And finally, here’s a look at a page from Super-Tron creator Sheldon Vella‘s heavy-metal Ghost Rider tale that will be featured in the upcoming second issue of Strange Tales II. Check it out in all its glory after the jump.

The book lands in shops next week and includes contributions by, among others, Paul Hornschemeier, David Heatley, Scott Richardson and Jaime Hernandez (who did the cover).

*****

A Drifting Life

Welcome to another edition of What Are You Reading. Our special guest this week is Katherine Dacey, a former contributor to Pop Culture Shock and current contributor to the Good Comics for Kids blog. She also is the driving force behind the impressive new blog, The Manga Critic.

To see what Katherine and other Robot 6ers have been reading lately, click on the link …

Salt Water Taffy

Tim O’Shea: This week, I’m doing a great of research for upcoming Talking Comics with Tim subjects. First on the pile of fun reading was Matt Loux’s Salt Water Taffy. What really caught my eye about Loux’s storytelling approach is his penchant for framing a set of panels with a backdrop landscape shot. Maybe many artists do that, but his style and approach made me take notice. Plus I like it when an all ages story entertains me beyond the core plot level.

Months ago, when I interviewed John Arcudi, he spoke highly about the work of John Kerschbaum. In looking at his latest release from Fantagraphics, Petey & Pussy, I find myself bewildered and horrified at his style of comedy. A dog and a cat with human bald heads (and a love of alcohol), I imagine as I read the stories that Petey & Pussy have thick New York (Yawk) accents when they talk.

What I love most about library book sales is the opportunity to find treasures I might never run across otherwise. This weekend at the Oak Ridge (TN) Public Library Friends of the Library book sale, I discovered Audrey Niffenegger’s 2006 graphic novel (classified by the author as “a novel in pictures”) The Adventuress. Upon closer examination, while the book was published in 2006, Niffenegger made it
between 1983 and 1985–in a style that reminds me of Edward Gorey. It’s interesting to look at this book and compare it to her 2004 style in the short story, The Night Bookmobile, which ran in webcomic installments at The Guardian in 2008.

In terms of blogs, Steve Duin has a new blog at the Oregonian, where he is showing readers more Matt Baker appreciation as well as the Paul Hornschemeier adaptation of Ted Kooser’s poem, The Giant Slide.

Britten & Brulightly

Michael May: I’m halfway through Britten and Brulightly. People keep mistaking Britten – an Ecuadorian detective – for a Frenchman, which I think is kind of appropriate since I keep mistaking this for a French comic. That’s a compliment, by the way. I love French comics except that I can’t usually read them. Thankfully, creator Hannah Berry is English, so yay for me.

The art in this thing is gorgeous and touchingly captures the grey dreariness surrounding a man who usually makes a living uncovering evidence of cheating lovers. Britten is appropriately known in his professional circles as The Heartbreaker. It’s a nickname that he despises almost as much as he deserves.

The awesome thing about the story (so far) is Britten’s partner, whom the novel’s back cover coyly describes as “unconventional.” I’m spoiling nothing by telling you that Brulightly is, in fact, a teabag. That’s revealed very early in the story and it’s brilliant. What I don’t know yet is whether Britten is insane, or if the teabag is possessed by something, or if it’s just a talking teabag. That – as well as the wonderful murder mystery that forms the plot – is pulling my happily towards the end.

Maid War Chronicle

Chris Mautner: I read another new Del Rey manga, Maid War Chronicle. This one’s about a snotty prince (only about eight or so, natch) who gets booted out of his throne by an invading country and only has his maids to protect him as he attempts to get his country back. Thankfully the maids, who are all named after spices and drinks (i.e. Cocoa, Mint, Vanilla, etc.), get endowed with magical weapons. Surprisingly, given its pandering nature, this isn’t too distasteful a book, and the fan service is kept on a rather low simmer. Still, I’m not exactly eager to follow the continuing adventures of this clan.

I also came upon Michael Kupperman’s Tales Designed to Thrizzle Vol. 1. Even though I’ve read most of this material in periodical form, it’s still a joy to revisit Kupperman’s absurd, hilarious universe.

In the “off the beaten path” aisle, I recently came across Certitude by Adam Begley, a collection of short biographies (like, one page) of folks who suffered from a large dose of monomania, like Ayn Rand and Gen. Custer. The real draw here is the art by Edward Sorel. His caricatures of folks like Madonna and Pope John Paul II are a thing of beauty.

Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Katherine Dacey: Topping my list is Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s A Drifting Life (Drawn & Quarterly). At the outset, I was skeptical: I’d found Abandon the Old in Tokyo and The Push Man so relentlessly grim that I wasn’t sure if I had the intestinal fortitude for a 840-page autobiography of their author. I’m astonished at how compelling Tatsumi’s story turned out to be, both for the insights it provided into his artistic and professional development, and for its frank depiction of life in post-war Japan.

I made another surprising discovery while reading A Drifting Life: manga makes an excellent vehicle for biography. Prose biographies seldom offer such an immersive experience, even when an author has gone to great pains to recreate pivotal moments in his subject’s life; if anything, I find these kind of details distracting, as few biographers have the storytelling chops to make them an organic part of the narrative. Robert Caro’s The Power Broker is a prime example of such more-is-more reportage, telling us exactly how warm it was and what Robert Moses was wearing every time Moses announced a new highway project or housing development. When I finished the book, I felt that Robert Moses had disappeared from view, his motives and beliefs obscured by the accretion of sartorial minutiae. In a graphic medium, however, it’s much easier to draw the reader into the scene; the very details that seem unnecessary in a prose biography give images a specificity that’s almost impossible to capture in words.

For my gig at Good Comics for Kids, I’ve been reading — and enjoying — Eric Shanower and Skottie Young’s take on The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Marvel). Shanower has been living in the Oz universe for some time, and it shows: the script is faithful to both the spirit and the letter of Frank L. Baum’s original novel. Young’s art is the perfect compliment to Shanower’s script, bringing new personality to some very familiar characters. I’m particularly taken with the Tin Man, who’s rocking a ‘stache and a beetle brow, and the Cowardly Lion, who looks remarkably like the world’s largest Pomeranian.

I’ve also been reading a lot of manga for the under-twelve set. Most of it is very didactic — “Hey kids, remember to play nice and believe in yourself!” — but there have been a few standouts: Dinosaur Hour! (VIZ), which cheerfully ignores all recent scientific research vis-a-vis dinosaur intelligence and depicts them as dumber than dirt, with hilarious results; Leave it to PET! (VIZ), which sounds horrible – robot made from plastic bottle saves the boy who recycled him–but is actually subversive fun; and The Big Adventures of Majoko (UDON), which is a cute adventure story that imparts a grrrrl power lesson without talking down to young readers.

Swallow Me Whole

Welcome to this week’s edition of What Are You Reading? Today our special guest is blogger and critic Matthew J. Brady (not to be confused with the other Matt Brady). He and everyone else at Robot 6 have been reading some really interesting stuff, so click on the link to find out what …

Grendel Tales

Matthew Maxwell: In Portland this week and not much reading time.

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN by Cormac McCarthy
After my reading of THE ROAD, I’ve decided to get some more McCarthy. Only partly through, so comments would be meaningless.

GRENDEL TALES by Matt Wagner
Collecting the story arcs that followed “The Devil Inside”. These are dense, dense reads.  Twenty panels to a page, lots of formalist play. Again, only partly through, and will remain so until I can find the damn thing again, but really I have to pack now and get on a plane.

Marvel Masterworks: X-Men

Michael May: I’m about halfway through the first volume of Marvel Masterworks: X-Men. Whenever I read Stan Lee/Jack Kirby stuff, I always end up – like a lot of people – wondering how much of each story was done by whom while cringing over Lee’s dialogue. A lot of the time Lee’s simply describing what Kirby’s already drawn, so I tend to belittle his contribution altogether. But something Lee pointed out in his intro to this volume made me realize a factor I’d been taking for granted: personalities.

It was Lee’s idea to make Beast the intelligent one and Cyclops — who under stereotypical circumstances would’ve been a dashing, charismatic leader — into a gloomy, unlikable soul. I’m guessing too then that Lee’s also responsible for turning Angel into a playboy and Iceman into the punk kid whom no one takes seriously. It’s an interesting team dynamic and I don’t usually give Lee enough credit for coming up with it.

On the other hand, that means he’s also responsible for Marvel Girl’s having NO personality outside of an object for the boys’ affection, but from Lee’s portrayal of Sue Storm in Fantastic Four, that’s not really surprising.

Crogan's Vengeance

John Parkin: This week I read Crogan’s Vengeance by Chris Schweizer, which incidentally was nominated for an Eisner this year. And I can see why — it’s a well-done adventure story featuring lots of pirate-on-pirate action, and Schweizer’s art style has a great narrative quality that’s both cartoonishly fun and stylistically detailed. This is the first in what’s planned to be a long line of tales of the Crogan family, whose lineage is detailed in the inside front cover (I love stuff like that). Based on the family tree, it looks like future editions will showcase soldiers, gun runners, ninjas and even a lion tamer.

Thom Zahler sent me an advanced copy of Loves and Capes #10, the Free Comic Book Day issue, the love story that happens to feature superheroes. In this issue, Abby decides she wants to know what it’s like to have super powers, so with some help from one of Mark’s mystic friends, she gets her wish. Page eight is hilarious, and pages 22 and 23 kind of choked me up. You’ll be able to get this for free on May 2, so definitely check it out.

Green Lantern Corps

Lisa Fortuner: I have eight months of backlogged Green Lantern and Green Lantern Corps issues on my plate.  Surprisingly, I’m enjoying the stuff in GLC that made me cringe to hear about it — Soranik and Kyle, the no-fraternizing between Lanterns rule, and the Star Sapphires making another appearance.  I was particularly worried about the Sapphire storyline because I hated the Johns retcon.  Then Tomasi managed to completely redeem it for me by giving the Zamarons the Golden Age Wonder Woman philosophy of love and gender.  The Sinestro Corps members rehabilitation reminds me of the Venus Girdle storylines.  They just need a Zamaron to use the term “loving submission.”   And the fixation on female enemies and female villains, suits the classic sexism of the Zamarons and weaves the love concept into it in a very … Marstonian way?  This is not something that suits Wonder Woman anymore because its too gender-essentialist, but it is very entertaining as founding principals for a sometimes allied/sometimes rivaling set of Lanterns that includes the main character’s best love interest.

Also, I am so relieved to see a Star Sapphire uniform that is not missing a chest.  I love Patrick Gleason so much for Miri’s look.

Blazing Combat

Tim O’Shea: Two things to follow up from JK’s thoughts, before sharing my own:
1) If JK’s endorsement is not enough, I second his mention of the book and suggest you check out my interview with Schweizer from several weeks ago.
2) I am jealous that you got a sneak peak of Loves and Capes #10. Zahler deserves all the praise he gets for his work and much more.

