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Artist's rendition of current state of mind of subject: Nadel. TCAF be warned.

Dash and I will be rolling into Toronto’s TCAF this weekend, May 8 and 9, with a full slate of programming and, natch, a full assortment of PictureBox books covering two tables. I’ll also be signing and selling Art in Time for all you history buffs out there. Come by the booth, go see Dash at his signings, and come see us both jabber on about comics.

Spotlight: Dan Nadel’s Art in Time
Saturday, May 8th, 10:30 – 11:15am, Learning Center 1

Publisher and comics historian Dan Nadel will discuss and show images from his new book, Art in Time, while addressing how comics history gets constructed and how the theme of adventure in comics has expanded and contracted over the years. Artists discussed will include H.G. Peter, Willy Mendes, Sharon Rudahl, Jack Kirby, Bill Everett.

-Spotlight: Paul Pope and Dash Shaw
Saturday May 8th, 12:00-1:00pm, The Pilot

TCAF Featured Guests Paul Pope and Dash Shaw are two of the most exciting creators in comics, mixing their influences and innovations to create groundbreaking work. Now Inkstuds Radio/Podcast host Robin McConnell will moderate a conversation between these two creators about the role that influences play in creating comics, ranging from traditional comics to film and music and from classical to contemporary works. This also includes a discussion of education, some key points in creating your own vision in comics, and an examination of how to make influences work and finding out where they lead you.

-Indie Comics Japan: Manga Outside the Mainstream
Saturday, May 8th, 1:45 – 2:45pm, Learning Center 1

Comics from Japan are called “manga”, and the very word inspires a very particular idea of style and presentation in the minds of many readers. But manga is just the Japanese word for comics, and the styles, presentations, and ideas contained within that medium are as interesting and diverse as the sorts of comics being produced in Europe or North America. Join publisher Dan Nadel of PictureBox Inc., translator/production coordinator Ryan Sands, Fanfare/Ponent-Mon and manga.about.com representative Deb Aoki, translator Jocelyene Allen, and moderator Christopher Butcher to discuss the many treasures manga has to offer North American readers!
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It’s a rainy Sunday morning here in Fumetto. The Kirby show is up, three floors and around 150 pages later. Here are some photos from the weekend thus far. I should note that not shown here are the superlative 1940s and ’50s pages we have on display, including the cover to Boy Commandos 23, unpublished Black Magic and Foxhole covers, the entire “City of Ghouls” from Fighting American 2, and more. I’ve so enjoyed walking through Kirby’s career, watching his visual world change and expand. Paul and I have also been lucky enough to be joined by two of our lenders, Tom Morehouse and Tom Kraft, as well as Rand Hoppe of  The Jack Kirby Museum. Just having spitballing history and theory with these guys has been an incredible education. Now I need to see the rest of the festival.

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Another morning here in Lucerne. A couple pix to illustrate my current state of mind.

Jones Underway. Some unstretched canvases on the table, and some unorthodox activity on the wall. We've all felt that way sometimes.

Kirby, from 2001. We've all certainly felt this way, too.

No more of these until the shows are up! Almost there…

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Mommy, is this heaven?

Here I am, back in beautiful Lucerne for Fumetto. The sun is shining, the sandwiches are fried and the beer is delightful. Oh yes, and there are comics, too! Many, many, many comics. Also, one Ben Jones. I’m here for my and Paul Gravett’s Jack Kirby show and Ben is here for the Ben show. There are various shows coming to life, including artists like Brecht Evans and Thomas Ott, whose life-size anatomical scratchboard (!) images are stunning and horrifying. It’s all pretty fun. The whole schlemiel opens on May 1. If you’re anywhere near Switzerland I must insist that you attend. If nothing else to take in some damn fine Kirby art. We have close to 200 pages (including all but two pages of Fantastic Four 54) and the site of all them has turned even me, cynical, grumpy, altogether jaded me, into a quivering lump of a fanboy. Gravett and I keep nudging each other like, “Can you believe this shit?” Anyhow, here are some pictures…

Oh, just an insane Devil Dinosaur spread. Only 150 more pages to go!

Detail of a Spirit World collage by Kirby. Check out the brushwork. 1971.

You haven't lived until you've seen the originals for an entire Soul Love story.

And this is all before we’ve even hung the show. Sorry to brag. It’s just too much fun. More tomorrow, including some Ben Jones candids, more gushing and more Kirby!

