Comic Book Resources

Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes

American Booksellers Association

Retailing | The American Booksellers Association has asked the Department of Justice to investigate the online price war being waged by Wal-Mart, Amazon and Target. The trade group says that by selling advance-order hardcovers at deep discounts the three retail giants are engaging in "illegal predatory pricing" and making it impossible for smaller stores to compete.

Ron Catapano of Ron's Comic World in Mount Holly, New Jersey, asserts that direct-market retailers face a similar scenario: "I hope the comic publishers are paying attention. When the Watchmen movie came out and Amazon was selling the Watchmen trade paperback for less than I could get the book from Diamond Comic Distributors (including shipping cost), I complained and nobody cared. For most discounters, these books are not a significant part of their business, they are just something to make a few extra dollars on." [ICv2.com]

ChuChu

Publishing | Japanese publishing giant Shogakukan plans to close three of its magazines, including the shojo manga monthly ChuChu. The magazine debuted in December 2005 with a print run of 180,000, but more recently sales have hovered around 50,000 copies. [Anime News Network]

Libraries | The New Jersey State Library has awarded $3,000 grants to 14 libraries to help them establish and expand graphic-novel collections. The State Library also conducted workshops about developing collections, and furnished librarians with "a core graphic novel bibliography" to help them with their purchases. [NJ.com]

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Kramers Ergot 7: the minicomic?

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.)

APE '09 | The Haul

Some of my APE purchases

I probably spent more at the Alternative Press Expo this year than I have in previous years. It's probably my favorite show of the ones I've been hitting regularly since moving to California a few years back, if only because at just about every single table in the place you have the opportunity to discover a comic you've never seen before. Although living in the Bay Area I have access to shops that not only carry independent stuff, but in some cases also have minicomics, it's nice to have a venue like this where you can find such a wide range of books and talk to the creators directly.

So here's what I came home with ...

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Will Dinski wins Isotope Award for Minicomics

Covered in Confusion

Will Dinski's Covered in Confusion took home the Isotope Award for Excellence in Minicomics last night. The award was presented during Isotope's annual APE Aftermath party. If you'd like to see the book, Dinski has a video of it up on his website, where you can also purchase it.

Gorillas Riding Dinosaurs: The Cowl, Super Maxi-Pad Girl, and the return of Rooster Jack

With the convention season wrapping up, I'm taking a break from longer graphic novels this week to finish up some shorter works that I've picked up at recent cons.

The Cowl

The Cowl
Written by Brian Azzarello; Illustrated by Benito Gallego
Based on characters created by Joseph Finder
JosephFinder.com; Free

One of the few highlights of this year's WizardWorld Chicago Comic-Con was Crimespree Magazine's booth and the focus on crime comics that it brought to the show. On one of my many trips to the booth I got handed a superhero mini-comic called The Cowl that was written by Brian Azzarello. The connection to crime fiction - other than Azarrello - is that it's a tie-in to Joseph Finder's most recent thriller, Vanished. Not an adaptation of Vanished, but a real version of a fictional comic created by one of the novel's characters.

It's only eight pages and mostly a teaser, so it's tough to review, but it serves it's function as a teaser very well. In some of the material that came with the comic, Finder talks about how he came up with the idea and asked a friend at DC for artist recommendations. After describing the style of art he wanted, Finder learned that he was looking for a modern-day John Buscema and was directed towards Benito Gallego. It was a good lead. I don't know if Gallego's intentionally trying to evoke Buscema for this project or if that's his usual style, but he does a fine job in the way he draws anatomy, poses his characters, and delivers action.

Even though the comic is essentially an ad for Vanished, Azzarello isn't wasted on it. The Cowl could have been - probably should have been, by all rights - a disposable superhero cliché. Certainly his costume is uninspired. But Azzarello gives him a couple of moments that are so cool - and a villain who's so immediately wicked and horrifying - that you can't help but hope to see him succeed. Only that's when you hit the cliffhanger and realize you're gonna have to read the novel. Nicely done.

