2011 July
SDCC ’11 | Gilbert Hernandez to return to Palomar in Love and Rockets: New Stories #5
CBR and Comics Should Be Good contributor Sonia Harris’s report from the Love and Rockets spotlight panel — in which all three of Los Bros Hernandez, Gilbert, Jaime, and Mario, analyzed one another’s work with moderator Kristy Valenti of The Comics Journal — is pure L&R-nerd heaven for a whole bunch of reasons. But not least among them is the revelation that Gilbert will be returning to the streets of Palomar, the tiny fictional Latin American village in which the bulk of his acclaimed stories for the series were set for years, with next year’s Love and Rockets: New Stories #5 from Fantagraphics. It’s a welcome surprise — emphasis on surprise, given how Beto has talked about his Palomar-based material lately.
Gilbert left the village behind years ago, with the end of the first volume of Love and Rockets in 1996. Subsequent stories were set in the same world, but shifted to Los Angeles and largely centered on the American sisters of Palomar matriach Luba, who moved to the States along with several other Palomar characters. Since L&R Vol. 2 wrapped up in 2007, the bulk of Beto’s work has come in the form of “adaptations” of the Z-grade movies that Luba’s psychologist-turned-actress sister Fritz has starred in within the Palomar world. The resulting material has been much more genre-based than the naturalistic/magic-realist Palomar comics, and absolutely suffused with graphic sex and violence. The move has left critics divided, but Hernandez told our own Chris Mautner that he wouldn’t have it any other way: “The Fritz series frees me of any obligation to be a do-gooder cartoonist, something most regular L&R readers probably don’t want to hear. I felt straight jacketed with ‘Palomar’ and the like after a while, really. I have a lot more going on in my imagination than I’m expected to utilize.”
On the panel where he announced his return to the town, he was appropriately enough a bit more conciliatory about his older work. “People always compare my [current] stuff to the ‘Palomar’ stuff, but lately, my stories have been just a little colder edged because I’m more interested in that,” he said, later adding that creating the “Fritz-verse” of movie-based comics enabled him to go wild without stuffing too much weirdness into “Palomar” for it to work properly as a setting.
As for what, specifically, is in store for Palomar’s residents, Hernandez hinted that the story will involve the legacy mothers leave their daughters — which, if you know your Beto, is enough to make you very excited and very nervous.
- July 28, 2011 @ 04:00 PM by Sean T. Collins
SDCC ’11 | Grant Morrison on the Atom
I might still like to do the Atom. I think there’s something great to be done with the Atom that hasn’t been done yet…I like the idea of doing an Atom story where he can only shrink to a certain size for each episode. One of the things I felt didn’t work about the Atom was that he was up and down [in height] and could do anything. I thought it would be really good to do stories of a guy who has so much power to shrink that he does it for missions when he’s brought in. So it’s slightly more Indiana Jones, where this guy works as a professor during the day, but sometimes he’ll get a call from the President — “There’s monsters in the White House carpet” kinda stuff. — and he comes in and deals with that. But in another episode he might just shrink to six inches and be chased around a room by bad guys and cats and dogs, like Incredible Shrinking Man stuff. I thought there’s a sci-fi series in there, where each issue is him at a different scale. In some he could be trapped at a molecular scale, and in other ones he’s one inch and trapped in the garden.
–Action Comics and Supergods writer and superhero-revamper extraordinaire Grant Morrison in conversation with CBR’s Jonah Weiland, who asked him what B-list characters he’d still like to take a crack at. And hey, Morrison’s proven his proficiency with sprawling supporting-player revamps in the past with projects like Seven Soldiers (not to mention the upcoming Multiversity, which he says will have a similar focus on DC’s deep bench), so would it be out of the question for him to throw a Ryan Choi: Rebirth and Atom Incorporated into the mix? For now, I’ll file this with his much-discussed desire to write Wonder Woman under projects we’ll hopefully get to see one day.
Watch the entire video above for more Morrison commentary on the Lois & Clark marriage, Superman’s costume, Action Comics, New X-Men, Supergods, Sinatoro and more.
