Brigid Alverson
Superman vs. the KKK: New book sorts fact from fiction
Superman
A new book, due out in April, will shed some light on the story of the Superman radio shows that took on the KKK back in 1946—and hopefully straighten out the record once and for all. Several versions of this story have made the rounds over the years, and the basic facts are not in dispute: In 1946, the Adventures in Superman radio show ran a 16-episode arc titled “Clan of the Fiery Cross,” in which Superman took on an organization that had many similarities to the Ku Klux Klan. (You can listen to it here.)
Much of the background material from the shows came from journalist Stetson Kennedy, who infiltrated the Klan and then wrote about it. Kennedy claimed the Superman shows included real Klan code words, causing great frustration to the real Klan leaders, who had to change them after every episode. (Our sister site, Comics Should Be Good, discussed the story as part of their Comic Book Urban Legends series.)
Author Rick Bowers researched the matter at length for his new children’s book, Superman Versus the Ku Klux Klan, and concluded that, although it makes for a great story, it just ain’t so. As he said to J.L. Bell, in an interview at the Horn Book site,
The reality is that “Clan of the Fiery Cross” — while dramatic and to a degree realistic—did not contain actual code words and did not force the Klan to scurry about changing their code words. Nevertheless, it is important to acknowledge the Superman producers for creating such a powerful program and to give a nod to the anti-Klan efforts of Stetson Kennedy — even if he was prone to exaggeration and tended to grab credit.
The code-words story was included in the first edition of Freakonomics, but the authors amended the story in later editions. Bowers said he began working on his book after that, and the public debate led him to research the matter carefully. The truth, as is usually the case, is more prosaic than fiction—but still pretty good!
- February 6, 2012 @ 03:00 PM by Brigid Alverson
Watch Colleen Coover design a book cover
Over on her blog, Gingerbread Girl artist Colleen Coover takes us step by step through the design of a cover for her short story a male/male romance titled Home Port. Coover has a nice, fluid style, and the drawing comes together pretty quickly, but it’s interesting to see how she keeps on toying with it after that.
She also talks a bit about using photo references from the web: “Now, it’s important to note that I did not just trace these photos directly, or stick ‘em in a Photoshop filter or anything like that; that would be a violation of the photographers’ copyrights. I drew from them as one would from a live model–to place the features in all the correct proportions and angles–but I made significant changes.”
- February 4, 2012 @ 09:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
Darryl Cunningham smashes bunkum in Science Tales
I think we already knew this, but it’s good news anyway: The UK publisher Myriad Editions sent out a press release announcing that they will publish Darryl Cunningham’s Science Tales in April.
If you’re a regular Robot 6 reader, you will probably already have seen some of Cunningham’s work, as we have linked to it several times; his comics are little mini-documentaries that take on controversial topics and debunk bad science. He has posted a number of the chapters of Science Tales on his blog and in a recent post he compared their popularity. His chapters on Evolution and the Moon Hoax are literally off the charts with over 250,000 hits each, while his autism/vaccine story, The Facts in the Case of Dr. Andrew Wakefield, which made the rounds of the comics blogosphere, got about 40,000 hits. Cunningham observes in the post that many of the visits come from folks who are interested in the topic covered, rather than comics per se:
It shows, I think, that the comic strip medium has a huge audience waiting out there beyond the tiny bubble of fandom. Readers coming to my blog to read these chapters were not the usual comic book crowd. They were drawn to to read these comics because of the subject, not because of the medium. Many noters commented that they didn’t usually read comics at all.
You can see this in the comments to each comic, which generally include a lively, but civil, debate about the topic at hand. (The readers also do Cunningham’s editing for him, pointing out typos and other small errors.) The posted chapters serve as the beta version of the book, but for fans of Cunningham’s work (his Psychiatric Tales is already available in the U.S.), the print edition will be well worth seeking out.
- February 4, 2012 @ 08:15 AM by Brigid Alverson
Start Reading Now | King of RPGs webcomic
Gamers and global manga fans are already familiar with King of RPGs, a graphic novel about, well, RPGs, by Jason Thompson and Victor Hao. (Thompson is well known in the manga community as a former editor and the writer of Manga: The Complete Guide.)
Now they are taking a new tack, extending their story on the web via a King of RPGs webcomic. It’s a nice brand extension, as the webcomic looks like it will be accessible to readers who aren’t familiar with the books as well as those who are longtime fans. Thompson and Hao have added plenty of bonus content to the site, including the original story pitch, and they plan on updating the webcomic two or three times a week.
- February 3, 2012 @ 10:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
Hourly Comics Day has come and gone
Renee Basham's day begins
Yesterday was Hourly Comics Day, but it would have been more appropriate to have it today, on Groundhog Day, so everyone could relive yesterday in comics form. Hourly Comics Day brings journal comics to their logical extreme: Every hours, creators stop what they are doing and draw a comic about it. There’s an inherent flaw in the concept, in that the best artists are the people who draw comics all the time, which makes for a dull diary. Let’s just say there’s lots of messing around with social media and eating of ramen in these comics. It’s not like anyone was rescuing people from the Tokyo underground or breaking up a crime syndicate yesterday. Still, some are quite well done, and peering at someone else’s life in such detail has a certain voyeuristic appeal. What’s more, the comics submitted to this year’s archive page show an impressive array of talent, although most are from creators I have never heard of before.
