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Good morning. Today we present an obituary of the much-admired artist Jeffrey Jones, as well as Joe McCulloch's latest column on the week in comics.

Elsewhere:

Jean-Christophe Menu, outspoken co-founder of the prominent French publisher L'Association, has apparently left the company. Tom Spurgeon and Bart Beaty have the available information and a bit of analysis here and here.

Robert Crumb gives a weird interview to his own website, in which he briefly comments in sometimes surprising ways on various public figures, such as Andy Warhol, Stanley Kubrick, Obama, Bob Dylan, and Tommy James and the Shondells (he's a fan!).

Bill Rechin, creator of the comic strip Crock, has passed away.

The eminent British comics critic Paul Gravett picked his top five political graphic novels for CNN. None of them are bad books, but a few of them don't strike me as very political, except in the broadest sense.

Our own Rob Clough writes about the minicomics of Susie Cagle.

Sometimes I read Tucker Stone's column and I am so so glad that I have no idea what he's talking about.

I heard from this guy on the subway that May 21 is the day the Y2K bug finally strikes. I may be a pessimist but I don't think our new robot rulers are gonna let us spend much time sitting around reading about comic books (was Monday's outage a preliminary attack?), so get your kicks in now. We'll all be working in the coltan mines soon.

Some ways to while away your final hours:

Dustin Harbin says goodbye to the Doug Wright Awards with one last diary entry. It has been fun to see the rolling waves of pleasure and argument getting started after each entry went up.

And Richard "Know Your New Yorker Cartoonists" Gehr weighs in with a review of Leslie Stein's new Eye of the Majestic Creature.

Oh, and did we forget to mention that issue 301 made New York Magazine's Approval Matrix? It did.

Elsewhere on the internet:

A great profile of Richard Thompson from the Washington Post. (Bill Watterson alert.)

Video footage has arisen from the 2010 APE interview Dan Clowes gave to Dan Nadel. (One of the reasons I like this interview is that before the show, Frank Santoro and I send Dan our most shameless comics-fan questions, and then he actually asked most of them.) [via]

TCAF has been getting all the glory, but Eric Reynolds went to the Swedish SPX festival in Stockholm, along with former TCJ.com diarist Vanessa Davis, Gabrielle Bell, Trevor Alixopulos, Dash Shaw, Brent Warnock, and many others. Check out his photos here.

Tom Devlin, Chris Oliveros, and John Porcellino took a trip with Chester Brown to visit his childhood environs. Tom Devlin Chris Oliveros has the photos (and their comic-panel equivalents from Brown's work) in a great post over here.

Joakim Gunnarsson didn't like the reproductions used in the recent Buz Sawyer book, and explains why here. The book's editor, Rick Norwood, shows up in the comments to defend himself.

Conflict of interest alert: Sammy Harkham announces the next edition of Kramers Ergot, and Dan's his new publisher:

Mondo (Alamo Drafthouse) is releasing a limited-edition screen print of Chris Ware's poster for the film Uncle Boonmee, going on sale this morning.

Finally—and "not comics"—an item for those into hand-wringing discussions about criticism only: This post about the lack of negative jazz criticism is really interesting for the way it corresponds (and doesn't) with the state of comics criticism. (It was more interesting before that site switched to TypePad last night and lost all its comments in the process.)

Well, Tim and I were heartened to know so many of you missed us for the 7 or 8 hours the site was down. We didn't know anyone was reading. Tim actually had me convinced that the current TCJ only appears on my screen in Brooklyn and one special, child-proof screen in New Jersey (not even in Tim's house, but just somewhere in New Jersey!). I suspected he was lying, so I feel vindicated now and maybe I'll tell my parents about this thing! They'll be so proud of my new life in comics.

Anyhow, insert your transition here, on the site today:

-Dustin Harbin: Day 2. I'm really glad to have Dustin's specific take on the Doug Wright Awards, and just glad to be working with him. The one time I went down to Heroes-Con in 2007 with Frank and Tim we really had a blast. Everyone did, including Brian Ralph, who may or may not have ever really recovered from it.

-Joe McCulloch heroically turns in yet another week in comics. The man is not human!

Oh, and what is that lead-in image, you might ask? Why it's a Neal Adams drawing from The Cartoonist's Cookbook, publishing in 1966. This tome, which has an intro from unsung early comics historian Stephen Becker, is pretty damn amazing, replete with, food memories and recipes by cartoonists famous and (now) obscure. Richard Gehr, of Know Your New Yorker Cartoonists fame, gave me a copy last night when we went to see Lee Lorenz play some damn fine jazz at Arthur's last night. Yes, this Lee Lorenz. Blows a mean coronet.

Here's Neal Adams, who talks lovingly about his wife cooking Chinese food.

And if this is not one of the best photos of a cartoonist, ever, then... well, then I guess I'm wrong.

Ladies and gents: Bill Holman!

The facing page has this priceless quote: "Holman says he never did an honest day's work until he sold 96,000 gag cartoons." And: "He has a reputation about money somewhat similar to Jack Benny's". Who's Jack Benny? Oh! Min! Plop!

And elsewhere online:

Tom Spurgeon has your answers regarding the out/sold out/out status of TCJ 301, not to mention our brief outage yesterday, complemented by a photo of me giving my "intense dude" stare. That's what I look like right now. OMG.

Comics Alliance has a preview and appreciation of Jacque Tardi's The Arctic Marauder.