- July 28, 2011 @ 03:00 PM by Sean T. Collins
Marvel offers retailers a Fear Itself variant for unsold Flashpoint tie-ins
Cue up the Steely Dan: Marvel has announced their intention to do it again by offering retailers a rare Ed McGuinness variant of Fear Itself #6 for every 50 covers they send in from certain Flashpoint tie-in titles from DC. Dubbed “Comics for Comics,” the divisive program is intended, according to Marvel, to offer relief to retailers who they say have been saddled with unsold product during the current economic climate. (This claim has met with some skepticism, Tom Brevoort’s protestations notwithstanding.)
Marvel’s done this before: Last year, they offered a J. Scott Campbell Deadpool variant of Siege #3 in exchange not just for unsold Blackest Night “power ring” tie-ins the from DC, but for unsold Siege and X-Men: Second Coming tie-ins as well. A copy of that comic [UPDATE: a signed, CGC-graded one, which I'm told makes a difference] recently sold on eBay for $625 (via ComicsAlliance commenter Tom). I’m curious as to whether Marvel will eventually make its own books eligible for this trade-in, too. (I’m also curious as to whether some other country will provide us with a functioning legislature in exchange for every 50 House GOP members we send them if we default on our debt, but I suppose that’s neither here nor there.)
- July 28, 2011 @ 02:00 PM by Sean T. Collins
Heat-sensitive color-changing ink = best kids’ book gimmick ever?
If you’ve seen Jordan Crane’s elegant webcomics hub What Things Do — or better still, if you’re one of the lucky few who have a copy of his hand-silkscreened, die-cut, three-books-in-one anthology NON #5 — you know that the cartoonist behind Uptight and The Clouds Above is one of comics’ best designers. But I think that with Keep Our Secrets, his new comics-style children’s book for McSweeney’s kids’ imprint McMullens, the man has truly outdone himself. This sucker is partially printed in heat-sensitive, color-changing black ink that disappears when touched to reveal a picture hidden underneath. Check it out in the video above, as two adorable tykes help demonstrate. If I were a little kid, I think being able to touch a book and suddenly see hidden stuff appear — like an accordion stuffed with cats, say, or a guy with banana hands under his gloves — would be something close to magic.
- July 28, 2011 @ 12:00 PM by Sean T. Collins
In lieu of a formal review, here are five thoughts about Chester Brown’s Paying For It
Drawn and Quarterly released Chester Brown’s Paying For It: A Comic-Strip Memoir of Being a John in May. It was one of the more eagerly anticipated books of the year, given the skill and reputation of Brown, and it ended up being one of the most reviewed and most discussed graphic novels of the year (so far).
The subject matter certainly didn’t hurt coverage any, in fact it’s colorful and controversial nature drove a lot of coverage: Brown meticulously chronicles every time he patronized a prostitute between 1996 and 2003, in the process formulating and defending a particular point-of-view regarding the evils of romantic love and relationships and the relative virtues of paying for sex.
Between the first time I read it and the second time I read it (it’s that kind of book), I read somewhere around 50 million reviews of it and articles about it and Brown and his position. Two months after release, and all that ink and virtual ink spilled over it, a formal review from me seems kind of superfluous at this point.
Instead, here are a few thoughts about the book…
1.) The book opens with the cartoonist breaking up with his live-in girlfriend…sort of. She announces that she thinks she’s falling in love with someone else, would like to try dating that person. Brown gives his blessing, and they decide to keep living together and see where it goes.
Cut to a scene of Brown walking down the street with the little comics avatars of his fellow Canadian cartoonists Seth (Wimbledon Green, Palookaville) and Joe Matt (Spent, Peepshow).
The pair have fairly big roles in the story—Dwight Garner refereed to them as a “wise-guy geek chorus” in his New York Times book review—and when I saw their first appearance, I felt a sudden surge of a mixture of surprise, glee, excitement, recognition and comfort.
I imagine it must be something like what little boys must have felt like reading Marvel Comics in the 1960s, and seeing Spider-Man sudden swing into a Fantastic Four comic, or Daredevil or Dr. Strange bumping into one another on their shared streets of New York City.
There’s something undeniably cool about seeing comic book characters appear where you don’t expect them, or interacting with one another, although it’s a coolness that has been diluted to the point it probably doesn’t even register in superhero comics anymore, given that Superman started playing sports with Batman and Robin back in 1941, and the modern Big Two super-universes are in constant states of crossover (And hell, Archie can meet the Punisher or president or Kiss, and Mr. Spock run into Wolverine or Cosmic Boy).
