BLOG

We have a ton of new material for you today. We're gonna have to slow down soon, I think. Geez.

First up, a one-week-only preview of Shigeru Mizuku’s first book in English-language translation, his 1973 WWII classic, Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths. As Dan writes in his online intro, Mizuki is a "giant of manga," and this is reputed to be one of his greatest works. I haven't read the untranslated material, but this book is strong stuff, with a tone that veers between comic absurdity and violent anger at loss and stupidity. Read the excerpt here.

J. Caleb Mozzocco brings in his first contribution to the new Journal, a feature on Columbus, Ohio's just-about-to-premiere stage adaptation of Joshua Cotter's Skyscrapers of the Midwest.

The internet agrees: Pascal Girard is killing it with his Cartoonist's Diary entries this week. Today is day three, with plenty more MoCCA madness & cameo appearances.

On the review front, we have two new ones for you. First, our own editorial coordinator Kristy Valenti reviews the much-anticipated Lychee Light Club. Second, Sean T. Collins brings us his take on Gilbert Hernandez's Love from the Shadows. We hadn't planned on running two reviews of the book, but an accident of scheduling occurred: Sean actually turned in his review a few weeks before we published Tom De Haven's very different piece on the same subject. In any case, this is undoubtedly going to be the kind of book that provokes strong reactions among readers, and our error of planning turned out to be kind of fortuitous.

Finally, we're entering the eighties in the archives, with eleven new issues (52 through 62) up and ready to read. We're into prime-era Journal now, folks, days and days — if not weeks and months— of stellar reading material. If you've fallen behind, make some time to check these out before it's too late. Remember: once the team in Seattle puts the paywall in place, only subscribers will be able to access these issues.

In the meantime, we will try to identify some of the archival highlights for you in future posts, to point out some of the best material. For now, know that the Blood & Thunder columns are reliably entertaining, an that issue 53 has a rather famous interview with Harlan Ellison. Google it if you haven't heard.

Oh, and non-Journal-related (unless you count Dan's upcoming ramblings on dumb comic-book movies), Sean Howe unearthed an article about one film adaptation that was blessedly never released: Nancy: The Movie. A taste of what we narrowly missed: "But wait. Nancy won't be a kid. She'll be 35 and a record company executive - 'No. 2 at a record label,' said [producer Peter] Muller from his New York office. "'She'll have the same hair and polka dot dress, but she'll be intelligent, sensitive and driven. She realizes she can have it all.'"

Also, Kevin Czap reports on every comic shop in the Cleveland area. I wish someone would do this for all the major cities. It took me years of living in New York before I even heard of Roger's Time Machine. I could have wasted a lot more money if I'd known about it sooner.

Welcome to Tuesday. Or as I know it, the day after Passover, when I eat bread anyway.

On the site today: Pascal Girard's Cartoonist's Diary Day 2, this time starring Joe Ollman.

Now, onto the day's headlines...

This lengthy piece on The Atlantic about book publishing since 1984 does some great history and also entombs it.

Rosebud Archives is releasing a sequence of Percy Crosby's Skippy accompanied by an expose on Crosby's sad decline, which, at least in the press materials, is positioned as a mob/political takedown of a patriotic American. Should be interesting because of Crosby's notoriously right-wing politics and, more crucially, due to his overlooked, virtuosic talent.

Man of the moment George R.R. Martin on comic books. At the NY Times. Yes, I watched Game of Thrones on Sunday night because, well, I don't know why. I think I like Richard Corben's version more (sorry, Sean!).

Robert Boyd (an upcoming contributor to this site) is curating a two-person show in Houston featuring Marc Bell and Jim Woodring. It's a rather ingenious pairing -- two drawing and narrative based fantasists, both perfectionist draftsman driven to very different results.

Over on Facebook, Jay Lynch is posting some great artifacts, including this killer 1965 collaboration with Art Spiegelman.

And in truly odd comics news, did you know about this funky conflict with Dilbert's Scott Adams? Hard to ignore, given that he/it is a cultural phenomenon. Anyhow, Adams was caught posting on various forums posing as his own biggest fan, and he's since posted a response on his own web site. Check out the Gawker article first, follow the links to Adams' pretty funny postings, and then enjoy his angry response. Good times, entertainment lovers!

Good morning. First things first: The Strand has posted video of the Comics Journal panel that was held there on April 8th, in which Dan and I asked Gary Groth and Kim Deitch various questions. Here is part one:

Parts two through four (and related Strandicon videos) can be found here.

Lots of new stuff on the site. First, the latest installment of Frank Santoro's pretty amazing Layout Workbook series went up yesterday. If you haven't been following along, and are either an artist or anyone else interested in the formal side of cartooning, I couldn't more strongly recommend going back and starting from the beginning.

