Burma: Cartooning’s Nightmare State The Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group Freedom House has released its "Freedom Of The Press 2010" report, with Burma reaching its top 10 in part because of the testimony as to abuses provided by cartoonists.
Two cartoonists are cited in the linked-to article. One, Aw Pi Kye, has been banned from publication by the military regime that controls the nation's press. Another, Han Lay, testifies from a position of being published in a Thailand paper that press freedoms have been abominable since 1988. I do remember that in late 2009 when Aung San Suu Kyi was convicted in what was believed to be an attempt to keep her from participating in the 2010 elections, it was only in regional papers that you could find cartoon commentary on what seems like a natural story for any cartoonist on the ground, were they given expression.
I totally missed this until I saw it on a French-language site, but apparently Shueisha has announced that Masashi Kishimoto's Naruto has passed the 100 million mark in terms of overall sales worldwide. They made this announcement on the eve of the 51st volume in the series dropping. That makes it the fifth title at the company to pass this mark after Kochira Katsushika-ku Kamearikouen-mae Hashutsujo, Dragon Ball, Slam Dunk and One Piece. I always liked Naruto, although that winter when their English-language version came out at a rate four volumes a month for a few months was basically them accelerating away from me as a customer. Naruto has all the required interrelationship material and inspiring, bordering-on-simplistic theme work on might expect with a big fat comics hit. I think it has two other things going for it, too, that are less discussed: the first a conception of kids and teens seeking out an ambitious path for themselves that I bet rings true to a lot of tutored, praised, pressured kids; the second its relentlessly imaginative action sequences that may give the series its best claim to greatness.
Tom Medley To Be Honored As A “Hot Rod Hero” At West Coast Nationals
The fact that Stroker McGurk creator and hot rod culture mainstay Tom Medley is being honored in August at a big event in Pleasanton, California, isn't the kind of news story that usually gets noticed at CR. It's just that save for maybe cowboy cartooning, the auto, racing and hot rod cartooning world is one of those lovely little corners of the comics-making art universe now on the wane and I want to drag out into the sun every mention of it I can. Plus "Tom Medley is still alive?" would be a clumsy headline. Medley, who has to be in at least his late 80s at this point, is one of that world's most irrepressible characters, someone whose interest in cars predated the rise of a whole California-based hot-rodding culture, a cartoonist who came along so early in the development of magazine to cover that world he had no choice but to be an editor as well as a contributing talent. I hope he has a blast.
Random Comics News Story Round-Up
* inspired by his Eisner nomination for best lettering, Brian Fies decides to write a bit about his approach to that element of the comics craft.
* the retailer Mike Sterling offers up monthly run-down of bizarre crap that has a place in a comics Direct Market that sometimes doesn't have a place at all for talented cartoonoists.
* not comics: David Brothers catches something that I had been looking for but hadn't yet seen: fan reaction to Idris Elba playing a Norse God in the forthcoming Thor movie that framed the casting as political correctness gone wrong. I tend to enjoy the results of color-blind casting and I think superhero films could use more of it in general, but clearly a lot of modern blockbuster film fans don't share my opinion.
* not comics: Charlie Stross writes about the misconceptions that people have of writing as a job. I don't agree with all of it -- I don't like to reverse-glamorize writing professionally as some sort of cursed-by-the-gods task -- and I've never been beset by tons of people making these sitcom-style assumptions (not since my early 20s, anyway), but the gist of it works for me. Much of it is applicable to cartoonists, particularly the part where everyone assumes you're rich if you have certain gigs.
Pulitzer Prize-Winning Cartoonists Condemn Threats Of Violence Against Parker And Stone Seventeen Pulitzer Prize winners have signed a petition condemning the the threats of violence by the group Revolution Muslim against South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker after the 201st episode of their television show depicted Muhammad. The threats brought up the murdered filmmaker Theo Van Gogh as a potential outcome for the successful comedy duo. The exploration into the depictions of Muhammad were inspired by a number of thigns, including the fate of artists like Van Gogh and 2006's Danish Cartoons Controversy.
The cartoonist who signed the petition are Nick Anderson, Tony Auth, Clay Bennett, Steve Benson, Matt Davies, Mark Fiore, Jack Higgins, David Horsey, Jim Morin, Mike Peters, Joel Pett, Michael Ramirez, Ben Sargent, Paul Szep, Ann Telnaes, Garry Trudeau and Signe Wilkinson. The petition can be read here.
Statements by some of the cartoonists indicate that an additional factor may have been Comedy Central's lack of support for the South Park duo and their work, eradicating any and all potential depictions of Muhammad from the television rotation and the web site's streaming video offerings.
I do think it's yet another a sign those books could do very well: you're hitting a sweet spot with the Smurfs of younger adults with kids that liked the property, and Euro-comics nerds that wouldn't mind checking them out. And kids like them; they're solid comics. I've had three adults of my acquaintance e-mail me to ask after the books, and that never happens.
City Of San Diego Pursues Randy Moss Strategy In Wooing Comic-Con
Lori Weisberg of the San Diego Union-Tribunereports that San Diego has offered Comic-Con an additional half-million dollar inducement targeted at shuttle services in their ongoing bid to secure the show for 2013 and beyond. The money would come from a nonprofit hotelier group called the Tourism Marketing District. Factors cited in making the offer were the publicity the con brings, the overflow business it brings, its success during a down economy, and recognition of the fact that the bloc of hotels working with the con has expanded in recent years and that expansion brings with it new shuttle concerns.
Speaking for the con, David Glanzer thanked the group for the offer and said that it would be part of the ongoing decision-making process that's expected to end soon. If nothing else, this puts a new light on that process seemingly being extended a few more weeks -- if that means one of the offers is improved, it's smart for them to do.
Personally and professionally I believe San Diego is the best place for them to be. It's the best location of the three to visit, "San Diego" is a significant part of their branding, the remove from LA gives it a sexy junket feel that it wouldn't have in or near LA, the Vegas option would be a disaster based on the McCarron cab line alone, San Diego looks prepared to compete with the other cities in terms of supplying services if the show grows and I think it's the best place if the show stays at the same size or even contracts. It's also the only locale I think could facilitate a long-term shift into a multiple-location festival model. And if you read this site, you probably already know all that. But there it is.
Two things.
One, I think it's hilarious that as the city seems to be coming around in terms of recognizing the show's value, some fans seem to be pressing for what I could only call psychic reparations in terms of past, perceived-to-be snotty treatment from the city and its denizens. I've never experienced that, don't believe it's institutional, and believe the bad behavior of funnybook fans that I've seen dwarfs anything I've seen from a mostly grateful, bemused local population. But that's just me.
It's worth noting in general I think the close attention that's been paid to conventions this year within the comics community. I thought this was driven by the news gatherers themselves, but now I'm not so sure. When this story flashed across my browser yesterday I bookmarked it for a story today and in the next six hours heard from about 10 of you wondering why I hadn't picked up on it. I will say there are a lot of facets to this convention story generally, and the thing I find the most interesting about it is this notion of conventions as a significant factor in how people process and deal with comics: the notion of conventions as an alternative distribution system, the asserted necessity of face to face meetings with one's industry peers, as a natural locus for publicity, the subtle insistence that comics automatically comes with a social component that I still can't wrap my mind around -- comics as a place to hang out rather than as an industry or medium. I suspect that we're seeing a boom in conventions because the structure of comics and bookstores as a place for comics is so damaged that a surge in interest can't be seen there. I'm also coming around to the fact that people really like dressing up in costumes.
“Frankly, I believe it is just the opposite.” Attempt To Ban Bone Due To Bad Behavior Fails The CBLDF's sleek new blog set-up drove attention yesterday to local media reports about a mother's attempt to have Bone removed from her local school library shelves. Ramona DeLay of the Rosemount-Apple Valley-Eagan school district south of Minneapolis/St. Paul made the request after reading her son's library take-home and objecting to what she felt was smoking, drinking, gambling and sexual situations in its pages.
The meeting took place April 27. DeLay made her case, and then a media specialist was brought in who argued to have the school keep the series, citing its enormous critical reputation as an all-ages work and drawing a distinction between DeLay deciding not to have it in her home and actually removing it from the library shelves based on DeLay's objection. A spokesman from Scholastic, the book's publisher in the color editions found in most school libraries, also spoke at the meeting. A pair of school kids brought by their mother to see the process told the local reporter they hoped it would say.
The vote was 10-1 for keeping the series on library shelves.
Jeff Smith's Boneville blog has a brief report up about the incident, including the fact that they were heading to C2E2 when the story broke and the content of a letter Jeff Smith wrote on behalf of his work. That letter was read at the meeting. That letter has a flat-out denial of any sexual situations involved, a citation in general of the saga's award-winning status and effectiveness with kids, notes that no one else has ever complained, and describes the booze and tobacco in the story as props appropriate to the medieval setting.
Random Comics News Story Round-Up
* Dave Lartigue declares February 1966 the greatest month of the Silver Age. Looking at the parade of dementia he assembles in the linked-to blog posting, it's hard to argue with him. I was very fond of the Weird Legionnaire when I was a kid.
* not comics: the funny thing is, the actual, multiple endings to Sanford and Son in our world isn't too much weirder than the stuff Andrew Farago presents in this blog posting.
* not comics: congratulations to Matt, Kelly Sue and Henry Leo on the new edition to their family. That photo is pretty amazingly adorable.
* Dan Nadel reports in from the great Swiss comics festival Fumetto, where every comics fan in the world that's not just a capes and cowls fan would like to be this week, even if they've never heard of it.
* the writer Kurt Busiek opens up a box of comics and marvels at how much good stuff there is inside. I don't like 70 percent of these books, but I believe in his general point: there's just an avalanche of quality material out there right now for all but the most rigidly-focused readers.
* did I really use "marvels" as a verb to describe something Kurt Busiek did? Sorry, Kurt.
* David Brothers argues Death To Canon. I always hated that fat jerk, so that's fine with me. Marc-Oliver Frisch comments on Brothers' essay and says he'd miss that aspect of comics if it went away.
* Eric Reynolds writes a letter of condolence to the Lambiek family on the passing of their patriarch, Kees Kousemaker.
* comics is so great right now that big ol' books like this one just sneak up on you.
* Rick Veitch predicts the future. Actually, if you take every fifth letter it spells out "Barack Obama Is President." Okay, no it doesn't.
* do you hear little voices singing...? Although I haven't seen official word, it looks like NBM will be republishing the Smurf material through their Papercutz imprint at the smaller size they use for the Donjon reprints. I think the original material is strong kids work, and I've seen certain children latch onto it in a scary way, so it'll be nice to have that material out there again. Jog comments.
* maybe the biggest news of the week for adult readers arrived in my inbox 20 minutes after last week's "Bundled" posted: Ruben Bolling has taken his Tom, The Dancing Bug to Boing Boing. TTDB was dropped in ignominious fashion by long-time primary web home Salon for financial reasons. That's a good match, and I hope Boing Boing's on-line heft will provide greater exposure to Bolling's long-run comic. That's a panel from the feature, above.
* a bunch of stuff was launched recently over a convention weekend that feature Stumptown in Portland, Oregon, and SPACE in Columbus. Jim Rugg was in the American Midwest moving copies of his Rambo 3.5, and you can pick it up at future show as described in this link. Many of the fine works on long list of mini-comics and related material from Profanity Hill is likely still available. This post describes the books that Sparkplug Comic Book saw debut at the Portland show, starting but not ending with Julia Gfrorer's Flesh and Bone and the free anthology Dope Flounder.
* the comics news web site Broken Frontierhas launchedThe Frontiersman, a comics magazine billed as the "first mobile comics magazine." If I were a better writer I could manage something here about Mark Waid throwing issues of Amazing Heroes at the interns, but I'm not so I won't.
* Brigid Alverson has news of a new Tokyopop license: Chibi-Vampire Airmail. There's some other stuff about another maybe-license that I frankly didn't understand in the time allotted.
* I don't know the site well enough to be able to tell you the difference between a blogger and a columnist, but Hooded Utilitarianhas apparently either added or changed the status of four writers: Erica Friedman (Okazu), Matthias Wivel (Metabunker), Domingos Isabelinho (The Crib Sheet) and somebody apparently named "kinukitty."
* among the comics-related projects trying to raise money through the Kickstarter project include Ryan Alexander Tanner's The Portrait Project, Leticia Silva's Into The Shadow, Kody Chamberlain's Sweets, and a Reading With Pictures project. I don't like the idea of Kickstarter.com for a lot of reasons, but that's an essay for another day and it's too popular an option for a slew of publishing projects for me to continue to ignore it here.
* finally, the convention may have come and gone, another successful flash on a calendar crowded with light bulbs big and small, but the FLUKE anthology lives on. You can find out more about it starting here.
Bill DuBay, the co-creator of The Rook and a longtime key cog at Warren Publishing as an editor and writer, passed away in Portland, Oregon on April 15. He was 62 years old.
A child fascinated with a relative's gift of TinTin comics and Dell and Western comic books generally, and a teen that became partly inured to the heartbreak of the comics industry through personal contact with the artist Jack Burnley, Dubay began his career in comics through the rich field of self-published fanzines in the 1960s. He contributed art to some of the better-known titles such as The Voice Of Comicdom, Komix Illustrated and Star-Studded Comics. Struggling with a style perhaps more suited to humor and even romance work than the all-the-rage superheroes that dominated the stands, DuBay enjoyed a smattering of modest professional art gigs for Charlton and Marvel in the latter half of that decade. A former contributor to the fan art section of the magazine, DuBay experienced what is probably best described as his first significant credit on the story "Movie Dissector," appearing in Creepy #32.
That gig transformed the early-twentysomething's career. He began writing as well as drawing stories for Warren, the first part of a transition to becoming a full-time writer as opposed to an artist or writer/artist. Jim hired DuBay to edit the Warren line starting with the publications released in November 1972. He started as managing editor and become the line's editor about a year later. Thus began a cycle of settling into one or both of those jobs and then becoming a freelance or senior editor when Warren brought in other editorial talent such as Archie Goodwin and Louise Jones. DuBay may have made this transition as many as four times, according to a count of stints provided on his wikipedia page.
DuBay edited a host of Warren publications, from classic Creepy, Eerie and Vampirella to key peripherals and second-stage publications 1984/1994, The Rook and The Spirit. His writing credits during the entire period but especially in the late 1970s and early 1980s were such his arguably became the dominant scripting voice in that line's magazines. With longtime creative partner Budd Lewis he created the line's iconic late-period character, The Rook, a western-tinged, science-fiction oriented time-traveler whose adventures in obvious ways broke from the classic Warren horror approach.
As a writer, DuBay would contribute to several Warren publications, Heavy Metal, Cracked, Crazy and Pacific's Bold Adventure. He briefly edited or packaged books for Western Publishing (Bold Adventure was an attempt to extend his professional relationship with that group of artists) in its latter days and drove Archie Comics' 1980s attempt at a superhero line. He also pursued opportunities in magazine publishing. He created a studio called The Cartoon Factory to take on a variety of licensing and comics-related assignments.
DuBay took a position from Stan Lee at Marvel Productions in the mid-1980s before moving to a similar position at 20th Century Fox. In more recent years, he had formed a company to publish graphic novels based around various characters including The Rook. An interview with the writer done early last year about that project shows him to be as legendarily feisty and engaged as at any point earlier in his career.
Bill DuBay is survived by his wife of only a couple of months, Venessa Hart, his mother, three daughters and two sons from a marriage to Peggy Buckler, multiple brothers and sisters, and three grandchildren. Services were held on April 25.
Please Consider Hiring Frank Young Frank Young, a longtime writer-about-comics, writer-of-comics and blogger of the fine Stanley Stories web site, has been hit particularly hard by the recession as it has ravaged his field in his city of Seattle, Washington. Facing some tough times ahead, he's put out a call to potential employers that he needs to work. Comics is a tough field in which to find any employment whatsoever, but if anyone out there in this field or any other has projects to which Young can apply his skills, they would likely greatly benefit in return.
I don't know Frank, but I get a lot of use out of his writing on-line and was an admirer of his version of The Comics Journal when he was for a too-brief time its managing editor. I'm not hiring, but I plan on hitting his donate button by the end of the day for the work I've already received from him as a reader and a fan -- even though he's firmly not asked for that. I hope that some of you will consider joining me and that maybe one or two of you has a gig for him.
Kees Kousemaker, the European comics expert who opened up that continent's first comics store, the legendary Galerie Lambiek in Amsterdam, potentially the world's longest continuing running comics shop, died yesterday. Kousemaker was a prolific writer about comics who both self-published and published works on the form; he also contributed to group efforts in writing about the form.
He founded Lambiek in 1968, one of the exemplars of comics retail generally and maybe the best- and best-known combination shop and art gallery. The store has yielded a high-traffic web site that with its biographical entries on so many cartoonists, in both French and English, came to reflect and perhaps embody the international view of comics with which the store engaged the medium. The web site's story is described here. The store would win awards such as the Will Eisner Spirit Of Comics Retailer Award (1995); the 2500th issue of Donald Duck featured a story about the Disney character searching for a rare back issue at Kousemaker's shop. The retailer himself made an appearance as a character with a name slightly altered from his own. In 2006, Kousemaker took home a Royal Decoration for his contributions to the medium.
It's unclear if elements such as combining an art show space with areas devoted to comics retail or hosting events at a comics shop originated with Lambiek, although such concepts tended to at the very least have an early expression there. One element perhaps unique to the store in its original location is that Kousemaker owned the building and kept an apartment there where cartoonists visiting Amsterdam would stay, complete with a wall where the various cartoonists would leave artistic evidence of their having been there.
In 2008, Margaret de Heer presented Kousemaker with a comic book featuring Lambiek-related comic strips from her own pen and from those of several other Dutch cartoonists. De Heer's cartoon and a few random photos of the shop being used for events can be found here with a bit of digging around. A profile of the store on 24-Hour Comics Day can be found here, including a great photos of some social space within the shop. There are a few photos here as part of a general tour of unique Amsterdam retailers that give you an idea of the treasure trove aspect of the store.
Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe at some point Boris Kousemaker took over the general operation of the store, with the support of longtime employees. I also think that the store moved locations some time in the last few years.
Go, Look: Sub-Mariner #30 If you're ever looking for an odd, creative cul-de-sac of a late 1960s, early 1970s superhero comic book, I heartily recommend Sub-Mariner. Sufferin' Shad, it's weird...
* here's a report from the Best of '00s panel at the recent MoCCA Festival, including the lists provided by the panel participants. Very few choices made me roll my eyes.
* I remember Deathstroke when Deathstroke was cool, or at least when he had enough going on that he would be the most likely candidate for an appearance in a Grant Morrison comic. Esther Inglis-Arkell does not remember that cool Deathstroke, but another one entirely.
* not comics: I don't really understand this article that's out there right now under various bylines. It says that Marvel is going to aim a lot of their properties at the slightly less than blockbuster budget category, say $20-40 million. I don't follow Hollywood that closely, but wasn't this sort of move obvious? First, on no planet was there ever going to be a $150 million Ka-Zar movie. Second, when Marvel went to Disney and started bringing properties back into the fold, it was pretty obvious that this would mean fewer comic book blockbuster movies rather than more of them. Wasn't it?
* finally, the writer Matt Maxwell pens a piece on the Stumptown Comics Fest for Heidi MacDonald's The Beat. He repeats something I've heard in a lot of the things I've been sliding into the "Collective Memory" on the show -- Portland comics audiences come armed with money for reading materials.
This Isn’t A Library: New And Notable Releases To The Comics Direct Market
*****
Here are the books that make an impression on me staring at this week's no-doubt largely accurate list of books shipping from Diamond Comic Distributors, Inc. to comic book and hobby shops across North America.
I might not buy all of the works listed here. I might not buy any. But were I in a comic book shop tomorrow I would be definitely be stowing the following on my great, fleshy person.
*****
FEB100028 USAGI YOJIMBO #128 $3.50 JAN100462 INVINCIBLE #71 $2.99 JAN100468 WALKING DEAD #71 (MR) $2.99 FEB108021 INVINCIBLE IRON MAN #25 $3.99 OCT091041 STUMPTOWN #3 (MR) $3.99
A pretty good-day for stand-alone, serialized genre comic books in their classic format: the ageless Stan Sakai, the super-solid performer Robert Kirkman with twin offerings in his best series (though ideally these would be spaced out; being able to count on a Kirkman book every other week might do wonders for a certain kind of DM customer over the long haul), shiny Iron Man and the reflected glow of his hit movie, and the mystery book Stumptown, which is probably about Portland rather than the adventures of the Dwarf Attack cartoonist Greg Stump.
FEB100234 GARRISON #1 (OF 6) $2.99
This sounds like a forgotten 1972 television show starring David Janssen as a Treasury Department agent, but it's actually a WildStorm comic about the world's most dangerous man.
JAN100304 SOLOMON GRUNDY TP $19.99
This comic book gave me the giggle as a series, because I couldn't wrap my mind around how anyone on planet Earth wanted to read a series about Solomon Grundy, Born On A Monday, short of its execution making it the greatest comic of all time. I'm not sure a trade paperback is as big an in-my-face as it might have been ten years ago, but apparently this material has some kind of audience, or they just collect everything. Wait, don't answer that; I don't wanna know.
JAN100191 BPRD TP VOL 12 WAR ON FROGS $17.99 FEB100623 INCREDIBLE HERCULES TP MIGHTY THORCULES $14.99
Two crowd-pleasing series that I tend to pay attention to as series rather than as trade paperback, although it occurs to me that if that's how you like to spend your comics money they would read perfectly fine that way.
MAR100914 JOHN STANLEY LIBRARY NANCY HC VOL 01 (O/A) $24.95
I quite liked this book, which is exactly what it sounds. I'd say I'm a sucker for fancy reprint editions, but that's not a confession, that's basically a pre-condition of being a modern-day comics fan.
JAN100949 OUR GANG SC VOL 04 $14.99
I don't find the comics all that appealing even though I'm a big fan of both Walt Kelly and the Our Gang comedies. The cover and the presentation on these books has been mostly nice. I'm sort of waiting to be able to see these with kinder eyes at some point.
FEB100607 STAR COMICS TP ALL-STAR COLLECTION GN VOL 03 $19.99
I don't know if the Star Comics material is any good, on any level, but we certainly have a greater appreciation for Harvey artists and creators than we did at the time these were coming out, so maybe there's a bunch of stuff of value here.
MAR100947 FOILED GN $15.99 FEB100909 RESISTANCE GN $16.99 FEB100908 CITY OF SPIES GN $16.99
Three from First Second. I didn't care for Foiled, and haven't seen the other two, which look like stylish YA comics about life and resistance during wartime. Come to think of it, I hope they didn't cut me off.
JAN101114 SUPER SPY LOST DOSSIERS GN $12.95
No comic that came out in the last decade confused me more than Matt Kindt's Super Spy material, which at times seemed like a comic made just for me and at other times like a comic made for a me that doesn't exist anymore. This book apparently contains all the pieces that didn't go into the book proper, many of which are clever and formally audacious.
AUG084013 DF ROMITA LEGACY HC $29.99
I worked on this book a long time ago, providing the bulk of the interviews and maybe an essay. The timing didn't work out to have it published then. I was supposed to work on getting the book back up to speed for publication now, but I failed to come through. I hope it came together okay under the editors' very skilled hands. If they're publishing it I'm sure it did. The DF people were really nice and very professional and the Romitas are an awesome subject. I remember being charmed by John Jr, to whom I'd never spoken before; he came across to me like the living embodiment of comic book work ethic as much as his dad might have at an earlier age.
JAN100954 ABANDONED CARS SC $18.99 DEC090865 BLAZING COMBAT SC $19.99
Two Fantagraphics softcover editions of two super-attractive hardcovers: the debut book from the muscular cartoonist Tim Lane and an absolute must-have reprint of Archie Goodwin's Warren-era war comics. No one with even a tiny bit of interest in war comics could fail to like that Blazing Combat book.
JAN100133 LITTLE LULU GIANT SIZE TP VOL 01 $24.99 DEC090034 TALE OF ONE BAD RAT HC (MR) $19.99
Down the road in Portland, in grown-up offices rather than a decaying house, Team Dark Horse sees Fantagraphics' re-releases and offers up two of their own. The first is a welcome re-packaging of their Little Lulu material. The second is Bryan Talbot's graphic novel that blew a lot of people's eyelids off when it initially came out, back when people didn't know quite what to do with stand-alone work like that. They sure know now.
FEB100867 WILSON HC (MR) $21.95
I like how this was near the bottom of the comics listings like some sort of last-minute, walk-on, massively famous celebrity guest on a 1960s telethon. This is of course Dan Clowes' first original graphic novel published all at once (if you don't count Eightball #23), and it's very good. You'll want one.
*****
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 the greatest compliment I can pay you. Okay, not really. Sorry.
Go, Read: Notes On Jorge Zaffino interviewer Michel Fiffe says he was inspired by some crack I made about someone getting out there and interviewing some of the odder artists that worked for Marvel in the late 1980s/early 1990s; I should make commentary like that more frequently
PCW: Apple Will Course-Correct
The concluding graphs of this article at PC World paint a rational picture of the future in Apple's case, that the rejection of certain editorial cartooning apps (Mark Fiore's initial rejection; Daryl Cagle just had a Tiger Woods-related app rejected) and the delays in approving others (Cagle had to jump through a lot of hoops last year to get a pretty straight-forward editorial cartooning app approved) will eventually course correct as language is worked out in Apple's developer's agreement and policy is established as to how they'll treat it. I agree, although maybe without the same level of conviction; it's hard to think that people will stomach language that allows for some editorial cartooning and not others, particularly with the bad publicity already involved. There have been general worries about the developer's agreement as it was applied in the Fiore case, and from this piece it doesn't seem like there's a lot of continuity as to how it's being applied. There are also concerns that other biases may come into play, such as making it difficult for apps that may facilitate criticism of Apple's Steve Jobs.
Business Weekbreaks down the acquisition by the Schulz Family and the apparel-make Iconix of rights to the Charles Schulz characters. They will pay $175 million to United Features Syndicate Inc. and EW Scripps. Iconix will take 80 percent of the brand; the Schulz family 20 percent. Iconix owns a number of fashion-related brands such as London Fog. The article unpacks the staggering number of licensing deals the Peanuts brand has with a variety of major players, both domestically and internationally. It's hard not to see it as a pretty good deal that favors the new owners, but I guess that depends on how the former media company owners employ that cash infusion.
As for the comics themselves, I made a couple of phone calls and am waiting on a third. Eric Reynolds of Complete Peanuts publisher Fantagraphics told CR, "We anticipate no interruption in regard to our current relationship with United Media." Tim King at Scripps told CR the change in ownership "... doesn't necessarily mean no change for [current syndicate strip offering] Classic Peanuts. We'll continue to syndicate well more than 100 comics and features, but the syndicator of Classic Peanuts will be up to Iconix." CR has a call in with Iconix to see if they will consider a change in syndicates as part of their initial ownership moves. While revenue from the strip offering is a relatively minor part of the ballpark-figure $2B Peanuts licensing empire, the strip is still a big player in that business and if its syndication partner were up in the air in any way that would be a major news story.
As Official An Update On Gene Colan’s Status As The Comics World Is Likely To See; How To Help
Gene Colan's situation is updated here in an interview with Clifford Meth. In the course of the talk Meth provides links and addresses to places where help can find its way to the longtime mainstream comics great. That Walt Simonson ink drawing sure looks spiffy.
* Ben Morse writes about early '90s superheroes that in a more rational world would have been given a much greater chance to get over with audiences. I like it because Morse realizes that costume design is a big deal. He's totally nuts on that useless Thunderstrike character, though. That character isn't even Thor's "Cousin Spike." On a good day, he's Olaf.
* Russ Manning was apparently quite the contributing pro to the fanzines of the late 1960s and early 1970s; Dan Nadel unearths a profile of Jesse Marsh by Manning that focuses on Johnny Mack Brown #2.
* I thought this post about Scott Adams and the iPhone interesting because of the notion of pushing up certain jokes or topics that are too good to resist.
