Greetings, guest-poster Evie Nagy here. While the Beat and half the known comics universe have been in San Diego for the past four days, and the rest of us have been following their reports closely (and maybe the tiniest bit grumpily), we may have overlooked some bits of fun. Oh, and as a native of that fair and sprawling city, I titled this post in tribute of a beastly landmark that every San Diegan has tattooed on their soul—if you can explain it in the comments, you’ll win some comics-affiliated stranger’s whimsical business card that Heidi collected at the Con. Alrighty, so:

- For my fellow junkies of the DC Animated Universe (a.k.a. Timmverse), Green Lantern: First Flight is available tomorrow (July 28) on DVD, Blu-Ray and on demand. The movie stars Victor Garber, Christopher Meloni, Tricia Helfer, Michael Madsen and John Laroquette. Yes that John Laroquette. It was written by animated DCU favorite Alan Burnett, and re-tells the story of Hal Jordan’s recruitment into the Corps and Sinestro’s turn to the dark side (cue John Cafferty & the Beaver Brown Band). Now, for all I know this was mentioned at panels and promoted like crazy at SDCC, but I’m making special mention of it here because I saw an advance copy, and, well, I’ll just give you this preview:

Hal: So, now what?

Sinestro: Now? I own your ass.

It’s pretty much 80 minutes like that.

- J. Caleb Mozzocco tries to salve his wounded essence after seeing Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen by reading old school Transformers comics, and discovers that all of the source material is also surprisingly atrocious.

- IGN finally has an official trailer for the upcoming film based on Greg Rucka and Steve Lieber’s fantastic Antarctica graphic suspense novel Whiteout, starring Kate Beckinsale as U.S. Marshal Carrie Stetko. I highly recommend watching this if it’s hot where you are.

- Sean Collins reviews the wonderful first issue of Iron Fist spin-off Immortal Weapons, in which Jason Aaron undoubtedly had the time of his life brainstorming absurd kung fu-titled sex acts such as Heaving Tiger Love Tug and the Tickle to End All Time.

- Fashioning turtles into comic book teenage boys was apparently not that far of a stretch (warning: you might not want to watch this at work, it destroyed me and I had to sit with my head between my knees for five minutes to regain the ability to process oxygen into carbon dioxide).

Possibly more later, safe trip back home from the Con everyone.

Some things you really should read!

§ The A.V. Club tackles 21 artists who changed mainstream comics (for better or worse) , and posting this before SDCC means there will always be something to talk about at cocktail parties. Seriously, it’s great to see Carl Barks on the list–Barks and the funny comics tradition in general have been slipping down the charts in recent years. (It’s obvious that Barks and other Disney comics had a huge influence on Robert Crumb, for one.) Some of the other choices are odd or debatable, but that’s what lists are for, right?

§ From Geekations, a useful list of cheap food around the San Diego Convention Center.

§ Another list! Another debate! Complex presents The 40 Most Violent Comics Ever…Devil Dinosaur? If you say so…

§ Phil Yeh is relaunching Uncle Jam and other things.

§ Scott McCloud reviews ASTERIOS POLYP and puts it in a whole new light. Honest.

§ Paola Loriggio at the Toronto Star investigates Supergirl’s new (under)clothes in a well-written wide-ranging piece, even though we weren’t quoted. But see also Chris Butcher’s unedited comments. Maybe we’ll run ours someday.

§ As soon as I have an extra $300 lying around…

§ Don MacPherson looks at how a reality show is promoting the comic drawn by a cast member, namely Nick Simmons, son of Gene:

So the broadcast announcement about Incarnate isn’t telling us anything new, but what’s of interest is how it’s being promoted. A&E has set up a mini-site on its own online home for Nick Simmons specifically to promote Incarnate. Now, A&E may not be one of the big American networks, but it’s no slouch in the world of broadcast entertainment either. Furthermore, Family Jewels is syndicated, so it has a longer reach than just the A&E crowd.The question is, though: will a de facto ad on primetime TV move comics? Will it drive non-comics buyers to seek out Nick’s comic and perhaps others if they enjoy the experience?

§ ConventionScene.com includes a detailed write up of last week’s 100 Bullets wrap party.

§ Top 5 Comics That Get Magic Right

§ Geoff Boucher offers an in-depth look at Darwyn Cooke’s adaptation of THE HUNTER

§ Blog@ looks at Big Funny, which someone really needs to take a picture of in proportion to a human. IT’S BIG.

§ You will not read anything else like Graeme McMillan’s Farewell, Matt Brady.

Mucho publishing news and notes hanging around out there:

§ Remember when we first reported on actor/musician Tyrese Gibson’s new-found love of comics? In a comment on the original post, we wrote,

What I would like to see is a video of Tyrese and Hellen Jo talking comics. Now THAT would be authentic.

We haven’t quite gotten that, but we did get the next best thing: Brian Hibbs and Tyrese Gibson. CAN Twitter and YouTube sell comics? We’re in the process of finding out.

§ SLG is not accepting new submissions until October, according to editor Jennifer de Guzman, whose reduced workload is part of the reason why.

§ Dave Eggers and the McSweeney’s crew haven’t given up on the newspaper and are working on a new model, which will contain many old features.

The vast majority of students we work with read newspapers and books, more so than I did at their age. And I don’t see that dropping off. If anything the lack of faith comes from people our age, where we just assume that it’s dead or dying. I think we’ve given up a little too soon. We [i.e., McSweeney’s] have been working every day on a prototype for a new newspaper, and a lot of what we’re doing is resurrecting old things, like things from the last century that newspapers used to do, in terms of really using the full luxury of the broadsheet newspaper, with full color and all that space.