This morning, Ken Parille brings us a new interview with Ivan Brunetti, whose cult classic textbook Cartooning: Philosophy and Practice has just been republished.

Finally, Pascal Girard has graciously agreed to be the latest artist to contribute a "Cartoonist's Diary" to the site, and today brings his debut post. (This is the first delivered in cartoon form.)

It's been a tough day on the New Jersey Turnpike, so let's go to other news:

Tokyopop is closing down its manga line. Not long ago, this company and others like it were sometimes pointed to as the future of comics publishing. I suppose they still might be.

Frank M. Young and Paul C. Tumey address Bill Everett's Atlas work in typically exhaustive fashion.

Paul Gravett interviews the great Italian cartoonist Lorenzo Mattotti (also the guest on a recent episode of Inkstuds).

Which reminds me: By way of reviewing an excellent history of Italian comics, Craig Fischer points to one of the more lackluster categories of Eisner nominations. Whether or not you agree that it makes sense to add an academic writing award, good work is definitely going overlooked.

Your daily bread:

*On the site today: Hayley Campbell on Winschluss's Pinocchio.

(Chain) Links:

*I just hope somehow Jim Shooter gets blamed even more for this. Just because that would increase his record.

*Everyone should be tuning in to The Comics Reporter to follow the L'Assocation news, since we've yet to get it together to cover the story. It's a big one, and Tom is hosting the best English-language coverage.

*There's another new Steve Ditko book coming out: Act 8 Making Lucky 13, Thirteen, Ditko's 32s. What a streak.

*Absolutely one of the best Mort Meskin stories I've ever seen.

And, the wind-up:

Every so often we'll present an oddity that comes across our desk; this email was passed on to us by one Gary Groth, an idealistic young "comics scholar" based in a ramshackle house in Seattle.

Dear Comics Scholar:

Matt and I would like to invite your contribution to a new anthology we are editing for ABC-CLIO called Icons of the American Comic Book. The project will include 100 entries spanning the breadth of comics culture, including the characters, creators, titles, and other facets that have achieved iconic status with the American consciousness. For your contribution, we can offer you an honorarium:

* $90 for each of the entries designated to run approximately 5,000 words
* $50 for each of the entries designated to run approximately 2,750 words
We are looking at an initial deadline of *August 1, 2011*.

Our aim with Icons of the American Comic Book will be to provide fresh insights into the significance of some of the most widely known and fascinating popular culture icons of the 20th and 21st centuries. Each entry will discuss the iconic significance of its subject and should be both more detailed and more entertaining than the conventional encyclopedia entry. More than simply character or creator biographies, the entries will provide in-depth explorations of the icons as products of and an influence upon American culture, informed by scholarly research.

Below is our list of entries (a strikethrough indicates an entry that is already assigned). If you are interested in contributing, please let us know what your primary as well as any secondary preferences would be, but do keep in mind that we will need your initial draft(s) by Aug. 1.  Along with each entry you request include *a brief statement of your qualifications* to write on the subject.

Please respond off-List to [EMAIL REDACTED]

Our publishers have stipulated that we should consider our primary audience to be students doing research. To that end, each entry must include a bibliography and one (or more) sidebars of 50-300 words each. (These considerations must be included within the word counts.)

We’re also planning to invite some guest contributors to 1) read and comment on the draft entries, 2) contribute a sidebar, or 3) even collaborate on the entry itself on several key entries. For example, comic book writer and editor Mark Waid (/Superman: Birthright/) might be enticed to act as a consultant on the Superman entry. Each guest’s role will depend on your comfort and willingness to work in such an arrangement.

Thank you and we look forward to hearing from you soon,

Randy and Matt

Entries of approximately 5,000 words

Archie Andrews

Barks, Carl

Batman

Captain America

Crumb, Robert

DC Comics

Dell Comics

EC Comics

Eisner, Will

Gaiman, Neil

Joker, The

Kane, Bob (and collaborators)

Kirby, Jack

Lee, Stan

Marvel Comics

Moore, Alan

Siegel, Jerry & Shuster, Joe

Spider-Man

Spiegelman, Art

Superman

Wonder Woman

Entries of approximately 2,750 words

Adams, Neal
American Splendor
Arkham Asylum
Aquaman
Black Panther
Blade
Bone
Captain Marvel
Classics Illustrated
Clowes, Daniel
Comic-Con International
Contract with God, A
Crime Does Not Pay
Dark Horse
Ditko, Steve
Doctor Doom
Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers
Fanboy
Fantagraphics
Fantastic Four
Flash
From Hell
Green Lantern
Green Lantern & Green Arrow
Gonick, Larry

good girls
Heavy Metal
Hellboy
Hulk
Image Comics
Iron Man
Jack Kirby’s Fourth World
Katy Keene
Killing Joke, The
Kubert, Joe
Kurtzman, Harvey
Lex Luthor
Little Lulu
Mad
Magneto
Maus
McCloud, Scott
McFarlane, Todd
Milestone Comics
Miller, Frank
MLJ/Archie Publications
Morrison, Grant
Mr. Natural
Palestine
Plastic Man
Pogo
Punisher, The
RAW
Richie Rich
Robin
Romance comics

