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Today, Frank Santoro explores the work of his friend and comics mentor Bill Boichel:

BEM was Bill's first comic-book shop. It was called "The Store" really. BEM was named after the Gilbert Hernandez story of the same name that ran in issue one of Love and Rockets. So, BEM, or "bug-eyed monster," was the machine that ran the store. The store's early logos said, "Coming to Grips with the Machinery." It meant the machinery of art and commerce together--comic books. It was high concept for a comic book store in a rundown post-industrial Rust Belt neighborhood like Wilkinsburg, just outside the city limits of Pittsburgh, PA. Somehow it all worked. Like a machine.

[...]

Boichel also made a ton of fliers for the store--check those out here. And he made a ton of variations on his store's logo--check those out here. So, it seemed really natural when he started making these wacky mini-comics. He'd make the comic at his desk and then print it up in the basement on the xerox machine and then give it away or sell it upstairs on the new comics rack. It was a way for Bill to be fully in the "machine" that was BEM. It was also a way for Bill to produce art like a machine. All of the comics Bill made at this time are credited to BEM which was, of course, the name of the store.

And Paul Buhle reviews the new collection of Gilbert Shelton's Wonder Wart-Hog:

Shelton's famed Texas-style characters, the Freak Brothers, were unique, and their Austin-ness was little grasped elsewhere in the country. But Shelton was also unique in his story-telling genius. Because the sense of opposition to the existing society was so unquestioned in the underground genre, satire often overwhelmed the storylines. The dopey ambience of the protagonists, frequently stoned-out, didn’t help either.

Elsewhere:

—Interviews. du9 talks to James Sturm and Rich Tommaso. Underwire talks to comiXology's David Steinberg. Art Spiegelman talks about his new show. The CCS blog interviews TCJ columnist Rob Clough. Anne Ishii and Graham Kolbeins discuss their Massive gay manga project.

—Reviews & Commentary. Chris Mautner reviews Dennis Eichhorn's Real Good Stuff. Sean Rogers has expanded his excellent top 5 of 2013 list to a top 20. Atomic Books is posting various "best of 2013" lists from people like Liz Prince, J.T. Dockery, Box Brown, Kelly Froh, etc.

—Giving Opportunities. There's one week left for the Sequential Artists Workshop fundraising campaign.

—History. 2014 is the centennial year for Tove Jansson, so expect a lot of coverage of the Moomin creator for a while. The Guardian reviews a new Jansson biography. Zak Sally continues to document the story of La Mano. Mindy Kaling was a cartoonist in college.

—The Funnies. Julia Wertz has a long autobio comics/prose piece on Narrative.ly. And I can't believe I forgot about Peter Maresca's "Origins of the Sunday Comics" feature at GoComics. (via)

Today on the site Chris Mautner interviews Paul Pope.

MAUTNER: Listening to you talk I get the feeling that you’ve had a very valuable relationships with your editors. 

POPE: Yeah, by far.

MAUTNER: Is that something you look for now? Can you talk a little bit about what you’ve gained? There are plenty of cartoonists that just want to be left alone to do their own thing.

I did that also. The first seven years of my career was working as a self-publisher. The only input I got was letters from readers. There was no editor on THB. There was no editor on the Ballad of Doctor Richardson or any of that stuff. The first time I had an editor was when I worked on the One-Trick Rip-Offwith Bob Schreck and then subsequently Batman Year 100. I was getting a lot of complaints from people before that, where they’d say, “Oh the drawings are good, but the stories are kind of light” or “They don’t go anywhere.” That was frustrating because I wasn’t trained as a novelist or a storywriter. I was trained first as an artist working in different disciplines whether it’s art history or studio art. And then as a printer, where I was doing everything from working in a commercial printing house doing web-set printing, printing magazines and menus and things like that. So working with editors was the first time I had to get muscular, in terms of writing.

MAUTNER: But you feel like those relationships have helped you as a writer and storyteller?

POPE: Yeah. I think I would take it a step beyond that and say it’s more primal to have [that] rapport. Your editor is like your Virgil. You need to be able to have a guide or at least a companion when you walk through Hell. With Mark Seigel at First Second, we’re taking it to a different level, where we just got off a multi-city [tour]. We’ve been on the road together, we go to bed at the same time, we get up at the same time, we’ve eaten every meal together, we’re on trains and planes and automobiles together – we’re pretty much together constantly on this junket. Now that Book One’s done we took a train back from DC a couple days ago and we spent the entire time thumbnailing out [what] I need to get done when I get back from Toronto. In a sense, it’s sort of like a creative marriage. He’s a coach, he’s a cheerleader, he’s a taskmaster, he’s a friend and a sounding board. I think ideally that’s the most harmonious relationship between the editor and the artist.

Elsewhere:

Michael Dooley on banned comics.

There's a comics round-up over at the AV Club.

Eleanor Davis has a pie blog.

The Beatles in comics.

And Batman in the funny papers.

Joe McCulloch is here with his latest This Week in Comics! column, a buyer's guide to the most interesting-sounding new comics available in stores as of tomorrow. He also writes about a little-noticed recent comic from Akira Toriyama:

Okay, show of hands – how many of you even *knew* Akira Toriyama not only released a totally new 217-page comic last year, but that it was published near-simultaneously in English? I ask because the Festival de la Bande Dessinée d’Angoulême is nearly upon us again, and last year’s festivities were marked by hints of conflict in the Grand Prix voting, which purportedly resulted in popular candidate Toriyama receiving an ad hoc commendation for the occasion of the show’s 40th anniversary while another cartoonist was selected for the top honor. Truthfully, this situation summarizes Toriyama’s present status in North America as well – unavoidable in terms of legacy, but rarely all that immediately accessed.

Elsewhere:

—Reviews & Criticism. The academic journal PS: Political Science & Politics has a symposium on superheroes and politics in its latest issue, available free online through the end of the month, if I understand correctly. Ace designer Jacob Covey reviews Michael DeForge's Very Casual. Craig Fischer writes about the gender politics of B.P.R.D. Rob Clough on Kent Olsen & Sabine ten Lohuis's Life Through the Lens. Lots of angry commentary out there on Alan Moore's interview from last week; I found this the most thoughtful by far.

