October 3: Walt Handelsman at DC charity event

Dave Astor is reporting that this year's Pulitzer winner Walt Handelsman will be at the Cartoons and Cocktails fundraiser.

Peter Bagge profiled in today's Post

See "A Cartoonist Who's Quick On the Draw" By Peter Carlson, Washington Post Staff Writer, Tuesday, July 24, 2007; C01. Carlson ends by noting, "Bagge says he's coming to Washington in September to cover Congress. Perfect! For a man of his gifts, caricaturing our elected representatives will be as easy as shooting fish in a barrel with that bazooka." If anyone knows more about this, let me know.

Postcards review in Los Angeles Times

Jason's publisher obviously sent out some serious amount of review copies of the book. "'Spent' by Joe Matt and 'Postcards,' edited by Jason Rodriguez: Blurring the line between reality and illusion" by David L. Ulin, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer, July 24, 2007.

Recent cIndy Center podcasts

Local 'caster Chris Shields has kept the cartoonists coming in. Since last we checked, he's interviewed Dion Floyd of Immortal Kiss, Dean Trippe on MOCCA, Ape Entertainment's Cereal and Pajamas creators, and most relevant to us - the District's Jason Rodriguez on the new Postcards anthology. Click here to find these and other podcasts.

September 29: DC Anime Club's Shoujo Day

CONTACT: Chris Wanamaker, 202 262 2083 president@dcanimeclub.org


DC Anime Club's Shoujo Day

The DC Anime Club, an organization whose purpose is to educate the Washington, DC community about East Asian culture through the art form known as Anime (Japanese animation) will host a Marathon of Shoujo (girls) Anime on September 29, 2007 from 2pm-5pm at the Martin Luthur King, Jr Memorial Library 901 G St NW Washington, DC 20001 in Room A9.

The Marathon will consist of screenings Girls Anime, Trivia, Prizes and More. For those unfamiliar with Shoujo, Shoujo is a specific genre of Anime and Manga that is aimed at female audience with such themes as romance and drama.

About DC Anime Club:
DCAC was established in 2003 to introduce and educate people in the Washington, DC area about East Asian culture, through viewing and discussion of Japanese animation (also known as anime) and Japanese comics (manga). DCAC is a 501(c)(3) not for profit organization, contributions to DC Anime Club are tax deductible to the extent allowable under the law.

The club also works to provide a positive, alternative activity to the youth in the area by exposing them to foreign culture, encouraging artistic expression and creativity, and providing opportunities for participation in community activities and leadership.

In addition to our weekly meetings, the club holds an Annual Art Show, an Annual Costume fundraising event, and visits local schools to do presentations on anime. The club also works with the Smithsonian Freer Gallery and DC Asian Pacific American Film Festival on their anime screenings, and has helped locally promote performances for Japanese bands such as Puffy Ami Yumi and Pine am.

DC Anime Club was founded by Chris Wanamaker (President), Jules Chang (Vice President) and Craig Vaughn (Sgt in Arms) on Saturday June 5, 2003. We have a strong membership that continues to grow -- most of which are teenagers.

This program is free and open to the public. For more information please visit the DC Anime Club website at http://www.dcanimeclub.org or call DC Anime Club at 202 262 2083.

# # #



--
Christopher Wanamaker
DC Anime Club President
http://www.dcanimeclub.org
202 262 2083

Nate Beeler of Washington Examiner wins Golden Spike Award

I didn't go to the AAEC wards, but R.C. Harvey did, and in his new Rants & Raves column says it was won by Nate Beeler of the Washington Examiner for a 'cartoon [that] depicted GeeDubya saying that “artificial deadlines embolden the enemy,” accompanied by a drawing of several soldiers with artificial limbs, which also embolden the enemy.' The Golden Spike is presented for the best cartoon a newspaper refuses to run.

Nate's work can be seen every other day or so in the Examiner and there's an original cartoon of his in the Katzen exhibit, Bush Leaguers.

August 5: 50th ANNIVERSARY OF "WHAT'S OPERA, DOC?

Here's a press release I was just sent. Sounds interesting - note the book. I don't think I can make this on the 5th, but if anyone's going, stick a note in the comments. I'd be interested in going later in the month. Also, I could use an exhibit reviewer for the International Journal of Comic Art.

