John Layman posts his Cerebus sketchbook at Millarworld, with art from John Cassaday, Travis Charest, Gene Ha, Eric Canete and more. Above, Lee Bermejo.

Link found here.

Golden Age Comic Book Stories! Above: Dorothy Lathrop.

Before the ultra A-list fashion gala at the Met for the Superhero: Fantasy and Fashion exhibit, we attended the press preview earlier in the day. The place was packed with a particular kind of New York crowd that sneaks into such things: a mix of legit press, pushy cameramen in cargo vests, bizarre, aged socialites with fuschia hair, and so on. They gathered in a hall filled with antique marble statues to hear remarks by Vogue’s Anna Wintour, a tiny wisp of a woman as see-through as the glass of water she carried — surely her meal for the day — and fashion icon Georgio Armani. The crowd was also addressed by Nathan Crowley, the production designer or BATMAN BEGINS and THE DARK KNIGHT, who had designed the rather startling environment for the 60 or so costumes/outfits that make up the show.

And oh that show. On the one hand, it marks the ascendance of superheroes/comics to yet another level of cultural acceptance. It’s a shocker to see giant Alex Ross photo murals hanging in the Met, only a few yards, as the crow flies, from Velazquez’s marvelous Juan de Pareja (our favorite painting at the Met), or to see Adi Granov credited for the design of Iron Man, or to see Christopher Reeve’s form near ancient marble Apollos.

On the other, it was yet another “Pow! Bam!” interpretation of comics; the fashions on display at the Met are the most lurid, fetishistic imaginable, and that was the intent, as the wall texts make clear. John Galliano, Jean Paul Gaultier and Thierry Mugler are the main notes, as a procession of spandex girdles, bustiers, and codpieces present an alarming vista of futuristic battle. Forget grim ‘n’ gritty, as show organizer Andrew Bolton put it in his remarks, the show embodies the “tough, hard-edged glamour of the 80s.” The fashions on display are fantasy all the way– spider-webbed dresses, jaunty gas mask ensembles, giant leather shoulder decorations. No surprise that Armani’s main comment about the show was his wonderment that these fashions had actually been included in collections.
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More at Neil Gaiman’s blog.

Much more ad art by the visionary illustrator in the link. Courtesy of Jeff Meyer.

§ Hope Larson has a new website up for her more adult art: Personal Ho. (left)

§ We totally forgot that the Pittsburgh Comicon was held this weekend, but it is now apparently dubbed “Murder con.” Someone wrote about it to the Comics Reporter and from the sound of it, it was pretty desolate.

§ Laura Hudson suggests that the comics industry’s press relations in general could use a review:

Before I really get into this, it’s important to keep in mind here that approaching a publisher as a member of the press who wants to give them coverage or reviews is very different from poking around for stories and quotes that don’t necessarily point towards a positive angle on their product. Unsurprisingly, the latter is going to get fewer welcoming responses.

To a certain degree, that’s just how it works, and I don’t see anything particularly insidious in it. I would add, though, that because the comics press is less established (or respected) than press is in certain other fields, I think a lot of people in the industry are not as accustomed to the poking and prodding Tom describes, and consequently can get touchier in the course of journalistic inquiries. But really, I don’t see this as the primary problem. While it may not be optimal, I’m not surprised by this unresponsiveness to certain lines of inquiry.

What I don’t understand–what really blows my mind is that some companies can be just as unresponsive and unhelpful to people who want to give their books positive coverage, review them, or generally make them more visible. That’s what really resonated with me about Tom’s post, because I’ve seen it happen more than a few times and it never ceases to amaze me with its pointlessness.

§ Mark Evanier went to the LA Times Book fest.

§ Shaenon on The Boys of Shojo Manga :

The Tortured Genius
The heroine’s parents approve of this one. He’s a high-IQ achiever on the fast track to Tokyo University, and is often a Wealthy Playboy to boot. But his heart is as tiny as his brain is huge. An arrogant smartass, he delights in making the heroine feel stupid and insignificant. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t want to date her, of course; his strategy is to belittle, manipulate, and intellectually bulldoze her into falling in love with him. And it works, especially once the heroine realizes that he’s hurting inside and Just Needs Someone To Love Him. Extremely common in the works of Miki Aihara.
Signature Romantic Gestures: Intellectually abusing the heroine; emotionally abusing the heroine; physically abusing the heroine; helping her study.
In Real Life He’d Be: Exactly the same, but in his forties.

§ Catch-up 1: Indie Jones blogs the ICv2 conference.

§ Catch-up 2: Jeff Trexler on “How Siegel and Shuster created our world”:

This tension between past and present is equally evident in the Siegel case. On the one hand, for many within the comics community the ruling was a symbolic victory in the struggle for creators rights, vindicating not just Siegel and Shuster, but legions of comic book artists and writers whose genius was exploited by corporate greed.

Yet much to the surprise of longtime industry watchers, the judgment also provoked a strong negative response. Some critics focused on the fact that the winner was not Siegel himself but his heirs, who were said to have gained an unearned windfall. Other observers went a step further, questioning the wisdom of a law that voids otherwise valid contracts, and accusing the Siegels themselves of exploiting Superman for their own financial gain.

§ Jim Steranko copies himself

§ When we saw the headline “Comic Genius” in our RSS feed, we wondered “Who could it be this time???”

Surprise! It’s artist John Cassaday:

These days, Cassaday finds himself in the enviable position of being able to pick and choose which assignments he takes. “I’ve got specific goals in mind and don’t want to deviate just for a few bucks if I’m not interested,” he says. “The story must come first.” Though he won’t reveal what he makes, his page rate—the amount an artist charges per page drawn—is among the highest in the business. Given that an elite illustrator can command up to $1,000 a page for a 22-page comic book and that most popular titles are monthlies, a top talent like Cassaday can comfortably clear six figures annually. And that’s not counting potential back-end royalties for merchandise, trade paperbacks, and spin-offs, which are negotiated separately.

Artist Stuart Immonen reports on an annoying internet rip off:

Yesterday, my pal Darren Di Lieto, from The Little Chimp Society website, emailed with some upsetting news. Turns out someone scraped the contents of his website and published it into a 350-page book being sold online for $100. You can read more on this post in Darren’s blog.

This book — which reprints without permission several dozen artist interviews which Darren had posted on the LCS blog — transcribes these interviews word-for-word, including the artwork, and was “published” under the title “Colorful Illustrations 93°C”. The book even includes a CD with all the illustrations from the book, all lifted off the site as well. Here’s a link to a gallery of scans that Darren made of each page of the book, with a close-up below of one of the two spreads which feature the interview Darren did of me (I can’t help but notice the thieves omitted the illustration of the two big gay muscle Daddies, chickens!):

More details in links.

You know, that one where Doctor Doom takes the Invisible Woman hostage and then tricks the rest of The Fantastic Four into going back in time to steal Blackbeard’s treasure…and it turns out The Thing was actually Blackbeard and wanted to stay back there and remain king of the pirates because there he had respect but in modern times he was just a freak?

Newsarama previews Frank Quitely’s variant cover for ALL-STAR BATMAN AND ROBIN.

Lawrence Klein writes to tell us of a spotlight on a very very deserving artist: the great Joe Staton. The veteran cartoonist behind E-Man, Scooby Doo and countless other books will have an art exhibit at the Storefront Artist Project in Pittsfield, Mass. this August. A series of events will tie in with the exhibit. More info in the jump

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Golden Age Comic Book Stories has been spotlighting Poe with all kinds of incredible artwork and a few comics stories.

The Black Cat (1843)
by Berni Wrightson fromCreepy #62 ~ May/1974

Berenice (by Archie Goodwin and Jerry Grandenetti from Eerie #11 ~ Sept/1967

The Cask of Amontillado! by Archie Goodwin and Reed Crandall from Creepy #6 ~ June/1966

BONUS: Harry Clarke, because we can’t resist Harry Clarke!

Prada Animation - Trembled Blossoms from kwest on Vimeo.

Pretty pretty.

We take back everything bad we were just saying about The Internet. This Flash-based New York Times tribute to Mad’s Al Jaffee and his amazing fold-ins is the greatest thing EVER this week.

This has been up for a while, but we’ve never linked to it. Reknowned fantasy artist Charles Vess has been designing a fountain themed “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” for Abingdon, VA. In this post on his blog he offers tons of photos of the design and construction process of what will be an incredibly lovely piece of public art.

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In more NPR comics news, they present Adrian Tomine’s ‘The Donger and Me’, an examination of the character from John Hughes lovably racist Sixteen Candles.

You just can’t. Check previous entries for even more breath-taking Wyeth goodness. Ah, far Selidor!

Alex Robinson’s next book is out this July, a graphic novel entitled TOO COOL TO BE FORGOTTEN; it’s the cmedic tale of a sorty-something man who is transported back to his high school days and gets a second chance to ask that girl in math class out.

BEASTS art director Jacob Covey has linked to a Flickr page of submissions for his open call and the results are super tasty. Above, Mario Trigo.

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Penguin’s well-received line of classics with covers by comics-type illustrators (such as Chris Ware, above)has won the Design Museum’s Brit Insurance Design Awards :

The category winners of the Design Museum’s Brit Insurance Design Awards have been announced with Penguin’s US Classics Deluxe editions winning in the graphics category and Haque’s Burble London installation taking the interactive prize

The category winners were decided by a judging panel consisting of Vitra’s Rolf Fehlbaum, publisher Lars Müller and architect and designer Antonio Citterio.

[Via Blog@]
Designer Paul Buckley is interviewed here.

Is it time for another one of our Gustaf Tenggren-inspired panegyrics? Yes it is, courtesy of the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive. Seriously, you should just read that blog every morning and skip everything else. In this installment they talk about the evolution of the Golden Book illustration style. (Tenggren went from working for Disney to drawing The Poky Little Puppy, one of the most influential children’s books of all times.) How did Tenggren go from this:

to this?

All is shown in the link; illustrators take note.

But halfway through Tenggren’s Tell It Again Book comes a huge breakthrough in design. Instead of the full page plates, Tenggren begins to float his characters over the white of the page, wrapping the text around the compositions. Background elements are reduced to small islands on the page, rather than extending out to the edges of a square bounding box.

Technorati Tags: Gustaf Tenggren

New illos up. [Via Meathaus]

The comics industry and blogosphere has been overflowing with tributes to the late Dave Stevens, who died Monday. His work influenced many people — more than you might think given the relative scarcity of his output. A couple of news notes:

– Stevens’ mother has requested that in lieu of flowers, people make donations to the Hairy Cell Leukemia Research Foundation.

– Arnold Fenner wrote to tell us that THE ART OF DAVE STEVENS (above) will be out in Spring ‘09 deom Underwood Books. The book is 90% completed and the editors will finish the rest from interviews.

And now some links to particularly notable tributes:
Stevens interview in Comic Book Artist Magazine #15
Bill Wray (This one is must reading.)
Craig Yoe
Scott Dunbier
Lea Hernandez
Colleen Doran
Elin WInkler
Kiel Phegley (A particularly funny story involving Billy Campbell.)

We’re reasonably sure that the highly erudite folks who read The Beat get this joke, but just to give a little background, Bass was the immensely influential and highly imitated graphic designer whose logos, movie posters and, most importantly, animated film credit sequences created a whole strain of drastically pared down modernism, minimal yet elegant. Influenced by the Bauhaus movement and Russian Constructivism, his titles for THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM were considered shocking at the time, focusing on the jagged image of an arm to impart the pain of drug addiction. (The movie featured Frank Sinatra as a heroin-addicted ex-con and musician.) Bass would go on to do more groundbreaking work with Alfred Hitchock, Stanley Kubrick and Billy Wilder, among others.

Okay, hilarious right?

The Emerald City ComiCon is not, strictly speaking, an indie comics show, but it takes place in Seattle, so it sorta is by default. Anyway, they have a new “Indy creator ad” by Jeffrey Brown, above.