Diamond Comic Distributors

Publishing | John Jackson Miller profiles Diamond Comic Distributors to mark its 30th anniversary, offering a timeline of major events in the company’s history. [Comichron]

Conventions | Usagi Yojimbo creator Stan Sakai and AdHouse Publisher Chris Pitzer both report on their experiences at the Angoulême International Comics Festival. [Angoulême]

Retailing | Dark Horse Publisher Mike Richardson will give the keynote address at this week’s ComicsPRO Annual Membership Meeting. [NewsOK]

Retailing | Hypno Comics will open Saturday in Ventura, California. [Ventura County Star]

Wolverine: The Best There Is #3

Comics | David Brothers explains why Wolverine: The Best There Is is indeed the best Wolverine story of 2011: “Rather than being a story where Wolverine is the absolute best there is at what he does, and what he does is tear through anyone and everyone with ease, we get a story where Wolverine is forced to slow down, change his tactics, and think things through before really getting loose (because we have expectations for Wolverine stories, of course).” [4thletter!]

Commentary | Kristy Valenti looks at Habibi and Paying for It, two brown-covered graphic novels about male sexual obsession, a genre she dubs “dick lit.” [comiXology]

Creators | Zippy creator Bill Griffith is the guest on the video interview show Mr. Media Radio. [Mr. Media Radio Interviews]

Suicide Squad #6

Creators | Writer Adam Glass talks about the new story arc in DC Comics’ Suicide Squad that focuses on Harley Quinn. [USA Today]

Analysis | Nicolas Labarre looks at a particularly interesting six-panel sequence from Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon’s Preacher. [Comics and the U.S. South]

Digital | The Vietnamese Communist Party may think they can censor provocative comics like Killer With a Festering Head, but tech-savvy teens know better. [The Washington Post]

Comics | John Parker looks at Spawn through the lens of history: “For those read the comic during its initial publication, the Spawn Compendium is a virtual time machine, whooshing us back to the joy and confusion of our teens. For entirely new readers it must be like studying artifacts. Spawn is the quintessential ’90s comic, inseparable from the trends and events that lead to its creation, and its subsequent impact on the industry.” [ComicsAlliance]

Comics | William Cardini discusses his work on Rub the Blood, the ’90s Image tribute project edited by Ian Harker and Pat Aulisio. [The Daily Texan]

Comics | KC Carlson talks about the long-in-development The Judas Coin by Walt Simonson, which he got a sneak preview of when trapped at the Simonson house during an ice storm. [Comics Worth Reading]

I don’t mind the jokes at my expense. I’m used to it. Seth and Joe [Matt] have teased me about paying for sex for years. I’m used to it.

—Chester Brown tells Tom Spurgeon that people can crack all the jokes they want about him and his patron-of-prostitution memoir Paying For It. I guess it stands to reason: “Gets emotional about things” isn’t high on a list of ways to describe Chester Brown, if that book is any indication. What’s more interesting to me is that Brown’s fellow Drawn and Quarterly-published Canadian cartoonists Joe Matt and Seth are the tough customers who hazed Brown into developing this hardened exterior. It’s a dog-eat-dog world up there.

In all seriousness, please read Spurgeon’s excellent interview with Brown, which largely eschews discussion of the book’s central topic/argument and focuses on the impeccable craft with which that topic/argument was deployed. And check out Spurgeon’s entire run of Holiday Interviews, featuring creators ranging from Colleen Coover to Stephen Bissette to Art Spiegelman to Jeff Parker to Jeff Smith, plus critics, journalists, activists and more. His comics-related New Year’s resolutions are worth considering as well.

Indy publisher Drawn and Quarterly is making its first foray into digital media—and it’s on the Kobo Vox tablet, which has not been a big comics platform up till now. D+Q is are starting slow with just two books, Chester Brown’s Paying for It and Louis Riel: A Comic-Strip Biography, and the deal is nonexclusive, meaning the books could pop up on other platforms as well.

Both Kobo and D+Q are headquartered in Canada, which may or may not be a coincidence, but this was an interesting part of the PW story:

D&Q publisher and editor-in-chief Chris Oliveros said that e-book proceeds will be split 50/50 between its authors and the publisher, citing rights recommendations from the Writers Union of Canada. “D+Q has always been an author-centric company, it is this ethos that has shaped us into who we are today,” Oliveros said, “it only seemed natural to offer the fairest proposition to our authors.”

Of course, that’s after Kobo takes its share.

I was curious as to what other graphic novels are available on Kobo; their store lists 515 books in the graphic novel category, including Cowboys & Aliens; a selection of manga from Digital Manga, Yen Press, Manga University, and the long-defunct Comics One; Italian translations of Peanuts; and a number of graphic novels that were new to me. It’s an odd assortment, but Kobo was recently acquired by the Japanese company Rakuten so big things may be in its future.

Bill of Rights

Creators | Writer Peter David shares a “Fan/Pro Bill of Rights” related to proper behavior at conventions, starting with a “Prime Directive”: “Fans and Pros have the right to be treated by each other with the same courtesy that they themselves would expect to be treated. Fans and Pros who act like jerks abrogate the right to complain when they themselves are treated like jerks.” [Peter David]

Crime | A Denver judge sentenced Aaron Castro to 45 years in prison after Castro pleaded guilty to drug and extortion charges. Prosecutors say he ran a major methamphetamine distribution ring and laundered the profits by buying and selling valuable comics in the collector’s market. [KMGH Denver]

Digital | Robot 6 contributor Graeme McMillan catches an error in Marvel’s press release from last week: Marvel was not the first comics publisher to release an entire line of comics simultaneously in print and digital—Archie Comics was. [Blog@Newsarama]

Creators | Cartoonist Chester Brown, whose Louis Riel is among the semifinalists for Canada Reads 2012, answers 10 questions on the awards website. [CBC Books]

WWE Heroes

Comics | Joey Esposito looks at the surprising parallels between mainstream comics and the WWE. [IGN]

Creators | CTV profiles Hark! A Vagrant creator and “web com artist” Kate Beaton. [CTV]

Creators | Forbidden Planet post two short videos, one old, one recent, of the late Family Circus cartoonist Bil Keane discussing his work. [The Forbidden Planet Blog Log]

Creators | The local news station profiles Rhymes With Orange cartoonist Hilary Price, whose daily strip is one of the fresher offerings on the comics page these days. [Masslive.com]

Comics | John Porcellino’s deeply personal comics and the emotional connection forged during a comics reading helped one reader realize he was not alone. [Weekend]

Retailers | Newly opened Florida comics shop EPIC Comics aims to be the opposite of the dingy basement comics shop; its owners deliberately created an art gallery-like space embellished with superhero murals done with Sharpie markers. [East Orlando Sun]

Retailers | Several Nashua, New Hampshire-area retailers discuss sales of DC’s New 52 titles in their stores. [Nashua Telegraph]

Commentary | Johanna Draper Carlson reviews the first volume of the wine-tasting manga The Drops of God, which was so popular it actually affected the wine market in Japan and Korea. She finds the story strongly reminiscent of the foodie manga Oishinbo, but with a few twists of its own. [Comics Worth Reading]

Legion of Super-Heroes

Commentary | Colin Smith starts a series looking back at the Legion of Super-Heroes reboot circa 1989, when Keith Giffen, along with Tom and Mary Bierbaum, took the team five years into the future: “In many ways, Giffen’s Legion remains a bold and innovative comic book, and one tellingly marked by a deliberate attempt to apply something of the form of Dave Gibbons and Alan Moore’s storytelling techniques from Watchman to DC’s consistently under-performing future-heroes franchise. But through a debilitating brew of opaque craftsmanship, DC editorial fiat, and a misdiagnosis of the Legion’s commercial weaknesses, this bold new start for the Legion of Superheroes ended up contradicting many of the key reasons for the artistic and commercial achievements of Watchman and The Dark Knight Returns.” [Too Busy Thinking About My Comics]

Comics | Christopher Gondrom posts a brief meditation on the beginning and the ending of the Flight anthology, along with an excerpt from the eighth and final volume. [Suvudu]

Culture | JL Bell presents a fascinating history of Guy Fawkes in America, starting with Boston revelers (who were only vaguely aware of who Fawkes was and what he had done) and exploring Alan Moore’s use of the Fawkes mask in V for Vendetta and its subsequent adoption by 4Chan users and Occupy protestors. [Boston 1775]

The books, all by Canadian author, were selected by public vote from a list of 40 nominees, and will be whittled down to five finalists chosen by celebrity panelists to be defended in February during the annual Canada Reads debates.

