The Chicago Humanities Festival this weekend presents the pen-ultimate panel, entitled “The Not-So-Funny Situation of Alternative Comix” and featuring Matt Groening, Lynda Barry, Jules Feiffer, and Chris Ware. Tickets are $5.

We are likely living in the golden age of graphic novels and alternative comics, but the artists themselves are facing what may be the most significant crisis in the medium’s history: the evaporation of virtually all of their outlets as alternative newsweeklies and comix publishers cease publishing their work in the midst of their own financial calamity.

The Festival — which is already going on — has several other comics-related events, including a sold out panel of New Yorker cartoonists, also on Saturday.

We welcome all reports!

Harvey Awards Animation from Monkey and Tiger on Vimeo.

Written, voice acted, and BLAMIMATED by Kristofer Straub with art by Scott Kurtz. This video was played at the start of the 2009 Harvey Awards, and people seemed to laugh.

[Link via Journalista!]

[We didn’t have time to write a post about the Keith Knight controversy yesterday, but Torsten Adair took time out of his commenting/work schedule to write one for us.]

WYTV in Youngstown, Ohio, reportsthat students at Slippery Rock University, located in western Pennsylvania, are upset about a recent “K Chronicles” cartoon written and drawn by Keith Knight.  In the strip Knight satirizes the current “post racial” society in this country, where any complaints by African-Americans are dismissed as “playing the race card”.
 
Students at SRU feel that the cartoon, especially the first panel showing the cartoonist being lynched, is one more example of recurring racism at the university.  According to an SRU report from Spring 2008, 87% of the 7,836 students at the university are classed as “White, non-Hispanic”.  The local NAACP college chapter plans a peaceful protest and march through campus on Thursday afternoon.
 
Keith Knight’s official statement deals with the protests with his usual aplomb:

A comic strip can be about more than cats eating lasagna or how stupid your boss is. Some of the best comic strips point out truths not only though humor, but through satire.

Many of my best strips involve real issues: Racism, suicide, war, disease. I mix those in with more humorous, less serious issues.

In the first panel of this specific comic strip, white people accuse a black man, who is about to be lynched, of pulling the race card. This is an exaggerated, satirical version of what we often see and hear in mainstream media: the victim gets accused of pulling the race card, which is an easy way to dismiss the real issues involved.

Beat readers may recall that last October, the newspaper of Montclair State University in New Jersey issued an apology after readers were offended by a cartoon which commented on the Presidential election of 2008.  The cartoon was based on a real event which occurred in Washington, Pennsylvania, which is 75 miles south of Slippery Rock.  (The cartoon is also available at the K Chronicles website.)

Heidi adds: Gawker has a snarky write-up on this, and the best part of the whole kerfuffle may well be Knight patiently killing the frog by explaining what humor is and how it works.

Well, then you can enter this contest!

Kicking off a year-long series of events celebrating Peanuts’ 60th Anniversary in 2010, Peanuts announces the launch of its first-ever PEANUTS 60th Anniversary Photo Look-A-Like Contest (www.peanutsphotocontest.com), which will benefit Boys & Girls Clubs of America (www.bgca.org).

Moms and dads across the country are invited to submit photos of their children looking like one of these Peanuts characters: Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Lucy, Linus, Sally, Schroeder, Franklin, Peppermint Patty, Marcie or Pigpen, or one of Snoopy’s classic alter-egos, Joe Cool or the World War I Flying Ace.  Submissions will be accepted through November 3.

Finalists, selected by a panel of celebrity judges, will be posted on November 11.  The public will then be able to vote for their favorite finalist through November 30.  The winners will be announced in December.

Celebrities have already kicked this off with some suggestions which you can see in the jump. Can we just say that Michael Cera/Linus really works for us?
(more…)

Last night’s big storm was followed by modem problems, meaning…a delayed Beat. Apologies to all.

In the meantime, if you’re in New York, come to the Bryant Park graphic novel panel this afternoon!

