The Body of Work

I suppose on a certain level running through all the loot you nabbed at this or that convention seems a bit like bragging, even if the intention is merely to say, “Hey, here’s some cool comics you should check out.” That being said, it seems like a while since anyone’s done one of those “here’s the stuff I bought” posts, so I thought I’d run down some of the more interesting-looking books I nabbed at SPX this past weekend. Forgive me.

The Body of Work by Kevin Huizenga. In addition to promoting the release of Ganges #4, Huizenga had a couple of mini-comics for sale as well. This one features some of the comics he’s been posting online like Postcard from Fielder.

Color Engineering

Danger Country by Levon Jihanian. This is the first chapter of what feels like a rather ambitious fantasy series about warring factions, done in a spartan, but nicely detailed line. This was nominated for outstanding comic and oustanding mini comic this year, and chapter two is supposed to be released in October. File this under “promising.”

Lizzie’s Tail by Darryl Ayo. Ayo won the Promising New Talent Ignatz Award at the show, and reading this mini-comic, a surreal little jaunt about a woman who goes questing for a necklace, it’s not too hard to see why.

Color Engineering by Yuichi Yokoyama. The other big debut book at the Picturebox table. Yokoyama’s Garden has been my favorite book of 2011 so far, so there was no way I was going to pass the chance to nab this collection of color work, most of which seems to have even more of a pop art sensibility than his black and white work. Picturebox also had limited copies of this book available, which looked pretty sweet.

The Naked Heroes by Benjamin Marra. A light goof from Marra, apparently done as a favor for some musician friends, it concerns a tough-as-nails couple that enter an otherwordly bar and end up taking on a two-bodied demon monster and its hellspawn. Lots of blood and violence, as one would expect. At the show, Marra let it be known that he was working on the second issue of Gangsta Rap Posse, the plot of which sounded almost too awesome to be believed.

A Lion in Winter by Jiro Taniguchi. I always try to pick up at least one book at the Fanfare/Ponent Mon table, if only because tracking down their books in stores can be such a tricky proposition (although I should note it has gotten considerably better). This is their latest book, another entry from their top star Taniguichi, although this one, about a young man who attempts to start a career in manga, is apparently his most autobiographical work to date.

Forming

Pope Hats #2 by Ethan Rilly. My comics collection is in complete disarray right now so I can’t look at the first issue for comparision’s sake, but it seems like Rilly’s art has taken a huge leap forward, becoming looser, more assured and more detailed. A nice eurocomics vibe throughout. Look for a more thoughtful, official review to show up sometime in the near future.

Forming by Jesse Moynihan. Another fantasy-style graphic novel, though this tends to lean more towards the mythology side of things, as it deals with a bunch of Biblical/Greek/etc. godlike beings fighting and speaking in a modern idiom. I haven’t had a chance to do more than browse through this, but it certainly seems promising. NoBrow Press did a really nice job with the production here, and I think it’s fair to say it was one of the better looking books at the show. AdHouse had copies of these but they sold out rather quickly on Saturday.

Theories of Everything by Roz Chast. One of the things I like about SPX is how cartoonists outside the traditional indie comics community like Roz Chast and Ann Telnaes  can fit in and be welcomed so easily. As I mentioned in my photo round-up, I’m a rather big Chast fan — honestly, I think she’s the best thing in the magazine these days; certainly the most idiosyncratic — so picking up this chunky “best of” collection of cartoons was kind of a no-brainer.

Once again I found myself in ever-pleasant Bethesda, Md., this past weekend for the annual SPX show. After a really awful week involving a flooded basement and a possibly ruined comics collection, I was really looking forward to attending the show this year, and it did not disappoint. I hope to have a full report up on the CBR main site later this week, but for now you’ll just have to content yourself with this photo diary. 

I have no idea who this gentleman was or what he was doing at the show. He seemed to be doing a lot of interviews. I envied his crown.

Here’s 1-800-MICE author Matthew Thurber signing copies of the Picturebox-published collection, one of several big debuts at this year’s show.

Picturebox publisher and TCJ co-editor Dan Nadel ponders the meaning of DC’s new 52. Watching Joe “Jog” McCulloch attempt to explain the ending of Final Crisis to him was one of the highlights of the show for me.

Kevin Huizenga and Anders Nilsen are very serious cartoonists.

One of the highlights of the show for many was getting an early copy of Craig Thompson’s heavily anticipated Habibi, signed by Thompson himself.

Raina Telgemeier had yummy rocketship-shaped cookies (baked, I’m told, by First Second’s Gina Gagliano) she was giving to those who bought books by either her or her husband, Dave Roman.

Drawn & Quarterly had a murderer’s row of brand spankin’ new releases by folks like Kate Beaton, Dan Clowes, Brian Ralph, Seth and Adrian Tomine.

Chester Brown remained a big draw, however, and there was a long line to get a signed copy of Paying for It.

Best exchange I overheard all weekend:

Woman: “Look, there’s Chester Brown! Is that his prostitute with him?”

Man: “No, that’s one of the women who work at Drawn and Quarterly.”

Biggest thrill? Getting to meet New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast and have her sign my book for me. Thrill. Of. A. Lifetime. Not. Kidding.

AdHouse publisher Chris Pitzer has good reason to smile. This was apparently one of the best attended SPXes in many years.

Is this the line for Chester Brown or Kate Beaton? Maybe it’s both!

Dustin Harbin has an angry drawing face.

There were laptop problems prior to the Ignatz Awards and so everyone congregated outside the doors of the amphitheater. You could barely move let alone get from one side of the hall to the other.

Dustin Harbin and his lady love

Most of my photos of the Ignatz ceremonies came out horribly, so I’m going with this picture of Harbin, seen here with his lovely girlfriend. Harbin emceed the event, and did a stellar job of it.

I ended my time at SPX exactly the way one should: Listening to Fantagraphics publisher talk about Jacques Tardi. If I can make a horribly biased statement (since I moderated one of the panels), I’d say most of the panel programming was rather stellar and kudos should go to programming guru Bill Kartalopoulos.

I’ll leave you with a photo of this painting that greeted me every time I walked to and fro the elevator to my hotel room. I don’t know who these gentlemen are or why they were hanging in the hotel hallway, but I like to imagine that they had something to do with comics.

I Will Bite You

The winners of the 2011 Ignatz Awards were announced this weekend at SPX, the Small Press Expo in Bethesda, Md. Nominees for the awards were chosen by a jury of five creators and voted on by attendees at the show.

Congratulations to this year’s winners:

Outstanding Mini Comic: Ben Died of a Train, Box Brown
Outstanding Anthology or Collection: I Will Bite You, Joseph Lambert
Outstanding Online Comic: Hark! A Vagrant, Kate Beaton
Promising New Talent: Darryl Ayo Brathwaite
Outstanding Story: Browntown, Jaime Hernandez
Outstanding Series: Everything Dies, Box Brown
Outstanding Comic: Lose #3, Michael DeForge
Outstanding Graphic Novel: Gaylord Phoenix, Edie Fake
Outstanding Artist: Joseph Lambert, I Will Bite You

SPX, or the Small Press Expo, returns to the Bethesda North Marriott Hotel and Conference Center in Bethesda, Md. this weekend.

The show’s special guests include Roz Chast, Jim Woodring, Diane Noomin, Jim Rugg, Ann Telnaes, Chester Brown, Johnny Ryan, Craig Thompson and Matthew Thurber, and fans who attend will also have the opportunity to meet and/or hear from Kevin Huizenga, Anders Nilsen, Jessica Abel, Sarah Glidden, Alex Robinson, Brian Ralph, Mike Dawson, Meredith Gran, Roger Langridge and Julia Wertz, just to name a few. I would also be remiss if I didn’t point out that our own Chris Mautner will be attending and conducting a Q&A with Johnny Ryan on Saturday, so be sure to tell him hi for us.

In addition to a lot of great talent, SPX also offers a full schedule of programming and the yearly Ignatz Awards. And a whole lot of new books and cool things will be available at the show:

• Drawn + Quarterly will have a ton of new books at the show, as detailed here, like Brain Ralph’s Daybreak collection, the Death-Ray hardcover and Big Questions, among many others.

• As we noted yesterday, AdHouse and Tom Scioli will have an American Barbarian print at the show. They’ll also have guests like Jim Rugg, Lamar Abrams, Ethan Rilly and Sterling Hundley at their table.

• Jennifer Hayden’s Underwire, from Top Shelf, makes its debut:

Underwire

• Roger Langridge’s The Show Must Go On! collection from BOOM! Town will debut there, and Langridge will also have a Snarked! print:

Snarked!

• Kevin Huizenga will have some new stuff at the show, not the least of which is a new Ganges book from Fantagraphics.

• NBM will debut Stargazing Dog and Ernie Colon’s Inner Sanctum at the show.

• The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund will host the first Jeff Alexander Memorial Benefit Auction, named for a cartoonist and an organizer of SPX and the Ignatz Awards. He passed away earlier this year. The auction includes pieces from Alexander ’s collection that he donated to the CBLDF, including original art by Charles Vess and Jeff Smith, Tony Millionaire, and Roger Langridge. The auction also includes contributions from Keith Knight, Raina Telgemeier, Jeffrey Brown and many more.

• A signed and numbered edition of Craig Thompson’s Habibi will be available from the CBLDF during the show. And Sara Varon will be at their table on Saturday signing Bake Sale.

• The SPX has a whole bunch more listed on their site, including Mike Dawson’s Troop 142, Pope Hats #2 by Ethan Rilly, Old-Time Hockey Tales by Robert Ullman and Jeffrey Brown, Monster Isle: Big Monster Stuff by Joey Weiser and more.

