DC Comics app

Digital comics | ICv2 estimates the total value of the digital comics market in 2011 as $25 million, triple the 2010 figure, and boldly predicts that digital will account for 10 percent of the entire comics market in 2012. Digital sales grew faster in the second half of the year, which ICv2 attributes to three factors: DC’s decision to release its New 52 comics digitally the same day as print, the industry-wide trend toward same-day print and digital releases, and the proliferation of different platforms on which to read digital comics. As for digital taking away from print, the publishing executives ICv2 has spoken to over the past few months don’t seem to think that is happening. [ICv2]

Retailing | Retailer and journalist Matt Price takes the temperature at the ComicsPRO Annual Members Meeting, which kicks off today in Dallas, noting that members remain interested in DC’s publishing plans, and report “very strong sales” for Image’s Fatale and Thief of Thieves. [Nerdage]

comiXology

Digital comics | ComiXology CEO David Steinberger talks about how comiXology got started (he was trying to figure out how to catalog his comic collection), his first comic book and what comic art he would most like to own. [Graphic Novel Reporter]

Comics | Heritage Auctions will sell 12 “ashcan” comic books created in the 1930s and ’40s for trademark purposes, including one of three Action Funnies known to exist. [Art Daily]

Creators | Japanese creator Takehiko Inoue has resumed work on his long-running series Vagabond, after taking a lengthy break, first for health reasons and then because he lost interest in it. He told fans he wouldn’t go back to work on the series, which is serialized in Kodansha’s Morning magazine, until he regained his enthusiasm for it. That seems to have happened, and the new chapter is being colored. Vagabond is published in North America by Viz Media. [Anime News Network]

Saucer Country #1

Creators | Paul Cornell discusses his upcoming Vertigo series Saucer Country, which combines his love of UFOs with politics: “I don’t like stories about stupid politicians, I like stories about politicians who show skill and daring, and by the end of the first arc, Arcadia’s used her political instincts to get her and her team out of an immediate danger, and on the way to being able to use the powers of a candidate to start investigating what happened to her.” [USA Today]

Creators | Amy Reeder talks about her new gig as the interior artist for Batwoman: “What I like about Kate is that she’s so subtle for a lead character … like she says very little and our job is to read behind the lines, which makes it impossible not to feel invested and empathetic towards her. She’s got a little of the edgy in her. She’s a nuanced balance between feminine and masculine, which is tough to pin down.” [DC Women Kicking Ass]

Creators | Yuko Shimizu, cover artist for Vertigo’s The Unwritten, discusses her process, influences and career. [Multiversity Comics]

Creators | Noelene Clark talks with artist I.N.J. Culbard about his upcoming Vertigo series The New Deadwardians, and adapting H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness. [Hero Complex]

Friends With Boys

Creators | Eva Volin chats with Faith Erin Hicks about her upcoming graphic novel Friends With Boys, fantasy, young-adult comics, and keeping motivated while struggling with the creation process: “I started doing online comics years and years ago, and even though comics are really hard to create, I fell in love with making them. With comics you have to learn how to draw everything really well. It’s not just drawing people, comics are backgrounds and props and cars and animals and learning to draw these things from all angles and in a style that is appealing and fresh. It’s a constant struggle to update and improve my skills. But even though it’s a struggle, it’s something I really love to do. A well made comic is my favourite thing in the world, and I want to someday be the person who makes that comic and gives a reader enjoyment.  It’s like that completely annoying saying: Nothing worth doing is easy to do. Besides, someone has to make comics about flying unicorns and puppies … (Disclaimer: I have not made this graphic novel yet and probably never will. Apologies to 11 year old me.)” [Good Comics for Kids]

Creators | Writer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa guests on the comiXologist podcast to talk about his work on the graphic novel Fantastic Four: Season One, and other matters. [comiXology Blog]

Creators | Ryan North answers questions from the public about his upcoming Aventure Time comic. [The BOOM!Pen]

Creators | Katie Monnin interviews Star Wars comics writer John Jackson Miller. Fun fact: He has a master’s degree in Soviet studies. [Graphic Novel Reporter]

Friends With Boys

Robot 6 has covered cartoonist Faith Erin Hicks on multiple occasions concerning her comics, but this time we’re discussing something new: what kind of living she makes as a cartoonist. Hicks recently opened up about the financial realities of her life as a working cartoonist in a blog post supplementing her current webcomic Friends With Boys, which First Second will release later this year as a graphic novel. Hicks isn’t the first to share such intimate details on the business of comics, but the picture she paints with it is surprising in many ways.

“First of all, never in a million years did I think I would be able to pay my rent by drawing comics,” Hicks wrote, “or even through doing the freelance art thing. Sometime I cringe inwardly when I tell people that I write and draw comics for a living, because sometimes it doesn’t feel like that; it’s more like I’ve taken a vacation from some real job to draw comics, and eventually I will return to the workforce when I run out of money.”

Hicks became a full-time comic artist only because she lost her job. Until 2008 she worked as an animator, but as her company’s contracts dried up she was let go until their prospects improved. While she was waiting, mainstream comics publisher First Second offered her a contract drawing Brain Camp, a comic written by someone else. That one-time opportunity eventually blossomed into an ongoing commitment between Hicks and First Second, with the artist now working on her fourth book for the publisher.

You might ask, what about Hicks’ work before Brain Camp? Although Hicks garnered acclaim with her webcomic Demonology 101 and two graphic novels for SLG Publishing, it turns out that it doesn’t pay nearly what you’d think. SLG, like most small publishing houses, doesn’t pay royalties or a page-rate for creator-owned work, with the creators only making money on the back-end. According to Hicks, her two SLG books — Zombies Calling and War at Ellsmere – sold about 2,000 copies each, with her receiving 7% (no misprint, 7%) of the cover price. Those two books were sold for $9.95 and $12.95, respectively, which works out to a total of $3,206 earned for those two books.

“Part of the reason for this pessimistic view is that currently I’m living off advances from [First Second], and supplementing that money with grants and freelance work (taking illustration jobs for clients, doing the occasional workshop, drawing commissions, etc),” Hicks went on to say in her blog post. “I do not have a hit graphic novel that I receive a steady royalty income from. Not yet, at least. I suspect I would feel more secure in my line of work if I did.”

Hicks goes into more detail about the financial life of a cartoonist, and into how she spends her limited income. Truly an insightful piece for pros and fans alike, some of whom chimed in with comments on Hick’s post.

Check out Diamond’s release list or ComicList, and tell us what you’re getting in our comments field.

Fantastic Life

Chris Arrant

If I had $15, I’d try something new first with the Xeric-winning Fantastic Life GN (Big If, $9.95) by Kevin Mutch. I’ll always give Xeric winners a second look, and this looks built for me: slackers, punk rock, zombies. Next up I’d get the ongoing adventures of Butcher Baker – the Image one – with Butcher Baker Righteous Maker #8 ($2.99). I’ll admit that the series went off a little bit around #5, but I’m still holding on for hopes it’ll right itself or I’ll figure out what I’d been missing. Lastly, I’d get Secret Avengers #21.1 (Marvel, $2.99). Seriously, is Rick Remender becoming the writer of all-things secret in the Marvel U? I’m not complaining though, as he’s bringing his Uncanny X-Force mojo and, from what it looks like, a lot of new cast members.

If I had $30, I’d get my usual pull of The Walking Dead #93 (Image, $2.99) and a Hickman two-fer, Fantastic Four #602 (Marvel, $2.99) and FF #14 (Marvel, $2.99). If you would have told me two years ago I’d be seeing two Fantastic Four titles (and two I’d be reading, no less) I would have been gobsmacked. Hickman does it again. And that’s it.

What, you say I didn’t spend my full $30? It’s a light week for me, so I’d spending the remaining on bags and boards or, *gasp*, food as it says in the title. Tijuana Flats, Taco Tuesday, be there.

Coming back if I could splurge, and I’d put down my tacos and pick up the ADD HC (Vertigo, $24.99) by Douglas Rushkoff, Goran Sudzuka and Jose Marzan Jr. From the outside it looks like The Hunger Games meets Ender’s Game, and Rushkoff looks to be just the one to make that mash-up more than, well, a mash-up.

The Silence of Our Friends

Brigid Alverson

If I had $15, I’d get Avatar: The Last Airbender: Vol. 1: The Promise, Part 1 ($10.99), despite the staggering title, because it is written by Gene Luen Yang (American Born Chinese) and I’m a fan. The art looks nice and clean, and this looks like a book I could enjoy, at least until my nieces and nephews snatch it away from me. And then I’d pick up the latest issue of The Sixth Gun ($3.99), because how could I miss out on that?

If I had $30, I’d have to put The Sixth Gun back on the shelf for a little while, or borrow two dollars from someone, because The Silence of Our Friends ($16.99) is the must-have book this week. Writer Mark Long based it in part on his father’s experiences as a white reporter covering the civil rights struggles of the 1960s, and Nate Powell’s atmospheric art really brings the era to life. It’s deep without being preachy, with characters that are good but flawed, and while politics shape the plot, the true story is about the interior reality, the clumsiness and missteps that occur even among people of good will. It’s a truly stunning graphic novel and the standout choice for this week.

The splurge choices are pretty good this week, but this former reporter is not going to even try to resist the first volume of Hermes Press’s collection of Brenda Starr, Reporter, even at a stiff $60. On the off chance that a bit of extra dough comes my way, though, my next choice would be the trade of Spontaneous, a smart and beautifully illustrated comic about the mystery of spontaneous human combustion. Since it features a more modern woman reporter, I’m sure Brenda would approve.

Manara, Volume 2

Chris Mautner

If I had $15: I haven’t read The Bulletproof Coffin yet, but I know a number of folks who thought it was pretty nifty, and I do like what little of Shaky Kane and David Hine’s work I’ve read before. So I’d probably be willing to flip through the first issue of The Bulletproof Coffin: Disinterred, the first issue of the six-part sequel.

If I had $30, I’d grab Wally Wood’s Strange Worlds of Science Fiction, a hardcover collection of sci-fi stories Wood did for publishers during the 1950s that were not EC. Wood’s one of those classic comic artists I’d really like to learn more about and this seems like as good a place to go as any.

Splurge: More Milo Manara goodness awaits with the release of The Manara Library Vol. 2, which contains El Gaucho, the second of his collaborations with Hugo Pratt, and Trial By Jury, a collection of shorts never released in the U.S. before now.

The Bulletproof Coffin: Disinterred

Graeme McMillan

If I had $15 this week, I’d apparently be most interested in some sequels; like Chris M, I’d go for Hine and Kane’s Bulletproof Coffin: Disinterred #1 (Image, $3.99) – because I like my comics meta and slightly disturbing, apparently – and I’d follow that up with the debut of IDW’s new cross-continuity crossover Infestation 2 #1 ($3.99), which replaces zombies with Lovecraftian monsters as the threat du jour, something else that feels more than a little meta for some reason. As far as I know, Rick Remender and Patrick Zircher are staying entirely un-meta for Secret Avengers #21.1 (Marvel, $2.99), but as I’ve been reading a lot of Captain Britain and Excalibur lately, I’m picking this up to get a jump on the Brian Braddock era for the title.

If I had $30, I’d continue a recent Warren Ellis run and pick up the reissue of Atmospherics (Avatar, $7.99), to see what his Avatar crime work is like. Sticking with big name creators and indie companies, Kirby Genesis #5 (Dynamite, $3.99) is finally out this week, so I’d grab that as well, and then finish everything off with the latest issue of Peter Milligan’s Justice League Dark (#5, DC, $2.99).

