The Silence of Our Friends

Hello and welcome to What Are You Reading? This week our special guest is Ao Meng, who writes about comics for the Daily Texan, the University of Texas newspaper, as well as Novi Magazine.

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

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Michael May

Planet of the Apes

I’ve read a couple of issues of BOOM!’s Planet of the Apes since the last time I contributed to this feature, and it’s still my favorite monthly series right now. It’s scary how good it is because experience tells me that comics this awesome are too good to be true and don’t last. Not that I have any reason to believe PotA’s going away; it’s just one of those irrational fears you get when you really love something and can’t stand the thought of not having it around anymore.

Something else I read recently was Pilot & Huxley: The First Adventure by Dan McGuiness. I’d never heard of it before and the deceptively simple art didn’t grab me right away, but I grinned and chuckled my way all through this thing. It’s about a couple of kids with an overdue video game rental that–unknown to them–contains the password that activates an alien Weapon of Doom. Unfortunately for the aliens, they don’t remember the password and need the game, so they hire Death to capture the boys, but Death sort of botches the job and sends the pair into an alternate dimension where swamps are made of bees and little girls turn into giant monsters. It…is…awesome.

Tom Bondurant

Aquaman

It may be perpetuating a stereotype to say that this week I read a pretty good issue of Aquaman, but, well … issue #5 was pretty good. Beginning with Aquaman literally dropped into the middle of a desert, it sets up the next big arc (the real reason Atlantis sunk) while serving nicely as a standalone survival tale. Geoff Johns’ script is efficient and well-paced, using a nonlinear narrative to good effect. There seems to be a little more pointed puncturing of Aquaman’s perceived inferiority, which at this point is a little old, so thankfully there’s not a lot. (Johns does get good use out of Aquaman’s telepathic powers, and that’s always nice.) Ivan Reis and Joe Prado’s art is straightforward as ever, conveying both Aquaman’s determination and his world-weariness.

The Fury Of Firestorm The Nuclear Men #5 (written by Gail Simone and Ethan Van Sciver, drawn by Yildiray Cinar) was also a decent standalone issue, reframing Ronnie and Jason’s continuing struggles with their powers in the context of a global Firestorm network. Specifically, when said network places our heroes in a too-good-to-be-
true planned community — a plot device which by this point should come with a “Ye Olde” prefix — you just know things are going to go horribly wrong. And so they do, but in a well-choreographed way which gives the reader some hope that maybe this time will be different. In other words, despite the predictability, this turned out to be a rather suspenseful issue, infusing the overall storyline with some necessary momentum.

This week I finally got a chance to check out Jeff Parker and Erika Moen’s Bucko, only about eleven months after everyone else on Earth, and just in time for it to wrap up. Still, not surprisingly, I liked this sprightly farce a lot. The combination of Parker’s energetic script and Moen’s endearing art is instantly appealing, and the plot is like “Three’s Company” on acid. (In a good way, of course.) I’m only through the first part, but I’m eager to see the rest.

In other better-late-than-never news, last night I was up late polishing off The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, so that my wife and I could catch David Fincher’s adaptation before it leaves the local theaters. The last half of the book took just under three hours to read, and at the risk of spoiling it (even obliquely), I thought the denouement was somewhat anticlimactic. I mean, I liked the book pretty well, but the first half is all about adapting to life on the frozen tundra, the third quarter jumps full-on into the mystery, and the last little bit is an extended wrap-up. I don’t doubt that the new movie will be fairly faithful, but I can’t imagine how the upcoming DC adaptation will deal with some of it.

Brigid Alverson

In Dotter of Her Father’s Eyes, Mary Talbot weaves her own growing-up story with that of James Joyce’s daughter Lucia. Tying the two stories together is Mary’s father, who was an eminent Joyce scholar. That meant less to his daughter, of course, than the way he treated her, warm and cold by turns, and sometimes unbearably harsh. Mary’s own story is an engaging tale of growing up in a large family in England after the war; Lucia’s is equally fascinating in a different way, as she led a more artistic and demanding life but was equally frustrated by her father’s needs and prejudices and, ultimately, her own mental illness. The book is skillfully illustrated by Mary’s husband, Bryan
Talbot, and it sits comfortably on the shelf next to Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home.

Friends With Boys

Mary Talbot grew up in a house full of brothers, and so did Maggie McKay, the heroine of Faith Erin Hicks’s Friends With Boys. In both cases, the boys add a certain madcap energy to the story, constantly fighting and breaking things, but in Friends With Boys, they also bring emotional depth. As the book opens, Maggie is starting high school after years of being home-schooled by her mother—who has just left the family, for reasons that are left vague. Maggie quickly makes friends with a brother and sister, but there’s a strange tension between them and her older brother, and the boys on the volleyball team. Hicks unfurls the backstory slowly, then brings it all to a head with a theft and a fight. While the plot itself is a bit improbable, the characters are well grounded and believable, and overall it’s an enjoyable read.

I also picked up Kate Beaton’s Hark! A Vagrant this week. It’s very hit-or-miss—sometimes Beaton makes me laugh out loud, other times the strips make me wish I knew more about Canadian history. Overall, though, there are more yuks than WTFs, and it’s easy to give a “read” recommendation on this one.

Chris Mautner

Mark Twain's Autobiography

Is there something wrong with me? Is my sense of humor on the fritz? Am I becoming too jaded? What could possibly be the reason for my completely “meh” reaction to Michael Kupperman’s latest book, Mark Twain’s Autobiography 1910-2010. I mean, I really like Kupperman’s work. I think he’s one of the funniest cartoonists going today. But Twain felt somewhat undercooked to me.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s still funny, just fitfully so. I didn’t greet the book with the sort of over the top vocal laughter that I usually do when reading his comics. Perhaps I’ve grown blase. Perhaps I’ve just become accustomed to Kupperman’s style and tics and it’s harder for him to get me laughing. Perhaps he’s better with comics than straight prose. Perhaps I’m just not a fan of all the Mark Twain jokes (I’m kind of not).

Whatever the case, any fears I had that Kupperman’s magic had ceased to charm me were swept away with the latest issue (that’s no. 7) of his regular series, Tales Designed to Thrizzle. Kupperman is back to his usually hilarity here, at least as far as I’m concerned, with a side-splitting parody/mash-up of Inception and Quincy, and a lengthy list of funny names for shower heads (I’m especially fond of “Mrs. Dallospray”). I take it all back. There’s nothing wrong with me after all.

Ao Meng

Spera

I’m actually pretty bad about finding time to go down to my local shops, but my last haul from a few weeks ago was pretty big: I picked up a copy of Josh Tierney’s Spera Vol. 1, mostly to see some choice web cartoonists make their leap from humble RGB to glorious CMYK. I especially loved the contribution from UK-based Nobrow Press mainstay Luke Pearson, whose two-color-on-cream-paper short sat nicely in contrast with the colorful explorations found in the rest of the book. I’m a big fan of adventure comics, and the energy on display here is infectious.

Speaking of adventure comics, Ryan Cecil Smith’s SF Supplementary File minicomics (I’ve only got #1 through #2B) are a whole lot of fun, and are a huge bang for your buck. #1′s contained origin story is a great continuation of that groove Smith’s been riding since the CCC#9 anthology. I really fell in love with the extended three-part #2— a”cover” of a 1979 space opera manga— one of a new trend of risograph comics that, to the best of my limited knowledge, have been sparked off by those noisemakers in the Ryan Sands camp. I also picked up Jonny Negron and Jesse Balmer’s Chameleon #2, which I believe contains the North American debut of Uno Moralez, whose pixel-art nightmares have been the best-kept secret of cartoonist livejournal rings for a couple of years now. Chameleon‘s two editors’s contributions are as on point as always.

Anyways, back to Mr. Smith’s minis— they are absolutely beautiful. They’re not nostalgic as much as interested in the techniques used by previous generations of cartoonists, and how much emotional heavy lifting they were capable of. To use terms from hip-hop, the other great American art form, It’s not quite a sample as much as an interpolation, where a producer or artist will re-record, re-sing and/or re-instrumentalize a melody, usually (but not always) because of sample clearance issues. Another very good interpolation by Kevin Huizenga is in the new Kramers Ergot, his being one of an obscure 1956 Charlton sci-fi short with an unknown writer. Who knows if this “interpolation comics” thing will eventually become another alt-comics trend, but this new type of dialog with comic’s labyrinthine history is incredibly interesting, and tickles a particular bone that classical reprints don’t quite scratch.

Let’s see, I also read The Silence of our Friends, a very readable and a great all-around First Second issue. Nate Powell’s art totally caries the book from it’s Oscar-awards-season material and towards something of real craft. I picked up the new King Kat #72, which is as good as always, but significantly more melancholic than the last issue. As one of the titans of the auto-bio genre, Porcellino’s commitment to the rawness and expression of his work is humbling to see. He’s a true living legend, that one.

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.

Cover design by Robert Beatty

“You can tell I’m still making sense of it myself.” So says Sammy Harkham of the eighth volume of his landmark anthology series, Kramers Ergot, at one point during our lengthy conversation about the book. And indeed, Harkham’s side conversation is characterized by strategic pauses, halves of sentences that trail off and are abandoned as Harkham retreats, rethinks, and rearticulates. Despite his ebullient cadence – Harkham’s as great a talker as he is a tweeter – it’s quite clear that the amount of thought he put into this comparatively slim and quiet volume of his once-overflowing and raucous art-comics anthology is nearly overpowering.

So is the collection itself. Despite featuring a much smaller roster than previous volumes in the series, and despite a much less “noisy” visual aesthetic than that which has characterized the series since its phone book-sized fourth volume caused a sensation upon its release at the MoCCA Festival in 2003, Kramers Ergot 8 has an intensity that’s tough to shake. Contributors like C.F. (aka Christopher Forgues) and Chris Cilla craft uncomfortable but undeniably erotic sex scenes, which sit next to grim science-fiction parables from Gary Panter and Kevin Huizenga and gruesome horror tragedies by Johnny Ryan and Harkham himself. Fine artists Robert Beatty and Takeshi Murata contribute pieces as visually vibrant as the stories of crime and desire from Gabrielle Bell and the team of Frank Santoro and Dash Shaw are bleak. A cheekily provocative introductory essay from musician Ian Svenonius and a massive selection of racy reprinted Oh, Wicked Wanda! comics from the pages of Penthouse prove perplexing – but it’s a good perplexing, because it forces the reader to consider just how fingernails-on-a-chalkboard effective the rest of the volume is at discomfiting them.

With the book on its way to stores from PictureBox Inc. in a couple of weeks, Harkham took an hour before picking his two older kids up at school to talk about this very personal project. We started off talking about our respective babies; fitting, then, that by the end of the interview a fascinating picture emerged of what Harkham wanted Kramers 8 to be that proved every pause along the way was a pregnant one.

Page from "A Husband and a Wife" by Sammy Harkham

Sean T. Collins: Kramers Ergot 8 debuted at the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival in December, but your third baby debuted not long before that. That had to be a challenge.

Sammy Harkham: Knowing the baby’s coming, you work knowing that when that baby comes, things are gonna shut down. The book only got finished mid-September, and then the baby came. It was funny, because I drew my comic [for the anthology] when the book was done, basically. I thought, “I’ll do a simple issue of Kramers, I’ll do a story for it, and then I’ll get back to Crickets.” But editing, for me, is like working on my own book, as if it’s fully just me. I’m thinking about it day and night, and it’s hard for me to then think of a story within that if I don’t already have one that I’m working on. So at a certain point I decided I’m not going to be in the book. Then it was clear I needed to be in the book, because I wanted a very particular kind of story in it [laughs]. “I guess I’m gonna have to do it.” It was a flurry of activity August into September, then it was done, then the book was done, and then I was just…breathing, you know? But I felt like, “Oh man, I really should be working right now before the baby comes.” But since the baby came I’ve still been doing stuff. You know what it’s like: a lot of tricky hours, and getting used to weird working habits. You work for five minutes, but you try to make it a good five minutes. You try to break it up. And I try not to lose my temper. I get resentful of the people around me when they’re asking for my help and I’m in the middle of something. [Laughs] If I’m in the middle of writing or drawing something, I wanna finish the thought. So I’ve got to think of those Dalai Lama tweets I read earlier in the day. [Laughs] You’ve got to get into the headspace where you’re malleable in that way, you’re flexible.

But Kramers was late this year. Nadel wanted it in July, but I’ve never been able to deliver that book on time, never. This one was particularly hard because there were so few contributors, so I couldn’t lose anybody without it affecting the whole thing. Whereas in previous issues there are so many people that unless it’s a really big strip – it’s a shame to lose anything, you don’t want to lose anything, but you can. You can lose a one- or two-pager. But with this, if CF is running late, there’s nothing we can do. I told [PictureBox Publisher Dan] Nadel that up front: “I hope to get the book done on time, but if Panter’s not ready, if Christopher’s not ready, if any of these people aren’t ready, we can’t do anything.” [Laughs] We’re at the mercy of them, really.

