Dilbert

Comic strips | Scott Adams’ Dilbert is moving to Universal UClick after two decades with United Feature Syndicate. The news doesn’t come as a big surprise, as it was announced more than three months ago that Peanuts would make the same move in February. Both properties are represented by Peanuts Worldwide. UClick will begin management of Dilbert.com on Saturday, with print syndication to follow in the summer. Dilbert will join a lineup at the syndicate that includes Doonesbury, Calvin and Hobbes, Garfield and Ziggy. [press release]

Comic strips | Writer Mary Schmich and artist June Brigman discuss the end of Brenda Starr, whose final strip runs on Sunday. “(Brenda) is a continuity strip, like a soap opera. Those have been dropping like flies,” Brigman says. “It is amazing she has lasted. It’s not a laugh-a-day strip. It requires some effort, like reading the paper every day.” [Boston Herald]

Retailing | Gendy Alimurung chronicles the final days of the Borders Books and Music location is Los Angeles’ Westwood neighborhood: “The protracted demise is helping [12-year employee Camilla] Ostrin gradually acclimate to her new reality, at least. Empty bookshelves are the saddest part. She’s used to seeing them full. Customers likely would agree; they don’t seem to understand that the store isn’t being restocked, that the new Obama calendars aren’t coming in, or that once the Paperchase journals are gone, they’re gone.” [LA Weekly]

Mome 20

Publishing | Chris Mautner talks at length at TCJ.com with editor Eric Reynolds about Mome, Fantagraphics’ quarterly anthology series. [Part 1, Part 2]

Creators | George Rigakos, who teaches political economy at Carleton University in Ottawa, is adapting the Communist Manifesto as a four-issue comic series. “There is nothing like a comic book and graphic novel to grip a reader,” he says. [London Free Press]

Creators | Robert Kirkman discusses The Walking Dead — the comic and the TV adaptation — and his upcoming kids’ series Super Dinosaur: “It’s definitely a time in comics history where there needs to be more things aimed at younger readers, just because the majority of comics out there these days are actually aimed at teenagers and above. It’s definitely a market that needs to be fulfilled. This is our effort to do the coolest comic ever and make sure that it’s appropriate for all ages.” [USA Today]

Creators | Tom Spurgeon continues his holiday interview series with an extensive Q&A with Dylan Horrocks. [The Comics Reporter]

Echoes

Creators | Collaborators Joshua Hale Fialkov and Rahsan Ekedal talk about their horror-noir series Echoes. “For being a book about a child murderer, it is the most populist, fun book that I’ve done,” Fialkov says. “I haven’t really done a hard horror book in a long time. It was a lot of fun to actually do something that’s just grotesque and upsetting.” [USA Today]

Creators | Co-writer Anthony Del Col chats about his IDW Publishing series Kill Shakespeare. [Timmins Daily Press]

Broadway | Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark director Julie Taymor has withdrawn from a public Q&A planned for Jan. 8, citing changes in the show’s production schedule. However, Vulture wonders whether Taymor, who’s never been publicity-shy, is “going off the grid” following the string of delays, accidents and criticism that’s plagued the $65-million musical. [Arts Beat]

Comics | Austin Hartman names the 10 best drinking buddies in comics. [iFanboy]

Legal

Legal | Michael Renaud, the only witness who can place retailer Michael George at his comic store around the time his first wife Barbara George was killed, testified Monday that a meeting with detectives shortly after the 1990 murder detailed in a recently published book did take place, despite its lack of mention in police files. Defense attorney Carl Marlinga questioned during the evidentiary hearing whether Renaud, who admitted to smoking marijuana, has a reliable memory of events. [Detroit Free Press]

Digital piracy | Four publishing groups in Japan, including the Digital Comic Association, is demanding that Apple stop selling pirated works of Japanese authors in its App Store. Apple says that it removes pirated material upon notification by the copyright holder. [The Wall Street Journal]

Publishing | Although a bill to further restrict the sale in metropolitan Tokyo of manga and anime depicting “extreme” sex won’t be voted on until Wednesday, some creators say the legislation has already had a chilling effect. For instance, one boys love artist contends her publisher is refusing to release works set in schools or featuring school uniforms. [Sankaku Complex]

Phoenix

Publishing | Comics veteran Mike Grell has been named editor-in-chief of Ardden Entertainment, replacing J.M. DeMatteis, who resigned in October. [ICv2.com]

Pop culture | More than two years after a man stabbed seven people in Tokyo’s Akihabara district, the popular otaku destination has reopened its streets to pedestrian traffic. [CNNGo]

Copyright | Dylan Horrocks cautions the publishing world not to follow the the same precarious path as the music and movie industries: “This shift from public good to private ownership has encouraged the repeated extension of copyright terms, and the erosion of such communal rights as fair use and public domain. And now, as we try to work out how to adapt to the new challenges of digital reproduction, the property metaphor is only making things worse. The music and film industries are waging war on their customers (and all too often their artists as well) in the name of protecting their property at all costs. Will the book world make the same mistake? Or can we find another way of looking at copyright? Maybe a metaphor that better reflects an author’s relationship to their work and their readers?” [Booknotes]