Super Maxi-Pad Girl and Rooster Jack await you after the break.

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APE is coming

APE Aftermath

The Alternative Press Expo, or APE, will take place the weekend of Oct. 17-18 at The Concourse Exhibition Center in San Francisco. Next week I plan to put together a preview post or two, so if you're exhibiting, please feel free to send me information on your plans -- what you'll be selling, where you'll be ... that sort of stuff.

Also, if you're going to APE and looking for something to do before the show starts or after hours on Saturday, Isotope Comics on Fell Street has events planned both Friday and Saturday night. APE special guest Dean Haspiel will sign copies of the ACT-I-VATE Primer at the store on Friday, while Saturday brings the annual APE Aftermath party and the presentation of the Isotope Award for Excellence in Mini-Comics. Add'em to your calendar!

Winners of the 2009 Ignatz Awards

Ignatz Awards

The winners of the Ignatz Awards were announced yesterday during a ceremony at the Small Press Expo in Bethesda, Maryland.

Named in honor of the brick-wielding mouse in George Herriman's Krazy Kat strip, the awards recognize achievement in comics and cartooning. Nominees are selected by a panel of five cartoonists and then voted on by SPX attendees.

The winners of the 2009 Ignatz Awards are:

Outstanding Artist: Nate Powell, Swallow Me Whole (Top Shelf)
Outstanding Anthology or Collection: Kramer’s Ergot #7, edited by Sammy Harkham (Buenaventura)
Outstanding Graphic Novel: Acme Novelty Library #19, Chris Ware (Drawn & Quarterly)
Outstanding Story: “Willy,” Papercutter #10, Damien Jay (Tugboat)
Promising New Talent: Colleen Frakes, Woman King (self-published)
Outstanding Series: Uptight, Jordan Crane (Fantagraphics)
Outstanding Comic: Uptight #3, Jordan Crane (Fantagraphics)
Outstanding Mini-Comic: Stay Away From Other People, Lisa Hanawalt
Outstanding Online Comic: Year of the Rat, Cayetano Garza

Congratulations to all of the winners. The complete list of nominees can be found here.

Everyone's A Critic: A round-up of comic book reviews and thinkpieces

• Ng Suat Tong time again! This time he's over at the Comics Reporter, talking about how mainstream (i.e. DC and Marvel) comics tend to mostly be writer-driven these days, and how few of these big-name writers fail to utilize the medium well, using Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli's Born Again saga as a comparison point.

From Miller and Mazzucchelli's 'Born Again

If Bendis and Maleev's take on Daredevil falters at times in its disregard for the formal properties of comics, it is also guilty of rolling out age old tropes for the "revival" of superhero titles. One is left with the impression that mainstream comics writing has not only stagnated but in all likelihood regressed in the last decade becoming competent yet mediocre.

Lots more good stuff at the link.

• Abhay Khosla declares the "3 Jacks" story from Daredevil #500 "pretty much the best Marvel comic of the year so far, right?"

• Jog looks at Jacques Tardi's West Coast Blues and compares/contrasts its noirist tendencies to Darwyn Cooke's recent Parker adaptation: "Both books contain framing images of Our Man on the road, a socio-economic subtext, and a dénouement that nod toward the inscrutability of these hard men and their achievements. You'd swear this was a response to Cooke's book, if you didn't know it was an English translation of a French album from 2005."

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Everyone's A Critic: A roundup of comic book reviews and thinkpieces

Hellboy: Seed of Destruction

• Pop Matters has an interesting essay comparing Mike Mignola's Hellboy series with the similarly themed Italian comic Dylan Dog.

As characters, they could be satanic siblings, or infernal in-laws: Hellboy, the Hades-born offspring of a witch and a demon; and Dylan Dog, in love with an undead woman who was likely his mother, and battling his nemesis, the devil, who could be his father. Despite their fantastic and often horrific circumstances, at heart each character is a working-class hero, just trying to get the job done.

