Artwork by James Sturm

Creators | Market Day creator James Sturm explains he’ll be boycotting The Avengers movie because he believes Jack Kirby, co-creator of many of Marvel’s longest-lasting characters,  “got a raw deal”: “What makes this situation especially hard to stomach is that Marvel’s media empire was built on the backs of characters whose defining trait as superheroes is the willingness to fight for what is right. It takes a lot of corporate moxie to put Thor and Captain America on the big screen and have them battle for honor and justice when behind the scenes the parent company acts like a cold-blooded supervillain. As Stan Lee famously wrote, ‘With great power comes great responsibility.’” Tom Spurgeon notes the position seems to mark a shift for Sturm, who wrote the Eisner-winning 2003 miniseries Fantastic Four: Unstable Molecules for Marvel. [Slate, The Comics Reporter]

Michael Chabon

Creators | The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay author Michael Chabon discusses a recent short story he wrote for The New Yorker about a comic book writer and artist who had a falling out, noting who they may or may not be based on: “Well, the obvious answer is Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. Stan and Jack met in the forties, began collaborating during lean times in the fifties, jointly revived the fortunes of Marvel Comics in the sixties, and then underwent a creative divorce that seems to have resulted in a certain amount of acrimony on Kirby’s side. So the outlines of the story are similar. But Feather and Conn are not Stan and Jack; their fates, their experiences, their biographies, and their personalities are quite different. Jack Kirby died in 1994, still idolized by fans, surrounded by his loving family, as far from the embittered loneliness of Mort Feather as you can be. And Stan Lee is still going strong, a potent creative force who seems to bear up under the tribulations and triumphs of a long and interesting life with the élan for which he has always been famous.” [The New Yorker]

Comic strips | The Chicago Tribune has spoken: Editors pulled last Friday’s Doonesbury strip because it “broke from its satirical mission in order to deliver a direct fundraising appeal for a specific charity that the author favors. The Tribune’s editorial practices do not allow individuals to promote their self-interests.” [The Daily Cartoonist]

Amelia Rules!

Creators | Robot 6 contributor Brigid Alverson talks to Jimmy Gownley, creator of the all-ages Amelia Rules series, about his experiences from self-publishing to signing a multi-book deal with Simon & Schuster. During the interview, Gownley dropped a bombshell: His next Amelia book, the eighth in the series, will be his last—at least for a while: “Amelia was a huge learning experience for me. I came out the other side a very different person and artist. I want to take all those lessons and put them into one book that combines all of that.” [Publishers Weekly]

Editorial cartoons | Times are tough for editorial cartoonists, but The New York Times cattle call for artists to provide work on spec for their Sunday Review section — and the measly fee of $250 per cartoon for the winners — is raising a hackles in the cartooning community. [Comic Riffs]

Creators | Ao Meng chats with French artist Boulet a.k.a. Gilles Roussel, about his recent webcomic Darkness, among other topics. [NOVI Magazine]

The Hookah Girl

Creators | Erica Friedman interviews artist Marguerite Dabaie, creator of The Hookah Girl, a memoir of growing up in the Palestinian Christian community in the U.S. [The Hooded Utilitarian]

Commentary | Librarian Robin Brenner and the contributors to the Good Comics for Kids blog discuss whether the inclusion of dialogue in graphic novel biographies makes them fiction. [Good Comics for Kids]

Commentary | Joe “Jog” McCulloch pays a visit to Dredd Reckoning to discuss Vol. 17 of Judge Dredd: The Complete Case Files with host Douglas Wolk. [Dredd Reckoning]

Copyright | Mike Lynch calls out MSNBC’s Up with Chris Hayes show for displaying a cartoon by Lian Amaris without asking her permission, let alone compensating her. To his credit, Hayes responded on Twitter, saying “we absolutely should have credited it and will rectify.” [Mike Lynch Cartoons]

Academia | Columbia University librarian Karen Green lays out a possible typology of comics, discussing the different ways they can be broken up for teachers who want to use them in a variety of different academic settings. [comiXology]

Jack Kirby

If Twitter had existed back in the mid-1980s, things might have turned out differently for Jack Kirby and, ultimately, his heirs. Perhaps Marvel’s demand that he permanently sign away the copyright to all his work for them in return for very limited rights to his original art would have triggered the sort of online firestorm that scotched the Bank of America debit card fees, SOPA/PIPA, and the Susan G. Komen Foundation’s brief moment of collusion with the hard right. Then again, maybe not—the internet can be fickle.

A number of creators criticized Marvel’s actions at the time, and in the end they did soften a bit and come up with a deal Kirby could sign. More recently, Kirby’s heirs tried to claim ownership of a number of copyrights for characters he created, but the judge in that case ruled in Marvel’s favor without even going to trial. Now Change.org is giving it a second try, with an internet petition asking Marvel to make things right with Kirby and his heirs:

We strongly urge Marvel Entertainment and its owner Disney to acknowledge Jack Kirby’s authorship and primary role in the creation of these characters. As well, we urge Marvel to pay Kirby’s family royalties or other just compensation for the use of these characters and stories.

The petition calls on the signatories to boycott Marvel until that happens. So far, despite appearing on The Beat, the petition only has 229 signatures, which isn’t likely to move the sales needle enough for Marvel to notice.

Action Comics #5

Welcome to another edition of What Are You Reading. Our guest today is Marc Singer, author of the very excellent book, Grant Morrison: Combining the Worlds of Contemporary Comics, which is an excellent, excellent book that you should read if you’re at all interested in Morrison and his work.

To find out what Singer and other members of the Robot 6 crew are reading this week, simply click on the link below.

Tim O’Shea: If Amazing Spider-Man readers were not already reading Daredevil before this two-part crossover (Amazing Spider-Man 677/Daredevil 8, both written by Mark Waid), the writer sure as hell gave them several

Daredevil #8

good reasons to start reading the book. And for Waid, this must have just been fun to write. In some ways, it read like a throwback to the 1970s Marvel Team-Up issues I grew up reading. In the first part, Waid worked in a scene where Spidey is confused about DD’s secret identity status. Spidey/DD banter is always fun to read, even when it’s marketing work intended to inform a non-DD reader. In the second part, we are given:

1. A Paolo Rivera cover that has me wanting the artist to do a 52-card playing deck of Marvel characters (and a great use of a fire escape for a cover)
2. An exquisite splash page by Kano
3. Waid writes the issue addressing previous plot threads and planting seeds for future issues (a risky approach considering the number of potentially new readers drawn in with this issue) but it works
4. A great billy club meets helicopter scene
5. A smidge more DD/Spidey banter

Amazing Spider-Man 678
This week’s Spidey (Christ, I feel absurd even saying that) offers readers another part one of a two-part story. In the world of neverending event comics (is Fear Itself over yet?), the fact that I get to talk about two two-part stories in one week is a refreshing surprise. If you look back at the number of writers of Spider-Man over the years, there were some writers that seemingly did not know how to write Peter Parker outside of his longjohns. Slott, on the other hand, relishes it. The cast of characters and the scenarios Parker finds himself in, thanks to his Horizon Labs job, allows Slott to stretch his writing muscles. This issue revolves around a time portal doorway that one of his lab associates has developed (Slott, ever the comedic writer, has it be the doorway for the lab’s break rooms. I appreciate Slott and Marvel editorials restraint on this story. A glimpse into the future where New York is destroyed could have easily been stretched out into six parts, so I am appreciative of the fact that this is a fast-paced (so far) two-parter.

T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents 3
In the third issue of this six-part miniseries, I am pleased to say that writer Nick Spencer surprised me. Admittedly he’s been revamping the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. history throughout his run with the characters, but his reveal at the end of this issue is one I never expected. I have been often on the fence with this series (a fascination with things Wally Wood-related has made me hang in there though). But there is no doubt I would have bought this issue, no matter what, given that I saw Walter Simonson pitched in to do some scenes. (And yeah, I cannot believe I forgot to pick up this week’s Legion of Superheroes 5, a standalone completely drawn by Simonson). On a Simonson-related note, if you are a fan of his like I am, go read the brief interview Josie Campbell did with him for CBR. Even in that brief exchange, Simonson unleashes some great gems of details—about his dad and other things.

Approximate Continuum Comics

Chris Mautner: You know who’s great? Lewis Trondheim, the incredibly prolific French cartoonist. Evidence comes in two recent publications, both autobiographical. The first is Approximate Continuum Comics, an English translation of a six-part series Trondheim published in the 1990s concerning his struggles in the comics industry, desire for success and acclaim and just general angst, anxiety and feelings of self-doubt. It sounds all terribly self-involved to the point of tedium, but Trondheim is simply too skilled a storyteller to allow his own ego to override the quality of his work. Approximate is filled with wonderful visual inventions, like an early daydream about dealing with obnoxious passangers on the subway. More to the point, Trondheim’s self-effacing sense of humor is so charming and revealing that the book never becomes too solipsistic or insufferable. Time has dimmed its

Trondheim continues to reveal his life to readers on a weekly basis over at his Web site (and the NBM blog), most of which has been collected in his “Little Nothings” series. The lastest book, My Shadow in the Distance, offers more of the same, and such a wonderful same it is. The material in Shadows is more one-page humor strips, similar to, say, American Elf, but Trondheim hasn’t lost any of his angst or irritation at modern life and travel. If anything he’s become a more accomplished artist, especially with watercolor, which graces the content of Shadows in lovely wash tones. Plus, it’s really funny.

Do the Gods Wear Capes?

Marc Singer: I’ve just picked up a ton of books, scholarly and otherwise. Right now I’m in the middle of Do the Gods Wear Capes? Spirituality, Fantasy, and Superheroes by Ben Saunders (which is absolutely not about how superheroes are “a modern mythology” and is all the better for it). I’ve also been leafing through Pat Harrigan and Noah Wardrip-Fruin’s Third Person: Authoring and Exploring Vast Narratives, a collection of essays about comics, television, video games, tabletop RPGs, and other media that lend themselves to huge, open-ended narratives. For fun I’ve been reading Kim Newman’s Mysteries of the Diogenes Club, a collection of short stories published by Chris Roberson’s MonkeyBrain Books. Newman has created his own “vast narrative” about the Diogenes Club, a group of occult investigators and secret agents that stretches from Mycroft Holmes to the present day. But I need to clear some of these out of the way, because the book I’m most looking forward to reading is Charles Hatfield’s Hand of Fire: The Comics Art of Jack Kirby.

As far as comics go, I’m pretty much a lock for anything Grant Morrison writes, so I’ve been following Action Comics since the big DC relaunch. I have mixed feelings about this one. For all of Morrison’s pre-release hype about writing a working-class “Bruce Springsteen version of Superman,” the comic never really delivered on his promise of an old-school Siegel and Shuster superhero who takes on crooked contractors and greedy mine owners. Hints of that approach were wedged into the first two issues — just barely — before they were shoved out in favor of the kind of ‘definitive’ origin retelling that attempts to cram in Brainiac, Metallo, Steel, and as many other old familiar faces as possible.

On the other hand, social realism has never really been Morrison’s strong suit and he handles the fantasy elements with more confidence. Each issue has been better than the one before it, with the possible exception of the origin story, which manages to do in twenty pages what Morrison once did in four panels and eight words. Still, he writes a suitably heroic House of El and each issue adds some new details that are collectively adding up to a bigger picture. I just can’t shake the feeling that the book’s craft and its ambitions are moving in opposite directions. (And it’s never a good sign when you find yourself looking forward to the fill-in artists.)

Batman Incorporated: Leviathan Strikes was much more to my tastes. I’m not certain this “corporate franchise” phase of Morrison’s Batman mega-narrative is going to amount to much more than a fast-paced team-up book, but with incredibly talented artists like Cameron Stewart and Chris Burnham on board, I don’t care. And Morrison’s compact, modular storytelling lets him work in a wide range of genres without losing focus: any book that can go from St. Trinian’s to Steranko is all right by me.

