Don MacPherson has more here.

via The New York Times:

Correction: May 31, 1998, Sunday A picture caption last Sunday with an article about the battle for control of the Marvel Entertainment Group misidentified a Marvel Comics character that visited the floor of the New York Stock Exchange in 1995. It was the Thing, not Iron Man.

Can you believe that none of the marquee comics blogs have a feature called Comics 101? That was low-hanging fruit. Over at Robot 6, Chris Mautner remedies that, inaugurating the new feature with a look at Los Bros Hernandez:

In the early 1980s, Love and Rockets was one of the seminal titles, along with books like Cerebus and American Flagg, in shaping the sensibilities of the nascent indie scene. Their influence since then has been enormous, both in the indie world and the mainstream (writer Matt Fraction cites Gilbert Hernandez as a strong influence). Their jump-cut style, which forces the reader to connect the narrative dots beetween the panels, their blend of genres (science fiction, realism, romance), their use of magical realism all helped show that not only could comic be serious literature, but how to achieve such a goal.

Our usually on-the-ball Junior Woodchuck Torsten Adair may have missed the ball by not linking to this fantastic gallery of butter/lard sculptures from the Iowa State Fair. The majestic heritage of the butter carving contest is brought forth by this 1940 depiction of Republican presidential aspirant Wendell Willkie, sculpted by Charles Umlauf.

The gallery also plays tribute to the terrific Norma “Duffy” Lyon, the Rodin of Iowa butter sculptures, here seen working on an Elvis in 1997.

Seriously, you really need to look at this gallery.

I own a comic gallery, an art gallery in New York that sells comic art and stuff; the guy that runs the art gallery also runs a comic store and we do a lot of business in France. They understand Alex Raymond, they understand that he was a great artist, they understand Hal Foster and they understand comic art as real art and as a sort of interesting, goofy thing. And I am very much into comic art, and its place in society as a real art, because it is something that expresses the culture as strongly as any other art. What Uncle Scrooge McDuck says about America, about me when I was a kid, is phenomenal. It is one of the greatest explorations of capitalism in the American mystique that has ever been written or done anywhere. Uncle Scrooge swimming around in that money bin is a key to our culture. [Laughs]

– Geoge Lucas

“Rock ’n’ roll, or the Beatles, started as just sort of hillbilly music, just a passing phase, but now it’s revered as an art form because so much has been done in it. Same with comics, and I think same with video games.”

–Sir Paul McCartney

During Wings’ Wings Over America tour in ’76 the band was slated for three nights at the Los Angeles Forum and Kirby associates Steve & Gary Sherman set up a meeting backstage between Sir Paul and ‘King’ Kirby. Kirby gave Sir Paul & Linda a 14” x 17” pencil drawing featuring Magneto and the band. (Visit THIS website to see drawing.) During the concert Kirby and his family and associates sat near the front row and during the band’s performance of Magneto & Titanium Man McCartney dedicated the song to Kirby.

–Doc Lehman (See also The Kirby Museum.)

I know the San Diego Experience has long since receded into either our dreams or our nightmares, but one element of the aftermath has been nagging at the back of my mind, as much as I try to suppress it.
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The latest round of the seesaw “one for you, one for me” legal battle between the heirs of Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel and Time Warner has gone to the Siegels, according to ICv2:

The heirs of Jerry Siegel have won another round in the court case over the rights to Superman because of a blog comment on Newsarama by long-time publisher and agent Denis Kitchen. The ruling in federal court determined that the Seigel heirs own the rights to Action Comics #4; Superman #1, pages 3-6; and the first two weeks worth of Superman daily newspaper strips. The court had earlier held that the Siegel heirs owned the rights to ACTION #1 (see “Siegel Heirs Win Superman Case”).

While we expect Jeff Trexler to come along any minute and explain this in depth, the ruling stems from a post by Trexler (not, as far as we can tell, Denis Kitchen) revealing early versions of of Superman — predating their contract with Detective Comics — by Siegel and artist Russell Keaton. The material has been deemed to be owned by the Siegels due to their previous recapture of Action #1.

