Paul Pope
Take a look at color pages from Paul Pope’s Battling Boy
From Paul Pope's "Battling Boy"
Artist Paul Pope and colorist Nathan Schreiber have released what I think is our first look at color pages from Battling Boy, Pope’s highly anticipated — and much-delayed — graphic novel from First Second Books.
Announced in 2007, Battling Boy centers on the son of a god (or perhaps superhero) who’s sent down from the top of a mountain by his father to rid the continent-sized city of Monstropolis of the monsters that plague it. This is the fabled comic with “horrible, Grimm’s fairytale, Beowulf-ish monsters” and 50-page fight scenes.
It was suggested back in March that Battling Boy initially could be serialized online, presumably as part of First Second’s TBC/To Be Continued initiative. However, no additional information has been released.
- July 30, 2010 @ 03:00 PM by Kevin Melrose
Paul Pope does the Beatles
Abbey Road by Paul Pope
Come together, right now, over the author of Batman Year 100: Yesterday Paul Pope posted a sketch of the iconic cover of the Beatles’ swan song Abbey Road. It kinda makes me want to see bearded, white-suited John Lennon have sexy science-fiction adventures, but then again, I usually do.
- July 8, 2010 @ 01:00 PM by Sean T. Collins
Bizarro cartoonist Dan Piraro wins 2010 Reuben Award
"Bizarro," by Dan Piraro
Bizarro creator Dan Piraro won the 2010 Reuben Award for Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year, presented over the weekend by the National Cartoonists Society. He beat out fellow nominees Stephan Pastis (Pearls Before Swine) and Richard Thompson (Cul de Sac).
The organization also 13 divisional awards in categories ranging from feature animation to book illustration to comic books. Paul Pope won the latter for “Strange Adventures,” his Adam Strange strip serialized in DC’s Wednesday Comics, while David Mazzucchelli took home the graphic novels award for his critically acclaimed Asterios Polyp.
The full list of divisional winners can be found after the break:
- June 1, 2010 @ 10:00 AM by Kevin Melrose
Do yourself a favor and read this Paul Pope interview
Paul Pope's original cover for Solo #3
In advance of Paul Pope’s appearance this weekend at the Stumptown Comics Fest in Portland, Oregon, Mike Russell sits down with the cartoonist for a wide-ranging interview that touches upon, among other topics, his pursuit of a “world comic,” working for Japanese publisher Kodansha, Psychenaut — the experimental sci-fi mash-up film and the comic — and his First Second Books project Battling Boy, which boasts sprawling, 50-page fight scenes.
“They go on forever,” Pope says. “That’s from manga. One of my favorite books is Egawa Tatsuya’s Tokyo University Story — and he would have long sequences where basically nothing would be happening except a guy in a bicycle riding along, or two guys playing Ping-Pong. And that’s just so cool to me — not because it’s jerking off on paper, but because it feels real. It’s that fugue state you get into when you’re doing something — when you’re playing chess or drinking coffee in the morning trying to wake up. … To me, the magic of comics — and art — is trying to say something real about life in an artificial medium. To re-create life, or to sub-create it, to use Tolkien’s term.”
AICN dubs the lengthy Q&A “a must-read interview”; it’s definitely that. Go read it.
- April 21, 2010 @ 08:00 AM by Kevin Melrose
Will Paul Pope’s Battling Boy first be serialized online?
Battling Boy
Paul Pope’s eagerly anticipated, but much-delayed, graphic novel Battling Boy may see life online before it’s released in print.
The cartoonist revealed the information this afternoon on Twitter. “Battling Boy: can’t say final details yet but it looks very likely it will be online before in print,” Pope wrote. “I’m glad for that.” He quickly deleted the post, but not before it had been commented on, and passed along, by several readers.
Presumably Battling Boy would be serialized as part of First Second Books‘ new TBC/To Be Continued initiative that already boasts Mark Siegel’s Sailor Twain, or, the Mermaid in the Hudson, Amir and Khalil’s Zahra’s Paradise, and Derek Kirk Kim’s Tune. All three comics later will be released in print.
Announced in 2007, Battling Boy centers on the son of a god (or perhaps superhero) who’s sent down from the top of a mountain by his father to rid the continent-sized city of Monstropolis of the monsters that plague it.
