July 2, 2013
Go, Read: Visuals-Stuffed Howard Chaykin Interview
posted 11:55 pm PST |
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By Request Extra: Zak Sally’s Sammy The Mouse Plea
The cartoonist, publisher and sometimes-printer Zak Sally
has a reasonably lengthy post up here reaching out to a certain segment of his readership in the hope that they'll entertain buying a copy of the new
Sammy The Mouse book directly from him as opposed to a bookstore or comics shop.
That's a reasonably risky thing for Sally to do as some shop owners might see this as pillaging one kind of sales for another, particularly given the risk involved in ordering material for your shop that doesn't have Wolverine or Batman or one of the walking dead in it. I would imagine, however, that Sally has a very specific fan base that would consider this kind of offer and that this doesn't necessarily draw from an existing store-shopping fanbase -- I suspect that sales for books like these are highly Balkanized. Anyway, Sally puts it as a matter of survival, and I think that's true at the margins we're talking about, so maybe a few folks that weren't going to try the book at all might get on board in support of an artist whose attempts at various strategies and approaches help the entirety of cartooning. Or maybe some of you will consider buying the book twice. It's a good one.
posted 11:50 pm PST |
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Go, Shop: Hidden Fortress Press Store
posted 9:30 pm PST |
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This Isn’t A Library: 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. You never know. I'd sure look at the following, though.
*****
MAY130984 SCIENCE FICTION GN (MR) $18.00
Well, it isn't last week, but last week was
stuffed with comics -- in part, I'm guessing, from a desire to have stuff out for Comic-Con International, but maybe I'm wrong. Lot of interesting books this week, though.
Science Fiction is Joe Ollmann's latest, once at D+Q and now at Conundrum. Ollmann is working a very peculiar stretch of artistic territory in his works, and this one may be the oddest of all: the story of a relationship slowly crumbling around the pressures of one participant believing they were abducted by UFOs. If you go to the comic looking for one-off, idiosyncratic artistic experience, you don't have to go much further than this one this week.
MAY130401 SATELLITE SAM #1 (MR) [DIG] $3.50
MAY130018 47 RONIN #5 $3.99
MAY130036 ABE SAPIEN #4 NEW RACE PT 1 MAX FIUMARA CVR $3.50
MAY130010 CATALYST COMIX #1 (MR) $2.99
MAY130019 MISTER X EVICTION #3 $3.99
APR130425 AGE OF BRONZE #33 [DIG] $3.50
APR130960 ADVENTURE TIME FIONNA & CAKE #6 MAIN CVRS $3.99
This summer has been really good for high-end genre comics in the classic comic book format. Writer Matt Fraction is having a heck of a summer between the super well-liked latest issue of
Hawkeye and the first issue of a series with artist Howard Chaykin. I wondered out loud a few weeks ago how well those two would mesh -- I always get the sense of Fraction figuring out his artists a bit on project, while Chaykin tends to crush things right out of the gate. They have worked before, though. That's a Stan Sakai comic book right underneath that one, and a Mignola-verse effort next. The
Catalyst book is the Joe Casey-led revamp of a bunch of Dark Horse superhero titles -- Joe Casey does consistently interesting work in that genre these days, and I'm interested to see how he plays with a bigger canvas. I always look at a
Mister X book, and ditto anything in the
Age Of Bronze series from that nice man Eric Shanower. I didn't mean to add the
Adventure Time-related comic, but what the hell.
NOV120017 AXE COP TP VOL 04 PRESIDENT WORLD $12.99
I haven't read a bunch of the
Axe Cop stuff, but I know a lot of folks swear by it, an it's of course a charming story. These comics collection have done pretty well for Dark Horse in their generally underrated little line of comics they do that appeared on-line first.
FEB130040 USAGI YOJIMBO LTD HC VOL 27 TOWN CALLED HELL $59.99
When summer hits I always thinking about doing a
Usagi Yojimbo re-read, and I end up getting that done about one of every four years. I only go up through about 10 or 12 volumes, though. There are
so many volumes now, I could spend a summer just reading what I haven't quite caught up to yet except for occasional dips into the serial comic book.
NOV121176 GREEN EGGS AND MAAKIES HC (MR) $19.99
More lovingly drawn Tony Millionaire madness. I'm fond of any book that's formatted in a way that it's hard to sort of read it on your lap; there's something very humorous about that, a book that's aggravating to even read. It looks great at that size, though.
