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]

Creators | Patrick Smith interviews Jeremy Whitley, co-creator of Princeless, an all-ages comic that has been getting good word-of-blog lately: “I think you’ll see as story progresses that fight scenes especially get pretty comical. In fact, I think that things like the lampooning of outfits and fairy tales and princess culture are the important heavy lifting of Princeless. They make adults who have lived with this stuff go “YES! THAT!” but hopefully kids who are seeing this stuff for the first time will be conditioned to see those sorts of things as ludicrous from an early age. It’s hard to get bs past kids on stuff like that anyway.” [Spandexless]

Jill Thompson, by Seth Kushner

Creators | Jill Thompson reminisces about modeling for P. Craig Russell and talks about her work on Wonder Woman, Sandman, Finals, and the all-ages comic Scary Godmother in a wide-ranging interview with Christopher Irving. [Graphic NYC]

Creators | Mike Jasper, co-creator of In Maps and Legends, talks about his love of fantasy and his experience launching the comic on Zuda and then moving it to other digital programs when Zuda folded. Fun fact: Although they have been working together for two and a half years, Mike and his collaborator Niki Smith have never met in person. [Graphicly Blog]

Comics | Funky Winkerbean fans rejoice: Tom Batiuk will release the first volume of collected Funky strips earlier this year. Readers who are familiar with the current depressing storylines will be surprised by the earlier strips, which are much more light-hearted and in fact quite funny. [The Daily Cartoonist]

Lady Sabre & The Pirates of the Ineffable Aether

Comics | Greg Rucka discusses plans for the collection edition of the webcomic Lady Sabre & The Pirates of the Ineffable Aether, and with a variety of digital and print formats on the table, asks readers what they would prefer. [Lady Sabre & The Pirates of the Ineffable Aether]

Graphic novels | The American Booksellers Association has published a list of the best selling graphic novels in independent bookstores for the two months ending Jan. 22. [Bookselling This Week ,via Graphic Novel Reporter]

Graphic novels | Paul Gravett lists some tempting graphic novels due out in March. [Paul Gravett]

Webcomics | The collaborative site Act-I-Vate celebrates its sixth anniversary today. [Acti-I-Vate]

Review | Robot 6 contributor Christopher Mautner reviews Government Issue: Comics for the People, 1940s to 2000s, which he finds as dreary as its subject matter, despite a few high points: “Easily the best comic of the bunch is Walt Kelly’s “Pogo Primer for Parents”, a visual lecture on the importance of properly monitoring your child’s television habits that is so charming and funny that it only serves to underscore how drab and lifeless all the other excerpts are by comparison.” [The Comics Journal]

Trip City

As long as I have been covering the comics industry,  it seems like I have always found reasons to support the work of Dean Haspiel and/or his many talented associates. So when Trip City, a Brooklyn-filtered literary arts salon, launched at the start of last month it struck me as a good time to reach out to the founders for an email chat. While Trip City has four key members (Haspiel, Seth Kushner, Chris Miskiewicz and Jeffrey Burandt) the bulk of the discussion involved Kushner and Miskiewicz, with a brief check-in by Haspiel (discussing the start of a new Billy Dogma story, The Last Romantic Antihero [TLRA]). Haspiel also gave me a head’s up on a December 8 TLRA live reading at BookCourt at 7 PM (163 Court St  Brooklyn, New York 11201/718-875-3677).

Tim O’Shea: When did TRIP CITY first get conceived–and how did the two of you come to be involved? How early in the planning was it determined that a podcast would be important to the venture?

Chris Miskiewicz: Dean was leaving Deep6 and starting a new studio. Seth Kushner and I were the first people he asked along. Although my film schedule is always in flux and I wasn’t sure how often I’d actually be there, the idea of sitting around others and not being by myself writing appealed to me. So we formed HANG DAI Studios.

If you put three creative people in a room together stuff happens. What happened was TRIP CITY. We spoke about the concept for about five months. Who would be a part of it, what we’d do, how we’d do it. We didn’t want to revamp ACT-I-VATE but we did want comics, along with prose, fiction, a web-series, and a podcast. What we did was create a multimedia site that catered to our individual interests blending them together into a whole.

Seth Kushner: I’d been posting my content in various places.  On GRAPHIC NYC (NYCGraphicNovelists.com) I was posting my photographic portraits of comics creators, along with Chris Irving’s interview-based essays.  I also wrote personal and pop-culture essays there.  I was posting my photos and behind-the-scenes material from my shoots on my personal blog, SethKushner.blogspot.com.  And, my series, CulturePOP Photocomix was appearing on ActivateComix.com.  I wondered if I was spreading myself too thin over too many venues.  TRIP CITY was created and designed to be the venue for a group of us who all felt we needed ONE place to post our unique content and sell our wares.

O’Shea: You really were ambitious with the bookings for the first two podcasts (Michael Moore and Henry Rollins). How hard was it to arrange for these two, and will the goal always be to go for “big name” mainstream interview subjects?

Kushner: One of my favorite quotes is by Woody Allen—“80% of success is showing up.”  I couldn’t agree more, but I would add that in addition to showing up, also be polite and persistent, know some of the right people, and hopefully have at least a little bit of cred.

BookCourt December 8 Event

We’re very fortunate to have our studio, HANG DAI located above BookCourt, Brooklyn’s premiere independent bookstore.  They get big names to do appearances at the store, so we’ve teamed up with them to “share” some of their visiting guests.

With the BookCourt’s help, we basically took shots in the dark at Moore’s and Rollins’s publicists before the site had even launched.  I wrote polite query emails, in which I described the site, dropped some names of publications where my work has appeared (NY Times Magazine, Time, L’Uomo Vogue, my book, The Brooklynites) and mentioned that Emmy winner Dean Haspiel and Eisner winner Nick Abadzis were involved in the site.  To our delight, both agreed to the interview and photoshoot.  Now, we have a nice looking site and Michael Moore and Henry Rollins to use as leverage for future guests.

One of the interesting aspects of the podcast is how we take a sort of “artist-to-artist” approach to the interviews.  While Chris “hosts” and produces the podcast, we try to match-up each guest with an appropriate interviewer.  For example, our buddy Dan Goldman, who’s done such politically charged graphic novels as Shooting War and 08 was matched up with Michael Moore.  Fellow TC contributor Amy Finkel, a filmmaker and punk music aficionado, was the right interviewer for Henry Rollins. We’ve got Dean and artist Jen Ferguson interviewing cartoonist Ben Katchor on the current episode. Upcoming, artist Krista Dragomer talks to artist/actress/filmmaker/author Miranda July for the next one, and writer/musician Jeffrey Burandt interviewing author Jonathan Lethem on the one after.

So, the bar is set high, but we plan to continue to roll out “name” guests, and more importantly, guests whose work we admire and who inspire us.

O’Shea: Do you hope to have some recurring segments on the podcast as the project evolves?

Miskiewicz: We’re looking at it as showcasing our featured guest with a TC-Podcast show running before it that talks about what’s going on with our contributors which includes some comedy skits like “Ronnie’s Story” “How to in 2” and a variety of real and made up news stories coming down the line. We also close with a featured song.

O’Shea: How do the two of you divvy up the production responsibilities for the podcast?

Miskiewicz: Seth & Dean have been getting our guests. A conversation goes out about who in our group will conduct the interview. We have a group meeting about the overall schedule. And then I build the podcast, picking the order, which skits, and which jokes.

O’Shea: Are there certain podcasts that the two of you listen to on a regular basis and that achieve the kind of vibe/content you hope to offer for TRIP CITY (to give interested listeners context)?

Kushner: I listen regularly to Marc Maron’s WTF podcast and also to John Siuntres’ Word Balloon.  What they have in common, is they feature smart, honest, in-depth discussions about process with folks I find fascinating–Marc with comedians, and John with comic book creators.  Dean and I are both fans of that type of format and Chris really enjoys silly, ironic humor, so he creates segments to go in-between the smart stuff.

O’Shea:Seth, how gratifying is it to have a forum where you “have a venue to post the type of material I most wanted to work on, no matter how esoteric or personal“. How hard was it to write about your late father?

Kushner: The piece, Patrick Stewart And My Father was the first of a series of “personal/pop-culture” essays I’ve written.  I followed it with How Mark Hamill Changed My Life and I Hated Star Trek.  The concept is to show how popular culture, the things we all love, informs our life and how some of the periods of our lives can be tied into these things.

It wasn’t that difficult to write about my late father.  It’s been a lot of years, and I see the piece as a tribute to him, and to some extent, to Partick Stewart.

O’Shea: Chris, in addition to your role in the podcast, what kind of content to you intend to develop for TRIP CITY?

Miskiewicz: In December I’ll be posting a 24-page children’s story entitled Astor Place as well as the second part of Adrift with Kate McElroy.

I’ll be publishing the first chapter of my novel Allergy Season in parts to run as a weekly until it’s completion, as well as several short stories.

However the bulk of my presence within Trip City comes into play when we launch our webseries station, Trip City Television in late February/March.

I’m currently in production on two original web-shows for the station. But we’ll also have short films and skits from outside contributors. It’s going to be a lot of fun.

O’Shea: What else is on the TRIP CITY horizon?

Kushner: There’s lots brewing at TRIP CITY.  I’ve been continuing my series CulturePOP Photocomix on TRIP CITY.  Author and creator of HBO’s Bored To Death Jonathan Ames was the first one, followed by comedian and WTF podcaster Marc Maron.  Upcoming I have Moby and James Haspiel, Dean’s dad and friend and biographer of Marilyn Monroe.

I will also be writing my own semi-autobio comix series called, SCHMUCK.  The first chapter, illustrated by Kevin Colden, appeared on ActivateComix.com two years ago.  Moving forward, I’ll have different artists illustrating 8-10 page chapters.  I plan to launch it in February and then post monthly.

The Last Romantic Antihero

The big thing coming on the site proper is Dean’s new Billy Dogma story, The Last Romantic Antihero.  I’ve seen it and it’s a doozy and it will appear only on TRIP CITY.  Look for it on 12/6.

Dean Haspiel: The Last Romantic Antihero is my gauntlet to woo virgin readers to the BILLY DOGMA mythology while welcoming fans to TRIP CITY, where I get to hit the re-set button both creatively and narratively. I’m excited to grow a multimedia home that challenges me to experiment new story ideas among a diverse set of accomplished and highly individualistic creators.

