Born in 1894 in Kankakee, Illinois, Gray joined the staff of the Chicago Tribune soon after graduating from Purdue University in 1917. He left for military service in World War I and then returned to the Trib; but he quit in 1920 to operate his own commercial art studio. One of his clients was Sidney Smith who hired him to assist on The Gumps, the Tribune strip that was so popular that the paper set up a syndicate to sell and distribute it to other newspapers. Gray soon aspired to doing a strip himself (Smith’s 1922 million-dollar contract may have helped inspire him), and he began sketching characters and imagining situations and talking to Smith about them. When Gray came up with a concept they both agreed was promising, Gray showed his idea to Captain Joe Patterson, storied head of the Tribune Syndicate. The Captain wasn’t interested. But Gray kept at it. The ensuing parade of ideas was followed by a parade of rejections. It went on for months. One day while going over some of his sketches with Smith, Gray pointed to a drawing of a small gamin and declared that the boy would be an orphan.

“Not bad,” Smith said, intrigued by the simplicity of the idea of a strip about an orphan, who must start out without relatives or friends or other complications. “But make the kid clean and cute and sweet to appeal to women readers.”

Gray dutifully made the kid cute, gave him a head of curls, drew up a dozen sketches of the boy in various poses, and showed them to Patterson, calling his strip idea “Little Orphan Otto.” For once, Patterson was interested. Searching for crowd-pleasing pathos probably, the Captain decided to try the orphan strip. But he wanted Gray to alter Otto: “The kid looks like a pansy to me,” Patterson growled. “Put a skirt on him and we’ll call it ‘Little Orphan Annie.’” It may have been the head of curls that did it, conjuring in Patterson’s mind the image of Mary Pickford in her early films.

In the first volume of the IDW reprint of Little Orphan Annie, comics historian Jeet Heer reports his discovery of an alternative origin story for Annie: “In this version, Gray struck up a conversation with a young street urchin he met while roaming the streets of Chicago looking for ideas. ‘I talked to this little kid, and liked her right away,’ Gray told Editor & Publisher in 1951. ‘She had common sense, knew how to take care of herself. She had to. Her name was Annie. At the time, some 40 strips were using boys as the main characters; only three were using girls. I chose Annie for mine, and made her an orphan so she’d have no family, no tangling alliances, but freedom to go where she pleased.’”

Probably neither version is the unadulterated truth. The first smacks of legend; the second suffers from being a storyteller’s story, concocted long after the fact by which time Gray was an even better storyteller than he’d been on the outset.

The legend is that Patterson worked with Gray to plot the first few strips, telling the cartoonist to aim for adult readers. “Kids don’t buy papers. Their parents do,” Patterson explained. They devised a Dickensian tear-jerker of an introductory sequence: little Annie (smaller and therefore cuter at first than in her heyday) was forced to labor for her keep at the orphanage, which was as grim and oppressive as any Oliver Twist ever endured. Her fate was presided over by Miss Asthma, whose rotten disposition ringed every childish hope for adoption with a nimbus of gloom.

The first strip appeared on August 5, 1924, and concluded with Annie’s bedtime prayer: “Please make me a real good little girl so nice people will adopt me. Then I can have a papa and mama to love. And if it’s not too much trouble, I’d like a dolly. Amen.”

But Annie wasn’t just a cute, sweet little girl. Gray quickly added dimension to her character: in the next day’s strip, when a rude boy teases her, Annie wallops him in the kisser, establishing immediately that she has a certain independence of spirit in spite of her straitened circumstances.

In a short time, Annie was a popular feature, and that spirit of independence that pervaded Gray’s work eventually enlisted a devoted readership. At the end of the second month of the strip’s run, Gray introduced the character that would shape the philosophy of independence into a political stance: Annie is adopted by Oliver “Daddy” Warbucks, a millionaire industrialist who made his fortune manufacturing munitions during World War I. Warbucks became Gray’s example of the self-made man, the self-reliant individualist who made himself what he is through purposeful enterprise. The epitome of this culture hero, Warbucks is the larger-than-life version of what all the “little people” in the strip inevitably become if they follow Annie’s example of diligent labor and canny capitalism.

But to be exemplary, Annie can scarcely be a rich man’s daughter. As soon as Gray had established bonds of affection between Annie and “Daddy,” he sent Warbucks off on a business trip, and Annie is returned to the orphanage by the spiteful Mrs. Warbucks (who soon disappears from the strip forever).

Annie is adopted again, this time by a slave-driving couple who make her life miserable. She runs away, accompanied by her only friend, a large orange-colored dog named Sandy, whom she acquired in January 1925. The two eventually take refuge at a farm owned by the poor but kindly Mr. and Mrs. Silos. But Annie is no burden to them: through hard work and her own ingenuity, the eleven-year-old waif is able to contribute to the couple’s welfare and happiness. After a few months, though, “Daddy” Warbucks finally locates Annie and takes her and Sandy back to live in splendid comfort with him. Thus did Gray inaugurate the cycle of separation and hardship, rescue and reunion that framed Annie’s adventures and the quest motif that animated them throughout the strip’s run. Separated from “Daddy,” Annie must find the means of survival; through her unflagging perseverance, she always does.

Oddly enough perhaps, Little Orphan Annie reached the zenith of its popularity during the thirties. “Odd” because it was the decade of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the man who gave government a social conscience. FDR’s mission ran in directions diametrically opposed to Gray’s ideas of self-sufficiency. Under Roosevelt’s tutelage, the down-trodden and the poor, the halt and the lame were encouraged to look to government for help rather than exhorted to help themselves by toiling determinedly and exercising tenaciously the principles of free enterprise. Gray’s message was precisely the opposite—although it was as much an accident of his story as it was a matter of political conviction.

The best way for a little orphan girl to make her way in the world without being simply a weepy milksop is for her to be self-reliant. As a good story-teller, Gray knew that. Warbucks and the rest of Annie’s entourage were natural outgrowths of this central notion. As Gray’s exemplar, Warbucks could scarcely espouse self-reliance and free enterprise during the Roosevelt years without, at the same time, seeming to attack FDR’s policies. And so Little Orphan Annie became the first nationally syndicated comic strip to be unabashedly, unrelievedly, “political.”

Annie was not the first political strip: Bud Fisher’s A. Mutt—the first daily strip—was the first to take political potshots in its panels. But Fisher’s strip was published only in San Francisco at the time: it could reflect the opinions of its host paper to a fare-thee-well and suffer no more consequences than the editorials in the same paper (that is, the paper would presumably not be purchased by those who disagreed with the views expressed).

Gray’s strip, on the other hand, was distributed nationally, and by tradition, syndicated strips steered clear of politics for fear of offending client papers who might cancel their subscriptions in retaliation. Annie was the first to break with custom. But it did so because the very essence of its story demanded it. Gray’s celebrated conservatism was hardly negligible in the development of the strip’s political thrust. But neither was the strip’s political content artificially superimposed upon an otherwise simple tale of a wandering orphan girl and her dog. The strip’s politics were organic—integral to its story and its heroine’s personality.

Throughout the thirties, Annie drifted from place to place, into “Daddy’s” care and out of it, spending most of her time with the ordinary folk and reviving by precept and example their faith in the values of hard work and economy. Sometimes the villainy she faced would be too much to be overcome by such simple virtue, and then “Daddy” Warbucks would show up and rescue Annie and everyone else.

In the thirties, Gray introduced another element into the harsh reality of his rendition of the Depression—the element of fantasy. Increasingly, Annie was encountering villains that were not merely greedy landlords or corrupt small-time politicians: some of them were criminals of the most unconscionable nastiness, unscrupulous schemers and plotters of the vilest sort, some with plans for world domination.

“Daddy” always arrived in time to save Annie, but not even he, powerful as he was, could punish these villains enough for their crimes. So Gray gave Warbucks aides adequate to the task. Gray had always been fascinated by the Orient (one of Warbucks’ earliest cohorts had been a Chinese mandarin named Wun Wey), and he now began to employ Oriental magic against his villains. On February 3, 1935, a giant, turbaned Indian, eight (perhaps nine) feet tall, showed up as Warbuck’s new right-hand man. Punjab was that paragon, a kindly man of enormous strength and vast intelligence. And he could also supply an appropriate punishment for the most unsavory villains, villains too unspeakable for ordinary legal disciplining: throwing a magic blanket over them, Punjab muttered an incomprehensible incantation and banished them from this world (presumably sending them to another, much more unpleasant, plane of existence).

Two years later, on February 21, Gray gave Warbucks another memorable assistant, a black-garbed, hooded-eyed agent of vengeance much more single-minded in purpose than Punjab and entirely humorless. His name, the Asp, evokes the poisonous viper Cleopatra deployed to achieve her suicide. The Asp’s homeland was (appropriately) in the Middle East where the term assassin originated.  

Gray’s fascination with the mysteries of the Orient culminated later in the same year with the introduction of the cryptic Mr. Am, a fatherly, bearded sort of sultan, who, Gray hinted broadly, had lived since the dawn of time and who could enter the fourth dimension and restore the dead to life. (And if readers wanted to think Mr. Am might be Gray’s version of God, the cartoonist might smile but he probably would not object.)

Fanciful as Gray’s fantasy element was, it was not at all light-hearted. At first glance, his drawing ability seemed too crude for rendering either his reality or his fantasy convincingly, but upon longer acquaintance, his artwork cast a spell that enhanced his story.

In maturity in the late thirties, Gray’s drawings were filled with solid blacks, heavy shadows, darkly shaded nooks and crannies. It was a comfortless world, vaguely sinister. And in that world, Gray’s people stood around rigidly, posturing woodenly, as if inhibited, restrained, in their movements—perhaps because they were fearful. They seemed, in effect, nearly paralyzed with fear and apprehension. And the blank eyeballs for which Annie is famous were integral to the mood of this fearful climate. 

Although there was little action in many of Gray’s tales, most of them erupted in violence sooner or later. Consequently, Annie seemed perpetually immersed in a sinister night-time world that threatened to assault her at every street corner. And her blank eyeballs were marvelously appropriate to her situation. One walks through a threatening night gingerly, never looking behind or to the side for fear of seeing a sinister presence there. One keeps his eyes focused resolutely, rigidly, ahead of him, in a kind of unseeing stare—precisely the effect that Annie’s eyeballs have. In such an atmosphere, when violence breaks out, we are not surprised. It belongs there. We have been led to expect it—to fear it. (The blank eyeballs would have been inspired graphic touch had Gray invented the device expressly for the purpose just described; but he was merely following one of the conventions of early comic strip art: George McManus drew Jiggs’ and Maggie’s eyes in the same way in Bringing Up Father, where the effect produced was quite different. In Gray’s strip, though, the convention contributed substantially to the impression Gray clearly intended.)

SOME READERS AND CRITICS—mostly avid supporters of Roosevelt’s New Deal—saw Annie as a political mouthpiece for Tribune publisher Robert McCormick’s conservative views masquerading as entertainment, a not-too-subtle indoctrination attempt by the Chicago Tribune. McCormick’s opposition to Roosevelt’s policies had a complex root system, partly philosophical and partly economic. We needn’t go into these matters at length here: for our purpose, it is perhaps enough to indicate what McCormick’s detractors may have thought.

Reduced to the simplest terms, McCormick and others of his station who opposed FDR were seen as protecting their own self interest. FDR’s effort to make society care for the destitute and the jobless of the Depression had to be financed, and since no one but the rich had money, it seemed logical to assume that the rich would finance social welfare through increased taxes. Thus, much of the conservative opposition to Roosevelt could be interpreted as originating in the narrowest kind of selfishness: the desire of the wealthy and powerful to preserve their wealth and power. McCormick was wealthy and powerful. Many of his class saw FDR’s programs as the cutting edge of an economic revolution that threatened their very existence. They believed that if society took up the burden Roosevelt urged upon it, the existing social order would be overturned in the process.

McCormick may have shared these views to some extent, but since I have deliberately simplified (and therefore distorted) the issues here, we can give him the benefit of the doubt by viewing his war against Roosevelt from another angle. Consider the threat that the New Deal posed to McCormick’s vision of America. The New Deal, with its radical restructuring of political and social order, would alter forever the traditional American way of life that the Tribune had championed throughout McCormick’s stewardship. From Gasoline Alley to the U.S. flag on the front page, the Tribune stood for the values of Horatio Alger—small town life with its promise of success in return for hard work and perseverance.

Regardless of the point of view we adopt for assessing McCormick’s politics, it’s not surprising that many thought he dictated Annie’s storylines. But the situation was scarcely as simple as that.

While the strip’s political diatribes during the thirties echoed McCormick’s on the editorial pages of the Tribune, they didn’t, for a long time, reflect Patterson’s views, and it was Patterson who ran the Tribune Syndicate and directed the efforts of the cartoonists. With his eye ever on the common working people, Patterson sensed that most of his readers were behind Roosevelt. Moreover, the Socialist instincts of his youth, never fully abandoned, made him sympathetic to the worker’s plight. In the early thirties, the Tribune’s sister paper that Patterson operated in New York, the screaming tabloid Daily News suddenly (and, remarkably, without any change in circulation or financial status) shifted its editorial ground.

In a celebrated speech to his staff, Patterson announced, “We’re off on the wrong foot. The people’s major interest is no longer in the playboy, Broadway and divorces, but in how they’re going to eat, and from this time forward, we’ll pay attention to the struggle for existence that’s just beginning.”

Almost alone among major newspaper publishers, the Captain supported Roosevelt and the New Deal. And his support lasted through the thirties—until, in Roosevelt’s lend-lease formula for aid to Britain, Patterson thought he saw the President tipping his hand. Once Patterson, a passionate isolationist and advocate of neutrality, thought Roosevelt intended to get America into the European conflict, he broke with FDR and became as bitter a critic of his policies as McCormick, Patterson’s cousin and partner, had been for nearly a decade.

And so was born the McCormick-Patterson Axis—the opposition to Roosevelt by the combined editorial voices of the two largest newspapers in the country’s two largest cities. But from March 1933 (the month Roosevelt was inaugurated for his first term) until December 1940 the cousins disagreed on Roosevelt, and Patterson defended him as passionately as McCormick attacked him viciously. Meanwhile, Gray’s orphan heroine went somberly about her business—reflecting her creator’s opinions, born of both political conviction and narrative necessity. And they were opinions that found enthusiastic reception among the readers of the day.

Even while attacking FDR, Little Orphan Annie addressed profound concerns among its readers. The events of the Great Depression unfolded gradually: the world did not collapse overnight. And as the economic institutions slowly crumbled, one after another, the dominant emotion among the population was fear—fear that an entire way of life, the American way, was falling apart. Gray’s strip addressed and assuaged that fear. Annie’s adventures proved again and again that the historic American ethic of hard work was not bankrupt and that capitalism could still work. Readers were reassured and comforted.

Annie (and Gray) joined the homefront war effort during World War II. Annie blew up a German u-boat offshore and organized the Junior Commandos to collect tons of newspapers, scrap metal and other recyclable materials used in the manufacture of munitions and other implements of war. And then all of a sudden, Gray’s politics became more overt.

What began as a storyteller’s stance morphed into a conservative’s protest. When Roosevelt was nominated for a fourth term in the summer of 1944, Gray had endured enough: he symbolized his feeling that FDR’s policies would be the death of the country by having “Daddy” Warbucks die. On his deathbed, Warbucks complains and explains: “Some have called me a dirty capitalist, but I’ve merely used the imagination and common sense and energy that kind providence gave me. Now? Well, Annie, times have changed, and I’m old and tired. I guess it’s time to go.” Warbucks simply couldn’t survive in FDR’s welfare state.

But after Roosevelt died the next spring, Gray brought Warbucks back to life. As Warbucks put it: “Somehow I feel that the climate here has changed since I went away. We’ll see….”

GRAY’S POLITICS—or, perhaps more accurately, his cultural convictions—proved to be the spark that ignited his storytelling. And no one else would combine similar elements to successfully continue Annie. When Gray died in 1968, the strip was assigned first to his assistant, Tex Blaisdell, and then to David Lettick, who made a regrettable attempt to revive Gray’s earliest Annie, the younger, cuter one; but their Annie was an anemic shadow of Gray’s. The syndicate discontinued their effort in 1974 and went to reruns of Gray classics.

But after the 1977 success of “Annie,” the Broadway musical based on the strip, the syndicate resurrected the feature in 1979, turning it over to veteran comic strip storyteller Leonard Starr, who, by then, had retired his own comic strip, Mary Perkins, On Stage—a beautifully, realistically illustrated and well-told adventure/human interest continuity. The revitalized strip was renamed Annie to foster associations with the musical, and Starr skillfully revamped the look of the strip, retaining the essential appearance of the characters and hints of the brooding atmosphere of Gray’s effort but producing visuals that were crisp and modern-looking. Starr’s Annie was a successful endeavor, but it wasn’t infused with Gray’s passion. It was thoroughly professional but emotionless.

When Starr retired in 2000, TMS (Tribune Media Services, the new incarnation of the old Tribune Syndicate) turned the writing of the strip over to a New York Daily News staffer with a penchant for comics history, Jay Maeder. The drawing was initially done by comic book veteran Andrew Pepoy, but it was a lot of drawing and very little money compared to what Pepoy could earn drawing comic books; he left after a year or so, and Alan Kupperberg took over until 2004, when Ted Slampyak assumed the drawingboard chores. He drew the last Annie strip for June 13 release. 

Commenting about the end of the strip to Larry McShane at the Daily News, Slampyak said: “It’s kind of painful—almost like mourning the loss of a friend.”

Maeder’s stories veered away from Annie more often than not, featuring Oliver Warbucks as an adventuring entrepreneur and patriot—“a sort of buff, Clive Owen-type,” saith Steve Tippie, TMS vice president for licensing. Maeder introduced several new supporting cast members, some of whom would run away with the strip for weeks on end. The most attractive of these was the woman pilot, Amelia Santiago, who, in action and name, was worthy of her own comic strip. I had the sense sometimes that Maeder’s stories never actually ended: they scrambled through one threatening menace after another but then turned a corner into a new series of threats and menaces before quite resolving the previous conjuration. It was a page-turner without end—a continuous cliff-hanger. Nothing wrong with that: daily continuity strips are, almost by definition, prolonged cliff-hangers. But most of them end stories; Maeder’s Annie never seemed to.

Gray’s strip had inspired a radio show, the first late-afternoon serial for young listeners; it debuted in 1930 and continued until April 1942. Hollywood produced movie versions, and Annie merchandise flooded the marketplace from time-to-time. The 1977 musical, which is performed over and over again across America by community theaters that pay fees for the privilege, has been “an annuity” for the syndicate, according to Tippie, interviewed by Phil Rosenthal at the Chicago Tribune. And TMS isn’t likely to forget the orphan’s revenue-generating potential.

As the strip approached its discontinuation, it was being published in less than 20 newspapers; it could scarcely yield enough income to support its writer-artist team. Not even the Tribune was running the strip, once one of the paper’s biggest attractions.

Strangely, with Tippie as our source, TMS doesn’t seem to know why the strip has slipped in popularity. Officials are blaming the generally straitened circumstances in the newspaper business: the last few years, Tippie said, the strip has targeted young readers (instead of adults who are the biggest segment of comic strip readers?), and young readers don’t buy or read newspapers. Tippie and his cohorts may be confused about who reads their features, but they are not confused about potential revenue sources.

In the last panel of the last strip, we see Daddy Warbucks, who, for all practical purposes, has displaced Annie as the chief protagonist, brooding uncertainly about what happened to Annie in her latest run-in with the Butcher of the Balkans. “And, leapin’ lizards, what about her dog Sandy?” asks Rosenthal.

It’s a cliff-hanger, a Maeder specialty—“actually a show of faith that there’s still life in the old gal,” says Rosenthal. And then he quotes Tippie:

“Annie is definitely not dying,” Tippie says. “She will definitely have a life beyond this newspaper incarnation. The daily newspaper strip will go away. Now, that doesn’t mean that Annie won’t come back—whether in comic books, graphic novels, in print or electronic media. It’s just too rich a vein not to mine,” he concluded.

All that’s lacking is the prospector who discovered and developed the vein of gold 86 years before.

By way of saying a fond farewell to the auburn-haired orphan, here are a couple glimpses of the less grim and brooding aspect of cartoonist Gray’s vision. In these visuals, we see that Gray had a sense of humor, a laudably perverse one, at least about such intimate matters as Annie’s eyeballs and her perpetually red dress. (I hand-colored one of these visual aids; alas, the only copy I had was a smeary black-and-white.)

Oddly enough perhaps, Little Orphan Annie reached the zenith of its popularity during the thirties. “Odd” because it was the decade of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the man who gave government a social conscience. FDR’s mission ran in directions diametrically opposed to Gray’s ideas of self-sufficiency. Under Roosevelt’s tutelage, the down-trodden and the poor, the halt and the lame were encouraged to look to government for help rather than exhorted to help themselves by toiling determinedly and exercising tenaciously the principles of free enterprise. Gray’s message was precisely the opposite—although it was as much an accident of his story as it was a matter of political conviction.

The best way for a little orphan girl to make her way in the world without being simply a weepy milksop is for her to be self-reliant. As a good story-teller, Gray knew that. Warbucks and the rest of Annie’s entourage were natural outgrowths of this central notion. As Gray’s exemplar, Warbucks could scarcely espouse self-reliance and free enterprise during the Roosevelt years without, at the same time, seeming to attack FDR’s policies. And so Little Orphan Annie became the first nationally syndicated comic strip to be unabashedly, unrelievedly, “political.”

Last Friday afternoon, as most of you probably are probably already aware, we posted a special report on the end of the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival, checking in with the three founding partners, who told conflicting stories of the reasons for its ending.

Elsewhere:

—Lots of Interviews to Read and Watch. Art Spiegelman & Françoise Mouly talk to the National Post. Mouly also talks to Hazlitt. Rutu Modan talks to the Jewish Journal. William Stout talks to Comic Book Resources. Lisa Hanawalt also talks to Hazlitt. Garry Trudeau talks to CNN. Ryan Sands talks to the Chemical Box.

—An Interview-Related Anecodote. From Anne Ishii, translating for Gengorah Tagame, talking to Butt magazine.

—So Many TCAF Reports. The official report from Brad Mackay. A report with a thousand photos from Robin “Inkstuds” McConnell. A short one from Brigid Alverson. A collection of TCAF-related videos at Forbidden Planet. And finally, an almost-as-long-as-War & Peace report from Tom Spurgeon, most of which is very positive, but part of which delves into the controversy this year over reportedly messy programming. TCAF Director Christopher Butcher responds to that part of Tom’s report here.

—Awards. Steve Gerber and Don Rosa win the Bill Finger Award.

—Comics History. The Billy Ireland museum finds early Jack T. Chick work, a Flinstones-esque gag strip. Paul Gravett writes about Crime Does Not Pay, which he considers America’s greatest crime comic. Michael May at Robot 6 highlights a Mark Evanier blog post I meant (but forgot) to highlight myself, on Chaykin, Infantino, and the historical treatment of comic-book artists. Jerry Beck, Scott Shaw, & Chad Frye talk Carl Barks (via):

—And Finally, a Lot of Video. The Society of Illustrators has posted video from several of the panels held at this year’s MoCCA festival. Here’s the one with guest of honor Bill Griffith:

Thank You and Good Night

We have decided not to continue with BCGF. We had a great run and thank all of our colleagues for their support.

While rumors of troubles between the festival’s three founding partners had been spreading over the past few months, the announcement still took many by surprise. Since its 2009 founding by three prominent members of the independent comics world—Gabriel Fowler, owner of Desert Island; scholar and programming coordinator Bill Kartalopoulos; and Dan Nadel, publisher of PictureBox (and co-editor of this website)—the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival, held every winter at the Our Lady of Mount Carmel church in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, had become one of the most influential, admired, and seemingly successful festivals for independent comics in the United States, and was seen as a model for several similar-minded shows that arrived in its wake. The abrupt announcement of its demise led to widespread dismay and surprise.

One of those expressing surprise at the announcement was founding partner Gabriel Fowler himself. When asked late yesterday to confirm the accuracy of the announcement, Fowler replied via e-mail, “You’ll have to ask the person who posted it,” and added that the message was not posted with his blessing. Fowler says that he wished to continue the show, but was prevented from doing so by his partners. He blames “interpersonal fallout” for the show’s demise, and explained: “Dan wanted to step away from the show due to other commitments, and I then failed to come to terms with Bill. I wanted to continue the show on my own and was told that it was impossible.”

Fowler says that he ultimately proposed “transforming the festival into a non-profit organization with a larger board of directors to diffuse any interpersonal tension,” but says that this proposal was rejected. What exactly were the terms that Fowler and Kartalopoulos failed to agree upon? “I’d rather not get into this, but it hinges on ownership of the festival,” Fowler says. “I was also hopeful that the formation of a non-profit organization would diffuse ego-driven issues related to ownership.”

Dan Nadel acknowledges via e-mail that he and Kartalopoulos made the announcement without Fowler’s involvement. “Bill and I felt it was necessary, and the majority has always carried the vote with BCGF.” However, he disputes some of Fowler’s claims about the reasons for the show’s ending. “I don’t think it was personal so much as business,” Nadel wrote in an e-mail. “Due to various professional obligations and time constraints, I no longer wanted to be involved, but stayed on to (I hoped) ease the transition into it being either a two-person organization or to help bring in a third to replace me. This transition proved more difficult than any of us anticipated. Without getting into too many details, we could not agree on terms for how the show should proceed. We offered Gabe a number of ways to continue the show, but he refused all terms, and ultimately negotiations broke down. That was effectively the end. Without any way to resolve the issues at hand, we were forced to call it a day. I want to make clear that I really hope there’s no ill will around this. I have a huge amount of respect and affection for Gabe and Bill both. This bit of business just couldn’t be worked out.”

Reached by telephone, Bill Kartalopoulos says that the announcement “reflected a majority agreement of the partnership that organizes the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival.”

Asked to give his version of the events leading to the festival’s dissolution, Kartalopoulos says that “the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival has always been a collaboration between PictureBox (i.e., Dan), Desert Island in the person of Gabe Fowler, and myself. The festival has been a product of that collaboration. We collaborated for four years, we put together four great festivals. Even though I expect to continue to work with both of those guys in a variety of ways, we’re not collaborating anymore, so the show, which I think is very specifically a product of the collaboration of the three of us, has probably come to a natural end in part for that reason.”

Kartalopoulos elaborates: “The other thing I would say is that the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival has been a very successful event. Every year it grew beyond our expectations. I think anyone who was at the 2012 show probably observed that the festival was sort of maxing out the structure that had been built to support it. I mean both literally in terms of the space and also, I would say, organizationally. Growth is hard, and presents a lot of challenges. I think that the 2012 event represented the peak of what could be accomplished within the constraints of the current model. So even though I’m sad and upset in certain ways, I am happy to go out on a high note rather than start hitting walls.”

The upstairs exhibitor floor, during the 2012 show.

Kartalopoulos also dissents from Fowler’s characterization of the partnership dispute as hinging on ownership and interpersonal issues. “Among the majority of the members of the group I don’t think there were too many questions about the ownership of the show,” he says. “My point of view is that the festival existed as a collaboration between three people, and to the extent that for four years we were able to stay on the same page, it worked. I don’t know that I would say that there were interpersonal issues because I liked everyone who was involved with the festival. I think there were just differences on how to deal with the challenges of growth.”

Kartalopoulos says that once the partners were no longer able to agree on the same direction, the show was basically unable to continue. “I think that based on the results of last year’s festival, to continue we would need to rethink the event,” Kartalopoulos says. “We had a lot of shared momentum up to that point, and I think once three people start rethinking an event, there is a lot of possibility for them to start thinking about it in different ways that they don’t necessarily share.”

Asked to comment on Fowler’s proposal to turn the festival into a nonprofit, Kartalopoulos demurs. “There were a lot of ideas that were tossed around at various points over the years, and I don’t really want to get involved in any kind of re-litigation of any conversation about that kind of stuff,” he says. “I don’t think it is helpful or productive. I mean, you could probably come up with twelve different visions of the future we came up with at different points and I wouldn’t want to single out any one in particular. I think probably the more important barter point is just that we collaborated with a similar mindset for four years, and I think we responded to the challenges of the growth of the festival with different ideas. As a result of which we’re just not collaborating anymore.”

When informed of Kartalopoulos and Nadel’s responses, Fowler disagrees strongly. “While it’s true that the BCGF evolved into a three-person collaboration, it didn’t start that way,” Fowler writes. “It started with me alone, looking for venues and approaching artists and publishers. I started the show and would prefer to continue it, but I guess I don’t have the right if these guys don’t agree. What else can I say? I’m not a lawyer, but I resent being put in this position. All of the other details are meaningless to me.”

Chris Ware-designed poster for the 2012 BCGF.

One thing all three founding partners do agree upon is that despite some of the speculation on social media from outsiders, the show’s demise had nothing to do with financial issues. “The festival has been a ton of work for very little financial reward, but it was essentially self-sustaining,” says Fowler.

“It was both profitable and artistically rewarding,” says Nadel. “It wasn’t making a fortune, but by publishing standards it wasn’t bad at all.”

“As far as I’m concerned, money-making has never been a consideration,” says Kartalopoulos. “The festival just needs to support itself.” But he does think that the perception brings up issues worth discussing. “There’s a bigger infrastructural point here which is that a big part of the indie comics economy at this point seems to rest on the shoulders of people who work very hard for very little reward to create these festivals,” he says. “I think there are some structural issues that I hope people will start talking about, even if not as a direct result of this situation. It’s really hard and it’s really a lot of work to put together these festivals. No one is making money personally doing these things, and you can’t have an industry that depends on volunteer labor forever.

“These festivals have become so important, because there’s also a real distribution problem that the festivals are being asked to compensate for,” Kartalopoulos adds. “These are tangential issues, but they just come up in my mind when people talk about Is the festival financially sound? I’m like, Well, no! Duh! This whole industry is not financially sound. If it weren’t for people working against their financial interests we wouldn’t have an indie comics world.

“Putting that aside,” he continues, “the show always broke even, plus a little bit. I spent some time looking into larger venues, and I think that some of those could have worked out financially if there was the organizational will to make them work. With a bigger space certainly the costs do skyrocket in New York, but there was an opportunity to potentially include more exhibitors and increase those revenues. Even though it was always a part of our ethos to keep the table costs as low as possible, I think the festival was financially successful enough for most exhibitors that there could have been some logic to increasing the table cost a little bit to compensate for the increased cost of a larger venue. I don’t think it was any more unsustainable than any other festival.”

Nadel wishes things could have ended differently for BCGF. “Ideally Bill and Gabe would’ve figured out a way to move forward, but that’s not happening,” he says. “I sincerely hope something else pops up, or one of those guys starts their own festival.”

“I think we all feel a little sadness that the festival is ending,” Kartalopoulos agrees. “It’s the ending of a collaboration.”

But Kartalopoulos thinks it is important to point out the successes of the festival, as well. “A lot of things that have a big cultural impact don’t necessarily stick around too long,” he says. “The history of art and culture is full of things that lasted a few years, reached the end of their normal lifespan, but continue to have an influence. I mean, not to put it on the same level, but there’s a punk show at the Met, you know? Most of those bands didn’t last more than a couple of years. There’s no question that over the past four years the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival has inspired a lot of other festivals around the country. You could probably come up with a list of at least half a dozen festivals that have come up since then that have at least a little piece of the Brooklyn comics festival DNA in them, from having a really art-comics-focused festival, to a curated show as a model, to free-to-the-public as a model, to having a lot of off-site events that aren’t just all in some depressing convention hall, to using and integrating with the city. I mean, you could look at CAKE or The Projects. I’m looking forward to Autoptic in Minneapolis this summer, which I think should be really interesting. I think there’s a lot of this kind of stuff popping up now, and I think the show has had a really huge influence. If you are able to articulate a new vision specifically and clearly and powerfully enough you don’t necessarily have to say it over and over again, and I think in terms of articulating a different kind of vision for an independent comics festival in America, the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival could not have articulated that more clearly or loudly than we did over the past four years.”

