Archive for March, 2009

Swiss Trips


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Sunday, March 29, 2009


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Well, two-thirds of Comics Comics will soon be in glorious Lucerne, Switzerland for the Fumetto Festival. That’s right, I’ll be there with Frank Santoro as well as Lauren Weinstein, C.F., Yuichi Yokoyama and others. PictureBox itself has a nice exhibition of work by these artists and the festival sounds pretty great in general, with shows and/or talks by Mark Newgarden, Mat Brinkman, Blutch, Shary Boyle and others. Frank and Lauren are already there and apparently Frank and Blutch had a drawing contest of some kind, resulting in a nicely Swiss “even draw”. Anyhow, I’ll be there from April 1 to April 6. Hey Europeans, come see us!

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Has This Been Posted Everywhere Already?


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Thursday, March 26, 2009


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If not, it will be soon:

Big Questions Big Numbers 3!

Of related interest: a big chunk of the issue’s original script.

And Frank discusses the earlier issues.

(Thanks, Sean H.)

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Wally Wood Question


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Monday, March 23, 2009


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(Unrelated eye-catching image by Ethan D’Ercole)

A question for the peanut gallery: There’s a great two-page Wally Wood comic from EC that has him describing the worlds he draws and ends with a self portrait in the last panel. Does anyone remember where and when that first appeared? I can’t find my source for it.

Thanks.

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Modern Decor


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Sunday, March 22, 2009


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Here’s a fantastic photo of a Jiggs and Maggie rug made for George McManus. It’s from the legendary Circulation magazine. The full article is a good read. Thanks to collector kingpin Warren Bernard for letting me swipe this.

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Kyle Baker juvenilia


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Wednesday, March 18, 2009


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I found this Kyle Baker comic in the “Ten for a Dollar” box at my secret spot here in Pittsburgh. I had never seen it before. From October 1985. Published by Lodestone. Straight outta Brooklyn, NY. Sort of a War comic, it made me laugh cuz I thought about how Baker is doing Special Forces these days, some 20 years later.

Just wanted to share, I’ve got nothing really insightful to say about it. I’m just annoyed. Kyle prolly just drew it in straight pen, no pencils. It has that “first take” look about it. And it’s still so good. Aarrggghh. It’s not fair. How old was he then? 19? Geez.

Too bad he didn’t do the cover, tho. Yikes.



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La-Z-Blog


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Monday, March 16, 2009


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1. I reviewed Amanda Vähämäki’s The Bun Field for the April/May issue of Bookforum, which is impressively packed with comics-related material in general, including Ben Schwartz on Harvey Kurtzman, CC contributor Joe McCulloch on Yoshihiro Tatsumi, and Nicole Rudick on Beasts!

2. Gary Panter animated, kinda.

3. Pretty awesome Milt Gross-created book reviews in comics form. I’ve never seen or heard of these before.

4. Not comics: The only review of Watchmen (the movie) you need. (The author of that also said some other stuff worth reading.)

5. Oh, and various prominent comics bloggers have weighed in on the new Cold Heat: here, here, here, and here.

UPDATE: I forgot one.

6. An interview with Ted May, partly re Injury 3. I’m pretty excited to see that issue, not only because I really liked the first two, but because CC designer Mike Reddy drew one of the stories in it. Mike showed me a few of the pages, and they were great, and I can’t wait to see the whole thing. Ok, I’m done now.

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The Best of 1968, or, Scorpio Rising


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Saturday, March 14, 2009


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Since just about all the best of 2008 lists have been presented now I thought I’d rip off follow in Dan’s footsteps, and share the “outstanding graphic stories” of forty years ago, as presented in Graphic Story Magazine 11:

“Who is Scorpio?”
Written, told and drawn by Jim Steranko
Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. 1, June 1968

“Mind Blast”
Written, told and drawn by George Metzger
Graphic Story Magazine 9, 1968

“Whatever Happened to Scorpio?”
Written and told by Jim Steranko
Drawn by Jim Steranko, with John Tartaglione
Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. 5, October 1968

Honorable Mentions:

Equal Time for Pogo
Written, told and drawn by Walt Kelly
Simon & Schuster, 1968

“The Pipsqueak Papers”
Written, told and drawn by Wallace Wood
Witzend 5, 1968

“Dark Moon Rose, Hell Hound Kill”
Written and told by Jim Steranko
Drawn by Jim Steranko, with Dan Adkins
Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. 3, August 1968

“Today Earth Died”
Written and told by Jim Steranko
Drawn by Jim Steranko, with Joe Sinnott
Strange Tales 168, May 1968

“The Junkwaffel Invasion of Kruppenny Island”
Written, told and drawn by Vaughn Bode
Witzend 5, 1968

“The Adventures of Fritz”
Written, told and drawn by Robert Crumb
Cavalier, February through October, 1968

Another big year for Steranko, obviously. It’s kind of fun to see the undergrounds start to sneak their way onto the list…

Graphic Story 11 is a terrific issue otherwise, too, by the way, with a great Will Gould interview, and even a fan letter from the infamous Dr. Wertham himself, congratulating the fanzine on its recent interview with Alex Toth, and attempting to claim the artist as a fellow spirit:

The point that interests me most, of course, is what he says about the artist not showing the realistic details of horror in a story, but having it take place offstage, as it were, as far as the picture is concerned. I agree with him entirely on that … because I have found out through long clinical studies that it may have adverse effects on the immature mind. For that I have been blamed often, and I’m glad to read the technical opinion of Alex Toth.

This didn’t prevent the editors from publishing a lengthy, vehement denunciation of Wertham on the preceding pages, of course.

Which is awesome, and one reason I like reading old magazines.

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Cold Heat is BACK!


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Saturday, March 7, 2009


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That’s right, you heard me. Bloodied and battered we rise up with Castle to lead us! Frank Santoro and Ben Jones have unleashed a brand new issue — 48 pages, full color — called Cold Heat 5/6. Just 100 copies were made, and it’s only available online. So don’t dilly dally — get on with it! Frank has some fine words about the issue on his blog, as well as incredible original art for sale done with Jim Rugg. And you buy the issue itself at PictureBox!

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More Information Please: The Curious Case of “Boody”


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Wednesday, March 4, 2009


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I should start by saying that I’m thrilled that Craig Yoe’s Boody brings such a nice quantity of superlative material by Boody Rogers into print. After a sampling in RAW and, more recently, my own Art Out of Time, it’s time for everyone else to read more of this great cartoonist. So, I feel like a schmuck when I say the book itself, despite the usual fantastic production job by Paul Baresh, and fine design by Jacob Covey, is a disappointment. Ten years ago I suppose it would have been OK, but in these days of books like Patrick Rosenkranz’s masterful Greg Irons retrospective, Paul Karasik’s personal, insightful Fletcher Hanks book, and the whole body of work by Jeet Heer for Gasoline Alley and Little Orphan Annie, Yoe’s treatment of the material is just not acceptable.

The introduction to the book is written with a blend of fannish glee (“I’m sure as shit”) and oddball imagery (“the stories were as wild as an acre of snakes”) that deflates the comics to which it refers. When work is as “wild” as Rogers’, it’s not necessary to go the extra mile with the prose. It’s self evident. What we need is cogent analysis and solid history, both of which are sorely lacking. I want to mention a few things:

Yoe notes (with good reason, I’m sure, but since no sources are listed, it’s hard to say) that Eric Stanton was, at one point, Rogers’ assistant, but we don’t know when, where, or how, exactly. Stanton later (it must’ve been later, as Rogers left comics in the early ’50s) shared a studio with Steve Ditko. So here we have the definitive bondage/s&m cartoonist/illustrator of the latter part of the 20th century linked to two of our finest cartoonists. But that barely merits a line (and the Ditko connection isn’t even mentioned) in Yoe’s introduction. Stanton could be a hugely important factor here, linking two sui generis cartoonists — if he knows more, Yoe isn’t telling.