• Sean Collins grapples with All-Star Batman and Robin: "The thing really is (to quote Grant Morrison's Mad Hatter) very much cleverer than its rep as a goddamn-Batman meme generator would indicate."

• Curt Purcell continues his ongoing look at the Blackest Night series and superhero decadence in general.

• Matthew Brady enjoyed Lamar Abrams' Remake: "It's pretty ridiculous stuff, but always funny."

• Greg McElhatton declares Neil Kleid's The Big Kahn "easily Kleid’s best work to date as a writer."

• Brian Hibbs was shocked — shocked I tell you — to discover that Archie #600 was a fun read: "I mean, I'm certainly a "Betty Man", and that makes a lot more sense to me than Veronica, but Mike Uslan's script here is remarkably crisp, as well as filled with real drama and pathos."

• Katherine Dacey on Ooku: The Inner Chamber: "For all its dramatic and socio-political ambitions, volume one isn’t nearly as daring or weird or pointed as it might have been. If anything, it reminds me of a BBC miniseries: it’s tasteful, meticulously researched, and a little too high-minded to be truly compelling."

• Kinukitty reads the yaoi manga Black Sun and says "I can't even think about this title without kind of flapping my hands and sputtering a bit."

• Rob Clough reads and reviews more minicomics, something we all should do more of.

• The Daily Cross Hatch on Johnny Ryan's Prison Pit: "True enjoyment of this volumes ultimately seems to fall on a willingness to embrace the complementary sensibilities of 'aw, fucking gross' and 'oh, fucking sweet,' ”

• KC Carlson reviews Looking for Calvin and Hobbes by Nevin Martel, a book I was completely unaware of until now.

• Finally, Tim O'Neil has some thoughts on what makes The Thing so awesome.

Isotope accepting submissions for best mini-comic

Isotope Award

James Sime, owner of Isotope Comics in San Francisco, has put out the call for submissions for the 2009 Isotope Award for Excellence in Mini-Comics. Submissions are due Oct. 1 and will be presented at Isotope's annual APE Aftermath bash on Oct. 17, in conjunction with the Alternative Press Expo.

"It's our seventh annual award, and I've got a feeling we're going to be especially lucky and help discover an amazing new talent this year," Sime said. "In 2009 one mini-comic creator's career will be forever changed, so fire up your xerox machines and get ready to submit your minis."

Judges for this year's competition include Sime, Top Shelf co-publisher (and usually the guest bartender at the Aftermath party) Brett Warnock, comics journalist/critic Tom Spurgeon, librarian and former Eisner judge Eva Volan, and comics writer/retailer/librarian Kirsten Baldock.

Entry to this competition is five copies of your mini-comic sent to Isotope's address -- 326 Fell St., San Francisco, CA 94102 -- before the Oct. 1 deadline. The winner will be contacted in advance and must be present at the Isotope at 9 P.M. on Saturday, Oct. 17 for the award presentation ceremony.

"I consider each year's winner of this award to be the Isotope's Miss America for the year and always love helping to get their work under the noses of the entire industry," Sime said. "Oh... and speaking of which, don't forget to place your pre-orders for two previous winners of this award, who both have new original graphic novels coming out this September, Danica Novgorodoff's Refresh, Refresh from First Second and Joshua Cotter's Driven By Lemons from AdHouse Books."

Other previous winners of the award include Rob Osborne, Daniel Merlin Goodbrey, Jonas Madden-Conner and Max Riffner.

Everyone's A Critic: A round-up of comic book reviews and thinkpieces

Asterios Polyp

• The great and all-powerful Ng Suat Tong provides one of the most comprehensive and detailed critiques of Asterios Polyp I've seen online yet. Seriously, Tong's one of the finest critics comics have ever had. The fact that he's writing again, even if it's just a one-time thing, is cause for joy.

