Like all giant monster fans, I’ve been excited about the Criterion release of the original Godzilla, but I somehow missed that Bill Sienkiewicz painted the cover for it. Apparently there’s been some controversy about his depiction’s being more 2002 than 1954, but Criterion responded that while “we can see why some viewers consider it to be more akin to the 2002 incarnation of Godzilla because the back plates seem more sharp-pointed and jagged than the curved tips of the ‘54 original, for example, or the tail tapers more to a point,” the design isn’t actually all that much like the more recent version either and ultimately, simply reflects Sienkiewicz’ “personal [though Toho-approved] vision of the creature.”

According to Trouble With Comics, Sienkiewicz also provided black-and-white illustrations for the Blu-Ray booklet.

(via The Comics Reporter)

Is this the only Big Numbers #4 art you'll ever see?

It’s one of comics’ greatest mysteries, and Inkstuds interviewer extraordinaire Robin McConnell just solved it. And the answer involves…’90s indie-rock icons Sebadoh?

McConnell covers a lot of incredibly fascinating ground in his astonishingly candid and in-depth interview with cartoonist Al Columbia — do not say “tl;dl” to the two-hour podcast — but he also cuts right to the chase, asking the mercurial artist what, exactly, happened to the artwork he created for Watchmen demigod Alan Moore’s great lost comic Big Numbers #4. As you might recall from our post on Columbia’s one-time mentor Bill Sienkiewicz’s recent words on the subject, Big Numbers was intended to be Moore’s magnum opus.

As I put it then:

Big Numbers was a Joycean look at life in a small English town as a big-box retailer prepared to set up shop. But this grand fiction-as-fractal-geometry experiment only managed to produce two published issues in 1990 before hitting a massive delay during work on issue #3, losing Sienkiewicz, moving from Moore’s Mad Love publishing imprint to [Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles co-creator] Kevin Eastman’s Tundra, tapping Sienkiewicz’s then-teenaged assistant (and current reclusive Pim & Francie creator and alt-horror superstar) Al Columbia to take over, losing Columbia and all the pages he’d completed, and finally shuddering to a halt….[N]othing has been seen of the all-Columbia fourth issue, long rumored to have been destroyed in its entirety by the perfectionist artist.

In his fascinating conversation with McConnell, Columbia first tells the story of how he landed a gig as Sienkiewicz’s assistant (a portfolio full of Sienkiewicz knockoffs apparently helped) and then how he was tapped to take over the struggling Big Numbers series (by Eastman’s request, some time after Columbia’s relationship with Sienkiewicz had ended on unpleasant terms). But the difficulty of working out the arrangements between all the parties involved led to lengthy delays even after Columbia agreed to take over, which in turn gave him ample time to realize he really hated working in the photorealistic style he’d been asked to use to mimic what Sienkiewicz had done in the two published issues (the third, unpublished one was done in Sienkiewicz’s trademark scratchy style) — not to mention sour on the contract he’d signed with Tundra. He also grew skeptical of the quality of the script, with which, he says, he felt Moore was setting himself up for failure by telling people it was his magnum opus: “I know that I got real bored with it quick, and whatever cleverness [it had], it might have been too clever.”

Then, one fateful day:

I was roommates with all the guys in this band called Sebadoh, which were particularly large back in the day — Lou Barlow, Eric Gaffney, and Jason Loewenstein, they were all hanging out. And Eric Gaffney was gonna put out this single, this little split single with somebody, and he wanted artwork for it and he wanted me to do something. He was big into collages and stuff like that, and we got the idea that I would chop up all this Big Numbers artwork and make a collage out of it for his album cover. I don’t know how I got the idea, but I just hated [Big Numbers] — I didn’t want anything to do with it, I had already quit it or I was going to, I knew I wasn’t going to have anything to do with it. So we put every page on a chopping block, one of those big slicers, and I just chopped it up madly for about a half hour — just sliced the whole thing up with a chopper. And Marc Arsenault, who’s the Wow Cool guy — I don’t know if anyone knows who he is, the minizine guy — he was a good friend of mine, he came over and just looked horrified. He stood in the doorway and watched me chopping up all the artwork and just went “Oh my God!” I think he must have told somebody I’d done it, and that’s how that [story] got started. But I think even before that, there was something [going around] to that effect. That might have been what influenced me to do it: “Well, they’re saying I did this, I might as well.” I can’t remember, though. But it wasn’t like “Oh my God, I’m gonna flip out, I can’t stand this!” It wasn’t this breakdown. It was just like, “Oh, this’ll make a cool record cover.” That’s it. That’s all it was.

So there you have it, folks. Big Numbers #4 was finished and Al Columbia chopped it into bits, not due to his notorious perfectionism and self-editing, but because his roommates Sebadoh needed a record cover. As best I can tell, the record he’s talking about was 1991′s Sebadoh/Azalia Snail split single; that’s the cover for the Sebadoh side above. It’s creepy, and creepiness is obviously a Columbia trademark, but at the same time it doesn’t exactly look like a collage assembled from sliced-and-diced photorealistic art from an Alan Moore comic about an English village. Is it the final resting place of Big Numbers, hidden in plain sight (well, plain sight if you’re an indie cratediver) all these years? Or did the band end up going in a different direction, one slightly less horrifying to Alan Moore fans? I’ll leave that to Columbia/Sebadoh experts to determine.

Again, your really want to listen to McConnell’s whole interview with Columbia; I’m about an hour deep and I already know more about Columbia’s childhood than I do about some of my best friends’. Huge round of applause to Inkstuds for a hugely revealing interview with one of comics’ most legend-shrouded talents.

from Big Numbers #3 by Alan Moore and Bill Sienkiewicz

It is perhaps the greatest comic never published. Intended to be a 12-issue miniseries ambitious and complex enough to make Watchmen look like Wizard of Id on an off day, Alan Moore and Bill Sienkiewicz’s Big Numbers was a Joycean look at life in a small English town as a big-box retailer prepared to set up shop. But this grand fiction-as-fractal-geometry experiment only managed to produce two published issues in 1990 before hitting a massive delay during work on issue #3, losing Sienkiewicz, moving from Moore’s Mad Love publishing imprint to Kevin Eastman’s Tundra, tapping Sienkiewicz’s then-teenaged assistant (and current reclusive Pim & Francie creator and alt-horror superstar) Al Columbia to take over, losing Columbia and all the pages he’d completed, and finally shuddering to a halt.

