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left to right: Johhny Ryan, Jaime Hernandez, Ron Regé Jr, Jordan Crane, Sammy Harkham, Frank Santoro

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. (more…)

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The venerable Bill Boichel has done it again. He has possibly unearthed the real secret origin of Spider-Man. Over on his Copacetic Comics site, he has posted a Harry Lucey story from Archie #126 published in March of 1962. He posits that Harry Lucey… err, wait, let me just cut and paste what Bill sez. Or just go to his site – which you gotta do anyways to read the Harry Lucey comic he’s riffing on. Please enjoy.

“Here for your consideration is the six page story, ‘Follow the Bouncing Ball’ from Archie Comics #126, with a publication date of March 1962. Produced by the peerless penciller, Harry Lucey, this story appeared on the stands five or six months before Amazing Fantasy #15 (AF15 had a cover date of August, but states September 1962 in the indicia).

“This story involves the accidental introduction of radioactivity into a high schooler’s life, with supernatural results. Not only that, but the throwaway gag panel that concludes the story introduces the concept of the so-gained supernatural power interfering with the teen’s normal romantic life, which is a central theme to Spider-Man, and critical to the long lasting success of the character. And then there’s the use of the word ‘tingling’ which came to be associated with Spider-Man’s ‘spidey-sense.’ It kinda of makes you wonder…

“Zeitgeist? Coincidence? Or, perhaps, this story was read by Stan and/or Steve during a lunchbreak, leading to the conscious or unconscious sparking of an idea. The timing is just right. We’ll never know, of course, but it’s something to ponder. Now’s your chance to read it for yourself, and see what you think.”

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I’m sitting in Ron Regé Jr’s apartment in Echo Park. Morning time. There is a woman below the window who is clipping, pruning the green around the white flowers. Lots of birds. Sun. I miss the sound of birds outside my window. Just the lonesome raven calls out in the desert of New Mexico.

I’ve been here 3 nights so far and Ron has been kind to host. He lives in a second story apartment in one of those pre-war white adobe corner jobs. There’s four units and it feels quite comfortable if you know and like your neighbors – and Ron does. He said it’s like Three’s Company. The other day people just started stopping by. “This never happens,” Ron said. One after another long lost friends were appearing in the little apartment. Just as one would leave another would drop by. It was like a rolling party. It never stopped for two whole days. The second day was even funnier because a photo shoot was happening next door. So there was a make-up trailer parked outside with loads of pretty girls parading up and down the stairs. Unfortunately, I had slept through most of it – exhausted from the earlier parade.

I rummaged through Ron’s zine collection. I found a few CF zines, a Rozz Toxx manifesto, some Kaz Strepak zines, and Ron’s Cambridge Massachusettes city sponsered teen anti-drinking scratch-off postcard.

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Hello and welcome to Comic Comics weekend edition. This week I asked the great John Porcellino to talk a little bit about drawing his comics at print size – or as John likes to say working “100%.” Please enjoy.
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Hey all,

Mr. Frank asked me to write about making comics at 100%, or the same size as the published form.

I started making lots of drawings as a kid, using scrap paper I found in my Dad’s office. So I grew up drawing on 8 1/2 x 11 inch paper. I also began making little booklets… paper of various sizes folded in half and glued along the “spine” which I’d then fill with stories and drawings. When I was a freshman in high school, I realized that if I folded letter-sized paper in half, and drew my comics on them that way, my Dad could photocopy them at his office and I could hand them out (without staples or binding of any kind) to my friends. Thus was created my very first zine: a D&D/Cerebus inspired comic called Tales of Hogarth the Barbarian Pig. At the time I was almost wholly unaware of the comic book world. I played D&D, and the hobby shop in my area carried copies of Dragon magazine, which featured a satiric comic in the back called Phineas Fingers. Somehow I saw a copy of Cerebus too, and lifted the animal idea without ever reading the comic itself.
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When I was in high school (10th grade?) I saw Masters of Comic Book Art. It was a videotape collection of interviews with Will Eisner, Jack Kirby, Harvey Kurtzman, Steve Ditko, Neal Adams, Berni Wrightson, Frank Miller, Moebius, Dave Sim, and Art Spiegelman. Somehow, I was able to dub my own copy and used to watch it when I would draw. It was really inspiring back in 1988. Still is, I think.

The one interview that kind of baffled me as a teen was the Art Spiegelman interview. He was the only artist represented who wasn’t on my radar at the time. He didn’t draw costumed heroes or genre comics. He was drawing something from his own experience but using comics to flip the script. Spiegelman was talking about how he wanted to feel like he was writing. He said he was using office supplies to draw with like typing paper and white out.

Then he talked about how most comics are drawn larger than they are actually printed. He explained how the lines become smaller and how there is a refinement process that occurs with the artwork. And then he said that’s what he didn’t want to happen with Maus – that the refinement process created a distance between the reader and the maker. He said that he wanted it to feel like a diary – that he wanted the mark he made to be the mark you see. (more…)

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Hello and welcome, True Believers, to 2011. For my first post of the new year, I wanted to do something a little more personal, and well, positive. I thought about writing something on the comics I got for Christmas – but the only one I really liked was King City #12. And if I write about the end of that series I’ll just spoil it for those among us who haven’t been able to track down the back issues. Should I list the comics I got for Xmas that I didn’t care for? Nah. I’m gonna try and write only about things I like this year. I’m getting tired of reading “oh I hated it” reviews. So I figure I’ll just do one of my typically rambling posts about the only book I really did enjoy reading over the Xmas break. Please enjoy this riff.

The book is Dizzy Gillespie’s memoir To Be or Not To Bop. I’m a big jazz fan and this book really set the record straight that Dizzy was truly the founder of the modern style in jazz. It’s basically an oral history with lots of interviews with his contemporaries in the 1940s. Time and time again each interview reveals that it was Dizzy who taught the modern style to everyone else. There were plenty of guys playing the modern style – or trying to – but Dizzy would literally show his bandmates and friends how to phrase things on the trumpet, on the piano, on the bass, on the drums. Apparently he could play just about every instrument in the band and birthed this modern style that would eventually become known as bebop. (more…)

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I wanted to do a post on the connection between illuminated manuscripts and comics but then I got sidetracked a little bit. From what I understand illuminated manuscripts were made like modern “assembly line” comics. They divided up the labor to construct the book. One guy did the calligraphy, another did the drawings, another did the “inking”, another the color and yet still others bound the book itself. Thinking about this also got me thinking more specifically about how I find it interesting that many of the leading alt/art cartoonists of yesterday and today come from interesting and varied religious backgrounds. Like maybe we’re all re-incarnated monks who used to sit for hours laboring over some miniscule drawing back in the 15th century or something. I’m kidding of course. But when I started thinking about my friends who are cartoonists who “had religion” I was surprised – or maybe I wasn’t – by the list I compiled. I dunno if there is a connection between “religion” – or “faith” – and comics – but there is something there. (more…)