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Elsewhere.... last night I went to the opening of Jim Shaw's retrospective at the New Museum here in NYC. Besides Jim's amazing work (and hey, he's a TCJ-contributor, too), you can catch a glimpse of work by as diverse a crowd as Steve Ditko, Jack Chick and Basil Wolverton enshrined in one of the galleries. Here's a bit from the NY Times. I wrote an essay for the catalog and took the opportunity to write at length about Wayne Boring. Here's an interview I did with Jim on this very site. So there's that.

Speaking of good things, the best thing DC Entertainment has published in who knows how long is this cover by Frank Miller, who, whatever else, is cartooning better than ever. Via Twitter, I was reminded of Sean T. Collins' excellent piece on Miller's last major art for DC, DK2. 

And more down the hatch, Dark Horse spent the most money on Moebius, I suppose, so they get the prize. I hope they don't fuck it up. Of course they will.

Joe McCulloch goes all (or part) Memento on us in his latest guide to the Week in Comics! The last shall be first and all that. But he has his reasons, in this case, a particular Diamond policy ...

Meanwhile, elsewhere:

—News. Amnesty International has expressed support for jailed Iranian cartoonist Atena Farghadani and her lawyer as her trial begins.

This is why you should be careful selling your comics through Craigslist.

Julia Wertz shared one of her personal experiences with online harassment on Twitter.

—Commentary. Chris Mautner and the aforementioned Joe McCulloch and Chris Mautner talk about this year's SPX.

—Interviews & Profiles. Gil Roth spoke to Scott McCloud on the Virtual Memories podcast.

Brooklyn magazine talks to Lucas Adams, one of the instigating forces behind a much-anticipated upcoming comics imprint, New York Review Comics.

Matthias Wivel is here with a review of the giant Drawn and Quarterly 25th anniversary anthology:

Today, when you're ingesting the latest whirl of supremely controlled, cold-as-ice pages from Michael DeForge, or finding yourself having lost forty-five minutes cracking up knowingly while scrolling down Kate Beaton's Tumblr, it may hit you how strangely natural this feels. You might also look in the mirror and catch a fleck of gray hair, and then perhaps experience a residual sense of alienation.

Because, yes, it has been about twenty-five years since those heady days of comics suddenly—again—appearing like they were all promise. Yes, there had always been great comics and much ground had been broken in previous decades, but there was a crackle in the air in the early nineties. A sense, when you opened a new comic, not so much of a blank slate, but rather that those clear lines, those scruffy hatch marks were composed fractally of unrealized potential. At that moment, everything seemed (theoretically) possible. Precariously, but exhilaratingly so.

And yes, Chris Oliveros' Drawn and Quarterly was there, somewhere near the center of this breaking kaleidoscope. A fledgling publisher in hip Montréal, sufficiently shrewd—and lucky—to launch out with a handful of the finest cartoonists of their generation: Julie Doucet, Chester Brown, Seth, and Joe Matt. It may be obvious today, but the gauntlet they threw in the face of comics was radical at the time: a look at real life.

It did garner the publisher a reputation among reactionaries for publishing exclusively navel-gazing autobiography, which it took more than a decade to shake, but that was less due to any real predictability in their publishing line than it was to the shock of the new. Autobiography and other reality-based approaches to comics became the natural locus of the quiet explosion of tradition that was happening in comics.

Meanwhile, elsewhere:

—News. Yesterday, Janelle Asselin published a report on harassment and assault allegations against Dark Horse editor Scott Allie. In particular, writer Joe Harris stepped forward to claim Allie both groped him inappropriately and bit him at a party during this year's San Diego Comic-Con. An unnamed witness backed up his account. Allie has since issued an apology for his behavior. Dark Horse CEO Mike Richardson has also issued a statement on the situation.

—Reviews & Commentary. Howard Chaykin, Gary Groth, Mike Catron, Larry Hama, and a bunch of other people discuss the work and legacy of Wally Wood.

Bart Croonenberghs writes about Philippe Druillet's 6 Voyages of Lone Sloane.

—Misc. The New York Times visits with Betty Tokar Jankovich, a onetime girlfriend of Bob Montana and apparent model for Betty from the Archie comics.

Today we have Annie Mok reviewing two new Michael DeForge books.

Transformations and power imbalances guide DeForge through Lose #7, the new issue of his one-person anthology comic; and Dressing, a collection of shorts and a successor to his 2013 collection Very Casual. Both come from DeForge’s regular publisher Koyama Press, and the crisp printing comes as a relief after the fuzzy image quality on DeForge’s Lose collectionA Body Beneath. Dressing sports textured cream paper in a pink hardcover, looking like an answer to DeForge’s precious salmon-colored D+Q book First Year Healthy. Its small size comes with the drawback of unnecessarily tiny text, but one story in the letter-sized Lose shares the same problem.

And elsewhere:

Jeet Heer has written a great article, with extensive new research, about Roy Crane's ties to the US military.

In a really smart and prescient movie move, The Lucas Museum has acquired the original art for R. Crumb's Genesis.

Comics related: The great cartoon-inflected painter Nicole Eisenman has been awarded a MacArthur "Genius" Grant. Here's a good interview with her.

Today, R.C. Harvey is here with an exhaustive report on this summer's Ted Rall/Los Angeles Times/LAPD controversy.

To say that political cartoonist Ted Rall is provocative is much like saying the Empire State Building is a pretty tall building or Mount Everest is quite a big hill. Rall often is, simply and unabashedly, extreme and outrageous, caustic sarcasm oozing from every panel of his cartoons. I usually agree with him—although at somewhat fewer decibels per utterance. And when his ire is aroused, as it has been lately, he can exaggerate the situation that irks him—he is, after all, a cartoonist—and maybe even stretch the truth a tad. So when he first began claiming that he’d been “fired” by the Los Angeles Times for spurious reasons, I paused before climbing on his bandwagon. For one thing, he couldn’t be “fired”: he freelances with the Times, contributing both cartoons and opinion columns.

