2010 May
The crazy world of Abner Dean
from What Am I Doing Here? by Abner Dean
The Internet is filled with comics riches, and What Things Do, the corner of the Internet run by cartoonist/designer Jordan Crane, contains plenty of them. It’s filled to bursting with new and old comics by the likes of Crane himself, Jaime Hernandez, Sammy Harkham, Kevin Huizenga, Ted May, John Porcellino, Dan Zettwoch, and Steve Weissman. But for me, the big discovery at the site is the work of Abner Dean, a New Yorker and Esquire cartoonist who specialized in anxiety-dream images of (anatomically incorrect) naked people is satirically absurd situations. What Things Do is reprinting the 1947 Dean collection What Am I Doing Here?, and the bounty is rather astonishing — the strength of both the images Dean concocts and his execution of them all but bowls me over. I’ve never seen its like, though if you’ve ever seen Matt Groening’s Life in Hell, you’ve seen a kindred spirit at the very least. The shrunken-down image above truly doesn’t do justice to seeing Dean’s stuff in its full-sized, screen-spanning glory, so click on over and check it out!
- May 13, 2010 @ 01:44 PM by Sean T. Collins
Cool things to bookmark: Joshua Cotter’s new website
Via the AdHouse blog comes word that comics creator Joshua Cotter has a spiffy new website. The creator of Skyscrapers of the Midwest and Driven by Lemons, who our own Tim O’Shea interviewed recently, has tons of art, strips and other cool stuff up on the site. Go check it out.
- May 13, 2010 @ 01:00 PM by JK Parkin
Preview: Last Airbender prequel comic
The Last Airbender
Splash Page has a five-page preview up of The Last Airbender: Prequel: Zuko’s Story, the prequel to the Last Airbender movie due out later this year. Published by Del Rey, the book promises to be a class act (despite its unwieldy title), with a script by Dave Roman and Alison Wilgus and art by Eisner winner Nina Matsumoto, creator of Yokaiden.
- May 13, 2010 @ 12:30 PM by Brigid Alverson
This weekend, it’s Motor City Comic Con
Motor City Comic Con
The Detroit Free Press and Hometown Life preview Motor City Comic Con, held Friday through Sunday at the Rock Financial Showplace in Novi, Michigan.
The event, which kicks off at 12:30 p.m. Friday, features a substantial lineup of comics guests, including Sergio Aragones, Avatar Press, Art Baltazar, Darryl Banks, Jeremy Bastian, Joe Benitez, Max Brooks, Guy Davis, Greg Horn, J.T. Krul, John Layman, Mike McKone, Dan Parent, David Petersen, Darick Robertson, Don Rosa, Stan Sakai, Herb Trimpe and Ethan Van Sciver.
Media guests include Martina Sirtis, Linda Blair, Todd Bridges, Tia Carrere, Herb Jefferson Jr., Daniel Logan, Ray Park, Eric Roberts, Lindsay Wagner, Adam West and the guy who said “Those aren’t the droids we’re looking for” in Star Wars: A New Hope.
- May 13, 2010 @ 12:00 PM by Kevin Melrose
Straight for the art | Ming Doyle’s Daria, Storm, and more
Daria and Jane by Ming Doyle
Daria, the cult-hit MTV animated series that spun out of Beavis and Butt-Head, is maybe the most iconic look at disaffected ’90s high-schoolers this side of My So-Called Life, and it finally hit DVD this week. What better way to celebrate than checking out artist Ming Doyle’s gorgeous tribute to this joyous occasion, featuring Daria and Jane?
- May 13, 2010 @ 11:30 AM by Sean T. Collins
Slash Print | Following the digital evolution
Screenshot of Comic Zeal 4
Apps: Chris Meadows reviews Comic Zeal 4, a CBR/CBZ comics reader for the iPad (previous editions had both iPad and iPod versions). Aside from the performance of the reader itself and its interface, Meadows also touches on the question of what you would use it for, since there aren’t a lot of legitimate sources of CBR/CBZ files; although some publishers use them for online work, the vast majority are pirated scans.
Zuda: Scott McCloud becomes the one millionth person to complain about Zuda’s annoyingly slow flash interface—and his prize is a personal response from Zuda honcho Ron Perazza.
iPad: Rich Johnson considers the possibilities and limitations of the iPad as a comics reader at The Beat.
Kindle: Gene Luen Yang‘s American Born Chinese is available on the Kindle, and he has a fuzzy photo on the internet to prove it. I’m not sure the Kindle is doing his book any favors, as the resolution is not that great and it converts the color images to black and white, but I’d need a sharper photo to know for sure.