The Flash

The most pleasant surprise of the DC relaunch has been Francis Manapul and Brian Buccellato’s Flash. Manapul’s approach to the Flash — using the character’s speed powers and accelerated perceptions as an excuse to experiment with different ways of representing time and motion on the page — is so perfect that you can’t believe nobody’s tried it yet. At the moment, Manapul’s still deeply indebted to his influences (the most recent issue trades Frank Quitely for J. H. Williams III) but I get the sense that when he fully absorbs their styles and starts creating his own visual idiom, this book is going to look even more amazing than it already does.

Flash radiates a pure joy in being a comic book that, among mainstream superhero books, is rivaled only by Mark Waid, Paolo Rivera, and Marcos Martin’s work on Daredevil. This is another one of those so-obvious-it’s-genius ideas—building a comic around Daredevil’s senses, which forces Waid and company to devise new ways to represent sound and texture on the smooth, silent page. It’s a testament to their skill that they make it look easy.

If you want to talk about sheer joy in comics as comics, it doesn’t get much more ecstatic than the crescendo of creatively designed, emotionally charged pages that Jaime Hernandez builds up to in his final story for the latest volume of Love and Rockets: New Stories. But Jaime’s command of his art—every aspect of his art, from lines to layouts to inks to body language to facial expressions—is so great that a single panel of Reno slouching away into the shadows can be just as breathtaking as the double-page spread that sums up the relationship of Maggie and Ray. A couple of years ago, I was hoping that Jaime’s foray into the loopy superhero sci-fi of the Ti-Girls would lead to a renewed freshness and vitality in his more realistic stories. “The Love Bunglers” delivers, big time. At this point Love and Rockets: New Stories probably doesn’t need any more rave reviews, but Jaime’s work is still the highlight of my comics pile.

Action! Mystery! Thrills!

Action! Mystery! Thrills!: Comic Book Covers of the Golden Ages, 1933-1945
Edited by Greg Sadowski
Fantagraphics Books, 208 pages, $29.99

Amazing Mysteries: The Bill Everett Archives Vol. 1
Edited by Blake Bell
Fantagraphics Books, 224 pages, $39.99

Young Romance: The Best of Simon & Kirby’s Romance Comics
Edited by Michael Gagne
Fantagraphics Books, 200 pages, $29.99

Our current publishing era has been dubbed the Golden Age of Reprints by a number of online pundits, myself included, and it’s not too hard to see why. Classic comics that fans and scholars never thought would make it to the bookbinders, let alone be available in an affordable version, are now coming off the presses at a staggering rate.

One of the benefits of this plethora of reprint projects is it allows us to re-examine certain noteworthy periods of comics history, help us discover long ignored artists and fully consider cartoonists who, though their names might have been recognizable, have largely been unappreciated except by a few. The alleged Golden Age of comics in particular has benefited from this scrutiny, not only  in illuminating people like Fletcher Hanks but in showcasing work by folks like Jack Cole and Bill Everett.

One of the people leading the way in this specific endeavor is editor Greg Sadowski, who, in anthologies like Supermen! and Four Color Fear, has given average readers access to comics from well-covered eras (i.e. the early superhero and horror trends) merely by republishing stories that didn’t come from Marvel (or whatever it was called at the time), EC or DC.

Sadowski’s latest book, Action! Mystery! Thrills! has a somewhat even narrower focus, dealing entirely with comic book covers from the Golden era. It makes a certain amount of sense. While covers are still an integral part of marketing and selling a comic, they were even more essential back in those early, heady days, when you competed with hundreds of other titles and an eye-catching cover could mean the difference between profit and cancellation (or at least that’s what many editors and publishers of the time felt).

If you’ve read any of Sadowski’s collections before, you should be familiar with the format by now. A short introduction or forward, followed by the work in question, uninterrupted by commentary, which is usually saved in the back of the book in some sort of “notes” section.

That’s certainly the case here as Sadowski peels through an assortment of covers, both notable for their historical significance as well as their aesthetic traits. A number of well-known artists are featured prominently here, including Will Eisner, Walt Kelly, Jack Cole, Lou Fine, Mac Raboy and Charles Biro. He seems to have a special fondness for the work of Alex Schomburg, a Timely/Marvel artist whose work mainly consisted of heroes leaping into action just as the barely dressed damsel (and perhaps a sidekick or two) was about to some horrible violent fate, usually involving elabore machinery and/or knives, from a gang of hooded evil-doers.

Honestly, while I can see the appeal in Schomburg’s frantic, almost cartoonish designs, I found myself preferring Cole’s elegant compositions or Raboy’s stately, illustrative offerings to Schomburg’s overly busy, cluttered covers, where it seems something had to be happening in every single corner lest the eye have a moment to rest.

And while I enjoyed Thrills (I’m especially grateful for being exposed to the neon-color stylings of L.B. Cole, who seems to prefigure the era of black velvet paintings), it’s definitely the slightest — the most coffee tableish — of Sadowski’s books so far. It feels like a book designed more to flip through than to mull over. Even Sadowski’s notes seem less considered and more perfunctory than before. That’s not necessarily a bad thing — there’s certainly pleasures to be had in re-examining these covers, as garish as some of them are — but it does make it a lesser star in the reprint galaxy.

Amazing Mysteries

As one of the pioneers of the comic book format, naturally Bill Everett is featured prominently in Thrills. He takes the starring role, however, for the Blake Bell-edited Amazing Mysteries, the first in what I assume is to be a multi-volume collection of the Sub-Mariner creator’s non-Marvel work, much in the same way Bell has been collecting and packaging Steve Ditko’s early material.

Bell keeps things in mostly chronological order here, although he does organizes the “chapters” according to the different characters Everett created, like Music Master, Hydroman and the disturbingly androgynous Dirk the Demon.

What’s exciting for me about this book is watching Everett develop as an artist and storyteller and figure out the medium in relatively rapid fashion. His lettering, clunky and stylized in his initial Skyrocket Steele story, quickly more straightforward and easier to read. His composition becomes more assured and dramatic. He clearly starts thinking of the page as a unit and not a bunch of unrelated panels as they stories start to seem less cluttered and more refined.

The heroes themselves seem an odd mish-mash that belong more to the “maybe this will sell” school than anything else. Everett rarely spends more than a story or two on any particular character, jumping from the generic spaceman Steele to the generic cowboy Bullseye Bill to the oddly dressed but still generic superhero The Conqueror, with little seeming thought between the various adventures except how best to depict the action.

Everett’s interest clearly lied with some of his more eccentric creations. Hydroman, for instance, is a obvious favorite. As a precursor to the Sub-Mariner, he’s certainly a figure many historians draw attention towards (apparently Everett had a thing about water). Dressed in a bulletproof cellophane outfit, Everett clearly got a kick out of depicting Hydroman in a variety of aqua-based scenarios —  a glass of water here, an ocean liner there — and and frequently draws him in in the middle of a transformation as he rushes out to surprise and subdue the bad guys, the rough water lines literally and figuratively coalescing in the panel to form a human figure.

That fluidity also graces Music Master, a hero who can transform himself into literal sound waves, with a string of notes trailing behind where the lower half of his body should be. Perhaps the oddest creation, though, is Amazing-Man a seemingly invulnerable (and at times invisible) character who gets his powers from an unnamed Eastern cult who goes from battling whip-wielding criminals to an entire (presumably German) army. The stop and go nature of these tales, combined with the Everett’s attempt at creating a continuing story arc, give the run a dream-like, off-kilter feel.

The material in Amazing in no way represents Everett’s strongest work, though they do point to his potential — those thrilling Sub Mariner stories were just around the corner. What you see  here are the glimmers of an artist struggling to comprehend the potential of this relatively new medium how he can push it to match his own interests.

Young Romance

Two artists that certainly knew something superheroes were Joe Simon and Jack Kirby. As interest in that genre faded with the end of World War II, however, the pair found themselves looking for other material to publish and quickly hit upon the idea of romance comics, with great success.

It’s a body of work that, though it took up a little over a decade, has been largely glossed over by fans in favor of focusing instead on all the musclemen in the gaudy outfits. Young Romance seeks to rectify that oversight, providing a “best of” collection from that lengthy run.

As you might expect, most of the stories in Romance rely deeply on hackneyed melodrama, clumsy coincidences and last minute changes of heart. What separates Simon and Kirby’s work from their later imitators, at least at first, is that they don’t feel the need to force a happy ending, and are even willing to delve into dark areas if need be. The opening story concerns a “boy-crazy” teen who falls madly in love with her aunt’s suitor, only to lose him at the end because of her flightiness. A young woman in post-war Germany falls in love with an American G.I. only to realize she can’t quite renounce Hitler. A woman behaves monstrously towards her mother in an effort to nab a husband from a higher social caste. And in perhaps the bleakest story in the bunch, a young woman attempts suicide when her lover is accused of a crime he didn’t commit and is given the death penalty.

The book is divided into pre-Code and post-Code and there’s no questions about which section is better. The latter stories are clearly scrubbed clean of anything that might give offense, and the gender roles more clearly defined, with all the women eager to become happy housewives. Even the art, rough and thick initially, gets cleaned up in the post-Code era, lest young readers be freaked out by, I dunno, too much cross-hatching.

Though modern readers may wince at some of the sexual stereotypes on display, not to mention the occasional forced happy ending, Young Romance underscores Simon and Kirby’s keen storytelling skills. Adhering to a mostly six-panel grid, the duo manage to produce work that is  visually arresting and dramatic, despite the fact that the violence is usually contained to the characters’ inner emotions. It’s also worth mentioning that editor Michael Gange’s reproduction work is stellar and apparently painstaking, as he demonstrates in an appendix at the end of the book.

Kirby, teaming up with Stan Lee, would eventually take the skills he learned from these making these romance comics — the over-the-top emotions, the dramatic plot reversals — and apply them with great success to the superhero genre. Young Romance helps show how that transition took place. For Kirby fans and those who just love to explore comics from generations past, it’s a rather essential read.

During its two-season run in the early 1990s, it was looked at by comics readers as a potential bright spot in a fallow time for comics on TV screens. It’s comedy circled around the idea that publishers wanted Newhart’s character to revive the jovial Mad Dog as a dark vigilante in the vein of Watchmen or The Dark Knight Returns,with a compromise being reached to resume publication but the simmering tension going on as the series progressed.

Although comics fans initially hoped the series would be a bright light in the fallow dearth of comics-to-TV hits in the early 90s, the retro-stylings of the show seemed out of place with the current tastes of comics fans. The series is notable for having a bustling amount of comic creators as guest stars, including Jack Kirby as seen here:

While Christmas is almost a year away, I wouldn’t be surprised if this ended up in more than a few stockings of comic book fans. The DVD collection is due in April.

Prophet #21

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

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

Graeme McMillan

If I had $15 this week, I’d avoid Marvel and DC altogether and go for some more independent offerings. Top of the pile would definitely be Prophet #21 (Image, $2.99), Brandon Graham’s much-anticipated revamp of the Rob Liefeld book from the mid-90s, recreated (with artist Simon Roy) as some kind of Heavy Metal fever dream; I’m a massive fan of Graham’s, and excited to see what he can come up with when he tries to play it (relatively) straight. I’d also grab Dynamite’s Kirby Genesis: Dragonbane #1 ($3.99), another spin-off from the Busiek/Ross/Herbert series this time focusing on the almost Thor-analog warrior, and IDW’s Memorial #2 ($3.99), continuing the urban fantasy series that I enjoyed so much last month. Lastly, I’d grab the cheap relaunch for Antony Johnston’s Wasteland (#33, Oni, $1.00); I’ve really enjoyed this post-apocalyptic world building book for awhile, but this relaunch – which will return the book to a monthly schedule as well as debut new artist Justin Greenwood – looks set to be a good jumping-on point for those who’ve never sampled its charms before.