Kartalopoulos ended on a further positive note. “I’m very proud of everyone who was involved with the show and what we accomplished, and I am just really grateful to anyone who ever exhibited at the show, came as a guest, or came to check it out, and am grateful to Gabe and Dan for all of the hard work they did to make it happen.”

This article has been slightly edited for content and grammar since its initial publication.

At some point–this point, actually–all this derision becomes more suspect. Who gives a fuck if these guys want to overexpose their brand, right? It’s actually sort of impressive to see people work so hard to create work outside of the corporate hamster wheel, succeed on all fronts, and then willfully decide to work just as diligently at turning into the exact same factory pump system that scoffed at them in the first place. It’s like watching somebody escape a jail cell, only to spend the next ten years fashioning a jail cell right across the street, with the only difference being that their new cell has a Misfits poster, and sometimes they’ll hire women.

To be clear: these first two issues of Abe Sapien don’t deserve this kind of venom. They aren’t terrible, and if it wasn’t for the fact that the BPRD’s track record had been so consistently unblemished, the sheer competence of their freak-on-the-run thriller story would see them placed alongside all the other “well, at least they didn’t shit themselves” comics. Basically, these are like Hawkeye, some of the Batman comics, the Jesse Martin Law & Order episodes, plain Greek yogurt, or those compilation albums of world music they used to sell at Starbucks–things that aren’t objectionable in terms of craft or commitment, it’s just that the only commitment is to being inoffensive. It’s a curious form of creation: someone sitting down at a drawing table and pursing the fantastic dream of not bothering anybody. That isn’t to say that something like a gross Lisa Hanawalt cartoon is way better just because it’s gross–even if it almost always is–but that at least you don’t look at ejaculate dripping off of a nose and immediately picture the person responsible pensively looking in your window, rending a bunch of tissues as their forehead beads with sweat. The question for BPRD stopped being whether it was good a while ago. Now everybody just gets a hard on at the fantasy of being “okay.”

Maybe the irritation stems from Michael DeForge? His newest releases–a collection of convention minis and other short run one-offs called Very Casual, and the fifth issue of whatever-he feels-like Lose series–is exactly what one arrogantly screeches all cartoonists should be doing all the time: great, unique comics that only that individual could make that are a little better then their previous work, hearty and head-rushing experiences that plainly demand attention and then reward it easily. There’s a simplicity to what DeForge is doing, it’s the oldest rule there is: do your own thing as best you can. He’s funny, and he can draw, and yes: that gives him a huge head start, because talent is very, very real, and talent will always beat persistence, hard work, being-a-nice-person, bringing cupcakes, setting a timer, and telling the truth.

At least in comics.

Sorry, in indy comics.

Okay, indy comics when the money isn’t factored in?

Never mind, that’s a stupid fucking thing to say, and it’s also hilariously unfair to Very Casual and Lose 5 to praise it in some offhand “it’s great because other stuff is bad” fashion, even if the shoe fits so well that it’s hard to imagine the foot ever went without it. But what do you need, at this point? There’s some excellent critics who have some intelligently phrased misgivings with DeForge’s work. I agree with them not even the tiniest little bit. As far as I’ve seen, he’s bulletproof, and his Lose 5 is–as has been mentioned by almost everyone who has read it so far–the best writing he’s done so far, a script that by itself would crush the dreams of all but the most confident young cartoonist. His drawing–what a meager word, when applied to some of these pages–looks to have made yet another of those quiet leaps that you see in cartoonists twice his age, with certain panels dropping away vertiginously, like one of those racing panels from Powr Mastrs. If you think about it, it’s no surprise the rate at which DeForge improves and evolves–he’s drawing all the time, producing comics at a rate that doesn’t have a lot of parallels. You make as much stuff as he does, you’re going to find new ways to skin cats, and in DeForge’s case, that usually means in ways that see the cat getting to wear lots of leather, and spikes. This is as close to saying bravo I’ve felt since Chris Onstad did that comic about Nice Pete murdering everybody at the basketball game.

I found it kind of irritating that Mark Waid’s run on Daredevil ended up going to the same boring fuck-with-Daredevil’s-friends place that everybody always goes to, but mostly because there was a sense of undeserved pride steaming off the book, as if fucking with his fat buddy was cosmically different from fucking with one of his bedmates, when the honest truth is that the main reason the gender got swapped is because Daredevil ran out of ex- and current girlfriends to mutilate. It didn’t help that Marcos Martin–the name that explodes in my brain every time somebody tells me that Frank Quitely is the risen Christ of drawing superheroes–bailed on the book, to be eventually replaced by Chris Samnee, a guy who initially seemed to have proven that you can build an entire career out of drawing adorable convention sketches of All Your Favorite Heroes. Go figure. The book has chugged along with its dumb cancer subplot and a dumber who’s-fucking-with-ya megaplot, and then, just a few months ago, it found its legs. Samnee’s proven himself to be capable of far more interesting panel layouts than his initial work at Marvel–stories which, in retrospect, never demanded much more from him than to move the characters from a very obvious A to an even more obvious B–while Waid has found a sort of poetic beauty in playing Daredevil’s inner monologue primarily off the limited (and strange) information that his senses provides. Even in the initial Martin and Rivera issues, this series mostly used the “radar sense” as a cool effect, a flash cutaway that showed an explosion or a headbutt as a series of concentric rings bouncing off of the walls. But here, Waid lets Samnee show the reader what IS happening, while we’re told what the character thinks is happening, and in the comic’s most recent issue, it’s a disquieting, uncomfortable marriage. We see where things are headed before Daredevil does, witnessing the surety and fluidity with which his defeat approaches, and watching him learn it is, in a pulpy, silly way, rather heartbreaking. It’s an interesting combination, a comic where two people have pushed one another to be better than they were, succeeded, and are now reaping the rewards of a winning partnership. It’s a Marvel comic that ships too frequently, so it’ll be no big shock when the wheels come off. But it’s not supposed to last, right? Everybody has to go home sometime.

Elsewhere:

You may have heard that the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival is no more. Tim will have a story shortly.

Let’s see…

Looks like Oily Comics is going to publish a Josh Simmons book. That’s a coup. An interview with Cecil Castellucci and one-time TCJ Diarist Sara Varon. A Groo review.

And I thought the news from Scott Eder Gallery of “Will Eisner’s ‘A Contract with God’ and Other Images, an exhibition featuring original art, sketches and drawings from the title story” of the book was interesting. For one thing, I can’t think of another show devoted to just a single comic book story. And also, I’m curious to see the process work. That is one of Eisner’s better visual efforts.

Finally, enjoy your weekend with Stan and Jan Berenstain.

Elsewhere:

—Ng Suat Tong released his annual survey of the “Best Online Comics Criticism” of the past year, including several mentions of works printed on this site. This is the first time I can remember being previously familiar with everything chosen (besides the year I helped judge, naturally), and also the first year that I largely agree that most of the picks deserve recognition. I remember past years featuring more adventurous, and just plain more choices, but I also remember past years featuring more clunkers, so maybe the two go hand in hand. Matthias Wivel weighs in on the selection here.

—The Beat has gathered audio from a selection of panels held at last weekend’s TCAF Festival.

—The only reason I don’t link to Rob Clough’s blog more often is that he’s so prolific that doing so would quickly become a full-time job. But maybe today’s a good day to remind readers of his other gig. Recent entries include a review of Abel & Madden’s Mastering Comics and Robyn Chapman’s Drawing Comics, and a roundup of recent minicomics.

—Jonathan Winters was also a cartoonist?!

—And finally, Jon Longhi talks to Robert Crumb (via):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=4oj6oD9_SkQ

For example, in “Wishy Washy”, Carré’s protagonist is a man with an utterly uncompromising approach to life, unwavering in his decisions, sticking to his daily habits and routines with metronomic accuracy: “Whether I’m in a hotel or at my apartment, I wake up at 8am sharp and look out the window first thing.” When his inability to change course (literally) leads to a disastrous automobile crash, he recovers to find he is unable to make any decisions at all. Even his morning regimen confounds him: “Why should one pair of socks be chosen over another?” Unfortunately, this total reversal of mindset leads not to moral epiphany but only to further
disaster.

The clear highlights in Heads or Tails are the two longest pieces: “That Thing about Madeline” (featured in Best American Comics 2008) and “The Carnival” (originally published in Mome and featured in Best American Non-Required Reading 2010), both of which share the collection’s theme of duality, as well as the eerie, enigmatic quality of Carré’s debut with Fantagraphics, her graphic novel The Lagoon (2009).

In “The Thing about Madeline” the title heroine is a rather sad sort who ends each mundane workday as a salesperson for a soap factory by tanking up at a local bar and listening to the same jukebox song over and over again until she needs to be escorted home by a man named Jacob, who doesn’t seem to mind this nightly routine, being clearly interested in her. One night, Madeline staggers home only to encounter herself, already asleep in bed. This doppelganger quickly takes over Madeline’s life, leading it far more successfully and healthily (even getting a romance going with Jacob), while Madeline passively watches the activity from windows: “… like watching a movie with the sound turned low.” Unable to integrate her two halves, she dodges the conundrum by boarding a bus out of town. (The story does not end there.) Carré weaves this tale of the uncanny with low-key efficiency and keen psychological underpinnings, subtly suggesting that Madeline’s dilemma has sprung from the tension between her subconscious desire to alter her tacky existence, and her stubborn unwillingness to do so.

Even better is “The Carnival,” a gorgeously colored 32-page story that unfolds with mesmeric dream logic. Like Madeline, the hero of the piece, Henry, is a salesperson (his line is cars). He plods through life listlessly until one night when he impulsively skips town for a few days. On a whim, he stops at a carnival and meets a nameless woman with a young boy in tow (who upon closer look resembles Henry). Though Carré leaves the woman’s role ambiguous—she may be aligned with some elemental or supernatural forces, especially considering the memorable manner in which she exits the story—it is clear that she sparks something in Henry: sexual desire, to be sure, but perhaps also the ability to dream of a life less prosaic – or even the ability to dream at all. Subtle and ambiguous but not opaque, Carré leaves the story particulars and ultimate meanings for the reader to suss out, inviting a re-read or two.

Visually, Carré is versatile, veering from the highly stylized, design-y imagery of the book’s opener, “Kingdom,” to the rubbery-limbed, Lynda Barry-esque figures of “Madeline” and “The Carnival” to the grittier black and white renderings of ”Too Hot to Sleep.” Even the least of the entries here, such as the somewhat twee “Moss” and “Marching Band,” are beguiling baubles of comic art, wrapped up in delightful colors and confidently rendered with faux-naïve figures bounding, floating or twisting their way through the panels and pages. Carré’s characters may be sometimes literally split in two, but their stories are satisfyingly all of a piece. This is a unified and cohesive collection from a significant artist and engaging storyteller.

Even better is “The Carnival,” a gorgeously colored 32-page story that unfolds with mesmeric dream logic. Like Madeline, the hero of the piece, Henry, is a salesperson (his line is cars). He plods through life listlessly until one night when he impulsively skips town for a few days. On a whim, he stops at a carnival and meets a nameless woman with a young boy in tow (who upon closer look resembles Henry). Though Carré leaves the woman’s role ambiguous—she may be aligned with some elemental or supernatural forces, especially considering the memorable manner in which she exits the story—it is clear that she sparks something in Henry: sexual desire, to be sure, but perhaps also the ability to dream of a life less prosaic – or even the ability to dream at all. Subtle and ambiguous but not opaque, Carré leaves the story particulars and ultimate meanings for the reader to suss out, inviting a re-read or two.

Elsewhere:

It’s a slow news day…. Tardi and Luc Besson fans will be happy to know that The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec is getting a proper DVD/Blu-Ray release. This is a good relic. And I sure like that Emil Gershwin (yes, the same Gershwin).

And here’s the Doug Wright Awards video:

It’s also the second day of the Cartoonist’s Diary of Faith Erin Hicks. Today, she’s on the way to Stumptown.

Elsewhere: Not so much.

—Devlin Thompson at Bizarro Wuxtry has some great photos of Peter Bagge and Daniel Clowes’s Hateball tour, which took place twenty years ago.

—Chris Mautner isn’t that big a fan of Bazooka Joe comics. Go figure.

—Graeme McMillan notes that despite Marvel’s recent claims, Avengers: Endless Wartime is hard to justify as “Marvel’s First Original Graphic Novel.” Does the phrase “graphic novel” really have such fetishistic power that it’s worth making bald-faced lies like that?

—And finally, Jeet Heer takes to the Globe & Mail to review Gilbert Hernandez’s latest two books.

Except for the fact that you didn’t get an advance copy of Suehiro Maruo’s The Strange Tale of Panorama Island, which sold out within half an hour of the doors opening on day one.

It’s cool. This column’s here for you. And your mama.

To your left we see the case for a PAL-format dvd release from Ciné Malta; as far as I know, it is the only legit home video release for an English-subtitled version of animator Hiroshi Harada’s Chika Gentō Gekiga: Shōjo Tsubaki, a 1992 anime adaptation of Mauro’s 1984 opus Shōjo Tsubaki, localized by Blast Books in the ’90s as Mr. Arashi’s Amazing Freak Show. Contrary to the Ciné Malta website, my system insists that it’s a region-free disc. It is *very* English-friendly, subtitling not only the film, but all of the bonus features, and even presenting the obligatory informative booklet in bilingual French/English format.

Midori, as I will now refer to the film — it’s also been known under the more explicative title of Midori – The Girl in the Freak Show — has attained a somewhat legendary status among older anime viewers and ‘cult’ movie fanatics of a certain generation; aside from simply *being* an anime made from a goddamned Suehiro Maruo comic, it was also known to have been drawn entirely by director Harada, who spent half a decade laboring over all 55 minutes of his one-man show, only to withdraw it from circulation at the end of the ’90s and seemingly forbid any home video release.

The dvd of Midori, then, with Harada’s full participation, acts to either dispel or explain some of the most common myths surrounding the project. This was not a crazy man’s personal obsession painted in blood and pus in his bedroom; Harada was a great admirer of Shōjo Tsubaki upon its release, and — noting the collapse of several larger-scale attempts to adapt the comic to film — basically hounded Maruo with correspondence (a la the student filmmakers who often pop up in the letters page of Optic Nerve) until he relented.

It was 1987, and Harada (not to be confused with the gekiga artist Hiroshi Hirata) had already enjoyed some success as an animator on mainstream anime like Maison Ikkoku, in addition to having directed a few short animated films of his own. However, he knew that there was no way he was going to secure formal ‘producers’ to finance such a project, and so opted to perform all of the direct illustration duties on his own basically as a cost-cutting measure. By the time he had actually finished the animation duties, however, his achievement was impressive enough that outside parties began donating (or drastically discounting) their services for the actual shooting, voice acting, titles, etc. Harada even submitted the film to Japan’s movie regulation board for guidance on self-censorship.

It was ultimately to no avail. Per Harada, in 1999, upon its return from an overseas festival screening, “the print” of the film — possibly the only one — was seized by Japanese customs and destroyed. The Ciné Malta disc appears to have been struck from a VHS master. This is why Harada has not attempted further Japanese screenings or a Japanese home video release; he is evidently not opposed to international video distribution.

Still, this is not the whole story.

As far as adaptations go, Midori is a pretty close one. Maruo’s original scenario concerns the trials and travails of a naive, agonized 12-year old girl of the early Shōwa period (say, 1930-ish), whose broken, impoverished family situation results in her falling in with a gang of circus freaks, whose rough ‘n ready counterculture clashes madly with Midori’s desire to go on school trips and be a well-socialized girl. The down-and-out show is enhanced, one day, by the arrival of a dwarf psychic whose magic acts delight everyone. He becomes an understanding (if *very* controlling) lover to young Midori, though his violent nature eventually causes him to lash out at hypocrites that make up the ‘civilized’ audience of (war-ready) Japanese. The circus breaks up, and the dwarf leaves to start a new life with Midori, though alas, dear reader, he is killed by a desperate thief in a robbery, leaving poor Midori all alone again with the mocking recollection of the freaks she’d abandoned.

Harada rearranges a few events and expands on others, adding additional episodes of sexualized violence — in an expanded prelude, Midori comes home to find rats gnawing on the genitals of her mother’s corpse, and the taking of her virginity at the hands (or, in the absence, mouths) of the freaks is specified and made graphic — but mostly hewing to Maruo’s rather elliptic narrative style. As you can see above, Harada sometimes breaks Maruo’s pages down into consecutive frames, copying Maruo’s panels closely and then ‘filling in’ moments of additional activity (frame 2 above, occurring between panels 1 and 2), a bit like an in-between animator working from key frames by a senior artist.

The film even adopts a chapter-based format, hewing closely to the structure of the comic, though Harada’s chapters are actually called “songs,” which is important. As is the full Japanese title, again: Chika Gentō Gekiga: Shōjo Tsubaki, translating roughly to “Underground Projected Dramatic Pictures: Camellia Girl.”

Midori, you see, was not envisioned as a normal theatrical feature. Inspired by the avant-garde theater and cinema of Shūji Terayama, which often added an element of live-action performance to cinema exhibitions, Harada debuted his film in a re-purposed shrine, with the audience led through a haunted house-style maze into a facsimile circus tent, where Midori was projected on three screens to the accompaniment of colored lighting, smoke, gunpowder, and a climactic whirlwind of cherry blossom petals raining onto the crowd. Moreover, it was accompanied by real circus acts and kamishibai demonstrations, which is to say a live-narrated picture story of the type active in the time of the film’s action, a widely-acknowledged predecessor to post-war manga in its employment of cinema grammar (and future manga artists).

Indeed, Maruo’s own Shōjo Tsubaki is allegedly based on an authentic girls’ kamishibai tale of that very period, though the artist blends this sentimental evocation with a mean-spirited parody of contemporaneous shōjo manga, mocking the idea of his pure-hearted heroine’s agonies leading to anything satisfactory in the way of societal or emotional reward. His is a Sadean perspective in which innocence is punished, though put to distinctly Japanese ends, in that Maruo most directly opposes the idea of tradition as anything to be honored. Instead, he fetishizes the aesthetics of fascist Shōwa as a perfect platform for tales of amorality and societal breakdown. In Maruo’s world, sentimentality is an indulgence of privilege, while the poor, the rejected, the freaks understand the truth behind humanity: the rape, the violence, the fact that we are all basically animals, and that conformity to societal norms only facilitates less honest means of exploitation.

But then, as with Chris Ware, such criticisms don’t get in the way of the fact that Maruo obviously loves old shit.

Harada loves it too. Midori is not the most lavishly-mounted animated film you’ll see; there’s a lot of panning over still images and sound effects/voices covering for a lack of motion, although it really doesn’t look that much different from most of the bargain-basement television anime cranked out today (and it has a *terrific* synthesizer score by authentic Shūji Terayama collaborator J.A. Seazer, who later worked on the classic ’90s anime Revolutionary Girl Utena). But I suspect Harada, who on the dvd cites the fine example of American comics/animation pioneer Winsor McCay — whose 1914 landmark Gertie the Dinosaur also involved a significant live-action accompaniment — is fine with a lot of his movie being still frames, many of them copied from another artist’s work.

This, after all, is the essence of kamishibai. I’m not the first to suggest that Midori is something of an elaborate, modern day (circa ’92) still picture story, and I’d even go so far as to say that the film’s status as adaptation is especially fitting, in that the film is the work of one man, readily replicating and extrapolating from another storyteller’s work, with his own pictures, in the way so many kamishibai storytellers operated. As a matter of fact, there was an earlier film project along these lines – 1967′s Band of Ninja, in which filmmaker Nagisa Oshima (himself a distinctly counter-cultural figure, best remembered in the West for 1976′s In the Realm of the Senses) edited together still images of a ninja comic by manga great Sampei Shirato, who was himself a kamishibai illustrator back in the day. In this way, Oshima cast himself as ‘narrator’ to Shirato’s illustrator, though he did not take the extra conceptual steps of drafting new (often copied) illustrations himself, or elaborating on the original story as Harada did… and as did Mauro from the original Shōjo Tsubaki.

It is tempting to draw a political conclusion from all of this. Maruo’s politics of anti-social violence read like a punk application of Shirato’s own taste for bloody Marxism. Fellow leftist Hayao Miyazaki would eventually denounce the influential Shirato’s worldview thusly: “If the world were truly filled with such hate and destruction, if that were how history was made, then everyone would surely have been dead by the Edo period.” He could just as well have been talking about Maruo. Harada, meanwhile, on the Ciné Malta dvd, casts his animation in opposition to that of Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli, which he sees as exporting a monied, status quo fantasy of Japanese history to the West. “If his stories represent the official story of Japan,” he says, “then Midori is a counter-story of Japan, one the Japanese State and powers that be have suppressed and tried to hide away.”

One wonders, however, if Midori really could have kept it up so long as the old-school multimedia extravaganza its director had planned. A few paragraphs up I mentioned kamishibai as informed by cinema grammar; the Japanese cinema of the Shōwa period specifically clung to silent movie grammar for longer than the West, insofar as a certain live component existed in it as well, with a benshi typically retained to stand by the screen and accompany the film with a running narration and character voices. Amusingly, this is how the earliest American anime fandom functioned in the absence of subtitles at SF conventions, with the one Japanese-fluent person in the room pausing the video and explaining things to the rest of the audience.

Still, soon fansubs were a thing. Soon, the sound revolution hit the cinema. Soon, cheaply-available cinema-informed manga and gekiga — and the slow rise of television — relegated kamishibai to antiquity. Mostly, I watch movies on my laptop; it runs PAL-format discs, and I never worry about region codes. I watch more and rarer films than I ever could before. I love it, though I do still look at projects like Midori and I know it’s a potent example of creative frustration, born from a real attempt to take its source manga’s evil nostalgia for an earlier age and create an entire self-referential space for the experience of such: to be transported and challenged, shocked by smoke and noises, and controlled by the exact pacing of images dictated by one Hiroshi Harada, who now works a lot in video games. He was also a PA on Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation, if the IMDB is correct. Maybe Bill Murray saw this film. Maybe underground, off the record, in the right conditions, through the maze, with an audience.

The rest of us are stuck reading manga at our own pace.

Alone in a room, with Suehiro Maruo.

***

PLEASE NOTE: What follows is not a series of capsule reviews but an annotated selection of items listed by Diamond Comic Distributors for release to comic book retailers in North America on the particular Wednesday, or, in the event of a holiday or occurrence necessitating the close of UPS in a manner that would impact deliveries, Thursday, identified in the column title above. Not every listed item will necessarily arrive at every comic book retailer, in that some items may be delayed and ordered quantities will vary. I have in all likelihood not read any of the comics listed below, in that they are not yet released as of the writing of this column, nor will I necessarily read or purchase every item identified; THIS WEEK IN COMICS! reflects only what I find to be potentially interesting.

***

SPOTLIGHT PICKS!

The From Hell Companion: Ooh, how appropriate! Following up Maruo with one of the greatest English-language graphic novels – a full-blooded horror comic to boot. Or, rather, this Top Shelf/Knockabout co-production is a 288-page softcover chronicle of the making of that book, authored by the comic’s own artist, the irreplaceable Eddie Campbell, “complete with photos, anecdotes, disagreements, and wry confessions,” along with many illustrations and samples of Alan Moore’s original scripts. I can’t wait to check this out. Samples; $29.95.

Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher #1 (of 2): What the hell, let’s make it an all-chills spotlight — kind of uncanny, that — with Richard Corben’s latest and lengthiest from a new series of Dark Horse-facilitated Poe adaptations running in Dark Horse Presents (and 2012′s The Conqueror Worm one-shot), colored in full by the artist himself. Preview; $3.99.

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(Please note that Ivan Brunetti’s Aesthetics: A Memoir may be appearing in some shops, despite its absence from Diamond’s shipping lists; you will want to look at that, if possible.)

–

PLUS!

Eerie Archives Vol. 13: More shivers await, as Dark Horse brings issues #61-64 of the old Warren series, featuring art by the aforementioned Richard Corben, as well as Wally Wood, Alex Toth, Bernie Wrightson and others. Introduction by Tom Neely, of The Blot and The Wolf, whom I think is the first younger, working artist to contribute an essay to this series of influential works. Samples; $49.99.

Crossed: Wish You Were Here Vol. 2: Every so often I hear a whisper or two from people who’re really into the webcomic for Crossed, a quasi-zombie series from Avatar Press, presented in a register they used to call “splatterpunk,” which is to say ‘probably not directly translatable to cable television.’ It’s still ongoing, still written by 2000 AD veteran Simon Spurrier, and now a second, 160-page color compilation is available, with art by Fernando Melek; $19.99 ($27.99 in hardcover).

Neon Genesis Evangelion Omnibus Vol. 3 (of 5): Getting back to Hayao Miyazaki, though – he has a new feature, Kaze Tachinu (“The Wind is Rising”) opening this summer, and it seems he’s cast Neon Genesis Evangelion creator Hideaki Anno as the lead character. Anno, of course, worked as an animator on Miyazaki’s 1984 Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind movie; perhaps he sees things coming full circle, now that Yoshiyuki Sadamoto has finally been announced to complete this manga adaptation of Eva with its Japanese vol. 14, a mere 18 years after he started? Cherry blossom petals, fluttering. Anyway, here’s Viz with a handy new packaging of vols. 7-9; $19.99.

Scott Pilgrim Color Edition Vol. 3 (of 6): Scott Pilgrim & the Infinite Sadness: Also in new editions, here’s Oni with the latest colorization for Bryan Lee O’Malley’s ’00s alt comics superhit, a de facto deluxe edition hardcover featuring assorted comments and production materials from the artist himself; $24.99.

[another mess of Cinebook releases]: Or, “Eurocomics in English: The Adventure Continues” -

Valerian Vol. 2: The Empire Of A Thousand Planets (48 pgs., 8 1/2″ x 11 1/4″, $11.95)
XIII Vol. 16: Maximilian’s Gold (48 pgs., 7 1/4″ x 10″, $11.95.)
Thorgal Vol. 6: City of the Lost God (96 pgs., 7 1/4″ x 10″, $19.95)
Betelgeuse Vol. 1: The Survivors (96 pgs., 7 1/4″ x 10″, $19.95)
Blake and Mortimer Vol. 11: The Gondwana Shrine (64 pgs. 8 1/2″ x 11 1/4″, $15.95)
Lucky Luke Vol. 27 & 28 (48 pgs., 8 1/2″ x 11 1/4″, $11.95)

All softcover, samples at the links. Been a while since I’ve seen any Thorgal. That’s a fantasy series drawn by Grzegorz Rosiński and written by Jean Van Hamme of XIII, which itself has now reached the album before the Moebius guest shot. Betelgeuse is actually the sequel to a series titled Aldebaran, which Cinebook is also releasing; they’re all clean-looking French-market sci-fi albums by Brazilian writer/artist Luiz Eduardo de Oliveira, aka Léo. Make sure you return these books neatly to the new release rack, so they don’t crowd out the new Age of Ultron!

Doomsday.1 #1 (of 4): Certifiable Steve Ditko fanatics have Charlton Comics’ entire publication history committed to memory, because you never know where the man might pop up. For example, Ditko had a back-up page in issue #5 of Doomsday + 1, and that’s how I recognize the title of that immediate-post-apocalypse series, a Joe Gill-scripted joint also noteworthy for the longform color debut of artist John Byrne, who is now doing a solo re-imagining of that very concept (SOLAR FLARE DESTROYS SHIT, ASTRONAUTS TO THE RESCUE) at IDW. Delightfully loud cover; $3.99.

Alter Ego #117: Yes, the Roy Thomas old-timey fanzine is still coming from TwoMorrows, and this issue is particularly noteworthy for boasting a spotlight feature on Jay Disbrow: pre-Code horror artist, web cartoonist, and creator of the very first Fantagraphics comic, The Flames of Gyro, which I’m hoping will be treated to a Ken Parille-on-David Boring-caliber exegesis, if they don’t want their magazine mailed back to them in tatters. Preview; $8.95.

Comic Book Creator #1: Oh come on, I’m kidding. Look, here’s your magazine-on-comics for the week – a new TwoMorrows launch, edited by Jon B. Cooke, devoted to “the work and careers of the men and women who draw, write, edit, and publish comics, focusing always on the artists and not the artifacts, the creators and not the characters.” First up on the cover is Jack Kirby, although chats with and/or coverage of Alex Ross, Kurt Busiek, Todd McFarlane, Frank Robbins, Neal Adams, Dennis O’Neil and others are promised across 84 color pages. Preview; $8.95.

–

CONFLICT OF INTEREST RESERVOIR: Quick, what’s the opposite of Suehiro Maruo? I have no fucking idea, but it might not be too far off from Wandering Son, Shimura Takako’s gentle study of children grappling with identity issues, now up to its fourth English-language volume, a 224-page hardcover aimed directly at you; $19.99.

 You’ve reached your 75th LOAC release. In terms of concept and execution, what do you think your biggest successes have been? What about your failures? Are there titles that flew under the radar for you?

Bruce Canwell: I’d say our biggest successes have been: [A] discovering how Dean and I — and subsequently, we and later additions to the LOAC team — were so closely in sync as to what we wanted to produce in terms of content, design, style, and scholarship, and [B] being lucky enough to find an audience that, on balance, is in tune with our sensibilities.

I’d say our major failure has been the same one shared by all other players in this arena: we’ve all created high-quality collections of exceptional comic strips, but none of us have found a way to grow the audience so these books sell in the big numbers the material deserves.

Dean Mullaney: The fact that we have seventy-five (and counting) books in the imprint is, in and of itself, our biggest success. Seventy-five books in any imprint is impressive; when you look back at the Hyperion line of strip reprints in the late 1970s, Bill Blackbeard managed to publish twenty-two titles, one third of LOAC’s current output. I also like to think that we have upped the ante in terms of strip restoration so that modern readers have a better sense of what the original strips were supposed to look like

For me personally, the biggest success has been to bring Milton Caniff’s Terry and the Pirates back into print, with the Sundays in color and with Bruce’s phenomenal essays that place the strip in its historical context. Each of the six volumes has gone through multiple printings and continues to sell.

If by “under the radar” you mean books that we feel should have received more attention than they did…I’d say King Aroo, the Chuck Jones book, and the Otto Soglow collection. It’s disappointing to note that in this day of bloggers and reviewers trying to constantly post new items ahead of the curve, detailed analysis tends to fall by the wayside. And let’s be realistic, in a crowded market, a more obscure “art house” strip like King Aroo or Barnaby needs perceptive bloggers and reviewers to help spread the word. And that’s not really happening.

I’ve often wondered during the reprint “boom” whether or not there’s an identifiable audience, beyond libraries, buying and responding to this work. Have you been able to identify one?

Canwell: Certainly — more than one, in fact! I suspect all the players in the market, not just us, benefit from the same audience. The long-time devoted collectors of comic strips — call them The Sons of Bill Blackbeard — are livin’ the dream at this point in comics publishing history. Many readers who were buying the first wave of comic strip reprints from the likes of Kitchen Sink, Fantagraphics, Eclipse, and NBM are upgrading their collections with the new editions being published today.