The exact details of these events have long been a matter of conjecture and dispute, involving as they do some of comics’ major (and in some cases most mercurial) talents: Moore, Sienkiewicz, Columbia, Eastman, then-Tundra editor Paul Jenkins, and the saga’s most reliable chronicler, Moore collaborator Eddie Campbell, who told the behind-the-scenes story as he knew it in his book Alec: How to Be an Artist. Meanwhile, nothing has been seen of the all-Columbia fourth issue, long rumored to have been destroyed in its entirety by the perfectionist artist. Ten pages of issue #3 saw the light of day in the short-lived SubMedia magazine in 1999; that was all that most anyone saw, or even knew for sure existed, until January 2009, when a photocopy of the entire third issue surfaced on eBay with art credited to Columbia. The pages were purchased by Irish bookseller Pádraig Ó Méalóid, who (with Moore’s permission) scanned and posted them on his LiveJournal.

Now Ó Méalóid has returned to the scene of one of comics’ great literary mysteries, and he’s brought along one of the three people best equipped to get to the bottom of things: Bill Sienkiewicz himself. In an essay apparently originally intended for Heidi MacDonald’s blog The Beat but now posted to Ó Méalóid’s blog, Sienkiewicz explains his side of the Big Numbers debacle in detail: the status of Big Numbers #3 (completely finished); the involvement of Al Columbia in the issue (zero, except for maybe a background or two); why he dramatically changed his art style from photorealistic to Sienkiewicz-scratchy between issues #2 and #3 (the prohibitive effort, time, and cost of sustaining his stable of photoreference models, two of whom tragically died and one of whom moved to Germany in the midst of making the comic, plus the opportunity the script for #3 afforded him to make a stylistic shift work for the story); how #3 fell off the scheduling rails (during that time he lost a parent, a relationship, Columbia, and a lot of money); the status of Big Numbers #4 (he hasn’t seen it, but heard (like all of us have) that Columbia destroyed the original pages before they could be published); the status of his relationship with Columbia (they’ve patched everything up; he wishes Al well); and what you’ve likely been waiting for — whether or not he and Moore will ever finish the series (he’d like to!):

To this day, I’ve lamented that Alan and I never finished the series. I actually literally can’t stomach the thought of it remaining a hole in our creative lives, certainly in mine. And honestly, there’s not a week that goes by that I don’t think about completing it, about contacting Alan and saying, “Adult here. What say you? Let’s kick out the jams!” I understand his great disappointment, though I’ve no doubt he’s moved on. And gotten even more brilliant, if that’s possible. I’ve apologized to Alan personally, and to the others, for my part.

Read the whole thing and imagine what might have been.

Deadpool Team-Up #886

Hello and welcome to a special “birthday bash” edition of our weekly “What Are You Reading” feature, where the Robot 6 crew talks about what books we’ve read recently. Usually we invite a special guest to share what they’ve been reading, but since today isn’t just an ordinary day for us, we thought we’d invite a whole bunch of special guests to help us out — our friends and colleagues from Comic Book Resources, Spinoff and Comics Should Be Good!

To see what everyone has been reading, click below …

*****

Brigid Alverson

Fables Deluxe Edition Hardcover, Vol. 1

I’m trying to catch up on some of the books I missed during the long stretch of my life when I was away from comics, so this week I picked up the first volume of Fables. I like the idea a lot—taking the characters of fairy tales and children’s literature and putting them into adult situations—and the stories are interesting enough to keep me reading. The art bothers me a lot, though. The character designs are fine, but the different elements of each panel don’t work together to create a coherent space. Snow White’s office for example, is in a vast room filled with all sorts of clutter—a flying ship, a toppled column, a suit of armor—but it’s as if every piece was drawn separately and then pasted down, like a Coloforms kit. It’s not as obvious in other parts of the book, but that early scene made me aware of it. Also the characters in this first novel don’t wander far from standard stereotypes—the icy executive woman, the bad boy, the slut, and of course Prince Charming. That’s the cost of using fairy tales as your source material, but I hope the characters develop a bit more complexity. Anyway, it’s a very witty take on the topic and the stories are fun to follow, so I’ll be sticking with it.

Manga-wise, I read the first chapter of Mizuki, a shoujo manga that Digital is publishing on their eManga site. It’s a pretty standard story about a girl who transforms into a devil to fight ghosts; as she is in high school, she tries very hard not to transform because her friends are frightened and revolted by her other form (they don’t know it’s her) and she doesn’t want to scare off the guy she has a crush on. That’s a pretty transparent metaphor for teenage life, and I can see why a book like this would have some appeal for the young-adult crowd. The art is not very distinctive but it is nicely done; I’ll be sticking around for chapter 2 of this one.

Sean T. Collins

Oh, sweet Christmas break! I did a ton of cramming to be properly equipped for doing Best of 2010 lists and now I can kick back and catch up on my prose reading. Right now I’m working my way through an old favorite fantasy series, Susan Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising Sequence. Re-reading it for the first time in years, I’m struck by how much of it is basically info-dumping, yet somehow its tale of the eternal, Arthurian conflict between the Dark and the Light in Britain and Wales still feels immediate and epic.

But there have been plenty of comics on the docket as well. Click the links below for full reviews!

H Day

* H Day by Renee French (PictureBox): French’s elliptical, silent tone poem about her struggle with migraines and ants is a fantastic showcase of her considerable gifts as a crafter of images.

* I Want You #2 by Lisa Hanwalt (Pigeon Press): Body horror, gross-out humor, and insanely detailed drawings of horses and birds and stuff. It’s quite a combo.

* Boy’s Club #4 by Matt Furie (Pigeon Press): Another uproarious installment of Matt Furie’s chronicle of the unrepentant dude-dom.

* Duncan the Wonder Dog by Adam Hines (AdHouse): Despite its rapturous reception elsewhere and my sympathies for its subject matter of animal rights, I found this graphic novel a classic case of reach exceeding grasp.

* The Wrong Place by Brecht Evens (Drawn & Quarterly): Evens uses color like you’ve rarely seen elsewhere to tell the tale of two friends, one a livewire and one a wallflower, and their shared social scene.

* Big Questions #15 by Anders Nilsen (Drawn & Quarterly): The decade-in-the-making conclusion to Nilsen’s haunting series about a flock of birds who were tragically ill-equipped to deal with the incursion of humanity into their world offers no big answers.

Timothy Callahan

The Making of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

The Making of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, by J. W. Rinzler
I’ll admit that the combination of the leaden prequels and video-gamish Clone Wars theatrical release nearly killed my interest in anything Star Wars-related. But I used to be a total Star Wars geek, even going so far as to submit a Star Wars RPG adventure to West End Games in the mid-1990s, though my adventure was rejected because it (a) wasn’t very good, and (b) had what the editor called an “inappropriate title” for something in the Star Wars line. The title? “Attack of the Energy Beasts,” a purposely goofy classic sci-fi homage. I guess, when the second prequel title was announced, years later, that editor probably realized his mistake. Or he said to himself, “Yeah, Lucas doesn’t get it, either.”

