Comic Book Resources

What Are You Reading?

Cat Burglar Black

Welcome to another edition of What Are You Reading. Our guest this week is scholar and critic par excellance Craig Fischer, whose musings on comics can be regularly read on Thought Balloonists, the blog he shares with  Charles Hatfield.

To see what Craig and everyone else is currently reading, click on the link. And don't forget to let us know what you're reading this week as well.

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Kramers Ergot 7: the minicomic?

Hall Hassi's "ke7 zine"

Standing nearly two feet tall, boasting over 50 contributors (including Matt Groening, Chris Ware, Jaime Hernandez, Daniel Clowes, and Adrian Tomine), and costing $125, Kramers Ergot 7 -- the latest installment of the avant-garde anthology series from editor Sammy Harkham and publisher Alvin Buenaventura -- was a famously, even infamously, grand production. And now...it's a minicomic?

Artist Hall Hassi has created what she calls a "ke7 zine" -- a 96-page, 8.5" x 5.5", black-and-white xeroxed version of the massive full-color hardcover. Pictures of the finished product can be found at the blog of artist Blaise Larmee, who notes that "sometimes the text is entirely legible. sometimes not at all." God only knows what kind of Kinko's kung fu had to be applied to even get the book to fit on a photocopier, so not being able to read some of it seems like a small price to pay.

Email Hassi if you're interested in purchasing one -- unless you're Sammy Harkham himself, who's still waiting to find out when he can expect a contributor copy.

(Via Kramers contributor James McShane.)

Robot Reviews: From Wonderland With Love and Why I Killed Peter

From Wonderland With Love

From Wonderland With Love: Danish Comics in the Third Millennium
Edited by Steffen P. Maarup
Fantagraphics Books, 176 pages, $29.99.

Why I Killed Peter
by Alfred and Olivier Ka
NBM, 112 pages, $18.95.

Sexual abuse, particularly pedophilia, is a tough subject to handle in any medium, let alone comics. It requires a delicate touch, a sympathy for the victim and the supporting cast (though not necessarily the perpetrator), an understanding of all the conflicting emotions involved and a willingness to go for broke -- to express the sheer horror of being violated both mentally and physically at such a young age in as honest and unflinching a manner as possible.

Two recent (or relatively recent at any rate) comics attempt to broach the unbroachable, but in wildly different ways. That both are successful has less to do with the grave severity of the subject matter than the particular talent involved and the unique perspectives they bring to their stories.

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Thin wallets, fat bookshelves: A publishing news round-up

Hate Annual

• Fantagraphics reveals that Peter Bagge has a new Hate Annual lined up to come out next year and shares the cover image. I thought Bagge had completely given up on these, so this is very good news indeed. More Buddy Bradley! Whoo!

• While we're talking about Fanta, it's worth noting that Joseph Lambert of Turtle, Keep It Steady fame will be joining the Mome family. In related news, Derek van Gleason posts some teaser images of his ongoing story in that anthology.

• Alan David Doane has published an e-book of his interviews with various cartoonists and comics industry folk, including Charles Burns, Chester Brown, Seth, Dave Sim, Howard Chaykin, Mark Millar and more. You can download a copy of the book here.

• Cinebook, which translates and publishes a number of French comics for the U.S., such as Lucky Luke, has acquired the rights to the XIII series and will start releasing volumes in May of next year, with a book coming out every two months.

• Jeffrey Brown is working on a sequel to his Cat Getting Out of a Bag book. This one will be tentatively called Cat Walks.The first book was also apparently popular enough to warrant a series of tie-in postcards and journals.

• Secret Asian Man cartoonist Tak Toyoshima is moving his strip from a daily to a weekly strip, which was its original incarnation.

• Via Spurgeon: Paul E. Fitzgerald has a book out exploring Will Eisner's time on PS Magazine.

Collect This Now! Wasteland

Wasteland #9

Ah DC comics, circa 1987. A wild, heady time. Pre-Vertigo. Pre-Sandman. Watchmen was just wrapping up. Grant Morrison would soon start working Animal Man. Kyle Baker and Andy Hefler were doing crazy things with The Shadow. And the company that Jack and Joe built was flinging whatever it could to the wall to see if it stuck. (anybody here remember Haywire? Or Sonic Disruptors?)

