2009 May
Talking Comics with Tim: Nick Bertozzi
Iraq War Stories
A few weeks back when I heard about Iraq War Stories, Nick Bertozzi’s project with his School of Visual Arts Comic Book Storytelling Workshop students, I wanted to immediately interview him. Here’s the advance write-up that caught my attention: “I’ve been teaching cartooning at The School of Visual Arts for a while now and this past year I asked the students in my Comic Book Storytelling Workshop to adapt stories that take place in Iraq during the War. Most of the students found stories from bloggers on the web, a few adapted stories told to them by friends, and one student, himself a veteran of the Iraq War, wrote and drew a story based on his own experience.
My good friend Dean Haspiel was wise enough to suggest that we put the stories up on the internet for all to see at the internet comics site that I’m part of, ACT-I-VATE.com.
The purpose of this anthology is not to wave a flag for or against the war—though some of the stories certainly have a political bent—instead, I asked the students to give me stories that would give the reader a sense of how the War has affected individuals, both American and Iraqi.”
The anthology series will release its second installment this Sunday.
Tim O’Shea: The anthology series will feature 13 stories ultimately–selected from the Comic Book Storytelling Workshop, how many students in total submitted stories?
Nick Bertozzi: I’m waiting to hear back from two more students who are making very slight tweaks to their comics, so there may be 15 comics when we’re all done.
- May 15, 2009 @ 03:00 PM by Tim O'Shea
Strangeways: The Thirsty – page 071
Gaaah! This is what happens when you have to pack the family off and get ready for an upcoming comic show at the same time. Apologies for the tardiness.
Stick around until the end of the post to divine the winner of this week’s MURDER MOON giveaway.
Welp, looks like the Sheriff got his. Maybe things’ll come together after all.
Okay, the winner of this week’s contest is….drumroll please…
John Gorenfeld, raconteur and all around swell guy. Give John a big hand, everybody. Come back next Wednesday to get in on the next giveaway. But a new page goes up on Monday at 1pm (not 2).
As usual, if you want to catch up on the story, hit the archives right here.
See you all after the San Jose Super-Con, which is in beautiful downtown San Jose this weekend. I’ll be there with plenty of books for sale and an advance look at the rest of chapter 3 of THE THIRSTY. And Five-Minute Stories! And bon mots! See you there.
- May 15, 2009 @ 02:02 PM by Matt Maxwell
Thin Wallets, Fat Bookshelves: A look at Fantagraphics’ fall/winter catalog
Gahan Wilson: 50 Years of Playboy Cartoons
OK, I know Fantagraphics has been posting pages from their new fall and winter catalog, but I thought it might be useful to run through their upcoming titles anyway, if only to have them all listed here in one easy to link-to post.
Anyway …
September
All and Sundry: Uncollected Works 2004-2009 by Paul Hornschemeier. 128 pages, $22.99 hardcover. As the title says it’s a compendium of Hornschemeier’s short works, most of which haven’t been in print, at least in the US, up till now. Hornschemeier seems to do better with short pieces than with longer narratives (Mother Come Home being the exception) so this should be quite good.
- May 15, 2009 @ 12:32 PM by Chris Mautner
Slash Print | Following the digital evolution
Vs.
Webcomics | Writing for Publisher’s Weekly Comic Week, Ada Price profiles Smith Magazine and its various webcomics, which include Shooting War, A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge and Next-Door Neighbor.
Webcomics | NYC Graphic profiles Eisner nominee Joe Infurnari, creator of The Transmigration of Ultra-lad and the Next-Door Neighbor story “Vs.” Joe’s also annotating “Vs.” over at Act-i-vate.
Digital comics + e-Devices | Straight.com has a good overview of comics being made available on mobile phones. The writer, whose credits I didn’t see anywhere on the page, spoke with reps from iVerse, Arcana Comics and Golden Age Collectibles, a Vancouver-based retailer.
- May 15, 2009 @ 11:26 AM by JK Parkin
Straight for the art | Strange Turkish comic
Pavement Myth
Over on his LiveJournal, Johnny Ryan shares some pages from Pavement Myth, a comic about … well, I’ll let Ryan describe it:
A friend of mine sent me these comics from Turkey. It’s a six volume comic autobiography of this Turkish actor Masist Gul, aka The Pavement Wolf (1947-2003). The first volume is about how a witch finds him in a toilet when he is a baby, then for the next several years proceeds to horribly beat, torture and starve him. The 2nd volume deals with his brutal revenge.