(The second part of a series on how not to spend Comic-Con week at Comic-Con)

After spending most of the week in San Diego, but only one day at the actual con itself, it was off to the Bay Area for the previously-discussed Miyazaki festivities at Berkeley. But before seeing the director, the previous day was spent making the trip from San Francisco Airport to Santa Rosa to visit the Charles M. Schulz Museum.

(For the super-nerds: Not only did I want to go to Santa Rosa to see the Schulz Museum, but wanted to drive around town, since it was the setting for my favorite and perhaps the most underrated of all the Hitchcock movies, SHADOW OF A DOUBT.)

It’s fair to say that anyone coming to California for Comic-Con really should make a detour to the Schulz Museum, as it’s one big love affair to Schulz and all the lovable characters (and Lucy) that populate the world of PEANUTS.

Obviously, it goes without saying there is tons of Schulz artwork in and around the museum, from the giant mural in the lobby to comic stripped tiles in the restroom (bathroom reading has never been so appealing).

While I was there in late July, there were two featured exhibits in the museum. The one that was nearing its run featured a number of strips and memorabilia commemorating the 65th anniversary of D-Day. The exhibit had both PEANUTS strips done by Schulz over the years related to the anniversary, as well as personal artifacts from Schulz’s time in the army during World War II.

The other exhibit, which had just opened the day I was at the museum, was the second of three under the heading “The Language of Lines.” This one is called “How Cartoonists Create Characters” and is filled with original art from the Golden Age up until the present. Sure, it was great to see a BARNEY GOOGLE strip from the 1930s or a page of PRINCE VALIANT art, but, given my age, nothing was cooler to see than an original CALVIN AND HOBBES strip.

The neatest thing among the permanent exhibits may be a re-creation of Schulz’s studio, complete with his longtime drawing board. Eagle-eyed visitors will want to be on the lookout for the NHL’s Lester Patrick Award, which Schulz was given in 1981 for his contributions to hockey, as well a Peabody Award, given for A CHARLIE BROWN CHRISTMAS.

Any visitor to the museum will also want to venture across the street and have lunch at the Warm Puppy Café, which is part of Snoopy’s Home Ice, the ice rink Schulz had built in 1969 and was opened by a skate by Olympic darling Peggy Fleming.

Although the museum was set up at Comic-Con (you could have easily missed them, like everything else that wasn’t a movie booth), it’s certainly no substitute for a visit to the real thing.

Posted by Mark Coale

Just received a galley of this.

The fascinating life, work, and legacy of the reclusive creator behind the beloved Calvin and Hobbes comic strip

For ten years, between 1985 and 1995, Calvin and Hobbes was one of the world’s most beloved comic strips. And then, on the last day of 1995, the strip ended. Its mercurial and reclusive creator, Bill Watterson, not only finished the strip but withdrew entirely from public life. There is no merchandising associated with Calvin and Hobbes: no movie franchise; no plush toys; no coffee mugs; no t-shirts (except a handful of illegal ones). There is only the strip itself, and the books in which it has been compiled - including The Complete Calvin and Hobbes: the heaviest book ever to hit the New York Times bestseller list.

In Looking for Calvin and Hobbes: The Unconventional Story of Bill Watterson and His Revolutionary Comic Strip, writer Nevin Martell traces the life and career of the extraordinary, influential, and intensely private man behind Calvin and Hobbes. With input from a wide range of artists and writers (including Dave Barry, Harvey Pekar, Jonathan Lethem, and Brad Bird) as well as some of Watterson’s closest friends and professional colleagues, this is as close as we’re ever likely to get to one of America’s most ingenious and intriguing figures - and a fascinating detective story, at the same time.

Only 3,160 Calvin & Hobbes strips were ever produced, but Watterson has left behind an impressive legacy. Calvin & Hobbes references litter the pop culture landscape and his fans are as varied as they are numerable. Looking for Calvin and Hobbes is an affectionate and revealing book about uncovering the story behind this most uncommon trio – a man, a boy, and his tiger.

Should be interesting.

And yet another fantastic announcement you may have missed in the San Diego scramble: Fantagraphics is reprinting NANCY, Ernie Bushmiller’s great experiment in ontology, starting in early 2010.

