Baltimore Sun blogger gets comics recommendations

See "Check It Out: Comics galore," by Nancy Johnston on July 9, 2008 for the Comics Kingdom store's recommendations. I've read about 1/3rd of them since I don't read too many superhero series any more ... can't take the long, drawn-out storylines or the multi-book crossovers.

July 20: Lost Ones booksigning with Panter and Niles

Steve Niles and Gary Panter will be signing their new graphic novel, The Lost Ones, at Big Planet Comics in Bethesda on July 20th at 2-4 pm. The book, from Microsoft's Zune Arts, will be given away for free!

I'll be there as well. Anybody else? (Date corrected per Our Man Thompson)

Robots exhibit in Baltimore

This little ad at the bottom of an edition of the Examiner led me to Port Discovery, Baltimore's children's museum and the traveling exhibit based on the cartoon Robots which is there from May 24-September 8. Here's their description:

Robots: The Interactive Exhibition is a one-of-a-kind exhibit that features characters from the blockbuster movie "ROBOTS." Each of the characters introduces children to the exciting and wondrous world of robotics through more than 15 interactive and hands-on experiences.

Embodying the spirit of technology and imagination, this exhibit is designed to engage, entertain, and enlighten visitors to the ever-changing field of science.

I enjoyed the cartoon, which I don't think did great at the box office. It had design work by William Joyce whom I always like.

Post censors comics again; punning headline writers despair

Gene Weingarten's July 8th chat reveals that the Post once again censored the comics section, this time Breathed's Opus. Weingarten wrote:

And lastly, HERE is Sunday's Opus. No, that's not the one you saw in The Post, which ran a sub. I believe the editors perceived a racial-ethnic insensitivity.

Bad decision. Nothing wrong with that comic. I really liked the real-world "available now" labeling.

A click on the 'censorship' label below will pull up the other examples for you.

Minor comics articles in the NY Times

For the new Batman movie, "Many Movie Theaters Decide to Leave the Bat Signal on Till Dawn," By MICHAEL CIEPLY, New York Times July 9, 2008.

In Internet avatar animation, "Google Introduces a Cartoonlike Method for Talking in Chat Rooms," By BRAD STONE, New York Times July 9, 2008.

Will more become less?

I noticed the above ad in a recent issue of the New Yorker and wondered about it since the two titles weren't familiar. Following the link to this page and doublechecking against Amazon shows that at least 4 of these books are self-published - The Book of Moms, The Book of Dads, The Graduation Collection and Will You Be Mine? I'd rather see more in print of course, but this does highlight a problem with both collecting and bibliography that's accelerating rapidly. It's very unlikely that any of these four books will end up in a library collection for example, unless they're actively sought out. I probably won't buy them as the price is a bit steep - $25 for 100 pages? Or$100 for four slim books?

Andrews McMeel's publishing through Lulu.com leads to the same problems. I can see a return to the earliest days of print when small publishers brought out items and now copies may not exist of their publications...

Big Planet TV commercials on YouTube

Joel sent a link to these a couple of weeks ago. Who knew? There's three of them on YouTube from this May. The note says, "Commercial for Big Planet Comics. Produced & Directed by Paul Nadjmabadi & Angela Ottinger." I don't recognize anyone in #1 at least. Here's #2 and #3. Anybody seen these on tv yet?

Heroescon hangover or holdover or something

Our host at Heroes Con (really Our Man Thompson's as I was the driver and go-fer) Dustin Harbin's just posted a cool blog post and drawing about cartoonists he's met and liked recently. Our Man Thompson is not actual size.

Neat, isn't it?

Washington realtors have a new hero

The real estate multiple listing service, Metropolitan Regional Information Systems Inc., of Washington launched its own DC-based web superhero.

For details, see "Introducing 'Mr. Is,' an MLS superhero; Comic strip promotes Web site relaunch," Inman News, Thursday, June 26, 2008.

To read the strip Mr. Is, click here. He's even got a backstory!

Rory Root memorial photographs

Miron Murcury sent in these three pictures and encouraged me to post them. Please note that these are Miron's titles and the pictures are copyrighted by him.

Mark Bode at Rory Root memorial. June 21, 2008

Ron, Last Gasp, Turner

Why's everybody looking at me?

