Comics Are Serious Business

"You Know, For Kids!"

2009-09-17T01:04:00.000-07:00

We get these Marvel freebie sampler comics all the time. We toss them right near the cash register and just hope that people take them with them as they go. I don't know why we just don't throw them in the garbage, but some people like them (especially parents who want to get away with getting their kids a comic-shaped book that costs them absolutely nothing).

The MOON KNIGHT SAGA, until recently for me, was no different. Just another one of those filler comics that could, maybe, potentially lead to someone actually buying...I dunno...a MOON KNIGHT trade.

So hey, remember how I mentioned how this sort of thing parents love to grab for their kids? And there should be no problem with this as the book is rated "A" for "Appropriate for ages 9 and up", right?*

My friend Lawrence picked this up while he was waiting for me to finish ring out at the end of the day, started to laugh, and showed me this particular image from it.

I guess I can start giving away PREACHER to the kids too! Well, I think ol' MOON KNIGHT SAGA is going to find itself in the garbage pretty quick...

-Jarrett

*Parents get pretty freaked out by the "A" on the front of comics...something like this probably wouldn't alleviate any fears either. Seriously, "A"? "For ALL, Silly! Not Adult. Or Anal."

Consolidation

2009-08-12T00:39:00.000-07:00

Short random thought while looking at this week's invoice: three of the best selling 'wait for trade' series (INVINCIBLE, WALKING DEAD, FABLES) all ship in the same week...meaning the dozen people collecting those series via collected form at my store have no reason to come in again for the next nine months to a year.

Oh, and the box with all that stuff that's mine from last post? Yeah, it has disappeared (ie. wound up at some other shop). Of course, it only took until this past Monday (so nearly two weeks after expected delivery) for Bob to finally get credited and have those all put onto another order (maybe next week, likely next week). It wasn't only my stuff in there: there was probably around $1000 retail in that box, a lot of it reorders for the shelf that could have been put up on the shelf and, you know, sold. Oh the hiccups of the Direct Market!

++++++++++++++++++++++++

So not too much posting activity from me again lately: been working midnight shifts at my other job (hotel desk clerk!), so have wound up working on a proposal for a studio class in the fall semester, reading/sketching for entertainment (I've fallen in love with Christophe Blain comics), but not so much thinking about what it is I'm reading. I have been seriously toying with doing some outright research and discussion of Al Columbia's work, which I just really discovered in the last few weeks. I found a copy of BIOLOGIC SHOW #1 in a dollar bin while in Saskatoon visiting Shanell which has gone on to cost me a chunk of change finding BIOLOGIC SHOW #0, ZERO ZERO issues (anyone got a #26 they foolishly don't want anymore?), BLAB #10, even DOG HEAD. Now, after having read Dan Nadel's devastatingly good review of Darwyn Cooke's adaptation of Richard Stark's THE HUNTER...I'm feeling wholly inadequate to do anything of the like. I think Tom Spurgeon made a pretty good comment on the review itself:

"I like the book, and if my site ever comes back and I can figure out how to write again I'll finish my piece on it.

I think the writing on it has been largely idiotic, though, and I can't imagine taking any of it seriously in a way that the book would then disappoint. Ninety percent of the positive reviews read like textbook examples of writing about a book that would then disappoint, if you know what I mean. There's not a lot of direct engagement with the work.

Also, I think Cooke's reputation as a standard-bearer of '50s mainstream art traditions is actually a misapplication of his working on period material combined with his occasional statements that such characters work best as close to the original concept as possible, not because his art really works that way.

Also, beating someone about the head and shoulders with John Stanley is jive."

Nadel doesn't write a volume of reviews*, but when he does they are pretty well thought out, publishable even (I still think a lot about his review of that Dave Stevens artbook). I don't necessarily agree with Nadel in either case, but he makes his case (one not popularily held), and makes it well, and makes you reconsider something you'd just smile and nod about. I like that feeling, and not much online does that. My other favourite online comic reviewer, Tucker Stone, produces a lot of writing obviously more from the hip and immediate than Nadel (or even a Wolk or Jog), but even as belligerently he writes it, it doesn't make it any less true (and HI-larious).

Well, once I stop feeling really out of my league, I'm going to give it a try hopefully.

-Jarrett

*Me being obvious, but I think the lack of thoughtful, engaging commentary regarding most comics is that something like THE HUNTER is often being read in the context of 'the weekly releases', and in that sense, THE HUNTER is probably excellent comparatively. Taken by itself, the successful approach that Nadel has (criticism of the John Stanley comparison aside) defies the lowered expectations of the kind of default format of comics reviewing (lump summary of someone's shopping list). Also a fear of being left behind in the online critical world creates a rush of getting a word in before everyone else might drive, without stopping and realizing maybe in that rush you are neglecting the work intellectually.

My Reordered Comics That Still Haven't Shown Up This Week!

2009-08-01T07:35:00.000-07:00

So most of the Diamond shipment arrived this week...except on box. With almost all of my reorders from the last couple of weeks in it.

ADVENTURES OF TINTIN NEW ED HC VOL 02, TINTIN AND ALPH ART SC, & TINTIN COMPLETE COMPANION HC
Oh, they always ship it all at once, don't they? With the album collections, I'm not sure if I'm incredibly happy with the reduced size. I dunno, it seems like a real poor fit for the French format of publishing. The ALPH ART book sounds really interesting as it sounds like all the layout/groundwork of Herge's style, before the finishing touches of his studio streamlined it into what we know today. When I started ordering these, I was surprised that Last Gasp had released so much of the North American supplemental material.

COMPLETE LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE HC VOL 01
Now that I've caught up with TERRY AND THE PIRATES, it is almost out of obligation that I move on and tackle yet another series of archival reprints. Because, ha!, I have nothing else better to do. I dunno, if Art Spiegelman and Seth like Gray's stuff so much, I can't imagine it will be awful.

FRED THE CLOWN GN
Considering this just plum didn't get shipped to us the first time (this is a replacement copy), and now the box that is missing contained it...perhaps it simply wasn't meant to be.

FROM THE ASHES #1
Sort of ordered on a lark (yeah, because I really don't have enough to fucking read), giving post-apocalyptic Bob Fingerman a try. You know, after I think about three or four attempts, I've never been able to finish BEG THE QUESTION?

GANGLAND TP
You wouldn't expect this would still be in print after so many years, but hey!

HARLAN ELLISONS DREAM CORRIDOR TP VOL 01
I really liked Vol. 2.

POGOSTICK #1 & #2 PACK
Since apparently you can't just get #2 by itself anymore, and I've shown my #1 to about three different people in the past week, and they all asked where the next one is.

-Jarrett

Comics Of Today

2009-07-22T01:50:00.000-07:00

As I write this, I am waiting for Fantagraphics' website to load up so I can attempt placing an order. If there's one thing I learned the last couple of days while visiting Shanell in Saskatoon, it is I can always find new ways to spend what little money I have on comics.

Let's try something different this week...breaking it down into Books, Comix, and Comics

BOOKS

ADV OF TINTIN NEW ED HC VOL 05
Ordered ahead with this series because I really want to see Herge draw spacecraft and the moon. My French-Belgian comics fascination has started to mild out a bit, mostly because there is just so very little of it available in this part of the continent. What I did manage to order were a few Christopher "GUS AND HIS GANG" Blain graphic novels, specifically ISAAC THE PIRATE and THE SHIP ABATER.

But speaking of orange-haired action-adventures staples...

COMPLETE TERRY & THE PIRATES HC VOL 05 & VOL 06
Aaaand…scene! These are going to look pretty fab right in between DICK TRACY and PEANUTS. Oh, but this doesn't mean I'm done with these hardcover archival reprints! Why, there's still two WALT & SKEEZIX I have to get, as well as getting a start on LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE. The good news I actually started reading TERRY Volume 1! The aim is to keep up a rotating of comic strip reading: TERRY, POPEYE, KRAZY KAT, DICK TRACY, and so on.

RICHARD STARK'S PARKER THE HUNTER HC
Came out last week for the rest of the world it seems, but better late than never. If you don't know Richard Stark/Donald Westlake, Darwyn Cooke, or Ed Brubaker...crazy. If that is the case, you should read this great Tom Spurgeon/Cooke/Brubaker interview from back in May. Probably one of the best interviews I've read in years.

YOU SHALL DIE BY YOUR OWN EVIL CREATION TP
Kind of excited for this.

COMIX

CITIZEN REX #1 (OF 6)
Hey, Hernandez comics! Will we be getting GRIP? Or SLOTH? Or maybe SPEAK OF THE DEVIL? CHANCE IN HELL?

DELPHINE #4 & GROTESQUE #3
Hey, Fantagraphics Ignatz comics! I forgot all about you!

COMICS

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #600 & INCREDIBLE HULK #600
Congratulations, Peter Parker! Congratulations, Bruce Banner! You know what frightens me? I was doing some house cleaning the other week, and I realized I have almost complete consecutive runs of both AMAZING and HULK starting at their respective #300 issues. For every issue of ARCADE, or ZERO ZERO, or ACME NOVELTY LIBRARY, or DIRTY PLOTTE, or Al Columbia comics I have, my Marvel superhero comics outnumber them...what, 10, 15, 20 to 1?

...

Hey, did you know that Alex Ross is one of the 21 artists who changed mainstream comics (for better or worse)? Actually, AVClub.com has been doing a real comics beatdown this week: Seth talking comics, the already mentioned list, an interview with Michael Kupperman, now I see an interview with Grant Morrison.

BLACKEST NIGHT TALES OF THE CORPS #2 (OF 3) & GREEN LANTERN #44
Let the wholesale slaughter for profit continue! Actually the first TALES OF THE CORPS was pretty good. Actually times two, as much as I pretty well scoff at the absurdity of this comic book, at least it is entertaining in an incredibly stupid way. I just find it tragic that for many comic shop denizens this is literally the best thing they'll read this week.

BOYS HEROGASM #3 (OF 6)
Why, Garth Ennis, do you write this? Why, John McCrea, do you draw this? Why, Jarrett Duncan, do you buy this?

CAPTAIN BRITAIN AND MI 13 #15
Last issue, yeah? Thanks to Caleb for bringing this highlight in the Marvel superhero line-up to my and others' attention, if even for a short time.

CONAN THE CIMMERIAN #12
I want to grow up to be the 40 to 50 year old dads who come in and this and JONAH HEX are all we know.

DETHKLOK VS THE GOON
A really random order, hopefully turns out better than last week's CREEPY #1.

FINAL CRISIS LEGION OF THREE WORLDS #5 (OF 5)
What a fuck up. I’ve never really liked George Perez (save that CRIMSON PLAGUE comics, which was suitably trashy and nice to look at), so none of this seems worth all the delays. Oh, I feel a rant coming on.

Speaking of fairly popular, incredibly late limited series: please, Marvel, make sure you overprint your OLD MAN LOGAN GIANT-SIZED SPECIAL thing, because being so incredibly slow and late no retailer will be able to remember how much to bring in initially. Do we order high, supporting the numbers of the various printings and various runs we've sold beyond initial orders on, say, #72? How about all those people who have since cancelled WOLVERINE off their file because 1) Mark Millar/Steven McNiven aren't on it, and 2) what is DARK WOLVERINE, who would still like to get that last issue? This is all very short term, no big deal in the end, but definitely drives people in the long run into the waiting arms of 'waiting for trades' (meaning decreased over all sales because waits become never buys), or into Other Less Demanding and Needlessly Convoluted Hobbies.

IMMORTAL WEAPONS #1 (OF 5)
I’m curious whether or not IRON FIST will continue after this miniseries of one shots by different creators wraps. Same thing is happening with GHOST RIDER, which I actually just started to really enjoy once Jason Aaron had a good artist. Hey, did you hear that Jason Aaron is going to continue on with PUNISHER MAX with Garth Ennis in mind? Could be great, based on that hilariously dark PUNISHER CHRISTMAS SPECIAL he did!

-Jarrett

A Tale of Three Connies

2009-07-15T20:15:00.000-07:00

A confluence of "Connie" the last 24 hours.

From TERRY AND THE PIRATES:
The daily comic strip CONNIE!
ANd what's Traylor got to say to John Constantine of HELLBLAZER fame?Oh, it looks like George Webster "Connie" Confucius has something to add.
Poor Connie...

-Jarrett

The Comics I Read Today - July 15th, 2009

2009-07-15T18:23:00.000-07:00

ALL SELECT COMICS #1
Michael Kupperman tackles Marvex, The Super Robot! Fuck, this was hilarious. Are you a TALES DESIGNED TO THRIZZLE fan? Have you heard of TALES DESIGNED TO THRIZZLE? This is a must own comics if you are. Boring, shithead comics fans will hate it, but if you're a Michael Kupperman fan, this cannot disappoint. What's most fucked up is that I thought Kupperman was totally playing around...and then you get to the reprinted original Marvex, The Super Robot story...and he was playing it Almost straight. Compared to the shit I'd be reading very soon, this was the best comic pamphlet of the month.

Even the Javier Pulido-drawn story looks really nice (didn't bother to read it though).

WEDNESDAY COMICS #2
(Apparently DC refuses to put up a cover for this, so here's my lousy scan). Azzarrello/Risso BATMAN continues to be serviceable. Gibbons/Sook's KAMANDI is sticking to its PRINCE VALIANT riffing, and you'll either admire it or will just skip it. Arcude/Bermejo SUPERMAN is just a dull, bitchy conversation between a Superman and a Batman made even sadder when you know they are printing this in USA TODAY, and not Paul Pope's ADAM STRANGE or Kyle Baker's HAWKMAN. Bullock/Heuck DEADMAN continues to showcase a very Darwyn Cooke look to it that I love to look at, indifferent to read. Busiek/Quinones I've already completely forgotten (it looks ok?). Gaiman/Allred's METAMORPHO deliver one three-panel comics, and a second utterly stupid additional strip that makes me think about how much more Neil Gaiman got paid for this page compared to everyone else. Berzanga/Galloway TEEN TITANS continues banality. Paul Pope STRANGE ADVENTURES is just beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, and probably the true success of this project right now. Palmiotti/Conner SUPERGIRL makes me wish Amanda Conner would draw a comic for someone who can write well outside of JONAH HEX. Didio/Garcia Lopez's METAL MEN can just go away, as well as Caldwell/Marston's WONDER WOMAN. The Kuberts' SGT. ROCK continues to turn at a snail's uninteresting pace. Kerschl/Fletcher/Leigh/McCraig's FLASH/IRIS WEST is just so nice to look at, and in many ways far more interesting than the event FLASH: REBIRTH. Simonson/Stelfreeze create an attractive looking page that I just don't want to read. And Kyle Baker HAWKMAN continues to really leave me happy. You know, they could really do something interesting with HAWKMAN, based on this and that one HAWKMAN strip in BIZARRO COMICS!

"A Very Special Issue of" CAPTAIN AMERICA #601
O-oh. Maybe we did order just right. Total placeholder comic while the whole CAPTAIN AMERICA: REBORN thing gets rolling. In some ways, I think this was a complete missed opportunity. You have a vampire story and Gene Colan...and you don't throw actual DRACULA in there? I love ol' Baron Blood and Union Jack (that Roger Stern written story from the #250s of CAP? Awesome! Or, hell, Paul Grist's JACK STAFF), but I kept hoping and hoping, and just got Old Man Gene Colan art, and a flashback story with Winter Soldier and Nick Fury watching videos at some undisclosed place and time.

CREEPY #1
Wow, that was shockingly stupid and bad. Ok, "The Curse" and "All The Help You Neeed" were typical and only guilty by association, but "Hell Hound Blues"? "Chemical 13"? What the fuck was the point of this? Don't try to appease me with old Alex Toth art either!

Did the original CREEPY and EERIE have this EC Horror Comics Intro/Outro bit character "Uncle Creepy" in it?

BLACKEST NIGHT #1
SPOILERS AHEAD, chit'lins!

Remember what I was saying about HAWKMAN in WEDNESDAY COMICS and BIZARRO COMICS? Geoff Johns and DC Editorial seem to think otherwise about his future.

Summary: So zombie Elongated Man and zombie Sue Dibney show up inexplicably in Hawkman/Hawkgirl's house, spearing Hawkgirl and smashing Hawkman's head in with his own mace. And THEN Elongated Man tears out Hawkman's heart, and then we're left hanging off a cliff (as the saying goes) with the promise of Hawkman/Hawkgirl coming back as zombie Hawkman and zombie Hawkgirl. And a man wearing a costume made out of a bodybag (revealed last issue!) who just shot himself in the head after murdering his family is carrying around the skull of Batman (?), watching.

Before all this goes down, there's a lot of creaky setting up of all these dead folks which makes sense from a marketing/selling perspective as DC is trying to make this their big selling book of the year, and since almost no one reads DC or DC comics, they have no idea who the hell any of these dead characters are (the logic goes if they were popular, they wouldn't be dead). And a blue scarred midget attacks another blue midget by biting into the neck, and greenish yellow goo comes pouring out because they are aliens.

Ok, one genuinely good bit in this? The swarm of black rings spreading through the galaxy, making sounds like flies. The rest of it is all kind of funny in the way I've always found Geoff Johns' comics to be.

Poor Hawkman. *Sniff*

-Jarrett

Corben! And Comics For Tomorrow!

2009-07-14T12:12:00.000-07:00

Richard Corben comics. I had no idea he did the cover for Meat Loaf's BAT OUT OF HELL until a week ago, and it really shook me. I always thought my first exposure to Corben was that Hard Times storyline he drew for Brian Azzarello on Azzarello's first HELLBLAZER storyline "Hard Times", followed by those ridiculous BANNER and CAGE miniseries for Marvel. But no! The first time I ever encountered Corben was when I was 3 or 4 years old, looking through my parents' LPs and being terrified by that bat. The other thing that has got me wanting more Corben is coming across a really big chunk of his late 80s/early 90s Fantagor Press stuff: DEN, CHILDREN OF FIRE, RIP OF TIME, SON OF MUTANT WORLD. It is out there, and I aim to get what I can get.

Well, I'm starting to feel the urge to write some non-shopping list posts here...just the mildest, tingling sensation.

ACTION COMICS #879
Holy shit has this been a terrible comic book. The art has progressively got worse, the ongoing story is just dullsville...I never read Rucka's ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN comics, but know of their ill regarded reputation. Actually, if it weren't for the strength of WORLD OF KRYTON alone, the entire SUPERMAN line would be pretty lackluster until the Geoff Johns/Gary Frank SECRET ORIGIN project kicks off...which still strikes me as fairly unnecessary, even considering its very unnecessary nature of being a superhero miniseries. Oh, those SUPERGIRL covers are all pretty nice, and remind me why I don't really miss having new Michael Turner covers anymore.

ALL SELECT COMICS #1 70TH ANNIV SPECIAL
Michael Kupperman! Or, just another chink in the Golden Age Marvel revival stuff. Really, outside the initial issue that got me hooked on buying these (YOUNG ALLIES)...they haven't been all that terrible interesting.

ALL STAR COMPANION TP VOL 04
Oh, right, I ordered this, even though 1) I haven't read the previous two (don't let that stop you!), and 2) I couldn't care less about Justice Society anymore, in a post-Geoff Johns series.

Oh, I couldn't find a cover for this, but I did stumble across this odd cover of GREEN LANTERN.

BLACKEST NIGHT #1 (OF 8) & BLACKEST NIGHT TALES OF THE CORPS #1 (OF 3)
And speaking of Geoff Johns. So #1 is coming out, finally revealing whether this is going to be Entertaining and Fun like a Sinestro Corp Wars way, or a Anti-Readable Editorially Mandated Geoff Johns story like INFINITE CRISIS was. And hey, don't forget to get your free Black Lantern ring from your retailer tomorrow with every purchase of BLACKEST NIGHT!

CAPTAIN AMERICA #601
Hmm, I think we may have underordered this...it will be curious to see how much this will have to do with anything, between #600 and REBORN #1.

COMPLETE TERRY & THE PIRATES HC VOL 04 1941-1942
Wooo, four down, two to go! Have I mentioned how nice these covers are?

CREEPY COMICS #1
My random sample and order from that month's PREVIEWS, not even sure what to expect.

INCOGNITO #5
So I haven't actually heard anything too glowingly positive or damningly negative about this...is everyone just politely waiting for CRIMINAL to start again? Regardless, wow, that's probably my favourite Sean Phillips cover in a long time!

RASL #5
This is selling decently in issues, but we still have the same three trade paperbacks of Vol. 1 of this that we did the day they arrived. It isn't exactly going for the young BONE reader (kind of an adult book), but maybe the potential 'thick edition' collecting it all in one go is putting people off?

SHADOW DOUBLE NOVEL VOL 2 & 3
These were getting cleared out at a steal of a deal, got the first one a while ago, might as well pick these up while they are still available.

WEDNESDAY COMICS #2 (OF 12)
Sometime shortly after I left and the store closed we sold our last shelf copy of #1, earning it 2 reorders. Showed a friend my copy, he wanted it, sold that one, reordered again. This is where publishers help the retailer out: overprint!

Random though: what I would love to have is the series of SOLO reprinted in two volumes, right alongside BIZARRO COMICS and BIZARRO WORLD to be able to sell people as a bridge from superhero comics to indie stuff. What a dream!

I did read #1 the other day: I think everyone who is buying and reading this is all on the same message: the TEEN TITANS and WONDER WOMAN strips are terribly for two different reasons (TT is an absolute nothing, and WW is needlessly dense, reproduced poorly on this paper, and dull). Everything else varies from "Awesome" (ADAM STRANGE, FLASH/IRIS WEST, HAWKMAN) "Really Fun" (DEADMAN, KAMANDI) to "That Was Ok" (SUPERMAN, GREEN LANTERN, METAMORPHO, SUPERGIRL, BATMAN, SGT. ROCK) to "Hmm, Well At Least It Wasn't TT and WW" (METAL MEN, DEMON/CATWOMAN).