If I had $30, I’d be likely to put Dragonbane back on the shelf and try out Marvel’s Fear Itself: Journey Into Mystery Premiere HC collection ($19.99) instead. Not having been a fan of Matt Fraction’s Thor, I skipped the first few issues of this and then, by the time I kept hearing great things and realized I actually really enjoy Kieron Gillen’s writing, it was far enough into the run that I knew I’d end up waiting for the collection. Color me cautiously optimistic.

When it comes to splurging, my love of comics from around when I was born rears its ugly head again, and I find myself drawn to Marvel Firsts: 1970s Vol. 1 TP (Marvel, $29.99). This is possibly my favorite era from the House of Ideas, so the idea of an anthology of some of its weirdest hits sounds right up my alley.

Kramers Ergot 8

Chris Mautner

If I had $15, I’d join the crowd and put $3 for that new, Brandon-Graham version of Prophet. I’ve yet to read King City (I know, I know) and I know nothing about the Prophet character, but I like the little bit of Graham’s work I’ve been exposed to so far and I’m curious to see how he handles this type of sci-fi/superhero tale.

If I had $30, I’d put back Prophet, snatch an extra $3 and change from my wife’s piggy bank (shhh, don’t tell her) and nab the eighth volume of Kramers Ergot, the latest edition of the mind- and genre-bending, cutting edge anthology from editor Sammy Harkham (this time published by Picturebox). This one runs a bit counter to past Kramers. It mainly features longer, more direct stories in a smaller, more standard book-size format. Contributors include CF, Gabrielle Bell, Dash Shaw, Frank Santoro, Gary Panter, Chris Cilla and others. Oh and there’s a generous helping of “Oh Wicked Wanda,” Penthouse’s answer to Little Annie Fanny for those who care to remember it.

My splurge this week would probably be Bill Griffith: Lost and Found, an “odds and sodds” collection of work by the Zippy creator, mostly done prior to that strip’s creation. I’m not actually certain what’s included in this book, but a good deal of Griffith’s non-Zippy material is pretty great, even better than the strip in some cases.

Batman #5

Chris Arrant

If I had $15, I’d lead off this week’s haul with my most anticipated book in some time: Prophet #21 (Image, $2.99). I am an immense fan of Brandon Graham’s work, so seeing him segue into writing is interesting… but I also admit to being a fan of Prophet. I remember trying to draw like Dan Panosian did in an early issue of this title. Next up would be Uncanny X-Force #20 (Marvel, $3.99), for Remender, for incoming artist Greg Tocchini, for X-Force, and for the entrance of Captain Britain. Rounding my Marvel haul would be Daredevil #8 (Marvel, $2.99); excited to see guest artist Kano on this. Last up for my $15 haul would be Batman #5 (DC, $2.99); on paper I like Wonder Woman more, but when it comes down to it I’m more enjoying Snyder and Capullo’s story in this. Oh wait, I have some money laying around… Wasteland #33 (Oni, $1) is it for a dollar.

For $30, I’d double back and get Wonder Woman #5 (DC, $2.99); for me, Azzarello’s story seems like a slow burn and I’m hooked in. I’m interested to see how Tony Akins handles filling in given Cliff’s one-of-a-kind art. Next up I’d get a Marvel 3-pack: Avengers #21 (Marvel, $3.99), Avenging Spider-Man #3 (Marvel, $3.99) and Uncanny X-Men #5 ($3.99). Then finally, I’d get my second $1 book of the week, Lord of the Jungle #1 (Dynamite, $1.00). More books should consider going their first issues at $1, especially ones that are lesser known and less likely to be tried.

For my splurge, I’d happy fork over the bills for Steve Canyon HC Vol. 1: 1947-1948 (IDW, $49.99). Milton Caniff is a titan, and being able to read the previous Terry & The Pirates collections and then lead into this, in the original order they were published, is amazing; it’s like being there to see how Caniff developed.

Planet of the Apes #10

Michael May

If I had $15, I’d make it unanimous by also grabbing Prophet #21 ($2.99). Brandon Graham is always interesting, but I’m in it as much for Simon Roy’s art as Graham’s story. I had the pleasure of working with Roy on an extremely short story for Panels for Primates and he’s an awesome artist. Then I’d grab a bunch of superheroine comics that I’m enjoying: Wonder Woman #5 ($2.99), Supergirl #5 ($2.99), Birds of Prey #5 (2.99), and Fear Itself: The Fearless #7 ($2.99) featuring Valkyrie.

If I had $30, I’d quickly add Planet of the Apes #10 ($3.99) to that pile and try to think of new adjectives to convince more people to read it. Speaking of primates, I’d also check out Dynamite’s Tarzan of the Apes adaptation, Lord of the Jungle #1 ($1.00). After that, I want to see what’s up with Danger Girl: Revolver #1 ($3.99). I’ve never read a Danger Girl comic, but it sounds like the kind of thing I’d enjoy. Jumping into IDW’s new mini-series is a cheaper way to try it out than getting one of the collections and catching up. Finally, I’m curious about the reprint of Grant Morrison’s Steed and Mrs. Peel #1 ($3.99) from Boom!. I don’t know much about the TV Avengers, but I dig groovy, ’60s spy adventures.

If I only had a little to splurge with I’d check out Danger Girl: Danger-Sized Treasury Edition ($9.99), but I’m hoping for a nice windfall so I can join Chris A in Steve Canyon, Volume 1: 1947-1948 ($49.99). I’ve read some of those stories from when Checker reprinted them and they’re cool enough that I want them in the nice hardcover.

Are You My Mother?

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

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

Mastering Comics

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Lovely, Horrible Stuff

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

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

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

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

Shade #4

Chris Arrant

If I had $15 I would be in comics heaven, starting with Shade #4 (DC, $2.99). I’ve loved what Cully Hamner and James Robinson have done so far, but seeing Darwyn Cooke drawing this issue knocks it up to a whole new level. It’s like seeing David Bowie sit in on an up-and-coming band’s gig one night. Next up would be the reunion of Warren Ellis and Stuart Immonen in Secret Avengers #21 (Marvel, $3.99). I was halfway hoping they would break from the serious tone of the title and revisit the inanity of Nextwave, but the preview dashes that hope; still, excellent work of two guys at the top of their game. Next up would be Invincible #87 (Image, $2.99), promising an all-new level of beatdown for Mark Grayson. Lastly, I’d get Jason Aaron’s fresh take on Marvel’s mutants with Wolverine and the X-Men #4 (Marvel, $3.99). Part return to basics and part brand-new day, seeing Logan having to be the respectable one and not the plucky wildcard is fun, and the cast Aaron’s assembled is great.

If I had $30, I’d continue reading Aaron with Wolverine #300 (Marvel, $4.99). Jokes about the constant renumbering/reshuffling/rejiggering of Aaron’s run aside, it’s been a swell ride and looks to be heading up to a finale of sorts. Next up would be Batwoman #5 (DC, $2.99). Williams’ art continues to impress, and while the story doesn’t match up to his levels with Rucka on Detective Comics, he and Blackman are striving for something I haven’t been able to fully understand yet. Lastly, I’d pick up Northlanders #47 (DC/Vertigo, $2.99). Artist Declan Shalvey is an inspired get for this series, really showing off what he can do outside Marvel’s Thunderbolts.

If I could splurge, I’d dive into Eric Powell’s adaptation of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (IDW, $19.99). Putting Powell together with Twain isn’t an obvious team-up, but given Powell’s depth of work I’m interested to see how it turns out.

Hand of Fire

Chris Mautner

If I had $15, I’d probably get Papercutz’s latest Smurf collection The Return of Smurfette, which is nice to see, because I was kind of worried about her.

If I had $30, I’d put down the Smurfs book and pick up Hand of Fire, a new prose book by blogger, author and scholar Charles Hatfield about the one and only Jack “King” Kirby and his legacy. I’ll read just about anything about Kirby, and Hatfield is a great writer, so this is about as close to a must-get for me as possible this week.

While there aren’t many under $30 I’d buy this week, there are a number of splurge-worthy books, including a hardcover collection of Brooklyn Dreams by J.M. DeMatteis and Glenn Barr, a series I had slotted for a future “Collect This Now” and now shall thankfully scratch off my list; Before the Incal, a $99 prologue to Jodorowsky and Mobieus’ sci-fi epic, this time featuring art work by Zoran Janjetov; and the Steve Ditko Omnibus Vol. 2, which contains more Silver/Bronze Age Ditko goodness than you can shake your oddly gesturing hand at.

The Steve Ditko Omnibus, Volume 2

Graeme McMillan

It’s a weird week for me this week; if I had $15, more than half of it would go on IDW’s Cobra Annual 2012 ($7.99), which promises to tell the origin of the new Cobra Commander. I know, it’s a toy tie-in book, but I’ve been enjoying the ongoing Cobra series so much more than I would’ve imagined, so this one is definitely on my list of things to read, as is Secret Avengers #21 (Marvel, $3.99), a reunion for Nextwave‘s Warren Ellis and Stuart Immonen and one that I really, really hope doesn’t rehash old jokes as much as let the two creators play with the medium they enjoy as much as they possibly can.

If I had $30, I’d probably grab a handful of superhero books I’ve been trying to keep up with lately: Batwoman #5, Batman and Robin #5, Legion Lost #5 and Green Lantern #5 (all DC, $2.99). Just to mix things up, I’d also see how X-Men Legacy #260.1 (Marvel, $2.99) is, and whether Marvel can continue their X-book winning streak in light of the successes of Wolverine and the X-Men, the relaunched Uncanny X-Men and the critically acclaimed Uncanny X-Force recently.

Splurge-wise, there’s absolutely no doubt in my mind: The Steve Ditko Omnibus Vol. 2 HC (DC, $59.99). I loved the mix bag of the first volume, and this second edition has the complete original Hawk and Dove. Just sit me down with this one and come back to get me in a few hours; I’ll be fine by myself.

Spera, Volume 1

Michael May

If I had $15, I’d grab my usual series, Frankenstein, Agent of SHADE #5 ($2.99) and X-Men Legacy #260.1 ($2.99) and also finish up the likable Avengers 1959 with #5 ($2.99). I’d top off the pile with the latest issues of two series that I’ve only recently fallen in love with: Batgirl #5 ($2.99) and Batwoman #5 ($2.99).

If I had $30, I’d add Demon Knights #5 ($2.99), a series I’m enjoying, but would love to see slow down enough for me to get to know some of these characters. To that I’d add Lewis Trondheim’s new book Monster Mess ($9.99).

There’s a lot of stuff I’d like to splurge on, like the first volume of The Intrepids ($16.99) and the first volume of Archaia’s Dark Crystal anthology ($19.95), for instance. I’m extremely interested in G. Willow Wilson and David Lopez’s take on CrossGen’s Mystic ($14.99), too. But if I had to pick just one thing, it would be Josh Tierney’s Spera ($19.95), about a couple of princesses and a fiery dog who have to save their kingdom.

American Barbarian

Back in 2010, when Thomas Scioli started bolstering his online presence and entered the realm of webcomics with American Barbarian, I was curious to see how things would play out (as may or may not have been obvious in my June 2010 interview of him). I’ll be honest and admit that now, more than a year later (and with far more of the project online to read), American Barbarian far exceeds what I expected. As much as I have always enjoyed and respected his Kirby-influenced approach to visual storytelling, after reading this double post Apocalyptic tale, I am far more impressed with Scioli’s funky ear for dialogue. It’s like reading a 1970s comic written by a minimalist version of David Mamet. Doubting my quirky endorsement of the work? Then realize AdHouse is collecting the webcomic for a 256-page/6 ” x 9 ” /hardcover release early this year. If you don’t trust my tastes, then you should definitely trust AdHouse publisher Chris Pitzer. To mark the upcoming release, Scioli and I did another of our quick email interviews. Before diving into the interview, let me take a second to agree with JK Parkin’s sentiment in this post, back in June, that DC Comics should have considered Scioli for one of the New 52 titles that it launched back in September. So I was surprised to learn (as you can read in this interview) that DC did not contact Scioli when assembling the creative team for the new OMAC title. As I edited this interview I realized it was hard to find my favorite part of our discussion, but it may be the revelation that the look for Two-Tank Omen came to Scioli in a dream. A close second was learning a bit about his next webcomic, Final Frontier. Feel free to chime in with your favorite part of this interview and/or Scioli’s work in the comments section, please.