* it's Spring again, which means that somewhere out there Ted Rall is grousing about Chris Ware. Wait, here it is.
* while I'm certain that there is reason to believe that the way manga sells in bookstores has changed, I can't take seriously ICv2.com's single-sample "Naruto Index."
* finally, Comix Talktries to have some fun at my expense over the Stumptown Trophy Awards, although I made it abundantly clear it was the table sponsor listed, not necessarily the creator in question. Oh, well. Whatever.
What If You Declared A National Holiday And They Tried To Make You Santa? A cartoon by Molly Norris in support of South Park creators and writers of Muhammed satire Trey Parker and Matt Stone has led to the declaration in various social media that May 20 be designated "Everybody Draw Muhammed Day." There's a hitch, though: Norris doesn't want to take part. In a story widely reported on various culture-related sites and in the wire services that pay attention to them, but I think best explained for comics folk by Michael Cavna, Norris wants little part of what might become an actual news event, preferring the commentary inherent in the concept over the reality if it actually comes off. I can't blame her. To be honest, it sort of distresses me that we've gotten to the point where folks feel a stunt is needed to provide balance to the ludicrous, anti-human threats of certain groups and the cowardice of corporate sponsors when it comes to back considered, thoughtful satire. Anyway, I think it's a firm enough idea that they don't need Norris and they don't really need her cartoon, so I hope they let her slip out the back door.
Looked-To Comic-Con International Meeting Yields No Decision On 2013
With rumors that a decision on the location of Comic-Con in 2013 and perhaps beyond would come a few weeks after the organization's WonderCon convention, a Sunday board meeting in late April seemed like a likely target for attention. However, that meeting has come and gone without a decision, according to a local media report, and the actual decision will apparently come two or three weeks from now. The article mentions a couple of aspects of the San Diego's offer to the convention, including free meeting space in various hotels in close proximity to the convention center, which one guesses would be used for additional programming and event needs, and that more hotel rooms be made available at a price capped at $300 per night.
I'm a great fan of the convention as it exists right now, and think a lot of complaints about the show are more flash than fire, caused either by the discombobulation felt by a privileged class of comics fans or the natural process by which creators and fans grow away from needing the convention experience. But they are complaints, and eventually people act on complaints one way or the other. I also have no insight into the growing needs of the range of exhibitors the show attracts nor do I have any special insight into how convention prioritizes those needs. My gut tells me that San Diego can best host the convention that exists right now, can handle an increase in demand just as much if not better than the alternatives, and -- I know suggesting the current surge of interest might end one day puts me in a minority -- that it's the best place for the show if interest in a national convention wanes with a still-troubled economy, a national travel infrastructure that has become increasingly frayed, a growing number of regional shows, and if the current broad array of comics-related genre films settles into a blockbuster track of 1-2 films a year.
For me personally, San Diego provides the best show because it's an event and a gathering of various comics movements into one room (you can report and build resources and relationships), all in a city that as an older man I realize is a place I'd like to keep visiting. I just don't have that desire when it comes to the other cities on deck, and I would make a decision how to cover and utilize a non-San Diego CCI with that in mind. Ironically, the connection between city and convention was underlined for me at the above-mentioned WonderCon, which I'd have no desire at all to attend were it to move back to parts outlying.
Catholic Man Objects To Chick Publications Distributed By Local Church
Here's an intriguing story about a Lancaster, Pennsylvania man objecting to the anti-Catholic content of the Jack Chick tracts he's been encountering. The tracts are coming from the nearby Liberty Baptist Church, Ephrata. If you're not familiar with the Chick material, they are religious parables and story and lectures in comics form that are printed on the cheap and then made available to churches as low-cost outreach program: members are asked to leave the little mini-comics in various place in their community in the hopes that the person that picks them up will encounter the Word of God through the material. The simplistic cartooning and heavy messages have made the Chick tracts a perennial subject for ironic appropriation by people who don't share those Christian impulses.
Anyway, the gentleman in question -- himself a generally active believer -- didn't appreciate the criticisms of the Catholic Church in the material he read and liked it less when he found it there was a local distribution point and that Chick Publications is defined by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group. The article is about the gentleman's complaints and his general thoughts on the pamphlets, and whether or not they represent a mainstream protestant point of view. (My own experience is that they don't, but they do represent an evangelical point of view that's mainstream in that group for not being examined.)
* the longtime writer-about-comics Charles Hatfield offers up an essay on Blackest Night and why his son's comic book series isn't for him.
* I have a different aversion to the comic: I can't stomach the thought of reading any more stories about Green Lantern. Seriously. I firmly believe I've read my lifetime's allotment of Green Lantern stories the same way I've seen my lifetime's allotment of Becker and sat through more than enough South Pacific and never again should have to listen to anything by Bon Jovi. If I had known Mr. Space Cop With A Magic Ring would make this unlikely comeback, maybe I wouldn't have spent that Saturday afternoon in 1997 with a pile of the Dave Gibbons stuff. As it is, I break out into a cold sweat at the thought of catching up with the bulk of this material. I can't be the only one. I'm sure I'll get it done, because I should know and understand these comics, but I'm not unhappy to put it off for a while yet.
* I never really thought this was much of a story -- it felt more like rubber-necking than a news story to me -- but I'm glad to hear the story, such as it was, may have come to happy conclusion.
* I was going to say something snarky about the movie based on Mark Millar and John Romita JR's Kick-Assnot quite performing at the box office as expected, but it seems weird to make fun of people's failures that are more successful than my successes.
* since the cartoonist Kate Beaton is new to comics, she points out that she may fall in love with a version of a character that may or may not be the most popular one. Funny strip results.
* in case you missed it over the weekend and aren't in the habit of scrolling down to the weekend material, there are individual posts available on the Stumptown Trophy Awards (big evening for Bearfight!, Boilerplate), the Maisie Kukoc Award (Sarah Oleksyk), and the graphic novel category winner at the LAT Book Prizes (Asterios Polyp). Congratulations to all the winners and all the nominees.
* any details on the announcement that Hope Larson will be adapting A Wrinkle In Time would be welcome details for most comics readers and certainly would be for fans of the cartoonist's work.
* not comics at all: this may be the greatest pop-culture story ever, but only if you came out of a specific background. I think it should be made known that cartoonists value the amount of sex a fellow cartoonist is having when they ascribe value to a peer's reputation, if anyone wants to launch a similar program for the makers of funnybooks.
* one's alumni magazine is one of the underrated places a cartoonist's art can appear. This would be pretty cool, too.
* finally, if you were looking around for a non-comics comments thread reaction to last week's announcement of an openly gay character being added to the cast of the Archie comics, you could do worse than Atlantic Wire. It seems to me there's a pretty broad range of opinion on display there, including a post that purports to be from a reader who took some solace in what I imagine is the Chuck Clayton character. If you were looking for a summary article by a writer with nice hair, you can read Douglas Wolk at Salon.
At 6:30 in the morning Portland-time, I didn't yet have the winners to all of the categories of the Stumptown Trophy Awards, which were given out last night at an event related to the small press event. One person was excited enough to tweet about it and apparently had home access to do so -- Paul Guinan of Boilerplate, whose book from Abrams won the Outstanding Writing and Outstanding Art categories. Oliver East says that Sarah Becan reported via tweet a win in the debut category for her book. The rest came in a rush from Becan and Hisham Zubi. Thanks! All wins are in bold.
Please note that the books are listed I believe by their sponsor at the show, which is slightly different in some cases than the creative person responsible.
OUTSTANDING SMALL PRESS
* Brian Cattapan, ZEEK... the martian geek * BT Livermore, Bearfight!
* C.M. Butzer, Rabid Rabbit #11, Rabid Rabbit #10
* George Leon, Luchadores in Space #2
* Stumptown Underground, For Your Pleasure, Heavy Enough To Fall
* Various Artists, Exploded View
OUTSTANDING DEBUT
* Brian McCracken, Shimmylah Ma Nah
* Greg Hinkle, BeardMonth 2010: Volume One
* J Davidge, Mathemagick & Mystiphysics
* M Tracy Boyce & A Whitaker, Batcave Beach: Chapter One * Sarah Becan, The Complete Ouija Interviews
* Trevor Halligan, SHYEAH!
* Trevor Halligan, For Your Consideration
* Trevor Kellogg, Knights of Nine to Five
OUTSTANDING DIY
* Brian McCracken, Shimmylah Ma Nah * BT Livermore, Bearfight!
* J Davidge, Mathemagick & Mystiphysics
* Rick Marcks, Jailhouse Mouse
* Stephenny Godfrey, Panorama
* STORM, Princess Witch Boy
* Stumptown Underground, Slumber Party
OUTSTANDING WRITING * A. Bennett & P. Guinan, Boilerplate
* Aidan Koch, Vastness No. One
* C.M.Butzer, Gettysburg -- The Graphic Novel
* Evan Dahm, Order of Tales
* Graham Annable, The Book of Grickle
* J Davidge, Mathemagick & Mystiphysics
* K. Stipetic, Yasha Lizard Buys a Painting
* Matt Kindt, 3 Story: Secret History of Giant Man
* Matt Wagner, Behold the Devil
* STORM, Princess Witch Boy
OUTSTANDING ART
* Brian Cattapan, ZEEK... the martian geek
* Chris A. Bolton, Smash
* C.M.Butzer, Gettysburg -- The Graphic Novel
* Dark Horse, Mesmo Delivery
* Diana Allen, Keyscaper Keyboard/Mouse
* Eric Drooker, Blood Song: A Silent Ballad
* Evan Dahm, Order of Tales
* Graham Annable, The Book of Grickle
* Greg Hinkle, BeardMonth 2010: Volume One: Gran.pa, Tell Me A Story...
* J.P. Kalonji, 365 Samurai and a Few Bowls of Rice
* Kristina Stipetic, Yasha Lizard Buys a Painting
* Matt Wagner, Behold the Devil
* M Boyce & A Whitaker, Batcave Beach: Chapter One
* M Palm, Swellzombie's Lair of the Psychic Creature
* Mike Lawrence, The Salamander King * Paul Guinan, Boilerplate
* Reid Psaltis, Carry On, Carrion: A Crow Funeral
* Stumptown Underground, Slumber Party, Heavy Enough To Fall
* Various Artists, Exploded View
OUTSTANDING PUBLICATION DESIGN
* C.M.Butzer, Rabid Rabbit #11, Rabid Rabbit #10
* Dark Horse, Wondermark Vol. 3, Mesmo Delivery
* Ed Choy Moorman, Ghost Comics
* Eric Drooker, Blood Song: A Silent Ballad
* J.P. Kalonji, 365 Samurai and a Few Bowls of Rice
* Matt Kindt, 3 Story: Secret History of Giant Man
* Sarah Becan, The Complete Ouija Interviews * Stephenny Godfrey, Panorama
* Stumptown Underground, For Your Pleasure
* Various Artists, Exploded View
OUTSTANDING WEBCOMIC * Aaron Colter, Wondermark
* Chris A. Bolton, Smash
* Diana Nock, The Intrepid Girlbot
* Evan Dahm, Order of Tales
* Greg Bigoni and Brenden Clawson, Mudtown
* M Palm, Swellzombie's Lair of the Psychic Creature
* Neal Skorpen, The Introvert Manifesto
* Trevor Halligan, SHYEAH!
Two Wider Cultural Conversations That May Remind You Of Comics
* The first conversation that's been reminding me of comics lately is a bit obtuse, so I'll ask you forgive me in advance. I'm getting at this too late to be able to offer a link to the essay that started it all, but what basically happened is that perhaps in order to goose interest in his 2005 book The Fall Of Rome, the historian Bryan Ward-Perkins wrote an essay comparing the current recession to the financial difficulties facing Fifth Century Rome. There are a lot of fascinating blog posts ricocheting off of that piece for Financial Times -- now behind a firewall -- such as this one here. In broad terms, and it's the broadest definitions that are the most useful for our purposes, Ward-Perkins describes a general relationship between complexity created through growth and a resulting fragility that isolates elements of the market and makes other much more susceptible to outside intrusion.
The only huge, complex economic system with which I have a daily relationship is the comics industry's Direct Market While it's admittedly absurd to compare the empires of Caesar and Geppi in too many ways, I think it's worth asking just how fragile the DM is due to factors of complexity: its byzantine structure, say, the at-once gigantic spread of publications and formats it's supposed to serve and tiny gradations between certain products -- this comic here is for fans of Wolverine, while this one is for fans of dark Wolverine -- it's asked to honor. There may be something to how the DM historically has suffered some of its most severe hits during times of rapid expansion (the black and white boom, Deathmate), and that you can count on one hand those events that seem to have greatly benefited the system in recent years (Watchmen post-trailer boom; Obama comic books).
So what does that all portend? Not much, but it may provide an intellectual framework for judging future moves within that market -- that simplifying and streamlining the process may be more important than adding greater structure and more rules. For instance, as the market struggles with the possibility of street dates, it may react better in terms of deciding to use one basic model instead of sorting through a dozen possibilities. That eventual policy may come into being without a complex enforcement element. At any rate, any notion that can nudge the comics industry in the direction of risk assessment and testing for strength in ways other than how much money gets delivered to the various big-company overlords has to be a good thing.
* The second conversation that's reminded me of comics is a bit more straightforward: Christopher R. Weingarten's yearly appearance to scream at people about how various actors have reacted to a change in technology by becoming more crass and numbers-obsessed. It's an entertaining and for most folks probably annoying short speech with a lot of f-bombs in it. When the writer Sean Collins brought it to my attention he did so by comparing it to a rant-style employed by not a few writers-about-comics out there. You know who you are.
Comics isn't where music is for a lot of reasons. For one thing, I imagine it's harder to get a bunch of hard-headed oddballs to follow trends than it is writers about other forms, forms that tend to attract more rational folks for a slew of more rational reasons up to and including the possibility of reward. Getting writers to do something is herding cats, getting writers about comics to do something is casting cats in a stage performance of Arcadia. And yet anyone who refuses to see at least one thing in comics that relates to something in that speech is either lying or wool-hat stupid. Nor is it much of a leap to see how things could get a lot more like the music industry as the bigger companies take a renewed interest in protecting/maximizing their respective catalogs; it's already a different game for the book publishers and their imprints involved. The acts of reporting and criticism being compelled to become commodities is a show that's constantly on stage, I'm not immune to it, and maximizing traffic was certainly much more on the minds of the folks attending the comics coverage panel I saw earlier this year than any qualitative issue.
I don't think the problem is so bad that comics folks have to chop their way out, not yet, but it might be worth taking a look at some of the benign-looking vines that have popped up around the camp site. One funny thing is that Weingarten's solutions right at speech's end could easily be applied to the kinds of choices we make about how we interact with comics. Active resistance may be the best policy, even if you're not totally convinced of the threat.
I hope a screenshot is fair use; I'll happily take it down if it's not
If I Were In Portland, I’d Go To This standard disclaimer: if you facebook me your event instead of e-mailing it to me, this is usually the quality of art you can expect in the subsequent post; it's not a priority for me to swap the art out, but .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
Quote Of The Week
"We hope other apps that focus on politics and satire do not have to wait for a Pulitzer Prize before they are approved by Apple." -- AAEC open letter to Steve Jobs
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today's cover is from the 1940s-1950s mainstream comics publisher Avon
Your Los Angeles Times Book Prizes Graphic Novel Category Winner
David Mazzucchelli's Asterios Polypwon the graphic novel category in the Los Angeles Book Times Prizes, announced April 23. The book was cited as "a beautifully executed love story, a smart and playful treatise on aesthetics, a perfectly unified work whose every formal element, down to the stitching on its spine, serves its themes."
I'm guessing from this Elijah Brubaker tweet that Sarah Oleksyk has won the 2010 Maisie Kukoc award for her mini-comic Ivy #5. The Maisie Kukoc is a cool award in that it actually provides cash to the mini-comic cartoonist who wins it, ostensibly to facilitate the production of more comics. Past winners are Vanessa Davis, Sarah Glidden and Andy Hartzell.
Your Danish Cartoons Hangover Update
* the Netherlands Utrecht District Court early today acquitted members of a group called the Arab European League of the hate speech charges facing them for a cartoon suggesting the Holocaust never happened. The cartoon was made in response to the Danish caricatures of Muhammad that ran in Jyllands-Posten. The original decision can be found here.
* the Danish Muhammad cartoonist Kurt Westergaard is thinking about retiring. He has been on leave since November 2009, and plans to discuss his future with his editors on June 1.
Nate Beeler Wins Thomas Nast Award; Bill Day Wins RFK Journalism Award
Two major comics awards were announced this week, hot on the heels of Pulitzer and Herblock prize announcements.
* the Washington Examiner's Nate Beeler has won The Thomas Nast Award for this year. The committee cited Beeler's sense of "vivid composition," his use of color and his generally meticulous art work. Three of his winning cartoons can be found in that link. Clay Bennett of the Chattanooga Times Free Press received a citation for his 2009 work. The Thomas Nast Award is part of the Overseas Press Club of America OPC Award Winners, where the individual awards all have names like the rooms in a really old rich person's house. The Thomas Nast Award has been part of the OPC Awards since 1968; past winners include Don Wright and Jim Morin.
*****
* cartooning free agent and former Commercial-Appeal cartoonist Bill Day was named the "Cartoon Winner" in the 2010 Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards for his much-lauded series on infant mortality that has been cited at least twice in recent cartooning awards history. That work also received a special citation at the National Press Foundation dinner in February and were lauded at the 2009 Berryman Awards as well. I guess you could work the fact that Day isn't a full-time employee into some sort of odd schadenfreude notion regarding the missing, sponsoring newspapers that doesn't get to share in Day's honor, but it seems to me that cartoonists like Day find themselves without that single employer for just about every reason other than anyone's estimation of their ability to do great work.
Pressing After The Initial Press Doesn’t Have To Be Seen As Piling On
Judging from the number of happy blog posts and articles about recent editorial cartooning Pulitzer Prize winner Mark Fiore resubmitting and having approved a device platform application based on his work, an application that had earlier been rejected for its satirical overtones, few if any object to Fiore using his new-found publicity and status and the timing of both as a club to get what he wanted from Apple. I hope that same courtesy is extended the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists following up Fiore's public win with a public letter that chastises Apple for initially rejecting the application for the reason Apple apparently did. That the ridicule of public figures somehow doesn't figure into our national dialogue is one of those notions that flops up from a general stew of well-meaning and anti-press sentiment and shouldn't be countenanced.
Random Comics News Story Round-Up
* Disney has named a new marketing chief: MT Carney. Given the doe-like worship with which marketing solutions both real and (especially) imagined are held within the culture surrounding the comics industry, you'd think this would be huge news.
* after five and a half hours of watching Mel Kiper Jr. I don't have enough brainpower left to figure out exactly where this Dr. Strange-inspired art comes from even though the post tells me straight-up, but it sure is cool-looking.
* Marc-Oliver Frisch makes the pretty good point that it's odd to hear the writer of what one thinks of as a Superman book say he hopes someday that he'll be allowed to use Superman. I think what Frisch means is that if you have entire comics devoted to secondary characters like Lex Luthor, it may be time to re-examine your basic publishing strategy. I've been thinking about this a lot lately, how the comics syndicates back in the 1930s and 1940s resisted exhausting their features and kept the market open to innovation by not running five strips set in the world of Prince Valiant or whatever. That doesn't mean that there weren't copy-cats everywhere, but at least the big syndicates weren't copying themselves in order to find every last buck in a good idea.
* not comics: what's up with all the chest-thumping the last couple of months on the various comics sites about exclusive this and exclusive that? It's become so bad I've seen people slap exclusives on news generated out of their living room and on interviews no one else on planet earth could possibly have been seeking out. Please stop; nobody cares.
* not comics: that last item was commentary exclusive to CR.
* one thing that occurs to me about yesterday's announcement of an openly gay student enrolling at Riverdale High is that while I personally think it's a fine idea, and I believe many of the objections to it despite all stamping of feet really will be made based at some level on homophobic grounds or by pandering to such grounds in a kind of "culture war" sense, it will probably do anyone arguing on the positive side some good to admit that while the Archie comics depict life in a high school and life in a high school these days means gay students, the Archie comics are likely read by a mix of reader, some older than high school and many younger. I have no idea how young those young readers are, but if the bulk of Archie readers are high schoolers, that to me is a much bigger and more astonishing story than if Reggie and Moose had come out of the closet after getting caught doing it at the fifty-yard line. I certainly don't think there's anything wrong with a much younger child encountering gay characters in what they read -- I think it's a positive, in fact -- but you kind of have to admit it's a slightly different argument. Also, I think because the world of Archie is capricious in what they decided to depict as their reality -- hetero sex is a big part of high school, after all, and you won't see that -- the creators of those comics do open themselves as to why certain aspects of teen life and not others are worth folding into the Archie milieu. Again, I would have no problem making that argument on behalf of this new guy, but I don't think you can bluster past the argument using a sweeping justification that reality demands it.
* as is always the case with Jaime Hernandez, a lot of us spent so much time salivating over that cool-looking Village Voice cover that we forgot to link to the profile inside the magazine. Me included. I blame my shallowness.
* finally, David Brothers writes about Marvel's curious mini-line of space superhero books, the kind of hidden, off-the-wall effort that's hard to believe they do anymore. I liked the only few series of these I've read, all under the Annihilation banner. It was like watching a somewhat engaging Sci-Fi Network TV series cast solely with character actors I hadn't seen on any show since 1978.
Ray Barton, the longtime Midwestern advertising illustrator and cartoonist who created the Minnie and Paul figures that became the official logo for the Minnesota Twins franchise and a driving force in their licensing efforts, died on Sunday. He was 80 years old.
Barton famously drew the picture of the two baseball players, named after their representative Twin City, in 1961 for $15. It was a freelance job he had accepted for the Dixie cups to be used by the new baseball team. Team owner Calvin Griffith re-purposed the drawing much to Barton's dismay, although it wasn't so much the money that concerned the cartoonist -- or at least the obituaries don't dwell on that idea -- as the fact he didn't think much of the drawing.
Barton, who served in Korea, also worked on any number of high-profile advertising campaigns locally and regionally.
The Minnie and Paul drawing not only found a massive secondary life on all sorts of merchandise, the impact of the visual speaks to the role that sports franchises can play in communities: a focal point for nostalgia, or a sign of a city's emergence into national stature.
Ray Barton is survived by a wife, six children and 17 grandchildren.
Nation Shocked Over News Of First Gay Archie Character; Sheepishly Apologizes To Jughead, Moose
Any and all potential jokes aside, the addition of a gay character to the cast of the Archie comics seems like a good idea to me, whether he's a one-shot or a recurring character, and I believe in this case it's as a recurring character. As cartoonist Dan Parent points out, that is the most rudimentary reflection of life in any number of if not all North American high schools coast to coast. Considering this is a subset of comics so conservative that Archie dating Valerie of the Pussycats probably raised some moron's eyebrows out there, it's nice to see them taking this step. I hope the character is quickly mainstreamed into the supporting cast in various ways, ways that have something and have nothing to do with that orientation.
I received a pair of e-mail nudges -- so apologies to whomever had it before me -- that Chris Sharron of Kent State University has won this year's John Locher Memorial Award. That award, founded by Association of American Editorial Cartoonists as a way to honor John Locher and generate enthusiasm among college editorial cartoonists in the field, brings with it an all-expenses paid trip to the AAEC annual meeting -- this year in June in Portland, Oregon. Sharron won the Charles M. Schulz Award for the best college-age cartoonist in March, and was the first runner-up the past two years with the Locher. Past winners of the Locher award include Steve Breen and Drew Shenneman. A profile of Sharron can be found here.
Random Comics News Story Round-Up
* Yen Press has canceled its much ballyhooed anthology Yen Plus and is moving the enterprise on-line. The magazine will have lasted just a bit less than two full years.
* Dirk Deppey takes a look at a 1992 issue of the great comics magazine Garo.
* tales of airplane problems and the comics world: Chris Staros and Brett Warnock of Top Shelf were ashed out of making it to Stockholm for the comics show they love attending over there; Eric Reynolds of Fantagraphics traveled back to Seattle from the East Coast (MoCCA, a trip to CCS) on a plane that had to emergency land.
* that Jaime Hernandez cover for The Village Voicesure is pretty.
* I know that for some reason all comics fans are supposed to live and die with the latest effort by any corporation to re-tell a story already expertly told by a character's original creators in the hopes that a few more people throw their money at it, and I'd like to respond grumpily to the presumption involved, but this cover just sort of made me laugh. Good luck with that, fellas.
* here's an interesting item: IDW is selling a special edition of its Bloom County Complete Library Vol. 1 through its web site only. There's a fine line that publishers have to traverse in terms of offering up limited-item offers like this and satisfying the needs and desires of its direct market retailers.
* Zack Soto's flickr stream reveals the cover to a fourth, imminent issue of the post-alternative comics anthology Studygroup 12. That's good news. I know from poking around the web that Theo Ellsworth and Tom Neely are in there, at the very least.
* in a week of publishing dominated by C2E2 panel announcements, the cartoonist Hope Larson in much more quiet and straight-forward announced she's currently adapting Madeleine L'Engle's childrens' classic A Wrinkle In Time into comics form. That is a nice match of cartoonist and project. I and I'm sure many others look forward to the result.
* missed it: Sparkplug debuted two new comics at the MoCCA Festival 10 days ago: Reich #7 by Elijah Brubaker and Eschew #2 by Robert Sergel.
* the much-loved Spit And A Half catalog, a focal point for 1990s mini-comics consumption, is on-line with a new version of its old, classic self. Ordering comics from a cartoonist like John Porcellino is one of the great things you get to do in comics than you really don't see from other art forms.
* there was a bunch of publishing-related news emanating from the shores of Lake Michigan during last weekend's inaugural C2E2, including I'm sure some mentioned in their own items here where I just didn't make the connection. The X-Men comics are doing a bunch of new #1s for no reason that anyone I know can ascertain. I wish comics would drop these baroque, limited-gain numbering strategies and concentrate on the timely, regular deliver of first-class material in easy-to-parse titles. Oni is doing a one-shot Yo Gabba Gabba! hardcover. Boom! picked up the license to make comics based on that Tim Burton Alice In Wonderland movie that inexplicably made like 500 Kazillion dollars. IDW announced they'll be doing comics related to the Dungeons and Dragon license. That sounds like a fine pairing, although my hope that all the covers are done by Erol Otus and there's a prominent role for the Jester class probably won't come off. Wildstorm announced a project from B. Clay Moore and Tony Harris that drew some stand-alone coverage. I guess the Dark Horse re-launch of various Dell properties is still on. Archaia has a new Hollywood-partnership line. Roy Thomas will be writing some Conan comics. And although I've already talked about it elsewhere, Matt Fraction moves his Casanova to Marvel's creator-friendly imprint Icon. That wasn't exactly a secret, but most of the project's details were. I look forward to seeing a new iteration of that comic, this time in full color.
* since the last time I took a peek at moderntales.com, it looks like Daniel Merlin Goodbrey has launched a new feature, 100 Planets. I'm always interested in whatever Daniel Merlin Goodbrey is up to.
* missed it: Carl Moore is ending State Of The Union on May 1. The usual culprit -- just not enough traction for the feature in terms of clients to make it profitable for the cartoonist to continue.
* Johnny Ryan ends his frequently awesome New Character Parade.
* Evan Dorkin talks about a forthcoming project with Jill Thompson: a crossover one-shot with their Beasts Of Burden characters and Mike Mignola's Hellboy.
* Del Rey has signed with an author I've never heard of for a series of graphic novels featuring a property with which I'm completely unfamiliar, which means it's probably a humongous hit.
* I almost missed this but a sequel to the recent alt-comics mainstays do Marvel characters Strange Talesis underway.
* at some point I'm going to figure out how to fold in a Kickstarter projects status thing into this feature, but that point is not upon us. In the meantime, Patrick Farley would like your support, just not a ton of it from any one person.
