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Today on the site we have another SDCC panel, this time The Auteur Theory of Comics, in which Arlen Schumer and Randolph Hoppe theorize that comic-book artist Jack Kirby was a de facto co-creator and co-author, with the credited writer, of his work: with John Morrow and TCJ contributors Charles Hatfield and Craig Fischer. And Brandon Soderberg reviews The Furry Trap, by Josh Simmons:

If the stories in Simmons’ new collection The Furry Trap, were designed to simply freak readers out, they would end in a page or two. But Simmons sticks with his ugly ideas, until the fucked-up-ness is no longer scary or even funny, and just kind of sits there to turn over in your brain. Shock seems besides the point.

I second that thought, except I've found the book frightening in the long term. It's a brilliant and brave book.

Elsewhere:

Tablet Magazine compares the depictions of Jerusalem in recent books by Harvey Pekar and Guy Delisle. Bleeding Cool hilariously calls out Tom Devlin's true nature in this summary of the Drawn & Quarterly / Fantagraphics panel at SDCC.

And this blog looks to be very promising: Terry Gilliam's daughter is chronicling her father's accumulation of stuff.

It's Tuesday, which means it's time to take comics-buying advice from Joe McCulloch. (Also featured: Chris Foss.) Things look a little lighter than usual this week, so it might be a good time to go back into the archives and look at some of Joe's earlier columns, to be reminded of opportunities missed. The important thing is never to go a week without buying something, whatever it is.

We also have Rob Clough's review of the latest Dupuy & Berberian Monsieur Jean volume, The Singles Theory, this time published by Humanoids.

Elsewhere—

—The great Justin Green gives advice on breaking into cartooning, in what appears to be an excerpt from a longer text about the field. I had no idea he was writing such a book, but can't wait.

—Dave Sim is in the midst of a week-long, question-a-day interview over at A Moment of Cerebus, which describes it as "a grilling that would make even The Comics Journal wince." So far, it's mostly just been a chance for Sim to rehearse his tiresome, self-inflicted martyr routine, but now that that's out of the way, I imagine the questioners will move on into more interesting territory.

—Bill Moyers invited journalist Chris Hedges onto his program last weekend, to discuss his latest book, Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, which was created in collaboration with Joe Sacco. The episode also features a visit to Sacco's studio:

—Robert Boyd revisits an old Love & Rockets post to honor the title's 30th anniversary.

—Cheers & Jeers Dept. Cheers: The Guardian invited a whole slew of cartoonists, including Gabrielle Bell, Tom Gauld, Ivan Brunetti, Kate Beaton, Lilli Carré, and Nicholas Gurewitch, to create comics strips presenting their worldview.

Jeers: The Guardian invited Dan Clowes to participate in an interview, then edited his answers down to the point of actively misrepresenting his words.

—Diamond Digital launched, which apparently allows customers to buy digital comics through their local comic shop's website. Noted for further research.

—The San Diego Union-Tribune interviews Andrei Molotiu about abstract comics and that terrible Slate series that ran during Comic-Con.

OK, it's really summer -- slow news, hot days, etc. etc. Weekend readers may have found Frank's latest New Talent Showcase, this one featuring Alex Schubert, Matt Seneca and Jaakko Pallasvuo. Frank has also started a Tumblr called Comics Workbook. He's busy! And coming up on today we have the complete footage of another panel, as arranged by the mighty Kristy Valenti. This one is called Comics and Journalism in a New Era and finds PW Comics World co-editor Calvin Reid talking to Susie Cagle, Andy Warner, Stan Mack, Ed Piskor, Dan Carino, and Chris Butcher about using the comics medium for journalism. Filmed by Justin Bloch and David McCloud.

And elsewhere the pickings are slim:

Speaking of SDCC, Jamie Coville has the audio for a number of panels.

Tom Spurgeon graces us with an interview with Jessica Campbell, who is leaving Drawn & Quarterly after over half a decade. I am, as some know, a very grumpy, some would even say "savage" presence at comic book conventions/festivals/whatever but not Jessica. She would roll off an all-night bus, set up, have snacks, make fun of Devlin, and generally be better than me in all ways. Well, good luck Jessica -- and bless your heart for escaping comics. You've done what so many of us have tried and failed to do. See you in Chicago!

Today is the day for Comics of the Weak, and this time, Tucker Stone & Abhay Khosla team up to co-write the column, which is interrupted by convention news, and introduced with a true-life tale:

Perspective--the kind of perspective that will prevent someone from overreacting to a stranger's opposing reaction to an incredibly successful piece of corporate produced entertainment that is in no danger of disappearing in your lifetime, the kind of perspective that will keep you sane. I, personally, cannot honestly admit to possessing this perspective, as evidenced by my near-death experience not but two nights past, wherein I looked directly at a red light and confusedly said to myself "red light means keep going" and was only saved from the wheels of an oncoming vehicle because of a combination of their extraordinary instincts and an excellently tuned set of brakes and not in the least by my own dumbfounded, wide-eyed "what have I done" momentary incapacitation.

We also have video from one of the panels that took place at San Diego last weekend: Gary Groth's interview with Gilbert, Jaime, and Mario Hernandez for the 30th anniversary of Love and Rockets. So that's 90 minutes of my day planned out...