Page from "Barbarian Bitch" by Anya Davidson

Collins: Was that something you factored in when you approached people?

Harkham: Not at all. Not at all. With this one, I was thinking of people who drew…I wanted a certain uptight energy, a certain rigidness to the work. That was a guiding principle. Then the people who don’t draw super-tight or super…I don’t know what the word is, but there’s a certain energy was going for, and the people who don’t necessarily conform to that, I thought, in a way define the book by what they aren’t. Leon Sadler, to me, almost defines the whole book by being so loose, because he really sticks out in sharp relief. Same with Anya [Davidson]. Those are the two people I think of as being kind of different stylistically, Anya and Leon.

I just wanted to get away from…I don’t know. [Pause] It’s a very hard book for me to discuss or to verbalize, because so much of it was intuitive. I wanted to do something that really felt different from what other Kramers were. It was really about thinking of a tone, and trying to think of who fits within that tone, and trying to create a vision of comics that maybe doesn’t exist, but to pretend that it does. Or to create it. Or to give the impression that it’s always there, but I really have to use spit and rubber bands to put together and give it that veneer.

Collins: The tone that emerged for me was a sad one. There was a melancholy to it. Maybe that what emerged for me from its spin on the sex and horror comics that are very much in the air right now. But beyond that, the strip I return to mentally is Kevin Huizenga’s cover version of a golden age sci-fi strip, which I found crushingly sad.

Harkham: It’s bizarre, right? It makes you really think about – tell me if you disagree, but you think of the guys who made the original strip, right? I mean, what is this? What is this strip? You’re right, I totally agree with you. It’s a really sad strip. It’s a very bizarre strip, and it’s a weird thing that someone did that comic knowing that the only people who were going to read it were children. It makes me think of Frank King working on Gasoline Alley, this idealized vision of what he wants his life to be, of him living with this son who in reality is very far away from him. Comics are often like that. Because of the nature of the work, it is often about escaping into a space and letting things live and breathe that in reality can’t exist. That’s often the impression on the last page of a Kim Deitch comic. [Laughs] I feel like he’s realizing that it’s over, and he’s like, “I kinda want to live with these pygmies forever in this miniature city that doesn’t exist.”

Collins: Now that you mention it, there’s a sense of loss to the book, too. Maybe it’s in the way the the sexy stuff sits against the horrific and angry and sad stuff, which spoils it or something. I think of Chris Cilla’s story, in which a sexual liaison is interrupted by a little kid who says, “Don’t worry, I won’t tell anybody.” It felt like something had been ruined. I came away from the book feeling… [sighs]

Harkham: Did you like the book?

Collins: I did! Oh yeah, I did. There was stuff that I struggled with…

Harkham: I ask that honestly. I honestly have no idea what reception the book’s going to receive from people. I don’t know if they’re going to take to it. And I’m open to that, I’m fine with that. I ask that question with my eyes open, not in a defensive way.

Page from "Mining Colony X7170" by Johnny Ryan

Collins: A lot of the stuff is very much in my wheelhouse. I love the direction that Johnny Ryan continues to go in.

Harkham: That strip is beautiful. It’s an ode to commitment and love. It’s a really rich story. Including Johnny in a book like this, where I wanted things to have a certain amount of restraint and emotional coldness, not the usual flop sweat and a gag every second – with Johnny, it was all about talking to him about the slow burn. I know Johnny well enough to know he’s really well read and a really smart writer. We’ve talked a lot about story and literature. It was exciting to bring him into this, knowing that when I mentioned his name to the other contributors, they were like “Huh, he doesn’t necessarily sound like a great fit for this,” and he really delivered. That strip is amazing. He doesn’t tie up all the loose ends, he doesn’t tell you exactly what’s going on, but there’s enough ambiguity and enough focus. I think it’s a really beautiful comic.

Collins: It feels like an answer to the Huizenga strip, too.

Harkham: That’s interesting. [Pause] That’s really interesting. [Laughs] Oh my God, I hadn’t thought about that!

Collins: These explorers searching for love—

Harkham: Looking for love, yeah!

Collins: –and finding these nightmares they choose to embrace.

Harkham: Cool. My struggle with Kramers is always looking at it so intensely and never feeling like it’s good enough. You want things to be better and better. I’m really hung up on narrative, so I always want better stories, and it takes me a bit of time to stand back from it and come towards it a couple months or years later and go “Oh, that’s a good issue.”

Collins: Kramers 4 had such an atom-bomb impact, and I think what a lot of people took away from it was the non-narrative material – the Fort Thunder contributions, the collage material. But the series has had a parallel thread of full-fledged short stories all along. Were you expressly trying to point in that direction with this new format?

Harkham: I wanted each contributor to do a somewhat meaty amount of material. So when you think about that—I broke it with Leon, but again, that helps define the rest of the book by having his section be all kinds of little bits and pieces. But besides Leon, I wanted each person to do a substantial amount of pages, or if not a substantial amount of pages then something that felt substantial. Comics are funny like that: A two-page strip can live in your mind like a 500-page book. So it wasn’t necessarily page count—I just wanted it to be really strong material. And it’s always a struggle to get that out of people, but with this one it was more like seeing if people could make a serious commitment. Most of those strips are over eight pages. Gabrielle’s is shorter and Kevin’s is shorter, but they’re all around eight, and beyond that. It’s a lot to ask of people, especially these days, when all the people I was working with have other projects.

Collins: The other week I reviewed the final issue of Mome for The Comics Journal, and to open the review I listed a bunch of anthologies that had come out over the past couple years, off the top of my head. There were two dozen easy. It’s a much more heavily anthologized era right now than it was when Kramers started.

Harkham: I think there’s a real need for it.

Collins: Why? And was that something you were considering when you were putting #8 together?

Harkham: To answer the first part, there’s always a need. People need an outlet for their work, and online is one thing, but having it in print is another. Comics lend themselves to short form, so it makes sense that there are going to be a lot of anthologies. To me, doing another issue of Kramers was more about…When approaching any issue, it’s always like, “What do I want to see? What do I feel a lack of as a reader?” I do read a lot of comics. I feel like I’m so heavily engaged with comics—too much, sometimes! [Laughs] Probably to an unhealthy degree. It’s crazy. You’re a writer of comics, so you know. You’re deeply involved as well. So it comes out of [thinking of] what kind of book I’m excited to see. Sometimes I feel like “Oh, everyone’s doing the work that I want to see.” Then there’s times like this, where there’s a kind of comic I want to see and it doesn’t exist, so I’m going to make it: “I want to present people’s work in a certain way that I don’t see it presented in. I want a context that I don’t see out there.” And starting to build from there.

That’s why I wonder about how people are going to respond to it, because to me, it doesn’t feel like there are many books like it. When Kramers 4 came out, there was a lot of resistance from within comics to that! [Laughs] I was still posting on the TCJ.com message board at that time. I was 23 and commenting on that board all the time. When people started talking about that book I was really excited, until everyone started shitting on it. [Laughs] But then people started sticking up for it. I mean, I know now that that’s always a good thing, when people dislike something enough to want to talk about it. That means it’s connecting on some wavelength, and that’s important. But with this, I don’t know how people are going to take to it. They might think it’s pretentious or they might think it’s too dry or something.

Collins: I bought Kramers 4 at MoCCA when it debuted, and I was on the TCJ messboard then as well. I remember the argument was like, “Is this comics? This isn’t comics!” That book won that argument so completely that it’s not even an argument people have anymore, at least not among art comics readers.

Harkham: People are over it. At the time I didn’t think the book was that far out. I thought it was a very normal thing, coming out of all the [pioneering art-comics publisher] Highwater books at that time. Don’t forget, [Marc Bell’s] Shrimpy and Paul had already come out, and [Mat Brinkman’s] Teratoid Heights came out either around the same time or just after, but Brinkman was doing work. All those people were doing work that was available, so to do an anthology including all those people did not feel like I was necessarily bringing anything new to the table. I was just trying to make a good collection.

I never focus on showing people stuff they’ve never seen before, because I think that’s a really shallow approach. It won’t yield so much great work by focusing on what’s new, what’s hot, what are people going crazy about this month. Comics people are very fickle. You mentioned that whole thing about horror and sex right now. Ben Marra started doing his thing the last two years, Michael DeForge, obviously Jonny Negron—there’s a certain energy in the air where people are getting really into doing unironic genre-based work, and it feels fresh. But in a year from now, maybe the hot new thing will be like Peepshow. It’s not a fickleness, but because the alternative comics scene is so small, there’s a lot of turnover, a lot of moving forward about what’s exciting. I try to avoid thinking in those terms.

So to go back to what we were saying, Kramers 4 was to me a very normal anthology. It was a big anthology, but I didn’t think I was necessarily bringing that much to the table. With this one in some ways I feel the same. But just seeing the response to the last issue… When that book got announced, the way people took to it, the negative comments that people had about that book – [they were] saying things I would never have thought of if I hadn’t read someone saying these things online, about making a book that was elitist. I guess I’m used to people second-guessing Kramers and putting a lot of their own baggage and issues into the work. Which is normal. Art goes halfway, the reader goes the other half, always. So if people want to look at a book and take the most negative view of why certain decisions are made, then that’s their prerogative, and I’m comfortable with that. So with issue eight, I know I wanted this book to be a certain way, and people may not take to it, and I’m okay with that.

I listened to the roundtable conversation [about the best comics of 2011] on Inkstuds [featuring critics Robin McConnell, Tim Hodler, Joe McCulloch, and Matt Seneca] and I thought that was really interesting. I’m listening to them talk about the book…[Laughs] I respect all those writers, but at first I was like, “No, I disagree completely. That’s fine, whichever way they’re taking to the book is fine, but I don’t agree with what they’re saying.” But as I listened to it, I realized they were teaching me something about the book. In a way, I was learning about what I was thinking. I realized they’re kinda right about a lot of their opinions about the book.

Page from "Epilogue" by Robert Beatty

Collins: The reason I brought up the debate over #4 actually ties into what I got out of that roundtable myself. Looking at #8, I have no problem processing the art from Robert Beatty and Takeshi Murata. I’d compare the opening stuff from Beatty to the opening synthesizer instrumentals from 1984 by Van Halen or Music Has the Right to Children by Boards of Canada – it’s really appropriate that it’s called “Overture.” And the Murata stuff, the way it has this beautiful sensual vibrant feeling but depicts these weird, slightly sinister items of pop- and trash-culture detritus…I get what that’s doing there among these comics. The stuff I really struggled with were the intro from Ian Svenonius [Harkham laughs] and the Oh, Wicked Wanda! material at the back of the book. The Oh, Wicked Wanda! stuff looked gorgeous on that lovely paper you selected for it, but I didn’t really like them as comics. And there was just so much of it!

Harkham: [Laughs] I had a hard time cutting it down!

Collins: And the Svenonius—I just wasn’t ready for an introduction to a Kramers Ergot that ended with “ZAP! BLAM! POW!”

Harkham: [Laughs] I know – I’m with you, man, I’m with you! Have you read any of his writing?

Collins: I feel like I have, although I couldn’t tell you what it was. I have enough friends who are deep into his various bands, Nation of Ulysses or Weird War or Chain and the Gang depending on the friend, that I feel as though these things have filtered into me secondhand, though I couldn’t pinpoint exactly how or why.

Harkham: There’s a book that the record label Drag City released of his essays called Psychic Soviet that I really recommend. I’m only slightly aware of his music; I really know Svenonius as a writer. My only concern with including him was that for people who did know his music, it looked like we got some hip dude to write an intro – like getting a Morrissey to write an afterword, or Steve Albini or something. I was a little bit concerned just ‘cause it’s him. But as an aside, you should read his other essays.

Collins: Well, in that Inkstuds roundtable, Joe McCulloch made the argument that the Oh, Wicked Wanda! material at the end of the book was as if the Svenonius essay was saying “The prosecution rests!” The essay was about the way pop art nullifies and destroys art’s revolutionary potential, and here at the end of a book of underground comics you have this endlessly long, vaguely funny smut comic – choke on it. [Laughs] I wasn’t sure if I bought it, but he was able to contexualize them a lot better than I was.

