The Art of Richard Thompson book excerpt: Thompson and Bill Watterson talk comics some more
http://richardspooralmanac.blogspot.com/2015/04/the-art-of-richard-thompson-book.html
Thursday, April 02, 2015
Thompson and Bill Watterson talk comics some more
http://richardspooralmanac.blogspot.com/2015/04/the-art-of-richard-thompson-book.html
Wednesday, April 01, 2015
April 9: Nadja Spiegelman and Sergio Garcia Sanchez
Takoma Park Maryland Library
Graphic
novelists Nadja Spiegelman and Sergio Garcia Sanchez will present their
new book for kids, "Lost in NYC: A Subway Adventure" on Thursday, April
9, at 7:30 p.m. In the book, Spiegelman and Sanchez tell the story of a
boy named Pablo, who gets separated from his schoolmates on a class
trip and has to figure out how to navigate the NYC subway system. In a
starred review, Kirkus noted that the book is "required reading for
anyone, tourist or resident, mystified by or anxious about using
arguably the greatest public-transportation system on the planet.." At
our event, Politics & Prose will be selling copies of "Lost in
NYC," but the event is free and no purchase is required to attend.
Thursday, Apr. 9, 7:30 p.m.
2nd Zodiac Starforce interview online
Magic, Girl Power & Humor Combine to Create "Zodiac Starforce"
Cardner Clark
Comic Book Resources April 1 2015
http://www.comicbookresources.com/article/magic-girl-power-humor-combine-to-create-zodiac-starforce
Dembicki's Wild Ocean listed as a 'Great Environmental Comic'
14 Great Environmental Comics
by Matt White
Nukees goes to Washington
The webcomic Nukees by Darren Bleuel has been set in DC for several months, but mostly in Congress. The DC strips start roughly at December 19 2014, and this week giant robot ants move into the Metro.
Joe Sutliff's April Fool's day Kickstarter (updated)
Of his 'project,' Joe says, "While easily perceived as a prank, my campaign is (or was) an attempt to tap into the gestalt of crowd funding. Rather that present a complex experience all at once, I wanted to see what would happen if something simple and silly would be appreciated by the community. Now I'm challenged to come up with a response to this. As everyone knows, a wounded cartoonist is the most dangerous beast in the jungle… At least I've become more annoying!"
The Art of Richard Thompson book excerpt: Thompson and Bill Watterson talk comics
Not a hoax. Not a joke. Not an April Fool's day trick. Here's an excerpt of the conversation of Richard Thompson and Bill Watterson from The Art of Richard Thompson, which you can buy right now from Amazon or Barnes & Noble, or order and wait for a copy signed by Richard from One More Page.BILL WATTERSON: When I was a kid, I loved Peanuts, so I wanted to be the next Charles Schulz. I didn’t understand what that meant of course, but it seemed like a plan. You came to your comic strip from a different path,
however.
RICHARD THOMPSON: Yeah. Off in my own little world of being a pretend cartoonist. Without a plan.
BW: So how did you envision cartooning? What was your experience of it as a kid?
RT: Well, Schulz pretty much defined “cartoonist.” But I remember in fifth grade, a friend’s older sister had some Pogo books and we spent the day poring over them. That was the first time I understood some of the jokes. It was pretty intimidating and dense for a kid.
RT: Yeah, mostly strips. Comic books were hard to find. And a strip is a one-person deal. Not like animation, where you’ve got to work with other people.
BW: As a kid, animation just seemed out of the question to me. I wouldn’t even know how to go about doing it.
RT: It was interesting. But even when I was old enough to maybe try it, I always hated the idea of working with others.
BW: Plus, you needed film equipment and all that.
RT: Yeah. Really, though, I did cartoons without any clear thought of having a future in it.
BW: Any other strips or cartoons that had any impact as a kid?
RT: Some strange ones. There was a panel called Mr. Tweedy about a hapless little guy. I don't remember who drew it. And there was Freddy by a guy who signed as Rupe. I think he was local.BW: I don't know either one.
RT: I think it was probably in one paper. Also, Wizard of Id... BC... And Mad Magazine of course. I discovered that when I was probably ten.
