Daryl Gregory

The Avengers #4 (Not the comic stuffed in 'Lil Daryl's stocking)

Every Christmas, comics would show up in my stocking. They’d be rolled up, which I’m sure breaks the heart of every collector out there, but it didn’t bother me much. Comics were for reading. For some reason, my mother thought I liked Thor. I wasn’t a Thor guy, except when he was hanging out in the Avengers. I was, and still am, a Captain America super-fan. How could my Mom not know this? But every year I’d get a couple more Thor comics.

Fast-forward 35 years. I’m the official stocking-stuffer in the household. My wife is the queen of holiday organization, but the stocking assignment has always been mine, primarily because it’s the kind of job you can give to a procrastinator. I can run out on Christmas Eve and grab everything I need: gum, iTunes gift cards, candy bars, extra batteries… and comics. See, my son is 15, and he IS a Thor guy, so I usually try to round up something Asgardian for him, as well as a something with Atomic Robo or Axe Cop. I don’t understand the clothing my daughter is asking for (an “infinity scarf” sounds like something Dr. Who would wear), but by gum, I do know my son’s taste in comics.

And by the way? The comics never actually get inside the stocking, but sit there on the mantle beside it. Because Christmas tradition be damned, I’m not rolling them.

Jeff Parker

Okay fine, I’ll tell an embarrassing one. A few years ago I was renting a house here in Portland and indulged one of my vices I haven’t been able to shake: trash dumping. Not in the woods or anything horrible like that, but in any open dumpster that someone left unlocked- I can’t help it, I hate having lots of trash around and can’t wait for garbage pickup sometimes!

Anyway, I had just gotten rid of a bunch of boxes at a nearby apartment complex’ dumpster during the holidays and Christmas morning I answered my door where an angry apartment manager held up an empty box from Dark Horse that had once contained comps of something I’d done for them- with my name and address clearly labeled. I had to laugh at myself for getting busted by such a stupid slip up, and I told the guy I’d go back over there and pull my trash out. He let me off the hook because it was Christmas and a ‘don’t do it again.’ I wonder what other mysteries he’ll be out solving this holiday season?

Remember kids, using other people’s dumpsters is WRONG. (wink!)

Fred Van Lente

It’d probably be getting Watchmen under the tree the year the TPB came out and reading pretty much in one sitting (in robe and PJ’s) for the rest of Christmas Day. I don’t remember if I got to Exploding Vaginal Space Squid before turkey.

Young Romance

Colleen Coover

One year Paul [Tobin, her husband] gave me my favorite Christmas gift EVER. It was a medium-sized box, and when I opened it there was some packing material, beneath which were fifteen romance comics from the late 60s and early 70s! I thought I’d died and gone to cheesy comics heaven. But then under all those comics was more packing stuff, and under that: ANOTHER TWENTY ROMANCE COMICS!!! Just the best.

Jane Irwin

My best Holiday-related comics memory is from right after Thanksgiving 2002, when Paul Sizer, Pam Bliss, Matt Feazell, Layla Lawlor, Sean Bieri and I all got together during Mid-Ohio Con and created a “Comics Passport” minicomic where fans could collect autographs and stamps from all of us and end up with a neat little personalized book. Sean hand-pulled the covers with his Print Gocco, and we each contributed a sketch. It was a really neat concept — it got fans of one creator introduced to the rest of us, and we had a lot of takers — but the very best part was that working on the passport together caused Paul and I to finally notice each other, after about five years of attending the same conventions. The rest, as they say, is history — we’ve been happily married and making comics together for over seven years now.

Paul Sizer

Here’s my memory. Not as mushy as Jane’s, but hers was pretty good!

Age 10: the marathon experience that was the opening of presents at Grandma and Grampa’s house was well under way. Two hours (out of five) in, my brain was ready to explode from boredom. Then, I opened a present from one of my uncles; How To Draw Comics The Marvel Way. History was forever altered. I don’t think I actually saw any of my other presents that year. I still have that book somewhere in my stacks.

Chris Schweizer

Through most of middle and high school, my sister exhibited a distaste for reading.  When she was a kid, she read voraciously, as did the rest of the family; when we moved to Kentucky (I had just turned eleven; she was nine) she fell in with a group of girls for whom reading was a very low priority, and, being a preteen girl in a new place and in want of friends, she naturally followed suit.  What I assume began as affectation became character, and by the time she was in middle school you couldn’t get her to crack open a book unless there was a grade attached.

There was one clear exception – newspaper comic strip collections.

My dad and mom both had picked up comic strip books since I was very little.  Our house was stocked with Peanuts and Pogo books well before I was born, and it was my dad’s first Calvin and Hobbes trade, likely brought home within days of its release, that cemented my love of the form, and my desire to contribute to it.  My dad was an ardent C&H and Far Side fan, and my mom bought For Better of Worse and Cathy.  We had stacks of others, usually the 1950s minimalist humor strips that still run today, but these paperback-book jobs were haphazard and gathered in no particular order from garage sales, not like the pretty horizontal Andrews McMeel deals that lined our bookshelves by series and in order of release.  When Watterson and Larson retired, our influx of books didn’t halt; if anything, it increased.  My mom and dad both became big fans of Dilbert (which, though oft-criticized, I still quite enjoy).  My favorite contemporary strip when I was in middle school (and a chunk of high school, until Zits came along and gave it a close run for its money) was Bill Amend’s Foxtrot.

Wrapped-Up Foxtrot

Though it may not be evident upon glancing at my comics, Foxtrot has likely had more influence on my storytelling than any other comic.  I consumed Amend’s dialogue pacing with such fervency and regularity that writing dialogue in anything but an Amend-patter-pattern would be entirely unnatural to me, and my dialogue pacing determines everything on the page, including the composition of the images. Oh, yes, Foxtrot was my favorite.

My sister felt the same.

My dad couldn’t resist picking up the Dilbert books as they came out, but the Foxtrot books waited until Christmas.  Why?  My parents, ever eager to stoke the fires of advanced literacy in their daughter, ALWAYS GAVE HER THE MOST RECENT FOXTROT BOOK. Without fail.  Every year. Her.

This would not have been a problem, in general.  We were a fairly communal household when it came to books, and what belonged to one generally ended up being passed around.  But as she grew older, my sister became increasingly aware of my intense desire to spend time with Amend’s newest masterpiece, and she began to use this to her advantage.  I’d have to trade candy for the privilege.  I’d have to give up a gift of greater value.  When I became able to drive, chauffeur duties became a bargaining chip.  Sometimes, just to get my goat, she’d refuse me entirely and hide the book, leading me to search, sometimes for days, whenever I found her absent.

“Well,” you might say, “You could drive and likely had a job.  Why not simply go get your own copy?”  The idea truly never occurred to me.  Getting my own copy when my dad or mom or sister had one which I could (in theory, at least) read?  It made no sense.  Even now, away from home for a decade and more, I still don’t have duplicates of books that my dad has.  The new Fantagraphics Peanuts collection?  You’ll not find a one on my shelves.  The big Calvin and Hobbes collector’s set?  Nope.  I make do with my old A/McM paperbacks.

I have, to be fair, stolen a good number of my parent’s books for my own collection – I consider it a child’s prerogative, and will not begrudge my own children such luxury when they someday fly the nest.  But, though they sit not in my sister’s house in Alabama but at my parent’s in North Carolina, I have not taken the Foxtrot collections.  Whereas taking from my dad is hardly stealing (sorry, dad), taking from my sister would be.  So, by virtue of Christmas tradition, I live more or less Foxtrotless, save the occasional bumper compendium snagged at a Borders failsale.

Elizabeth Breitweiser

My husband, Mitch, has a good one. Christmas of 1992, Mitch age 13. His dad gave him his very first comic book, Spider-Man 2099 #2. As soon as he pulled it out of his stocking and flipped through the pages, he knew he wanted to be a comic book artist.

This year will also be one for the memory book. Mitch surprised me by sneaking our little family, fat cat and all, into the holiday issue of Journey Into Mystery #632. What a treat!

The Breitweiser Family in Journey Into Mystery #632

Erik Larsen

My recollections are both Marvel-related. I can remember having two different people give me a copy of Stan Lee’s Origins of Marvel Comics as a kid and I can recall getting money from my parents to buy gifts for other members of my family and blowing part of it on a copy of Rampaging Hulk #1 (the b&w magazine) and getting some grief for doing that.

Mike Allred

When I quit a career in broadcasting in exchange for a budding comic book career, the first few years were hard going.  But Christmas time brought a few moments of splurging, and Laura would justify getting me hard cover collections of classic comics.  I still have those, and they are every bit as priceless to me as the original pulpy beauties they reprint.  Later, after Madman started taking off, she started scoring me original comic book art for Christmas gifts.  The ultimate collectable from the ultimate wife.  Laura is the best thing about Christmas and comic books.

Van Jensen

G.I. Joe

When I was 4 or 5, there was nothing cooler in the world than G.I. Joes. It’s fair to say I spent months in the lead up to Christmas poring over the Sears and JC Penney catalogs looking at the Joe toys, trying to decide which ones to ask for (we lived far from any toy stores, so the catalogs were all I had). Christmas morning, I know I had a couple of Joes waiting for me under the tree. But despite all of my excitement for the toys, I can’t recall which ones I received. All I really remember is that I also got my first few comics: issues of MAD, Captain America and Larry Hama’s G.I. Joe. I still remember the stories from those issues—Roadblock was arrested!—even though hundreds of readings long ago disintegrated the copies into dust.

MK Reed

On a New Year’s Day about 10 years ago, I was working in a ski rental shop at a small ski slope in New Jersey with my bff. They’d been very insistent that we come in on New Year’s bright and early, but it was in the 40′s and the snow was all melted. With few customers and little to do, we started putting together the shipment of kid’s skis that were waiting to be assembled, and when rentals employees called to see if they should come in, we said yes, not realizing that at a certain point the managers made an announcement that the slope would be closed in the afternoon because of the weather. (There was no speaker in the rentals room, nor supervision, nor heat.) We accumulated some boxes from the skis & bindings, and so my bff & I decided to set up a city of boxes and live out a Godzilla/Rodin fight to break them down. Within a minute of the fight’s beginning, the laughter and cheering of a dozen onlookers alerted a manager who showed up to see what all the noise was about. As he yelled at us for not leaving, we protested it was impossible for us to hear the announcement, and that no one had told us to leave or stop more employees from coming in. During the entire argument, we kicked & stomped down boxes. We were then criticized for being inefficient in box-waste removal, which everyone jeered at. Then we got to leave work early!

John Arcudi

Terminator

It was long, long ago — right about when I became a full-time comics writer.  In fact, it was exactly then.

I was back in my home town visiting my father for the holidays when I got a call from Dark Horse publisher Mike Richardson.  I don’t remember how he got my father’s number (we had only communicated through my home # back in Brooklyn) but he did.   I’d been writing part-time for a few years, working a variety of day jobs, hammering away on scripts at night.  You can do that in your 20′s.  Just 8 page stories here and there, nothing regular.  Anyway, Mike was calling to offer me a series (Terminator) which would require a full time writing schedule from me, meaning I would have to quit my day job.  Seems like an easy decision in retrospect, but there was no “retrospect” then.   Still, I knew what I wanted, and so did Mike.  I remember what he said very clearly: “You want to be a comics writer, John, then be one.”  He was, of course, right.