When it comes to slurging, there’s a lot to choose from this week. I’m tempted by the Spontaneous HC (Oni, $24.99), Daredevil by Mark Waid Vol. 1 HC (Marvel, $19.99) and Catwoman Vol. 1 (DC, $29.99), but I’ve already read those books in their original serialized format, so I think I’d probably go for the Strikeforce Morituri collection from Marvel ($34.99); I vaguely remember the series past its early issues way back when, and I’d be interested to see if it holds up to my memories…

Polly and the Pirates, Volume 2: The Mystery of the Dragonfish

Michael May

I usually spend my $15 allowance on single issues, but this week I’m making a beeline for Polly and the Pirates, Volume 2: The Mystery of the Dragonfish ($11.99), a comic I’ve been waiting five years for. I’m so excited I don’t even care that Ted Naifeh didn’t draw it, especially since Robbi Rodriguez’ art looks so great. My remaining three bucks would of course go to Alpha Flight #8 ($2.99), an issue I’m both looking forward to (because it resolves the excellent story that Van Lente, Pak, and Eaglesham have been telling) and dreading (because there’s no more after it).

If I had $30, I’d circle back for my monthly series: Aquaman #5 ($2.99), Superman #5 ($2.99), X-Men Legacy #261 ($2.99), and All-Star Western #5 ($3.99).

My splurge item this week is the Daredevil By Mark Waid, Volume 1 hardcover ($$19.99). I’ve been looking forward to reading it anyway, but it made so many year-end lists that now my mouth is watering about it.

MUSH!

I was immensely impressed in early December, when Stephen Colbert recommended Glenn Eichler & Joe Infurnari‘s new First Second book, Mush!: Sled Dogs with Issues, to The Colbert Report viewers. Admittedly, Colbert is slightly biased, given that Eichler (the author of the frozen tundra/talking sled dogs/quirky humans comedy-drama) writes for the Comedy Central show. However, while many of the show’s writers have projects they’d love to have promoted by their boss, it’s relatively rare when Colbert uses the show’s forum to promote his staff’s projects. As a result, once I saw the endorsement, I made a mental note to track down the creators after the holidays for a potential interview. By some stroke of luck, the book’s artist, Infurnari, instead contacted me in mid-December to see if I was interested in covering his latest project (you bet I agreed to email interview with him and Eichler). I appreciate the collaborators’ willingness to discuss the project, particularly when Eichler shared the origin of his honed sense of comedic timing (having worked in an “editing room for a lot of animated half-hours for TV” [he was a story editor for MTV's Beavis & Butthead in the mid-1990s, as well as creating and producing the television show, Daria]). Once you’ve read the interview, be sure to enjoy First Second’s preview of the book.

Tim O’Shea: Joe, I love the way you convey the intensity and energy of the dogs when they are working, how did you arrive upon conveying that particular style of kineticism?

Joe Infurnari: The story hinges on the idea that not doing what you love leads to discontentment and unrest. For the team of sled dogs featured in this book, running is their bliss and the time they spend not running breeds trouble. So it was important to make the times the dogs were running as full of energy and joy as possible.

Quick slashing lines, splashes of ink, dramatic foreshortening and powerful diagonals are some of the ways I tried to bring to life the rush of running through the trails. I also knew that if it looked quickly drawn, then that energy would come through in the movement of the characters. When it came to the final inks, I was very comfortable drawing the book and I think the art reflects that. The inks are decisive, gestural and full of energy.

The final piece to the puzzle was the use of sound effects to add a visual punch to the high action running sequences.

O’Shea: Joe, I appreciated the placement of sound effects (particularly the dogs’ sounds), how did you decide when to slip those sound effects into the page?

Infurnari: I like sound effects in comics. With Mush! I used them to not just be descriptive of the sounds of things but to also highlight some of the non verbal communication taking place between the dogs. So when Buddy feels Venus is responding to his amorous overtures, I punctuated his tail with a ‘WAG!’ When she responds with a withering quip his tail simply ‘sags’. Similarly, when Dolly tries to politely reject Winston’s advances, she moves her hindquarters away from him with a ‘scooch’.

Ironically, I also used sound effects to make the lack of communication and sexual frustration between the humans even more awkward. The ‘shlup’ ‘shlup’ of Patty mashing berries is a subtle and funny comment on her desire for more connection with Frank.

O’Shea: As collaborators, how quickly did you establish a rapport on this project, and had the two of you been familiar with each others’ work prior to this project?

Infurnari: I of course knew Daria and before starting Mush! I read Stuffed!, his book with Nick Bertozzi. That was a great book and I think it helped me understand what was needed for Mush.

Mark Siegel’s editorial style is to have his artists and writers work together directly so Glenn and I rather quickly built up a rapport.

Glenn Eichler: I have to say that I was not familiar with Joe’s work, but First Second’s Mark Siegel thought he’d be perfect for the book, and Mark has a great sense for that kind of thing (and was absolutely right). As for our working rapport, we were always in touch, but never working in the same room. Joe did his thing and I did mine, but when we did communicate concerning feedback or notes, I’d say our working relationship was great.

O’Shea: I enjoyed the comedic pacing of the book at times. There are panels where nothing is said, allowing the comedy to linger for a moment. How much discussion took place in trying to frame comedic moments like that?

Infurnari: Glenn and I both understand it’s not always what is said that is funny. Many times it’s what goes unsaid that can really be hilarious. I don’t recall how many of those moments were in the script and how many came out of our collaboration. Those moments just seem to naturally flow out of the characters and their situations.

Eichler: Often I had indicated in the manuscript where a blank panel should be… I’ve been in the editing room for a lot of animated half-hours for TV, and that helps develop a sense of timing. Obviously you can’t “freeze” for five seconds in a book, so we used blank panels instead.

O’Shea: Joe, the dogs in this story convey a range of emotion, to a great extent through body language (beyond the mere wagging of a tail), did you do a lot of experimental sketching trying to learn how best to convey emotions or how did you settle upon how best to emotionally wrangle the dog cast?

Infurnari: Doing this book taught me a lot about my own process. Unlike some artists who are able to nail the designs and style right from the beginning, I have to do the book to know what it will look like. The characters and their unique body language come out of living with them through the layouts, the pencils and eventually the inks. The more I drew them the more they would each gain their own life. I attribute the hard work of drawing, redrawing and living with them throughout the process of creating this graphic novel as responsible for really breathing life into these characters.

O’Shea: How much research did the two of you in preparation of doing this story?

Infurnari: In his character descriptions of the dogs, Glenn gave me their breeding. This was my launching point for developing the characters with the rest coming from just doing lots and lots of drawing. I also researched the Alaskan landscape, log cabins, the sleds and harnesses as well. The book was pretty light on research with most of the books focus being on the characters’ psychological states. They have issues after all.

Eichler: I read up on dog teams, the various breeds used, what type of dog is considered best for what position in the harness, etc. I had read a classic book about Alaska, John McPhee’s “Coming into the Country,” which taught me a lot not only about how Alaskans use dog teams, but also about what kind of person moves up there from the lower 48 to live in the bush.

O’Shea: Was there a great deal of discussion on the coloring of the pages between you two, or did Glenn defer to you on that Joe? I really like the wintery range used to convey the snowy landscape.

Infurnari: When Mark approached me about the book he said he was looking for something different from the color. A wintry landscape of mostly snow and sky is limiting of what can be done but I tried to inject as much color into it as I could without detracting from the characters. That was my other objective for the color; to really individuate the dogs. So after a few tests of the color, I showed Mark and Glenn what I had and I was pretty much given the go-ahead from there.

O’Shea: Glenn, the human characters in the book are named Boss and Boss’s Mate (clearly named from the dogs’ perspective). How early in the story’s development did you realize you wanted to take that approach?

Eichler: Probably when I first decided that we should see the humans from two points of view, their own and the dogs.’ The device of the names lets you know immediately whose perspective you’re seeing, and that’s also the reason that when the dogs hear the humans speak, it’s in nonsense syllables. In their scenes without the dogs, the humans call each other by their given names.

O’Shea: Glenn, how much of a struggle was it trying to pace out how much story you wanted to devote to human drama versus the dog drama that is the backbone of the story?

Eichler: It wasn’t hard at all. The book was always going to be about the dogs, so they got the main focus.

O’Shea: Question for the both of you, there appear to be metaphorical fences in this book (between people and between the dogs), in addition to the physical fences. Would you agree?

Infurnari: When I read the script, I was reminded of how in art and literature natural landscapes have often represented the depths of the human psyche. There’s something about the dark bottomless fathoms of the oceans, the mysteries of the forest or the wide open expanses of sand or snow that spark our imaginations. In Mush!, the barren isolation of the Alaskan landscape sets the scene for a story about the dogs’ psychological state and ultimately our own interior lives as readers. The fences in this story are boundaries preventing the dogs from being out in the open on a run where they are most happy. The trail is their bliss and the fences that keep them from it mark the breeding area of their issues.

Eichler: Well, definitely. No one can ever know or meld with another person (or dog) entirely, and the isolation in which they all live just throws those differences into brighter relief. But that same isolation also creates fences that enclose the people and the dogs, forcing them together because they really can’t get away from each other. I’m saying the book has a lot of fences. It’s best to read it with a pair of wire cutters.

O’Shea: Glenn, not to get bogged down in details, but naming one’s dog is often a challenge. You really did a good job of naming the team of dogs in this story, did that come to you quite easily as you developed the characters or was it challenging with certain characters?

Eichler: I hate naming characters as a general rule, but I tried for a mix of the silliness and anthropomorphism often found in the names that real people give their real dogs. I also wanted to touch on the way people will give their puppies names that turn out to be either perfectly descriptive of their adult personalities, or utterly wrong.

O’Shea: Glenn (from the book’s acknowledgements you thank the dogs “who talk to him when he sleeps”) how long have you heard the dogs talking to you?

Eichler: I didn’t write that. The dog dictated it.

O’Shea: Of the whole team of dogs, for both of you, did you develop an affinity for one of the dogs over the course of developing the story?

Infurnari: Definitely. For me, I loved Buddy and Winston the most because their particular physiognomy and situation gave me the most opportunity for some hilarious drawings!

Eichler: I always like all my characters. To write them you have to be able to understand and sympathize with the motives of them all, even the villains. That said, it’s hard not to love Buddy.

O’Shea: How much fun did the two of you have at the recent Cousin Corinne’s LIVE COMIX BLOCK at Book Court in early December?

Infurnari: Live comics readings are always great opportunities for pushing the material into a different comedic realm. I like to enlist the audience to do all the sound effects. With Mush!, I got no small amount of pleasure at conducting a room full of people into a resounding swell of grunts!

Eichler: It was my first time doing one of those, so I had a lot of fun. And I got to meet some people whom I respect a lot – including Joe! That was the first time we met face to face, if you can believe it.

O’Shea: Anything we should discuss that I neglected to ask you about?

Eichler: Where’d you get that shirt? I like it.

Are You My Mother?

With 2012 still fresh and new, it seems like as good a time as any to look at various publishing companies’ plans for the year ahead and pick out what looks good, or at least interesting. Because the year looks to be filled with so many delights, I decided to double down and offer not just six but 12 comics I’m really looking forward to reading. Obviously this list is reflective of my own, indie-slanted interests, so feel free in the comments section to tell me what a dope I am for forgetting about Book X by Artist Y.

1. Are You My Mother? by Alison Bechdel (Houghton Mifflin). With a planned initial print run of 100,000 copies, there’s little doubt that Houghton Mifflin is expecting big things from Bechdel’s follow-up to her hugely acclaimed graphic novel Fun Home. Whereas that book dealt mainly with Bechdel’s relationship with her dad, this one focuses on her mom (in case you didn’t grab that from the title). A touchy subject, to be sure, but Bechdel’s proven she can handle such difficult, personal material with considerable aplomb.

