2009 November
Straight for the art | Jeffrey Brown’s Haruki Murakami
Jeffrey Brown’s Haruki Murakami
Hey Oscar Wilde! It’s Clobberin’ Time!, the blog that posts portraits of authors by comic creators, recently posted one of Haruki Murakami by Jeffery Brown. You can see the back story on it, also by Brown, over at Kevin Church’s blog.
- November 5, 2009 @ 10:58 AM by JK Parkin
Straight for the art | Monster Mashups
Monster Mashups
Dean Haspiel points us to Monster Mashups, a collaboration between Tim Hall and Jen Ferguson “depicting the lesser known aspects of some of the most notorious creatures in the Western lexicon of horror.” Haspiel says:
Tim Hall (writer) and Jen Ferguson (artist) began collaborating late in the summer of 2009, when Tim became aware of Jen’s peculiar art and vice-versa: a working friendship was born. Tim Hall had begun “Uplift the Positivicals,” a new “comic without comics” (somewhat like Hazel Motes’ “Church of Christ Without Christ” in Flannery O’Connor’s novel “Wise Blood”) on Act-i-vate.com, a webcomix collective founded by mutual friend and artist Dean Haspiel. Tim asked Jen to illustrate some of his most demented passages, which turned out to be the perfect assignment for the artist, who years earlier had nearly been booted out of an illustration program at Pratt and sworn off anything that involved “assignments.” Tim’s first request of Jen is that she draw a plushie’s fantasy: a Paddington Bear bed with mechanical arms. After this intriguing first request, stranger ones followed.
- November 5, 2009 @ 10:05 AM by JK Parkin
This weekend, it’s King Con Brooklyn
King Con Brooklyn
Here’s an event that makes me wish I lived close to New York City again: King Con Brooklyn, a comics and animation convention being held Saturday and Sunday at the Brooklyn Lyceum.
It has a great name, and boasts an impressive lineup of largely local guests, including Harvey Pekar, Al Jaffee, Denny O’Neil, Neal Adams, Brian Wood, Alex Robinson, Molly Crabapple, Dave Roman, Raina Telgemeier, Kevin Colden, David Gallaher, Steve Ellis and Matt Loux.
In addition, there’s a programming schedule that includes workshops, a DC Comics/Zuda portfolio review, creator spotlights, and panels devoted to kids’ comics, European comics, digital comics, animation and Marvel’s publishing plans.
The convention will be held from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. on both days at the Brooklyn Lyceum, 227 Fourth Ave., Brooklyn.
- November 5, 2009 @ 09:30 AM by Kevin Melrose
Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes
The Book of Genesis Illustrated
Sales charts | R. Crumb’s The Book of Genesis Illustrated climbs seven spots to No. 2 in its second month on BookScan’s list of top-selling adult graphic novels in bookstores. It’s bested, as most are, by the latest volume of Masashi Kishimoto’s Naruto. But it’s another story on USA Today’s bestseller chart, where Crumb’s book drops 49 places in its second week to No. 129. [ICv2.com, USA Today]
Passings | Tom Spurgeon, NPR’s Mark Memmott and Ina Jaffe, and Michael Cieply of The New York Times have obituaries for Comic-Con co-founder Shel Dorf, who passed away on Nov. 3 at the age of 76.
Libraries | The Yoshihiro Yonezawa Memorial Library of Manga and Subculture opened over the weekend at Meiji University’s Surugadai campus in Tokyo. Users can become one-day members of the library, where they can have access to about half of the 140,000 manga for about $1.10 per copy. The books can’t be removed from the library. [The Japan Times]
Internet | Tom Spurgeon points out that the review blog Guttergeek will move to the expanded TCJ.com, joining a stable of hosted blogs that will include The Hooded Utilitarian. [Guttergeek]
- November 5, 2009 @ 08:41 AM by Kevin Melrose
Gorillas Riding Dinosaurs: Hunter’s Fortune
Hunter's Fortune #1
Hunter’s Fortune #1
Written by Andrew Cosby and Caleb Monroe; Illustrated by Matt Cossin
Boom!; $3.99
It’s comics like that this that are the exact reason I started this column.
I love treasure hunter stories. That probably started with Raiders of the Lost Ark, or maybe Treasure Island long before that, but ever since I was a kid I’ve loved stories about people trying to find hidden treasure. Whether it’s a chest of gold, a lost artifact, or a hidden city doesn’t really matter. It’s just the whole spirit of adventure; striking out on little information to try and discover something that may or may not exist.
My biggest fear when starting a new treasure hunter story is that it’s not going to live up to its concept. Maybe I won’t like the main character. Maybe the clues will be too easy to figure out. Maybe the villains will be unoriginal. Maybe the banter will be more annoying than witty. Maybe it just won’t have the sense of wonder that it should. There are dozens of things that can go wrong and often do. I’m so happy that none of that’s the case with the first issue Hunter’s Fortune.
