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Hi there. Over on Art Info there’s a report on the Brussels Antiques and Fine Art Fair, which included a few comic art dealers who commanded some very high prices for original work by Moebius and Milton Caniff. It does seem like prices run higher in Europe overall, and based purely on my conversations with various U.S. galleries and dealers, a tremendous amount of non-hero based comic art (i.e. underground old and new) is sold to European collectors. 180K may seem like a lot in the comics racket, but it’s cheap compared to a masterpiece by a comparable contemporary artist (let’s say, for the sake of argument, Ed Ruscha. Ignore dopey headline.

Speaking of dopey: Dear Chris Arrant at Robot 6: It’s not nice to quote from my article without attribution (that is, directly swiping from an interview I did). Here’s the piece I wrote (with its own dopey headline) about one aspect of Mike Kelley’s current show at Gagosian L.A. Mike’s work couldn’t have less to do with Lichtenstein, but such is life in the dopey-verse.

UPDATE: Robot 6 updated the post appropriately.

Oh yeah, and Frank would like to point out that Dave Sim responded to Jog at length in the comments section yesterday. Check it out.

Happy Friday.

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If you haven’t already heard about this, you need to know: Occasional Comics Comics contributor Bill Kartalopolous has curated an amazing-sounding show, which will hold its opening reception at Parsons tonight. The show features the works of such artists as Winsor McCay, Tony Sarg, Saul Steinberg, Mariscal, Richard McGuire, Paper Rad, and Kevin Huizenga. If you live in the New York area, you should go.

Full info here.

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Comic Book Heaven. Been catching up on some different comic book series in the last month since X-mas. Here’s a little rant on comic books – the old fashioned kind. Here’s the list:

Crickets #3
Uptight #4
The Bulletproof Coffin #6
King City #12
Neonomicon #3
Deadpool MAX #3

I finally read The Bulletproof Coffin #6. The finale. I gotta say that I liked it. But I’m such a fan of this series that I don’t expect you to believe me. Is this propaganda? Did Kane and Hine pay me to write a five-star review? Something to be Google searched and referenced in some futurepast? Read More…

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Every time Art Spiegelman wins a public honour, a familiar cry can be heard among some comics critics. “Oh, no,” the lament goes, “why is Spiegelman winning praise again? He only has one good book to his name, Maus? He’s overrated.”

These frequently expressed opinions are profoundly wrongheaded. Even if, for the sake of argument, we accept the claim that Spiegelman is a one book author, that doesn’t diminish his stature: Ralph Ellison was also a one book author: aside from Invisible Man, Ellison’s legacy consists of an inferior posthumous novel and a scattering of strong essays. All of Flannery O’Connor’s worthwhile fiction can be found in single Library of America volume. Emily Bronte’s oeuvre could also be easily confined to a thick but still manageable volume needed to gather together Wuthering Heights and her poetry. Yet is anyone really willing to gainsay the legacy of Ellison, O’Connor, or Bronte?

But of course Spiegelman has more than one book to his credit. To my mind Breakdowns is a pivotal a book in the history of comics as Maus. Just as the more famous holocaust memoir was a springboard for graphic novels and historical/political narratives in comic book form, Breakdowns is a wellspring for comics formalism, a vital and still underdeveloped and underappreciated tradition.  It’s harder to gauge the importance of In the Shadow of No Towers but only because we’re all too close to the events of 9/11, and our possessive memories of that trauma still hinder any predominately aesthetic response to such a work. All I can say about In the Shadow of No Towers is that it articulated something I distinctly remember about the aftermath of 9/11 which almost every other account avoids: the frenzied and baffled anger of the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks. It’s a book whose stature will rise once we are far enough away from 9/11 to confront it.

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Friend of Comics Comics Ryan Standfest is putting together an anthology called Black Eye which will “collect original narrative comics, art and essays by 42 international artists and writers, all focused on the expression of black, dark or absurdist humor.” All the art and writing for the book is done and now Ryan is raising money for the printing. He has a kickstart page devoted to this purpose, which can be accessed here. This page also has more information about the project, including the rewards that will be given to funders such as a limited edition of the publication. I’m involved with Black Eye but even if I weren’t I would say that this is a project worth supporting: Ryan has a great curatorial sensibility and the tradition of visually shocking material that he’s gathering together is an important one in comics history, although currently underrated in our fey and sensitive age.

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Of note are [Milo Manara‘s] two collaborations with Federico Fellini (a comic book enthusiast and a cartoonist himself), both in the director’s final years. The first, Viaggio a Tulum, appeared in 1986; the second and final one was supposed to be a completed version of Il viaggio di G. Mastorna, the movie Fellini had attempted to make during most of his career (the autobiographical 8 1/2 refers to the director’s failure to start the production of this very film).

Curiously, due to Fellini’s illness and a bizarre printing accident when the comic was serialized in the magazine il Grifo, even the comic book version was left unfinished. The next two installments would have told of Mastorna’s travels in the afterlife, but due to a printing mistake, the word END appeared at the bottom of the last page of the first episode. The always superstitious Fellini then decided it was a good place to stop and withdrew from the project. Il viaggio di G. Mastorna is to this day considered by many Italian film critics the most famous never-filmed movie in the history of cinema.

—Simone Castaldi, Drawn and Dangerous: Italian Comics of the 1970s and 1980s

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Here we see Steve Ditko in as close to a conciliatory mood as his solo work tends to get. It’s part of a Heads strip from the 1985 comic Charlton Action: Featuring Static #11, an all-Ditko special facilitated in the twilight of the Charlton press with editor Robin Snyder. As part of its introduction to the Ditko Series, “a view of art, man, and life, a look at values, conflicts, right and wrong, and justice,” the artist’s Heads — at least as prominent to me as his hands, because what is the Avenging World if not wrinkled with the sweat and agony of compromised individual principles? — seems content at the moment to merely suggest possibilities, with the idealistic middle head, though closest to Ditko’s own disposition, given a kind of daffy eyes-to-heaven grin. Nonetheless, the rest of the issue proves an adequate guide to the artist’s preferences. Read More…

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Back in August of last year, my friend Sebastian Demain sent me an email that said he was opening a gallery in Los Angeles. He and his business partner Ethan had rented a multi-use space where they could have art shows, performances, happenings, whatever. It’s a long corridor of a space in a basement – perfect for a gallery.

So I was lucky enough to be invited to have a show there. Sebastian asked if I had any paintings that looked like my comic Chimera. He said he liked my “classical” style. The inaugural show of the gallery was a Lee “Scratch” Perry painting exhibition in November and then there was a Nazi Knife group show in December. I was to be the third show. Felt like good company.

Dem Passwords, the name of the gallery is derived from a Lee Perry prose poem (a 3000 page Word document) where Lee writes about “dem passwords” one needs to know to get into places of power – of Black power. It’s pretty heavy and reflects the gallery’s many faces. CF played a show there. Coppertone. Pink Dollaz. It’s already become quite a scene. I mean Jerry Heller was at my opening so that should give you an idea of how strikingly L.A. this spot is. But more on that later. Lemme get back to my story. Read More…

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Let’s start this meeting of the CCCBC by pointing newcomers to previous entries so as to get up to speed, and then leap right in to a SPOILER-filled synopsis: Read More…

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Weather conditions are delaying today’s post, but something will be up later. In the meantime, check out photos from Frank’s show.