So what sorts of comic books are we providing for our children, our future these days? As it turns out, some pretty good ones—hell, some pretty great ones.

This week saw the release of three particular comic books–not graphic novels or tankobon, but good-old-fashioned 20-some pages and some staples comic books—that featured superior writing and art, some of that art coming from world-class cartoonists.

And all three of those comics, oddly enough, are based on cartoon series.

When I was a child, there were comic books based on cartoons (cartoons that were often based on toy lines), and while they were readily available in drug and grocery stores, and you could buy one with a dollar bill and get change back, they weren’t exactly the highest quality product.

But some of today’s based-on-cartoons comics can put to shame much of what the “Big Six” direct market publishers release for their grown-up audiences.

Take Batman: The Brave and The Bold #16, for example. Writer Sholly Fisch and artists Rick Burchett and Dan Davis have been producing but one of the five, ongoing monthly titles with the name “Batman” in the logo (if you expand the definition of Batman comics to include those starring his many sidekicks and villains, the Batman line composes the greatest majority of DC’s “New 52” imprint). Theirs is also the only one you can hand to anyone, regardless of age, to enjoy, and the only one that regularly features done-in-one, complete stories where prior knowledge of previous issues or Batman history is rewarded but not required.

It’s rated “E for Everyone,” not “K for Kids,” and actually is for everyone.

In this issue, fashion criminal The Mad Mod (an old 1960s Teen Titans villain that was reinvented for the 2003-2008 Teen Titans cartoon) and his gang steal Batman’s various specialty suits (many recognizable from Silver Age covers, toy lines and/or episodes of the cartoon), which he was displaying during Gotham Fashion Week, and then they don the gimmick-laden gear to attack him with.

This draws the attention of Batgirl and Bat-Mite, and the latter begins courting the former with his magical powers, causing comedic chaos.

Like each issue, it works quite well as a straight-ahead comedy adventure, but it is positively laced with allusions to obscure bits of Batman and comic history, which devoted fans will notice and, I imagine, be delighted in.

The care and craft that goes into Burchett’s art has always been one of the book’s chief pleasures for me (as I’ve stated often…perhaps so often some of you are sick of hearing me go on about it). As someone who enjoys looking at and dissecting art, it’s fun to see an artist draw his version of a character designed for an animated series, which in turn is based on a classic comic book artist. And Burchett usually draws the characters in the scripts to resemble the work of their creators or the artists they’re most associated with, so we’ll see a C.C. Beck Captain Marvel and a Mac Raboy Captain Marvel Jr. sharing space with a Dick Sprang-by-way-of-cartoon Batman.

Here it’s a Brave and The Bold-style Batman, with a  Teen Titans-style Mad Mod, a Bruce Timm-style Batgirl and a Sheldon Moldoff-style Bat-Mite.

Bat-Mite’s reality-warping, fourth wall-breaking powers also offer up some surprisingly sharp and incise meta-textual criticism. I don’t know how intentional Fisch’s take on women in superhero comics is in this story, but there’s a telling page where Bat-Mite offers her the co-starring role in a Bat-Mite/Batgirl comic book because, without him, her options as a female character are fairly limited:

If this weren’t rated “E for Everyone,” it wouldn’t take much imagination  to see a few more options, one of which might  include a refrigerator. (His next attempt, by the way, is to drop her from a great height so that he can rescue her, since that’s how Superman won Lois Lane’s heart).

Sadly, this is the very last issue of Batman: The Brave and The Bold, leaving the new comics racks without a Batman comic book a kid can read without fear of seeing, say, The Joker’s flayed-off face nailed to a wall. Surely another one will come along eventually, but it’s a strange hole for DC to leave in its publishing strategy.

The same day that great comic shipped its last issue, another shipped its first issue: BOOM! Studio’s Kaboom imprint launched Adventure Time, a new series based on the popular cartoon.

This one is written by Ryan North, the cartoonist responsible for Dinosaur Comics, one of the best of the funny webcomics, and drawn by Shelli Paroline and Braden Lamb, in a style that seems to match that of the show, while working well in static form. It also features a back-up strip by Aaron Renier, responsible for 2005’s excellent Spiral-Bound and 2010’s even-better Unsinkable Walker Bean, and, among this first issue’s too-many variant covers, there’s one by indie superstar Jeffrey Brown.

I don’t have cable so I’ve never seen the show (although, on the strength of the comic, I did pick up a DVD of it from the library; Say, did you know there’s a Young Justice cartoon now? And one starring The Avengers?).

It opens with a pretty thorough explanation of the dramatis personae, which manages to be entertaining as well as informative (something the Marvel recap pages almost never pull off), which was pretty much all I needed to go on.

