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

Mould Map 2

Missed out on the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival? Want to check out new comics, zines, and prints from some of the show’s buzziest attendees and exhibitors? BCGF co-organizer PictureBox Inc. has you covered. Dan Nadel’s brainchild has stocked its online store with new books and art from a who’s who of folks at the show, including Frank Santoro, Anya Davidson, Matthew Thurber, CF, Sammy Harkham, and Leif Goldberg, and the anthologies Mould Map 2 (edited by Hugh Frost and Leon Sadler) and Weird (edited by Noel Freibert) from Landfill Editions and Closed Caption Comics respectively. Stuff your stockings, artcomics fans.

Elf World

Hello and welcome to What Are You Reading? Today our special guest is Fantagraphics’ Marketing Director Mike Baehr, who runs their indispensable company blog, Flog!, among other duties.

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

*****

Tim O’Shea

Thunderbolts

Thunderbolts 162: Holy crap, Jeff Parker. How long have you been holding onto to the Giant-Sized Man-Thing card? Best Thunderbolts moment in a long time. In the increased publishing schedule dynamic, I do not think I will ever see a more jarring shift than when the story shifts from Valentine De Landro to Matthew Southworth.

Supergirl 67: Really ashamed that we do not get to read more of Kelly Sue DeConnick’s Supergirl. But good lord, Chriscross’ penchant for drawing ugly-as-hell bone structured faces almost killed any enjoyment I had in this story. It astounds me how such an accomplished and talented artist utterly fails to make any effort to consistently draw character’s faces the same way. Extra points to DeConnick for ending the issue on a note that would have been a mild series gamechanger (a secret revealed) had the series continued beyond this point.

Venom 6: OK this whole Spider Island event. Am I the only person that sings Spider Island to the melody of that 1970s rock classic by Jay Ferguson, Thunder Island, whenever I see the phrase? I have one question was it writer Rick Remender or artist Tom Fowler who decided to have the Venom symbiote bond with a dog? Visually a great bit. There’s always a fun horror-vibe whenever the issues are drawn by Fowler.

Gladstone’s School for World Conquerors 4: The issue opens with a great battle scene (with beautifully vibrant colors by Carlos Carrasco), leading to, of all things, a study group session? (This series is like 1960s X-Men comics, but on acid, which is a good thing for me [the comic, not the acid, that is]). But what makes this issue a must buy for me is writer Mark Andrew Smith and artist Armand Villavert’s dead-on riff on Scott McCloud’s storytelling approach in Understanding Comics (special thanks to my friend Dugan Trodglen for pointing this out to me). An aside, the issue is dedicated to Scott McCloud (“one of the greatest teachers in comics”).

Power Girl 27: Matthew Sturges tells a 60-second story. With Power Girl’s speed, of course, there’s a lot to cram in that 60 seconds. But honestly, it must be hard to understand all that she says in that 60 seconds, because she says a lot. Matthew Sturges, another writer who writes females well. Curious to see where he’ll end up in the new DCU.

Cloak & Dagger: Spider Island 1: This actually came out last week, but my pal Dugan convinced me to pick it up this week. Glad I did. Writer Nick Spencer and artist Emma Rios clearly are taking a swing at an ongoing series with this miniseries. So far, the Spider Island connection is fairly mo’s second dular, they could have just as easily plugged in a Fear Itself moment and run the same story. I am not complaining, as the dual (Cloak & Dagger) narration that Spencer employs is really effective. Much of the first issue is a rehash of where the characters have been before, but the life recap actually served to draw me into the tale. I look forward to seeing what issue 3 brings. I’m really impressed with how much more confident and effective that Rios’ art has gotten since the Strange miniseries (with Mark Waid) from a year or so back.

Hulk 39: So my good pal (and I must add, damn fine writer) Carla Hoffman does not feel the love for Red Hulk (as documented in this week’s always must read Fifth Color) that I so clearly possess. This issue perfectly exemplifies why I find Parker and artist Gabriel Hardman’s Hulk to be a great exploration of Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross. Despite the fact that he cannot currently change back to his human form, Red Hulk is very much defined by the human that Ross is. No one else creates as cinematic-like and dynamic layouts as Hardman. The flashback to Ross’ childhood in this issue is some of the most compelling storytelling I’ve read in months. I want a whole damn arc with Thaddeus and his childhood pals. Hoffman, please read this issue.

Daredevil 2: In this issue, writer Mark Waid subtextually reveals that he wants to marry Captain America’s shield. But seriously, I think spending time as BOOM’s big editorial honcho gave Waid a chance to sit back and look at the dynamics of the Marvel universe (something he obviously had mulled prior to BOOM admittedly) and is allowing that inform his approach to this book. Dating back to the days of Waid’s second run on Captain America, I have clearly appreciated his basic concept of seeing Marvel heroes and their weapons as props to be explored (remember when Cap lost his shield for that run?). As issue 2 opens, Daredevil quickly gains control of Cap’s shield and Cap snags DD’s billy club. To see the way the two tacticians wield the weapons is a storytelling treat, particularly given artist Paolo Rivera’s complete commitment to the scenes. DD uses Cap’s shield as an urban boogieboard, for Pete’s sake. When Waid has DD say: “That thing (the shield) is beautifully balanced, by the way. It’s like touching a Stradivarious. High point of my evening.” I giggled in delight like my 10 year old self. In two issues this creative team has given me the DD I have not seen since the days of Karl Kesel’s short run (#353-357, 359-364 [thanks very much manwithoutfear.com])–a fun to read comic. Added bonus, editor Steve Wacker runs a letter column with letters from the 1960s issues.

Tom Bondurant

2001: A Space Odyssey

Finally, the magic of eBay has delivered unto me Jack Kirby’s Monolith-sized adaptation of 2001: A Space Odyssey, and the combination of Kubrick, Clarke, and the King was pretty engaging. I had read some of the regular-series 2001, and of course I have seen the movie (and read the books) many times over, but this felt much more like ’70s Cosmic Kirby — much more in the spirit of The Eternals, say — than a straightforward adaptation. In fact, Kirby’s dynamism is diametrically opposite Kubrick’s cool, meditative style. Thus, the Dawn Of Man scenes are beefed up with insight into Moon-Watcher’s thoughts and feelings. Dr. Floyd and his colleagues get a little more attention. The Star-Gate sequence is translated into a series of breathtaking double-page spreads. Kirby does a pretty faithful version of the famous bone-to-satellite jump-cut, but he modifies the look of the Pan Am clipper to more closely resemble the (then-experimental) Space Shuttle orbiter. Ironically, the characters who suffer the most are Bowman and Poole, both of whom come across fairly generic. In a way, this was in keeping with Kirby’s plans for the regular series, in which a procession of ordinary humans were transformed by the power of the Monolith. Still, Kirby’s 2001 and Clarke/Kubrick’s 2001 share the same basic cautions about humanity’s development, and in the end that’s what matters.

