If you couldn’t make it to MoCCA, or missed Frank’s panel with Gary Panter and Raymond Sohn for any other reason, here’s an audio recording of the proceedings. (Thanks, Ray!)
Also, Squally Showers has put together an excellent visual companion to the talk.
If you want to listen to the TCAF “Post-Kirby” panel Frank mentioned in his last post, the audio has been posted by Inkstuds.
That‘s the Dan I know!
On the other hand, I don’t know if this report is accurate, Dan, but I would like to point out that you have had months to digest Asterios Polyp, so that’s no excuse–for you.
It’s impossible to tell much from this post that mentions Frank’s panel, but maybe more details will be revealed.
Also: I feel like maybe we should be arguing about this, but really, I get tired just thinking about it. Maybe you guys have the energy.
Reviews soon.
1. Tucker Stone interviews Frank and writes about Cold Heat.
2. A good, thorough review of that Fumetto Festival in Switzerland that Dan, Frank, Lauren, and Mark Newgarden kept going on and on about a few weeks back. I don’t mind that I didn’t attend, not at all. It sounds awful. I’m really glad I didn’t waste my time.
3. Lauren reports from last week’s SPX in Sweden, which I’m also glad I missed.
4. Gary Panter’s Zomoid!
5. I haven’t read Jamilti, and so can’t comment on the accuracy of this Guardian review of Rutu Modan’s collection, but I found it kind of interesting how the anti-comics-respectability meme idea-or-behavior-that-spreads-from-person-to-person-within-a-culture [Thanks, zik!] made its way in at the end. I’m probably forgetting a dozen different things, but I don’t remember encountering it in the mainstream press in quite this form before.
6. I didn’t actually have enough patience or interest to do more than skim this article from the same paper, but I’d say that in my case, my overindulgence in exclamation points stems almost entirely from having read too many comic books! I was surprised that Stan Lee didn’t get mentioned!
Done. And done!!!
UPDATE: Or not. One more quick one. If I wasn’t avoiding Twitter as much as possible on general principle, I would’ve seen this earlier. I had to google J.P., but it was worth it.
I do not have the proper mindset for decent comics bloggery this week, but I still thought I’d quickly post a link to this fascinating essay by Kentaro Takekuma (co-creator of one of my favorite books of comics meta-criticism, Even a Monkey Can Draw Manga) writing on Osamu Tezuka and Hayao Miyazaki.
One of the most interesting parts of this essay, I think, is where Kentaro describes why he feels that Miyazaki’s Nausicaä manga series is “hard to read”, including this bit:
The individual panels are too “complete” as illustrations. This is only true for each singular frame (panel), and there isn’t enough of an attempt to connect one frame to the next, or to guide the reader in following the flow of the manga.
This probably has something to do with why people so often describe Nausicaä as aesthetically “Western”. The whole thing is worth reading, especially for Miyazaki or Tezuka fans.
Oh, and for the record, I personally didn’t find Nausicaä hard to read at all.
[H/t to J.O.G. McCullochuddy]
Ok. And while I was writing this, Chris Butcher linked to it, so this meager post is even more superfluous now. I’ll put it up anyway.
[And apparently D. Deppey posted it yesterday. Whatever. I’m done.]
So this was unexpected (and awesome):
Best Comics-Related Periodical/Journalism
* Comic Book Resources, produced by Jonah Weiland
* The Comics Journal, edited by Gary Groth, Michael Dean, and Kristy Valenti (Fantagraphics)
* The Comics Reporter, produced by Tom Spurgeon and Jordan Raphael
* Comics Comics, edited by Timothy Hodler and Dan Nadel (PictureBox)
I think the nominee seal is pretty cool, but it might seem weird affixed to newsprint. The winner seal looks like it will blend in nicely, though, and considering our competition in this category, that’s likely going to be the one we end up using.
No, but seriously, check out those nominees. Not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but one of these things is not like the others. [EDIT: This is meant to be self-deprecating, folks.] Which really, it would be smarter not to mention. So please pretend I didn’t, and thanks!
If not, it will be soon:
Big Questions Big Numbers 3!
Of related interest: a big chunk of the issue’s original script.
And Frank discusses the earlier issues.
(Thanks, Sean H.)
1. I reviewed Amanda Vähämäki’s The Bun Field for the April/May issue of Bookforum, which is impressively packed with comics-related material in general, including Ben Schwartz on Harvey Kurtzman, CC contributor Joe McCulloch on Yoshihiro Tatsumi, and Nicole Rudick on Beasts!