Also on the site, but somehow lost in the blog shuffle and never linked to this week:

—Rob Clough's review of Jon Chad's formally innovative Leo Geo and His Miraculous Journey Through the Center of the Earth.

—Sean T. Collins's review of Batman: Earth One.

Elsewhere, the post Comic-Con hangover seems to have slowed down the normal news cycle, but you can't go wrong reading the aforementioned Jaime Hernandez's memories of San Diego past ("I remember when every panel ended up 'How can we get comics into book stores?'").

—Seth has a new comic strip out, related to that barbershop we told you about last week.

—Jessica Abel reports from the recent Chicago Comics: Philosophy & Practice symposium, in comics form.

—And the only-sorta-comics must-read of the week comes in the form of Tom Spurgeon's notes on his recent 200+ pound weight loss. It's a great read, and even better is the news (if I'm understanding correctly) that he is developing the classic Comics Journal essay these notes are a thematic sequel to ("Comics Made Me Fat") into a book.

Today on the site, R.C. Harvey bring us a slice of Milton Caniff history, namely a time when he ran afoul of his public's taste.

Caniff included a woman in virtually every story for the obvious storytelling reasons: not only does a damsel in distress give a hero a mission, but relations between the sexes are central to the human condition. A man-woman situation enhances the drama of any high adventure, giving it an added human dimension. Since Terry’s early days, Caniff acknowledged the sexual aspects of his storytelling. His erotic or titillating allusions were undertones, but they were evident enough to those who could recognize them. In such man-woman relationships, Caniff once remarked, there should “always be the feeling of potential rape in the air—legal or otherwise.” Words and pictures usually convey this feeling, but not in tandem.

A mark of Caniff’s sophistication as a cartoonist is that when the dialogue dilates with double entendre, the women in the accompanying pictures are typically demurely dressed, softening the suggestive import of the language. When the women slip into something more comfortable, they talk like choir boys. Adjusting his pictures to temper subtly his suggestive words, Caniff controlled his medium masterfully. The sexual connotations of Delta’s backseat struggles would be intolerable for most readers if she wore skimpy clothing. But Caniff dresses her in a conservative skirt and sweater. Admittedly, she fills them amply, but she keeps her knees out of sight most of the time. Caniff focuses our attention on Delta’s dilemma not on her sexuality. Caniff’s treatment of Madame Lynx illustrates the reverse effect. In the absence of verbal reminders of Lynx’s sexual role, the pictures remind us. In this case, however, Caniff for once misgauged his audience and went too far, upsetting the delicate verbal-visual counter-balance.

And in other parts of the internet...

There is more legal maneuvering to report on the Superman copyright case. There's a summary here, with more detail and the relevant documents here.

Sean T. Collins has an epic series of posts honoring the 30th anniversary of Love and Rockets. Go read them and then check out his updated reading guide to the series as well.

Jillian Tamaki chronicled the trash on her block for Print magazine and the full piece is online.

Hey, what does Milo George think about the new Batman movie?

Today, we bring you the inimitable Bob Levin's review of the newly collected cartoons of the great writer Flannery O'Connor. He wasn't wholly satisfied:

Flannery O’Connor: The Cartoons acts as if there was no mystery as to how she managed. It proceeds as if Step One is "Teach a chicken to walk backwards"; Step Two "Mock Physical Fitness Day"; and Step Three... BANG! You have bumped noses with Hazel Motes. It makes nothing of the newt eyes and bat claws bubbling within O’Connor’s cauldron: prematurely deceased father; controlling, disapproving mother; not entirely chosen celibacy; lurking, potentially fatal genes. It overlooks the gasses fermenting in this mix: frustration and fright, bitterness and pain, grief and rage. All brewed while she drew her way through GSCW. All foretold unseen vistas, untasted spice, unheard notes, unscented perfumes, uncaressed flesh. Only her imagination could compensate. Only it could lead her on. And cartoons only carried her so far. She required a greater conveyance to discharge what she held within.

O’Connor would not encourage this type of analysis.

Off-site, I recommend reading the following, among other links I have surely missed or forgotten:

—An article on Dan Dare and Eagle written by the eminent comics historian Paul Gravett to accompany a British museum exhibition. Gravett's always worth reading.

—Rafael Medoff writing for the Jewish Journal about a 1942 cartoon drawn by Theodore Geisel (that's Dr. Seuss), the only cartoon in which he ever explicitly addressed the Holocaust. (via)

—Robin McConnell, the host of the popular comics radio show Inkstuds, has launched Canadian Comics Archive, an online repository for rare and unusual Canadian comics.

—Noel Murray writes about Comic-Con for the A.V. Club, in which he plausibly claims we are currently going through something of a "golden age" of comics. I think this is arguably true. What puzzles me about Murray's article is that he claims this to be the "legacy of Comic-Con" itself, but never really explains why this particular convention is responsible. I think the efforts of historians like Bill Blackbeard, publishers like Fantagraphics and D&Q and IDW, editors like Spiegelman and Mouly, and scores of individual cartoonists have far more to do with the current renaissance than did any particular movie-promotional event, no matter how visible it is. And they would have done it with or without—and maybe even did it despite—things like Comic-Con. But aside from that flaw, Murray's impressions as an intelligent outsider are worth reading, and make me wish I'd attended.