Our post spotlighting a LIFE magazine archive of photos of 1950 cartoonists drawing on swimsuit models, got lots and lots of attention, but no one seemed to know if the photos had ever appeared in print.

Well, Library of American Comics editor Dean Mullaney has stepped in to solve at least part of the mystery. A 1951 Jan/Feb issue of Gala Magazine ran several of the pictures, including Bil Holman and George Wunder, above and Otto Soglow, below. Gala Magazine was, Mullaney explains, “a low-budget pin-up/model mag (as opposed to a nudie mag), with cheap printing.” Photos of girls in bathing suits and so on were a staple.

The caption reveals that the pretext for the event was a test of waterproof ink (we suspected it has something to do with pens.) Hence the cartoonists dousing the ladies with water later on. Because nothing says waterproof like Smokey Stover and girls in bathing suits.

BTW, Paul Tobin’s reconstruction of the event is a must read.

Also, it’s a pretty good bet that Eleanor Roosevelt wasn’t really there.

We missed 1979 Semi Finalists’s list of the 100 Best Comic Book Covers … it’s a highly subjective list — big on Jaime Hernandez, James Jean, Adam Hughes and 80s X-men. But glancing at it is surely enough to rekindle some thoughts about the greatness and variety of comics, and their indelible imagery. Actually the most startling thing about the list was the above…the cover of ACTION COMICS #2 by Leo E. O’Mealia.

Seriously in all our years of comics research, we never even THOUGHT about the cover to ACTION #2, let alone that it might be so cool.

Bonus #1: After Ellen singles out some of the Top 100 covers that feature women.

Bonus #2: the cover to Action #3 also by O’Mealia! It is such a shock to see that famous logo without Superman underneath it. Also how sophisticated the cover design is — without Shuster’s simple drawing, it really pops.

Imagine if THIS is what had kick started the American comics industry. What a world we would live in.

One can only guess at what the occasion for this LIFE Magazine photo shoot was, but it must have been long remembered in the halls of NCS. Apparently a bunch of strip cartoonists were brought out to draw on the bathing suits of a bunch of comely young models. All that’s missing is a bunch of those cartoon sweat drops (”plewds”) surrounding the heads of these guys as they try to get a ballpoint pen to draw over the nylon-encased curves of the models’ “hites.”

Behold, Ernie Bushmiller.

Oh, Alfred Andriola! You didn’t!!

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Likewise, we haven’t had time to delve into all the various levels of the return of Marvelman, but let’s just say all the players are tuning up for a whang dang doodle of a hootenanny. Rich Johnstongathers up some early reports and message board postings, including Erik Larsen’s declaration that “Neil Gaiman is a dick.” Oh yeah, it’s on. For a more researched take, here are Steve Bissette’s findings.

Here at Stately Beat Manor we’re involved in an ongoing process of transferring some of our valuable collection of memorabilia and artifacts, painstakingly gathered on our world travels, into our secure, temperature-controlled archives, otherwise known as Manhattan MIni Storage. By pure chance, while rummaging through our archived files, we found a manilla folder containing all sorts of little pieces of paper from conventions in the period 1988-1990. There’s a lot that either brought back memories or would be, perhaps, surprising to today’s crowd. For those of you who only know the frantic Media Con, it was a different, pre-internet world. For one thing, it was held at the old venue, The Convention and Performing Arts Center, which held maybe 5-10,000 people. Let’s a take a look at a few items, shall we? (Click on all for larger views.)

First off, here’s the cover of the first SDCC “Progress Report” for the 20th Anniversary show in 1989, sent out in February with dates, hotel info, and so on. It was a simple 16 page newsprint pamphlet, a bit different from the glossy full-color magazines that now go out; great Rick Geary cover though!

And now…hotels!
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§ GUTSVILLE was one of the highest concept comics ever, a Hawthorne-esque melodrama of a society that lives inside some giant beast. Written by Si Spurrier with art by Frazer Irving, the first issue came out in May 2007, to good reviews, and two issues eked out over the next two years. But it seems to have run aground. Now Rich Johnston quizzes Spurrier on What Ever Happened to Gutsville and the answer isn’t the happy one we’d want, as Irving can’t fit the last three issues into his schedule:

Bleeding Cool: So what happens now? In a Marvelman style do you bring Alan Davis on board?

