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Saturday, July 10, 2004
slowpoke: america gone bonkers
"Cartoonist Jen Sorensen, recently honored by the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies for the second consecutive year for her self-syndicated Slowpoke comic strip, has announced that Alternative Comics will release her latest strip collection SLOWPOKE: America Gone Bonkers in September 2004. Jen Sorensen's Slowpoke, which runs in numerous alternative newspapers around the country, won second place for Best Cartoon at the 9th annual Alternative Newsweekly Awards held June 25 at the AAN Convention in San Antonio.
"SLOWPOKE: America Gone Bonkers is Xeric Grant-winning cartoonist Jen Sorensen's second collection of her brilliant weekly cartoon Slowpoke. Through her characters Little Gus, Mr. Perkins, and the terminally horny Drooly Julie, Sorensen slams the Bush regime, vapid trends, and corporate gluttony with her trademark brand of absurdist humor."
SLOWPOKE: America Gone Bonkers by Jen Sorensen, for mature readers, 112 pages, 8” x 8”, $12.95, Diamond Code: JUL04 2537, ISBN: 1-891867-78-4, September 2004.
more at slowpokecomics.com.
posted by peter! 3:50 PM EST permalink
Thursday, July 08, 2004
Kel and I found Give Our Regards to the Atomsmashers! at the bookstore the other night and picked it up. I've not seen any mention of it around anywhere, so, here, here's what Publisher's Weekly has to say:
"As we always knew, 1950s scaremongers were wrong: not only does overindulgence in comic books not dissuade young readers from prose, but some very famous writers grew up addicted to comics. Howe has lined up a remarkable bunch of essayists, including Luc Sante, Greil Marcus, Jonathan Lethem and Brad Meltzer, to write about their favorite funny books. Many revisit the comics of their youth with amused distance—the Marvel vs. DC rivalry, the wonders of Jack Kirby's cosmology and Steve Ditko's crabbed mysticism. A few analyze specific series: Steve Erickson takes on Howard Chaykin's boundary-pushing '80s title American Flagg, and Gary Giddins traces how Classics Illustrated celebrated a part of the literary canon that was dying. Some of the most striking contributions, though, are very personal pieces by self-consciously comics-obsessed writers: Glen David Gold recounting his tormented attempts to buy original comics art from a dealer who'd have nothing to do with him; Sante explaining the power of the 'clear-line' style of Tintin cartoonist Hergé on his boyhood self; and Meltzer (who's now a comics writer and novelist) discussing his near-sexual fascination with a mid-'80s New Teen Titans story line. The book includes some of today's most elegant writing on comics, a worthy companion to Lupoff and Thompson's All in Color for a Dime (1997), the previous standard in the field. "
So you should go buy it then.
posted by Matt 12:32 PM EST permalink
new review: david chelsea in love
"Maybe things were better in the late '80s and early '90s, or maybe it was just in comic books. Not sure if anyone was holding their breath for a collection of the DAVID CHELSEA IN LOVE stories, but now that it's here, it reads like a two-tiered social document of the first, gossipy order. First, DAVID CHELSEA IN LOVE exists as a narrative of the times in which the story takes place, particularly the sexual mores of young urbanites. From today's perspective the oddest thing isn't really in any of the couplings but the way in which New York is viewed vis-a-vis smaller cities, in this case Portland, Oregon..."
(more from tom spurgeon)
posted by peter! 2:11 AM EST permalink
why we love the japanese #1024:
"Japan's government plans to issue a version of its annual defence white paper as a manga comic book in a bid to make politics more popular.
"The white paper, released in normal format this week, is a weighty tome of 450 pages, most of them crammed to the margins with small print and extensive footnotes in even smaller print..."
more at skynews
posted by peter! 1:28 AM EST permalink
hype: bipolar #5
"Tomer and Asaf Hanuka are twins. They share a similar genetic structure but were raised in different places. This condition creates a special tension between their stories and styles and is the foundation of their award-winning Bipolar series from Alternative Comics. Asaf, with writer Etgar Keret is telling the story of Pizzeria Kamikaze about a guy with a broken heart who committed suicide only to find himself at Pizza Kamikaze, a regular day job in a world where everyone died before and now it's about passing time. Tomer is telling personal stories with a twisted time sense that will put you right now, a year ago, and in the future."