We also see an audience segment smaller than The Sons of Bill Blackbeard but still sizeable enough to be of note: folks who find their long-time interest in the latest comic books is fading. They’re shifting to strip reprints, finding the wealth of great material that’s available, and rekindling their love of comics. (I have an affinity for this group, because that’s the exact path I walked during that first wave of strip reprints in the 1980s.)

The Sons of Bill Blackbeard — the libraries and schools — the comic book fans who become comic strip fans — the parents who seek appropriate reading material for their kids and discover Little Orphan Annie or the Gottfredson Mickey Mouse books or (for the more precocious reader) King Aroo … all of those are important clusters of demographics for our little corner of the industry.

Mullaney: I’d add another key segment to that group: comics professionals and would-be comics professionals who want to learn from and be inspired by the master cartoonists of the past. It’s all fine and dandy to have heard that Caniff, Herriman, Raymond, Segar, Foster, King, et al were great, but unless their works are reprinted, it’s just talk. You need to SEE and READ the work — and we now have an unprecedented opportunity to study these classic strips.

Further, individual titles can broaden our market and reach a new audience. For example, Bloom County is our best-selling series to date because it captures people who aren’t specifically strip fans, but are Bloom County fans. Same goes for Star Trek – our best information indicates that the Star Trek strip book is being bought primarily by Star Trek fans, not strip die-hards.

Now, will Bloom and Trek fans start buying Li’l Abner and the Gumps? Probably not, but the success of any book in the line helps the entire imprint – not merely because it makes money but because retailers and wholesalers look more favorably on an imprint that has certified “hits.” There are a lot of marketing and sales factors that come into play and are not of interest to fans. And not important to them, either. It’s “Inside Baseball” kind of stuff that I need to be aware of, yet is irrelevant to the reader.

Is there a place for a “best of” Dick Tracy or Annie? Is that something that’s even possible with those strips? I’ve wondered if the seriality of the books is an issue (as well as being a virtue, of course).

Canwell: There are definite challenges to doing “Best of” collections, especially for a strip like Little Orphan Annie, where continuities could run for the better part of a year. Still, every problem has a solution — our first and so far only foray into softcover publishing is a Best of Dick Tracy. I think it’s a great little “Whitman sampler,” a way for someone totally unfamiliar with Tracy get an idea of what he’s all about. I wish something like this had been out there when I was first deep-diving into the strips back in the ’80s!

And to that end, I wonder that the next step is? Do you plan to start new series? Or stay entrenched with the numerous strips you have going now? If the latter, what is your criteria for inclusion in the LOAC? With so many classics covered already, how do you begin to decide on secondary titles?

Canwell:  Yes; we’ve had new releases every year The Library of American Comics has been in business. Why would we stop now? And as long as there is audience demand, why would we stop producing Steve Canyon or Li’l Abner or Skippy? Our criteri  is the same as it ever was: projects that appeal to Dean and me, that we believe will be fun to produce AND fun for the audience to read; informative, too, one hopes. One of the big disconnects in our society is the notion that “learning” and “fun” should be separate things. Alex Toth’s life is a STORY, as is George McManus’s, or Milton Caniff’s — our task is to bring that story to life in a way that informs and entertains in equal measure, because to us those two qualities go hand-in-hand. The timeless value of the material, of course, speaks for itself. ”… how do you begin to decide on secondary titles?” Probably by not worrying about meaningless labels like “secondary titles.” Who decides what is “secondary,” anyway? And how many other strata have these faceless arbiters created?

Mullaney: There’s no single criterion for what strips to reprint. Sometimes one of us has a particular favorite and we’re in the position to make it happen. Our long-term goal is to present a wide variety and a fair representation of strips that, together, tell the overarching history of newspaper strips. And we obviously need to be aware of commercial considerations. We’ll give some strips the complete treatment (Dick Tracy, Little Orphan Annie), while others—Bringing Up Father—will get the best years in sequential order treatment. Other strips might get a one-shot.

I doubt if there are any (or many) long-running series we’ll add to the line. But then again, new opportunities can come along unexpectedly, as in our getting the license from DC for the Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman strips. These series alone will add nearly two dozen titles to LOAC over the next few years. I’m current penciling in the schedule for 2014 and 2015 and trying to find slots for all the books we want to do!

I wonder if you can write a little more about the differences in approach between say, Soglow/McManus and Gray/Caniff. Beyond commercial considerations, do you think some strips are simply better than others in terms of the experience of reading the whole run? 

Canwell: It’s tough to make a broad generalization here, I think, because several factors come into play. A strip like Caniff’s Terry is so short, relatively speaking, that certainly it rewards being read from start to finish. A series like Bringing Up Father began in the comics’ first blush and has McManus’s name attached to it until the middle of the 20th Century: the concept stays the same throughout, yet in terms of format, look, and pacing the 1910s BUF is significantly different from the 1940s BUF. Would those early strips be of interest, given the art is far less layered and detailed, and Maggie & Jiggs’s routine has now been played out by TV imitators like Ralph & Alice Kramden, Archie & Edith Bunker, and Al & Peg Bundy (among others)?

Then think of how many strips got squeezed in the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s by the shrinking real estate allotted to the comics page. Some series retain their appeal even in those cramped quarters because their creators still have interesting stories to tell or things to say (Steve Canyon, Li’l Abner), others less so.

Have there been any strips on your wishlist that just don’t make the grade, commercially? And if so, are there potential solutions to that problem?

Mullaney: We’ve got a list a mile long that’s probably not much different from the list my old pal Kim Thompson has made at Fantagraphics. Plus, we all have personal faves that are totally uncommercial; for example, I’d hung up on Fay King’s art, but aside from Cole Johnson, Trina Robbins, and me, I don’t know if anyone else would care!

One solution to the problem is our new series, LOAC Essentials. By offering a year’s worth of dailies (instead of 3 years’ worth), we can keep the price down so readers will be more willing to try something new. There aren’t a lot of readers, for example, clamoring for a gigantic $50 volume of the Gumps – but by presenting a shorter book, I think we’ll get those readers hooked so they’ll want a second Gumps storyline. We’d like to take similar approaches with other strips. For example, Bruce wants to edit a Cap Stubbs and Tippie book, I’m researching a top-notch Winnie Winkle continuity, and Jared Gardner remains hung up on Minute Movies.

You’re about to embark on a Russ Manning series. I’m fascinated with the relationship between Toth, Marsh and Manning, and Manning’s initial emergence from ERB fandom. How do you see the aesthetic relationship between Toth and Manning? Do you see a “California” school there? Were they in contact much?

Mullaney: The question of whether or not there was/is a “California school” is interesting. Regardless, there were certainly enough comics artists who migrated west or were native born.

Alex was a great admirer of Marsh’s although I wouldn’t say Marsh was an influence on him. I also don’t recall Toth having anything except a peer to peer relationship with Manning. Dan Spiegle (who remains one of my all-time favorites) also seems to be a singular talent. One could argue that Toth’s, Marsh’s, and perhaps Spiegle’s influence independently may have created a California school. Manning, of course, was influenced by Marsh and to a lesser degree by Toth; Manning, in turn, begat Dave Stevens, and on and on. The entire notion of a California school gets further complicated by the migration of East Coasters who were looking for sunshine and some Hollywood paychecks.

One point of debate in recent years is compensation for the estates of the artists involved. Do you have a stance on this?

Canwell: I would hope our stance is obvious, first by our statement of principles on page 325 of Genius, Isolated, page 349 of Genius, Illustrated — “Although some of Alex Toth’s earlier comics work may legally be in the public domain, there are some rights more important than legal ones. We ask everyone to respect Alex Toth’s memory and the moral rights of his children as the beneficiaries of his work. We urge those who wish to reprint any of that earlier work to contact the estate for permission: http://www.tothfans.com.” — and second by the fact we operate in a way that proves we apply those sentiments across the board, not just to Alex Toth and his heirs.

Mullaney: In fact, I first met Alex when I let him know that I’d be paying him money to reprint some of his public domain Standard comics. I started in the comics business in 1977 with the expressed purpose of establishing creators’ rights as the norm in the industry. I’m not going to pass judgment on other publishers/editors who don’t pay creators or their heirs for public domain work; that’s their call.

With long-running strips, it’s a little more complicated because anything that premiered in the early 1920s and earlier is public domain. Yet if the strip continued for a long time (Gasoline Alley comes to mind), at some point you hit a brick wall when the strips are still under copyright by the syndicate. So you can theoretically publish the early years and find heirs to pay, but once you get to the copyrighted material, you’re either paying double royalties (the syndicate AND the heirs) or just the syndicate.

The “moral rights” of the Toth estate: Can you expand on this? What are those rights, in your view, and how do they dovetail with the idea of public domain work?

Mullaney: Those rights are what we, as individuals, make them. The issue is totally separate from legal rights. From a publisher’s perspective, if I want to reprint Alex’s Zorro comics, I need to pay a licensing fee/royalty to John Gertz/Zorro Productions, who owns the trademark to the character and the copyrights to those stories. If, on the other hand, I want to reprint Alex’s comics for Standard or Lev Gleason, the work is apparently in the public domain, so no licensing fee or royalties are due. If the original publisher failled to register or renew the copyright or that publishing entity no longer exists, anyone is legally free to reprint the stories. In the course of my long career in comics, I have made the personal decision that — in the case of public domain comics in which there is no rights holder requiring a fee or royalties — I would pay the artist or the artist’s direct heirs. I still have letters of appreciation from Jerry Siegel, Jack Katz, Reed Crandall’s sister, Ellie Frazetta, and other creators whose work I reprinted in the 1980s and 1990s and for which I paid them.

These “moral” rights run parallel to a previously obscure part the 1976 Copyright Act, which allows artists, under specific circumstances, to reclaim the rights to their work after 35 years. The intent of the law is to allow creative people a second chance to own material they sold to a publisher earlier in their careers when they may not have had fair leverage. I think we can all agree that very few comics artists in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s understood what they were signing away – or even IF they signed anything away. It seems to me that if we are in favor of Siegel, Shuster, and Kirby trying to reclaim their rights, then we should similarly should pay them for reprinting that earlier work. In my book, it’s all the same thing.

With your recent deal to release DC character comic strips and IDW’s Artist Editions, do you see any hope in larger companies allowing other publishing entities to more aggressively publish work that is more or less trapped behind corporate copyrights? Here I think of Meskin, Cole, Maneely, and, of course, Toth, whose DC work is represented in Genius Illustrated mostly via original art, as opposed to the final (printed) work. It is the only real absence in Genius Illustrated.

Mullaney: I can’t speak to the Artists’ Editions because we have nothing to do with them; they’re produced with great finesse by Scott Dunbier at IDW. Whether the larger companies such as Marvel and DC will license their copyrighted material to other publishers, who knows. It’s a question best directed to them.

In the Toth books, the reason I chose to reprint most of his DC work from original art rather than from printed comics had nothing to do with copyrights. As an editor/designer, I believe the original art best represents Toth’s intent, and it’s what Toth fans want to see. If this were a book of straight reprints, I’d have used printed versions. But the Genius series is part bio/part art book; as such, we wanted to stress the art. Plus, we were fortunate enough to find some very generous art collectors willing to loan the valuable art!

Speaking of original art — what is your philosophy on original art vs. printed comics. When the work was printed in color, do you feel the image loses something as original art? Was Toth drawing for color, do you think?

Canwell: Isn’t this like asking, “When the ground beef is cooked up as a hamburger, does it lose something by not being served as steak tartare?” It’s still pretty tasty either way, isn’t it? As for Toth drawing for color — an intellect as keen as Alex’s would always keep the end result in mind as he worked, but remember [A] he was color-blind, so his own color sense was far from impeccable and [B] he knew what the coloring process was for comics during his heyday, and he knew how often it produced bad results.

Mullaney: Whether or not the image loses something as original art depends wholly on what the work is. I’m reminded of Alex’s Zorro comics for Dell, which for many of us was our first encounter with his art. I reprinted those stories two decades ago in B&W – with new tones added by Alex. Were they drawn “for color?” Yes, but the coloring sucked. Do they look better in B&W? Yes. Do they look better still in B&W with Alex’s new tones? Absolutely.

I could argue the other way for, say, Jack Kirby’s Fantastic Four. Sometimes it’s a matter of personal preference, but in Toth’s case, in my opinion, his work ALWAYS looks better in B&W.

Faith Erin Hicks writes and draws comic books for a living. Her previous comics include Demonology 101, The War at Ellsmere, The Adventures of Superhero Girl, and Friends With Boys.

Mullaney: Those rights are what we, as individuals, make them. The issue is totally separate from legal rights. From a publisher’s perspective, if I want to reprint Alex’s Zorro comics, I need to pay a licensing fee/royalty to John Gertz/Zorro Productions, who owns the trademark to the character and the copyrights to those stories. If, on the other hand, I want to reprint Alex’s comics for Standard or Lev Gleason, the work is apparently in the public domain, so no licensing fee or royalties are due. If the original publisher failled to register or renew the copyright or that publishing entity no longer exists, anyone is legally free to reprint the stories. In the course of my long career in comics, I have made the personal decision that — in the case of public domain comics in which there is no rights holder requiring a fee or royalties — I would pay the artist or the artist’s direct heirs. I still have letters of appreciation from Jerry Siegel, Jack Katz, Reed Crandall’s sister, Ellie Frazetta, and other creators whose work I reprinted in the 1980s and 1990s and for which I paid them.

These “moral” rights run parallel to a previously obscure part the 1976 Copyright Act, which allows artists, under specific circumstances, to reclaim the rights to their work after 35 years. The intent of the law is to allow creative people a second chance to own material they sold to a publisher earlier in their careers when they may not have had fair leverage. I think we can all agree that very few comics artists in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s understood what they were signing away – or even IF they signed anything away. It seems to me that if we are in favor of Siegel, Shuster, and Kirby trying to reclaim their rights, then we should similarly should pay them for reprinting that earlier work. In my book, it’s all the same thing.

Elsewhere:

I’ve been at TCAF all weekend selling books. So while two days in the midst of comic-dom would have you think I’d have plenty to say… it doesn’t. TCAF was an excellent show for me. The Hernandez Bros were a big focus, which was great. There’s a new edition of Chester Brown’s The Playboy, with additional notes, new lettering and a whole format reconfiguration. Brown’s reworking of his text is so rigorous that each edition is a new work, which is exciting. What else… here are your Doug Wright Award winners, from the PR:

Best Book: The Song of Roland, by Michel Rabagliati

The Spotlight Award (aka “The Nipper”): Nina Bunjevac for Heartless

Pigskin Peters Award: Hamilton Illustrated, by Michael Collier

Held as a feature event of the 2013 Toronto Comic Arts Festival (TCAF), the evening also saw Albert Chartier inducted into The Giants of the North, the Canadian Cartoonists Hall of Fame.

The winners were decided by a jury that included: Joe Ollmann, Pascal Girard, Jonathan Goldstein, Natalia Yanchak and Julie Delporte.

And Tom Spurgeon interviews Ryan Sands, who had two much talked about debuts at the show.

I wonder if the answer to the “should the guy have his tongue out?” question is instinctual at this point, or if Nate has to actually stop and consider first. Mind-like-water kind of stuff, you know? I can’t be the only one who read that book.

I’ve been busy lately, with houseguests and family and fighting, none of which I’d say I truly excel at: the column ends up taking a back seat at times like that, and that’s not fair to you, and I apologize. This week will be another odd one, an attempt to clear out my inbox of all the comics that have washed ashore since we last saw each other. In honor of an email, which I recently received and will now quote (in an abbreviated fashion, so as not to be unduly cruel to those who might be emotionally caught up in its collateral damage), your column this week is designed–nay, DEVOTED–to working purely as a utilitarian tool for you, the consumer. What’s that thing, you ask. Should I buy that thing? Answers: they’re coming. First, the missive:

Every artist who ever lived is correct about critics: they are barren nursemaids, never-weres deficient in the slightest authority to dictate the placement of a comma. They are shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, and comics critics are among the very worst, lacking in even the brazen, flatulent delusion that marks the livelier movie types. Yours is a *nice* failure, Tucker, a sweetheart’s sigh of continued, contented disappointment, sauntering dignified into worthwhile irrelevancy, beyond which none will remember, nor care, nor will any demerit solemnify the ignorance of anyone who might be moved, through any impossible intercession, to somehow remember.

These are the comics I have read since we last saw each other.

Good Riddance: An Illustrated Memoir of Divorce
By Cynthia Copeland
Published by Abrams Comicarts
222 pages, $17.95 

Successful humor author Cynthia Copeland’s storybook marriage broke up in quite a bit of drama, and this is the full story of how it went down: cuts and bruises, warts and all! This graphic novel may not be the best medicine for the brokenhearted, but if you keep it around the house for a bit, you’re sure to discover what those of us with a thicker skin already know: breaking up may be hard to do, but it sure makes for a compelling read! Highly recommended!

Noise
By Billy Burkert
Published by Oily Comics
8 pages, $1.00 

With a dip into stand-up comedy AND adventure comics, wild card cartoonist Billy Burkert shows himself to be more than just the “pinball wizard” behind the critically acclaimed (and literally side-splitting!) Too Many Nitrous. And before you cry poverty, give that price a double-take… I’ll wait! Now, after your head stops spinning, ask yourself this: is all that change in your couch collecting interest, or what? :)

The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
By H.P. Lovecraft & I.N.J. Culbard
Published by SelfMadeHero
128 pages, $19.95 

Whoa! Did somebody just walk across my grave? Oh no, now I remember: I made the classic mistake of reading The Case of Charles Dexter Ward too close to bedtime! All kidding aside, this comic-book adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft may not have the sort of graphic violence the kids of today associate with the horror genre, but it brings the spooks nonetheless. This the story of a young man who makes a big mistake and the doctor who has to save him. Don’t be surprised if you make the same mistake I did, and find yourself going to bed with the most unwelcome of partners: a nightmare!

Everything Takes Forever
By Victor Kerlow
Published by Koyama Press
60 pages, $10.00 

“Objection, Koyama!” That’s what I’d be saying if I was at the publisher’s office when this book’s title came up for discussion–some things may take forever, but Victor Kerlow’s comics are NOT one of them. This collection is a smorgasbord of classic black-and-white comics with an “indy” vibe–you’ll see some dates go awry, a man with a taco head being silly, and young guys getting a little too fresh with the police. But Victor doesn’t stop there–every once in a while, he’ll throw in a full page of “just drawing.” A pretty girl here, a pretty girl there, and of course, lots of little robots. Everything takes forever? Pshaw. More like “Victor … Kerlow Forever!”

3 New Stories
By Dash Shaw
Published by Fantagraphics
32 pages, $3.99 

One of three major 2013 releases by hipster Brooklynite cartoonist Dash Shaw, 3 New Stories provides exactly what its title promises: you haven’t seen any of these stories before! For those of you who have read earlier comics from this popular trendsetter, you might be pleased to know that you won’t need your concentration cap this time around–Mr. Shaw has his sights directly aimed at the funny bone. Three shots outta do it!

Fury: My War Gone By #11
By Garth Ennis, Goran Parlov, Lee Loughridge
Published by Marvel Comics
30 pages, $3.99 

One of the most common complaints you’ll hear from the neighborhood grouch is that comics are too expensive. Next time, you just head him (or her!) off at the pass with a copy of Fury #11–there’s a dirty joke, a realistic sounding domestic squabble, deduction worthy of Sherlock, and a nice slice of action. It doesn’t need a spooky conclusion as cliffhanger, but it has one anyway, and trust me when I say that won’t forget about it anytime soon … at least, not until you pick your jaw up off the floor!

Macbeth
By Benjamin Marra
Published by Benjamin Marra
8 pages, Free, Is in German 

While Mr. Marra certainly can draw like a champ, somebody might want to get the guy a map–you live in America, buddy! I’m just kidding of course, but I can think of a certain Great Generation that might be a little steamed to see a classic English story (Shakespearean too!) in the language of Adolf and wiener schnitzel. Still, free is free, and the sword fighting here is top notch. Just don’t wash it down with a Beck’s, or you might find yourself waking up in lederhosen.

Young, Dumb, & Full Of Cum: The Autobiography Of Nick Drnaso
By Nick Drnaso
Published by Oily Comics
8 pages, $1.00 

While this comic has a pottymouth title to go with its naked pottymouth characters, it also has a couple of pretty good jokes. Writing about oneself is one of the hardest things an artist can do, especially when you’ve had dealings with insensitive caregivers.

Detective Comics #20
By John Layman, Jason Fabok, Jeromy Cox
Published by DC Comics

This is the final chapter in the saga of Ignatius Ogilvy, otherwise known as the Emperor Penguin–for you lapsed readers, Ignatius is a new character, and he’s been given the  ”Dark Knight” a real run for his money over the last few months, although it’s taken a while for our hero to figure that out. This issue serves as the story’s conclusion, and while this is a Spoiler-Free Zone, I would advise the curious to give the story’s title a close reading: “King For A Day”, eh? Why only a day? ;) Anyway, the Emperor Penguin is a real great character and I for one hope he’s around forever.

As you can see, things are going pretty well for comics right now, and I bet that means things are going pretty well for you too. (You are at the COMICS Journal after all, amirite?) However, we’d be remiss if we didn’t acknowledge that it’s not easy street out there for everybody in the funny book biz. For that, we turn to ABHAY KHOSLA:

For the NEWS!

Except Comics Alliance shutting down, no stories stuck out to me as being particularly interesting lately. Just the routine hum of comics being promoted.

Marvel is busy teasing its summer event Infinity (which is not to be confused with its spring event Age of Ultron) (or with the fall event which it recently announced, Battle of the Atom). Infinity will feature the Marvel Universe under attack by the Black Order, who are comprised of Black Dwarf and Ebony Maw (who Marvel promises has a “black tongue”). Other members of the Black Order will hopefully include Black Ceasar, Blacula, Black Belt Jones and Lewis Black who is Back in Black. So, watch out, comics– t–t-the … the blacks are attacking?

As for the fall crossover that will change everything after the summer crossover changes everything after the spring crossover has changed everything, Battle of the Atom will be about a “huge sprawling war between all the X-Men” so for fans who wanted to read a crossover about a sprawling war between superheros, finally, there’s a crossover for them besides Secret Wars, Secret Wars 2, Civil War, Avengers Vs. X-Men, World War Hulk, DC vs. Marvel, Trinity War, Blackest Night, and all the video games with that premise. It’s all for you, Damian.

David Lapham teased his ongoing vampire comic The Fall, “describing the trajectory of The Fall in a single word: ‘Down’.” Lapham added, “If you thought it couldn’t get worse, shame on you.” Describing the trajectory of my face in a single word: “en-Smug-ified”? Shame on me, and may God have mercy on my eternal soul, I guess.

There was a C2E2 convention the other day, wherever those happens. C2E2 stands for something, probably. DC creators met with DC fans at one of their celebratory “Steaming Cup of Why Do We Even Do This? Movies People Don’t Have to Do This” panels. They call them “All Access” panels. ”All Access” isn’t a dirty phrase at all, but every time I hear it, part of me (because I’m an idiot) always has a regrettable knee-jerk reaction and thinks of dirty things I heard in rap songs when I was a teenager and/or adult. I always hopes it’s going to be a panel of DC creators discussing 2 Live Crew songs. “In Pop That Pussy, Brother Marquis rapped that ‘I like the way you lick the champagne glass/ It make me wanna stick my dick in your ass.’ Will this be revisited in any future Brother Marquis stories, Len Wein?” Wait and see!

This year’s All Access panel? According to CBR, “a young man who has been the victim of severe burning got up and expressed disappointment that anyone who appears in a comic that has burns is always cast as a villain rather than a more empathetic portrayal of the plight.” This was followed by a “fan with a Swamp Thing tattoo complete with Wein’s signature.” Proving definitively a theory I’ve had for years: at a comic book convention with all other things being equal, a victim of severe burning still might have the best skin in the room.

Most importantly, as CBR reported twice, a fan asked about the Crime Syndicate of America at a DC 101 panel. As a result: “both Cunningham and DC Editor-in-Chief Bob Harras dodged the question, Cunningham said, ‘You asked that question about a month before you should have asked it.’” At this point, Bob Harras threw smoke bombs at his feet and disappeared in the ensuing melee. Sirens went off and rabid dogs were loosed into the chaos of the conference room; the dogs had been nourished for months only on a strict diet of half-rotten AIDS-meat, and their jaws were thus especially eager to crush down on the unwary. The elderly were trampled by the exits, but also trampled in the dead center of the room, defying any reasonable explanation. A crowd of cannibalistic humanoid underground dwellers surrounded a nun, but luckily the nun found a handgun that a canine-riddled nurse had dropped onto the floor and blew her brains out, unfortunately dying believing that, out of cowardice and a fear of the depravities that the menacing crowd would surely have inflicted upon her virginal nun-flesh, she was surely consigning her immortal soul to the depths of Hell. And, yes, a single mother lifted her newborn baby into the sky and then threw the crying baby to the ground and crushed it under her boot– but out of love to make sure that her baby wouldn’t grow up in a world like ours. What choice did she have? After all, The Most Important Question, The Question That Dared Not Be Answered Before Lo, It Is Time had been asked! There was no turning back.

Uh, before all that happened though, when asked about video games, Cunningham told fans, “Video games are hot hot hot,” and that there were “many projects we know about and I would be shot through the head if I named any of them.” Yes, for a DC employee’s life is a life of danger and secrets. They can let no man or woman close to their hearts, so for them, it’s only a life of anonymous prostitutes and furtive assignations in urine-stenched back-alleyways. Such are the sacrifices. Such is the heroism.

And today is the final day of Joe Ollmann’s week running A Cartoonist’s Diary. There was a whole complicated schedule around this last entry, based on what Joe promised was going to be an incredibly exciting trip to New York City. As you’ll see, things didn’t go that way exactly. Anyway, this has been a great week for the feature, so thanks, Joe!

Elsewhere:

—Interviews. James Romberger talks to Michael DeForge. Rugg, Lex, & Piskor talk to Jeff Smith. SCPR talks to Gilbert Hernandez, and so does KNPR. In advance of TCAF, Forbidden Planet talks to reps from three companies, SelfMadeHero, Fantagraphics, and Blank Slate.

—Criticism. Ng Suat Tong reviews Fraction & Aja’s Hawkeye. Charles-Adam Foster-Simard reviews the Art Spiegelman “Co-Mix” exhibition in Vancouver. Chris Randle reviews Gilbert Hernandez’s Marble Season.

—News. Sports Illustrated writes about the influence of the manga Slam Dunk on the popularity of basketball in Japan. P. Craig Russell remembers Dan Adkins. (via) Tom Tomorrow delivered his Herblock acceptance speech:

—Misc. Miriam Katin went to Canada and drew comics. I learned that ulta-hard-boiled crime novelist Peter Rabe also wrote and drew an illustrated humor book about motherhood! Apparently the Man of Steel soundtrack is a little downbeat and a writer at The Guardian is complaining about it. I continue to be amused at the way the complaints of comics nerddom from a decade or more ago become the complaints of everybody else as the entire world of popular culture slowly devolves. I also continue to be amused at pictures of old celebrities clearly not enjoying comic books.

Joe Ollmann is a cartoonist living in Montreal. He won the Doug Wright Award for best book in 2007 and still coasts on that, calling himself an “award-winning” cartoonist. His new book, Science Fiction from Conundrum Press, debuts at TCAF this weekend.

The longtime cartoonist Dan Adkins has passed away. Adkins was known for his sleek drawing for comic books including T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents and Dr. Strange and genre mags like Argosy and Amazing Stories. He was also perhaps Wally Wood’s finest assistant, working for the older artist in the 1960s. We’ll have a full obituary soon.

Elsewhere:

I’m not sure what this is, but it’s delightful.

Inkstuds host Robin McConnell has a lengthy report on his visits to recent comic book conventions.

PW looks at our publisher Fantagraphics’ digital moves.

A Neal Adams oddity throughout the years.

Joe Ollmann is a cartoonist living in Montreal. He won the Doug Wright Award for best book in 2007 and still coasts on that, calling himself an “award-winning” cartoonist. His new book, Science Fiction from Conundrum Press, debuts at TCAF this weekend.

Joe Ollmann is a cartoonist living in Montreal. He won the Doug Wright Award for best book in 2007 and still coasts on that, calling himself an “award-winning” cartoonist. His new book, Science Fiction from Conundrum Press, debuts at TCAF this weekend.

In the last years of his life, Wojnarowicz embarked on a book-length comic with Romberger and Van Cook in which he sought to chronicle episodes from his life: his early years and youth as a hustler and, later, his feelings regarding the AIDS crisis. Working with Wojnarowicz, Romberger edited the texts and drew the art; Van Cook (who is too frequently undercredited for her essential contribution) colored the pages after Wojnarowicz’s death. Published by Vertigo in 1996 and now reissued by Fantagraphics, 7 Miles a Second records raw and unsettling experiences by way of images and colors that are meant to disturb and to evoke the emotional tenor of a fraught—though occasionally hopeful—life.

Romberger and Van Cook are avid conversationalists, and we spoke also about their other projects, including Romberger’s Post York, which has been nominated for an Eisner for “Best Single Issue (or One-Shot).” So I was dismayed when, at the end of the lengthy interview, my recorder froze and erased the entire thing. But Romberger and Van Cook were game to try again after a week, and the second time held.

Their eagerness to talk about Wojnarowicz and the project, to remember all of it despite the pain of recalling his death, strikes me as a kind of bearing witness—testifying to Wojnarowicz’s life in much the same way the book does. Of that period in America, Avram Finkelstein, cofounder of Silence=Death Project, wrote, “What will be said of the first days of AIDS, long after pharmaceutical interventions have blunted our cultural memory? Hopefully we will say there was a time before we knew what we know, and many people died. There was an outcry and it mattered.”

How did your gallery, Ground Zero, come about?

Van Cook: In 1984, promoter Steve Lewis, of Danceteria, invited us to do a show encapsulating the East Village art scene, and so we spoke to the all the people and galleries around the neighborhood. It was called “The East Village Look Again.” After that, we did “The Acid Test,” which was an accidental curation on our part. Someone wrote in a gossip column that we were going to do a show called “The Acid Test,” so we said what the hell and did it.

Romberger: It was actually the doing of the guitarist and gossip columnist who was staying at our house, Tony Heiberg. There was a gallery called Sensory Evolution, and I said we should do an acid show there because of the name of the gallery and then it was Tony who wrote in his gossip column in the local newspaper, The East Village Eye, that we were doing it. So the next morning, I had to go to the gallery owner, Steven Style and, though I don’t think he liked our work, he said that since it was it was already in print, he’d let us do it for one night.

Who were some of the artists in those early shows?

Romberger: David was in “The Acid Test,” and a bunch of people we knew from the scene. We got to know a lot of the artists from doing “The East Village Look Again.” We also went to all the galleries, and they each gave us several artists, so in that way we got to know everybody.

Van Cook: “The Acid Test” had been very popular. We ran into Dean Savard, who ran Civilian Warfare with Alan Barrows, and he said he was moving out of that space and why don’t you have the keys and take the show there.

Romberger: Dean had shown David’s art at Civilian Warfare, but Dean himself was an artist and he didn’t show his own work, and nobody had ever asked him to be in a show. But we had asked him to be in “The Acid Test.” He was so thrilled that when we ran into him in the street he wanted to rent us his space, so we moved in and lived in the back and we put “The Acid Test” in the front. And that’s basically how we started running Ground Zero.

Van Cook: And then we made it to the front page of the Sunday New York Times. For our second show, we had Robert Costa curating. Critic Grace Glueck came by on her bicycle—she was doing a comparison of uptown and downtown galleries and set us up as the real deal. So our second show, in 1985, got the front page of the Sunday Times. Limousines were pulling up all day trying to buy the artwork that had been reproduced in the Times, and Calvin Reid—it was his work—didn’t want to sell it. So we said, I guess we’re in this business.