• Frank Santoro reviews issues #1-4 of Richard Sala's Ignatz series, Delphine: "The story surrounded me and carried me away to a very real world. It's a cartooned, exaggerated world, but a real world nonetheless."

• Johanna Draper Carlson reads a whole lotta vampire manga.

• Graeme McMillan offers 25 thoughts on Wednesday Comics. He also admits to liking X-Men Forever. That's very brave of you Graeme.

• Similar to our Collect This Now feature is David Welsh's License Request Day, where he picks manga that haven't been translated yet, but should. This week he recommends something called Paros No Ken.

• It's been up for a few days now, but I have to point an arrow towards Katherine Dac's review of Children of the Sea, which is one of the best takes on the book yet.

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SDCC '09 | More exclusives, more panels, more everything

40th Anniversary Souvenir Book

The 2009 San Diego Comic-Con is less than a month away, with preview night kicking things off on Wednesday, July 22. If you are a publisher, creator, retailer or any other kind of exhibitor who would like to let folks know about any special plans you have for the show (panels, signing schedules, exclusives, debuts, etc.) drop me an email and I'll run it here.

Also, to the right is the 40th anniversary souvenir book cover, featuring art by the great Rick Geary. Comic-Con debuted it on their Twitter feed, where they've also been announcing panels and auctions for membership badges.

Publishers | Red 5 Comics will be at booth S-9 in the small press area, with the creators of We Kill Monsters, Neozoic, Atomic Robo and Afterburn available for signings.

Books | Scott Morse says he'll have about 100 copies of The Ancient Book of Sex and Science, which sold out before its release after being mentioned on BoingBoing. He's also taking orders for a signed and numbered edition, which he'll bring to the con if you order one.

Exclusives | Becky Cloonan will have a set of four silkscreen prints at the con, limited to 100 "signed, numbered, stamped and enveloped" copies.

I asked if she and the 5/Pixu crew had another book planned for this year, but she said they've all been so busy they haven't been able to do one. She also said she'll have a big announcement at the con, and she'll have a table with with Brian Wood, Cliff Chiang and Jill Thompson.

Mini-comics | According to Ben Towle, J Chris Campbell of Wide Awake Press is putting together a Michael Jackson memorial mini-comic to sell at the con, which will feature stories and pin-ups of the King of Pop.

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Joe Lambert on the making of a minicomic

Sundays 3 cover process

Joe Lambert shows off the production process for the Sundays 3 mini-comic --"three small, pocket-sized volumes banded together with a tight band, a loose theme about the times of day, and lots of love." The process in this case includes the binding, which Lambert came up with on his own, as well as the "tight band" that includes a short comic strip of its own.

And below you can check out the final product via a video that shows off the three comics that make up Sundays 3, with a little Johnny Cash music for good measure.

(Via Drawn)

A guide to this year's MoCCA Festival debuts

The 2009 MoCCA Festival poster, illustrated by Molly Crabapple

The Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art Festival in New York City is always a prime venue for independent publishers and creators to premiere new works.

But I didn't realize just how many choose MoCCA for that purpose until I was putting together this post on books that will make their debut this weekend at the Lexington Avenue Armory (68 Lexington Ave.).

While this list certainly doesn't cover all of the debuts, it does include nearly 50 graphic novels, comic books, minicomics and sketchbooks. Plus, I've tossed in links to a few signing schedules.

It will, I hope, at least provide a starting point for attendees as they head into the armory Saturday morning:

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Straight for the art: Matt Madden Mondays

Matt Madden advertisement

The Ephemerist has been doing a regular feature for a few weeks now titled "Matt Madden Mondays," where they post some of the Odds Off author's illustrations and early work. The latest selection is a collection of fold-em yourself minicomics jams he did with Walt Holcombe and Tom King back in the day. They're rather NSFW though, which is why I'm not posting any of the art here.