Yeah, not something easily forgotten, to say the least.

Mark Andrew Smith

This is a Christmas story that happened to me last year.

Living in Taiwan they do not celebrate Christmas.  You’re on your own, and you try to make the best of things.

I went to a Taiwanese Bar with my friend Paul and we are going to order some hamburgers.  We sit down and there’s a drunk guy in the bar who speaks poor English that wants to talk to us and says the same thing over and over again, the guy is kind of scary, and I just nod to be polite, hoping he’ll leave.

In Taiwan there are street dogs everywhere. This black stray dog goes into bar and just starts humping the crap out of the guy’s leg.  He’s drunk and can’t do anything about it.

Meanwhile all of these Christmas songs are playing while the dog is going at this guy’s leg nonstop with his face so happy and his tongue hanging out of his mouth and it almost seems to synch up to ‘it’s the most wonderful time of the year’.  The dog would go away and then come back and hump this drunk and incoherent Taiwanese guy’s leg.

It went on for a good 30 minutes with the music playing like it was out of a film.

I turned to my friend Paul and said, “This is it, this is our Christmas Eve. Eating a hamburger and watching a dog go to town for 30 minutes on a drunk Taiwanese dude’s leg.  Merry Christmas Paul.”

Janet K. Lee

Duncan the Wonder Dog

Last year, I desperately wanted a copy of Duncan the Wonder Dog for Christmas, but could not find it in Nashville. My LCS couldn’t get it for me in time for the holiday; I had waited until too late to ask. So I tweeted about my great sorrow, my failure to acquire Duncan the Wonder Dog, to several hundred of my closest internet friends. Like you do.

Well, the amazing folks at Malaprops Bookstore in Asheville, North Carolina, were listening. They have one of the best graphic novel sections in the US—not only in my opinion, but according to the fine folks at Publisher’s Weekly—and they sent me a copy of Duncan. It was a Christmas miracle under my tree. I sent them a bunch of home-made ornaments as a thank-you. Best part: the book was every bit as wonderful as I wanted it to be.

Charles Soule

In March 2009, my first published work, Strongman, appeared on shelves (from SLG Publishing, a fine group of people if ever there was one.)  The Christmas before that, I was home to visit my family in Michigan – in Grand Rapids, specifically, at my dad’s house.  I had some advance copies of Strongman with me, and I intended to give a few to my siblings and my father as Christmas “gifts.”  Yes, I know that’s pretty dubious as far as gift-giving goes.  I might as well have given them a framed picture of myself.  Signed.  (Hmm… maybe I’ll do that this year.)

Anyway, I got everyone something “real” too, but I was (and still am) very proud of Strongman, and wanted to share it with them.  On Christmas morning, everyone opened up their stuff, oohed and aahed and thanked, and we moved on to the customary post-gift breakfast.  Good stuff.  Traditionally, my family will go to a movie Christmas afternoon, or do something else as a group.  That year, we trooped out to see The Spirit, god help us.  My dad declined to come with us, which was weird – we weren’t all together that much over the year, because my family is scattered all over the country, and normally he’d hang out with us the entire day.  He decided to skip the movie because he wanted to stay home to read Strongman (or possibly because he’d read a review of The Spirit, but I choose to believe he wanted to read the book.)

My siblings and I saw the movie, came home, and my dad and I talked about my first published book for a while.  He was a comics reader from childhood, and introduced me to them – my first comic was a Fantastic Four he bought me, and I use to read his tattered T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents issues in his old bedroom when we’d go to visit my grandparents when I was little.  So, he knew what he was talking about, and he had some good things to say and some critical points to make.  It was amazing.  One of my favorite Christmas memories of all time, not just comics-related.  Unfortunately (putting it very mildly) that was the last real Christmas we got to spend together, but that afternoon we had no idea that bad things were looming on the horizon, and we just talked.  I have a million memories of my dad and books, but it’s hard to top that one.

Ryan Stegman

Spawn #39

My comics-related holiday memory is the issue of Spawn that had “Santa Spawn” on the cover. That is easily one of my most remembered comic book covers ever. It hit me at the time when I had just decided that comics were what I wanted to do and I just stared at it forever wondering how the hell someone could draw something that cool.

I also remember reading that issue. It’s hilariously cheesy, but in the best way possible. It’s like every Christmas related kids movie with the sappy ending. But the stuff leading up to the ending was insane violence and Spawn looking badass. What more could you want?

Corinna Bechko

This time of year generally means two things at our house: comics-related presents and wicked deadlines. Usually the gifts are special edition books or maybe rare action figures, while the deadlines are always urgent and seldom as nice to look at.

Last year I wanted to get something extra special for my husband Gabriel Hardman though, and after much hunting I found an original page from The Tomb of Dracula #14, drawn by Gene Colan and inked by Tom Palmer in 1972. I carefully wrapped my treasure up, convinced that I had scored a great bit of comics history.

Meanwhile, Gabriel was hard at work penciling and inking Hulk. The holidays are always hectic when you’re a freelancer, so when he was asked to do an extra “point one” issue on top of his normal workload something had to give. He agreed to pencil the book, but wanted someone else to ink it. And who did that someone turn out to be? None other than the legendary Tom Palmer. So in a nice bit of symmetry Gabriel now has an almost 40 year old Palmer-inked page hanging on his studio wall as well as his name next to Tom’s on a book from 2011.

Nick Dragotta

My favorite holiday recollection was the time Howtoons went to the Kipp Bridge Charter School in West Oakland to teach 8th graders how to make snow globes through our comics. We projected the cartoon up on the wall and then just laid out the supplies. The kids were pretty stoked you only needed a peanut butter jar, water, and glitter. The decoration we left to their imagination. The results were pretty fantastic. I also remember it being freezing that day, and we all wore our winter coats the whole time while inside the classroom.

Shawn Crystal on The Cartoonists Holiday

It’s dark outside, and cold. My two kids, Zoe and Zac, are tucked snuggly into their warm beds. My wife, Stephanie, sits watching Family Guy while wrapping presents.

I wish I were there, home with my family… relaxing.

Instead, I am at my studio, working tirelessly under the relentless pressure of a tight… VERY tight, deadline. This is my life, the life of a cartoonist. We don’t get down time, vacations, or holidays. We work when we have work. We relax when we don’t. The lucky ones are constantly working.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining. I’m just painting a portrait of what a cartoonist’s life is like.

Crystal art from Deadpool Max XMas

When I was a young wide-eyed child with a head full of dreams, my biggest wish was to be a professional comic book artist for Marvel. Every Hanukah, I asked for drawing supplies, comics, and Marvel related toys. As I grew older, I wished for books on storytelling, cinematography, anatomy, and photography. Always focused on the big wish, to draw for Marvel. Decades later, here I am, doing just that.

I didn’t just wish for this lifestyle, I worked hard to achieve it. I was focused and driven to draw comics. I don’t think many of us (cartoonists) truly understood the demands of this job before we had it, but that doesn’t matter. It’s a damn cool job to have.

It’s a bittersweet time for me.

I miss being with my family, but I LOVE that I am drawing comics.

On the day of Hanukah, I’ll be busy frying Latkes and grilling steaks. Passing out presents to my family while shoveling Belgian chocolate gelt into my mouth. I’ll be full, happy, and half drunk.

So, I’ll get some downtime…even if it’s just for a day. After that, I’ll promptly return to my studio, ready to grind while I listen to Marc Maron’s “WTF” podcast.

To my family, I love you. Without your support, I wouldn’t be able to do this. My job asks a lot of you. You work with me to make it all happen. I’ll see you soon, with a table full of food, and presents to pass around.

To all the cartoonists, my brothers in arms, fighting the good fight in the trenches of publishing…you’re not alone during these cold nights. You’re making comics, and you worked hard to be able to do this. Take a moment to enjoy your success. Soon you’ll be with friends and family, doing your thing. Only for a short while though, there’s a deadline waiting for you…. and he’s a nasty lil bastard.

Did I mention that I run the Sequential Art dept. for SCAD Atlanta as well? That’s another story for another time.

Chris Schweizer just read True Grit, and as often happens with Chris, it has inspired him to pick up his drawing materials and start doing his own version. Check out the character sketches at his LiveJournal, and stay tuned for more: He just saw Sherlock Holmes …

Jordan Mechner (Prince of Persia) says the second volume of Solomon’s Thieves, his historical-adventure trilogy, is in the can, and artists LeUyen Pham and Alex Puvilland are hard at work on Vol. 3. No release date for either book has been announced, but there’s a Facebook page for fans who want the latest info on the series, including sneak peeks at artwork like this:

Meanwhile, Sam Hiti has teased that his long-awaited return to the Hispanic-themed Tiempos Finales concept will happily coincide with the Mayan end times next year.

Finally, Chris Schweizer declares that Crogan’s Loyalty, the third volume in his historical-adventure series Crogan Adventures is completed and in the publisher’s hands. There’s not a specific release date for this yet either, but Schweizer says that it’ll be sometime next summer. [UPDATE: Schweizer announces in the comments below that Crogan's Loyalty will be released on June 6.]

Cody the Cavalier

When I attend comic book conventions these days, I tend to avoid the Marvel and DC panels, in favor of creator-focused and/or independent comics panels. And it’s not just because it’s always easier to find a decent seat. But attending the Family Friendly Comics panel at HeroesCon this past summer was mostly a chance to catch up with the work of Chris Schweizer, Andy Runton and Chris Giarrusso. I was not looking to be introduced to new work, but the panel made me aware of Jamie Cosley, the creator of the webcomic, Cody The Cavalier. And once I became aware of Cosley, I decided to interview him.

Tim O’Shea: You just celebrated your one-year anniversary on Cody the Cavalier. How satisfying was it to reach that milestone?

Jamie Cosley: It’s very encouraging to find a character that you truly love. I believe I’m just beginning to scratch the surface with this little guy and hope to produce many more strips for many years to come!

O’Shea: What lead you to develop Cody in the first place?

Cosley: A little over a year ago I was contacted by an editor named Jason Long to try out for the Word Girl comic series published by Boom studios. I was stoked beyond belief and put together tons of sample sketches and a one page sample (pencils and inks) working from the script he provided. I worked really hard to capture the look of the show and to stay as close to that model as possible. I was told I made it all the way to the top of Boom and Scholastic but they wound up choosing a much more stylized version of Word Girl. So close. I was really bummed for about 5 days – “really bummed” but then I received some an encouraging word from a friend of mine and sat down to create Cody! I doodled this little kitty with a sword and all was right with the world once again Cody is a tribute to my favorite comic strips and creators of all time! Ziggy, Hagar the Horrible, Groo, King Aroo etc. – the tagline from the very beginning was “Ziggy meets Zorro”…..although now I’m more likely to tell people it’s “Ziggy” meets Puss in Boots especially with the new movie coming out even though the two characters are very different.

O’Shea: It’s hard to start building an audience in the comics market, was this strip a commentary on your struggles?

