Sunday is Genghis Con in Cleveland; if you're within driving distance of Cleveland, you're pobably going to want to come to it. I will be there, selling my own comics. There will also be talented cartoonists there too, of course, selling good comics.
And if you're local, or will be in town for tomorrow's show tonight, there's a pre-party at Mahall's, which is nearby where the con is being held.
I won't be updating EDILW again until Monday, so if you're wondering why I'm being so shiftless, Genghis Con is why.
I will be exhibiting this year–my first show sitting behind a table!–selling these comics, if you would like to come by and criticize my poor art in person. For more information on the convention itself, you can visit its sites, like this one or this one.
As many of you have likely already heard, longtime Batman artist Norm Breyfogle has recently suffered what sounds like a pretty serious stroke. That can be a pretty terrible thing to suffer, no matter who you are and what you do for a living, and I can only imagine how much more horrible it must be for an artist to lose—even if only temporarily—the ability to use his drawing hand.
While I've never met the man, Breyfogle has been a pretty big part of my life, as I've spent God knows how many hours reading comics he's drawn, and I've even tried teaching myself to draw better by studying and trying to copy his work. Breyfogle is, in my opinion, one of the best Batman artists of all-time (he's maybe a hair ahead of Kelley Jones in my book), and his work on the Batman books with writer Alan Grant in the early '90s made him one of the handful of gateway artists who helped interest me in what ultimately became a lifelong obsession of mine, comics.
Like far, far too many of the people who draw the comics we read for a living, Breyfogle doesn't have adequate health care coverage, nor is he as fabulously wealthy as one might hope someone who spent so much time working on Batman might be. To help cover his medical expenses, his family has set up a fund-raising effort, which I hope you'll consider donating to, even if it's only a few bucks. They're shooting for about $200,000, so if everyone who bought an issue of Batman in October donated $2, they'd make that goal and have plenty to spare (And if everyone who bought an issue of Batman in October donated the cost of an issue of Batman, Breyfogle's family would more than triple their goal).
Additionally, this is probably a good time to remind any readers of The Hero Initiative, a worthy organization dedicated to providing a financial safety net for comics creators in need. It's never a bad time to consider a donation to The Hero Initiative.
Earlier this week I visited Cleveland's West Side Market in Ohio City for the first time. There I happened upon this three-part mural by Gary and Laura Dumm. You may recognize Gary Dumm's name from some American Splendor comics.
I found out upon returning home that the Dumms were responsible for the mural, which they call a "love letter to Cleveland" and essentially lists a bunch of people and things that Cleveland is responsible for. That link will take you to better pictures and explanations of who is who and what is what, but you'll probably recognize the gentleman with the eyebrows peeking over an issue of American Splendor immediately.
Just around the corner are two other late Cleveland comics-makers, and their most famous creations:
That was a nice, unexpected surprise.
I was also pleasantly surprised by Horizontal Books, an honest-to-goodness, brick and mortar, not-used-books bookstore that wasn't a Barnes and Noble. I don't come across those very often. How are they still in business?
Well, I don't know, but they sure as hell offer some crazy amazing (craymazing!) discounts; you get 50% off your first book purchase, if you buy two books, you get 60% off and, if you buy three or more, you get 70% off.
So I got this particular haul—
—of $79.96 worth of books for just $25.92 cents, a savings of $55.96! If you can't see 'em clearly, that's G.I. Joe/Transformers Vol. 1 (reprinting some old Marvel crossovers), Dungeons & Dragons Classics Vol. 4 (reprinting the last chunk of DC/TSR's Advanced Dungeons & Dragons monthly) and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures Vol. 4 (reprinting just four issues of the old Archie Comics ninja turtles, which translates into about $5 per issue, which is pretty damn steep), all from IDW, and the Hera volume of George O'Connor's excellent Olympians series from First Second.
Their selection wasn't the greatest, but it changes pretty frequently, and those are some great deals. Those IDW books are all so expensive that deep discounts are pretty much the only way I'd buy 'em, especially considering I have swathes of each in crumbling, yellowing comic book form somewhere in my vast comics midden.
Finally, on a West Side Market/comics intersection note, check out these cookies one of the vendors was selling:
I did not purchase one, so I have no idea how they taste, but they're aesthetically pleasing, anyway.