* finally, Roger Langridge will be writing a Thor comic for Marvel that sounds like one of those comic projects they do to increase the publishing base for a character about to see a movie come out. Despite the handsome art sample below, Langridge will be working with Chris Samnee, so that could be a fun, nice-looking book. The fact that the industry is now making room for Roger Langridge to have two monthly gigs corrects a long-standing structural failure in comics generally.
Go, Look: I Believe In Batmite yes, that's a Dick Sprang drawing of Bane. the little-updated and/or abandoned blogs of today are the quarter boxes of tomorrow
Apple Accepts Mark Fiore’s iPhone App
The wires are burning up with this one. In case you missed it, newly-named Pultizer Prize winner in editorial cartooning Mark Fiore used the platform provided by the win to throw the spotlight on Apple's rejection of an application designed to carry his work on extremely dubious and nebulous grounds related to potential controversial elements to his satire. Apple asked him to resubmit and the application has been approved. It's a pretty easy story even in terms of analysis: Fiore was smart to do this; it was dumb and worrisome that Apple rejected him in the first place.
Since everything's possible, the better question might be why aren't more comics scary? The answer to that is that people don't want them to be. 1) The primary genre in comics is about comfort rather than fear, so it's what many people come to them expecting and as a resulting function of the market what we find scary in a modern sense has been largely unexplored. 2) The medium puts tools in the hands of the reader that they can more easily avoid being scared if they wish it, and they frequently do. 3) How most people measure scary is through the effects brought about by scary films, and the differences in the way identification works in comics as opposed to film puts comics in a bind when it comes to duplicating those effects.
Smarter people than I am about horror discuss the matter here.
Hunting Advocacy Group Opposed to Publishing Effort Provides Publisher With Gift Of Free Publicity You can read about it here if you must. I don't really understand how these actions as (not really) reported are news. Advocating something usually means the objections of those against whom you advocate, and if e-mailed objections to content and invitations to stop publishing constitute harassment this site you're reading is harassed once a week. The shocker is that anyone would give a shit about that stupid-looking comic.
Also, I don't understand how if it's news the PR and stories out there can't at least call the "U.S. Sportsmen Association" by its actual name, the U.S. Sportsmen's Alliance.
* because they love us, D&Q has a huge scan of a rejected Chris Ware Fortune cover that lets you read all the tiny-letter jokes.
* R. Fiore points at that Tasha Robinson/Reads jaw-dropper, providing enough context to get you where you're heading if you haven't heard about it yet.
* I find Carlos Latuff's constant priming of the system to draw attention to himself severely tiring to watch, but I like some of his cartoons okay. They're not exactly loaded with meaning and nuance, but many are funny and I always like blunt cartooning. Here's a profile.
* I don't really understand what anyone gets out of objecting to widely accepted terminology at this point in comics' development. Sometimes names aren't perfect. If names were always perfectly appropriate, my name would be Bronislaw "Blackjack" Hammersmith. Does that totally describe me or what?
* some of the whip-cracking in this 1976 (dated 1974) Marvel memo from Gerry Conway might sound harsh, but I can't imagine what I would have done at 23 years old put in charge of Marvel Comics. It would not have been pretty.
* finally, reading this panel report from C2E2 featuring on-line writers about comics makes me wonder how they know their readers as well as they purport to. Is it just the people that post comments? That's a tiny percentage of any site's readership. Is there something I'm missing? They speak with such confidence on the subject. Oh, well. I'm so, so genuinely grateful for any and all of you that come here, for one post or a thousand, and I'm sorry I don't know most of you that well. By which I mean at all. I hope you don't mind we've told the advertisers that 87 percent of you are rich.
This Isn’t A Library: New And Notable Releases To The Comics Direct Market
*****
Here are the books that make an impression on me staring at this week's no-doubt largely accurate list of books shipping from Diamond Comic Distributors, Inc. to comic book and hobby shops across North America.
I might not buy all of the works listed here. I might not buy any. But were I in a comic book shop tomorrow I would be definitely be slapping books from the hands of customers not reading the following.
*****
FEB100700 DO ANYTHING VOL 01 $5.99
This is a collection of Warren Ellis' serialized, on-line essays about a historical context for comics making both real and imagined. I was quite entertained by the serial version although I'm a big-time sucker for that kind of writing.
JAN101133 KINGYO USED BOOKS TP VOL 01 $12.99 JAN101166 REAL GN VOL 08 $12.99 JAN101137 VAGABOND VIZBIG ED GN VOL 07 (MR) $19.99 NOV090062 SHINJUKU HC $29.99
A little clump of manga- or manga-related books. This first volume of Kingyo Used Books was serialized on-line and I failed to catch onto it there so now I have the option of checking it out in book form. It's supposedly aimed at my demographic. Those are two fine Takehiko Inoue serials in the fighty Vagabond big book and the sporty Real; I'm behind on both. I had to look at what Jog said about Shinjuku, where I learned it's illustrated prose with the illustrator being Yoshitaka Amano.
JAN100348 100 PERCENT TP (MR) $29.99
I'm not certain where this Paul Pope project stands in terms of when it's been collected and how, but it's a nice-looking book and I'm happy to have it the form I have it right now so you might make a mental note to check it out if you haven't before... it's sci-fi romance with heavy amounts of ink tossed.
FEB100249 AIR #20 (MR) $2.99
I have to pay someone a dollar every time a new issue comes out. I'm sorry I didn't have faith in you, odd little comic whose first issue was sent to me.
FEB100255 JOE THE BARBARIAN #4 (OF 8) (MR) $2.99
I can't imagine I wouldn't be buying a Grant Morrison-penned comic drawn by a stylish, young artist if I had a comics shop within 180 miles. As it is, it's one of those things I may or may not get as a book, but years down the road. This is wrong.
FEB100156 SPIRIT #1 $3.99
Moritat, one of those guys who's been around comics through multiple presidents, digital revolutions and 14 television series with Paula Marshall in the cast, gets his shot on a relatively big-name character from one of the two mainstream publishers. I'm rooting for him, and will buy this comic the next time I'm in a shop that has one.
FEB101010 ART OF P CRAIG RUSSELL HC $49.99 FEB101011 ART OF P CRAIG RUSSELL HC S/N ED $79.99 JAN100999 ART OF TONY HARRIS ART & SKULLDUGGERY HC S/N ED (IDW) $79.99
Art books from IDW, a comic book empire built just as much from fealty to the art book as it is on vampires who don't mind the cold. The good thing about art books is that you can gauge initial interest from the artist and the price point, and then you can gauge secondary interest by picking one up in the better comics stores and checking it out. It's very easy, this comics and comics-related book buying.
FEB101005 BLOOM COUNTY COMPLETE LIBRARY HC VOL 02 $39.99
Last volume was the Bloom County very few had seen. This volume is the Bloom County all of you around 40 years old started laughing about with your teenage buddies in the back of debate class.
NOV090350 INVINCIBLE HC VOL 05 ULTIMATE COLL (RES) $34.99 JAN100442 MICE TEMPLAR HC VOL 02 .1 DESTINY PT 1 $29.99
Two of Image's line of fancy-looking hardcovers. The Invincible stuff is available in a number of formats, but I have to imagine the Mice Templar stuff is much more ideally suited to book collection.
FEB100463 CAPTAIN AMERICA WHO WONT WIELD SHIELD #1 $3.99
Something about that title cracks me up. The great thing about comics is I have no idea if it was supposed to or not.
FEB100453 FIRESTAR #1 $3.99
Something about that price point cracks me up. In this case, I know it's not supposed to be funny. Two of her Amazing Friends show up and you have a $12 book, $13 if Ms. Lyon is thrown in. Speaking of which:
FEB100609 LOCKJAW AND PET AVENGERS TP GN $19.99
Due to the rapid speeding-up of time that comes with middle age, I missed checking out this series when it was out in serial form. So I would definitely pick this book up and give it a shot. I'm always a little bit suspicious of books that seek to push superhero fantasy in every corner of the Marvel Universe, because I think it loosens the intriguing way Marvel is shackled to our world's reality. On the other hand: superhero pets!
FEB100573 DARK WOLVERINE #85 $2.99
Shouldn't this be "Darker Wolverine" -- Wolverine's pretty dark already. Or maybe it could be "Anti-Wolverine" in which the character doesn't have a noble, samurai spirit and also sucks at everything. I might buy that comic.
JAN100520 SIF #1 $3.99
This is long-time dialogue expert Kelly Sue DeConnick's Marvel series writing debut. I hope she's a fan of the initial version of the character, because that character is potentially hilarious: Minka Kelly plays Thundra. Is it my imagination, or has Marvel done a pretty good job with gently resuscitating their various female characters? I like that kind of thing because as the bottom rots out of the serial comics market, thinking you're better off with an effective Valkyrie in your stable is really an act of hope.
JAN100956 BASIL WOLVERTONS CULTURE CORNER HC $22.99
Who doesn't want to read as much Basil Wolverton as they can? He's not in the starting all-time five, but he gets a lot of playing time off the bench.
MAR101139 GREETINGS FROM CARTOONIA SC (MR) $20.00
This is the Stripburger cartoonists working through a fictional construct/high-concept. The first of at least three pretty good art-comics offerings to round out our week.
FEB100923 MOME GN VOL 18 $14.99
I think the last couple of issues felt a bit off, but this 18th volume of Fantagraphics' anthology for (mostly) young cartoonists seeking a showcase at least offers a super-strong line-up of creators, including Ben Jones, Frank Santoro, Joe Daly and Tim Lane. I've been really digging T. Edward Bak's serial in there. I think if I weren't getting to see something close to all the comics, this would be even more of a vital pick-up for me, if that makes any sense.
FEB100787 RASL TP VOL 02 FIRE OF ST GEORGE $15.00
The second trade collection of Jeff Smith's lively RASL series. Since a lot of the fun of RASL is watching Jeff Smith draw these things that pop into his head after years of drawing little Walt Kelly figures and fantasy characters, this over-sized, initial trade series has been a fun way to get into this work.
*****
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, I really have no excuse.
I try to stay away from any and all news stories that feel more like rubbernecking than actual news, so I've been avoiding recent, speculation-driven Gene Colan (and Frank Frazetta) stories, but I did notice yesterday that there's an effort to raise money for Mr. Colan going on again, one that involves a combination of original art, personal collection items and donated offerings from Mr. Colan's friends. It seems like everything is priced in order to start generating cash rather than in the hopes of leveraging something into a higher price. I can't stress to you how much an artist of his caliber and a creator with his level of contribution to the multiple billion-dollar enterprise that is the intersection of his work with various comics properties deserves to live in his older years with dignity.
If you're a fan of Gene Colan's work, and he had a highly laudable career offering up work in a style so strong that even the marketplace revolution of Jack Kirby's 1960s superheroes couldn't move him off point, I would suggest bookmarking the site and checking back for material like the lovely pencil drawing above. That thing is ridiculous-looking.
Go, Look: Party At The Fleece Station bunches of cartoonists I've never seen before; do kids with funnybooks on the mind still look at photos of comics professionals as intensely as we used to?
I didn't know that New Yorker cartoonist and prolific spot illustrator Henry Martin was still alive, nor that he was still active in various areas, nor that he was the father of Ann M. Martin. Thanks to this profile of his gift to Princeton University, I know all of these things now. I always thought it would be funny if they did a TV show based on Sergio Aragones and Henry Martin, two cartoonists whose best work was never all that incidental and was always well in the spirit of each magazine they are best known for serving. You can see a few samples of Martin's offerings from The New Yorkerhere.
An Istanbul native educated at the Istanbul Academy of Fire Arts whose further academic study was cut short due to economic reasons, Sinan sidled into cartooning as a way to support his family. A 60-year career developed from there. Sinan was a widely published gag and editorial cartoonist in various newspapers and magazines. His clients included the dailies Turkiye, Yeni Asya, Yeni Safak and Zaman. Sinan also created the virtuous kids' superhero character Topuz, popular with Turkish children in the 1980s. He was awarded the grand prize from a national literary association for his publication Cizgi.
Sinan once said he never considered himself a cartoonist, that he focused on truth-telling rather than expressing an opinion one way or the other or making a drawing. He also never held an office job, preferring to freelance from home.
Sinan was buried yesterday at Istanbul's Topkapi Cemetery after what was apparently a well-attended set of noon prayers.
* not comics: I should know better than to ever guess about movie box office results now that I no longer pay close attention to movies in that way, but I'll admit to being certain from the number of commercials I was seeing for the thing that Kick-Ass would easily make twice its opening three-day salvo.
* hey, a report on one of the other shows taking place over the weekend and one of two taking place in a city called Athens: FLUKE. Good news: the show seems like it was really busy.
* the scheduling for the Stumptown show is up now. Spotlights on James Sturm, Graham Annable and Craig Thompson, plus at least one panel where all the panelist happen to be female that's not about being a female -- it all sounds good to me. Wish I were going.
* finally, Xaviar Xerexes reminds that Harvey nominations ballots are due this Friday. On the one hand, I'm not sure there should really be a Harvey right now and that energy couldn't be better spent on a more focused remembrance of the great Harvey Kurtzman. On the other hand, I'm not sure there's anything that consistently pays off as much as voting in the Harveys' nomination round and getting your friends to do the same.
Carl Macek, 1951-2010 According to cartoon historian Jerry Beck, the writer and anime producer Carl Macek passed away on Saturday, April 17. He was 58 years old. The cause of death was a heart attack.
Macek was best known for his work as producer and story editor on the syndicated series Robotech, a cartoon presented as a multi-generational story of resistance to earth's invaders that was actually taken from three re-purposed and dubbed Japanese cartoons: Macross, Southern Cross, and Mospeada. Unlike the concurrent Captain Harlock and the Queen of a Thousand Years (another combined cartoon) the Robotech material was a hit with its target audience of kids watching after or even before school, particularly the first arc of its stories and its potent blend of transforming robots, overall feeling of post-apocalyptic doom and swoony love triangle (Rick Hunter, Linn Minmei, Lisa Hayes). Eventually controversial among hardcore fans I believe for the way it was put together and the idea that cuts and changes were made to make the cartoons more palatable to the intended viewership (the latter charge Macek denied), the cartoon is regarded as a important step towards developing today's larger audience for anime. The property is currently celebrating its 25th year.
There were also multiple comics adaptations of the series (comics.org lists 50). This includes a long relationship with Comico that flowered at the time time the cartoons were still in heavy rotation. How much those comics helped to foster an audience for manga is much less well-examined, but they certainly locked in a certain passionate audience for that specific cartoon. Other comics publishers for the license include Eternity, Academy, Antarctic and DC/Wildstorm. Gerry Giovinco of Comico called Macek "a big supporter of us" in an e-mail to CR.
Macek went on to co-found Streamline Pictures with Jerry Beck in 1988, taking into the fold many of the writers from the Robotech effort. Streamline worked on a variety of projects including Crying Freeman and Laputa: Castle In The Sky. Purchased in 1996 by Orion, that company no longer exists.
Former partner Beck and various biographical materials on Macek's behalf say that the deceased also co-founded Spumco with John Kricfalusi, leaving that group after 1990. Other materials, such as the lack of Macek being listed on Spumco's wikipedia page in that role and a general lack of citations on the relationship, suggest that Macek's involvement may have been more unofficial than co-founder status might imply, or perhaps even formally through a precursor company, although still crucial. Don Markstein describes the pair as partners in his Ren and Stimpy entry. In a 2008 interview, animator Bob Camp recalled the close proximity of the groups sharing office space. "John and I shared an office in Hollywood with Jerry Beck before there was a Spumco. We were picking up any freelance we could. We didn't even have any furniture back then. Jerry was partnered up with Carl Macek in Streamline Pictures and they were distributing Japanese animation. I'm fuzzy on the details but Carl and John went to Nick and met with Vanessa. John pitched ideas he had created with friends in college in Canada. One was called Your Gang, kind of a parody of Our Gang. Ren Hoek and Stimpy were just a couple of characters in the pitch. They said that they wanted just the dog and cat and they made a deal to make a pilot."
Among Macek major accomplishments in the area of dubbing anime was work on the first release of Miyazaki's My Neighbor Totoro. Streamline released a version of Akira to theaters and on video, another keystone for a lot of fans. He would go on through a variety of other studios to do work for a variety of titles in that fashion, including popular series Bleach and Naruto. To my knowledge, a long-promised major sequel to the Robotech effort never came off, and I believe such a project had a variety of half-lives.
Macek was the author of The Art Of Heavy Metal in 1981, and enjoyed a smattering of other Hollywood credits throughout his long career, ranging from on the ground promotional work on genre films in the Wild West-like 1970s to writing the script for a recent animated version of Lady Death.
Your Danish Cartoons Hangover Update
* Sam Allis gets me on his side immediately by name-dropping Giorgio Forattini in the first graph, but the bulk of his article is about Jean Plantu and the status of the Cartoonists For Peace effort that began after the first round of Danish Cartoons Controversy riots in 2006.
* speaking of reactions to the Danish Cartoons Controversy, here's the latest on the efforts to pass a defamation of religion resolution at the UN.
* Denmark is closing embassies, and it's hard not to see that decision in loss of the attack on their embassy in Pakistan, which was directly related to the publication of the Muhammad cartoons.
* a discussion of his Harper's essay on the matter is apparently part of Art Spiegelman's stump speech on various college campuses.
Several Notes On The Inaugural C2E2
Here's what pops into my head this morning:
1. The conventional wisdom I'm hearing back and reading seems to be be coalescing around the inaugural C2E2 being a fine and well-run convention, particularly for a first show in a new city, with the only bad news is that attendance was a bit light.
2. I think it's good for Lance Fensterman to report a 27,500 attendance figure, even though projections were 5000 or so higher, and to further admit that sales were sluggish for some people. There's no use denying what people saw with their own eyes, and there's no reason to undercut the trust of the people covering the show. Fensterman's admission makes Gareb Shamus' recent claim of 75,000 for last summer's Wizard show -- a figure I've yet to find anyone in attendance endorse as adhering to reality in any way -- look childish.
3. I would say the troubling news for C2E2 given that attendance figure is two-fold.
4. The first is that it's hard to imagine a better confluence of comics guests -- Smith, Gaiman, Ross, Ware, Marvel/DC -- coming to the show the same weekend they have actors from a big comics-related movie coming to the show, both in a time period kinder than any ever experienced to the general comics-convention experience. How they organize for next year's show should be fascinating, and I think they're in a race in terms of getting the show greater traction (45K to 50K should do it) before this latest fascination with comics shows fades a bit.
5. The second is that as an ex-Chicagoan and Midwesterner I've long held that a problem C2E2 would have is that I felt they were underestimating how big a pain in the ass it is for people in Chicago and outside Chicago to come into the city and into McCormick Place. Or if not really a pain in the ass how they perceive it as such. I hated going down there when I lived there just as much as I hated going to Rosemont. And even then I had a better idea of how to head out to the airport (red line to blue line, baby) than to the public areas downtown. When I didn't live in Chicago and was driving up with a car filled with junk culture-obsessed idiots from Indiana, I hated going to the McCormick Place area even more than going to Rosemont, because it cost more to function around there. I'm not sure that goes away, and I bet it continues to hamper the show. There's no good solution here, either. The show has to be down there.
6. I would say the positive news for C2E2 given that attendance figure is also two-fold.
7. First, the general trend is for comics conventions to do better in years subsequent to their debut, as they find an audience and people begin to trust the show as a regular event.
8. Second, my hunch is that there's room for growth in attendance from the entire region. When the old Chicago show worked it was due in part to attendance (relative to that time period) from people that lived in Indianapolis, Fort Wayne, Toledo, Detroit, Milwaukee, and Champaign. I think if a Chicago show settles in, you'll get some of that audience back along with more and more Chicago-area folk.
9. By one measure the show did well: there was a decent amount of publishing news churn at the show. CBR and Newsarama were there in full index-necessary force, and there were a decent number of representatives from other comics-related media. This may not mean anything, but it seemed to me this morning that there were a lot of articles by local media, too.
10. I'm not sure if there was a big publishing news takeaway for me. The plethora of Avengers titles stuff generally comes across to me like Marvel is overtly trying to make a line of books that encapsulates everything wrong about mainstream comics' category-to-category over-publishing right now. I can foresee fans getting relatively tired of a straight-ahead approach really quickly -- I'm not saying they will, but I think these Heroic Age books have about the smallest area-to-hit in order to be successful that I've seen in years of those books. Mark Millar claiming that he generated the hopelessly generic idea of mutant vampires is about the only amusing thing I can say about the idea of mutant vampires. Even my inner 12-year-old gives that particular idea the finger. I think Matt Fraction bringing his Casanova to Icon is kind of interesting, and not just because it involves CR fave Dustin Harbin as letterer. The refashioned Casanova basically concedes that the original format (16 pages, supplementary material, limited color, cheaper price) just was never going to work with this Direct Market, which I find sad even as I'm sure retailers out there roll their eyes mercilessly just at my saying so. I'm also fascinated by what seem to me to be something of a sales ceiling at Icon. For what it's worth I think Dungeons and Dragons and Yo Gabba Gabba are good licenses for IDW and Oni, respectively. Dark Horse seems like a good home for Finder.
11. I'm not fond of the new CBLDF logo. Sorry, Charles. For one thing, I read it as "CBCDF" when I look at the top of it, and "Book Legal Defense Fund" when I quickly scan the bottom row. I'm also not fond of the site's basic design: there's too much space given to the logo and thus the main thrust of the site seems crowded off to the right and below.
12. That said, the CBLDF web site relaunch should probably be linked to their recent pair of hires as news of an overall ramping-up with that group at a time when no major cases -- knock on wood -- are draining their resources.
13. Speaking of free speech-related issues, Jeff Smith had a general initial reaction to news of a mom wanting to ban Bone from her school's library that I think a lot of people did: as far as not wanting your kid to read that material because of its smattering of incidental adult-ish behaviors, a little bit weird, but fine; taking the steps to have it removed it from the library; weirder, and not acceptable. Smith's panel seemed full of straight talk about some business issues; he's always a pretty interesting panelist.
14. C2E2's Lance Fensterman went to the elementary school in Minnesota where the Bone controversy is taking place -- small world, comics.
15. It seems like attendance at the corresponding Diamond Summit turned out pretty well. Getting retailers to come back may involve a completely different skill-set, I'm not sure. And by "I'm not sure" I don't mean "I'm weighing both ideas and haven't concluded which one I think most likely" as much as I mean "I have no idea what I'm talking about when it comes to retailer summits."
16. As always, if there's one must-read summary, it's the ICv2.com sales numbers and comparisons year to year. The slight decline reported seems about what one would expect given the concerns of recession and the performance of some fluke hits.
Random Comics News Story Round-Up
* Johnathan at Living Before Wednesdaysreprints a great, early Superman sequence with a Metropolis chanteuse singing a song called "You're a Superman." The only thing that would keep me from reprinting a panel here is if someone came out with an excuse for me to run that ACG cover of Nemesis fighting a bear.
* okay, this is the oddest idea for a post I've come across in some time, but it's a fun one: Ken Parille has re-published some of the ACG letters pages to poke out Editor Richard Hughes supposed discouragement with superheroes.
* Rich Johnston surveys various Shakespeare experts about the IDW comic book series Kill Shakespeare.
* getting older can be tough, but there are compensating virtues. One of them is you feel absolutely no need to go see movies that sound kind of not all that entertaining. Luckily for the art of pithy phrase-making, Jog is much younger than I am.
* finally, I'm not sure exactly what this means, but duly noted.
I tried to write a cogent essay this morning on the changing landscape of digital comics, the move from an era of conceptualize and debate to one of making choices and waiting for tipping points. I failed. My inability to write on this matter should not keep you from enjoying writers who can fashion an essay about this exciting time in comics.
* I thought Matt Maxwell's reaction to the launch of the iPad and its obvious ramifications for comics reading was the most reasonable and the best-expressed. For a lot of folks that read comics, there are many comics that read just fine digitally formatted, and there are even comics that for various reasons (storage, the author's intention, price) you'd prefer to read that way. That doesn't mean anyone wants to see an angry crowd to throw iPhones at Peter Maresca's head; it's an admission that there most folks have several appetites for comics, not just an idealized one.
I think this is particularly true of mainstream comics. The first time I wanted easy-to-access on-line comic books is when I wanted to read Ed Brubaker's Death Of Captain America so I could comment on it. The second time is when I moved 15 boxes of comics from storage into my office. The third time is when, slightly tipsy, I thought how it would be nice to read a bunch of Ka-Zar.
* Brian Heater of The Daily Cross Hatch has written two pieces about the iPad as a reading device. One for PCMag.com and one for his own site focusing on independent comics. I like that he gives the reason for the strip format's adaptation to the Internet as "it fits" and stresses that the smaller companies may be the places where we see any remaining innovation in this area. I'm not sure I believe either argument, but I like that Brian's making them.
* There's an interesting idea in just about every paragraph of Paul Gravett's semi-large piece about digital comics. My hunch is that the material on a large group of French-language comics creators freaking out over the way their rights have been interpreted in the light of emerging on-line use of their work is probably more important to the state of things right now than the article's sojourn into comics made with computer-aided elements folded into their presentation. I know there's no better way to empty a virtual -- or actual -- room of North American comics people than to bring up the rights and recompense situation as it exists in North America.
Today’s Vaguely Comics Related National Sunday Feature Article: NYT On Gay Superhero-Themed Parties it's like a coalition of Youth Pastors from the Midwest put in a request for an article
FFF Results Post #206—2nd Tier
On Friday, CR readers were asked to "Name Five Superpowers You'd Like To Have That Are NOT On The Following List Of Standard Choices: Flying, Invisibility, Super-Strength, Super-Speed, Reading Minds." This is how they responded.
Tom Spurgeon
1. Walking Through Walls
2. Persuasion
3. Immortality
4. Never Gets Tired
5. Fortunato!
1. Underwater breathing
2. Entering the dreams of others
3. Speaking & understanding any language
4. Power of illusion
5. Alchemical/element transformative ability
*****
Sean T. Collins
* Mind control
* Telekinesis
* Energy blasts
* Retractable claws
* Not having to go to the bathroom ever again because of super-efficient body
Editor's Note: Way to count to five, Collins
*****
Don MacPherson
1) Chemical transmutation
2) Time travel
3) Shape-shifting
4) Teleportation
5) X-ray vision
1) Travel through Time
2) Stop Time around me
3) Regenerate myself
4) Heal others
5) Master of all tech stuff
*****
Ben Ostrander
1. Loosen person's bowels
2. No need to breathe
3. Look like anyone I choose
4. Jump really high
5. Confuse people
*****
Michael Grabowski
1. Wall Crawling
2. Gladstone Gander's Good Luck
3. Super-Speed Reading
4. Wolverine's Fast Healing
5. Leap Tall Building Single Bound
*****
Paul Stock
* Ability to travel through wires (Atom)
* Ability to converse with birds (Hawkman)
* Ability to gesture hypnotically (Mandrake)
* Ability to crush & burn Tokyo (Godzilla)
* Heal the sick, raise the dead (Christ)
*****
Peter Duffy
1. Telekinesis
2. Invulnerability
3. Hex
4. Animal communication
5. Master of disguise
*****
Chris Duffy
1. Teleportation
2. Shooting various rays from eyes
3. Speed reading
4. Seeing into the past
5. Super-relaxation
*****
James Langdell
1. Invent devices as needed
2. Multiple bodies
3. Rapid healing
4. Projecting heat
5. Insects obey my commands
1. Super Smart
2. Time Traveler
3. Self-Healing Powers
4. Alchemy
5. Force Field Wielder
If you haven't deduced: I plan to go back in time, corner the Gold Market and then protect myself from those meddling kids and their damn dog.