Cosley: Perhaps

Cosley's Business Samples

It’s really about working at a pace that you’re comfortable with and developing the characters and their audience slowly. During the day I develop comic strips for businesses. I have clients that are security companies and some that manufacturer office furniture and they love to share their news/ideas/grievances through comics. It’s awesome – I’ve included a couple of samples.

So one newsletter/magazine may have an audience of 4,000 but it’s just for that particular industry. So when you try and create your own webcomic for a much larger audience and realize that maybe 30 people are visiting each day it’s easy to get discouraged. But I read somewhere that it takes like 3 years to really get an audience so I’m not throwing in the towel because according to that statistic I haven’t even really started yet.

O’Shea: During the recent hurricane Irene, you had no power, but you had time to concoct some new creative ideas. Any plans to work some of the ideas into Cody?

Cosley: Absolutely! My son Tyler is 10 and my daughter Ava is 3 and we were without power for 6 days, so during the light of the day she would put together puzzles with mommy and he and I would create comics. We would feverishly fill our notebooks with story ideas and characters and some of those ideas have already started to show up in the strip.

O’Shea: Were you pleased with how your name the frog character turned out?

Cosley: Yes, that was actually a lot of fun and I’m very pleased with “Muddy Spoons” (shout out to Little John and OC!!) – you will definitely see more of him in the future.

O’Shea: Of all the Cody cast, have there been any characters that have grown on you (more than the others) over time?

Cosley: For some reasons I cannot explain, this guy haunts me. He first appeared as a painting and has only been in 2 strips so far but I really like him so we’ll see what happens…..

O’Shea: While Cody started as one-panel gag comics, you’ve expanded into longer multi-panel strips. What prompted this shift?

Cosley: I am working on a longer story because I wanted to see how difficult it would be for me to switch gears It’s actually tougher than I thought because my brain is still always trying to turn everything into a one panel joke. I’m learning how to take my time and pace the story.

O’Shea: How much of a boost was it to your creative drive to have taken part in a HeroesCon panel this year with Andy Runton and Chris Giarrusso?

Cosley: I walked away from that entire weekend with a renewed sense of purpose and passion. HeroesCon in Charlotte is the BEST show and I can’t wait until next year. I was honored to be on a panel with them and it was very encouraging to see how supportive they both were. I’m not an equal but they treated me as such and that was inspiring. Andy and Chris are both Superstars and everyone should buy Owly and G-Man!

O’Shea: Creatively what’s on the horizon for you?

Cosley: More Cody for sure! I am pitching a longer story to an editor so my fingers are crossed! I will keep you posted. I’m also the regular artist of an ongoing series called Priscilla for Salinas Slugger Studios and Crown of Life Jr. comics. You can read the first issue here. We are working on a fifth issue as I write this. I also write/illustrate a Lil’ Priscilla strip that appears in a magazine in Houston, Texas.

Chris Schweizer is too busy to do a lot of Halloween sketches, but his take on Frankenstein’s monster as a work in progress is too good to pass up. Click the link for a scary story about Schweizer’s own Victor Frankenstein experience.

Detective Comics #67

Art | Jerry Robinson’s cover artwork from Detective Comics #67 is expected to bring in more than $300,000 when it goes up for auction Nov. 15. “Robinson penciled and inked this cover and the detail of his art is amazing close-up,” said Todd Hignite, consignment director for Comic Art at Heritage Auctions, “particularly his shading lines on Batman and Robin, and on the feathery details of the ostrich being straddled by that bird-of-prey, the Penguin.” [Art Daily]

Business | Stan Lee’s POW! Entertainment Inc. and Vuguru, former Disney CEO Michael Eisner’s independent studio, are partnering to produce “original digital content.” [press release]

Comics | Darryl Ayo has a small manifesto about comics that makes a lot of sense: “Things that don’t make sense in North American comics: 1) comics that exist after their creators have ceased to. 2) these comics’ existence continues despite minimal effort to applicable to contemporary culture. Things that make perfect sense in North American comics: people’s general lack of interest in comics.” He points out a number of reasons why the comics audience is small and challenges creators and publishers to “Do better.” One point he makes that is rarely mentioned: The critical importance of editors. [Comix Cube]

Light Yagami, from "Death Note"

Manga | Japanese readers picked Death Note as the greatest Shonen Jump manga of the 2000s. (One Piece, the most popular manga in Japan, and Naruto, the most popular in the United States, didn’t qualify because they launched in the 1990s.) [Crunchyroll]

Creators | Sam Kieth and Jonathan Wayshak discuss When The Chickens Revolt, their “stream of consciousness web comic.” [MTV Geek]

Creators | Jim Ottaviani discusses his graphic novels Feynman and Laika, his storytelling techniques, and why science and graphic novels go so well together in an hour-long podcast with interviewer Jerzy Drozd. [Comics Are Great!]

Creators | Colorist and illustrator Jose Villarrubia is briefly interviewed. [Windy City Times]

Alan Moore: Conversations

Creators | Editor Eric Berlatsky talks about the recently released interview anthology Alan Moore: Conversations: “… This book is an effort to collect Moore’s assertions at various moments in his career, so that critics and readers can see what he was thinking at the time, and also to track some of his changes over time, some of which I discuss in the introduction to the book. For example, in a 1984 interview with Guy Lawley and Steve Whitaker, Moore talks about how great it is to work for DC, how they don’t interfere with his creative process, and what an improvement it is over 2000 AD, etc. You won’t get that kind of effusion about DC these days from Moore. So, you can trace how things started to go bad in ‘real time,’ as it were, instead of getting a retrospective — and necessarily revisionary — view. I think those things are valuable to scholars, but they are also interesting to a more general readership.” [The Morton Report]

Creators | Longtime Dick Tracy artist Dick Locher gets the hometown-boy-made-good treatment from his local paper. [DailyHerald.com]

Craft | Crogan’s Adventures creator Chris Schweizer has put together a field guide to tangents, lines that interact with each other in awkward ways, and he has some suggestions for avoiding them. It’s interesting reading, even for non-artists. [Chris Schweizer's LJ]

Manga | Shaenon Garrity weighs in on Kazuo Umezu’s The Drifting Classroom as part of a Halloween roundtable. [The Hooded Utilitarian]

Webcomics | Here’s one that’s worth a look: Don Aliff reviews Out at Home: “What sets it apart is that it takes that familiar formula [family dynamic], twists it a little, adds a dash of wit and eccentricity, and then throws in a few explosions for the hell of it.” [Spandexless]

Chris Schweizer announced on his blog that he’s begun inking Crogan’s Loyalty, the third volume in his history-spanning, multi-generational Crogan Adventures series. In addition to sharing a few pages of art, he also says that he’s finished writing the fourth volume, Crogan’s Escape, hoping to start pencils on it as soon as he finishes inks on Loyalty.

That Chris Schweizer maquette I posted last week got me tooling about Schweizer’s site and I found one more thing that needs sharing. Schweizer drew a comics trailer for an imaginary Casablanca/Star Wars mash-up called “Mos Eisley.” His matching characters from the two movies is brilliant (Chewbacca as Ilsa Lund is as funny as it is disturbing).

Cartoonist Chris Schweizer (the Crogan Adventures series) is also a professor at the Atlanta branch of the Savannah College of Art and Design and that combination can result in some cool things. Like this Crogan maquette he sculpted as an example for a character-design class.

Schweizer talks about the benefits of this kind of exercise when creating characters for a comic, but is also mindful of the dangers:

I spend a LOT of time on preproduction, but it’s a means to an end.  Never, ever, ever let it be the end.  It’s self-indulgent, and benefits you nothing.  ALWAYS make sure your concept work is leading to stories.  Otherwise you’re just playing with yourself.

FLUKE 2011 at 40 Watt (Photo: Dustin Harbin)

This marks the third year I have covered FLUKE for Robot 6. In past years, I was pressed for time and was unable to stay long. This year, my 11-year-old son was able to join me. As a Georgia native, I am embarrassed to say FLUKE 2011 was the first time I ever set foot in the legendary 40 Watt Club. I promised myself that unlike last year, I would not leave FLUKE without seeing Joey Weiser. It helped that the main reason my son wanted to attend FLUKE was to get an autograph from Weiser, the creator of one of his favorite comics, Mermin.

Here’s the challenge for someone like me–I stink at being a networking journalist and a parent at the same time–my ability to focus as a journalist falls by the wayside. Case in point: In my search for Weiser, I asked friend of the blog/SCAD professor/Crogan Adventures creator Chris Schweizer–as he stood in front of Dustin Harbin’s table, if he knew where Weiser had a table. Imagine my mortification when Schewizer pointed out I was literally standing next to Weiser. Really. So, at that point I realized, if my son and I were going to have fun at this year’s FLUKE I was going to have to focus on that and be a journalist later. (Did I mention we could only stay two hours? I swear one of these year’s I will have my entire Saturday free for FLUKE promise, just not yet…)

So this year, rather than giving a play-by-play of my walk-around of the FLUKE floor, I am letting folks that had tables at FLUKE 2011 share their perspective.

There was no way I could include everyone, so if you attended or participated in some fashion (or have any kind of opinion), by all means chime in, in the comments section.

Josh Latta

Fluke’s attendance seemed way up, but it’s always hard for me to tell if it’s people wondering in off the streets, or all the money comes from and is in the same room. Speaking of which, the tables went pretty much instantly leaving me to wonder if the organizers will be forced to take pre registrations. That might not be such a bad idea, but I guess the tables could still go pretty fast that way too.

Sales-wise, personally, I  have never done better.

Allen Spetnagel

Fluke is my favorite comic book convention because it allows creators to completely and easily bypass the publishing establishment in order to distribute their work.  Everyone is always hoping to eventually be picked up by a publisher, but, in order for that to happen, you have to get your work out there first.  Unlike most conventions, the fee for a table is always less than $10.  There were a lot of new faces at FLUKE this year, and holding it at the renowned 40-Watt Club in Athens added a prestigious feeling to the convention.  I think that organizers Robert Newsome and Patrick Dean did an exceptional job putting together the 10th anniversary FLUKE celebration.  These guys are committed to supporting independent comics in the Southeast, and I am very appreciative to have an inexpensive venue for showcasing and discovering indie work.

Chris Pitzer & New Friend

Chris Pitzer (excerpt from his AdHouse FLUKE report)

So, yes, FLUKE I love you. Thanks for holding me in your arms this past Saturday. It was special. (I picked a quote that bemused me, but you really need to read Pitzer’s full perspective)

Joy Taney

The new venue was great. The theme of the anniversary show seemed to be all about the personal connections–getting new contacts, meeting your favorite artists, and making new friends. Myself and the people on my row, including Allen Spetnagel and Meg Golding, had some of the best table positions in the house, but most of us seemed to be selling less than we had in years past (possibly because this year’s expo was smack between Passover and Easter, two religious holidays?). Of course, with the extra five minutes here and there to get to know the artists around us, the value of coming away with new friends far outweighed any concern over making a few dollars less than last year.

The best part is, with the focus of my and my tablemates’ Fluke being on making lasting personal connections, Fluke fans have even more reason to get excited about the work debuting at Fluke 2012. After all, when was the last time you met a group of artists who were NOT constantly inspiring each other?