Snarked! #0

Recently I was lucky enough to see a preview of Roger Langridge‘s Snarked! #0, his all ages series for Kaboom where the writer/artist uses Lewis Carroll‘s “Walrus and the Carpenter” poem (from Through the Looking-Glass) as a springboard for his storytelling. For every consumer that railed against the cancellation of Langridge’s Thor: The Mighty Avenger, here’s your chance to support Langridge again. For every pundit and website commenter who opined that Thor would have flourished, had it not been caught in the deluge of Thor titles that dashed any chance of it succeeding, take note.

A quick look at the CBR front page reveals a full court press for every new DC #1 coming our way in September. And we should be covering the DC relaunch, don’ t get me wrong. But I am fearful that some great books coming out around the same time, say this one, for example, are going to get overlooked. Roger Langridge’s Snarked! should not be overlooked. This is the comic that non-comics reading parents are looking for when they wander into a store seeking something to give their kid. This is a fun comic. This is a funny comic. This is an intelligent comic. This is a comic with puzzles, mazes and word searches. This preview issue is only a $1. This is a project that I hope to see on many folks Best of 2011 lists (I know it will be on mine).

Langridge chatted with me briefly in this email interview, and Kaboom was kind enough to give us a preview of Snarked! (provided at the end of our discussion). While the preview is not on sale until August, of course it is in Previews this month, with orders due June 30 [Diamond Code: JUN110963]. I can count on one hand the number of active creators that write and draw as engagingly a story as Langridge. If that does not win you over, the book stars a talking walrus (Wilburforce J. Walrus, as noted by Kaboom: “that’s right, the same Walrus that inspired the Beatles song “I Am the Walrus” is now in Roger Langridge’s merry, mad hands”) for the love of God. Check it out, I think you’ll agree it should be on everyone’s must-read list, no matter your age. To paraphrase Langridge fromthis interview, I hope this project is something that people will want to re-read many times–and if that’s not the definition of a great comic, I don’t know what is.

Tim O’Shea: How long have you been a fan of the work of Lewis Carroll?

Roger Langridge: It’s tempting to say “since I could read”; I’m sure it can’t have been quite that long, but I know I was very, very young when I first read the Alice books. And I’ve gone back and re-read them every couple of years since then, pretty much. They’re that rare thing, books which hit you in one way when you’re a kid, and in a different (yet equally powerful) way when you’re an adult, when you appreciate some of the really black humor and the general pricking of pomposity. They reward repeated re-readings more than most.

O’Shea: I love the look of your characters–when and how did you decide that Clyde McDunk needed an underbite (as opposed to an overbite)–and does he just have two teeth?

Langridge: Thanks! I’m playing fast and loose with the teeth – if a particular expression requires it, he might find himself with a full set for a panel or two – but the underbite was pure instinct, it just felt right. I suppose the Walrus technically has an overbite with those tusks of his, so I didn’t want to flog it to death!

O’Shea: In addition to the core story in the first issue, you include games and puzzles (something lacking in most kids comics). Was that your idea or BOOM!’s?

Langridge: Mine. I grew up on that stuff in my comics – not just in British humor weeklies, which usually had extra features like pull-out booklets or make-it-yourself board games, but also in the DC 100-page Giants of the 1970s. I always liked them, I thought they made the comics I bought seem like I was getting more value for my money because they engaged me for longer, so I thought, heck, SNARKED is my baby – why not? The series proper will probably integrate the activities into the story itself a bit more; but for the preview, a separate and distinct puzzle section seemed entirely right to me.

O’Shea: With Carroll’s Hunting of the Snark, which runs in the back of the first issue, you include Henry Holiday art (commissioned in 1874). Did you track down that art, or how did it come to be in the issue?

Langridge: I have the book in a couple of different editions, both with the original illustrations, so I didn’t have far to look. I thought, if we’re going to be referring to the poem throughout the series, it would be helpful to have a primer for those who aren’t familiar with it. Plus, it’s great!

O’Shea: How happy are you to be swimming in the creator-owned waters?

Langridge: Deliriously so! Of course, I never really left them; even during the time I was working on the Muppet books and Thor: The Mighty Avenger I was still plugging away at my web strip, Mugwhump the Great, on ACT-I-VATE. But it’s very satisfying to actually be earning a living from my own creations, something that I’ve been able to do all too rarely.

O’Shea: I love how you strike a balance of innocent facial reactions mixed with knowing more mature knowing glances in terms of the emotions with the children of the Snarked cast. How hard (or easy) is it for you to draw and emotionally frame the children in your storytelling?

Langridge: Well, I have a couple of kids of my own, so first-hand reference is never far away. And that’s pretty much how they are – one moment giggling and running through the house without any pants on, the next giving you a look that makes you blush. Or laugh out loud!

O’Shea: Thanks to your work in the past few years you have elevated your level of recognition and popularity. So when you decided to do more creator-owned work, I am sure you were courted by many publishers. What prompted you to work with KABOOM!?

Langridge: I hate to break this to you, but I was approached by exactly two publishers, and only one of them was interested in me developing a concept of my own – that was BOOM!. The other one was really only interested in some sort of movie tie-in, and even then I was unable to come up with any pitch that grabbed them enough to take things further. That said, even if I’d been approached by a dozen publishers, BOOM! would have been high on my list, as they’ve been very good to me. I’m delighted that my working relationship with them continues.

O’Shea: I was fortunate enough to see some of your pages in black and white (as well as many in full color). How important was it to you to do this in full color?

Langridge: I’m not someone who thinks of colour as essential to comics, having grown up on black-and-white stuff like 2000AD, as well as Australian B&W reprints of Marvel and DC comics – I consider black-and-white to be “normal”; that’s kind of my default setting. That said, I’m aware that the market seems to favour colour books, so I’m happy for Snarked! to be in colour if that will get more people looking at it – and I’m thrilled with the work being done by Rachelle Rosenberg in that department. Really original and interesting colour choices – I’m confident her work will make the book stand out.

O’Shea: I love looking at the lettering in this preview issue, how did you settle upon what kind of lettering to employ to help set the tone and narrative of Snarked?

Langridge: Thanks! I wanted to do the lettering myself – not because of any dissatisfaction with other letterers I’ve worked with, but just because this thing is my baby. Though I’m a hand-letterer from way back, I decided to go digital, mainly for speed and ease of editing – and my ideal for comic lettering has always been Abe Kanegson’s work on The Spirit. If I could letter like anybody, it would be him. So I thought, why not make a font from his lettering? A few Spirit scans later and some digital jiggery-pokery, and hey presto, Kanegson is back in business! I like the retro quality it has, and the lively, springy feel it brings to the work. I think it’s a good fit – my own lettering tried to imitate Kanegson’s for many years, so now it looks like I always wanted it to.

Elric: The Balance Lost

If you didn’t have a chance to make it to your local comics retailer this past Saturday, never fear — it’s always Free Comic Book Day on the web. Here are a few places you can find digital editions of the FCBD comics released on Saturday, plus a few more freebies because, hey, free comics:

• Both of Dark Horse’s FCBD books, Criminal Macabre/Baltimore and Avatar: The Last Airbender/Star Wars: The Clone Wars, will be available for download from Dark Horse Digital starting today through the end of the month.
• Image’s offering, the Super Dinosaur Origin Special, can be downloaded for free from comiXology.
• BOOM!’s Elric book can be read in full on Comic Book Resources, along with Th3rd World Studios’ The Intrepid Escapegoat.
• Jay Hosler has posted an eight-page story he did for Evolution of Adventure, a minicomic given away at The Comic Swap in State College, Penn.
• Dr Pepper is serializing a Thor and Sif comic on their website. It’s titled “Rescue,” I wonder if it’ll end with Thor’s thirst being rescued by the cool taste of Dr Pepper? Joking aside, it’s by Jeff Parker and Kev Sharpe, which definitely makes it worth checking out.
• Paul Maybury has made an eight page comic called “Clock” available for free.
• Eisner nominee Frank Stockton has posted his nominated short story, “Hamburgers for One,” on his blog.
• Finally, ACT-I-VATE today posted a one-shot comic called “Hurricane Wilma” by Omar Angulo.

Enjoy!

Panels for Primates

Late last week, Panels for Primates editor Troy Wilson (who I interviewed at my pop culture blog in 2010) gave me a heads-up that this Wednesday’s installment of the “charity anthology for the Primate Rescue Center, featuring an eclectic mix of primate stories by both well-known and up-and-coming creators” was going to be written by industry veteran Roger Stern with art by Canadian animator Caleb Hystad. With the installment fast approaching, I begged Stern for a brief email interview about his new story. Normally, if I had more time, I would love to do an in-depth, career-spanning interview, but time was of the essence. Rest assured, Stern is open to the idea of doing a longer interview down the road, so that will happen eventually, but for now, here we go. My thanks to Stern for his time and to Wilson for the tip. [Update: Stern and Hystad's story is now online. Enjoy.]

Tim O’Shea: Your story is titled: “All Monkeys are Primates, But Not All Primates are Monkeys!”. First off, how did you become involved in the Panels for Primates project. How did you arrive upon telling this particular tale?

Roger Stern: It all started when I received an email from Troy Wilson (the author of Perfect Man), asking if I would contribute a four-page strip to an anthology of monkey comics — with all of the proceeds going to a worthy animal-related charity.

The idea really tickled me. The more I thought about it, the more ideas came to mind. And that eventually led to the creation of Morty Monkey, the star of our little four-pager. In fact, the hard part was restricting myself to four pages. I could probably have written a whole book about Morty.

O’Shea: Did editor Troy Wilson team you with artist Caleb Hystad?

Stern: Yes, Troy was the uniting force in this project. I’m embarrassed to admit that I hadn’t heard of Caleb before Troy brought us together. He’s a monstrously talented artist, and quite an accomplished animator. Caleb’s done just about everything from designing characters for Nintendo games to directing the award-winning Raven Tales series. Plus, he draws wonderfully wacky monkeys.

O’Shea: As a longtime writer for Marvel, DC and many shared universe companies, how liberating is it to be able to construct a story that does not get bogged down in continuity?

Stern: Well, I’ve never had that much trouble in dealing with continuity … in fact, I’ve always found it to be kind of fun. That said, it’s also great fun to be able to just make things up out of whole cloth. I get to exercise different parts of my brain.

O’Shea: Does this mark the first time you’ve written primates in comics–I was thinking maybe not, given that both Marvel and DC have their fair share of primates.

Stern: Actually, the majority of characters I’ve written have been primates. I mean I’ve written about a few aliens in my time. Technically, Superman wouldn’t be a primate … at least not a terrestrial one.

But Spider-Man is a primate. So is Captain America. So am I. So are you.