Jeff Lemire’s acclaimed Essex County Trilogy last year became the first graphic novel to make the program’s list of finalists. However, it was quickly voted down by judges who couldn’t get past its “lack of words.”

Published by Montreal-based Drawn and Quarterly, the Harvey Award-winning Louis Riel chronicles the life of the crusader for Métis rights, controversial leader of the 1869-1870 Red River Rebellion, and “Father of Manitoba.”

(via Sequential)

SPX, or the Small Press Expo, returns to the Bethesda North Marriott Hotel and Conference Center in Bethesda, Md. this weekend.

The show’s special guests include Roz Chast, Jim Woodring, Diane Noomin, Jim Rugg, Ann Telnaes, Chester Brown, Johnny Ryan, Craig Thompson and Matthew Thurber, and fans who attend will also have the opportunity to meet and/or hear from Kevin Huizenga, Anders Nilsen, Jessica Abel, Sarah Glidden, Alex Robinson, Brian Ralph, Mike Dawson, Meredith Gran, Roger Langridge and Julia Wertz, just to name a few. I would also be remiss if I didn’t point out that our own Chris Mautner will be attending and conducting a Q&A with Johnny Ryan on Saturday, so be sure to tell him hi for us.

In addition to a lot of great talent, SPX also offers a full schedule of programming and the yearly Ignatz Awards. And a whole lot of new books and cool things will be available at the show:

• Drawn + Quarterly will have a ton of new books at the show, as detailed here, like Brain Ralph’s Daybreak collection, the Death-Ray hardcover and Big Questions, among many others.

• As we noted yesterday, AdHouse and Tom Scioli will have an American Barbarian print at the show. They’ll also have guests like Jim Rugg, Lamar Abrams, Ethan Rilly and Sterling Hundley at their table.

• Jennifer Hayden’s Underwire, from Top Shelf, makes its debut:

Underwire

• Roger Langridge’s The Show Must Go On! collection from BOOM! Town will debut there, and Langridge will also have a Snarked! print:

Snarked!

• Kevin Huizenga will have some new stuff at the show, not the least of which is a new Ganges book from Fantagraphics.

• NBM will debut Stargazing Dog and Ernie Colon’s Inner Sanctum at the show.

• The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund will host the first Jeff Alexander Memorial Benefit Auction, named for a cartoonist and an organizer of SPX and the Ignatz Awards. He passed away earlier this year. The auction includes pieces from Alexander ’s collection that he donated to the CBLDF, including original art by Charles Vess and Jeff Smith, Tony Millionaire, and Roger Langridge. The auction also includes contributions from Keith Knight, Raina Telgemeier, Jeffrey Brown and many more.

• A signed and numbered edition of Craig Thompson’s Habibi will be available from the CBLDF during the show. And Sara Varon will be at their table on Saturday signing Bake Sale.

• The SPX has a whole bunch more listed on their site, including Mike Dawson’s Troop 142, Pope Hats #2 by Ethan Rilly, Old-Time Hockey Tales by Robert Ullman and Jeffrey Brown, Monster Isle: Big Monster Stuff by Joey Weiser and more.

Chester Brown

“It’s hard to imagine a Hollywood adaptation that would stay true to the book’s political message. That would be a problem for me. I doubt I could be convinced to sell the rights to an American company — filmmakers would be very tempted to turn the ‘Denise’-and-Chester story into a variation of ‘Pretty Woman.’ The reality of our relationship is nothing like that film.”

–Cartoonist and (ironically monogamous) prostitution enthusiast Chester Brown, on the prospect of seeing a big-screen version of his memoir of life as a john, Paying For It, in an event report and interview from CBR’s James Gartler. It’s just as well, really: Based on Brown’s gaunt, vacant-eyed self-portraiture in that book, the only actor I can think of who could convincingly play the role is Jack Skellington, and I’m pretty sure that since The Nightmare Before Christmas he’s been concentrating primarily on live theater.

The subject matter certainly didn’t hurt coverage any, in fact it’s colorful and controversial nature drove a lot of coverage: Brown meticulously chronicles every time he patronized a prostitute between 1996 and 2003, in the process formulating and defending a particular point-of-view regarding the evils of romantic love and relationships and the relative virtues of paying for sex.

Between the first time I read it and the second time I read it (it’s that kind of book), I read somewhere around 50 million reviews of it and articles about it and Brown and his position. Two months after release, and all that ink and virtual ink spilled over it, a formal review from me seems kind of superfluous at this point.

Instead, here are a few thoughts about the book…

1.) The book opens with the cartoonist breaking up with his live-in girlfriend…sort of. She announces that she thinks she’s falling in love with someone else, would like to try dating that person. Brown gives his blessing, and they decide to keep living together and see where it goes.

Cut to a scene of Brown walking down the street with the little comics avatars of his fellow Canadian cartoonists Seth (Wimbledon Green, Palookaville) and Joe Matt (Spent, Peepshow).

The pair have fairly big roles in the story—Dwight Garner refereed to them as a “wise-guy geek chorus” in his New York Times book review—and when I saw their first appearance, I felt a sudden surge of a mixture of surprise, glee, excitement, recognition and comfort.

I imagine it must be something like what little boys must have felt like reading Marvel Comics in the 1960s, and seeing Spider-Man sudden swing into a Fantastic Four comic, or Daredevil or Dr. Strange bumping into one another on their shared streets of New York City.

There’s something undeniably cool about seeing comic book characters appear where you don’t expect them, or interacting with one another, although it’s a coolness that has been diluted to the point it probably doesn’t even register in superhero comics anymore, given that Superman started playing sports with Batman and Robin back in 1941, and the modern Big Two super-universes are in constant states of crossover (And hell, Archie can meet the Punisher or president or Kiss, and Mr. Spock run into Wolverine or Cosmic Boy).

As cartoonists who are also characters in other comics, Seth and Joe Matt have a peculiar status and, in this narrative, it was the Canadian art memoir comics equivalent of, I don’t know, seeing Johnny Storm and Bobby Drake in a Spider-Man arc, only you’re seeing it for the first time.

The book even rewards familiarity with these characters and their previous adventures, like in a scene where Brown brings up prostitute review message boards, and the Matt character says it’s too disturbing to which Brown replies “How can this be disturbing for someone who watches porn almost 24 hours a day?”

Which isn’t just a quip, of course—it’s practically the plot of Matt’s memoir Spent.

Aside from the crossover thrill, it’s worth noting that the scenes with the other cartoonists are among the most enjoyable to read in the book, because they tend to be the most funny; Brown shows himself debating with himself and friends and even some of the prostitutes (to some extent) about the ethics and morality of prostitution and love, sex and relationships in general, but he’s apparently most comfortable around his friend cartoonists, so those exchanges tend to be the most honest and amusing.

2.) In that same chapter, the trio are hanging out in a hotel room the night before a comics convention, and, looking at the program, they wonder what Playboy Playmates are doing attending a comics convention.

The next day, Brown sees a favorite Playmate, selling hugs, photos and autographs for $50, and though tempted, is too embarrassed by the thought someone might see him (Which is funny, as he puts his thoughts on the subject in this book, so everyone does see him, sorta—the magic of autobio comics!). It’s at this point he thinks, “For another fifty-or-so I could probably pay a prostitute,” and his odyssey begins.

It disturbed me to no end to think of these three, each a master of his craft, in a hotel room, at a comics convention, talking about Playmates, one of them even thinking of buying a prostitute.

Because, at that point, I realized that maybe there’s no such thing as comics creator groupies, and that the most talented, most famous cartoonist can’t simply go to a convention and have scores of women throwing themselves at them.

That completely dashed by 40-year-plan, hatched when I was 14 or so, to finally become super-popular with the ladies by growing up to be a famous cartoonist.

Damn it. I should have learned to play guitar. Or even drums! Brown’s last girlfriend left him for a drummer!

3.) Brown is not a bad-looking guy. Here’s his author photo in the back of the book:

There are even more handsome pictures elsewhere on the Internet.  He doesn’t seem like the sort of guy who would have to pay for sex, you know? But then, I guess I don’t really know that many johns in real-life, just the ones I see on various incarnations of Law & Orders, and in the occasional Batman comic, and johns aren’t glorified in either context.

