2009 March
Robot Reviews: Three from D&Q
Nicolas
Drawn and Quarterly recently released three small, slim graphic novels, all dealing with similar themes of loss, death and the human experience, though they vary widely in approach.
Nicolas
by Pascal Girard
Drawn and Quarterly, 64 pages, $9.95.
Aching with regret and longing, Nicolas is Girard’s chronicle of personal grief following the death of his younger brother. Rather than delve into any sort of lengthy or more traditional narrative, he chooses instead to lay out his autobiographical story in stark, short vignettes, utilizing a crisp, minimalist style that’s completely devoid of background or extemporaneous detail.
Overall it’s a smart choice and it really helps the book feel intimate and personal. As Girard moves from childhood to adulthood he attempts to give a rounded portrait of his behavior and doesn’t attempt to portray himself as a wounded angel. He’s selfish and self-absorbed and not necessarily above using his tragic story to help him get attention, particularly from women. More significantly, however, is how his inner thoughts and behavior ring true for anyone who had to attend a family funeral as a young child.
- March 3, 2009 @ 12:34 PM by Chris Mautner
That’s where the money is
Grumpy Old Fan
Whatever happened to comic book stories for the sake of story? Does everything have to have universe shattering impact? Doesn’t anyone rob banks anymore?
It’s been just over a month (well, February) since the end of Final Crisis, but there’s no lack of events at DC. Green Lantern and Green Lantern Corps are still building up to The Blackest Night, Wonder Woman is in the middle of “Rise of the Olympian,” and this week sees both Superman’s move to New Krypton and “Battle for the Cowl’s” kickoff. Each of these storylines is pregnant with the possibility of radical change, and there’s still Flash: Rebirth to go.
- March 3, 2009 @ 11:36 AM by Tom Bondurant
Rugg provides artwork for Street Angel short film
from the Street Angel short film
Earlier this month Kevin posted about a Street Angel short film, based on Jim Rugg and Brian Maruca’s acclaimed mini-series from SLG. Now MTV’s Splash Page posts some new art by Rugg, created for an animated sequence in the film.
The director, Lucas Testro, told MTV that the animated sequence will reveal the origin story of the series’ hero, Jesse Sanchez, and shed some light on her past. Very cool!
For more info on the film, check out its Facebook page.
- March 3, 2009 @ 09:54 AM by JK Parkin
Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes
The Unwritten #1
Retailers | The apartment of Ryan Higgins, owner of Comics Conspiracy in Sunnyvale, Calif., burned on Saturday. His girlfriend received burns on her hands, but she and the dog escaped the fire. Higgins writes on Twitter that it, “looks like comics and some clothes made it.” [Twitter]
Creators | In advance of his appearance at STAPLE! The Independent Media Expo, cartoonist Jeffrey Brown discusses the personal nature of his work, the meaning of “indie,” and The X-Men: “… it was my dream growing up to draw X-Men. I’ve been kicking around the idea of collaborating with an artist on a mainstream genre book like that. I’d love to.” [Decider Austin]
Creators | Mike Carey and Peter Gross hold court on their upcoming Vertigo series The Unwritten, and the collaboration process. “I noticed, looking through them the other day, that I sent a lot of what I called Bath emails,” Gross says. “I like to soak in the tub and I’d just sort of let Mike’s latest idea steep at the same time, and I would literally get these inspired epiphanies that amazed me. We were in some sort of creative frenzy for a couple of weeks, and it’s pretty interesting to look back through those emails and see how the strong ideas grew and the weak ones fell away until the story grew to a point where Mike was ready to write a first draft. It’s the most excited I’ve been in the bath in years!” [Sequential Tart]
Pop culture | New York magazine rolls out a package titled “New York as Graphic Novel,” which includes a strip by Alex Robinson, the city’s notable comic-book locations (both fictional and real), creators’ picks of comics in which the city plays a prominent part, and a look at Watchmen‘s version of New York City. [New York]
Education | Two professors at Misericordia University point to DC Comics’ short-lived series New Guardians as “a 1980s attempt at multiculturalism that’s gone pretty terribly wrong.” Poor, poor Extrano. [The Times-Leader]
- March 3, 2009 @ 08:38 AM by Kevin Melrose
After Watchmen, what next Hollywood?
Ronin
The Onion’s AV Club runs through a list of other comics they’d like to see get the full cinematic treatment, starting with Frank Miller’s Ronin:
Miller doesn’t have the best track record with Hollywood, especially not with his directorial debut, The Spirit, hanging over any project bearing his name. But surely financiers can still remember what a payday Watchmen director Zach Snyder got out of Miller’s 300. Besides, Ronin was practically written for the screen to begin with, and it fits particularly well into the current blockbuster-action aesthetic. Samurai, demons, robot battles, shifting realities, explosions, sex, and above all, massive mindfucks as the story behind the story keeps changing—Miller’s breakout book looks dense and muddy on the page, but it’d look terrific on the big screen. A few years ago, Stomp The Yard director Sylvain White was reportedly attached to a Ronin project… so where is it?