Anyway, Rinzler’s massive “Making of…” tomes are the kinds of things that can rekindle interest in that far, far away galaxy. This book focuses on Episode V, of course, and it not only has fascinating behind-the-scenes photographs, and a compelling overview of the struggle to make the movie at a time when no sequel had ever made as much as the original film (Godfather II only did half as well as the original, for example, and that was the best sequel ever made), it also has a great sequence which transcribes a day in the directing life of Irvin Kershner, based on a recording of that day’s events leading up to the famous Han Solo in carbonite scene. Kerhner was wearing a mic all day for another “Making of…” project being completed at the time, and the transcription of the on-set script revision and fragile egos of the performers is a clear look at what really happened when the cameras weren’t looking. The whole book is a pretty great, and engrossing, read.

Captain America #613 by Ed Brubaker, Butch Guice, and Friends
I read ten to twenty new comics every week, so why single out this one? Because sometimes I forget how good Brubaker’s Captain America can be, and this was a particularly good reminder of what has been one of the best mainstream superhero comics of the past five years. From Guice’s chiseled artwork (best embellished by Stefano Gaudiano) to the sometimes dynamic vividly nightmarish layouts to the rapid cross-cutting between Steve Rogers, Bucky Barnes, and the daughter of the Red Skull, this looks to be a comic that’s back on track after a year of slightly disappointing issues (though by the high standards of Brubaker’s Captain America, even weaker installments are better than most). I liked this one a lot.

The Art of Jim Starlin, by Jim Starlin
Quite early in my comic book reading days, I picked up a copy of Dreadstar and Company #2, which reprinted the second issue of the Epic Comics series focusing on Dreadstar’s blind female compatriot, Willow. It was a shocking issue back then, and rereading the entire Dreadstar saga these days, trying to follow along with CBR’s Chad Nevett in “Dreadstar December,” has reminded me how much I’ve always enjoyed Jim Starlin’s work. I’ve been devouring his other comics, and I have an essay on Gilgamesh II that I keep promising to write.

Jim Starlin’s art book, which features highlights from his career and a lengthy retrospective written by himself, is a good primer on the man’s career and it’s also a good reminder of all the projects he’s tacked over the years. It doesn’t go into nearly enough detail about the conflicts he’s had with various publishers (he frustratingly hints at juicy stories of poor treatment by the Big Two, but politely declines to name names or provide specific blow-by-blow accounts), but it does show Starlin to be a man who has always been ahead of the curve, trying to do his own thing in an industry that wants bland conformity.

Timothy Callahan writes the regular column When Words Collide, as well as reviews for Comic Book Resources. He does a lot of other stuff online, too, even talking about comics on the Splash Page podcast with CBR’s Chad Nevett.

Josh Wigler

Morning Glories #2

It’s probably no accident that the books I’m enjoying the most these days are coming from Image Comics, given the fact that I’ve covered the Image beat on CBR for the better part of two years now. But that’s just the state of things, I guess — it’s a good time to be a comics fan, and an especially great time for Image’s creative output.

The two books at the top of my buy pile every month are Chew and Morning Glories, and not just because I’m running monthly columns on them (though that certainly doesn’t hurt). With Chew, John Layman and Rob Guillory are constantly evolving the story of FDA agent Tony Chu in exciting new directions, almost effortlessly taking the series from its initial premise of a guy who gleans psychic impressions from the things he eats to it’s current end-of-the-world-by-fiery-alien-sky-writing status quo. There’s no telling where the book is going to go next, which is exactly why I love it so much.

Nick Spencer and Joe Eisma’s Morning Glories is entering the new year in great shape as well, with the first arc officially concluded in last month’s breathtaking fifth issue. Having already read this month’s installment a couple of weeks early, I can already tell you that Morning Glories is off to an excellent start in 2011. I can also say with no bullshit that this series is one of the most consistent edge-of-your-seat reads you’ll find anywhere in comics today. If you’re not picking Morning Glories up already, do yourself a favor and dive in while it’s still early — trust me, you don’t want to miss this boat.

Some other current favorites include:

- Artifacts … the best event series of 2010, trucking strong into 2011 thanks to Ron Marz and the enormously talented people at Top Cow.

- Orc Stain … I’m pretty sure James Stokoe couldn’t make a bad comic if he tried, certainly not when crafting the disturbingly detailed world that “Orc Stain” inhabits.

- Proof … recently relaunched with a new number one, but it’s the same hairy Sasquatch you know and love.

- The Walking Dead … as the world wakes up and smells the coffee thanks to the hit AMC series, the rest of us already know how amazing this series is thanks to the increasingly devastating monthlies. After eighty issues, Kirkman is still at the top of his game and showing no signs of slowing down.

That’s barely scratching the surface of what I’ve been reading and loving lately, and judging by what’s on the horizon in 2011, the new year should be an equally crowded one. Here’s hoping, at least!

In addition to covering Image for CBR, Josh also can be found blogging regularly for Spinoff. He also writes for MTV and ComicsAlliance.

Ryan K Lindsay

Franken-Castle

Franken-Castle
It’s a concept nearly everyone scoffed at and while many enjoyed it just as many would never admit that it was fun. I missed the boat but that only means I get to enjoy it in one big HC instead. While the end of the tale may have lost its way, the start of this strange monster filled romp by Remender and Moore was one of my picks for comic of the year. A shame not enough agreed with me and it missed out on a mention on the CBR Top 100. I absolutely loved the art and the writing here and while it wasn’t really the Punisher I kind of dug that about it. It wasn’t afraid to try something new and completely succeed in totally new ways.

I can only imagine what a youth would make of Franken-Castle if s/he found it squirreled away at home (which is the optimal way for every generation to discover comics). The sensational art by Tony Moore is something indeed and matched with Rick Remender cutting loose in a way that the Big Two just don’t do enough is the sort of mind-expanding four colour drug that every formative stage should be exposed to. This is comics the way I always imagine them through the magical and misty lens of the golden years of my youth. There should be more titles out there like this.

