there's going to be an anthology set in David Petersen's Mouse Guard universe featuring work by creators other than Petersen. I still feel that whole Mouse Guard enterprise is a sleeping giant, but I feel a little bit less that way about it every year.
* if I understand this post correctly, DC is going to resurrect some canceled series to tie into their Blackest Night event series. That's kind of cute, actually.
* finally, James Kochalka's American Elfadded a character in a way that doesn't involve anyone getting pregnant: a cat, Nooko.
Bigger Than The Actual Drawing: Scott Stantis Reflects On Still-New Trib Gig
Although it kind of trails off at the end, this profile of Chicago Tribune editorial cartoonist Scott Stantis has a few nuggets worth extracting -- especially if, like me, you consider Stantis receving this gig one of the more symbolically important news events this new century. I didn't know that he was an official member of the editorial board, which is something that used to be more common than I think it is today. I was also encouraged by the drive he felt after witnessing his first editorial meetings -- a feeling papers should try to replicate in the paper itself -- and the fact alluded to in the title that the printed version of his first cartoon was bigger than the drawing itself.
Warren Ellis Won’t Be At 2010 Wizard Show Despite Print Ad’s Suggestion
The writer Warren Ellis is generous enough to chalk up as a misunderstanding this advertisement that strongly implies his attendance at the 2010 Toronto Comic-Con (I assume without knowing for sure they've changed its name since purchasing it) despite his never had any contact of any kind with anyone that would make this a logical conclusion. While I can't speak to this specific incident, given the potential dissonance created by their appropriation of the term "Comic-Con" and the direction of their PR regarding same, I wouldn't be surprised if dubious strategies aren't going to be par for the course in getting this new generation of Shamus-owned shows on their feet.
Random Comics News Story Round-Up
* there's a good interview with the very interesting cartoonist Randall Munroe here. Unfortunately, I feel I have to spend the bulk of this mention saying that the aside Munroe makes about Bill Watterson having to keep his job until five years into Calvin & Hobbes is -- at least to my knowledge -- pretty much bullshit. I believe Watterson (famously, even) quit all his jobs to devote full attention to the strip -- Scott Adams is a famous cartoonist who held onto his day job for years. Even if Watterson was still working a job somewhere I don't know about, the bigger truth there is that he would have been making a comfortable living by just about any standard by the end of his first 18-24 months as a newspaper cartoonist, if not much, much earlier. So if he kept a job it wasn't because he needed-one needed one. Also, Watterson stated over and over again that the primary reason he didn't get into merchandise is because he felt it would fundamentally dilute the strip. There's enough bad information out there already in the discussion of webcomics vis-a-vis newspaper cartoonists that there really doesn't need to be any more.
* also: S-C-H-U-L-Z. I suck at spelling generally, but I'm also a signatory of the Kim Thompson "Let's At Least Try To Spell Schulz, Shuster and Jenette Correctly" Treaty of 1994, so I have to mention that.
* although I've never been much of a comics collector except as much as you need to lug the things around to have access to them and be able to write about them, I like the idea of bookplates that people have been doing recently. The one pictured in this post is described by its maker here.
* if there were more features like this one with G. Willow Wilson of Air about best airports, I'd be able to link to the various DC blogs more frequently than I do. Although I have to say, McCarran Airport should be disqualified from any list that suggests you spend any time there because of its cab line. Last time I flew into McCarran I saw three Lords of the Underworld standing to the side of the cab line talking in admiring tones and making plans to have one put in down below. Admittedly, the kind of "stuck in" the list is talking about means you're not going outside to catch a cab, but I sure like ranting about that stupid cab line. If CCI ever moved there, I'd drive in or not go at all.
* it looks like there are more major book festivals than simply BEA that have seen significant invasions of comics and comics authors over the last few years. Or I could totally be reading this wrong.
* this Fall is going to be crazy for comics specials -- from publishers, from retailers, from the artists themselves. Here's what Amazon.com has done with the price of a favorite book of mine from the last couple of years. Even the traditional discount outlets have more comics than ever before.
* the third best non-human blogger about comics Bully and I share a fondness for Silver Age comics' use of blueprints.
* finally, a bit of not comics: Sean Kleefeld comments on Brett Ratner's comments about crazy comics fans. I think the reactions fans have are a lot more complicated than feelings of ownership, although I'm happy to blast fan entitlement where it legitimately exists. I also think there's quite a bit of distance from Bat-Fans freaking out because Mr. Mom was cast as Batman and FF-fans feeling that the Fantastic Four movies weren't good because they're not as good as the Fantastic Four comics they've read in the way those comics are good. In this case, given how much fans generally liked the first two X-Men films, it's a bit silly to suggest even by proximity that fans all of the sudden became protective of those characters or their reading of them only when Mr. Ratner went to work on them. My hunch is that it was simply not a good film. Oh, to have the problems and hang-ups and setbacks of multi-millionaires.
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 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 definitely at least pick one of these suckers up, if only to chuck it at the guy behind the counter. Don't follow my lead.
*****
AUG090038 BPRD 1947 #4 (OF 5) $2.99 AUG090040 HELLBOY WILD HUNT #7 (OF 8) $2.99 JUN090373 ASTOUNDING WOLF-MAN #19 $2.99 MAY090348 GODLAND #29 $2.99 AUG090367 WALKING DEAD #66 (MR) $2.99 AUG090473 INCREDIBLE HERCULES #136 $2.99 JUL098304 INVINCIBLE IRON MAN #17 2ND PTG LARROCA VAR (PP #886) $2.99
A good week for quality, sub-$3 pamphlet-style mainstream comic books.
MAR090226 ABSOLUTE DEATH HC (MR) $99.99
I want to have a life someday where my appraisal that a comic will be pretty at a certain size afforded it by choice of format will be enough for me to order one.
AUG090574 DAREDEVIL RETURN OF KING TP $17.99
I wonder if there are any direct market retailers out there that really could have sold more issues of a pamphlet-format comic book series like Daredevil if the trades didn't come out so quickly. For some reason, I suspect that that's a skill that most comic book retailers simply don't have any more.
AUG090968 ACT I VATE PRIMER HC $24.99
One of the more prominent webcomics collectives out there goes print for at least one volume anyway.
JUL090864 YOU ARE THERE HC $26.99
More beautiful Jacques Tardi, a seminal work in comics for adults in the French-language market and a first-paragraph mention work for both Tardi and writer Jean-Claude Forest.
JUL091247 ART OF OSAMU TEZUKA GOD OF MANGA HC $40.00
Reviewers better thought of than I am have been teasing me with dropped mentions of perusing advance copies of this Abrams art book for a few weeks now. If I were in a comics shop, I'd have my sweaty hands all over this thing.
JUL091030 AMELIA RULES TP VERY NINJA CHRISTMAS $7.99
A lot of people really enjoy this series. I'm not one of those people, but it's not like I wish it harm or anything.
JUL090867 MOME GN VOL 16 SUMMER 09 $14.99
Is this new and late or old and just popping up again? And has any cartoonist not Jack Kirby made better use of a silent, understated quality as it exists in relation to their bolder moments?
*****
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, you deserve better.
Your Danish Cartoons Hangover Update
There's only one today, but I think it's a considerable piece: this Brussels Journal article on Kurt Westergaard's visit to the US and his speeches at Yale (widely covered) and Princeton (not so much) fairly lambastes many of the students in attendance and the American press generally. I'm not sure how frequently I'd agree with their politics were I regular reader, or even how much I agree with them on these specific issues, but Brussels Journal was on that story from the very beginning and stayed with it in a very thorough and principled way. They have the right to slap the backs of a few heads, or at least should be taken seriously while doing so.
Let The Phantom Kidney Punches Begin
I said the other day that I was divided on the issues presented by a politician making a bit of a deal of the incidental and sexual discomfort humor present in the first volume of Akira Toriyama's wonderful Dragon Ball. I don't have children, and I doubt anyone cares how I would raise my imaginary phantom children, but it occurs to me that I have plenty of friends whom I'm certain would not feel comfortable with this kind of humor easily accessible by their young children. Just having these feelings doesn't make them right, but it doesn't seem unreasonable to bring this up in whatever legitimate way allowed by policy. However, I loathe the way that politicians and cultural warriors use these kind of incidents to bask a bit in their political heat and even perhaps divert that energy to shoot at target outside the original subject matter. In that light, I'm sad to learn that the public library is apparently reconsidering stocking this series in its entirety in what seems like a perfectly appropriate place just because people are asking angry questions. That doesn't seem right.
Please Stop Operating At Technological Cutting Edge, Says Outmoded Platform
You just sort of know that this odd story of an anti-piracy comic book being distributed was going to add with someone noting that comic had been uploaded somewhere. Although I guess that could be the idea, because otherwise it seems like you're not reaching the same people at all -- comics to fight on-line piracy is like distributing sheet music to curtail music piracy. More coherent and less stiff arguments might help, too, and that's coming from someone who is very old and who avoids free stuff put on-line like the plague.
Book From Tolle/McDonnell Team-Up
Here's something I didn't know at all: Patrick McDonnell is a fan of Power Of Now popular thinker and self-help guru Eckhart Tolle, whom I primarily remember as one of those people who refused to go to school because it sucked -- something I wish I'd thought of at that age. I don't know what crediting someone to be the inspiration in your life means, but it's clear that Tolle's work is important to the cartoonist. A book using the illustrations of the cartoonist to enlighten as to the meaning of the words of the writer is apparently imminent.
Herblock’s 100th Kicks Off Festivities
Newspaper industry bible Editor & Publisherhas a succinct wrap-up of events timed to begin today on the 100th anniversary of the birth of the late editorial cartoonist Herblock. (The first of which is noted elsewhere on this site with an event designation.) This includes a major retrospective at the Library of Congress from today through May 1, 2010, and the imminent publication of a book featuring thousands of the iconic cartoonist's cartoons on paper and within the included DVD. Herblock was a formidable cartoonists, one of the best dozen or so working in his profession in the 20th Century; it's great that he passed away after such a long run near the seat of American political power and with the ability to fund a massive foundation which will contribute to this kind of attention and a score of other good works.
Random Comics News Story Round-Up
* of the avalanche of Berke Breathed pieces we're seeing in conjunction with the new archive launching, I enjoyed reading this piece from New York.
* here's a piece on the 1980s John Byrne-led Superman re-launch as a gateway comic. It's amazing to think how that particular publishing event would be handled as a news story now.
* there are wonderful Prison Pit event photos here and here. Ye Gods.
* finally, Sean T. Collins expands a bit on yesterday's announcement that the arts festival run by MoCCA will take place in 2010 in a very crowded April, noting that people will react to the table prices and that there seems to be some pent-up resentment regarding. I've always felt there's some resentment about certain practices at the show along with a great deal of affection for it generally. I think people see the table costs and look at the what they get back in terms of basic services -- the fact that air conditioning was off the table, the haphazard nature of pre-show promotion, what seems like year after year of confusion on the floor itself despite it being a veteran festival at this point -- and ask questions, even if it makes them uncomfortable given how much they enjoy the show and get a lot out of it.