Justice League #1 (Second Printing)

Publishing | DC Comics will allocate the second printing of Justice League #1, with retailers receiving 32 percent of their orders, which now won’t ship until Sept. 21, the same day the third printing will be released. ICv2 reports some stores are concerned that potential new readers drawn in by the publisher’s promotional campaign for the New 52 won’t understand the two-week wait to pick up a copy of the comic. The website also runs down the list of cable television shows during which DC’s New 52 commercial is airing. [ICv2.com]

Passings | Comic Art Community reports that artist Dave Hoover passed away earlier this week. Hoover, who drew runs of Captain America and Starman in the 1990s, more recently worked on Zenescope’s Charmed comic. Before working in comics, Hoover was an animator, working on Flash Gordon, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, She-Ra: Princess of Power, The Super Friends, The Smurfs and many more in the 1970s and 1980s. [Comic Art Community]

The Astonishing Secret of Awesome Man

Creators | In support of The Astonishing Secret of Awesome Man, his new superhero children’s book (with Jake Parker), Michael Chabon tells the Wall Street Journal he wrote it for “the primary focus group,” his son Abe. “This was a story that I wanted to write for him. He’s at the age when, boys in particular, you get into kindergarten and it becomes much more important that you know how to control your body and strength, to restrain yourself and hold yourself back. He was working through a lot of that stuff and occasionally struggling with it. Part of the recipe of a four or five-year-old boy is superheroes and fascination with superheroes. They want to wear costumes all the time. They’ll wear their costumes to school. Part of what makes a superhero a superhero is the ability to use his body and have this incredible power and strength. It seemed like the superhero was a perfect figure to create a little story about someone who needs to control his power and recognize the limits of his power.” [The Wall Street Journal]

Creators | Continuing his publicity tour for Habibi, Craig Thompson talks about the new book in advance of this weekend’s SPX, which Thompson is attending as a special guest. [Washington City Paper]

Green River Killer: A True Detective Story

Creators | Writer Jeff Jensen chats with Geoff Boucher about his true-crime graphic novel, Green River Killer: A True Detective Story. [Hero Complex]

Creators | Retired Marine Capt. Dale Dye and his wife Julia Dye discuss Code Word: Geronimo, which tells the story of SEAL Team Six and the mission to kill Osama bin Laden. [USA Today]

Reviews | Spencer Ackerman takes a look at the 9/11 Truther comic The Big Lie, saying Rick Veitch’s newest work “makes Frank Miller’s forthcoming Holy Terror seem calm and reasonable.”[Wired]

Reviews| Robot 6 contributor J. Caleb Mozzocco reviews Boys of Steel, a children’s book about Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster that tells a carefully restricted version of the story as a picture book but adds a more unvarnished version at the end in text form. [Every Day Is Like Wednesday]

Troop 142

Reviews | Greg McElhatton reads Mike Dawson’s Troop 142 in collected form, after having followed it as a webcomic, and finds that it’s a somewhat different experience: “It was fun, that sort of story about young men at camp that instantly feels real. But reading again a year later, all in one sitting? There’s a much stronger emotional heft to the story that I think is slightly lost in serialized format.” [Read About Comics]

Reviews | Similarly, Xaviar Xerexes finds that the collected edition of Zahra’s Paradise packed a punch that the webcomic didn’t: “This may be the most emotional, involving comic I’ve read this year. I’ve read along with the webcomic but sitting down with the book and reading the story from start to finish was immersive and cathartic.” [ComixTalk]

Comic strips | How do you get your comic strip picked up by King Features? It’s a long shot in this market, says editor Brendan Burford, but he lays out the basics of what they are looking for. What not to do: Submit your comic in a glitter-covered binder or a toilet seat. Oddly, the comments get hijacked by fans of something called 2 Cows and a Chicken, which they keep pleading with Burford to pick up, even after he explains nicely why he can’t. File that under What Not to Do. [DailyINK Blog, via The Daily Cartoonist]

Retailers | Three comic shops within a mile radius of one another? That makes Falls Church sound like heaven. [Falls Church News-Press]

American Barbarian

In advance of this weekend’s Small Press Expo, or SPX, in Bethesda, Md., AdHouse Books has announced they’ll publish Tom Scioli‘s webcomic American Barbarian.

The hardcover collection will be 6″ x 9″, the same dimensions as the Afrodisiac hardcover they published last year. It ships in early 2012, according to the publisher’s website.

Both AdHouse and Scioli will have signed and numbered American Barbarian prints at SPX, free with any purchase from Scioli or AdHouse. Other AdHouse guests this weekend include Jim Rugg, Lamar Abrams, Ethan Rilly and Sterling Hundley.

Spearheaded by SPX executive director and chairman of the board Warren Bernard, the Collection will serve multiple purposes. It will archive the ephemera of the Bethesda-based alt/indie comics convention itself, including the posters, badges, and programs created by cartoonists for the Expo, and even each year’s SPX website. It will also include every print comic nominated for the Expo’s festival award program, the Ignatz Awards. (For the time being, only the winner of the Best Webcomic Ignatz will be digitally archived.) And it will collect a selection of the comics that are available for purchase at each year’s show — a selection dominated by minicomics and other self-published works that are often difficult if not impossible to find once their tiny initial print runs have sold out.

As someone who’s gotten a lot out of SPX over the years, I think this is providing a vital service — a time capsule of the state of alternative and art comics, updated yearly. An Please read TCJ.com editor Dan Nadel’s entire interview with Bernard about this fascinating project. Then be sure to go to this year’s SPX next weekend, where my fellow Roboteer Chris Mautner and I will be hosting panels about the kinds of comics that will soon make the Library of Congress their permanent home.

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)

Small Press Expo is still a few months away, but it’s never to early to start drumming up interest. That must be what the organizers had in mind when they released this year’s flyer, illustrated by none other than Craig Thompson, creator of the classic Blankets and the much-anticipated Habibi. Thompson will be a guest at the show, along Roz Chast, Chester Brown, Jim Woodring, and other artistic luminaries.

Get in line for cool comics

As is my wont, I made the one-day (the one day being Saturday) trek to Bethesda, Md., along with Joe “Jog” McCulloch for the annual Small Press Expo. Perhaps the Earth’s rotation is spinning ever faster, but this year’s show seemed a bit of a blur to me, even by previous years’ standards. Before I had a chance to say “Sorry, I’m tapped out and can’t buy your mini-comic,” it was after 6 p.m. and time to go home. Fortunately I took some pictures to help my fading memory keep the show alive in my tumescent brain. Or at least, I tried to take some pictures.

Gabrielle Bell and Vanessa Davis

Joe and I got there about 10 minutes before the official opening, but they let us in anyway, no doubt because of the snazzy VIP badges we scored. There was already a notable crowd that grew considerably as the day wore on. Based on my fleeting observations it seemed to be made up of the usual number of men, women, families, hipsters, young people, middle aged folks with big beards and just plain fans.

What was the book of the show? Was there a book of the show? Hard to say. New books from the larger (relatively speaking), big-name publishers tended to drown out some of the smaller, hand-stapled offerings. Everyone seemed to be eager to get their hands on the newest volume of Acme Novelty Library over at the D&Q table. A couple of folks I talked to said they couldn’t wait to pick that up. Likewise, I saw a number of folks walking around with Vanessa Davis‘ latest book, Make Me a Woman. I also wasn’t expecting them to have copies of the new, hardcover bound Palookaville as well. That was a nice surprise.

Tom Devlin wants you to read 'Red Snow'

Elsewhere, Top Shelf finally had copies of their Ax anthology for sale. Picturebox had new graphic novels by Renee French and Julie Doucet, as well as Monster, an anthology of work by former Fort Thunder associates and like-minded individuals. They also had a sample copy of Brian Chippendale’s If-n-Oof, a little brick of a book that strongly whetted my appetite for its eventual release.

Dan Nadel protects his sole copy of 'If and Oof'

Over at the Fantagraphics table, Jaime Hernandez had a steady stream of devotees seeking his signature, helped by the fact that the company had the latest and third Love and Rockets volume available. Fanfare/Ponent Mon had finally gotten their long-promised anthology Korea As Viewed by 12 Creators off the presses and on the show floor. AdHouse, meanwhile, seemed to attract a steady stream of customers as it had both a new issue of Paul Pope’s THB: Comics from Mars #2 and Adam Hines’ Duncan the Wonder Dog, an impressive and massive looking book that seems to be building up a steady buzz.

Frank Santoro pitches comics

Frank Santoro was also on hand as usual, over by the PictureBox selling a variety of long-forgotten (Video Jack anybody?) mainstream comics out of his longboxes and raving about their various qualities to anyone who stopped by. Listening to Frank extol the virtues (or lack thereof) of, say, Coyote or Tiger-Man has become a real con highlight for me.

Joe "Jog" McCulloch, Copacetic Comics' Bill Boichel and me

I helped out with two panels, both of which I thought went rather well. The first focused on Market Day author and CCS co-founder James Sturm. Sturm had a slideshow all prepared that delved into his bibliography, the creation of the school, and his recent decision to go offline for a few weeks. All I really had to do was give a general, glowing introduction, ask two relevant questions after he was done and then open the floor to audience questions. Pretty easy on my part and Sturm seemed really happy with the panel, so it was win-win as far as I was concerned.

SPX tends to be a family affair. Here's Jay Hosler and his two sons, Max and Jack

The second panel I was on was the critics roundtable, which also featured Jog, Gary Groth, Johanna Draper Carlson, Ken Parille, Tim Hodler and Caroline Small. Many jokes were made (several by me) about how fistfights were likely to break out at this year’s panel due to an minor Internet kerfuffle between Small and Hodler (among others) Everyone was gracious, polite and thoughtful though, which no doubt depressed and bored some of those in the audience. I think Heidi MacDonald in particular was hoping for blood to be spilled.

Most of the discussion centered on the the question of experience/knowledge versus being naive about certain genres and methodologies, how the wealth of material makes any sort of blanket coverage difficult and academic versus mainstream reviewing. I recorded the panel and will have a transcript and/or downloadable mp3 file available sometime before 2010 ends.

Tim Hodler and daughter Ramona

After the panels were over Joe and I grabbed a beer with Comics Comics’ Tim Hodler, who had his daughter Ramona in tow, and who has to be one of the best behaved babies I’ve ever seen. Nothing like talking about Alan Moore and Garth Ennis while drinking Sam Adams and watching an 11-month old play with a paper napkin and go “ba ba ba.” Everyone should have that experience.

Dustin Harbin does the old banana = phone joke

For me the social aspects of SPX have long since equaled or even overridden the chance to blow a wad of dough on new, exciting comics (although I did that too). Meet people like Dustin Harbin, Zack Soto, Caroline and Ken, as well as say hello to people I haven’t seen since MoCCA or the last SPX show. Many other bloggers have already commented on this, but it seems as though half of the primary reason for the show’s existence is for people to schmooze with like-minded souls.

Oh, you want to know what I bought? Quickly then: the new Acme, the new Palookaville, Afrodisiac, the Ax anthology, Monster, Julia Wertz’s Drinking at the Movies, the new Love and Rockets, Fire and Water (i.e. that Bill Everett book), the lastest Dodgem Logic, Jim Rugg’s Rambo 3.5, Kevin Huizenga’s The Wild Kingdom, a bunch of old Kyle Baker Shadows, and some other stuff that I’m not remembering right now.

One of the show’s best highlights for me, however, was when First Second’s Gina Gagliano introduced me to Ben Hatke, whose book, Zita the Spacegirl, will be published by the company early 2011. Hatke was there with his daughter Angelica, who had made her own minicomic, Chicken Adventures, which she had been selling at the show for $2 a pop. She had two copies left and offered to sell me one. “This,” I promised her, “will be the first comic I read when I get home.”

Image ganked from Hatke's website

And it was.

White Indian

Publishing | Dark Horse Comics and Vanguard Productions have reached an agreement on who will publish Frank Frazetta’s White Indian comics after each company had reached separate agreements with different members of the Frazetta family. Dark Horse has taken The Classic Comics Archives Vol. 1: White Indian off their schedule. Vanguard will release the Complete Frazetta White Indian Collection, while Dark Horse will collect all the post-Frazetta material that featured the character. [ICv2]

Passings | Mark Evanier reports that Jerry Grandenetti, who began his career as an art assistant to Will Eisner on The Spirit, passed away Feb. 17. Grandenetti’s work appeared in Creepy, Eerie, House of Mystery, Prez and Championship Sports, among many other titles. [News from Me]

Pricing | Douglas Wolk considers the higher price of comics: “Twenty years ago, the price of a new mainstream comic book was 75 cents, about to make the leap to a dollar, the same percentage they’re currently increasing. For a $20 bill, you could get a stack of a couple dozen titles, with some interesting indie experiments thrown in.

