2010 April
Strangeways: The Thirsty – Page 130
The final page of STRANGEWAYS: THE THIRSTY here at Robot 6. Debriefing to follow.
My thanks to Gervasio and Jok for their artwork on this series.
Yeah, wrap-up will be coming later. Thanks for reading along, folks.
- April 7, 2010 @ 01:00 PM by Matt Maxwell
Make Mine MoCCA: PictureBox
What to expect at the PictureBox booth
Dan Nadel sent us that Doug Johnson painting, which he says approximates the vibe at the PictureBox booth. What’s going on? PictureBox will be debuting two books, Charles Willeford’s I Was Looking for a Street and Thurber’s new 1-800 MICE #4, Nadel adds, “There will also be the usual extra special items from everyone from Neal Adams to Anya Davidson. Yes, you read that correctly. Ask nicely and I’ll show you the original pages for Real Deal that will be for sale for the first time.” Frank Santoro will also be there with a massive selection of back issues priced at $3 or less.
In addition, Peter Blegvad will be doing a signing at the booth on Sunday from 1 to 3 p.m.
Nadel will also be debuting his own book, Art in Time: Unknown Comic Book Adventures 1940-1980, at the Abrams booth and will be signing there at 1 pm on Saturday.
- April 7, 2010 @ 12:30 PM by Brigid Alverson
Make Mine MoCCA: Fantagraphics brings the star power
Megan Kelso's Artichoke Tales
Fantagraphics Books will be bringing an impressive roster of creators, including Arnold Roth, Al Jaffee, Gahan Wilson, Dash Shaw, Charles Burns, Jaime Hernandez, and Miss Lasko-Gross. Check their MoCCA post at the Flog blog for the complete schedule of panels and signings.
Fantagraphics will also be be debuting a number of new books at MoCCA, some of which won’t be available in stores until much later this year. Visitors will be able to score copies of Artichoke Tales by Megan Kelso, Best American Comics Criticism, edited by Ben Schwartz, Billy Hazelnuts and the Crazy Bird by Tony Millionaire, Captain Easy, Vol. 1 by Roy Crane, Dungeon Quest by Joe Daly, Culture Corner by Basil Wolverton, Blazing Combat (softcover) by Archie Goodwin & Co., Krazy & Ignatz 1916-1918 by Geo. Herriman, The Search for Smilin’ Ed by Kim Deitch, Tales Designed to Thrizzle #6 by Michael Kupperman, Wally Gropius by Tim Hensley, Weathercraft by Jim Woodring, and Temperance by Cathy Malkasian.
- April 7, 2010 @ 12:00 PM by Brigid Alverson
Straight for the art | Sean Phillips contributes to ‘The Johnny Cash Project’
Johnny Cash by Sean Phillips
Artist Sean Phillips shows his contribution to ‘The Johnny Cash Project.’ Participants send in their drawings of Cash, which are being shown on the site and are being used in the Johnny Cash music video “Ain’t No Grave.”
- April 7, 2010 @ 11:30 AM by JK Parkin
Make Mine MoCCA: Welcome to the collective
Outbound 2
Boston and Philadelphia will be represented at MoCCA not only by individual artists but also by collectives based in both cities.
The Boston Comics Roundtable, which is known locally for their series of Inbound anthologies, will be showing off a preview of their second sci-fi anthology, Outbound #2.
The Philadelphia-based collective Philly Comix Jam is launching a free quarterly alternative comics tabloid, Secret Prison, with art by Box Brown, Art Baxter, and Pat Aulisio, among others. They are starting out with a 2,000-copy limited edition that will be available at the Box Brown, Yeah Dude Distro, and free giveaway tables at MoCCA.
- April 7, 2010 @ 11:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
Kirkman wants to wean Loeb from the “fat corporate teat”
Invincible
In an interview with Mike Malve from Atomic Comics in Arizona, Image’s Robert Kirkman discusses upcoming Invincible stories and also throws down the gauntlet, so to speak, for writer Jeph Loeb.