Robert Venditti

This was the best FLUKE I’ve attended. There was a lot of energy in the room, and the creators set up at the show were topnotch. I’m not exactly sure how many I’ve been to (I think this may have been my fifth or sixth FLUKE). This year had the highest traffic and most creators of any I’ve been to. The move to the 40 Watt was a great idea, both providing more space and putting all of the people into one room.

I met Chris Sims and Chad Bowers from Action Age!, which was great. I also bought minicomics from Luis Enrique Echavarria Uribe and Pranas Naujokaitis, two creators whose work I hadn’t seen before, but really caught my eye.

Shannon Smith

It was a great show for me.  I stayed busy the whole day.  I kept expecting some downtime to be able to just walk around an check stuff out but the down time never really came.  Which is great.  Thanks to the kindness of J. Chris Campbell, Josh Latta and the Top Shelf folks I had a really good location so I think most all of the people that entered the show passed my spot at some point.  Sales were good but I had a lot of items in the one to three dollar range.  I sold out of a couple of my minis very quickly.   I should have had a new book to sell but that is another story.

This was my 6th show.  Maybe 5th.  I used to live in the Atlanta area but now I’m in Virginia so I can’t quite make it every year. I think the 40 Watt was/is the best location so far.  At least twice as big as the old Tasty World spot but the creators and attendees seemed to fill that room as soon as the doors opened.  It was certainly the longest line I’ve ever seen prior to the doors opening. It was also easier to get in and out of.  No stairs.  I parked right on the street and did not get a ticket.  It was a great experience all around.  The best Fluke I’ve been to and I’ve had a great time every time I’ve been.

FLUKE 2011 Anthology

I’ve not had a chance to look through my loot so I’m sure I’ll have some different things to be excited about after I read through it all.  I was excited about the Fluke anthology.  It looks really great.  Nice stuff from Sally Bloodbath and Joey Weiser.  I’m super excited that there is a new Drew Weing Blar story in there. Very excited about Josh Latta’s new Rashy Rabbit comic Droppin’ Anchor.  I’ve known Dustin Harbin through HeroesCon for a while but this was the first show I’ve been to where he was set up as a creator so it was nice to look through his stuff.  I picked up a couple of his books that I was missing and scored an original page from his diary webcomic/book.  I don’t live near any comics shops or book stores that carry much alternative material so it’s big treat for me that Top Shelf and AdHouse were set up.  I could spend all day looking through their stuff.  I picked up the Ax Anthology from Top Shelf.  They had that huge new Eddie Campbell collection.  Very impressive.  Intimidating actually.  Andy Runton had the Owly children’s picture book.  That thing looks beautiful.  I was missing Patrick Dean‘s book, Bit Lip.  I think its been out a while but I did not have it so I was excited to get that.  Meg from I Feel Twitchy was there wearing a jacket that was a comic.  Neat idea but it was also drawn well and funny. Another book I was really excited about is Delanie’s new Not My Small Diary minicomic anthology.  It’s minicomics’ best kept secret.  It should be on every year end favorite anthology best of list evey time she puts one out.

(Be sure to visit this other Smith site in the next week or so, as he intends to post a FLUKE report there.)

Dave Wheeler

My Fluke experience this year matched the awesome nature of the past four years for me. It is the very embodiment of artistic passion. Think about it all of us that were exhibiting our wares were sacrificing a beautiful Saturday to get our work into the hands of people to enjoy!

My first Fluke was 2006, I was a freshman at SCAD and had no idea about mini comics up until about 2 weeks prior to Fluke, my buddy Jon Chad and myself created a mini that introduced two ridiculous characters that stick with me to this day; The diabolical, dictator dinosaur the Hateasaurus Rex and the Maniac with a toaster on his head, Captain Toast. Flash forward 5 years and these characters are the lead villains in my creator owned series The Misadventures of Wonderboy! That first mini sold a whopping 15 copies. Issue 1 of Wonderboy has just hit it’s 1100th copy sold (At Fluke no less!). While I grew up reading the pages of superheroes and mainstream books, my roots in telling stories is in Mini Comics and they hold a very special place in my heart.

All the creators at Fluke were blowing me away left and right, I am a bit biased to my friends. The young and talented Pranas T. Naujokaitis, Jeremy Nguyen, Kevin Burkhalter, Joey Weiser, Chris Schweizer,  Drew Weing and Eleanor Davis. The list goes on and on. These guys are the raddest, seeing their silk screened master pieces and kitchy stories makes me psyched every time I pick up their works. It’s awesome to see their bigger works too, like Schweizer’s Crogan’s books. It’s always a fun time to be around such creative people and I believe that everyone that was there deserves some props for pumping out the work they did! Also major props go to Patrick and Robert for organizing and rocking Fluke as they always do, two of the nicest folks in comics they are!

Dustin Harbin

Harbin & PBR

This was my second Fluke, but my first as a 100% cartoonist (as opposed to being there to promote HeroesCon like last time [in 2008]).

It was super awesome! I did good sales, had a great time, and more than anything was really delighted with how well-organized and simple everything was. Being tabled between Derek Ballard and Chris Pitzer didn’t hurt either.

Unfortunately I didn’t have time to really walk to floor, except to and from the bar, but I did manage to get Eleanor Davis’s new sketchbook mini and a couple of prints. Buying one thing by Eleanor is like five things by regular mortals, but still I wish I’d gotten to look around a little more.

(Harbin has a much more in-depth report at his own site, but I wanted to include a snippet of Harbin, so I could run his intimate FLUKE moment with PBR [a photo I was proud to take, I must add])

Chris Schweizer

This year’s Fluke was the best one yet. The new venue is much larger, and has a much friendlier layout, and the amount of casual attendees was significantly higher than it seemed to have been in previous years. It’s always a fun show – I get to see folks with whom I’m close emotionally if not geographically – but the thing I love about Fluke is how I’m always surprised by somebody. There’s always someone whose work I haven’t seen before, and who I end up loving.

This time around, it was Cassie Kelly. She had an adorable Empire Strikes Back picture that first caught my eye, free with the purchase of an even more adorable book called Washington’s Waltz, a beautifully illustrated series of drawings of presidents engaging in alliterative dances (Jitterbug Jackson, Macarena Monroe, etc.), accompanied by a little-known factoid (“before his presidency, Grover Cleveland was a public executioner”). All of her art was amazing and the book is the best thing I’ve picked up in a long time. I spent most of the rest of the show going from table to table and showing them to friends so that they wouldn’t miss out. Kelly said she lives in Charlotte, so I hope that she’ll be at HeroesCon – this is definitely an artist worth checking out.

Christian Sager

This was my first Fluke as a creator and my second overall. The old space was tiny compared to the 40 Watt, so it certainly had more room for creative people to share their wares. I heard somebody say it was more like a flea market than a comic convention, in that most of the business took place between creators and by its nature, anyone can get a table as long as they get there early enough. In that respect I like the vibe, but some people made comments that sounded like they considered our products too “professional” for a show like Fluke. Regardless, I enjoy the DIY ethos of the show and hope to continue doing it in the future.

The creators that caught my attention were Cassie Kelly and her husband Drew. They were selling a book called Washington’s Waltz that they funded through Kickstarter. It’s a beautifully packaged hardcover that runs through the history of America’s presidents.

(Speaking of Kickstarter, Sager and artist E.C. Steiner have their own Kickstarter project–THINK OF THE CHILDREN, a 24-page, one-shot, satirical horror comic about the events leading to the original Comics Code Authority.)

Joey Weiser

Joey Weiser

FLUKE was really great this year! I’ve seen and heard a lot of “Best FLUKE Ever” proclamations, and I think I agree. I’ve been going to FLUKE since the year of the big ice storm (2005?) and have seen it in all its many venues. It’s amazing to consider its growth from a few tables by the bar, to the entire upstairs at that same bar, to a special room at a theater/bar, to the legendary 40 Watt club. And the 40 Watt is THE spot for FLUKE. The atmosphere was just right, the lights and decorations made it feel really fun, and the space was perfect. I hope FLUKE can stay there, at least for the next few years.

AdHouse Books, the publisher behind my two graphic novels, The Ride Home and Cavemen in Space, was a sponsor this year, and it was their first time at the show. It was great getting to show publisher/pal Chris Pitzer around the city a bit, and see his enthusiasm for the show.

Sales were pretty good. Especially for a show which I didn’t technically have anything new at. Mermin issues 4 and 5 hadn’t been at a show before, but have been out for several months, so that’s the closest thing I had to “new” material. Still, sales were good, and I think I introduced some new people to my work as well as connected with those who have seen my work before. My webcomic, Monster Isle, runs in the local paper in Athens, so I got to meet a few folks who recognized my work from that. Lots of trading went on as usual, so I’ve ended up with a ton of new books and mini-comics. I’ve only begun to dig into my pile, and already I’ve read all sorts of memorable work!

When I think about the show, I think of great times with friends, beautiful works of art, an amazing venue, and FLUKE 2012!

Andy Runton

This year’s Fluke was my best yet both in terms of the time I had and financially. I had a blast!

I think I’ve only missed two Fluke shows. Once it happened when Atlanta was snowed in, and last year I was sick.

I always have a great time at the show but the new space (and how much space we all had) made it easier to move around and talk to fellow creators. The new space is absolutely incredible and the show was a great mix of all ages. I had an absolutely wonderful time at this show. The great weather, the laid back crowd, the excitement from all the kids, and the positive vibe really got me excited about what we do… Comics!

As usual, I spent the majority of my time with J. Chris Campbell, Josh Latta, and my friends from Wide Awake Press. It was great to see Chris Pitzer there with all of his amazing books, the always enthusiastic Dollar Bin crowd, and I was quite impressed with Shawn Daughhetee’s first mini-comic!

Jackie Lewis

Jackie Lewis

I had an awesome time! I got to see some of my comics friends, and I got to meet a ton of cool comics fans. That’s one of the things that’s great about Fluke; it really gives people a chance to talk comics. It’s not overwhelming like some of the bigger shows, and the creators actually have time to talk.

I got some really good responses to a couple of my books, like “Sad Baby Monsters“, BC/CC, and Skein. I can’t wait to print up more books; I’m definitely going to have them available at Heroes Con.

One of the folks whose work stood out to me was Eleanor Davis and her book Beast Mother, a beautifully drawn book about a hunter tracking down a forest beast. Her book The Secret Science Alliance and the Copycat Crook is also crazy good, intricately drawn, and undeniably appealing to all ages.

One of the books that I was looking forward to picking up was Drew Weing’s Blar. It’s a great book if you like guys with big swords, cutting through hordes of monsters. And it’s funny as hell.

Also, check out Kevin Burkhalter’s “Boogers” series. Kevin traded me Boogers #1, and it’s the cutest booger adventure I’ve ever seen. EVER. (Also, check out the way he numbers his pages. It’s precious.) Burkhalter and Kasey Paulk also made First Mate, a cute story about a whale finding love. It came free with a purchase of one of Kasey’s stuffed whale pillows, and it’s totally worth it! (The whale pillow even has a little pocket to hold First Mate for you when you’re not basking in its cuteness.)

Beard by Pranas T. Naujokaitis is a great book. The interior art and story are straight up awesome and hilarious, and the cover alone makes it worth buying. Get one the next time you see him.