Some of the specifics were familiar enough from fantasy and role-playing games—a lich and a bag-of-holding figure prominently in the conflict set up in this first issue—but the main selling point was the attractively weird artwork, in which show creator’s Pendleton Ward simplified-to-abstraction characters move about in a brilliantly colored, Nintendo-esque playground world, having fun if dangerous adventures. There’s a scene where human Finn rides stretchy dog Jake, whose four legs are ridiculously elongated so that he resembles one of Salvador Dali’s spindly-legged elephants, confronting a floating skeletal wizard who is sucking the world into an open sack. They begin their battle with a “battle burn,” their version of the dozens.

The friends-hanging-out-vibe juxtaposed with the surreal but mass market-friendly visuals make for quite a fun reading experience, and hey, bonus Aaron Renier. And next issue will feature a strip by Lucy Knisley!

Such talented all-ages and indie cartoonists are a regular fixture in SpongeBob Comics, which shipped its seventh monthly issue this week. R. Sikoryak is a regular fixture, always illustrating the table of contests, which he turns into a comic strip featuring pirates, as is James Kochalka, who usually contributes several short, newspaper-funnies-page style strips, and does so in this issue, in addition to a longer four-page strip.

This month’s also features a longer, 10-page strip by Graham Annable (Grickle), which the painted cover alludes to.

Editor Chris Duffy and publisher/creator Stephen Hillenburg allow the artists involved a lot of slack when it comes to interpreting the characters into their styles, so that a Kochalka SpongeBob looks exactly like a Kochalka drawing, and Annable’s has the eyes, expressions, limbs and movements of one of his figures, despite the great gulf in design.

Artist Jacob Chabot has the most “straight” take on the characters, his designs reflecting those of the TV show perfectly, and that provides enough of an anchor for some of the wilder interpretations in each issue.

As a child, I certainly enjoyed the issues of Marvel’s Transformers and G.I. Joe comics relatives would pick up for me at the drug store occasionally—usually to help me pass the time when I was home sick from school for a few days—and I’m sure they played some small part in my becoming so interested in comics as a teenager and young adult, but my inner child is thus nevertheless jealous of today’s kids, and the comics-based-on-cartoons they get.

Why, in my day we were lucky to get one excellent issue of a comic book based on a cartoon series a year. Kids today can find three in the same week!

The Comic Book Fan’s Worst NIGHTMARE!

Jeffrey Brown, Ming Doyle, Michael Kupperman and several other creators have contributed to The Comic Book Fan’s Worst NIGHTMARE!, a mini-comic that highlights the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund‘s current casework. In particular, the comic highlights the case of “Brandon X,” who is facing a minimum sentence of one year in prison for possessing horror and fantasy manga on his laptop computer. His case is expected to go to trial in 2012, and legal expenses are estimated to run around $150,000.

You can read the whole comic on the CBLDF site or download it via comiXology.

It’s an annual tradition to look forward to: The alternative comics publisher Top Shelf has unveiled its “Massive $3 Sale,” in which they’re pricing down their catalog to near-ridiculous levels — in many cases $3, and in many more cases just one lousy American dollar. For very little money, you can rack up a big chunk of one of the best comics publishers’ best comics.

What would I get? At the $3 level, Kolbeinn Karlsson’s The Troll King — a surreal collection of intertwined short stories that for once lives up to the overused, rarely true label “fairy tales for grown-ups” — is basically a must-buy. I’d also be sure to pick up Andy Hartzell’s Fox Bunny Funny, an unpredictable and impeccably cartooned funny-animal allegory about conformity and self-discovery. Lilli Carré’s remarkably assured debut collection of satirical short stories, Tales of Woodsman Pete, is another no-brainer. If you’re interested in rounding out your Alan Moore collection with some of his more off-the-beaten-path efforts, you can get all eight issues of his underground-culture zine Dodgem Logic, his prose novel Voice of the Fire, and his poetry/photography collaboration with José Villarubia The Mirror of Love for three bucks a pop. And you can pick up all three issues of Jeffrey Brown’s one-man action anthology series Sulk — Bighead & Friends, a return to his genuinely funny superhero parody characters; Deadly Awesome, an 84-page mixed martial arts fight comic; and The Kind of Strength That Comes from Madness, a grab bag of sci-fi/fantasy/action/adventure spoofs — for a buck apiece, which is a steal.

Beyond the deepest discounts, you’ll rarely find the publisher’s heavy (literally–these books are big) hitters priced as low as they are now: Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell’s From Hell, Campbell’s Alec: The Year’s Have Pants omnibus, and Jeff Lemire’s complete Essex County are all $20, while Craig Thompson’s Blankets is just $22.50.

And hey, if you’re totally new to all of these books, so much the better. Maybe DC’s New 52 initiative has you in an “I’ll try anything for $3 a book” mood? If so, put a few bucks aside and get some full-fledged graphic novels for that price or lower. You’ll be glad you did.

The third issue of The Devastator, the humor anthology edited by Geoffrey Golden and Amanda Meadows, comes out at the end of the month, and the theme this time around is cats. Cats! Who doesn’t love cats?

