Ronald Searle

Passings | British cartoonist Ronald Searle, best known as the creator of the fictional St. Trinian’s School, passed away Friday at a hospital near his home in southeastern France. He was 91. His spiky drawings of the wicked pupils of the girls school debuted in 1941 in Lilliput magazine, leading to five books and seven films. Searle, a Cambridge native, also co-authored (with Geoffrey Willans) the Molesworth book series. [Reuters]

Conventions | Four-day passes for New York Comic Con go on sale for $85 today at noon ET/9 a.m. PT. The event will be held Oct. 11-14 at the Jacob Javits Convention Center in New York City. [press release]

Conventions | Comiket, the world’s largest self-published comic book fair, drew a total of 500,000 people for its winter convention, held Thursday through Saturday at the Tokyo Big Sight in Japan. Held twice a year, in August and December, the event doesn’t use turnstiles or unique passes, so a visitor who attends all three days would be counted each time. [Anime News Network]

Graphic novels | Writing for Newsweek, Maya Jaggi offers a broad overview of “the graphic novel renaissance,” highlighting such works as Zahra’s Paradise, Habibi and Logicomix. [The Daily Beast]

Tintin

Comics | Using Steven Spielberg’s The Adventures of Tintin as a springboard, Charles McGrath examines Hergé and his beloved boy reporter. [The New York Times]

Publishing | A pair of articles take a look at the growing Indian comics industry. [The Times of India, Daily News & Analysis]

Creators | Who Is Jake Ellis? writer Nathan Edmondson is spotlighted during a signing in Medford, Oregon. [Mail Tribune]

Creators | The Grant MacEwan University newspaper profiles local writer Robert Burke Richardson. [West Edmonton Local]

Life with Archie #16

Comics | CNN covers the upcoming wedding of Archie Comics’ Kevin Keller, who will get married to another man in Life with Archie #16. Keller was injured while serving in the military in Iraq and Clay Walker, his groom-to-be, was his physical therapist. “Riverdale is this picturesque vision of American life, and when you see yourself reflected in that, you have a role in even the most idealized version of the reality you live in,” said Matt Kane, associate director of entertainment media for the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. “That’s the difference between feeling like a rejected outsider and feeling like you’re a part of something.” [CNN]

Comics | Jim Caple worries that viewers of the Tintin movie won’t appreciate it the way he does, comparing old-school Tintin fans to old-school Boston Red Sox or Seattle Mariners fans: “That’s what I worry about. I worry there will be all these Tintin wannabes who only know the character from the movie, who don’t appreciate Herge’s genius, who don’t know what it was like to wait a month for the next 10-page installment or when you had to special order the few books made available in America. Fans who didn’t earn this movie.” [ESPN]

Creators | Kurt Busiek discusses his work on Dracula: The Company of Monsters, which returned from cancellation as a webcomic, as well as digital comics in general: “I’ve been interested in the possibilities of online distribution for a long time, and even pitched an idea for an online strip a decade or more ago, but my collaborators and I couldn’t afford to do it on our own back then, and we didn’t find any takers who wanted to back it. And there are stories I’d love to do online, and ways I’d like to try taking advantage of the online interface, instead of print, that I’m eager to try — but between deadlines on existing projects and my health issues, I haven’t been able to launch an online series yet.” [Biff Bam Pop!]

"Saga," from Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples

Creators | Fiona Staples talks with her local newspaper about her upcoming project with Brian K. Vaughan, the eagerly anticipated Image Comics series Saga. [Calgary Herald]

Creators | Sweets creator Kody Chamberlain gets the spotlight ahead of a book signing with Chew artist Rob Guillory. [The Times]

Creators | Here’s a heartwarming story for the holidays: A historian found some old comics about Saginaw, Michigan, in the local library and tracked down the artist, Vincent Faletti, whose work was published in The New Yorker and other magazines. It turns out that Faletti is alive and still cracking jokes at 95. [MLive.com]

Comics | The first issue of IDW’s Magic: The Gathering comic, originally scheduled to be released next week, has been pushed back to Feb. 1 due to “unforeseen printing challenges.” [ICv2]

Crime | Victoria, British Columbia, police have recovered a cache of stolen goods worth more than $10,000 — $8,500 of which was a comic book collection taken from an apartment storage locker. Police are returning the collection to its owner. [Victoria Times Colonist]

Fandom | Ology spotlights the marriage proposal of David Salomon, who proposed with a homemade take on an issue of Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane. “What is it about the gamers, the comic book Ologists, the sci-fi fans and the zombie slayers that makes them the kings and queens of romance?” [Ology]

Mudman

Welcome to Food or Comics?, where every week we talk about what comics we’d buy at our local comic shop based on certain spending limits — $15 and $30 — as well as what we’d get if we had extra money or a gift card to spend on a “Splurge” item.

Check out Diamond’s release list or ComicList, and tell us what you’re getting in our comments field.

Graeme McMillan

What’s that, you say? Paul Grist’s new Mudman series starts this week (#1, Image Comics, $3.50)? Well, that’s how I’m starting my $15 haul this week. While I’m at it, let’s add Avengers Origins: Luke Cage #1 (Marvel, $3.99) and Kirby Genesis: Captain Victory #1 (Dynamite, $3.99), before finishing up with the third issue of Wonder Woman (DC, $2.99) for a superheroic week that goes from the earth to the gods, with some blaxploitation and aliens thrown in the middle for flavor.

DC would dominate the other half of my budget if I had $30. I’d be grabbing the third issues of Green Lantern Corps, Justice League and Supergirl ($2.99 each, except Justice League for $3.99), but I’m surprising myself as much as anyone else by grabbing The Bionic Man #4 (Dynamite, $3.99) for my final pick – I read the first three issues in a bunch this weekend and really enjoyed the book to date much more than I’d been expecting.

If I were to splurge this week, my money would probably end up going to Dark Horse, because I’m kind of tempted by Drawing Down The Moon: The Art of Charles Vess ($29.99). I’ve liked Vess’ art ever since I first saw it, which was possibly in his Spider-Man graphic novel in the late 1980s…? Nonetheless, this is more than likely something I’ll end up loving the hell out of.

