Posted By:Bob Fingerman

More crunchy goodness from MySpace, as Bob Fingerman presents an educational film about “Independent Cartooning: A Career in Salf-Absorbtion.”

CAROUSEL
Cartoon slide shows and other projected pictures

Hosted by R. Sikoryak

Featuring
Megan Montague Cash
Brian Dewan
Emily Flake
Doug Skinner
Lauren R. Weinstein
with Patrick Hambrecht
J. Kathleen White
and R. S.

Wednesday, October 18, 2006, 8 pm (doors open at 7:30 pm)

Dixon Place
258 Bowery, 2nd Fl,
between Houston & Prince
Tickets: $15 or TDF; $10 student/senior

We’re pleased to announce that TCAF 2007 will take place August 18th and 19th in downtown Toronto, at The University of Toronto’s Old Victoria College building and quad. This location is more central, with easy access to the TTC and will accomodate the consistant increase in attendence and guests of the fest.

For those wishing to exhibit at TCAF, our policy is still that TCAF is a curated event. That said, we do want to hear from you if you have an interest in exhibiting. Please send an e-mail to 2007@torontocomics.com with full contact information, and if possible, links to examples of your work online. Please note that this is a festival in celebration of the comics medium, and as such comics creators are given preference over those artists who do not work in comics.

And on a happier note……all the best in the world to one of our favorite cartooning couples!

Nico Cinque has started a very good looking new webcomic about the collapse of the Incan Empire at De-act-i-vate.

Legendary PLAYBOY cartoon editor Michelle Urry has died at age 66 of occular melanoma, according to the NYT obituary (which we can’t find online.)

For a generation — from the early 1970’s until her death — Ms. Urry sorted through more than 1,000 cartoons a week to come up with the couple of dozen or so to appear in the monthly magazine, then sent them on to Hugh Hefner for the final selection. Her taste — seasoned by a girlhood of reading comic books, the careful study of the history of cartoons and experience as a fashion designer — helped shape the famous look of Playboy’s cartoons.

Sequential has more:

Raised in Winnipeg, Urry (born Michelle Altman) was an early fan of comic art. According to a 1995 New York Times interview, “What no one knew at the time was that as a kid I had the biggest comic book collection of any girl I knew, just stacks and stacks of Wonder Woman and other characters. I expected to grow up to wear gold bracelts and fly. […] I was a snob even then –a comic that wasn’t well drawn didn’t interest me. But give me a well-drawn comic with a good story and I was hooked.”

…”The rise in sexual and erotic humor is often viewed with alarm but it may, in fact, indicate a generally healthier society. You cannot laugh at anything unless you have mastered your anxieties about it, and the airing of these previously forbidden areas with more acceptance by society means that they are no longer so frightening. In order to laugh at a cartoon, for instance, one must be able to perceive the hidden hostility and be stimulated by it, but the cartoonist has to make it clever enough so that you don’t feel guilty because you identify with it.”

Tomand Dirk also have tributes. Dirk quotes Gary Groth as having spoken to Urry only days ago with no indication that she was gravely ill.

§ Michael Chabon is still all about the kids comics:

In the past, you sometimes weighed in and defended or promoted comic books and graphic novels as an art form. Do you think that’s broken through to the mainstream?

I think so. If anything, at this point I think that it’s possible that comic books are taken too seriously. There’s almost too strong of a bias in favor of adult-oriented material now in the comics world. I think comic books worked so long and so hard to achieve some level of the respect that they deserve as an artistic medium that they along the way abandoned some of the things that prevented them from being taken seriously, such as being written for the pleasure of child readers.

And now when I take my child readers into the comic book store, it’s hard to find good things for them to read. There are good things for kids in comics, but people in the comic book world don’t like to talk about them that much.

§ Mike Lynch has a nice tribute to Hilda Terry with some newspaper scans on his MySpace page. (BTW, people who use MySpace for their content should be aware that a lot of companies — including Reed Elsevier — are now blocking it as a matter of course. So you may not be reaching as wide an audience as you should.)
§ Sequart has unveiled a really sweet what’s on sale today page with cover images and solicitation info. It looks like it took an insane amount of time to put together, but also quite useful.

§ Low in the polls Senator Rick Santorum hit the campaign trail with a pitch aimed squarely at the Tolkien-quoting demographic:

In an interview with the editorial board of the Bucks County Courier Times, embattled Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum has equated the war in Iraq with J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings.” According to the paper, Santorum said that the United States has avoided terrorist attacks at home over the past five years because the “Eye of Mordor” has been focused on Iraq instead.