I know someone who definitely loves cats — cartoonist Jeffrey Brown, creator of Cat Getting Out of a Bag and Other Observations. Brown has a two-page strip in the upcoming volume; Devastator sent us the first page, which you can view after the jump, but you’ll have to buy the anthology to see the second page (see what they did there?) Each issues is a mix of comics, prose pieces and a whole bunch of humor, and can be bought through their website.

*****

Good-Bye Chunky Rice

Cartoonists rarely produce great work right out of the starting gate. It usually it takes lots of time and lots of effort for an artist to hone their style and storytelling abilities. Debut comics — even those made by the greats — rarely offer any indication of what type of treasures lie ahead. Even Chris Ware had to make Floyd Farland before he could produce Jimmy Corrigan.

Still, sometimes a cartoonist seems to spring out of the sea foam fully formed, producing a work that not only draws attention and great buzz, but also indicates exactly where they’re headed — what direction they plan to take as an artist and what you as a reader can expect from them.

Here then, are six debut comics that made people go “Who the heck is this guy? And why haven’t I heard of him before?” I’m sure I missed someone. I always do. Be a dear and let me know who I forgot in the comments section, won’t you?

Night Fisher

1. Goodbye Chunky Rice by Craig Thompson. True, Thompson had done a few mini-comics before Chunky was published, but those weren’t seen by many until years later. Chunky was really the book that introduced readers to Thompson. The reaction to the book was swift and laudatory. I remember people buzzing about the book at SPX that year, wondering who this guy was and how could he produce so moving and assured a work at so young an age. With only three major books to his name so far (four if you count this year’s forthcoming Habibi), he’s remained one of the more beloved and significant creators in the alt-comix landscape.

2. Clumsy by Jeffrey Brown. Rare is the cartoonist who gets a glowing cover blurb from Chris Ware on their very first comic. Brown, however, was lucky enough to do so with his debut book, a cringe-tastic tale of awkward, and ultimately doomed, young love. He’s shown quite a bit of diversity since then, especially in humor books like Incredible Change-Bots, but I don’t know that he’s produced anything as emotionally affecting as this particular title yet.

3. Yummy Fur by Chester Brown. Looking back, it seems hard to believe that Yummy Fur was Brown’s first comic, that he was that good right out of the gate with so few missteps, but it’s true. That very first issue, with the start of the Ed the Happy Clown serial, stories about toilet paper that killed people and oddities like Walrus Blubber Sandwich let readers know from the get-go that there was something unique and potentially unsettling about this particular comic. I remember reading that first issue in my local comic store at the time and being profoundly unnerved by it. So much so that it actually scared me off of Brown’s subsequent work for several years afterward. That’s gotta be a mark of some kind of quality, no?

Lose #1

4. Bone by Jeff Smith. You could ostensibly argue that Smith’s first professional comics work was Bone’s precursor, Thorn, a comic strip he drew for his college newspaper while enrolled at Ohio State University. You could make that argument, but I’m not going to. For all intents and purposes, that first issue of Bone was Smith’s debut into the world of comics, a debut which proceeded to change the landscape for all-ages and alternative comics for years to come. Smith had obviously spent a inordinate amount of time thinking about and developing the series beforehand, since  it’s so assured and fully formed from the first page. His craft and storytelling abilities are just as confident in that first issue as they are in the last.

5. Night Fisher by R Kikuo Johnson. As with Chunky Rice, there was quite a bit of hype and brouhaha over the publication of Johnson’s inaugural work. Publisher Gary Groth even compared its release to the arrival of the first issue of Love and Rockets, or words to that effect. It’s not that good, although this tale of disaffected adolescence and drug dealing in Hawaii is certainly compelling and suggests that Johnson is an artist capable of producing great work. Unfortunately, he has yet to follow up on that initial promise. But Night Fisher still marks him as an artist to watch out for.

6. Lose #1 by Michael DeForge. What planet is DeForge from that he is able to produce such stellar work with such seeming effortlessness? And how is he able to make comics so profoundly creepy? So far he’s produced three issues of Lose and a rather wide assortment of mini-comics and anthology contributions with next to no drop in quality. The confidence this guy exudes on the page, especially in that first issue, is rather shocking honestly. I say we can expect great things from him, but he’s already produced great things, starting with that very first issue of Lose.

Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark

Broadway | The $70-million musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark will emerge Thursday from its three-week hiatus a vastly changed production, featuring five additional flying sequences, expanded roles for Aunt May, Uncle Ben and Mary Jane, a scaled back (and transformed) Arachne, new songs and a lighter tone. “There is still a ton of emotional complexity in the musical, and some of that original darkness,” says playwright and comics writer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, who was hired to help rework the script. “But we all also wanted a show that would honor the rich legacy and history of the Spider-Man story: the high school love story, the pretty girl next door, the science geek who is coping with new powers.” The new opening night is set for June 14. [The New York Times]

Publishing | Gregory Noveck, former senior vice president-creative affairs at DC Entertainment, has been hired as senior vice president of production for Syfy Films, a joint venture of Syfy and Universal. Noveck, who oversaw DC’s film and television ventures, left the company in August amid a massive restructuring. [Heat Vision]

