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I’ve just returned from Tokyo, where I had a whirlwind adventure in Manga and art. I’ll have some very special related announcements soon. In the meantime, as Tim has noted, Comics Comics 2 is out and about. Look for it in a store near you, and in the Diamond catalog for February shipping along with issue 1. Also, I’m proud to announce the release of Cold Heat 2, which will be available through Diamond in January, and monthly thereafter.

Anyhow, Cold Heat remains a 12-issue series by Ben Jones and Frank Santoro about Castle, an 18-year old Ninja. It features truly groundbreaking concepts in story and art, and also every issue contains a one-page piece of fiction by Tim. Below is an excellent description by Bill Boichel, CC 1 contributor and the owner of our favorite comic book store. Copacetic Comics. Cold Heat is available from PictureBox Inc.

Cold Heat #2
By Ben Jones and Frank Santoro
Picking up where the first issue left off, Cold Heat #2 revs it up a few notches and takes us on a whirlwind ride through the dis-united states of the disturbed American psyche. Series artist, Frank Santoro once again refuses to play it safe. This time around he pulls out all the stops and takes the chances that most other artists wouldn’t take even if they could. Leaping into the artistic no man’s land between the well established borders of pre-existent genres, Santoro combines the propulsive narratives of mainstream American heroic adventure
comics, the exaggerated expressiveness of Japanese manga, and the naivete of self-published autobiographical comics with his own experimental ideas to create a totally unique comics cocktail that will knock you for a loop. Cold Heat takes the outside in and then brings the inside out—demonstrating how our internalization of international affairs creates monsters in our minds that are every bit as dangerous as anything we’ll meet on the street—and by so doing helps us see our place in and find our way through the mess of our world.

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Well, it’s finally here in all its glory. The second issue of Comics Comics debuted this weekend at SPX, and it’s a pretty terrific bargain.

We’ve switched to a much larger size—the second issue is a broadsheet—and though we’ll probably have it available for downloading fairly soon, this is one you’re going to want to own and hold in your hands, if only for the beautiful, giant Justin Green “Perpetual Calendar” on the back cover.

Incidentally, I was surprised at how many people at SPX (ostensibly big fans of “alternative” comics) didn’t recognize Justin Green‘s name. All I can say to that is that he basically invented the modern conception of autobiographical comics, and he is easily one of the dozen or so most important comic book creators of the last fifty years. If you haven’t read his Binky Brown stories, you should buy them and read them immediately. Seriously. Don’t buy a single other comic until you’ve found the Binky Brown Sampler. It is better than anything else you could possibly be considering.

Of course, Green’s not the only contributor in this issue. Did you ever wonder how Peter “Hate” Bagge really feels about Spider-Man, and about the single issue of that superhero’s adventures he created for Marvel? You can find out in Comics Comics #2!

Do you like the strange and wonderful work of Matthew Thurber, recently named minicomics artist of the year by the Comics Journal? You’ll read more here, in Comics Comics #2!

Also, Frank “Storeyville” Santoro discusses the lost art of color separation with mainstream legend Kevin Nowlan!

Comics and a very rare interview from our cover artist, the enigmatic PShaw!

Dan on Dave Sim, Mark Newgarden on Michael Kupperman, gag cartoons by Lauren R. Weinstein, and the first installment in an epic, New Yorker-style (ha) exploration of the 1970s Marvel stories of Steve Gerber!

Does YOUR favorite store carry Comics Comics?

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I’ve never read a single issue of Wizard or Comic Foundry, and after watching this, I have no plans to change my reading habits. All the same, if you don’t mind irrevocably losing eight minutes of your life to something completely and utterly pointless, it is hilarious. Ly depressing.

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A few months ago I was asked by Adam Baumgold to curate a show of female cartoonists at his gallery. The show is set for a September 6th opening. I’m normally averse to comics shows and particularly to gender-specific shows of anything, but, given the lack of recognition given to all of the below artists, it seemed like it might be a good idea. There’s been a lot of hoopla about the lack of women in the Masters of American Comics exhibition opening in New York in September, most of which I think is misguided. There aren’t any because, for most of the century comics were created almost exclusively by men. There’s no way around that. But, by opening my little show at the same time as the Masters show, hopefully audiences can see that, yes, female cartoonists do indeed exist. In fact, I’d argue that between them Lauren Weinstein, Carol Tyler, Megan Kelso and Renee French probably released the best comics of the year so far. My choices are highly subjective–I simply based it on who I feel is doing the most visually inventive work at the moment, with a bit of an anchor in the history as well. There are tons of artists excluded, but, well, that’s my job. Anyhow, what follows below is the press release for the show and a few images as well.

