I’m sure this will be everywhere on the internet in half an hour or less (if I didn’t already miss the deluge), but this looks like something too good to miss.
[Via the great Dan Z.]
UPDATE: Oh, and this is worth checking out, too. [Via everyone.]
We present a special President’s Day Cage Match.
You have been warned.
[If you want to familiarize yourself with the rules, you can see how it went last time here.]
[Oh, and thanks to Frank and Alex Holden for providing me with replacements for the issues of Heavy Liquid I own but can not find.]
I wrote these notes while traveling this weekend. They’re sort of reviews, but really just riffing on color and composition. I’m obsessed with HOW color comics used to be made and want to write about it here for fun.
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“The Inheritors”, by Bruce Jones and Scott Hampton
Alien Worlds no. 3
Pacific Comics, 1983
full color
Looks like Kaluta, Wrightson. Reads like an old Unknown Worlds ACG comic but is beautifully painted. Each panel like a small Frazetta fantasy world. And that’s sort of the problem. I like the story, but it’s so serious and heavy and important. No Twilight Zone economy, no pacing, just a slow, laborious plodding. “We were aliens; creatures from another world come to the salvation, not of humankind, but of the planet itself.” A story of immigration, essentially, hacked out by Jones. Tolerable stuff, not great. The art saves it but really it’s just a fairly authentic blend of Frazetta, Wrightson, Kaluta, Vess. Nothing special really but beautiful.
I love the way these old Pacific Comics look. The colors on all the stories are great. All the Pacific Comics back then were done with that crazy process that was called “Greyline”. Steve Oliff actually colored a story in the back, but the Hampton story in the front is colored by Hampton I believe. Anyways, it looks fantastic like some comic straight out of “The Studio.” Plus, I bought it for a quarter. Whatever.
Oh, yes, back to the story. Well, I never finished reading it. I do love this passage (above, bottom panel) however, where a landscape panel has no black-line “overlay.” The landscape is not delineated by black marks, lines that are colored, filled in with paint. The landscape is just pastel colors that recede and allow the inserted black ink’d shadowed image — and the panel itself — to “float” above the color plane. That’s why I bought this one.
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Special Forces no.2, by Kyle Baker
DC, 2007
full color
I don’t really want to review this comic, I just want to write about the color and how fresh it looks. Plus, I’m such a Baker fan it’s hard for me to review anything of his fairly. I mean, I could give a shit about a war comic but Baker’s approach, his humor and his vantage point (read: not white) on the subject makes it, um, enjoyable. Remember this is the comic whose opening volley was a (black) guy getting his head blown off.
Baker has been creating his comics on computer for over ten years now. They “worked” for me back in the ’90s; I always thought he struck a balance between the generic Photoshop look of all computer “constructed” comics (meaning: no inked panel borders, floating computer fonts and text all arranged in Photoshop). It’s an interesting mix of approaches that Baker has developed. He seems to be using all the same filters and settings that everyone else is in Photoshop, but since he can draw better than just about anyone (uses no photo references for the figures as far as I can tell, has mastered a sort of Aragones-inspired comical realism, plus he has a real eye for movement, no staged “realistic” photo ref’d scenes that jar the narrative flow to a halt, no spending days playing photo-shoot director, dressing up as the characters for “believability.” Nah … none of these games for Baker, who’s got the time? He’s got kids, man. Plus he can draw. Did I mention that?), and since his use of color is so inventive and comic-booky and fresh — it all simply overrides the sensors in my brain that normally dismiss such “computerized” comics. In fact I actually like the economy of the easy-to-read simplistic layouts. I think they allow his drawings & sequences to breathe. There’s a real organic feel to his customized approach that carries the narrative along quite beautifully.
I really just want to write about the color tho’, so here goes: in many sequences, Baker will switch from the “realistic” color of the Iraqi landscape and replace it with “knockout” color in the action sequences. Meaning Baker will reduce entire backgrounds to a single color like blue while figures in said background are, say, red. This was very common in the four-color era of comics, but it’s rather uncommon these days to switch from “realism” to “symbolism” on the same page.
Baker’s “realistic” color is, I think, a perfect example of using the contemporary approach to color (Hyper-realism: everything molded and highlighted, shiny and video game-like), but using it with restraint so that the drawings are not overpowered by the colors. His “realism” is also served by alternating back to knockouts and the use of pure flat color. This approach develops a rhythm that allows Baker to use the symbolic and “the real” within the same sequence to great effect.
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Archie no.170, by Harry Lucey
1967
four-color
This is an all Harry Lucey issue. You don’t know who Harry Lucey is? He was the best Archie artist. That’s all you need to know. The whole issue is an amazing display of composition, pure drawing, and gag humor cartooning. It’s a fucking clinic, actually. I’ve been doing these warm-up exercises everyday where I just draw from Lucey. I just look and learn.
