2011 September
SDCC ’11 | Jaime Hernandez on how the hell he’s going to top his last two Love and Rockets stories
The San Diego Comic-Con is the gift that keeps on giving, this time in the form of an interview with Love and Rockets co-creator Jaime Hernandez by CBR’s Kiel Phegley. Ask anyone who’s reading the series in its book-formatted New Stories incarnation — including this autumn’s #4, which picks up where last year’s massively acclaimed “Browntown”/”The Love Bunglers” storyline left off — and they’ll tell you: Jaime’s making some of the best work of his career, some 30 years after L&R made its debut. Unfortunately, that left him floundering when it came time to come up with a story for next year’s volume:
I almost blew my wad on these last two issues. I was so proud of it, and I wrapped up so many loose ends, and I was so proud of myself. And I said ‘Okay, now it’s time to do a new issue’…and I was blank. I swear, I was blank! I was actually looking out the window, looking for something, some kind of inspiration, you know? That happens to me once in a while, but this time — I mean, big! I was just wandering around, asking my wife, ‘Do you need me to go do something out in the back yard, or…?’ I just felt like the most useless human being. It’s what I always call the post-comic withdrawal, where after I’ve just gone BANG on one issue, after it’s done, I feel so useless. I need to do something, but it’s like nothing’s there. It always comes, but I can’t make it come. It’s an organic thing with me, where it comes when it comes. Luckily, it’s always come within the deadline.
Watch the entire fascinating interview, which reveals a lot about Jaime’s creative process and his desire to do comics outside his usual “Locas” world, above.
- September 8, 2011 @ 12:00 PM by Sean T. Collins
Robot Reviews | Chimichanga
Chimichanga
Written and illustrated by Eric Powell
Colors by Dave Stewart
Dark Horse
This comic is an all-ages story written as only Eric Powell (creator of The Goon) could write it. It’s basically the classic formula of a little girl and her pet monster, with a couple of hard twists thrown in, starting with one that is obvious on the cover: The little girl, Lula, has a beard and mustache.
That’s a daring choice all right, and Powell adds to it by giving Lula blank black eyes, so at first, actually, I thought she was wearing a V for Vendetta mask. But no, it’s all her, and it quickly becomes clear that far from being a caprice to make the book outrageous, Lula’s beard is an important part of the story.
Lula’s grandfather runs an unimpressive little circus featuring acts like Randy, The Man With the Strength of a Slightly Larger Man and an amazing two-eyed goat, and it’s not doing very well. There’s also a boy-faced fish that has a tendency to freak out.
The action starts with Lula getting a delicious chimichanga from a food stand. As she walks back to the circus, a witch beckons to her. “Whoa, Nelly!” Lula responds, “I’m not going into that house! It looks like Vietnam!” Then the witch farts. That’s pretty much how the whole book works, with Powell trotting out cliches from children’s literature and subverting them with snappy dialogue and fart jokes, which is why Chimichanga is one of those rare books that works for both children and adults (well, adults who can tolerate fart jokes, anyway). There’s not a bad word in the entire book (“Raspberries!!” is Lula’s biggest swear) yet it’s sharply written from an adult sensibility.
Lula trades the hairs for what she thinks is a shiny rock, but a few minutes later, the rock cracks and a monster climbs out—and eats her chimichanga. The monster, whom Lula promptly dubs Chimichanga, is big and hairy but not particularly fierce, so he is a perfect asset to her grandfather’s circus, although the other performers don’t like upstaged.
Spoilers after the cut.
- September 8, 2011 @ 11:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
Get great comics at cheap prices from the Top Shelf Massive $3 Sale
It’s an annual tradition to look forward to: The alternative comics publisher Top Shelf has unveiled its “Massive $3 Sale,” in which they’re pricing down their catalog to near-ridiculous levels — in many cases $3, and in many more cases just one lousy American dollar. For very little money, you can rack up a big chunk of one of the best comics publishers’ best comics.
What would I get? At the $3 level, Kolbeinn Karlsson’s The Troll King — a surreal collection of intertwined short stories that for once lives up to the overused, rarely true label “fairy tales for grown-ups” — is basically a must-buy. I’d also be sure to pick up Andy Hartzell’s Fox Bunny Funny, an unpredictable and impeccably cartooned funny-animal allegory about conformity and self-discovery. Lilli Carré’s remarkably assured debut collection of satirical short stories, Tales of Woodsman Pete, is another no-brainer. If you’re interested in rounding out your Alan Moore collection with some of his more off-the-beaten-path efforts, you can get all eight issues of his underground-culture zine Dodgem Logic, his prose novel Voice of the Fire, and his poetry/photography collaboration with José Villarubia The Mirror of Love for three bucks a pop. And you can pick up all three issues of Jeffrey Brown’s one-man action anthology series Sulk — Bighead & Friends, a return to his genuinely funny superhero parody characters; Deadly Awesome, an 84-page mixed martial arts fight comic; and The Kind of Strength That Comes from Madness, a grab bag of sci-fi/fantasy/action/adventure spoofs — for a buck apiece, which is a steal.