Sean T. Collins looks into the comic/film synergy at Marvel Comics. Dapper Dan, meanwhile, is holding out hope for the Green Lantern movie.

So that didn't work. Sorry about the disruption this morning. Apparently the e-mails sent out to remind us to renew our domain name were sent to the inactive address of a person who no longer works at Fantagraphics. It seems to be all fixed now, though, and shouldn't be a problem ever again. Though keep track of this date a year from now, and we'll see.

Okay, and we have two new prose columns up. First, R.C. Harvey is back with more thoughts about Bill Blackbeard.

[Bob] Beerbohm’s question hangs in the air: Why did no one know that Blackbeard had died? The man whose passion for collecting comic strips had launched hundreds of reprint projects slipped away without anyone knowing? “Why is that?”

And Frank Santoro posted his most recent Layout Workbook Sunday. This time, the topic was Asterios Polyp. (Have you been following along with this stuff? The sheer mass of evidence Frank has laid out so far is pretty impressive.)

Once I was teaching a class in my studio and I would randomly open Asterios Polyp to a spread and diagram it from the center out. The folks in the class practically fainted when they would see a random spread "line up" right in front of their eyes with a few twists of a compass. It's fun! Try it at home!

Austin English reviews a book likely to be one of the year's major releases, Lorenzo Mattotti's Stigmata.

Often, in a comic, if the reader is unsure of how to react to a particular character's physicality, it's due to the poverty of the cartooning (or the imaginative breadth of the story). But with Stigmata, the portrayal of the main character is so sophisticated that it defies us to size him up.

Finally, Dustin Harbin is our newest diarist. He went to TCAF, and drew a week's worth of cartoons about it. Entry one is up now.

Dustin isn't the only one filling out their convention reports a little late, and it's understandable if you're TCAF'd out by now. All the same, two recent posts on the show are still worth a look: Dylan Williams's (especially in light of the far less sanguine takehe offered after this year's MoCCA and Stumptown festivals), and Tom Devlin's, just because he may be the funniest tour guide in comics.

In Jeet Heer news, he reviewed Chester Brown's Paying for It in the Toronto Globe and Mail, and does so from a personal angle.

And now his daughter is getting into the comix tawk game.

Tom Hart, the best-liked man in comics, is holding a fundraiser for his Sequential Artists Workshop. Go here for more info.

Finally, Bhob Stewart has dug up a can't-miss oddity, with a back story involving Doug Moench, Robert Roger Ebert, and Vampirella.

Welcome back. On the site today:

* A fond farewell to Joyce Farmer! Here's Day 5. Thanks, Joyce!

* Wrapping up our week of Chester Brown we have Scott Grammel's 1990 interview with the artist in its entirety! Compare and contrast! Let's look back for a second on our Chester-ness. We have: Sean Rogers' interview; R. Fiore's meditation; Naomi Fry's essay; and Ed Park's notes. Spend the weekend with 'em all!

Anyhow, by the time you read this I will have gone to the opening of Zap: Masters of Psychedelic Art, 1965-1974, curated by Gary Panter and Chris Byrne. Lucky for you went by the gallery on Wednesday to check in on it. Drawn from Glenn Bray's collection, the show is what you think it is: a few dozen excellent examples of work from the Zap artists from the comic book itself and contemporaneous collections. There are full stories by Robert Williams, Gilbert Shelton, and R. Crumb, and enormous pages by S. Clay Wilson, Rick Griffin and Spain (two panoramic scenes by Spain are particularly striking), as well as a wonderful page by Moscoso -- the first original of his from that period that I've ever seen. I gotta say, seeing a sequence of Williams pages in person made me remember what a phenomenal draftsman he is. The hot-rod honed precision rendering plus a phenomenal ability to work multiple figures on a single plane makes him look pretty damn great these days. Reproductions don't really do justice the sheen of his pen line. Plus, the guy worked only slightly larger than reproduction-size. Jeezuz. Anyhow, it's good to see these artifacts all gathered in one place. Some work better as "drawings" than others, but as a 360-degree view of that art, this is hard to beat. Plus, of course, I love that Panter, who has for the past few years been doing a sort of "my art history lineage" lecture, is curating this particular segment of his influence cloud. Seeing it through Gary's eyes deepens the choices and the work itself.

Sayeth Gary on his blog:

The accompanying cover of ZAP comix number one which appeared in microscopic form as an item in the Electric Last Minute, the fold-out poster calendar that came free in every issue of EYE magazine back in the late  sixties, blew my mind. It was familiar and foreign– backward-looking AND forward-looking. The tiny cover, pictured, reminded me of old Popeye comics or of the Nutt Brothers by Gene Ahearn, the last of the really old-timey looking comics in the newspaper. It was a year or so before I got my hands on a Zap, which by the way is a trademarked logo and the rights are shared by the aforementioned Zap group of artists, and I wasn’t disappointed. There was a high level of skill, experimentation and a rabid interest in pushing the limits of allowed content and social critique. Some of the artists I had seen before: Rick Griffin’s work had appeared in surf mags; I looked forward to Robert William’s complex and disturbing, hence exciting, ads for Ed Roth monster shirts in various hot rod mags; Wonder Wart Hog I had seen in hot rod cartoons magazines and in his own short lived magazine; plus, I had been magnetically drawn to the funny greeting card racks in drug stores by the commercial illustrations of Robert Crumb. Something amazing had happened! A bunch of edgy cartoonists that I was already watching had grown their hair out, formed an experimental drawing club, teamed up with more insane drawers and moved to San Francisco to be hippie cartoonists and poster artists. WOW! That premise was exciting enough, but when I finally got my hands on an issue of Zap I was ecstatically pleased to see that the drawing was of such a high, controlled, inventive, diverse order and that the disparate approaches, experiments and stylizations were somehow successfully fused into soupy collaborative drawings, just… well, it was a lot to consider.