The rest: SCALPED #30, X-FACTOR #46 & YOUNG LIARS #17
Part of the great unread pile...in the very real sense that I have literally not read either series since maybe the first storyline. With YOUNG LIARS...only one more of these to go. I do remember not really caring for the first few issues, but apparently by the end of the 'first act', it completely changed. I like Lapham's comics, generally, and I guess by buying anything he does gets us a little closer to seeing more STRAY BULLETS.

Before we go, let's check in with Traylor, see what he has to say.

Until next time!

-Jarrett

What I Bought Today

2009-07-08T23:21:00.000-07:00

ASTERIOS POLYP GN
It wasn't until very recently that I even knew this was coming out. Outside of the obvious (DAREDEVIL: BORN AGAIN, BATMAN: YEAR ONE, CITY OF GLASS) I have always really liked Mazzucchelli, and imagined he was just done with comics, or very slow. A very pleasant surprise indeed. Looked at the first ten or so pages and...well, we'll see how it goes.

GREEN LANTERN #43
When Doug Mahnke was announced as the fill-in artist on the last issue of FINAL CRISIS, I was kind of happy. After SEVEN SOLDIERS: FRANKENSTEIN, I knew Mahnke was yet another one of those artists who seemed to be able to take Morrison scripts and make them readable as comics. After the fairly terrible art on the last few issues of GREEN LANTERN (Philip Tan, who I get to look forward to being the follow up artist to Frank fucking Quitely on BATMAN & fucking ROBIN), I was glad to see him pop up here next.

HARLAN ELLISONS DREAM CORRIDOR TP VOL 02
A really random purchase (Vol. 1 is coming next week I guess). I didn't realize there was as much Harlan Ellison stories adapted into comics, nor did I know that there was an entire series with some artists of reputation drawing them (Richard Corben!).

NOBODY HC
A combination of Jeff Lemiere's previous work on TALES FROM ESSEX COUNTY, the forthcoming SWEET TOOTH, and my fetish for bandaged characters in visual mediums, sold this sight unseen/unreviewed.

PRINCE VALIANT HC VOL 01 1937-1938
I have never read any Hal Foster comics before, and I've been looking forward to doing so after having read about him in Dave Sim's GLAMOURPUSS (which, for my money, is one of the most important comics coming out right now...well, at least half of it anyway). This might be another of those prestige archival collections that go unread for quite a while (if ever? hi FLASH GORDON/BUCK ROGERS), but essential for the sake of my personal comics art history.

WEDNESDAY COMICS #1 (OF 12)
I imagine and hope that the inevitable collection of this material is something along the lines of PRINCE VALIANT/previous ACME NOVELTY LIBRARY. I really like this project myself, ordered it without question. Amazing line up of creators, something a bit exciting and daring from a mainstream publisher format wise, a definite change of pace from the dreary to mundane string of weekly comic projects from DC since 52.

So from a retailing perspective; Bob ordered 8 copies total. Of these 8, 3 were pre-ordered (me, a friend, and a hardcore Joe Kubert and Neil Gaiman fan). Talking to Bob, no one asked him about it in the last few months. From the two weeks I worked the store solo, not a single request or question. I have read many comments that suggest that retailers are leery about this comic and were ordering via pull lists/pre-orders, and conservatively for the shelf. I have read ensuing comments from reader-customers that this is 'idiotic' and the retailer should know to support this fully, without reservation, to reach out beyond the 'Wednesday' crowd (ha!).

Considering this is full colour printed on newsprint for $3.99US an issue...that's $2 or so retailer cost for a format which was created in the mindset of existing temporarily, in a slight unconvential, flimsy state that promises only to yellow, tear, tatter. It doesn't look entirely unlike the freebie Marvel (a 1930s issue of the DAILY BUGLE) did a few weeks ago promoting their Golden Age MARVEL PROJECT. Newsprints, some colour...and free. Obviously you cannot compare the contents (dig that creator line up), but asking $3.99US, for twelve issues, for something this close to a recycling bin?

Day one sales: We have all but one copy unsold at the store now. Two file customers tried it out, gave it to the guy who buys literally everything from Marvel and DC, and one guy bought it who Bob had never seen before. One for the shelf. Checking Diamond, it appears to still be in stock. If I do sell that last copy tomorrow, and I have some more requests reorders are still possible. If I have a sudden rush of 5 or more people wanting to at least check it out, I've got a copy on hand to show off, and will happily reorder and sell it in another week (and play catch up with subsequent issues until we find our sales bottom).

Oh, just remembered I was thinking of doing this. These are our initial orders for the first and last issues of the DC weekly series.

52 WEEK #1

52 WEEK #52

COUNTDOWN 51

COUNTDOWN TO FINAL CRISIS 1

TRINITY #1

TRINITY #52

And DC didn't even do the same returnable offer that it did with 52 or COUNTDOWN, did it? Maybe tomorrow I should gather up a stack of all the remainder issues of 52 and COUNTDOWN and TRINITY the store still has and take a photo. And these comics were $2.99US each, on the whole. TRINITY, at the very end, was straight to file.

And now...WEDNESDAY COMICS #1........8. An untested physical format, in a fairly tainted release format, with a one week USA TODAY article (not so widely read in Lethbridge, Alberta), appealing to...well, either hardcore DC types (a really dying breed), experimenters who will likely try the first one, and you & me.

-Jarrett

What I'm Buying Next Week

2009-06-26T15:49:00.000-07:00

It has been a while. Yeah, over half a year. I think being away from the comic store really drives down my general interest in comics (reading and drawing them), and so the last two weeks covering for Bob while he's been on vacation have sort of reinvigorated that interest (at least for one post!) So let's see how this goes...

Actually, on the whole, this is a pretty good stack.

AGENTS OF ATLAS #7
Jeff Parker! One of these nights I should probably read all of the hardcover, the various short stories from various SECRET INVASION/DARK REIGN ONE SHOTS (all conventiently available in the forthcoming trade paperback collection), and the previous six issues.

ASTRO CITY THE DARK AGE BOOK THREE #3 (OF 4)
One more month, then I'll read Book Three in one sitting. Or maybe really treat myself and read all of ASTRO CITY again from the very beginning.

BATMAN AND ROBIN #2
Morrison, Quitely...should be pretty awesome. A retailer's note: we ordered 50 of these, and have only four issues left on the shelf. This makes it the better seller than any issue of the core FINAL CRISIS series.

BOYS #32
I think I almost hate this comic. Really awful art work, incredibly juvenile, meaningless scripts...but man, that cover for #34 has reinvigorated my interest. Well, almost.

CAPTAIN AMERICA COMICS 70TH ANNIV SPECIAL #1, MARVEL MYSTERY COMICS #1 70TH ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL, SUB-MARINER COMICS 70TH ANNIV SPECIAL #1, USA COMICS #1 70TH ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL
A big swack of reorders for me, enjoying YOUNG ALLIES, and finding MISS AMERICA and HUMAN TORCH sitting around the store the other week. Looking back and ahead, it really is a good time to be a fan of Golden Age superhero comics. AVENGERS/INVADERS, THE TWELVE, PROJECT SUPERPOWERS, the Fletcher Hanks Jr. reprints, the recent Jack Kirby/Joe Simon collection, SUPERMEN, forthcoming THE MARVEL PROJECT...

CAPTAIN AMERICA REBORN #1 (OF 5)
I really can't believe this is out already! Oh, and no one has actually asked me about it at the store besides people who already are buying Brubaker's CAPTAIN AMERICA. As an avid Brubaker reader, I am just hoping this is a mostly artistic direction, and not mostly editorially mandated.

CEREBUS ARCHIVE #2
I got my $15 Obama & Zombie-Cerebus variant last week, and for whatever reason the regular version of this didn't come out until This week for the store. But I got a $15 dollar version of a $3 comic with a different cover!

Why do I feel so empty inside?

COMPLETE TERRY AND THE PIRATES HC VOL 03 1939-1940
And still have to start reading these...eventually there will have to come a tipping point where I can't justify ordering these $50 hardcovers that I'm not actively reading out of fear that when I do have an insatiable urge to buy and read them they'll be out of print and grossly overpriced. In the meantime, these looks awesome, and I can't wait until CAPTAIN EASY and RIP KIRBY start (that void inside is growing...)

CONFESSIONS ROMANCES SECRETS & TEMPTATIONS
Recommended by Dan Nadel. Nadel is the chap who wrote ART OUT OF TIME, which is one of the more important books that got me started really delving into comics art history, so a recommendation by him is something worth taking a look at (and it cost all of $9.95US).

FRED THE CLOWN GN
I've been picking up Roger Landridge's MUPPET SHOW and Marvel Monster stuff, and didn't know this existed until recently. Should be a gas! (Oh, and we got shorted on it on the invoice! Another two weeks I guess...)

GUS & HIS GANG GN
Ordered solely after reading Abhay Khosla's review.

-Jarrett

So I Got KRAMERS ERGOT 7 Yesterday...

2008-12-26T06:35:00.000-08:00

...and yeah, it is pretty amazing. Last night Shanell and I laid it flat on the bed and, not even reading it, just flipped through. That was about a half-hour endeavour, which I think has already begun to justify its price. Shanell had the "Holy Shit, you just spent over $100 on this?" reaction at first sight, but after that initial pass through, she agreed it was worth it.

To echo everyone else, it really is massive: easily the large bound book that I own. It is one thing to read 16" x 21", but quite another to be carrying the tome around under your arm. I'm 6'3", and I find it intimidating!

I'm almost tempted to leave my copy at the store for a week so I can show it off to a couple of people who would actually potentially order copies for themselves...hey, it is still in stock through Diamond! There's one guy who comes to the store who is a big Seth fan who might be interested to know that included is a 25 page Seth comic compiled as a two pager here. I think a pretty good gauge of whether you are having any doubts to buy this or not (if its steep price isn't an issue, which is understandable), I would say if you liked KRAMERS ERGOT 6, you will like this at least as much, and probably more. I really wish this came out when everyone was complaining about the price in the late summer rather than now, considering the Canadian exchange rate went down the crapper since then, making this more than when people were talking about it.

I think once my schedule is cleared up a bit more again, I want to do a walkthrough of it.

-Jarrett

Hey, News!

2008-12-19T09:22:00.000-08:00

Via Tom Spurgeon:

Another Cartoonist Loses Staff Position

This time it's Thomas "TAB" Boldt, cartoonist for the Sun Media papers in Canada -- specifically the Calgary Sun. Unlike some of the recent staff position cuts, Boldt had been in his current job for less than a decade, although I think from looking at the cartoonist's picture and guessing at his age he may have been working in the field before that -- I'm terribly, terribly unfamiliar with most Canadian newspaper cartoonists. Not that noting the relative length of time Boldt's had his current position compared to some other eliminated job makes it any less a potentially miserable day for Boldt, or any more alarming in terms of the continued losses in North American newspaper for these kinds of positions. Three other cartoonists working for the chain were retained.

Living in southern Alberta, I am more than a little familiar with "TAB" and his political cartoons. It should be noted that the Calgary Sun is something of a second-rate tabloid...a right-wing Conservative soapbox, which is reflected in the obviousness and overall lack of quality of Tab's cartoons. Lots of easily digestible, explanatory labeling, and populace sentiment amounting on non-jokes. He will not be missed, though I'm certain that whoever takes the reigns within the Sun Media empire will be just as disappointing.

-Jarrett

With Christmas Approaching...

2008-12-17T16:36:00.000-08:00

Well, my finals are written, marked, and I'm now just waiting for final marks to finish rolling in...I suppose I should do something more than just sketches and maybe (maybe!) even get that last Brunetti 4 page comic drawn! Instead I've watched almost every Lars von Trier movie, and started THE OUTER LIMITS, which I received as an early Christmas gift. I am doodling away while watching, but nothing too concrete.

Anyway, I thought I would just take a moment to share with you all a hot seller locally for us, with two special requests for Christmas presents for this particular trade paperback. Allow me to introduce you to: FREDDY VS JASON VS ASH.

I suppose if I was...twelve? this would have been kind of awesome. As it is, I can't help but laugh when I think of all the top ten lists floating around that don't have this gem on it, yet I will sell two more of these than anything off the typical list (I'm not counting my own purchases here).

-Jarrett

Sketchbook of "Week Nine", Kind Of, Sort Of, Continued...

2008-11-21T19:08:00.000-08:00

And....shit, almost two weeks late! Huh. Crap.

Assignment Nine! The colour page assignment! So this isn't even what I was planning on doing for this...I actually am still slowly (around school and essays and tests and research and work and family reunions...I know, excuses excuses!) planning out that work which is turning out to be more ambitious. So this was just the result of me drawing a blank character, in the vein of Anders Nilsen comics, done in one page, thinking about those big empathic white eyes...and really desolate environments, and the sort of colours you'd expect to see. So here's two samples with two colours straight from a paint bucket!

Sunday Colour w/one colour

Sunday Colour w/two colours

If I have some spare time this weekend, I want to actually scan in my 'hi-lighter' colouring job and compare how it looks compared to this really cleaned up version. And actually maybe hunt down some variety of colour from other sources that I a tad more...subtle. And at some point I should probably tackle that 4 page final assignment! It might actually expand beyond the constraints of the Brunetti book (which I'm now at the end of at this point), and start some preliminary work on my Arctic project.

But wait! BONUS HOBOS, in glorious B&W! I think it would make just a charming Christmas card...inspired by an Art Now lecture at the University the other week with an artist who destroys books for her work. I thought to myself "Well, I don't really like the idea of destroying books...but under what circumstances is book burning OK? I mean, Nazis burned books...hey, I bet a few ambitiously desperate hobos have broken into a library to steal books-as-fuel for an impromptu alley bonfire before!"

Comedy gold.

UPDATE! As promised here are a couple more attempts at colouring...

Sunday Colour w/Two Colours, modified yellow

Sunday Colour, hand coloured

-Jarrett

Sketchbook of "Week Nine", Kind Of

2008-11-09T00:00:00.000-08:00

It seems as the semester begins to wind up for finals, time continues to slip through my fingers...

Assignment 8! Draw your good page as meticulously as you can muster! I honestly didn't really want to draw a Jim Woodring page, and had been flipping through MAUS recently, and working on Assignment 9, which references one particular page from MAUS...so why not draw that particular page!

The original (from MAUS, Page. 201)...

...and my travesty!

I actually found this to be probably one of the most rewarding learning experiences of the whole process, as far as teaching me how far I still have to go making that leap from rank amateur to semi-professional. When in the end you actually have something else to compare your work to, something both qualifiable and quantifiable...it really is revealing. All those little shortcuts I take that I can tell myself are alright, and just 'part of my style'...it really exposes them as just laziness. So, what all did I learn?

After scanning black and white images at around 600-1200dpi, black-and-white, into bitmap and tiff, I decided to dial it down to 300dpi...and boy do you really start to notice the pixellation when cleaning up! In fact, there isn't much to clean up, as most of that fine detail is lost in the process. A few weeks ago I discovered this .pdf of a zine Jordan Crane, Ron Rege Jr., Dave Choe, and Brian Ralph did called "Re: A Guide to Reproduction", and it is all pretty bang on and can't be ignored (find it here on Jordan Crane's website at the very bottom!)

I have always liked the idea of Chester Brown and Charles Burns (I think Burns does this) doing individual panels followed by assembling them on the final page for printing. It seemed to solve the intimidation of tackling an entire comics page each and everytime. In my mind, though, I never actually realized that there are indeed still problems that can arise without actually planning for assembly. It takes just as much time putting everything together and making it all look seemless! Also, free handing panels individually, thinking eye balling is going to cut it? It doesn't. I think I remember reading in IN THE STUDIO in the interview with Art Spiegelman talking about how any one comics panel should be able to stand on its own merit...Oh Some Kind of Irony!

I guess there really is a reason that stuff like rulers and white-out are worth having around!

I am still debating whether or not I should be pencilling first, than inking. I just find that inking saves so much time and still feels like fun instead of the job of inking over the same old material again. I don't know, someone beat some sense into me!

As much time as I spend getting better at drawing, I should be spending just as much time learning how to write/print clear letters. I want this stuff to be read, you know?

I really need to get an actual studio space. My squishy bed and the rug of my bedroom floor are limiting me in ways that I don't even want to think about (though Chester Brown apparently draws on a block of wood across his legs and produces LOUIS RIEL).

I should actually do this copying thing more often...don't know why I had to be reminded of this. Random observation: anyone ever read that MODERN MASTERS: BRUCE TIMM book? It is pretty amazing how Bruce Timm went from being amateur Bruce Timm to professional Bruce Timm while working under John Kricfalusi in the 1980s. From the sounds of it, Kricfalusi GRINDS YOU. This is one of the main reasons why I still go to John K's blog; I don't always agree with his personal aesthetic preferences (John K isn't even a fan of the Bruce Timm style....nor much of contemporary animation and cartooning in general), far too much good information gets put out there for absolutely free every week to ignore.

So...Week Nine: Full Colour "Sunday" Page. There wasn't any particular 'exercise' this week, but instead Brunetti going over colour techniques. You'd think in lieu of this, I'd have Assignment 9 all rearing to go...but that is still coming along. So what do I have to offer? What I will do is actually reproduce a pretty good page of instruction from the Brunetti book.

"Some common pratfalls..., Pg. 65
A. Who is talking first?
B. Spatially confusing tangents.
C. Clunky perspective.
D. Arbitrary framing.
E. Unintentional connections.
F. Awkward compositions, more easily seen if page is turned upside down.
G.Inconsistent character design.
H. Not enough space.
I. Lettering too small or close together."

Pretty good information that I think a few cartoonists out there in the land could probably heed, aspiring and professionals all...

-Jarrett

Sketchbook of "Week Eight"

2008-11-02T11:49:00.000-08:00

It isn't so much slowing down in drawing, but slowing down of scanning that held up this week's post...

So, Assignment 7 was to gather a comic page you liked and a comic page you disliked, and to think about why that was. I selected

Jim Woodring's FRANK comic "Sugar of Vengeance"....

and a section of the recent Grant Morrison/Tony Daniel's BATMAN #680.

Week Eight: Style.

Exercise 8.1 is to draw the "bad" page in the good style...(Woodring BATMAN)

...and the "good page" in the bad style (Daniel MANPIG)

Assignment 8 is drawn, and just needs to be scanned in and assembled. We're actually rapidly to the end of this whole project, with "Week Nine" involving colour, and "Week Ten to Fourteen" being the production of a complete 4 page comic. Speaking of which, I should probably start getting caught up again...but first!

BONUS COMICS #1!

BONUS COMICS #2!

-Jarrett

Sketchbook of "Week Seven"

2008-10-24T19:49:00.001-07:00

Jesus, it's been a week already.

Well, I've had Assignment 6 done for over a week (which is dealing with the Hierarchical Grid), and this is the first time I've had some spare time to do some scanning with a larger than 8 1/2 by 11" image. The only conceptual point I had to work from was 'Relationships'.

On to "Week Seven": Tools.

Exercise 7.1 is to create a 11x17" grid, each square 1x1" (so 160 squares) and try out dip pens, brush, and technical pen and try different textures, patterns, marks, etc.

Here's pen...

Here's ink, some calligraphy brush...

...and ballpoint pen.

The next step was to shrink the work down 65%, 50%, and 35% from its original size and see how your work reproduces.

Assignment 7 and Week Eight: Style next time!

-Jarrett

Sketchbook from "Week Five and Six"

2008-10-17T15:03:00.000-07:00

Here is Assignment 4 from last time. Decided to work again with Blockhead, the actual square of the panel (thinking back to a comment Brunetti made about the circle frame choice for his Holden Caulfield circular head), and the playful, page breaking I saw in Shintaro Kago's comic "Abstraction". I'm not exactly thrilled by the final result, but it is all part of the learning process I guess.

Onward though to "Week Five", The Democratic Grid, which we'll get out of the way all in one go.

Exericse 5.1 is to draw a long series of the same face with varying eyebrows.

Assignment 5 was to construct a one page comic strip about 'childhood' using the democratic grid (that's where all your panels are the exact same size, without any real particular emphasis on any one place). I'm pretty sure anyone who grew up in the age of Nintendo and pre-Internet should be able to relate to this sort of childhood prattle...

And "Week Six", The Hierarchical Grid.

Exercise 6.1 is more of a writing/thought exercise, and actually pretty interesting. Here is pretty well the entirety of Brunetti's description for the exercise....

"Imagine you are walking in the desert. Can you see it in your mind? OK, now, after walking for a while, you come upon a cube. Describe that cube.

How big is it? What is it made of? Is it hollow or solid? Is it on the ground or floating? A part of the desert of detached from it? How do you think it got there?

About half the size of me, but considering how heavy it looks I can lift it to chest level without difficulty. Solidly built, looks carved, polished, maybe machine made. Made of material from the desert itself...compressed sand...brown...but how did it get Here? Maybe dropped by some caravan because the horses couldn't pull it anymore? But it is so light...on the ground. Seems displaced, out of touch.

What is your impression of it? What are your feelings about it, if any? Do you touch it? Can you hold it? Do you? Is it large enough that you can go inside it? Do you? Do you interact with it in some way? Why do you think you react to it as you do? Are you able to discern its history and make-up, and if so, how? Do you care? How do you think most poeple would react to it if they saw it? Can anyone other than you even see it?

Kicking as it doesn't really do anything. Like I said, very solid. It is course to touch too. The desert seems to rotate around it, or is completely indifferent...seems like a complete mystery...think I'm being influenced by Art History To 1500 class, what with all the Paleolithic/Neolothic/Sumerian/Babylonian/Ancient Egyptian material. No marking to reference, and it isn't like I have the means to do any carbon dating or anything...I think if the cube were larger, older, and made of a valuable stone people would care more....noteworthy because it isn't naturally forming, though there's that quantum chance that it is...

Assignment 6 is to do a comic using hierarchical scale (varying panel sizes for emphasis), and construct a one page comic about 'relationships' of a romantic nature. Just needs to be scanned in...and will be made available for your perusal as we hit on "Week Seven" next time.

-Jarrett

Sketchbook of "Week Four"

2008-10-13T01:50:00.000-07:00

"Week Four" is brief: A Simple Page.

