2009 September
Lieber, Ryan and Parker’s Escape from Alcatraz comic
Alcatraz comic
I went to Alcatraz this weekend with some out-of-town visitors (and before anyone asks, no, they didn’t try to keep me there), and one of the items available in the gift shop was an Escape from Alcatraz comic. It’s about the 1962 escape of Frank Morris and brothers Clarence and John Anglin, which was dubbed “The Dummy Head Breakout.” The trio designed fake heads out of things like soap and toilet paper, to trick the guards into thinking they were asleep all night, then snuck out through the vents they’d been widening for about seven months.
They were never seen again. The story has been recounted in other books and in the 1979 movie starring Clint Eastwood.
The comic was created by writer Sara Ryan, artist Steve Lieber and colorist Jeff Parker. You can buy the book either on Alcatraz or via the online store.
- September 28, 2009 @ 10:00 AM by JK Parkin
A Cold Day In December: Gallaher talks Winter Guard
This was my first introduction into THE SOVIET SUPER SOLDIERS – Ursa Major, Darkstar, and Vanguard – the team that would eventually become THE WINTER GUARD. I was only a few months into collecting and reading comics at that point – and I got the book admittedly because of the Speedball cameo in the beginning of the story. As a teenager, I found the cover disturbing – could the Avengers really have murdered this team of Russian superheroes? The truth, of course, was a little more complex – and, of course, I was hooked on the revelation!
- September 28, 2009 @ 09:31 AM by David Gallaher
Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes
The Avengers #4
Creators | Using the copyright-reclamation bid by Jack Kirby’s children as a news hook, Geoff Boucher takes a look at the artist’s legacy, his creative partnership with Stan Lee, and his bitter feud with Marvel. “A lot more people know the name Stan Lee than the name Jack Kirby,” says daughter Lisa Kirby. “I’m not putting down Stan Lee’s talents but it’s difficult for us to see that he does dominate the credit. That doesn’t reflect the work or the reality. To see Jack Kirby in small letters and Stan Lee in big letters, that’s hard for us.” [Los Angeles Times]
Publishing | Jim Shelley considers what effect the recession may be having on the illegal downloading of comic books. He finds there are more downloads, but they’ve become more difficult to track. [Flashback Universe, via Kleefeld on Comics]
- September 28, 2009 @ 08:02 AM by Kevin Melrose
Guest blogger: David Gallaher
High Moon
I’m pleased to welcome comics writer David Gallaher to Robot 6. David will be blogging about his various projects, webcomics and other fun stuff with us for the next week.
David’s the writer of High Moon, the first winner of Zuda’s monthly webcomics competition. A print collection of the strip comes out this Wednesday. He and his High Moon collaborator, artist and new father Steve Ellis, are also doing a Winter Guard one-shot for Marvel in December. They’re also doing a straight-to-the-iPhone comic called Box 13 for comiXology.
Watch for David’s first post tomorrow.
- September 27, 2009 @ 03:25 PM by JK Parkin
What are you reading?
Labor Days Vol. 2
Welcome once again to What are you reading?, the weekly column where the Robot 6 team runs through what comics and other stuff they’ve been checking out lately. As Chris is in Bethesda this weekend, I’m filling in for him as your host.
Our special guests this time are Philip Gelatt and Rick Lacy, creators of the Labor Days graphic novels published by Oni Press. Volume two, Just Another Damn Day, is now available in finer retail establishments everywhere. (You can check out a preview here).
See what they’ve been reading, as well as the rest of the Robot 6 crew, after the jump …
- September 27, 2009 @ 10:11 AM by JK Parkin
Winners of the 2009 Ignatz Awards
Ignatz Awards
The winners of the Ignatz Awards were announced yesterday during a ceremony at the Small Press Expo in Bethesda, Maryland.
Named in honor of the brick-wielding mouse in George Herriman’s Krazy Kat strip, the awards recognize achievement in comics and cartooning. Nominees are selected by a panel of five cartoonists and then voted on by SPX attendees.
The winners of the 2009 Ignatz Awards are:
Outstanding Artist: Nate Powell, Swallow Me Whole (Top Shelf)
Outstanding Anthology or Collection: Kramer’s Ergot #7, edited by Sammy Harkham (Buenaventura)
Outstanding Graphic Novel: Acme Novelty Library #19, Chris Ware (Drawn & Quarterly)
Outstanding Story: “Willy,” Papercutter #10, Damien Jay (Tugboat)
Promising New Talent: Colleen Frakes, Woman King (self-published)
Outstanding Series: Uptight, Jordan Crane (Fantagraphics)
Outstanding Comic: Uptight #3, Jordan Crane (Fantagraphics)
Outstanding Mini-Comic: Stay Away From Other People, Lisa Hanawalt
Outstanding Online Comic: Year of the Rat, Cayetano Garza
Congratulations to all of the winners. The complete list of nominees can be found here.
