2010 January
A shopper’s guide to Fantagraphics’ Hangover Sale
I missed this amid all the holiday hijinks, but comics publisher par excellence Fantagraphics is holding a New Year’s Hangover Sale that ends at midnight tonight. Everything they sell is 20-percent off. And if you like comics, chances are they’ve got something you’ll want to buy.
Dig superheroes? Try their astonishing Golden Age superhero collections like Supermen!, I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets! and You Shall Die By Your Own Evil Creation, or get a Steve Ditko fix with Strange Suspense.
Love classic strips? Can’t go wrong with The Complete Peanuts, Popeye, Dennis the Mennis or Krazy & Ignatz.
A fan of shoujo manga or Scott Pilgrim? Give Jaime Hernandez and the Love & Rockets Library a shot, starting with Maggie the Mechanic and The Girl from H.O.P.P.E.R.S.
Prefer your comics on the hard-boiled side? Take aim at killer crime comics like West Coast Blues, Why Are You Doing This? or They Found the Car.
Just want some laffs? Yuk it up with Maakies, Tales Designed to Thrizzle or Angry Youth Comix.
And of course, if you wanna find out what this whole “alternative comics” thing is all about, there’s no better place to start than the books of Chris Ware or Daniel Clowes.
Enter in the discount code “HANGOVER”, and you’ve got great comics coming to you at bargain prices. Just make sure to do it today!
- January 8, 2010 @ 07:19 AM by Sean T. Collins
Marvel says it’s time to save the world in April 2010
It's Time To Save The World
Marvel posted the above teaser image on their website earlier today without any text except the headline: “It’s Time To Save The World — A sneak peek at April, 2010.”
So what could this image be referring to? Well, you may recall we’ve seen a very similar image of Galactus recently, in the promo images for Jonathan Hickman and Dustin Weaver’s upcoming Shield series. So maybe this means we’ll be seeing the solicitation for it from Marvel soon.
- January 7, 2010 @ 07:37 PM by JK Parkin
Ten from the old year, ten for the new: 2009-10 edition
Grumpy Old Fan
We’ve certainly done our share of review-preview posts over the past several days, but I still have this last bit of business to address. This is the third year I’ve done a ten-and-ten list, so why stop now?
(Click here for last year’s post.)
Onward!
Continue Reading »
- January 7, 2010 @ 02:32 PM by Tom Bondurant
Matt Groening’s music festival
Is it possible to make devil horns with a four-fingered hand? I guess we’ll find out when The Simpsons/Futurama/Life in Hell creator Matt Groening curates this May’s All Tomorrow’s Parties music festival in Minehead, England. The lineup, hand-selected by Groening himself in the usual ATP curated-festival fashion, includes such avant-rock notables as Iggy & the Stooges, Coco Rosie, Built to Spill, Panda Bear, Deerhunter, Daniel Johnston, the Residents, Boredoms, the Raincoats, Amadou and Mariam, and Shonen Knife.
This isn’t the first time ATP and Groening have hooked up: The animation and alt-weekly legend (and one-time music critic) also ran a 2003 festival in California that boasted performances from the Stooges, Sonic Youth, Spoon, the Shins, !!!, the Mars Volta, Mission of Burma, Modest Mouse and Cat Power. (You can buy a CD compilation from that show here.) He’s a hip dude, is what I’m saying.
(Via Pitchfork)
- January 7, 2010 @ 12:59 PM by Sean T. Collins
A roundup of end-of-the-year (and decade) pieces
Beast
• Writing for National Public Radio, author Glen Weldon makes another run at 2009 with a list of the graphic novels that “grabbed” him. Among them are Marian Churchland’s Beast, Fred Chao’s Johnny Hiro and Susumu Katsumata’s Red Snow.
• Tom Spurgeon talks with critic Grant Goggans about 2000 AD as one of the comics emblematic of the past decade.
• Heidi MacDonald continues her annual year-end survey of comics professionals.
•Reviewers at AICN name the best, and worst, comics of the decade.
• Marc-Oliver Frisch his rundown of the best comics of 2009.
• Don MacPherson announces the creator categories in the 2009 Glass Eye Awards.
• At iFanboy, Mike Romo selects the best artists of 2009, including David Lafuente, Rob Guillory and J.H. Williams III.
• Writing for The Faster Times, Ryan Joe names his 10 favorite comics of the decade, including Gene Luen Yang’s American Born Chinese and Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely’s We3.
• At the Forbidden Planet International blog, cartoonist Martin Eden chats about the best comics of 2009.
- January 7, 2010 @ 12:30 PM by Kevin Melrose
Comics Cavalcade: Ghosts, monsters and aliens
Dear Ship’s Log by Scott Campbell
- January 7, 2010 @ 12:00 PM by Chris Mautner
11-year-old receives pre-Christmas shopping spree thanks to Kids Wish Network
Bryson Michaelis
This story about Bryson Michaelis, an 11-year-old Cincinnati boy with cancer, getting a shopping spree at Rockin’ Rooster Comics & Games right before Christmas is cute, heart-warming and heart-breaking all at the same time. Michaelis took home $700 in merchandise, including some cards and comic books that he gave to his brothers for Christmas. Kids Wish Network helped make it happen.
- January 7, 2010 @ 11:30 AM by JK Parkin
Straight for the art | He-Man & the Masters of the Universe art show
Skeletor by Kiersten Essenpreis
By the Power of Grayskull! Los Angeles’ Gallery 1988 has the power! Beginning tomorrow, Friday January 8, they’re hosting “Under the Influence: He-Man and the Masters of the Universe,” an art show featuring various reinterpretations of my all-time favorite action-figure/cartoon line ever. You can check out a Snake Mountain-sized pile of art for the show here and here.