*****
Justin J. Major
1. Nigh-Invulnerability
2. Twelfth-Level Intelligence
3. Super Karate
4. Transforming into living iron
5. Biting through and consuming all forms of matter
*****
Matt Chan
1. Inherent omniscience
2. Self-imposed selective forgetfulness
3. Time travel
4. Eternal youth
5. Transformation into Tom Spurgeon
1. "Liar, liar, pants on fire" (from Evan Dorkin)
2. Reprint whatever I command, publishers!
3. Teleport roadside litterbugs into ocean
4. Mute button for caterwauling felines
5. Every superpower you can't name (Doom Patrol's Brotherhood of Dada)
*****
Danny Ceballos
1. Teleportation
2. Shape Shifting
3. Indestructability
4. Time Travel
5. Looking Like Cary Grant
*****
John Parkin
1. Walk through walls
2. Control the weather
3. Teleportation
4. Shape shifting
5. Probability manipulation ("luck" powers)
1. Ability to look like anyone (The Chameleon)
2. Photographic reflexes (Taskmaster)
3. Change reality with sweater letter (Letterman)
4. Ability to return from death (Mr. Immortal)
5. Every power never thought of (The Quiz)
*****
Daniel Mata
* ocean commanding
* gender shifting
* Matter eating
* body stretching
* power flatulating
*****
Joumana Medlej
1. Turn anything into pure H2O
2. Teleportation
3. Accelerated learning
4. Healing (others)
5. Astral sight
* Teleportation -- Better than flying
* Matter transmutation -- e.g. Dr. Manhattan
* Shapeshifting -- e.g. Sauron
* Powers of persuasion/pheromone control -- e.g. Glorious Godfrey
* Perfect recall -- e.g. Taskmaster
2. Marvel announces it will move its trade distribution relationship from Diamond to Hachette.
3. Minnesota parent asking after son's library reading raises objections to Bone as a work suitable for young people.
Winners Of The Week
People that always wanted to read a longish effort from Fabrice Neaud in English.
Loser Of The Week
Wizard. Anaheim's convention may perform better than expected, but it was a bad sign for Team Shamus that Chicago media so closely followed the C2E2 version of the story about C2E2 versus Wizard's Chicago show. Plus in one of those articles Gareb Shamus busted out a 70,000 attendance figure that reminded people how much they hate Wizard's disingenuous when it comes to such reportage.
Quote Of The Week
"Cab driver on the ride back used to be a comic store owner with two locations: Smash Comics and Crash Comics. What're the odds?" -- Tom Brevoort, asking a question too depressing to answer.
*****
today's cover is from the 1940s-1950s mainstream comics publisher Avon
The Weekend’s Developing Con News
* no lie: I'd totally forgotten there was a Wizard Entertainment show in Anaheim this weekend. I wouldn't go to such a show if I lived in Southern California, so I can't make that claim via a stand-alone post. There's just nothing there for me that's what I enjoy about comics, although god bless the people that do find stuff to do at such a show, whether it's meeting Steve Garvey or the local Jedi Guild or what relatively few comics guests there are on hand. This video of the first day reveals mostly empty aisles in the background of every picture and a full-on hoochie dance of slatternly-looking women in costumes evocative of various female genre characters drawing maybe 100 people in a tight circle for their, um, performance. Rob Liefeld has a more positive outlook from the convention floor. I imagine that they'll do just fine on a Saturday. I don't know anyone who's believed an official Wizard attendance report in their entire history of doing conventions, so I'm afraid it's a lot of guess-work.
* the Athens, Georgia-based small press comics show FLUKE is today. All the google-able links to a potential web site seem broken to me, and while Heidi MacDonald seems to have received a press release, I don't think I did. I would go to this one if I were nearby, so I'll see if I can scrounge up a poster. [long pause; typing in other tabs] Okay, I wasn't able to do so, but I did find the local free weekly illustration I'm excerpting here and here's a nice review of the cool-looking anthology you get as part of the price of the $5 admission.
* you can find round-ups of the news from C2E2 like this one scattered around the Internet. I won't write one until Monday, but it's worth noting that the interest of companies in terms of making publishing announcement is one emerging measure of a comics convention's general vitality. So C2E2 looks like it will do very well on that score. There aren't a whole lot of pictures of the convention floor from which one can make background assessments -- this one looks like the crowds were light but not Friday-embarrassing -- and no one in the comics media seems interested in reporting on this aspect of the show, at least no one I'm reading. Update: Okay, Calvin Reid of PW twittered about it; as suspected crowds were light on Friday. He also suggests here that Saturday has seen the usual uptick.
Friday Distraction: Lots Of Photos From Fabrice Neaud Exhibition At Angouleme 2010 pretty art and an idea of what an exhibition looks like at the biggest European comics convention; thanks, Sebastien Soleille
Minnesota Parent Objects To Bone’s Drinking, Smoking, Gambling, Sexiness; Review Of Work Scheduled According to an article in Sun Newspapers' Minneapolis area news clearinghouse Minn Local, a parent of an student at Southview Elementary in Apple Valley, Minnesota named Ramona DeLay has objected to the content of the Bone volume her child brought home from school. DeLay subsequently filed to have the material reviewed, and the appropriate review committee is to meet April 27 to consider the request.
According to the article, the content she objected to in the filing March 15 dealt with the characters' gambling, their alcohol and tobacco use and the "sexual situation" between characters. The filing asks that the material be removed from all students.
The review process is describe in great detail in the linked-to article. It sounds thorough and reasonably representative, and the article that while three books were removed by this process in the 1990s, the most recent book for which this request was made remains on school shelves and 17 of 20 overall had such requests denied.
One of the interesting things about this is that cartoonist Jeff Smith has stated in the past he was always pleased there was no pre-emptive request on Scholastic's part to excise the gently humorous incidents of drinking and gambling in the book for fear of such a complaint.
To my eye, the incidents in the book are no different than in any number of books I read at that age, even age-appropriate books, and the absolute wide-spread saturation of this comic with this being a first complaint would seem to support that viewpoint. I don't understand why this can't be handled at the parental level. Whatever this person sees as the sexual situations in the book I can't be sure; the nature of Fone Bone's crush on Thorn does initially have something of a sexual element but not an overt one and it's nothing to my memory that isn't safely included in a lot of children's books I read. Here's hoping that DeLay's request is denied flat-out, and if it's not, let's hope that all it does is make kids want to read the work that much more.
Apple Valley is a community of about 50,000 south of the Minneapolis/St. Paul area.
It’s Good To Be The King
A couple of brief and perhaps final notes about Mark Fiore's Pulitzer Prize win. One of the good things about being a self-syndicated winner is that multiple publications get to claim a part of you and thank you via their various publishing platforms: Mother Jonesoffers up a link-filled post that includes a gallery and Fiore's thank-you cartoon. Another is that you can revisit any recent controversies that include people that disrespected you before you won the Pulitzer's stamp of approval. To that end, Fiore has revisited the rejection of his cartoon-related app by Apple, and the company has apparently asked him to resubmit.
C2E2 Launches First Show Today C2E2, the debut show that sounds like a sequel, gets underway today in space at Chicago McCormick Place today. There are multiple business stories.
Local media has spotlighted one of them: the story of Reed's new show in competition with the traditional summer Chicago show, currently run by Wizard Entertainment. Wizard saved that show from oblivion in the late 1990s, and it became cornerstone of a still-developing convention strategy. At one time not too long ago, Wizard's Chicago show was a clear #2 event in North America and was even talked about seriously as a potential challenger to San Diego's Comic-Con International, mostly based on its capture of a very specific mainstream comics zeitgeist. The show has tumbled since then, both in perception and in the kind of realistic appraisals that count on on-floor observations and outside-in reporting as opposed to increasingly dubious reported attendance figures. I'd say that story is a little overrated right now. There's little reason to think that C2E2's big-tent, yearly high-point approach and Wizard's one stoop of many by a traveling band of nerd gypsies approach clash. Seeing it as a tussle favors Wizard, too, a show that looks like the little guy but really has any number of historical resources to its benefit, and a convention that has to meet a ridiculously low standard for its organizers to start trading high-fives.
Another story is Reed vs. Comic-Con International, and whether or not Reed's C2E2 and NYCC should be seen as two of three crown jewels in the convention business, particularly in that CCI operates a national show in WonderCon that has a more significant pedigree and probably sees itself as the one of those jewels. Yet another story is C2E2 as a measure of how appealing the broad designation of "comic con" has become, how big an appetite there is for this kind of activity in the Midwest. You can even see C2E2 as a story in isolation: how will it work, what will attendance, how much on board are the major publishers in terms of providing publishing announcements that drive a lot of news coverage of such shows and are also a signifier of how seriously such shows are considered, will there be a place for indy/alt comics and how much, ditto manga, ditto on-line comics, and so on. It should be a fun weekend for that reason alone, and I'm jealous of the reporters on site.
I also hope that everyone in town to visit enjoys Chicago. Chicago has several very good comics stores and a pair of great ones owned by Eric Kirsammer: Chicago Comics and Quimby's, small but powerful shops with deep local ties and a variety of unique shopping opportunities. Chicago is the best food town in America. It not only competes in the realm of culinary frou-frou, the City Of Big Shoulders offers a rambling landscape of cheap food options to shame any three other cities, from Salvadoran hole-in-wall neighborhood joints to a thriving Mexican-American small restaurant scene (the original burritos as big as your forearm) to the city's outright fealty to twin prime junk foods hot dogs and pizza. With its tolerable hipster ratio, Chicago offers an array of plebeian joys like honest-to-goodness thrift store shopping, big breakfasts, off-track betting, league softball taken seriously, staring at A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte or the same museum's multiple Homer Winslows, tromping around the Lincoln Park Zoo slightly buzzed, corner bars that open at 9 AM owned by guys named Charlie, and still-surviving stand-alone specialty retail like the Jazz Record Mart. It is America's best theater city from garage to million-dollar playhouse, it is the home of the most enjoyable painter who sometimes accidentally does comics without realizing it, and you can actually go to blues bars there and not be bored out of your skull. It is the city of Nelson Algren, David Mamet, Del Close, Studs Terkel, Rebecca Gilman, Bill Mauldin, Ernie Banks and Bronko Nagurski. It even offers one of the great sports experiences via a day game at Wrigley. What's not to like? What's not to root for?
Random Comics News Story Round-Up
* the writer Graeme McMillan suggests that the X-Men books tend to be writer-proof, in that it's hard for even a distinctive writer to make his voice heard through them. That would make Grant Morrison the exception that proves the rule, I guess, but I follow his meaning.
* not comics: great catch by Alan Gardner that Matt Richtel of Rudy Parkwon a Pulitzer this week for his writing on distracted driving. Congratulations to Mr. Richtel and I hope he doesn't mind I posted this while driving the kids to school.
* I can't tell if the Ruby-Spears and Krofft producing teams working with old Jack Kirby design work thing is a fun story or the Saddest Story In The World. Couldn't tell you why, either.
* why does Paradise Island always have to be blown up by every other new writer for Wonder Woman? Islands are cool now, I watch a show about one every Tuesday at 8 PM.
* finally, the movie version of the Mark Milllar/John Romita Kick-Ass opens today. I've always thought the more controversial aspects of Mark Millar's work pretty silly, and obviously intentionally performed in order to continue to get himself over. Then again, he tends to have targets that don't resemble me so I can't speak to what that is like. Here's a pair of brief but critical pieces about Millar from two of the more prominent writers about comics on-line, David Brothers and Marc-Oliver Frisch.
Go, Read: An English-Language Translation Of Fabrice Neaud’s Emile By Bart Beaty
Let me put this out there as a statement of fact: Fabrice Neaud is the most important cartoonist in the world who does not have a book published in English.
In the decade and a half since the publication of his first Journal (Ego Comme X, 1996), Neaud has been the world's leading autobiographical cartoonist. No one rivals the intensity or honesty of his work, the tremendous philosophical and political depths of his analysis of the world and his own place within it, nor the raw emotional power of his storytelling. Neaud is a cartoonist whose comics seek out the most crucial issues of our time - what does it mean to live in this age? - and he is an author who does not flinch from the answers, even when they are unflattering.
I have argued in The Comics Journal and in my book Unpopular Culture that Neaud's Journal (3) (Ego Comme X, 1999) is one of the most important works ever published in the comics form. It is an astonishing masterpiece, rivaled only by the likes of Art Spiegelman's Maus and David B.'s Epileptic. At this year's Angouleme Festival, Neaud was the subject of a retrospective exhibition at the Hotel St. Simon, and produced a new edition of Journal (3) with 58 additional pages. Re-reading this book with the new pages was like visiting an old friend for the first time in years -- things are how you remember them, but also somewhat, almost imperceptibly, altered. I was reminded, for example, of just how naked Neaud laid himself with this book, and how vulnerable he must have felt when he was criticized for it on the Internet.
What is most striking about Emile is the absence of its title character. Condemned by the internet for his "invasive" portrait of Dominique in Journal (3), Neaud refuses to depict Emile in this short story, filling its pages with images of Angouleme, of comic books, of classical music cds, and movie stills. The act of denial that structures Emile is an act of disappointment, and few comics have ever captured this feeling as strikingly as this one.
I firmly believe that Fabrice Neaud is one of the leading figures of contemporary comics, one of a small handful of cartoonists working at the top of the form. It pains me that no one has published a work as beautiful as Journal in English, but I am thrilled that Ego Comme X has made this short work available online for free.
Go read Emile now. It's the best comic you will read this week, I guarantee it.
Analysts: March 2010 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 March 2010.
What hits me about the estimated numbers this time out is a bunch of scattered stuff. Dynamite did well with their Kevin Smith Green Hornet project (comic books) and their latest Boys trade. The collected Kick-Ass has become an anticipation-of-movie hit in the Direct Market as well as apparently in bookstores. The Northlanders trade placing sixth on the charts is good news for that comic. Siege continues to perform like a grand finally rather than a grand finale.
It's way more difficult this time around to make much of a judgment about broader market health issues. March 2009 seems on retrospect like the apex of the fear-of-recession period in terms of ordering, and was light on standard traffic drivers that didn't feature the then newly-inaugurated president. One thing that did pop out at me is that it seemed like there were more comics over 25K in sales than in any winter month I can remember: 86 (last month there were 32). Given the number of short-running series and specials out there -- look at that comic book top ten -- it's hard to say if this is a huge victory or not, but in general I would love to see more comic book series doing pretty well as opposed to just a few doing very well.
Go, Read: Jeff Smith C2E2 Interview
There's a cute, short interview with Jeff Smith at the Chicago Tribune that surprisingly manages to ask a couple of questions I've never heard him asked before. Much more importantly, it's worth noting for Smith being one of the cartoonists receiving spotlight treatment heading into the downtown Chicago-based comics convention. I root for shows a little bit more in those moments when they drive attention to the cartoonists they're having as guests as opposed to some of the other PR approaches available to them, so good for Reed on that one. Alex Ross was also interviewed, which is a fine way of bringing in both the mainstream comics and book publishing elements.
I got a ton of e-mails after this posted about a Chicago Reader article on the supposed war of conventions between Wizard and Reed. It's good and it has Larry Charet: you should read it. I thought Gareb Shamus came across super-poorly in the article. Does anyone on earth not employed by Wizard really believe that last year's Chicago show was more than 1/2 the size of Comic-Con International? I honestly don't know what to make of the 1000 exhibitors thing, but it sounds dubious, too. And while it's a good strategy to extol your string of smaller shows as something different than C2E2, it's silly to make one sound like a huge to-do and the other like it's local funnybook show. There's room for both shows in Chicago, I think.
A Few MoCCA Coverage Highlights
* I thought Rob Clough's was the best report I've seen thus far in terms of establishing context for the show and then parsing out via some semblance of rational subjectivity what worked and what didn't, all from an outsider's perspective.
* if you want to read a humorous take on the show, I very much liked Peggy Burns' posting yesterday called "The Men Of MoCCA." It's really dry, and insider-y, but the commentary is dead-on and the inside stuff probably won't leave you out. Plus, there are very nice pictures of various indie comics major players.
* finally, I like and respect all of the artists involved, and I'm terrible at convention programming myself, but after perusing the results the much-ballyhooed Art Of The Superhero panel at MoCCA (transcript here; audio here) seems to me like it was a tremendous waste of time. What a terrible panel. Bottom line: nobody says anything particularly interesting about anything particularly interesting. In fact, that may be an understatement. Ninety-five percent of what's said you could have heard at a random Chicago Con panel from 1987 or reading a random issue of Amazing Heroes from roughly that same period. This is a problem because doing a counter-intuitive panel should bring with it a higher standard: you have to be able to build on the friction of a superhero panel at a decidedly non-superhero venue, and you have to be able to justify the use of time and space to explore a well-worn, done-to-death subject at the expense of the main focus of the show. If that's all the panelists had to say, I would have rather heard from this group of artists on any other topic. Seriously: anything. Their in every single case much better and more personal art. Sandwiches. Zeppelins. Zane Grey. The Arizona Cardinals. I'm sure people had a good time: those are funny guys, Baker and Miller in particular are Hall of Fame convention panelists, and it's fun to watch people whose work you admire talk and engage with one another. But leave "historic" at home, thank you. Dull and insipid with moody pictures is still dull and insipid, and if this kind of over-hyped PR-driven presentation is MoCCA's future, I'll be that much more happy to skip the show.
Random Comics News Story Round-Up
* Robot 6has a Frank Miller round-up, including news he won't be doing that Batman Vs. Al Qaeda thing. I wasn't looking forward to that one as much the camps of sincere Batman as real American hero and Frank Miller as real crazy American artist were, but I surely would have read it.
* in praise of the new Abominable Charles Christopher book.
* Alan David Doane and Sean Collins comment on my piece about comics costs. I don't agree with either of their takes on it, but it's nice to have people commenting. I don't have a problem with whatever price anyone wants to put on a comic, I just question the publishing and industry strategy of doing so on lots of books at this time without evidence of a countervailing, positive, compelling rationale for doing so. I agree with Sean in that $2.99 isn't my personal idea of a good time buying third-generation serial sweaty man fight comic stories, either, but to me that just makes it that much more alarming that they decided in a recession with a seemingly stable financial base to raise prices on those entry-point products by 33 percent.
* I'm all for God getting an Eisner nomination, although if you extend the logic out I'm pretty sure it would mean I'd be sharing CR's nod with Beefeater's Gin. Of course, if God had received an Eisner nomination, it would have been more likely that He'd show up for the ceremony than Crumb. "I created the world in six days; why does it take four hours to give out a bunch of comics awards?!"
* this poster for the Secret Avengers title, one of 58 Avengers titles to be made available under the Heroic Age impetus at Marvel, is I guess a big deal to folks that follow those kinds of comics. I do like their Valkyrie character. No reason that can't be at least a pretty good character for that company.
* holy crap, I think Rich Kreiner remembered the book I completely forgot about when compiling my top comics of 2009 list. This isn't supposed to happen when you wait until April.
* you can ask the writer Kurt Busiek to share his process, but he'd really prefer not to.
* the big news for the general comics media since I last posted this column is the announcement at WonderCon that the Jim Lee/Frank Miller effort All-Star Batman and Robinhas transmogrified into a six-issue mini-series called Dark Knight: Boy Wonder, due to start in February. The last issue of the previous series came out in 2008. Originally intended as a big-name series to which shop owners could point casual customers roughly aware of the films and other media efforts for the character, the All-Star title quickly established itself as a frequently hilarious, demented and I would posit wholly inaccessible take on the caped crusader.
* the nice folks at Cartoon Books have revealed their cover for the next issue of RASL. I really enjoy RASL in a way I don't enjoy any other comic right now.
* Eric Powell, he of one-time Eisner Awards dominance, is spinning of his Goon character Buzzard into his own mini-series.
* the cartoonist and writer Jeff Lemire says that he'll be working on established DC properties.
* Vanguard announces plans for Adams, Frazetta books this summer. The Frazetta book is one of those titles I think a lot of publishers have considered doing or even pursued doing to a certain extent at one time or another.
* this summer's forthcoming X-Women project seems like one out of its natural time in a lot of was, although this preview indicates it's been in the hopper since 2006. But Milo Manara drawing from a Chris Claremont script and it being a special project where those creators simply doing an X-Men-related book is supposed to drive interest, all of that sounds like 1996 to me. Still, I'll look at it. Manara cracks me up.
* I don't run as much news about on-line comics debuts as I might if I knew enough about on-line comics to tag which ones look good and which one don't without reading months' worth of work, but even I know a comics effort by John Kerschbaum is bound to be at least worth watching if not outright awesome.
* in licensing rescue news, it looks like Seven Seas has picked upGunslinger Girl from ADV and Blood Alone from Infinity. Not familiar with the latter but the former, like most of the ADV efforts, is quite slick and seems like it might have a potential wider audience. I remember it was something about little girls as killer-assassins with adult handlers, and just about as creepy without sliding into debauched porn as you might imagine with that premise.
* finally, ICv2.com has more on that massive anniversary of Doonesbury book coming out later this year from Andrews McMeel: 13 percent or so of all strips Trudeau's done, 650+ pages, $100 retail (I'm guessing $65-$70 at an on-line buyer), 18 (!!) essays from Trudeau. The book roared over the horizon in an interview the Washington Post ran with the cartoonist. Sounds like a must-buy to me.
Alan Gardner caught this story on which I fairly whiffed: Steve Breen of the San Diego Union-Tribune has won the John Fischetti Editorial Cartoon Competition. His submission is the cartoon above, which ran July 11 of last year.
Steve Breen has won the Pulitzer Prize twice, the Berryman Award, the Thomas Nast Award and the National Headliner Award. He's been with the Union-Tribune since 2001.
The award has been given out since 1980 and is named after John Fischetti. I don't recall the award in years past being named so close to the Pulitzer, which I think is kind of unfortunate since the Pulitzer is clearly the bigger award, but maybe I'm just forgetting that part. I also can't remember what the winner gets, although I do recall there's a healthy scholarship program also attached to the Fischetti name.
You Bastards! You Blew It Up!
In advance of the standard Direct Market sales charts and analysis, serene numbers guru John Jackson Miller notes something slightly horrifying about the make-up of Diamond's Top 300: more comic book titles are priced at 3.99 rather than $2.99. "130 comic books were priced at $3.99, with 124 priced at $2.99. The intermediary step, $3.50, continues to be bypassed with only 16 comics at that level," he reports.
This is semi-startling on a couple of levels. First, I believed, and therefore I'm guessing others might have also thought this, that the $3.99 price point was something that was sprinkled about various lines on the big crossovers and most popular titles but hadn't started to dominate -- say 20-25 percent of the books in that realm. Second, there's just so much that feels wrong about the $3.99 price point. I have yet to hear anybody put together a forward-thinking, positive rationale for this strategy -- a 33 percent price hike during a time of economic stresses when the comics have never been more profitable the way they're leveraged across the board and nearly all the major players are as stable and non-desperate for cash as any time in the last two decades. The justifications for it feel like a teenager deciding to drive an increasing number of her errands at 90 mph and admitting this is crazy but pointing out they've managed to do this so far without totaling the car. In other words, there's been no rationale expressed at all. Even the standard mainstream comics fob-offs for bad behavior -- this is what you guys support, we'll just make the comics worth the greater amount -- ring hollow to me. What choice do the fan have but to support certain price points, how long will they, how can we tell there isn't bailing out of purchases elsewhere (have profits matched the price increase?) and has anyone really seen a 33 percent upgrade in comic book quality recently?
In the end, despite it having to come from anecdotal evidence and the reading of reader behavior through a system of guaranteed sales that makes it nearly impossible to chart such things, it's difficult to believe there isn't a huge, ongoing risk in driving away or hamstringing the buying habits of long-time customers during 1) a lingering recession; 2) the explosion of cheap alternatives through digital delivery of movies, music and prose; 3) the potential transformation of the industry itself as comics companies invest in digital strategies; 4) arguable narrative exhaustion with characters that have been around with many of those readers for decades. It just feels wrong, and now the wrong has reached a potential tipping point. What will be the agent that tests it with a push?
Kick-Ass Pushes Past 100K Sold
I'm a tiny bit confused about this story, that Marvel has sold 100,000 of the Kick-Ass trade in advance of the forthcoming film. And hey, good for them. John Romita Jr. deserves a mainstream audience, if that's who's buying the book, and the royalty for a $25 book with the standard creator-owned contract should be pretty sweet. Still, it's been established for about ten years now that single-volume representations of films do well if a) the film is highly anticipated, b) the film is good. If Fantagraphics and its limited resources can move 100,000 copies of Ghost World, a movie that didn't make what Kick-Ass is likely to make in its first weekend, at a time when bookstore sales of comics was still mostly uncharted territory, shouldn't it be surprising if Marvel didn't sell six-figures on a book like this? I'm failing to see what's extraordinary here except that Marvel sent out a press release. The Spider-Man and X-Men comparisons -- that this is more than any book featuring those characters sold with their movies -- doesn't work because those aren't equivalent book/movie relationships.
Random Comics News Story Round-Up
* I've been hugging this story close to my chest about Universal Uclick merging with international arm Atlantic Syndication, trying to figure out some angle to it. At this point I'll admit defeat and suggest the move follows a general comics merger trend without anything particularly startling about this individual instance, and hope I'm right.
* Jeet Heer writes about the reclamation of comics artists using an interesting test case: Al Williamson.
* Matthew Brady breaks down the C2E2 programming so you don't have to. Speaking of Brady, I liked this short review of an independent film using superhero tropes: none of it matters if the film isn't very good.
* another awards nomination for Jeff Smith, this time for his TOON Book Little Mouse Gets Ready. I know a three-year-old that would be very happy if they knew what awards were and that people made the books she reads and probably some other stuff, too.
* there's a nice essay here from the artist Gabriel Ba about how Image Comics -- the comics that caught his imagination as a teen -- changed his life.
This Isn’t A Library: New And Notable Releases To The Comics Direct Market
*****
Here are the books that make an impression on me staring at this week's no-doubt largely accurate list of books shipping from Diamond Comic Distributors, Inc. to comic book and hobby shops across North America.
I might not buy all of the works listed here. I might not buy any. But were I in a comic book shop tomorrow I would be definitely be extracting a scientific sampling as follows.
*****
DEC090975 ROGUE TROOPER TALES OF NU EARTH GN VOL 01 $26.99 DEC090974 JUDGE DREDD RESTRICTED FILES TP VOL 01 $32.99
Two big, powerful chunks of (I think) mostly early 1980s 2000 AD material, including the every-serious-genre-comics-library offering Rogue Trooper.
FEB100045 BPRD KING OF FEAR #4 (OF 5) $2.99 FEB100116 BRIGHTEST DAY #0 $3.99
A couple of random single-issues titles of interest to at least someone out there in a week where there aren't a whole lot of such books. The Mignola books continue to do really, really well while Brightest Day is DC's latest and slightly depressing for market wonks foray into event comics-ness.
DEC090263 OTHER LIVES HC (MR) $24.99
The big mystery book of the week, Peter Bagge's stand-alone work from Vertigo riffing in on social media. I would love to have one of these in my hands to pore over.
FEB100168 MAGOG #8 $2.99
I have no interest in buying this, but I remain in love with the fact that there's a comic book out there called "Magog."
DEC090926 DAN DECARLOS JETTA HC $21.99
This is a long-forgotten Dan DeCarlo project, so I'm guessing it's elegantly staged with tons of cute girls. That's just a guess, mind you.
FEB100907 PRIME BABY TP $6.99
The last of the Funny Pages serials, this is a lovely price point for a cute story about young siblinghood.
JAN101063 DUNGEON TWILIGHT GN VOL 03 $12.99
I can't follow these at all -- I think this is the one in the future of the universe where everything is dying and the world is chaotically collapsing -- but I always want to read anything that comes out in the Donjon series, no matter if the art totally satisfies or not.
FEB100204 LOSERS #1 NEW PTG $1.00
I'm well aware of how film drives people to graphic novels, but do they drive people to series? Or maybe this is the taste to get you to start buying the trades.
DEC090253 TOM STRONG DELUXE ED HC BOOK 02 $39.99
It's hard for me to believe they're still working material out of that long, second, sort-of shotgun marriage to Alan Moore, and this is my least favorite of those characters, but I bet the book is gorgeous and I know there are parts worth reading.