2. Gary Panter animated, kinda.
3. Pretty awesome Milt Gross-created book reviews in comics form. I’ve never seen or heard of these before.
4. Not comics: The only review of Watchmen (the movie) you need. (The author of that also said some other stuff worth reading.)
5. Oh, and various prominent comics bloggers have weighed in on the new Cold Heat: here, here, here, and here.
UPDATE: I forgot one.
6. An interview with Ted May, partly re Injury 3. I’m pretty excited to see that issue, not only because I really liked the first two, but because CC designer Mike Reddy drew one of the stories in it. Mike showed me a few of the pages, and they were great, and I can’t wait to see the whole thing. Ok, I’m done now.
Since just about all the best of 2008 lists have been presented now I thought I’d rip off follow in Dan’s footsteps, and share the “outstanding graphic stories” of forty years ago, as presented in Graphic Story Magazine 11:
“Who is Scorpio?”
Written, told and drawn by Jim Steranko
Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. 1, June 1968
“Mind Blast”
Written, told and drawn by George Metzger
Graphic Story Magazine 9, 1968
“Whatever Happened to Scorpio?”
Written and told by Jim Steranko
Drawn by Jim Steranko, with John Tartaglione
Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. 5, October 1968
Honorable Mentions:
Equal Time for Pogo
Written, told and drawn by Walt Kelly
Simon & Schuster, 1968
“The Pipsqueak Papers”
Written, told and drawn by Wallace Wood
Witzend 5, 1968
“Dark Moon Rose, Hell Hound Kill”
Written and told by Jim Steranko
Drawn by Jim Steranko, with Dan Adkins
Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. 3, August 1968
“Today Earth Died”
Written and told by Jim Steranko
Drawn by Jim Steranko, with Joe Sinnott
Strange Tales 168, May 1968
“The Junkwaffel Invasion of Kruppenny Island”
Written, told and drawn by Vaughn Bode
Witzend 5, 1968
“The Adventures of Fritz”
Written, told and drawn by Robert Crumb
Cavalier, February through October, 1968
Another big year for Steranko, obviously. It’s kind of fun to see the undergrounds start to sneak their way onto the list…
Graphic Story 11 is a terrific issue otherwise, too, by the way, with a great Will Gould interview, and even a fan letter from the infamous Dr. Wertham himself, congratulating the fanzine on its recent interview with Alex Toth, and attempting to claim the artist as a fellow spirit:
The point that interests me most, of course, is what he says about the artist not showing the realistic details of horror in a story, but having it take place offstage, as it were, as far as the picture is concerned. I agree with him entirely on that … because I have found out through long clinical studies that it may have adverse effects on the immature mind. For that I have been blamed often, and I’m glad to read the technical opinion of Alex Toth.
This didn’t prevent the editors from publishing a lengthy, vehement denunciation of Wertham on the preceding pages, of course.
Which is awesome, and one reason I like reading old magazines.
No one else will remember or care about this, but a while back I recounted how I was once deluded into thinking MAD caricaturist Mort Drucker didn’t use pencils, but inked his pictures directly. Tonight I happened across my ancient copy of Mort Drucker’s MAD Show-Stoppers and noticed the included biographical essay (written by Nick Meglin), which includes the following passage, and must have been my original source:
Drucker doesn’t think out his ideas on paper. He doesn’t do thumbnail sketches. He prefers instead to envision the completed work in his mind beforehand. He later duplicates the concept on paper as best he can, allowing accidents and changes that may possible improve the work as he goes along. … “It’s also a sure way to keep from being influenced by your research,” reveals Drucker. “I put the figure in where I think it belongs and not where the photo dictates. Staging an illustration around available reference points limits your freedom to tell a story effectively; when an artist does that, he ignores his very purpose.”
It goes on to say that Drucker sometimes used pencils, but only for panel backgrounds.
Anyway, the latter part of that quote is reminiscent of some of Frank’s talk about photo-referencing, etc., which is interesting to me because Mort Drucker’s one of the last artists I would’ve associated with Frank’s ideas. He doesn’t often achieve the associated flow Frank talks about so much, I don’t think, but still… half-baked connections are what blogs are for.
UPDATE: An anonymous commenter has rightly pointed out conflicting evidence.