—Jim Emerson writes about the dumb morality of superhero stories. This just one of dozens of these kinds of stories that have been written over the past few years. I am not linking to it for any other reason other than that I enjoy the idea that the bread and butter for decades' worth of TCJ reviews and articles has now become the most popular hobbyhorse of movie critics instead.

—At the Hooded Utilitarian, Ng Suat Tong reviews Joe Sacco's Journalism, and Marguerite Van Cook ponders the "postmodern sublime" she finds in cartoonists like Ben Katchor and Mark Newgarden.

Well, it's a new day. Did anyone else listen to three entire episodes of Comic Books Are Burning in Hell over the weekend? No? Oh. Well, you should consider indulging in this fine podcast, which makes the best case yet that Joe McCulloch could become a religious leader of some kind, maybe like L. Ron Hubbard. He's just the convincing. Speaking of Joe, here's his Week in Comics.

And elsewhere:

This is actually a Punisher "fan film" by Punisher actor Thomas Jane. Why am I fascinated by this? I don't know. Maybe because I was looking at some Klaus Janson over the weekend.

Somewhat comics-related: The Library of America has launched a companion web site to its American Science Fiction series. Here's William Gibson on Alfred Bester.

Bill Kartalopolous profiles our ol' Ganzfeld co-founder, one-time cartoonist and current Vector Park maestro, Patrick Smith.

Not comics: It's been alternately distrusting and fascinating to watch the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles completely implode. There are many lessons here about curatorial integrity, not pandering, fiscal responsibility, and, as the artists all resign from the board, a lot to be said about maintaining the trust of the people who make the stuff a museum is meant to show.

Finally, TCJ-contributor Frank Santoro has an excerpt from his graphic novel, Storeyville, over at What Things Do.

Ah, the long comics-world nightmare is over, and Comic-Con has ended. According to what I have gathered from reading other comics sites in search of links, a new Superman movie poster has been unveiled, as well as the armor from Iron Man 3. The Eisner Award winners have been announced. Many pictures were taken. (We will surely be linking to more photo reports over the next few days.) And the Evil Eisner-winning Tom Spurgeon has provided his traditional show notes, always worth reading for those who couldn't attend. (For the record, Tom is my favorite comics blogger.)

We don't have much exciting movie news here, unfortunately, but we do have Ryan Holmberg's latest essential column on manga history, this time with a closer look at truth behind the conventional wisdom that Disney animation was the primary influence on Osamu Tezuka. Here's an excerpt:

One of the biggest blind spots in the scholarship on Tezuka Osamu is the assumption that his main access to Disney was through animation.

Granted, first contact might have been made watching Mickey alongside other American animation stars like Popeye and Betty Boop in theatres and at home in the 1930s. Wrote Tezuka in 1973 (roughly translated, here and throughout):

I liked Disney, I adored Disney, here before you is a man whose life was determined by Disney.

I first encountered Mickey around second grade at an animation festival [Tezuka was born in 1928]. Also my father brought home a rickety home projector called the Pathé Baby, and amongst the films he purchased was Mickey’s Choo Choo. From that point on I became attached to Disney by a chain that could not be cut.

And then from fascination to emulation,

I first followed the comics of Tagawa Suihō and Yokoyama Ryūichi. But suddenly, once I became devoted to Disney, I set out to copy and master that stuffed-animal style, eventually ending up with how I now draw.

But note that he does not specify what Disney media he “copied,” and nowhere does he say that he learned to “master” the Disney style on the basis of the animation alone.

We also have Frank Santoro's latest "New Talent Showcase", this time with reports from up-and-comers Angie Wang and Charles Forsman.

Elsewhere...

—The Guardian has an audio slideshow linked to Joe Sacco's recent collaboration with Chris Hedges.

—The Evil Tom Spurgeon has the first part of a massive interview with Image publisher Eric Stephenson.

—In an interview with the art blog Hyperallergic, MoCCA president Ellen Abramowitz revealed a bit more about the reasons for the museum's recent closing, claiming they were primarily financial.

—The A.V. Club revisits Chris Ware's Jimmy Corrigan.

Well, today on the site we have the full complement of Tucker Stone content. I look forward to your complaints. And Sean T. Collins reviews The Walking Dead #100:

When you pick up an issue ofTWD, there’s no telling who’ll be left when you put it down. Your odds of any given issue featuring that kind of shock to the system may be low, but they exist (especially for the milestone issue numbers), which is more than you can say for all but probably under half a dozen monthly comics total. Despite, or because of, the increasing wait between payoffs, Kirkman finds a way to make them worth it, frequently far enough beyond worth it and into gobsmacking awe that he went there that it doesn’t seem like a wait at all.

It's Friday and there's a full weekend of Comic-Con ahead of some of you. The news out of the con thus far is almost completely irrelevant to anything I'm interested in. And yet I can't look away! There's stuff about "dark" things and stuff about "IP" and other stuff. For you TCJ readers demanding things of traditional TCJ interest, you'll be heartened to know that Art Spiegelman's monograph, Co-Mix, named for the now-deceased cutting edge tween culture blog, is coming out from Drawn & Quarterly. Despite his stature, Spiegelman's work remains scattered across decades and mediums, so it'll be nice to have a selection in one book. Anyhow, our man Eric Reynolds has the perfect antidote to all this news: Memories! Sweet, sweet memories from a man who has had waaaay more fun at comic conventions than I ever have.