It soon developed that not only had the Times resolved not to use any of Rall’s submissions in future (effectively “firing” him), but the paper announced its decision to the world on its website, a suspicious act on its face: Why would a newspaper feel compelled to make a public proclamation that it was no longer going to use the contributions of a freelancer? When a writer makes factual errors as the Times says Rall did, isn’t the usual journalistic practice to issue a correction? But the Times went far beyond this, and the extreme to which the paper went is highly suspicious. Why make such a public big deal about it?

The Times announcement continued, justifying its decision to drop Rall by claiming that a recent Rall column played fast and loose with the facts, thereby smearing his professional integrity as a reporter and commentator. And that, like the announcement itself, seemed a little extreme. Not only was the Times “firing” Rall in public, but it was sabotaging his reputation so he wouldn’t be able to find work anywhere else.

This is serious stuff. Deadly serious. No wonder Rall was pissed.

I have a different perspective on these events than Harvey does, largely because despite listening to Rall's "enhanced" audiotape multiple times, I have never been able to hear many of the key things Rall says are there. But Harvey's account is still well worth reading; there are important issues involved, and the facts at the bottom of the story are murky.

Meanwhile, elsewhere:

—Chip Zdarsky has refused to accept a Special Award for Humor from the Harvey Awards, arguing that it makes no sense for only him to be nominated for the award, considering Sex Criminals writer Matt Fraction's contributions.

—In Playboy, Noah Berlatsky exaggerates the merits of Randall Munroe's XKCD, which is a good enough strip that it doesn't really need the hyperbole. (Not that overstating things online is a crime.)

—Rob Clough reviews the latest volumes of the Complete Peanuts, as that project nears its end.

—This Friday will see the opening, at the Turchin Center of the Arts in Boon, NC, of "At the Junction of Words & Pictures", an exhibition celebrating the tenth anniversary of the Center for Carton Studies curated by TCJ columnist Craig Fischer. Featured artists include Ariel Bordeaux, Chester Brown, Charles Burns, Sophie Goldstein, Kevin Huizenga, James Sturm, and Sophie Yanow, among many others.

—Gabe Fowler of Desert Island:

Today Joe brings us the week in and the week out.

Elsewhere:

Goodbye to Bergen Street Comics. 

Local news dept: This cracked me up.

Finally, here I am this past summer talking Hairy Who with most of the HW themselves...

Today, Dan writes about a slew of comics he's read recently, including work by Aidan Koch, Anya Davidson, Benjamin Marra, Heather Benjamin, S. Clay Wilson, and Hugo Pratt, among others. Here's an excerpt, in which he reviews the new anthology, Lagon:

I was one of the lucky 400 who got this limited edition risograph comics anthology. I was excited. It is ironic then, that it would appear at same time as Mould Map 4, which makes Lagon irrelevant. For all its bluster (from the intro: “In the depths of the ocean, under the blue Lagon, an island was waiting to rise to the surface.” Guess what’s on the island guys? Comics!) and preciousness the book is basically a rehash of Mould Map #3 and various issues of Kramer’s Ergot, right down to the obligatory historical piece (Fletcher Hanks, guys!). What’s odd about this lavish production is that it’s filled with imitators of other people in the actual book. CF, Negron, Yokoyama — their influences dominate to an almost hysterical degree. Like, what the fuck? Or as Jeff the Drunk would say, Chelllllllo?! I guess what I’m looking for now in a comic (since you asked) is strangeness or authenticity. Give me one or the other or both (Koch, Benjamin, Davidson, Marra, Chandler below all have it in spades). In any case, Lagon is not strange or even unusual. It feels like a luxury good and thus like the end of something. It’s co-sponsored by by Agnes B., whose other offenses include Harmony Korine’s career. I don’t want art that has been digested already. Obviously I’m not being fair to it. Everyone worked hard, etc. But if you’re gonna do it, don’t fuck around with bullshit. On the other hand, man, this one contributor, Alexis Beauclair, is really excellent. He or she has taken the lessons of Yokoyama and Schrauwen and made a lot of fascinating comics in which you kind of activate them by touch. It’s hard to explain. Check it out. Better than you think.

Meanwhile, elsewhere:

—The Harvey Awards were given out at the Baltimore Comic-Con.

—Michael Lorah at CBR talks to Adrian Tomine about his upcoming collection.

—Mark Medley at the Toronto Globe & Mail profiles Kate Beaton.

—Comics Enriched Their Lives! #135: In this lost and only recently published book review of Alfed North Whitehead, T.S. Eliot takes his title metaphor from the funny pages.

Frank Santoro announced the winners of Comics Workbook Composition Competition 2015 Winners. A truly astounding comic by John Brodowski got a special mention.

Well, Mothers News, the great newsprint periodical out of Providence, home to some excellent writing and some fine comic strips, is closing its doors after half a decade. Celebrate it by stocking up on back issues while you can.

Another venerable institution of the underground, Tomato House, is now distributing hand-painted Caroliner posters, which is pretty exciting.

Today Annie Mok returns with another interview. This time, she talks to Jane Mai, whose latest book is Sunday in the Park with Boys:

MOK: I talked to Corinne Mucha once when she was developing her book [Get Over It!], the one about the breakup, and she said that autobio comics are a weird thing, because you’re deciding what to keep hidden. It’s this illusion of revealing all.

MAI: It’s true. I also have this weird thing, where—there’s two Jane Mais, there’s the blond one—well, there’s three, there’s too many to keep track of. And even though they’re based on me, I don’t consider them representative of me. They’re like these side characters that do stupid things.