Exercise 4.1; "Draw a character, built out of simple shapes; circles, triangles, rectangles, minimal features and rudimentary limbs. Do some sketches."

"Then, create a four-panel strip, without words, of your character in any location, performing an action. Now, add two panels to create 'motivation' for the character preceding the four you've just drawn, then add two more panels at the end."

Here we have it, me finding a way to both blatantly lift from Brunetti and Chris Ware.

Exercise 4.2 is to simply compare the results here with last week's assignment.

Assignment 4 is to create a 6-9 panel strip, all panels the same size, in black and white. That'll be for next time...

-Jarrett

"Week Three": Day Six

2008-10-12T00:01:00.000-07:00

"Week Three": Day Five

2008-10-11T00:01:00.000-07:00

So this strip and yesterday's strip are both obviously a continuation of one another...and both are using collage to an effect that I was pretty leery of at first but actually kind of like how it reproduces here. What I really kind of hate is the decision I made to stick with the static drawing of me, which really seems to kill any sort of energy I was start to feel in the actual drawing. I suppose this all comes down to a valuable learning experience...static, photocopying repetition blows dead bear (which I should have learned from all those Brian Michael Bendis comics).

Well, the biggest influence on these last two pieces is the Art Spiegelman comic strip "A Furshlugginer Genius!"...(excerpt)

... which I first saw in the opening of the COMICS JOURNAL LIBRARY book on Harvey Kurtzman, but just saw yesterday was also reproduced in Ivan Brunetti's AN ANTHOLOGY OF GRAPHIC FICTION, CARTOONS, AND TRUE STORIES Vol. 2. Just got my copy of it yesterday and....yeah, a really fantastic book, and I'm still waiting for Vol. 1 to ship. Wow, colour really makes it sing, doesn't it?

-Jarrett

"Week Three": Day Four

2008-10-10T00:01:00.000-07:00

"Week Three": Day Three

2008-10-09T20:52:00.000-07:00

"Week Three": Day Two

2008-10-08T09:09:00.001-07:00

Man, those sliding/wonky hand drawn panels really stand out once scanned in....

Anyway, after I drawing this I realized I had Daniel Clowes' MAROONED, Jack Chick comics, and the Harvy Kurtzman/Steve Ditko close up on the brain.

-Jarrett

"Week Three": Day One

2008-10-07T11:26:00.000-07:00

Something Smells

2008-10-07T10:40:00.000-07:00

=

Oh, right, the rotting corpse that is corporate superhero mediocrity!

It started with a Tucker/Nina Stone the other day:

Watchmen, Chris Ware, Daniel Clowes, Criminal, Carl Barks, Darwyn Cooke, David B, Lynda Barry, Charles Burns, Krazy Kat—those comics, those creators get real serious writing because they earned it, because they did something that’s worth talking about, that’s worth taking seriously. If you’re not getting really brilliant reviews, really incisive, intelligent response—it’s because you don’t deserve it. It’s because you’re a waste of time to the people who might write those reviews. Not because “it’s comics.” It’s because that thing you did was just middle of the road, and you can’t say anything smart about middle of the road. Because you didn’t earn it, and no sour apples begging will get it for you.

Dick Hyacinth built upon the above here, pissed about the celebration of mediocrity in comics culture. No, it isn't just comics. That's good old fashion American anti-intellectualism. I live in Alberta, Canada, which does a pretty good job of trying to pursue that end goal as well, so I am well aware of the celebration that circles KINGDOM COME and NIGHTWING while I have the works of Charles Burns, Daniel Clowes, and Chris Ware on the shelf discarded because of format and expectation.

Speaking of NIGHTWING, I think what made me compile these fragments all getting at the undercurrent of frustration was Laura Hudson's piece here.

Coming directly off of my weekend at SPX, as well as recently reading a string of excellent, engrossing graphic novels like Skim, Swallow Me Whole, and Alan's War, picking up a comic book like Nightwing #149 feels a lot like shutting my hand in a car door. And I'm thinking -- I'm thinking I should stop doing that.

Yeah, that crashing back to reality is a fucking bummer. This was what I was dancing around and about with discussing BATMAN #680. Like I said there, after reading Woodring's absolutely-holy-shit-this-is-great-comics-why-did-I-take-so-long-to-read-this THE COMPLETE FRANK, and Jason's not-as-holy-shit-good-but-still-pretty-amazing POCKET FULL OF RAIN... going to read the so-called best superhero comics on Wednesday night is such a disappointment. The crap just keeps adding up in long boxes and piles. I'm still reading monthly whatever Geoff Johns, Grant Morrison, Ed Brubaker, Matt Fraction, Garth Ennis, Peter David, and Greg Pak are writing...and that can be a wildly varying experience (see: Fraction IRON FIST, CASANOVA, and PUNISHER WAR JOURNAL). These are the best DC and Marvel have working for them....and it is all just alright. "It's alright for what it sets out to do" is not a great defense.

For the most part, I am kind of just counting down the issues until these writers move onto something I'd find more interesting so I can drop things like UNCANNY X-MEN, NEW AVENGERS, SHE-HULK, INCREDIBLY HERCULES, and GREEN LANTERN CORPS. Oh yeah, I am even worse than people who accept mediocrity: I know it is what it is, but I continue buying. I really do blame that on the fact I work at the comic store and I find it unavoidable to buy this stuff, especially when I want to keep up to date on everything that is coming out beyond just a knowledge of solicitation. Or maybe that's just what I tell myself. "I buy it to see what happens next." Oh God.

Hell, even some of the creator owned stuff isn't all that great. THE BOYS and CRIMINAL? The mediocre of the 'art comics' scene. What else are you suppose to do for the next year waiting for TALES DESIGNED TO THRIZZLE, and LOVE AND ROCKETS, and (soon) another ACME NOVELTY LIBRARY? You've got to fill that peculiar comic collector void somehow...

-Jarrett

Sketchbook of "Week Three"

2008-10-06T03:03:00.000-07:00

Week One.

Week Two.

So, Assignment #2 was to produce three one-panel comics. Brunetti said you need not make with the funny, but I decided that when that gets said it is more to avoid the sad and uncomfortable experience of seeing a whole bunch of really unfunny comics by people who are, tragically, also unfunny. Going against Brunetti's recommendation of following this course in order, I wound up doing these sometime after doing the Week Five exercises...and I think the Brunetti HAW! influence really overwhelms me at the moment. Something about those little rounded headed cuties makes things really fast, easy, fun to draw, and reduce the number of decision you have to make.

#1. I am pretty sure this one sprang to mind while I sipped upon a fast food cup filled with Cherry Coke from the local Red Dog Diner on the bus going to my Thursday night class.

#2. God, should I even admit to thinking up and drawing this? I think this one came to me during that same Thursday night evening class...

#3. I really liked drawing those hoboes the first time, and start thinking about 'dog humour'* things to draw. That building panel inset was just me thinking through clarity/detail, I liked how it looked, so kept it in here.

Well, onto Week Three: Four-Panel Strip.

Exercise 3.1 is a variation on the previous exercise. On index cards, do 12 drawings (as you've seen before, I kind of whip these off, still under the influence of the 5-10 second drawing) of...

A) "The beginning of the world;
-There's me, God, creating my cartoon world...

B) the end of the world;
-...and my cartoon world doing itself in. Little turds.

C) full body self-portrait;
-Yeah, that's me alright.

D) something from lunch-time, or breakfast;
-The morning before I was drawing all this, I went to the grocery store near my house to get some cold medicine and as I was driving out, these two hoodlum corner kids on bikes were riding around pointing cap guns as cars and firing. Pretty awesome, I thought.

E) image from recent dream;
-Up until I was drawing again, I couldn't remember any of my dreams...so a big ol' murky blackness.

F) something from the middle of the world's existence;
-There's the cliche....

G) what happened right after F;
-...aaaand, slightly less cliche? What about all those failed fish-men who didn't cut it?

H) something from early this morning;
-God I was sick when I was drawing these...

I) something that has yet to happen;
-Jarrett Duncan, Jet Pack Bank Robber Of The 21st Century.

J) from anything above, what happened immediately after;
-Really, what would happen...

K) a 'riff' on J;
-I think I was drawing on my memory of Jimmy Corrigan's superhero dad falling to his death...

L) and something completely unrelated to the rest."
-earlier in the day, Shanell had showed me this photograph as I was talking about how much I wanted copies of Daniel Raeburn's THE IMP magazine.

So, after all that...create a 4 panel strip. I think a few days before doing this assignment, I had just been looking at "Reset"...and wound up with the combination of A, F, G, E. What were YOUR combinations?

Exercise 3.2 is a continuation of 2.3, with the ten or a dozen objects we 'brought to class' to discuss...which I decided not to do! I have had my fair share of intro studio classes in the Fine Arts department along these sames lines to do me a lifetime, and appreciate and understand the concept behind it....but yeah, I'm about the comics.

THUS! Assignment 3 was what made me decide to do all this in the first place: six daily strip comics for a week (Brunetti notes the obvious influences of James Kolchalka's AMERICAN ELF daily comic). So starting tomorrow, let's see if I can't keep up with at least scanning in the daily comic weeks finished and ready to go!

* 'Dog humour' is what James Ellroy refers to the crude sense of humour he and a childhood friend shared, which has bled into his writing and writer personality.

-Jarrett

Regarding BATMAN #680

2008-10-05T12:07:00.000-07:00

I was really tempted to write something about this after reading it Wednesday...it slipped my mind, then this morning I read Nick Locking's enlightening words on this comic and its artists Tony Daniel*.

Fuck this comic! The art is unintelligible! FUCK IT. I literally cannot work out what is supposed to be happening all the way through this piece of shit, because Tony Daniel is a BAD ARTIST. If I was an editor and he submitted this as a demo, I would not hire him! Not for ANY Big Two book! Certainly not for this book - comics' most popular character and comics' best writer, at the same time as the number one superhero film of all time, featuring said character, comes out! It's mind boggling! Was every other artist in the world busy?

A bit of research reveals that Mike Marts is the editor on this book - and he was also the editor on New X-Men, so presumably gave us Kordey on NXM, too. He also edited Wolverine: Origin, which was, as we are all well aware, shit on toast.

THANKS A FUCKING LOT MIKE MARTS.

I've been pretty luck lately, doing a lot of reading of really great comics (ie. Woodring's FRANK, Jason's POCKET FULL OF RAIN) and....it is kind of embarrassing to get steamed up over corporate comics, which will chug along regardless of what any of us writes or says. I guess my only stake in this is I really enjoy Grant Morrison comics and I hate to see a maybe good one ruined by really sloppy art.

Well, Tony Daniel has himself a blog. What did he have to say about this issue?

This issue offered a lot of opportunities for me to select some interesting camera angles. I like bird's eye level views, but only when we have a reason to be up top, over the scene. So I got the chance a couple times this issue to show that kind of vantage point, as well as some worm eye views too. Like a panel with Batman jumping down a stairwell. Lots of action, lots of questions answered this issue.

Well, here's a wonderful opportunity to state Ivan Brunetti's "5 C's of Cartooning" from CARTOONING: PRACTICE AND PHILOSOPHY. They are: Calligraphy, Composition, Clarity, Consistency, and Communication. In his review of this issue, Jog hits upon the utter lacking presence of those 5 principles...

But it also seems that Morrison is aiming for a cacophonous sort of action-and-revelation peak with this chapter, and the art team doesn't seem quite there to handle it. Penciller Tony Daniel is prone to some confusing layouts here, including a double-page setup (story pp. 6-7) that guides the eye directly to the right when it's supposed to be moving down, or a Wayne Manor action bit (story pp. 12-13) that introduces a dangerous element (a red telephone), sets up some 'countdown' suspense via word balloons, but then doesn't return to the element as the countdown is foiled, leaving characters to converse while the threat is disposed of off-panel, leading to some awfully odd pacing.

And lord - I read it over and over, and I simply could not tell what even happened to poor Señor Sombrero, until I read that he seemed to get tangled up in a homage to Dario Argento's Suspiria - apparently he crashes through an overhead window into a room the other villains are sitting in, while the Joker is walking in from the next room, although since we haven't seen that next room, nor has an overhead window been set up, nor do we even see that Mr. Brimmed Hat has landed anywhere for another nine or so pages of story, everything seems to be taking place in entirely distinct locations, with no notion of spatial unity present whatsoever.

You know, I thought we were bad off with Andy Kubert too. Now, when you really stop and think about it, the problem really isn't necesarrily all on Grant Morrison having bad luck with art teams (and he really does have bad luck), but maybe Morrison's move towards story and pacing experimentation, which I think have failed to work (compare the clarity, more traditional success of ALL STAR SUPERMAN with Frank Quitely, and the hit-and-miss FINAL CRISIS with JG Jones, and FINAL CRISIS: SUPERMAN BEYOND with Doug Mahkne). Go back and read the first issue of his BATMAN run, and that entire sequence with Batman/Fake Cop Batman/Joker getting shot in the head. It still really makes not a whole lot of sense...

So yeah, at this point this has all been a wildly inconsistent run. I think even JH Williams three issues of the book are really oversold as being better than they are, due to the surrounding circumstances (Kubert, Daniel, that Ra's Al Ghul crossover). I've said before that even a bad Grant Morrison comic is interesting enough....but I don't think I can really stand by that anymore. DC is making it pretty easy too, what with a series of miniseries and fill-ins coming up soon after RIP wraps up. I think that pretty soon I'm going to be coming to the point where I am not buying a Grant Morrison comic being published.

Bring on SEAGUY 2 and WAR COP, I say!

*Who I should remind the audience is the artist and mastermind behind THE TENTH and F5. He also has worked with Alan Moore on SPAWN: BLOODFEUD, which I remember thinking of was the greatest comic book ever when I was 13 (GIANT SNAKE MAN! GREG CAPULLO KNOCK-OFF!)

-Jarrett

Sketchbook of "Week Two"

2008-10-03T09:10:00.001-07:00

So it isn't like I'm taking a week to do each of these; I knew I was going to be busy this semester, but fuck. Going from one post a week from almost daily? Shit. But that is neither here nor there. Single-Panel Cartoons.

So, Assignment #1, handed in! So putting this together I was thinking about comic strips (duh), and just throwing stuff going through my head recently. So we've got the EC Comics/MAD layout, a Kurtzman zoom, a three panel cause-and-effect, my "Yellow Guy" we've seen before, some kind of Clowesian male....multi-panel sequence breakdown of KRAZY KAT, and my BRAZIL head.

Exercise 2.1, write out several things on index cards: "something you overheard recently in a public place, something you said to someone earlier that day, a catch phrase or slogan, a question of some kind, and maybe an interjection". So mine are

"All the critics and stuff liked it, but it was horrible!"

"One guy is not too bad...the other...a big ol' Meh."

"I'm lovin' it."

"FAGGOT!"

"LOL"

"How do you get that ass to look so good?"

Exercise 2.2, on larger index cards, draw

"the funniest thing you can think of;

the saddest thing in the world;

something sexy;

something abstract;

something scary;

something boring or mundane;

something you saw earlier today;

something you saw in a dream recently."

The idea then is to play around, matching up those expressions written down previously with the images and seeing what combinations pop up. So yeah, it seems the darker, more horrifying instantly becomes funnier. I have the same morbid humour Brunetti has, so my 'funny' is pretty in line with the sort of thing we've seen in SCHIZO and HAW! Abstract doesn't really go with anything at all though, does it? No subject matter denies a narrative required in comics to work I think, which is why everything worth talking to is figurative...the very nature of this medium.

We'll just skip Exercise 2.3, which involves bringing 12 objects together and linking them via a common element, then a series of eliminations to strengthen those links.

Exercise 2.4 is getting to do some of our first comic stuff: a one panel cartoon. Brunetti runs with doing a panel that encapsulates Salinger's CATCHER IN THE RYE, and takes us step through step with the decisions he makes. I think what kind of bungles this exercise for me is that Catcher was chosen in the first place because there exists no prexisting visual reference (no movie, no comic), but admist the very exercise we see a Brunetti illustration of the steps he took...undoing the process we're suppose to be following along with. If I were teaching someone straight from the book, I would obviously not be showing them this (not until after they had done something), but teaching yourself, it is unavoidable.

For next time: Assignment #2, which is to produce three single panel comics. I actually have these drawn, but I want to put a tad more polish on them. Next time: Four-Panel Strips.

-Jarrett

Regarding THE 50 THINGS THAT EVERY COMIC COLLECTION TRULY NEEDS

2008-09-28T11:35:00.001-07:00

*"Week Two" of by Brunetti Cartooning thing should be up in the next day or so, just been waiting for the time to do some scanning*

So hands up, who else out there is a list fetishist? You know, the sort of person who really gets their rocks off when someone they enjoy reading or respect spends the time to really put together a sizable inventory of recommendations about something you are interested in that will 1) share a lot of things in common with your own collections, and 2) hopefully introduce you to something you've never heard of but now, sight unseen, you desperately need or want? Well, that's the story of my life.

Speaking of lists, here's my "You Can Play Along Too #2" response to Tom Spurgeon's list.

"Leave Plain = Things I don't have
Make Bold = Things I do have
Italics = I have some but probably not enough (optional)
Underline = I don't agree I need this (optional)"

UPDATE: I plan to...update...this as I go along, methodically filling in the so called gaps in the collection.

1. Something From The ACME Novelty Library

-really, it could hurt to own as much Chris Ware material as possible.

2. A Complete Run Of Arcade

-so what did I do when I first read this? Skim the article, create a new tab, start looking on Ebay. Yeah, I'm not so interested in a complete run of ARCADE as much as a sampling. UPDATE 10/15/08: Well, when I discovered there were only seven issues constituing a 'complete run', I figured what the hell? Just got in #6 and it is a real beaut!

3. Any Number Of Mini-Comics

-the majority of my mini-comics are whatever kind of stumbles its way through Diamond Distribution, and the one zine convention I was at in Vancouver.

4. At Least One Pogo Book From The 1950s

-as Spurgeon mentions, Fantagraphics is planning on doing an archival reprinting of this which I fully expect myself to buy.

5. A Barnaby Collection

-a comic I was completely unfamiliar with until I opened up IN THE STUDIO, THE COMICS: BEFORE 1945, and #28 all very recently. Again, 'new tab, search Ebay...' UPDATE 10/15/08: No luck so far.

6. Binky Brown and the Holy Virgin Mary

-hey, I just ordered this on Amazon last night...

7. As Many Issues of RAW as You Can Place Your Hands On

-a few weeks ago I was able to find a copy of READ YOURSELF RAW on Amazon too. But as the fella says, it would be nice to have all of this if the grey market price on this material wasn't so high.

8. A Little Stack of Archie Comics

-eh, fuck ARCHIE, frankly. I have one of those THE PIN-UP ART OF DAN DECARLO books from Fantagraphics, which I personally get a lot more, um, enjoyment out of than reading stories of Riverdale.

9. A Suite of Modern Literary Graphic Novels

-Pretty broad and all encompassing of anything in literati comics being published right now.

10. Several Tintin Albums

-My friend John's brother has the entire collection of these, all in original French language, and...looking at them...other than wanting to own the especially Europe-racist representations of Native American Indians and Congolese...pass? Maybe like other things I just haven't really paid attention to Herge enough to 'get it'. Say, isn't Steven Spielberg directing a live action Tintin thing? UPDATE 10/15/08: OK, I really do like Herge's art style, I could probably buy one or two (screw several) for the sake of research, but I don't know about the stories. I'd rather just look over the Marc Smeets pages in KRAMERS ERGOT 6 again, really.

11. A Smattering Of Treasury Editions Or Similarly Oversized Books

-I know I have at least the HOWARD THE DUCK Treasury Edition....

12. Several Significant Runs of Alternative Comic Book Series

-EIGHTBALL, dawg. EIGHTBALL.

13. A Few Early Comic Strip Collections To Your Taste

-A few months ago I was going on against the COMICS JOURNAL TOP 100 list that was filled with a lot of this kind of material...but I've come around to really like DICK TRACY, KRAZY KAT, and especially DREAMS OF THE RARE-BIT FIEND.

14. Several "Indy Comics" From Their Heyday

-Will always treasure my CEREBUS phonebooks. And one of these days I should buy that AMERICAN FLAGG HC that finally just came out too.

15. At Least One Comic Book From When You First Started Reading Comic Books

-This is either a GHOSTBUSTER 2 adaptation or one of the early Archie Comics TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES comics.

16. At Least One Comic That Failed to Finish The Way It Planned To

-Oh BIG NUMBERS...

17. Some Osamu Tezuka

-Like Chris Ware, you really can't have enough of this stuff. ODE TO KIRIHITO is definitely a good place to start though, instead of having to tie yourself up into 8 volumes of BUDDHA right off the bat. Did a whole post about Tezuka here.

18. The Entire Run Of At Least One Manga Series

-I did a whole post about the manga I own here.

19. One Or Two 1970s Doonesbury Collections

-I just have so little interest in this...

20. At Least One Saul Steinberg Hardcover

-I know I've heard of Saul Steinberg, but this looks all very new to me. UPDATE 10/15/08: I haven't seen any of these pop at all (perhaps Spurgeon's article created a renewed Steinberg fervour?)

21. One Run of A Comic Strip That You Yourself Have Clipped

-I'm sure I've got a whole bunch of GARFIELD clippings somewhere...we'll just not talk about that though. Last time I did anything like this was in elementary school, keeping said clippings glued on loose leaf in a purple duotang.

22. A Selection of Comics That Interest You That You Can't Explain To Anyone Else

-Uh, I guess the 100-200 Jack Chick books I've got count? I guess that might cancel out #37 though...

23. At Least One Wood Cut Novel

-I think I only disagree with this notion because where's "at least one ballpoint pen comic"? UPDATE 10/15/08: I still admit I am pretty uncertain what this actually is, but people seem to get all dry at the mouth and their eyes roll back at the mention of it. Off the 'shouldn't be on the list' until further investigation.

24. As Much Peanuts As You Can Stand

-Between the dozen of archival hardcovers I'm already working on, my hope is that the current Fantagraphics collections don't go anywhere too soon.

