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Friday, July 02, 2004
hype: eightball #23
"The most popular alternative comic in the world is back, and it's bigger and better than ever! Presenting Eightball #23 by DANIEL G. CLOWES. This is the first new issue of Eightball in over two years, and it's another self-contained, full-color, oversized masterpiece like the award-winning previous issue! Featuring the first appearance of... THE DEATH-RAY! The best-selling author of Ghost World tells the story, set mostly in the 1970s, of a teenager granted mysterious powers and the irrevocable changes in his life that accompany them.
"Eightball #23 hits stands July 14, just as Clowes and Ghost World film director Terry Zwigoff will begin working on their second feature film collaboration. Mr. Mudd, the production company behind 2001's Ghost World, reteams director Terry Zwigoff and cartoonist/screenwriter Dan Clowes for the eagerly anticipated Art School Confidential. Set to lense in Los Angeles on July 12, the film also marks the continuing partnership between Mr. Mudd and United Artists, who released Ghost World to critical acclaim. Terry Zwigoff and Dan Clowes were nominated for an Academy Award in 2002 for their screen adaptation of Ghost World based on Clowes' graphic novel of the same name, published by Fantagraphics Books. Terry Zwigoff most recently helmed the box office hit Bad Santa starring Billy Bob Thornton.
"Mudd partners Lianne Halfon, John Malkovich and Russ Smith are producing from the Clowes penned script. Malkovich rounds out the art school cast of characters including Anjelica Huston, and Jim Broadbent. The film boasts ingenues Max Minghella and Sophia Myles.
"Based on a comic story in Dan Clowes' Eightball #7 (and reprinted in the collection Twentieth Century Eightball, "Art School Confidential" tracks an art student (Minghella) who dreams of becoming a famous artist. Arriving as a freshman at a prestigious east coast art school, he quickly discovers that his affected style and arrogance don't get him very far. When he sees that a clueless jock is attracting the glory rightfully due him, he hatches an all-or-nothing plan to hit it big in the art world."
EIGHTBALL #23
By Daniel G. Clowes
44-pages, Full-Color
$7.00, 9" x12"
posted by peter! 11:57 AM EST permalink
Thursday, July 01, 2004
not exactly comics: alex garland's got a new book out accompanied by woodcut illustrations from his father, the political cartoonist nicholas garland. from the sfgate:
"His first novel in five years, The Coma is 190 pages, an unsettling but extremely quick read, illustrated with evocative woodcuts by the author's father, Nicholas Garland, a political cartoonist for the London Daily Telegraph. It was their first collaboration and the result, says Garland, is 'an illustrated novella.'
"'We did the writing and the woodcuts concurrently,' says Garland. 'I'd write some chapters, he'd read them and then we'd think about what the image needed to contain.' The images weren't designed to illustrate the text, exactly, but to amplify it and in some cases to foreshadow a chapter."
btw, when garland isn't writing works of literary import and delight, he writes... zombie! films!
posted by peter! 11:12 AM EST permalink
artbombers on the prowl:
laurenn mc. has announced her rent girl tour dates. stay tuned to laurennmccubbin.com for details, the first of which are posted under the june 29th entries.
susie b. has a new short story at parenthetical note entitled "i moved to this town", which is about, y'know, fucking.
warren e. has a new column going up at the pulse today.
posted by peter! 11:00 AM EST permalink
this man doesn't like your comics:
from the national review:
"Calling the new Spider-Man film the best comic-book movie ever made — and it is, without a doubt, the best comic-book movie ever made — is a little like calling a Chicken McNugget the best processed fast-food poultry product ever produced. It's praise, but how substantial can the praise really be, given the source?
"Movies and television shows based on comic books constitute the worst single genre in the history of filmed entertainment (with the exception of porn). Okay, maybe movies and TV shows made from video games are worse, but they've only been around a little while. There have been horrendous comic-book movies since Superman first emerged as the avatar of this new form of pop-culture junk in 1938.
"The only way Hollywood could succeed in making such entertainment minimally palatable was to camp it up like crazy, which is what the makers of the Batman TV series did in the mid-1960s and what Gene Hackman did so gloriously as the scenery-chomping villain of the Superman movies in the late 1970s..."
i really hate it when people disparage porn in this way.
posted by peter! 10:43 AM EST permalink
call the police: this morning's headline at icv2.com, offered without further comment...
posted by peter! 10:40 AM EST permalink
Wednesday, June 30, 2004
new review: last of the independents by fraction & dwyer
shhhh. don't tell fraction.
"Okay, so Fraction's an artbomb.net writer. Of course, he doesn't have the faintest idea I'm writing this.
"You really, really wouldn't know that LAST OF THE INDEPENDENTS was his first graphic novel. He shows a native understanding of the form. It's filmic -- it's a fine blueprint for the best caper flick you'll never see, in fact -- but it never loses sight of being a graphic novel and exploiting the effects that are only available to graphic novels..."
(more from warren ellis)
posted by peter! 11:46 AM EST permalink
Reading Patrick Neighly's excellent PAPER CURTAIN article on CLUB ZERO-G from Douglas Rushkoff & Steph Dumais this morning reminded me to post a link to Jonathan Ellis' interview @ Popimage with Rushkoff that I read the other day.