Harkham: Yeah, me too. I think editing an anthology is not that different from making your own book, in that you gather bits and pieces that feel right and start making this overall thing. You don’t necessarily have a clear idea, you just know that you like these things next to each other. In the same way, when you’re writing a short story, you’re like, “Well, I’ve got this scene, and I don’t know what it means, but there’s something I’m really attracted to.” It resonates within you, something very simple – a guy barbecuing in the rain or something. [Laughs] You’re attracted to these little things and they all come together. I had some very clear ideas about why I wanted certain things, and then there are some things you’re unsure about. So listening to McCulloch talk about what he thought was very interesting. I don’t feel like it’s my place to say he’s 100% right, he’s 100% wrong – I just thought it was interesting. Once the book is done, it’s now owned as much by the readers as by me as far as what it means. I try to avoid getting in the way of that and saying “No, it’s here because of this.” I don’t necessarily want to effect how people read the book.

Page from "Oh! Wicked Wanda" by Ron Embelton and Frederic Mullally

Collins: I’ve heard that from artists; it’s really interesting to hear it from an editor.

Harkham: Well, you know, I have my own feelings and thoughts about Oh, Wicked Wanda!, and I don’t necessarily want to smother the reader with my take on it. I’d much rather they engage the work. If I wanted to, I’d run little paragraph intros before each strip to contextualize why I like them in my own editorial voice, but I don’t feel like that’s necessarily an exciting book to read. Every book, regardless of whether it’s an anthology or by a single author, should have a certain amount of ambiguity and mystery and tension. The only time those things should be lacking – and it’s debatable – is in a work of nonfiction. That’s debatable, because some of my favorite writers of nonfiction bring a lot to the table where they don’t have all the answers. To tie it into comics, Dan Raeburn’s Imp #4 about Mexican comics – he’s wrestling with stuff, and it’s interesting.

So Oh, Wicked Wanda!…It’s interesting, because I don’t think I thought it was gonna be hard for people to get through that stuff. I thought they’d have issues with it, but I didn’t think it would be hard, or intense in that way. You could make the argument that the book was almost meant to feel like you just sat through a grueling four-hour war movie, or some atonal music piece, and now here’s The Benny Hill Show as a respite. [Laughs] But it’s clear no one’s really taken it that way. Which is good, I guess.

Collins: Perhaps for this audience, the atonal stuff is our Benny Hill Show. Then you get to the T&A romp, and it’s like, “Aaaah! It’s Metal Machine Music!”

Harkham: But what is it? Is it seeing swastikas on girls’ asses? Is that a problem?

Collins: No, and that’s the thing. You said you thought people would have issues with it; I didn’t have any issues with it, I just thought it wasn’t that funny. Which is sort of the least critical criticism that anyone can ever levy at anything…

Harkham: I feel like that’s important, though. I can’t remember who wrote it – maybe you wrote it – but there was a [Comics] Journal review about the black humor anthology [Black Eye, edited by Ryan Standfest].

Collins: Yep, that was me.

Harkham: I only read one review of that book, and that was in the Journal, and you said you didn’t find it very good because it just wasn’t that funny. Remember? [Laughs] That, to me, is a very valid criticism. That’s something, as a reader, I’m curious about: How funny is a funny anthology? That’s important to me.

Collins: Okay, I feel a little better then. [Laughs]

Harkham: I know that for my own work, the most important thing is that it’s entertaining. That’s number one. Any deeper or richer intention should be behind that. The main thrust should always be “Is this scene funny? Is it good? Is it scary? Is it strong?” I want momentum, I want this thing to be moving. Any other concerns, like personal expression, honesty, truthfulness, whatever it is – all the stuff you really wrestle with when you’re in art school – should be in play in the background.

So I think jokes are important. Oh, Wicked Wanda! is a little bit trickier. It sounds like you still engaged with it, you didn’t shut down, but you didn’t find the jokes funny. I do think there are a couple other ways of reading it that make it kind of interesting. People who don’t even want to read it can just look at it and still like it without reading it. The first year I was looking at that stuff, I never read it. I was just looking at it page by page and thinking “My God, these are incredible-looking pages.”

Collins: Well, it sits so well on that paper stock that you can look at it along with the other airbrush art in the anthology literally on a surface level. You can look at the surface of the page and enjoy it.

Harkham: And I think that’s important. I do.

Page from "Warm Genetic House" by CF

Collins: You can also look at the Nazisploitation and S&M elements of the strip, and a few pages away you have CF’s strip, and you can get some resonance there. In fact, I feel as though the act of putting all the stuff that’s in here between two covers is almost like a game. I don’t mean that as a value judgment at all – or maybe I mean it as a positive one. The game is to try and puzzle out the context. “Okay, it’s a shorter, smaller volume; Sammy and Dan have said it’s the most focused one. So what is the focus? What am I not seeing?” Most of it I can make sense of, but the things that really stick out become a challenge. “What are they doing in here? What did he see?” That’s one of the pleasures of an anthology with a really strong editorial eye: trying to puzzle out the context the editor had in his mind when he put it together.

Harkham: Well, let’s see. Oh, Wicked Wanda! you had trouble with, and the Svenonius. [Long pause] Keeping in mind what we were talking about, about not wanting to smother readers with my goals or what I was trying to do…I definitely wanted to make something that got away from all the things that we take for granted when we think of anthologies, and when we think of comics, and when we think of comics within the context of the wider culture. When you pull it out of our little scene…One thing at play with Kramers 4 was that that book was, in some ways, a response to comics being embraced by the mainstream and by the wider book culture and art culture. 2003: Pantheon is releasing books, Fantagraphics and D&Q are now in bookstores, it’s becoming a regular thing, and comics are being presented more and more like literature in the way that they’re packaged, the way that the books are designed. [Kramers 4 was] my way of dealing with that, because I had no connection to that and didn’t grow up reading comics in that way. The Love and Rockets collections and the Jim Woodring collections were always 8 ½ x 11. They were just comics jammed together with covers in the back. [Laughs] They were just collections, really simple. Kramers 4, in some ways, was, “I want to get back to things being comics.” No context, no blurbs, just that energy of comics, throwing it all out there and leaving it to the reader to make sense of the work themselves.

When thinking about doing another issue of Kramers, I want to do something that’s gonna enter into that conversation of comics as literature and comics as fine art, but do it in a way that feels right where all those other books feel wrong to me. It’s a way of throwing out all the things we take as a given because that’s the way it’s done by Fanta and D&Q and First Second or whoever. You could make the argument that all previous Kramers have been about stripping context away, so let’s make one that’s all about context. So you think about having an essay to start the book. And you think about Takeshi Murata, who’s not a cartoonist, and I wouldn’t say those are comics in any form, but when you think of literary anthologies like Granta or McSweeney’s, often you’ll have somewhere in a book of prose a selection of sculptures or photography by a fine artist. Murata served that purpose. And you think about the size, and about trying to have meaty contributions and stories, and about a book you could buy at an airport bookstore and sit with for a couple days. That was really important to me.

One of the things that happens with the previous issues is that there’s a very off-handed way of giving the work: [in a singsongy voice] “Oh yeah, here’s Chris Ware, and here’s Martin Cendreda, and here’s CF…” I’m just tossing them out to the reader. With this, I wanted to present all this stuff with real respect and dignity. [Laughs] It gets a little bit tricky talking about this stuff, because I know that for everything I’m saying there’s a million arguments against it, and we could go into any one of these points and have a conversation. But I just wanted to make something that was really refined and clean and had a strong point of view. Someone mentioned that it’s an angry book, and I’m might agree with that. In a way I feel like I want to just throw everything out, and it’s a new start. [pause] Does that answer your question at all?

Collins: [Laughs] I think so! I don’t at all want to tease out of you some sort of revelation you’re not comfortable with because it proscribes reader reaction.

Harkham: I’m still figuring it out myself.

Collins: But the way you just described it makes me think that the fact that it’s a Kramers with a typewritten table of contents at the beginning is somehow the Rosetta stone of the entire project.

Harkham: Exactly. But dude, forget that. You don’t even need to go that far. Open the book, look at the endpapers: The endpapers are white. [Collins laughs] I’m serious! I am serious. Kramers has always covered every square inch of surface with content. It’s always been like “Just jam it in, as much stuff as possible, and if it’s not a good book, at least it’s a big book. [Laughs] One of these is bound to hit!” There’s a certain amount of insecurity when you’ve been working on an anthology for six months: “Fuck, I’ve got one month left. I’m gonna send out one last email to twenty people and be like ‘Who’s got something?’” With this, it was, “I’m gonna have a few people and I’m gonna give them space.” I told them all “I want your strip to start on the right-hand side, and I want it to be a certain number of pages, and I want it to be a certain kind of story.” I wanted to contextualize all this stuff, in a way that I never had before.

Cover of Crickets #3 by Sammy Harkham

With my own work, with Crickets, it’s more like those old issues of Kramers. When it comes to how I present my own work, I like it to look like shit. I like it to look dashed off and simple and vulgar, so that when you read it, if there’s anything richer, it’s almost a surprise. I want to embrace all those exterior elements of a comic book so that it’s a little bit subversive in that way. Like, [Crickets #3’s lead story] “Blood of the Virgin” is called “Blood of the Virgin.” You know? And the cover of Crickets 3…I’m really proud of that issue, but there’s no signifiers when you hold that thing that it’s anything but a dirty, gross comic.

Collins: You went out of your way to trashify it.

Harkham: Exactly. [Laughs] I didn’t go out of my way to trashify it, but all my favorite writers, if there’s one thing in common, is that they write in a very direct way, with a certain clarity of thought, just saying things. I really respond to that. So Crickets 3 works for me [because] I wanted to make something that feels like a comic book, and all the things we think of as a comic book as comic readers. You get what I mean when I say that, because you’re engaging with the medium in that way. Crickets is very much a part of that conversation.

With Kramers 8, it doesn’t make sense to do that anymore. I’m 31, I’m not 23. It doesn’t make sense anymore to have everything be loud and crazy and messy. And anyway, everyone’s doing that for me. Everything kinda looks the way Kramers 4 looked.

Collins: BCGF looked like if Kramers 4 came to life.

Harkham: [Laughs] Well, that’s nice, I guess. I mean, I’m not gonna take credit for any of that sort of thing. But there’s a certain rough texture to everything, and that doesn’t really resonate for me anymore. If I look at the fine art I’m looking at, the books I’m reading, the fashion, the graphic design, all the things I’m interested in – it doesn’t look like that. So why do the comics I buy?

Let’s see if I can say this in a clear way so you don’t have to edit the hell out of it… [Pause] There are certain things, I don’t know what I should call them, but certain tropes of indie comics that are sort of a given. It’s a pretty incestuous community, the world of comics. I realized that if I stepped out of that a little bit and think of the wider context, there’s a way of approaching this book that feels really fresh, and yet feels like it’s connecting to the wider culture. Which I feel that comics have been doing anyway, for the last couple of years. Does that make sense?

Collins: Well, as we were just saying, it’s a Kramers with white endpapers, with a table of contents, with a prose introduction, with a cover that’s restrained even by the standards of #7. The package itself is making an argument.

Harkham: Yeah. It’s a difficult book for me to talk about because I feel like I’m still in it, even though I’ve been done with since September. I haven’t really been able to make sense of it. This is why I wanted to do this interview over the phone as opposed to me writing answers, because anything I would type, I don’t know how honest it would be. Over the phone, I can say I don’t have clear-cut answers or clear-cut reasons for making the book what it is, exactly.

But hopefully, with any piece of work, there’s multiple strands that are at play. Every time I would see your name come up in my email when we were communicating, I’d think of Game of Thrones, because I know you’re a big Martin fan. I’ve only just started that series, but he’s a good example of this. When you describe that book to someone, you can say, “It’s about this,” and it’s totally true, but you can also say “It’s also about this,” and that’s totally true as well. Not to say that Kramers is anywhere near a work like what George R.R. Martin’s doing [laughs], but you try to have multiple strands at play, multiple things that you’re working towards.

Page from "Childhood Predators" by Frank Santoro and Dash Shaw

With this new issue, there is that one strand: “Okay, I want to make a book that actually looks like a book, that can sit on a bookshelf with good prose and good graphic design and good records. I want it to be part of the wider culture.” All these cartoonists are doing very, very unique work, and if there’s one connector – I don’t know if this is true, but maybe – all that work feels like it’s a little bit outside comics. Despite being totally informed by the medium, there’s something about it that looks or reads like it’s not so incestuous. They’re not responses to other comics. It feels like they’re engaging the wider culture.

So there was that element of wanting to make something that’s pushing past comics, because comics as a medium is already going there. You already have comics in every bookstore. You have mainstream coverage of cartoonists. So it’s like, okay, if we want to finally engage with that instead of avoiding it…I can avoid it with my own work, but it’s not fair to do that when representing other artists and putting together collections of other people’s work. That was an exciting challenge, to try to do that.