I think newspapers shouldn’t try to compete directly with the Web, and should do what they can do better, which may be long-form journalism and using photos and art, and making connections with large-form graphics and really enhancing the tactile experience of paper. You know, including a full-color comic section, for example, which of course was standard in newspapers years ago, when you’d have a full broadsheet Winsor McCay comic. So we’ll have a big, full-color comic section, and we’re also trying to emphasize what younger readers are looking for, what directly appeals to them. It’s hard to find papers these days that really do anything to appeal to anyone under 18, and the paper used to do that all the time. I think there will always be — if not the same audience and not as wide an audience — a dedicated audience that can keep print journalism alive.

§ Remember The Huntress graphic novel whose mysterious ascension up the Amazon charts provoked an inquiry? It seems to have worked, as it has gone back to press for a second printing.

§ Darwyn Cooke’s awesome Hunter adaptation is out, but on some coasts it is delayed. Scott Dunbier explains why.

§ CEREBUS is being translated into Italian.

§ Girlamatic, the female-focused webcomics site, is relaunching on July 31st. . Diana Cameron McQueen is the new editor. Here’s the new lineup:

Girlamatic Headliners
By the Wayside By Leigh Dragoon
Claviger by Ronnie Casson
Faery Underground by Jean Ciolek
Five Star by Laura Wilson
Galaxion by Tara Tallan
Gypsy! by John Peters
Hold My Life by Dale Ingram
Jeepers by Andre Richard
Jupiter by Lynn Lau
Kismet: Sun Cutter by Layla Lawlor
Knights of the Shroud by Matt Bayne
L’il Mell by Shaenon K. Garrity and others
Mad Sugar by Michelle Mauk
Outspoken! The Girlamatic Podcast!
Pressing Dawn by Rachael Moore and Marisa Delvaille
Raconteur by Karen Luk
Raggedyman by Tasha Lowe and Anthony Jon Hicks
Sevenplains by Tintin Pantoja
Shrub Monkeys by Kt Shy
Spades by Diana Cameron McQueen

§ BLACKEST NIGHT is out, and it’s a hit! DC has even made a mini-site to keep everyone in the mood!

§ Related: Todd Allen reports on The Ultimate Blackest Night Promotion, namely a blackout.

§ Following in the pages of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, we have Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters.

§ Recent Comics Classic #1: The Stranger reviews SLEEPER, by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips.

§ Recent Comics Classic #2: The Examiner looks at LIGHT BRIGADE:

Originally released in 2004, DC Comics’ “Light Brigade,” written by Peter Tomasi with art by Peter Snejbjerg, is one of the best comics of the last decade. High praise I know, but trust me, if you pick up “Light Brigade,” you’ll find it deserves every bit of it and then some.

§ The Wall Street Journal examines the recent surplus of Obama based comics:

What’s different about Mr. Obama’s triumphant march through comics is (1) the sheer volume of his appearances, month after month; and (2) the worshipful attitude toward him. The main characters gape and stutter in his presence, overwhelmed by his magnificence. He’s even drawn iconically. Where other presidents have been penciled either realistically or satirically, Mr. Obama mostly gets the superhero treatment with bulging muscles and jutting jaw line.

§ Geoff Boucher contemplates who will play Bilbo Baggins? of those suggested, James McAvoy would definitely be the best, in our humble opinion, but having been previously Tumnified, would he be up for another Inklings role? And it’s hard to imagine Daniel Radcliffe going for another fantasy icon again. Like David Byrne said, once in a lifetime.
§ Stan Sakai blogs about real life giant robots.

§ News of the odd: Michael Jackson to be enshrined in butter statue. PLEA: We desperately need someone to go to the Iowa State Fair and get us photos of these dairy classics!

§ Vertigo has announced I, ZOMBIE, a new ongoing series by Michael Allred and Chris Roberson:

I, ZOMBIE is the story of Gwendolyn “Gwen” Dylan, zombie girl detective. Think graveyards, ghosts, vampires and werewolves with a twist.

More on this new series will be discussed at San Diego Comic Con 2009.

The book will be out next year. We’ve been penpals with Roberson for many years, so congrats on the deal, dude!

§ Fecal Face interviews Ben Jones of Paper Rad fame:

I grew up in a boring suburb in New England. I remember having tons of zits and no friends. Any lifeforce, or energy I had was focused into drawing, riding freestyle-bmx bikes and/or playing drums. My first band was named “Death From Above.” We played the 8th grade field day. As a kid I think I wanted to be an artist because I thought I could be good at it. Somehow that innocent curiosity has turned into a mega-ego and narcissistic complex. I feel like I was never given the chance to be a normal American; somehow I was more scared or less scared of wanting to be happy, playing sports and having pretty girlfriends. I guess I have weird parents, so maybe there was no hope, I am a crazy artist, and their is no denying it. Please kill me.

§ Would we be so wrong to admit we like this Black Lantern Ring? We were happily wearing our Yellow Lantern ring all Saturday. But we’re worried this will be too beefy for our delicate fingers.

§ Tim O’Shea talks to the mot awesome Roger Langridge who will be at SDCCI promoting his MUPPETS book:

Roger Langridge: The Disney Adventures stuff was a bit less on-model; they’d been running some Mickey Mouse cartoons by Glenn McCoy that were drawn in a raggedy, undergroundish sort of style and they were popular enough that they were looking for something similar with the Muppets, so I was encouraged to just go with my own style entirely. The BOOM! material, being more in the nature of a piece of official merchandise, is stylistically somewhere between that and the official models: not entirely my own take, although still recognisably “me.”

§ Ken Grobe at Examiner.com looks atthe Isotope Comics Lounge, and specifically how they have used the internet to survive and thrive:

James first found his voice on the Warren Ellis Forum, a comics-and-culture discussion BBS, on the old Delphi online service. Eventually, James opened up his own Delphi forum, then wrote a popular column for the Comic Book Resources news site. He’d opine about retailing, let creators promote their comics, and plug his store’s events, all in his uniquely enthusiastic style. It garnered him an online audience and made the Isotope a destination shop for people both in and out of town.