So, yeah. Done and done.
posted by Matt 11:00 AM EST permalink
Tuesday, June 29, 2004
Jeff Mason writes:
The Supreme Court today, in a 5-4 decision, upheld an appeals court injunction blocking the Justice Department from enforcing COPA, the Child Online Protection Act.
The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund (CBLDF) has been involved in every challenge to COPA, a web censorship law, which would require websites featuring "harmful to minors" material to use an age verification system to operate.
For text of the decision, see: http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/03-218.ZS.html
For more about the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, visit their website at: http://www.cbldf.org.
posted by Matt 3:37 PM EST permalink
The Actus collective, a group of comics artists based in Tel Aviv, have readied a their annual production (which, from what I've heard, was available at MOCCA?) and the hard workin' folks at Top Shelf are taking preorders on their site now:
"Actus independent Comics presents an exciting and beautiful collection of graphic short stories by some of today’s most outstanding international cartoonists. This fabulous oversized album includes Art Spiegelman’s ‘‘In the Shadow of no Towers’’; a modern fairytale by the French cartoonist Blanquet; an interview with the Japanese alternative Manga artist, Suehiro Maruo; a new domestic drama by Rutu Modan, short stories by Etgar Keret, a silent story by Ulf K., as well as new stories by all the Actus artists. Dead Herring Comics also contains five detachable mini-posters by the Actus artists."
I think the Actus books live in some strange place in-between comics and art object, the care and concern that goes into their presentation is near-unequaled. Gorgeous work.
posted by Matt 1:52 PM EST permalink
tothfans.com is the official Alex Toth website and is full of great stuff, including this annotated section, where Toth (along with David Cook) has offered up commentary on a wide swathe of the man's work. Showing a page of art on one side and handwritten comments on the other, Toth's commentary ranges from pure technical notes to snarky jabs at co-workers to critical self-analysis. So great you'll wonder why it's free.
posted by Matt 11:32 AM EST permalink
Monday, June 28, 2004
Gaiman @ Harvey Awards
Neil Gaiman has posted his speech from the Harvey Awards this weekend:
"Right now I actually believe that the best thing about comics may well be that it is a gutter medium. We do not know which fork to use, and we eat with our fingers. We are creators of a medium, we create art in an art-form, which is still alive, which is powerful, which can do things no other medium can do.
I don't believe that a fraction of the things that can be done with comics have yet been done."
And mentions that Stephin Merritt has plans to stage CORALINE as a musical.
posted by Matt 1:05 PM EST permalink
to hell with leveraging and marketing! comics are fun!
Michael Chabon on Avi Arad in yesterday's NEW YORK TIMES:
"'I was expecting someone more interested in leveraging and marketing,' (Chabon) said in a recent telephone interview. 'But the guy knows Spider-Man backward and forward — all the minor super-villains and their secret identities. I found myself totally able to talk to him on this ridiculous, wonderful level of, `Who's tougher, the Lizard or the Rhino?' '"
posted by Matt 12:45 PM EST permalink
armwrasslin' with PREVIEWS
Renowned homosensualist Greg McElhatton goes and reads PREVIEWS so you don't have to.
posted by Matt 12:42 PM EST permalink
Daredevil #420
Is it old news that Ann Nocenti is the editor at HIGH TIMES?
posted by Matt 12:25 PM EST permalink
Sunday, June 27, 2004
lost & foun... oh, wait, "spade," i get it. ha ha.
Daniel Fish has a cool, odd collection of various lost comics pages-- from changed art & dialogue from Grant Morrison's INVISIBLES to the extended ending of Neil Gaiman's first DEATH series to the content of Chris Ware's JIMMY CORRIGAN that was available in the softcover but not the hard. Zip files abound and there's a good deal of superhero content that's just sorta enh, but there's enough weird shit here to kill a half-hour by indulging your inner pedant.
posted by Matt 9:19 PM EST permalink
Shut up, Bitch!
A reader of The Pulse speaks out with regards to the winners of this year's Harvey Awards:
"Why does this read like a who's who of people whose comics mostly only sell in the low thousands? Not that awards are, or should be, a popularity contest for sales, but Jesus! I don't suppose you could pay your bills with awards. Payment for a top selling book though? That's different. That kind of award can at least earn interest. They ought to give a special negligence award to the judges for excluding anything that was remotely popular in the medium. I mean, congrats and all to the winners. Don't get me wrong, they deserve to win and everything and all... But maybe they should change it to the D&Q-Fantagraphics-Top-Shelf-awards. Can someone look into this? I certainly agree with Kyle Baker winning for Plastic Man but though Acme Novelty library is good, couldn't someone else win for best colorist besides Chris Ware for once? The Novelty is wearing off... Not that anyone really cares. That much is obvious because it seems like the same twenty people win every time.
Besides that, have you ever sat through the Eisners for example? It reminded me of the play NO EXIT. They shut the doors to the room and everyone finds out they're stuck there with each other for eternity."
•
The full list of winners-- like Chester Brown (Best Writer, Louis Riel), Craig Thompson (Best Artist and, uh, Cartoonist, Blankets), Tony Millionaire (Special... Humorist? Sock Monkey), Chris Ware (Excellent... ah... Presenter, Acme Novelty Datebook), and Kyle Baker (Best New Seriesist for Plastic Man)-- or, really, they're losers, aren't they-- are also listed in the link. Not that you've ever heard of any of them.
posted by Matt 2:18 PM 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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