Spurrier: Heh. That would be nice… I dunno: it’s fucking tricky. I mean… You go riiiight back to the beginning and || the setup was gloriously efficient. Fraze had had a run of good work and was flush enough to be able to take || 6 months out to do something which paid fuck-all along the way. He loved the Gutsville pitch and that was that. || …and to start with it worked perfectly. He’s super-quick at top speed. The first ep took 20 days, and looks amazing. || So do I want to finish it with someone else? Not really, because I’ve had a taste of how amazing it *could* be || For whatever reason Fraze slowed down then stopped. I don’t want to farm it out to anyone else if there’s the slightest || chance he can get going again.

Can’t we all raid our penny jars and gather a fund to get Irving started on finishing this? Please?

§ Graphic NYC has what they bill as “Carmine Infantino’s final interview.” The artistic giant and former DC publisher finds himself much concerned with his legacy:

“Let me ask you a question,” Carmine Infantino says at the end of our interview. His voice normally reaches the lows of a mumble, except when he has a point.

Like now.

“Where do you think I fit in the whole picture of comics?” he asks with an air of sincerity, as if he were asking if the sky was really blue. “Be honest. A lot of people don’t like what I did as editor, but some did.”

Michel Fiffe interviews artist Trevor Von Eeden for the latest Comics Journal, and his LJ includes outtakes and a generous helping of art to show what makes Von Eeden such a noteworthy figure. There’s also lots of juicy comic book history:

MICHEL FIFFE: Your last and most extended run on any title was Black Canary from ’91-‘93, which was on one of the only female-led comics of its time. You were paired up with yet another relative newcomer, writer Sarah E. Byam. Considering your longer than usual stint on that title, what was the creative process for you and Sarah during her first big break?

VON EEDEN: “Same as in all of my work for DC Comics — little to no direct communication with the writer at all. I believe that Sarah Byam called me once or twice, and we spoke briefly over the phone, but my work at DC Comics was never collaborative in nature. I was interested exclusively in doing the work, not in ‘networking’. I picked up a script, went home, drew it, and then handed it in. That’s it. Thriller suffered when my creative fire, my enthusiasm, was doused after the ‘chair collapsing’ stunt that the DC editor had tried to pull on me. Although to this day, I still don’t remember who’d sat behind that desk, insisting over and over again that I ‘take a seat’. Maybe Alan Gold would remember, since he’d ended up literally ‘taking the fall’.

An excerpt of the TCJ interview is here.

Art Spiegelman has a comic in the Washington Post about the St. Louis, a 1939 ship filled with Jewish refugees from Europe that was denied asylum in the US and sent back. Spiegelman focuses on some of the media-related aspects of the shameful story, with his usual bite.

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.

Since leaving his job as Publisher of Marvel Comics, Bill Jemas has been taking on many unusual projects besides 360ie, his IP branding company. For instance, he’s been translating the Bible. And he’s also been trying to bring peace to the world and promote green causes via Peacepaint, a clothing company featuring eco-friendly designs.

“Peace first. Ask questions later,” declared Bill Jemas, 360ie CEO. “Our fall 2008 line revolves around the world peace movement.” Mr. Jemas, former Marvel Comics Publisher, co-created the ID line with accomplished graphic designer Farrah Gross, 360ie’s Art Director. “We work with dozens of freelance artists and have created a beautiful collection with many diverse messages. But to start, we decided to focus on peace art with peaceful messages.”

To support the broader Peace Movement and publicize its own peace-apparel line, 360ie is launching peacepaint.com – a website that aggregates information about the cause and links to major peace-oriented organizations. Peacepaint.com also comes with an eye-catching twist – exhibiting the best ID designs in body paint on some very sexy canvases!

What does that last part mean? Well, basically that painting these designs onto sexy girls is a good way to get attention! Can’t say we disagree.

Can you find the panda bear?

