Ronald Searle

Passings | British cartoonist Ronald Searle, best known as the creator of the fictional St. Trinian’s School, passed away Friday at a hospital near his home in southeastern France. He was 91. His spiky drawings of the wicked pupils of the girls school debuted in 1941 in Lilliput magazine, leading to five books and seven films. Searle, a Cambridge native, also co-authored (with Geoffrey Willans) the Molesworth book series. [Reuters]

Conventions | Four-day passes for New York Comic Con go on sale for $85 today at noon ET/9 a.m. PT. The event will be held Oct. 11-14 at the Jacob Javits Convention Center in New York City. [press release]

Conventions | Comiket, the world’s largest self-published comic book fair, drew a total of 500,000 people for its winter convention, held Thursday through Saturday at the Tokyo Big Sight in Japan. Held twice a year, in August and December, the event doesn’t use turnstiles or unique passes, so a visitor who attends all three days would be counted each time. [Anime News Network]

Graphic novels | Writing for Newsweek, Maya Jaggi offers a broad overview of “the graphic novel renaissance,” highlighting such works as Zahra’s Paradise, Habibi and Logicomix. [The Daily Beast]

Tintin

Comics | Using Steven Spielberg’s The Adventures of Tintin as a springboard, Charles McGrath examines Hergé and his beloved boy reporter. [The New York Times]

Publishing | A pair of articles take a look at the growing Indian comics industry. [The Times of India, Daily News & Analysis]

Creators | Who Is Jake Ellis? writer Nathan Edmondson is spotlighted during a signing in Medford, Oregon. [Mail Tribune]

Creators | The Grant MacEwan University newspaper profiles local writer Robert Burke Richardson. [West Edmonton Local]

Life with Archie #16

Comics | CNN covers the upcoming wedding of Archie Comics’ Kevin Keller, who will get married to another man in Life with Archie #16. Keller was injured while serving in the military in Iraq and Clay Walker, his groom-to-be, was his physical therapist. “Riverdale is this picturesque vision of American life, and when you see yourself reflected in that, you have a role in even the most idealized version of the reality you live in,” said Matt Kane, associate director of entertainment media for the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. “That’s the difference between feeling like a rejected outsider and feeling like you’re a part of something.” [CNN]

Comics | Jim Caple worries that viewers of the Tintin movie won’t appreciate it the way he does, comparing old-school Tintin fans to old-school Boston Red Sox or Seattle Mariners fans: “That’s what I worry about. I worry there will be all these Tintin wannabes who only know the character from the movie, who don’t appreciate Herge’s genius, who don’t know what it was like to wait a month for the next 10-page installment or when you had to special order the few books made available in America. Fans who didn’t earn this movie.” [ESPN]

Creators | Kurt Busiek discusses his work on Dracula: The Company of Monsters, which returned from cancellation as a webcomic, as well as digital comics in general: “I’ve been interested in the possibilities of online distribution for a long time, and even pitched an idea for an online strip a decade or more ago, but my collaborators and I couldn’t afford to do it on our own back then, and we didn’t find any takers who wanted to back it. And there are stories I’d love to do online, and ways I’d like to try taking advantage of the online interface, instead of print, that I’m eager to try — but between deadlines on existing projects and my health issues, I haven’t been able to launch an online series yet.” [Biff Bam Pop!]

"Saga," from Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples

Creators | Fiona Staples talks with her local newspaper about her upcoming project with Brian K. Vaughan, the eagerly anticipated Image Comics series Saga. [Calgary Herald]

Creators | Sweets creator Kody Chamberlain gets the spotlight ahead of a book signing with Chew artist Rob Guillory. [The Times]

Creators | Here’s a heartwarming story for the holidays: A historian found some old comics about Saginaw, Michigan, in the local library and tracked down the artist, Vincent Faletti, whose work was published in The New Yorker and other magazines. It turns out that Faletti is alive and still cracking jokes at 95. [MLive.com]

Comics | The first issue of IDW’s Magic: The Gathering comic, originally scheduled to be released next week, has been pushed back to Feb. 1 due to “unforeseen printing challenges.” [ICv2]

Crime | Victoria, British Columbia, police have recovered a cache of stolen goods worth more than $10,000 — $8,500 of which was a comic book collection taken from an apartment storage locker. Police are returning the collection to its owner. [Victoria Times Colonist]

Fandom | Ology spotlights the marriage proposal of David Salomon, who proposed with a homemade take on an issue of Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane. “What is it about the gamers, the comic book Ologists, the sci-fi fans and the zombie slayers that makes them the kings and queens of romance?” [Ology]

Mudman

Welcome to Food or Comics?, where every week we talk about what comics we’d buy at our local comic shop based on certain spending limits — $15 and $30 — as well as what we’d get if we had extra money or a gift card to spend on a “Splurge” item.

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

Graeme McMillan

What’s that, you say? Paul Grist’s new Mudman series starts this week (#1, Image Comics, $3.50)? Well, that’s how I’m starting my $15 haul this week. While I’m at it, let’s add Avengers Origins: Luke Cage #1 (Marvel, $3.99) and Kirby Genesis: Captain Victory #1 (Dynamite, $3.99), before finishing up with the third issue of Wonder Woman (DC, $2.99) for a superheroic week that goes from the earth to the gods, with some blaxploitation and aliens thrown in the middle for flavor.

DC would dominate the other half of my budget if I had $30. I’d be grabbing the third issues of Green Lantern Corps, Justice League and Supergirl ($2.99 each, except Justice League for $3.99), but I’m surprising myself as much as anyone else by grabbing The Bionic Man #4 (Dynamite, $3.99) for my final pick – I read the first three issues in a bunch this weekend and really enjoyed the book to date much more than I’d been expecting.

