This endorsement of the great Patrick Smith‘s Vector Park. Patrick has recently been making some terrific paintings, as Sammy Harkham pointed out a while back.
Here’s one of them:
This is all in the interest of having an extremely roundabout and strained excuse for reminding everyone that Sammy is collaborating with Guy Davis on a really amazing cover for the next issue of Comics Comics. Get psyched.
If you enjoyed Peter Bagge‘s essay on Spider-Man in the second issue of Comics Comics (which was partially inspired by the time he spent creating Megalomaniacal Spider-Man), you might also like this page from his aborted shelved* Incorrigible Hulk, which is currently making the internet rounds.
(via Again With the Comics)
*improved word choice stolen from Dirk
THE BELIEVER: What’s it like spending all this time mining your adolescence to find the hardest, darkest, maybe the funniest stories? Is this a way of purging these experiences? Or making sense of them?
LAUREN WEINSTEIN: Even if you’re pulling up old memories, they’re completely unreliable. I remember running into this guy before our ten-year high-school reunion. He said, “Oh, man, what really destroyed high school for me was that I could never date anyone because I wrote that really bad, hyperconservative op-ed piece about how women should be barefoot and tied to the stove.” And I thought, That’s not why no one dated you. But that was his story. In general, everyone’s got their own issues in high school, and they’re not such a big deal to other people.
That was Dan’s subject line for the e-mail in which he sent me this.
Because the print run of the second issue of Comics Comics has sold out, we are now making it available for free downloading over at the sidebar.
So if you missed out on getting your own copy (and unfortunately, this one really does work best in its oversize paper form), you can now finally enjoy:
Peter Bagge on Spider-Man!
An interview with PShaw! (He has posted a nice color variation of this issue’s cover on his own site, by the way.)
Part one of a far-too-long essay on Steve Gerber‘s cult ’70s Marvel comics (Howard the Duck, Omega the Unknown, etc.)! (By the way, don’t forget to read the article’s accidentally excised footnotes.)
Kevin Nowlan on color separations!
Dan on Dave Sim‘s Collected Letters 2004!
Mark Newgarden on Michael Kupperman!
A beautiful “perpetual calendar” by the legendary Justin Green!
Comics and cartoons by PShaw, Matthew Thurber, and Lauren R. Weinstein!
And more!
P.S. When you’re done, drop us a line. There’s still time to make the letters page for issue three.
From Dan’s press release:
It’s the rock-n-art event of the year! Or at least the month!
Yes, PictureBox, together with Issue Project Room, presents an evening of book/art related entertainment.
Musical sets by:
–Gary Panter and Devin Flynn
This is Gary’s first live show since before you were born. You know Cream? It’ll be like that.
–Matthew Thurber/Ambergris
Thurber put together a rock combo for this one. You know Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd? It’ll be like that.
And films by Amy Lockhart! Do you know goodness? It will be so.
All happening at 8 pm, April 18th.
Issue Project Room
400 Carroll Street
between Bond and Nevins
Brooklyn, NY 11231
Telephone: 718-330-0313
$10
Come rock with us. (Oh and posters by Gary will be for sale, as well as other goodies!)
If you want to avoid (mild) spoilers, don’t read Sean T. Collins’s brief review of Cold Heat #4 before the actual issue. But when you do read it, you will know that he is right.
Kurt Vonnegut, who sometimes wrote what he called “comic books without pictures.”
(Which isn’t strictly accurate, I don’t think, but now’s not the time for arguing.)
UPDATE: The Daily Cross Hatch has some short tributes from cartoonists.
All right, Dan’s in France, and I haven’t read any comics that have inspired me to write in what seems like forever. Which means it’s half-assed quiz time. My high-school German is extremely rusty. Have any of you ever heard of this book? Because if this description is correct (“a pseudo-art-historical treatise on the paintings found in the backgrounds of Donald Duck comics”), then I am curious.
In other Euro news, many of you are probably already aware of it, but I’ve really been enjoying the Danish metabunker blog. The long interviews with rappers and the like I mostly skip, but Matthias Wivel writes very intelligently about comics.