- September 27, 2009 @ 06:47 AM by Kevin Melrose
Winners of the 2009 Joe Shuster Awards
2009 Joe Shuster Awards
The fifth annual Joe Shuster Comic Book Creator Awards were presented last night at the University of Toronto as part of the Word on the Street National Book & Magazine Festival.
Named in honor of the co-creator of Superman, the awards recognize achievement in comics by Canadians.
The winners of the 2009 awards are:
Artist: David Finch — Ultimatum #1-2 (Marvel Comics)
Cartoonist: Dave Sim — Glamourpuss #1-4, Judenhaas (Aardvark-Vanaheim)
Colorist: François Lapierre — “Gédéon et la bête du lac,” Contes et légendes du Québec (Glénat Québec), Magasin général 4 (Casterman)
Writer: Mariko Tamaki — Emiko Superstar (DC/Minx), Skim (Groundwood Books)
Cover: Niko Henrichon — Hostile Tome 1 (Dupuis)
Webcomics: Cameron Stewart — Sin Titulo
Publisher: Les 400 Coups/Mécanique Générale
Comics for Kids: Kean Soo — Jellaby, Book 1 (Hyperion)
Gene Day Award for Canadian Self-Publishers: Jesse Jacobs — Blue Winter, Shapes in the Snow
The Harry Kremer Award for Outstanding Canadian Comic Book Retailer: Legends Comics and Books (Victoria, British Columbia)
Canadian Comic Book Creator Hall of Fame: George Menendez Rae, Réal Godbout, Ken Steacy and Diana Schutz
Congratulations to all of the winners. The complete list of nominees can be found here.
- September 27, 2009 @ 06:23 AM by Kevin Melrose
Strangeways: Murder Moon named best local graphic novel by Sacramento News & Review
Murder Moon cover, dig?
Congratulations to our own Matt Maxwell, whose graphic novel Strangeways: Murder Moon was named best local graphic novel by the Sacramento News & Review, the local independent paper.
“We’ve got some serious local talent when it comes to comics and graphic novels (including artist Sam Kieth, who lives up in the foothills), so it’s no surprise that every so often a graphic novel crosses the transom that looks pretty damn good,” the write-up says. “Strangeways: Murder Moon, the first in a series written by El Dorado Hills resident Matt Maxwell, is a genre bender that adds to werewolf mythology and transforms the traditional Western. The slightly retro black-and-white drawings are stark but detailed. It’s extremely unnerving and just right for this horror-slash-oater story of a Confederate veteran out to stop a family curse. Maxwell’s going places—and not just to Rocklin, either.”
Be sure to check out the follow-up, The Thirsty, right here at Robot 6.
- September 26, 2009 @ 09:58 AM by JK Parkin
The Fifth Color | Marvel Solicitations for Dec ’09
Walking into the local Borders bookstore, I noticed that the rack by the front is already starting to stock Christmas cards. This surprised me as much as seeing the latest and (as always) greatest next event brewing on the horizon for the Marvel U. Remember, Dark Reign is supposed to be over by the end of the year, so let pick up a pack of Santas and go look at the end of a banner title.
Oh, Dark Reign! How will miss you! Your only vaguely reasonable introduction brought us a bevy of brand new teams that make me ponder when Force Works is going to pop up next. You dismantled SHIELD in favor of his own private army ‘HAMMER’, an acronym that not only hasn’t been explained, but hasn’t really done much when you think of all those ‘dark’ superhero teams at Osborn’s disposal. And they haven’t really done much when you consider that Clint Barton ran amuck through Osborn’s hand-picked Avengers team in their own base until he got to the God of War. And Ares.
Really, what has Osborn done for us besides hand out frustration and stalemates and have to use a crappy acronym like GRANPA for a global supernatural/superhuman monitoring organization (like the Weird Happenings Organization wasn’t doing anything)? He’s been a fantastic and obnoxiously unbeatable object of hate, a red-haired target for all our heroes as he held are the cards. Perhaps Spaceballs was right, perhaps evil will always triumph because good is dumb.
- September 25, 2009 @ 03:45 PM by Carla Hoffman
Read the comic Chris Ware doesn’t want you to see
From 'Floyd Farland'
Long before there was Rusty Brown and Jimmy Corrigan, there was Floyd Farland: Citizen of the Future, Chris Ware’s very first published comic book.
Apparently he’s quite ashamed and embarrassed of it (as honestly most of us are by our early attempts at art), to the point where he’s tried to hunt down as many copies as possible and destroy them. Show up at a signing with a copy and he’ll beg you to buy it from you so he can burn in front of your eyes, laughing maniacally all the while.