If I were to splurge this week, my money would probably end up going to Dark Horse, because I’m kind of tempted by Drawing Down The Moon: The Art of Charles Vess ($29.99). I’ve liked Vess’ art ever since I first saw it, which was possibly in his Spider-Man graphic novel in the late 1980s…? Nonetheless, this is more than likely something I’ll end up loving the hell out of.

Chris Arrant

Wonder Woman #3

If I had $15, I’d grab (with both hands) Wonder Woman #3 (DC, $2.99). The only time I’ve bought three issues in a row of Wonder Woman was the Amazons Attack crossover Pete Woods drew years ago, but this team-up between Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang has been consistently amazing. Next up I’d go from amazons to vikings for Northlanders #46 (DC/Vertigo, $2.99); I’ve bought every issue of this in singles, but seeing artist Paul Azaceta’s arc on this re-invigorated my appreciation for the title. Getting my super-hero fix on, next I’d get Avengers #19 (Marvel, $3.99). I admit seeing Norman Osborn’s Dark Avengers isn’t high on my list, but I’ve continually enjoyed what Bendis has done to varying degrees and seeing Daniel Acuna join the book is a big bonus in my book. Lastly, I’d be one of the zombie horde to buy Walking Dead #91 (Image, $2.99).

If I had $30, I’d thankfully double-back to get Greg Capullo’s ongoing return in Batman #3 (DC, $2.99) – seriously, I think Capullo is entrenching himself as a top artist in mainstream comics (again). Next up I’d get two Marvel joints – Thunderbolts #165 (Marvel, $2.99) and Venom #9 (Marvel, $2.99). After that, I’d get me weekly fix of Pilot Season with Seraph (Image/Top Cow, $3.99) then get Justice League #3 (DC, $3.99).

For splurging, there would be no question that I’d get the trade paperback edition of Drawing Down The Moon (Dark Horse, $29.99). I missed this when it came out in hardcover in 2009, so I’m glad to see it coming back into print. I seriously think Vess is one of the overlooked great in comics, but only because he hasn’t done a standard “run” on a title like seems to be needed to ingratiate yourself with the comic buying world at large. Regardless, Vess is a master and I’m glad to finally get my hands on this for a decent price.

Chris Mautner

Butcher Baker Candlestickmaker

If I had $15: It’s a quiet week for me for the most part, so I’d probably limit my initial purchases to the fifth issue of The Boys‘ spin-off Butcher Baker Candlestickmaker. For some reason I was under the delusion that it was a four-issue series and not six. Oh well.

If I had $30: A lot of people who’s opinions I respect really like the work of Golden Age artist Bob Powell, so I’d at least take a gander through Bob Powell’s Terror, a Craig Yoe-edited collection of ghoulish tales.

Splurge: That $150 one-volume anniversary edition of Bone would probably make a good Christmas present for somebody on my gift list. If I was splurging for myself though, I’d grab another Yoe-edited book, Felix the Cat: The Great Comic Book Tails, a collection of long-form stories done for Dell and Harvey back in the day by Otto Messmer, who did the original Felix comic strip as well.

Brigid Alverson

Saturn Apartments

If I had $15: I would end up leaving some of it on the table, because this is a good week for manga, and all the manga costs less than $15. Viz has three new volumes coming out this week, and my first choice among them is volume four of Saturn Apartments ($12.99), which I mentioned in What Are You Reading? this past weekend. It’s a lovely sci-fi story about a window washer in a space colony and the people he encounters. I’m hooked, and I’m ready for volume four.

If I had $30: I would add Tesoro, an anthology of short stories by Natsume Ono. Viz has been publishing a lot of Ono’s work lately, and it’s all beautiful. Her stories are more literary and romantic than your standard run of teenage manga, and she has a clean, linear style that is easy on the eyes. With the leftover money, I’d pick up Atomic Robo and the Ghost of Station X #3, just for something different–and because I find Atomic Robo irresistible.

Splurge: Let’s start with the third Viz release of the week, vol. 10 of Real. It’s a splurge for me because it’s a bit of a risk–I haven’t been keeping up with the series, and I don’t know anything about basketball, let alone wheelchair basketball. But volume 1 was amazing, and I’d like to see more. And if I’m really binging, I’d add the first volume of Fantagraphics’ Pogo collection ($39.99) and Drawn & Quarterly’s The Adventures of Herge ($19.95), a graphic biography of the creator of Tintin, drawn in his own ligne claire style.

Michael May

If I had #15, I’d spend most of it on DC. Eventually, I’m going to have to cut back on the number of series I’m buying from them, but not this week. I’m still enjoying Batman ($2.99), Birds of Prey ($2.99), Supergirl ($2.99), and Wonder Woman ($2.99) and want the third issues of each of them. Finishing off my budget, I’d grab Fear Itself: The Fearless #3 ($2.99). I caught up on it last night and even though I didn’t read Fear Itself, I’m going to enjoy Valkyrie’s globe-trotting adventures tracking down a bunch of MacGuffiny weapons and fighting vampires and Avengers along the way.

If I had $30, I’d quickly add Planet of the Apes #8 ($3.99), Bonnie Lass #3 ($2.99), and Atomic Robo and the Ghost of Station X #3 ($3.50). And like Graeme, I’d be sure to try out Paul Grist’s Mudman #1.