Elsewhere:

If you can't get enough of Tucker, Jog and the gang, here, listen to their voices!

And if you like comics, you can read about Dennis the Menace here!

And... I bet there will be so much more, so very very soon. But for now, kind people, there's little other comics news. It's all over... there.

For those of you who miss the days when Ken Parille wasn't obsessed with super-powered fights, you're in luck. His new close-reading column is in, and he's set the New 52 issues aside to focus in on John Hankiewicz’s “The Kimball House”. (He also includes a pdf of the comic in question, so as to make it easier to follow along with his formal analysis.) Parille brings it this time. Here's a taste:

Without necessarily knowing the terminology, readers instinctively understand the distinction between a comic’s diegetic and non-diegetic elements. A diegetic element is one that is (or could be) experienced by the story’s characters. A non-diegetic element is not part of their world. For example, a word balloon represents language that characters hear, but the balloon itself is not present; it exists at a level above/outside the narrative. In “The Kimball House” Hankiewicz takes conventional non-diegetic comic book elements and transforms them into diegetic elements. Thus, in panel 2, a thought balloon’s bubble tail (which comes after the command “Think”) becomes a physical object, casting a shadow on the ground. In the next panel, these circular shadows reappear as another form central to comics: the ellipsis. [...]

While the comic’s human characters — the Kimballs and the roofer — are confined to embedded pages, the other ‘characters’ —forms like the ellipsis —appear throughout the comic. “The Kimball House” plays with a limited set of geometrical shapes that function as reoccurring characters: rectangle (as pane, panel, page, house), triangle (as rooftop, arrow top), circle (dot, ellipsis, thought balloon tail bubble, star), along with other main characters — the asterisk (star) and cloud (narration balloon).

Everyone involved in comics seems to be at San Diego right now, so news is relatively light. But there are a few things to read while we wait for the great comics journalists of our time to deliver breathless reports on all of the upcoming movies!

—There are two big interviews with Darwyn "Before Watchmen" Cooke out right now, one on everything Parker/Richard Stark at the Violent World of Parker, which is exhaustive and worthwhile reading for anyone interested in the Stark novels, whether or not you dig Cooke's particular take on the material, and another on superheroes at the A.V. Club, which includes his soon-to-be-(in)famous take on the Watchmen controversy:

In all honesty, I didn’t expect, “Poor Alan Moore.” I just didn’t expect that. So that sort of took me by surprise. I certainly expected people to have an opinion about whether this beloved material should be explored any further, and I believe that that’s a question, but it’s also a challenge that I’m happy to meet. All the stuff with Alan, I didn’t count on that or really give it much thought.

He also maintains that participating in the project isn't as bad as forcing children to starve. Which is true, but maybe setting the bar a little low?

—The Guardian has a report on the great illustrator/cartoonist Quentin Blake's recent work for hospitals.

—Will Brooker, a British academic who specializes in Batman, recommends five comics-related books to The Browser. These are superhero-centric but not stupid choices.

—Tucker Stone previews the next few months of comics releases for Flavorpill.

—And apparently it is comics blogger Heidi MacDonald's thirtieth anniversary as a writer on comics. Torsten Adair has gathered up tributes.

On the site today:

Michael Dean has a report on the news of sudden closure of the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art's Soho location. And Craig Fischer brings us video arguments for the Jack Kirby family. Something to keep in mind as the megalith of Comic-Con rumbles to life. And Sean T. Collins reviews the first issue of Gilbert Hernandez's new series, Fatima the Blood Spinners.

Elsewhere:

-Kevin Huizenga, whose Gloriana (one of the all-time great comics) was recently reissued in hardcover, is interviewed at the AV Club and PW.

-Here's a guide to the Love & Rockets 30th anniversary celebrations at Comic-Con.

-TCJ-contributor Sean T. Collins has a cartoon collaboration with Jonny Negron over at Studygroup.

-I've enjoyed comics by lots of these people, so this Oily Comics subscription seems like a good deal.

-Huh, Peter Milligan and Brendan McCarthy briefly had a comic strip in 1987.

-Finally, here's a mess of Edgar Rice Burroughs covers, just because.

Today Joe McCulloch brings us news of the Week in Comics, and extends his recent streak of being especially amazing with a look back at a little remembered Alan Moore Vampirella story from the late '90s. Here's an excerpt:

Moore, in keeping with the genre, plays up the sexual aspects of these encounters, with a queasy emphasis on acts of violence inflicted upon the sexual-and-therefore-lethal women populating his story; a two-page sequence preceding the image above sees Jack’s slaying of Dracula’s wives intercut with the vampire bursting in on disaffected Lucy & Mia (“So what? I mean, it’s that kind of world these days. I read about Bosnia or Romania, or wherever, and I’m just, like, bored, you know?”), seizing them by the face and hair and ‘taking’ them in a shadowed but distinctly connoted manner not unfamiliar to several Alan Moore works. Yet as Jack gradually reveals to the reader that he’s aware of how shallow this little update seems to be, Moore’s true target comes into view: the purposeless banality of modern society and its pop culture, a full 15 years before the similarly situated The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century, except with an American focus, and the tv sensation Friends standing in for Harry Potter as avatar of all that’s hopelessly shit.

Also, Rob Clough reviews Karrie Fransman's The House That Groaned.