—Lists. Comics Bulletin released their top 10 of 2013. Robert Boyd has some comics content on his top ten art list.

—The Funnies. Michael Kupperman and David Rees just started a recurring political strip at the Sunday New York Times. Maria Popova has reposted Ralph Steadman's illustrations from a 1973 edition of Alice in Wonderland.

—Interviews. Tom Spurgeon talks to Jesse Reklaw. Bleeding Cool talks to Brandon Graham.

—History. Sean Howe has begun posting outtakes from his Marvel Comics: The Untold Story. First up is a story about Barry Smith and Tom DeFalco from Terry Kavanagh. Tom De Haven has posted a short essay he wrote about Yellow Kid creator Richard Outcault (who figures largely in his Derby Dugan novels). Ron Goulart on Jefferson Machamer's Gags & Gals. John DiBello (aka Bully the Stuffed Bull's friend) is now writing regularly about comics for 13th Dimension. His first piece is about the history of Miracleman.

Well, let's do some shilling right at the top here: The TCJ archive is now available by subscription for just $30! That's right: You get access to nearly the entire run of the print TCJ (we're almost done posting it) for a measly $30. Lose days or weeks or months bing-reading Gary's old editorials and News Watch columns about people you've never heard from again (these are two of my most favorite activities in the world).

And speaking of losing yourself... Today on the site:

An unexpected treat: Bob Levin on Guy Colwell's comic book series Doll.

Doll (Rip Off. 1989-95)^[1] was written with a consciousness that remained engaged with and troubled by the world.  At the time, Colwell was living in a second-hand mobile home in the western foothills of the Sierra Nevadas and working part-time as a typesetter and graphic artist. He had been through one marriage and several short term relationships.  Now, he announced in his introduction to the first issue, personal experience had led him to explore “sex… desire… greed… caring (and)… especially loneliness.”

Elsewhere:

The LARB on Feminism in Comics.

Finally some good movie news. Phoebe Gloeckner's all-time great graphic novel The Diary of a Teenage Girl has been cast and is moving into production.

TCJ-contributor Sean Rogers on the reissue of the classic Canadian graphic novel The Cage.

NPR on race and identity in superhero comics.

TCJ-contributor Alex Dueben talks to Chris Claremont about some less-discussed aspects of his career.

Over at The Paris Review, TCJ-contributor Nicole Rudick wrote about Jeet Heer's (another TCJ-contributor) In Love with Art.

Today, Katie Haegele is here with a review of Jesse Reklaw's unusual Couch Tag.

The first part—the book’s five sections are described by Reklaw as novellas—is told as a series of stories about each of the pet cats his family had throughout his childhood. There were thirteen of them, and they all met a bad end—by dying of distemper, having too many litters, getting run over, or just running away. They were given names like Paranoid and Dead Duck by Jesse’s dad, and tripped with fishing line by Jesse himself on a day when he was feeling mean. Reklaw’s drawing style has a rounded softness to it, and the cutesy lettering of the chapter titles belies a nastiness underneath these stories. In this clever way, Reklaw manages to impart a queasy but subtle sense of unease and instability. If this is what became of the cats, what was life like for the kids?

Elsewhere:

—Internet Controversy du jour. Alan Moore has been enraging the Twitter masses on a regular basis for years now, usually through offhand interview comments dismissing superhero comics, superhero comics readers, and/or superhero movies, but this time is on another level. Pádraig Ó Méalóid asks Moore about some of the criticisms that have dogged his work over recent years and Moore responds in essay form, addressing topics such as, yes, his aversion to superhero comics, but also accusations of racism, rape fixation, and more. There's a lot to unpack, and I will leave it for interested readers to judge how convincing his arguments are. Much though not all of it seems reasonable to me (I continue to think that while Moore and collaborator Kevin O'Neill's intentions were clearly benign, their handling of the golliwog character in the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was ill-advised), but his manner of presentation seems unlikely to win over skeptics. It also would have been nice if there were more followup questions on the points where his arguments are less than air-tight.

Moore then goes on to fire back at some of his critics, including journalist Laura Sneddon, Dez Skinn, someone "whose name escapes me but who is evidently pleased to identify himself as a Batman scholar," and Grant Morrison, whom he insults at length, only stopping just short of comparing him to Shia LaBeouf. Moore also declares this to be something like his final interview, at least of this nature that he will be dramatically decreasing the amount of interviews he gives from now on, so longtime fans (and detractors) should not miss this one. Those not well-versed in the background may find the reading unpleasantly bitter.

—News & Profiles. Calvin Reid profiles international comics agent Nicolas Grivel (who represents artists like Ulli Lust, Blutch, and Dylan Horrocks). The Eisner Awards are currently accepting submissions. The Image Expo is currently going on, and those interested in upcoming announcements from that company should check in with more mainstream-oriented comics sites today. The New York Times reported on one such announcement, a new deal with Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips. The CBLDF reports on a New York district court ruling upholding the government's right to search laptops at the Canadian border. Tom Spurgeon interviews Gilbert Hernandez.

—Reviews & Commentary. Rob Clough writes about Julia Gfrörer's Black is the Color. Neil Cohn comments on the non-universality of some visual imagery. The Gilbert Hernandez interview linked to above led to a brief but interesting discussion between Andrew White and Frank Santoro on how much influence "classic" American comic-book aesthetics should have on current artists.

Hi, it's Thursday. Frank Santoro is here with a post about old comics that just won't sell, darnit!

I have certain comic books for sale that just won’t sell. Ever. No matter how much I slash prices. I can’t give ‘em away!

Yet many of these comics are good. Or have a good page or two in them. They’re worth keeping around just for conversation sake. I call them “clunkers”. I can’t sell them but I can’t bring myself to throw them out.

You see comics like this over and over again in the back issue bins. The same ones. A certain era–1983 to 1992–is always well represented in almost every comics shop in North America. (Was it because they overprinted runs back then?) Most folks flip right by these clunkers because they look like garbage–and they usually are. However, some of them are worth a second look. Here are 9 of them.

Elsewhere:

Tom Spurgeon interviews Lucy Shelton Caswell.

A look at Jack Kirby's great 2001 comic.

This is so nuts looking that I can't resist linking to it.