Rorschach
Ross, Alex
Sacco, Joe
Sandman
Scott Pilgrim
Sheena
Sin City
Sgt. Rock
Spawn
Steranko, James
Supergirl
Swamp Thing
Tales from the Crypt
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
The Thing
Uncle Scrooge
Warren, Jim

Watchmen
Wertham, Fredric
Wizard
Wolverine
X-Men

Zap

The jokes just write themselves here. Nothing I can write would be sillier than the list itself. Fave entry: "Bob Kane (and collaborators)". Every so often I think, "gee, books on comics could never be as bad as they used to be", and then I'm reminded that in some ways it's worse because so few people have actually learned anything. It's like parallel universes exist. The future: We are fucked. Wizard,  X-Men, (whiiinne: "no Yellow Kid?")  Zap. Ka-Boom.

That line, spoken by one R. Gehr, was my favorite part of MoCCA. What does it refer to? Or Who? Who cares. It's just funny on 800 levels. Heidi MacDonald covers MoCCA here. My own report will appear... now! What is there to say? Let's see... Friday night was good at the Strand and Saturday night was drunken and fun at the TCJ launch party. Many people were there, including Boss Groth, a ton of artists (including Mazzucchelli, Burns, Girard, Evans, Ollmann, G. Bell, DeStefano, Stearn, Lewis, Newgarden, G. Wilson) many of our writers (among them: Rudick, Fry, Gehr, Howe, Gazin). And etc. We thank you all for coming out. And here are some pix:

During the day I sold books. Overwhelming trends seemed to be a sense of exhaustion, questions about the viability of a medium filled with young professionals with no place to go, and a decent amount of low-stakes, "networking" thrown in. EH!

Other links for you:

On Facebook: Fluid, perfect, and according to the artist, unpublished early 1970s drawings by the great Victor Moscoso make the best argument yet for getting a Facebook account. Also the best argument yet for never letting an artist control his own monograph: They always leave the best stuff out.

Good article on hidden art in animation, because we all know animation is not art. "JK."

On the site for most of you:

Sean T. Collins talks to Daniel Clowes about Mr. Wonderful; a new column by R. Fiore on Jacques Tardi and Ayn Rand.

MoCCA did Dan in, so I'm stepping in to deliver the news.

First, we are publishing frequent Journal contributor Matthias Wivel's first story for the new site: an in-depth interview with the French artist Fabrice Neaud. I was not previously familiar with his work, which is not easy to find in translation here, but still found this to be a fascinating conversation. We hope you will too.

In other Journal news, the panel discussion at the Strand Friday night seemed to go well, or at least well enough. It's hard to tell from the microphone side of the table. But Gary and Kim Deitch were both in fine form, and the audience seemed happy. My favorite part came the first time it was mentioned aloud that Dan and I had taken over the website, when I could have sworn I saw a giant light bulb literally appear over Kim's head—he had apparently been too good-natured to ask what we were doing there earlier.

Several people inquired beforehand about the possibility of the panel being recorded, and they should rest easy, because by my count there were at least three devices capturing the whole thing for posterity. Thanks to all of you who attended.

Elsewhere on the internet:

Drawn & Quarterly had a limited supply of Chester Brown's instantly infamous Paying for It at the MoCCA Festival, and there are already three reviews online—from Tom Spurgeon and TCJ.com contributors Chris Mautner and Sean T. Collins—all worth reading later, or now if you can't wait for the actual book. Following the reaction to Brown's book may well end up being almost as much fun as the work itself—which, incidentally, it seems like I may have enjoyed more wholeheartedly than any of these three writers. (Why do I feel creepy saying so?) Then again, I haven't needed to take a publicly stance on the more polemic aspect of the book, which is the hard part. We'll have more coverage of Brown on the site closer to the book's release date.

Bhob Stewart investigates (with a little help from Jay Lynch) the possible origins of the term "Hoo-Hah!," a bit of slang frequent readers of early Mad will remember well. Was Harvey Kurtzman influenced by T.S. Eliot? Considering the mutual admiration society Eliot set up with Groucho Marx (one of the comedian's letters to the poet can be read online), I wouldn't put it past the realm of possibility.