25. Maus

-I think people really forget how amazing this is.

26. A Significant Sample of R. Crumb's Sketchbooks

-I think the only one of Crumb's Sketchbook collections you can get that's in print is Volume 10.

27. The original edition of Sick, Sick, Sick.

-"New tab, search Ebay...." And it's mine! UPDATE 10/15/08: Also just came in the mail, and I wish I was as confident as Feiffer to leave the lines the way he does. I guess all those horribly scribblers I dismiss are all actually Feiffer imitators?

28. The Smithsonian Collection Of Newspaper Comics

-And I just got this and the SMITHSONIAN COLLECTION OF COMIC-BOOK COMICS, based upon my first hearing about them in CARTOONING: PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE's bibliography. The same day I received my copy of COMIC-BOOK COMICS, I also recieved a copy of THE BLOT in the mail, and Tom Neely recalls the massive influence these books had on him. Tom Neely's THE BLOT is pretty well everything I want out of my own comics, so hey, you should really own these too....or borrow mine if you already know me.

29. Several copies of MAD

-Pretty well restrict myself to the Archive collection of these.

30. A stack of Jack Kirby 1970s Comic Books

-Those DC collections of these are pretty tops.

31. More than a few Stan Lee/Jack Kirby 1960s Marvel Comic Books

-Hey, more massive hardcover action! FANTASTIC FOUR is probably the best way to go for this goal...

32. A You're-Too-High-To-Tell Amount of Underground Comix

-Will eventually take a look at the FABULOUS FURRY FREAK BROTHERS collection that just got released....though I'm sure there's something to be said about actually holding the comics themselves in your hands.

33. Some Calvin and Hobbes

-This and FAR SIDE are probably my fondest memories of funny comics from my kiddie days.

34. Some Love and Rockets

-Tried reading MAGGIE THE MECHANIC, and I have decided I am definitely a Gilbert sort of guy.

35. The Marvel Benefit Issue Of Coober Skeber

-I still love this cover, and would love to actually see this first hand instead of only as a .jpg.

36. A Few Comics Not In Your Native Tongue

-I have a softspot for Jodorowsky's Humanoids stu....oh, non-translated stuff? Well since BLACKSAD is unavailable in English nowadays...

37. A Nice Stack of Jack Chick Comics

-After finding this book in Calgary just before flying out to Vancouver one the first vacation Shanell and I took together, I have been in love with Jack Chick comics. There's this really strange, weird and fun underground trading of this stuff for pure kitsch fun, especially popular amongst us agnostic/atheist types.

38. A Stack of Comics You Can Hand To Anybody's Kid

-I think the majority of this stuff is DC animated stuff, but I've got my eye set for some of the Harvey Comics reprints Dark Horse has been doing. And eventually those mammoth Carl Barks Disney hardcovers will be coming out...

39. At Least A Few Alan Moore Comics

-No, really, own as much Alan Moore as you possibly can (obviously I'm not talking about WILDCATS and VIOLATOR).

40. A Comic You Made Yourself

-I think I can pull that off...actually, I've got the first full length, completely pencilled and inked comics I ever did a few years ago called STALE MILK scanned into my computer ready to have something done to it....uh, any suggestions?

41. A Few Comics About Comics

-This is probably one of my favourites genres in any medium, really.

42. A Run Of Yummy Fur

-I think I will live with all the various Chester Brown collections I own already.

43. Some Frank Miller Comics

-Intellectually I kind of really dislike Frank Miller and his work, but thinking with my heart I think about the first Miller work I ever saw (TALES TO OFFEND), and the excellent MILLER/EISNER book...and kind of wind up in a stalemate.

44. Several Lee/Ditko/Romita Amazing Spider-Man Comic Books

-You might as well go crazy and buy the AMAZING SPIDER-MAN OMNIBUS Vol. 1 which collects all of the Lee/Ditko SPIDER-MAN run. When they release a Vol 2, which will be all Romita Sr. packed full of awesome, get that too.

45. A Few Great Comics Short Stories

-I recommend everything there Spurgeon recommends.

46. A Tijuana Bible

-Uh...I guess Ebay would have this sort of thing?

47. Some Weirdo

-Another one of those 'things I've heard all about, but never seen because I live in the middle of the prairie province of Alberta, Canada'....

48. An Array Of Comics In Various Non-Superhero Genres

-Good idea! This is almost needs not be saying, considering that anyone reading Tom Spurgeon...this is a given (but probably much of the list falls into that category).

49. An Editorial Cartoonist's Collection or Two

-I'd really have to be interested in this sub-genre to even start thinking about this....

50. A Few Collections From New Yorker Cartoonists

-1) I think a good substitute for this is buying back issues of COMIC ART Magazine. 2) I should probably set out and find a copy of Richard Taylor's INTRODUCTION TO CARTOONING.

And there goes an hour of my life...now to go finish re-watching THE WIRE Season 4. UPDATE 10/15/08: I'm sure it would greatly please you to know I have finished all of THE WIRE, and have moved onto the original TWILIGHT ZONE.

-Jarrett

Sketchbook of "Week One"

2008-09-23T13:07:00.000-07:00

Because Tucker Stone demanded it! From Ivan Brunetti's CARTOONING: PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE, the first week of the class: Spontaneous Drawing. These will follow the similar format of my scanned in sketchbook image responding to the exercises and assignments, with me typing in the notes I wrote in response to each page.

So Exercise 1.1 consisted of drawing a subject, spending 3-4 minutes on it...then start over again, spending 2 minutes on that, start over again spending 1 minute, then 30 seconds, then 15 seconds, then 10 seconds, 5 seconds, etc. Started with a car, then a cat, castle, telephone, then a self-portrait.

A car
-not looking at any reference when starting these, working purely from memory
-don't have time to figure out perspective properly (and cars are damn well hard enough to draw anyway)
-narrowing down the most communicative lines as possible, while also trying to make the lines as attractive and pleasing as possible (didn't happen so much here)
-my favourite of the lot? the 2 minute car
-with more time, I was drawing the car parked
-with less time, I was drawing the car moving

A cat
-I'm noticing the more time I have, the more 'real' I try to make the subject look, and it actually winds up looking terrible
-Again, my favourite is the 2 minute drawing
-Hopefully not subconsciously sabotaging myself to that preference/conclusion
-again, hate the 4 minute drawing
-spent a lot of time on developing a face, and not much else (preoccupied with the details)
-with less time, the more 'essential' the lines you put down...
-a bit of movement with the cat, but not as much with the car

A castle
-without reference, my mind first went to how I would draw a castle for a bad fantasy comic I would have drawn when I was 12 years old
-the four minute drawing I don't actually mind compared to the previous 4 minute drawings
-Subsequent drawings seem to be referencing memories of the only real castles I've experienced outside of photographs...classic, simply, designed caricatures in mass media
-Bowser's castle from Super Mario Bros., and the Disney castle
-what makes up a castle? a main building, towers, portholes, a 'gate' for an entrance, and a flag
-never really went into much detail as far as what the actual castle is made of

A telephone
-with the 4 minute drawing, I've typically started larger. For some reason I think that 'more time=more detail=more room for detail clarity"
-the phone definitiely is smaller here
-really didn't have to think too hard about what components make up a phone
-very simple compared to the previous three subjects
-maybe because of its relationship to our own face it just 'makes sense'?
-also changed up the forms of phones one can depict (old analog, cordless, payphone)
-generally all look pretty decent
-some thought about the exercise itself; perhaps change up the rhythm? change subject matters? vary the order of the amount of time per subject? I found as I went along, starting at the top, my brain just started to eliminate excess information and planning on what I could actually draw in future drawings. Not sure if this is the point of the exercise or a drawback....

A self-portrait
-this was interesting...
-I have a lot more experience drawing myself than anything else here, so it came pretty fast and natural jotting myself down
-my traditional way of drawing myself (with no conscious effort to squeeze myself into a time frame) falls apart and I begin to have to figure out what makes me up 'essentially'
-the Essential Me, According To Me?
-glasses, light brown/blond hair combed to one side, plaid shirt, old man sweater, beard, 'dot' ees behind glasses (which, because of the frame, look like cartoony google eyes)...and I tend to draw myself thinner than I actually am

Exercise 1.2 was to do at least 25 doodles of famous cartoon characters, spending only 5 seconds per image.

Exercise 1.3 was to grid out 100 (I only did 95) squares and fill them in, spending only 5 seconds on each 'panel' without too much hesitation for forethought.

Assignment 1 was to assemble a 'doodle page' horizontally or vertically with some harmonic composition (ie. put some thought into how it looks in the end). I'll post that next time (like a crit!) And maybe like in real life, I'll not hand it in on time. So yes, next time: "Week Two".

-Jarrett

What I've Been Doing Lately

2008-09-15T15:55:00.001-07:00

CARTOONING: PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE, by Ivan Brunetti; Easily one of the best books of its kind, I've been pawing through this compulsively for the last week. I'm on 'Week Four' of the course, and I'm debating whether to start scanning and posting my 'exercises' and 'homework assignments' from the weekly lessons soon or maybe once I've reached the halfway mark.

Oh, and if anyone has no idea what this is, it is a supplementary companion to COMIC ART MAGAZINE #9, which is still available new from Amazon.

-Jarrett

"In Russia, Comics Buy YOU...!"

2008-09-12T11:18:00.000-07:00

Well, with the semester load starting to reveal itself to me, I am thinking this is going to be the future pace of the blog for the foreseeable future. But let this jump into next week's shipping invoice from Diamond!

I would just like to inform everyone that it looks like JENNA JAMESON'S SHADOW HUNTER HC Vol. 1 has been canceled. Hopefully you, me, and the entire industry can suffer from this hopefully only temporary loss. On the flipside, I thought I had successfully reordered COMICS COMICS #4 from Diamond, but that somehow got cancelled too. That really surprised me as I was hoping to give that a try as I've just become interested in the Picturebox Inc. works.

ABANDONED CARS HC, by Tim Lane; Like I was saying recently, I really was convinced I had ordered this for myself, but apparently I only thought about it. Alan David Doane's recent review was the reminder of how promising this looked, and confirms it is definitely worth owning. A mix of Charles Burns, Daniel Clowes, and EC Comics? Yeah, sounds good to me.

ALL STAR SUPERMAN #12, by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely; At this point I really can't see this disappointing....and if it does, I think I might just cry, scream, and/or curse.

ASTRO BOY TP Vol. 1 and 2, by Osamu Tezuka; a little omnibus of the first two and long unavailable volumes of Dark Horse's ASTRO BOY trades. Really glad to see these back, considering the movie is suppose to be out sometime soonish. Come on AKIRA, I can sell you too!

BILLY BATSON AND THE MAGIC OF SHAZAM #2, by Mike Kunkel; It has got to have been way longer than a month since the first issue of this came out. Was that a scheduled delay? For being probably one of the best looking and well received Johnny DC comic launches they've pulled off so far, the first two issues come out this far apart? Damn.

CHARLES BURNS LIBRARY: BIG BABY, by Charles Burns; Not much to really say here, except that this week I got a copy of READ YOURSELF RAW from the Amazon Seller Market and it really is an impressive work. I am really glad to see that Buenaventura Press are planning on doing a Jerry Moriarty COMPLETE JACK SURVIVES down the road. I just read about him this week in my recently purchased COMIC ART #9, so it all kind of worked out nicely.

DC UNIVERSE: DECISIONS #1, by various master comics craftsmen; We've got only one copy of this bad boy heading straight to the file of the guy who buys one of everything from Marvel and DC, and that's about it. I kind of want to read it just to see how awful it is...but honestly, I have a lot of actually good comics to read, and certainly someone will have scanned, mocked, and lynched this comic on Wednesday better than I could.

EC ARCHIVES: TWO FISTED TALES Vol. 2, by various; The first volume of this was excellent, and I am guessing this will be no less excellent. I'm caught up with this for the time being, and I think FRONTLINE COMBAT should be out sooner than later...I'll probably go and finish catching up on WEIRD SCIENCE next, then start looking at the Crime/Horror stuff (which I've got cheap little reprints of the earlier issues of already).

GLAMOURPUSS #3, by Dave Sim; In some ways I really do wish this came out faster. I also hope this issue is an improvement on last issue. I can't get enough of Sim's illustrated historical essay on the photorealism style, and I find that the actual Glamourpuss material is kind of one-note. Also I kind of find it outright strange that, with the recent 'I Believe Dave Sim Isn't A Misogynist' petition, Sim is answering letters from readers, friends, and colleagues as....Glamourpuss. I am kind of tempted to actually write Sim a letter and see what happens (I have signed the petition as I don't believe Dave Sim is a misogynist, so he Might actually talk to me).

REFLECTIONS #1, by Marco Corona; I have been slowly working my way through the Ignatz series stuff, and this is next on the list. With so much I want to review, I really want to do a survey of the Ignatz series in blocks of ten, to see how the large scale project has come along.

A SHROUD FOR WALDO, by Kim Deitch; Well, regardless of what some people think, Deitch is still pretty awesome (the cover for the recent COMIC JOURNAL doesn't look great on screen, but when you actually hold it in your hand, it looks no worse or better than any other cover out there). No idea what to expect out of this, but I went in the same way with ALIAS THE CAT too.

And the Canadian exchange rate this week from Diamond? 8.25%. It might actually be worse for next week too. I guess I have chosen a pretty bad time to decide to start buying the nice archival hardcovers...

-Jarrett

On Social Realism

2008-09-08T17:59:00.000-07:00

Thinking out loud here...

From Todd Hignite's IN THE STUDIO interview with Robert Crumb:

"Another whole area of art that I'm really interested in is the social realist period of American art from the teens, twenties, and thirties. Boy, I love some of that stuff, but again it's hard to find. A lot of those artists are totally obscure now. Reginald Marsh's paintings of everyday life around New York, the subways, the beach, railroad yards, street scenes...just people. They're fabulous." -Pg. 36

So in reviewing for my art history classes covering 1945-70, we touched back upon the ideas and general themes in the previous course, such as Cubism, Dada, Suprematism, early Abstract Expressionism, and artists Marcel Duchamp and Piet Mondrian. We then talked about the mostly shunted genre of Social/Socialist Realism. According to Dorothy Barenscott (my professor from last semester teaching 1900-1945), Social Realism was widely accepted and very popular right up until Hitler and Stalin also really liked it and pretty well tainted it with that liking. Barenscott's thoughts on the subject bare out well you consider how obscure Reginald Marsh is (let alone speak of a American Social Realism movement....which isn't Socialist Realism, but it is all pretty well connected and LOOKS the same, from a pure technical point of view).

I really wish I could find an image of A LEADER IN THE PIONEERS by Vychleslav Mariupulski (1949)! It creates an...interest...contrast to Norman Rockwell. Speaking of which...

Norman Rockwell. Really, instead of presenting paintings government mandated/accepted proclaiming virtues of communism and leadership, Rockwell presents works proclaiming the virtues of capitalism, Christianity, and American leadership. These works haunt the family restaurant/all-night dinners as prints and framed jigsaw puzzles. Sickening kitsch, a myopic nostalgia for a past and present that never existed. Are they technically skilled, masterfully even? Fuck yes, I could never paint that well. Even the caricature work, the expressions, the composition, the characterization....really outstanding. All these aspects of the works are very solid....but that is all part of the Sell. The commercial artist selling the consumer what they want to believe about themselves and the world around them. The exact same approach that Stalin's Socialist Realist painters followed! Here's some images of the Boy Scouts, and here's a link to Rockwell's Four Freedoms paintings ("Freedom from Want" is pictures below).

A sticky sweet contrast to the works of his contemporaries (Edward Hopper's NIGHTHAWKS (1942) and his works of isolation, Robert Frank's photographs from the 1950s of alienation).

This philosophy became especially true when Ross discovered such illustrators as Andrew Loomis and the great Norman Rockwell. "I idealized people like Rockwell, who drew in that photorealistic style," Ross says. "When I was 16 or so, I said to myself, ‘I want to see that in a comic book!’" - from Alex Ross Art bio of the artist

Now we're talking comics! When I first started hitting the comic blogs, Frank Santoro's short article on why he hates Alex Ross was making the rounds, and riling up the easily riled. Anyway, I think my issue isn't so much with Ross's approach to illustration, but what that style of illustration he has decided to pursue represents. Your regular Direct Market customer trips over themselves fawning over Alex Ross.* I have had at least one customer declare KINGDOM COME a superior work to WATCHMEN....which is just retarded.

Anyway, short version: Alex Ross is successful in that he sells the customer the illusion the customer wants to believe. That illusion for the Direct Market? That Alex Ross with his technical skill somehow elevates the comics medium to that of legitimate literature, so as properly extol and qualify the usually ashamed superhero comics purchaser's decisions in life. "Look, Mom! Look at this art! Just like the paintings on your wall! See, comics are for adults too!" Yeah, it is all very seductive, until you read the shit and realize unless you know who anyone is in the DC universe, none of it matters, no matter how 'prettily' drawn it is.

-Jarrett

*Speculation: at the Calgary Comics Expo last year, Bruce Timm and Mark Waid were both attending. The year before Bruce Timm also appeared, and both years the line up to get him to sign or draw anything was about an hour long at any given time. Mark Waid had maybe one or two people at his table at any given moment. When I grabbed a few things for him to sign, I actively avoided grabbing KINGDOM COME because it is just so....obvious. So stuff like EMPIRE, POTTER'S FIELD, JLA: THE SILVER AGE, JLA: YEAR ONE, and BRAVE & THE BOLD it was. Uh, so my speculation: I cannot even fathom the sort of line up for Alex Ross. In fact, I am confident it would dwarf Bruce Timm as Bruce Timm dwarfed Mark Waid.

"A General Survey of New Comics Out 9/10/08"

2008-09-06T09:19:00.000-07:00

A more broad look at what is coming out...

100 BULLETS #95 and EX MACHINA #38; Both series setting up to their finite conclusions. 100 BULLETS seems to have at least worked through the scheduling issues it had over the last couple of years, and EX MACHINA seems to be stuck in those same problems. I re-read the series back in June, was all caught up...and I think one issues has come out since. EX MACHINA too reminds me that Brian K. Vaughn has kind of fallen behind in the monthly comics game (Y: THE LAST MAN has been over for over half a year, RUNAWAYS a year, and let's not talk about LOGAN). Hopefully he does another graphic novel ala PRIDE OF BAGHDAD sooner than later...

AFRO SAMURAI SC Vol. 1; This material was exhibited recently at the Vancouver Art Gallery for their comics show, and from what I saw in the art magazine, the pages for this look amazing.

ALL STAR BATMAN AND ROBIN THE BOY WONDER #10; The order code for this starts at FEB08...so just a little over 4 months late...and I'm pretty sure #11 has been cancelled and has yet to be re-solicited. I would also like to remind you all that I cannot keep the hardcover collection of #1-9 instock.

BOYS #22 GLOW IN THE DARK COVER; Your's for the low low price of 14.95US. I was about to laugh and scoff at anyone who would buy this, but then I remembered I put myself down for the $15 'zombie variant' of GLAMOURPUSS #4. I really am in no position to judge.

CABLE KING SIZE SPECTACULAR #1; I laughed at the title.

COMICS JOURNAL #292, COMICS JOURNAL LIBRARY Vol. 7: HARVEY KURTZMAN, LOVE & ROCKETS NEW STORIES #1, PORTABLE FRANK SC; Thanks Fantagraphics for this fall line-up beatdown! Again, the strange one-week later Canada thing strikes again. Actually, I thought that is what happened with ABANDONED CARS, but after one-week past and it still wasn't in, I went and consulted the orders and I totally forgot to mark myself down for it (or I'm forgetting that I told myself I was going to wait for the reviews). But yeah, that's a lot of stuff all at once. What I'm really looking forward to is the (reissue?) of the CJL Kurtzman book. I was actually starting to get antsy about when this was finally coming out (again?), but here it is.

DEADPOOL #1; It is unbelievable how many people are looking forward to this. I've had people telling me to make sure this goes into their file months before the first issue was even solicited. The only thing I hope that comes out of this is Marvel continues doing DEADPOOL CLASSIC trades, working their way into Joe Kelly's ok-to-great run on the character.

OMEGA THE UNKNOWN PREMIER HC; So I was originally picking these up individually, and we got shorted, didn't have enough for customers, no reorders, so I decided to forgo the rest of the series and wait until the hardcover was out. Artwise, this looks amazing. Story? What I read hadn't really captivated me as of yet, but we'll see how it works all together.

TRUTH SERUM Vol. 1; I haven't read THE LONELY PARADE yet, but Lawrence seemed to have loved it. I am expecting a similar reaction for this collection too.

ZORRO: COMPLETE ALEX TOTH; I have been contemplating buying these for such a long time, and finally I got sick of that Alex Toth shaped hole in my bookshelf staring me in the face.

-Jarrett

For My 100th Post...

2008-09-03T09:04:00.000-07:00

*Pats self on back*

As we all celebrate this momentous occasion, Jennifer de Guzman, editor-in-chief of SLG, crashes the party with this really fantastic post about comic blogs.

Just two weeks ago I decided to move beyond just bookmarking all the blogs I follow and actually take advantage of Google Reader, compiling all of those blogs so I don't waste time surfing and checking out un-updated sites. On a good day, a person could easily spend an hour reading and catching up on the news and events of the past 24 hours...but as Guzman writes, it is mostly just skimming. A lot of the time we're just filling the time and space out of a sense you need to post Something.

In the last bit of her article, she mentions the quality writing of Douglas Wolk. It is in fact Wolk's READING COMICS and his reviews that appear...well, pretty much everywhere nowadays...that got me wanting to write about comics on as close a daily schedule as possible. During the course of the summer I felt like my critical writing had started to stagnant too soon...that I needed to work toward something that I would enjoy. And comics I enjoy a whole lot. In retrospective, I'm sure right now if I went through a lot of my posts, I could have spent far more time actually writing and developing some of them, maybe doing one Really good essay a week, instead of a bunch of one off tidbits (the dreaded link to another blog...should really just assume that you're all reading Tom Spurgeon and Dirk Deppey for that sort of thing).