Elfquest: The Conceptual Angle.

And... that Shia story has now jumped the shark. Somewhere on Twitter Jeet Heer suggested that perhaps Shia was behaving just like a Clowes character might, which made me feel happy/sad/weird.

Today, Zainab Akhtar returns to the site with an interview with 16-year-old wunderkind Anatole Howard. Here's a snippet:

I don't know when I actually got into comics, since as a kid they were just like any other book to me. I really liked Inuyasha and Ranma 1/2, but they never excited me as much as they do now. Back then I was way more interested in anime instead of manga/comics. Like a lot of people the idea of a western comic that wasn't Superman was an idea that never crossed my mind. My dad was really into old underground comics and he introduced me to Robert Crumb (he had a Crumb biography which I read without his permission), and discovering the alternative scene was great. When I started to explore comics on my own it was still mostly manga that I found appealing, with only a few western titles mixed in. Comics that had deep narratives, little dialogue, and lots of art were my favorite for a long time.

Yeah. It’s interesting how kids don’t really view comics as separate from other literature. That’s learned. It's only when you get older that you become aware that they’re viewed separately. It's cool you had your dad to guide and encourage you. Is he into comics? Did you have them around the house, or were they something you actively sought out?

No comic books were in our house besides the ones that I had checked out from the library, and so all the comics I read were ones I picked up on my own with some inspiration from my dad. He told me about how he used to buy underground comics like "Pudge Girl Blimp" but that he had lost them all, so later on he and I visited a con where he was able to buy a new copy. Later, I went to a bookstore and stood alongside him and bought a copy of Fantagraphics’ reprint volumes of Robert Crumb and kept looking at him saying, "Should I get this? Would you want this?" Whenever I discovered somebody or something new, I would always tell him about it. But Crumb is what bonded us as two people who knew about comics; Crumb always shows up in every small talk we have about them.

Daniel Kalder weighs in on last year's "lost" David B. book, Incidents in the Night:

... David B. awakens to realize he has acquired the power to assume four different forms; he can be a shadow, a skeleton, a paper man, or human, four versions of his self which he depicts sitting on an eight-pointed wheel, a symbol suggestive of various mythologies. From a very simple starting point—the dream of a book—we have rapidly entered exceedingly imaginative, fantastical, esoteric territory, shifting from dream to “reality” to humorous fantasy, back to dream and then back to “reality.” Borders are blurred, the lines between realities are crossed freely, and yet the book has hardly started. And from this point, it only gets more baroque.

And for those of you who missed it, Joe McCulloch has updated the buyers' guide portion of his column from yesterday (spotlight picks: Gregory Benton and Bob Fingerman), which had been delayed due to technical difficulties.

Elsewhere on the internet:

—News. Matt Bors has launched an impressive new lineup of cartoonists and comics content at The Nib, featuring too many names to mention here quickly. The American woman known as "Jihad Jane" has been sentenced to ten years in prison for her part in a plot to murder one of the cartoonists who drew Muhammad.

—Interviews. ICv2 has posted the first two parts of a three-part interview with Marvel exec Dan Buckley. Dan Berry talks to Emily Carroll for Make It Then Tell Everybody. Chris Ware discusses his latest cover for The New Yorker.

—Funnies. First-time-in-a-long-time comics from Julia Wertz for the holidays (1, 2, 3). Mike Dawson on Sofia the First.

It's that time we all look forward to: Tuesday with Joe McCulloch. The buyer's guide portion of the column will go up tonight.

And Katie Skelly reviews one of my very favorite books of 2013: Jodelle.

Elsewhere online:

The Beat names Kim Thompson person of the year for 2013.

Tom Spurgeon interviews political cartoonist Kevin "KAL" Kallaugher.

Liza Donnelly has a good comic up.

Zainab Akhtar reviews a handful of comics.

Comic Book Resources names its top stories of 2013.

The Mysterious Underground Men, reviewed. The Guardian on Women Rebel.

Korean Air goes Popeye?

And I don't think I've ever seen this alphabetical guide to Don Martin sound effects, but I'm glad I did. Via.

Let's keep 2014 going right with another column from historian R.C. Harvey. This time he looks into some of the murkier aspects of the origin of the Superman comics:

We know who invented the Man of Steel. Jerry Siegel. But the invention in early 1933 was followed by frustration: for the next four years plus a few months, Siegel and his drawing partner Joe Shuster tried in vain to sell their creation to newspaper feature syndicates and to publishers who were just hatching the comic book business by reprinting newspaper comic strips in magazine format. Nobody wanted this super strong refugee from the disintegrated planet Krypton. And then, all of a sudden, Superman was “discovered” by a young editorial assistant tangentially connected to the McClure Syndicate. Sheldon Mayer, just out of his teens, was working with M.C. “Charlie” Gaines, who, in turn, was functioning as a sort of freelance salesman and packager, scouting for printing jobs for the two new color presses McClure had acquired when Bernarr MacFadden’s scurrilous Daily Graphic folded in 1932. Hanging around the McClure offices, Mayer saw the Superman comic strip Siegel and Shuster had submitted in the hope of getting their brain child syndicated. And Mayer’s brain exploded.

“I went nuts over the thing,” Mayer said years later when remembering the event. “It was the thing we were all looking for. It struck me as having the elements that were popular in the movies, all the elements that were popular in novels, and all the elements that I loved.”

But he couldn’t convince anyone to sign up the feature. Not Gaines. Not any of the McClure officials.

“They all asked me what I thought of it,” Mayer said. “I thought it was great. And they kept sending it back.”

And Rob Clough takes a look at Real Good Stuff, the latest Dennis Eichhorn comics:

[Dennis Eichhorn] was a sort of mirror image to Harvey Pekar, as both men were writers who employed a number of alt-cartoonists to depict stories from their everyday lives, as well as their checkered pasts. In Pekar's case, of course, he sought to draw poignancy from the mundane and quotidian while exploring his emotions, intellectual interests and the interesting people he happened to work with and frequently befriend. Nothing much "happened" in those stories in a kinetic, narrative sense, other than a particular thought or anecdote being relayed in a memorable fashion. Eichhorn, on the other hand, has led an extraordinarily colorful life and isn't afraid to share every detail with his readers.