FEB131128 GRAPHIC CANON TP VOL 03 HEART OF DARKNESS TO INFINITE JEST $44.95
I really didn't think much of the first two books I've read, although maybe they have some sort of academic role to fill that would provide with a different context in terms of understanding what these books are supposed to do. There are also always a few cartoonists I love in these books.
MAY131085 JOHN STANLEY LIBRARY NANCY HC VOL 04 $29.95
You had my money at "John Stanley."
MAY130983 PAUL JOINS THE SCOUTS GN $20.00
This is a bit like under-appreciated comics week, so of course a volume in this measured, extremely pleasurable comics series comes out. I haven't always loved every book, but each one is immensely fun to read.
APR131262 STAR REACH COMPANION SC $27.95
It's rare that one of these specific-history books attracts my attention, but I'd love to know more about the overground period more generally and this anthology specifically.
APR131393 TASCHEN SILVER AGE OF DC COMICS 1956 - 1970 HC $59.99
I haven't read the first DC-related Paul Levitz book for Taschen, let alone made plans for this one, but I'm interested in the subject matter and the production vales so I would of course give it a thorough looking-over. Certainly there are few writers, if any, as focused on that area of comics history as Levitz, and none have his pedigree.
FEB131020 DISNEY MICKEY MOUSE COLOR SUNDAYS HC VOL 01 CALL WILD $29.99
I've had a fun time reading all of the Disney stuff that Fantagraphics has put together thus far, but I had a blast with this one: color work, all working out of very strange rhythms, lovingly presented and contextualized. There are
so freaking many decent to great strip collections now, but that doesn't mean we should fail to appreciated individual effort on their own merit. I lost a whole Saturday afternoon in this book, an it was a fine, fine day.
*****
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 9:00 pm PST |
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If I Were In Portland, I’d Go To This
posted 8:30 pm PST |
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Go, Look: Forbidden Worlds #76
posted 7:00 pm PST |
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Random Comics News Story Round-Up
* I imagine with
so many characters being done with so many overlapping similarities between them, a bunch of lawyers are going to make a lot of money over the next ten years.
* Woodrow Phoenix talks to
Jaime Hernandez. Chris Mautner talks to the great
Carol Tyler. Zainab Akhtar talks to
Julia Gfrorer.
* new -- or at least unseen -- work from
TJ Kirsch and
Julia Wertz.
*
here's a Deconstructing Comics podcast on audio comics.
* not comics and missed this:
congratulations to Ryan and Jane.
* Greg McElhatton on
The Passion Of Gengoroh Tagame. Grant Goggans on
Doctor Who: The Crimson Hand. J. Caleb Mozzocco on
Wolverine: Wolverine's Revenge. Kelly Thompson on
The Wake #2. Jeffrey O. Gustafson on
Force Field Fotocomix. Ng Suat Tong on
Good Dog. John Kane on
a bunch of different comics. John Anderson on
Sunny Vol. 1. Sean Gaffney on
Utsubora: The Story Of A Novelist.
* Sean Kleefeld
discusses that Erika Moen video on self-promotion.
* finally, Johanna Draper Carlson notes that
Entertainment Weekly has released a list of 10 Greatest Graphic Novels and includes Martin Lemelman's
Mendel's Daughter, a work with which she is completely unfamiliar.
posted 6:00 pm PST |
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Happy 51st Birthday, Tom Heintjes!
posted 5:00 pm PST |
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Happy 46th Birthday, Dan Slott!
posted 5:00 pm PST |
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Happy 76th Birthday, Russ Cochran!
posted 5:00 pm PST |
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Happy 48th Birthday, Joey Manley!
posted 5:00 pm PST |
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Fifteen Days Until Comic-Con International 2013!
posted 4:30 pm PST |
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Go, Read: Image Comics Announces Major Digital Initiative + Multiple Series At Their Expo
Kiel Phegley's on the ground there, apparently;
I trust him to report back in accurate fashion. I'm going to play catch on this one until at least tomorrow.
I will say this, though. I think Image had done a really nice job building its market share the last few years, but I think it's for a variety of reasons and not solely the "opportunities for creative expression" reason that gets put out there I believe because a) it's good rhetoric, b) it distinguishes these books from the books at DC and Marvel. I'd be careful of biting down hard on that as a sole explanation of why they're doing so well.
