“You can tell that Knisley wants more of her heroes to join her across the river, but there are plenty of burning bridges downstream. It’ll be interesting to see how many find a way to cross in the long run.”

- Scott McCloud

 

A coda to this week’s nuttiness: Let me take a moment and offer my apologies to Gary Groth and the Comics Journal staff for my passive-aggressive snark last Tuesday. I wasn’t in full possession of the facts, and acted like a dick as a result. It was uncalled-for behavior.

 

Above the Fold

 

• [Top Story] Life in interesting times
  • In the Philippines, a ban on both real and “virtual” child pornography has been signed into law.
  • The British government has unveiled its plan for policing the digital world, including strong copyright-enforcement measures and a new ratings system for videogames — and from the sound of things, that’s not all. According to Cory Doctorow:

    Peter Mandelson, the unelected Business Secretary, would have to power to make up as many new penalties and enforcement systems as he likes. And he says he’s planning to appoint private militias financed by rightsholder groups who will have the power to kick you off the internet, spy on your use of the network, demand the removal of files or the blocking of websites, and Mandelson will have the power to invent any penalty, including jail time, for any transgression he deems you are guilty of. And of course, Mandelson’s successor in the next government would also have this power.

  • Canadian publishers are eager to climb aboard the Kindle bandwagon.
  
  • Some twenty people picketed the offices of New York’s Newsday newspaper over the November 15 Mallard Fillmore cartoon by Bruce Tinsley (pictured above), which they claimed was insensitive, published as it was “on the one-year anniversary of the death of Ecuadorean immigrant Marcelo Lucero.”

    (Above: ©2009 King Features Syndicate. Link via Tom Spurgeon.)

  • Lisa Elliott describes the challenges librarians face in curating a Spanish-language graphic-novel collection.

    (Link via Brigid Alverson.)

 

 

 

Literary Comics

 

• [Profile] David Small
  Link: Richard Pachter

  The Stitches author discusses his work.

 

• [Review] Papercutter #11
  Link: Greg McElhatton

  “If I haven’t said it before, let me do so now. The best anthology series right now, in my book, is Papercutter from Tugboat Press.”

 


• [Review] Thomas Wogan is Dead
  Link: Richard Bruton

  “In the pages that follow every animal has their moment to reveal the manner of their demise…. And in between it all, we get to find out a little more about Thomas’ life and the manner of his death. Just as pointless, tragic and faintly ridiculous as the rest of the creatures in the waiting room.”

  (Above: sequence from the book, ©2009 David Hughes.)

 

 

 

Pop Comics

 

• [Profile] Bill Willingham
  Link: John Hogan

  The Fables writer speaks!

 

• [Profile] Danijel Zezelj
  Link: Personal Cyber Botanica

  “Danijel was one of the main guests at Funny Comics Show Festival two weeks ago. He rarely gives interviews and thanks to him, Slaven Goricki — director of the festival — and the people who attended his talk, this interview was possible…”

  (Link via Kevin Melrose.)

 

• [Review] Astonishing X-Men #30
  Link: Vom Marlowe

  “Instead of making me look forward to more or compensating, the art just reinforced those parts of the story that pissed me off.”

 

• [Review] The Troublemakers
  Link: Chad Derdowski

  “Hey, there’s a reason why these Hernandez brothers are so famous in the realm of comic books: They’re good!”

 

• [Review] Amulet Vol. 2: The Stonekeeper’s Curse
  Link: Esther Keller

  “[Kazu] Kbuishi has drawn a vivid story, but for those readers stumbling onto this series late in the game, or for those readers, like me, who read volume one ages ago, there is little to help catch readers up.”

 

• [Review] Various titles
  Link: Chris Sims

  “Sometimes it’s hard to tell when you’ve got a weight problem, but I’m pretty sure that if the sound of someone kicking you in the face ends with a double-F, you should probably look into long walks and a personal trainer.”

 


• [Comics] White Indian #15
  Link: Golden Age Comic Book Stories

  Two stories, featuring great art by Angelo Torres and Sid Check.

  (Above: panel from the Torres-drawn “Declaration of Doom,” ©1953 Magazine Enterprises.)

 


• [Comics] “Billy Dollar”
  Link: Pappy

  Walt Kelly would like you to buy War Bonds.

  (Above: sequence from Our Gang #6, published by Dell in 1943.)

 


• [Multimedia] Advanced Common Sense
  Link: Tucker Stone

  Sometimes you gotta take down a baby.

  (Above: screenshot from the video.)

 

• [Snark] Sigmund Freud meets the comics
  Link: 163k image file

  Courtesy of Diversions of the Groovy Kind, a great example of the barely sublimated form. Stay unconquered, dude!

 

 

 

Manga

 

• [Review] Rin-ne Vol. 2
  Link: Lori Henderson

  Rumiko Takahashi’s latest story “is still a good series to kill time with, but it’s not something I have to run out and buy.”

 


• [Comics] Gekiga Jaws
  Link: Patrick Macias (one, two)

  A Japanese adaptation of the hot 1970s film.

 

Editorial Cartoons

 

• [Scene] Mike Keefe wins Berryman Award
  Link: Press release

  “Mike Keefe of the Denver Post has been awarded the 2009 Berryman Award for Editorial Cartooning for a wide-ranging series of drawings that poked fun at politicians, journalists and public perceptions.”

 

Small Press/Minicomics

 

• [Review] Ochre Ellipse #3
  Link: Sarah Morean

  “It’s difficult to say something new about the simplicity and preciousness of youth, but in Ochre Ellipse #3, I believe Jonas Madden-Connor has done it.”

 

Cartooning

 

• [Scene] Tom Richmond in Australia
  Link: Cartoonist’s blog

  Backstage at the Stanley Awards.

 

• [Review] The Portable February
  Link: Tom Spurgeon

  “I wanted to like this book of random doodles from musician/poet David Berman a heck of a lot more than I did, and I’m still not sure if my opting out is more my fault or Berman’s.”

 


• [Comics] Guillermo Mordillo
  Link: Harry Lee Green

  More work by the Argentinian cartoonist.

  (Above: gag panel from Der Grosse Mordillo, ©1974 Guillermo Mordillo.)

 


• [Art] Anthony Saris
  Link: Leif Peng (one, two, three and counting)

  Another week, another look at one of the unsung heroes of 20th-century commercial illustration.

  (Above: a 1963 piece for Readers Digest Condensed Books, nicked from Peng’s anthony Saris Flickr page.)

 

• [Commentary] The back of the art
  Link: Brendan Wright

  “I’ve never been a collector of original art, since I don’t have the money, so Dark Horse is the first place that I’ve had regular contact with original pages. What appeared in the margins or on the back literally never crossed my mind, so it was surprising to start dealing with pages and learn that there are in fact all kinds of things on the side of the paper that isn’t seen by readers.”

 

Comics Culture

 

• [Multimedia] Comics-related podcasts
  • This week on Panel Borders, Alex Fitch speaks with musician and Ctrl Alt Shift contributor Dev Hynes about the activist anthology, and also offers a chat with illustrator Laura Oldfield Ford (34.6MB).
  • Writer Chris Roberson joins the gang at War Rocket Ajax (82.7MB).
  • Alex Robinson and Mike Dawson’s conversation with iFanboy contributor Josh Flanagan continues on the Ink Panthers Show (34.1MB).
  • Finally, Inkstuds‘ Robin McConnell offers up something different this week, spinning music performed by cartoonists from Al Columbia to Lucy Knisley to Chris Ware (71.3MB).

  All podcasts are in downloadable MP3 audiofile format.

 

• [Your not-comics link of the day]
  Could the oceans of Jupiter’s moon Europa support life?

  (Link via Victoria Jaggard.)

 


• [Your Scans_Daily link of the day]
  Meet Cocco Bill, the star of Benito Jacovitti’s 1970s cowboy comedy.

  (Above: scanlated panel from the story, possibly ©2009 Benito Jacovitti.)

 

Events Calendar

 

Today:

• November 6-26 (London, England): The Comica London International Comics Festival eats the month of November, with a wide variety of events taking place in a number of locations. Details here.
• November 19-22 (Leeds, England): Thought Bubble, otherwise known as the Leeds Sequential Art Festival, takes place in Royal Armouries Square. Guests include Frank Quitely, Ben Templesmith, Ilya, Emma Vieceli, Kieron Gillen, Jamie McElvie, Cameron Stewart and many others. Details here.
• November 20 (Toronto, Ontario): Join Marc Bell and Amy Lockhart for a signing and exhibition at Magic Pony on Queen Street, from 7-9PM. Details here.

 

This weekend:

• November 21 (San Jose, CA): Gloom Cookie creator Serena Valentino will be on-hand for a signing at the SLG Gallery on Market Street, from 1-4PM. Details here.

 

Want to see your comics-related event listed here? Email a link to dirk@tcj.com and let me know. Please include an online link to which I can send people for more information. No sales-only events, please — it’s nice that you’ve marked things down at your store or website, but I won’t be listing it here.

 

“Much of this argument seems to come down to this: Adult customers want to buy comics for their kids that replicate their own comics-reading experience, but the franchises they grew up with (Superman, Spider-Man) are no longer kid-friendly, except for a handful of comics that are obviously aimed at kids.”

- Brigid Alverson

 

Before we begin, let’s take a moment and end some of the speculation surrounding The Comics Journal’s plans for the Web, shall we?

• We pulled TCJ #300 offline largely due to retailer concerns over not having been given adequate warning about said plans before ordering the issue. It was a fair point, and one that we hadn’t properly considered.
• The issue will again be made available online in late December, after retailers have been given time to sell the print edition.
• All future editions of The Comics Journal will be freely available online, in their entirety.

Our apologies for the learning-curve wipeout. We’d love to assure you that it won’t happen again, but you know as well as we do that it probably will…

 

Above the Fold

 

• [Top Story] Life in interesting times
  • TorrentFreak is reporting that the notorious BitTorrent-tracking site The Pirate Bay is shutting down its trackers for good… but this doesn’t exactly signal a victory for copyright owners. They claim to be doing so because said trackers are no longer necessary:

    TorrentFreak has learned that behind the scenes the Pirate Bay operators are talking to other BitTorrent site owners to encourage them to follow suit and completely ditch torrents in the future. BitTorrent has reached a point where trackers and torrents are no longer needed to download files successfully. Supported by all of the major BitTorrent clients, DHT and PEX can handle the transfers and Magnet links can largely replace traditional torrent files.

  • Bart Beaty has the latest on the funding war between the city of Angoulême, France and the festival that bears its name.
  • David Small’s Stitches lost the National Book Award for young people’s literature yesterday to Phillip Hoose for Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice.
  • Saving me the effort, ICv2 summarizes a recent pair of news reports covering a library-board meeting in Jessamine County, Kentucky, after two librarians were fired over their attempts to keep a copy of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier off young-adult shelves.
  • Is the funnybook industry recession-proof?
  • Steven Grant discusses the state of the graphic novel.

 

 

 

Literary Comics

 

• [Profile] Kevin Baker
  Link: Neal Conan (streaming audio, transcript)

  The Dreamland author discusses his first graphic novel, Luna Park, a collaboration with artist Danijel Zezelj.

  (Links via Kevin Melrose.)

 

• [Profile] Eddie Campbell
  Link: Simon Hacking

  A short Q&A with the author of Alec: The Years Have Pants.

 

• [Review] Map of My Heart
  Link: Rob Clough

  John Porcellino’s new King Cat collection is “devestating,” because “here the artist’s struggle with self-worth and the desire to create was inextricably tied into his own mental illness.”

 

• [Review] Pim & Francie
  Link: Comics Comics

  A roundtable discussion on Al Columbia’s long-awaited new book.

 

• [Review] Grown-Ups are Dumb
  Link: Tom Spurgeon

  “Despite all the nice blurbs from cartoonists that assert otherwise, I don’t really find [Alexa] Kitchen’s cartoons reliably more sophisticated than my memory of the cartoons and comics passed around in Mr. Frischkorn’s Mitchell Elementary School class, circa 1980. I would have to have some of these boosters sit down with me and walk me through the book and show me where and why what they claim is true.”

 

• [Commentary] A Southern Baptist perspective on Crumb’s Genesis
  Link: Albert Mohler

  In case you were wondering what one looked like.

 


• [Comics] “Downloading Optimism”
  Link: Lucy Knisley

  Why do indy cartoonists fear the Internet?

  (Above: sequence ©2009 Lucy Knisley. Link via The Ephemerist.)

 

 

 

Pop Comics

 

• [Profile] Gilbert Hernandez
  Link: Shaun Manning

  The Love and Rockets co-creator talks The Troublemakers, his new crime thriller. Oh, and here’s a preview of the book!

 

• [Profile] Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá
  Link: Steve Sunu

  The twin cartoonists discuss their forthcoming collaboration, Daytripper.

 

• [Review] Cat Burglar Black
  Link: Brian Heater

  “It’s not by mistake that [Richard] Sala has, over the years, drawn comparisons to the likes of Charles Adams and Edward Gorey. His work is often decidedly dark, but also frequently whimsically so, infused with the a playful spookiness, an aspect that manifests itself in the secret passageways and disembodied voices that populate Cat Burglar Black.”

 

• [Commentary] Getting into Sandman
  Link: Glen Weldon

  “But here’s the thing you don’t often hear about Gaiman’s series, which ran for 75 issues, helped establish and grow the marketplace for comics aimed at adults, and remains one of the most literate, imaginative and intricately plotted accomplishments in long-form comics storytelling out there:

  “Its barrier-to-entry is remarkably high.“

 


• [Comics] Bananas #46
  Link: Sam Henderson (one, two and three)

  “BANANAS started out as similar to DYNAMITE, but for older readers. It was kind of THE ELECTRIC COMPANY to DYNAMITE’s SESAME STREET. It was published by Scholastic, which made its money from a captive audience. Kids were given fliers in school so parents would be pressured into buying books from them.”

  (Above: sequence from a Diff’rent Strokes parody by Megan Stine, H. William Stine and Sam Viviano; ©1981 Scholastic Inc.)

 


• [Comics] Into Battle with Jack Kirby
  Link: Ten-Cent Dreams

  Military-themed work by the King.

  (Above: sequence from the documentary strip “Submarine,” as inked by Christopher Rule and published in Battle #66, ©1959 Marvel Comics.)

 

 

 

Manga

 

• [Review] Two of Hearts
  Link: Hooded Utilitarian

  “This is another one of those yaoi titles with a bizarre rape scene (or near rape — they get interrupted just before they get to the full monty) that just leaves you scratching your head. It seems to come from a ‘guys are different’ kind of place, but it doesn’t play right.”

 

Comic Strips

 

• [Snark] The most difficult comic-strip quiz in history…
  Link: Rick Bentley

  …or not.

 


• [Comics] Marvellous Mike
  Link: Allan Holtz (one, two)

  The first two weeks (and final week and a half) of Bob Kuwahara’s mid-1950s strip.

  (Above: sequence ©1956 United Feature Syndicate, Inc.)

 

Cartooning

 

• [Scene] SketchCrawl
  Link: Charley Parker

  Taking place this Saturday, “Artists gather in groups in various cities around the world and move from location to location within their respective cities, drawing what’s around them.”

 


• [Craft] How to Make Money with Simple Cartoons
  Link: Mike Lynch

  Reproductions from an old instruction pamphlet.

  (Above: page detail, ©1949 The Cartoonists’ Exchange.)

 


• [Art] Eric Sturdevant
  Link: Online portfolio

  “Eric Sturdevant’s illustrations have been featured in a variety of print media including magazines, books, children’s publications, greeting cards, and board games. Working digitally, his style is graphic and fun while having texture, depth and warmth.”

  (Above: illustgration for Macworld, ©2009 Eric Sturdevant.)

 


• [Art] Dutch mystery-novel covers
  Link: A Journey Round My Skull

  The 1930s and ’40s really were a fantastic time for commercial art and design, weren’t they?

  (Above: cover creator[s] unknown.)

 

Comics Culture

 

• [Scene] Cartoon Art Trust Awards
  Link: Royston Robertson

  The winners, as announced at a fundraising dinner at the Mall Galleries in London.

  (Link via Joe Gordon.)

 

• [Scene] Eisner Awards judges announced
  Link: Press release

  Ladies and gentlemen, meet Craig Fischer, Francisca Goldsmith, John Hogan, James Hudnall and Wayne Winsett.

 


• [Your not-comics link of the day]
  Kool Keith and Tom Waits — two great tastes that taste great together.

  (Above: screenshot from the video.)

 


• [Your Scans_Daily link of the day]
  Donatello meets Jack Kirby.

  (Above: sequence from Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird’s Donatello: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle #1, ©1986 Mirage Studios.)

 

Events Calendar

 

Today:

• November 6-26 (London, England): The Comica London International Comics Festival eats the month of November, with a wide variety of events taking place in a number of locations. Details here.
• November 19-22 (Leeds, England): Thought Bubble, otherwise known as the Leeds Sequential Art Festival, takes place in Royal Armouries Square. Guests include Frank Quitely, Ben Templesmith, Ilya, Emma Vieceli, Kieron Gillen, Jamie McElvie, Cameron Stewart and many others. Details here.
• November 19 (Watford, England): Veteran comics writer Pat Mills will discuss his work at the Watford Central Library on Hempstead Road, beginning at 8PM. Details here.
• November 19 (Ann Arbor, MI): Phoebe Gloeckner will discuss her work on-stage at the Michigan Theater on Liberty Street, beginning at 5:10PM. Admission is free. Details here.
• November 19 (Baileys Crossroads, VA): Looking for Calvin and Hobbes author Nevin Martell will appear for a reading and signing at the Borders on Crossroads Center Way, beginning at 7:30PM. Details here.

 

This week:

• November 20 (Toronto, Ontario): Join Marc Bell and Amy Lockhart for a signing and exhibition at Magic Pony on Queen Street, from 7-9PM. Details here.
• November 21 (San Jose, CA): Gloom Cookie creator Serena Valentino will be on-hand for a signing at the SLG Gallery on Market Street, from 1-4PM. Details here.

 

Want to see your comics-related event listed here? Email a link to dirk@tcj.com and let me know. Please include an online link to which I can send people for more information. No sales-only events, please — it’s nice that you’ve marked things down at your store or website, but I won’t be listing it here.

 

“I believe that romance comics suffered from being stuck in a male oriented industry: male writers, writing from a male point of view, with male artists doing their level headed best to do comics that they might want to look at (and thus with a male-centric point of view when it comes to storytelling as well as character design). Certainly 40 years ago you wouldn’t have had a huge stable of female artists with the chops and skills to draw from when putting together your gothic romance comics, even if you could have found a distributor.”