Wasteland was a one of the things they threw. It was ostensibly a horror comic, though it rarely showed much in the way of blood or gore, and generally avoided traditional horror tropes. There were no serial killers here, or zombies or vampires, and no twist endings of the sort patented by TV shows like The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits.

Which is not to say that it couldn't be incredibly disturbing.

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Robot reviews: Abstract Comics

Abstract Comics Anthology

Abstract Comics
Edited by Andrei Molotiu
Fantagraphics Books, 232 pages, $39.99.

Scott McCloud famously posited (among other things) in Understanding Comics that it was the sequential nature of the medium -- the fact that images were placed one next to the other -- that gave them their uniqueness and strength. As a reader, one couldn't help but create a connection or story of some sort between two images placed together, even if none existed. Comics, in other words, is an inherently narrative medium.

Or is it? That's the question -- one among several -- that Abstract Comics, a new anthology edited by Andrei Molotiu, asks. If you're the sort of person, like me, who gets off on these sort of labyrinthine, subjective, academic questions, then you're sure to like this book (in fact, chances are you've already bought a copy). But even if the very mention of the word "abstract" makes you poke your fingers in your ears and go "La la la la", I'd strongly recommend the book, as it contains a number of strikingly beautiful images and sequences.

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Thin wallets, fat bookshelves: A publishing news round-up

• That Freak Brothers Omnibus that came out last year must have done pretty well, because Knockabout Comics has announced Fat Freddy's Cat Omnibus. Clocking in at 368 pages, cost $29.99 and will be available in North American stores early next month. Need a little bit more background? Here's the press release:

Fat Freddy's Cat Omnibus

Fat Freddy's Cat began life as a footnote strip to the Freak Brothers and later appeared in many comics of his own. He is often to be found sleeping on the unfortunate Fat Freddy’s head. His constant battles with the never ending army of roaches out for world domination drive him to distraction, as does Fat Freddy's never-ending failure to feed him or empty his kitty litter box. As a result of this, his main hobbies seem to be shredding Fat Freddy’s water bed and any other items he can sink his claws into, and finding places to leave surprise poop packages for Freddy to discover. This cat has variously gone travelling to Mexico, saved the world from alien invasion, and worked as a government agent in Washington trying to save the world from the “hee hee hee" drug. He has 3 nephews of unknown origin. He tends to regard the Freak Brothers with a fair bit of contempt, but despite the odd separation he always seems to hook back up with his inept roomies.

• Tom Spurgeon pulls back the curtain on the table of contents for this year's Best American Comics collection, edited by Charles Burns. That's a pretty impressive line-up.

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IDW previews the ACT-I-VATE Primer

Loviathan by Mike Cavallaro

ACT-I-VATE and IDW have now officially announced the ACT-I-VATE Primer I mentioned back in May, and have even posted a 17-page preview that features a page from each of the stories.

The ACT-I-VATE Primer is an anthology of stories by creators from the webcomics site, including Joe Infurnari, Roger Langridge, Mike Dawson, Nick Bertozzi, Tim Hamilton, Dean Haspiel, Simon Fraser, Molly Crabapple and John Leavitt, Mike Cavallaro, Pedro Camargo, Jim Dougan and Hyeondo Park, Ulises Farinas, Michel Fiffe, Maurice Fontenot, Jennifer Hayden and Leland Purvis.. The collection is due in October and will include a foreword by Warren Ellis.

SDCC '09 | Jennifer Love Hewitt opens The Music Box for IDW

The Music Box

IDW Publishing announced today in San Diego that actress Jennifer Love Hewitt has created a new comic series called Jennifer Love Hewitt’s The Music Box, a ten-part anthology series about "a mysterious music box that causes strange occurrences for the people who possess it."

“The chance to create my very own comic, and a horror/thriller at that, is like a very fun nightmare come true," said the star of the CBS series The Ghost Whisperer. "I've always been fascinated by the notion that an inanimate object can hold as much malevolent energy as a human being can. And when they two meet, or are at cross purposes, very bad things can happen. I'm so proud of The Music Box and can't wait for people to read it... with the lights on, of course!”

Hewitt isn't actually writing the book, as former X-Men writer Scott Lobdell will team with various artists on the stories, including Michel Gaydos, Casey Maloney, Adam Archer and the team of George Tuska and Joe Rubenstein.

