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Dear Readers,

It’s with mixed feelings that we have to say goodbye to Comics Comics for now.

We’ve been offered a great opportunity to be co-editors of The Comics Journal online, and after five very rewarding years of editing Comics Comics, we feel it’s time to try something new. With the infrastructure and resources of TCJ, we’re confident we can explore the medium with even greater depth and verve.

Comics Comics will remain online, exactly as it is, but there will be no further posts, and we will be closing comments in a week or so as well. We want to thank our co-founder, Frank Santoro, our founding publisher, Laris Kreslins, and our contributors, Jeet Heer, Joe “Jog” McCulloch, Nicole Rudick, Dash Shaw, and Jason T. Miles, our amazing design team, Mike Reddy and Ray Sohn, and all the many artists and guests. Most of all, we want to thank you the readers, for your attention, your comments, and your support.

Please join us, and all of the Comics Comics contributors, over at The Comics Journal.

Thanks so much again.

Dan and Tim

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1. You’ve doubtless seen mention of this already, but on the off chance you’ve ignored the links, you should definitely make some time this week to check out HiLobrow.com’s Kirb Your Enthusiasm, a series of posts by various writers deconstructing single panels from all stages of Jack Kirby’s career. I haven’t read a bad one yet, but special notice so far should go to Dan, Gary Panter, and Annie Nocenti.

2. The Onion’s A.V. Club has revamped its regular “Comics Panel” feature.

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As of one week ago today, I finally finished Gravity’s Rainbow. Now that I’ve read the whole thing, I can more responsibly ponder the Frank Miller question. While I’m still not a fan of the actual cover he produced, I also still think his selection makes a lot of sense: there’s a ton of comic-book imagery in the novel, and many of Miller’s themes (militarism, noirish overcomplicated plots, skeezy sex, fascism) are present. The more focused and disciplined Ronin-era Miller would probably have done a better job, but that was clearly not in the cards. In any case, let’s move on from Miller — it is more fun to speculate about other cartoonists who might have worked even better.

Assuming you wanted to stick with a modern-era superhero artist, Howard Chaykin is one obvious (and arguably more apt) choice. The late Jack Cole, who is referenced often in the story itself, would have been pretty much perfect, though obviously he was unavailable for cover duty. While we’re dreaming, Jack Kirby initially seems like a good fit, but there’s a certain nobility in even Kirby’s saddest comics that would be far out of place in the corrupt, fallen world of GR. That thought leads, of course, to perhaps Kirby’s greatest descendant, Gary Panter, who is ultimately the one and only obvious choice for the assignment.

But there’s no reason to restrict this game to just one book. (more…)

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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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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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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: (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.