I’ve also been catching up on John Ostrander and Jan Duursema’s Star Wars Legacy series, having bought a couple of paperbacks from the emptying shelves at the local Border’s. So far I’m through volume 3, and I like it pretty well. Cade Skywalker does have a somewhat predictable “you can’t make me” attitude, although I guess that’s one way of following in his ancestors’ whiny ways. Also, I can’t quite get past his relentlessly-coiffed appearance, which threatens to be more monsters-of-rock than a Star Wars character should be. Overall, though, it’s a good next-generation take on the Galaxy Far, Far Away, and it stands alone well enough that the occasional ties to the movies are just a bonus.

There’s something of an unfinished aesthetic to the first few years of “New Look” Batman stories (reprinted in color in Dynamic Duo Archives Vols. 1 and 2, and in the black-and-white Showcase Presents Batman Vol. 1). Mostly this is due to the relative lack of Carmine Infantino pencils. The Bob Kane studio (including Sheldon Moldoff) still drew the bulk of the stories, with Infantino only on covers and pencilling every other issue of Detective. (Inker Joe Giella gave everything a consistent feel.)

Among the memorable stories so far are November 1964′s “Zero Hour For Earth!” (Batman #167) and “Hunters of the Elephants’ Graveyard!” (Detective #333), and “Partners In Plunder!” from February 1965′s Batman #169. “Zero Hour” was written by Bill Finger, with pencils credited to Bob Kane, and features Batman and Robin on a globetrotting mission to stop the nefarious organization known as Hydra. (Yes, this predated Marvel’s Hydra by a couple of years, but the Bat-office might already have taken a shot at Marvel a few months earlier, when a megalomaniacal mutant threatened the world in “The Man Who Quit The Human Race!”) Anyway, “Zero Hour” is the kind of story that the hairy-chested love god of the ’70s would have found familiar; although Kane/Moldoff’s Batman was hardly hairy-chested. “Hunters” was written by Gardner Fox and pencilled by Infantino, and it is probably the last word on Batman vs. a herd of rampaging pachyderms. Specifically, it’s very effective at setting up the elephants as noble creatures, and then turning them into a giant mass of stampeding trouble. Most clever of this bunch is “Partners In Plunder,” written by Ed “France” Herron and pencilled by Moldoff, which finds the Penguin deciding simply to create random chaos with trick umbrellas, and then basing his future capers on Batman’s subsequent speculation. It’s a neat idea which plays perfectly off of the “Batman is never fooled” trope, and in fact it ends with the Penguin in prison and Batman never realizing he’s been duped.

Finally, I enjoyed the Batman and Wonder Woman ’90s Retro-Active specials, mostly because the creative teams of Alan Grant and Norm Breyfogle and William Messner-Loebs & Lee Moder produced stories which didn’t miss any beats from their earlier work. The Wonder Woman story especially made me wonder why DC wouldn’t turn to Messner-Loebs and Moder more often. Sure, it was a quiet, character-oriented piece about Wonder Woman bonding with a group of mallrat girls, but the reprint was the start of Messner-Loebs’ outer-space saga, and that was plenty action-oriented. If anything lasting comes out of the Retro-Active experiment, I really do hope it involves more work for Messner-Loebs, who clearly still has the chops to handle these characters.

Brigid Alverson

21

I have started reading Wilifred Santiago’s “21″: The Story of Roberto Clemente several times, but I always wandered off: This time I pulled it off my stack and read it most of the way through. I love Santiago’s style and his depiction of Clemente’s childhood in Puerto Rico, but the story is hard to follow for a number of reasons. One is the huge cast of characters, who simply appear and start having conversations as if they had known each other forever, with no background on who they are. The story also moves around in
time in a confusing way, especially in the beginning, and seems to skip important events‹how did Clemente go from being voted 8th in the Most Valuable Player poll to having Roberto Clemente Day at Three Rivers Stadium ten years later? Still, Santiago really captures the feeling of listening to a ball game on a hot summer day, and his story is rich and complex, if flawed. I’m glad I read it.

Also on the stack this week was an advance copy of The Last Dragon, a gorgeous fantasy graphic novel written by YA author Jane Yolen (Foiled) and illustrated by Rebecca Guay, who is probably best known as one of the illustrators of the card game Magic: The Gathering. Guay’s style is a throwback to the Golden Age of children’s books, reminiscent of Maxfield Parrish and Arthur Rackham in its combination of pseudo-classical styling and luminous color. I usually find books like this boring, but Yolen pairs up a smart young woman with a blowhard Fabio look-alike to accomplish the central task of the story, killing a dragon that has been terrorizing a small village. It’s a fairy-tale type story that manages to feel fresh despite its traditional setting and tropes. It’s due out in early September, and it’s definitely something to watch for.

Finally, I picked up Doctor Who Volume II: The Ripper on a whim and I really enjoyed it. The book collects four of IDW’s Doctor Who comics featuring the Eleventh Doctor. In the first story, Rory uses a cell phone in the Tardis and as a result all his (and Amy’s) spam and social-networking contacts come to life. It’s very well done, and some of the anthropomorphized spam made me laugh out loud. The second story comprises three arcs of the comic and it’s a Doctor Who take on Jack the Ripper. You really don’t have to be familiar with the television program to enjoy these stories‹I have been away from Doctor Who since the 1970s, and I still could follow them. In fact, it
worked the other way for me: I started watching the show with my daughter and I actually knew who the characters are. Incidentally, all the stories are available via IDW’s digital app, for less than the cost of the trade paperback, and if you have an iPad, the two bucks you spend on that first story will be the best money you spend all week.

Mike Baehr

My to-read pile contains about 12 feet of graphic novels and comics right now, with about half of that being Fantagraphics stuff — we’re literally putting out books faster than I can read them. I’ll try not to be too much of a shill for my employers, but what kind of Marketing Director would I be if I didn’t love what we put out?

I just finished plowing through my stash of minicomics from the Stumptown Comics Fest. Elf World from Family Style is a fun anthology series of fantasy stories by independent and small-press artists, and the first 2 issues of the 2nd volume have the nicest production values I’ve seen in minicomics, with gorgeous letterpress covers illustrated by Sammy Harkham and Daria Tessler. Salad Days by Minty Lewis is another standout — no one depicts awkward conversations and the minor humiliations of life quite like her, and all with a cast of talking fruit, which gives it a sense of absurdity but somehow heightens my empathy for the characters at the same time. Too Dark to See by Julia Gfrörer is chilling for the way it depicts how the damage that we do to ourselves and each other is far greater than any supernatural threat. And after one issue I’ve completely fallen in wuv with Ed Luce’s adorable and hilarious Wuvable Oaf (soon to be seen in Fantagraphics’ forthcoming queer comics anthology No Straight Lines), which stars a big hairy metal-and-Morrissey-loving gay dude and his friends, plus a bunch of kitties. I definitely need to pick up the rest of that series.

