Burger King's true nature
Do not let this injustice stand. I don’t know how long this contest will last, so go to the site now to cast your vote for integrity, solid values, and Neon Knome.
[image found via]
Special CC correspondent Mark Newgarden reports in about his recently unveiled mural at Bill’s Bar and Burger in NYC:
This little mural was part of a four person installation at Bill’s curated by David Scher, painter, drawer, sketchbook wizard and sometime restaurant designer.
David, Dawn Clements, Katie Merz and I were asked to punch in at 2:30 am for two consecutive nights this past Dec. The big idea was total improvisation; BYOB (bring your own brushes). We had no solid idea what we would be doing, which wall we would be working on – or even what color paints would be on hand. No sketches, no plans, no forethought. Just caffeine, adrenaline and a ticking clock. This is pretty much 180 degrees from the way I usually approach things. What the hell.
Nobody from the restaurant seemed to be expecting muralists. The walls weren’t primed. There was some vague rumor that we would be painting on the ceiling. I walked behind the bar looking for a screw driver and was chastised to stay away from the liquor. David’s filmmaker friend showed up with some of the world’s brightest lights and most expensive video equipment. There was no coffee.
Dawn annexed the stamped metal wall in the back, Katie took the big landscape format to its left, David grabbed a corridor near the men’s room and I got an 8 x 8 foot square right next to the kitchen door. Everybody went to work. And everybody was good.
Go there and see.
I basically approached my space like a big telephone doodle pad. The carnivore theme was pure wish fulfillment; I’ve been off red meat for a while and was now decorating its shrine. We drew & painted til dawn, came back the next night and did it all over again. There was a smiling hostess and brewed coffee for part two, but titanium white was in precious supply. The back door flew open and shut all morning long as food deliveries and freezing snow blew in. We expired around 9 am.
David went back a third night for mop-up and sent me an email the next day: “Yours is the big hit, the staff loves it. One of the cooks was explaining it to me. I can’t do justice to his poetic exposition, but it was something like this: “The Americans are attacking the hamburger like Pearl Harbor.” I’ll buy that.
BILL’S BAR & BURGER
2 Ninth Avenue @ 13th Street
New York, NY 10014-1204
–Mark Newgarden, February 1, 2010
PictureBox alighted to Toronto for the weekend to set up shop, sell books, and enjoy a comics “vacation.” I drove up with Frank Santoro and Dash Shaw. Many things were discussed. We went to see Star Trek. It was very excellent. We ate hamburgers (twice, Hodler!) and enjoyed the company of our colleagues. Also, there were back issues to be had at The Beguiling. Always with the back issues.
Two handsome men and a lot of books. 
Which one of us bought these? I bet you can guess…
Tom Devlin reserves judgment.
Comic critic enforcers Jeet Heer and Bill Kartalopoulos loom large over PictureBox.
A fleeing Gabrielle Bell says “maybe” to Frank’s generous offer to collaborate on a Cold Heat Special. “Maybe means maybe,” says Bell!All in all, a truly excellent weekend. TCAF is the best comics festival in North America — it’s cosmopolitan but still feels very community oriented. Everyone retreats to one bar, everyone is accessible. It’s really quite nice. So hats off to Chris, Peter, and the whole crew.
UPDATE: I forgot to mention that my favorite surprise of the show was the English translation of Francois Ayroles’ Key Moments from the History of Comics. The Beguiling published this little chapbook, which contains one page cartoons mostly focusing on the great American and European cartoonists. It’s perhaps my favorite work of general comics history in years. A real gem. I have no idea how to get it, though I suspect it will soon be available from The Beguiling itself.
This first volume of E.C. Segar‘s complete Popeye comics is going to be very tough to beat for comic book of the year—and this has been an amazing year for great comic books.
I don’t know if Popeye is the best comic strip of all time—or even what that would mean, exactly—but it is without question my favorite. It’s been said before, but if you only know Popeye from the enjoyable but repetitive Fleischer cartoons, you really don’t know the character at all. (The late, lamented Robert Altman‘s flawed film version got closer to the original Segar flavor, with a large cast of eccentric characters and understated humor, but it ultimately misses the mark as well.)
The original strips are funny and fantastic (in both senses of the word). They’re the rare adventure strips that are driven as much by character as by plot. With its bizarre creatures (the Goons, the Jeeps), indelible characterizations (Wimpy, Olive Oyl), and impeccable timing (each day’s strip building beautifully on the one before), Thimble Theatre worked as only a serialized comic strip could. It’s like early Wash Tubbs mixed with Mutt and Jeff, but with monsters and witches and hamburgers—and three times as funny! I can’t imagine higher praise than that.
Read the book. And save room on your shelves for the next five volumes. They keep getting better. Which means “comic book of the year” is pretty much foreordained for a while, at least until 2011.
Sorry we missed a day blogging. I ate too many burgers this weekend, and kind of needed a break. (Green-chile cheeseburgers are amazing things, but should be eaten in moderation.
Anyway, I still haven’t come up with the energy for a really well-considered post, so here are a few random things I thought worth noting.
1. The week before last in the New York Times, John Hodgman wrote a really nice review of recent comics, including MOME, Ganges, et cetera. (Most of you probably saw it.) I don’t agree with everything he has to say, but it’s thoughtful, informed, and it isn’t patronizing. This isn’t the first smart comics review Hodgman’s written in the Times, and with any luck, it won’t be the last. Maybe other writers for big-time newspapers and magazines will even follow his example.
2. Last week, on his invaluable Comics Reporter blog, Tom Spurgeon advanced an argument about superhero comics addressing hot-button political issues that happens to more or less, kinda-sorta parallel one of my own recent posts, albeit in a much more focused and coherent manner. Marvel Comics’ own Aubrey Sitterson wrote in to disagree, mostly using straw-man tactics.
I was going to write more about all of this, but ultimately decided against it, as I don’t want to bore readers by talking about superheroes too much. But suffice it to say that Sitterson is only able to think of one modern superhero comic that actually supports his argument, and it’s Watchmen. As usual.
I forgot to mention it earlier, but maybe the fact that none of the characters in that book are used to sell Pez dispensers has something to do with Watchmen‘s artistic success.
3. Many of you may already be aware of Big Fun magazine, but if you’re not, and you’re a fan of classic adventure strips, I highly recommend that you seek it out. The included strips are fairly hard-to-find elsewhere, and they’ve been extremely well-reproduced. Leslie Turner’s Captain Easy, Noel Sickles‘ Scorchy Smith, and Warren Tufts’ Lance are all currently being serialized, and the artwork is simply fantastic.
More, and better, entries later in the week.