In reference to the challenge Kirkman made to Todd McFarlane a few years ago to start drawing again, which resulted in the comic Haunt, Atomic Comics asked Kirkman if there were any other creators out there who he wanted to “challenge to push their limits.” Kirkman responded:
What’s that Bendis guy done lately? All kidding aside, I’d love to see Jeph Loeb try his hand at an original creator-owned book. Millar has proven that when top-flight talent take the plunge it has the potential for massive success, and Loeb does the most commercial books out there with only the highest caliber of artists. I’d buy a creator-owned book by him in droves and I know he would excel at it. But sadly, I think he’s too comfortable on that fat corporate teat. Still, I hold out hope. Don’t you know that guy, Malve? Tell Loeb how many copies you could sell of his own Kick Ass. I don’t even care if he does it at Icon–I just want to read it.
- April 7, 2010 @ 10:30 AM by JK Parkin
Make Mine MoCCA: Dean Haspiel powers up
Dean Haspiel’s plans for the weekend include an participating in an all-star panel, pimping the Act-I-Vate Primer, and DJ’ing at what sounds like the comics party of the decade. He talks about his work and MoCCA in this Twi-NY interview, and here are the details of his schedule:
SATURDAY, April 10th, 2:00 PM
The Art of the Superhero: When Singular Vision Meets Popular Mythology
Once upon a time, comics defenders made much fuss over how “comics are not just superheroes.” We turn the notion on its head, exploring how superheroes can be not only as smart, and as much of a personal artistic expression as the more “literary” autobio and indie comix, but when done right these new myths can be simply sublime. Join true superheroes of the art Frank Miller (Dark Knight Returns, Sin City), Jaime Hernandez (Love & Rockets), Paul Pope (Batman Year 100, Heavy Liquid), Kyle Baker (Plastic Man, Nat Turner) & Dean Haspiel (Billy Dogma, ACT-I-VATE) as they explore what they find inspiring about the genre and about each others work. Moderated by Jeff Newelt (HEEB, Smith, Royal Flush)
- April 7, 2010 @ 10:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
One custom-made JARVIS, Stark family fortune not required
Tony Stark and JARVIS, from "Iron Man"
It may not be able to help him construct an armor suit — not yet, anyway — but Chad Barraford’s Project Jarvis greets him and his dog by name, controls his apartment lights and temperature, and can even cook a hot dog.
Inspired by, and named after, JARVIS, Tony Stark’s personal artificial intelligence computer system from 2008′s Iron Man, Barraford’s “digital life assistant” (DLA) runs on a four-year-old Mac Mini with built-in speech recognition.
The 27-year-old tech-support worker, who communicates with Jarvis via RFID tags, microphones, webcams, tweets and instant messages, has spent a grand total of $691.98 on his DLA. The Boston Globe has the full story (with video).
(via TUAW.com)
- April 7, 2010 @ 09:30 AM by Kevin Melrose
Make Mine MoCCA: Discover the next great comic
This weekend brings one of the high points of the comics year: The Museum of Comics and Cartoon Art Festival 2010. If you’re in New York, you can’t do any better than this; for $10 for a one-day ticket and $15 for a weekend pass ($12 if you’re a member), you get to wander around an entire armory filled with comics talent. We’ll be posting some of the highlights over the next few days; I wanted to start with some individual artists, as the opportunity to see new talent is one of the big draws of this show.
Troop 142
Mike Dawson will be debuting issues 1, 2, and 3 of his new graphic-novel-in-progress, Troop 142. He will also be selling and signing copies of Freddie & Me and Ace Face: The Mod with the Metal Arms. He can be found at table E19, alongside Liz Baille.
- April 7, 2010 @ 09:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes
Wizard World Anaheim
Conventions | A Wizard World convention soon may be coming to your town. Wizard CEO Gareb Shamus has announced plans to double the number of shows in his company’s stable within the next year.
“We want to create an atmosphere that’s different than San Diego, one that has real access to the stars and is about celebrating these characters in many media, which includes Hollywood films but goes well beyond that,” Shamus told the Los Angeles Times. “San Diego has done a spectacular job. It took them 40 years to build it up to what it is. But there’s other ways of doing things, and people are responding to that. We have 12 shows that we started or bought, and next year we expect it to be 20 to 25. There’s a lot more coming.”
Wizard now has conventions in: Anaheim, California; Philadelphia; Chicago; Boston; New York City; Edison, New Jersey; Austin, Texas; Cincinnati; Cleveland; Atlanta; Toronto; and Nashville, Tennessee. Most of those are part of a recent, rapid expansion that involved the acquisition of small, local shows. [Los Angeles Times]
- April 7, 2010 @ 07:25 AM by Kevin Melrose
Land deal approved for planned expansion of San Diego Convention Center
Artist's rendering of the convention center expansion and hotel
As expected, San Diego’s Port Commission today approved a land deal considered a major step toward a $753-million expansion of the city’s convention center.