The comic strip, Ground Zero, preceded the gallery, right?

Van Cook: Yes, the comic strip was Ground Zero, and then the gallery became Ground Zero.

When did you start the strip?

Romberger: In 1984, in The East Village Eye. We had a whole page.

Van Cook: We wanted to reference, chronologically, the events surrounding where we lived and who we hung out with. It’s all in the comic.

Ground Zero strip from 1994 that was printed in the small press music magazine Pretty Decorating.

How long did you do the strip?

Romberger: It started out as a full tabloid page, then they got more strips—Gary Panter, who did Dal Tokyo, and Wayne White and Lynda Barry—so they cut everybody down to smaller sizes and had two pages that were two-tier strips, maybe four to a page. Then, a few months later, they cut them down to very small pieces and then dumped it entirely. So the strip lasted for about eight months in the Eye, because in a newspaper the first thing to go is the strips.

Van Cook: But conceptually we didn’t really want it to be in one place, and I had the idea that it shouldn’t be easy for the reader to access. I wanted to break up any sense of how narrative works, so we wanted it to be in different publications at different times, in different formats.

Was that notion influenced by your having studied Roland Barthes?

Van Cook: Yes, the whole influence of semiology and semiotics.

Romberger: So it was in East Village Eye, Red Tape, Avenue E, Pretty Decorating—many, many small-press publications.

Van Cook: This was reflected in our work at the gallery, too. One of the things that was different about our curations is that we invited comics artists to show, making a space that was somewhere between comics and fine art. We didn’t want to close down any avenues.

How did you work on the script with David for 7 Miles a Second?

Romberger: David gave me the material and asked me what would work for a comic, and I picked things that would work visually. He established more control over the first part—of when he was a child—because he wanted to show himself getting picked up on Times Square and then getting taken to Nathan’s and then to a hotel room. For example, he’d given me pages of monologues, a couple of different people talking to themselves, and I drew a scene where he goes down into Nathan’s. I took one of the monologues, an older guy talking about his own son and imposed it on the character picking up David, and then took another monologue of a woman talking to herself about getting caught up by her trick and not being able to go see her children and imposed that on another character. I then had the two conversations running together. David thought it was great because it efficiently used the space to get two conversations going at once. It wasn’t technically true to his experience, but that’s how you would hear it.

So you selected all the text for the comic from what he gave you?

Romberger: The general scope of the narrative we worked out together—but I did the selection and then the editing of his texts. I cut them down as much as I could to keep what I thought was the most beautiful language. You don’t want the text to be redundant with the image, so you’re cutting away the extraneous material to get to the nut of the text. The process was heavy on editing, and David approved all that stuff in the first two parts.

If there was a place that needed dialogue, he’d write a little something to put in the balloon. Or he’d tell me dreams. I selected a few of his dreams that would work for me to draw. The giant wasp hanging over a banquet was one, and I could do a double-page spread of that and use the cinematic scope of comics to show something you’d need a big budget to film. In a comic, you can just draw it.

The third part wasn’t completed until after his death. How did you manage it?

Romberger: When it came to the third part, I had a lot less to work with. David had given me the gist of what he wanted, which was “I want to show myself at the current time, mourning the deaths of my friends, but then in the end it’s a beautiful day and I’m happy to be alive.” But by the time I actually got to sit and draw this thing and edit it—after David’s death—there wasn’t anything like that in his texts. There was no beautiful day, so the book ends with him dying.

He had done this really magnificent bit of writing that was in part of the Artist’s Space book that had gotten him in so much trouble with the NEA, and he had told me, Draw me huge on Fifth Avenue. By that time, what I remembered being on Fifth Avenue was St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and David had once gone with Act Up to protest the church’s stand against public health and homosexuality, while mass was going on, so it made it sense to make Fifth Avenue St. Patrick’s and to draw him smashing it. These were decisions I had to make, but they are true to what his intent would have been, as close as I could approximate.

Did he think there would really be a happy ending to the third part? Or that there would be something good to end it with?

Romberger: In a way it’s a vulnerability we all feel—no one really sees themselves dying and if David had been able to hold on another year or two, perhaps the combination therapy that was developed within a couple years after he died might have saved him. A lot of people were brought back from the brink of death, and it is incredibly tragic that due to actions of people like David and others in Act Up—actions that got the medical establishment to loosen up on the approval of drugs trials—a lot of the work on AIDS and cancer was accelerated. And yet so many people died because things were being held off.

Van Cook: People were starting to be diagnosed and become ill, but that was something David wrote to us about in a letter—I’m rejecting that particular view of life and I’m going on to this brighter path. He didn’t want to be celebrating death and darkness anymore, as an artistic trope. He didn’t want to go down that artistic road, he wanted to go somewhere else. So even when things happened to him later on, he had embraced that more hopeful aspect.

What was he hopeful for, do you think?

Van Cook: A life that had some good in it. I don’t want to put words in his mouth.

Romberger: It wasn’t really born out by the factual matter of what happened. There’s a spread in the book of the train that’s referential to his own paintings of trains—he did several of them, in which he depicts the wheels spewing shit and language. That particular text is very bleak and nihilistic, but I think it’s unavoidable. On the other hand, I’m a little sensitive to the fact that a young person could read that material and feel a very dark place. I was a little hesitant to go that route, but you can’t avoid what happens in the end of the book—he dies.

Van Cook: He really loved our son Crosby, and there were a few times when David took him out in the stroller, but he was very nervous about what interacting with a child would do, because we didn’t know what the disease was about early on. David was tested three times before he had a concrete diagnosis. Emotionally it was terrible.

I think what James did such a good job of bringing out in the last part of the book is David’s distress, to put it mildly. It’s a response to real events, as opposed to living a lifestyle that manufactures anxiety.

That’s an interesting distinction.

Romberger: The first part is very pointedly about David’s trick and the lack of empathy the guy feels for what he’s making David watch through that hole in the wall. And David’s shocked—that the trick has no inkling of what the woman on the other side of the hole is feeling. I purposely made that the point of the last part, to come back to that idea at the end, where David is in his room and is alone, and it’s me calling on the phone. He lets the machine pick it up, and he thinks, People don’t know where I am, I start to hate healthy people because they can’t feel what I’m going through. And he talks about himself in the third person—“David’s in pain,” “David’s alone”—but it is about empathy, the only thing we have that allows us to touch each other. So if there’s anything positive to be taken out of the book, it’s that we should be working toward a more empathetic experience while we’re on the planet.

Van Cook: He had on his answering machine a song we had recorded, “I’ll Be Loving You,” that is extremely bright. The lyrics are “If I could sing a song as beautiful as you,” and it was on David’s machine from when we came back from Belgium in 1991. It just stayed on there.

(continued)

The third part wasn’t completed until after his death. How did you manage it?

Romberger: When it came to the third part, I had a lot less to work with. David had given me the gist of what he wanted, which was “I want to show myself at the current time, mourning the deaths of my friends, but then in the end it’s a beautiful day and I’m happy to be alive.” But by the time I actually got to sit and draw this thing and edit it—after David’s death—there wasn’t anything like that in his texts. There was no beautiful day, so the book ends with him dying.

He had done this really magnificent bit of writing that was in part of the Artist’s Space book that had gotten him in so much trouble with the NEA, and he had told me, Draw me huge on Fifth Avenue. By that time, what I remembered being on Fifth Avenue was St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and David had once gone with Act Up to protest the church’s stand against public health and homosexuality, while mass was going on, so it made it sense to make Fifth Avenue St. Patrick’s and to draw him smashing it. These were decisions I had to make, but they are true to what his intent would have been, as close as I could approximate.

Did he think there would really be a happy ending to the third part? Or that there would be something good to end it with?

Romberger: In a way it’s a vulnerability we all feel—no one really sees themselves dying and if David had been able to hold on another year or two, perhaps the combination therapy that was developed within a couple years after he died might have saved him. A lot of people were brought back from the brink of death, and it is incredibly tragic that due to actions of people like David and others in Act Up—actions that got the medical establishment to loosen up on the approval of drugs trials—a lot of the work on AIDS and cancer was accelerated. And yet so many people died because things were being held off.

Van Cook: People were starting to be diagnosed and become ill, but that was something David wrote to us about in a letter—I’m rejecting that particular view of life and I’m going on to this brighter path. He didn’t want to be celebrating death and darkness anymore, as an artistic trope. He didn’t want to go down that artistic road, he wanted to go somewhere else. So even when things happened to him later on, he had embraced that more hopeful aspect.

Joe Ollmann is still in the middle of his excellent Cartoonist’s Diary this week. In today’s entry, he talks about his father’s recent death.

Elsewhere:

—It’s not strictly speaking comics-related, but it would be strange not to take note of film and special-effects pioneer Ray Harryahausen’s passing. Journal columnist Charles Hatfield has posted a tribute.

—Chris Ware drew the Mother’s Day cover for The New Yorker, and wrote a mini-essay for the site about the holiday.

—The New Yorker’s site also has a short video interview with Dash Shaw.

—Sean Howe tags a Deadline story about the “absurdity” of some of the actors who appeared in The Avengers getting only $500,000 bonuses after the movie’s success. I wonder if there is anyone else being overlooked in these arrangements?

—Boing Boing has begun publishing stories from Dennis Eichhorn’s old Real Stuff comics, which is great news for me.

—The Dylan Williams Reporter site has reposted Williams’ 1995 interview with Seth. It’s a lot of fun to read the early interviews with major artists over there.

—The Beat talks to L Nichols.

—Finally, Curt Swan’s letter to a young Jim Shooter.

Still, a question remains: is it really so important for a critic to pay very much attention to dull, explicative, do-nothing art in a (hypothetical) crummy writer/editor-driven superhero comic? Certainly, it would depend on the aim of the critic’s writing; a perfectly good and valid piece can be written strictly on Bee Man #14′s position in its scriptwriter’s oeuvre. However, your traditional ‘consumer guide’-style comic book review, I am forced to conclude, carries a holistic necessity that demands consideration of the visual aspect, because to review the total effect of a comic is inevitably to deal with the coloration that drawings will always give words.

To best illustrate this concept, I will draw your attention to the non-superhero book pictured above: editor Scott Longo‘s Sonatina Comics #1, the 2011 first edition of the continuing Sonatina anthology series, which has just recently seen its (very good) second release. It’d be a mistake to attribute a specific exploratory mission to the whole of Sonatina, but I can tell you that the most striking of its comics observe certain meaningful disconnects between words and pictures, be it Blaise Larmee juxtaposing handwritten note cards with a drawn account of a gallery space’s panel discussion (such juxtapositions having since evolved into superimposition), or Longo himself chasing a set of drawings of numerous, individual chairs and desks and plants and people with a textual rumination on the meaningful, individual connections facilitated by a work of ‘limited’ audience. I took this, greedily, as a mission statement of sorts.

Anyway, in Sonatina Comics #1, there is a piece by the writer and artist Jason Overby, a diptych (let’s say) collectively titled Still Life with Kanye West (freely available at the link). Its first section, individually titled “(Kanye) West,” looks like this:

It’s a seven-page account of several minutes in the life of “Jason,” who is stopping for coffee in the middle of a drive. Overby draws his characters in a highly gestural style, relying on small identifying features to distinguish them from one another, although the give-and-take of the dialogue helps as well. Thoughts are distinguished from spoken words by classic thought bubbles, while broad drawn elements (the doodled circles in panel 11, for example) denote the shifting mood of a given speaker.

The piece’s second section, “Still Life,” repeats the same story, in six pages:

You will notice that this is exactly the same page, but created without pictures; instead Overby uses what looks like multi-colored stamps to pound the dialogue down onto the page. However, there are meaningful omissions. All of the thoughts — i.e., the words in thought bubbles from the first section — are gone. We have been cut off from the characters’ thoughts, which, all things considered, would be difficult to convey in a visual presentation of words lacking the space to build the formal structures of prose that rightly designate interior and exterior communications by characters. Perhaps he could have put the thoughts in a smaller font and stamped them near the spoken words; that might have worked.

Read as a whole, though, a more allegorical conclusion can be drawn. In withholding his characters’ thoughts from the text-dominated section — a still life, depicting inanimate subjects — Overby suggests that it is the role of pictures in comics art to establish a subconscious, empathetic understanding of characters. Merely to see the contours of a person’s body, their shifting expressions and posture, is to metaphorically access their thinking. It is an inevitable function, if not always an effective one in practice; thus, it is fitting for (textual) thoughts to also appear, and for the story to become less observed than felt, like one might hear music.

Interestingly, there is one extra page in “(Kanye) West” lacking in “Still Life”:

This is memory. It is a depiction of something Jason is recalling, inside his head. It only appears in the more visceral, drawing-laden section, because memories, of course, cannot be observed, they must be felt. Yet Overby combines elements of both sections here – the background is darker, like in the text-driven “Still Life,” and koans are stamped down upon the scribbled drawings. There are even abstract elements: splashes of color, unseen anywhere else.

It is the fusion of words and pictures, which is to say a super-fusion different from the words/pictures of “(Kanye) West” and the paneled words of “Still Life”; it’s all comics, but this is a composite ‘comics’ posited as the stuff of time-travel, of images jutting from chronology, of both feeling memories (drawings), and thinking about them (stamps), because aren’t memories always colored by our consideration of their circumstances?

Pictures change words, and words change pictures. These are fundamental circumstances of the art. Invisible, sometimes, but… don’t you ever read a comic to turn off your brain? To analyze, though, best practice suggests we turn it back on.

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PLEASE NOTE: What follows is not a series of capsule reviews but an annotated selection of items listed by Diamond Comic Distributors for release to comic book retailers in North America on the particular Wednesday, or, in the event of a holiday or occurrence necessitating the close of UPS in a manner that would impact deliveries, Thursday, identified in the column title above. Not every listed item will necessarily arrive at every comic book retailer, in that some items may be delayed and ordered quantities will vary. I have in all likelihood not read any of the comics listed below, in that they are not yet released as of the writing of this column, nor will I necessarily read or purchase every item identified; THIS WEEK IN COMICS! reflects only what I find to be potentially interesting.

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SPOTLIGHT PICKS!

Sandcastle: Yeah, I mentioned this last week, but only because I wanted to keep an eye on it for when Diamond official said it was coming, i.e. now. This is another release from busy SelfMadeHero — again, distributed in North America by Abrams — marking the latest English-language release of comics drawn by Frederick Peeters, the talented Swiss eye behind the autobiographical Blue Pills (Houghton Mifflin) and artist of the rather overlooked fantasy Koma (Humanoids). This one’s a 2010 collaboration with filmmaker Pierre Oscar Lévy, a Buñuelian study of people from various backgrounds gathered on a secluded beach, where a dead body is found. It’s a 6.5″ x 9.5″ hardcover, 112 b&w pages. Note that the UK-based publisher is already prepping another Peeters translation: his 2009 surreal color thriller Pachyderme, which should be available for import in October. Samples; $19.95.

Benny Breakiron Vol. 1: The Red Taxis: Having managed to release a very large portion of the original Smurfs comics in small, inexpensive kid-friendly books (the 15th volume of which is also due this week), NBM/Papercutz now prepares to both double back and press forward; the older Smurfs material will soon be re-released in larger, supplemental-laden volumes for adult readers of old-timey Belgian comics, while the publisher also begins this 6.5″ x 9″ hardcover album series, translating creator Pierre “Peyo” Culliford’s 1960 kid superhero creation Benoît Brisefer under the title “Benny Breakiron.” In this particular batch of 64 color pages, covering the earliest material, he is joined by background artist Willy “Will” Maltaite – one of the most prominent forces in the ‘Marcinelle’ school of Belgian comics illustration centered around Spirou magazine, where this material was initially serialized. Your Gil Jordan and Sibyl-Anne albums are probably lonely, why not stoke their national pride? Preview; $11.99.

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PLUS!

We Can Fix It!: Being the latest release from Chester 5000 creator Jess Fink, a travesty on autobiographical comics in which the artist secures a time machine and engages in esteem-building and/or sexy antics with younger iterations of herself, though publisher Top Shelf assures us that it all grows into “a thoughtful story about memory, regret, and growing up.” I like Fink’s art, and her comedic timing is very sharp from what I’ve seen of this 112-page production, a 6.5″ x 8″ softcover original. Preview; $14.95.

Freaks’ Amour: Apparently (BUT NOT REALLY – SEE COMMENTS) there is a new Gary Panter comic(?) tucked away in this Dark Horse softcover, ostensibly a collection of a 1992 Dana Marie Andra/Phil Hester/Ande Parks comic book adaptation of a 1979 post-nuclear fringe-living novel by Tom De Haven. Which is to say, De Haven will provide a new prose sequel to his novel, which Panter will then adapt, all in one book. Charles Burns cover too. Take a look, if you can. Samples; $17.99.

You’re All Just Jealous of My Jetpack: Good, clean fun in this one, folks, as Drawn & Quarterly compiles 160 pages of weekly Tom Gauld strips from The Guardian into a 8″ x 5.9″ landscape-format hardcover, very handsome. High-class laughs await. Samples; $19.95.

Snake Pit Gets Old: New from Birdcage Bottom Books, a 288-page collection of daily diary comics from Ben Snakepit, a zine-maker since 2000. Classic-styled autobio in here. Samples; $16.95.

The Library: Another week, another intriguing release from Canada’s Conundrum Press, this time a 184-page collection of stories by the Hong Kong-based “Chihoi,” whom I believe is going to be at TCAF this weekend. The publisher deems the artist “a poet of the quotidian, of life’s minutia, of little gestures, of silences… of the invisible, invoking the spirit of a dead person or a lost love, and rendering him/her real,” amidst references to Kafka and Gaugin. I’d certainly flip through this if I saw it; $20.00.

Red Handed: The Fine Art Strange Crimes: Ditto for this, a new 272-page First Second hardcover from the very prolific Matt Kindt, a self-reflexive crime story seeing a Detective Gould (tee hee) working to link up a slew of seemingly random crimes. Preview; $26.99.

Mumbai Confidential Book 1: Good Cop, Bad Cop: Yesterday, in detailing the variety of subject matter to be found in the Comix.India anthology, Ryan Holmberg identified “Mumbai noir” as a pertinent example; it’s fitting, then, that Archaia has selected this very week to release a longform example of just that, a 156-page cop-gone-bad/secret assassination squad scenario from writer Saurav Mohapatra (of numerous Virgin Comics series from the prior decade) and artist Vivek Shinde (working in a part-color ink washy mode). Filmmakers Ram Gopal Varma & Anurag Kashyap have been cited as influences, so expect a certain violent glee streaking across the gritty local environs. A digital version was released to comiXology a little while ago. Preview; $24.95.

Good Riddance: A Graphic Memoir Of Divorce: I have absolutely no idea what this is — I mean, beyond the fact that it’s a 224-page autobiographical comic from a major book publisher about its artist‘s divorce — but Tucker Stone keeps bringing it up in front of me, laughing, and I’m very frightened and confused as a result; $17.95.

Sláine: The Grail War: Your 2000 AD import of this most international of weeks, picking up 192 pages of late ’90s barbarian comics from writer Pat Mills, working with artists Steve Tappin & Nick Percival. Note, however, the inclusion of a Massimo Belardinelli short from a 1985 Annual, which will probably look pretty cool; $29.99.

The Playboy: Reissues too! I’ll confess now that I’ve never been a huge admirer of this 1992 Chester Brown landmark — collected from the pages of Yummy Fur — a youth solo sex confessional transmitted through a cumbersome on-page commentary by the adult author, explicating his own motivations in a manner not entirely unlike the oft-redundant narration to a 1950s EC comic. Brown, of course, loves to comment on his own work, but such an explicitly diaristic approach dominates the build of his narrative, I think detracting from his much-stronger in-panel depictions of obsession and isolation. The subsequent, superior I Never Liked You dispensed with such unnecessary devices. Still, there are some immortal ’90s alt comics bits in here, and Brown will apparently be penning a new set of author’s notes for this 176-page Drawn & Quarterly edition. Be aware that a softcover edition of Brown’s Paying For It is also due this week; $16.95.

Creepy Comics #12: Another 48-page issue of Dark Horse’s comic book-format revival of the old Warren magazine, notable for a new story from writer/artist Richard Corben, as well as some Peter Bagge art on a different feature; $4.99.

12 Reasons to Die #1 (of 6): I *think* this is the first comic book release from Black Mask Studios, an offshoot of the Kickstarter-funded (and yet-forthcoming) Occupy Comics anthology. It’s still looking to function as an anthology of sorts, though, using an undead gangster vs. crime lords scenario formulated by the Wu-Tang Clan’s Ghostface Killah and composer/producer Adrian Younge (who released a related concept album last month), as a means of deploying all sorts of Image/Vertigo/Dark Horse/Archaia/Top Shelf artists for different segments, including Ron Wimberly, Paolo Rivera, Nate Powell, Ramón Pérez, Jim Mahfood, Ben Templesmith, Francesco Francavilla, Riley Rossmo and many others. Not all in issue #1, surely, but eventually. Video preview(s); $3.50.

Legends of the Blues: Finally, your not-a-comic of the week, in which formidable illustrator William Stout essays an assignment that’ll remind basically everyone reading this column of Robert Crumb’s historical works (and, indeed, which originated as a continuation of Crumb’s own blues illustration project): 100 cartoon portraits of musical heroes, presented as a 5 1/2″ x 7 1/8″ hardcover, with profiles by Stout and a bonus CD of sample tunes. From Abrams; $19.95.

–

CONFLICT OF INTEREST RESERVOIR: What? Belgians not your thing? You need some rock-ribbed American kids’ comics from the middle of the 20th century? Well you too are served, patriot, via Walt Disney’s Donald Duck: The Old Castle’s Secret, a new 232-page collection of Carl Barks output from the year of our lord nineteen hundred and forty-eight, including some early Uncle Scrooge; $28.99.

Elsewhere:

Here’s a lengthy exquisite corpse comic.

The comics symposium MIX is coming up, and there’s a call for papers.

Abhay Khosla writes the Iron Man 3 review for you.

A trip through Seymour Chwast’s rejection pile.

Writer about comics Gene Kannenberg, Jr on typography.

Here’s the beginning of multi-author a celebration of Matt Wagner’s 1980s alt-superhero, Grendel.

Matt Wagner: “The Hunter Rose version of Grendel was the first comic book character and narrative I ever developed. I wanted to feature the villain/anti-hero as my title character, a motif that just wasn’t done in the commercial comics of those days.

“After I moved my attentions to developing my first color series, Mage, I began to hear back from readers, asking me whatever happened to the story I’d abandoned in Grendel. So, I adapted that narrative to fit into 4-page segments as a backup feature in Mage.

“The result was that I had to really stretch my storytelling sensibilities and find a new and innovative way to tell that tale, little realizing that motif would become a hallmark of Grendel throughout its long history.”

And a bit of news on my end, the cartoonist Blutch has canceled his appearances in North America.

Joe Ollmann is a cartoonist living in Montreal. He won the Doug Wright Award for best book in 2007 and still coasts on that, calling himself an “award-winning” cartoonist. His new book, Science Fiction from Conundrum Press, debuts at TCAF this weekend.

Joe Ollmann is a cartoonist living in Montreal. He won the Doug Wright Award for best book in 2007 and still coasts on that, calling himself an “award-winning” cartoonist. His new book, Science Fiction from Conundrum Press, debuts at TCAF this weekend.

Comix India, vol. 3 (September 2010), cover art by Shishir C. Naik.

A few years ago, I had the honor of talking about Garo in New Delhi, at the Yodakin bookstore in Hauz Khas Village. The occasion was the release of the third issue of Comix India, India’s first and most prominent amateur comics magazine, or dōjinshi – calling it by a Japanese name, as you will see below, is entirely justified.

Comix India was founded in 2010 by Bharath Murthy, a documentary filmmaker, cartoonist, comics historian, and manga fanatic. I cannot remember how I learned about the magazine; it’s not available in bookstores; one has to order it online through an Indian print-on-demand publisher. However, if you do just a little bit of net searching in the vein of “alternative Indian comics,” it will come up. The content is wildly varied. Some established artists appear in the magazine’s pages. In the first issue there is a short by Orijit Sen, doyen of Indian graphic novelists, and a 22-pager by Appupen, pusher of wordless down-with-the-system stories.

Left: Orijit Sen, Visioncarnation; Right: Sudeep Menon, Just Another Job, Comix India, vol. 1 (March 2010).

But the rest is largely “first-timers,” as Bharath describes them. Subject matter runs the gamut: struggling as a young artist, teen romance, Hindu fantasies, Mumbai noir, high school horror, village India versus city India, life in prison – the broadest slice you might imagine, in graphic styles just as heterogeneous.

Comix India, vol. 6 (October 2012), cover art by Samia Singh.

What hooked the manga scholar in me was Bharath’s “A form of writing: an essay on the comic,” a McCloudian intro to the medium and his own interests, published in Comix India no. 1. There’s a hefty segment on manga, and it wasn’t the usual. He had apparently been to Tokyo and met a few artists. I was curious. I arranged to meet him. He was giving a talk about manga in Delhi and asked me to piggyback with a lecture of my own. I interviewed him too, stupidly without a sound recorder. Now I am back in India, living in Mumbai – for “personal reasons” that do not include gurus or NGOs. I had to redo the interview.

Bharath presently lives in Pune, where he teaches at the venerable Film and Television Institute of India. On a recent weekend, I yanked myself away from writing and translation work, put myself on a train southbound, and holed up in Bharath’s pad until 2 AM with a litre of one of India’s finer scotches.

Bharath Murthy, The Vanished Path, Comix India, vol. 4 (January 2011).

Currently he’s working on finishing up a travelogue in comics form covering India’s ancient Buddhist sites. Chapters have appeared in Comix India and the completed project is due out next year from Navayana, a respected publisher named after the Dalit Buddhist movement, publishing books on related political issues, including graphic novels like the award-winning Bhimayana and A Gardner in the Wasteland. We talked about that too. But as I set to transcribing, I realized I had enough just on his manga-related background and Comix India. Hopefully the Buddhist material, which is fascinating, in the future.

In addition to introducing Bharath and Comix India to a wider audience, I think the following interview also offers a valuable alternative portrait of the making of an Indian comics writer and editor. Outsiders assume that every Indian kid growing up read the ideological edutainment of Amar Chitra Katha, and indeed many did. In many people’s minds, ACK = Indian comics, at least prior to the rise of domestically produced graphic novels in the last decade. But in talking with Bharath, one realizes how much more varied exposure to comics could be in late twentieth century India. How, even when it comes to Indian comics for kids, ACK had anything but a monopoly.

Bharath has promised to keep a close eye on this post during its first week up. So if anyone has further questions, he should be around to answer in the comments section below.

(cont’d)

What hooked the manga scholar in me was Bharath’s “A form of writing: an essay on the comic,” a McCloudian intro to the medium and his own interests, published in Comix India no. 1. There’s a hefty segment on manga, and it wasn’t the usual. He had apparently been to Tokyo and met a few artists. I was curious. I arranged to meet him. He was giving a talk about manga in Delhi and asked me to piggyback with a lecture of my own. I interviewed him too, stupidly without a sound recorder. Now I am back in India, living in Mumbai – for “personal reasons” that do not include gurus or NGOs. I had to redo the interview.

Bharath presently lives in Pune, where he teaches at the venerable Film and Television Institute of India. On a recent weekend, I yanked myself away from writing and translation work, put myself on a train southbound, and holed up in Bharath’s pad until 2 AM with a litre of one of India’s finer scotches.

Oh, and I’m really excited about this week’s Cartoon Diarist, Joe Ollmann. Today he introduces himself and makes a few promises.

Elsewhere:

—The Harvey Award nominations are open.

—Criticism Department. Derik Badman comments on every comic he’s read in April, and includes information on what the mysterious Blaise Larmee has been up to for those who’ve been wondering. Domingos Isabelinho writes about Geneviève Castrée’s Pamplemoussi. Bill Morris writes about the new Herblock documentary. Glen Weldon writes about Superman’s dog Krypto.

—Interviews Department. Haaretz talks to Art Spiegelman. Tom Spurgeon talks to the writer and translator Anne Ishii. Forbidden Planet visits Karrie Fransman:

—Not Comics: A recent flap sparked by a Publishers Weekly interview with Claire Messud (see two perspectives here and here) has provoked a lot of discussion about the necessity (or not) of likeable characters in fiction. This can’t help but remind me of the critical response to Daniel Clowes’s Wilson a few years ago, and Clowes’s claim: “Likeable characters are for weak-minded narcissists.”

Spawn #1 (May 1992) by Todd McFarlane © 1992 Todd McFarlane Productions, Inc.

Todd FcFarlane is a contented millionaire. Following a mega-popular run on Marvel’s Spider-Man, which was craftily marketed with a multi-cover scheme that created overnight “collectors’ items”and sold millions of comic books, McFarlane broke with the majors and, with such mainstream superstars as Rob Liefeld, Jim Lee, and Eric Larsen, created the Image Comics line. Todd doesn’t claim to be a genius, or even much of a reader, but he knows that he’s a success and that he produces work that the public likes. Criticism scarcely fazes him: when called “morally idiotic,” he chuckles and compliments his accuser’s wit. What makes him tick? Read on and perhaps you’ll find out …

— Gary Groth

CAPTURED IMAGE

GARY GROTH: Let’s start with the beginning of Image. It’s my impression that you were the ringleader — the guy who got the group together. Is that true?

TODD MCFARLANE: I think what you’ll find is, each guy’s got a different take on it. If you’re asking me, my interpretation is that Rob Liefeld and I were always talking about doing something on our own anyway. Rob had this idea for Youngblood, and I hadn’t really thought about what I was gonna do. I had quit doing Spider-Man because I had a new baby daughter. Then Rob announced his Youngblood … It caught everybody by surprise, it also caught me by surprise. “Robbie, why didn’t you tell me?” If I would have known this, I would have come up with my character and we could’ve done a crossover and whatever else.” It was like, “OK, cool. You’re gonna do it.”

We’d also been talking to Eric Larsen — he was going to do it anyways. Then it was like, “Well, since we got three of us, fuck, why don’t we push the envelope a little bit more and go for some of the other guys?” Why leave it too easy for a couple of the other guys to just be there … let’s create a vacuum, at this point.

Shaft, from Rob Liefeld’s Youngblood. © 2008 Rob Liefeld Inc.

GROTH: A vacuum?

MCFARLANE: It was just a matter of nudging people. Part of the nudging came from Rob. A lot of the nudging came from me. I was probably more of a pitcher than the rest of them, for a longer period of time. I think I had more time to convince people, just because I wasn’t working, technically, so … Yeah, maybe some people looked at me as one of the guys that put it together, but it’s not like this thing wouldn’t have existed without me, really. Maybe, maybe not. I don’t want to go that far.

GROTH: So you’re the one who called everybody else. Is that right?

MCFARLANE: Well, I was always working on Jim Lee.

GROTH: How well did you know all these guys?

MCFARLANE: I was even working on Scott Williams, the Italian fat guy. Every time somebody came to my house I worked on them.

GROTH: What do you mean, “worked on them?”

MCFARLANE: Dale Keown, fuck, I was working on him … Javier Saltares came up there. Whoever came and stayed with me for a weekend. When I was living on Vancouver Island I’d find out who was going to the next Vancouver show and I’d phone them up and say “You wanna come stay with me for a couple days? You know, I’ll give you my car and whatever, you can have transportation, I’ll pick you up from the ferry” and stuff … and then as soon as they got in the house I’d work them over.