Everything’s Coming Up Zapiro
Recent news from prominent South African editorial cartoonist Jonathan "Zapiro" Shapiro, a powerful media figure in the region and a well-known artist internationally:
* although the thrust of the article is rightly on the career achievements of Khaba Mkize, it's worth noting that Zapiro's "Rape Of Justice" cartoon has won another prize, this time the cartoonist award at the Vodacom Journalist of the Year Awards. I think it's fascinating how such a strong cartoon -- Zapiro depicted various politicians holding down justice so she could be raped by current South African President Jacob Zuma -- has won so much recognition. I just can't fathom this ever happening in the US, even for the best cartoon in the history of cartoons.
* the cartoonist was apparently the final feature in a 13-episode set of documentaries on prominent South Africans. It asserts that the documentary dealt with the shadow of the Holocaust, which is interesting because I have no idea how that might have had an influence on the cartoonist's career.
* the long-troubled Spitting Image-style television show featuring puppet caricatures of South African politicians based on Zapiro's visuals has found new life on the Internet, the place to go for new life in this century.
1. On the positive end, you can read this profile as something in which Shamus either participated directly or likely approved of indirectly, and as such it may provide some insight as to his current state of mind and market positioning. I would say this all but confirms that Shamus' new business model is going to emphasize the conventions over the magazines. It's not like the fact that Wizard's site ignored recent earth-shattering publishing announcements in favor of announcements as to what musical acts have been hired to play the next Shamus convention wasn't a huge clue right there, but still.
2. The incessant branding within the article of Shamus' conventions in particular and of conventions in general as Comic-Cons seems to me a deliberate attempt to piggyback on publicity garnered by Comic-Con International and to a lesser but still significant extent by the Reed Exhibitions folk. But mostly CCI. No one I'm ever aware of has called comic conventions "Comic-Cons" with such certainty that an article like this can make that determination. I've been writing about comics for 15 years and I was still looking up proper spellings two years ago.
3. "You might have to look hard to even find a comic book." Ugh.
4. I could swear Wizard didn't buy the struggling Chicago Comicon until 1998. I'd bet money it wasn't 1994, and that it wasn't called Chicago Comic-Con.
5. It's really a strain to say that Shamus is part of a new generation of promoters that have transformed the comics convention; the hopeful description sounds like anyone but Shamus (movie previews?), the more realistic description (Adam West) sounds exactly like what Wizard tried with its broader-implication WizardWorld set-up. It's quite a dance to make this all sound new, but CCI has been so successful and there is enough of an appetite for pop-culture dealer and minor-celebrity driven shows I imagine there are going to be a ton of people willing to write articles like this.
The funny thing is, I never had anything against the old WizardWorld shows except that they were not my cup of tea. A mainstream comics-focused show with a strong adult fan contingent and Golden Age dealer emphasis made a certain sense as a divergence from what San Diego has become. I was at the last few Chicago Comicons and the first couple of Wizard shows -- that show wouldn't have lasted much longer in its previous form. At some point, though, that model either showed its limitations or started to fail, and you had MMA on the premises and perhaps a certain kind of mainstream fan got too old to devote an entire weekend to drunken excess in a hotel bar and the shows weren't family-friendly enough to reboot... I honestly don't know. I just know it faded quickly. I think buying a bunch of smaller shows is also a great idea, but I'm just uncomfortable with the mirror-branding which could bring with it a lot of confusion in that marketplace that feels exploitative. I guess we'll wait and see.
Go, Read: Mike Manley BCC Report Mike Manley is unsparing in his criticism of the excesses of North American comics culture as experienced through conventions, so a con report from him is always a nice thing to see
Missed It: 3 Geeks Court Judgment
I totally missed Don MacPherson's telling of this story about Rich Koslowski winning a summary-judgment motion in Canadian higher court regarding the use of his 3 Geeks characters. Looking at it just now, I think what strikes me isn't so much the win itself but how clearly the use in question violated the common-sense standards of a bunch of people like you and me sitting around a table after dinner discussing such things, but that it still went into formal legal proceedings before being resolved.
It Used To Be Comics Coverage On-Line Was All Stories Like This One
So a man decided he need to stalk Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi dressed in a superman suit. There is nothing about this story that isn't funny and sad and awful and hilarious all at the same time, from the fact that the cops confiscated this poor man's cape before his court appearance to the Prime Minister apparently not noticing some goofball in a Superman suit frantically trying to capture his attention to the notion expressed by the arrested man that the costume would help him along into the world of entertainment. I heartily approve, and look forward to President Obama's potential stalking by Corto Maltese.
2010 Con Calendar Begins Its Subtle Shifts As MoCCA Festival Moves To April
The full press release can be found here, but the short story is that the long-running New York-based comics art festival run by the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art (the MoCCA Festival) has as expected moved from its traditional June weekend back to April (the 10th and 11th) to find a more amenable and perhaps less hot pair of days to hold the show in new site as of last year the 69th Regiment Armory. This puts it a week after WonderCon, a week before the new Reed Chicago show and two weekends before the Columbus small press show S.P.A.C.E.. I would imagine this might facilitate a mini-tour or two -- being able to do multiple shows is an inducement for people to maybe map out a triangle- or box-shaped flight plan and hide out in one or more of the cities involved or the other between gigs. I know that this makes a MoCCA/C2E2 10-day trip more attractive to me.
Anyway, this is the second move by a name show that I can think of to better facilitate a full convention calendar now with the addition of shows by Reed and whatever Gareb Shamus' loose confederation of shows should be called. Baltimore Comic-Con has already announced its move to an August weekend for 2010 from its previous October dates. While summer in New York is nice, spring is love as well, and I think I was the only person doing a Belmont Stakes/ MoCCA Festival two-for. This also puts more distance between MoCCA Festival and its most direct small press counterpart SPX and the big New York show on the calendar, which may keep people from choosing one or the other.
Go, Look: Mike Baron’s Recent Wedding I couldn't use the Rude/Baron photo with that headline, but there's a very nice one in there; congratulations to the bride and groom
* the ComicsPro people have sent out a press release that writer Robert Kirkman will give the keynote speech at their annual meeting in Memphis, March 25-27. That could be particularly interesting if new-deal changes at DC and Marvel are starting to reveal themselves by then and Kirkman's speech could conceivably be seen as Image's response to any such change.
* not comics: I think Johanna Draper Carlson nails it when she suggests that the reason there's little risk in releasing the entirety of Charles Vess' art book on-line is that no art book customer one can fathom would find that a reasonable substitute for the actual book.
* the writer Sean Kleefeld asks if a comics company promoting themselves as biographers has the right to depict Stephanie Meyer as far skinnier than she is if they want to. He says yes, but in doing so it damages their credibility as biographers. I say in doing so they not only damage their reputations as biographers, I'm not sure I can continue to believe Meyer when she tells me how a vampire's hair smells.
* the great Eddie Campbell suggests he'll be reviewing a bunch of books that touch on the subject of the graphic novel, starting with this piece on Will Eisner's Life In Pictures. Sounds good to me.
* there's some fun conversation at Comics Comicshere about the Richard Corben-drawn Cage mini-series from early this decade. What I remember when that came out is that a lot of people enjoyed the art but the story seemed pretty generic and the overall approach from Marvel in terms of goosing up their characters a very specific way had begun to be kind of tiresome.
* not comics: The Bradleysmoves into the pilot phase. Not only should there be a at least one Peter Bagge TV show on the air at all times, about 40 shows that have been on the air since 1990 should have given Bagge a cut.
* Josh Elder makes the case for his Reading With Pictures initiative. I don't have the time right this minute to vet the project the way it should be vetted, but I didn't want to keep any of you from being exposed to the idea from reading Elder's letter and considering the ideas and proposals there on your own.
Five Truths I Hold About Comic Books That Might Not Be Truths At All
By Tom Spurgeon
If you write about a certain subject relentlessly, theories of same roll into and out of your life like so many failed relationships. I'm dating one right now. It says a significant contributing factor to North American comics culture is that a single, broadly-defined but still recognizable generation shattered the cycle that existed in comics' first several decades and acted as the primary audience for comics from their early teens into their 40s. That doesn't mean there aren't comics readers of all ages, but that the primary audience for same and their collective expectation for how things should was in almost all cases conceived of as a group of folks born between 1965 and 1975. I haven't really figured out what that means, or even if it's accurate, but it's a thought that's in the back of my mind and finds frequent expression in my current writing.
It also set me to wondering how much of my own views on comics are generational, specifically controlled by my own experience despite my efforts to see things as rationally and from the ground up as possible. Even if I do a good job of trying to see thing with fresh eyes, what are my stickiest comics biases? I came up with five that influence me whether I like it or not. You may recognize yourself in some of them as well.
1. I don't covet the comics of my youth, I covet the comics from just before my youth.
This is hard to understand for people that came to reading mainstream superhero comics in the graphic novel age, but there was a time when if you were a comics reader you could rattle of a bunch of numbers that were basically your starting points in the Marvel and DC Universes. This was more than a nostalgic nod as to when you first started to get involved in comics the way I think such numbers function for people now. No, these were almost like your awakening points, your second birthdays, your baseline for understanding the universe put in front of you beyond the limited number of reprints you might get to see if your quarters held out. They were your limits. With a kid's allowance and the limited opportunities to find and buy the items in question, your jumping on points were also the parameters of your cage.
Because superhero comics book became increasingly self-referential in the 1970s, to a severe degree in fact, right down to their bones, something that happened just out of sight took on extremely romantic, desirable dimension. The end result is that I was happy to collect the Celestial Madonna storyline in Avengers, but what I really wanted was to read about something I kept hearing about called the Kree/Skrull War. I enjoyed the new X-Men, but are you kidding me these old X-Men once had their own comic and it had Neal Adams art...? The 1970s were generally envisioned as a wasteland. A popular message of youth culture is that you had missed out on everything worthwhile: it's the fertile soil from where expressions like classic rock and the initial wave of VCR owners found their reasons to be. So too with comics. Reading comics back then was like constantly being in the room were people were talking about stuff that happened and the only thing that was keeping you from having these blissful, secret experiences was a bit of money and a penchant for follow-through.
