I’m bringing out the hype machine because it’s a pretty darned good issue of PW Comics Week today, and if you aren’t already subscribing…what are you waiting for? It’s FREE!

•An update on CPM and their manga publishing plans
•At look at US efforts to get comics on cell phones
•Douglas Wolk reports on the Stumptown Comics Fest
•Peter Sanderson has a detailed report on the Cartoon symposium at the U.N.
•A very rare interview with legendary artist Jordi Bernet by Chris Arrant
•AND a 19-page story by Evan Dorkin and Jill Thompson from the Dark Horse Book of Monsters

Tuesday, October 31st

San Jose, CA 6-9 PM — SLG WAREHOUSE OF HORROR
This year, the public is invited to witness the spectacle of the SLG WAREHOUSE OF HORROR as we open our doors to the public and make a grand party out of things. In addition to the spooks and haunts, our lobby gallery will have new art on the wall for you to gander at, including some original art by Roman Dirge and the original page of Jhonen Vasquez’s very first Filler Bunny strip. Creators in attendance include Mike Moss, artist of SLG’s Haunted Mansion comic book and series editor and writer Dan Vado.

The SLG Warehouse of Horror will take place in the massive SLG Office/Warehouse Megaplex located at 577 S. Market Street, San Jose, CA 95159. The Haunting takes place from 6-9 PM and is FREE!

Wednesday, November 1
Portland, Maine at 7:00 PM–Scott McCloud at Maine College of Art
Scott McCloud’s one and only Making Comics tour stop in the state of Maine! The lecture will take place in the Baxter Building, 619 Congress Street.

New York, NY at 7 pm — Greace Reading Series:

Girly Stories, Teenage Diaries, and Other Marvels of Women’s Graphic Fiction
PRESENTING:
Allison Cole: author of Never Ending Summer.
& Lauren Weinstein: author of Girl Stories and Notes from Vineyland.

Guest Curated by: Ariel Bordeaux, At Mo Pitkin’s, 34 Ave. A, between East 2nd and 3rd streets.

Thursday, November 2nd
San Francisco, CA at 7:00 PM–Ralph Steadman at the Park Branch Library

Ralph Steadman gives a talk and presents a slideshow for his new book “The Show’s Over”, remarkable collaboration that documented the turbulent 70s, and details a friendship filled with both betrayal and understanding. This event will take place at the Park Branch Library (1833 Page Street) in San Francisco. Note– Ralph Steadman will not be able to sign books or autographs at this event.

Los Angeles, CA at 7:30 PM–Drew Friedman at Skylight Books .
Drew Friedman will be discussing and signing his new book, Old Jewish Comedians, at Skylight Book(1818 N. Vermont Avenue).

Saturday, November 4th
Guelph, ON from 1:00 PM to 4:00 PM –Stuart Immonen, Cameron Stewart, J. Torres, Eric Kim, and Chip Zdarsky are at the Dragon (3 Wyndham St. North)

New York, NY at 7PM - Grace Reading Series “Graphic Lit Fest Comix Slam” at Bluestockings, 72 Allen Street between Stanton and Rivington

Join the Grace Reading Series for an open mike celebration of the intense, hilarious, visceral and sublime qualities that women bring to the medium of comics. Women cartoonists are invited to perform whatever they wish - readings? music? belly dancing? - and the readers who love them are invited to speak out in praise of their power and charms. Browse a great selection of books and comics by women cartoonists, and get books signed by some of the best artists working in comics today. Slated to appear: Megan Kelso, Fly, Gabrielle Bell, Lauren Weinstein, Allison Cole, Sara Edward-Corbett, Heidi MacDonald and more.

Sunday, November 5th
New York, NY at 7:30 PM –Graphic Novels: Traditions and Trends The 92nd St Y is hosting a panel with Art Spiegelman, Joann Sfar, Jessica Abel and Mark Siegel, with Leonard Lopate moderating. Tickets cost $25.