Also, Brown draws himself as a grim, expressionless little bobble-headed skeleton, looking like Harold Grey drawing of the male half of the couple in Grant Wood’s American Gothic, so it was kind of surprising to see that he’s not really the undead little goblin I was reading about for the first couple hundred pages, you know?

4.) There’s a very big, very transformative twist at the end of the book, the sort that retroactively colors everything that came before. It’s not actually presented as a “twist,” but rather a plot point; it functions like a twist though.

Somewhat frustratingly, seems like the real story—from a dramatic stand-point, if not from the author’s intentions. I won’t say what it is, but…well, okay, I will: Chester Brown was a ghost the whole time! No, I’m kidding, the twist is that he and the prostitutes are really all the same person. No, actually Chester Brown is Keyser Soze, and he made the whole thing up. And “Rosebud” is the name of Brown’s penis.

5.) I really enjoyed the reading experience, and even wrestling with many of the issues Brown brings up in the back of my head while reading, but, months later, I still can’t shake the fact that there was a more interesting story to tell, and that Brown hints at it without getting into it. Maybe in Paying For It II: Pay Harder…?

It’s been a few months now, and I’m still not sure how I feel about the 30 pages of back matter, notes and appendices in which Brown expands on the arguments we see made in conversations throughout the book.

They seem sort of foreign to the graphic novel reading experience, but then, it’s Brown’s graphic novel; he can shape that experience however he wants.

It’s inclusion is definitely unusual, which makes it novel, which makes it sort of exciting, a great cartoonist using comics and prose to educate and argue larger social issues…

…but engaging it seems well beyond my job description as a comics critic, and I don’t think anyone really cares about my personal opinions regarding the legality or regulation or sadness of prostitution.

I imagine more readers are more interested in whether or not the book is good and worth reading, and it is at that. Beyond its qualities, it’s also unlike just about any other book-length comic you’ve probably read, which in and of itself recommends it as something to seek out.

Hello and welcome to another edition of What Are You Reading? Today’s special guest is Shannon Wheeler, New Yorker cartoonist and creator of the Eisner Award-winning comic book Too Much Coffee Man, Oil & Water, the Eisner-nominated I Thought You Would Be Funnier and the upcoming Grandpa Won’t Wake Up.

To see what Shannon and the Robot 6 crew have been reading, click below …

*****

Tom Bondurant

Superman Family #203

Last week my brother-in-law was in a used bookstore — actually, I guess “used-book store” would be more accurate — and called me asking what random old DCs and Marvels I’d like. One of the fruits of his labors was September-October 1980′s Superman Family #203, a decent little anthology inked mostly by Vince Coletta (so they all tended to look the same) and written and penciled by various DC stalwarts. The lead was a Supergirl story, “The Supergirl From Planet Earth,” written by Jack C. Harris and penciled by Win Mortimer. Seems there’s a formerly-comatose blonde teenager in Kara’s old hometown Midvale who suddenly starts manifesting Kryptonian powers and zipping around in a certain blue-skirted super-suit. Moreover, when questioned by Supergirl, the new kid pretty much recites Kara’s first speech to her cousin, about the destruction of Argo City, etc. Naturally I was reminded of Peter David and Ed Benes’ “Many Happy Returns” storyline, but Harris and Mortimer only have 12 pages to introduce another complication and then resolve everything — and resolve it they do, using X-Kryptonite, a medallion made of lead, and some conveniently-placed acid. It’s a neat little story which, although inconsequential in the greater scheme of things, is still entertaining.

Since I’m always interested in how a Lois Lane solo series might work (once more), I read “Lost,” another 12-pager, written by Marv Wolfman and penciled by Bob Oksner. As with the Supergirl story, there’s a lot of plot in these pages: Lois is kidnapped and mind-wiped, escapes, gets picked up by a helpful widower, falls in love with same, and then uses her (unwiped) martial arts skills to fight off the goons who eventually catch up with her. The story ends with an amnesiac Lois wandering off into the woods, Bruce-Banner-style, so I’ll have to seek out #204 to see how it ends. Here, I’m not sure the format does this story many favors (especially with regard to Ted, the widower). It might do better played out over a few issues of that hypothetical solo title. (That would also leave room to cross over and/or be mentioned in the main Superman books, too….)

Finally, “The Critic Killer” (written by E. Nelson Bridwell and penciled by George Tuska) is a tale of the Earth-2 Lois and Clark, set in the early ’50s when the two were newly married — and when TV was still new enough that the Daily Star didn’t have its own critic. Along comes Lana Lang, daughter of a professor Clark knew from Smallville, seeking to carve out some column space for just that purpose. Clark (editor of the Star, like you didn’t know) gives her the job, and she promptly goes all scorched-earth on the new sitcom from a notoriously thin-skinned writer. Lois realizes nothing good can come of Lana’s scathing review, and sure enough, the writer traps Lana and Lois in a specially-modified elevator car. Because Lois — in what strikes me as a bit of Earth-2 Superdickery — is wearing a “mood ring” which telepathically alerts Clark to sudden changes in her emotions, Superman saves them (of course). However, we learn that the writer bought his elevator-trap from Luthor, still in prison but still scheming about taking down Superman. Dun dun dunnnn! Again, it was a clever little tale whose eight pages were more concerned with establishing Lana’s bona fides (this was apparently the retcon introducing Lana to Lois and Clark) and maybe making Lois a little jealous, than with a straightforward adventure/suspense story. Along those lines, it laid the groundwork for future stories involving Lana and/or Luthor, and I’m now curious to see how fleshed-out the “Mr. And Mrs. Superman” stories got.

And speaking of Earth-2, I read Invaders Classic Volume 1, written by Roy Thomas (who else?), penciled mostly by Frank Robbins, and inked by Vince Coletta and Frank Springer. This paperback reprinted the first several issues of The Invaders, plus ancillary issues, and it’s pretty much non-stop action from page one. Essentially, the Invaders — Captain America and Bucky, the Human Torch and Toro, and the Sub-Mariner — fight Nazi super villains, as depicted by Robbins’ hyperkinetic pencils. What I took away from this book, though, was that even though he was working at Marvel, and even though DC was, at the time, doing contemporary Earth-2 stories featuring the Justice Society, Roy Thomas desperately wanted to write a wartime JSA book. I have no idea how much Thomas drew from those old Timely comics to come up with the various Axis bad guys and the heroic Liberty Legion (although reprinted text pages help out in this regard) — but there sure are conspicuous references to moving “faster than a speeding bullet” and being part of “seven soldiers” of something-or-other. Actually, I take part of that back — the first baddies the Invaders face are a trio of faux-Teutonic godlings, and I thought “oh, here’s a riff on Evil Thor.” Still, though, the Liberty Legion contains 1) a speedster, 2) a guy who stretches, 3) a superheroine with black hair and a red-and-blue costume, 4) the Blue Diamond, who kinda looks like Green Lantern if you squint, 5) a flying guy with big bird-wings on his back, 6) Jack Frost, an ice-based hero who looks like he’s got Aquaman-style scales, and 7) the Patriot, another red-and-blue-clad figure who’s the group’s moral center. Maybe it was just me, but I had more fun looking for those kinds of references than I did reading the stories themselves. Lucky for the series, though, the last couple of issues introduce Union Jack and Baron Blood, a British hero and his undead foe, and The Invaders starts to build its own little corner of Marvel history, instead of reminding readers of others’. Lucky for Roy Thomas, too, that it wouldn’t be long before he was writing DC’s All-Star Squadron — otherwise, I suspect his brain might have exploded.

(By the way, I’m not up on Marvel history as much as some — but doesn’t Union Jack’s debut in World War I make him Marvel-Earth’s first costumed hero, preceding the Human Torch by at least 20 years?)

Michael May

Lois Lane and the Resistance

As I said in this week’s Food or Comics, I wasn’t sure if I was going to buy Lois Lane and the Resistance or not. I flipped through it in the store though and decided to get it for its visuals and action sequences. It looked like fun. And there were some exciting parts, but unfortunately, this still isn’t the Lois Lane comic I’m waiting for. Lois spends the entire issue running around doing the bidding of other people. The story opens with Perry White’s sending her on a fluff piece instead of covering the impending war. The Lois Lane I want to read about doesn’t get sent to cover Fashion Week. She doesn’t have to whine and argue that she’s a serious reporter; everyone should know that she is and treat her that way. But this Lois…even when the story gets going she’s still acting as someone else’s agent, and not even a particularly competent one. This isn’t the story of a strong, empowered reporter that I’ve been craving.