I best most fans of these giant serials have some sort of impulse along these lines, but for kids of a certain age this impulse was met with a fractured market enough to challenge anyone's limited exposure to the world. Comic shops are a wonderful thing, but a lot of today's most devoted fans had initial experiences dominated by severe scarcity, going to garage sales in blind fashion just in case there was a basket of old Conan comic books, biking to the flea market to find the guy with the clipped-out, framed Frazetta magazine drawings and the box of Rawhide Kids. I just wanted to be fully clued in, to read the rest of the story. And it lingers. I still have a soft spot for any comic that costs $.15, despite decades of accrued knowledge that should have blasted that feeling from existence. Not only that, but I think that as much as it's conventional wisdom how creators want to re-make the comics of their youth, we also define too narrowly and fail to see how creators treat comics just out of their touch with a reverence and power that on their own they might not deserve. Many of the best comic book writers of today started out extending the themes and approaches from the comics they read as teens. It's when they go back further to the ones that they experienced as children, or only heard about, that things have become deeply imaginative and weird.
Our desire to rekindle a sense of wonder in forges left cold for decades can be stifling enough, that we want to recapture oh-so-specific dreams dreamed for us by someone else runs close to tragedy.
2. Whether or not there are comics for kids, I still want comics to function as a pastime for a child.
This one's easy, but it was a huge blind spot for years. Although I quickly stopped wanting the comics I enjoyed as a 12-year-old to function in a way I could enjoy them as a 16-year-old or heck, name your age, I know that for a lot of fans this is something they hold onto for a long time. Comics fans tend towards wanting their new comics to be the same or to recall the qualities that allowed that young person they once were to enjoy them as an echo of an experience from years aback. As a group, longtime comics fans can't really wrap their minds around the fact that what they hate about certain comics might be corned beef hash with a perfect, sunny-side up egg on top to someone that's not them. Occasionally, I like to make fun of these people.
What's a little humiliating about that is that I have my own bias, which is that I over-value the way I experienced comics, if not the comics themselves. I romanticize the furious hunt that came before comics shops (see #1), and I put an extreme amount of value on the relationship I had to comics for about five or six years as a teenager. That relationship was I would go to the comics shop on new comics day -- because I lived in a town small enough the shop occasionally used a sub-distributor this changed a lot -- I would buy a small stack of comics with shared money from my brother and myself, this would include some independent comics but also some high-end mainstream comics (they were cheaper than black and whites back then, so keeping your hand in mainstream comics gave you a bigger stack of comics to read), and while it wasn't cheap it didn't leave me totally bankrupt for the weekend ahead. Then I would go home and spend about two hours absorbed in the variety and range of worlds and artistic expressions laid in front of me, revisiting the best ones for about another hour later in the week.
I'm sure that young readers still get lost in the material they read, whether they have the trust funds I'd imagine it would take to follow pamphlet-style comics these days, or if they borrow them from the library, or if they secure them in trade form from Barnes and Noble. But I don't always act as if they do, favoring my own experience over any others with a distressing and unearned absolute quality. And while I do think there are advantages to cheap entry points and having a variety of experiences clamoring for your attention as opposed to companies rushing to give you approximates of the best-selling one or two kinds of books over and over and over again, I'm not sure that I always make the case fairly, trusting my own very satisfying reading experience filtered through a prism of nostalgia. This is exactly the kind of thing that when applied to content rather than process I love to make fun of fans for doing. I know there's no going back to what was in the brown paper bag every week from 1982 to 1986; I need to give up the rest of it, too.
3. I over-trust the serial.
This one probably goes without saying, in part because it's obviously related to the last point. I grew up reading serial comics in the newspaper and at the spinner rack. I later took the latter habit into the comic shop. While I was always a fan of comic strip collections and was there to slowly discover graphic novels and have read dozens of amazing works each way, it's nearly impossible for me to wrap my mind around a comics experience dominated by original works over serialized works. I can do it intellectually, but I'm not sure I can do it emotionally. I still see the comic books as the real unit, no matter how many of my peers' bookshelves are filled with collected versions. More importantly, I can't shut that acceptance of the older form out and really see the opportunity for reading comics that way. When someone says they couldn't stand to read Blankets in serial form, I have no problem imagining this. Serial comics is my default mode.
At least in this way I think I'm pretty typical of a lot of people in comics, who are buoyed by the dependability of profit models in newspapers, with manga's original publication overseas, with album series in France and of course American mainstream comics. It's been an advantage when dealing with those who are trying to find different models mostly by yelling about it really loud and making grampa jokes to have a gut instinct that suggests looking at the bottom line before advocating for widespread change. I'm certain that for many serial comics advocates that belief becomes a liability, and I'm not sure which side of the line I'm on.
4. I distrust a social component for comics.
Like many devoted North American comics fans, I read comics mostly by myself for years and years. My friends certainly read my comics, and my brothers shared in them, but I think all of them were taking advantage of comics' proximity through me more than they might have been exercising their own tastes and desires. One thing I've never quite been able to rectify is how much people like comics -- whether it's kids in my bedroom waiting for the beer to show up all reading issues of Zot!, or college students swiping our house's copies of Life In Hell books from the back of the john, or a summer break as a young adult when on a rainy day at a lake house folks took turns devouring issues of Yummy Fur -- with the fact that this never inspires them to take that next step and enjoy them on their own. Anyway, I was never lonely as a young person, and certainly no one looked down on my odd hobby, but I was kind of on my own when it came to my exploration into comics the way I never was with music or movies. R. Fiore was a bigger player when it came to my interest in funnybooks than all of my friends growing up.
I wonder after the effects of this. Sometimes I wonder if people in comics make such a high percentage of friends out of other people in comics because they get sick of not being able to tell anyone their Keith Pollard jokes. I know that being able to talk through those kinds of topics was a hugely attractive part of my own working at Fantagraphics in the mid-1990s. These days I'm more interested in how the comics corner of the Internet and its level of social interaction is determined by the solitary habits of a previous generation of comics fans. Not only must it be odd to be able to jump on-line and share words with the guys and gals who made the comic book you just read, but I wonder if that acts as the second part of an experience that those of us who came aboard before the early 1990s had no choice but to try and fill with more comics. If there had been an X-Men chatroom in the early '80s, would I have felt the need to try the books published by Capital? The few comics readers I knew growing up used to kid that the difference between a comics convention and a science fiction convention is that you needed comics conventions to find more comics and at other conventions they dressed up in costumes hoping there was something more involved that way. I think I still look at the world that way, and I wonder how unsympathetic it leaves me when trying to see different way to envision the art form.
5. I expect everything in comics to last forever.
I hadn't realized that I was biased towards the conception of comics as forever -- in the sense that Superman and Batman and Wonder Woman are forever -- until the late 1990s as companies flailed for survival in the vise created by lousy and short-sighted business decisions from Marvel, DC and Image. When Fantagraphics was in severe trouble, for example, I was worried for myself but also for my considerable rooting interest in the company. I dreaded most of all having to face its usual crew of critics who would of course delight in the company's failure, consider it a win for their side, and subject the publisher's departure to a bigger and more thorough razzing than that which had greeted Kitchen Sink Press from some of the same sources.
Yet the more I thought about such company closures, the more I wondered at what standard of measure I was using that depicted companies that lasted decades and published hundreds of qualities books and had been so meaningful to so many people for long could be termed a failure? Surely a couple of decades of swimming against every current out there is an achievement rather than failure because it failed to last into a fourth decade? Then I figured it out: I was employing a standard where the culturally ubiquitous Superman and its hundreds and hundreds of issues of Action Comics and related titles was the accepted ideal. While I had always rejected the crass measurements that so many people in comics used that were basically cultural versions of the Thing vs. the Hulk, here I was applying a variation of my own.
The perniciousness of this bias struck me recently when I saw an article on "Classic Avengers" vs. "Bendis Avengers" and through it entertained the notion that there are some fans out there that to varying degrees considered a specific line-up of muscled superheroes to be the correct way to bring into some creative reality a really loose concept with thousands of possible variations. They did so for the simple reason, I think, that they had always been catered to with that particular solution. This is sort of like expecting Terry Bradshaw to still be quarterback of the Pittsburgh Steelers, or for all your friends to still be just as excited about a new RUSH album the way they would have been in 1985, or for Walter Cronkite or someone looking like him to be hosting the CBS News.
When a few folks have recently looked at the failure of properties from a quarter-century ago, or even artists from a quarter-century ago, to find their proper place and blame the marketplace for being broken in some way, I have to wonder if this isn't the measure of Superman and Charlie Brown seeping its way in. Artists have a time and then most find less favor in the marketplace -- one of the reasons their contracts and deals have to be just and honest and fair in the first place. I think it's hard for readers like me to let go of the fact that certain creators we enjoyed, certain comics we loved, are lost to us in the way that we loved them. I think it's easy to point at one hundred ways the industry functions based on that sort of measure, when it's the brief and fleeting and the single volume that are more precious and worthy of our attention.
FFF Results Post #184—Toppers
On Friday, CR readers were asked to "Name Five Of Your Favorite Hats Or Other Pieces Of Headgear Worn By a Comic Character." This is how they responded.
Tom Spurgeon
1. Jughead's hat
2. The Sandman's gas mask
3. Wildcat's mask with whiskers
4. Clark Kent's snappy chapeau
5. Flower's flower
1. Bill the Cat's Billy and the Boinger's wig
2. Dr. Midnight's mask
3. Kroenen's mask (Hellboy)
4. Dr. Doom's mask
5. The Baroness' glasses (GI Joe)
*****
Fred Hembeck
1. The Fat Fury's plunger
2. Loki's helmet with those big ol' horns
3. Tubby's sailor hat
4. The Penguin's top hat
5. Mysterio's fishbowl helmet
*****
Tuck!
1) Cheech Wizard's hat
2) Galactus' tv antennae thing
3) Hela's headdress
4) the Inhumans' crown
5) Forbush Man's "original pot head" look
*****
Marc Sobel
1. Mickey Death
2. Fred the Clown's flower hat
3. E.T.'s "No Foolin" cap
4. Kabuki's mask
5. Herbie's propeller
*****
Cole Moore Odell
1. Ant-Man's helmet
2. Loki's horned helmet
3. Wolverine MacAlistaire's hat
4. Popeye the Sailor's cap
5. Snoopy's long, striped winter hat with a pom-pon
*****
John Vest
1. Snoopy's fighter pilot headgear and goggles
2. Andy Capp's flat cap
3. Nancy's bow
4. Dick Tracy's fedora
5. Thor's helmet
*****
Adam Casey
1. Dr. Fate's helmet
2. The Great Machine's helmet
3. Starman's goggles
4. Golden Age Flash's helmet
5. Baron Zemo's hood
1) Dr. Fate's Helmet
2) Raven's hood
3) Dick Tracy's hat
4) Sargon's turban
5) Ringmaster's hypnotic tophat
*****
Chris Duffy
1. Golden Age Hawkman's wild hawk mask with no hole for the mouth
2. Galactus's helmet (or is it his head?)
3. Storm's tiara thing that she kept her lockpicks in
4. Wimpy's bowler
5. Hutch Owen's winter hat
*****
Ali T. Kokmen
1. The headbands worn by adult Kryptonian males--especially, of course, Jor-El.
2. Brain Storm's comically overtall helmet.
3. The scarab-like maang tika Zatanna wore as part of her George Perez-designed costume that no one but he and Gray Morrow could really draw well
4. Galactus's satellite-dish of a helmet
5. The Golden Age Hawkman's very birdlike helmet
*****
Bill Matheny
1) Sluggo's cap.
