2011 May
What Are You Reading?
Yeah!
Welcome to What Are You Reading? Our guest today is Leslie Stein, creator of Eye of the Majestic Creature, a collection of semi-autobiographical and fantasy-based comics published by Fantagraphics.
To see what Leslie and the Robot 6 crew have been reading, click below.
- May 8, 2011 @ 03:31 PM by JK Parkin
Saturday Shelf Porn
Welcome once again to Shelf Porn, where fans show off their collections of comics, graphic novels and the like. Today’s Shelf Porn was submitted by Fritz Park from Seoul, Korea, whose collection is currently on display at a local bookstore.
If you’d like to submit your own Shelf Porn, we could certainly use it — just send a write-ups and jpgs to jkparkin@yahoo.com.
And now here’s Fritz.
- May 7, 2011 @ 12:00 PM by JK Parkin
Dark Knight Returns artwork sells for almost $450,000
from The Dark Knight Returns
Heritage Auctions expected to bring in $100,000 for page 10 of The Dark Knight Returns #3. It turns out their estimate was a little bit on the low side.
The piece actually sold for $448,125 to an anonymous collector — “the single most valuable piece of American comic art to ever sell,” the auction house said in a press release.
“I’ve always loved that drawing,” said Frank Miller, who drew the landmark Batman: The Dark Knight Returns miniseries, before the auction. “Danced around my studio like a fool when I drew it. I hope it finds a good home.”
“Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns defined the best of 1980s comics, and has since been universally acknowledged as one of the most important and influential stories ever published,” said Ed Jaster, senior vice president of Heritage Auctions, “and no image from that important comic series is more iconic than this Splash Page. It’s a little surprising, yes, but fitting that this piece is now the most expensive piece of American comic art ever sold at auction.”
Per the press release, the previous record price for a piece of original American comic book art was set last year when the cover of EC comics Weird Fantasy #29, by artist Frank Frazetta, sold at Heritage via a private treaty sale for $380,000. That of course was a cover, which typically sell for higher prices than interior art. Typically ….
“Heritage auctioned Frank Miller’s original artwork for the cover of Daredevil #188 for $101,575 last year,” said Jaster, “so we knew there were serious buyers out there, especially for Miller’s top work. Now we know for sure what collectors are willing to pay. This piece is far away the current king. Nothing else has even come close.”
- May 6, 2011 @ 03:40 PM by JK Parkin
TCAF Travails: Black Eye confiscated by Canadian customs
Canadian customs has long had a reputation for being quick to seize any comics they find potentially obscene, and Tom Neely learned that the hard way this morning, as Canadian customs officers reportedly confiscated the five copies of the Black Eye anthology that he was bringing with him to the Toronto Comic Arts Festival. Ryan Standfest, editor/publisher of Rotland Press + Comic Works, which publishes Black Eye, emailed Neely’s account of the incident to The Comics Journal:
… They took ‘em. I tried to get them to just ship them back to me at home, but they said they were required to send it to Ottawa for review… if they found the material to be ‘obscene’ they would take ‘further action.’ I asked what ‘further action’ meant and he said they would just destroy them. Or there is a chance they might ship them back to me.
Black Eye is an anthology of dark humor, which was funded in part by a Kickstarter campaign; apparently a page by singly named artist Onsmith is what first caught the customs officer’s eye. The book also contains work by Ivan Brunetti, Lilli Carré, and Paul Hornschemeier, among others, and essays by Jeet Heer and other luminaries, and an interview with Al Feldstein … it’s hard to argue that this anthology wouldn’t have redeeming features. Nonetheless, the customs agent wouldn’t let it through, and kept talking about “further action,” which certainly sounds ominous.
Although Neely seems to have been taken by surprise, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund issued an advisory just two months ago about taking comics across international borders.
And this certainly isn’t the first time this has happened. Continue Reading »
- May 6, 2011 @ 01:00 PM by Brigid Alverson
This weekend, it’s the Toronto Comic Arts Festival
TCAF 2011
Comic creators from all over the world will converge in Toronto this weekend for the annual Toronto Comic Arts Festival, or TCAF, which takes place Saturday and Sunday at the Toronto Reference Library. Admission is free.
Guests include Darwyn Cooke, Chris Ware, Seth, Kathryn and Stuart Immonen, Jeff Lemire, Paul Pope, Brecht Evens, Adrian Tomine, Becky Cloonan, Chester Brown, Graham Annable, Kate Beaton, Ross Campbell, Brandon Graham, Matt Kindt, Jamie McKelvie, Ryan North, Jay Stephens, Kagan McLeod, James Stokoe, Ben Towle, Raina Telgemeier and many more. It’s an impressive guest list. Publishers attending include Fantagraphics, Drawn & Quarterly, Top Shelf, AdHouse, Sparkplug, Secret Acres and Vertical, just to name a few.