If you're reading this comics blog, then you're probably a fan of comic books in general, and superhero comics in particular. And I imagine there's a pretty good chance that, at some point this weekend, you went to the nearest movie theater to take in Guardians of the Galaxy, maybe the mostly hotly anticipated of all the many based-on-a-comic book movies that have appeared in theaters this year (Me? I'm going tomorrow night).
The movie is directed by James Gunn (Super, Slither), and written by Gunn and Nicole Perlman. It stars Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, David Bautista, Lee Pace and others. I don't generally follow box office returns, like, at all, but I'm fairly certain the film is going to be well-received and a huge financial success for Marvel Studios and Disney, as pretty much any profit made on a Guardians of the Galaxy movie is going to be seen as a remarkable amount (as far as properties likely to produce summer blockbusters, "Guardians of the Galaxy" was probably somewhere between Man-Thing and Red Raven on a list of all Marvel potential film fodder right up until about the point that it was announced that Marvel was doing a Guardians of the Galaxy movie). A sequel is already showing up as announced under Gunn's IMDb profile, for whatever that's worth.
In short, a lot of people are going to make a lot of money off this movie.
And, if a lot of people make a lot of money and there are a lot of accolades being thrown about, then a lot of credit is going to go to a lot of people, from whoever cut those winning trailers to the designers and animators who got Rocket's fur to look just so to Gunn himself. If comic book people get any credit, chances are it's going to be as a collective (i.e. "Marvel") or under a "Special Thanks" near the end of the end-credit scrawl (IMDb has comics writers Dan Abnett and Andy Lannning receiving writing credit; if that's on the screen near the "written by" credit, then that's awesome).
So I think it's worthwhile to take a moment to remember who did what, and to maybe take a moment to write a check this weekend to The Hero Initiative, a non-profit that serves as a financial safety net for comics creators in need, for at least as much as the cost of a movie ticket (For me, it costs between $5-$9 to see a movie, depending on when I go; that's somewhere between one and three comic books). And/or to remember Bill Mantlo and his current circumstances, given his role in creating one of the more prominent and memorable characters in this particular film.
Hollywood, here we come!
The superhero team name "The Guardians of the Galaxy" was created for a 31st century group of heroes in 1969's Marvel Super-Heroes #18; they were written by Arnold Drake and their first appearance was pencilled by Gene Colan. The characters guest-starred in various Marvel books sporadically over the decades, eventually earning their own title in the 1990s.
In the 2007-2008 crossover storyline Annihilation: Conquest, overseen by writers Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning, a rag-tag group of space heroes—including Groot and Rocket Raccoon—would begin to gravitate toward the character Peter Quill, Star-Lord. The miniseries Annihilation: Conquest—Starlord, written by Keith Giffen and drawn by Timothy Green II and Victor Olazaba, followed this thread most closely.
In 2008, Abnett and Lanning would launch the second volume of a Guardians of the Galaxy comic book, with pencil artist Paul Pelletier and inker Rick Magyar. The book spun out of the events of the writing team's various Annihilation storylines, and this particular line-up of this particular team is the same as in the movie—Star-Lord, Rocket, Gamora, Drax, Groot–and several others who come and go.
Behold: Groot's wide vocabulary!
Groot was created by writer Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby and Dick Ayers in 1960; he was one of the more memorable monsters in a string of one-off monster comics produced by Kirby and Lee in the pre-superhero days of Tales To Astonish.
The Collector was created by Lee and Don Heck in 1966 as an Avengers villain.
Please tell me "the deadly lips of Ronan" are referred to in the film.
Ronan The Accuser was created by Kirby and Lee in 1967 as a Fantastic Four villain; his alien race, The Kree, were also created by Kirby and Lee, and are a mainstay of the space-set stories in the Marvel Universe shared-setting.
Drax The Destroyer was created by Starlin and Mike Friedrich in 1973 in the pages of Iron Man.
Gamora was created by Jim Starlin in 1975; she is the adopted daughter of Thanos, another Starlin creation (albeit one heavily influenced by Kirby's DC-owned, 1971 creation Darkseid, who Thanos has beaten to the big screen).
Star-Lord was created by writer Steve Englehart and artist Steve Gan in 1976.
The Celestials were created in 1976 by Kirby for his series The Eternals.
Rocket Raccoon was created by Bill Mantlo and Keith Giffen in 1976 (and dramatically fleshed-out in a four-issue, 1985, self-titled mini-series by Mantlo, pencil artist Mike Mignola and inkers Al Gordon and Al Milgrom).