- May 13, 2010 @ 11:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
Straight for the art | New covers for De:Tales, Sin City collections
Dark Horse sent over three new covers that you’ll find when their next round of solicitations go live … first up is the cover for a new edition of Gabriel Bá and Fábio Moon’s De:Tales, which collects several of their short stories. The softcover is out of print, so Dark Horse is releasing it as a hardcover in October. If you like their Daytrippers series from Vertigo, you’ll most likely like this:
De:Tales
- May 13, 2010 @ 10:43 AM by JK Parkin
Marvel launching another Namor series in August
Namor #1 variant
Marvel.com has a brief write-up today on an ongoing Namor series that’s launching in August. Written by Stuart Moore and drawn by Ariel Olivetti, Namor: The First Mutant will tie into the big X-Men vs. vampires storyline, “The Curse of the Mutants”, that’ll run in the new X-Men title coming later this year.
Per Marvel.com, “Stuart Moore and Ariel Olivetti set the world’s first mutant on his most dangerous mission ever! Namor may be able to end the vampire threat, but is he willing to sacrifice Atlantis? And what can stop the threat of…the Atlantean vampires?” The first issue will have covers by Joe Quesada and Jae Lee.
Created by Bill Everett, Namor has appeared in a slew of ongoings, miniseries and team books over the years since his introduction way back in 1939, from Sub-Mariner Comics back in the 1940s to Namor, the Sub-Mariner in the 1990s. He’s been an Invader, an Avenger, a Defender and a member of the Illuminati, and most recently has been hanging out with the X-Men.
- May 13, 2010 @ 10:00 AM by JK Parkin
Everybody Loves Leonardo
Leonardo Da Vinci in S.H.I.E.L.D. #1 by Jonathan Hickman and Dustin Weaver
Leonardo Da Vinci and the Soldiers of Forever is the upcoming Warner Bros. action movie written by frequent comics scribe Marc Guggenheim and starring artist/inventor/genius Leonardo Da Vinci as a prototypical action hero in the Indiana Jones/James Bond/Batman mode. Perhaps you noticed Jeffrey Renaud’s interview with Guggenheim on the topic for our sister blog Spinoff Online … and perhaps you noticed the similarity of the idea (cooked up by Hitman producer Adrian Askarieh) to that of Jonathan Hickman’s new Marvel comic S.H.I.E.L.D., which features Leonardo and several other real-world and Marvel-Universe geniuses as members of a secret society dedicated to saving the world.
Well, you’re not alone: Jonathan Hickman noticed it, too. In a tweet directed at fellow Marvel writer Brian Michael Bendis, Hickman linked to the Guggenheim interview and wrote “This … is going to be AWESOME! 
” Bendis replied, “i know, right? where do they come up with ideas like that?”
Now, there are enough winky emoticons and tongue-in-cheek phrases in there to mitigate against any perceived outrage over the similarity between the projects on the part of Hickman or Bendis. Meanwhile, Leonardo’s the guy who gave rise to the term “Renaissance man,” for pete’s sake — it’s hardly as though his astonishing, evocative talents have gone unnoticed by the world’s writers of fantastic fiction prior to the release of S.H.I.E.L.D., as anyone who’s read The Da Vinci Code can tell you. Still, it’s funny how, for the moment at least, everything’s coming up Vitruvian.
- May 13, 2010 @ 09:30 AM by Sean T. Collins
Grapes from outer space
Seedless
What if the grapes in your fridge were really aliens from outer space? That’s the concept behind Corey Lewis’s Seedless, due out in August from Image. From their blog:
“I consider it like the movie BATTERIES NOT INCLUDED meets the video game MEGAMAN,” says Lewis. “Originally, SEEDLESS was an online comic supported by Seattle-based video game store Pink Gorilla. The grape characters in SEEDLESS are from one of the first comics I created when I was twelve years old. The story is a bright and colorful, action-packed adventure for kids and adults!”
With the tagline “The grapes have gone BAD!” this book sounds like a lot of fun, and just looking at the cover has resurrected dusty memories of the other personified grape in my life, Goofy Grape.
- May 13, 2010 @ 09:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes
One Piece, Vol. 27
Publishing | Viz Media has confirmed that its public relations and design departments were among those affected by Tuesday’s layoffs. In a brief statement released yesterday, the company assured fans that, “We have no plans at this time for drastic measures such as product cancellations or business line closures. Your favorite series are not going away.”