“Since then, the price of comics has zoomed far ahead of the cost of living: $20 in 1990 is the equivalent of a bit over $33 now, while new mainstream comic books have more than quadrupled in price. And what happens when comics abruptly increase their cover prices by a third while adding little or no extra content–and the $20 standard gets you all of five 22-page comic books that take a few minutes apiece to read–is that that value proposition gets a lot less enticing.” [Techland]

SPX

Conventions | Heidi MacDonald, Ben Towle, Brian Heater and Mike Dawson all report on last weekend’s Small Press Expo in Bethesda, Md. Geoff Grogan, meanwhile, discusses why he didn’t exhibit at the show this year. [SPX]

Digital comics | Michael Cavna talks to cartoonists whose work was previously rejected by Apple about the company’s newly relaxed content policies.

“While I love the fact that professional political satirists are exempt from the ban on offensive or mean-spirited commentary — and methinks I may have had something to do with that clause — these new rules are no substitute for good human judgment by Apple gatekeepers,” said Mark Fiore, whose “Newstoons” application was rejected last year but approved eight days after he won the Pulitzer Prize. “At any rate, I’m happy that Apple is more specific when it comes to issues of free speech.” [The Washington Post]

Publishers | Brett Warnock of Top Shelf Productions talks about conventions both large and small, Top Shelf’s publishing schedule and cover design. [Whatever]

Dick Grayson

Comics | Ben Morse shows his appreciation for the character Dick Grayson by looking back at some of his more recent key appearances. [The Cool Kids Table]

Comics | Ty Templeton lists the seven best gay characters in comics. [Ty Templeton's Art Land]

Creators | Marvel editor Nate Cosby talks about social media, the editor’s role in promoting comics and literary adaptations, among other topics. [ComicsAlliance]

Creators | Deb Aoki provides a transcript of the Moto Hagio spotlight panel from this past summer’s Comic-Con International, as well as her own interview with the shojo manga pioneer. [About.com]

Retailers | Jamie and Erin Sullivan have opened I.E. Comics and Gaming — “Imagine Everything” — in Hemet, Calif. [Valley News]

I know I’d feel like a V.I.P. were I sporting a picture of this fine gentleman. For the complete set of badges that I Want You cartoonist Lisa Hanawalt designed for this weekend’s Small Press Expo in Bethesda, Maryland — all of which feature animals wearing elaborate hats against some seriously neon-ass backgrounds — check out Hanwalt’s Flickr page.

(Via Ken Parille)

A lot of people are doing both since we are in walking distance from each other. SPX seems to focus more on print and close around 5 or 6pm. We are all Internet and have huge events running until at least 3 AM. It’s almost like the yin and yang of comics. Some fans have nicknamed this weekend, “Comicspalooza”

Guests at Intervention include Fred Gallagher, Molly Crabapple and Ben Bova (who was recently rather critical of comics … hmmm), and activities will include not only webcomics panels but a class on WordPress and ComicPress taught by the developer of ComicPress. SPX will feature Richard Thompson, Nate Powell and R. Sikoryak.

Still can’t choose? Intervention press agent Brian Lynch lays out the options this way for Wired’s Geek Dad blog:

“we’re the only con to ever host a two-night, Cthulhu-themed goth/industrial dance party, replete with cosplaying go-go dancers. Alternately, I hear that SPX has a very nice chocolate fountain …”

The Broadcast

Small Press Expo happens next weekend, and NBM is ready with a nice lineup of creators and book launches, including the debut of The Broadcast, Eric Hobbs and Noel Tuazon’s suspenseful graphic novel about a group of neighbors and strangers weathering the panic caused by Orson Welles’s War of the Worlds broadcast.

In addition, there will be appearances by Brooke Allen (A Home for Mr. Easter), Greg Houston (Elephant Man), and Ted Rall, “fresh back from Afghanistan, if he’s still alive,” according to the blog. Nice to know they care!

The Small Press Expo, or SPX, has announced programming for their show on Saturday, Sept. 11-12 at the Bethesda North Marriott Hotel & Conference Center in Bethesda, Md.

You can find the complete schedule after the jump, but I wanted to point out two panels that feature our own Chris Mautner:

Spotlight: James Sturm
1:30 | White Flint Amphitheater
James Sturm is the author of several comics and graphic novels including The Golem’s Mighty Swing, Unstable Molecules, James Sturm’s America, and Market Day. He is also the founder of the Center for Cartoon Studies, a unique two-year degree granting institution dedicated to cartooning. In this spotlight presentation, Sturm will discuss his work and answer questions from moderator Chris Mautner.

Critics’ Panel: How We Judge
3:00 | Brookside Conference Room
The accessibility of online publishing alongside traditional media has enabled a diversity of critical voices who are addressing the broad spectrum of comics being published today. A diverse group of critics will discuss the disparate bases for their own critical opinions, and the extent to which they regard different kinds of work in different ways. Join moderator Bill Kartalopoulos for a discussion with Johanna Draper Carlson (Comics Worth Reading), Gary Groth (The Comics Journal), Tim Hodler (Comics Comics), Chris Mautner (Robot 6), Joe McCulloch (Jog the Blog/Comics Comics), Ken Parille (Blog Flume), and Caroline Small (The Hooded Utilitarian).

*****

Comics and Worldbuilding
1:00 | Brookside Conference Room
This panel will consider the challenge of developing original settings for comics, individual artistic processes, and how the medium of comics is particularly well-suited to creating convincing invented worlds. Evan Dahm will lead a conversation with Liz Baillie, Aaron Diaz, Carla Speed McNeil and Spike Trotman.

Spotlight: James Sturm
1:30 | White Flint Amphitheater
James Sturm is the author of several comics and graphic novels including The Golem’s Mighty Swing, Unstable Molecules, James Sturm’s America, and Market Day. He is also the founder of the Center for Cartoon Studies, a unique two-year degree granting institution dedicated to cartooning. In this spotlight presentation, Sturm will discuss his work and answer questions from moderator Chris Mautner.

A Conversation About Daniel Clowes
2:00 | Brookside Conference Room
Daniel Clowes has long been one of America’s premier cartoonists, and his work has caught the public eye again with the 2010 publication of his graphic novel Wilson. Ken Parille and Isaac Cates, co-editors of the recent anthology Daniel Clowes: Conversations (University Press of Mississippi) will discuss Clowes’s art and career with moderator Bill Kartalopoulos.

Carousel at SPX
2:30 | White Flint Amphitheater
The long running slide show series, Carousel, returns with some of today’s finest comics artists, graphic novelists, and pencil pushers reading and presenting their work. Hosted by R. Sikoryak, this special SPX edition of Carousel will feature Kate Beaton, Dean Haspiel, Lizz Hickey, and more!

Critics’ Panel: How We Judge
3:00 | Brookside Conference Room
The accessibility of online publishing alongside traditional media has enabled a diversity of critical voices who are addressing the broad spectrum of comics being published today. A diverse group of critics will discuss the disparate bases for their own critical opinions, and the extent to which they regard different kinds of work in different ways. Join moderator Bill Kartalopoulos for a discussion with Johanna Draper Carlson (Comics Worth Reading), Gary Groth (The Comics Journal), Tim Hodler (Comics Comics), Chris Mautner (Robot 6), Joe McCulloch (Jog the Blog/Comics Comics), Ken Parille (Blog Flume), and Caroline Small (The Hooded Utilitarian).

Center for Cartoon Studies Self-Publishing Workshop
3:30 | White Flint Amphitheater
Robyn Chapman, Jon Chad and Alec Longstreth join us from The Center for Cartoon Studies, a two-year college for budding cartoonists in White River Junction, Vermont. Alec will offer a short presentation chock full of self-publishing tips. Afterwards, each participant will draw, fold and bind a comic using the Hidden Book format. This simple process allows you to create an 8-page comic with a single piece of paper. No matter what your experience level, you’ll leave this workshop with your own handmade minicomic!

Remembering Harvey Pekar
4:00 | Brookside Conference Room
When comics writer Harvey Pekar died in July 2010, he left behind an influential legacy of independent autobiographical comics that highlighted the forgotten moments and ignored people of everyday life. In this special panel event, a group of Pekar’s former collaborators will discuss their experiences of working with the creator of American Splendor. Heidi MacDonald will moderate this conversation with Vanessa Davis, Dean Haspiel, Jeff Newelt, Rick Parker, Ed Piskor, and Sean Pryor.

Spotlight: Jamie Hernandez
4:30 | White Flint Amphitheater
The 1982 publication of Jaime, Gilbert and Mario Hernandez’s Love and Rockets #1 by Fantagraphics virtually created the model for the post-underground alternative comic book series that characterized art-comics for nearly two decades. In the intervening years, Jaime Hernandez has emerged as one of the most distinctive visual stylists and compelling storytellers in modern comics, as he crafts the still-continuing saga of Hopey, Maggie, and his other post-punk Locas. Publisher and editor Gary Groth will ask Jaime about his art and life in this special spotlight session.

Comics for Younger Readers
5:00 | Brookside Conference Room
Book-length comics for younger readers are increasingly following graphic novels for adults into the bookstore and library shelves. Johanna Draper Carlson will discuss the pleasures and challenges of creating comics for younger readers with the collaborative duo Metaphrog, Aaron Renier, Raina Telgemeier, and Drew Weing.

Return of the Monster: The Fort Thunder Legacy
5:30 | White Flint Amphitheater
From 1995 to 2001, the Fort Thunder artists’ and performance space in Providence, Rhode Island was a fertile creative center. Work produced by artists living at the Fort – both at the time and in the years since it was shut down – has been enormously influential in the worlds of fine art, music, and comics. A new issue of the de facto Fort Thunder anthology Monster debuts at this year’s SPX. To mark the occasion, Bill Kartalopoulos will moderate a discussion with artists and former Fort Thunder residents Brian Ralph and Paul Lyons and publisher/editors Tom Devlin and Dan Nadel.

SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 12 PROGRAMMING SCHEDULE

Telling Stories
12:30 | White Flint Amphitheater
How do creators shape inspiration and life experience into memorable stories and characters? Join moderator Heidi MacDonald for a lively discussion about vision and process with a panel of cartoonists including Meredith Gran, Roger Langridge and Jon Lewis.

Teaching Comics
1:00 | Brookside Conference Room
Comics have increasingly gained a berth as the subject of courses within the academy, and classes about comics production are increasingly a part of studio art departments. What do students need to know about comics? To what extent do studio art students need to know about comics history and theory, and to what extent do humanities students need to know about the practice of comics production? Professors Marc Singer and Isaac Cates join Center for Cartoon Studies founder James Sturm for a conversation moderated by Bill Kartalopoulos.

Kate Beaton and Julia Wertz in Conversation
1:30 | White Flint Amphitheater
Two of the most popular and entertaining cartoonists of their generation, Kate Beaton and Julia Wertz have both attracted dedicated audiences online with their uniquely humorous comics. This special conversation moderated by Dustin Harbin will investigate the similarities and differences between the creators of Hark, A Vagrant! and The Fart Party.

Brave New Comic Strips
2:00 | Brookside Conference Room
The newspaper industry, long the home of American comics’ first popular dedicated format, faces an existential crisis presented by the emergence and proliferation of digital media. Against all odds, artists interested in the daily strip format continue to produce work with an eye for print. Mike Rhode will discuss the present and the future of the newspaper comic strip with Marguerite Dabaie, Keith Knight, and Richard Thompson.