Monday, November 6th
New York, NY at 7:00 PM
Tom DeFalco, Peter Sanderson, Dan Wallace will be signing copies of the Marvel Encyclopedia at Barnes and Noble in Chelsea (22nd St. and 6th Ave.)

New York, NY — MoCCA Monday, Adaptation

Moderated by David Saylor (director of Scholastic’s Graphix imprint), this panel explores the phenomenon of graphic novel adaptations. Creators Ernie Colon (The 9/11 Report), Tim Hamilton (Treasure Island), George O’Connor (Journey Into Mohawk Country), and R. Sikoryak (”Dostoyevsky Comics,” “Crypt of Bronte,” “Good Ol’ Gregor Brown,” and more for the anthologies Drawn & Quarterly, RAW, Hotwire), discuss what went into their personal projects as well as their thoughts on the value of adaptations.

Join us below the cut for more images to celebrate this SPOOKTACULAR day!

(BTW for more Harry Clarke/Poe goodness, go here)

(more…)

Stare at this picture a long time, my children. It represents the strangest crossover yet, the team–up you ever DREAMED you’d see: Marvel and Guiding Light, a day time soap.

Now you may be like The Beat, and somewhat blissfully unaware that they even HAD daily soap operas any more; we thought Fox News, Jerry and Oprah supplied all the drama and hysterics daytime viewers need. Evidently not.

The New York Times has a report:

“Guiding Light� and Marvel Comics have teamed up for an episode of this long-running series, to be shown at 10 a.m. tomorrow on CBS. In the episode, “She’s a Marvel,� Beth Ehlers, as Harley Davidson Cooper, one of the show’s main characters, has an accident that gives her superpowers. To commemorate the occasion, Marvel has produced an eight-page comic.

Ellen Wheeler, the executive producer of “Guiding Light,� said the idea for a collaboration came from another Marvel comic book milestone: the July wedding of the Black Panther and Storm, an X-Men character, whose dress was conceived by Shawn Dudley, the costume designer for “Guiding Light.� After that, it was simple: “Let’s call them to see if there’s anything to talk about,� Ms. Wheeler said.

The producers deny any cross marketing appeal, and say it was all for “fun.”

“We didn’t think of it as a way to get a bunch of Marvel fans to watch the show,� Ms. Wheeler said. The super-power aspect of the story was also not a big stretch for the show. Mr. Kreizman and Ms. Wheeler said past plot developments had included a character’s being cloned and a painting that transported Springfield residents back in time.

The blogosphere has also been dubious on the cross-promotional potential for the stunt: Johanna, and this LJ

Did no one at Guiding Light take aside the studio exec from Proctor and Gamble and try to explain to them just what Marvel would have to do to ever make soap fans who don’t already like and follow comics, spend money on them? Or did someone try but they just weren’t heeded? Because it’s not difficult to think that someone said ‘Oh, those women will buy anything that promises them some romance, as long as we stick in characters they already like….’

Marvel, however, is more hopeful about the venture as this article in BRANDWEEK shows:

“We were really attracted to this as a way to get access to a new audience,â€? said David Gabriel, Marvel Publishing’s vp-sales and marketing. “The soaps’ audience is all women and ours is all men.â€?…Although the collaboration between the two genres has gotten a lot of press, Gabriel said that he’s being realistic about what it might accomplish “The best case for us is a woman who’s a typical soap watcher goes into a store and buys a book,â€? he said. “Even if she doesn’t like it maybe she’ll give it to her kids or her husband.â€?

Adult women are seemingly the last frontier for the comics renaissance…or are they? We know that in Japan josei manga is for the ladies…but who cares about Japan, really, their market is completely different from ours.