I went to war this week, at least in my reading. Fantagraphics’ collection of the four issues of Blazing Combat blew me away from the start. The size and heft of the hardback reminded me of my textbooks from my school days. And once I cracked open the book, I found myself getting a hell of an education with this one. Excuse my ignorance on this front, but I had no idea that as Michael Catron writes in the intro of this collection:

In 1965, when Blazing Combat burst onto the scene, the U.S. involvement in Vietnam was just beginning to escalate.

Blazing Combat’s realistic depiction of soldiers under fire — in the chaos of battle, in the no-holds-barred, no-man’s-land of instant imminent death — was viewed by the U.S. military, The American Legion, and those wholesalers as anti-American.

So, they killed it.

The military outright banned it from sale on military bases — government censorship with no apologies.

Wholesalers, at the behest of the American Legion, strangled it to death, slowly, by locking it in their warehouses, denying it a chance to go on sale.

There’s more to the intro (go read it, that alone is a great read). But as a longtime fan of Archie Goodwin’s work, I’m woefully behind on reading work from his Warren days. This book is full of amazing artists, including Frank Frazetta, Wally Wood, John Severin, Al Williamson, Russ Heath, Reed Crandall, and Gene (working as Eugene in
these stories) Colan. But best of all (and among these names, finding a “best” is not hard) is the chance to read three Alex Toth stories.

If you want a sneak peak at the book, Fantagraphics offers a 19-page PDF excerpt (3.4 MB) containing the first three stories” here.

This week the 70 years of Timely/Marvel celebrations is observed with a Sub-Mariner one-shot. The lead story features Roy Thomas with Mitch and Elizabeth Breitweiser on art, but what really sold me on buying this was the secondary tale, written by Mark Shultz with the aforementioned great Al Williamson on art. There is nothing like the detail rich style of Wiliiamson’s work.

Finally, I missed it when Mark Waid originally wrote about it last month, but he
revisited his thoughts on deadlines and freelancers with his discussion of the “Triangle Rule in comics” on his podcast. While I don’t always agree with Waid, I really appreciate the knowledge he’s been sharing (first at John Rogers’ blog — now at
his own BOOM! blog) and you can beat the price (free).

Supermen!

Tom Bondurant: I’m in the middle of three things:  Showcase Presents The Doom Patrol Vol. 1, Fantagraphics’ Supermen! book, and the first twelve issues of Micronauts.  They are (respectively) Silver Age crazy, Golden Age crazy, and … not as crazy as I remembered.

My first real exposure to the Doom Patrol was in the early years of New Teen Titans, which built a very heartfelt tribute around Gar Logan searching for Robotman and Mento and getting a chance to avenge their teammates’ deaths. I read all of the Grant Morrison/Richard Case Doom Patrol, and a fair amount of the John Arcudi/Tan Eng Huat series, but the original stories put all of that in a whole new light.  The original Doom Patrol reads more like the Fantastic Four than the X-Men, because as much as they feel like “freaks” they seem to have a pretty decent relationship with the public.  They also depend on each other a lot more than I’d have expected in a mid-’60s DC super-team book.  The stories are charming and inventive, and I’ve just read the first couple of Mento stories, so Gar himself probably isn’t far behind.  (Mento is the freshmaker! … oh, I feel dirty.)  Looking forward to Vol. 2.

If nothing else, Supermen! puts Fletcher Hanks’ career in perspective.  It’s easy to criticize these old stories for their huge gaps in logic, their inexplicable plots (I particularly like the one where the hero stays safe in the house while he convinces the guy in trouble to see what’s in the old barn), and even their grammar and spelling.  Clearly, though, it shows what the era’s writers and artists were willing to try, on the off chance that they had the next Batman or Human Torch.  These are comics designed to make you tear your hair out waiting for the next issue, just to see if these guys could top themselves.  Great fun all around.

Finally, I read Bill Mantlo and Michael Golden’s Micronauts off and on when it first came out, not because I had the toys — I coveted the toys, but never owned a single one — but because the comics themselves were so appealing.  (Young Kurt Busiek gave the book his thumbs-up in issue #6′s letter column.)  Mantlo gave the toys a space-fantasy back story and grounded the book firmly in the Marvel Universe, giving it Captain Universe in return.  Golden had one of the ’70s most distinctive styles, which suited the book perfectly.  He blended the toys’ designs and real-world elements seamlessly with his own stuff. I mean, the artillery was drawn to resemble the toys, right down to the big orange-rubber “darts,” and for a second it takes you out of the comic, but Golden (and inker Joe Rubenstein) made it work. Because it was the late ’70s, there are obvious nods to Star Wars, but I was surprised to see, in hindsight, some elements straight from the New Gods (an Enigma Force, Dog Soldiers, and a character called “Bug”).  In fact, the letter column of issue #5 (which includes a letter from future Eclipse publisher Cat Yronwode) reveals that “Bug” was indeed a Kirby homage, and “Commander Rann” honored Adam Strange.

Still, there’s a lot of Buck Rogers in Rann, so I suppose Mantlo was going for a timeless feel.  Not so timeless were the Marvel house ads and Bullpen Bulletins, hawking the company’s other licensed properties like Shogun Warriors and Battlestar Galactica….

Baby Blues: My Space

Chris Mautner: Baby Blues Vol. 24: My Space by Rick Kirkman and Jerry Scott — I really like Baby Blues. It’s one of the only comic strips in my newspaper that I can bother to read anymore and it’s the only family strip after Cul de Sac I can read without wanting to committ a random act of violence.

It’s more of an “my life is like that ” strip than Cul, which relies more on verbal wit and surreal, off-kilter humor, making it the better strip IMHO. But Kirkman and Scott have a real eye for detail and honesty that manages to capture parenthood perfectly. More importantly, they’re just as sympathetic to the kids’ perspective as they are to the parents, a quality that Scott’s other strip, Zits, severely lacks.

The Arcade of Cruelty by Joesph Patrick Larkin — Yeah. I honestly don’t know what to make of this one. It’s got that sort of really uncomfortable, too-much-information quality that marks, say, the work of folks like Ivan Brunetti or Joe Matt, but is completely devoid of the sort of craft or storytelling skill those two provide.

It’s got some funny off-color jokes about stuff like 9/11 that it unfortunately hammers into the ground repeatedly. It also uses up a lot of pages including things like Larkin’s high school yearbook with smutty phrases drawn over the photos. Then there’s Larkin’s depressing, self-obsessed rantings about his lack of sexual experience and troubles with women. I have no idea how seriously I’m supposed to take any of this — is any of it on the level? — but the whole thing left me feeling awkward and uncomfortable. Mission accomplished, I guess.

Salt Water Taffy Vol. 2

Matthew J. Brady: This is kind of a rarity, but I’m actually reading a prose novel right now, rather than any comics (Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, if you really wanted to know).  But I’ve always got plenty of recently-read and soon-to-be-read books.  After finishing my recent binge of Naoki Urasawa’s Monster, I’ve read the second volume of Matthew Loux’s Salt Water Taffy (a great kids’ series about two brothers who go on adventures in a fantastical Northeastern vacation spot), Nate Powell’s Swallow Me Whole (one of the best graphic novels of 2008, a harrowing depiction of mental illness with some sharply realistic characters and gorgeous artwork), the latest issue of Shojo Beat (there are some major developments in Vampire Knight this month), and (since I can’t get enough of Urasawa) the first volume of 20th Century Boys.  Next up are some Western comics I need to catch up on, including the most recent collections of DMZ, Godland, and Powers, and I’ll be trying to get caught up on several other manga series, including Nana, Parasyte, One Pound Gospel, and Drifting Classroom.  That should keep me busy for a few more months.

Tales of the Great Unspoken

Making comics, as we all know, is hard work. And — particularly if you work in the “indie” side of the aisle — it’s not always good-paying work.

Small wonder then that many talented individuals leave the medium to find a career in illustration, animation, sales, or hell, anything that paid better than comics.

Still, while I understand the financial necessity, there’s a number of artists I wish would come back to the fold, if just for old time’s sake. For example:

1. Aaron Augenblick. In 1999 Augenblick created a charming little mini-comic, Tales of the Great Unspoken. It was inventive, clever, superbly crafted and very funny. It won a Xeric. It was, all in all, a great debut that showed enough promise to suggest that Augenblick had a great career ahead of him in comics. Then he decided to chuck it all and make animated cartoons for Adult Swim and MTV.

It’s a shame. The kid really could have really made a name for himself. Still, it’s not too late Aaron. You could give up all that sweet, sweet Nickelodeon money and come back to comics anytime …

2. Brian Biggs. Like Augenblick, Biggs left the world of comics for greener pastures, though in his case, those pastures consisted of illustration and children’s books, with a smidge of animation here and there.

For a while there in the 1990s, though, it seemed as though he was one of the up and coming stars in indie comics. Books like Dear Julia and Frederick and Eloise brought a whimsical, storybook approach that never seemed overly twee or sweet. Indeed,they were often grounded by some dark undercurrents, not to mention backed by some serious artistic chops.

Biggs still dabbles in comics occasionally, but those are mainly one or two page pieces. I’d love to see him attempt a longer work once more.

The Far Side

3. Gary Larson. A gimmie perhaps, but significant enough to warrant inclusion here nevertheless. Seriously, has Larson done anything since the release of his children’s book There’s a Hair in My Dirt? I’m really tired of reading third-rate Far Side retreads in my newspaper — they just make Larson’s absence all the more frustrating. I’m not asking him to return to the grinding daily schedule that made him retire in the first place, but surely a collection of cartoons every few years or so wouldn’t put too much of a mental strain on him. And he’d have some new material for those calendars he cranks out every year.

4. Dave Cooper. For one brief shining moment, Dave Cooper had climbed up to the upper pantheon of Fantagraphic artists. Surreal, mind-warping books like Suckle, Ripple and his ongoing series Weasel, which chronicled a number of sweaty, paunchy, disturbingly neurotic and oversexed characters, had Cooper earning acclaim equal to the likes of Clowes and Ware.

Sadly, he became more interested (and no doubt found he could earn a better living) in painting and illustration (he recently wrote a children’s book of all things) and abandoned comics, apparently permanently. Perhaps he said everything he had to in those various graphic novels, but I’d sure love to have him come back and try again, even if he does end up repeating himself.

5. Mary Fleener. I’m not including that recent story she did for The Beats book and neither should you, since a) she didn’t write it and b) it wasn’t up to par with her best work.

Calvin and Hobbes

No, I’m talking Fleener’s entirely self-produced work. The kind of stuff found in issues of comics like Slutburger, the G-rated Fleener and the x-rated Nipples and Tum-Tum. Even though she hasn’t produced a single 32-page comic in years, she remains one of the most original voices in comics, with an art style that’s completely her own (no one draws a sex scene like her). Really, comics probably needs her a lot more than she needs it.