Publishing | Rich Johnston reports Disney has decided that all Marvel superhero content must originate in the United States, which means that Panini/Marvel UK can no longer publish its own Marvel stories aimed at younger UK readers: “And since the US don’t generate this kind of content readily enough, a number of titles will be cancelled, repurposed or relaunched.” [Bleeding Cool]

G.I. Joe #1

Publishing | Writer Chuck Dixon and editor Andy Schmidt chat about IDW Publishing’s relaunched G.I. Joe line. [USA Today]

Digital comics | ComiXology CEO David Steinberger discusses his company’s comics app, its PullList app and the Guided View Authoring Tools program. [Big Shiny Robot]

Creators | Chew writer John Layman talks about taking his Eisner Award-winning series a year into the future, jumping from last month’s Issue 18 to this week’s Issue 27, which features Tony Chu’s sister Toni: “I thought, ‘Why not throw it out there?’ I’m always very aware of the monthly readers, because they pay our monthly rent. We get big checks twice a year from the trade-waiters, and I don’t begrudge them. But if we can do things to keep people interested on a month-to-month basis, we will.” [USA Today]

Creators | Sean Rogers interviews Chester Brown at length. [The Comics Journal]

Creators | Christopher Irving profiles Jeffrey Brown. [Graphic NYC]

Borders

Retailing | A bankruptcy judge is expected to hear arguments today from the bankrupt Borders Group, which is seeking to pay $8.3 million in bonuses in a bid to retain key corporate personnel. The struggling bookseller says that 47 executives and director-level employees have quit since the company declared bankruptcy on Feb. 16 — two dozen just this month — leaving only 15 people in senior management positions. In a court filing last week, U.S. bankruptcy trustee Tracy Hope Davis objected to the bonus proposal, characterizing it as “a disguised retention plan for insiders, which also provides for discriminatory bonuses for non-insiders.” [The Detroit News]

Publishing | Todd Allen looks at sales estimates for the first issues in Marvel’s “Point One” initiative, which featured self-contained stories designed to serve as a jumping-on point for new or lapsed readers: “With the sole exception of Hulk, retailers ordered less copies of the ‘jump on’ issue, than the regular series.  If you figure people picking up the title would also pick up the ‘.1′ introductory issue, this is a flaming disaster and there aren’t going to be a lot of these comics finding their way into the hands of new readers.  It smack of very low buy-in from the retail community.” [Indignant Online]

Conventions | Heidi MacDonald wraps up last weekend’s MoCCA Festival. [Publishers Weekly]

Comic-Con | The deadline for contributions to the 2011 Comic-Con Souvenir Book is April 29. [Comic-Con]

Retailing | Michael Waddell spotlights Memphis, Tenn.-area retailers Comics and Collectibles and Comic Cellar Cards, Comics & Games. [Memphis Daily News]

Daniel Clowes

Creators | Robot 6 contributor Sean T. Collins talks at length with Daniel Clowes about his new book Mister Wonderful. [The Comics Journal]

Creators | This Q&A with Lynda Barry covers a fascinating range of topics, from nervousness and figure skating to brain function and how art works. [The Boston Phoenix]

Creators | Mike Carey discusses his Vertigo series The Unwritten. [The Associated Press]

Creators | Jeffrey Brown chats about The Incredible Change-Bots, and the possibility of more installments: “I think there will be a third and possibly final book, although I don’t want to rule anything out. I still haven’t done any kind of parody or tribute to my other favorite toy growing up which is G.I. Joe. I had a bunch of ideas for a G.I. Joe parody and as I was finishing the second book and then doing some of the drawings and things for the compilation of odds and ends. I realized that I could very easily fold the G.I. Joe parody into the third Change Bots book. So it won’t be too specifically G.I. Joe, but there will be a third book where the Change Bots are now living on Earth and fighting with each other and humans as well. I haven’t quite figured out all the details yet. It would be down the road a couple of years before I get to that.” [Topless Robot]

Creators | Jesse Schedeen looks at the essential comics of Stuart Immonen. [IGN.com]

Creators | Eva Volin interviews Alexis Fajardo at WonderCon. [Good Comics for Kids]

Comics | Ben Morse compares and contrasts Marvel’s Thunderbolts and DC’s Suicide Squad. [The Cool Kids Table]

Green Hornet

Publishing | Dynamite Entertainment CEO Nick Barrucci talks frankly about the state of the marketplace, digital comics, and his company’s plans. He also acknowledges some missteps: “Green Hornet was a license we paid a lot of attention to last year, probably too much attention. Going back to what we were talking about earlier, putting out too much product, we put out too much Green Hornet product. Part of it is that we wanted to get trade paperback collections out in time for the movie, and we did that, we succeeded. We built up our market share and we generated more revenue for us and the retailers. I’m going off on a tangent here, so I apologize, but we took that money and reinvested into projects like Vampirella, like Warlord of Mars, like the upcoming Kirby: Genesis. But we overdid it, and that we realize, which is why you don’t see us doing four Vampirella titles and four Warlord of Mars titles.” [ICv2.com]

