• This showed up in my po box a while back, and i just got around to reading it... what a stunner. Clearly a loving Frankenstein homage with nods to comics of old and stuff like Warren's Monster's of Filmland, this oversized comic is a real formal masterpiece. The art is multi-media collage pasted up on newspapers. The look feels gritty and intense, and the narrative is a wild pop-culture tour de force. Great stuff.
• Mr. Max Estes has some cool new stuff available at Made by Max.
• Heads-up from Vancouver cartoonist, and Top Shelf 2.0 contributor Don King, who tipped me off to a terrific sounding show in Vancouver, B.C.
• Had this terrific submission-envelope art hanging in my workshop for forever... figured i show it to the world.
• I've been dipping into my enormous to-read pile a little lately. Standouts include:
Eschew #1 (mini-comic), by Robert Sergel. Apparently this guy has been making comics for a long long time, yet i'd never heard of him until he sent me this mini. And it's really solid. Using a "clear-line" style, the work i've read is of the shorter, poetic style, more than long narratives. In any case, one could spend days reading the plethora of comics he has on his website. So get to it, people!
I lifted this comic from his website.
Nerd Burglar (comic), Free Comic Book Day book by Tugboat Press, Teenage Dinosaur, and Sparkplug Comics. A potpourri of comics fun, this puppy feature's an awesome twisted story by legendary punk cartoonist Bobby Madness and an appearance by the always-good-to-see and sadly underrated ink stud Chris Cilla. What really rocked me though, was a strip called "Fifteen Variations on The First Day We Met," by Sarah Oleksyk, which plays with formalism to wonderful effect. Too hard to describe, i recommend you just order this book. It costs one penny, plus postage, cheap-wads!!
• From comics cognoscenti Craig Yoe:
"Yo, Comix Fan!
"I'm joining the San Diego Zoo, i.e. the San Diego ComicCon. I'll be signing my new books Clean Cartoonists' Dirty Drawings and Comic Arf, and I'll be on some panels."
Last Gasp
July 24th, 1:30-2:30
Clean Cartoonists' Dirty Drawings book signing at Last Gasp booth 1616.
Fantagraphics
July 24th, 6:00-7:00
Comic Arf book signing at Fantagraphics booth 1716
Drawing Demo: Spotlight on Dean Yeagle
July 25, 3:30-4:30
Room 30CDE
I will be the panel moderator.
Fantagraphics
July 25th, 5:00-6:00
Comic Arf book signing at Fantagraphics booth 1716
Fantagraphics
July 26th, 11:00-12:00
Comic Arf book signing at Fantagraphics booth 1716
Last Gasp
July 26th, 1:30-2:30
Clean Cartoonists' Dirty Drawings book signing at Last Gasp booth 1616.
The Launch of Abrams ComicArts
July 26th, 3:00-4:00
Craig's book will be announced!
• And once again, because i can... here's Cfunk doing his Happy Dance.
Hey LEAGUE fans!
The new issue of Entertainment Weekly just hit the stands. It looks like THIS:
And inside is the FIRST-EVER look at THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN (VOL. III): CENTURY (published by Top Shelf in 2009)!
Here's a tiny version -- for a better look, you gotta buy the mag!
It's been years since i last updated here. My bad. Catching up.
• First, Slovenian-produced anthology Stripburger #47 arrived in my po box last week, and it's a beauty. While many of the essays are in the native language, the comics themselves are all in English, and they are ample. The whole affair kicks off with a stunning wraparoud cover and lead feature and interview with French cartoonist Matthias Lehmann. Other standouts include Filipe Abranches (Portugal), Marcelo D'Salete (Brazil), Bendik Kaltenborn (Norway)Thomas Vielle (France), Mawil (Germany), and Gunnar Lundkvist (Sweden).
One of their best issues in a long while, this issue is really worth tracking down. Ostensibly Top Shelf is the North American distributor, but i just looked, and i don't see anything on our site. I'll look into this and get back.
• Merry Mike Dawson (Freddie and Me) sent me a link to a terrific new strip, title "Max, Get Out of My Room!" What happens when super-powered tween brothers get in a fight? Read on...