The Box Man

At Comic-Con last month I finally picked up a copy of The Box Man by Imiri Sakabashira, published by our “Distinguished Qompetition.” It’s like a mashup of a Jim Woodring Frank story, Hans Rickheit’s The Squirrel Machine, and a Mat Brinkman comic (with maybe a dash of Brian Ralph) as the protagonist and his animal companion journey through an incredibly detailed detritus-strewn urban underbelly on a mysterious mission, encountering various forms of peril and bizarre debauchery along the way. It’s part maximum weirdness, part straight-up thrilling action, all depicted with breathtaking skill. I’m surprised I didn’t hear more about this book when it first came out.

My current favorite ongoing webcomic is Steven Weissman’s Barack Hussein Obama, which I have the privilege of posting on the Fantagraphics website every week. Steven’s work has undergone a really interesting transformation over the last few years, and he really cuts loose with this sketchbook strip, mashing up old-fashioned gag humor, Lovecraftian horror, bizarre nonsequiturs and absurd interpersonal drama. It’s a combination that could only come from Steven and it makes for a dizzying and thrilling reading experience. I also enjoy seeing the remastered reruns each week at What Things Do (the best webcomics site out there bar none), and I’m excited that we’ll be putting out a book collection of the strip next year.

There’s a ton of recent and upcoming Fantagraphics books that I’m chomping at the bit to read (Prison Pit 3, Michael Kupperman’s Mark Twain book, Gahan Wilson’s Nuts, Willie & Joe: Back Home, The Man Who Grew His Beard) but one that leaped to the top of the pile was the new 4th issue of the Hernandez Brothers’ Love and Rockets: New Stories. I actually first read this as a printout a few weeks ago but it’s been hard to stop picking it back up now that I have a bound copy. Pretty much everyone who’s read it has said that it moved them to tears, and I’m no exception. Jaime’s stories in the issue are some of the most emotionally powerful fiction I’ve ever read — as devastating as “Browntown” was in the last issue, Jaime takes it to the next level here. Brace yourself because Jaime takes you on a rollercoaster ride. So many “oh my god” and “holy crap” moments. And Gilbert is absolutely at the top of his game here too. The metafictional world he’s been building over the last few years is super-fascinating to me, and the new directions he pushes himself within that world are exhilarating.

To continue in shill mode for just a bit longer, another thing I just read is the Fantagraphics Spring/Summer 2012 distributors catalog, with all of our books slated for April-August of next year, which we just sent off to the printer. People tell me all the time that we put out too many good books, all I can do is agree and say HOO-EE, that’s not about to change anytime soon!

The nominees for the 2011 Ignatz Awards have been announced on the website for the Small Press Expo. Awarded every year at SPX and named after the brick-throwing mouse from Krazy Kat, the Ignatzes are selected by an anonymous jury of five creators and voted on by attendees of the show. There’s nothing in comics quite like lugging around the actual, honest-to-god bricks awarded as trophies to the winners.

This year, cartoonists Michael DeForge, Edie Fake, and Sammy Harkham top the list of nominees with three nods apiece. DeForge’s Lose, the third issue of which was released this year by Koyama Press, earned him nominations for Outstanding Artist, Outstanding Series, and Outstanding Comic. Fake received an Outstanding Artist nomination for his Secret Acres graphic novel Gaylord Phoenix, which is also up for Outstanding Graphic Novel, while the the fifth issue of the series collected in the GN earned an Outstanding Mini-Comic nod. Harkham’s self-published Crickets is up for Outstanding Series thanks to its third issue, which is nominated for Outstanding Comic and contains “Blood of the Virgin,” nominated for Outstanding Story.

On the publishing side, Fantagraphics leads the pack with five nominations, split between Joe Daly (Outstanding Series, Dungeon Quest), Joyce Farmer (Outstanding Graphic Novel, Special Exits), Jaime Hernandez (Outstanding Story, “Browntown,” from Love and Rockets: New Stories #3), and Carol Tyler (Outstanding Artist and Outstanding Graphic Novel, You’ll Never Know, Vol. 2: Collateral Damage).

Secret Acres and Sparkplug tie for the silver with four nominations each. Secret Acres boasts the two nods for Fake’s Gaylord Phoenix graphic novel, plus another two for Joe Lambert’s I Will Bite You (Outstanding Artist and Outstanding Anthology or Collection). Sparkplug was tapped for editor Annie Murphy’s Gay Genius (Outstanding Anthology or Collection), Elijah Brubaker’s Reich (Outstanding Series), Dunja Jankovic’s Habitat #2 (Outstanding Comic), and Chris Cilla’s The Heavy Hand (Outstanding Graphic Novel).

Not to tip my own hand here, but as with the Harveys, it’s refreshing to see that Hernandez’s “Browntown” and Chris Ware’s Lint, arguably two of the best comics of all time, are nominated in the relevant categories for best comics of the year. You’d think you could take that for granted, but you’d be surprised! Moreover, DeForge, Fake, and Harkham’s books really are excellent, and Fantagraphics, Secret Acres, and Sparkplug are high-quality, gutsy publishers. Not a lot to be unhappy about with this list!

Hosted by cartoonist Dustin Harbin, the Ignatz Awards gala will take place on Saturday, September 10 at SPX in Bethesda, Maryland. See the entire slate of nominees after the jump.

2011 Ignatz Award Nominees

Outstanding Artist

• Michael DeForge, Lose #3 (Koyama Press)
• Edie Fake, Gaylord Phoenix (Secret Acres)
• Renee French, H-Day (Picturebox)
• Joseph Lambert, I Will Bite You (Secret Acres)
• Carol Tyler, You’ll Never Know, Vol 2: Collateral Damage (Fantagraphics)

Outstanding Anthology or Collection

• Black Eye, edited by Ryan Standfest (Rotland Press)
• Gay Genius, edited by Annie Murphy (Sparkplug)
• I Will Bite You, Joseph Lambert (Secret Acres)
• Make Me a Woman, Vanessa Davis (Drawn & Quarterly)
• Three #1, edited by Robert Kirby

Outstanding Story

• “Blood of the Virgin” Crickets #3, Sammy Harkham (self-published)
• “Browntown,” Love and Rockets: New Stories No. 3, Jaime Hernandez (Fantagraphics)
• “LINT,” Acme Novelty Library #20, Chris Ware (Drawn & Quarterly)
• “The most gripping mind-exploding triumphantly electric of our time,” Papercutter #15, Jonas Madden-Conner (Tugboat Press)
• “Weekends Abroad” Three #1, Eric Orner (self-published)