Sweet Tooth, Vol. 2

Creators | Jeff Lemire talks about his post-apocalyptic Vertigo series Sweet Tooth, and writing DC’s Superboy. [Publishers Weekly, Underwire]

Creators | Ariel Schrag interviews Gabrielle Bell. [AfterEllen]

Creators | Artist Freddie E. Williams II discusses technology and working digitally. [TCJ.com]

Creators | John Seven spotlights Jason Little, creator of Shutterbug Follies and its sequel Motel Art Improvement Service. [Publishers Weekly]

Comics | Douglas Wolk looks at 10 comics we’re still waiting for. [Techland]

WildCATS 3.0 by Dustin Nguyen

• Wildstorm will bring Joe Casey and Dustin Nguyen’s WildCATS 3.0 back into print in September.
• Wildstorm also adds another video game franchise to its publishing line, in the form of Kane & Lynch.
• Dark Horse had a few items I was unaware of in their latest round of solicitations. There’s another Grandville book coming out by Bryan Talbot called Grandville Mon Amour, and Jill Thompson’s Scary Godmother books are being collected into one huge “deluxe” edition. Also, the out-of-print Hellboy/Starman/Batman stories by James Robinson, Mike Mignola and many others are being released as a part of the Hellboy trade paperback line. There’s lots more, of course, coming from Dark Horse in August, but those jumped out at me as stuff I hadn’t heard about or missed when they were announced.
• NBM will collect Gerard Jones and Mark Badger’s Networked: Carabella on the Run in July. This is a webcomic that runs on privacyactivism.org.
• Artist David Hahn is working with comedian John Roy on a new book for Image Comics.
• Tyler James, creator of the webcomic Over, is working with Matt Zolman on a new comic called Epic.
• Sports club bars in a South Auckland, New Zealand will give away an anti “drink-driving” comic by Hicksville creator Dylan Horrocks. “An advantage with the comic medium is that people are more relaxed when they start reading one and you can reach all kinds of people and tell a story of characters making the right choice,” the creator said. Via

D&D Player's Handbook

Welcome to another edition of What Are You Reading. JK Parkin is off having fun at WonderCon, so it falls to me to handle this week’s column. Our special guest this week is New Zealand cartoonist Dylan Horrocks, who some of you might know as the author of the seminal graphic novel Hicksville, which was just re-released by Drawn & Quarterly.

To see what Dylan and the rest of us are reading hit the link below. Hard. Then let us  know what you yourself are perusing in the comments section.

Blackest Night #8

Tom Bondurant: Hey, I am traveling and I still found time for comics!  (Isotope and Comix Experience helped).  Thought Blackest Night #8 was pretty satisfying, but that might be due to its relative predictability.  My expectations were met, is what I’m saying.  Also got a charge out of Wonder Woman #42, because it set up a nice, dire situation in the context of some unexpected old business.  Same goes for JLA #43, but why is Evil Lightray Southern?  Oh, and I read all of the Demon Omnibus on the plane — which surprised both me and my wife.  Moved on to Essential Marvel Two-In-One Vol. 1, an absolute delight; and now Action Philosophers Vol. 2. So, y’know, keeping busy.

Chris Mautner: I spent most of this week reading Japanamerica: How Japanese Pop Culture Invaded the US by Roland Kelts. Published in 2006, it’s one of those “let me explain why your kids are nuts for all those crazy cartoons and comics with the kids with the big eyes” type of books.

Japanamerica

Overall it’s a pretty good book though it has it’s flaws. Whenever Kelts talks about the business of anime and manga he’s on pretty solid ground. He talks repeatedly, for example, about how the anime and manga industries are flailing about these days and how flummoxed they are about Western interest in their intellectual properties and how they can best exploit it.

He’s on shakier ground when he talks about the cultural resonance of this material. He oversells it a little too much. Yes, anime and manga deal with more adult and complex themes than most Western animation, but they also capitulate to just as many genre cliches and formulas as we do (not to mention being just as given to over the top melodrama). And I think he lets the hentai stuff off a little too easily. No, I don’t think that reading tentacle porn is going to turn someone into a serial rapist, but what do the way women are portrayed in these comics and films say about gender relations in Japan? Does the constant submissive portrayal of women in these works encourage a sexist mindset? It’s a question he should have asked.

Plus, he makes a few errors — minor stuff (Robert Crumb’s Fritz the Cat stuff was written and drawn before he started Zap. And his more autobiographical material came years after the hippie era.) but frequent enough to set my back teeth on edge. And I really wish he had stopped the 9/11 allusions about 1/3 of the way through. Still, as these kind of “newbie’s guide to j-pop” type books go, it’s not a bad
read and marked with some occasional sharp insight.