Yeah, something to think about...while I look through all my new comics (for whatever reason, even with the holiday on Monday, comics arrived today...TWO FISTED TALES, here I come!)

-Jarrett

The Joys of Studenthood...

2008-09-02T20:35:00.000-07:00

...and very little to do with comics, so unless you are intrisically interested in me as an Individual, this may not be the post for you.

Like probably a lot of bloggers, I am a student. And like a lot of students, it is the time of the year to bitch about the damn price of textbooks! I guess the nice thing about really enjoying Art History is that you're forced to buy books that aren't so terrible owning. The worst part of being an Art History major? Your textbooks are kind of expensive.

ART HISTORY VOL. 1, 3rd Edition by Marilyn Stokstad; Sort of the KRAMERS ERGOT 7 of this semester for me. And not unlike KE 7, I found this at Amazon.com for about $45 less than what the University bookstore has it at. The book's emphasis is more on Pre-14th century art from all over the world....which doesn't really float my boat at all, but I guess there's no avoiding this core class if I want to actually graduated one of these years. BOOKSTORE PRICE: $126.25

ART SINCE 1900: MODERNISM, ANTIMODERNISM, POSTMODERNISM: 1945 to Present, by Hal Foster, et al; "Part three" of the Art History chain, starting with 19th Century Art (my third favourite period of time), 1900-45 (my second favourite period of time), to 1945-1970 (my favourite period of time). BOOKSTORE PRICE: $62.50

CANADIAN ABORIGINAL AND SPIRITUAL ART: A VITAL LINK, by John W. Friesen; This is for one of the Native American Art classes I have to take to finish my degree...which isn't necessarily a bad thing, as the whole subject is far more interesting than you would first guess. Probably my favourite professor at the unversity, Professor Leslie Dawn, specialized in the field, which I think says a lot about it. BOOKSTORE PRICE: $49.25

NORTH AMERICAN INDIAN ART: IT'S A QUESTION OF INTEGRITY, by Alfred Young Man; I'm pretty sure Young Man use to be the head of the Native American Studies Program at the U of L, so this might be an interesting book. BOOKSTORE PRICE: $19.95

This is not to mention the 'optional textbook SHORT GUIDE TO WRITING ABOUT ART, or the non-returnable course pack I have to buy as well. I really shouldn't say too much about the course pack because they typically save you a lot of money on several different books, all in one photocopied manual...plus, the professor of that class is the wife of a friend too, who I am sure has the same impeccable taste.

-Jarrett

Worth Your Time and Dollar: Dave Sim

2008-09-01T09:48:00.000-07:00

-Jarrett

On Kurtzman, or Electric Linking Boogaloo

2008-08-31T07:04:00.001-07:00

Trying a different style of post (the dreaded 'link' post!), and decided to try it with someone I was planning on studying anyway: Harvey Kurtzman(1924-1993).

Read Yourself RAW Profile.

Kurtzman slideshow!

About halfway down the page, Steven Grant tells us about the best single American comic book page ever by Kurtzman and Will Elder.

A couple of discussions by John Kricfalusi on Kurtzman's compositional style.

Kurtzman's "Silver Linings".

Some advice from Kurtzman that...well, I don't know is all that good.

An audio interview with Kurtzman.

Mark Evanier on Kurtzman and MAD.

Some Kurtzman comics from ASIFA.

Tom Spurgeon interviewing Gary Groth and Greg Sadowski on THE COMIC JOURNAL LIBRARY: HARVEY KURTZMAN book. Groth pretty well nails the appeal and importance of Kurtzman in his closing remarks in that interview:

GROTH: Kurtzman's legacy may have trickled down as far as it can at this point; no one reading his Mad-edited issues now can be as affected by it as artists like R. Crumb and Gilbert Shelton were when they read it as kids in the '50s. His cultural legacy may give way to his aesthetic legacy, that is, what may affect young artists now is his cartooning, by which I mean specifically the absolute, unerring beauty of his line and the expressiveness of his drawing.

Like most of the truly great artists who started out and worked in mainstream comics -- Kirby is the perfect example -- Kurtzman was never "pure" in the sense that his writing and drawing came together satisfactorily. As he said himself, he was not as good a writer as he was an artist and in the best cartoonists these two skills are roughly equal and virtually indistinguishable -- the reader can't quite tell where one stops and the other begins. Kurtzman probably came closest to this ideal in The Jungle Book -- and, of course, he had what may be the most perfect collaborator in the history of comics with Will Elder -- but I think his legacy will ultimately reside in his drawing.

Loosely related to that is something Jeff Lester wrote the other day on Savage Critic in the '50 Things I Like About Comics' meme lis t:

"The first time I read this (EIGHTBALL), I realized how people could talk about how reading Mad back in the '50s could completely change the way they saw everything."

I really couldn't agree more. Of course Lester a little further down hails SAM & MAX as "one of my picks for all-time funniest comic book." You really couldn't get much further from the truth, in my opinion.

-Jarrett

Splat Comics

2008-08-30T08:52:00.000-07:00

Well a lot of people (Johanna Carlson and Valerie D'Orazio) already have jumped all over TEEN TITANS #62, what with Wonder Dog being introduced and devouring Marvin and Wendy of the Wonder Twins. This week in particular seemed more blood soaked in the mainstream superhero fare though. Maybe it is just a case of the ol' ultraviolence following me over from movie discussion to comics. Let's discover the wonder together!

DC UNIVERSE LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT #1; "ROFLMAO, you just bought a Geo-Force comic!" Pretty horrible comic on the whole, and with Brad Meltzer's fetish for Deathstroke kicking ass...lots of gushing wounds, and self-inflicted slit throats...I was expecting more weepiness though.

FINAL CRISIS ROGUES REVENGE #2 (OF 3); Not a ton of on-panel gore...but here we have Weather Wizard blowing a man up (last issue we had evil Impulse/Inertia suggest he pulled apart a man's insides to see how long his intestines were...)...we also got Captain Cold's father getting burned alive!

KICK-ASS #4; I vaguely remember how this comic was suppose to be...I don't know...realistic? Now it has turned into this weird BODY BAGS redux, with over the top Frank Miller style young girl (sort of DKR Robin and SIN CITY Miho), and to be expected tin earred Mark Millar dialogue ("Hey, I got that box-set of "Queer As Folk" you were looking for. "Awesome. I can't believe I missed this. I love gay drama."). Far too many people actually look forward to this overhyped, wrought crap. In case that last panel is a bit unclear, that is a gangster being crushed in a car compactor by the BODY BAGS knock offs. Seriously, compare the cover of KICKASS #4 to...BODY BAGS #1.

NEW AVENGERS #44; There goes Namor's jaw! Oh yes, and throughout this issue various Skrulls-As-Reed-Richard are tortured, maimed, and shot dead.

WOLVERINE #68; So, first we have Hawkeye chopping people away with another samurai sword (must be Millar's phase?), and then we have his daughter"Spider-Bitch" taking the black Kingpin's head off by the neck with a steel pipe. The panel looks a lot like Namor getting his jaw literally torn off, doesn't?

X-FORCE #6; I haven't actually read this myself, but apparently this comic involved the character Wolfsbane eating her father.

Well, prognosis?

-Jarrett

Happy Birthday Us!

2008-08-30T08:34:00.000-07:00

-Jarrett

Comics I'm Buying Next Week...

2008-08-28T02:18:00.000-07:00

Written on Thursday, posted on Saturday...oops!

Well, yet another 'what I'm buying' post...I should probably type out the notes and reviews of the last few things I've read and drawn and whatnot sometime this weekend.

BERLIN Vol. 2, by Jason Lutes; The only new release that is out for me this week. I suppose I should re-read the first volume or something?

CHARLES BURNS Vol. 1: EL BORBAH, by Charles Burns; I've got this hankering for Burns stuff, and BLACK HOLE alone isn't cutting it anymore. I have read one of these CHARLES BURNS volumes before (maybe even this one), and I remember the stories didn't exactly set my world on fire, but Oh That Art.

COMPLETE DICK TRACY vol. 3 & 4, by Chester Gould; The Dickin' continues! After seeing that the first two volumes are almost sold out, I should probably stay caught up on these before they disappear too. I don't know, is IDW just completely unable to keep this or TERRY AND THE PIRATES in stock? Isn't the point of these definitive archival editions to make their availability permanent for at least a few years?

EC ARCHIVES: TWO FISTED TALES Vol. 1, by various; Woo, more old stuff! I've skimmed the WEIRD SCIENCE collection, and I think at one point I was a big Johnny Craig fan...I still like his stuff, but I'm really starting to fall for Harvey Kurtzman stuff. It actually comes down to a comparison in IN THE STUDIO with Art Spiegelman. The comparison of Kurtzman to Davis is kind of amazing. Initially I was kind of baffled by Spiegelman's description of Davis' as 'ugly'...but it kind of makes sense now. This sounds to be the most Kurtzman non-MAD EC Comic, so giving this a wild stab.

GROTESQUE #1, by Sergio Ponchione; Until someone pointed it out, I had no idea these were really only 32 pages long. In general the density of these comics is pretty light, making them read at the length of a visit to the bathroom.

KRAZY & IGNATZ 1925-26, George Herriman; So this is suppose to be pretty good.

SAMMY THE MOUSE, by Zak Sally; Hmm, another mouse book. I was planning on picking up all the Ignatz collection stuff, and this one comes highly recommended by Dick Hyacinth.

STOREYVILLE, by Frank Santoro; I've seen Mr. Santoro creep up all over the art comics blogs and discussion, so I thought I'd give this graphic novel a chance.

-Jarrett

What I'm Buying/Bought This Week, or "Comics Whore A#1 !"

2008-08-26T13:24:00.001-07:00

Back a couple of days early due to a medical emergency on Shanell's mom's side of the family, cutting the stay to move Shanell in short. Kind of a bummer, really, but we were at least able to get Shanell moved in, the bed set up, found a bike...just didn't find a desk. Fortunately her roommate has a vehicle and should be able to transport something in the near future.

Well...this is quite the opposite of last week. I suppose this is just the kind of week I needed after last week's behemoth, and sometime before next Wednesday I have to go and buy textbooks (art history textbooks no less!), so maybe this is the end of the summer comics gravy train. God knows I could actually bother to read a lot of the stuff I've bought so far, instead of just looking forward to what is coming out next week.

Couple of different singles coming in this week, but the one I'm most looking forward to is FINAL CRISIS: SUPERMAN BEYOND #1 by Grant Morrison and Doug Mahnke (last time I checked). Honestly, Morrison has been pretty hit and miss with his current DC output. I guess what I'm hoping for here is something in the vein of ALL-STAR SUPERMAN and not...well, FINAL CRISIS #1 or #3....or the worst parts of his BATMAN run so far. But hey, he has Mahnke on art here (in 3D!), who did a pretty good job of communicating Morrison's script coherently and entertainingly in SEVEN SOLDIERS: FRANKENSTEIN, so I have some hope still.

FOUNDATION, by John Rozum and ; I loved MIDNIGHT, MASS, and hopefully DC will be publishing XOMBI in the near future now that they have Mosaic. I don't think I am expecting much from this, but I have a real soft spot for Rozum (I put him in the same camp as Dan Curtis Johnson...a writer who is sort of a third stringer comics writer who does some really solid, entertaining stuff when they do it). Honestly, if you stopped to ask me what this was even about, I couldn't tell you. This sadly might find itself very quickly on the giant pile of trades I have where it is all the more modern, self-contained stuff....FAKER, UMBRELLA ACADEMY...it is a pile of stuff that just keeps growing as it gets shouldered aside for my reading books out from the library, older, 'classic' archival material....we shall see.

MAGGIE THE MECHANIC, by Jaime Hernandez; like I said a few weeks ago, I don't even think I've ever read any Jaime's stuff, and have read almost all of Gilbert's stuff. I think the offbeat, stream of conscious, dream style of Gilbert has always (and might always) appeal to me more than Jaime, but his interview with Todd Hignite in IN THE STUDIO got me at least interested enough to try his Locas stuff.

ICE HAVEN, by Daniel Clowes; because apparently it is an improvement of the original EIGHTBALL #21. I haven't read this material for years, so I'm looking forward to the nicely designed book too. I might find all of this far more enlightening too, after reading more about the comic strips that Clowes was being inspired from when working on this (kind of like if I went and re-read Spiegelman's IN THE SHADOW OF THE TOWERS, now that I've actually read some of the Sunday newspaper material Spiegelman is referencing).

Outside the comic store, I have been up to my old Ebay hijinx. So what have I found? We've got sort of a Art Spiegelman theme going on...

JACK COLE & PLASTIC MAN, by Art Spiegelman and Chip Kidd; From the plastic cover to the low-quality/high quality scans of the material, this book is just absolutely beautiful and, in some ways, is probably one of the best ways to get the Jack Cole PLASTIC MAN experience without having to spend $50 on the DC ARCHIVES with their lavishly cleaned up production. This reminds me a lot of that PEANUTS: THE ART OF CHARLES SCHULZ book from a few years ago (also designed by Chip Kidd), with the brown and yellow original pages, contextualizing with the merchandise...a real nostalgia item that actually captures nostalgia perfectly.

COMPLETE CHESTER GOULD DICK TRACY Vol. 1, by Chester Gould; What hoops I had to run through to find a copy of this. Apparently there is a softcover edition coming out early next year, but I had the interest now. My purchasing this came from the panel examples in Brian Walkers THE COMICS: BEFORE 1945, and Art Spiegelman and Chris Ware both talking about Gould in IN THE STUDIO, and I've read about a third of it so far and absolutely love it. My enjoyment of it comes from basically reading almost every male character with the same James Cagney sneer. The situations and dialogue or so naive and sincere, I've had such a blast going through this. About every five pages I have to stop myself from leaping up and scanning in an individual panel. I keep getting the urge to kind of do a remix of the first DICK TRACY comic, to really play up the plotting of it...but that kind of misses the point of looking back at this material. Still, it would probably make for a pretty hilarious read....maybe....

-Jarrett

Gone For The Week

2008-08-22T03:32:00.000-07:00

Shanell, my lovely girlfriend for the last four years, starts grad school at the University of Saskatchewan in just two weeks so I'll be accompanying her for the next week, and helping with the moving and such. I'm assuming I'm not going to be near a computer, or at least one with internet access, for the next five days.

For some thoughts on Saskatchewan, I point you in the direction of my friend and fellow blogger Lawrence Krysak's thoughts and trivia on Saskatchewan. A fun fact missing from Lawrence's post from last year (from Wikipedia):

Saskatoon also led Canada in violent crime again for 2007 and adds murder capital of Canada (tied) to its previous title (2006) of sexual assault capital of Canada^[14]

As you can imagine, I'm just oh so thrilled about this. Anyway, see you all next week...

-Jarrett

REVIEW: Kim Deitch's ALIAS THE CAT

2008-08-21T16:14:00.001-07:00

Well, that's the first time my socks have been rocked like that for a really long time. The following Chris Ware quote from Todd Hignite's IN THE STUDIO is what sold me on at least trying one Kim Deitch work:

Kim Deitch is easily one of the greatest cartoonists in the world, and in the history of the medium. I first saw his work in RAW and WEIRDO, and I find his stuff more inspiring than pretty much anything else around-the amazing world he's created just keeps growing and growing. There have been times when I've thought I should just quit cartooning altogether, but his stuff, and especially the fact that he continues to do it, has kept me going. (Art Spiegelman's told me Kim's work has had a similar effect on him). His originals clearly show that he's one of the finest craftsmen alive. I'm surprised when I hear very occasionally that some cartoonist don't "get" his work. Thus his work acts as sort of a litmus test for me-I've never met a cartoonist I respect who doesn't love his work.

Ware is the only cartoonist of the nine in IN THE STUDIO that mentions Deitch, and boy I'm glad he did. I honestly have no idea why I hadn't really heard of Deitch before...actually, I've got to admit when I first read the name 'Kim Deitch', I thought it was a woman. Well, here I sit corrected and glad for it. But back to ALIAS THE CAT! If you recall from my...well, Massive stack of comics I got in this week*, this was the one book that shouted out that I read it immediately.

At the end, I wanted to be all real, which I guess is a running notion in the rest of Deitch's work...that is, the running and bleeding between fantasy and reality. While reading the book, I continuously fought the urge to go online and find out what was and wasn't real...but fought successfully to remain in the world Deitch has created in his comics. I even have to question whether or not Deitch's wife actually collects those vexing cat dolls, and if she does...1) they really are all worth the money, and 2) Deitch is really a different kind of creator to be able to string all of this together from them.

A bunch of images I think back to vividly, which I will go against scanning in and showing off so you have a reason to either borrow this from me (all three of you), go out and buy it (some of you), or go grab the copy sitting on your shelf that maybe you only read when you got it, or haven't got around to yet (the rest of you).

-The first time we see the cat suit in the story itself on Deitch's computer screen while surfing Ebay? One of the first times I've gotten excited reading a comic book in years. It completely changes everything you've been reading up to this point, and that Chip Kidd designed book cover begins to make a whole lot more sense.

-The furry sex party. Far better than any real furry sex party, I'm sure, or at least as accurate. Again, probably one of the best moments I've read since I first was reading Daniel Clowes or Chris Ware comics. Who the fuck expected That??

-Also, the KKK cat. And what could have been just a one page gag, follows up later with an explanation by a possibly fictitious expert? So genuine, and all part of this grand illusion of reality that you want to be true, but something just keeps nagging at you that you're letting yourself being sucked in, like one of those many cults in David B.'s EPILEPTIC.

-Oh, and Midgettown orgy? Wow. See, if you haven't yet read this, it all just seems so over the top and stupid that you're wondering how the hell anyone could be tricked into all of this even being real? Wait until you read it.

I think what goes a long way in the unbelievable way Deitch seduces you into his delusions (hey, you do see Waldo, don't you?), are each of those little moments of revelation that Deitch has ("HOLY SHIT!" indeed!) are all those markings of 'too much to be a coincidence' moment that makes you forget you are reading a potential fiction. You find yourself sinking lower and lower, following the narrator of a comic that was originally titled THE STUFF OF DREAMS, mouth agape.

As part of that seduction, you really want the ALIAS THE CAT comic strips that Deitch discovers to be rendered in a more believable, reproduced style, and not clearly drawn by the hand of Deitch. Deitch realizes this inbetween Part Two and Part Three, and there's a pretty cute little nod to the similarities for this complaint right in the text. Hats off!

Probably the only criticism I could really throw the way of Deitch is that I often found that the expressions of the characters were almost always the same teeth gritted...grief?...that sometimes didn't fit at all what the narration said was happening. I don't know if this is just sort of a stylistic tic Deitch has developed in the thirty or so years he's been doing comics...but it really is the only little teeny weeny thing I can say I don't completely, 100%, gush over. That's the rest of this book. I guess in some ways it is similar to IT'S A GOOD LIFE IF YOU DON'T WEAKEN (see: Kalo), but it seems to suffer from how Seth regards his craft, spending far too much worrying about what he's doing and not just doing it (whereas WIMBLEDON GREEN is a compiled book of his sketch work and is easily his best material). I remember almost not a damn thing about IT'S A GOOD LIFE, but there's material in WIMBLEDON GREEN (like ALIAS THE CAT) that I'm going to be going back to look at for a long time.

I'm kind of ruined right now, because I have this feeling nothing is going to measure up...and I have like a dozen other books to go through. The Diamond Order Code for this lovely book is JAN073805 (give that to your comics retailer and he'll know what to do...hopefully), for the price of $23US.

-Jarrett

*Uh, I had no idea that JIMBO IN PURGATORY was that big. Still not as big as KRAMERS ERGOT 7 is going to be, but getting there!

Worth Your Time and Dollar: Robin Bougie

2008-08-20T17:35:00.000-07:00

Thematically, I guess these last two are the 'Canadian' editions of "Worth Your Time and Dollar".

I discovered Robin Bougie's comic/zine CINEMA SEWER due completely to the old mantra 'judging a book by its cover'. I was in a comic store somewhere in Vancouver (one that had a spinner rack filled with local comics and whatnot), and was drawn in by the cover to #12. Usually purchases like this amount in something not even always novel, and quickly forgotten about or discard...not this time. The night after I picked up #12, I was back at the store and caught up with everything they had.

Remember how I said Dave Cooper might not be for everybody? Well, that probably goes doubly for Bougie, who I love but I'm not blinded by that love and realize some people probably wouldn't find an article on, say, bestiality porn in the 1970s, or the wonder of water sports to their personal tastes. There's a bit in there for the horror/exploitation movie fan, and an even smaller amount for the comics fan, but I could definitely understand their being somewhat a small audience for the material Bougie (and I) go for.

What is probably the most striking thing about CINEMA SEWER is that it is almost all entirely hand written. At first it is rather daunting, but you soon forget about it, and find yourself forgetting that almost nothing is hand lettered anymore...let alone actual articles. It actually reminds me a lot of Robert Crumb's text, which may or may not be intentional.

Saying Robin Bougie is the sole hand behind all of CINEMA SEWER is misleading of course. Bougie brings in his friends for writing (which Bougie typically hand writes and illustrates himself), and a lot of the recent issues have sported lovely Danny Hellman covers.

One of the neatest things was I was only in Vancouver for the week and a half with Shanell and it just happened to be around the time of the Vancouver Comics Zine Festival. Looking it up, lo and behold, Robin Bougie would be there! I made my way down there on the Saturday? I think it was, and got to meet him. Extremely friendly, and very open to talk about his stuff. I always kind of feel bad because I remember him pointing out Rebecca Dart's (his wife) comic RABBIT-HEAD, which I told him I actually had ordered in for myself just a few weeks ago. I'm not sure if he believed that, or if I was being polite, but it is true! Yeah, that's something else everyone should buy too, if it is still available...RABBITHEAD!