Faylnn K

The venure was just right, the crowds came in but it was never too crazy or too hot, and there was a nice mix of both first time comic artists trying their hand at tableing at a convention, as well as some tried and true vetreans, and of course a couple publishing complanies like top shelf and ad house. One of my favorite minis was Pranas Naujokaitis’s Monster Town, which is just adorable for kids, and I like that Fluke is all ages and family oriented. I love to visit Athens and will be planning on coming to Fluke again and again.

Brian Prince

I had alot of fun getting to know the other artists.  Because Fluke is mostly mini comics you get more for your money as well as see a different side of the comics community often overlooked by the media.  I met some really great people and I’ll be carrying my inspiration into next years event.  You can definitely expect to see me behind a table next year.

Erin Gladstone

FLUKE was awesome, as usual! This was my third year in a row and I loved the new venue and table layout, they made the whole experience less claustrophobic and kept table traffic flowing.

Jackie Lewis totally caught my attention, despite the fact that I’ve known her for years. Her minis were some of classiest I’ve seen and watching her chat with everyone who came by her table made me want to do so much more for this con next year.

Shawn Daughhetee

Shawn Daughhetee

This is the second year that the Dollar Bin has set up at FLUKE and the third year for me going. Adam Daughhetee and the rest of the Dollar Bin have been going for four or five years now. I love going to FLUKE. We always have a blast. A lot of our friends are there so it is a perfect place to catch up and hang out. Plus, I love checking out new comics. FLUKE has introduced me to some incredibly talented creators (like Jason Horn and Pranas Naujokaitis). One of the standouts for me this year was Luis Echavarria. His stuff was amazing! Our sales were better this year than last year, which was awesome. We don’t go to make money. We set up to help spread the word about the Dollar Bin and hopefully make a little extra spending cash. I debuted my first-ever mini-comic this year. I was very happy with the reception and I met my sales goal. I was extremely happy to actually sell a comic that I made (and some copies were sold to people who I don’t personally know which was also exciting). This was also the first year that the Dollar Bin did an anthology for FLUKE. The contributors wrote pages about our experiences at FLUKE and we got our friends to draw them. It was a lot of fun to do and we think it really turned out super awesome.

Adam posted our FLUKE show on Tuesday. It has the two of us talking about our experience and it has interviews with Patrick Dean and Robert Newsome, Josh Latta and Chris Schweizer.

And I posted the pictures that I took on our Flickr site.

A God Somewhere

Happy Easter and welcome to What Are You Reading?, our weekly look back at the comics and other stuff we’ve checked out recently.

Today our special guest is Chris Schweizer, creator of the Crogan Adventures series published by Oni Press and a professor of sequential art at the Savannah College of Art and Design.

To see what Chris and the Robot 6 crew have been reading lately, click the link below.

*****

Tim O’Shea

Invincible #79

Invincible #79: Earlier this week, in a CBR News interview with writer Robert Kirkman, he said of this issue ” I just wrote a scene at the end of #79 that I don’t think you’d ever see in a corporate superhero comic.” And he is right about that. The plot reveal of a decision that Eve chose to make in Mark’s absence is an interesting direction for the book to take with the characters, but I’m curious to see if certain social issue groups take umbrage at the creator’s plot choice. I don’t want to reveal the ending, but I will comment that I appreciated how Kirkman had both characters react to the news. Superhero comics rarely attempt real character moments like this, and I admire Kirkman’s effort to do it.

Super Dinosaur #1: I was really struck by the difference in tone between the adult issues dealt with in Invincible, versus the full-out fun in the launch of Kirkman’s all-ages Super Dinosaur. Kirkman does an impressive job of introducing the cast quickly and building the most unique father-son dynamic I’ve seen in an all-ages adventures ever (basically the child becomes the parent). It’s an interesting element to attempt, but one hopes it’s a plot element that is temporary and not status quo for the entire series. Here’s hoping the female kid characters will be utilized as more than potential crush interest for Derek Dynamo (the book’s kid lead). An aside, Stan Lee must be overjoyed to see Kirkman introducing a lead character named Derek Dynamo, son of Doctor Dynamo. The 11-year-old son found the book to be a solid read as well.

Justice League of America #56: I keep reading this title hoping a glimmer of old James Robinson will reveal himself. Is there any chance that Robinson was only a really strong writer when he was edited by the late Archie Goodwin? Longtime Titans fans let me know something, has Dick Grayson at any point in his friendship with Donna Troy ever called her “Don”? And kudos to DC editorial for shoehorning Doomsday in this Eclipso plotline (where Shade appears to be uncharacteristically weak-willed for the sake of the plot). Meanwhile, the Alan Scott family gets used as props in a very crappy plot (at least we’re spared the odd costume that Scott is sporting in the JSA). Both the JSA and JLA keep throwing characters at stories with very little attention to how or why they are there.

Avengers Academy

Avengers Academy #12: Christos Gage continues to write the best Avengers title that Marvel publishes currently. This issue though I was really struck by the character moments that Tom Raney is working into the tale. For instance, in the opening splash page–after the team is granted access to future versions of themselves, I love how Raney has Finesse looking at her future self by using Mettle’s surface as a mirror. But Raney’s best work does not occur until the final pages of this issue, where Raney attempts (and succeeds) at showing Mettle’s non-moving facial features with emotion. It’s amazing what Raney accomplishes merely with Mettle’s eyes.

Hulk #32: Jeff Parker’s ability to capitalize upon Thunderbolt Ross’ military instincts (and problem-solving ability) makes a different kind of Hulk than you get with Bruce Banner. I really love the use of Annie in recent issues and am curious to see what he does with this almost human character over the long haul. Plus artistically there are few books that beat the combo of Gabriel Hardman colored by Elizabeth Breitweiser.

Thunderbolts #156

Thunderbolts #156: I’m not sure who is having more fun: me reading this series since the introduction last issue of Satana or Parker getting to write it. The effort to develop a B-Team for the Thunderbolts (the Underbolts) is already bearing some great narrative fruit as well. But back to the new team member, the one panel where Satana “greets” Moonstone will have word balloon placement scholars talking for decades, I tell ya, decades! Be sure to see Erika Moen’s alternate take on that scene –as well as see the latest installment of Parker and Moen’s Bucko. Did I mention that Parker is my favorite Thunderbolts writer since Kurt Busiek?

Zatanna #12: Matthew Sturges pinch-hits for regular series writer Paul Dini–and reveals he’d be a great replacement should Dini ever want to quit the series. The scene that won me over was when Mikey quizzes Zatanna with flash cards, practicing backward versions of words. Extra bonus, Amanda Conner’s cover where Zatanna’s morning commute has her magically juggling an iPad, her coffee and a muffin just stolen by a bird.

Brigid Alverson

The Sky Over the Louvre is the latest in NBM’s series of translations of graphic novels about the Louvre, and I think it’s the best so far. It is set in the French Revolution and the two main characters are Maximilien Robespierre, architect of the Terror, and the painter Jacques-Louis David, who was sort of the art-propaganda arm of the Revolution. The story revolves around Robespierre’s desire to create the Cult of the Supreme Being, a sort of secular religion, and to make a martyr of a young boy, Bara, who had chosen to die rather than hand over two horses to the enemy, and David’s attempts to create paintings for both. The backdrop of all this is the Terror, and David’s struggles are contrasted with Robespierre’s seeming obsession and the madness of accusations and death. It’s a great read and left me wanting more.

I returned this week to Dylan Meconis’s Family Man, another historical comic about a wayward theology scholar at a university in the hinterlands of Germany. It’s a great story that wraps up bits of scholarship and history with a supernatural tale in a really beautiful setting. The romantic action is heating up right now, and there’s nothing I love more than a love story between brainy people‹moments of passion interspersed with witty dialogue. I continue to be in awe of the way Meconis composes a page, using panels and pictorial elements to set the scene and move the action, and her characters have gotten even more solid and real as the story goes on.

Chris Schweizer

It’s been a little bit tough to squeeze in comics reading for the last couple of weeks. I’ve been engrossed in Patrick O’Brian’s first two Aubrey/Maturin novels, Master and Commander and Post Captain, and have just started the third, and I’ve been scrambling to get the files to the printer for a large sketchbook that I’ll be debuting at HeroesCon. Nevertheless, I read any time I’m not actively doing something where I can’t be reading – in bed, in the bathroom, eating, at stoplights, in line at the post office, etc. so I do have a few that have slipped through my schedule barrier.

Blacklung by Chris Wright: I’m incredibly lucky, in that I was citing this book for a paper about the rise of genre in art comics, and asked Wright if he could give me a page or panel to use while presenting. He obliged by sending me the entire book as a PDF, which I printed out and bound, and have read four times in two months.

Though I’d read and been very impressed by the Wright’s short stories in his Inkweed collection a couple of years ago, I could not have imagined how impressive a work Blacklung would turn out to be. It’s a graphic novel, both in its vernacular term and in a more literal sense, violent and horrible and poetic at the same time – the sort of thing McCarthy might write if he were more interested in pirates than cowboys or Appalachians.

Our medium has had many excellent works, and usually I tend to be an ardent cheerleader for ones that I feel best epitomize the form. Segar’s comics, for example, are excellent in the larger context of the comics medium. But they don’t necessarily hold up against the great works of Western literature. They do to me, but I’m a toon-head, if I might borrow a phrase from Jeff Smith.

Blacklung is different. While trudging through it (and it IS a trudging read – the hatchwork is so heavy as to anchor one’s eyes to each panel, and the story forces regular pauses for contemplation), I couldn’t help but compare it to Conrad, as the reading experience seemed virtually identical – I expect he influenced the work, though I don’t know this for certain. And I genuinely believe it to be on par in quality with his best works. Blacklung is a great book; canonically great.

It does not have a publisher.

It had one, from what I understand, one of the more respectable GN publishers, but my impression is that this is no longer the case. Wright’s meticulous and minutiaed inkwork doesn’t allow for any reduction in scale from the original to the finished book, which means that the book must be large – 10 by 14 inches or so, I reckon – and for a book which the average comic reader will likely find difficult this may be a real stumbling block for publishers, financially. But I hope against hope that somebody who can give it the design treatment that it deserves will carry it to shelves.

It’s one of the best books I’ve ever read. Do I enjoy reading it? No. It hurts me to read it, both my mind (which I’m the first to admit is not nearly as quick as I’d like) and my sensibilities. But it’s a damn good book. I hope it becomes available very, very soon. It’ll make everything I do look like the Boxcar Children, but that’s a small price to pay for the elevation of our medium.

A God Somewhere by John Arcudi and Peter Snejbjerg: I can be kind of a snot regarding collaborative comics – I don’t mean to be, and I’ve got nothing against them, but it’s a rarity that I pick them up, the same way I tend to avoid books with two authors on the byline (Black House or Peter and the Starcatchers, for example). I enjoy reading comics, but I’m always analyzing them, and not knowing from which end, artist or writer, a decision comes is frustrating to me. I like having a clear sense of how the narrative was conceived and delivered, and it’s much harder to do that with team comics. I read the ones my friends make because I can gain that insight through conversation, but otherwise I don’t unless something comes highly recommended, and as a result I miss a lot of really good titles.