Splurge-wise, how unfair is the universe for making the color, one-volume Bone ($150.00) available on the same day as Fantagraphic’s Pogo: The Complete Syndicated Comic Strips, Volume 1 ($39.99)? And that’s on top of DC’s Legends of the Dark Knight: Marshall Rogers collection ($49.99) and SLG’s Royal Historian of Oz ($14.95). Bone and Pogo are especially impossible to pick between, even with the massive price difference.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Publishing | IDW’s Chief Operating Officer Greg Goldstein attributes a bump in the company’s September sales to several factors, including DC’s big relaunch: “The reality is the DC New 52 brought some people into comic book stores that hadn’t been in comic stores for a while, and we had the opportunity to sell them some of our books as well as the other books that are available to them. But clearly, people who had not been focused on comics came out of the woodwork a bit.” It didn’t hurt that IDW had its own launches of properties familiar to those outside of comics, including the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series, an ongoing Star Trek series and the Star Trek/Legion of Super-Heroes crossover. [ICv2]

Legal | A Belgian judicial adviser has recommended that the nation’s courts reject a four-year-old bid by a Congolese student to have Herge’s 1931 Tintin in the Congo banned, or at least restricted, because of its racist depictions. The recommendation is being viewed as a major setback for the case, as the opinion of the Procureur du Roi (Senior Crown prosecutor) is requested and typically followed by the court. [The Guardian]

Creators | Francis Manapul and Brian Buccellato talk about the tone of their new Flash series. “We definitely decided we wanted an optimistic, hopeful, and noble story because that’s who Barry Allen is to us,” Buccellato said. “It was important for us to go in that direction, and not toward the darker or more tortured hero. He’s a guy from the Silver Age who does the right thing because it’s the right thing.” [io9]

Creators | Lee Bermejo discusses his upcoming Gotham-meets-Dickens graphic novel Batman: Noel. [MTV Geek]

Enigma

Creators | Peter Milligan opens up about Red Lanterns, Justice League Dark and the potential for more Enigma: “I was re-reading Enigma. This is the really early, early stages but I’m considering doing a sequel. So much has happened in the world since it came out, in terms of how gays are treated in the West. I’d like to highlight those differences of lives of homosexuals in the West compared to gays in Africa, the Middle East, and lots of developing countries.” [io9]

Creators | A bandana-wearing Nathan Edmondson discusses his work on DC’s Grifter series. [Creative Loafing]

Creators | Scott Snyder talks about Swamp Thing. [USA Today]

Conventions | The Free Press profiles the Coast City Comicon, coming up Nov. 11-13 in Portland, Maine. [Free Press]

Figuring out the density of a page of comics is one of the most important challenges that a cartoonist faces between idea and finished product, but it’s also one that’s frustratingly tricky to talk or even think about.  How does one measure how much happens on a page other than pointing and saying “this much?”  And how does a cartoonist decide on the optimum amount of story to convey with each canvas?  I’d hazard a guess that most of the time for both reader and creator, these aren’t conscious practices, and the varying densities of different cartoonists’ approaches simply occur rather than being plotted out.

The vast majority of American comics on both sides of the mainstream/alternative divide stick to the rhythm of (roughly) six panels to a (roughly) three-tiered page, sequenced from character action to character action, with maybe three seconds of time depicted in-frame and five or so passing in each gutter.  Japanese comics tend to move a little quicker: a few less panels per page, a bit less time taken up in each individual one.  European comics, on the other hand, typically have much more density than their American counterparts, with more panels per tier, more tiers per page, and more story time taken up in each image.  Some of the difference in density of information can be chalked up to the average size the comics are published at: in Japan, digest-size books are most commonly the final state of comics, so less is crammed onto the page than in American “comic-size” comics, which in turn can fit less than album-size European books.

But density isn’t only a question of how many panels per page: it’s at least as much about how much goes into each panel.  Here it’s more enlightening to look not at trim size, but the most influential cartoonists of the world’s three major cartooning traditions.  In Japan, Osamu Tezuka, with his pure cartooning and borderline ruthless, Disney-inspired simplification of forms is the “God of Manga”.  Here in America, the “King of Comics” is Jack Kirby, whose fully packed panels hint at the illustrative without ever quite bowing to realism or observational drawing.  And in Europe, far and away the most widely read maker of comic art is Georges Remi, pen name Herge, creator of Tintin.

Herge’s comics are about as dense as it gets before you notice: his pages stick to four tiers, usually subdivided like crazy, and his word balloons tend to be plentiful.  Beyond this, his drawing is much more detailed that either Kirby or Tezuka.  Though both of those artists could throw down with spreads of mind-blowingly intricate machinery or painterly landscape shots, in Herge the figures and faces are cartooned, and everything else, from architecture to natural environments to the details of props and the wrinkles of clothes is captured in meticulous, pinpoint linework. But Tintin comics somehow never feel overstuffed, and the sequence above is a perfect example of why.  Though Herge drew with a documentarian’s eye for detail, his eye for open space and flat color was second to none.  Each crisply realistic outline frames a lineless space for the eye to rest in, turning every panel into a flickering alternation between work and pleasure, surely the optimum mode for comics to function in.

And Herge’s understanding of space extends beyond what’s inside the panels.  This sequence takes full advantage of Western readers’ prose-produced instinct to read in straight lines across a page, squashing three panels into the vertical space usually occupied by one.  Of course, even though the lack of verticality in these panels feels natural enough when we do most of our reading across lines as tall as the ones you’re looking at now, it makes the panels proportionally much longer, giving readers a vast expanse of space to read across.  No small amount of story time passes in these panels, and what’s more, that time is felt as the eye scans across Herge’s long, multiple-focus scrolls.  The terrain changes, travelers speed up and slow down, and the eye is forced to register these changes of position while the long, low panels push forward as inexorably as a moving walkway.