Outstanding Series

• Crickets, Sammy Harkham (self-published)
• Dungeon Quest, Joe Daly (Fantagraphics Books)
• Everything Dies, Box Brown
• Lose, Michael DeForge (Koyama Books)
• Reich, Elijah Brubaker (Sparkplug Comic Books)

Outstanding Comic

• Crickets #3, Sammy Harkham (self-published)
• Danger Country #1, Levon Jihanian
• Habitat #2, Dunja Jankovic
• Lose #3, Michael DeForge (Koyama Press)
• The Magic Hedge, Marian Runk

Outstanding Online Comic

• Alphabet Horror, Nate Marsh: www.alphabethorror.com
• A Cartoonist’s Diary, Pascal Girard: http://www.tcj.com/author/pascal-girard/
• Hark! A Vagrant, Kate Beaton: http://www.harkavagrant.com/
• Finn and Charlie are Hitched,Tony Breed: http://hitchedcomic.com/
• Lucky, Gabrielle Bell: http://gabriellebell.com/

Outstanding Graphic Novel

• Gaylord Phoenix, Edie Fake (Secret Acres)
• The Heavy Hand, Chris Cilla (Sparkplug)
• Hereville: How Mirka Got Her Sword, Barry Deutsch (Amulet Books)
• Special Exits, Joyce Farmer (Fantagraphics)
• You’ll Never Know, Vol 2: Collateral Damage, Carol Tyler (Fantagraphics)

Promising New Talent

• Tony Breed, Finn and Charlie are Hitched (self-published/online)
• Darryl Ayo Brathwaite, House of Twelve Monthly #3 (Comixology)
• Jesse Jacobs, Even the Giants (AdHouse)
• Jon McNaught, Birchfield Close (Nobrow)
• Jesse Moynihan, Forming (Nobrow/online)

Outstanding Mini-Comic

• Ben Died of a Train, Box Brown
• Gaylord Phoenix #5, Edie Fake
• Danger Country #1, Levon Jihanian
• Morning Song, Laura Terry
• Trans-Utopia, Tom Kaczynski (Uncivilized Books)

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.

its a strange thing when the most visually exciting sequence in a chester brown book are of his dick being inspected. not bad, mind you. I think chester brown has a big dick. he keeps saying it’s six inches, but girls keep saying “ow”, so he’s measuring wrong.

–Via Twitter, Sammy Harkham, editor of Kramers Ergot and author of Crickets, asks the hard questions (sorry) about Chester Brown’s new memoir about his life as a patron of prostitutes, Paying For It. I’m enjoying Fear Itself and Flashpoint just fine, but as far as summer buzz books go, they sure don’t spark conversations like this.

On a more serious tip (sorry!), Harkham also echoes an observation I myself had about the book. I won’t spoil it lest I call down the wrath of Drawn & Quarterly (although Harkham does spill the beans in his tweet, so be warned, I guess?), but by far the most interesting aspect of his relationship with prostitutes, one that pretty much turns everything else in the book on its ear, is crammed into the final few pages and barely dealt with at all. “To me, that’s where the book should start,” says Harkham. “That’s a book.”

Have you read it? What did you think?

Wow: Cold Heat cartoonist and Comics Comics blogger Frank Santoro went to Los Angeles, and all he got was this wondrous photo of him and a gaggle of the greatest alternative comics creators on the West Coast. From left to right, you’re looking at Johnny Ryan (Prison Pit, Angry Youth Comix), Jaime Hernandez (Love and Rockets), Ron Regé Jr. (Yeast Hoist, Against Pain), Jordan Crane (Uptight, What Things Do), Sammy Harkham (Crickets, Kramers Ergot), and Santoro. I haven’t seen this kind of star power packed into one picture since Crumb, Ware, Clowes, Tomine, and Buenaventura straddled the cliffs of France like comic-book colossi.

Click the link to read Frank’s whole “L.A. Diary,” with great you-are-there accounts of the cartoonists and insightful thoughts about their work — and about the City of Angels itself:

Me and Sammy went up to Griffith Park, up to the Rebel Without a Cause Observatory to look out over the city and smoke cigarettes. L.A. is kind of magical. It’s like Heaven. Or Hell. Your choice. I had been so lonely out in the desert of New Mexico that I tagged along with Sammy while he went on his errands. We went to one of those movie poster stores on Hollywood Blvd. He bought a couple film stills for references. Then we went to the Family Store. Then I sat in the barber shop while he got a trim. Then to the butcher shop. I was stalling him as long as I could. Then his wife called and he had to go home for dinner. So I drove back to Echo Park. Me and Ron hit the taco truck. Heaven.

Read the whole thing for a slice of comics history.

Batgirl #17

Welcome to a long holiday weekend (at least here in the United States) edition of What Are You Reading? Today our special guest is Doug Zawisza, who writes reviews and the occasional article for Comic Book Resources.

To see what Doug and the Robot 6 gang are reading, click below.

*****

Brigid Alverson

Pooches of Power!

I’m overwhelmed by cuteness right now! Capstone Press, which is a publisher I mainly associate with the library and school market, is launching a line of DC Super Pets chapter books, illustrated by Art Baltazar of Tiny Titans fame. I picked up Pooches of Power!, in which Ace the Bat-Hound and Krypto the Super-Dog team up to thwart a gang of sardine-stealing birds working under the aegis of The Penguin, and I have to say I enjoyed it. Despite being an early reader, it had a fairly complicated plot and plenty of interesting characters. I can see a lot of comics fans reading this story with their kids, but it’s also accessible enough that a child who had never heard of Batman before could enjoy it.

So, to bring my blood sugar levels down a bit, I read the first volume of Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead. Yes, I know it’s been around forever, but I hate zombies so I never felt the urge to pick it up. Of course, I quickly realized what everyone else already knew, that this is far more than a zombie story; it’s one of those comics in which, in the immortal words of Pogo, “We have met the enemy and it is us.” In some ways, it’s a very familiar and typically American story — people thrust out of normal society (and away from the government) and forced to live by their wits, supplemented with plenty of guns. Kirkman makes it interesting even to zombie-haters like me with a varied cast of characters and some interesting interpersonal dynamics. By the end of the first volume, I knew I would be signing up for the duration.

Sean T. Collins

I’ll tell you what — if you ever wanna feel good about comics, spend a few days cramming with nearly every title you heard positive things about at the end of the year. Click the links for full reviews!

The Incredibly Fantastic Adventures of Maureen Dowd: A Work of Satire and Fiction by Benjamin Marra (Traditional Comics): In addition to being Marra what he does best — sex and violence in ’80s-trash fashion — this is a killer satire of one of America’s most satirizable pundits.

Crickets #3 by Sammy Harkham (self-published): As rock-solid a showcase of alternative comics as you’re likely to find, centered on a story about life as a low-level hack in Roger Corman’s ’60s/’70s movie factory.