GROTH: How did you “work them over?”

MCFARLANE: Well, mostly it was artists, so I just told them, for the most part, just ditch your writer, you know? Grab control of the reins … There’s a few teams that have worked over the years, but I find that the more people you have to answer to in life and any kind of decision-making, the less people that are in line, the less problems you have. Some of the guys were working with great writers, but I was just in this mode of “Everybody’s gonna become a writer/artist. You know, you’re just playing into the hands of the writers because they’re coming up with the ideas and you’re kind of getting into this and they’re stifling this.”

I mean, fuck that.

GROTH: Did it ever occur to you that a lot of these artists might not know how to write?

MCFARLANE: [Long pause.] You know, uh, that really didn’t occur to me because that never occurred to me, you know what I’m saying? I mean, fuck, I didn’t let some little thing like not being able to write stop me, so I didn’t really see where that should actually be that much of a problem. I just wanted to test to see how much balls people had. Some people had a fear, like “Yeah, you’re right, I can’t write.” Well, OK, that’s fine, then plot the thing and give it to a writer. And that’s one of the reasons why I don’t use a writer on my stuff: I think that’s almost an insult to a writer for me to want to plot it and then just give it to them to put words to it. Even though they do a hell of a lot better job than I would … I’m not going to get Alan Moore to just script my book. I’d have to go through the ranks, so I’d end up getting a guy who maybe was my 57th choice that said, “Yeah, OK, cool, Todd, I’ll do it.” And I knew, because I’m just a fuck, that in three months I would have been frustrated with him and I would’ve gone, “What kind of dialogue is that? I could do something just like that.” I couldn’t see where I was going to get a very good scripter, and that’s all I wanted, was the scripts.

GROTH: Right. You aren’t the one who wrote that letter to the Buyer’s Guide? About writers?*

MCFARLANE: No. I don’t get any of this stuff. Actually, you guys give me stuff, I’m on your comp list or I must’ve done a cover or something. But other than your books, really, unless I get it for free I don’t really pay attention to it. I never see the CBG.

The argument in CBG doesn’t hold any water, if you want my opinion, and of course I’ve got most of the answers to every single problem out there … that it doesn’t work that the artist or the writer should get an equal amount of royalties or, in some cases, the letters said they should get more. You see, my attitude is this; I think that the writers should get 99 percent of the royalty, and the artists, should only get 1 percent.

* [NOTE: Groth’s comment refers to an unsigned letter that appeared in the Comic Buyer’s Guide lambasting comic writers as useless and unnecessary. The letter drew irate responses from many comics professionals.]

I agree totally, 100 percent with those writers that say that. But you know what that means? Tomorrow, every fucking artist becomes a writer, because they want that 99 percent. So, in a dumb way, the more the artist and the writers fight for the royalty, the more writer/artists you’re going to see. I hate to say it. If they say that the writer should get 70 percent, you’re going to see a hell of a lot more guys turning into writer/artists, just because they’re going, “Fuck ’em. I’m cutting those guys out of the loop, I need to pay the bills, I got a family to raise too.” So if writers were a little bit smarter they’d actually do the opposite. They’d say “Let’s give more to the artists, so if they are comfortable just being artists and not infringing upon our territory.” That actually would be the smarter way to go about it instead of saying, “we deserve just as much as those guys, blah blah blah …” I think right now, I forget how the breakdown is, but it’s kinda weird at both companies. I totally disagree because they can write three or four books or whatever.

GROTH: You’re painting a portrait of writers and artists being warring factions. Is that the case in mainstream comics?

MCFARLANE: I don’t think so. I think you’ll find that in a lot of my thinking I’m probably the biggest oddball in comic books, next to you. My whole attitude, when I was doing comic books, was kind of foreign to a lot of guys. See, they wanted to co-plot together …

GROTH : Yeah?

MCFARLANE: See, I’m working with Gary Groth, OK? So, Gary’s sitting there going “Todd, I want your ideas. Let’s co-plot, let’s get to become pals.” My attitude was “No no no no. Here’s how we deal with this relationship. You don’t tell me how to draw, I don’t tell you how to fucking write, and we get along just perfect.” Because the first time you accept any advice or criticism or whatever I have about your writing, I have to reciprocate and say that you can now change my artwork and, unfortunately, I’m not big enough of a man to have some fucking writer change my artwork. So I’d go, “No. I don’t tell you how to write, and I’ll be Goddamned if you tell me to redraw a panel.” And it worked. It worked for two years with Roy Thomas and two years with Peter David and a couple years with David Michelinie. I mean, we didn’t war over it. I just kinda stayed on this side of the fence and never treaded into their territory, and they never came into my territory, and we got along. There’s better ways of doing it. I just don’t like to give up control of what I’m doing.

GROTH: So you couldn’t see yourself in a genuine collaboration where there’s give and take on both sides.

MCFARLANE: No. Not me personally. Unless it was Frank Miller. Partnerships don’t work in business and I don’t really see where they can work for any length of time in comic books either. When they do happen, Gary, they’re some of the best comic books that have happened over the years. You know, the Lee/Kirby stuff and even Eisner with some of his artists and writers. It’s not like it doesn’t happen. Even current stuff … The kids are really infatuated with Byrne and Claremont’s X-Men, so it can happen. It’s just that I weighed the odds and the odds of it happening are minimal, so why even try to get in bed with somebody when it’s not going to be worth my time?

GROTH: What was the impetus for you to talk all these guys into leaving Marvel and starting your own imprint?

MCFARLANE: Ninety percent of why I quit was I had a baby daughter. That might be something that still mystifies a lot of people. I was flying high on Spider-Man, I was making good money, I was famous … I had everything. Why would I walk away from that? For one reason: I had a wife that was very supportive, I had a daughter and I’d never been a father before … that was 90 percent of it. I saw that I had done well enough that I could actually take some time off because I wasn’t stuck in a 9-5 job. I don’t begrudge a 9-5 guy who doesn’t stay home with his family, but I had a chance to stay home with my family. The other 10 percent, though … just fucking was becoming a festering cancer within me, and the system … Anybody that knew me knew that I was bitching about the same things since five weeks into being a comic-book artist. I saw the flaws in the system and the only difference was that five years ago nobody would listen to me. Five years later I got a little bit of pull, and I got a little bit of might and so I can start to say things and people actually start to pay attention to them. The little status quo corporate America idiotic stupidity, more than anything else, was driving me fucking nuts. My mind was going on me. I quit once, Amazing Spider-Man when my mind went, and my mind had gone a second time, and I just went, “No, I’m not going to go crazy, I’d rather quit and throw everything that I have out the window, and walk away from it and just become a dad” than to fucking continue doing what was literally appalling, me.

GROTH: Now, what was it that made your mind go?

MCFARLANE: Just the stupid fucking stupid stuff.

GROTH: Can you give me an example?

MCFARLANE: On one panel on a book, everybody had a heart attack, so I asked them to send the book back and I wasn’t going to let them print the last issue. It wasn’t even that panel …That panel was representative of everything that I’ve had to put up with for five years. The bullshit is, that if you want to do a G.I. Joe comic book with war heroes, god forbid they’d actually advertise that stuff on a base.

GROTH: I’m sorry, advertise it where?

MCFARLANE: In an Army base or one of the military bases. If you did an aerodynamic or aviation book, God forbid they’d actually put that into the Air Force.If you did a rock ‘n’ roll comic book, God forbid they’d advertise that in Rolling Stone. If they did a kiddie magazine, whew! You wouldn’t want to make a commercial of that. Kids are supposed to telepathically know that there’s a kiddie comic book out there and stop playing Nintendo and rush to their comic shop.

Spawn #6 (November 1992) written and drawn by Todd McFarlane © 2005 Todd McFarlane Productions, Inc.

Like the mere existence of these comic books is good enough for them to sell. The promotional people are locked into a frame of mind … They don’t give a shit about more than issue #1. They hyped the shit out of Spider-Man #1 and I thank them. I’ll always thank them for that, but they dropped that thing like a cold potato for the second one and onward. Now, the book still was a top seller for the next year and a half, but it was no thanks to them, sorry to say. They didn’t give a shit about it. If we look at other things in life, no other company runs things the way comic book companies do. See, if Michael Jackson is hot, then they just don’t go “Oh he’s hot, we don’t have to promote him.” They fucking promote Michael Jackson! He’s got a video out, he’s got a movie, he’s got clothes, he’s got a hat, he’s got a T-shirt … Michael Michael Michael, to the point that they get people to get bored of him twice as fast as they normally would have. But, I’m just saying, they push the shit. Home Alone was a good example that Rob Liefeld told me. When the movie came out it was a sleeper, so when the video finally came out and they knew they had a sleeper hit, you couldn’t walk into a toy store or a Sears without a Home Alone video display. They didn’t say, “We only spent $2,000,000 making this movie, and we made $40,000,000. We’re happy. Let’s go on and promote the next piece of shit that we got.” They said, “We got a fucking good product, let’s fucking let people know that it’s there.”

Comi- book guys don’t do that, it’s just … totally mind-boggling, to say the least. That’s just promotion. That’s not even getting into editorial, and I don’t think you’ve got enough tape for that. It’s just those little things that wear you down until after four or five years, you’re a nub. You just go, “No more, I can’t take this.” Some people can, and I admire them, but I personally just couldn’t take the bullshit.

GROTH: Could you give me an example of an editorial interference that you objected to?

MCFARLANE: From the very beginning I was on Spider-Man there was a fight. “God, Todd, why are you making the eyes so big? Todd, why are you making those spaghetti webbings? Todd, why are you making so many webbings under his armpits? Todd, why are you curling his wife’s hair? Todd, why are you doing this …” It was like I was fucking with the status quo. Any company, I don’t care if I’m working for IBM, if you don’t do it their way, they instantly take it in their head that you think their way is wrong. It wasn’t that their way is wrong — and I’ll never make them understand it — it’s just that there’s more than one way of doing something. As a matter of fact, there’s 100 ways of doing most things. But, because they make most of the decisions, because you say “No, I’m not going to follow that path,” because they made that path, they think that you’re saying that their path is fucked. I’m just saying “Nah, it’s been walked before.” I like to go through the bush, I like more of a challenge going through the bush instead of a nice clear path. So they thought that I didn’t want to draw like John Romita because I hated John Romita. Quite the opposite. I was not stupid enough to try and emulate John Romita because that’d be like me becoming a painter and trying to draw like Michelangelo or paint like Rockwell. I was not going to go down in history as a good-John-Romita imitator. I said, “Nope, Todd, if you’re going to keep your career going, you got to live and die on your own merits.” That’s always been my attitude on all the books I’ve done. Why do I want to be almost as good as this guy or better yet I could be better than John Romita? That would be the best that could happen to me, but I would always be compared to John Romita. So I go, “Naaah, I don’t want to be compared to John, nor Steve Ditko, nor Ross Andru or any of these guys,” who I thought did beautiful jobs. “I’ve got to come up with something different from them, because I don’t want to be an imitator of them.” They took that as me being a fucking rebel: “How dare you screw with our icons?” Thank the gods that the sales went up because that’s the only thing that saved my ass on that whole fight.

Now if you look at the Spider-Man books, they’ve all got a McFarlane look to them, which is good for my career because it’s free advertising for me. They’ve all got the big eyes and the curly hair and the spaghetti webbing and lots of black in the tights. What happened was, I said “I’m not going to follow the status quo.” I continued, and now the status quo is some of the stuff that I laid down. It’s come back to haunt me. Besides, it’s flattering. It’s also somewhat frustrating that I’ve killed the monster and reconstructed another one. The next kid that comes in there is now going to be told, just like I was told to draw like John Romita, “Draw Spider-Man like McFarlane.” He’s got one of two choices: he either does it, and he does a pretty damn good Todd McFarlane type Spider-Man, or he goes “Fuck them, I’m not going to draw like Todd McFarlane, I got this cooler idea.” He’s got another fight and I’m going, “Why does that kid have to fight? How do you know that the next kid won’t be able to come up with something that’s 10 times better than I did?” Or 10 times better than Romita, or 10 times better than Ditko. You’re never going to see it if you keep putting them into a little shell and putting them off into a corner someplace. I wouldn’t do it, but then I don’t run the big companies so that’s not my call.

GROTH: So basically you were too much of a maverick for the system, heh?

MCFARLANE: A fuck? Yeah. I was very talented, I was a trailblazer and I was a fuckface and an asshole. To me they’re all the same thing, I wear all those names with a badge of honor. It’s a lot better than being afraid, or being content. To me, the guys who change the world are not the guys who follow, they’re the guys who lead, because if everybody keeps doing the same thing there is no change in the world. The only way that there’s change is if some guy goes “Ahh, fuck it, there’s another way to do this” and really puts his heart and soul into it, has to prove to himself that there’s actually more than one way of doing it. Then people go, “Oh, yeah yeah,” and then all of a sudden that becomes the way. It just starts all over again. The cycles keep going and going and going.

SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS

GROTH: Do you think you and the rest of the people at Image are going to be doing better work now than you did at Marvel? It seems to me that the only way you can support the proposition that change is for the better is if the work itself is better. If the work isn’t better, then why is changing the system better?

MCFARLANE: See, now I’d disagree with that. If I’ve got my sanity back, and I’m still doing the same work but I’m 10 times happier, and I’m a better father and I’m a better husband and I’m a better friend to the neighbors, who cares if it looks the same? It wasn’t that I had this miraculous calling that “This is the way you do superheroes,” it’s just that I just can’t take fucking orders very well. I’ve accepted that, so I just go, “Ah, instead of me being the thorn in their ass, and vice versa, the best thing to do is for me to just abandon it and do superheroes the way that I want to do superheroes.” Not that I got any great vision, but personally I’ll be happy. If I’m personally happy it should show up in my work. I’m not saying that that’s always necessary, but it should show up in the work. And, I’ll be a better husband and a better person, and that, ultimately, is 10 times more important than all the comic book stuff. That’s what was getting to me. They were sapping away my sanity. It was like, “Nah, I can’t do this.” I was accepting and doing things that I wasn’t willing to accept, and I just go, “Naah.” I mean, you’re right in some respects. If we don’t change something … but I just don’t think that because I want to do superhero comic books I should be shackled to Marvel and DC. Why can’t I do the exact same comic books with another company, which just happens to be Image? I like doing superhero comic books. Just because Marvel and DC does comic books, I shouldn’t be stuck at those two companies. I’ve heard that, and I think that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. That’s like telling Honda they should have never invented a better car because Ford already made one 100 years ago. Fuck Ford if they can’t come up with a good car. Honda made a better car. All that proves is Ford better get their shit together and build a better car because they’re going to have troubles, and they’re having troubles right now. Just because it exited and they were there, I don’t think that just because I wanted to break away that, necessarily, I have to have anything new and innovative. I hope I put a couple of things in there that maybe wouldn’t have existed in a Marvel comic book, but I don’t think there’s revelations.

GROTH: So what you’re saying is, Honda didn’t have to build a better car —

MCFARLANE: In some respects. In some respects what I’m saying, the guys working for Ford say, “Aw, fuck you, I can build just as good a car and I’ll be the one to give orders” and so he goes out there, and he goes, “I can build the same piece of shit you’re building” and lo and behold, he comes up with the same car or maybe a better car or maybe he hires some people that work out better. That might happen to us. Every company doesn’t build a better car than Ford. Some build worse, some build better, I don’t know where we’re going to land. I don’t know if we’re going to build the next Jaguar or we’re going to build the next little Hyundai. It’s too early in the ballgame to tell right now. I’m just saying, there’s the possibility for both things to happen, that we can come out with something that’s weaker but, stupid as it sounds, be happy doing it or do something that might be a little bit better.

Here’s where I get my satisfaction right now; we sold 1,000,000 copies-plus of Spawn. I work over my garage, literally. So, that would’ve been the day that anybody could sell 1,000,000 copies of a comic book that’s not mainstream. Rob’s book, with his re-order, sold 1,000,000-plus. I sold 1,000,000-plus. A couple of the other guys at Image, probably all of them sell 1,000,000-plus. That’s good, cool, whatever. Yes, guys are buying multiples, whatever, let’s not get into that right now. They came out with the new Batman, backed by Warner Brothers, and they sold 800,000. In some ways I’m bigger than Batman right now, during the Batman hype. All I’m saying is seven of us little shits sitting over our garage doing comic books right now, can sell 1,000,000 copies.

Spawn #4 (September 1992) written and drawn by Todd McFarlane © Todd McFarlane Productions, Inc.

I don’t got no lawyers. I don’t got no PR people. I don’t got no licensing people. I ain’t got shit! I hate to say it but I just proved that half those jobs at Marvel and DC are worthless. They could get rid of all of those guys and it’s not really going to affect the sales of their comic books, if you’re doing a comic book that taps into the heart of what the kids want right now. You don’t need a battery of people to produce big sales. What you need is a comic book that’s either good, glitzy, or happens to be tapping into whatever’s hot that week.

GROTH: But you also needed to have worked at Marvel for several years, and worked on a popular character before you could sell 1,000,000 copies of your own comic.

MCFARLANE: Yup. Yup. Oh yeah yeah. They’re a training ground now. As a matter of fact, guys that I see that want to work in comics, I send samples of their stuff to Marvel for them. People say that’s kind of weird. No way. Marvel and DC, those are good places to be. You get exposure. You get to work on stuff, you get a steady paycheck. My attitude when I was working for them was, they were whoring me out, but you know what? I always knew that I was whoring them out because every time they out a Spider-Man drawing out there that had my name on it they’re doing me a favor. Because I knew eventually I wouldn’t be there. I’d just go, “Cool. You guys want to keep promoting the book? Beautiful, because you’re just going to make it that much easier for me to walk away some day.”

I’m not saying for people to stay away from those companies. All’s I’m saying is, once they’re there, they’re going to see that there’s options at a certain point in their life. I’m glad Dark Horse is succeeding, I’m glad that Tundra is succeeding, I’m glad that Image is doing good now and 50 other ones … Some haven’t done so well and some have, some have fallen to the wayside, Pacific and First. I’m just glad that another option has been given, so that you can succeed without having to live with the king. You can be a pauper but still have a smile on your face. There’s nothing wrong with that.

GROTH: But, your success is largely the making of Marvel. I mean, if you hadn’t worked at Marvel you wouldn’t be as successful as you are.

MCFARLANE: That’s the problem. You see, I disagree with that.

GROTH: You do?

MCFARLANE: U- huh.

GROTH: You think you would have sold 1,000,000 copies of Spawn if you hadn’t drawn Spider-Man for Marvel?

MCFARLANE: I’m again being the shit that I am. I owe Marvel one thing, and you know what that is?

GROTH: No.

MCFARLANE: They own the copyright to Spider-Man. That’s all I owe them. That’s all that I, pretty much, will acknowledge for them. I thank them for giving me a wide forum, I thank them for allowing me to hone my abilities, and I thank them for owning the copyright to Spider-Man. But if you think for one minute that Todd McFarlane would be a nothing right now without Marvel comic books … Gary, then you don’t know me very well, because, you know why? There’s a character out there called Batman that I would’ve grabbed, or I would have done something. Would I have been as big as today? Nah, but that was never my goal in life.

GROTH: But Todd, my point is you needed a pre-owned corporate character to become as successful as you are.

MCFARLANE: To be as successful as I am, right?

GROTH: Right.

MCFARLANE: But you’re assuming now that that was my goal, to be as successful as I was.

GROTH: No no, I’m not assuming that at all. I’m just saying that you wouldn’t be as successful as you are today, whether you wanted to or not, without Marvel or DC.

MCFARLANE: Right. OK, yeah, that makes sense.

GROTH: So your success is based upon Marvel. Although you’ve liberated yourself from Marvel, you couldn’t have become as successful as you are without them.

MCFARLANE: I guess it depends on what success is. See, you and I have two different definitions of what success is. You’re taking where I’m at right now, physically and mentally and that I’ve sold 1,000,000-plus copies of Spawn. Would I have ever sold 1,000,000-plus copies of Spawn? Nope.

GROTH: How do you measure success?

MCFARLANE: It ain’t in the number of copies I sell, I guarantee you. Got nothing to do with comic books. I’ve had enough people do enough interviews of me, and ask me how much money … Let me tell you what Todd McFarlane’s all about; I got a wife that I love dearly, I’ve always loved, that I’ve been together with for 14 years. I’m a rich man in that I’ve got a very understanding, caring, beautiful wife. I got good friends and family. You know what? They could take all the fame from me, they could take all the fortune from me. Just let me do comic books and sell 5,000 copies, just so I could eke out a living … and I would still do comic books, because I like comic books so much. The rest of it is a Western civilization success: if you sell a lot of copies, oh, then it’s OK for us to allow our kids to do comic books. If you make a lot of money, that’s OK for us to allow our kids to do it. That’s why it’s OK for doctors and lawyers to let their kids be doctors and lawyers. That’s why I was “wrong” to stop doing Spider-Man at the top of my career, twice, and willing to walk away. Because what people see as a success and as a big shot and as a fan favorite, that was never my goal in this business ever. I consider it a blessing more than anything else. I’ve had more than my five minutes of fame. Anything now is just bonus time. They could take it away from me in 10 seconds and I wouldn’t care one iota, to tell the truth.

GROTH: In an interview with you in Wizard you suggested you engineered your success a little more than you’re doing now. Referring to your “artistic” strategy, you said, “Some of the stuff I was doing on Infinity, some of the page design stuff — I try to do as much design work as I can, but I can’t make it too wacky or that 10-to-15 crowd gets a little antsy about the whole look of the book. The kids only want to work so hard to figure out the comic book, but once you get older, it’s kind of neat to have to delve into different layers. I have to make a marriage of both of them, so I can get a big audience base.”

MCFARLANE: Right.

GROTH; So were you interested in getting a big audience base? Isn’t that why you married the two styles you were talking about?

MCFARLANE: I’m a guy who likes challenges. As soon as they say “That can’t be done; you can’t sell 1,000,000 copies” — ah, just watch this. It’s not because I wanted to sell 1,000,000 copies that I made $1,000,000. It’s just because they said “It can’t be done.” Me being the little adolescent mentality that I’ve always had, it was like “Watch me. Or at least I’m going to die trying. Watch me.”

The toughest thing in comic books, I think, and you’re a publisher, you know this … is that there’s different groups of people. There might be 10,000 of each one of them, but there’s 10 different age groups that look at 10 different books. Now, if you can actually tap into all of them, there’s a potential to actually get 100,000 people to read your book.

To me, that became my goal, in that I just wanted to see if it was possible to cross the barriers. So it was like, “OK, if I do something that’s a little bit designy, then that will get the attention of the older audiences. But I still have to make the storytelling clear and somewhat simple enough that it wouldn’t confuse the 12-year-old, but I could still put a couple of underlying things so that the 20-and-older group would pick it up that the 8-year-old wouldn’t, but it wouldn’t affect the story.” You have to try and give just enough to everybody so that everybody went home satisfied. Does that mean maybe that if I was just aimed at one group I would have been able to do a better package? Yeah, probably. I would have been able to concentrate more, but I just wanted to see whether I could do it, just from a career point.

“Designy” panels in Spawn #5 (October 1992) written and drawn by Todd McFarlane © Todd McFarlane Productions, Inc.

I hate to say, but this business is weird in that they give you the next bone depending upon how well you did: “What have you done for me lately?” I had to prove my merit by saying “OK! Your business, as Marvel or DC, is to sell comic books, and you hire me to sell comic books, and I do that job very well. Whether you like my style whether you like the way I do it, whether you think that I’m good or not is irrelevant. I’m sorry to say, that’s irrelevant. Just accept the fact that I sell comic books. After you accept that, now we can delve into whether you think I’m actually good at what I do, but you got to get past the first hurdle, which is just accept it. Don’t like me personally, don’t like my style, don’t like the way I write, don’t like the way I lay out a book, just accept that I sell the comic books and don’t even try to understand it.”

You can talk to me now about trying to improve those areas, but they couldn’t even get past that first hurdle. “This is the way we’ve done comic books for 25 years, what’re you trying to do?” It’s like, “Jesus, who gives a fuck how I do it? Who cares if I give you 22 blank pages and I sell 500,000 copies. If that’s what the public wants … perfect! Let’s give it to them! It seems to work. They seem to like it. Who cares that 20 years ago they used to actually have dialogue on their pictures? The kids don’t like that any more, obviously. They want books that have 22 blank pages. Who are we to argue with them?

GROTH: Uh-huh.

MCFARLANE: Who are we to educate them right now? Give them what they want, I don’t got time to make world peace. I do that on my own time.

GROTH: Huh. [Long pause.] Let me ask you this: do you have any artistic standards of your own, or are your standards based entirely on what the public wants to buy?

*Buddy Saunders Sidebar

MCFARLANE: [Long pause.] I’d say, almost, right now, at this point, maybe a little bit of both. Although now with Image, actually I’d say … I just self-indulge myself, literally. And thank the Lord, even though I’m an atheist, that there’s enough people out there that are coming along for the ride. As long as there’s about 20 or 30,000 of them, I’ll keep indulging myself because I’m just a weenie like that. There’s a lot of guys who’re doing black and whites or doing independents that I think are literally doing the exact same thing that I’m doing. I just happen to be doing it in a more commercial form. So I sit there and I go “Aw cool, I like guys with capes” so, Spawn’s got a cape.

Spawn #2 (July 1992) written and drawn by Todd McFarlane © Todd McFarlane Productions, Inc.

No questions asked, I don’t got no editor that I got to clear that through. “Ah, I want to do this, I want to do this, I want … ” — it’s done! I mean, it’s done in seconds, and you want to know what? Does it all make sense? Nah. Ultimately it doesn’t have to make sense, really, because I’m having a kick. I’m just going, “Todd, this is cool. You want to draw a cartoon character? Ahh, let’s bring in a cartoon character. You want to draw a monster? Ahh, let’s bring in a monster. You want us to draw tall guys? Ahh, let’s draw tall guys. You want to do it at night time? Daytime?” It doesn’t matter what I do, I get up and I go, “Ahh, what’s going to entertain Todd McFarlane?” And, fortunately or unfortunately, depending on who you are, there’s a lot of people that get entertained by the same things that I do. They like funny little characters. They like guys with big capes flowing in the wind. They like monsters. So, I guess I’m, like I said, somewhat of an adolescent still. And there’s a lot of adolescent readers out there that go “Aw, that’s cool, Todd.” What I thought was cool, as a comic book reader, I put in my pages, and if those kids think it’s cool and if they turn into comic book artists and writers, they’re going to still put monsters and fights because that’s what they liked. I wish I had a major epic that I could put down on paper that would change the world, but I haven’t come up with that one yet. Right now, I just do kind of cool comic books. I don’t hang my head in shame; I’m proud that I do something that I like and that I’m somewhat successful at it. “Successful” being, in this capitalist society, that other people buy it.

GROTH: So you actually take pride in your work?

MCFARLANE: Yeah, sure I do. If I don’t then I’m going to become a dinosaur. I try to keep up with everything. I try to update myself. My style isn’t the same as it was five years ago, even two years ago. If you look at the first issue of Spawn that’s out, it’s not the way that I used to draw Amazing Spider-Man. It’s maybe not a quantum leap from there, but at least it’s not me just going “Ah, I’ve done it, this is how good I am, this is what I do, I don’t ever have to try anything different.” I try to change, whether the changes are for the good or for bad — again, that’s not my decision, because I’m not the one buying the book.

GROTH: Right. How did you feel about being complicit with Marvel’s pandering to the fraudulent collector’s market with Spider-Man — did that bother you?

MCFARLANE: Gary, I don’t have any control over the multiple cover idea. If you’re asking if that was my idea, the answer’s no. If they came up with an idea, it was maybe going to sell twice as many copies because of the idea … whatever! I mean, I’m going, “I don’t care. You can sell twice as many copies of my book? Whatever.”

GROTH: Do you think you should care? Because clearly what happens with all these “collectable” comics, such as your Spider-Man is that Marvel promotes them as collectable, retailers promote them as collectable, on down the food chain until they’re sold to gullible kids or avaricious speculators. They’re then hoarded by retailers, and then the market is manipulated by dealers and retailers who stock these things and only allow a limited supply that is just less than the demand. So, in other words, there is … your Spider-Man sold 5,000,000?

MCFARLANE: 3,000,000.

GROTH: There’s no way in the world that that comic, with a print run of 3,000,000, could be worth anything if the market weren’t manipulated.

MCFARLANE: Yeah … you know, you’re right. Everybody is either to blame or to be patted on the back for that, I guess it depends on your view of it. I couldn’t do nothing at that point. That I fight one way or the other, no that was a decision that I didn’t even have, that I didn’t say nothing about because I knew that my voice, at that point, was irrelevant, in the way that the system was set up. Do I think that’s a good idea of doing it? Well, take a look at the first issue of the Spawn, you see how many variations there are on that book. One comic book, you get it, that’s it. I’m not really a big fan of multiple covers, if that’s what you’re asking, because I think it’s cheating the public. I think that you’re selling them the same product twice. I can kind of live with the cover, even though I don’t have it on mine, but if somebody gives you a day-glo yellow cover … technically, if you just buy one copy of it, you’re still getting only the one cover. So, it’s really no different than the previous issue, it’s just the mentality of the people that are biting the hype and buying it, that are buying multiples of it, even those who just got day-glo, what’s the point of it?

GROTH: Aren’t you pandering to that mentality by [A] working at Marvel in the first place and [B] drawing Spider-Man?

MCFARLANE: Am I . . . ?

GROTH: In other words, it seems to me you have a decision to make, and that is, to draw a comic that is read or to draw a comic that is hoarded, and you know very well going into it that Marvel has exploited the speculator’s market more than any other publisher, and that by working on Spider-Man for Marvel you will be complicit in that exploitation.

MCFARLANE: OK, here’s my attitude when I took over Spider-Man. The sales were pretty solid. Spider-Man, I mean, it’s the status quo. My only thing that I wanted to do was, it’s selling 250,000 copies; my only goal was, not really so much to raise the level of the sales, was that Spider-Man is such an ongoing title that a lot of people have been collecting it for years. They’re going to buy it no matter who draws it, my mom could draw it and still sell 250,000 copies. So, the only goal that I had was, “I hope they read it before they shove it in their plastic bags. That’s all I can hope for.” The sales aren’t going to reflect any of that, but at least if they read it and they start talking about it, then all of a sudden Spider-Man is back on their lips again. Actually, it probably was almost a year before it actually reflected, in sales, what they had been talking about. “There’s this new kid on the book and he’s got this weird style, blah blah blah, he’s got a little bit of Ditko in it, blah blah blah,” but it wasn’t really reflected in the sales. If anything, “the sales went down initially because it was a new kid coming on there or something like that…so it was more that all those guys were just buying it because it was just to keep their collection going, were now stopping, flipping through it or reading it, and then shove it in their plastic bag. You’re up against certain obstacles at that point, but that doesn’t mean that because that market exists that I shouldn’t be entitled to do Spider-Man. That question is almost the opposite, that because the pubic is a certain way, that I should not be able to do something. I didn’t come on Spider-Man and do the status quo, quite the opposite. I went in there and said “Ahh, let’s fuck with it.” I was hoping to fuck with it so that it would actually be something that people would respond to, for good or for bad. Again, let them make the decision … but at least I got a reaction out of it. They’d be talking about Spider-Man now, and that was the central idea essentially that I was looking for in Spider-Man. And to some extent, I did what I set out to do. I got people going “Ah, Spider-Man … I’m going to collect it anyway.” They’re still collecting it, Spider-Man hasn’t been cancelled since I left. Far from it, the sales are as solid as ever. Whether that had anything to do with whatever I did, who knows? It’s just, maybe, a cycle it’s going through.