“These are horrible, Grimm’s fairytale, Beowulf-ish monsters, awful things,” Pope wrote in 2008. “Child-stealers. Plus some of the vampires and mummies and wolfmen we remember from the old black and white Hollywood horror films.” He’s also teased a 50-page fight scene, the benefit of not having page restrictions.
Paramount Pictures optioned the film rights in November 2008.
- March 24, 2010 @ 04:19 PM by Kevin Melrose
IDW returns to Jurassic Park, with covers by Miller, Pope, Adams and more
Jurassic Park #1, by Frank Miller
Two months after Frank Miller tweeted “I just drew a really cool dinosaur,” everything finally falls into place with IDW Publishing’s announcement of Jurassic Park: Redemption, a new ongoing series by IDW Senior Editor Bob Schreck and artist Nate Van Dyke.
June’s Issue 1 will feature covers by Frank Miller and Tom Yeates, with subsequent covers in the initial five-issue arc by Yeates with variants by Arthur Adams (#2), Paul Pope (#3), Bernie Wrightson (#4) and Bill Stout (#5). What’s more, IDW will be giving away posters at WonderCon featuring Miller’s cover art.
The series is set 13 years after the events of the first Jurassic Park film, as John Hammond’s now-adult granddaughter Lex Murphy works with the United Nations to keep people off of Isla Nublar and Isla Sorna, while her brother Tim tries to redeem their grandfather’s name.
In addition to the new series, IDW has secured the rights to reprint the Topps Jurassic Park comics from the 1990s in a trade paperback.
- March 23, 2010 @ 06:20 PM by Kevin Melrose
What are you excited about for 2010? Part 1
Over the last couple of weeks Tim O’Shea and I have been reaching out to various folks around the comics industry, asking them one simple question: What are you excited about for 2010? We asked them to mention something they were anticipating, as a fan, and also something they were working on (if, of course, it wasn’t top secret). So we’re ending today with the first of three of these round-ups; watch for the other two to be posted sometime tomorrow.
Jeff Parker
Lava Men!
I’m excited by a NEW GRAPHIC NOVEL from Paul Tobin and Colleen Coover that is coming out from Top Shelf this year, that I don’t think I can name because they haven’t formally announced it yet. But really, those two names and a full length work should be all you need to hear to know I’m right.
What I’m most excited about that I’m involved with comes out in just a few weeks, it’s AVENGERS VS. ATLAS from Marvel, where I think my collaborators Gabriel Hardman, Elizabeth Breitweiser and I have really gelled. Even if you’ve never read an Agents of Atlas story, I bet you’ll enjoy seeing the original lineup of The Avengers back on the scene.
Or you’ll at least want in for the LAVA MEN.
Jeff Parker writes a whole bunch of great comics for Marvel, including all the Agents of Atlas projects and Thunderbolts. He also helped us out last year with our Robot Love posts at Valentine’s, in a post titled I ♥ learning from comics. Tim O’Shea also interviewed him about Underground earlier this year, along with artist Steve Lieber.
- January 2, 2010 @ 06:41 PM by JK Parkin
And the award for comics’ Tweeter of the Year goes to…
His comics ain't so bad either
Brian Michael Bendis! At least according to Samuel Rules of Are You a Serious Comic Book Reader? In a post stuffed with evidentiary linkage, Sammy proclaims “No one used Twitter better in 2009 than Bendis,” citing the Siege writer’s honesty and humor, as well as the “little insights into his life” he provided. “I used to talk a lot of trash on him,” Sammy recalls — “Upon discovering his Twitter, however, I started to understand him as a person, and then kinda wanted to hang out with him.”
Which got me thinking: Who would I proclaim comics’ Twitter-er…Twit…uh, Tweeter of the year?
Would I stick with Bendis, for his informative Q&A alone?
What about Matt Fraction, for his performance-art masterpiece Hobo Darkseid?
Michael Kupperman, for a consistently hilarious feed that’s like reading Tales Designed to Thrizzle in pictureless 140-character snippets?
Paul Pope, for his philosophical musings?
Kate Beaton and Dustin Harbin, the dynamic duo of Tweeting webcartoonists?
Ryan “Agent M” Penagos, for having more followers than the rest of the comics industry combined?