Tim O’Shea: As an independent creator, the job of marketing your work falls to you. Do you think over the years, you have gotten more comfortable marketing yourself? On a related note, how did you decide upon doing this one minute trailer for American Barbarian?

Thomas Scioli: Even the largest comics publishers don’t seem to have a budget for promotion, so I’d say any creator, independent or mainstream, can benefit from doing their own promotion. It’s something that I’ve never been comfortable with, but do out of necessity. I think I have gotten better about it, because in the beginning, it would give me crippling anxiety, now it’s just mild trepidation. The idea for doing a trailer came from having seen other people do it. AdHouse’s own Afrodisiac trailer and [Top Shelf's] Infinite Kung-Fu [trailer] are two that made an impression on me when they made the rounds. It got me excited about those two works, so I wanted to do the same. I’d been dabbling with animation, back when I started AmBarb so it was a natural outgrowth of that, too. Once you start doing a webcomic it isn’t long before you realize, hey, why not just do a cartoon?

O’Shea: Did AdHouse’s Chris Pitzer contact you regarding the possibility of an American Barbarian book, or was it the other way around?

Scioli: It happened pretty organically. Comics is a small world, independent comics is even smaller. We’d been hanging out on the convention circuit. Chris had expressed an interest in American Barbarian from pretty early on, but there’s a wide gap between interest as, “that’s something I’d like to read” and “that’s something I’d like to publish.” When I got closer to finishing the book, I knew I had to start pitching it to publishers soon. I was dreading the thought. Chris had bought an American Barbarian pinup I did for the program book and art auction at HeroesCon 2010. At HeroesCon 2011, our tables were adjacent. One of the most common things people ask me at conventions is “When are they going to reprint the first Godland hardcover?” Since it’s been out of print for many years and goes for ridiculous prices online. The idea occurred to me, “Hey, Joe and I own this, so just because Image doesn’t want to reprint it doesn’t mean some other publisher might.” I half jokingly turned to Chris and said, “Do you want to publish a reprint of the first Godland hardcover?” Chris said no, but that he’d like to publish American Barbarian. It was as simple as that. I was ready to say yes right then and there, but I decided to wait until I got home and think about it first. The more I thought about it, the more sense it made. I had a long list of reasons why AdHouse would be the best possible publisher for it. And I like Chris so much, that the idea of working with him made it easy to say yes.

O’Shea: To you, what are some of the larger benefits to teaming with AdHouse?

Scioli: Before AmBarb, my audience was largely the wednesday comics store audience, viewing my work mainly from a Kirby nostalgia direction. When I started going all-in on webcomics, I noticed a totally new audience discovering my work for the first time. I think being with AdHouse gives it a different context where the full range of things I’m bringing to the table can be highlighted.

I feel like Chris Pitzer is strong in areas that I struggle with. He’s got a great understanding of book design, which is really important for a project like this that is going from an online context to book form. He’s focused on making the book an interesting object in and of itself. Since this is a work that I created entirely on my own, it wasn’t commissioned by a publisher, the main thing you need is a publisher who understands presentation. I know American Barbarian will get the attention it needs and not get lost in the shuffle. AdHouse’s line seemed to me to be carefully curated. Each release really counts. It’s gotten to a point where each new AdHouse book is kind of an event, you know? The Josh Cotter books, then Afrodisiac, then Duncan the Wonder Dog, Pope Hats, Forming. I feel like AdHouse has had this great track record of quality, where I’m benefitting from that goodwill, that American Barbarian is the next AdHouse book and that that means something. I think it’s a great way to have your work presented.

O’Shea: In the webcomic’s first chapter for several panels before his arrival you inject small panels teasing the impending arrival of Two-Tank Omen in a manner that reminded me of Walt Simonson’s teases for Surtur. Did that serve as an inspiration for you?

Scioli: I’m a fan of Thor, so it might be in there somewhere. It’s probably closer to the buildup to the introduction of Galactus, since the buildup and intro happen within the same chapter. Ditko tended to do more of the Surtur-style multi-issue buildup to a villain’s intro than Kirby did. Didn’t they mention Dormammu for months before he actually showed up in Dr. Strange? Spiderman always seemed like it had lots of silhouetted mystery villains hanging around making plans for ages before they’d actually make a move.

Specifically what I was thinking of, and I think it will be more apparent in the print version, is that I had an idea in one of my notebooks to have a subplot going on in a small panel at the bottom of each page, and to have that bottom panel slowly get larger and larger until it engulfs the entire page. I eventually found a use for that idea here, in the buildup to Two-Tank’s arrival.

O’Shea: Is it me or did you enjoy writing the dialogue for American Barbarian’s brothers and father? I cracked up when you had his dad telling the king: “you’re going to have to eat some shit.”

Scioli: Yes I did. I had to make that choice for this comic, how do people talk? I’d been doing the high and mighty fantasy speech in 8-Opus. I wanted to take a break from it and see if I could get away with some more direct, less polished speech. While I’m drawing, I’ll write temporary dialogue in the margins as a placeholder for when I can fill in something more polished. I’ve talked to some other artists who also do this, too. I thought it might be interesting to have them speak in that “first draft” dialogue. “Eat shit, Submariner!” rather than “Taste the full cosmic fury of mine awesome hammer Mjolnir!”

O’Shea: When Rick is carving revenge into his fingers you went to a completely different art style in two panels (pages 10 and 11) of Chapter 2, in fact at least with 11 it looks like it is a photo of actual hands. What lead you to try those panels that way?

Scioli: I don’t know. It was something that just came up in the course of doing it. I hadn’t planned to do it that way, until I sat down to draw it. I knew I wanted to reserve the right to draw any page any way I wanted to. That’s part of the freedom of webcomics. I knew fumetti, watercolor and collage were tools that I hadn’t used before in a comic, so this seemed like a good place to do it. In a lot of ways that’s the emotional focal point of the whole story, so if you’re going to do it somewhere, that’s the place for it.

O’Shea: Am I right in assuming you love designing zany-looking characters. Who do you consider among the American Barbarian cast to be the most outlandish looking character?

Scioli: You’re right, that’s my favorite part of the job. The most outlandish has got to be Two-Tank Omen. That was one that came to me in a dream, so I don’t feel like I “designed” it as much as some of the other characters. Gali-Leo is pretty weird and he was one that was very carefully constructed.

O’Shea: At what point in the story planning did you realize: “I want to have Rick driving a Honda in the opening to chapter 3!”?

Scioli: I wanted him to roll down the hill in some kind of vehicle. At first I was kind of picturing something like in the Simpsons driving game where you utterly destroy your car and drive around in a frame with no tires.

Eventually I decided I wanted this to be another point to include some photo-collage. That’s actually my car.

O’Shea: How is plotting and pacing for a webcomic different than your approach in your past projects?

Scioli: Here’s a big difference, which worked out really well: there’s no set length for the chapters. Each chapter is as long or short as it needs to be. I had 14-page chapters, 40-page chapters. Originally I had concieved of this as a 10-part monthly mini-series comic book. That means that I would’ve had to cram the 40-page chapter into 20-some pages or pad out the 14-page chapter. It lets the work breathe and find its own pace.

I also like how you can release it a page at a time. In a monthly comic, the only page that lingers is the last page. You have to wait a while for that next chunk of story, so that’s where the cliffhangers go. With a webcomic, every page is a cliffhanger. As a creator, you hate the fact that something you labored over can be read so quickly. The people who followed the comic as each page was posted read it in a timeframe that was a lot closer to the timeframe I created it in.

O’Shea: Am I right in thinking you love to use thought balloons for comedic effect (I am thinking in particular of the line “I thought that douche was her boyfriend” from Chapter 5).

Scioli: I’m a big believer in the thought balloon. It lends itself to humor of course, since it’s viewed as a quaint relic, but I think you can use it for serious effect, too.

O’Shea: The webcomic is currently at chapter 10. How many chapters will be covered in February’s release?

Scioli: There will be 10 chapters total, but chapter 10 is pretty long. That’s the whole story. After the story finishes, ambarb.com will host my next webcomic: Final Frontier.

O’Shea: Care to divulge some more details about Final Frontier?

Scioli: It’s the most straight-up superheroey thing I’ve ever done. There’s a whole universe of characters doing all kinds of crazy stuff. It’s tangentially related to American Barbarian.

O’Shea: Are there any extras that the American Barbarian book is going to offer?

Scioli: There are extra drawings and sketches scattered through the book as chapter breaks or design elements. There’s an awesome map of American Barbarian’s world on the endpapers. There’s no backmatter. The book is pretty much all story. The story ended up being a lot bigger than I thought it would be. That last chapter just kept going and going.

O’Shea: In a recent Twitter exchange with Kurt Busiek, you noted that there is a lack of plot (much less subplot) in some comics. How did that come to be, in your opinion?

Scioli: I disavow anything I post on Twitter. Anything I say on there is usually only how I feel at the moment I tweet it, and I usually disagree with it immediately.

I think that because Kirby-style action comics story-telling is my baseline, which is very plot-heavy, everything else tends to seem to my eyes, leasurely and anemic by comparison. But I probably tend towards an over-reliance on plot mechanics and need to learn to more fully utilize the other components of storytelling.

O’Shea: It’s a simple opinion at its core, but I still have to ask (based on this tweet) what is it about the writing process that is so enjoyable for you?

Scioli: That’s where it feels like you’re really playing with toys and having fun, when you’re in those early stages of figuring out the shape of it. The day-in-day-out drawing of a comic has its own set of rewards, but things happen so much more slowly, it’s not as enjoyable. I think it’s also because my early work was so much more focussed on the drawing. Writing was something I did to facilitate the things I wanted to draw, where now I’ve accumulated enough experience that I actually have feel like I have things to say, and a way of expressing them.

O’Shea: Please tell me that DC contacted you when they decided to include OMAC as part of the new 52?

Scioli: They did not. DC is the one big four company I’ve never done anything with. OMAC is a lot closer to what I’d like to see from mainstream superhero comics, a focus on visual bravura and clearly-choreographed action. It’s got that joy in the drawing process that I’d just mentioned. I’d been enjoying Giffen’s recent penciling work leading up to it. It’s beautiful. It’s my favorite of the new 52, and tellingly enough it’s by far the worst-selling. I know better than anybody what a tough sell the fake Kirby thing can be.

Green Lantern #3

Hey kids, it’s time once again for What Are You Reading?, a weekly look into the reading habits of your Robot 6 bloggers. This week our special guest is Rik Offenberger, comics journalist and public relations coordinator for Archie Comics.

To see what Rik and the Robot 6 crew have been reading, click below.

*****

Brigid Alverson

This week’s reading included two totally different comics about young men haunted by their father’s work-related deaths, which is an odd coincidence because they are otherwise totally different stories.

Spontaneous

I had been reading the single issues of Joe Harris and Brett Weldele’s Spontaneous, but I sort of dropped off in the middle, so this weekend I went back and read all five issues, the entire story arc. It’s a great supernatural thriller about a young man and a slightly wacky investigative reporter tracking down the cause of multiple cases of spontaneous human combustion in a small town. The young man, Melvin, is driven by the memory of his own father exploding into flames before his eyes. The story stretches credibility a bit in places but also includes some good twists, and the pacing is perfect. I am also a huge fan of Weldele’s atmospheric, watercolor-styled art, which is perfect for a story like this. (You can read the whole first issue at Robot 6.)