It’s a challenging bit of comics, with both a brisk forward motion and changing compositions to give the reader pause built in.  Indeed, the most noticeable bit of character movement is Captain Haddock’s slow slip backward, which is pitched against the directionality of the rest of the sequence.  These panels pitch and yaw on their slow march forward, which is perfect: Herge takes not only his characters, but the reader’s eye on a journey as well, matching form to content in an inspired sequence that hits just the right point between density and the lack thereof.  Whether that balance was thought out or simply occurred is something only Herge knows for sure, but either way it’s a perfect example of comics that contain just enough.

In his latest post at The Comics Journal, Frank Santoro engages in a little bit of compositional analysis, explaining how an artist determines where the eye will fall, and what are the static and dynamic areas of the page, using a page from a Tintin comic, King Otokar’s Sceptre, to demonstrate the ideas in action. In this case, the components of the drawn comic line up so neatly with Santoro’s diagram that it’s hard to believe Herge wasn’t doing it deliberately.

I’m usually suspicious of after-the-fact dissections, because it’s easy to look at a completed work and see things the artist may not have put in deliberately. But Santoro says that Herge was probably aware of the technique, but that for some artists it just comes naturally, like playing music by ear. And just as the artist may use it unconsciously, the reader probably isn’t aware of it, observing only that some pages are more attractive or compelling than others. It’s useful to be reminded that such swift impressions are often born of painstaking planning. Sometimes you have to work hard to make it look easy.

I wonder what TinTin and Haddock would have to say about the current state of affairs?

Tintin

Legal | A Belgian court has postponed until next week a hearing in the months-long trial over whether to ban Tintin in the Congo because of its racist portrayals of native Africans. The legal battle was launched three years ago by Bienvenu Mbutu Mondondo, a Congolese man living in Belgium, who wants the book removed from the country’s bookstores, or at least sold with warning labels as it is in Britain. An anti-racism group joined Mondondo in seeking the ban. Wednesday’s scheduled hearing was postponed after one of the plaintiffs withdrew from the case; however, the article doesn’t say which one. [Expatica]

Legal | Cartoonist Rich Koslowski discovers that winning a copyright-infringement lawsuit against a company that used his artwork without permission didn’t end the matter. More than a year later, Ontario-based Geeks Galore Computer Center still hasn’t complied with the judge’s order, and continues to use Koslowski’s art in signage and advertising. [Eye on Comics]

Publishing | Andy Runton’s new full-color hardcover Owly & Wormy: Friends All Aflutter! will be released in March by Simon & Schuster, under a license from Top Shelf. [Top Shelf, via The Beat]

Marvel

Publishing | Jason Woods picks apart Marvel’s new “Architects” initiative promoting the contributions of such creators as Jason Aaron, Brian Michael Bendis, Ed Brubaker, Matt Fraction and Jonathan Hickman: “Don’t think for a second people in the industry don’t already know the score. Do you think other writers needed an official announcement from on high that Bendis was a big dog? Or that Brubaker (who has won a boatload of Eisners in recent years) is a key cog in the wheel? People in the industry understand who is who. And if they’re being honest with themselves, they know where they sit in the pantheon. But that doesn’t mean they like being formally reminded of it by their employer.” [iFanboy]

Retailing | Lincoln, Nebraska, retailer Comic World will close on Dec. 23 after 18 years in business. [Lincoln Journal Star]

Creators | Roger Stern is profiled in advance of his appearance on Sunday at the Indianapolis Comic Book and Toy Convention. [Indianapolis Star]

Comics | Kenton Smith recommends a handful of graphic novels as holiday gifts. [SEE]

Tintin in Tibet

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.

Welcome and happy holidays to all our Comics College readers. Today, as a post-Thanksgiving treat to you, we’ll be talking a lengthy look at the career of one Georges Remi, better known by his pen name, Herge, and by extension, his most famous creation, the plucky boy reporter Tintin.

Why he’s important

There are only a handful of cartoonists in the world who have had as enormous and significant an influence in comics as Herge has. There’s Osamu Tezuka, Charles Schulz, Jack Kirby and then there’s Herge. The incredible popularity of the Tintin books and their considerable influence on European comics really cannot be overestimated. Artists like Joost Swarte and Yves Challand built their entire careers upon Herge’s style, creating what eventually would be known as the “ligne claire” school. Herge to Eurocomics is sort of like the Beatles to rock music: You’re either influence by it, or you work in opposition to it. There’s no in between.

Plus, Herge’s work remains utterly charming and enthralling after all these decades. Though ostensibly created for younger readers, the Tintin books are some of the few all-ages books that can be read by adults and children alike, without any embarrassment on the former’s part (well, there are one or two exceptions, but we’ll get to that later).

Where to start

The Complete Tintin

Though he did create other characters, Herge is primarily known for Tintin, the crime-solving reporter (even though he mysteriously never files a story) who, with his cadre of friends and little dog Snowy, brings down a rabble of drug pushers, spies, counterfeiters, dictators, warmongers and general bad guys.

Tintin’s American publisher, Little, Brown, has, in recent years, made the decision to package three Tintin stories together in one, much smaller, hardbound volume apiece. It’s not a move I support, quite frankly, as I feel it doesn’t give the reader the chance to fully appreciate Herge’s detailed, precise art in the manner it was initially designed for. Instead, I’d suggest picking up the individual, traditional BD-sized books, most of which are still easily available online. The hardcover volumes are admittedly a cheaper option in the long run though.

Having disparaged the hardcover volumes, I will admit that the Collector’s Gift Set, which collects all of Tintin’s color adventures (minus Tintin in the Congo, more on that in a while) is pretty spiffy looking. Still, at $150 a pop, it’s might not be the first purchase a Tintin neophyte might want to make.