Powr Mastrs Vol. 3 by CF (PictureBox): Kinky, funny, focused alt-SF/F. The artist also known as Christopher Forgues is doing something special in this series.

Mould Map #1

Mould Map #1 by various artists, edited by Hugh Frost and Leon Sadler (Landfill Editions): Each artist in this giant-sized artcomix anthology gets one page to tell a sci-fi story; in many cases this leads to stuff that’s more sci-fi tone poem than actual tale, and the material’s the better for it. It’s a British import, but American readers will recognize and welcome work from CF, Aidan Koch, and Matthew Thurber.

Bodyworld by Dash Shaw (Pantheon): Given the hubbub about how the webcomic version of this near-future sci-fi comedy was pushing that medium’s envelope, I was surprised by just how straightforward and focused it was. Strong character work, too, in an indie-comedy vein.

Map of My Heart by John Porcellino (Drawn & Quarterly): This collection of strips and prose from Porcellino’s seminal King-Cat Comics and Stories minicomic series is pulled mostly from around the turn of the millennium and tracks an ever more impressive refinement of the artist’s minimalist style and frequently melancholy subject matter.

Carla Hoffman

Daredevil: Reborn #1, by Jock

Okay, WAYR, you’re part of my New Year’s Resolutions too, so let’s get to it! I read Daredevil Reborn #1 because I am supposed to. Daredevil is a popular character and if you don’t know where he’s going, you can’t relate that info to customers looking to see where ‘that guy Ben Affleck played that one time’ is. After Shadowland, I was personally just done with Matt Murdock and whatever terrible thing he was going to do to himself this time, but I’m happy to report that Daredevil Reborn #1 is really good. This is exactly what Daredevil needs as far as character tune-up and this exactly feels like what Andy Diggle wanted to write about. The artwork has a hard line, empty feeling to it, where characters look rough and in the middle of nowhere, the perfect canvas for this little expedition to find himself. I’ll admit that I wasn’t surprised by Daredevil stopping at a mean, middle-of-nowhere locale for trouble he whines about not wanting in an internal monologue, but I love the pacing, the artwork and the art in the storytelling and -most importantly- I believe this is all going somewhere. Diggle isn’t just going to give us this same sad Daredevil story we’ve been reading for years, he’s going for change and I can believe that after this issue.

I also read Incredible Hulks #620 in an act of masochism. Don’t get me wrong, it’s well written, it’s just not what I want to read. Me and the Hulk books have had a strained relationship since I want them to be a man’s internal struggle with the monster inside, and they want to be a team book of heavy hitters with some inference to previous stories. I know, women always want to change the men we love, and I want the Hulk books to be more like when we met. I don’t like their new haircut and hip attitude that’s making them all popular. It’s worse too, because this issue mentions the Devil Hulk and boy howdy, I love the Devil Hulk from Paul Jenkin’s run on the book. It has Jarella too, plus Glan Talbot, Marlo Jones, two Abominations, Doctor Strange, Skaar and Korg and Hiroim and possibly the kitchen sink in a background cameo. Like I said, the story was good, but it doesn’t feel like the Hulk I fell in love with.

Man I relate to Betty Banner more and more each day….

Last but not least I read Infinite Vacation #1 (Resolution #3!) because the cover looked interesting and a quick flip through looked weird enough for me. Other people will describe what happens inside the book better than I will, but suffice it to say that buying time to live your alter-selves’ lives in parallel universes with an app on your phone is rad. They don’t hold your hand through the idea, they just jump you right in with David Mackian artwork and smart and clever narratives. Do you like Cory Doctorow? Sure, we all do! Do you miss ‘hard sci-fi’ set in the real world and the idea that New Media could sell us on anything? How about a book that you’ll have to read a couple times to really understand? Infinite Vacation #1 is all of these and more. I think this is what all the cool indie kids will be talking about this week.

Chris Mautner

Networked

Networked: Carabella on the Run by Gerard Jones and Mark Badger — This is a unnecessarily convoluted story about a blue-skinned girl from another dimension who comes to our universe only to have the totalitarian regime from her world attempt to follow over to take over the Earth. The real purpose of the book is to warn everyone about the dangers of social networking and how the government can use stuff like Facebook and Twitter to monitor everything you do, etc. Considering the real dangers involved in sites like those — i.e. stalking, harassment, bullying, sexting — making grandiose arguments about how THE MAN is going to use FourSquare to create a one-world Orwellian state seems not only far-fetched, but a trifle irresponsible. Still, it’s always nice to see Mark Badger’s art.

Elephant Man by Greg Houston — Fitfully amusing superhero parody that dares to say what if Jon Merrick fought crime. A lot of the problems that plagued Houston’s last book — Vatican Hustle — plague this book: It’s a bit too wordy, it’s a bit too self-aware and a bit too in love with how “zany” it is. Still, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t laugh several times and the plot is a lot tighter than Hustle‘s. For those who don’t get easily offended and don’t mind yet another collection of smart-ass jokes about superheroes, Elephant Man will suit you fine.

Rat Catcher by Andy Diggle and Victor Ibanez — This is the latest book in Vertigo’s Crime imprint, about a double-agent in the FBI who goes around killing mob informants and another agent who attempts to go after him. The book plays around with the two characters’ identities to keep you guessing as to who’s who, but it’s pretty obvious from the outset. More to the point, the book’s very plot-heavy, to the point where there’s really no room for characterization. It moves speedily enough that fans of the genre probably won’t mind too much, but it comes up short when compared to more notable recent crime comics like Criminal or 100 Bullets.

Tim O’Shea

Superman #707

Used to be I believed the closest I would get to Mark Waid writing Superman was Waid on Irredeemable. But if Chris Roberson remains as strong as he is on this first issue of his Superman run ([#707]/part five of this JMS-initiated Grounded storyline), this is the closest we can get to Waid. I’m often nervous when a writer shares that he’s been a fan of a character since childhood (as Roberson has said of Superman), but I was pleasantly surprised to see Roberson’s healthy knowledge of Superman is something that he wields in a reasonable, while engaging fashion.

So, this week the final Thor: The Mighty Avenger came out and was as strong as the other seven issues. And I’m still waiting to hear from Marvel when writer Roger Langridge and artist Chris Samnee have their next ongoing or limited series is scheduled. Those two need to work together again on more than just Free Comic Book Day material.

Bryan Miller concocts the finest Damian Wayne scene to date in Batgirl #17, as he is forced to go undercover as a grade school student on a field trip.

Doug Zawisza

For the past half-decade I start every year with the same resolutions: lose weight, eat better, read more. Every year, I fail at all three. I decided to bring those resolutions back again this year, and I’m trying, I really am, to knock them down this year. I’m sure most of you are familiar with similar resolutions, but the read more resolution is one that I try to apply to things outside of comics.

