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Saturday, December 13, 2003
news: colleen doran has confirmed that reign of the zodiac, the fantasy series she was illustrating for dc comics written by keith giffen has been cancelled with the eighth issue. expect to see colleen resurface next year at vertigo comics. in the meantime, in honor of the pending release of return of the king, here's a gorgeous illustration she did for the essential jrr tolkien sourcebook written by george beahm:
more info on her website, which has been recently updated. very nice, col.
posted by peter! 3:11 PM EST permalink
news: congrats to comics writer stefan petrucha for optioning out his dystopian detective adventure, lance barnes, to twilight zone and spy hard director rick friedberg. originally published by epic comics in the mid-nineties, lance barnes will be returning from moonstone comics as a collected graphic novel in 2004.
posted by peter! 3:03 PM EST permalink
news: speaking of nbm, they too have announced their april 2004 releases, which includes one of my favorite serialized books of the year, how loathsome (which was plugged earlier in the week for its glaad nomination -- we're all about synchronocity over here), as well as rick geary's latest victorian murder treasury... the beast of chicago.
how loathsome by ted naifeh and tristan crane
the beast of chicago by rick geary
plus: leviathan, a graphic novel from european creator jens harder that has something to do with whales; riviera moon goddess, the second saucy vikki belle adventure by colin murray; and a book of victor hugo poems adapted to comics.
posted by peter! 2:36 PM EST permalink
canardo watch: on the heels of yesterday's canardo gallery, i've been told of the possible existence of two english translations, both woefully out-of-print. the first appears to have been published by rijperman in 1989 and distributed in the us by fantagraphics (a similar version was published in the uk by xpresso books/fleetway). this edition was translated by fantagraphics co-founder, kim thompson. the second version appears to have been published by nbm in 1991, but i have very little details about this one. a small glimmer of hope, perhaps. (thanks, nenad, for the fyi.)
posted by peter! 1:48 PM EST permalink
Friday, December 12, 2003
"graphic novels are good for you."
(dean haspiel on the mend. feel better, dino.)
posted by peter! 11:22 PM EST permalink
brainpowered 31: all you need is hate
"A few notes on responses to previous columns. Anita in Australia found the use of thalidomide babies as metaphor in a quote from Kieron Gillen to be extremely offensive, and decided to tell me instead of Kieron. Let me just say now that neither of us intended to imply that victims of the thalidomide outrage are Vines fans. Hope that's cleared that up. And for the several creatures who complained that in their perception I somehow equated American neo-conservatives with Nazis last week; you're retarded. You are intellectually diseased animals who represent everything the human race has to overcome. Even junkies like Rush Limbaugh laugh at you people. Oh, and pre-emptively -- whenever I use the word "retarded," I get a dozen shrill emails from sensitive students using university connection time. Get fucking jobs."
(more)
posted by peter! 10:40 AM EST permalink
news: top shelf has announced their publishing plans for april 2004, which includes three new releases (below), as well as the 6th! printing of from hell and the 3rd! printing of blankets. congrats, guys.
troglodytes by marcel ruijters
typewriter edited by david youngblood
things are meaning less by al burian
posted by peter! 10:34 AM EST permalink
sharing the love: ingrid, our unofficial foreign correspondent, writes again from brussels to say that every american that loves good comics should start learning french RIGHT NOW in order to take advantage of the rich and diverse european comics unavailable to us on this side of the pond. i like this idea because it's probably easier to educate comics readers in french then it is to reform the comic book direct marketplace...
 
 
 
pics from "canardo", a graphic novel series from the acclaimed french creator, sokal, available at casterman's website. what's not to love about a smokin', drinkin', down-on-his-luck penguin with a lousy love life, after all?
posted by peter! 10:22 AM EST permalink
because i love you... i give you the lyrics to the "fiend without a face" tribute by the misfits: "See the features of my rage, begin to shoot the fiend without a face, my face. The fever rots, the brain goes numb inside, I feel a blackout comming, a boiled blister pops inside, my ears still bleed with razor sharp precision, mouth to mouth the sweetness dangle by the breath upon my chest. See the features of my rage, begin to shoot the fiend without a face, my face. we dance all night the dogs keep up and snickering, just stay with me one moment then i'll go away, my ears still bleed with razor sharp precision, i'll burn in hell before I plunge into lifes darkness, darkness. See features of my rage, begin to shoot the fiend without a face, see the features of my rage, begin to shoot the fiend without a face, my face, the fiend without a face, the fiend without a face, the fiend without a face, a fiend without a face."
good night.
posted by peter! 12:22 AM EST permalink
Thursday, December 11, 2003
more weiners.
posted by peter! 11:19 PM EST permalink
news: in the spring, georgetown university is launching a new course in "examining comic books as literature" that promises to explore the works of art spiegelman, alan moore, frank miller and many others. it's a 9-week course starting on feb 9th available through their school of summer and continuing education, and taught by comic scholar a. david lewis. only $250. cool.