I also read Mystery Men #2 and liked it, but it reminded me why I became a trade-waiter. The first issue got me all excited to continue the story, but now I’m growing impatient with its being rationed out in small chunks. Some cool stuff happens this issue — another masked hero joins the investigation and there’s a major revelation about the villain — but it’s hard to say that I enjoyed this particular chunk of the story as its own, self-contained unit.

Finally, I read the first volume of Jason DeAngelis and Aldin Viray’s Captain Nemo, a manga re-telling of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. There are some cool, imaginative things going on in it, like the story’s taking place in an alternate timeline where Napoleon won at Waterloo and has taken over the world. The 19-year-old son of the original Captain Nemo is operating the Nautilus II in rebellion against the French Empire, providing this version with an actual plot (something that Jules Verne’s novel lacks). Viray’s obviously had a great time creating the steampunk world for the story; the environment of the book looks great. And I like how it’s still hitting major beats in Verne’s story, but reworking them enough to keep them exciting and follow DeAngelis’ plot.

But the book falls victim to some standard manga tropes and the characters are boringly familiar. Nemo is the classic manga hero: handsome, but stand-offish, but really very gentle at heart. Camille Pierpont (who stands in for Professor Aronnax, Conseil, and Ned Land by ending up prisoner on the Nautilus II after Nemo saves her from drowning) is the traditional manga heroine: headstrong, judgmental, entitled, but supernaturally gifted with wild animals and really just one good kiss away from calming down into someone likeable. Even the characters’ designs are unimaginative; something that Aldin admits to in the sketchbook section where he says that he gave Nemo “the standard Harlock look” and Camille “the typical female lead character look.” The other crew members of the Nautilus II are just as immediately recognizable: Smart and Cocky Guy With Glasses, Bad Attitude Girl, Plucky Kid, etc.

Brigid Alverson

Treasury of Victorian Murder

This week was murder, at least in terms of what I have been reading. I got an advance copy of Rick Geary’s latest Treasury of Victorian Murder book, The Lives of Sacco and Vanzetti, which will be debuting at San Diego Comic-Con this year. Like all of Geary’s books, it’s cool, almost clinical, with the timelines and details carefully laid out in a heavy-bordered grid and a narrative voice straight out of a PBS documentary Geary’s objective voice suits the story well, because the guilt or innocence of Sacco and Vanzetti is a matter of some controversy, but it does make the book seem rather dry.

Also on the stack is The Green River Killer, written by Jeff Jensen and illustrated by Jonathan Case. Jensen’s father was a detective on the case, and the story is told from his point of view. The story gets rolling with Gary Ridgeway’s confession and skips back and forth in time as the police bring him to the sites of the murders and then flash back to their first encounters with the same scenes. The art is straightforward and linear, but there are some nice atmospheric moments.

And in the prose realm, I’m reading The Poisoner’s Handbook, which would be more aptly titled “The Toxicologist’s Handbook.” Set in 1920s New York, the book follows the work of pioneering medical examiner Charles Norris and toxicologist Alexander Gettler as they investigate various murders — grouped by the poison involved. Some they solve, some they don’t, and sometimes they are simply frustrated by the difficulty of proving their toxicological case in court. It’s a bit overly dramatic but a good read nonetheless, and I’m learning a bit of chemistry from it too.

Tim O’Shea

IDW’s Rocketeer Adventures #1

Rocketeer Adventures #1 and #2: OK, I have to admit, I completely missed the first issue’s release. So I picked up issue #2 this week, Mark Waid teamed with Chris Weston, Darwyn Cooke, Geof Darrow, Lowell Francis with Gene Ha (all colored by Dave Stewart) and realized: “you were a fool to miss issue #1.” Fortunately I snagged the last copy of issue #1 at my local store. And I am torn which is my favorite from that issue, it’s a close race between John Cassady colored by Laura Martin or Kurt Busiek teamed with legendary Michael Kaluta (honorable mention Mike Allred colored by Laura Allred). But after serious consideration I have decided that Kaluta (inked by Stewart) is my favorite. There’s not a bad story in either issue–and I am looking forward to issue #3.

Thunderbolts #159 is a double-sized issue with multiple creative teams on different tales. But all you need to know is this: Jen Van Meter writes a team-up (of sorts) between Ghost and John Walker. I really hope that Marvel announces some more work for Van Meter at San Diego, because she deserves a monthly assignment.

Captain America: Given Bucky’s current status quo (given the Fear Itself event), I am confused as to why I would care what happened to James in this issue. But all my annoyance washed away when I got to see Chris Samnee draw more Nick Fury in the second half of the issue.

Did you catch my interview with Roger Langridge about the preview of his new Kaboom book, Snarked #0, which will sell for $1 in August? Did I convince you to tell your retailer to get a copy for you? You have until June 30 for the Previews deadline (Diamond Code: JUN110963). I mean it when I commit to this series being destined for my best of 2011 books.

Shannon Wheeler

Paying for It

There’s a narrow road to success if a creator already has a lot of good books. If it’s too different from what came before, I’ll hate it, and if it’s too similar to what came before, then I’ll hate it, too. Chester Brown created my favorite comics: Ed the Happy Clown and The Playboy. So, of course, I was disappointed with Paying for It.

It’s an autobiographical book about Chester Brown’s decision to satisfy his sexual needs by being with prostitutes. The best part of the book is when he details his internal conflict and anxiety when he first hires women to have sex with him. Unfortunately, the book drags as he uses his friends as characters to stage pro and con arguments regarding prostitution. The books drags even more when he reiterates his beliefs for the third… and fourth time. He avoids talking about his final relationship in respect for her desire for privacy. This could have been an emotional resolution in the book — Chester finding a relationship that he’s comfortable with. They are both happy with monogamous, but independent, lives where he continues to pay for sex. Any editor could have trimmed 20 percent of the redundant ranting to make it a smoother read and then pushed for a conclusion with emotional depth and acute observations similar to the book’s beginning. Chester Brown could have had a book that matched or succeeded his earlier work. As it stands, the book is a vaguely interesting read as a political diatribe and an okay read as an emotional journey, but is redundant as one and unresolved as the other. Chester is still a great creator; it’s too bad his editor hasn’t kept pace. It’s a good book that could have been a great book.

Okko

Okko

It’s a solid read that takes place in old Japan with demons, ronins, monks and magic. The book is skillfully put together with natural storytelling, attractive drawings and pretty coloring. It’s not a book you’ll ponder much after putting it down. As a book in the same genre as the great Usagi Yojimbo, it holds up as a solid and entertaining read.

New Yorker: On the Money

I always grab collections of New Yorker cartoons. This one has the strength of being assembled by the New Yorker’s current cartoon editor, Bob Mankoff. By choosing financially themed comics from 1925-2009, Mankoff shows an economic history of our country through humor. It’s telling that the rich-screw-the-poor is a recurrent theme that doesn’t change from the earliest comics to the recent ones. The repetition left me a little cold. Maybe not cold – but depressed. If the economics of this country could change the way families, gender roles and race relations have changed, I might like the book better. But I guess that’s not really the book’s fault.

Cowboy Wally

Always funny. I’m constantly amazed at how well this book has held up. I consider it one of the best comics created.

Underground

I just picked this one up, but the first issue shows potential. I love the art and story. Jeff Parker and Steve Lieber are great comic creators. I’m sure they’ll deliver.

Good-Bye Chunky Rice

Cartoonists rarely produce great work right out of the starting gate. It usually it takes lots of time and lots of effort for an artist to hone their style and storytelling abilities. Debut comics — even those made by the greats — rarely offer any indication of what type of treasures lie ahead. Even Chris Ware had to make Floyd Farland before he could produce Jimmy Corrigan.

Still, sometimes a cartoonist seems to spring out of the sea foam fully formed, producing a work that not only draws attention and great buzz, but also indicates exactly where they’re headed — what direction they plan to take as an artist and what you as a reader can expect from them.