As cartoonists who are also characters in other comics, Seth and Joe Matt have a peculiar status and, in this narrative, it was the Canadian art memoir comics equivalent of, I don’t know, seeing Johnny Storm and Bobby Drake in a Spider-Man arc, only you’re seeing it for the first time.
The book even rewards familiarity with these characters and their previous adventures, like in a scene where Brown brings up prostitute review message boards, and the Matt character says it’s too disturbing to which Brown replies “How can this be disturbing for someone who watches porn almost 24 hours a day?”
Which isn’t just a quip, of course—it’s practically the plot of Matt’s memoir Spent.
Aside from the crossover thrill, it’s worth noting that the scenes with the other cartoonists are among the most enjoyable to read in the book, because they tend to be the most funny; Brown shows himself debating with himself and friends and even some of the prostitutes (to some extent) about the ethics and morality of prostitution and love, sex and relationships in general, but he’s apparently most comfortable around his friend cartoonists, so those exchanges tend to be the most honest and amusing. Continue Reading »
- July 28, 2011 @ 11:00 AM by J. Caleb Mozzocco
Humberto Ramos on his self-published book Fairy Quest: Outlaws
A lot of things happen at Comic-Con, from media spectacles to actual comic book news. And amidst all the news, announcements and rigamarole this year was the debut of a new graphic novel by creators Paul Jenkins and Humberto Ramos. The two have done a number of books in their time, but this does it on a new stage — their own stage, self-publishing.
Fairy Quest: Outlaws is the first of a projected four-book series that takes the Western world’s most beloved fairy tales and sets them up in their own world — Fablewood — where they’re forced to re-enact their stories everyday like marionettes. Ramos is no stranger to creator-owned work; although he might be best known now for Amazing Spider-Man, he’s done far-ranging projects such as the vampire-epic Crimson to the Catholic thriller Revelations, amongst others. I talked with Ramos about Fairy Quest: Outlaws on the eve of the convention to find out more.
- July 28, 2011 @ 10:00 AM by Chris Arrant
SDCC ’11 | Listen to Dan DiDio respond to the fan who told DC to “hire women”
MP3: Dan DiDio at the Thursday “DC: The New 52″ Panel, San Diego Comic-Con 2011
It was the shout heard ’round the world. In the opening minutes of DC’s very first daily “New 52″ panel at the San Diego Comic-Con last Thursday, when Co-Publisher Dan DiDio turned to the audience and asked what DC would have to do to change the minds of those skittish about the impending relaunch, one man yelled “Hire women!” The number of women creators working on the DC Universe, he added after audience applause, had dropped with the relaunch from 12% of the total to just 1% (i.e. Gail Simone, and Amy Reeder if you count the later Batwoman launch). DiDio’s response was to turn the question back on the questioner and ask him whom he thinks DC should hire. The move raised some eyebrows, to be sure, given that an audience member isn’t in the kind of position to assess all the professional comics talent available to be hired that the brass at a major publisher would be in. Still — and I’ll just quote myself here from another time this topic came up — “I think it behooves those of us who argue for the inclusion of non-white non-straight non-male people in a creative team or superhero team or panel or article or exhibit to have candidates ready to hand,” so turnabout is fair play, I suppose.
- July 28, 2011 @ 09:07 AM by Sean T. Collins
Joshua Middleton joins The Last Airbender: Legend of Korra
From Joshua Middleton's poster for "The Last Airbender: Legend of Korra"
Following a stint last year as an art director for Warner Bros. Animation’s upcoming Green Lantern: The Animated Series, artist Joshua Middleton announced this week that he’s joined the staff of Nickelodeon’s The Last Airbender: Legend of Korra. And he does so in fine fashion, with the beautiful illustration he created for the limited-edition poster that debuted at Comic-Con International.
The eagerly awaited sequel to the hit Avatar: The Last Airbender, Legend of Korra picks up 70 years after the original series, following the current incarnation of the Avatar, a hotheaded teenage girl from the Southern Water Tribe. The 26-episode series is set to debut in mid-2012. Check out Middleton’s full poster after the break.