2) Dr. Strange's full face mask circa 1969
3) Rudy's fedora. (It's gotta be a fave of your's as well...)
4) Luke Cage's funka-licious metal headband
5) The Scarlet Witch - Exactly what is that thing she used to wear on her head?
*****
Randall Ragsdale
* Our protagonist's tall bowler w/ eye-hole -- The Blot by Tom Neely
* The Spirit's fedora -- The Spirit
* The Green Goblin's sleeping cap -- Marvel U
* Dale's bucket hat -- Walking Dead
* Lord Fanny's wig -- Invisibles
*****
Gil Roth
1. Black Lightning's afro-wig
2. Those antennae that Takahashi wears in Cromartie High School
3. Bacchus' fisherman's hat
4. Galactus' helmet
5. Elektra's head-scarf, because it channeled her inner Rhoda
1. Thor's dinky Helmet
2. V's top hat and mask
3. Lowlight's Black Tuque (from GI Joe)
4. Freewheelin' Franklin Cowboy Hat
5. Ant-Man's ant-controlling headgear thingy
1. Rogue Trooper's talking helmet
2. Zonker's special football helmet with the extra stars
3. Rebis's darling sunglasses
4. Arale's ball cap
5. Sensor Girl's mask
1. Dr. Fate's mask/helmet/thingy
2. The Spirit's fedora (it is a fedora, isn't it?)
3. Hawkman's hawk-head
4. Razorback's um... mask?
5. Firestorm's sweatband
*****
Will Pfeifer
1. Monsieur Mallah's beret
2. Also from the Doom Patrol, Mento's helmet
3. The original Flash's Mercury-inspired helmet
4. Merryman's jester hat (from The Inferior Five)
5. Enid's devil bondage hat from "Ghost World"
1. Blackhawk's pilot's cap
2. Detective Chimp's deerstalker
3. Monsieur Mallah's beret
4. Sluggo's cap
5. Buck Rogers's helmet
*****
Johnny Bacardi
1. The Phantom Stranger's fedora
2. Zatanna's top hat
3. Solomon Kane's Puritan lid
4. Bat Lash's white hat with daisy
5. The Shadow's big floppy wide brimmed hat
*****
Mark Mayerson
* Thor's helmet
* Galactus's helmet
* Magneto's helmet
* Black Bolt's tuning fork
* Dum Dum Dugan's derby
*****
James Langdell
1. Snoopy the World War One Flying Ace's cap and goggles
2. 9-Jack-9's boater
3. Porkypine's plaid hat
4. Merryman's monochrome jester hat
5. Flaming Carrot's headgear (assuming it's detachable)
*****
Matt Maxwell
1. Galactus' helmet
2. Rorschach's porkpie
3. Golden Age Flash's winged helm
4. Thor's helm with wings
5. Mysterio's orb
1. Hourman's needlessly phallic hood.
2. Gwen Stacy's Alice Band
3. The Grizzly's "pukeaboo" cowl
4. Fortress Maximus Entire Head (Fortress Maximus is a giant robot whose head turns into a robot whose head turns into a college student)
5. Harley Quinn's motley hat.
*****
Andrew Mansell
1. The shadow play on Hourman's mask
2. The Spirit's sun-glasses disguise
3. Ferro Lad's mask
4. Prince Valiant's Hair
5. B.D's Helmet(s)
*****
William Burns
* Snoopy as the WWI Flying Ace Headpiece and Goggles
* Bacchus's cap
* Future Batman's cowl, from Batman Year 100
* Cowboy Wally's cowboy hat
* Catwoman's cowl and goggles, as drawn by Darwyn Cooke
*****
Michael Rhodes
1. Spirit's Hat
2. Galactus Head Gear
3. Mentallo's (Doom Patrol) Headgear
4. Jack (Starman) Night's Goggles
5. Ironman's Second (Gold & Red) Helmet
*****
Tom Bondurant
1. Zonker's football helmet
2. Green Arrow's feathered cap (from the Neal Adams costume, if there's a difference)
3. Big Barda's helmet
4. 'Mazing Man's helmet
5. That red barrette/hairpin George Perez designed for Zatanna
1. Frenzy's hat (from Brotherhood of Dada)
2. Doc Doom's mask
3. Maggie the Mechanic's goggles
4. The animals wearing hats in Lisa Hanawalt's comics
5. Galactus' ridiculous helmet
The top comics-related news stories from October 3 to October 9, 2009:
1. Kodansha confirms North American publishing arm, what sounds like a small-c conservative effort focusing on perennials and solid back list performers.
2. Editor at Moroccan paper closed for cartoon willing to apologize... if anyone wants to hear it.
Quote Of The Week
"Back in the late '70s, I created an animated Doonesbury special for NBC. The network declined to order another because of disappointing ratings. The show had 21 million viewers. On an average night, The Daily Show, a huge hit, pulls 1.5 million viewers. It's a different world." -- Garry Trudeau
*****
today's cover is from one of the great publications of the underground comix era
All Eyes Towards The Inner Harbor The Baltimore Comic-Con goes off this weekend, the first jab in a one-two punch that will come with next weekend's Alternative Press Expo and effectively end the comics convention calendar year. I think BCC has moved past the major convention status that some had dreamed for it a few years ago and settled into prime regional convention expectation territory, a Heroes Con with Maryland blue crab instead of pulled-pork barbecue. In other words, it's a perfectly entertaining show, comics-focused, with a ton of pros there happy to be talked to and engaged and asked to sign stuff or even make art if they're so inclined.
Baltimore's great. It has about 100 worthwhile museums ranging in interests from the traditional Walters Art Museum and all those students sitting on the floor sketching to the Geppi comics place I hope to visit someday. It has been a career background character in the films of John Waters, and was the backdrop of the greatest television show. It has Atomic Books, Pimlico, Jack's Bistro, Lexington Market and Edgar Allan Poe's grave. Walk around the downtown if you can; ever since Denver turned over I've felt Baltimore is America's best preserved city in a certain 1950s-1970s "George Sprott" sense. If you're not from one of the coasts seek out a place to devour some seafood.
As for the show itself, go and dive into some comic books and their makers. Attend the Harveys, which will hopefully be classy and well-attended. Now that the frying pan to the face effect of the recent big announcements has begun to wear off, the gossip from comics professionals about what all of it means should be fast and furious and fearless. If I lived within 400 miles, I'd surely be right there with you.
Dragon Ball Kid Library Controversy So a councilman in Wicomico County, Maryland is pushing forward with a complaint that a mother of a nine-year-old apparently made after her child checked out a copy of Dragon Ball Vol. 1 from the library shared by the middle school and elementary school. If the councilman indeed called the very good and very funny Akira Toriyama manga "disgusting," he should never be allowed to be a critic, but at the same time, I think anyone who's read the title can think of someone they know who's very rational and reasonable who would not want that particular book in the hands of their nine-year-old and might be surprised to find it available to them. It's not a new thing, so I can't see this being a manga literacy issue. I know from my own experience that there were books put in the kids sections that I perused in the late 1970s that were shelved in that section because they were fantasy books but often had sexual elements to them that made me go lie down and watch cartoons for an hour, a little bit of the childish veneer air-blasted off of my soul.
So cosmic karmic kidney punches to any douchebag cultural warrior who presses the point and goes after grant money or bad librarians or anything like that. At the same time, I think this is a book I would probably not make part of an institution offering designed to hit kids at a certain grade level. Is it okay to hold both opinions? I don't know, but there you are.
Terry Challis, 1935-2009
According to published reports, longtime Watford Observer cartoonist Terry Challis has died at the age of 74. Challis was best known for his cartoons that were part of the paper's coverage of the Watford Football Club since 1972, and his passing was noted by fellow newsmen and fans of the FC.
In Ian Grant's lovely reminiscence, he describes Challis' run of sports cartoons as distinguished by the cartoonist's general skill and his ability to bring into immediate perspective the events of faraway games.
"You won't need to have a Terry Challis cartoon in front of you to conjure up an image of that familiar style in your mind's eye: the pithy, witty and often rather insightful commentary on the week's events, followed by the inevitable highlighting of the last game's star player, name embossed underneath. In days before blanket coverage and instant highlights, it always seemed particularly vital after a distant, unseen away game, as much a part of the reportage as Oliver Phillips' account alongside."
(The cartoon at top was one of two pages done for the charity book You Are My Watford, which Grant helped edit.)
Challis struggled with depression and suffered a severe spell for two year in the 1970s. In recent years he was diagnosed with emphysema. A friend noted that he began his last downward slide after the loss of his brother last year.
A book of Challis' Watford FC cartoons, Drawn Game, was published in 1995. He also provided illustrations to a book called The History of West Herts. Golf Club 1890-1989, which was published in 1988. A number of commenters at the Observer site noted Challis' sympathy for the fans, which was likely due in part to Challis' being a lifelong fan of sport in general and the Watford FC in particular.
Challis will be buried on October 21. The Watford Observer planned to publish a number of his cartoons in today's edition. I believe he may be survived by a longtime partner described in this column.
Random Comics News Story Round-Up
* longtime industry figure Scott Edelman unearths his fanzine report on the first of Phil Seuling's mini-conventions designed to tide fans over between Seuling Cons.
* the writer Warren Ellis pays tribute to the trials and efforts of Gil Kane. It's always interesting to read mainstream creators comment on other mainstream creators when it's not open, empty-headed praise.
* this doesn't seem to me that interesting a news story, but I can't find a way to say it in pithy fashion: this quarter's book sales are down compared to the same quarter in 2008 when the Watchmen movie trailer drove a boatload of sales. Literally a boatload, as I assume these books were printed overseas. Okay, maybe not. But still a lot, so a decline doesn't seem to me surprising at all. Still, there it is.
* the writer Sean Collins has a nice piece up here on how comics editors manage the use of their characters outside of their purview, as modern crossovers tend to demand.
* the critic Tucker Stone gets into a couple of those weird continuity-driven projects that the mainstream companies do where they seem very insistent that the series in question needs to be done but as a reader you're probably not feeling it as much as they are.
* I'm not sure I understand all of these, but the ones I do are cute.
* finally, I know it sounds goofy and probably outright tight-assed bagging on something involving poor old Archie, but that some news sources have actually carried the obvious PR-stunt of this "What If? marriage thing as if it were a real item of pop culture news boggles the mind. It also goes to show you just how unsophisticated some news sources are, and how much they deserve to be losing the readers they seek to entertain instead of inform. Johanna Draper Carlson analyzes here. Archie's press releases on the matter are basically lies, and I don't think they're clever or fun at all or justified by their success. It just reminds me what a creepy company that is.