Well anyhow, I'll post some pix from the opening and such next week, I suppose. Should be a hoot. The catalog, by the way, is a mammoth affair: 14" x 16", 48 pages, showcasing the artwork larger than it's ever been printed, I supposed. [PLUG ALERT!] In about a week PictureBox will be exclusively carrying the thing. It's a run of 1000, so you'll wanna get 'em while you can.

Now, onwards, to something else.

* Bleeding Cool gets a comment from Bill Sienkiewicz on a 2005 proposal for a Wonder Woman series he wanted to do with Frank Miller. As the world's only human who prefers DK2 to the original, I would have liked to see that series. That reminds me, does anyone out there know if  Sienkiewicz, who at one point shared a studio with Stan Drake, worked on the latter's Kelly Green series? Kelly Green! Overlooked graphic novel of '80s.

* Heidi MacDonald went to see Steranko, Simonson and Quesada talk and has a report.

* Oh man, that is one bad-ass cover on the upcoming Marti book.

* This is a great little mystery over at Stripper's Guide.

Have a great weekend.

Chester Brown Week continues today with a review from Naomi Fry:

What does good sex consist of, exactly, for a straight man? I’ll admit, in the spirit of full disclosure, that this might not the most apt question to be puzzling out in my current state as a bloated, fatigued, 39-weeks-along pregnant woman, but let’s give it a try anyway...

And Joyce Farmer is back with another diary entry. In this one, she reflects back on an earlier portion of her life:

Thus began my radicalization. I was astounded that I had to prove to the state that I was suicidal, when all I wanted was an abortion, clean and safe.

Elsewhere:

Ed Champion interviews Daniel Clowes for his popular podcast series.

Forbidden Planet reports on the wrap party for Alan Moore's Dodgem Logic.

There are two recently published articles on race and superhero comics getting lots of attention on the internet this week. This one is better than the other.

The history of the "Bechdel" rule told through links.

Also, apparently one of Harvey Pekar's final projects may be having publication problems, though it is difficult for me to see what exactly is going on, if anything.

Finally, here's a couple of the better TCAF reports I've seen going around:

A nice one from Secret Acres. (And I agree with what they say—the new Koyama Press releases are impressive.)

And a two-parter from John Porcellino.

And Jeet Heer e-mailed me a few more photos from the convention:

Happy Wednesday. On the menu today:

* Ed Park joins us for our week of Chester Brown with the somewhat self-explanatory and can't be described anyway, Notes to a Note on the Notes of Chester Brown.

* Mike Dawson returns with his latest TCJ Talkie (yes, I named it that. Proudly!) with guest Josh Cotter.

* Joyce Farmer, Day 3.

* TCJ related: Apparently Randy Chang is the best boyfriend ever.

Meanwhile, elsewhere online we have:

* Jeet Heer's appreciation of the the Doug Wright Award-winning Spotting Deer.

* Daniel Best has put together a kind of "Don Heck In His Own Words" from various interviews, which are not sourced on the site itself -- hopefully he'll add some sources soon in the interest of giving credit where credit is due. In any case, it's a great read, as Heck, while somewhat of a hack (ok, more than somewhat) did have some bright spots and comes off as a smart and earnest guy. I especially like the grounded-ness of moments like this:

I used to like Iron Man in the beginning, because of the characterization I could get into. Like when I had Happy Hogan, and Pepper Potts. When I was doing Pepper, I was thinking of Schultzie, who was the secretary on the Bob Cummings Show.  In other words, she was the girl who never quite got the date with the boss; he's always watching all those good-looking girls. But they were characters, in a certain sense of the word. Happy Hogan was an ex-fighter. I think they were fun to do. They had personalities you couldn't miss. I did the first Iron Man story. They have it listed that Jack Kirby did the breakdowns, but that's not true. I did it all. They just didn't bother to call me up and find out when they wrote up the credits. It doesn't really matter. Jack Kirby created the costume, and he did the cover for the issue. In fact the second costume, the red and yellow one, was designed by Steve Ditko. I found it easier than drawing that bulky old thing.

* Tucker Stone digs into some recent comics and some shit-talking theory over at The Factual Opinion.

And now, kind people, my last bit about TCAF: Some blurry iPhone pix! Chris Ware actually explained to me that the new iPhone photo software is worse than the old, and so I'll hold onto that as I reveal my poor photography skills.

Another big day at the Comics Journal East.

First, Chester Brown Week continues with a new column from the inimitable R. Fiore:

I like to imagine the Canadian Council for the Arts anticipating what that fine young fellow Chester Brown is going to follow Louis Riel with. Something about the Manitoba Schools Question, perhaps. Oh, it’s called Paying for It, eh? Well, that sounds more like the Klondike Gold Rush. Bit of a hackneyed subject, but the lad is bound to have found a novel approach . . .

Then Joyce Farmer continues her week of diary entries. Today's for the pen-and-ink enthusiasts, nothing but materials talk:

Crow quill pens are in a class by themselves, the nibs are round and the penholders are short and cut to accommodate the round nib. Anyone who masters crow quill is a genius and I give him or her my utter respect.