The Nova Corps (and Richard Rider, aka the superhero Nova who starred in the comic book Nova, but who I don't think actually appears at all in the film himself) were created by writer Marv Wolfman and first drawn by artists John Buscema and Joe Sinnott in 1976.
Nebula was created by Roger Stern and John Buscema in 1985 as an Avengers villain.
Korath The Pursuer was created by Mark Gruenwald and Greg Capullo in 1992 in the pages of Quasar.
And...that's all I know of. Did I miss anyone or thing very important, that isn't a spoiler for the film...? I'm just going off what I've seen in the trailers and the cast-list on IMDb here.
Now that Free Comic Book Day has come and gone again, let's turn our attention from comics that you can get for free to comics you can buy for money...but much less money than you might otherwise be able to get them for.
AdHouse Books, publisher of many fine comics by many fine comics creators (almost all of which are impeccably well-designed), is having an inventory-clearing sale, and you can get some pretty great books for some pretty great prices. I've read and/or reviewed...let's see...most-ish of 'em, so I can offer some recommendations, if you'd like. So open another window to this location, and read along.
You'll find comics from such talents as Joshua Cotter, Farel Dalrymple, Stuart Immonen, Scott Mills and Joey Weiser among those currently on offer.
Now, if you haven't read any of these, and I were you, then I would definitely start with Project: Romantic, one of a trilogy of anthologies AdHouse put out riffing on three great subjects of comics making—Romance, robots (Project: Telstar) and superheroes (Project: Superior). Featuring short stories by Junko Mizuno, Hope Larson, Maris Wicks, Debbie Huey, Scott Morse and many others, it's a great standalone book, and a sort of primer to comics creators whose work one should keep their eye out for (Looking back on the Project books, its interesting to see how many of those creators have gone on to bigger things, and earned a higher degree of fame since their contribution). (I wrote a very short review of it for Las Vegas Weekly back in 2006). The one one sale is a hardcover edition, which usually sells for $30, but is now going for $15. That's 50% off! Has AdHouse's Chris Pitzer gone completely insane? He must have, with prices like these!
Speaking of the Project: trilogy, Project: Superior is itself not on sale, but some of its spin-offs are (Hey, I found an ancient, pre-EDILW review of Project: Superior saved here, even if the altweekly it originally appeared in purged its online archives after it was bought out by Columbus' daily newspaper). It was followed-up by a short-lived comic book-comic which extended the superhero comics-by-people-one-wouldn't-imagine-doing-superhero-comics theme entitled Superior Showcase. Issues #2 and #3 are in the sale for $1.50 a piece (Hey, I remember when comic books used to cost $1.50! Oh, those were the days...)
Superior Showcase #2 features a new adventure featuring Dalrymple's character from Project: Superior, plus stories by Wicks (Primates, SpongeBob Comics) and Weiser (Cavemen in Space,Mermin) and a cover by James Jean. As for #3, that features a new Street adAngel comic by Jim Rugg and Brian Maruca, and stories by Dustin Harbin and Laura Park, all behind a Roger Langridge cover.
Also from the pages of Project: Superior comes another comic book-comic, Zack Soto's The Secret Voice, whihc features Soto's strange, unsettling super-characters, and 100-page graphic novel Ace-Face: The Mod with the Metal Arms by Mike Dawson (Freddie & Me).
The Max Blaster in action
I'd also definitely recommend Lamar Abrams' Remake, a 150-ish page book collecting stories about Max Guy, a manga/anime-inspired robot boy with a super-gun with the extraordinary power to turn things into stuff. It originally ran for $12.95, and is now on sale for just $6.50 (I know I reviewed Remake somewhere, but I can't remember where, nor can I find it by a few minutes of Googling, so I assume it was someplace that has since taken it down/had parts of itself eaten by the Internet, like Blog@Newsarama 2.0 maybe...? Anyway, it was one of my favorite comics of 2009). There are two follow-ups, Remake Special and Remake 3xtra, which I never bought or read for reasons I can't explain; I intend to purchase those along with the Jay Stephens collection Welcome to Oddville and maybe Gregory Benton's B+F during this sale.
Also worthy of consideration are Matt Howarth's dramedy The Downsized (For just $3.50! This is another one I reviewed for Blog@, that Newsarama destroyed during some content purge or other), Jim Rugg's showcase/sketchbook/collection thingee Supermag (Just $5! Reviewed here) and J. Chris Campbell's hilarious and wonderfully-drawn gag comic Zig-Zag #1 (Well worth the $3 price tag).