“That saved me!” He tells me, shaking his head in disbelief. “Now, 15 to 20 percent of my business comes from people (visiting) from other parts of the world.”

§ The Mayham saga continues, as Image has announced a one-store pre-sale modern record for Tyrese Gibson’s new superhero comic. More on this later.

§ AND, a few round ups and photo parades from the recent Asian American Comic Con:
Jerry Armbulo
Jerry Ma
And co-organizer Keith Chow

From what I hear, a good time was had by all at the Asian American ComiCon. I wouldn’t know since I was running around all day. When I did get a chance to sneak into a panel room, I saw SRO crowds and really interesting panelists having a good time together. Artists’ Alley seemed like it had a good vibe and looked like it had a nice flow of traffic. Not sure what the final tally was at the silent auction, but there were a bunch of knockout pieces donated that fetched some good prices–with all proceeds going back to the Museum.

By all accounts it was a great day for fellowship and comics, so…a big success.

§ Al Jaffee discusses the evolution of vomiting up fishbones for comedic effect at Comics Comics.

§ Johanna catches up with the evolution of Zuda, DC’s online comics initiative which is going on two years old.

I thought I’d stop by and check out this month’s Zuda entries, which made me wonder about how similar they were all becoming. I noticed that many of them were tagged either Super-Hero, Action/Adventure, or Horror. There were smart-alec animals, girls in their underwear, bloody fights, talky conspiracies, and always, too much time spent waiting for the viewer to load. The content reminded me of what I can already get elsewhere.

High Moon’s David Gallaher rebuts in the comments.

§ Jock updates the production of the LOSERS movie, and previews a future poster, which will be based on the cover to issue #12, above:

Up until yesterday, I’ve not allowed myself to actually think it was happening, as it’s been well over 3 years since we first met Pete Berg and things started moving. Three (maybe four) directors along the way, hearing it had stalled a number of times, we thought it was unlikely it’d see the light of day. I’m sure that’s part of the course in the movie world, but as it’s been both mine and Andy’s first experience with film, we’ve erred on the side of caution so as not to get our hopes up too much. But it got cast. It got a shooting date. It got a release date. Still, every time we didn’t hear anything for a few weeks, we assumed it probably wasn’t happening.

§ The IGN Blackest Night Midnight Launch at Meltdown has been canceled.

§ Noah Berlatsky looks at some of the subtexts of romance stories via Paradise Kiss:

At first, Ai Yazawa’s high school, high fashion romance “Paradise Kiss” seems to be working faithfully from the frog prince model. The male love interest, George, is a precocious clothing designer whose heart appears to be divided about equally between his love of couture and his admiration of his own eccentricities. The protagonist, Yukari, agrees to model his clothes for his senior contest, and then falls in love with him…letting herself in for a bucketful of pain and humiliation. On their first date, George tells her she “lacks initiative” and sends her home by herself on the train. He also appears to have a number of other lovers, of both genders…or at least, likes to insinuate that he does, which isn’t much less hurtful. And, of course, he likes S&M play (though this is treated much less explicitly than in Secretary.)

§ Comics Comics again! Seriously, if you care about comics as an art, bookmark CC and put it at the top of your RSS. We have. Anyway, in this episode, Frank Santoro quotes, at length a conversation between Dave Sim and Neal Adams on color in comics and the rather primitive state it existed in for years:

DC Comics, at the time I joined the firm [laughs], they had 32 colors. And I didn’t quite understand it until I got their chart, and I noticed that they didn’t have what we call “tone yellow.” They did not have 25% yellow and 50% yellow, and I did not understand why that would be, because I had done a syndicated strip and all kinds of other process-color work using the same basic chart, and I thought, “If you have 25% and 50% of red and blue, why don’t you have 25% and 50% of yellow?” It didn’t make sense. So I asked around a little bit … kind of quietly … and, apparently [laughs] at some point to save money in some weird way at some weird time they decided to do without “tone yellow.” So that if you see a DC comic book from back in “them thar days” you notice that all the Anglo-Saxon flesh is pink. You don’t continue to notice it because after you turn the page you’re reading the story and it isn’t a glaring difference but the flesh is pink. Whereas if you looked at Marvel Comics from the same time period, it’s more of a flesh color—25% red, 25% yellow. Because they only had 100% yellow at DC, if you tried using that for a flesh tone you’d have orange flesh. You couldn’t have all the subtler colors with “tone yellow” values. You lost HALF of the colors. Instead of 64 you had 32.

§ Must Read link of the day: manga expert Jason Thompson looks at the strange manga genre Moe: The Cult of the Child

The sexualization of underage (or underage-looking) characters in manga goes back to the late ’70s, when underground and adult manga artists such as Disappearance Diary creator Hideo Azuma began to work around censorship laws by drawing characters without pubic hair. This was the beginning of the lolicon (Lolita Complex) trend; born in vending-machine porn magazines, it later influenced the new ’80s market in direct-to-video anime pornography.

It’s an in-depth, balanced examination of the phenomenon, squick and all.

§ DC’s Source blog has a charming gallery of pictures of folks reading WEDNESDAY COMICS.

§ We didn’t know Brett Warnock had a Twin Peaks-themed Sketchbook. Commence jealousy fit NOW. He also links to all kinds of cool art, like Tammy Stellanova, above.

§ Tyler Chin-Tanner at Broken Frontier asks questions about Longbox, which aims to be the iTunes for comics:

As a small publisher, I think this idea is great. No one stands to gain more from new ways to sell comics than those who’ve been failed by the current print distribution system. But, like I said, this isn’t exactly a new concept and Longbox is far from the first company to offer downloads of comic books. So my question for Longbox is, what are they going to do differently from all the other ventures that have come before them? How are they going to take digital comics beyond the category of an interesting idea or experiment, and into the realm of a legitimate way for readers to feed their comic fix?