(Continued)

Elsewhere:

Tom Spurgeon carries on his convention travels at Stumptown.

Bill Kartalopolous on Eric Lambé’s Le Fils du Roi (Frémok, 2012),

Here’s an unusual recent Popeye story that never saw print.

Domingos Isabelinho on Pamplemoussi by Geneviève Castrée.

Finally, one of those lotsa covers, lotsa editions posts, this time for William S. Burroughs.

Elsewhere:

—Howard Chaykin wrote a candid remembrance of Carmine Infantino (“There was no greater animosity in that generation than the one that existed between Gil [Kane] and Carmine”) for the Los Angeles Review of Books.

—The Doug Wright Awards has started a series of posts introducing readers to their nine nominated artists. First up is Ethan Rilly.

—Brigid Alverson at Robot 6 talks to Darryl Cunningham.

—Paul Pope draws a short comic about his favorite books.

—Michel Fiffe picks out some of his favorite comic-book fight scenes.

—The satirical website and Twitter account That Comics Blogger has apparently decided to close up shop after the end of Comics Alliance, and offers up reasons why here.

Comic by Asia Bordowa

Nowhere is this more evident than in Asia Bordowa’s “Radical Cheerleader” history. Punk rock became a huge rallying cry for a generation that seized their new-found freedom of speech to mix protest and performance. Dedicated to protesting against homophobia, sexism, and limitations against reproductive rights, Bordowa became part of an art-intensive group involved with comics, zines, music, and performance/protest art, creating a community out of whole cloth from the like-minded who rejected the ruthlessness of capitalism along with the shackles of communism. Her drawing is classic zine-scrawl. Maria Rostocka’s “The Flashy Queen” takes a different approach, attacking the oppressive greyness of post-Communist Poland with a bright palette in terms of dress. That move has its own problems, as the initial attention it gives her leads to jealousy and eventual ostracism—for her, creating art seems to be a means of coping. There’s a sensitivity to her watercolor technique that adds to the emotional fragility of the work.

Comic by Maria Rostocka

A number of the stories in the book are mere snippets, like Ada Buchholc’s four-page, duo-toned piece about running that’s part of her larger project of comics related to body image. Maja Demska’s “Everything I Do Is Personal” is a design-heavy account of being frustrated with one’s identity, personified in the way she uses her eyeglasses to stand in for her. There are scribbly diary comics from Agnieszka Piksa, detailed experiences about art school from Marta Nieznayu, and memory flash comics from Jadwiga Zelazny. In general, the artists in this book tend to be either highly-trained designers with extensive art school backgrounds or DIY scribblers who have more in common with zine culture than comics culture.

Comic by Oliwia Ziebinska

One thing I always enjoy about anthologies like this is discovering artists I wish I could see more of right away. Maria Ines Gul smears black, white, and grey in interesting ways to talk about the past and wonder about the future, creating a visual style both childlike and sophisticated. Joanna Karpowicz is a superb illustrator with a rich color sense and a sharp sense of humor. Her “Five Random Life Lessons From Childhood” are hilarious, as when she portrays herself managing to sleep through being left outside in freezing weather as a baby, which leads to the moral: “Sleep your troubles away.” Ola Szmida’s fanciful drawings about trying to find a sport that fit her mixes a clear line, a restrained use of color, cursive lettering a la Vanessa Davis, and a wickedly self-deprecating sense of humor. Agata Wawryniuk’s mix of delicate lines for her figures and thicker lines for her panels and construction of hair, along with exaggerated and rubbery anatomy creates a dense but playful atmosphere for her history of antagonism with her mother. Her nearest American analogue in terms of style is Lilli Carré. Olga Wrobel’s beautifully rendered, deeply felt, yet sly satirical letters to her fictional future granddaughters about her loves and relationships gets across a lot of emotional content thanks to her sophisticated understanding of character design and body language. Finally, Oliwia Ziebinksa’s stark and brutal “Enter Me” is an account of her missing childhood memories and a harrowing tour of what might be missing, told in a visceral but stylized manner.

Comic by Maria Ines Gul

I’m hoping that this anthology is just the first of many attempts by Centrala to reach out to a larger audience, because there’s clearly a great deal of strong work here that deserves wider recognition. It’s to the Polish scene’s credit that no single visual style seems to be particularly in vogue, which makes sense considering the wide variety of influences that are cycling through the scene. There’s a freshness and lack of cynicism that stands out in this book, as using comics as a means of expression and possibly even making a living from it is still a new idea. Hopefully, this book can serve to further link Poland to the wider European and international comics scenes.

Fredric Wertham has long been America’s greatest comic-book villain, an evil Freudian genius, so the argument goes, who single-handedly almost destroyed one of our country’s most beloved art forms in his quest to prove how deeply perverse the comics of the ’40s and early ’50s were, how effortlessly they twisted pliable young minds. Dr. Wertham operated toward the end of what’s now called the “Golden Age” of American comics (c. 1933-1956), the halcyon days of kid’s funny books, whose pages overflowed (we seem to forget) with bondage, rape, stabbings, bullet holes, pistol whippings, mutilation, dismemberment, hypodermics in the eye, patriotic gore, and 1001 other kinds of sadism.

Horrific #3 (Jan. 1953)

(If Wertham ended the Golden Age, is he the accidental father of the anemically chaste Silver Age superhero, who began his journey into the heart of comic fandom in 1956?)

The value of Wertham’s 1954 Seduction of the Innocent is almost always reduced to a pro-con argument over its claim that crime comics damaged child readers — unsurprisingly, most folks fall into the “Wertham is Wrong” camp. Adding to comic-lovers’ reasons to detest the psychiatrist, we recently learned that he was a sloppy researcher who played fast and loose with the data.*

What’s missed in these debates is a fuller understanding and appreciation of Wertham, not as an anti-comics crusader, but as a comics critic. When I first read Seduction of the Innocent, I was taken by how comprehensive, almost exhaustively so, it is. Wertham talks not only about plot, images, narration, and dialogue, but about seemingly every aspect of comic books and the culture in which they were created and consumed. He tackles how they’re produced, printed, and disseminated; their non-story elements (such as advertisements and editorials); child readers’ responses to them; and public reactions in the press and educational community. His presentation of these subjects is, as many have noted, disorganized and repetitive, but his impressive interpretive scope more than compensates. While readers are certainly right to criticize his many faults and biases,** I’m not really interested in the validity of his findings. It’s Seduction of the Innocent’s wide-ranging approach that makes Wertham one of comics’ heroes.

Here’s a short survey of his extensive ‘methodology’:

Narrative
When Wertham interprets a comic, he assumes that every narrative/visual element matters. So he’ll discuss plot, dialogue and narration, art and coloring, the presence of familiar character types, the use of splash pages, and even hand lettering and typography (which words are in what style and size, etc . . .). He performs numerous short close readings of scenes, typically from a Freudian perspective that addresses why an image or scene will trigger a child’s drives and anxieties. Wertham also undertakes quantitative studies — e.g., what types of violent actions are represented and how many times each appears per story and book — and argues that repeated expose to such visual sadism causes real harm.

For each element he examines, he asks what it means for the comic and its juvenile reader, investigating how editorial-artistic choices function together to create the ‘sensationalizing’ effect that comics can have on a child’s body and psyche. Wertham famously argues that artists (perverts that they are . . .) use sexually-charged “pictures within pictures” (hidden drawings animated by a subliminal pornographic mischievousness) to excite young readers.

Crime SuspenStories # 19 (Oct-Nov 1953)

Paratextual
Always interested in “the paratext,” Wertham looks at non-story aspect of the printed object, such as materials used in the printing process, cover image and words, the series’ title, along with text pieces and advertising. Particularly concerned with interactions between story content and paratextual elements, Wertham focuses on ads that address boy and girl readers’ sense of their own masculinity or femininity, talking about how the ads, the comic’s imagery, and its plots reinforce each other by dramatizing (and thus encouraging) the same anxieties. He also explores the arrangement of discrete elements, such as the location of a publisher’s defenses of its product. For Wertham (and me), the standard practice of following a story of mind-bending graphic gore with a throwaway tag line like “Then the criminal went to jail, so crime doesn’t pay, kids” seems a little disingenuous. Publishers care about cash, not kids.

Mister Mystery #16 (Apr. 1954)

Identity Issues and Social Contexts
Thematically, his topics range extensively to include important issues such as race, gender, sexuality, class, living conditions, and family (adult-child and sibling) relationships. He explores these issues as they appear in the lives of comic-book characters and comic-book readers, connecting crime narratives to developments in contemporary culture, such as a rise in violence and juvenile delinquency.

Media/Medium Comparisons
He frequently defines his subject by talking about crime comics’ connection to other forms of entertainment, such as non-crime comics, comic strips, children’s books, adult fiction, movies, Classic Comics and the literature they adapt. Unlike those who insist that comics shouldn’t be compared to other media (they’ll say things like, “Comics are their own art form and comparisons broadcast an anxious desire to elevate the form by comparing it to Literature and Film”), Wertham understands a simple fact: specific comparisons aid in understanding, analysis, and judgment.

Crime Does Not Pay #24 (Nov. 1942)

Reader Reception
Wertham talks in detail about children’s readings habits: how many comics they read and the ways in which high circulation of current and back issue among friends affect both a child’s exposure and total readership numbers. Studying comics’ effect on literacy, he shows that children of different ages interact with comics differently: some read the text while others ignore it, with many of all ages focusing solely on meanings conveyed by the semi-pornographic imagery. After Wertham and his staff interview child readers, he connects these responses to the child’s “reading grade,” intellectual abilities, and social conditions. As a Freudian, he’s intensely interested in children’s fantasy lives and parental beliefs (often incorrect) about their children’s reading habits and interest in comics. Concerned with children’s emotions and social interactions, he focuses on needs and desires that these comics ignore or meet. Ultimately, he argues that the repetitious and disposable nature of such violent, misogynistic, and fascistic comics, create a physically addictive desire to consume more: crime comics are a visual drug.

Exposed – True Crime Cases #1 (Apr. 1948)

Production and Cultural Reception
Looking at publishers’ claims, especially public defenses of their products, Wertham compares these claims to what actually happens in the comics, finding publishers’ arguments wanting. SOTI addresses circulation numbers and comic producers’ self-represent in a comic’s indicia (the location of publication information); they try, he believes, to conceal their business’s name to ensure anonymity and thus avoid responsibility and publicity. Wertham also talks about the writers/artists who create the books and their motivation for doing so (often only money); mainstream comics, he believes, are non-artistic, editorially-driven corporate product. Seduction of the Innocent surveys numerous arguments about comics and children in the popular press as written by parents, educators, social critics, and medical professionals, putting these arguments in the context of trends in child development/behavior and Wertham’s readings of comics.

So:
I can’t think of another comics study that employs so many different methods. Because of this, put me in the pro-Wertham camp. It’s hard not to appreciate someone who takes comics so seriously and studies them from so many perspectives: evaluative, psychoanalytic, ethical, political, sociological, materialist, paratextual, production history, reader reception, plot-based, identity-issue based (class/gender/sexuality), etc . . .

Thus:
Q: Who is America’s Best Comic-Book Critic?
A: Fredric Wertham

2. What is the Best Way to Write Comics Criticism?

Like Wertham, maybe . . .

If comics are a distinct “medium of expression,” it makes sense that the best criticism will explore a work’s use of properties that make a comic a comic and not, say, a novel, such as artwork or page layouts, right? Wrong. I’m always puzzled when readers argue that, to be legit, a discussion must tackle these kinds of topics; we do something wrong, we’re told, when we talk only about a comic’s plot (isn’t this a key reason most humans read books and comics, watch movies, etc?). Of course, I’m all for art-centric analysis. I’m still waiting for someone to write “The Emotional Contours of Jack Sparling’s Brush Technique in Late Dell Comics.” (I love the under-discussed, underrated Sparling, a master of the quick and scratchy ink line!)

Readings that center on non-comicy elements are often called literary. I wonder, though, if there’s really any such thing as a literary reading of a comic. First of all, I don’t know what the word means (and suspect it doesn’t really mean much); but if a literary reading is one that ignores the art, then I’m a little confused. In many narrative comics, the story is often communicated through the art; so even a literary reading takes art into account in some way. And because “non-literary” things like print advertisements and TV commercials often have a plot, a close and meaningful link between literary and story might not be possible. 

I think that the “cause of comics criticism” might benefit from a ban on words like literary and literariness, etc. People often use them in vague, shifting, and at times idiosyncratic ways. If critics had to communicate without these words — if they used a less abstract vocabulary when creating or characterizing interpretations — I’m pretty sure all of us would benefit.

Mystic #16 (Jan. 1953)

I often write criticism that addresses the comicy aspects of comics — visual and/or formal elements — but see no reason to assume this is better than any other approach, literary or otherwise. And why does method matter: as long as the critic doesn’t lie or get facts wrong, then who cares?

So, perhaps the best way to write criticism is to employ one of the methods that America’s best critic, Fredric Wertham, used: evaluative, psychoanalytic, ethical, political, sociological, materialist, paratextual, production history, close reading, reader reception, plot-based, identity-issue based, quantitative, etc . . .

Or just use any method you like.

Thus:
Q: What is the Best Way to Write Comics Criticism?
A:  Any way that’s smart, funny, insightful, etc . . .

Mystic #16 (Jan. 1953)

So:
When writing about comics, please consider exploring topics like the following:

A comic’s dialogue – just the dialogue.
A comic’s dialogue in relation to its character’s facial expressions.
The dialogue in a comic you like and compare it to that of a comic you don’t like.
The dialogue in a film you like and compare it to that of a comic you don’t like.
The plot – just the plot.
Gil Kane’s chins (and/or other cartoonists’ characters’ body parts).
The play of shapes and gestures on a single page with no mention of plot or art.
The play of shapes and gestures on a single page in relation to plot and art.
The use of ”camera angles.”
The number of times The Hulk smashes the ground in comics drawn by Herb Trimpe
(you may want to look at some Keown/David Hulk issues for comparison).
Three cartoonists’ approaches to lettering.
Three mid-1970s DC artists’ approaches to inking.
Gender politics; for example, in early 1990s alternative and mainstream comics.
How a cartoonist poses his main characters and relate this to another relevant issue.
Fashion / clothing.
Production markings (those not intend for reproduction) on an artist’s original art.
Uses / meanings  of a given word in the work of a comics writer.
The relationship between a comic’s advertising and its narrative (a la Wertham).
The work of Freud, Nietzsche, Marx, etc. . . .
Critical Race Theory, post-colonial theory, ecofeminist theory, etc. . . .
Why older printing and coloring methods led to way more cool-looking comics.
The comic in terms of the creator’s life, work, etc. . . .
Page layouts in early 1940s superhero comics.
The virtues of Neo-Nostalgia.
How a cartoonist sets up gags and action sequences and what he or she could learn from Carl Barks’s comics.
The history of thought balloons and related internal-narration devices, from 1657 to today.
Punctuation in comics versus prose + poetry . . .
Why Dondi’s face has always disturbed you.
Why all superhero comics are not fascistic, despite the fact that some folks continually say they are when they clearly aren’t, like think about The Inferior Five for instance.
Why the comic sucks; why you love it; what a character means to you; why you like comics better than books without drawings, etc. . . .

And so on.

________
NOTES
*See information on Carol Tilley’s recent work here.
**Though fairly progressive on issues of race, Wertham was reactionary when it came to sexuality; like many psychiatrists of his time, he saw homosexuality as a deviant form of behavior.

—Andy Webster at the New York Times Book Review becomes the latest writer to review the new Al Capp biography.

—Michael Cavna at the Washington Post talks to Ruben Bolling about the multi-cartoonist political ad he put together last week.

—I’m pretty sure we haven’t yet linked to Frank Young and James Gill’s comic-book image site, Panels to Ponder. The Facebook incarnation of it is more active.

—A Moment of Cerebus digs up an old speech Dave Sim gave in 1995 to SCAD consisting of advice to young cartoonists. I think he’s wrong on the music thing.

—Not Comics: A 1938 rejection letter from Walt Disney to a young woman interested in becoming an animator. It’s easy to discount this as ancient history, but it is actually in living memory for some.

But then, sometimes, you’d see a profile post on Leon Sadler, right on the front page, and you’d know that few other major American geek culture websites would be so likely to bother.

None of this, however, speaks to the legacy of Comics Alliance. And truly it is unique for a site of such relative youth to even *have* a legacy, in so clogged a scene, among so many options.

When I think of what CA has done, I initially think of two things that are not CA. The first is Comic Foundry, a comics-related culture & lifestyle magazine (there was a longer-lived web presence too, but I’m thinking only of the magazine) which published five print editions between 2007 and 2009. The blurbs and blips on fashion and stuff passed me by, but right from the beginning there was a unique focus on issues of representation in superhero comics: portrayals of women, in particular, presented in a direct and continuous manner unlike that of any other comics magazine.

It was not unlike any other comics resource, though. Gail Simone’s Women in Refrigerators was a key early source, but the second thing I think of when I think of CA is scans_daily, which by the late ’00s had become a popular LiveJournal-based forum for discussion of freely posted comics images, with a large and lively user base of women. There was always more than capes available on the site, but by that time it had become well-known as a voice for the historically ill-served female readership of Marvel and DC superhero comics. It also had a critical flaw: it could not shake the impression of being a site where people went to catch up on comics for free, and the corporate custodians of superhero properties have always been primarily interested in the exchange of money. In setting up a counterculture of sorts, it could be marginalized.

Comics Alliance, then — or, the version of CA launched in 2009 by Laura Hudson, a senior editor at the just-departed Comics Foundry (who now works at Wired) — took this stuff to the heartland. *Of course* they ran previews of new superhero comics, and posts on superhero movies: that is the expectation of a big-ticket comic book website, the platform which allowed the site’s writers to launch sustained volleys against the gendered (and, increasingly, racial) subtexts of the popular serial comics it had made its bread and butter. It’s become a a cliché, since: websites relentlessly criticizing the corporations they’re reliant on for hit-driving exclusives, but unlike the others you got the feeling that CA really could get by if Warner and Disney blackballed them entirely – you can lack interviews and previews and juicy publishing scoops, but they can never take away your liberty to read and comment, and the heart of Comics Alliance was always the opinion pieces, a proclivity that increasingly led it toward longer analytic reviews as the years passed.

It’s reductive to speak of legacy, I know. If you add up all the site’s posts, less than a quarter, I expect, relate to these issues. Moreover, the conversation was never primarily housed at CA; it was an interaction of multiple voices from multiple forums, ‘represented’ in its most mainstream-visible form by the site’s own renditions of the topics. But such representation is valuable as a display of force, enough so that it is now very difficult to read Marvel or DC comics, or comics struck from their mold, and not notice the way characters are designed and positioned in stories for the purposes of oft-unwitting sociological metaphor. I often think this is the great paradigm shift that superhero comics have undergone in the 21st century, ostensibly their days of assimilation into action movie formulae on the big screen. To front such demands on reading was good work. I can’t say that about everyone on the scene.

***

PLEASE NOTE: What follows is not a series of capsule reviews but an annotated selection of items listed by Diamond Comic Distributors for release to comic book retailers in North America on the particular Wednesday, or, in the event of a holiday or occurrence necessitating the close of UPS in a manner that would impact deliveries, Thursday, identified in the column title above. Not every listed item will necessarily arrive at every comic book retailer, in that some items may be delayed and ordered quantities will vary. I have in all likelihood not read any of the comics listed below, in that they are not yet released as of the writing of this column, nor will I necessarily read or purchase every item identified; THIS WEEK IN COMICS! reflects only what I find to be potentially interesting.

***

SPOTLIGHT PICKS!

The Grey Museum: Being the newest release from Canada’s Conundrum Press, a very interesting publisher of international works, although this one comes from Lorenz Peter, a Montreal-born Doug Wright award-winner for Best Emerging Talent in 2006. I don’t know a lot about this 216-page b&w book, but I’m assured it’s “a galactic romp,” seeing human stragglers dealing with various gods and aliens in a satiric manner. I like the heavy inks on the art. Preview; $20.00.

Pietrolino: On the other hand, there’s always unfamiliar work by a familiar name, and I suspect we’re all familiar with Alejandro Jodorowsky – filmmaker, comics writer and trained mime, who in 2007 and 2008 released this two-album series of WWII-era intrigue, based on a stage play he’d written for an old collaborator, Marcel Marceau. The art is by Olivier Boiscommun, whom I don’t believe has had a longform comics work released in North America since one of the very first Humanoids releases waaaay back in 2000: the Denis Pierre Filippi-written The Book of Jack. This too is a Humanoids production, an 8.5″ x 11″ hardcover of 96 pages. Samples; $29.95.

–

I’m noticing an awful lot of comics that *might* be showing up this week, although Diamond isn’t listing them for release. In particular, keep an eye out for Sandcastle, the new Frederick Peeters-drawn book from SelfMadeHero, which Abrams is supposed to be importing any week now. Until then…

–

PLUS!

Jack Davis’ EC Stories: Artist’s Edition: So, this month’s Fantagraphics release of ‘Taint the Meat wasn’t enough for ya, eh? What’s that? You have unlimited money? Then drag your ass over to the XL section of the new releases shelf and scope out this 15″ x 22″ IDW production, shooting 144 pages’ worth of Davis’ stories and covers from Entertaining Comics right off the original art, in color, at their native size, as usual; $125.00.

The Incal Vol. 3 (of 6): What Lies Beneath: Yes, there’s several items in the XL section. This, for instance, is Humanoids’ newest 12″ x 16″ album of vintage Moebius/Jodorowsky, walking through the original series step by step, in its original publication colors. What? You told me unlimited money. Samples; $79.95.

The Jack Kirby Omnibus Vol. 2: The Kirby Omnibus line has been popular at DC, in covering his various series for the publisher, and now we’re into an area we’ve previously seen with the less-prolific (at DC) Steve Ditko – big, fat hardcovers compiling random stories and short runs. There’s 624 pages of the stuff in here, including Kirby’s works on the ’70s like of Black Magic, The Sandman and others; $39.99.

Korak, Son of Tarzan Archives Vol. 1 (of 2): Damn, Dark Horse has released enough Tarzan that we’re into spinoffs now, such as this 1964-born Gold Key series for the son of the Earl of Greystoke and Jane. I suspect Dark Horse’s interest is in the art of Russ Manning, since they’re apparently cutting the series off once he leaves (it actually continued into 1972). Written by Gaylord DuBois, of many Jesse Marsh jungle outings. A 192-page hardcover. Samples; $49.99.

Ten Grand #1: Gosh, this is two weeks in a row I’m mentioning a J. Michael Straczynski comic – necessary here in my continued quest to track the high-profile developments at Image, bustling creator-owned forum and now the home of Straczynski’s new “Joe’s Comics” line of original series, kicking off with a Ben Templesmith-drawn ongoing about a dead criminal reborn to sacrifice himself for others on Earth, over and over as a leasing plan for his stay in Paradise. The colors look toasty as ever. Preview; $2.99.

Heavy Metal #262: I’m presuming Heavy Metal is either out of the French translation game entirely at this point, or at least taking a long break, because this is another issue heavy with the participation of A1 co-founder Dave Elliott, specifically as co-writer of an issue-length story (Dravn) with Jesse Negron, a movie producer/editor working with visual designs from Keith Thompson, a concept artist on the upcoming Guillermo del Toro film Pacific Rim. The concept has mythological characters living as extra-normal humanoids while running a bunch of shit, and there’s going to be multiple artists from around the world, including Camilla de’Errico and Sami Basri, the latter of whom drew a bunch of Brett Lewis’ most recent series, Fall Out Toy Works. So… maybe we’re not gonna see the rest of Bilal’s Animal’z in English any time soon; $7.95.

MW Kaluta Sketchbook Series Vol. 4: Ah, I’ll just wrap it up now, noting that there’s still two days left if you want to go contribute to the Kickstarter campaign for Starstruck, the sprawling Elaine Lee/Michael Wm. Kaluta SF series of years ago, which is now seeking to continue its never-quite-finished story. Actually, it *is* continuing, since they met their goal a while back, but now the creators are raising added money to do it in color. Synchronicity, meanwhile, has ensured the arrival of this fourth IDW collection of Kaluta sketchwork, 8.5″ x 11″ and 48 pages, if it’s anything like the other three; $9.99.

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CONFLICT OF INTEREST RESERVOIR: Not the biggest list overall this week, but plenty of stuff from Fantagraphics, headed up by 3 New Stories, an honest-to-god 32-page alternative comic book compiling fresh (and terrifically-colored) material from Dash Shaw, concerning “dystopian societies” in a manner not unlike the stories collected in The Unclothed Man in the 35th Century, I’d guess; $3.99. Then, a longtime veteran brings Peter Bagge’s Other Stuff, a 144-page collection of odds ‘n ends culled from the pages of Hate, including collaborations with Robert Crumb, Dan Clowes, Jaime & Gilbert Hernandez, Adrian Tomine, Johnny Ryan, Alan Moore and Alice Cooper; $19.99. After that, Linda Medley has Castle Waiting Vol. 2: Definitive Edition, a 472-page compilation of materials expanded from a 300+ page edition back in 2010; $29.99. And why not go all-in with The Complete Crumb Comics Vol. 5: Happy Hippy Comix, a new edition of 144 pages from Snatch and other cultural landmarks; $19.99. Hey, a new Donald Duck hardcover might show up too! Watch the skies, Corporal.

This morning, over breakfast, I read Gilbert Hernandez’s new book Julio’s Day, which I had just gotten the day before.

This evening, before dinner, I read Gilbert Hernandez’s new book Marble Season, which I had found waiting for me on the dining room table when I got home.

Crossing the synapse between these two lit my head up, like fireworks. In the stretch between the two of them, in the distance but also consistency between 2001 and 2013, is fresh proof of Beto Hernandez’s fidgety talent, his rare mix of raw provocation and affirming humanism, toughness and tenderness of heart. When it comes to Beto, the lightning keeps striking, and if it doesn’t strike exactly the same place twice, it does testify to the same divided genius. To read two new books by Hernandez in a day—and both of them self-contained and freestanding, unlinked to the elaborate continuities that shape his signature projects, Love and Rockets and the “Fritz B-Movie” series—this, to me, is a gift.

Elsewhere:

Michael Dooley on Stan Mack.

This is one beautiful Alex Raymond image.

Here’s a process piece on the recent Lovecraft graphic novel reviewed here.

Padraig O Mealoid continues on the Alan Moore trail, this time with the end of Eclipse Comics and what happened to Miracleman.

Tom Spurgeon makes a case for the new Matt Bors book.

And here’s a new Comics Books Are Burning in Hell from McCulloch, Mautner and (almost) Stone.

Marble Season. By Gilbert Hernandez. Drawn and Quarterly, April 2013. $21.95. 128 pages.

What a day.

This morning, over breakfast, I read Gilbert Hernandez’s new book Julio’s Day, which I had just gotten the day before.

This evening, before dinner, I read Gilbert Hernandez’s new book Marble Season, which I had found waiting for me on the dining room table when I got home.

Crossing the synapse between these two lit my head up, like fireworks. In the stretch between the two of them, in the distance but also consistency between 2001 and 2013, is fresh proof of Beto Hernandez’s fidgety talent, his rare mix of raw provocation and affirming humanism, toughness and tenderness of heart. When it comes to Beto, the lightning keeps striking, and if it doesn’t strike exactly the same place twice, it does testify to the same divided genius. To read two new books by Hernandez in a day—and both of them self-contained and freestanding, unlinked to the elaborate continuities that shape his signature projects, Love and Rockets and the “Fritz B-Movie” series—this, to me, is a gift.

Julio’s Day gathers up Hernandez’s serial of the same title from Love and Rockets, Volume 2 (2001-2007). An episodic and elliptical patchwork novel, it flickers through a century in the life of one family, at the core of which is the stoic, self-denying, often near unreadable Julio: a gentle, much-battered soul whom we follow from birth to death.

The story’s setting, which is bucolic and vaguely pastoral but shot through with odd fabulist touches, evokes the beloved Palomar of Hernandez’s earlier work: a village not quite removed from time, or change, but still at arm’s length from the modern. The story’s form—a series of charged moments, or montage of scenes, across a wide span of time—testifies to its roots in the sporadic Love & Rockets magazine, and the fact that it was but one of many projects Hernandez pursued in the same period. Yet, for a project that took some six years to do and another six to collect, it’s remarkably compact. In serial form, Julio’s Day covered almost the whole lifespan of L&R, Vol. 2, but its episodes were always short, often just single pages, at times little more than reflective pauses; it seemed orphaned and under-done within the larger framework of L&R, where Gilbert and his brothers Jaime and Mario were up to so many other things. But, gathered in here, its story pops into focus and stakes fresh claims.

To me the story crystallizes around the question of home, more precisely the rootedness of Julio and the rootlessness of other characters who are more inclined to wander, and who crave the life of freedom and incident that Julio so carefully denies himself. Home is blessing and curse; Julio has desires that cut against the grain of his community and his family, but he cannot act them out. Over the book’s course quite a few children, not just Julio, are born and raised up and eventually die, but from first to last Julio stays cradled in his mother’s arms, unable or unwilling to leave behind the obligations and assurances that that bond represents. An uncle who murders children while speaking of them in sentimental terms (recalling Tomaso, the murderer from Hernandez’s Human Diastrophism) provides a menacing underside to hearth and home, but this isn’t a crime or a horror story. From quietness to quietness, Julio lives a life that seems mostly dull, pulseless, and narratively unpromising—but for the occasional quick, sharp shock—and yet a little world unfolds around him.

This sense of storyworld is nourished not least by gorgeous drawings: looming skies, dark, cross-studded hills, inky avalanches of mud, and trees that spread like black clouds. Silent vistas echo Julio’s lifelong silences, and the arc from birth to deathbed is simply, but powerfully, a span from darkness to darkness. What I most remember about Julio’s Day is the feeling of being young and small, against a backcloth of unexplained and irresistible forces.

Julio’s Day improves from being collected. How odd it is to recall that some of its pages appeared as isolated one-pagers in a larger magazine that seemed almost to ignore them. It is the great lost Beto comic, belatedly given new form and new life. Julio’s losses—most particularly that of his deepest yet most inadmissible love, another boy-turned-man—ring louder in this context, gathered into themselves as a single striking volume.

But, oh, Marble Season! An entirely new, done-in-one story billed as the author’s “first ever semi-autobiographical novel,” Marble Season feels like both a cousin to Julio’s Day and a Rosetta Stone for Hernandez’s entire body of work. Childhood is the key. The feeling for childhood evoked in Julio carries across so many of Beto’s comics: from the boys of Heartbreak Soup to the Guadalupe of “Duck Feet” and Human Diastrophism; from the Casimira of “A Trick of the Unconscious” to the Venus of Letters from (duh) Venus. What Marble Season does is set forth that feeling for childhood—perhaps the very season that the title refers to—in undiluted form, unhurried, minutely observed, formally conservative perhaps, but emotionally freighted. It’s a joy.

Where Julio’s Day telescopes a whole century, seen in lightning flashes, Marble Season takes its own sweet time telling us about, presumably, a short time: a fuzzily defined but important interval in the life of Huey, a young boy in a 1960s suburb implicitly modeled on Hernandez’s hometown, Oxnard. In this postwar landscape of ranch houses and fences, sidewalks and curbs, telephone poles and rabbit ears, Huey grows up, a bit, while learning from an older brother, ironically called Junior, and trying to teach a thing or two to a younger one, the speechless Chavo. Quite a few other kids weave in and out of the story, too: Axel and Suzy, Lana and Patty, Toody, Lucio, and Chauncy, and several more. Some of them matter a great deal to Huey and to the story. Friendships, crushes, and fights matter a lot. Relations form, and then fade, or come back, or just start to happen. Small but important moral questions are worked over: Huey is cheated, and he cheats others; he is bullied, but also defended; he steals, and steals again, and loses. He misses certain nuances, especially when it comes to what older boys and girls go through socially and romantically. In fact he shuttles between sensitivity and cluelessness, and is surprised when the world resists what he has dreamed up. His likes and dislikes are plain, and his enthusiasms grand, overwhelming.