“As the hobbits are going up Mount Doom, the Eye of Mordor is being drawn somewhere else,” Santorum said. “It’s being drawn to Iraq and it’s not being drawn to the U.S. You know what? I want to keep it on Iraq. I don’t want the Eye to come back here to the United States.”

We just want to know if they recognize habeas corpus in Rivendell.

A diamond news release reports a post Free Comic Book Day retailer survey indicates new customers and increased sales — apparently this free sampling thing works.

Comic book specialty retailers who participated in Free Comic Book Day (FCBD) 2006 experienced increases in sales and the amount of new customers generated by the event, according to the results of a post-event survey of participating retailers.

“Even before the survey results were tabulated, retailers who participated in FCBD were sharing their success stories with us,” said Free Comic Book Day spokesperson Elissa Lynch. “These results dramatically support those stories, and reflect how the time and hard work that went into planning the big day paid off for all involved.”

Of the retailers who responded to the survey, which asked them to compare performance in their store this year against last year’s FCBD, approximately 57% experienced higher sales on that day, while 35% experienced significantly increased sales one month after the event.

Additionally, approximately 55% of the respondents said that store traffic for FCBD 2006 was higher compared to last year’s event. (Some stores reported that as many as 90% of their customers on that day were new customers.) Furthermore, 76% of the respondents said that they gained customers in the month following FCBD 2006.

“These statistics illustrate how successfully FCBD accomplished one of its key mission,” said Lynch. “To introduce readers with limited exposure to comics to the wide range of subject matter the medium has to offer — and to encourage those newcomers to return to comic shops on a regular basis.

“Once again, we’d like to thank all of the retailers who participated in this year’s FCBD event,” added Lynch. “We hope these positive results will encourage retailers who have yet to participate in FCBD to come on board for next year’s event on Saturday, May 5, 2007.”

For additional results of the FCBD 2006 Survey, visit http://www.freecomicbookday.com/Fx_Chg-Bdd_Ree_23dosdl34556.pdf.

Jarred Pine has a good review of ODE TO KIRIHITO at Anime on DVD:

Ode to Kirihito might just be the most important, and at times the strangest, manga that I’ll not just read this year but quite possibly ever. While the medical thriller aspects of the story will entertain, it is what Tezuka does outside and between the lines that have and will continue to leave quite the strong impact on myself. Using the gekiga style, Tezuka creates a world that is close to home, will sock you in the face, and make you reflect on your own life and surroundings. Despite the references to Christ and Christian imagery, Ode to Kirihito is not a religious manga but rather a reminder about the true important teachings outside of the doctrine and moral decay for all religions.

Cartoon Network held a contest to pick out the top five Crayon Shinchan quotes…YouTube has the answers.

Eric Reynolds talks about Dan Clowes recent open heart surgery:

I wanted to extend, on behalf of all of Fantagraphics, our best wishes for a speedy recovery for Mr. Daniel Clowes, one of my favorite people in the whole wide world (and my favorite artist). Dan underwent open-heart surgery last Tuesday in Northern California to repair a defective mitral valve. As scary as open-heart surgery is, Dan was cracking jokes right up to the day he went into the hospital, and the surgery was declared a success and he is recovering nicely (though it will be a long process). Here’s hopin’ he’ll be back at the drawing board soon. We love ya, Dan!

We join Eric and everyone in sending him our very best wishes.

The New York Times has one of those read-it-before-it-goes-behind-the-firewall stories, a profile of Goro Miyazaki and his recent adaptation of Ursula K. LeGuin’s THE FARTHEST SHORE. The story, written by Charles Solomon, covers the difficulties Miyazaki has as the son of perhaps the greatest animator of all times, and their sometimes strained relationship. It also contains the news that we won’t see GEDO SENKI here until maybe 2009 because stinky Sci-Fi Channel owns the domestic rights to the Earthseas books.

In a telephone interview from her home in Portland, Ore., Ms. Le Guin said: “Mr. Miyazaki’s movie won’t be shown as long as the Sci-Fi Channel people sit on their rights, which they have until ’09, unless they decide to stop being a dog in the manger.�? Representatives from the Sci-Fi Channel did not respond to calls seeking a comment.