Wait, do you mean non-human primates? Let’s see … I wrote a few scenes of Brainiac 5′s monkey Koko in the old Legionnaires series. And in ACTION COMICS, I once channeled one of my favorite Harvey Kurtzman features from MAD, when writing dialog for a chimp in a Superman suit: “Vootie!”

O’Shea: Is this the first time you’ve written a webcomic?

Stern: Gee, I guess it is. I hadn’t even thought about that. The writing itself wasn’t any different from writing for print media.

O’Shea: Have you considered doing more webcomics or collaborating on other projects with ACT-I-VATE?

Stern: Given the right project, sure. Why not? Certainly, I would never say never.

O’Shea: Anything about “All Monkeys are Primates…” you’d like to discuss that I neglected to ask you about?

Stern: I hope the strip makes people laugh, and that people enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

But mostly, I’d like your readers to know that Caleb’s and my story is part of the larger Panels for Primates charity anthology. PfP has been running on the Internet since last October. There’s a new Panels for Primates strip every week at ACT-I-VATE — and it’s all for the benefit of the Primate Rescue Center in Nicholasville, Kentucky.

As with other series running on ACT-I-VATE, the Panels for Primates archive can be viewed absolutely free. But we encourage readers to swing on over to http://www.primaterescue.org/ and make a donation. Troy tells me that Panels for Primates will finish its online run on June 1st — with a bang! I have no idea what he means by that. [Laughs] But if I’ve learned anything over the last few years, it’s that you should never underestimate Troy Wilson.

It's Never as Simple as it Seems

In what could possibly be considered a Robot 6/ACT-I-VATE crossover, our own Michael May and artist Simon Roy contribute a story to the Panels for Primates project. And as all the stories feature primates of some sort, it was only natural that May and Roy’s comic, “It’s Never as Simple as it Seems,” would feature Gorillas Riding Dinosaurs.

Our work here is done …

Creator-Owned Spotlight

Editor’s Note: With the recent discussions going on around the comics community about creator-owned comics, we’re pleased to welcome one of the voices in those discussions, 30 Days of Night and Mystery Society creator Steve Niles, to Robot 6 for a series of columns on creator-owned comics.

by Steve Niles

Second column and I’m already late! Here’s a creator tip I can’t seem to get through my thick skull: Don’t bite off more than you can chew. That said, here I am again and happy to be here talking about my favorite creator-owned books and creators.

This week I’m going to talk about a creator who dominates the modern creator-owned scene with both his work and his relentless support of other creators.

WARREN ELLIS

I wanted to talk about Ellis for many reasons: his talent, his persistence and his vision. Warren Ellis approaches his work with the strategy of a learned zombie killer. Don’t run into the stinky crowd swinging and shooting like a crazy person, find a place to settle in and let them come to you.

Warren Ellis has not only created worlds within his work, but also a world for himself online where you can follow his daily work routine, check out what he’s reading/watching himself, or meet and discuss his and other people’s work on the various forums he’s overseen. He has created a perfect fort for all of us Ellis zombies to swarm.

Desolation Jones

Doing my research for this column, I discovered that Warren has more books out than Hilton has bed-bugs (Yeah, the Hotel too.) He is the award-winning creator of such popular titles as Transmetropolitan, RED, Supergod, No Hero, Desolation Jones, Planetary, Ministry of Space and many others.

I’ll go out on a limb here and say that Warren Ellis is one of the few creators in comics whom I would call a Science Fiction writer. Oddly, that’s one of the areas you’d think there would be more people working in funny books, but that’s neither here nor there, because Ellis does it and does it well. It is odd though how little good sci-fi there is in comics.

Ellis has worked in just about every medium; not just comics. He is also a novelist and last year we saw a big-screen adaptation of RED, a series Ellis did with the lovely and talented Cully Hamner.

I could go on and on and try to sound really smart, but all I really need to say here is grab an Ellis book, any book, and give it a try. If you have any questions, just stop by warrenellis.com and soon you will be well-informed. Warren has made it very easy for fans to find his books.

Before I close on Warren Ellis though, I really want to underline something I mentioned earlier. Warren has a persona, no doubt. A pretty smart and wickedly funny persona, but he might be one of the most supportive creators in comics as well, and I love him for that. He spends massive amounts of his time and energy helping comics and comics creators. He opens up his websites for people to discuss and plug their work. And if Warren reads or watches something he likes, he shares it. In this market that is huge. Warren has always supported others.

I hope other creators follow in his footsteps both creatively and as an advocate of all things nerdy.

DAVE JOHNSON

by Dave Johnson

What? Are you crazy? That boy drawls Batman! How’s he fit into creator-owned?

Yeah, well along with doing some astounding cover work for both Marvel and DC, Dave Johnson has established the DRINK & DRAW SOCIAL CLUB. What started as a way to get his married friends out for a night has turned into a weekly activity across the world for all sorts of creators. The idea is so simple: get a bunch of artists to leave their basements and all hang out and just draw.

It seems so basic, but I think Johnson deserves a shot at the Nobel Peace Prize. My own idea DRAWING ON THE BACKS OF PEOPLE’S HEADS AT AA MEETINGS, didn’t really catch on. Dave and his gang deserve huge props for motivating a generation of young artists, giving them an outlet and a chance to hone their craft while working with other artists and getting shit-faced.

Hey, if it works, it works. Check out all things Dave Johnson here: http://devilpig.deviantart.com/ and Drink and Draw here: http://drinkanddraw.com/.

Let’s see, what books am I talking about…? I told you it was a bad idea to write a column. I have the attention-span of a gnat on meth.

SKULLKICKERS!

Woot! There are many reasons I love this title but one thing I love most is the publisher, Image, getting the book out on a regular basis. This may not sound big, but late books are a problem. The publishers of Skullkickers have planned and worked it out.

One of the things they’ve done is go out and hire some of the best, up-and-coming indy artists in the biz to do filler stories to keep the book on schedule. The “fillers” though are anything but. They’re all good, solid, fun, twisted, little short stories about dude, well, kicking some skulls. Check out an issue today (I think #6 hit the stands) or pre-order the first collection.

And last, but hardly least is another creator who has reached outside the comic bubble with his unique style of storytelling.

DEAN HASPIEL

There are not a lot of Emmy-winning comic creators out there, but Dean has managed to receive the prestigious award for his drawings for the opening sequence of HBO’s Bored to Death. He has also created books for DC and Marvel as well as Image, Dark Horse, Scholastic and even the New York Times and helped pioneer webcomics with the introduction of ACT-I-VATE.COM.

Please check out Dean’s Eisner-nominated series Billy Dogma. He’s a remarkable talent. Grab anything he’s done to see for yourself, and I’m sure you’ll be hooked.

I have to keep this week short because I also have some creator-owned books to do, but coming up I’m going to talk about more creators and books like Jill Thompson and I Kill Monsters. I’ll also start pouring through the mail I’ve been receiving and plugging harder-to-find creator-owned books.

Thanks for reading!

Everywhere

The webcomics collective ACT-I-VATE celebrates its fifth birthday today — congrats, guys! — by launching a new “tongue-in-cheek” horror comics anthology called Everywhere. The strip, created and written by Chris Miskiewicz, will feature artwork by Dennis Calero, Rodney Ramos, Bobby Timony, Nathan Schreiber, Seth Kushner and many more. The first strip, “Horses Everywhere,” is up now and features artwork by Andrew Wendel.

“Five years ago, eight independent cartoonists allied and presented personal signature works, online for free, and ACT-I-VATE was born,” said Dean Haspiel, creator of Billy Dogma and co-founder of ACT-I-VATE, in a press release. “Five years later, ACT-I-VATE expanded its roster, created a PRIMER graphic novel, and helped confirm publishing options between print and web. A bold example of how a curated destination point for new stories and ideas can sustain, ACT-I-VATE continues to break ground as the industry transitions to the Digital Age.”

art by Robert Wilson IV

The webcomics collective Act-i-vate has kicked off a new ongoing anthology called Panels for Primates, where various comic creators will create comic strips featuring monkeys, apes and other primates to help raise awareness and, hopefully, money for the Primate Rescue Center in Nicholasville, Ky.

While the stories can be viewed for free, they include a promo at the end encouraging readers to donate money. Per a press release, upcoming stories will “offer an eclectic mix of creators and content, with the only common denominators being high quality and primates.” The first story, “Ilya’s Back Pages” by Stuart Moore and Rick Geary, is up now. The cover, above, is by Robert Wilson IV.

photo by Seth Kushner from MOCCA 2010 Panel

There are more comics being produced now than ever before — from new releases to reprints and re-issues to comics coming in from outside the United States. And while the number of comics arriving weekly to your favorite store grows every year, the shelf space doesn’t. As comic books fight for your attention, some of the more entrepreneurial-minded creators are engaging their public directly. They do it with forums, newsletters, Facebook, Twitter and interviews with the comics press — but when does that leave time to … you know… create comics?

That’s where publicity person and uber-fan Jeff Newelt comes in. Newelt, who often goes by the moniker of “Jah Furry,” worked for years as  a publicity director for major companies such as Samsung, but left it all to go solo and to take his love of comics — and the craft of making comics — to the people.

As the minister of hype for webcomics collective ACT-I-VATE and working with friends such as Paul Pope, Newelt has brought attention to their work by reaching out to journalists and by communicating directly with fans through Twitter and Facebook.

He’s also parlayed his skills into editing, as the comics editor for the online magazine SMITH and in gigs for Heeb and Royal Flush. He also headed up the recent grassroots Harvey Heads gallery, with artists from all over the world drawing a rendition of Harvey Pekar. Newelt also edited The Pekar Project, and is speaking at the “Remembering Harvey Pekar” panel next weekend at New York Comic Con.

Through it all, Newelt has become an indispensable part of the comics world, as well as a staple of the New York City comics scene. In many ways he’s a 21st-century Stan Lee — goodwill ambassador for comics to the outside world. He offers a unique perspective on the creators he works with, and the vibrant scene he lives in. Don’t expect any hard-hitting journalism — this is just me seeing what makes the man tick.

Chris Arrant: What do you see your role in comics as?

Jeff Newelt: I gots multiple roles with mad prongs. To nutshell it: 1) I’m both an ambassador of the medium to the uninitiated and a spreader of sublime shite to existing fans on behalf of creators/publishers by way of public relations, social-media shenanigans, event producing/promoting, and boppin’ around with books in my murse. Comics clients of mine include/have included Paul Pope, Rick Veitch, David Lloyd, Molly Crabapple, Dan Goldman, ACT-I-VATE, Larry Marder, Al Jaffee/Harper Collins, Bill Ayers/Teachers College Press, CBLDF, Doug Rushkoff, Bryan Talbot, as well as newcomers like SoulCraft Comics (Tribes: The Dog Years) and ZIP! Comics (Harvey Pekar’s Cleveland, coming in 2011).