6. Bill Watterson. An obvious choice really. Indeed, Watterson must be the patron saint of people who have turned their back on the comics industry. Watterson retired in 1995 and hasn’t uttered nary a peep since then except for the occasional introduction or commentary in one of those Calvin and Hobbes collections.

And god, how I miss him. I don’t care if he brings back Calvin and Hobbes. I don’t care if he tries to adapt the works of Herman Hesse. I don’t care if he decides to tell the adventures of “Bundle of Twigs and Mulch Pile.” I just want Watterson to be back at his drawing table and making comics again. Like, right now.

Violence Jack

• How have I blathered on all this time without calling attention to Derik Badman’s great volume by volume analysis of Osamu Tezuka’s Phoenix series? Obviously I need my head examined. (In backwards order, Karma, Yamato, Space, Future and Dawn).

• Craig Fischer has nice things to say about Patsy Walker: Hellcat : “It’s not designed to be immortal art–in other words, it’s not Raw or Love and Rockets–but as far as mainstream comics go, it’s clever and fun, virtues that are too easy to take for granted.”

• Takekuma Kentaro, co-author of Even a Monkey can Draw Manga wonders why the manga version of Hayao Miyazaki’s Naussica is so hard to read: “Each individual panel is too complete, and the characters and background are drawn with lines of equal thickness. This leads to the characters not standing out.”

• Awesome Engine is doing a series of posts on Go Nagai’s Violence Jack who lives up to his name rather well (link is so NSFW by the way).

• Paul Gravett provides an interesting look at the work of Italian comics artist Gianna DeLucca.

• Andrew Wheeler didn’t care much for Joseph Patrick Larkin’s Arcade of Cruelty. He does, however, have nice things to say about Jimmy Gownley’s Amelia Rules!

• Noah Berlatsky doesn’t care much for Alan Moore’s proposal for the Wonder Woman rip-off Glory, but he did like the first volume of Fruits Basket, though it took two readings.

• Stripper’s Guide’s Allan Holtz offers some capsule reviews of recent comic strip-related releases.

Scott Pilgrim, Vol. 5

Welcome to another edition of What Are You Reading. This week I’m pleased to announce that our special guest star is Dash Shaw, who wowed the critics last year with his doorstop family drama Bottomless Belly Button and was just nominated for an Eisner for his recently completed Webcomic Bodyworld (soon to be published in book form by Pantheon).

To see what Shaw and the rest of us are reading, click on the link below.

Watchmen

Michael May: I’m a little over halfway done with my second reading of Watchmen, my first time through being about 15 years ago. I purposely stayed away from it before seeing the movie and my thought so far is that I like the movie better. At least, I like the characters better in the movie. I pretty much hate the comics version of the younger Silk Spectre, but I was able to muster some sympathy for her in the film. Pretty much the same with Doc Manhatten except that I don’t have any feelings about him at all in the comic. Maybe I’ll change my mind by the time I finish it, but that’s how I remember it from my first go-round too.

I’m also digging into Dark Horse’s reprints of Marvel’s Conan the Barbarian. I keep thinking about this guy on a Conan message board I used to go to. This was while Kurt Busiek was writing the new Conan series for Dark Horse and every time a new issue would come out this guy would go on and on about how Kurt was blaspheming against Robert E. Howard and how Marvel’s version was so faithful and true to Holy Scripture. I stayed out of those conversations then, but I now realize that that guy was totally on crack. I also don’t see the big deal about Barry Windsor Smith, but then I’ve always been a fan of John Buscema’s version.

I’m also re-reading X-Men: Children of the Atom. I bought the paperback version of Marvel Masterworks: X-Men, Vol. 1 a couple of weeks ago and about two panels into it I decided I wanted to re-read the prequel mini-series first. I wish they’d been able to keep Steve Rude on for the whole thing, but man that’s a fine mini-series.

Chris Mautner: Quickly, because it’s late and I want to get this up before Easter services. I read Wolverine: Prodigal Son, which is the first entry in Del Rey/Marvel attempt to manga-fy the X-Men. The story’s by Anthony Johnston, art by Wilson Tortosa. It’s a serviceable but somewhat silly attempt to make the character more appealing to teen-age girls. Logan’s a brash young teen, all angsty and tortured, which just makes you want to give him a hug and some chai tea. Like I said, it’s not bad — it’s certainly more coherent and competent than a lot of the Wolverine stories I’ve come across in recent years — but it’s not terribly essential either, Tortosa’s art gets muddied a lot, particularily during action scenes (he likes motion lines a lot apparently) and I’m not sure they aren’t losing something by making the character younger. I kind of always thought part of his appeal lay in the fact that he was a grown-up. I give it a meh.

FLUKE 2009 Anthology

Tim O’Shea: One has to appreciate the disclaimer that greets you on the first page of the 2009 FLUKE Anthology, about two or three sentences after some standard legal disclaimer, you get “Submissions drawn by crawdads, Tuscan raiders, snipes, Ferengi, narwhales or any other fantastical or fictional creatures are not eligible for inclusion in the FLUKE Anthology. It must also be noted that regular usage of the FLUKE Anthology may cause anal leakage and some hair loss.” In the 80 pages of the book, you get a wooden nickel (no really) and a selection of creators, including Gary Fields, Sarah Louise, Jeremy Sorese, Joey Weiser, Jason Horn, Josh Latta, Andrew Goldfarb, M Campos and many many more (like they used to say in those 1970s variety shows…). I love anthologies like this, as they are like going to a mega mall without getting hit by perfume salespeople.

On the mainstream front, Jeff Parker was born to write Exiles. (Sorry Jeff, if you thought your purpose in life might be bigger or at least creator owned…) Parker’s grasp of the Marvel universe (or universes I guess with this series…) makes him the ideal writer for an ever-changing cast that comes with this concept. And only his sense of humor can handle Hitler/Ghandi juxtaposition/alternate universe comedy. My only disappointment was that in my excitement to buy this (as well as Jason Aaron’s Wolverine: Weapon X [which I need to read again before deciding if I like it]) I did not notice they were both $3.99. I have a hard time justifying $4.00 for a Marvel comic, but I’ll take the hit for Parker — particularly with the clean, engaging style of artist Salva Espin. And that’s saying a great deal, as I grew tired of the original Exiles run and did not think I would ever revisit the title. Fortunately Marvel assigned the correct writer for this relaunch.

Another $3.99 comic from Marvel that I begrudgingly support (my conditional support is a fiscal complaint, only) is the fifth installment (out of eight) for writer Eric Shanower’s and artist Scottie Young’s Wonderful Wizard of Oz. I really appreciate the manner in which Young handles some implied violence in this issue that engages the reader while still keeping it an all-ages story.

Air Vol. 1

Matthew Maxwell: Read more actual books this week, but nobody wants to hear about that.

RAWBONE #1
The funny thing is, there’s no “Mature Readers Only” warning on the front of this book, when it’s easily one of the most unquestionably mature books I’ve read in some time. I’ve made no secret of my love of Jamie Delano’s writing. I have since HELLBLAZER, purple prose and all (hey, it was the 80s, right?) RAWBONE is unmistakably his work, blood-engorged puns bumping up against corrupt authority figures on the high seas. If you wanted more like TALES OF THE BLACK FREIGHTER, you could do much worse than give this a try.

AGENTS OF ATLAS #3
Now this is kind of on the other end of the spectrum. Much more accessable, much more kid friendly, though strangely doesn’t hold a corner on the gorilla/chimp market for this week’s reading. And Ken Hale is a lot more friendly than the…thing that shows up in RAWBONE, particularly when drawn by Gabriel Hardman. Some nice character moments, some wry chuckles, nice dashes of spectacle and action. I don’t want to say “another typical issue of AGENTS OF ATLAS,” or anything, but that’s what it’s gonna sound like, I suppose. I’m waiting to hear about people grouching that the fight on the cover doesn’t take place in the book itself, but is just sorta hinted at.

UNKNOWN SOLDIER #5, #6.
I’m cheating, since I haven’t actually read these yet. You know the series got nominated for an Eisner, right?

AIR, Vol. 1
It’s been awhile, it seems, since I’ve seen a Vertigo book tackle magic that wasn’t horror. I’m only partly through at the moment, so I don’t want to give a full review yet, but I like what I’m reading so far. G. Willow Wilson brings a feminine voice that reads as strikingly different from a lot of what’s out there right now. I’m curious to see where this is going to end up. Magical realism and I have an uneasy relationship. Done well and when internally consistent, it can be very good, illuminating dark corners and entertaining in a unique way. Done poorly (and I don’t think that this will be a problem for AIR) and it becomes a deus-ex-machina mess that can still be entertaining, but often only temporarily satisfying.

BATMAN: EGO AND OTHER TAILS
I’m not so much reading this as I am studying it for the layouts and cartooning. But the stories here are well worth the read.

BASIL WOLVERTON’S BIBLE
Wow. Just wow. Only glanced over it after buying it at Emerald City, but man, that’s a piece of work.

Warlord

Tom Bondurant: I finished Heartbreak Soup and am almost done with Essential Dr. Strange Volume 2. With regard to the Essential book, I was pretty surprised to see Gardner Fox writing most of a Doc-fights-”Cthulhu” arc. Sure, he was a prolific prose science-fiction writer, but he was also one of the architects of DC’s Golden and Silver Ages. I had no idea he did any Marvel work.

The latest Warlord relaunch, written by creator Mike Grell and drawn by Joe Prado and Walden Wong, debuted on Wednesday. I’m only familiar with the character in passing, but it’s not the hardest concept to grasp: Air Force pilot becomes power broker in barbarian-and-dinosaur-rich land. This time, a group of scientists from 2009 are the new-
reader-identification characters, so about half of issue #1 is devoted to introducing them. The other half recaps the Warlord’s origin, acquaints us with his supporting cast, and ends with a mysterious murder. The issue is paced nicely, with each part getting its own “cliffhanger.”

Grell’s script is just on the good side of being expository, but it is a first issue and there’s a lot of ground to cover. (However, one character is named “McBane,” apparently without irony.) The art is lively and crisp, with colorist David Curiel using a warmer palette for Skartaris than he does for the modern world. For a while now I’ve wanted DC to offer more variety in its main line of books, and this was a good start.

Otherwise, this week — probably after the taxes (grumble) — I’ll be diving into Showcase Presents Doom Patrol Vol. 1, and (thanks to a timely bargain) the first twelve issues of Marvel’s Micronauts.

The Moon in the Gutter

Dash Shaw: “Scott Pilgrim 5” by Bryan Lee O’Malley. I first read this a while ago. My initial read was disappointing probably because my expectations were really high. I LOVED volume 4. It had more of an older manga feel to it. It felt like he dove into those Tezuka reprints and came out the other end stronger. It’s cool to see him play around inside of his parameters and develop across a big project. Four’s a total fucking joyride. Smart too. O’Malley’s really tapped into the collective subconscious with this series. The melodrama’s very modern and real — like Guy Maddin says melodrama’s “life uninhibited” — more real than real life. I was pumped for 5 to be him blowing through the roof.

