David Mazzucchelli
Your Wednesday Sequence | David Mazzucchelli’s “Year One”
Batman #404-407 (1986-87). David Mazzucchelli.
Despite his having drawn two of the bangin’-est, bone crunching-est superhero comics of the modern age (namely Daredevil Born Again and the book at hand, Batman Year One), few would argue that a — perhaps the — defining aspect of David Mazzucchelli’s approach to his mainstream comics work is its great subtlety. The artist’s decision to leave superheroes for the greater freedom of alternative comics may have been surprising at the time, but in retrospect it makes perfect sense: Mazzucchelli was never as interested in the roaring moments of climax that are action comics’ stock in trade as he was in the smaller, tension-filled moments of ascent and decline that bookend them. It was perhaps inevitable that he would one day leave the spandex merry-go-round in order to investigate them more deeply, but in his timeless collaboration with Frank Miller on Year One, Mazzucchelli was able to find an ideal point between noise and quiet, action and inertia: superhero comics somehow created to lack the kitschy “zap bam pow” element, given a truer “real-world” feel than can be found just about anywhere else in the genre.
- January 4, 2012 @ 03:00 PM by Matt Seneca
Jack Davis, Phoebe Gloeckner, David Mazzucchelli, Chip Kidd headline BCGF
The featured guests for the third annual Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival have been announced, and whoo boy, it’s quite a line-up. And it runs the gamut, too: MAD Magazine legend Jack Davis, book-design kingpin Chip Kidd, The Diary of a Teenage Girl author Phoebe Gloeckner, Asterios Polyp/Batman Year One artist David Mazzucchelli, Providence artcomix vets CF and Brian Ralph, grossout-humor queen Lisa Hanawalt, and minicomics patriarch John Porcellino. An opportunity to encounter Gloeckner live and in person is not to be squandered, folks, and that’s just for starters.
Organized by publisher PictureBox Inc., retailer Desert Island, and scholar Bill Kartalopoulos, this year’s BCGF will take place on Saturday, December 3 from noon to nine at Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Church in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, with programming hosted at the nearby Union Pool. If the last two years are any indication, it’s the alternative comics show to beat.
- November 7, 2011 @ 01:19 PM by Sean T. Collins
Your Wednesday Sequence SupaSpecTac DeluXXXury Edition #2
It’s a little something different on Your Wednesday Sequence this week, folks. For weeks now I’ve been wanting to dig into the rock-solid action storytelling of Benjamin Marra, who draws comics like Jack Kirby given a dose of Giotto DNA and filled to the bursting point with speed metal and grindhouse movies. Ben’s work on Night Business and Gangsta Rap Posse (a bracing new issue of which was just released) is about as close to flawlessly constructed as comics get: deceptively simple strings of phenomenal drawings that flow like a waterfall. Luckily enough for me, Ben was willing to answer a few of my questions on composition, layout, pacing, and a bunch of other comic book-making inside dope. And luckily enough for you, I’m posting our Q and A right here. Get ready to learn from a master, kids…
From Gangsta Rap Posse #2
MATT SENECA: Your comics have always emphasized gridded layouts, but in your latest comic, Gangsta Rap Posse #2, you stick almost exclusively to a basic six-panel grid, with each of the frames the exact same size as all the others. What makes that layout so appealing to you?
BENJAMIN MARRA: There are several reasons. Firstly, I think it’s the most efficient system for constructing and reading comic book pages. Many masters of comic book art and storytelling have worked off of it, like Kirby, Alan Moore (to an extent), Kyle Baker and Gary Panter. If the six-panel grid was good enough for Kirby, it’s good enough for me. It’s also a matter of time. If my page layout is pre-determined I’ve spared myself from having to solve many additional problems and can spend time focusing exclusively on what the panels contain. Additionally, I think it’s a more accessible format for new readers. A lot of comics these days focus too much on doing unnecessarily crazy page layouts (I guess stemming from Neal Adams’ response to Steranko?) with panels, instead of focusing on what’s within the panels, which is what’s really crucial. Wild panel layouts just confuse readers who aren’t already versed in comics as a language.