Beyond the deepest discounts, you’ll rarely find the publisher’s heavy (literally–these books are big) hitters priced as low as they are now: Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell’s From Hell, Campbell’s Alec: The Year’s Have Pants omnibus, and Jeff Lemire’s complete Essex County are all $20, while Craig Thompson’s Blankets is just $22.50.
And hey, if you’re totally new to all of these books, so much the better. Maybe DC’s New 52 initiative has you in an “I’ll try anything for $3 a book” mood? If so, put a few bucks aside and get some full-fledged graphic novels for that price or lower. You’ll be glad you did.
- September 8, 2011 @ 10:00 AM by Sean T. Collins
IDW brings graphic novels to the iBook store
IDW Publishing launched 19 graphic novels in the iBook Store this week, hoping to bring new readers to the medium by placing their graphic novels in the same space as related prose books. Jeff Webber, director of ePublishing for IDW, told Macworld that the comics apps were successful in bringing the comics to established comics readers, but that people who don’t regularly read comics are less likely to encounter them; putting the books in the iBooks Store will ensure that Anne Rice, readers, for instance, will find IDW’s graphic adaptations of her work in the same search as her prose novels. Incidentally, the launch included Code Word: Geronimo, IDW’s graphic novel about the capture and killing of Osama Bin Laden, which was released simultaneously in digital and print.
I fired off an e-mail to Webber with some questions, and here’s what he had to say:
Robot 6: IDW has been pretty aggressive in the digital field—you were among the first to market comics as single apps, back in the day. Why did you wait so long to go the iBooks route—and why does it make sense to do so now?
Jeff Webber: The epub format is entirely different from app development. It’s much more rigid and allows for little specialized navigation. IDW has released epub-formatted books before, we have over 200 single-issue books in the Amazon Kindle store. Those are panel-by-panel books, because the same file has to work on a Kindle or inside Kindle apps on other devices. It works fine but isn’t as perfect as using an app. The reason for the big push now is that Apple recently introduced new epub formatting tricks specific to iBooks. That has led to the great looking full-page approach we’ve developed.
- September 8, 2011 @ 09:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
DC’s mainstream push for New 52: Diversity, digital and detectives
Batwing #1
DC Comics continues its promotional assault in the press to push “The New 52″ to a mainstream audience, with the theme this week, apparently, being diversity. At least four stories this week — three of which were posted Wednesday — tackled the subject and put the spotlight on Static Shock, Batwing and more. Here are some of the highlights:
• The Huffington Post previewed the first issue of Judd Winick and Ben Oliver’s Batwing yesterday, the same day it arrived in shops. Winick spoke to Bryan Young about the origins of Africa’s Batman: “… if you consider that we’re coming from a starting place that this is a Batman who lost his parents to AIDS and was a boy soldier. That’s square one for us. In the first couple of pages Batwing is talking about the fact that one of the things Batman has to do is instill fear. And Batwing points out that he’s not really sure that a man dressed up as a bat is really going to scare the average criminal in Africa. Batman just tells him that ‘you’re just going to have to sell it.’ And that’s the point, it’s a different world.” An unabridged version of the interview can be found at Big Shiny Robot.
- September 8, 2011 @ 08:00 AM by JK Parkin
Comics A.M. | Justice League second printing allocated, pushed back
Justice League #1 (Second Printing)
Publishing | DC Comics will allocate the second printing of Justice League #1, with retailers receiving 32 percent of their orders, which now won’t ship until Sept. 21, the same day the third printing will be released. ICv2 reports some stores are concerned that potential new readers drawn in by the publisher’s promotional campaign for the New 52 won’t understand the two-week wait to pick up a copy of the comic. The website also runs down the list of cable television shows during which DC’s New 52 commercial is airing. [ICv2.com]
Passings | Comic Art Community reports that artist Dave Hoover passed away earlier this week. Hoover, who drew runs of Captain America and Starman in the 1990s, more recently worked on Zenescope’s Charmed comic. Before working in comics, Hoover was an animator, working on Flash Gordon, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, She-Ra: Princess of Power, The Super Friends, The Smurfs and many more in the 1970s and 1980s. [Comic Art Community]
- September 8, 2011 @ 06:55 AM by Brigid Alverson and JK Parkin
Your Wednesday Sequence | Steranko’s “Frogs!”