Indeed, every Eichhorn story includes either a fight or some threat of violence, a wild drug sequence, a graphic and frequently hilarious sex scene, a recounting of some interesting and generally unbalanced person he happened to encounter, or some combination thereof.

Elsewhere on the internet:

—News. Marvel will be taking over the license for Star Wars in 2015. That franchise has been a big part of Dark Horse for a couple decades now. Marc Arsenault of Wow Cool and Alternative Comics has opened a store. You might not want to buy this drawing on eBay.

—Reviews & Commentary. At Bookforum, Ben Schwartz takes on Al Capp. Tim O'Neil looks at what the Star Wars move might mean from a fannish perspective. Our old friend Rob Clough reviews new work by Liz Valasco, Alex Schubert, and Aaron Lange. Janus-like, Jeet Heer looks back at 2013/forward at 2014. Kailyn Kent writes about Jillian & Mariko Tamaki's Skim.

—Interviews. Excellent interviewer Michael Silverblatt has a discussion with Joe Sacco. Tom Spurgeon talks to writer-about-comics (and TCJ contributor) Zainab Akhtar. Political cartoonist Zapiro talks about getting a complaint by phone from his frequent target Nelson Mandela (via):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9xksnwqrWg

—Funnies. The Barnacle Press site has a bunch of newly posted strips from George McManus's Newly Weds. And Janelle Asselin & Katie Cook start a series of webcomics on gender and comics at Bitch magazine. (Slight point of disagreement: in my opinion, "sequential narrative/storytelling books" is definitely not a term worth knowing.)

Hi, I'm back, too. Tim decided not to trap me in 2013 forever, so here I am in 2014 feeling... pretty much the same. So, on the site today we have:

Marc Sobel interviewing Ulli Lust.

And elsewhere:

The Shia Labeouf story just gets better and better. I mean, now that we're past the "he did something immoral and illegal" part (which is actually the only important part), it's just like watching TMZ, but in some bizarre and goofy microcosm. I hope it goes on for all of 2014 and beyond. I can't get enough of this guy. He's the lesser James Franco. Or maybe he's the better James Franco. Who knows! He loves Jeff Koons. He's got big, undergrad ideas about authorship swiped from Richard Prince. I love it. He's not what comics deserves, but he's everything the comics internet deserves. Anyhow, here's an incredibly awesome interview with him.

Shia is alllllmmmmost like a character out of INFOMANIACS -- almost a creation of the internet. And here's Matthew Thurber at The Paris Review to tell you about all things INFO.

This story about Captain America confused me, but that's cool.

I enjoyed these holiday comics by Julia Wertz and Leslie Stein, respectively.

Robert Boyd explains about Kus.

Gregory Benton interviewed.

Dominic Umile on some recent comics.

And this story about Jim Starlin is kinda funny and kinda sad. Just read the text sideways.

It's a brand new year, and here at TCJ (Internet division) we have a brand new attitude. Dan and I are well-rested and have spent our web-free days meditating on how to provide better criticism and coverage of the art of comics. I think it's fair to say that 2014 will likely be the best year here yet. So prepare yourself.

To start things off, we have Joe "Jog" McCulloch, who has a recap of his own personal experiences with the last two weeks of comics. (This has been a trying fortnight for Joe, who has been e-mailing us regularly to see if he might be allowed to post during the holiday hiatus. I'm feeling a little guilty now, seeing what he Joe resorted to reading during his imposed vacation.)

Elsewhere:

—Comics websites and writers of all kinds have been posting end-of-the-year ruminations and summations of all kinds, including Robot 6's list of favorite 2013 comics, The Beat's annual comics-creator-survey, Tim Callahan's best-of-2013 list, Nick Gazin's top ten list, Abhay Khosla's best/worst-of-entertainment list, Jeff Smith's favorite comics, and Rob Clough's typically exhaustive list.

—News. Marvel has decided to stop selling individual issues of their comics in traditional bookstores. Columbia University's library has received the Kitchen Sink archives.

—Funnies. Kate Beaton went home for the holidays and posted a slew of comics about her visit. Joe Ollmann on the job. Sean T. Collins has started a new Tumblr called Comics Democracy reposting only the most popular webcomics, without commentary. He explains his reasons here.

—Interviews & Profiles. Paul Gravett on Leo Baxendale. Chris Mautner talks to Anna Bongiovanni. Emine Saner talked to G. Willow Wilson about the new Muslim Ms. Marvel. Chris Sims talks to Michel Fiffe. Tom Spurgeon interviewed many people, too many to link to, but you can figure out how to find them. The latest talk was with Ed Piskor.

—Reviews & Commentary. J. Hoberman reviews Peter Maresca's Society is Nix. Bob Heer reviews the Chris Duffy-edited Fairy Tale Comics. Becky Cloonan wrote an essay on self-publishing.

—Don't Feed the Troll.

Well, this is it for us for 2013, everyone. Click on over to our TCJ year-in-review and read yourselves silly.

Well,folks. R.C. Harvey is here this morning, with a column on George Baker and Sad Sack:

A few months following the Sack’s debut in Yank, Baker was transferred to the staff of the magazine, and he served there for the duration of World War II. Yank sent Baker to military installations all over the world to expose him to every possible phase of Army life in order that he might reflect it in the cartoon. In the early months of Yank’s run, Baker also distributed subscription blanks wherever he went. Eventually, the magazine acquired a circulation department, which involved Baker only to draw promotional posters. One of these gave the cartoonist “the first tangible evidence” that the Sack was a success. The poster said: “Subscribe to Yank and see the Sad Sack every week.”

Baker shouldn’t have worried. As perennial low man on the regimental totem pole, the Sad Sack was popular from the very start. He epitomized the frustrations and disappointments of Everyman, dragged somewhat reluctantly into a military bureaucracy he didn't understand and could never master. The Sack's adventures took place entirely in pantomime; each cartoon was a series of eight-to-ten borderless pictures that progressively depicted the cascading persecution of the week. Like some dumb animal being inexplicably punished for behaving in a perfectly natural way, the Sack was all the more pitiful for being mute.