Here then, are six debut comics that made people go “Who the heck is this guy? And why haven’t I heard of him before?” I’m sure I missed someone. I always do. Be a dear and let me know who I forgot in the comments section, won’t you?

Night Fisher

1. Goodbye Chunky Rice by Craig Thompson. True, Thompson had done a few mini-comics before Chunky was published, but those weren’t seen by many until years later. Chunky was really the book that introduced readers to Thompson. The reaction to the book was swift and laudatory. I remember people buzzing about the book at SPX that year, wondering who this guy was and how could he produce so moving and assured a work at so young an age. With only three major books to his name so far (four if you count this year’s forthcoming Habibi), he’s remained one of the more beloved and significant creators in the alt-comix landscape.

2. Clumsy by Jeffrey Brown. Rare is the cartoonist who gets a glowing cover blurb from Chris Ware on their very first comic. Brown, however, was lucky enough to do so with his debut book, a cringe-tastic tale of awkward, and ultimately doomed, young love. He’s shown quite a bit of diversity since then, especially in humor books like Incredible Change-Bots, but I don’t know that he’s produced anything as emotionally affecting as this particular title yet.

3. Yummy Fur by Chester Brown. Looking back, it seems hard to believe that Yummy Fur was Brown’s first comic, that he was that good right out of the gate with so few missteps, but it’s true. That very first issue, with the start of the Ed the Happy Clown serial, stories about toilet paper that killed people and oddities like Walrus Blubber Sandwich let readers know from the get-go that there was something unique and potentially unsettling about this particular comic. I remember reading that first issue in my local comic store at the time and being profoundly unnerved by it. So much so that it actually scared me off of Brown’s subsequent work for several years afterward. That’s gotta be a mark of some kind of quality, no?

Lose #1

4. Bone by Jeff Smith. You could ostensibly argue that Smith’s first professional comics work was Bone’s precursor, Thorn, a comic strip he drew for his college newspaper while enrolled at Ohio State University. You could make that argument, but I’m not going to. For all intents and purposes, that first issue of Bone was Smith’s debut into the world of comics, a debut which proceeded to change the landscape for all-ages and alternative comics for years to come. Smith had obviously spent a inordinate amount of time thinking about and developing the series beforehand, since  it’s so assured and fully formed from the first page. His craft and storytelling abilities are just as confident in that first issue as they are in the last.

5. Night Fisher by R Kikuo Johnson. As with Chunky Rice, there was quite a bit of hype and brouhaha over the publication of Johnson’s inaugural work. Publisher Gary Groth even compared its release to the arrival of the first issue of Love and Rockets, or words to that effect. It’s not that good, although this tale of disaffected adolescence and drug dealing in Hawaii is certainly compelling and suggests that Johnson is an artist capable of producing great work. Unfortunately, he has yet to follow up on that initial promise. But Night Fisher still marks him as an artist to watch out for.

6. Lose #1 by Michael DeForge. What planet is DeForge from that he is able to produce such stellar work with such seeming effortlessness? And how is he able to make comics so profoundly creepy? So far he’s produced three issues of Lose and a rather wide assortment of mini-comics and anthology contributions with next to no drop in quality. The confidence this guy exudes on the page, especially in that first issue, is rather shocking honestly. I say we can expect great things from him, but he’s already produced great things, starting with that very first issue of Lose.

its a strange thing when the most visually exciting sequence in a chester brown book are of his dick being inspected. not bad, mind you. I think chester brown has a big dick. he keeps saying it’s six inches, but girls keep saying “ow”, so he’s measuring wrong.

–Via Twitter, Sammy Harkham, editor of Kramers Ergot and author of Crickets, asks the hard questions (sorry) about Chester Brown’s new memoir about his life as a patron of prostitutes, Paying For It. I’m enjoying Fear Itself and Flashpoint just fine, but as far as summer buzz books go, they sure don’t spark conversations like this.

On a more serious tip (sorry!), Harkham also echoes an observation I myself had about the book. I won’t spoil it lest I call down the wrath of Drawn & Quarterly (although Harkham does spill the beans in his tweet, so be warned, I guess?), but by far the most interesting aspect of his relationship with prostitutes, one that pretty much turns everything else in the book on its ear, is crammed into the final few pages and barely dealt with at all. “To me, that’s where the book should start,” says Harkham. “That’s a book.”

Have you read it? What did you think?

Alpha Flight

Welcome to Food or Comics?, where every week we talk about what comics we’d buy on Wednesday based on certain spending limits — $15 and $30 — as well as what we’d get if we had extra money or a gift card to spend on a “Splurge” item.

Check out Diamond’s release list or ComicList if you’d like to play along in our comments section.

Michael May

Even if I didn’t have any money at all, I’d stand on the street corner and beg until I collected three bucks to buy Alpha Flight #0.1 ($2.99). I’ve never not bought an issue of Alpha Flight and I’m not breaking that streak this week. Fortunately I have $15 and can afford to get not only that, but also Rocketeer Adventures #1 ($3.99), which I’m only slightly less excited about. And since I’ve still got some money I’d add Drums #1 ($2.99) – because it’s been a while since I’ve read a voodoo story and this looks like a good one – and Snake Eyes #1 ($3.99). I’m not a GI Joe fan, but ninjas are cool and expect that I’d be entertained by a comic about one who fights an evil spy organization.

If I had $30, I’d trade-wait Drums and Snake Eyes and grab Courtney Crumrin Tales #2: The League of Ordinary Gentlemen ($5.99) because Ted Naifeh. Then I’d add Batgirl: The Flood ($14.99), because Batgirl has come up in a couple of recent conversations about modern comics that are sort of quietly fun and appropriate for younger readers without being “kids comics.” I want to check that out.

I’ve got a couple of splurge items this week. I’ve been catching up on The Adventures of Dr. McNinja online and it’s hilariously fantastic. I definitely want to support that by buying The Adventures of Dr. McNinja: Night Powers ($19.99). But I’m also extremely interested in Winshluss’ darkly beautiful and wordless take on Pinocchio ($26.95) from Last Gasp.

Chris Arrant

Courtney Crumrin Tales #2: League of Ordinary Gentlemen

If I had $15, the belle of my comics buyin’ ball would be Ted Naifeh’s Courtney Crumrin Tales #2: League of Ordinary Gentlemen (Oni, $5.99). Naifeh continues to amaze me, and although he might be overshadowed at Oni by Bryan Lee O’Malley he does amazing work. I love this prequel story of Courtney’s ward, Aloysius. Second up would be DMZ #65 (DC/Vertigo, $3.99), which writer Brian Wood said is the first ending for the series –- with the finale coming later this year. Third and final would be Avengers #13 (Marvel, $3.99) for Chris Bachalo’s amazing work; in fact, the previews for this push me even more to buy it than his name alone. I still think him and Bendis could do a great, and great-selling, Dr. Strange series.

If I had $30, I’d double back and pick up the new Rocketeer Adventures #1 (IDW, $3.99) and then spend the rest of my money on Ross Campbell’s Shadoweyes In Love (SLG, $12.95). Seriously, why isn’t Ross Campbell more appreciated than he is?

For my splurge, I’d spend my hard-earned money on Chester Brown’s Paying For it (D&Q, $24.95). I’m buying this based on Brown’s name and previous work, as well as the review Tom Spurgeon gave it a couple days ago.

Chris Mautner

Paying for It

If I had $15: This is a mostly “already own, but let me recommend” type of week. The main exception would be Liar’s Kiss ($14.95), Eric Skillman and Jhomar Soriano’s noirish detective story about a detective who’s surveillance case takes a turn for the gruesome. Skillman is best known as the top designer over at the Criterion Collection, and he’s done a couple of crime-themed comics titled Egg. I have a strong suspicion this is going to be very good.

If I had $30: Paying for It ($24.95) is clearly the book of the week, and surely one of the most anticipated and talked-about books of the year to date. I offered my own thoughts on it here. To sum up: It deals with a touchy subject, prostitution, in a rather forthright and honest way, which may make some uncomfortable. It also makes some proposals about the nature of romantic love and relationships that may irk others. On the other hand, it’s by one of the finest cartoonists alive today and offers a fascinating, at times even funny, look at a world rarely viewed in broad daylight.