Melinda Beasi, Simon Jones, Kai-Ming Cha and Lissa Pattillo provide more commentary. [Viz Media]
Legal | As a Belgian court decides whether to ban Tintin in the Congo because of racist content, Roger Bongos and Sebastian Rodriguez argue that Hergé’s book shouldn’t be censored but rather read and analyzed within the context of the era in which it was created. “You cannot deny however that the book is very discriminatory of black people,” Bongos writes. “Hergé wasn’t a racist person himself: he simply reflected the image the Western world had of the Congo and of Africa during those years, as well as the colonial aspirations of Belgians. In this sense, the book is kind of Proust’s ‘madeleine episode’ for us: it helps us remember our colonial history.” The court is expected to issue its ruling on May 31. [France 24]
- May 13, 2010 @ 08:11 AM by Kevin Melrose
It’s the hard-knock life for Little Orphan Annie as syndicate cancels strip
Annie and her pal Sandy
After more than 85 years, the sun will no longer come out for Little Orphan Annie, Harold Gray’s Depression Era comic about a red-haired waif and the kindly capitalist who gives her a home.
Although the strip, which debuted on Aug. 5, 1924 in the New York Daily News, once appeared in hundreds of newspapers, it now runs in fewer than 20. So Tribune Media Services has decided to cancel Annie with the June 13 installment — a cliffhanger, curiously enough.
The Chicago Tribune’s Phil Rosenthal reports that Sunday strip will end with Daddy Warbucks uncertain of Annie’s fate after her latest run-in with the Butcher of the Balkans.
“Annie is definitely not dying,” Steve Tippie, TMS’ vice president of licensing, tells Rosenthal. He says that while “the daily newspaper strip will go away [...] that doesn’t mean that Annie won’t come back … whether it’s (in) comic books, graphic novels, in print, electronic. It’s just too rich a vein (not) to mine.”
Indeed, Little Orphan Annie inspired a long-running radio show, three motion pictures, a television movie, and a musical — the basis for one of those films — that ran for six years on Broadway and has since been staged countless times around the world.
IDW Publishing has released four volumes of The Complete Little Orphan Annie collection through its Library of American Comics imprint.
- May 13, 2010 @ 05:47 AM by Kevin Melrose
Gorillas Riding Dinosaurs | Athena: Grey-Eyed Goddess
Olympians, Volume 2: Athena
Olympians: Athena, Grey-Eyed Goddess
Written and Illustrated by George O’Connor
First Second; $9.99
After loving the Zeus volume in George O’Connor’s Olympians series, I hoped that the other volumes in the series could live up to it. Zeus was surprising in the uniqueness of O’Connor’s designs and how well he succeeded at making it exciting as well as faithful to the myths. I had enough respect for O’Connor to expect another great volume, but still… one gets nervous.
O’Connor does succeed again with Athena, but he goes about it in a different way than he chose for Zeus. That’s nice in that it keeps the surprises coming, but it’s also necessary because of the nature of Athena’s mythology. While Zeus’ was a straight-out origin story with a single narrative running through it, Athena’s is made up of several unconnected events. To accommodate this, O’Connor has the Three Fates tell her tale.
This sounds like a straightforward device, but O’Connor adds depth to it by understanding the nature of the Fates’ storytelling and applying that to his book. The first Fate begins the story by spinning out the tale of Athena’s birth, then the other two add to it, weaving in other events until at last the full picture of the goddess is complete. It’s more than just a way to present the story; it’s a philosophy. And it works. Athena presents a view of the goddess that at least feels whole. As O’Connor points out, it’s not whole – that would require “a thousand walls with a hundred thousand tapestries” – but it is satisfying. And besides, Athena will undoubtedly show up in future volumes of the series.
Betrayal, giant monsters, and the Clash of the the Titans after the break.
- May 12, 2010 @ 05:56 PM by Michael May
Video of the day | What a 2-D Bone cartoon might have looked like
Back at the Alternative Press Expo last fall, Jeff Smith talked about the computer-animated Bone movie that Warner Bros. is working on, and the creator of Bone noted that at one point he tried to get a hand-drawn Bone movie going with some friends. “It was just too big, too expensive,” he said. “I ended up just spending my time trying to get everyone to get along with everyone else.”
What would a hand-drawn Bone movie look like? Well, maybe something like the video above. Cartoon Brew posted it yesterday, noting that it was created by animator Andrew Kaiko, with some vocal assistance from a Bone video game — presumably the one created by Telltale Games.
- May 12, 2010 @ 02:29 PM by JK Parkin
Send us your Shelf Porn!
Hello and welcome to Send Us Your Shelf Porn, where fans can show off what they’ve got, so long as what they’ve got involves comic book collections. Would you like to show off your shelves? Drop me an email and let’s see what we can do.
Today’s shelves come from Chad Nevett, who reviews comics for CBR and also contributes to Comics Should Be Good. Take it away, Chad …
- May 12, 2010 @ 01:00 PM by JK Parkin