- Charles Yoakum

 

Above the Fold

 

• [Top Story] Life in interesting times
  • Italian company Fandango has purchased the Bologna-based art-comics publisher Coconino Press.
  • Prime Minister Stephen Harper has acknowledged that Tahawwur Hussain Rana, charged in October with conspiring to murder Killer Danish Muhammed cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, is also a suspect in the gun rampage last year in Mumbai, India.
  • A new comics-reading program arrives for the Sony PSP… in Japan.
  • Amazon’s Kindle enters the Canadian market.
  • Simon Jones digs into the doom-mongering currently surrounding the Japanese comics industry.
  • Johanna Draper Carlson and Tom Spurgeon react to Monday’s Little Launch That Couldn’t here at TCJ.com.
  • Carlson also looks at a bit of file-sharing hypocrisy, while Matt Blind offers a lengthy examination of digital piracy from a historical perspective.

 

 

 

Literary Comics

 

• [Profile] Peter Kuper
  Link: Christopher Irving

  A visit with the author of Diaria de Oaxaca.

 


• [Scene] Eddie Campbell in Europe
  Link: Eddie Campbell (one, two, three, four, five and six)

  The Artist travels to the Lucca Comics Festival in Italy and Britain’s Comica.

  (Above: detail from a poster advertising Campbell’s presence in Italy.)

 

• [Review] The Storm in the Barn
  Link: John Seven

  “Children’s book illustrator Matt Phelan makes a dynamic graphic novel debut with The Storm in the Barn, which takes the setting of the Dust Bowl and transforms it into a barren landscape that inhabits a fertile universe of folklore.”

 

• [Review] Various titles
  Link: Chris Mautner

  Quick takes on work by Gilbert Shelton, Jesse Lonergan, Joann Sfar, Lewis Trondheim, Chris Blain, Ben Jones and Frank Santoro.

 

• [Commentary] From Tintin to Perspolis
  Link: Paul Gravett

  A look at the growth of Eurocomics, and what it signals for 2010.

 

 

 

Pop Comics

 

• [Review] The Winter Men
  Link: Henry Chamberlain

  Brett Lewis and John Paul Leon’s tale “is a patchwork quilt of observations and red herrings that takes the spy thriller to new heights of eccentric fun. It’s one of those stories that starts out about being one thing and ends up embracing everything.”

 

• [Review] Blackest Night
  Link: Curt Purcell

  “My biggest beef with these issues is the point in the crossover at which they take place. It’s actually hard for me to imagine a worse point for these stories to have any impact.”

 


• [Comics] Bud Sagendorf’s Sherm
  Link: Sherm Cohen

  Humor work by a classic newspaper-strip cartoonist.

  (Above: sequence from Popeye #19, ©1952 King Features Syndicate.)

 


• [Comics] Blackmark
  Link: Diversions of the Groovy Kind

  The prologue from Gil Kane and Archie Goodwin’s pioneering fantasy series.

  (Above: panel from the comic, ©1974 Archie Goodwin and Gil Kane.)

 

 

 

Manga

 

• [SUBJECT] 20th Century Boys Vol. 5
  Link: Tangognat

  “Everytime I pick this series up I’m reminded again how great it is. [Naoki] Urasawa always throws in surprising plot elements, and it is rare now for me to be genuinely surprised when reading manga.”

 

• [Review] The Lizard Prince Vol. 1
  Link: Johanna Draper Carlson

  “This manga, a romance in a magical fantasy setting, has enough humor to make it an enjoyable read for the young and young-thinking.”

 


• [Review] Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms
  Link: Sandy Bilus

  “This still does not feel like a heavy, difficult book. For the most part it’s enjoyable to read, full of sweet moments and lovely characters. But merely knowing where it is taking place is enough to place a shroud over what should be the happy lives of these people.”

  (Above: Hiroshima lingers in the air in this sequence from the book, ©2003 Fumiyo Kuono.)

 

Comic Strips

 

• [Profile] Neil Swaab
  Link: Brian Heater

  The conclusion of Heater’s three-part conversation with the cartoonist behind Rehabilitating Mr. Wiggles.

 

• [Profile] Alex Hallatt
  Link: Scott Nickel

  Twenty Questions for the Arctic Circle creator.

 

• [Review] Bringing Up Father
  Link: Tom Spurgeon

  “Everything from actions to motivations to backgrounds have been stripped down miles past what you might see on the first season of a long-running television show might. At times it seems as if the entire world in which Maggie and Jiggs would later operate has been boiled clean out from under their feet.”

 


• [Comics] Mannikinland
  Link: Allan Holtz

  There are only two samples from Mark Fenderson’s 1900 fantasy strip, but oh, what samples.

 

Digital Comics

 

• [Profile] Josh Way
  Link: Brigid Alverson

  The Chronicle creator discusses the life of a journeyman cartoonist online.

 

• [Commentary] Three ways to imrove your Web design.
  Link: Brad Guigar

  Get those comic-strip homepages working for you!

 

Small Press/Minicomics

 

• [Review] Archaeology
  Link: Sean T. Collins

  “[James McShane's] thick little minicomic does a lot of things right.”

 

Cartooning

 

• [Review] Two by Frank Tashlin
  Link: Kristy Valenti

  A look back at the director/animator’s children’s-book work, focusing on The Bear That Wasn’t and The World That Isn’t

 

• [Scene] Dr. Sketchy meets Craig Yoe
  Link: Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art Blog

  Racy photos from the meeting of lewd-cartooning minds in New York City.

  (Link trail: Joe Gordon ← Jeff Newelt.)

 


• [Comics] William Steig’s Punch and Judy
  Link: Harry Lee Green

  Their later years.

  (Above: drawing from Continuous Performance ©1959, 1961 The New Yorker Magazine, and ©1963 William Steig.)

 


• [Art] Mercedes Laguna
  Link: Online portfolio

  Dig on this Madrid artist’s mixed-media approach.

  (Above: “Mars Attacks!” ©2009 Mercedes Laguna.)

 


• [Art] Lab Partners
  Link: Illustration blog

  Ryan Meis and Sarah Labieniec cop that whole mid-’50s cartooning thing perfectly.

  (Above: illustration ©2009 Lab Partners. Link via Nate Williams.)

 

• [Commentary] The Springtime of Bob Peak
  Link: David Apatoff

  “But in the 1960s, Peak caught fire and began turning out radically different work. His line work had roots in the Viennese Secessionist movement (particularly Schiele and Klimt) and in the great Rene Bouche, but Peak’s hot, fluorescent color combinations were unprecedented; his extreme angles, cinematic style, and space age dynamism were blazingly original.”

 

Comics Culture

 

• [Profile] Lisa Wood
  Link: Matthew Badham

  A Q&A with one of the people behind this weekend’s Thought Bubble comic convention in Leeds.

 

• [Scene] 2009 Prix de la Critique nominees announced
  Link: Tom Spurgeon

  Because I’m too lazy to hunt these down myself.

 

• [Commentary] Living with comics art
  Link: Ng Suat Tong

  “As with any hobby, collecting comics original art has its own complexities which take in both the aesthetics and economics of the form.”

 

• [Your not-comics link of the day]
  Happy 31st birthday to the Star Wars Holiday Special.

 


• [Your Scans_Daily link of the day]
  Excerpts from Don Rosa’s Uncle Scrooge.

  (Above: sequence from “A Matter of Some Gravity” in Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories 610, ©1997 Disney.)

 

Events Calendar

 

Today:

• November 6-26 (London, England): The Comica London International Comics Festival eats the month of November, with a wide variety of events taking place in a number of locations. Details here.

 

This week:

• November 19-22 (Leeds, England): Thought Bubble, otherwise known as the Leeds Sequential Art Festival, takes place in Royal Armouries Square. Guests include Frank Quitely, Ben Templesmith, Ilya, Emma Vieceli, Kieron Gillen, Jamie McElvie, Cameron Stewart and many others. Details here.
• November 19 (Watford, England): Veteran comics writer Pat Mills will discuss his work at the Watford Central Library on Hempstead Road, beginning at 8PM. Details here.
• November 19 (Ann Arbor, MI): Phoebe Gloeckner will discuss her work on-stage at the Michigan Theater on Liberty Street, beginning at 5:10PM. Admission is free. Details here.
• November 19 (Baileys Crossroads, VA): Looking for Calvin and Hobbes author Nevin Martell will appear for a reading and signing at the Borders on Crossroads Center Way, beginning at 7:30PM. Details here.
• November 20 (Toronto, Ontario): Join Marc Bell and Amy Lockhart for a signing and exhibition at Magic Pony on Queen Street, from 7-9PM. Details here.
• November 21 (San Jose, CA): Gloom Cookie creator Serena Valentino will be on-hand for a signing at the SLG Gallery on Market Street, from 1-4PM. Details here.

 

Want to see your comics-related event listed here? Email a link to dirk@tcj.com and let me know. Please include an online link to which I can send people for more information. No sales-only events, please — it’s nice that you’ve marked things down at your store or website, but I won’t be listing it here.

 

“Why pick it up when you can read online for free, some will ask? Well SF writers like Cory Doctorow and Charlie Stross among others have found similar strategies with their fiction has boosted their profiles and helped sell more of the traditional books as people who might not otherwise have bought one read material online for free and thought hey, I like this, I will buy their next book to enjoy reading properly.”

- Joe Gordon

 

“Mmm, that was some tasty New Coke!”

- Paul Herden

 

Above the Fold

 

• [Top Story] Life in interesting times
  • Wim Lockifeer looks at the latest haggling over money and the Angoulême Comics Festival.
  • Google, the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers have announced a revised settlement in the legal maneuvering over Google Books.
  
  • Least I Could Do creators Ryan Sohmer and Lar DeSouza are offering scholarships to send online cartoonists to the Center for Cartoon Studies in Vermont — a scholarship that Gary Tyrrell believes to be worth six figures.

    (Above: sequence from the strip, ©2009 Blind Ferret Entertainment.)

  • The U.S. Census Bureau reported that September bookstore sales saw a 7% increase.
  • Heidi MacDonald notes that former Borders graphic novel buyer Micha Hershman has signed on to be Dark Horse Comics’ new marketing director.
  • Is Japan’s comics industry in dire straits?
  • K.C. Carlson recounts his time working in the 1990s Direct Market.
  • Your hope-filled “comic-book store opens” story for the day. Wish him luck!

 

• [Consumer news] New this week
  Link: Matthew Brady

  A look at the best-sounding books scheduled to hit the comics shops tomorrow.

 

 

 

Literary Comics

 

• [Profile] Jerry Moriarty
  Link: Brian Heater

  The second installment of Heater’s four-part interview with the Jack Survives cartoonist.

 

• [Profile] Shannon Wheeler
  Link: Tim O’Shea

  A chat with the guy behind Too Much Coffee Man.

 

• [Review] Like a Dog
  Link: Rob Clough

  “There are certainly hard-working artists who have never produced a single worthwhile work, but the point is that unless the artist continues to release work, it is absolutely certain that they will never get better. The work is all that’s left after the ephemeral nature of process and emotion fades away.”

 

• [Review] Follow Me
  Link: Tom Spurgeon, Sean T. Collins

  Two views of Jesse Moynihan’s latest book.

 

• [Review] Grotesque #2-3
  Link: Greg McElhatton

  “It’s at times like this that the Ignatz Series format is that much more critical. With larger dimensions and high quality paper stock, it lets you examine and enjoy the art that much more.”

 


• [Comics] “Walking Home From the Train”
  Link: Derik Badman

  A brief autobiographical vignette.

  (Above: sequence from the strip, ©2009 Derik Badman.)

 

 

 

Pop Comics

 

• [Profile] Irene Vartanoff
  Link: Jacque Nodell

  The 1960s comic-book writer discusses her life in the field.

  (Link via Mike Rhode.)

 

• [Review] Spin Angels
  Link: Richard Cook

  “And what does the French mainstream look like? Think Dan Brown with more cheesecake.”

 

• [Review] Batman/Doc Savage Special
  Link: Nina Stone

  “The art in here is delicious. I know I usually just talk about the story forever, but these are comic books, after all. It would seem to me that having glorious, page-turning art is probably just as worthy as a goal. Or maybe it’s the whole point! And this comic — it has such clean art, constructed out of all these clean lines. Every frame seems perfectly framed.”

 

• [Review] Various titles
  Link: Tucker Stone

  “This is one of those comics that features the little purple dragon that used to hang around with Kitty Pryde getting drunk by himself. You want to read that? (The answer is ‘yes’ if you buy shit like Lockjaw & The Pet Avengers.)”

 

• [Commentary] Romance comics: the basic formula
  Link: Robyn Chapman

  “While I’m no expert, I’ve read my fair share of romance comics. I’ve found that, in general, there are three basic plot structures that romance comics follow, each having its defining conclusion.”

 

• [Commentary] The Superdick in the closet
  Link: Noah Berlatsky

  “The problem, the thing to be ridiculed, is powerlessness, not power.”

 


• [Comics] Two by Krigstein
  Link: Ten-Cent Dreams

  A pair of stories drawn by pioneering cartoonist Bernie Krigstein.

  (Above: panel from “Captain Splint’s Hairy Helper” in Airboy Comics V.8 #4, ©1951 Hillman.)

 


• [Comics] “The Woman in the Tower!”
  Link: Sherm Cohen

  More surreal dream comics by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby.

  (Above: sequence from The Strange World of Your Dreams #3, ©1952 Prize Comics.)

 

 

 

Manga

 

• [Review] Red Snow
  Link: Deb Aoki

  “Many stories in Red Snow seem similar to fables — but with an adult twist. Desire is a pervasive theme in these stories, expressed as young love, pre-pubescent flirting, sexual abuse and perversity. Young and old, men and women alike are depicted as unabashedly sexual beings, sometimes in surprising ways.”

 

• [Review] What a Wonderful World! Vols. 1-2
  Link: David Welsh

  “The title is ironic, but only mildly so. These collections don’t offer the kind of fetuses-in-the-sewer bleakness that’s the domain of Yoshihiro Tatsumi. If they did, the title would be actively horrible and sophomoric. Exclamation point aside, it might be read with a flat intonation and a hint of a smirk.”

 

• [Review] Various titles
  Link: Katherine Dacey

  Quick takes on work by Fumi Yoshinaga, Kiminori Wakasugi and Keitaro Takahashi.

 

• [Snark] Kaoru Mori, Nooooo!!!!
  Link: John Jakala

  Things fall behind.

 

Comic Strips

 

• [Profile] Carl Anderson
  Link: Glen Goodhand

  A look back at the life and career of the cartoonist behind Henry.

 

• [Review] Dr. Seuss & Co. Go to War
  Link: Chris Murphy

  “But the simplification of a complex situation into an image can produce jarring results even with the best of intentions. And for the sake of historical accuracy it has to be pointed out that Seuss didn’t always have the best of intentions.”

 


• [Comics] Hank Porter’s Pinocchio
  Link: Thom Buchanan (one, two, three and four)

  The esteemed Disney cartoonist makes a run in the Sunday papers.

  (Above: sequence from the strip, ©1940 Disney.)

 


• [Comics] There Oughta Be a Law
  Link: Harry Lee Green

  “Harry Shorten was a publisher who started out as a cartoonist in the early 1940s. There Oughta Be a Law was his version of the successful They’ll Do It Every Time panel by Jimmy Hatlo.”

  (Above: comic strip ©1969 Harry Shorten.)

 

Editorial Cartoons

 

• [Scene] Pat Oliphant in Australia
  Link: Tom Richmond

  “I will do a more complete post covering the weekend’s events later, but int he meantime here is a short video of part of Pat’s talk, where he recreates a cartoon that he said was one of the most controversial he’d done.”

 


• [Comics] George Herriman cartoons
  Link: Allan Holtz

  Another week, another sampler of early work from the Krazy Kat creator.

  (Above: details from this week’s comic — full version available at the link, of course.)

 

Digital Comics

 

• [Profile] Jamaica Dyer
  Link: Alex Dueben

  A Q&A with the Weird Fishes cartoonist.

 

• [Scene] Dean Haspiel in Chicago
  Link: Matthew Brady

  “On the night of Friday, November 13, 2009, the city of Chicago was graced with the presence of Dean Haspiel and Tim Hall, there to present a documentary about Act-I-Vate, the webcomics collective to which they both contribute, and also to do some readings of their stories and meet fans.”

  Brady also reviews the group’s new collection, The Act-I-Vate Primer.

 


• [Review] Xkcd
  Link: Larry Cruz

  “With stick figures and minimal art, the writing becomes the focal point for the reader. Most stick figure comics are total failures because the writing isn’t great either. With xkcd, though, the writing will at least provide something interesting, whether it’s a humorous twist on a textbook equation or whether it’s Munroe being a ‘creepy sperging manchild’ again.”

  (Above: Here comes the White Knight! Panel from the strip, ©2009 Randall Munroe.)

 

Cartooning

 

• [Review] All and Sundry
  Link: Rob Clough

  “I found the experience of reading and looking at this collection to be an oddly ephemeral. I rarely got a sense of the artist, the process or the work,” says Clough of Paul Hornschemeier’s new sketchbook collection.

 

• [Craft] Don’t forget the space behind the face
  Link: John Kricfalusi

  “A lot of cartoonists tend not to see space. We see fills or positive spaces. Areas of interest to us are eyes, mouths, ears, arms, fingers, but we sometimes neglect the big spaces between the fills. And those negative spaces are needed.”

 


• [Art] Elizabeth Shippen Green
  Link: Golden Age Comic Book Stories

  Three series of illustrations from Harpers Monthly Magazine.

  (Above: art for Josephine Preston Peabody’s “The Little Past,” from the December 1903 edition of the magazine.)

 


• [SUBJECT] Ralph Bakshi
  Link: Comicrazys

  A collection of sketches and storyboard work.

  (Above: illustration ©2009 Ralph Bakshi.)

 

• [Commentary] The fun of doing comics
  Link: Faith Erin Hicks

  “Recently I’ve been stumbling around with the whole ‘how do I keep this drawing comics thing fun when it is my job?’ thing. I know it sounds kind of weird, because drawing comics IS fun, but once the thing that you used to do ‘for fun’ becomes the thing you do for work… okay, it’s not like it STOPS being fun, I LOVE doing it, but it becomes something… else.”

 


• [Multimedia] Jules Feiffer at Dartmouth
  Link: YouTube

  The legendary artist discusses “cartooning in the Twentieth century and beyond.”