————————

In less welcome news, the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art has abruptly closed its doors and canceled many of its upcoming events, so far limiting its public discussion of this development to a brief notice posted on its Web site and Facebook page. Here is the full text of the announcement:

The Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art (MoCCA), New York City’s only cultural institution dedicated specifically to celebrating the comics medium, will be closing its physical location effective immediately.

The SoHo museum, currently at 594 Broadway, recently celebrated its tenth anniversary. While the physical space is closing, plans are afoot to continue MoCCA in a new and exciting incarnation. An announcement of MoCCA’s future arrangements will be forthcoming by the end of July.

Current memberships will be honored at the new venue, as will table renewals for MoCCA Fest 2013.

They have also claimed on Twitter that they will announce a new venue by the end of the month. (via)

Michael Dean recently reported on the museum's status for its tenth anniversary on this website. Obviously these new developments bear watching.

Elsewhere...

—The cartoonist Seth has recently branched out into barber-shop design, mapping out the look for his wife Tania Van Spyk's new Guelph establishment, Crown Barber Shop. Bryan Munn and Brad Mackay have photos.

—Barry Moser's essay on Flannery O'Connor's cartoons has been excerpted in The New York Review of Books.

—Mark Waid talks to the A.V. Club about his new digital comics venture.

—Robert Boyd, who was recently named the best arts blogger in Houston (he'd certainly have been my vote), has just posted reviews of the latest books from Joe Sacco and Joost Swarte.

—James Romberger has just penned (or keyboarded) a post briefly reviewing a whole slew of books, including titles featuring Mort Meskin, R. Kikuo Johnson, Richard Corben, Brandon Graham, Michael DeForge, and Josh Bayer.

—The Mindless Ones have posted their third and final marathon group reading of Alan Moore & Kevin O'Neill's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century: 2009.

—I don't post links to webcomics very often on here, but I'll always make an exception for Justin Green.

Welcome to the new week. Over the weekend, Frank Santoro posted an interview with Ed Piskor, author of Wizzywig. And we're leading off with the great Bob Levin. Join him as he revisits Ed the Happy Clown:

Drowse-inducing scholarship aside, footnotes can be fun. They can provide hilarious counterpoint to the text (Will Cuppy), an entire alternative narrative (Vladimir Nabokov), the ruminations and reflections of an over-flowing intelligence (David Foster Wallace), or the opportunity to shoehorn in anecdotes one can’t find space for otherwise (Not infrequently, me). In Louis Riel, Brown’s footnotes amplified his text, explained his choices between competing “facts,” afforded voice to others’ differing views, and revealed what he had made-up, overlooked, exaggerated, got wrong, guessed at, can’t explain, and flat-out falsified, wonderfully illustrating the unreliability of historical “truth.” I hoped Ed’s footnotes would provide insight into Brown’s magic. I wanted his thoughts on from where those pygmies and perversions,  plot loops and dimension jumps had come. I hoped to have his genius, wars-and-all, self-investigated.

Elsewhere:

Frank Santoro is giving a talk tonight at 7 pm in NYC as part of the NY Comics & Picture-story Symposium.

Tom Spurgeon has an interview with Rob Salkowitz, who wrote a book about Comic-Con and the pop culture biz.

Here's an interview with cartoonist Jason Karns, who we featured early this year.

Fred Guardineer did some awfully nice work back in the 1940s.

Why does a week that's so short feel so long? Holidays on Wednesdays are just wrong. In any case, we have a your standard comic-book-related Friday distraction for you, with Tucker Stone's weekly column. His guests this week include regulars Nate Bulmer and Abhay Khosla, along with a special visit from this week's holiday-defying MVP, Joe McCulloch! Here's Joe on the old (and new) Ozymandius story:

It’s a commentary on very act of staring into multiple television screens, positing a means of discerning some meaning from contemporary media overload; William Burroughs’s cut-up technique is cited, and, insofar as a wall of television screens is analogous to the stern grids of artist Dave Gibbons’s page layouts, the alert reader is duly congratulated for having sifted through the unorthodox POV shifts and fragmented character histories of the past ten issues to arrive at this point of a nefarious master plan’s gala revelation, though [Alan ]Moore, being Moore, slips in a final puckish joke through the issue’s title: a statement of bravado which the English majors among the readership will know is the last-standing legacy of a doomed ruler’s supreme plans. Basically, Moore is giving away the book’s ending, beyond even the seeming ambiguity of the famous corporate-owned ketchup dripping onto the world-renowned corporate-owned smiley face t-shirt of that fat guy whose childhood I am dying to explore.

Len Wein, in contrast, spends his opening page basically explaining the concept of ambiguity to the slower readers, via a block of metafictional rib-nudging wherein Ozy goes on about how very nearly flawless his crazy plan is, though history will be the judge in the end — because his plan totally might not stand up to history at all, that was the ending of the original book, remember? It’s dramatic irony!

Elsewhere on the internet, many things have been posted. Including...

—Our own Tucker Stone again, this time gushing over Carl Barks.

—The New York Post tracked down Steve Ditko for an article, in which he makes it clear that he has not shared in the profits for the gajillion-dollar Spider-Man juggernaut:

“No,” he tells The Post, when asked if he was paid anything for the four recent Spider-Man movies.

“I haven’t been involved with Spider-Man since the ’60s.”

