This press release is a little long, but it’s worth it just to see Sergio Aragonés’s accomplishments laid out in one very very long paragraph. In the time it takes to read it, he probably drew a whole page!

Bart Simpson teams up with Sergio Aragonés beginning in Bart Simpson #50.

Matt Groening, creator of “The Simpsons” and “Futurama,” has announced that Sergio Aragonés (MAD Magazine, Groo the Wanderer) will become a regular featured artist and writer in Bart Simpson comics beginning with issue #50. Sergio Aragonés will provide the entire contents of Bart Simpson #50 as well as the cover art. The issue will include an eleven-page main story entitled “The Simpson Project.” Mr. Aragonés will also contribute a new and ongoing feature entitled “Maggie’s Crib,” a series of pantomime stories much in the vein of his classic three-page “A Mad Look At…” feature found in MAD Magazine. Sergio will also be a contributor of stories to the Bart Simpson title as well as other Bongo Comics Group titles on a regular basis.
 
Bart Simpson #50 will be released on October 28, 2009 in direct market comic book stores and at newsstands. Bart Simpson is a bimonthly comic book aimed at younger comic book readers and was launched in 2000.
 
“I have been a Simpsons fan from the very beginning,” says Sergio Aragonés. “I watch the show, read the comics, and collect everything that has come out, so imagine the pleasure to now be writing and drawing my favorite family…I couldn’t be happier!”
 
Bill Morrison, Bongo Comics Creative Director, says, “We’ve put some of the funniest characters ever created in the hands of the world’s funniest cartoonist. This is unprecedented in the world of humor comics, and it may result in more comedy than the average reader can safely handle. I predict it’ll be just like that movie The Perfect Storm, only hilarious.”
 
“Sergio’s the best,” says Matt Groening, Bongo Comics founder and publisher, “and it’s an honor to work with him.”

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Legendary artist and publisher Carmine Infantino was the subject of an interview on the Graphic NYC website last week, and it seems that he takes issue with some of the handling of the piece. Since we gave the interview a prominent spot, we’re giving his rebuttal equal prominence:

“Some weeks back, I granted an interview to Mr. Christopher Irving, who brought along a few friends, one of whom photographed me. Mr. Irving promised that I could look over the materials before publication. Imagine my surprise when I found out that both the interview, which was turned into an essay, and the photographs, were posted on the internet before I had a chance to review them.
Not only am I displeased with Mr. Irving for not keeping his word to me, but I also object to his describing my physical health in a negative way, as if I was about to die. Irving reinforced this image by labeling the essay as Carmine Infantino’s Final Interview. I was unaware until now that I had died. I may be an 84 year old man with some health issues, but I am not at death’s door. Also, I never stated that this was my final interview, as I have given one since then, and if the opportunity arises, I may do more.
When I complained about the essay title, Mr. Irving promised to change the title, but all he did was add a question mark at the end. If he’s expecting me to die soon, I wish he’d tell that to my sister-in-law, who’s cooking dinner for me next week.
I asked him to remove the bad language from the interview, which he did. However, he has not fixed the historical inaccuracies in the piece, most of which consist of his own lack of research. When discussing my decision to have Murphy Anderson redraw Jack Kirby’s Superman and Jimmy Olsen faces, Irving states, “Carmine now admits this was a mistake.” I never said any such thing, and I still stand by my original decision. I asked Irving to remove this comment, and he has yet to do so.
I had not intended to go public with this, but because Irving has painted an inaccurate portrait of me nor has he kept his promises after our last private conversation, I have no choice but to disassociate myself with this article. I have learned one lesson, though. From now on, I’ll be more careful about granting interviews to disrespectful amateurs.

Carmine Infantino”

Okay, we gave the writer of the original piece a change to respond, and you can read his response in the jump:
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Join cartoonists Mike Dawson (”Ace-Face”, “Freddie & Me”), Alex Robinson (”Too Cool to be Forgotten”, “Box Offiice Poison”) and John Kerschbaum (”Petey & Pussy”, “The Wiggly Reader”) for their informal conversation, reading of their work and, most importantly, champagne brunch!

Family, Pet and Nerd friendly!