Elsewhere:

—Interviews & Profiles. Fast Company talks to Neil Cohn about his research into the visual grammar of comics. Ruben Bolling and Vanessa Davis are guests on the latest Gweek. Jesse Reklaw was on Inkstuds. Comics Journal regulars Joe McCulloch and Sean T. Collins talk about the business of alternative comics with Tom Spurgeon. I love both those guys, but that is a very odd and even skewed discussion to read, at least from my perspective. (I'm probably too close. Maybe they're too close, too.) One thing I do think is worth saying is that given that the closing of PictureBox was a personal decision and not one forced by economics, it probably shouldn't be overinterpreted; if Dan was a slightly different guy, or in slightly different circumstances, it would still be running. And I don't agree with Sean's comment that it's hard to "imagine another 30-year anniversary of an alt-comix publisher after Drawn & Quarterly has theirs, maybe ever again." Top Shelf is more than halfway there. AdHouse could easily make it, if Chris Pitzer wants to do it. If anything, there are more stable or semi-stable small publishers around right now than at any time I can remember... A thirty-year-plus run in independent publishing has always been the anomaly. Those guys are always worth listening to, though, so go to it.

—News. Stumptown is merging with Rose City Comic Con. The comics writer Scott Lobdell has admitted to being the mystery aggressor in MariNaomi's xoJane story, and has given a statement to Heidi MacDonald. Screw publisher Al Goldstein, who employed many prominent cartoonists in his day, has died.

—Reviews & Commentary. Rob Clough looks at the perennially underdiscussed Mineshaft. Paste picks the 13 best webcomics of 2013.

—Misc. Zak Sally shares the history of La Mano.

Today on the site: An anonymous (by request) article recounting one female cartoonist's experience with being made to feel uncomfortable by unwanted attention.

I don't normally feel like being a woman in this field is enough to justify having to answer questions about it all the time, most frequently: "What is it like to be a woman cartoonist?" Let's face it, this is not dangerous work.  This is not even physically demanding.  I am not a police officer, I am not a fireman, I am not in the army.  I don't put my life on the line every day.  Hell, I don't even work in an office where some asshole could potentially pinch my butt.  I work from home!  I am practically a housewife. So please, stop asking that question.

And Frank is here with his final column of the year: Best of Greatest Hits 2006-2012.

Elsewhere:

In related news, the cartoonist MariNaomi has also just posted an article on XOJane about being harassed on a comic convention panel.

The Shia LaBeouf craziness continues. The Beat has an update, and I'm in the absurd position of reporting that it's been brought to my attention that, yes, yours truly was also plagiarized by young Shia. Seriously. The "about" page of his publishing company is lifted from the "about" page for PictureBox.

Here are my words:

Why is PictureBox? Because I love the things I love and I want to champion them. I tend toward outliers and I'm obsessed with the history of visual culture writ large and small. But look, ostensibly PictureBox is a publishing company. I publish around 10 books a year (graphic novels, prose, design, art, etc.) as well as assorted specialty items like DVDS, CDs, and prints. Each project comes from my own tastes and relationships, and are rooted in what I believe in.

And here's Shia:

Pretty amazing. And sad.

I should also note that this site reviewed LaBeouf's comic books (since discovered to also contain lifts). We have amended the reviews.

Otherwise, let's see... here's an interview with Jesse Reklaw on Inkstuds, and Tom Spurgeon talks to Paul Pope.

Zak Sally has begun writing a history of his publishing company, La Mano.

Couple of end-of-the-year announcements: Columbia University has acquired the collected papers of Kitchen Sink Press.  And TCAF has announced the first of its 2014 guests.

And... the most unusual R. Crumb appearance I've seen yet:

Today, Rob Clough has his last column of 2013, with an enthusiastic introduction to the gay/wrestling/death-metal humor comics of Ed Luce:

Luce's storytelling structure is far more loose, and in some ways, far more self-indulgent [than Bryan Lee O'Malley's]. I mean this in the sense that Luce simply writes about everything that interests him and throws it into one big stew. He's a huge music nerd and manages to throw in references to everything from death metal to dance music to Morrissey to punk. He's a knowledgeable fan of professional wrestling, so of course his lead character Oaf is a former pro whose nom de ring was Gote Blud. Luce can't help but throw in musical puns and references, as Oaf's finishing move involved him wearing a goat horn mask that spewed fake blood and was called "Raining GoteBlood"--a reference to the band Slayer. Luce is fascinated by cats, and so the cats here have weird fantasy lives of their own. And of course, Luce is gay and writes extensively about gay culture, particularly what he refers to in the comic as "oafs and bait"--big, frequently muscular and sometimes fat men (popularly known as "bears," though Luce puts the kibosh on that term here) and their smaller lovers. There are elements of magical realism and just plain weirdness at work here, such as when the cat's hair sometimes take on a life of its own or a future story where Oaf is the savior of the new cat race.

Elsewhere:

—Rob Clough takes to his own blog to review comics by Jonathan Baylis, Matt Runkle, and Jason Martin. Chris Randle has a really strong take on Gilbert Hernandez's Maria M.. Jason Heller of the A.V. Club appreciates a Carl Barks Christmas story. Impossible Mike at HTMLGiant reviews the much-anticipated reprint of Martin Vaughn-James's The Cage. And Bobsy, one of my favorite Mindless Ones, did a best-of-2013 via Twitter.

—Also, Paul Gravett has profiled Yves Chaland, and Sean Witzke interviews Michel Fiffe.

Hey, it's Tuesday on this web site and that means Joe McCulloch is here to tell you about the week in comics.

And elsewhere in the world:

-The big news is that actor Shia LaBeouf has allegedly plagiarized a Daniel Clowes comic for a short film. Buzzfeed has the story. This is a weird and sad one.

-The writer about comics Sarah Horrocks has posted a link, with commentary, to her 2013 writing.

-And a couple over at Vice: Molly Crabapple talks to Art Spiegelman and Nick Gazin has a roundup.