BW: I remember there was some shock value in bringing Mad home.
RT: Right. (laughs) I remember the first time I picked it up in the grocery store and said I wanted to buy this. My parents looked at it and went ickkk. But my dad finally read it and started giggling. He had a good sense of humor, thankfully.
BW: My next-door neighbor bought it regularly, and he'd bring it over and I'd pore over the drawings. Eventually I worked up the nerve to ask my mom if I could get it. There were a number of years when I really thought Mad was the cat's pajamas, although now I think it was pretty formulaic. But even as a kid, it seemed out of the mainstream of cartooning. It was off in its own world.
RT: It seemed to open up this whole subculture.
BW: Could you imagine yourself doing something in that direction?
RT: Kinda vaguely.
BW: I could never see a way in. I couldn't imagine myself drawing movie and TV satires. I guess Don Martin did the closest thing to a regular cartoon, but in that grotesque style. Or Dave Berg's whatever....RT: The Lighter Side Of (laughs). I'd often read it first. It was always so square!
BW: Right! So what did you respond to in Mad? What aspect?
RT: Oh, the art. The Aragones drawings in the margins and stuff like that. There was no one thing. Spy vs Spy, which was kind of exotic. And of course the parodies, where you discover caricature.
BW: I marveled at Mort Drucker, but I didn't see any road between here and there. At that age, my drawing skills were pretty much limited to drawing things in side-view outlines.
RT: I would try, but... I do remember seeing David Levine drawings of Nixon in like, sixth grade, in my classroom. My teacher was an anti-Nixonite. These beautiful, elegant drawings of Nixon--I remember being fascinated by it. He was using ink like paint, almost.
BW: What, the hatching?
RT: Yeah. So elegant.
BW: I never really responded to Levine. The likenesses were strong, but sort of like stone sculpture, or something- -not warm. I dunno. I remember Oliphant's caricatures really impressed me--so wild and cartoony, compared to Drucker. But getting a likeness is really hard. What made you want to do that?
RT: Caricature was something that'd always interested me. Later, as a freelancer, I thought the more arrows in my quiver the better. When I showed the art director at the Post, Mike Keegan, some pages of caricature sketches, he was delighted. I was suddenly taken more seriously too. I remember the British show Spitting Image had just premiered, and it gave me the kick I needed.
BW: Hm, I'm trying to think what else was in the air back then...
RT: I remember we had a bunch of New Yorker cartoon books in the classroom. This is like fifth or sixth grade. The teacher would bring them from home or something.
BW: OK, you moved in more sophisticated circles than I did!
RT: I didn't quite understand them. There's a Roz Chast drawing about her as a child finding Charles Addams cartoons, and I remember finding those too, and how gruesome they were. And the painting in them was soft and..BW: The grays?
RT: Yeah, like no one else.
BW: I was probably a bit older when I saw New Yorkers. You know, if it was a cartoon, I'd jump to read it, but I don't remember them making much impact. Well, actually, I still like George Booth a lot. He's one of the few New Yorker cartoonists whose drawings are funny.
RT: I remember being impressed with New Yorker cartoons, but I probably didn't understand much.
BW: How about comic books? Nothing?
RT: Some. They were hard to find. I'd find them occasionally, and then I'd probably whine 'til I got them. If they were Batmans.
BW: Really, they were hard to find? My town had three drugstores that used to carry them, and I'd get them sometimes, but superhero comics didn't do a lot for me.
RT: Archie and whatnot... I had a few of those but I was never really into them.
BW: One summer my neighbor gave me this huge box of Archie comic books, and I read them in the car on some family vacation. I have no idea where he got them, but there were a zillion of the things, so my brother and I sat in the back seat reading one after another until it nearly killed us. We read ten thousand Archie comic books and they were all exactly the same.RT: And the drawings are so clean.
BW: Yeah, very slick. Even then I thought they were dumb and outdated. It's a bizarre memory. How about underground comix? Did they have any impact on you?
RT: Some. I came late to undergrounds. I had friends who collected them (Henry Allen has Zap #0) but my main exposure was all in histories and anthologies. I liked, revered Crumb, though he is overwhelming, and thought Wonder Warthog was freaking hilarious.