(more…)

§ School Library Journal’s Good Comics for Kids presents a list of comics that celebrate cultural diversity, from Dr. WHO to COMANCHE MOON.

§ Rick Veitch wraps up his fascinating Secret Origin Of The Sentry.

§ Simon Jones wraps up some Anime Expo news and has news of a man arrested for photoshopping.

§ This Brian Azzarello interview reminds us that The 100 Bullets Last Shot party not only celebrates 100 issues of the book but benefits the Hero Alliance. Details here.

§ The comments on this are pretty catty.

§ Todd Allen delves into Wizard World Chicago 2009;s exhibitor list.

§ Headline no one could resist: Potter star POTTED!

§ The Wood/Frazetta head-to-head that we wrote about a while back gets further examination from Uncle Eddie’s Theory Corner and the UK Forbidden Planet International Blog Log.

§ The US comic shop Forbidden Planet has a new blog, written by David Press, that’s pretty fun.

§ The site Comic Book Conventions has relaunched as ConventionScene.com, and it’s much updated and improved with information on all kinds of shows and a really, really thorough events calendar.

§ The Hollywood Reporter’s Borys Kit has a bit on last week’s Grant Morrison and Clive Barker summit.

Among the nuggets: Morrison said he was “miserable and sick over a year” writing “Final Crisis” as he got into the head of the evil character of Darkseid. He also said he preferred working at DC over Marvel (”They love the artist and creators…At Marvel, I love them, but there’s more of a house style to create a universe.”)

§ Lucas Siegel wonders if Nerdcore is dead and what could follow.

§ A new Do Anything by Warren Ellis is up, with further delving into the history of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.

§ We did not link to Image marketing manager Joe Keatinge’s An Open Letter on the 2009 Harvey Award Nominations, which we should have done.

§ Tom Spurgeon interviews the great Carol Tyler:

SPURGEON: There are many significant memoirs out there in a variety of media. Is there anything about such books you wanted to avoid?

TYLER: I am and always have been nervous about inadvertently copying someone else or ripping off someone’s ideas. So I just kind of steer clear of all of it. Sad kinda, huh — I’m probably missing some great art/literature. When I go visit my parents in Indiana, we watch westerns. They have cable. Somebody’s always popping off a Smith & Wesson.

§ Return with us to the thrilling days of 1995! The Friends of Lulu blog is scanning in the original FoL newsletters!

§ This X-Men who-zoomed-who chart is MEGA.

§ Brigid rounds up news from Anime Expo.

§ The Houston Chronicle profiles Wednesday Comics, which is out THIS very Wednesday.

§ The UK Times Online profiles John Higgins’ RAZORJACK and puts up a 22-page excerpt — nice exposure.

§ Frequent Beat poster Christopher Moonlight interviews ROBOT 13’s Thomas Hall and Daniel Bradford.

§ Sez you! Mom’s The Word: Making a collection doesn’t mean becoming a pack rat

§ Chris Butcher visits Japan 2009: Tezuka World Installation, Kyoto JR Station and sees many many wondrous things that make is drool.

§ In a Cup o’ Joe installment, Mark Waid recounts a classic tale of a store signing that….wasn’t what it seemed:

Several years ago, I had done an over-the-phone college radio interview with a couple of guys in Vermont. Chat went fine, I remembered to mention what a genius Alex Ross is the requisite nine times, and we probably moved some trade paperbacks in the process. So once the interview was done, one of them explained that they ran a store in one of Vermont’s largish towns and asked if I’d be interested in doing an in-person signing. “Sure,” I said. At the time, I was living in Brooklyn, so it would be a short flight, and I’d never been to Vermont before. Fly up late on a Saturday morning, home on Sunday morning, see the sights, meet some fans. “Great,” I said. Set me up.”

That is not what happened.

§ Tucker Stone interviews Dirk Deppey, something you don’t see enough of.

Deppey: …On the one hand, I love writing and can’t seem to keep from knocking out long essays when a short note would often do just as well. (Maybe you’ve noticed.) On the other hand, there’s always the danger of turning into a Keith Olbermann-style blowhard – or worse, a Dave Sim-style crank – if you feel obliged to keep churning out 14,000-word essays three or four times a week. This became clear to me through the course of that Mary Jane Statue fiasco a while back; the more I wrote, the more I found myself circling around to points that I’d already made. Now, in a certain sense this is inevitable in blogging. Since almost everything I write is a mildly edited first draft, I find myself narrowing in on cogent points over the course of several days, refining my arguments as I read responses and get the chance to think more about a given subject. Still, it’s a gateway to intellectual stratification as well, since the further you go in defending a point, the more you feel in your bones that You Are Inarguably Correct in whatever it is you’re talking about. The longer I do this, the less I trust in such positions.

§ In this Czech link from the Prague Writers’ Festival, you will find video of Robert Crumb, Aline Kominsky Crumb and Gilbert Shelton attending said festival.

§ Rick Veitch reveals the Secret Origin Of The Sentry Part 1

Paul and I were old buds, having met while he was at Mirage Studios. We worked closely together on BRAT PACK and THE MAXIMORTAL at Tundra. Paul was focused mostly on production and editing back in those days but clearly had potential as a writer. He and I had often discussed a story he wanted to develop concerning an over-the-hill guy, struggling with addiction, who had a tight relationship with his dog. Paul was trying to come up with a way to show the character’s addiction problem as a manifestation of the unconscious. At one point, if I remember correctly, Paul pitched a horror version of this plot to Steve Bissette for TABOO, although nothing came of it.

§ What is Dylan Horrocks reading this summer, anyway?