MOK: In the beginning you make a main character list, the main characters being you and your friends: you, Greasy, Paril, and your best friend Evelyn. There’s Jane Mai who’s blond, Jane Mai with dyed black hair, Jane Mai with an eyepatch, and “Nurse Janey, a fictional character.” Aside from Nurse Janey, who seems to be used in more fantastical situations—or maybe not. There’s the one where Nurse Janey’s working with the vet to take care of the guinea pig’s terrible poop sickness, and it feels in fantastical because you’re not a nurse in real life. But then in some way, it’s “Well, this doesn’t seem like a very outlandish problem. Maybe Jane dealt with this IRL.” Can you talk about these different characters, and how they maybe have an intuitive separation for you between the four of them?

MAI: Nurse Janey is supposed to be more fantastical, even though I did do the guinea pig thing, and it was horrible.

MOK: It seemed based on real life.

MAI: Yes… I had some mini comics that I had done that were more fantastical, monsters and weird stuff, about Nurse Janey and Dr. Paril. They were these stupid little things I was doing for fun, and no one liked them! [laughs] So I stopped doing them, even though I’d like to get back into it. She’s a really fringe character for more exploratory, monster stuff. I feel like nurses and doctors are respectable positions to have, and I’m not [laughs] a really respectable person, so I made her a nurse. She’s not idealized, but she’s supposed to be almost a regular person. Except that she lives in a fantasy world with monsters and stuff.

Meanwhile, elsewhere:

—Reviews & Commentary. As you've no doubt heard, Marvel has announced that the next writer of Black Panther will be Ta-Nehisi Coates. At The New Republic, Jeet Heer writes about how this relates to the superhero industry's various diversity problems.

Ace comics reviewer Sean Rogers writes about new books from Jessica Abel, Cole Closser, and Michael DeForge.

Inkstuds has posted a critics' roundtable episode, with guests Joe McCulloch, Zainab Akhtar, and Tom Spurgeon.

—News. Via the CRNI comes reports that Syrian cartoonist Akram Raslan likely died in government custody two years ago, possibly after being tortured.

—Interviews & Profiles. Laura Hudson interviewed Kate Beaton for Wired.

Davey Nieves talks to Glenn Head for The Beat.

—Misc. Entertainment Weekly has a preview excerpt from Bill Griffith's first comics memoir, Invisible Ink.

Forbes ran an SPX report(!), focusing primarily on diversity.

Michael Dooley at Print shares images and brief excerpts from the Comic Book Apocalypse Jacky Kirby catalog.

On the site today we have Katie Skelly reporting on the long-awaited re-release of the 1973 film Belladonna of Sadness. Long-awaited because I've been hearing about this all year and I'm really quite excited to see it. I also know of a related book that is supposed to come out in 2016. A good time for psychedelia, kids!

The 1973 adult animation feature film Belladonna of Sadness (Kanashimi no Beradonna) was birthed into the world by Mushi Productions, the animation production studio founded and eventually abandoned by Osamu Tezuka after the commercial failure of his own adult animation feature, Cleopatra(1970). In the 90-minute film, directed and co-written by Eiichi Yamamoto, the virginal protagonist Jeanne lives a peaceful, humble life in her feudal village until a sadistic baron violates her by rule of droit du seigneur on the eve of her wedding. The destitute Jeanne begins to experience visions of a phallic demon, who strikes a deal with her and brings her closer to power through manipulation of nature and magic.

Belladonna, like Tezuka’s Cleopatra, was a commercial failure and remained unseen by wider audiences for years after its initial release. However, its lurid themes of eroticism, explicit sexuality, and witchcraft—the film takes cues from Jules Michelet’s 1862 treatise Satanism and Witchcraft—combined with its eye-watering psychedelic stills garnered steady interest in the age of the internet. After over 40 years of obscurity (and endless low-quality versions surfacing online), Belladonna of Sadness recently received a 4K restoration by Los Angeles-based post-production company Cinelicious. Having recently seen the restoration myself after years of anticipation, I was thrilled by its slow and steady animation style, reminiscent of the language of comics, its thumping soundtrack and painterly style, which I had never seen in animation prior.

And Rob Clough reviews Leslie Stein's Bright Eyed at Midnight.

Leslie Stein is part of a new strain of autobiographical cartoonists who inject a strain of magical realism into their work. That’s been true for her book/mini series Eye of the Majestic Creature, where she refers to herself as Larrybear and lives with anthropomorphic musical instruments. Her technique is fanatically labor-intensive, as she uses a stippling method to go along with lissome lines in creating a highly detailed but fanciful version of her mostly nocturnal existence. Her new book, Bright-Eyed at Midnight, is a sort of strange, inverted version of her other comics. Her usual work is in black and white, but her new book is structured around her use of watercolors and colored pencils. Her old work was heavily line-dependent, but her new work is built around color formed around the wisps and hints of lines, using negative space to nudge the reader into creating fully-textured drawings. Finally, while she put up a fictive veil in EOTMC, she rips that barrier away in BEAM, using the structure of the daily journal comic’sin media res qualities to more directly engage her own personal narrative.

Elsewhere:

A few things... let's remember Frank Santoro's crowd-funding campaign for his school. The link is here. Rewards are awesome.

Oh, and may I mention again how incredible Mould Map #4 is? It's incredible. And yes, I am still due for a report on NYABF. I just need to, uh, write it.

Still more... longtime romance comic artist and illustrator Jay Scott Pike passed away last week. Mark Evanier has a brief obit.

Tom Spurgeon reports back on SPX. 

Joe McCulloch has your usual guide to the Week in Comics here for you this morning, along with a short review of a new Dennis Eichhorn collection.