Now this makes us sad — although attaining a copy of the movie won’t be too difficult, if you know what I mean — but it also makes us happy. Why? BECAUSE URSULA K. LEGUIN USED THE PHRASE “DOG IN THE MANGER”!

We’ve used this many times in conversation to blank stares. In fact no one we ever met had ever heard the phrase “dog in the manger,” which refers to one of Aesop’s fables. (Despite the fact it has over 100K references on Google.) We were beginning to think we were crazy and it was one of those weird family things that we let slip out now and then, like asking “What’s your capacity?” when dishing up macaroni and cheese. But Ursula K. LeGuin knows it, so we’re not crazy. In fact…we’re LITERATE! Yeah, baby! Suck that, bee-yotches!1000 fast loancredit loans 1000 bad forjobs 12 loan payday 17loan 125 credit equity homeequity loan 125 credit125 equity loan no homehome georgia equity loans 125pennsylvania loans home 125 equity Map

Okay. I read a lot of blog posting about SPX today and several of them mentioned the lack of signage for programming. I’d like to say, this sort of thing can be helpful:

Granted, perhaps indie cartooners wouldn’t be so likely to read actual hotel signs, but it was there. And yes, there could have been more SPX-like signs indicating that the programming was going on downstairs, but sometimes the man comes through.

Another common cry was the lack of beer at the 7 Eleven. There WAS a liquor store around the corner, and the hard truth is YOU MUST PLAN AHEAD FOR BEER RUNS WHEN IN THE
‘BURBS.

I’m going to break this down into bullet points because I don’t have the faculties to weave everything together into essays any more.

• The New Venue: I give it a thumbs up. Yes, we all miss the crappy old SPX with its wobbling circular staircase and the gelato amd the tunnel of love and the Army-Navy store and our favorite restaurants. But the new joint is modern, clean spacious and offers a variety of spaces for a variety of activities.

Being the first year and all, there was some awkwardness. The hotel staff clearly didn’t know what to make of us, but they were all courteous and helpful. The hotel charges way too much for wifi and parking, true, but the room rates were comparable and the room were much nicer.

The big problem was that the hotel didn’t set aside enough rooms for SPX, leaving far too many folks to stay at far off hotels, but the word from SPX organizers was that after looking at how quickly we filled up the room block and how much we drank, they are eager to have us back and will offer more rooms next year.

I also didn’t hear about any problems with security. Late night hotel room parties seem to have gone on until everyone passed out and an impromptu life drawing class even took place. (The Marriott may not be so thrilled to know that naked men were being sketched, but perhaps they won’t find out. Oops.) Robin Bougie reports that he had to cover come nude covers on his table, but that’s the only incident we’ve heard of yet.

I also read a lot of bitching about the bar, but I don’t see that myself. There were receptions downstairs both nights — these weren’t advertised to exhibitors as well as they could have been, though — but the upstairs bar had a lot of chairs, and there was plenty of room in the sprawling hotel to settle in for your own private get together — I saw a lot of these going on. I was particularly taken with the OUTSIDE patio area. It was a very chilly weekend, but during the day it was a fine place to grab lunch or hang out. If the show moves to a date a little earlier in the year, this outside area would be a great hangout. So yeah it was different, but it wasn’t bad.

• The Food: This was the big problem. No one knew where to go to eat. I came this close to eating at the same Japanese/Chinese takeout place two nights in a row, and that can’t compare to the awesome, top-notch ethnic eateries of charming Bethesda. Those places were a few metro stops away, which was a hassle admittedly. In New York you wouldn’t think anything of going a few subway stops for dinner, so it wasn’t that impassable. Once again, I think people just weren’t given enough information in advance, and next year, if they know what to expect it will go better. But yeah, I will always miss my indie nights at Faryab. (When I got home Sunday I ordered some ashak from Bamiyan, my local Afghan place, but it wasn’t the same.)

The bottom line is that the new location has sucky environs, but I doubt that there is any going back.

• The show: As mentioned before, I liked having everyone in one room, and most people I talked to seemed to like it, although others report a more mixed reaction. The room itself had narrow aisles and the kind of acoustics that made it sound busy even when no one was buying anything. Some people complained about the noise, but I prefer a bustling sound (minus loud video game booths, of course) to the deadly silence of someone who just spent their lunch money for a month printing horrible mini-comics begging you to buy them.

However, up until about 4 pm on Saturday, it looked like this SPX was going to be a flop. No one had been doing very well when I walked around the room that afternoon. One veteran exhibitor said he hadn’t even made a single sale, something that had never happened at a previous show.