I’ve been converting people to comics since I was 7 years old; I once got in a teacher’s face with the Kirby/ Lee Thor vs. Hercules “Treasury Edition,” and showed him how I already knew the mythologies we were learning, and that the vocabulary was even more complex in “my” version, forsooth!

I like to think I played a small part in the tectonic shift we’re still experiencing. The boom in interest in graphic novels these past two years is not, as the cynical naysayers might assert, part of a “cycle,” it’s a change. THINGS DONE CHANGED. Here’s the dealio: You don’t have to be an indie-film freak to see a few indie films a year, right? You don’t have to be a theater buff to go to one or two plays; you don’t have to be a jazzhead to see a few shows or download a Miles Davis album. BUT before now, unless you were already into ‘em, or had someone like me literally shoving one in your face, there was little chance you’d be exposed to, let alone read, a comic. Finally, you don’t have to be a comics-store regular to get a few graphic novels a year, or read webcomics regularly … Comics are now just another medium for culture-lovers to consume. This is very much a result of the Internet, in terms of webcomics allowing folks to read comics (often for the first time) while they’re not-working, and also Facebook, Twitter, etc., that has all sorts of folks in each others faces recommending shit to each other all day, and the easy access to Amazon and ordering books online …

2) I’m a connector of comics creators with badarses in other mediums to share audiences and ideas as well as concoct cosmic team-ups. For example, two years ago I mashed Paul Pope with video remix masters Eclectic Method; they really dug each other’s shit and Paul, whose comics exude music, always wanted to DJ. So the EM guys taught Paul a thing or three, he opened for them at the NYCWTF parties and San Diego Comic-Con 2009 CBLDF benefit, and now, training wheels off, PP is an actual DJ Pulphope and headlined a dozen gigs in the past year.

Newelt modeling for appearance in 'Shooting War' illustrated by Dan Goldman

3) As comics editor of SMITH Magazine, I’m a curator/producer of ambitious webcomix projects, each of which has gone on to become a book or is on its way to, knock on wood. The first was Shooting War, by Anthony Lappe and Dan Goldman, then A.D.: New Orleans After The Deluge, by Josh Neufeld, the Next-Door Neighbor anthology edited by Dean Haspiel, and currently, my first all-out editor gig, The Pekar Project, Harvey Pekar’s (RIP) webcomics series. For “The Pekar Project” my role was/is actually three-fold: editor/producer/promoter. I edited the comics, meaning Harvey read me the scripts over the phone and we’d jam, then I would work with the artists on manifesting his story; I produced the website, wrote blogs concocted, special features like the Harvey Heads gallery for Harvey’s 70th birthday; I promoted/publicized it, knowing in my gut that so many more people could be into Harvey’s work, even after the American Splendor movie. Before Seinfeld had an episode in a Chinese restaurant, Harvey had comics that took place at the supermarket, etc. I treated working on this project like I was a record producer, and Harvey was the composer/band leader, the artists the musicians/soloists. For example, I teamed-up Harvey and Doug Rushkoff for a “conversational comic.” Harvey went on Doug’s WFMU radio show, but even before they chatted on-air, I knew the results would be a raw extended track for us to edit, remix and produce the final album, which is a four-part comic illustrated by Sean Pryor. It felt like putting Duke Ellington and John Coltrane together in the studio, knowing it would work and be a spectacular simpatico one-off. And Pryor did a terrific job of illustrating the conversation itself, not two people talking.

4) I’m comics editor of Heeb and Royal Flush magazines, and also a frequent moderator of panels at various cons. In my journalism work, I act more as an appreciator then as a critic; I only write for non-comics publications and I don’t do any negative reviews. My criteria for what’s covered is that the work should be something appealing to both the aficionado and the newbie. For example for Heeb I’ve done profiles on Gary Panter, Paul Pope, Mike Allred, Jeff Smith, etc., and every year I get to be the first in comics to pop out a best-of list, because the Jewish New Year comes first! I recently chose my Top 10 Comics of 5770. For Royal Flush I did a fun piece on the friendship between Jack Kirby and Frank Zappa, by way of an interview with Ahmet Zappa, and got Rick Veitch to draw “Zappa as a Kirby New God.” I co-curated the MoCCA Fest 2010 with Brian Heater, and got to moderate a dream panel, “The Art of the Superhero,” with Frank Miller, Kyle Baker, Jaime Hernandez, Paul Pope and Dean Haspiel, and also throw a helluva after party with DJ Pulphope, DJ Crosshatch (Brian Heater of The Daily Cross Hatch), and DJ Man-Size (Dean Haspiel)

Arrant: What do you do for comic creators — are you a manager, agent or the comics equivalent to a superhero’s tech guy? And what are some projects you are working on now.

Newelt shows up in a Harvey Pekar Comic by Joseph Remnant

Newelt: It’s a mixture, I do different things for different clients/cohorts. For the most part, I provide a combination of public relations and social-media services, meaning I help score articles ranging from The New York Times features like this one for Molly Crabapple, to interviews in cool blogs like Robot 6 [laughs]; I advise on/help run Twitter/Facebook accounts, and act as a media outlet myself by popping goodies from clients into my own robust feeds. But I can’t be paid to promote something I don’t adore — that would poison my feeds and defeat the porpoise of love.
I enthuse about so many things I adore that its tough to tell whom my clients are. Only so many hours in a day, so clients get priority, but I’m perpetually pimpin’ anything I think rocks heiny. I do act as occasional agent, scoring gigs for creators for a commission. I also throw a mean launch soiree. I usually do it as a team-up, for example we did a party to launch Next-Door Neighbor true-life webcomix anthology, edited by Dean Haspiel, combined with Doug Rushkoff’s Life Inc., which brought together both complementary fan bases that wouldn’t necessarily know about the other’s work without a nudge.

I also help produce and perform live comix readings, like the one ACT-I-VATE did this past weekend in Dumbo. The comics were projected, dialogue read aloud, and each strip had its own soundtrack. I wound up doing four voices, including my specialty, Harvey Pekar’s, and ’twas quite a delight. Photos here. I’ll be performing an encore of Pekar pieces I read at the RIO Comic Con in November.

Some recent fun projects: I’m working on promoting Al Jaffee’s Mad Life, a biography written by Mary-Lou Weisman with 65-plus new illos by Al. It’s a fucking page-turner and a tearjerker. He had an abysmal childhood, with a nutty mom who not only locked him and his brothers in an apartment with nothing but a piss bucket to run around giving all her money to beggars, but after Al’s dad got the family out of Lithuania to the U.S., she kidnapped them and took them back! Just in time for Hitler! So no wonder he’s the ultimate sillyhead, he escaped all that misery by entertaining himself and others. I set up a Facebook page for Al Jaffee, which I take pride in doing just right, with the right mix of content in the right places to provide an instant hearty, enticing and real introduction to the “product.”

Bill Ayers! What a treat to work with someone Sarah Palin hates! If Sarah hates them, I wanna hug ‘em. I helped promote To Teach: The Journey, In Comics, his kick-ass teaching memoir/manifesto. A lazier “celebrity” would have handed his original book to an artist and said, “Adapt this.” But no, Ryan Alexander-Tanner lived with Bill for six months, and they recreated his memoir from the ground-up. ‘Twas a privilege to work with such a passionate creative duo. Bill got the hang of Facebook, but I still owe him a tweetorial.

I’m having a blast helping photographer Seth Kushner curate his remarkable ACT-I-VATE series CulturePOP: Photocomix Profiles of Real Life Characters. For Season 1, I set him up with jazz sousaphonist Clark Gayton, VJ Jonny Wilson from Eclectic Method, sculptor/graffiti artist Mare139, and Doug Rushkoff. Wait til you see who we lined up for Season 2, which starts October 4th.

You are what you eat and you are what you work on. I’m blessed to be working with terrific creators and creations. Right now I’m promoting two gawjuss graphic novels, Tribes: The Dog Years, a manga-meets-Moebius widescreen sci-fi epic written by Mike Geszel, who along with Larry Smith of SMITH, was my editor-in-chief on 34th Street, the weekly arts mag at UPENN, and illustrated by Inaki Miranda who WILL be a star within one year, and Red Light Properties by Dan Goldman, a now-complete online graphic novel about a real estate firm that performs exorcisms on haunted properties in Miami. Red Light Properties is the comic I wanted to read from Dan ever since I got a taste of his psychedelic prowess with Kelly! I would eat each new Red Light Properties chapter like candy and poop out peppy promotional posts! As a fun way to promote Red Light Properties, interviewed not Dan, but Jude Tobin, the lead character, for ComicsAlliance. It was a unique opportunity to jump into a fictional world a la Purple Rose of Cairo.

I’m also working again with Doug Rushkoff, promoting his new book Program of be Programmed: 10 Commands for a Digital Age; its fun to be a fan, friend and collaborator with your clients! People tell me to stop working, but it’s also my play! Now sometimes I should stop playing AND working and just relax, that’s probably a good idea …

From left: Paul Pope, Dean Haspiel, Frank Miller, Jeff Newelt, Kyle Baker and Jaime Hernandez (photo by Seth Kushner)

Arrant: What’s your day job, and how does that relate to your work in comics?

Newelt: I left day-job land over two years ago to go solo. For my last fulltime PR gig, I had Samsung as a client for four years. This relates to my work in comics in that I have a corporate PR background, and certain connections I made during that period, I still pitch stories to, but with my shirt tucked out. It was like my secret identity, “Tucked-In Boy,” I fucking hate tucking! And they made me tuck. No one outside of that world would recognize me tucked; I’d see someone on the street, they’d have no idea who I am, then I would untuck and they’d go “JEFF!!!” Now afternoon job is more like it, my eight hours of sleep are 4 a.m. to 12 p.m,. it’s how I’ve always worked and played best, because my play is my work, and vice versa … I often organize outings to jazz and reggae gigs that I also promote, and who joins me but clients, media, artists, etc., so much of my work gets done at night, that I don’t apologize for my unique schedule.

My non-comics clients are cool, too. I’ve become a go-to guy for corporate clients to outsource blog-outreach/social-media work when the project is sweet enough not to pollute my feeds. Recent clients were Volvo, ESPN, the Korean government and the British government; they all needed someone to organically infiltrate on their behalf who would be believed because, not only don’t I bullshit, I can’t — I’d bore myself to death if I ever had to B.S. for a living, or even a minute.