Anyway, check out the color in this splash page. Stare at it and break it down. Remember this is four-color process, so its simplicity may fool you. For me, it’s the super simple use of the black and green of the girl’s dress in the foreground, which is a darker green and blue, playing off the wall behind her which is a lighter, 50% green and blue behind her. Big deal, you say? Well, look how the shapes unite and allow the central figures to remain on the left of the composition. The lines of the the wall AND the united color shapes create a plane and piece the wall and the foreground girl together in a really pleasing way. It’s a minor thing, really, but these masterful touches throughout each of the 4 stories in this comic all add up to one remarkable reading experience. (For 3 bux.)
Then I guess I have to. I keep waiting for some happy blogger to find this, but no one ever does. It’s our dedicated site, courtesy of Ben Jones, for the upcoming back breaker/door stop/weapon of love Gary Panter.
Bookmark it now.
Your Stickboy for the day. By Dennis Worden.
He’s first over the line one more time.
Speaking of Brendan McCarthy, he’s got some original art up for sale right now on Artdroids, including a bunch of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles stuff. I assume Jacob Covey will be all over this.
(Via.)
Shaky has landed. We are speaking through translators.
image copyright Shaky Kane
The recent flare-up over the Direct Market regarding books sold at conventions before they appear in comic shops seems absurd. But since most Comics Comics readers already know that Diamond and their sales reps are doomed to some circle of Dante, I won’t bother getting into the fray. Instead I’d just like to use the subject as a springboard to talk briefly about more direct ways that cartoonists can reach their audience.
Imagine you’re a young cartoonist who’s worked with Harvey Pekar (on last year’s Macedonia) and, by virtue of that creative partnership, have a book out from a major publisher (Random House). Would you expect to be self-publishing your next book and hawking copies yourself at cons and on your website? Well, that’s what Ed Piskor’s doing these days.
“I can tell you right now,” Piskor told me the other night, “no one in comics has read WIZZYWIG yet. Only, like, computer hackers and people into that culture. I’ve been posting about my book on these message boards and like some kid with some influence in that circle of people will write about it, and I’ll get like a bunch of orders that night.”
You guessed it: the book is about computer hackers. It takes place in the early days of “phone phreaking”, when all it took to “seize phone lines” and make free calls was the right “bluebox” or a whistle with the right pitch and a little know-how. Rather than a documentary about that time and the figures involved, Piskor has created a single composite character who is emblematic of the period. Kevin Phenicle appears to be a middle-school kid living in late ’70s Steel Valley USA — who just happens to enjoy getting over on the system. Free bus rides, free video games, free long distance phone calls. But the system catches up with him. And then it’s “Free Kevin.”
So why did Piskor decide to publish it himself? “I showed it to a couple publishers and they were basically like, ‘Do you want us to print it for you?’ And I just thought I could do it myself and keep the loot. Why should I give them my book for free and MAAAYBE down the road see some cash? I mean, I just wanted to see if I could do it first. And if it didn’t work — then go round and take them up on their offer.”
I must admit I was pretty impressed when Ed told me this story. It was heartening to hear because I’ve heard a couple of stories recently about creators who have books with major publishers, who sell thousands of copies per issue, and who don’t see a dime in return. The artist is, I guess, supposed to feel that it’s an achievement in itself to have a book at all. The way the story usually goes is that the money spent on the printing and promotion hasn’t been recouped so, no, sorry, there’s no profit. “But make sure you get the next issue done on time and, gee, we’ll you give us something extra special cuz sales have been down.” I hear the same story when it’s a small publisher too. The publisher gets to look good (and makes a few bucks somewhere down the line) and the artist gets a couple free boxes of their comic.
Young cartoonists who get lucky early with big publishers might want to think about why Ed is choosing to self-publish. I think it’s important to stay connected on some level to one’s core audience. That means the convention circuit, hustling copies to cool stores, the same drill that got these young cartoonists in the position to get a deal with a publisher in the first place. Don’t get me wrong, I have every hope that Ed and other talented cartoonists like him can find permanent homes at fine publishing houses. Seriously. But if any one reading this seriously doesn’t believe that the bubble won’t burst someday, they are seriously deluding themselves.
“I just want to be realistic,” says Piskor. “At the end of the day who’s going to be looking out for my best interest? Me. It might suck to be on the phone and the computer hustling these books but at least I know what’s up, where my books are selling and to who. And when the right publisher comes along, I’ll be there. I can do both. Why not do both? The reality of the market is that I have to do both just to survive or else I’d be sight out of mind.”