Moroccan Paper Faces Two Charges Related To Late September Cartoon Editor Tawafik Bouachrine has recently assured media in Morocco and throughout Europe and Africa that he and his paper Akhbar Al Youm are willing to apologize and move forward, but it's unclear if anyone is willing to accept the apology. The paper was raided and closed in late September after the publication of a cartoon by Khaled Kadar that depicted elements of the national flag and a caricature version of Prince Moulay Ismail -- each the basis of an impending charge against the paper. Both the cartoonist and the editor were detained and questioned in late September. The best wire report information indicates the paper has remained closed while actions move forward at what must seem like a snail's pace. A round-up of reactions can be found here.
Go, Watch: Westergaard Interviewed On Canadian Christian Television
I haven't carved the room in my schedule yet, but you may want to watch Kurt Westergaard on something called The Michael Coren Show, available through the CTS web site. I found the piece through a brief article in praise of the interview. I disagree with that article's take that no one ever asks why the cartoonists did the drawing in the first place and that they assume the worst. I imagine the cartoonists had a variety of reasons to want to do the drawing, everything from a general belief in free speech, a specific belief in free speech as an issue at that moment in Danish cultural history, an even more specific belief that Jyllands Posten was doing something good by publishing the drawings, or maybe a bunch of other stuff like perhaps they could use the gig. I don't know that the artists' motivations were ever a big issue one way or the other except with lunatics who want to kill them, to be honest.
Comics Convention News Round-Up
* in the big news for the increasingly crowded and I'd argue important convention circuit, Preview Night for next year's Comic-Con International is already sold out. This is astonishing in that just five or six years ago I and many other people like were still going to that show at the metaphorical last minute, easily snagging hotel rooms and a flight in about 10 days before the show and not worrying about whether or not we could get a badge at all because that was so easy to do. If I understand this interview with David Glanzer correctly, they divorced four-day passes from four-day passes with Preview Night privileges in an effort to scale that number back to "still incredibly busy but not plot assassination of CCI officials" 2008 attendance levels. I think that's smart, and the fact they have to wrestle with this kind of issue shows how much success they've enjoyed the last few years. I have to say I don't get people who see a move to scale back problematic crowds as some sort of sign that the show's gone all profit-oriented and ruthless.
* this interview with Martha Donato at what was reportedly a pretty successful Long Beach Comic Con suggests that they're in it for the long haul. If one of the two comics companies moves to the west coast, a LA-proximate superhero-driven convention could be a great gig.
* New York Comic-Con hosts its one-year out party tonight, and it looks like you can still go if you RSVP through information provided at the link. It's useful for them to do this because you can kind of get a sense of what the con will feel like on the calendar. Take a second and imagine a huge con this weekend. Okay, that's what it is going to be like one year from now.
* NYCC isn't the only show that's been seeking to buttress their profile by planning smaller events outside of the show weekend: the Angouleme Festival has been doing things for a while now like this event with the great Jiro Taniguchi. That's a bit more impressive when you consider how much the comics industry over there naturally bends towards Angouleme anyway. Only 112 days away.
* it's not all about the giant shows: paid admissions at North Bethesda's Small Press Expo were up 19 percent and overall attendance was around 2600, which is good news for that show.
* the writer Steven Grant continues to share his education in comics art, including how the undergrounds changed things and how his appreciation of content relates to his appreciation for art.
* not comics: over at MediaBistro.com, Jeff Rivera suggests that book publishers are seeing declining sales because they're really, really, really out of touch with what people want and aren't even trying to move in the direction of what evolving demographics suggest they may want. Me, I think book publishing is gross.
Days Like Today I Think About Other Lines Of Work: Some Stuff I’ve Missed
Seriously, there's no excuse for missing Chris Ware and Pete Wentz hanging out for a chat, including a moment of bonding over hating one's work (warning: it pops up noisy). Or Shaenon Garrity writing a tone poem to the life-altering powers of GI Joe #21. Orasix-partUrasawainterview. I'm sure there's a ton of other stuff, too. Yikes. I'll try to do better.
* above is the possible cover for Darryl Cunningham's Psychiatric Tales, as discussed here. It's due next year from Blank Slate Books.
* the writer Matt Fraction has posted two images showing off the new look for the Iron Man comics he's doing. They're by Rian Hughes and they're very pretty. An eye-popping design for a run of issues heading into a movie summer sounds smart to me.
* the serial Life With Mr. Dangerous by Paul Hornschemeier will end in Mome Vol. 17, for which Mr. Hornschemeier did the covers including the one at left.
* most everyone reading this probably already knows that translated manga has been just as popular and just as industry-changing in the French-language market as it's been here. They'll be getting Pluto next year from Kana; an ongoing series of Nausicaa volumes designed to look like the original publications has been delayed because Glenat claims that Studio Ghibili is too busy getting into the making of video games to work with any of the foreign licensees.
* briefer than brief Amulet Vol. 3 and Flight Vol. 7 production updates here.
* the comics business and news analysis site reports that in March Dark Horse will be releasing two books illustrated by Yoshitaka Amano (Shinjuku) and the collective Clamp (Okimono Kimono).
* Vertigo's Joe The Barbarianhas been extended from six issues to eight issues, which if nothing else shows enough confidence in the project that they can handle a bigger, single trade. (via Sean Collins)
* it was its own story, but in case you missed it this was the big publishing news of the week: Kodansha finally confirms its move into the North American market as its own entity.
* the second biggest story and the subject of another pull-out was the publication of Planetary #27, the end to the high-quality Warren Ellis and John Cassaday adventure comics series and prolonged meditation on 20th Century imaginative literature. This also means the retirement of the "how late is the next issue of Planetary?" joke, with the honors of the last one I believe going to Blair Butler at the Eisners last summer. Anyway, here's Warren Ellis on the issue, including hints at some of the difficulties along the way.
* the third biggest publishing news story of the week, and one I haven't touched at all until now, is Alan Moore readying an underground... um... lifestyle magazine, maybe? That's not my own doubts about the project in the question mark, only my ability to describe it succinctly. It sounds awesome, and includes plans for an eight page section to be filled in by a local participant where the work is distributed.
* Fantagraphics has recently posted its releases for December and January. Companies do this all the time, so I'm not sure why I've picked up on Fantagraphics doing it and bookmarked them, but as the deed's already done it's always fun to look at a publisher's output for a certain period.
* finally, it looks like Kevin Scalzo will be the subject of a forthcoming volume in D&Q's Petits Livres line. Or maybe it's the Petit Livre line and you just refer to them in multiples as Petits Livres. Whatever. I don't care what they call it as long as I get a Kevin Scalzo book.
Editor Critical Of Delonas Cartoon Fired; Sturdy Link Between Two Events Sought
There's a semi-hot story crackling through the various wire services and punditry spewers about the New York Post dismissing Associate Editor Sandra Guzman last week. Guzman objected to a Sean Delonas cartoon from earlier this year that bizarrely tied President Obama into the shooting of a crazed chimpanzee that was in the news that week. Why this would have an impact on her being dismissed now is anyone's guess, and certainly still mine even after reading a bunch of articles, but the article certainly has more juice this way, Guzman can justifiably be identified as that editor, and maybe there's something uglier there. For now, it seems articles like this one provide semi-alarming headlines and then in the body of a piece discuss the rumor run by the Huffington Post article and but also suggest that maybe the elimination of the department she was working on is a bigger cause.
Your 2009 Lulu Awards Nominees
The Friends of Lulu advocacy group has announced its 2009 awards nominees, complete with instructions as to how to vote. The winners will be announced at a date sometime in November, at a venue to be named later.
Woman of Distinction
* Joanne Carter Siegel, widow of Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel
* Gina Gagliano, Marketing Associate at First Second Books
* Jackie Estrada, Eisner Committee & Exhibit A Press
* Francoise Mouly, Editorial Director of Toon Books
* Mimi Cruz, owner of Night Flight Comics
Best Female Character
* Monica Villarreal, Wapsi Square by Paul Taylor
* Kimberly "Skim" Keiko Cameron, Skim by Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki
* Rapunzel, Rapunzel's Revenge by Shannon, Dean, and Nathan Hale
* Barbara Thorson, I Kill Giants by Joe Kelly & JM Ken Niimura
* Mirka, Hereville by Barry Deutsch
* Melanie, Melody by Ilias Kyriazis
* Julie Martin, Echo by Terry Moore
Boom! Reaches Agrees With Haven On Distribution… Of Second Printings
This article about the up-and-coming comics company Boom! and the "they're still around?" distribution company Haven at first appears to be important because it would mean a vote-of-confidence in Haven from Boom! in terms of monthly comics. Then the second printings thing becomes apparent and it becomes an odd story in certain ways. There's still business to be had there for Haven, for sure, but there's also a couple of questions raised. "Why would Haven be better suited to get second printings into stores and what this may mean as an implied criticism of Diamond" is one; "Why would any company have an actual strategy centered around delivering second printings" is another.
Random Comics News Story Round-Up
* this Geoff Boucher profile of Berke Breathed has maybe the fanciest author's photo I've ever seen. It's like the Liberace's bathroom of author's photos; it's quite magnificent. It's my understanding that Mr. Boucher's work on comics and related areas is now award-winning, although I can't find the e-mail that told me this. But congratulations.
* this piece about Harvey Pekar may set a new standard in event coverage, or at least force the rest of us to break out our flip cameras and camcorders on a more regular basis.
* there's some more stuff out there on the FTC's decision to hold bloggers accountable for the review copies they receive in a consumer/endorsement fashion; Johanna Draper Carlson seems to be on the issue most closely of the regular comics-commenting folk. Ron Hogan has been writing about it, too. I don't really get how this becomes a scorecard story, but I suppose that would make my position when it was a volunteer deal the losing side. I find paid-for endorsements grotesque and pathetic, and have sympathy for the issues involved there and thus the new ruling. I just wish I could move forward with greater certainty I'd be given a fair shake in terms of how I approach my job if something I did were called in question, but hey, life is full of uncertainties. I'll adjust. Somehow I think this may end with me not taking any submitted small press material anymore, but I'm not even sure why I think that.
* I don't exactly know what's going on here, but the drawings from I assume Stuart Immonen are very nice.
* not comics: I had to drive over to Tucson yesterday, and, as usual, boy is my middle finger tired (short story: Chicago drivers without the Chicago driving skill-set). I did enjoy my visit to Fantasy Comics, however, and the owner or operator seemed very nice. I enjoyed watching him help a customer who hadn't been in a while find the appropriate tie-in comics for a certain character and story, something that doesn't happen when you buy comics on-line.
* go, listen: Ian Rankin and Neil Gaiman discuss writing; comics are included.