Telling Tales: Contemporary Women Cartoonists
Curated by Dan Nadel

Genvieve Castree
Roz Chast
Jessica Ciocci
Julie Doucet
Debbie Drechsler
Anke Feuchtenberger
Renee French
Phoebe Gloeckner
Megan Kelso
Aline Kominsky-Crumb
Amy Lockhart
Diane Noomin
Jenni Rope
Dori Seda
Anna Sommer
Carol Tyler
Lauren Weinstein

Adam Baumgold Gallery is pleased to present Telling Tales: Contemporary Women Cartoonists. Telling Tales is a subjective look at the last four decades of comics drawn by women.

Long a boys club, comics have, since the rise of the late 1960s underground, opened up to women as a medium like any other. Unfortunately, most current historical surveys are notable not only for the absence of women artists but also the absence of women as protagonists or even subjects in the medium itself. And while a gender-based exhibition might marginalize women even further, Telling Tales seems necessary as a slight corrective to the usual historical narrative.

The seventeen artists included here were chosen for their unique points of view and their idiosyncratic approaches to cartooning. All are free from the usual stylizations of comics, making stories that rely as much on line and mark as narrative and dialogue. Each artist has made an indelible mark on the medium, including Aline Kominsky Crumb, who helped revolutionize comics drawing with her scratchy line and brutal abstractions; Debbie Dreschler brings an unthinkably dense patterning to the medium; while Renee French’s lush pencils convey meaning in each stroke. Younger artists, such as Lauren Weinstein and Amy Lockhart, have appropriated old genres, such as confessional and superhero comics, and used them for their own purposes. The larger story of these artists is swiftly evolving and Telling Tales will be just the first chapter of this long artistic narrative.

Amy Lockhart:

Megan Kelso:

Debbie Dreschler:

Anna Sommer:

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Superheroes and social issues usually don’t mix well. Whether it’s Superman crying because he’s unable to prevent famine in Africa (which actually seems like the kind of problem he could solve if he really wanted to), or the Justice League coming face to face with the fact that being raped by a supervillain can turn a woman into a psychopathic killer (for those who don’t follow superhero comics, that story was actually published, just last year, as DC’s flagship title), their engagement with complicated “adult” problems is generally puerile, hystrionic, and more likely to belittle the issues involved than to clarify them.

This kind of superficial treatment of complicated ideas in superhero comics saw its apotheosis in the 1970s, when writer Dennis O’Neil and artist Neal Adams (who currently moonlights as a plate tectonics skeptic) teamed up for a series of Green Arrow/Green Lantern adventures, with the heroes joining forces to confront such social ills as racism and drug addiction.

These stories are still celebrated in some circles today as somehow breaking important ground, though they are basically the embarrasingly dated equivalents to the “very special episodes” of bad sitcoms.

Basically, the quest to depict superheroes as “all grown up” is just a bad idea at the outset—so far, to my knowledge, this artistic strategy has worked exactly once. (And no, I don’t consider The Dark Knight Returns to be “grown-up”; that book works best when the reader is fifteen years old. And there’s nothing necessarily wrong with that.) Superheroes are the vehicle for adolescent power fantasies, more or less by definition.

Which is not to say that the superhero story is a bankrupt genre or that its tropes are incapable of being used to great effect; it’s just that like any other genre, superhero stories have built-in limitations. Steve Ditko and Stan Lee’s early Spider-Man stories do a remarkable job within those limits, as do Frank Miller’s later Daredevil comics, at a slightly more sophisticated level.

(More obliquely, Chris Ware has shown that the iconic value of Superman can be used quite effectively to very different purposes in his early Jimmy Corrigan stories, and more obliquely still, Ursula K. Le Guin has shown the very complicated and profound ramifications of power fantasy in her original Earthsea trilogy, despite the fact that it features wizards instead of super-powered aliens. (Anyone interested in the potential triumphs and pitfalls inherent to fantasy for young adults should pick up a copy of her essay collection The Language of the Night posthaste.))

I’ve rambled on far too long already, so I’m going to end this here for now. So far I’ve just been leading up to what I really want to talk about, a sixty-year-old superhero comic that deals extremely successfully with a grave political problem. On Wednesday, I’ll reveal the masterpiece in question. If you can’t wait (and I’m sure most of you can’t, this is so exciting), I’ll leave you with a one-word hint: Shazam.

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In this week’s issue of the trade newspaper Advertising Age, “Media Guy” Simon Dumenco has astutely chosen this publication as his current “Pop Pick”.