Secret Dead Men
I love Duane Swierczynski. I’ll just come out and say it, I think he’s a damn fun writer. I really liked his Immortal Iron Fist Run and I would have loved to see him do just a bit more on Black Widow. But the man also writes novels and very good ones so I’m slowly catching up on them all. I recently finished The Wheelman, which is a stellar heist story, and I’m now elbows deep in Secret Dead Men, which is about a sort of wandering PI who collects souls and stores them in his brain. It’s the sort of zany idea that must be read to be believed, and once you’ve read enough Swierczynski you will become a believer. I have no doubt.

Proof
John Prufrock is a very cool character. A Bigfoot (perhaps the Bigfoot) who works for a shadowy government agency tracking down other cryptids. It’s a perfect high concept but shocking in that the execution is actually better than you think it might be. There’s erudition to the words, and beauty in the art, and a certain spirit between the panels that just makes you fall completely into the world created. This is a title you can get lost in.

I initially picked this title up in trades but I’ve switched to floppies for the new relaunch and I’m glad I did. The latest issue was a whole barrel of cool and I’m so very glad I don’t have to wait months between my Proof fixes. This comic deserves to be read by more people so become the next one and pick up a trade, or the latest #1 issue, today. You won’t regret it.

Ryan K Lindsay is a weekly reviewer at CBR. He is also a staff writer for comic news and reviews site The Weekly Crisis. He also runs a comic scripting challenge site called thoughtballoons where each week a character is picked and every member of the site must write a one page script about that character (and play-at-home scripts are encouraged in the comments). He’s also been known to throw a think piece up at Gestalt Mash and is hoping one day to have his many comic pitches drawn by people with pencils.

Greg McElhatton

All Clear

All Clear by Connie Willis: I’ve been a fan of Connie Willis’s writings ever since I first picked up a copy of Doomsday Book, back in the day. The second half of what was supposed to be a single novel (but so big it got split into Blackout and All Clear), it feels like it’s the final word on her time travel novels. A book about World War II is rarely cheerful, but this one pulls your heartstrings with both despair and hope. It’s a book I was a little unsure of early on, but it comes together beautifully for a strong conclusion.

Justice League International Vol. 1-4 by Keith Giffen, J.M DeMatteis, Kevin Maguire, Ty Templeton: I have a confession to make–aside from the odd issue here and there, I’ve read almost none of the “classic” Giffen/DeMatteis/Maguire JLI. I recently went on a binge and read all four collections to date, and unsurprisingly I loved them. Sure, I could’ve done without the inevitable line-wide crossover every five or six issues, and the rotating door of cast members is a little hard to keep track of at times, but it’s still a lot of fun. Looking forward to picking up Volume 5 shortly!

Voodoo Heart by Scott Snyder: I’m about halfway through this collection of short stories, and if there was any doubt that Snyder’s adept at multiple genres (he’s already proven that by writing both American Vampire and Detective Comics with completely different voices), this should seal it. The opening story (“Blue Heron”) about a man chasing a zeppelin across the country to catch the love of his life will hook you, and three stories later the quality hasn’t dipped. Really looking forward to sitting down with the rest before long.

Greg McElhatton writes reviews for CBR and Read About Comics, and also has a fun personal blog.

Kiel Phegley

X'ed Out

Over the past few weeks, my reading has been divided up on two very specific categories. First up, I’ve been going back over a ton of great comics while working on CBR’s top 100 of the year list. Aside from some of the books I wrote up for the countdown including Brandon Graham’s King City, Hope Larson’s Mercury and Mike Dawson’s Troop 142, I’ve been going back over the big books of the year like Wilson an X’Ed Out as well as some killer stuff that didn’t quite make my top ten or the top 100 including Jason Lutes’ latest issue of Berlin and Kathryn and Stuart Immonen’s Moving Pictures. And in case you’re wondering, my #1 book of the year was totally Love & Rockets New Stories #3. That one has been banging around my brain box since the moment I first picked it up. We live in an age of wonders.

The other stack of stuff I’ve been tearing through are a slew of novels I have to read for my upcoming residency as an MFA student at Hamline University. My program is in Writing for Children and Young Adults, so my required list is a metric ton of middle grade and YA prose with a few picture books thrown in. I’ve read Jack Gantos’ Joey Pigza Swallowed The Key, Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak and Deborah Heiligman Charles and Emma: The Darwins’ Leap of Faith. Most importantly for the comic folks out there, I’ve been asked to re-read Gene Yang’s American Born Chinese because, get this, Yang will be at Hamline next week while I’m in my first residency to give us students a workshop in writing and graphic novels and what not. How rad is that?

Kiel Phegley is the news editor for Comic Book Resources, and one of the folks I should probably thank more often for all the help he gives us. Check out his interview with The Comics Reporter.

Brian Cronin

The last five comic books that I read were Deadpool Team-Up #886, a well-told action story by Shane McCarthy and Nick Dragotta featuring Iron Fist. Dragotta’s art was fantastic and McCarthy had a lot of funny dialogue.

Secret Warriors #23

Secret Warriors #23 was the rare issue that gives you an extreme amount of singular character development while still moving the over-arching plot along. Great job by Jonathan Hickman, and it is awesome that Alessandro Vitti is going to finish out this series on art.

Justice Society of America #46 was an intriguing look at the idea of a superhero team devoting itself entirely to one city and not letting ANY crime occur. Meanwhile, Marc Guggenheim and artist Scott Kolins do strong work in establishing the mysterious villains in the comic as a formidable and scary threat to the cast of this book. One drawback in the issue to me was a scene featuring Obsidian that did not ring true to me.

Hulk #28 was another entertaining issue by the impressive duo of Jeff Parker and Gabriel Hardman. Hardman has not had a bad issue yet, and Parker gives him a lot of really cool stuff to draw in this issue (and the previous issues, as well).

Finally, Flash #8, by Geoff Johns and Scott Kolins, was an effectively eerie look at the origin (or should I say originS) of the Reverse-Flash. Seeing him cruelly change time around himself makes him a rather terrifyingly disturbing creature.

That’s my list!

Brian Cronin runs our sister blog, Comics Should Be Good! and was part of The Great Curve team way back in the day, before we were ever Robot 6. He’s also an author.

Alex Dueben

Apollo’s Angels

Apollo’s Angels by Jennifer Homans. Writing about comics and art has its challenges, but it’s a cakewalk compared to writing about dance. For centuries, the only real record we have of dance has been through writing. The facility with language required by good dance writers is part of what I love about the genre (sometimes more than dance itself) and as I think and write more about the history of comics I know that Homans’ cultural analysis and history of ballet is something that’s going to stick in my head for some time to come. This is the gold standard of arts writing.