Anyway, I thought I’d re-read vol 5 this week with a calmer head. I still don’t like it as much as a single book but I have faith that this will be an important piece in the completed series. The other volumes felt more self-contained than this one; maybe 5 functions more as a connector between 4 and the upcoming conclusion. That accounts for its pace, which peaks somewhere in the middle and then putters around for a while and closes with a set-up for 6. 5’s more tonally complicated too. The tone bounces around a lot. Die-hard SP fans will think I’m nuts, but I think this series would benefit from being in color. O’Malley puts thought into the clothing of the characters, which is important for readability in manga where the character’s faces are so similar. It emphasizes their fashion as character design. But in SP the clothing becomes generalized with O’Malley’s thick brush lines and it loses some readability, especially when there are so many characters. If it was in color I think it’d make the characters and scenes more instantly recognizable and more specific. More emotional too. I dunno. Maybe I just like color comics now. I used to be pissed when people colored comics originally in B&W. I could blab more about this series and how awesome it is and nit-pick more things, but the point is that SP’s very exciting and I’m glad it’s as popular as it is.

Old auction catalogs from the Strand. 120 pages of prints for two dollars- cheaper than a comic book!

On Creativity by David Bohm. Short sorta motivational read.

Lots of blogs/webcomics/comic reprint blogs. Too many and too boring to list. I’ve plugged Forming before but I will do so again because it’s cool to watch the colors get more ambitious each week. I wonder what it’ll be like 6 months from now.

The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths by Rosalind Krauss. Writing originally published in Artforum and October. I like reading essay collections or short-story collections on the subway. I wish I read these when they came out because a lot of it is in response to criticism at the time that I haven’t read, but most of it is new too. Barnett Newman said “Most people think of subject-matter as what Meyer Shapiro has called ‘object-matter.’” People confuse the subject/meaning with the depicted objects.

I also read the April issue of Artforum and it’s got a great short interview with Artur Zmijewski. I read the article on Lawrence Jordan but I still think Jordan’s lame. The lameness is in context now. Kikuo got a shout-out for “Night Fisher” from director Michael Almereyda who apparently, when he was a kid, used to chill with Alex Toth in LA!

Moon in the Gutter by David Goodis. Jason T Miles recommended this author to me since I’m working on a murder-mystery comic. I started it this morning. No thoughts yet.

Crickets

Continuing our occasional series looking at how small press and indie comics publishers are weathering the downturn in the economy, not to mention Diamond’s recent policy changes, today we’re talking with Drawn and Quarterly’s Associate Publisher Peggy Burns.

D&Q rather unintentionally became regarded as one of the first martyrs of Diamond’s new cut-off policy when two of their serialized comics, Sammy Harkham’s Crickets and Kevin Huizenga’s Or Else, were cancelled. The fact that said cancellations were due to the separate decisions of the artists themselves and not the publisher or Diamond didn’t matter much at the time; its close proximity seemed to have a direct cause and effect.

I was curious as to what Burns had to say about that matter and the industry climate in general, since she’s one of the most intelligent and candid people working behind the scenes in comics today. She didn’t disappoint and I’d like to thank her for taking the time to respond to the plethora of questions I emailed her.

Can you give me any idea of how close Crickets and Or Else were to missing Diamond’s new cut-off before the respective creators pulled the plug on the series?

I don’t really want to get into a numbers game with our authors whose comics fell below or near the Diamond minimum. Obviously, the titles (Or Else, Lucky, Crickets) that have been announced as ending in their pamphlet form hovered around the minimum, though the conversation with Or Else happened before the minimum news. Ending a series is not something we want to do. The artist wanted to tell their story in this form, and we have the job of telling this form is no longer viable. It’s not an easy decision and wasn’t fun to do.

Right now, how many “pamphlets” or serialized comics or what have you does D&Q publish?

We publish Big Questions, Berlin and Optic Nerve.

Or Else

Are any of them in any danger of not making the new minimum cut-off?

No, the comics that have been coming out regularly for over a decade enjoy a certain awareness that places them well above the minimum, I think a wider number of stores recognize the title as it has been around for ten years and will automatically buy it. That said, even Palookaville, which wasn’t near the minimum, is becoming a book series. And Big Questions and Berlin are nearing the end and will be collected. I think any independent publisher would agree that you just can not achieve the same awareness and sales for comics by new authors. Big Questions has a high cover price, and the series is on its tenth issue, which helps it buck the trend for comics by new authors. If any author, new or not new, asked me whether they should continue to do a pamphlet or start a new one, I would in 98% of the cases say they should just do a book. I guess I should say that only in comics is an author who has publishing less than ten years considered new.

How important is the Direct Market (and Diamond) to the success of these comics and to the success of the company in general?

Diamond is critical to the health of pamphlets, as they make up 90% of the sales. And for our books, Diamond, and the direct market as a whole is critical as it is about 1/4-1/2 of sales depending on the title, Diamond and the Direct Market is critical to any company who publishes comics in book form.

Big Questions

What about the Petit Livres series? Many of the books in that series feature new or unknown artists and I would imagine be a hard sell to a lot of comics retailers. Are any of them in danger of not being carried by Diamond?

Our Petit Livre series is a good example of trying to come up with an alternative format to the pamphlet. There are so many new artists we adore and want to publish, and the pamphlet clearly was not working. The cover price itself makes each book viable for Diamond, but you would be surprised by the unit numbers and the very fact the Petits Livres are books (or perhaps booklets) makes them able to be sold in the book market.

Are there any other current or future projects that you fear might not make the new cut-off?

No.

Assuming a book does not make it into Previews, what other distribution options do you have to make sure retailers are able to get a copy?

I assume you mean a pamphlet? As if it is a book, it would go out through our book distributors, directly through us and various sub distributors. If it is a pamphlet, and it doesn’t go through Diamond, it would go out directly and through various comic distributors like Last Gasp and Haven.

Palookaville

How much of a hindrance are these new policies? How much of an impact do you think they’ll ultimately have on your bottom line?

It’s not a hindrance. It’s business; about ten times a day we face business decisions that make us reflect what we are doing. Choosing what kind of paper to print on, whether or not to overnight a press request, everything is a business decision that affects the bottom line. My whole day could be one big hindrance. Really, the minimums were more of a wake-up call that the medium has profoundly changed to not include the alt pamphlet.

Do you see this new policy as being the final nail in the coffin for the alt-comic or was it already dead and this is just the death certificate?

No, I definitely do not see it as the final nail in the alt-comic. The pamphlet, maybe. But people said that with vinyl, and look at vinyl making a comeback. Perhaps we’ll see floppies come back in a few years. Bottom-line is, with this thing called the Internet, people will find a way to get their comics known. For the author who needs to tell their story in 24-page serials, they can self publish, whether online or on paper. In fact there are probably more ways now to get your comic out there than ever before and that made the decision slightly easier for us. Matt Forsythe was nominated for an Eisner before his online comic became a book. Top Shelf stopped doing pamphlets of American Elf, which is now just online and then collected into a book. Kate Beaton has a huge internet following. And god bless John Porcellino! And this doesn’t even include all anthologies out today.

I don’t find Diamond initiating new minimums in this economic climate shocking; I find the opinion of everyone in comics reaction more shocking. Just the other day I heard that Gary Groth is planning an article on us canceling these titles. I knew comics was a nostalgic industry, I never knew it was so nostalgic that it ignored basic business trends. (Or wait, maybe I did know that.) And I love pamphlets, but it seems like most pundits are mad at the idea that pamphlets won’t be in stores anymore and are ignoring the fact that comics sales have been declining steadily for the past decade.

Berlin

I think Kevin Huizenga sums it up best when he was in the D+Q office for the Kramers tour and he said (before the news of the minimum) that if Love & Rockets is becoming a book, then it’s pretty clear that the pamphlet is over. I would venture to say that most people in comics do not buy pamphlets anymore. For the publisher who has fixed costs of overhead, actual salaried employees and pays fair royalties, publishing comics by new authors became a break-even situation about 5-8 years ago, which was the reason why the Diamond minimum was more of a wake up call and less of a blow. I don’t know what it costs for Diamond, but I would assume that they can not break even either.

Look, when our artists decide to create their work in the pamphlet format, they are making a decision that this will just be sold in comic stores. When the main distributor for comics stores decides to institute minimums that may affect their work in pamphlet form, we – as both their publisher and not just their biggest fan – have to have an honest conversation with the artist if this is the best way to publish their work and if we, as a company, can continue to publish it as a pamphlet to a declining audience that is beyond our control, no matter how good the comic. The alternative of publishing books to an increasing audience is a win-win situation for everyone involved-author, publisher, retailer, distributor. This may sound like a sacrilege – such an obvious mixing of art with business. I would imagine our artists and fans know that we place art before commerce about 99% of the time, more often than not, to our disadvantage.

Lucky

At the end of the day, though, we have a business arrangement with the author. The author has asked us to sell their art and to be in charge of the business aspects of publishing this art, and we have to have honest conversations. We can’t pay our bills if we are breaking even and we wouldn’t be a very good publisher to our authors if we ignored basic business trends in the industry, and didn’t have these conversations to try to steer the author to where the audience is. Our job is to get the largest paying audience for their book as possible.

I find it sadly ironic that the rest of the publishing industry around the world is seeking electronic rights to their backlists, and is facing a huge Google copyright settlement that barely makes a ripple in comics news, we are debating over the apparent “health” of the comic book. I understand why no one wants to have the conversation over what increasingly seems to be the inevitable digitization of books, but it seems like the pundits and journalists are misplacing the debate. It is like insisting your movie be on VHS, when everyone watches DVD, and eventually all will be a moot point when everyone downloads it from Netflix. Or, as one of authors said when discussing the Google news, “I just don’t want to end up like Burt Reynolds in Boogie Nights … refusing to jump on the newfangled video bandwagon and sticking with reel-to-reel film.”

Beyond Diamond, has the bad economy affected D&Q in any way? If so, how?

So far the economy has not had an adverse effect. Knock on wood, and thanks to all of the customers, distributors and retailers who support us.

There are shelves with comics-related books all over the house, but I didn’t want to confuse things with isolated photos. The Complete Peanuts collection is on more public display in the living room, along with Star Trek and Star Wars coffee-table books, the Harry Potter and James Bond series, and the Tolkien books. The Showcase Presents and Essential Marvel books are on a small shelf in the bedroom, for easy insomnia-curing access.

However, my “office,” where the real magic happens, is in our bonus room above the garage. It doubles as a den/guest room. Not pictured are a big comfy chair, a sofa/bed, another chair, my DVD shelves, a display case full of Star Trek model kits, and the TV and related equipment. Also not pictured are big piles of books and boxes. If this feature were called “Pile Porn” I’d be Larry Flynt.