The idea that grown women won’t read comics seems to us to be fairly spurious. (Note that we said grown women as a group, NOT the average grown woman.) The ladies like their escapist entertainment, just like everyone else. The average Video Gamer is 41 and Half Are Female. A well-written BATTLESTAR GALACTICA or DOCTOR WHO comic would surely appeal to the women who watch these kind of shows; women like vampires, and comics folks are trying that kind of thing, too. FUN HOME, CANCER VIXEN and the works of Marjane Satrapi have definitely made some inroads on this group as well.

The problem isn’t so much getting women to enjoy genre fiction as getting them into some place where they might sample the comics. If adult women aren’t exactly the frontier then marketing to them is, at least for most comics retailers. But that is a whole ‘nother tome that we’ll save for another day.

The Guiding Light stunt is just that, and we sincerely doubt that it’s going to get too many crossover viewers/readers. (It may cross over to people like Jim McCann, Marvel’s marketing guy and a soap fan who once wrote for the show.) But if nothing else, it’s gotten Marvel a lot of press, and got people thinking. From that standpoint, it’s already a success.

Coolest thing to do today, bar none:

Spend Halloween with popular “macabre� cartoonist Gahan Wilson, whose art and gag cartoons have been seen in such popular magazines as The New Yorker, Playboy, Esquire, and National Lampoon. Mr. Wilson will appear and sign autographs at Evanston’s Comix Revolution, 606 Davis Street, on Tuesday, October 31, starting at 6 PM.

Born and raised in Evanston and a student at the Art Institute of Chicago, Mr. Wilson’s work is featured in the recently published The Rejection Collection: Cartoons You Never Saw, and Never Will See, in The New Yorker and his return to Evanston is due in part to he being the subject of a new documentary directed by Steven-Charles Jaffe.

Mr. Wilson’s art – a cross between Charles Addams and Edward Gorey – first appeared in a 1954 issue of the science-fiction pulp magazine Amazing Stories, and in the subsequent 50 years, his cartoons, stories, and commentary have entertained (and horrified) readers.

Join Mr. Wilson at Evanston’ Comix Revolution on Halloween night starting at 6 PM for a very rare public appearance. A large selection of Mr. Wilson’s books, comics, and magazines will be available for purchase.

Neil Gaiman wrote an op-ed for the NY Times:

We are gathered here at the final end of what Bradbury called the October Country: a state of mind as much as it is a time. All the harvests are in, the frost is on the ground, there’s mist in the crisp night air and it’s time to tell ghost stories.

And Jae Lee’s illustrated Dracula is out.

Here’s what’s happening in Hollywood, my homie hepcats!

Hot rumor of the week: Bruce Campbell WILL play a villain in Spiderman 3. The blog
film ick has the spoilerish and Mysterio-so details.

Jack Black is NOT playing Green Lantern!

“Well yeah it was true that uh yes someone wrote a script for me, but I don’t think it’s going to happen. Too many people were mad at the idea of me being Green Lantern.”

Wow, like that was going to happen.

Ron Perlman and Kelly Hu join the cast of AFRO SAMURAI:

Ron Perlman and Kelly Hu have joined Samuel L. Jackson in the voice cast for Afro Samurai, a five-part animated series premiering on Spike TV on Thursday, Jan. 4, 2007. Based on a graphic novel by Takashi Okazaki, the toon is produced by Japanese animation studio Gonzo in partnership with GHK and FUNimation.

The KING, Jerry Lawler, claims to have been working on a Superman pitch.

In the latest WWE Magazine which will be released soon features an interview with Jerry ‘The King’ Lawler regarding his career….The King also mentioned that he recently submitted samples to DC Comics for a potential Superman project in the future.

Puppies! Puppies! Puppies!

Charles Addams is the king of the creepy cartoons, and Linda Davis has just written a new biography of the artist calledCharles Addams: A Cartoonist’s Life. You can listen to an interview with her in NPR, or read a review of the book
or this one.

Miho Hatori, whose musical stylings with Cibo Matto, Handsome Boy Modeling School and the Gorillaz have always given us nothing but joy, is back with a solo album, and the first single has a Halloweenie kind of cool animated video directed by Masaru Ishiura.