FEB101154 YOTSUBA & ! GN VOL 08 $10.99
The only non-literary manga series I'm reading as it comes out, I'm very grateful that the license was rescued and the books continued.
FEB100967 ANGEL BARBARY COAST #1 $3.99 FEB100980 A-TEAM WAR STORIES FACE #1 $3.99 FEB100959 KILL SHAKESPEARE #1 $3.99 FEB100961 PANTHEON #1 $3.99 FEB100997 PILGRIM #1 $3.99 FEB100972 STAR TREK MCCOY #1 $3.99 FEB100963 WIRE HANGERS #1 $3.99
These are all number one comic-book issues from IDW. They're the #3 publisher according to certain standards right now, so I'm hesitant to double-guess them, but all your #1s coming out in the same week can't be great for anyone. Of the group above I didn't watch on TV I've only heard about Kill Shakespeare, which I believe features a "Shakespeare-verse."
JAN100998 ART OF TONY HARRIS ART & SKULLDUGGERY HC (IDW) $49.99
Deep down near its core IDW is an art books publisher just as much as it is anything else, including a comic book company.
FEB100633 EXCALIBUR VISIONARIES WARREN ELLIS TP VOL 01 $19.99
One of the better superhero comic books I read out of freebie packages back when superhero comics were particularly dreadful.
FEB101058 BODYWORLD HC $27.95
This is the release of the week, Dash Shaw's new major work, serialized at one point on-line and terrifically gorgeous. The future of the comics.
OCT091070 HOPE LARSON MERCURY GN $9.99 OCT091071 HOPE LARSON MERCURY HC $19.99
Two extremely well-priced editions in different formats for the talented Hope Larson's new graphic novel, which I enjoyed reading in yet another format: the advance reader copy. All the cool young people in comics ten years from now we'll find out have been Hope Larson fans for a decade or more.
*****
The full list of this week's releases, including some titles with multiple cover variations and a long, impressive list of toys and other stuff that isn't comics, can be found here. Despite this official list there's no guarantee a comic will show up in the stores as promised, or in all of the stores as opposed to just a few. Also, stores choose what they carry and don't carry so your shop may not carry a specific publication. There are a lot of comics out there.
To find your local comic book store, check this list; and for one I can personally recommend because I've shopped there, albeit a while back, try this.
The above titles are listed with their Diamond order code in the first field, which may assist you in finding comics at your shop or having them order something for you they don't have in-stock. Ordering through a direct market shop can be a frustrating experience, so if you have a direct line to something -- you know another shop has it, you know a bookstore has it -- I'd urge you to consider all of your options.
If I didn't list your comic here, that's because I didn't know about it, because I'm sure it's awesome.
Why Is This Messiah Smiling? Because he's getting a hummer from a priest, of course. (click through the image to see full magazine cover) This Hollywood Reporter article claims that there's a controversy over in Germany over the Jesus being blown cover that ran on the April cover of Titanic, a Frankfort-based satirical magazine that claims a circulation of 100,000 and has been around since 1979. The topic being referred to is obvious: the ongoing claims of sexual abuse by priests in the German Catholic Church. I can't find another article to confirm, but the one that's out there suggests that there were multiple complaints and two criminal filings concerning blasphemy from German citizens. A decision about prosecution should come this week. The credits of the magazine suggest it was done by German cartoonist Stephan Rurup, although it doesn't particularly look like any of the cartoons of his I've seen.
Reaction To Mark Fiore’s Historical Editorial Cartooning Pulitzer Prize Win
It's always nice to do a little link round-up for the editorial cartooning Pulitzer Prize winner the day after what must be one of the great days of one's professional and perhaps personal life. The hometown paper profile (by which I mean where he's primarily published) tells us the cartoonist is 40, and seems to adopt the same bottom line that was immediately suggested: the groundbreaking nature of an editorial cartoonist winning when he doesn't appear in print. Jesse Walker at Reason suggest that more important than the technological aspects of Fiore's win we might also be dismayed because he sucks. Michael Cavna profiles the winner, with quotes and everything.
Go, Read: Jeet Heer On The New Craig Yoe Compiled Milt Gross Book From IDW Here's a thoughtful essay from Jeet Heer on Craig Yoe's new Milt Gross book, The Complete Milt Gross. It's interesting in that it's filled with negatives from a writer/essayist that doesn't tend towards the negative, including the potentially hard-to-rebut argument that a book called "complete" should be complete.
I may have a personal interest here. Heer presents his review in the context of criticism I lobbed at Dan Nadel about his review of Yoe's Boody Rogers book. I resent the characterization of my criticism as accusing Dan of acting out of sour grapes and envy. I accused Dan of writing what I thought was a bad review because it read like an editor/publisher second-guessing another editor/publisher, not a critic reacting to what was placed in front of him. I'll stand by that criticism until someone actually engages it.
In the meantime, everyone should read Heer's essay in the first link, which is much more open with the second-guessing approach to engaging result when it's not doling out some blunt, straight-up criticism of the kind I greatly prefer.
Update: Jeet Heer and I have since exchanged e-mails and he says he wasn't talking about my criticism or meaning to link to it but rather he was linking to Dan's piece and referring to more direct criticism along the lines described from other sources. My apologies for assuming otherwise. I'd take the whole post down but I think it's important to stick it to Dan Nadel whenever possible.
Producers Announce They Will Repurpose Jack Kirby Character Design Work For Ruby-Spears Productions The headline pretty much says it all. Joe Ruby and Ken Spears along with Sid and Marty Krofft are going to see if there's a bigger media life for some the reams of conceptual designs that Jack Kirby did for the company in his later years. Like most Kirby fans, I've seen smatterings of this stuff over the years. While none of it leaps out at me as automatic tent-pole movie property material, a lot of it has that Kirby touch and it'd be fun to live in a world where stuff that consistently energetic had a second life. Mark Evanier mentions a related project that seems a lot more likely than a gigantic film or network television show: an art book with a lot of this material in it.
* here's an analysis of Marvel's price point on their iPad efforts. I agree with the writer on the general principle that Marvel's costs are generally not what people think they are and that the printing part of it isn't as big a percentage as is widely believed. Frankly, I'm surprised they're charging that little.
* this headline strikes me as silly given that 2010 Eisner Judge James Hudnall is really clear what he meant -- that he put an emphasis on the indie books available to him after reading them. Still, you can follow the article back to Hudnall's writing on the judging process if you're as much of an industry wonk as I am.
* D&Q reports they had a pretty good MoCCA, too, saying they enjoyed sell-out of James Sturm's Market Day. With all of the sell-outs reported it's unclear if any of them were assisted by wholesale deals with local retailers, which is why I've kept those words in the mouths of their speakers. I don't think it's a big deal, actually, moving product is moving product, but I did get a couple of e-mails asking after books that sold out that people seemed to think were available in great quantities for the entire weekend. I wasn't there, I don't know, and I'm trusting the publishers that through whatever means they sold a lot of books.
* Richard Thompson talks about a promising forthcoming exhibit and shows off the comic he's going to have in it.
Mark Fiore has won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning for a portfolio consisting of his self-syndicated cartoons and animated work appearing on SFGate.com. The prizes cited "his biting wit, extensive research and ability to distill complex issues" in naming him earlier today. He will receive $10,000 and a place in cartooning and journalistic history.
Fiore graduated from college in 1991, which I'm guessing makes him a younger man than many who win the award. He is one of the more lauded cartoonists for the breadth and scope of his on-line work. He's won divisional NCS Awards and the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award. If I'm reading this correctly, his entire submission may have been animated cartoons, which if true is quite the noteworthy event.
The other finalists were Matt Wuerker of Politico and Tony Auth of the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Hachette Book Group Announces It Will Handle Marvel’s Book Distribution Starting September 1, 2010 That's pretty much the content of the press release here. The Internet is festooned with any number of quotes on the matter; I'll spare you a repeat of those here as they all sound like they come out of the Quotemaker 3000. Marvel is staying with Diamond's comics arm for direct market distribution of those types of work.
The four issues company to company here are fairly obvious, I think, unless I'm missing something:
1) the effect on former distributor Diamond Books, whom practically no one to whom I speak regularly or semi-regularly thought would keep Marvel's book business for very long after the Disney deal. While there are several publishers happy with Diamond Books, and I bet Marvel's trade sales have grown with the distributor, the backstage gossip about Marvel's dissatisfaction with elements of their service was severe and convincing. DBD should be able to keep going without Marvel, but how much such moderate blows have a cumulative effect on Diamond's business will likely remain an item of interest for all industry watchers in the months ahead.
2) that Marvel's book business didn't go to HarperCollins, the group I believe already does the bulk of Disney publishing distribution, may yet yield a significant story on its own. Mostly it seems like one of those things you note and move on.
3) Hachette Book Group should benefit greatly from a major player in the still reasonably vital category of graphic novels and whatever related art books Marvel puts together.
4) the move may have a reciprocal effect on Marvel's trades program, still thought to be somewhat backwards when compared to other companies'. A great, big book distributor like Hachette can set certain benchmarks and identify certain priorities that can bring stability and order to a books program like Marvel's.
The move continues Marvel's post-bankruptcy era habit of partnering with really big companies, only this time it's the books rather than licensing and Disney ownership was involved rather than their acting on their own behalf.
Missed It: Jen Sorensen Wins James Aronson Award & Grambs Aronson Cartooning With A Conscience Award Ms. reports that the alt-weekly cartoonist Jen Sorensen (Slowpoke) will receive the James Aronson Award Award for Social Justice Journalism and the Grambs Aronson Cartooning with a Conscience Award from Hunter College's Film & Media Studies school next month. The latter award is named after James Aronson's wife, who was an illustrator. Past winners include Steve Brodner and Tom Tomorrow, which is stupendous company. In a quote utilized in the article through the link, Sorensen talks about the honor coming at a time when she was struggling with the bleak outlook for media expressions such as her own. You can read about the award, started in 1990, here.
thanks to the those who e-mailed this; my apologies to whomever in our sphere had it first
A Few MoCCA Notes From Far Away
Here are a few things I'm seeing on-line of interest about the just-completed MoCCA Festival in New York City. I'll put the bulk of the linkage in the Collective Memory, which will be republished every morning this week as the first more substantively-linked post. These jumped out at me, though:
* Eric Reynolds claimed on Facebook that Fantagraphics shipped about 50 boxes of books and are shipping back only about two or three. That's the idea, of course, but I've been around when Fanta was loading up at the end of that show before and both times they had way more than two or three boxes. Besides, I'm always happy when a publisher puts a number to sales so I'm happy to report Eric's casual mention as news.
* Speaking of which, Fantagraphics had a lot of advance books and I've heard from five different people with a line like "And Fanta had _______. I couldn't believe it; I thought that wasn't out until summer." So that may have worked on their behalf.
* For some reason, Hope Larson's comment that she never felt so relaxed at a show stuck with me. Given the stressful moments of years past and of comics shows generally, that's high praise, indeed.
* R Stevens gave the show a similar stamp of approval.
* I"m not hearing a bunch of complaints yet, but there are some out there. MoCCA attendee Gil Roth noted in his report here yesterday that it was weird that people paying on-site got into the show before advance ticket buyers, but he was a beneficiary of this quirk and I haven't seen anyone complain from the opposite end. Darryl Ayo Brathwaite notes that a small sub-section of tables got stuck behind a reading area and were thus completely cut off from foot traffic with resulting crappy sales; you can see the view from their tables in a nice photo in that linked-to post. Jody Culkin noted that an all-woman panel at the show was much shorter than other panels, for whatever reason.
The Most Surprising Story Of The Year
Okay, I mean that tongue in cheek, but I really did sort of gasp at this mention that the very private Chris Ware's home will be part of a house tour in Oak Park next weekend. On the other hand, what an awesome thing to get to see as part of such a tour.
Random Comics News Story Round-Up
* the writer James Vance has resumed blogging after a mini-break from such activities on-line. He picks up the content-driven ball with a nice run up the middle in a resumption of his Tekno Comix series.
* go here for a fascinating article about an art dealer with whom several experts in comics seem to have deep problems in the "actually has the cartoons he says he has" department. I can't think of anything more deeply and automatically sad than original comics art forgeries.
* here's a post I missed about one person's experience teaching comics workshops. Here's an intriguing newspaper article I missed on Mat Johnson's comics classes at the University of Houston. Robert Boyd brought the latter to my attention.
* not comics: here's another post I missed where Larry Young asks you to consider helping him save the restaurant where he and Richard Starkings have their yearly pow-wows.
* not comics: I don't read Variety. Have they always been gigantic douchebags? Accusing people of bad journalism because they don't accept your spin on the matter and promote it to your satisfaction seems like atrocious behavior to me. When that spin is that you're restructuring your bottom line even though you're still profitable and making your talent take a shortfall that's apparently not necessary for them to take, you are a double-douchebag. Have fun spending away the last of your brand's goodwill and inherent market position, fellas.
* finally, this Harvey Comics letterhead might be the best comics-related letterhead they've posted at this site. (thanks, Devlin)
[Editor's Note: my friend Gil Roth sent me a report from this weekend's MoCCA Festival, an informal write-up intended just for me. It made me laugh, so I asked him if I could share it with CR readers, and he agreed. Please take it in the informal spirit offered. It struck me that this is what cons are: thousands of subjective experiences, no one on the record.]
By Gil Roth
So, I get to the front steps of the armory for MoCCA. You have to go up a full flight of stairs to get into the building proper. A MoCCA staffer asks, "Is anyone here buying tickets on site?"
A bunch of us raise our hands. She says, "Okay. You guys come upstairs and buy your tickets." We proceed to leave the line, walk up, pay for our tickets, get stamped, and enter the show way ahead of our line-mates who actually paid in advance for tickets. I said to one guy, "What is this, Bizarro-Con?"
*****
Eric Reynolds: Hey, Gil! I didn't recognize you! Have you lost weight? Or not wearing glasses?
Gil: Nah, I just learned how to dress.
*****
Santoro's Magic Box of Back Issues was mobbed every time I passed by Picturebox's table.
*****
It took me three walk-throughs to find D&Q's tables. They were two rows over from Fanta.
****
Peggy Burns is good at up-selling. I forgot to ask her about my Acme Novelty Library #19, which re-ran the same 12 pages at the end of the issue. I never did find out how that one ended.
* * *
There was a series of tables from a Scandinavian contingent. They looked a little puzzled by the whole setup, and it reminded me of the line from In The Loop, "You needn't worry about the Canadians. They're just happy to be there... Yes, well, they always look surprised when they're invited."
* * *
Pretty disparate crowd. A guy ahead of me on line was carrying a carved wooden walking stick; he and his friends were discussing Thor, which worried me for several reasons. Another guy wore a big deer-head (with antlers) made out of cardboard. He wore a fedora on top of that and had one of those suitcases that straps over your shoulders, to sell your wares (like a cigarette girl). I don't know what he was selling.
* * *
The guy behind me on the Jaime line, Marc Sobel, said he's writing a book about the Hernandezes. He had a magazine with a 1978 fantasy comic by Jaime. He signed it "James Hernandez."
* * *
The guy two spots in front of me talked to Jaime for a while and then took out an issue of The Forever People and asked Jaime to draw Beautiful Dreamer after this one panel. It took forever, which didn't strike me and Marc as funny.
* * *
Jaime was selling a drawing of Vivian, but it was just a headshot, and not a full-body (or 2/3rds, like my Penny Century drawing), otherwise I would've bought it. He also had illos of all the Ti-Girls. If there was one of the full squad, I might've bought that.
* * *
Marc Sobel said to the friend who was on the Jaime line with him, "My girlfriend probably wouldn't like it if I spent $100 on a Jaime drawing." I thought, "Man, my wife wouldn't be happy if I didn't come back with a Jaime drawing."
* * *
Charles Burns wasn't selling any art, which disappointed me. I bought the Big Baby collection, even though I have all the comics that are in it, so that he could draw something for me. He did it in pencil.
* * *
Kim Deitch was selling all sorts of art, including finished pages which were going at $1000 each.
* * *
Sikoryak looked younger than I thought he'd be.
* * *
On the way out, I saw Gahan Wilson walking by. I stopped him, shook his hand, and thanked him for the decades of great cartooning. He said, "Thank you so much, young man."
FFF Results Post #205—4+1
On Friday, CR readers were asked to "Name Four Characters From Comics And Then A SINGLE WORD That Unites Them." This is how they responded.
FFF Results Post #204—Later
A while back, CR readers were asked to "Name Five Comics You Remember Waiting On, Including Either One That Never Came Out At All Or One You're Still Waiting On." This is how they responded.
Tom Spurgeon
1. D'arc Tangent #2
2. Camelot 3000 #12
3. King-Cat #63
4. Planetary #27
5. Pogo Volume One: Through The Wild Blue Yonder
1. X-Statix #1
2. Acme Novelty Library #16
3. Kramers Ergot #6
4. The Complete Terry and the Pirates Vol. 4
5. Grant Morrison and Jim Lee's Wildcats #2
*****
James Langdell
1. Strange Adventures #217 (which came out, but didn't continue the mind-bending finish of the Deadman story in #216)
2. Hepcats #13 (which never did come out)
3. Swamp Thing #88 (which came out, but without Rick Veitch's "Morning of the Magicians")
4. Green Lantern #199 (the "Ignition" issue ending a series of issues with countdown number titles, running parallel to Crisis)
5. Mage Volume 1 #15 (a fine culmination to a well paced buildup through the series)
1. Pogostick #3 by Al Columbia & Ethan Persoff. [Number 2 came out in 2003. A new issue has been in the works according to Columbia.]
2. Avengers mini-series written and drawn by Tony Salmons. [From back in 2004 or '05?]
3. Dork #12 by Evan Dorkin. [Not sure if he's even working on one. Is the series over for good?]
4. FCHS by Vito Delsante & Rachel Freire. [From Adhouse books: "Due to smaller than expected advance orders, this title has been canceled. We suggest you check out the creators' sites to stay informed of progress."]
5. Dark Knight Strikes Again #3 by Frank Miller & Lynn Varley. [I was lucky enough to not have to wait for Ronin or the DKR due to the collections later on, but waiting for these was painful. I absolutely loved every issue.]
* The Pirates of Coney Island #7
* Strangehaven #19
* The Expatriate #5
* '76 #6
* Gutsville #4
*****
John Platt
1. Scud the Disposable Assassin #24 (the creator's bad breakup almost put this series in an early grave)
2. Jack Staff #14 (a year between issues!)
3. The Complete Ragmop (finished in graphic novel form after the aborted comic-book version)
4. Cerebus #300 (I waited until the whole thing was published to really read it.)
5. Hellboy's Mexican lucha libre adventure (finally coming out next month?)
Honorable mention: Steranko's Red Tide, which exists, but I've been waiting for the new edition for years.
*****
JE Cole
* Wintermen: Every single issue!
* Battle Chasers #10
* Cannon God Exaxxion: TPB's #6 and 7
* Planetary #27
* The Ballard of Halo Jones: Books 4 and 5
*****
Jean-Paul Jennequin
1. Watchmen #9
2. Zot #1
3. Uncanny X-Men #104
4. The weekly Journal de Tintin when I was a subscriber -- I still love getting comics by mail.
5. Marvel #14 -- This was the French comic that was published in 1970-71 and had the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man and Captain Marvel in it. Three months after it was supposed to come out, the letters column in sister monthly Strange explained that Marvel had been classified as not for sale to minors, so the publisher had to cancel it because this year -- and just this year -- the VAT for such magazines was 33%. This made me -- and many other French kids -- a lifelong enemy of censorship.
*****
Christopher Cudby
* Ninja
* Wetworks #1
* League of Exraordinary Gentlemen Vol. 2 #6
* New Universal: Shockfront Vol. 2 #3
* Bizarre Boys by Grant Morrison, Peter Milligan and Jamie Hewlett
1. D'arc Tangent #2
2. Big Numbers #3
3. 1963 Annual
4. Love and Rockets #50 (original series)
5. Cerebus #300
*****
Grant Goggans
1. Dan Dare in the continuation of the "Servant of Evil" / "Traitor" storylines by Tom Tully and Dave Gibbons.
2. Doctor Who: "Evening's Empire" by Andrew Cartmel and Richard Piers Rayner.
3. The fourth, fifth and sixth issues of both League of Extraordinary Gentlemen miniseries
4. Calvin & Hobbes, when it went on that agonizing hiatus in the mid-'90s.
5. Samantha Slade: "La Revolution Robotique." Any day now, Tharg!
*****
Danny Ceballos
1. Batman #407
2. Yummy Fur #18
3. Drawn and Quarterly Volume #4
4. Sandman: The Dream Hunters #4
5. Fantagraphics' FCBD Weathercraft and other unusual tales
*****
Greg McElhatton
* Miracleman #23
* Seven Soldiers of Victory #1
* Akira #34
* Jack Staff #12
* Big Numbers #3
*****
Gabe Roth
Watchmen #11 Watchmen #12 Seven Soldiers #1 Scott Pilgrim Vs. the Universe Zot! #37
*****
Will Pfeifer
1. Return of the Dark Knight #4
2. Camelot 3000 #12
3. That American Flagg hardcover collection
4. The Lost #4 (never did -- or will -- appear)
5. Comics as Art: We Told You So -- I'm still hoping this will hit the stands eventually
1. Hulk Weekly (Marvel UK, 1979/80)
2. Amazing Spider-Man #400
3. Transmetropolitan Vol. 10: One More Time
4. Planetary #12
5. Grant Morrison's Batman (TPB editions)
* Explainers: The Complete Village Voice Strips (1956-1966)
* Abstract Comics: The Anthology
* Pim & Francie: The Golden Bear Days
* Pictures That Tick (in paperback)
* Art in Time: Unknown Comic Book Adventures, 1940-1980
*****
Sam Humphries
1. Havok and Wolverine #3
2. Stray Bullets #41
3. The Invisibles Vol. 3 #1
4. The Collected THB
5. Wildcats Vol. 4, #2
Loser Of The Week
James Sturm, who isn't really a loser but you can call him one on the Internet and he won't read it.
Quote Of The Week
"To all who congratulated me for the Eisner nom, thank you. To all those vocally pissed that I got one, thank you too. The fact that you care enough about comics to have strong opinions at all is a good thing, ultimately. So bravo to all you Robinson haters, I love you all." -- James Robinson
*****
today's cover is from the 1940s-1950s mainstream comics publisher Avon
Line Lengthy At MoCCA Festival 2010
Gil Roth is sending me e-mail from his phone that at 12 Noon New York City time the line to get into the MoCCA Festival is a full block and a half long. Good for them.
Your Danish Cartoons Hangover Update
* a cartoon put up by the Dutch Branch of the European Arab League in response to the Danish Cartoon Controversy has led to a court deciding the league and its representative should be fined, The Muslim News reports. The cartoon, put up to highlight double standards in the treatment of anti-Muslim cartoons, features the always knee-slapping idea that Jews invented the Holocaust.
* an exhibit on blasphemy in art opening in Dublin is leaving the one that caused people to riot and die right the heck out, thank you very much.
A New Jersey native, Forsyth worked in both anime and manga for ADV. Among the manga titles on which she worked are Azumanga Daioh, Chrono Crusade, Gunslinger Girl, Peacemaker Kurogan and Yotsuba&!. ANN also reports she worked with Tokyopop and Yen Press on a smattering of titles.
She graduated from Trenton State College and also worked as a computer analyst.
A public comments thread based on the ANN story can be found here, including several praise of several of her individual translation efforts.
Services will be held in Cape May Court House, New Jersey, on Saturday. Forsyth is survived by a staggering number of relatives, including her mother, stepfather and father.
Random Comics News Story Round-Up
* Kevin Melrose has some thoughts about the Eisner nominations. I think the manga thing really is the biggest news coming out of those nominations. Comics Comicsthanks the academy.
* WonderCon has announced its dates for next year: April 1-3. This takes this very nice show off of Easter, and also gives them the first shot at a date in a month that's the most crowded of this year's convention months.
* speaking of WonderCon, one of the things that struck me a few days later after a weekend of listening to my peers and fellow industry members talk about superhero comics is that they seem to be taking a kind of sideways pleasure in the odd and inexplicable nature of many of those books. That seems strange to me only in that there are more direct pleasures to be had elsewhere. Maybe if superheroes were still by far the primary thing going on my fondness for the medium would lead me to a refined appreciation of the the more out-there projects within that sub-genre, but these days when I hear the new Cathy Malkasian is imminent I want to read that, not a fun run on Character X or a crazy run on Character Y or a train-wreck treatment of Character Z. Does that make sense?
* also speaking of WonderCon, Heidi MacDonald steps in with an appreciation of this year's show. I think she's right that if you want to blend tourism/time in a big city with a convention experience, that's a good one with which to do it. I spent some time off of the comics grid shopping and meeting up with non-comics friends to break bread, and they were all first-rate experiences.
* there are a lot of good ways this morning to spend some time reading about comics, but none better than this interview with Robert Williams. Williams, when he's thought of in that way, is one of comics' finest ambassadors.
* not comics: we could probably all do a better job of traversing the thin line between fair use and simply exploiting another person's image to illustrate our own ideas.
* finally, our pal and yours, the Comics Reporter Supreme Emeritus Dave Astor, recently won a New Jersey state press association award for his humor column. Congratulations, Mr. Astor.
The Eisner Awards nominations for 2010 were released earlier today. David Mazzucchelli's return to comics Asterios Polyp leads all nominees with four, while Naoki Urasawa has five nominations spread across two works, Pluto: Urasawa X Tezuka and 20th Century Boys. To the best of my knowledge this is the first time a manga creator has picked up the most nominations, and that seems worth noting. Mazzucchelli's return is also worth noting, obviously, one of those semi-miraculous events we take for granted in this Age Of Comics Abundance.
Otherwise, the nominees seem remarkably spread out amongst several publishers, with longtime Eisner dominant force DC Comics picking up its usual boatload (20), Fantagraphics taking its more-often-than-not Place position (17 and one shared), relative newcomer Abrams picking up eight, and sometimes shut-out victim Marvel coming in with a healthy eight of its own. Dark Horse (4 and two shared) seemed relatively down this year, as did Drawn & Quarterly (4). You can read the press release here for more counts by creator and publisher. Congratulations to all the nominees.
As for analysis, what I'm hearing back from about a dozen or so people is disappointment about individual nominations. A few are targeted as just lousy nominees, probably most vocally one for James Robinson's writing on a superhero book called Cry For Justice. (Robinson's response here.) I haven't read the book, although its sounds pretty crazy. Other than that, though, I'm hearing from folks that are extolling the virtues of an individual book or a set of books that they thought might be included: frequent-nominee Jason, or last year's category winner and obvious marketplace leader Comic Book Resources, or the never-better Hernandez Brothers, or Matt Fraction, or Dash Shaw.
Honestly, I think this is one of those things where there are ton of at least pretty good works and pretty good creators out there right now and it's really, really hard to design an awards program that can sort them out. I'm not sure there's ever been an aggressive ethos in comics for sorting out the best from very good, at least not since that became more difficult than determining that "Spring 1982" is a better comic than the Project Pegasus run in Marvel Two-In-One. In fact, a lot of people I know that vote on the nominees openly do so in support of friends, or projects they worked on, or publishers they like, or creators for whom they root -- one underlying idea used in defense of that practice being they're all nominees and they're all pretty worthy of consideration and it's only a stupid awards program, so who cares?
With so many comics worthy of a nomination, I'm guessing that what you get in the final count tends to reflect the overlapping tastes of the judges within that wider and arguably equally worthwhile grouping, more so than the results of sustained dialogue and agonizing over all of the books that could possibly make each list. Let me be clear: I'm sure there is dialogue. I'm told there is dialogue. But seeing as it took me five months of constant fretting on the exercise bike to decide whether or not Genesis was better than Pim and Francie, I'm guessing the dialogue at the Eisners nominating weekend has to be focused in some ways or it would go on forever.