§ Jim Salicrup recalls Michael Jackson’s discussion to purchase Marvel, including much else of those heady days. [Via Comics Alliance]

§ Rich Johnston has a useful essay on How To Be A Celebrity At The San Diego Comic Con

How do I get the Comic Con clique to love me? This is the easiest thing of all. Go to the small press comic publisher booths. Walk along and buy something from every table you see. Might cost you $200 to $300 in total. The publishers and creators will twitter this instantly. Go to a panel for your movie, get there early, put your feet up and start reading from a stack of thse comics next to you. The word will spread. And you’ll be a Con God. could be worth an extra fifty grand on your next contract. And if you really really don’t like comics, there are recycle bins around the centre.

§ Cinematical chats with writer Justin Gray:

More people than ever dream about writing for Marvel and DC. What is it REALLY like to be a successful comic book writer? And what does it take?

JG: It is humbling, not everyone gets to make money doing what they love, which in my case is writing comics, film, TV, short stories and so on. I’ve been lucky, I have a great friend and writing partner who believed in me after I left the industry in ‘98 and fought to have me work with him when people just wanted his name on their products. I’ve had varying degrees of success over the last eight years, but it has all been an invaluable learning experience that has helped me grow creatively. As far as what it takes to get into and survive in the industry I can only speak for myself. Joe and Jimmy opened a door after I spent a number of years being relentless and dedicated to proving it wasn’t impossible for a writer to break in. After that I feel I’ve had to continue to prove myself on every project. Sometimes the industry can be frustrating, but this frustration is much sweeter than many others I’ve faced. At the end of the day I know I keep pushing myself to do what I love.

§ Chris Butcher and his macro lens are having a great time in Japan!

§ Chris Mautner looks back at the majesty of David Mazzucchelli’s RUBBER BLANKET (above) and wonders why it hasn’t been collected. YEAH, David? WHY HASN’T IT?

§ Newbies ahoy: here’s A guide to comic books throughout the decades by Brendan Kachel, Wichita Comic Books Examiner, right from the Yellow Kid to The Dark Age.

§ Steven Spielberg and Will Smith are still planning a US version of OLDBOY. Crazy! But the Japanese publisher, Futabasha, is pulling out all the stops to prevent this. CRAZIER.

§ Frank Santoro digs deeper into the history of comics coloring with an investigation of Pacific Comics and the grayline coloring system. BTW, if you’ve read comics prior to the advent of cheap scanners, they have some pretty strange and sometimes amazing coloring. This piece will give you some idea of the tortuous and inaccurate processes that were used, and it’s pretty wild.

§ Robot 6 suggests Six comic book action figures that need to be made right now, and we can’t disagree with any of the choices, even if finding space for them would be a pain.

§ We may have to buy this.

§ Did you know that the well-respected DC/Vertigo editor Joan Hilty is also a syndicated cartoonist?

You lived in San Francisco in the ‘90s and became involved with a lot of publications including “Gay Comix” and “Wimmin’s Comix.” Who were the people who played a major role in your life, both in terms of growing as an artist and working as an editor, but also in more practical terms of living as a cartoonist?

Well, I definitely wasn’t making a living off it. Right after graduation I shopped “Jitterbug Waltz,” a campus paper strip I’d been doing, around to syndicates, and I got some very kind, individualized attention from editors and cartoonists — Jay Kennedy, Lee Salem, Kathryn LeMieux, Cathy Guisewite — but there was no question I wasn’t ready yet. And I started drifting sideways into indie comics, because I was drawn to telling longer stories, and I’d gotten involved with various political and social groups.

§ Craig Fischer looks at the legendary Ditko Hands!

Just a few while we get our wits together.

§ Frank Santoro continues his explorations into little known eddies of comics history with an interview with comics color pioneer Steve Oliff.

§ Matt Madden took his students to MoCCA for a guided tour of the David Mazzucchelli exhibit with the man himself.

§ Kristy Valenti explains why San Diego is like high school:

What table you sit at actually matters.

Professionally, obviously, it marks you — your clique, your place in the food chain, etc. If someone knows nothing about you, they will judge you by where you sit in the Exhibit Hall before they judge your work. What table you sit at matters socially, too. Not only can it help or hinder how enjoyable whatever you’re doing is, it can honestly affect your career, whether you’re pestering a group of professionals who are just trying to eat dinner or make a little extra room for someone who later on offers you a business opportunity.

§ Speaking of Comixology, Tucker Stone has another video review up and…let’s just say he’s at it again.

§ Are cons really a hotbed (hee hee) of hookups? David Pepose replies to the Penthouse article, and Laura Hudson does a fact-check: Comic-Con Hookups: True or False?

§ Johanna’s crew discusses Should Press Get in Free to Conventions? after Otakon asks some press to pay for badges. Frankly, we can totally see why cons would want to limit the number of free badges given to fledgling bloggers.

§ Meanwhile, Neil Gaiman faces danger from a bear in the woods.

§ Do Anything, the new Warren Ellis column for Bleeding Cool, connects some dots:

Jack Kirby didn’t get to be an intellectual. That’s a label others stick on you. When Jack told Will Eisner, as recorded in Eisner’s book SHOP TALK, of the time in his career when he “began to intellectualise,” you can almost literally hear Eisner’s condescension come off the page. Art Spiegelman, struggling to say anything of import about Kirby in a conversation with Gary Groth, calls his work “dimwitted.”

When Jack Kirby’s army superiors, during his World War II service, discovered he was an artist, they put Private Kirby to drawing maps on scrap paper while in the field of combat. Will Eisner was illustrating manuals from his Pentagon posting as Chief Warrant Officer.

In 1997, Eisner tells an interviewer that when someone showed Kirby Eisner’s THE DREAMER, a book about the early comics industry and therefore depicting a young Jack Kirby, Kirby’s comment was “I didn’t think Will liked me that much.”