Developing Iconographies
2:30 | White Flint Amphitheater
Distinct from drawing as an art discipline with its own self-ratifying purpose, artists in comics create pictures as part of a visual language. Moderator Ken Parille will investigate the ways in which comics artists develop visual iconographies in individual works and throughout bodies of work. Cartoonists Eamon Espey, Kevin Huizenga, and Tom Kaczynski will participate in this discussion, illustrated with slides of the artists’ work.

Autobiography in Pieces
3:00 | Brookside Conference Room
How do you tell the story of a life that’s still in progress? Is “story” even the right way to think about it? How do you winnow down the manifold details and data of your life? Cartoonists Sarah Becan, Gabrielle Bell, Vanessa Davis, and Jesse Reklaw will discuss alternatives to the memoir with moderator Isaac Cates.

R. Sikoryak: Adaptation and Parody
3:30 | White Flint Amphitheater
Comics chameleon R. Sikoryak inventively adapts canonical Western literature using the visual styles and characters of historical American comic books and comic strips. These works have been collected in his 2009 book Masterpiece Comics (Drawn and Quarterly). Sikoryak will reveal his intensive working process and will discuss the history of parody and adaptation in comics in a discussion with Bill Kartalopoulos, curator of the recent exhibit “R. Sikoryak: How Classics and Cartoons Collide.”

Commercial Eruptions
4:00 | Brookside Conference Room
Jim Rugg (Street Angel, Afrodisiac) and Frank Santoro (Storeyville, Cold Heat) have produced auteurial work that shows the influence of commercial comics, and have brought an independent sensibility to work for publishers like Marvel Comics. In a conversation moderated by Tim Hodler, the two cartoonists will reflect on what they have learned from the contents and processes of historical commercial comics and how they reinterpret their influences when working for corporate publishers.

Comics and Printmaking
4:30 | White Flint Amphitheater
Comics have historically been a medium of work made for reproduction, but the means of reproduction have often constrained by technical and commercial limitations. Even as new digital technologies have broadened technical possibilities, a number of cartoonists are exploring the possibilities of reproducing work using traditional printing techniques including silkscreening and etching. Noel Freibart, Lizz Hickey, Brian Ralph and Jon Vermilyea will discuss the relationship between comics and printmaking with moderator Bill Kartalopoulos.

Julia Gfrörer's Flesh and Bone

Nominations for the Ignatz Awards, which go to outstanding independent comics, were released today at the Small Press Expo site; the awards will be presented at SPX on Sept. 11. Here’s the list:

Outstanding Artist
Eddie Campbell, Alec: The Years Have Pants (A Life-Sized Omnibus) (Top Shelf Productions)
Al Columbia, Pim & Francie: The Golden Bear Days (Fantagraphics Books)
Mike Dawson, Troop 142 (self-published)
John Pham, Sublife #2 (Fantagraphics Books)
Sully, The Hipless Boy (Conundrum Press)

Outstanding Anthology or Collection
The Hipless Boy, Sully (Conundrum Press)
Lemon Styles, David King (Sparkplug Comic Books)
Masterpiece Comics, R. Sikoryak (Drawn & Quarterly)
Red Snow, Susumu Katsumata (Drawn & Quarterly)
Ten Thousand Things to Do, Jesse Reklaw (self-published)

Outstanding Graphic Novel
The Complete Jack Survives, Jerry Moriarty (Buentaventura Press)
Market Day, James Sturm (Drawn & Quarterly)
Pim & Francie: The Golden Bear Days, Al Columbia (Fantagraphics Books)
Summit of the Gods Vol. 1, Yumemakura Baku and Jiro Taniguchi (Fanfare/Ponent Mon)
Years of the Elephant, Willy Linthout (Fanfare/Ponent Mon)

Outstanding Story
“John Wesley Harding”, The Red Monkey Double Happiness Book, Joe Daly (Fantagraphics Books)
Market Day, James Sturm (Drawn & Quarterly)
Monsters, Ken Dahl (Secret Acres)
“Turd Place”, The Hipless Boy, Sully (Conundrum Press)
“Untitled”, Mome Vol. 16, Laura Park (Fantagraphics Books)

Promising New Talent
Rina Ayuyang, Whirlwind Wonderland (Sparkplug Comic Books & Tugboat Press)
Rami Efal, Never Forget, Never Forgive (Studio Namu)
Blaise Larmee, Young Lions (self-published)
Sully, The Hipless Boy (Conundrum Press)
Matt Wiegle, “The Orphan Baiter”, Papercutter #13 (Tugboat Press)

Outstanding Series
Ganges, Kevin Huizenga (Fantagraphics Books)
King-Cat Comics & Stories, John Porcellino (self-published)
Sublife, John Pham (Fantagraphics Books)
Summit of the Gods, Yumemakura Baku and Jiro Taniguchi (Fanfare/Ponent Mon)
Troop 142, Mike Dawson (self-published)

Outstanding Comic
Blammo #6, Noah Van Sciver (Kilgore Books)
Eschew #2, Robert Sergel (Sparkplug Comic Books)
Flesh and Bone, Julia Gfrörer (Sparkplug Comic Books)
I Want You, Lisa Hanawalt (Buenaventura Press)
Sublife #2, John Pham (Fantagraphics Books)

Outstanding Mini-Comic
Don’t Drink from the Sea, Lilli Carre
Rambo 3.5, Jim Rugg
Stories by… Vol. 1, Martin Cendreda
Troop 142, Mike Dawson
Water Column #3, Josh Frankel

Outstanding Online Comic
Callahan Online, John Callahan
I Think You’re Sauceome, Sarah Becan
The Lesttrygonians, Stephen Gilpin
Reliable Comics, David King
Troop 142, Mike Dawson

The judges for this year’s awards are Anders Nilsen, David Kelly, Rob G, Joshua Cotter and Trevor Alixopulos, and they will be voting on the final awards at SPX.

Don't mess with Dharbin

“I can’t BELIEVE MoCCA’s table prices. They are drinking the same hubris Kool-Aid as SPX. Why are the charity shows always the cheekiest? I saw it and I was like *slaps head*. Although to be fair, I’ve never exhibited there, just been a crowded hot attendee. (I read some interviews with them after the super hot year, they were all like ‘hey listen, it’s summer, it gets hot.’) Not to mention how expensive NYC is in general! Just makes it easier to skip. Also today I got my acceptance letter (???) for APE, after applying 3 months ago. Due date for payment: 1 week from now. I had always heard about how well-run HeroesCon is from guests, but now I see why. Indie shows are organized like block parties. Except the kind of block parties where they charge you like $50 to come in, then charge you for beer too. ‘Dude it’s for charity!’ SPX is pretty fun, but TCAF is the best one easily–plus Toronto = my favorite city! Wait, please exclude TCAF from that mini-rant. TCAF is a dream, a dreammmm. Other shows take note! Okay back to lettering, sorry.”

—Cartoonist, Casanova letterer, and “nicest guy in comics” candidate Dustin Harbin has an uncharacteristically grumpy moment on Twitter over the prices that the MoCCA Art Festival is charging exhibitors, and the administration of indie/alt-comics shows generally (except TCAF, of course). It’s hard out there for a minicomics creator.

Art by Mat Brinkman

They’re gettin’ the band back together, man! Tom Spurgeon reports that members of Providence, Rhode Island’s late, great comics/music/art/noise/wtf collective Fort Thunder are planning a one-off reunion issue of their anthology title Monster, to debut at the San Diego Comic-Con UPDATE: the Small Press Expo via exhibitor and Fort alumnus Brian Ralph. Though the Fort produced everything from installations to art-rock to bicycles, we comics folks know them best through the output of a line-up of cartoonists that included Ralph, Brian Chippendale, Mat Brinkman, Leif Goldberg, Jim Drain, and Paul Lyons. It’s tough to imagine the alternative-comics world without them anymore — their aesthetic heavily influenced or outright inspired entire publishing lines, including Highwater, PictureBox, Buenaventura, Bodega, and post-Tom Devlin Drawn & Quarterly — so for fans of comics’ outer limits, this is at least as exciting as the Faith No More reunion tour currently underway. Which is pretty damn exciting.

Then it came to me: David Bowie. He’s my favorite musician, and it’s fair to say his outlook and approach to art literally changed my life. Plus, with all those alter egos and ch-ch-ch-changes, he’s like a superhero anyway, right? And thus, at MoCCA 2007, the David Bowie Sketchbook was born.

I’ve since collected sketches of Ziggy Stardust, the Thin White Duke, Aladdin Sane, the Goblin King, Major Tom, or whatever else you care to call the former David Jones from 80 artists and illustrators. Below are the latest batches, from this year’s Small Press Expo in September and Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival last weekend. How must the others see the faker?

Benjamin Marra: When I approached Ben about being in the Bowie book, he insisted on taking it from me and working on it for some time. He killed it. This is a “wow” piece for lots of folks who flip through.

John Porcellino: I had no idea what the god of minicomics and minimalism would produce for this thing. He went with the harlequin from “Ashes to Ashes,” that look’s first and only appearance in the book so far. I love it — somehow it’s perfect for Porcellino.

Matt Furie: NSFW! Matt is the author of Boy’s Club, the funniest comic I’ve ever read, so this is fitting. The hermaphroditism is a nice touch for pop’s premier gender-bender.

Jon Vermilyea: Jon actually drew his piece on the loose sheet of paper I was using to stick behind artists’ pages as they drew so that ink wouldn’t bleed onto the subsequent page. So what, it’s still monstrously delightful like most of his work. Fun fact: I have a phobia of skin growths and yet this doesn’t bother me at all. Go figure.

Ben Katchor: Like Paul Karasik before him, Ben Katchor made it clear he wasn’t thrilled about drawing David Bowie. “I don’t think I want to draw David Bowie,” he said, as if he were narrating the thought as it occurred to him. “I don’t want to glorify him. What should I draw instead?” I told him anything he wanted would be fine, and lo and behold, he was kind enough to work the theme in anyway. Watching Katchor arrange space on a page is an all-time thrill.

James McShane: At SPX, James McShane became the first and thus far only person to turn me down for the Bowie sketchbook because he’d already decided what he would draw in it prior to my asking him but didn’t have the pencils he needed to do it with him. He wanted to draw Bowie from the cover of Earthling, so he needed the blue and red for the Alexander McQueen Union Jack coat. I caught up with him at BKCGF, he had the pencils with him, and everyone lived happily ever after. Earthling was my first Bowie record and is still one of my favorites, so I’m glad to see that era make its first appearance in the book.

Shawn Cheng: I’ve known Shawn since college, we’ve worked together, I’ve sold comics at his table, and yet all my attempts to get him into the Bowie sketchbook were in vain. UNTIL NOW. I catch a ’60s-illustration vibe off this one.

Mat Brinkman: Mat Brinkman changed the way I looked at comics with his book Teratoid Heights, no exaggeration. His presence at BKCGF was a big reason I drove there through the freezing rain in the first place. I imagine the way I gushed all over him and then shoved a David Bowie theme sketchbook in his face was a little disconcerting, but hopefully one of the 79 other artists I’ve done this to was able to contextualize it for him. Anyway he drew Bowie as a li’l monster, which is exactly what I wanted from Mat Brinkman.