- November 2, 2011 @ 02:02 PM by Matt Seneca
Creator Q&A | Sonny Liew on Malinky Robot
Malinky Robot
Since a Xeric Foundation grant back in 2002 first allowed him to self-publish, comics creator Sonny Liew has created a series of stories starring Atari and Oliver, two street urchins who steal bicycles, watch giant robot movies and get into trouble in a futuristic city filled with robots. The stories have appeared in various comics and anthologies over the years, and this August Image Comics will collect them into one volume titled Malinky Robot.
Liew, whose body of work includes the Vertigo series My Faith in Frankie and Minx book Re-Gifters with writer Mike Carey, Marvel’s Sense and Sensibility adaptation with writer Nancy Butler, and SLG’s Wonderland with writer Tommy Kovac, shared some details on the new collection with me via the magic of email. Based in Singapore, Liew is also working on a few new projects, as he shares below.
JK: What stories are included in the new collection and where did they originally appear?
Sonny: The collection begins with “Stinky Fish Blues,” which was first conceived in David Mazzucchelli’s Graphic Storytelling class at the Rhode Island School of Design. Xeroxed copies of the story ended up in a couple of comic stores in the Boston area, before a Xeric grant allowed to me to try my hand at self-publishing. Later on a colored version appeared in Liquid City vol 1. “Bicycle” was originally released as a one-shot from SLG Comics, and the other stories, “Dead Soul’s Day Out,” “New Year’s Day” and “Karakuri” appeared in various editions of the Flight anthologies edited by Kazu Kibuishi.
- June 21, 2011 @ 11:05 AM by JK Parkin
Comics A.M. | Spiegelman wins Grand Prix, Borders delays more payments
Art Spiegelman
Awards | Art Spiegelman on Sunday won the Grand Prix at the Angoulême International Comics Festival, marking only the third time an American has received the honor (the other two were Will Eisner and Robert Crumb). “Considering my poor skills, I’m looking a little like the president Obama receiving the Nobel Peace prize,” he told the festival by telephone from the United States. Spiegelman will serve as the grand marshal for next year’s event.
Other winners at the four-day festival, which drew an estimated 200,000 visitors, include David Mazzuchelli for Asterios Polyp (Grand Jury Prize), and Naoki Urasawa and the late Osamu Tezuka for Pluto (Intergenerational Award). The full list of winners can be found here. [Agence France-Presse]
Retailing | The beleaguered Borders Group announced on Sunday that it’s delaying January payments to vendors and landlords in an effort to save cash while it tries to complete a debt restructuring. This marks the second round of delays for the bookseller, which has been pressuring large publishers and distributors to agree by Feb. 1 to convert late payments into $125 million in loans. The bookstore chain announced just last week that it secured a $550 million credit line from G.E. Capital, but only if several tough conditions were met — including an unlikely agreement from publishers. [The Wall Street Journal]
- January 31, 2011 @ 07:20 AM by Kevin Melrose
Bizarro cartoonist Dan Piraro wins 2010 Reuben Award
"Bizarro," by Dan Piraro
Bizarro creator Dan Piraro won the 2010 Reuben Award for Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year, presented over the weekend by the National Cartoonists Society. He beat out fellow nominees Stephan Pastis (Pearls Before Swine) and Richard Thompson (Cul de Sac).
The organization also 13 divisional awards in categories ranging from feature animation to book illustration to comic books. Paul Pope won the latter for “Strange Adventures,” his Adam Strange strip serialized in DC’s Wednesday Comics, while David Mazzucchelli took home the graphic novels award for his critically acclaimed Asterios Polyp.
The full list of divisional winners can be found after the break:
- June 1, 2010 @ 10:00 AM by Kevin Melrose
Mazzucchelli’s Asterios Polyp wins LAT Book Prize
Asterios Polyp
The Los Angeles Times Book Prizes were announced last night, and the Graphic Novel award went to David Mazzucchelli’s Asterios Polyp. The judges commented:
Mazzucchelli’s monolith is a beautifully executed love story, a smart and playful treatise on aesthetics, a perfectly unified work whose every formal element, down to the stitching on its spine, serves its themes. No wonder the main character is an architect finding his way back to his Ithaca and his Penelope: “Asterios Polyp” is an odyssey of design as well as writing and art and cartooning. Steeped in classicism and wholly modern, it’s a pleasure to read, and maybe even more of a pleasure to contemplate and discuss.