I know I also read Doug Fraser's Mort Grimm and Fermin Solis' One Step After Another, but it's been so long I'll be damned if I can remember much about them. I remember liking the former a lot, and something about a skeleton on a motorcycle (I think?), and I can't remember much of anything about Solis' other than the cover.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have an online order to place...
Hey kids! If someone ever points a gun at you, never, ever stick your finger in the gun's barrel, like Popeye does here:
Not because there's a danger that the the gun might go off, either because the person holding it pulls the trigger or on accident, causing you greivous bodily harm (although that is a conceren), but becaue there's another real danger involved in such an action.
It's still Valentine's Day for another two hours or so, and if you haven't visited ComicsAlliance yet today (Say, why haven't you visited ComicsAlliance yet today), then I'd like to call your attention to a couple of neat, holiday-specific features there today.
Do you have plans for this weekend? Well, if you're not already booked solid, then I'd suggest you check out this show.
And if for some reason you haven't already read Joshua Cotter's comic series on which the show is based, I'd suggest you visit one of your fine town's fine local comic shops (I used to use this one at least once a week) and buy it, read it and then attend the show.
What's that? Can't afford the $20 a copy of the collection will cost you? Or they don't have any copies in stock? Well, a quick looksee around the online catalogs reveals that the Columbus Metropolitan Library system has four copies of Skyscrapers of the Midwest in their collection, although it looks like they're all currently checked out. The Grandview Heights Public Library owns a single copy, which is currently available. The Upper Arlington and Bexley Public Libraries don't have any copies though.
I'll have much (much, much) more on the adaptation in the very near future, but in the meantime, I wanted to let you locals know this was going down starting this weekend so any of you who weren't aware wouldn't miss out on what looks to be a pretty cool comics-related event.
For more on the show, you can click here. For more on the folks putting it on, you can click here. And for more on Cotter and his work, you can click here.
The Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum (formerly the Ohio State University Cartoon Research Library) is hiring an associate curator. The qualified candidate will need an MLS (or equivalent) or a Master's degree-specialization in archives or museum studies, experience in processing special and archival collections, "extensive and current knowledge of practices relating to the identification, access, control, organization and digitization of visual materials," knowledge and experience of the history of graphic arts, especially printed cartoon art, and the ability to lift 40 pounds.
I've long longed to work there in some capacity, as the institution combines two of my three career focuses (writing, comics, libraries), but sadly I'm only qualified in the knowledge of cartoon and ability to lift 40 pounds departments.
If you're more qualified and looking for a good gig somewhere, you may want to look into this. If you're not from or anywhere near Columbus, Ohio, I heartily endorse it as a surprisingly comics-friendly city. Certainly for the Midwest, where it's maybe second only to Chicago.
The nominees for the 2011 Glyph Awards, which recognize "“the best in comics made by, for, and about people of color," were officially announced today. DC/Vertigo's recently canceled Unknown Soldier lead the field with six nominations (including Story of the Year and Best Writer), followed closely by Jim Rugg and Brian Maruca's original graphic novel Afrodisiac with five nominations. J.D. Arnold and Rich Koslowski's BB Wolf and The 3 LP's and Jamar Nicholas' adaptation of Geoffery Canada's Fist Stick Knife Gun each earned four nominations.
The complete list of nominees in each category can be found below.
What's that? Why are you reading about it on EDILW instead of a comics news site? Well, I'm part of the five-person panel who nominated the nominees, along with Jennifer Contino, Martha Cornog, Joseph Phillip Illidge and Chad Nevett, so I figured I should post this here. (Not that I nominated everything here; everyone made their own nominations in each category, and the final nominees were determined through democracy and math).
Everything after the asterisks will be a press release from Glyph Awards top dog Rich Watson, although I threw in some images and links, in case you want to pursue some of these works...