I’m the father of three very bright girls, all of whom love reading. My wife is a kindergarten teacher, so there’s never really a shortage of reading material in our house. As a matter of fact, there’s usually too much. Everyone’s reading two or three things, here, there, or wherever. I’ve always had multiple reading options open at all times, and right now is no different.

Secret Zoo

The Secret Zoo by Bryan Chick is a book that I happened across while researching an idea that’s been baking in my brain for longer than I care to think about. As a father of three voracious readers, I’m always trying to help them find new worlds. This is one world I’m glad we’ve found. My oldest and youngest haven’t had a chance at this book yet, but my ten-year-old and I have been enjoying it immensely. It’s the story about a boy who is looking for his missing sister, Megan. Noah Nowicki finds clues that tie his sister’s, disappearance to the Clarksville City Zoo. Most of those clues come to Noah via the animals AT the zoo. Chick delivers a story that is filled with adventure, child-like enthusiasm, and unbridled hope.

Chick has stated that he has a target audience of 9-12-years-old, but I’m enjoying it nonetheless. It’s a smart read that holds a great deal of potential beyond this book. Chick has planned the series to run over ten volumes, with the second set to be released on Feb. 1.

Skippyjon Jones came home with my wife. As I’ve already mentioned, she’s a kindergarten teacher and has her students bring in their favorite books to share. How my children made it past kindergarten without partaking in the free-wheeling, madcap imagination of Skippyjon is beyond me. Judy Schachner delivers the story of this creative young kitty who imagines himself as a Chihuahua and dreams up adventures for his “pack” of Chihuahuas (who are really stuffed animals in his closet). It’s zany fun that even my 13-year-old gets a good laugh at.

After the kids go to bed and when the wife tunes in to her shows, I find myself with some spare time to flip some pages, so I do. This week the highlight of my comic stack was Batgirl, a book I’ve been enjoying since issue #1. Issue #17 features a team-up between current Batgirl (Stephanie Brown) and Robin (Damian Wayne) in a story that Bryan Q. Miller delivers with equal parts humor, adventure and character. The team-up is driven by Batgirl’s first official Batman Inc. assignment. It’s definitely the lightest of the Bat-books, but strong enough to leave you wanting to read more in a hurry.

Superheroes, Strip Artists, & Talking Animals

I’m also making my way through the anecdote-laden Superheroes, Strip Artists, & Talking Animals book by Britt Aamodt. Published by the Minnesota Historical Society, this book covers Minnesota’s Contemporary Cartoonists. It doesn’t limit itself to just mainstream comic books (and thereby the work of luminaries such as Dan Jurgens, Peter Gross, Doug Mahnke, and Pat Gleason) it also looks at the comic strip artists that call the North Star State home. Aamodt does a nice job of letting each artist – mainstream, independent, or comic strip – have a few pages of glory, including more than one sample from most of the artists. It’s a black-and-white book, but the art reprinted here translates well to grayscale life. The book itself has the heft of one of TwoMorrows’ Companion books, and the quality of the material within is pretty darn close to TwoMorrows’ standards.

The last thing I’m reading is on my iPod touch. I haven’t committed to a Kindle, iPad or other such reader device yet, but I have decided to experiment with the apps and my Touch. I’m reading The Inner Circle by Brad Meltzer. The book just hit the stands (digital and deadwood) on Tuesday past, but I’ve been able to bust out the iPod Touch while waiting for kids at dance or swim, or heating up my lunch at work. This has given me the chance to pack an extra seven chapters of reading into a week that wouldn’t normally allow such an extracurricular activity. The book is standard-fare from Meltzer, playing close to his Decoded show while investigating the National Archives in more detail. Beecher White is an archivist who happens upon a secret that may or may not be tied to the President of the United States of America. From there, assumptions are made, conclusions are jumped to, and adventure busts forth. As he has done in previous prose works, Meltzer peppers the story with comic book-related winks and nods. It’s a page-turner at this point, and I’ve found myself unlocking the Touch to read one more page quite frequently.

As for what’s waiting for me next, well, I just checked out Ed Brubaker’s Rise and Fall of the Shi’Ar Empire from the library. I haven’t done much X-Men reading in the past few years, so I’m looking forward to an interstellar adventure with Nightcrawler, Havok, Polaris, Marvel Girl and Warpath. That will be waiting nicely over to the side as I finish one of these other books.

Check out the full schedule in the BCGF press release after the jump.

BROOKLYN COMICS AND GRAPHICS FESTIVAL ANNOUNCES PROGRAMMING SCHEDULE

The Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival announces a full slate of programming events featuring comics luminaries including Lynda Barry, Charles Burns, Anders Nilsen, Brian Chippendale, Mark Alan Stamaty, Renée French, and many more as part of the one day Festival taking place on Saturday, December 4, 2010 at Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Church in Williamsburg, Brooklyn (full schedule below). The Festival is especially pleased to announce New Yorker Art Editor, RAW co-editor, and TOON Books Editorial Director Françoise Mouly as a special guest, who will join Kramers Ergot Editor Sammy Harkham for a conversation about the art of editing. Festival programming is curated and principally moderated by Programming Director Bill Kartalopoulos.

In addition to the day’s programming, the Festival is pleased to announce a suite of satellite events taking place over five days, including a very special program of rare comics-related film curated by Mark Newgarden screening on Sunday, December 5 at the Knitting Factory and exhibit openings at Secret Project Robot on Friday, December 3 and the Adam Baumgold Gallery on Tuesday, December 7.

Admission to the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival and all associated events is free and open to the public.

BROOKLYN COMICS AND GRAPHICS FESTIVAL PROGRAMMING EVENTS

Downstairs at Our Lady of Mount Carmel | 275 North 8th Street, Brooklyn

All panels moderated by Bill Kartalopoulos unless otherwise indicated

1:00 | LYNDA BARRY AND CHARLES BURNS IN CONVERSATION

Lynda Barry drew the syndicated weekly comic strip Ernie Pook’s Comeek for more than two decades, and has authored books including Cruddy, One Hundred Demons, What It Is, and this year’s Picture This. Charles Burns is the author of acclaimed graphic novel Black Hole and the recent full color book X’ed Out. Join us for this conversation between two extraordinary artists who also share a personal history as former classmates.

2:00 | THE ART OF EDITING

In 1980, Françoise Mouly co-founded, with Art Spiegelman, the ground-breaking comics anthology RAW. She is also the Art Editor of The New Yorker and the Editorial Director of the TOON Books line of children’s comics. Sammy Harkham is the editor of the Kramers Ergot series, which has articulated a new aesthetic for comics – and comics anthologies – with each monumental volume. Harkham and Mouly will discuss the pleasures and problems of editing.

