2011 May
Your Wednesday Sequence 12 | Doug Wright
Nipper, June 20th 1964. Doug Wright.
Yes, yes, I can see perfectly well that this is only one panel. But sequence is just the same as anything else: one definition works fine until you run across something that contradicts it. To my eyes, the picture above is one such something. Today we’re going to examine how an artist can build sequence into a single image, creating pictorial motion without having to subdivide the page with panel borders.
We’ve already seen how sequence is subjective. The information on any page of comics exists independent of order, and while most artists lay out their pages in a way that leaves little of that order to question, it’s easy enough to skip around in the panels of comics your own way, randomizing the events or stitching new meanings into them. (What do you mean you’ve never tried that? You really should.) This is especially true of silent comics, where there are no strings of dialogue or narration to get in the way. Similarly, there’s almost never one correct, proscribed way to read a single panel, a logic the reader is meant to follow to move through one picture. In multi-panel comics, the images are most often meant as quick hits of action or locale, with only a single stage of the events taking place communicated within them before the next one hits. When there is more than that going on, as in this single-frame strip by Doug Wright, the Charles Schulz of Canada, what the reader is dealing with is sequence.
- May 25, 2011 @ 04:00 PM by Matt Seneca
Creator Q&A | Jim Zubkavich on Skullkickers‘ second story arc
Skullkickers #7
I spoke with writer Jim Zubkavich about Skullkickers, the Image Comics series created by him and artist Edwin Huang at the beginning of the year. With the book’s second story arc kicking off in issue #7 today, I thought I’d catch up with him on what he and Huang have planned for the two as-yet-unnamed (but that’s about to change) mercenaries in the book.
The solicitation text for issue #7 says: “After the events collected in Image’s hit trade paperback SKULLKICKERS, VOL. 1, the second SK adventure begins here! In this issue: a den of thieves, a city of danger, nobility, stupidity, dinner parties and bloodthirsty faerie folk. Jump onboard and see why Ain’t It Cool News says: ‘Everyone who loves comics should buy Skullkickers.’”
My thanks to Jim for doing this interview this week, especially considering he’s on his honeymoon right now. Congrats to the happy couple on their recent nuptials!
JK: I was going to ask you to fill in anyone who hadn’t read the first six issues on what exactly happened, but you guys do that quite well in the first two pages of the preview CBR has up of issue #7. So instead I’ll ask you to tell me about the lady who gives the intro — who is she?
Jim: She’s a new mystery character whose influence is going to be felt in the second arc in some subtle ways. I know it’s hard to imagine anything about Skullkickers being “subtle”, but it’s true. I’m not ready to tip my hand on her just yet, but I think readers will enjoy what she brings to the mix with our two monster-mashing mercenaries.
- May 25, 2011 @ 03:00 PM by JK Parkin
Quote of the day | The audience doesn’t know what it wants
Mark Waid
In a recent interview with SotoColor Graphics (by way of Chris Sims), Mark Waid had this to say: ”The audience doesn’t know what it wants. If it knew what it wanted, it wouldn’t be an audience. It just knows that it wants to be entertained somehow, and that’s a perfectly reasonable expectation. I wish we were better at it. The 50,000 hardcore fans of periodical print comics that we have left, the ones we haven’t and can’t drive away, seem to indicate with their buying patterns that they’re interested only in nostalgia, which is terrifying. And I understand why publishers cater to that; they’re kinda forced to, given that the print distribution system is targeted SOLELY TO THOSE 50,000.”
“The audience doesn’t know what it wants” is an old adage shared by many many writers, including me. That’s not an easy statement for some fans to hear over their own shouting, “Why do DC and Marvel not respond to our concerns and demands?” After all, we’re the audience. We should have a say in what kind of stories we read, right?
Well, of course we do. But we say that with the decisions we make about what to buy and read, not by crying over being “forced” to read things we don’t enjoy and then demanding that writers give us exactly what we tell them we want. Art doesn’t work that way.