DC (Comics, that is) fan films

Chris Cowan must have noted my "Films and TV Adaptations" book and sent in the following note the other day. I've got to say that I'm a big proponent of the idea of fan films. I've seen some really good ones. In Japan, this type of fan participation with fans writing comic books and having whole conventions devoted to them has been popular for years. And I really loved What If (Marvel) and Elseworlds (DC) before both companies went for that extra dollar and published too many to keep track of. Anyway, here's the note:

I'm a filmmaker who loves making films dealing with SciFi and Comicbook Universes. Lex Randleman (a long time friend of mine and aspiring comicbook writer) and I are creating a new webseries for DC Fans called "Elseworlds". Its based upon the DC Comics Elseworlds series where heroes are taken from their usual settings and put into alternate realities. (All done just for fun out of the love for the DC universe - No Budget). They will be a series of five 2-8 minute original story webisodes dealing with some of the famous characters in the DC Universe (Different groups of characters but following one linear story arc overall). Part 4 should be up in the next week and a half. Please take a look for yourself. We're trying to do something really different. Its not your average fanfilm.

A little bit of info:

Chris Cowan (24 yrs old - The Ohio State University Graduate: Film Production Focus) - Director/Editor/Camera/Cyborg
Lex Randleman (24 yrs old - The Ohio State University Graduate: Creative Writing Focus) - Writer/Concept/Costume/Mister Terrific

DC Elseworlds Part One - "Fair Play" : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sseVgcEmx1A

DC Elseworlds Part Two - "Titans" : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFQ3UjeLcRE

DC Elseworlds Part Three - "What's in a name?" : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iguQCdU1K_o

QUICK REVIEWS FOR COMICS DUE THURSDAY (not Wednesday) 07-10-08

QUICK REVIEWS FOR COMICS DUE THURSDAY (not Wednesday) 07-10-08
By John Judy

BOOSTER GOLD #1,000,000 by Geoff Johns, Jeff Katz and Dan Jurgens. Booster meets Peter Platinum, who is a superhero, NOT a star of a certain type of movie! So don’t even go there, pal!

BPRD: THE WARNING #1 of 5 by Matt Wagner, John Arcudi and Guy Davis. Armageddon threatens. Time for the team to punch in.

CAPTAIN AMERICA: WHITE #0 by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale. Look what happens when “Heroes” gets shut down by a writers strike! (Not saying this should happen more often…)

CRIMINAL VOL. 3: DEAD AND DYING SC by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips. Collecting the done-in-one masterpieces we all must have in our glass-covered, climate-controlled bookcases. Highly Recommended.

DEAD SHE SAID #2 by Steve Niles and Bernie Wrightson. Posthumous noir by horror’s master illustrator. IDW Publishing is doing its best to keep all knowledge of this series to itself. Don’t let them!

FINAL CRISIS: REQUIEM #1 by Peter J. Tomasi and Doug Mahnke. DC says this is “a very special FINAL CRISIS one-shot” which, given that it’s a tie-in to this year’s huge Summer cross-over series, may be code for “this one doesn’t suck.”

GOON #26 by Eric Powell. “Bill, ya can’t eat a whole bag of cookies and follow it up with a whole chocolate-covered cat! You’ll ruin yer dinner!” Also featuring machine guns and axes. Recommended!

I KILL GIANTS #1 of 7 by Joe Kelly and JM Ken Niimura. The story of a 5th grade girl and her Norse giant-killing war hammer. “Hello kitty!” Gotta look.

JOKER’S ASYLUM: PENGUIN by Jason Aaron and Jason Pearson. This is written by Jason Aaron, therefore all must read it.

JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA #17 by Geoff Johns, Alex Ross and Dale Eaglesham. This and ASTRO CITY are the last two projects with which Alex Ross is even tangentally associated that don’t make me want to break things and give up comics.

KYLE BAKER’S NAT TURNER HC & SC by KB. For all of us who wondered whatever happened to this title. Still recommended because Baker’s a friggin’ genius.

NEIL GAIMAN’S CORALINE GN by NG and P. Craig Russell. It was text with illustrations. Now it’s the opposite. P. Craig and Neil: ALWAYS a winning combination. Recommended.

SECRET INVASION #4 by Brian Michael Bendis and Leinil Francis Yu. Skrulls! They kick puppies! They green-lit “The Love Guru!” They rigged the last two elections! Miley Cyrus is a dirty !@#$* Skrull!

ULTIMATE ORIGINS #2 of 5 by Brian Michael Bendis and Butch Guice. It’s Ultimate Project Pegasus! No lie! And the origin of Ultimate Captain America. No Skrulls. Yet.