Whatever the case, the artist doesn’t seem much interested in money. Although he could make thousands doing commissions for fans, he consistently refuses. Instead, he forges ahead on black-and-white, self-published books with titles like “The Avenging Mind.”

“I do those because that’s all they’ll let me do,” he tells The Post, suggesting big publishers aren’t interested in his work anymore.

—The regular Alison Bechdel links are slowing down from daily to weekly, but here's an interesting one: Lee Konstantinou at The New Inquiry.

—Your regular Jack Kirby link comes by way of Rodrigo Baeza's look at Kirby's Davy Crockett strips.

—Daniel Best has posted the transcript to an entertaining (as always) 1979 interview with Jim Steranko, which includes the new (to me) information that Steranko designed the sets and production for an unfinished Alain Resnais film!

—The magazine Guernica has an excerpt from Harvey Pekar & JT Waldman's Not the Israel My Parents Promised Me.

—Donna Barstow is braver than I am. [I'm not taking a side on the argument, for the record.]

—Chris Pitzer has announced that AdHouse will no longer be in the distribution business.

—Part two of the Mindless Ones' extraordinarily thorough crosstalk on Moore & O'Neill's LOEG: Century.

Welcome back. While you were having weenie roasts and throwing firecrackers at neighborhood children, Joe McCulloch was sweating over his computer to bring us a Richard Corben interview and preview of the artist's upcoming projects. Here's Corben on his recent process:

I had been drawing some Hellboy projects and it dawned on me that if I ever wanted to do some projects I wanted, it was time to do it or forget them completely. I decided to promote projects of my own design or choice. I wanted them to have a good start which meant a good writer. Margopoulos’ ideas about Poe horror and mine no longer seemed to mesh well. Jan Strnad would be an excellent choice. I told him I wanted a Poe-esque story that could be a one shot. He agreed and Ragemoor was the result. It came out well, but now it’s over and I wanted more. And to have more control, I would have to do more. Doing a short adaptation of a Poe story wasn’t too difficult and it was a sample of my goals. This and a project outline was sent to Dark Horse and they accepted.

Elsewhere, as you might imagine, it's been slow, but here goes:

-Here's Tim Marchman attempting to talk to Len Wein about Before Watchmen. Marchman found the Ozymandias comic book more interesting than I did. I mean, they're all incredibly dumb, but that one, with it's bullying tropes, faux-risque sex, and barely-there artwork, was allllmost as bad as Silk Spectre, which was the worst (that Darwyn Cooke thing is technically probably the "best" but also the worst because he tries so hard with the cutesy 1950s bullshit that it just seems sad. Loosen those drawers, son! In fact, maybe pity is the new anger in reaction to BW. Like, holy shit, this stuff is so bad it's sad? No, I know, the moral aspect trumps all. Just trying it out.) But then again, they were all "better" than the last DC comics I read -- all of the 52 first issues. But all much worse than any given run of, I dunno, Power Man and Iron Fist. Basically just bad comics. Oh wait, I forgot, I also read (perversely) Batman Earth One, which I guess is some sort of practical joke? Right? Someone dared someone else to make a movie pitch into a book, and include lots of bromancing and Deer Hunter stuff, right? Because I've never seen bromancing like that before. Oh, and yes, I will read superhero comics that arrive in the mail. Dog-like behavior, I know.

-And here's a palette cleanser: A fine C.F. interview on Inkstuds.

So, I swear, that's all I have. It's all I should have. It's that kind of week. And really, all I can say about yesterday is contained in this video of Albert Brooks exploring our national heritage.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7JBrN_R6es&feature=share

I'm not sure how I got from there to here, but nevertheless, here's a video of a Commodore 64 Howard the Duck video game. Huh.

It's a holiday week. Fair warning: We are taking the day off tomorrow. Bank holidays are TCJ holidays. Speaking of... us... we're very happy to have received a Harvey nomination for Best Biographical, Historical, or Journalistic Presentation. Thanks very much.

Today on the site:

Joe McCulloch brings us The Week in Comics, because that's his job.

Elsewhere:

-Bookslut interviews TCJ-contributor Michel Fiffe about fan fiction and his Suicide Squad comic.

-Comix Claptrap features an interview with Dan Zettwoch about his new book, Birdseye Bristoe.

-I've enjoyed Ed Piskor's Wizzywig in its various iterations. I'm really glad it's getting a full release.

-The Believer has an interview with Brian Chippendale on music and comics and art, many months in the making.

-In the history column, Bhob Stewart takes a look at the transforming daily comics page while Daniel Best examines some recent Superman-related legal developments.

And finally, Frank Santoro writes about an Aircel comic. Y'know, it's a funny thing, the surge in interest in 80s-glut action/superhero comics. Surge might even be an exaggeration. In this Twitter/Tumblr feedback loop it's hard to tell what's actually generating lasting interest and what's just a passing click. Anyhow, the point is, most of this interest is from artists -- and really, that's almost the only way these things can be enjoyed -- as material for influence. Frank writes:

The stuff that holds up, to me, sometimes reads like some gang slang. Kinda cool. I'm not trying to convince anyone that these "throwaway" comics are actually any good. I just really like them for the airbrushed tones - real airbrush, none of this Photoshop airbrush crap [...] I doubt any of it is future Art Out of Time material but it is interesting. Even if only for historical reasons. And airbrush coloring.