‘Comics Comics’ ($5 by Internet order) is a new mini-mag that “aims to document contemporary and past comics, from a pluralistic, affectionate, but critical standpoint.” If that sounds a little heady, well, it is–and things get equally quasi-scholarly at comicscomicsmag.blogspot.com, where you can find loving meditations on the artistry of greats such as Scrooge McDuck father Carl Banks [sic]. But you don’t have to be a comics nerd to get inspired by the beautiful art. … Comics Comics shares creators and contributors with The Ganzfeld, an art annual … that shares a similar passion for thinky illustration. Check out theganzfeld.com and roll your mouse over the letters of the logo to view a supercool animation by Flash genius Patrick Smith. And then amuse yourself further by visiting his web site, vectorpark.com

Now we just sit back and wait for the flood of advertising requests from Courvoisier and Aston Martin, anxious to get in on this whole “graphic novel” craze everyone’s talking about. (Actually, come to think of it, if we were really that smart and marketing-savvy, we should have called the magazine Graphic Novels Graphic Novels.)

Also, sometime soon we will begin presenting actual, not just self-promoting material again. We felt like we needed to give you a chance to catch your breath and rest your mind a little first. We’ll start learning you again but soon.

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Dan hit the big time this weekend, finally recognized for his “comic book guru” status by that noted cartooning periodical, The Washington Post.

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But now we’re pretty tired. Comics Comics was launched with only one actual gun fight along the way. Here is contributing editor Ben Jones’ cartoon impression:

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You’ve read the blog, you’ve absorbed the hype, now it’s time to actually see what Comics Comics is all about. Could Dan be the new generation’s Art Spiegelman?! (Wha’!?) Only one way to find out – come out this weekend and buy all his junk!

This weekend, Comics Comics will debut at the MoCCA Art Festival in New York City’s Puck Building. Stop by and pick up the premiere issue, t-shirts, and the latest PictureBox releases. Many great artists and cartoonists will be at our table throughout the weekend, including Paper Rad, Frank Santoro, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Gary Panter, Matthew Thurber, David Sandlin, Taylor McKimens, and Jonathon Rosen.

Besides the magazine, PictureBox will be releasing:

Two new comic books: Cold Heat #1, by Ben (Paper Rad) Jones & Frank Santoro, and Incanto by Frank Santoro.

Two new books: Gore by Black Dice and Jason Frank Rothenberg, and Me a Mound by Trenton Doyle Hancock.

Jessica (Paper Rad) Ciocci’s limited run artists’ book, Pig Tales.

A series of large offset “posters for your dorm room or crash pad” by Brian Chippendale, Gary Panter, BJ & Frank Santoro.

And of course, Dan’s amazing new anthology, Art Out of Time: Unknown Comics Visionaries 1900-1969, just published by Abrams.

If you can only pick one day to attend, make it Sunday, as Dan will be presenting a slide show based on his book at 4 pm.

(Personally, if I didn’t have to be at the convention all weekend, I’d spend Saturday at the Big Apple Barbecue Block Party in Madison Square Park or the Phil Karlson double feature at the Film Forum. You can do whatever you want.)

Then, this Saturday night, between 7 and 9 pm, join us for our magazine’s launch party at Participant Inc in the Lower East Side.

Beer and other beverages provided.

PARTICIPANT INC
95 Rivington Street
NYC, NY 10002

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Bryan Munn was recently kind enough to link to this site, and he had some kind things to say, for which I’d like to thank him.

He also took issue with my invocation of Robert Louis Stevenson in the post about Carl Barks:

Barks did manage some interesting social satire and his storytelling and dialogue are very sharp, but Robert Louis Stevenson? Maybe it’s just because one of my old perfessors was an editor of the Complete RLS, but I don’t see the complexity of plot or theme in the decidedly adult work of Stevenson mirrored in Barks. Now when we compare Stevenson’s drawing to Barks…

I have two quick things to say in response.

One, I did write, “in some ways”…

And two, I did not intend to compare the complexity of Barks’ work directly to Stevenson’s, which is why I wrote, “In some ways, Barks’ place [italics added] in comics is similar to Robert Louis Stevenson’s in English literature.” Meaning that the grace and apparent ease they display in their story-telling leads many to misunderstand or underestimate their work.

I certainly didn’t want to imply that Barks’ duck stories are as complex as Stevenson’s writings. Though I’m not altogether sure that they aren’t. I’d have to think about it a lot more than I have heretofore.

In any case, generally, I’m not sure if it is really wise (or fair) to directly compare the work of two artists working in such different media. Making comics is different than writing prose, and the techniques involved (and the responses generated) are probably too divergent to make a one-to-one comparison. What they are trying to accomplish is simply too different. Likewise (to use a different art as an example), it would probably not be very fruitful to take, say, Goya’s war prints, set them side-by-side with Ambrose Bierce’s Civil War stories, and proclaim, “Goya’s more complicated”, or vice versa.

Well, it’s all too complicated for a quick post like this one. Food for thought, as they say, and thanks again to Munn.

UPDATE: No one say anything about the (unwise, unfair) Hergé/Tati thing below. I don’t want to hear it. Just pretend it never happened.