- July 28, 2011 @ 08:00 AM by Kevin Melrose
Graphicly publishes digital version of Cowboys & Aliens
The Cowboys & Aliens movie premiered last week at Comic-Con International, and it opens nationwide on Friday, so it’s a good time to revisit the graphic novel on which it’s based. Remember the graphic novel? Despite the controversy around the initial marketing — the claim is that publisher Platinum Studios boosted the book onto the bestseller list by giving it away for free — I thought it was a pretty good read. Which is not surprising, considering it has a pretty solid team of writers and artists behind it: Scott Mitchell Rosenberg, Fred Van Lente and Andrew Foley are the writers, and Dennis Calero and Luciano Lima handled the art.
Graphicly announced Wednesday that it’s releasing an enhanced digital edition priced at $9.99, and publishing a special Nook edition at the same price. Or you could get it for free: Years ago, Cowboys & Aliens was published digitally at Wowio, which was owned by Platinum at one time but is now a separate company. It is still up at Wowio with a list price of $1.99, but at the moment it’s free as a sponsored download— without the enhancements, of course.
So what makes Graphicly’s version worth $10? I put the question directly to Ron Richards, the company’s vice president of external relations, and here is his response: “The C&A book on Graphicly is the latest release (the Wowio one is dated 2006), and the extras contain all the movie trailers, character sketches and bios. The characters are hot-spotted throughout the book, so you can click on someone and load up their bio and see development sketches. And when it’s purchased at B&N, you can unlock even more extras including video and audio.”
The extras are pretty impressive, but so is the price differential. So I leave it to you, readers: Which would you buy?
- July 28, 2011 @ 07:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
I’m on Team Lois
As part of their promotion of September’s new Superman #1, DC Comics and the New York Daily News are asking fans to vote on whether Lois Lane’s new boyfriend “Jonathan Carroll is an upgrade from Clark Kent.” That’s the way the Daily News puts it, anyway. On DC’s Source blog, they phrase the question a bit differently: “Are you Team Superman or Team Jonathan?”
It’s difficult to set aside feelings about Twilight when that’s exactly what DC’s alluding to. One of the biggest criticisms of the Twilight series is that its lead character is largely defined by who she’s dating. Robin Browne (by way of Andrew Futral) put it well when she compared Twilight to Harry Potter (though her quote is often attributed to Stephen King): “Harry Potter is all about confronting fears, finding inner strength and doing what is right in the face of adversity…Twilight is about how important it is to have a boyfriend.”
It’s frustrating to hear DC express Lois Lane’s story in similar terms. By asking readers to join either Team Superman or Team Jonathan, DC’s suggesting that what’s really important isn’t whatever’s going on in the rest of Lois’ life, but who she ends up with. I hope there’s much more to it than that.
All we’re seeing is two pages from Superman #1. I hope that what we’re not seeing is that “boyfriend” is a hyperbolic term and that Lois isn’t really interested in this new douchebag. I hope it’s a one-night stand. I also hope that it’s a good long time before she sees anything in Clark Kent beyond simple friendship. And vice versa, come to think of it. I hope that DC allows her to be her own character before throwing the messiness of a relationship with Clark/Superman at her. Show her dating, sure. Let’s see what kind of guys she likes. That’s part of who she is. But I sure as hell want to see what she’s like in other areas too. I hope that she’s not just a prize for Superman to win.
It’s just that based on DC’s marketing so far, I don’t hope it very strongly.
- July 27, 2011 @ 04:00 PM by Michael May
Your Wednesday Sequence 20 | Kevin Huizenga
Ganges #2 (2008) page 3. Kevin Huizenga.
Comics’ panel-by-panel mode of presentation is incredibly effective at sucking people in. The simple fact that we say we “read” comics when we describe following strings of pictures attests to how strong a tool for immersion sequencing is. And it’s especially strong when we step back for a moment and think about just how weird, how alien cartoons look. A single panel of a comic, especially one drawn with the blend of simplification and exaggeration that forms the look of newspaper strips and many alternative comics, is as much a conceptual statement about form as a depictive drawing. Where the real depiction comes into play is with the sequencing, which turns cartoons from abstractions into living vehicles for movement and action.
