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I found this list written in my notebook. It was a cheat sheet for an interview on Inkstuds. We ran out of time before I could get to these riffs, so I am posting them here before they become too stale.

-Webcomics are good for gags only/contained stories for that screen, that day. They work like one pagers essentially; serialized stuff does work in theory but I’ve only read a few I actually like.

–Jim Rugg discussion about imaginary audiences. Jim’s always talking about finding the audience who would read zombie comics or something popular and trying to devise schemes to get them to be his readers “How do you tap into these people cuz you know they would love this kind of story I’m doing” – Ed Piskor does same and finds that real/imaginary audience.

-Jesse Moynihan did the most amazing comic online but no one talks about it – if it was a book and laying around in the store, maybe people would write/talk about it more? (more…)

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Contrary to what you’re thinking, this is not from the new Palookaville, it’s an entirely random fumetti I happened to come across this week. Or, really it’s what North American publishers were calling ‘cinemanga’ until recently, in that it appears to have assembled from screengrabs of a 2006 action movie vehicle for Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan, Don: The Chase Begins Again. Publisher Bollywood Comics appears to prefer the term ‘movic’; I guess the producers of Don enjoyed the results regardless of what they’re called, since the comic was included as a pack-in with the dvd release of the film. I bought it just for the comic.

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Lee Falk’s The Phantom is widely credited as being the first superhero with blank pupil-less eyes. Is this true? I don’t know. Maybe a more educated Comics Comics reader can name a pre-Phantom pupil-less pulp hero. Falk said he got the idea from Greek statues. (more…)

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Greg Cook reports in on the opening of the Highwater show. Click through for some good pix and commentary.

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Howdy folks! Welcome to CC‘s weekend edition. So, I bet you’re wonderin’ how can I transition back to riffing on romance comics after two weeks of SPX tunes? Well, see at SPX, me and Heidi MacDonald were talking about Marie Severin. We were looking at a Tales to Astonish cover (#98) and trying to figure out who inked it. Bill Boichel said Severin inked it. And then Jaime Hernandez said Dan Adkins inked it. Heidi looked it up on her phone. It was a fun little game. One that we used to play at comics conventions in days of yore. Try it – you might like it and hey! if it ain’t your thing, that’s fine! I’ll be right here. Talkin’ to Jaime. (more…)

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While I’m embarrassing myself discussing painting and comics, I should take the time to recommend the Charles Burchfield exhibit at the Whitney to any of our readers in the New York area. It’s only open for another two weeks, and it’s well worth the trip if you’re able. And as Guy Davenport has pointed out, Burchfield made plentiful use of comic-strip-derived symbols for certain visual effects. See above and below for examples.

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Herewith the second part of our excerpt from the Highwater oral history. Bostonians, Go check out the show, opening tonight. We pick up with a discussion of the Highwater look and feel.

Highwater Style

Kurt Wolfgang: I felt like things were going kind of a different way, and Tom was really doing them right, not as a businessman, but as far as a publisher and as far as his idea of what a publisher’s job is, which I agree with about 99.999 percent. He put it in really basic terms to me a few years ago [at the Highwater reunion] in Scituate. And I didn’t agree with that statement when he first said it because it seemed too simplistic. He said, “A publisher’s job is to discover and expose and nurture talent.” To me, looking from a capitalist point of view, well, gee, then no one’s going to publish R. Crumb. But he said, “No, someone will always publish those guys. They’re not the good publishers.” To really find things and nurture things, I think Tom’s publishing philosophy probably had less to do with the actual books come out than with making things happen that make those books possible.

I think when a lot of people look at Highwater they think of crazy design and textured paper and rounded corners. That’s all they look at. These are people who probably wouldn’t like that kind of comics anyway. So when you throw all that stuff on I think that they think you’re trying to deceive them. But I think with Tom the beauty of it all has nothing to do with the design of those books, as I said it’s part of a whole, as amazing as it is. The things that him and Jordan did and bounced off each other. I think with those two together, I think that you’re really talking about Highwater. Jordan, at least from a design perspective, is a really big part of that. Him and Tom were bitchy old ladies and trying to prove each other wrong at all times. And wonderful things come out of that. (more…)