“Frogs!” in Comixscene #3 (1973). Jim Steranko.
Right down to the phrase “reading comics”, there’s something about the medium we get wrong all too often. Narrative storytelling is not inherent to comics. Other media — film, music, and even to a certain extent prose — are continuous, a single uninterrupted flow from one place to another. We assign narrative to even the most abstract works in these forms, yielding to the temptation to figure out “what they mean”. Comics, on the other hand, is a medium of constant truncations, constantly cutting itself off from panel to panel, never able to establish much narrative momentum before the view into the action switches and the story rebuilds itself again. Continuity in comics is suggested by the artist at best, and even when things are presented as clearly as possible, when they exist in multiple panels it ultimately falls to the reader to put things in sequence, to make drawing after disconnected drawing line up and make sense.
- September 7, 2011 @ 04:00 PM by Matt Seneca
Judging a comic by its cover
Daredevil: Season One
Marvel released the trade dress for their new line of graphic novels yesterday, and I have to say, as someone who seldom reads superhero comics, they tempt me in a way that DC’s New 52 line does not. The covers are simple and show off the characters without a lot of clutter, explosions, or excessive detail. I feel like these are books that someone who has never read comics before could pick up and read without having to look stuff up on Wikipedia.
I went back and looked at the New 52 first-issue covers to figure out what was turning me off about them. Some, like the Flash, Batwing, and Voodoo covers, do a nice job of showing what the comic is about, but others read as an impenetrable mass of lines and colors. I know this is largely a matter of taste, but as someone who reads a lot of manga and indie graphic novels, I find the art in many superhero comics difficult to “read” visually, because of the huge amount of detail and the lack of differentiation between subject and background.
- September 7, 2011 @ 03:00 PM by Brigid Alverson
Nominees announced for Spike TV’s 2011 Scream Awards
Spike TV has unveiled the nominees for the sixth annual Scream Awards, which honor the best is science fiction, fantasy, horror and comic books. This year’s nominees were selected by an advisory board that includes Neil Gaiman, Wes Craven, Tim Burton, Damon Lindelof, George A. Romero, Robert Rodriguez and Rob Zombie.
The Scream Awards will be taped Oct. 15 in Los Angeles and broadcast Oct. 18 at 9 p.m. ET/PT on Spike.
Here are the nominees in the three comics-specific categories:
Best comic book or graphic novel
• American Vampire, by Scott Snyder and Rafael Albuquerque (Vertigo)
• Chew, by John Layman and Rob Guillory (Image Comics)
• Daytripper, by Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba (Vertigo)
• Locke & Key, by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriquez (IDW Publishing)
• The Walking Dead, by Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard (Image Comics)
Best comic book writer
• Ed Brubaker (Captain America, Captain America: Reborn, The Marvels Project, Steve Rogers: Super Soldier)
• Joe Hill (Locke & Key, The Cape)
• Robert Kirkman (The Astounding Wolf-Man, Haunt, Invincible, The Walking Dead)
• Grant Morrison (Batman Incorporated, Joe the Barbarian)
• Mike Mignola (Baltimore, The Amazing Screw-On Head)
Best comic book artist
• Charlie Adlard (The Walking Dead)
• Mark Buckingham (Fables)
• Duncan Fegredo (Hellboy)
• John Romita Jr. (The Avengers, Kick-Ass)
• Bernie Wrightson (Doc Macabre)
Also worth noting are nods in other categories for comic-book adaptations Captain America: The First Avenger, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, RED, Thor, The Walking Dead and X-Men: First Class. A full list of nominees is available on the Scream Awards website, where fans are encouraged to vote often.
- September 7, 2011 @ 02:30 PM by Kevin Melrose
AdHouse to publish Tom Scioli’s American Barbarian
American Barbarian
In advance of this weekend’s Small Press Expo, or SPX, in Bethesda, Md., AdHouse Books has announced they’ll publish Tom Scioli‘s webcomic American Barbarian.
The hardcover collection will be 6″ x 9″, the same dimensions as the Afrodisiac hardcover they published last year. It ships in early 2012, according to the publisher’s website.
Both AdHouse and Scioli will have signed and numbered American Barbarian prints at SPX, free with any purchase from Scioli or AdHouse. Other AdHouse guests this weekend include Jim Rugg, Lamar Abrams, Ethan Rilly and Sterling Hundley.