Other suggestions include Dave Sim’s High Society, Craig Thompson’s Blankets and James Robinson’s run on Starman. The site is particularily comics focused this week (in celebration of the Watchmen release no doubt) as they’ve also got a 101 guide to superhero comics for the uninitiated and the usual bimonthly slate of reviews.
- March 3, 2009 @ 07:00 AM by Chris Mautner
Food or Comics | A roundup of money-related news
Amazon Kindle
• As JK Parkin noted yesterday, SLG Publisher Dan Vado spoke frankly at his WonderCon panel, putting in very grim terms what the economic climate and Diamond’s new order minimum could mean to his company: “I’ve done this for 23 years. I can’t say we’ll make it to the end of 2009. And that’s shocking to say because I’ve lived through a lot of crap.”
SLG Publishing Editor-in-Chief Jennifer de Guzman revealed last month that her hours have been cut by 40 percent “until business picks up.”
• Despite layoffs at DC Comics and other publishers, Rich Johnston reports Marvel Comics employees have been told their jobs are secure for at least the rest of the year.
• Marvel Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada and Executive Editor Tom Brevoort tackle questions about the possible effects e-devices like Kindle could have on the comics industry.
“I don’t see 10%, 20% or any percentage of comic fans ‘migrating’ away,” Quesada says, alluding to recent comments made by DC Comics’ John Cunningham. “I see 10%, 20% or some percentage of brand-new fans migrating in. I see all these new advancements and technologies as inroads to comics. They’re additive. I don’t see them as taking anything away, and part of the reason is … technology never goes backward. It always advances. No one wants a black-and-white TV. No one wants a horse and buggy. The digital revolution is here. Technology will never stop moving, and it will advance beyond this. And the one thing I am certain is that as long as we embrace it, we will be able to grow with it. IF we shun it or look at it as the enemy, then it’ll run us over and leave us dead on the road.”
• Asked during a WonderCon panel whether the free online anthology MySpace Dark Horse Presents generates revenue for the publisher, Dark Horse editor Shawna Gore answered, “It’s essentially outreach. Basically what MySpace is trying to be, is the MTV of the Internet, which makes them attract younger viewers.”
- March 3, 2009 @ 06:14 AM by Kevin Melrose
Horrocks revamps Hicksville
New Zealand cartoonist Dylan Horrocks, creator of the seminal and excellent Hicksville, has updated his Web site, and entered the wild and woolly world of Webcomics with two new serials:
The American Dream: this is a totally new story that I’ve been working on for some years (I think I began writing notes for it in 2003 or 2004). Not sure exactly how long it will be, but probably less than 100 pages, and I plan on putting up a few new pages per week.
Sam Zabel & the Magic Pen: I already published the first chapter of this story in Atlas #2 & 3 (from the wonderful Drawn & Quarterly), so the first 26 pages will look pretty familiar to anyone who read them there. But I’ve now added colour (which I’d always hoped to do eventually), and of course from chapter two onwards, it’ll be all new.
Horrocks has a couple other short stories up as well and also says he plans on serializing the main story from Atlas on his site, and that he will still be collecting these tales in book form at some point down the road. Go check it out.
- March 3, 2009 @ 05:30 AM by Chris Mautner
Swallow Me Whole, Graveyard Book nominated for L.A. Times book prize
Swallow Me Whole
The Los Angeles Times has announced their 2008 Book Prize finalists, and both Swallow Me Whole by Nate Powell and The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman are listed in the Young Adult Literature category.
They join Terry Pratchett’s Nation, Candace Fleming’s The Lincolns: A Scrapbook Look at Abraham and Mary and Oscar Hijuelos’s Dark Dude on the list. In 1992, Art Spiegelman’s Maus won the award in the fiction category.
Top Shelf, which published Swallow Me Whole, issued a press release on the announcement, which you can find after the jump.
Congratulations to both Powell and Gaiman.
- March 3, 2009 @ 04:00 AM by JK Parkin
Brubaker’s Angel of Death debuts today
Angel of Death
Can’t believe I almost forgot to post this … Ed Brubaker’s web series, Angel of Death, debuted on Crackle.com today. The series about a female assassin stars Zoe Bell, Lucy Lawless, Doug Jones, and Ted Raimi.
- March 2, 2009 @ 08:08 PM by JK Parkin
WonderCon | Thoughts on Day Three
Day three at WonderCon was much shorter for me, as I covered two panels for the main CBR site, walked the floor a little bit to say goodbye to some folks and then headed home.