Tunde Adebimpe: Tunde Adepbimpe is a member of TV on the Radio, which makes him, to the best of my knowledge, the only contributor to my Bowie sketchbook who has actually collaborated with Bowie. (Unless I missed something involving Michel Gondry.) So when I heard he’d be at BKCGF he became a must-get–but the care with which I saw him draw in another sketchbook, plus the fact that he might well have been the nicest guy at the whole show, woulda put him on the list regardless. Love love love the pink makeup–he brought a whole arsenal of drawing implements with him, and it shows.

Finally, this one’s cheating a bit as it’s not from my sketchbook, but I want to show it off anyway:

Isaac Moylan: This is an unfinished page (note the white trousers) from a biographical comic about Bowie’s less-than-healthy year-long sojourn in Los Angeles between the release of Young Americans and Station to Station in the mid-’70s; I wrote it and Isaac’s drawing it. As you might have guessed, I’m excited about it.

So there you have it, my Bowie haul for this fall. For past installments of my Bowie sketchbook, click here, here, here, here, here, and here, or see the whole shebang as a Flickr set. Thank you so much to all the artists who’ve contributed — you were my heroes, just for one day.

In front of a packed house at September’s Small Press Expo in Bethesda, Maryland, a group of critics from around the comics Internet and beyond talked shop at the annual Critics Roundtable panel. Moderated by Bill Kartalopolous, the panel featured Comics Journal founder Gary Groth, New York Times critic Douglas Wolk, bloggers Joe “Jog” McCulloch, Tucker Stone, and Rob Clough, and a pair of Robot 6ers, Chris Mautner and myself. I’m happy to present a transcript of the panel below.

Sure, I’m a little biased, but I think it’s a fascinating discussion. The topics include the differences between print and online criticism, the notion of “the critical discourse,” negative critiques and much more. For some panelists, things have already changed since the panel took place: Groth, who gets quizzed on why he isn’t a bigger contributor to the comics Internet, is getting ready to jump in with both feet with the relaunched Comics Journal, of which Clough is going to be a part; while my membership in Robot 6 wasn’t even a glimmer in JK Parkin’s eye yet. And with a good deal of familiarity between the critics — I believe seven out of eight have written for the Journal and half write for The Savage Critic(s) — the back-and-forth was fluid.

If you’d like to listen along, you can download this mp3 recording of the panel. It’s worth it just to hear the chaos surrounding Tucker’s bathroom break.

Click the jump to read the transcript. Now, without further ado…

Bill Kartalopolous: Look at this crowd! And I mean the panelists. [Laughter] Ba-dum-bum-bum. Okay. Hi, my name is Bill Kartalopolous. I’m the programming coordinator here at SPX. I also teach classes about comics and illustration at Parsons, and write about comics for Publishers Review and Print magazine. Publishers Weekly is actually what it’s called, isn’t it? It could be called Publishers Review. I just look at the number on the check. Then I cry. [Laughter]

Rob Clough: Is it a handwritten check?

Bill: Yeah, right. I don’t think the signature’s even handwritten. Okay, so, this is our annual Critics Roundtable. I’m very, very excited that there’s so many notable critics here at the show this weekend that I just had to invite everyone on to the panel. I’m really briefly going to introduce everyone and mention one or two of the publications they write for. Some of them write for many, many publications, but it would take probably the remainder of the panel to communicate all of our CVs collectively. But going in, I think, alphabetical order, as I have them here: Rob Clough [prounounced "claw"]…

Rob: “Clow.” [rhymes with cow or Mao]

Bill: “Clow.” Sorry, I always do that.

Rob: And I always correct it.

Bill: Frequent comics reviewer for the seems-to-be indefinitely on hiatus Sequart website —

Rob: Coming back soon!

Bill: Coming back soon to a computer monitor near you. But now reviewing on your own High-Low blog, and writing many many reviews, as many as three a week it seems, very very frequent reviewer. We have Sean Collins, Sean T. Collins — I always do that too… [Laughter] … who maintains his own blog called Attentiondeficitdisorderly All Too Flat… ?

Sean T. Collins: Close enough.

Bill: What did I get wrong?

Sean: The “All” isn’t in there. The “All” is silent. [Laughter]

Bill: Okay, Attentiondeficitdisorderly Too Flat. Right. But you also write for The Savage Critic group blog, and you’ve written for a number of publications, from Wizard to Maxim to many others I’m flaking on right now. A very frequent writer for all of those venues and more. Gary Groth all the way at the end, a person probably without whom many of us would not be in this room. The co-founder of The Comics Journal, co-founder and co-publisher of Fantagraphics Books, longstanding editorial director of The Comics Journal, the writer of many pieces of savage criticism that we’ve all admired over the years, setting a real standard for everyone else.

Gary Groth: Not all. [Laughter]

Bill: Not all. But someone who we’re always happy to have on this panel. We have Chris Mautner [pronounced "Mawtner"]…

Chris Mautner: “Mowtner.” [rhymes with cow-tner or Mao-tner]

Bill: “Mowtner.” It’s gonna be one of those panels. [Laughter] He’s frequently reviewed comics for the Patriot News in Harrisburg?

Chris: In Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. I had a column there.

Bill: And also a frequent writer for the Robot 6 blog at Comic Book Resources. And most of what you do for that is reviewing.

Chris: Reviewing, and we have some column features, regular features, and kinda daily blogging. And I also do reviews for The Comics Journal.

Bill: And immediately to your right, Joe McCulloch?

Joe McCulloch: Yes. Perfect.

Bill: Phew! AKA Jog?

Joe: Yes.

Bill: Author of the blog Jog Likes Comics?

Joe: Yes.

Bill: Okay. Also writing for Comics Comics magazine, The Savage Critic, Bookforum, among many other venues. Also recently started writing a comics column, a kind of comics and movies column, for the ComiXology website called… “The Watchman.”

Joe: [Laughs] I inherited that, yes.

Bill: I should hope so! [Laughter] Immediately to my left, Tucker Stone maintains the Factual Opinion blog, featuring many comics reviews by yourself and also by your significant other. I think those are the only two contributors, or do you have any other…

Tucker: No, we have a couple other people, but for comics it’s just my wife and I.

Bill: And you’ve also recently started doing a series of video reviews for the ComiXology website.

Tucker: I guess you could call it that.

Bill: In which you sort of performatively communicate opinions about comics and the comics industry and culture…

Tucker: Okay. [Laughter]

Bill: Okay, something like that?

Tucker: Yeah, that’s accurate.

Bill: And right over there, Douglas Wolk, a man we all know and love who writes for many many publications, including Publishers Weekly, or if you prefer, Publishers Review. [Laughter] Very frequently recently writing for The New York Times, very long pieces of comics criticism. Also the author of the book <i>Reading Comics</i>, and you’ve been in 8,000 other magazines, newspapers, websites, also The Savage Critic, et cetera.

So I think we’ve covered everyone, basically. And that’s about time… [Laughter] There are a lot of issues we could start with, and there are two that leap to mind the most. I’m not actually sure which one’s better, but they’re both related. One of the things I’m interested in, because so many of the people here on this panel write most frequently on the Internet and often for their own fora, their own blogs, or at least websites that are written collectively by a small group of people. So I’m interested in the question of how the Internet has affected comics criticism in good ways and in bad ways. That’s a very broad and general question. Since many of you are writing for the Internet, maybe the easiest place to start — anyone can jump in on this — is what you perceive as being one of the advantages of this new, pretty much dominant mass medium in our lives that’s leeching the life out of everything else. Joe, do you have any thoughts on this?

Joe: Yeah, well, one of the plus sides of the Internet, definitely, is that you can respond quickly to something — not necessarily a new book that’s come out, but something that you’re interested in and studying, so to speak. I tend to study things after I read them. So you can get things out there quickly, and then they’re out there. You could find them on search engines. Whether they could be found, or whether they’re permament, is another question, but the potential is there to access them easier than you can something that’s, say, in a bookstore, or in a magazine longbox. I think that’s a good plus. And of course this is a minus too, but you can write how you want, you can address works the way you feel like you want to, you can just change topics if you want to, you don’t have to feel constrained to write about only new things, about only a certain genre, about only a certain format.

Douglas: It enables conversations, too, which is what’s most rewarding for me — not just seeing the article but seeing the responses to it and the comments and the things that people write in response to it and other responses to that. But the conversation happens much more quickly and much more broadly than it was able to in the past, and I love that.

Sean: I guess this is a little bit obvious, but there’s no gatekeeper, there’s no editor, there’s no publisher to answer to. So, speaking for myself, and I think Joe, and probably Tucker, the Internet is where I first ever wrote about comics — I think probably, maybe on the Savage Dragon message board, and then on the Comics Journal message board, and then on my blog. Then a few years ago, Dirk Deppey, when he was managing editor of The Comics Journal, brought a bunch of people who were primarily bloggers aboard. And that still happens. I never would have dreamed of submitting anything to The Comics Journal. It was just way beyond my ken, I thought. And then all of a sudden I’m writing for it, and that never would have happened if I hadn’t started a blog on my friend’s humor website and started writing about comics.

Chris: I do think there’s some kind of promotional aspect to the Internet and writing on the Internet that allows you — and it’s part of that direct conversation — that you can… I think if I’d just been writing for the newspaper, I don’t think I would have met these people or have access. Unless I’d put it up on a blog, I wouldn’t be doing the work I’m doing at Robot 6. So there is that self-gratifying notion of being able to, I don’t want to say call attention to yourself, but at least the reward of people paying attention, which can lead to other things. It can lead to greater writing rewards down the line.

Rob: The thing about it for me is that there’s potential there… When you’re writing for a publication there’s space constraints, there’s editorial constraints, but there’s a real possibility to write long, thoughtful, critical pieces, and really engage something. And unfortunately, on the Internet, that doesn’t always happen. Too many online critical spaces are just shorter reviews or short excuses for snark as opposed to really trying to engage the work, both for its positive and negative qualities. To me, that’s the greatest possibility there for the Internet, for those who are really willing to engage it, is that a lot can be done that can’t sincerely be done in a publication.

Bill: I talked to some of the panelists ahead of time to see what kind of topics they were interested in or questions they might be interested in, and Sean directly wanted to know, Gary, why you don’t have a blog or haven’t participated in online fora or some kind of writing of that nature, beyond the fact that you’re obviously a very busy publisher.

Gary: Yeah. Well, I don’t know. People bug me about not having a blog all the time. First of all, I’m generationally challenged in terms of having a blog. I mean, I’m just not suited to writing every two days. I’m from the tradition where you sit down and you spend several weeks honing some piece. So I haven’t been able to get into the rhythm of blogging. Plus, in terms of criticism, the criticism I write has been somewhat dilettantish because of my position as the publisher of The Comics Journal, and that’s only gotten more acute over the years. So I don’t feel like I can really whale on a lot of books, because it would look immediately like this is obviously a conflict of interest. So I feel somewhat compromised in terms of writing about specific books. Then I also don’t necessarily want to write only about the books that I love, because there a lot of books that I read that I don’t think much of that I’d love to write about, but I just feel like I’m in a difficult position to do that. I don’t know if that sort of incoherent rambling answered your question.

Rob: You felt your position has changed? I mean, you’ve been the publisher for a long time.