Chris Arrant

Wonder Woman #3

If I had $15, I’d grab (with both hands) Wonder Woman #3 (DC, $2.99). The only time I’ve bought three issues in a row of Wonder Woman was the Amazons Attack crossover Pete Woods drew years ago, but this team-up between Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang has been consistently amazing. Next up I’d go from amazons to vikings for Northlanders #46 (DC/Vertigo, $2.99); I’ve bought every issue of this in singles, but seeing artist Paul Azaceta’s arc on this re-invigorated my appreciation for the title. Getting my super-hero fix on, next I’d get Avengers #19 (Marvel, $3.99). I admit seeing Norman Osborn’s Dark Avengers isn’t high on my list, but I’ve continually enjoyed what Bendis has done to varying degrees and seeing Daniel Acuna join the book is a big bonus in my book. Lastly, I’d be one of the zombie horde to buy Walking Dead #91 (Image, $2.99).

If I had $30, I’d thankfully double-back to get Greg Capullo’s ongoing return in Batman #3 (DC, $2.99) – seriously, I think Capullo is entrenching himself as a top artist in mainstream comics (again). Next up I’d get two Marvel joints – Thunderbolts #165 (Marvel, $2.99) and Venom #9 (Marvel, $2.99). After that, I’d get me weekly fix of Pilot Season with Seraph (Image/Top Cow, $3.99) then get Justice League #3 (DC, $3.99).

For splurging, there would be no question that I’d get the trade paperback edition of Drawing Down The Moon (Dark Horse, $29.99). I missed this when it came out in hardcover in 2009, so I’m glad to see it coming back into print. I seriously think Vess is one of the overlooked great in comics, but only because he hasn’t done a standard “run” on a title like seems to be needed to ingratiate yourself with the comic buying world at large. Regardless, Vess is a master and I’m glad to finally get my hands on this for a decent price.

Chris Mautner

Butcher Baker Candlestickmaker

If I had $15: It’s a quiet week for me for the most part, so I’d probably limit my initial purchases to the fifth issue of The Boys‘ spin-off Butcher Baker Candlestickmaker. For some reason I was under the delusion that it was a four-issue series and not six. Oh well.

If I had $30: A lot of people who’s opinions I respect really like the work of Golden Age artist Bob Powell, so I’d at least take a gander through Bob Powell’s Terror, a Craig Yoe-edited collection of ghoulish tales.

Splurge: That $150 one-volume anniversary edition of Bone would probably make a good Christmas present for somebody on my gift list. If I was splurging for myself though, I’d grab another Yoe-edited book, Felix the Cat: The Great Comic Book Tails, a collection of long-form stories done for Dell and Harvey back in the day by Otto Messmer, who did the original Felix comic strip as well.

Brigid Alverson

Saturn Apartments

If I had $15: I would end up leaving some of it on the table, because this is a good week for manga, and all the manga costs less than $15. Viz has three new volumes coming out this week, and my first choice among them is volume four of Saturn Apartments ($12.99), which I mentioned in What Are You Reading? this past weekend. It’s a lovely sci-fi story about a window washer in a space colony and the people he encounters. I’m hooked, and I’m ready for volume four.

If I had $30: I would add Tesoro, an anthology of short stories by Natsume Ono. Viz has been publishing a lot of Ono’s work lately, and it’s all beautiful. Her stories are more literary and romantic than your standard run of teenage manga, and she has a clean, linear style that is easy on the eyes. With the leftover money, I’d pick up Atomic Robo and the Ghost of Station X #3, just for something different–and because I find Atomic Robo irresistible.

Splurge: Let’s start with the third Viz release of the week, vol. 10 of Real. It’s a splurge for me because it’s a bit of a risk–I haven’t been keeping up with the series, and I don’t know anything about basketball, let alone wheelchair basketball. But volume 1 was amazing, and I’d like to see more. And if I’m really binging, I’d add the first volume of Fantagraphics’ Pogo collection ($39.99) and Drawn & Quarterly’s The Adventures of Herge ($19.95), a graphic biography of the creator of Tintin, drawn in his own ligne claire style.

Michael May

If I had #15, I’d spend most of it on DC. Eventually, I’m going to have to cut back on the number of series I’m buying from them, but not this week. I’m still enjoying Batman ($2.99), Birds of Prey ($2.99), Supergirl ($2.99), and Wonder Woman ($2.99) and want the third issues of each of them. Finishing off my budget, I’d grab Fear Itself: The Fearless #3 ($2.99). I caught up on it last night and even though I didn’t read Fear Itself, I’m going to enjoy Valkyrie’s globe-trotting adventures tracking down a bunch of MacGuffiny weapons and fighting vampires and Avengers along the way.

If I had $30, I’d quickly add Planet of the Apes #8 ($3.99), Bonnie Lass #3 ($2.99), and Atomic Robo and the Ghost of Station X #3 ($3.50). And like Graeme, I’d be sure to try out Paul Grist’s Mudman #1.

Splurge-wise, how unfair is the universe for making the color, one-volume Bone ($150.00) available on the same day as Fantagraphic’s Pogo: The Complete Syndicated Comic Strips, Volume 1 ($39.99)? And that’s on top of DC’s Legends of the Dark Knight: Marshall Rogers collection ($49.99) and SLG’s Royal Historian of Oz ($14.95). Bone and Pogo are especially impossible to pick between, even with the massive price difference.