Berlin: City of Stones and Berlin: City of Smoke. I’ve been meaning to reread the first volume and read the second one of Jason Lutes’ epic series ever since I picked it up months ago but I wanted to read through it all in one sitting and finally got a chance this week. I can’t help but feel that like Love and Rockets, the problem isn’t that we love the series any less or that the quality has dropped – it’s better than it’s ever been – the problem is that we’ve run out of adjectives to describe it. There’s nothing new to say. How many times can we say it’s a brilliant piece of work and one of the greatest comic series ever?

Bad Machinery: A Feral Flag Will Fly. I picked up this limited edition book of the beginning strips of John Allison’s new comic at Webcomics Weekend and hadn’t gotten around to reading it. Part of the problem with buying the books of webcomics is that I’ve already them, which means they drop to the bottom of the pile quickly. The truth is that I love Bad Machinery. I think it’s Allison’s best work. And it was great to OD on the comic for an afternoon without staring at the screen.

The Butterfly Mosque. G. Willow Wilson is best known to comic fans for her graphic novel Cairo and the series Air. This new memoir will likely change all that. It’s a beautiful book that I can’t recommend highly enough, detailing Wilson’s conversion to Islam and her time in Cairo, falling in love and her young married life. Wilson conveys the culture she found herself a part of and the essential separateness that one feels in a culture unlike that which one is born and raised in. Through it all there is a greater understanding and love.

Alex Dueben writes about the kinds of comics that I know Sean and Chris dig for CBR.

Sonia Harris

The Essential Moon Knight

The Essential Moon Knight Vol 1 & 2
by Doug Moench, Bill Sienkiewicz and others
Love Bill Sienkiewicz, I have ever since New Mutants and then Elektra Assassin. Because of his genre-altering work , I thought it would be interesting to see how his style evolved. This book definitely show his early work, you can see the change and watch him move towards something more communicative. Still, his line is always characteristic, easy to spot even when he’s trying to hide his inherent craziness. To be honest, I’m not reading the words, I’m just in it for the art. I might go back and read them if I get stuck in bed sick one day or something, but there isn’t a lot of draw.

http://www.freakangels.com/
by Warren Ellis and Paul Duffield
I tried reading this online when it started, but the short episodes meant that I couldn’t really get into it. Then I forgot about it for a few months and came back with plenty of story unfolded. Elis writing a screwed-up, post-apocalyptic London is very compelling, especially with a dysfunctional, neo Village of the Damned (but nice, sort of) angle. Duffield’s art is quite lovely, and it’s become one of the few comics that I don’t mind reading online. Having said that, it does look good in print – the colors sort of do slightly better things in print – but knowing that it is up online, how can I wait all those extra weeks for the book?

Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity
by David Lynch
A funny little, chunky, blue book. Although I read sequentially, it would be a great book to dive into at any point for inspiration, a sort of random divination kind of a thing, to set the mood for a project or day. David Lynch talks gently about his creative process and the role transcendental meditation plays in that (which may or may not be your cup of tea, but I think it is interesting, regardless.) He’s very candid, talks openly of his feelings about major projects, which is really interesting to me. He discusses about how some films are made, what it means to him, and what he intends in making them… It’s nice, but it didn’t affect my enjoyment of his films. The book is less dry than that, more an aspirational piece for the creative mind.

Sonia Harris writes for Comics Should Be Good every wednesday and sometimes writes convention coverage for CBR.

James Hunt

Hopeless Savages: Greatest Hits

1. Hopeless Savages: Greatest Hits – Jen Van Meter, Christine Norrie et al.
Many of my favourite creators have admitted being influenced by Hopeless Savages, so when the omnibus edition came out recently, I took that as my “now or never” moment to see it for myself. Working through the book, I’m not sure I’ve been entirely won over by the “punk family” premise, but the characters are lovingly-crafted and it’s easy to see why it had such an impact on those who read it.

2. Generation Hope – Kieron Gillen, Salvador Espin.
With its central theme of teenagers accepting themselves as mutants, Generation Hope feels more like the X-Men than any other X-Book does right now. I’ve loved Gillen’s work ever since the days of the original Phonogram series, and this is no exception. The market might feel a little over-saturated with mutant titles, but this had an incredibly strong launch, and it’s a series that I’m looking forward to seeing more of in 2010.

3. The Fabric of the Cosmos – Brian Greene.
Sometimes it’s good to get away from fiction and be reminded that actually, the universe we live in is strange enough even without superpowers and cosmic beings. I figure if I can understand DC continuity, quantum physics shouldn’t be much harder to grasp, and Greene’s informative yet approachable style keeps me from feeling overwhelmed by the hard maths – just when you think it’s getting a bit too complicated, out come The Simpsons references.

James Hunt reviews comics for Comic Book Resources.

Greg Hatcher

Well, to be honest, what I’m reading is usually listed right there in the column every week. But today we have….

Crossovers: The Secret Chronology of the World, volumes one and two, by Win Eckert. This is kind of the ultimate continuity-geek book, working out the chronology of every single literary crossover ever, including comics. It might be a little uber-nerdy for some folks but I’m pretty nerdy and I think it’s great fun. I’m a Wold Newton guy from way back, I bought Philip Jose Farmer’s biography of Doc Savage new off the stands back in the seventies, so this is totally my thing.

Coils, by Fred Saberhagen and Roger Zelazny. Picked this up on a whim not too long ago, on one of our bookscouting road trips. A man discovers that his memories are false computer implants… when he tries to discover the truth his fiancee is kidnapped and the chase is on. Sort of a cross between The Bourne Identity and Total Recall.

The Liberty Project by Kurt Busiek and James Fry, collecting their short-lived comics series from Eclipse way back when. I remember this series fondly from the 1980s and it’s nice that it’s back in print again.

Greg Hatcher can be found writing every week for Comics Should Be Good!

Shaun Manning

20th Century Boys

20th Century Boys vol. 12

I’ll admit that I thought 20th Century Boys went off the rails a bit when the “New Book of Prophecy” was introduced, but volume 12 reveals a bit more about the origins of this second deadly tome and ties together a lot of really fascinating threads. Urasawa is utterly brilliant, managing to string out the big reveal of the Friend’s identity for a full twelve volumes and keep things interesting at every step of the way.

Doctor Who #1

I got a preview copy of the new IDW series starring the Eleventh Doctor, and this standalone issue was a hell of a lot of fun. Basically, the TARDIS is infected with every spam email Rory has ever received and brings to life the various charlatans and con men embodied in each. The 419 man is a special treat. My only gripe is that it drives me nuts when recognizable entities like Facebook are tweaked just to avoid naming them directly, and there was a bit of this.