Today, John Hogan examines the hidden connections between conceptual art and gag cartooning through a comparison of Mark Newgarden and Richard Prince:

Whereas Newgarden’s humor manifests as functional jokes about how jokes are created, Prince's jokes are simply defused and deconstructed, and his humor remains more withholding. The jokes he appropriates are unfunny borscht-belt groaners. Gags like a woman catching her husband in his office with his secretary on his lap become vaguely disturbing and sad without the levity of an appropriate zinger attached. According to Nancy Spektor, in her essay for his 2008 recent retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum, this is Prince “bring[ing] to the surface the hostility, fear, and shame fueling much American humor.” (Spektor, p.37)

In the conceptual art mindset, the humor must be obfuscated and neutralized before the nastiness beneath it can be revealed. I would argue as much shame, fear, and hostility are evident and made obvious in Newgarden's work, and with a functional sense of humor intact.

The comedic motivation behind pairing tired jokes with tired imagery on a large canvas is blatantly nihilistic. The failure of the jokes and gags are built in to the composition of the work, relegating humor into a subject rather than a tool for communication. These neutered sex cartoons are incapable of triggering any honest laughter, and thereby reinforce the objecthood of the painting and its status as painting as painting --art as art-- thereby keeping it firmly entrenched in a tradition of the avant-garde and safe from being confused with entertainment.

—Reviews & Commentary. Jeet Heer reviews George A. Walker's wordless graphic bio of Conrad Black. Bob Heer reviews Matt Kindt's MIND MGMT. Steven Heller puts together a slideshow of design and comics books for the Times. Corey Blake looks back at Miracleman. Julian Darius at Sequart does a more expansive look at Miracleman coloring & reprinting than Robot 6 did last week. Rob Clough reviews Faction.

—Interviews. Jim Woodring was a guest on the Gweek podcast. The other Boing Boing podcast has had two interesting recent guests, Ed Piskor and printmaker Joe Lupo.

—News. Brian Hibbs of Comix Experience is expanding to a second store. I can't believe we neglected to link to this New York Daily News story about accusations against Archie's Nancy Silberkleit last week.

—Hmm. Hmm.

—Video. James Sturm at ESAD Art+Design:

Ed Piskor at the Chicato Humanities Festival:

And Lynda Barry at the National Book Festival:

Today on the site we bring you Ryan Holmberg and his tales of bird poo Indian comics.

I had been under the impression that Comix India, inaugurated in 2010, was the first amateur comics magazine in India. It might have been the first with significant heft and geographical reach. Chronologically, however, there is at least one precedent.

Out of Kolkata’s Jadavpur University in 2009 came Drighangchoo. It only lasted three issues. It is a pamphlet affair in black and white. The first issue is half prose, but by no. 2 Drighangchoo is a robust comics magazine. It is printed cheaply but the artwork can be as good as what one finds in the luxurious mini-comics from Manta Ray in Bangalore. And dealing as some Drighangchoo comics do with harder social issues, it is generally a meatier magazine than its more polished peers. It definitely feels like something produced on a university campus, due to its jocular but palpably self-conscious editorial commentary, peppered with baroque self-deprecations and mocking academy-ese. But the evident earnestness of the project and the increasing quality of the contents and production from issue to issue suggest that, had it lived a bit longer, Drighangchoo might have become a standard-bearer in amateur comics publishing in India, or at least in Bengal.

Elsewhere:

I am so baffled by all the year-end list and how they don't coincide at all with my experience of the comics-reading year, and yet I can't look away. I'm fascinated. Why here's the Montreal Gazette. Here's part four of Comics Alliance. This one from the Village Voice is incredibly confusing and yet alluring in its singularity. Naturally I approve of this take on Pompeii. That confuses me not. Had enough? I might've.

Also bizarre is the first paragraph of this Gilbert Hernandez profile. Read it and then think about the last half-decade in comics. Then read it again. Strange, right?

Here, go cleanse yourself with this funny Steve Brodner list. Have a good weekend.

Today, Shaenon Garrity has a column exploring the way cartoons and comics are shared online, often without their original creators being credited.

[T]he uncredited versions of comics often spread more quickly than the credited versions. After all, the sites and individuals sharing the uncredited versions are likely to be less ethical about how they use the art. While the credited version may be reposted by fans sharing it with a small circle of friends, the uncredited version can wind up on a series of image-sharing sites dedicated to spreading maximum content for maximum hits.

“In some cases, an individual edits out attribution in order to pass the work off as their own,” says [Rachel] Dukes. “More frequently, attribution is edited out by staff of meme-based websites like 9GAG that profit off of ad revenue. The reason that they do this is because they want readers to stay on their website, clicking from image to image, for a long period of time. That’s how they make their ad revenue.” The last thing these sites want is for users to leave their site to look at an individual artist’s website instead.

Elsewhere:

—Reviews & Commentary. Art Spiegelman on Ad Reinhardt. Françoise Mouly on Ad Reinhardt. The cartoonist and critic Derik Badman writes about a slew of comics. I like Badman's writing partly because though his tastes are sometimes baffling (to me), he is always upfront and forthcoming about them, and doesn't seem to be posturing or rancorous. Sean T. Collins has moved all of his Vorpalizer webcomics reviews to a new location. Kevin Melrose compares the coloring of the new Marvel reprint of Miracleman with the Eclipse originals.

—Best of Lists. The A.V. Club's list includes some interesting choices. The Comics Alliance list is occasionally weird, superhero-heavy, and published in multiple parts annoying for linkblogging, but some of the entries are written by strong reviewers familiar to readers of this site. (1, 2, 3). Whitney Matheson at USA Today and Publishers Weekly also have lists.

—Interviews. Alex Dueben talks to Jennifer George, Rube Goldberg's granddaughter and the editor of about the new book celebrating his work. Bryan Munn asks Jeet Heer about his new endeavors as a comic-strip writer. Former DC publisher Jenette Kahn was interviewed at the Chicago Humanities Festival:

—News. Forbes takes a look at how the growing popularity of tablets may affect the comics business. NPR's All Things Considered devoted a segment to the Billy Ireland library. Bleeding Cool has promoted Hannah Means-Shannon to editor-in-chief. That site's coverage of alternative and independent comics has improved measurably since she started writing for it.

—Random. Brandon Graham continues to be a good blogger.

Hi there,

Today on the site Rob Steibel returns with a reading of Fantastic Four Annual 6.