Luckily, around 4, the circlers became buyers and it got mad hectic as people rushed to buy stuff. All the key books sold out, and in two hours the show became profitable and successful.

Attendance was about what it was last year, or perhaps even up a tiny bit, according to one of the organizers I talked to Sunday morning. The show got MAJOR local press, so if it hadn’t done well, that would have been a big failure. While the Metro DC crowd may not LOOK like an indie alternative crowd, they have money to spend and like to buy comics. And, lest we forget, comics are HOT HOT HOT.

• Programming: We only got to go to the Feiffer panel, but by all account it went well, with most rooms 2/3rd full. The Scoot McCloud panel was the marquee event and lots of people couldn’t get in. Bill Kartalopoulos did the programming, and he tried to make it more intelligent and informative, and he definitely elevated it to the level that a serious festival of intelligent comics needed.
(more…)

Scott photos and Ivy’s report.

At TalkAboutComics more of the cartoonists for the revamped Serializer are mentioned. The line-up is as strong as it gets.

With one week until the serializer.net relaunch, I’m happy to announce five more serializer comics by seven amazing creators. Count them:

1) Spike with “Templar, Arizona� and “Blikada� (Blikada illustrated by Ainsley Seago)
2) Ryan North with “Dinosaur Comics�
3) Joey Comeau and Emily Horne with “A Softer World�
4) Rick Smith and Tania Menesse with “Shuck� (in comic strip form)

Ryan Roman graduates from De-act-i-vate to Act-i-vate.

At this weekend’s SPX we had some fun calling the main panel room “The UN,” and indeed the attendees had a grand time making paper placards for various countries, adding to the fun. Well now, lo and behold, the fantasy became reality yesterday, as an international group of political cartoonists went to the UN for a program entitled “Cartooning for Peace.”

Political cartoonists discussed the power of their pens and brushes at the United Nations on Monday and the pressures they face — highlighted by the Muslim outrage over a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad in a Danish newspaper.

More than 15 cartoonists from Denmark, the Middle East, the United States, Africa and other countries, drew a fine line between freedom of expression and respecting religious beliefs during a program on their changing profession entitled “Cartooning for Peace: The responsibility of political cartoonists?”

Cartoons “can encourage us to look critically at ourselves, and increase our empathy for the sufferings and frustration of others,” U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said in opening remarks at the gathering. “But they can also do the opposite. They have, in short, a big responsibility.”

Recently Mike S. Miller announced that Alias Comics was turning into a packaging company for religious comics, and Alias’s non-religion themed comics would be finding a new home. That home is Abacus Comics which is solely owned by Miller. The new concern will publish only the titles written by Miller, like THE IMAGINARIES, LULLABY, etc. Apparently, the website briefly said it was going to publish ANT — not the Image issues, but an earlier collection of the Arcana issues — but that has since been taken down.

With most recent attempts at periodical comic/pamphlet/floppy companies having a tough go of it, we can only wish Miller luck.

Guy DeLisle, whose PYONGYANG related his stay in North Korea is a very popular media figure right now, NPR has an interview with him .
[Link via Bookslut.]

§ George Khoury presents a long interview with Roger Stern.

§ Long ago retailer Brian Hibbs said that if ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN made it to issue 100 he would eat a bug. Proven wrong, he makes good on his word.

§ The Weinsteins pact with Vince McMahon. Only one can emerge victorious.

Lloyd Grove explains the life of the gossip columnist:

But I have also learned, after nearly eight years of writing a daily column in both D.C. and N.Y.C., that gossip can be good for society — don’t laugh — and can even, perish the thought, be legitimate journalism. All it takes, beyond being insanely competitive, is an honest heart, a keen eye, a strong stomach and a thick skin.

Well, we have three out of four, and we’re learning the fourth.

BTW, we figured out yesterday that someone was posting trollish comments here while posing as an industry figure. The comments have been deleted. Homey don’t play that.

Trina Robbins passes along word that comics pioneer Hilda Terry has passed away at the age of 92.