In conjunction with TCAF, the annual Doug Wright Awards will be presented Saturday night at 7 p.m. at the Art Gallery of Ontario’s Jackman Hall. Admission to the awards is $5 and includes a pin designed by Michael DeForge.
- May 6, 2011 @ 12:30 PM by JK Parkin
Icarus on Robot 6 pg 18
Icarus is a comic by Ryan Cody and is serialized here on Robot 6, with new pages every Monday, Wednesday & Friday. Comments welcome.
* If you live anywhere near Phoenix, AZ, I will be sketching for The Hero Initiative at Atomic Comics in Chandler Saturday May 7th as part of Free Comic Book Day. Please come by and say hi and get a sketch for a small donation. I’ll have a couple issues of Icarus #1 available for sale as well.
Ryan Cody is the creator, artist, writer, & colorist of ICARUS, a bi-monthly super-powered adventure/espionage book published through Super 75 Comics. Ryan’s past projects include illustrating the graphic novel VILLAINS for Viper
Comics as well as contributing to the Eisner-Award winning anthology, Popgun Vol.3, from Image comics. ICARUS #1 is currently available as both a .99 digital download and in print. For more information or to order a print copy of ICARUS, please visit www.super75comics.com
- May 6, 2011 @ 12:00 PM by Ryan Cody
Robot Reviews | Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths
Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths
Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths
by Shigeru Mizuki
Drawn and Quarterly, 368 pages, $24.95.
Disclaimer: At the request of the publisher, I wrote a letter of recommendation when they were applying for a grant from a nonprofit organization to aid in the publication and promotion of this book.
Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths is nothing less than a spit in the face of militarism, war and feudal attitudes. It is an angry book, but it doesn’t shriek its indignation, though the temptation certainly seems to be there. There are few histrionics on display or scenes of outright, explicit condemnation. Rather, the book is content to let the general inhumanity on display speak for itself.
- May 6, 2011 @ 11:00 AM by Chris Mautner
This Saturday, it’s Free Comic Book Day
art by Darwyn Cooke
Retailers around the world will once again celebrate the greatest holiday of the year, at least for comic fans, on Saturday — Free Comic Book Day. In addition to giving away comics from a wide range of publishers, many retailers will also host creator signings and other events at their shops. To see what’s happening in your area, head over to the FCBD’s event listing page.
For parents wondering what you should pick up for your kids, Katherine Dacey has a great guide posted at Good Comics for Kids.
And after you’ve hit your local comic shop, you can also find some free comics of the electronic variety:
- Graphicly will have several free comics available via their site and applications on Saturday, including a Free Comic Book Day Edition of Mouse Guard that will appear in all of their user accounts. They will also have issues of Archie, Atomic Robo, In Maps & Legends and many more that can be downloaded for free on Saturday only; head over to their blog for a complete list.
- ComixTribe and Red Handed Studios have joined forces to digitally release a crossover between their flagship titles, Epic and DynaGirl. You can download it now, right here.
And finally, to see previews of just about all the titles that will be available, head over to the FCBD website. My personal “shopping” list for tomorrow includes everything, but the ones I’m really psyched about include the Amazing Spider-Man one, featuring Shang Chi; DC’s Green Lantern one, mainly for the Flashpoint preview; Robert Kirkman’s Super Dinosaur; Spontaneous #1 from Oni; and of course the Roger Langridge/Chris Samnee Thor/Captain America book, which is the perfect thing to read after we see Thor tomorrow. For more on the comics themselves, Dorian at Postmodern Barney has a rundown.
- May 6, 2011 @ 10:00 AM by JK Parkin
Bill Watterson illustrates Mark Twain
Unlike the painting that Bill Watterson just did for the Team Cul de Sac project, these drawings are not new work; in fact, they were done early in his career, before Calvin and Hobbes became such a success. Artist Thom Buchanan posted them at his blog My Delineated Life, which is a treasure trove of interesting illustrations from times gone by.
Watterson did these as a freelance job for the Mark Twain Journal, and it’s kind of interesting to see how consistent the public discourse is: These cartoons, done in 1983 and based on material that’s about 100 years older, are about the same things that cartoons are about now: Cats and corruption in Congress.
At The Daily Cartoonist, where I first spotted this item, Nevin Martell contributed a few more Mark Twain cartoons, including one on another timeless topic, the irritations of modern technology—in this case, the telephone.
- May 6, 2011 @ 09:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
Neil Gaiman vs. the Bully: ‘Nobody kicks sand on this Sandman’
From "Neil vs. The Bully," by Evil Wylie
There’s been a lot written over the past couple of days about Minnesota House Majority Leader Matt Dean’s churlish, and childish, criticism of Neil Gaiman for accepting $45,000 from the state’s Legacy Fund to speak a year ago at a library. (Dean called the author a “pencil-necked little weasel who stole $45,000 from the state of Minnesota,” but has since apologized, at his mother’s urging, for the name-calling.)