A friend sent me A God Somewhere, by John Arcudi and Peter Snejbjerg. I love Arcudi’s work on B.P.R.D., but haven’t read much of his other stuff – after this I plan to. Like Blacklung, it’s an emotionally uncomfortable read, a superhero story without any costumes and a terrifyingly account of the consequences of absolute power – real absolute power, Superman-level absolute power. Arcudi delivers this horror with the same approach to scale that he handles so deftly in B.P.R.D., consequences so far beyond my capacity for imagination that trying to fathom them puts me in the same state of panic and fear as his characters. Snejbjerg’s art is well-suited to the story, and he doesn’t pull any punches in depicting the human consequences of the events. It’s graphically violent without glamorizing the violence. It has to be shown vividly for the story to work. I’d like to see more works like this and less degradation of existing or iconic superheroes, as per the suggestions Roger Langridge made last week.

Moonshine by Falynn Koch: Also, another in-progress one, but at least this one you can read so far on the web. It’s Falynn Koch’s alcoholic werewolf coming-of-age western, Moonshine. I love seeing stuff as this is being developed, and Falynn’s an amazing storyteller. I can’t wait to see it all finished and in color (she’s a heck of a good colorist).

Also, congratulations are in order: Chris recently received a SCAD Presidential Fellowship, which includes a grant for a personal project; his will be an annotated sketchbook collecting his character designs, research drawings, thumbnails, and other preliminary work.

by Chris Schweizer

Artist Chris Schweizer shares an early Christmas present for comic fans who also dig NBC’s Community — a mash-up of the casts of both. It looks like he went with a more classic Avengers line-up, or else I’m sure Troy would be Spider-Man. Head over to his site to download wallpapers of the image.

Usagi Yojimbo: Return of the Black Soul

Welcome once again to What Are You Reading? This week our special guest is Paul Maybury, creator of the webcomic Party Bear. His work can be found in Comic Book Tattoo, various volumes of Popgun and 24seven, and, of course, the full-length graphic novel Aqua Leung. Be sure to check out the sketches he shares.

To see what Paul and the rest of the Robot 6 crew have been reading lately, click on the link …

*****

Sean. T. Collins

Exit Wounds

I took last week off from WAYR last, so I’ve got fully half a dozen comics to share with you–well, my bloviating about half a dozen comics, at least. Click the links for full reviews…

Neighbourhood Sacrifice by Steph Davidson, Michael DeForge, and Jesjit Gill: Dark, down and dirty newsprint zinemaking from a trio of intriguing artists.

The San Francisco Panorama Comics Section by various: Uneven but nonetheless enjoyable broadsheet-format comics from an all-star line-up assembled by McSweeney’s.

Paper Blog Update Supplemental Postcard Set Sticker Pack by Anders Nilsen: A minicomic and assorted other goodies featuring never-before-seen strips from one of alternative comics’ best writers and biggest talents.

Exit Wounds by Rutu Modan: Strong art dukes it out with predictable writing in Modan’s much-acclaimed Israeli drama.

Prison Pit: Book 2 by Johnny Ryan: Johnny Ryan goes as far as he’s ever gone.

The Witness by Hob: The artist also known as Eli Bishop serves up an existentially chilling minicomic about the death and afterlife of a dinosaur. No, seriously.

Brigid Alverson

Market Day

I picked up James Sturm’s Market Day from the library, having seen a preview of it online. I thought it was well done but lacked a satisfying conclusion. I liked the main character, and the way the story followed the monologue in his head. I really liked the fact that although this was a story about a traditional society, Sturm didn’t fall back on the standard folk-tale stereotypes. His characters are a bit neurotic and often deeply thoughtful, reflecting on the world around them and their own place in it. At the same time, the internal monologue we are listening to is an interesting one: Mendelman, the rug-maker, observes the world around him, thinks about how to translate it into rugs (in a way that only a graphic novel could show), experiences rejection, indignation, despair, and camaraderie, and reflects on the meaning of his life and his place in the world. It’s a wonderful, human portrait, and it is beautifully drawn with a limited palette and a simple but effective line, but having followed Mendelman through this day of upheaval and self-examination, I really wanted Sturm to finish the story, but it seemed to simply stop, rather than end.

The folks at Norton sent me a galley of Sophie Crumb’s art book. It was a bit of a tough sell—what parent doesn’t think their child is a genius? So I guess if you’re Robert and Aline Crumb, you get to show that to the world? Actually reading the book tempered my indignation quite a bit, however. First of all, from the pictures and descriptions, it’s clear that Sophie was indeed ahead of most kids her age. (Almost as advanced as my children! Hey, Norton, where’s my book?) And while her drawings are still little-kid drawings, she comes up with fairly complex relationships and stories within them. I ended up liking it quite a bit, although in the end, it suffers from the fact that it is a sketchbook—the drawings don’t have the finish of a completed work of art, and they don’t knit together into a single narrative, like a comic book. They just float on the page, and like any sketchbook, weak drawings share space with strong ones. For me, the best part of the book was the end, where she did combine pictures and text into something like a narrative, and I’d like to see more of that—I could see her doing a killer comic about life with her baby and husband. But those little-kid pictures sure are cute.

Chris Mautner

A Home for Mr. Easter

A Home for Mr. Easter by Brooke A. Allen — A rollicking, fast-paced affair from a relative newcomer. Allen could stand to tighten up her line a bit — there were times I had a bit of trouble figuring out what exactly was going on, especially in large crowd scenes with complicated backgrounds. That being said, she manages to keep her hero’s quest story moving at a fair clip without ever flagging once. And I liked how she had a rather unconventional heroine (a rather large, possibly mentally handicapped teen) as her lead. All in all, it’s a solid debut book and I plan on keeping an eye out for what Allen does next.

Booth by C.C. Colbert and Tanitoc — A fictionalized retelling of the day’s leading up to Lincoln’s assassination, from the perspective of his assassin. This was alright — I’m not sure Tanitoc’s impressionistic art style fits the material — I had trouble frequently trying to tell who was who and what they’re relation was to each other. It didn’t help much that Colbert’s script assumed too much on the reader’s part and didn’t really spell enough out for history dimwits like me. Bottom line: If you want to learn about Lincoln’s death via comics, Rick Geary’s version is a much better account.

Tim O’Shea

Roger Stern writing Captain America, I just get giddy reading that phrase. Add to the mix it’s the present day James Barnes Captain America–with Nick Dragotta drawing the 1940s era Bucky scenes and Marco Santucci on the modern day material and it gets even better–with the first installment of a four-part miniseries, Captain America:Forever Allies. Dragotta has a Darwyn Cooke vibe to his art that’s just perfect for Stern’s writing. My one gripe–Marvel’s penchant for reprint back-ups as a justification for the $3.99 price tag: instead of the 100th reprint of Cap’s origin, how hard would it have been to reprint one of Stern and John Byrne’s Cap tales instead.

Gorilla Man #1

Gorilla Man: Jeff Parker’s Ken Gale origin miniseries continues to hold my interest. My one question: in a world where Deadpool seems to publish on a weekly basis–why is there not room for a Gorilla Man ongoing monthly, eh?

Avengers Prime: how much do I cherish Alan Davis artwork? I will endure the tiresome writing of Brian Michael Bendis in Avengers Prime just to see the incredibly executed layouts by Davis (and equally exquisite inks of Mark Farmer).

For all of us that enjoyed Paul Cornell’s Marvel work, we get one last treat with this week’s Spitfire one-shot. Cornell clearly has a bigger Spitfire/Blade story to tell (which we get a little taste of in this adventure) and someday I hope he gets to tell it.

I get the impression that if given the chance, Secret Warriors 18 scribe Jonathan Hickman would write an Untold Tales of the Howling Commandos miniseries. In this issue, he has the Commandos swapping war stories in a manner that says to me this guy understands Marvel history and character dynamics in a way that other current Marvel writers wishes they could.

Sweet Tooth 12: Jeff Lemire makes good storytelling look too easy.

iZombie 4: artist Michael Allred has every right to disagree with me, but the two-page of two characters walking through a mental landscape disguised as Egypt is the best sequential scene he’s pulled off in a damn long time. And I love that writer Chris Roberson snuck a punchline or two in the lush scenery.

Writer Jim Shooter and artist Bill Reinhold’s first issue of Magnus Robot Fighter is a little rushed and uneven in some parts (kudos to Dark Horse for reprinting the Russ Manning’s original first issue for contextual reference, it helped frame the modern day update in a sense), but I’ll likely be back to check out issue two. I wish Reinhold would tone down the cheesecake factor of the female leads, I get that it’s emulating Manning’s approach to a certain extent, but I wonder if it might alienate potential female readers.

Writer Jim McCann continues to hold my interest with the third issue of Hawkeye and Mockingbird. I particularly liked McCann’s pacing (with David Lopez’s art) in the opening where Hawkeye retraced the shooting that ended the last issue. Taking a CSI approach (on a slight level) with Hawkeye is a nice approach that makes sense for the character. He understands the physics of a shot more than most heroes, given his skill set.

Paul Maybury

First on my list, I finally tracked down a copy of Peplum by Blutch. I’ve literally been looking around for four years. While this isn’t the cover on my copy, I was floored by this image years ago, and remains one of my favorite comic covers ever:

Peplum

It’s almost a crime that more of Blutch’s work isn’t translated here in America. For now I’ll be slowly translating as I go while drooling over the imagery.

2 ) Fluorescent Black by Nathan Fox and MF Wilson
Nathan sent me a pdf of this a while back and I was excited to see this totally perverse and imaginative art with an interesting Biopunk story being published by Heavy Metal. Nathan is one of those guys that came into comics a little later, but has the work ethic and drive of a modern master. I finally got to pick up the hard cover in San Diego and man, this is one beautifully printed book. It doesn’t hurt that there’s a nifty pinup by yours truly in the back.

3) Peepo Choo by Felipe Smith
I was a huge fan of MBQ from TokyoPop, and was sad to see it end and then learn that Felipe was moving to Japan to work for Kodansha. I mean, super excited for him, but super bummed that I wouldn’t be able to read it. Thankfully, the fine folks at Vertical have blessed us with an English translation. It’s very much a spiritual successor of MBQ with some great characters like Milton, an American kid and hopeless Otaku who does some really weird Peepo Choo dance to communicate with people.

4) Usagi Yojimbo, Return of the Black Soul by Stan Sakai
The only book I’ve consistently followed my entire life. This volume mostly deals with the evil spirit known as Jei. We see Usagi, Gen and Stray dog team up again to track down a bounty. I love Stan’s pacing and whimsical story telling. The last three volumes really remind of me the feeling I got from the original Fantagraphics published volumes. I was lucky enough to receive this totally awesome Aqua Leung drawing by Stan a few years ago when I sat next to him at a show in Austin. Sorry, I just have to show it off:

5) Crogan’s March by Chris Schweizer.
Yes, Oni publishes Scott Pilgrim, but they also publish another fantastic series. The Crogan series is about a couple of kids learning about their famous family tree and the valuable lessons all of their stories tell. One of the few intelligent all ages series out there, I couldn’t recommend this book more. Heck, I even drew fan art for it. There are currently two volumes out, with a third on the way.

by Paul Maybury

6) Old City Blues by Giannis Milonogiannis
This recently wrapped up and is an amazing read from start to finish. It has a weird Snatchers (a very cool Sega CD game) vibe, with loose gritty art that fits the story perfectly. I hope this guy never stops making sweet sweet comics. Go read it now over on his site and give him a pat on the back. Webcomics can be a pretty thankless job, and it’s always nice to feel acknowledged by readers.