Gary: I think it has, because the Journal has shrunk as a proportion of Fantagraphics over the years. As we publish more and more books, more graphic novels — we publish something like sixty graphic novels a year. So in 1986 or 1988 we publish eight books a year, and The Comics Journal was a much more prominent part of our company, and I was much more involved in it, and now I’m much more involved in publishing the books. So I think it has changed somewhat.

Bill: And that thing you pointed out as well, I think, is sort of the other side of the coin from the networking aspect of blogging and writing online, which is that often, in order to be a presence, as Gary suggested, it’s helpful to be generating content on something resembling a regular schedule, which maybe works against the kind of writing you were talking about — spending two weeks trying to write your definitive statement on X, Y, or Z. Is that something any of you have felt? That there’s some sort of pressure to publish regularly in order to keep an audience? Or are there strategies to maintain your momentum without impinging upon the quality of your writing?

Joe: Well, I think there is an expectation that websites should be updating frequently, like every day. I personally, as I’ve gone along — and I think it’s more difficult now, because the comics Internet has gotten a lot bigger in the last five years since I started writing on the Internet. It’s easier to get lost, I think, now, writing about comics on the Internet — to disappear into the crowd. So I think there might actually be more interest in writing more frequently. I’ve personally found myself slowing down, actually. I do write pretty quick, but I’m always writing something. I just don’t stop, ’cause I don’t want to. But some pieces, they overlap. I can spend two weeks working on something, and y’know, when it’s posted it just appears, and it might as well have been made yesterday, ’cause I don’t talk about how I write it. But yeah, those are factors at work.

Douglas: If you don’t care about hit counts, though, it doesn’t really matter. Once you publish something on the Internet, as long as you’re paying for the website, it’s there for good. You don’t have to worry about distribution, you don’t have to worry about it going out of print. If you have something to say and you publish it when you’re ready, if you don’t care about either hit counts or being supported by ads, it doesn’t matter.

Sean: In my case, my blog is hosted on a site that was designed by a friend and some of his college buddies from Cornell to practice coding. So the hit count, y’know, the thing that monitors traffic is so rudimentary that it’s useless. So I literally couldn’t find out what my traffic was even if I wanted to. And that, over the years — I really have never thought about having an audience. I’ve been blogging regularly, particularly over the last two years or so. I’ve been reviewing three comics a week, pretty much non-stop, and that’s more for my own fun and benefit. I feel much worse about how rarely I contribute to Savage Critic(s), which I think…

Tucker: Yeah.

Sean: …Tucker is part of and Joe and Douglas, because that’s somebody else’s site, and I know that they would like to get some traffic, and I just, I don’t have it in me, for some reason. That I feel bad about, but on my own site, it doesn’t really register.

Tucker: I don’t know how anybody else comes at it, but I — I mean, I haven’t been at this but for maybe a couple years, and I always kinda treated what I do at my blog, at the Factual, as just like, it’s my own school. I don’t really know anything, I didn’t take any classes in writing or anything — it started as a hobby. And then other people… basically, Dirk Deppey linked to it, and then Tom Spurgeon linked to it, and then all of a sudden there was an audience, and it wasn’t something that I really expected. I do try to follow a deadline, but that’s basically because in my head I think, “Well, that’s what writers do. They have deadlines to turn in pieces,” or “They have deadlines to turn in columns.” Then when ComiXology actually gave me money to write something, then I did have a real deadline. In my head, I’m like, “Well, if you have a deadline, then that’s gonna… ” It makes me write, it makes me do it. Like Joe, I just write about stuff all the time anyway, now that I do it and it’s a hobby and it’s fun. But it’s kind of also a way to go, like, “Well, if you’re gonna be a writer, you have to get stuff done by… ” When I do my weekly comic thing, I do that every Sunday. That’s what I do every Sunday night — it has to go up. And there’s an expectation there. But also, I just had an education this week: The most popular thing on my website, by far, is a review that my wife wrote, which is not really much of a review, it’s just a personal reaction to Achewood, and that’s because Chris Onstad linked to it. And if Chris Onstad links to something, then obviously that immediately becomes more popular than any review you write about any superhero comic or anything else, because a lot more people read Chris Onstad than read Tucker’s jokey reviews of comic books. That’s just the way it goes. So hit counts — I don’t even have ads, so I don’t really care. It’s like, “Whatever, that’s not important.”

Rob: For me, I only have a very vague idea of what audience I may have. But I read something, I think about it, and then I just feel a compulsion. I must write about it. And until I have written about it, the feeling doesn’t go away. It’s a very intense thing. And when people start sending you a lot of comics, just out of the blue [laughter from the panel], it’s like, “Oh my God.” All I think about is the backlog, thinking “Now it’s time to read this.” And then once I’ve done it, it starts the process, it starts the chain reaction until I’ve finished the review. And some books are harder to approach than others. I’ve been working on a review of the second Ivan Brunetti anthology thing for the last three months, and it’s just not quite ready yet.

Gary: Can I ask you guys a related question to what Bill asked? I know most of you write for both print and the Internet. Maybe all of you do, but I know most of you do. Do you write differently when you write for print than when you write for the Internet?

Chris: Absolutely, yeah. Doug and I were just talking about this. I think you have to consider your audience and who you’re writing to. When I was doing my column for the newspaper, it didn’t matter if I was writing about Kazuo Umezu or Robert Crumb, I had to assume that most of the people who were gonna pick up that column were gonna have no idea who those people were, and I was gonna have to introduce them to this person. So half the column was easily going to be “Robert Crumb was this person who started in the ’60s and did Zap Comix and now he has a new book out and it’s good, the end.” Whereas if I’m writing on Robot 6 or on my own blog or what have you, I don’t really have to worry about that. I can assume that most people are all speaking the same language. I might, depending on the obscurity of the artist or the writer, I might do a little hand-holding sometimes for something like the “Collect This Now!” column that I do, where I kind of forge… I don’t probably go into as much detail as I really should, usually ’cause I’m doing this late and night and I’m tired. But I do definitely consider who I’m writing to. The way I write for the Journal, for example, I bring probably a different attitude and way of writing than I do for some of the other reviews I do.

Joe: Yeah, and on an even more basic level, the Internet tends to be kind of a free-for-all, actually. So when I’m reacting to a book on the Internet, some of these things run upwards of four thousand, eight thousand words. In print, you just don’t have that much space, and to make the thing read correctly, to get your ideas across properly, I’ve found that because I started on the Internet, I have to temper myself in order to get things within a certain hit count. Plus, I’m interacting with an editor who’s looking at what I’m doing and sometimes will tell me, “Yeah, no one’s gonna understand this.” So I react to that, I interact with my editor, and that inevitably changes things, ’cause [when] I’m writing for my own site, I’m my only editor.

Sean: For me, it can be a print-web dichotomy, but it’s also just the audience. The writing I do for the Journal, when I was reviewing for the Journal, obviously was a lot closer to my personal blog than if I’m writing online for Marvel.com or whatever.

Gary: I should hope so. [Laughter]

Sean: I’m not really doing criticism for them, but yeah, it’s different. I also think that —

Gary: But the media themselves don’t necessarily change how you…

Sean: Not really. Well, I mean, it really depends on the venue and their target audience. Douglas may be the only one of us who has the clout, in print, to write a bad review. In my experience, when I’m writing for a general-interest publication, they ask you, “What are some good comics coming out that we can cover?” So I’ll pitch them stuff that I actually like, or think I’ll like if I don’t have a copy yet. So 99 times out of a 100 that I’ve written for Maxim, it’s been about something that I’m excited about. I’ve barely ever given a bad review in print, except in the Journal, for that reason. Because they’re not really… you know, usually the editors at general-interest publications who are running comics reviews are comics fans who are sort of boosters of the medium, to a certain extent, and they don’t really want to waste real estate telling the audience why they shouldn’t buy something.

Gary: So you’re actually saying you need clout to get a negative review published?

Sean: I guess? I mean, I don’t… [Laughs] [Douglas] is writing for magazines and publications that are a different kettle of fish than the ones I’m writing for.

Joe: It kind of depends on the forum. The general interest newspapers and magazines, they tend to take more of an advocacy position. I have written negatively for Bookforum — they’re a literary newspaper, though, so I think they’re more inclined to treat comics like the rest of the books they’d review.

Douglas: Right. If you’re writing for a large general-interest non-literary sort of magazine, if you’re not writing about something that you’re giving a positive review to, they’re going to ask, and very reasonably, “Then why should our readers care?” I think, addressing your point about print versus online, one thing that is useful to keep in mind when I’m writing online is that print is maybe more suited to rendering some sort of judgment; writing online is maybe more suited toward opening a conversation, giving people something to respond to where I actually care about their responses, and they may actually care about each other’s responses. I don’t always manage that, though.

Gary: Does that change the way you approach the review itself?

Douglas: Um, it can certainly change the way I approach writing it. There’s also the matter of the audience. If I’m writing for The Savage Critic, I’m writing for the people I saw in the comic store on Wednesday, and now it’s Friday, and we’re talking about what we saw on Wednesday.

Bill: That’s interesting too. It does point out the value of venues like either The Comics Journal or Bookforum, in that if print is more suited towards rendering definitive judgments, and nine times out of ten print is also a positive advocacy slot, you’re not going to frequently find in print the kinds of really thoughtful criticism that can actually maybe change the way that you think about things, necessarily. Right? I mean, [Douglas has] a lot of latitude at the Times, for example, and I think Joe and Dan [Nadel] and everyone else who’s written for Bookforum has a certain amount of latitude there, and the Journal is all about critical latitude, I think. It’s interesting, because someone wrote — and I wish I could remember the writer’s name… Well, Ng Suat Tong wrote a separate post on a similar subject, so I’ll mention this one just because I remember the name, about Bottomless Belly Button, saying that he had read this book — and he’s someone who’s written criticism for the Journal and other places. But he was responding more as a reader, saying that he had read this book and he wasn’t entirely sure what he thought about it having read it. He went out looking for criticism that would help him refine his thoughts about it, expose him to other points of view, and found very little, even though there were many many reviews and things to link to. If that is a problem to some extent — well, does anyone agree that that’s a problem, that there isn’t enough of this kind of thoughtful criticism out there for a reader who might be looking for this kind of material as a way to navigate the terrain? Or was it just a book that was underreviewed, or he wasn’t finding it?

Chris: No, that was definitely not a book that was underrreviewed. [Laughter] I think that what you’re getting is…

Bill: Well, maybe under-criticized, in a non-pejorative sense.

Chris: Yeah, well no, I don’t even know if it was that so much as I think you’re getting a lot of people who are coming at it with just that initial review. They’re getting the book for the first time, and there’s not a lot of going back to the book and reexamining it, or considering it on a deeper level. There’s a lot of just that initial “Is this book good or not?” More review-ish.

Gary: But by the time he did that survey, the book had been out for about nine months. It wasn’t like he did it three weeks after the book came out. It was pretty scary survey, I thought.

Bill: You saw this thing that I’m talking about?

Gary: Yeah.

Sean: But even online, you don’t get a lot of… after the first couple weeks that the book comes out, nine months could go by and you don’t get anything after that first wave. I mean, I’m skeptical about [Ng's] thing, but I’ll…

Joe: That speaks to, I think, a potential downside of the Internet. Personally, I think there’s an inclination, since there is no word count, there is no editor, to write short, to just get your impressions out, to just summarize, give what you think immediately about a book, you know, in five hundred, eight hundred words. Furthermore, there’s no industry surrounding the Internet.