Some creators posted their hourly comics at their own sites. Dean Trippe has a charmingly simple comic about a day that was apparently dominated by the letter D. Sarah Becan has a day of minor annoyances at work, and Jeph Jacques covers all the comics-creator bases: He plays video games, eats junk food, checks to see what people are saying about him online, and worries a lot. Check the Twitter hashtag #hourlycomics for more.
- February 2, 2012 @ 10:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
Battlepug brings the cute side of darkness to Dark Horse
It was, gee, just about a year ago when we posted the news that Mike Norton was turning his Conan-meets-canine T-shirt design Battlepug into a webcomic. It’s been a great year for the comic, which uses the framing tale of a naked lady telling a bedtime story to her two dogs as a starting point for a hilariously imaginative tale of a warrior bent on revenge and his two traveling companions, a lunatic and a giant pug. It’s completely incongruous, but it also makes perfect sense, in a weird sort of way: Norton didn’t just throw together a couple of disparate elements, he integrated them into a real story, using the tropes of fantasy literature but pitting his hero against cute characters gone bad, including a giant baby seal, gophers who unite to form a mega-gopher, and an evil Santa figure. A parody would have worn thin pretty quickly; with Battlepug, you keep reading just to see what crazy creature Norton is going to come up with next.
And now it’s coming to print: Dark Horse announced yesterday that they are collecting the story into a print edition, with volume 1 due on July 4. That’s pretty much it for details, but as Norton says, “When I first made the Battlepug T-shirt, people kept asking when the comic was coming out. So, I put out the webcomic and now everybody wants to know when the book is coming out! I guess now people will want to know when the movie is happening?” Not soon enough, Mike. Not soon enough.
- February 2, 2012 @ 09:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
Kevin Keller’s first date
Kevin Keller, the first openly gay character in Archie Comics, gets his own series starting today, and when you think about it, that in itself is pretty historic—when was the last time an Archie character got a new series? It seems like all the individual comics (Jughead, Betty and Veronica, etc.) have been around since I was a kid.
Anyway, Out Magazine has a preview of the first six pages of the comic. It starts with typical Archie exposition, but there is a plot: Kevin gets asked out on his first date. Up till now, Kevin’s gayness has been purely theoretical, so it will be interesting to see him join in the romantic hurly-burly of Riverdale. Hopefully there are at least two other gay guys in town, so he can accidentally invite both to the prom or send flowers to the wrong one.
Out also has a brief interview with Kevin creator Dan Parent, who says that he based Kevin’s look on Justin Timberlake, although he ended up looking more like Glee’s Mr. Schuster. And Kevin’s husband Clay (who is seen only in the Life With Archie magazines, not the regular continuity) was inspired by the Old Spice guy. Life is good in Riverdale!
- February 1, 2012 @ 11:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
Comics A.M. | Thief steals all 64 volumes of One Piece
One Piece, Vol. 46
Crime | An energetic thief stole all 64 volumes of One Piece from a Japanese bookstore by stuffing 10 volumes at a time in his duffel bag. As One Piece is the most popular manga in Japan, he could have gotten a good price for his booty at a used manga store, had the forces of law not intervened. [Kotaku]
Legal | Michael Cavna talks with cartoonist Susie Cagle about being taken into custody again over the weekend during Occupy Oakland protests. [Comic Riffs]
Creators | Kiss member Gene Simmons still remembers the postcard he got from Stan Lee as a kid. [Noisecreep]
Comics | Jeff Parker and Erica Moen’s webcomic Bucko has reached its last panel, but Parker says a book is on the way, and there will be “exciting news” at Emerald City Comic Con. [Parkerspace]
- February 1, 2012 @ 07:10 AM by Brigid Alverson
Jillian Tamaki mixes sex and politics for the New York Times
Jillian Tamaki (Skim, Indoor Voice) is between projects right now, with one project on the editor’s desk and another not quite under way. So when the New York Times asked her to illustrate a piece on political sex scandals, she was ready, willing, and more than able. Here’s the main illustration, and click through to her blog to see some other sketches. (Mildly NSFW—this is the Times, after all—but she includes one drawing that was apparently too hot for them.)
- January 31, 2012 @ 09:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
Terry Moore on why he’s going digital
Terry Moore announced on his blog last week that he will release his comics digitally via comiXology, beginning with Strangers in Paradise and hopefully going on to Rachel Rising, his current series. Actually, he lets one of his would-be readers, Aaron, do most of the talking:
I went to Bedrock Comics today, asked about Rachel Rising #5, and was told that they only ordered two copies, and both were pre-orders. The shopkeeper said when the book first came out, he ordered more, based on track record, but they didn’t sell. I simply don’t have the time to go searching around, and I don’t buy enough comics to warrant a pull list. I’m not sure what the problem is that there “isn’t a single penny” for you with digital, but I’d buy PDFs straight from this site if I could. Unfortunately, I can’t justify $6.99 plus shipping for a comic….