Robin Bougie maintains a daily blog, which you can find over on the link scroll, and you can buy his wares here, and via email and Paypal. Probably one of the best buys is the recently released CINEMA SEWER book, which collects the best of CINEMA SEWER #1-12. I actually found I recognized a lot of the material from #11 & 12, which just might mean that is when he personally felt he hit his stride. The biggest bonus with ordering the book directly from Bougie is he will personalize your copy with whatever you want him to draw on the inside. He's been doing this so often that apparently he's even thinking of making a comic collecting these.

I've been buying all the recent issues of CINEMA SEWER from Bougie direct. What I miss was his porn magazine clipping, with white-out text balloons with the woman in question pleading for my subscription money. Maybe if I, and everyone else reading CINEMA SEWER, had done so, we wouldn't have to wait now for February to roll around for our new issue.

-Jarrett

Worth Your Time and Dollar: Dave Cooper

2008-08-19T20:18:00.001-07:00

Kind of an uneventful day that didn't exactly spark anything new, which made me realize I hadn't done one of these "WYT&D" posts in over a month.

One of my favourite comics creators who it seems we've lost to the world of fine art prints, Dave Cooper's comics are wonderfully perverse, revealing a painful awareness of the body, beautiful drawn and realized images that aren't for everyone.

Maybe I just have missed it, but Cooper seems to be not as talked about as his some of his Canadian cohorts (Chester Brown, Seth, Dave Sim, and Joe Matt has been long on the west coast in the States but I think forever linked to Toronto and 'the group'). Maybe it has something to do with a giant invisible dome blocking out the signal over Ottawa, or something...

-Jarrett

Some Thoughts on Back Issues

2008-08-18T02:15:00.000-07:00

Somewhere, deep, dark...

The latest Brian Hibbs TILTING AT WINDMILLS got me thinking about back issues, so here we go!

Ah, the shelf copy graveyard…Say you are even willing to put the time and effort to actively stock, price, and maintain a back issue bin for what really amounts to very little return, I honestly don’t believe it is worth it nowadays. Even freshly bagged, priced fairly, and alphabetized...it isn't worth it. In my experience, these are the grounds on which I do sell back issues anymore…and why it still isn't worth it.

1) You happen to have some odd-and-end issue someone is looking for; predicting this is impossible and no reason at all to have back issues. The benefit of selling some AMAZING SPIDER-MAN once every six months doesn’t really offset the copies of AMAZING SPIDER-MAN you’re not selling, nor SUPERMAN, BATMAN, FANTASTIC FOUR…and those are the ‘live’ books that are continuing. Think about all the crap that has come out in the last year alone that has already disappeared in the collective mind, let alone in the last decade.

2) Unless you have a complete run/story of something, which someone happens to want, at the Right Price, it is going to Sit Forever. People will pass up a run of a series if you are missing one issue out of twenty five, unless you are almost giving it away, because buying it just creates for a more infuriating hunt. And really, anything anyone is looking for was probably bought at the time it came out, or someone else has already beat them to it.

3) Say you start out with a magnificient collection, from lucking out at auction, you brought in your own stuff, some long time regular doesn’t have the space anymore…you have almost no control (worthwhile) in restocking. We live in the world of MyComicShop.com, MileHighComics.com, and lest we forget Ebay. Ebay has kind of rendered back issue hunting dead as the amount of time a customer puts in to hunting down a comic or a run of a comic, from city to city, town to town, isn’t going to be worth it. It is long past time that amount of time put in isn’t worth it for the modern comic shop retaile either. Hell, even the carrot on the stick for customers of maybe finding a ‘sweet deal’ is rare, and stores are following the Overstreet.

Makes a lot more sense to just turn people onto trade paperbacks, and put money into something that you can control restock of, reorder (eliminating space problems and financial overhead), and boy do they look nice! Between Ebay and trade paperbacks, back issue bins are a waste of time. Why are they still around? Nostalgia? Well, like I said at the beginning…it’s a graveyard; a dumping ground. The shit has got to go somewhere, and you shouldn’t be putting it anywhere in your store hoping someone will not only take it away for you, but also Pay For It.

So what do you do with your shelf copies without a dumping ground? I’ve only come up with a few viable solutions from a business standpoint, but I welcome suggestions that I’m overlooking:

1)Order next to no shelf copies. Cross your fingers, and hope for the best that you’re ordering is very spot on, and you aren’t making mistakes, meaning next to no shelf copies to worry about. The problem with this is you are really restricting your growth potential with new customers who don’t know the ins and outs of your position. If you don’t have anything on the shelf, you’re not making going to be making any money. If nobody wants what you do have on offer (which has already been vultured over), consider it yours to insulate your makeshift hut and to burn for fire in the coming apocalypse!

2) If you want to keep your shelf copies, be prepared to clear them out at a ridiculous discount pretty quickly after release (3 months tops?), just to clear up space at cost. In the worst case, 25cents is better than no cents and yet another comic filling up another space in a long box. And believe me, there are comics that you cannot even give away (and yes, even the most experienced veteran comics retailer will find him or herself stuck with this special kind of dark matter).

3) Hey, Ebay can be your friend too! This can be even more of a money loser due to listing fees, but you get your stuff exposed to the most amount of people who might be looking for something you have, but happen not to live even in the same country as your store. This is probably just as much of a time consumer as actually keeping up a back issue bin, but it could be more profitable (and hey, more space in store to actually display stuff that might sell).

Oh yes, there’s also the option of giving them away to a hospital/charity too. Give them away at Free Comic Book Day (see #2). As the suggestions go on, it really is teetering very close to just throwing them into a dumpster being the best solution. Hey, grocery stores do it all the time with their product (with the benefit of writing them as off a tax beneit). Just think about those unsold HALO: UPRISING #3s as milk that’s gone rancid….right down the sink drain it goes!

I am definitely aware and admit that the back issues at the store I work at are a complete disaster...definitely something no one is proud of, and I would love to be able to deliver a selection that was easily accessible, and easy to navigate. I'll take it right on the chin on behalf of myself and the owner that it is not only a time/space/cost thing, but also a lack of ambition to get it done properly. But considering everything I've listed above...well it all seems kind of futile, doesn't it?

When I went to the Calgary Comics Expo in April, I was unsurprised that almost all the vendors had their back issues they brought along in no particular order, all at clearance of 50% or more. For myself, my reader/fan self, there isn't anything I'm looking for that would merit me spending the time to go through literally thousands of long boxes on a convention room floor looking for anything. There's something just dehumanizing at snouting your way through a long box futily, like a pig at the trough in search of some rotten cabbage and carrot ends. Even if it was all organized, I have a feeling I wouldn't find what I'm looking for.*

I wrote this up without reading up on what others have written on the matter, then decided to look on Google to see what else popped up. Mike Sterling wrote an article on this very matter, and pretty well says what I wrote. It is both heartwarming and depressing to discover how almost universal the comic store retailer experience is.

-Jarrett

*That would be DC Comics/Piranha Press' FAST FORWARD #1

What I'm Buying This/Next Week...

2008-08-17T02:18:00.000-07:00

And here's the mother load week I've been fearing the last two weeks. The bolded titles are the actual 'new releases', and the unbolded titles are my reorders in pursuit of comics I should have read by now.

ACHEWOOD: THE GREAT OUTDOOR FIGHT, by Chris Onstad; So at this point Achewood has been so built up for me that this first book collecting (I guess) the "Great Outdoor Fight" story better rock my fucking ass, or I'm going to start a murderin'! I really hope this isn't a case of people talking about it to keep up indie hipster cred or something...I really want this to be good, and hope it delivers.

ALIAS THE CAT, by Kim Deitch; One of the first books that came down to the recommendation of Chris Ware in Hignite's IN THE STUDIO. Apparently I've been missing out on Deitch's stuff, so...again, a blind purchase, but readily available and at a good price.

AMAZING REMARKABLE MONSIEUR LEOTARD, by Eddie Campbell; Sure to be another in the long line of Eddie Campbell books that I haven't actually finished reading, besides FROM HELL.

DON'T CALL ME STUPID, by Steven Weissman; Been wanting to get this for a long time, and Diamond finally let it be known it was in print (or in stock anyway) in their warehouse after the massive Fantagraphics restock this month.

EC ARCHIVES WEIRD SCIENCE Vol. 1, by various; The first of many purchases of the EC Archives...decided to start here to try to reignite my interest in the sci-fi comic I was thinking about last month, and I already have the first volume equivalent to CRIME SUSPENSTORIES and VAULT OF HORROR in softcover. I'm actually sort of looking forward to reading that George Lucas introduction...

HERBIE ARCHIVES Vol. 1, by Shane O'Shea and Ogden Whitney; I am getting the feeling that this collection is actually going to really popular due to Dan Nadel's ART OUT OF TIME exposing people like me to how awesome this is, a lot of people remembering how much they loved it, and Alan Moore recently saying Herbie is his favourite superhero.

JIMBO IN PURGATORY, by Gary Panter; Another test run with a creator I've no previous experience with, and going on the high recommendation of many individuals I respect.

LAST LONELY SATURDAY, by Jordan Crane; I recently saw the cover to UPTIGHT #3, remembered I already owned his CLOUDS ABOVE, and realized I should track down his stuff sooner than later (just ordered UPTIGHT #2 off his website, and UPTIGHT #1 from a guy in England). This looks like a smaller effort, but it will be interesting to see his earlier stuff (and see how much further I have to go before I should think about publishing anything).

MONSTER Vol. 16, by Naoki Urasawa; a quick inspection of my bookshelf indicates I somehow missed Vol. 15. Probably didn't notice because I'm now at least five volumes behind here (which sounds like it happens a lot with other people when it comes to manga), but I'm sure the quality can't be blown too much with only two volumes remaining. What I'm jazzed for is that Urasawa's TWENTIETH CENTURY BOYS and PLUTO are going to be published simultaneously from Viz starting in February. Jurassic Park!

THE NUMBER 73304-23-4153-6-96-8, by Thomas Ott; Yes, another blind purchase from a more recent creator whose works I've seen in Previews enticed me but I held off waiting for reviews.

POWERHOUSE PEPPER, by Basil Wolverton; There isn't too much Wolverton material available save this, so...giving it a whirl!

PREMILLENIAL MAAKIES, by Tony Millionaire; I've been wanting this to come back in stock with Diamond for years, ever since Cory and Dan Wong had theirs and I was never able to get reorders. But soon, It Will Be Mine. Looking at the dimensions of this book though, I'm wondering how comics shops actually display this, as I don't recall seeing it anywhere.

TALES DESIGNED TO THRIZZLE #4, by Michael Kupperman; Apparently most of the US got this last week, which is just one of those funny things about Fantagraphics/Diamond and Canada. Typically have to wait one week longer than elsewhere for new books to come in. Weird anecdote though! The other week I got in a reordered copy of JUSTICE LEAGUE INTERNATIONAL Vol. 2 HC. I swore I was suppose to have two on order (one initially, and one someone requested), but figured it was me misremembering. Only on the following invoice, the Initially ordered copy was shipping...meaning the reordered copy was received a week earlier. I guess just one of those strange warehouse hiccups (except this one was in the favour of somebody).

TRUTH SERUM: THE LONELY PARADE, by Jon Adams; I talked about this a month ago, and am glad it is coming in sooner than later (though perhaps a week later would have been nicer on my store credit and wallet. Some really funny stuff that I'm amazed no one really talks about...

WHERE DEMENTED WENTED: THE ART AND COMICS OF RORY HAYES, edited by Dan Nadel and Glenn Bray; Falls into the same camp as TALES DESIGNED TO THRIZZLE, I think I and Western Canada are receiving this a week late.

Also this week of note: Mark Waid's (and my) last issue of THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD, new Ed Brubaker CAPTAIN AMERICA, Richard Corben draws CONAN THE CIMMERIAN, Geoff Johns' LEGION OF THREE WORLDS (which looks pretty exciting as far as these things go...until Super'man' Prime tears someones face off), and the first issue of MAX PUNISHER sans Ennis (hope you remembered to tell your retailer to cancel this off your file/pull list!)

A question to my readers: would you like for me to also include the prices of these books? Unless it would be a complete surprise or utterly exorbitantly, I can't see why it really matters. When I see Brian Hibbs complain about a $3.99 price tag on a JSA Annual, I can't help but start thinking one of us is out of touch.

-Jarrett

On Retailing, Part the Second

2008-08-16T21:30:00.001-07:00

"Comic Shop Clerks of North America" by Drew Friedman, from COMIC ART Issue 8, Pg. 60 and so on and so on. My brain says Russ, but my heart says "Chappy".

-Jarrett

The Sexual Prowess of Plastic Man

2008-08-15T21:18:00.001-07:00

Boy, you just open up some of these DC Archives and you get hit with images so subversive...

See also: THE CLASSIC PIN-UP ART OF JACK COLE. There is also a featured article on Cole in EROTIC COMICS: A GRAPHIC HISTORY FROM TIJUANA BIBLES TO UNDERGROUND COMIX.

-Jarrett

Comics, Time, Space

2008-08-15T13:14:00.000-07:00

For whatever reason this morning as I was waking up, my mind starting to think of comics that really utilize the idea of space and time on the comic page. I only have three examples here, and in the case of Alan Moore wanting to restrict it to one example, and hope someone out there reading can come up with some more ideas.

Robert Crumb's SHORT HISTORY OF AMERICA; I guess my first exposure to this sequence was the still frames in Terry Zwigoff's CRUMB documentary.

Alan Moore/Mike White's THE REVERSIBLE MAN from a 2000AD Time Twister; as Moore quickly abandoned drawing his own stories quickly, it isn't surprising that the real experimentation isn't with the actual comic book page, but the storytelling. This notion of malleable time pops up a lot in Moore's comics (in particular the final fate sequence of William Gull in FROM HELL with Eddie Campbell, throughout PROMETHEA with J.H. Williams).

Richard McGuire's HERE; This short story I was so amazed at, I photocopied it and showed it around to people when I really wanted to show how awesome comics could be. Some guys did a student film doing a live action adaptation of the story, which would seem obvious, and fails not just because of production value (I'm sure David Fincher could do something very seductive with it), but something is lost when you lose the nature of the comic page.

-Jarrett

On KRAMERS ERGOT #7

2008-08-13T09:37:00.000-07:00

A lot of rabble on KRAMERS ERGOT #7 and its $125 price tag this past week. Alan David Doane had the good idea to ask retailers what they thought of the item and pricing, so I figured I might as well throw in my two cents as well.

1. How many will you order for your shelves?

None. We don't keep a regular stock of Marvel Masterworks, DC Archives, or any other high priced book from the mainstream publishers, let alone something like this. Far too much money to tie up on the shelf for something that wouldn't sell any time soon. Direct Market isn't helped out too much in the overhead department with everything being unreturnable, so we leave the high-price point material to Diamond's warehouses to store until we get the order. Of course with an item like this, who knows how long it'll be available?

2. How many would you guess you may preorder by request of regular customers?

If I decide to order it? One. What's too bad is I really have never seen a KRAMERS ERGOT before and none of the previous issues are available at Diamond to sample. If I decided to order it, I'd be really ordering blind...and $125 suggested retail US? That's just stupid and foolish. And I just mentioned, the double edged sword is if I wait for the reviews, there's no guarantee that this'll even be in stock anymore with Diamond. It really is just easier to say 'pass'.

3. Do you think $125.00 for a 96 page anthology is a reasonable price for your customer base?

No, but our demographic isn't the aim for a project like this either. I have to actively stock and push the more well known Fantagraphics/Drawn & Quarterly stuff (Clowes, Ware, Seth, Burns), whose price point is reasonable in comparison to the mainstream equivalent, and that's an uphill battle. For the meat-n-potato style store that I work at, the very question of if we're going to stock KRAMERS ERGOT is kind of absurd, but also maybe underlines another matter altogether...

4. Will you offer it at a discount, either to customers pre-ordering it, or on your store shelves?

If we brought it in, absolutely. We're pretty much selling everything at US price (not sure for how much longer, with the exchange taking the hit the last week or so), and it isn't unusual for us to do a discount on top of that either for regulars and when material is bought in large volume (ie. the guy who bought every single CIVIL WAR trade paperback in one go we had in store in one go, the guy wanting to buy the full collections of Y: THE LAST MAN, PREACHER, and SANDMAN at once).

5. How do you feel about Amazon's discounting of the book (currently over 30 percent off) and how it might impact your store, or the direct market in general?

Let's put it this way: the 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons Collector Set on Amazon.com was around the high $50 mark, and the suggested US retail price is $104.95. That is almost 50% off, and at that price mark, we'd be better off ordering stock from Amazon at that kind of discount (only the S&H bites you in the ass and brings you to cost through our regular distribution channels). Did we still wind up selling over 20 copies of the Player's Handbook and at least that many of the Collector Set? We sure did. The guy who is on Amazon or Ebay...that someone who is scouting for the best price is probably Not shopping retail anyway, or is content in someone losing money for his advantage...he's not even a customer, ergo Not a concern. If Amazon's heavy discounting of trades and comics is hurting us, I've no way of really telling. It has been such a long time sticking point that I just look around, realize we're still in business and selling trades briskly every day of the week, and that's OK.

-Jarrettt

On Retailing

2008-08-13T01:08:00.001-07:00

This was floating around today, and since I'm actually definitely involved in this field...thought it might be of interest: Kevin Church's thoughts on comic retailers telling customers 'not to buy' the retailer's own product.

In the messages, Kevin Church clarifies his views and makes additional comments that were lost in the hasty frustrated post that kicked off this whole matter. Such as:

(((I think consumers can decide for themselves what they want to buy but I also believe that comparing opinions about comics is what this business is all about.)))

"No, they should be in the business of selling comics, not running an Algonquin Round Table of comics commentary. Otherwise, these retailers would just stay at home and run a comics bulletin board, no? If someone solicits an opinion from an employee, that’s one thing, but sending out an email with a review telling people Don’t buy is something very different."

Personally, if Bob had the initiative to actually set up an online newsletter I would be in charge and, as many people have said in the comments, would direct their attention to The Good Stuff instead of what they shouldn't buy.* Yeah, basically what I've been doing in my "What I'm Buying This Week". Which brings us to inherent similarities to this mass emailing of 'Don't Buy' and blogging 'Don't Buy'.

Sure, I often talk about the shit comics that are out there, why they are shit, and how things could be better...but I'm speaking as a critic and reader, not as a retailer. I do mention the store too, throwing around my part-time status as credential, but I'm not passing this blog off as "The Official Voice of Showcase Comics!"

But isn't this what Brian Hibbs and Co. have been doing with Savage Critic for a really long time, calling the worst offenders AWFUL or CRAP? It does link right off the official Comix Experience website! Usually the reviews come out after a comic has hit the stands, but that doesn't matter. For an ongoing series, if the customers are going to listen, it doesn't matter when they read it, they'll potentially drop it and end future sales on that book. If after all that time these reviews were hurting his store financially, wouldn't he have stopped?

I notice too that Mike 'Progressive Ruin' Sterling gets involved due to too many people misconstruing Church as saying retailers shouldn't give their opinions one-on-one in store either. A lot of people of people read that into Church's post (which I think is due to a lack of clarity in Church's post too), and Sterling was right to make sure people were talking about the right point. But as far as 'broadcasting' opinion goes, Sterling does his 'Ridiculous Items in Previews' schtick every month. He doesn't say "Don't Buy", but he points out their ludicrous existence with pretty funny captions, which I can't imagine is a shining endorsement. Does him doing so perhaps deter orders and purchases in the future make doing the article the Stupidest Goddamn Thing Ever? Maybe, maybe not? He listed BAT-MANGA as one of those items, and I'm still going to buy it. I think the people who read that retailer's newsletter are going to buy ASTONISHING X-MEN at the end of the day, even against the judgment of the seller.

One last thing: someone brought up how FUTURE SHOP or BEST BUY don't tell you what not to buy in their flyers or emails, and that these stores are held up as some sort of laudable height of Great Retail I guess in comparison strikes me as just all kinds of sad. Are big box companies Really the goal we should be aiming for? Fuck.

-Jarrett

* Church fails to give us actual context to the ASTONISHING review within the newsletter, other than mentioning that TRINITY is also negatively reviewed (at least the retailer knows what crap is!). Perhaps surrounding the two reviews are glowing reviews of comics customers should be buying that'll make up for $150+ squandered on shitty comics. That Don't Buy really got to him I guess.

On Process

2008-08-13T01:01:00.000-07:00

Via Tom Spurgeon and Dirk Deppey (thanks Comics Journal online blogging!), a link to Seth talking about his own drawing process (with a comic at the bottom!), as well as a website with links to a whole bunch of different creative types talking about their own methods of getting work done. I haven't had a chance to go through any of the information on that second link, but hope to in my own perspiration/aspirations.

Image is a Fontaine Fox one panel gag from THE COMICS BEFORE 1945, with his thoughts.

-Jarrett

Levitz Moore Love

2008-08-12T16:32:00.000-07:00

While reading this article, I was kind of hoping for some mention of Alan Moore being the actual writer of this comic book, and not Paul Levitz OR "DC Comics", and finally found some mention of him:

NRAMA: With all this buzz for Watchmen, and for those of us who’ve been around comics for a while, we understand why Dave Gibbons is the creative spokesman for the film and property – but if we extrapolate the buzz of the Watchmen trailer into phenomenon level in a few months, could it spur on a reaching out to Alan Moore by DC? Is there a desire there to be reached out to, even, on his part?

PL: I have the greatest respect for Alan and his work. We’d love to work with him again some day, in any fashion, if he chose to.

NRAMA: Going back to the changes and the pressures that are coming in the industry...

Thanks Newsarama for that hard hitting backtracking! No probing questions shining some light on the lack of respect the President & Publisher of DC Comics has for Alan Moore and his work that has made DC Comics a metric ton of money over the years? Oh right, I guess you don't want to anger anybody and lose future interviews and 'exclusive preview' access to such titles at FINAL CRISIS: REVELATIONS.