This is the first year the prizes have included a graphic novel category; the website calls graphic novels “an expanding part of the book landscape, both aesthetically and commercially.”
- April 24, 2010 @ 05:15 AM by Brigid Alverson
Los Angeles Times creates Graphic Novel category for its 2009 Book Prizes
I’m old enough to still find it absolutely delightful when a mainstream publication recognizes excellence in comics, particularly when the comics it deems excellent really are excellent. And that’s certainly the case with the finalists for the LA Times’ inaugural Graphic Novel Book Prize:
Luba by Gilbert Hernandez
GoGo Monster by Taiyo Matsumoto
Asterios Polyp by David Mazzucchelli
Scott Pilgrim vs. the Universe by Bryan Lee O’Malley
Footnotes in Gaza by Joe Sacco
That’s a pretty outstanding group. In other comics-related Book Prize news, McSweeney’s publisher Dave Eggers will be presented with the Times’ first-ever Innovators Award, while cartoonist Shaun Tan’s Tales from Outer Suburbia is a finalist for the Young Adult Literature Book Prize.
According to the announcement of the finalists in all categories — which, again to my delight, treats the addition of the Graphic Novel category like a major selling point — the winners will be announced April 23. My sincere congratulations go out to all the finalists.
(via Bryan Lee O’Malley)
- February 22, 2010 @ 11:30 AM by Sean T. Collins
Robot reviews: Asterios Polyp
Asterios Polyp
by David Mazzucchelli
Pantheon, 344 pages, $29.95.
Asterios Polyp is the type of graphic novel that causes critics like me to rub our hands together frantically and salivate. It’s full of all the juicy metaphors, re-occuring motifs and classical allusions that academics and reviewers alike go koo-koo for. Best of all, they’re all right up front and not hidden in the text, so you don’t have to do a lot of hunting around.
At its center, however, Polyp is a familiar and heartfelt tale of a man, who, halfway through his life, is faced with the realization that he is far from the wonderful person he thought he was and sets about trying to make things right.
- July 31, 2009 @ 03:45 PM by Chris Mautner
Everyone’s A Critic: A round-up of comic reviews and thinkpieces
Asterios Polyp
• Man, everyone and their Uncle Bob is reviewing David Mazzucchelli’s Asterios Polyp these days aren’t they? This week alone we’ve seen Brian Hibbs, Rob Clough, Douglas Wolk and the LA Times’ David Ulin.
Not wanting to be left out of the fun, I’ll probably have my own review of the book up this Friday.
• The Groovy Age of Horror’s Curt Purcell has been spending a lot of time talking about Blackest Night, and, given that he’s not a regular fan, he has some interesting things to say about the crossover event. Rather than link to all the separate posts, I’ll just say start here and work your way back.
Oh, and while you’re at it, read his new review of Gilbert Hernandez’s Speak of the Devil.
• Johnny Bacardi likes Blackest Night quite a bit too.
• Speaking of the Hernandez brothers, are you confused about where to dive into their expansive magnum opus, Love and Rockets? The Onion’s AV Club is here to help. Continue Reading »
- July 29, 2009 @ 11:15 AM by Chris Mautner
What are you reading?
Prince Valiant Vol. 1
Welcome to another round of What Are You Reading. Our guest this week is blogger, critic, Comics Comics editor and expectant dad Tim Hodler. To find out what Mr. Hodler and the rest of us are reading this week, click on the link below. And be sure to let us know what you’re currently reading in the comments section.
- July 12, 2009 @ 09:00 AM by Chris Mautner
Talking Comics with Tim: MoCCA’s Karl Erickson
The 2009 MoCCA Festival poster, illustrated by Molly Crabapple
While I did not attend Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art (MoCCA) Art Festival 2009, held back on June 6-7, I was struck at the amount of constructive feedback that came out of people’s reports after the festival. It goes without saying that almost everyone thought the new venue (the 69th Regiment Armory) needed air conditioning and many folks were understandably dismayed with the logistical challenges and delays that occurred at the festival’s start. While reading a great deal of reactions from attendees and exhibitors, I was curious to get a lessons learned perspective from the organizers. Fortunately, Karl Erickson, MoCCA Director, was willing to take my email questions. In his answers, Erickson seemingly made it clear he was open to constructive feedback. While my questions aimed to cover a great deal of various concerns, I welcome folks to chime in with additional thoughts in the comments section. My thanks to Erickson for his time.
