The Post on animation - Pixar’s ‘Turning Red’ and ‘I Am Here’

Pixar's 'Turning Red' is a brilliant, hilarious follow-up to Oscar-winning short 'Bao' [in print as Nothing fuzzy about coming-of-age flick]

Domee Shi's semi-autobiographical first feature film is audacious, funny and sweet.

By Michael O'Sullivan

Staff writer

Washington Post March 11, 2022  p. Weekend 18, 20

https://www.washingtonpost.com/movies/2022/03/09/turning-red-movie-review/

(4 stars)

Documentary tells a Holocaust-survival story in simple animation

'I Am Here' is a bearing of witness, by 98-year-old Ella Blumenthal [South Africa]

By Michael O'Sullivan

Washington Post March 11, 2022  p. Weekend 20

https://www.washingtonpost.com/movies/2022/03/08/i-am-here-movie-review/

(2 stars)

 

What to watch with your kids: ‘The Adam Project’, ‘Turning Red’ and more [Big Nate; animation]

Washington Post March 11, 2022  p. Weekend 21

online at https://www.washingtonpost.com/goingoutguide/movies/what-to-watch-with-your-kids-the-adam-project-turning-red-and-more/2022/03/09/7c5e7252-9b3b-11ec-adfd-da5e159009e0_story.html

 

Pictures of cartoonists made my life so wonderful... continued

Once again, I've fallen behind on posting my photographs of local events. Here's a catch-up for May and early-June.

From the ANS Convention:



Frank Cho doing a quick sketch for me. It's the Shadow of course...



Jerry & Penelope Gaylord and Brian Turner - the Franchize Studio folks.



Ducky's Comics booth - Don and a much-more attractive relative modelling his new t-shirts.

More ANS Con pictures can be seen here.



Glen Echo Park in Maryland outside the Adventure Theatre - Cartoonist Lincoln "Big Nate" Peirce. And here too.



Disney's Tinkerbell "You Don't Need Magic To Use Energy Wisely" public service announcement poster. Another shot here.




Cartoonist Rachel Scheer at One More Page Books.

More with Lincoln Peirce and Big Nate

(all images by Bruce Douglas for Adventure Theatre)

Yesterday, the Washington City Paper ran my interview with Lincoln Peirce about the current adaptation of his Big Nate comic strip to a musical at Adventure Theatre in Glen Echo Park. The show runs through June 2, 2013.

Peirce also took questions from the children in the audience after the show.

Q. Are you going to make any new books?

LP: I'm working on it, I'm working on it. There are two kinds of books. There's the chapter books and then there are the compilation books which are collections of the comic strip. The compilation books they just assemble from the strips I work on every day. The chapter books come out once a year. The most recent one came out in February so that means the next one's coming out next February. I wish I could write it as fast as you could read it.

Q: What is your favorite book and why?

LP: I can tell you that my favorite book when I was your age or a little older was a mountain-climbing story called Banner in the Sky by James Ramsey Ullman. It's the story of a boy who tries to climb a mountain on which his father was killed. I read it many times. I probably read it twice or three times a year from when I was ten until when I was sixteen or seventeen. That's probably my favorite book ever from when I was a kid. Sometimes kids ask what's my favorite book of the Big Nate books and I always say I like them all for different reasons, but I'm especially fond of the second chapter book, Big Nate Strikes Again. It's got all the Ben Franklin comics in it because I love Ben Franklin. The fourth one is call Big Nate Goes for Broke and it's a winter story. I wanted to write a story about winter because I wanted to be able to draw winter scenes. I'm particularly fond of those two.

Jenny, Gina and Artur

LP: "Why do I make Big Nate hate Artur?" Well, here's the thing. It's a fine distinction. Nate doesn't hate Artur. Nate is jealous of Artur. Nate understands that Artur is a nice guy and that's what bothers Nate. When I brought Artur into the comic strip, I brought him in because I wanted to give Nate sort of a friendly rival. At the time I was writing a lot of comics about chess. Nate's a chess whiz. So I brought in Artur who's the champion of the entire country of Belarus so he can be better than Nate at chess. And then I thought wouldn't it be funny if Artur is just a little bit better than Nate at everything? I personally think we all have an Artur in our lives. We all have somebody that we want for our friends and yet they are always just a little bit out. So Nate does not hate Artur. He hates Gina.

Q: Have you ever written anything else besides Big Nate?