§ We neglected to mention that The Toronto Star has named Chester Brown’s LOUIS RIEL as one of the best books of “The Century So Far”.

§ Matt Thorn went to a party for Moto Hagio, one of the Forty Niners, and perhaps “the most important cartoonist in the history of shojo.”

§ Is Kiminori Wakasugi’s DETROIT METAL CITY the latest manga must-have? We think so, and so do David Welsh and Johanna Draper Carlson. Basically, it’s Spinal Tap/Metalocalypse in manga format. We hear both the anime and live action adaptations are aces, too.

§ Boston University is adding a Religion & Comics Collection courtesy of doctoral student A. David Lewis.

§ Dave Howlett’s Living Between Wednesdays column brings up some storytelling tropes like the “first page little head recap.” Maybe it’s our own mentally-challenged reasoning ability, but we LOVE the “first page little head recap.” What do the rest of you think?

§ We’re not that eager to go see TRANSFORMERS 2. A robot with a gold tooth, really?

§ Jill Thompson’s superpower, revealed.

§ Jeff Smith as Colleen Doran’s life coach:

But Jeff urged me to get A Distant Soil done as soon as possible. The challenge? Shave my head and keep it shaved until the book is finished.

Whew. I may have to come up with some other sacrifice. May I crop it boyishly short instead? Live with my natural color for awhile?

§ Another remembrance of Dave Simons, this time by the Hero Initiative, via a script he wrote before his death.

§ The Source reveals that James Robinson and Mark Bagley will be taking over JLA. The title has recently undergone some creative changes.

§ Speaking of The Source, it also has a nice preview of the third STARMAN OMNIBUS. STARMAN wasn’t just good superhero comics, it was good comics, period.

The third Omnibus collection of writer James Robinson and artist Tony Harris’ STARMAN series hit today, continuing the adventures of the modern day Starman, Jack Knight. In this installment, featuring work from Robinson, Harris, Gene Ha, Dusty Abell, Phil Jimenez and J.H. Williams III, Opal City is terrorized by Dr. Pip, an eccentric bomber. Also, Starman teams up with a certain Dark Knight to save the life of Solomon Grundy. Collecting STARMAN #30-38, STARMAN ANNUAL #2, STARMAN SECRET FILES #1 and THE SHADE #1-4, the STARMAN OMNIBUS v.3 is the height of layered, engaging and powerful storytelling. I still have fond memories of sitting in my grandparents’ house reading the first batch of issues, and being excited an intrigued by not only the stellar work within the pages, but also sensing the care and thought both Robinson and Harris put into the creation of these stories.

§ Meanwhile, Vertigo: Graphic Contenthas a preview of the next Vertigo Crime book, THE CHILL, by Jason Starr and artist Mick Bertilorenzi.

(PS: The Graphic Content blog seems to be having a hard time with thumbnails….may we recommend Ecto?)

§ Dan Nadel recommends some good history books about comics.

§ The SF Examiner profiles Julia Wertz, who continues to have namer’s remorse:

What Fartparty.org visitors do find are simple, candid and very funny four-panel comics in which Wertz lampoons her own life. The artist, a former San Francisco resident now living in Brooklyn, first drew her autobiographical Web comic just to entertain friends and named it on the spur of the moment.

“It really is an unfortunate title though. I had no idea it’d stick when I made it, it was a split-second decision. Had I waited another minute, I might have an entirely different career,” she says.

§ Top Story: Brigid Alverson read comics on an iPod Touch. TRAITOR!!!!

It may never replace print, but the iPod Touch is starting to emerge as a pretty good platform for comics, at least in the short term. It has several advantages over the Kindle—it has color, the graphics are nice and sharp, and a lot of people have iPods anyway for other reasons. For readers who value portability, it’s a handy alternative to carrying around a stack of books, and even purchased chapter by chapter, comics are generally cheaper in the iTunes store than in print form. A handful, such as Yoshitoshi ABe’s Pochiyama, are only available that way.

§ Sean Rogers writes about the joy of ligne clair master Joost Swarte in The Walrus. Above, a portion of Swarte’s charming cover for that issue.

§ The Sydney Morning Herald profiles Aussie cartoonist Nicola Scott.

§ Brian Cronin has been spotlighting “Art Stars” as chosen by other artists all month and it’s a fine list.

§ Jim Burns remembers the late Dave Simons at Robot 6.

§ Former NY Daily News editor Jere Hester wonders if tough times mean that folks like the old timey heroes, like the Lone Ranger, will return. Hm, what a tough question.

§ The Miramichi Leader looks at the strange history of CrossGen .

The comic book industry grave yard is filled with the bodies of once proud comic book companies that for one reason or another went belly up.

Some had a long illustrious history, such as Charlton Comics, while others were popular for a while, but eventually faded away, such as Chaos Comics.

But one company stands out from the crowd for it’s rise to prominence in the comic book industry, only to suffer a most humiliating fall.

§ Jason Little has wrapped up his MOTEL ART IMPROVEMENT SERVICE webcomic. Congrats!

§ The rags are full of previews of Comic-Con, none of which have anything to do with comics. Oh well.

§ The new Vertigo: Graphic Content blog previews LUNA PARK, a new graphic novel by Kevin Baker and Daniel Zezelj.

LUNA PARK, written by novelist Kevin Baker, drawn by Danijel Zezelj, and colored by Dave Stewart, is an epic, sprawling historical crime thriller that spans a century and is reminiscent of Kevin Baker’s acclaimed novel DREAMLAND and David Cronenberg’s film Eastern Promises.

§ Todd Allen connects some dots and comes up with an interesting hypothesis re: Wizard World Chicago.

§ At Robot 6, JK Parkin points out what seems to be a historical moment that took way too long: not one but two African-American women writing mainstream comics. UPDATE: David Brothers also covers this topic.