  (Above: screenshot from the video. Link via Mike Lynch.)

 

Comics Culture

 

• [Scene] Friends of Lulu Award winners
  Link: Press release

  “Just as a recap, The Lulu Awards recognizes the people and projects that helped to open eyes and minds to the amazing comic and cartooning work by and/or about women. the nominees were voted on by a panel of judges, and the actual awards voted on by the public.”

 

• [Scene] International Comic Arts Forum seeks new members
  Link: Press release

  “We invite applications from academics (including graduate students) and independent scholars in various fields, including but not limited to Comparative Literature, English Studies, Cultural Studies, Communications and Media, Visual Studies, Art History, and Comics Studies.”

 

• [Scene] Pittsburgh’s ToonSeum relocates
  Link: Michael Khan

  “Shortly after 10 a.m. last Saturday, the ToonSeum, Pittsburgh’s cartoon museum, opened the doors of its new location in the Cultural District, Downtown. About 25 visitors, mostly teenage boys, stood outside the entrance waiting for the ribbon to be cut and the new space to be unveiled.”

 

• [Your not-comics link of the day]
  Calling a bong a bong.

 

• [Your Scans_Daily link of the day]
  Today it’s Scans_Daily itself, which has moved to a new host and is currently settling in and arranging the furniture.

 

Events Calendar

 

Calendar returns tomorrow.

 

Want to see your comics-related event listed here? Email a link to dirk@tcj.com and let me know. Please include an online link to which I can send people for more information. No sales-only events, please — it’s nice that you’ve marked things down at your store or website, but I won’t be listing it here.

 

“Each cartoonist has a unique sensibility but was bitten by this comics bug, and sees things through that particular prism. The only common denominator is that it takes a lot of patience and craft.”

- Art Spiegelman

 

Now free and online online for subscribers, and soon to be on better store shelves everywhere: The Comics Journal #300!

(Update: Well that didn’t take long. All apologies — we’re withdrawing the whole concept.)

The new issue features almost 200 pages of conversations between generations of cartoonists, running the gamut from lit-comics to superheroes to comic strips and editorial cartoons. Check out this line-up:

• Art Spiegelman and Kevin Huizenga
• Jean-Christophe Menu and Sammy Harkham
• Frank Quitely and Dave Gibbons
• Dave Mazzucchelli and Dash Shaw
• Alison Bechdel and Danica Novgorodoff
• Howard Chaykin and Ho Che Anderson
• Denny O’Neil and Matt Fraction
• Jaime Hernandez and Zak Sally
• Ted Rall and Matt Bors
• Jim Borgman and Keith Knight
• Stan Sakai and Chris Schweizer

Plus: R. Fiore on how people experience comics, Matthias Wivel on Moebius’ Airtight Garage, R.C. Harvey on Art Spiegelman’s Breakdowns, Tom Crippen on the Age of the Geek, and much more. The print edition hits better comics shops and newsstands shortly!

Regular ¡Journalista! coverage resumes tomorrow. See you then!

 

“We know artists have a hard time mastering this anatomy-defying pose, since unless you are a member of Cirque Du Soleil it’s actually impossible to turn your ass and your tits in the same direction. But they will try, oh yes, they will try [...]“

- Heidi MacDonald

 

“I maintain, as I have for some time, that Kirby has little or no talent. His writing disgusts me even more than the early work of Gerry Conway. His creations seem to be of less than human quality. [...]“

- Dave Sim, age 17

 

Above the Fold

 

• [Top Story] Life in interesting times
  • Japanese publisher Shueisha will begin selling manga on cellphones next spring, launching its first phase in Microsoft’s Windows Marketplace.
  • Sean T. Collins rounds up the latest skrmishes in the Great Convention War.
  • Stuck in the Middle editor Ariel Schrag comments on the decision by Sioux Falls, South Dakota middle school libraries to remove the book from their shelves.
  • I did not know this:

    Chris Muir’s Day By Day, draws in about 100,000 visitors, according to Compete.com. This is very healthy by webcomic standards. To give you a sense of scale, it draws in more readers than PvP, Sheldon, and chainsawsuit combined.

 

 

 

Literary Comics

 

• [Profile] Jules Feiffer
  Link: Karla Araujo

  The renowned cartoonist and proto-graphic novelist reflects back upon his life and career.

 

• [Profile] Peter Kuper
  Link: Alex Dueben

  A chat with the Diario de Oaxaca author.

 

• [Commentary] It doesn’t mean shit
  Link: Devon Tincknell

  A Freudian analysis of the comics of Robert Crumb and Art Spiegelman.

 


• [Comics] Daryl and Susie Cagle in Israel
  Link: Daryl Cagle

  A cartoon record of a recent trip abroad.

  (Above: sequence ©2009 Susie Cagle.)

 

 

 

Pop Comics

 

• [Review] King City #1-2
  Link: Tom Spurgeon

  Brandon Graham’s series “not only has the strengths of an early ’80s comic but actually resembles titles like Mr. X and D’Arc Tangent in its presentation of a (mostly) human story in a fantastic setting.”

 

• [Review] Captain America: Reborn #4
  Link: Graeme McMillan

  “Captain America: Reborn has the odd distinction of being one of the most dull event books in recent memory.”

 

• [Review] Various titles
  Link: J. Caleb Mozzocco, Chris Sims, Don MacPherson and the Mindless Ones

  Even fanboys get the blues.

 

• [Commentary] Ain’t dead yet
  Link: Noah Berlatsky

  “So the question then becomes, not why are super-heroes unpopular, but why are the super-heroes parlayed by Marvel and DC so darn unpopular? Why can everybody and their idiot cousin create successful super-heroes except for the companies that spend all their time, 24-7, writing about super-heroes?”

 


• [Comics] Sugar and Spike
  Link: Doug Gray

  A double dose of Sheldon Mayer’s cult-favorite children’s strip.

  (Above: sequence from Sugar and Spike #54, ©1964 DC Comics.)

 


• [Comics] “River of Fire”
  Link: Gold Key Stories

  A Space Family Robinson adventure drawn by Dan Spiegle.

  (Above: sequence from Space Family Robinson Lost in Space #17, ©1966 Western Publishing Company, Inc.)

 


• [Multimedia] Sandy Plunkett
  Link: YouTube

  A visit with the talented comic-book cartoonist.

  (Above: screenshot from the video. Link via Mike Lynch.)

 

 

 

Manga

 

• [Review] Pluto Vol. 6
  Link: Matthew Brady

  “I don’t know if there are any great insights to be had in this volume of the series (from me, at least), but it’s still a pretty amazing one, seeing the culmination of some long-running plots and at least some partial answers to the mysteries that have been lurking in the background for the entire series. And action!”

 


• [Review] Emma Vol. 9
  Link: Michael Buntag

  “Having completed her main narrative, [Kaoru Mori's] not yet ready to part with her beloved period. But this is an obsession not for something wholly imagined and fantastic, but for something grounded in a particular reality that is still foreign to her.”

  (Above: panel from the bok, ©2007 Kaoru Mori.)

 

Cartooning

 

• [Scene] Who created the Batman logo?
  Link: Todd Klein

  Mystery solved.

 


• [Art] Fletcher Martin
  Link: Leif Peng (one, two, three, four, five, six, seven and counting)

  Peng returns to a previous subject for this week’s tour through 20th-century commercial illustration history.

  (Above: Martin’s cover image for a 1943 edition of Life Magazine, nicked from Peng’s Fletcher Martin Flickr page.)

 


• [Art] Attila Sassy’s Opium Dreams
  Link: A Journey Round My Skull

  “Attila Sassy was a contemporary of Csáth, and Columbia included the etchings for purposes of illustration. While Sassy has an obvious affinity with the work of Beardsley and others of Art Noveau (as Birnbaum points out in her note on him), I think he works his own magic.”

 

• [Commentary] Seeing and unseeing
  Link: David Apatoff

  “It’s not easy to shed established habits of seeing. The process of dismantling skills — abandoning assumptions, vanquishing muscle memory and starting from scratch — can be as difficult as acquiring skills to begin with. You can’t rid yourself of your assumptions about the world without first going through the educational process of figuring out where your assumptions end and the real world begins.”

 

• [Commentary] 22 ways of looking at a sheep
  Link: Noah Berlatsky

  “On the one hand, putting images in a simple numerical sequence seems…well, simplistic. And it actually is simplistic, of course — this is how children’s books are organized, after all. At the same time, though, breaking away from narrative, however it’s done, is a step away from traditional structures and towards modernism.”

 

Comics Culture

 

• [Multimedia] Comics-related podcasts
  • This week on Panel Borders: Alex Fitch speaks with The Spiral Cage author Al Davison (41.8MB), and Dickon Harris interviews cartoonist Paul Rainey and poet Ceri May (29MB).
  • Vermont Public Radio’s Jane Lindholm speaks with graphic novelist/educator James Sturm and New Yorker cartoonist Harry Bliss (21.1MB).
  • Comixology presents a conversation with Doris Danger creator Chris Wisnia (24.7MB).
  • iFanboy’s Josh Flanagan joins Ink Panthers Show hosts Mike Dawson and Alex Robinson for a series of frolics through pleasant meadows and woodlands (21.3MB).
  • Join Paul O’Brien and Al Kennedy for another installment of criticism and commentary in the House to Astonish (80.3MB).

  All podcasts are in downloadable MP3 audiofile format.

 

• [Your not-comics link of the day]
  The science of oral sex among fruit bats.

  (Link via Maggie Koerth-Baker.)

 


• [Your Scans_Daily link of the day]
  A bittersweet moment from Naoki Urasawa and Osamu Tezuka’s Pluto.

  (Above: scanlated sequence from the series, ©2009 Naoki Urasawa/Tezuka Productions.)

 

Events Calendar

 

Today:

• November 6-26 (London, England): The Comica London International Comics Festival eats the month of November, with a wide variety of events taking place in a number of locations. Details here.
• November 13 (New York City, NY): The Al Columbia event at Brooklyn’s Desert Island has been cancelled.
• November 13 (Chicago, IL): Join Dean Haspiel for a multimedia presentation and launch party for the new Act-I-Vate Experience anthology at Quimby’s Books on North Avenue, beginning at 7PM. Details here.
• November 13 (Washington DC): The Astro Boy Essays author Frederik Schodt will discuss Osamu Tezuka’s most famous creation at the Freer Gallery’s Meyer Auditorium on Jefferson Drive, beginning at 7PM. Admission is free. Details here.
• November 13 (Austin, TX): R. Crumb and Art Spiegelman will talk comics with moderator Françoise Mouly at the University of Texas’ Bass Concert Hall on 23rd Street, beginning at 8PM. Ticket prices start at $26. Details here.

 

This weekend:

• November 14 (White River Junction, VA): It’s portfolio day at the Center for Cartoon Studies! Participation is free, but a reservation is required. Details here.
• November 14 (Emeryville, CA): The sixth annual Cartoon Art Museum Fundraiser takes place at the Pixar Animation Studios, from 11AM-4PM. Ticket prices start at $35. Details here.
• November 14 (Pittsburgh, PA): The folks at The ToonSeum, Pittsburgh’s Museum of Cartoon Art, celebrate the opening of their new location on Liberty Avenue, from 10AM-6PM. Details here.
• November 14 (Plano, TX): The Dallas Webcomics Expo takes place at the Southfork Hotel on the Texas Central Expressway, from 11AM-6PM. Admission is $5; guests include Baldo creators Hector Cantu and Carlos Castellanos, plus Randal Milholland, Scott Kurtz and many others. Details here.
• November 14 (London, England): Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers creator Gilbert Shelton makes an appearance at Gosh! Comics on Great Russell Street, from 3-5PM. Details here.
• November 14 (Dublin, Ireland): The Electric Micks comics collective will be signing their new sketchbook compilation at Forbidden Planet on Crampton Quay, from 3-5PM. Details here.
• November 14 (Cambridge, MA): Paul Hornschemeier and Jay Ryan will be signing books and meeting readers at the Million Year Picnic on Auburn Street, from 4-6PM. Details here.
• November 14 (San Francisco, CA): James Kochalka will appear at an opening reception for his new gallery show at Giant Robot on Shrader Street, from 6:30-10PM. Details here.
• November 14 (Los Angeles, CA): Join Keith Knight for a book signing at Meltdown Comics on Sunset Boulevard, from 7-10PM. Details here.
• November 15 (Dublin, Ireland): Karl Kerschl, Cameron Stewart and Ramón Pérez will make an appearance at Forbidden Planet on Crampton Quay, from 3-5PM. Details here.
• November 15 (New York City, NY): Paul Hornschemeier and Jay Ryan will be signing books and meeting readers at Brooklyn’s own Rocketship on Smith Street, beginning at 7PM. Details here.

 

Want to see your comics-related event listed here? Email a link to dirk@tcj.com and let me know. Please include an online link to which I can send people for more information. No sales-only events, please — it’s nice that you’ve marked things down at your store or website, but I won’t be listing it here.

 

“What is happening to Christopher Handley is an affront to sane system of law. It’s an affront to human decency.”

- Ed Sizemore

 

“I think there should be a new rule: any such ‘how do I get a woman to like comics?’ column MUST be accompanied by a matching column about ‘how do I get a man to like knitting/ scrapbooking/ quilting’ or other feminine craft of your choice. Yes, it would be about as pointless, but reading about a geek trying to crochet a Transformer would amuse me.”

- Johanna Draper Carlson

 

Above the Fold

 

• [Top Story] Life in interesting times
  • Bangladesh’s BDnews24 reports that “a Jessore court has handed down two months of rigorous imprisonment to cartoonist Arifur Rahman of satire magazine Alpin, a weekly publication of the daily Prothom Alo.” As you may recall, Rahman was the subject of national scandal after drawing a cartoon that lampooned the tendency to name everyone Muhammed by giving the name to a cat.

    (Right: panel from the oh-so-perfidious cartoon in question.)

  • Rob Tornoe brings word that Iranian cartoonist Hadi Heidari has been released from prison, where he had languised since October 22.

    (Link via Alan Gardner.)

  • “Former San Diego Union-Tribune editorial cartoonist Steve Kelley, who alleged that newspaper officials intimidated his successor, Steve Breen, into dropping plans to develop a joint comic strip with him, has had his suit thrown out in court,” reports Editor & Publisher.
  • In Sioux Falls, South Dakota, copies of the Ariel Schrag-edited anthology Stuck in the Middle have been pulled from school shelves “after a parent complained about cartoons containing foul language, sexual references and teen smoking.”
  • Former New York Post editor Sandra Guzman is suing the paper over her termination, which she claims fired her over her opposition to a Sean Delonas cartoon.
  • ICv2 presents its Direct Market sales extimates for October. Comic-book sales are apparently down 14% vs. this time last year, while graphic-novel sales dropped by 30%. Here’s the market analysis, the top-300 bestselling comics pamphlets and the top-300 bestselling books.

    (Right: cover to Blackest Night #4, the bestselling comic book to comics-shop owners in October.)

  • Other sales-estimates type stuff: Matthew Murray offers a month-to-month look at indy-genre comics sales to Direct Market retailers (now updated for September), while Matt Blind examines online graphic-novel sales.
  • Business reporter Jason McBride takes a look at Canadian art-comics publisher Drawn & Quarterly.
  • Simon Jones catches an online-scanlations pay site pirating the comics that he publishes.
  • Joe Scott pays a visit to Jermaine Exum, owner of South North Carolina’s Acme Comics.
  • Chris Heller surveys the choice of comics shops in Washington DC.

 

 

 

Literary Comics

 

• [Profile] Eddie Campbell
  Link: Bill Kartalopoulos

  The Alec author discusses his work.

 

• [Review] Diario de Oaxaca
  Link: Brian Heater

  “But while [Peter] Kuper’s art often has a relatively finished feel to it (compared, at least, to more traditional sketchbooks), a sense of experimentation and adventure pulses through the journal’s pages, as the artist immerses himself and his work in the culture and art that surround him during his family’s Mexican exodus.”

 

• [Review] Funny Misshapen Body
  Link: Sean T. Collins

  “[Jeffrey] Brown’s basically telling two stories here: the stories of his physical and artistic/intellectual development.”

 

• [Review] The Squirrel Machine
  Link: Henry Chamberlain

  “The things that seem the most curious and promising may ultimately be the things best left alone.”

 

• [Review] Bread & Wine
  Link: Kristy Valenti

  “1999’s Bread & Wine, a 44 pp., squarebound 10″ X 8″ autobio comic written by black, gay science-fiction writer, professor and theorist Samuel R. Delany and drawn by artist /martial arts instructor Mia Wolff, is difficult to write critically about; I’m afraid I’m going to lapse into mere rhapsodic description.”

 


• [Comics] “Will Everyone Please Stop Freaking Out Over Ayn Rand!?!”
  Link: Peter Bagge

  A plea for common sense.

  (Above: panel from the strip, ©2009 Peter Bagge.)

 

 

 

Pop Comics

 

• [Profile] Roger Langridge
  Link: Chris Arrant

  The cartoon-comedy genius talks Muppets.

 

• [Review] The Best of Battle
  Link: Bart Croonenborghs

  “In general, the concepts are solid and well thought through, or at least in the stories presented because it is hard to tell how certain things hold up in larger chunks than published here.”

 

• [Review] Prison Pit #1
  Link: Tom Spurgeon

  “I wish to add my voice to the chorus of those who really, really like Johnny Ryan’s left-hand turn into violent fantasy with the promise of more to come [...]“

 

• [Review] Zot!
  Link: Shaenon Garrity

  “Zot! wants more than anything to retreat into a mix of 1930s pulp idealism and 1960s technocratic optimism. But it can’t. The deeper [Scott] McCloud delves into Zot’s shiny world, the less satisfying he seems to find it.”

 

• [Review] Various titles
  Link: Joe McCulloch, Graeme McMillan

  Eventually they’ll blot out the whole sky, I just know it…

 

• [Commentary] The superhero is dead…
  Link: Steven Grant

  …just not the way you’d think.

 


• [Comics] Ringo Kid
  Link: Ten-Cent Dreams (John Severin, Joe Maneely, Fred Kida and counting)

  All this week, it’s a tour of the 1950s Western series.

  (Above: John Severin-drawn panel from Ringo Kid #9, ©1955 Marvel Comics.)

 


• [Comics] “The Evil Stranger”
  Link: Karswell

  Aggressively mean-spirited tale of dueling murder plots.

  (Above: sequence from Strange Mysteries #14, creator[s] unknown; ©1953 Superior Publishers Limited.)

