2009 October
Comics Journal to beef up print, Web presence
The Comics Journal #300
Tom Spurgeon broke the news yesterday that The Comics Journal, Fantagraphics’ long-standing magazine of comics news and criticism, will be altering their coverage and format following the release of their 300th issue.
The announcement came via a letter sent to subscribers that Spurgeon posted online. In it, the staff unveiled a two-fold plan which entailed enhancing the magazine’s Web site considerably and turning the print publication into an elaborate, twice-yearly affair.
Acknowledging the changing role the Internet has played in comics coverage, the letter states the current TCJ site will become “full-service,” with daily updates, and deliver “everything you love about the magazine,” including the interviews, news and “real journalism” the magazine has become known for. The site is currently best known as the home of Online Editor Dirk Deppey’s daily Journalista column.
As for the print magazine, it will become “considerably larger and more elaborate” than the current iteration, and will only come out semi-annually. While the price of the new magazine is still up in the air, individual issues will cost more than they do now, though the letter promises that a single issue will never cost more than $19.99.
- October 28, 2009 @ 07:27 AM by Chris Mautner
Robot 666: Van Jensen reluctantly rides the vampire wave
Pinocchio, Vampire Slayer
Editor’s Note: With Pinocchio, Vampire Slayer from SLG Publishing hitting comic shops this week, we asked writer Van Jensen to share his thoughts on vampires in this guest post for Robot 666 week.
by Van Jensen
This past weekend, I was a guest at the Vampire Film Festival in New Orleans, a fitting enough setting with my first book — Pinocchio, Vampire Slayer — coming out this week. With vampires in books (Twilight), TV (True Blood and Vampire Diaries) and movies (Twilight and The Vampire’s Apprentice) exhibiting unrivaled pop cultural dominance at the moment, it’s a good time to be aboard the bloodsucker bandwagon.
But I have to confide a secret: I don’t like vampires.
It’s not that the concept is a bad one. Immortal, undead, shape-shifting, bloodsucking monsters of the night? I can get behind that. But the execution almost always leaves so much to be desired. Twilight is the obvious punching bag, with its ridiculous additions to the mythology (sparkle, anyone?), disturbing sexual commentary and milquetoast vampires. Grady Hendrix already perfectly explained the disappointment of these sissified vampires whose chief concern is how not to bite anyone, so I don’t need to elaborate.
- October 27, 2009 @ 05:33 PM by JK Parkin
This Wednesday, you will believe a boy can lie
This week’s comics are an eclectic mix, for sure, but there’s a heavy dose of Halloween-inspired horror … from the “raise the dead” X-crossover that kicks off in Marvel’s X Necrosha to the so-simple-it’s-brilliant idea behind Pinocchio, Vampire Slayer, coming from SLG tomorrow. DC gives us another issue of Blackest Night, Radical fights back against the undead in The Federal Vampire and Zombie Agency #1 and Jennifer Love Hewitt even gets in on the action with a Twilight Zone-style book about a haunted music box. Speaking of celebrities, Halloween and comics, Marvel collects Bill Hader and Seth Meyers’ Short Halloween comic into a hardcover with stories from Amazing Spider-Man Family.
Also hitting stores this week are several first issues — DC has a new World’s Finest miniseries, Red Sonja gets promoted to Queen Sonja by Dynamite, Dark Horse gives us more Groo and Ares fights his way into his own mini. This week also sees some endings, several minis wrap up, including Last Days of Animal Man, Killapalooza, Marvel Divas and Ambush Bug.
To see what Chris, Kevin and I have to say about this week’s releases, read on …
- October 27, 2009 @ 03:20 PM by JK Parkin
Six by 6 by 6 | Six great paranormal investigators
There’s a long tradition of occult detectives in popular fiction dating back to Sheridan Le Fanu’s Martin Hesselius, Bram Stoker’s Abraham Van Helsing and William Hope Hodgson’s Thomas Carnacki.
Comics, too, have an established history of the examiners of the unknown, from Doctor Occult to John Constantine to the denizens of the Hellboy universe (the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense, Lobster Johnson, Sir Edward Grey, et al).
For this list highlighting some of the medium’s greats, I wanted to avoid the more popular, or more obvious, choices, such as Doctor Strange, Doctor Thirteen, Batman or the aforementioned Hellboy and Constantine. Most of them get plenty of ink as it is.