And of course, just like every other Tuesday, Joe "Jog" McCulloch brings you the week in new comics, with a little something extra for your reading pleasure:

I wasn’t planning on writing about my Free Comic Book Day experiences; frankly, I didn’t expect anything of note to happen.

Elsewhere:

Martin Wisse digs up an image of and information about an amazing-looking new comics museum in China.

I think Tom Spurgeon's rambling convention reports may be my favorite recurring feature at the Comics Reporter. He went to TCAF this weekend, so I'm in luck.

Matt Seneca writes about some of his favorite comics that also work as criticism. He uses a definition of criticism broad enough to include straight-up parodies, but that's okay with me—I try not to be a purist about such things. Anyway, he picks out a great, overlooked Spiegelman piece, and forgets all about Harvey Kurtzman, an oversight I hope will be corrected in a part two or three somewhere down the line.

Here's a super-short interview with Chris Ware from an apparently new Greek comics site. The intro's in Greek, but the discussion itself is in English. The part about superheroes and science fiction is interesting, in light of the amazing science fiction story he created for Acme Novelty Library 19.

Finally, Matthias Wivel's been blogging up a storm this week, republishing an Andreas Gregersen essay on Ice Haven and The Death Ray, as well as his own (relatively) negative take on Mister Wonderful, plus a brief appreciation of Dominique Goblet.

Before I dive into TCAF and such: We are pleased to begin our week of coverage of Chester Brown's new book, Paying for It. Leading things off is an interview with Brown by Sean Rogers. Later in the week we'll post Scott Grammel's 1990 TCJ interview. Also on tap are pieces by R. Fiore, Naomi Fry, and Ed Park.

In non-Canadian TCJ news: Please welcome Joyce Farmer to the Cartoonist's Diary stage. And Frank Santoro's Layout Workbook part 9 went up yesterday. Frank's back-issue box was much missed this weekend.

Anyhoooo, I'm just back from TCAF, where, fittingly enough, the fest was gripped by Chester Brown mania. The lines for his signings (he stands and then signs on a cardboard box) were as long as I've ever seen for anyone. The festival was, as usual, quite a lot of fun -- well attended, brisk sales, and good vibes. Most of what I saw and did during TCAF was at night, as I was manning ye ol' PictureBox table both days. But from what I can gather, the buzzy books included DeForge's Lose #3, the Floyd Gottfredson Mickey Mouse collection, Lucille by Ludovic Debeurme, and of course, Paying for It.

Upon landing on Friday I embarked on a high-powered TCJ meeting with Jeet Heer, during which we discussed such weighty topics as: the proper reproduction techniques for ben-day dots; "photo-realism" and the comic strip; and who's right and who's wrong. Many problems were solved. Then I moderated a conversation with Adrian Tomine, Seth, Chris Ware and Chester Brown. The room was packed and the artists were in great, chatty form. That night there were yet more high-powered TCJ tet-a-tets tête-à-têtes with Canadian correspondents like Sean Rogers and Chris Randle. I witnessed no dancing, per se, though Brecht Evans Evens as in attendance.

The Doug Wright Awards happened Saturday night. It was, as usual, an entertaining and enjoyable ceremony. Best book went to Bigfoot by Pascal Girard (best known, of course, as a TCJ diarist). Alex Fellows was given the Best Emerging Talent award for Spain and Morocco; and Michael DeForge is now a two-time DWA-winner, having received the Pigskin Peters Award (Given to non-traditional and avant-garde comics) for Spotting Dear, though surely his greatest honor will be as an upcoming TCJ diarist! The ceremony also included a witty, buoyant conversation between Seth and Reid Fleming cartoonist David Boswell, who was inducted into the Giants of the North Hall of Fame.

A few links for kicks:

-Your "1970s Marvel stars" beginnings and endings links:

*Dark Horse is canceling Jim Shooter's much lamented reboots of Magnus: Robot Fighter, Turok: Son Of Stone, Doctor Solar: Man Of The Atom. I hope this means it's finally time for C.F., Gary Panter, and Frank Santoro to have their shots.

* Jim Starlin wants to tell you about Breed III.

-And finally, I always have time for a Mort Meskin Vigilante episode.

We just received the following e-mail from Ryan Standfest, editor/publisher of Rotland Press + Comic Works:

Mr. Tom Neely reported this morning that while traveling across the border to Canada to attend this year's TCAF, the five copies of the black humor comics anthology BLACK EYE that he was carrying with him to the festival were confiscated/seized by a customs agent on the grounds that the material in BLACK EYE was "obscene."

According to Neely:

"... They took 'em. I tried to get them to just ship them back to me at home, but they said they were required to send it to Ottawa for review... if they found the material to be 'obscene' they would take 'further action.' I asked what 'further action' meant and he said they would just destroy them. Or there is a chance they might ship them back to me.

"It was the page of Onsmith's gags that they first saw... I tried to tell them that it was 'parody' and 'humor' and the rest of the book had essays on the history of dark humor... the customs guy was really cool and understanding, but he said he just couldn't let them through. I just hope 'further action' doesn't involve being arrested the next time I try to cross the border."

More details to come as we learn them.

Good morning, folks. A couple new things are up for you this morning.

Rob Clough reviews the second issue of Dunja Jankovic's Habitat.

Also, Mike Dawson's podcast, TCJ Talkies (did I already tell you that Dan came up with that name? I think I'm gonna be reminding you often), is now available on iTunes. You can find it here.