 

• [Pandering] And now…
  Link: Diversions of the Groovy Kind
  

  …Tarzan’s ass.

  (Above: John Buscema’s rendition of Tarzan’s ass, from Tarzan #2 and ©1977 Edgar Rice Burroughs.)

 

 

 

Manga

 

• [Profile] Frederik Schodt
  Link: Chelsea Bauch

  A chat about Osamu Tezuka with the author of The Astro Boy Essays.

 

• [Review] Various titles
  Link: Noah Berlatsky

  Quick takes culled from the pages of The Comics Journal.

 

Comic Strips

 

• [Profile] Johnny Hart
  Link: Nick Meglin

  Reproduced from the book Humorous Illustration, a spotlight on the late B.C. creator.

 

• [Profile] Jeff Keane
  Link: ICv2

  A short Q&A with the second-generation Family Circus cartoonist.

 

• [Review] Various titles
  Link: Chris Mautner

  New Bloom County and Family Circus collections examined.

 


• [Comics] Buck O’Rue
  Link: Ger Apeldoorn

  “Paul Murray was one of the more recognizable artists in the Disney comic books. Lots of people remember him from his Mickey Mouse and Goofy adventures. For Buck O’Rue he teamed up with Disney writer, cartoonist and later Mickey Mouse Club favorite Roy Williams.”

  (Above: panel from the December 8, 1951 strip.)

 

• [Commentary] A preemptive wake for alt-weekly comics
  Link: Todd Allen

  “On November 7, the Chicago Humanities Festival held a panel on the decline and death of alternative comic strips. That is to say, the weekly comic strips that appear in alternative weekly papers like the Chicago Reader, the Village Voice and so forth. Or, more to the point, don’t appear any more.”

 

Digital Comics

 

• [Review] Goats Vol. 2: The Corndog Imperative
  Link: Matthew Brady

  “There’s kind of a formula for a lot of webcomics, especially those that traffic in nerd humor. There’s usually a couple of guys who are slackers, but are smart and funny, and sometimes have hot women who inexplicably find them attractive. Maybe some anthropomorphic animals or robots, which are probably violent or evil to give them an ‘edge.’ Throw in a bunch of geeky humor about video games or computers, a bunch of swearing, and some ostensibly wacky adventures, and you’ve got yourself an automatic audience, or so it seems, since this sort of comic abounds online, to the point that it’s almost a sort of insular ghetto.”

 

Cartooning

 

• [Profile] John Proctor
  Link: John Adcock

  A look back at the 19th-century British proto-cartoonist.

 

• [Review] Talking Lines
  Link: Tom Spurgeon

  “The work itself is a mixed bag,” says Spurgeon of this collection of R.O. Blechman comics.

 


• [Craft] Work in Progress
  Link: Site homepage

  Spanish-language website that uses Flash to demonstrate a given artist’s page-creation process.

  (Above: sequence by and ©2009 Pau. Link via John Martz.)

 

• [Craft] Four scripts
  Link: Warren Ellis

  In case you were curious how he did it, the scripts for issues of Ministry of Space, Desolation Jones and Fell.

 


• [Comics] Bill Mauldin’s Star Spangle Banter
  Link: Harry Lee Green

  “This booklet, issued by the STARS AND STRIPES newspaper in 1944, collects some of Mauldin’s cartoons. He drew six a week, which is a lot for any cartoonist, especially one like Mauldin who traveled around in his own jeep, visiting soldiers for inspiration.”

  (Above: cartoon ©1944 Army Times Publishing Co.)

 


• [Art] Roy G. Krenkel
  Link: Thom Buchanan (one, two)

  “Back in the early 80s, my finances were like a roller coaster, and when I saw this Roy Krenkel portfolio in a comix shoppe window, I was devastated to realize I couldn’t afford it at the moment (yes I was that low on cash). Several years later I was able to get it at auction for a couple bucks more than cover price. It’s not the best portfolio, but I was really glad to finally get it.”

  (Above: illustration ©1980 Roy G. Krenkel.)

 

• [Commentary] On Mamet and Herzog
  Link: Tom Hart

  “All my career I’ve obsessed with a dichotomy between what I call drama and poetry. The inclination more towards story or towards imagery that exists outside of it’s dramatic context.”

 

Technology

 

• [Software] Corel Painter Magazine
  Link: Vom Marlowe

  “For those who don’t play in the fields of digital art, Corel Painter X (or XI, which has just been released) is the big ‘other’ art program. Unlike Photoshop, Painter is designed to mimic the natural materials so many artists use. Sure, Photoshop has some natural material brushes, but it doesn’t have a mixing palette or blending brushes or brushes which naturally and intuitively pick up the underlying paint and mix it, or make impasto, or a dozen other things.”

 

Comics Culture

 

• [Scene] Comica Comiket
  Link: Jess Holland

  “The launch of a comics anthology that pitches itself as a British alternative to Dave Eggers’ McSweeney’s was one of the highlights of Sunday’s Comica Comiket, a fair for independently published comics that took place at London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts on Sunday.”

 

• [Scene] King Con Brooklyn
  Link: Brian Heater

  “The show was housed at the Brooklyn Lyceum, stone church-like theater space/coffee shop, which, of the course of a few months, serves as a home from everything from batting cages to chess champions. The building itself is located on 4th avenue, on the outskirts of Park Slope, just beyond the ever-creeping hand of neighborhood gentrification. It’s a strange space to say the least — in the lead up to one of my panels, I discovered a lone prop skull amongst wayward theater refuse.”

 


• [Commentary] Out of the closet and into the comics
  Link: Andy Mangels

  “The piece looked at how the industry treated gay characters and topics [in the 1980s], as well as gay creators, was split over two issues, kicked off industry debate and led to the long-running Gays In Comics panel every year at San Diego’s Comic-Con.”

  (Above: Howard Cruse’s illustration for the first part of the essay, published in the June 15, 1988 edition of Amazing Heroes and ©1988 Howard Cruse.)

 

• [Your not-comics link of the day]
  Twelve reasons unemployment is going to (at least) 12 percent.

 

• [Your Scans_Daily link of the day]
  Look out — Scans_Daily is migrating again.

 

Events Calendar

 

Today:

• November 6-26 (London, England): The Comica London International Comics Festival eats the month of November, with a wide variety of events taking place in a number of locations. Details here.
• November 12 (London, England): Are You Zine Friendly? is billed as “another awesome evening of zines, comix, book arts and poetry,” and takes place at The Foundry on Great Eastern Street, beginning at 7PM. Details here.
• November 12 (Washington DC): Writer Haynes Johnson will discuss the life and art of the legendary editorial cartoonist Herblock at the Politics and Prose Bookstore on Connecticut Avenue, beginning at 7PM. Details here.

 

This week:

• November 13 (New York City, NY): The Al Columbia event at Brooklyn’s Desert Island has been cancelled.
• November 13 (Chicago, IL): Join Dean Haspiel for a multimedia presentation and launch party for the new Act-I-Vate Experience anthology at Quimby’s Books on North Avenue, beginning at 7PM. Details here.
• November 13 (Washington DC): The Astro Boy Essays author Frederik Schodt will discuss Osamu Tezuka’s most famous creation at the Freer Gallery’s Meyer Auditorium on Jefferson Drive, beginning at 7PM. Admission is free. Details here.
• November 13 (Austin, TX): R. Crumb and Art Spiegelman will talk comics with moderator Françoise Mouly at the University of Texas’ Bass Concert Hall on 23rd Street, beginning at 8PM. Ticket prices start at $26. Details here.
• November 14 (White River Junction, VA): It’s portfolio day at the Center for Cartoon Studies! Participation is free, but a reservation is required. Details here.
• November 14 (Emeryville, CA): The sixth annual Cartoon Art Museum Fundraiser takes place at the Pixar Animation Studios, from 11AM-4PM. Ticket prices start at $35. Details here.
• November 14 (Pittsburgh, PA): The folks at The ToonSeum, Pittsburgh’s Museum of Cartoon Art, celebrate the opening of their new location on Liberty Avenue, from 10AM-6PM. Details here.
• November 14 (Plano, TX): The Dallas Webcomics Expo takes place at the Southfork Hotel on the Texas Central Expressway, from 11AM-6PM. Admission is $5; guests include Baldo creators Hector Cantu and Carlos Castellanos, plus Randal Milholland, Scott Kurtz and many others. Details here.
• November 14 (London, England): Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers creator Gilbert Shelton makes an appearance at Gosh! Comics on Great Russell Street, from 3-5PM. Details here.
• November 14 (Dublin, Ireland): The Electric Micks comics collective will be signing their new sketchbook compilation at Forbidden Planet on Crampton Quay, from 3-5PM. Details here.
• November 14 (Cambridge, MA): Paul Hornschemeier and Jay Ryan will be signing books and meeting readers at the Million Year Picnic on Auburn Street, from 4-6PM. Details here.
• November 14 (San Francisco, CA): James Kochalka will appear at an opening reception for his new gallery show at Giant Robot on Shrader Street, from 6:30-10PM. Details here.
• November 14 (Los Angeles, CA): Join Keith Knight for a book signing at Meltdown Comics on Sunset Boulevard, from 7-10PM. Details here.
• November 15 (Dublin, Ireland): Karl Kerschl, Cameron Stewart and Ramón Pérez will make an appearance at Forbidden Planet on Crampton Quay, from 3-5PM. Details here.
• November 15 (New York City, NY): Paul Hornschemeier and Jay Ryan will be signing books and meeting readers at Brooklyn’s own Rocketship on Smith Street, beginning at 7PM. Details here.

 

Want to see your comics-related event listed here? Email a link to dirk@tcj.com and let me know. Please include an online link to which I can send people for more information. No sales-only events, please — it’s nice that you’ve marked things down at your store or website, but I won’t be listing it here.

 

“Just yesterday I was complaining about how Apple sometimes treats its customers as if they were stupid.

“I had no idea how right I was.”

- Tom Richmond

 

Well, not a “day off,” exactly, but I need to spend some serious time getting materials ready for the Great Leap Forward, and something had to give. ¡Journalista! returns tomorrow.

 

Events Calendar

 

Today:

• November 11 (Chicago, IL): Paul Hornschemeier and Jay Ryan will be signing books and meeting readers at Quimby’s Books on North Avenue, beginning at 7PM. Details here.

 

This week:

• November 12 (London, England): Are You Zine Friendly? is billed as “another awesome evening of zines, comix, book arts and poetry,” and takes place at The Foundry on Great Eastern Street, beginning at 7PM. Details here.
• November 12 (Washington DC): Writer Haynes Johnson will discuss the life and art of the legendary editorial cartoonist Herblock at the Politics and Prose Bookstore on Connecticut Avenue, beginning at 7PM. Details here.
• November 13 (New York City, NY): Al Columbia will be signing books and meeting readers at Brooklyn’s own Desert Island on Metropolitan Avenue, goodness only knows when. Details here.
• November 13 (Chicago, IL): Join Dean Haspiel for a multimedia presentation and launch party for the new Act-I-Vate Experience anthology at Quimby’s Books on North Avenue, beginning at 7PM. Details here.
• November 13 (Washington DC): The Astro Boy Essays author Frederik Schodt will discuss Osamu Tezuka’s most famous creation at the Freer Gallery’s Meyer Auditorium on Jefferson Drive, beginning at 7PM. Admission is free. Details here.
• November 13 (Austin, TX): R. Crumb and Art Spiegelman will talk comics with moderator Françoise Mouly at the University of Texas’ Bass Concert Hall on 23rd Street, beginning at 8PM. Ticket prices start at $26. Details here.
• November 14 (White River Junction, VA): It’s portfolio day at the Center for Cartoon Studies! Participation is free, but a reservation is required. Details here.
• November 14 (Emeryville, CA): The sixth annual Cartoon Art Museum Fundraiser takes place at the Pixar Animation Studios, from 11AM-4PM. Ticket prices start at $35. Details here.
• November 14 (Pittsburgh, PA): The folks at The ToonSeum, Pittsburgh’s Museum of Cartoon Art, celebrate the opening of their new location on Liberty Avenue, from 10AM-6PM. Details here.
• November 14 (Plano, TX): The Dallas Webcomics Expo takes place at the Southfork Hotel on the Texas Central Expressway, from 11AM-6PM. Admission is $5; guests include Baldo creators Hector Cantu and Carlos Castellanos, plus Randal Milholland, Scott Kurtz and many others. Details here.
• November 14 (London, England): Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers creator Gilbert Shelton makes an appearance at Gosh! Comics on Great Russell Street, from 3-5PM. Details here.
• November 14 (Dublin, Ireland): The Electric Micks comics collective will be signing their new sketchbook compilation at Forbidden Planet on Crampton Quay, from 3-5PM. Details here.
• November 14 (Cambridge, MA): Paul Hornschemeier and Jay Ryan will be signing books and meeting readers at the Million Year Picnic on Auburn Street, from 4-6PM. Details here.
• November 14 (San Francisco, CA): James Kochalka will appear at an opening reception for his new gallery show at Giant Robot on Shrader Street, from 6:30-10PM. Details here.
• November 14 (Los Angeles, CA): Join Keith Knight for a book signing at Meltdown Comics on Sunset Boulevard, from 7-10PM. Details here.
• November 15 (New York City, NY): Paul Hornschemeier and Jay Ryan will be signing books and meeting readers at Brooklyn’s own Rocketship on Smith Street, beginning at 7PM. Details here.

 

Want to see your comics-related event listed here? Email a link to dirk@tcj.com and let me know. Please include an online link to which I can send people for more information. No sales-only events, please — it’s nice that you’ve marked things down at your store or website, but I won’t be listing it here.

 

“The Dark Knight Returns additionally helped start the ‘grim and gritty’ trends in comic storytelling that still exist today. That was an unintended result, and I am truly sorry it happened. Comics are much too dark today. Er — in my opinion…”

- Dick Giordano

 

Above the Fold

 

• [Top Story] Life in interesting times
  • Tunisian blogger Fatma Riahi has been jailed on suspicion of being a cartoonist:

    On Monday, November 2nd, 2009, Tunisian blogger and college Theatre professor, Fatma Riahi (34), known online as Arabicca, was summoned to appear before the Criminal Brigade of Gorjani (Tunis), where she was questioned about her online activities.

    Fatma was released the same day around 10 pm then summoned again the next day, on Tuesday November 3rd when three Security officers escorted her to her house in Monastir, located at 160 km from the capital (Tunis), to conduct a search for evidence that she may be hiding behind the pen-name of the famous Tunisian cartoonist blogger Blog de Z. They also confiscated her PC. On Wednesday, they escorted her again to her home in search for her passwords and managed to access her facebook account.

    

    Riahi has been incarcerated ever since, and has not been given access to a lawyer.

    (Above: Nov. 6 cartoon by Blog de Z.)

  • A hearing to determine the sentence of Christopher Handley will take place on January 25, according to ICv2. Handley was found guilty on charges related to the possession of lolicon manga.
  • So is the Angoulême Comics Festival happening or not?
  • “Tamiki Wakaki, a top Shonen Sunday mangaka, has voiced his concerns that the Japanese manga industry is in long-term decline, and that authors not writing in the four staple genres of ero, parody, bishonen, and bishoujo can no longer expect to support themselves commercially.”

    (Warning/Promise: There is ass at that link, which is via Simon Jones, naturally.)

  • Johanna Draper Carlson spots an adult graphic-novel section in her local library.

 

• [Consumer news] New this week
  Link: Joe McCulloch, Matthew Brady

  A look at the best-sounding books scheduled to hit the comics shops tomorrow.

 

 

 

Literary Comics

 

• [Profile] Jerry Moriarty
  Link: Brian Heater

  The first installment of a four-part concversation with the Jack Survives creator.

 

• [Profile] Marisa Acocella Marchetto and S.L. Wisenberg
  Link: Elinor Brecher

  “I’m sick about writing about cancer.”

 

• [Scene] Eddie Campbell in London
  Link: Paul Tierney

  “It’s all right writing about your own life, but it’s got to be of use to someone else.”

 

• [Review] Footnotes in Gaza
  Link: Tom Spurgeon

  “The first good news to report about the massive, fascinating new Footnotes in Gaza hardcover is that the cartoonist is in top form throughout. If there’s something that Joe Sacco’s done in a previous comic that you’ve liked or with which you’ve been impressed, then that same technique or approach is likely to be on display here in a comparable or more effective way.”

 

• [Review] Refresh, Refresh
  Link: Sean T. Collins

  “Every email from its latchkey-kid teenaged protagonist to his soldier father abroad is a poetic reverie about the emptiness of lives touched by war. Every conversation between his friend and his friend’s kid brother is an object lesson in how violence and hierarchical power relationships infect those raised around it. Every bully, every cute girl, every wild animal is a metaphor first and foremost.”

 


• [Comics] “Love Punishes the Guilty”
  Link: Tim Hensley

  Romance can be complicated.

  (Above: panel from the strip, ©2009 Tim Hensley.)

 


• [Comics] “A Parable”
  Link: Rick Veitch

  Two-page strip by (and ©2009) Veitch and Peter Money.

 

 

 

Pop Comics

 

• [Review] Cinderella: From Fabletown With Love #1
  Link: Nina Stone

  “This one is right up my alley, but not necessarily on the story alone. It’s the whole idea that I’m a big fan of.”

 


• [Comics] Two failures from Authentic Police Cases
  Link: Sherm Cohen

  Weird, awful comics. Go have a look.

  (Above: panel from Authentic Police Cases #1, ©1948 St. John Publishing.)

 

 

 

Manga

 

• [Review] The Way to Heaven
  Link: Hooded Utilitarian

  “Unlike the guys in this story, though, I haven’t been plucked from my painful personal drama by a hot and annoyingly playful alien who agrees to give me another chance by allowing me to go back in time for an additional fraction of a second for every test tube I can fill with blood or semen. Looking deep into my heart, I find that I’m really, really OK with that, though.”

 

• [Review] Various titles
  Link: David Welsh

  A tour of collegiate comedies.

 

• [Commentaty] One-shots in the Western manga market
  Link: Manga Widget

  Is there a place for the short story in the North American manga scene?

  (Link via Brigid Alverson.)

 

Cartooning

 

• [Useless Blather] Gonna do some squats
  Link: Kate Beaton

  This Scans_Daily post (spotlighting Ms. Beaton’s Wonder Woman comics) led me to troll her archives, leading to the above-linked strip and a reminder of what a well-made comic strip looks like.

