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Happy birthday to the King.

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The Comics Journal has posted the audio from the “Comics Are Not Literature” panel at San Diego’s Comic-Con, which features Dan in discussion with Douglas Wolk, Sara Ryan, Cecil Castellucci, Paul Tobin and Austin Grossman.

There’s a lot of misunderstanding and talking at cross purposes, and large chunks of the panel are excruciatingly dull, but I always find it amusing how consternated people get when Dan says even the simplest, most self-evident things about comics. It gets more productive (if that’s the word) as it goes along.

Apparently, this will be up until October.

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PictureBox is blowing into Toronto tonight to engage in TCAF, The Toronto Comic Art Festival, Saturday and Sunday. Frank Santoro and I will be our usual bleary-eyed slightly grouchy selves. But we’ll be happy to see you! And we will sell you things!

Debuting at TCAF is Brian Chippendale’s decade-in-the-making Maggots. We have just 30 advance copies for sale. Get ’em quick! Also, we’ll have some eye-popping prints and posters by Chippendale, C.F., and Leif Goldberg, fresh off the ink stained floors of Providence, RI.

Come and let us rock you!

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When I was a child, ladies and gentlemen, I was a dreamer. I read comic books, and I was the hero of the comic book. I saw movies, and I was the hero in the movie. So every dream I ever dreamed has come true a hundred times.

Elvis spent the three weeks before the tour in California, mostly relaxing in Palm Springs. The first day he was back, on October 19, he picked up twelve pendants he had ordered from Schwartz-Ableser Jewelers in Beverly Hills. There was one for each of the guys to match the prototype he and Priscilla had sketched out at the conclusion of the tour. … Elvis had been wearing it himself for the last few weeks — a fourteen-karat gold necklace that came down in a V to a zigzag lightning bolt framed by the letters “TCB.” It was the lightning bolt that compelled attention, an image that had captured Elvis at an early age, when it symbolized the transformation of everyday human being Billy Batson into superhero Captain Marvel in Elvis’ favorite action comic book.

Much more on the connection between comics and Elvis, who died thirty years ago today, can be found here.

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Special sidewise image! I accepted Ogden Whitney’s Hall of Fame
award at the Eisner Award ceremony. And they let me keep it! Haw!
As Johnny Ryan said, “what does it mean if the inductee is a better
cartoonist than the guy who the award is named for?” Good question,
Johnny! The Eisner Awards remain the best reason not to take comics
seriously as an art form (well, that and the Masters of American Comics
exhibition!). Tom looks at it enviously after a furious night of losing to
Gumby, Sandman (I lost to Sandman, too!) and other stuff waaaaaay better
than the Moomins and Tatsumi. Oh yes.

Matthew Thurber, Marc Bell and Jon Vermilyea go Bats.

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Here’s a bit of self promotion!

PictureBox Inc. is proud to announce its brand new web site:

www.pictureboxinc.com

As designed by Circle and Square, the new site will function as both the PictureBox catalog and a hub for a carefully curated international selection of artists products. Every product is either chosen or commissioned according to PictureBox’s high aesthetic and production standards. Current site exclusives include plates and shirts by Gary Panter, prints by Brian Chippendale, C.F., Paper Rad (see above!), and Taylor McKimens, animation cells by Amy Lockhart, and zines by Misaki Kawai and John Broadley. Pictureboxinc.com is a culture unto itself, linking visual nodes across the globe.

PictureBox is a Grammy Award-winning art, music, photography, and comics publisher based in Brooklyn, New York. PictureBox specializes in bringing artists’ visions to print in startling and unexpected ways. All of our books are meticulously designed and printed to create as unique and immersive a reading experience as possible. PictureBox publishes its own books and also packages books and concepts for museums and galleries around the world. Previous books include The Wilco Book, Ninja, Paper Rad, B.J. and da Dogs, and Gore among others. Its most recent publications include Real Fun: Polaroids from the Independent Music Landscape (Ashod Simonian), Wipe That Clock Off Your Face (Brian Belott), and The Ganzfeld 5: Japanada.