§ Val interviews Rich, but don’t expect a tell-all:

OS: Is there any story that you ran in “Lying In The Gutters” that in retrospect you wish you hadn’t or had handled differently? RJ: I wish I’d run the Rick Olney story a week early. I wish I’d trusted my gut and run the Dreamwave stories earlier. Running the X-Statix/Princess Diana story and getting the Daily Mail newspaper onto it seemed to kill the storyline and the book, after Elton John gave Avi Arad an earful. Yeah, that one was a big regret. Who knew that Marvel would get so tabloid-sensitive so suddenly?

§ David Welsh examines this year’s Manga Eisner nominees, all of which deserve your consumer dollar.

§ Abhay Khosla reviews GUS AND HIS GANG as only Abhay Khosla can. Whatever he says, we give GUS AND HIS GANG our highest recommendation — if you like Jason you will like this book.

Just like the guy in the horror movie who does not heed the dire warnings of the gnarly old groundskeeper, Brian Heater did not listen to us, and went to this weekend’s Big Apple Con 2009 and paid the price:

The registration woman’s second obligatory question was the more bizarre—and perhaps revealing—of the two. “If Big Apple Con added a casino, would you stay and gamble?” I’m not really much of a gambler, and as such, this was far and away the easier of the two questions. Neither, it seems, are the organizers of Big Apple Con. Both of whose questions are clearly geared at shaping future iterations of the show based on this small bit of mandatory audience participation.

Actually, we have been to many a Big Apple Con and had some fun, but if hot sweatiness alone was grounds for ending a show, BAC would have been finished years ago.

ALTHOUGH, looking at Brian’s photos, it appear that they moved the show upstairs, instead of the tarp-draped, often leaked on pavillion area? Can anyone report?

§ Top Shel’fs Brett Warnock reports on notable new artists and comics he’s picked up over the last few weeks.

§ Chris Pitzer of AdHouse does likewise.

§ Tom Spurgeon interviews erotic cartoonist Dale Lazarov.

LAZAROV: Bruno Gmunder Verlag, my German gay art book publisher, says that most of their books sell online; given that I can go to online booksellers in Argentina, Italy, Poland, India and Japan and see Manly and Sticky listed, I would say they certainly do their homework with online booksellers. They are distributed to bookstores internationally, though, since they’re marketed as art books and not comics. Here in North America, high-end, erotica-friendly comic stores like Chicago Comics, or big city independent bookstores like Books, Inc in San Francisco (which has a long-standing end cap with my books! Yay!), plus still-vital gay bookstore chains like Lambda Rising, carry my books. I helped Gmunder get Manly carried by Borders and InsightOut (the LGBT division of Quality Paperback Book Club) so there’s room to grow, too.

§ Vince Moore at Comics Waiting Room asked: Why are there no great black supervillains?

Where are all the “cool” black supervillains? Where is the black Lex Luthor? Or the black Dr. Doom? Where are those black bad guys that comics readers can love to hate? Those black bad guys made from the same stuff of myth and legend as the Joker and the Green Goblin. The brilliant yet disturbed mind. That one obsession which drives the need to conquer or create mayhem. The hero’s opposite number. The capacity to make the hero suffer, to even defeat the hero if not for that one fatal flaw that thwarts all the mad schemes. Where are those black bad guys?

§ Steven Grant responds with a sharp description of “otherness”:

The difference between white characters and other characters in American comics is that non-white characters of any story magnitude are almost always defined by their race. A white supervillain, well, he’s just an evil bastard, or wants money, or whatever. A black supervillain? His motivation has to at some level be racial; he suffered the indignity of racism in the ghetto as a child, or went to an otherwise all-white rich kids’ school where he was never allowed to forget he was different, or whatever other rubbish backstory someone comes up with. Otherwise why make him black, right? Same with Asian, Native American, etc. If they’re motivationally indistinguishable from white male supervillains, why risk offending an entire race? The difference being that white supervillains enhance the middle class white American viewpoint of a Caucasian status quo. Even female characters are often seen to require “special” motivation that almost no one would think to look for in a white male supervillain. Or superhero. (In the ’70s-early ’80s, rape or some variant of sexual abuse was a way too common motivation for both heroines and villainesses, and I’m glad that one pretty much subsided.)

§ Sometimes Splash Page gets a little TOO immersed in its own universe for its own good, such as this look at Mickey Rourke as Whiplash, that ventures the hypothesis that comic book movies that mash-up two characters into one are a dangerous sign a movie will suck.

§ First Second’s Mark Siegel reviews David Mazzucchelli’s ASTERIOS POLYP.

§ A new author reenters the comics shop after some time away and finds it a strange landscape, especially where comics for her kids are concerned. Go help her out with some suggestions.

§ Valerie D’Orazio and her respondents discuss where comics news ends and gossip ends and what is appropriate.

§ With TRINITY wrapped up, Tom Bondurant interviews author Kurt Busiek.

§ Must listen! Audio of the Santoro/Panter/Sohn panel at MoCCA.

§ ZDARSKY — THE EVIDENCE FOR: Recently, a wiki-fight broke out on the Wikipedia page of Toronto-based cartoonist Chip Zdarsky, suggesting that he did not exist. While it is technically true that Zdarsky is a pseudonym for natural-born Steven Murray, Zdarsky’s long, antic-filled run on message boards and blogs around the world, as well as frequent sightings and interactions at comic book conventions and karaoke bars would seem to be persuasive evidence that he does, indeed, exist. Laura HudsonChris Sims digs even deeper, into the heart of this wiki storm with “Ten Things Wikipedia Considers More Notable Than Chip Zdarsky”, like…a list of guest appearances on a John Cena rap record. Truly, the ways of the internerd are strange.

