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Today Tom Spurgeon offers an excellent explanation of the appeal of Wally Wood. I remain fascinated by the late work of Wood. His and Ogden Whitney’s work have occupied my brain for the better part of a year now. Both create such odd, tactile visual spaces and both, in some ways, are under-appreciated. The recent biography of Wood, Wally’s World, by Steve Starger and J. David Spurlock does little to remedy that. It’s a slapdash affair that at times borders on incoherence. There’s a great book to be written on Wood–it just doesn’t exist yet. In the meantime, check out Tom’s succinct take on a unique artist.

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Nabokov‘s interest in comic strips was not limited to his childhood. Axel Rex, protagonist of Laughter in the Dark, is a cartoonist, the creator of Cheepy. Bend Sinister also features an invented comic strip (Etermon) and Speak, Memory pays its coded tribute to Otto Soglow‘s strip The Little King. Alfred Appel, whose 1974 Nabokov’s Dark Cinema (New York, Oxford UP) remains the best introduction to Nabokov’s use of images from popular culture, surveys his American comic strip allusions (pp. 74-85). Dick Tracy and Kerry Drake figure in Lolita, as does Lo’s favorite strip Penny. Appel also quotes a personal conversation in which Nabokov mused: “Dennis the Menace doesn’t look like his father. Could he be illegitimate?” (31). When he ponders writing a letter about it to The Herald Tribune, “he is dissuaded by Vèra who remarks that the paper had not printed his earlier letter about plot inconsistencies in Rex Morgan.”

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Sickness unfortunately prevented a full interview, but Dan was able to call in for an all-too-brief fifteen minute conversation at the end of last week’s Inkstuds podcast.

In other news, I have nothing to say about comics at the moment. But if you were intrigued by the Dick Ayers piece in Comics Comics #1, and live in the New York area, Ayers is making an appearance at the Big Apple convention tomorrow, and will doubtless be selling copies of his three-volume autobiography in comics.

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I know a lot of Comics Comics readers have already seen Marc Singer’s recent part-right, part-way-off-base review of MOME, because I recognize the names of a lot of the commenters there, but if you haven’t seen it yet, the post itself and the comments that follow are pretty interesting.

Via Jog — who, by the way, somewhat recently wrote one of the more insightful reviews of Cold Heat (drawn, as you probably know, by CC editor-at-large Frank Santoro) I’ve yet seen.

Speaking of Frank, judging by their Website, Copacetic has only a few copies of his ’90s masterpiece Storeyville left, and I believe they’re the only place where you can still purchase it. So this may be your last chance if you want to get your hands on Storeyville in its original format.

Finally, and via Tom Spurgeon, a Steve Gerber anecdote from Marvel’s Tom Brevoort. [UPDATE: Gerber has responded.]

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I started reading comic books that were published in the 1980s, when I was about 20 years old, and they all dealt with repression in Franco’s Spain. These were comic books that were published in Spain. At the time, they were sort of the equivalent of the underground comics in the Sixties in America. They were very anarchic, very against the system, against the establishment, and a lot of them dealt with the situation of postwar Spain. There was one in particular that influenced The Devil’s Backbone more than Pan’s Labyrinth that dealt with an orphanage in postwar Spain; that was called Paracuellos [by Carlos Giménez, 1981].

This one is too easy, I know, but this series needs to live on as more than just a cheap ploy to lure unsuspecting readers from a barely related (at best) “blog-a-thon”—if only so I can sleep at night. Sometimes you have to go to blog with the post you have, not the post you want to have.

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As mentioned earlier, new Comics Comics issues should be available through Diamond starting in February, but a few prescient stores have gotten their hands on copies early. If you can’t wait for your fix, go visit them. They are all excellent boutiques, and very deserving of your money and patronage.

THE COMICS COMICS FIVE
(in alphabetical order)

1. Big Brain Comics, in Minneapolis

2. Domy, in Houston

3. Family, in Los Angeles (& don’t miss co-proprietor Sammy Harkham‘s terrific related blog)

4. Jim Hanley’s Universe, in Manhattan

5. Rocketship, in Brooklyn

P.S. It’s possible we’ve missed a few stores, so if you work at a location stocking Comics Comics or if you spot an issue somewhere, drop us a line, and we’ll keep a running honor roll. In the meantime, these are the five greatest stores in North America.