It feels churlish to me to write about the nominations process because CR has been nominated every year so far. However it works, it seems to work for us. Then again, that puts us in the position to notice the Eisners' arbitrary weirdness: we've always lost to someone new, and then that person doesn't show up in the nominations the next year. For the most part, comics journalism entities have been stable across the board for a few years now, not just here at our web site but generally. I don't think of it as a field where someone new roars across the sky and then disappears, do you? Or to put it another way, it's not like Alter Ego has noticeably good and bad years at this point, at least not to my eye, and I'm a fan. What we get in that category and generally is what the new group of judges thought each individual year and what the voters want to vote for. I'm just glad I get to sit up at the front table for the ceremony.
In a way you might be able to argue that the Eisners do reflect the times: that it's a pretty good system by which we recognize a certain set of pretty good books and pretty good creators and sometimes great ones and maybe one or two crappy ones that someone else likes and then leave off a bunch that could have made it but didn't. I don't know. That's probably stretching it. There might be a way to restructure to have a more rigorous vetting process -- the Eisners pulled off a genius move several years ago that has kept mainstream comics and alt-comics from clashing all the time by leaning certain categories one way or the other -- but until that comes to pass I'm at least reasonably satisfied with what we have. It's an industry award, for pete's sake, and we're the Island Of Misfit Toys of entertainment industries. Aim that gun. Shoot that jelly. This year it hit Ken Dahl and Eleanor Davis and The Brinkley Girls. Next year maybe it hits Blaise Larmee and Dan Nadel and The Ti-Girls. I'm not sure we can do a whole lot better than that.
Ballots will go out mid-April to eligible voters (creators, editors, publishers, retailers) in the database, while a downloadable PDF will be made available on-line for everyone else.
This year's nominations panel was Craig Fischer, Francisca Goldsmith, John Hogan, James Hudnall, and Wayne Winsett.
The award show is Friday, July 23, in conjunction with Comic-Con International. Please stop by my table and console me.
Home Auction Highlights Geppi Woes
The Baltimore Sunnotes an auction today for Steve Geppi's former home two years after it was put on sale for $7.7 million at the beginning of the housing market slump that preceded today's lingering Recession.
The 19th Century mansion features eight bedrooms, nine fireplaces, a wine room, a home theater, a grand hall, a game room and a gym. The Geppis paid $4.8 million in 2004 for the home, and put it on the market in January 2008 moving to a nearby home. The estate was most recently listed for sale at $3.6 million.
The article notes various Geppi financial setbacks and danger signs such as May 2009's rent reduction at the Geppi Entertainment Museum following rent difficulties, a $16.4 million bank judgment in January 2009 and a Harbor Bank judgment of $3.5 million from March 2010.
MoCCA Kicks Off Arts Festival Portion Of Comics Convention Calendar
This weekend is the newly spring-ensconced arts festival of the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art. The MoCCA Festival was established in 2002 and has despite several crises of faith become a star on the indy-comics schedule alongside San Francisco's Alternative Press Expo and Bethesda's Small Press Expo. Until the creation of the New York Comic-Con, MoCCA Festival was also the most New York-y show on the convention calendar, and it remains an important showcase for a massive number of cartoonists in that part of the country.
This year's show is the second in 69th Regiment Armory, maligned last year for its lack of air conditioning. The Spring move was expected to help ameliorate those difficulties. New York City saw record heat this week and may be in the mid-60s this weekend -- certainly not a disaster in the making, but humorous to note. Leave no doubt that this is a major show for arts cartoonists and arts publishers: Dan Nadel is kicking off his Art In Time appearance schedule there. D&Q will be featuring James Sturm and his Market Day in the course of its usual strong presence. Fantagraphics is debuting an astounding 13 books, many of which won't be available through normal channels for weeks.
There will also be any number of events: keep an eye on Rocketship, Desert Island and the MoCCA event pages for the latest information on their related signings and parties. That's a really fun show, and I think it's in a good slot here in the Spring. If you've never been, you should look at the programming and see if there's something that you can build a half-day around. Heidi MacDonald will suggest a place for lunch.
Your 2010 Comics Division Nominees For The Best Graphic Story Award
The Hugo Awards have announced this year's nominees for their honors, including those in a still-new but not brand-new Graphic Story category. They are:
I don't know how seriously that statement needs to be taken. Casting Wizard's string of regional/area shows as a serious challenge to Comic-Con and Reed is sort of silly when the smaller, several-show strategy seems much more clearly to be Wizard's way of gathering itself after getting its ass kicked by the bigger shows when they were actually in direct competition. It's like allowing John McCain to recast his Arizona election struggles as a new strategy to take the White House. You should also probably have to be more than one show -- and maybe not a show where you could drive a F-350 down the aisles on one of its three days -- into a new strategy before you get a PR platform to boast about a bigger version of that strategy. Perhaps most scorn-worthy is Wizard trying to cast itself as a champion of those elements neglected by the bigger shows. That should be laughed at, not published as a potential pull quote. Wizard's entire history is front-running and capitalizing on the biggest trends. I don't know anyone who thinks that if an Iron Man pavilion and a bevy of A-list stars were made available to them, any smaller elements in the way wouldn't be shoved right into the parking lot.
Still, could they go to that number of shows? Well, sure. You may recall that many of today's top comics professionals got their start holding conventions as broke-ass teenagers in a time where there wasn't extra convention space all over the country and people eager to fill it in order to do business with fans. So I think they could expand, just as long as there's some basic minimum standard of quality met that assures the modest number of exhibitors and attendees necessary to make that sturdy economic model work on everyone's behalf. But for now, with their generic brand name and eagerness to criticize, they're just drafting behind the success of better show organizers. They should be left out in the cold for a bit longer, at least until they can prove this new strategy is minimally workable for more than 2/3 of a single weekend and in shows from the future that exist in Gareb Shamus' head.
Random Comics News Story Round-Up
* I was finally able to get on-line and tweak Monday's WonderCon report: adding a few video snippets, linking the thing out, tightening the language. I'm the world's worst videographer and barely managed to remember I had the thing, but I think the three I put up were instructive enough to include. And yes, in that shot of Saturday's crowd, I nearly stomped to death a seven-year-old child. You can hear me apologize so that the dad won't punch me in the jaw.
* not comics: a great photo of author and one-time comics scribe Samuel Delany.
* Johanna Draper Carlson has declared it the West Coast Age Of Comics. I disagree as to the general argument that such a designation is necessary and even if I were to give Johanna that argument I think I would tend to disagree with her on who, for instance, are the most exciting publishers in comics. Still, I sure haven't named anything recently.
* the writer Matt Maxwell analyzes Greg Rucka's departure from DC. It's weird that we live in an age where you can't accept certain statements at face value, but you really can't anymore. Artist JH Williams discusses it here.
Let’s All Talk Shit About James Sturm The cartoonist/educator won't know about our personal slams and salty insults because he's leaving the Internet behind, maybe for good, which he talks about in a Slate article that has to break some sort of illustration per number of sentences record.
I sympathize, of course. Life is too short. The one great thing about the Internet, though, is that you can manage your time there however you like. I've had a modest amount of success managing what used to be a pretty tiny and horribly overactive window from my living hole into the outside world. I no longer rage at people in message board arguments, I've dumped every piece of Internet-accessing technology I own except the computer, and when I work far enough ahead I'm happy to shut things down and go to San Francisco for a couple of days on the worst airlines in the world. But while I'm happier with the amount of potent life force I allow the modem to suck out of my soul, I know other folks haven't found their happy medium yet. I wish James the best, and I'm completely freaking terrified how much he'll accomplish if the Internet was somehow holding him back.
The Korea Timeshas apologized for two cartoons about the Moscow bomb attacks that it ran on its March 31 and April 2 editions. The apology was picked up on an English-language wire service. This Moscow Times article recognizes the apology, says it was asked for by the ambassador to South Korea, and describes them: "One cartoon depicted a bear in a fur hat wiping away tears as it looms over a train in flames. The other showed a train shaped like a skull." That notice says that the cartoons were part of a packaged syndication service the paper uses based out of Bangkok.
This Isn’t A Library: New And Notable Releases To The Comics Direct Market
*****
Here are the books that make an impression on me staring at this week's no-doubt largely accurate list of books shipping from Diamond Comic Distributors, Inc. to comic book and hobby shops across North America.
I might not buy all of the works listed here. I might not buy any. But were I in a comic book shop tomorrow I would be bringing the following books chocolate and flowers, in an attempt to woo them into my good graces.
*****
FEB100130 BATMAN AND ROBIN #11 $2.99 DEC090402 ASTOUNDING WOLF-MAN #22 (RES) $2.99 DEC090364 INVINCIBLE RETURNS #1 $3.99 FEB100539 SHIELD #1 (MARVEL) $3.99 DEC090411 KING CITY #7 (MR) $2.99 DEC090417 WEIRD WORLD OF JACK STAFF #2 $3.50
Here's a handful of comics that might make for a good pile of comics to take out of the funnybook shop if you still buy comics that way. It's a perfectly good way of buying comics, you know. King City is already up to #7 and Weird World Of Jack Staff follows up its first sometimes surprisingly confusing issue for a #1 with -- and it's only a guess -- more of the same rapid-fire narrative-switching and chapter-jumping approach. Of the mainstream superhero stuff I'm most interested in seeing the Hickman/Weaver take on Marvel's S.H.I.E.L.D. concept -- it sounds like they're giving the whole organization the Eternal Warrior shtick, which is such a tired concept they had better execute it really, really well.
DEC090201 BATMAN AND ROBIN DELUXE HC VOL 01 BATMAN REBORN $24.99
Here's a hardcover of that Batman and Robin material. I'm not totally sold on this material yet, but it looks like this is an opportunity to do my reconsideration of the series thus far as fancily as possible.
JAN101030 LIL ABNER HC VOL 01 $49.99
It used to be that there were only a few strips I didn't feel as much as understood their positive qualities intellectually: Dick Tracy made the trip out of that category and into the "I love you deeply and without question" part of the pie chart, so maybe there's still hope for Li'l Abner. Sure is good-looking and there sure is a lot of it in this new hardcover presentation.
FEB100906 BOOTH GN $19.99
I thought this book had a lot of positive qualities, particularly its depiction of mid-1860s Washington D.C. as a kind of overheated small town stuffed with intrigues big and small, but in the end it failed to grab me. Your mileage may vary.
JAN101138 ONE PIECE TP VOL 39 $9.99 JAN101139 ONE PIECE TP VOL 40 $9.99 JAN101140 ONE PIECE TP VOL 41 $9.99 JAN101141 ONE PIECE TP VOL 42 $9.99 JAN101142 ONE PIECE TP VOL 43 $9.99
It doesn't feel like the sales for One Piece are exploding with this multiple-volume, catch-up effort, but I guess I could be wrong. There aren't ten more popular properties in the entire world right now.
JAN100953 HATE ANNUAL #8 (MR) $4.95
I love Hate, particularly the increasingly oddball Buddy Bradley stories that come once a year with these annuals. I'm guessing their publication here means that Peter Bagge has stopped submitting work to Discover, but that's only a guess. Every comics fan should have the vast majority of whatever Peter Bagge has in print, and these volumes would be a great value for a cartoonist only 2/3 as talented.
AN101168 SLAM DUNK GN VOL 09 $9.99
My experiences trying to get a Butler score on Saturday at WonderCon are a sign that Slam Dunk probably will never hit as hard with American comics fans as their Japanese counterpart; those two worlds are just separate, separate, separate.
OCT090901 TIMES OF BOTCHAN GN (OF 10) VOL 04 (OF 10) (RES) $19.99
Fanfare/Ponent Mon's translation of one of the great literary comics series of the 20th Century continues.
JAN100916 WALT & SKEEZIX HC VOL 04 1927-1928 $39.99
Another of the great 20th Century comics and, additionally, one of the great 21st Century reprint projects. I don't think any series of books has done more to raise the estimation of a strip than this one has Gasoline Alley.
DEC098381 DODGEM LOGIC MAGAZINE #2 (PP #905) $4.25
Does it reflect badly on my character that the modern burlesque movement bores me to death?
FEB101180 ART IN TIME UNKNOWN COMIC ADVENTURES 1940-1980 HC $40.00
Dan Nadel's follow-up to Art Out Of Time and a fun anthology mixing never-heard-of folks with never-knew-they-did-this talent.
JAN101213 COMICS OF CHRIS WARE SC $28.00
A collection of essays on Chris Ware, including one by Jeet Heer. Jeet Heer is almost always interesting on great cartoonists; can't speak for the rest of the contributors because I have no idea who they are.
*****
The full list of this week's releases, including some titles with multiple cover variations and a long, impressive list of toys and other stuff that isn't comics, can be found here. Despite this official list there's no guarantee a comic will show up in the stores as promised, or in all of the stores as opposed to just a few. Also, stores choose what they carry and don't carry so your shop may not carry a specific publication. There are a lot of comics out there.
To find your local comic book store, check this list; and for one I can personally recommend because I've shopped there, albeit a while back, try this.
The above titles are listed with their Diamond order code in the first field, which may assist you in finding comics at your shop or having them order something for you they don't have in-stock. Ordering through a direct market shop can be a frustrating experience, so if you have a direct line to something -- you know another shop has it, you know a bookstore has it -- I'd urge you to consider all of your options.
If I didn't list your comic here, that's because I'm a sorehead.
First Major Step Taken Towards New San Diego Convention Center
Local San Diego media are all over the story that the Port Commission has approved a land deal that will allow plans to move forward for an expansion of San Diego's convention center, the current home of Comic-Con International. The expansion, which would happen by mid-decade, has been deemed necessary by its advocates in order to keep major shows like CCI. I'm not sure I get the particulars; it sounds like they had a plan that would have had development going one way rather than another and that if they fail to come through they give the land back...? David Glanzer provides a positive quote.
Go, Look: Matt Maxwell On The iPad
The writer and big-time comics aficionado Matt Maxwell talks about owning an iPad, which may be the first electronic reader to reach a saturation point with comics fans both hardcore and casual that it has a major impact on the print comics sales infrastructure. Maxwell constructs a pretty intricate and personalized context for this, but I think his message is worth noting: if a major event in terms of shifting sales habits isn't already here, it will definitely come some day. I've always advocated for the full-on pursuit of these sales because I think artificially supporting an infrastructure has a much greater chance to end in collapse later on.
* the writer Sean Kleefeld presents the comics shop as place to buy a shared experience of being into comics argument. I understand the argument, but I've been shopping in comics shops since 1978 and I've never once stepped into one looking for a sense of community. I go there looking for comics.
* this is a better than usual humorous entry from Bully about newspapers in comics, particularly the Daredevil comic. Newspapers are to comics what the Internet is to movies -- a magical plot-facilitating device that makes no practical sense.
* finally, I can't remember from whom I nicked the link to this blog post at OC Weekly (sorry, whomever that is), but it presents the "CCI should stay in San Diego" argument pretty well, although it does cheat a bit by excising Las Vegas from the equation. That's the first time I've ever seen anyone actually bring up relevant hotel statistics for LA and Anaheim.
Various media outlets have picked up on a press released from Archie announcing the passing of Henry Scarpelli on Sunday, April 4. The Staten Island-based cartoonist had been ill for some time. He was 79 years old.
Scarpelli received much of his art training at New York's School Of Visual Arts, although it's unclear from the press release exactly when this was. By the late 1940s and SVA's establishment, Scarpelli was already working in various places around comics, such as DC Comics. He became an assistant on a feature called Little Sport and afterwards launched one of his own, the TV Tee Hees panel that ran from 1956 to 1975.
Concurrently with the panel gig, Scarpelli began a long run on the Dell TV adaptations, working on comics based on several shows, including Hogan's Heroes and Bewitched. He worked outwards from there, picking up assignments and just about every publisher still in existence: Archie, Charlton, DC and Marvel. His work appeared in some of that period's DC humor titles, such as Angel and the Ape. He would later pick up a Shazam award for his work on such titles. Scarpelli would work on Millie the Model for Marvel and the magnificent Sinistro, Boy Fiend feature in Charlton Premiere.
Scarpelli's work on the Archie comic book became a long-running late-career assignment on the Archie dailies and Sundays, a gig he maintained for over 16 years, making him the dominant Archie artist for many readers of this current generation. He also contributed to Nickelodeon's comics efforts.
He is survived by a wife, a son and several siblings.
* I haven't read too many interviews with Robert Kirkman off the regular campaign trail of major comics magazines and news sites, so it's nice to read this one by Marc-Oliver Frisch.
* David Brothers looks at recent statements by Joe Quesada on comic sales through the iPad and punches several of them in the kidneys. Brothers makes the great point generally that the needs of Direct Market retailers in terms of having time to sell material can be at odds with business decisions in the best interest of a project overall.
* Brothers pulled Quesada's statements from this interview which seems to be a must-read on several mainstream comics news trends right now.
* not comics: I may be the only one who thinks so, but I quite enjoyed this Junot Diaz short story that appeared with a Jaime Hernandez illustration in a recent New Yorker. I thought it was funny, like Ta-Nehisi Coates writing a Locas story.
* not comics: speaking of the New Yorker, they have the first review I've seen of the forthcoming Treme.
* This is a series of notes about or inspired by WonderCon 2010, which took place April 2-4 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. WonderCon is a comics and related media show that's been going about 20 years constructed mostly along the lines of mainstream North American comics, taking place in one of the world's hot spots for alternative culture. Notes on other comics-related events taking place outside of the convention center but scheduled for WonderCon weekend to take advantage of the extra folks in town are included here, at least as much as I was able to attend them.
* Just to be as clear as possible, I was flown out as a media guest for this show and given a hotel room. Although why the offer was tendered wasn't discussed, I imagine the Comic-Con staff made the offer in order to help bring greater attention to this specific show. As much as it has its passionate devotees, WonderCon has been odd man out in terms of media coverage the last few years. As I would not be able to afford to attend the show otherwise, and because the show interests me, I was happy to take them up on their offer. There was absolutely no suggestion on their end as to how I should cover the show or, frankly, whether I should cover the show at all! Had I been of the mind to do so, I could have spent the entire weekend squirreled away at the hotel watching filthy pay-per-view.
* Comic-Con is also an advertiser on this site. I usually don't mention that because it's, you know, right there for you to see. Anyway, I guess there's a big chance for biased, compromised nonsense this time out. Read carefully.
Thursday
* No one really wants to hear another person's travel horror stories, but I'll give you mine: I showed up at the airport Thursday morning to take the first of three segmented flights. The first flight was canceled for mechanical reasons. I couldn't make it by car in time to pick up the second flight, so the folks at the first airport offered to re-book me through Tucson, 3.5 hours away. Flying from Tucson would still get me to San Francisco that day. They even showed me paperwork and gave me a code. Turns out that while this flight existed, the nice folks at the first airport didn't do any of the actual re-booking. To have them re-do the flight in Tucson would cost $500. I don't know about you, but that was my entire Thunderstrike back-issues buying budget. The guy at the next desk eventually felt sorry enough for me he booked me an entirely new flight on his own authority. But thanks, original airport people, for several moments of stomach-churning dread.
* It probably wouldn't be classy to name the offending airline, but I will say it rhymes with "Montier."
* The cab driver I used from SFO hadn't heard of WonderCon. I thought that was an interesting enough contrast with the bemused groans I usually get from San Diego's taxi-driving legions that I'd mention it here.
* One thing I saw on the highway was a big Iron Man billboard for Oracle. Don't know exactly what for, but it was definitely ol' Shellhead. I flashed on the kind of thought that writers with a greater sense of what mainstream comics mean tend to make routinely and with a lot more verve: as much as our first reaction would be to pooh-pooh it, it must be cool on some level to work near the creative fulcrum for such iconic characters, these temporary avatars of cultural shorthand. I concentrate so much on the downside of that kind of work that it probably behooves me to address the positives every now and then.
* We passed by the new stadium, where the Giants were having an exhibition game with the Oakland A's. I would learn later that evening that somewhere in that stadium was a very cold Jim Chadwick.
* My WonderCon-ignorant cab driver did say he'd never seen that much activity at the Marriott Marquis on a weekday evening. Any number of cabs and cars were crowding their short driveway. In fact, I walked in just as a short line of DC power players barreled past me, on their way to dinner. Comics-town!
* That's a fine hotel, by the way. I have no idea where it rests in the constellation of WonderCon hotels, but it's nice. It's also huge, with a lot of rooms. My room was very comfortable, with a large desk pressed up against the window. Most writers love most hotel rooms, and this definitely had many of the reasons why. The lobby is airport terminal spacious, with a bar that feels like the place you might get a last drink before taking off. The concierge desk hosts up to three such service providers at a time.
* Did anyone ever figure out what those ladies in the similar floral dresses were all about?
* I fully intended to walk to the Walgreens and come back and go to bed. But instead I enjoyed a three-hour lobby bar conversation with IDW's Scott Dunbier, who was hoping to catch some people coming back from dinner to transfer some original art to one of them. That original art? An entire comic book by an old master, which was about as ridiculously gorgeous to look at as you'd imagine. (Here's a clue: black gutters.) Most people that stopped by took the time to take at least a peek, oohing and aahing all the way.
* Coming in and out of our vicinity were a variety of comics folks and convention regulars: Mark Evanier, Sergio Aragones, James Robinson, Pam Noles, AnnaMaria White, Heidi MacDonald and a number of folks whose names I'm way too terrified to wing. I saw Joe Kubert in the lobby proper, at one point talking to I believe Dan DiDio. I saw Team Isotope on the other side of the bar. The reason I mention all this is because a) it's always a lot of fun to talk about comics face to face with other people when you spend nearly all of your time typing about them at home, b) this is a very mainstream comics-focused show, and I don't know a lot of mainstream comics people. These would be my personal themes for the weekend.
* As many people as were roaming about, a few expressed nostalgia for WonderCon's original, Oakland-area potency as a bar con, as in "best bar con ever." There wasn't a lot of what we in college called "shuttling" in term of expressing a series of old memories, but there was definitely some fondness in the air for the original hotel's bar and the shenanigans that developed there. (It occurs to me that with the Petunia Cons of the mid-1980s, you might be able to say the Bay Area locked into place the two-tiered con set-up with which San Diego flirted: where you have this public show during the day and an intense series of social engagements at night.) Smaller shows have more intimate backstage scenes generally, and while this show is a bit too big for there to be one single area of commiseration, it came close: in whatever circle you traveled, you tended to see those people over and over.
Friday
* Yet another thing that makes this con different from Comic-Con is that walking over to the show the street didn't begin to coalesce into a WonderCon crowd until about 40 yards from the front door. At Comic-Con I always get a sense I've entered the convention center's sphere of influence about three blocks away, like Peter Weller getting joined by the other Buckaroo Banazai cast members in the end credits.
* Downtown San Francisco seems to have some sort of Walgreens problem. One of the neighborhoods where I lived in Seattle offered two Starbucks within 40 yards of one another. Market Street was kind of like that, only with the opportunity to buy two-liters of Sunkist and a rotary fan rather than espresso. I always like walking around San Francisco, though. Even more than New York it offers the sight of people absolutely put together right next to people absolutely falling apart. I come from a town where the mayor is just as likely as anyone else to be standing in line in his sweatpants and wifebeater at 12 PM on Sunday holding an 18-pack of Bud Ice, so the sharp distinction the big cities bring between haves and have-nots always fascinates.
* Registration was great. Christopher whose last name I don't remember and who takes care of that for Comic-Con said they get about 650 pre-registered press members and about 800 total (the walk-up addition may have only been Friday's). The lines for individual registration looked long but survivable.
* I caught a glimpse of David Glanzer going the other way up the world's longest escalator. When I tried to go up and see him I couldn't find him. I went down the escalator again and noticed he was in this open air little circular lounge behind the registration area and over the outside of the hall. It was like a little Star Wars social space. I really liked it. Best staff-only area ever.
* The convention hall is pretty big, appropriate to the show: I'm thinking maybe 2.5 times the size of a Heroes Con? Between a third or fourth of Comic-Con International? In the size-sense the show really is like San Diego from 15-18 years ago. I thought it looked fairly crowded on Friday, although maybe not so much at the far ends of Artist's Alley, the lanes against the walls where folks like cartoonist Justin Thompson and the writer Matt Maxwell were located. They actually had some of the bigger AA names on the ends of rows rather than in the rows -- I don't know if that's a typical thing or not -- guys like Ethan Van Sciver and David Finch and Frank Cho.
* I saw a couple of my core convention buddies. By convention buddies I mean guys with whom I'm friendly that I only ever seem to see at conventions. Joel Meadows is readying another print issue of his handsome Tripwire for release in July. Justin Norman is in the midst of a hopefully long, ongoing run on DC's The Spirit, first issue to come out soon. He admitted that the pedigree of creators to work on that character gave him some pause. Norman's one of my favorite people in comics and it's great to see him work his way into this new opportunity. It's been a long time coming and I hope he kills it. He's working with writer Mark Schultz on the initial issues and Editor Joey Cavalieri generally.
* I saw only two celebrities; and only one of them was a sure thing. I swear I saw Jeff Garlin there, although I haven't double-checked yet and pretty much 17 percent of all dudes at a convention look like Jeff Garlin (Ian Brill has since confirmed). I definitely saw Michael Chiklis at his signing, which was big enough to cause Bob Schreck to do that ambulatory scarecrow thing where you slowly walk into a crowd waving your arms gently to get people to scatter. There were a lot of young men at the Chiklis signing. You could do much worse than emulate the determination he's displayed in shaping his career. For what it's worth, I felt almost none of the Hollywood presence, even less than the 10 percent of it that I feel in San Diego.
* By celebrity I mean the kind there to do a panel or maybe even buy some stuff, not working the show at a booth. There were a lot of folks signing autographs and the like, although I didn't spend much time in their section. I saw an actor who apparently played an African-American sheriff on Dukes of Hazzard, a character I couldn't remember at all (my dad, inexplicably, was a fan of the show; he also loved Hee-Haw). My favorite show business related thing on the floor was a booth in which sat a fan club for the small town community-affirming, post-domestic nuclear terrorism show Jericho. I loved watching Jericho when I could remember to go look for it because it was so terribly, terribly weird. The ladies at the booth were selling show-related clothing.
* Most improved booth: IDW. Booth I didn't really understand: Aspen. Booth that wasn't actually their real booth: DC Comics. Company I didn't expect to be here that wasn't: Marvel. Company I had sort of expected to be here for some reason but wasn't: Top Shelf.
* People talk about the graying of the comics readership, but it felt to me like very few people in attendance happened to be my age or older. Most looked like they came from the same age group -- 25-35 year olds -- that to my memory dominated convention crowds 15 years ago. I felt old more than a few times. There seemed like a lot of women there, including a number attending on their own, which maybe wasn't the case when I started going to these things. I also saw a lot of kids, including kids that seemed just as into this stuff as the parent, if not outright escorted by one. Also, the crowd seemed quite diverse. It's nice to see different ethnic groups represented, and gay couples.
* Never in my life will I understand the costume impulse, even less so in terms of people my age and older wearing them (nearly all teenager activities are designed around sex; jumping in and out of costumes and acting out a bit while in them is not the worst idea to push young people in that direction). I was surprised to see only a modest amount of them on the floor this first day. My favorite was a Dove costume, as 1) it's weird, 2) that one doesn't make a whole lot of sense once you see someone actually wearing it, 3) it cracks me up when someone does a costume where you're paired with someone else and decides not to do the other costume.
* one thing that's different now: almost everyone is more media savvy in the sense that they operate as if anything they say can be considered media fodder. I heard a lot of "This isn't for publication" before a lot of conversations I would never dream of making public because there would be absolutely no interest in what was said except maybe from the American Boring Institute. Didn't stop the people talking from seeing such things in that light, though.
* Saw two folks from the Pacific Northwest with cons of their own: Jim Demonakos of Emerald City and Shannon Stewart from Stumptown. Demonakos seemed pleased with the success of his 2010 show, and from all reports -- including unsolicited raves from three pros I talked to -- he should be. Emerald Con passed that threshold this year where it's going to be hard not to have it now, if that makes any sense. It should be interesting how they make the transition to being a three-day show: that's an underrated move in terms of degree of difficulty, because it changes the tenor of a convention. Stewart said that Portland's finest indy comics show just announced Paul Pope as its last special guest, and that the mayor has named April comics month in that great funnybook city for the fourth year in a row. I haven't been to Emerald City yet, but Stumptown is a fine show of that type, and I encourage you to attend if it sounds appealing in any way.