Finally, via Tom Scioli, I learned of a Wired article that claims to have discovered a 1953 Otto Binder article that provided the secret inspiration for every nuclear-radiation-mutated superhero from Spider-Man to the X-Men. It's not true, unfortunately—the mutant superman has been around since at least the early '30s, when a writer named John Taine wrote a whole slew of "mutational romances." And Lewis Padgett's famous "Baldy" series of the 1940s, gathered in Mutant!, featured a race of persecuted bald telepaths, and provided an obvious reference for Professor X as well. But anyway.

Finally—Not (or at least only tangentially) Comics: Over at the great film site Mubi, our own Joe McCulloch writes about Frank Miller's The Spirit and Zack Snyder's Sucker Punch. Check it out.

The great Tim Kreider turns in an editorial/essay on the state of the cartooning profession. Despite a small amount of shared territory with a recent controversial Voice story (including a particular Ted Rall joke--it is a funny line, so I see why Rall likes to use it), this piece was written before that issue of the Voice was published. Not that it matters, since they're sufficiently different, but just so you know.

Also, Rob Clough contributes a review of the international survey anthology Gazeta.

Finally, of course, any Journal readers in the New York area tonight will want to come to the Strand bookstore, to see Gary Groth and Kim Deitch in discussion with Dan and myself about the magazine's history and legacy. It starts at seven, and comes after a full day of store appearances by cartoonists such as Ben Katchor, Jillian Tamaki, Pascal Girard, and Dash Shaw.

Elsewhere:

The 2011 Eisner Award nominations have been announced. It's going to take a little time to absorb the whole thing; there are definitely some good and deserving nominees in there, but a few surprising oversights as well. That's par for the course with awards all over, of course, but in comics, the whole thing sometimes seems especially perverse. More on this later, I am sure.

In news of more lasting importance, Bart Beaty sums up the latest state of the troubles at L'Association. Highly recommended.

Also on the Comics Reporter, Tom Spurgeon reflects further on the Voice non-payment issue.

I don't think we've yet linked to this interview with Anders Nilsen yet.

And here's a very short Q&A with the Journal's debut diarist Vanessa Davis.

Hello there. We're looking forward to seeing you at The Strand Friday at 7 pm. Watch me and Tim grill Gary Groth, while Kim Deitch valiantly defends us against his taunts. It will be a ball. Bring your questions about arcane TCJ history and we (by we, I mean Gary) will attempt to answer them.

And now, your links for the day:

* I'm pretty sure this means that Frank Santoro has finally been tapped to star as Batman.

* Tom Devlin reports back from WonderCon. Tom looks healthier and more distinguished each year while I grow haggard. Is it Montreal? All those John Stanley comics? His loving partner and children? Oh, whatever. I don't like it. Not one bit.

* Burp the Twerp. Yes. A reason to go on.

* Dan Zettwoch almost makes me care about baseball via these awesome buttons.

* Over at the Village Voice we learn about comics and money. It's about as depressing as you think, but also oddly... incomplete. However, it provided a nifty handout for my Cartooning major students yesterday. D&Q snagged a since deleted response from Mimi Pond, which is priceless.

* Barely comics: Mark Newgarden alerted me that our beloved S.S. Adams novelty company building has gone up for sale. We visited it long ago, when there were still remnants of fake doggy do to be found. Hard to believe a place so beautiful gave the world such unrelenting mania.

On the site:

-Jeet Heer returns with more thoughts on race and comics.

See at MoCCA, though I'll be wearing my other hat.

New to the site: Hayley Campbell joins the Journal team with a review of Kiki de Montparnasse.

Also, five new issues are up for viewing in the archives. Check them out now before they go up behind the subscriber paywall.

Issue 42 features an interview with Stan Lee.

In issue 43, Gary Groth meets Neal Adams.

Issue 44 finds Kim Thompson talking to Marv Wolfman (and an enjoyable pan from Gary on Sabre--funny how having standards can pay off in unexpected ways thirty years later).

Issue 45 features Marilyn Bethke interviewing Joe Staton.

And in issue 46, Will Eisner talks to Cat Yronwoode.

Dig in while you can.

Elsewhere on the webonet:

“Lichtenstein did no more or less for comics than Andy Warhol did for soup.” I don't remember coming across that Art Spiegelman quote before, but it's nice in that it does a lot of work in not so many words. Ernesto Priego dug it up for a traditional (but not philistine) comics vs. pop art post.

The cartoonist, editor, and, um, enthusiast (?) Sammy Harkham is good at pretending to be excitable and aggressive during interviews, and his recent Comix Claptrap appearance is no exception. It's all an act, folks. Honestly, what I really appreciate in Harkham's public appearances is his willingness to be candid—a surprisingly rare trait among cartoonists, as you'd think it would go hand in hand with a talent for the form. (The Claptrap is also one of a very small handful of comics interview podcasts worth following, so get on it already.)