Tintin in the Congo

Comics | Calling Tintin a “Catholic hero,” the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano took strong exception to the decision by U.K. publisher Egmont to sell the controversial Tintin in the Congo with a protective band around it — or, as the paper says, “wrapped up like a pornographic magazine and consigned to the adults-only section” of bookstores because of its portrayal of racial stereotypes. If you’re going to do that, the editorial argues, why not ban Boy Scouts, which were founded by notorious eugenicist Anthony Baden-Powell? “But then, he was English,” the paper snidely concludes. [Agence France-Presse]

Digital | ComiXology confirmed Tuesday that the Comics by Comixology app will be available for Amazon’s Kindle Fire when it goes on sale next week. ComiXology CEO David Steinberger said the company is prepared for the smaller screen size the Fire has, compared to the iPad: “Ah, well we’re lucky there, because our Guided View reading technology was designed first for a very small device — the iPhone — long before tablets became the norm. A great comics reading experience is one of the core reasons we’re so successful, and it translates great to all devices, from small to large. The Comics by comiXology reading experience is the same on all platforms, so it’s going to be very familiar to our fans. You can toggle in and out of Guided View with a simple double-tap. The Fire has a great screen, and for those pages that have lettering a little too hard to read, Guided View is a fun way to get in there and see the details.” [Chicago Sun Times]

21: The Story of Roberto Clemente

Awards | 21: The Story of Roberto Clemente by Wilfred Santiago is a finalist for the CASEY Award for Best Baseball Book of the Year, presented by Spitball: The Literary Baseball Magazine. [Flog!]

Publishing | ICv2 has a lengthy interview with Seiji Horibuchi, the founder and CEO of Viz Media, the largest manga publisher in the U.S. Horibuchi reflects on the boom in manga sales in the early 2000s, the recent slide in sales, and the pressure on manga publishers to move to digital format. [ICv2]

Creators | VICE interviews R. Crumb about his drawing for a New Yorker cover, showing two people of ambiguous gender and a confused marriage-license clerk. The New Yorker paid Crumb for the drawing but decided not to run it on the cover. [VICE]

Orchid #2

Creators | Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello and artist Scott Hepburn talk about their Dark Horse series Orchid. [The Blog From Another World]

Creators | King Features editor Brendan Burford and creator Norm Feuti have been blogging about bringing Feuti’s comic Gil from webcomic to newspaper syndication. Their most recent discussion involves bringing a difficult character into conformity with the boundaries of the comics page. [The Road to Syndication]

Creators | Robot 6′s own Michael May talks about writing the webcomic Kill All Monsters. [Panel Bound]

Comics | Burlesque performer Roxi D’Lite talks about her appearances in Eric Powell’s The Goon comics: “Eric Powell first contacted me a few years back on as part of his research for an earlier issue of The Goon. I had never heard of The Goon or Eric Powell so my first thought before seeing his work was that he was some amateur living in his parent’s basement drawing funny pictures of naked ladies but I couldn’t have been more wrong. I asked around and everybody’s was like, ‘What!? The Eric Powell?’ I learned he is a multiple award-winning artist and a titan in the comic industry, but even without knowing that his work speaks for itself. It was an honor being contacted by him and he has become one of my favorite artists. We hit it off and he invited me to perform at The Goon’s 10-year anniversary party in Nashville and we’ve been friends ever since.” [Metromix Detroit]

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Publishing | IDW’s Chief Operating Officer Greg Goldstein attributes a bump in the company’s September sales to several factors, including DC’s big relaunch: “The reality is the DC New 52 brought some people into comic book stores that hadn’t been in comic stores for a while, and we had the opportunity to sell them some of our books as well as the other books that are available to them. But clearly, people who had not been focused on comics came out of the woodwork a bit.” It didn’t hurt that IDW had its own launches of properties familiar to those outside of comics, including the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series, an ongoing Star Trek series and the Star Trek/Legion of Super-Heroes crossover. [ICv2]

Legal | A Belgian judicial adviser has recommended that the nation’s courts reject a four-year-old bid by a Congolese student to have Herge’s 1931 Tintin in the Congo banned, or at least restricted, because of its racist depictions. The recommendation is being viewed as a major setback for the case, as the opinion of the Procureur du Roi (Senior Crown prosecutor) is requested and typically followed by the court. [The Guardian]

Creators | Francis Manapul and Brian Buccellato talk about the tone of their new Flash series. “We definitely decided we wanted an optimistic, hopeful, and noble story because that’s who Barry Allen is to us,” Buccellato said. “It was important for us to go in that direction, and not toward the darker or more tortured hero. He’s a guy from the Silver Age who does the right thing because it’s the right thing.” [io9]

Creators | Lee Bermejo discusses his upcoming Gotham-meets-Dickens graphic novel Batman: Noel. [MTV Geek]

Enigma

Creators | Peter Milligan opens up about Red Lanterns, Justice League Dark and the potential for more Enigma: “I was re-reading Enigma. This is the really early, early stages but I’m considering doing a sequel. So much has happened in the world since it came out, in terms of how gays are treated in the West. I’d like to highlight those differences of lives of homosexuals in the West compared to gays in Africa, the Middle East, and lots of developing countries.” [io9]

Creators | A bandana-wearing Nathan Edmondson discusses his work on DC’s Grifter series. [Creative Loafing]

Creators | Scott Snyder talks about Swamp Thing. [USA Today]

Conventions | The Free Press profiles the Coast City Comicon, coming up Nov. 11-13 in Portland, Maine. [Free Press]

The indispensable Dan Hipp has created a series of fake Tintin covers mashing the classic character together with movies like Alien, Star Wars, and Tron. And this isn’t even the coolest thing on his blog.

Oyster War Tumblr

On any given week, reading Ben Towle’s Twitter feed or Oyster War Tumblr or his blog, I tend to take away some perspective of substance. And that’s what prompted me to do this email interview with him. Rather than explain what ground we tried to cover, I prefer to jump right into the interview, after thanking Towle for his time and thoughts. This interview was conducted prior to Towle’s Amelia Earhart: This Broad Ocean being nominated in the Eisner Best Publication for Kids category.

Tim O’Shea: When you started on Oyster War, did you expect that “publishers [would not]… be beating down my door to publish this weird, not-all-ages mashup of 20s newspaper comic strips and obscure (at least in the U.S.) French graphic novels“? Or has that been an unexpected, disappointing surprise?

Ben Towle: As far as my statement about publishers goes, I should clarify: no big publishing house is beating down my door to give me a publishing deal with a decent advance. And no, this doesn’t surprise me at all.

I guess I’ve gotten a reputation as a naysayer as a result, but I’ve always been quite dubious of the (in my opinion, very Pollyanna-ish) claim that the graphic novel as a literary/art form has “arrived.” I think if you look at what GNs for adults have gotten deals from big publishers, they’re almost exclusively very specific genres—usually memoir with some sort of an angle (historical, grave illness, identity politics, etc.)—-and that’s not the sort of thing I’m personally interested in doing comics about.