According to Co-Publisher Gary Groth, who inked the deal, Fantagraphics has contracted to publish the first 24 years of Nancy dailies, beginning in 1938 (when Nancy took over the strip from its former star, Fritzi Ritz) through 1961. “If the demand is there,” Groth noted, “we will of course want to continue into the 1960s and beyond, if for no other reason than to run all those great ‘hippie’ Nancy episodes. But we’ll cross that bridge in 2016 when we finish publishing the books we’ve contracted for.”

“I was a late Nancy convert,” admits Co-Publisher Kim Thompson, who will be editing the series. “It wasn’t until Denis Kitchen published his Nancy collections in 1989 and 1990, after people like Bill Griffith and Scott McCloud had been touting it for years, that I finally ‘got’ it. It’s one of the all-time greats — way ahead of its time in its own goofy way. Ever since then it’s been at the back of my mind to do a more extensive reprinting, and our ongoing successes with classic reprint series these past five years told me the time is now ripe.”

Jacob Covey will design the series, while Daniel Clowes will provide the intro to the first volume.
In addition, there is a call for help from the great international Nancy Cult:

Fantagraphics will begin with the “second” volume, 1942-1945. According to Thompson, “While we have access to great, nearly complete runs for most of the 1940s dailies, it looks like it will be far more trouble to collect the 1938 and 1939 material. So we’ll be putting out a call to Nancy fans, both over the internet and in the first book itself, until we eventually secure the missing strips to double back and release the best possible 1938-1941 volume.”

At the very least, this could make games of Five-Card Nancy even more exciting!

Richard Thompson, a guest at next week’s SDCC, and creator of Cul de Sac, one of the finest comic strips currently running, has announced he has Parkinson’s disease. Let’s all send him some good thoughts, okay?

A shake up in KC, as comics strip giant Andrews McMeel has consolidated its syndications and online divisions, merging syndicate Universal Press Syndicate with digital entertainment company Uclick .

The resulting company, called Universal Uclick, will encompass print and digital syndication and licensing services.

Universal Press Syndicate President Lee Salem will take over as interim CEO of Universal Uclick. Douglas Edwards, who had been CEO of Uclick, resigned effective Tuesday.

Universal Uclick Marketing Director Paul Richardson said that Edwards left the company to seek other opportunities but described the split as amicable.

The article goes on to say that the reconfiguration will combine processes for a more efficient company.

Universal is the syndicate behind such comic strip giants as Doonesbury and Garfield, and Andrews McMeel has long published collections of these strips. In recent months Uclick had gotten into digital distribution of the same; merging the two arms is yet another tacit acknowledgment that digital distribution is now as important as print.

Over at Hogan’s Alley!, Daryl Cagle posts his photos from the Memorial Day mingling of the comic strip tribes known as Reuben Awards Weekend. Above, Bill (”FoxTrot”) Amend, left; Greg (”Luann”) Evans, center; and eventual Reuben winner Dave (”Speed Bump”) Coverly.

One of the most intriguing news stories of the last few months has been DC’s upcoming WEDNESDAY COMICS, a newspaper-sized weekly comic featuring a wide range of top talent under the watchful eye of editor Mark Chiarello. The idea of a newspaper-sized comic sounded incredibly cool — so cool that one had to wonder, couldn’t this actually appear in a newspaper? Turns out, at least one strip will. The John Arduci/Lee Bermajo Superman strip will be serialized each week, The Source blog reports;

Starting Wednesday July 8, when the first issue of WEDNESDAY COMICS hits stands, USA TODAY will be syndicating writer John Arcudi and artist Lee Bermejo’s SUPERMAN strip every week over the course of the 12-week series. The first strip will appear in print on July 8, and subsequent strips will appear each Wednesday on USATODAY.COM, day-and-date with the respective issue. Additionally, each online preview will be promoted weekly in USA TODAY’s print edition. USA TODAY announced the news this morning.

The New York Times finds Jeet Heer’s analysis of Little Orphan Annie’s anti-FDR tone during the Great Depression a “Big Idea” for today, and a mirror of current monetary anxieties. What cartoon character is currently carrying the standard for the Chicago School? And who’s for Keynes?