* Watching Jeremy Atkins of Dark Horse and AnnaMaria White at IDW operate a little bit, it struck me how the publicity operations in comics might have changed in recent years, without our really noticing, to more significantly favor people that are personable and presentable along with those able to carry out media relations duties. This is the kind of thing that might only matter to me, I admit. And it's not like there was ever a time when PR in comics was run by disagreeable, beastly folk. Still, the current generation seems slightly more telegenic, if that makes any sense.
* I watched some of the Dark Horse panel; it was fun to gauge the various contrasts between Atkins and Dark Horse/comics old guard member Randy Stradley. They had presentational tool malfunctions that would have sent me screaming from the building and into a new career. One thing they mentioned that I hadn't noticed is that Joss Whedon's brother whose name I can't remember (Zack?) is doing more and more writing for the company. Also: Ron Glass anecdote, and you can't have enough of those.
* a fit-looking, earnest and personable Geoff Johns ran his moderator-less panel like he was hosting an MTV special; appropriate to that comparison, three or four questions were about how good-looking he is (he deflected these questions). Johns had to negotiate not being able to discuss Blackest Night #8, as a significant number of people in the audience had yet to read it. His new corporate position brought with it a bunch of questions that helped compensate. Johns said he worked very closely with the writer on the Green Lantern film script, and rattled off a significant number of weird alien things that we're likely to see in the movie, now filming. The crowd, maybe three times the size of the Dark Horse panel, seemed to enjoy the heck out of themselves.
* Back on the floor, I saw the writer Joe Casey, who refused to let me take his photo because he said his new look afforded him a disguise for conventions. By the time you read this, they will have announced a new title for Casey at Image Comics called Officer Down.
* I ran into Charles Brownstein, who informed me that the wire services had picked up on the death of Burton Joseph, the lawyer and free speech activist who lent his energy and prestige to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund in some of its most important cases. A full obituary will appear at CR soon. He was right around 80 years old.
* The general health of Generation Direct Market -- the first group of shop owners, now aging and in some cases passing on -- was a recurring topic throughout the weekend. I also talked to a number of people about the mounting costs of the Recession on businesses within comics and on individual careers. One basic idea that seemed to form during the discussions about money was that just because the last 18 months were not as apocalyptically bad as we thought they might be, a lot of people still took major hits.
* Personal note: it would be nice to go through an entire convention season where I didn't have to say to at least one person: "Wow, I totally screwed you on that. I'm sorry."
* A lot of folks expressed enthusiasm for the $2 Darwyn CookeParker preview; it was also by far the single item that people mentioned when I asked what I should go see. I ran into a couple of people that gushed over being able to catch up with Long Tail Kitty. After that, opinion fractured markedly.
* I stopped in for some of two company panels: the DC Nation panel -- which is somehow different from the DC Universe panel in a way I don't care enough to understand -- and IDW's. The DC Nation panel featured three of the new company executives in Dan DiDio, Jim Lee and Geoff Johns, and all were enthusiastic about their new roles although not in a way that extended past general platitudes. Apparently, the desire to make great comics is a brand-new one. They also all wore baseball caps, which I trace back, likely in improper fashion, to being one of Image Comics enduring gifts to the funnybook world. The IDW guys struggled through their visual accompaniment. Fog kept the rest of the IDW editorial team from getting on planes early that day. This left those in the room without their cheat sheets. There were 22 people in attendance, most of who got to laugh at the enthusiastic, earnest musings of Max Brooks on his GI Joe work.
* My sampling consists of exactly two people, but if Brooks and Johns are representative of the slightly younger creators coming to the fore now, that kind of earnestness may be on the rise while the slightly snarky remove of the older creators may be on the decline. That's a ridiculously broad statement, of course, but I wonder if there isn't perhaps a trend of some sort there.
* One thing I like about comics conventions is you can pepper your conversation with li living sight gags. Two different people with whom I discussed my forthcoming plans were treated to me saying, "or maybe I'll just stand here and watch Erik Larsen read a comic book." And as we all looked up not 20 feet away was Erik Larsen reading a comic book. I could do stuff like that all day.
* I ran into retailer and Direct Market industry advocate Brian Hibbs on the convention's main floor. He's someone with whom I've been dealing since 1994 -- almost always in friendly fashion; sometimes on different ends of an issue, never angrily -- but hadn't met face to face, so that was a joy. He was still beaming from the recent ComicsPro meeting in Memphis, particularly in how responsive the companies in attendance were to hearing back from Direct Market retailers in terms of things they were doing. I remain a big Direct Market guy, although I'm cognizant of their failings. If comic shops didn't exist we would dream about them. I really like when Brian writes about hanging out with his little kid, so I was glad to hear they made it to WonderCon together and went toy shopping. Hibbs doesn't exhibit at shows, which never occurred to me before but of course he doesn't. I wonder if there's any significant about a generational shift in retailers -- Hibbs being a transitional figure, starting his shop in 1989 -- and if we might lose comics retailers at shows by a change in practices on the retail end of things rather than the by conventions' doing. As a matter of fact, there's a broad range of issues that comes up when you think of DM Generation One entering their golden years. Item one: who gets their stores?
* Went to the Ed Hannigan benefit at the Cartoon Art Museum. I hadn't been to CAM since I went to an Ed Gorey exhibit there in the mid- to late-1990s (with soon-to-be birthday boy Greg Stump). It's very different space: first floor (rather than a higher one), bigger shop, four largish rooms and a fifth, smaller one furthest away from the street with a small hallway (and bathrooms) sticking out from that. It's a good space: not as big as some small museums I've been to over the years, but certainly half again the size of a strong gallery's showing area.
* I quite liked the variety of art on display. There was some sort of Batman exhibit that had original pages from Paul Pope, Frank Miller and Jiro Kuwata. The Kuwatas were stunning, imagery presented with a confidence that made their inexplicable oddities stand out that much more: I felt an urge to own every third page. The Millers brought on feelings of nostalgia more than any appreciation for the works as original art pages, although that was probably just my mood. For some reason, it was heartening to see the whiteout Miller employed. The Paul Pope pages were ridiculously huge.
* As far as I know, the Museum failed to raise enough money to make Andrew Farago shave a 1989-style Batman logo into the back of his head. I wondered if his wife, the writer and cartoonist Shaenon Garrity, was relieved, but I was told she was filming a public access TV show with Phil Foglio, which is the kind of thing you end up doing on a comics convention weekend.
* The Ed Hannigan stuff was fine. If you're near my age, you probably bought a lot of comic books with Ed Hannigan covers. With the 40 or so pieces on hand, they managed to snag what I think of as his best design -- an issue of Batman looking down on an alley way where the Caped Crusader and the Boy Wonder have just beaten down a whole crowd of typical-era punks, with a second grouping on the way. When I think of Hannigan's interior work I think of the first Cloak and Dagger story, which opens with this snazzy, one-panel street setting and contains some fine minimalist cartooning featuring the visually contrasting guest stars. They had that whole story there, so a good job in representing Hannigan's better work, I think.
* A few pieces of art from the more general part of the exhibit offered several obvious highlights. I'd never seen a Jack Kent (it looked like an original Pogo, naturally) or a William Steig original before (that one baffled me; it looked like no human hands had touched it). I'd seen some Bill Mauldin but I liked the ones they had on display quite a bit. The usual cartoon art show suspects -- Crane, Caniff, Kelly, King/Moores, Arriola were all well represented.
* Random factoid: the Cartoon Art Museum has about 6000 pieces of original art in a permanent collection. They are stored in a different, higher-security part of their property.
* I met Albert Moy later that evening, which I thought a bit humorous given the original art theme to the evening. He's been working in that field since 1982, which is long for any career in comics let alone a ruthlessly commercial one like that. He seemed like a cool guy.
* My one "This isn't like 15 years at San Diego at all" moment was watching Mark Evanier check his portable device to see if a business-related download he was doing in his hotel room was completed. Don't remember that from 1995.
* I've been given figures ranging from 20-25 people to 125-150 people going on Friday's Tiki Bar tour. No matter the bottom-line number, several went in full pirate garb.
Saturday
* Saturday: way different than Friday crowds-wise. There were more people stepping away from the convention center Saturday early afternoon than had been heading there the same time Friday. Most of the tables in the center of the show were jammed with people seeking something. By mid-afternoon I began to collect a wide array of stories about who was making money that tended as a group to trend towards the "things are going very well." The more elaborate costumes had come out, too.
* The crowds didn't go everywhere, though. Like San Diego, like various iterations of the Chicago Con, like Heroes Con 2008 and therefore I imagine like most shows, there were dead spots: one such at WonderCon was the outside row of small press artists. I don't know that there's anything that can be done about that -- people are going to go where they're gong to go -- but I always feel sorry for someone who for reasons of flow not aesthetics is seeing most people chug by without a second look.
* Someone told me a few hours after the fact that the Q&A-driven DCU Editorial panel was "the longest experience" of their life. Just saying.
* A bunch of people enthused over Greg Rucka's spotlight for its long, full and specific answers to questions asked. Rucka had just terminated his partnership with DC Comics, and was not shy in unpacking exactly why he thought this happened.
* If I had enough money to cover conventions more thoroughly, I swear my first hire wouldn't be another person to run around the con but someone to stay home and monitor the various news feeds coming out of it. Being so close up I have little idea as to what's going on, and feel I'll have some work to do on Tuesday of this week catching up with some announcement-based news for sure.
* My favorite new recurring panel is the CBLDF Live Art Jam, which I think is a great idea: a group of artists make sketches to auction off on behalf of the CBLDF while answering questions about what they're drawing or the industry generally. They switch places so that one of them is always working on the overhead. I greatly enjoyed this at San Diego and except for the fact that at CCI the table set-up made it an endearing lunchtime panel (it's the future as I once envisioned it to see dozens of teens staring at Mike Mignola drawing while eating from Bento Boxes) I had a better time at this version. When Emily Procter is done with CSI: Miami, they should hire her to play Colleen Doran drawing in public while at the same time sticking it to dumb editors and the stupidities of work-for-hire production in a southern lilt. I'd watch that show every week. Darick Robertson even told a pretty great Peter Bagge anecdote. Good panel.
* The two funny things about the Boom! panel were 1) its bizarre mix of new comics readers and super-old and jazzed up Disney comics enthusiasts, 2) the fact that Darkwing Duck is so far outside the bounds of any definition of my own childhood/adolescence that I have no attachment to it at all and the names of places and characters that thrilled some in attendance bounced off my forehead like water from a shower head. They had about 30 people there.
* The Gail Simone spotlight panel was more packed in the same room as the Boom! panel: bunches of people that seemed genuinely pleased to meet the comics writer. Simone told a funny story about nearly blowing off an early opportunity to work for Bongo. In fact, she was generally funny, although that's hardly a surprise. I thought smart her statement on Wonder Woman that it wasn't so much about figuring out the one or two things that character did really well but creating a vehicle through which multiple interpretations could be valid.
* The video is Simone talking about her entry into comics. One thing I didn't know about Simone is that her move into comics writing was basically from the on-line writing that she did about comics. I was aware of her on-line writing but when she started showing up in the credits of different books I assumed there was another track to her work to which I was not privy.
* Simone wasn't one of them, but there seemed like a lot of mainstream people talking about forthcoming independent projects, albeit in vague terms. That may just be a function of events like this one, but the sentiment that you'd want to do something of your own seemed genuine and present. The writer Geoff Johns was one person who talked about doing his own characters (which might be his first such project -- I don't follow him closely enough to know -- and might be worth noting just in terms of his being able to do so given his current corporate responsibilities); the Amanda Conner/Jimmy Palmiotti team was another.
* I attended a fine Black Cartoonists as Social Commentators panels, despite the fact that so much time was lost to trying to get the video to work. The one time the video did work, it showed a funny video by Jerry Craft where he basically yells at the black superheroes from the '70s for various offenses related to their sucking. The best line was after pointing out that Black Goliath was routinely beaten up on the cover of his own comic books, the Craft stand-in suggests that BG has to be the only superhero whose utility belt contained nothing but first aid items. The funny thing is, that video had little to do with what was great about the panel, which was hearing Darrin Bell and Keith Knight talk not about their careers, or self-publishing, or a try-anything ethos, but about the content of their work and how people had reacted to it positively and negatively over the years. I don't know Bell's work as well as I might, but I've already put aside time to go and re-examine a bunch of it. Both guys were smart and funny and despite time restraints had trenchant stories to tell. This is exactly the kind of panel I hope to see at a comics show.
* One cool thing about that panel is they had a professional moderator whose name I can't remember, a guy that was seemingly used to doing interviews on TV. He seemed completely out of place, but he was absolutely brutal in terms of shutting down questions from the audience. He should train other moderators.
* If I had greater capability to travel to do comics news stories, I'd love to go with Keith Knight when he hits Slippery Rock to speak about a cartoon that outraged the black students there. Knight spoke with great sympathy about how his cartoon, brutally misunderstood, nonetheless may have been a final straw for many of the students facing some real issues on that campus.
* I went to speak to Shaenon Garrity on the floor after the Knight/Bell panel; she was helping Phil Foglio at the show. I don't know all that many folks at WonderCon, so I kind of relished visiting the few I did. This probably isn't the best way to orient one's self towards a show like this one, but there it is.
* The Darwyn Cooke presentation was nearly packed, and even more so in its concluding moments when Star Trek people eager to see the next panel crowded into the few remaining seats. There was no A/V. Cooke's a forthright speaker.
* It was interesting to me how many more of the questions at this show focused on his Parker work as opposed to focusing on superheroes through his work on books like New Frontier. Cooke expressed some general frustration with the amount of time it takes works to be approved in the mainstream comics milieu, and admitted to outright fear shopping the Parker stuff around. He was also it seemed to me honest and funny about the primary/sole motivating factor for potentially doing occasional mainstream projects if any were to be offered -- money, and a lot of it -- while noting that most artists live in a way that they can avoid taking this kind of work. One thing that was interesting to me is that he spoke of letting his personal reaction to the Parker books set him on a new career path when that was necessary, but that he also still plans to do the original work he was shopping around a couple of years ago. One of them (a romance?) may happen sooner than later. The other (a fantasy) may wait until he feels more creatively confident taking it on.
* One thing that stuck with me was that Cooke was complimentary of Daniel Clowes more than once over the weekend, calling him the best letterer in comics at one point (Will Eisner being the best all-time and Gaspar Saladino being his favorite of the old mainstream hand-letterers), citing his work with single colors as a factor in his working on the same in the Parker books, and extolling the virtues of Like A Velvet Glove, Cast In Iron as a horror story.
* I'd like to thank the comics journalism panel for making Douglas Wolk and myself feel 10,000 years old. Graeme McMillan's career was discussed like he was the inspiration for The Front Page and he started his Fanboy Rampage in 2002.
* All of the panelists came across as articulate and engaged and each presented themselves well, including late addition Laura Hudson. I thought David Brothers was a natural moderator; anyone out there who needs one should ask him. I'd never met Kate Dacey before, so that was nice. She was formidable.
* That said, when I stopped feeling old I started feeling like I came from a different planet than most of the panelists. There was a lot of talk about generating hits and reacting to readers' concerns that are flat-out foreign to me. One thing that made me happy was there wasn't a lot of time debating over what journalism is or isn't. All of the panelists clearly practice some form of journalism, even if isn't of the Woodward/Bernstein -- or Groth/Heintjes -- variety.
* The Comics Journalism panel was the last panel of the day, and even ran a bit over.
* I saw the sartorially resplendent Phil Foglio making his way back to the convention, dressed like the mayor in a particularly fancy Dahl story. I really thought about trying to do the masquerade since San Diego's has been such a tough ticket for 10 years now, but I had a couple of verbal commitments. It's nice to know I probably could have, though.
* Walking from the convention center to Comix Experience is a great idea only if you remember that natives don't consider four-and-half blocks of walking uphill walking uphill at all. The walk down Market Street is fascinating, though.
* Comix Experience is a lovely-looking shop, maybe the paragon of a neighborhood store. I got to talk about the general, flushed state of North American comics conventions with some industry heavy-hitters (including Ron Turner), shoot the shit about Chicago comics retail of days gone by with Larry Marder and discuss what kind of comics hit with audiences and why with Justin Norman, Erik Larsen and Joe Keatinge. That was actually a very engaged discussion for people standing around holding beers and trying not to trip on some of the idiosyncratic parts of the shop's floor, with a sense that there are these really talented people that logic says should have an audience out there and that want to make comics that are absolutely flummoxed by the low sales ceiling for certain kinds of funnybooks right now.
* People at CE were happy to be drinking the fancy beer, and the food truck outside may be the greatest idea for a comics event supplement in the history of comics event supplements. Brian seemed to be enjoying himself, too, which is a great thing. It's nice to be able to see his space, and 21 years in is an accomplishment in terms of comics retail, retail generally and single-proprietor retail all at once.
* Matt Maxwell and I bummed a ride in Justin Norman's cab to the Isotope Party. Thanks, Justin. Norman told a very funny artist talking to his writer after bumping into him in the convention center bathroom story.
* Isotope's party spilled out onto its sidewalk; several folks that looks like neighborhood people out walking dogs or breaking down their bicycles stopped nearby or across the street to gape. It wasn't the biggest party the store has had, James Sime confirmed, but to my eyes it looked very, very respectable. I was frightened to go in.
* That's a lovely space, by the way. High ceilings, comfortable, modern. It seems ideal for social events like this weekend's, but I can imagine being a comics fan in my early 20s and wanting to come and hang out in a space like this one with facilitating my comics buying as a bonus.
* I have no idea why, but the Isotope party's comics-name guests (Palmiotti, Conner, Cooke) and their friends were all dressed in western garb. (I've been reminded since the initial posting that it was a Jonah Hex-related party; I guess I'm glad they didn't go with a scarring motif.) The Canadians were even Mounties. I started having Paul Gross flashbacks. When Palmiotti was giving a couple of the folks in attendance general career advice I imagined him breaking in on a pal's meeting with DC or Marvel, shooting his pistols until the contracts details were conformed.
* I really need to get to know more people on the mainstream side of things.
* I bummed a ride from Douglas Wolk's cab back to the hotel. Thanks, Douglas. Douglas is writing for Techland every week now, and they are at the very least keeping him in cab money.
* The hotel bar was once again hopping. And the Butler Bulldogs won. By the way: comics convention? Worst place to find out a basketball score ever.
Sunday
* Easter Sunday. Several people at the show asked me if I thought there would be crowds on Easter or not. No one really knows.
* Turns out they didn't have a ton to worry about. The crowds fell safely within general Sunday parameters: not as many as the very crazy Saturday but more it seemed than Friday. The floor felt busy. You mostly noticed the reduction in audience in the non-busy areas of the building. There weren't people resting up against random walls on the mezzanine levels like on Saturday, not as many panels (it seems) in danger of being crowded right out to the hallway, not as long of a line (and by 3:30, none at all!) at the eating centers. It was San Diego of 25 years ago.
* I heard that several exhibitors thought they could get in much earlier than they ended up being let in. Don't know if that's a big deal or not.
* By the way, the Moscone food stands seem superior in every way to the San Diego Convention Center food stands. I didn't eat at them, but I bought some water near the end of Sunday and they had actual food-looking food behind the counter. I loved the proximity to the panel room areas, too. Why wouldn't you want to grab a bite to eat and then go watch cartoons or see Ian Sattler pontificate or whatever?
* When I walked in today a small circle of journalists had surrounded David Glanzer, including one gentleman absolutely incensed about the performance of Travel Planners during their 2010 hotel lottery a few weeks back. An announcement about CCI's feate should be coming pretty soon. I remain convinced that San Diego is the best spot for the show for now, so I hope it stays there.
* It was good to hear that Heidi MacDonald felt as old as Douglas and I did at that comics journalism panel.
* At least one well-known professional flew home Saturday late to spend Easter with their family and hey, good for them.
* Talked to some of the Artist's Alley folks. Lark Pien was there, holding forth with a table full of stuff that was way more APE and MoCCA than maybe the entire rest of the room combined. I also met Miriam Libicki, which was nice, and she gave me a new comic with a different look to it, a book I have yet to devour.
* I talked to a non-representative mix of about 20 retailers, exhibitors and industry organizations. All seemed pretty positive about the show except two that were in what I would call, looking around, not-prime locations. People with a specific focus -- the retailer that was there to sell newer comics under cost, the artist there to give out cards directing people to their to their web site -- seemed particularly pleased with the outcome. I think that makes a certain amount of sense, to ratchet down your presence and goals at a show if the show is less huge. I love the big-publisher presences, but I also think one editor, one talent, one book strategies might be even better suited to the not-humongous shows.
* I don't think there's a whole lot that can be done about that, incidentally, beyond the kind of baseline realizations that I'm sure shows like this make. For instance: it seems to me that most of the TV and film autograph people leave a couple of hours early -- I'm not certain why -- so you wouldn't want to count on them driving traffic to a general location for an entire day. Convention flow is a mysterious beast. I might suggest for this particular show and this particular convention that the far wall -- the part of the exhibitor groups that are up against an actual wall, be potentially discounted. You're just not going to have people on the ends, and that last row in particular was like an express highway by which people went from one place to another.
* I saw one panel on Sunday. The Pogo panel wasn't Evanier/Kelly-driven, so I took a pass. I was going to go to the Jonathan Ross panel, but it disappeared when I went to the bathroom. I'm not kidding. Not sure what happened there.
* That leaves the one panel I did attend, the SLG editorial panel. It's nice to see a familiar face and hear a friendly voice. Dan Vado was in comics long before I was (SLG's 25th anniversary is next year). I couldn't tell from most of the video presentations if the comics being promoted were of much interest, but it was good to hear that James Turner's Warlord Of Io will have trade collection this summer.
* Dan also reported on the designer and cartoonist Scott Saavedra's health, saying that he had his good periods and bad periods but that he was doing okay. That was good to hear.
* There's no convention experience that can't be improved by buying 10-12 comic books you want to read for $1 apiece.
* Here's something I never experienced at a comics convention before: publishers giving copies of books to press to take home because they didn't want to pack and ship them back to the home office. That's a very BEA thing, actually. I'd like to encourage this, but the way the airlines are I'm not sure I want any more books, either.
* I missed seeing Ground Zero Of The Direct Market retailer Bob Beerbohm, but the young ladies at the booth said his surgery was successful and that he was roaming around the show somewhere. So that's good news. Given all the time I talked about first generation retailers this weekend, seeing Bob's booth was a particularly nice ending point.
* I left the convention at 4:05, with a promise to try and meet up with some folks for dinner -- on Easter, I'm thinking this might be more difficult than the usual convention dinner, but we'll see. As you're reading this I should be either en route to New Mexico or already there, in time to watch the Butler/Duke game.
* So that was my WonderCon.
* Overall, I think WonderCon's a pretty good show, or at least my experience of it was pleasurable. It seems to have benefited a great deal from the general surge in the public's appetite for conventions. I mean, seriously, think about this. Ten years ago we had like 1.5-2.5 conventions in terms of super-healthy geek-focused mainstream shows. Now we have at least 10 that do okay enough that it doesn't seem ridiculous for a person to spend a weekend reporting on them, and maybe even another 10 if you throw everything of 1998 size and greater into the bucket. My guess is that in an entertainment world driven by geek phenomena, those who like them are encouraged to have their own experience with as many of them that hold interest. It's a very different impulse than why my friends and I visited Chicago in the late '80s -- that was mostly to buy comics we couldn't find anywhere else.
* A number of people asked me if I thought WonderCon was a big regional show or a smaller national. It feels to me like a smaller national show. 1) If I walked into the big room from some sort of magic portal and didn't know what city I was in, I would not be able to guess. 2) Companies with national reach made announcements here. (I asked David Glanzer if conventions encourage publishers and creators to make announcements and he says that while other might Comic-Con does not do this. So even if the announcements were modest, the fact that they existed at all says something about how exhibitors value the show as a press platform.) 3) There were enough guests of high enough quality that it seemed -- barely, but still -- like a national show. It just seemed a smaller version of one.
* So what does that mean? Many folks have asserted the virtues of WonderCon being a smaller show. Many of those good things are obvious, I think: greater ease of access to certain creators and experiences, more cohesions amongst the pros in attendance, a general reduction in hassle and cost, a greater opportunity to make a splash with a project that would be denied the stage at an established, larger show.
* In doing a final analysis, however, you also have to take into consideration the down side of a smaller show. There were two big ones for me. The first is that the show was focused primarily on the expression of mainstream comics and the pop culture that resembles mainstream comics. There was very little in the way of comics of the kind I tend to regularly buy on hand, and no natural programming I would follow. This wasn't a hassle because I have broad tastes and it's fun to try all sorts of thing on a comics weekend. But I really couldn't recommend the show to my friend Bob Levin, say, or the vast majority of my Seattle comics reading friends, or even my other family members. It might be nice if the con forged a relationship with one of the bigger art-comics publishers just to have a more pronounced presence like that at the show. The legendary Ron Turner was there, and so was Last Gasp, but he didn't feel there-there. Another strategy might be to focus on a specific release rather than a cartoonist or kind of cartooning and have someone there supporting that: like the new Jaime Hernandez art book, or the new James Sturm book from D&Q. Very focused presentations seemed to do pretty well in Artist's Alley in terms of moving books, and would maybe have more of a chance to make an impression on the show than a gaggle of small-pressers might. Given San Francisco's big presence on the art comics scene and identity as the underground comix capital, it seems like a wasted opportunity not to have a small presence.
* And guys, I know they do APE, but that's a very different kind of show, a type that calls for a specific focus. I think of WonderCon as a national show instead of a focused one, and while I think the general vibe will remain capes and cowls, I think some attention should be paid to comics of all types.
* Ditto manga. It's weird that the biggest publisher in town doesn't have a focused, meaningful presence. It shouldn't have to be feast or famine at these things, and again, a focus on a single book or publishing effort might be the way to approach things in the future.
* The other thing about a smaller show is that there are fewer surprises. The show's just not big enough for there to be this gigantic pool of undiscovered things and people and talents for you to stumble into by accident -- at least not without a super- super-broad screening process. If you don't see something in the announced guests and the announced programming for a show like this one, I'll suggest you may not enjoy yourself. While I might make initial plans to attend on the strength of past shows, I can't see making final plans until I double-checked to make sure I had enough to do. For instance, I went to a couple of Darwyn Cooke-related panels this year, as he's an artist that interests me. I can't imagine a lot of people in his kind of guest slot would from year to year. If Cooke or someone like Cooke weren't a guest I'm not sure how I would have spent that time.
* I thought there were elements of the show that just weren't sharp, which is sort of surprising given how the show's been around for 20 years or so. For instance, there was an awful lot of malfunctioning equipment. I saw maybe eight panels over the three days and five of them had significant A/V problems, and in two cases the visual presentation never worked. Considering how smoothly executed the show managed to be otherwise -- the security people were pretty great, I thought -- the constant stream of friendly guys swarming different podiums proved to be extremely disappointing. There were other things, too, some of which I already mentioned. I thought some of the panels had an awful lot of chatty people in the audience. It might be nice if major announcements and news were posted broadsheet form by the convention organizers; I know I missed a ton of stuff. Little touches could mean a lot.
* Much more importantly, the general identity of the show could use some fine-tuning: "We're like Comic-Con but smaller" works in some ways but doesn't in others. It assures quality, but may not convince someone to attend on the unique features of the Bay Area show. I would love to see WonderCon distinguish itself from other shows in some public way -- the way that HeroesCon has established itself as a drawing show, or Chicago used to function as a mainstream comics beachhead. Not only that, I think they should do so with greater definition and more force. If there were only five-six shows out there, being a good one -- or a modest version of a great one -- might be enough for people to make room for it in their schedules. With 20 shows out there you have to be a good show and you have to be a unique show, too, I think. There has to be some way to conceptualize this show where there's some drama and interest in how it turns out. If they can't figure anything else out, they should go with "We're like Comic-Con but better," and see where that challenge takes them.