That said, I’m optimistic that once Oyster War gets to the point that it’s, say, 75% complete I’ll be able to shop it around to a specialty graphic novels publisher and find it a home. It would be nice if we got to the point that there’s a sizable enough audience for adult general fiction graphic novels to sustain the “living from advance to advance” model that successful prose authors can pull off, but until then, I’ll just continue to do what I’ve been doing: produce the work that I love doing and which I truly believe in, and hope to find some success with those projects on the back end.

O’Shea: Talk about some of the 1920s comic strips and French graphic novels that clearly appeal to you (and help influence) Oyster War?

Towle: You had to ask? Am I not wearing my influences on my sleeve shamelessly enough?

Well, as far as comic strips go, my big influence here is Segar’s Thimble Theater—aka Popeye. I’ve been a fan of Popeye since I was a little kid when I used to have to repeatedly borrow and re-borrow that Bill Blackbeard Smithsonian newspaper strip collection from a buddy of mine (whose dad actually owned the thing). So, yeah, I’m brazenly swiping a lot of stuff from that: mainly just the “bigfoot” style of character design, but also a lot of the general nautical ambiance, fisticuffs, and (hopefully) the strangely-alien visuals of Segar’s world. The fictional town that Oyster War takes place in, Blood’s Haven is a reference to the name of the town the Altman Popeye film takes place in: Sweethaven.

I probably should have said “Franco-Belgian” instead of “French” since there’s some real Tintin influence going on, mainly with the layout of the strip. It’s four-tiered—rather than three-tiered as most American comics are—and that comes directly from my love of the Tintin books. More generally, I really, really love that “Tintin-size” book that’s the standard size for European books. I had read a bunch of those big editions of Tintin before, but it wasn’t until I was looking around in the comics section of a bookstore in Madrid that I realized that that’s the size that pretty much all European comics are printed at. It’s such a great size to read. It’s big enough that the art looks great, but it’s not so big that it’s too heavy and unwieldy to ready comfortably.

I’m definitely a huge Christophe Blain fan as well. I sure don’t have the cartooning chops to even manage a shameless rip-off of his drawing style, but I am stealing… um, I mean “paying homage to”… the coloring in his books. I did blog post about it a while back, but in short, I really didn’t have any interest in coloring my comics until I saw through his work how one could use color to serve an actual narrative purpose—the color could actually communicate rather than simply describe objects. You ask about coloring later on, so more on that then…

O’Shea: You’ve intentionally avoided joining Facebook so far, but you are very active on Twitter–and set up an Oyster War Tumblr page. Why are you selective about your utilization of social media to promote your work (and interact with folks in the industry)? Do you think Tumblr has helped generate more interest in Oyster War?

Towle: I think “selective” is putting it generously; I’m really not on-board with social media in any real sense of the term. I am indeed fairly active on Twitter, but I’m probably not using Twitter in the way that I really should be if my purpose were to leverage social media for self-gain/self-promotion. For sure, I’ll send out information about new work I’ve posted online, what conventions I’ll be at, etc., but mainly I use twitter to engage in “shop talk” with other cartoonists during the day. We cartoonists tend work alone and we really don’t get the benefit of the sort of chatter someone gets who works in an office. I think there’s something beneficial to seeing how other people approach the same sorts of projects/problems you do and how those people solve them.

I am pretty selective, though, about how much I’ll engage social media and on what platforms. The thing that I like about Twitter is that it’s more analogous to a radio—something that you can turn on and off depending on whether you want some “background noise”—than to a book that you have to read start to finish. Facebook seems to me like something that would become a real chore. I just don’t see it as a good “deal” for me right now: the time and personal information I’d have to put on the table is more valuable to me right now than what I’d receive in the exchange. Also, I guess I’m just old-fashioned. I’ve had a blog at www.benzilla.com for somewhere near a decade now and that’s just what I’m used to and comfortable with.

Again, with Tumblr, I’m not really using that platform in the way it’s intended. I’m basically using it as a webcomics hosting service.

I guess with most of this stuff, the bottom line is probably just that I’m foolishly-naïve: I’ve got this archaic idea that if you do good work and put it out there for people, it will get noticed. We’ll see…

O’Shea: For the untrained artist, what did you mean when you wrote: “I’m using too much literal color in these Oyster War pages.”

Towle: Well, that gets back to Christophe Blain. The coloring in all of his work is really beautiful, but I was really, really blown away by the coloring in Gus and His Gang. Rather than repeat myself, I’ll direct you to a pretty extensive (and commented-upon) blog post I did about it here. After reading that book initially, I went back and looked just at how color was being used throughout, and the big take-away for me was that you can use color as more than just “window dressing.” When you color an apple red, all you’re really saying with that coloring is “this is an apple” —something you’ve presumably already communicated with the line-art drawing. Obviously if you’re going to use color, you have to use literal color in a lot of places for clarity’s sake, but if the only “work” your coloring is doing is saying “this is an apple,” “this is a tree,” etc., then as far as I’m concerned you really don’t need color at all.

That particular tweet was likely a reference to a scene I’m working on now where there are two different groups of people going back and forth between two different ships. It’s a potentially confusing scene since the reader has to keep track of who’s on what ship with various characters moving ship to ship, so I’ve tried to establish a distinct color scheme for each vessel (blues/purples for one, greens/oranges for the other) to hopefully reinforce the drawn staging of the scene. But, for this kind of thing to work, it’s got to be consistent, which necessitates sticking to the proscribed schemes. I’m looking forward to getting crazy with color again when this scene’s done, though!

O’Shea: Care to discuss further about the status on other projects like “Super-Secret Mystery Project That Probably Won’t Come to Anything” or In the Weeds?