The next thing was, what’s the point of view? That’s where Svenonius and Oh, Wicked Wanda! obviously add a lot. Maybe they throw a wrench in things, but maybe that’s good. Obviously I don’t want anyone to dislike any of the pieces. That’s always a problem when doing an anthology. Every review of an anthology, as a given, will say, “It’s great, but like any anthology it has its problems.” [Collins laughs] There’s always those strips you don’t care about, because every editor has their own definition of what’s good.

Collins: But as a reviewer, for example, I realized a few volumes into Mome that the fact that I disliked a few strips in each issue is a big part of why I enjoyed reading the series. It helped me understand, “Okay, why does a comic work? Why does a comic not work? What are these two comics that are only a few pages away doing so differently?” I found that really helpful. So even when there’s stuff that you struggle with or dislike – I understand that as an editor, the intention is not to put in stuff and say “Oh, no one’s gonna like this – let’s see what they make of that!” But as a reader, it’s an experience that a regular book can’t reproduce. “Advantage” is a weird word for it, but it is a unique advantage of anthologies that they present different works that you may have very different reactions to, all between two covers.

Harkham: I think it’s the job of the editor to make the right decisions so that all that work creates a bigger whole. If you think of each creator’s comic as a chapter of a novel, and each person is bringing a different idea to the table, and each one is working well off the other, then a bad anthology is when all that gets muddled. They’re just running whatever, or they’re just running stuff they like, and there’s no clear tone or feeling, and it becomes a muddled mess. You engage with it not as a book but as a bunch of different strips that happen to be bound together.

Like you said, there’s a lot of anthologies, so to do Kramers isn’t so much because I’m like, “Oh I have to publish this guy because nobody’s gonna see it otherwise. It’s more about going, “I want to see a certain kind of comic book, and I want to push the reader hard, and I want to break past their barriers, the perimeters of what they expect, and give them something fun, something different.” That sort of thinking goes into play when you’re making your own book – it just so happens that you’re working with all these different bits and pieces from other people, and you’re trying to build this Voltron robot out of all these pieces. [Laughs] You can tell I’m still making sense of it myself.

Collins: You’re saying so many things that sound like you’re talking about a comic you drew from beginning to end. [Harkham laughs] To me, that says a lot about what Kramers is.

Harkham: If you’re a cartoonist and you’re editing an anthology, it’s very much an excuse to live in the skin of other people, for sure. That’s definitely at play. “Man, I love this girl’s work, she’s amazing, and I wanna be involved! I wanna present this stuff my way.” You want to get your fingerprints on it. So that’s definitely there. I think it’d be easier to have a free-for-all and say, “Okay, I have this many pages, I just need to fill it.” If I did that, I could probably get an issue of Kramers out every year.

It was a good learning experience on this one, because with only having to deal with about twelve people, I thought it would be a much easier process, but it wasn’t. It’s a huge undertaking. It feels like a lot of work. I never know why afterwards. When I’m in it, I should write myself a letter and give myself notes, so that next time I’m like “I want to do another Kramers,” I can read it and remind myself. I always forget, and it’s always the same issues that come up. “Ohhh, right.”

You’re always at the whim of your contributors. I think I never get over that, and I think I always resent that. As a cartoonist, after a while you start resenting that you’re spending so much time on other people’s work and not enough on your own work. You just become this maniac by the end, where you want it to be done, but at the same time you’re like “Fuck, I spent so much time on this, I want it to be good. I really don’t want it to be a waste of six months. Or a year!” It’s always a struggle. It’s a lot of work. I’m always surprised that it’s so much work, but it is. I’m sure that Eric Reynolds [editor of Mome] would say the same. It’s a pain in the butt.

Collins: I feel good that I went through all 40 pages of Oh, Wicked Wanda!, then. I owed it to you!

Harkham: Well, hopefully, even if you didn’t enjoy reading it, you got something out of it, or it enriched something else, at least in the context of the book. I felt like it was important to run that stuff. I don’t feel beholden enough to anything that I have to run anything. I’m a harsh editor in that way: “Do I need any of this?” I don’t feel beholden to anybody in any way. With the Oh, Wicked Wanda! stuff, the only real question mark was how people were gonna respond to it. But maybe that’s always the way, when doing anything. You never know. You just gotta go off what you want as a reader. That’s how I approach my own work, that’s how I approach Kramers: Finding out what do I feel like looking at and reading, and then trying to make that thing.

Page from "Get Your Ass to Mars" by Takeshi Murata

Images courtesy the artists and PictureBox

From noon to 9 p.m. tomorrow the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival (or BCGF as it’s more commonly known) will take place at Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Church, 275 North 8th Street, Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The show, curated by Picturebox, Desert Island and Bill Kartalopolous, has very quickly built up a reputation as being one of the “must-attend” indie shows on the East Coast, and this year promises to be the the most impressive and largest show yet with a murderer’s row of top-flight guests and expanded exhibitors list debuting some killer-looking books. Best of all, the show is free to attend, so

Click on the link below to read a run-down of who will be debuting what, when and where:

Kramer's Ergot 8

• How awesome is this year’s guest list? Awesome enough to not only include the one and only Jack Davis, of Mad and EC fame, but also Chip Kidd, Phoebe Gloeckner, David Mazzucchelli, CF, Brian Ralph, Lisa Hanawalt and John Porcellino.

• Perhaps the most notable debut book this year comes from Picturebox, which will have early copies of Kramer’s Ergot 8. Editor Sammy Harkham will be on hand to sign copies, as will contributors Gary Panter, CF, Frank Santoro, Dash Shaw, Anya Davidson and Gabrielle Bell. They’ll also have a number of prints for sale, including two rare ones by Rory Hayes, of all people.

• Fantagraphics will be attending the festival for the first time, and have brand spanking new copies of Jack Davis: Drawing American Pop Culture, 500 Portraits by Tony Millionaire, Action! Mystery! Thrills! Great Comic Book Covers 1936-1945 edited by Greg Sadowski and Jason Conquers America by Jason. Signing at their table will be Josh Simmons, Kim Deitch, Dash Shaw, Jack Davis, Michael Kupperman and Al Columbia.

• Drawn & Quarterly won’t be debuting any books, but they will have Brian Ralph, Adrian Tomine, R. Sikoryak, Jillian Tamaki, John Porcellino, Matt Forsythe and Gabrielle Bell (who apparently will be doing a lot of table-hopping).

• Bell will also have a new $1 mini-comic debuting over at the Uncivilized Books table, which you can get for free if you sign up for their mailing list. UB will also have a new issue of True Swamp by Jon Lewis and Bell will be selling portraits for $5 a pop.

• Koyama Press will debut a number of comics at the show, including Comics Class, Rivers Forgotten and The World of Gloria Badcock. Artists on hand include Michael DeForge, Julia Wertz, Maurice Vellekoop, Matt Forsythe, Jeremy Kai and Jordan Crane.

• DeForge also wants you to know that he’ll have two mini-comics at the show, King Trash and Open Country, and that the new issue of the Smoke Signal anthology will feature a collaboration with him and Benjamin Marra. I’d strongly recommend buying anything DeForge has for sale. Marra’s no slouch either, and he’ll have the new, fourth issue of Night Business for sale at his Traditional Comics table.

• DeForge is also one of the contributors to Zack Soto’s Studygroup Magazine anthology, which Soto will be debuting at the show. It looks pretty swell.

• New books at the Domino Books table include Face Man, Spider Monkey, Violence Valley, Here I Am and The Archer. Secret Acres will have a new issue of John Brodowski’s Curio Cabinet. AdHouse will have new Ferzan mini by Lamar Abrams. Ryan Cecil Smith will be debuting something called SF Supplementary File, which looks intriguing. Conundrum Press will have a brand-new book from David Collier, Colliers Popular Press. La Mano Press will apparently have early copies of Zak Sally’s Sammy the Mouse book. Sam Henderson will have a spiffy looking new book of gag cartoons. Oh and so much more. See a full list of exhibitors here.

• Programming will be held nearby at Union Pool, 484 Union Avenue #A. If you can only attend one panel I’d probably shoot for either the Q&A with Jack Davis or the talk with Phoebe Gloeckner. There will also be a number of satellite events held in various locations in the surrounding area, which is nice if you can afford to stay longer than a day.

• A number of comics bloggers will also be in attendance, including yours truly. I’ll actually have a mini-comic of my own — the prologue to a lengthy fantasy epic my 10-year-old daughter is working on — that I’ll be handing out for free to a few friends and curious parties. Supplies will be limited, but if you see me at the show feel free to ask for a copy.

Studygroup Magazine

Looks like the mother of all post-millennial art/alt-comix anthologies is about to get a makeover. Last Thursday, editor Sammy Harkham and publisher Dan Nadel of PictureBox Inc. announced the November 2011 release of Kramers Ergot 8, the latest installment in Harkham’s “this is why the word ‘seminal’ exists” anthology series. According to Harkham and Nadel, the new volume will mark a break from the four previous, sprawling, all but physically intimidating collections — a smaller, more focused effort, featuring longer 16-24-page stories from about a dozen creators, working with the same aesthetic end in mind instead of the potpourri of approaches evident in earlier volumes. The line-up includes Harkham, cover designer Robert Beatty, Gary Panter, Gabrielle Bell, C.F., Kevin Huizenga, Ben Jones, Jason T. Miles, Leon Sadler, Johnny Ryan, Frank Santoro & Dash Shaw, Anya Davidson, Ron Rege Jr., Ron Embleton & Frederic Mullally.

Beginning with 2003′s volume four, Kramers bestrode the alternative comics landscape like a colossus. It’s widely credited, certainly by me, with “breaking” the artists and aesthetic of the Providence underground (Fort Thunder, Paper Rad, Paper Rodeo, etc.) with the altcomix audience at large, and with drawing non-traditional approaches to comics and image-making into the comics conversation. (It’s hard to remember now, but back in 2003 the inclusion of pages of non-narrative collage was a controversy that lit up the Comics Journal message board.) At the same time, however, and as would befit an artist of Harkham’s restraint, Kramers has always contained a second strain of rigorous storytelling, as evidenced in strips ranging from Harkham’s early standout “Poor Sailor” to the short stories from heavy hitters Chris Ware, Adrian Tomine, Jaime Hernandez, and Daniel Clowes that appeared in the anthology’s last issue, the gigantic, expensive Little Nemo in Slumberland-sized #7 from now-defunct publisher Buenaventura Press. It ought to be fascinating to see where Volume Eight’s mission statement takes us.

For more information, watch Nadel’s interview with Harkham in the very Vestron Video-ish video embedded above.

from "Crossfader" by Dan Zettwoch

Another day, another link to Jordan Crane’s must-read What Things Do webcomics portal. This time it’s Dan Zettwoch’s “Crossfader,” which originally ran in the equally indispensable print anthology Kramers Ergot 6. Using Zettowch’s trademark diagram-style layouts, it’s a good-natured look at a fictional midwestern church’s Fall Festival “haunted house,” the centerpiece attraction of which is a lighting trick that transforms a girl into a gorilla. (I think this represents “the horrors of evolution.”) Chances are good you’ve never read comics quite like Zettwoch’s before — it’s no sin to check ‘em out.

Pigeon Press wuz robbed! Publisher Alvin Buenaventura reports that his new publishing venture had two copies of the legendary, gigantic, expensive hardcover anthology Kramers Ergot 7 stolen from its table at APE this past Sunday morning. Buenaventura, who’s had a rough enough year as it is, is looking for help from any APE exhibitors and attendees who may have witnessed the thieves in action. With a book that size, they’d be hard to miss.

If you were at APE and you saw something, say something! Not only will you help catch a thief and (hopefully) facilitate the return of some very expensive merchandise, you’ll also help solve the mystery of how anyone could waltz away with two copies of a book roughly the size of a Great Dane.

“5 years, 20 volumes, 72 artists, and 2,352 pages of comics.” Strictly by the numbers — taken from the Editor’s Notes that kick off Mome Vol. 20: Fall 2010, on sale this month — Fantagraphics’ signature anthology is a force to be reckoned with. Launched in 2005 with the intention of providing a regular home for new work by promising young cartoonists like Gabrielle Bell, Jeffrey Brown, Anders Nilsen, Paul Hornschemeier, and Sophie Crumb, it rapidly evolved into something else, something arguably more: a showcase for alternative comics of nearly every style and stripe. During its five-year history, Mome‘s diverse accomplishments have included publishing work from European greats like David B. and Lewis Trondheim, serializing Tim Hensley’s acclaimed graphic novel Wally Gropius, reintroducing Al Columbia to the comics scene prior to the release of his landmark Pim & Francie, giving Dash Shaw yet another forum for his experimental take on science fiction, providing an unlikely venue for underground legend Gilbert Shelton, showcasing up-and-comers like Jon Vermilyea and Nate Neal…and, like all anthologies, starting a good deal of debate over which contributors were any good at all. With its like-clockwork quarterly schedule, Mome is a go-to destination for finding out what’s going on at comics’ cutting edge.