**********************
These are the nominees for the 2011 Glyph Comics Awards (GCA) for black comic books, to be presented in May at the East Coast Black Age of Comics Convention (ECBACC) in Philadelphia:
STORY OF THE YEAR:
Afrodisiac; Jim Rugg, co-writer and artist; Brian Maruca, co-writer
BB Wolf and the 3 LPs; JD Arnold, writer, Richard Koslowski, artist
Fist Stick Knife Gun; Geoffrey Canada, writer, Jamar Nicholas, artist
Unknown Soldier: Dry Season; Joshua Dysart, writer, Alberto Ponticello, artist
Yummy: The Last Days of a Southside Shorty; G. Neri, writer, Randy DuBurke, artist
BEST WRITER:
JD Arnold, BB Wolf and the 3 LPs
Geoffrey Canada, Fist Stick Knife Gun
Joshua Dysart, Unknown Soldier
Mat Johnson, Dark Rain
Jim Rugg & Brian Maruca, Afrodisiac
BEST ARTIST:
Denys Cowan, Captain America/Black Panther: Flags of Our Fathers
Christian Dibari, Pale Horse
Simone Gane, Dark Rain
Richard Koslowski, BB Wolf and the 3 LPs
Jim Rugg, Afrodisiac
BEST MALE CHARACTER:
Afrodisiac, Afrodisiac; created by Jim Rugg, co-writer and artist, & Brian Maruca, co-writer
BB Wolf, BB Wolf and the 3 LPs; created by JD Arnold, writer, Richard Koslowski, artist
Cole, Pale Horse; created by Andrew Cosby & Michael Alan Nelson, writers, Christian Dibari, artist
Geoff, Fist Stick Knife Gun; Geoffrey Canada, writer, Jamar Nicholas, artist; based on the life of Geoffrey Canada
Moses Lwanga, Unknown Soldier; Joshua Dysart, writer, Alberto Ponticello, artist; inspired by the character created by Robert Kanigher & Joe Kubert
BEST FEMALE CHARACTER:
Aloya Rose, Unknown Soldier; created by Joshua Dysart, writer, Alberto Ponticello, artist
Nola Thomas, NOLA; created by Chris Gorak & Pierluigi Cothran, writers; Damian Couceiro, artist
Sarah, Dark Rain; created by Mat Johnson, writer, Simone Gane, artist
Scout Montana, Shadoweyes; created by Ross Campbell, writer and artist
Selena, 28 Days Later; Michael Alan Nelson, writer; Declan Shalvey & Marek Oleksicki, artists; based on the character created by Alex Garland for the motion picture 28 Days Later
RISING STAR AWARD:
Nicholas DaSilva, Dread & Alive
Carl Herring Jr. & Tod Smith, The Enforcers
Brandon Howard & Sean Mack; The Revolutionary Times
Jamar Nicholas, Fist Stick Knife Gun
Geoffrey Thorne & Todd Harris, Prodigal: Egg of First Light
BEST REPRINT PUBLICATION:
Cold Space TP, BOOM! Studios
Superman vs. Muhammad Ali Deluxe HC, DC Comics
Unknown Soldier: Dry Season TP, DC/Vertigo
BEST COVER:
28 Days Later #6, Tim Bradstreet, illustrator
Afrodisiac, Jim Rugg, illustrator
Cold Space #1, Jeffrey Spokes, artist; Juan Maruel Tumburus, colorist
Unknown Soldier #15, Dave Johnson, illustrator
Yummy: The Last Days of a Southside Shorty; Randy Duburke, illustrator
Azrael: Angel in the Dark; Fabian Nicieza, writer, Ramon Bachs & John Stanisci, artists
Captain America/Black Panther: Flags of Our Fathers; Reginald Hudlin, writer, Denys Cowan, artist
Doctor Voodoo: Avenger of the Supernatural; Rick Remender, writer; Jefte Palo, Gabriel Hardman & Alessandro Vitti, artists
New Avengers: Heroic Age – Possession; Brian Michael Bendis, writer, Stuart Immonen, Wade von Grawbadger & Art Adams, artists
New Avengers: Luke Cage – Town Without Pity; John Arcudi, writer; Eric Canete, artist
The poll for the Fan Award will go up next month at the ECBACC website (www.ecbacc.com/wordpress). Fans are encouraged to vote for their favorite black comics from the five nominees listed, or to submit their own with a write-in choice. All write-in ballots must be sent to rich.watson@gmail.com with “Fan Award” in the subject line. IMPORTANT: The write-in ballot is ONLY for choices NOT listed on the poll. ANY WRITE-IN BALLOTS WITH ANY OF THE FIVE NOMINEES ALREADY ON THE POLL WILL BE DISCARDED AND WILL NOT COUNT.
In addition, for the first time, the GCA Committee announces the creation of the Chairman’s Award, a new award given in special recognition of a work in any media outside of comics, including but not limited to books, television, film, or the Internet, that illuminates the black comics experience in an exceptional manner, and also broadens and deepens the growing body of knowledge about black comics worldwide.