Creators | For its annual Comics Issue, the Village Voice takes a fascinating, lengthy and very depressing look at the often-grim financial reality faced by cartoonists — an environment to which, it turns out, the Village Voice contributed. “I’m not sure how much you’ll be allowed to write about this,” says Dan Perkins (Tom Tomorrow), “but of course the Village Voice Media chain is one of the major culprits in this  —their decision to ‘suspend’ cartoons [in 15 papers in 2009] dealt a serious blow to the struggling subgenre of alt-weekly cartoons.” It’s noted parenthetically that Tom Tomorrow will return to the paper “within a few months,” and that “many of the artists in this issue aren’t getting paid, but have contributed work for the exposure.” [Village Voice]

Geronimo Stilton #7

Publishing | Papercutz reveals that sales of its Geronimo Stilton graphic novels have exceeded 350,000 copies. The seventh volume was released in January. [ICv2.com]

Conventions | Heidi MacDonald wraps up last weekend’s WonderCon in San Francisco: “While WonderCon has long been seen as the smaller, more laid back cousin of the pop culture behemoth known as Comic-Con, there were some signs that the show is getting big and crazy as well—the line to get into the Green Lantern panel stretched halfway around the convention center, a smaller version of the all-day line to get into San Diego’s Hall H.” [Publishers Weekly]

Conventions | In the final run-up to this weekend’s inaugural Kapow! Comic Con in London, rival MCM Expo has announced it’s set a record for advanced sales for its May event. Rich Johnston notes the competition is again heating up between the two conventions, a la the Wizard World-Reed Exhibitions rivalry. [MCV, Bleeding Cool]

Conventions | Victoria Hungerford covers the “Indy Marketing 101″ panel at last weekend’s WonderCon. [The Bottom Line]

Incredible Change-Bots 2

Creators | Jeffrey Brown talks about moving to Chicago, his process, the new Incredible Change-Bots sequel and more: “I grew up watching the original Transformers cartoons, playing with the toys, reading the Marvel comic books. In high school I had the cassette soundtrack to the Transformers animated film and some friends were making fun of me, saying, ‘What’s on that tape? Sixty minutes of chee-choo-chee-chook?’ And so years later I was doodling in my sketchbook and came up with the Incredible Change-Bots, making fun of that aspect, and later just everything I found amusing and lovable about those old cartoons. The first book had more straightforward parallels to the Transformers, but after that I worked with the characters more and they became something more of their own thing. The first book was well received, and I enjoyed drawing the Change-Bots, and had an idea for what the sequel would be about, so I went ahead and did it. It’s more about drawing things I enjoy, and following my own muse, so don’t be surprised if I keep drawing them until I get sick of it.” [Chicagoist]

Creators | Sergio Aragones is interviewed at WonderCon. [San Francisco Chronicle]

Creators | Phil Jimenez chats briefly about his influences, his approach to writing and drawing, and being an openly gay creator. [Pink Kryptonite]

Creators | Georges Jeanty discusses Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and what drew him back for the upcoming Season 9: “As any fan will tell you it’s the characters. You feel so much for these characters that it was really a joy to come back. It wasn’t a chore. It’s funny because I did have a conversation with Joss [Whedon]. And I sort of asked him, ‘Are you coming back?’ He said, ‘Well, are you coming back?’ I was like, ‘I’ll come back if you come back.’ And he was like, ‘Alright, that makes me feel better about coming on then.’ It sort of went like that. I was like, ‘Yeah, if we can keep the quality level of what we were doing before, I would love to keep doing this.’ And, heaven help me, they’ve got me for another twenty-five issues.” [FEARnet]

When the editors of the Graphic NYC blog asked Incredible Change-Bots creator Jeffrey Brown to discuss his influences, they had an essay in mind, but after working on the idea for some time, Brown came back with something different: A comic.

In the charming I’m Really Good at Playing, Brown uses his interactions with his son Oscar to make some points about creating comics, some obvious—his comics are inspired by childhood love of both comics and action figures, in which good and evil were clearly demarcated and good always triumphed at the last minute—and some subtle, like the way his wife can’t impersonate a shark as well as he can. As an extra bonus, he provided a diagram of his initial thoughts and how he turned them into panels of the comic, and he goes through all the steps at his blog.

line art for the Strange Tales II #1 cover by Rafael Grampa

Over at ComicsAlliance, Laura Hudson has a real treat for those of you who like your superhero comics with an alternative twist: 50-plus pages of sketches, thumbnails, pencils, inks, color studies and more from the Strange Tales II hardcover, which debuted this week. Click on over and get a glimpse at the creative process behind contributions from Kate Beaton, Jeffrey Brown, Ivan Brunetti, Farel Dalrymple, Rafael Grampa, Dean Haspiel, Jaime Hernandez, Paul Hornschemeier, Benjamin Marra, Edu Medeiros, Harvey Pekar, Frank Santoro, and Paul Vella. That’s hella Strange!