This all relates to comics because I am able to combine my comics peeps with all these other great peeps to make cross medium magic happen. And I’m always noodging journalists who cover cool stuff of all kinds to cover comics, making sure comics are on their radar.

Arrant: Part of what you do is related to the fact you live and work in NYC, where the biggest collection of comic creators live. Could you do what you were doing if you were living in … Muncie, Indiana, or somewhere?

Newelt: No, I couldn’t and I wouldn’t. I can do a lot on the Internet, but the online feeds the offline and vice versa. Only working one side of that equation won’t work, I need to be out and about and within, and, as I said before, I conduct a lot of my “networking” at jazz and reggae shows, etc., I know where the crazy-good shit’s at each night, and I bring together all sorts of folks at those gigs.

Newelt's logo courtesy of Dan Goldman

Arrant: What would you do if you were promoted from minister of hype at AiV to do it for the entire comics medium?

Newelt: Basically I’d do what I’m already doing. I’m certainly not the only hypester of the medium — there are many — but I do a good job promoting the medium as a whole already.

Arrant: Since you know comics and know New York City: Take me on a walking comics tour of NYC. Where would you go?

Newelt: In Manhattan I’d take you to the offices of DC and Marvel; to Forbidden Planet, Midtown Comics and St. Marks Comics, to the apartment of Heidi MacDonald and Ben McCool to meet their Twitter-famous puking cat, to Landsdowne Road — a pub frequented by many comics peeps, especially after NYCC; in Brooklyn to Deep Six studios to say hi to Dean Haspiel, Simon Fraser, Nathan Schreiber and that lot, to Desert Island and Bergen Street Comics, and out to Rockwood Music Hall midnight on a Tuesday to hear the Dred Scott Trio or to NuBlu to check out Clark Gayton with me, Paul Pope and posse.

Photographed by Seth Kushner

This has been a year of ups and downs for Dean Haspiel.

He’s riding high after last week’s win at the Creative Arts Emmy Awards. He, along with the crew of the HBO series Bored To Death, won for outstanding main title design, and Haspiel returned to his native New York City to continue the promotional blitz for his upcoming graphic novel Cuba: My Revolution with artist and family friend Inverna Lockpez. He just had a short feature published in Marvel’s Deadpool #1000 and has more work on the way for the House of Ideas. But this was also the year his friend and longtime collaborator Harvey Pekar passed away.

Throughout it all, Haspiel has become one of the strongest independent voices of comics (or “comix,” as he would say). His years of networking and socializing in the New York City comics scene came to fruition in 2006 with the inception of the ACT-I-VATE collective, resulting in several series making the jump from web to print in IDW Publishing’s ACT-I-VATE Primer. He continues to be a driving force in webcomics, with the third installment of his semi-autobiographical series Street Code just out from Zuda‘s newly transplanted home on Apple’s mobile-phone platform.

Today, he has a girlfriend, a studio full of friends dubbed DEEP6, a Sept. 15 signing at Midtown Comics, and new work appearing later this month in the second season of Bored To Death. On a recent morning, I talked to Dean by phone before he rode his bike to his nearby studio.

Chris Arrant: Let’s start with an easy one, Dean – What are you working on today?

Dean Haspiel: Today I’m going to the studio to work on the final page of Street Code. It’s a semi-auto-bio comic about the transition of moving between Manhattan and Brooklyn. While it takes place during a certain era in my life – around when I turned 30 to recent events – the latitude of semi-auto-bio allows me to crunch time and tell certain kinds of stories. The themes of Street Code are about my avatar, Jack, and how he interacts with his new neighbors, and how they interact wit him. I use stories that have happened to me. Street Code recently transitioned from being a Zuda webcomic to being on the ComiXology and the DC Digital app.

The particular story I’m working on now is called “Beef with Tomato,” which is my love letter to New York City and a slight homage to Charles Bukowski’s Ham On Rye. This will end up being the sixth “issue” of Street Code on the digital app but, fingers crossed, if the transition to digital is popular for Street Code then it’s possible it could yield more stories in the future.

Then what I’m working on next is a backup feature to Marvel’s upcoming Spider-Girl #1 – written by Paul Tobin, who’s writing the regular series as well. And it features a young version of Spider-Girl before she became Spider-Girl; her father was a reporter, and she goes with him on a visit to the Baxter Building to interview Sue Storm. It gives me a chance to draw the lumpy version of the Thing. It’s a wink at the old Stan Lee/Jack Kirby stories. It’s probably why I got hired, because Marvel is paying attention to how much I love Kirby and old Marvel comics.

It’s not too retro … It’s not me getting my Mad Men on and drawing Sue Storm as January Jones, but it will be a lot of fun.

Arrant: Are you doing just the first issue, or is this an ongoing backup?

Haspiel: This is just for the first issue; who knows if I’ll get another gig. It’s possible that, by the end of the year, I’ll have scored another long-form gig.

And coming in December we’ll finally see the release of the Woodgod story I did for Marvel in Strange Tales #3. My Woodgod story is my Marvel Two-in-One homage; it features the Celestials and the Thing.

I finished my art for the original graphic novel Cuba: My Revolution last December, and I reunited with Jonathan Ames to do some things for the second season of Bored To Death, which starts Sept. 26. It was a lot of work. Jonathan and I cobbled together some of the artwork for Season 2 and designed a Super-Ray minicomic to promote the show at the current comic cons. At San Diego, they hired people to dress up as Zack’s Super-Ray character to pass out the minicomic. I was also passing them out at my table at last weekend’s con in Baltimore, and I’ll also have them at SPX and the New York Comic-Con.

Arrant: That’s a lot, but like you said you’re wrapping up – or have already wrapped up – most of these. What’s your big project in the future you’d like to work on?

Haspiel: I’m always trying to pitch my next big book. I’m used to working on one major project throughout the year, and then fitting in smaller projects, like things on ACT-I-VATE or the Deadpool story I just did for Marvel. I love those challenges, but I also like the security of having a 120- to 140-page graphic novel to work on throughout the year while taking these small jobs. But I don’t have that large job right now. I’ve been pitching some long-form stories, and collaborating with different writers I like to work with. The trajectory I’m aiming for is to be able to write more. I hope that’ll happen at some point.

Super Ray minicomic for HBO series 'Bored To Death'

Arrant: After all the work you’ve done at Vertigo with other writers while also writing your own stories in a smaller clip, the next step for you is your own graphic novel there writing and drawing.

Haspiel: Yeah, I have my ideas. I made my hay doing memoirs and semi-auto-bio comix, but my passion is doing superheroes, psychedelic romance and science-fiction noir.

Arrant: I know we’re jumping around here, but how was your first day back at work after winning an Emmy for the title design on Bored To Death?

Haspiel: I got in at 1 a.m. off the flight back from California, placed my Emmy on my dresser, caught about six hours sleep then had to finish a gig inking a cover of an upcoming series at Marvel. I went right back to work.

Arrant: So no rest, huh?

Haspiel: Not much, but this is the kind of work I’ve been itching to do. Right now I’m doing what I can do the best I can so editors will shine a light on me and see where I stand at Marvel. This is what I think: There are segments of the superhero books that are “blockbuster” comics; the regular titles are ones where I wouldn’t necessarily fit with in terms of the ideology or the look or feel of it. But there are also titles, like the ones Nathan Cosby edits, and the ones Paul Tobin writes, that are more cartoony and allow for a Silver Age feel. As long as they keep producing those comics, I’ll have a potential place there professionally.

But at the same time, you don’t need to be working at Marvel or DC to make a living in comics. For me, it’s a choice and a desire to work on franchise comics because that’s what I grew up reading.

Arrant: I understand what you’re saying about those “blockbuster” comics, the top-tier books. I’d hate to see you try to alter your style to fit into that mold.

Haspiel: Don’t take me wrong, I don’t think there’s a house style, per se, but there’s a perception amongst editors of what the audience wants. There seems to be a polarization between the comics I grew up with, the comics I draw and like, and then the comics today that are the neo-realistic Hollywood blockbusters of comics.

I will tell you this, though – one guy I really admire because he dances between cartoony and stylized is Stuart Immonen.

Arrant: Yeah, I’m interviewing him later this week for Robot 6.

Haspiel: He’s great. I wish I had half his talent. That guy really creates a great balance; I see him as an artist at the crossroads, acknowledging the tradition of Marvel Comics in the older style, while also standing shoulder-to-shoulder with what’s currently being published in the franchise.

Arrant: Did you see the recent book he and Kathryn [Immonen] did at Top Shelf, Moving Pictures?

Haspiel: It’s beautiful. He’s a master storyteller and draftsman. He gets it.

Arrant: Jumping back to Bored to Death before we descend into more comics, what exactly did you do for the new season? Did you do new title credits?

Haspiel: The title credits are the same. This time I did more artwork for the Ray Hueston character played by Zack Galifianakis. In Season 2 we get to see more of his life, his studio and art table – and that’s my artwork he’s doing. And a particular comic book he draws in the show, we see some of that. The season is going to be eight episodes, and in the season finale it culminates in a comic convention in which I make a cameo, as well as other Brooklynite cartoonists.

Arrant: Has that been filmed yet?

Haspiel: Yeah, it’s already been shot, but I don’t know what’s going to make it out of the editing room and into the final scene. It was shot at the Brooklyn Lyceum where King Con is held.

Cuba: My Revolution (DC/Vertigo)

Arrant: From King Con to Cuba, your next big release is Cuba: My Revolution from Vertigo. I just received a press copy, and although I haven’t read it yet, I keep coming back to your artwork and José’s [Villarrubia] colors. How do you normally handle things with a colorist?

Haspiel: Well, the major works I’ve done have been in black & white  — The Quitter and The Alcoholic. For those toned works, I trusted Lee Loughridge to know what to do. I see pages as they come in and give notes on a few alterations, but basically it’s just a matter of adding a couple greytones to help shape some of the pages. With José and Cuba: My Revolution, he’s a master artist and painter himself. I handpicked him because I love what he does. He comes from outside of comics, and teaches art in Baltimore. So with him on board, so much more has been added to this project. Plus I wanted someone Spanish to help me realize this view of Cuba. Although he’s from Madrid, Spain, and not Cuba proper, he adds that Spanish flavor to the book.