So, all that being said, if you’re going to stick with the hardbound volumes and you don’t want to blow your whole wad on the complete set, then I recommend starting with Volume six, which contains what most Tintinologists consider Herge’s finest moment, the lovely Tintin in Tibet, in which our hero treks to the Asian land in search of a friend he believes has survived a horrible plane crash, even though all evidence points to the contrary. It’s a touching tale about sacrifice, faith and friendship and shows the amount of research and detail the author put into his books. You’ll swear after reading he actually visited the country even though he never did.

Volume 6 is also recommended as it contains The Calculus Affair, one of my personal favorite stories and, I think, a rather archetypical tale, and also quite good Red Sea Sharks.

From there you should read

Explorers on the Moon

Volumes three, four and five contain some of the best and most memorable Tintin tales, including the two-part Secret of the Unicorn and Red Rackham’s Treasure (in which Tintin searches for buried treasure and we meet the deaf genius Prof. Calculus); the Seven Crystal Balls and Prisoners of the Sun (in which Tintin heads to South America and meets up with some ancient Incans); and the excellent Destination Moon and Explorers on the Moon (which contains some rather accurate predictions about space travel). These books are about as good as Herge ever gets.

From there I’d go back to the earlier volumes one and two, which feature Tintin minus his usual boozing companion Captain Haddock (and, in several cases, before Herge became more culturally aware and devoted himself to researching the places he wrote about). Of special note here are The Blue Lotus, which marks a turning point in the artist’s attitude towards other cultures and the world around him. Also good are The Cigars of the Pharaoh, Lotus’ prequel, The Black Island, which finds him in Scotland, and King Ottokar’s Scepter, a great bit of escapist fun involving an attempted coup d’etat in Eastern Europe.

Conclude your Tintin reading with the final volume, number seven, which contains the Castafiore Emerald, Flight 714 and Tintin and the Picaros. The latter two verge dangerously close to self-parody and you get a sense Herge was growing tired of the formula and perhaps even feeling a little trapped by his creation. Emerald, however, is a great little drawing room comedy, with Tintin staying at home for once.

Further reading

The Calculus Affair

Herge was working on Tintin’s 24th adventure when he died. The preliminary script, notes and sketches were collected into the posthumous Tintin and Alph-Art. While the tale, which has the boy reporter rooting out corruption in the modern art world, is sadly uncompleted, it provides about as good a glance at Herge’s working methods and inspiration we’re ever likely to get.

In his early days, Herge serialized his stories in magazines in black and white and only later collected and printed them in color volumes, often redrawing the stories from scratch. Last Gasp has released a number of these early, original black and white versions in English and they provide a nice point of comparison regarding Herge’s considerable artistic growth during this time. So far they’ve released Tintin in America, Cigars of the Pharaoh, The Blue Lotus and Tintin in the Congo (more on that in a minute). I’m still waiting for an English version of Black Island, which I understand is quite different from its final volume.

Last Gasp also published Tintin’s first adventure, Tintin in the Land of the Soviets. The art is crude and minimal and shows little of the charm and flair that would later typify Herge’s work. It’s mostly worth noting because it’s Tintin’s first adventure and because it shows just how far he came.

The upcoming Peter Jackson/Steven Spielberg film is not the first time Tintin has appeared in the cinema. A number of attempts have been made before, including some odd-looking live-action films. One of the best might be Tintin and the Lake of Sharks, which, though not anywhere near as strong as the core canon, is closer in tone and style to the source material than anyone would have a right to expect. While you can’t easily get a copy of the film on DVD, you can score an English “book of the film” on the Internet easily enough.

Ancillary material

Tintin: The Complete Companion

Books about Herge and his famous creation abound, many of them released by (you guessed it) Last Gasp and several of them by or edited by one Michael Farr. Farr wrote a biography of Herge, entitled (appropriately enough) The Adventures of Herge, Creator of Tintin (you may also want to check out The Man Who Created Tintin by Pierre Assouline).  He also penned Tintin: The Complete Companion, which goes book by book through the series and compares different versions as well as provides valuable information on influences, origins and research methods. Tintin and Co., meanwhile, takes a closer look at Herge’s cast of characters.

For my money though, the book to check out is Art of Herge: Inventor of Tintin by Philippe Goddin, which offers scores of early sketches, advertising art, original art, paintings and other illustrations that throw a new light on the man and his work. There are two volumes out now, and I’m hoping a third is on the way soon, as they’ve proven to be quite invaluable.

Avoid

There’s a reason why Tintin in the Congo has (apart from the afore-mentioned Last Gasp release) never been published in America. It’s horribly racist. Indefensibly so, with the boy reporter schooling a bunch of big-lipped, dull-witted savages in basic arithmetic and the glories of occupying power Belgium (he doesn’t treat the surrounding wildlife much better either). It’s an especially egregious attitude considering how Belgium treated its colony and the people who lived there in real life. Herge was deeply embarrassed about the book (which he blamed on his own youth and naiveté), and his later work reveals a great sensitivity and sympathy for other races and cultures that belies Congo’s simple-minded bigotry. Still, it’s not a book for newcomers — especially those with an easily offended sense of moral outrage — to tackle on first blush. In fact, it’s probably a book best saved for last.