Eric Reynolds by Jaime Hernandez

Presiding over all this has been editor Eric Reynolds, who inherited full control of the anthology from original co-editor and co-publisher Gary Groth. When last I spoke to Reynolds about Mome in October of 2007, he was prepping Vol. 10, which sported a new look, new work from Columbia, and the second half of a story by altcomix titan Jim Woodring. Three years and ten issues later, the series has gotten a full-on makeover from designer Adam Grano, and is in the midst of some of its most challenging work ever from Shaw, Josh Simmons, Derek Van Gieson and more. What has changed, what has remained constant, and what lies in store? Reynolds spoke with Robot 6 about all this and more in a fifth-anniversary interview.

If I’d ask you five years ago to describe what Mome Vol. 20 would look like, what would you have said?

I would’ve said there’s no way this thing’s going to last 20 issues. Really, I’m sure I would have had no other answer.

This may be a weird question, then, but how does that sort of belief — the belief that this thing we’re about to do doesn’t stand a chance of lasting very long — affect doing that thing in the first place? What were you hoping for, in terms of how long it lasted? Or did you not really care?

I honestly don’t know what I was hoping for. I’m sure I was hoping it could last 20 issues, but realistically, how could I have expected it? Look at any other anthology that’s ever been. I’m not sure there’s ever been one in alternative comics that’s published more pages of comics than Mome. We’re at around 2,350 pages of comics thru issue 20. What are the most successful comix anthologies of all-time? RAW? Zap? Weirdo? Zero Zero? Arcade? Kramers? None ever approached that many pages. So I don’t think I had a fatalistic attitude going in; it was more of a realistic one. I mean, I know enough from working at Fanta that there are few book series we’ve ever launched that could sustain 20 volumes. I thought we’d have a decent run but I just don’t think I could have anticipated 20 issues.

Mome Vol. 1

It’s probably been a while since you’ve been asked this one, but what was the thinking behind the launch of Mome?

Well, there were a lot of specific ideas behind it that I think is well-traveled territory, but really, I just felt like there was a need for an ongoing anthology that came out frequently enough to give a number of cartoonists a platform to publish stories regularly. The periodical market was already shrinking rapidly, and I thought and continue to think that this was not a good thing, creatively-speaking. Virtually every towering alternative cartooning figure I can think of, from Spiegelman to Crumb to Los Bros to Clowes to Ware to Sacco to Chester Brown, etc., honed their craft and found their voice by doing comic books and contributing to anthologies. I knew we were past the point where we were going to be starting too many comic book series anymore and thought an anthology could help fill that void a bit. I had been thinking about it for awhile, and one day Gary and I just started talking about it and decided to do it.

Mome was originally conceived of as featuring a fixed roster of young cartoonists whom we could watch develop over time. That version of the series didn’t last very long at all, and since then there have been, I think, several “eras” for the book: An SNL-style “regular cast plus guest star” model, a period where things felt more like underground comics than alternative comics, a period featuring a lot of experimental takes on genre, a slightly edgier feel in the last few issues…If I’m mischaracterizing anything I apologize, but I was wondering how the evolution of the book looked from your vantage point.

You probably have a clearer perspective on it than I do. To me, they tend to blend together at this point. The evolution has been subtle and organic and rarely conscious. I can understand the perception of the eras you’ve defined, but it wasn’t conscious, per se, and I’m not sure I could’ve ever come up with them on my own.

That makes sense, but were there ever any conscious moves on your part to introduce a sensibility or approach you felt was missing? Like “Hey, you know what we need?”

from Mome Vol. 10 by Tim Hensley

Well, sure. But not in a broad, overarching sense. For better or worse, it’s really more like, “Boy, I really like this, we need this,” from issue to issue as opposed to trying to reinvent the entire Mome wheel periodically. I’m not that smart, Sean.

The “name names” portion of the interview: Whose work in Mome are you proudest of?

I’m probably most proud of Tim Hensley, because I’ve been a pretty big fan of his for going on 20 years now — I think he was the only early Mome contributor that had also done work for my Dirty Stories anthologies of the mid-1990s — and I don’t think Wally Gropius would exist if we hadn’t asked him to contribute to Mome. I don’t think Wally was really swimming around in Tim’s head until he was specifically asked to contribute X number of pages to Mome per issue and he had to come up with something. And I think that book is one of the great graphic novels of the 2000s, so I can’t help but take some pride in that even though it’s all Tim’s work.

I figured he’d be high on your list. One of the coolest things about that comic is that I think it caught a lot of people by surprise. In the individual installments, I know a lot of people who just thought “Oh, that’s a funny Archie parody” or whatever. It wasn’t until the collection hit that a lot of people cottoned to what he was up to. For me, it was the incest strip that did it. How early on did you know he was up to something special?

Oh, right away. Page 1. It was clear he was embarking on his Magnum Opus. I’m not trying to sound like Mr. Know-it-All, like I knew this was going to set the world on fire. His work just really resonates with me, I love literally everything about it, it’s as close to perfect a comic as anything I can think of in regard to my own, undefined, unconscious Platonic ideal of what makes a good comic. The rest of the world, to a man, could hate it and it would do nothing to shake my faith in it, because I know how much *I* value it. The only thing I’ve read this year that is on that same plane for me, as a fan, has been Jaime [Hernandez]‘s stuff in the new Love and Rockets, [Daniel] Clowes’s Wilson, and [Charles] Burns’s X’ed Out. For whatever reason, these comics are just right in my wheelhouse.

Dirty Stories Vol. 2, edited by Reynolds

Now that you mention it, how did your experience with Dirty Stories affect your work with Mome? Tom Spurgeon suggested recently that Vol. 19′s strips are the best reminder yet that you were the editor of both books…

That sort of makes sense because 19 is definitely my favorite issue so far and the issue that I think most closely reflects my own tastes as a comics fan. I’m not sure how DS affected my work with Mome, really, other than to give me the confidence that I could do something that others might want to read. They’re pretty different titles, though. I was very young when I did Dirty Stories and had a much more reactionary, transgressive streak in me than I do now. Dirty Stories came from a very punk mindset. Mome was a much more idealistic endeavor.

from Mome Vol. 10 by Dash Shaw

What other contributors have you been really happy with?

I’ve been extremely proud of what Dash Shaw has done in Mome. I think he’s been the perfect Mome contributor in many ways, actively utilizing the format to experiment in a myriad of ways.

He’s sort of a cartoonist who’s never done the same thing twice, isn’t he? I mean, the growth from, like, Love Eats Brains to Bottomless Belly Button…

Yeah, exactly. Trying different genres, experimenting with fiction and nonfiction, playing with color, with technique, and having no fear…The guy is really something else.

from Mome Vol. 10 by Tom Kaczynski

I could list any number of cartoonists and what I’ve liked about their work, but one other who comes to mind that I’ve been really proud of is Tom Kaczynski. He was someone I met through Gabrielle Bell and I liked his work from the get go but it’s only as I’ve gotten to know him a little bit better and read his contributions to Mome that I’ve discovered what a smart, thoughtful guy he is. And he has the cartooning chops to match what’s going on in his head. I have a feeling there are very few rooms that Tom walks into where he isn’t the smartest one in it. The sociopolitical themes he wrestles in his work would in the hands of a lesser cartoonist come off as preachy or dogmatic, but he manages to never do that. I think he has only important work in him.

from Mome Vol. 1 by David Heatley

Did any of your contributors let you down?

As far as who let me down…I don’t really want to go there and nobody immediately came to mind, even, although thinking about it a bit I would have to say the biggest disappointment is that David Heatley never finished Overpeck. I think that was shaping up to be a tremendously weird and powerful story and I was eager to see where it was headed.

That’s a great call. And not just because what he ended up doing instead was so divisive, but because I really did feel that that was his best work yet. What happened there — is it something you can go into?

I’m not even sure I remember the specifics. I know I tried very hard to convince him to continue it. If I recall, he had gotten his book deal to do My Brain Is Hanging Upside Down and with it there may have been a deal or an option for Overpeck, as well, and he decided he didn’t want to tip his hand any further and simply wait for the collection to publish it. Which was fine, it was his decision, but I just really liked the work and wanted to see it finish in Mome. I haven’t talked to David in quite a long time, so I have no idea if it’s still in the cards or what.

from Mome Vol. 13 by Gilbert Shelton & Pic

Who was your biggest get?

I guess I’d have to say David B., Jim Woodring, Al Columbia or Gilbert Shelton. David B. was really key because I think he was the first truly established cartoonist to consent to being in Mome, it was very early on (issue 3) and I think he lent some much-needed legitimacy to what we were doing. I was grateful to Al and Jim, two guys I’d known for over 15 years, to trust me enough to let me run their work, because they could have published anywhere they wanted, I’m sure. Personally, I was probably most excited to have Gilbert Shelton. I get the impression that his pieces didn’t go over so well with a lot of Mome readers but holy fucking shit it’s Gilbert Shelton! I knew he would be a weird fit for Mome in some ways but I saw it as a real chance to introduce him to a new generation of cartoonists. I think it’s not unreasonable to say that Shelton has kind of fallen off the radar when it comes to discussing a pantheon of the all-time greats. Most of his work over the last couple decades from Knockabout and Rip Off seemed to be off the radar of most alt-comix readers. So, as silly as it might sound, I thought he might stand to benefit from Mome as much as any of the younger folks, and certainly more than, say, David B. or Jim Woodring. I also thought his strip was very funny and contemporary despite the superficial hippie trappings that seem to put some folks off. I think if he drew his characters to look like urban hipsters folks would have loved it, which is kind of depressing.

Are there any cartoonists you think of as “the ones that got away,” who you wanted to get in the book but couldn’t?

There were a few folks who were initially slated to be in Mome‘s initial core group but had to back out for whatever reasons prior to the first issue. Marc Bell was one, I think Kevin Huizenga was another. I would have been thrilled to publish them in there but it didn’t work out.

At Comic Con this year, Brian Ralph told me that he was bummed at the time Mome started because he wasn’t asked to contribute. Brian would have been an awesome guy for Mome, so now I’m bummed that I didn’t.

from Mome Vol. 1 by Jonathan Bennett

I also really miss Jonathan Bennett being in Mome, which I know he knows. I love his work and it felt like he was in a very strong creative groove with the first several issues of Mome and that the best was still yet to come. I think he’s a tremendously underrated cartoonist, an impeccable craftsman with a very strong voice. But his career as a graphic designer really took off shortly after Mome began and he hasn’t been able to create many comics the last few years. Whether it’s for Mome or otherwise, I really hope he gets back to them because he’s really, really good.

Do you get a lot of feedback from the artists in Mome about the other artists in Mome? How does their juxtaposition with one another affect the reception of their work, do you think? Have any of them ever offered their thoughts on that?

You’d have to ask them, I guess. I mean, yes, I have gotten and do get feedback from some of the artists about what they like and don’t like, and I always enjoy that. But I couldn’t tell you much more, specifically. It’s not like we all work in a big clubhouse. In fact, I’m often lousy at communicating with Mome artists, which I’m really embarrassed to say, it’s really something I wish I was better at. I’d like to think they and the readers enjoy the juxtapositions, and I always try to create interesting juxtapositions within each issue. Rob Clough has a real knack for picking up on those things whenever he reviews Mome.

One thing I’ve been curious about for a long time is what Mome‘s audience is like, since it’s a format that’s very different than anything else out there. Is it people getting every single issue? Subscribers? People who pick individual volumes up depending on who’s in them? The audience for the literary journals that inspired it?

I really have no idea. I just don’t. I mean, I know where we sell the books, but I don’t know who the consumers are, per se. And where we sell Mome is not appreciably different than where we sell most of our books. About half go thru W.W. Norton to bookstores and Amazon and half go thru Diamond to specialty shops. We do have a subscriber base although it’s farily minimal, maybe a couple of hundred people.

One slight trend I’ve noticed and which has been pretty gratifying is that a lot of cartooning students tell me they read it. I’ve taken trips in the last couple of years to places like MCAD and CCS and I’m really gratified to have a surprising number of aspiring cartoonists tell me how much they really enjoy it. I like that. When we started Mome, the idea was essentially to help the cartoonists who were in it. If it actually somehow serves as some kind of inspiration or influence to cartoonists who aren’t even in it, then that’s a really great fringe benefit that never even occurred to me as a possibility when we started.

That’s interesting. It’s not as though I have any contact with cartooning students whatsoever, but i wonder if it’s seen as sort of the Big Leagues, the way people at the sketch and improv institutions in New York and Chicago and L.A. and so on see Saturday Night Live. That’s why I’ve pitched to it, I could tell you that much.

Maybe. I imagine it’s maybe something they see as both the Big Leagues but yet also attainable, if that makes sense.