For Immediate release
Contact: Leslie Combemale
703-478-0778 artnsights@aol.com

ARTINSIGHTS TO HAVE NATIONAL CELEBRATION
FOR 50th ANNIVERSARY OF "WHAT'S OPERA, DOC?"


Reston, VA—ArtInsights Animation and Film Art Gallery, as part of a weekend-long celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Chuck Jones directed 1957 short film and National Film Registry inductee, “What’s Opera, Doc?”, will be premiering an exhibit of original animation and fine art by Chuck Jones, some of which is rare and from the Jones family collection, both at a remote exhibit at Wolf Trap and at ArtInsights, and will be hosting Emmy Award-winning film producer Linda Jones Clough at the gallery on Sunday, August 5, 2007 from 1-3 PM.

Mrs. Clough will be signing the first art book dedicated to the animation character oil paintings created by her father, the legendary animation film director and creator, Chuck Jones. The exhibit at Wolf Trap will be in conjunction with the presentation of a revised Bugs Bunny on Broadway, conceived, directed and produced by impresario George Daugherty, that pays homage to this significant film on Friday and Saturday, August 3rd and 4th at Wolf Trap. A portion of the larger exhibit, which will be at ArtInsights through September 3rd, will be on display at Wolf Trap's Encore Circle Lounge.

The book signing on Sunday features the new release, Stroke of Genius, A Collection of Paintings and Musings on Life, Love and Art by Chuck Jones, which brings together a selection of Jones’ original oil paintings depicting his best known characters-- including Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd, Marvin Martian, Road Runner, Wile E. Coyote and Pepé le Pew—with reflections by the man behind their development and creation. Jones’ thoughts on his art, his characters, his inspirations and his aspirations are laid out alongside a sampling of over 50 of his paintings.


ArtInsights is located just outside of Washington, D.C. at 11921 Freedom Drive, Reston, Virginia, in Reston Town Center. The gallery presents the works of art from the 20th century film art genre, including original art from the masters of film and moving entertainment. From film campaign artists to matte painters, from concept and layout artists to animators, ArtInsights represents the most influential artists of film art history. Representation includes Chuck Jones, John Alvin, Maurice Noble, Bill Melendez, Lawrence Noble, Toby Bluth, and many other artists made famous working for Walt Disney, Warner Brothers, and other film studios. For more information please call the gallery at 703-478-0778.

Linda Jones Clough is available for phone interviews prior to the show and on the day of the event. For images or to schedule interviews, contact Leslie Combemale at 703-478-0778.

Bush Leaguers editorial cartoon exhibit open one more week UPDATED

I saw the Bush Leaguers exhibit at the Katzen today, prefatory to reviewing it for the International Journal of Comic Art. It's an amazingly large exhibit, and a good one. The space is awkward, as you can tell from these pics, but there were some real good cartoons here and you could get up close to see the technique.
As you can tell by the above photo, Matt Wuerker did an introductory image, and AAEC President Rob Rogers wrote an introduction (and the only text) to the show.
The exibit opened with videos including KAL, Fiore and Telnaes, and then went into an overwhelming amount of print cartoons. Many of these images were now 'born-digital' as librarians like to say. It does raise a question about what original art is.
Some more random notes:

Tom Toles's "Battle Hardened" cartoon that provoked a letter from the DOD's Joint Chiefs of Staff is on display.

Good cartoonists not as well known in DC like Mike Jenkins of the Journal can be seen. His "Heartbeat Away" showed Bush playing with toys and worrying about being President when told that Cheney was having heart problems. Ed Stein of Denver drew "Band of Brothers" showing the GOP's 2004 team of Bush, Cheney and others, noting "They all weren't in Vietnam together."

Other viewers in the exhibit, of which I think I saw 3 sets, were laughing out loud.

Some memorable cartoons were VC Roger's "Iraq War Memorial," a play on the W in George W. Bush and the Vietnam War Memorial in DC was great. Mike Luckovich's "Apple-Bobbing at the Cheneys" showed Cheney holding a kid underwater in a tub while saying 'Confess!' Matt Davies' "The Concert Pianist" had Rice playing a 'White House Foreign Policy' piano that only had one key. JD Crowe's "Rumsfeld Steps Down" used the trope of flag-draped coffins, and had Rumsfeld as a blind man stepping down a long, long stairway of them. It was a lovely drawing even if the flag-draped coffin was declared to be overused at the recent AAEC convention.