With that out of the way, here are six great paranormal investigators from comics (in no particular order, of course):
Dylan Dog
- October 27, 2009 @ 02:00 PM by Kevin Melrose
Unbound: Webcomics that send chills up your brain
When it comes to horror, I’m not really a fan of zombies, vampires, or exploding eyeballs. I prefer the more subtle type of horror, the kind that walks a line between everyday life and something much darker. The kind where everything seems normal until… suddenly it isn’t. Like this moment in Pete Stathis’s Evenfall: Phoebe, the heroine, keeps slipping from everyday life into an alternate reality, and this is a signal that it’s happening again: She steps into the elevator and all the buttons have changed to down arrows.
Now that’s creepy.
- October 27, 2009 @ 01:06 PM by Brigid Alverson
Straight for the art | Huizenga’s ‘Fielder’
Panels from 'Fielder'
Kevin Huizenga has a two-page strip in the Italian magazine Internazionale and gracefully decided to share the comic, sans dialogue with the rest of the Internet.
- October 27, 2009 @ 12:15 PM by Chris Mautner
Hey Colbert, Cap’s gonna need that shield back now …
You might remember back in 2007 when talk show host Stephen Colbert was given Captain America’s shield after Steve Rogers was apparently (but not really) shot to death. Joe Quesada, Marvel’s editor in chief, passed the shield on “to the only man who has the red, white and blue balls to carry the mantle” — the “conservative” talk show host/comic fan whose show runs on the Comedy Channel.
Well, as we learned in June, Captain America isn’t exactly dead, so schoolteacher and Robot 6 reader Robt Seda-Schreiber has served Colbert with “a legal document called a writ of replevin that I have prepared.” Here’s what it looks like:
“As I am sure comes as no surprise to anyone, Captain America, aka Steve Rogers, has returned (‘reborn’ if you will) from his supposed death. More to the point, reports of his death were greatly exaggerated in the first place. It was under this false pretense that Mr. Colbert was ‘bequeathed’ said shield, so it would follow that the good Captain’s shield be returned to him post-haste,” Seda-Schreiber writes. “I bring this legal action in his name, with the help of my brilliant & beautiful lawyer-wife.” Check out his blog for updates and to find out exactly what a writ of replevin is.
(And a closer look at the writ makes me wonder if it IS actually legal … there’s a really good chance the sheriff who signed it was a Life Model Decoy …)
- October 27, 2009 @ 11:45 AM by JK Parkin
Chris Ware ‘Unmasked’ in the New Yorker
Unmasked
The New Yorker has posted a new strip by Chris Ware that has a bit of a Halloween theme. And an iPhone.
- October 27, 2009 @ 10:20 AM by JK Parkin
Everyone’s A Critic: A round-up of comic book reviews and thinkpieces
• David Welsh asks the people who know what sort of scary manga they’d recommend for Halloween reading. As expected, his panel comes up with a lot of good picks.
• Meanwhile, Ten-Cent Plague author David Hajdu reviews Robert Crumb’s adaptation of Genesis for the New York Times:
Crumb's The Book of Genesis
For all its narrative potency and raw beauty, Crumb’s “Book of Genesis” is missing something that just does not interest its illustrator: a sense of the sacred. What Genesis demonstrates in dramatic terms are beliefs in an orderly universe and the godlike nature of man. Crumb, a fearless anarchist and proud cynic, clearly believes in other things, and to hold those beliefs — they are kinds of beliefs, too — is his prerogative. Crumb, brilliantly, shows us the man in God, but not the God in man.
Over at Comics Comics, Dan Nadel calls BS on Hajdu’s review: “One wonders why an author would persist in writing about a subject he clearly disdains and isn’t interested in actually learning about, but I guess that’s between Hajdu and his own idea of the sacred.”
Go read the whole takedown; it’s fun.
- October 27, 2009 @ 09:50 AM by Chris Mautner
When I wake up in the morning and the ‘larm lets out a warning …
From "Saved by the Spell," by Lucy Knisley
The always-entertaining Lucy Knisley imagines what J.K. Rowling might’ve come up with had she been inspired to create Harry Potter some two decades earlier. The result? A Saved by the Bell-style TV series called Hogwarts High, starring John Cusack, Mark Paul Gosselaar and Brooke Shields, and featuring David Bowie as He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.
- October 27, 2009 @ 09:10 AM by Kevin Melrose
Fabio as Thor: I say thee nay!