Jeremy Sheldon wrote an online essay for the "Aliens" issue of Granta — as far as I can tell, it's the only content in the journal about, like, real aliens (meaning the outer-space kind). Otherwise, it's all immigration issues and such. In the essay, Sheldon discusses the deep meaning of science-fiction book covers, and draws much inspiration from the fact that the big alien monster at the end of Watchmen looks like human genitalia.

Our own Kristy Valenti writes about the artist Mike Kelley's take on the bottled city of Kandor here. If you don't know Kandor, that was a shrunken city from the planet Krypton that Superman kept around in his house. Whenever he got really lonely, he'd occasionally shrink himself down and hang out with the little people inside. Most comics theorists will tell you this is a metaphor for something or other. Schizophrenia?

For CCCBC members only: The occultist Kenneth Grant, whose work played a key role in Alan Moore's recent Neonomicon series, has died.

As has been mentioned a few times here on the blog (and in the site's comments), former Marvel editor-in-chief Jim Shooter has recently published a series of rather dubious claims regarding the infamous Marvel/Jack Kirby artwork debacle. For those of you unfamiliar with this history, Rodrigo Baeza has gathered together much of the relevant information into one place. Is it depressing that this recent Shooter activity is sparking so little discussion?

The Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction recently held an industry day, and there are three big reports online about it: here, here, and here. (I particularly recommend Tom Spurgeon's.) It still amazes me that the CCS exists, even now that it's nearly reached the status of a institution.

Just kidding, I'm writing this before watching the new Gossip Girl, and it's a repeat anyway. But if demand warrants it I can try to convince Tim to let me run weekly recaps. If not, well, I'll just do so on my own time.

Well, well there is much to discuss, isn't there? For one thing, new to the site are full length interviews from the archive with Aline Kominsky-Crumb (from 1990, and by Peter Bagge) and Lynda Barry (from 1989 -- before many of you were born!). So go enjoy those, my friends. Spend the day, even.

Let's take a trip together around the internet, OK?

* Steven Heller calls our attention to a new traveling project from the great British pop artist Peter Blake.

* From WonderCon comes news that IDW will be releasing oversized editions of classic Marvel comics reproducing the original art. This is good news, I think, and points to a much-needed recognition by Marvel of the aesthetic value of this work and willingness to hand over material to a smaller publisher perhaps better equipped to handle this kind of project. The series begins with Walt Simonson's Thor. I'm curious where it'll go from there.

* Speaking of IDW, it's also releasing a deluxe edition of Darwyn Cooke's Parker material, to which I have a severe allergy. That said, This is a pretty wonderful memoir of hanging out with Donald Westlake, aka Richard Stark, complete with photos of men with beards.

* This new profile of Moebius alludes to problems with the artist's vision, as well as a booming business in privately commissioned paintings. I'd be curious to see some of those pieces.

* Speaking of Moebius, and those who love him, Inveterate phone-talker Sammy Harkham lays it down on tape over at Comix Claptrap.

Finally, for you Facebook fanatics:

* Here is a fabulous selection of Out Our Way panels by J.R. Williams. Even in the current strip boom, Williams remains overrated underrated. I love his natural, easy-does-it drawing style and acute regional observations. Here's a project that could keep Jeet busy: "Great Regional Cartoonists of the 1920s". And not "midwest" or anything too easy. Oh no, I wanna see it state-by-state. Get a WordPress account and get started, Jeet!

Dan spent some time with Ben Jones last week, and interviewed the man in anticipation of tonight's Cartoon Network premiere of Problem Solverz.

Our man in Scandinavia, Austin English, turns in his first review for the new CJ, looking at John Mejias's Paping Teacher's Edition.

Elsewhere:

Paul Gravett turns in an Angouleme report.

Tom Spurgeon interviews Wilfred Santiago.

Sammy Harkham interviewed by James Romberger.

Over at HiLobrow, our own Matt Seneca uses a panel from Weird Mystery Tales to explore Jack Kirby's depiction of women. "He was never meant to draw the average action comic’s shrinking violet of a 'gal.'"

HiLobrow seems to be upping their comics coverage in general, actually, and today also sees the first post in a week-long collaboration with 4CP's John Hilgart.

New feature up today: Tara Sinn introduces (and interviews) the mysterious Japanese poster artist Aquirax Uno, and day four of Brandon Graham's diary.

"My inspiration for these stories simply comes from the strangeness of life and the the sense that there are invisible forces behind things, and things happen for reasons we can't fully understand." Am I the only person who missed this brief but very well done video interview with Jim Woodring?