3:00 | TAKING INVENTORY: THE STORY OF THINGS

In their most conventionally narrative form, comics develop a storyboard-like continuity from panel to panel. But how isolated can a panel be? Renée French, James McShane, Jungyeon Roh and Leanne Shapton will discuss the ways in which they construct or suggest narratives by assembling images of objects and moments that retain their individual integrity.

4:00 | IRWIN HASEN: WHEN COMIC BOOKS WERE NEW

Comic books came into their own with the success of Superman’s 1938 debut. By 1940, Irwin Hasen was working in this new field, drawing early comics featuring Green Lantern and Wildcat before co-creating the comic strip Dondi and, recently, the 2009 graphic novel Loverboy. Evan Dorkin and Paul Pope will join moderator Dan Nadel for a special conversation with an artist who has been working in comics for seventy years.

5:00 | ANDERS NILSEN Q+A

Anders Nilsen’s fine line, radical graphic experimentation, and humane philosophical investigations distinguish him as one of the most notable cartoonists of his generation. This winter sees the conclusion of his series Big Questions, an epic epistemological adventure featuring several cartoon birds (some of them dead) and one disoriented fighter pilot. Anders will discuss his art and career in this spotlight conversation.

6:00 | HOW NANCY IS: THE SEMIOTICS OF THE GAG

Ernie Bushmiller’s iconic comic strip Nancy has been described as “a mini-algebra equation masquerading as a comic strip” drawn by “a moron on an acid trip.” Bill Griffith (Zippy the Pinhead), Mark Newgarden (How To Read Nancy), and Johnny Ryan (Angry Youth Comix) will discuss the unshakeable appeal of Nancy and the essence of gag humor in their comics.

7:00 | CHAOS AND PATTERN

Artwork that is dense with compositional detail, line, pattern and texture encourages a lingering, wandering eye. How does this kind of drawing work in comics? Brian Chippendale, Jordan Crane, Keith Jones and Mark Alan Stamaty will consider the relationship between densely made drawing and the propulsive concerns of visual narrative.

SATELLITE EVENTS AND EXHIBITS

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 3

“Nazi Knife” Exhibit Opening

Location: Secret Project Robot | 210 Kent Ave, Brooklyn

Time: 8:00 – 10:00 pm

A collection of images curated by the French collective Nazi Knife, whose eponymous anthology has become a post-millennial clearing house for the psyche-grotesque and other non-narrative drawing in the transgressive post-punk French tradition. Artists include: C.F., Mat Brinkman, Hendrik Hegray, Jonas Delaborde, Andy Bolus, Leon Sadler, Massimiliano Bomba, Stephane Prigent.

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 5

The Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival presents:

Cartoonists and Comics On Camera, 1916-1962

Location: The Knitting Factory | 361 Metropolitan Avenue, Brooklyn

Time: 3:00 – 5:00 pm

A once-in-a-lifetime presentation of rare footage featuring 20th century comics greats and some unusual animated adaptations of their work, curated by Mark Newgarden. See Rube Goldberg, Otto Soglow, Chester Gould, Frank King, Harold Grey, Hal Foster (and many more) at the drawing board! See Jefferson “Gags And Gals” Machamer act! See a drawing lesson from Fred C. Cooper! Plus Krazy Kat, Al Capp, Jacky’s Diary and many more surprises! And join us afterwards for drinks at the Knitting Factory’s front-room bar.

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 7

“Renée French: Drawings” Exhibit Opening

Location: Adam Baumgold Gallery | 60 East 66th Street, NY, NY

Time: 7:00 pm

Adam Baumgold Gallery presents a selection of Renée French’s exquisite graphite-on-paper drawings from 2007 to the present. Included here are sequences from her acclaimed new graphic novel, H Day, as well as a series of metaphorical “portraits” — uncanny visages made up of microscopic details.

The Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival is an ongoing project by Desert Island, PictureBox and Bill Kartalopoulos. More information about the Festival is available online at www.comicsandgraphicsfest.com.

Crickets #3

That’s pretty much all I got, folks. According to a post on the blog for Harkham’s L.A. book and music store Family, Crickets #3 is “happening soon.” That appears to be the cover up above.

Around this time last year, Harkham announced the cancellation of the series, then published by Drawn & Quarterly, due to Diamond’s new minimum-order thresholds. At the time, the Kramers Ergot editor and cartoonist said the third issue “will come out in some DYI form in the next couple months.” I think I speak for all of us when I say better late than never!

“Postcard from Fielder 2″ by Kevin Huizenga

“The Miracle” by Johnny Ryan

“Money Can’t Buy Jappiness” by Vanessa Davis

“The Haunted High School” by Dash Shaw

“The New Yorker Story” by Sammy Harkham

Ectopiary by Hans Rickheit

“Sale, extended” by Anders Nilsen

“Portrait of Bob Flanagan” by Elijah J. Brubaker

The Trials of Sir Christopher by Colleen Frakes

“A Decision in Love” by Bill Boichel and Tom Grindberg

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.

Crickets

Continuing our occasional series looking at how small press and indie comics publishers are weathering the downturn in the economy, not to mention Diamond’s recent policy changes, today we’re talking with Drawn and Quarterly’s Associate Publisher Peggy Burns.

D&Q rather unintentionally became regarded as one of the first martyrs of Diamond’s new cut-off policy when two of their serialized comics, Sammy Harkham’s Crickets and Kevin Huizenga’s Or Else, were cancelled. The fact that said cancellations were due to the separate decisions of the artists themselves and not the publisher or Diamond didn’t matter much at the time; its close proximity seemed to have a direct cause and effect.

I was curious as to what Burns had to say about that matter and the industry climate in general, since she’s one of the most intelligent and candid people working behind the scenes in comics today. She didn’t disappoint and I’d like to thank her for taking the time to respond to the plethora of questions I emailed her.

Can you give me any idea of how close Crickets and Or Else were to missing Diamond’s new cut-off before the respective creators pulled the plug on the series?

I don’t really want to get into a numbers game with our authors whose comics fell below or near the Diamond minimum. Obviously, the titles (Or Else, Lucky, Crickets) that have been announced as ending in their pamphlet form hovered around the minimum, though the conversation with Or Else happened before the minimum news. Ending a series is not something we want to do. The artist wanted to tell their story in this form, and we have the job of telling this form is no longer viable. It’s not an easy decision and wasn’t fun to do.

Right now, how many “pamphlets” or serialized comics or what have you does D&Q publish?

We publish Big Questions, Berlin and Optic Nerve.

Or Else

Are any of them in any danger of not making the new minimum cut-off?