UPDATE, Monday 10/30: Peter Kuper sent out the following update today:

Sad to say it seems to be getting worse as of this morning but hard as always to verify without going downtown. For some reason Betty doesn’t want me to head to the zocalo–something about me getting shot or arrested and deported–go figure!

Latest I’ve heard was that there are 3 different groups marching to the Zocalo and that there has been fighting in the street with the Federal police.

We’re sitting tight in San Felipe,we dropped Emily at school like it was a normal day and are keeping an ear on the news/internet.

He also sent some new drawings. Click to enlarge.

Several months ago cartoonist Peter Kuper moved with his wife and daughter to Oaxaca City, Mexico for a year’s stay. Kuper has long been known as a very politically aware cartoonist, having edited WORLD WAR 3 , and contributed to other left-leaning anthologies over the years.

We aren’t up enough on Mexican politics to know if it was a hot spot when they moved there, but it has been much in the news lately due to protests by social activists who are protesting the rule of state governor Ulises Ruiz, whom they accuse of corruption. In recent days the federal government stepped in with an invasion by thousands of federal riot police:

Mexican riot police backed by helicopters and armoured trucks tightened their grip over the colonial city of Oaxaca on Monday after seizing it from leftist protesters in clashes that left one person dead.

Thousands of federal police, some armed with assault rifles, stormed the beautiful city popular with foreign tourists early on Sunday and steadily gained control by using tear gas and water cannon.

They finally occupied its central square as night fell and demonstrators armed with metal poles and sticks pulled back.

An American journalist making a documentary, Brad Will, was killed in the rioting over the last few days. It all sounds like something out of DMZ, but it’s real life, alas.

We’ve been on Peter’s mailing list, and he sent an email out over the weekend saying that he and his family live ten minutes from downtown and have been safe. “Throughout our time here(four months now) these problems have been hanging over Oaxaca, but we have nonetheless been having a fantastic experience,” he writes.

He also sent a link to a previous email posted on a friends site. Posted above is a page from Peter’s sketchbook from earlier in his stay which he gave us permission to post here.

Needless to say, we send many good thoughts for the continued safety of Peter and his family, and all those involved in the conflict.

Art © 2006 Peter Kuper.

There is he. Tony Long. The enemy. The Wired staffer’s modest proposal that AMERICAN BORN CHINESE wasn’t good enough for a National Book Award nomination has spurred defenses of comics far and wide. Here’s First Second’s own Mark Siegel, the publisher of the collected AMERICAN BORN CHINESE

Rather than taking to task each assertion, or the tone of the missive, let’s step back a minute: isn’t it finally time the debate over the standing of the graphic novel within modern literature be left behind? Will it finally elevate from an obsession over the formal aspects of comics vs. prose — and move into substance, storytelling, character, plot, voice, these much more interesting depths?

Obsession over the form overlooks the fact it’s A VEHICLE, and while there are some differences in the crafts of novel and graphic novel creation, fundamentally it’s mostly about STORY, the work of AUTHORS, and in the best cases, a discerning reader’s reading experience. (This is why I have no interest in being a champion of the Graphic Novel form per se, even though I sound like one on many of my talks to booksellers and librarians — but no, I champion creators, voices, talent that moves and touches me, creators who speak a universal storytelling tongue, and in the case of First Second, they happen to be working in this chosen medium.)

But Siegel need not have worried. Here’s The Orlando Sentinel’s Rebecca Swain Vadnie:

(more…)

As an 18-year-old in 1942, Allen Bellman joined Timely studio as an artist. Now, 64 years later, he’ll be a guest at the Florida Supercon, and looks back at his brief career in comics, working on such characters as Sub-Mariner, Vampire Brats and Mike Trapp.