LP: Probably not that you've ever seen. Nothing's that really been published. I tried to write some cartoons for Cartoon Network, but they never quite made it. Down the line, I certainly plan to write some other things after I'm done writing Big Nate, but I can't tell you what those are now.

LP: "How long have I been writing my books?" Not all that long. Most of the kids here hadn't heard about Big Nate until a few years ago because that's when I started writing the chapter books. The first one came out in the spring of 2010 so that's only three years ago. But Big Nate's been around as a comic strip for years and years before that -- it started in 1991. So Big Nate has been around for twenty-two years and he's still eleven years old.

Q: Have you ever thought about making a movie about Big Nate?

LP: Well, I can tell you why there has not yet been a Big Nate movie, and that's because the offers we've received have been to make a live-action movie with real-life performers playing the kids. I've always said Nate's a cartoon character. One of the things that's so great about this show is how much it uses the art from the comic strip and the books. For me, it would be difficult for me to accept seeing a real-life ten or eleven year old wearing a Big Nate wig and trying to act like a cartoon character. If we can find a way to make a Big Nate movie or a tv show that's a cartoon? Then we'll make it happen.

LP: "Why did I come up with the name Nate?" Because that's my brother's nickname. I'll tell you the story. My brother's name is not actually Nate. It's Jonathan. When we were kids, I realized if I took the first two letters off his name, J-O, I was left with Nathan. So I came up to him one day and said, "I'm going to start calling you Nathan." He said, "No, you are not." Then I said, "Well how about I call you Nate?" and he said, "OK." I called him Big Nate because he's my big brother and he's a big person. It's one of those family names that almost nobody calls him except me. It's sort of like a secret name, and I've always loved the name. When I started the comic strip it was a way of me fulfilling a dream of doing a comic strip, but also having the name Nate attached to it is just a reminder for me of my brother and how much I love my brother.

Q: Are you going to ever have Nate grow up?

LP: No, no, he's never going to grow up. There are two kinds of comic strips out there -- there are the ones where people stay the same age all the time and there a few -- For Better or For Worse is one or Gasoline Alley is another -- where the characters age. Here's why I don't want Nate to grow up. I would have to teach myself how to draw him differently each year that passes. I'm too lazy for that. I'm just going to keep him eleven years old.

Enslave the Mollusk

Q: Where did you get the name Enslave the Mollusk?

LP: I'm often asked do you get ideas from real life, and usually the answer is no. It's not that often that I get ideas from real life, but when our son, who is now nineteen years old, was in sixth grade some friends asked him to join a band they called Enslave the Mollusk. Their illustrious career lasted for one rehearsal. Then it was over, and now they're just a legend.

Q: How do you get your ideas for Big Nate?

LP: A lot of times, if you're a writer or cartoonist, you're submitting ideas and your editor will tell you to write about what you know best. So I'm the sort of person -- I don't have a really good memory for recent events, but I remember in vivid detail almost everything that happened to me when I was in sixth grade. I remember the first day of sixth grade better than I remember yesterday. So I thought when I was trying to get this comic strip going, I thought I'd write about a sixth grade boy because that's who I was and what I remember best.

Q: Why does Nate like Jenny?

Jenny

LP: Nate kind of likes the idea of Jenny more than he likes Jenny. Over the course of time... Jenny's been around in the comic strip since the very beginning, so for all of these twenty-two years, he's liked her. But if any of the other characters asks Nate why he likes her, he never really has a great answer. It's not that they have a lot in common. It's not that she treats him real well. It's just that she's an ideal. She's a dream. That's why I loved it when Jenny came skating out [in the play] with the wings and everything. That's exactly the way he thinks of her. A lot of times, especially when you're a young person, you think you're feeling something really intensely, but what you're feeling is something different. In Nate's case, he doesn't quite know what he's feeling. He thinks it's love.

Q: Would you ever make Jenny dump Artur?

LP: I don't know. You know, Artur has not been in the comic strip since the beginning and before Artur came around, Jenny had a few other boyfriends. So I suppose it's possible that she could still have yet more boyfriends, which would mean that she and Artur could break up. When I do the comic strip.. the comic strip that appeared in the paper today, I actually did about three weeks ago. So I'm right now doing comic strips for July, and into August, so as of August, they're still together.

Mrs. Godfrey, Nate and Gina

Amanda Russell: For the playwright and the writer of the music, how many drafts did you do?

Christopher Youstra & Jason Loewith: We had drafts, but it was more evolutionary. There were probably four or five really big drafts. We had a workshop in December and we spent a week and made a lot of little changes. We made sure the characters were in the voices that were in Lincoln's head and then once we got here, there's was a lot of cut and change. The music changed far less.