Next month: Charles M. Schulz

Detective Comics #27

Comics | A copy of Detective Comics #27 bought for 10 cents by Robert Irwin in 1939 sold at auction Thursday for $492,937. It’s not a record price for the first appearance of Batman — a CGC-graded 8.0 copy fetched more than $1 million in February — but the $400,000 that the 84-year-old Irwin will make after the commission fee is subtracted will more than pay off the mortgage on his home. [Sacramento Bee]

Digital piracy | The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday unanimously approved a bill that would grant the Justice Department the right to shut down  a website with a court order “if copyright infringement is deemed ‘central to the activity’ of the site — regardless if the website has actually committed a crime.” In short, Wired’s Sam Gustin writes, the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act “would allow the federal government to censor the internet without due process.” [Epicenter, AFP]

Image Comics

Publishing | Image Comics Publisher Eric Stephenson returns for a second interview with Rich Johnston, and the subject turns, inevitably, to the price of comics: “It’s kind of a weird situation, because historically, indie books have always been about a dollar more than Marvel and DC books. I mean, you look at IDW and their books are $3.99, and based on the way things were done in the past, that’s exactly where they should be in relation to Marvel and DC. Now DC is scaling back prices to $2.99, but they’re cutting their page counts. Marvel is doing …  something. They’re making announcements about doing something, anyway. It’s my understanding there actually isn’t going to be much of a change. But you know, hey, they got some attention with the announcement, right? It’s all pretty disingenuous.” [Bleeding Cool]

Publishing | Marvel has overhauled its website. [Marvel.com]

Publishing | U.K. journalist Roz Laws goes on a tour of the DC Comics offices: “Our guide, BJ Hemann, points out the sad fact that schoolchildren who visited the offices had to be told what phone booths were, as they no longer exist in America.” [Birmingham Post]

Sabu & Ichi, Vol. 1

Awards | Deb Aoki spotlights the manga titles nominated for the Angoulême International Comics Festival’s prestigious awards. (Man, that Sabu & Ichi cover is lovely.) [About.com]

Conventions | The programming schedule has been released for the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival, set for Dec. 4 in Brooklyn, N.Y. [Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival]

Creators | Charles Burns discusses X-ed Out, his decision to use color, and the influence of Hergé: “When I was growing up, before I could even read, there were six books that were translated into American. There were English translations, but these were American translations that were published by Goldman Press. My dad was interested in comics and books and art, and he would regularly go out to bookstores. He found me the first, it was The Secret Of The Unicorn, and he brought that home for me, and I was totally dumbfounded and totally into it. I had seen typical kid comics, but this was really something different. You were really entering into this incredible world. I couldn’t read yet, so it was really examining those pages, reading it a different way than you would as an adult, I guess. Sometimes you’re just reading it to get through the story. This is examining the atmosphere, and the characters, and everything about it. So even though that clear-line, Franco-Belgian look that Hergé developed doesn’t really enter into my style of work. I think a lot of the intensity of the locales and the atmosphere of the stories certainly sunk in. And the characters.” [The A.V. Club]

Spider-Girl #1

Creators | Writer Paul Tobin talks about Marvel’s Spider-Girl. [BBC News]

Creators | Artist Guiseppe Camuncoli chats briefly about his influences and his work, and the differences between Marvel and DC:  “Not so many, to be honest. There can be small or big differences in some things, but that apply as well inside the same company. It really depends on the book you work on, and the people you work with. But overall, I’m having a blast working with both companies. Call me lucky or whatever, but so far there’s not been any single editor/professional or company that I’ve worked with that gave me a hard time. Everyone has always treated me like a king, and I try to return that same kind of attitude with anyone.” [The Star]

Comics | With the opening of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1, Graeme McMillan looks at two (earlier) comic-book boy wizards — Luke Kirby of Summer Magic and Tim Hunter of The Books of Magic. [Techland]

Fandom | The different types of comic-book readers. [The Suffolk Voice]

Pop culture | A Christmas tree decorated with Superman ornaments is being erected at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport. [Cleveland.com]

Aboard the CBR mothership, Alex Dueben talks to Black Hole author Charles Burns about his new book X’ed Out, in stores this week from Pantheon. And by the sound of it, the book — the first in a trilogy — is thoroughly indebted to Belgian comics master Hergé’s timeless Tintin tales, from the cover to the coloring to the format itself:

There’s certainly a very strong Herge influence. If you just think of the Franco-Belgian style of creating comic albums in that format, the way those European make them which is the 64 pages, 48 pages. A hardbound albums with continuing characters. I was one of those rare kids of my generation who grew up reading Tintin and it had a very profound effect on me, so this is the way that I can kind of reflect on that and play with some of those ideas.

[...]

“Black Hole” was always conceived of as being a book that would be all collected together. I’m not conceiving of this as, “Here’s three books that will eventually be collected into one book.” When I get interviewed by the French and Belgian press, I won’t be answering this question, because it’s a different tradition. I’m kind of emulating that tradition by doing a series of books in this manner. For example, when I was doing a signing in Southern France, there was someone who came up to me and who explained that he was really hesitant to buy “Black Hole” for a long time because it just seemed too foreign to him, this idea of this big volume. He wasn’t used to that idea of the graphic novel format, whereas now, it’s really been assimilated over there and popular over there as well. Here, the questions I get asked are, “Gee, this seems like a really slender volume for a graphic novel.” It’s not trying to pass itself off as a big graphic novel. It’s a different style of storytelling.

Unfortunately, Hergé passed away before he could ever release a graphic album in which he processed the influence of Charles Burns. Too bad — I would have liked to have seen Captain Haddock grow a small but strangely erotic vestigial tail.