This year, the GCA Committee bestows the award to the book Black Comix: African American Independent Comics Art and Culture, by Damian Duffy & John Jennings, a reference book spotlighting over fifty different independent black comics creators from the past quarter century. The release of this book was accompanied by a gallery exhibition in New York containing artwork from some of the book’s featured artists.
The GCA ceremony will be held May 20, 2011, in the Skyline Room of the Free Library of Philadelphia, Park Central branch, as part of ECBACC, which will take place at the Crown Plaza Hotel Center City, in Philadelphia, PA, May 21, 2011.
(Note: Here's the official press release concerning this year's Glyph Comics Awards. Chances are you've already encountered it somewhere on the comics Internet, but I figured I should post it here as well, given my participation.)
The sixth annual Glyph Comics Awards (GCA) will be part of the tenth anniversary of the East Coast Black Age of Comics Convention (ECBACC), and as such, all involved hope it will make the big celebration that much grander. The GCA Committee will now accept submissions for the 2011 awards season.
—Joseph Phillip Illidge, comics editor and writer/co-owner, Expo Weekly
—J. Caleb Mozzocco, writer, Blog@Newsarama*
—Chad Nevett, writer, Comics Should Be Good
Any comics publisher—small, large, corporate, independent, self-published—as well as online comic creators and cartoonists for newspapers and other periodicals, are invited to submit black-themed material released from January 1-December 31, 2010 for consideration for award recognition. The Committee defines black-themed work as any comic with any combination of the following: a black protagonist(s), or at least a black character(s) pivotal to the direction of the story; a setting(s) or a theme(s) that explore the black experience within the United States and/or abroad, past, present, and/or future; and/or a comic of any kind written and/or illustrated by a black creator(s).
Anyone wishing to submit their comic book or comic strip for consideration in the 2011 competition should e-mail GCA Committee Chair Rich Watson at rich.watson@gmail.com for further information. Hard copies are preferred, though submissions of a e-files will also be accepted. Online comics creators and newspaper/periodical cartoonists with websites should send a direct URL link to their site or page. Daily cartoonists must have a minimum of one month’s work archived and available for viewing; weekly cartoonists a minimum of two months. The deadline for submissions is January 31, 2011.
The 2011 Glyph Comics Awards ceremony will be held at the East Coast Black Age of Comics Conventions (ECBACC) on May 20, 2011.
About the Glyph Comics Awards:
The Glyph Comics Awards recognize the best in comics made by, for, and about people of color from the preceding calendar year. While it is not exclusive to black creators, it does strive to honor those who have made the greatest contributions to the comics medium in terms of both critical and commercial impact. By doing so, the goal is to encourage more diverse and high quality work across the board and to inspire new creators to add their voices to the field.
The awards were founded in 2005 by Rich Watson as a means to provide news and commentary of comics with black themes, as well as tangential topics in the fields of black science-fiction/fantasy and animation.
About ECBACC:
The East Coast Black Age of Comics Convention (www.ecbacc.com/wordpress) is an annual gathering of comic book creators and retailers who create and sell material that caters to black readers of alla ges. In addition to selling their work, they also take part in panel discussions and self-publishing workshops for aspiring creators. The convention is held in Philadelphia each May. There is also a reception held the preceding night. ECBACC is an outgrowth of the original Black age of Comics Convention in Chicago, founded by Turtel Onli.
For more information about ECBACC, contact event coordinator Akinseye Brown at akinseye.brown@ecbacc.com
—Do you live in or around Erie, Pennsylvania? (Huh? Do you? Raise your hand, if so). Have you not yet read the first five volumes of Bryan Lee O'Malley's Scott Pilgrim series for some reason, but would like to do so before the movie opens next month? Well then, you should visit Books Galore on Peach Street ASAP. I was in the store on Saturday, and at they were having a 10% sale on the first five volumes...20% if you're a club member (i.e. if you have a pull-list there). And if you wanted to buy all five of 'em, they'd give you 20% off...30% if you're a club member. That sale lasts through September 8.
That is a very good deal on some very good comics.
The sixth volume, Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour, ships on Wednesday, July 20, and it's going to be like Christmas. If Christmas came once a decade.
—Do you live in or around Columbus, Ohio? (Don't lie; I know many of you do). Or are within driving distance, if you've got a good enough reason to visit Columbus, Ohio? Because there are some pretty neat comics-related events on the horizon.