I knew going in I wanted a limited color palette because I love the simple two-color treatment like I did on Billy Dogma, which I felt was needed for this. I don’t like to use color as color but as a tone. I knew that if I could get José on-board to color it as adding tones, and get him to bring his A-game, explore and experiment with the limited gamut, then this would look great. Our aim was to evoke an era from the late 50s and early 60s; I wanted this to look like a cross between a Preston Sturges film and I Love Lucy, even though the content of the book is very severe and dramatic.  Most of the book is black and white with gray tones, but the introduction of the passionate color of red gives you a multitude of variations: pink, salmon, blood, communism, romance and revolution. I knew that when we settled on this color scheme I was excited what José was going to do with it.

Arrant: So how would the coloring process work?

Haspiel: José would do a first pass on a page, then me, the writer, Inverna Lockpez, and editor, Joan Hilty, would make notes and send it back to José to finally arrive at what is published. With a limited palette, you may not believe it but it’s harder to decide what to assign colors to. Orchestrating the color palette, choosing the paper stock, as well as the design of the book, all came together into something I’m very proud of. I’ve described the book as something you might find if you dug a shovel into the sand of Cuba; when you pull out that dirt, you’ll find Cuba: My Revolution. That dirt gives you a sense of time and place you couldn’t otherwise document.

Arrant: Did you go, or at least think about, trying to make it in to Cuba for research on the book?

Haspiel: I would have loved to go to Cuba during the making of the book, but I never figured out a way to do it. I would like for it to be translated into Spanish; that was one of my first notes towards the publisher. I’m excited to see what the reaction will be to Cubans, but also a little scared. If you’ve ever met a Cuban who has lived in Castro’s Cuba, the ideology there polarizes people. It’s a very black-and-white subject for Cubans from Cuba, and while some people believe in Castro’s ideology and fight for it, others are vehemently against it. I know you haven’t read the book yet, but the majority of it is in support of Castro’s Cuba from the eyes of the protagonist because she buys into the ideas at an early age, joins the militia and becomes a surgeon. But slowly, with evidence from family and friends beginning to leave, she herself is betrayed by the regime and is tortured by sharing the ideology. With most of her friends and family gone, she’s the last one to break and leave. It’s about the story of Sonya, this woman who, when she finally emerges as an artist, can’t express herself freely in her own home and country and has to leave and come to America to tell her story. It took Inverna a long while to tell her story – a good fifty years.

Arrant: And this project came about from you knowing Inverna and pitching it to Vertigo. I’ve always known you as one of those people who knows everyone. You gave a film producer the idea to do a movie based on Harvey Pekar’s work, you created the personal webcomics collective ACT-I-VATE.com, wrangled your Gowanus, Brooklyn, studio DEEP6, and you’ve been close with Jonathan Ames in comics and now with the HBO show. I know working on comics can be a solitary experience sometimes, but how does the socializing part of things affect you?

Haspiel: For Harvey’s American Splendor film, it all started when I was an assistant to Ted Hope. While I was working at his house, I uncovered a script for American Splendor written years and years ago, as well as – believe this – a script for “Ed the Happy Clown” from Chester Brown’s Yummy Fur. I told Ted, “Wow man, I didn’t realize you had these things!” I had just finished a comic with Harvey and I told Ted how cool an American Splendor film would be. Ted liked the idea, so I talked to Harvey about it. Harvey was initially hesitant about it because he’d heard this kind of story before and how it backfired, but Harvey said he’d talk to Ted. So Ted and Harvey talked, and a year and a half later this amazing movie came out. It was an award-winning, incredibly innovative film.

I also just saw a rough cut of James Gunn’s upcoming film Super, produced by Ted Hope, starring Rainn Wilson, Kevin Bacon and Liv Tyler; that’s another low-budget film coming out to watch for. The only way I can describe it is that it’s like a cross between Taxi Driver and Dan Clowes.

For ACT-I-VATE, it all started out by just talking to people. It seemed to scratch a certain itch that I couldn’t find elsewhere. That kind of thing sometimes gets me in trouble, in terms of not making my own work because I’m matching people up and helping getting balls rolling. Plus there’s the fact that since we live in a world of artists, writers and creators, we spend 50 percent of the day branding ourselves with social networking and such. Today, you can’t rely on a publisher to market you; it’s actually gotten harder to market because of the Internet. I spend at least 50 percent of my day hyping, and cobbling together things for other people. Maybe these concentrated efforts will yield me a position as an editor or organizer of a publishing imprint. I only have so many stories in me that I want to show and tell in comics, and my attention gets distracted by working with other truly talented people who create wonderful content, perpetuating the comics form, and doing other kinds of storytelling.

Arrant: Do you think the socializing and networking helps you when you sit down to do comics?

Haspiel: Absolutely. Of course. I know people who can’t or won’t do it, and that’s fine. Maybe it’s a focus issue or they can’t deal with distraction; I respect that. But I can’t move a pencil eight hours in a row; I’m getting older. Drawing is my least-favorite part of making comics. I enjoy doing layouts, conjuring ideas and working on dialogue. It’s the actual execution and craft of comics that’s the doldrums for me. To make it fun, I work around like-minded people like the crew at DEEP6. Sure there’ll be lulls and the ebbs and flows, fights and such –- it has its pros and cons like any office environment. Then you remind yourself you’re sitting among a bunch of folks doing what you love, and although we sure can complain like the best of them, it’s a fantastic thing to be able to spend each day writing and drawing comics. That’s what I like to do, and that’s what we do. I’ve become unemployable otherwise.

But, in this day and age, I wouldn’t know how to get a job outside of the comics and film industries. Sure, I sit at my art table eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich a lot more than I’d like to. I work until midnight most nights, six days a week, and there’s an irony to that. Sometimes I look out the window and wish I was at the beach, or could stop and watch a movie and eat dinner with my girlfriend. I guess I let my ego get in the way, because I think I’m creating a testament to my life here. I draw other people’s stories, too, because I believe I’m a good collaborator and I like working with people, but I would also like to experience life more, outside of my work, so, when I do write and draw, I can report my life and allow for hindsight to be expressed like how I do with my work on Street Code and Billy Dogma, both very emotional auto-bio comix.

Arrant: What’s it like having these avatars of you floating around: Billy in Billy Dogma, Jack in Street Code and Ray in Bored to Death?

Haspiel: The character in Bored to Death is only very loosely based on me; I don’t consider it to be me at all. There are some background story elements we share to help fill out the character – but Zack and Jonathan have fully realized the Ray Hueston character on their own.

But on the subject of avatars, I think that if you buy into the concept of “write what you know,” then I can’t help but include variations of myself. I think my personal works are like variations on those Russian dolls where they are different-sized versions of the exact same thing.

Arrant: Does it ever sneak into your non-auto-bio comix?

Haspiel: I just wrote and drew a story for Deadpool #1000, and I put a version of myself, a conflict I know very well, in that job. In the Woodgod tale for Strange Tales v2 #3, that’s all me. It’s rare that I get to write franchise characters but, ultimately, I write what I know. In Cuba: My Revolution, I cast myself as one of Sonya’s torturers. The writer, Inverna, was having emotional trouble embracing her story as visualized, as it dug up buried memories. So, in a weird and bizarre solution to help counteract her troubles, I elected to cast myself as one of the torturers to be there for her. In a twisted way I was protecting her. Comforting her.

Arrant: Do you find yourself drawn to franchise characters like the Thing and Woodgod because you see yourself in there somewhere?

Haspiel: Definitely. I love the Thing. He’s a tragic monster. Not that I’m walking around like Ben Grimm, but there’s also a bit of romance in his depiction that I respond to. Even though he’s sold as “the ever-loving blue-eyed Thing,” I understand his main story to be that of a tragic, creature romance comic. We all hurt, feel pain, and that’s one of the universal things we can latch onto – our vulnerability. One of the reasons Jonathan Ames has been so successful is that he understands you have to be vulnerable to tell a powerful story; it’s about showing that you’re vulnerable, or you become vulnerable. There’s nothing you can do when you’re standing before a knight in shining armor; the heroes I like to tackle are the flawed ones, the one who have problems, who make mistakes and learn. We all make mistakes, and we’re always learning.

Arrant: Do you mind if we talk about Harvey and his passing?

Haspiel: Sure, it’s okay.

Arrant: Now that some time has passed since Harvey Pekar’s death, are you at peace with it? Do you ever forget he’s gone and want to give him a call, or expect a phone call from him?

Haspiel: Yeah, I can’t believe he’s dead – bottom line.

I don’t even know how to answer. I hope he’s at peace. Not that he lived an especially hard life, but he lived a small life, a common life, and was somehow able to exploit that artistically, which was great; not many people can do that. Yet, if you want to learn about Harvey Pekar, it’s all out there in his comics. You know, I think maybe his death was poetic. Sometimes people will die and it seems like they were taken away far too soon. Yeah, seventy is a young age to die at, but I think it’s okay. And it’s a shame he didn’t get to tell his last story – you don’t get to do that with autobiography. That’s his wife’s job, or maybe his many collaborators.

Harvey Pekar was a consistent, like a smoke signal, observing what was around him and reporting on it. Because of the storytelling medium he worked in, the oracle of Harvey Pekar will always be around for us to read and ponder.

And it’s encouraging to me that his stories encourage you to tell your own story. It was Harvey Pekar’s work that I read as a teenager that showed me that comics didn’t have to be just superheroes or genre-oriented work. He convinced me of that.

Arrant: Where do you see yourself in five years, Dean?

Haspiel: Well, there’s the cynical part of me that sees it one way and then there’s where I hope I’ll be. Where I hope to see myself in five years is writing and drawing my own stories, my own comic books, and also working in television and movies. I’d like to create a show, and write and possibly direct it. That’s what I’d like to do. In my early years, I went to SUNY Purchase to study filmmaking. I love music, and sound. I don’t get to do that in comics, and I’m not satisfied by animation except for PIXAR. I think what they do is brilliant, but I’m not interested in working in that medium. For me, its either static images like comics or working with live actors in film.

Arrant: Have you taken any steps towards these film ambitions?

Jonathan Ames, Stephanie Davis, Vanja Cernjul, Dean Haspiel, Jennifer Ferguson

Haspiel: I’m working up a couple of screenplays I wrote years ago, dusting them off and pitching them as graphic novels. But I’d love for them to go their original intended direction and become films. I’ve always thought in terms of movies; a ninety-minute/two-hour story, but because I’ve been working with Jonathan Ames on Bored to Death I’m rethinking that. There are some great shows out there – Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Lost, Battlestar Galactica, Deadwood, 30 Rock. I’m really looking forward to The Walking Dead TV series. I think television has become a great way to tell a story. With movies you tell one story and it’s finished, but with television it’s episodic and you’re given the latitude to advance characters and situations and story arcs. You’d think that I’d have a good grasp with episodic storytelling since I work in comics, but with television the minute you start dealing with real money it’s a whole new ballgame. The great thing about comics is that you can truly experiment with new ideas on a page, and because there’s no budget on what you can draw on a page, it can do pretty much anything. It doesn’t cost that much to produce and print a comic – but that’s kind of a crime, because in comics there are many creators out there coming up with fantastic ideas and trying out new things, to only get poached by other more expensive mediums that pay better. And you know, it’s tough to make a buck in comics even when you’re at your most successful.