However, my favorite take on the kerfuffle is this webcomic by cartoonist Evil Wylie. Titled “Neil vs. The Bully,” it parodies the old Charles Atlas comic-book ads while also depicting Neil Gaiman and Matt Dean in swim trunks. Check out the full comic at EvilReads.
(via GalleyCat)
- May 6, 2011 @ 07:00 AM by Kevin Melrose
Grumpy Old Fan | Who’s got room for Professor Zoom?
Flashpoint: Reverse-Flash #1
While it might not be much, Saturday’s Free Comic Book Day will bring our first real glimpse at the world of Flashpoint. I’ve been looking at the looming alternate-universe epic as little more than a fun way to spend the summer — which would be fine, by the way — but apparently that is just crazy talk. Everything will change, as it always does; as it did with Brightest Day and Blackest Night and Final Crisis, etc., etc.
Naturally, there are different degrees of “change,” from wholesale reorganization to continuity tweaks. 1985′s Crisis On Infinite Earths gave DC carte blanche to rework characters from the ground up. 1994′s Zero Hour, 2005-06′s Infinite Crisis and 52, and 2008-09′s Final Crisis also allowed DC to tinker with the timeline, mostly on a small scale. More esoteric devices like Hypertime, Super-punches, and plot-specific time travel have produced and/or explained certain changes.
However, in practical terms, the post-COIE changes haven’t upset too many apple carts. Oh, Zero Hour tried to clean up Hawkman’s history, and it also facilitated a new Legion of Super-Heroes timeline, both of which were big deals. More recently, though, Infinite Crisis gave Clark Kent a “secret Superboy” career and restored certain aspects of Batman’s and Wonder Woman’s histories, but those developments stayed in the background. Accordingly, a change that doesn’t affect a title’s regular storytelling practice doesn’t seem like much of a change.
And therein lies the real puzzle of Flashpoint: what room is there, across DC’s superhero line, for the kind of change which excites more than it frustrates? Of the 55 DCU/superhero-line titles DC will publish in July (as the big event reaches its midpoint), 17 are part of Flashpoint, and many of the rest are dealing with their own ongoing arcs. Today we’ll look at who might be flexible, and speculate a little on what might happen.
- May 5, 2011 @ 03:30 PM by Tom Bondurant
Alamo Drafthouse/Mondo has Thor seeing red
Thor by Ken Taylor
You might have heard there’s a new Thor film coming out this week, and as they’ve done in the past with Scott Pilgrim and Iron Man 2, the Alamo Drafthouse has created a limited edition Thor poster available through their Mondo Tees site.
The poster is limited to 380 copies and was created by artist Ken Taylor.
- May 5, 2011 @ 02:45 PM by JK Parkin
Craig Rousseau runs through the (alien) jungle
Craig Rousseau’s announced on his blog that he’s working on a new comic with writer Rich Woodall and colorist Lawrence Basso. They hope to have Kyra, Alien Jungle Girl ready for 2012, but that shouldn’t affect The Perhapanauts (Rousseau’s project with Todd Dezago). He says that “the haps will be back in a big way” later this year.
- May 5, 2011 @ 02:00 PM by Michael May
Previews: What Looks Good for July
Sergio Aragonés Funnies #1
Time once again for our monthly trip through Previews looking for cool, new comics. As usual, we’re focusing on graphic novels, collected volumes, and first issues so that I don’t have to come up with a new way to say, “Alpha Flight is still awesome!” every month. And I’ll continue letting Tom and Carla do the heavy lifting in regards to DC and Marvel’s solicitations.
Also, please feel free to play along in the comments. Tell me what I missed that you’re looking forward to or – if you’re a comics creator – mention your own stuff.
Abstract Studios
Terry Moore’s Echo Complete Edition – Collecting all 30 issues of the Strangers in Paradise creator’s sci-fi epic.
Rachel Rising #1 – And kicking of Moore’s new series, featuring a girl who rises up out of her shallow grave and tries to figure out how she got there.
Bongo
Sergio Aragonés Funnies #1 – I can’t think of a better publisher for a book like this and it’s nice to see Bongo’s growing beyond its Simpsons and Futurama books a little.
Boom!
The Amory Wars: In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth, Volume 3 – I haven’t read these myself, but I know at least one Coheed and Cambria fan who doesn’t read a lot of comics, but snatches these up as soon as they come out. Because of that, they’re worth not only mentioning, but being happy about.
- May 5, 2011 @ 01:00 PM by Michael May
Marvel cartoons coming to Netflix streaming
Marvel announced late last week that a bunch of their classic cartoons are being released for Netflix streaming. Actually, “a bunch” is an understatement. It’s just about everything:
- May 5, 2011 @ 12:00 PM by Michael May