Spell Checkers

Brigid Alverson: Spell Checkers is the bad-girl answer to all those cute high school witch stories. The three antiheroines of Jamie S. Rich’s graphic novel, due out from Oni in two weeks, basically mugged a witch for her spell book and have been using it ever since to ensure they are top dogs at home and at school. With basically no controls, they smoke in school, cheat on their homework, skip out of gym, and slag on each other constantly. They are terrible role models but a lot of fun to watch. Joelle Jones, whose work I really admired in Token, designed the characters and draws the flashback sequences, while Nicholas Hitori De handles the rest of the artwork, using a manga-influenced style that’s a bit heavy on the screentones for my taste. The story is great, though, and it’s a lot of fun watching the main characters be as bad as they can be.

A Home for Mr. Easter is your basic chase story. Tesana, a large, misunderstood girl who spends a lot of time in a fantasy world of her own accidentally comes across an Easter bunny — a rabbit that lays Easter eggs. She decides she will bring him home, and she ends up with half the town — cheerleaders, animal-rights protesters, the avaricious pet-shop owner, and her mother — on her tail. I feel that the story is a
bit weak — it’s hard to make a premise like that work — but the artist, Brooke Allen, does a great job of bringing it to life. You really feel Tesana’s anger and her desperation, and the side characters are lively
and expertly drawn.

Finally, I picked up Tokyopop’s Alice in the Country of Hearts because a lot of other reviewers have liked it, and I also liked the cover designs. It’s Alice in Wonderland redone with handsome young men in all the main parts — the White Rabbit, the Mad Hatter, and a few others thrown in for good measure. I’m not too far into it yet, but it doesn’t seem to be following the story very closely — more like using it as a set of ingredients for a new one. Alice falls asleep and in her dream she is thrust into a new country, one that is filled with perils and smiling young men. The rules aren’t entirely clear, but basically she is trying to get back home. The art is nice and clean and the character designs are interesting. I’m not entirely sold on it yet, but I’ll keep reading for now.

Amazing Spider-Man #627

Tim O’Shea: I’m really afraid that my role on WAYR is fast deteriorating into Schrödinger’s cat monitor (see WAYR from two weeks ago). I scooped up Amazing Spider-Man 627, totally enthused at the prospect of the Roger Stern/Lee Weeks creative combo. And then I got to the second page of the tale and–you guessed it–Pete internally monologues: “She’s (Cassie) understanding, and she’s as science-geeky as I am, I can make a joke about Schrödinger’s cat, and she gets it.” Added points to letterer Joe Caramagna for putting the phrase in red letters, giving it a “He killed Uncle Ben” level of importance. I exaggerate, but it did crack me up that the words were highlighted in such a manner.

I frequently bash editorial decisions made in comics, but long-time WAYR readers will not be surprised to see me praise Marvel editorial for hiring Stern to write an arc. Getting Weeks on art is sheer gravy. Stern’s history with Marvel is rich, in fact I had forgotten that Stern once wrote Doctor Strange and was only reminded of it when Wong has a brief cameo in the issue. I know Marvel just had the Waid miniseries wrap up, and I was already begging to see Waid do more with Strange, but in case Mark’s too busy — can there be a consideration for Stern and Paul Smith to do a Doctor Strange miniseries? Please? (God I am a fanboy aren’t I?)

Rucka’s announced departure from DC makes me appreciate his final issue (Detective Comics 863) with Jock even more. But I hope Rucka is right and that anyone can step in and continue with Batwoman. I never was that keen on Rucka’s Superman work, but he definitely connected with me on Batwoman.

I’m still appreciating the tributes and acknowledgments of Dick Giordano’s passing. Two pieces that I heartily recommend: — my friend KC Carlson’s thorough examination of Giordano’s editorial
work (and its impact on Carlson) — The three-part 1980 Gary Groth interview with Giordano (one, two and three).

The Midnight Disease

Dylan Horrocks: I usually read nonfiction, and currently in my reading pile are:

Swallow Me Whole

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

New Zealand cartoonist Dylan Horrocks, creator of the seminal and excellent Hicksville, has updated his Web site, and entered the wild and woolly world of Webcomics with two new serials:

The American Dream: this is a totally new story that I’ve been working on for some years (I think I began writing notes for it in 2003 or 2004). Not sure exactly how long it will be, but probably less than 100 pages, and I plan on putting up a few new pages per week.

Sam Zabel & the Magic Pen: I already published the first chapter of this story in Atlas #2 & 3 (from the wonderful Drawn & Quarterly), so the first 26 pages will look pretty familiar to anyone who read them there. But I’ve now added colour (which I’d always hoped to do eventually), and of course from chapter two onwards, it’ll be all new.

Horrocks has a couple other short stories up as well and also says he plans on serializing the main story from Atlas on his site, and that he will still be collecting these tales in book form at some point down the road. Go check it out.