Comic Book Resources

Buenaventura does The Believer

He's the man who helped bring us the sublime Kramers Ergot 7 and the ridiculous Boys Club. Now publisher Alvin Buenaventura is lending his Midas touch to stalwart literary magazine The Believer for its annual Art Issue.

At his Blog Flume group blog, Buenaventura reveals that In addition to an Acme Novelty Library/Jack Surives "crossover cover" by regular cover artist Charles Burns, the issue features an interview between Acme's Chris Ware and Jack's Jerry Moriarty, other interviews with Aline Kominsky-Crumb and Peter Blegvad, and a poster by Moriarty.

Finally, the issue sees the launch of a new monthly feature: a comics spread featuring new strips from Burns, Al Columbia, Matt Furie, Tom Gauld, Lisa Hanawalt, Tim Hensley and more, edited by Buenaventura himself.

Click over to Buenaventura's blog for sample art, click the individual links for the respective features, and get ready to gorge on some great comics content.

Wow -- between this and issue #33 of The Believer's sister publication McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, dubbed The San Francisco Panorama and featuring comics by Art Spiegelman, Chris Ware, Dan Clowes, Erik Larsen (!) and more, it's a good time to be a fan of comics in high-end literary periodicals.

Wall-to-wall Ware

How much Corrigan can you stand?

The Ewing Gallery of Art and Architecture at the University of Tennessee has a new exhibit up entitled "MultipleXMultiple: A Survey of Contemporary Printmaking." The interesting (and comics-related) thing about this show is they're highlighting the work of Chris Ware by displaying every page from every issue of Acme Novelty Library so far on a wall. One of the student curators, Daniel Maw, has pictures of the installation on his blog, and talks about the idea behind the show over at Flog:

In order to showcase the epic nature of this comic we elected to purchase two copies, cut the bindings off each, collate the pages, and display all [390] pages in a grid on a 23 x 10 foot wall. It is quite impressive to take it all in at once as it demonstrates the tremendous amount of talent and work that went in to the creation of the book.

Chris Ware 'Unmasked' in the New Yorker

Unmasked

The New Yorker has posted a new strip by Chris Ware that has a bit of a Halloween theme. And an iPhone.

Via Drawn & Quarterly

Next week: Ivan Brunetti chats with T-Pain

Well here's a celebrity meet-up I never in my most drug-induced haze ever thought of before: Chris Ware and Fall Out Boy bassist/lyricist Pete Wentz talking about comics, music and art against an LA backdrop. Apparently they have more in common than you think. For one thing, both agree that they're embarrassed by most of their output. The first video is below, but you'll want to go here to see several more, including some outtakes. (found via CR)

Read the comic Chris Ware doesn't want you to see

From 'Floyd Farland'

Long before there was Rusty Brown and Jimmy Corrigan, there was Floyd Farland: Citizen of the Future, Chris Ware's very first published comic book.

Apparently he's quite ashamed and embarrassed of it (as honestly most of us are by our early attempts at art), to the point where he's tried to hunt down as many copies as possible and destroy them. Show up at a signing with a copy and he'll beg you to buy it from you so he can burn in front of your eyes, laughing maniacally all the while.

That's the story I've heard at any rate. But Brian Hughes of Again With the Comics managed to have a copy in his collection and share a few pages, as well as his impressions:

The writing is very “Angry Young Man” circa 1987, what with the “Thought Police” and the “Totalitarian Government” slant. The art style is almost the exact opposite of his current style: crude, stark, and unpolished. Ware now applies an architectural precision to each page, but his early work is thick–lined, blocky, and chaotic. Background detail is abstract, when it appears at all, and human faces are blob-and-line cartoons. It is fortunate that most of the story is driven by exposition, because figuring out the action on some pages is nearly impossible.

What Are You Reading?

The Photographer

We have a very special edition of What Are You Reading this week, as our guests are none other than the legendary Art Spiegelman and Francoise Mouly. Spiegelman, you know, no doubt, as the author of such acclaimed books as Maus, Breakdowns and In the Shadow of No Towers, while his wife Mouly was co-creator and editor of Raw Magazine, art editor at the New Yorker and is spearheading the new Toon Books line of children's comics.

To see what's currently in their reading stack, just click on the link below ...

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Chris Ware's charity robot T-shirt

Onward Robots!

Cartoonist Chris Ware has created a T-shirt that's currently available at Woot.com's T-shirt site to benefit 826michigan, a nonprofit tutoring and writing center in Ann Arbor. It also features a subject near and dear to our hearts.

The shirt is currently $10 with free standard shipping, and after today the price will go up to $15 if there are even any left. So order fast!

Via The Comics Reporter

Six by 6 | Six comics that made us cry

Tom Strong #36

This week Chris Mautner suggested we share our softer sides and each talk about three comics that broke down our tough-guy exteriors and made us openly weep as we turned the pages. It's a risky venture, to be sure; to some members of our audience, this will destroy the "manly man" image we've worked so hard to build up on the blog, but for others, it will show there's more to who we are than just bad jokes and Shelf Porn.