Anyway, let’s start the tour. On the little blue shelves are a few of my Star Trek models, namely the early Federation vessels Horizon and Republic and the Constitution-class Lexington and Yorktown. Below them are a few Batmobiles, with a Schumacher Batboat almost out of view.

The first little shelf is dominated by Star Wars books, as well as my Black’s Law Dictionary and a few other law-related books. The comics-related books include two Chip Kidd-designed Batman books (Batman Collected and Batman Animated), Les Daniels’ Marvel history, Jules Feiffer’s Great Comic Book Heroes and Jones & Jacobs’ revised Comic Book Heroes, Alice In Sunderalnd, and Blake Bell’s Ditko biography. Below them are the Dark Horse reprints of Marvel’s Star Wars (of course), Understanding Comics, Reading Comics, and the Jeff Klaehn-edited book which contains my 5000-word dissertation on Silver St. Cloud. Also on this shelf are several Doonesbury, Bloom County, Life In Hell, Simpsons (TV show, not comics), and Calvin & Hobbes books; as well as an old Rocketeer hardcover, a couple of original American Flagg! collections and the two Time Squared graphic novels, and a collection of My New Filing Technique Is Unstoppable. Hanging below the Star Wars VHS case is my 2007 San Diego press badge.

The other little shelf is better organized. First are the Kirby books (and other FF books), including the original Hunger Dogs graphic novel.

Next is the Batman section.

After that is the Superman/Spider-Man section, which will eventually become the Supes/Wonder Woman section once I beef up my WW collection. (Spidey will move into the Star Wars space so it can join the Steve Ditko biography.) Yes, those copies of the two Elliott S! Maggin Superman paperbacks (Last Son Of Krypton and Miracle Monday) are very well-worn.

At the bottom of this shelf are the Flash and Green Lantern books, along with a hodgepodge of Marvel Visionaries, DC oddities, and things like the American Flagg! hardcover, Nextwave, and the Dr. 13 collection which I just like having close at hand.

The big shelf starts off with George Perez, Alan Moore, and Grant Morrison books. (The Superman figure is holding the Atom’s chair.)

After that is the Justice League section,

the Star Trek section, and a couple of non-comics sections (including my collection of Kentucky basketball media guides).

On my desk is a “life-size” Atom action figure. A super-poseable Spider-Man sits on one of my speakers. Behind the desk are more short boxes, a filing cabinet, and my all-in-one printer/fax/scanner (but only the scanner works).

Finally, there’s a skinny shelf for trade paperbacks and Prestige Format books. Many of the books on this shelf could fit into categories already mentioned (Batman, Superman, etc.), but they seem to fit better here. My original issues of The Dark Knight and The Killing Joke are on this shelf, for example — I wouldn’t feel good about putting them on a “reference” shelf where they could get knocked around by the bulkier hardcovers. Sometimes you organize a library with the shelves you have, not the shelves you wish you had.

The exception is for my two-dozen-plus long boxes, which are on heavy-duty wire shelves in one of the bonus room’s closets. I have had to install these shelves in every home I’ve lived in since marriage. For at least a week after installation I have dreaded the awful sound of their collapse, but so far so good. I am getting more short boxes these days and I will probably convert to them to save both my shelves and my aging back.

Remember, we here at Shelf Porn can’t do it alone. We need your help. If you love feasting your eyes on the bookshelves of others, then take the time to consider a donation of your own. Perhaps you’ve been thinking about donating your pictures to Shelf Porn, but have just been too busy. Or tired. Well, there’s never been a better time than today! Just email your photos to cmautnerATcomcastDOTnet and we’ll send you absolutely nothing except for our thanks. Oh, and we’ll post your pictures here for everyone to see.

Speaking of which, let’s take a look at Rickey’s collection. What have you got to say about this stuff sir?

The main bookshelf in the apartment stands behind staircase and holds the majority of our books both graphic and prose. We decorated the top with toys (that’s Domo with a Jason Voorhees mask!) and bookended the white shelves with brown ones holding comic book collected editions mostly from Image, DC, Marvel and Dark Horse ’cause they’re all one size.

Here’s the bottom left of the above photo. The only place I could find to safely store Kramers Ergot #7 from my cat’s predilection to cough up hair balls on the books I like most is right there between the shelves (to the right in this picture).

Here’s the bottom right of the first photo above. Here’s where I hide my DC Absolute editions and the Goon flask I got from Eric Powell for Christmas one year while I worked for Wizard Magazine.

A couple wall-mounted Ikea DVD holders (for our TV shows like Arrested Development and Freaks and Geeks) on each side of a Best Buy DVD holder (for our general movies like Monster Squad and Hot Rodand Dirty Dancing) make for great storage space in the living room. But add a painting of you playing Halo from your best friend? Priceless.

At the top of the stairs is our dining room and here’s one wall of it. We’re slowly replacing the years-old longboxes with Drawerboxes for uniformity and an attempt to make our collection look a bit more classy. My girlfriend makes wear-able fairy wings and to the left you can see a pair on a mannequin alongside a wall covered in art she picked out. To the right of the boxes is a bookshelf holding mostly indie titles. And my keys. And if you’re like me, you’ve got random stacks of single issues EVERYWHERE.

Up top are some oversized books I can’t fit on shelves. Below that are handmade minicomics in little boxes I transformed into minicomic short boxes.

Here’re more minicomics, my Acme Novelty Libraries, some Comics Journals, the beauty of a Mome collection and, to the bottom right, the random reference comics I have such as a full run of DC’s Who’s Who and a fat stack of DC Secret Files and Origins (I want to MARRY that series).

On the opposite wall I have two perpendicular shelves. That’s my Target reading chair.

Artist Scott Mills was open for commissioning tiny drawings a couple years back and I snagged these from him to hang in the small openings on the wall. Here we have Morpheus, Kamandi and Reverse Flash…

…and Kid Flash, Scarecrow and Darkseid!

Up top of the first perpendicular shelves are more over-sized books. The Smithsonian Collections are so fun to flip through! Meanwhile, Mr Miracle and Orion guard my Watchmen and ninja sketchbooks up on top.

My embarrassing “still need to read” shelf. Don’t judge me for not cracking Love and Rockets yet.

Some overflow mainstream books in alphabetical order from the main bookshelf. Superman’s my boy. Also seen is my disc-shooting gun (like Madman!), my Watchmen movie countdown clock (sent from the studio!) and a few Flash and Green Lantern rings my cat likes to chase.

The bottom shelf is a little taller, so it houses my Watchmen Absolute edition, some reference books and my Friday the 13th oral history book. Did you know Ron Moore of Battlestar Galactica did a draft of Freddy vs Jason? It’s true!

The other half of the perpendicular shelf holds my growing manga collection. Stuff like Dragonhead, Uzumaki, Drifting Classroom, the Tomine-edited Yoshihiro Tatsumi books and other stuff along with similarly sized English digests like the Scott Pilgrim library, King City and more. I’m especially pleased with this section having multiplied into the size it has.

And at the bottom is my Kirby/Kirkman/Vaughan hardcover collection.

Our staircase is lined with original art including this spasm-inducing homage piece by Jim Rugg. When I left Wizard, my friends got this for me featuring Kamandi and Impulse (my two favorite characters) saving me from a falling girder.

For my birthday, my buddy Kevin asked Shane Davis to knock out this Kirby OMAC (one of my OTHER favorite characters).

At MoCCA I snagged this Evan Dorkin art of Kamandi from the Bizarro World comics collection.

And this is one of two murals by Jim Mahfood hanging above my front door and given to me by the incredibly thoughtful and generous Kat Amano!

And lastly, here’s the first piece of original art I ever bought. It’s Dale Eaglesham’s disturbing splash page from HERO #16. HERO remains one of my favorite books of all time and this page scared the beans outta me when I first saw it, so I grabbed it for shockingly cheap at New York Comic Con.

Sam's Strip

Wow, has it been a week already? Welcome to another round of What Are You Reading. Our special guest this week is the mighty blogger, photographer and writer Kevin Church. To find out what he and the rest of the Robot 6 crew are currently reading, just click that little link below …

Anna Mercury Vol. 1

Michael May: I’m up to Akira Vol. 4 and the story just went from action-packed and kick-ass to dark and pretty damn disturbing. It’s like it suddenly switches genres mid-story. I’m wondering where it’s going next.

I’m almost done with Anna Mercury, Vol. 1. I expected a fast-paced adventure story and I got it, but I didn’t expect to like the main character this much or be this fascinated with the setting. I probably should’ve – Ellis is nothing if not imaginative – but I think I underestimated him in assuming that maybe he’d dumbed this one down.

I’m also reading Showcase Presents: Aquaman, Volume 1. I’ve been curious for a long time how a concept as cool as Aquaman can be so universally ridiculed. I blame Justice League of America and Super Friends (the old cartoon, not the current kids’ book), because these stories are pretty awesome. Silly and childish like the rest of the Silver Age, but awesome. As long as he’s on his own, Aquaman is a fine sea-adventure hero. It’s only when he gets stuck in land-based plots that he doesn’t have anything to do.

From "The Muppet Show" #1, by Roger Langridge

Tim O’Shea: Other reviewers have effectively described why the first issue of Roger Landridge’s Muppet Show is a must read (Don MacPherson I am looking at you sir) . I would break down the particulars of what I appreciated most about the issue, but my nine-year-old son has taken full possession of the comic and has already read it twice if not three times. Boom appears to be serious about reaching kids with these comics (Waid’s The Incredibles reminds me again why his FF run was so good, his grasp of family dynamics) particularly given the newsstand distribution deal that was announced this past week.

I’ve been hearing some complaints about the Old Friends and Enemies three-part arc that’s finishing up in Captain America #48. After the fast-paced action and intrigue of the prior arcs, this (in many ways a flashback) tale was a shift in gears that did not suit everyone’s taste. It clicked with me, however, allowing James to step away from his role as Cap to seemingly grow more comfortable with his role as Cap ultimately. But it’s not James’ character path that hooked me in this issue. Rather in four or five pages, Brubaker and Guice gave Marvel readers the most interesting approach on Namor that I’ve seen in years. Namor as a pulp noir character is something that Brubaker should write more often. And the fact that Dark Reign never appears in any way shape or form, as far as I can tell, is another plus for me.

James Robinson’s Superman #686 (the next installment in the larger World without Superman plotline) is the polar opposite to the Rucka/Action Comics issue that I mocked a few weeks back. If Mon-El and the supporting cast stay as interesting as they came across in this issue, I’m not going to miss Superman very much.

True Tales of the Roller Derby

John Parkin: Like Tim, I bought, read and enjoyed The Muppet Show comic this week. I could probably wax on about the nostalgia I felt while reading it, but instead I wanted to point out the beauty of the main plot of this issue, which is about Kermit getting nostalgic over the old swamp. It’s hard not to start reminiscing about the old days while reading this book, and the fact that Landridge chose this particular story for the first issue seems very fitting.