Oh how quickly we forget ALAN MOORE'S EXIT INTERVIEW. In particular, with examples of DC's active agenda to censor, edit, and general muck about with Moore's work, this bit stands out at me:

"There was a friend of a friend who apparently worked in the Warner Bros. boardroom, who had said that right from the outset of the ABC deal, apparently DC's Publisher Paul Levitz, had felt that this was some sort of contest between me and him. That I was "fucking with him", and that he was going to show me what for."

Moore also construes DC Comics has something of a rich stalker, what with their active pursuit of ABC Comics via Wildstorm after a failed attempt at Awesome Comics. Hey, maybe Alan Moore is full of shit! Or, you know, not?

Anyway, Paul Levitz is a spokesman and from most accounts a nice guy...so maybe this is more of a "Wag of the Finger" to Matt Brady maintaining that low level of journalistic discourse Newsarama is known for.

-Jarrett

Highlight of the Day

2008-08-11T16:33:00.000-07:00

*Achem!*

DC Exclusive Preview - 'Final Crisis: Revelations #1'.

Go ahead and read that. So what's the typical Newsarama verdict on these six pages? Nothing all that surprising...here's your random taste.

Corpulent1 wrote:

Sweet. I quit reading Final Crisis with #3 because, frankly, it was just boring me. But Greg Rucka returning to Cris Allen with Questoya playing a major role? Final Crisis tie-in or not, count me in.

Dr Manolis Dooplove wrote:

all the tie-ins have been top quality so far (unlike, say, the main series) and this looks amazing as well. cant wait!

HarveyDent wrote:

God, that got really heavy really fast. Is it weird how much better than the main series the FC tie ins have been? Is there a case to be made for Morrison as a story editor instead of a writer?

holtom2001 wrote:

this already looks better then Final Crisis.

IdentityCrisis08 wrote:

I've been humming and hawing as to whether I'd pick this up. I like Greg Rucka's writing, but when this was announced it felt like it was just another tie-in, something to keep the Rucka fans happy. Since then though, I've gotten caught up in the buzz for it and the preview helps. I'm not sold on the art yet, but I'll definitely pick up the first issue and see how it goes.

That user name is rather apropo....

Grott wrote:

Ok, maybe at 37 I'm just too old for this, but this looks pretty sick, as in disgusting. And yeah, I know Dr. Light is a big depraved pervert now, and I know the Spectre's going to take him apart so we can cheer as the bad guy gets what's coming to him, but wow, the language and the imagery there just seem way, way over the top, in a bad way. I know the Fleisher/Aparo stuff was pretty brutal for its time, but this just grosses me out completely. Not trying to flame at all, sorry.

Kel-El wrote:

So, Grott, you think it's overkill for a deranged rapist, murderer, and child molester to be behaving the way Dr. Light is?

reflecto wrote:

This looks amazing. I can't wait for Wednesday. Rucka is God!!

wonder wowmn wrote:

WOW!! This looks amazing!

thedanofsteel wrote:

That is one of the best first pages ever written. "I work for God." This is gonna be brilliant!

Capt_Piett wrote:

"This sucks in so many ways I'm not gonna even bother commenting."

You just did, bunky. Seems like most of us are looking forward to this; your lack of participation in reading won't be missed.

You know what I'm personally waiting for? For this to be the 'hot ticket' book of FINAL CRISIS because Rape Master Dr. Light 'gets his'. One last thought that sprang to mind reading the 'exclusive preview' and these comments...take them as you will.

All the animals come out at night - whores, skunk pussies, buggers, queens, fairies, dopers, junkies, sick, venal. Someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets. I go all over. I take people to the Bronx, Brooklyn, I take 'em to Harlem. I don't care. Don't make no difference to me. It does to some. Some won't even take spooks. Don't make no difference to me. -Travis Bickle, TAXI DRIVER

-Jarrett

Comics I'm Buying This Week....

2008-08-11T12:53:00.000-07:00

Bah! I knew this was coming...but it is only one of many a large week or reorders pouring in all at once! Out of the nine, two of these are 'new releases'.

BATMAN #679, by Grant Morrison and Tony Daniels; The continuation of
Morrison's "R.I.P" storyline that could still potentially go off the rails even
halfway through.  Still, it is a lot of fun to talk about, and each issue is
something to look forward, which is more than one can say about the majority
 of either of DC or Marvel's output.  So hey, 'comic single' of the week!







CLOVER HONEY, by Rich Tommaso; I was going through Cory's comic
shelf and saw HORROR OF COLLIER COUNTY, reminding me that Rich
Tommaso has actually been around for a long while.  Going online
looking up comic creator's bibliographies can be a real crapshoot,
especially when you start getting into non-mainstream creators
like Tommaso, but fortunately Fantagraphics' website had this
still listed.





DELPHINE #1, by Richard Sala; Another one of those creators with a
distinctive style who falls under the collective radar.  I think I've mostly given
all of my Sala stuff to Shanell over the years, so this will be sticking with
my 'IGNATZ' collection.  I actually ordered the first few issues of NEW
TALES OF OLD PALOMAR around the same time as this other IGNATZ
stuff, and am surprised it isn't in this week as well.  Oh well, there's always a
metric shit ton of stuff for me next week to buy....sigh....




FINDER VOL 5 DREAM SEQUENCE TP, by Carla Speed O'Neil; Wow,
I think the theme of this week is 'stuff I use to buy, lost track of/interest in,
and now I'm behind'.  I have the first two dozen or so issues of O'Neil's
FINDER in trades and issues, and I wound up giving up or cutting back,
and this didn't make the cut.  Reading Douglas Wolk's fawning praise
over the series in READING COMICS pretty well got me interested in
re-reading and catching up with FINDER again, and I'm happy to see that
it is all available at Diamond.





INNOCENTS #1, by Gipi; More IGNATZ stuff.  Speaking of Diamond, I really
wish I were able to reorder David B.'s BABEL #1, as it is the 'unofficial start'
 of the IGNATZ series (Drawn and Quarterly released BABEL #1, it counts
as IGNATZ #0, and #1+ is all Fantagraphics...).  I imagine I can wait a few
years and there'll be a BABEL collection, seeing as it is the sequel to David
 B's EPILEPTIC.









MILTON CANIFF TERRY & PIRATES & STEVE CANYON MEANWHILE,
by RC Harvey; I decided to go down the path of 'retrospective' on Caniff, to
see if it is worth my time getting into both TERRY &THE PIRATES as well
as STEVE CANYON.  If not, I think this book will serve to scratch the itch of
the creator (like my Steve Ditko/Alex Toth/Al Williamson books).




PLASTIC MAN ARCHIVES HC VOL 02, by Jack Cole; Continuing with at
least one of these Archive series all the way through, it is interesting to see
Cole's artwork improve every few issues.  I also decided to go on Ebay
and order the JACK COLE & PLASTIC MAN book written by Art
Spiegelman and designed by Chip Kidd.  Also thinking about ordering the
PIN UP ART OF JACK COLE that Fantagraphics has.







THE END #1, by Anders Nilsen; More IGNATZ stuff, plus I really like the
minimalist Nilsen stuff, and the design choices he makes (typically).











THUNDERBOLTS BY ELLIS PREM HC VOL 02 CAGED ANGELS, by
Warren Ellis and Mike Deodato Jr.  I really enjoyed the first volume of this
(which came out over a year ago, no thanks to Warren Ellis and his
abysmal track record at having anything come out on time for more than
six months), and am glad to see that this ought to wrap things up nicely. 
I have zero interest, of course, in actually following THUNDERBOLTS with
anyone other than Warren Ellis writing, no matter how adequate a writer
Christos Gage and Andy Diggle are.

-Jarrett

Generalities & Generalities Part Two

2008-08-10T18:24:00.000-07:00

And we're back with Part Two...!

We have a few anti-superhero comics biases at work here, which I'll quickly outline, then deconstruct:

Superhero comics are usually collaborative, not the work of a single creator.
Superhero comics are serialized in arbitrary, 22-page segments.
Superhero comics are juvenile, and lack the sophistication of true literature.
Superhero comics are too exaggerated to relate to real life today.
Superhero comics are endlessly repetitive.
Superhero comics are inbred monstrosities that feed on their own pasts.

So here comes in the perceived victimization I mentioned at the beginning. For being an article that is fighting these anti-superhero biases, there's no citation of examples of these biases....Callahan picks his own fights and 'deconstructs' them. Remember that letter asking about the 'corporate' superhero game? Callahan didn't want to get into 'that old debate'...which I think is actually one of the big sticking points of this argument. There's no point of argument, which just screams sloppy writing. But let's go for the ride regardless.

1. We expect prose fiction to be the work of a single writer, and that bias carries over to comics. There's something more inherently literary about the vision of a single writer than the vision of a group of creators working together. There's no reason why this has to be true, of course, but it's been the dominant bias throughout the history of written literature. Often, it's just the illusion of the single creator that's important. As long as one individual is credited with the work, nobody seems to care how much collaboration was done behind the scenes. Many current short story writers "workshop" their stories in MFA programs or writer's groups. Max Perkins, editor of Thomas Wolfe, Ernest Hemingway, and William Faulkner, famously crafted tightly-controlled works of literature out of the pages his writers turned in. Wolfe, in particular, submitted piles of manuscript pages and it was up to Perkins to dig through and cut out everything that wasn't essential to the novel. Yet as long as Wolfe gets credit on the cover, and it's not billed as a Wolfe/Perkins collaboration, the literary critics don't need to worry about violating their own anti-collaboration bias.

In drama -- whether on stage or in film -- we expect collaboration, and there's no bias against it at all. A one-man or one-woman show is not automatically assumed superior to a play with a full cast and crew. How many movie directors are also writers, cinematographers, production managers, set designers, actors, and editors all at the same time? Some directors take on a few of these responsibilities, but even the best have dozens, if not hundreds, of talented collaborators who contribute to the artistic vision of the work. Why are comics not judged by the standards of drama, then? The creation of a superhero comic has more in common with the creation of a movie--from concept to script to visuals to production to release--than to a novel, which is all about a single creator typing away, revising and retyping, until a work of prose is born. Think of the newest issue of "Batman" as closer in craft to a work of cinema, and the bias against collaboration no longer makes any sense.

The so-called bias against collaboration never really made sense, and the argument here has nothing to do with that. The bias against collaboration, as far as my own understanding goes, is actually not as old as "the history of written literature": the dominant bias is maybe only a two hundred years old at most. That's Romanticism/Individualism rising out of the Enlightenment, followed by the ability to actually accurately attribute credit to a work because of the printing press, and these ideals being firmly embedded in criticism and discussion since then.

The novel is a single creator typing away, revising, and retyping....but sometimes it isn't (how short term of memory am I suppose to have, Tim?) Also comparing the level of production behind a comic book, even a corporate mainstream superhero comic book, to movie production is an extreme exaggeration and underlines a severe misunderstanding of movie making. There are hundreds of people involved with the making of these movies he is talking about. And just because Callahan changes the definition of how we think about the making of BATMAN doesn't change the fact that mainstream superhero comics are far more low-scale collaborative than 'a work of cinema', which could mean BOTTLE ROCKET or THE DARK KNIGHT.

I think the point could be made, because I'm guilty of this, is we often consider the work of material like superhero comics worth talking about as by The Writer, first and foremost. Even Callahan named GREEN LANTERN as 'Geoff Johns' GREEN LANTERN. He isn't even the singular creator, what about his collaborators? The problem is that they change so frequently due to the monthly constraints of these company's publishing models. I loved Greg Rucka and Ed Brubaker's GOTHAM CENTRAL, but couldn't tell you who was drawing a lot of the issues anymore beside Michael Lark (and there were at least two or three others). I am sure Callahan is aware of this, considering his recent book of Grant Morrison and how sometimes Morrison's stories are defined by how good or bad the artists interpret his scripts.

2. Sure, superhero comics are serialized, normally. But they don't have to be. It's not inherent in the genre that they have to be serialized, and we've certainly seen some original graphic novels of varying lengths. But even when they are serialized, which is 99% of the time, that's not necessarily a handicap. It can be, if the creators are continually putting in artificial cliffhangers and not considering the long-term story. But Charles Dickens wrote serialized fiction. So did Victor Hugo, and many other canonical novelists. On television, "Deadwood" was serialized. So was "The Wire." Serialization does not make for bad stories. Bad stories make for bad stories. With the advent of the almost-automatic trade paperback collections, surely the anti-serialization bias has less relevance. Alternatively, people now complain about too many writers "writing for the trade," thus making the individual issues less significant--with less story, less plot, per issue. Superhero comics seem to be shifting away from arbitrarily determining structure in terms of 22-page units, and while that makes some readers of the monthly issues annoyed, it shows that the format does not necessarily drive the content the way it used to.

This 'deconstruction' misses the point of the critique, which is kind of sad considering Callahan has set the board for himself. A good writer worth his salt is of course going to make sure that he's planning for serialization. The problem isn't the format, because one can work with the format: the problem is that it allows for inconsistency due to the publishing methodology of these companies. Ten years ago, would Mark Millar and Steve McNiven been allowed to work 'late' on CIVIL WAR to deliver some kind of consistency? Probably not. That has changed, but it happens to lesser known books even now (take Chuck Dixon's quick removal from his DC comics, without even skipping a beat), and the pure interchangeability of creators on superhero comics definitely doesn't strike me as all that literary. Wouldn't it be Awesome if Fantagraphics forced Daniel Clowes to get whomever to do fill-in issues and whatnot? What this has to do with how Spider-Man isn't considered literature, I'm not sure.

3. Superhero comics were historically targeted to children, sure. Most of them aren't anymore. With the exception of the Johnny DC comics and the Marvel Adventures line, mainstream superhero comics are targeted at longtime readers in their 30s. The juvenile influence still runs deep, transformed by the need to appeal to an adult readership. Thus, we go from Mike Sekowsky's simple, blocky heroes in the Silver Age "Justice League of America" to Ed Benes's embarrassingly indiscreet artwork on the current incarnation. Both styles tap into the inner 12-year-old in the reader for different reasons, and neither seems to help makes the case for the literary value of superhero comics. But Sekowsky and Benes, whether you like their artwork or not, conform to a noble literary tradition--one of the core literary traditions of which comics are an offshoot: Romanticism.

Romanticism, in art and literature, has little to do with "love" and everything to do with exaggeration and the superhuman. Romanticism was, by far, the dominant mode of storytelling for thousands of years. The essential values of Romanticism are as follows: an emphasis on the ideal hero, unspoiled nature is superior to the world of mankind, innocence trumps experience, and the potent influence of the supernatural. Think of the classical heroes like Perseus or Theseus. Both ideal heroes. Both saved and/or trained by gods and goddesses who literally embodied the forces of nature. Both youthful characters who outwit more experienced, older men. Both use supernatural weapons or implements to help them complete their quests. Are they much different that Green Lantern, or Flash, or Spider-Man? In Silver Age comics, aliens and super-science often replaced gods and magic, but the stories are the same. Comic book heroes are part of the Romantic tradition spanning from ancient mythology through Beowulf and King Arthur and D'Artagnan.

It's only been about 150 years since Romanticism was not the dominant tradition. Jane Austen was one of the first writers to help Romanticism move toward Realism, but it was really the scientific developments of the Victorian Era--most clearly embodied by Charles Darwin--which helped Realism sprout in the latter half of the 19th century. Whether it was George Eliot in England or Emile Zola in France, Realism began to take hold in the Western world, and by the 20th century, if you weren't writing Realistic fiction, you weren't writing "literature." Romanticism, still the most popular mode, had to take the second-rate status of genre fiction, hiding out in the pulp magazines, in the movies, in the precursors to "Star Wars" and "Harry Potter." And, of course, in the comics books. The anti-Romatic bias has become so deeply imbedded in our culture, that unless something is Realistic, it cannot have literary merit. But it's a bias born out of artifice. Realism is a stylistic approach just as much as Romanticism is. Yet the bias continues, and superhero comics are condemned because they are part of a large, popular tradition that is as old as civilization.

Here I think Callahan is just confusing form and content....what's funny is that Callahan is aware of the Romantic movement, and its rejection, but not the streak of individualism when talking about 'collaboration'. It is all the same thing!

4. Because they are part of the classical Romantic tradition, of course superhero comics are exaggerated, but that doesn't necessarily mean they don't relate to life today. There was a tendency in the late Silver Age/Early Bronze Age to make superhero comics more "relevant." Perhaps it was the influence of the Underground Comix of the 1960s, or perhaps it was Vietnam and Watergate and social unrest across the country, but the zeitgeist was reflected in the comics, most memorably by Denny O'Neil. That injection of Realism into a Romantic mode of storytelling was highly influential, but any reading of those important works today -- go back into your "Green Lantern/Green Arrow" trades -- will show that the perceived Realism was just a shading on the larger landscape of Romanticism. Speedy may have become a junkie, but it was still handled in a Romantic way. Green Arrow and Green Lantern maintained their status as ideal heroes, and it was the corruption of civilization that led to this innocent young ward turning to heroin. Classically Romantic in style and content--it just seemed like a dose of Realism because, on a spectrum, with pure Romanticism on one side and Realism on the other, it was a bit more Realistic then, let's say, the Tattooed Man teaming up with Sinestro to rob an intergalactic banking empire.

But it's a fallacy to suppose that Romanticism bears no relevance on Reality. Romanticism reduces reality to symbolism, perhaps, but the symbols reflect the social forces of the time. The DC characters are easier to distill to their essence, and the most effective ones represent a single idea: Superman is "goodness," Batman is "vengeance," Green Lantern is "order," for example. Each decade creates stories that show the current cultural attitude toward those ideas. Superman, a nearly omnipotent force of goodness in the optimistic 1950s, became, by the 1970s, depowered as the country became more cynical toward the notion of what it means to be idealistically good. Today, if his comics seem more directionless than they used to, isn't it because our notions of good and evil have become far more complex as we deal with the post 9/11 uncertainty? Where do we, as a nation, stand in relation to goodness? If we don't know, how do we expect Superman to?

In the Marvel Universe, Iron Man, the god of technology, has risen to become the mass-media's icon of choice. In an era where every middle school child is wired into the global network at all times, the technological promise of Iron Man resonates on film not just because it was a well-made movie. The Romanticism he represents is the Romanticism which represents our society today -- unlike the from-an-earlier-era version of Superman as presented by Bryan Singer. The heroes we relate to may be the ones that symbolize us, not the ones who have the same lives we lead.

I am pretty sure that 3. & 4. are talking about the same thing...or just can't come to the realization that some people just do not have any interest in reading the exploits of Spider-Man versus Doctor Octopus in the conventional Marvel House style. I have always dreamed of doing a battle of mutant powers between the both paralyzed (well, just at the start of Grant Morrison's NEW X-MEN run) Professor Xavier and Magneto in a Chris Ware style, and becoming rich and famous.

5. Superhero comics can be repetitive. Endlessly so, or at least it seems that way. Then again, Paul Lucey, in his screenwriting guide "Story Sense," says that all drama boils down to seven basic story archetypes. Novelist Jim Thompson boiled it down even further, saying that there might be a million plots but there's only one story: Things aren't what they seem. Narrative has always been repetitive, retelling the same kinds of stories over and over. The heroic quest story has transcended every geographical boundary, and has been told in every culture in the world, with remarkably similar plot points. Repetition has even been a hallmark of various forms of literature and drama over the years. The African American oral tradition is built on the act of "signifyin'"--of taking a story and modifying it with a new twist. Medieval mystery plays in Europe told the same Bible stories again and again, with slight variations.

Comics, specifically superhero ones, are part of that kind of traditional storytelling. The excitement comes not from radically different approaches, but from revisions, reimaginings. Alan Moore's "Marvelman" (aka "Miracleman") was a slight variation of the Captain Marvel character and mileu; his "Watchmen" was the Charlton characters in a story with a sophisticated structure. Ed Brubaker and Matt Fraction's "Immortal Iron Fist" relied upon prior knowledge of the character while inventing a new, more complex backstory that fit within the established setting. And so on.

In superhero comics, each new writer or artist is expected to bring his or her own approach to the character, but to balance that fresh vision with the accepted tradition of the character. Yes, superhero comics can be repetitive, but that doesn't disqualify them from having value.

Again, misses the point of the criticism. Some really good stories exist about playing on the repetition of the superhero comics...but that doesn't change the fact that a superhero comic that has been published for 70 years only can tell so many different styles of stories. I really wish I could cite this, but I vaguely remember that there was a cyclical approach Marvel took toward publishing their characters...something along the lines that every 5 years they are writing for a 'new audience', as well as the 'same old audience'/long time users who buy whatever comes out and complain that it isn't what they were buying 5/10/15/20+ years ago, depending on what cycle they got hooked on. I honestly have no interest in these characters save when a good writer is tackling the work, and even then we can drift into 'well this is just referencing 20 year old stories by that other good writer...'. Again, I don't really know where he is seeing the 'devaluing' of superheroes as literature, as he hasn't really cited anything too clearly. I am sort of a reader of all tastes, and I can read ALL STAR SUPERMAN at the same time as GANGES and say 'hey, those are both really good!' This article probably isn't aimed at me, but I still find it to be kind of lazy and not really serving any purpose except for a pat on the back for some, and defending the stuff you liked as a kid and think everyone else should too.

6. Because of these slight variations -- and the storytelling tradition that comics are part of -- some readers feel as if superhero comics are too inbred. Too hermetically sealed from outside forces. Over-reliant on past history at the expense of future progress for the genre. But in this, too, superhero comic books are part of a larger heroic tradition in literature and drama. Superhero comics continually comment on themselves, even if they don't come from either Marvel or DC, because, like ancient story cycles or medieval sagas, the scope of the story far surpasses the individual tale. Think of superhero comics as a contemporary version of the King Arthur stories. Those stories began as fragments--as parts of some larger, inconsistent story--much like the Golden Age Marvel or DC stuff. But somewhere along the way--with Sir Thomas Malory for the Arthur stories, and with the Silver Age fans-turned-professional-creators like Roy Thomas in the case of the Golden Age comic books--the inconsistent bits were all woven together into a big story that was contradictory in the small details but made a kind of overall sense. The Arthur stuff is even more idiosyncratic than the superhero sagas, because what was originally a group of Anglo-Saxon legends was infected by the French influence after 1066 and Lancelot and his crew were affixed to stories they didn't originally take part it. And the French poetic style infiltrated England as well, leading to the birth of modern verse. The comic book equivalent might be something like the way Captain Marvel was shoehorned into DC continuity after Fawcett sold off the character, but even that didn't change the style of comic book storytelling. It just added more characters to the mix.