Look at me, I won an Emmy and I have a book coming out that people are excited about that could entice the literary crowd and be made into a movie. It might also tickle the fancy of superhero readers – you never know – because fans are hungry for a wide range of stories. But with all that, I don’t have health insurance; I eat cheap; I live small. It’s not to say I’m a great storyteller that deserves more because there are a lot of great storytellers out there in my same situation. Jack Kirby alone came up with half the ideas being done today in our culture. Comics have become some kind of IP farm for savvier businessmen to reap.

Gang of Fools

Today  James Smith‘s Gang of Fools makes its ACT-I-VATE debut. To mark the debut, he and I did a brief email interview. I apologize to Smith for perceiving the tale as being set in the future, but rather than edit my mistaken perceptions out, I leave them intact to avoid further confusion. Here’s the official description of the story: “Aditi’s got one week to come up with ten grand for rent. Diane needs a cool condo in a hot neighborhood to boost her Q rating. Paul simply cannot keep it in his pants. Ishmael’s keeping a secret from his own dancehall revolutionaries. Laila’s autobiographical porno has attracted the Russian mob, and Mr Chips hates you. Yes, yes he does.” As part of the run-up to today’s debut, Smith collaborated with animator Daniel J. Kramer on this animated clip. And I’m really grateful that Smith was willing to discuss important trends like pants.

Tim O’Shea: In reading this brief reaction to your work by comicsgirl in which she characterizes it as ” futurist urban paranoia”. Would that be an apt description or would you go about describing it differently?

James Smith: Probably would take issue with the “paranoia” bit, as I don’t think the comic betrays any sort of fear or discomfort at all the admittedly horrible social conditions it portrays. And if I’m feeling particularly bloody-minded, maybe I’d whine about the “futurist” part too. All the fancy, sci-fi stuff in Gang of Fools is only a slight embellishment on what our most precious natural resources– drug-addled MIT engineers– are working on as I type this. “Urban” works, though.

At MoCCA the tagline I used was “sci-fi action hipsters and the people who hate them.” I consider it slice-of-life with a sprinkling of autobiographical porn and floating robot cops. You know, like how we live today.

O’Shea: The tale is set in the future, and one character in one sentence tosses around terms like “ni**a” and “f*g”. In your version of the future, are these words as derisive/offensive when used as they are in the present day.

Smith: I actually had to go back and re-read the thing to figure out what “f*g” meant, which probably makes my point better than anything else I could say.

But, for the people in the cheap seats, Gang of Fools isn’t really about the future. It’s about today, and the characters speak pretty much the way people speak today. It isn’t that I think those words will one day lose their offensiveness; it’s that everyday I overhear the conversations of people for whom such language is already inconsequential. Put it this way: right now, there’s someone posting on 4chan who will one day be President. I don’t imagine we’ll be any more civil next week or next year.

(Tangent: was Neal Stephenson the last person to explore the return of highly-ritualized civility in an SF setting? Did I miss a week where someone did something interesting with steampunk?)

O’Shea: How long have you been producing Gang of Fools and how did it find its new home at ACT-I-VATE?

Smith: I am crap with dates. And names. And money. But I think I’ve been drawing GoF for two years now? And have been thinking about it and writing scripts (none of which I’ve used) for a year or two before that. I do know that when I started George Bush was President and I was in a terrible mood. If enough people read and then buy Gang of Fools, I will be able to repay my gambling debts to Dean Haspiel. And therein you have your second answer.

It is, I should mention, extremely flattering that the folks at Act-i-vate saw GoF and were willing to associate themselves with it. It’s like getting asked out by the high school quarterback all over again (except this time I will not puke on the Ferris wheel.)

O’Shea: Do you think the ongoing migration to digital platform (and the ever-increasing popularity of iPads) will be of benefit to webcreators like yourself? How do you hope for your work to best capitalize upon this current trend?

Smith: The Internet is a fad. And this “pants” thing will never last.

New avenues of reaching readers is ostensibly a good thing. Increasingly sophisticated means of leeching cash out of their pockets? Even better. The thing I fear, however, is fragmentation. There’s been a lot of talk lately– books, interviews, drunk hobos with signs, etc.– about our inability to keep up with it all. I’m not going to go off on some neo-Luddite rant here, but putting stuff on the Internet increasingly feels like pissing off a windy cliff. I’m hoping that wide-spread adoption of web-enabled devices means a greater ability to target a smaller but more invested audience.

At the same time, we all like to feel as if we really did discover this new comic or that new band. The more able we are to pinpoint an audience, the more that audience balks at being shilled at. I can imagine how iPad apps might circumvent this problem, but until you buy me one I won’t be able to test my theory.

O’Shea: In creating this cast of characters, was there any one in particular that proved more troublesome to you in terms of trying to find the right voice or look for the character?

Smith: It took me a while to figure out what the landlady looked like. It isn’t so much that finding a character’s voice is hard– it’s more that working to web serialization rather than to the printed page alters the amount and pace of information you can get across. So sometimes you have to tweak language in odd ways to make the storytelling work. But Aditi doesn’t talk like Diane, so you solve that “problem” in different ways for different people.

(Problem being in quotes because this is my idea of fun, for I are a nerd.)

O’Shea: Anything we need to discuss that I overlooked?

Smith: My Harvey nomination? Hah.

Actually, I just hope folks give Gang of Fools a little time to play out. I’m really excited to see how it reads in multi-page chunks, rather than page-by-page. Given that no one was initially even supposed to see this thing, it’s as close as I could get to what the inside of my head looks like. Unfiltered id can be weird, but also fun. So: have fun. And wear pants.

"The Puppet Makers" character designs, by Molly Crabapple

Back in mid-May, Molly Crabapple and John Leavitt launched their latest project, Puppet Makers, at Zuda Comics. When Crabapple gave me the head-up about the project a few weeks back, I immediately recalled our enjoyable last interview (August 24, 2009), and decided to go for another round of questions. Here’s the official synopsis on the project: “Versailles 1685, France has industrialized centuries before her neighbors but focuses on creating exquisitely ornate robotic shells for the aristocracy called, DOLLIES. Towering, lavishly expensive, and run on electricity provided by damming the Seine. Only the court elite wears Dollies, but their upkeep is beginning to bankrupt France. During the king’s birthday party, his Dolly explodes but is found to be empty. Rumors fly, blaming THE SMASHERS, a ring of Luddite terrorists who may lurk within the palace. The church’s cardinal sends a neophyte priest, JEAN JAQUES, to uncover Smashers at court. Amidst the contrary, conniving and self-indulgent upper class, Jean is thwarted at every turn. As he begins to uncover the truth behind the king’s disappearance, he finds that decadence and deceit may be a greater threat to the throne of France and his own life than her missing monarch.”

Tim O’Shea: What is the core appeal of steampunk fiction for you as a creator?

Molly Crabapple: I started drawing steampunk pictures in college. A teacher assigned me to design a skateboard deck, and, rebellious thing that I was, I thought it would be hilarious to imagine kateboarding as the sport of trussed Victorian ladies. I drew a board titled “Lady Etheldrina’s Wheeled Conveyance”, which shows a bouffant haired aristocrat on a skateboard, which is then being hauled by her maid.

I like working in the steampunk genre because I get to imagine the horrifying and hilarious ways technology would distort my favorite time periods.

O’Shea: Maybe I’m wrong, but it seems like the opening panel of your story must have been hell to draw. Was it?

Crabapple: Yes! Oh yes it was.

O’Shea: How many weeks is Puppet Makers running–and how frequently will it be updated?

Crabapple: Puppet Makers should run to 240 pages, and is updated every Wednesday

O’Shea: Given that Kevin Colden’s  I Rule the Night is a mature content story at Zuda, I was surprised to see you did not develop a mature content tale yourself. Care to explain your thinking on not going for a mature content tale?

Crabapple: I had a few reasons. First, me and John feel like we’ve been pigeonholed as the people who make the  comics about sexy sexy sex, and while we like boobs as much as anyone, doing only boobs causes people to overlook your other talents. Second, I hate content filters with a fiery passion. The world isn’t childproof- if you don’t want your kid to see the organ they came out of, keep them away from a computer. Not that that will work anyway.

O’Shea: When you’re steampunking history as you are with this story, is there still an amount of research to be done on the front end? Do you or collaborator John Leavitt do the bulk of the research (or is the load shared)?

Crabapple: When you steampunk up a time period, you actually need to know more about it than if you were doing straight historical drama, because you have to know their design grammer and societal norms well enough to imagine how anachronistic tech would change them.

Luckily, me and John are both history junkies. We’ve spent years intrigued by the machinations of Versailles- how Louis XIV’s perfect trap for the nobility eventually led to the French revolution. We gobble up biographies and design books. I’ve been memorizing Baroque: Style in the Age of Magnificence.

O’Shea:  How did John first come up with an idea of a soundtrack for Puppet Maker (which includes the range of “Celebrity Skin – Hole; The Infanta – The Decemberists; Rip Her To Shreads – Blondie; and Queen Bitch – David Bowie) Did you have any input on the soundtrack as well?

Crabapple: John’s a music genius. The soundtrack is all him. Though Celebrity Skin is one of my favorite songs

O’Shea: Do you approach your layout or pacing differently when creating for Zuda versus an ACT-I-VATE project, or do the slightly differing interfaces have no bearing on your approach?

Crabapple: I can be more fancy pants on Zuda because I’m getting paid. Act-i-vate was more of a fun side project. Also, Zuda is a horizontal page layout, which just makes more sense on a computer screen.

O’Shea: Have you already gotten an iPad, or are you holding off until the first round of bugs are sorted out? As a creator, how maddening is it to try to  stay on top of every new app that might be the new “best” way to present your webcomic?

Crabapple: I’m probably not going to get an iPad (Apple’s shitty attitude towards scantily clad pictures and indie developers is a major turnoff). However, Scarlett Takes Manhattan is available on the ipad and iphone via the Comixology app. As far as I’m concerned, they’re the best app out there for displaying comics on mobile devices.