And because Dan decided to talk about Viking movies yesterday instead of providing links, I should announce that Shaenon Garrity turned in her inaugural webcomics column yesterday. Check it out.

Elsewhere on the internet:

The New Yorker's Richard Brody recently weighed in on a minor kefuffle in film-crit world (more here), and while I don't really have any interest in discussing the topic at hand, Brody did bring up something relevant to comics criticism:

At newspapers and magazines, as here at The New Yorker, classical-music critics and pop-music critics are usually different people. With movies, things are different: David Denby and Anthony Lane write about “The Dilemma,” “Source Code,” and “Toy Story 3”; about “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives” and “Meek’s Cutoff”; and about the life work of Robert Bresson and Abbas Kiarostami. Though analogies between the arts are inexact, the boundaries between classical and pop cinema are as fluid as are the interests and curiosities of critics who do the cinema justice. D. W. Griffith, Charlie Chaplin, Carl Theodor Dreyer, and Sergei Eisenstein are artistic peers, regardless of the differences in their cultural heritage and context, and one of the great discoveries made by critics—the young French writers at Cahiers du Cinéma in the nineteen-fifties, the inventors and advocates of the politique des auteurs (or “auteur theory”) who are now better known as the filmmakers of the French New Wave—is the recognition that some of cinema’s most popular latter-day artists, such as Alfred Hitchcock and Howard Hawks, are not merely skillful showmen but classical artists, akin to the writers and painters of the grand tradition, despite working in popular styles and genres in the employ of a mass-media industry.

Comics, too (or at least modern comics), has something of the same "problem"—it began as (and remains?) a popular art form, and as a result of that, many of the most historically and aesthetically important comics are not sufficiently "serious" for more respectability-minded contemporary critics and artists. This is partly where the vitality—and for some, the embarrassment—of comics come from. It's an issue that permeates nearly everything written about the form, and won't be going away during our lifetimes. I have mixed feelings about how film critics have handled their version of the same issue, but it's worth keeping in mind.

Related?

No-Prize to the first reader who can guess why this story makes me sad.

Pete Hamill briefly discusses the comics in this pretty great interview about Osama bin Laden, 9/11, and his life in newspapers.

Nice Daniel Clowes interview at the Wall Street Journal.

The Chilean critic Ariel (How to Read Donald Duck) Dorfman offers his own somewhat idiosyncratic take on the idiotic-on-all-sides Superman-renounces-his-citizenship story. (Thanks, RB.)

Pretty astonishing figure for this Dark Knight Returns splash page at auction yesterday: $448 thousand! Is that the most money ever paid for original comic art?

Not comics: John Coltrane doodles.

And don't forget: depending on where you live, tomorrow is Free Comic Book Day.

First of all, I didn't invite Tim. Apparently I promised I would, but then got it in my head that he didn't want to go, and so I went to the press screening of Thor by myself. I wore 3-D glasses. I chewed gum. The popcorn line was too long, so there was no popcorn.

Thor! It was supposed to be good. It's not. It's not unwatchable like those two Fantastic Four movies, but it's pretty lame. Here's the deal (oh, right, SPOILER ALERT!): Thor is arrogant and is banished from Asgard to New Mexico, where he is rescued by Jane Foster and co. Natalie Portman plays Jane like a ditzy schoolgirl, but she doesn't have much to work with, so it's not her fault. She was good in Black Swan, though! Anyhow, Loki conspires to take over Asgard, blah blah blah, The Destroyer is sent to Earth to kill Thor, who recovers his hammer just in time to beat him, and then return to Asgard to beat Loki. S.H.I.E.L.D. is in the film, as is one Avenger, and there are allusions to Bruce Banner, and of course, Samuel L. Jackson makes an appearance. Oh, and there is tons of father/son/brother stuff that seems like an attempt at seriousness but rings hollow because we have nothing invested in the relationships. (Note to screenwriters: You have to set up the relationship with some backstory before ending it. Otherwise it's just a plot mechanism. Which is the point. Sorry I brought it up.) The end.

Phew. Now look, I have no attachment to these characters, though I certainly like Jack Kirby's Thor, and also Walt Simonson's, and the recent Matt Fraction issues were a hoot. It's not like I was looking for some perfect version of Thor and co., but an entertaining movie would be nice. It seems to me the best thing you can do with this stuff is make it grand and colorful and cosmic. Also, as a friend pointed out, Thor is kinda girly with his blond do and floppy garb. I mean, he's a hippy dude with a hammer. But here he's a muscle dude with no discernible charisma and not an ounce of femininity. One of the running jokes in the film (because, post-Iron Man, there have to be running jokes—which becomes a problem when no one in the movie has any comedic timing) is that Thor is soooooo hot.

So anyway, the biggest problem (aside from the above, which are big problems, but ones that can be solved with a toke or two if you were so inclined) is that the whole thing looks blah, and this cannot be solved with a toke. Or even a bong hit. Needless to say, no one took our Comics Comics Contest seriously. The colors are all dull bronzes, concrete grays, and muddy greens. The rainbow bridge has no rainbow, but rather seems more like a flickering data-stream from the Matrix. The Asgardian architecture, so nuttily psychedelic in the old comics, is here more like Frank Gehry on steroids. And the costumes are, as per usual with these things, trying to be "realistic." They're indistinguishable from Game of Thrones, which is indistinguishable from Lord of the Rings, etc. All this "realism" has worn thin. What happened to color? Also, dudes, the 3-D makes the movie look worse. Was it added later? Must've been. Because of all the dimensional layers the fight scenes are very difficult to understand, all the stuff on earth is hard to "read," and the tones are all darkened. Bad idea. Cameron had it right with the only-slightly-better-because-it-knew-it-was-silly Avatar: Bright fucking colors and wide shots! The only good thing to look at in Thor was Destroyer, and that's probably because it's pretty much exactly Jack Kirby's design, he's supposed to be metallic (so the gray is OK), and the scale (Destroyer = Biiiig) works.