- May 15, 2009 @ 10:35 AM by Chris Mautner
Art teams for DC’s Red Circle one-shots named
Hangman
DC Comics has revealed details about the Archie Heroes/Red Circle one-shots they’ll release in August. We already know J. Michael Straczynski is writing them, but today they shared the art teams, as well as some new preview artwork from the books.
“Each book slides off the next, showing the interconnectedness of the world, how fate can launch a bank shot from one person to the next,” JMS said.
So here’s the rundown on the art teams:
- The Hangman: Tom Derenick and Bill Sienkiewicz, whose work you can see to the right. Editor Joey Cavalieri says it’s about “…a doctor who’s been spared the executioner’s noose (a circle of rope, get it?) only to be confronted with a choice that condemns him to roam around Earth forever, aiding everyone in his orbit.”
- Inferno: Greg Scott, who worked on Marvel’s newuniversal:1959 and BOOM!’s Galveston mini-series. It’s about an amnesiac who can set things on fire.
- The Shield: Scott McDaniel and Andy Owens. “The Shield is the spearhead of a program meant to encompass America’s borders, but quickly becomes a link in a bigger chain,” Cavalieri said.
- The Web: Roger Robinson and Hilary Barta; Robinson did the art for the Blue Beetle/Hardware team-up in DC’s Brave and the Bold title. He also did these really cool game menu screens for a canceled Flash video game.
As previously reported, the one-shots will introduce these heroes to the regular DC Universe.
- May 15, 2009 @ 09:50 AM by JK Parkin
Straight for the art | Whitechapel redesigns the Octopus
Pia Guerra redesigns the Octopus
On his Whitechapel message board, Warren Ellis has a fun exercise he throws out every week where he asks artists to redesign a character of his choice. This week was the Octopus, suggested by Jess Nevin, and it resulted in some pretty cool art. That’s Pia Guerra’s above, and you can see all of them by going here.
- May 15, 2009 @ 09:01 AM by JK Parkin
Two Vikings beating the tar out of each other for a whole issue? Yes, please
From "Northlanders" #17, by Brian Wood and Vasilis Lolos
I’ve been a big fan of Vasilis Lolos since I discovered his art in 2007 with The Pirates of Coney Island, his entertaining yet sadly unfinished Image Comics miniseries with writer Rick Spears. Since then Lolos has more than made up for that minor disappointment with his graphic novel The Last Call and collaborations like the Eisner-winning 5, the follow-up Pixu, and the upcoming Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Tales of the Vampire.
But I’m always looking for more of his work. So I was happy to see Lolos was teaming with writer Brian Wood for a standalone issue of Vertigo’s Northlanders, and thrilled to get a peek at the results in this preview at MySpace Comic Books.
If I recall correctly, the issue, titled “The Viking Art of Single Combat,” is one long battle, with two warriors hammering away at each other for 22 pages as the narrator dissects the fighting techniques of the Norsemen. Ah, Northlanders. If the issue didn’t already have me at “Vasilis Lolos,” the premise would’ve reeled me in for sure.
Northlanders #17 goes on sale March 27.
- May 15, 2009 @ 08:10 AM by Kevin Melrose
Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes
Will Elder
Retailing | Comic stores in Florida are feeling the effects of the recession as customers cut back on purchases and sell their prized collections. “Nine months ago we were getting three to five collections a week, three months ago we were getting three to four collections a day and now we are seeing six to seven collections a day,” says Joel Kilmer, owner of Big Dog Comics. [TCPalm]
Creators | New Jersey’s Jewish Standard marks the one-year anniversary of the death of Will Elder with a cover story examining how the MAD cartoonist helped to bring “a Yiddish sensibility” to American culture in the 1950s: “American kids didn’t know it but Will and [Harvey] Kurtzman were hitting them over the head with Jewish humor. This was the way they thought about the world, and America’s youth, ready to question established values and mores, ate it up.” [The Jewish Standard]
Legal | Charles Brownstein, executive director of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, provides a little commentary on recent analysis of the Christopher Handley and Dwight Whorley cases. [The Comics Reporter]
Conventions | This weekend, it’s the eighth annual East Coast Black Age of Comics Convention in Philadelphia. [The Philadelphia Inquirer]
- May 15, 2009 @ 07:08 AM by Kevin Melrose
Annotations for Trinity issue #50
Trinity #50
Maybe it’s just me, but this was one deep issue of Trinity.