This one-question interview with Johnny Ryan kills my lonely fantasy that Prison Pit's plot was maybe, kind of, sort of a loose remake of Robert Sheckley's The Status Civilization. I guess it was always kind of more obviously inspired by the story in the back of Real Deal #1, anyway. (Prison Pit fans who haven't read that issue better get on it.)

A nice, and surprisingly informed, short tribute to Captain Marvel artist and former Journal columnist C.C. Beck appeared on The New Yorker's website yesterday.

Do you know anything about 1940s cartoonist Ann Roy? If so, current Journal columnist Ken Parille needs your help.

Another current Journal columnist, Jeet Heer, turned in a solid review of two recently reissued (and near canonical) comic histories for Publishers Weekly. I haven't yet read the Jerry Robinson book, but I agree with Jeet about the value of Brian Walker's collection.

Offhand, I can't think of any epistolary comics, but it's a great idea, with a lot of unexplored potential. Aidan Koch and Jaakko Pallasvuo are giving it a try right now.

We will review Jacques Tardi's Arctic Marauder soon, I promise. In the meantime, Craig Fischer has a smart-as-always response to the book here.

Finally, Comics Alliance has gathered several videos from French television featuring the likes of Moebius, Hugo Pratt, and Joe Kubert in action.

That's right, I'm in Chicago for less than hours. Came out to see the Jim Nutt retrospective at the MCA, "Coming into Character." Scandalously, it is not traveling outside of the city -- through know fault of the show itself -- amazingly (or actually not, if you're familiar with recent programming decisions by other major museums), no other institution would take it. I'll keep it simple: If you can, go see this show. It's the best single-artist retrospective I've seen in a very very long time. Maybe since Dieter Roth at MoMA - PS1 in 2004. Watching Nutt tighten his focus to intensely rendered and detailed imagined portraits is riveting. These are paintings that can be looked at for hours -- worlds of brushwork exist within each area of these images. Every mark builds on the next, and the intersecting planes and surfaces build to multiple crescendos. Nutt is a real modern master, and one whose early language in the 1960s was highly involved with flat, comic-strip/advertising rendering. He's very far away from that now, though one can still see a bit of the diagramatic Gould grotesque in him if you squint just right.

Not that it's all culture here -- when I come to Chicago I roll with pal Ethan D'Ercole, who started me out with tacos, moved along to hot dogs, and finished off with deep dish pizza (the kind with the sauce on top, and, in a unique twist, a crust wrapped with carmelized cheese -- delightful).

Anyhow, it's a quick blog from me today, since I'm traveling and also in a food coma.

And your links:

* Amy Poodle on Batman Incorporated #4.
* This story is just sad, but obviously also infuriating and dangerous to the creators involved. Sad.
* This is fun: A bunch of prelim and promo art for Marvel's Strange Tales II.
* Bob Powell: A damn fine journeyman. Here's a 1944 war comic starring "The Spirit of '76".

On the site:

Tucker Stone on Jason Shiga's latest.

And with that, kind people, I go back to digesting.

It is easy to pick a side in the long-running debate between Garfield Minus Garfield and the original Silent Garfield. The latter reveals a bleak hidden dimension to the original strip, and enlarges our understanding by offering a new way to read it. The former simply relies on a cheap gimmick that reveals nothing other than the banal observation that if you remove one character from a dialogue, the remaining figures will look foolish. Take Andre Gregory out of My Dinner with Andre and you'll make Wallace Shawn look weird, too. So what? (I'd like to call dibs on that YouTube edit, by the way.) After all, it's no surprise that Garfield Minus Garfield got official approval and a book, while Silent Garfield quietly disappeared.

These thoughts are prompted by the new popular "viral" comic-strip edit, 3eanuts. The idea here is simple, too. As the site says, "Charles Schulz's Peanuts comics often conceal the existential despair of their world with a closing joke at the characters' expense. With the last panel omitted, despair pervades all." You could perform this trick with most stories too—lop off the ending of anything from Psycho to Romeo & Juliet or Goodfellas, and you'll get a radically different tone and impression. So in a sense this is another facile experiment, but at least it illuminates something about how powerfully an artist's editing choices affect the reader. (via)

Today on TCJ:

Don't miss Jog's latest column, Shaenon Garrity's long-awaited return to the Journal with a review of the latest volume of Finder, and day two of Brandon Graham's diary.

More links:

Philip Nel brings us Crockett Johnson's first strip.

Jim ("Our Nixon") Shooter is still blogging, and just put up a post about how he became editor-in-chief of Marvel while he was still in his twenties.