(Via ToyFare)
- January 7, 2010 @ 11:00 AM by Sean T. Collins
Straight for the art | Melanie Mathews’s 365 cartoons
Melanie's crocodile
Australian artist Melanie Mathews has embarked on quite the year-long project — drawing one black and white cartoon for every day of the year — which you can follow along on her blog. Here’s hoping she makes it all the way to the end. (via)
- January 7, 2010 @ 10:30 AM by Chris Mautner
Congratulations to Winsor McCay …
whose seminal 1911 animated film, Little Nemo, has been inducted into the National Film Registry.
- January 7, 2010 @ 09:45 AM by Chris Mautner
Send Ted Rall to Afghanistan
No, really. He wants to go. He’s even got a Kickstarter project up and everything:
To Afghanistan and Back
In November 2001, The Village Voice and KFI Radio in Los Angeles sent me to Afghanistan to cover the U.S. invasion. The work I produced earned accolades from The Nation and The Washington Post, which called my work “the best journalism from Afghanistan by an American reporter.” What I saw made me one of the earliest and most vocal opponents of the Afghanistan war. While Democrats called Afghanistan “the good war,” I filed an essay from Afghanistan called “How We Lost the Afghan War.” It was printed in December 2001.
Now I’d like to go back for an update, and to fill in the gaps by visiting parts of the country where US reporters never go. I have media outlets ready to publish my stories and a publisher for a book about this trip. But magazines and newspapers can’t/won’t cover travel costs. Because it costs tens of thousands of dollars to travel to a war zone, that’s what I’m trying to raise here.
Rall is looking to raise $25,000 over the next 88 days. A $10 pledge gets you regular Internet updates from Rall while he’s overseas. $50 gets you a copy of the book, and so forth, up to $5,000 which, if you pony up, will get you dinner on the town in New York City on Rall’s dime, plus the eventual book and original art.
- January 7, 2010 @ 09:15 AM by Chris Mautner
Batton Lash parodies Chris Ware in “The Scariest Kid on Earth”
The Scariest Kid on Earth
Batton Lash is posting the back-up story to Supernatural Law #39, which features a parody of Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth, on his website in full color. The story is about a werewolf appearing as an attraction in Quimby’s Carnavale & Sideshow.
The complete press release is available after the jump. You can start reading the story here. Watch for new pages every Monday and Thursday.
- January 7, 2010 @ 08:45 AM by JK Parkin
Make some art: Super Punch holding a John Carter of Mars art contest
Thark spray by Carlos Melgares
One of my favorite blogs, Super Punch, is holding a John Carter of Mars art contest, with the winner getting a $100 Threadless gift certificate. If you are artistically inclined, head over there and find out how to submit.
(Art above by Carlos Melgares)
- January 7, 2010 @ 08:15 AM by JK Parkin
Michael Kupperman’s rejected New Yorker comics
a rejected New Yorker comic by Michael Kupperman
Eustace Tilley’s loss is our gain! Michael Kupperman, writer/artist of Tales Designed to Thrizzle and Twitterer extraordinaire, has posted a slew of comics that didn’t quite make it into the pages of The New Yorker.
His submissions, which can be viewed on his Twitpic account, include a look at Microscopic Goings-On About Town, Pigeons in Film, Slightly Cursed Merchandise, Other Species’ Currency, and the eternal question seen here, How Much Do You Know About Your Mutual Fund Manager? And because he’s that kinda guy, Kupperman has even shared a pair of strips that actually wound up in the mag.
Kupperman’s trip down memory lane was prompted by a request from The New Yorker to pitch them some comics again. The problem there, he tweeted, was that “after years of working for them and other magazines like them, I am in the wrong income bracket to adopt their worldview/sense of humor.” Here’s hoping that at some point soon, the likes of Hendrik Hertzberg and David Denby will once again be guarded by McGritte the Surrealist Crime Dog.
- January 7, 2010 @ 07:44 AM by Sean T. Collins
Bob Greenberger returns to edit new 18-issue Who’s Who series
Who's Who #2
Bob Greenberger, one of the original editors of DC Comics’ well-remembered Who’s Who series, has returned to oversee the new version of the comic-book encyclopedia.
In this week’s “DC Nation” column, which appears in most DC Universe titles, Executive Editor Dan DiDio said that Greenberger “is taking on the incredible task of building this series so that it has the same lasting impact of the first one,” which ran for 26 issues from 1984 to 1987.
Although the new Who’s Who was announced just last month as a 15-issue miniseries, DiDio gives the count as 18 issues, with more than 800 entries. It will debut in May.
DiDio also mentions the 10-issue Legacies miniseries, by writer Len Wein and a rotating roster of artists, and the History of the DC Universe, both of which were announced at the same time as Who’s Who. However, it’s unclear from the column whether Legacies takes the place of History, or if they’re separate projects.
The original Who’s Who detailed the people — both prominent and obscure — places and organizations of the DC Universe. There were subsequent updates, but none was ever as comprehensive as the original series. The role of Who’s Who eventually was filled by the Secret Files and Origins one-shots.
History of the DC Universe was a two-issue series by Marv Wolfman and George Perez released in 1986 in the wake of Crisis on Infinite Earths to establish what was canon now that there was no multiverse.
Greenberger joined DC in 1984 as an assistant editor, eventually becoming an editor, editorial coordinator and then finally manager-editorial operations before leaving the company in 2000. After a brief stint with Gist Communications and Marvel, he rejoined DC in 2002, working as senior editor-collected editions until his firing in early 2006.
- January 7, 2010 @ 07:11 AM by Kevin Melrose