He's right, it's probably not future Art Out of Time for material, in the sense that it won't, like a lot of the AOOT stuff, broaden and enrich the "canon" (if you'll forgive the term. It's late.). These aren't lost masterpieces, but they contain blips that are almost best seen through, say, Frank's eyes. They're almost impossible to enjoy as they were meant to be enjoyed -- as comics. I mean, they might provide a visceral thrill, but the function has changed. Now they're repositories of technique and attitudes, and ones that have mostly been left unexamined, like a lot of 1980s independent comics, both because of how close we are to that period and because comics was supposed to have transcended that stuff, too. I'm sure there are analogies to be drawn between these comics and z-level horror/SF movies, of course. And... that's all I have on the subject for the moment.

Hear that? No? Me too. It's quiet out there in comics land. I mean, there is a gentle humming of the usual controversies and complaints, but really, it's summer and there's a slow-down afoot. I mean, unless you count SDCC, but I'm not going, and really, why go when I can just read Tom Spurgeon's reports. Soooo much more satisfying. Anyhow, on with the day I guess?

Tucker Stone slows down for no one, and so here he is to get you through the weekend.

And Rob Clough reviews Nelson, the enormous British comics project.

Elsewhere online:

Here's David Brothers on Garth Ennis. Everyone tries to get me into Garth Ennis, but so far I think I only liked his Punisher series. R. Fiore has me wanting to read The Shadow, though. See, I'm susceptible. Oh, and holy shit, did you all read Funnybook Roulette on Wednesday? It's nice to publish one of the all-time greatest writers about comics. I mean, he went from Chester Brown to Alex Ross without skipping a beat. That's just goooood.

And the great R.O. Blechman was recently inducted into the Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame and here's a fine profile on The Atlantic site. Blechman's work is worth seeking out in any form, whether the recent short story collection that D&Q released or his incredibly fun monograph, Behind the Lines, which is now out of print but really important. Jeet Heer interviewed the artist for us last year.

And finally, hey, it's Vern Greene! I love to read about Vern Greene, one of the great personalities in comic strips. Not a major talent, but an important figure and I guy it woulda been fun to chat with.

Today Jeet Heer is back again with a new column, using examples from Seth's latest release, The Great Northern Brotherhood of Canadian Cartoonists, to make the case that the cartoonist has been largely misunderstood. An excerpt:

I’ve written in the past about the process whereby cartoonists invent their ancestors. I meant by that something very banal and literal: the cultural recuperation of Frank King by Chris Ware and Doug Wright by Seth, both cases where the cartoonist being recovered can now be seen as a predecessor of their later-day champion. But Seth has been engaged in the task of inventing ancestors in a more imaginative way as well. In both A Good Life and in The Great Northern Brotherhood of Canadian Cartoonists (or The G.N.B. Double C) Seth very convincingly makes up cartoonists who serve as role-models for the type of work he wants to do.

And Sean T. Collins has a review of Gabriella Giandelli's recent graphic novel Interiorae. An excerpt:

Using a mystical cartoon white rabbit as a sort of spirit-slash-tour guide — half Virgil, half Harvey — Interiorae depicts the discrete, discreet lives of various residents in an apartment building, whose dreams fuel a big, whiny black blob called the Great Dark One that lives in the basement and serves as the building’s heart and soul. The patina of magic realism enlivens the slice-of-lifey material: an old woman dreams of making a grand exit with the help of her immigrant caretaker, a bored housewife makes a big show of cheating on her workaholic husband where everyone can see, a teenager dreams of running off to meet a rock star, a misanthropic horticulturalist alternately accepts and rejects the advances of a promiscuous and attractive neighbor, a boy whose parents are freshly and unpleasantly separated escapes into superheroes and visions of the rabbit himself. It's familiar material.

Elsewhere, there be links:

—Speaking of Jeet, he has a new review of Alison Bechdel's Are You My Mother? at the Globe & Mail, and recommends another one of Chester Brown's Ed the Happy Clown at Maclean's.

—The always-worth-reading Christopher Butcher reacts to the disconcerting new trend of professional publishers resorting to online fundraisers such as Kickstarter. [Argh. I forgot that Dan mentioned this yesterday. But two can play at this game, because yesterday, he stole my Sendak/NYRB link from Friday. So... I guess that's twice as bad, actually. Anyway, the Butcher post is still definitely worth a look.]

—Salon has reprinted a Steven Heller article chronicling the history of Italian comics, with a particular emphasis on photo-comics.

—John Adcock digs up another valuable find, this time from a dusty 1917 issue of Cartoons magazine: "How the Comickers Regard Their Characters".

—Matt Seneca, whose enthusiasm is never set lower than 11, praises the genuinely underappreciated Greg Irons, and his Light.

—Missed it/not comics: Terry Gilliam has listed his ten favorite animated films.