Mastering Comics

2. Mastering Comics by Jessica Abel and Matt Madden (First Second). Abel and Madden’s Drawing Words and Writing Pictures was one of the best “how-to” guides comics has ever seen. I’m anxious to see what they’ll do for an encore.

3. Sammy the Mouse Vol. 2 by Zak Sally (La Mano). Volume One of Sally’s surreal, anthropomorphic saga just came out, collecting the first three issues of the Ignatz series. As good news as this is, what I’m excited about is Sally’s plans to have Volume 2, featuring all-new material, out by the end of the year. Sammy was one of the best books in the Ignatz line, and I’m eager to see the story continue.

4. Best of Enemies: A History of the Middle East Relations, Part One by Jean-Pierre Filiu and David B (Abrams). Funny the things you find out when you start strolling through a company’s online catalog. Did you know that Abrams is kickstarting another graphic novel imprint this year? With a heavy focus on Eurocomics? I sure as hell didn’t. One of the more notable releases is an English edition of the award-winning Kiki de Montparnasse. What I’m really curious about, however, is this historical project by the always interesting David B. and friend on the history of the Middle East.

5. Ed the Happy Clown by Chester Brown (Drawn and Quarterly). How long has it been since a collected version of Ed has been available? It’s been a long time. Long enough for me to note that it’s one of the few books by Brown that I haven’t read (other than pieces here and there — it’s shameful, I know). This is definitely going to be one of the big reprint projects of the year.

6. The Strange Tale of Paranorma Island by Suehiro Maruo (Last Gasp). This was initially promised to come out last year but apparently got delayed. Let’s hope we’re able to see a release in 2012. Maruo’s work is rarely for the squeamish or easily offended, but his comics have a haunting, lush quality that makes them worth checking out.

7. Barnaby Vol. 1 by Crockett Johnson (Fantagraphics). Here’s the other big reprint project of the year. Johnson’s wonderful, vastly underrated comic strip about a little boy and his underperforming fairy godfather is finally, finally being collected. Can’t wait.

8. Rohan at the Louvre by Hirohiko Araki (NBM). OK, so NBM has been publishing these graphic novels about the Louvre museum in Paris, and for the most part they’ve all been pretty good. This one, however, looks really interesting as it’s by the creator of the manga series Jo Jo’s Bizarre Adventures and stars one of the characters from that series. Chris Butcher talks a bit about it and offers up a preview over at his site.

9. Skippy Vol. 1 by Percy Crosby (IDW). OK, this is the other other big reprint project of the year. Even more than Barnaby, Skippy has largely been forgotten by a lot of comic readers, even though it heavily influenced works like Peanuts. But it’s a thoroughly charming, thoughtful strip that I expect will find a new appreciation with the release of this book.

The Lovely, Horrible Stuff

10. The Lovely Horrible Stuff by Eddie Campbell (Top Shelf). A new book from Eddie Campbell is always cause for celebration. This one deals with money and mankind’s general relationship toward it, with lots of personal anecdotes provided by the author, no doubt.

11. Lose #4 by Michael DeForge (Koyama Press). Oh, yeah, boy, more DeForge. What’s not to like?

12. Spirit World by Jack Kirby (DC). I didn’t even know this work existed until DC announced the collection earlier this year — that’s how poor a Kirby scholar I am. Still, it’s nice to see DC make a concerted effort to get as much of the King’s work out there as possible and I’m excited to see what this collection — mainly collecting horror/supernatural-style magazine stories if I’m correct — holds.

First Second has announced its releases for spring 2012, and as usual it’s an exciting, eclectic lineup. Here’s a quick rundown:

• Graeme talked about Arne Bellstorf’s Beatles comic, Baby’s in Black yesterday.
• Humayoun Ibrahim has adapted Jack Vance’s classic science fiction story The Moon Moth with “lots of masks, lots of aliens, and an interstellar mystery to round it out.”
• Marathon by Boaz Yakin and Joe Infurnari tells the story of the first marathon, when Eucles ran 153 miles from Sparta to Athens to help save Greece from the Persian Empire.
• Bloody Chester is a noir Western horror story by JT Petty and Hilary Florido.
• Victory finishes up Carla Jablonski and Leland Purvis’ excellent Resistance trilogy about the French Resistance in World War II.
• And finally, Jessica Abel and Matt Madden offer a “201-level” companion volume to Drawing Words and Writing Pictures called Mastering Comics.

Which are you looking forward to?

Time

2011 was the year of the Arab Spring, in which protestors took to the streets throughout the Middle East—often peacefully, sometimes not—and toppled regimes, threatened others, provoked responses that may ultimately lead to the downfall of regimes this year or in the next few. In the United States, the Occupy movement quickly grew from something the American media tried to ignore for a week or two into something no one could ignore, becoming part of the national conversation, revealing some of the savage urges of repression among our own police forces and outing Frank Miller as cranky old nutcase.

If The Protestor is the person of the year, then Zahra’s Paradise might just be the graphic novel of the year.

I don’t necessarily mean in simple terms of quality, although it is an excellent, compelling, make-you-set-the-book-down-and-think-in-stunned-silence work, and it probably is one of the better comics to see release in the last calendar year.

I’m referring instead to its timeliness, and the way it grapples with, explores and ultimately finds a qualified defeat—the “good guys” technically lose this one, while spotting a route to victory in the future—with some of the most pressing issues of the day, the very things that world leaders, would-be world leaders and the media talk about almost daily.

Zahra’s Paradise is a comic book about the Arab Spring, the Occupy movement and protests spurred by economic and social justice concerns world wide, because its about repressive, unrepresentative government and the clash between rulers and the ruled. Even though the Middle Eastern country it’s set in isn’t an Arab one, and the real-world protests that sets its fictionalized narrative in motion were two springs before the Arab Spring.

The country is Iran, and the protests were those that followed the June, 2009 presidential election, in which incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won reelection, despite widespread concerns about the legitimacy of the election, within and without Iran.

The story begins after a huge protest, when a young man named Mehdi fails to return home to his worried mother and brother, a blogger who serves as the protagonist (Although its their mother’s search that truly drives the story).

Worrying that he was detained during the crackdown, the pair begin searching for him through winding labyrinth of the Iran’s justice system and extra-judicial, gray system, ultimately visiting hospitals, jails, morgues, graveyards and various government bureaucracies.

The search leads readers into a modern-day Iran, a place unfamiliar to most people who haven’t visited, and have only caught glimpses in Western news stories, and introduces a variety of characters with a variety of viewpoints on the government, the state of the country and the lives they live in it. These run the gamut to unhappy folks trying to get by to online activists to cogs in the evil machine of the regime (Tellingly, even one of the bad guys, whose job involves torturing people and covering up deaths, seems highly conflicted).

The issues are big ones, but the story focuses narrowly on the mother’s grief, and her search for a single son, allowing readers to relate to and sympathize with this person and her personal quest, so that by the dynamite climax—in which the mother is given a fiery, eight-page rant—and the personal tragedy is multiplied by a factor of thousands, it makes for a devastating gut-punch (The book begins, I should note, with an emotional punch in the face, as the creators use a scene in which a man disposes of an uwanted litter of puppies as a metaphor for what the Iranian regime will do to their own children).

I can’t tell you exactly who those creators are, as they are semi-anonymous for political reasons. The writer is Amir, an Iranian-American activist, journalist and filmmaker, and the artist Khalil is a cartoonist and fine artist, creating his first graphic novel.

It’s a hell of a debut. No matter how well aligned with the zeitgeist the work is, no matter how compelling the story, Zahra’s Paradise wouldn’t work if it weren’t also a great work of comics, and it most assuredly is.

Khalil’s character designs all have the slight exaggeration of the characters that populate modern political cartoons—an effect no doubt further suggested by the black-and-white, newspaper-like presentation of the art—but the panels are all rich in detail, from the heavily emotive faces to the characters in the foreground, to the many nameless people in background crowds, to the architecture.

He provides not only characters, but a sense of place, with many distinct settings, something quite welcome in a story set so far away, in a place even more alien to most of us than Metropolis or Madripoor.

And clever ways are always found to illustrate that which doesn’t exactly suggest itself as good comics material. For example, when our blogger protagonist gets access to a file he shouldn’t, and learns about those who disappeared into the extra-legal system, we see a few little framing panels of him at a computer screen around a massive two-page spread, in which two massive, mechanical cleric’s heads are shown as part of a big, sinister factory, with conveyor belts full of dozens of people going in and out of their mouths, cutaway views six floors behind them in which figures are tortured or imprisoned or executed.

The story isn’t a true one, necessarily. At least, not every character in this is really real, but the story itself is common—way too common based by one of the appendixes in the back, in which the names of 16,901 people executed, shot while demonstrating or assassinated since the Islamic Republic of Iran was established. That sound like a big number, but it looks like an even bigger one, as you scan 11 pages full of the tiniest still-legible type you can imagine.

It would be some comfort as an American to finish a book like this and think, “Well, that can never happen here,” but then, 2011 was the year we saw peaceful protesters getting billy-clubbed, pepper-sprayed, tear-gassed and, in a few particularly tragic cases, getting struck in the head by tear-gas canisters. It was the year that the president who got elected promising to close down Guantanamo Bay, a former constitutional scholar, again failed to do so. It even ended with that same president signing a bill that allows for the indefinite detention without trial of any terror suspect, even American citizens.

So, you know, things may seem a lot better in the U.S. at the moment, but they are a hell of a lot worse than they were a decade or so ago.

Here’s hoping that as vital and relevant a work of fiction as Zahra’s Paradise might have been in 2011, it soon becomes a work of historical fiction.

Comics College is a monthly feature where we provide an introductory guide to some of the comics medium’s most important auteurs and offer our best educated suggestions on how to become familiar with their body of work.

This month we finally break Comics College’s glass ceiling (what took us so long anyway?) with an in-depth look at one of the many notable female cartoonists to come out of the alt-comix scene of the 1990s, Jessica Abel.

Why she’s important

Abel was one of the leading lights of the alt-comix scene of the ’90s, a warm, observant artist whose richly detailed stories of anxious young people looking for love and success helped propel comics from towards the — if not financial success — then more mainstream acceptance they endear today. And while she may have entered the scene a bit too late to be called a pioneer, there’s little doubt that her work, along with that of peers like Megan Kelso, helped encourage other women to read and make their own comics.

What’s more, she’s been a tireless advocate of the medium, both as a creator and as an educator and editor, shepherding young cartoonists and getting noteworthy work out in the face of a larger public. She may be one of the best ambassadors comics has at the moment.

Where to start

La Perdida

It might be nostalgia on my part, but I think the best place to be introduced to Abel’s work is Mirror, Window, which collects the second volume of Abel’s seminal series, Artbabe. Befitting the author’s own age at the time, the stories here deal with freshly minted adults who struggle with friendships being tested, young love, making drastic changes in the hopes of improving your lot, trying to decide which direction you want the rest of your life to go and other things that plague modern day 20-somethings. Far from being solipsistic, or indulging in whiny navel gazing, Abel presents her stories with a good deal of grace and even poetry at times; her characters are rich in telling, nuanced details and their behavior suggests an author who has sharply observed the world around her. Really, it’s a killer collection of work.

From there you should read

Abel’s next project, and the one that’s won her the most acclaim so far, is La Perdida, a 250-plus-page story of a young woman who moves to Mexico seeking a different life but ends up involved with some seedy characters. And then things take a turn for the worse. Although it takes some time to get all the ducks lined up in the row — this is a very character-based work – Perdida is more of a straight-up thriller than any of Abel’s previous stories, and also one of her darkest works to date. She also adopts a much looser, rougher art style here, which fits the main character’s seeking, confused tone as well as the violence that occurs afterward. It’s not my favorite comic of hers — I find the main character to ultimately be too willfully naive to root for — but it definitely has its charms and has won enough acclaim to be a good next stop on your tour of Abel-land (definitely opt for the collected version, which is much tighter and better than the serialized issues).