Saturn Apartments is a sci-fi manga about a window washer in a huge ring-shaped apartment colony that circles the earth like the rings of Saturn. It’s located in the stratosphere, 35,000 feet up, so it’s not in outer space–the earth is right there, but no one lives there any more. Mitsu is the son of a window washer who disappeared while working on the lower side (the earth side), and when he starts at the same job, he wonders if his father wasn’t just trying to get to home to earth–but his first gig is in the exact same spot where his father disappeared, and that first-hand encounter changes his thinking. Saturn Apartments is your basic workplace manga in a sci-fi setting, and the entertainment in this book comes both from the technology and the personalities, especially the customers who’s windows Mitsu cleans. The ring-shaped complex is literally stratified: Wealthier people live in the upper levels, with access to natural light, while the lower class lives at the bottom of the ring in crowded, dark streets. The lack of natural light weakens their immune systems and makes them sickly. Creator Hisae Iwaoka uses this as a structural element in the story but doesn’t get too heavy-handed with it.

Tim O’Shea

Batman: The Brave & The Bold #13

Batman: The Brave & The Bold #13: Once Grant Morrison has praised someone’s writing and picked them to write a Steel back-up for his ongoing Action title, one would think it would be a good time to notice the creator. I’d already been enjoying writer Sholly Fisch’s run to date, but this month’s Calling All Robins may be the writer’s best issue to date. His ability to capture the voices of the various Robins, through the myriad incarnation (plus one Nightwing) of the character is uncanny. Rich Burchett’s prowess at capturing the characters’ look (no easy fit) is the icing on the cake.

Batman & Robin #3: Not sure which I like more in this series; Bruce Wayne as father figure, or Alfred as the grandpa (with espionage savvy). One thing that threw me with Peter Tomasi’s writing in this issue, I think he may have had Daddy Batman use Child (Assassin) Robin as bait in a trap. An odd thing for a father to do to a son, even when it’s Batman.

Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos Essentials Volume 1: I don’t know if it was intentional on the part of Marvel to release this Essentials volume on the same week of Veterans Day, but if not that’s one great coincidence. As much as everyone enjoys Jack Kirby’s art in some of this issues #1-23 collection (plus one annual), I really gained a newfound appreciation for Dick Ayers on this project. One funny quirk, the fact that Stan Lee named a story named “An Eye for An Eye” (issue #19) in which the then two-eyed Nick Fury…does not lose his eye.

Frankenstein

Frankenstein, Agent of S.H.A.D.E. #3: I would strongly recommend this book were it not for Jeff Lemire’s annoying narration crutch of S.H.A.D.E.NET (the computer program that runs operations and is seemingly technologically omnipotent or something). The monsters in this issue drawn by Alberto Ponticelli are a reason to check out the book, though. And I hope one day that they can get Arthur Adams (is he Marvel exclusive?) to draw a guest arc.

Black Panther #525: I normally would be overjoyed to have Shawn Martinbrough on art (working with David Liss’ strong script). And while I was quite happy to see him on this assignment, it seems like his art was too rushed in certain points. In fact toward the end of the story, a villain is introduced and I had to re-read the pages, as it appeared a page of the story was missing. But honestly as much as I am displeased by the quality of Martinbrough’s art, on his worst day, the artist outperforms 85 percent of current mainstream artists. And his noir approach is picture perfect, in a general sense, for this series.

Battle Scars #1: As little interest as I had for the Fear Itself event, I was pleasantly surprised by the basic premise of this limited series (Military veteran who is sought after by villains and protected by heroes). But I wonder how much we will see of series like this, given that editor Alejandro Arbona was recently let go by Marvel. Time will tell.

Rik Offenberger

Jughead Double Digest #175

Jughead Double Digest #175: Jughead is always good for a laugh, and this issue is no exception. Jughead is featured as his super hero alter ego Captain Hero. Which is the best name a comedy hero ever came up with. He is join in his super hero adventure by Big Ethel, who has been looking for any way to team up with Jughead since before I was born. Its both fun and funny, it’s everything you want from a comic book. Pal’s and Paws is the following story and I don’t know what Hotdog is such a good foil for Jughead. It’s hard to do animal stories in comics but Hotdog has always been able to bridge the gap between funny animal stories and strait comedy stories. The double digest is the greatest value in comics with more comic pages per dollar then any other format. The balance of the digest is filled with Jughead tales spanning the generations. If you are a new fan then all the stories are new to you, but if you are a long time fan you get to re-experience your childhood love of Jughead as the classic tales cover every decade.

Mega Man #7: Mega Man is a video game-inspired comic that is so good you don’t have to have played the game to enjoy it. However if you are a gamer, Mega Man follows the game closely and adds depth and enjoyment to the game you already love. In this issue Mega Man searches for his kidnapped sister. Clues to clear Dr. Light’s name is coming up empty. Dr. Wily is still at large. Maybe Mega Man can save the day with the help of the six Robot Masters, or are the robots wandering right into Dr. Wily’s latest trap? It’s the mixture of both fun and excitement that Ian Flynn delvers better then anyone else.

Green Lantern #3: Green Lantern was never one of my favorite characters, but it is one of the best comics on the rack. Geoff Johns’ have overcome my concerns about a character who only had to think about what he wanted and his ring would do it for him. Hal Jordan has been put through his paces from one set of personal torture to another. Currently he has been stripped of his ring and finds his non-super life is a total mess. His greatest nemesis, Sinestro has offered Hal his powers back and Hal has to answer to Sinestro. However it’s not entirely clear that Hal will survive the experience. To make matters worse, the Guardians of the Universe, who give Green Lantern’s their powers, are now considering pulling the plug on the entire corps and starting over.

Huntress

Huntress #2: I have been a Huntress fan since she first appeared in DC Super Stars. She started as the daughter of Batman and Catwoman, and after the first Crisis she became Helena Bertinelli, a girl whose family was killed by mafia rivals. She has always been a character who could stand up to Batman without flinching. In the current story, Huntress creator Paul Levitz tells a compelling story of Helena Bertinelli’s trip to Naples, where she ends up fighting the mafia to save young girls from a prostitution ring. It’s a full blown, hard core kick ass adventure that should please any comic readers and on top of it all, Marcus To’s art is outstanding.

FemForce #157: FemForce is the first all female team book. Bill Black and team have been building a small but very loyal fan base since 1984. I started reading FemForce with FemForce Special #1. This issue focused on the storyline involving Synn’s loss of control of her powers. The whole FemForce team have repaired to a high-tech government paranormal facility, The Colorado Project, where they hope to preform an experimental medical procedure to restore Synn’s balance. Stardust and Nightveil argue as to whether science or magic is the best cure to Synn’s ills. This issue also introduces N.E.D.O.R. Agents. Set in 1965, the strip answers the question, what if the Standard /Nedor heroes had been revived in 1960s, like the DC and Marvel/Timely heroes were? The store features Fighting Yank, Pyroman, Black Terror, The Commando Cubs, and other actual Golden age heroes, and introduces second-generation heroines Pyrogirl, Candi Future and Fighting Yank, jr. Plus Dinosaur Girl faces an Asian giantess who seems to be the first in an endless wave of new female Axis menaces.

Magneto Not A Hero #1

Magneto Not A Hero #1: Erik Lasher is the best villain in any comic. In that he is so complex that he can be written as both hero and villain. He is the Malcolm X to Professor X’s Martin Luther King. He wants Mutant equality now by any means necessary. He is also a holocaust survivor, who really believes “Never Again.” In this four part story a video surfaces of Magneto murdering members of an anti-mutant group. It’s not clear if the tape is real or a fake. But Erik must answer to the Avengers for the contents of the tape as well as deal with the reaction from within his mutant community. The thing that makes Magneto fun is playing the line between being a mutant rights activist and being a mutant terrorist. Skottie Young does a great job focusing on Magneto and how others deal with him.

Uncanny X-Force #17: In Uncanny X-Force, Rick Remender goes into familiar waters as we are in part 7 of the 8 part Dark Angel Saga. The Saga actually began in June 1986 when Apocalypse first appeared and started a storyline that led to the end of the Angel and the birth of Dark Angel. One of my favorite lines in the book is Warren saying “X-Men don’t kill” especially since Dark Angel does kill and the entire Uncanny X-Force cast are the X-Men who kill. You could even go as far to say they are child killers. The events in Uncanny haven’t matched up with Schism yet. If you are a long -ime X-Men fan there are lots of little payoffs with fond memories of Age of Apocalypse. Even playing up the Phoenix and Weapon X relationship. While I find this all to be great fun and well thought out, I don’t know if it is even accessible to new fans. I hope it is, because this is all the wild violence that made Wolverine a super star in the early days of Uncanny X-Men and now he is leader of a team of like minded mutants.

From Gangsta Rap Posse #2

MATT SENECA: Your comics have always emphasized gridded layouts, but in your latest comic, Gangsta Rap Posse #2, you stick almost exclusively to a basic six-panel grid, with each of the frames the exact same size as all the others.  What makes that layout so appealing to you?

BENJAMIN MARRA: There are several reasons. Firstly, I think it’s the most efficient system for constructing and reading comic book pages. Many masters of comic book art and storytelling have worked off of it, like Kirby, Alan Moore (to an extent), Kyle Baker and Gary Panter. If the six-panel grid was good enough for Kirby, it’s good enough for me. It’s also a matter of time. If my page layout is pre-determined I’ve spared myself from having to solve many additional problems and can spend time focusing exclusively on what the panels contain. Additionally, I think it’s a more accessible format for new readers. A lot of comics these days focus too much on doing unnecessarily crazy page layouts (I guess stemming from Neal Adams’ response to Steranko?) with panels, instead of focusing on what’s within the panels, which is what’s really crucial. Wild panel layouts just confuse readers who aren’t already versed in comics as a language.

(Side note: Something I’ve been thinking about for a while is how comic art has divided into two ways of thinking. One camp followed the path of Jack Kirby striving for power through the abstraction of cartooning. The other followed Neal Adams, striving for classic illustration — like Alex Raymond — and naturalism or realism. Adams’ camp currently dominates superhero artwork, to its detriment. Its peak is personified in Alex Ross, during Justice and Kirby Genesis. Ross also uses weird, obtuse page layouts.)

SENECA: Yeah, Ross layouts are just bad.  It’s always based in Adams’ diagonal compositions, so bizarre looking when they incorporate such realist artwork.  And he especially goes into them when the action starts, which is right when a grid would be most useful.   No flow whatsoever.

You also stay very consistent with the framing you’re using inside your panels.  You use a few close-ups from time to time and draw long establishing shots to kick off scenes, but mostly it’s a simple combination between full figures and two-shots.  Is that for the same reasons of clarity as your six-grid, or does it have to do with the content you’re interested in depicting?

MARRA: Definitely. Clarity, or the attempt for clarity, is what all my decisions are based on. I wasn’t aware of how most of my shot selection was so consistent until you just pointed it out. I’m really into pre-Renaissance Italian painters like Giotto, Fra Angelico and Piero Della Francesca, who all used full-figure shots to tell stories. Those images are probably floating around my unconscious and informing my choices on shot-selection.

Marra's take on Marvel Comics' USAgent

SENECA: How do you approach moving the figures over the space of an entire page, and arranging them within the panels?  They’re pretty much always centered in the middle of the panels, but there’s this sense of perpetual motion, it’s never static.  Is there an approach you use to keep everything moving?

MARRA: A lot of the time it’s completely intuitive, the way I arrange the figures. Usually though I’m thinking about the reader reading left to right and use that as a basis for how to lay out the priority and secondary information in the panel. But then subsequent panels will need to follow what’s been already established in previous panels. I try to have most of the movement flow from left to right since that’s the natural flow for the reader, but that’s not etched in stone for me. Sometimes the best solution is moving the information or forces right to left. I try to keep it consistent within a scene at least. It bugs me when I read comics and the way the characters are set up, say their talking to one another, one is established to be on the left of the other, then the artist flips them arbitrarily. That takes me out of the story, and instantly the comic has failed to me. There can’t be any speed bumps in comics to jolt the reader out of the experience of the story or the comic fails. With regard to an approach to keeping everything in perpetual motion, I’m not conscious of applying a method. I do try to make the characters act. Even if they’re standing or sitting in one place they should be gesturing or just moving slightly, emoting, expressing something. I’m glad to hear that nothing seems static.

