Stephen Colbert
Talking Comics with Tim | Joe Infurnari & Glenn Eichler
MUSH!
I was immensely impressed in early December, when Stephen Colbert recommended Glenn Eichler & Joe Infurnari‘s new First Second book, Mush!: Sled Dogs with Issues, to The Colbert Report viewers. Admittedly, Colbert is slightly biased, given that Eichler (the author of the frozen tundra/talking sled dogs/quirky humans comedy-drama) writes for the Comedy Central show. However, while many of the show’s writers have projects they’d love to have promoted by their boss, it’s relatively rare when Colbert uses the show’s forum to promote his staff’s projects. As a result, once I saw the endorsement, I made a mental note to track down the creators after the holidays for a potential interview. By some stroke of luck, the book’s artist, Infurnari, instead contacted me in mid-December to see if I was interested in covering his latest project (you bet I agreed to email interview with him and Eichler). I appreciate the collaborators’ willingness to discuss the project, particularly when Eichler shared the origin of his honed sense of comedic timing (having worked in an “editing room for a lot of animated half-hours for TV” [he was a story editor for MTV's Beavis & Butthead in the mid-1990s, as well as creating and producing the television show, Daria]). Once you’ve read the interview, be sure to enjoy First Second’s preview of the book.
Tim O’Shea: Joe, I love the way you convey the intensity and energy of the dogs when they are working, how did you arrive upon conveying that particular style of kineticism?
Joe Infurnari: The story hinges on the idea that not doing what you love leads to discontentment and unrest. For the team of sled dogs featured in this book, running is their bliss and the time they spend not running breeds trouble. So it was important to make the times the dogs were running as full of energy and joy as possible.
Quick slashing lines, splashes of ink, dramatic foreshortening and powerful diagonals are some of the ways I tried to bring to life the rush of running through the trails. I also knew that if it looked quickly drawn, then that energy would come through in the movement of the characters. When it came to the final inks, I was very comfortable drawing the book and I think the art reflects that. The inks are decisive, gestural and full of energy.
The final piece to the puzzle was the use of sound effects to add a visual punch to the high action running sequences.
- January 23, 2012 @ 04:00 PM by Tim O'Shea
Comics A.M. | More on digital pricing; comics’ Colbert bump
Dark Horse Digital
Digital | Retailer Brian Hibbs responds to recent comments around the price of digital comics, commenting on how “channel migration” could effect comic retailers: “The concern of the comics retailer isn’t that there IS digital — fuck, I’m totally all for a mechanism to drive a potentially wide segment of customers to the medium of comics itself. How can that NOT help me? But, rather, that enough customers will ‘change channels’ (of purchase), so as to make segments of work unprofitible to carry. I’ve been pretty straight with you — most periodicals are but marginally profitible; most books are largely unprofitible. That we have stellar, break out, oh-my-god-it’s-like-printing-money successes like WALKING DEAD or BONE or SANDMAN doesn’t mean that this is the way all books can follow. Quite the opposite in fact! So what this means is that even losing a TINY portion of the readership through Channel Migration could potentially have dire effects. Seriously, if I lost just 10% of my customers, I’m done. And what we also know is that when physical stores close, most of that readership for comics UTTERLY VANISHES. The gist of this is that losing 10% of sales to migration could mean that the other 80% of that stores’ sales are COMPLETELY LOST.” [The Savage Critics]
- December 8, 2011 @ 06:55 AM by JK Parkin
‘Can you imagine spider-powers and infallibility?’
Spider-Pope!
On last night’s episode of The Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert spied a spider crawling on the face of Pope Benedict XVI and posed a hypothetical scenario that would make Stan Lee proud: “… Given all the toxic waste and loose nuclear radiation all over Eastern Europe, if that spider bit the pope we might soon have … Spider-Pope!”
“He could shoot holy water from his wrists,” Colbert continued. “Trap atheists in his web, and every time someone used birth control his popey-sense would tingle!”
- September 30, 2009 @ 11:30 AM by Kevin Melrose
‘There’s a proposal out there that’s tearing this country apart’
On last night’s episode of The Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert devoted a six-minute installment of “The Word” to Archie’s proposal to Veronica, “the biggest news from the comics world since Dilbert lost his favorite mug and gunned down everyone in human resources.”
Of course, it should come as little surprise that Colbert opposes the storyline.
“I can understand Archie wanting to have a wedding night after nearly seven decades of cold, poorly drawn showers,” Colbert said, “but this is changing everything we hold dear in Riverdale, the town where nothing changes. For Christ’s sake, Riverdale still has a travel agency!
- August 19, 2009 @ 06:38 AM by Kevin Melrose
Watch Gaiman and Colbert face off over The Graveyard Book
As JK noted yesterday, Neil Gaiman appeared on The Colbert Report last night to answer Stephen Colbert’s charges about Gaiman’s children’s book The Graveyard Book.
“Isn’t there a danger here that our children will stop being frightened of graveyards?” Colbert asked in the interview. “Because without that how are we supposed to get them to eat their vegetables?”
You can watch the full episode at the Colbert Nation website.
- March 17, 2009 @ 08:13 AM by Kevin Melrose
Gaiman defends controversial child-raising techniques on The Colbert Report
Neil Gaiman, writer of Sandman and The Graveyard Book, will appear on The Colbert Report tonight.
As you can see in the video below, the popular conservative talk show host called Gaiman out on his latest book, where a young orphan escapes his family’s killer by wandering into a graveyard:
The program starts at 11:30 p.m. Eastern on Comedy Central.
- March 16, 2009 @ 01:32 PM by JK Parkin