Incredible Change-Bots 2

As Transformers 3 draws inexorably nearer, I find myself dreading the conversations I know I’m going to have.

My friends will ask, innocently, “Have you seen Transformers 3, yet?”

“No,” I’ll reply, hoping they’ll lose interest and change the subject.

“Why not? It looks great! I thought you were into all that sci-fi, comic booky stuff.”

At which point I’ll either have to lie and say that I just haven’t gotten around to it yet (a tactic I’ll feel horrible about later), or tell the truth about hating Michael Bay movies and come off sounding like a complete snob. Which of course I am, but nobody likes defending themselves against that, especially when it’s true.

You see, my friends just don’t get it. If it’s big, if it’s blockbustery, if it’s got giant robots and it’s based on a popular cartoon from the ‘80s, they’ll go see it regardless of how crap it is. “I know it’s not great,” they’ll tell me, “but come on. It’s fun!” I could argue that last point, but by now I’m tired of the conversation.

I know I’m going to get this because I went through it two years ago with Transformers 2. I don’t want to go through it again. Fortunately, this year I have something with which to deflect the conversation into a positive direction. I have Incredible Change-Bots.

Jeffrey Brown

I passed on the first volume mostly because it came out the same year as the first Transformers movie. As I would later learn, that was my mistake, but as curious as I was to see Jeffrey “Every Girl is the End of the World for Me” Brown try out some fun, happy material instead of his usual, gloomy, autobiographical comics (and I write that as someone who likes Jeffrey Brown’s autobiographical comics, I promise), I thought that the Transformers movie would probably be enough Transformers for me that year. This was when I was just Michael Bay Skeptical instead of full-blown Michael Bay Done.

I caught occasional episodes of the Transformers cartoon as a kid, but I wasn’t a faithful watcher. Which means that while I’m not a fan, I’m familiar with the concept and – more importantly – the flavor of the show. And though it’s a parody, Incredible Change-Bots captures that flavor in a way that the movies haven’t even tried. It pokes fun at some of the goofier aspects and very gently nudges some current social and political events in the ribs, but it does it all with a wonderful, uncynical sense of humor that lets the reader have a great time while reading it. In short – and in direct contrast to those movies – it really is fun.

If you’ve read the first volume – in which the evil Fantasticons and the not-as-evil Awesomebots leave Electronocybercircuitron and come to Earth – you know what I’m talking about. You’ve thrilled to the race between the two groups of robots to establish their bases before each other. You’ve laughed at robot love and Shootertron’s assessment of why the Fantasticons always fail in battle. You’ve cried over the death of – oops. Spoilers.

If you're not laughing, I can't help you.

But you haven’t laughed as loudly or often as you will in the sequel. And not only are the jokes even better, but the story’s more touching too. The space-bound Awesomebots and Fantasticons not only have to learn to integrate, but when they accidentally return to Earth they must also face Shootertron, the former Fantasticon leader they left for dead. He’s still alive, of course, but he’s lost his memory and is living with a kindly old farm couple. Or he is until the military gets their hands on him anyway.

I know Transformers fans who are as frustrated with the movies as I am, but feel like they have to keep seeing them because they think that the movies are all there is for them right now. I’m going to loan out my of copies Incredible Change-Bots right away so that they know there’s something better. That way I can hopefully have them back again when Transformers 3 comes out so that when my less quality-conscious friends say, “Have you seen it yet?” I can happily reply, “Nope. Have you read Incredible Change-Bots?” I don’t expect I’ll deter them from seeing the movie, but I’ll at least be able to open a conversation about comics, which is a lot more fun than defending my dislike of Michael Bay.

The last page

Bew! Bew! Bew!

The second volume of Jeffrey Brown’s Incredible Change-Bots debuts at the C2E2 comics convention this weekend, where the creator will be in attendance. Over on his blog, Brown also reveals a piece of art titled “Bew! Bew! Bew!” that will be featured in a Change-bots art show at the Scott Eder Gallery in May. The gallery has a table at the con, where the artwork will be displayed.

And if that’s not enough, Brown also recently announced a new Change-Bots fan club offer, which you can either take advantage of on the web or at C2E2 this weekend. You can find Brown at the Top Shelf booth (#810).

There are a lot of superhero parodies, but not a lot of transforming fighting robot parodies. Does it help, knowing you’re treading on ground no one’s covering?

[Laughs] It’s hard to say how much that helped. I think especially with the second book, it became less a parody of Transformers and more just being interested in these characters…who just happen to have the same functions as Transformers. It becomes more of its own thing. I think it’s one reason why I’ve enjoyed the Change-Bots stuff more than I enjoyed doing [the superhero parody] “Bighead.” It doesn’t feel as much like it’s something that’s been done to death already.