The agreement gives the San Diego Convention Center control of a seven-acre bayfront plot to be used for the proposed expansion — an additional 200,000 square feet of exhibit space, 100,000 square feet of meeting rooms and a third ballroom — and a 500-room hotel. Both are seen as essential to keeping Comic-Con International, and the estimated $60 million its attendees pump into the economy, in San Diego.
The expansion would give the facility a total of 815,000 square feet of exhibit space, roughly the same as the venue in Anaheim — which, along with the one in Los Angeles, is competing for Comic-Con. The group’s contract with the San Diego Convention Center expires in 2012. Organizers are expected to make a decision about the event’s future within the next 30 days.
Now that the land deal is approved, officials with the city, convention center and port district will begin an 18- to 24-month process during which time they’ll seek public comment, study possible environmental effects of the expansion, and identify potential revenue streams. If all goes as planned, and the California Coastal Commission approves the project, the expanded convention center could open in 2015.
If the expansion happens, the San Diego Convention Center Corp. would pay a total of $14.5 million to Fifth Avenue Landing, the business group that holds the lease on the property. However, if it doesn’t happen, the plot reverts back to the business group, which then would have to build a hotel there.
- April 6, 2010 @ 05:26 PM by Kevin Melrose
Weighing in at 256 pages: Jarrett Williams talks Super Pro K.O.
Super Pro K.O. gives us a shout out!
Jarrett Williams has been doing his webcomic Lunar Boy, for a few years now, and this July will see the release of his first full-length graphic novel from Oni Press — Super Pro K.O.! The first digest-sized volume will weigh in at a monster 256 black-and-white pages, and it combines old-school wrestling (or rasslin’) with slick manga-style artwork. You can check out a 27-page preview of it here.
I learned from Oni’s Cory Casoni this weekend at WonderCon that Williams is already hard at work on volume two of the graphic novel series … Casoni said Williams is about 60 pages into the next volume. Williams took some time out from drawing it (not to mention his Lunar Boy pages) to talk to me about the graphic novel, wrestling and how he came to tag-team with Oni. And he even provided us with an original piece just for this interview (up top), which was really awesome of him. I have to wonder if he sleeps with a pencil in his hand.
My thanks to Williams for his time, and to Casoni for setting the interview up.
JK: So what exactly is Super Pro K.O.? Is it a wrestling comic wearing a manga mask, or more of a manga series that’s been dropkicked into a wrestling ring?
Jarrett: Haha, It’s a bit of both actually. I’ve been a fan of manga since I was a kid. I think most of the young cartoonists out there grew up with a huge awareness of Japanese comics. And we directly felt the impact of it when it really caught on. However, I was lucky enough to also have a family that was really big on pro wrestling. Well, at least my cousin, little brother and I. We watched it faithfully growing up. Everything from Mid South Wrestling, to WCW, to early WWF, I’ve pretty much seen it all.
I’ve wanted to tell a pro wrestling story in comic form for a long time but I just wasn’t sure how to approach it at first. I wanted to capture the fun/spirit of pro wrestling. And I definitely wanted to present it as athletic and over the top. And I have a lot of retro influences in the way I approach drawing comics so I figured capturing that 1970’s early 80’s time in wrestling would be the best way to go (and allow me to create all of these fantastical characters). So after playing around with ideas for a couple years while I drew other comics, I finally decided to just sit down and draw the badboy. And that’s how SPKO came to be.
- April 6, 2010 @ 02:51 PM by JK Parkin
Guest shot | Hitting MoCCA? Your guide to NYC by Alex Dueben
Editor’s Note: Alex Dueben, who writes articles for Comic Book Resources, The Comics Journal and Suicide Girls, shared with us the following guide to other things you can do in New York City while you’re in town for the MoCCA Festival.
by Alex Dueben
New York is the city that never sleeps and while you visit the city for this weekend’s MoCCA Festival, neither should you! Just kidding. There is a lot to do in the city that is comics-related not going on at the festival and you should make time to check out while you’re there. Time is short, and most of your cash will be going to buy comics, but here are a few suggestions of things to do while you’re in the city when you’re not at the festival or at the MoCCA Official Afterparty.