If I’m not mistaken, Vol. 20 marks your debut as the sole editor of the series.

I’ve actually been the sole editor for quite awhile. I forget what issue Gary’s name came off the masthead but it’s been several.

Oh, look at that — it was Vol. 17, Winter 2010. How had you and Gary split the work, and what’s changed now?

This might sound self-serving, I really don’t mean it to, but I was always doing the heavy lifting on Mome even though we consulted together on everything early on. Gary always has too much to do. It got to the point where I was making a lot of decisions without even consulting Gary because he’s a Very Busy Man and I didn’t want to bother him with too many details, and at some point he suggested to me that I take his name off the masthead because he felt guilty about taking co-credit. So I did. The division of labor early on was simply that we both invited cartoonists to contribute and that I did most of the nuts and bolts assembly of the book while he contributed the interview every issue. It was a lot of fun because even though I work ten feet apart from Gary we hadn’t really collaborated on a project like this since I was an editor for The Comics Journal in the early-to-mid 1990s.

Mome Vol. 10

This issue sees a redesign, the biggest since Jordan Crane designed the very first installment. I know the layout was altered at issue #10, removing the two-tone wallpaper-style patterns and moving the title from a bar at the bottom to a box in the upper left, but the logo remained the same. Why change what turned out to be a pretty iconic design?

Well, I guess it came down to, “Why not?” It’s not like Mome has ever been hugely successful, and it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise when I say that after 20 issues, sales have flattened out a bit. Adam Grano has been doing the production and design for Mome since almost the very beginning, adhering to Jordan’s template. He’s done a great, unsung job considering — let’s face it — it can’t be as creatively satisfying adhering to someone else’s template is it would be to create your own. So when Adam proposed redesigning the series a few issues back, even though the obsessive-compulsive in me resisted the idea, the more I thought about it and the more it seemed like a good idea. So I gave him the green light for issue 20, which seemed like a good “anniversary” issue to do it with. We’d made a slight design change with issue 10, eliminating the title bar across the bottom and eschewing the patterned backgrounds, so 20 seemed like a good place to mix it up even further. It enabled Adam to put his stamp on it a bit. If Mome was a tremendous commercial success I would’ve likely been more resistant to it. I love The Believer and love that they’ve stuck to their template for 70-some issues now. Charles Burns is their David Levine. I love that kind of continuity personally. But it felt right to resist those inclinations and try something different.

Anthologies are a dicey business in comics. To what do you attribute Mome‘s longevity?

Just enough sales. I realize you’re really asking me, “To what do you attribute just enough sales to?” and to that end I really have no idea. I’m just grateful it’s hung on.

Fair enough! Speaking of anthologies, though, where do you see Mome in relation to some of the other approaches to that format over recent years — Kramers Ergot or Papercutter or D&Q Showcase?

Well, I’ll be the first to admit that Mome is hardly as tightly-curated or as well-conceived as the last few Kramers. That’s like the gold standard for anthologies at this point. But one of the great benefits of Mome is, for me, its frequency. I very purposefully created with Jordan Crane a template that would enable me to be able to get issues out every three months. I work on Mome as a labor of love, I do it on the side for no pay, and to be able to do that, I simply couldn’t be as hands-on and as detail-oriented as Sammy [Harkham] has been with Kramers. You’ll never see me flying to Malaysia to watch Mome come off the press. I wish that wasn’t the case, but I would’ve burned out after a few issues. So I see Mome‘s great strength as being its periodicity, as superficial as that might sound, but it really was a key component of the idea behind it, that by doing four issues a year with four deadlines, the contributors might be pushed to create more pages than they otherwise would, and try things they might not otherwise have done.

There does seem to be a bit of a renaissance of good anthologies lately. Smoke Signals from Brooklyn’s Desert Island, Diamond Comics from Floating World in Portland, some of the stuff Sparkplug has been doing, student work from CCS and SCAD, etc. I don’t know where Mome fits in it all, really. I just hope enough people enjoy it on its own terms to justify its existence. When there isn’t enough, we’ll end it. I’m not too precious about it.

Bizarrely, I’d never thought of the anthologies of the past few years as a replacement for the solo alternative comic book until just now, when you mentioned how Mome was a response to the latter’s disappearance. Now, of course, it makes perfect sense: If you’re not one of the very few artists continuing to pursue that format, perhaps quixotically — Kevin Huizenga seems to have made the most successful go of it recently, and Michael DeForge seems to mean business about it — an anthology makes sense as a way to work frequently in print, in front of an audience. Did you get a sense from your artists that that’s how they saw it as well?

I think so, yeah. I mean, that was really the explicit intent of it being quarterly. And I think you’re right about Kevin, he’s one of the Last Men Standing as far as that goes, the exception to prove the rule. There were always anthologies, even when the periodical market was thriving, but I think they’re even more valuable now. There are just not enough publishers to support all the good cartoonists out there. I am constantly having to reject some pretty good work because we just have a ceiling of how many books we can publish a year. It’s my least favorite part of the job. Mome is at least a small way to help offset that reality.

Related question: It can be argued that web publishing can serve the same purpose that the solo series used to serve, or that the print anthologies serve today. Lately we’ve been seeing a lot more work from established alternative cartoonists going up online, from Brian Chippendale to Frank Santoro to Gabrielle Bell to everyone on Jordan Crane’s What Things Do, which is a real murderer’s row. As an editor of a print anthology dedicated to that sort of material, how do you see the rise of the alternative webcomic?

Well, it’s a good question, because you could argue quite easily that a good cartoonist could pretty easily find as large an audience — and quite possibly a significantly larger one — online as they would contributing to something like Mome. I harbor no illusions about that. But I also think there’s still something to be said for preparing your work for print, seeing it printed in ink, on paper, that validates the work.

This may “out” me as an old man clutching to dying technologies, but I grew up wit print and love its tactile thrill. What the internet now delivers in instant gratification and access it lacks in stirring that fetishistic affection in my soul for print and paper and black, black ink. Evolution has already eliminated this gene from younger generations; it was a largely 20th century anomaly in humankind. Personally, even though I don’t make a lot of minicomics or zines anymore, I would still rather do a minicomic than a webcomic. Preparing something for print and making a physical object should be a part of the whole creative experience, it seems to me. When something only exists a screen it doesn’t feel like the physical effort of drawing a comic amounted to anything real. Printing is an inherent component of the history of cartooning and comics. Removing that from the equation will make cartooning a different thing in the 21st century, as different as ragtime and electronic music. I am personally invested in keeping the tradition of hand-drawn and physically-printed cartooning alive.

That’s not at all to dismiss the Internet or webcomics, which is clearly become a vital component of the contemporary comics scene, and is probably a more valid path for many cartoonists than pursuing print, and digital will win out in the very end. I understand and accept the whole “adapt-or-die” and think about it daily in my larger position here at Fantagraphics. I love Jordan’s site and think it’s the best thing going on the web, and it bodes well for the future of webcomics. But I still, simply, see a value in print, and think both ends can coexist peacefully. I mean, I know Jordan, for all of the work he’s put into What Things Do, still ultimately sees the web as a means to end for the eventual print collections of his work. The books are still the Thing in What Things Do.

What does the future hold for Mome?

Well, I’d like to say 20 more issues, but I honestly don’t know. I take it very much issue to issue. I’m starting to put together 21 now. Tom Kaczynski and Kurt Wolfgang are back, which is exciting to me, I love those guys. I think Kurt’s the last remaining contributor whose been with Mome since issue 1. And [Wolfgang's story] Nothing Eve is going to be a fantastic book when it’s done. Sara Edward-Corbett just turned in a story that blew me away, it’s her most gorgeous piece ever, very Gorey-esque yet still unmistakably Sara. Josh Simmons’ crazy White Rhinoceros serial is just getting started. And lots of other stuff, of course.

Pigeon Press announcement

Or maybe that headline needs a question mark instead of an exclamation point — I’m not exactly sure, and publisher Alvin Buenaventura is letting the picture at right speak for him. But, yes, over on the Blog Flume group blog, Buenaventura posted the image, announcing the launch of Pigeon Press with the latest installment in two of the late, lamented Buenaventura Press’s comic series, Matt Furie’s Boy’s Club #4 and Lisa Hanawalt’s I Want You #2.

It was with heavy heart that we reported the closing of Buenaventura Press back in June after several months in limbo, owing to what Buenaventura described a single knockout financial-legal blow. In addition to comics by Furie, Hanawalt, Ted May, and Eric Haven, BP also released high-end prints, the acclaimed critical publication Comic Art, and recent volumes of Sammy Harkham’s hugely influential anthology series Kramers Ergot. It remains to be seen just how much of a continuation of that work Pigeon Press constitutes, but it’s certainly good to see Boy’s Club and I Want You back in the game at the very least.

(L-R) Robert Crumb, Kramers Ergot 7 contributors Chris Ware, Daniel Clowes, and Adrian Tomine, and publisher Alvin Buenaventura; photo by Melissa P. Coats

On Friday, publisher Alvin Buenaventura announced he had shut down his imprint Buenaventura Press as of this past January, due to a single knockout legal/financial blow. Publicly available details are few, in keeping with the private way the move has been handled for the past six months. But comics creators and critics en masse are mourning BP’s demise and reading the tea leaves as to where its publisher, artists, and entire brand of comics will land.

Robot 6 reached out to several of the artists published by Buenaventura, as well as a few of his fellow publishers, for their reaction:

Working with Alvin over the years has been really amazing. He has introduced me to a lot of magical and influential artists and hooked me up with tons of inspiring and perverted books. His place has awesome shit scattered all over- mountains of crazy books, toys, memorabilia, gigantic figures, artwork- it’s like a bomb went off. Now that he’ll be taking a break from the business we’ll finally have more time to play Rock Band and trip out on weird TV shows.

–Matt Furie, writer/artist, Boy’s Club

Alvin has a sixth sense for Things That Are Good, and he knows exactly how to present those Things so that they are even Gooder. I don’t understand how he does it, but it’s one of the many reasons why working with him has been such an extraordinary privilege.

–Lisa Hanawalt, writer/artist, I Want You

I really liked working with Alvin. Being part of the whole Buenaventura press thing I felt like I was part of a whole new comics movement. It was all very exciting. It’s really fucking depressing that it’s all over. I don’t even like to think about it.

–Johnny Ryan, writer/artist, The Comic Book Holocaust and The Klassic Komix Klub

It saddens me to hear that Buenaventura Press has closed their doors.
They were a juggernaut of alt comix and art book production. I hope that
Alvin keeps a hand, or ear, or head in the biz and that all of us might
benefit from it. Thanks for all the great work.

–Chris Pitzer, publisher, AdHouse Books

I’ve known Alvin since well before he was a publisher, when he was just a guy that I would sell a lot of comics to at every west coast comic convention. Except he (and his wife, Carleen) were different. I would see them *every* time, and Alvin would buy a giant pile of books that almost exactly dovetailed with my own personal taste. You notice these things, when a guy comes to like every Rick Altergott signing you have. I don’t even remember when it happened, honestly, but at some point he became a friend, and eventually a “colleague,” and ultimately a publisher that I truly admired (this is a very select group in the comics world). His list was impeccable and he’ll have a place in history for things like Kramer’s 7 and Jack Survives. He also has introduced me to some outstanding cartoonists like Lisa Hanawalt and Matt Furie. Basically, he is a man of exceptional taste, and knowing that Buenaventura Press won’t exist anymore is a real drag, because what he did excited me. But I also know he’s not really going anywhere and will continue to have a hand in good shit. Recently, he helped Tim Hensley and myself pick the best possible paper and package for Wally Gropius. It had nothing to do with Buenaventura Press, but he helped make that one of my favorite books of all time. Thank you, Alvin.

–Eric Reynolds, associate publisher, Fantagraphics

What i liked about what Alvin was doing, and indeed, something i was jealous of, was that he had a fondness for screenprinting and true “small press” aesthetics. Prints, posters, little saddle-stitch mini-comics, etc. This is how i got my own start, but Buenaventura did it so much better. Also, BP was very good at digging up new talent and springing it on an unsuspecting world. One of my favorite new comics to come along in the last decade were the issues he put out of Matt Furie’s Boy’s Club. Bummer.

–Brett Warnock, co-publisher, Top Shelf Productions

Cartoonists and commentators around the web also weighed in on the closing. On his blog, Ted May, who published his series Injury Comics through BP, eyed the future for both Buenaventura and his own series:

Knowing Alvin, I’m sure this won’t keep him from doing more awesome work whatever that ends up being.

I’ve got three stories in progress for the next issue(s) of Injury (working with Jason, Mike and Jeff). I’ll release that stuff in one form or another once we get it wrapped up.