  Note carefully the way that Matthew Henson is drawn throughout the course of the strip. He starts out in a kind of semi-cartoony state, and as we work our way through the top tier, we move in closer to him and begin to see more realistic features, reaching the natural conclusion of this progression as we hit the dramatic pause in the final panel. And then the fun begins! We’re all cartoon eyes and wacky antics from here, frolicking around the mummified Peary (who himself never advances past googly-eyed cartoony) — and since the figures are smaller, they don’t call enough attention to themselves to draw the eyes away from the top tier as you’re reading it, allowing the sudden shift in emphasis enough surprise to “put the eyebrows on it” (as Frank Zappa once used to say) and hit the comedy sweet spot. Let’s have a big grin in that final panel!

  That is one cleverly constructed comic strip, yes indeed.

 


• [Multimedia] The Zoomquilt 2
  Link: Madmindworx.com

  I couldn’t not link to this.

  (Above: screenshot from the animation.)

 

• [Snark] How (not) to draw asian women
  Link: Zac Bentz

  “In his defense, this is labeled a ‘beginner’ drawing lesson.”

 

Comics Culture

 

• [Your not-comics link of the day]
  Video: Rodrigo y Gabriela perform live at Seattle’s KEXP.

 

• [Your Scans_Daily link of the day]
  Honestly, that Beaton thing was the only interesting thing I found today, and I know I’ve linked to it before.

 

Events Calendar

 

This week:

• November 11 (Chicago, IL): Paul Hornschemeier and Jay Ryan will be signing books and meeting readers at Quimby’s Books on North Avenue, beginning at 7PM. Details here.
• November 12 (London, England): Are You Zine Friendly? is billed as “another awesome evening of zines, comix, book arts and poetry,” and takes place at The Foundry on Great Eastern Street, beginning at 7PM. Details here.
• November 12 (Washington DC): Writer Haynes Johnson will discuss the life and art of the legendary editorial cartoonist Herblock at the Politics and Prose Bookstore on Connecticut Avenue, beginning at 7PM. Details here.
• November 13 (New York City, NY): Al Columbia will be signing books and meeting readers at Brooklyn’s own Desert Island on Metropolitan Avenue, goodness only knows when. Details here.
• November 13 (Chicago, IL): Join Dean Haspiel for a multimedia presentation and launch party for the new Act-I-Vate Experience anthology at Quimby’s Books on North Avenue, beginning at 7PM. Details here.
• November 13 (Washington DC): The Astro Boy Essays author Frederik Schodt will discuss Osamu Tezuka’s most famous creation at the Freer Gallery’s Meyer Auditorium on Jefferson Drive, beginning at 7PM. Admission is free. Details here.
• November 13 (Austin, TX): R. Crumb and Art Spiegelman will talk comics with moderator Françoise Mouly at the University of Texas’ Bass Concert Hall on 23rd Street, beginning at 8PM. Ticket prices start at $26. Details here.
• November 14 (White River Junction, VA): It’s portfolio day at the Center for Cartoon Studies! Participation is free, but a reservation is required. Details here.
• November 14 (Emeryville, CA): The sixth annual Cartoon Art Museum Fundraiser takes place at the Pixar Animation Studios, from 11AM-4PM. Ticket prices start at $35. Details here.
• November 14 (Pittsburgh, PA): The folks at The ToonSeum, Pittsburgh’s Museum of Cartoon Art, celebrate the opening of their new location on Liberty Avenue, from 10AM-6PM. Details here.
• November 14 (Plano, TX): The Dallas Webcomics Expo takes place at the Southfork Hotel on the Texas Central Expressway, from 11AM-6PM. Admission is $5; guests include Baldo creators Hector Cantu and Carlos Castellanos, plus Randal Milholland, Scott Kurtz and many others. Details here.
• November 14 (London, England): Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers creator Gilbert Shelton makes an appearance at Gosh! Comics on Great Russell Street, from 3-5PM. Details here.
• November 14 (Dublin, Ireland): The Electric Micks comics collective will be signing their new sketchbook compilation at Forbidden Planet on Crampton Quay, from 3-5PM. Details here.
• November 14 (Cambridge, MA): Paul Hornschemeier and Jay Ryan will be signing books and meeting readers at the Million Year Picnic on Auburn Street, from 4-6PM. Details here.
• November 14 (San Francisco, CA): James Kochalka will appear at an opening reception for his new gallery show at Giant Robot on Shrader Street, from 6:30-10PM. Details here.
• November 14 (Los Angeles, CA): Join Keith Knight for a book signing at Meltdown Comics on Sunset Boulevard, from 7-10PM. Details here.
• November 15 (New York City, NY): Paul Hornschemeier and Jay Ryan will be signing books and meeting readers at Brooklyn’s own Rocketship on Smith Street, beginning at 7PM. Details here.

 

Want to see your comics-related event listed here? Email a link to dirk@tcj.com and let me know. Please include an online link to which I can send people for more information. No sales-only events, please — it’s nice that you’ve marked things down at your store or website, but I won’t be listing it here.

 

“I can’t help but notice that many manga and anime fans these days seem to be…pretty bad readers. They don’t get literary or artistic references. In fact, if it’s not games, they often miss that anything all was referenced. They haven’t read classics in mostly any genre. If it wasn’t a movie, they’ve never heard of it.”

- Erica Friedman

 

“I’ll give y’all this much: I apologize for putting the noose in the cartoon.”

- David Horsey

 

Above the Fold

 

• [Top Story] Life in interesting times
  • Some people never lose the stigma: A comic by notorious Air Pirates cartoonist Dan O’Neill has been banned from eBay (last item) for its portrayal of the Irish Republican Army.

    (Link via W.L. Lilly.)

  • This week, five of the bestselling books in France are comics.
  • Marc-Oliver Frisch presents his month-to-month estimates for DC Comics’ sales to Direct Market retailers, now updated for September.

 

 

 

Literary Comics

 

• [Review] Cross Country
  Link: Rob Clough

  “M.K. Reed’s book is “ostensibly about a young man who is forced to travel across the country with his odious former fratboy boss. It’s also a vicious takedown of nondescript small town America as well as the monotonous corporate entities that wind up gutting them.”

 

• [Review] Mome #14-16
  Link: Sean T. Collins

  “Things kinda went off the rails here, no?”

 

• [Commentary] Chris Ware is everywhere
  Link: Jeet Heer

  “Certainly Ware has raised the bar in terms of design, just as he has done for comics, but it is odd to see Ware pastiches popping up all over the place.”

 


• [Comics] “Talkin’ Bout My Generation”
  Link: Vanessa Davis

  A review of Crumb’s The Book of Genesis Illustrated in comics form.

  (Above: detail from the strip, ©2009 Vanessa Davis. Link via Peggy Burns.)

 


• [Comics] “Illustrative Excerpts From The Final Problem“
  Link: Kevin Huizenga

  In which the cartoonist riffs on Sherlock Holmes.

  (Above: panel from the strip, ©2009 Kevin Huizenga.)

 


• [Comics] “A Zen Fable”
  Link: Thom Buchanan

  A psychedelic three-pager by underground cartoonist Fred Schrier.

  (Above: sequence from Meef #2, ©1973 Fred Schrier.)

 

 

 

Pop Comics

 

• [Review] El Indio
  Link: Ruel S. De Vera

  “Lovingly restored and collected, Francisco V. Coching’s masterpiece El Indio is a stunning epic of adventure and romance in any century.”

 

• [Review] Deathlok the Destroyer #1
  Link: Greg McElhatton

  “Just how many times can Marvel revamp a character concept?”

 

• [Review] Dungeon: The Early Years Vol. 2: Innocence Lost
  Link: Bill Sherman

  “But this French comic series by writers Joann Sfar and Lewis Trondheim, with art this time out by Christopher Blain, turns out to be a sharply adult funny animal parody/satire: close to Stan Sakai’s wonderful ronin rabbit series Usagi Yojimbo — if Sakai had a darker, more underground sensibility.”

 

• [Review] Various titles
  Link: Tucker Stone, Chris Mautner, Paul O’Brien, Don MacPherson and the A.V. Club’s circle of critics

  “You put your hands in, and rip my heart out…”

 

• [Commentary] Grant Morrison ruined the X-Men
  Link: David Brothers

  “Morrison pulled the X-Men into the modern day, not even the future, and Marvel’s move after he left was to immediately dial things back to 1982. It’s a baffling decision, and one that’s hamstrung the X-Men ever since.”

 


• [Comics] Sick #3
  Link: Sam Henderson (one, two, three and four)

  “This [comics magazine] has gone through many incarnations in its history, but always used the same format as Mad, fifty-two pages on newsprint. It started out trying to differ itself from them by focusing on current events and the ’sick’ humor of stand-up comics of the day. Not sick as in ‘gross-out,’ but as in the sick world we live in. It was closer to the humor of Lenny Bruce and Mort Sahl than the parodies of TV shows and movies Mad was known for.”

  (Above: gag page from the comic, creator[s] unknown; ©1960 Headline Publications, Inc.)

 


• [Comics] Russ Manning’s Captain Sinbad
  Link: Harry Lee Green

  The master comic-book cartoonist’s adaptation of the early-’60s motion picture.

  (Above: panel from the comic, ©1963 King Brothers Productions, Inc.)

 

• [Snark] All this needs…
  Link: Rich Johnston

  …is a lesbian encounter between Storm and Kitty Pryde, and it’ll be the X-Men book that Chris Claremont always wanted to write.

 

 

 

Manga

 

• [Commentary] The unseen terrors of Naoki Urasawa
  Link: David E. Ford

  “This technique of enhancing fear by occultation certainly isn’t new and it is flawed insofar as eventually you’ve gotta show just what it is that is so scary. Urasawa manages to avoid this flaw and thereby redefine what is scary in comics in a couple of ways.”

  (Link via Katherine Dacey.)

 

Comic Strips

 

• [Profile] John Kovaleski
  Link: Scott Nickel

  Twenty questions for the Bo Nanas creator.

 

• [Review] Schulz’s Youth
  Link: Noah Berlatsky

  “The publishing world is doing right by Charles Schulz; virtually everything the man did is making its way back into print. So now, alongside Fantagraphics’ steady reissue of all the Peanuts strips, we also have available a wealth of side-projects. That includes this series of cartoons which Schulz drew in the ’50s and early ’60s for Youth, a magazine aimed at religious teens in the Church of God (Anderson) movement, with which Schulz himself was affiliated.”

 


• [Comics] Alex Raymond’s first Flash Gordon Sundays
  Link: Ten-Cent Dreams

  “It’s incredible how quickly paced these early efforts were; no foreplay, all action.”

  (Above: panel from the second strip, ©1934 King Features Syndicate.)

 

• [Snark] The worst Spider-Man of all
  Link: Brian Hughes

  Stan Lee stinks up the funny pages.

 

Editorial Cartoons

 

• [Scene] Dave Coverly in Michigan
  Link: Rebecca Bakken

  “Author of the comic Speedbump and Plainwell High School graduate Dave Coverly spoke to a full room at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts about what inspires him and what makes cartoons art.”

 


• [Comics] George Herriman cartoons
  Link: Allan Holtz

  After a hiatus, Holtz returns with another sampler of early work by the Krazy Kat creator.

  (Above: detail from one of the cartoons — full version available at the link.)

 

Cartooning

 

• [Scene] Swann Foundation accepting Fellowship applications
  Link: Press release

  Missed it: “The Swann Foundation seeks to award one fellowship annually (with a stipend of up to $15,000) to assist in continuing scholarly research and writing projects in the field of caricature and cartoon. Depending on the number and quality of proposals, the advisory board may elect to make multiple, smaller awards.”

  (Thanks to “Barrens Lit” for e-mailing me the link.)

 


• [Art] Jugend Magazine
  Link: Archive homepage

  “Germany in the late 19th century. Jugend was a cultural weekly publication. It soon became a style-setting icon that launched the German art nouveau movement, named Jugendstil after the magazine.”

  (Above: illustration from a 1903 edition of the magazine. Link via Jaleen Grove.)

 


• [Art] Curious Pages
  Link: Illustration blog

  A site devoted to obscure and “inappropriate” children’s books, with plenty of sample art.

  (Above: one of Edward Gorey’s illustrations for Peter F. Neumeyer’s 1969 book, Donald and the…. Link via Amid Amidi.)

 

Comics Culture

 

• [Commentary] The pros of cons
  Link: Paul Gravett

  “With Comica ‘09 now taking place in London [...], it seems appropriate to consider the role that UK comic conventions and festivals play in the growing graphic novels market.”

 

• [Your not-comics link of the day]
  “Artificially generated black holes could provide us with the power to make inter-solar travel a possibility.”

 


• [Your Scans_Daily link of the day]
  Six pages from Brandon Graham’s cult-favorite series, King City.

  (Above: page from the first volume in the series, ©2007 Brandon Graham and Tokyopop, Inc. because the latter are complete assholes who don’t respect artists and have to have their grubby little paws in other people’s rights.)

 

Events Calendar

 

Today:

• November 6-26 (London, England): The Comica London International Comics Festival eats the month of November, with a wide variety of events taking place in a number of locations. Details here.
• November 9 (Charlotte, NC): The next next Heroes Discussion Group will cover Darwyn Cooke’s Parker: The Hunter at Heroes Aren’t Hard to Find on Seventh Street, beginning at 7PM. Details here.

 

This week:

• November 11 (Chicago, IL): Paul Hornschemeier and Jay Ryan will be signing books and meeting readers at Quimby’s Books on North Avenue, beginning at 7PM. Details here.
• November 12 (London, England): Are You Zine Friendly? is billed as “another awesome evening of zines, comix, book arts and poetry,” and takes place at The Foundry on Great Eastern Street, beginning at 7PM. Details here.
• November 12 (Washington DC): Writer Haynes Johnson will discuss the life and art of the legendary editorial cartoonist Herblock at the Politics and Prose Bookstore on Connecticut Avenue, beginning at 7PM. Details here.
• November 13 (New York City, NY): Al Columbia will be signing books and meeting readers at Brooklyn’s own Desert Island on Metropolitan Avenue, goodness only knows when. Details here.
• November 13 (Chicago, IL): Join Dean Haspiel for a multimedia presentation and launch party for the new Act-I-Vate Experience anthology at Quimby’s Books on North Avenue, beginning at 7PM. Details here.
• November 13 (Washington DC): The Astro Boy Essays author Frederik Schodt will discuss Osamu Tezuka’s most famous creation at the Freer Gallery’s Meyer Auditorium on Jefferson Drive, beginning at 7PM. Admission is free. Details here.
• November 13 (Austin, TX): R. Crumb and Art Spiegelman will talk comics with moderator Françoise Mouly at the University of Texas’ Bass Concert Hall on 23rd Street, beginning at 8PM. Ticket prices start at $26. Details here.
• November 14 (White River Junction, VA): It’s portfolio day at the Center for Cartoon Studies! Participation is free, but a reservation is required. Details here.
• November 14 (Emeryville, CA): The sixth annual Cartoon Art Museum Fundraiser takes place at the Pixar Animation Studios, from 11AM-4PM. Ticket prices start at $35. Details here.
• November 14 (Pittsburgh, PA): The folks at The ToonSeum, Pittsburgh’s Museum of Cartoon Art, celebrate the opening of their new location on Liberty Avenue, from 10AM-6PM. Details here.
• November 14 (Plano, TX): The Dallas Webcomics Expo takes place at the Southfork Hotel on the Texas Central Expressway, from 11AM-6PM. Admission is $5; guests include Baldo creators Hector Cantu and Carlos Castellanos, plus Randal Milholland, Scott Kurtz and many others. Details here.
• November 14 (London, England): Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers creator Gilbert Shelton makes an appearance at Gosh! Comics on Great Russell Street, from 3-5PM. Details here.
• November 14 (Dublin, Ireland): The Electric Micks comics collective will be signing their new sketchbook compilation at Forbidden Planet on Crampton Quay, from 3-5PM. Details here.
• November 14 (Cambridge, MA): Paul Hornschemeier and Jay Ryan will be signing books and meeting readers at the Million Year Picnic on Auburn Street, from 4-6PM. Details here.
• November 14 (San Francisco, CA): James Kochalka will appear at an opening reception for his new gallery show at Giant Robot on Shrader Street, from 6:30-10PM. Details here.
• November 14 (Los Angeles, CA): Join Keith Knight for a book signing at Meltdown Comics on Sunset Boulevard, from 7-10PM. Details here.
• November 15 (New York City, NY): Paul Hornschemeier and Jay Ryan will be signing books and meeting readers at Brooklyn’s own Rocketship on Smith Street, beginning at 7PM. Details here.

 

Want to see your comics-related event listed here? Email a link to dirk@tcj.com and let me know. Please include an online link to which I can send people for more information. No sales-only events, please — it’s nice that you’ve marked things down at your store or website, but I won’t be listing it here.

 

“How nice for you. I don’t have an iPhone, so I don’t really care. I know lots of people do, though, and that’s why there are now something like 100,000 apps out there for that platform. If you couldn’t compete in the direct market, what makes you think you’re going to stand out in the larger field? Just for the novelty? Are you giving your comic away for free, then? If so, what’s your business model?”

- Johanna Draper Carlson

 

Above the Fold

 

• [Top Story] Life in interesting times
  • “Waldenbooks will shutter 200 stores,” notes ICv2.
  • Tom Spurgeon catches word that the wife of jailed Iranian political cartoonist Hadi Heidari has likewise been arrested.
  • Interesting tidbit from Jim Milliot’s report on the latest financial results from HarperCollins:

    Sales of e-books remain strong in the U.S., Murray said, and account for about 4% of adult group revenue.

  • Paul O’Brien presents month-to-month estimates for Marvel’s sales to Direct Market retailers, now updated for September.

 

 

 

Literary Comics

 

• [Profile] Eddie Campbell
  Link: Chris Mautner, Martha Cornog

  Two conversations with the Alec creator.

  (Thanks to Mike Rhode for e-mailing me the second link.)

 


• [Review] The Squirrel Machine
  Link: John Hogan

  Hans Rickheit’s book “is a hypnotic, occasionally repulsive, always entertaining, and wildly creative graphic novel.”

 

• [Commentary] Black and white and startlingly offensive all over
  Link: Ng Suat Tong

  The roundtable discussion on race in comics continues with a look at Gene Yang’s American Born Chinese.

 


• [Comics] “My Dinner With Crumb”
  Link: Rob Ullman (one, two)

  A report on the underground-comix master’s recent public appearance in Virginia.

  (Above: sequence ©2009 Rob Ullman.)

 

 

 

Pop Comics

 

• [Profile] Jim Steranko
  Link: James Romberger

  A conversation with the legendary cartoonist.