12:00 pm - 3:00pm
Bergen Street Comics
470 Bergen Street
Brooklyn, NY

Here’s Jeff Smith’s schedule for this year’s SD: CCI, and a mock-up of the booth he’ll be sharing with Terry Moore. PS: Smith has just been announced as the second GoH at next year’s C2E2 in Chicago.

Thursday July 23

Signing: Cartoon Books Booth 2109, 2:00pm-3:30pm
Panel: Happy Hour with Jeff Smith & Terry Moore Room 7AB, 5:30pm-6:30pm

Friday July 24

Signing: Cartoon Books Booth 2109, 12:30pm-2:00pm
Panel: Jeff Smith Documentary Room 5AB, 7:30pm-9:00pm

Saturday July 25

Signing: Cartoon Books Booth 2109, 10:00am-11:30am
Panel: CBLDF Master Session Room 30CDF, 1:00pm-2:00pm

Sunday July 26

Signing: Cartoon Books Booth 2109, 11:00am-12:30pm
Panel: Comics and Graphic Novels for all Ages Room 3, 1:30pm-2:30pm

NEW OFFERINGS/ FUN MENTIONABLES

-For the 1st time ever, Cartoon Books will be sharing a booth with Terry Moore and Abstract Studios
-We’ll have the debut of Little Mouse at our booth during a signing on Friday
-We are doing joint limited edition prints with Terry Moore
-We’re debuting the Limited Edition RASL Hardcover
-Friday night screening for the Jeff Smith Documentary

Tania del Rio writes:

The Bazaarium is honored to have a booth for the first time at SDCC this year, situated in the Small Press Area at M10. The elusive Wilhelm Staehle and T.D.Rio will be making a rare appearance to hawk their Victorian inspired wares: Dollar Dreadful booklets (including new titles to add to the growing library!), various wearables, gun soaps, spoke cards for your velocipede, and more. Of course, we shall have pieces from the ever-so-popular Silhouette Masterpiece Theatre collection available- among which guests shall find a convention exclusive piece – which shall be unveiled at www.thebazaarium.com a week prior to the event.

Also at booth M-10, Tania del Rio of Archie Comic’s Sabrina the Teenage Witch will have copies of My Poorly Drawn Life available. This is 400 page collected edition of her web-comic of the same name for the low convention price of $20 each. She will also be available for commissions.

Get a FREE comic book and pick up the new issue #14 of ROB HANES ADVENTURES at Randy Reynaldo’s booth.

Randy Reynaldo, writer-artist of the long-running indie small press title, Rob Hanes Adventures, will make his 12th appearance at the 2009 San Diego Comic-Con, scheduled this year from July 23-26. Randy and the WCG Comics crew will again be in BOOTH S14 in the Small Press Pavilion of the main exhibitor’s hall (row S against the wall on the west side of the building, off of aisle 1400). This year marks Randy’s 12th appearance at the show as an exhibitor.

Randy will have the newest issue of his action-adventure series (#14) available at Comic-Con. In the issue, Justice International agent Rob Hanes is hired to extradite a beautiful felon back to the U.S., and becomes stranded with her on a desert island in the Pacific after their plane goes down. Cover by guest artist Benton Jew. Preview pages from the issue are available here.

In addition, Randy will have FREE sample issues of the series available at the show. Pick up one of the promotional cards at the show or simply visit the booth to pick up the issue and check out back issues.

Launched in the early 1990s, Rob Hanes Adventures is one of the longest running independent titles still being published. Following the exploits of a modern-day soldier of fortune and spy-for-hire who works for worldwide Justice International, the series takes a serio-comic and modern-day approach to the classic high adventure strip genre, reinventing and making it fresh for modern audiences. Fans of classic comics like Terry and the Pirates and the Spirit, or of current spy fare like Danger Girl, will enjoy Rob Hanes Adventures. Every story is self-contained in each issue. For more information about WCG Comics, visit the company’s website at http://wcgcomics.com.

• The weekly comic strip “Tom the Dancing Bug” by Ruben Bolling won the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies’ 2009 award for Best Cartoon in a ceremony that took place in Tucson on June 26. The list of winners can be seen here.