Yoe also claims Rogers was a great letterer, but it’s clear from reading the book that later in Rogers’ career he switched to a letraset of some kind, and his unique handwriting vanishes. Why? Also, despite Dudley’s presence in the book, that 3-issue comic book never merits a mention in the intro. What was the nature of Rogers’ work with Zack Mosely on Smilin’ Jack? I mean, when you read the strip you see Rogers all over it, so how did that partnership work? And what effect did Bill Holman have on Rogers? Throughout Babe and Sparky Watts one sees Holman-esque gags: characters in picture frames freely move in the background; signs on the street have their own gags: it’s a loopy, jam-packed menagerie of jokes. But this was not Roger’s invention, and is very much linked to his time in Chicago and his friendship with Holman, just as his action/adventure stuff is liked to Mosely. Finally, and perhaps most interestingly, Rogers, like Gould and Holman, and later the Hairy Who, belongs to a grand Chicago tradition of the comic grotesque. It’s a loose aesthetic but certainly the distortions at play in Rogers, Gould and Holman are not unique to them: they’re very much informed by that city and it’s own aesthetic vibe. Rogers, coming from Texas (and here we could link him to other Texan yarn-spinners and imagists gone urban and psychedelic like Gary Panter, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Gilbert Shelton, et al) also had that distinct “hillbilly” gift for punning and dialogue. Put that together with the Chicago aesthetic and you have a potent cultural/visual mix (as, for example, Panter combined it with LA and Tokyo). I’m not making these points to reduce Rogers or somehow put a formula on him, only to note that there is a broader art, comics, and cultural context at play that Yoe ignores.

And we’re also missing the basic context for Rogers’ career. The book lacks even a starter bibliography or timeline for Rogers, leaving the full arc of his time in comics a mystery. When, precisely, did he work for Mosely? When was Deadwood Gulch published? When was his final work with Columbia Comics? Hmmm? Yoe repeatedly references having gone through Rogers’ personal papers, finding photos, artwork, etc., and in his own bio refers to himself as the “Indiana Jones of comics”. Well, um, I don’t get it: What’s the point in mentioning you’ve found all this stuff if you don’t use any of it to illuminate your subject’s life and work? Or if you barely show any of it?

And then there’s the running order of the book. There is no table of contents, so it’s a little hard to navigate, but from what I can tell, many of the stories are run out of sequence. For example, the book begins with a story from Babe 1. Then the second to last story in the book is a continuation of that first story from Babe 1. But before we’ve gotten to that story, we’ve read a story from Babe #4 that references events in the second part of Babe 1. Still with me? It’s tough going. In between, natch, there are stories from Dudley and Sparky Watts, also in no particular order. Why not run stories in sequence? Or at least separate out the characters so we can better understand his distinct bodies of work. As is, there’s no rhyme or reason.

Look, Rogers made great work and Yoe has done a service just by compiling some of it. I know how these books can go, and how difficult it is to achieve a balance between scholarship and reprinting, especially with a limited page count. And I hate when people impose their own unreasonable expectations on someone else’s work. Yoe clearly was not interested in writing the kind of text that, say Heer or Rosenkranz might have, but that’s not really an excuse. These days, with all the resources and writers out there, an editor has a responsibility to his subject to make a clear, cogent case for the history and importance of the material at hand, even if it means letting someone else take a crack at it. So, I’m sure choices were made. I just happen to disagree with them, and I think the things left out of the book — basic information, in fact — ultimately sinks it as a useful document. I wish that Yoe had looked past his obvious love of the material and towards preserving Rogers’ legacy in a more articulate and informed manner.

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The Hewll


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Tuesday, March 3, 2009


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(Sing to Denim and Leather)
Markers and Pencils, brought us all together! It was you that set the spirit free!

Okay so it doesn’t rhyme that well. Still, the idea is there. With all the full-color printing and web publishing out there I’d think there would be more full-color comics made these days with just color markers and pencils. When Deadline went full color in the early ’90s, it was amazing to watch Jamie Hewlett just go bananas with the color art. He utilized every tool in the box to create art on a board (check out the crop lines on the image second from the top). It’s funny how this fresh approach is sort of out-dated in the current Photoshop era. Anyways. Go to the art store you lazy bastards, buy a new set of markers and a lay-out pad and turn off the computer.

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