Further reading

Soundtrack

Abel began her rise to prominence with her first, self-published run of Artbabe, which won her a Xeric grant in 1995. Most of the material from those comics are collected in Soundtrack: Short Stories 1990-1996, a swell little compedium that also compiles a number of illustrations as well as some interesting nonfiction, journalistic pieces she did for various alternative newspapers.

As it turns out, Abel is quite good at comics journalism, a notion that Radio: An Illustrated Guide confirms. This is a 32-page comic she did with public radio bon vivant Ira Glass for Glass’ weekly program This American Life. It’s an in-depth look at the acclaimed show and how it comes together. Abel does a fantastic job of breaking down the ins and outs of radio production and what makes a compelling story, and as a result it’s one of her best comics to date.

Ancillary materials

Abel has had a noteworthy second career as an educator and comics advocate, mainly at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Drawing upon her experience in the classroom she and  her husband and fellow cartoonist Matt Madden created Drawing Words and Writing Pictures, an exemplary textbook on making comics. Just about every aspect of comics, from dialogue to scenery to lettering and making mini-comics is discussed at length here, making it the most essential, thorough book on the subject so far.

Madden and Abel are also the co-series editors of the Best American Comics series that Houghton Mifflin puts out every year. These books tend to be more reflective of the instincts of the special “guest editors” that oversee these yearly volumes, but it’s worth noting if just to remark how varied and busy her current workload seems to be.

Those looking to get hear the artist talk about herself and her work can check out The Comics Journal #270. She also did a recent interview with Mike Dawson as part of his TCJ Talkies series.

Finally, Abel has a number of irons in the fire that should appear soon, including a sequel to Drawing Words and a children’s prose novel that has yet to see the light of day. Her most intriguing upcoming project is Trish Trash, Rollergirl of Mars, which Abel has started a Kickstarter project for to help get it off the ground.

Avoid

Life Sucks has a great hook, combining the world of vampires with that of young adult slackerdom. The notion that vampires have to deal with the same shitty jobs, poverty and unrequited love affairs as normal human beings is a great one. Unfortunately, the book, co-created with writer Gabe Soria and artist Warren Pleece doesn’t go much further than that. It seems mostly content to rest on the laurel of its initial premise and doesn’t really develop the cast well enough to get the reader to care too deeply about what happens to them. Honestly, the book feels like a warmed-over movie pitch, but I give Abel and company credit enough to assume that’s not the case. It’s not a horrible book, but it’s far removed from the type of stuff Abel was doing in Artbabe and La Perdida, and not the first book you should turn to when going through her bibliography.

Next month: Gabrielle Bell

Archie #631

Creators | Dan Parent discusses an upcoming Archie storyline that will bring Valerie Brown from Josie and the Pussycats to Riverdale, causing sparks to once again fly: “The fans can expect the next step in what I think is the most romantic story in Archie history. The chemistry between Archie and Valerie was hot the first time they got together, and now you’ve really got to see it simmer, all the way from the rekindling of their romance to getting much more serious than we’ve seen before.” [USA Today]

Editorial cartoons | Cartoonist Jeff Stahler has resigned from The Columbus Dispatch following accusations that he lifted ideas from other cartoons, including one that ran in The New Yorker. [Poynter]

Creators | Former Marvel Editor-in-Chief Jim Shooter responds to a video that highlights the strange and disturbing events of Avengers #200, in which Ms. Marvel was raped and then gave birth to her rapist: “I take full responsibility. I screwed up. My judgment failed, or maybe I wasn’t paying enough attention. Sorry. Avengers #200 is a travesty.” [Jim Shooter]

Batman: Noel

Sales | ICv2 and John Jackson Miller offer additional analysis on the November and year-to-date sales charts. [ICv2, Comichron]

Retailing | Patrick Rosenkranz checks in with retailers in Chicago, Hollywood, Brooklyn and Portland, Oregon, for a “seasonal snapshot” of the current comics retail climate. [The Comics Journal]

Publishing | AnnaMaria White, director of marketing and public relations for IDW Publishing, is leaving to start her own marketing company. [The Beat]

Creators | Paul Gravett interviews Shaun Tan, the award-winning creator of the wordless graphic novel The Arrival. [Paul Gravett]

Creators | Atomic Robo creator Scott Wegener guests on the latest Comic Book Diner podcast. [Comic Book Diner]

Creators | Archie Comics writer and PR guy Alex Segura talks about the Archie Meets Kiss arc in the latest War Rocket Ajax podcast. [Comics Alliance]

Avatar: The Last Airbender: The Promise, Part 1

Manga | Deb Aoki picks 25 manga she’s really looking forward to in 2012. [About.com]

Exhibits | A new show at the Kyoto Manga Museum in Japan showcases the art of three Americans who work in the manga style: Takeshi Miyazawa, Felipe Smith and Svetlana Chmakova. [Anime News Network]

Publishing | Mark Millar’s hint that some sort of big change is about to rock the industry has Rich Johnston speculating on five possible big events, aside from the domination of digital, that could change comics forever in 2012. Here’s a fun idea: Set a reminder on your calendar for December 31, 2012, to go back and check how he did. [Bleeding Cool]

Design | French designers Thomas Blanc and Florian Amoneau have kicked off the Comic Sans Project, which “tries to re-imagine the much-maligned font by posing a simple aesthetic question: What if the world’s most recognizable logos used Comic Sans?” I don’t think the redesigned logos, which include Star Wars, Microsoft, Playstation and McDonald’s, really make their case. [Mashable]

Reviews | Rob McMonigal reviews Zahra’s Paradise, First Second’s webcomic-turned-graphic-novel about a protester who disappears during the Iranian elections. [Panel Patter]

Comics | When historians, academics and other nobs gather at NATO headquarters in Brussels to celebrate the 30th anniversary of martial law in Poland, comics will be there, too: Marzena Sowa and Sylvain Savoia will do a presentation and signing of their graphic novel Marzi, the story of a girl living in Poland at the end of the Communist era. The comic was published in the U.S. by Vertigo. [Forbidden Planet Blog]

History | Mike Lynch presents a gallery of old photos and caricatures of the late Jerry Robinson from National Cartoonists Society events of years gone by. [Mike Lynch Cartoons]

Judge Bao and the Jade Phoenix

It’s time once again for our monthly trip through Previews looking for cool, new comics. As usual, we’re focusing on graphic novels, collected volumes and first issues so that I don’t have to come up with a new way to say, “ Wonder Woman is still awesome!” every month. And I’ll continue letting Tom and Carla do the heavy lifting in regards to DC and Marvel’s solicitations.

Also, please feel free to play along in the comments. Tell me what I missed that you’re looking forward to or – if you’re a comics creator – mention your own stuff.

Archaia

Judge Bao and the Jade Phoenix - A detective story set in ancient China. Plus: cool name.

Avatar

Dicks #1 – Garth Ennis and John McCrea’s humor makes my top hat explode and my monocle fly off my face, but I remember this being pretty popular back in the day and I imagine that it’s new presentation in color and leading into a new storyline could make it popular again.

Bongo

Ralph Wiggum Comics #1 – This, on the other hand, is exactly my kind of funny. Kind of like 30 Days of Night, I’m astonished no one’s thought of it before. Too bad it’s just a one-shot, but hearing that Sergio Aragones is one of the contributors makes me want to poke myself with my Viking helmet to see if I’m dreaming.

Terror on the Planet of the Apes #1

Boom!

Terror on the Planet of the Apes #1 – Boom continues its domination of the Planet of the Apes by reprinting classic stories from Marvel’s time with the concept. Between Rise of the Planet of the Apes and Boom’s other PotA comics, I’ve been itching to read these stories.

Adventure Time #1 – As much a welcome no-brainer as Ralph Wiggums Comics. Oh, man. Now I want a crossover!

Dark Horse

Conan the Barbarian #1 – Not only does this have Brian Wood and Becky Cloonan; it also features one of my favorite Conan characters, Bêlit the pirate queen.

BPRD Hell on Earth: The Long Death #1 – The Mignola-verse is managing to come out with some kind of first issue or collected volume just about every month now. That’s amazing. In this mini-series, the team returns to the spooky woods from New World.

Star Wars: Dawn of the Jedi #1 – If this had come out fifteen years ago when I was still voraciously devouring all the Star Wars EU history I could get my hands on, I would’ve been dancing like a Twi’lek slave girl over finally getting the story of how the Jedi came to be. It’s one of the few events in Star Wars history that haven’t yet been explored.

Dark Horse Presents #9 – Featuring Tarzan, Lobster Johnson, and the world’s largest pirate ship. Not in the same story, unfortunately, but still pretty cool.

DC Universe Presents #6

DC

DC Universe Presents #6 – The Challengers of the Unknown take over the title with a beautiful, fantastic cover by Ryan Sook.

Legends of the Dark Knight: Jim Aparo - This isn’t even out yet and I’m already impatient for Volume 2.

Northlanders, Volume 6: Thor’s Daughter - I’ve been looking forward to finally trying out Northlanders with this volume. Telling the story of the Siege of Paris through the eyes of a Viking woman is a great hook.

Dynamite

Warriors of Mars #1 – Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter stories couldn’t be more different in tone from Edwin Lester Arnold’s goofy Lieutenant Gullivar Jones: His Vacation, but the similarities in concepts (Southern soldiers transported to Mars where they fall in love with princesses) has had fans and writers making connections between them for decades, including Alan Moore in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Now Dynamite’s taking a turn with Carter’s princess (or her people, anyway) kidnapping Gullivar’s.

First Second

Friends With Boys - I’m all for three things: First Second publications, Faith Erin Hicks comics, and stories about people learning to communicate with people unlike themselves. No, wait: four things. Ghost stories.

The Big Town

Fantagraphics

The Big Town - Charles Schulz’ son wrote this novel (the last in his jazz-age trilogy) about the end of the Roaring Twenties and “the role of business, crime, morality, and love in our lives.” It’s not comics, but it sounds ambitious and transporting.

Humanoids

Celestial Bibendum – New York is now on the Seine and there’s a lonely seal named Diego living in it. That’s weird enough that I’d like to know more.

IDW

Road Rage #1 – You might think that the short story “Trucks” was Stephen King’s ultimate homage to the Richard Matheson novella Duel. After all, “Trucks” was collected in Night Shift and King himself directed the movie adaptation of it, Maximum Overdrive featuring Emilio Estevez, AC/DC, and a giant Green Goblin mask. What you might not know is that King also collaborated with his son Joe Hill on a biker-gang novella called Throttle that’s more directly inspired by Duel (which you probably remember was also adapted to film as Stephen Spielberg’s first feature-length project). IDW is now adapting both Duel and Throttle to comics with this four-issue mini-series.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Volume 1: Change is Constant – The first issues of the new, ongoing series are collected.

Jack Avarice is the Courier - I love the way IDW released this mini-series: weekly over the course of a single month, then the entire collection the month after that. I’d love to know how it sold for them, but for me as a consumer, that’s a perfect system.

Thief of Thieves

Image

Thief of Thieves #1 – Some new guys named Robert Kirkman and Nick Spencer team up to write one of those crime comics the kids love these days.

Glory #23 – Rob Liefeld’s Extreme relaunch continues to impress me with the talent it’s choosing. In this case, Joe Keatinge (Popgun) and Ross Campbell (Shadoweyes) offer a very different take on the Wonder Woman archetype.