If all that hits your “ick” button too much however, let me suggest Eye of the Majestic Creature ($18.99), a lovely little collection of comics by relative newcomer Leslie Stein, mainly concerning a young girl named Larrybear (basically a stand-in for Stein) and her adventures with her best friend, an anthropomorphic guitar. I wasn’t sure what to expect when I picked this up, but Stein quickly won me over with her charm and good humor.

Splurge: If you’re looking for a great book to splurge on, look no further than French cartoonist Winshluss’ rather loose adaptation of Pinocchio ($29.95). I picked this up at MoCCA this year and it was easily one of the best purchases I made, a tour-de-force that reimagines the little wooden boy as a metal machine housing some nasty weapons of destruction, Jimminy Cricket as a slacker, stoned cockroach and more. Yes it’s a puerile and “oh so naughty” take on a classic fairy tale, (think classic-era underground comics) but masterfully done, full of sharp, knife-edge humor and wonderful art. Highly recommended.

Graeme McMillan

IDW’s Rocketeer Adventures #1

If I had $15 this week, I’d probably blow more than half of it immediately on DC Comics Presents Batman: Dark City (DC, $7.99), a collection of a little-remembered three-part Peter Milligan-written story from the 1990s that accidentally served as the basis for a lot of the Gotham mythology in Grant Morrison’s The Return Of Bruce Wayne arc (It’s been a long time since I read it, but I remember the Kieron Dwyer art being pretty great, as well). I also wouldn’t be able to resist IDW’s Rocketeer Adventures #1 ($3.99), the start of a new anthology series about Dave Stevens’ famous character with work by Kurt Busiek, Mike Allred and Mike Mignola, amongst many others. With the $3 left to me, I’d give in again to nostalgia and pick up Alpha Flight #0.1 (Marvel, $2.99); I read the original John Byrne stories when I was ten years old, in the back of Marvel UK’s Secret Wars reprint title, and remember them far more fondly than they deserve… It’ll be a depressing but necessary sight to see what they’ve become today, I think.

If I had $30, I’d continue my Batman fix with the first issue of Scott Snyder’s Batman: Gates of Gotham (DC, $2.99), before picking up regular purchases like Justice League of America #57 (DC, $2.99), Legion of Super-Heroes #13 (DC, $2.99) and recent addition (at least until Cullen Bunn leaves), Superman/Batman #84 (DC, $2.99).

I’m torn when it comes to splurging. I mean, the superhero fan in me is very, very tempted by The Flash Omnibus By Geoff Johns Vol. 1 (DC, $75), especially as I’ve not read the majority of those stories before, but I have to admit, I think Paying For It (Drawn & Quarterly, $24.95), Chester Brown’s book about prostitution that, from the sounds of it, is part admission memoir and part polemic, would be more bang for my buck. So to speak.

Fear Itself #1

Publishing | The drop in year-over-year sales in the direct market slowed in April, with periodicals slipping 1.75 percent and graphic novels just .84 percent. Overall sales were down 1.46 percent for April and 6.5 percent for the first four months of the year. Marvel topped Diamond’s comics chart with Fear Itself #1, while DC led the graphic novel category with the 15th volume of Fables. [ICv2.com]

Crime | Police evacuated the bus terminal in downtown Ann Arbor, Michigan, Friday afternoon after a suspicious package was discovered across the street. The Michigan State Police bomb squad was called in, and it was determined the mysterious package was merely a briefcase-shaped media kit promoting Acura’s involvement with Marvel’s Thor. A writer for Automobile, whose offices are next to the terminal, had discarded the “S.H.I.E.L.D. Assessment Test” kit in the recycling bin, but it wasn’t picked up — apparently because it isn’t recyclable. [WXYZ, Jalopnik]

San Diego Convention Center

Comic-Con | Mark Evanier discusses a new hotel tax proposed by San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders to pay for the planned expansion of the city’s convention center. There would be a 3 percent tax on rooms closest to the convention center, the location of Comic-Con International, with others being taxed between 1 and 2 percent, depending on their proximity. [News from ME]

Awards | Nominations are being accepted through May 31 for the 28th annual Russ Manning Promising Newcomer Award, which will be presented July 22 during the Eisner Awards ceremony at Comic-Con International. [Comic-Con International]

Retailing | In its first-quarter filings, U.S. retail chain Hastings reports a 3 percent increase in its “trends” merchandise category, driven in part by the sales of new and used comics. The retailer recently expanded its comics space in 126 stores. [press release]

Conventions | Tim Janson wraps up this weekend’s Motor City Comic Con in Nov, Michigan. [Mania.com]

Creators | David Lloyd chats about his career, V for Vendetta and a possible shift to online comics: “I’m interested in online storytelling, not just putting a comic online though. I think that’s kid of crazy. There should be something more than just putting a comic page on a computer screen, and there are different ways of doing that. I’m looking for the best way to do that, to tell a story, produce a graphic novel week by week, month by month. Now obviously you can do that just as a showcase and then sell the book afterwards. There have been some examples of that working well. But if I do something like that, I would like to earn money. I kinda regret that a lot of ideas I get, I can’t do. I have some nice ideas but if I did all of them, every one of them taking two years, I’d be fixed for the next ten, so I’m not sure if I want to do that. If I invest time in something, I’ve got to get results and it has to be seen.” [Philippine Daily Inquirer]

Creators | Chester Brown talks about his new graphic novel Paying for it: A Comic-Strip Memoir About Being a John. [The Gazette]

Mark Wayne Williams is ... Batman

Crime | Police in Petoskey, Michigan, arrested a 31-year-old man early Wednesday morning after he allegedly climbed to the roof of a downtown hardware store dressed as Batman. Mark Wayne Williams of Harbor Springs — yes, his middle name is Wayne — has been charged with trespassing, disturbing the peace and possession of dangerous weapons, as he reportedly carried a folding steel baton, weighted (sand-filled) gloves, and a can of chemical irritant spray.

Williams said at his arraignment that he didn’t realize the items were illegal, but didn’t offer an explanation as to why he was hanging off the roof of Meyer Ace Hardware dressed as the Dark Knight. The incident apparently isn’t Williams’ first encounter with police: The city’s public safety director said he had previously dressed as the Crow, but didn’t give any further details. [Petoskey News]

Crime | The expired website domain of defunct manga publisher Go! Comi is being used in a scam by an unknown party to solicit donations under the guise of resurrecting the company. “It is not real,” Audry Taylor, Go! Comi’s former creative director, warned last night on Twitter. “Do not donate. Gonna my lawyers on them.” [Anime News Network]

One Piece, Vol. 62

Publishing | The 62nd volume of One Piece has sold 2.37 million copies in Japan, making it the 13th consecutive volume of Eiichiro Oda’s pirate manga to break the 2 million-copy mark. [Anime News Network]

Digital comics | Todd Allen looks at the growing number of comics offered for Barnes & Noble’s Nook eReader. [Publishers Weekly]

Awards | Shojo pioneer Moto Hagio has won the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Award, which will be presented June 10 at the 40th Japan Cartoonist Awards ceremony. [Anime News Network]

Creators | CNN profiles Geoff Johns, with an eye toward DC Comics’ Flashpoint event: “I didn’t want to take the DC universe, put it in a box, shake the box and pour it out. I wanted to take the major characters and show what they could be like if they were put on a different path.” [CNN.com]

Thor Visionaries: Walter Simonson

Creators | Walter Simonson discusses his landmark 1983-1987 run on Marvel’s Thor: “My intention was when you were reading the Thors I was doing, they would not feel like the Thors you were reading for some years – they were different. I wanted to create something that had the excitement of the Stan Lee and Jack Kirby work, where they introduced new concepts every 20 minutes. While I didn’t want to go back and do those stories, I did want to create the feeling I had when I had read those stories and loved them … You have to find some new way to bring in new ideas and throw stuff at the readers. Hopefully, they’ll enjoy it and stick with you.” [Mania]

Creators | Chester Brown is spotlighted in advance of the Saturday launch party for his new graphic novel Paying for It: A Comic-Strip Memoir About Being a John. [The Gazette]

Creators | Alex Fellows, who won this year’s Doug Wright Award for best emerging talent, chats about his comic Spain & Morocco. [CBC Books]