But then I remembered the one man whose Twitter account impacted my life, or at least the blogging side of it, more than anyone else. For my money, no one tops the ever-interesting, refreshingly candid Tom Brevoort. Why, just the other day he took to his feed to breathe a sigh of relief about Captain America: Reborn finishing before The Flash: Rebirth as he predicted, size up his chances regarding Siege finishing before Blackest Night, criticize Rebirth artist Ethan Van Sciver for drawing convention commissions while his book is delayed, and defend Reborn artist Bryan Hitch from accusations of habitual lateness. Can you imagine if everyone in comics were that forthright? I can, and it looks like heaven from here. Tweetin’ Tom Brevoort, we salute you!
- December 22, 2009 @ 01:59 PM by Sean T. Collins
Straight for the art | Unused Batman Year 100 art by Paul Pope
Batman Year 100 unused art
Batman Year 100 creator Paul Pope shares an unused cover design from the book on his blog.
- December 13, 2009 @ 10:38 AM by JK Parkin
Paul Pope has seen the future, and it contains flying cars
Woosh!
Paul Pope provided some nifty illustrations for GQ’s It Will Come From Japan!, a look at futuristic concept cars from the land of the rising sun. (via)
- November 30, 2009 @ 09:00 AM by Chris Mautner
Straight for the art | Paul Pope’s “Shakedown”
"Shakedown" by Paul Pope
I have no idea what this was drawn for, but c’mon, like I’m not gonna post a Paul Pope picture of a naked girl rocking out on a strategically placed guitar.
- November 20, 2009 @ 01:52 PM by Sean T. Collins
Paul Pope, Dustin Harbin do Dune
Dune art by Paul Pope
Cartoonist and Heroes Con creative director Dustin Harbin is obviously a comics guy. But even for sequential-art partisans, every once in a while the literary spice must flow. Thus Harbin has created the Dune book club, a weekly discussion of the original science-fiction classic by author Frank Herbert, hosted on Harbin’s blog. In addition to thought-provoking posts and comment-thread chats about the book, which Harbin calls “probably my favorite novel ever,” the book club is also something of an art club, with Harbin, Paul Pope, Patrick Keck, Peter Lazarski, Pen Ward, Thomas “Smo” Smolenski, and Evan Dahm all providing luscious comics and stand-alone illustrations based on the book. (Pope, another big-time Dune devotee, had already drawn a scene from the book in the style of a Wednesday Comics page.) Personally, I’m waiting for someone to take a crack at a sandworm.
- November 2, 2009 @ 10:01 AM by Sean T. Collins
Quote of the day | Paul Pope on lessons learned from Wednesday Comics
Paul Pope draws Dune
“I wanted to try applying the lessons learned from the Wednesday Comics experience to a different subject, here finding a source which would be difficult to illustrate as a page of comics, given that there is very little suggested action. I find that with the format of Wednesday Comics (which is really the traditional Sunday Comics page), one must condense the plot and action to the briefest yet most vivid bursts of information available– there is a lot of space on the page for the illustrations to really overwhelm the reader/viewer, but there isn’t a lot of space for story development in the sense of how we’d develop a plot or work up dialogue for a typical comic book page. In a comic book, one page may be well drawn or well written, but it is still just a single facet of a larger whole. One page can be preceded or followed by another, but no one page carries the entire weight of the sustained narrative. The Wednesday Comics single page format forces the artist to create a story unit which may well be part of a larger storyline, however it still must be able to stand alone.”
(Also, click the link to check out his really awesome Dune artwork).
- October 2, 2009 @ 08:48 AM by JK Parkin
Video: Paul Pope illustrates Complex Magazine photo shoot
Complex Magazine enlisted artist Paul Pope to illustrate their models as part of a photo spread. Here’s a video of Marc Ecko and Pope talking about how they approached it, along with some of Pope’s art:
FYI, while there’s no nudity, there are scantily clad models rolling around on the floor, so it might be NSFW in some instances …
(Thanks, Tim!)
- July 10, 2009 @ 09:50 AM by JK Parkin
Paul Pope channels Akira Kurosawa for new poster
Yojimbo by Paul Pope
The pop culture fashion site Nakatomi Inc. has a limited edition T-shirt and poster available from Paul Pope. The poster, above, is called Yojimbo, after the Akira Kurosawa film of the same name.
“The central calligraphy reads ‘Yojimbo’ and the banner in the circle device at bottom reads ‘Toshiro Mifune’ with the actor’s birth and death dates,” the creator wrote on his blog.
The shirt features “Watson Robot Industries” from his THB comic series. The set is limited to 250 copies and are available this month only.
- June 9, 2009 @ 10:31 AM by JK Parkin