King City - Brandon Graham’s masterwork is finally collected.

Marvel

Winter Soldier #1 – The closest thing we’re going to get to a Black Widow comic right now.

Ka-Zar by Mark Waid and Andy Kubert, Volume 2 - Ka-Zar vs. Thanos. ‘Nuff said.

Metropolitan

Journalism - A collection of short comics by cartoonist/war-reporter Joe Sacco.

Moonstone

The Lone Ranger: Vendetta - The concealed cowpoke and Tonto investigate a serial killer with possible connections to the Ranger’s dead nemesis, Butch Cavendish.

Rohan at the Louvre (French edition)

NBM

Rohan at the Louvre - A newly famous mangaka meddles with a cursed painting deep in the bowels of the famous museum. This will not end well.

Oni

Sixth Gun, Volume 3 – Trade-waiters have reason to whoop it up now that the next installment of the awesome Weird Western is on its way.

Courtney Crumrin, Volume 1: The Night Things Special Edition – The comic that put Ted Naifeh on so many radars gets color and a hardcover.

SLG

Malleus Maleficarum: A Guide to Catching Witches - Everyone’s favorite Inquisitorial treatise on How to Hunt and Torture Pagans, the Homeless, and Other People You Don’t Like is adapted to comics.

Top Shelf

Harvey Pekar’s Cleveland – One of the last projects Pekar worked on before his death is also – according to Alan Moore’s intro – “one of [his] very greatest works.”

That’s it for me. What are you looking forward to?

Dark Horse Digital

Digital | Retailer Brian Hibbs responds to recent comments around the price of digital comics, commenting on how “channel migration” could effect comic retailers: “The concern of the comics retailer isn’t that there IS digital — fuck, I’m totally all for a mechanism to drive a potentially wide segment of customers to the medium of comics itself. How can that NOT help me? But, rather, that enough customers will ‘change channels’ (of purchase), so as to make segments of work unprofitible to carry. I’ve been pretty straight with you — most periodicals are but marginally profitible; most books are largely unprofitible. That we have stellar, break out, oh-my-god-it’s-like-printing-money successes like WALKING DEAD or BONE or SANDMAN doesn’t mean that this is the way all books can follow. Quite the opposite in fact! So what this means is that even losing a TINY portion of the readership through Channel Migration could potentially have dire effects. Seriously, if I lost just 10% of my customers, I’m done. And what we also know is that when physical stores close, most of that readership for comics UTTERLY VANISHES. The gist of this is that losing 10% of sales to migration could mean that the other 80% of that stores’ sales are COMPLETELY LOST.” [The Savage Critics]

Comics | Classic Sunday funnies character Joe Palooka has been resurrected, but this time his sport is Mixed Martial Arts, not boxing. Boxing announcer Joe Antonacci grew up reading the classic comic and when he learned the trademark was available, he acquired it, then hired a stable of writers and artists to turn it into an action-adventure comic about MMA. You can see some samples at Palooka.com. [Sherdog]

Creators | Comics Alliance has another preview of Sacrifice, due out next week from writer Sam Humphries (Our Love Is Real) and artist Dalton Rose, along with a Q&A with Humphries. [Comics Alliance]

Stephen Colbert

Comics | Comedian and television personality Stephen Colbert recommends Mush! Sled Dogs with Issues, the new First Second graphic novel by Glenn Eichler, who writes for The Colbert Report, and artist Joe Infurnari. (If you watch the full episode on his site, you can see it around the 20-minute mark, right after the Black Keys play). [The Colbert Report]

Creators | Sarah Glidden (How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less) chats with Mike Dawson about process and other topics in the latest Talkie Hutt podcast. [The Comics Journal]

Review | Cow Boy, by Chris Eliopoulos and Nate Cosby may look like a kids’ comic, but Ali Colluccio finds it offers plenty for readers of all ages to appreciate. [iFanboy]

Review | David Anderson thinks Robert Berry and Josh Levitas have done a great job of adding visuals to James Joyce’s classic Ulysses in their webcomic Ulysses “Seen,” but it’s probably best for most readers to read the book and the comic in tandem. [Spandexless]

Libraries | Young Adult Librarian Robin Brenner did a survey of her library colleagues to see what sort of graphic novel collections they had. Amazingly, almost 87% had a children’s graphic novel collection and over 83% had a teen graphic novel area. Only 64% had adult graphic novels in a separate collection, although some interfile them with prose books. She also looks at the reasons librarians give for not having a separate graphic novel collection as well as what factors (budget, content, poor bindings, availability) limit the books they acquire. [No Flying, No Tights]

For God and Country

Criticism | Dave Seliger finds GQ‘s comic-book rendition of the death of Osama bin Laden, written by Matt Fraction and drawn by Nathan Fox, to be in extremely bad taste: “Is this really how the whole bin Laden saga needs to be remembered? As a bloody double tap to the head with ‘pok’ and ‘pak’ sound effects? I think the military handled the end quite well, with an unpublicized ceremony and burial at sea. It didn’t need a comic book rendition in a ‘gentlemen’s’ magazine.” [Core77]

Events | The third Comics and Medicine Conference is coming to Toronto next July, and they are currently accepting proposals for papers and workshops. [Comics 212]

Awards | Dave Brown, political cartoonist for the UK newspaper The Independent, has been named Political Cartoonist of the Year by the Cartoon Art Trust. [The Daily Cartoonist]

Snark | Alan David Doane applauds Dark Horse for promoting its watermark so vigorously, by plastering it prominently all over its electronic review copies. [Trouble With Comics]

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.]

The Death-Ray (Drawn and Quarterly):

The first is highly personal. While I greatly enjoyed reading the issue in its huge, newspaper-sized, stapled format, as soon as I finished, I was faced with a problem: Where on earth do I put the damn thing? Obviously it wouldn’t fit in a long box or on any of my bookshelves, either laid flat or standing. If I simply set it on an end table or a coffee table, not only would it take up a lot of space, but it would collect dust and need regularly dusted. And it wasn’t like I had a lot of comics of similar size—only Lauren Weinstein’s Goddess of War, really—so I couldn’t stack it up with my other gigantic comics in a corner somewhere.

Ultimately, I stuck it in an oversized shipping envelope and hid it in the space between a bookshelf and the wall of my apartment, although even there it bothered me, as I knew it was there. And, of course, every time I moved I would pull it out, look at it, and realized I’d have to find a place to keep it in my new apartment as well, before I ultimately would decide to hide it behind a bookshelf in my new place. (It occurs to me now that while Clowes probably didn’t plan that experience for me, it does replicate the feelings of some of the characters in the story, who come into possession of something they can’t really get rid of, but can’t have others know about and have to secretly store for years).

But now that it’s got a spine and hard covers, now that it’s a book-book instead of a floppy, it can stand up on a bookshelf next to other similarly-sized books! The problem is solved! (Although I’m not quite sure I can bring myself to part with Eightball #23 just because I have the same story in an easier to store format now…)

The second reason I’m grateful for the re-release of this story in the new format is a more general one: It gave me another excuse to reread it, another excuse to write about how great it is and it will give a the world a new chance to read a truly great comic, one of the better superhero comics of the last decade, even though a lot of superhero comics fans probably didn’t consider it as such, given that it was published by two art/lit comics publishers and was created by the guy who did Ghost World and Wilson.

After a bold new cover of its star, wearing a Mike Allred-esque, vaguely Spider-Man like costume and clutching the titular weapon and a title page in which the tile glows in an explosion of pink radiation, we meet a middle-aged man named Andy in the year 2004. He talks directly to the reader, before he notices a man littering and confronts him.

When the man challenges him with “What are you going to do about it?,” the tale begins in earnest, as we learn the secret origin of Andy, aka The Death-Ray, who has the most terribly perfect weapon imaginable (Not only does it cause death, but it completely erases its target from existence, leaving not a molecule of physical remains for evidence, and it only works for Andy).

The panel-packed pages are mostly drawn in Clowes’ default style, in flat but brilliant colors that evoke maximum old-school superhero comics. The style gets looser or tighter here and there, but it doesn’t fluctuate as much or as intentionally as in some of Clowes’ more recent works.

The story does drift in and out of differently formatted comic strips though, so that the two page spread “The Origin of Andy” features him talking about his life and his default best friend Louie, the next page brings a series of headshot panels of Andy’s high school classmates following a title panel “What Do You Think of Andy?”, followed by newspaper Sunday strip-sized “Louie At Home,” in which we watch Louie have dinner with his family.

Andy’s story echoes that of Spider-Man’s and other post-Spidey relevant and relatable super-stories, as he’s the orphaned son of a famous scientist who secretly did experiments on him, and doesn’t discover them until he’s a put upon teenager just about to come of age.

The problems he faces are more real and more troubling though. He doesn’t have a single supervillain or rival superhero he ever has to trade blows with, but he does have to deal with a world full of damaged people hurting one another constantly, intentionally and accidentally, and figure out how to use his incredible power responsibly, or, at the very least, not make things all that much worse (“How the hell does one man stand a chance against four billion assholes?” is how adult Andy puts it).

It’s actually pretty terrifying, but it’s also pretty funny and a perfect example of a rather rare animal you probably here about all the time, but harldy ever encounter: A superhero comic book for grown-ups that is itself actually grown-up; one that doesn’t just add adult content like too much frosting on a child’s cake, or deconstruct superhero conventions in nihilistic or semi-sarcastic fashion, but is actually a piece of literature with aims beyond entertainment and time-killing.

Now in a more convenient format.

The Great Northern Brotherhood of Canadian Cartoonists (Drawn and Quarterly): Seth explains the province of this work in an introduction, an explanation alluded to in the banner along the bottom of the cover reading “A Story From the Sketchbook of the Cartoonist ‘Seth’.”

Apparently it began in his sketchbook, and it wasn’t something he had any intention of publishing, nor was it something he felt was entirely publishable at the time it began. He abandoned it to work on Wimbledon Green, a work with which it shares a worldview and tone, a fantasy version of comics in comics are the most exciting thing in the world; in otherworlds, a point of view that literalized the way a lot of us feel about the medium. In Wimbledon Green, it was the readers and collectors who were the focus; here it’s the creators.

Encouraged to publish, however, Seth returned to the story and finished it, reworking portions of it now that its audience was broader than just himself.

The resultant book is a guided tour—presumably conducted by Seth himself, as the few glimpses we get of our docent resemble the artist—of the The Great Northern Brotherhood of Canadian Cartoonists club headquarters. It’s an amazing place, something like the old 19th century explorers’ clubs of London and gentlemen’s clubs in the U.S., although it  is devoted to Canadian cartoonists, and it’s a little too amazing in its conception and design.

Essentially, Seth has created a fantasy Garden of Eden for himself, one full of so many quirky details, from an elaborate history to the sorts of niggling political and interpersonal problems that you’d find in a real place rather than an imagine paradisical one, that it all sounds, looks and feels completely real—or at least just on the other side of the line between realistic and fantastical.

In the process, the Seth character also gives the reader—imagined here as a guest he is leading through the rooms of the club–a guided history of Canadian cartooning and comics, and again the line between what’s real and is invented is a bit blurry. Real names and characters are in there, like Doug Wright and his creation Nipper, but so too are a lot of characters that seem like they can’t possibly be true, and some, especially among the cartoonists, who seem like they have an equal chance at being real and being invented by Seth for the purposes of this book. That’s how good he is at detailing and selling his fantasy world.

And it is a whole world. While the Seth and reader character never leave the grounds of the G.N.B. Double C. (as the club is called), it’s an entire world that is being imagined and evoked. It’s pretty much identical to ours, save for the place cartooning and cartoonists have in it.