WOLFSKIN ANNUAL #1 by Warren Ellis Mike Wolfer and Gianluca Pagliarani. Wolfskin. He’s Conan without the sensitivity. Plot credit to Ellis so it probably contains the requisite Depraved Indifference to Human Life we demand of such things.

www.johnjudy.net

These Times demand the Times

5 comics-related pieces this Sunday:

"Michael Turner, 37, Creator of Superheroines, Is Dead," By GEORGE GENE GUSTINES, New York Times July 6, 2008

Rob Esmay, a local artist whose cartoons have appeared in The New Yorker curates an exhibit in a hardware store - "In Williamsburg Store, Customers Find Art Among the Wrenches," By JUSTIN PORTER, New York Times July 6, 2008

Hellboy II's director del Toro's character-design artwork is featured in "Elves and Killer Beanstalks From Director’s Personal ‘Hell’," By DAVE ITZKOFF, New York Times July 6, 2008 with audio commentary at "Dear Diary," New York Times July 6, 2008.

An editorial calls for a bold new direction - "Wall-E for President," By FRANK RICH, New York Times July 6, 2008.

Finally, Rutu Modan is doing the comic strip in the Magazine.

Ed Stein's cartoon journalism

I got an email from Ed Stein's newspaper, which I reproduce below. I was a big fan of Stein's Denver Square strip, and cartoon journalism's been an interest of mine as well. This should be good - it's great to see people experimenting with the artform.

CONTACT:
Ed Stein
101 W. Colfax Avenue
Denver, Colorado 80218
303-954-5479
stein@rockymountainnews.com

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Ed Stein, veteran editorial cartoonist for the Rocky Mountain News in Denver, debuts "Long Time Passing," a new graphic blog series to run every Friday from July 4 through the 2008 Democratic National Convention on August 25-28. Told in a unique and engaging first-person narrative, the special series will cover the build-up to the convention and the current political climate in light of Ed's personal experiences at the Chicago convention 1968 and as a seasoned journalist 40 years later.

The first installment, to be pulished tomorrow, July 4, focuses on what democracy, freedom and independence truly means to a cartoonist who has covered national politics and elections since Jimmy Carter was in office.

Ed Stein has served as the editorial cartoonist for the Rocky Mountain News in Denver, Colorado, since 1978. He graduated from the University of Denver with a degree in fine arts in 1969. Stein recently retired his popular local comic strip, "Denver Square," after 11 years to focus on his editorial cartoons. "Long Time Passing" will run every Friday from Friday, July 4 until August 24 and daily during the convention from August 25 to 28.

This week's installment is attached to this email and can be re-posted with a link to Stein's blog at the Rocky Mountain News website, http://blogs.rockymountainnews.com/stein/ . Subsequent editions can be read every Friday on his blog or via RSS here: feed://blogs.rockymountainnews.com/stein/index.xml .

For more information, contact Ed Stein directly.

Book review: Marvel Graphic Novels and Related Publications

This will appear in the fall's International Journal of Comic Art, but I'll give Rob a plug here as well.

Robert G. Weiner. Marvel Graphic Novels and Related Publications: An Annotated Guide to Comics, Prose Novels, Children's Books, Articles, Criticism and Reference Works, 1965-2005. McFarland, 2008. $49.95. ISBN-13: 978-0786425006. www.mcfarlandpub.com or 800-253-2187.

Rob Weiner, a librarian at Texas Tech University, has attempted a Herculean task in this amazingly ambitious annotated bibliography. Marvel’s publishing history runs for over sixty years and, through licensing, covers dozens of publishers. In his preface, he notes, “This volume is intended to be a handbook, not only for the Marvel Comics fan and collector, but also for academic, public, and school librarians, who want to include Marvel graphic novels in their collections. While many of the publications in this work are known to most Marvel collectors, it is my hope that even the most knowledgeable collectors will find something new in it. There are some entries in this volume, which, to my knowledge, describe material not documented anywhere else.”
Weiner lists citations with annotations for all kinds of publications from Marvel. He has attempted to bring some order to the citations by breaking them up into seventeen categories, three of which are appendices, along with two introductory “Background Highlights” sections on the history of both graphic novels and Marvel Comics.

A typical citation, chosen at random (p. 73), reads:

DeFalco, Tom, Pat Olliffe, Al Williamson, et al. Spider-Girl: A Fresh Start. New York: Marvel, 1999. ISBN: 0785107207. Reprints Spider-Girl 1-2.
Peter Parker’s teen-age daughter, May Day, inherits amazing powers from her father. She becomes Spider-Girl, much to her father’s dismay. She defeats Crazy Eight and encounters Dark Devil.