And so, with nothing much to look at... well... there's not much left. Our protagonists are dull; our plot is rote. The only bright spot in the movie is Stellan Skarsgard as a scientist and mentor to Portman. My favorite movie with Skarsgard remains The Glass House, in which he plays an evil guy in an awesome glass house who adopts and then tries to kill Leelee Sobieski for her money. Skarsgard always looks like he's slightly drunk and about to hit on you, your girlfriend, and your cousin. And that totally works. It's entertaining. He's the same here: A scientist of no particular purpose, he just kinda looks on and smirks, dispenses advice, and seem immune to Thor's hotness. He's more focused on the waitress at the diner. Or he is in my mind.

Oh, Stan Lee makes an appearance, too. Jack Kirby, who co-created the comic book with Lee but really built the "property" and invented the look and mythology of the thing (that's pretty well established now) gets a "special thanks" at the very end of the credits (and I mean the very end), along with Simonson, and a few others. [UPDATE: Heidi points out the Lee, Kirby and Lieber get co-creator creds at the beginning of the credit roll -- I must've blinked] Nice! I wouldn't expect much more from Marvel, and won't sour this edition of the DDSMC by dwelling, but I will gently guide you again to this article by Michael Dean on Marvel's treatment of Kirby and this interview (parts 1 and 2) by Mark Hebert from 1969. Hey guys! Remember Jack Kirby! No use shouting. No one is listening.

Anyhow, assuming this edition of DDSMC won't get me banned from press screenings, I'll be with you all summer long from one Super Movie to the next. Maybe I'll invite Tim next time. Maybe.

This morning at the Journal, Rob Clough reveals his top twenty-five minicomics of 2010 (and throws in a few broadsheets for good measure).

Hayley Campbell files a personal report from the international comics festival of Barcelona, featuring appearances from her father (Eddie Campbell) and Kurt Busiek. Apparently zombies are kind of big in Spain.

Tom De Haven reviews Joe Ollmann's Mid-Life ("attention ought now to be paid").

Lots of Chester Brown coverage out there (the Journal's will begin next week).

Brad Mackay wrote a thoughtful review of Paying For It at the Globe and Mail. (Don't miss the panel-by-panel visual examination of Brown's style.) Mackay adds a little more background here.

Our own Sean Rogers reviews the book over at The Walrus. Sometimes I think the best writers about comics are all Canadian.

It is interesting to me that Mackay (like many of the reviewers so far) draws a clear separation between the comics section of Brown's book and the commentary that follows it. ("I expect most people will judge this book on the comics, not the commentary, and these are some of the best comics of Brown’s career.") In my reading of the book, I wasn't able to separate the two so cleanly. I am not talking about the obvious political dimensions of the book (which advocates for decriminalizing prostitution, if you just logged on to the comics internet for the first time)—most adult readers are able to appreciate material morally alien to them to one degree or another. I just mean that the notes so inform the rest of the book (and the character of "Chester Brown," among others) that it seems to me a distortion of the book to divide the parts too cleanly.

Somewhat related: Ed Park contributes an excellent essay touching on Brown's frequent use of notes throughout his career, and particularly in Paying For It, for a new website called the Toronto Standard. If you are the type of reader who doesn't like to know how a book ends beforehand, you might want to bookmark it for now. But don't forget to come back later. This is one of the best things about the book I've seen so far.

Nick Gazin's latest comic-book review column for Vice is up, and includes short interviews with Gilbert Hernandez, Johhny Ryan, Michael DeForge, and Benjamin Marra. (The Gilbert H. interview is the longest and best.)

I'm gearing up for TCAF this weekend and have been tricked into moderating a panel Friday night with Chester Brown, Seth, Adrian Tomine and Chris Ware. All men who are smarter, more successful and more liked than I am. I'm sure they'll go easy on me, right guys? Uh, guys? I'm working through my fear. How? By working on TCJ, of course.

So! I should note that you have days, or perhaps only hours until the vaunted TCJ archive goes behind ye ol' pay wall. Right now we're up to issue 68. Might I suggest having a peek at issue 66? Some fine Scholz and Groth material in there.

On to some links:

Over at The Panelists there's a bit about young Hugh Hefner's early life as a wannabe cartoonist.

Here's a short but tantalizing article about the comics publisher Lev Gleason (Crime Does Not Pay, among others), written by his grandnephew, who is also working on a full length biography. (via PF) This connects back to earlier posts by Kent Worcester, and including some of this material, over here.

Harry Mendryk looks at Jack Kirby's comics about the mob. I love that Kirby's career is so vast that you can look at not only how he treats a given subject over a thirty-year span, but also track the changes in the medium itself as he does so. Fun.

I can't believe I missed this exhibition of Charles Schulz love letters. No excuse. Jeez.

Here's an interview with cartoonist and historian Brian Walker, someone you don't see interviewed that much, but has certainly lived the history.