- September 7, 2011 @ 02:00 PM by JK Parkin
New 52 Pickup | Week 2
It’s finally here: The first full week of DC’s New 52 brought 13 brand-new titles – only the tip of the iceberg as September progresses. If the quality of this week’s books is any indication of the rest of the New 52, there will be some very difficult cuts to make at the end of the month.
From now through the end of September, I’ll provide brief overviews of each book with the pull-list status at the end. With no further ado, it’s time to jump into Week 2 of the New 52! Prepare for a number of Bat-family books, the new JLI, Sgt. Rock for the modern age and more!
Warning: Spoilers ahead!
Animal Man
Written by Jeff Lemire with art by Travel Foreman
This book sets the benchmark for this week as to what a New 52 #1 should be. Jeff Lemire brings new life to Buddy Baker in an incredible story that both takes advantage of the character’s rich history and introduces new elements in the spirit of DC’s relaunch. Not only does Lemire give readers a welcome reintroduction to Animal Man with a stunning cliffhanger that will leave them wanting more, Travel Foreman’s interior pencils are gorgeous, only adding to the unique feel that Lemire gives this title. It’s a great first issue, and I can’t wait to read more. If I could read only one New 52 issue this week, this would be it.
Status: IN
- September 7, 2011 @ 01:00 PM by Steve Sunu
Check it out: The Goon‘s Eric Powell takes on He-Man
I’m not one to lay out exuberant adjectives, but this piece by Eric Powell gets me jazzed on a couple levels. Check it out:
It’s a painting The Goon artist did for a mini-comic inserted in selected toy action figure packages for He-Man recently. This gem popped up on my radar when it came up as an eBay auction by Powell’s account there, and although there’s little chance we’ll see Powell ditching his creator-owned digs for a trip to Eternia, the fact that Dark Horse is the one publishing this comic for He-Man is interesting … could they be acquiring the license for He-Man, side by side with Conan?
- September 7, 2011 @ 12:00 PM by Chris Arrant
Joann Sfar on drawing comics vs. directing films
Joann Sfar’s not the first (or the last) comic creator to make the transition to movie-making, but a recent interview for the Wall Street Journal on his French film Gainsbourg the artist-turned-director laments about the difficulties of comics versus that of film.
“It’s actually more difficult to do a comic book than a movie,” Sfar told WSJ‘s Nick Andersen. “If something doesn’t work in a movie, you can blame the crew or do it again. If it doesn’t work in a comic book, then it’s your fault. I know I have many things to learn in movies, but I had so much fun making the movie. Comic books may not have been useful for making a movie, but drawing was. My crew all had more than 20 years of experiences, and I’m a newbie. So I didn’t come with orders, I came with graphical suggestions. There are visual propositions in the film that may be appealing for the studio people.”
Sfar goes on to explain that when creating the animated film The Rabbi’s Cat, the production of animation was much slower than drawing comics, comparing his page rate of five pages per day as a cartoonist with an animator’s typical rate being one second of film per day.
- September 7, 2011 @ 11:00 AM by Chris Arrant
Periscope Studios helps raise funds for Dylan Williams
Thor
The good folks at Portland’s Periscope Studios are holding a fundraiser for Sparkplug publisher Dylan Williams, who is dealing with a serious illness. Several of the artists who work out of Periscope, including Jonathan Case (who painted the showdown between Thor and Galactus you see above), Steve Lieber and Colleen Coover, have contributed artwork to an auction to benefit Williams.
You can find all the available pieces on Periscope’s eBay page.
- September 7, 2011 @ 10:00 AM by JK Parkin
Out of the swamp, and into The New York Times
From Swamp Thing #1, by Scott Snyder and Yanick Paquette
If you had told me a year ago — heck, a week ago — that Swamp Thing would be in The New York Times, in anything other than an Alan Moore retrospective, I’d have certainly laughed. But here we are, with the newspaper referencing the creature in a headline and showing off two pages of Yanick Paquette’s gorgeous art from the first issue of DC Comics’ relaunched Swamp Thing, which arrives in stores today.
It’s all part of a solid, if brief, profile of Scott Snyder that charts the writer’s three-year comics rise from minor Marvel gigs to Vertigo’s American Vampire to Detective Comics to a key role in DC’s New 52, penning Swamp Thing and the high-profile Batman.
After the break, check out two more pages from Swamp Thing #1, which Comic Book Resources gave 4 1/2 stars. Batman #1, by Snyder and Greg Capullo, arrives in stores Sept. 21.
- September 7, 2011 @ 09:00 AM by Kevin Melrose