* here is what might be an encouraging story for some about a young artist going through the formal portfolio review process getting work at DC Comics.
* finally, Alan Gardner is doing a pledge drive to help fund his efforts at Daily Cartoonist. We did a pledge drive once here at CR that was right in the middle of our free, no-advertising period. It helped us pay some bills before we started bringing in advertisers and it allowed us to gauge just how many people might participate that way in the long-term.
FFF Results Post #183—Faves In Five
On Friday, CR readers were asked to "Describe A Favorite Comic In Five Words So That It's Clear What You're Writing About, But Don't Name The Comic." Here is how they responded, or close enough for my purposes.
1. Hat
2. Contest
3. Causes
4. Frequent
5. Earthquakes
"The Land Beneath The Ground"
*****
Sean T. Collins
1. Of
2. course,
3. he
4. never
5. did.
"ACME Novelty Library #13"
*****
Kenny Penman
1. Man,
2. Neil -
3. Sand!
4. Gay
5. Men!
I Have No Idea
*****
Johanna Draper Carlson
1. Hukka
2. Robot
3. Wordless
4. Battle
5. Giffen
"Hukka Vs. The Bob"
*****
Andy Stout had the most correct answers in the insta-contest we ran where readers guessed the comic from the description; thanks to all that participated.
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 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 pick them up and hold them to the sun, checking for secret numbers and signs of the Illuminati.
*****
AUG090037 BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER #29 JEANTY CVR $2.99 AUG090106 BATMAN AND ROBIN #5 $2.99 AUG090039 WITCHFINDER IN THE SERVICE OF ANGELS #4 (OF 5) $2.99 AUG090356 JERSEY GODS #8 $3.50 AUG090454 X-MEN VS AGENTS OF ATLAS #1 (OF 2) $3.99
This is a random selection of books out that at least someone out there likes. Or books that they paid me to put here. I'll never tell.
JUN090027 GRANDVILLE HC $17.95
Bryan Talbot's hardcover stand-alone funny animal steampunk book, the kind of entry that gets film directors major points just because how different it is than other recent works on their IMDB page. I'd love to see it before I buy it -- it looks like it may be very pretty.
AUG090285 HAUNT #1 $2.99
This is the team-up between Robert Kirkman and Todd McFarlane, right?
JUL090399 KING CITY #2 $2.99
I enjoyed the first issue of this, an oversize-format, satirical science-fiction story drawn with a significant dollop of care and imagination.
AUG090463 DOCTOR VOODOO AVENGER OF SUPERNATURAL #1 $3.99
I've been reading comics for a lot of year, and never once in my life have I ever woken up with the desire to spend almost $5 on a Doctor Voodoo comic. That price point really kills it for me in terms of taking random chances on new comics -- what if it's one of those books that takes 11 seconds to read? -- and I'm not a guy that's ever thought of price points. I think this is Rick Remender, right? If so, it's likely pretty good.
MAR094248 A DISTANT NEIGHBORHOOD GN VOL 01 $23.00 APR090822 SUMMIT OF GODS GN VOL 01 (OF 5) $25.00
Two books from Jiro Taniguchi, so you'll know they'll at the very least be handsome. I could force a framework on this pair and say they represent two sides of the artist's career, but I think they're more like two sides of five.
AUG090908 BLOOM COUNTY COMPLETE LIBRARY HC VOL 01 $39.99
This is very, very handsome. If you're in a comic shop today that's carrying it, pick it up.
JUN090792 MUPPET ROBIN HOOD TP $9.99
This certainly passes my test for an easy to understand concept. I'm going to guess it's the muppets acting out the Robin Hood story.
JUN090687 MYTH OF 8 OPUS LABYRINTH GN $24.99
I like the publishing name "A-Okay" comics. This release celebrates 10 years of Thomas Scioli's self-directed work.
JUL091115 SLAM DUNK GN VOL 06 $9.99
There's a bunch of top-line boys adventure manga out this week, and while sports manga is in a slightly different category I still think this series is the belle of that other ball, too.
JUL090743 WALT DISNEYS COMICS & STORIES #699 $2.99
Boom! begins its effort to re-jigger the Disney titles into actual little kids comic books. I hear that the downside to this plan is that they're drawing on some of the international material that's not all that fantastic, but I haven't seen the book yet to make my own judgment there.
JUL090985 CARTOON HISTORY MODERN WORLD TP VOL 02 BASTILLE TO BAGHDAD $18.99
Should we be making a much bigger deal of this? This is Larry Gonick's apparently final volume in his modern history efforts, one of the very enjoyable and sustained comics efforts of the last quarter-century. I'm looking forward to catching up to it.
JUL090846 MASTERPIECE COMICS HC (MR) $19.95
This book of Bob Sikoryak's literature/comics mash-ups is extremely pretty. Like if it were on TV, we'd talk about it by its initials.
JUL091220 DR SEUSS & CO GO TO WAR HC $29.95
This sounds promising, although I could have sworn there was a stand-alone work of the Seuss stuff already.
APR083869 EC ARCHIVES FRONTLINE COMBAT HC VOL 01 $49.95
That's it, I'm robbing banks until I catch up with all of the necessary comics buying programs.
JUL090583 CRIMINAL SINNERS #1 (MR) $3.50
New Brubaker and Phillips, on their best series.
AUG090509 STRANGE TALES #2 (OF 3) (MR) $4.99
More comedic/alternative takes on Marvel characters.
AUG090209 PLANETARY #27 $3.99
Finally, the end of the fine Warren Ellis and John Cassaday science fiction adventure series about 20th Century imagination. I'll miss the series, and I'll miss the "Planetary #27 is late" joke.
*****
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 just the way it goes.
According to the article, the publisher will set up an office in New York City, the set-up will be spearheaded by known Kodansha quantities Yoshio Irie and Tomoko Suga, the books will be distributed by Random House, they will initially target the books that people thought they were initially targeting (Akira and Ghost In The Shell), as expected the line will initially focus on Kodansha's expansive backlist although original publishing may happen on down the line, and that there will be plenty of titles and plenty of licensing relationships available for other publishers for years to come. I think they could be a fascinating player in that market, and potentially a stabilizing one.
The New Standard For All Comics Critics
I have no idea what's going on here, and I don't want to know, not even a little bit, but I have to admit that even working from flat ignorance a significant part of my being wants to be banned from a convention, too. It doesn't even have to be a big one.
Go, Read: Garry Trudeau Interviewed
There's a long and interesting interview with Garry Trudeau performed by Tim Rickard here, for the Greensboro News-Record. Trudeau names his favorite characters now that Lacey Davenport is gone and even talks about post-newspaper platforms in an honest and forthright manner. Trudeau never does long interviews, and he's very astute, so every time a modest-sized interview like this one appears it has to be jumped on.
Random Comics News Story Round-Up
* so according to this post at Johanna Draper Carlson's place, the FTC is going to make all bloggers and on-line reviewers reveal whether or not they got free copies. This seems weird from my perspective -- I just assume everyone gets everything for free with rare exceptions, but hey, whatever the law needs me to do. I sure hope this doesn't apply to the prostitutes purchased for me at conventions.
* the critic Noah Berlatsky provides one of the better cross-media sales articles I've ever seen. I always took the low number of sales that comics have as a great opportunity for significant growth rather than a pinprick to the collective ego or as some sort of unreasonable demand that comics needs to match TV's or film's numbers. That's not what Berlatsky is saying, but it seems to me that's how these articles are invariably taken by many comics industry watchers.
* not comics: it probably says something about my state of mind that I was more peeved that this post credited the fine young film actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the dude from Third Rock than the latest round of soul-destroying Roman Polanski stupidity.
* Rich Johnston draws our attention to the Cesar Feliciano family and the burden awaiting them due to severely high medical bills.
* finally, I love Brett Warnock's blog. It's like running into the Top Shelf co-publisher at the grocery store and having him talk your ear off for five minutes. Here's the latest update.
Missed It: Wowio Declares Intent To Start Paying Those Leftover 2008 Bills
I totally missed this story at Rich Johnston's Bleeding Cool about a declaration of intent through a series of private correspondence from new Wowio owner Brian Altounian to pay leftover second quarter 2008 bills due a number of vendors. Johnston rightly points out that the inability to pay came from the fact that previous payments were left to venture capital rather than tied into more reliable income sources. It's a little distressing to hear the assertion that the payments may encourage people to start working with the company again (and of course some never left) but a little money goes a long way in the wide-open field that is finding new comics platforms.
Pahé Is Fine, Says Thank You
Seriously, the popular Gabonese cartoonist did a full post about being fine and having only memories -- and some slight handcuff-related soreness -- from his brief time in jail after drawing a pair of police officers. His last hours in custody are described here. Up and down the cartoonist's blog right now are various drawings done by those sympathetic to the position in which the cartoonist suddenly found himself. Many of them are great fun.
So Is This Site The New Wizard? It's almost impossible to figure out exactly what the Wizard Entertainment empire is up to these days, but certainly past news stories have indicated that they've shrunk the magazine like mad, moved offices and that the comics convention strategy employed by the company and its core team has moved from shows branded as "Wizard World" to a series of local/regional shows -- some of them based on previously existing shows at some level of success in that specific market -- that employ a kind of local branding combined with a more generic umbrella "Comic Con."
The big question seems to be whether these efforts will be used in the long term to shore up the existing Wizard empire or if some sort of new company is being formed from its once much-larger shell. Unless someone leaks that information -- if there is an answer -- I imagine this could wait until the moment a new company is announced if that ever happens. All of that is meant to note a new site that launched Friday called Geek Chic Daily with I'm told Gareb Shamus' and Scott Gramling's involvement, a site that covers the same areas and that has no Wizard-related branding whatsoever , at least none that I can find. On-line publishing is at a place right now where it's hard to finish one's statements of intent with whatever bullshit one wants to grasp out of a completely unclear feature, but things are still all over the place, and it could be that multiple platforms suit what it is people want to do these days. Me, I can't get the same thought out of my head that I had when the conventions started to be renamed and when Wizard's site ignored the A-Bomb news stories of late August through mid-September: this seems like a new thing.
Random Comics News Story Round-Up
* among the many interesting tidbits in this Berke Breathed interview kicking off Bloom County week at USA Today in one of those publicity campaigns I find slightly terrifying is that he corresponds with Harper Lee. That's a "for the win" bit of information that could get you through the anecdotal one-upsmanship phase of a dozen dinner parties.
* the writer and academic Charles Hatfield reminds us that ICAF is right around the corner.
* the longtime comics web presence Johnny Bacardi is starting a short series of posts of on the fondly remembered DC comic book series of a quarter-century ago Thriller, which is great because he's the expert on all things Thriller. Note to Mr. Bacardi: Joe Casey once told me that Thriller was an important series in his development as a writer because it was one of the first books to open itself up for behind the scenes articles and coming attractions type pieces in a way that's common now. Is that true? Is it possible we can get a Johnny Bacardi round-up on fan press treatments of the series?