I suppose part of the mysterious, almost magical effect of Seth’s blending the real and the ideal into such a convincingly told story, the appearance of a middle ground between obviously true and obviously not in which a reader is unsure of whether or not he is being told the true truth, relies on the Canadian setting, and the chance that the reader—like this particular reader—has never been farther into Canda than Niagara Falls, and thus it’s a place that is only slightly more real to me than, say, Narnia or Middle Earth or Metropolis and Gotham. “Canada” is a place I read about all the time, but never really see for myself.

I think this is at least a tiny, tiny part of the reason Scott Pilgrim hit as it did with readers—a Canadian could tell an American that Toronto magical land, and chances are the typical poorly traveled American can’t count on her own personal experience to refute it.

Basically, Seth could knock on my door and tell me that elves account for 2.5-percent of the modern Canadian population, and while I would be quite skeptical, I wouldn’t know for an absolute fact that he was lying, particularly if he lies as elaborately and convincing in person as he does in comics. (I can’t even look up some of the dubious-but-not-impossible characters and creators on the Internet as I write this, as I am doing so in a house without an Internet connection; I didn’t look anything up while reading the book for the first time in early October because I couldn’t put it down).

Beyond the considerable virtues of Seth’s abilities as an artist, world-builder and storyteller The Great Northern Brotherhood of Canadian Cartoonists should appeal to anyone who loves comics—for what they are, for what we wish they were, for what they could be and for what they will never be.

Nursery Rhyme Comics (First Second): We devoted a relatively large amount of attention to this hardcover anthology of short comics versions of nursery rhymes by some of the greatest cartoonists working today throughout the past month. Savvy readers will realize that this means it is probably a very good book, or, at the very least, one deserving of a great deal of attention, and would likely thus come to the conclusion that a formal review of it on Robot 6 is rather superfluous.

Savvy readers would be right, but I’m going to go ahead and review it anyway, as it is worthwhile enough to deserve all the coverage it gets.

There are 50 contributors, and chances are your favorite cartoonist is among them, as the list includes Jules Feiffer, Craig Thompson, Stan Sakai, Gahan Wilson, Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez, Tony Millionaire, Kate Beaton, Gene Luen Yang, Richard Sala and so on. There are some somewhat surprising contributors as well, including two of the best artists working in the newspaper strip field at the moment: Mutts’ Patrick McDonnell, who draws “The Donkey,” and Cul de Sac’s Richard Thompson, who draws “There Was an Old Woman Tossed Up in a Basket.”

The contributions are all quite short—these are just rhymes, not whole poems, after all—ranging from one to three pages, and some containing as few as three panels. The great fun of reading it, in addition to its function as a who’s who of comics art and, I imagine, a great primer for who to read next for anyone interested in getting into comics, is seeing the various strategies the artists take in adapting sometimes non-narrative nonsense into a story of some kind.

This can be as straightforward as Stephanie Yue giving the mouse a reason to run up the clock in her “Hickory, Dickory, Dock” or Sala a reason for the mice in “Three Blind Mice” to chase after the farmer’s wife, or adding uniquely idiosyncratic interpretations to the starting point.For example, Lucy Knisley makes the old woman who lived in a shoe the tattooed proprieter of “Ruth’s Rock & Roll Baby-Sitting,” and when she “whipped them all soundly,” it was with rock and roll, as she leads them in a rock performance (the bass drum reads, “The Whips”). Meanwhile Tao Nyeu and Cril Pedrosa add wolves to “Rock-A-Bye Baby” and “This Little Piggy” to add some cartoon predator/prey conflict.

My favorite of these re-interprative riffs, however, is probably Dave Roman’s “One, Two, Buckle My Shoe,” in which a bearded professor uses ten clones to help him engage in a weird  extreme sport involving sticks of butter and a giant chicken, which is a genuine marvel of making something weird, cute, funny and original from next-to-nothing.

**************************

Discussion Questions:

1.) Did you purchase Eightball #23 in 2004? If so, where and how did you store it?

2.) Who is your favorite cartoonist? Are they in Nursery Rhyme Comics?

Comics by comiXology

Digital | Comics by ComiXology has topped Apple’s charts as the top-grossing iPad application for the last six Wednesdays. ComiXology cited the launch of DC’s New 52 initiative, as well as many other comic companies moving to a same-day digital release schedule, as reasons for its success. “When have comic books, not comic book movies, not comic book merchandise, but the actual comic books been #1 in anything, much less high tech?” comiXology CEO David Steinberger said in a statement. “Being the number one grossing iPad application six Wednesdays in a row isn’t just a huge milestone for comiXology, but a huge milestone for comics as a medium … and we could not be prouder.” [press release]

Creators | An auction for the naming rights to a character in Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons’ The Secret Service raised $5,100 for St. Bartholomew’s Primary School, where Millar attended. The money will be used to pay for field trips for the school’s students. “I’m a former pupil at St. Bartholomew’s and have so many great memories of the place,” Millar said. “I know there’s not a lot of money in local government at the moment and I was sad to hear that the annual school trip for the children had been cancelled. By establishing this fund, I hope to have a pot the head-teacher can dip into every Christmas and take the entire school to a pantomime every year.” [Airdrie & Coatbridge Advertiser]

Brian Azzarello (by Seth Kushner)

Creators | Christopher Irving profiles Wonder Woman and Spaceman writer Brian Azzarello. [NYC Graphic]

Creators | Werewolves of Montpellier creator Jason discusses his career and influences, including Tintin creator Herge: “I borrowed his albums at the library as a kid. I started drawing my own cartoons. And I think you can have a much worse teacher than Hergé. It’s not really the clear line that is the most important thing, even if that is part of what I like with him, it’s more the very clear storytelling that you find in his books. On page three you’re hooked. I think you can read his books in a foreign language, in Russian, and still understand the story and enjoy it. I don’t re-read the books that often, but I often take them out, my favourite albums like The Broken Ear and The Shooting Star, and just look at the drawings.” [The Casual Optimist]

Manga | Deb Aoki interviews the editors of Viz Media’s new yaoi manga line SuBLime, which will offer boys-love stories in both print and download-to-own digital form—with many digital offerings being available worldwide. [About.com]

Manga | Shaenon Garrity turns her sights on the classic, criminally overlooked series Basara: “Almost alone among long-running manga, Basara reads not like a serial, but like a single 28-volume graphic novel.” [Anime News Network]

Digital | Mashable profiles Graphicly founder Micah Baldwin, who also started the “Follow Friday (#FF)” meme on Twitter. [Mashable]

Kobo Vox

Digital | While it’s not getting as much attention as the Amazon Kindle Fire, the Kobo Vox color e-reader shows some good potential as a comics reader, and it comes pre-loaded with an Archie comic. [The Beat]

Review | Greg McElhatton reviews Jim Ottaviani and Leland Myrick’s graphic biography of physicist, raconteur, and “major horndog” Richard Feynman: “Reading Feynman did what few other books about scientists have done for me; it made me think, ‘I wish I’d met this guy.’” [Read About Comics]

Accessories | The New York Times takes its readers inside the Brooklyn Superhero Supply Company, where the trendy New York superhero can buy particle guns, thunder inducers, grappling hooks and, of course, capes. [The New York Times]

Events | Isotope Comics in San Francisco will host Lark Pien, Thien Pham, Alex Puvilland, Jordan Mechner and Mark Siegel this Saturday for a Halloween-themed party. [Isotope Comics]

Conferences | Peggy Burns recounts, with many photos, her trip to the University of Iowa for the Comics, Creativity, and Culture Conference. Guests included Jeet Heer, James Sturm, Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez, and a host of other comics luminaries. [Drawn and Quarterly]

The Dare Detectives: The Snow Pea Plot

It’s time once again for our monthly trip through Previews looking for cool, new comics. As usual, we’re focusing on graphic novels, collected volumes, and first issues so that I don’t have to come up with a new way to say, “ Life with Archie is still awesome!” every month. And I’ll continue letting Tom and Carla do the heavy lifting in regards to DC and Marvel’s solicitations.

Also, please feel free to play along in the comments. Tell me what I missed that you’re looking forward to or – if you’re a comics creator – mention your own stuff.

Ape

Richie Rich Gems Winter Special - In addition to their modern-look Richie Rich, Ape has also re-introducied the classic version in both new and reprinted adventures. I missed the solicit for Richie Rich Gems #44 last month (which picked up where the Harvey series left off in 1982), but the series continues with not only the Winter Special, but #45 as well.

Arcana

Dragons vs Dinosaurs - I haven’t had great luck with Arcana’s books in the past, but c’mon. The title alone…

Hero Happy Hour: On the Rocks - This, on the other hand, is no risk at all. I’m a big fan of Dan Taylor and Chris Fason’s superhero bar stories and this is an all-new, 80-page adventure. Not reprints; not even a printed version of the webcomic. It’s all-new and I need it.

Archaia

The Dare Detectives: The Snow Pea Plot Collected Edition – Archaia prepares for their publishing Ben Caldwell’s Dare Detectives: The Kula Kola Caper by re-publishing the first story that was originally put out by Dark Horse.

Andie and the Alien

Archie

Archie #637 – The first installment of the “Archie Meets Kiss” story. Not quite as odd as Archie’s meeting the Punisher, but gettin’ close.

Bliss On Tap

Andie and the Alien - An alternate-history story in which an alien prevented Europeans from colonizing North America and how that affected WWII. That’s a harrowing premise and I’m eager to see how Philip and Brian Phillipson and Alex Niño (the team behind God the Dyslexic Dog) tackle it.

Boom!

Outcast #1 – Undead (but not Zombie) Conan. I can get behind that.

Ice Age: A Mammoth Christmas - And my nine-year-old can get behind this. Just realized it’s written by Caleb Monroe too and that bodes well. I really liked his stuff on Hunter’s Fortune.

Dark Horse

The Strain #1 – Pandemic stories are too scary for me and zombies make me yawn, but this might just hit the sweet spot between the two.

Hellboy, Volume 12: The Storm and the Fury – The Death of Hellboy for trade-waiters.

Star Wars: Agent of the Empire – Iron Eclipse #1 – I don’t remember the last time I was interested in a Star Wars comic, but I’ve always supported the notion of using big, popular settings like that and Star Trek for other genres. James Bond in the Star Wars galaxy sounds kind of awesome just so long as it doesn’t turn into the same Empire vs. Rebels story I’ve already seen too many times.

Ningen's Nightmares

Star Wars Omnibus: A Long Time Ago, Volume 5 - Wrapping up the reprints of Marvel’s 107-issue Star Wars series. I have fond memories of a lot of those comics and have been waiting to read them all back-to-back.

Dark Horse Presents #7 – Another excellent lineup of talent from Neal Adams and Howard Chaykin to Mike Mignola and Eduardo Barreto.

Empowered: Deluxe Edition - Collecting the first three volumes (and some extra material) of the critically-acclaimed superhero spoof.

Ningen’s Nightmares - A warrior-monk fights bounty hunters, a witch, and her demon-samurai with art that reminds me a little of Mike Oeming’s.

DC

Batman Incorporated: Leviathan Strikes #1 – Grant Morrison continues his popular, pre-New 52 Batman Incorporated story in this one-shot.

Ray #1 – Justin Gray, Jimmy Palmiotti, and Jamal Igle bring out the New 52′s Ray and make him fight giant monsters.

Catwoman, Volume 1 - Collecting the first issues of Ed Brubaker and Darwyn Cooke’s much-loved time with the character.

Resurrection Man, Volume 1 - This was a fantastic series and deserving of a collection. It raises the question though: why isn’t there a New 52 Aztek comic?