posted by peter! 11:18 AM EST permalink
news: mike kunkel's excellent children's comic book series, herobear and the kid, is returning to comic shops this february in the form of a three-part serial called saving time. i'd point you to the astonish factory website for more information, but it looks like they're still putting it together. suffice it to say, expect to see more misadventures of tyler and his magic toy, herobear, as they struggle against school, girls, and evil toys galore.
posted by peter! 11:12 AM EST permalink
event: mocca, the museum of comic and cartoon art, has opened a holiday giftshop to raise funds for the museum, which'll be open on the next two fridays, dec 12th and 19th, from 3-7pm; as well as the next two saturdays, dec 13th and 20th, from 12-4pm. plenty of gift ideas including autographed graphic novels, t-shirts, posters, original art, etc. address: 32 union square east, suite 600, nyc. mocca is the same organization that holds the really fantastic annual small press comix festival each year in june. worth supporting.
posted by peter! 11:03 AM EST permalink
watch out... it's a theme day! i give you my favorite genre film of all time:
posted by peter! 10:55 AM EST permalink
voila! as promised earlier, i give you the fixer by joe sacco:
one of this year's best and brightest. next week, we'll have a much larger update. i promise.
posted by peter! 12:38 AM EST permalink
Wednesday, December 10, 2003
news: the village voice, nyc's reknown alternative newspaper, has published their top 25 books of 2003, which just happens to include two graphic novels: the frank book by james woodring and the fixer by joe sacco (which coincidentally will be going up on artbomb tonight). there's also a pair of prose books on there from our friends at soft skull press.
over the summer, we published an extensive 9-page preview of the frank book, including this choice page:
makes a good holiday gift, methinks.
posted by peter! 12:21 PM EST permalink
event: the one-and-only will eisner will be giving a talk at the university of massachusetts in amherst on saturday, dec 13th, starting at 1pm at the mahar auditorium. the talk is free and open to the public.
posted by peter! 12:12 PM EST permalink
click here to waste 40 hours of your life.
posted by peter! 12:08 PM EST permalink
"graphic novels are good for you"
(laurenn mccubbin and tristan crane on location.)
posted by peter! 12:00 PM EST permalink
creator website: neil kleid has put up a new site revolving around ninety candles, a graphic novella that he was awarded a xeric grant to produce. congrats, neil.
posted by peter! 11:56 AM EST permalink
all work and no play: got trapped at work for 16 hours yesterday and missed the tuesday homepage update... we plan to refresh the page tonight, including a feature on joe sacco's the fixer, recently released by d&q. look for it.
posted by peter! 11:52 AM EST permalink
Tuesday, December 09, 2003
news: gladd, the gay & lesbian alliance against defamation, has posted their 15th annual media award nominations, which includes a number of usual suspects in the comic book category, but also one significant standout... tristan crane and ted naifeh's fantastic series, how loathsome, published earlier in the year by nbm. here's hoping for a graphic novel collection sometime in the near future. congrats, guys.
posted by peter! 11:00 AM EST permalink
news: rich johnston is reporting over at lying in the gutters that antony johnston (no relation that i'm aware of) will be writing a new nightjar series based upon the work that alan moore and bryan talbot are currently serializing in the four-part yuggoth cultures. the latter work is truly a buried treasure that i encourage you to seek out if you haven't yet. i believe the first two issues have hit the stores.
"Following the competition of the abandoned "Warrior" strip "Nightjar," by Alan Moore and Bryan Talbot, and serialised by Avatar in "Yuggoth Cultures," Antony Johnston is writing the spinoff. Based on Moore's notes, and continuing the story of Mirrigan, the first issue of a four issue series comes out in March from Avatar and a sequel is already planned."
and, in case you were wondering what a comics rumormonger actually looks like, i give you rich johnston...
posted by peter! 10:52 AM EST permalink
weiners
posted by peter! 10:44 AM EST permalink
who knew? legendary italian creator, milo manara, has a gorgeous website right here that's presented in both english and italian. if you caught neil gaiman's recently released sandman: endless nights, then his work should look familiar to you. not for the kiddies.
(thanks to our friends at the mlf for the link.)
posted by peter! 10:41 AM EST permalink
Rocker Rob Zombie and author-cartoonist Steve Niles have created Creep Entertainment Intl., a horror-themed production company.
Banner will begin with three comicbook projects that, down the road, are expected to be adapted for films: 'The Nail' with Dark Horse Comics; 'Bigfoot' with IDW Comics; and 'Lords of Salem,' a combo music-comics project.
All tales were co-written by Zombie and Niles. The books will be illustrated by established comic talents.