And Rob Clough reviews Leslie Stein's Bright-Eyed at Midnight.

Her new book, Bright-Eyed at Midnight, is a sort of strange, inverted version of her other comics. Her usual work is in black and white, but her new book is structured around her use of watercolors and colored pencils. Her old work was heavily line-dependent, but her new work is built around color formed around the wisps and hints of lines, using negative space to nudge the reader into creating fully-textured drawings. Finally, while she put up a fictive veil in EOTMC, she rips that barrier away in BEAM, using the structure of the daily journal comic's in media res qualities to more directly engage her own personal narrative.

Meanwhile, elsewhere:

—Interviews & Profiles. A Pizza Island mini-reunion occurs when Lisa Hanawalt interviews Kate Beaton.

R.W. Watkins talks to J.R. Williams.

—Reviews & Commentary. Rob Clough looks at recent children's comics, including several Toon Books titles.

Not 100% comics: Philip Nel writes a manifesto on reading children's literature.

—News. Mark Evanier remembers Jay Scott Pike.

DC is now giving Bill Finger on-screen credit on some Batman adaptations, including Gotham and Batman v Superman.

Rob Kirby reports from SPX.

A mural of imprisoned Iranian cartoonist Atena Farghadani in Brooklyn has been repeatedly vandalized.

—Misc. Vulture has posted an excerpt of a comics-like art book by Marcel Dzama and Raymond Pettibon.

Hello again,

Today on the site:

Paul Tumey on comics as a self-aware form of art:

Perhaps comics tend to be self-aware because the very act of making a comic requires intense focus on the building blocks of the form. Anyone who has sat down to create a comic knows there is a surprisingly complex decision tree that must be worked out.

It can go something like this: What’s my story? How do I break it down into little pieces? How many pages? How many panels per page? Will they all be the same size and shape, or different? Will I tell the story with narration, or dialogue, or a mixture of both? How is it going to be printed? What size should I draw it at? Will I use a computer to letter or color, or touch up the art? Which of the hundreds of drawing tools available should I use? That’s just for starters. The list can go on and on.

Part of the greatness of a particular comic has to do not with how well the artist can draw, but with how thoughtfully and creatively they have worked with the formal elements. As with artists in other mediums, accomplished and dedicated comics artists assemble their own unique combinations of these building blocks – and that’s called style.

 

Elsewhere:

It was a very busy weekend for east coast publishing: The Brooklyn Book Fair, The NY Art Book Fair, and SPX. The biggest news came out of SPX with an historic Ignatz awards sweep by all female cartoonists. Your winners are below in bold:

Outstanding Artist

• Emily Carroll – Through The Woods
• Ed Luce – Wuvable Oaf
• Roman Muradov – (In a Sense) Lost and Found
• Jillian Tamaki – SuperMutant Magic Academy
• Noah Van Sciver – Saint Cole

• Drawn and Quarterly, 25 Years of Contemporary Cartooning, Comics, and Graphic Novels, edited by Tom Devlin, Chris Oliveros, Peggy Burns, Tracy Hurren, and Julia Pohl-Miranda
• An Entity Observes All Things by Box Brown
• How To Be Happy by Eleanor Davis
• Pope Hats #4 by Ethan Rilly
• SuperMutant Magic Academy by Jillian Tamaki

Outstanding Graphic Novel

• Beauty by Kerascoët and Hubert
• The Oven by Sophie Goldstein
• Rav by Mickey Zacchilli
• Saint Cole by Noah Van Sciver
• Wendy by Walter Scott

Outstanding Story

• Doctors by Dash Shaw
• “Me As a Baby” from Lose #6 by Michael DeForge
• “Nature Lessons” from The Late Child and Other Animals by Marguerite Van Cook and James Romberger
• "Sex Coven” from Frontier #7 by Jillian Tamaki
• Weeping Flower, Grows in Darkness by Kris Mukai

Promising New Talent

• M. Dean – K.M. & R.P. & MCMLXXI (1971)
• Sophia Foster-Dimino – Sphincter; Sex Fantasy
• Dakota McFadzean – Don’t Get Eaten by Anything
• Jane Mai – Soft
• Gina Wynbrandt – Big Pussy

Outstanding Series

• Dumb by Georgia Webber
• Frontier edited by Ryan Sands
• March by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell
• Pope Hats by Ethan Rilly
• Sex Fantasy by Sophia Foster-Dimino

Outstanding Comic

• Borb by Jason Little
• The Nature of Nature by Disa Wallander
• The Oven by Sophie Goldstein
• Pope Hats #4 by Ethan Rilly
• Weeping Flower, Grows in Darkness by Kris Mukai

Outstanding Minicomic

• Devil’s Slice of Life by Patrick Crotty
• Epoxy 5 by John Pham
• King Cat #75 by John Porcellino
• Sex Fantasy #4 by Sophia Foster-Dimino
• Whalen: A Reckoning by Audry

Outstanding Online Comic

• The Bloody Footprint by Lilli Carre
• Carriers by Lauren Weinstein
• Mom Body by Rebecca Roher
• O Human Star by Blue Delliquanti
• Witchy by Ariel Ries

Many of these works and authors have been covered here at TCJ, including: Sophie Goldstein's interview appeared here a couple months back. Sex Fantasy was reviewed by Sean T. Collins last year, and Sean also interviewed Emily Carroll a few years back. Jillian Tamaki was interviewed by Hazel Cills last Spring; and Eleanor Davis published my all-time-favorite Cartoonist's Diary here last summer.

