Today at the Comics Journal, we're bearing down for the annual onslaught of April Fool's themed marketing emails by reading Michel Fiffe's latest episode of The Fiffe Files. This time around, Michel is here to make the case for Mike Sekowsky...along with a whole mess of Justice League of America comics.
And look at that amazing Mike Sekowsky art! Inked by Bernard Sachs this time around. Like Dillin, I've always thought Sekowsky had an old school illustrator vibe to him, but that he was more concerned with speed and efficiency than technical virtuosity... less concerned with showing off and more about meeting the deadline. Either way, I was all in, expecting a slog of pseudo science over-explained by a pack of humorless boy scouts. That's not what I got at all. I cracked open this new comic Christmas afternoon. A few hours later, the hooks were in. I wanted more.
Our review of the day comes to us from Matt Seneca, and it's a mixed take on Little Bird, one of the more visually compelling books to come out of the Image genre factory in a while.
Still, to my eye at least, Quitely is the most apparent influence on the way Bertram draws. This isn't surprising; as one of a very few modern cartoonists whose work on corporate properties hasn't led to a bibliography comprised mainly of bad comics, Quitely is cruising toward elder statesman status these days with an ever widening circle of published acolytes. Bertram flexes a strong individual style while picking up on two important, underappreciated aspects of Quitely's: his markmaking and his passion for grotesquerie. Bertram's forms are his own, but they're shaped with profusions of crabbed, gossamer-thin lines that rarely extend for more than a centimeter before breaking off a micron from another, nearly identical stroke. Quitely fans will recognize this impressionistic, almost sculptural approach on sight, but Bertram brings a more frenetic, compulsive hand to his pages, locating a strong gristle of connective tissue between Quitely and Dave Cooper. And like Quitely, just about every one of Bertram's characters are imbued with Extreme physicality: a Strong guy looks like an NFL lineman with hypertrophy, a Regal dude's robe-swathed legs extend well over twice the length of his torso, a Small girl approaches a lithe brand of dwarfism. This is influence properly wielded, not copycat work but an identification and exploration of shared strong points.
Over at Comicosity, Mark Peters took a reverent look at Charles Glaubitz's Starseeds for his Kirbyology column.
I had never read such a confident, surreal, mythological, entrancing comic. As Tom Scioli has said of New Gods #7 (“The Pact”), you could build a religion around this comic.
Over at Bleeding Cool, there's a fascinating look into the financial tentacles of IDW, a company that has spent the better part of the last twelve months involved in so many different types of drama, legal maneuvers and fiscal hopscotch that I wouldn't even know how to summarize it.
The numbers show that IDW’s sales revenue percentage from direct market sales grew significantly more than traditional retail. Digital comics sales revenue percentage actually decreased from 2018 to 2019. We’ve prepared pie charts to illustrate the breakdowns.
Still don't even understand what this is, and i've read the NYT on it, and then I read the WWAC making fun of the NYT on it. Why is Garth Ennis so great at making war comics and Punisher stories and yet still so bad at picking business partners?