“Tom the Dancing Bug” is distributed by Universal Press Syndicate to about 50 newspapers and also appears in Salon.com. One of the characters from the comic strip, “Harvey Richards, Lawyer for Children,” is in development at New Line Cinema, where a live action comedy is planned.

• There seems to be a lot of legal issues surrounding Frank Frazetta’s artwork. Now, there are also a lot of press releases concerning the legal issues over Frank Frazetta’s artwork.

• Sandy Bilus unearths Marvel’s 1993 Annual Report — prepared at the zenith of the Ron Perelman era, it was presented in a comic book format, and the graphics provide a picture of a very, very different company 16 years ago (click for larger image).

Sweet Christmas! Can you believe it? A mere six percent of Marvel’s revenue was from licensing, while nearly half — 48.2 percent — was from trading cards! (Marvel owned Fleer at the time, and it was the height of trading card madness.) Wow, that sure didn’t last. Did anyone think it would?

Today Marvel is mostly a licensing company, with net sales in 2008 at $676 million. Much more in the link.

A sad story winds down.

It’s kinda shaky-cam, DIY level quality video, but damned if it isn’t Al Jaffee and Arnold Roth, and hearing these two speak is one of the great comics experiences you can have.

Flog previews a…Marvel book? When it’s STRANGE TALES MAX, it’s the right thing to do! When it’s Jason doing Spidey, it’s super right.

Yow! We had so many debuts we had to split them up into two posts. In this one, we look at individuals and their debuting comics, books and minis. Thanks to everyone who wrote in!

Box Brown has two debuts and three books:
1) Xeric funded book Book “Love is a Peculiar Type of Thing”
2) The Ultimate Bellen! webcomic collection These Dreams Keep Me Going These Days
3) Unsyndicated Press: A newspaper collection of the failed Bellen! United Features Newspaper Strip

Bill Roundy: I’ll be exhibiting at the MoCCA Art Festival again this year! And I’ve got a debut: “The Amazing Adventures of Bill: the complete journal comics”, a 296-page tome collecting five years of my webcomic. I’ll also have a selection of gay romantic-comedy mini-comics, featuring monsters, pirates, and superheroes.

Peter Quach is a new cartoonist who will be selling his self-published TRANSIT at the show. “Transit is a story of being in your 20s in the city, somewhat lost, and yet not totally alone. It’s a story of transitioning from one era of your life to another. And it’s a story of the connections between people that sometimes keep us alive. Try before you buy: Read the whole thing online.

We’re still out and about on last day BEA business….wrap-up and photos later. For now, here’s a great story by
Steve Duin, with a photo of Paul Mavrides. Spain Rodriguez. R. Crumb. And S. Clay Wilson. Wilson nearly died a few months ago. Read the whole story for more.

As reported in Dark Horse’s solicitations for August, Bryan Talbot has a new book, GRANDVILLE, coming out, and it looks to be as unique as his previous works, if not quite the in-your-face mind bender of ALICE IN SUNDERLAND. It’s best described as a steampunk alternate history mystery with anthropomorphic characters, in the Euro tradition. As the solicitation puts it:

Two hundred years ago, Britain lost the Napoleonic War and fell under the thumb of French domination. Gaining independence after decades of civil disobedience and anarchist bombings, the Socialist Republic of Britain is now a small, unimportant backwater connected by a railway bridge, steam-powered dirigible, and mutual suspicion to France. When a British diplomat’s murder is made to look like suicide, ferocious Detective-Inspector LeBrock of Scotland Yard stalks a ruthless murder squad through the heart of a Belle Epoque Paris, the center of the greatest empire in a world of steam-driven hansom cabs, automatons, and flying machines. LeBrock’s relentless quest can lead only to death, truth . . . or war.

There’s a trailer up now. The cover is above and a random page is below. Many more previews at the GRANDVILLE page, linked to above.

Michael Fiffe does another one of his historical recaps, this time the career of David Mazzucchelli. We know the above ROM cover is something that no one would like to have remembered, but…he got better.

PS: We do have a copy of RUBBER BLANKET #2…somewhere in here.

It seems that comics stuff — illustrations and reviews and previews — are EVERYwhere now. The usual places and the UNusual places. For instance, we don’t remember Time Out New York running comics previews before, but here’s a nice preview of R. Sikoryak’s Masterpiece Comics, forthcoming from D&Q. (One such comic above.) The piece excerpted involves Mary Worth nosing her way into Macbeth’s business as he plots to kill the king and…oh, you just have to read it.

A more usual place for comics is the Village Voice — but not in the comics section, as you know if you’ve been reading this blog lately. Despite the dearth of weekly comics, there is still a cartoon presence. Ward Sutton has a comic about the new Star Trek movie (above), and does the cover. (Don’t worry, we didn’t spoil the joke — the whole thing is funny.) Sutton also sent us a link to his cartoon in The New Yorker. (Shannon Wheeler has also been spotted in the pages of The New Yorker lately, along with regular contributors like Chris Ware, Michael Kupperman and Adrian Tomine. Chris Mautner has more.)

Sutton ALSO has a piece on Star Trek in The Huffington Post, which brings us to our NEXT unlikely spot for comics — the Huffington Post! On Tuesday, cartoonist Bob Fingerman had an essay about his upcoming FROM THE ASHES, which we previewed only a few days ago:

So, memoirs. Memoirs in prose. Memoirs in graphic form. During the run-up to the 2008 election I was filled with guarded optimism and deep-rooted pessimism. As I alternated between pondering our potential collective fate and figuring out what my next project would be, a phrase popped into my head: “speculative memoir.” Why be limited, I thought, to recounting what’s already happened? Granted, true depictions of actual real life aren’t necessary in doing a memoir (James Frey, J.T. LeRoy and Margaret B. Jones, anyone?), but how liberating would it be to create a memoir of events yet to happen?

Good for Bob on the exposure — because we’re often told that The Huffington Post is the future of journalism…except that in a piece on a comic book, they couldn’t even run ONE PIECE OF ART? Come on now, people. You are the FUTURE. Don’t take a page from OLD MEDIA’S playbook. It’s all about the picture. Unless The Huffington Post is trying to be the place that is all about…not the picture? Hm.

As for more traditional previews, ICv2 has a preview of Jason’s LOW MOON, so you know it’s awesome, and Flog has a list of all kinds of LOW MOON goodies. Plenty to keep you busy on a Friday afternoon.

Aside from his NY Times serial, Mister Wonderful, Daniel Clowes hasn’t had a book come out since 2005’s ICE HAVEN, so word in The New Yorker of his latest project should be greeted by the slaying of calves and giant bonfires:

“I don’t even have a title for it yet,” he told me, but hinted that the plot concerned “a guy whose father dies, and he’s completely alone, so he tries to reconstruct what he’s lost, to approximate a nuclear family by joining people together.” Each page of the book is an individual scene, a joke on the format of a Sunday cartoon strip, but cumulatively the scenes create a larger narrative that turns from comic to tragic.

The piece has a slideshow of sketches from the project, one of which is shown below. Clowes also has the cover of this week’s New Yorker, shown above.

As part of the festivities leading up to this weekend’s Toronto Comics Arts Festival, the Toronto National Post is running a HUGE series of charming interviews with cartoonists who are attending, with questions involving pen nibs, Rubik’s Cubes, aliens, and other stuff you don’t usually read about on the regular news sites . It’s too much for one sitting but dipping in here and there presents a pretty good cross section of what cartoonists are reading and thinking about — and they mostly come across as so affable, it’s kind of scary:
Mariko Tamaki
Antoine Dodé
Arthur Dela Cruz
Sparkplug’s Shannon O’Leary
Brian Evinou
Tom Neely
Joey Comeau and Emily Horne
Cecil Castellucci
Eric Kim
Florrent Ruppert
Jason Kieffer
Scott Campbell
Tara McPherson
Ryan North
Michael Cho
Graham Annable
John Malloy
Tim Fish
Tom Humberstone
Steve MacIsaac
Paul Rivoche
Willow Dawson
Erika Moen (above)
J. Torres
Jose Villarrubia
Troy Little
Jeff Lemire

Sorry to be so New York-centric this week but it really is a banner week for all things graphic in the Apple. Tonight, it’s SVA’s annual student comics convention, as reported by Matt Madden.

Most interesting for the general public will be Fresh Meat, the mini-comics convention for SVA cartooning students. You’ll find a range from first efforts to polished silk-screened artbooks for sale. Come check out the superstars of tomorrow!

Friday, May 1
Fresh Meat, SVA’s In-house Comic Convention
6 – 8 pm
217 East 23 Street (SVA’s Student Center “Monkeybar Lounge”)

Madden has a few other events later in the week listed in the link, but we can testify that you are virtually guaranteed to meet one future superstar of comics at every Fresh Meat.

Steve Breen of the San Diego Union-Tribune won this year’s Pulitzer Prize for cartooning. As others have pointed out, the Pulitzer Prize winners this year seem particularly … absurd, given the media woes everywhere. For instance, the Union-Tribune is on the endangered list for daily metropolitan newspapers. Another Pulitzer winner was laid off back in January. Let’s hope the prizes perk things up.

A year or so ago, our good pal Bryan Talbot started telling us about a new artist that he had met in France, a French-Japanese woman named Veronique Tanaka who had created a rather unusual graphic novel called METRONOME that not only worked as an animated movie but told a story through meta images and syncopated storytelling. We remember thinking that Talbot seemed awfully interested in this artist’s work, as he was acting as her agent, but, well, comics folks are an incredibly helpful bunch, and it’s not all that unusual for them to help each other out. The book was eventually published in the US by NBM, Tanaka was interviewed by several websites — including Publishers Weekly — and then, as with many flavors of the minute, she disappeared into the great scrum of comics, back to her original world of “conceptual art.”

Or did she?

It turns out, Tanaka never really existed.

As revealed today on The Forbidden Planet Blog, Tanaka and Metronome were completely the creation of…Bryan Talbot.

NBM took the book believing Bryan was acting as Véronique’s agent, it was only after it had been accepted but before publication that he revealed the truth to them, when he said - “Terry Nantier… to his credit, he didn’t try and persuade me to put it out under my real name.” The book garnered some good reviews (personally I thought it was fascinating) but the sales didn’t match the good reviews and so Bryan has decided belatedly to come clean via the Page 45 Newsletter, Stephen Holland having been in on it from before publication (and equally as impressed with the book as I was before he knew it was actually Bryan experimenting).

Well, it certainly fooled me! I’ve got to say I quite like the idea of this - famous creators working under another pen name is far from unusual in the book trade, but the majority of the most famous rather spoil the idea by having “Joe Bloggs writing as Stack Powerhouse” on the cover, which makes the idea of having a different type of work from your normal ouevre taken on its own merits rather than as a work by the famous such and such rather redundant (frankly, other than to please the marketing department I never saw any sense in that approach at all, it’s like Batman wearing a top with ‘Bruce Wayne appearing as Batman’ on it.

To which we can only say…well played, Mr. Talbot! Thank goodness no one in comics journalism ever does an actual background check.

In remembrance of the 15th anniversary this week of the suicide of Kurt Cobain, cartoonist Ward Sutton offers“In Bloom, an alternate take on the life and times of everyone’s favorite dead grunge idol.”

Back in November, underground cartooning legend S. Clay Wilson suffered a severe brain injury that has left him incapacitated. While at first it was feared that Wilson would not survive, he has made a lot of progress — he’s laughing and drawing again but will need supervised care for the rest of his life.

That care will be expensive. Wilson’s longtime companion, Lorraine Chamberlain, has started the S. Clay Wilson 
Special Needs Trust, where folks can donate or help out:

Although he is still recovering in the hospital and beginning to draw again, (in his signature dense-pack style) his ability to earn a living in the future is in serious question. a depleted bank account and mounting bills make it imperative that his fellow man (and woman) come forward now and donate what they can to help this iconic artist develop a healthy, independent quality of life when he comes home to Lorraine Chamberlain, with whom he has lived for the past nine years.

He will need loving care for the rest of his life. Please help us do that for him.

draws…things.

Michael Kupperman has a blog!

Via LJ. Follow the link for MUCH, MUCH more Graham art and news.