- May 25, 2011 @ 02:30 PM by Michael May
ComiXology adds Aspen Comics to its stable
Aspen Comics is the latest publisher to sign on with comiXology as its digital distributor. Founded in 2003 by the late Michael Turner, Aspen is the home to such titles as Fathom, Soulfire and Lady Mechanika. The publisher launches on comiXology today with the issues #0, #1, and #2 of Executive Assistant Iris, Fathom, Shrugged and Soulfire, priced from 99 cents to $2.99, with the #0 issues offered for free. Full series sets will be priced at a discount from the individual issues. “Exclusive digital content” is teased as well.
Comic Book Resources’ Steve Sunu recently talked with Executive Assistant Iris creator David Wohl, who is working on volume 2 and planning a big event for this summer.
Aspen is a small publisher, but it collaborates on DC and Marvel comics, and has some projects in development for other media. This move obviously gives the company a boost, bringing its comics to a larger audience, and it’s a nice get for comiXology as well, further enriching its stable of publishers.
- May 25, 2011 @ 02:00 PM by Brigid Alverson
Crumb on McCay (and Twain and Obama and …)
Crumb on Crumb
Part of Robert Crumb’s website includes a series of observations called “Crumb on Others,” in which the cartooning legend talks about a diverse spectrum of people from Mozart to Martin Luther King Jr.
Take this musing on Little Nemo‘s Winsor McCay as an example and then click the link above for the others:
The guy’s not even human. I don’t know how he did it. It’s unbelievable what he did, week after week on those Little Nemo strips. It’s incredible. His son said he was a workaholic, that he didn’t pay any attention to his kids or anything, he just worked all the time. And that’s the only way he could have done those strips, just worked constantly. God, just the conception of those strips, and every week? He did those for years. Omigod, I don’t know how he did it. It’s beyond anything I could even imagine doing. I guess he was a man of his time, you know, people conceived things differently then. It’s like a tiffany lamp. I look at that thing and I can’t even imagine how they did it. Or some ancient Egyptian gold leaf figure on a throne, you know, some pharaoh — have no idea how they did it. That’s how Winsor McCay is to me. And then guess what? He made his own animated cartoon and drew every single cell himself! How about that?
Thanks to Chris Mautner for pointing this out.
- May 25, 2011 @ 01:00 PM by Michael May
Robot 6 presents Icarus #2, page 5
Icarus is a comic by Ryan Cody and is serialized here on Robot 6, with new pages every Monday, Wednesday & Friday. Comments welcome.
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 forViper
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 25, 2011 @ 12:00 PM by Ryan Cody
Read the first FULL issue of Oni’s Spontaneous
Courtesy of our friends at Oni Press, we’re really pleased to present the Free Comic Book Day edition of Spontaneous #1, the new series by writer Joe Harris and artist Brett Weldele. Here’s a description of the book:
Driven to discover the truth regarding his father’s mysterious death many years prior, Melvin Reyes seeks to prove the existence of Spontaneous Human Combustion after fresh outbreaks of the phenomenon reveal a pattern only he can see, a predictability model only he can read, and the terrifying realization that whatever phenomenon consumed his father is also boiling inside of him, just waiting for release.
The first issue will be available again — this time for purchase — in July, when the second issue also comes out. But you can check it out after the jump …
- May 25, 2011 @ 11:00 AM by JK Parkin
Comics: ironic kitsch or cool bits of culture?
Dark Horse assistant editor Brendan Wright noticed that Mario’s, a designer clothing store in Portland, Oregon, is using art from Paul Levitz’s 75 Years of DC Comics in its window displays. It’s an interesting juxtaposition of comics and fashion, made more fascinating by Wright’s uncertainty about the message Mario’s intended to convey.
“On the one hand,” he writes, “I suppose it casts comics as a generic pop-culture backdrop, a colorful splash of nostalgia against which gray suits can stand out, your mileage may vary. On the other hand, it does posit this $200 book as an upscale item for sophisticated people who drop lots of money on clothes.”
Wright wonders “if Mario’s is using comics as ironic kitsch or cool bits of culture.” Which do you think it is? Check out his photo-filled post then sound off below.