Towle: Sure, I can talk a little about that. The “super-secret mystery project” is just something that an agent I’m working with sent my way. She’s been talking with an editor at a (primarily) prose publisher who wants to do some graphic novel adaptations of some of their existing books. So far, I really haven’t found the right match among their catalog, though—and to commit to a project like that, it’d really have to be a book I’m passionate about. I’d love to do an adaptation, but it’d have to be a good fit for me stylistically. I actually worked up a complete proposal for an adaptation of The Count of Monte Cristo that she shopped around, but there were alas no takers. Needless to say, I was pretty disappointed. (Here’s a five-page sample I did for the proposal.)

In the Weeds is most likely what I’ll tackle after Oyster War. It’s quite different from any of my previous projects in that it takes place in the (relative) present day. It’s a story about a part-time chef/part-time touring rock musician who gets into a cooking contest with a kitchen rival and has to use regional food knowledge and ingredients that he learns about while on the road to try to win the contest. The story is structured in five “courses” and each one concludes with a cooking lesson/recipe that relates to food from the story. The script’s completely written (something I pretty much never do) and I’ve got most of the primary character designs done. (You can see some here.)

Interestingly, In the Weeds is what really gave me the impetus to go ahead and just start posting Oyster War pages—just putting them out there and seeing what happens. After the Count of Monte Cristo thing failed to find any takers, I started working on the In the Weeds script. Once it was done, I showed it—along with my character designs—to my agent. She really liked the story, but basically said, “It’s pretty rough out there right now in the book market. I could maybe sell this if it were a finished graphic novel, but probably not just with what you’ve got here.”

I’d just read Dean Haspiel’s blog piece, “Dear Content Maker…” and it really got me thinking: if traditional publishers no longer have exclusive control of the delivery channels, and they’re now at the point financially that they’re reluctant to put an advance on the table… then what possible reason would I have to give up my creative output to them if I complete an entire graphic novel by myself, on my own time, and with no financial assistance? I mean: what am I getting in that exchange?

My experience working on Amelia Earhart: This Broad Ocean for Disney/Hyperion was fabulous. Having a decent advance involved meant that for a year or so—really for the first (and probably only!) time ever—I was a true “professional cartoonist” and sat behind a drafting table for my whole workday. That’s something that I value enough to exchange my creative output for. But if I’m going to do something on my own, then my inclination is to own it. Being able to adjust my monocle and haughtily say, “I’m published by so-and-so” isn’t something I really value that much.

So that’s where I stand now. I’m doing the comics work that I love—that I’m passionate about—and just putting it out there at whatever pace I can manage given everything else I have going on. If some big publisher notices my work and says, “Hey, we love this and want to publish it. Here’s a check so you can pick up the pace a little bit but in return we want a piece of the action sales-wise,” well then, heck yes I’ll take that deal. But until that happens, just look for Oyster War to continue… followed by In the Weeds… followed by whatever else I next find interesting in my “idea file.” I promise to keep cranking out comics (even if the pace is a little languid at times)!

In his latest post at The Comics Journal, Frank Santoro engages in a little bit of compositional analysis, explaining how an artist determines where the eye will fall, and what are the static and dynamic areas of the page, using a page from a Tintin comic, King Otokar’s Sceptre, to demonstrate the ideas in action. In this case, the components of the drawn comic line up so neatly with Santoro’s diagram that it’s hard to believe Herge wasn’t doing it deliberately.

I’m usually suspicious of after-the-fact dissections, because it’s easy to look at a completed work and see things the artist may not have put in deliberately. But Santoro says that Herge was probably aware of the technique, but that for some artists it just comes naturally, like playing music by ear. And just as the artist may use it unconsciously, the reader probably isn’t aware of it, observing only that some pages are more attractive or compelling than others. It’s useful to be reminded that such swift impressions are often born of painstaking planning. Sometimes you have to work hard to make it look easy.

Borders

Retailing | The struggling Borders Group, which filed for bankruptcy protection on Feb. 16, has reversed its January decision to close the distribution center in LaVergne, Tenn. The bookseller will instead shut down its warehouse in Carlisle, Penn., leaving the facility in Tennessee and another in California. [Nashville Business Journal, via ICv2.com]

Legal | A handful of publishers address what effect Tokyo’s revised ordinance further restricting the sale of sexually explicit manga to minors might have on the industry. “This ordinance could attack the creativity of genuine authors, not just attacking perverted comics,” says Pascal Lafine of Tonkam, a French publisher of manga. [The Mainichi Daily News]

Publishing | David Itzkoff profiles Marvel, tracing the company’s route from mid-1990s bankruptcy to its current place at the top of a struggling industry. [The New York Times]

Publishing | Jonathan Hickman, Scott Snyder and Nick Spencer talk about digital comics, television and movie adaptations and a changing industry. “We got to get our digital shit together. We haven’t yet, we’re very poor in that area, just because we’re in the beginning,” Hickman says. “Nobody gets it right. Once we get that started, we won’t have the distribution choke that we have right now in the direct market. Things will get more interesting. I don’t see any way we don’t expand in the next 10 years.” [Daily Trojan]

Fear Itself #1

Publishing | Matt Fraction and Tom Brevoort discuss Marvel’s next big event Fear Itself. [USA Today]

Creators | Michael Cavna spotlights Ferris State University student John Vestevich, winner of this year’s Charles M. Schulz Award for best college cartoonist. [The Washington Post]

Events | Peter B. Lord reports on the inaugural New England Comic Arts in the Classroom Conference, held Saturday at Rhode Island College in Providence. [Providence Journal]

Comics | Toby Walne examines the enduring popularity of Tintin, from an investment standpoint. [This is Money]

Comics | The A.V. Club crew runs down 13 comic-book characters with convoluted origins and confusing identities. [The A.V. Club]

Comics | Ben Gilbert looks back at Who’s Who in the DC Universe and The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe. [Panels on Pages]

Your eyes do not deceive you … it’s the return of Shelf Porn! We had a pre-holiday lull in submissions that led to several Shelf Porn-less weeks, but luckily Andrew Chapman sent in a fresh batch to feast you eyes on. He and his wife have a great collection of graphic novels, toys, a Tintin puppet and even a table made from Captain America’s shield.

We love sharing people’s shelves, but we can’t do it without you! So if you’d like to see this feature continue, please send in your Shelf Porn to jkparkin@yahoo.com.