The second volume opens with the main villain of first “Change-Bots” waking up without his memory after everyone else has left Earth. How did you go from that as a starting point to a Superman parody?

I don’t even know. I think it just happened naturally. I tend to write the books where I have a basic idea of what’s going to happen at Point A, Point B, Point C. As to how things get from one point to another, I don’t figure out until I’m sitting down and actually working on that part of the book. So I’m really not even sure where that came from. I think it came from [the question of], who’s going to find him first when he doesn’t have his memory? I didn’t want the army [to find him], and then once he’s on a farm, it becomes the obvious jump to do the Superman mythos.

Brown’s threatening to toss G.I. Joe into the mix if there’s ever an Incredible Change-Bots Three. Incredible Cross-Over! Me, I’m waiting for the Awesomebots and Fantasticons to enter the actual Jeffrey Brown-verse, wrecking shop as he sits in a coffee shop drawing in his sketchbook and listening to the latest Death Cab album.

To highlight the New Chicago Comics exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art, NBC Chicago ran the above segment, which features creators Jeffrey Brown and Paul Hornschemeier talking about their work. The exhibit features their work, as well as that of Lilli Carré and Anders Nilsen.

Via Flog

LOEG goes to Carnaby Street

Mark your calendar and start saving your pennies: Top Shelf has announced its entire 2011 lineup, in chronological order, and it’s going to be quite a year. In addition to a varied line of adult graphic novels, the indy publisher is greatly expanding its children’s line and inaugurating a “Kids Club” website just for those books. Some highlights:

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (Vol III): Century #2 – 1969, by Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill: The latest chapter of Moore’s epic moves to 1960s London, the epicenter of psychedelic cool. Due out in July.

Any Empire, by Nate Powell: Powell won an Eisner Award two years ago for Swallow Me Whole, and now he’s back with another book about the secrets of childhood, this one focusing on violence in suburbia. Also due out in July.

Incredible Change-Bots Two, by Jeffrey Brown: The catalog text describes this as “a nostalgic tribute not only to Saturday morning cartoons but also to Jeffrey Brown’s Incredible Change-Bots One,” which is as good a reason as any for fans of the first book to pick up the second. Watch for it in March.

Gingerbread Girl, by Colleen Coover and Paul Tobin (who we interviewed last summer about it): This sounds like a pileup of wackiness, with multiple narrators following a young woman, trying to see if her mad-scientist father used part of her brain to make her a sister. Due out in May.

Okie Dokie Donuts (Story 1): Open for Business, by Chris “Elio” Eliopoulos: Trouble in the donut shop! Chris Eliopoulos is an animator for the children’s television show Yo Gabba Gabba, and you can see his webcomic The Bravest Nino at the Top Shelf site. Due out in June.

And, for those who can’t get enough alternative manga, another volume of AX! There’s a lot more in their catalog, so go, read, and plan!

Wolverine by Dan Panosian

Brigid did a round-up yesterday of various holiday gift-giving suggestions, so I thought I’d follow suit with some that I’ve seen lately.

• The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund is auctioning off original art by Paul Pope, Eric Powell, Gabriel Hardman, Tom Fowler, Dan Paosian and many more, as well as lunch with Chew writer John Layman in New York next week.

• I remember shoveling a whole bunch of quarters into the X-Men arcade game back in the day; my friend Mike and I beat the game as Nightcrawler and Wolverine. If you have an Xbox fan in your life, they too can fight the Blob, Magneto and more in side-scrolling action, as the game will be available on Xbox Live Arcade Dec. 15. The PlayStation Network, unfortunately, won’t get it until February, so you’ll have to find something else this holiday season for the PS3 fan in your life. Joy to the world! The game will hit the PlayStation Network Dec. 14!

• Khepri Comics is selling Gabriel Ba and Fabio Moon’s Atelier, a comic they created to sell at conventions.

• Comics creator Ben Towle has a 20 percent off sale going in his web store, where you can purchase original art from books like Midnight Sun, signed copies of Amelia Earhart: This Broad Ocean and superhero commissions.

• IDW continues their “12 Days of Comics” sale over on their website. Today’s special deal is Star Trek comics.

• Brendan McCarthy points out that Albert Moy is selling a whole bunch of McCarthy’s original art.

• Brian Fies is offering a signed bookplate to anyone buying Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow? as a gift this season.

• Two cartoonists whose books I recently read and really, really enjoyed — Eleanor Davis & Drew Weing — have a web shop with all sorts of cool stuff for sale. Let me recommend Set to Sea by Weing and The Secret Science Alliance by Davis. (Via Flog)

• And finally, more free Christmas cards … this time by artist Jeffrey Brown, featuring cats!