  (Link via Frank Santoro.)

 

• [Review] The Best of Battle
  Link: Steve Holland

  “The format — extracting four or five episodes from strips that sometimes ran for years — can be a little frustrating, although at least with extracts of 12 to 15 pages you get more out of the stories than in the recent Best of Battle special released by Egmont. It’s still only a sampler for the books we all actually want, but it’s at least a substantial sample.”

 

• [Review] Various titles
  Link: Andrew Wheeler, Chris Sims and J. Caleb Mozzocco

  Comics: Better than heroin… or are they?

 


• [Comics] “Radar the International Policeman”
  Link: Chuck Wells

  Captain Marvel, as drawn by C.C. Beck — now that’s what I call a treat. Shame about the reproduction, but still.

  (Above: panel from Captain Marvel Adventures #35, ©1944 Fawcett Comics.)

 


• [Comics] Alex Toth war comics
  Link: Ten-Cent Dreams

  Two tales by one of the finest cartoonists ever to work in comics.

  (Above: sequence from “‘Geronimo’ Joe” from Exciting War #8, ©1953 Standard Comics.)

 

 

 

Manga

 

• [Profile] Moebius on Urasawa
  Link: Eastern Edge

  Translating a magazine article in which the Fresh comics master discusses his fascination with manga and his admiration for the 20th Century Boys author.

 

• [Review] Manga library opens at Meiji University
  Link: Kyodo News

  “The Yoshihiro Yonezawa Memorial Library of Manga and Subculture, which opened Saturday at Meiji University’s Surugadai campus in Chiyoda Ward, is stocked with [...] comic books published in Japan in the 1960s and later.”

 


• [Review] It’s a Wonderful World Vol. 1-2
  Link: Matthew Brady

  “As a collection, the series works wonderfully to detail [Inio] Asano’s theme, and one can see how he could go from something like this to the more expansive Solanin.”

  (Above: sequence from “White Star, Black Star” in Vol. 1, ©2003 Inio Asano.)

 

• [Review] Little Fluffy Gigolo Pelu Vol. 1
  Link: Katherine Dacey

  “Poignant — now there’s a word I never imagined I’d be using to describe one of Junko Mizuno’s works, given her fondness for disturbing images and acid-trip plotlines.”

 

• [Review] Akira Vol. 1
  Link: Greg McElhatton

  “It blazed paths forward that people are still following decades later, and it’s a thoroughly engaging work to boot. I’m slightly envious of people who are just now discovering Akira, because they have an amazing experience ahead of them.”

 

Comic Strips

 

• [Review] Bloom County Vol. 1: 1980-1982
  Link: Tom Spurgeon

  “I can’t tell if it’s my current state of mind or some element of the work itself that I’ve read this book twice and I’ve failed both times to fully engage the work as comics. I’m going to guess door #2.”

 

Digital Comics

 

• [Review] The Meek
  Link: Larry Cruz

  “I personally was very impressed in how Helmer’s art carried the bulk of the storytelling duties, notably during the changeover from Chapter 1 to Chapter 2.”

 

Cartooning

 

• [Business] Online-portfolio design
  Link: Thomas James

  “The reason that I am beginning this series with this element is that if you get this one horribly wrong, potential clients will leave before you’ve even had a chance to draw them in.”

 


• [Art] Louis Glanzman
  Link: Leif Peng (one, two and counting)

  It’s Friday, and that means it’s time for a look at the art and career of another great 20th-century commercial artist.

  (Above: Glanzman drawing for the March 29, 1952 issue of Collier’s.)

 

• [Commentary] My Gahan Wilson story
  Link: Mike Lynch

  Rapunzel cartoons are easy…

 

Comics Culture

 

• [Scene] SPX critics’ roundtable
  Link: Sean T. Collins

  Transcription of the panel at the recent-ish Small Press Expo, featuring Collins, Bill Kartopoulos, Gary Groth, Douglas Wolk, Joe McCulloch, Tucker Stone, Rob Clough and Chris Mautner.

 

• [Commentary] Panels in the ivory towers
  Link: Karen Green

  “This isn’t about comics being not just for kids. This is about comics having a meta-life as objects of study.”

 

• [Multimedia] Comics-related podcasts
  • It’s been a very busy two weeks over at Inkstuds — here are conversations with George Sprott: 1894-1975 author Seth (69.9MB), Ball Peen Hammer illustrator George O’Conner (42.1MB), Dolltopia author Abby Denson (30.5MB), Hipless Boy creator Sully (51.4MB), up-and-coming cartoonist J. Bradley Johnson (36.8MB), and here’s a discussion of Robert Crumb’s Book of Genesis Illustrated, featuring Jeet Heer and UBC English Professor Paul Stanwood (54.3MB).
  • Over at Panel Borders, meanwhile, Pedro Galvao talks comics with Brendan McCarthy (53.1MB), while Alex Fitch talks to artists Sarah McIntyre and Viviane Schwartz (37.9MB).
  • The Sound of Young America presents a short on-stage chat with Black Hole author Charles Burns (9.1MB).
  • Mark Shultz, Derek Kirk Kim, Ben Caldwell, Brandon Graham, and Robert Atkins are among the participants in a roundtable discussion about their personal work, the industry, and working within the sequential world (51.8MB).
  • Matt Sturges (70.3MB) and James Lucas Jones (76.6MB) were the guests on recent episodes of War Rocket Ajax.
  • Join Al Kennedy and Paul O’Brien for another round of critique and commentary on House to Astonish (50.3MB).

  All podcasts are in downloadable MP3 audiofile format.

 


• [Your not-comics link of the day]
  Julia Child makes primordial soup.

  (Above: screenshot from the video.)

 


• [Your Scans_Daily link of the day]
  Here’s a nice, meaty excerpt from Pierre Christin and Jean-Claude Mézières’ popular sci-fi series Valérian et Laureline.

  (Above: scanlated sequence from Metro Châtelet: Direction Cassiopée, ©1986 Dargaud Editeur.)

 

Events Calendar

 

Today:

• November 2-7 (Sandusky, OH): If you haven’t already registered for the International Society of Caricature Artists 2009 Annual Caricature Convention and Competition, then you probably aren’t attending anyway. Still, there are details here.
• November 6-26 (London, England): The Comica London International Comics Festival eats the month of November, with a wide variety of events taking place in a number of locations. Details here.
• November 6 (Montreal, Quebec): James Kochalka will appear (and perform music!) at an opening reception of his smaller paintings at Galerie Monastiraki on St-Laurent, from 7-10PM. Details here.

 

This week:

• November 7-8 (New York City, NY): King Con Brooklyn! takes place at the Brooklyn Lyceum on Fourth Avenue, from 11AM-7PM each day. Guests include Al Jaffee, Harvey Pekar, Denny O’Neil and more. Details here.
• November 7 (Altoona, IA): The Comic Book I-Con takes place at the Adventureland Inn on 34th Avenue, from 9AM-5PM. Details here.
• November 7 (Tucson, AZ): The Tucson Comic Con takes place at the Hotel Arizona on Broadway Boulevard, from 10AM-7PM. Admission is free! Details here.
• November 7 (Las Vegas, NV): The Vegas Valley Comic Book Festival takes place at the Clark County Library on Flamingo Road, from 11AM-4PM. Guests include Kim Deitch, Matt Wagner, Cecil Castelluci and more. Details here.
• November 7 (London, England): Mouse Guard author David Petersen makes an appearance at the Forbidden Planet Megastore on Shaftesbury Avenue, from 1-2PM. Details here.
• November 7 (London, England): Eddie Campbell will be signing books and meeting readers at Gosh! Comics on Great Russell Street, from 2-4PM. Details here.
• November 7 (Chicago, IL): Matt Groening, Lynda Barry, Jules Feiffer and Chris Ware will discuss the state of alt-comics onstage at the Francis W Parker School on Clark Street, from 4:30-6PM. Admission is $5. Details here.
• November 7 (Seattle, WA): Join Al Columbia for the opening reception of an exhibit of his work at the Fantagraphics Bookstore on Vale Street, from 6-8PM. Details here.
• November 7 (London, England): Comedian Arnold Brown will talk comics with Eddie Campbell at the Institute Of Contemporary Arts’ Nash Room, from 7-9PM. A book signing takes place afterward. Details here.
• November 8 (Los Angeles, CA): The Los Angeles Comic Book and Science Fiction Convention will take place at the Shrine Auditorium Expo Center on 32nd Street, from 10AM-5PM. There are a couple of guests, but it sound like a back-issue bin-stravaganza from over here. Admission is $8. Details here.

 

Want to see your comics-related event listed here? Email a link to dirk@tcj.com and let me know. Please include an online link to which I can send people for more information. No sales-only events, please — it’s nice that you’ve marked things down at your store or website, but I won’t be listing it here.

 

“Your conventions are total horseshit, so it’s wise to stop branding them with the name Wizard. But no amount of polishing is going to make me want to attended any of the 5 turds your company is going to crap out in 2010, especially when you schedule them against other shows in some bullshit dick measuring contests that serves no other purpose but to fracture an already dying industry that I have nostalgic ties to.”

- Scott Kurtz
(link via Laura Hudson)

Above the Fold

 

• [Top Story] Life in interesting times
  • Longtime News & Observer editorial cartoonist Dwane Powell has announced his retirement.
  • Those stories about the city of Angoulême, France’s reluctance to pay for the annual comics festival that bears its name? Nevermind (Google translation).
  • ICv2 reports that R. Crumb’s The Book of Genesis Illustrated (cover pictured at right) made its debut at #2 in BookScan’s estimates for the top-twenty graphic novels sold through bookstores in October. ’s top-150 bestselling books chart has it at #129.
  • Mark Milian looks at Randall Munroe’s publishing strategy for the first xkcd book collection.
  • Comics: the new disco?

 

 

 

Literary Comics

 

• [Profile] Peter Kuper
  Link: Michael Lorah

  The cartoonist discusses his new book, Diario de Oaxaca.

 

• [Review] Refresh, Refresh
  Link: John Hogan

  Danica Novgorodoff “has an ability to capture the small nuances of human emotion in little movements and facial expressions.”

 


• [Review] Various titles
  Link: Eddie Campbell

  “In the aftermath of Jeet’s recent post on ‘proto-graphic novels,’ the inimitable Eddie Campbell has generously agreed to let us post his excellent review of an A. B. Frost collection, Stuff and Nonsense, and Rodolphe Töpffer’s Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck. The essay originally ran in the 260th issue of The Comics Journal, from May/June 2004. As usual, Campbell’s voice is unmistakable, and his ideas are ignored at the reader’s peril.”

  (Above: image from Stuff and Nonsense.)

 


• [Comics] “On the Banks of the Ohio”
  Link: Rebecca Dart

  Gorgeous adaptation of the old country-blues song.

  (Above: detail from the comic, ©2009 Rebecca Dart. Thanks to Meg Hunt for pointing out Dart’s site.)

 

• [Commentary] Can women learn to enjoy comics?
  Link: Joe Lawler

  Today’s weirdly framed comics agit-prop article. Actually, I think this should do us for the rest of the year…

 

 

 

Pop Comics

 

• [Profile] Stan Sakai
  Link: Shaun Manning

  The Usagi Yojimbo creator discusses his popular adventure series.

 

• [Profile] Dale Lazarov
  Link: Bilerico Project

  A Q&A with the homoerotic-comics writer.

 

• [Scene] Viz Magazine turns 30
  Link: Jill Lawless

  “Martin Rowson, editorial cartoonist for publications including The Guardian newspaper, calls Viz ‘magnificently rude, irresponsible, stupid, puerile and brilliant.’ The magazine has influenced a generation of British humorists and celebrates its 30th birthday with a major exhibition opening Wednesday at London’s Cartoon Museum.”

 


• [Review] Parker: The Hunter
  Link: Tom Spurgeon

  “The two great distinguishing elements of Darwyn Cooke’s affectionate adaptation of the iconic crime novel is that the cartoonist decided to bring as much of the book as possible onto the page and that he remained Darwyn Cooke the whole time doing so.”

  (Above: scene from the book, probably ©2009 Donald Westlake.

 

• [Review] Captain America: Reborn #4
  Link: Sean T. Collins

  “One of my favorite things about [Ed] Brubaker’s run — and in this he’s been indispensably assisted by a solid stable of artists, led by Steve Epting and Mike Perkins and stood in for here by the slicker style and cantilevered action of Bryan Hitch, who in every other way is consistent with the established tone — is just how good he is at grouping various super-people together and having those groupings make visual and practical sense. Several times I’ve touted how he’s established this sort of underbelly to the Marvel Universe involving super-powered espionage-based characters: Steve Rogers, Bucky, Black Widow, Union Jack, Crossbones, Agent 13, Nick Fury and so on all look like people you really could believe take advantage of whatever relatively slight super powers they have, put on some form-fitting garb and skullcaps, and go out and assault people in classified military installations.”

 

• [Review] Astonishing X-Men #32
  Link: Greg McElhatton

  “Had this story shown up six months ago, with Sentinels made of flesh that fire alien Brood at its victims, I suspect readers might have sat up and taken more notice.”

 

• [Review] Stumptown #1
  Link: Don MacPherson

  “Writer Greg Rucka isn’t exactly reinventing the wheel with this latest creator-owned project.”

 

• [Review] Britten and Brülightly
  Link: Jillian Steinhauer

  “Suspenseful, engrossing, beautifully painted, and extremely sad, it seems a book that should at least be [Hannah] Berry’s sophomore effort.”

 

• [Commentary] Black and white and startlingly offensive all over
  Link: Richard Cook, Noah Berlatsky

  The roundtable discussion on race and comics continues.

 


• [Comics] “The Supreme Penalty”
  Link: Gold Key Stories

  “Enjoy the crushing desperation.”

  (Above: sequence from Twilight Zone #49, ©1973 whoever I don’t care.)

 

 

 

Manga

 

• [Review] Various titles
  Link: Chris Mautner

  Quick takes on work by Fumi Yoshinaga, Junko Mizuno, Kim Dong Hwa and Susumu Katsumata.

 

Digital Comics

 

• [Scene] Women in webcomics
  Link: Erin Polgreen

  “Though comics have been published online since the mid-1980s using early subscription services such as CompuServe, in the last five or six years the number of female webcomic producers has grown exponentially. Artists are no longer limited by syndicates, newspapers’ editorial pages, or the boys club typically associated with comics. With the Internet, artists can convey an image how they want to, using any idea, for as long as they need to tell the story.”

  (Link trail: Brigid Alverson ← When Fangirls Attack.)

 

• [Commentary] What’s your comics-to-crap ratio?
  Link: Scott McCloud

  “So I thought, hey, there are really only three types of pixels you’re going to be looking at if you sit down to read a comic book or graphic novel on the screen. There’s (1) the comic, (2) the controls, and (3) the crap — ‘crap’ being logos, chatter, ads, useless branding, etc.”

 

Small Press/Minicomics

 

• [Comics] A Circle, A Sphere
  Link: Warren Craghead
  

  Another little DIY comic from alt-comics’ serene conceptualist.

  (Above: image from the mini ©2009 W. Craghead III.)

 

Cartooning

 

• [Analysis] Analyzing the Nausicäa manga
  Link: Kaoru Kumi

  The Japanese manga scholar offers a detailed examination of the “cinematic” aspects of composition found in manga:

  “What exactly makes a manga ‘cinematic’?” I’ve always suspected that the text that can answer this question is Nausicäa. So finally, I’ve found a way to bring the answer to you, today through my technical analysis of this superheavyweight title. How smart I am, huh? (laughter) Today will be the first time that I reveal this method of analysis in public, so prepare yourselves.

  Related: Inspired by Natsu Onoda Power’s book God of Comics: Osamu Tezuka and the Creation of Post-World War II Manga, Craig Fischer looks at the cinematic impulses in Tezuka’s work.

  (First link via Simon Jones, who notes, “This is a must read.”)

 

• [Craft] Advice on characterization
  Link: Charlie Jane Anders, Dennis O’Neil

  I really have nothing to add beyond “advice on characterization.”

 


• [Art] Tatsuro Kiuchi
  Link: Online portfolio, Flickr page

  This is what I call awesome composition.

  (Above: Illustration for Iris Murdoch’s book The Sea, The Sea. Link via Dadanoias.)

 


• [Art] John Buckland Wright’s Sphinx
  Link: A Journey Round My Skull

  “These were John Buckland Wright’s first book illustrations, preceding those for Keats’ Collected Sonnets (1930).”

 

Comics Culture

 

• [Scene] Cartoon contest commences in Azerbaijan
  Link: News.az

  Proving that there are enough cartoonists in Azerbaijan to hold a contest, if nothing else.

 

• [Commentary] Teach house styles
  Link: Dash Shaw

  “I studied cartooning at SVA and recently visited CCS, and so how to teach comics has been fluttering around in my mind for a while. What follows is a suggestion of how to run a Cartooning BFA or MFA course, just a potential direction that I think would be worth considering…”

 

• [Your not-comics link of the day]
  It’s one thing to criticize Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei from a website, but quite another to do so to his face, in front of an audience.

  (Link via Radley Balko.)

 


• [Your Scans_Daily link of the day]
  And now, “the galaxy’s first computer comic” — the dubiously named Load Runner.

  (Above: sequence from “The Invasion of the Arcadians,” written by Les Cookman and drawn by John Stokes; ©1983 ECC Publications.)

 

Events Calendar

 

Today:

• November 2-7 (Sandusky, OH): If you haven’t already registered for the International Society of Caricature Artists 2009 Annual Caricature Convention and Competition, then you probably aren’t attending anyway. Still, there are details here.
• November 5 (Evanston, IL): Cartoonist and editor Paul Karasik will present a multimedia discussion of the life and art of Fletcher Hanks at Comix Revolution on Davis Street, beginning at 6PM. Details here.
• November 5 (Chicago, IL): Matt Groening and Lynda Barry will talk shop onstage at the UIC Forum on Roosevelt Road, from 7-8PM. Tickets are $15. Details here.