* One thing a number of people expressed to me is that the con needs to settle in on firm dates; if it's a convention center problem and it could very well be a convention problem, they need to play hardball until those dates firm up. Easter is probably not the best idea, and will likely keep this show from exceeding to any great extent past last year's attendance figures. But the general time of the year seems to work just fine.
* I think it was a strong show. I think there's a sturdy base from which to build a much stronger show. WonderCon has natural advantages: a great city with a convention center right in a traversable neighborhood, strong retailers, a location people want to visit and access to the CCI Rolodex with a pre-summer slot to offer film people. It's still way, way, mainstream comics, though, and I don't see it like a mini-San Diego as much as a truncated one. To put the whole thing to you another way, C2E2 will have to be significantly formidable right out of the gate to be considered the Spring show, at least for now. But there's work to be done.
Thanks to the good folks of WonderCon and all of my friends and colleagues who were generous with their time and assistance; my apologies to the drunken man I enraged over by Glide Memorial United Methodist.
This is kind of a messy list. My longtime desire to find a way to distinguish works that are brand new/brand new and those that operate in my mind as more of brand new work with a past history on-line or serialized or in a different language has come back to bite me on the ass. Luckly, there's no list jail out there (as much as some may argue with a passion that convinces otherwise.) I just have to kind of feel my way though. I'll also admit that in the case of Eddie Campbell's work, there's not only a genuine feeling that the work as collected is a supplementary presentation of those comics, I'll admit I wanted to find a way to make it a clear #1 in a year where in new works I could find so many works that made a case for the top spot on that list.
Campbell's book is extraordinary, and I'm kind of at a lost why the comics readership in general hasn't been spending the weeks since its publication sitting around stupefied by how entertaining and clever and frequently affecting it is. The thing about putting it into one place that surprised me was how not smoothly it sometimes flowed, how it revealed Campbell's circling around certain points and life experiences and working through the same issues in different guises. The highest compliment I can give Alec -- and this is no means a way to denigrate its considerable surface qualities because the pleasure of its company can be remarkable and life-affirming -- is that Campbell's work reflects not just a life as lived but mirrors the process of understanding that life: casting one's romantic past with as much gauze and Vaseline on the lens as possible, doubting your own good intentions, realizing that the accrued detail of your experiences has sent you in a different direction and trying to understand that, seeing yourself in the struggle of peers and family and friends. I look forward to re-reading it soon.
As for the other works, I thought the Plunder Island sequence was as good as my memory of it, which puts the latest volume of Fantagraphics' work with Thimble Theatre at the top of another ruthless year in that comics' realm. I'm a huge fan of some of the late 1920s sequences in Little Orphan Annie as that book settled into its more effective slow-building soap opera narratives. The Love and Rockets material is strong enough to be any list's #1, diminished for a list like this one only in that unlike a lot of comics the L&R material doesn't ever feel to me to have a primary home, a format above all others. That IDW's Bloom County book is where it is stresses how strong a year this was. While I have the typical child of the Reagan years' nostalgic enthusiasm for Breathed when he got going -- even if you preferred Doonesbury it was fun to have a strip in the paper that all your friends liked, and that had the kind of energy and momentum that one usually ascribes to a series of giggles -- it's worth noting that Breathed's attempt at national syndication started miles and miles from where he'd eventually settle into a sweet spot. That made this first volume kind of a difficult book to pull off, but it's also one I'd suggest for anyone on at least the library borrowing level for anyone wanting to understand comic strips and how they development after they start.
What else? Well, that Humbug book was a gift. Those guys weren't exactly working in a comedic milieu that flatters an easy reading of the work now, but the craft of it fairly punches you in the face. I wonder if it will be easy to read the moment I can stop thinking about how amazing it is to finally be reading this material. I bet so.
*****
*****
*****
Three Books More People Should Have Talked About (In No Particular Order)
This is the one section that could, ever year, be 25,000 entries long. Save for perhaps the top manga series, Blondie and Jeff Kinney's comics hybrids, I bet there's someone out there that feels for every work there's many, many more readers to be had. Giant corporations with cross-media applications in mind bet billions on it in 2009. At any rate, you should probably consider these more emblematic choices than the only choices.
Eleanor Davis' Secret Science Alliance debut gets marks for being the promising young cartoonists' first comics story of significant length. That it's a decidedly commercial work rather than something that more directly builds on Davis' well-executed short stories may be vexing for some of those that have been paying attention to her development. On the other hand, that's the marketplace, and more to the point there's a lot of virtue to found in this approach as well. Jess Moynihan's Follow Me is the classic case of a book from a small publisher where about 2/3 of the way through it you might be convinced it's the greatest book you ever read and after you're done you realize you don't see into what the cartoonist was doing with enough to make a strong argument beyond liking it. Amanda Vahaki and Lisa Hanawalt's book were like this for me in 2009 as well. Josh Simmons' self-published Cockbone is a classic split-opinion book. There are sections that seemed obvious, even staged for effect in the way that you can imagine the cartoonist's friends laughing through a private joke or two, but there are also two or three moments of sublime, existential horror. No one mines that more effectively than Simmons, and I don't think the fight for second place is close enough to what Simmons accomplishes with regularity for it to be worth making a list..
I fell very, very behind on my prose about comics this year, but these two books -- the first one through a DVD aid -- have the huge advantage of providing a veritable mountain of material in addition to their focus on a worth subject. It's weird to suggest a couple of books where you could almost have a relationship to the work they present for your consideration completely divorced from the way they're looking at it themselves, but that's publishing in the modern age.
*****
*****
*****
Best Comics (First Run Or Definitively Collected) Of 2009
If you're invested in comics and their expansion as a preferred medium of expression for serious, excellent cartoonists, I can't imagine a better capstone to the decade just finished than the late, late December release Footnotes In Gaza. Everything that Sacco, one of the best cartoonists, has come to do well can be found in its pages. Some of the more lacerating asides, like the mother who speaks of watching her child trying to put on pants with one hand, occasionally float to the surface of memory, and I'm not going to shake its central thesis on how tragedy builds on tragedy and the limits of historical inquiry for a long, long time.
Others: I went back and forth on the Crumb after an initial reading, but after subsequent ones I can't figure out why. Genesis seems similar to me in many way to Pim & Francie in terms of accruing power through the quality of drawing stretched across this incredibly sophisticated storytelling framework. I had the opposite reaction with Asterios Polyp that I had to Genesis, and I honestly wish that Mazzucchelli had done more when the book came out to talk about it, because sometimes I'm not as sophisticated a reader as I'd like to be and I could use the help. I suspect that the key to my appreciation for Asterios Polyp will come down to how much some of the surface qualities of the characters as displayed are commentary on their facility. I'm not sure how much I enjoyedA Drifiting Life, but I've never seen a work in any medium capture the dream-like, everything but the guilt goes away quality of creative obsession as effectively as Tatsumi did there. Kate Beaton made the primary list this year for making me laugh more frequently than any cartoonist not named Richard Thompson. I like the way she draws those little, giddy arms. Vanessa Davis's on-line comics evinced a quality greater than the sum of their parts, and if I were a better critic I might be able to put some of that into words. Like Jesse Reklaw's minis, I thought Davis' work presented a world with which I was completely unfamiliar but provided enough specific detail I felt grounded the entire visit. Finally, I thought Kevin Canno's Far Arden received more play for its formal constraints -- its origin as a series of 24-Hour comics, its funny and literal sound effects -- than it did for its world-building and capacity for melancholy.
*****
*****
*****
A Final Few Notes On Inclusion Issues, Comics I Didn't Read, Etc.
I broke most with critics generally on The Photographer, which is work I failed to enjoy or even admire artistically to such an extent I honestly feel like I'm missing something. If First Second were to send an extraction team to re-program me on the matter, I'd go along just to hear the most convincing argument available to me for the other side. Most of what I read on the work didn't going into the why and how of the superlatives afforded it. Plenty of people liked The Hunter, although through personal conversation and the occasionals essay I've discovered the critics I value most highly didn't seem to enjoy it as much as I did. The question for me wasn't whether or not Cooke's stylized take was the most appropriate imagining an out-of-time bullpen from which to puck any writer and artist, but what Cooke's approach brought to the adaptation. I thought it extremely pleasurable to read. Work like Cooke's and Stark's invites consideration on what sumptuousness in art really means. I also thought Parker observant when it came to the nature of its lead character's shift in attitudes and belief. I look forward to the next in the series.
One prominent alt-comic I ended up not reading, and one that I intended to, was the comics section to the McSweeney's newspaper project San Francisco Panorama.
There were superhero comic books I liked in 2009; I just didn't like any enough to make any of the above lists (I may have to revise my opinion when I double-check on when the Rocketeer collection from IDW came out; I'm not on-line right now with any regularity). New superhero work I liked included Seaguy: Slaves of Mickey Eye, Robert Kirkman's constantly ratcheting-up Invincible and the Brubaker/Fraction books at Marvel. I will also admit that I did not read a ton of manga this year. Extolling the virtues of a quirky mid-list series like Cromartie High School was at one point a few years back can be so rhetorically useful that it's almost worth doing even if you're not fully in support of the comic in question. There are too many manga readers to call me on it if I tried to fake it, though. While I did read a number of mini-comics I may have been reading the wrong ones. I seem to remember a new John Hankiewicz comic I enjoyed, but I wasn't able to find a virtual footprint for it before shutting down the Internet. One general regret I have making this list is that I did so largely without the virtue of on-line access or proximity to my books in the hope that it would disqualify anything that didn't rest firmly in my memory. I know that I enjoyed certain works that came out in the Cold Heat universe, but damned if I can remember what they are. It's a fantastic time for an art form when you can just forget about some of its quality works, and led mostly by continuing booms in archival strip reprints and an expansive, expressive alt- and art-comics milieu, it's clearly a great time for this medium.
The top comics-related news stories from March 27 to April 2, 2010:
1. Dick Giordano, an important cover artist of the 1950s, a key editor of the 1960s and 1980s, and again a crucial artist of the 1970s, all in mainstream North American comics, dies at 77.
2. Tahawwur Hussain Rana maintains his not-guilty plea in charges related to his accused co-conspiratorial role in the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks and the Mickey Mouse plot.
3. Editorial cartoons enjoy a particularly coarse week (1, 2).
Winner Of The Week Comic-Con. They want to sell out, right?
Quote Of The Week
"Comicpalooza was devoted to comics as entertainment. Virtually everything there was related to popular fannish genres and generally to the lowest common denominator examples of those genres. And that's OK." -- Robert Boyd
*****
today's cover is from the 1940s-1950s mainstream comics publisher Avon
Missed It: FPI Trying Significant Back Issues Strategy In Birmingham Store
I almost missed this short post at the FPI Blog about a new strategy they're trying in one of the stores. That new strategy is back issues, of all things. I love this not just because I support retailers trying any and all things in maximizing sales at their stores, but because I love shopping back issues at comics shops. It's one of the unique pleasures of going to a comics shop. As much as I was told for years that I'm supposed to be more in love with stores that eschew such old-fashioned functions, and as much as back-issues strategy are usually pretty lame if not completely divorced from reality in terms of pricing and freshening the selection, I still look at them in every store I visit. I hope they're able to put into practice a strategy that works.
WonderCon 2010 Begins Today In SF
Comic-Con International's WonderCon gets underway today. That's a convention that at the very least has been sort of the odd man out on the discussion of today's convention fan-gathering and direct-direct sales industry. As I understand it, WonderCon is a mostly straight-ahead mainstream comics and related media con held in one of the great cities of the world for alternative culture. As the Comic-Con organization's big spring offering it's also designed to complement that show with much of the sames sorts of offerings as CCI. This has put it into the odd position of obliquely competing with the new Chicago show C2E2, although the two shows won't likely compete directly. If you'll recall CR's interview with Reed's Lance Fensterman, he went so far as to describe his two big shows (Chicago, New York) and Comic-Con as a potential Big Three, which is understandable, only I imagine CCI could potentially have a different opinion on which shows they'd list 1-2-3 with CCI as the big one in the middle.
Another weird thing about WonderCon is that it's often presented as a balm for people roughed up by the surge of interest in San Diego. This tends to be expressed through statements like "WonderCon is like Comic-Con 15 years ago." This is always hard for me to figure out, because when I think of San Diego 15 years ago I'm suddenly afraid my WonderCon is going to involve sleeping in a room with seven dudes and watching guys from the early seasons of The Real World pick up chicks at a miniature golf course while I'm sitting in a circle with a bunch of people I barely know passing around a joint someone brought with them on the plane (you suck, Osama). I don't want to relive experiences from 15 years ago; I could barely tolerate them back then. I'm no longer ready for the Marvelution, if you know what I mean.
That's right: I said "my WonderCon." Unless something has gone horribly awry, I'm in San Francisco this morning. To be very clear: WonderCon is flying me in as a media guest and putting me up. This is good because otherwise I couldn't afford to go, and hopefully good for them because I'll be paying close attention all weekend and will write about a show and a scene that I don't understand. (I'll be writing about it my own way, too; I'm thinking a one-and-done article on Monday and maybe a supplementary piece or two. I'm not the go-to guy for tweets from the DCU panel.) I hope that I've built up enough trust you'll forgive me taking them up on the offer for the opportunity to write about this show and otherwise get some hands-on work done. They paid for my presence, but they didn't pony up the extra $6.95 (per day) necessary to purchase my opinion, so I'm good there. If not, please forgive me and skip those articles and concentrate on some of the others. Jyllands-Posten has yet to fork over a dime.
Missed It: Jake Forbes’ Mighty Howl
Longtime fan turned pro and still fan Jake Forbes takes a few moments to scream at manga publishers, North American licensed rights holders and fans, in I believe that order. The organizing principle is the mass of free, on-line translated works that exist: the original publishers don't plan ahead in a way that would reduce their impact, the North American licensed rights holder have failed to create compelling product that might compete with free on-line work, fans take "free" for granted and as a birthright as opposed to an active choice. It's a sensible assault, and for most of us a window into a world of comics reading with which we have no experience. I think the overall message is that you can change a culture with that kind of activity as an expression, but it takes an enormous amount of work. At least that's my takeaway. I'm having a hard time wrapping my mind around the other position enough to know if I'm engaging it fairly from my own.
Random Comics News Story Round-Up
* Andy Rooney gently rants about the funny pages. It's not difficult to imagine him saying that the funny pages aren't all that funny, and now you don't have to imagine it. This is his second comics-related rant this year after the one about Bill Mauldin. Rooney is also, of course, the average age for a devoted comics fan in North America.
* one-time funnybook industry veteran and long-time writer about comics Robert Boyd writes well about two Houston mini-comics artists: Kelly Deanne Robertson and Ted Closson.
* here's something cute: a Ramones design-influenced t-shirt for the two-shop chain Comix Connection has itself been bootlegged. I'm all for bootlegging comics shop t-shirts and the day I win the lottery will wear nothing but, although I suppose that it's either the Ramones element that attracted the copiers or they outright think it's a band.
* finally, I'm just now catching up with some of the personal Dick Giordano tributes, like this one from James Owen that ably captures how a lot of people our age regarded him: as artist and businessman in equal measure. I was really struck by the Journal interview Gary Groth did with Giordano about labeling, and how relatively forthright the industry veteran was in trying to answer the specific questions placed in front of him. You don't see a whole lot of that anymore.
Variety: SLM Suit Dismissed Varietyis reporting that a lawsuit filed from the last men standing in the midst of wreckage of Stan Lee's ill-fated Stan Lee Media set-up against the company's namesake over Lee's ownership stake in various Marvel characters has been dismissed by a federal judge. The suit was brought by Jose Abadin and Christopher Belland and the ruling was issued by US District Court Judge Paul A. Crotty.
The article cites two primary reasons for the dismissal. First that the filers did not acquire their shares in the company until after Lee transferred his interest in the company to Marvel; second that securities claims against Lee had already been settled with the two men being part of that settlement. This provided something of an anti-climax as the decision didn't seem to directly engage what the suit and its backers suggested was its primary logic -- that in settling with Lee in order to get its movie house in order Marvel had acknowledged Lee's interest in several characters, but that in putting together his media company Lee had assigned all rights in advance of any settlement he could make with Marvel. To such issues, Variety notes that the copyright claims were rejected in part due to statute of limitations in California law that limited lifetime pacts to seven years, and because Lee has been using his own characters since 1999 without legal objection until relatively recently.
It's questionable whether anything about Crotty's decision will pacify persons that feel the assignation argument remains worth repeating, at least as a rhetorical club, but it would also seem that with every decision, in what the judge acknowledged was a sprawling effort across several courts, potential legal teeth that could be provided that stance are being removed.
Comic Album On The Government Dime
I have a hard time reading some of the features that emanate from the French-language news clearinghouse ActuaBD.com -- there's what I think is a whimsical tone that they use that I find very discouraging -- but I believe this article is talking about a comic that will be out this September about the subject of French identity, particularly as experienced by new citizens. Seeing as integration issues are a hot-button topic all over the world, the feature kind of popped at me, but it also brought to mind the recent flap when a government agency in the U.S. sought an in-house cartoonist to perform graphics work and improve moral. While there doesn't seem to be the same problem in France, the article winks that the talent involved will not divulge their advance, which as government work would come from taxpayers' funds.
Missed It: ABC News On Strip Market
I totally whiffed on bringing attention to this ABC News Report on the tough market for comic strips out there. They spend some time on an interesting area: the building hit comic strip, specifically Lio. Strips like that have sold in enough papers their continued survival is no longer really in question, but how big a hit they become depends on how much momentum they maintain and for how long -- how many papers they add in their expansive stage. While I'm sure the distressed economy is hitting those kinds of strips, I'd say it's even worse than suggested in that the market is much less dependable than it used to be for papers adding clients like mad, and it's been that way for five to ten years now.
* Andy Burns of Biff Bam Popvisits Wizard Entertainment's Toronto Comic Con. His observations tend towards what I was seeing in most fan photos of the event, especially the Friday of the three-day show:
I arrived at the Direct Energy Centre on Friday night at around 6 pm, six hours after the doors had opened. I walked in with my mouth agape. The floor was virtually barren. The logical part of me thought that this made sense. A bad location. A ridiculous start time. Little in the way of compelling programming. What could anybody expect? Had the proper thought been put into the event, the doors would have opened at 4 or 5 pm, and stayed open until 9. I think that more people would have likely arrived and your dealers and celebs wouldn't have been sitting around all day dealing with sparse crowds."
Yikes. I've been pretty hard on the show, but in the con's defense, it looks like it was only Friday that was ridiculously empty, at least one photo has surfaced that indicates more than a few hundred people, secondary estimations were in the 3000 range rather than the 20,000 range, and they've changed next year's time to better engage that reality.
* speaking of Toronto, Jamie Coville sent along some pictures of his own, here. Walter Dickinson sent in this YouTube video. And that's about enough from that show.
* not comics: remember that movie that was going to be made about the Center For Cartoon Studies? According to an e-mail I received, I guess they're trying to get some money raised through Kickstarter.com to facilitate that project moving forward. This site isn't the church bulletin board, and I still claim if I start listing individual fund-raisers for projects in and out of comics except in special newsworthy cases I will quickly go mad, but I bet you could find it if you wanted to give them some money.
* not comics: when people write in to have me take letters they wrote me off the site I'm happy to do so, but what always strikes me as odd is that any creator thinks I want to have a personal dialogue with them whether I love their work or don't like it at all. That sounds mean, I know, but I swear it's not intended that way. It's just that I don't write a review for a creator, I write it for everyone but the creator, so any exchange that takes place where those people can't see it doesn't work for me.
* hey, I didn't mean anything nasty or confrontational or even to make some sort of oblique comment on the act of artistic referencing when I pointed out that whatever character that is on the cover of Uncanny X-Men #522 looks like alt-comics superstar Phoebe Gloeckner. I don't care about any of that stuff; I just thought it looked a lot like Phoebe and that made me laugh. I mean, you have to admit: she does sort of draw way too well to be homo sapien.
The Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group Freedom House 
* congratulations to Darryl Cunningham 
Seventeen Pulitzer Prize winners 
Speaking for the con, David Glanzer thanked the group for the offer and said that it would be part of the ongoing decision-making process that's expected to end soon. If nothing else, this puts a new light on that process seemingly being extended a few more weeks -- if that means one of the offers is improved, it's smart for them to do.
The CBLDF's sleek new blog set-up 
* Ken Parille 
* a bunch of stuff was launched recently over a convention weekend that feature Stumptown in Portland, Oregon, and SPACE in Columbus. Jim Rugg was in the American Midwest moving copies of his Rambo 3.5, and you can pick it up at future show 
DuBay edited a host of Warren publications, from classic Creepy, Eerie and Vampirella to key peripherals and second-stage publications 1984/1994, The Rook and The Spirit. His writing credits during the entire period but especially in the late 1970s and early 1980s were such his arguably became the dominant scripting voice in that line's magazines. With longtime creative partner Budd Lewis he created the line's iconic late-period character, The Rook, a western-tinged, science-fiction oriented time-traveler whose adventures in obvious ways broke from the classic Warren horror approach.
* 
* Christopher Allen takes on what I think is the very best book about comics, 
A cartoon by Molly Norris in support of South Park creators and writers of Muhammed satire Trey Parker and Matt Stone has led to the declaration in various social media that May 20 be designated "Everybody Draw Muhammed Day." There's a hitch, though: Norris doesn't want to take part. In a story widely reported on various culture-related sites and in the wire services that pay attention to them, but I think 
* the longtime writer-about-comics Charles Hatfield 
The only huge, complex economic system with which I have a daily relationship is the comics industry's Direct Market While it's admittedly absurd to compare the empires of Caesar and Geppi in too many ways, I think it's worth asking just how fragile the DM is due to factors of complexity: its byzantine structure, say, the at-once gigantic spread of publications and formats it's supposed to serve and tiny gradations between certain products -- this comic here is for fans of Wolverine, while this one is for fans of dark Wolverine -- it's asked to honor. There may be something to how the DM historically has suffered some of its most severe hits during times of rapid expansion (the black and white boom, Deathmate), and that you can count on one hand those events that seem to have greatly benefited the system in recent years (Watchmen post-trailer boom; Obama comic books).
Comics isn't where music is for a lot of reasons. For one thing, I imagine it's harder to get a bunch of hard-headed oddballs to follow trends than it is writers about other forms, forms that tend to attract more rational folks for a slew of more rational reasons up to and including the possibility of reward. Getting writers to do something is herding cats, getting writers about comics to do something is casting cats in a stage performance of Arcadia. And yet anyone who refuses to see at least one thing in comics that relates to something in that speech is either lying or wool-hat stupid. Nor is it much of a leap to see how things could get a lot more like the music industry as the bigger companies take a renewed interest in protecting/maximizing their respective catalogs; it's already a different game for the book publishers and their imprints involved. The acts of reporting and criticism being compelled to become commodities is a show that's constantly on stage, I'm not immune to it, and maximizing traffic was certainly much more on the minds of the folks attending the comics coverage panel I saw earlier this year than any qualitative issue. 
Miscellaneous
* Marc-Oliver Frisch 
* Dirk Deppey 
* missed it: Sparkplug 
* Johnny Ryan 
* because they love us, D&Q 
* these Sean Murphy Dr. Strange sketches 
* okay, this is the oddest idea for a post I've come across in some time, but it's a fun one: Ken Parille 
* the Athens, Georgia-based small press comics show 
According to the article, the content she objected to in the filing March 15 dealt with the characters' gambling, their alcohol and tobacco use and the "sexual situation" between characters. The filing asks that the material be removed from all students.
Local media has spotlighted one of them: the story of Reed's new show in competition with 
* Sean T. Collins got some new Bowie sketches at last weekend's MoCCA Festival, 
This feeling struck me again re-reading Emile, a 32-page short story originally published in Ego Comme X #7, and 
* 
* if you want to read a humorous take on the show, I very much liked Peggy Burns' 
* 
* the nice folks at Cartoon Books have revealed their cover for the next issue of RASL. I really enjoy RASL in a way I don't enjoy any other comic right now.
This is semi-startling on a couple of levels. First, I believed, and therefore I'm guessing others might have also thought this, that the $3.99 price point was something that was sprinkled about various lines on the big crossovers and most popular titles but hadn't started to dominate -- say 20-25 percent of the books in that realm. Second, there's just so much that feels wrong about the $3.99 price point. I have yet to hear anybody put together a forward-thinking, positive rationale for this strategy -- a 33 percent price hike during a time of economic stresses when the comics have never been more profitable the way they're leveraged across the board and nearly all the major players are as stable and non-desperate for cash as any time in the last two decades. The justifications for it feel like a teenager deciding to drive an increasing number of her errands at 90 mph and admitting this is crazy but pointing out they've managed to do this so far without totaling the car. In other words, there's been no rationale expressed at all. Even the standard mainstream comics fob-offs for bad behavior -- this is what you guys support, we'll just make the comics worth the greater amount -- ring hollow to me. What choice do the fan have but to support certain price points, how long will they, how can we tell there isn't bailing out of purchases elsewhere (have profits matched the price increase?) and has anyone really seen a 33 percent upgrade in comic book quality recently?
* Jeet Heer 
The headline pretty much says it all. Joe Ruby and Ken Spears along with Sid and Marty Krofft are going to see if there's a bigger media life for some the reams of conceptual designs that Jack Kirby did for the company in his later years. Like most Kirby fans, I've seen smatterings of this stuff over the years. While none of it leaps out at me as automatic tent-pole movie property material, a lot of it has that Kirby touch and it'd be fun to live in a world where stuff that consistently energetic had a second life. Mark Evanier 
* 
That's pretty much the content of the press release 
Ms. reports that the alt-weekly cartoonist Jen Sorensen (Slowpoke) 
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The guy behind me on the Jaime line, 
* I still have a difficult time figuring out what's going on at TCJ.com, but 
As for analysis, what I'm hearing back from about a dozen or so people is disappointment about individual nominations. A few are targeted as just lousy nominees, probably most vocally one for James Robinson's writing on a superhero book called Cry For Justice. (Robinson's response 
* Drawn and Quarterly reminds us that there's a new Melvin the Monster collection out the best way they possibly could: 
The cartoonist/educator won't know about our personal slams and salty insults because 
* 
* I haven't read too many interviews with Robert Kirkman off the regular campaign trail of major comics magazines and news sites, so it's nice to read 
* a fit-looking, earnest and personable 
* The 
* Comix Experience is a lovely-looking shop, maybe the paragon of a neighborhood store. I got to talk about the general, flushed state of North American comics conventions with some industry heavy-hitters (including Ron Turner), shoot the shit about Chicago comics retail of days gone by with Larry Marder and discuss what kind of comics hit with audiences and why with Justin Norman, Erik Larsen and Joe Keatinge. That was actually a very engaged discussion for people standing around holding beers and trying not to trip on some of the idiosyncratic parts of the shop's floor, with a sense that there are these really talented people that logic says should have an audience out there and that want to make comics that are absolutely flummoxed by the low sales ceiling for certain kinds of funnybooks right now. 
Another weird thing about WonderCon is that it's often presented as a balm for people roughed up by the surge of interest in San Diego. This tends to be expressed through statements like "WonderCon is like Comic-Con 15 years ago." This is always hard for me to figure out, because when I think of San Diego 15 years ago I'm suddenly afraid my WonderCon is going to involve sleeping in a room with seven dudes and watching guys from the early seasons of The Real World pick up chicks at a miniature golf course while I'm sitting in a circle with a bunch of people I barely know passing around a joint someone brought with them on the plane (you suck, Osama). I don't want to relive experiences from 15 years ago; I could barely tolerate them back then. I'm no longer ready for the Marvelution, if you know what I mean.
* one-time funnybook industry veteran and long-time writer about comics Robert Boyd 
* not comics: if I were in New York, 