• Strange and Stranger: The World of Steve Ditko. Wow wow wow wow!!!! Author Blake Bell actually pitched this book to Top Shelf several years ago, and i just couldn't get Chris (Staros) interested in backing me in my desire to pick it up. I was bummed, but that is the nature of our partnership, so i let it go. Having ravenously devoured this book, and reading the author's notes on the evolution of it's development, this is probably a good thing. The content and narrative thrust changed radically. Moreover, the design by Fantagraphics designer Adam Grano is astonishing.
It's a wonderful companion volume to the recent Kirby! coffee-table art book. Except that where that book mostly regurgitated information about Kirby and his work that has been around for years, the wealth of information regarding Ditko's background and the analysis of his life's work, in Bell's book, make for an engaging and riveting read, covering ground virtually unknown heretofore. I want to pull it off the shelf and start reading it over again already.
I will state right now, that this book will easily end the calendar year 2008 in my Top Five books of the year, if not Number One. Very highly recommended.
• How cool is this cover art for our (as yet unannounced) one-shot by Top Shelf 2.0 contributor Brecht Evens. The book is titled Night Animals. More on this soon.
• Totally not comics, but incredibly cool. I was tipped off to an amazing video of (from the website) "world-renowned kayakers following the banks of Africa's White Nile River with one mission: to discover uncharted whitewater."
A spine-tingling short film, made by the writer of the article Aaron Retting, can be linked to at Flux magazine. (A student magazine of my alma mater, University of Oregon.)
Ink-stud extraordinaire Steve Lafler writes:
"Just a heads up -- my new book TRANNY: Boys Will Be Girls is in the current Diamond Previews catalog on Page 330 (listed with Sparkplug Comic books). Now is the time to pester your favorite comics retailer to order the book!"
• Things i scored at MoCCA and am just now getting around to dive into:
Love/Pain by the artist named Ephameron, published by Bries. Not comics, but rather, wonderful and beautiful drawings, photos, portraits and what have you, in a terrific hardcover package. Sublime. The artist was actually working the Bries table (in place of our old pal Ria Schulpen, who wasn't there for the first time in many years), so i got a wonderful drawing inside as well.
- Skyscrapers of the Midwest, collected hardcover, by Josh Cotter. Published by AdHouse.
Awesome. I have to admit that black humor in comics is pretty hit or miss for me. Some of the more misanthropic ones are just plain juvenile or creepy as fuck. On the other hand, in the hands of some — like Ivan Brunetti — self-loathing has never been more raging with humanity. Enlightenment through hitting rock bottom and rolling in the muck.
Josh Cotter is something different altogether. Dark as it gets, but the humor is wacky and dare i say, joyous in it's affection. I'm not sure what scares me more, Josh's comics themselves, or the fact that on the surface this guy seems like a "normal" human being, when clearly this is not the case. No matter, this book rocks. Many thanks to Chris Pitzer and Josh Cotter. I owe you one, kids.
- While i was in Montreal on the way to New York, we stopped by a bitchin' store called Planète BD, which blew my mind. No other North American store has this much French Bandes Dessinee. (French comics, mostly as oversized albums, or new format graphic novels.)
Anyway, i picked up two volumes of a crime story called RG written by Pierre Dragon (who was a special agent himself, before becoming a writer) and drawn by the incredible Swiss inkstud Frederik Peeters. (Peeters is most known here for his book Blue Pills, published by Houghton Mifflin.)
GREAT looking stuff.
- And down the street (in Montreal) i picked up a gorgeous new Blutch graphic novel, C’était le BonheurC’était le Bonheur. Stunning comics. I'm reminded here of Jules Feiffer's older Village Voice strips stylistically. It's pretty depressing that no one's really made any inroads getting his material into print here in the U.S. Ah well, c'est la vie.
- Last BD i picked up was Daniel Blancou's delightful Le Roi de la Savane, a terrific athrpomorphic treat.
• Charles Hatfield and his cohort Craig at Though Balloonists give careful consideration of Eddie Campbell's Alec graphic novel, How to Be An Artist. Good reading to prepare the world for the mammoth all-in-one Top Shelf Complete Alec tome next year.