Theater:
“Diary of a Teenage Girl.” We’ll start with this show since it is based on a graphic novel (and not a just “a” graphic novel but a GREAT graphic novel) and the lobby of the show features artwork by Phoebe Gloeckner. Sean Collins reviewed the show when it first opened and fittingly MoCCA weekend will be its final weekend. Great reviews all around (even the New York Times loved it). Star and writer Marielle Heller spent a lot of time and energy getting it off the ground and it was definitely worth it. Go out and show some solidarity for indie comics. A must see event!
“Samuel and Alasdair: A Personal History of the Robot War” at the Brick Theater. The play has it all: Love. Friendship. Robot wars. With a title like that, does it really require much in the way of a description?
“The Addams Family.” Charles Addams’ family brought to life by two of Broadway’s greatest stars, Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth and music from Andrew Lippa. Reviews have been mixed but it’s hard to gather more talent together than this show has. Deserves props just for trying to go back to Charles Addams’ original cartoons for inspirations and not television or movies. Here’s hoping they capture some of Addam’s magic.
“Stuffed and Unstrung.” I’m not even going to try to sell you on this NYC version of the Henson company’s acclaimed “Puppet Up” shows in Los Angeles. If puppets plus improv doesn’t make you want to see this show, I don’t know what will.
- April 6, 2010 @ 01:19 PM by JK Parkin
Gaiman and Nelson battle Lady Gaga and others for ‘most influential’ crown
Neil Gaiman and Diane Nelson
As Brigid pointed out on Monday, Penny Arcade creators Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik are among the finalists on Time magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world (they’ve slipped two spots to No. 11 since yesterday). However, they’re not the only comics-industry figures in the poll: Just six spots behind the duo is writer Neil Gaiman, followed way down the list is DC Entertainment President Diane Nelson (No. 156, as of this post).
It’s an online poll, so it probably shouldn’t be surprising that the creators of a popular webcomic and a comics writer-turned-bestselling author, both with a substantial web presence, rank high on the list, rubbing virtual elbows with the likes of actors Neil Patrick Harris and Robert Pattinson, and U.S. Rep. Ron Paul. They all have dedicated, and plugged-in, fan bases, after all (though none can touch Lady Gaga, who sits comfortably at No. 1).
But the inclusion of Nelson, who now hovers toward the bottom of the list just behind legendary singer-songwriter Patti Smith, is (pleasantly) unexpected.
“As comic books have rapidly emerged as the most bankable mainstream movie properties,” Time‘s description for Nelson reads, “a vast gulf has grown between the big-screen Marvel universe (Iron Man, Hulk) and that of DC Comics. Besides Christopher Nolan’s Batman chapters, DC has faced a drought at the multiplex. Nelson is charged with altering that course. As the head of the newly-created DC Entertainment, she’s been handed a sprawling comic book universe and tasked with adapting it for the mainstream. Millions of fans — and plenty of movie studio execs — are hoping she’s up to the task.”
To the best of my knowledge, there’s no Diane Nelson Fan Site, so it’s unlikely she’ll rocket into the upper echelons currently inhabited by Beyonce, Apolo Ohno, Stephen Colbert and President Obama. We’ll know for sure on April 29. Until then, the voting is open.
- April 6, 2010 @ 12:00 PM by Kevin Melrose
Make Mine MoCCA | Special edition of Split Lip
Split Lip special edition
WonderCon is so last week; now we’re looking ahead to this weekend’s MoCCA Art Festival.
Sam Costello, writer of the webcomic anthology series Split Lip, fires the first press release over the bow with the news that he is producing a very limited special edition of Vol. 2 of his Split Lip horror anthology just for MoCCA. And by “limited,” he means “35 copies.” The 160-page special edition includes an unpublished story that won’t be in the regular volume 2 and will sell for $23.99. Each book is signed and numbered. Featured artists include Sami Makkonen (Hatter M, vol. 2), Anthony Perruzo (Zuda), John Bivens (Comic Book Tattoo), and Jason Ho (Agnes Quill), and the cover is by Shane Oakley. And best of all: You can get it at MoCCA, whereas the non-special edition won’t be available until the end of April at the earliest.
Are you debuting a new comic or planning something special for MoCCA? Send your press releases to brigid@mangablog.net and we’ll post as many as we can.
- April 6, 2010 @ 11:30 AM by Brigid Alverson