Brightest Day #7 (August's top-selling comic)

Retailing | Laura Hudson surveys a handful of retailers about what part higher cover prices may have played in August’s plummeting comics sales. “This summer has underperformed, and I think [the $3.99 price point] is a big part of it,” says Chris Rosa of Meltdown Comics in Los Angeles, “but also I think the lack of an event and the fact that the big books at both [companies] are extended denouements to events. There’s nothing really inspiring people to run out to the stores. People are tired of buying four Avengers titles at $3.99 a pop.” [Comics Alliance]

Publishing | Tom Mason looks at the return of Atlas Comics: “If you were 13 years-old in 1975 when the original books were out, you’d be 48 today. In other words, the age of the average direct market fanboy. But in order for these new books to succeed, they’d have to appeal beyond nostalgia because with most Marvel and DC comics at $4.00 a pop, you’ve got to have something special and excellent to lure some of those buyers into your own circus tent.” [Comix 411]

Retailing | Johanna Draper Carlson offers advice for aspiring comics retailers. [Comics Worth Reading]

Detective Comics #871

Creators | Scott Snyder discusses American Vampire and his upcoming run on Detective Comics in an interview from Comic-Con International: “… I want it to be back to basics and have it be anchored in Gotham. Batman solving mysteries as the greatest detective in the world. I wanted it to be street level crime, a couple new villains that are a little bit above the sidewalk level, but at the same time, it’s going to focus on Batman solving crime in Gotham using new tech. It will be old fashioned in terms of its format, but high tech in terms of his gadgets for a new twist.” [AICN]

Creators | Alex Deuben interviews Dame Darcy and Dan Goldman. [Suicide Girls]

Creators | Gerard Way talks briefly about The Umbrella Academy. [The Star]

Tintin

Comics | Claudia Massie details why she loves Hergé: “The visual style of the Tintin books is one that looks enormously simple: it is rather muted in colour; the black lines are neat and constant. The predominant tones are those of the up-market paint company Farrow & Ball and dominated by gentle browns, yellows, blues and greens. Most frames restrict their colour spectrum to just two or three different tones and. unlike some other comic styles, much importance is given to empty space, meaning Hergé is happy to offer a blank sky or wall as a backdrop to a small detail of action or expression. Not for Tintin the graphic pyrotechnics of Marvel Comics; our Belgian boy hero operates against a tranquil canvas of meticulous order.” [The Spectator]

Comics | Author David Lipsky sings the praises of Runaways, Vol. 1, by Brian K. Vaughan and Adrian Alphona: “… I bear the books a grudge. Marvel collected them — because their biggest fans were female teenagers — in tiny digests with girlish covers that were intensely embarrassing to read on the subway. I kept locking eyes with people I could swear had just shaken their heads. And, alright, I fell a little in love with one of the female leads: the great flying beauty Karolina Dean. Who turned out to be gay. A hardship I’d steered clear of in real life, and there I was stumbling into it in a damned graphic novel (OK, comic book). Runaways — while a consistently brilliant reading experience — has been an embarrassment festival. Way beyond a guilty pleasure. It has been a fount of guilt, awkwardness and grave personal doubts. Which is to say, it turned me teenaged again.” [NPR]

Tintin and Snowy

Legal | As rare Tintin memorabilia sold at a Paris auction for more than $1 million, an attorney for Moulinsart told a Brussels court that an attempt to ban the controversial Tintin in the Congo for racism is akin to book burning. “I cannot accept racism but I consider it equally lamentable that we burn books. To ban books is to burn them,” said Alain Berenboom, who represents the organization that controls the rights to Hergé’s works.

The civil case, which began last month, is the result of a nearly three-year-old effort by Bienvenu Mbutu Mondondo, a Congolese man living in Belgium, to have the book removed from the country’s bookstores, or at least sold with warning labels as it is in Britain. The Court of First Instance is expected to announce on June 21 whether it, or a trade tribunal, should consider the case. [Agence France-Presse]

Gantz, Vol. 10

Publishing | Kai-Ming Cha reports from BookExpo America, where, despite recent blows to the manga market — a 20-percent decline in sales, layoffs at Viz Media, the closing of DC’s CMX imprint — Dark Horse’s Michael Martens says the publisher’s manga sales actually increased by 13 percent. [Publishers Weekly]

Conventions | Marc Mason and Jenny Williams report from last weekend’s Phoenix Comicon. [Phoenix Comicon]

Conventions | Tom Spurgeon compiles an exhaustive, and helpful, list of 135 tips for those attending Comic-Con International. [The Comics Reporter]

Retailing | It says a lot about the sorry state of music retailing that the Boston-area chain Newbury Comics “has in part moved back to its roots,” selling comics and graphic novels, to survive steep declines in new-music sales. [The New York Times]

Chiggers

Creators | Kelly Thompson talks at length with Hope Larson about the results of her recent survey of female comics readers. [Comics Should Be Good]

Creators | Dan Nadel answers five questions about comic artists and Art in Time: Unknown Comic Book Adventures, 1940-1980. [Hero Complex]

Creators | Garth Ennis chats briefly about The Boys spinoff miniseries Highland Laddie. [Comic Vine]

Creators | David Barnett spotlights controversial cartoonist Jack Chick. [Guardian]

Kirkman and Kuchera

Creators | I enjoyed Ben Kuchera’s account of meeting with writer Robert Kirkman to trade a copy of Super Mario Galaxy for a signed set of The Walking Dead hardcovers and The Complete Invincible Library, Vol. 2. [Ars Technica]

Comics | David Uzumeri explains the need for minority heroes in superhero comics: “I love this stuff — comics — and I want to share it with everybody. I realize tastes aren’t universal, but when really good stories are held back from finding a mass, multicultural audience by the whitebread nature of the protagonists, it’s depressing. You can’t just change race of major icons, sure, but the world around them should still reflect the world we live in, because otherwise it’s alienating. I don’t want to read, and enjoy, comics that alienate other people for unnecessary reasons — it’s depressing, and it kills my enjoyment, too.” [Comics Alliance]

Comics | Marc-Oliver Frisch names “10 Things Superhero Comics Do Better Than Any Other Genre in Any Other Storytelling Form.” [Comiks Debris]

Comics | Autostraddle provides a guide to comics for the uninitiated. [Autostraddle]

Tintin

Publishing | Stanley Pignal takes a look at the transformation of the Tintin brand since the death of Hergé in 1983, as the cartoonist’s widow Fanny Vlamynck and her husband Nick Rodwell drastically changed merchandising strategies. In the process, the prickly Rodwell has become a controversial figure, running afoul of fans and journalists alike in his effort to exert control over Tintin’s image.