Christopher Youstra & Jason Loewith: Lincoln, you've been living with these two-dimensional people here in your head -- which of these actors sounds the most to you like what you've got in your head?

LP: Gina.

Lincoln 'Big Nate' Peirce interview online at City Paper

Meet a Visiting Cartoonist: A Chat with Lincoln Peirce

by Mike Rhode

Washington City Paper's Arts Desk blog May 9, 2013

http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/artsdesk/visual-arts/2013/05/09/meet-a-visiting-cartoonist-a-chat-with-lincoln-peirce/

Tune-in tomorrow at ComicsDC for the children's Q&A session that didn't make it into this story.

'Big Nate' playwright on the new musical

Bringing Big Nate From the Page to the Stage
Jason Loewith
Playwright, 'Big Nate'; Artistic Director, Olney Theater
Huffington Post 05/03/2013

Pictures of cartoonists made my life so wonderful...

I've been keeping busy going to events and I've generated a bunch of photographs of them. Click through the links under each picture for more shots.


Here's more shots of Awesome Con. Starro the Conqueror!


Dan Perkins, aka Tom Tomorrow, receiving the Herblock Award for his strip, This Modern World, at the Library of Congress. See the strip here.


Way too many shots of Charles Vess at Politics and Prose bookstore.


Free Comic Book Day at Big Planet Comics in Bethesda and Vienna, as well as Victory Comics. That's Art Hondros, the cover artist for Magic Bullet #6.


Political cartoonist Kevin "KAL" Kallaugher's book launch for Daggers Drawn, his Kickstarter-funded retrospective, held at Boordy Vineyard near Baltimore. Buy the book here.


Glen Echo Park in Maryland with cartoonist Lincoln "Big Nate" Peirce. Get tickets to the Big Nate musical here. (I'm working on writing up an interview with Peirce, but I saw the show on opening day, and can recommend it).

Free Comic Book Day and more this weekend

After the success of Awesome Con, we've still got a lot of comic-related events going on this weekend too. Iron Man 3 opens on Friday, and it's already been bigger than The Avengers in Europe.

Free Comic Book Day is on Saturday, and local comic book stores will have a selection of the 52 comics that were published this year. Big Planet Comics, our largest local chain, will have eight cartoonists spread between its four locations including Steve Artley, Michael Cowgill, Matt Dembicki, Andrew Cohen, Evan Keeling, Art Hondros, John Gallagher, and John Staton. Most of the cartoonists are in the DC Conspiracy co-op or have work in the book District Comics and the new free comics newspaper, Magic Bullet #6. Other cartoonists from the two publications include Troy-Jeffery Allen and Matt Rawson (along with Superman historian Glen Weldon) at Fantom Comics in Union Station and Rafer Roberts and John Shine at Beyond Comics in Gaithersburg. According to editor Carolyn Belefski, the issue is almost 'sold-out' so pick one up this weekend and get it signed as well.  Carolyn and her co-author Joe Carabeo will be at Laughing Ogre comics in Fairfax. Local comic critic Glen Weldon has suggestions about the comics for you on NPR.

Ranging a bit further afield Jacob Warrenfeltz will be at Third Eye Comics in Annapolis. Jacob had planned to have a special new publication, but now tells us "'Bella & Bunny Man Bridge' is a short 8-page mini comic that Zarmina Sulaiman and I  came up with.  It's a cute, kid friendly story about a fluffy white dog and her cool cat sidekick as they brave the adventure of investigating Clifton VA's "Bunny Man Bridge".  Our plan was to have this ready for Free Comic Book Day.  Unfortunately we aren't going to have the book back from the printer in time, so the next opportunity to get your hands on this new mini comic will be the DC Zine Fest, which is happening on July 20." Rounding out our list of local cartoonists, Steve Conley and Frank Cho will be appearing at Cards, Comics & Collectibles in Riestertown, Md along with Adam Kubert.

On Sunday, you can attend the world premiere of the musical Big Nate at Adventure Theater in Glen Echo, MD. Lincoln Peirce, the comic strip creator (and a close personal friend of Wimpy Kid's Jeff Kinney) will be at the play and signing books.

Also on Sunday, Marc Tyler Nobleman will be speaking about Batman co-creator Bill Finger at the Washington Hebrew Congregation (3935 Macomb St, NW) from 10:30-12:00 and signing copies of his book Bill the Boy Wonder: The Secret Co-Creator of Batman.