Bellman will be on hand to mingle, sign autographs and perhaps earn some money doing commissioned drawings. He’s happy to talk about his years in the business and, if anyone asks, why he dropped out. Sitting in his Tamarac kitchen, he looks back on the mix of personal and external circumstances that separated him from work he loved and put him on a different trajectory: a family-run auto parts wholesaling business in New Jersey, a move to South Florida, a stint doing ad design at the Sun-Sentinel newspaper and then retirement.

The article at Popmatters provides a touching look at what it must be like to be remembered for something after a lifetime in another field.

To call it a revelation, this flood of visual material from decades ago, is almost an understatement. Vassallo “added a new dimension to my life,� Bellman says. Nowadays he gives talks about his experience to community groups and convention audiences. At a “con�—shorthand for comics convention—in Orlando, Fla., a man approached him with several back-issues drawn by Bellman “and he asked me to sign every one.�

“Do you know how that made me feel? I was remembered,� says Bellman.

Remember the horror-themed line of Fox Atomic comics which are tied in to Fox’s new youth-branded horror movie line? Of course you do. What better day to launch some previews than /Halloween, with THE CARNIVAL OF LOST SOULS, a series of previews and activities to be found on foxatomic.com. This will include comics previews, according to the website.

Fox Atomic has created and will host The Carnival of Lost Souls on Halloween day. The day long event will take place at foxatomic.com, with a series of activities designed to offer something to all Halloween, horror, and film enthusiasts.

Activities will include contests, giveaways, and premieres of various clips from Atomic film releases, including Turistas and first looks at the heavily anticipated Hills Have Eyes 2 and 28 Weeks Later. There will also be a number of trivia contests, testing fan knowledge of some of the smaller details of popular horror films. Over the course of the day prizes will be awarded to contest winners. The most valuable prize will be awarded to the three winners of the Carnival’s three costume contests: scariest costume, funniest costume, and sexiest costume. Visitors are invited to send in a photo or video of their costume for consideration, with the victor in each category winning a screening of the upcoming Atomic release Turistas in their home town, for themselves and their guests.

(more…)

Okay now the white background and sidebar are gone in Safari and Firefox, anyway. I know this happens when I post an image that is too large, but I can’t see which one it is. Any ideas, email me or post in the comment.

Ah, it was all those pee and poo colored tags in the John K. post.

The Golden Apple, Hollywood’s legendary comics store is moving to a new location on Wednesday, November 1. It will still be on Melrose, but a bit further east, on the corner of La Brea, at 7018 Melrose. Stan Lee will be doing the ribbon cutting on the new location, and later that day there will be a signing with Seth Green (Freshman, Robot Chicken) and David Mack (Kabuki, Daredevil).

We spoke with Sharon Liebowitz a few days ago and everyone is excited about the new location, which is larger and will give them even more opportunities for events. We can’t wait to get out to LA to visit the new locale, even as we recall fond memories of the old one: hanging out in the back in the office with the late, great Bill Liebowitz (who founded the Golden Apple), kibbitzing on every topic under the sun, running into Weird Al Yankovic perusing the stacks, or sitting outside on a mellow California evening during one of the post San Diego parties.

Sharon and son and GM Ryan are planning a big grand opening party at some point which we hope to make, and that’s sure to kick off a whole new bunch of great memories.

The Stumptown indie comics fest took place this weekend in Portland, OR. Reports are straggling in. There’s a Flickr photo pool up which makes it look as adorable as heck. Also, apparently all women cartoonists in the Pacific Northwest are covered with tattoos. We don’t recognize most of the West coast folk, although in the above panel you can see Colleen Coover, Steve Lieber, and Paul Chadwick, among others.

The Stumptown blog has an opening night report and there’s also an Engine thread. We read a bunch of blog reports from attendees, and mostly it sounds fun, although reports on business were mixed. Apparently the big party on Saturday night had some problems at the door, as well.