* not comics: the impending release of Irwin Hasen's semi-autobiographical Loverboy will hopefully shine a spotlight on various incidents of cartoonists talking about their sexual escapades, as with Hasen in this newly resurfaced but still entertaining video.
* the cartoonist Dash Shaw talks us through a Mainstream/Alternative panel at TCAF that he wasn't happy with at the time and seems only marginally happier about now. The nuggets he pulls out are pretty great -- it's always fun to hear Frank Santoro talk about artists like Kirby, and usually fun to hear cartoonists no matter who they might be talk about Krigstein -- and the commentary made during the walk-through compels one to dig a bit deeper than is usual with such a presentation.
* finally, Bernie Mireault wrote me a long e-mail suggesting I draw attention to this limited animated piece he's done with his Jam character. Although I like many of Mireault's comics, I have to be honest: while I thought the basic idea was clever, I did not particularly enjoy reading the suggested piece and stopped about ten clicks in. It may be that I'm just not really a comics-plus guy; I'm a comics guy. Your mileage, of course, may vary greatly. Certainly Mireault, a vastly under-appreciated and talented cartoonist, is enthused about the end product.
On The Subject Of Return Reading
The author and music writer David Gates penned an article this summer for Newsweek on the pleasures of re-reading. Gates seems to view re-reading as way to spend time in the company of memorable characters that have touched him in his lifelong give-and-take with literature. It further seems he experiences this pleasure through specifically lively usage of language. Gates appears to be enamored of Charles Dickens, in whose works the characters' names are frequently worth a second visit all by themselves. I found Gates' piece fascinating for the accrued force of his recollections and for the amount of conflict it sparks in him about what those books he reads indicates about his own life, its predilections and potential shortcomings.
I think comics has a harder time than prose with the question of what gets read over and over and why. The various comics industries' longtime devotion to impermanence may have fostered a suspicion of reading a few works a bunch of times as opposed to as many works as possible a single time or two. A comics reader remains in many ways measured by the breadth of her pull list rather than the devotion she might feel to a few great works, and nasty, dismissive words are common when discussing those whose interest in comics is limited to a specific genre, artist or kind of story. Further, comics are such a powerful expression of nostalgia and act as such highly effective totems of negotiating childhood issues and rough life periods that there's a tendency to want to equate re-reading with the kind of emotional wallow many of us have experienced diving back into a big stack of mental comfort food. I know that I can help find my way through a down period armed with a large stack of comics that feel and smell a certain way. At those times, the specific comic doesn't matter as much as it being comics.
As I get older, however, I find I return to very specific comics to re-experience their inherent virtues, that I'm spending less time reading comics in general than I am trying to fully and effectively read and re-read the great comics or the comics that are important to me. Here are four that I find on my night table more than once a year, and some reasons why this may be so.
*****
Hicksville, Dylan Horrocks, serialized in Pickle 1992-1996, published in book form 1998, Tragedy Strikes Press/Black Eye Press/Drawn and Quarterly.
It's not difficult to figure out why I might have been interested in Hicksville during its serialization in Dylan Horrocks' great comic book Pickle. One of its main characters and arguably the audience's viewpoint character is the comics critic Leonard Batts. In the mid-1990s I was one of maybe a half dozen people in the world who could argue that he had Batts' job or something very close to it (there are many more now). My job did not involve writing books about Jack Kirby or being sent around the world to track down the biographical details of a prominent cartoonist. It did mean I paid a lot of attention to comics and cartoonists without being one of their number, a feeling of being part of a special club but far outside of it that Horrocks nailed.
Hicksville went on to become a beloved graphic novel for many people enamored of cartooning, particularly those in the post-alternative generation who I think were looking for a narrative that spoke to their struggles with the art form that didn't express it as a push away from mainstream comics, a rebellion against content and practices about which they might not have felt strongly in the first place. I think its success is due in part to the fact that Horrocks manages to suggest something deeply mysterious and wonderful about the making of comics and a care in reading them that ropes in the horrible futility experienced by many of its best creators, then and now. Some people complain about its lighthouse metaphor being way too spot on, but I think there's a solicitousness that should be appreciated when it comes to Dylan's choices of metaphor and meaning. There's something to comics that the creation of a bold metaphor can have meaning to people who read the story even as the actual thing has meaning to the people in the world where they get to walk inside the thing. It's tough to love comics sometimes. Let them have a lighthouse.
Going back to Hicksville always feels to me like getting to have a long conversation with Dylan about art and related issues. It's interesting how much that conversation changes even though the book has remained the same. More of Hicksville is revealed to me each time out. In terms of its narrative, I'm usually struck by how measured Dylan's pacing and tone are, how little happens and how much heaven and earth move -- sort of literally -- on the relatively modest decisions about life and art embraced by the characters. In fact, the more I read it, the more I tend to see the characters over the ideas they represent. I don't wonder after comics as cartography as much as I might have 10 years ago, but I ponder Grace's garden quite a bit, the wisdom of returning home and the way that none of our personal lighthouses have much to do with comics and that's okay, too.
As The Kid Goes For Broke, Garry Trudeau, Holt Rinehart and Winston, 1977.
I have no desire to read Doonesbury on a daily basis. Unless I'm reading a newspaper that carries it -- my local doesn't -- I never even see Garry Trudeau's still slowly unfurling document of Baby Boomer adulthood. When I do, I'm surprised by how relatively handsome it is, and how sympathetic his strips about the soldiers are, and how he's solved a lot of the problems that used to crop up when he dealt in abstractions of real-world figures rather than allowed his amazingly diverse cartoon cast to carry those moments. I recognize its quality, and suspect that making it still gives its cartoonist a charge and thrill. I'm happy to remind people that it's arguably the great comics feature still running.
The Doonesbury comics I frequently read are the 1970s book collections, the small white books from Holt that carried four panels per page in a box format and resembled in their proportions and modesty similar collections from any number of popular gag cartoonists of the time period. There's nostalgia involved, sure. Because Doonesbury was comics, I read it far ahead of my interest in its subject matter. It seemed to me a very adult strip, in that it reflected the way I heard adults talk to one another when I was in the room being quiet or otherwise unobtrusive. As adulthood was a club that would barring a movie of the week outcome eventually have me as a member, and as a member of 1970s American culture I was certain at all times that I was not being given the best information possible, I paid an inordinate amount of attention to Doonesbury just trying to decipher what the hell all these people were up to.
The great congressional campaign storyline in As The Kid Goes For Broke -- one of Trudeau's career highlights and one of the best comics of the 1970s in any format -- was the first time in any medium I'd seen people pursuing jobs that seemed personally fulfilling and fun. This was a great boon in imagining some sort of future for myself beyond becoming an important pawn in a world-shattering end of millennium contest between good and evil. There was a casual certainty to what was going on that seemed like it was loaded with insights, anyway. It held a truth that was not literal truth.
When I read the book these days I'm struck by how fantastic a character Joanie Caucus is, and how little she gets mention in examinations of the great comics characters. There's something that feels much more real and observed about Joanie Caucus than even those characters in Doonesbury with easy-to-nail, real-life antecedents. It's so, so difficult to make an admirable character that's still as funny as Trudeau makes her. I'm also reminded how hard Doonesbury hit with audiences at the time. For one thing, I'm pretty certain that a criticism aimed at Trudeau in those days -- some years before Scott Adams came along -- was that he was a terrible artist and the strip would improved 10,000 percent if only he could find a decent craftsman to see his vision through. This seems absurd now, but it's fun to look at some of the oddball aspects of Trudeau's character design -- the big, wide, eyes that looked so ugly in people aping his style, for instance -- and some of the solutions (static imagery, voices off panel, dropping details) that he may have employed to avoid having to draw certain things in explicit fashion. I don't know if Trudeau's comfort drawing was part of the origin of the silent third panel he mastered and every single cartoonist has at least thought about using since, but that's a delightful craft element to track, as effective a use of silence as any Jack Benny employed.
The best-known sequence in the book is all silent panels, of course: Joanie and Rick Redfern in bed together introduced to us by a sweeping view through the neighborhood. It remains hilarious not for the skill displayed in that silent lead-in, but for the confidence Trudeau had in doing that part of the story that way in the first place. As the kid goes for broke... For most people this would something you'd consider only if you were to never do anything with the characters again, and you probably wouldn't go there anyway. (For a reverse gender example from that same period, consider the Mary Richards/Lou Grant kiss and giggle.) Trudeau never hesitated and never blinked. If that means there's an element of rooting for the characters that seeps in, let me ask you this. Was there ever a better character to root for?
Sick Sick Sick, Jules Feiffer, serialized in the Village Voice starting in 1956 (the strip would later be renamed Feiffer) and first published in book form in 1958.
I think Jules Feiffer's Sick Sick Sick is a perfect comic book. The one I re-read is a fourth or fifth edition, basically the one depicted above and the general volume most people I know think of when they think of this work in print form. Sick Sick Sick has many excellent surface qualities; if you were a character on a sitcom, you'd pay it to go with you to a wedding. The book's great-looking, it's of a size that is pleasing to hold and read, it's of a length that flatters Feiffer's unique voice, the material inside remains poignant and its overall historical significance is undeniable. It is all by itself proof that comics for an adult, sophisticated readership can exist, that they can be done in a style far away from given commercial standards, and that they can yield major artistic returns. It did this decades before an years-long movement came to the same conclusions. It is singular and it is Ruthian.
It's also fun. Feiffer's cartooning is so lively here. Feiffer's running men and the way he draws slumped shoulders and his tiny women are all pantheon-worthy in terms of the art form's great visual depictions. The bitter disappointments of manhood in the post-War world and neuroses that drove so many novels were also rich territory for Feiffer, maybe richer because of the deep subtext afforded in giving these expressions a visual life and the modest act of Greenwich Village-style, insouciant rebellion that was taking on such subjects in cartoon form in the first place. This was another book I used to try and understand adults when I was a kid, although it'd be years and hundreds of readings later before I realized that many of the concerns upon which Feiffer seized were funny because they were beyond easy understanding.
Feiffer's had a wonderful career, in cartooning and as a writer, which is almost a minor miracle in itself given how trailblazers tend to be treated vis-a-vis the group that follows and dumbs things down. Reading this very great book as I like to do every month or so I'm still astonished by how little credit he's given for the towering accomplishment of creating work that was two or three decades away from fostering a sustained movement. If we valued the graphic novel as much for its capacity for psychological insight and ability to deal with sophisticated issues and propensity towards expressive artwork as much we do for the number of pages involved, Feiffer would rightfully be seen as one of the major cogs in its creation. As things stand, his work exists in its own little world, and this startling, ground-breaking phase to his career continues to call me for round after round of personal reckoning.