On October 16, Life in Hell cartoonist turned television producer/Simpsons empire emperor Matt Groeining will visit Mershon Auditorium for a free discussion on his career and his work, with television writer/cartoonist Tom Gammill. More info on that event here.
Then, the very next night, on October 17, Art freaking Spiegelman will give a presentation at Mershon. This one will cost $6; Wex members can start buying tickets now, while others will have to wait until September. More info on Spiegelman's visit can be found here.
Spiegelman's visit is being co-sponsored by the newly renamed Ohio State University Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum's Festival of Cartoon Art. As usual, the Festival looks like it will be pretty awesome. You can learn more about it here, including the jaw-dropping line-up of presenters (Yes! My jaw literally dropped!) and details on how to register.
Just a reminder that if you were planning on checking out the This is a Comic Book show at Mahan Gallery but haven't gotten around to it yet, it's only hanging through August 28, which means you only have about a week left. More info here.
The title of the show is a confrontational one: This is a Comic Book. It’s simple, declarative and unequivocal, challenging whoever hears it to check and see if that really is the case, and then to either agree or disagree.
The confrontation is intentional. This is a Comic Book curators Jimi Payne and Colleen Grennan know this, and are doing more than simply hanging comic art in the Mahan Gallery for a show. They’re also asking questions, starting and engaging in a conversation about what a comic book is, what comic book art is, and how the art world and the comic book world get along, particularly at this point in time, when comics are no longer strangers to gallery walls, and no longer a novelty acts within the “fine” art world.
Now there are an awful lot of challenges to putting comic books in gallery spaces, a topic discussed at length in the show catalog, and This is overcomes two of the most obvious ones in interesting ways.
The first is that comic books are comic books, meant to be handled and read, not simply looked at one random page at a time. The show acknowledges this by including actual comic books in the show. The walls are covered with flat pages, covers and original work, but in the center of the gallery is a little island, strewn with minicomics by many of the artists with work on the walls; you can take in the pieces of the show, but you can also linger by the island, and experience the work of the creators as it was intended to be experienced. There on the walls are comics-as-art, captive and domesticated. Here on the table are comics-as-comics, wild and native. Neat.
(In the corner of the gallery there’s also a bookshelf containing graphic novels for perusal and purchase, so if you’re wondering what that Cochise character is doing climbing up the mountain in one of Lauren Weinstein’s pieces, you can get a Goddess of War Vol. 1 and find out).
The other major challenge is the fact that, because comics are meant to be read, not taken in as wall-art, gallery presentation sometimes means a white room full of big white rectangles, each including grids of smaller, black and white rectangles within the frames. Not exactly an appealing look for anyone other than comics-fiends, really.
But there’s a great deal of color in the gallery.
The most eye-drawing aspect is certainly Columbus-artist Phonzie Davis’ contribution, a column on the south wall of the gallery, wrapped like a gift in big, bright, poster-sized pages from his Left-Handed Sophie comic book. Among the half-dozen others or so also working in color are Panayiotis Terzis (whose contributions include big, bright, King Top strips with borders bordering on design elements, and a multi-layer, silk screen-looking piece piece that Payne says is part of Fantagraphcs’ new Abstract Comics: The Anthology), Lee Mei Yan (whose works are incredibly busy and detailed jumbles of cute, colorful images, only “sequential” in that their size and scope mean they must be taken in one piece at a time, although it’s up the viewer how big the implied panel, and what sequence in which to “read” them), Ron Rege Jr (whose cover to Cartoon Utopia is equal parts classic cartooning and street art). Among the more expected sorts of pieces are those from cartoonists you’re most likely to heard of, although there were certainly some surprises there.
There are a trio of pieces from Nate Powell, who’s recent Eisner for Swallow Me Whole certainly made his inclusion a timely one. There are several standalone pages from his work, and as always it’s fascinating to see the real, original art that the artist’s hands created: The finished product may be the published books, but it’s undeniably exciting to see what the artist made before it went to the printer, and look for clues about how Powell applied his ink or drew his letters into the art.
Weinstein’s pieces were surprisingly large; there are a couple of page from Goddess, and they were remarkably large. Weinstein works big. The finished, printed Goddess is a gigantic comics (Which, as much as I liked it, continues to frustrate me; I can’t figure out what to do with the damn thing now), at 10-by-15-inches, but the original pages looked even bigger; I’m not sure how big she works, but some of the pages were much larger than the traditional 10-by-15-inch piece of Bristol board, so she must work even larger than that and have it reduced? (At least for the Cochise page).