And now let’s hear from Andrew …

*****

Hi there, welcome to what we call “The Library.” We really should have borrowing cards at the door … hard to keep track of what a friend has what sometimes. When my wife and I got together, our respective book and toy collections merged to form one giant melting pot of popular culture.

The McFarlane monsters are my wife’s…yep.

A few random figures and some heroclix i’ve no idea how to play it but they look good

Tintin used to be in the hall..until he got decapitated. When it happened the second time, it was time to move him. The Mrs loves Universal Monsters. She flipped out when she found the Dracula and Werewolf cut outs.

Tree beard on a rocking horse … why not?

We made this Captain America coffee table a few years ago.

Who needs real Transformers when you’ve got Distortion Androids?

And finally our action figure cabinet

Thanks for letting us share!!

I wonder what TinTin and Haddock would have to say about the current state of affairs?

Tintin by Brandon Graham

Our friend Joe Keatinge spent part of his holiday season gathering images of Tintin from various artists for Neon Monster; you can see the galleries here and here. In addition, Keatinge sat down with King City creator Brandon Graham (who drew the above piece) for a conversation about the character. You can check it out here.

Tintin

Legal | A Belgian court has postponed until next week a hearing in the months-long trial over whether to ban Tintin in the Congo because of its racist portrayals of native Africans. The legal battle was launched three years ago by Bienvenu Mbutu Mondondo, a Congolese man living in Belgium, who wants the book removed from the country’s bookstores, or at least sold with warning labels as it is in Britain. An anti-racism group joined Mondondo in seeking the ban. Wednesday’s scheduled hearing was postponed after one of the plaintiffs withdrew from the case; however, the article doesn’t say which one. [Expatica]

Legal | Cartoonist Rich Koslowski discovers that winning a copyright-infringement lawsuit against a company that used his artwork without permission didn’t end the matter. More than a year later, Ontario-based Geeks Galore Computer Center still hasn’t complied with the judge’s order, and continues to use Koslowski’s art in signage and advertising. [Eye on Comics]

Publishing | Andy Runton’s new full-color hardcover Owly & Wormy: Friends All Aflutter! will be released in March by Simon & Schuster, under a license from Top Shelf. [Top Shelf, via The Beat]

Marvel

Publishing | Jason Woods picks apart Marvel’s new “Architects” initiative promoting the contributions of such creators as Jason Aaron, Brian Michael Bendis, Ed Brubaker, Matt Fraction and Jonathan Hickman: “Don’t think for a second people in the industry don’t already know the score. Do you think other writers needed an official announcement from on high that Bendis was a big dog? Or that Brubaker (who has won a boatload of Eisners in recent years) is a key cog in the wheel? People in the industry understand who is who. And if they’re being honest with themselves, they know where they sit in the pantheon. But that doesn’t mean they like being formally reminded of it by their employer.” [iFanboy]

Retailing | Lincoln, Nebraska, retailer Comic World will close on Dec. 23 after 18 years in business. [Lincoln Journal Star]

Creators | Roger Stern is profiled in advance of his appearance on Sunday at the Indianapolis Comic Book and Toy Convention. [Indianapolis Star]

Comics | Kenton Smith recommends a handful of graphic novels as holiday gifts. [SEE]

Palle Huld in 1928

Just last week, our own Chris Mautner provided an excellent introduction to the Tintin comics, and this week we have an interesting bit of Tintin-related news: Palle Huld, one of the possible models for Herge’s globetrotting reporter, has passed away at the age of 98. In 1928, at the age of 15, Huld won a competition sponsored by a Danish Newspaper to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Jules Verne’s birth. The prize: A trip around the world, unaccompanied, in 44 days, or about half the time it took Verne’s hero Phileas Fogg. The following year, Huld published a book about his travels, A Boy Scout Around the World, and the year after that, Herge began his series of comics about a young, red-haired explorer who favored knickers and kept getting into trouble.

While his exploits were somewhat tamer, Huld’s journey had its share of perils. The most dangerous leg was Manchuria, which was at war at the time, but he made it through unscathed. He got lost in Moscow and missed his train in Newfoundland because he was trying to impress a girl (OK, that doesn’t sound very Tintinish). It is certainly easy to imagine that press accounts of Huld’s travels, or perhaps his book, planted the seed for Tintin. Pierre Assouline, Herge’s biographer, told the New York Times that he had never heard of Huld, but Huld himself believed there was a connection.

Tintin in Tibet

Comics College is a monthly feature where we provide an introductory guide to some of the comics medium’s most important auteurs and offer our best educated suggestions on how to become familiar with their body of work.

Welcome and happy holidays to all our Comics College readers. Today, as a post-Thanksgiving treat to you, we’ll be talking a lengthy look at the career of one Georges Remi, better known by his pen name, Herge, and by extension, his most famous creation, the plucky boy reporter Tintin.

Why he’s important

There are only a handful of cartoonists in the world who have had as enormous and significant an influence in comics as Herge has. There’s Osamu Tezuka, Charles Schulz, Jack Kirby and then there’s Herge. The incredible popularity of the Tintin books and their considerable influence on European comics really cannot be overestimated. Artists like Joost Swarte and Yves Challand built their entire careers upon Herge’s style, creating what eventually would be known as the “ligne claire” school. Herge to Eurocomics is sort of like the Beatles to rock music: You’re either influence by it, or you work in opposition to it. There’s no in between.

Plus, Herge’s work remains utterly charming and enthralling after all these decades. Though ostensibly created for younger readers, the Tintin books are some of the few all-ages books that can be read by adults and children alike, without any embarrassment on the former’s part (well, there are one or two exceptions, but we’ll get to that later).

Where to start

The Complete Tintin

Though he did create other characters, Herge is primarily known for Tintin, the crime-solving reporter (even though he mysteriously never files a story) who, with his cadre of friends and little dog Snowy, brings down a rabble of drug pushers, spies, counterfeiters, dictators, warmongers and general bad guys.