The story opens with Hunter Prescott being kicked out of his apartment on the same day that his car’s repossessed. Hunter’s a young kid – early 20s – and his only support is his best friend Trip, who’s only slightly less worse off than Hunter. “You can totally crash at my place,” he tells Hunter. “With both of us, I bet we can even afford to turn my power back on.” Thanks to Matt Cossin’s art, Hunter is a good-looking, likable kid and Trip is all starry-eyed and optimistic. Caleb Monroe’s dialogue also helps enormously to make these guys real people and not annoying clichés. Hunter’s down on his luck, but he’s got Trip, whose cheerfulness in the face of adversity makes him a huge asset. Even if Hunter doesn’t always totally appreciate it.
Secret keys, beautiful villains, a legendary artifact, and a bear-fighting Russian after the jump.
- November 4, 2009 @ 09:06 PM by Michael May
Wolverine: Weapon X 100 covers up for bid at eBay
by Josh Medors
Several pieces of original art from The Hero Initiative’s Wolverine: Weapon X 100 Project are available for bidding on eBay … including this one by Josh Medors, which just looks absolutely incredible. Also pieces from Chris Bachalo, Colleen Coover, Art Adams, John McCrea and several others can be found as well.
Go check’em out and place a bid; it’s for a good cause.
- November 4, 2009 @ 03:00 PM by JK Parkin
Send Us Your Shelf Porn!
Is it time for Shelf Porn once again? You bet your sweet bippy it is! And we’ve got a heck of a collection to share with you this week, from Caren Pilgrim, who runs the Peanuts Collectibles Web site. As you might imagine, she has quite the Peanuts-inspired collection herself.
Upon coming across her Web site, I emailed Caren and asked if she would be willing to share some photos of her collection with Robot 6 readers. Here’s what she sent in …
- November 4, 2009 @ 02:00 PM by Chris Mautner
Strangeways: The Thirsty – Page 100
One zero zero!
Written by Matt Maxwell. Art by Gervasio and Jok.
And look! There’s even something going on on this page! Not just yakkity-yakkin’ and stuff.
Thanks for sticking around so far, folks. Still got a pretty substantial chunk of story to go. And things look to be heating up in Drytown, so buckle in.
- November 4, 2009 @ 01:00 PM by Matt Maxwell
H. R. Giger’s Batmobile design
…would have looked something like this:
Batmobile by H.R. Geiger
The essential Super Punch has more images and information on Giger’s rejected designs for the Batmobile from Batman Forever.
- November 4, 2009 @ 12:36 PM by JK Parkin
Robot reviews: Another manga round-up
Ooku: The Inner Chambers
by Fumi Yoshinaga
Viz, $12.99.
As story hooks go, Ooku’s got a great one: A strange plague during the Edo period of Japan kills off more than three-quarters of the country’s male population. As a result, the culture and gender relations end up going all topsy-turvy, and succeeding generations find the women ruling the roost and men being protected and prized for their ability to produce offspring. This is especially in the Shogun’s harem, or Inner Chambers, where the story takes place.
It helps that the story is by Fumi Yoshinaga, who, in books like Antique Bakery and Gerald and Jacques, has proven herself to be more interested in gender relations and identity issues than mere yaoi squickiness (although she certainly likes that too. Certainly the fact that Ooku won the Osamu Tezuka Cultural Prize in its home country has led to a certain amount of anticipation among some manga fans.
Unfortunately, while Yoshinaga remains an excellent and expressive artist, the series stumbles out of the gate. One of the main problems is the translator’s decision (no doubt motivated by an attempt to approximate a certain Japanese dialect) to have everyone speak in a formal, Renaissance Faire-like manner, with lots of “thees” and “thous” and “didsts.” It has the unintended effect of coming off as forced, and distancing the reader from the characters and the story.
Beyond that though, Yoshinaga doesn’t really seem to do much with her idea, at least so far. She seems more interested in conveying the various back room politics and romances that take place in the inner chambers than giving thought as to what such a huge change in the population would do to a culture. Would the fashion still be identical to what it was in the real world, with men shaving their heads and women wearing long gowns? Wouldn’t that change somewhat drastically? Would a female shogun really keep a male harem and if so, would it be so identical in structure to what the real Edo shoguns had? This may sound like nit-picking, but makes the story seem more than a bit facile, as though she just swapped everyone’s sex and that alone would be interesting enough. It may well be that I’m not giving Yoshinaga enough credit and that she’s actually considered these issues and will explore them in more depth in future volumes. But so far, I’m not encouraged.
Reviews of Red Snow, Pelu and more after the jump …
- November 4, 2009 @ 12:00 PM by Chris Mautner
Fall of the Hulks Alpha preview
from Fall of the Hulks Alpha
Marvel sent over some pages from their upcoming Fall of the Hulks storyline, which kicks off with an “Alpha” issue in December. You can see additional pages from it here (where you can also see the ad/homage to the original Fall of the Mutants ad that ran in various Marvel comics back in the 1980s).