Over the years plenty of writers have discussed Jack’s work from a feminist perspective, many criticizing what they consider his lack of strong female characters. Hundreds of articles have been written about the role of fictional women characters in comics so I don’t want to go off on a long tangent, but I do want to say although I understand Sue not running around beating up bad guys when she’s 9 months pregnant, I am disappointed that Crystal doesn’t take a more active role in these books and in FF Annual # 6, it would have been great to see her kick some ass in the Negative Zone. It is also noteworthy that around the time of the birth, Alicia Masters all but disappears, and Crystal is relegated to the sidelines, standing by Sue’s side worrying. It’s a strange decision: here’s an online conversation where the topic is touched on.

Here’s my guess as to why Jack did this: I think Jack wanted to make FF Annual # 6 about the four original members of the team. There was no X-Men to save them, no Avengers to save them, no Hulk, no Thor, no Nick Fury — the FF had to rely on themselves to get out of this jam. That’s why Crystal is pretty much nothing more than a cheerleader. It keeps the story simple, and it shows you the stability of the Fantastic Four family unit – the core of the team is still the same. Crystal can’t replace Sue. The story ultimately is about the four adventurers who started the journey together. Everyone else is a minor supporting player. You could also argue FF Annual # 6 is just another stereotypical testosterone-driven superhero story where the men do all the fighting and rescue the damsel in distress, but as soon as the baby is born Crystal takes a far more active role in the stories while Sue spends time with the newborn.

Elsewhere:

Andrew Farago interviewed about the upcoming Bobby London Popeye book. It's good news that work will again see print.

Our own Paul Tumey on Ving Fuller, entertainer.

And in more TCJ-contributor news, Jeet Heer is now writing a comic strip drawn by the very talented Ethan Rilly.

Finally, enjoy this video by the great Leif Goldberg. Over and out.

It's the second day of the week, which is the day that Joe McCulloch runs down the most interesting-sounding new comics set for release in comics-specialty stores this Wednesday. The title for this recurring feature is This Week in Comics! His spotlight picks this week include the end of Joe Casey & Tom Scioli's Gødland and another of Darwyn Cooke's Richard Stark adaptations.

Elsewhere:

—Interviews & Profiles. Chris Mautner has a brief interview with Gilbert Hernandez about his about-to-be-reprinted Grip: The Strange World of Men. Tom Spurgeon talks to academic Benjamin Saunders about an expansion of the comics studies program at the University of Oregon. Paul Gravett profiles Jaime Hernandez.

—Reviews & Commentary. Dana Jennings reviews The Art of Rube Goldberg. A grateful and relieved Rob Clough reviews Jesse Reklaw's Couch Tag. Jason Heller reviews Lance Parkin's new biography of Alan Moore. Michael Dooley of Print lists his favorite books of 2013.

—"News"? J. Caleb Mozzocco grieves for PictureBox. Chris Mautner recommends six PictureBox titles. And Heidi MacDonald invites comment from several comics retailers over the question of serialized comics vs. original graphic novels.

—Giving & Spending Opportunities. Zak Sally is holding a 21st anniversary of La Mano sale. Julia Wertz is selling art, photos, and books (with today the last day for Christmas delivery on photo prints). I used to only rarely post links to sales and fundraisers but they have become so common now that I guess my policy has changed. Please feel free to contact me if I've missed an important one. I won't promise to list every one I get, but I haven't been looking for these carefully up until now so I'm sure a few have slipped by unnoticed.

Today on the site:

James Romberger interviews Paul Kirchner, of "The Bus" and "Dope Rider."

Paul: Don’t worry, I don’t feel bad about my association with High Times, really. If I did I suppose I’d refuse to have the work reprinted, or condemn it like someone who’s had a religious conversion and renounces his past.

Dope Rider originated because when I showed my samples to Dennis Lopez, the editor of Harpoon, he liked a surrealistic Western story I had drawn but said I should do a similar story and make it drug-themed. The drug element was necessary to have the surrealism make sense to most readers. Because of the drug element, High Times wanted to run it, and I had no qualms about working for a drug-oriented magazine if it provided an outlet for the kind or art I wanted to do.

I have always been interested in the conflict/connection between the “real” world–the world of material things, orderly transitions, and logical, predictable outcomes–and the other world, the world of spiritual forces, visions, dreams, and delusions, that follows illogical and unpredictable rules of its own. I’m not sure that latter realm is any less real in our lives.

Elsewhere online:

My favorite comic strip in America, True Chubbo, has moved to its own site.

Robert Crumb interviewed at, uh, Red Bull Academy.

The great psychedelic artist Martin Sharp, who I wrote with Norman Hathaway for our book Electrical Banana, has passed away. Here's a solid appreciation of his early cartooning in Australia and London.

Paste has a top ten list. I'm really glad to see Dash Shaw's New School getting some play on these lists. That's a my personal favorite (ahem, non-PictureBox) comic of 2013.

I somehow missed the fact that classic 90s comic Big Mouth is being featured over on Boing Boing.

Tom Spurgeon interviews Karl Stevens.

Jeez, this Kim Deitch artwork is gorgeous.

I was very flattered and grateful for these appreciations of PictureBox, one from the boys at Comics Books Are Burning in Hell and one from Frank at The Washington Post. It's nice to read eulogies while I'm still alive.

Today, after nearly three years of virtually no comics convention coverage on this site at all, we present our second full report in a row. This time, it's columnist Paul Tumey on the Short Run festival in Seattle. Here's a bit of what Paul had to say:

Short Run was created in 2011 by two talented, crafty, artistic friends who love D.I.Y. publishing - Kelly Froh and Eroyn Franklin (Janice Headley became an organizer in 2013). It makes sense that this would eventually happen. SPX (Small Press Expo) has been going on for years, New York's MoCCA and Chicago's Cake Alternative Comics Expo are well-established. Seattle, which may well have more cartoonists per square inch than any other city in the world, seems a natural for a small press festival. The first Short Run Small Press Fest, funded by bake sales and the organizer's bank accounts, featured exhibitors and drew 800 people.

Insert a narration box at the top of the next panel that reads "Three years later..." and Short Run (this time partially funded by grants from Humanities Washington and 4Culture) 2013 drew about 1700 attendees and featured 120 beautifully mad people makin' copies, comics, zines, prints, and doodads for sale and trade. This year, Short Run took a long sprint across the entire month of November, with such events as November 9th's Rookie Yearbook 2 signing party with editor and fashion sensation Tavi Gevinson, the small press art show at the Fantagraphics Bookstore and Gallery, and November 29th's Read/Write event that featured a panel, an interactive performance with David Lasky and Greg Stump, a silkscreen workshop with Eric Carnell, and much more.