I'll have some New York Art Book Fair thoughts later, but more importantly this weekend I read Mould Map 4. It's the most urgent, bracing and shocking comic book-thing I've read in long while. It's new. Finally. No anthology has been his new and important since Kramer's #4. It's in control of its own identity, aesthetic and politics. It is entirely concerned with Europe in crisis, and the comics address this, but never didactically. More like flurries of articulately expressed visual howls. As with the last issue, it's almost claustrophobically colorful, with an emphasis on high-gloss screen-like visuals. The design blends early 21st century Dutch protest graphics and "bad" digital FX pharmaceutical advertisements. It successfully included a few historical pieces which serve to contextualize Mould Map itself, including an authoritative English-language history of the late 1970s and early '80s radical Italian comics scene around Frigidaire. As for the comics. It's the "Euro-Zone issue, so it's an all European group of contributors. There are no imitators here and no one from any dominant lit European cartooning tradition. None of the L'Asso preciousness or the Belgian twee -- more like trash cartooning from The Beano and comparable humor and adventure kids mags. And that's just natural, not referenced. There's not a drive to be "artistic" but rather, artful. I happily imagine this work to be (ironically, but truly) unable to assimilate. The authentic cartooning of this group is merged with a radical awareness of the economic and political crises around it. Reading it this weekend, after weeks of the refugee crisis... it's just incredible. Incredibly powerful and jolting. There is no more important book of comics in sight. Not even close.

Most of the east coast comics world is descending on Bethesda, Maryland today for SPX. Here on the internet, we have two new reviews by two new contributors. Jason Overby writes about a comic debuting at SPX, Maggie Umber's Time Capsule.

Unlike traditional comics, Maggie Umber’s Time Capsule isn’t engaged with constructing a narrative. Umber is observing the natural world (flora, fauna) and building internal connections, but she isn’t creating her own world or forming a story. There’s a homemade quality to the drawings that makes them feel like they are about the process of putting pen to paper. These are human drawings, not perfectly crafted objects.

I like the theory that our brains are restrictors of sensory inputs from the world. Comics, to me, have always seemed about classification and organization of data. Time Capsule both embraces and evades this idea. There is the process of collection of visual information and an organization of it, but it is not working toward a sort of plastic linearity. Time is all at once and everywhere.

And then RJ Casey joins us with a review of a paperback crime comics collection from Dark Horse, Joëlle Jones and Jamie S. Rich's Lady Killer.

I can just see the pitch meeting now. "You know all those hot-button articles posing the question 'Can Women Have It All?' They always ask, 'Should ladies have to choose a life devoted to their family or their job?' Well, what if their job was being a hired killer?"

Dark Horse gave the nod and here we are, with one volume collecting the first five issues of Lady Killer. It's not a good book, but the problem is that it’s not bad enough to be tossed aside as schlock either.

The first issue begins with Josie Schuller, green-eyed and sharply dressed, posing as an Avon lady at the door. We very soon find out that Josie peddles death along with makeup and her assigned hit, Doris, has let her inside the house. Doris's real name is Ms. Romanov (because of course it is), and it’s not long before she takes a butcher knife to the clavicle for … well, we never really find out, but mission accomplished I guess. Josie returns to her nice home, where she lives with her working-class husband, two daughters, and a nosy mother-in-law. Joëlle Jones and Jamie S. Rich, the writers of this comic, really want to push their protagonists double life to the forefront. Can this manicured assassin put out hits during the day and be home in time to put out casseroles? It’s not altogether a poor concept, especially in the early format in which Josie gets a new assignment each issue. However, the execution (pun intended!) is lacking.

Meanwhile, elsewhere:

—Joshua Barajas at NPR talks to Kate Beaton.

—Dan Zettwoch has a nice process post.

—The next season of Koyama Press looks pretty impressive.

—R. Sikoryak is posting his latest, strangest comics adaptation yet.

—Tom Bondurant has posted his final "Grumpy Old Fan" column at Robot 6.

Today on the site we welcome new contributor Annie Mok, who interviews Liz Suburbia, author of the the book Sacred Heart. Here's a bit:

MOK: There’s also [gender] stuff going on with Otto. There’s this scene where Otto offers to take Ben to the dance, and he says he’ll dress up, too. Then [when Ben comes to get him] he shows up to the door in a prom dress and a cute flower barrette and makeup, and he’s like, “Pretty hilarious, huh!” And she’s like, “Yeah, uh, it’s nice, it’s a nice dress.” He quickly realizes that it’s not “Ha-ha, weird thing,” and it gets real for him very quickly. They go and get booze and ice cream, and Otto’s eating this crappy 7-11 ice cream cone, and smiling with lipstick on. And then that’s the moment when they hook up for real. They’re sitting next to each other [on the car hood], and Ben stares at his cleavage-ish poking out of his dress, and Ben kisses his shoulder. Then there’s this moment later in the story when they’re sort of breaking up. Otto’s sitting at home watching the end of the second Kill Bill, and he sees this vision of this male-assigned person in lingerie, and the person looks like him. Can you tell me about that scene?

SUBURBIA: Well, some background on Otto’s gender identity first… Otto’s a character I identify with, and I put a lot of myself in. In the course of the story, we see him kind of cast a wide net as far as sexual and gender exploration goes, and doing some things that are kinda creepy, like hanging out under the bleachers to look at girls’ shoes and legs. He’s got something inside him that he doesn’t understand yet, which is something that I relate to. I’m assigned female at birth, and I’m married to a cis man, and we walk down the street and it looks… When you’re growing up in a religious environment and a narrow cisnormative and heteronormative world, you just think of yourself as the default even though the signs are all there. Like you said, that point of view shot from Ben, she thinks of herself as straight, but maybe she’s a little more queer than she realizes. None of these characters are aware of this stuff yet. They’ve all got bigger things on their mind. I guess this is a spoiler, that Otto survives the book.