From Gangsta Rap Posse #2

SENECA: I think that striving for clarity is key, because you manage to pull off a lot of pages where every shot is an impact shot without losing the focus of the overall scene.  It’s a skill that reminds me of Kirby, who you mentioned as an influence earlier.  Can you talk a little about what you’re trying to pull from Kirby’s comics into your own?

MARRA: What Kirby did that I try to emulate, (which is really just simple, basic, foundational comic book storytelling) is establish information in a scene in one panel — it could be the entire location of the scene or an establishing shot — to set up the blocking of the characters. And then base the logic of subsequent action panels on the previous panels information.

Kirby's storytelling at its best

On Fantastic Four #99 Page 12 (one of my favorite comics ever, which was often referenced in Stan Lee and John Buscema’s How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way) where Johnny Storm is facing off against the Inhumans in the throne room of Black Bolt [above]. In the first panel we can see the positioning of all the characters who will be active on subsequent panels on the page. Johnny in the foreground, ringed by Inhumans protecting Black Bolt and Crystal in Panel One, where we also get a bit of background scenery and flavor. Panel Two is a close up of Crystal with Black Bolt to her side. Kirby hasn’t changed the camera angle much, Black Bolt is still to Cyrstal’s left. Then the same for Panel Three as Johnny evades a strike from Karnak the camera angle hasn’t changed from what’s was established for the reader in panel one. Also in panel three we’re reminded of Medusa’s presence and location in relation to Johnny so there’s the set up for Panel Four. In Panel Four there aren’t even any faces, but we know who the three characters are. Also, Kirby has progressively dropped any background scenery at this point since establishing it clearly in Panel One. Kirby brings the back of Triton’s head and hand position into the composition of Panel Four to set up for his Panel Five close up.It’s also worth noting that the word balloons in Kirby’s page, in addition to adding dialogue to advance the narrative and define character, stand as visual elements pointing to the the most relevant characters in the panels. For instance, Karnak speaking in the first panel alerts us to his presence in the composition to set up for his primary role in Panel Three. It’s all really basic stuff, but I don’t try to just stick to the basics. Sort of like really stripped down rock ‘n roll. You can make a lot of cool-sounding stuff with some attitude and three chords.

This reminds me of a favorite saying  about comic book storytelling Marcos Martin told me that he heard Javier Pulido say to some fan who’s work he was critiquing at a convention, I believe. Javier said, and I’m paraphrasing, “Every panel is both a question and an answer. It answers the question posed by the previous panel and offers a question to be answered by the subsequent panel.”

In David Mazzucchelli’s comic book workshop class he was giving a presentation where he had a slide of a Kirby page, from an early Western comic I think, Two-Gun Kid or Rawhide Kid or Kid Colt, where the hero was in a saloon with a bunch of bad guys approaching him, in the First Panel you could see a wooden chandelier hanging from the ceiling. In Panel Two the hero shoots upward. And in Panel Three the wooden chandelier established from Panel One lands on the group of villains.

Also, Jim Shooter does an excellent analysis of Jack Kirby’s storytelling powers on his blog. In particular I liked this post.

SENECA: In your recent comics you’ve really pulled back on using line weights and spotting blacks — it’s pretty much all basic linework now.  What influenced you to make that decision, and how do you find it affects your pages?

MARRA: I was looking a lot at Matthew Thurber, Matt Lock and Gary Panter stuff. All of them render to a degree and use blacks as shadow. Panter does some cross-hatching with line, too. So does Thurber sometimes, but he uses line for texture mostly, and black is usually used as a color in his drawings, or sometimes a deep shadow. I was looking at comics and drawings that I thought looked fast — 1-800-MICE, Jimbo — that looked like the artist was moving quickly, getting the drawing down decisively, confidently. When I would spot blacks I spent a lot of time filling in those blacks. Time for me is a huge element in creating comics. Actually I heard an audio from a panel Kirby did at an early San Diego comic con, I think? He said that time is always what he and every comic artist is working against. I’m always trying to streamline my process, so eliminating the shadows, using black as a color, sparingly or not at all, and relying solely on line saved me time. I was able to complete Gangsta Rap Posse #2 in a month, from conception to sending it to the printer. A lot of that was because I eliminated shadow and most of the rendering from the drawing. I tried to be very economical with my drawing and just to get across what was necessary for an idea or a narrative information. I think a lot of comic artists, myself included, get too caught up in the aesthetic quality of their drawing instead of just trying to get the information across with as much economy as possible.

How a lack of shadow or spotting blacks affects my pages aesthetically is the look lighter, more raw and less refined compared to the pages which carry shapes of shadow. From a process standpoint I can create pages faster without having to execute shadows and worry about a balance of black and white shape.

I actually like the way a lack of line weight looks. I like a sterile kind of line. But I’ve been looking a lot at Raymond Pettibon recently, particularly the flyers for Black Flag shows and I’m going to use a brush to drop shadows into the next issue of Night Business, which requires shadow as a story from a visual and content standpoint. I’d like for that issue to look like a comic illustrated by Pettibon.

From Night Business

SENECA: Oh man, that’s awesome.  Okay, last question: do you have an approach to balancing the concerns of creating a sequence that reads as clearly as possible and also making drawings that are satisfying as single units?

MARRA: I don’t have an approach trying to balance a sequence of drawings while creating a singular drawing that’s satisfying. I don’t worry about the drawings operating as independent of each other. I’m only concerned with how they function as a sequence. That’s what’s creatively satisfying to me. The construction of the sequence. And the clarity of the storytelling is the most important thing. If the drawings can succeed standing alone that’s a byproduct of my primary intent. I actually have a lot of trouble creating single drawings or illustrations now. I’m more comfortable and it’s more satisfying trying to create a story through several images rather than just one illustration.

Bulletproof thanks to Ben Marra for his time and copy.  You can buy Ben’s comics here, read his ongoing webcomic Zorion The Swordlord starting here, and check out his blog here.

Wolverine and the X-Men #1

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

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

Chris Arrant

If I had $15, I’d be a judicious comics buyer and pick the top four out of over 20 titles I’d want this week. DC/Vertigo makes it slightly easier by making the new Brian Azzarello/Eduardo Risso joint Spaceman #1 only $1. This dollar price point for first issues combined with the $9.99 price point they sometimes do for the first volume of comic trade paperbacks surely gets a lot of traction. Next up I’d get Jason Aaron’s new era of the X-Men in Wolverine & X-Men #1 (Marvel, $3.99) with Chris Bachalo. I’d also get my regular pulls of DMZ #70 (DC/Vertigo, $2.99) and The Walking Dead #90 (Image, $2.99) and last–but first in my stack to read-–would be Secret Avengers #18 (Marvel, $3.99). I hear some Ellis guy is writing it, but the big draw for me is artist David Aja. His Iron Fist run is one of my top favs in comics in the past ten years, and he’s a titan in my book.

If I had $30, I’d first grab this week’s Pilot Season: The Beauty (Image/Top Cow, $3.99) despite not knowing what it’s about because I love the Pilot Season concept. Next up would be the finale of Red Wing #4 (Image, $3.50), Butcher Baker, Righteous Maker #7 (Image, $2.99) and Daredevil #5 (Marvel, $2.99). Looking back at my picks so far, it’s an art-heavy week for me with lots of favorites from Risso to Bachalo, Aja, Burchelli, Huddleston and Martin. That means extra-long reading, as I normally do a second and third read just to soak up the artwork page by page, panel by panel.

If I were to splurge, I would gladly plunk down money for The Manara Library Vol. 1 (Dark Horse, $59.99). I applaud Dark Horse for doing the massive undertaking of collecting all of Manara’s work in seven volume. This first volume collects The Paper Man as well as Indian Summer with Hugo Pratt. It’s going to be a good weekend for me, work be damned.

Graeme McMillan

Kirby: Genesis

For a Kirby fan like myself, this is a pretty great week to have $15: More than half of it would immediately go toward the lengthily titled DC Comics Presents: The Jack Kirby Omnibus Sampler #1 (DC, $7.99), which collects 96 pages of 1950s Kirby from the pages of Adventure Comics, House of Secrets, House of Mystery and other anthology titles. Then I’d throw some coin in the direction of Kirby: Genesis #4 (Dynamite, $3.99), the continuation of Kurt Busiek, Alex Ross and the unsung Jack Herbert’s evocation of Kirbyesque scale and imagination, using some of his lesser-known creations. I’ve really been digging this series, and even if I hadn’t already been planning to pick up this issue, that lovely Ross cover probably would’ve convinced me. Look at the Captain Victory pose! Look at the giant egg-headed character at the back! Not-so-Kirby-esque, but a definite must: The Flash #2 (DC, $2.99), which had a surprisingly lovely first issue last month and earned back all the goodwill lost with the previous series.

If I had $30, there’d be even more Kirby-influence going on, because I’d pick up the first issue of two relaunches of Kirby properties: Jason Aaron and Marc Silvestri’s The Incredible Hulk and Aaron (again!) and Chris Bachalo’s Wolverine and the X-Men (Both Marvel, $3.99). The prelude to the Hulk book at the end of Fear Itself #7 was the very definition of underwhelming, and I didn’t think much of Schism, but I’m holding out hope for these two books nonetheless. Also on the to-buy list: DC’s Legion: Secret Origin (The second retelling of the team’s roots in the last two years, both of them written by Paul Levitz; DC, $2.99) and the second issue of Justice League Dark (DC, $2.99), which was fun if not essential in its debut.

Like Chris, if I had the possibility of splurging this week, it’s be The Manara Library Vol. 1 (Dark Hourse, $59.99). The man’s art is just stunning, and I can’t wait to see it in this deluxe presentation.

Brigid Alverson

The Drops of God

If I had $15, I would have just enough for the first volume of Drops of God, the manga about wine tasting that features two willowy men competing for an inheritance based on how well they can identify 12 different wines. It’s a winning manga formula that has not only won the book several awards but also boosted the popularity of the wines involved, and I can’t wait to read it.

If I had $30, I would add Power Lunch, a new all-ages graphic novel from Oni Press. I like the wacky premise‹a kid gains superpowers from the different foods he eats‹and the creative team of Dean Trippe and J. Torres closes the sale for me.

Splurge: The second volume of A Bride’s Story, Kaoru Mori’s beautifully drawn tale of life on the Silk Road in the 19th century. The first volume didn’t have a lot of story–it was more a series of beautifully drawn moments with occasional bursts of action–which puts it in the splurge rather than must-buy category as far as I’m concerned. And since that only sets me back $16.99, expensive for a weekly buy but cheap for a splurge, I’ll toss in Gladstone’s School for World Conquerors #6, which I believe wraps up a story arc, and The Sixth Gun #16, and call it a very good week indeed.

Chris Mautner

Milo Manara Library

If I had $15:It would be a toss-up between The Smurf Apprentice, the eighth (that many already) volume in Papercutz’s ongoing reprint project, because you can never have too many Smurf comics, or the latest volume (that’s No. 10 if you’re counting) of Yotsuba! the cheery little manga about a effervescent green-haried girl. I’d probably end up going with Yotsuba, only because it’s one of my daughter’s favorite comics, and she’d kill me if I didn’t buy it.

If I had $30:I’d probably take a chance on Drops of God, that manga series about wine that seems to be insanely popular in its home country, if only to see what all the fuss was about.

Splurge:A couple people have mentioned the first volume of the Manara Library, and that’s definitely on my Amazon Wish List, but before that I think I’d pick up the second volume of Floyd Gottfredson’s Mickey Mouse. The first volume was a real treat, not just in terms of reintroducing myself to Gottfredson’s stellar work, but also in the sheer amount of incisive historical information about the strip, Gottfredson and his various Disney helpers. I’m sure Vol. 2 will be more of the same.