By book’s end, as Huey has a long and thoughtful talk with Patty—a subtle measure of his growth—he wonders “what it will be like in the future,” and whether he will “like being a grown up” (120). Yet there’s no big finale, no too-obvious signaling of development or sudden lurching into a new phase. Just a conversation between two kids, in the midst of a beautiful suburban day whose stillness brings questions to mind, perhaps even a momentary spookiness too, but a day filled with hope and promise as well as doubts and cares. There is a suggestion of love as well, feather-light and unpushy, like a slight breath of wind, along with a recognition that, at Huey’s age, these things may register differently on girls than on boys. The deftness of the characterization is a miracle: Huey, Patty, and many of the others come through as definable persons, though we know them for such a very short time. So little happens to them, but so much.

All this is threaded through a loving evocation of the pop culture of the day, the common currency of so many 1960s kids: comic books and TV, monster movies and radio, Mars Attacks trading cards and G.I. Joe dolls. The DNA of Love and Rockets is in all this, but Marble Season is not some autobiographical cryptogram or mere catalog of influences, nostalgically indulged. If the relationship between Huey and Chavo inevitably brings to mind that of Gilbert to Jaime Hernandez—people will imagine it that way whether Gilbert meant it that way or not—what matters more is that Marble Season is a complete story about a childhood and a neighborhood evoked with terrific vividness.

Some version of Gilbert’s own comic book fandom plays a major part in this; references to specific comic books from the 60s are sprinkled throughout. One charming scene shows Huey and Chauncy bonding over the latter’s impeccable comic geek cred. But Marble Season is not a story that belongs to fandom in the way that the bulk of today’s monthly comic books do; it’s a story about relationships defined or formed, with comic books simply as pretext and backdrop. There’s a tensile strength to this book, a tug-of-war between nostalgic investments and honest characterization, between idealized childhood and rough insight, which lends the story depth beneath its mostly unruffled surface.

Visually, all this is drawn with a lovely economy and openness. The cartooning in Marble Season is spartan and unafraid: a game of small gestures with big stakes. But for the opening splash, all of the book’s 120 pages are democratic six-panel grids, 2×3, regular and unwavering. Light and air have the upper hand: it always appears to be daytime, and much of the action happens out of doors. The panels are almost always habitats for the characters, and the characters are favored above the physical settings. Emotions are privileged above all. The surroundings do not suffer for that: the open skies are sketched in with clouds in the form of stipples and dashes; houses, fences and trees are reliable backdrops. Sometimes, not often, the houses and trees are silhouetted (spot blacks, used sparingly, become eye magnets). Simplicity of effect is the byword, though the visual thinking behind it is anything but simplistic.

Hernandez seems to lean hard toward childhood favorites like Schulz, Owen Fitzgerald, and Bob Bolling, with allusions scattered here and there. For instance, Patty’s Frieda-like hair and all those walls and fences sure remind me of Peanuts; I can easily imagine Charlie Brown and Linus stopping to ruminate along one of those walls, just as Chavo, who can barely clear them, peeks over their tops. (Like Peanuts, Marble Season is adult-free, a kidcosm.) The calmly observed ordinariness of Frank King seems to hover nearby. John Stanley and Kirby get their nods too, though the latter’s hyperbolic zeal is notably absent. Superhero excess is mentioned but not visually sought for (though one hilarious scene finds the brothers pulling bodybuilder poses in order to “get muscles” à la Charles Atlas). If, tonally, the take on childhood here recalls Scout, Jem, and Dill from To Kill a Mockingbird, graphically it distills Hernandez’s cartooning style to a fine essence, fragile up top, robust as all get-out underneath. Marble Season, in short, is beautiful.

Years ago I asked Gilbert what comic he would talk about if he were asked to talk about an unfairly neglected comic that had a big influence on him. He told me, without a blink, Bolling’s Little Archie. Read it, he said—read it and see that a classic Love and Rockets story is a Bob Bolling type of story. I get that: Love and Rockets is full of tales, both Gilbert’s and Jaime’s, about young people wandering suburban neighborhoods, tales that evoke Bolling’s version of Riverdale as well as the archetypal neighborhood of Peanuts and the postwar neighborhoods of Oxnard (a background documented by Todd Hignite in The Art of Jaime Hernandez). But darkness bordered Bolling’s Riverdale, and mysteries too, even horrors, reminding me of Palomar’s odd, troubling eruptions and dreamlike outskirts. What’s more, Bolling often sent Archie somewhere else geographically (or even into deep space, or time), spiking the series’ default suburban feel with sorties into the exotic. Ditto Love and Rockets (particularly Jaime’s early work, which toggles back and forth between suburbia and faraway, exotic locales that license all sorts of hand-me-down comic book riffs). Also, Bolling tucked crime stories, SF, historical adventure, and more into his comfortable suburban premise—a genre-splicing, protean spirit that again shows up in Love and Rockets. Huey and the other kids of Marble Season, though they never actually leave their town, play at these kinds of adventures, pretending, making up stuff. Perhaps most relevant here, Bolling gave his cartoon kids sadness and thoughtfulness as well as pep and optimism, a quality revived in Gilbert’s Venus, and of course in the many kids of Palomar, and that most certainly lives on in the suburban airiness of Marble Season, where rowdiness and quiet contemplation go hand in hand and the kids have plenty to think about.

Some readers, I’m guessing, will say that Marble Season, though about childhood, is not “for” children. I know this line of argument, which, as a professor of children’s literature, I encounter often, especially when texts about children get too complex or troublesome to be absorbed easily into prevailing notions of childish taste or age-appropriateness (a developmental catch-all phrase that frankly gives me fits). It is true that Marble Season, like most of the children’s comics published by Drawn and Quarterly, will probably reach wistful adults more readily than children of the ages depicted in the book. It is true that the book’s simple graphic approach does not subscribe to the usual notions about kids’ appetite for color, fizz, and dynamism. And it is also true that, despite that simplicity, Marble Season is not for early readers: though its steady grid, sparse, open artwork, and focus on children urge me to think of it as, yes, a children’s comic, its languid rhythms, uncued shifts in time and space, and subtlety of observation would seem to keep very young readers out. In any case, the book, for all its softness, is too honest to be an unquestioned read for children raised within the cosseting confines of children’s literary culture, narrowly defined (by which I mean the kind very obviously sanctioned and cordoned off by adult solicitude). Bullying, racist taunting, fighting, eager “pretend” violence, casual meanness, and theft are all depicted here without moralistic tsk-tsking. Thwarted or hostile relationships are sometimes let be. Huey’s and other kids’ mistakes are shown in an understated and forgiving light; no narrator’s superego is allowed to impose. As calm and gentle as Marble Season may be—as unlike the deadpan horrors and ice-chill satire of Beto’s recent work as it may be—it offers plenty of potential incitements for those anxious to string a fluorescent caution tape between stories “about” kids but not “for” kids.

But—but—give it a rest, I say! This is the best graphic book about childhood I’ve read in a dog’s age (maybe since Lat’s Kampung Boy trilogy?). As Corey Creekmur points out in the book’s afterword, Marble Season isabout childhood in the profoundest sense—it doesn’t just depict children; it seeks to inhabit that life-space. However we end up labeling the book, it’s a quiet masterwork, and one that plenty of readers, young as well as old, will learn to dig on their own, if they’re not blockaded—if they’re not discouraged from having an honest encounter with a life fondly but fully remembered.

And Rob Clough is here with a review of Jon Lewis’s True Swamp: Choose Your Poison, a book that’s been quietly influential on any number of important artists you wouldn’t expect. Here’s an excerpt:

The obvious touchstone comparison for True Swamp is Walt Kelly’s Pogo, and Lewis clearly drew inspiration from Kelly in terms of setting up a particular kind of swamp patois and creating a huge, broad cast of colorful characters. Where Lewis sharply differs is in the way he depicts these characters. This is a raw, nasty world where death is always at hand, yet there are small joys to be experienced every day. Love, sex, friendship, jealousy, knowledge, and religion are all important concerns, but they are experienced in ways unique to each animal. The animals have animal needs—food, survival, and sex (just like humans)—and Lewis enjoys playing up the cruder aspects for humorous effect.

Elsewhere:

—A double shot of your daily Gilbert Hernandez interviews, one from Hero Complex and one from L.A. Weekly.

—Other interviews. Tom Spurgeon talks to retailer and TCAF honcho Christopher Butcher, and Alex Carr talks to noteworthy prose writer (and recent comics scripter) China Miéville.

—Michael Barrier reveals a story of Carl Barks in peril as a child that may have influenced some of his later work.

—Alan Gardner writes about a recent controversial Daryl Cagle cartoon (or pair of cartoons, rather), in which Cagle appeared to sell two versions of the same cartoon by changing the punchline to reflect both sides of a political debate. This sparked some consternation, including even the usually so-even-keeled Ted Rall. Gardner’s relatively forgiving, but as you can see from the comments to his post, opinions differ.

—Finally, Tom Spurgeon delivers the MoCCA/SPACE report to end all comics convention reports.

Abhay Khosla? Turn it up a notch.

The last time I got to visit with you was April 5th. So: what’s happened since then?

Since April 5th, there have been bombings in the U.S. and abroad, manhunts, obnoxious poems written about the manhunts by untalented narcissists, way-better written letters by sorority girls, the failure of Congress to pass gun control, an explosion of a goddamn fertilizer plant, and a factory collapse that killed at least 161 people. There were international incidents, pirate attacks, axe rampages, hunger strikes, child-rape scandals, and Justin Bieber-Anne Frank scandals. An issue of Saga was purportedly banned from the Apple app store, people got angry at Apple on Twitter, comiXology announced a day later that the issue of Saga in question had never been submitted to Apple to begin with, and Mark Waid tried ridiculously to scapegoat ”comics journalism” for not having asked enough questions; one week later, DC Editor-in-Chief Bob Harras and Editorial Director Bobbi Chase got asked questions by Comics Journalism (specifically about Jerry Ordway’s complaints about ageism), refused to answer them, and ended the entire process by which Comics Journalism could ask them questions; better luck guessing the correct number of questions next month, Comics Journalism.

A new species of giant tarantula was discovered, a teenager with Down syndrome climbed to Mount Everest’s base camp, a man was arrested at a hospital just for refusing to leave the bedside of his sick husband, two women were beheaded based on accusations that they were engaged in sorcery, and Superman turned 75 years old. Roger Ebert, Annette Funicello, Carmine Infantino, Robert Morales, and many others died, and people mourned. Margaret Thatcher died and “Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead!” climbed to #2 on the UK pop charts. The Eisner nominations were announced, Jimmy Palmiotti complained that his wife didn’t get nominated, someone brought up that Frank Santoro wasn’t a fan of the repulsive Before Watchmen cash-grab she’d nauseatingly participated in, and this all snowballed into the Great “Frank Santoro: Threat or Menace?” Controversy of 2013.

Former President of Pakistan Pervez Musharraf was arrested, as was Reese Witherspoon. Science revealed that men who wear kilts have the “ideal physiological scrotal environment”; science revealed that stress makes squirrels grow faster; science announced they’d found two planets that might support life elsewhere in the universe. Mark Millar and Frank Quitely released “The Greatest Superhero Epic of This Generation” (i.e. another Squadron Supreme retread) which featured the lines, “She doesn’t give a damn about endometriosis. Chloe couldn’t even spell endometriosis.”

Records were broken in the sport of cricket. Another teenage girl who’d been raped by jock(s) killed herself because adults failed her. Other teenage girls flocked to Twitter to declare that they believed the Bombing Suspect of Boston to be (a) innocent and (b) “very cute.” There were ricin attacks, a donkey attack, an Elvis impersonator was arrested for the ricin letters, the Elvis impersonator was exonerated, a second man who seems to the Elvis impersonator’s archenemy then became Suspect #1 (and promptly “went missing“), and comic fans debated whether Marvel Comics suffer from “being TOO well made.” (See also, “Young Avengers Goes All ACME Novelty Library“).

Huh.

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Back to me:

The first thing I thought when I saw this cover was that I was glad that the cover artist hadn’t succumbed to the temptation to swipe a picture of a young black woman being dragged by two white cops from the photographic annals of American civil rights protests, but my second thought was that maybe they did and I just didn’t recognize it, as I was educated in a public school in the South and I believe we spent even less time talking about Watts than this year’s Eisner committee spent talking about how wonderful Crossed Badlands can be. (So wonderful!)

That Catwoman cover is part of this thing that was going to be called the “WTF” month until some people went to DC and complained that America might not be ready for a brand-wide promotion built around the phrase “What The Fuck”. The covers are double sized, with the surprise part of the image being on the half that’s folded inwards. In most situations, this would be where a reviewer tells you which one was his favorite.

This one is probably as close as I could get, but to be honest, the most interesting thing about the cover to Batman Incorporated 10 is that it completely spoils the conclusion of the comic while still failing to rob that conclusion’s final moment of any of its punch, wit, or charm. Otherwise, it’s a pretty ordinary cover.

The comic itself tells the beginning of what one has to assume is the final battle between Batman and Talia al Ghul, who was revealed sometime in the last year as the ringleader of a series of attacks that date back to the beginning of Grant Morrison’s run on Batman. (That simple explanation doesn’t hold true for all the tangents and blind alleys that were written into these comics, but “the plot” isn’t the best or most memorable part of Morrison’s work. Moments, transitions, twisted declarations and punchline dialog, coupled with great art: that’s where he shines the brightest.) That battle would have strode towards its upcoming conclusion just fine, pleasing those of us who had given the writer another try after the plummeting creative fortunes of 2011 and his sorely misguided foray into prose writing saw him at the lowest creative point of his career. After all, these last six months of Batman Incorporated have seen the comic humming along at a consistent pitch, expanding (and thereby deflating) the overwrought seriousness of some of its concepts, spinning a strange, exciting story out of a bunch of hoary Batman concepts. It’s not a very funny comic … except it sort of is, something cut from the same cloth as Axe Cop, a popular webcomic reportedly written by a small child, who likes his stories to include mustaches, dinosaurs, and whatever else the kitchen sink provides. Batman Incorporated couldn’t have had less to do with the DC Universe if it tried, and considering how almost all of Grant’s ideas have been shuffled off into cold storage (the good ones as well as the bad), it’s likely that he’s trying very hard.

Which is why it’s too bad that the comic will be most remembered for what one (admittedly major) part of its story has produced. The panel above is from Justice League 19, a comic that is about a very large number of things. It is not, despite the savagery of the emotions in Alfred Pennyworth’s face, about the death of Damian Wayne, who died in the 8th issue of Batman Incoporated when he was shot multiple times with arrows before having a sword the size of a Golden Retriever shoved through his tiny 10-year-old ribcage. That’s merely the backdrop for the story, which is about the return of the alien Despero, a very old Justice League villain, and the theft of Batman’s various anti-Justice League failsafes (a Kryptonite ring to kill Superman, a regular gun to kill the Flash, etc.). The Batman-doesn’t-trust-us story has showed up multiple times in various Justice League comics, the fact that it’s making its appearance here is merely an indication that Geoff Johns likes the story and wants to write it himself–that’s not a negative for this comic, it’s part of its designated appeal: Geoff Johns isn’t just writing DC’s biggest characters, but he’s also restoring and refining those character’s most popular stories.

I don’t care about that, actually. I just wanted you to know all that stuff so you’d have a better understanding of these pages.

Put this together: Batman’s 10-year-old son has just died. In the world of Batman Incorporated, he died in this nightmarish, heavily cartooned world of mayhem and noise, an elastic place where everything is sort of a gigantic game of tragedy and insanity. He’s dead, but in those comics … it doesn’t matter, really. It’s a candy land, a 2013 attempt to recreate those sorts of old Batman comics where the villain is a giant eraser who hates Bruce Wayne for going to the school dance in a princely sled, or comics where Batman travels to a space planet to teach an alien race how to fight a tyrant centipede.

But in the world of Justice League, you have to hold your cape down like Marilyn Monroe on a subway grate or its going to blow up and make you look ridiculous. In the world of the Justice League–which, again, is the actual DC continuity that matters–Alfred is crying like that because he’s remembering that a ten-year-old boy’s chest got a freight train driven through it, and later on Batman is going to borrow some future technology so he can sneak up on Wonder Woman and Superman and congratulate them about their relationship. I just buried my son, whose body sort of fell apart in my hands while I was screaming his name, but I wanted to cut out and say I’m really stoked you two found each other: also, I apologize that somebody discovered my private hobby … which was to figure out the easiest way to murder ya’ll and then place those answers in little sunglasses cases that have your respective logos on them. Again: I’m really, really happy that you two are seeing one another. It’s great to have people you care about, especially when tragedy strikes.

Let’s be frank though: this is a lot of pointless observation to avoid what one might have assumed would have been this column’s moistest interest: Jupiter’s Legacy 1.

The first major work from Frank Quitely since a three-issue stint on Batman & Robin with Grant Morrison (ignoring Dan Nadel’s fondness for some drawings of Fourth World characters hanging in a shitty apartment), Jupiter’s Legacy sees the Scottish superstar teamed up once again with Mark Millar, reforming the team that helped shepherd one of the most popular–and controversially, most influential–post-Watchmen super-hero comics ever, The Authority. (Hell, if you go through that Justice League page above, what do you see? Geoff Johns taking dialog and themes straight out of … you guessed it.)

It’s not that good. Unfortunately, it’s not that bad, either, and that’s the worst with Mark Millar. At his best—Enemy of the State and Ultimate War–Millar is pure candy floss, the sort of super-hero comic that you probably want to read if you’re ever the type of person who thinks they might want to read a super-hero comic. They give off consistent heat, they withstand derision: most of all, they render their peers unnecessary. Nobody needs a Wolverine story, sure, but if you do, it’s easiest if you can meet the need without lugging a stack around. And at his worst, Millar can still be interesting. His obsession with contemporary celebrity and disinterest in actual politics can churn out a bit of on-point contemporary pulse-taking, like his Prozac-versus-Islam twist in Ultimate Avengers (it’s cool that you missed it), while his general, all-around bad taste–bad taste he’s totally unaware of–can mean that he’ll finish a hugely popular run on Wolverine by having Steve McNiven draw page after page of bloody entrails offset only by the kind of low-rent white trash humor you usually have to cook crystal meth to experience.

Jupiter’s Legacy is neither. It’s not a bad comic, it’s not offensive, just a limp retread of ideas, all of which are stripped of their original punch and then plastered across the page like they came out of a Dymo label printer. There’s an intriguing two pages by Quitely, but they come in the middle of a comic that consists of the same people-talking-to-people stuff you’ve seen a million times before, so generic that it’s vaguely aggravating that this is what has taken up the guy’s time. This is it? A comic where super-heroes argue about whether they should support their elected officials? Where others worry about how to keep their endorsement deals?

And yet, like all boring comics, it’s impossible to even maintain irritation–this isn’t doing enough wrong to be mad at, and isn’t doing enough bad to slow one down. Everything in here is textureless and bland, and it goes down so quickly you’ll feel like you didn’t give its creators a fair shake.

Trust me though: you’re not the one who isn’t doing the work.

This collection of comics originally published in 1994 and 1995 follows the adventures of Lenny the Frog in his swamp. All of the animals and insects in the swamp are intelligent and have needs and dreams not unlike humans, but they are very much still animals and part of a food chain. Indeed, Lenny bemoans nearly being eaten every time he tries to sit still for a moment, think, and philosophize. The obvious touchstone comparison for True Swamp is Walt Kelly’s Pogo, and Lewis clearly drew inspiration from Kelly in terms of setting up a particular kind of swamp patois and creating a huge, broad cast of colorful characters. Where Lewis sharply differs is in the way he depicts these characters. This is a raw, nasty world where death is always at hand, yet there are small joys to be experienced every day. Love, sex, friendship, jealousy, knowledge, and religion are all important concerns, but they are experienced in ways unique to each animal. The animals have animal needs—food, survival, and sex (just like humans)—and Lewis enjoys playing up the cruder aspects for humorous effect.

While quotidian details about life in the swamp and the emotional negotiations and struggles of the characters are important, each chapter has both a coherent plot structure as well as the underpinnings of subplot. “Choose Your Poison” introduces us to Lenny, but it also takes us on an adventure as he’s captured by a human who thinks he’s an entirely new species. In reality, Lenny had hired a marmot friend named Hale to paint a disguise that would fool gators and other predators into ignoring him, but it only served to pique the interest of humans. Lenny manages to accidentally kill his captor by thwipping his tongue up his nose and dislodging part of his brain, an event that brings great angst to the poor frog. He’s haunted by the specter of being a murderer for the rest of the book, even if he knows it was kill or be killed.

There’s a denseness to Lewis’ work that is satisfying as he draws his animals just a touch on the cute side without making them anthropomorphic. The details of everyday life are not spelled out but instead are introduced without explanation, as in the form of currency the animals use (the names of cities), the nature of religion, and the political backbiting that occurs in the swamp. One of the subplots early in the book is that of a human captured by fairies (and tipped off by Lenny) who is enchanted and then traded to a colony of ants for mysterious purposes. In “Blue Caboose”, Lenny meets a traveling frog named Twotongue who is a “book”–an animal who seeks specific kinds of knowledge. In this case, it’s “killer herps”–reptiles that kill larger animals. Twotongue was looking for the legendary Big Snipper, a herp serial killer, essentially. Upon finding his lair, there was no predator to be found–only a frog and his fungoid friend. The twists and turns of this story were remarkable, with a lot of jaw-dropping and frightening moments to go along with moments of genuine humor.

Further chapters see Lenny confronting a human-sized and -shaped colony of ants, dealing with his crush, and having casual sex with another frog (in this case, it’s just fertilizing eggs); Hale having a frank sex talk with another marmot and getting shot down; more animals searching for knowledge; a close encounter with some apparently mystical beings in a bacchanal; and the tragic death of a loved one. Lewis pulls the narrative strings tighter and tighter even as he introduces new characters and new information about the strange world they live in, meting it out in small doses. It doesn’t end on a cliffhanger so much as it just ends, as Lewis took a break of several years before he started working on the book again. The next volume will be collected by Uncivilized Books a bit later on; I imagine they’ll fold Lewis’s recent minicomics in as well. It’s a book that focuses on a single character as well as the world he lives in, shifting back and forth between the two and then combining that view for some key sequences.

At its heart, True Swamp is an existential howl. It’s as much about the artist’s own quest for meaning and purpose as it is for his characters. One can sense Lewis in the person of Lenny the thinker, but also in the person of Hale the inventor and artist. Each character tries to find ways to motivate themselves to explore and engage the outside world, and each finds disappointment in a variety of fashions, both great (being wracked by guilt, being eaten by predators) and small (being shot down by potential mates, losing out on knowledge). One can sense how intuitive the storytelling is because even as the characters interact on a quotidian basis, Lewis reveals small but important details that add richness to their own interactions. On top of that, True Swamp is a world-building exercise that is not dominated by that world-building to the detriment of the stories or characters. Instead, a new aspect of the swamp is revealed in service to the story, like how the denizens drink alcohol or come together to party. Though there are a lot of rough edges here (especially in terms of things like lettering and inking), the bonus material shows just how hard Lewis worked in a short period of time. Indeed, the original version of True Swamp #1 is nearly illegible in comparison to what he would later publish. Seeing that rapid improvement is eye-opening, because it reveals just how important this project was to Lewis. It certainly stands the test of time.

The temptation in looking back at this compelling exhibit, which the Urban Arts Space described as “the first in-depth retrospective” of Beyer’s work, is to search for a trajectory, a progression from one aesthetic or subject matter to another concurrent with the artist’s biography or history. Retrospectives encourage this, don’t they? Well, it was there if you wanted it. Following the exhibit’s route, you began in “With Text: 1975-2011,” starting with mainly black-and-white comics, including a wall of original Amy and Jordan comic strips, and proceeding to the commercial art of New Yorker covers and commissioned album art and posters, where words became images themselves, and his animated series The Adventures of Thomas and Nardo, where words were only spoken. You concluded in “Without Text: 1975-2012″ which was largely comprised of silkscreens and reverse paintings on plexiglas, absent of words or motion.

And yet, any argument the show might have made about the progression of Beyer’s work by dividing it into “With Text” and “Without Text” was leveraged by the fact that each section covered Beyer’s entire career. On the other hand, Beyer stopped publishing comics in the late 1990s and has returned to the form, so far as I know, only once.

Elsewhere:

David Brothers writes a nice appreciation of the excellent Johnny Wander. A new blog devoted to comic book mapping and explaining graphics.

Plus, new Ditko (60 years in) and old Kirby.

Mark Beyer: With/Without Text, The Ohio State University Urban Arts Space, January 8-February 23, 2013.

1.

Stepping out of With/Without Text I asked myself, What did I just see, an abattoir or heaven?

2.
The temptation in looking back at this compelling exhibit, which the Urban Arts Space described as “the first in-depth retrospective” of Beyer’s work, is to search for a trajectory, a progression from one aesthetic or subject matter to another concurrent with the artist’s biography or history. Retrospectives encourage this, don’t they? Well, it was there if you wanted it. Following the exhibit’s route, you began in “With Text: 1975-2011,” starting with mainly black-and-white comics, including a wall of original Amy and Jordan comic strips, and proceeding to the commercial art of New Yorker covers and commissioned album art and posters, where words became images themselves, and his animated series The Adventures of Thomas and Nardo, where words were only spoken. You concluded in “Without Text: 1975-2012″ which was largely comprised of silkscreens and reverse paintings on plexiglas, absent of words or motion.
And yet, any argument the show might have made about the progression of Beyer’s work by dividing it into “With Text” and “Without Text” was leveraged by the fact that each section covered Beyer’s entire career. On the other hand, Beyer stopped publishing comics in the late 1990s and has returned to the form, so far as I know, only once.

3.
So, yes, those contradictions and questions were there if you wanted them, but none of them seemed to matter much as I walked through the exhibit and none of them much interest me as I look back. With/Without Text told a story in fragments, suggestions and eruptions that was nonetheless held together by a considerably persistent vision, perhaps because all but one of the 130-plus items included here, seventy of them original works of art, were drawn from the private collection of the exhibit’s curator, Thomas Arlen Wagner. Unified yet tumultuous, thoughtfully arranged yet loose and ambiguous, the show was as complicated as Beyer’s work. The abattoir or heaven? Who says we have to choose? Who says we have a choice?

4.
It matters that Beyer’s illustrative style has not changed drastically over the years when it comes to figuration. The same misshapen, abused individuals in his early drawings and comics appear in his more recent single images. Whether they are human or animal or living geometry, their bodies are warped and savage. (Including the fish, and there are a lot of fish in these works.) What have changed are the environments in which those individuals find themselves. In the comics, rendered in black ink, they are besieged by urbanity; in the reverse paintings, they wander freely, if bewildered.

5.
Death and the end of society run through these works like blood through a bird’s heart.

6.
The “With Text” portion of the show focused primarily on Beyer’s most persistent characters, Amy and Jordan, featured here in covers from A Disturbing Evening, Dead Stories, and numerous originals from We’re Depressed and the weekly strip version of their manic exploits, which ran from 1988-1996 in New York Press and was collected in 2004 as Amy and Jordan.
It had been a long, damp, sunless winter in Columbus, which made it a dangerous time to read or look at anything related to Amy + Jordan (Beyer usually substitutes the “and” with a plus-sign), and so these diminutive, claustrophobic wonders were a test of will power and antidepressant dosages. Flattened and stretched as if caught under the ant-killing hand of God himself, the duo looks like Lou Reed sounds in “Paranoia Key of E” from his album Ecstasy. To read the minute, framed, glass-encased images and text, I had to hunch and peer, grumbling to myself about the hitch in my back and the pain shooting up my spine, the kind of ache you get only in the winter—and this seemed to be precisely the right way to encounter the endless oppression that afflicts Amy and Jordan, and that they inflict upon each other.

7. 

Amy and Jordan’s hapless misery grows tiresome pretty quickly, but Beyer’s artistry energizes this tedium, especially the inventive, even disorienting panel layouts. In one strip from 1993, a horizontal funnel repeated across five panels squeezes the air out of each, and in another—this one included on a poster for a Beyer exhibit in 1994 in Berlin—a bulldozer shoves the panels off the page while Amy and Jordan lie in bed, as if the artist-author couldn’t stand his own creations, at least that week. On one page from We’re Depressed wherein Amy and Jordan attempt to disguise themselves with paint, the half-bubble panels are stacked one atop the other; it’s a dramatic construction enveloping a farcical plot, and it redeems the farce.

Beyer’s use of patterns—cross-hatching, dots, quilts, whorls, and striated, nervous textures sometimes worried to the point of near opaqueness—anchors the comics in enough detail that they never lose touch with the twisted reality they emerge from. Usually the patterns are purely expressive. As a rabbit named Jack (get it?) talks on the phone with Amy in “Fish City Airport,” for instance, the woven diamond patterns behind him mock Amy’s omnipresent checkerboard dress in sympathy with the rabbit’s thoughts. The realist represents materials first—fur, terrycloth; the expressionist renders emotion first by coding it as material. That’s probably why the New Yorker covers included here—a beach scene and a city sidewalk, both largely dependent on clean, almost confident lines, at least by Beyerian standards—seem incomplete and innocuous, merely odd instead of unnerving. Meanwhile, back in “Fish City Airport”, the fingerprint swirls of the water morph easily into clouds, dirty and threatening. You can understand why Amy and Jordan are so damn anxious.

8.
Walking through the gallery, I wondered if I was supposed to think this was very strange artwork: “outsider art”—a term that needles me—or even simply the soul-killing redundancy that is the term “art comics.” Instead, Beyer’s work was uncomfortably, compellingly familiar. Not in an “I’ve seen it all before” sense, you understand; only the most trite art historian could remain unnerved by Beyer’s singular vision. And neither do I mean “familiar” in the sense of who Beyer has influenced, though you can trace that through RAW, Blab! and Kramers Ergot. No, this is the familiarity of a certain message: the world is not what it appears to be, but truer to what you suspect of it. The revelation in Beyer’s work is not entirely unlike what happens when Nada puts on those special sunglasses in the John Carpenter film They Live: the veil of the world is lifted, fascist slogans are revealed, and you discover that a big chunk of the humanoid population is in fact comprised of skull-faced aliens. Only here, you realize you’re an alien, too.

9.
As With/Without Text transitioned from ‘with’ to ‘without,’ it made the case that the city and all its nightmares is one of Beyer’s great subjects. In the Amy + Jordan strips, the city is the stage for a nihilist slapstick steeped in violence and crippling doubt about the worth of civilization, or what passes for it. In Untitled (Pooooo Drawing), a drive-by sparks helpless, guilty laughter. At its most benign, the city upends its victims with tilted, sharp perspectives, and they find themselves on the cover of Dead Stories, one of eight or possibly nine individuals ushered by the devil in a neat line toward what is either a row of apartment buildings or a prison. At this point in history, Beyer seems to ask, can we tell the difference, and do we care if we can’t? At its most menacing—Three Jerks on Beach Umbrellas, from “Without Text,” is a good example—the city prepares to consume you, or reflects your pleasure in consuming and then spitting your own body out onto the pavement. At least you’ve murdered yourself instead of letting someone else do it.

