Happy Wednesday. On the menu today:
* Ed Park joins us for our week of Chester Brown with the somewhat self-explanatory and can't be described anyway, Notes to a Note on the Notes of Chester Brown.
* Mike Dawson returns with his latest TCJ Talkie (yes, I named it that. Proudly!) with guest Josh Cotter.
* Joyce Farmer, Day 3.
* TCJ related: Apparently Randy Chang is the best boyfriend ever.
Meanwhile, elsewhere online we have:
* Jeet Heer's appreciation of the the Doug Wright Award-winning Spotting Deer.
* Daniel Best has put together a kind of "Don Heck In His Own Words" from various interviews, which are not sourced on the site itself -- hopefully he'll add some sources soon in the interest of giving credit where credit is due. In any case, it's a great read, as Heck, while somewhat of a hack (ok, more than somewhat) did have some bright spots and comes off as a smart and earnest guy. I especially like the grounded-ness of moments like this:
I used to like Iron Man in the beginning, because of the characterization I could get into. Like when I had Happy Hogan, and Pepper Potts. When I was doing Pepper, I was thinking of Schultzie, who was the secretary on the Bob Cummings Show. In other words, she was the girl who never quite got the date with the boss; he's always watching all those good-looking girls. But they were characters, in a certain sense of the word. Happy Hogan was an ex-fighter. I think they were fun to do. They had personalities you couldn't miss. I did the first Iron Man story. They have it listed that Jack Kirby did the breakdowns, but that's not true. I did it all. They just didn't bother to call me up and find out when they wrote up the credits. It doesn't really matter. Jack Kirby created the costume, and he did the cover for the issue. In fact the second costume, the red and yellow one, was designed by Steve Ditko. I found it easier than drawing that bulky old thing.
* Tucker Stone digs into some recent comics and some shit-talking theory over at The Factual Opinion.
And now, kind people, my last bit about TCAF: Some blurry iPhone pix! Chris Ware actually explained to me that the new iPhone photo software is worse than the old, and so I'll hold onto that as I reveal my poor photography skills.