Welcome back to the working week. Lots of new stuff for you this week and month. Thanks for reading us so far, and bearing with the occasional bump in the road. (Like the continuing comments wrinkles -- it will get fixed soon, we swear.) May should be the best month yet.

New on the site:

Sean Rogers writes about the great Kim Deitch, via the portfolio published by La Mano.

Frank Santoro turns in his latest Layout Workbook, this time focusing on the format of the late & lamented MOME.

And Kristian Williams returns to the site with a review of Mike Howlett's Weird World of Eerie Publications.

Elsewhere:

Drew Friedman talks about the book covers of his father—the brilliantly funny Bruce Jay Friedman. If you haven't read him before, you really need to.

Speaking of books, The Strand in New York City has invited various people to "curate" collections of recommended titles, including John Waters, Maira Kalman, and Art Spiegelman.

The infamous-in-some-quarters critic and former TCJ message board habitué Domingos Isabelhino compares Peanuts to Percy Crosby's Skippy.

Chris Mautner attempts to sum up Joe Sacco.

Only very tangentially comics: A typically oddball interview with Alejandro Jodorowsky.

Sorry for the bare-bones nature of today's blog post. A certain little girl would not stop crying if she wasn't being held, and this particular entry had to be written with one hand.

Welcome to the weekend.

On the site today:

The first installment of Bart Beaty's monthly column, The Dr. Is In. Bart will be writing about academic publishing around comics -- he kicks it off with Hillary Chute's recent book.

And Sean Rogers weighs in with a review of Dan Clowes' Mr. Wonderful.

Your daily links...

This went around the Twitter-sphere yesterday afternoon -- it's pretty great. Cartoonists talking about the tools of their craft in a promotional video for TCAF.

I've never been to the FLUKE comics fest, but it sounds like it was fun, and I like spending time in the South, so...

John Adcock takes a look at Bill Blackbeard's non-fiction and pulp writing.

Michael Barrier has been posting some great old interviews on his site. Here's one with animator and funny animal cartoonist Lynn Karp.

J. Caleb Mozzocco looks at Matt Howarth's new book, The Downsized. Howarth is one of those cartoonists who remains pretty much unexamined, and he sure was prolific throughout the 1980s and early '90s.

I enjoy looking at the sporadically updated Frank Bellamy Checklist blog. Bellamy is a standard bearer for ye' ol' stiff upper lip British realist comic, which I have some weird weakness for looking at. Anyhow, this latest installment has some images that would not seem out of place on a 1970s Brian Eno record cover.

And finally, the old pro Murphy Anderson -- the cleanest surface around. Here's an oldie.

Two new features for you this morning.

First, we have Matt Seneca's entertaining and searching interview with Shaky Kane and David Hine, regarding the collection of The Bulletproof Coffin that came out this week.

Second, we introduce an audio component to our multimedia empire: TCJ Talkies, a new biweekly podcast series hosted by Mike Dawson. (Dan came up with the name, I hasten to add.) The first episode's guest is world-class ranter Evan Dorkin.

And if you haven't checked in to our post gathering tributes to Bill Blackbeard in a while, it is probably worth looking at again. We have been adding new material all week, including writing from Gary Groth, Michael Tisserand, Peter Maresca, Trina Robbins, and updated thoughts from Jeet Heer.

Your Daily Links:

Kim Thompson has been working on a big upcoming collection of Joost Swarte material for Fantagraphics, and has two great posts on the translation issues involved.

Robot 6 found a striking early Charles Schulz strip going up for bid at Heritage Auctions, which features characters eerily similar to Charlie Brown and Snoopy. Peanuts before Peanuts.

There's a good short interview with Shaun Tan at literary website The Millions.

I can't remember why I saved this link to Tucker Stone's most recent roundup of superhero comics "reviews." Maybe just because we haven't linked to his blog before? Anyway, for those still caught up in the weekly capes grind (or who enjoy following it from a discreet distance), Tucker's stuff is a constant sharp reminder that doing so isn't much more worthwhile than just burning your money.

Bob Temuka compares the 3-D movie fad to the original graphic novel boom, and doesn't have very kind words about either.

Charles Kochman at Abrams (the Smithsonian collection's publisher) offers his own praise for Bill Blackbeard. (via)

Finally, I leave you with an old quote from Philip Roth making the internet rounds. I don't want to put my finger on exactly why, but it somehow seems appropriate:

"Had I been away twenty years on a desert island, perhaps the change in intelligent society that would have most astonished me upon my return is the animated talk about second-rate movies by first-rate people which has almost displaced discussion of any such length or intensity about a book, second-rate, first-rate or tenth-rate. Talking about movies in the relaxed, impressionistic way that movies invite being talked about is not only the unliterate man’s literary life, it's become the literary life of the literate as well."

Hello again. Here's the run down:

* Tom Spurgeon has a great round-up of thirteen tributes to Bill Blackbeard. I second his recommendation to race over to read Dylan Williams' fantastic post, which contains the longest interview with Blackbeard ever published.

* So Gary Panter (with Chris Byrne) has curated an exhibition on Zap opening on May 12 in NYC. I've seen the original pages selected: it's a killer show. Great generational combo.

* Kim Thompson takes us inside an adventure in translating. Also: Joost Swarte book back on schedule.

* Here's an incredibly enjoyable con report over at The Mindless Ones. Frank and Jog: Meet your British counterparts.

* Via Top Shelf, the much-talked-about French graphic novel by Ludovic Debeurme, Lucille, has a preview up at Pen American Center.