Today we bring you the latest from R. Fiore, who not only discusses the new edition of Ed the Happy Clown, but also has a lengthy disquisition on variant comic book covers for The Shadow, and actually quite a bit more. This one'll keep you busy for a while. Here's a bit about The Shadow:

The prime beneficiaries of the alternate cover come on opposite sides of the consumption spectrum. At one extreme is the collector-loon, who likes nothing more than to have something more to collect. For this buyer Dynamite supplies not only 4 or 5 evenly distributed variant cover designs, but God’s own number of hyper-rare “retailer incentive” variants for collectors to war over. On the other end of the spectrum is the buyer of the collected edition, which will contain all the variants as an appendix. For the buyer who wants to read the comics as they come out but will be damned if he’s going to be gulled into buying more than one copy of the same comic book, it becomes a matter of dubious consumer choice. You are called upon to choose how your comic book is going to be decorated in the same way you choose what color car you’re going to drive. Or more charitably, you are promoted to a practical art critic through the act of choosing.

Elsewhere:

-He brought us some attention this week... here's a fine appreciation of Maurice Sendak from the New York Review of Books.

-Prompted by a recent Tezuka fundraising campaign, Christopher Butcher posted a series of thoughts about Kickstarter. Last week Tim mentioned the ongoing Kickstarter discussions. I'm glad there's some public debate about it.

-Mike Gartland's Failure to Communicate, a series of close readings of the Jack Kirby and Stan Lee comic book stories focused on the tension between Kirby's intentions and Lee's published versions, is now online at the Jack Kirby Museum.

-Cartoonist Brandon Graham checks in with one of his extremely fun updates on all things in his world.

-And finally, via Jeet Heer and Michael Tisserand comes news of sad cutbacks at the New Orleans Times-Picayune. Here's a petition should you wish to get involved.

Today, Joe McCulloch brings us word of the latest comics, and somewhat troublingly continues his ingenuous focus on the work of Sammy Harkham favorite Tim Vigil. (Well, the folks at D&Q will be happy.)

The lobrow yu(c)ks continue in Brandon Soderberg's review of Pat Aulisio's Bowman 2016, a loose riff on/rip-off of/sequel to 2001. An excerpt:

Bowman 2016 has a warts-and-all approach to science fiction that recalls films like Alien or Silent Running as much as the heady, sophisticated Kubrick classic. The Bowman series’ brilliance comes from the way that Aulisio attacks 2001 like an adoring slavish fan of the originals, and a snarky jokester, who deflates the whole thing with Porky’s-esque dick jokes and gritty, autobio comics emotion.

Elsewhere:

—The animation historian Michael Barrier reviews a new Thomas Andrae & Carsten Laqua book on Walt Kelly.

—Chris Mautner remembers Matt Groening's Life in Hell.

—Tim O'Shea interviews Mike Dawson about Troop 142 (and Mike explains why he had to stop producing podcasts for this site).

—Michael Shelley's WFMU program this past Saturday included a brief interview with Mark Newgarden about Ernie Bushmiller's Nancy. (It starts at about an hour-and-a-half in, if you don't feel like listening to the music.)

—Famed convention reporter (and cartoonist) Brian Ralph has photos and stories from the just-past Heroes Con in Charlotte.

—And Kramers Ergot contributor Shary Boyle was chosen to represent Canada in next year's Venice Biennale.

Welcome to the new week. Yesterday on the site Frank Santoro put up his latest New Talent Showcase, this time with guest writer Ariel LeBeau.

And R.C. Harvey comes in with his latest profile, this time of the underrated adventure cartoonist Zack Mosley. Mosley had a great feel for the grotesque, which, as you'll learn, he came by via the great Chicago cartooning school, not to mention a serendipitous hiring of Boody Rogers. Here's a taste:

While waiting for an appointment, he wandered in to Walter Berndt's office, and after canoodling a little about Berndt's strip, Smitty, Mosley heard some startling news: Patterson was about to double the Sunday comic section to sixteen pages. Before Mosley had time to rejoice at the timing of his errand, Berndt went on to explain that the new strips would be selected from 400 candidates already on exhibition awaiting the Captain's decision. Mosley decided to enhance the odds in this 400-1 shot: he would go ahead and see Patterson in order to show his strip personally.

The Captain was not impressed. "You're a lousy artist," he said when he saw Mosley's samples. "But you seem to know a lot about aviation. How much pilot time have you had?"

And elsewhere:

Tom Spurgeon has an excellent interview with Ed Brubaker, in which they discuss Marvel, Before Watchmen, and ownership. It's your essential read of the week.

The Mindless Ones has a fine installment of its podcast, Silence!

Over at our kind publisher's site, Kim Thompson has notes on the latest Tardi book, New York Mon Amour.

And finally, here's "The Impudent Excursion" by Edward Gorey, from the May 1962 issue of Holiday.

Today on the site we have Rob Clough on some selected periodical comics of all shapes and sizes.

Elsewhere:

The big news is, of course, the end of Matt Groening's long and excellent comic strip, Life in Hell. Here's TCJ-contributor Richard Gehr's interview with the artist, and here's a short appreciation by Tom Spurgeon.

Benjamen Walker has a wonderful radio report on the gathering of the comic book tribes last month in Chicago. Two more from Chicago, this time from last weekend's inaugural CAKE: A wrap-up from Secret Acres and a very funny travelogue from D&Q's Jessica Campbell.

Elsewhere in the midwest we find this interview with Joseph Remnant and Jeff Newelt on Harvey Pekar's Cleveland.

And a couple of excellent image-based posts: Who knew that the great Seymour Chwast took a crack at redesigning the Bazooka Joe graphics? And Greg Cook visited Brian Chippendale's studio; I can tell you that these pictures are real.