The comments thread after this typically terrific Glenn Kenny post on Taxi Driver sees various of his readers getting back into the old argument over whether the main character of Scorsese's Raging Bull is "identifiable" — a debate that always seems to flare up around Scorsese and Coen Bros. films, and which also brings to mind last year's back-and-forth on more or less the same topic regarding Daniel Clowes's Wilson. Both sides of the character debate are represented well on the Kenny thread.

Joanne Siegel's letter to the head of Time Warner from shortly before her death is a must read (Spurgeon explains), and very sad.

First, some office work.

Earth people, send us your event listings. As you may have noticed, we are publishing event listings. We wish to fill them up. So, direct your listing news to: [email protected].

We have uploaded issues 37 and 39-41 of ye ol' TCJ. Only 260 more to go. Almost there! But these issues are chock full of goodness. Issue 40, for example, has an interview with a young-ish Jim Shooter, just a little while before he was branded "Our Nixon." Kim Thompson, meanwhile, contributed a piece about Tom Sutton, and the great John Benson has an early (and very prescient) overview of Art Spiegelman's work. TCJ and Tom Sutton: A long term love affair. Issue 39 has a long piece on the now-infamous 1978 DC Comics contraction, a lengthy report on the then-comatose underground comics scene, and in the reviews dept., we have Kim giving Marvel 1970s-era Kirby a tough talking to, while Groth takes on Superman vs Muhammed Ali. And then issue 41 breaks open the Steve Gerber controversy, with a report and an interview with the man himself. The archive is still free for a little longer.

And new content today and from the weekend. In his first piece (of many, we hope!) for us, Tom De Haven takes on the upcoming Gilbert Hernandez book; meanwhile Frank Santoro brings it for the third week in a row. His best layout piece yet. By the by, if, during the week you long for Frank, as Tim and I often do, you can click over to his Tumblr and check in on him.

And now, onto links.

Most of you have probably already seen this NY Times piece on Marvel's publishing program. A little more business-y than I would've expected, the takeaway here seems to be that, uh, Marvel is trying... something, and that something is directed from the editors through the writers. The visuals in this visual medium aren't mentioned much, and neither are any particular creative strategies. Me, I'm still waiting for that New Universe revival.

Via pal Dash Shaw we have two delights. First is this animated film by the great illustrator James McMullan, who taught Dash at SVA, along with a few other generations of other artists. His drawing lessons are actually online at the New York Times. His languid, elegant figures are just astonishingly well painted. More McMullan can be seen at Container List. Second, here's an online exhibition of the Art of Akira, along with commentary.

Contributor Chris Mautner takes us to Comic Book College in the area of Frank Miller. This is a good start in some choppy waters. I'm glad Chris recommends The Dark Knight Strikes Again, which is my favorite Miller work, post-1990 division. Also, he reminded me that Miller actually wrote Robocop vs. Terminator. I can't believe there's not a movie of that already. I'd go see that. Thrice! Dapper Dan's Movie Review would have a field day!

Finally, Harry Mendryk goes what we, around the "office" call "deep Santoro" with part one of an analysis of the Simon & Kirby colorists. And Joshua Glenn's HiLobrow continues to focus on Kirby with this fine piece by Adam McGovern.

As Jog noted in his column this week, the final issue of Neonomicon just came out, so now I have to figure out whether or not it's worth resurrecting the Comics Comics Comic-Book Club one more time, possibly in mutated form. Those of you who were reading along, stay tuned -- I'll figure something out.

Now, to the links:

Multiple birds killed with one stone in this brief review. A model of the short form.

Richard O'Connor digs up an old George Plimpton introduction to a Bill Plympton collection.

I suppose now that we've made the move to the Journal, I no longer am obligated to bring to your attention all news on Steve Gerber. But old habits die hard. Here's a Scott Edelman interview with the writer. The audio's a little poor, unfortunately, but Gerber is a good talker.

Carol Tyler is more charming when she gets purist about comics terminology than John Byrne is. Big claim, I know,

Speaking of Byrne, Roberto Batuel at the Comics Grid offers a short and perhaps slightly too reverential take on the infamous blank pages of Alpha Flight issue 6.

Normally I like to leave comic-book movie news to Dapper Dan, but just this once: the producers of the new live-action adaptation of Akira are reportedly hoping to cast white actors as the main characters (and change the location from "Neo Tokyo" to "New Manhattan"). Some are complaining, but they are probably forgetting how well Roland Emmerich's Godzilla came out.

You're probably seen word going around about the shirts Daniel Clowes designed for Stüssy. (Interview here.) They're beautiful, as were the ones the Hernandez Bros did a while back, but I have to wonder: Am I the only one who would have trouble wearing a shirt with a Stüssy logo that big? I guess I'm just getting old.

For the Utne Reader, Joe Sacco goes to New Jersey.