Shaun Manning covers Dark Horse, BOOM! and a lot of other comic news on CBR.

Chad Nevett

Invisible

I got some really cool books for Christmas and have been reading those, prose and comics alike. On Wednesday, I had a bunch of time to kill and wound up reading all of Invisible by Paul Auster in the process. It’s not dissimilar to his other books with a narrative within the narrative presented to us by a friend of the original author. I find Auster’s prose engaging and it always makes me want to write. It’s writing that requires you to be active and read between the lines. He’s also a writer I love just for the fact he’s almost at the point where he’s releasing one novel each year.

I arrived home from the holidays to find a shipment of comics I bought, including Jack Cross #1-4 by Warren Ellis and Gary Erskine. It’s one of the rare recent Ellis-penned minis that I hadn’t read and I missed getting a copy of the recent DC reprint. It fits nicely into his larger body of work with his interest in intelligence work. The protagonist is an interesting fellow with his idealism and pacifism in the ‘real’ world, but his utter brutality when he’s called on to do a job. It’s a cynical book, but definitely one for the Ellis fans.

And, finally, just today, while at work, I read Parker: The Outfit by Darwyn Cooke (on lunch and during breaks, of course). I picked this up during the week with a gift card and loved it. Much more of a COMIC adaptation of the prose than The Hunter was. Cooke is more playful and inventive here, willing to change up styles and storytelling approaches when it suits him, not just during the heist scenes. It’s a shame we’ll have to wait until 2012 for more.

Chad Nevett talks about comics in several different places around the web — at his personal blog GraphiContent, at Comics Should Be Good!, as a reviewer for Comic Book Resources and on the Splash Page podcast, with Mr. Callahan. He also writes about wrestling for 411mania.

Tim O’Shea: You been working on this script for years, can you single out a phase of the script development where you felt like you got the story where you wanted it to be?

Kody Chamberlain: The time spent on the script was mostly a result of being a full-time artist. Creating artwork for comics is extremely time-consuming, especially since I usually ink and color my own work. So that means I have to steal time here and there for my writing and that slows down the process. I didn’t mean to imply I’ve been writing the script nonstop all this time, I’m not a full time writer, so that can’t happen. Writing Sweets was a slow process for me because I wanted it to be a solid script before I picked up my pencil, and that takes longer when you’re a full-time artist. But from the start, I committed to nailing down a solid script before drawing anything, and that’s taken a while.

There are a few specific moments in the script where it felt like things clicked. One scene in particular comes to mind—the scene in the first issue where Jeff is talking with Lieutenant Palmer. The dialogue was very tough to write and I did a million rewrites on that, but as I was lettering the finished art, it seemed to work. The characters felt real in that moment. There’s also a scene in issue four between Curt Delatte and Lieutenant Palmer that works well on paper. I’m thumbnailing that scene now and it’s starting to come alive. I think that scene is one of the best in the series. I hope it holds up once it’s put together.

O’Shea: Cooking pops up frequently in the story–what motivated you to use that as a framing aspect in some of the scenes?

Chamberlain: As readers found out in issue two, the pralines found at each of the crime scenes are what inspired the media to nickname the killer “Sweets,” so I thought it would be fun to tie that recipe into the overall storyline. I toyed around with various titles for the story, but eventually I settled on Sweets because I liked the juxtaposition of the title against the hard and gritty storyline. A few people have actually emailed me to let me know they actually tried the recipe and loved it. The guys at Multiversity actually did it as a cooking show and put the video online.

I once heard Francis Ford Coppola say that he liked to include a recipe in each of his films so in the event that the viewer hated the movie, they’d get something out of it. I can’t argue with that logic.

O’Shea: At the end of the first issue, there’s a shot of your studio where all the pages of the issue are tacked to the wall, along with a few covers. When you do this, is it an effort to see area that you might want to tweak–or why are the pages on the wall?

Chamberlain: This is something I started doing as a graphic designer right out of college. I’d do a few dozen versions of a logo for a client and I’d pin them all up. Having everything in view makes it easier to see the big picture and get your head around what’s important. Every morning when I’d walk in, I’d see these designs and I could quickly spot things that need to be adjusted, or I’d get a spark of an idea that could be applied to one version but not another. Overtime, the project was improved by having everything in view at all times. Out of sight, out of mind. So keeping them in view forces me to stay focused on the work.

Pinning up the comic pages works in a similar way. It helps me spot consistency problems with how the characters are dressed, background details, etc. and it also helps me track my progress and timeline. I usually pin up all the pencils and make little notes about what needs to be tweaked before I do the inks. So I’ll pull them down and do revisions as needed and do the same thing for the inks. If I have time, I pin up the colored and lettered pages as well.

O’Shea: Can you discus your thought process on the color schemes of the pages. It’s most noticeable (the color shift) when you switch to flashback scenes. In fact, am I mistaken in thinking you used a different art style in the flashbacks as well?

Chamberlain: Color can be used in a lot of ways. Most often, color is used to ’separate’ things on the page. Put a dark orange shirt in front of a light blue sky, and that shirt will jump off the page. But color can also become a distraction. It can pull attention away from the things that are important and draw too much focus to too many things. The reason black and white comics work so well is because of the clarity. Black and white can ’unify’ shapes in the same way full color can ‘separate’ those shapes. For a brief time I actually considered doing Sweets in black and white because I wanted that unity and that clarity. But there were some things I wanted to do stylistically that needed a bit of color to work properly, so I compromised and decided to go with a very limited color palette. There are three style/color shifts in the comic, each one represents a slightly different point of view. There are times where that overlaps, but for the most part, the style changes represent a shift in focus from one character to another. The cartoon style in blue and green is also drawn in a completely different lineart style because it represents a different time period. The other two styles exist in the same time. It’s not meant to be a literal representation of time and point of view, just one of those things I do to add a layer to the concept.

O’Shea: In terms of developing the two lead detectives in the story, which of the two did you develop first? Who proved the most challenging to write of all the characters–why?

Chamberlain: One of the early story ideas that came to me was the scene at the mausoleum in the first issue. It was mostly a dialogue exchange that ended up on one of those index cards I pin to my cork wall. It’s changed a lot since then, but I think that’s where the characters were born, so in a way, they were created at the same time from that one scene idea. The two detectives are always fun to write, they’re connected in a way I can’t quite explain. They also happen to be the most challenging to write. These guys are detectives, and I’m not. The goal is to bring them to life in an interesting way and avoid the CSI-style clichés. I prefer watching true crime shows on cable, it’s a great place to see how cops work, hear how they talk, and see how they break down a crime scene. It’s also interesting how often a big break in a case comes from outside their area of focus and how they react to that. A good detective has a highly tuned sense of what’s important and what isn’t, but that can change in the blink of an eye as the facts come in. It’s truly fascinating. I also have a few actual detective friends and I’m constantly picking their brains by throwing out situations and asking them what they’d do if this happened, or if that happened. It’s really a lot of fun to mix that stuff into fiction.