- May 25, 2011 @ 10:00 AM by Michael May
Sex > violence: Dave McKean on his new erotic comic Celluloid
The depressing majority of comics seem to be about violence of one sort or another, yet how much violence does the average person have to deal with in their everyday lives? Unless you live in Bogotá or somewhere similar, mostly it’s pretty petty stuff; the odd drunk looking for a fight, the odd crazy shouty person, the odd mad taxi driver, maybe. And I just don’t enjoy violence. I can see that narratively it is often a powerful spike in a story, but I certainly don’t want to dwell on it. I don’t want it in my real life, I don’t find violence entertaining in and of itself, or exciting, or funny.
But sex is happily part of most people’s lives, and crosses the mind most days, I would say, even if it’s just watching your partner get out of bed in the morning. All my stories tend to be about things that mean a lot to me and may be fragmented through dream imagery, or metaphorical settings, but basically, my stories are just about the people and places in my life.
–Dave McKean, artist of Arkham Asylum and many memorable collaborations with Neil Gaiman (including The Sandman‘s distinctive covers), on Celluloid, the upcoming porno-graphic novel from Fantagraphics that’s his first big comics project since his 1998 magnum opus Cages. I like that practical argument on erotica’s behalf. Ideally, we’ve had sex more often than we’ve thrown punches or shot bullets — why not reflect that in the art we make and consume?
McKean’s whole CBR interview with Robot 6′s own Chris Mautner makes for a fascinating read: He fills us in on how he’s been spending his time (lots of comics-esque collaborations with avant-garde musicians), talks about the unique challenging of baring it all (artistically speaking) in an erotic comic, discusses working with live models for some of the book’s sequences, and more.
- May 25, 2011 @ 09:00 AM by Sean T. Collins
Comics creators shed blood for The Art of War
Writers and artists often talk of spilling blood into their work, but they are usually being metaphorical. Not writer Kelly Roman and illustrator Michael Weese, though. On a sunny spring day in New York City’s Chinatown last week, the pair rolled up their sleeves and spilled their blood, literally, onto sample chapters of their upcoming graphic-novel adaptation of Sun-Tzu’s The Art of War. Well, actually, they had a doctor draw the blood and then used it to stamp Chinese characters on the chapters, but it was still a pretty dramatic gesture. The press release invokes tradition:
“There’s a monstrous tradition of using cremated remains and blood to make comic books” states author Kelly Roman, “Marvel editor Mark Gruenwald had his ashes mixed with ink and made into commemorative issues of Squadron Supreme. KISS had their blood used to print their first comic. We are adding a live performance element.”
Dramatics aside, the creators are doing their best to draw attention to their book, which takes Sun-Tzu’s classic manual of strategy and adds the element that has been missing for centuries: a plot. Details are sketchy at the moment, but it takes place in the future, when China is the world’s dominant economy and Wall Street is “militarized,” whatever that means, and the main character is directly modeled on—and named after—Roman. Showing their mastery of social media as well as bloodshed, Roman and Weese have set up a Facebook and Twitter feed for the eponymous main character, as well as a YouTube channel where people discuss their opinions of China. The book is due out next spring from It Books, the pop-culture imprint of HarperCollins (they also publish Cowboys and Aliens), and there’s a 50-page sample up on the website.