Donald Glover as Spider-Man

Columbia Pictures announced yesterday that Andrew Garfield is going to play the title role in Columbia Pictures’ 3D Spider-Man movie, which means that the internet campaign to get Donald Glover the role has failed. Amazingly, Hollywood executives do not take their marching orders from Twitter. I’m sure Mr. Garfield will do a fine job, although the first thing that jumps into my head when I see his picture is “Edward Cullen,” not “Peter Parker.”

But to hell with reality. I’m posting this to show off Chris Schweizer’s drawing of Glover as Spider-Man, to give the world a taste of what they missed.

Afrodisiac cover

Welcome once again to What Are You Reading? Our guest this week is Van Jensen, writer of Pinocchio, Vampire Slayer and Pinocchio, Vampire Slayer and the Great Puppet Theater. To see what Van and the rest of the Robot 6 crew are reading, click below.

*****

Sean T. Collins

Ex Machina

I burned my way through a minicomic and a couple of lengthy runs this week. Click the links for reviews:

Ex Machina Vols. 1-9 by Brian K. Vaughan and Tony Harris: Ambition trumps awkwardness in this slow-burning superhero tragedy.

Pluto: Urasawa x Tezuka by Naoki Urasawa: Nakedly emotional science fiction from Japan’s grandmaster. The ending doesn’t quite live up to the promise of the early going, but that’s almost beside the point.

Studio Visit by James McShane: A portrait of the artist as an artist. A slight but solid minicomic.

Michael May

I finished the Adventures of Red Sonja reprints with Volume 3. Unfortunately, I didn’t enjoy this volume as much as the other two. The Marvel series took a nasty dip around issue 8 that lasted through issue 13. It was this too-long saga that involved crazy – even by Hyperborian standards – sorcery and a nonsensical quest through goofy settings for generic fantasy items that are always proclaimed to be vital at the time, but are discarded as irrelevant in the following issue. It’s taxing to read. The reason that sorcery works in the REH stories is that Conan hates it and avoids it when possible, so it’s used very sparingly. Claire Noto and Roy Thomas over-indulged themselves for six issues and it’s no wonder that the series was canceled two issues after that. Which was kind of a shame, because those last two issues got back to Sonja’s wandering mercenary concept and were a lot of fun.

Even more fun though was my re-reading the first Atomic Robo volume. I will never ever get tired of “I just used my violence on them.”

I also checked out the first issue of Joe the Barbarian, which I picked up for free at C2E2. I was pretty sure I wanted to get the collected volume when it comes out, but now I’m positive. Sean Murphy’s art is awesome and Morrison’s set-up is much less like Life on Mars than I feared it would be.

Chris Mautner

Garo Manga: The First Decade, 1964-1973

Jog was kind enough to loan me the new catalog for the Garo Manga: The First Decade, 1964-1973, now on exhibit at the Center for Book Arts in New York City. For those who don’t know, Garo was the leading alternative manga anthology for decades, highlighting works by singular, idiosyncratic artists like Yoshihiro Tatsumi. A lot of Westerners (alright, just me) tend to compare the series to Zap or some other alt-comic equivalent, but curator and catalog author Ryan Holmberg argues that is completely not the case.

Holmberg’s main thrust of his essay is that Garo, at least in its early days, was driven by an interest in left-wing politics and social change much more than any sort of interest in alternate forms of visual expression in manga. Co-creator Sanpei Shirato was much more interested in giving readers (especially young readers) an antiwar, pro-democracy, pro-working class point of view via his classic series, The Legend of Kamuy, than in making any sort of attempt at avant-garde self-expression or testing the limits of the medium. In fact, he argues, many of the contributors during this period were attempting to come to terms with the still relatively new, post-war Japan and underscore a distrust with the new, modern world and their role in it, especially when it comes to sexual relations.

Holmberg’s essay is succinct and revelatory. He provides a knowledge and perspective about not only Garo, but Japan itself, that is severely lacking among most manga critics these days (myself included). His thoughts on Yoshiharu Tsuge’s work, particularly “Screw Style” is nothing short of fascinating (I would have never made the connection between the war dead had he not pointed it out). As Jog put it, the thing it really underscores is that we need more critics who can actually read Japanese.

If you’re interested at all in manga or good criticism in general, I urge you to go online and buy a copy ($20), as I likely will once I return this copy to its rightful owner. It’s one of the best critical pieces I’ve read all year and I can easily see myself using it as a reference again and again.

You can read more of Holmberg’s thoughts on the subject here.

Brigid Alverson

Smile

I’m going to be interviewing Raina Telgemeier onstage at the American Library Association annual meeting next weekend, so I re-read Smile this week in preparation. The first time I read it, I was absorbed in the story and the atmosphere of it; this time I could pull back a bit and look at how she does it. Telgemeier interweaves the story of her dental problems with a narrative of growing up in a happy, middle-class family; there are no earth-shattering events (except for the San Francisco earthquake, and that’s only earth-shattering in the literal sense). The thing that sticks out for me is that Raina really remembers what it feels like to be a middle-schooler. She notes the little awkward and ambiguous moments that might be glossed over by an adult writing for kids. I’m really glad to have read it again. Also, I went over some of Raina’s earlier work and was reminded of this wonderful little webcomic, Beginnings, and how in three pages Raina sketches a whole family and brings her main character to an epiphany—about comic books, no less.

Tim O’Shea

My pal Dugan Trodglen was kind enough to give me a copy of The Comics Journal 293. I really wanted to read it as it had an interview with S. Clay Wilson from 2008 prior to his November 2008 severe brain injury. It’s a fascinating interview and painful juxtaposition to the recent update that his companion Lorraine Chamberlain provided (thanks to Tom Spurgeon for making me aware of it). Consider this observation from Chamberlain:

“I have put together a Special Needs Trust for him, since he is no longer capable of earning a living. He receives Social Security and Disability benefits which barely cover expenses. This Trust gives him a little security for his future needs, although it is not growing very quickly. This gifted artist who has worked as hard as he partied is now in need of everyone’s generous help. He is still capable of worrying about the future even though he does not fully understand what has happened to alter it.”

Please read the Wilson update and consider donating to the Trust.

Marvel has finally gotten the right team to do a Black Cat miniseries. Unlike some artists who have drawn the character as damn close to a porn star (really some of the folks that drew Black Cat seemed to forget she was supposed to be a cat burglar…). But fortunately Javier Pulido is perfectly suited to convey the acrobatic nature of the character. In the first issue (in a four-part miniseries) writer Jen Van Meter gives folks a dash of Spider-Man and a healthy supporting cast.

Van Jensen

For the most part, I’ve been trying to find time to read everything I picked up at HeroesCon. It’s hard to pick a favorite, but the hardcover Afrodisiac collection earns that nod. I’m a big fan of blaxploitation films, and Jim Rugg and Brian Maruca take that framework and inject their overabundant creativity and energy. The humor shines through in the dialogue and bizarre situations, Rugg draws the finest ladies this side of Rob Ullman and the packaging is ridiculous. Every page reveals how much thought and love went into the book.

Midnight Sun

I also picked up the historical fiction one-two punch of Ben Towle’s Midnight Sun and Chris Schweizer’s Crogan’s March. Both books are smart, informative and enjoyable yarns. Schweizer, in addition to growing a hell of a mustache, is one of the most talented artists with a brush and ink. He’s also one of the greats when it comes to character design.

Heroes was a stellar show for mini comics as well. Dustin Harbin’s newsprint Enquirer was the steal of the show at a dollar apiece, even if the stories are online for free. Brad McGinty’s two new minis are hilarious (of course), as is Josh Latta’s latest, A Rabbit in King Arthur’s Court. Then I had to pick up everything Joseph Lambert brought down from Vermont. That dude is insane. I always come away from his work jealous of both the skill he exhibits and the uniqueness of his stories. I really recommend Food/Fall and Turtle, Keep It Steady!, but you honestly can’t go wrong.

I also just finally got through the December 2010 issue of Fierro, an Argentinian comics anthology that I picked up on a trip to Buenos Aires. Argentina has an amazing tradition of cartoonists, but it has a lot of new talent as well. I’d wager we’ll start to hear more from the country in the coming years. And it’s not comics, but the novel The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman is an amazing book, especially for a former newspaper guy like myself.

The X-Men, as seen by Chris Schweizer

HeroesCon is just getting under way at the Charlotte Convention Center in Charlotte, NC. Here’s a sample of what you have to look forward to if you are going—and what you will miss if you’re not.

Chris Schweizer, creator of Crogan’s Vengeance and Crogan’s March, will be there, and he’ll have some sweet art to sell.

Jeff Parker has created a handy map to make it easier for fans to find him.

Raina Telgemeier will be in Indie Island, and you can also spot her on the panels on Comics as Career and Autobio Comics.

Atomic Robo co-creator Scott Wegener sums up the show:

you should come down and say hey to Brian and me this weekend in disgustingly hot and steamy Charlotte NC, where the weather sucks balls, but the people are the best. Last year was my first time at Heroes and I loved it. It’s a fairly big show with a very down home small con feel to it. Unlike the massive spectacles that are NYCC (this October!) and SDCC, things are mellow enough at Heroes that we can actually hang out and shoot the breeze with folks.

Ben Templesmith will be there and will be taking part in the panel on Horror and the Macabre in Comics.

Rob Anderson's Animal Control comic

Rob Anderson will be debuting Animal Control: Special Creatures Unit at the con; look for him at Table SP-35 in the Artists Alley.

Brad Guigar will be debuting a new Power Girl print.

Nick Mizgala of Think Weasel arrived at his first convention ever and… his site went down. Happily, it’s up again,

The publishers who will be there include Archie Comics, which will have a truckload of creators there, BOOM! Studios, IDW, and Top Shelf.

In light of the recent, sad news about Thundercats creator Steve Perry, it’s worth mentioning that Hero Initiative, a nonprofit dedicated to helping comics creators in need, will have a booth at Heroes Con, and Jimmy Cheung will be sketching there most of the weekend, so stop by and drop them some coin.

(If you’re on the fence, Heidi MacDonald has a more exhaustive list at The Beat, and the full guest list is here.)

Lobster Johnson, by Chris Schweizer

Chris Schweizer, creator of Crogan’s Vengeance, Crogan’s March, and hopefully a slew of other Crogan books, takes a jaunt into Hellboy territory with this sketch of Lobster Johnson. Chris doesn’t post sketches too often on his LiveJournal, but when he does, it’s always worth a look.