Dynamite

Lord of the Jungle #1 – It’s been too damn long since we had a Tarzan comic. I just wish they didn’t feel the need to retell the origin story again.

Romeo and Juliet: The War

Voltron #1 – On the other hand, since I know nothing about Voltron (except that it’s about a giant robot, which is really all I need to know), I can do with a re-telling of the origin story on this one. So, yes, I’m a hypocrite.

1821

Romeo and Juliet: The War - Stan Lee turns my least-favorite Shakespeare play into a sci-fi fantasy with cyborgs and genetically enhanced humans. So torn.

Fantagraphics

Young Romance: The Best of Simon and Kirby’s 1940s – 1950s Romance Comics – Not only am I extremely curious from an historical standpoint, but damn it, sometimes you just wanna read about kissing.

Flannery O’Connor Cartoons - Growing up in the South like I did, Flannery O’Connor’s short stories were required reading. I had no idea she made comics too.

First Second

Mush! Sled Dogs with Issues - Sled dog soap opera! That’s so crazy it just might work.

Hermes

The Phantom: The Complete Series – The King Years – I really can’t seem to get enough Phantom.

The Hero Initiative

Justice League of America 100 Project - Great artists drawing great characters for an even greater cause.

Madman: 20th Anniversary Monster!

Humanoids

Before the Incal: Classic Collection – One of these days I’m going to get around to finally reading Alejandro Jodorowsky and Moebius’ The Incal and when I do, I’m going to include this prequel.

Muse – Terry Dodson draws the story of a beautiful (it’s Dodson; how could she not be?) governess to a mysterious family.

IDW

Memorial #1 – Magic shops are great settings for stories, but I rarely read one that lives up to my hopes for it. Maybe this one about an amnesiac girl (another favorite concept of mine, Starfire notwithstanding) will do the trick.

Magic: The Gathering #1 – I still get a little angry over the concept of a game where the advantage goes to the person most willing to spend a bunch of money on it (yeah, I’m looking at you too, baseball), but the art on the Magic cards did a great job of suggesting a cohesive world, even if I didn’t understand anything about it as I was playing. I’m hoping that this series can flesh out that suggestion while also telling a good story.

Curious Cases of Sherlock Holmes – I’m a big fan of Gary Reed and Guy Davis’ alternate universe Holmes in Honour Among Punks, so I’m pretty excited by the prospect of Reed’s doing a comics anthology of the “real” Holmes teaming up with and/or fighting Dr. Jekyll, the Phantom of the Opera, Oscar Wilde, and Toulouse Lautrec.

Image

Madman: 20th Anniversary Monster! - Madman’s already cool. He doesn’t need Peter Bagge, Kyle Baker, Peter Milligan, Darwyn  Cooke, Dean Haspiel, Los Bros Hernandez, Erik Larsen, David Mack, Mike Oeming, Paul Pope, Eric Powell, Frank Quitely, Steven T Seagle, Jeff Smith, Craig Thompson, Matt Wagner, and others to make him cooler. But he’s got them anyway.

Polly and the Pirates, Volume 2: Mystery of the Dragonfish

Last Battle - Dan Brereton does the art on this Rome vs barbarians one-shot.

Marvel

Defenders #1 – I wish this had Green She-Hulk in it instead of Red (and also that it had Valkyrie and maybe Hellcat), but it’s still a revival that’s past due.

X-Club #1 – The X-Men’s Science Team was always a cool idea and deserves a shot at its own series, but I’m kind of scratching my head over why Beast isn’t in this. Apparently it’s Second-Guess Marvel Team Lineups day.

Moonstone

Captain Action: The Complete Adventures – Including both Fabian Nicieza and Steven Grant’s runs on the series. Over 400 pages for less than $30. I’ll take that Action. (Sorry.)

NBM

Inner Sanctum – I don’t think I’ve ever listened to a single episode of Inner Sanctum, but I always get a thrill of recognition when I hear the title thanks to Bill Cosby’s name-dropping it in his “Chicken Heart” story. Anyway, if you’re going to do a horror anthology, you could do much, much worse than have it inspired by Inner Sanctum and completely created by Ernie Colón.

Oni

Polly and the Pirates, Volume 2: Mystery of the Dragonfish – Have I only been waiting six years for this? Feels like sixty. Volume 1 was wonderful and I can’t fault Ted Naifeh for only writing this one when he got someone as awesome as Robbi Rodriguez to take his place on the art. The preview pages look amazing.

Spontaneous – The mini-series that combines Spontaneous Human Combustion with conspiracy theory gets its collection.

Th3rd World

The Intrepid Escapegoat – Guys, it’s a paranormal-investigating escape artist who’s a goat. You’re welcome.

Titan

The Complete Flash Gordon Library, Volume 1: On the Planet Mongo – I’m still not sure I understand the difference between this volume and IDW’s (except that IDW’s also includes Alex Raymond’s Jungle Jim comics), but I’m mentioning it just in case there is a difference that I don’t figure out until later. Seriously though: if someone knows, please explain it to me.

That’s it for me. What did I miss?

From Scott C's 'Pop Goes the Weasel'

All this week at Robot 6 we’re interviewing some of the many contributors to First Second’s new anthology, Nursery Rhyme Comics. In today’s final installment, Chris Mautner talks to cartoonist Scott C.

If anyone in this new anthology seemed like a “must-get,” it surely was the cartoonist known as Scott C., a.k.a. Scott Campbell. His charming, anthropomorphic — and frequently sardonic — work, whether found in video games made by Double Fine Studios, in comics like Hickee and the Flight anthologies, or in his new book, Amazing Everything: The Art of Scott C. seems perfectly suited to the off-kilter, frequently surreal world that nursery rhymes frequently seem to inhabit. The fact that he chose one of the most manic rhymes of the bunch — “Pop Goes the Weasel” — seems equally fitting.

How did you get involved in this particular project and what led to you selecting this particular nursery rhyme?

I’ve known Chris Duffy for awhile through Nickelodeon magazine. When he asked me to take part in the project, there were not many rhymes left. I chose Pop! Goes The Weasel because it is the most nonsensical of any of the rhymes and I thought it would be fun to pick apart.

If memory serves me well, there’s a couple different versions (or at least verses) of Pop Goes the Weasel. What led you to pick these particular verses and did you have to do any research per se?

Oh, man. I researched this rhyme like crazy. Even after Chris had tried to convince me that such a thing was futile when it came to nursery rhymes. I guess I feel that even if there are a million versions of a rhyme and no real origins, there may be some inkling something that could spur an idea. This particular rhyme had an interesting common aspect to it in which Pop! Goes The Weasel was a popular dance back in the 1700s. I think. And the variety of wacky lyrics were merely roundabout ways to get to that awesome dance. So I incorporated that into the comic a bit and chose the version that I remembered from my childhood.

Did the fact that it was such a short comic — two pages — present any challenges for you?

Well, not for pop goes the weasel. It’s a short high energy rhyme, so two pages is perfect. It would be a funny thing to see stretched to a graphic novel length though. Really explore the popping of the weasel

What led to the decision to use circle panels with this comic?

The circle panels felt like pops. Like bubbles. And the rolling around energy that the story had. If you can call it a story.

Your comics in general seem to have a fondness for anthropomorphism. Did this particular nursery rhyme seem like a good fit for you for that reason?

I use cute little faces on things all the time. In this poem, it worked nicer than other times. It matched the nonsense of the poem.

So what’s going on with that weasel anyway? Is he jumping? Having a fit? Passing gas? He seems so placid about the whole affair.

He is bursting onto the scene and pop locking, I think. He loves hiding in there, waiting for the perfect moment to knock everyone’s socks off with his moves the least everyone expects it.

All this week at Robot 6 we’re interviewing some of the many contributors to First Second’s new anthology, Nursery Rhyme Comics. Today Brigid Alverson talks to the editor, Chris Duffy.

Chris Duffy is the former editor of Nickelodeon Magazine‘s comics section and the current editor of SpongeBob Comics. I was interested in hearing the inside story of Nursery Rhyme Comics—how he rounded up this diverse array of talent and what sort of marching orders he gave them—and Chris obliged with some interesting insights into the making of Nursery Rhyme Comics.

Brigid Alverson: You have some really big names contributing to this book. Were you the one who recruited them, and if so, how did you get them to participate?

Chris Duffy: Almost everyone we asked wanted to be a part of the book. That’s the good news with a collection with a great, clear concept like this book has. Everyone wants in! The challenge was paring down our list to 50 cartoonists (harder than you might think) and just making all those phone calls and emails. I did most of the contacting, though Mark Siegel and Calista Brill broke the ice with a lot of creators who they knew well. I should mention that the idea began with former First Second publisher Lauren Wohl.

Alverson: As an editor, did you match up creators with rhymes, or did you let them choose their own?

Duffy: As an editor, it’s nice to stay sane and pretend you’re in control. So it went like this: first I read a LOT of nursery rhymes. (Hint: the Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes is the place to start.) I chose 50 that were a good mix of types as well as lengths and degrees of fame. Then I started at the top of the cartoonist list and tried to match that name with a rhyme–based on their work. Chose a few backup rhymes, then approached the cartoonist. Some kept asking to see more rhymes, some got right into the one we sent, and one went and found her own darn rhyme, thank you very much!

Alverson: What sort of guidelines did you give the creators?

Duffy: The goal was to make it a real nursery rhyme book, not a parody or a deconstruction. So, the first rule was that the words of the rhyme were presented in a clear way. Readers had to see quickly what words went with the rhyme and which were the little asides. (If there were asides.) Nursery rhyme books are meant to be read out loud and that needed to be possible with Nursery Rhyme Comics. Beyond that, not many guidelines, though we urged the cartoonists to have fun with it and to keep young readers in mind.

Alverson: Nursery rhymes are already familiar to the readers, and there are a million nursery rhyme books out there already. How did you approach the problem of doing something original with them?

Duffy: Now there are a million and one! Cartoonists, in my experience, have no trouble coming up with their own way to tell an old story. They seem to live for it. How many cartoonists, on their own, draw their own Charles Atlas comic or Jack Chick parody or send-up of superhero origins? Lots! I knew from the start that with the people we were approaching we’d get quite a few original takes. The results surpassed my expectations and then some.

Alverson: Which comic surprised you the most, in terms of the creator’s interpretation of the original material?

Duffy: Even though I know him very well from our time together at Nickelodeon Magazine, Dave Roman created a comic that surprised me and surprises everyone who reads the book. One doesn’t immediately associate “One, Two, Buckle My Shoe” with clones, mad scientists, and mutant chickens sliding on melted butter. There were many other surprises, such as the gigantic guard at the end of David Macaulay’s “London Bridge” and the flying cats in Theo Ellsworth’s “As I Was Going to St. Ives.”

Alverson: Who do you see as the readers of this book? Children, nostalgic adults, or adults reading aloud to children?

Duffy: Yes, yes, and yes.

All this week at Robot 6 we’re interviewing some of the many contributors to First Second’s new anthology, Nursery Rhyme Comics. Today, Michael May talks to cartoonist Aaron Renier.

Aaron Renier first came to comics fans’ attention with his childlike, but suspenseful Spiral-Bound, a Top Shelf graphic novel that earned him the Eisner for Talent Deserving Wider Recognition in 2006. Last year, he gained some of that recognition with his adventurous and spooky The Unsinkable Walker Bean from First Second. This year finds him still with First Second illustrating one of the more obscure (to me, anyway; Lewis Carroll fans will undoubtedly recognize it) nursery rhymes in their collection.

Michael May: For those who aren’t familiar with “The Lion and Unicorn,” can you explain the history behind it?