- May 25, 2011 @ 08:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
Comics A.M. | Justiniano pleads not guilty; Burkle loads up on B&N stock
Josue Rivera (aka Justiniano)
Crime | Josue Rivera, the comic artist known as Justiniano, pleaded not guilty Tuesday to charges of possessing more than 100 photographs and videos containing child pornography. Rivera was arrested in Connecticut on May 10 following a July incident in which police say he mistakenly gave a funeral home director a thumb drive containing 33 files classified as child pornography instead of the one containing photos of a deceased relative. Police later seized Rivera’s computer and found 153 files of suspected child pornography. On Tuesday, the 38-year-old artist pleaded not guilty to first-degree possession of child pornography, and requested a jury trial. [Connecticut Post]
Retailing | Days after it was announced that media conglomerate Liberty Media offered $1 billion to buy Barnes & Noble, supermarket magnate Ron Burkle has revealed he bought another 603,000 shares at $18.49 a share, raising his stake in the bookseller to 19.74 percent. The Wall Street Journal suggests that Burkle, already the book chain’s largest shareholder, may be “playing a potentially dangerous game of chicken to force a takeover price for Barnes & Noble even higher.” [Deal Journal]
- May 25, 2011 @ 06:55 AM by Kevin Melrose
The Middle Ground #54: To infinity and beyond
I admit, there was more than a slight potential for disaster when Dynamite Entertainment announced Kirby: Genesis. Yes, Alex Ross and Kurt Busiek were involved, and yes, both gentlemen clearly have respect and love for Kirby’s work. But that didn’t change the fact that we Kirby fans had had other projects announced as continuations of Kirby’s creator-owned material, only for them to remain unfinished (or, in the Image Comic material, never even started), or that there seemed something almost ghoulish about the idea of creating something to cash in on Kirby’s name, using his leftovers, without actually honoring his legacy.
Which is why it’s all the sweeter that, based on the first two issues, Kirby: Genesis is pretty damn great. Continue Reading »
- May 24, 2011 @ 05:00 PM by Graeme McMillan
Food or Comics? | This week’s comics on a budget
Kirby: Genesis
Welcome to Food or Comics?, where every week we talk about what comics we’d buy on Wednesday based on certain spending limits — $15 and $30 — as well as what we’d get if we had extra money or a gift card to spend on a “Splurge” item.
Check out Diamond’s release list or ComicList, and tell us what you’re getting.
Chris Arrant
If I had $15 this week, I’d start it off by buying Kirby Genesis #0 (Dynamite, $1); I love the idea of world-building from older characters, and Jack Kirby left a treasure trove of ideas even he couldn’t get a handle on completely. I’m interested to see where Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross take this, and I hope with Busiek’s addition it can be more tantalizing than Project: Superpowers was. Second up, I would get the penultimate Secret Warriors #27 (Marvel, $2.99); when this series started I was an ardent reader, but it lost me along the way. For some work-related research I caught up with the series, and since the last Howling Commandos story it’s been going great; I hope Hickman can stick the landing. Third I would get Vertigo’s new anthology Strange Adventures #1 (DC/Vertigo, $7.99); a pricey experiment, but I’m in the mood to get blown away. Lastly would be FF #4 (Marvel, $2.99) – I’m really enjoying what Hickman and Epting have done in the new simply titled series.
- May 24, 2011 @ 04:00 PM by JK Parkin
Hub Comics owner dead of apparent poisoning
The Boston Globe reports that James Welborn, owner of Hub Comics in Somerville, Massachusetts, died Monday of an apparent poisoning. Rescue personnel had found Welborn in the bathroom of his home on May 16; a note on the bathroom door warned of poison gas, and police officers who were performing a well-being check at Welborn’s home noticed a strange smell. Firefighters and a hazmat team responded to the scene as well. A bucket of unidentified chemicals was found in the bathroom with Welborn.
Hub Comics, which billed itself as “the comics store for NPR listeners,” ran into financial troubles in October and lost its account with Diamond Comic Distributors. However, the store made a comeback, regained the account, and even had a food drive for Free Comic Book Day.
While I never met Welborn, I did frequent Hub Comics when it first opened, and I always found it a friendly venue that was open to a wide range of tastes. They had a special area for kids and tucked the adult stuff away in an alcove. Unlike a lot of comics stores, it always felt welcoming and comfortable. Store manager Jesse Farrell is going to try to keep the business open.
- May 24, 2011 @ 03:00 PM by Brigid Alverson
‘Stachepoint: Today the lip changes
This mountain of awesomeness came to us via Neil Kleid (Brownsville, The Big Kahn), who added, “This should have been the summer’s big DCU crossover event. A boy can dream.”
I’m into it. It’s about time Green Arrow was the center of a DC event.
- May 24, 2011 @ 02:00 PM by Michael May