 

This week:

• November 6-26 (London, England): The Comica London International Comics Festival eats the month of November, with a wide variety of events taking place in a number of locations. Details here.
• November 6 (Montreal, Quebec): James Kochalka will appear (and perform music!) at an opening reception of his smaller paintings at Galerie Monastiraki on St-Laurent, from 7-10PM. Details here.
• November 7-8 (New York City, NY): King Con Brooklyn! takes place at the Brooklyn Lyceum on Fourth Avenue, from 11AM-7PM each day. Guests include Al Jaffee, Harvey Pekar, Denny O’Neil and more. Details here.
• November 7 (Altoona, IA): The Comic Book I-Con takes place at the Adventureland Inn on 34th Avenue, from 9AM-5PM. Details here.
• November 7 (Tucson, AZ): The Tucson Comic Con takes place at the Hotel Arizona on Broadway Boulevard, from 10AM-7PM. Admission is free! Details here.
• November 7 (Las Vegas, NV): The Vegas Valley Comic Book Festival takes place at the Clark County Library on Flamingo Road, from 11AM-4PM. Guests include Kim Deitch, Matt Wagner, Cecil Castelluci and more. Details here.
• November 7 (London, England): Mouse Guard author David Petersen makes an appearance at the Forbidden Planet Megastore on Shaftesbury Avenue, from 1-2PM. Details here.
• November 7 (London, England): Eddie Campbell will be signing books and meeting readers at Gosh! Comics on Great Russell Street, from 2-4PM. Details here.
• November 7 (Chicago, IL): Matt Groening, Lynda Barry, Jules Feiffer and Chris Ware will discuss the state of alt-comics onstage at the Francis W Parker School on Clark Street, from 4:30-6PM. Admission is $5. Details here.
• November 7 (Seattle, WA): Join Al Columbia for the opening reception of an exhibit of his work at the Fantagraphics Bookstore on Vale Street, from 6-8PM. Details here.
• November 7 (London, England): Comedian Arnold Brown will talk comics with Eddie Campbell at the Institute Of Contemporary Arts’ Nash Room, from 7-9PM. A book signing takes place afterward. Details here.
• November 8 (Los Angeles, CA): The Los Angeles Comic Book and Science Fiction Convention will take place at the Shrine Auditorium Expo Center on 32nd Street, from 10AM-5PM. There are a couple of guests, but it sound like a back-issue bin-stravaganza from over here. Admission is $8. Details here.

 

Want to see your comics-related event listed here? Email a link to dirk@tcj.com and let me know. Please include an online link to which I can send people for more information. No sales-only events, please — it’s nice that you’ve marked things down at your store or website, but I won’t be listing it here.

 

“I want someone to pay Al Columbia six figures to adapt Stephen King’s It.”

- Sean T. Collins

 

Above the Fold

 

• [Top Story] Life in interesting times
  • San Diego Comic-Con founder Shel Dorf died yesterday at the age of 76, from diabetes-related complications. Mark Evanier offers an eulogy. Funeral services will take place at San Diego’s Home of Peace Cemetery on 3668 Imperial Avenue — those who knew and worked with Dorf are encouraged to attend.
  • James Callan reports that Marvel Entertainment released its Q3-2009 earnings report yesterday, which acknowledged a nearly 60% drop in profit due to “a drop in film revenue and licensing sales.” Given that the House That Jack Built is in a fallow period between movie releases at the moment, investors seemed to be in a forgiving mood — as of this writing, Marvel’s price per stock share is soaring high at just over $50.
  • Sign of the times: Tor.com acquires the Web-only rights to two graphic novels, which will be serialized on the website.
  • “Cupertino-based Spring Design has filed a lawsuit against Barnes & Noble over the use of its Alex e-book intellectual property” in the bookstore chain’s new Nook e-reader, according to Aulia Masna.
  • “Marvell, a California based semiconductor and microprocessor producer, has entered into an agreement with E Ink, the producer of electronic paper display screens for all the major digital reading devices, to produce a new generation of integrated processors designed to both reduce the price and improve computing performance in a wave of new e-ink screen reading devices slated to hit the market over the next year,” reports Calvin Reid.
  • Christopher Irving interviews Marvel’s editor in chief, Joe Quesada.
  • Has the North American funnybook industry matured? Sort of, answers Jennifer de Guzman.

 

 

 

Literary Comics

 

• [Profile] Rick Geary
  Link: Central Crime Zone

  The murder-centric graphic novelist discusses his work.

  (Link via Kevin Melrose.)

 

• [Profile] Guy Delisle
  Link: Brian Heater

  The conclusion of Heater’s four-part conversation with the Burma Chronicles author.

 


• [Comics] Irish 24-Hour Comics Anthology
  Link: Project homepage

  I thought that this collection of comics contained a number of good works; it’s available for download for a limited time as an 11.4MB PDF file.

  (Above: sequence from John Robbins’ contribution, “Dental!”; ©2009 John Robbins. Link via John Robbins.)

 


• [Multimedia] R. Crumb in conversationbr />
  Link: Fora TV

  Here it is, video from an on-stage discussion with Françoise Mouly.

  (Above: screenshot from the video. Link via Mike Lynch. Note: This entry has been altered to remove erroneous location information.)

 

 

 

Pop Comics

 

• [Profile] Benjamin Marra
  Link: Nick Gazin

  The cartoonist behind Night Business and Gangsta Rap Posse.

  

  Oh, and here’s a two-page strip by Marra, in case you were wondering all the hype’s been about.

  (Above: sequence from the strip, ©2009 Benjamin Marra. Links via Sean T. Collins.)

 

• [Review] Malice Vol. 1
  Link: Robert Greenberger

  “The book would have benefitted greatly by using an accomplished comic artist as opposed to a professional illustrator unaccustomed to working in the medium. As a result, his pages are poorly constructed, the storytelling is weak and the use of shadow and scratchy lines robs the comic sections of their power.”

 

• [Commentary] Black and white and startlingly offensive all over
  Link: Steven Grant, Vom Marlowe

  The roundtable discussion on race and comics continues.

 

• [Commentary] Favorite comic-book clichés
  Link: Chris Sims

  But… there are so many to choose from…

 


• [Comics] Stumptown
  Link: Comic Book Resources

  Eleven pages from the first issue of Greg Rucka and Matthew Southworth’s new crime series.

  Related: Greg McElhatton reviews the first issue.

  (Above: excerpt from the excerpt, most likely ©2009 Greg Rucka.)

 


• [Comics] “They Said I Was Fast”
  Link: Pappy

  Romance comics by Torchy creator Bill Ward.

  (Above: sequence from Campus Love #2, ©1949 Quality Comics.)

 

 

 

Manga

 

• [Review] Yokaiden Vol. 1
  Link: Lori Henderson

  “The plot of Yokaiden sounds very generic. Orphaned hero goes off to another realm filled with monsters to avenge his grandmother’s death. But Yokaiden turns out to be much more than it’s basic plot. It’s a showcase for many of the strange and sometimes playful, sometimes dangerous creatures that make up Japanese folklore. The interplay with these beings often overshadows the plot, and its clueless main character.”

 

Comic Strips

 

• [Profile] Peter Blegvad
  Link: Franklin Bruno

  The Leviathan creator sits down for an interview.

  (Link via Tim Hodler.)

 

• [Profile] Glenn McCoy
  Link: Scott Nickel

  Twenty questions for the cartoonist behind The Duplex.

 

• [Commentary] A request
  Link: Mark Anderson

  When I was a kid, my grandparents had an old issue of Popular Mechanics containing blueprints for the Smokey Stover car pictured at the link. Does anybody happen to know what issue that might have been?

 


• [Comics] The Troubles of Dictionary Jaques
  Link: Barnacle Press

  Ed Carey’s 1910-era strip “is a really fun creation. The situation is simple enough: Jaques is a Frenchman who relies on his dictionary to understand his surroundings, but misinterprets the definitions he reads.”

  (Above: sequence from the November 3, 1912 strip.)

 

Digital Comics

 

• [Commentary] Death stalks the Internet
  Link: Brigid Alverson

  What happens when webcomics die?

 


• [Comics] Death-Day
  Link: Sam Hiti

  The latest tale from the creator of Tiempos Finales, serialized online.

  (Above: panel from the first chapter of the comic, ©2009 Sam Hiti. Link trail: J.K. Parkin ← Paul Pope.)

 

Small Press/Minicomics

 

• [Review] Adrift
  Link: Tom Spurgeon

  “In the end, I think stories like the one in Adrift work when you approach them with vastly reduced or specialized expectations: when this is one of 30 books you might buy at a convention in support of a scene, or if you just want a sense of the artist’s work, or if you have an inexhaustible appetite for comics of its gentle, emotionally twee nature.”

 

• [Review] Crowbars Don’t Kill People…CROWBARS Do Vol. 1
  Link: Robert Newsome

  “You know already whether or not you’re going to be into this. The cover of this book doesn’t lie. Scratchy, amateurish scrawling with what appears to be a Bic pen, tasteless gags, and lots of blood (oh, the book, even though it mostly in black & white, is printed in color so the blood can be red… nice touch, really…)”

 

Cartooning

 

• [Craft] Clutter vs. composition
  Link: John Kricfalusi

  …as demonstrated in two images.

 


• [Comics] More Cartoon Humor
  Link: Harry Lee Green

  A second round of gag panels from the mildly salacious 1950s-era publication.

  (Above: cartoon by Louis Priscilla from Cartoon Humor #51, ©1952 Better Publications, Inc.)

 


• [Art] Record jackets by cartoonists
  Link: Golden Age Comic Book Stories

  Featuring work by Bill Ward, Frank Frazetta, Jack Davis and many others.

  (Above: In case you ever wondered what a Frazetta drawing of Herman’s Hermits would look like, well, here you go.)

 

Comics Culture

 

• [Your not-comics link of the day]
  William Voegeli explains why California’s high-benefit/high-tax model no longer works, especially compared with low-tax states like Texas.

  (Link via Neatorama.)

 


• [Your Scans_Daily link of the day]
  Dare you enter… Binkley’s anxiety closet?

  (Above: sequence from Bloom County — I don’t know the date of its initial publication — ©2009 Berkeley Breathed.)

 

Events Calendar

 

Today:

• November 2-7 (Sandusky, OH): If you haven’t already registered for the International Society of Caricature Artists 2009 Annual Caricature Convention and Competition, then you probably aren’t attending anyway. Still, there are details here.
• November 4 (Los Angeles, CA): R. Crumb — maybe? Anyway, someone will give an informal, fifteen-minute talk on Crumb’s new book, The Book of Genesis Illustrated, at the Hammer Museum on Wilshire Boulevard, beginning at 12:30PM. Details here. (Thanks to Kelly Kilmer for throwing a question mark on the possible Crumb appearance via e-mail.)

 

This week:

• November 5 (Evanston, IL): Cartoonist and editor Paul Karasik will present a multimedia discussion of the life and art of Fletcher Hanks at Comix Revolution on Davis Street, beginning at 6PM. Details here.
• November 5 (Chicago, IL): Matt Groening and Lynda Barry will talk shop onstage at the UIC Forum on Roosevelt Road, from 7-8PM. Tickets are $15. Details here.
• November 6-26 (London, England): The Comica London International Comics Festival eats the month of November, with a wide variety of events taking place in a number of locations. Details here.
• November 6 (Montreal, Quebec): James Kochalka will appear (and perform music!) at an opening reception of his smaller paintings at Galerie Monastiraki on St-Laurent, from 7-10PM. Details here.
• November 7-8 (New York City, NY): King Con Brooklyn! takes place at the Brooklyn Lyceum on Fourth Avenue, from 11AM-7PM each day. Guests include Al Jaffee, Harvey Pekar, Denny O’Neil and more. Details here.
• November 7 (Altoona, IA): The Comic Book I-Con takes place at the Adventureland Inn on 34th Avenue, from 9AM-5PM. Details here.
• November 7 (London, England): Mouse Guard author David Petersen makes an appearance at the Forbidden Planet Megastore on Shaftesbury Avenue, from 1-2PM. Details here.
• November 7 (London, England): Eddie Campbell will be signing books and meeting readers at Gosh! Comics on Great Russell Street, from 2-4PM. Details here.
• November 7 (Chicago, IL): Matt Groening, Lynda Barry, Jules Feiffer and Chris Ware will discuss the state of alt-comics onstage at the Francis W Parker School on Clark Street, from 4:30-6PM. Admission is $5. Details here.
• November 7 (Seattle, WA): Join Al Columbia for the opening reception of an exhibit of his work at the Fantagraphics Bookstore on Vale Street, from 6-8PM. Details here.
• November 7 (London, England): Comedian Arnold Brown will talk comics with Eddie Campbell at the Institute Of Contemporary Arts’ Nash Room, from 7-9PM. A book signing takes place afterward. Details here.
• November 8 (Los Angeles, CA): The Los Angeles Comic Book and Science Fiction Convention will take place at the Shrine Auditorium Expo Center on 32nd Street, from 10AM-5PM. There are a couple of guests, but it sound like a back-issue bin-stravaganza from over here. Admission is $8. Details here.

 

Want to see your comics-related event listed here? Email a link to dirk@tcj.com and let me know. Please include an online link to which I can send people for more information. No sales-only events, please — it’s nice that you’ve marked things down at your store or website, but I won’t be listing it here.

 

“I am taking your suggestion regarding Charlotte Braun and will eventually discard her. If she appears anymore it will be in strips that were already completed before I got your letter or because someone writes in saying that they like her. Remember, however, that you and your friends will have the death of an innocent child on your conscience. Are you prepared to accept such responsibility?”

- Charles M. Schulz
(link trail: Caleb Goellner ← Evan Dorkin)

 

Above the Fold

 

• [Top Story] Life in interesting times
  • A recent public appearance and gallery exhibition by Robert Crumb has stirred up controversy at Virginia Commonwealth University the University of Richmond:

    Timothy Patterson, a Richmond College senior, cited a quote from Crumb’s speech in his response to The Collegian: “Every woman has a rape fantasy. Every man deep down… hates women.”

    [...]

    Crumb, the founder of Underground Comix, has a reputation for producing controversial material. Crumb’s 1989 graphic novel, My Troubles with Women, depicts autobiographical sexual encounters, sexual fantasies and family life.

    “[The] book features a number of appalling depictions, such as the raping of a little girl, forced oral sex with a woman chained to a desk, and a picture of Crumb sitting on top of a pile of drugged, raped women dressed as a king,” Patterson said.

    Ben Towle and Ed Sizemore have further coverage of the underground-comix legend’s recent appearance on-stage with Françoise Mouly.

  • Cut off a limb and two shall take its place: According to Stewart Mitchell, the closure of the Pirate Bay torrent-tracking site has led to a 300% increase in in sites providing access to copyrighted material.

    (Link via Slashdot.)

  • Marvel executive Ira Rubenstein discusses the company’s recent decision to begin selling digital comics on iTunes — an unsurprising move, given the surging book sales on that platform. From the sound of things, downloads of new comic books are still off-limits, at least for the moment.

    (Links via J.K. Parkin.)

  • Michael Buntag connects a few dots related to the decline of manga in Japan.
  • More about us, us, us: Noah Berlatsky responds to Jeet Heer’s analysis of The Comics Journal.

 

• [Consumer news] New this week
  Link: Joe McCulloch, Matthew Brady

  A look at the best-sounding books scheduled to hit the comics shops tomorrow.

 

 

 

Literary Comics

 

• [Profile] Françoise Mouly and Art Spiegelman
  Link: Chris Mautner

  The lit-comics power couple discuss their latest collaboration, The Toon Treasury of Chidren’s Comics.

 

• [Profile] Matt Kindt
  Link: Tim O’Shea

  An interview with the Super Spy/3 Story author.

 

• [Review] The Best American Comics 2009
  Link: Tom Spurgeon

  “The thing I like most about The Best American Comics series is the massive migraine they inflict upon anyone who tries to figure out exactly what it is they’re doing and how well they’re doing it.”

 

• [Review] Pim & Francie: The Golden Bear Days
  Link: Sean T. Collins

  “The genius of Pim & Francie is harnessing the power of that demon — whatever it is or was that led [Al] Columbia to abandon his impossibly immaculate conceptions of monstrousness and murder half-drawn on the page time and time again — and deploying it as a conscious aesthetic decision.”

 


• [Comics] Bob Dylan Revisited
  Link: Bhob Stewart

  An advance look at the English language edition of Bob Dylan Revisited “featuring visual interpretations of Dylan’s lyrics by more than a dozen top international illustrators.”

  (Above: sequence from Lorenzo Mattotti’s contribution to the book, “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,” copyright information unknown.)

 


• [Comics] “Vampire Cowboys”
  Link: John Glenn Taylor

  In which J.R. Williams does what he does best.

  (Above: sequence from Rip-Off Comix #26, ©1990 J.R. Williams.)

 

 

 

Pop Comics

 

• [Review] Batwoman in Detective Comics
  Link: Joe McCulloch

  An illustration-centric view of the Greg Rucka/J.H. Williams superhero series.

 

• [Review] Blackest Night
  Link: Curt Purcell

  Halfway through the Green Lantern zombie crossover event, we “have everything in hand that was on the original checklist, which only covered the event to this midpoint (is there a new official checklist for the next half? — I’d sure like to see one). Looking back over that list, and at the stack of comics corresponding to it, what’s most astounding to me is how little ground it’s actually covered, story-wise.”

 

• [Review] The Troublemakers
  Link: Don MacPherson

  “Not surprisingly, [Gilbert] Hernandez populates his story with some thoroughly grounded and intriguing figures, but what’s fascinating about the plot is how it criss-crossed over on itself so that not only do the characters remain unaware of who’s conning who but so does the reader. The plot is an intricately woven web of lies and truths, and it’s peppered, of course, with Hernandez’s trademark touch of raw sexuality.”

 

• [Review] Gotham Sirens #5
  Link: Nina Stone

  “Basically — get ready for this, please — Poison Ivy ‘encourages’ a cactus cock to grow and cum. Seriously. It’s ridiculous. And the following page has all three girls covered in a white milky substance. What the fuck?”

 

• [Commentary] Black and white and startlingly offensive all over
  Link: Noah Berlatsky

  Kicking off the Hooded Utilitarians‘ roundtable on race in comics, Berlatsky examines the less-than-progressive racial attitudes on display in Marston and Peters’ Wonder Woman #19.

 


• [Comics] Gerald McBoing Boing
  Link: Big Blog of Kids’ Comics!

  A great kids’ humor strip, written by Theodore Geisel (a.k.a. Dr. Seuss) and drawn by P.D. Eastman.

  (Above: sequence from Gerald McBoing Boing and the Nearsighted Mr. Magoo #1, ©1952 UPA.)

 


• [Comics] “Hop-Frog!”
  Link: Brian Hughes

  Archie Goodwin and Reed Crandall present a case of rough justice skillfully applied.

  (Above: sequence from Creepy #11, ©1966 Warren Publishing.)

 

 

 

Comic Strips

 

• [Commentary] The brushwork of Leonard Starr
  Link: David Apatoff

  An appreciation of the cartoonist behind Mary Perkins On Stage.