* At HiLobrow: A selected series of posts by Adam McGovern on various aspects of pop culture, including some comics of interest.

* A random note: I know this is conflict of interest and blah blah, but damn the new Hate Annual 9 is good. Bagge knows his characters so well, and he never goes for the easy gag. Just great suburban American comedy. Also, if I had some dough, I'd race over to Scott Eder's site and buy some originals by Bagge. There are some killer pages on there.

On the site today:

The second installment of Richard Gehr's Know Your New Yorker Cartoonists, featuring Gahan Wilson! Ol' man Gehr is on a roll with these, having just completed a great interview with Roz Chast. Stay tuned for his monthly dispatches.

And coming up tomorrow: Matt Seneca contributes a great interview with Shaky Kane and David Hine on the occasion of their newly released book, Bulletproof Coffin. It's fantastic to see Kane, in particular, getting some attention from the general comics universe. Just five years ago Frank Santoro was a lone voice in the wilderness talking about his work, and it was some effort to track him down for a Comics Comics cover feature. Always a deeply idiosyncratic artist, Kane seemed, well, maybe lost to history or something -- his work residing primarily in back issues of Deadline and a handful of small press British comics. Anyhow, sounds like we're going to get to see some more, so that's a good thing.

Okay, first, if you haven't yet made time to read the obituaries and tributes for Bill Blackbeard we published yesterday, written by R.C. Harvey, Jeet Heer, and others, you really should do so at your earliest convenience. It would be difficult to overstate how great a debt anyone interested enough in comics to be reading this site owes to Blackbeard. It is easy to take for granted the state of things as they are, and think that it's entirely natural for bookstore and library shelves to be groaning with beautiful archival reprints of classic comic strips, but if not for Blackbeard, it is very unlikely we would be living in such a world. It is both frightening and motivating to think about how much can come down to one dedicated person. (Two off-site tributes worth reading come from Dylan Williams and Tom Spurgeon.)

New to the Journal today are Dan's interview with Dean Mullaney and Bruce Canwell, regarding their upcoming Alex Toth book, Rob Clough's review of Noah Van Sciver's Blammo, and the latest column from Joe McCulloch, with the highlights of the week for newly published comics—and another in-depth look at late Steve Ditko.

Elsewhere, lots of links this morning:

Timothy Callahan has been reading old issues of the Journal and getting inspired. You can too.

Adrian Tomine is selling art to raise funds for Japanese disaster relief.

For those buried under a rock, new art from Bill Watterson has surfaced.

Ben Katchor brings us drawing-as-writing from both Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky! (In appreciation for these great finds, I ought to link to Katchor's recent interview with the A.V. Club.)

The film writer Richard Harland Smith interviews one of the great comics talkers, Drew Friedman.

James Romberger just posted an interview with Gene Colan. As you may know, Colan's health situation isn't very good right now. You can learn one way to help here.

The Point has published a nice, thoughtful review-essay based on Chris Ware's latest volume of Acme Novelty Library.

The popular literary weblog HTMLGIANT does the same for CF's City-Hunter.

Robert Boyd organized a show in Houston featuring the work of Jim Woodring and Marc Bell. He revisits it in words and video. Both artists (and JW's famous giant pen) make appearances.

I imagine this must be a very common experience, but having a kid recently, and being "forced" (she isn't that strong) to read the same books over and over again nightly, has given me immense new respect for the artistry of figures like Dr. Seuss and Maurice Sendak. Sendak was feeling ill when he granted a Philadelphia reporter a brief, bracing set of quotes.

I'm very sad over the passing of Bill Blackbeard. My experiences with Bill Blackbeard are much the same as many other people's: I "met" him through his books, which provided the best exposure I had to comic strips. His emphasis on personal taste -- which he confirmed to me the one and only time I spoke with him -- as a guide for shaping foundational history was an inspiration as well. I mean, he emphasized the good stuff. I'm sure there was plenty I'd disagree with him on, but he would fight for difficult strips -- like The Bungle Family -- and also advocated for the sheer poetry of, say, Roy Crane. His tenacity and taste were formative for all of us. And, as Jeet convincingly argues, without Blackbeard comic strip history as we know it would more or less not exist. What Blackbeard did for the medium goes past anything I can really imagine: I think it is without question that by virtue of saving and then sharing its history, he was one on the most important men in the history of comics. Period.

R.C. Harvey has written an obituary, and Jeet Heer an appreciation. Let's honor Blackbeard's memory by continuing his good work.

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Just a handful of links for you today:

I really enjoyed this Douglas Wolk pieces on Howard Chaykin, which comes from a reading of the recently released (and highly recommended) book Howard Chaykin: Conversations. Chaykin is, in a lot of ways, the last of his kind -- an autodidact who will slog through a shitty script because he felt like drawing horses that month. Like his mentor Gil Kane, he produces excellent work in a shitty field. He also did create a couple of pretty great graphic novels, to boot. Really worth reading.

Tom Spurgeon has a typically excellent interview with Joe Daly over at The Comics Reporter. I'm a fan of Daly's Dungeon Quest series.

I completely relate to Dylan Williams' assessment of his recent convention experiences. Sigh.

And, randomly, from another conversation, Jay Babcock reminded me of this interview he conducted with Alejandro Jodorowsky that covers his comics work. Also, an excuse to link to this piece on his collaborations with Moebius on his aborted Dune film, and a blog with his 1960s psych comics.