Tintin’s American publisher, Little, Brown, has, in recent years, made the decision to package three Tintin stories together in one, much smaller, hardbound volume apiece. It’s not a move I support, quite frankly, as I feel it doesn’t give the reader the chance to fully appreciate Herge’s detailed, precise art in the manner it was initially designed for. Instead, I’d suggest picking up the individual, traditional BD-sized books, most of which are still easily available online. The hardcover volumes are admittedly a cheaper option in the long run though.

Having disparaged the hardcover volumes, I will admit that the Collector’s Gift Set, which collects all of Tintin’s color adventures (minus Tintin in the Congo, more on that in a while) is pretty spiffy looking. Still, at $150 a pop, it’s might not be the first purchase a Tintin neophyte might want to make.

So, all that being said, if you’re going to stick with the hardbound volumes and you don’t want to blow your whole wad on the complete set, then I recommend starting with Volume six, which contains what most Tintinologists consider Herge’s finest moment, the lovely Tintin in Tibet, in which our hero treks to the Asian land in search of a friend he believes has survived a horrible plane crash, even though all evidence points to the contrary. It’s a touching tale about sacrifice, faith and friendship and shows the amount of research and detail the author put into his books. You’ll swear after reading he actually visited the country even though he never did.

Volume 6 is also recommended as it contains The Calculus Affair, one of my personal favorite stories and, I think, a rather archetypical tale, and also quite good Red Sea Sharks.

From there you should read

Explorers on the Moon

Volumes three, four and five contain some of the best and most memorable Tintin tales, including the two-part Secret of the Unicorn and Red Rackham’s Treasure (in which Tintin searches for buried treasure and we meet the deaf genius Prof. Calculus); the Seven Crystal Balls and Prisoners of the Sun (in which Tintin heads to South America and meets up with some ancient Incans); and the excellent Destination Moon and Explorers on the Moon (which contains some rather accurate predictions about space travel). These books are about as good as Herge ever gets.

From there I’d go back to the earlier volumes one and two, which feature Tintin minus his usual boozing companion Captain Haddock (and, in several cases, before Herge became more culturally aware and devoted himself to researching the places he wrote about). Of special note here are The Blue Lotus, which marks a turning point in the artist’s attitude towards other cultures and the world around him. Also good are The Cigars of the Pharaoh, Lotus’ prequel, The Black Island, which finds him in Scotland, and King Ottokar’s Scepter, a great bit of escapist fun involving an attempted coup d’etat in Eastern Europe.

Conclude your Tintin reading with the final volume, number seven, which contains the Castafiore Emerald, Flight 714 and Tintin and the Picaros. The latter two verge dangerously close to self-parody and you get a sense Herge was growing tired of the formula and perhaps even feeling a little trapped by his creation. Emerald, however, is a great little drawing room comedy, with Tintin staying at home for once.

Further reading

The Calculus Affair

Herge was working on Tintin’s 24th adventure when he died. The preliminary script, notes and sketches were collected into the posthumous Tintin and Alph-Art. While the tale, which has the boy reporter rooting out corruption in the modern art world, is sadly uncompleted, it provides about as good a glance at Herge’s working methods and inspiration we’re ever likely to get.

In his early days, Herge serialized his stories in magazines in black and white and only later collected and printed them in color volumes, often redrawing the stories from scratch. Last Gasp has released a number of these early, original black and white versions in English and they provide a nice point of comparison regarding Herge’s considerable artistic growth during this time. So far they’ve released Tintin in America, Cigars of the Pharaoh, The Blue Lotus and Tintin in the Congo (more on that in a minute). I’m still waiting for an English version of Black Island, which I understand is quite different from its final volume.

Last Gasp also published Tintin’s first adventure, Tintin in the Land of the Soviets. The art is crude and minimal and shows little of the charm and flair that would later typify Herge’s work. It’s mostly worth noting because it’s Tintin’s first adventure and because it shows just how far he came.

The upcoming Peter Jackson/Steven Spielberg film is not the first time Tintin has appeared in the cinema. A number of attempts have been made before, including some odd-looking live-action films. One of the best might be Tintin and the Lake of Sharks, which, though not anywhere near as strong as the core canon, is closer in tone and style to the source material than anyone would have a right to expect. While you can’t easily get a copy of the film on DVD, you can score an English “book of the film” on the Internet easily enough.

Ancillary material

Tintin: The Complete Companion

Books about Herge and his famous creation abound, many of them released by (you guessed it) Last Gasp and several of them by or edited by one Michael Farr. Farr wrote a biography of Herge, entitled (appropriately enough) The Adventures of Herge, Creator of Tintin (you may also want to check out The Man Who Created Tintin by Pierre Assouline).  He also penned Tintin: The Complete Companion, which goes book by book through the series and compares different versions as well as provides valuable information on influences, origins and research methods. Tintin and Co., meanwhile, takes a closer look at Herge’s cast of characters.

For my money though, the book to check out is Art of Herge: Inventor of Tintin by Philippe Goddin, which offers scores of early sketches, advertising art, original art, paintings and other illustrations that throw a new light on the man and his work. There are two volumes out now, and I’m hoping a third is on the way soon, as they’ve proven to be quite invaluable.

Avoid

There’s a reason why Tintin in the Congo has (apart from the afore-mentioned Last Gasp release) never been published in America. It’s horribly racist. Indefensibly so, with the boy reporter schooling a bunch of big-lipped, dull-witted savages in basic arithmetic and the glories of occupying power Belgium (he doesn’t treat the surrounding wildlife much better either). It’s an especially egregious attitude considering how Belgium treated its colony and the people who lived there in real life. Herge was deeply embarrassed about the book (which he blamed on his own youth and naiveté), and his later work reveals a great sensitivity and sympathy for other races and cultures that belies Congo’s simple-minded bigotry. Still, it’s not a book for newcomers — especially those with an easily offended sense of moral outrage — to tackle on first blush. In fact, it’s probably a book best saved for last.

Next month: Charles M. Schulz

The title says it all: Artist Murray Groat imagines what it would be like if the master of horror was writing Tintin.

The Spider-Man Room at Villa Comics

If you’ve been thinking of heading to Italy and want to stay somewhere close to the water, Villa Comics has six rooms available with a private bathroom, air conditioning, TV, minibar and a comic book theme.