The DC Conspiracy blog has this:

The show was Friday evening and Saturday night. Friday was busier than we expected, and then Saturday was a little lighter than we had thought. Since this is the show’s first year in a huge location (the Oregon Convention Center), I think it’s a case of the show not quite catching up with the size of the venue. Plus, as several people at the show pointed out, the media sponsor (Willamette Week, a local paper) hardly advertised the show at all.

Jamie S. Rich:

The show overall was a real success for Joëlle and I. 12 Reasons sold extremely well. We signed a lot of autographs, and Joëlle did some cool sketches. I liked her drawings for fans of Death from Sandman, a monkey, and Storm from the X-Men (though, not all in the same sketch), as well as her personal sketches of people in the crowd.

[snip]Both days seemed very well attended, and what I liked was it seemed to me that the cycle of people kept renewing. It’s not a huge room, so anyone coming could scope it out, meet the creators they wanted to meet, make their purchases, and then make room for the next set.

What say you, gentle readers?

At his always indispensible blog, Mark Evanier posted his thoughts on the origins of the images of the Marvel stamps released last week, and how the USPO itself seems to have incorrectly ID’d the artists. In an update, he gives some more info on the Wolverine stamp:

I received the following from Len Wein, who co-created Wolverine and wrote the comic book he mentions below…and who, more importantly, owes me many lunches and his undying gratitude for my friendship. Len writes…

FYI, the Wolverine image on the stamp is from the splash page to Giant-Size X-Men #1. It’s both penciled and inked by Dave, though the version on the stamp is probably from a bad stat. You can check out any of the 42 million reprints of said issue for verification if you’d like.

BTW, I own the original art from this page. Trust me, the original looks better.

Who cares? It’s only a UNITED STATES POSTAGE STAMP. Why should they bother getting a clear image on it? For that matter, why should they not print their expensive hardcover reprints from eighth-generation stats? Really, I don’t know why consumers (and the artists themselves) aren’t more outraged at the bad reproduction we often get when anything is reprinted.

§ Over at the The Forbidden Planet International Blog the artist known as Ilya is intervieed asbout a new brit anthology with the promising title The Mammoth Book of Best New Manga,a 500 (!) page anthology of non-Japanese manga.

The cover was largely a compromise – the publishers had horrendous ideas – and while the rising sun image is a tad embarrassing for a book deliberately made up of “manga not made in Japan�?, it does make for a strong graphic. I like that the panda suggests the Far Eastern influence, but there’s equal elements of Rupert Bear and Little Nemo to Neill’s artwork in there too. It does seem to best represent the hybrid. As for their story, Bulldog is genuinely widescreen – you can see From Hell and The Authority / Ultimates in the mix as well as manga and anime, what with the mecha (giant robots), anthropomorphism, and the various transformations going on. It’s that good!

§ James Kochalka is interview at Stranded In Stereo:

James is famous for his comics. He’s won the prestigious Ignatz Award four times, the Harvey award once and has been nominated for numerous Eisner Awards. His best selling comic book Monkey Vs. Robot sold over 10,000 copies. His website Americanelf.com averages almost 3,000 hits per day. He has created some things there that are truly great, perhaps even timeless. But comics are only half the Kochalka story. There is also music. James loves making music as much as he loves making comics. His love is so altruistic and genuine he wants to share it with you all. He wants to rock you and everyone you know and love. Spread Your Evil Wings and Fly is his first album that packs the kind of mass appeal that would make that possible.

JK: “…My single most flawless work is Spread Your Evil Wings and Fly. The single best thing that I’ve created is probably that album… I think it’s clear from the music that it’s real emotion. It’s not faked emotion. Anybody who listens to that album can tell it was made by people that are really passionate about music and were seriously trying to make a great album.�?

§ Have you ever wanted to asked Archie comics chairman Michael Silberkleit a question? Now is your chance!