Local Examiner cartoonist Nate Beeler contributed "Late Night Reading" showing Cheney hiding a copy of 'Torture Illustrated' inside a copy of 'Nurturing Democracy.' A good one.

Iraq, Cheney, wiretapping, and civil liberties were generally the topics. There were only two cartoons on Hurricane Katrina's destruction of New Orleans.

In a mis-step, two cartoons of Bush as a Roman Emperor were mounted together. The cartoons by Stuart Calsun and Steve Greenberg were both fine, but didn't benefit from being shown side-by-side.

Two had comics-references in them. Daryl Cagle used the Robert Crumb cover of Zap #1, drawing George Bush getting the show in "Surge in Iraq." It was a good drawing, but I wonder how many people got the reference. Tom Stiglitch went wider and drew George Bush as Charlie Brown leaning on the sad Christmas tree with a broken ornament labelled Iraq in "A George Bush Christmas".

Overall, this was a good show, and would make a neat fundraiser for the AAEC which could use the print-on-demand technology mentioned in the next article to do it.

OT: The most important comics news this month

Forget the San Diego Comic-Con - Dave Astor's got the real story right here:

Two Print-On-Demand Books Feature Universal Comics
By E&P Staff
Published: July 20, 2007 12:21 PM ET

The two books are "Circling Normal, A Book About Autism" by "Clear Blue Water" cartoonist Karen Montague-Reyes' and "'Come Here Often?' Bad Pickup Lines and Other Dating Atrocities" from "The Fusco Brothers" cartoonist J.C. Duffy. Some of the Cartoonists with Attitude crowd, along with Ann Telnaes, Signe Wilkinson and countless web cartoonists are already self-publishing - this is the wave of the future.

"The Universal-Lulu partnership, reported on in a May 3 E&P Online story, is designed for books that would not otherwise be acquired by Andrews McMeel Publishing, a sister company to Universal." My guess is that AMP will stay in business because of its distribution savvy, but a lot more cartoon books will be appearing as cartoonists become comfortable with the idea. You can make the Lulu publishing completely invisible to the end consumer.

It's going to make comics bibliography a continuing nightmare, of course...

Mike Carey reviewed in The Onion

The Devil You Know, the book he signed earlier this week, is reviewed in the paper copy of the Onion that came out on Weds. You can also read it online, and there's some reviews of comics online too, that weren't in the print edition.

For what it's worth, I enjoyed the book and didn't find his text overly descriptive.

ICAF: New name, new website

2007 ICAF chair Marc Singer is reporting that the International Comic Arts Forum is moving to a new website:
http://www.internationalcomicartsforum.org

The site currently features our 2007 line-up of panelists and special guest artists and scholars; please check in regularly for schedules and other conference information.

OT: Rebecca Sullivan's book recommendations

My friend Rebecca is a Canadian prof based in Calgary so this is way off topic, but in this July 17th audio interview she recommends Jessica Abel's La Perdida. I like Jessica's Artbabe work, but must confess that I haven't read the review copy of this I got. However, I strongly recommend her husband Matt Madden's 99 Ways to Tell a Story - Exercises in Style. Matt tells a short story in ... 99 ways, with different art, or timing, and his book is a useful teaching tool like Eisner or McCloud.

September 29: Gene Luen Yang at National Book Festival

Matthew Dembicki, who will be signing his story in Postcards at Olssen's next week,* also reports that Gene Luen Yang, cartoonist of American Born Chinese will be at the National Book Festival in the Mall in September. This is the Library of Congress event, and usually both mobbed and interesting.

*Tuesday, July 24, 2007 at 07:00 PM at Olsson's Books & Records-Dupont Circle, 1307 19th St. NW, (202) 785-1133

Simpsons' movie drives Express to full-frontal nudity

This image is actually published on page 2 of today's Express. For the story, BBC News has a good rundown.