So here they are -- six comics that made us cry. After reading our selections, be sure to grab a tissue and tell us what comics made you cry as well.

1. "We're brothers, Tom"

I always thought Tom Strong was the weakest of Alan Moore's ABC line (in fact I said so rather openly in issue #231 of The Comics Journal). Oh sure, there were lots of colorful dialogue and zany plots, but I felt the series was sorely lacking in gravitas. The characters seemed too thinly sketched to me and I couldn't find myself forming enough of an emotional commitment to them to care about what happened to them. It kept hinting that there was a lot more going on under the surface, but that's all it would do, hint.

That was until the final issue, no. 36, where, during the "end of the world as we know it" created by Promethea, Tom is confronted by the ghost of his arch-enemy Paul Saveen, who reveals that he is, in fact, Tom's half-brother. What follows is one of the most tender scenes I've ever read in a superhero book ("Jesus Paul" Tom says, breaking down "We tried to kill each other.") When, two pages later, Tom introduces Saveen to a passerby with a simple "This is my brother. This is my brother Paul" well, I just lose it. --Chris Mautner

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Bookforum plays host to Ware, Shaw, etc.

A plethora of indie cartoonists, including Dash Shaw, Chris Ware, Paul Hornschemeier, Laura Weinstein, CF and Gabrielle Bell, are featured in the latest issue of Bookforum magazine, where their illustrations and comics are juxtoposed with a variety of excerpts from novels, essays and short stories. Go check it out, it's pretty nifty.

More on that New Yorker issue

Chris Ware's New Yorker strip

I feel that I should mention that in addition to that swell cover by Daniel Clowes, the latest issue of the New Yorker also features a lovely one-page strip by Chris Ware, as well as a gag cartoon by Ward Sutton and an illustration by Michael Kupperman. Blog Flume also notes that Ware has a strip in the current issue of the Virginia Quarterly Review (Spring 2009) and the current issue of Wired.

The Chris Ware/Andrew Bird mash-up finally becomes a reality

For a special live edition of This American Life that was broadcast in theaters across the country a few weeks ago, Chris Ware contributed the above animation, featuring Quimby the Mouse and that nameless cat that doesn't have a body. Man, that thing always freaks me out.

Update: Aaaaand no wit looks like it's been taken down. Sorry about  that. If it comes back up again somwhere soon I'll update the link.

Ware, Satrapi talk comics

A scene from Persepolis

Marjane Satrapi and Chris Ware recently gave a talk, moderated by Francoise Mouly, at the Skirball Center for the Performing Arts as part of the the three-day festival of New French Writing.WYNC has a podcast of the conversation up on their Web site. (via: Jeet Heer)

Talking Comics with Tim: Jeet Heer, Part I

Walt & Skeezix, Vol. 2

Jeet Heer is a critic and scholar who makes me realize I'm incredibly ignorant of the comics medium on so many levels. Therefore when I had the opportunity to interview him recently, to say I was intimidated (even though it was via the comfort of email) is an understatement. We covered a great deal of ground in our email exchange, but it is so diverse while at the same time succinct, I have opted to split the interview into two parts. The second part (found here) focuses on Heer's collaboration with Kent Worcester. My thanks to Heer for his time and thoughts.

Tim O'Shea: What is the labor breakdown between you, Chris Ware and Chris Oliveros in terms of editing the collections of Frank King's Gasoline Alley? Who handles what on the projects?

Jeet Heer: I see the Walt and Skeezix books as truly collaborative efforts. With each volume, Chris Ware and I make a trip out to see Frank King’s family, collect material and decide what the theme is going to be. I try to shape my writing around the visual material: thus in volume 3, we had a lot of photos of Gasoline Alley toys and merchandizing, thanks in large part to Chris’s efforts as a collector. See those photos inspired me to write about King’s ability to spin off merchandizing based on is characters. Chris Oliveros, of course, handles the production end of things, which is a big part of the book’s appeal (and a big reason why Drawn and Quarterly books are so treasured). I’m less involved in the production decision, but I often eavesdrop as an interested observer and it’s fascinating to listen to the two Chrises talk about paper stock, the size of books, the color scheme of the covers and other details. For both Ware and Oliveros, book making is truly an art. This is important to bear in mind because until recently, book production wasn’t a big part of comics: most comic strip collection and comic books were shoddily put together. To be sure, there were exceptions like the Barnaby books of the 1940s, or Walt Kelly’s warm and inviting Pogo paperbacks of the 1950s. But the real revolution in comics came in the 1980s and 1990s thanks to four people: Francoise Mouly, Chip Kidd, Chris Ware, and Chris Oliveros. The four really taught us that to do justice to comics as a visual form, the book design had to be specifically tailored to show the art in the best light.

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