As part of the celebration of Archie’s 65th Anniversary, Archie Comics Chairman and Co-Publisher, Michael Silberkleit will answer 25 questions submitted by fans during the December Archie Comics PodCast. If there is something you always wanted to know about Archie or Archie Comics send us an email and your question may be selected to be included in this celebration.

Sent questions to interviews@archiecomics.com

§ Wizard has announced the programming for Wizard World Texas, to be held in a couple of weeks. This is the first Wizard show since the reorganization after the Chicago show. In a bit of a sign of the times, there is a LOT of anime, and manga programming. There are also no female cartoon guests listed, although this lady rassler made the cut.

It’s the time of year to dress up and show your inner self, and we saw plenty of inner selves this weekend, including a girl dressed as Aspargus Woman on the subway. The Blogger’s Blog rounds upsome general costuming news, and to the surprise of no one who’s been living outside a cave for the past six months pirates were a popular choice this year. The top 20:

1 Witch 17.5%
2 Pirate 3.7%
3 Vampire 3.7%
4 Cat 2.6%
5 Clown 1.8%
6 Fairy 1.6%
7 Gypsy 1.6%
8 Superhero 1.6%
9 Ghost/Ghoul 1.4%
10 Dracula 1.3%
11 Devil 1.2%
12 Woman of the Night 1.1%
13 Nurse 1.1%
14 Pumpkin 1.1%
15 Athlete 1.0%
16 Princess 1.0%
17 Zombie 1.0%
18 Angel 0.8%
19 French Maid 0.8%
20 Cowboy/Cowgirl 0.7%

After pirates, “tinkerbell” and “wonder woman” were also popular searches. However, Comics Book Bin claims that it’s Harley Quinn who is the most popular fantasy figure for females:

Harley Quinn costumes frequently sell out at retailers before the Wonder Women and Supergirls suits. In recent years, the realistic painting of the character by artist Alex Ross and the portrayal of the character in fan films have probably increased the character’s popularity. Combined with the other assets of the character as derived from a great theatrical it’s not difficult to understand why every year thousand of women want to be Harley Quinn on Halloween night.

If you say so. Based on our observations walking home on 3rd Avanue on Saturday night, every year, women want to wear some costume that enables them to wear a very short skirt. Not that anyone is really complaining.

Margaret Atwood is one of Canada’s greatest living writers. The multiple-award winning novelist, essayist and poet is the author of such books as THE HANDMAID’S TALE and CAT’S EYE, and she also dabbles in comics, as Jim Dougan discovered on his LJ.

What I didn’t know was that, in addition to being the author of more than thirty-five books of fiction, short stories, poetry, literary criticism, radio and television scripts, she’s also a closet cartoonist. That’s right: Margaret Atwood DOES COMICS. In tone, they’re vaguely reminiscent of Stuart Immonen’s 50 REASONS TO STOP SKETCHING AT CONVENTIONS. As a drafts(wo)man, she’s no Winsor McCay, or Danielle Corsetto, even, but still - who knew?

Check out Atwood’s comics oeuvre here, and Tony Long? You can put this where the sun don’t shine.

[Image © Dan Haskell 2004]:

An many of you know, legendary animator John K. has a blog, where is slowly offering his teachings in how to make good animation. Recently, he’s been talking about color theory, and the title of one post really caught our eye:

Color Theory: Pee and Poo colors versus Colorful Greys

DULL AND DINGY COLORS TO MAKE YOU THINK SOMETHING SERIOUS IS HAPPENING

K. goes on to show examples of pee and poo colored backgrounds that muddy up storytelling. Meanwhile, his idea of good storytelling with color? Art Lozzi, above, the mastermind behind most of the Hanna-Barbera cartoons.

In other posts, K. contrasts the over-saturated color of recent (post 1990) Disney flicks with the more intelligent use of color in the olden days, and shows off a variety of sunsets.

More commentary in Cartoon Brew, including the fate of Art Lozzi. (It’s not what you expect.)

ROBOT CHICKEN animates Weird Al song.