The pieces I personally found most remarkable were those by Anders Nilsen. There are a few pages from his Dogs and Water a very strong and very representational work from Nilsen.
The Dogs and Water pages were marked here and there with white correction fluid, and patches of other pieces of paper placed atop the originals, apparently covering mistakes or drafts that Nilsen wasn’t happy with. For example, this page in the book… …has a large, polygon of paper covering almost half of the original image, with the drawing extending over both fields of paper. I suppose any actual cartoonists in the reading audience will here think this simply stating the obvious, but from a reader’s perspective, because the finished product so often looks perfect, I often assume it was created perfect, and it’s something of a revelation to see how many imperfections go into reaching that finished perfection.
Also on the more representational end of things are a few complete strips.
Dorothy Gambrell* has several Cat and Girl strips that can be read in their entirety in the space of a single piece.
Here’s one, entitled Times New Viking**: Matt Furie, like Gambrell, has complete strips, although his characters and use of space and line makes his work seem at a greater distance from what one imagines when one imagines “comic strip” than Gambrell’s. Gambrell’s strips could easily appear in newspapers, if newspapers were more awesome than they actually are, where I can’t see in a newspaper…maybe an alternative magazine of some sort. John Porcellino*** also provides complete strips, although his—interestingly enough—aren’t original pages from any of his minicomics, but recreations of them. That is, instead of giving them his original art, he created original art from the original art, if that makes sense. It’s pretty neat.
Porcellino’s work has a special place in my heart, as I first became aware of him shortly after I moved here (at the inaugural SPACE) and found it quite inspirational (In a “Shit, if this guy can publish comics drawing baby raccoons like that, certainly I can draw comics too!” kind of way), particularly the way his work has evolved into the graceful, beautiful, airy abstracted aesthetic it is now.
This is a pretty Porcellino type of piece too: On the other side of the spectrum are sequential pieces without any real story or, like Chris Day’s Droop Till You Drop, which shows Droopy going from drooping to melting, and Noel Friebert’s excerpt from Son of a Gun, which is a six-panel grid with no images in it, simply words written in several different styles. (Shit, I wish I thought of making comics that way). I know it’s all art (it’s in an art gallery, after all), but is it a comic book? It must be. The name of the show says it is, and, after seeing it and thinking about it, I can’t disagree. It’s comics, and wow, what a multitude of definitions to that term there are.
*Speaking of Gambrell, check out her awesome Baba Yaga t-shirt design. I’m not one of those wealthy people who can afford to buy “clothing,” and simply cover my shame with strategically placed back-issues and yarn, but if I were, I would totally buy that
**Hey, here’s an additional Columbus connection to this piece. Did you know that, in addition to being a type font, Times New Viking is also the name of wonderful Columbus band? It’s true! You should totally go buy their album Rip It Off right this minute. I like track 2, “My Head,” and track 9, “The Early ‘80s” best. Also, if they happen to be playing near you, you should totally go see them, as they’re even better live than recorded.
Here, watch them perform with poor sound quality:
***According to publisher Drawn and Quarterly, Porcellino will be in Columbus on October 12 to promote his new book Map of My Heart at Wholly Craft, a swell store I would spend a lot of money at if I had a lot of money (which I don’t). No confirmation at Wholly Craft’s site though; I imagine they’ll eventually have some info up here.
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This is a Comic Book will remain on view through Friday, August 28. For more info on the show and/or Mahan, click here. You should really go see it if you can. And buy a catalog, if you can—they are only 125 of them in existence, so maybe it will be worth money some day! (There much rarer than copies of Chew #1, and people seem to think that will be worth money). And hell, if you got scratch to spare, buy something off the wall while you're at it. I think one of Terzis' pieces would look perfect right above your couch. Thanks to my friend who doesn’t want me to name her for letting me use her retarded Mother Box to take the photographs of the show above. This is my last post on the subject of this particular show, I swear.
J. Caleb Mozzocco is a freelance writer who lives and works in Ohio.
Creators and publishers who would like their books considered for review here (and/or anywhere else he contributes) may feel free to contact him at jcalebmozzocco@gmail.com.
Editors at respectable publications who would like Caleb to write for them are also welcome to contact him and offer him work. He loves money.