Last year the University of Missouri had a special exhibit celebrating 75 years of the comic strip Alley Oop, which concerns a comical, time raveling caveman. A digital exhibit is online, with a bio of creator V.T. Hamlin, information on the strip’s history, examples of Oop licensing over the years and much other interesting stuff. Check it out.

[Thanks to Karen Green for the link]

Not to rain on anyone’s award parade, but the weekend of the Reuben Awards was also the impetus for a relentlessly gloomy look at the future of comic strips in newspapers in the LA Times:

“There’s less you can do in the size of the panel that current newspapers provide,” said Stephan Pastis, creator of “Pearls Before Swine.”

“In the old days, comics were often full pages. Now, they’re squeezed down into tiny little boxes that don’t give much more room than what it takes to do a talking head. It’s sad to see something that was so important to cartooning becoming marginalized.”

The un-funny reality has made the print comics scene a challenge for newcomers, according to the Post’s Michael Cavna, TV/theater editor and the man behind its Comic Riffs blog.

“I think it’s brutally hard to break into print comics right now,” Cavna said. “It’s like ‘Star Wars,’ when you’re trying to shoot to get the Death Star . . . that tiny little room of error — that’s where cartoonists are left in the print world. The window is yet narrower to succeed.”

This weekend, the National Cartoonists Society held their annual get-together and gave some people awards. Mike Lynch has all the winners, and we’re going to cut and paste:

2008 REUBEN AWARD
Dave Coverly
This is the one known as THE Reuben to recognize the year’s top cartoonist. Coverly is the creator of Speed Bump, and a multiple nominee and winner (for Best Greeting Cards) in previous years.

2008 NCS Division Award Winners:

TELEVISION ANIMATION
Sandra Equihua and Jorge Gutierrez - Creators - “El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera”

FEATURE ANIMATION
Nicolas Marlet - Character Designer - “Kung Fu Panda”

NEWSPAPER ILLUSTRATION
Mark Marturello

GAG CARTOONS
Mort Gerberg

GREETING CARDS
Jem Sullivan

NEWSPAPER COMIC STRIPS
Mark Tatulli - “Lio”

NEWSPAPER PANEL CARTOONS
Mark Parisi “Off the Mark”

MAGAZINE FEATURE/MAGAZINE ILLUSTRATION
Sam Viviano

BOOK ILLUSTRATION
Mike Lester COOL DADDY RAT

EDITORIAL CARTOONS
Michael Ramirez

ADVERTISING ILLUSTRATION
Craig McKay

COMIC BOOKS
Cyril Pedrosa THREE SHADOWS

There were 5 awards of recognition:

Silver T-Square
Jeff Bacon

Silver T-Square
James Kemsley

Gold Key Award
Bil Keane

Gold Key Award
Mell Lazarus

Jay Kennedy Memorial Scholarship Award Winner
Chris Houghton

Sean Kleefield does all a favor by rounding up the full slate of Earth Day Comics from our dying newspapers’ funny pages. Since we hadn’t looked at a newspaper comic strip page in…many a moon, it was a nice way to relax. Of course, we know there are only two you care about…

Mark Trail!

and Mary Worth!

Wait a minute…now we all know newspapers are dying, and comic strips are one of the few things that people care about in the papers any more, but maybe it was an off day or something, but are these two strips supposed to be about zombies? Because we’ve rarely seen such lifeless artwork. If it isn’t the inert way everyone is standing around in the last panel of Mark Trail, it’s creepy stoned-eyed Mary Worth! At least the ducks look okay. If this is what comic strips look like nowadays, no wonder people watch Superjail.

But you can’t take the comics away from the people, no sir. Look what happened when the Washington Post tried to quietly remove the Judge Parker comic strip and hush up the crime.

When the Washington Post killed its Sunday Book Review section, some readers complained. When the Post folded the Business section into the A section, there were a few murmurs. When the daily decapitated the Judge Parker comic strip, readers revolted. “We received hundreds of passionate e-mails,” a top Post editor told The Washingtonian. “The readership may not be that high, but what we underestimated was the intensity.”