I also picked up True Tales of Roller Derby: Doppleganger at the Hangar, by Lisa Titan, Nader Absood and Dennis Culver. Last year the Rose City Rollers, Portland, Ore.’s roller derby league, self-published a series of comics about the women of roller derby. And now Portland-based Oni Press has published a one-shot about the league, or least its fictional equivalent — I doubt the real league has to worry about mad scientists trying to replace its skaters with dopplegangers, who look both creepy and sexy thanks to Culver’s art. Featuring characters with fun names like Hurricane Skatrina and the Vominatrix, the story is straight out of a B-grade movie. The writers have a lot of fun with it, and you can tell they have a lot of love for the sport (Titan is a skater herself) … almost to a fault, as sometimes the roller derby lingo in the dialogue can become a little overwhelming. Despite that one minor nit, though, I really enjoyed the book; it’s a fun romp.

Chris Mautner: I just finished the lastest entry in Lewis Trondheim and Joann Sfar’s (and, in this case, Boulet) fantasy parody series Dungeon, Zenith Vol. 3: Back in Style. The Zenith arc takes place during the “golden age” of the world of Terra Amata, and focuses mainly on the adventures of the smartaleck Herbert the Duck and his friend, Marvin the Dragon.

This latest volume is lacking some of the farcical humor that really made the previous books sing for me, and I was a bit sorry for that. On the other hand, it provides us with a good deal of background into Herbert’s history, deepening his character a good deal and allowing us to see the beginnings of the dark wizard he will one day become.

If all this sounds a bit too self-important and ornate, trust me, it isn’t. Well, it isn’t self-important at any rate. Newcomers won’t get a lot of the references to past stories, but those who have been following the series so far will find a lot to chew on.

Irredeemable #1

Kevin Church: Irredeemable #1 – The opening salvo from Mark Waid’s “And Then One Day, Superman Had Enough” series for BOOM! is all mood and ominous rumbling with some distinctly traditional art by Peter Krause that sells the whole thing better than I would have thought possible in the current post-postmodern superhero landscape. It should be out this Wednesday, I think.

Oishinbo: Sake – It’s a 250+ page manga about restaurateurs learning about sake in order to pick the perfect one for their new establishment. The only way it could be improved is if were a 250+ page yaoi about restaurateurs learning about sake in order to pick the perfect one for their new establishment..

Tom Strong – I started re-reading these on a whim and wow, that Alan Moore, he sure is something, isn’t he? Somebody should get him a job doing something. I know that Top Ten and Promethea are both better-constructed, more ambitious series with loftier goals, but Tom Strong will always have my heart because it’s pitch-perfect 21st-century pulp.

Sam’s Strip - So, in 1961, Mort Walker and Jerry Dumas convinced King Features to let them do a comic strip about comic strips. Sam met everyone from Krazy Kat to Charlie Brown, and managed to work in no small amount of metafictional humor. It was either going to be the biggest success in the world or end within two years. Since it’s all collected in one volume now, you can likely work out how it went down.

Jack Kirby’s The Losers – Yeah, that’s the stuff. Nazi-shooting and crazy Pacific theater hijinks from the King. I’m so glad DC has worked to make sure Kirby’s legacy with the company is preserved. Now where’s my Absolute Super-Powers, dammit?

Illustration from Mahler's 'Spam'

Cartoonist Nicolas Mahler (Lone Racer) has a new book out entitled Spam, where in he illustrated … well, I’ll let him explain it:

hello. i collected 15.000 spam-mails. i illustrated some of them. you may buy the collection in book form. or just follow this blog. if you`ve got a small dic`k, don`t blame your parents.

Crumb Genesis Sketches

The official Robert Crumb “newsletter” is reporting that the famed cartoonist has finally finished his adaptation of the Book of Genesis that he’s been working on for the past several years:

Robert has finished the Genesis project. It’s 201 pages. He has also finished the Cover, the Introduction, the commentary (for the back sleeve) and also the Map, which will be in the beginning of the book. The book is soon going to production and it’s planned to be released this fall.

And what are his plans now that this huge project is complete? He has to catch up on his correspondence which has been building up some time now. And then a little break—a journey to the States. He and Aline are talking about collaborating on a book upon his return, but that’s later this summer.

I think it’s pretty safe to say this is one of the most hotly anticipated books of the year, so the news that it’s completed and off to the publisher is good news indeed.

Remember: we are always looking for new contributions, so if you think your shelves are special enough, send photos to cmautnerATcomcastDOTnet and we’ll post them here. Heck, send them even if you don’t think they’re special. We’re not picky.

Our guest this week is Fantagraphics promotions director, Mome editor and cartoonist (no, really, he’s quite good) Eric Reynolds. Mssr. Reynolds has quite the collection to share, but let’s let him talk about it, shall we?

The good shit: Top left shelf is all Crumb, all the time. Top right is basically some of my favorite comics collections of all-time (non-Crumb/non-classic strips divison): Clowes, Woodring, Ware, Hernandez Bros., Burns, Bagge, etc. The two shelves below are older, vintage cartoon-related books (Abner Dean, Artzybasheff, Frank King, Krigstein, Addams, etc.). Next to the LPs are Mauldin and Sacco and Seth, with the bottom two shelves collecting my favorite comics by my favorite cartoonists ( Clowes, Crumb, Deitch, Bagge, Chester Brown, Burns, Woodring, Hernandez, etc.). Above the shelf is a Rusty Brown original by Chris Ware, and a portrait of myself and my wife by my pal Jim Blanchard. You can see an Al Columbia original cropped at the upper-right and a Woodring Frank page at the upper-left on the wall.

This wall of books is roughly divided between art books on the left bookcase, and strip collections on the bigger bookcase. Plus oversized things like Kramers 7 that won’t fit anywhere else in my house. The painting in the upper left is by the great Dennis Worden. I need to water my plants.

The uber-nerd shelf porn shot: the ‘trophy’ case. Mostly vintage comic strip “merch” and contemporary, alternative comics-related vinyl figures from Presspop and its ilk. And my autographed Stan Musial baseball.

The stairwell of comics: Far left, on the white shelves, are my “mainstream” collections. Mostly Kirby, Ditko, Eisner, Toth, Kurtzman, Wood, Elder, Stanley, etc. The black bookshelf is a fairly random collection of contemporary GNs, and also some Manga, some old pocket books, etc. The two originals at upper-left are a one-pager by Jeremy Eaton and an EC page by Johnny Craig. The dolls cropped at top are old Johnny West figures from my youth. Greatest action figures ever! Below it all you can almost make out the Shamrock Squid page by Peter Bagge and Adrian Tomine, and a painting by Jason T. Miles. And two portraits of Robert Mitchum. Why not?

The basement runoff shelves: minicomics on the left. On the right: foreign editions, my collection of duplicate Daniel Clowes books (the only artist I tend to every edition of every book of), copies of TCJ, the Believer, Duplex Planet, and various mags/zines.

I have other bookshelves with prose books, too. No, really!

Reich #5

Besides being a cartoonist in his own right, Dylan Williams is also the brains behind Sparkplug Comic Books, which has published such noteworthy titles as Bookhunter by Jason Shiga, Reich by Elijah Brubaker and Asthma by John Hanckiewicz.

Wondering how a small press operation like Sparkplug would be affected by the turn in the economy, not to mention Diamond’s new policy changes, I sent a list of questions to Williams over email and he was kind enough to offer some thoughtful replies. Here’s what he had to say:

In general terms, how has Sparkplug Books been doing financially over the past year?

In general terms, Sparkplug keeps on growing. Last year was best one yet. It used to be that we’d get one order a week and now I can basically spend most of my time filling orders. It is kind of great and I keep on crossing my fingers. Money-wise, it is still a break-even affair but it is nice to not having to be “on the grind” as much as I was four or seven years ago.

Jin & Jan

How important is the direct market and Diamond to the success of the company?

The direct market is extremely important to us. I feel like comic shops are a sort of evolving thing, and they aren’t going to be what they once were. But I love what some of them are turning into. I really love small business people and the idea of individuals running stores selling stuff that they care about. We are always trying to expand our audience, but I feel like it is really important to work with small and like-minded business.

As for Diamond, they did Sparkplug a lot of good and they’ve been really supportive, but I figure that if they are going to cut off low-selling books, we aren’t going to depend on them to get into stores. We’ve had a great relationship with Tony Shenton, Last Gasp and the smaller distributors. It also really nice to have a relationship with stores through these smaller “distros.” I prefer to be on a first-name basis with as many people selling Sparkplug books as I can. For some of the smaller distributors it is about the same profit margin as Diamond but encouraging smaller business is what Sparkplug aspires towards.

How does Diamond’s new policies affect your bottom line? Are there any past, present or future projects that you feel will not make the cut-off?

Good question. In a weird way it won’t because their discount and cost of shipping was basically eating into any profit but there was an increase in interest with all the books that went through Diamond. By their new numbers, even Sparkplug’s most successful books wouldn’t make their cut. Of course, they turned down some of those books five years ago, so I have faith that things will change. I’m hoping that their change in interest will encourage small stores to go to other sources as well. We’ve been distributing other people’s books for about three years and that side of the business is just growing and growing, which is a sign that people are looking for independent and art comics and don’t know where to find them.

Do you feel as though you will have to keep a better eye on a project’s potential financial success in order to ensure it ends up in Previews in the future?

I’m of the mind that I should always be trying to keep a better eye on the financial potentials of the Spakplug books. I don’t base the potential success of book on Previews orders though. It gives me a good idea of what the people at Diamond and some comic shops think of the books but besides that, it isn’t good business to base art on commerce. Some of our biggest successes haven’t done well through them and the other way around too. Our job is to publish, distribute and promote the best comics we can to the best of our ability.

That said, we’re always looking at ways that we could do better. Shannon O’Leary joined the company last year as a promotions and public relations person and she has helped so much. If Diamond turns down some books now, then it is our job to go out and find new markets and work with the alternatives. We try not to look at the market as a static thing.

Are you worried that you’ll have to forgo pamphlets entirely to focus more on book-length works?

Here is one of the strangest things to me, I’ve heard about a few publishers ditching comic books (pamphlets) as a way of publishing comics. It is so weird to me for a number of reasons. First, the idea of selling luxury paperbacks is not what I started the company to do. “Comic Books” is in the name of our company so we’re stuck. And we like them. I mean, we’re not really tied to just pamphlet style books, but I’ve always been offended by the way “Graphic Novels” replaced comic books in the nomenclature. Ultimately it is all just a name, but it makes me sad to hear that pamphlets are being dumped because a distributor won’t be able to carry them. It is that kind of logic that leads to lower and lower levels of exploitation entertainment.

It is also strange to me because pamphlet style comic books are the most affordable and accessible form of comic books. And at this point in the post-George Bush economy, people don’t have a lot of money, so investing in more expensive books seems to be a big, dangerous mistake. People at shows and stores are still buying traditional comic books, maybe not as many for Marvel or DC or something but for a small concern, they are. I’ve had really good luck with them, we enjoy them artistically, and they are much more in line with our politics or approach to business, so we are continuing on with traditional comic books for the time being. Ultimately it is the artist’s choice.

Sparkplug has several new “comic books” out now — Jin and Jam, Reich and Danny Dutch. How has the public reception to these comics been? Do you feel confident that you can continue to publish future issues of at least the first two series?

We’re pretty excited to do more Jin and Jams. Danny Dutch is a sort of one off project that may transform into more. We also just published an art book/luxury paperback called the Airy Tales too. I feel the same way about all the books, the work and skill that went into them makes me confident more than anything else.

Do you feel you have a strong enough relationship with Diamond that if a project were on the borderline so to speak you could convince them to get it in the catalog?

Our Diamond sales rep is really cool but I wouldn’t want to put him or them in that place. I’ll continue to send things in but if they aren’t interested then that is the way things go. I hope that they’ll see the value of giving smaller publishers a chance but I don’t want to expect them to be more than focused on their financial realities as they see them. I don’t think of them as a monolithic entity, more like a collection of people all different and having their own approach to their business.

Do you have any other distributing options beyond Diamond to ensure getting your pamphlets into comic stores and beyond?

Oh yeah, Tony Shenton has been doing an amazing job. All the other small distros add up to about what Diamond was doing, if not more, actually. We’ve been having great interest through the website and at shows. And right now Portland is the most hoppin’ comic book town in the country. Maybe NYC is better … maybe. Anyway, I don’t want to start a coastal feud cause Bodega Distribution might bump me off or something.

Beyond Diamond’s new policies, has the bad economy affected Sparkplug in any way?

Well, it hasn’t really. It is kind of amazing. I mean, I expect the worst but I’m really happy to see that people are looking for good affordable independent comic books. I feel like if you publish good things and stand behind them, then people figure out that they can come back to you for more good stuff. It is a slow process and we’re not going to be able to publish a lot of things I’d like to, but the goal of Sparkplug is to make interesting and less known work more available to as many people as we can.

The Color of Earth

Welcome to another edition of What Are You Reading? Our special guest this week is Brigid Alverson, whom dedicated manga fans will know as the force behind the excellent Mangablog. If that’s not enough, she’s also a contributor to the Digital Strips podcast, and oversees the School Library Journal’s Good Comics for Kids blog, which is about … well, you figure it out.

Anyway, click on the link below to find out what Ms. Alverson and the rest of the Robot 6 gang is reading this week.

Mouse Guard #1

Tom Bondurant: This week I finished Mouse Guard: Fall 1152, by David Petersen. On the whole I liked it. Petersen’s an excellent artist, and I thought his designs and his use of color really conveyed a fantasy-adventure feel. At times I thought his storytelling was a little confusing, particularly when he switched from a mouse’s perspective to a more normal one and I had to hunt for the mice in the corner of the page. I also had some problems distinguishing among the three lead mice, both in terms of costume and personality.

However, I thought Petersen did a good job keeping the plot moving and the reader focused, without making me feel like I was being led along. It was a straightforward story, but I have to admit I thought the exposition towards the end made it sound a bit more nuanced than the rest of the book portrayed it.

Clearly Petersen put a lot of thought into world-building. I appreciated his work, but I almost wish it had been more integral to the story instead of tacked on at the end. Still, I thought it was good, and I’m looking forward to Winter 1152.

I’m just about done with Essential Avengers Vol. 2, but the book’s been worth it already. Finally I know how that Ultroids story from issue #36 ends! I read #36′s story as a reprint thirty-odd years ago and always wondered how the team got free of their alien captors. (Issue #36 also featured one of Don Heck’s creepiest alien females ever.) However, I did have some problems with the book’s printing. Some pages were too light, like the inked art had been bleached away along with the color; and some pages (and covers) hadn’t been bleached sufficiently. I wonder if Marvel hadn’t perfected the process when this book was printed, or if the state of the original comics had something to do with it.

I’ve also started re-reading Geoff Johns’ Green Lantern, and got from the Rebirth miniseries to the ongoing series’ early teens. By and large these stories hold up pretty well. Rebirth works too hard to convince the reader that Hal is Teh Awwsum, but Johns does a good job putting all the pieces of the Silver Age GL status quo back together. I’m not a huge Ethan Van Sciver fan — more often than not, his work can be rather stiff — so that also cut against my enjoyment of Rebirth. I thought the regular series looked better under its original art team of Carlos Pacheco and Jesus Merino, and then under the current team of Ivan Reis and Oclair Albert. I’m finishing up “Revenge of the Green Lanterns,” the big adventure story featuring the Cyborg Superman’s new-model Manhunters, and I’m enjoying Johns’ foreshadowing “Sinestro Corps” and its aftermath.

Strongman

John Parkin: While on vacation I had time to read several books, including:

Strongman by SLG: If you’re going to read one book about a former Luche Libre star fighting against an organ smuggling ring, this is the book. It has a lot of heart, and I mean that figuratively … it also literally has a lot of livers and kidneys and other organs that you’d expect from a book about an organ smuggling ring.

Hercules: Love and War: I’ve been reading Hercules in collected format since he took over the Hulk’s book. The last collection before this one featured the Secret Invasion crossover issues, which I found a little lacking compared to the stories that came before. So I was happy to see the book return to its usual level of charm with this collection. In it, Hercules and his sidekick Amadeus Cho both learn a little bit about love and heartbreak, as the pair runs afoul of a group of grouchy Amazons. And they fight Wonder Woman, kind of.

Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman: I’m not quite done with it yet, but I can echo Chris Mautner’s recommendation from a few weeks ago. Particularly the parts told from the viewpoint of Doctor Impossible.

A Drifting Life

Chris Mautner: Right now I’m about 200 pages into A Drifting Life, Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s massive, 800-page memoir of his life in manga from Drawn and Quarterly. It’s quite different than the grim material that Tatsumi’s known for and that has graced the three volumes of his work that D&Q has released previously. It’s much more of a straightforward “and then this happened” approach, with Tatsumi moving from event to event with freight train like speed, with lots of reference to artists and works that have never been released in the U.S. and quite possibly never will.

Still, it’s a fascinating book, a great account of a young man’s attempt to make the hobby he loves so desperately his occupation. And it’s a fascinating trip through the early years of manga, an era very few Westerners know anything about. Despite some cluelessness, I’m really digging it.

Preacher Vol. 1

Matthew Maxwell: PREACHER v. 1
No, I haven’t read it before this. Yes, this is my first time through. No, I didn’t like his run on HELLBLAZER. Yes, I like this a lot more. No, I can’t see this having been written by anyone else. Yes, I like it quite a bit. Gonna take me some time to get through the whole thing I imagine.

MUSEUM OF TERROR v. 2
More Tomie. I found this to be very hit and miss. Either Tomie is an all-powerful indestructible woman-girl of darkness who destroys for the fun of it, or she’s a walking plot device. It’s hard for me to like a lot of this because it’s very much “Tomie just wrecks things and you watch.” There’s some really messed-up horror elements, but none of it’s scary in the slightest. My interest picked up towards the end of the volume, when they actually decided to weave some character-driven plots and not just show off twisted imagination.

LONE WOLF AND CUB v. 8
Slowly working my way through this. Unlike MUSEUM OF TERROR, it’s all very good, meaty character/history stuff with gorgeous art (not that Ito is chopped liver in this regard). But getting the whole series is going to end up bankrupting me.

WORLD’S FUNNEST SPECIAL
Evan Dorkin and friends destroy the DC Universe(s) with the help of Bat-Mite and Myxlptzyk. I bet I only spelled one of those right. Fun, but not the sort of thing you need to read a second time (though seeing Frank Miller take the piss out of himself was kinda neat.)

She-Hulk #38

Michael May: Still catching up, this week I read a couple of final issues: She-Hulk #38 and Simon Dark #18. Both were bittersweet experiences.

Simon #18 was a peaceful issue. At first it feels like Steve Niles is kind of coasting through it. And you couldn’t really blame him if he had. He and Scott Hampton had just finished a big story arc and of course you don’t expect them to begin another epic in the final issue. Nor would a quick, snap-bang done-in-one story have been an appropriate wrap-up to the moody, elegant pacing of the rest of the series. But as Niles and Hampton show their cast winding down and going back to regular life for most of the issue, it’s only to lower our guards and punch us in the gut at the very end with a perfect, emotional good-bye. And while you’re still reeling from that, you realize that it’s also a hopeful end. As in: I really hope this series finds another home soon.

She-Hulk #38 was also perfect. I generally enjoyed Peter David’s run, but boy how I wish that every issue had been more like this one. Not that I blame him for wanting to address the aftermath of Civil War and World War Hulk and how it affected his main character. I don’t blame David as much as I do the rest of the Marvel U for putting She-Hulk in the position where those were the kinds of stories David felt obligated to tell. From reading this last issue, it seems obvious to me that this is the fun, clever kind of story he wanted to have been telling all along.

Marvel Boy

Lisa Fortuner: How far behind am I over here? I’ve only found the last issue of Final Crisis this month, thanks to AAFES superslow comic shipments (though I should be grateful to have the paltry selection I do), and finally have a chance to sit down and read them this weekend. Sadly I’ve missed the community gripefest over this one, but I think I’ll recover.

I also got my Marvel Boy trade in the mail Friday morning, so I guess that makes for a Grant Morrison weekend.

Tim O’Shea: This afternoon I was enjoying a nice early spring afternoon, clearing some overgrown bushes and vines in my front yard, listening to Peter Gabriel on the iPod. And out of nowhere I flashed on a summer afternoon from my childhood, when I came back from a family vacation, only to find my brother had dropped off Avengers 200 for me to read. But first I had to clean my room, before I could read the comic book.

Avengers #200

I was so excited to read the 200th issue (in retrospect the plot’s pretty forgettable), but as kid, this was one of my first milestone issues. So excited I was, that when I was done cleaning my room, I laid the book down at the center of my made bed and took a picture of the issue. I kid you not. That photo is lost in one of my boxes of stuff somewhere, but I remember that moment clearly — after years of reading many other comics. And this afternoon as I looked at the blue Southern clear sky, I caught that sensation I always feel when I discover a new book, song or work of art that affects me. I love spring.

Most graphic novels I grasp and enjoy on the first read. When I was doing my Anders Nilsen interview this week, this response — “I suppose I would hope with most of my work that people are compelled, because they are interested enough, to reread it, and that they find something they didn’t see before that makes it worth the effort.” — really hit home with me. I enjoyed my first read of Nate Powell’s Swallow Me Whole — the art, the lettering, the whole damn thing is both lyrical and maddening. But I know I need to read it many more times to fully grasp it.