There is something profoundly wrong with the distribution system when a title from a leading creator can’t be found at a comic store in a major metropolitan area. I can’t see how digital would be any worse for you, and it would be a lot better for me (and I’m betting plenty of others). I want to support your work, but it shouldn’t be this difficult.
This is the problem, in a nutshell, for independent creators like Moore. I’m sure if Aaron were looking for the latest DC or Marvel title, there would be no problem, but it’s hard for retailers to take a risk on titles that may not sell — or that don’t sell well for the first couple of issues. You can’t blame them for that, but it presents an obstacle to new or alternative creators whose work may take a while to catch on. Moore isn’t abandoning print, or the direct market, but he’s a good example of a creator who will probably add readers with digital.
- January 31, 2012 @ 08:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
Check out Coconino’s classic comics collection
Call it serendipity: I was poking around looking at something else, and somehow I stumbled on the Coconino Classics website, a stunning treasure trove of early comics. The site includes beautifully designed sub-sites for a number of artists, including Krazy Kat creator George Herriman and Little Nemo creator Winsor McKay, that feature biographies, bibliographies, and generous samples of their work. Artists from the pre-history of comics, such as Hokusai, George Cruickshank and Rodolphe Töpffer, and more recent creators such as Rube Goldberg and George McManus get more modest pages that still include digitized versions of their work and the occasional article by comics scholar Thierry Smolderen.
It’s all part of a larger site, Coconino World, that features contemporary as well as classic comics. It’s a French-language site, but much of the text is translated into English, and of course the comics are in their original languages.
- January 30, 2012 @ 08:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
Comics A.M. | Retailers big on timeliness, readers on pre-ordering
Valiant Entertainment
Retailing | Former retailer Atom! Freeman, now sales manager for the revived Valiant Entertainment, has set out to contact every comics retailer in the direct market to promote the publisher’s upcoming superhero line. What has he learned? Retailers are divided on the importance of variant covers, and they don’t place a high value on returnability, but they care a lot about timeliness: “I try to ask every retailer I speak with what his or her biggest concern is in dealing with a new publisher. The number one answer I get is timeliness. Retailers want to know that they will have a consistent product shipped on a consistent schedule.” [ICv2]
Retailing | Todd Allen’s survey of readers of The Beat, admittedly a specialized audience, reveals that more than two-thirds use pre-ordering as their primary method of buying comics, although many will pick up a few off the rack as well. [The Beat]
- January 27, 2012 @ 06:55 AM by Brigid Alverson
Read Skullkickers for free on Keenspot
The fantasy-action-comedy comic Skullkickers was one of the surprise hits of the past year, and now the creators are going to post the back issues on Keenspot. The web version starts out with two prequels, short stories that writer Jim Zubkavich and artist Chris Stevens created for Image’s Popgun Anthology.
While it may seem odd to post a comic for free while it’s still available for sale, this move makes a lot of sense: I’m guessing single issues that came out more than a year ago are no longer readily available (although digital editions still are at comiXology), but as the trades have sold pretty well, the creators may figure the value of the new readers who will come to the comic through Keenspot — and ultimately buy the print or digital editions — will more than compensate for any sales lost from those people who might have paid but decided to read Skullkickers for free instead.
This is a calculation every creator should make, because it may lead them to choose, as Zubkavich & Co. have done, to pre-empt the pirates and make their work available online on their own terms.
- January 26, 2012 @ 08:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
Rich Tommaso brings Pete and Miriam to BOOM!
Rich Tommaso has had a varied career—his Satchel Paige: Striking Out Jim Crow (written by James Sturm) won an Eisner and several Glyph awards, and he has had a long relationship with Gary Groth and Fantagraphics; currently he is re-coloring Carl Barks comics for Fanta’s collected edition of Barks’s works.
Yet for some reason, Tommaso has had a hard time getting his work published in the U.S.—until now. Yesterday, BOOM! Studios announced that they will publish Tommaso’s graphic novel Pete and Miriam in March under their BOOM! Town imprint. Pete and Miriam has already been published in French, and his bio lists a Spanish edition due out in 2013. “I kept working on it because I had this contract in France but no one was biting on it here,” Tommaso told Tom Spurgeon in an in-depth interview at The Comics Reporter in November. “I went to Angouleme last year and it was amazing how many people came up to me and talked to me about the book. They wanted to know when a second one would be out. There was a lot of excitement for it.” Let’s hope American readers warm to it as well—Tommaso is an artist whose time has come.
- January 25, 2012 @ 10:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
Your Tuesday art break: Eleanor Davis draws veggies
Eleanor Davis, the creator of the kids’ graphic novels The Secret Science Alliance and The Copycat Crook and Stinky, has also illustrated Crescent Dragonwagon’s new cookbook, Beans and Greens. You don’t have to like either to enjoy Davis’s whimsical illustrations, with their charmingly retro green-and-white color scheme; these drawings will tickle even the most dedicated carnivore.
- January 24, 2012 @ 11:00 AM by Brigid Alverson