Thursday, November 12, 2020
Nov 18: Tommy Siegel, author of I Hope This Helps: Comics and Cures for 21st Century Panic
Nov 18: Tommy Siegel, author of I Hope This Helps: Comics and Cures for 21st Century Panic
Tommy Siegel and his new book are here to help! I Hope This Helps: Comics and Cures for 21st Century Panic has had our staff laughing since it arrived last month, and we are pleased to bring him to you (virtually) in November!
-->>> This event is free, but please Register
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The event will stream on Facebook and YouTube (links will be added here a few days in advance). If you register, you will receive direct links via email.
An illustrated guide to the absurdities of our phone-obsessed modern life from one of the sharpest wits in webcomics.
Tommy Siegel's debut book collection includes 200+ pages of comics, essays, and extremely helpful guides to coping with 21st-century panic. With comics titled "Choose your social anxiety coping mechanism" and "What your coffee drink of choice says about you," I Hope This Helps offers clever and sardonic commentary on our phone-obsessed, social media-driven culture, as well as a series of devastatingly funny relationship comics starring his popular Candy Hearts characters.
Tommy Siegel's comics began as doodles in the back of a van as a touring rock musician, and quickly earned a viral global fanbase and shout-outs from cultural heavyweights ranging from Ringo Starr to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. With a perfect balance of absurd humor and insightful writing, I Hope This Helps outlines the journey from the author's earliest "van doodles" all the way to the socially-distanced awkwardness of the present day.
Tommy Siegel is a cartoonist and musician who tries his best to juggle both pastimes with assistance from copious amounts of coffee. As lead guitarist and singer for his solo projects and his power pop trio Jukebox The Ghost, Tommy has played over 1,000 shows around the world, including festivals like Bonnaroo and Lollapalooza and late-night television programs like Letterman and Conan. As a cartoonist, his challenge to draw 500 consecutive days of comics led to a viral fanbase of hundreds of thousands worldwide.
Wednesday, November 11, 2020
Kleefeld on Webcomics - a ComicsDC video interview
By Mike Rhode
Sean Kleefeld, independent comics scholar and author of the new book, Webcomics, was the subject of our first video interview (via Zoom). Sean's been writing about comics for 14 years at his blog, Kleefeld on Comics, and Webcomics (Bloomsbury, 2020; $33) is the first academic book on various aspects of a newish form of cartooning. 
I was joined today by two local experts on webcomics - Robb Tanner, who as Xavier Xerxes, was one of the main comics journalists covering the early days of the field - and Megan Halsband, curator of the web comics collections at the Library of Congress.
Sean joined us from Chicago to discuss his definition of webcomics, the process of writing a book on them, his choices for 7 key texts in the field based on trying to capture the field's diversity, the role of social media and collectives in creating and distributing webcomics, the difficulties in preserving an ephemeral field and other issues.
I would recommend this book as a key text in an understudied area of the comics arts. I found it very readable and a good, solid explanation of the field whose prehistory dates from 1987, but in reality which took off in 1997, not quite 25 years ago.
Click here to go to the video at the Internet Archive.
https://archive.org/details/comics-dc-kleefeld-on-webcomics in case you missed it.
Small Press Expo Comic and Comic Art Web Archive
Comics Literature and Criticism Web ArchiveQuick review of Under the Cape: An Anthology of Superhero Romance
Under the Cape: An Anthology of Superhero Romance, Rachel Kenley (ed.), Riverdale Avenue Books, 2020, 320 pp., $17. http://www.riverdaleavebooks.com
From the Amazon description: Super speed, incredible strength, the ability to fly, throw fire, read minds or change forms. What superpower would you choose if you could? Would you be the hero or the villain? And how would it affect your relationships? From heat levels mild to wild, these authors explore the universal truths of love and romance and the happy endings we all desire.The challenge of connection, secrets, and the murky line between good and evil are explored in this collection of 11 original romances by:
-Kim Strattford – Flying Fast, Falling Hard (M/F)
-E.D. Gonzalez – Where There’s Smoke (M/M)
-Naomi Hinchen – The Trust Paradox (M/F)
-Elizabeth Schechter – Time for No Mercy (F/F)
-David Valentin -No Words Needed (M/M)
-Stella B. James – Swiftly In Love (M/F)
-Julie Behrens – Supergay (F/F)
-Christopher Peruzzi -The Little Push (M/F)
-Louisa Bacio – Foolproof (F/F)
-Rachel Kenley – Just Be Yourself (M/F)
-Austin Worley – Love, Law and the Whippoorwill (F/F)
When I was a kid in the 1970s, I really wanted superhero prose, but there wasn't much to be had - a couple of Batman tv series tie-ins done in the '60s, some Superman movie novels by Elliot S! Maggin, and a short-lived line of Marvel novels. The main way to get longer super-heroic stories was to read the pulps that were being reprinted at the time - the Avenger, Doc Savage (with covers by James Bama) and The Shadow (covers by Steranko), but these pulp heroes weren't quite the same as the later comic book heroes. The desire for longer stories, which lasted more than 15 minutes to read, and could give more backstory than a comic, was strong for me.