Over at Arthur Magazine, retailer Jason Leivian of Portland’s Floating World Comics noted the publisher’s influence, including on his own career:

Without Buenaventura Press it’s possible I wouldn’t have been inspired to start Floating World Comics….It’s the Velvet Underground effect. Their books have inspired new comic scenes all over the world.

The Beat’s Heidi MacDonald praised BP’s high production values and eye for quality, which she argues makes the closure even more troubling:

Looking beyond the obvious loss of a great publisher, it’s a bit disturbing that, quite simply, arguably the finest boutique comics publisher in America went out of business five months ago and…no one noticed. Buenaventura had announced something of a hiatus back at the end of 2009 so perhaps people were waiting for the comeback, which never came.

The Comics Reporter’s Tom Spurgeon noted Buenventura’s dual role as a publisher of both comics and prints:

It’s not that this was unexpected — BP’s quiet withdrawal from the comics industry over the last nine months has been the source of a lot of discussion in certain comics circles — but it’s still very sad because of the overall quality of their offerings, ranging from exquisite prints like the above work from Marc Bell to books like last year’s great Jerry Moriarty collection.

Though it’s hard to parse Young Lions cartoonist Blaise Larmee’s deadpan tone, his post on the impact of BP’s closure on the artcomics scene led to interesting comments from a several of its practitioners on the future of the form. Here’s Tom Neely (The Blot):

self publish. small is beautiful. stay within your means. keep yr dayjob. make comics forever.

Tim Hensley (Wally Gropius, Kramers Ergot 7):

I think Kramers 7 may have done Alvin in, but I think dealing with the printer more than the reception of the book was the problem.
It depresses me that it confirms the opinions of many still eager to abscribe nothing more than hubris to the whole endeavor, but there it is…

Frank Santoro (Cold Heat, Kramers Ergot 7):

“Will young creators find themselves accepted or adrift within this territory?”

Adrift. Start swimming. Art Comics are going to be remembered like Undergrounds. It’s already happening if you ask me.

Start working on that romantic comedy yaoi webcomic! At least you’ll get reviewed on TCJ.com

Santoro also reveals that Kramers Ergot 8 was intended to be a year-long series of 32-page magazine-sized monthly installments featuring two artists per issue. “It might still happen,” he notes, before adding that he was never paid for his work in issue 7.

Perhaps the best response to the news came from the Beguiling retailer and TCAF organizer Chris Butcher:

I don’t want to turn this into a polemic or anything, I’m not trying to guilt or badger you into giving up your money, but I know more than anything how easy it is to get swept along in the day-to-day-discussion of comics, the bullshit Blackest-Night-Siege-Heroic-Age-Brightest-Day nonsense is fun because you can be a part of the conversation online about how terrible it all is, but when it comes to spending money on good books that don’t get as much discussion–but are going to hold up on your shelves and in your comic boxes a helluva lot better down the road–it really is worth your time and effort to check out some of the smaller and boutique publishers out there, because they’re often doing amazing stuff.

And I’m not setting this up as a mainstream versus indie debate–that’s fucking stupid. That’s over. This is about buying comics you like versus buying comics you don’t. And there are a lot of great books out there getting left out of the discussion that are great, that are worth your time.

Butcher goes on to list 18 small publishers putting out excellent work, and recommends several favorite books for each of them. If you’re going to take anything away from this story, make it this shopping list.

Continuing our countdown of (in our opinion, obviously) the most important and influential comics of the past ten years, here’s the second half of our list, from #15-1. If you missed it, you can read part one over here, with an explanation of how we put the list together and the (admittedly somewhat arbitrary) ranking. Can you guess what made number one? (hint: it’s not one of the books sampled in the collage above.) Read on to find out!

Complete Peanuts, Vol. 10

15. The Complete Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz (Fantagraphics)
If you believe, as I do, that we are living in the Golden Age of Reprints, chances are The Complete Peanuts is your Exhibit A. Now that we’re some six years and twelve volumes into it, it can be difficult to remember just how controversial the project was. A publisher best known for its co-founder Gary Groth’s shot-to-the-kidney critiques in The Comics Journal and a roster of edgy alternative and underground talents from Crumb to Clowes, republishing 50 years of history’s most acclaimed, beloved, and lucrative daily comic strip, in order, in a series of 25 hardcover volumes, designed in understated fashion by cartoonist/nostalgist Seth, to be released over the course of twelve years? You can count me among the skeptics … to my shame. The series set the standard for how such strip reprints are done — if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, reprint projects from Dick Tracy to Hagar the Horrible should make Groth, Seth, and the Schulzes feel flattered as hell. It also put prime Peanuts back in the public eye just as both the series and the life of its creator came to a much lamented-end, vindicated Seth’s iconic design choices, and not incidentally saved the financial bacon of arguably the most important comics publisher of the last 30 years. Good ol’ Charlie Brown! — Sean T. Collins

Kramers Ergot Vol. 4

14. Kramers Ergot, edited by Sammy Harkham (Buenaventura Press)
Like Blankets, the fourth volume of Sammy Harkham’s avant-garde anthology Kramers Ergot was a big fat powder-blue brick of a book that debuted at the 2003 MoCCA Art Festival in New York City. And like Blankets, it was something many in the comics industry had simply never seen before. From its Mat Brinkman-illustrated cover, a textless piece featuring two massive monsters clashing on a crudely drawn rainbow bridge, to its dizzyingly drawn contents, featuring a cream-of-the-crop collection of young alternative-comics talents spearheaded by members and associates of Providence, Rhode Island’s Fort Thunder underground art, comics, and music collective, Kramers was arguably the boldest, most influential, and most clearly generation-defining comics anthology since Art Spiegelman & Francoise Mouly’s RAW. The presence of collage, fine art, and non-narrative comics gave Kramers a reputation for privileging joyous, anarchic markmaking over storytelling. To a certain extent, that rep is both deserved and something to be celebrated, as it injected renewed attention to visually driven work into an altcomix scene then dominated by the literary comics of Fantagraphics and Drawn & Quarterly stalwarts like Chris Ware, Daniel Clowes, Chester Brown, and Adrian Tomine. But Kramers has always been about more than eye-melting art — some of the decade’s most memorable alternative-comics stories, from Kevin Huizenga’s “Jeepers Jacobs” to David Heatley’s “My Sex History” to Harkham’s own “Poor Sailor,” appeared in its pages. By the time the gigantic, Little Nemo-inspired seventh volume hit the stands (and made waves on the Internet for its price tag), readers who’d really been paying attention weren’t surprised to see such stalwarts as Ware, Clowes, Tomine, Jaime Hernandez, and Matt Groening right alongside the underground enfants terribles who’d been there from the start. — Sean T. Collins

Art Out of Time

13. Art Out of Time, edited by Dan Nadel (Abrams)
The book that launched a thousand other books! (Granted, many of them were independently in the works, as their editors will no doubt point out, but still.) Prior to the release of this Abrams-published hardcover anthology, most comics’ readers impressions of the medium’s past divided it between the enjoyable but creatively anonymous work of a legion of journeymen and the stand-out breakthroughs of a small of legends. But beyond the established canon of Kurtzmans and Kirbys and Crumbs, Segars and Schulzes and Spiegelmans, there flowered a fertile field of forgotten talents from throughout comics history, cartoonists who’d carved out comics whose artistic ambitions and personal touches were overlooked at the time but were unmistakable to observers today. Ogden Whitney, Rory Hayes, Boody Rogers, Milt Gross, Gene Deitch, Fletcher Hanks: The authors included here read like a murderers’ row of weird, wild, “where the heck did that come from?” comics collections that would emerge in its wake. And they’re joined by many more besides, represented by astutely curated, frequently breathtaking work selected by Nadel. He would go on to produce other riches via his art-comics company, PictureBox, but his place in comics would already be cemented by this great act of reclamation of our lost history. — Sean T. Collins

Daredevil

12. Daredevil by Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev (Marvel)
The breakthrough book for the decade’s biggest and most influential superhero-comics writer. Yes, Brian Michael Bendis made his Marvel debut with 2000′s Ultimate Spider-Man, a “scrap it all and start over from scratch” effort conceived by Marvel’s then-President Bill Jemas that proved influential not just in terms of the decade’s many fresh-continuity reimaginings (we wouldn’t have the MAX, All Star, and Earth One lines without it) but also by giving Bendis and his Ultimate cohort Mark Millar the hit-making power they’d eventually use to commandeer the Marvel Universe proper. And yes, he also combined superheroes and crime in his creator-owned series Powers. But Daredevil, along with Grant Morrison’s New X-Men, was the definitive book of the “Nu-Marvel” era, in which Jemas and Joe Quesada okayed a range of series in which talented creators from the edgier reaches of the Direct Market comics industry — your Vertigos and WildStorms and Onis and Images and Calibers — swapped out the traditional, and by that point poorly selling, Marvel Comics feel for as personal a batch work as giant corporate icons are likely to produce. In the case of Bendis and Daredevil, this meant a series in which he was free to explore his creative obsessions: his passion for observing and reproducing contemporary society’s staccato speech, his love of crime fiction, his portrayal of superpowers and costumes as the outward manifestation of deeply personal traumas and life choices.

It also meant he could totally upset the apple cart, unceremoniously deposing the Kingpin and outing Matt Murdock in the tabloids. Yet all the while the book remained of a piece with the storied runs of such creators as Frank Miller, David Mazzucchelli, Ann Nocenti, and the still-fresh Kevin Smith, seeming to be a continuation of Daredevil’s story as well as a holy-crap upending of it. Meanwhile, Maleev’s memorable art — a sort of naturalist noir that was dark but never murky, realistic but never stiffly beholden to photoref — became, in a slightly cartoonier form promulgated by everyone from Steve Epting and Mike Perkins to Michael Lark and David Aja, a whole new Marvel house style. And in much the same way, Bendis’s conflation of superheroics and supervillainy with urban crime, and, later, black-ops espionage, would soon become the default setting for the entire Marvel Universe, and beyond. — Sean T. Collins

Blankets

11. Blankets, by Craig Thompson (Top Shelf)
Blankets dropped like a bomb upon 2003′s MoCCA Art Festival in New York City — the sort of smash debut you might use to illustrate the “book of the show” entry in a comics-convention dictionary. And for good reason: Clocking in at just over 580 pages, none of which had ever been serialized anywhere, it was the largest original graphic novel North American comics had ever seen. But while the novelty of its size might have made the first impression, what was found in its pages made the lasting one. An unabashedly emotional memoir, Blankets told Thompson’s own story of first love and fundamentalism, romance and religion, as both discovered and lost by him while a teenager in the snowy northern Midwest. Drawn in a sweeping, inviting style, its sheer loveliness attracted readers from beyond comics’ traditional audience, while the universality of its subject matter and the specificity of Thompson’s experience of it kept them turning the pages. More than any other book this decade (excepting, perhaps, Jimmy Corrigan), it cemented the thick “graphic novel” format as the publishing method of choice for artistically ambitious literary comics, proving that forgoing the more immediate critical and financial rewards of serialization could lead to unprecedented success. Fun Home, Persepolis, Stitches — more so even than Maus, Blankets paved the way for the crossover success of the mainstream-friendly comics memoir. — Sean T. Collins

Fruits Basket, Vol. 22

10. Fruits Basket, by Natsuki Takaya (Tokyopop)
Sailor Moon got the phenomenon started, but Fruits Basket was the most popular shoujo manga of the 00. The graphic novel market quadrupled between 2001 and 2007, and that growth was driven in large part by girls who were getting comics of their own for the first time. Fruits Basket is a good twist on a classic setup—the lone girl in a houseful of boys—but it brought in girl-friendly themes—emotional truth, the importance of friendship, and of course, a love triangle with two very different, but equally hot, guys at the outer corners. — Brigid Alverson

9. Penny Arcade, by Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik (self-published)
Penny Arcade started in 1998, but its influence spread far and wide in the 00s, thanks to the attention Holkins and Krahulik paid to turning their audience into a community. The daily strip runs on a combination of in-jokes and topical humor, although many gags are comprehensible to the non-gamer. In addition to making their living from it, Holkins and Krahulik have created the Childs Play charity, which provides toys to children’s hospitals, and the annual Penny Arcade Expo, or PAX. They have also been known for their biting commentary on events within the comics and gaming world, making Penny Arcade not just a comic but an opinion leader as well. — Brigid Alverson

Watchmen

8. Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (DC)
We at Robot 6 have little doubt that eyebrows will rise at our designation of Watchmen as one of the past decade’s most important comics. Indeed, various collected editions of Watchmen have been popular virtually since their first printings twenty-odd years ago. However, the fact that Watchmen sales not only increased, but practically snowballed, through the worst economic climate the world has seen in several decades — arguably since the birth of the superhero itself — is a testament to the book’s staying power. Most comics publishers hope that a movie adaptation will produce a modest bump in sales, but the Watchmen movie’s trailer inspired DC to order an additional 900,000 copies into print. When the movie itself premiered, Watchmen was No. 1 on Amazon’s bestseller list — not just for comics and graphic novels, but overall. Because it garnered so many new readers, no doubt including some new or returning to comics, we honor Watchmen accordingly. — Tom Bondurant