BW: I saw some in college and I liked Wonder Warthog too, but on the whole, the undergrounds didn't make much connection. I preferred sillier, more cartoony stuff, I suppose.
What non-cartoon things made an impression on you as a kid?
RT: My folks liked doing things and making me a part of it. I remember when the Mona Lisa came to town. I was about six. We stood in line for a long time. Red draperies and guards every few feet, and then ventually, there it is. My mom liked it a lot. The whole way, she was telling me what an important painting it was and the story of it. She had a great appreciation for culture. She didn’t have any great understanding of it so much as just liked it, I guess.
BW: Wow, I guess you’re one of the few people who’s ever seen it without a foot of bulletproof glass in front of it.
RT: I think so. You couldn’t get right up to it--there were velvet ropes. But you could breathe the same air. (BW laughs)
BW: I don’t remember much exposure to fine art--just the popular culture of the day. I think of my childhood as the Batman TV show, the Beatles, and the moon landings. Although I do remember in middle school there were a few years when I read all the Doctor Dolittle books. I loved those--the idea of talking to animals. A PETA sensibility ahead of its time. It probably had some subliminal influence on my strip. What aspects of pop culture did you participate in?
RT: Well yes, the moon landings and take-offs. You knew it was important when the teacher pushed the TV into the classroom.
Jump over to Richard's Cul de Sac blog for more discussion on comic strips.
Wonder Woman's invisible plane on display at Air & Space Museum today
Wonder Woman's Invisible Jet Now on Display
Beth Wilson
Posted on April 1, 2015 by The National Air and Space Museum
http://blog.nasm.si.edu/behind-the-scenes/wonder-womans-invisible-jet/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ig4aJey9QZMApril 15: Animezing: The Tale of The Princess Kaguya
|
PR: A New Updated ComicBacks list!
(Ray's a real-life archivist at the National Archives too, and this is a great bibliography resource)
From R Bottorff <carchivist@yahoo.com>
From R Bottorff <carchivist@yahoo.com>
I have just updated my ComicBacks list and this time I have it for you in an Excel spreadsheet! 9080 entries, 5.5 MB in size so I can email anyone who wants a copy.
Email me direct please and I will get it sent to you in the next few days. Oh yes, its free. I welcome all updates and corrections.
And for those who do not know, my ComicBacks list is a database of all comic book, comic strip, cartoon, pulp hero, and superhero-related mass-market (aka Pocket Book size) paperbacks. Well, at least an attempt at all of them! I am sure there are many more discovered. The list focuses on United States and Canadian ComicBacks, and any international ones distributed in the United States (which means you may see an occasional title from the United Kingdom).
It includes all editions and printings that I have discovered to date going back to early Pocket Books up to current Marvel and DC prose novels. And Peanuts, cartoons gag, Dennis the Menace, Doc Savage, Family Circus, B.C., Beetle Bailey, Tarzan, scholastic titles joke and gag books, Lone Wolf and Cub, Marvel Ilustrated Books, and a few thousand others in between!
I hope you like it and can find use for it!
So email if you are interested and I shall send it to you.
my best
-Ray Bottorff Jr
(a monster PDF version, over 500+ MB, is also available, feel free to inquire!)
Tuesday, March 31, 2015
Richard Thompson = The Band, or an Art of Richard Thompson review
Graphic Novels from Apatoff, Font, Jurgens & others, Lewis & Co., and Sutter | Xpress Reviews
By LJ Reviews on January 22, 2015http://reviews.libraryjournal.com/2015/01/books/graphic-novels/graphic-novels-from-apatoff-font-jurgens-others-lewis-co-and-sutter-xpress-reviews/
ComicsDC on the road: Mountain Top Comics and Collectibles of Cookeville, TN
I visit Cookeville, TN regularly to see my wife's family and off and on have visited local comics shops. I thought they were all gone, but last year for Free Comic Book Day, my in-laws heard about Mountain Top Comics and kindly stopped in for me. I took the opportunity to visit recently and met the owner Michael Hargis. It's the only shop left in Cookeville, which at one point in the 90s had at least three of them. The shop at, 1683 S. Jefferson Ave, has a good assortment of new comics. Hargis probably stocks more new floppies than the Big Planet stores around DC that I regularly shop at. Hargis has a good run of the non-big two comics, including a reasonable shelf of indy graphic novels, and lots of Image and Boom comics. He also has a fun selection of comics-based toys, a decent amount of back issues and a little bit of games. If I lived here, I'd be perfectly happy with this as my regular shop. Today's purchases were Camelot 3000 chosen by my daughter, Batman 66 trade for me, and a Conan print and The Haunt of Wylding Wood minicomic by local cartoonist Matt Knieling (pictured below).