Now, Marvel and DC have regularly published novels about their characters, and many other people have written stories about generic heroes. In fact, Washington's Tom King got his start that way with his 2012 novel A Once Crowded Sky.
The stories are generally competent, although none of them particularly stood out for me. I just enjoyed them as a light fiction read. The heroes' powers and names are often secondary to the plot, as expected, and there's plenty of hero-villain cross-romance, also as expected.
This anthology is probably a bit of a hodgepodge as far as finding an audience, due to its laudable attempt at diversity. As you can see above, the tales vary between hetero- and homosexual, with 5 hetero, 4 lesbian and 2 male stories. The stories are further divided into "sweet" (no sex) and "heat" (explicit sex). I have no idea how romance audiences select their books, but there might not be enough specific content here for anyone but the devoted superhero fan.
Speaking of the devoted superhero fan, Peruzzi's The Little Push does a deep dive into comics fandom and the ending is almost certainly incomprehensible to anyone who doesn't map his Mistress Marvella and Captain Photon onto Shazam-powered Mary Marvel (Fawcett / DC Comics) and Captain Marvel (the original Marvel Comics version). Both of those characters ended up with a superhero form bonded to a human form.
In conclusion, I enjoyed this book for what it was. Other reader's mileage will certainly vary. I appreciate the publisher's agent providing a free copy for me to review.
Robin Ha nominated for Goodreads Choice Award
Tuesday, November 10, 2020
Flugennock's Latest'n'Greatest: "MABA (Make America Brunch Again)"
"MABA (Make America Brunch Again)"
http://sinkers.org/stage/?p=3092
It's this kind of clueless queefage from rich-ass Hollywood knobs like Mark Hamill which perfectly illustrates the attitude of the French aristocracy and bourgeoisie just before the head-chopping started — at last, the Democrats are back in the White House; now we can stop pretending to care about the poor and the working class and go back to brunch again.
Finally, everything's back to "normal" — America is brutalizing the rest of the world, the police are terrorizing Black America, and the Liberals are beating down the Left. Time to celebrate!
Editorial Cartoon by Steve Artley
Recent Cartoon (click on Image for larger view)
"Blue State Bar"
©2020 Steven G Artley • artleytoons • ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
The Lily's latest comic
How I learned to let my Christian values — not any political party — guide my vote
It wasn't until college that I started challenging my political beliefs
An Editorial Cartoon by Steve Artley
Recent Cartoon (click on Image for larger view)
"2021: an electoral odyssey"
©2020 Steven G Artley • artleytoons • ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Monday, November 09, 2020
Troy-Jeffrey Allen interviews Space Bastards
Interview: Space is the Final Frontier...for Bastards!
PREVIEWSworld Nov 06, 2020
Nov 11: Tommy Siegel with Ben Thornewill
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Sunday, November 08, 2020
Guston exhibit re-rescheduled
After intense criticism, Philip Guston exhibition rescheduled for 2022-24 [in print as Postponed Philip Guston show coming here in 2023]
Flugennock's Latest'n'Greatest: "Feet To The Fire"
"Feet To The Fire"
http://sinkers.org/stage/?p=3088
This one's going out to all the Leftie media "Blue Checks" who spent the better part of the last four years ripping the mask off the Democratic Party, blowing the Russiagate grift wide open — and then chickening out at the last minute and going with Joe Biden because... harm reduction?
Harm reduction? Really? Even knowing Gropin' Joe's record over the past 40-odd years? F'crissake, the guy practically invented harm.
Shame on you. ALL the goddamn shame on your asses.
That darn Toles
Thank you, Tom [letters on Toles]
Adrienne Dern, William A. Carnegie, Adrianne Krause, Jonathan Roth, T.E. Gardner
Friday, November 06, 2020
KAL Show Closing and Book signing Sat Nov 7th
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NPR reviews 'Blue In Green'
Inks And Colors Rescue 'Blue In Green' From Plodding Plotting
October 31, 2020
https://www.npr.org/2020/10/31/929461708/inks-and-colors-rescue-blue-in-green-from-plodding-plotting