§ Meanwhile, what about toy magnate/comics iconoclast Todd McFarlane. What’s he been up to? He hasn’t been sued lately, so he’s kind of dropped out of the news, aside from ongoing cutbacks at his McFarlane Toys. It seems he is thinking about making a new SPAWN movie, and has some ideas for casting and so on, such as a role for Leonardo DiCaprio as a Sam or Twitch-like role:

“It’s a big wish, but his dad was a big fan of underground comic books and he came from that. It’s not a big special effects movie, it’s a character movie, so I could shoot it in 40 to 50 days and you don’t have to budget that much time.”

[snip]Although Todd wants Leonardo to play a detective, it is unlikely to be either Sam or Twitch, the two famed officers from the original comic series, as he is hoping to work on another project focused on the two characters.

He added to MTV News: “We had Sam and Twitch in the book, but because of some of the stuff I’m trying to sell in Hollywood, we might have to change the characters a bit.

And many other comics, also with new Graham art.

I really like the early Dreadstar comics. I feel like this is seeing a dude at rock bottm.
Years later in therapy Dreadstar will be talking about his low point of boning a magic blade.
And after that he ended up being such a bad father that the book about his daughter got writen by peter david–”if only she’d just become a stripper!” falling in with a bad crowd.

A few oddments of news we’ve had floating around our inbox for the last few days:

§ Tucker Stone’s MoCCA coverage dropped the bomb that the upcoming SIMPSON’S TREEHOUSE OF HORROR #15 will contain stories by the cream of the latest art comix crop, including John Kerschbaum, Kevin Huizenga, Jordan Crane, Jeffrey Brown, C.F. and Dan Zettwoch. CF on the Simpsons! Can’t wait!

§ Canadian cartoonist Doug Wright has been getting much attention of late due to D&Q’s lavish collection of his work. This jogged Marv Wolfman’s memory regarding a little known phase of Wright’s career:

Doug was one of my regular Crazy artists. I…got in touch with Doug and other Pulitzer prize winning editorial cartoonists who did stories for me at our ridiculous rates. Turns out editorial cartoonists had plenty of time each day while waiting for the story that they’d do their cartoon about. They were also lightning fast as well as brilliant. Doug did a number of stories for me as did several other editorial cartoonists who wanted to keep busy. Great stuff and it made Crazy look beyond wonderful.

§ Agent/artist Denis Kitchen has a few notes for us; his UNDERGROUND CLASSICS book from Abrams has gone to a second printing. Also, daughter Alexa Kitchen, is hitting the mainstream with a new book due from Hyperion this August, Grown-Ups Are Dumb! ((No Offense)). Young Kitchen has been publishing her cartoons since she was five years old, and this work — the fruit of her 10th year — represents her most mature work yet!

The game was created 25 years ago today. Learn more about the creation of “the world’s greatest video game” here.

I don’t know about you, but I played TETRIS so much when I was an undergrad in the late 1980s, I would see the shapes when I closed my eyes, trying to get to sleep at night.

And now, there are kids still playing it today on their Wiis and on their cell phones.

It started when James Sturm from CCS, presented a slideshow on children’s book illustrator Virginia Lee Burton on the feminist blog DoubleXX. Sturm proposed that Burton might be a lost link in the early history of the graphic novel and pointed out that the crossover between illustration and comics has always been a fluid one:

But it’s increasingly clear to me, as I watch my students struggle to bring nuance to a medium that has historically lacked it, that they have as much (if not more) in common with children’s book artists like Burton as with the men who worked in the sweatshops in the early years of comic books. It is time to stop looking at the history of comics as the history of the comic industry. We need to make room for more masters, Burton among them.

Along the way, Sturm pointed out that all of the cartoonists in the Masters of American Comics exhibit were men, which is, as we all know, because there were no great women cartoonists.

That inspired this from Spurge:

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Robyn Chapman wrote to alert us to the existence of the CCS SChulz Library blog, a compendium of cool comical things:

The Schulz Library resides in a restored old firehouse on the bank of the White River. The room is packed with zines, graphic novels, cartoon collections, and related ephemera— an amazing and inspirational resource for The Center for Cartoon Studies students and faculty.