'Comics have become the storyboards for movies,' Zombie told Daily Variety. 'All our comicbooks are stand-alones and are done in a movie way. We're actually working backwards --- these look like comic adaptations of films.'...
posted by Matt 10:31 AM EST permalink
Monday, December 08, 2003
creator update: kieron dwyer has launched a nifty new website featuring lots of purty stuff from his career as an illustrator and an animator. here's a page from last of the independents, his recent graphic novel collaboration with none other then our own mister fraction.
posted by peter! 11:32 PM EST permalink
update: earlier today i posted a bit about the return of opi8.com and, voila!, the new editor-in-chief, travis anderson, dropped me a line to introduce himself and confirm that there will indeed be a massive site update coming soon. best of luck, travis.
(and this gives me another excuse to post some of chad's art... i'm so obvious sometimes.)
posted by peter! 11:10 PM EST permalink
link: over at journalista, the online blog of the comics journal, dirk deppey cuts loose with this essay on the state of the comic book direct marketplace, which nicely summarizes the dismal affairs of most of america's comic book stores.
"There are many kinds of readers in America: they read spy thrillers, crime novels, romance potboilers, westerns, science fiction, fantasy, whodunnits, biographies, histories, political screeds, confessionals, high literature, sleazy porn volumes -- you name it, people read it. While some bookstores specialize in single genres, most tend to cater to as many kinds of readers as they can, stocking representative samples of each genre in an attempt to draw them in. Because many readers like more than one kind of book, there's a crossover effect: someone who showed up for the latest Harry Potter novel might also see the latest Molly Ivins or Bill O'Reilly collection (depending on their politics), and pick up the latest Toni Morrison book stationed near the counter as they stand in line..."
"By and large, the Direct Market ignores such advice, and is for the most part a one-genre network of shops."
posted by peter! 11:00 AM EST permalink
webcomics: it looks like op8.com: new dark culture will be ramping up some original content again in 2004. i just got an announcement that these things happen, a bi-weekly webcomic by james woodward will be running for ten installments between january and may, picking up where it left off before going on hiatus. i've always liked opi8 and it's founder chad michael ward, and, well, i'll jump at any excuse to run some of chad's art:
posted by peter! 10:52 AM EST permalink
artblog: one week old.
posted by peter! 12:47 AM EST permalink
interview: newsarama sat down with jim valentino to find out what is going on with image comics these days in light of a number of defections involving studios that were producing licensed property comics crap for them. hopefully, this'll mean the end of all that bollocks and a return to the "image central" model that jim ushered in when he took the reigns a few years ago. of course, the fanboys and the direct market retailers are no doubt crying in their milk since they have to buy their g.i. joe and transformers drek elsewhere, but fuck 'em. at the end of the day, i'd rather be publishing books that i believed in then publishing at all. from the interview:
"The guys who are far more important are the ones who chose Image because we're the only company that's gonna do 100% right by their creation. Brian Bendis, David Mack, John Romita, Jr., Joe Linsner, Mike Oeming, Frank Cho, Scott Kurtz, Matt Wagner and so many more have chosen to work with Image, chosen Image to be their partners in taking care of the creations they invented and that they care about.
"These guys are in it for the long haul, and so are we. There's a reason we all split off from the big guys a dozen years ago and that's because we wanted to control our creative destinies. In the years that followed we've helped other people do exactly that. These are the long term guys and they're the ones that count for retailers and fans year in and year out; not the guys chasing a month-to-month fad. Image doesn't worry about the fly by nights, we invest in the long distance runners."
(and the link above is a direct link to the interview since it was posted without an embedded message board. thank you, matt.)
posted by peter! 12:32 AM EST permalink
archives:
11/30/2003 - 12/06/2003
12/07/2003 - 12/13/2003
12/14/2003 - 12/20/2003
12/21/2003 - 12/27/2003
12/28/2003 - 01/03/2004
01/04/2004 - 01/10/2004
01/11/2004 - 01/17/2004
01/18/2004 - 01/24/2004
01/25/2004 - 01/31/2004
02/01/2004 - 02/07/2004
02/08/2004 - 02/14/2004
02/15/2004 - 02/21/2004
02/22/2004 - 02/28/2004
02/29/2004 - 03/06/2004
03/07/2004 - 03/13/2004
03/14/2004 - 03/20/2004
03/21/2004 - 03/27/2004
03/28/2004 - 04/03/2004
04/04/2004 - 04/10/2004
04/11/2004 - 04/17/2004
04/18/2004 - 04/24/2004
04/25/2004 - 05/01/2004
05/02/2004 - 05/08/2004
05/09/2004 - 05/15/2004
05/16/2004 - 05/22/2004
05/23/2004 - 05/29/2004
05/30/2004 - 06/05/2004
06/06/2004 - 06/12/2004
06/13/2004 - 06/19/2004
06/20/2004 - 06/26/2004
06/27/2004 - 07/03/2004
07/04/2004 - 07/10/2004
07/11/2004 - 07/17/2004
07/18/2004 - 07/24/2004
07/25/2004 - 07/31/2004
08/01/2004 - 08/07/2004
08/08/2004 - 08/14/2004
08/15/2004 - 08/21/2004
08/22/2004 - 08/28/2004
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