But take a look at Judge Parker by Woody Wilson and Eduardo Barretto. Damn, that is some dope shit! Pow! Sock! That top Post editor had no idea of the intensity whirlwind he was going to reap, given this combustible fuel! See, that’s what people like, not that “Hey Mary Worth! It’s 4:20!” stuff.

Alan Gardner reports that Ted Rall and eight others were laid off from United Media, the cartoon and content syndication giant.

Ted Rall, who worked as the Editor of Acquisitions and Development at United Media has been laid off last Thursday. Ted tells me that eight other individuals were also let go and that his responsibilities would probably be reassigned to other people. Ted was brought in for the position back in 2006. During his term he helped United Media launch Diesel Sweeties, Secret Asian Man, Family Tree, The Knight Life and Rip Haywire.

Rall was hired — after a search that saw just about every cartoon-type person in New York interviewed — to update United Media’s cartoon content in a world where blogs and webcomics are the currency of the Attention Economy. On his blog, Rall writes:

Considering the circumstances, I enjoyed remarkable success. My first feature was a daily newspaper version of “Diesel Sweeties,” by R. Stevens. If not the first transition of a webcomic to daily form, it was certainly the most successful. Unfortunately for print readers, the artist decided to focus on his online work and ended the strip. After that came Tak Toyoshima’s “Secret Asian Man,” the first daily comic strip about Asian-Americans by an Asian-American cartoonist. It remains in syndication today, and continues to garner attention. I recruited Signe Wilkinson to draw “Family Tree,” a family strip with an ecological bent filtered through Signe’s uniquely jaundiced eye, and “Family Tree” keeps getting sales as comics pages get slashed. There was also Keith Knight’s “The Knight Life,” in which Keith transitioned his autobiographical alt weekly strip “The K Chronicles” to the daily form. It is a success. Most recently were the daily comic version of Stephanie McMillan’s political cartoon “Minimum Security” and “Rip Haywire,” an updating and parody of adventure comics by Dan Thompson.

We think any legacy that includes R. Stevens, Signe Wilkinson, Keith Knight and the other cartoonists named has to be considered a success by any standard — even if Stevens eventually went back to running his own shop, the very fact that traditional syndication was no temptation for a successful webcomicker was an empirical experiment of invaluable worth.

In the comments on his blog, Rall assesses the grim prospects for the alt cartoonist these days; with even United Media trying to upgrade their business model, everyone is still wondering what the new business model is.

Over at the NBM blog, Terry Nantier reminds us that a collection of BRINGING UP FATHER is on its way:

Well, we’re putting to bed the next great entry in our Forever Nuts collection of classic comic strips, Bringing Up Father, and it looks gorgeous. The strips have been meticulously restored and we end up with a colorful foreword by Bill Blackbeard, short but quite sweet, and a great intro by R.C. Harvey who gives us all we could want to know about McManus and this seminal strip in the history of comics.

And if that weren’t enough, we have quite a few annotations/footnotes at the end of the book that explain references in the strips. Allan Holtz, who worked on this with us did painstaking research. His full set of notes even beyond what we culled for the book will be posted up online when the book is out.

BRINGING UP FATHER was the creation of George McManus, and it’s probably familiar to many readers since it ran until 2000. The early strips — it began in 1913 — were stupendously drawn in a clear line style rarely equaled. The broad humor included Jiggs, a nouveau riche Irishman; Maggie, his surly wife, who was quite free with the rolling pin; and Nora, an inexplicably realistically drawn hot young flapper. We could never figure out why Nora looked normal, but we sure liked her clothes.

Tom Tomorrow reprints correspondence that indicates that things aren’t any better for alternative weekly comics than they were a few months ago.

To no one’s surprise the “temporary” Village Voice Media suspension of cartoons continues indefinitely. I haven’t been contacted myself, but one of my colleagues got this email:

I had said we would review syndicated cartoons after the first quarter, so wanted to get back to you.