§ If you think Marvel is bad now, you may enjoy this stroll down Memory Alley with Hart Fisher. Fisher, a colorful character and the one-time publisher of Boneyard Press, (he was sued for publishing a comic about Jeffrey Dahmer, once accidentally faked his own suicide, and recently carried on a one-sided feud with Gerard Way) got Marvel’s ire by creating a T-shirt with a rather colorful slogan on it. In fact, we still have ours, but we’re way too peaceful these days to ever wear it out.

§ Beth Harnett looks at Smith Magazine’s ‘Next-Door Neighbor,’ anthology.

§ Two-new-books-wielding Kevin Cannon is interviewed at CBR.

§ Signs of the comics takeover: Graphic novels (and songwriting) have been added as topics at a writing seminar.

§ Kai-Ming Cha on Tatsumi and the history of gekiga.

§ Dept. of Follow-up: Has the mystery of the Montauk Monster…been solved?

§ Robot 6 asks Yow! What have they done to Little Lulu? Apparently, in Brazil, they’ve made her and her gang manga-style skaters, videogamers and fashionistas. In all honesty, this doesn’t bother us much…The original Lulus are still there, sitting right on my shelf, so nothing has been hurt in the making of this comic. Plus…the originals were of their time — kids lived a simple suburban life without electronic stimulation, aside from the radio and an occasional movie. That life is nonexistent, and the kids of today are just as funny and poignant as ever. So…sure, give it a whirl. The PTB would probably be better off thinking of something original, but that might be too hard.

§ Shaenon K. Garrity looks at the Top Five Cartoonists/Children’s Book Illustrators. One is Crockett Johnson — who are the OTHERS?

§ Colleen Doran alerts us to a convention con artist who has everyone from Edward James Olmos to Robert Piccardo on the rampage against him for unpaid fees. Not cool.

MoCCA Section:

§ We’ll have a longer overview of MoCCA along in a bit, but the happy posts where people show off their treasures from the show are in abundance. Here’s one from Ricky Purdin. Geekanerd has another. And Alex Robinson a third. Since we didn’t get as many comics as we would have liked, we’ll try to link to a few more tomorrow.

§ Gary Tyrell summed up the webcomics contingent.

§ Metabunker looks at the Mazzucchelli contingent.

§ Finally, here is the MUST READ post of the day, with Gary Panter’s list of fine artists who should influence comics. Amazing, amazing stuff.

§ El Santo responds to Brigid Alverson’s 8-page rule:

But most webcomics aren’t limited by Zuda’s hard-coded (and unwieldy) Flash-based Zuda browser. Hence, more often than not readers are introduced to elements that happen further on down the story. I personally was introduced to my favorites, — Gunnerkrigg Court, Scary Go Round, and Octopus Pie — in medias res. Later chapters were posted by enthusiasts, I was hooked onto the worlds and characters, and then later I would skip back to the early, more primitive chapters. In a sense, the hook itself didn’t need to be at the beginning.

Establishing the hook far better applies to, say, book stores and comic book shops. We naturally skim through the first pages to see if that’s what we want to read, and then, in those short moments, decide whether or not we want to go forward. But is that the case with long-form webcomics? With the browser environment, we are far more at liberty to jump around to see if the story gets any better in later chapters.

§ Over in the NY Times, Douglas Wolk reviews Carol Tyler’s You’ll Never Know:

“ ‘You’ll Never Know’ ” unfolds like a rambling reminiscence, except without the boring parts. It skitters around in time, every observation setting off another memory or meditation or visual flourish. Tyler’s artwork flutters between representation, fantasy and symbolism, sometimes even in the same panel, but her stylistic virtuosity is a steadfast guide through her chronology’s loops and pivots. On one page, she shows us an imagined scene in her family’s backyard in the early ’50s — kids playing in buckets of water, her mother hanging up a towel reading “Always Do Your Best,” a TV set and a pair of pedal pushers floating in midair — then carefully annotates the anachronisms. She draws her father as a sturdy young man in an Army helmet and as a grouchy retiree in a trucker’s cap, but also as a little boy in church with a halo floating over his horns, as a fox seeking out a peach labeled “Mom,” and as a tree trying to teach fortitude to its fragile sapling of a daughter.

Tom Spurgeon interviews Sethand it’s hard to pick just one pull-quote. Is it this kind of stuff?

I had an excellent working relationship with the Times and it was a very valuable experience doing the strip — I learned a lot about editing my own work while doing Sprott. But I cannot say I received a great deal of response to the work while it was running. Since it finished I have received a smattering of remarks here and there, nothing much worth commenting on. As an artist you like feedback but I have learned not to expect it. That’s one sure way to be disappointed. I must say, though, that the high profile venue was a “feather in my cap” and I have “felt” some vague effect from having serialized a strip there. Hard to explain what I mean by this, though. The lack of direct feedback may simply be the nature of newspaper and magazine publication — I mean, George Sprott (the book) has only been out a couple of days and I have received significantly more feedback than during the entire run of the strip.

Or this:

Thoreau MacDonald is always up there in my mind as a potent life example — along with Glenn Gould and Robert Crumb. People I admire enormously and think about almost every day. He was modest and hard working and had a profound connection to the world — specifically the fields and farms of Thornhill, Ontario (now a depressing Toronto suburb). He was smart and had exquisite, austere sensibilities and I wish I were more like him.

Oh, just go read the whole thing.

§ A story has been going around about how a potential planted viral marketer may have slipped up on 4chan, the great floating therapy session of the internet, but according to Bleeding Cool, it was just another 4chan hoaxer.

§ T Campbell is twittering a rereading of CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS.
§ This profile of the original Chaka, Phillip Paley, was of great interest to us since we were with Paley on the memorable night we met “Naked John” and we always wondered what happened to him. Paley, that is, not NJ.