Of particular interest is a brief profile of Bob Garcia, a novelist and fan who published a series of books examining Hergé’s possible inspirations for Tintin. Garcia believed he could legally reproduce a few copyrighted illustrations for the purpose of critique, but Moulinsart saw things differently: The writer is now fighting to keep his home as penalties and legal fees mount. [Financial Times]

Crime | Danny Wayne Barton, owner of Kryptonite Komics in Carbon Hill, Alabama, was arrested Thursday after he allegedly sold marijuana to police informants on four separate occasions. Three of those incidents reportedly occurred in Barton’s shop, which also sells smoking devices as the Good Karma Store. The 38-year-old retailer faces a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in prison on four counts of unlawful distribution of a controlled substance within a three-mile radius of a school. [Daily Mountain Eagle]

Comix Experience

Retailing | Tom Spurgeon talks at length with Brian Hibbs of Comix Experience about sales of alt comics, the challenges of opening a comic store, the digital model, ComicsPRO, Diamond and more. [The Comics Reporter]

Webcomics | Matthew Inman (The Oatmeal), Chris Onstad (Achewood) and Brad Guigar (Webcomics.com) discuss making a living through webcomics: “In good years, Onstad grosses around $250,000 in sales, though sales have been leaner in the past two recession years. He estimates having about 100,000 regular readers.” [AOL Small Business]

Libraries | John Campanelli spotlights Ohio State University’s Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum which, if all goes as planned, will move from its basement location to a $20.6 million home in a renovated Sullivant Hall in 2013. [The Plain Dealer]

San Diego Convention Center

Conventions | Luke Y. Thompson assesses the mood among professional attendees regarding a possible move by Comic-Con: “My sources invariably see it as a battle between San Diego and Los Angeles, with Anaheim an irrelevant factor, despite the fact that it has the most hotel space. First of all, it’s Disney’s backyard, which could put the other movie studios ill at ease (Glanzer denies that this would be an issue, saying that it was originally a question they had, but that all parties involved have assured him it would not be a problem). And secondly, it’s enough of a commute from L.A. to be an annoyance, and not quite enough to be a vacation (though fans and exhibitors who actually live in OC are for it, nobody else seems to be).” [Deadline]

Passings | Bruce Weber pens an obituary for Modesty Blaise creator Peter O’Donnell, who passed away on May 3. [The New York Times]

Creators | Douglas Wolk chats with Grant Morrison about Batman and Robin, the identity of Oberon Sexton and The Return of Bruce Wayne. [Techland]

Turf #2

Creators | This profile of television host Jonathan Ross divides its focus between his departure from the BBC and his move into comics with Turf, his Image collaboration with artist Tommy Lee Edwards: “Christ, it’s hard! But I’m really enjoying the nuts and bolts of the writing, which I didn’t think I would — I thought I’d just be thrilled at the sheer vanity of having my name on something with colours and pictures.” [Times Online]

Creators | Artist Shane Davis is interviewed by his local newspaper. [Hickory Daily Record]

Comics | Tom Spurgeon talks with Ben Schwartz, editor of The Best American Comics Criticism. [The Comics Reporter]

Manga | Jason Thompson considers “five brilliantly perverted manga.” [i09.com]

Comics | Ben Morse explains the appeal of Iron Man: “He’s basically a walking action figure, the type of concept that is like candy coated in crack to a kid, as you can go wild over his accessories and the fact that he’s got different suits for different occasions. I also think the idea of ‘suit of armor’ is just easier for people to wrap their head around than something like telepathy, a healing factor, freeze breath or even super speed (to say nothing of the really complex super powers).” [The Cool Kids Table]

Tintin mural

Yet another reason to visit Belgium before you die.

My dear Thompson!

The Ephemerist found this charming Magritte/Herge mash-up created by Karl Meersman to celebrate the recent openings of two new museums in Belgium that honor each artist.

Red Rackham's Treasure

Professor Calculus’ shark-shaped minisub from The Adventures of Tintin has become a reality — albeit a pricey one.

The Deep Flight Super Falcon, designed by Graham Hawkes, possesses two sets of wings and two tail fins that allows it to do barrel rolls with dolphins while traveling at speeds of up to 6 knots.

The base price, CNN reports, is $1.3 million. Another model, with open cockpits, is available for $350,000.

Calculus’ shark-shaped submarine first appeared in 1943 in The Adventures of Tintin: Red Rackham’s Treasure, by Herge. In the story, the eccentric scientist offers the use of his invention so that Tintin and Captain Haddock won’t be harassed by sharks while searching for a sunken ship.

Calculus’ submersible also plays a role in the 1927 animated film Tintin and the Lake of Sharks and its comic-book adaptation, which Hawkes cites in the CNN article.

Tintin and Snowy

I plan on celebrating by buying a white Scottie dog, befriending an inebriated sea captain and thwarting a string of drug smugglers and slave traders. All the while being pursued by two identical policemen. Then I’ll read this BBC article.

Ironically, when it comes to Tintin the person, it is perhaps his very internationality that is his undoing. Euro-characters who do well in the States – James Bond, but also those portrayed by Hugh Grant and Gerard Depardieu – often play on national stereotypes and foible-laden sophistication. Herge, however, went out of his way to deny Tintin any specific Belgicite, underlining rather his international features.

And then I’ll go to Tibet.

Tintin in Tibet