The Death Of Speedy Ortiz, Jaime Hernandez, serialized in Love and Rockets Vol. 1, reprinted in multiple collections since.
I had a significant crush on The Death Of Speedy Ortiz the summer I was 20 years old, reading and re-reading the serialized story with a passion I had never brought to a single comic story before then. There are a number of Hernandez Brother works from that general time period that feel special to me for their content and for how completely each knocked me on my ass: "Tear It Up, Terry Downe," "For The Love Of Carmen" and "Frida" all spring to mind. But it's "Speedy Ortiz" to which I always return. It's such an irresistibly sentimental and sweetly romantic story on so many levels. It's full of nighttime adventures of the kinds that only young people can have, the promise of sex and violence, lovers kept from each other by fate, friends and family sticking up for friends and family. The story's ending is a Godzilla-sized choke-up moment of Speedy's goodbye and the final reveal as to his fate, followed by the next page's King Kong-level gut-punch of a moment from the characters' past where they're all heading different directions towards the same depressing result. I think people sometimes take it less seriously for its appealing qualities, as if there's something too easy or smoothed-over about this approach. I thought it was wonderful that summer I read it 10,000 times, and I remain convinced it's a special story every time I've picked it up since.
Although I'm a long way divorced from the mind-set shared by so many of the characters in Death Of Speedy Ortiz, and most importantly have broken with the simple desire it invoked in me to want to live way Hernandez depicts these people living their lives, I like the comic more than ever for its power and luminous art work and what I see now as instances of narrative restraint. There are stunning panels in here -- Maggie and Speedy sharing a kiss at a barbecue, a moment of Maggie as she likely appears to Ray, Litos flailing his arms around as a sign of the youthful energy he can't leave behind -- that illustrate instances that aren't high moments of action but the way we assemble memories and ascribe meaning. A gifted and unappreciated writer, Hernandez further underlines the story's theme by shifting much of the action off-line and focusing on the reaction that the cast members have to those moments. Even a crucial instance he depicts within the story, a drive-by shooting, seems more important for the way in which both of the major characters involve react than for the physical consequences involved. When I read Death Of Speedy now, I see a little bit more of how Jaime Hernandez uses single moments and narrative flow to comment on how we forge a past.
The top comics-related news stories from September 26 to October 2, 2009:
1. A double-appearance on Yale's campus of author Jytte Klausen and cartoonist Kurt Westergaard near the fourth anniversary of the original publication of the Danish cartoons calls into question issues surrounding the original event and the decision by Yale's press not to publishing any imagery depicting Muhammad in Klausen's new book.
2. Cartoonist Pahé arrested in Gabon for drawing two police officers.
3. Keith Knight cartoon crosses a line several students not willing to let Knight cross, actually reading the comic be damned.
Winners Of The Week
Your 2009 Ignatz Award winners.
Your Danish Cartoons Hangover Update
* here's a nice write-up on Jytte Klausen's speech at Yale last night, including some video. She dances along the line that is her position against the images not being included because the danger cited runs against the entire thesis of her book but also not wanting to be sucked into a controversy that would include taking the book somewhere. It's the most credible she's sounded on the issue, I think. Also, Joseph Cumming defended the Press' decision at the meeting.
* I'm not sure what you did for International Blasphemy Day, but I hope it was a good one. I had planned on blackmailing a late-night talk show host, but that fell through.
Haller's first published work in comic books seems to have been on "Deputy Dawg" for Spotlight Comics at the tail end of the black and white boom period. His most high profile work may have come for Marvel's Star line on licensed series including Alf in the early '90s. He has also made comics for the Flintstones franchise and later provided work to DC's Looney Tunes titles. One of the comics he worked on during that period was an Eek! The Cat book from Hamilton Comics. His partner on that issue was Nat Gertler, who later published a great deal of Haller material through is own publishing effort, About Comics. Gertler wrote a long letter to several sources about Haller.
Rusty was one of my regulars, working on a number of About Comics projects. He worked on every issue of Licensable BearTM, and also contributed to The Factor and Many Happy Returns.
Gertler says that Haller may have worked on some licensed material related to comics in addition to comics themselves.
Haller had recently found a level of creative satisfaction with his work on Ace and Queenie, his own creation. Ace and Queenie is an anthropomorphic adventure-romance that appeared in Radio Comix' Furrlough, and enjoy an on-line following through a devoted site. He had anticipated collecting that work. According to a post by Elin Winkler, Haller also contributed to the Radio's Hit The Beach and was in discussions for several new projects, including some on-line.
According to several postings by friends, Haller had been displaced after the death of a family member and drop in work opportunities. He had recently moved to Ohio to live with a friend. Describing him as someone who loved comics more than they loved him, Gertler mentioned that he remained hopeful to the end.
When last we talked, he had plans in place to go to some convention... which would involve his first ever airplane flight. I think I brought up once again the idea that it might be time to find something beyond comics to earn a living, but that wasn't in him. It may be a slightly poetic memory bank telling me that he said that he'd be doing comics until he died... but even if he didn't voice it that way, it was certainly how he felt.
* this interview with Eric Reynolds is interesting enough and his daughter is adorable enough you won't if you're of a certain age in comics be freaked out by the white in his bear.
* here's an SPX thing that's gone up recently that's worthwhile enough to pull out and spotlight: Sean Collins transcribed his "New Action" panel.
* not comics: I sort of like this Hulk journal. I have no idea why you'd want a little Hulk on your journal, but there it is.
* finally, Marvel signs yet another license. It doesn't sound like much, but Marvel's ability to secure high-level partners for projects like this is something that's distinguished the company post-bankruptcy era as much as just about any movie they've done.
According 
* one thing that may have been lost in the news about The Comics Journal moving the bulk of its regular output on-line 
It should come as no surprise to anyone that Robert Crumb's The Book Of Genesis Illustrated has been a big hit with the media. The combination of the Bible, comics, and a 1960s icon best known for breaking artistic taboos about sex and human relationships paves the way for everything from a two-line twitter post to an extended feature article. Here's this morning's contribution: 
* yesterday's 
* C. Spike Trotman is funding her second self-published project Poorcraft 
"It was always a strain to assemble eight commercially viable issues that were also aesthetically pleasing -- balancing that fine line -- every year. I feel much more comfortable concentrating our resources on fewer print editions each year and spending some of those resources on our web presence. It's no secret that newspapers and magazines are suffering because so much of what they've traditionally done can be done on the web, faster and cheaper. We decided therefore to redesign the editorial and physical format of the magazine to take advantage of what print's best at -- upscale production values, longer prose, more permanent content -- and bring the Journal's mandate for criticism and commentary to the web with a vengeance.
Lulu, femme nue by Etienne Davodeau 
* everyone is agog over 
According to 
* 
The Korea Times 
+ although impossible to confirm, all three major con organizers seem to have, at some point in their past, scheduled shows with an eye on what the other two entities had planned. 
* in the latest installment of what I think is a recurring feature, Chris Mautner recommends how people 
* missed it: a comic 
His life's work Jommeke enjoyed a modest start in 1955 as a gag comic for the Catholic newspaper Kerkelijk Leven, for whom he would later make a number of more realistic-looking religious-themed anthologies. That initial burst of Jommeke comics ran for three years and were collected into books, along with other work he was doing at the time. In 1958, Jommeke moved to the daily Het Volk and became a story-strip, with two strips a day feeding 44-page stories. Through most of the 1960s he made Jommeke comics and continued to do fill-in work on other serials and launch supplementary features of his own. By the 1970s, he had focused much of his attention on his most successful feature. By the late 1970s, over two million copies of Jommeke books were selling each year, and initial printings of new works were in the six-figure range. 
It was also in the 1970s that Nys began to farm some of the Jommeke work out to other creators, first in terms of additional inkers, then to artists and writers, work that eventually scaled back as the feature fell from the absolute height of his popularity. He was still contributing work to the feature shortly before his death. 
* the second season of Comix Claptrap 
* the Robert Kirkman-written Astounding Wolf-Man 
Captain Marvel was a favorite, as was Crime Does Not Pay.
* 
* the cartoonist Evan Dorkin deserves his reputation as a word and concepts guy, but I sure like the way he drew this dog in a panel from 
* it looks like a fine discussion of proto-graphic novels 
* there's a bunch of George Tuska stuff out there, celebrating the life of the late, longtime veteran comic book artist. Here's 
Better documented than the length and location of his schooling is that Tuska began his comics career during the industry's initial burst of publishing activity, joining the Eisner/Iger studio and working as an assistant on the newspaper strip Scorchy Smith in roughly the same time period. For Eisner/Iger he worked on the titles Jungle, Mystery Men, Planet Wonderworld and Wings. He joined the Harry "A" Chesler Studio for a while, where he contributed work to features such as Captain Marvel, Golden Arrow and Uncle Sam. He would later work for Eisner after his separation from Iger. Other publishers for whom Tuska worked in this initial period included Quality Comics -- for whom he created the character "Hercule" -- Fiction House, Harvey, Fox and Standard.
A drop in the popularity of adventure strips and a more stable market than that which existed in the previous decade began to entice the veteran illustrator back into the comic book fold. Although his re-entry into comic books came through Tower Comics, perhaps the most famous entity that tried to capitalize on the success of new superhero books at DC and Marvel, he is best known for his work at Marvel during this period. One early assignment that grew in stature over the years was inking Jack Kirby on the Captain America "Sleeper" storyline that appeared over several issues of Tales Of Suspense. He worked fill-in slots on various titles, before setting in on the Iron Man character for a decade-long run. Tuska also found work with the Luke Cage character, as well as performing duties on Ghost Rider, X-Men and Daredevil.
* I always have bad luck with site like this one in terms of things popping up and without my asking them start playing things, but 
Ron Hogan 
* the writer Steven Grant 
* you ever get news that you feel bad you didn't know already, but you're so happy about its substance that you don't care? That's how I feel to learn that 
* here's more good news: Mike Dawson and company 
* although I've never been much of a comics collector except as much as you need to lug the things around to have access to them and be able to write about them, I like the idea of bookplates that people have been doing recently. The one pictured in this post 
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* there's some fun conversation at Comics Comics 
Baltimore's great. It has about 100 worthwhile museums ranging in interests from the traditional 
So a councilman in Wicomico County, Maryland 
* the writer Warren Ellis 
Editor Tawafik Bouachrine 
* the writer Steven Grant 
* the serial Life With Mr. Dangerous by Paul Hornschemeier will end in Mome Vol. 17, for which Mr. Hornschemeier did the covers including the one at left.
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* I think J. Caleb Mozzocco is right to be fascinated by 
It's almost impossible to figure out exactly what 
* the longtime comics web presence Johnny Bacardi 
* the cartoonist Dash Shaw 
Haller had recently found a level of creative satisfaction with his work on Ace and Queenie, his own creation. 
* one thing that's cool about 