"The Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, Tales of the Crypt, Eerie, Creepy, Alfred Hitchcock Presents and even Boris Karloff's Tales of Mystery -- classic scary page turners one and all! Jennifer Love Hewitt's The Music Box is a horror/mystery/thriller anthology series in that grand tradition,” said Lobell. “Tasked with the responsibility of turning Love's vision into reality has been a total thrill. And without giving anything away I can tell you that no one comes away from their encounter with the music box unscathed!"

The series kicks off in November.

What are you reading?

Modern Masters: Kyle Baker

Comic-con or no comic-con, gods or no gods, we aim to keep What Are You Reading up and running every Sunday regardless. Our special guest this week is none other than the one, the only Abhay Khosla. Abhay's a regular contributor to Brian Hibbs' Savage Critics Web site, but can also usually be found lurking about here.

To see what Abhay and everyone else is reading, click the little linky ...

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What Are You Reading?

Asterios Polyp

Welcome to What Are You Reading, where we don't let a little thing like national holidays and fireworks prevent us from talking about our current reading exploits. Our guest this week is cartoonist (you can see his work in the new anthology Syncopated) and editor Paul Karasik, whose latest book is the highly accclaimed You Shall Die By Your Own Evil Creation! the second collection of comics by the late Golden Age artist Fletcher Hanks.

To discover what Paul and the rest of us are reading, simply click on the link below ...

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Robot reviews: More potpourri

Wrapped-Up Foxtrot

Wrapped-Up FoxTrot
by Bill Amend
Andrews McMeel Publishing, $16.99

Here's my basic problem with FoxTrot: I can't stand the family. Not a one of them. They all come across as a bunch of unlikeable clods to me, each one too invested in their own personal tics and desperate obsessions to show any interest in each other. Really, they seem more interested in making each other miserable, especially the bratty youngest child, Jason, who would have been thrown to the lions years ago by any real-life family. Of course, without him we'd miss all those obvious and occasionally desperate attempt to reference contemporary pop culture. "Hey, they're making a Star Trek movie! Let's make a strip about it!" "Here's a joke about World of Warcraft! You know, lots of people play that!" People complain about the saccharine sweetness of The Family Circus, but their are times I prefer that to the insufferable smart-alec attitudes of the Fox family.

This new Treasury collects the last of the daily strips as well as some Sundays. It's certainly readable. It didn't make me want to claw my eyes out the way, say Snuffy Smith does, but still, that's a real annoying family.

More reviews after the link ...

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Everyone's A Critic: A round-up of comic book reviews and thinkpieces

Boody Rogers

• Let's begin by directing your attention to the comments section of this post on the Comics Comics blog regarding my recent interview with Dan Nadel. It devolves into a conversation over Nadel's earlier comments about Fantagraphics' recent Boody Rogers book, edited by Craig Yoe. Nadel disliked the book for a number of reasons, which Tom Spurgeon had felt was inappropriate for him to discuss in public, since Nadel had written and edited a book that featured Rogers' art, Art Out of Time, and thus, was suffered from a conflict of interest of sorts.

Anyway, Nadel, Rob Clough, Tim Hodler, Jeet Heer, Spurgeon and even Gary Groth (!) hash the whole matter out here, though little is resolved by the end. I haven't read the Rogers collection yet, so it's hard for me to gauge the accuracy of Nadel's comments. Spurgeon makes some good points, but I'm not 100 percent convinced they are that germane to Nadel's original post. Still, it's an interesting discussion nevertheless.

• Speaking of that Boody Rogers book, John Mitchell didn't care much for the book either, though for different reasons, labeling it a "patience tester."

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Thin wallets, fat bookshelves: Abrams fall catalog

Toon Treasury of Classic Children's Comics

The art book publisher Abrams came out of the gate running this year with their new Comicarts imprint, which featured titles like Craig Yoe's discovery of naughty Joe Schuster art, Secret Identity. What delights will the offer for the second half of the year? How about a new book by Alan Moore? Yes, it's true; click on the link to find out more.

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Straight for the art | Mack White's 'Roadside Hell'

White's 'Roadside Hell'

Over at his blog, Mack White has posted a few sample panels from his upcoming short story that will appear in the third volume of the Hotwire Comics anthology. Looks like the sort of trippy, conspiracy-laden, horror-tinged stuff I've come to expect from White, which is definitely a good thing.