Fun Home

7. Fun Home by Alison Bechdel (Houghton Mifflin)
I’m not sure anyone expected the sort of acclaim and attention that greeted Fun Home, least of all Bechdel herself. Riding on a populist wave of interest in both memoirs and graphic novels (not to mention a growing interest in gay rights), Fun Home swooped in and quickly became the “must-read” book of 2007. Somehow this story of the author’s awkward relationship with her troubled (to put it mildly) father garnered the sort of mainstream attention that creators and publishers have been yearning for years to attain (the fact that a big house like Houghton Mifflin was behind it might have helped matters — in itself a notable feat). Perhaps most notably of all, it was named the Book of the Year by Time Magazine. Not “Best Graphic Novel” or “Best Memoir.” Best. Book. Whether or not you think it deserved that title, I remained stunned to this day that this comic — or any comic mind you managed to attain such a lofty award from an otherwise staid and deliberately average magazine. Fun Home is an important reminder of just how much the times have changed. — Chris Mautner

Identity Crisis

6. Identity Crisis (2004) by Brad Meltzer, Rags Morales and Michael Bair (DC)
Written by suspense novelist Brad Meltzer and drawn by Rags Morales and Michael Bair, this seven (double-sized-) issue miniseries was billed as the other kind of crossover hit — namely, the one which would bring normal folks into the comics shop. Looking back in late 2005, Meltzer told CBR “it was supposed to be a small, emotional story.” Nevertheless, when Dan DiDio and Geoff Johns saw what Meltzer was doing, elements of IdC’s plot were spun out into their own storylines, including other DC events like Infinite Crisis, 52, and Countdown. Thus, DC kicked off a cycle of line-wide Big Events which stretch arguably through Blackest Night. Marvel similarly used the contemporaneous “Avengers Disassembled” arc to cultivate its current string of events, and the result has been an ever-escalating battle over the top spot in the sales charts.

On its own, though, Identity Crisis came to symbolize a new, and not entirely welcome, revisionist approach to fictional superhero history: explaining the old goofiness by retroactively inserting “realistic” elements. Ironically, today’s event comics may well be charged with restoring a calmer, more gentle status quo — one which might not demand the sort of fix Identity Crisis provided. — Tom Bondurant

Jimmy Corrigan. The Smartest Kid on Earth

5. Jimmy Corrigan, The Smartest Kid on Earth by Chris Ware (Pantheon)
And here is the straw that broke the proverbial noncomics-reading public’s back. Maus and Watchmen had sung their siren songs on the rocks and managed to entice the occasional wayward sailor back in the ’80s — someone who had perhaps heard they were doing interesting things with them thar funnybooks — but by and large the great unwashed — or more accurately, the cultural elite and the media at large — remained unimpressed. These were flukes; comics were still the stuff of children and maladjusted nerds. It took Ware’s masterpiece, which he spent years serializing in the pages of Acme Novelty Library throughout the 1990s, to show critics that yes, comics could be just as elegant, knotty, rich, satisfying and emotionally devastating as your prose novel.

Praise was quick to follow. The book won the Firecracker Alternative Book Award, the American Book Award and the Guardian First Book Award, the first comic ever to do so, a move that was met with some mild astonishment in the U.K. The book threw Ware to the forefront of the art-comix movement (much to his chagrin no doubt). Now he was no longer simply Chris Ware, but now CHRIS WARE, GREATEST CARTOONIST ON EARTH, and has had to deal with all the resulting backlash that unwanted title has come with. That’s not to mention the wealth of imitators, disciples and kids who studied Corrigan like the Bible, hoping to gleam some insight from its pages. Corrigan showed its readers new ways to make comics, new ways to think about comics (flowcharts! timelines! awkward silences!) and the ensuing years saw a rash of inspired cartoonists wearing Ware on their sleeve like a Led Zepplin patch on a jean jacket. In the end though, Corrigan proved without a shadow of a doubt that comics could be literary. The flood gates were let loose and it was anybody’s game from here on in. — Chris Mautner

Naruto Vol. 1

4. Naruto, by Masashi Kishimoto (Viz)
Naruto is the alpha comic; it is the top-selling manga in the U.S. (both in terms of individual volumes and the franchise as a whole) and it outsells most graphic novels as well. Because they were so confident of its popularity, publisher Viz made a radical move in 2007 and again in 2009: They sped up the release schedule, churning out three volumes a month for several months. The flood of Naruto volumes had a noticeable effect, squeezing the sales of other manga but also bringing the U.S. edition closer to the Japanese releases — a strategy that is likely to become more common among manga publishers in the decade to come. — Brigid Alverson

3. Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi (Pantheon)
What is it about Satrapi’s memoir of her childhood during the Iranian revolution that earns it such a high place on our list, above arguably more groundbreaking books like Jimmy Corrigan and Blankets? Well, certainly the subject matter plays a role.

Persepolis

The book was introduced to North America at a time when an interest in the Muslim world was at an all-time high due to the 9/11 attacks and the subsequent War on Terror. For many it’s offered a glimpse and insight into a world that heretofore has seemed alien and mysterious to many. On a much more important and political level, however, Persepolis has served as an inspiration for Iranians living abroad and in their home country, as the recent mash-up created by dissidents about the recent election shows.

But Perspolis’ success — indeed, it’s continued success — in a large part is due to Satrapi’s simplistic, bare bones style and direct, unfussed storytelling. The very elements that turn off some, more experienced comics critics are the very things that make it perfect for the unwashed masses. It’s simply a very easy book to engage, about a subject that interests a great many of us. Perhaps I can best sum it up this way: Very few of my non-comics reading friends — family members, co-workers, etc. — ask to borrow my comics. They don’t want to read Watchmen (even if they’ve seen the movie), they don’t ask about Captain America getting shot or even express an interest in Maus. Everyone asks if they can borrow Persepolis. — Chris Mautner

Sailor Moon

2. Sailor Moon, by Naoko Takeuchi (Mixx/Tokyopop)
Naruto is a bigger seller, and it certainly commands respect, but Sailor Moon changed people’s lives. I have seen a lot of women talking online about how it was the first comic they could relate to. Having grown up knowing that girls’ comics existed in other countries (Britain) but that there were none for me in the U.S., I know exactly how powerful that discovery can be. Until Sailor Moon came along (first the cartoon, then the comics), it doesn’t seem to have occurred to anyone that girls might like comics written specifically for them. After the initial success of the anime on American television, Tokyopop (then Mixx) started publishing the graphic novels, and a genre was born. Although the series was first published in 1997, new volumes continued to come out in the early years of the 00s and the manga spread virally among fans, creating one of the earliest fan communities based around shoujo manga; in 2004, according to Wikipedia, there were over 3 million websites devoted to Sailor Moon. Despite its popularity, Sailor Moon was out of print in the U.S. by 2005.

Sailor Moon affected the way people thought, both inside and outside the industry. This whole trajectory I’m on now was launched when I found some of the books at a garage sale and picked them up for my kids, still not really sure what they were — but what the heck, they were 5 for a dollar. That’s the most expensive bargain I ever got, because it set the girls rocketing off into manga-land — they quickly discovered Kodocha, Tokyo Mew Mew, Fruits Basket, even Megatokyo. Suddenly my house was filled with these really foreign, sort of sketchy-looking books. So I started reading them, and next thing I knew, I was writing about manga on the internet. For me, as well as a number of other women and young girls, Sailor Moon was a paradigm shift. — Brigid Alverson

The Muhammad cartoons

1. The Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons
Here’s the thing about all the other comics on this list: They didn’t cause anyone’s death. No one got severely injured because they read them. None of their creators were persecuted or received death threats. No one rioted over Fun Home.

Not so here. In September 2005, the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, whether to simply provoke or to engage in a discussion about censorship and religion, published a collection of 12 editorial cartoons of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. Not all of the depictions were irreverent or nasty, some were respectful, but that hardly mattered to most Muslims since any visual depiction of the prophet, respectful or otherwise, is considered a sacrilege.

Things quickly went downhill from there. Danish embassies in Lebanon, Syria and Iran were set on fire. Some protests resulted in riots and violence, with police firing into crowds and more than 100 total deaths worldwide. Death threats were issued to the people involved.. The whole affair became Exhibit A in the ever-deteriorating relationship between the Western world and the Middle East. And its after-effects continue to plague us today, as the recent attempt on the life of cartoonist Kurt Westergaard proves.

There are many, many lessons (or at least discussion topics) we can draw from the Muhammad cartoons — about the power of images to provoke, issue of religion and free speech, and so forth. — but I think most importantly they should serve as a reminder for the bulk of us, who live comfortably in North America and elsewhere that the price we pay for making and reading comics is only a few dollars and not our lives. — Chris Mautner

Hall Hassi's "ke7 zine"

Standing nearly two feet tall, boasting over 50 contributors (including Matt Groening, Chris Ware, Jaime Hernandez, Daniel Clowes, and Adrian Tomine), and costing $125, Kramers Ergot 7 — the latest installment of the avant-garde anthology series from editor Sammy Harkham and publisher Alvin Buenaventura — was a famously, even infamously, grand production. And now…it’s a minicomic?

Artist Hall Hassi has created what she calls a “ke7 zine“ — a 96-page, 8.5″ x 5.5″, black-and-white xeroxed version of the massive full-color hardcover. Pictures of the finished product can be found at the blog of artist Blaise Larmee, who notes that “sometimes the text is entirely legible. sometimes not at all.” God only knows what kind of Kinko’s kung fu had to be applied to even get the book to fit on a photocopier, so not being able to read some of it seems like a small price to pay.

Email Hassi if you’re interested in purchasing one — unless you’re Sammy Harkham himself, who’s still waiting to find out when he can expect a contributor copy.

(Via Kramers contributor James McShane.)

©2009 Bongo Entertainment, Inc. The Simpsons © & ™Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

I somehow missed this in Tucker Stone’s report from MoCCA last week, but luckily Heidi over at the Beat caught it — Stone spoke with John Kerschbaum about his future projects, and the creator revealed that he’s working on this year’s Bart Simpson’s Treehouse of Horror book for Bongo Comics.

Kerschbaum isn’t the only one working on the book, though; as you can see below in the solicitation copy that Bongo was kind enough to send us, they’ve recruited a Murderer’s Row of creators, including Jeffrey Brown, Kevin Huizenga, Matthew Thurber and many more, and it’s edited by Sammy Harkham of Kramers Ergot fame:

Bart Simpson’s Treehouse of Horror #15
Edited by Sammy Harkham
$4.99
48 pages/standard format/color/humor
UPC: 01511 (7-98342-02851-5)

Guest edited by Sammy Harkham, the award-winning creator of the popular Kramers Ergot anthology, this year’s issue is a jam-packed with some of the most idiosyncratic (and weirdest) takes on “The Simpsons” universe ever. Among Halloween-inspired short strips by such visionary cartoonists as Jordan Crane (Uptight), C.F. (Powr Mastrs), Will Sweeney (Tales from Greenfuzz), Tim Hensley (MOME), and John Kerschbaum (Petey & Pussy), are four featured tales of inspired Simpsons lunacy: heralded artists Kevin Huizenga (Ganges, Or Else) and Matthew Thurber (1-800 Mice, Kramers Ergot) collaborate on a weird and wild story equal parts Lovecraftian eco-horror and Philip K. Dick identity comedy. Jeffrey Brown (Incredible Change-Bots, Clumsy) does a creepy and suitably pathetic story featuring Milhouse in a “Bad Ronald”-inspired tale of murder and crawl space living. Harkham and Ted May (INJURY) pull out all the stops for a tragic monster tale of unrequited love, bad karaoke, and body snatching at Moe’s Bar. Ben Jones (Paper Rad) does the comic of his life with an epic tale of how bootleg candy being sold at the Kwik-E-Mart rapidly spirals out of control into an Invasion of The Body Snatchers-like nightmare of a Springfield filled with cheap bootleg versions of familiar characters. And nobody does squishy, sweaty, and gross like up and coming cartoonist Jon Vermilyea (MOME), who outdoes himself with “C.H.U.M.M.,” a C.H.U.D.-inspired parody featuring everybody’s favorite senior citizen, Hans Moleman!

With a cover by Dan Zettwoch, Bart Simpson’s Treehouse of Horror #15 is like nothing you’ve ever seen, and is sure to be one of the most talked about comics of the year by alternative comic readers and Simpsons fans of all ages!

This goes on my “must buy” list.