Simpson's Kwik-e-mart photos

A friend of mine visited the Bladensburg 7-11 that was converted. You can see her pictures here - click on the link will take you to a flickr site - or you can go directly here.

Fashionable clothing using comics - buy designs from local cartoonists

Postcards editor Jason Rodriguez sent a note reporting, "I have a friend in the district that makes his own belts and shirts. He has a workshop in his garage and he's able to knock out 50-100 belts a day, if necessary.

I think it's cool because several of his designs are from comic guys. These three are from Elk's Run's cover artist Datsun Tran:
http://www.jonwye.com/Beetle_Leather_Belt_p/beetle-spears.htm
http://www.jonwye.com/Western_Belt_p/showdown-belt.htm

This one is from Graham Annable:
http://www.jonwye.com/Men_s_freedumb_T_shirt_p/freedumb-m.htm

And some from local graphic designer D. Billy:
http://www.jonwye.com/Snap_Leather_Belt_p/snap-belt.htm
http://www.jonwye.com/Boom_Leather_Belt_p/boom-belt.htm

He's currently working with DC Conspiracy member Scott White on this hybrid mafia/graffiti belts. They look awesome.

Anyway - it's a cool marriage of comic artists and fashion coming from a local guy."

Postcards discussed in Hawaii

Remember Jason and others are signing later this month at Olssens. He talks to the paper in "New strip uses high school as metaphor," By Gary C.W. Chun, Honolulu Star-Bulletin Sunday, July 15, 2007.

Also, the Los Angeles Times has scheduled a review of it this week.

Harry Potter spoilers courtesy of Richard's Poor Alamanack

Everyone should stay away from the Post's Style section today - Richard Thompson reveals what happens in the last Harry Potter book. It's not pretty.

Weingarten on his comic strip and Tom the Dancing Bug

Gene Weingarten*, the Post's main humor writer, is a hardcore comic strip fan and his weekly chat frequently has a comics contest to pick the best strip of the preceeding week. This past week, Chatalogical Humor, as it's known also had two bits on comic strips.

In the first, Mr. W is queried about his plans to do his own comic strip:

Dangenecomic, AL: Welcome back. I know the book's been pressing, but what about the comic you and Dan are doing? When's it coming out? Have you contacted a syndicate? Will Gary, Jeff and Patty be giggling maniacally over your effort(s)?

Gene Weingarten: Dan and I and David Clark, the cartoonist, have finished 12 weeks worth. And as of basically today we are starting to write again. I anticipate you will see it some time after we finish 24 week's worth.

We're trying to make it as unfunny and derivative as possible, because we want to penetrate as many newspaper comics pages as possible.

Ouch. And then a story from this blog, that Comics Reporter picked up, namely the Post dropping Tom the Dancing Bug last week for Cheney-bashing, comes up:

Washington, D.C.: Since The Post did not mention it, most readers are unaware that it did not publish the current "Tom the Dancing Bug." It replaced the strip, which was harshly critical of the Vice President with an old strip. It did link to the strip on the Web site.

While I think that "Tom the Dancing Bug" is generally the the best comic in The Post not written by Richard Thompson, this one is too angry to be good. But as Comics Reporter noted: "...the Post's recent tendency to take a pass on controversial strips for no stated reason and then not tell anyone they're doing so is crappy editorial policy that badly serves the Post's readership..."

Gene Weingarten: I agree about The Post. I want to know when they kill a strip. I also don't understand why they would have the original strip on the website. We are told repeatedly that the fairness standards are the same. So I don't get it.

I believe at this time it is impossible to be unfair to Cheney. I called him "Satan" once. In the high school graduation speech I say he is "the root of all evil."

I mean, really. He makes a decision and a million fish die.

I think this Dancing Bug is quite funny. So over the top it's actually LESS critical that some criticism.

I would have liked the (missing) link to go to me, and not just Tom's blog, but que sera.

*my apologies for initially getting Mr. Weingarten's name wrong; obviously I've got to stop doing these when I'm tired.

Savage Love - Ullman in color

This week's City Paper has Rob Ullman's first illustration in color for the Savage Love column. I'm not sure how I feel about it yet - I've got about a dozen of his b&w originals. Still, it's probably colored on the computer, so I can still buy the line art.