O’Shea: I liked the whole discussion of ties in the first issue, did you make that up from out of nowhere–or did you once have someone tell you a similar story?

Chamberlain: That’s something I made up. That particular scene was about power. The Mayor has Lieutenant Palmer by the balls and is applying pressure. I thought the concept of power could be clearly represented by the quality of their neckties and how the Mayor chooses to apply that power. In my mind, Lieutenant Palmer would notice the difference between his ties and the Mayor’s ties, and he might use that in a conversation to make his point. It’s all about superiority. But Jeff has his own motivation, he’s there fighting to save Curt’s job, so there’s a second power struggle going on in that scene. Lieutenant Palmer continues the necktie metaphor at the end of the scene to tie it all together. People seem to like the dialogue there, so I feel like it worked the way I wanted it to work. You never really know because I rationalize it in my mind, but I’m never 100% sure it’s going to work for the reader. I just go with what feels right on the page.

O’Shea: In watching the video tour of your studio you show a picture of a fountain where you sometimes go to do sketches. Why is that site so conducive to sketching?

Chamberlain: It’s funny you’d ask about that because it’s been very hot lately and I haven’t been to the fountain in months. But this week was nice and cool so I did end up there to do some thumbnails yesterday. It’s a great place to sketch because it’s one of the few places downtown that has comfortable outdoor benches. There are a few other spots I like, but they’re not very comfortable and that makes sketching a lot less fun. But the fountain is nice because the sound is very soothing, and it’s only about a hundred yards from my studio door. There’s also an outdoor stage right beside it, there’s live music every Friday, so it’s become a bit of a focus point for the downtown area. Lafayette is a small town and everyone knows everyone in the downtown area, so it’s a great place to bump into friends and hang out a bit while I work. I do work alone in my studio most of the time, so it’s always nice to see other humans.

O’Shea: Not everyone’s books get praised by the likes of Bill Sienkiewicz & Jim Starlin, how long a buzz did you ride from compliments like that?

Chamberlain: I was ecstatic when I got those quotes, but the story of how that happened is also interesting. About five or six years ago, I was seated next to Sienkiewicz in Artists Alley at a Wizard con and he’s always super busy signing books and doing commissions. So I’d break away now and then and I’d bring him coffee, water, or whatever he wanted to drink. We hung out a bit after the show and we started talking talking shop. He was answering every question I threw at him and I was really inspired by his willingness to share his knowledge. I learned so much that night and when I got back to my hotel I couldn’t sleep so I just sketched most of the night. Since then, we’ve connected a few more times at conventions and he’s always been very gracious, and we share upcoming artwork via email now and then.

I attended the Boston Comic-Con this past year and we were seated near each other once again, so I handed off one of my printed ashcans to him. It was the entire first issue of Sweets, and I think I had the script for the second issue in there as well. It wasn’t colored yet, but it was lettered, so it was readable. Jim Starlin happened to be sitting on the opposite side of Sienkiewicz, so I offered an ashcan to him as well. The next morning I had to staple together more of those ashcans so I got to the convention early. Starlin walks over to my table about two hours before the convention opened and he complimented the book and told me he really enjoyed reading it. I thanked him for taking the time, and then he asked if I was interested in talking about the comic with him. That blew my mind. OF COURSE I want to talk about my comic with Jim Starlin, so he sat at my table and he went over the comic and the script for about an hour. I
listened and soaked it all in. He pointed out the things that worked and the things that didn’t work, and offered some advice on different aspects of what I was doing. Keep in mind, I’d never met him before that weekend. He had no reason to do what he did. He did it because he loves comics and he wanted to help.

Those two experiences are easily two of the best con moments I’ve ever had. After the show that day, I put my tail between my legs and asked both men if they’d mind giving me a blurb. It’s always hard to promote a creator-owned comic, and I knew that would help in a big way. They both jumped on the opportunity and sent me quotes right away. It’s such a thrilling experience to have two legendary creators step in and give me their time. I’ll always be grateful and I think that’s something we should all do a little more often.

O’Shea: In documenting your creative process through your blog did you end up learning more about your own creative approach through the discussion and feedback you received?

Chamberlain: Absolutely. When I was in college I taught a high school drumline a few hours a day, and I learned more than I could have imagined. Sharing the details of a particular technique or a concept forces you to analyze that concept deeper than you normally would. Knowing something and then explaining what you know involves a higher level of understanding overall. You’re forced to consider it from different angles. That was one of the reasons I wanted to keep the blog, I wanted to have a journal, but I also wanted to challenge myself to understand the process a little better and go out of my comfort zone once again.

Dexter Morgan, by Bill Sienkiewicz

Award-winning illustrator Bill Sienkiewicz, best known for comics like New Mutants, Elektra: Assassin and Stray Toasters, will take a stab at serial killer Dexter Morgan with an animated webseries — or is it a motion comic? — based on the acclaimed Showtime drama.

Debuting online in October, Dexter Early Cuts: Dark Echo will follow the character as he’s challenged by a copy-cat killer who doesn’t follow a code. The six chapters are written by Tim Schlattmann, Dexter co-executive producer and staff writer, and voiced by series star Michael C. Hall.

According to IGN.com, Dark Echo opens immediately after the death of Dexter’s father Harry, with a young Dexter enrolled in medical school, studying to improve his craft. During a kill, he realizes another student has been spying on him, leading to a clash between the two.

Based on a series of novels by Jeff Lindsay, Dexter premiered on Showtime in October 2006. The fifth season begins on Sept. 26. The show was featured this afternoon in two panels at Comic-Con International.

Watch the trailer for Dark Echo after the break.

General Francisco Franco, President of Spain, by Bill Sienkiewicz

Man, they made trading cards out of everything in the ’90s, didn’t they? Case in point: Written by Dennis Bernstein and Laura Slydell and illustrated by Elektra: Assassin genius Bill Sienkiewicz, the Friendly Dictators Trading Cards set from 1990 represented a rogues’ gallery of tyrants who were on good terms with the good ol’ U.S. of A. Okay, so Hitler’s a bit of a stretch. But from Papa Doc Duvalier in Haiti to Augusto Pinochet in Chile to Ngo Dinh Diem in South Vietnam, there’s no shortage of creeps, goons, and outright monsters with whom America traded the occasional Christmas card and/or oodles of military and monetary aid, and Sienkiewicz brings them all to ghoulish life. I particularly appreciate the “CANCELLED” stamp applied to the autocrats who eventually fell out of our favor. Poor Manuel Noriega, he never saw it coming.