Crogan's March

Since starting Talking Comics with Tim in 2009, I have made a frequent effort to not interview creators more than once. But as I am well into my second year, I’ve decided to ease that self-imposed restriction. Thus why I tapped Chris Schweizer again (after last year’s discussion) to do an email interview regarding his second installment in the Crogan Adventures chronicle, Crogan’s March (Oni Press). In addition to discussing the adventures of French Legionnaire Peter Crogan (circa 1912), the SCAD Atlanta professor pulls back the curtain on his creative process as well as his plans to participate in Free Comic Book Day in Atlanta (he has a 10-page Crogan Adventures story in the Oni Press Free-for-All). For my money, Schweizer is one of the good guys in the Atlanta comics scene and I appreciated the chance to interview him about his latest book. Once you read the interview, be sure to check out the 26-page preview that Oni has posted.

Tim O’Shea: Which character look did you come up with first–Sgt. Ludlow’s ears or Captain Roitelet’s chin?

Chris Schweizer: Originally, the two characters were one in the story, and that one was a short, barrel-chested moustached guy with a shaved head. As I was writing, though, I started to realize that I could use the officers to showcase the two different primary motivations for colonialism. Once I started writing Roitelet, I fell in love with him – he was so much fun to do. I plan on him popping up again.

Keelhaul's Fop

Roitelet’s design was actually cannibalized from an earlier design – much earlier, actually – a strip called Keelhaul that I had in my college newspaper, the Murray State News. There was a character named Fop, who was based on a friend of mine (I still tend to base characters on friends), and he looked a lot like Roitelet in the face. I made the hair blonde to better play off the fair-haired dashing hero of early 20th century adventure lit ideal, and changed up the body a bit, but the core of the character comes from Fop. Since I wasn’t ever going to do anything with Keelhaul again, I thought it okay to steal, since I was stealing from myself and only a handful of Kentuckians had ever seen the original.

(Note – after answering this question, I looked for some old strips, and although in my own head I was completely ripping off my own design, there’s actually much less similarity between the Fop character and Roitelet. [See a sample of the strip above.])

For Ludlow, there was a British character actor in the sixties named Harry Andrews, who would often play military officers. I liked the juxtaposition of his big ears which would be nerdy were it not for his gravelly forcefulness. I used them as a jumping-off point for the design, and pushed it a bit more.

O’Shea: In a recent interview with ACME Comics, you mentioned your affinity for Larry Gonick’s Cartoon History of the Universe, would you agree that Gonick’s work may somewhat informs what you’re doing with the Crogan Adventures?

Schweizer: Not directly, in that I don’t use those books much for research, and while his storytelling approach definitely colors my humor comics and my nonfiction stuff (as well as my Christmas cards), it doesn’t have much influence on my storytelling style for my fiction projects.

That said, the Crogan Adventures would be much different were it not for the Gonick books. I’ve been reading them since I was probably ten years old, and one of the things that most captured me was how each period in history directly plays into the next, intricately interwoven in a cause-and-effect tapestry, and how you can’t really understand a period without being informed about those which precede it. It’s what got me nuts for history, excited about the periods that I once thought were boring because they directly inform the periods I thought were exciting. And, in studying them, I realized that THEY were exciting of their own merits, too.

A big goal with the Crogan series is to showcase where in relation to each other all of these genre periods fall. The old west is separated from the rise of modern cities, with cars and electricity, by geography more than by time. The Napoleonic Wars end only twenty-one years before the battle of the Alamo. This is the sort of thing that got me excited about history, stuff I got from the Gonick books, and it’s what I hope will get others similarly excited.

O’Shea: You deal with death in this book to a certain extent, did you hesitate having that be part of the book (given that it’s for teen readers) or for historical accuracy did you always intend to acknowledge the risk of death in this setting (1912: French Foreign Legion)? {First spoiler warning, skip this question if you wish for the story not to be spolied}

Schweizer: I’ve never wanted to shy away from death in these books because I think that narrative plays an important sociological role for children in helping them encounter and deal with emotions they hopefully won’t HAVE to deal with in their “real” life – terror, vengeful anger, grief. By giving them the opportunity to feel these emotions in a safe and structured setting, stories help kids to be accustomed to these emotions and thus better equipped to deal with real-life situations that may evoke them. Also, these are adventure stories, and the time periods in which I set them were violent. These things necessitate the characters being at genuine risk of life and limb, and I have no qualms about including them; I simply try to handle it tastefully, so as to not make it visually inappropriate for any age group.

Crogan’s March Spoiler (here’s your second spoiler warning, folks, skip this answer if you wish for the story to remain unspoiled): Peter Crogan’s death was calculated, in that I wanted to establish early on in the series that just because a character is the protagonist doesn’t mean he’ll survive his story. Hopefully, this will create a genuine concern for the protagonist’s safety in all future Crogan books (and Vengeance, if folks read that one second). I may never kill another one, but it sets a precedent that I might.

O’Shea: In the “Thanks to” back pages of the book, you thank Hunter Wook-Jin Clark for meeting you in the early morning at the local (for you and me, that is, given we’re both Atlanta-based) Majestic Diner to iron out plot challenges. Can you give folks a glimpse of how some of those sessions in the diner went? And I’m curious, that’s a diner (around since 1929) with a hell of a lot of character (and characters) did anybody ever chime in when you were talking to Hunter?

Schweizer: No, mostly because we were there in that quiet time about an hour after the bars close but two or three before the early risers make there way out. I wrote down one of our more illuminating conversations afterwards, but it’s long and consists of nothing but spoilers. I was trying to nail down the exact ending, which was mostly formed but lacking specifics, and Hunter, who recently did the art for The Return of King Doug, helped me with articulating those specifics.

I’ve put the transcript online – you can read it here, but remember, if you haven’t read March yet, it’s all spoilers.  (End spoiler section)

O’Shea: From pages 143 to 159, major chunks of dialogue take place in absolute darkness. Some of the pages you don’t even have dialogue or sound effects. Without giving anything away, page 157 is an absolute black panel, nothing else. Page 158, the darkness is split into three distinct panels. How the heck did you decide to take a narrative risk like that and how much (if any) editorial pushback did you get?

Schweizer: Page 157 is the only splash page I’ve ever done!

The cave sequence stemmed from two challenges – I’ve never been strong with depicting form through lighting rather than line, and this forced me to address that shortcoming, and I wanted to see if I could manipulate the reader in a suspenseful way in the same manner as a film. To me, monster movies are scary only until you see the monster, and the imagination can conjure up things far more terrible than can a comic artist. The black sequences are my attempt to do this, to stretch out and create that suspense. It seems like it would be a really easy sequence – there’s no drawing – but that doesn’t mean I didn’t spend as much time on it as I did any other page. In one instance, I realized after doing the waking episode that I needed one more black panel than I had originally put in there in order to get the pacing right, and ended up redoing about four pages as a result.

[Oni editors] James [Lucas Jones] and Jill [Beaton] didn’t give me any flack about it – it’s not like I was trying to reach a page count by cheating (the book is actually about forty pages longer than I originally told them to expect), and they could tell what I was doing. I did get flack from my students, who call ‘em “Schweizer Boxes,” and tried to include them in as many assignments as possible for the week or two following their execution.

O’Shea: What was the hardest scene for you to execute to your liking? In terms of historical accuracy, which was the hardest element to research?

Schweizer: There are two scenes in which Crogan goes pages without talking. I try to keep my characters paired up as often as possible, so that one can always be narrating to another, but sometimes the protagonist is forced by the story to be alone, and in these instances I invariably fret over whether or not the audience is going to be able to tell what’s happening. In my thumbnails, sometimes even in my pencils, I write stilted monologues (“if I can just… get this chain…loose…”), trying to make sure that wha’s happening is clear. But by the time I get to inks, my confidence in the audience’s ability to figure it out with just the acting overcomes my concern, and I ink it without these. It’s really, really hard to let go of that, though. I’m so reliant on dialogue.

In terms of historical stuff, finding out how the different pre-WWI North African tribal system worked was really tricky. Not much of it ended up in the book – very little, actually, which is always frustrating considering how much time and effort went to trying to track it down all of it – but it does inform certain things, so it was worthwhile.

O’Shea: In the pursuit of historical accuracy, how do you make sure you don’t get so bogged down in the accuracy that it does not derail the rhythm of your storytelling?

Schweizer: By doing all the research beforehand. I read as much as I possibly can, try to get as much of a feel for the period as possible, and then simply write a story. By this point, I hopefully know the period well enough to know what will or won’t be right, and little details that I picked up along the way stick with me and inform the plot. But at this point it becomes all about story; I don’t have to start tailoring things around certain facts I find, the facts are a part of it from the beginning, the same way as if I were writing a story taking place in my hometown while I was in high school. It becomes peripheral. The location and period are a part of it, yes, but only insomuch as they allow for the story to take place. I hope that makes sense.

O’Shea: Are there certain scenes that you look at and realize they benefited from the feedback you get from beta readers at SCAD Atlanta?

Schweizer: No one really “read” the book, except my wife Liz and my editors. I gave out a few copies of early chapters to a few folks for feedback – Matt Kindt was especially helpful in a couple of spots where off-panel balloons weren’t really clear as to whom they belonged – but mostly it was just showing people the drawings, out of sequence. Pat Bollin, who did a Resurrection story recently and is drawing a book called Ciudad, helped me out in a few places. For some reason, I hadn’t drawn in the inner line of Ludlow’s ears for a big chunk of the book, and he pointed this out, that they looked like weird tumors. I’d made Walad’s – that’s Arabic for “boy,” he doesn’t really have a name – I made his eyes grotesquely big in later scenes when in earlier ones they’d been little dots. Lots of scenic stuff. He’s a grad student, too – our students are a sharp bunch. We all help each other out on our work.

O’Shea: In a recent post at your blog, you wrote: “I definitely prefer the Crogan series to be in black and white.” Simple question, why is that your preference?

Schweizer: I feel like there’s less distance between what I’m doing on my drawing table and the reader. Color adds a sort of middleman, and for me comics are as much about the art form as they are the stories. By putting my stuff out in black and white, without tones, it’s a story, yes, but you can also look at it to see technique and process, should you choose to approach it that way. Most of my favorite comics are in black and white, and I try and get my hands on as many black-and-white, non-toned versions of color comics that I like – the Calvin and Hobbes Sunday Pages OSU catalog, the Russ Cochran EC box sets – for this reason.

O’Shea: Care to talk about your plans for Free Comic Book Day?

Schweizer: There’s a ten-page Crogan Adventures story in the Oni Press Free-for-All, which also has stories from Matt Loux’s Salt Water Taffy and Ray Fawkes’ Possessions. It should be available at any shop participating in Free Comic Book Day. I’ll be doing signings that day at Criminal Records and at Oxford Comics, both in Atlanta. So far, no one in Atlanta has come close to measuring up to the type of FCBD that’s put on by other folks in our general vicinity (I’m thinking especially of Acme Comics in Greensboro and Heroes Aren’t Hard to Find in Charlotte), but we’re hoping these stores make a real event out of it. There are so many comic fans here and so many comic creators here, it’s a shame that no one has been successful at bringing the two together in a meaningful way.

I’ve spent the last couple of years doing signings at Heroes, where they have hundreds of folks coming in all day for signings and sketches by ten, fifteen different artists. This year, I’m giving ATL a try because I’d like to see that sort of thing done here, but it’s on the shoulders of the retailers to properly organize and promote it. I’m optimistic, though, which is why I’m staying home this year.