Kevin Huizenga is one of the cartoonists whose work addresses comics’ conflict between the abstract and the literal most frequently and interestingly. Huizenga’s attempts at using comics to mimic the visual effect of video games are especially notable: rather than creating the simulacrum of reality that the vast majority of comics do, what is brought forth instead is a simulacrum of a simulacrum, a copy of a copy, something already abstract abstracted further, its ties to reality stressed and stretched about as close to the breaking point as they can go.
- July 27, 2011 @ 03:00 PM by Matt Seneca
Exclusive preview: Oni Press’ Power Lunch
You might have heard the phrase “power lunch” and thought of a business meeting over food, but with the word “power” in it weren’t you hoping for some more … fun?
J. Torres and Dean Trippe rescue the phrase from its stuffy business origins and turn it into a action-packed grade-school drama. If Captain America is a super-soldier due to his superpowers, then Power Punch‘s Joey would be a super-student!
Trippe has described Power Lunch as “elementary school superheroin’ w/snacks”, and that’s just the half of it. Joey gets different superpowers depending on what he eats, from flight to invisibility and even some earth-shaking powers. To keep himself out of trouble he sticks to a strict dietary regimen, but as young kids are wont to do — sometimes they break the rules, especially when it can impress their friends.
An advance read of the book gave me a real thrill for this young-readers book, so look for it when it hits shelves in October. The creators have provided an exclusive five-page preview of the book, which you can check out after the break:
- July 27, 2011 @ 03:00 PM by Chris Arrant
First look at Steve Orlando and Polly Guo’s Morningstar
[Note: Article edited to add publisher information.]
The Internet is a wonderful thing. Twenty years ago when you wanted to find out about the next big comics talent you had to wait for them to hit shelves in indie comics or a small anthology title. Now every day something new is popping up on the internet.
Today, we have Morningstar. Written by U.K. Albany indie writer Steve Orlando, I found out about the upcoming graphic novel via the book’s artist Polly Guo. Guo describes it as a “balls-out superhero punchfest” covering the redemption of the fallen angel Lucifer in the Kingdom of God. Tying into the writings of poet John Milton’s Paradise Lost, Morningstar is scheduled for publication in late 2012 by 215 Ink … and doesn’t this look great?
- July 27, 2011 @ 02:00 PM by Chris Arrant
Lost in the SDCC shuffle: Liam Sharp launches Madefire Publishing
Say the name Liam Sharp to a group of comic readers and it’s bound to bring up different images for each person. To some he’s best known for the early ’90s Marvel UK series Death’s Head II, while others think Judge Dredd and even others remember his ill-fated comic company Mamtor from a few years back. Although Mamtor failed to become a lasting presence, it featured impeccable work (and design from Tom Muller) that is a great back-issue find if you’re so lucky. And at Comic-Con International over weekend, Sharp announced his new publishing outfit — Madefire Publishing.
Launching as a digital-first comics publisher, Madefire is intended to be a modern-day equivalent of the comics from Sharp’s childhood — “cheep, accessible entertainment,” as he’s told Bleeding Cool. Using the wide user base of smartphones, Madefire’s digital comics app hopes to touch into both the hardcore fan, the lapsed fan and the future fan with their line-up of titles.
In addition to his own project Captain Stone is Missing, Sharp has assembled a great line-up of creators for the effort, including Mike Carey and Dave Kendall’s Houses of the Holy and a new series called Treatment written and drawn by Dave Gibbons (!!).
No word yet on when their first projects will be released, but I’ll be keeping my ears up looking for more information as its announced.
- July 27, 2011 @ 01:00 PM by Chris Arrant
Location, date for WonderCon 2012 still uncertain
WonderCon
Despite a report that WonderCon will be held next year in Anaheim, Calif., because of renovations to San Francisco’s Moscone Center, event organizers say no final decisions have been made.
David Glanzer, director of marketing and public relations for Comic-Con International, tells The Comics Reporter that while the organization is considering the Anaheim Convention Center as one of the possible locations for 2012, it’s possible that WonderCon could remain at the Moscone Center, its home since 2003.
He explained that although organizers were initially told there would be no dates available next year because of the construction, that recently changed. Now, with Comic-Con over, officials will turn their attention to the dates and facilities included in the new proposal.
- July 27, 2011 @ 12:00 PM by Kevin Melrose