MOK: Yes!

SUBURBIA: I didn’t conceive of him as a closeted trans woman, but I’m still thinking about where the character’s gonna go. He’s a fluid person, and I guess we’ll see how that solidifies as his life goes on.

MOK: “Closeted” is such insufficient language sometimes, right? In this case, and as was the case for me, it wasn’t so much that I was closeted growing up as I just did not realize what was going on. I never really had a period of being closeted, because as soon as I identified as trans, I told the people I was close to. The way that this vision of a person that looks like him appears to Otto, free of context and in a high stress moment, a moment of loss, mirrors my experience. It points out how nonverbal, how elemental and primal this experience is for Otto.

SUBURBIA: It goes back to the horror references, where it’s kind of a ghost moment: he sees this apparition. I’m very aware of the kind of privileges I have, as someone who’s female assigned at birth, who considers themselves gender neutral but doesn’t present in any kind of way that trips anybody’s alarms. So I wanna be really careful with the gender stuff in Sacred Heart.

MOK: Can I ask what pronouns you use?

SUBURBIA: “She,” “her.” It’s as good as any. [laughs] I use “she” for my dog, too. She probably feels as much like a girl as I do. It’s something I wanna treat sensitively. And I have a lot of fears about doing it wrong, because I come from such a place of privilege in relation to existing power structures. But it’s also really important to me not to pretend it doesn’t exist.

Elsewhere:

Here's a rare look at a Metal Hurlant precursor, Snark.

Yesterday's feature subject, Yumi Sakugawa, is reviewed over at the AV Club.

Today on the site, Greg Hunter returns with the third episode of his podcast, Comic Book Decalogue. I hope you guys have been checking out this series; it's great. Today's episode poses ten questions to Yumi Sakugawa (I Think I Am In Friend-Love With You, Ikebana), who talks about meditation, Megahex, and linework as handwriting.

Meanwhile, elsewhere:

—Interviews & Profiles. Kate Beaton has a new collection of Hark! A Vagrant out, and is doing lots of interviews. This one in The Guardian is particularly strong, and she also spoke to Autostraddle and Vulture.

Everyone's favorite comics person, Annie Koyama, shares five books from her collection.

John Semley at The Walrus looks behind the mask of Sex Criminals artist Chip Zdarsky.

—Misc. Michael Vassallo posts Sunday strips from the end of the famous 1962-'63 newspaper strike.

—Awards. Zunar has won the CPJ's International Press Freedom award.

Noelle Stevenson's Nimona has made the longlist for the National Book Awards in the young people's literature category, and is apparently the first webcomic to make it this far.

Hey, I'm back. Today, as per tradition, we have Joe McCulloch on the week ahead in comics.

Elsewhere, a few notes:

The publishing company 2D Cloud has launched a Kickstarter to help with its expansion. I like 2D Cloud very much, and in particular I like how the "brand" (for example, I have no clue who owns it) is less important than the books. That's refreshing nowadays. I remain skeptical about the viability of crowdfunding in the longterm, and lately have been wondering if the whole small publishing world is becoming overcrowded with books and imprints. How much can the market support? I know how finite it is, so... huh. We'll see. Anyhow, any company that published Mark Connery has my vote.

I admittedly have paid almost no attention (aside from Joe's article last week, which, in a pre-wedding fervor I admit to skimming) to Alan Moore's Electricomics, but here's a tour of it that intrigues me.

Here's a critique of Sunday night's Walt Disney documentary.

I'm not supposed to be here this morning, but Dan got married this weekend, so he gets a short reprieve from blogging. Today, we're happy to present for the first time a twenty-year-old, never-before-published interview with Daniel Clowes, originally conducted by Zack Carlson for the fanzine Meatnog. It's always interesting to read decades-old comics business talk:

CARLSON: Since you’re doing animation right now, has there ever been a point where you feel like you’ve done comics and you want to move on to something else?

CLOWES: I never get tired of what I’m doing. I’m always challenged. Comics are really difficult because you’re doing writing, storytelling, and you have to learn so many things that you’re just constantly improving.

I still have tons of stuff that I want to get done, but I get really frustrated with the business of comics, having to sell my stuff to superhero fans. There just aren’t stores for the type of comics that we do. There are alternative record stores that also sell comics, but they don’t really know how to actually sell them. It’s really irritating, and I’ve felt like quitting because of that. I hear stories of just … stupid comics selling millions of copies and that gets to me sometimes.

But the truth is that I’d probably keep doing it even if I only sold a hundred copies. I just wish I could reach the audience that I know is out there for this kind of thing. There has to be at least a hundred thousand people that would enjoy these types of comics, and they’re maybe getting to ten thousand.

CARLSON: But in the last couple years, your art has been able to reach more people, if not specifically Eightball. Even this music video —

CLOWES: That’s true. But somehow that doesn’t translate into people buying comics. People might see this Ramones video and like the artwork, but they’re never going to be in a comics store. Maybe if Eightball was sold in Waldenbooks at the mall, these people would run across it, but nobody but deviants go into comic-book stores. Certainly no girls will go in. People have to know about something and actually go in looking for it. It’s a real problem. It’s not something that’s gonna get picked up as an impulse buy. And the people who are going into comic shops mostly aren’t interested in Eightball or the other good comics that are being produced today. Sad, but true.

Meanwhile, elsewhere:

—Reviews & Commentary. Rob Clough writes about Gabrielle Bell's autobiographical comics. J. Caleb Mozzocco writes about Ben Marra's Terror Assaulter: O.M.W.O.T.

A collective of over 100 female comics creators has created a website addressing sexism in French comics. Most of their site is in French, but they have posted an English translation of their charter statement. (via Heidi MacDonald.)