No, the comics that have been coming out regularly for over a decade enjoy a certain awareness that places them well above the minimum, I think a wider number of stores recognize the title as it has been around for ten years and will automatically buy it. That said, even Palookaville, which wasn’t near the minimum, is becoming a book series. And Big Questions and Berlin are nearing the end and will be collected. I think any independent publisher would agree that you just can not achieve the same awareness and sales for comics by new authors. Big Questions has a high cover price, and the series is on its tenth issue, which helps it buck the trend for comics by new authors. If any author, new or not new, asked me whether they should continue to do a pamphlet or start a new one, I would in 98% of the cases say they should just do a book. I guess I should say that only in comics is an author who has publishing less than ten years considered new.

How important is the Direct Market (and Diamond) to the success of these comics and to the success of the company in general?

Diamond is critical to the health of pamphlets, as they make up 90% of the sales. And for our books, Diamond, and the direct market as a whole is critical as it is about 1/4-1/2 of sales depending on the title, Diamond and the Direct Market is critical to any company who publishes comics in book form.

Big Questions

What about the Petit Livres series? Many of the books in that series feature new or unknown artists and I would imagine be a hard sell to a lot of comics retailers. Are any of them in danger of not being carried by Diamond?

Our Petit Livre series is a good example of trying to come up with an alternative format to the pamphlet. There are so many new artists we adore and want to publish, and the pamphlet clearly was not working. The cover price itself makes each book viable for Diamond, but you would be surprised by the unit numbers and the very fact the Petits Livres are books (or perhaps booklets) makes them able to be sold in the book market.

Are there any other current or future projects that you fear might not make the new cut-off?

No.

Assuming a book does not make it into Previews, what other distribution options do you have to make sure retailers are able to get a copy?

I assume you mean a pamphlet? As if it is a book, it would go out through our book distributors, directly through us and various sub distributors. If it is a pamphlet, and it doesn’t go through Diamond, it would go out directly and through various comic distributors like Last Gasp and Haven.

Palookaville

How much of a hindrance are these new policies? How much of an impact do you think they’ll ultimately have on your bottom line?

It’s not a hindrance. It’s business; about ten times a day we face business decisions that make us reflect what we are doing. Choosing what kind of paper to print on, whether or not to overnight a press request, everything is a business decision that affects the bottom line. My whole day could be one big hindrance. Really, the minimums were more of a wake-up call that the medium has profoundly changed to not include the alt pamphlet.

Do you see this new policy as being the final nail in the coffin for the alt-comic or was it already dead and this is just the death certificate?

No, I definitely do not see it as the final nail in the alt-comic. The pamphlet, maybe. But people said that with vinyl, and look at vinyl making a comeback. Perhaps we’ll see floppies come back in a few years. Bottom-line is, with this thing called the Internet, people will find a way to get their comics known. For the author who needs to tell their story in 24-page serials, they can self publish, whether online or on paper. In fact there are probably more ways now to get your comic out there than ever before and that made the decision slightly easier for us. Matt Forsythe was nominated for an Eisner before his online comic became a book. Top Shelf stopped doing pamphlets of American Elf, which is now just online and then collected into a book. Kate Beaton has a huge internet following. And god bless John Porcellino! And this doesn’t even include all anthologies out today.

I don’t find Diamond initiating new minimums in this economic climate shocking; I find the opinion of everyone in comics reaction more shocking. Just the other day I heard that Gary Groth is planning an article on us canceling these titles. I knew comics was a nostalgic industry, I never knew it was so nostalgic that it ignored basic business trends. (Or wait, maybe I did know that.) And I love pamphlets, but it seems like most pundits are mad at the idea that pamphlets won’t be in stores anymore and are ignoring the fact that comics sales have been declining steadily for the past decade.

Berlin

I think Kevin Huizenga sums it up best when he was in the D+Q office for the Kramers tour and he said (before the news of the minimum) that if Love & Rockets is becoming a book, then it’s pretty clear that the pamphlet is over. I would venture to say that most people in comics do not buy pamphlets anymore. For the publisher who has fixed costs of overhead, actual salaried employees and pays fair royalties, publishing comics by new authors became a break-even situation about 5-8 years ago, which was the reason why the Diamond minimum was more of a wake up call and less of a blow. I don’t know what it costs for Diamond, but I would assume that they can not break even either.

Look, when our artists decide to create their work in the pamphlet format, they are making a decision that this will just be sold in comic stores. When the main distributor for comics stores decides to institute minimums that may affect their work in pamphlet form, we – as both their publisher and not just their biggest fan – have to have an honest conversation with the artist if this is the best way to publish their work and if we, as a company, can continue to publish it as a pamphlet to a declining audience that is beyond our control, no matter how good the comic. The alternative of publishing books to an increasing audience is a win-win situation for everyone involved-author, publisher, retailer, distributor. This may sound like a sacrilege – such an obvious mixing of art with business. I would imagine our artists and fans know that we place art before commerce about 99% of the time, more often than not, to our disadvantage.

Lucky

At the end of the day, though, we have a business arrangement with the author. The author has asked us to sell their art and to be in charge of the business aspects of publishing this art, and we have to have honest conversations. We can’t pay our bills if we are breaking even and we wouldn’t be a very good publisher to our authors if we ignored basic business trends in the industry, and didn’t have these conversations to try to steer the author to where the audience is. Our job is to get the largest paying audience for their book as possible.

I find it sadly ironic that the rest of the publishing industry around the world is seeking electronic rights to their backlists, and is facing a huge Google copyright settlement that barely makes a ripple in comics news, we are debating over the apparent “health” of the comic book. I understand why no one wants to have the conversation over what increasingly seems to be the inevitable digitization of books, but it seems like the pundits and journalists are misplacing the debate. It is like insisting your movie be on VHS, when everyone watches DVD, and eventually all will be a moot point when everyone downloads it from Netflix. Or, as one of authors said when discussing the Google news, “I just don’t want to end up like Burt Reynolds in Boogie Nights … refusing to jump on the newfangled video bandwagon and sticking with reel-to-reel film.”

Beyond Diamond, has the bad economy affected D&Q in any way? If so, how?

So far the economy has not had an adverse effect. Knock on wood, and thanks to all of the customers, distributors and retailers who support us.

Crickets

OK, this is officially getting depressing now. Hot on the heels of Kevin Huizenga’s announcement that he is pulling the plug on his D&Q pamplet series Or Else, cartoonist and Kramer’s Ergot editor Sammy Harkham says on his blog that he is canceling his D&Q-published pamphlet series, Crickets after only two issues. Unlike Huizenga, he minces no words abou the reason why:

Wanted to just let those favorite few of you out there to know that my comic book, Crickets, has been cancelled due to changes made by the major comics distributor that effectively made it impossible to continue in the comic book format. Crickets #3 will come out in some DYI form in the next couple months…after that, I dont know exactly. While I am really bummed about this, as I feel I never even really got started on it, I appreciate all the people who supported it when it was coming out. Thanks. To the future.

Man, I really liked that comic too. Should we start some kind of Drowning Pool and take bets as to what series is next on the chopping block?

(found via)