Also, we are republishing a rare, comprehensive interview with Calvin & Hobbes creator Bill Watterson, conducted by Richard Samuel West in 1989 and published in issue 127. Here's a sample:

WEST: Let’s talk about Hobbes a little bit. He seems to be older and wiser than Calvin, but not much. Which of the following more accurately describes him: a pet, a brother, a friend, or the father that Calvin never had?

WATTERSON: Hobbes is really hard to define and, in a way, I’m reluctant to do it. I think there’s an aspect of this character that’s hard for me to articulate. I suppose if I had to choose from those four, the brother and the friend would be the closest. But there’s something a little peculiar about him that’s, hopefully, not readily categorized.

WEST: Well, in a way that says more about Calvin than Hobbes because Hobbes is implicitly, explicitly just a product of his imagination.

WATTERSON: But the strip doesn’t assert that. That’s the assumption that adults make because nobody else sees him, sees Hobbes, in the way that Calvin does. Some reporter was writing a story on imaginary friends and they asked me for a comment, and I didn’t do it because I really have absolutely no knowledge about imaginary friends. It would seem to me, though, that when you make up a friend for yourself, you would have somebody to agree with you, not to argue with you. So Hobbes is more real than I suspect any kid would dream up.

WEST: Well, at the risk of getting into psychobabble, a lot of psychologists would say that children create imaginary friends to play out family dramas. So an argument can be just as much a part of an imaginary world as, you know, a sort of sentimental, gooey friendship can be.

WATTERSON: Yeah, well, I would hope that the friendship between Calvin and Hobbes is so complex that it would transcend a normal fantasy. The resolution of the question of whether Hobbes is real or not doesn’t concern me or interest me, but, hopefully, there’s some element of complexity there that will make the relationship interesting on a couple of levels.

Elsewhere:

—Reviews & Commentary. There have been a few more articles and testimonials written about PictureBox, including from Corey Blake at Robot 6, Calvin Reid at Publishers Weekly, and George Elkind.

Our own Rob Clough has reviewed Peter Bagge's Margaret Sanger bio Woman Rebel, and completed his thirty-day examination of figures connected to CCS. Paul Morton reviews Jon Lewis, Andrew Aydin & Nate Powell's March.

There are more best-of-2013 lists coming out too. Here are two from Douglas Wolk at Time and Hillary Brown & Co. at Paste.

Finally, one of the best retailer-run comics bloggers around, Mike Sterling, just celebrated his tenth anniversary.

—Interviews. Xavier Guilbert interviews John Porcellino at du9, Michael Cavna interviews Ed Piskor at the Washington Post, and Michael Dooley interviews Ted Rall at Print.

—Giving Opportunities. In Wednesday's post, while listing a slew of people and organizations looking for help (most of which are still ongoing), I neglected to include this indiegogo fundraiser for Tom Hart & Leela Corman's worthy SAW. Also, many cartoonists of interest to readers of this site are involved in Providence's Mothers News, which is currently raising money via subscription for 2014.

Today Zainab Akhtar covers the UK festival Thought Bubble.

Conventions are generally a whirlwind of events, but this year was even more hectic than usual: I was working, helping to man the OK Comics (the fab comics store at which I work) tables with the guys, was conscious of doing this write-up and so attended panels for due diligence (panels are deathly boring, yo) as well as having a list of things on my “to buy” list and people I wanted to see. The guys had done the hard work lugging all the books to the Armouries in a van and setting up, so by the time I strode in with a packed lunch of Irn Bru and Jammie Dodgers on Saturday, the queue was happily snaking around the building in the cool sunshine. I knew we were sharing table space with publishers SelfMadeHero, but it’s still pretty daunting to have one of your favorite cartoonists- Frederik Peeters- in much closer proximity than imagined. I had a plan, right? At some point in the day, I’d just naturally strike up a conversation, and we’d talk like normal people, but then the kindness of others resulted in the world’s most awkward handshake and introduction, a complete lack of eye contact and brain freeze on my part, which in turn meant I had to ignore him the rest of the weekend. Peeters has a proper superstar air about him. I don’t mean that he’s haughty, but that he has a tangible presence. That presence was keenly felt on Saturday, as he spent most of the day arms folded, stalking up and down two meters of tight area as he waited for copies of his new book, Aama, to arrive, which didn’t happen until the last 15 minutes of the evening. He was calmer on Sunday.

Bob Levin covers Ray and Joe: The Story of a Man and His Dead Friend.

Ray and Joe: The Story of a Man and His Dead Friend, edited by Bob Fingerman and Gary Groth, is a 184-page collection of Rodrigues’s most scabrous work, all of which seemingly ran in the “Lampoon” between 1978 and 1989.  I say “seemingly” because the book omits any delineation of which appeared when as though to keep all statutes of limitations on the table as potential defenses against any group libel claims from the tissue-skinned.

The volume contains four narrative pieces,  20 to 84 episodes in length, and several more abbreviated efforts.  (A collection of Rodrigues’s gag cartoons is slated for future release.)  They seemingly – there’s that word again – appeared, one installment per issue, in primarily nine-panel, single-page strips, with story lines that could shift as abruptly as a dirt track Chevy.  The strips do not build to a single, concluding laugh but pull smiles and chuckles at disparate points en route.  Rodgrigues works like a silent film comedian, choosing a situation and wringing as many laughs as he can from it before moving on, like Charlie Chaplin starving in a cabin or Harold Lloyd climbing a building, though Rodrigues’s situations are more likely to produce an uplifted eyebrow or sharply sucked in breath: rooming with a corpse; a private detective in an iron lung; the ugliest little girl in the world.

Elsewhere:

And the lists are coming in like crazy right now. Here's one from Comics Alliance. And here's another from NPR. Here's a nicely illustrated one from Ryan Cecil Smith.

Tahneer Osman on Co-Mix. Kevin Huizenga on page layouts. Sean T. Collins on Fantagraphics and PictureBox.