—Interviews. Katie Skelly interviews Liz Suburbia.

—Crowdfunding. Artist/teacher/TCJ columnist Frank Santoro has launched an Indiegogo campaign to fun a new school for comics creators in Pittsburgh. Even if you don't contribute that's a fundraising pitch that no one should miss, and something that only Frank could've created.

Cynthia Rose is here with a report on "The Golden Age of Belgian Comics", an impressive exhibit of comics art from the Museum of Fine Arts in Liège now on display in France.

Their pages detail a comics revolution, the era when – led by Tintin – the ninth art forever changed leisure on the continent.

Its big names are the gods of this particular origin myth: Hergé (Tintin); Edgar P. Jacobs (Blake & Mortimer); André Franquin (Gaston Lagaffe and Idées Noires); Peyo (Les Schtroumpfs – the Smurfs); Maurice Tillieux (Gil Jourdan); Morris (Lucky Luke); Raymond Macherot (Chlorophylle and Sibylline); Didier Comès (Silence) and Willy Lambil (Les Tuniques Bleues).

Their tale is as unlikely as it is significant. Few of these artists had dreamed of working in anything like cartooning. Whether it was a life at sea, fine art or detective fiction, their first ambitions were a reaction to the Belgium where they grew up. Society there was mostly sober, parochial and largely Catholic. But then came the World War II, Occupation and Liberation – the first utterly traumatizing, the latter establishing a Euro-dependence on its "liberator."

From films to comics, cars to clothes, all of Europe felt the pull of post-War US style. But, within a decade, these artists managed to fuse it with a European and Francophone experience. Certainly the best of them – Hergé, Franquin, Morris, and Macherot – drew like geniuses. But it was really thanks to insight, intuition and sheer insouciance that they transformed modest genre stories into something all their own. They gave the European comic an architecture much of which remains with it today.

Meanwhile, elsewhere:

—Reviews & Commentary. Paul Morton writes about Drawn & Quarterly's 25th anniversary for The Millions.

At Hyperallergic, Anthony Cuday writes about Kris Mukai and Aidan Koch, and pays a lot more attention to their art than most comics critics tend to do...

Loren Lynch writes about Kelly Sue DeConnick and Valentine de Landro's Bitch Planet for The Nation.

Rob Clough on minicomics.

—Interviews & Profiles. Karen O'Brien talks to Glenn Head. Head then writes about his own experiences with underground comics for CBS.

CBR talks to Alex Robinson.

—Misc. This story on cult author Dennis Cooper (who also co-created the experimental graphic novel Horror Hospital with Keith Mayerson) explains his attempt to create a "novel" formed from gifs. This strikes me as one possible path forward for comics, or at least it's not entirely unrelated.

—Crowdfunding. Longtime inker Bob Wiacek is in need of financial help after a bad fall.

The Women Write About Comics site is running an indiegogo campaign and is close to its goal.

We had a little site outage yesterday, but we're back now. Note that yesterday brought us a great interview with Josh Simmons by Rob Kirby. Simmons is quietly producing a substantial body of work that burrows pretty deep into world-making in comics.

How have the reactions to Black River been so far?

Reactions seem pretty positive. Everyone talks about how depressing it is. I had thought it my most hopeful book, in a way, compared to most of my other work. But I’m not the best gauge for what my work is about, or what it’s doing, I suppose. I still get plenty of haters. I don’t understand at all when people call it gratuitous or “shock value” work. Or pointless. I always worry my stuff is, if anything, too obvious in its text or subtext or meaning or whatever. And people will have completely opposing reactions. One thing I heard was a reader thought that I was enjoying the violence too much. And another thought I was taking a kind of ethical stance, sort of wagging my finger in the reader’s face about how much they enjoy violence. Sometimes I want to take to the Internet and write a screed telling people how it is. But I think it’s best to just let people have their reactions. That’s part of the fun of art, right? And it’s nice there seem to be a fair amount of reviews online, and that people seem to be talking about it…

And today Mike Dawson chats with Dan Zettwoch and Rina Ayuyang about Linda Barry's The Freddie Stories.

Elsewhere:

Here's a nice obit for Marmaduke's Brad Anderson.

I'm intrigued by this Octobriana research and book.

Charles Hatfield walks us through his Jack Kirby exhibition:

Welcome back from Labor Day. Joe McCulloch is here with his usual guide to the week's most interesting-sounding new comics, but first he reviews the new comics app from Alan Moore & co., Electricomics.

Meanwhile, elsewhere:

—Reviews & Commentary. Josh Bayer writes about Benjamin Marra's Terror Assaulter: O.M.W.O.T.

Andrew Rilstone reviews selections from the entire run of Captain America, from 1941 to 2002, in three posts.

—Misc. The New Yorker has a preview of Cole Closser's Black Rat. I really enjoyed his previous book.

Tom Hart has posted a preview trailer of Rosalie Lightning.

—Interviews & Profiles. Will Wellington has a short interview with Michael DeForge.

William Cardini was a guest on Inkstuds.

Hannah Means Shannon talked to Alan Moore about Electricomics.

And so it has come to pass that R.C. Harvey has written about the British comic strip Modest Blaise. Little known here but somewhat loved. Bob himself really digs it.

He calls her “Princess,” and that, it turns out, is the consummate expression, for him, of their relationship. She calls him “Willie love,” but that, for American readers, is misleading: they aren’t lovers. For readers in their native Britain, however, “love” here represents not fevered ardor but a kind of familial affection, and that is an almost complete description, to her, of their relationship.

To me, Modesty Blaise and Willie Garvin are a literary pair that ranks with Damon and Phintias. Or Roland and Oliver. Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson. Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. But Modesty and Willie are a greater literary achievement than these more celebrated duos: they are more fully rounded, more human. Their personalities have depth and nuance. They live. For a potboiler pair, that’s a notable feat.