Tim O’Shea: The first question has to be–did you explore the possibility of air conditioning this year? Was it deemed just too cost prohibitive? If you’re staying at the Armory, do you intend to have air conditioning in 2010?
Karl Erickson: We did explore air conditioning for the Armory, but, yes, it was just too expensive. As far as staying at the Armory we are looking at dates earlier in the spring to help alleviate the heat.
O’Shea: Can you speak to what happened to cause the hour-long delay on Saturday and logistical challenges (like delayed book deliveries, only one trashcan on the show floor [by some reports], names missing from the guide book)–and are you establishing measures to try to minimize these situations next year?
Erickson: The delay was due to a few different factors, the major being a severe miscommunication with the trucking company that was to deliver not only many of our exhibitor’s books, but all of our supplies for the festival, not least being our cash registers and other check-in essentials. Of the problems that we did have, having one trashcan for the entire show floor was not one of them. We definitely had many trashcans.
We are certainly taking steps to contain and minimize the mistakes of this year, the most important of which is getting a much earlier jump in the planning and execution of the Festival. This includes a lengthy review of the 2009 Festival with practical solutions suggested. These include moving the Festival earlier in the spring (as this is not the first year we have had heat problems, AC or no), starting on every aspect of the Festival earlier, and creating a new MoCCA website that will deliver information much more effectively to exhibitors and attendees.
- July 9, 2009 @ 02:37 PM by Tim O'Shea
What Are You Reading?
Asterios Polyp
Welcome to What Are You Reading, where we don’t let a little thing like national holidays and fireworks prevent us from talking about our current reading exploits. Our guest this week is cartoonist (you can see his work in the new anthology Syncopated) and editor Paul Karasik, whose latest book is the highly accclaimed You Shall Die By Your Own Evil Creation! the second collection of comics by the late Golden Age artist Fletcher Hanks.
To discover what Paul and the rest of us are reading, simply click on the link below …
- July 5, 2009 @ 02:00 PM by Chris Mautner
Collect This Now! Rubber Blanket
Rubber Blanket #1
One of the most hotly anticipated books of the year, at least among the indie crowd, has got to be David Mazzucchelli’s Asterios Polyp. The book has been earning a plentiful number of plaudits, but part of the interest is surely the fact that Mazzucchelli hasn’t published a book in almost 15 years and hasn’t had a strip published since 2001.
With all the fanfare surrounding the book, however, it seems odd that up till now no one has attempted to collect the three oversized issues of Mazzucchelli’s seminal self-published series, Rubber Blanket. While the three issues aren’t necessarily hard to find, securing them can prove to be a bit pricey. More importantly though, Rubber Blanket was a seminal series, both in Mazzucchelli’s development as an artist and in the indie comix scene of the early 90s.
- June 29, 2009 @ 02:00 PM by Chris Mautner
New details revealed on upcoming Crumb/Mazzucchelli books
Crumb Genesis Sketches
It looks like I have more of an influence than I thought. Last week I wondered when Bill Kartalopoulos was going to get around to updating his site, and low and behold he has, with some really useful information on two hotly anticipated books.
The first deals with what may well be the most anticipated and possibly even controversial book of the year, Robert Crumb’s adaptation of the Book of Genesis.
Kartalopoulos, points to a few links that suggest the book may be in stores courtesy of WW Norton by the end of the year. He also posts some tantalizing art, links to an interview with Crumb, and reports on how the book’s foreign rights have been snapped up.
The second item concerns David Mazzucchelli’s long-awaited graphic novel Asterios Polyp. The book was originally scheduled to be out in February, but publisher Pantheon has updated that release date to June 2.
The book, a 344-page hardcover, concerns a middle-aged architect and womanizer whose life literally goes up in flames when his apartment burns down and he retreats to a small town.
- January 12, 2009 @ 05:50 AM by Chris Mautner