 |
| Back issues for sale in a side room |
Monday, March 30, 2015
The Post on editorial cartooning in South America
Drawing cartoons, defying the government
By Karen Attiah and Ann TelnaesWashington Post.com (March 30 2015): http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/opinions/wp/2015/03/30/drawing-cartoons-defying-the-government/
CdS and TCdS artist Stacy Curtis is ill
Here's the story:
We send Stacy our best wishes for a rapid recovery, in print, because we can't draw a banjo let alone a pig.Stacy Curtis loses sight from stroke; Pig and Banjo drawings fill Facebook wall
by Alan Gardner
March 30, 2015
Bagge in Dupont Circle's Reason magazine
Life Out on the Political Fringe: Peter Bagge hits the campaign trail
Peter Bagge
Reason April 2015 issue
http://reason.com/archives/2015/03/29/life-out-on-the-political-fringe
A new Josh Kramer restaurant review comic
Drawn to Flavor: Zaytinya
By DCist Contributor Josh Kramer
March 30 2015
http://dcist.com/2015/03/drawn_to_flavor_zaytinya.php
Saturday, March 28, 2015
April 16: CultureBlast: COMICS BASH
Join Fantom Comics at the Hillyer Art Space for CultureBlast: COMICS BASH, an evening of DIY screenprinting, dramatic readings, and comic book-inspired art.
Bring your best costumes to our comic book-themed dramatic reading! Share an original work, read your favorite superhero soliloquy, or just shout "I AM BATMAN! WHERE IS HE?!" into the microphone for 3 minutes. Because 3 minutes is all you get.
EVERY READER will get a free comic book and some Fantom swag! BEST COSTUMED PERFORMANCE will win a $50 gift card to Fantom Comics so you can buy those sweet, sweet graphic novels you've always wanted!
Artist J.D. Deardourff will show you how to make your own screenprint to take home with you!
Doors, drinking, FREE popcorn, and schmoozing starts at 7:00 pm.
Contributors will be drawn from a hat at 7:50 and the performances begin at 8 pm.
$5 suggested donation.
Bring your best costumes to our comic book-themed dramatic reading! Share an original work, read your favorite superhero soliloquy, or just shout "I AM BATMAN! WHERE IS HE?!" into the microphone for 3 minutes. Because 3 minutes is all you get.
EVERY READER will get a free comic book and some Fantom swag! BEST COSTUMED PERFORMANCE will win a $50 gift card to Fantom Comics so you can buy those sweet, sweet graphic novels you've always wanted!
Artist J.D. Deardourff will show you how to make your own screenprint to take home with you!
Doors, drinking, FREE popcorn, and schmoozing starts at 7:00 pm.
Contributors will be drawn from a hat at 7:50 and the performances begin at 8 pm.
$5 suggested donation.
That darn Toles
Ancient poetry that still relates today
Susan Schearer,
Winchester, Va.
Washington Post March 28 2015http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ancient-poetry-that-still-relates-today/2015/03/26/6a384464-d247
Friday, March 27, 2015
Big Planet team's Zodiac Starforce picked up by Dark Horse
Congratulations to Kevin Panetta and Paulina Ganucheau.
http://comicsalliance.com/zodiac-starforce-panetta-ganucheau-dark-horse/
Awesomeness and Sparkles: Meet 'Zodiac Starforce', Your New Favorite Magical Girl Team [Interview]
by Kate Leth March 27, 2015http://comicsalliance.com/zodiac-starforce-panetta-ganucheau-dark-horse/
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