It also looks like they're going to relaunch their sometimes-criticized web site as an aggressive all-formats digital comics store. That's interesting.
posted 3:00 am PST |
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Assembled Extra: MonkeyBrain Celebrates One-Year Anniversary
The digital comics initiative MonkeyBrain Comics
celebrates its one-year anniversary today. Happy anniversary to them. I like MonkeyBrain's straight-forward approach to digital comics publishing, particularly as I think a lot of folks have danced around the various issues involved to the point where it's baffling and complex for some of us to even think of comics we might want to read being made for paid digital download. I read a great deal of stuff on there; I think the belle of the ball year one is
Bandette. You should try it if you haven't; it's very cute.
posted 12:40 am PST |
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Go, Bookmark: Gabrielle Bell’s July Diary Year Three
posted 12:35 am PST |
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Go, Read: Kiel Phegley Interviews Ross Richie, Jack Cummins
I thought this was
a pretty good effort from Kiel Phegley to sort out some of the basic issues involved in the just-announced deal that Archaia was to become an imprint of BOOM! Phegley focuses on the nature of the contracts offered by each company and any philosophical divide their differences portend; he is assured that these are marginal differences, but it's good to have that line of questioning out there. He also gets at a key nuts-and-bolts question: the Archaia offices will move into the BOOM! workspace.
I also thought interesting that Ross Richie puts forward a positive defense of publisher participation in IP aspects of comics properties -- he basically argues that full participation is an incentive for the publishing part of that relationship just as it is for the creator part of that relationship. That is actually a fairly fascinating set of principles there, and I think one that we have kind of a goofed-up way of talking about in the comics industry sometimes. I am generally in favor of really hard, stringent standards being applied rather than any hard, fast rules about one contract set-up over another. Whether or not a company that actively pursues deals and takes a larger percentage is potentially more exploitative than a company that leaves all of that up to the creator and their people but still takes a percentage, perhaps a smaller one, is a question that goes back, I don't know, something like 80 years in the industry. It isn't easy to resolve, but talking about it is a good thing.
posted 12:30 am PST |
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Go, Look: Thelytoky
posted 12:25 am PST |
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PW: Three Will Eisner Library Award Winners Named At ALA
I could rewrite
Calvin Reid's story and present it here in some form, but I hope you'll click through the link and read it at
PW, because I wouldn't even know it happened otherwise. Three librarians won the second year drawings of what looks to be annual Will Eisner Graphic Novel Award for Libraries presentations at the just-past American Library Association convention in Chicago. The librarians that won work in libraries in Georgia, New York and Indiana. Their libraries get a collection of the GNs nominated for this year's Eisner Awards, the entire backlist from the late cartoonist, and $3000 pledged towards various pro-graphic novel uses. That all strikes me as a very nice thing, and I hope for more good things from a variety of foundations, organizations and institutions as comics begins to build more and more of them.
posted 12:20 am PST |
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Missed It: Masterplasty, Re-Colored
posted 12:15 am PST |
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By Request Extra: Doggie Style
The veteran indy comics-maker Steve Lafler
has a crowd-funder going for a print run of a complete collection of his Dog Boy comics. Lafler is a lifelong, compulsive comics-maker, that was a key work of the 1980s small-press, and the crowd-funder is super-modestly apportioned in that way that makes me want to support for that reason alone. C'mon, it's Dog Boy.
posted 12:10 am PST |
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Bundled Extra: So I Guess Best American Comics 2013 News And This Cover Are A Thing Right Now…?
It seems like folks are posting via different social media about their inclusion in the forthcoming
Best American Comics 2013. That's the one guest-edited by Jeff Smith, and the last one edited by series editors Jessica Abel and Matt Madden (Bill Kartalopoulos takes over in 2014). That's a nice cover by Kate Beaton; as I recall, Smith was very fired up that she agreed to that gig. Anyway, I've seen Colleen Doran (
Gone To Amerikay), Faith Erin Hicks (
Friends With Boys) and Derf (
My Friend Dahmer) talk about their respective placements in the volume, and I'll post any list anyone out there can find me.
Updates: Add
Michael Kupperman. So I guess this has been out for a while now...? Bummer: that "Quinception" story is the freakin' best. Also: Leela Corman, who confirms they were not allowed to speak until today; Sammy Harkham; Grant Snider.
Final Update: Yahtzee.
posted 12:00 am PST |
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