March 31, 2016
Go, Look: Adam Vick
posted 5:30 pm PST |
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Assembled, Zipped, Transferred And Downloaded: News From Digital
By Tom Spurgeon
* there is little I like more than Gary Tyrrell's look at comics shows from a webcomics perspective. That a show can be analyzed in terms of component participation makes it always seem a little bigger and grander.
Here he talks MoCCA Festival.
*
new web site for Library Of American Comics coming. That's been strong content-wise for a long while, so I'm glad to see them pay attention to the other aspects of it.
*
the Broken Frontier anthology goes digital.
* finally,
it's great to have Jessica Campbell back actively doing comics. She's posting them on-line in anticipation of a book from Koyama Press.
posted 5:25 pm PST |
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If I Were In Pittsburgh, I’d Go To This
posted 5:20 pm PST |
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If I Were In NYC, I’d Go To This
posted 5:20 pm PST |
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If I Were In NYC, I’d Go To This
posted 5:20 pm PST |
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If I Were In Cleveland, I’d Go To This
posted 5:20 pm PST |
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If I Was In St. Louis, I’d Go To This
posted 5:20 pm PST |
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Go, Look: Neal Obermeyer
posted 5:10 pm PST |
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Random Comics News Story Round-Up
* Todd Klein on
Superman #48.
* go listen: "
Religion And Comic Books: A Tangled Web."
* festivals extra:
Linework NW has added a boutique retailer to its convention line-up; they'll be in the basement of that nice neighborhood hall facility they use. Arts festival tend to stay away from retailers, but I think there are actually two strategies that would work: a retailer selling alt- and handmade comics, and a retailer selling well-curated mainstream comics for cheap.
* by request extra:
that Retrofit crowd-funder has moved into its final seven days. They're about 3/5 of the way there. It's still possible: just about anything over 33 percent going into the last week has a shot. Still, what they need right now is pledges, not analysis. I hope it works out for them.
* finally, please know that the great Bill Kartalopoulos
will be taking submissions for the Best American Comics series all weekend at MoCCA Festival.
posted 5:05 pm PST |
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Go, Look: The Incurious Case Of Thomas
posted 1:00 am PST |
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Go, Look: Anissa Espinosa
posted 1:00 am PST |
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Go, Read: Profile Piece On Court Street Comics
It makes sense in a time when a lot is made of "legacy heroes" in mainstream comic books as a way of reinforcing a brand and extending the length of bearability on certain properties that we'd start to see comic shops citing older comic shops as an inspiration or at least a proximate spiritual antecedent.
This is the case with a new comic shop in Brooklyn, with ties by location and hoped-for fervent customer loyalty to Bergen Street Comics and Rocketship.
I used to despair much more than I do now about the first generation of comic book stores going away and what would replace them. I don't do that as much anymore. One reason is that I mellowed the fuck out some. That's a dumb thing to be worrying about, the continuity of comic book stores. What the hell was wrong with me? I was just making stuff up to raise my blood pressure and kill myself early for a while there. Sheesh. Another reason is I think the comic book store is an attractive enough thing for some young business owners that it will be part of what a lot of people try.
The cultural shift, then, may be measured in terms of "that store was my life" becoming "that was the 11 years we did the shop, remember?" This will certainly have an effect on how shops serve customers, good and bad.
posted 12:55 am PST |
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Go, Look: Dave Wachter
posted 12:00 am PST |
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March 30, 2016
Go, Read: Two Cartoonist Tribute Articles
* there's a biography by Michael Maslin of the iconic
New Yorker cartoonist Peter Arno coming, so expect a decent amount of feature article writing on the subject. The best part about
this first piece of I've seen is the analysis of specific cartoons.
It's difficult at times with an artist like Arno, whose humor might come with a leer, to dissect what was funny and important about what they did. Arno's personal style and the powerful visual impact of his cartoons mitigates the dismissiveness that might greet his frequently deplorable treatment of women in service to his sense of humor. I hope this new biography gives us a chance to sort things out a bit or a chance to see the work with practiced eyes.
* Jessica Zack remembers
Phil Frank. Frank had one of the more interesting careers of any 20th Century cartoonist, and was sort of regarded -- with cause -- as the last living "local-only" of artistic significance.
posted 11:55 pm PST |
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Go, Look: Dana Wulfekotte
posted 5:30 pm PST |
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The Never-Ending, Four-Color Festival: Shows And Events
By Tom Spurgeon
* wow, wow, wow look at
the French-language cartoonist and
Wowee Zonk participant line-ups at TCAF. What an amazing bunch of gets. That's a whole show right there.
* Linework NW
has started naming its special guests. That show has an illustration/art focus which leads to about half of their featured artists in any given year. I like that show, I think it's a perfect neighborhood show, and hope I can get out there.
* veteran writer-about-comics Brigid Alverson
covers C2E2, a commuter train ride from her old stomping grounds.
* report on "
The Face Of Scottish Comics."
*
another incremental step -- possible big news, possibly not news -- in the saga of Comic-Con International's lawsuit agains the similarly themed show in Salt Lake City.