Again, further afield, Kevin 'Kal' Kallaugher will be speaking at the Walters Museum in Baltimore at 2 pm to launch his new book, Daggers Drawn. The Express has an interview.

And I've interviewed most of the cartoonists mentioned here (and many others) if you want to study up before meeting them.

PR: Announcing the World Premiere Musical: Big Nate

It's 'Big Nate'! A World Premiere Musical from Adventure Theatre MTC May 3 - June 2, 2013 Based on the comic strip and books by Lincoln Peirce Book by Jason Loewith Lyrics by Chris Youstra & Jason Loewith Music by Chris Youstra Directed by Michael Baron Recommended for ages 5 and up Nate Wright, a detention-riddled sixth grader (and drummer for the greatest garage band in the history of the galaxy, Enslave the Mollusk!) hopes to woo beautiful Jenny away from her boyfriend Artur by winning "The Nickelodeon", the first prize in his school's Battle of the Bands. But when Artur and Jenny team up with Nate's arch-rival Gina to form the sap-pop band, Rainbows and Ponies, he's gotta take his game to an all-star level. What will he do? Learn more about Big Nate from Lincoln Peirce and see him draw Big Nate

Adventure Theatre MTC uses Vendini for ticketing, marketing, and box office management.

Adventure Theatre MTC - 7300 MacArthur Boulevard, Glen Echo, MD, 20812, (301) 634-2270
Vendini, Inc. - 660 Market Street, San Francisco, CA, 94104, 1 (800) 901-7173

Photos! Al Jaffee, Michael Uslan, Rick Marschall and Jim Ottaviani

Comics events in DC happen with surprising regularity these days - here's pics of a few events I attended late in the year.

Comic book writer Jim Ottaviani signed his new book 'Feynman' at the National Air & Space Museum. Notwithstanding the last photo, he had so many people I barely had a chance to speak with him:









Comics historian Rick Marschall at the Library of Congress:







Batman movie producer Michael Uslan discussing his book The Boy Who Loved Batman at Discovery (note the signature he uses):









MAD magazine cartoonist Al Jaffee and Mary-Lou Weisman signing their book at the DCJCC:













Al Jaffee's bookplate that he uses instead of signing due to a tremor.


Al Jaffee's bookplate that he uses instead of signing the biography Al Jaffee's Mad Life (by Mary-Lou Weisman).


A display of Big Nate books at Barnes and Noble.


Cartoon books for sale at the National Cathedral.

Comic Riffs on Oh Brother and Chew interview

I paid some attention to this because my daughter's addicted to Poptropica -

New 'OH, BROTHER!' website hopes to follow in 'Big Nate's' big steps
By Michael Cavna
Washington Post Comic Riffs blog August 3, 2010

-and in spite of myself I liked the Free Comic Book Day issue of this -

The 'Riffs Interview: New Eisner winner JOHN LAYMAN relishes the success of 'CHEW'
By Michael Cavna
Washington Post Comic Riffs blog August 3, 2010

Cavna on Nate Pierce and Jeff Kinney

Kidspost: 'Big Nate' creator Lincoln Peirce and 'Wimpy Kid' creator Jeff Kinney
By Michael Cavna
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 7, 2010; C10

Comic Riffs on Big Nate, DC as a comics town, and the top 5 cartoon contest contestants

1. The 'Riffs Interview: Lincoln Peirce's 'BIG NATE' becomes an 'overnight' best-seller, Michael Cavna, Washington Post Comic Riffs blog June 27, 2010.

I just missed him at ALA, a disappointment because I enjoy his strip. Check the City Paper Arts Desk blog this week for my ALA report.

2. THE RIFF: Where does D.C. rate as a 'comics town'? - Not as high as this blog wants it to be, by god.

3. 'NEXT GREAT CARTOONIST' finalists offer their reactions to the contest, by Michael Cavna, June 28, 2010.

3a. Oh, and now they have to draw a Sunday strip.

Lincoln Peirce of Big Nate picks Cul de Sac as best new strip

In the uncredited "An Interview with Lincoln Peirce," Comics Insight blog July 28 2009, the anonymous interviewer asks Peirce (whose Big Nate appears in the Post):

And lastly, what would you pick as the best comic strip launched within the last decade?

“Cul de Sac.” Hands down.

Amen to that.

Our Man Thompson's fan club continues...

Comic Riffs fan anecdotes from Stantis and Peirce

See "Fave Fan Anecdotes: 'The Buckets' & 'Big Nate'."