This blog is a way to share our enthusiasm for the incredible collection!

Currently residing at the top of blog is an appreciation of John Stanley by Steve Bissette, and the rest of the blog is equally interesting, such as a side-by-side comparison of Zonker and the Red Dragon from BONE. Chapman, James Sturm, and Chuck Forsman are some of the other contributors. Good stuff.

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]

As anyone reading our tweets knows, we spent the weekend going through our bookshelves and comics boxes weeding, sorting and stacking. No, we’re not quite ready for a Shelf Porn, alas…unless it’s an episode of How Clean Is Your Stately Manor. As usual when we do this (every few years) it turns out to be an archaeological dig through the many layers of comics publishing history. And we couldn’t help but take note of a few things.

First there was the ’80s bookshelf. About 50 percent of this was European comics albums from Catalan, NBM, and Fantagraphics. Lots of Mattotti (FIRES! Yes!), Bernet, Manara, Lt. Blueberry, and so on. We didn’t even know we OWNED a copy of XIII. And, it seems, there have been so many efforts by Kim Thompson, bless him, to get Euro comics albums accepted in the US. Aside from showing whose comp list we were on back in the day, it is of some interest that at that period, there simply weren’t enough US graphic novels/albums what have you, to publish. (There was a significant pile of Richard Corben in there, and most of the other squarebounds of the era has some kind of underground lineage.) However, to this day, the kind of grown-up adventure/fantasy/SF produced in Europe has never really caught fire in the US. Thompson is trying again with Tardi, and one hopes the literary comics crowd will support his fine, genre-defying work. Humanoides tried and tried, and is back yet again; maybe Hollywood turning to stuff like DYLAN DOG, XIII, and THE KILLER will turn the tide.

Mixed in was the pre DARK KNIGHT/MAUS/WATCHMEN US attempts at graphic novels. Like the very first Marvel OGN — THE DEATH OF CAPTAIN MARVELl, which was followed by efforts like THE NEW MUTANTS, STAR SLAMMERS, and so on. Well, you had to start somewhere, right? There was also a disturbing pocket that contained no less than three different formats of collections of early TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES. Oh, and mustn’t forget SWORDS OF CEREBUS. First was also making some efforts with Eric Shanower’s Oz books (recently reprinted by IDW) and Howard Chaykin’s obscure but really good TIME [SQUARED]. Oh, and the “very first graphic novel,” A CONTRACT WITH GOD. (I have the Kitchen Sink edition.)

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Surely the entire planet must by now have been converted to the Church ofJohn Stanley, one of the most inventive, wisest storytellers in comics history. In case there are still a few doubters, here are some of his works to get you started:

Little Lulu in “Bam Bam” (via Doug Gray).

Guess who in “Luluhaha” (via Pappy’s Golden Age)

Andy Panda in “Snowpocalypse” (via Frank Young)

Judy Junior in “Arts and Crafts” (via the D&Q blog.)

Everyone is talking about this career-spanning interview with writer/BOOM! EIC Mark Waid at AICN. In a comics media drowning in promotional interviews, the long, in-depth interview is a thing of the past (or a TwoMorrows publication) but this one pulls out the stops, and Waid spells out his version of some of the most colorful comics incidents of the past decade, like…Crossgen:

[Mark Alessi’s] idea of creative guidance was to; quite literally, scream until he was red in the face that there wasn’t enough detail on the page and that he wanted to see every single blade of grass, Goddamnit! He’d punish guys who drew perfectly well without his help by focusing on some detail or another on one of 22 pages–some face that somehow wasn’t exactly what he saw in his head, whatever the hell that was–by berating them at the top of his lungs and then sending them home for the day, “and don’t come back until you can draw it right!” That, people, is art directing at its finest. Despite his inappropriate behavior, which was deservedly notorious, there were some damn good Crossgen books put out–but I swear to you, none of them were issued by Crossgen so much as escaped FROM Crossgen.

And…the Jemas Years at Marvel:

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