Sadly, the results were disappointing, so we’re going to have to extend our moratorium on syndicated cartoons for at least another quarter.

Wish I had better news. I hope we can resume our relationship when things finally turn around.

Well, shit.

Billy, Jeffy, Dolly, and PJ are getting their own deluxe collection treatment, as IDW continues to expand their comic strip empire. At their WonderCon panel today, IDW announced a new series of Family Circus reprint collections. PR below:

IDW Publishing is pleased to announce The Family Circus Library by Bil Keane. The Family Circus, which was originally published in only 19 newspapers, is now seen in over 1500 newspapers worldwide, making it one of the most enduring and popular comic strips ever.

Drawing inspiration from his own family’s antics, Bil Keane brought the charming adventures of Billy, Dolly, Jeffy & PJ to life where they have been beloved by millions of readers ever since.

“Having truly enjoyed drawing my Family Circus cartoons,” Bil Keane said, “it is icing on the cake to see them now preserved in these very special volumes that will go on and on and on! Realizing that future generations may read the Keane family drawings that I penned so long ago is a happy bonus for this old cartoonist. I am eternally grateful.”

The initial book will collect the first two years of daily and Sunday strips, starting from the very beginning, February 29th, 1960. Volume One will be released in November, in celebration of the 50 year anniversary of The Family Circus.

“The Family Circus has been a favorite of mine since I was a kid,” said Scott Dunbier, the project’s editor, “and is even more so now that I have kids that age!” Each hard cover book will be designed by Eisner Award winner Dean Mullaney, and will be part of the critically acclaimed Library of American Comics.

Kristy Valenti looks at a lesser known facet of George “Krazy Kat” Herriman’s career — his illustrations for archy and mehitabel. Written by journalist Don Marquis, these popular blank verse poems supposed a friendship between a cockroach (archy) and an alley cat (Mehitabel) who liked to dance in the moonlight. The poems had no punctuation because archy typed them out by jumping up and down on the keys of a typewriter:

Though Mehitabel resembles a gendered (Mehitabel is both intensely feminine and pointedly undomesticated), more feline version of Krazy Kat, Herriman’s Archy suggests, more than resembles, a cockroach (if one could pinpoint what kind of cockroach Archy is, in my humble opinion it would be an American one): it may be the hat. Which is not to say that Herriman’s version of Archy isn’t definitive: it is. Other illustrators, before and after Herriman, have tried their hand (including Edward Gorey), but none have matched Herriman: his rendering of Archy is simply a whole other layer of characterization. And, though the font (and the lack of capitalization) is diegetic, Marquis couldn’t possibly have found an illustrator more sensitive to language: when certain lines are transcribed in Herriman’s lettering, they seem especially to sing (they’re so full of life, they’re practically vibrating).

If you’ve never read archy and mehitabel, it’s worth searching out — jangling and whimsical odes to the Bohemian life, as in “the song of mehitabel”:

i have had my ups and downs
but wotthehell wotthehell
yesterday sceptres and crowns
fried oysters and velvet gowns
and today i herd with bums
but wotthehell wotthehell
i wake the world from sleep
as i caper and sing and leap
when i sing my wild free tune
wotthehell wotthehell
under the blear eyed moon
i am pelted with cast off shoon
but wotthehell wotthehell

IDW Publishing had become known as the home to some very high quality classic comic strips reprints — Terry and the Pirates, Dick Tracy, the upcoming Rip Kirby — but they are now turning to what might be called a “modern classic” with The Bloom County Library:

IDW Publishing is pleased to announce the forthcoming release of The Bloom County Library. Beginning in October 2009, each of the five volumes will collect nearly two years worth of daily and Sunday strips, in chronological order. This will be the very first time that many of these comic strips have been collected, and the first time in a beautifully designed, hardcover format. The books will be part of IDW’s Library of American Comics imprint, and designed by Eisner Award-winner Dean Mullaney.

“Fans have pestered me for years,” said Berkeley Breathed, “for this ultimate Bloom County collection in that polite, respectful badgering way that only fans can manage. Thank God I can now tell them something better than just ‘please remove your tent from my lawn.’ I can say, ‘It’s coming!”