Vasilis Lolos

Creators | Vasilis Lolos talks about his webcomic Hats, which debuts this week at MTV Geek: “Hats is about not giving a fuck about the comic making process and cutting it close, haha. I just wanted to do something that I set myself free of coming up with a script, making thumbnails or any kind of plan. Comics tend to be OCD and by the numbers — and at some point, I felt that I wanted to move away from it, initially it wasn’t even a conscious effort it was more like ‘I just want to make something fun.’ When I start on a Hats comic I have no idea what I’m doing, it’s like automatic writing.” [MTV Geek]

Art | Illustrator Jason Crosby walks through the process of creating a cover for SF Weekly. [SF Weekly]

Fandom | Steve Wing explains what attracted him and his childhood friends to Marvel comics in the early 1960s: “The Hulk was this rampaging engine of destruction, sure, but still, deep down, he was basically a nice guy. That is, he was the reverse of how we actually were in seventh grade, me and Rick and Jerry: all too nerdishly nice on the surface, but underneath raging. Raging, because in our day-to-day lives we were subjected to casual schoolyard violence and related humiliations. We might sidestep, we might negotiate, but sometimes an actual fight happened, messy, clumsy, sweaty, nauseatingly fearful and confusing. So of course we were drawn to the glory of comic book battles, the perfectly framed punches, the clean hard connections, the grace and balance displayed by heroes even in the midst of a complete ass-over-teakettle wipeout.” [Salon.com]

Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark

Broadway | The $70-million musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark will emerge Thursday from its three-week hiatus a vastly changed production, featuring five additional flying sequences, expanded roles for Aunt May, Uncle Ben and Mary Jane, a scaled back (and transformed) Arachne, new songs and a lighter tone. “There is still a ton of emotional complexity in the musical, and some of that original darkness,” says playwright and comics writer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, who was hired to help rework the script. “But we all also wanted a show that would honor the rich legacy and history of the Spider-Man story: the high school love story, the pretty girl next door, the science geek who is coping with new powers.” The new opening night is set for June 14. [The New York Times]

Publishing | Gregory Noveck, former senior vice president-creative affairs at DC Entertainment, has been hired as senior vice president of production for Syfy Films, a joint venture of Syfy and Universal. Noveck, who oversaw DC’s film and television ventures, left the company in August amid a massive restructuring. [Heat Vision]

Publishing | Rich Johnston reports Disney has decided that all Marvel superhero content must originate in the United States, which means that Panini/Marvel UK can no longer publish its own Marvel stories aimed at younger UK readers: “And since the US don’t generate this kind of content readily enough, a number of titles will be cancelled, repurposed or relaunched.” [Bleeding Cool]

G.I. Joe #1

Publishing | Writer Chuck Dixon and editor Andy Schmidt chat about IDW Publishing’s relaunched G.I. Joe line. [USA Today]

Digital comics | ComiXology CEO David Steinberger discusses his company’s comics app, its PullList app and the Guided View Authoring Tools program. [Big Shiny Robot]

Creators | Chew writer John Layman talks about taking his Eisner Award-winning series a year into the future, jumping from last month’s Issue 18 to this week’s Issue 27, which features Tony Chu’s sister Toni: “I thought, ‘Why not throw it out there?’ I’m always very aware of the monthly readers, because they pay our monthly rent. We get big checks twice a year from the trade-waiters, and I don’t begrudge them. But if we can do things to keep people interested on a month-to-month basis, we will.” [USA Today]

Creators | Sean Rogers interviews Chester Brown at length. [The Comics Journal]

Creators | Christopher Irving profiles Jeffrey Brown. [Graphic NYC]

Green Lantern Animated Light Up Display

Retailing | DC Comics has advised retailers to immediately unplug the $150 Green Lantern Animated Light Up Display after one of the signs caused a small electrical fire Saturday at Rick’s Comic City in Nashville. Other retailers have reported the smell of burning plastic coming from the displays. The publisher will notify stores in the next few days how it will rectify the problem.[ICv2.com]

Retailing | Borders Group lost more than $50 million in February and March as it sought bankruptcy protection and began liquidating 226 stores, a new court filing shows. [The Wall Street Journal, Publishers Weekly]

Publishing | Mike Searle, former editor of Wizard Entertainment’s defunct InQuest Gamer magazine, reportedly will replace Mike Cotton at Wizard World Digital. Cotton, who had been co-chief pop culture editor, left the company on Friday. [Bleeding Cool]

Conventions | Forces of Geek rounds up news from last weekend’s Boston Comic Con. [Forces of Geek]

Gladstone's School for World Conquerors #1

Creators | Brian Truitt interviews write Mark Andrew Smith about his new Image Comics series Gladstone’s School for World Conquerors. [USA Today]

Creators | Chester Brown discusses Paying For It, his new memoir about hiring prostitutes: “I had a couple of different titles. One I was considering, but not that seriously, was The Sex Life of John Brown. But probably more seriously I was thinking of I Pay For Sex—much more direct or blunt. And for them [his publishers at Drawn & Quarterly], that was too blunt, too direct. Darn, I wish I could remember the title they suggested that I really hated. I think they actually suggested In Defence of Prostitution, which just is so boring.”  [Macleans]

Creators | The National Post’s literary blog kicks off its series of mini-profiles of creators attending this weekend’s Toronto Comic Arts Festival: Canaan, Ben Towle, Mike White, Phil Rynda, Kayla Marie Hillier, Eric Skillman and Sean Ford. [The Afterword]

Creators | Zach Weiner, creator of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, talks about collecting his popular webcomic in printed form. [Forbes]

Creators | Mike Rhode spotlights cartoonist Katie Omberg. [Washington City Paper]

Toronto Comic Arts Festival: Pencil it In from Toronto Comic Arts Festival on Vimeo.

The Toronto Comic Arts Festival, or TCAF, is coming up May 7-8, and to promote it some friends of the organizers have created this nifty video featuring many of Toronto’s talented comics folks — Chester Brown, Michael Comeau, Steve Charles Manale, Vicki Nerino, Michael Cho, Michael DeForge, Seth, Fiona Smyth and Britt Wilson.

Amazon Kindle

E-books | Amazon announced it will allow Kindle users to read e-books from more than 11,000 libraries, marking a reversal of the company’s policy. Previously library users who borrowed e-books could read them on Barnes & Noble’s Nook, the Sony Reader and other devices, but not the Kindle. “We’re excited that millions of Kindle customers will be able to borrow Kindle books from their local libraries,” Jay Marine, Amazon’s director of Kindle, said in a statement. The Kindle Library Lending will debut later this year. [The New York Times, press release]

Publishing | Several DC Comics staff members laid off as part of the sweeping corporate restructuring — among them, editors Mike Carlin and Pornsak Pichetshote — have been hired by DC Entertainment’s newly formed Burbank-based Creative Affairs division, which operates alongside Creative Services. [Bleeding Cool]

Legal | Japanese police have arrested a 25-year-old man suspected of using Share file-sharing software to upload about 28,000 manga and anime files without the copyright holders’ permission. [Anime News Network]

Tokyopop

Publishing | Sam Humphries and J. Caleb Mozzocco join in the reflection on the closing of Tokyopop’s U.S. publishing operations. [Comics Alliance, Every Day Is Like Wednesday]

Publishing | IDW Publishing is auctioning all 83 variants of Godzilla: Kingdom of Monsters #1, with the proceeds going to AmeriCares to benefit the victims of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. [IDW Publishing]

Retailing | Borders Group, which is closing 226 superstores, is paying a dozen consultants more than $500 an hour to guide the company through the bankruptcy process. [AnnArbor.com]

Retailing | Kevin Czap tours Cleveland’s comic stores. [Comix Cube]

Far Arden

Creators | Far Arden creator Kevin Cannon has been dubbed the best cartoonist in Minneapolis. [City Pages, via Top Shelf]

Creators | Matt Fraction talks about the new Mighty Thor series: “Is he a superhero, is he a god? Is it a little g or a big G and what does that mean? Is my god better than your god, and does Jesus live somewhere? It’s also fun to refer to big Gs and then cut to Galactus.” [USA Today]

Creators | Jonathan Valelly spotlights Chester Brown and the official book launch for Paying For It. [Xtra]

Creators | Cowboys & Aliens co-writer Andrew Foley discusses the upcoming movie adaptation. [Edmonton Sun]

Paying for It

Paying for It
by Chester Brown
Drawn & Quarterly, 272 pages, $24.95.