By Tomer Hanuka, Asaf Hanuka, and Etgar Keret, b&w, Full Color Covers, 24 pages, $2.95 US. ISBN: 1-891867-36-9. November 2004.
posted by peter! 1:25 AM EST permalink
slackers: disappear for a week and it doesn't look like much has happened in comics outside of spider-man. the most significant story appears to be scholastic's announcement of a new graphic novel line called graphix that will debut with manga-sized versions of jeff smith's long-running bone series. from yahoo:
"In January 2005 Scholastic will launch its new graphic novel imprint, Graphix, with the publication of Jeff Smith's award-winning series Bone, it was announced today. The first Bone comic book was released by independent publisher Cartoon Books in 1991. Now a nine-volume book series, it has been met with international acclaim. Originally published in black & white, Scholastic's new Graphix edition of Bone will be in color with a 6x9 inch trim size."
posted by peter! 1:04 AM EST permalink
new dark culture: our friends at opi8.com have begun to unveil their long awaited relaunch, promising a stream of new content starting with an art gallery from painter dave senecal. i used to dig this site back in the day, so hopefully they'll be successful in their attempt to get it off the ground again.
posted by peter! 12:45 AM EST permalink
Wednesday, July 07, 2004
creators on the prowl:
been terrible with keeping up with email the past week, so here's a piss-poor attempt to play catch-up...
kieron dwyer is the proud father of a new baby boy named liam and will most likely never sleep again.
tom hart has posted the first hutch owen story from 1994 at his website archives and has begun posting new weeklies and dailies as well.
jim ottaviani has released his new graphic novel suspended in language: niels bohr's life, discoveries and the century he shaped available from gt labs.
susannah breslin suggests checking out chris bishop's comics website double agent.
neil cohn of we the people fame has launched a weekly comic strip for the air america radio blog.
omaha perez has announced the launch of a new anthology from OPP entitled periphery that'll feature a pair of short stories by comics horror writer steve niles.
boo.
posted by peter! 11:05 PM EST permalink
Tuesday, July 06, 2004
"graphic novels are good for you, dammit."
posted by peter! 1:16 AM EST permalink
Monday, July 05, 2004
brainpowered 36: things online that i am sick of
"Today, the things I am sick of:
"RSS. The geek superpower of being able to collect in a single window the most current entries from dozens of blogs all making the same pot/kettle gags about Michael Moore's weight. Sing hosanna, the next iteration of the Apple operating system will contain an RSS thing. See, when Bill Gates talks about starting a blog, everyone says blogs must be tired. But when a corporation that partners with the loathesome Pepsi to make people swallow the latest Britney Spears horseshit says they're making an RSS enabler, suddenly there are angels in the air. When did it get so hard to just go to a website?
"Blogs with the suffix -pundit in the title. These must all immediately be changed to -wankerinbasement. Not only is pundit just a horrible word with intimations of some barstool idiot with an uninformed opinion on everything, but, frankly, if they had any kind of useful take on anything, they'd have a real fucking job doing it."
(more from warren ellis)
posted by peter! 7:25 PM EST permalink
new review: it's a bird... by seagle and kristiansen
"[It's] a metafictional dissection of the most recognizable figure in comics. Seagle has created his own doppelganger, a comics writer named Steve. The big job drops in his lap at the most inopportune time -- his father has gone missing, and Steve is wrestling with his fears about Huntington's Disease, a genetic nerve disorder that runs in his family. As he sorts through all the disparate components of Superman -- his costume, his secret identity, his fascist overtones, etc. -- he weighs them against his personal problems, and both sets of troubles begin to make more sense.
"Most of the time when comics are self-reflexive, they are clumsy about it. A character says, 'This is just like in comics!' or the author steps into the story for no reason except to be 'cute.' Seagle's approach is more sophisticated. He doesn't show you where the lines are, but blends them. This isn't a story about a man in a cape, but a man with a pen and a pad with very real problems delving into the idea that literature can inform life."
(more from jamie s. rich)
posted by peter! 6:49 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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