(Via John Barber)

Batman and Elektra

Legendary artist Bill Sienkiewicz will have both a limited edition lithograph and sketchbook at the San Diego Comic Con this week. Above is the lithograph, which costs $40 and can be found at booth 2449. The sketchbook will cost $20.

Swallow Me Whole

Nate Powell‘s Swallow Me Whole is a graphic novel that demands and warrants repeated readings. Released by Top Shelf last year, the publisher describes it as “a love story carried by rolling fog, terminal illness, hallucination, apophenia, insect armies, secrets held, unshakeable faith, and the search for a master pattern to make sense of one’s unraveling.” My thanks to Powell for this email interview and his level of candor.

Tim O’Shea: What motivated you to start self-publishing mini-comics at the age of 14?

Nate Powell: Well, I’d been drawing comics with a few friends for a couple of years already. We had many issues of a comic series mapped out, and a friend’s uncle suggested that we finish up each issue and self-publish it. We didn’t really know what that entailed, but soon discovered a few neglected copy machines around town and in my dad’s office. We made 100 copies of the first comic, and they all sold in about two months; we’d never anticipated recovering our expenses, or anyone actually BUYING the books, to be honest. We just wanted to have a comic too, and found the most accessible way to make them. At this time I was already into the punk subculture and had been exposed to people who made zines and released records in much the same manner, but it was not until a few years later when I started writing zines and putting out records that I saw the inherent connections between these two realms of DIY entrepreneurship.

O’Shea: How many different languages has Swallow Me Whole been translated into–and how much are you involved in reviewing or approving the foreign editions?

Powell: So far, there are English and Spanish editions available, and there are French, Dutch, and Italian editions on the way in the coming months. Unfortunately, I can only read French (and I’m no master at that), but I do have total trust in Top Shelf to work with strong translators. It’s exciting to see my lettering transposed to different tongues!

O’Shea: How hard was it to tackle an issue like mental illness without allowing it to overwhelm the story?

Powell: Hopefully mental disorders didn’t overwhelm the story because it’s not a story “about” mental disorders—I see the book as being just as centered around aging, dignity, adolescence, death, and personal sovereignty. Having said that, a good degree of caution was certainly exercised to allow the characters’ subjective experiences carry weight and relevance without exploiting the nature of mental disorders for the sake of narrative.

O’Shea: How much, if at all, did your years of experience working with the developmentally disabled influence or inform your approach toward tackling Swallow Me Whole?

Powell: It’s tricky—on one hand, I don’t really see my line of work as directly influencing the book at all, but that’s because I take for granted that I’ve been close to disabilities all my life. My older brother Peyton has autism and some other minor learning disabilities, and I must’ve been twenty or so before I realized just how different my experience of growing up was from most of my friends. My entire perspective on affection, family communication, physical contact, rites of passage, playtime, change, and transition are filtered through this context. I credit my time spent working with folks with disabilities as drawing those experiences to my attention, but I’d give more of the credit to my family life in childhood.

O’Shea: Are there any particular artists that have influenced your sense of layout (use of negative space/lettering style)?

Powell: Chester Brown’s I Never Liked You opened me up to the possibilities of playing with margins, panel density, and space to control pacing and gravity—the early printings of that book had entirely black gutter/margin space which I’d never really seen before, besides in Mike Mignola books. Will Eisner, Lynda Barry, Dylan Horrocks, John Porcellino were all very impactful as well, especially on the lettering tip. As far as layout is concerned, I greatly enjoy making more traditionally structured comics; I feel that more conservative formal boundaries allows for greater experimentation within those boundaries. So I’d also credit Art Adams, Paul Smith, John Romita Jr., Dave Sim, Eric Talbot, and Bill Sienkiewicz for massive influence earlier in life.

O’Shea: How did you find out you were nominated for the LA Times Book Prize?

Powell: The folks at Top Shelf sent me an excited email one day.

O’Shea: How hard is it working on two graphic novels at once, The Silence Of Our Friends and Any Empire?

Powell: It’s not that hard, it just takes pacing, piecemealing, and a little discipline (of which I’m lacking). I tend to be more productive when I have more than one thing going on at once; I just quit my day job, but find that I get less done at the drawing table despite having more time to do it. If I’m able to bounce back and forth between projects, I get less burnout and can actually move through both projects more quickly.

O’Shea: Have you found an increased in interest in your past works, like Please Release–as the accolades for your latest work piled up? Do you think attention for Swallow Me Whole has helped benefit your webcomics at Top Shelf?

Powell: No real increased interest in older books that I’ve noticed, and I’m not actually sure whether or not anyone reads my webcomics anyway. I’m a lover of tangible paper comics and find it hard to look at webcomics, to be honest—there’s something missing without the weight and smell of the paper product. I do have a self-published minicomic version of those web-available stories, and it has sold surprisingly well, so yes is a solid answer.

O’Shea: Given your love of music (as evidenced by your years running Harlan Records) and more recently, your new band Universe–do you ever work out storytelling challenges in your musical pursuits and vice versa?

Powell: Yes, but usually narratives are lent to whatever medium works better. I was in a band from ’92 to 2007 called Soophie Nun Squad that had lots of narrative focus in its songs—we did skits, rock operettes, lots of hip hop narrative, and reflexive song referencing. Soophie was also comprised of many visual and performance artists, so we all leaned on the side of wanting to tell stories. After Soophie, I was a one-person narrative hardcore band called Wait. Wait was an attempt to bridge these two creative sides; I’d yell and play bass with a slide show or flash-card sequence, or a little busted puppetry. A more recent project called Divorce Chord had narrative focus as well, but my new band Universe is intentionally un-narrative, with the exception of one song thus far. Universe covers ground I miss by NOT doing zines and shorter comics so much anymore—the songs are more emotionally raw and immediate, less filtered, and more reactionary at times.

O’Shea: What were the highlights of the LA Times Book Festival for you? What were the dynamics like at the “Problem Child” panel with Laurie Halse Anderson, Suzanne Phillips, and Jacqueline Woodson?

Powell: The panel was absolutely great, and all three other panelists had insightful and relevant things to say. My personal highlight was walking through a doorway only to come face-to-face with Bob Barker. I also ate dozens of genetically modified teeny tiny hobbit squashes.