 

Digital Comics

 

• [Comics] Ray and Roast Beef meet Drinky Crow and Uncle Gabby
  Link: Achewood

  Yes, it’s Tony Millionaire playing in Chris Onstad’s sandbox. No, I’m not going to spoil it with an excerpted image — go see it for yourself!

 

Cartooning

 

• [Profile] Kurt Westergaard
  Link: Jan Olsen

  A visit with perhaps the most notorious of the artists behind the Killer Danish Muhammed Cartoons.

 

• [Profile] Charles Addams
  Link: Anne Semmes

  A look back at the life and art of the macabre cartoonist.

 


• [Art] Alex Dukal
  Link: Online portfolio, illustration blog

  This stuff is just plain fun to look at.

  (Above: “Mascarones,” ©2009 Alex Dukal. Link via Nate Williams.)

 


• [Art] Fernando Vicente
  Link: Online portfolio, illustration blog

  Joyously sexy pin-up work from an artist who clearly likes women and doesn’t draw his visual cues from Hustler.

  (Above: illustration ©2009 Fernando Vicente. Link via Dadanoias.)

 

Comics Culture

 

• [Scene] YALSA “Great Graphic Novels for Teens” nominations announced
  Link: Young Adult Library Services Association

  Aside from the inexplicable inclusion of that Secret Invasion thing, not a bad list at all.

 


• [Scene] Observer/Cape/Comica Graphic Short Story Prize winner announced
  Link: Rachel Cooke

  “In 2008, we received 240 entries yet as this year’s deadline approached, we’d taken delivery of only a handful. Were local postal strikes behind this strange lack of enthusiasm? We certainly hoped so, and duly decided to extend the deadline. This turned out to be a good call. By the closing date, we had more than 300 entries.”

  (Above: panel from the winning entry, “Paint,” by and ©2009 Vivien McDermid.)

 

• [Scene] Women in Comics conference in Cambridge
  Link: Matthias Wivel

  “This past Sunday saw a conference on Women in Comics at Murray Edwards College here in Cambridge. Organised jointly by the college and the particularly strong contingent of comics scholars at the University of Glasgow, it presented a full day’s programming of papers and artists’ talks to go along with an already planned exhibition by organiser and artist Sarah Lightman.”

 


• [Your not-comics link of the day]
  Buena Vista Social Club, Wim Wenders’ documentary of the Cuban musicians featured in the album of the same name, is now available for free viewing on Hulu.

  (Above: That’s Compay Segundo in this screenshot from the film.)

 


• [Your Scans_Daily link of the day]
  “Sitting at home with H1N1 (no, really), I thought I’d provide some more French bande-dessinée for your enjoyment. Today you’re getting a taste of one of my favourite webcomics, Maliki.”

  (Above: panel from the strip, ©2009 whoever owns this strip.)

 

Events Calendar

 

Today:

• November 2-7 (Sandusky, OH): If you haven’t already registered for the International Society of Caricature Artists 2009 Annual Caricature Convention and Competition, then you probably aren’t attending anyway. Still, there are details here.
• November 3 (New York City, NY): Eric Drooker, Tom Hart, Tim Kreider and Peter Kuper will discuss political cartooning at the New York Center for Independent Publishing on 44th Street, beginning at 6:30PM. Admission is $15. Details here.
• November 3 (Montreal, Quebec): Seth will offer a slideshow presentation at the Librairie Drawn & Quarterly on Bernard, beginning at 7PM. Details here.
• November 3 (Columbus, OH): Filmmaker and animation historian John Canemaker will give a presentation on cartoonist and animator Winsor McCay at Ohio State University’s Wexler Center for the Arts on Neil Avenue Mall, beginning at 7PM. Details here.
• November 3 (Hertfordshire, England): Watchmen artist Dave Gibbons will discuss his most famous book at the Stevenage Library, beginning at 8PM. Details here.

 

This week:

• November 4 (Los Angeles, CA): R. Crumb — maybe? Anyway, someone will give an informal, fifteen-minute talk on Crumb’s new book, The Book of Genesis Illustrated, at the Hammer Museum on Wilshire Boulevard, beginning at 12:30PM. Details here. (Thanks to Kelly Kilmer for throwing a question mark on the possible Crumb appearance.)
• November 5 (Evanston, IL): Cartoonist and editor Paul Karasik will present a multimedia discussion of the life and art of Fletcher Hanks at Comix Revolution on Davis Street, beginning at 6PM. Details here.
• November 5 (Chicago, IL): Matt Groening and Lynda Barry will talk shop onstage at the UIC Forum on Roosevelt Road, from 7-8PM. Tickets are $15. Details here.
• November 6-26 (London, England): The Comica London International Comics Festival eats the month of November, with a wide variety of events taking place in a number of locations. Details here.
• November 7-8 (New York City, NY): King Con Brooklyn! takes place at the Brooklyn Lyceum on Fourth Avenue, from 11AM-7PM each day. Guests include Al Jaffee, Harvey Pekar, Denny O’Neil and more. Details here.
• November 7 (London, England): Mouse Guard author David Petersen makes an appearance at the Forbidden Planet Megastore on Shaftesbury Avenue, from 1-2PM. Details here.
• November 7 (London, England): Eddie Campbell will be signing books and meeting readers at Gosh! Comics on Great Russell Street, from 2-4PM. Details here.
• November 7 (Chicago, IL): Matt Groening, Lynda Barry, Jules Feiffer and Chris Ware will discuss the state of alt-comics onstage at the Francis W Parker School on Clark Street, from 4:30-6PM. Admission is $5. Details here.
• November 7 (Seattle, WA): Join Al Columbia for the opening reception of an exhibit of his work at the Fantagraphics Bookstore on Vale Street, from 6-8PM. Details here.
• November 7 (London, England): Comedian Arnold Brown will talk comics with Eddie Campbell at the Institute Of Contemporary Arts’ Nash Room, from 7-9PM. A book signing takes place afterward. Details here.
• November 8 (Los Angeles, CA): The Los Angeles Comic Book and Science Fiction Convention will take place at the Shrine Auditorium Expo Center on 32nd Street, from 10AM-5PM. There are a couple of guests, but it sound like a back-issue bin-stravaganza from over here. Admission is $8. Details here.

 

Want to see your comics-related event listed here? Email a link to dirk@tcj.com and let me know. Please include an online link to which I can send people for more information. No sales-only events, please — it’s nice that you’ve marked things down at your store or website, but I won’t be listing it here.

 

“There will never be a website that has a comics writer like Peel. Like movie reviews and music criticism, the Internet has destroyed all of the potential jobs available for future John Peels.”

- Tucker Stone

 

“For all we know, Newsarama could have been acquired for a dozen copies of Superman #75. With the bags opened.”

- Glenn Hauman

 

Mike Baehr presents subscription information for the new TCJ publishing plan. Those with questions are encouraged to contact Fantagraphics Books. One note: If you have a currently active online subscription, please be advised that while we are no longer offering online subscriptions, your account will work with the soon-to-be-archived present version of the website, if not forever, then at least for the forseeable future — so far as I’m concerned, your TCJ.com account no longer has an expiration date.

Elsewhere: Kiel Phegley and Tom Spurgeon recently spoke to various TCJ staffers about last week’s announcement. Noah Berlatsky notes that the new Journal site will play host to the blog he edits, the Hooded Utilitarian. Finally, Steven Grant and Jeet Heer offer commentary on the Journal.

Sorry for the late posting. Playing catch-up takes time, but better late than never…?

 

Above the Fold

 

• [Top Story] Life in interesting times
  • Two Chicago men have been arrested over an alleged plot to attack employees of Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten for the 2005 publication of the infamous Killer Danish Muhammed Cartoons. Natasha Korecki offers further details, including word that the would-be terrorists also planned to target Kurt Westergaard, one of the twelve cartoonists.
  
  • Quebecois cartoonist Bruno Laporte, creator of the Franch-language Rupert K series of comics albums, died on October 25 (Google translation) in Montreal, at the age of 45.

    (Above: detail from the cover of the first Rupert K volume.)

  • Also passed on: comics podcaster Mike Nebeker.

    (Link via Kevin Melrose.)

  • Former Baltimore Sun editorial cartoonist Mike lane has announced his retirement.
  • Lori Matsukawa reports that a thief has stolen several computers containing the life’s work of freelance cartoonist Stu Heinecke.
  • Civic leaders in Angoulême, France are backpedalling furiously (Google translation) after word spread that budget difficulties might complicate their sponsorship (Google translation) of the city’s annual comics festival.
  • A decision by the British Home Office not to renew any Artists’ Visas has stranded cartoonist Nikhil Singh in South Africa for five months, preventing him even from attending the launch of his latest book.
  • R. Crumb’s The Book of Genesis Illustrated makes its debut at #80 on the latest USA Today top-150 bestselling books chart. Holding tight at #1 is last week’s #1 debut, Jay Kinney’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days.
  • Incidentally: Last week the three bestselling books in France were all comics.
  • In Italy, 140,000 people attended the recent Lucca Comics and Games 2009 (Google translation).
  • Sean T. Collins charts the latest developments in the ongoing devolution of Wizard Magazine: one, two. There will now be a brief pause while I whistle my way past the graveyard…
  • The haphazard re-release of Ghost in the Shell has Simon Jones wondering if the folks at Kodansha’s new North American division have any idea what they’re doing.

 

• [Consumer News] The end of civilization
  Link: Mike Sterling

  Sterling finds the most dubious items from the latest Diamond catalog, so you don’t have to.

 

 

 

Literary Comics

 

• [Profile] R. Crumb
  Link: Kenneth Baker

  A short Q&A with the The Book of Genesis Illustrated creator. Wait: Sophie’s expecting a baby? I did not know that.

  Also: Chris Pitzer and Ben Towle report from the cartoonist’s public appearance last week in Richmond, Virginia; W.W. Norton executive editor Robert Weil discusses editing Crumb with Calvin Reid; and Ed Sizemore reviews the book.

 


• [Profile] Janek Koza
  Link: Paul Gravett

  The Polish indy cartoonist is profiled.

  (Above: sequence from Wszystko zle (Everything is Wrong), ©2008 Janek Koza.)

 

• [Profile] Ken Dahl
  Link: Brian Heater

  The conclusion of a three-part conversation with the author of Monsters.

  Related: Greg McElhatton reviews Dahl’s new book.

 


• [Scene] 2007 Rand Holmes exhibit in Canada
  Link: YouTube

  Underground-comix historian Patrick Rosenkranz presents this video record of a retrospective of the cartoonist’s work, held on British Columbia’s Lasqueti Island.

  (Above: screenshot from the video. Link via Mike Lynch.)

 

• [Review] The Complete Jack Survives
  Link: Derik Badman

  Jerry Moriarty’s series of stories from Raw Magazine “is like a hybrid of comics strips that preceded it and the autobiographical comics that followed.”

 

• [Review] Fair Weather
  Link: Bob Temuka

  “While it ends on an upbeat (and slightly confusing) note, Joe [Matt] displays an irritating smugness throughout the book, unwilling to help unless there is something in it for him, proud of the fact he has ripped off former friends and unable to see why it’s wrong if they don’t know about it.”

 


• [Comics] “Unmasked”
  Link: Chris Ware

  A Halloween strip for the latest New Yorker cartoon issue.

  (Above: sequence from the strip, ©2009 F.C. Ware.)

 


• [Comics] “E Pluribus Unum”
  Link: Maira Kalman

  A visit to the nation’s capital.

  (Above: panel from the comic, ©2009 Maira Kalman.)

 


• [Comics] Mickey Mouse in Gurs
  Link: Horst Rosenthal

  A satirical 1942 tour of a Nazi internment camp in France, drawn before Rosenthal was killed in Auschwitz later that year.

  (Above: excerpt from the comic. Link via Cory Doctorow.)

 

 

 

Pop Comics

 

• [Profile] Richard Corben
  Link: Bill Baker

  The underground legend discusses his recent projects.

 


• [Profile] Jim Rugg
  Link: Shaun Manning

  The Street Angel artist discusses his latest collaboration with co-writer Brian Maruca, Afrodesiac.

  (Above: fake comic-book cover from the new book, ©2009 Jim Rugg and Brian Maruca.)

 

• [Review] Far Arden
  Link: Greg McElhatton

  “Do you ever feel like you’ve been faked out by a book’s presentation? I certainly did with Kevin Cannon’s Far Arden. Somehow along the way I’d mistakenly got the impression that Far Arden was a light-hearted, full-of-fun, slightly-silly adventure story.”

 

• [Review] Strange Tales
  Link: Richard Cook

  “But, hell, even the indie guys need some spending money every now and then, which is how Strange Tales came into being.”

 

• [Review] Anita Blake: The Laughing Corpse: Executioner #1
  Link: Chris Sims

  “To be honest, your humble annotator has been dreading this one, but it turns out that this is actually the most exciting issue of Anita Blake ever. Of course, that’s sort of like saying that it’s the most exciting pudding cup or Bob Ross’s most action-packed painting, but still, it’s an improvement.”

 

• [Review] Various titles
  Link: Tucker Stone, Matthew Brady, Alex Carr, Paul O’Brien, J. Caleb Mozzocco, Chris Sims, Brian Hibbs and Don MacPherson

  “I am the world’s forgotten boy, the one who searches and… finds funnybooks in back-issue bins!”

 

• [Commentary] Six deeply creepy alt-horror cartoonists
  Link: Sean T. Collins

  “These alt-horror cartoonists may not even think of themselves as horror-comics creators at all, eschewing as most of them do the rhythms and staples of conventional horror fiction. But by deploying altcomix’ usual emphasis on tone and emotional effect in service of dark and macabre imagery, their comics haunt me all the more.”

 


• [Comics] “Babe and the Magic Lamp!”
  Link: Pappy

  Boody Rogers! Boody Rogers!

  (Above: panel from Babe, Darling of the Hills #10, ©1950 Prize Comics.)

 


• [Comics] Bob Powell horror comics
  Link: Harry Lee Green

  Four classic chillers drawn by one of the golden-age greats.

  (Above: splash panel from Black Cat Mysteries #41, ©1954 Harvey Comics.)

 

 

 

Manga

 

• [Profile] Frederik Schodt
  Link: Evan Miller

  A conversation with the author of the seminal English-language book on Japanese comics, Manga! Manga!

 

• [Review] Red Snow
  Link: Andrew Wheeler

  “[Susumu] Katsumata’s stories are earthy, encompassing the sound of a monk killing his fleas and the violent battles of young kids over minor, pointless thing. They’re similarly clear-eyed about sex, which rarely works out well for the women in these villages, with their extremely limited choices.”

 

• [Review] Yotsuba&! Vol. 6
  Link: Joy Kim

  “Few manga series have given me so much joy, and I am happy to report that volume 6 is no exception. It made me laugh and laugh.”

  (Link via Brigid Alverson.)

 


• [Review] Manga Shakespeare: Twelfth Night
  Link: Richard Bruton

  “It’s yet another very classy adaptation that stays very true to the original whilst updating the styling and storytelling for a modern audience.”

  (Above: double-page spread from the book, ©2009 Richard Appignanesi, Nana Li, Self Made Hero or some combination thereof.)

 

• [Review] Aria Vol. 5
  Link: Johanna Draper Carlson

  “It’s the manga equivalent of a hot cup of tea and a sit-down, a lovely mediation on appreciating the quieter aspects of life.”

 

• [Commentary] The manga cargo cult
  Link: Jason Thompson

  How manga stories got really, really long — and then short again.

 

• [Commentary] Top five untranslated manga
  Link: Shaenon Garrity

  Five titles that should be in English-language print but aren’t.

 

Comic Strips

 

• [Profile] Tom Tomorrow
  Link: Jen Sorensen

  The alt-weekly cartoonist talks shop.

 

• [Profile] Neil Swaab
  Link: Brian Heater (one, two)

  The first two-thirds of a three-part conversation with the Rehabilitating Mr. Wiggles creator.

 

Editorial Cartoons

 

• [Profile] Hana Hajjar
  Link: Olivia Sterns

  “For Saudi Arabia’s lone female cartoonist, drawing is more than just satire, it’s ‘a duty.’”

 

• [Scene] Alan Kawahara, Aries Barry win Herblock Award
  Link: Sharon Gleason

  Two students from Buffalo, New York take the prize.

 

Digital Comics

 

• [Profile] Robert Berry
  Link: Steve Ekstrom

  The Ulysses Seen creator discusses his attempt to adapt James Joyce to comics.

 

• [Profile] Mike Bannon
  Link: Tom Mason

  A Q&A with the cartoonist behind the online gag panel Mordant Orange.

 


• [Multimedia] Erika Moen
  Link: YouTube (one, two)

  A conversation with the artist responsible for DAR: A Super Girly Top Secret Comic Diary.

  (Above: screenshot from the first video — that’s Moen on the right, by the way.)

 

Small Press/Minicomics

 

• [Review] Various titles
  Link: Rob Clough

  Quick takes on work by Matt Runkle, Jason Viola, Ibrahim Ineke, Hawk Krall, Jack Turnbull, Rusty Jordan and Brent Harada.

 

Cartooning

 

• [Profile] R.O. Blechman
  Link: Mark Medley

  A visit with “one of the most innovative and influential cartoonists and animators of the 20th century.”

 

• [Profile] Todd Klein
  Link: Sardinian Connection

  A chat with the famous comic-book letterer and typographer.

 


• [Craft] Famous Artists Cartoon Course: Kids
  Link: Comicrazys

  The latest chapter from the renowned mail-order instruction course.

  (Above: page detail ©1956, 1965 Famous Artists Cartoon Course, Inc.)

 


• [Craft] Inking with Doug Tennapel
  Link: YouTube

  A practical demonstration.

  (Above: screenshot from the video. Link via Scott McCloud.)

 


• [Comics] Still more Charles Addams
  Link: Harry Lee Green

  Yeah, like anyone needs an excuse to post more Addams.

  (Above: cartoon from Drawn and Quartered, ©1942 Random House, Inc.)

 


• [Art] Walter Wyles
  Link: Leif Peng (one, two, three, four and five)

  All last week, Peng introduced us to yet another fantastic commercial artist from the 20th century.

  (Above: a typically lush Wyles image, source unknown.)

 


• [Art] Weimar book covers
  Link: A Journey Round My Skull

  A look back at one aspect of the doomed German culture that flowered between two wars.

  (Above: a 1927 photomontage cover by John Heartfield. Link via John Martz.)

 

Comics Culture

 

• The “Comics Culture” and “Events Calendar” sections return tomorrow.