You’d be forgiven for thinking that Paying for It, Chester Brown’s latest graphic novel, is an autobiographical work in the same vein as his seminal books The Playboy and I Never Liked You. You’d be forgiven but you’d be wrong. Despite what surface appearances might suggest, the book’s autobiographical and personal elements are in service to its larger goals, which is to serve a polemic. A polemic whose ultimate message is: “Prostitution is really, really awesome.”

If Paying for It bears a resemblance to any of Brown’s previous comics, it’s My Mother Was a Schizophrenic, a short essay of sorts in which Brown laid out it methodical and absorbing detail why he felt schizophrenia wasn’t a mental illness that should be treated with therapy and medicine but simply a label for aberrant and socially unacceptable behavior that needed to be re-evaluated if not retired all together.

Paying for It takes a similar tack, this time with regards to prostitution. As the book begins, Brown’s current romantic relationship has fizzled out, and while he’s not feeling particularly distraught about the break-up, he has no real desire to jump back into the matchmaking waters again. Neither, however, does he want to lead a life of celibacy, which puts him in a bit of a sexual pickle. The solution? Start frequenting “ladies with negotiable affections.”

The bulk of the book then, chronicles his dalliances with a variety of prostitutes (each one gets their own chapter, some more than one). While his initial, stumbling forays into john-dom are somewhat comical (he rides around town on his bike hoping he’ll bump into a streetwalker; he looks under one woman’s bed for miscreants) and he suffers from the chiding and disapproval of his friends (particularly fellow cartoonists Seth and Joe Matt, who provide a good deal of the humor of the book), overall the experience proves to be a positive one for Brown. So much so that he starts to completely rethink his attitude towards romantic love. Romance, he posits, only leads to jealousy and heartache and is not worth the trouble. Those suckers who get married or continually attempt to find the perfect soulmate are kidding themselves and signing up for a life of disappointments. Like a born-again zealot (or, perhaps, someone who feels a bit on the defensive), it’s not enough for Brown to build prostitution up, he must also tear romance down.

To that end, the final third of the book is taken up by a lengthy series of appendixes and notes wherein he expounds at length on why prostitution should be treated like any other business and even goes so far as to imagine a Utopian future where people see no need to get married or be boyfriend-girlfriend, when they can simply slake their sexual needs via an economic exchange, which would no longer regarded as taboo or shameful, thus perhaps reducing the need for prostitutes altogether.

Obviously these grandiose statements can be tough to swallow, and I can easily imagine a number of readers having loud, visceral reactions to the book (I almost threw it across the room when Brown suggested there was no such thing as drug or alcohol addiction). Brown’s at his best when he makes the case for decriminalizing prostitution (not to be confused with legalization, which would require regulation, which in turn would break his libertarian heart) . His arguments – for example, that more prostitutes would be willing to press charges if harassed or abused — are sound and his personal experiences suggest that paying for sex is rarely the tawdry, depressing affair we tend to associate it with. If you are a socially awkward, intensely shy man who finds the pursuit of true love to be an excruciating, hopeless affair, then I can see where paying for sex might appear like a healthy, viable alternative.

He’s on less solid ground, though, when he discusses issues like why women enter into prostitution, sexual slavery and the afore-mentioned Utopian ideals. Suffice it to say that I find his “I didn’t see it, therefore it can’t be that big a problem” attitude more than a bit naive to put it mildly. Encounters like one involving a rather young, foreign girl who seems to be in pain through much of their coupling add a bit of tension and raise unsettling questions, but Brown doesn’t delve into them deeply enough.

Brown adopts a rigid eight-panel grid structure for he book that he never veers from. As small as his panels are, his figures are drawn even smaller, dwarfed by the minimalist, urban environment. This is  particularly during the sex scenes, where they seem to almost be floating in an inky blackness, and threatened to be swallowed up by it at any moment.

Out of consideration for the women, Brown doesn’t provide any background detail on the prostitutes he visits, although he does note that he spent a lot of time talking to them and learned much about their lives. He also says he dallied with a variety of ethnic types and hair styles, but — for fear perhaps that they may be recognized by family or friends — their faces are all obscured, and all are portrayed as white-skinned brunettes, (though it’s worth noting he does take care to denote individual body types, especially in regards to breast size). That doesn’t derail the book too badly but there is a palpable sense of something missing, an experience or emotional hole that needs to be filled. I can well understand and respect Brown’s desire to show as much consideration to these women as possible, but not having more female perspective in the book, particularly in a book about such a taboo and divisive subject, hurts the book both aesthetically and in terms of his larger points.

Despite my criticisms, Paying for It remains a compelling, even occasionally hilarious book. It’s a difficult work in some respects in that while there is material here that will encourage serious, healthy debate, there is also material here that will encourage anger and derision. I just hope the latter doesn’t override the former.

Excerpt from 'Paying for It'

With the end of the year approaching, book publishers are sending out their preview catalogs to book buyers and the media. One of those publishers, Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, just happens to represent the Canadian comics company Drawn & Quarterly, which means we can get a sneak peek of sorts at their plans for the spring and summer months. Most of these titles won’t be too surprising to those who follow the company’s output, but there are a few books of note that readers may not be expecting. Click on the link to find out what they are.

April

Big Questions

Big Questions by Anders Nilsen, 658 pages, $44.95 paperback, $69.95 hardcover. Having just wrapped up (the final issue was for sale at the Brooklyn show and should be in stores soon) his serialized story of birds, snakes, dogs and wounded human beings facing existential angst in a minimalist landscape, D&Q is wasting no time in turning the collected version out in stores and is apparently releasing hardcover and paperback versions of the book at the same time, a move I find interesting for reasons I can’t immediately articulate. My above description of the book makes it sound like an intellectual chore, but let me assure you that Big Questions is anything but. it’s a probing, moving work that I expect to see on a lot of “best of” lists come December 2011.

Reunion by Pascal Girard, 152 pages, $19.95. Girard must be D&Q’s favorite author of the moment — this is the third book of his they’ve released in what seems to be a relatively short window of time. At any rate, this semiautobiographical tale follows the author’s attempts to lose weight in time for his ten-year high school reunion, where he hopes to meet the woman he lusted hopelessly after all those years ago, a fact he desperately tries to keep hidden from his current girlfriend.

May

Paying for It

Paying for It by Chester Brown, 272 pages, $24.95. Surely one of the most hotly anticipated books of 2011, Paying for It is Brown’s first published comics work since 2003′s Louis Riel. In the spirit of such astoundingly confessional epics as I Never Liked You and The Playboy, Paying finds Brown discussing in depth how he started frequenting prostitutes and his experiences as a “John.” Brown has proven time and again to be one of the most fascinating and stellar cartoonists around, and the subject matter seems to ensure that, if nothing else, the book will generate a good deal of discussion.

Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths by Shigeru Mizuki, 368 pages, $24.95. Lionized in his home country of Japan for works like Ge Ge Ge no Kitaro, Mizuki is more or less an nonentity on these shores — I don’t think any of his work has been translated or published in North America up till now. Hopefully this memoir, about his experiences as an infantryman during World War II, will fix that oversight. Certainly the subject matter should be enough to engage readers outside of comics and manga circles.

The Klondike by Zach Worton, 320 pages, $24.95. This is apparently the first book, or at least the first major work, from Worton, and it offers a dramatized version of the gold rush that occurred in the Yukon during the late 19th century.

June

Moomin Book Six

Moomin Book Six by Lars Jansson, 88 pages, $19.95. This is the first book featuring Moomin creator Tove Jansson’s younger brother Lars, who took over both the writing and drawing of the strip after Tove became disenchanted with the daily production grind. I think D&Q’s original plan was to stop the series at this point, but it must be doing well for them to continue publishing the strip after Tove’s departure. Either that or Lars did a really fabulous job with the work. Maybe both.

Constructive Abandonment by Michael Dumontier and Neil Farber, 64 pages, $15.95. I’m guessing that this is another entry in the company’s Petite Livres series, which tends to focus more on art than comics. This is a “series of small paintings featuring surreal vignettes with animals and children weighed down by the pressures of life,” according to the pr copy. You now know as much as I do about this book.

Nogoodniks by Adrian Norvid, 80 pages, $19.95. Another Petit Livre book, this time focusing on Norvid’s cartoonish, humorous and occasionally crude images, most of which parody commercial products.