Aaron Renier: Sure. The history behind it is that in the early 17th Century, England and Scotland became unified and they needed a new coat of arms. So they took one of the two lions from the English coat of arms and one of the two unicorns from the Scottish coat of arms. One lion and one unicorn to symbolize the unity for the new British coat of arms. But when I read the poem I saw it as something much stranger, and colorful. So I tried to ignore that knowledge.

May: Did you get to pick the poem or was it assigned?

Renier: I picked it. I did because I had no interest in merely illustrating a nursery rhyme I was already familiar with. Almost all of the fun of being an illustrator is being able to add your own two cents. If I had done something I grew up with I’d have felt pretty bad derailing the meaning and visuals too much. It was something new to me and that left me able to imagine it as something fresh. If you read the poem literally, it’s immediately strange. Why give [the animals] bread? Why give them cake? It has a happy bit of nonsense I loved. It was also a very nice challenge to make a poem most people would be unfamiliar with into something relevant and new and special.

May: What hook did you find that made it fun to adapt?

Renier: The hook for me was that I was allowed to make the lion and the unicorn the steed of two evil men. It was impossible for me to villainize two animals. I love animals, and animals are animals. Imagine villainizing a unicorn or a lion. It’s impossible. Such fantastic creatures. It’s men who would care to battle over something as silly as a crown.

May: Do the riders represent anyone in particular?

Renier: The riders represent the hearts of people that would fight for the power of a crown. They are greed and corruption! Careless, cold-hearted hunger for the crown! It’s really a pity they have such beautiful beasts of burden. I feel bad for the lion and the unicorn.

May: Did you have to do any research for the story?

Renier: I did one image search online for the poem and discovered an alarming amount of images with the two animals “putting up their dukes” and often with boxing gloves on. I remember closing that search window thinking how boring that interpretation was. I never read the poem and saw them standing in the middle of town punching each other, and I realized then that I needed to quickly sketch it out as I saw it. So that’s how it came to be. As I said, I looked up the poems origin, but the poem’s background didn’t seem important to me. I didn’t want to turn a wonderful bit of nonsense into a history lesson. The poem needed to take new form, and become relevant to me.

May: Though the poem has the animals being “drummed out of town,” you depict them as being led out; almost tricked. Is that an intentional bit of subversion on your part?

Renier: I hope it comes across that way. Yes, I think the world is run by people who want power for the sake of being powerful, not caring if they ruin a few fruit markets along the way. The good thing is they get drummed out of town (animals love cake and bread!) and the crown can be used for something useful. The children at the end can use that piece of metal for make believe and a good ol’ game of “kick the crown” if they want. The future of that town is with the children. I pictured the men eventually sitting on a distant hill in some long forgotten valley, hungry and trying to get the baked goods away from the animals. Ha!

Thanks so much to Aaron for answering my questions.

TOMORROW: Brigid Alverson talks to anthology editor Chris Duffy.

Excerpt from Sala's "Three Blind Mice"

All this week at Robot 6 we’re interviewing some of the many contributors to First Second’s new anthology, Nursery Rhyme Comics. Today, J. Caleb Mozzocco talks to cartoonist Richard Sala.

Richard Sala is a prolific comics artist and illustrator often compared to Charles Addams and Edward Gorey, given his interest in visually compelling, somewhat spooky subject matter and deadpan gothic humor. He’s responsible for creating several plucky heroines who confront various mysteries and horrors, like foul-mouthed girl detective Judy Drood from Mad Night and The Grave Robber’s Daughter, monster magnet Peculia from Sala’s signature series Evil Eye and K. Westree of Cat Burglar Black.

The artist’s most recent work is last month’s original graphic novel The Hidden from Fantagraphics, about a group of people stuck in a diner during what may be the end of the world. Well, that and “Three Blind Mice” for First Second’s Nursery Rhyme Comics.

J. Caleb Mozzocco: Do you think nursery rhymes played any particularly powerful role in your childhood or development as a storyteller?

Richard Sala: My mom had old books of illustrated nursery rhymes and fairy tales from her childhood (which were old even when she was young) when I was very little and they certainly had an impact on me. Years later I found copies of some of those books and was amazed to find the roots of some of my weird fears and obsessions!

Mozzocco: Given how short your piece is—two pages, five panels—do you think creating it was more akin to the illustration work you’ve done, or to a comic?

Sala: Definitely a comic. Because I had to “fill in the blanks” that aren’t really spelled out in the rhyme. Like, why in the world would three mice (who happen to be blind!) run after the farmer’s wife? So, I decided to draw them sniffing the sweet smell of a cake she had just made, and running towards that.

I also decided that to match the simplicity and repetition of the rhyme, the strip should have the same qualities. I wanted it to work as a whole—and not look like I was trying to overpower the little rhyme with my art.

Mozzocco: I noticed your bio in the back of the book refers to your usual subject matter as unusual or spooky…do you think this falls into that unusual/spooky area, involving mice and knife-play as it does, or is this a more atypical piece from you?

Sala: Well, a lot of nursery rhymes seem to have a somewhat creepy quality—like old Victorian dolls. At least for me. But for this particular piece, since it was for kids, I made an effort to reign in some of my natural tendencies toward doing some scarier stuff.

A friend and I did joke about the fact that the strip had the potential for some really nightmarish and bloody images and we tossed around some ideas that were truly revolting! But [editor Chris Duffy] had said that the book was for kids, so those ideas stayed in my notebook.

Mozzocco: You’ve created comics and graphic novels for several seemingly distinct audiences in the past. In general, how conscious are you of audience when making a work? That is, do you think, “This comic is for a grown-up. This comic is for a young adult/teenage audience,” or do you just make books for yourself? I’m just curious if you approached this as a comic for little kids specifically.

Sala: Ideally, I am always making the things for myself. That’s why I chose to work more in comics and less in illustration to begin with.

I did a comic strip for Nickelodeon magazine ages ago that ran about eight or ten episodes. That was aimed at kids but I totally did it to please a specific part of my own brain. I mean, I always think of the individual reader, more so than a particular audience. I want my work to be able to communicate and entertain the reader—that’s my goal—but beyond that, I’m doing them for myself, in that I’m doing things that I personally want to see.

Mozzocco: Did drawing this little comic whet your appetite for illustrating nursery rhymes or adapting or illustrating public domain/shared cultural material like this in the future?

Sala: It’s actually something I’ve always been interested in. Somewhere in my piles of old notebooks there are several plans to do books of nursery rhymes and similar things. Maybe someday I’ll actually get around to it! In the meantime, I’m always very happy to be invited to be a part of cool book projects like this one.

TOMORROW: Michael May talks to Aaron Renier

Janelle Asselin

Publishing | DC Comics associate editor Janelle Asselin has left the company, reportedly for a job with Disney. She clarifies on Twitter that, contrary to a report, she wasn’t escorted from the building on Tuesday but, rather, left “at my leisure.” Asselin had been with DC since 2008, working primarily on Batman books like Batman and Robin, Batman: Streets of Gotham, Red Robin, Birds of Prey and the relaunched Batman, Batwoman, Detective Comics and Savage Hawkman. [Bleeding Cool]

Publishing | Longtime editor Betsy Mitchell is taking early retirement from her post as editor-in-chief of Del Rey, where she helped create Del Rey Manga. Tricia Pasternak, a former Del Rey Manga editor herself, has been promoted to editorial director. Del Rey was established as a science fiction prose imprint; the manga line was created in 2004 and was mostly shut down in 2010, when Kodansha began publishing its manga directly in the U.S. However, Del Rey still publishes a handful of manga and graphic novels, including xxxHolic, King of RPGs, and Deltora Quest. [Publishers Weekly]

Legal | In a twist that sounds like something out of a comic (or even an ad from an old comic), a witness in the Michael George trial testified he saw someone wearing an obviously fake beard outside George’s Clinton Township, Michigan, comics shop a few minutes before George’s first wife Barbara was murdered inside the store in 1990. [The Tribune Democrat]

Starfire

Comics | The latest critique of Starfire comes from Michelle Lee’s 7-year-old daughter, who was a big fan of the incarnations of the character in the Teen Titans comic and animated cartoon. She summarizes the whole problem with childlike simplicity: “Well, she’s not fighting anyone. And not talking to anyone really. She’s just almost naked and posing.” [io9.com]

Comics | Former superhero reader and current manga blogger Deb Aoki describes the Starfire/Catwoman controversy for her manga fanbase and discusses how shonen manga manage to provide good, even fanservice-laden, stories for men without alienating their female readers: “The fascinating and diverse female casts of Bleach and Naruto are a big part of these series’ appeal to both male and female readers. Yes, there are some busty babes in both series — but Soul Reaper Rangiku Matsumoto is a commanding officer in the Soul Society in Bleach, and Tsunade is a strong and dynamic Hokage (leader) of Naruto’s ninja village to name just a few.” [About.com]

Comics | Brian Truitt spotlights Marvel’s ABC television tie-in Castle: Richard Castle’s Deadly Storm, the just-released graphic novel by Brian Michael Bendis, Kelly Sue DeConnick and Lan Medina. [USA Today]

Wolverine and the X-Men #1

Comics | Writer Jason Aaron and editor Nick Lowe discuss the upcoming debut of Wolverine and the X-Men, which establishes Logan as headmaster of the Jean Grey School for Higher Learning. [The Associated Press]

Creators | Jonathan Callan has started a Facebook campaign to persuade the Animation Writers Caucus to give a Lifetime Achievement Award to the late Dwayne McDuffie. McDuffie’s wife Charlotte has posted there, asking that members of the Caucus nominate McDuffie via write-ins, as his name is not on the eligible list. [Facebook, via Blog@Newsarama]

Creators | Kate Beaton gives a pair of interviews about her popular webcomic Hark! A Vagrant!, which has received a printed collection from Drawn and Quarterly. [The L Magazine, io9.com]

Creators | Geoff Johns discusses DC’s relaunched Aquaman, which debuts today: “Everybody around has at least heard of Aquaman, and they’ve probably heard all the jokes — the same jokes Aquaman’s heard — and they have their opinion on Aquaman. Whether it’s good or bad, that’s what the book’s all about.” [USA Today]

Creators | For reasons that aren’t entirely clear, writer Jim Ottaviani was interviewed about his new graphic novel Feynman while riding on a teeter-totter with the interviewer. [HD Teeter Talk]

Comics | Caroline Small, the treasurer for Small Press Expo, meditates on the difficulty of bringing art-comics to a wider audience. [The Hooded Utilitarian]

Americus

Censorship | The Good Comics for Kids bloggers, many of whom are librarians, discuss MK Reed and Jonathan Hill’s Americus, a graphic novel about religious fundamentalists challenging a YA fantasy novel in a small-town library. The discussion touches on the issues the book raises and the way those issues are portrayed in the graphic novel. [Good Comics for Kids]

Comics | Kristy Valenti takes a look at Rob Liefeld’s fashion sense: “From a fashion (and commercial) perspective, ideally, a superhero artist should create an iconic costume (for example, Steve Ditko’s Spider-Man kit, Gil Kane’s Green Lantern look, or even Power Girl’s indefatigable “boob window”); Liefeld’s costuming is more like a collection, with certain motifs he returns to.” Such as high-waisted pants, shoulder pads and French-cut bikinis. Call in the fashion police! [comiXology]

Comics | Daniel BT suspects that life is imitating art as DC’s latest effort matches all too closely a Cracked parody of superhero comics art from the 1970s. [Sunday Comics Debt]

Manga | Translator Tomo Kimura lists the top ten manga creators in Japan and the number of books they have sold, from a list compiled by Nikkei Entertainment magazine. All ten are published in the U.S. as well as Japan, and One Piece creator Eiichiro Oda tops the list with almost 55 million sold. [Tomo Kimura's Translation Notes]