You can buy this book for three bucks

Goodness gracious, look at all the terrific titles that are on sale for $3 over at Top Shelf Productions’ website. That’s some 70 in all, including books by Alan Moore, Jeffrey Brown, James Kochalka, Scott Morse, Liz Prince, and Renee French. Another 30-plus comics and graphic novels are also on sale for suitably impressive amounts — the complete Lost Girls from Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie and the complete Alec: The Years Have Pants by Eddie Campbell may be purchased for just $25 and $20 respectively, for pete’s sake. Top Shelf’s $3 Sale lasts through Friday, September 24th, so get ‘em while the gettin’s good!

Right now Side A, which includes work by Sean Azzopardi and Julia Wertz, is just five bucks, while Side B, with a cover by Lucy Knisley and comics by Knisley, Box Brown, Jeffrey Brown, Brandon Graham and Mitch Clem, among others, is $11.99. (Here’s a review, and Johanna Draper Carlson, who picked it up at MoCCA, said “So far, the best anthology I’ve seen all year.”)

Dukes says the books won’t be reprinted. Details on the liquidation sale are here.

How long have you been planning Incredible Change-Bots Two? Did you need to see how the first volume did, or were you full-steam-ahead from the jump?

I started thinking about it shortly after finishing the first on. The book was so much fun to write, and draw, and the characters were already kind of taking on their own life. Plus people really liked the first one, and I hope that someday I’ll make enough things that people like, that they’ll like me too.

What’s the basic scoop on the sequel, storywise? Any new ‘Bots to look forward to?

At the end of the first book, Shootertron was defeated and left in a pile of rubble on Earth while the other Change-Bots headed into space to find a new home. Shootertron wakes up, but has lost his memory, but the other Change-Bots end up back on Earth because of some miscalculations, and a run-in with Shootertron becomes inevitable. There’s lots of new ‘Bots, but they mostly get killed off right away, because there’s not enough room in the book. I liked how the old cartoons did that too, introduce a new character and then the character disappears at the end of the episode.

The thing that’s interesting to me about Incredible Change-Bots was that even though a lot of the people who both read and make superhero comics AND parodies of superhero comics also read/played with/watched Transformers, it’s a really under-parodied subgenre. Was that part of the attraction of it for you?

Maybe not consciously, but feeling like I wasn’t repeating something else definitely helped encourage me to work on it. It made it easier to build the Change-Bots from scratch when there wasn’t a significant parody that I would have to avoid repeating certain ideas.

Over the past few years a lot of alternative comics have come out that address ’80s action-figure-style action-adventure-fantasy franchises head-on, from the He-Man/D&D-isms of Prison Pit to the video-game tropes of Scott Pilgrim. Do you see Incredible Change-Bots in that light at all, or is it more the comedy that drives it?

To some extent it’s certainly still driven by the 80′s cartoon, but especially in the new book, there’s a lot of jokes that could probably be written without the robots, I’m just using them there instead of with this particular story and characters. I think the reason I was able to write a second book was due to the fact that I’m thinking less and less about addressing the past and more letting the characters and humor drive the story.

It seems like Michael Bay’s Transformers movies might be even more ripe for parody — or perhaps “deserving of satire” is the way to put it — than the originals. Will Change-Bots Two address the live-action movies in any way?

Not really… I almost slipped a joke in here and there, but they ended up not fitting. My love of the original Transformers cartoon is still the primary inspiration. I’ve watched the new films, but it’s almost like they’re trying to be self-conscious parodies of themselves at this point. I think even the IDW comics have less to do with the films than the original mythology. I’m content to let the films exist as a separate thing on their own.

What else have you got coming down the pike?

The new cat book, Cats Are Weird, is just coming out from Chronicle. Next I plan on working on the long planned autobiographical book dealing with religion and fatherhood, as well as a kid’s book about dinosaurs. I think, anyway, there’s a dozen projects I’d really like to be doing, so once Change-Bots Two is wrapped up I’ll figure out exactly what I’m doing.

Does San Diego allow you to indulge both the autobio and action-comedy sides of yourself? Like, will you be bouncing between the small-press area and the Hasbro booth?

I would bounce by the Hasbro booth, but it’s always so crowded! I definitely let my geek fan boy side have more fun here at Comic-Con, and one of the things I love is that you can go from small press to mainstream and see some toys along the way. This convention is always kind of inspiring to me, both in writing fun comics like Change-Bots and writing more ‘serious’ work like the autobiographical books. It’s also exhausting, but still worth it.

Strange Tales cover by Peter Bagge & Chip Kidd

A sequel to Marvel’s surprise-hit alternative-superhero anthology Strange Tales has long been rumored, and now a post at cartoonist Paul Hornschemeier’s blog reveals the truth: Strange Tales 2 is on its way. No official word on when it’ll arrive, or on who else will be joining the anthology this time out, but based on what The Perry Bible Fellowship‘s Nick Gurewitch has said about a Galactus strip he’s working on, and this table of contents from Jeffrey Brown’s Process minicomic boasting the inclusion of Strange Tales sketches, they seem to be likely candidates. Meanwhile, I’ve heard tell that Becky Cloonan and Michael Kupperman will be making their triumphant returns to the project. Stay tuned!