That’s the story I’ve heard at any rate. But Brian Hughes of Again With the Comics managed to have a copy in his collection and share a few pages, as well as his impressions:
The writing is very “Angry Young Man” circa 1987, what with the “Thought Police” and the “Totalitarian Government” slant. The art style is almost the exact opposite of his current style: crude, stark, and unpolished. Ware now applies an architectural precision to each page, but his early work is thick–lined, blocky, and chaotic. Background detail is abstract, when it appears at all, and human faces are blob-and-line cartoons. It is fortunate that most of the story is driven by exposition, because figuring out the action on some pages is nearly impossible.
- September 25, 2009 @ 01:00 PM by Chris Mautner
Strangeways: The Thirsty – Strangeways in person
For those of you in the Sacramento area looking for something to do this weekend, you could do a lot worse than hitting From The Land Beyond. Second year for this show, which skews towards the spooky side of things, though there’s some comics goodness there, including Dan Brereton and, uhm, me. I’ll be there with copies of MURDER MOON and the limited edition chapterbooks for the first chapter of THE THIRSTY and should have some pages from Luis Guragna’s artwork for “Red Hands”, which is the upcoming second feature in THE THIRSTY.
Here’s a little of what Luis has been working on in the meantime:
Head on over here to check the show out. Looks like it also dovetails into the fall edition of the quarterly Sac-Anime/Comics show as well, on Sunday that is. Out of towners are recommended to Weiner Works on Madison near Hemlock for the best chili fries in town. And if you’re not in the mood for that, then there’s the Brazilian steakhouse three doors down. The show itself runs Friday-Sunday, and leads off the mini-convention season that hits around this time of year.
Next week is the first annual Long Beach Comic Convention, which I’m very much looking forward to. The Wizard shows held in Long Beach were only a million times better than the shows in LA, and it’s a great venue. I’ll be right next to David Gallaher (and maybe Steve Ellis, not sure–David you wanna confirm/deny?) of HIGH MOON. Rumor has it that I’ll even be on a panel there, which should be interesting. This runs Friday to Sunday as well. Same items up for grabs, unless I have to run to a second edition of the chapbooks.
Two weeks after that is the Alternative Press Expo at the Concourse in downtown San Francisco. I’ve been to APE many, many times and am looking forward to finally exhibiting there. Hopefully it won’t rain so damn hard this year. I couldn’t even get to Holy Burger without getting soaked to the bone.
Hope to see some of you fine folks at the above events. And don’t forget, at each one, I’ll be doing Fabulous Five Minute Stories, an example of which you can read right here. Remember, each one is hand-crafted for maximium quality assurance!
- September 25, 2009 @ 01:00 PM by Matt Maxwell
Slash Print | Following the digital evolution
Ant Man
Webcomics | In case you missed it, like I did … Chris Eliopolis shares a fun Ant Man tribute comic on his website. (via Comics Alliance)
Webcomics | Alex Hoffman of the webcomics site Transmission-X discusses how webcomics are usually limited to one category when awards time rolls around.
“The issue is that since webcomics are allowed nominations in only a single category – while print comics are nominated under a multitude of aspects of comic production – webcomics are severely limited in their recognition,” he writes. “The online comics community is large and growing quickly, but as yet, all the major awards exclude them from the majority of categories. While they do honour the Best Webcomic, they do not allow those strips to compete for recognition as Best Artist, Best Cartoonist, etc.”
- September 25, 2009 @ 12:03 PM by JK Parkin
Straight for the art | Watch Skottie Young draw a cover
On his blog, artist Skottie Young shares a video of his digital drawing process for the cover to one of his Oz books for Marvel. “I then print this out and ink it traditionally with brush and ink,” he says.
- September 25, 2009 @ 11:01 AM by JK Parkin
Faith Erin Hicks makes Friends with Boys
Friends With Boys
Faith Erin Hicks, creator of two graphic novels from SLG, Zombies Calling and The War at Ellsmere, and the artist on an upcoming book from First Second called Brain Camp, announced on her blog this week that she’s writing and drawing on a new book called Friends with Boys:
It’s the first time I’ve used my own life as a jumping off point for a comic, although I’d like to stress the book is not autobiographical, nor is the main character me. It’s about a girl named Maggie, who has three brothers (as I do), who was home-schooled (as I was), and is now entering her first year of public high school (as I did). She also is stalked by a ghost (that has yet to happen to me). She gets mixed up in High School Drama, makes friends with the wrong people, and because the story is written by me, it will contain two things: 1) Zombies. And 2) Someone will, eventually, get punched in the face.
She’s hoping the book will be out in 2011. Brain Camp comes out next year.
- September 25, 2009 @ 10:08 AM by JK Parkin
Straight for the art | Let’s go to the movies, part 2
art from Leslie, My Name Is Evil
Artist J. Bone also did some time in movieland recently, creating artwork for a film called Leslie, My Name Is Evil. The art he produced is for “a Jack Chick-like tract detailing the seduction of the main character, Leslie, by a beatnik who gives her LSD and an unwanted pregnancy.” The film debuted at the Toronto Film Festival.
- September 25, 2009 @ 09:36 AM by JK Parkin