BOOTH
March 12th, 2010 By Jared GardnerC. C. Colbert & Tanitoc, Booth (First Second, 2010). $19.99, paperback
As our regular readers know, Beth usually handles the historical comics for us here at guttergeek. This one, however, was sent back to me after only a few hours with a brief apology: “I’m sorry, I just can’t bear to look at this one any more.” Having spent a few hours more with the book myself, I now understand her reaction. This is an unpleasant book to read visually: the “evocative” brushwork of the French theorist and artist Tanitoc is often ungainly continued...
WEDNESDAY SHOP TALK
March 11th, 2010 By Alex BoneyThe High Price of Superman
By Alex Boney
I’ve been reading a lot of Golden Age Superman comics the last couple months, so my eyes and ears have become unusually attuned to stories about the character. Over the last few years, I’ve also been paying attention to the slowly unfolding legal proceedings involving DC Comics’ parent company Warner Bros. and the family of Superman creator Jerry Siegel. Last week, as I scanned through the comics news stories, two items in particular jumped out at me: 1) Action Comics #1 sold for $1 continued...
LITTLE NOTHINGS
March 9th, 2010 By Jared GardnerLewis Trondheim, Little Nothings 3: Uneasy Happiness (NBM, 2010). $14.95, paperback.
This is the third installment of Trondheim’s blog-comic, as he continues on his quest to be the most productive retiree in the history of comics. Since announcing his “retirement” in 2004, Trondheim has gone on to win the Grand Prix de la ville d’Angoulême (in French comics, kind of like the Oscars and a Knighthood wrapped up in one), published a dozen or so books (including, with Appollo, the splendid Bourbon Island), and flown restlessly around the world to comics festivals. So continued...
SUNDAY FUNNIES: the Oscar Night edition
March 7th, 2010 By Jared GardnerThe scanner is down for repairs, but that’s ok: it’s Oscar Night! TIme to celebrate the beginnings of the long, on-again/off-again love affair between comics and film. The birth of sequential comics and cinema was about as close to a twin birth as can be achieved, with both coming into their own in the final decades of the 19th century. But comics actually came of age first, developing what are arguably the first 20th-century celebrities with stars like Happy Hooligan and Buster Brown back when film was still busy filming folks getting on trains or waiting for the stores to continued...
NEWSFLASH: 2010 Festival of Cartoon Art
March 5th, 2010 By Jared Gardner
One of the myriad pleasures of studying comics here at Ohio State University is the opportunity to work closely with the remarkable folks at the (recently renamed and soon-to-be-rehoused) Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum and to help in the planning for the triennial Festival of Cartoon Art. For those who have never attended, it is not your average con. In fact, it isn’t a con at all: it is a gathering of some of the most exciting people working in all aspects of comics—editorial, webcomics, superhero, alternative, etc—to share their careers continued...