O’Shea:  Given your obvious love of theater, any temptation to adapt one of your webcomics to a play?

Crabapple: We’re talking to one of my heroes about doing Scarlett as a play. God knows, he’s a busy gentleman, so perhaps it won’t happen. But there are murmurings

O’Shea: How goes the world of Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School?

Crabapple: Busy! We did Sketchy’s at MoMA several months ago, and we’re bringing it to the Brooklyn Museum in August. We’re at over 120 branches, are beta testing a new website, and throwing a splendiferous warehouse party called The Art Monkeys Ball on June 12.

“Lunch” by Kevin Huizenga

“NOW! Is the time…” by Dave K

beanbots by Kevin Kobasic

Cow-Boy Chronicles by Jay Hosler

Nawlz by Stu Campbell

3X4

• AdHouse will distribute 3X4, by Scott Morse, Lou Romano, Don Shank and Nate Wragg, the guys behind Sex and Science and The Ancient Book of Myth and War. AdHouse describes the book as “a unique collection of paintings built around the simple aesthetic of the numbers 3 and 4. Be it shape, line, texture, or color, this collection dares to boldly add a new perspective to modern art.”
• Per Ross Campbell, the sixth edition of his popular Wet Moon series of graphic novels from Oni Press is now slated to come out next year. “I’ll be finished with the book on the same schedule, but Oni has restructured their workflow a bit so their turnaround/build time is longer now, making WM6 most likely a February 2011 release,” he wrote.
• Heidi at the Beat points out that this preview of the London Book Fair by Publishers Weekly reveals that Ben McCool and Billy Tucci are working on a graphic novel adaptation of the film Alexander Nevsky by Russian director Sergei Eisenstein.
• Jim Rugg will debut a new Rambo minicomic at this weekend’s SPACE event.
• Meathaus has scans of a Charles Burns minicomic called Free Shit “with preview art from an upcoming project of his.”
• Rami Efal has self-published Never Forget, Never Forgive, which was originally serialized on the webcomics collective site ACT-I-VATE. “It is a tragedy taking place in 16th century Japan and is a cross between Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood, Sophocles’ Antigone, and Lone Wolf and Cub,” according to the author.

“Death Tales” by Jaime Hernandez

Tozo The Public Servant by David O’Connell

Sea Urchins by Jason Whitley and Scott Eckelaert

“Desperate” by Dave K.

Nightmare Town by Dashiell Hammett and Francesco Francavilla

“Reasons why superheroes aren’t online more often” by Zee M. Kane

The Intrepid Girlbot by Diana Nock

The All-New Cartoon Boy Adventure Hour by John Kerschbaum

Hat tip: Chris Mautner, Sean T. Collins, Sean Kleefeld, Flog and Lauren Davis

Fever Dream

Robot 6 is fortunate to have Brigid Alverson covering the webcomics scene as well as she does through her Unbound column. But every once and awhile I like to jump into the webcomics mix and provide some coverage as well. Kat Roberts is set to resume (after a hiatus of a few months) her ACT-I-VATE webcomic, Fever Dream. Here is a snippet of Roberts’ bio: “…originally from North Carolina, now lives happily in Brooklyn. Her comics have appeared in Roctober, SMITH Magazine and the comix anthology Negative Burn, where she’s a frequent contributor. Kat is also member of XOXO Studios in Gowanus, Brooklyn. Aside from lots of drawing and painting, Kat spends her time working as a handbag designer, teaching footwear at FIT and repetitively watching Beat Street with her dance crazed daughter, Ophelia.” Fever Dream is described as “Sometimes autobio & sometimes fictitious, these short stories depict everything from the mundane to the absurd.”

Tim O’Shea: In developing Fever Dream for ACT-I-VATE, is this a project where you will continue to find and strengthen your narrative voice, or did you have that voice from the get-go on this project?

Kat Roberts: I’m very much still in the process of working out my narrative voice. It’s only been in the past year and a half that my stories actually began to feel like my stories to me. The feedback I’ve received from people through my livejournal blog, and now through Act-I-Vate, has been invaluable in my learning how to tell a story, and tell it in a way that will resonate with someone.

O’Shea: What were the influencing factors in joining the ACT-I-VATE group?

Roberts: I’ve been a loyal reader of the collective since it’s initial launch 4 years ago. As many shifts as the contributors have gone through since that time, I’ve always viewed it as being a consistent source for high quality content. When Dean asked me if I’d like to join it really wasn’t anything that I had to think about. I was thrilled with the invitation to join such a talented group of creators.

O’Shea: The conversation in the “space” strip, did that come from your own childhood?

Roberts: Totally. The elderly lady shown in the comic is my excellent grandma, Della. She was always telling me things that were a little too big for me as a child. The story in this strip is my favorite example of that. When I visited her in North Carolina this past summer, I gave her the strip as a gift. She didn’t remember ever talking to me about any of that, but picked the conversation back up right where she left off the first time. My reaction was pretty much the same low but intense level of panic that I had felt 25 years ago.

O’Shea: In the third panel of this strip I was curious how you opted to execute the “missing” head?

Roberts: With this story being about a guy who has lost in his mind, it made sense to me to have his companion be more of a disembodied voice than a real flesh and blood presence, even though she is actually standing right there with him. She serves as another physically reality that he’s unable to connect with.

O’Shea: The snippet about Fever Dream described it as “Sometimes autobio & sometimes fictitious”–do you prefer to avoid acknowledging which strip is autiobio and which is fictious?

Roberts: I’d rather leave it unstated because I don’t really think it matters what is based on truth and what’s just made up. For the most part, everything I do contains some combination of the two anyway. The fun for me in doing semi auto bio comix is the power to share experiences that are uniquely mine through whatever filter I want. If I had to be totally beholden to telling exactly what happened exactly the way it happened, I’d probably feel a little too exposed to go certain places. Yeah, I realize I’m contradicting myself by having previously said that the “space” strip was a totally true story about my Grandma. She’s one of my favorite people so I’m willing to let her be the exception to my rule.

O’Shea: What have been the biggest creative and/or general benefits to being part of XOXO Studio?

Roberts: There’s really been no downside to being in XOXO Studios. Undoubtedly there are a lot of benefits from being surrounded by talents that I have such respect for, but just being able to work around people that I enjoy is the best part for me. I quit working my full time job in fashion a few years ago, in favor of becoming a full time freelance designer. It was a little terrifying at first to give up the reliability, but eventually the jobs did begin coming in. And, I LOVED working from home… at first. It took about 6 months till I noticed that all of my social interactions had begun to take on a kind of weird feeling. I was a little too eager to talk to people and it made me feel kinda creepy. I’ve since talked to a bunch of people with similar stories. I wouldn’t say I was psyched to hear how cabin fever had begun to wreak havoc on them, too, but it did make me feel better that it wasn’t just me. It appears that this is a pretty common fate for people without an office. Being at XOXO on a frequent basis did a lot to remedy that, though. It’s made all the better by the good fortune of my studio mates all being people that I thoroughly enjoy walking in the room to see. None of us really knew one another that well before sharing the room, so it has turned far better than probably any of us may have suspected.

O’Shea: Do you ever get story ideas or some level of inspiration when you’re designing handbags or teaching footwear at FIT?

Roberts: There’s definitely no shortage of characters to inspire me in the fashion industry, but when someone from that world shows up in my comix, it’s a very abstract interpretation of the actual person. So far none of my stories have centered around fashion. I keep the two worlds pretty separate. In fashion, after the initial flurry of creative freedom in the early design phase, my job becomes extremely technical. There’s still a lot of fun to be had in that technical phase, but I believe it makes returning to comix creating feel all the more freeing. They’re both great jobs and the huge differences in execution and thinking involved from one to another seem to keep me from ever feeling burned out on either. It’s been a really pleasing balance.

O’Shea: What’s on the horizon for you and Fever Dream?

Roberts: After having taken a little break, I’m glad to again be posting new “Fever Dream” installments at Act-I-Vate. It will be more of the shorter comics and strips I like to do, as well as a few longer narratives. In addition, I have a one-page comic appearing in the first issue of Cousin Corinne’s Reminder. I’m also very excited about my story in the upcoming Twisted Savage Dragon Funnies, a series of indy comic stories that will be appearing in the Image perennial “Savage Dragon” as back up stories. My story will show up a little later in the year, but the series will kick off with Michel Fiffe’s contribution in issue #160.

Check out this great Blackest Night homage done by Act-I-Vate contributor and Lego fan Ulises Farinas did. Then head over here to see him do a Marvel variation.  (via)

Apple’s rejection letter said “it contains content that ridicules public figures,” which they said violates their iPhone Developer Program License Agreement.

“This is the very reason that Apple as a company should be taken to task over its ludicrous and inconsistent app approval policies,” Richmond writes. “Clearly this app does not ‘ridicule public figures’ and is violating nothing, but Apple has decided the world must be protected from the insidious subversiveness this would force upon the public and the brutal, heinous ridicule that my cruel, cruel caricatures would subject these politicians to.”

Daryl Cagle, who is waiting to hear back from Apple on a political cartoon application, offers commentary. Richmond says the producers of the application are looking at other options, including other platforms.

Digital comics | Over at Boing Boing, Douglas Rushkoff talks a little bit more about the alternate reality game and online graphic novel he’s doing for Smoking Gun Interactive.

Webcomics | Shannon Wheeler of Too Much Coffee Man fame is considering joining the ACT-I-VATE crew with a new strip, and he needs a name for it. Speaking of ACT-I-VATE, be sure to check out Dean Haspiel’s new strip, A-Okay Cool.

Monster Mashups

Dean Haspiel points us to Monster Mashups, a collaboration between Tim Hall and Jen Ferguson “depicting the lesser known aspects of some of the most notorious creatures in the Western lexicon of horror.” Haspiel says:

Tim Hall (writer) and Jen Ferguson (artist) began collaborating late in the summer of 2009, when Tim became aware of Jen’s peculiar art and vice-versa: a working friendship was born. Tim Hall had begun “Uplift the Positivicals,” a new “comic without comics” (somewhat like Hazel Motes’ “Church of Christ Without Christ” in Flannery O’Connor’s novel “Wise Blood”) on Act-i-vate.com, a webcomix collective founded by mutual friend and artist Dean Haspiel. Tim asked Jen to illustrate some of his most demented passages, which turned out to be the perfect assignment for the artist, who years earlier had nearly been booted out of an illustration program at Pratt and sworn off anything that involved “assignments.” Tim’s first request of Jen is that she draw a plushie’s fantasy: a Paddington Bear bed with mechanical arms. After this intriguing first request, stranger ones followed.