10.
Fittingly, city living killed Amy and Jordan. In 2012 Beyer told Paul Gravett in an article for Art Review that he’d become “completely burned out on Amy and Jordan” even if he wasn’t “burned out on the idea of making comics.” And so he wrote a comic, also published in Art Review and Gravett’s article, in which Amy and Jordan are shot dead by a loud neighbor, who then reflects, “I did what I felt I had to do, and I did it with passion, integrity, courage, and honor,” amidst beer cans, the couple’s feet, and what are possibly Cheetos. The comic mocks each one of those ideals, right down to the gnarled scrawl with which they’re written, but you also sense that no one in Beyer’s world would disagree with the man.

11.
I’m glad Amy and Jordan are dead.

12.
In truth, they were always dead. That is Beyer’s other great subject, the one that extends through all of his work: death and its various animations, by which I mean how our existence becomes a living death. In Amy + Jordan, zombie-living is status quo. These two mopes were dead from their first panel, and the mistake others have made when writing about them is to write about them as if they were alive—as if any actions they took in the absurd “disaster!” plots Beyer concocted would have mattered; as if they were ever anything more than what Gravett describes as a “pair of eternal victims…,” victims of life itself, at the mercy of ludicrous circumstances and forces (“enemies,” one strip vaguely calls them) and each other’s malevolence and relentless ennui; as if the idea of taking control of your life is anything other than a tremendous joke. Even if you wanted to, all you’d do is tear out your lover’s eyes.

13.
With/Without Text suggested that in Beyer’s comics, when the veil of lies is lifted and the truth is revealed, everyone shrugs. “Nothing to be done,” as Gogo would say. It’s a late twentieth-century nihilism, another reason why the strips were arrestingly familiar. There is no point to social critique when the very notions of a “society” or “critique” are irredeemably corrupt, or if what those words refer to have already been obliterated, living replaced by merely existing. This quality infuses every anxious line and skewed perspective in the Amy + Jordan comics, every intentionally hackneyed plot and redundant piece of dialogue. This is not nihilism in the service of building something new; it says we are living in the aftermath of an Armageddon and witnessing the slow trickling away of humanity. That’s why I can’t see my way into thinking that these comics are “bleakly hilarious and life-affirming” and “a testament to how strong life is even in the face of a hostile environment” as Jeet Heer described them in 2004. Life is the hostile environment. We’re just as hostile as anyone else, but we tell ourselves that we’re not, and we get used to living by this lie.

14.
In comparison to the mainly black-and-white “With Text” pieces, the silkscreens and reverse paintings of “Without Text 1975-2012″ erupted with color: lime, midnight, blood, clay. More open, more traditionally the kind of objects you’d expect to see hanging on gallery walls, the “Without Text” works shifted the tone of the show, replacing claustrophobia with movement, history with myth, passivity with imagination. What critics have tried to dig for in Amy + Jordan, you couldn’t miss in these standalone works: the ritual of art and the freedom of subjectivity are the only things that give us control over our lives, and thus the only things that give life-that-seems-like-death any worthwhile meaning.

15.
In the course of a conversation for the August 1982 issue (#74) of the Comics Journal (reprinted in Art Spiegelman: Conversations), Kim Thompson and Gary Groth talked about Beyer with Spiegelman. Trying to articulate a criticism of RAW, Groth noted that Beyer’s work was “so abstracted…from a naturalistic or realistic…,” at which point Spiegelman interjected, “Oh, representational.” A page or two later:

Groth: I see a greater sensitivity in your work than in Beyer’s work. It’s simply so abstracted and so divorced from any aspect of reality.

Spiegelman: But it’s not. It’s real basic reality, like AAAAAAAAAARGHHHH! is basic reality.

In With/Without Text, it certainly wasn’t difficult to see what both were talking about, but at the risk of adjudicating a conversation that took place early in Beyer’s career, Spiegelman wins by a landslide. The “basic reality” of Beyer’s work at the time was indeed a cry of alarm and exhausted pain (Spiegelman refers to it as “raw nerve screaming”). The implication is that this basic reality is essentially emotion that can’t be put into words, only sound, or ‘soundless’ images.

16.
Beyer’s single-image silkscreens, drawings, and reverse paintings would seem to be even more subjective, even more distanced or “divorced…from reality” than his comics. Calling to mind the late 1960s work of Hairy Who member Jim Nutt, who also painted in reverse on plexiglas, these wordless portraits and scenes of near-psychedelic intensity are populated by arcane figures more consistently abstracted than those in Amy + Jordan. But they are still figures, individuals, and—this fascinated me as I walked through “Without Text”—despite their wordlessness, they speak more compellingly than anyone in the comics.

17.
Beyer’s comics lampoon speech, exposing its dire inadequacies. Usually crafted in the hyperbolic language of a child, narration and dialogue are stiffened by image redundancy and heavy-handed exposition. On an earlier page in We’re Depressed (one of three included in the exhibit), the narrator informs us, “Last episode, Jordan got infected by the same disease germs that infected Amy,” the phrase “disease germs” sounding like all the realism an eight year-old can muster. In “Fish City Airport,” Amy trawls what looks like the river Styx with the aforementioned rabbit named Jack, and after being tugged along by a flying fish, she lands in an airport and thinks to herself, “Nice airport, but I sense imminent danger.” Immediately, armed men begin shooting their way through the crowd, to which Amy replies, “Ugh oh, terrorists!” Surviving, she telephones Jack, who thinks privately, against that mocking, checkerboard background pattern, “To [sic] bad, I had hoped that you would have been killed, I hate you, I hate you!” This sounds vaguely honest, since any eloquence in this world would be just one more fraud.

18. 
In the wordless images, Beyer’s subjects speak eloquently by looking at you. Not always, but often. The eyes of the doll-like figure in Untitled (Clown/Magician), a silkscreen from 1991, stare just to your right. The children huddled next to him likewise are just barely avoiding eye contact with the viewer; same goes for the floating seahorse and the spitting bird and the dogs. In one untitled piece, a rotund figure actually waves at you, and in the 1995 reverse painting Untitled (The Office), desk-bound schlubs stare at you, waiting for your instructions. One of them prepares to dissect a human head with a fish bone.
So many of these individuals’ eyes bulge, horrified, more convincingly human than Amy and Jordan ever were. The duo’s stories were closed off and insular: you weren’t welcome, and why would you want to be? In these single images, particularly beginning in the mid-1990s, urban society becomes the familial, the tribal. This would seem to be even more insular, but the effect is actually more inviting; these aliens who gaze at you have questions for you, warnings, premonitions, and lives of their own they dare to think might actually matter.

19.
The reverse paintings appear brittle, though they are painted into what we would otherwise consider a hearty artifact of modernity: plexiglas. Still, the vivid colors and sheen of the surface make it seem like the individuals contained inside could break apart at any minute.

20.
In that TCJ interview, just after Spiegelman refers to “basic reality,” Groth responds, “Primitive art, you mean.” Spiegelman relents: “Yeah, primitive…I’m trying to avoid that word. It’s a whole other can of worms.” Primitive, naïve, outsider—parse the terminology however you like, it’s a troubled idea, and one that often rears up when comics are displayed in galleries or museums. As Bart Beaty points out in Comics Versus Art, “In a field in which so few cartoonists have been elevated to the status of art world insiders, it is not difficult to see how the conception of cartoonists in terms of outsider art might seem so appropriate.” We know the dangers, mainly that the outsider artist is portrayed as an unsocialized, uneducated, genius-oaf whose raw talent and private visions are redeemed by an institutional art world that uses him or her to seem relevant and hip at the cost of derogating the artist’s skill, craft, and effort. Jean Dubuffet saw art brut as a permanent resistance to the institutional art world, but arguably, that world simply made room for outsider art, which, after all, only reifies the long-standing concept of what literary scholar Jack Stillinger called the “myth of solitary genius.” But does it always have to be this way? Is someone who’s entranced by what’s called outsider art obliged to call it that, and to enter into the cultural, aesthetic and political battlefield? By policing the borders of high and low culture, do we just maintain their division and the hegemony of the institutional art world? And if we avoid the question—which the Urban Arts Space did by never explicitly framing With/Without Text as an outsider art exhibit, presumably to let Beyer’s work speak for itself—are we just as guilty of maintaining the status quo? And here’s a more pertinent question: Is it necessary or valuable to think of Beyer as an outsider artist?
So, yeah, a can of worms. That’s enough of that.

21.
What is “primitive” in the majority of Beyer’s silkscreens and reverse paintings presented in “Without Text” is actually progressive. Though a core idea in Beyer’s comics is still in play—that, though we believe otherwise, we are living in a devolved society, staggering along in a radioactive haze, half-melted, devolved; there are few if any shadows in these works, as if the sun has gone out—the response to this idea in “Without Text” is, instead of a shrug, a question: Now that we have been stripped to our prehistoric marrow, what do we do now? The primordial nature of this question imbues these works with an affirming and surprising humanism, even in the Untitled (The Office), which, for all its bright grotesquerie, is contemplative and inquisitive. “[R]eal basic reality” in the comics is a scream trapped within a hopeless culture. In the silkscreens and reverse paintings, the nihilism of our society has created the opportunity to progress into a different kind of culture, one that is perhaps “real basic” but not solipsistic, one in which we are not victims but participants, grounded by a belief in the possibility of meaning.

22.
Though Beyer’s distortions would seem to breach the walls of reality, in actuality they push those walls farther afield, imagining into being a wider sense of what reality is.

23.
In so many of the Amy + Jordan comics, culture, which is epitomized by the city, turns life and death into meaningless jokes told on each other. Though the exhibit made no claims about a systematic philosophy on Beyer’s part, it seems significant that so many of his recent wordless images depict a culture more engaged with nature in the largest sense of the word, including the fundamental mystery of death and the possibility of what happens after. These images suggest that what we call the supernatural is just nature we hesitate to imagine out of fear, but if we have the courage to imagine it, living might become meaningful. This is captured most literally in Tunnel of Death from 1994. Here Beyer’s compositional flatness recalls antiquity: cave paintings, hieroglyphs. As souls float by on black water, the boatsman Charon holds a candle that emits lines instead of light. His eyes are ambiguous: flat, vaguely malicious, grim, and alert. This seems to be Dante’s version of Styx, the Fifth Circle of Hell, since we can spot the eternally hateful and morose Amy drowning in the water. But who is the soul being ferried across the swamp? He stands there passively, the size of a child, mummified and glowing, possessing both guilt and innocence, and engaged with life even if it’s slipping away.

All images courtesy Ada Matusiewicz, with the exception of “Clown/Magician”, courtesy Courtney Williams.”

This is the first entry in TwoMorrows’s extremely ambitious attempt to provide a comprehensive history of the American comic book industry in America. Running from the 1940s to today, the series proposes to detail all the “pivotal moments” that occurred both behind the scenes and within the comics themselves, with different authors tackling different eras.

Just glancing at that timeline, though, gave me pause. Why start at the 1940s? Why not begin earlier? I understand that TwoMorrows wants to focus solely on comic books, but even so, to ignore the first forty years of the newspaper comic strip, which, to put it mildly, laid most of the groundwork and influenced many if not all of the cartoonists that worked in the first few decades of the industry (to say nothing of the high aesthetics of the work being done during that period) seems problematic at best. Turning the book over in my hands I wondered: Is this going to be a thoughtful, engaging look at how the industry has changed over time, or just a fannish reminiscence of bygone years?

Elsewhere:

—Talk talk. Tom Gauld talks to NHPR, Gilbert Hernandez talks to The Portland Mercury, Liza Donnelly talks to Cartoon Movement, Blutch talks to Craig Thompson.

—Award fever. Voting is now open for the Eisner Awards, with the ballot available here. Eisner judge Charles Hatfield addresses the recent controversy over Frank Santoro’s Before Watchmen comments. SAW has announced their latest round of micro-grant awardees. And the Doug Wright Awards has begun an auction of supervillain-related original art to help fund itself. Details are here, and the first item up for bid is the following piece from Seth.

—Critical commentary. J. Ryan Strandal reviews the new Ben Katchor book for LARB, and Kailyn Kent writes about cinema, music, and comics for HU.

—Miskellaneous. The terrible self-promoters over at Drawn & Quarterly get profiled by Huck magazine. A U.S. District judge has ruled that Superboy rights belong to DC. Ruben Bolling talks about organizing the following film, featuring an impressive group of cartoonists:

Just glancing at that timeline, though, gave me pause. Why start at the 1940s? Why not begin earlier? I understand that TwoMorrows wants to focus solely on comic books, but even so, to ignore the first forty years of the newspaper comic strip, which, to put it mildly, laid most of the groundwork and influenced many if not all of the cartoonists that worked in the first few decades of the industry (to say nothing of the high aesthetics of the work being done during that period) seems problematic at best. Turning the book over in my hands I wondered: Is this going to be a thoughtful, engaging look at how the industry has changed over time, or just a fannish reminiscence of bygone years?

The answer appears to be a little from Column A, and a little from Column B. The book is at its best when discussing comic book companies that are not named DC or Marvel. Whereas the Big Two’s histories are well known, even among casual comics fans, the backstories of companies like Dell, Harvey, and even Archie aren’t. For example: Forgive my ignorance, but I never knew, that licensor Whitman split from Dell and formed Gold Key, so I found John Wells’s chronicle of that debacle fascinating.

Wells attempts to be as thorough as possible in the book, so we also get tidbits on the rise of fanzines and fan culture, Bob Bolling’s influential “Little Archie” stories, Roy Lichtenstein, the rise of interest in teenage hot-rod comics, a unsuccessful lawsuit between a music publishers’ group and Mad Magazine, and the birth of Creepy. It’s clear Wells and company wanted to leave no stone unturned and it’s nice to be reminded that not every popular comic book character in the 1960s wore circus suits and beat people up.

Certain bits of historical detail are engrossing as well. Portrayals of, for example, John F. Kennedy before and after his assassination, or confusion over the rise of The Beatles provide a nice bit of context. The book is also enlivened by the occasionally oddity or obscurity. Things like “Treasure Chest,” which told a multi-part story about a presidential election where the candidate is revealed at the end to be African-American, or the fact that DC attempted a James Bond comic only a few months before Dr. No arrived in theaters (surprise: It flopped).

Unfortunately, far too much of the book is spent on DC and Marvel. It’s understandable to an extent. Even back in the ‘60s, DC was one of the 500-pound industry gorillas, with such stalwarts as Superman and Batman still selling well. And it’s perfectly natural that Marvel would get a good part of the spotlight here, as this period effectively marks the birth of the so-called “Marvel Revolution.”

Wells does do readers a favor by reminding readers how slow the revolution took to build and that other, non-superhero Marvel titles, like Two-Gun Kid and Patsy Walker, were just as important to the company’s bottom line – at times more so — than the Fantastic Four.

But the basic problem here is that most fans, i.e. the kind that will search out and read this book, already know Marvel and DC’s histories inside and out. Minus a few minor exceptions, Wells doesn’t add enough nuance or new data to make these rehashed tales of Lee, Kirby, Ditko, and company seem fresh. It especially pales in comparison Sean Howe’s excellent history of Marvel, which, since it’s only a few months old, lingers in the back of the brain as an unfair comparison.

Wells covers so many companies, artists, and stories that the book starts to take on a metronome-like rhythm. This character appeared in this issue. This other character appeared in this other comic. This publisher did this. And this publisher did that. And so on and so forth. In his attempt to be as thorough as possible, Wells can only help but keep things on a surface, superficial level. We learn a great deal about who drew or wrote which story, but not enough about the cartoonists themselves, or what it was like to work in the industry during this period (except for the fact that Mort Weisinger was a horrible boss—which, again, we already knew).

He’s too effusive in his praise as well. Is “Robin Dies at Dawn” (Batman #517 for those of you keeping score) really “harrowing and poignant”? Our Army at War #113 might be notable for its exploration of prejudice, but is it really “a remarkably understated example of racial harmony”? I’m not saying these stories aren’t any good, but when both major and seemingly minor story lines are given such laudatory descriptions, it arouses suspicion and makes one wish for a more nuanced, critical eye.

Certainly the book is nicely illustrated and colorful, featuring panels and covers from just about every comic mentioned. Occasionally it offers something striking, like a two pages of black-and-white original art by Russ Manning for Magnus Robot Hunter. Unfortunately, those moments are few and far between.

Little attention is paid to comic strips, gag or editorial cartoons, or anything else comic-related that might have been going on in the 1960s. One notable exception is Sy Barry’s run on The Phantom and how Barry’s work ramped up interest in a long-neglected strip. Mention is also made of Dick Tracy’s bizarre “Moon Maiden” run. But often these little tidbits are quickly dropped in order to move on to the next item of business.

It’s hard to shake the feeling that the main goal of American Comic Book Chronicles – or this volume of it at any rate – is to offer little more than a nostalgia trip for baby boomer fans. There’s too much focus on the fictional characters, particularly the superheroes, and their various permutations, and not enough on the people that created these stories. I can’t say the book is a total failure for me. There was enough history and trivia contained in these pages to enlighten and entertain me at times, even if the “And then … and then” rhythm of the text made it difficult to get through at times. And certainly there’s a certain satisfaction in knowing that even back in the 1960s, nobody liked Hawkman. Yet while I applaud the overall concept behind this project, I have some real problems with the initial execution. Here’s hoping the future volumes do better.

***

PLEASE NOTE: What follows is not a series of capsule reviews but an annotated selection of items listed by Diamond Comic Distributors for release to comic book retailers in North America on the particular Wednesday, or, in the event of a holiday or occurrence necessitating the close of UPS in a manner that would impact deliveries, Thursday, identified in the column title above. Not every listed item will necessarily arrive at every comic book retailer, in that some items may be delayed and ordered quantities will vary. I have in all likelihood not read any of the comics listed below, in that they are not yet released as of the writing of this column, nor will I necessarily read or purchase every item identified; THIS WEEK IN COMICS! reflects only what I find to be potentially interesting.

***

SPOTLIGHT PICKS!

Marble Season: Certainly one of the year’s major releases from a veteran cartoonist, this is Gilbert Hernandez’s first original graphic novel with Drawn and Quarterly, 128 pages of semi-autobiographical comics-about-kids, announcing its style and intent with an opening splash image of a boy walking along, reading a comic book titled “COMICS” – you can bet a coming-of-age in media is set to arrive, reminiscent of Schulz and Archie alike. The author has included a brief set of cultural annotations for those too young to have lived through the story’s 1960s setting, though I suspect the interactions between Hernandez’s characters will prove resonant nonetheless, particularly to those aching for Beto comics devoid of generic interest, although I, for one, enjoyed Fatima: The Blood Spinners. An 8.125″ x 11″ hardcover, in black and white. Preview; $21.95.

pepita: Inoue Meets Gaudí: Okay, so you appreciate the impact Slam Dunk had on the ’90s sports manga scene, and you’re totally down with the decompressed swordsman maneuvers of the continuing Vagabond, but what about… the wanderlust of Takehiko Inoue? We don’t get a lot of illustration books from star mangaka in North America — even some hardcore Akira fans were unaware that Katsuhiro Otomo teamed up with Katsuya Terada for a heapin’ helping of cycling illustrations back in ’08 until a bunch of them showed up in Genga — but Viz is committed enough to Inoue that this 2011 collection of sketchbook impressions and learned reflections on the architecture of Antoni Gaudí is now available in English as an 8.5″ x 11″, 108-page softcover. Please note that this edition does not appear to include the documentary dvd that was packed with the initial hardcover Japanese release. Samples; $24.99.

–

PLUS!

How To Fake A Moon Landing: Exposing the Myths of Science Denial: Lots of mainstream comics out this week, so let’s line ‘em up. Mainstream Pick #1 – Informative Nonfiction, in which Darryl Cunningham (of Psychiatric Tales) explores scientific topics with an eye toward rebutting the skepticism of received wisdom. It’s a 5.5″ x 8.25″ Abrams hardcover, 176 pages in color. Tucker Stone reviewed it here; $16.95.

Jerusalem: The Story of a City and a Family: Mainstream Pick #2 – the Political Topic, a tale of one family in the titular city in the 1940s, written by Boaz Yakin and drawn by alt comics veteran Nick Bertozzi. A 6″ x 8.5″ First Second hardcover, 400(!) pages in b&w. Preview; $24.99.

Who is AC?: And Mainstream Pick #3 – YA Fantasy, specifically a homage to the ‘magical girl’ anime/manga subgenre of Sailor Moon and the like, written by Hope Larson (also writer/artist of last year’s gigantic A Wrinkle in Time adaptation, among various original projects) and drawn by Tintin Pantoja. From Simon & Schuster, 176 pages in soft and hardcover formats. Preview; $14.99 ($21.99 in hardcover).

Judge Dredd: The Judge Child: If you didn’t happen to see Indigo Prime in stores last week, it’s probably showing up now, and it’ll be accompanied by the latest in Rebellion’s line of 5″ x 8″ digest-sized collection editions for classic Judge Dredd storylines, which now appear to be doubling as discreet methods of digitizing those stories for online sales. The Judge Child is an episodic thing from 1980, 160 pages jostling the Dredd cast from one event to the next, but boasting art by a potential Big Three of early series artists who were not co-creators of the property: Mike McMahon, Brian Bolland and Ron Smith. Written by John Wagner & Alan Grant; $11.00.

Mean Team: Also from Rebellion comes a 160-page collection of a Wagner/Grant-conceived ‘violent sports’ series — a perennial 2000 AD type, that, dating back to Harlem Heroes in issue #1 — which ran off and on under various creative teams from 1985 to 1989, although by far the most consistent force behind it was artist Massimo Belardinelli, one of the most welcome presences of early progs. A lot of this stuff has already been collected in 2000 AD Extreme Edition #25, from back in ’07, but this one’s meant to be comprehensive, with added strips drawn by the aforementioned Ron Smith; $22.99.

The Twelve: This, meanwhile, is not a 2000 AD project, but few admirers of British genre comics drawn in a sumptuous Don Lawrence-y style (if often modified to pleasingly grotesque ends) will be able to resist the 328 pages of Chris Weston promised by this all-in-one hardcover collection of a 2007-12 Marvel series about Golden Age superheroes navigating intrigues and dramas and such in the present day. Granted, the script is (mostly) by J. Michael Straczynski, whose work doesn’t appeal to me very much at all, though this one’s reputedly among his better efforts; $39.99.

Fury MAX #11: I’d say the all-in-one on this Garth Ennis Marvel series is gonna be dynamite, but I keep imagining it as a series of European-style oversized albums, one devoted to each three-issue time period. Maybe it’s the Goran Parlov art? Anyway, here’s more; $3.99.

Joe Hill’s Terrifyingly Tragic Treasury Edition: Man, nobody told me IDW was getting weird with its Treasury Editions (low-cost 9.25″ x 14.25″ comics in the style of the mighty roll-around-on-it-in-your-jammies Marvel/DC productions of yore); the last one I was this amazingly deluxe compilation of production materials — not comics, but production materials — relating to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #50 from 1992. Now we have a 72-page collection of odds ‘n ends by Joe Hill, the writer of IDW’s popular Locke & Key, including the final comics work by the late Seth Fisher, whose art is guaranteed to look damn pretty at this large a size; $9.99.

Haunted Horror #4: In contrast, there’s nothing too fancy about this IDW release – just 32 pages of whatever pre-Code horror comics Craig Yoe feels like publishing. I can read these all day; $3.99.

Double Fine Action Comics Vols. 1-2: I don’t know anything about these dueling Oni compilations of sketchbook webcomics by Scott Campbell — an art director for video game production house Double Fine whom some of you might remember from the old Alternative Comics series Hickee — but the art does look pretty cute and sprightly, and you’re getting 120 pages of it in every 9″ x 9″ package. Many samples; $19.99 (each).

Jupiter’s Legacy #1 (of 10): Your high-profile Image launch of the week, marking the return of artist Frank Quitely to regular (i.e. bimonthly) comics serialization, although I understand a longer hiatus has already been scheduled at the halfway mark, a la some of the recent Hellboy series. The writer is Mark Millar, who has vowed that his multigenerational superhero scenario — young heroes struggling to deal with shit their ascendants ennobled — will be “operatic” and summarize “[e]verything I’ve ever wanted to say” about the genre. C’mon, you’re curious. C’mooooon. Preview; $2.99.

The Flowers of Evil Vol. 5: I barely follow television anime anymore, but I do still find myself drawn toward the weird visual experiments that still somehow crop up on the scene, and *hoo boy* does director Hiroshi Nagahama’s adaptation of Shuzo Oshimi’s humiliation-porn-for-junior-high-schoolers manga opus double fucking count as that. It’s a rotoscoped series! Tonally reminiscent of nothing so much as American mumblecore films of the ’00s! It’s bananas, is what I’m saying, and sure to remain super-divisive throughout its run, which can be enjoyed via free streaming in anticipation of an already-announced North American dvd release sometime in the future. Anyway, Vertical is releasing the original manga (presently up to vol. 7 in Japan), and this installment’s got some extra-gross sex stuff in store for our would-be decadent student non-heroes. Also, the back cover has maybe the purplest pull quote ever excerpted from a manga review, it’s a riot; $10.95.

Knights of Sidonia Vol. 2: Also from Vertical is the sophomore edition of Tsutomu Nihei’s excellent tribute to space robots clashing outside civilizations adrift in the stars, epitomized by that most ’80s of anime classics, The Super Dimension Fortress Macross (or its North American Robotech variant, which is apparently still big on Kickstarter). There’s a house ad in the back of this for the publisher’s concurrently-running Gundam: The Origin series that made me grin – if you’d told me last year that Vertical would soon be my source for good robot fighting comics, I’d have told you ‘forget that, do I get rich’ and you’d reply yes, rich in columns devoted to upcoming comics, and then we’d kiss; $12.95.

Of Comics and Men: A Cultural History of American Comic Books: And finally, your book-on-comics of the week, a new edition of Bart Beaty’s & Nick Nguyen’s translation of Jean-Paul Gabilliet’s 2005 study of “the rise and development of the American comic book industry from the 1930s to the present,” released in hardback in ’09, and now available as a 432-page softcover. From the University Press of Mississippi; $35.00.

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CONFLICT OF INTEREST RESERVOIR: A good number of French albums are released in English these days, but very few are nearly so F-R-E-N-C-H as So Long, Silver Screen, 88 pages of comics by the great Christian “Blutch” Hincker, comprising a color-coded poetics of movies-as-personal-reflection, reminiscent in approach (if not always theme) of Godard’s Histoire(s) du cinéma. Not your American autobiographical comics tradition, but now, at least, an 8.25″ x 11″ hardcover from PictureBox; $22.95.

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Images excerpted from: (1) “A Newspaper Article, a Reporter’s Report” by Steve Ditko, as collected in The Four-Page Series #1, an insert to The Comics! Vol. 23, No. 9 (2012); (2) Ghost in the Shell by Masamune Shirow, pg. 320, pns. 1-5 (1995 ed.); (3) “A Newspaper Article, a Reporter’s Report” by Steve Ditko, as collected in The Four-Page Series #1, an insert to The Comics! Vol. 23, No. 9 (2012); (4) Ghost in the Shell by Masamune Shirow, pg. 321, pns. 2-3 (1995 ed.); (5) “For/Against One’s Best Interest?” by Steve Ditko, as collected in The Four-Page Series #2 (2013); (6) Ghost in the Shell by Masamune Shirow, pg. 327, pns. 7-8 (1995 ed.); (7) “Author’s Notes Pg. 271″ by Masamune Shirow, as collected in Ghost in the Shell (1995 ed.); (8) Ghost in the Shell by Masamune Shirow, pg. 328, pns. 1-4 (1995 ed.); (9) “The Deadly Alien” by Steve Ditko, as collected in Avenging World, pg. 35, pn. 1 (2002); (10) Ghost in the Shell by Masamune Shirow, pg. 328, pn. 5 (1995 ed.). All Shirow translations by Frederik L. Schodt & Toren Smith. Buy The Four-Page Series here.

Elsewhere:

An interview with Gilbert Hernandez.

Alan Moore on writer Robert Morales.

Excellent Western comic drawn by Mort Meskin here.

Effective advertising?

Best thing I’ve seen in a little while. John Alcorn, what a great cartoonist and illustrator. Broad and ornate simultaneously.

Not comics but gag cartoon material.

A boy named Barnaby wishes for a fairy godmother. Instead, he gets a fairy godfather who uses a cigar for a magic wand. Bumbling but endearing, Mr. O’Malley rarely gets his magic to work — even when he consults his Fairy Godfather’s Handy Pocket Guide. The true magic of Barnaby resides in its canny mix of fantasy and satire, amplified by the understated elegance of Crockett Johnson’s clean, spare art. Using typeset dialogue (Barnaby was the first daily comic strip to do so regularly) allowed Johnson to include — by his estimation — some 60% more words, giving O’Malley more room to develop a rhetorical style that, as one critic put it, combines the “style of a medicine-show huckster with that of Dickens’s Mr. Micawber.” In its combination of Johnson’s sly wit and O’Malley’s amiable windbaggery, a child’s feeling of wonder and an adult’s wariness, highly literate jokes and a keen eye for the ridiculous, Barnaby expanded our sense of what comics can do.

Though one of the classic comic strips, Barnaby was never a popular hit — at its height, it was syndicated in only 52 papers. By contrast, Chic Young’s Blondie was appearing in as many as 850 papers at that time. As Coulton Waugh noted in his landmark The Comics (1947), Barnaby’s audience may not “compare, numerically, with that of the top, mass-appeal strips. But it is a very discriminating audience, which includes a number of strip artists themselves, and so this strip stands a good chance of remaining to influence the course of American humor for many years to come.” He was right.

Elsewhere:

—Egyptian cartoonist Magdi El Shafee has been arrested and imprisoned by security forces for dubious reasons. [Please see Ethan Heitner's comment below, and the World War 3 Illustrated Tumblr, for more information.]

—Since the last time I posted on this blog, the comics internet erupted with controversy over the Eisner Awards judging, especially in regards to past comments by Frank Santoro (who, as all readers surely know, is a Journal columnist and my friend), only to die down almost as quickly once the facts came to light. At this point, I don’t know how much there is to add to what’s already been said, but I think that Tom Spurgeon and Heidi MacDonald are both well worth reading. (My take in a nutshell: You want judges who have strong tastes and opinions, and Frank is one of the most knowledgeable people about comics I have ever met in my life.)

There are plenty of non-Santoro-related Eisner Awards links to share, too, including judge Michael Cavna’s memories of the nomination process, and quick takes on the event from all of the judges on the Eisner website.

—In other awards news, the Stumptown awards nominations have been announced, and are now open for voting, and Natalia Yanchak, one of the Doug Wright Awards judges, writes about those awards for the Huffington Post.

—And in still other awards news, Sammy Harkham’s Everything Together has just won the L.A. Times Book Prize.

—Double shot of Miriam Katin now: with a studio visit at the Paris Review website, and an interview at Inkstuds.

—Librarian Carol Tilley writes about the recent Persepolis debate for the CBLDF.

—Small publisher news: Sparkplug Books has announced that Virginia Paine will be taking over ownership of the company, and Domino Books owner Austin English announces an imminent move that will affect several small publishers and cartoonists, including Domino, Rebus, Revival House, etc., and says this would be a particularly good time to buy some Domino books if you’re so inclined. (I’d guess the same is true for Rebus and Revival House.)

—The Beat has been on a roll lately, with another very solid post on Gilbert Hernandez and children’s comics.

—And finally, Ed Piskor, Jasen Lex, and Jim Rugg visit the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library: