First, some office work.
Earth people, send us your event listings. As you may have noticed, we are publishing event listings. We wish to fill them up. So, direct your listing news to: [email protected].
We have uploaded issues 37 and 39-41 of ye ol' TCJ. Only 260 more to go. Almost there! But these issues are chock full of goodness. Issue 40, for example, has an interview with a young-ish Jim Shooter, just a little while before he was branded "Our Nixon." Kim Thompson, meanwhile, contributed a piece about Tom Sutton, and the great John Benson has an early (and very prescient) overview of Art Spiegelman's work. TCJ and Tom Sutton: A long term love affair. Issue 39 has a long piece on the now-infamous 1978 DC Comics contraction, a lengthy report on the then-comatose underground comics scene, and in the reviews dept., we have Kim giving Marvel 1970s-era Kirby a tough talking to, while Groth takes on Superman vs Muhammed Ali. And then issue 41 breaks open the Steve Gerber controversy, with a report and an interview with the man himself. The archive is still free for a little longer.
And new content today and from the weekend. In his first piece (of many, we hope!) for us, Tom De Haven takes on the upcoming Gilbert Hernandez book; meanwhile Frank Santoro brings it for the third week in a row. His best layout piece yet. By the by, if, during the week you long for Frank, as Tim and I often do, you can click over to his Tumblr and check in on him.
And now, onto links.
Most of you have probably already seen this NY Times piece on Marvel's publishing program. A little more business-y than I would've expected, the takeaway here seems to be that, uh, Marvel is trying... something, and that something is directed from the editors through the writers. The visuals in this visual medium aren't mentioned much, and neither are any particular creative strategies. Me, I'm still waiting for that New Universe revival.
Via pal Dash Shaw we have two delights. First is this animated film by the great illustrator James McMullan, who taught Dash at SVA, along with a few other generations of other artists. His drawing lessons are actually online at the New York Times. His languid, elegant figures are just astonishingly well painted. More McMullan can be seen at Container List. Second, here's an online exhibition of the Art of Akira, along with commentary.
Contributor Chris Mautner takes us to Comic Book College in the area of Frank Miller. This is a good start in some choppy waters. I'm glad Chris recommends The Dark Knight Strikes Again, which is my favorite Miller work, post-1990 division. Also, he reminded me that Miller actually wrote Robocop vs. Terminator. I can't believe there's not a movie of that already. I'd go see that. Thrice! Dapper Dan's Movie Review would have a field day!
Finally, Harry Mendryk goes what we, around the "office" call "deep Santoro" with part one of an analysis of the Simon & Kirby colorists. And Joshua Glenn's HiLobrow continues to focus on Kirby with this fine piece by Adam McGovern.