Douglas: The other thing there isn’t is money. [Laughter]

Joe: Yeah.

Gary: But since there isn’t any money, why wouldn’t more thoughtfully considered reviews be just as good as a glib summary?

Chris: I think time.

Sean: Spending a lot of time for no material [gain], y’know, other than just the satisfaction of a job well done. And if you have to make a living as a writer, a lot of the time — I mean, there’s been times where I’ve been just like, “Well, I can do a freelance assignment that’ll give me $100, or I can review a book.” I’ve tried to keep reviewing books for free, but there’s times when it’s tempting just to take the $100 and run.

Joe: I agree with you, yeah.

Gary: This may sound like a preposterous question, but do you guys get paid for blogging about comics?

Chris: Yes.

Rob: No.

Tucker: No.

Joe: Sometimes. [Laughter]

Douglas: I think the Savage Critics have split ad revenues that have come in, and over the past two and a half years, it’s amounted to maybe $18? [Laughter]

Bill: What did you get with it?

Douglas: I got a Diet Coke. [Laughter]

Rob: One of the downfalls of the Internet is a problem I had: I wrote something like 200 colums for Sequart, and then it died.

Bill: Yeah, and they’re not there.

Sean: [gasps]

Rob: And they’re not there, and you can’t get to them.

Tucker: Gotta back it up! Back it up on the hard drive.

Rob: Yeah, I should have.

Sean: I don’t even wanna think about that. Oh my God! [Laughter] It just occurred to me that that could happen! Oh my God! [Laughter]

Rob: The guy who runs the site says he’s going to get all my old stuff and give it back to me. But I wrote a 3,000 word review of Bottomless Belly Button that I would have loved to have given to [Ng] and said “Yeah, I really thought about this book for a long time.” But things can just disappear like that.

Bill: Tucker, you were about to say something?

Tucker: Part of it — and I don’t want to steal anybody’s words, but this did come up when we were driving down here, because I rode with two of the people on this panel. [Laughter] It’s part of the thing with Bottomless Belly Button, and I’ll out myself for it: If you really really hate something, yeah, you might write some thoughtful piece about why you hated it and what’s wrong with it. And if you really really liked something — and I agree that maybe Bottomless Belly Button didn’t get that treatment — you might write something thoughtful. But if you’re middle of the road, like, “I read it! I don’t really give a shit! [Laughter] I don’t hate it, but this is not gonna knock any of my ‘Oh my God, this is what comics is to me’ kinda stuff off the shelf.”

Gary: But you shouldn’t even be writing about something you’re ambivalent about.

Tucker: Well, that’s it — then you don’t. I don’t write about Bottomless Belly Button.

Rob: Do you feel an obligation to write about…

Tucker: I think if anyone says they feel an obligation to write about something, that’s totally self-imposed. Unless there really is an editor who’s telling you what to put on your blog, there’s no way, other than self-imposition, to write about something. Like, “Oh, I’ve gotta write about Asterios… ” No you don’t.

Sean: Yeah, Asterios Polyp.

Tucker: You don’t have to write about Bottomless Belly Button, you don’t have to write about David Mazzucchelli, you don’t have to write about the latest development in Superman, you don’t have to write about anything other than what the fuck you want to write about. It’s not print…

Rob: I agree with you, but does anybody else feel like they need to be part of the critical discourse on…

Tucker: But what’s that even mean? What’s that even mean, though? [Laughter] Like, “the critical discourse.” I mean, you go wide enough on the Internet, you’re gonna find plenty of people… I mean, the classic thing for me is, you wanna see what’s happens with the Internet, you go to the most popular YouTube video, and look at the comments on there, and everybody’s just like, “THAT BITCH IS A CUNT!” [Laughter] That’s the discourse of the Internet when you go wide enough. [Laughter] I really have to go to the bathroom.

Bill: You want to?

Tucker: Yeah. [gets up and leaves -- laughter]

Sean: Tucker Stone, ladies and gentlemen! [applause]

Bill: Tucker Stone will be returning momentarily. He’s actually writing a blog post right now. [Laughter] A couple points I want to get to. Rob, I think you’re coming from a very opposite position, because I think you actually make a good-faith effort to review everything that comes your way, right?

Rob: Yeah.

Bill: So you’re definitely someone who’s taken on an almost martyr-like constraint. [Laughter]

Rob’s wife [from the audience]: As his wife, I agree! [Laughter]

Rob: When someone sends me something in the mail, I feel obligated to take a look at it and review it. What I have to say about it will vary. There were some things that were sent to me three years ago that I haven’t written anything about yet.

Joe: Yeah.

Sean: Yeah.

Rob: But eventually I feel like I’ll do something on it. And occasionally I’ll do what I call a short-reviews column, where I’ll realize, “I don’t have anything more to say about this than a paragraph, or even a couple of sentences.” As a critic, I feel that if someone sends me something, I should engage it as best I can, almost phenomenologically, just putting aside certain suppositions and ideas about a work. Which is why I review a fairly wide range of genres, with the exception of superheroes, which I don’t write about. But I’ll review minicomics, big publisher comics, children’s comics, and each one of them sort of gets not a different critical response, but they’re meant to be engaged at different levels, and I engage them in different ways. Yeah, I just feel a need to respond to that, to response to someone’s work. And I rarely give — what I actually rarely talk about is “Should you buy this?” I don’t really care. I don’t care. That’s not something I ever say. Some critics even discuss, like, “This is a pretty good comic, but it wasn’t worth the $20 pricetag,” and that’s a valid thing to say, but again, I don’t care. It’s not something I’m interested in. I just talk about the work, I engage it, and sometimes there’s not much to engage, or sometimes there’s an interesting idea but it fails in some spectacular way, and I talk about it on that level, and I go into detail, and it’s a compulsion I have.

Bill: One issue that came up, too, is this notion of, “Do you need to participate in a critical discourse? Does everyone who writes need to weigh in on these big tentpole books that come out?” Obviously Tucker doesn’t think so. [Laughter] And here he is. Welcome back, Tucker.

Tucker [returning]: That was off the charts, man. [Laughter]

Bill: Did you wash your hands? Okay. I think one of the things that’s interesting to me about critical discourse is that criticism generates discourse, in that I don’t know that it’s necessarily required for every critic to write about the Crumb book, for example, but I also think it’s possible for a very good piece of criticism about that to generate another piece of criticism. If a critic is identifying some quality of the book and either holding it up as praiseworthy or holding it up as a flaw, or identifying it as a virtue or the primary virtue or the point of the book or et cetera, I think that’s the kind of thing that can probably generate a healthy critical discourse more than everyone feeling like they have to take a whack at the new piñata or whatever. Have any of you found yourself in that situation, where you’ve come across a book that you weren’t necessarily motivated to write about, but some other writer’s take on it motivated you to respond or reconsider something? It’s probably hard to remember, so I’m asking a horrible question. [whistles]

Gary: I think that does sort of answer Tucker’s question, though, which is “What the fuck is that?”: Critical discourse is a public dialogue about what’s going on out there, what significant works are out there, what do they mean.

Tucker: Yeah, but that’s — yeah, I agree with that. What I disagree with is — the notion that there’s a real public dialogue that comes about because a bunch of critics wanna do what he’s talking about, they wanna respond to real criticism and they wanna create some criticism of they own.

Gary: You don’t think that that exists?

Tucker: No, I do agree that that exists. Like, earlier this year, when, um — like, these three right here [gestures to Sean, Joe, and Douglas], you know? When Final Crisis dropped.

Sean: Oh yeah.

Tucker: Which is like, it’s a superhero masturbation-fest, but still. [Laughter] That was really fascinating, to see all these different takes, and to see people genuinely come out of the game and really put out there stuff there. But they didn’t feel — I don’t think that you’d turn to Sean and be like, “Did you feel imposed upon?”, like he had to respond to Final Crisis. He wanted to. Joe wanted to. When stuff comes out, it’s up to the art to create that desire in people to actually go and respond to it. If it’s created from some feeling of, “Well, I’m obligated to write about this, so that there will be a public discourse… ” The art creates the public discourse, not —

Gary: Of course.

Tucker: It shouldn’t come from some feeling of, “I’m obligated to help create this so that comics can have its own little critical discourse.” It’s up to the comics. It’s up to them.

Joe: I think it happens with superhero comics. There tends to be a lot more, I think, discussion about those on the comics Internet because there’s a certain volume of superhero comics that comes out every week, every single week. And superhero comics today are attuned to giving this impression of a shared universe that you peek into every week and see how things do or do not interact. So I think that has a way of encouraging more people to talk about these things often, and there’s inevitably more dialogue about a superhero thing that a lot of people happen to want to talk about, like Final Crisis. There’s more support.

Douglas: I don’t think of it as an obligation, though. I think of it as a pleasure.

Joe: Well, yeah. But there’s just more things to react to.

Douglas: Sure.

Sean: I see what [Joe]‘s saying, though, ’cause I think Final Crisis gives you a good apples-to-apples comparison. I loved Final Crisis to pieces, and I loved talking about it, and I loved reading people talk about it even when they hated it. But Acme Novelty Library #19 came out in roughly that same time frame. It is not just the best comic of the year, in my opinion — it’s a terrific science-fiction story, it’s a terrific horror story, you could talk about it in genre terms if you wanted to, which is the kind of thing I like doing. But there was none of that back-and-forth that we had going about Final Crisis. And I will defend Grant Morrison and Final Crisis until the day I die, but I would have loved to have — and I said so, I think — I would have loved to have that much writing, just that volume of people writing these huge impassioned posts, about Acme Novelty Library #19.

Gary: Well, why didn’t that happen?

Sean: Well, I think there’s a bunch of reasons. He’s been so good for so long that that people run out of things to say about how good he is…

Gary: And that’s not true of Grant Morrison? [Laughter]

Sean: Well, I guess — ’cause Morrison is like “the literature of ideas,” and he’s beboppin’ and scattin’ all over the place, so there’s always specific things to talk about.

Douglas: He’s a lot less consistent than Chris Ware, too.

Sean: That’s also true. There’s stuff you can compare that you didn’t like by Grant Morrison. And it’s also very bleak, and Acme Novelty Library might be the bleakest thing he ever did. I feel like that turns a lot of people off, and they just don’t feel like they have an “in” to it.

Joe: But I think it is a different situation, though, because Acme #19 is a serial, and unless you’ve been following Chris Ware’s thing for however long ago he serialized this in the papers, it doesn’t compare to something like Final Crisis, where it’s the lynchpin of the DC Universe. I don’t think it works like that, but —

Sean: But I’m not even talking about the people who just —

Joe: I’m saying there’s inevitably going to be more conversation, because people are going to want to talk about it even if — because it effects other things in the superhero world.

Sean: But I’m not really paying attention to those guys. I’m talking about people who… [sighs] They’re not just being like, “What did Wolverine say this week? He would never say that!” [Laughter] I’m not talking about those people. I’m talking about people who treat comics as art, and yet don’t… I’m sorry.

Douglas: If we’re going to be apples-to-apples about serials, though, you might have seen more of that if, you know, Acme were monthly. [Laughter] Dream on, but…

Rob: Honestly, it’s easier to talk about Final Crisis than it is to really sit down and think for a long time and think about Chris Ware’s Acme #19. The other thing I’ve noticed about superhero comics is that it’s almost akin to people talking about their favorite football team, and what has happened to their football team that week.

[murmured assent from the panel]

Sean: Yeah, Tim O’Neil had a thing about that recently.

Rob: There’s this kind of weird emotional investment in it that’s difficult to put apart from a critical analysis. And to me that’s kind of the culture of way more mainstream superhero criticism. I know there’s a lot of folks who do both, but there’s also many, many, many more folks who only will review superhero books.

Sean: Yeah.

Joe: Yes, yes.

Rob: And it kind of creates a certain kind of clubby thing with their writing. Which is why it’s interesting — a question I’ve asked a lot of you guys is, do you approach reviewing superhero comics and art-comics any differently? How does that work for you?

Sean: I’m sure that I do, but…

Chris: I really try not to, whenever possible.

Rob: Not to do it differently?

Chris: Just approach the work on its own terms and on its merits. I mean —

Bill: Well, if you say on its own terms, though, that suggests something different.

Chris: Well, yeah, I was about to say, yeah.

Bill: ‘Cause you’re not judging the Whatever Crisis the way you would judge the Chris Ware, necessarily.

Douglas: If you’re judging something as part of the giant interlocking master narrative, like, yeah, that’s obviously going to come into it. And that’s part of the fun of reading it and that’s part of the fun of thinking of it. It’s also really fun to deal with superhero comics on the same terms that you would deal with art comics. But it can sometimes be hard to get away from the fun of thinking of, like, this window on the master narrative.

Bill: But there’s a different focus, certainly, right? Because when you’re talking about Chris Ware, you’re talking about someone as an author or an artist making a work, whereas when you’re looking at this other stuff, you’re kind of looking at this sort of collaborative project.

Douglas: Well, you’re thinking of it as an author and artist, partly, making the work also. But there’s also this other part to it.

Sean: Yeah. I don’t treat that any differently.

Gary [to Bill]: You’re saying Grant Morrison isn’t an auteur?

Bill: Well, maybe, I don’t know. He has a chapter in Douglas’s book, so the answer is yes. [Laughter] Tucker, this is something you had talked about, too. Putting aside the superhero/auteur-driven work, whatever, you were also talking a little bit about, do you — [Tucker fidgets with the tablecloth on the panel's table] Don’t play with the Velcro.

Tucker: You’re the one who knocked it off, man! [Laughter] C’mon, playa!

Bill: Sorry. But bringing different expectations to different work — like if there’s something by a young, twentysomething first-time cartoonist, handling that a little different.

Tucker: Yeah, I have to admit that that does… Like, I’ll read some minicomic or something where I’ve met the person, you know? Some 19-year-old kid who’s shy and is like [quietly] “This is my minicomic” and that sort of thing — I really don’t look at that and go, “Well, okay, you’re some 30-year-old in the business and you’re published by Fantagraphics which means you’re probably not some first-timer.” Yeah, that stuff, it gets a little — I mean, I try not to do that, and most of the time what I do is I just don’t review it, because it’s hard to read something by some kid. Like a kid, a fucking kid! [Laughter] Who’s just getting started! And to be like “Yeah, this is trash!” You want to sit there and go, “Well, I really see some promise.” I don’t see any promise! I want you to stop! [Laughter] I mean, you should go to college! Learn a trade! Because you’re not gonna be Chris Ware. You’re not even gonna be Tony Bedard, you know? [Laughter]

Rob: I’ve been reviewing comics lately for the Poopsheet Foundation website, and —

Tucker: Poopsheet?

Bill: Poopsheet.

Chris [in a dramatic voice]: Poopsheet? [Laughter]

Rob: Let’s all get it out. [Laughter] And these are things sent to the guy who owns the site who then sends it to me, as opposed to some of the other comics I get. ‘Cause people who send me stuff have a general idea of what I’m going to say about comics, or comics in general. These people don’t know that I’m going to be reviewing it. And the quality of the comics I’ve been getting from this guy have been measurably worse, and I’ve said some of my harshest stuff. And again — but it’s the same approach. I hear what Tucker’s saying, like “there’s a young kid,” and I see a lot of comics like that, where it’s like, “Well, you know, it’s overwritten, it’s overdrawn, but maybe there’s something here and maybe there’s not.” But there are some where it’s just like, “This just wasn’t a good thing to read.”

Gary: You can ignore them, if they’re not somehow significant.

Rob: Yeah. And hopefully the feedback is useful to them in some way, in saying, “This is the best I could do, or maybe it wasn’t, and it just wasn’t good enough.” And maybe it’ll spark some kind of response. But I don’t feel any obligation to think about what their response will be.

Gary: Right.

Rob: You can’t.

Gary: You can’t, right.

Sean: I got a lot of my scorched-earth criticism out of my system in the early days of the comics blogosphere and a couple things I did for The Comics Journal. I don’t really have that in me anymore, and I find myself not enjoying reading it too much, either. But one thing that I’ve brought up before on my site or in interviews is that all the reviews I do for my own blog, I do from my own spare time, and they’re generally books I’m interested in reading, so it’s sort of a self-selecting group. Like, if I flip through something, and it doesn’t look appealing, or it looks downright aggravating, you know, there’s only so many hours in a day, and I’m generally not gonna force myself through something that I don’t think I’ll get to the end of it and say, “Well, that was a valuable way to spend my train ride” or whatever. So to a certain extent, that’s not a problem for me, because if I get something and I’m like, “What am I gonna do, tear this apart?”, I just won’t.

Tucker: Well, I’m not gonna try and back off or anything like that. [Laughter] But I will say that I don’t ask for free shit and I don’t get free shit, so when some kid sends me something, I usually read it. And I’m talking, what, two fuckin’ minicomics a month, you know? I’m not sitting there, I don’t have some kind of hookup or anything like that. I basically read what I read and then review that. But when I do get something in the mail from some kid — which it’s always fucking kids! I don’t know why — it’s like they don’t read the blog or something like that. It’s not like I have some big post on there where I’m like, “Aren’t minicomics awesome? Can I read more about your parents?” [Laughter] That’s the shit that I get sent! I get sent 8 X 11s stapled at the top corner. That’s what I get sent. I don’t know why they send it to me, I don’t know who told them to do that, but that’s they send.

Bill: There’s some grade school teacher somewhere who found your address.

Tucker: Somebody! Somebody.

Bill: Gary, Sean was just talking about how he’s not as interested in negative critiques —

Gary: A little sad! [Laughter]

Bill: But the Journal has actually run some of the outstanding negative critiques in the history of this field. How would you articulate the value of that kind of criticism for someone who maybe finds it difficult to approach?

Gary: Someone for whom it’s difficult to read?

Bill: Yeah, maybe, or who would balk at writing something like that.

Gary: Well, I don’t feel like you should write it just for the sake of writing it. But I think as a critic, you have to run the gamut. You just have to give an honest response. And sometimes that honest response is going to be negative. And, I mean, that serves the function of critically dismantling something that might be a sacred cow or that might be widely reviewed and widely praised and offering readers an alternative point of view about that, and allowing them to think about it in terms they haven’t even seen before. I mean, I just think that has an intrinsic value.

Rob: To me, the danger is that you can never make a negative review personal, to me. At least that’s my philosophy. Which is why I hate really snark-heavy negative reviews. [Various panelists turn to look at Tucker -- Laughter] Because to me it’s just kind of a dishonest reaction. That’s just my personal thing. You can talk about the weaknesses of a work as the work without necessarily attacking an author or a person. And you can get really really negative about it and talk about “This is why this doesn’t work.” And the responses to some of that that I’ve had have been, some people have been… I’ve written some harsh things and people have said, “Thank you for the review, that was very helpful,” and I’ve written some minorly harsh things and gotten really negative feedback. I’m like, “Well, that’s just the way it goes,” but in neither case did I say, “This is awful, this person should never write again” or anything like that.

Douglas: My allegiance as a critic is always to the people that are reading what I’m writing, not to the person making the art. But there’s a lot of art that I’m exposed to that leaves me so cold or bores me so much that I don’t get all the way through it, and I can’t see the value in writing scorched-earth something about that unless there’s a way that it can be a gift for my reading audience.

Bill: A gift in terms of food for thought as opposed to just dismissing a work that you thought didn’t have any merits?

Douglas: Yeah, something that can be useful or meaningful or something to the people reading it.

Bill: Alright, well, with that we’re basically out of time. But I guess I could probably take one or two questions, if anyone has… yes?

Audience Member #1: I have a question. If you — like, I listened to the discussion — Is there a proper venue to go through to get a good critique? [Laughter]

Bill: What’s the best place to get a good review?

AM1: Yeah — no, not, like, “a good review”…

Bill: Do you have any friends with blogs? [Laughter] No, no.

AM1: I mean, I heard you [Tucker] say you get like two little minicomics a week or something — is there a submission…

Sean: No, just find a blog that you like — I mean, it just comes from reading different sites or different publications and getting a sense for their tone, and if you feel like you’ll get something valuable out of being reviewed by this person, drop them an email and say “Hey, I’d like to send something.”

Rob: Go to The Comics Reporter website and Journalista! — they do a zillion links to reviews. Find someone whose work is interesting to you and that you think would be appropriate and contact them.

Bill: Yeah, almost every blog or whatever, review website, has some kind of email link, and if the mailing address isn’t on there, people will usually send it to you if you ask them to.

Sean: Unless it’s NeilAlien, people will take review copies and thank you for it.

Audience Member #2: Have you ever changed your mind about something, either positive, liked it and then didn’t like it, or didn’t like it and then liked it, and felt you needed to really let people know that?

Sean: I wrote a very negative review of Locas, the Jaime Hernandez hardcover, in The Comics Journal, and I have completely changed my mind since then. [Laughter] And I’m waiting until I have a chance to sit and read everything in a row and write a new review, and I’ll run the old review one day and I’ll run the new review the next day and be like “I was totally wrong.”

Chris: You have to. If you’re gonna review, and you’re gonna be a critic, you have to face the fact that you may change your mind and you may change your taste as you go along.

Tucker: I actually reviewed Essential Fantastic Four, one of those black and white reprint books, the day before my wedding. [Laughter] I don’t know why I reviewed it then, but I was just like, “Man, fuck this book,” you know? [Laughter] “I like Kirby, but fuck black and white reprints. Five-hundred page — this is retarded!” [Laughter] Then Frank Santoro was like, “Man, you’re just freaking out because you gotta get married tomorrow.” I was like, “That’s right!” [Laughter] I got back from the honeymoon and I left it up there, but I was like, “I should probably fix that. That was a stupid thing to do.”

AM2: Not necessarily “fix it,” but just kind of…

Tucker: No, fix it.

AM2: Oh. [Laughter]

Bill: One more —

Audience Member #3: Where do you guys see a role in arts criticism in general, and how would you compare some of the ways you engage with the work with music writers or fine-arts critics?

Bill: Anyone immediately wanna jump on that? I know Douglas, you write about music.

Douglas: I can talk to you about this afterwards, but yeah, I… I can’t answer it easily. [Laughter]

Bill: Well, with that, please join me in thanking all of our distinguished panelists for being with us. [Applause]