Thor, God of Thunder
Comics creator Colleen Doran points out that apparently at one time the model Fabio developed his own Thor cartoon, with himself as the model for the Norse god. “I know posting this will out me as someone who looks at Fabio’s official website,” she writes
She has more images from the “dead in development” cartoon over at her site.
- October 27, 2009 @ 08:35 AM by JK Parkin
Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes
Tales of the TMNT #55
Publishing | Following the purchase last week of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles property by Viacom/Nickelodeon, Mirage Studios announced it will publish Tales of the TMNT at least through May 2010.
On the official website, cartoonist Dan Berger writes that co-creator Peter Laird retained an option to publish up to 18 TMNT comics a year. Elsewhere, writer Tristan Jones notes that the agreement only covers single issues “based on the current Mirage Universe stuff (eg: a continuation/conclusion to Volume 4).”
However, judging by comments made yesterday afternoon by Laird, it seems unlikely he will invoke that option in the near future: “One thing that is becoming clear to me is that, right now, I need to really step back from Turtle stuff. I am feeling strongly that I need to distance myself from the TMNT to truly grasp what has happened, and become accustomed to it. With that in mind, I have to say that it is likely that any new TMNT comics coming from me/Mirage (under the ‘reserved rights’ clause negotiated in the sale) are probably not going to be seen anytime soon. Although I do have the right to publish up to eighteen issues of TMNT comics per year, it is highly unlikely that I will do that right away. In all honesty, the idea of doing ANY new Turtle stuff right now leaves me cold.” [NinjaTurtles.com]
Legal | A court has ordered South Korean cartoonist Choi to pay $17,000 to settle a dispute with Wonju City over a cartoon that included offensive words about President Lee Myung-bak. The city recalled about 20,000 copies of the promotional paper after readers discovered the hidden message. [The Korea Times]
- October 27, 2009 @ 08:07 AM by Kevin Melrose
Talking Comics with Tim: Todd Dezago
Mike Ploog's Perhapanauts cover
With the Halloween-themed fun we’re having this week at Robot 666 (aka Robot 6)–it seemed like the perfect time to talk to Todd Dezago about the recently released Perhapanauts Halloween Spooktacular One-Shot (featuring stories drawn by the likes of Craig Rousseau, Rich Woodall and Fred Hembeck). Normally in an interview with Dezago, I would characterize him as one of the nicest folks in comics. But in the spirit of the Halloween season, I instead choose to characterize him as the most paranormal-fascinated person in comics. In addition to the one shot (with three stories in it)–we discuss other spooky topics like volleyball and iTunes. You are warned!
Tim O’Shea: Is it apt to say that Halloween is about your favorite time of the year, given your affinity for the paranormal?
Todd Dezago: Oh, Halloween definitely holds a special place in my heart, both for memories of Halloweens past and for the spooky, scary, creepy haunted element!
And I love that we were able to put together this fun and, hopefully, frightening anthology featuring very different artists on very different stories!
- October 26, 2009 @ 03:00 PM by Tim O'Shea
Collect This Now! The short stories of Al Columbia
From Columbia's 'Amnesia'
Perhaps it’s because we tend to think of it as a very narrowly defined genre with certain expectations and limitations, but generally when we hear the term “horror comics” we tend to think of Tales From the Crypt or The Walking Dead and not so much anything from the art comix crowd.
And yet I hope it’s no slam against Al Feldstein or Robert Kirkman if I say that within the indie scene a number of talented cartoonists have produced some brilliant and truly terrifying work. Josh Simmons, for example, has been steadily building an impressive repertoire of horror-based work with books like House. Certainly Hans Rickheit’s surreal/grotestque The Squirrel Machine falls more easily under the “horror” label than just about any other.
But there’s one alt/indie cartoonist whose work stands head and shoulders above everyone else in the “ye gods, that’s frightening department.” Although he hasn’t produced (or at least published) a huge body of work, what has been released over the past fifteen years has been of such stellar, nightmarish quality as to astound readers lucky enough to stumble on it and influence a number of artists. I’m speaking of Al Columbia.
(Note: Disturbing images and swear words lurk below the jump. You’ve been warned.)
- October 26, 2009 @ 02:00 PM by Chris Mautner
Strangeways: The Thirsty – Page 097
Written by Matt Maxwell. Art by Gervasio and Jok.
Remember kids, in real life, TNT is not to be enjoyed like a fine cigar.
- October 26, 2009 @ 01:37 PM by Matt Maxwell