Berkeley Breathed’s Bloom County is one of the most popular and critically acclaimed newspaper strips of modern times. Premiering on December 8th, 1980 — a month after the election of Ronald Reagan as President — the strip brought to the comics pages a unique amalgam of contemporary politics and fantasy, all told with hilarious humor and wit.

The beloved and quirky denizens of Bloom County include Opus, Steve Dallas, Bill the Cat, Milo Bloom, Michael Binkley, and Cutter John. Breathed was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning in 1987 for his work on Bloom County. The strip was published in an astounding 1200 newspapers.

The phenomenon that was Bloom County spawned a merchandizing bonanza, as well as two spin-off strips, Outland and Opus. The first paperback collection of the strip, Loose Tails, sold over one million copies. Bloom County paperbacks cumulatively sold over six million copies. At the height of the strip’s popularity, Breathed walked away on August 6th, 1989.

IDW Publishing Special Projects Editor Scott Dunbier conceived the series. “I’m absolutely thrilled to be editing the Bloom County Library,” said Dunbier. “This is a series that I can’t wait to hold in my hands.”

The Bloom County Library will also contain a series of “Context Pages” sprinkled throughout the volumes. These pages will provide perspective for the reader, presenting a variety of real-life events and personalities that were contemporary at the time of original publication.

§ Cartoonist Matt Bors sits down with Kevin Allman, editor of The Gambit, an independent alt-weekly out of New Orleans, to talk about the recent weekly comic holocaust. The result is sobering but informative:

The cutback in cartoons has less to do with the budget than it does with page counts going down. Let’s face it: you guys aren’t paid shit for what you do, and it’s got to be infuriating to feel like your measly $25 is the first place editors look to cut. We don’t. It’s a space issue.

Okay! Finally some good news! IDW is planning to add Alex Raymond’s gorgeous Rip Kirby to its deluxe comic strip reprint series, with the first Dean Mullaney-edited volume due in September:

Following the Eisner-award winning Terry and the Pirates, IDW’s Library of American Comics will present Alex Raymond’s modernist classic Rip Kirby in a definitive five-volume archival hardcover series.

Edited and designed by Dean Mullaney, Rip Kirby will contain every daily from the strip’s inception in 1946 through Alex Raymond’s tragic death in 1956. “It’s going to look gorgeous,” Mullaney says. “We are reproducing the strips from pristine syndicate proofs that will allow readers to see, for the first time, the full luxurious detail of Raymond’s brushwork.”

Rip Kirby was the first hip and cool detective in newspaper comics. Created by Alex Raymond when he was deactivated from the Marines after World War II, it was a fresh approach to the genre, a departure from the prevailing hard-boiled style of detective fiction. Rip Kirby was urbane and cerebral, and used scientific methods as often as he used his fists when solving crimes and mysteries. But there was still plenty of action — Kirby was an All-American athlete and decorated war hero.

Co-written with Ward Greene, Rip Kirby often addressed contemporary issues, including trafficking in black market babies and the attempt to limit the proliferation of atomic and biological weapons. The supporting cast was comprised of Rip’s valet and assistant, Desmond, and plenty of breathtaking women, particularly Rip’s girlfriend, Honey Dorian, and the raven-haired and aptly-named Pagan Lee. Highly conscious of the fashions of the day, Raymond brought post-war and early-50s chic and fashion to the comics page, dressing his female characters in ultra-chic clothes obviously inspired by Dior’s “New Look.”

The strip also signified a grand departure, both thematically and artistically, from Raymond’s first major creation, Flash Gordon. With Rip Kirby, Raymond wedded his incomparable brushwork to a sweeping approach to storytelling and camera movement that was missing in the more static Flash. He promulgated a new art style — one of cinematic photo-realism — that influenced such artists to follow as Stan Drake, Leonard Starr, Al Williamson, and Neal Adams.

Biographical and historic essays will be written by Brian Walker, author of the best-selling Comics Before 1945 and Comics After 1945. The first volume will have an introduction by Raymond biographer and authority Tom Roberts.