Michael May

From All-Star Western #2

If I had $15, I’d continue picking up some New 52 series I’m enjoying along with some talking apes. It hurts–oh it hurts–to pay four bucks for All-Star Western #2 ($3.99), but I’ll do it. I loved the detective story in the first issue with Arkham’s trying to figure out Hex in the voice over, and the art was even better. I don’t think I can keep buying it at that price, but I seem to be hooked for the first story anyway. More affordable are Justice League Dark #2 ($2.99) and Superman #2 ($2.99). JLD is starting with a slow build, but I’m attracted by the concept enough to keep checking it out. I was especially pleased by the attention the first issue of Superman gave to Lois Lane, so I’m hoping there’s more of that as the series continues. Finally, I’d grab Planet of the Apes #7 ($3.99), because that’s a fantastic series that I’ve run out of ways to say I love.

If I had $30, I’d get Aquaman #2 ($2.99). I enjoyed the stronger, tougher Aquaman in the first issue; I just hope the tone becomes less defensive, and quickly. I’m a big fan of the character, but (or maybe because of that) I’m already tired of his constantly explaining how cool he is. Next, I’d add some more expensive comics to the stack, like John Martz’ Heaven All Day ($4) about a lonely man who’s building a mysterious contraption and the abandoned robot he encounters in the process. Then there’s Ape’s Western/Kung Fu/Monster mash-up, Helldorado #1 ($3.99) and Warren Ellis’ Secret Avengers #18 ($3.99).

My splurge item would be Flesh: The Dino Files ($25.99) from Rebellion/2000 AD, because it’s a badass version of Terra Nova. Instead of going back in time to live, the future citizens of our depleted planet go back in time to capture dinosaurs for food. That’s a horribly irresponsible plan, but I’m curious to see if that’s addressed too. I hope it is, but even if not, I’m okay with shutting off the environmentalist part of my brain long enough to enjoy some dino-roping cowboys.

JK Parkin

If you buy one comic this week, it’s gotta be Marvel Adventures Spider-Man #19.

A piece of artwork by “The King” has resurfaced in an auction from the estate of one-time Kirby inker Marven Stein. This artwork is from an aborted comic strip pitch called Space Busters by Kirby and writer Dave Wood. The strip never saw life, instead evolving into another strip titled Sky Masters of the Space Force, which was syndicated in 1958. In 2000, Pure Imagination collected them in a single tome that’s worth tracking down.

Created in the mid-50s, this was after Kirby’s initial tenure at Marvel (then Timely) in the 1930s and ’40s, but before he returned to the publisher in the ’60s for the creation of the Marvel universe as we know it. Kirby’s ’50s work is relatively under-appreciated given the commercial peaks for him in the ’40s and ’50s, but this work shows Kirby as his style evolves into what he later became famous (again) for at Marvel.

Check out this page, and get in on the bidding when it starts Nov. 4!

Youngblood

Creators | With the announcement that Rob Liefeld’s Extreme Studios is back in business, former Extreme Studios employee and current Image Comics publisher Eric Stephenson reflects on his time with the studio. “From 1992-1998, Extreme Studios was more or less my life. Youngblood, Supreme, Brigade, Bloodstrike, Team Youngblood, New Men, Prophet, Youngblood: Strikefile, Bloodpool, Glory… We put out a lot of comics, and for the most part everyone involved was incredibly young. Rob and I were amongst the oldest at 25. So many of the artists involved in various aspects of production were just out of their teens, and that made the work as frustrating as it was fun. But looking back, the main thing I remember about that time is Rob wanted to share his success with people who loved comics and wanted to make a living in the business as much as he had.” [It Sparkles!]

Webcomics | A Distant Soil creator Colleen Doran, who began serializing the comic online in 2009, notes “my bottom line is up significantly, and my online audience is ten times higher than when I started the five day a week online serialization of A Distant Soil 2.5 years ago.” She also shares advice she received when she started the endeavor that hasn’t worked for her. [A Distant Soil]

Tom Morello

Creators | Orchid writer and musician Tom Morello shares his thoughts on his new book, politics and social issues in comics, and the story in Action Comics #900 that featured Superman renouncing his citizenship, among other topics. [Vulture]

Creators | Speaking of politics in comics, Marzena Sowa talks to Hero Complex about her upcoming Vertigo graphic novel Marzi: “When I started to write Marzi, the first stories concerned my daily life in Poland: I wrote about my family, my neighbors. Then, progressively, political questions started to appear and I realized that the politics had so much space in my childhood life I hadn’t even imagined. Marzi is getting bigger, and her curiosity and will to understand the world is getting bigger too. She feels concerned by the world and she tries to understand it — understand why it doesn’t work correctly. At a certain point she starts to speak, she is not only a mute witness of what is happening in her country. She starts also to claim her own freedom; but for instance she is maybe too small to be heard by her parents, but she won’t give it up.” [Hero Complex]

Creators | The New York Times profiles the husband-and-wife cartooning duo Raina Telgemeier and Dave Roman. [The New York Times]

Creators | Phil Hester and Jonathan Lau discuss their work on Dynamite’s Bionic Man comic book. [TFAW]

Creators | Mark Waid talks about his work on Marvel’s recent revival of the CrossGen title Ruse. [Mulholland Books]

The Death-Ray

Creators | Daniel Clowes talks about re-release of “The Death Ray” and his “drift toward more sympathetic figures” in his work: “I decided at a certain point that one of my goals is to find a way to connect with the characters no matter how awful they may seem or how hard they are to be around, to try to look at their humanity and find a way to love them by the end.” [Montreal Gazette]

Creators | Jonathan Liu catches up with Anya’s Ghost creator Vera Brosgol after sitting on a panel with her at Portland, Oregon’s Wordstock. [Wired]

Creators | Underground comics legend Robert Crumb shares his other “passion” — early 20th-century popular music. [BlogCritics]

Creators | Robin Furth discusses adapting Stephen King’s The Dark Tower to the comics medium, collaborating with Peter David, and Stephen King’s thoughts and involvement. [Biff Bam Pop! - part 1, part 2]

Comics | Saladin Ahmed looks at four of comics legend Jack Kirby’s “most ethnically adventurous creations” — The Thing, the Howling Commandos, Black Panther and The Black Racer. [tor.com]

Black Hood

Comics | The Beast Must Die at the Mindless Ones blog looks back at Mark Wheatley and Rick Burchett’s covers for Black Hood, from DC’s early 1990s !mpact line [Mindless Ones]

Commentary | Robot 6′s own Sean T. Collins reviews Brian Ralph’s Daybreak. [The Comics Journal]

Fandom | Looking for a Halloween costume? Found Item Clothing details 34 pop culture costumes you can make on your own, including Wonder Woman and Charlie Brown. [Found Item Clothing]

Robots | The Calgary Sun spotlights Phil Allen, who created a giant robot he hopes to sell to help pay for his wife’s liberation treatment for multiple sclerosis. “Science fiction has been talking about robots for 70 years and now I know why there aren’t any … It’s a huge undertaking when you decide to build one.” [Calgary Sun]

The Dare Detectives: The Snow Pea Plot

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

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

Ape

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

Arcana

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

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

Archaia

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

Andie and the Alien

Archie

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

Bliss On Tap

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

Boom!

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

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

Dark Horse

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

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

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

Ningen's Nightmares

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

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

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

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

DC

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

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

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

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

Dynamite

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

Romeo and Juliet: The War

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

1821

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

Fantagraphics

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

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

First Second

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

Hermes

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

The Hero Initiative

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

Madman: 20th Anniversary Monster!

Humanoids

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

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

IDW

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

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

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

Image

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

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

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

Marvel

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

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

Moonstone

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

NBM

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

Oni

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

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

Th3rd World

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

Titan

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

That’s it for me. What did I miss?

B.P.R.D Hell On Earth: Russia #1

Hello and welcome to What Are You Reading? This week our special guest is Dark Horse assistant editor Jim Gibbons, who I spoke to about his new job on Friday.

To see what Jim and the Robot 6 crew have been reading, click below …

*****

Brigid Alverson

Snarked

Top of my stack this week was the first issue of Roger Langridge’s Snarked! His remained Walrus and Carpenter are con men with hearts of gold, and while neither of them is too bright, the Walrus has a certain practical ability to get things done. So when Princess Scarlett and her baby brother, Prince Rusty, are in danger because of scheming by the palace advisers, none other than the Cheshire Cat himself points her toward the rascally pair. It’s good, old-fashioned comedy with a familiar storyline and gentle humor that both children and adults can relate to.

I also enjoyed the second issue of B.P.R.D. Hell on Earth: Russia. I feel like this is a very muscular story that sort of grabs you and drags you in. Kate Corrigan and Johann Strauss are in Russia investigating some sort of icky problem, and the plot moves along briskly in this issue with a bit of exposition and a nasty case of possession. There seem to be several strands to the story, and it will be interesting to see how Mike Mignola and co. tie them all up.

With the third volume of their Archie Archives, Dark Horse has found their formula — minimal front matter (this one features an introduction by Archie Comics president Mike Pellerito but no other historical information) followed by a solid collection of vintage comics. Volume 3 features comics from 1943 and 1944, and in addition to the odd look of the characters — Archie has prominent buck teeth, Jughead looks like one of the Dead End Kids and seldom opens his eyes‹there’s the strangeness of wartime Riverdale, where goats run freely and people worry about ration points. A bit of background on these comics would have been nice; a number were inked by Janice Valleau, whom David Hajdu highlighted in the opening pages of The Ten Cent Plague as an established comics artist who left the field during the dark days of the 1950s.

Tim O’Shea

Sweet Tooth

Sweet Tooth #26: I hate to agree with my pal Dugan Trodglen, but I suspect he is right when he feared writer Jeff Lemire’s involvement in the new DC52 would negatively impact the quality of this book. I am a huge fan of guest artist Matt Kindt, but this first installment of a three-issue arc bored me immensely, no matter how effectively Kindt drew and painted the story, Lemire’s script was heavy on narration and less engaging than what I come to expect on Sweet Tooth.

Huntress #1: Remember the whole new DC52 and how everything is starting from square one (unless you were connected to Batman [and were not Barbara Gordon])? Well Paul Levitz was writing Huntress in the late 1970s (albeit Helena Wayne back then) and Levitz is writing her again more than 30 years later. Way to shake it up, DC. I bought
this book against my better judgment because I have enjoyed artist Marcus To so much in the past. Huntress going against Italian organized crime…again. Yippie. Won’t be back for issue #2.

Action Comics #2: So Rags Morales and Brent Anderson split up art duties on writer Grant Morrison’s second issue. Anderson’s Lois Lane is distinctive (in a good way). Just wondering, am I the only person that tires of Kryptonian dialogue that no one understands? Small quibble, I promise. The book continues to be a fairly interesting read, though clearly rehashing the same Superman ground we’ve seen before. A great deal of the new DC52 smacks of high-end Elseworlds so far, but for now it’s selling quite well of course.

Thunderbolts #164: Modern day pseudo-Thunderbolts trapped in 1943 Austria along with the Invaders provides for some hilarious faux wholesome period dialogue (Boomerang saying “Aw, shucks” for example) from writer Jeff Parker. Artist Kev Walker looks immensely stronger on art (unlike last week’s complaint) when inked by Terry Pallot. Really hoping next week I will not have to stare at another Marvel house ad touting an Avengers Solo book launching October 2010 (really nice attention to detail, gang).

Hulk #42: Wonder what happens when Thunderbolt Ross starts dabbling in foreign policy as the Red Hulk? Nothing that makes Steve Rogers happy, but it does make me content (as well as set up the foundation for some interesting guest stars) in the first installment of the “Hulk of Arabia” arc. With the series increased publishing schedule, there’s no way that artist Gabriel Hardman can draw every issue. So I was pleased to see that Patrick Zircher’s artistic style (while not exactly like Hardman’s) in this issue is not a jarring transition to a style that clashes with Hardman.

JK Parkin

Ready Player One

I was traveling for the past couple weeks, visiting family and friends in Texas, which meant I had some down time to catch up on some reading — mostly on my iPad. Considering it’s setting and subject matter, I think Ernest Cline’s novel Ready Player One was written specifically for me. Dystopian future (check), virtual reality (check), a street-smart teenager (check) and more ’80s references than you could roll a 20-sided dice at (huh?). The story is set in a future where the real world is something everyone wants to escape from, but luckily there’s a virtual reality world, OASIS, that’s filled with various planets, quests and avatars of all kinds for someone like our hero, Wade, to dive into. Wade’s a poor kid in Oklahoma looking for a break, and when the creator of the virtual reality world Wade pretty much lives in dies, the kid goes on a quest to solve the riddle the guy left in his will. Fans of the old Atari game Adventure will remember the three castles you had to find the keys for; James Halliday set up a similar quest in the OASIS, and whoever can find the three keys, open the gates and solve the puzzles within will not only get the guy’s enormous fortune, but also control of the OASIS. Halliday was raised in the ’80s on John Hughes movies, TV sitcoms, video games, comic books, Dungeons & Dragons and Rush songs, and all of that comes into play as Wade tries to solve the puzzle before anyone else — including a shady corporation who wants control of the OASIS. Just following along to see what references Cline would throw in next was fun, but what really made the book was the main character, an underdog you can’t help but cheer for.

On the comic front, I downloaded a few on the road, including the first two chapters of the new Ultimate Spider-Man and the last two chapters of X-Men Schism. I haven’t read any USM since maybe the second or third story arc; I was always good with the first Peter Parker and never felt the need to follow the second, despite the fact that the book was well crafted. But I was curious enough about Miles Morales to see how they’d introduce him, and after reading the first two issues I can say I’m hooked, at least for a few more issues.

As for Schism, while the series read like a prologue to the upcoming X-Men relaunch, i.e. it didn’t feel very self-contained and didn’t introduce a lot of surprises, I dug some of the elements of it. One the new Hellfire Club, and second, Jason Aaron’s Wolverine. I never read his take on the regular Wolverine series, but I think I see some trades in my future. And I’ll at least be checking out the first few issues of Wolverine and the X-Men later this year.

Jim Gibbons

The majority of what I end up reading is directly related to my work as an assistant editor, but here are a few things I’ve been enjoying in my spare time…

The Coffin

Mike Huddleston’s work on Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan’s The Strain has been consistently blowing me away, so I’ve been checking out a bunch of Mike’s other work. I recently read the Phil Hester penned The Coffin after hearing Guillermo del Toro give it a personal recommendation at Comic-Con—that’s a pretty good pedigree as far as I’m concerned. It’s a very enjoyable and really great looking read about keeping souls on earth after death in robot “coffins.” Up next, I’ll be delving into Huddleston’s The Homeland Directive written by Robert Vendetti. I’ve flipped through it and the art looks phenomenal. I’m psyched to jump into that one.

B.P.R.D Hell On Earth: Russia #1 was an amazing first issue. Tyler Crook is really hitting his stride and I’m super excited to see how the Bureau interacts with their Russian counterpart. Given, B.P.R.D. is one of my favorite comic series of all time, so… not a hard sell for me there regardless.

Based on what little I’ve read, Green River Killer is shaping up to be one of the best graphic novels of the year.

In the realm of superheroes, I’ve been enjoying Rick Remender’s Uncanny X-Force. It’s much preferable take on the X-Men’s wetworks team than some comics in recent years, as far as I’m concerned—a lot less angsty and a lot more fun. Plus, the Age of Apocalypse nostalgia they’ve been throwing in there seems directed specifically at readers like me who grew up thinking AoA was one of the best things to ever happen in comics.

I’m always working my way through a few massive archival books. Right now I’ve got bookmarks in Marvel’s gigantic Howard the Duck Omnibus and the Jack Kirby’s Eternals Omnibus. And if I do things right, I’ve always got unread Stan Sakai comics around. Right now, I’m trucking through Space Usagi and starting up Fantagraphics’ beautiful Usagi Yojimbo omnibus. Sakai’s an absolute master, so I always aim to have some of his work on hand.

by Giorgio Comolo

The Kirby Museum’s Kirby Vision blog points to a gallery of Jack Kirby-inspired cosmic artwork by artist Giorgio Comolo, and the results are pretty astounding. Click on through to check out several pieces, including some DC/Marvel mash-ups like the Teen Titans vs. the X-Men in the shadow of the Anti-Monitor vs. Galactus, Silver Surfer vs. Orion and more.

New Gods (1984 reprint series) #6 page 30.  Jack Kirby.

The comics-critical landscape that has sprung up around Jack Kirby — often the man himself as much as his work — in the past few decades can be worryingly polarized.  Though there’s plenty of good, clear-headed writing on what Kirby did with and for comics, there’s reams more of both hagiographic praise (which is fair enough, because this is one of the great artists not just in comics but of the 20th century) and the-emperor-has-no-clothes teardowns (which is also fair, because no one short of world leaders can really be said to deserve the amount of hosannas that have been heaped on Kirby).

Of the brickbats most commonly thrown at Kirby’s golden legacy, one of the most compelling is that he very rarely “told a story” in the traditional manner with his sequencing.  Especially in his action scenes, Kirby’s storytelling style was often simply too wild to support “correct” sequencing, with each panel giving a clue to the content of the next and every prop and figure grounded in recognizable three-dimensional space.  In Kirby fight scenes characters transmogrify from one physical state to another between panels, hurl each other across vast chasms of space before clashing again within an instant, and reveal heretofore unknown powers as the conflicts crescendo.  Usually there’s just too much going on in a Kirby fight scene for the traditional values of motion tracking and choreography to hold much sway.  It’s also why Kirby comics are so verbose: take out the explanatory word balloons and you haven’t a hope of understanding the specifics of what’s going on half the time.  What Kirby captured in his action scenes wasn’t the balletic wax and wane of physical confrontation so much as impact after impact after impact.  It’s up to his readers to decide how valuable an approach that is, but its undeniable that he did it brilliantly.

What’s interesting about this particular Kirby page is the way it showcases the artist’s chopped-up, almost discontinuous approach to action while remaining legible without any expository dialogue or narration riding sidecar.  It’s been mentioned all over that by the 1980s Kirby’s drawing ability was no longer what it had been in his mid-’60s prime, but what gets brought up much less frequently is just how much sharper Kirby’s sequencing got after his 1979-80 stint as an animation artist for Ruby-Spears.  A few years roughing out stories for a medium in which the audience plays the role of passive receptor rather than active participant had subtly changed Kirby’s comics art once he returned.  Here the blocking is surgically clean, panel after panel capturing the dominant visual element dead in its center with none of the off-kilter, perspective-less drifting that could bleed into Kirby’s rougher pages.  The short action sequence in panels 1 through 3, while still stitched together from a series of impact shots, provides through-lines from one panel to the next nonetheless: from Orion to Orion and a rock to the rock alone.

It’s that grounding in more traditional storytelling values that allows this page to “read” without the words that are stuck onto it, and it’s the silence that makes this page so powerful.  Kirby’s narration, while spectacular as pure prose, was most often there to push readers through panels whose connection to one another was stretched to the breaking point, providing a thread to follow through them.  The unfortunate aspect of this is that it’s tough to linger in many of Kirby’s best action sequences because of it: the words pull you over the panels rather than leaving you stranded in pictures whose relationships to one another are less clear than usual.  Here, however, everything the reader needs is in the pictures, and the thunderous visual noise of their impacts is the only narration needed.

The way the lack of word balloons allows Kirby to design his page is also notable.  Kirby drew for the panel, using gridded layouts almost exclusively and rarely creating sequential pages that also read as “canvases” a la his contemporary Jim Steranko.  Again, it worked beautifully — Kirby comics are some of the most immersive around — but without the busy, visually unappealing white space of word balloons crowding up the page, Kirby can use his whites in a more painterly fashion, knocking out the backgrounds of the first and last panels to create a nymmetrical axis for the rest of the page to orbit around, as well as a line indicating the basic directionality of the page’s flow, from top left to bottom right.  Just as impressive is the rhythm each individual panel’s composition contributes to: the vertical force of panels one and two gives way to the centerpiece of the horizontally oriented panel three before being mirrored by the similarly vertical panels four and five.  Kirby still isn’t drawing for the page as much as he is for the panel, but he’s obviously thinking about both, creating a lushly harmonic pattern for his individual boxes to fit into.

This single page holds so much of what made Kirby great — twinned power and grace, simplicity and complexity, and above all pictures that speak louder than words.

SPX

Conventions | Executive director Warren Bernard said attendance at this year’s Small Press Expo in Bethesda, Maryland, was up 10 to 15 percent, with exhibitors reporting strong sales and many sell-outs. “A great line-up of new material was partially responsible, but the region itself is also a factor — the economy around metro DC has remained relatively stable even in the recession, and a lot of people with good jobs seem to save up their money for the whole year just to spend at SPX,” reported Publishers Weekly’s Heidi MacDonald and Calvin Reid. Because of the growth, next year the show will move to a bigger room with about 50 percent more space. Daniel Clowes and Chris Ware scheduled to attend. [Publishers Weekly]

Organizations | The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, meanwhile, reports that it raised $12,500 at SPX, thanks to efforts like the Jeff Alexander Memorial Benefit auction and fundraising activities involving Craig Thompson, Roz Chast and Sara Varon. [press release]

Michael George

Legal | Instructions and opening statements are expected today in the second trial of former comics retailer Michael George, charged with first-degree murder in the 1990 shooting death of his first wife Barbara in their Clinton Township, Michigan, comic store. The five-day jury selection process wrapped up Tuesday. George, 51, was convicted in 2008, but a judge set aside the conviction, citing prosecutorial misconduct and the emergence of new evidence. [The Detroit News]

Sales charts | John Jackson Miller, who yesterday posted commentary on comic and graphic novel sales in August, has additional information about sales of Justice League #1 thus far. He notes that North American orders for the book came in at 186,000 — a figure that only includes preorders Diamond Comic Distributors actually shipped to North America for sale on Aug. 31. It does not include orders for the United Kingdom or late-placed pre-orders that couldn’t be filled until September. He also notes that many of the best-selling comics of this century continued to sell for months, not weeks, “with the best seller of the 2000s, the Obama Spider-Man issue, getting nearly half its sales in the second month with a later printing,” Miller writes. “A report on a single day’s sales should be regarded like the opening day of a film: illustrative of enthusiasm, but on its own just a portion of the picture.” [Comichron]

Jack Kirby Museum

Organizations | The Jack Kirby Museum and Research Center, which has existed as a virtual organization since 2005, is looking for a temporary physical location in New York City’s Lower East Side, in addition to funding to pay for it. They plan to display original artwork and Kirby artifacts, and feature prominent guest speakers and educational programs. Ultimately organizers hope to have a permanent location. [Kirby Museum]

Organizations | The Hero Initiative reminds California residents that if they designated the organization as the beneficiary of supermarket chain Ralph’s reward-card program, which allows users to select a charity that Ralph’s will donate money to whenever the card is used, it’s time to re-register your card. Ralph’s wipes the slate clean every September. [Hero Initiative]

Retailing | CNN’s Geek Out! blog talks to Zack Overton, a clerk at Atlanta’s Oxford Comics, about DC’s “New 52″ relaunch, Marvel’s counter programming, digital comics and the store’s outlook for the rest of the year. [CNN Geek Out]

While the East Coast was reeling from Hurricane Irene this weekend, much of the rest of comicdom was celebrating an elemental force of the art form’s own: Jack Kirby, the King of Comics, would have been 94 yesterday. As always, the best tribute comes from Tom Spurgeon, who has assembled a massive, gorgeous image gallery in homage to the titanically talented cartoonist. Tom does this every year, and every year he describes it — accurately — as “a tiny, even insignificant sample of his awesome image-making power.” All of us involved in any way in the North American segment of comics are forever in Kirby’s debt, some more directly than others, and the minutes spent looking at this gallery burn away the controversy so that the size and scope of his achievement and his contribution to this medium shine out more clearly than ever. Go and gaze upon the tiger force at the heart of the art form we all love.