Lately I’ve been thinking about the way I approach fictional universes, and had put some of that into words on Tuesday with regard to Star Trek. Accordingly, Trinity #50 gives me the chance to expand on that.
For those of you concerned about such things, this means very little trivia and a lot of rambling. You have been warned.
SPOILERS FOLLOW
LEAD STORY
“So…” was written by Kurt Busiek, pencilled by Mark Bagley, inked by Art Thibert, colored by Pete Pantazis, and lettered by Pat Brosseau; Rachel Gluckstern, associate editor; Mike Carlin, editor.
- May 14, 2009 @ 03:07 PM by Tom Bondurant
Robot Reviews: Huh, they still make comic books?
The Unwritten #1
by Mike Carey and Peter Gross
Vertigo, $1.
I’ve always kind of wondered what it must be like for those who are famous merely because of their genetics, where your choices seem to consist of milk that connection for everything it’s worth or spend your entire life trying to extract yourself from those who are impressed because you share a last name with someone they’ve heard of.
Unwritten adds a nice twist to that dilemma. It’s main character, Tom Taylor, is the son of a novelist almost universally adored for a series of fantasy novels that bear an almost striking resemblance to the Harry Potter series. The father having disappeared, Tom spends his days signing books at conventions and trying to figure out how to stand apart from his father’s literary creation. The problem is, he may actually be his father’s literary creation, instead of a flesh and blood one, if you get my meaning.
Carey and Gross do a really solid job making Tom a sympathetic character and setting up his identity problems while tantalizingly hinting at other mysteries yet to be revealed. My only gripe is that I wish they had avoided the Potter mythos entirely — they ape it so much its distracting — and had instead opted to craft a more original fantasy world as a backdrop. Still, I’m eager to see how the series develops, and it’s been a long time since I’ve said that about any Vertigo comic.
- May 14, 2009 @ 02:00 PM by Chris Mautner
DC previews ‘Green Lantern’ feature from Wednesday Comics
Green Lantern
DC’s The Source blog continues to roll out previews for their upcoming Wednesday Comics title; today, they’ve got a page from Green Lantern by Kurt Busiek and Joe Quinones.
I like the book will not only feature fringe characters like Kamandi and the Metal men, but also DC’s more prominent characters like Superman and Green Lantern.
- May 14, 2009 @ 12:30 PM by JK Parkin
Talbot takes us to Grandville in October
Bryan Talbot has a new book coming in August October from Dark Horse, called Grandville. Check out the trailer above, and check out his website for some preview pages.
- May 14, 2009 @ 11:25 AM by JK Parkin
Okay, sometimes comics collections are worth something
Jon North
After posting numerous items about collectors discovering their treasured comics aren’t worth much of anything, it’s a little refreshing to come across this story about a Michigan man who learned the contents of his dead father’s longboxes are valued at $100,000.
Detroit’s Channel 4 News was so excited that they broadcast live from Wonderworld Comics & Games in Taylor, where Jonathon North had the comics appraised.
The collection, which was left to North by his father, contains Golden Age and Silver Age comics, including Showcase #4 and The Brave and the Bold #28.
Of course, reporter Natalie Sentz has to go and ruin a perfectly fine story by suggesting that anyone who wants to start “investing” should look into The Amazing Spider-Man #583, which features the meeting of President Obama and Spider-Man.
- May 14, 2009 @ 09:30 AM by Kevin Melrose
The team-up you’ve been waiting for: Clayfish, Lil’ Atom and Young Darkseid
The Revenge of Young Darkseid
Brian Hughes at Again with the Comics points out that the Elseworlds 80-Page Giant pulping incident is 10 years old — my, how time flies. All but a few thousand copies were destroyed because of a “Superman’s Babysitter” story by Kyle Baker that had the infant of steel surviving all sorts of mishaps a normal baby wouldn’t. That story was later included in DC’s Bizarro Comics anthology. It went on to win an Eisner.
In honor of the anniversary of the pulped comic, he’s posted one of the book’s features — the “Hall of Silver Age Elseworlds,” which features one-page previews from Silver Age Elseworld comics that never were, by Mark Waid and Ty Templeton. It’s funny stuff; go check them out.
- May 14, 2009 @ 08:39 AM by JK Parkin