First of all, an announcement that may be of interest to those of you who live in the New York area, or who plan to visit the city during this year's MoCCA Festival. The Journal will be participating in an all-day event at the famous Strand bookstore on April 8th:

STRANDICON presents a Celebration of The Comics Journal: A Conversation with Gary Groth, Kim Deitch, Tim Hodler and Dan Nadel

April 8: 7:00PM – 8:00PM

The Comics Journal has been the leading voice in comics criticism for nearly four decades. It launched its first full-fledged website in March 2011, and in celebration its editors, Tim Hodler and Dan Nadel, will lead a discussion on the history of the magazine and the medium of comics criticism with founding editor Gary Groth and longtime cartoonist and TCJ interviewee Kim Deitch.

The bookstore will feature artist appearances and signings by throughout the day. More information here.

***

And now on to random links. The weird thing about doing this every other day is that it tends to mean that a portion of the links are a little out of date, at least in internet time. (What's that, you say? I should share links I find with Dan? I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that.) But maybe that's okay. These links may not be brand new, but they are tried and tested, each one worthy of clicking. Or at least that's the hope. Anyway...

*In Bible scholarship news, according to Discovery, new evidence has come to light supporting the idea that the Old Testament may have been edited to remove traces of a female god. Interesting in light of some of the similar scholarship Robert Crumb relied upon while creating his version of Genesis. (via)

*Here's a review I never expected to see: the often astonishing novelist William T. Vollmann writes about the Library of America's recent Lynd Ward collection in the latest Bookforum. Unlike the typical literary type slumming in the cartoon world, he even manages to take the form seriously enough to think out loud about how it works: "Graphic novels sometimes require of us the willingness to see and remember without comprehending right away."

*Luc Sante also wrote about the collection, in Harper's. I let my subscription to that magazine lapse, so I can't read it until I pick up a copy, but Sante's always worth reading.

*It's hard to believe that Chris Ware's daughter is already old enough to be writing record reviews—if you haven't clicked on the many links to Clara Ware's take on Tiny Tim for Roctober (complete with illustration and afterword from her father), you really should. (via)

*Eddie Campbell's one of the greatest talkers in comics -- and just might be interviewer-proof. Matthias Wivel's no slouch in his own right, and their resulting conversation is predictably solid.

*Journal columnist Sean T. Collins points us to an interview with Phoebe Gloeckner, which contains a lot of new information on just what she's up to in Mexico over the last several years.

*I remember seeing this once. I thought it was a dream.

*Hans Rickheit would like your help.

*A short radio interview with New Yorker cartoonist Ed Koren. (Thanks, LP.)

*Finally, another story that's been going around, but that you might not have read yet. You have to, though. I won't ruin it by telling you anything beforehand. Just make sure you get far enough to understand about the frogs. (Thanks, ER.)

Well, our e-mailboxes are full, and the results are clear: No one is happy! It seems like for one reason or another, everybody is upset about the comments section these days. Some people want us to ban a few perennially controversial commenters, others want us to stop deleting their "entirely tame" comments, and still others want us to shut the whole thing down entirely, possibly to replace it with an edited letters column. That last option sounds potentially appealing, but if possible, we'd like to keep the comments around. Because when comments threads really work, they offer one of the few genuinely unique pleasures of the internet, a dynamic conversation that can't be replicated with overly edited content. However, the threads haven't really been working quite that well so far. Because of generally good experiences in the past, we've probably been a bit too lenient with our moderation here, and have erred on the side of inclusion even when it has allowed a few notable threads to descend into name-calling and blatant trolling. There is probably no way of avoiding annoying or useless comments altogether, but maybe putting a few policies into writing can help a bit with our signal-to-noise ratio.

So starting today, the following commenting rules are under effect:

1. Comments which include ad hominem or abusive attacks on writers, commenters, or figures featured on the site will be deleted.

2. Comments which are racist, sexist, or otherwise offensive will be deleted.

3. Comments which stray too far from the topic at hand (especially when of a promotional nature) have a very good chance of being deleted. If you want to share a link, send it to Dan or myself, and maybe we'll post it. Otherwise, it better have something to do with the post or resulting discussion.

4. Comments designed to start or prolong unnecessary, unpleasant, and/or just plain ugly arguments (i.e., trolling) will be deleted.

5. Commenters who repeatedly post comments that are deemed abusive in one of these ways will be warned via e-mail. If they continue to post comments of an unwelcome nature, they will be given a week's suspension. If a third warning is necessary, the commenter in question will be banned pending further review.

That's it for now, though we reserve the right to add new rules if and when they become necessary. Remember, debate and discussion are welcome, but is important that these arguments stay civil. If you have any questions, feel free to ask below or via e-mail.