Elsewhere:

Details are a little sketchy in English, but it appears there's an effort to shut down a Stu Mead exhibition staged in Marseille, home to Mead's publisher (and comics/graphics stalwart) Le Dernier Cri. Most of this I'm getting from Facebook, though I did turn up this article on French Buzzfeed. I asked cartoonist/publisher/critic J.C. Menu about it and he wrote me the following:

• 

  Jean-Christophe Menu dear Dan, hello!
  Quite hard to explain quick but I'll try ...
  1) LE DERNIER CRi exposed since a few weeks Stu Mead & Reinhard Scheibner. Of course this is no boyscoot stuff.
  but no scout was supposed to go there... But DC exhibit such thing from 20 years. Thanks to Pakito Bolino who's the craziest french publisher, I hope you know.
  2) it happened rightist association (or maybe just one fascist guy) discovered the exhibition. Made a petition on line. Recolted 10.000 signatures. An enormours cabala against DC. Very grave.
  3) those fascists-rightists are going to demonstrate in front of DC office this week-end. The little LePen girl had took things in hand. (National Front, the third of the dinasty, vive la France) cause of course : "subventioned pedophilc art in the city" isgood pain...
  4) so they will come in Marseille offices. of course we care debordments skinheads, huge bullshit.
  5) It's time evolution badly and the main tihng I said in this texto is "NEVER CALL AGAIN DEGENERATE ART ". cause that's the point. And that's the point WE NOW HAVE TO FIGHT AND STOP
  7) No seven point. Said it all. Bye Dan !

  Unlike · Reply · 3 · Yesterday at 2:56am

I've asked around a bit, but so far not much more info. Anyone out there with more insight please comment below or send me an email.

And finally, it both warms my heart and chills me to the bone that by virtue of growing up on the comics culture I grew up on (1980s suburban) and the social media I have to interact with for this job, I will encounter something like the image below. I love to hate comics, and yet I also love to love comics. This is the conundrum embodied by, say, Paul Gulacy and, on the other side of the spectrum, Seth. That's right, they're not so far apart. The far-out, costume-wearing, persona-first thing. And so, gaze at the below and think about this name: KENNY FUCKIN' POWERS.

Back from the Minnesota State Fair and ready to read about comics on the internet, which it looks like Dan didn't manage to break in my absence (this time). Rob Clough is here today with a review of The Cigar That Fell in Love With a Pipe by David Camus and Nick Abadzis, a historical fantasy romance featuring Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth:

The Cigar That Fell In Love With A Pipe is a hard book to pin down. At heart, it's an unconventional fairy tale romance, and as such, it owes everything to artist Nick Abadzis, who brings that fairy tale to life. Written by David Camus, this is a book whose imagery is visceral and funky: the smell of smoke, the feel of sweat from Cuban heat, the taste of salt from the ocean, the sound of Orson Welles' mellifluous voice, and of course the ways in which light and smoke play against each other. The book has a nested narrative structure, as what appears to be the beginning of the story of Welles receiving a box of cigars is actually almost the end of magical story of two spirits in love.

Meanwhile, elsewhere:

—News. Berke Breathed's revival of Bloom County goes to Universal UClick, and is no longer a Facebook-only affair.

Wil Pfeifer remembers the late cartoonist and self-publisher Tim Corrigan.

—Reviews & Commentary. Abraham Reisman at Vulture reviews Glenn Head's Chicago.

Warren Peace enthuses about the work of Liz Suburbia.

Shawn Starr writes about Blaise Larmee's uncategorizable 3 Books.

Rob Clough on Glynnis Fawkes.

—Misc. Michael Dooley at Print shares the best vintage comics he found at Comic-Con this year.

It's a good time to revisit Spit and a Half.

Today on the site I'm pleased that R. Fiore has returned to these hallowed pixels with a new column on a topic I can relate to: Snobbery!

I can’t really think of a better way to categorize my kind of comics reader than “comics snob.” By comics snob I mean the comics reader who, when introduced as a comics reader, instantly feels the urge to disavow any interest superhero comics. To the lay public this distinction will mean next to nothing. To the comics snob the superhero comic is the elephant in the room, who is your roommate, who happens to pay about 90% of the rent, and when you tell someone where you live they say, “Oh yeah, the Elephant House.” Any self-deprecating use of the term “snob” will open you up to charges of humblebragging, but the term comics snob carries with it a tacit admission that there’s something absurd about being a snob about comics. It’s the absurdity of saying, “I don’t read any of that superhero crap, what I like is Donald Duck.”

The problem for the comics snob referred to herein is the superhero comic that’s too good to ignore. The reference is facetious; good comics aren’t a problem for anyone. The problem is this: Ignoring mainstream comics is easy. Steadfast resistance is the line of least resistance. Once the comics snob concludes there are mainstream comics worth paying attention to, he faces the fact that they publish an awful lot of mainstream comics, and to truly have a sense of what’s happening in that part of the forest you’d have to look at a lot of trees. Lacking that kind of stamina all I can say about the state of mainstream comics based on the examples reviewed here is that an elephant sticks in the ground and is round like a pillar.

In fact, I’m uniquely unqualified to write about mainstream comics in any authoritative way. I stopped paying more than piecemeal attention at precisely the point where the X-Men had become the creative center of mainstream comics, a circumstance which in large part inspired me to get off the bus. In terms of modern mainstream comics history, this is like losing interest in the Bible when God decides that Adam needs a girlfriend.

Elsewhere:

Jessica Abel on the editing process.

Alex Dueben on artist Paul Johnson.

And finally, I've never seen this amazing video of Jack Kirby discussing his time in WWII.