I’m very sorry to inform you that pioneer woman cartoonist Hilda Terry passed away on October 13. Hilda’s strip, Teena, ran in national newspapers from 1941 - 1966, after which she became a pioneer computer animator, animating baseball scoreboards for the Mets, for which she won a National Cartoonist Society award. There’s a little irony there, since Hilda was responsible for breaking the gender barrier of the NCS, which up till 1950 was a male-only organization. Hilda’s husband, the late cartoonist Gregory D’Allessio, submitted Hilda’s name for membership, and the ensuing fight between members about whether or not to open up their membership finally ended with Hilda being accepted into the society a year later, after which she submitted the names of all her women cartoonist friends, thus breaking the gender barrier.

Hilda always said that we don’t die, and that Gregory was still with her. Wherever she is, she’s with Gregory now.

Terry’s extensive website is still up. Her Lambiek page is here. Sadly, her webpage was more given over to her current interests in historical preservation and other, admittedly oddball matters, and very little to her art. There are only a handful of examples of it online. Terry never stopped learning and growing. After working in comic books for so many years, she switched to animation, for which she won an NCS award, and later launched her website and continued to write.

I saw Terry (above on the left) for the last time at Robbins’s slide show at MoCCA last June. She was clearly on the the last portion of her journey, and Trina was worried about her getting home in one piece. Someone from Lulu whose name I have shamefully forgotten escorted her home, and we were all glad. Hilda had made it down to MoCCA all by herself, however, at age 92, no mean feat and a tribute to her desire to still be part of things.

As I wrote then:

Hilda Terry, the creator of TEENA and the first woman to join the National Cartoonists Society, was at the lecture. Terry is 92 and by her own admission “can’t hear and can’t see.” She stood up and made a rather rambling speech during the Q&A, but we all figured, well, she’s allowed. She did say one thing that was so blunt and honest that I had to write it down. “If you do a comic strip, you don’t want it to be forgotten.”

Indeed. I sincerely hope Hilda won’t be forgotten. Even meeting her in her later years, she was an amazing and inspiring person, so I know I won’t.

Marshall Democrat-News editor Chuck Mason takes a stand:

I’m no legal scholar but there is one thing I do know: censorship is censorship.

I have no qualms with Louise Mills of Marshall, who objected to the two books and filed the necessary paperwork to bring the matter to the attention of the board of trustees. Mills is a resident who has a complaint and she has the right to register it.

What I object to is pulling the books off the shelves.

The library board has essentially blinked in the harsh light of public discussion.

Tom translates a French article reporting on departure of two of the founding members of the groundbreaking alternative art collective.

Stepping in to say these implied reasons are not true is Joann Sfar himself, who says that he left for a more fundamental reason: creative differences, in that the kind of comics he did at L’Association were more in line with Trondheim’s conception of and presence within the company than with Menu’s. Stressing his affection for those who remain, Sfar goes on to say that he always published through other publishers, so this isn’t a case of someone being brought up solely by one publisher and then leaving them for another, and that there’s nothing wrong as far as he can see with L’Association’s set-up in terms of being promoted and fairly remunerated.

This is interesting, for as we understand it, Sfar has been put in charge of a line of graphic novels in France that is aimed at presenting work in a more traditional, adventurous format.

Paul Gravett on gekiga:

During the traumatic recovery after World War II, Japanese children escaped into Osamu Tezuka’s Disney-inspired manga as the perfect pre-TV entertainment. Manga books were pricey, so people took to hiring them from pay libraries. It was through demands from older customers that a very different strain of much darker, more socially engaged comics developed, inspired by new realist cinema and literature.

[Link via Journalista]

John Jakala examines the evidence and explains why fan outcries don’t hurt Marvel when not backed up by speaking with your pocketbook.

This is why Marvel will always win:

Two months ago: “Screw Civil War. I am going to go spend my money on timely products made by companies that want my business.”

Today: “I have to admit, seeing this [variant cover for Civil War #5] makes me want to go buy the next issue, if for no other reason then to watch Frank Castle kick some serious butt.”

OMG! THE PUNISHER FIGHTING SPIDER-MAN?? ALL IS FORGIVEN, MARVEL!!!

In the comment section, Heidi Meeley explains:

At any rate, I have no intention of buying any more Civil War books. I will be very upfront about the fact that I will be looking at it in the store. My hubby and I will wander over to the local shop and talk it through in a group setting, where the owner allows us to do so. That is probably some breach of comic reading ettiquette, but so be it.

…In the meantime, the money I am saving not buying Amazing Spider-Man, Iron Man, Ms. Marvel, New Avengers, and the ilk- I am able to spend buying books from the new Virgin Comics imprint as well as IDW titles. Those publishers have won me over.