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Well, my fave comics of ’06 list caused a little tizzy in web-land. And Dirk got kind of annoyed. All because of my flippant remark about Fun Home. My remark was just that: flippant; and not really meant as a substantive criticism (obviously), but rather as an example of a disagreement with the PW list. That said, I don’t really have much to add: I found the narrative devices in Fun Home to be rather forced and the cartooning too often stiff and inexpressive. Most of all, it just seemed overstuffed and not really in control of the medium. Mostly, it just doesn’t interest me enough as a book to write any further about it. It’s not a terrible book, just kinda mediocre.

I don’t agree with Dirk that my not liking it represents some kind of comics-elitist (something I’m certainly not–though I’d like to see a list of qualifications) reaction against mass popularity. I totally understand why it has wider appeal than Kim Deitch’s work (which is vastly more successful as art)–ummmm, that’s the way world works. I’m not surprised at all, nor do I expend any energy being annoyed at it. Culture is what it is and the most we can do is to work for and promote and write about the things we believe in and hope for the best.

And further, contra-Dirk I don’t make my aesthetic judgments based on the relative popularity of a work or what “scene” it emerges from. Who cares about that stuff? I might have at age 14 but certainly not now. I judge things based on their relative successes as art, and that’s it. So that’s pretty much my response. I didn’t like the book that much, but anything else–scenes, cred, popularity and all that other foolishness is besides the point.

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So Dan got back from wherever he goes at this time of the year and has informed me that I kind of jumped the gun when I re-posted the Comics Comics issue 2 information. Most stores apparently won’t be receiving their copies until February or a little later. (I saw a big stack of Number 2’s at Big Brain in Minneapolis, a really excellent comic shop, and, uh, overinterpreted.)

A few stores do have early issues, such as Big Brain and Brooklyn’s beloved Rocketship, but if you can’t get to one of those stores and/or can’t wait until next month, we’ve added a button to the sidebar here, and we can send you a copy.

Thanks a lot, and sorry for any confusion.

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NOTE: As the second issue of Comics Comics is just now being distributed to many comics stores for the first time, this is a special encore presentation of an earlier post.

Consider this an errata slip to Comics Comics #2. Unfortunately, two footnotes were left out of the printed copy of my essay on Steve Gerber in the story, so I decided to reprint them here. They will not make sense without the essay, so please feel free to skip this post if you don’t have it.

Footnote 1 — This should have been attached to the third paragraph of Section II: The Duck:

This reviewer is not old enough to have read these comics when they came out, so their funniness at publication is impossible to determine fairly. It may be worth noting, though, that in 2002, Marvel published a new Howard the Duck mini-series written by Steve Gerber, and the topical humor there ranges from the obvious and forced (a boy band literally manufactured in a laboratory by an evil corporation) to the fairly sharp and pointed (there’s a pretty devastating satire of Warren Ellis’s Transmetropolitan and that title’s futuristic Hunter S. Thompson-clone protagonist, whose book collection prominently features copies of The Bluffer’s Guide to Cyberpunk and Egotism Without Charisma). A mixed bag, basically, but one entertaining enough to be worth reading, if you’re so inclined.

Footnote 2 — This should have been attached to the sixth paragraph of Section III: The Unknown:

See, for example, this Gerber quote from Gary Groth’s 1978 interview with the writer: “Glance through a typical Marvel or DC book, you’ll find that, regardless of which character the magazine features, the material will be arranged in roughly the following way: a three-page fight or chase scene to open; about two pages of the character in his secret identity; three more pages of the character back in costume, either engaged in a second fight with the villain or swinging around the city looking for the villain and encountering other little obstacles along the way; a couple more pages of the alter ego; and then the big fight scene at the end. That’s the formula… All of it reads alike.”

That’s it. I hope this is helpful, and apologize for the mistake.

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NOTE: As the second issue of Comics Comics is just now being distributed to many comics stores for the first time, this is a special encore presentation of an earlier post.

Well, it’s finally here in all its glory. The second issue of Comics Comics debuted 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?