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In the 1972  fanzine Sense of Wonder #12, Russ Manning published an enigmatic “see if you can guess” essay on Jesse Marsh. Without naming the artist, Manning takes the reader through the progression of the mystery artist’s style, beginning with Four Color Comics and ending with Johnny Mack Brown. Manning situates Marsh’s style from first-hand knowledge of Marsh’s influences, but goes further by describing the difference between an artist like Gould and an artist like Foster: design versus composition. It’s a quick theoretical detour, but one Manning would come back to later in interviews about his own work. Over halfway through the piece he declares Johnny Mack Brown #2 (featured in its entirety in Art in Time and chosen—I swear—before I even read this article!) a masterpiece, and then explains why in as close an analysis of artistic style as I’ve read from that period. Manning gets inside the work like a fellow artist but with the enthusiasm of a fan. And Russ Manning was, in fact, a fan. He began as an Edgar Rice Burroughs fanzine artist and, via Tarzan, made the acquaintance of Jesse Marsh, who got the younger artist his first job at Dell. Eventually, of course, Manning would succeed his mentor on Tarzan. By the end of the piece, Manning, with rhetorical flourish, reveals his subject to be Jesse Marsh. Anyhow, these two men, so different in style, were closely linked as artists and friends. It’s a study in contrast and lineage, and also a somewhat opaque subject, since both men were very private and possessed full lives outside of comics. Maybe this independent streak, something common to the handful of comic books masters on the west coast, was recognized and respected by the two friends. In any case, here is some fine evidence of an unusual artistic friendship.

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Quick one: Pals Sammy Harkham and David Kramer (among others) are featured in this great piece about FAMILY in the New York Times. Look for cameos from Multiforce, Gary Panter and Charles Willeford.

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I asked Ryan Holmberg, the curator of Garo Manga: The First Decade, 1964-1973, (running until June 26 at The Center for Book Arts in NYC) to write something for Comics Comics about the exhibition. He came through and more. Take it away, Ryan.

Tsuge Yoshiharu page from Garo

So, Dan has asked me to write something about “Garo Manga: The First Decade, 1964-1973.” Since I don’t want to completely rehash what’s in the exhibition catalogue, I think I will approach this from what I think the exhibition offers as a corrective to the dominant North American image of Garo—a venue for highly inventive and very funny, but supremely crass material, with lots of deskilled drawing, gross body humor, and non-sequitur narratives—an image informed by anthologies like Comics Underground Japan and PictureBox’s Monster Men Bureiko Lullaby that have translated work from the 1980s and ’90s. This standard image—I will call it “hetauma” (lit. “bad good,” i.e. deskilled, punk, et cetera) Garo for short—fits fairly well with contemporary ’70s-’80s underground comics in North America. The mutually adoring relationship between Gary Panter and Japan in the early ’80s is a good example of how there is a certain trans-national convergence of taste in alternative comics-making in that period which did not exist in the ’60s: Garo and Zap had little in common.

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Video painting

Ben “Bonzo Jr.” Jones recently opened an exhibition at The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. See, that’s him, just below Andy. How is this related to comics? Well, only just barely, but PictureBox is releasing a book of work related to this show, and the book will include a new, substantial comic by Jonesy. Anyhow, here are some pix from the show. Next stop Lucerne with me and Jack Kirby.

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Mark Newgarden, CC pal and advocate for actually making good books about cartoonists, writes in to ask for YOUR help in completing his and Paul Karasik’s sure-to-be masterpiece HOW TO READ NANCY.

Mark says:

There are a small handful of specific images that we are still seeking quality scans of.

We are searching for hard copies (or high rez scans 350 dpi or higher) of the following:

FRITZI RITZ  1/2/33

NANCY 6/ 29/ 55

DEBBIE (AKA LITTLE DEBBIE) by Cecil Jensen 6/ 27/ 55

THE 1942 NANCY TERRYTOONS MOVIE POSTER

We are also looking for additional photographs of Ernie Bushmiller; preferably in his studio (and/or related memorabilia). Please let us know what you have in your vaults!

Of course all contributions will be fully acknowledged in the book and all lenders will receive a gratis copy—and a hearty handclasp!

If you can help, please email Mark: mark (at) laffpix (dot) com.

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Jeet kindly forwarded me two letters from Pat Boyette to Roy Crane, which he came across while researching his texts for Fantagraphics’ upcoming Crane books. It sounds like these essays will do for Crane what our man Heer has already done for Frank King: completely open up a new way of thinking about his life and work. I can’t wait. Anyhow, as part of my continued and shameless shilling for Art in Time, here are the two letters. Love the humor here and Boyette’s unabashed fandom. Don’t forget to come see Frank and I at MoCCA this weekend in NYC. The password is: “Charlton.”