One can see both the strengths and limitations of bibliography here. One is given the basic information about the book, along with a plot summary of the story and who Spider-Girl actually is, except that in standard Marvel continuity, Spider-Man does not have any children. In fact, since 2008, he is not even married – a deal with the devil erased his marriage to save his Aunt May’s life. So one must come to a project like this with a good bit of existing knowledge, namely that Marvel published a series of comic books set in their character’s ‘future’ in which the normal aging not usually permitted fictional characters had taken place.

As mentioned above, Weiner broke up the book into sections. The major category “Marvel’s Superheroes” is divided into sections like “Major Characters, Teams, and Team-Ups” which is then further reduced into subsections like “Conan / Kull” and “Fantastic Four / Dr. Doom and Inhumans.” A sampling of other subsections include “Epic Comics Graphic Novels,” “Marvel/DC Crossovers,” “Movies and Television,” “Prose Novels” and “Scholarly Publications,” the last of which cites several articles from this Journal. The three appendices include single line citations for 2005 publications, game books, and possibly unpublished books for which an ISBN exists.

As with any project of this size and complexity, one can quibble. Weiner’s introduction is too concerned with rationalizing the importance of the study of comic books. Anyone willing to even glance at his bibliography does not need to read an argument which sums up “Epic Stories like Earth X, Kree/Skrull War and Marvels exhibit as much character development, and thought, as any work by Shakespeare, Stephen King, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Charles Dickens, Leo Tolstoy, Margaret Mitchell, or Jack London.” (p. 7) By engaging theoretical critics, Weiner gives them both too much credibility and ammunition. His work is a bibliography of an aspect of popular culture, and as such, does not need defense or apology, let alone attempting to reach an intellectual high ground. Any library or scholar interested in studying Marvel Comics, and especially their publishing history, should add this bibliography to their collection.

In today's Times...

Disney on Ice lets the company slide into new markets - "A Solid Surface for Disney Success," By BROOKS BARNES, New York Times July 5, 2008.

On the editorial page, James Stevenson's got another one of his great Lost and Found New York pages - Best Rocks of the Bronx.

Nate Beeler featured in American University's magazine

I found this magazine in the library's sale section today:


Which led to finding this link to American University's alumni magazine for you gentle readers - "Drawn to Washington: Editorial cartoonist for the Washington Examiner, Nate Beeler '02 has a ringside seat for D.C.'s political circus," by Adrienne Frank, American (Spring 2008): 26-27. I don't know why he doesn't tell me about these things - maybe it's the new baby. By the way, the Examiner started running his work in color this past week.

Bought at the same library - three Story magazines, just for R.O. Blechman's covers:

If you haven't read Blechman's graphic novels, such as The Juggler of Our Lady, step away from this website and hunt them up through a used bookseller NOW.

Comics-related obituaries from the Post

Today the print paper had Michael Turner's obit from the LA Times. Here's a link to it from the Times - "Comic-book artist Michael Turner dies at 37: Turner became known for the highly stylized covers he created for major titles and his depictions of curvaceous female characters," By Valerie J. Nelson, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer, July 4, 2008.

Yesterday we had a Bozo obit which touched on an animated version - "Larry Harmon, 83; Actor Made Bozo the Clown a Household Name," By John Rogers, Associated Press, Friday, July 4, 2008; B07.

And a local obituary for a former NY Herald Tribune cartoonist - "Charles E. Kavenagh, Graphic Artist," - Adam Bernstein, Washington Post Friday, July 4, 2008; Page B08.

Washington writer on superheroes for NPR.org

See "Holy Bookworms! Superheroes Take To The Page," by Glen Weldon, NPR.org, July 3, 2008 for a look at fiction and non-fiction prose about superheroes.

Secret History of Comics includes Crumb, courtesy of Warren Bernard

Warren writes in with a modern piece:

I went last month to Stripdagen, the biennial comics show in Haarlem, The Netherlands. Found myself at the booth which does the printing for lithos and prints by Chris Ware and Joost Swarte. While poking around their amazing collection of prints, I struck up a conversation with one of the people running the booth. In the middle of the conversation the guy stops and asks, "Are you a Robert Crumb fan?". After saying yes, he handed me the flyer you now see.

It's for a concert in Paris and I was real lucky to get this. I am sure thousands were printed, but how many will actually make it to America?

So, regardless if it's Crumb or Gluyas Williams for Texaco or Charles Schulz for Metropolitan Life, there is a ton of commercial art by great and famous cartoonists that needs to be revealed by SHOC.