• I did talk to one retailer and one publisher on Sunday. The retailer said that by midday Saturday, he had made as much money as he had during the entire 2008 WonderCon. Everything else was gravy. The publisher was too busy selling books to really talk to me too long, but sales were good for them. As far as crowds go, Sunday did feel a little lighter than Saturday when I got there, but when I hit the floor after my panels it had really picked up. And Matt Maxwell, whose Strangeways we’re currently syndicating right here on Robot 6, said he sold more books Saturday “than on entire weekends at other shows.”
- March 2, 2009 @ 04:07 PM by JK Parkin
MODOK reigns supreme in March
It’s the return of MODOK March Madness over at the MODOK March Madness blog, which will feature various fan art of “The Man, The Myth, The MODOK” all this month. So far this one is my favorite:
MODOK
But it’s still early yet.
- March 2, 2009 @ 02:01 PM by JK Parkin
Collect This Now! The Cereal Killings
The Cereal Killings
Perhaps this is the sort of work that pundits were fearing would die along with the indie comic pamphlet (which, Diamond policy or no Diamond policy, is pretty much six feet under by this point). An eight-issue mini-series, published by Fantagraphics between 1992 and 1995, The Cereal Killings is an awkward work at times, and betrays the youth of it’s creator, James Sturm, both artistically and thematically. I get the sense, both from the work and in my limited conversations with Sturm, that he was often frustrated by its quality and indeed in his interview with Tom Spurgeon in issue # 251 of The Comics Journal he calls it an outright “failure.” I can’t help but wonder if Sturm had not serialized the story but attempted to publish it in one big graphic novel chunk if he wouldn’t have simply abandoned it midway and moved on to something else.
That would be a shame because The Cereal Killings has a lot going for it. Despite its noticeable problems , it’s an enjoyable, at times gripping work and is a seminal step in Sturm’s development as an artist.
- March 2, 2009 @ 01:00 PM by Chris Mautner
Talking Comics with Tim: Chris Schweizer
Crogan's Vengeance
Chris Schweizer is a creator that lives in my neck of the woods: Atlanta. I always enjoy the opportunity to support (albeit imported) local talent. I recently email interviewed him about Crogan’s Vengeance (Oni Press), described by the publisher as “the first in an ongoing series of adventure graphic novels spanning continents and centuries as cartoonist Chris Schweizer climbs through the various branches of the Crogan clan’s family tree! Volume one of THE CROGAN ADVENTURES series introduces us to ‘Catfoot’ Crogan, an honest sailor who finds himself thrust into a life of piracy! Crogan never wanted to be a pirate and he never dreamed he’d wind up at odds with the most dangerous buccaneer ever to sail the Spanish Main! But there’s more to this fight for ‘Catfoot’ than just staying alive, there’s also CROGAN’S VENGEANCE!”
As noted at Schweizer’s own site: “He received his BFA in Graphic Design from Murray State University in 2004, and did his post-graduate work in Sequential Art at the Atlanta branch of the Savannah College of Art and Design . . . he now teaches as a professor of Sequential Art and Animation at SCAD-Atlanta.”
Thanks to Schweizer for an interview and thanks also to Oni’s Cory Casoni for facilitating the interview.
Tim O’Shea: Your pirate tale really relies on strategy being conveyed in battle partially with dialogue and visually, how did you strike a balance that did not make it too detailed or not detailed enough, while still being entertaining?
Chris Schweizer: A lot of it was gut instinct and hope. In some of the scenes where strategy came into play, I was very mindful of the potential to get bogged down in factual minutia. I tried to combat this a couple of different ways – firstly, by giving the bare minimum amount of information needed to understand what was going on, making sure that once an idea had been put forth in dialogue that it wasn’t repeated in subsequent dialogue. The other was panel composition and subject focus. Showing the different members of the crew in varying states of readiness rather than simply following the protagonist, Catfoot, around, bought me a little bit of extra reader attention during these expository battle preparations… at least, I hope it did.
- March 2, 2009 @ 11:50 AM by Tim O'Shea
Wolverine: Not just a weapon, but an offensive one
A certain hirsute mutant may want to rethink that next trip to England.
The Coventry Telegraph reports that “deadly razor-sharp hand claws” were seized last week by customs officials at the international Parcelforce depot near Coventry Airport.
The “Tomahawk Claw Gauntlet,” produced by Tomahawk U.S.A., is classified as an offensive weapon under British law, and will be destroyed. It had been destined for an address in London.
The newspaper describes the claws as “like those wielded by X-Men superhero Wolverine.” I’m sure Marvel wants to be associated with that.
Hyped by the manufacturer as a “monstrous handspike” — paging Dr. Freud — that “will send your foes running in the other direction,” the 17-inch gauntlet retails for $67.
Logan, consider yourself warned.
- March 2, 2009 @ 11:34 AM by Kevin Melrose
Strangeways: The Thirsty – Page 045
Written by Matt Maxwell. Art by Gervasio and Jok.
No funny comment, just an admonition to click here for the archives to catch the story from the beginning.
- March 2, 2009 @ 11:17 AM by Matt Maxwell