Located in the Gulf of Policastro – Cilento, “the theme is ‘comics,’” their website reads, “and each room is named after a comic character. There are room in honour of: Little Nemo, Tin Tin, Spiderman, Uncle $crooge, Corto Maltese, Spirit and Dylan Dog. Each room is decorated with a colourful canvas. Whether you’re a comic fan, or not, you’ll be enthralled by the attention to detail and the way in which ‘comics’ seeks to transport its guest into the world of fantasy to which each room has been dedicated.”

The proprietor, Gianfranco Martuscelli, is a cartoonist who wanted to combine his passions for comics and tourism.

Via Joe Keatinge

Tintin in Petra

The Guardian’s Georgia Brown takes a tour of Jordan that is explicitly designed to mirror Tintin’s travels in The Red Sea Sharks:

I was jolted back to the present when our driver suddenly pulled up and started animatedly talking to a group of Bedouin riders blocking the road. I half-imagined we had stumbled into a misadventure. But this was part of our planned adventure – these were our mounts for the next two hours as we recreated Tintin’s escape over the Heisha Mountains en route to Wadi Musa. We donned our own red and white keffiyehs – a playful nod to TT – before setting off along the dusty track, leaving the highway behind.

The tour was led by noted Tintinologist Michael Farr and included a visit to the ancient city of Petra as well as some sidelights on Tintin and his creator, Hergé.

Aboard the CBR mothership, Alex Dueben talks to Black Hole author Charles Burns about his new book X’ed Out, in stores this week from Pantheon. And by the sound of it, the book — the first in a trilogy — is thoroughly indebted to Belgian comics master Hergé’s timeless Tintin tales, from the cover to the coloring to the format itself:

There’s certainly a very strong Herge influence. If you just think of the Franco-Belgian style of creating comic albums in that format, the way those European make them which is the 64 pages, 48 pages. A hardbound albums with continuing characters. I was one of those rare kids of my generation who grew up reading Tintin and it had a very profound effect on me, so this is the way that I can kind of reflect on that and play with some of those ideas.

[...]

“Black Hole” was always conceived of as being a book that would be all collected together. I’m not conceiving of this as, “Here’s three books that will eventually be collected into one book.” When I get interviewed by the French and Belgian press, I won’t be answering this question, because it’s a different tradition. I’m kind of emulating that tradition by doing a series of books in this manner. For example, when I was doing a signing in Southern France, there was someone who came up to me and who explained that he was really hesitant to buy “Black Hole” for a long time because it just seemed too foreign to him, this idea of this big volume. He wasn’t used to that idea of the graphic novel format, whereas now, it’s really been assimilated over there and popular over there as well. Here, the questions I get asked are, “Gee, this seems like a really slender volume for a graphic novel.” It’s not trying to pass itself off as a big graphic novel. It’s a different style of storytelling.

Unfortunately, Hergé passed away before he could ever release a graphic album in which he processed the influence of Charles Burns. Too bad — I would have liked to have seen Captain Haddock grow a small but strangely erotic vestigial tail.

Brightest Day #7 (August's top-selling comic)

Retailing | Laura Hudson surveys a handful of retailers about what part higher cover prices may have played in August’s plummeting comics sales. “This summer has underperformed, and I think [the $3.99 price point] is a big part of it,” says Chris Rosa of Meltdown Comics in Los Angeles, “but also I think the lack of an event and the fact that the big books at both [companies] are extended denouements to events. There’s nothing really inspiring people to run out to the stores. People are tired of buying four Avengers titles at $3.99 a pop.” [Comics Alliance]

Publishing | Tom Mason looks at the return of Atlas Comics: “If you were 13 years-old in 1975 when the original books were out, you’d be 48 today. In other words, the age of the average direct market fanboy. But in order for these new books to succeed, they’d have to appeal beyond nostalgia because with most Marvel and DC comics at $4.00 a pop, you’ve got to have something special and excellent to lure some of those buyers into your own circus tent.” [Comix 411]

Retailing | Johanna Draper Carlson offers advice for aspiring comics retailers. [Comics Worth Reading]

Detective Comics #871

Creators | Scott Snyder discusses American Vampire and his upcoming run on Detective Comics in an interview from Comic-Con International: “… I want it to be back to basics and have it be anchored in Gotham. Batman solving mysteries as the greatest detective in the world. I wanted it to be street level crime, a couple new villains that are a little bit above the sidewalk level, but at the same time, it’s going to focus on Batman solving crime in Gotham using new tech. It will be old fashioned in terms of its format, but high tech in terms of his gadgets for a new twist.” [AICN]

Creators | Alex Deuben interviews Dame Darcy and Dan Goldman. [Suicide Girls]

Creators | Gerard Way talks briefly about The Umbrella Academy. [The Star]

Tintin

Comics | Claudia Massie details why she loves Hergé: “The visual style of the Tintin books is one that looks enormously simple: it is rather muted in colour; the black lines are neat and constant. The predominant tones are those of the up-market paint company Farrow & Ball and dominated by gentle browns, yellows, blues and greens. Most frames restrict their colour spectrum to just two or three different tones and. unlike some other comic styles, much importance is given to empty space, meaning Hergé is happy to offer a blank sky or wall as a backdrop to a small detail of action or expression. Not for Tintin the graphic pyrotechnics of Marvel Comics; our Belgian boy hero operates against a tranquil canvas of meticulous order.” [The Spectator]

Comics | Author David Lipsky sings the praises of Runaways, Vol. 1, by Brian K. Vaughan and Adrian Alphona: “… I bear the books a grudge. Marvel collected them — because their biggest fans were female teenagers — in tiny digests with girlish covers that were intensely embarrassing to read on the subway. I kept locking eyes with people I could swear had just shaken their heads. And, alright, I fell a little in love with one of the female leads: the great flying beauty Karolina Dean. Who turned out to be gay. A hardship I’d steered clear of in real life, and there I was stumbling into it in a damned graphic novel (OK, comic book). Runaways — while a consistently brilliant reading experience — has been an embarrassment festival. Way beyond a guilty pleasure. It has been a fount of guilt, awkwardness and grave personal doubts. Which is to say, it turned me teenaged again.” [NPR]