And even if the superhero universes are dense and seemingly impenetrable to outsiders, think of it this way. This basic superhero story -- starting with Superman in "Action Comics" #1, has been going, continuously, for 70 years. And that single story doesn't just encompass Superman and his supporting characters, it includes every superhero comic ever published, from DC and Marvel and from any other company willing to add to the complex narrative that is the "Grant Superhero Story." Douglas Wolk, in "Reading Comics" calls the Marvel and DC stories two grand corporate narratives, but I think it's actually a single big story. After all, Spider-Man and Superman have traded punches, and so have the Hulk and Batman, ad infinitum. You could play six degrees of Superman (Atom Eve hangs out with Invincible, Invincible was in "Marvel Team-Up" with Spider-Man, and Spider-Man has met Superman more than once. That sort of thing.) Superhero comics are actually part of an incredibly complicated experiment in grand-scale storytelling, the likes of which have never been seen in the history of narrative fiction. It's one big vast story so large that no single person has even read all of it (although Peter Sanderson and Mark Waid, if joined together into one super-reader, might come close). Superhero comics may feed on their own pasts, but in doing so, they also move forward incrementally, and help build the most complex long-form story in human history. That makes superhero comics uniquely impressive.

Why should I have to think of superhero comics as stories of King Arthur? Ok, and THIS just pisses me off, "Superhero comics may feed on their own pasts, but in doing so, they also move forward incrementally, and help build the most complex long-form story in human history. That makes superhero comics uniquely impressive." Again, changing your definitions in something attempting to be academic to fit your own means is just dishonesty. Claims of making something what they aren't doesn't make it so. Relativism is valid, but doesn't go to prove much of anything...especially when your grounding abstract of the acceptance of 'superheroes of literacy' cherry picks left and right. So what actually prevents superhero comics from making money? For those asleep in the back: the publishing model. These comics were and are designed to make money, and if 'good stories' by writers sell that month, they'll do it. Jemas at Marvel in 2000 had great luck getting interesting projects through, like Peter Bagge's MEGALOMANIACAL SPIDER-MAN, through the door...but it sold like crap to superhero fans and we won't see any more brave experiments like that again.

Does any of this make superhero comics more likely to be called "literary?" Will superhero stories appear more frequently in the "Best of…" anthologies? Will superhero comics overwhelm the recommended reading lists from "The Comics Journal?" Probably not. But that's just because we're stuck in an era with a Realism-dominated bias. Will this one Grand Superhero Story someday be seen as an unbelievable feat of narrative accomplishment? Probably. Are individual superhero stories as good as anything on the shelves? Absolutely. Should you read "Acme Novelty Library" and "Eightball" and "Kramer's Ergot?" Definitely.

Nope. Remember how DC wouldn't let Paul Pope's BATMAN YEAR 100 not get reprinted in "American's Best Comics 2007?" Exactly. Hey, The Comics Journal! I still say fucking DENNIS THE MENACE. What 'Realism-dominated bias'? I read his damn article, and have no idea what he's talking about still (ok, I just disagree with him). Though there is an appeal to one Grant Superhero Narrative (how Marxian!), I think it is kind of funny considering the "original sin" of Siegel/Shuster/DC Comics. Fantagraphics sold porno to get the comics they thought people should be reading until that finally bid off at the last minute. Sex and money, comics style! Which individual superhero stories are we talking about? Because if you mean 'any individual story', absolutely not. And while I am reading ACME NOVELTY LIBRARY and EIGHTBALL, I bet a lot of the Comic Book Resources readers probably aren't. Hey, it has been like four or so years since EIGHTBALL came out, hasn't it? Fantastic.

But don't forget about superheroes. They're something special.

No more so than cowboys or spacemen, of course.

-Jarrett

Generalities & Generalities Part One

2008-08-10T03:57:00.001-07:00

Timothy Callahan's article "In Defense of Superhero Comics" strikes me as nothing but a series of straw men and perceived victimization...but maybe that's because I was reading it at 4am after only 6 hours of sleep the previous day. Well, it was my initial reaction and so I actually looked up Mr. Callahan's blog to see what sort of material he reviews and talks about when he's not being featured on Comic Book Resources. Mostly reviews of the higher quality superhero stuff coming out (FINAL CRISIS), and why a lot of the current superhero comic stuff falls flat (TRINITY). In the comments under the post regarding this very article, 'anonymous' left this post:

"A lot of good ideas and observations in your new column, but in my opinion, the primary reason superhero comics get a bad rap (as opposed to "literary comics") is because a number of them just aren't written very well, regardless of any genre expectations. The biases you list magnify the extent of the perception that superhero books are poorly written, though."

Asked to explain what is meant by 'poorly written', anonymous fulfills:

"The usual suspects... clumsy and laborious dialogue, poorly executed exposition, uneven pacing. That being said, it's not as if "literary comics" are immune to the same things. If anything, the lack of professional polish, effective editing, and practiced craft in many self-published/indie "literary comics" results in some particularly awkward reads (although I guess to fans of the "literary comics" genre, this is part of its quirky appeal). I guess what I'm saying is that bad writing in superhero comics is no different from bad writing in "literary comics," or bad writing in fiction, television and movies, both in its distribution (Sturgeon's Law a.k.a. Sturgeon's Revelation liberally applies in all cases) and its core deficiencies."

Callahan responds: "Yup. Exactly."

So I'm not exactly sure why Callahan had to write up 3000 words what an anonymous individual explained in 112.

Maybe I am misreading, so let's go through this...

What are "literary comics?"

Not unlike literary novels, I would surmise.

When you hear that term, what do you think of?

Something like PERSEPOLIS, MAUS, EIGHTBALL, ACME NOVELTY LIBRARY?

Do you think of "Persepolis" or "Maus," because they are both serious autobiographical comics?

No, it is the approach to the medium those works make toward comics.
Do you think of "Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth" or "Ice Haven" because they both address small moments of despair within a formally experimental context?

I'm not necessarily sure if despair is what makes 'literary comics', but compare the handling of despair in any Chris Ware comic, or Daniel Clowes comic, to Marvel's AMAZING SPIDER-MAN "One More Day". Technical and that more ambiguous 'good storytelling gene' at work?

Do you think of "Jimbo" or "Powr Masters" because they're weird and you don't quite understand them?

That's sort of loaded and speaks to Mr. Callahan's own bias. I haven't read JIMBO yet (just ordered it), and let me tell you: if it sucks, it sucks.

Or do you think of "Watchmen" and "Sandman" because, well, they're supposed to be really good and they're written by British folks?

Well, WATCHMEN and SANDMAN (at least the first half of SANDMAN) are actually really good and I don't think either of the writers being British have much to do with that in any real sense, beyond speaking to the lowest common denominator a lot of American creative producers set for themselves.

Would anyone put Geoff Johns's "Green Lantern" in the category of "literature?" How about Ed Brubaker's "Captain America?" Doug Moench's "Moon Knight?" Roy Thomas's "All-Star Squadron?" Do any of these qualify?

I don't even know if Johns, Brubaker, Moench, or Thomas would put those works of their's into the category of "literature". But then neither would Clive Cussler or Tom Clancy. Actually, Clive Cussler gets brought up later on, but let's just forge ahead for right now...

Here's the thing about literature: the way we think about it constantly shifts, and even if we accept a division between "literary works" (which implies the serious, profound importance of the text) and "genre fiction" (which implies that a book about cowboys will have cowboys in it), the terms of that division are based solely on cultural bias. And cultural bias changes, from culture to culture, over time.

No way! Sorry for the snark, but I'm not exactly sure who Callahan is writing for. This is posted over Comic Book Resources, and maybe he thinks that these sort of statements and questions are required to set up for his comic book reading audience.

William Shakespeare, the paragon of all things literary -- what high school student in the Western world has graduated without reading at least one of his plays? -- was, of course, considered a populist, mainstream writer. The "First Folio," the most reliable and, at that time, most comprehensive publication of Shakespeare's plays, wasn't published until 1623. Shakespeare was dead for seven years by then. To crack the literary market, Shakespeare wrote narrative poems, not plays. "Venus and Adonis" and "The Rape of Lucrece" were his bids for literary immortality, while "Romeo and Juliet" and "Hamlet" were what he crafted to pay the bills. How many of us have read those two narrative poems? How many have read the two plays? Exactly.

Hey, everyone knows who William Shakespeare is! I graduated high school too, and took a few English courses at my local college! Again, this is quite a few hundred words spent saying absolutely nothing.

And "Romeo and Juliet" and "Hamlet" were both examples of genre fiction. We don't consider them genre fiction anymore, because our popular genres have changed, at least in name. "Romeo and Juliet" is a romantic tragedy. That's its genre. It conforms to the rules of that tradition just as "Hamlet" conforms to the rules of the revenge tragedy (it's just that Hamlet is a really ineffectual avenger). We still have romantic tragedy and revenge tragedies today, and works produced in those genres can be exceedingly popular. Think of recent films like "Message in a Bottle" for the former or "Kill Bill" for the latter. You'll note that both of those films have enthusiastic supporters, but neither was nominated for Best Picture of the Year. Neither was embraced as aesthetically or important by the austere keepers of the cultural flame.

I...really don't get what is happening there. Who didn't nominate KILL BILL or MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE for Best Picture of the Year? The Academy Awards? I can't even imagine anyone who knows what they are talking about regarding the world of cinema thinking of the Academy Awards as the 'austere keepers of the cultural flame'. What's sad is Callahan is going to bring up movies again to prove his point.

Perhaps I'm mixing up my analogy by throwing movies into the mix when we're talking about publishing, but Shakespeare's plays were dramatic performances first, and written literature second. The point is that Shakespeare wasn't considered any more literary during his time than Geoff Johns is today. Am I seriously lumping Johns in with Shakespeare? Not so much. Shakespeare is a unique genius who transcends his own time and the genres in which he worked. Johns may prove to be that -- it's possible -- but the point isn't that Johns is this generation's Shakespeare. The point is that cultural standards change and the automatic dismissal that superhero comics receive in the early 21st century has little to do with the quality of the work produced and everything to do with a cultural bias that we're currently wallowing in.

I understand what Callahan is saying, but it is still incredibly misguided. Callahan is asking these questions that are wrong, followed by a backtrack...incredibly lazy writing that we're all guilty of when we're tackling something we really don't know enough about. I've done it, and it really is paining me to see it right now.

"Just because Geoff Johns isn't literary today, doesn't mean he won't be Shakespeare in 500 years!" Get real, and Callahan even admits that. However, in a mere words afterwards he is saying "Shakespeare is a unique genius who transcends his own time and the genres in which he worked", which is parroting the very attitude which apparently this article exists to actually criticize. So what we really do have is a 'defense of superheroes' under the guise of 'challenging the ivory tower'.

Where did the cultural bias come from, though? Why are superhero comics automatically considered less literary, or less aesthetically significant, than the latest Jeffrey Brown release?

The bias probably came from critics who are approaching the medium with stuff like Cultural Theory behind them, and other modern marvels of literary discussion. Superhero comics (and by that, based on the examples of superhero work listed above by Callahan himself, I guess he only really means Marvel and DC superhero comics) don't get talked about for the same reason that DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES doesn't receive the same shake as THE WIRE (and remember that THE WIRE has been ignored by the 'keepers of the cultural flame' in The Emmys). I guess Jeffrey Brown is like the TIM AND ERIC AWESOME SHOW, GREAT JOB to Marvel or DC's TWO AND A HALF MEN. Here's that point I mentioned I would bring up again...

Apparently I'm not the only person who thought about the 'corporate' angle of superhero comics, so here's another bit from Callahan's own blog, in response to this article.

Reader Chris Dueker writes:

There is one complaint against superhero comics that I'd be curious to see you address further, that being the corporate ownership of the titular characters. This isn't the case for all heroes, but it is for most of them, and certainly for the most visible (Batman, Spider-Man, etc.) I think the fact that anyone who writes Batman, for example, loses some popular respect because:
1.  They didn't create the character
2.  They can't significantly change the character without approval
from the owners.
(Grant Morrison's current arc aside, such change is rarely approved.)
It also seems that the comics writers who achieve the most fame with a company owned character are the ones who are given the most freedom (Frank Miller's "Dark Knight Returns").

This doesn't make such comics writers any different from television writers, but I don't know if saying that accomplishes anything. Even today TV writers are not held in anywhere near the high cultural esteem as novelists.

Okay, let's see. First of all, I think the comparison to TV writers is almost valid, but not quite, because very few TV writers work on an extended run of episodes in a row, which is very common in superhero comics. The TV writers who do have a strong voice and a lot of control -- David Simon, for example -- are held in increasingly higher cultural esteem, though. And it all depends on what you mean by cultural esteem, and which novelists you're talking about, too. I don't think Clive Cussler is held in high cultural esteem, but he's a novelist who sells a lot of copies. And many of the novelists held in high cultural esteem are only esteemed by a small, elite group. Anyway, it's a sticky issue of high culture vs. low culture and all of that stuff, and I'd rather just move on than have to wade through that old debate. Especially since it's clearly changing as academia embraces popular culture more and more wholeheartedly.

I would say that Callahan doesn't want to actually write about what it is he's actually already talking about and doesn't realize it. I personally don't see much of a difference between literary and genre comics, though I understand that the difference exists for some people...and setting up your argument as 'literary versus genre' IS setting up 'high culture' and 'low culture'. Unless I'm missing something, is he not embracing that very old debate he doesn't want to talk about? Comics were considered low culture up until the last couple of decades, and the works that tend to find their way into TIME magazine's Top Ten lists are usually 'literary'....but so are the novels they select as well. I love George R.R. Martin's fantasy novels, but I'm not crying a river that some people might not like Martin's novels and would rather read a Dave Egger or Zadie Smith novel (those examples are like five years old...man am I behind on my reading). Looking at Callahan's favourite books, he has DeLillo, Nabokov, Melville, Shakespeare (ha!), Stephenson, Eco listed. Surely he can perceive the difference between a 30 year old Roy Thomas ALL STAR SQUADRON comic and Don DeLillo novels? He's written a book on Grant Morrison's early work....I mean, he must realize why he enjoys Grant Morrison more than Doug Moench MOON KNIGHT?

So let's talk about the notion that superhero comics can't be as good as literary comics because of the corporate control of the characters. I think it is a giant hindrance to quality, sure. The more comic writers and artists I talk to, the more stories I hear about how individual issues were changed because of corporate mandates. A distinct lack of freedom, plus editorial meddling, probably get in the way of superhero comics being anywhere near as good as they might be. But that doesn't mean superhero comics can't be good. It just means they often are not -- largely because of the corporate influence. It's not an inherent aesthetic flaw in the genre; it's a flaw in the business model. The same is surely true for novelists who are forced to make concessions to a perceived audience -- or from publisher demands, and the same is definitely true for anyone working on a movie with any sort of reasonably high budget. So comics aren't along in their restrictions.

*Some snarking comment about the obviousness of this statement* I am just amazed that it has be repeated so often that what most good and readable creative content is down to its execution and merit. I don't think I'm being unfair in picking at the article for not talking about, well, obvious things....but the article is so obvious, why not some more thrown in for good measure?

Anyway, this is turning into quite an epic of redundancy so I'm going to take a break and return to this later tonight or tomorrow...otherwise Part Two is going to vanish into the either of my reviews of SINESTRO CORPS WAR and BPRD! I think I'll just start typing for Part Two right now....

-Jarrett

Thoughts on Basil Wolverton

2008-08-09T21:10:00.001-07:00

MAD #11. "The first time I ever saw the work of Basil Wolverton was on the cover of MAD number 11, in 1954. I was eleven years old and it changed forever the way that I looked at the world", says the pull quote of R. Crumb on the back of THE ORIGINAL ART OF THE BASIL WOLVERTON. When I initially saw this image, I thought it was Robert Crumb as it pretty well looked like the sort of thing he would draw. Obviously my entire frame of reference was wrong by 10 years, not realizing how long and prolific MAD was.

It wasn't until researching a Canadian Art History paper on General Idea that I began to realize how relevant LIFE magazine was before I was born, and now when I'm looking at this image one sees that extra added layer of satire (beyond just the simply "Beautiful Girl of the Month"). Harvey Kurtzman, editor of MAD at this point, made it a habit of satirizing all walks of life, in this case LIFE, and later on with his Little Annie Fanny strip in PLAYBOY with Will Elder made fun of the values of the very publication it appeared. What I didn't realize until very recently though was the featured 'model' on the cover actually was pre-existing.

From the bastion of truth, Wikipedia:

In 1946 Wolverton won a contest to depict "Lena Hyena", the world's ugliest woman, a running gag in Al Capp's Li'l Abner newspaper strip where Lena remained unseen beneath an editorial note stating her face had been covered to protect readers. Capp, responding to popular demand, announced a contest for artists to submit their interpretations to be judged by Boris Karloff, Frank Sinatra and Salvador Dali. Out of 500,000 entries, Wolverton's was the winner; it appeared in a Li'l Abner daily and Life magazine. Wolverton's fame briefly lead to Life and Pageant printing his caricatures. The Lena portrait typified the unique "spaghetti and meatballs" style he employed regularly thereafter.

So not only were Wolverton's caricatures suddenly appearing in LIFE magazine, but there is now a kind of connection of the fine arts with Salvador Dali among the members of the jury involved with the proceedings. I can't help but think back to Dali's own Soft Construction With Boiled Beans (Premonition of Civil War) looking at Lena.

In THE ORIGINAL ART OF BASIL WOLVERTON, Giuseppe Arcimboldo's 'vegetable portraits' (ex. Vertumnus) are used as a historical grounding in discussing Wolverton's work.* The first time I encountered Arcimboldo's work, I thought I came across a really talented painter working in the last thirty years (see a modern example using the Arcimboldo approach). The artwork that immediately sprang to my mind though thinking about the artistic merit and explaining of the power of the MAD #11 cover was Quentin Matsys' "A Grotesque Old Woman" aka "The Ugly Dutchess"

When I first saw this image, I swear I was looking at yet another extremely talented postmodern painter tackling Tolkien or World of Warcraft characters. Again, these works are 500 years old, and are (to me) more relevant and interesting than most paintings of that same era. Anyway, what we are seeing in Wolverton, Arcimboldo, and Matsys are caricature and the grotesque. Here's the some background and history on the concepts of caricature and the grotesque, going back as far as when Matsys and Arcimboldo were painting their works in the 1500s, from THE ORIGINAL ART OF BASIL WOLVERTON:

Caricature generally consists of exaggerating a subject's physical characteristics-usually facial features-to comic effect. Caricature is usually associated with satire, exposing a political figure (or other celebrity) to ridicule through the association of their appearance with that of a pig, or vampire, or other creature-in the case of Erhard Schon's famous sixteenth-century woodcut supposedly depicting Martin Luther, Luther is shown as a set of bagpipes being played by the Devil. Though it didn't really catch on until the seventeenth century, caricature is as old as art making: comically exaggerated portraits have been found in the ruins of Pompeii. In fact, caricatures may have deeper biological significance than their social and political uses suggest, reflecting the human ability to abstract complex fields of information into a few simple iconographic reductions, thus linking caricature to the roots of applied semiotics and graphic communication.
-Doug Harvey, Pg. 18.

*DEEEEEP BREATH* And now, the grotesque!

The subject of the grotesque is more complicated, dating to the late 15th century discovery of The Golden Palace of Nero in Rome. Initially mistaken for a grotto, the palace's millennium-and-a-half-old decorations caused a sensation among the young artists of the emerging Renaissance (including Michelangelo and Raphael), who devised a new style-le grottesche-to incorporate the category-smashing hybrids of human, animal, and plant imagery they found there. As this fantastic, humanist response to the strictly ordered sensibilities of the Church dominated Middle Ages quickly spread, its characteristics became more extreme, spawning such extravagant visionaries as Hieronymous Bosch and Giuseppe Arcimboldo. Over time, the term "grotesque" came to take on connotations of nightmarish monstrosity, the upheaval of hierarchy, shameless carnality, and unblinking observation of the darker aspects of human nature.
-Doug Harvey, pg. 19

Even following out of Bosch you have Pieter Bruegel (also Flemish, right along with Matsys) who Robert Hughes compared favourably to Robert Crumb in CRUMB....boy it all starts getting a tad like that Robert Crumb JOE BLOW comic, doesn't it? Oh yes, one can even say that someone like Drew Friedman was probably influenced by Basil Wolverton, considering his grotesque caricatures of celebrities. And who is a big Friedman fan? Daniel Clowes, who has an entire graphic novel called CARICATURE. In Todd Hignite's IN THE STUDIO, Clowes also talks about the influence of THE MAD READER on him. Anyway, I bet like me you had no idea where the idea of the grotesque came from, right? Who says you don't learn anything from reading my blog!

Shudder. I'll also add that what actually got me to pick up the ORIGINAL ART book was John Kricfalusi's blog and his love and admiration of Wolverton's work (list of blog posts about Wolverton).

-Jarrett

*There's a certain irony with placing Arcimboldo's 'vegetable works' with Wolverton's 'spaghetti and meatball style', I suppose.

Sketch(s) 5

2008-08-08T02:41:00.000-07:00

And let him be known as....DADDY MOOLAH GREENBACK!

More of a sketch from memory of all the 'fat cat' types of the old comic strip, without actually going back and looking how they were actually draw. Played with various Photoshop filters to try to decay the image, thinking of maybe creating a poor reproduction of some long forgotten one gag story type, but either I'm not adept at Photoshop, or Photoshop filters just look like poop. I personally bank on the former.

The music video for "Dust In The Wind" by Kansas? A fucking triumph. Just another excuse to draw from life, trying different lines, drawing hair, faces, etc.

-Jarrett