The book is written by Jeff Parker with pencils by Paul Pelletier. The story revolves around the Leader, Mad Thinker, Egghead, M.O.D.O.K., Red Ghost and Doctor Doom putting their heads together to create some sort of battle plan that leads into the World War Hulks event. More details on that can be found here.
Check out additional pages after the jump …
- November 4, 2009 @ 11:45 AM by JK Parkin
The Variants, Ep. 4: Can they survive the night of the living ‘Passholes’?
I’ve meant to link to this a few times — three, to be exact — but haven’t, for one reason or another: It’s The Variants, the web comedy series created by Richard Neal, owner of Zeus Comics in Dallas, and produced by Neal, Joe Cucinotti and Ken Lowery.
If you haven’t caught any of the three monthly previous episodes, The Variants is set, unsurprisingly, in a comic-book store, and focuses on the frequently dysfunctional staff and customers. What’s pleasantly surprising perhaps, given the sheer number of people with access to a video-recording device and access to YouTube (but who shouldn’t be allowed near either), the writing, acting and production are pretty good. (I’m a fan of the smoking, snippy, customer-unfriendly Barry.)
The fourth episode (“Passholes”), which features a zombie-like horde of customers lining up for free movie passes, just went live. You can get caught up on the previous episodes here.
- November 4, 2009 @ 11:15 AM by Kevin Melrose
Thin wallets, fat bookshelves: A publishing news round-up
Polly and Her Pals
• IDW announced over the weekend that it will be collecting the Sunday strips from the Cliff Sterrett classic Polly and Her Pals. The first volume, encapsulating 1925-27, will be in stores this coming August.
The strip began in 1912, but it was in the 20s that Sterrett’s art really took off. Influenced by the modernist art movements, he started incorporating abstract and surrealists motifs into his Sunday pages, and many historians and critics have compared this period favorably to strips like Krazy Kat.
Kitchen Sink attempted to publish these strips back in the 90s before going under but they were only able to get two volumes out the door. Having managed to find those books in a back issue bin years ago and devoured them several times since then, let me say this is fabulous news and I’m really looking forward to seeing this release.
• IDW also posted about their intention to publish a four-issue mini-series about the Weekly World News’ Bat Boy, which I imagine will be quite different from Polly and Her Pals.
• Writer Clifford Meth reports on his blog that Marvel will be publishing The Invincible Gene Colan in February 2010. The 128 page book will feature art work by the master as well as appreciations by folks like Stan Lee, Marv Wolfman and John Romita Sr.
• Apparently Erik Larsen (and his Savage Dragon) is featured in the latest edition of McSweeney’s newspaper. That’s kinda cool.
- November 4, 2009 @ 10:45 AM by Chris Mautner
Douglas Rushkoff writes X, a graphic novel for new video-game franchise
From "X"
Author, media theorist and sometimes-comics writer Douglas Rushkoff (Testament, Life, Inc.) has penned a graphic novel to promote an as-yet-unnamed video-game franchise from Smoking Gun Interactive.
Illustrated by Cheoljoo Lee and Younger Yang, the comic — it’s simply called X — is being previewed on this marketing site in installments that roll out over the next four weeks. The full graphic novel will be released next year. More stories are set to follow.
As you might expect from the mysterious title, the story of X involves secrets — specifically, “the secret history of mankind.”
So says the press release: “As a small, scattered group of people stumble onto the truth, they find that they are too late: every great power on earth has already aligned itself against humanity. The war is all but over. Their struggle to discover the truth will lead them into a massive conspiracy that predates humanity itself — from the world’s most ancient sites to the global centers of power.”
- November 4, 2009 @ 09:45 AM by Kevin Melrose
Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes
Shel Dorf with Warren Beatty in 1990
Passings | Sheldon “Shel” Dorf, who in 1970 co-founded the event that grew into Comic-Con International, passed away Nov. 3 in San Diego’s Sharp Memorial Hospital from diabetes-related complications. He was 76.
A collector of comics and Dick Tracy memorabilia, Dorf had run Triple Fan Fest in his native Detroit. After he moved to San Diego in early 1970, he met Ken Krueger of Alert Books in Ocean Beach and the two, together with a group of teen-aged fans, organized first Golden State Comic Con, held Aug. 1-3, 1970, at the U.S. Grant Hotel. Dorf served as president, or chairman, of the convention until the mid-1980s, stepping away just as the annual event was becoming a national stage for pop culture.
Dorf reportedly struggled with diabetes for years, gradually losing mobility and vision. He entered Sharp Memorial Hospital in 2008 and never left. His brother Michael was with him when he died.
Mark Evanier, of course, has a nice tribute to Dorf peppered with memories dating back to before that first convention. There’s also an extensive Shel Dorf Tribute website, and a memorial banner topping the Comic-Con International homepage. The photo above, of Dorf with Warren Beatty on the set of the 1990 Dick Tracy movie, is borrowed from Alan Light’s Flickr stream. [The San Diego Union-Tribune]
- November 4, 2009 @ 08:42 AM by Kevin Melrose