* I don't see
this as any big deal; I don't detect a crucial overlap in the core attendees that would wound one show or the other. I could be wrong, though.
* finally,
CR's co-publisher Jordan Raphael sent along a few photos from the LA version of WonderCon. The kids in tow are his children Leo and Mirabel, big comics fans. I think that was an interesting experiment, and I hope people found out anything they wanted to find out so that the southern California convention scene will continue to stabilize. Thanks, J.
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posted 5:25 pm PST |
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If I Were In Minneapolis, I’d Go To This
posted 5:20 pm PST |
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Go, Look: Jeffrey Jones Illustrating Robert E Howard
posted 5:10 pm PST |
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Random Comics News Story Round-Up
* Mat Colegate talks to
Dan White. Priscilla Frank talks to
Austin English. Bret McCabe talks to
Ben Katchor. Some nice person from
The United States Of Nerd talks to
Peter David.
* go and read:
a colorists roundtable.
*
Batman has a new costume. He should probably have a lot of costumes, given his bank roll and the necessity of dressing for the part and for the job.
* there's a tongue-in-cheek element to stories about
a Garfield art book, from the readers if not the writer (this writer plays it straight), but well-executed I'd be interested in reading it. I know historian and critic RC Harvey is a legit fan.
* I got made fun of for not watching this Richard Thompson short film until recently;
don't be me.
* Andy Oliver on
Fedor.
* finally, I never did find a "go, look" space for
this police blotter comic about a person driven a bit wild by the tenor of today's politics.
posted 5:05 pm PST |
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Go, Look: Hannah Fisher
posted 1:00 am PST |
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Not Comics: Jeff Jones Illustrating Red Shadows
posted 12:00 am PST |
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March 29, 2016
Go, Look: FOOM #3
posted 5:30 pm PST |
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This Isn’t A Library: New, Notable Releases Into 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. You never know. I'd sure look at the following, though.
*****
JAN161486 GLORKIAN WARRIOR HC GN VOL 03 MUSTACHE OF DESTINY $19.99
I don't know that I'm familiar with this particular series of kids comics, although of course I know James Kochalka's work from a variety of sources spaced out over two full deades. I'd be interested in seeing it, that's for sure. To be honest, I'm not sure I'd go into the comics shop this week. It seems
so light, although I imagine with the first book of the next section that most shops will have a good week.
JAN160610 SAGA #35 (MR) $2.99
NOV150655 THEYRE NOT LIKE US #12 (MR) $2.99
JAN160862 DAREDEVIL #5 $3.99
JAN160812 DRAX #5 $3.99
JAN160858 HERCULES #5 $3.99
An odd mainstream comic book week to supplement the generally weird vibe emanating from the list entire.
Saga is a best-seller with multiple entry points and works hard to keep that status. I enjoy Simon Gane's art in
They're Not Like Us, and like Eric Stephenson's adventure-comic writing generally, although I get lost a bit in keeping the characters straight. That may be weird only in that the series is very diverse and thus the signifiers one character to another are larger than in many books. The final three listed above are Marvel books either on the cusp of or outright ending what will go into a first trade collection. That makes it a good time to read those books' reviews to see how they're getting over with the fans of that material a half-year or so into the run. It may be a more important sign than first-issue reviews.
DEC151453 GOLEM GN $19.99
DEC151718 NICHIJOU GN VOL 01 $10.95
JAN160520 TET TP $19.99
This is the kind of week where I would wander around the store, knocking children down. No, sorry, those last three words weren't typed by me. Plus there are few children in comic book stores, at least the ones where I shop. No, what I mean is that the lack of sure things, regular titles, established creators, would send me looking at stuff I might not check out in a busier week. These three books look like likely candidates.
Golem looks like fun eye candy, from the well-liked artist Lorenzo "LRNZ" Ceccotti.
Nichijou is a series with up to ten volumes to be translated. I like the look of it, and the gentle bend of reality in the make-up of its cast is something I'm always interested in as far as comics goes. Any series of this length with a commitment from Vertical is bound to be at least pretty good.
Tet I remember mostly for its handsome cover in the serial format. It's a murder mystery with a direct tie into that particular piece of Vietnam-era nasty business. Somewhere in there is a book I'll like, I'm sure.
DEC151364 ROBOT DREAMS GN NEW PTG $17.99
I assume this is the Sara Varon effort from First Second as opposed to some hardcore sci-fi book I haven't exactly nailed down. I liked that book when I saw it originally.
FEB162031 ED BRUBAKER CONVERSATIONS HC $40.00
Ed Brubaker is a great talker, and I'm sure this bunch of interviews has some good stuff in it. I don't know if anything I talked over with Ed is in this; I tend to out of these kind of "donate your work for someone else's book" kind of projects these days. Still, given the way on-line sources have drifted and print sources before them faded, this may be a valuable bunch of books to have in libraries two decades from now.
*****
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 failed to list your comic, that's because I hate you.
*****
*****
*****
posted 5:25 pm PST |
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If I Were In Portland, I’d Go To This
posted 5:20 pm PST |
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If I Were In Chicago, I’d Go To This
posted 5:20 pm PST |
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