Also, this week, I really enjoyed the latest installment of Mark Waid’s Potter’s Field. I’ve not read the previous installments, but now I want to go track them down.

Nightschool

Brigid Alverson: At NYCC I got an advance copy of The Color of Earth, a Korean graphic novel from First Second about a girl in a rural Korean village learning about love and sexuality. It’s set in the past and relies heavily on nature imagery, so it feels very poetic, yet at the same time the conversations are quite frank. I’m not sure that teens, who are the intended audience, will be comfortable with the subject matter and the way it is presented, but it offers a lot of food for thought for older readers and the art is lovely.

I’m also reading the collected edition of Svetlana Chmakova’s Nightschool, which has been running in Yen Plus magazine. The great thing about this book is that it’s about supernatural doings but at the same time it’s very down-to-earth, so the characters act in very believable ways. Svet’s style has matured a bit since Dramacon, but she has kept her very expressive character designs, and Yen is doing the book up with a bigger trim size and nice white paper that really shows it off well.

The first two volumes of Crown literally made me laugh out loud because the story is so over the top. The writer, Shinji Wada, is a big shoujo manga writer in Japan and the artist, You Higuri, is known for manga that blend beautiful men with romantic settings. Crown is the story of two deadly mercenaries who quit their jobs to protect the sister of one of them, a princess whose life is in danger. Higuri and Wada have a great time parodying all the clichés of shoujo and boys-love manga: The guys are constantly striking poses with their guns and winding up in compromising situations together, and the girl is so adorable and puppylike that by volume 2 Higuri has started drawing her with ears and a tail.

At Good Comics for Kids, we are celebrating Women’s History Month by focusing on comics with strong women characters, so Female Force: Hillary Clinton was a natural choice. Hillary is such a strong figure that it’s impossible to be neutral about her, so I liked the fact that the writer made himself a character and talked about his reactions to things and how her work had affected his life. I’m also reading Sabrina Jones’ bio of Isadora Duncan, which is entertaining but a bit choppy.

And here’s an unexpected treat: I ordered a graphic novel through Paperback Swap recently, and the person who sent it to me put one of his mini-comics in the package. Laterborn, by Jason Martin, is a small comic with a series of rather poignant vignettes of young love and longing. It was a refreshing change of pace, and I’m hoping to see more of his work in the future.

Bagge's Discover comic

Peter Bagge is apparently doing monthly strips for Discover Magazine about He’s posted a sample strip over at his MySpace page. (Which also, by the way features a page from his aborted Hulk project. Man, when will Marvel get hip and finally put that thing out?)

Bagge also designed some new T-shirts for Stussy, and in return they put together a great video interview with him. (all found via Flog)

Remember, we want to post your shelf porn photos here. Send any and all pictures to cmautnerATcomcastDOTnet and we’ll have them up and about in a few weeks time.

But enough of that. Let’s let George talk for a bit …

“I’m the managing editor of T: The New York Times Style Magazine and I write about comic books for the newspaper. My bylines can be found here. But let’s talk shelving. Last year, my partner and I did some apartment renovating. The trade-off to having more adult living quarters (meaning no comics stuff stored/displayed in our bedroom) was that I got a lot of room in our den.”

“Combined, the shelves are about 9′W x 4′H x 16″D. It seemed liked infinite storage space, but I’m already taking advantage of the bottom level’s depth. The organization of the books drives me vaguely crazy. I’d prefer a strictly alphabetical approach, but I know I’ll run out of space, so I grouped the “completed runs” together in order to double them up. So behind series like Bone, 52, Lucifer, Pulse/Alias, Sentinels and StormWatch are various DC Archive and Showcase collections and a set of Marvel’s Essential X-Men. Aside from titles that are really over — like Preacher and Sandman — the logic of what to group there is sometimes strained. For example, “Batman: No Man’s Land” is at the bottom, but the current Grant Morrison stuff is at the top.”

“(Random thoughts: Does anyone group all the hardcovers and softcovers? I’m not sure it would gain me anything, but the notion continues to entice me. Also: In order to try to keep my collection manageable, I do a periodic purge. If I’m never going to reread the book, it has to go… eventually.)”

“The top shelf is devoted to my sweet, sweet toys (I started to say “action figure collection,” but c’mon, let’s be real). The pic below gives you a good example of how far I’ve taken it — I almost wish I had never discovered custom figures on Ebay. I grew up on the various SuperFriends cartoons, so I had a natural affinity for the Justice League when my sister bought me a copy of JLA 200. Needless to say, I got hooked, and I eventually discovered The New Teen Titans. Because of my obsessive-compulsive tendencies (in a comic fan? Say it ain’t so!) I limited myself to buying the satellite-era JLA and any and all Titans (including lots of customs like Phantasm and Pantha, which I bought, and Wildebeest which was a birthday gift).”

“The full view pic at the top shows a couple of cheats — Power Girl? Booster Gold? — but those were either gifts from friends, bundled with other Ebay purchases or figures I just couldn’t resist (Earth-Two Huntress and Robin). I suddenly feel I’m at confession. My partner isn’t going to read this, is he?”

Injury #3

I’m not sure when I first came across Ted May‘s work — it was probably with It Lives — but I remember being delighted with his sly blend of rock and roll, monster mania, superheroics, and adolescent smartassery, all delivered with a wink and a nod. I was excited, then, when May recently began a new comic book series, Injury, published by Buenaventura Press. What other alt-cartoonist would dare to imagine a Slade pinball machine or unabashedly quote Nazareth lyrics?

Alas, it seems Injury and May have fallen victim to Diamond’s recent policy changes, as the third issue apparently won’t make the cut-0ff criteria, making distribution of the pamphlet a tricky issue at best.

I spoke with May over email last week about these issues and the future of the series. I’d like to take this moment to thank him profusely for taking the time to answer the list of poorly worded questions I threw at him.

How well or poorly did the first two issues of Injury sell?

They sold pretty well as far as I know. The first issue did a bit better – probably since it had that first issue cachet. We figured the book would start catching on a little better as it progressed.

Given the problems indie pamphlets (for want of a better word) face currently, what made you decide to go with a serial comic book series rather than say a graphic novel or Webcomic or other publishing option?

I think the pamphlet is the best way to put out comics. Books like Eightball and Dirty Plotte were very inspiring to me early on. I’ve always wanted to do a regulation comic book. Even when I was doing minis, it didn’t feel quite like the real thing. I guess Alvin [Buenaventura] and I were aware that a book like Injury was sort of a dicey proposition, but we both believe in the format. I’ve been hoping that more people would do ‘em actually. Get a critical mass going. I never entirely understood why the format should have to fail. I guess it’s because the whole system of distribution and sales is built on the back of the established superhero market and … most of that crowd just absolutely will not tolerate a book that isn’t in color. I’m not saying that’s the ONLY thing Injury lacks, mind you.

I do stuff online but it’s just not as rewarding as Injury. Same with anthology stuff. I don’t mind doing it, but to me, doing a published comic book is the best way to go.

Are you definitely still planning on releasing the third issue of Injury at some future date or is that simply not feasible now?

Yeah, it’ll get put out. It’s just a matter of getting it printed and all. This is really more of Alvin’s concern at the moment. [Note: I did contact Alvin Buenaventura but as of this moment he has not yet responded to my email salvo.]

Should someone manage to get their hands on that third issue, what wonders would they find inside?

Well, there’s another chapter in the ongoing semi-autobiographical tales of Jeff Wilson. I really like the story – I think it turned out very nice. Jeff gave me all kinds of red meat to work with: high school bullying, detention, heavy metal and a healthy dose of Carl Sagan. The other story is a collaboration I did with a cartoonist I’ve long admired called Mike Reddy. It’s about a skywriting werewolf adventurer called Beast Biplane. He runs afoul of an aggressive gang of cross dressers and – as one would imagine – mayhem ensues. Beyond that, Jason Robards and I did a two-page infographic detailing Manleau’s cyborg arm. This book is SICK from stem to stern.

What’s your perspective on Diamond’s new policies? Do you view them as overly harsh? A necessary step that unfortunately cuts you out of the picture?

It seems like they have decided to strictly adhere to their core competency which is selling superhero books to fans of that genre. I mean, selling a book like Injury is very different from selling a book like Ultimate X-Men. They have very different audiences with very different shopping habits. Your Ultimate X-Men fan will likely be showing up every Wednesday for new comics day and buying his regular stack of books. A fan of any of the indie pamphlets is more likely to shop sporadically and follow specific artists. So to expect an indie book to sell X amount of books within the first 60 days or whatever is to essentially say that you don’t want to sell that sort of stuff. And that’s totally valid. It doesn’t really make sense to me but I haven’t spent a lot of time worrying about it either.

What do you think this will mean for other indie comics artists like yourself? Do you expect to see others fall by the wayside as well?

Well – I don’t think you’ll be seeing publishers putting out any new indie pamphlets, which is a shame. But we’ll all keep doing comics. Anybody who’s able to clock in the amount of blood, sweat and tears it takes to crank out multiple issues of a series isn’t going to let something like this slow them down. It’s weird – on one hand I keep thinking that nothing’s really changed. Artists will just resort to self publishing (print or web) and working toward eventual collected volumes or graphic novels. But then – I dunno – I think it really sucks to be losing that published pamphlet format. Oh well. It’s a shame, but it’s also a really fun time to be reading and making comics, so unfortunately I’m not able to feel a lot of righteous indignation.

"The New Godfather" by Drew Friedman

Sharing Is Caring is where we take all the interesting art and Webcomics links we’ve accumulated in our inbox and unleash them in one messy pile. Watch where you step!

* Drew Friedman riffs on Janis Joplin and The Godfather.

* Any excuse I can have to link to a Kate Beaton comic is a good one.

* D&Q posts a massive one-page strip by John Stanley that could have easily fit within the pages of KE7.

* Monsters, ape-men, kung-fu and alligators. That’s what you’ll find at Johnny Sampson’s blog. (via)

* Your totally awesome news of the month: Animator  Hayao Miyazaki is apparently making manga again. In watercolor no less.

From Hiti's Coke Zero ad

* Cartoonist Sam Hiti did a six page comic for a Coke Zero ad campaign in Hong Kong and is kind enough to share the final results.

* Star Wars fans take note: If you haven’t seen it already yet, BioWare and Dark Horse have teamed up to produce Star Wars: The Old Republic: The Threat of Peace, as a way to hype the upcoming video game. Words are by Rob Chestney. Art is by Alex Sanchez.  (via)

* Dash Shaw mashes up his own work with that of Frank Cho, with considerably odd results.

* Here’s something I was heretofore unaware of: James Kochalka is doing a series of comics based off of the odd Mii avatars he creates with his Nintendo Wii. It’s called Monster Mii.