The Comics Reporter

September 14, 2010

Go, Look: More PT Bimbo

posted 4:00 am PST | Permalink

Go, Look: Jungle #2

posted 4:00 am PST | Permalink

Go, Look: Splashy George Perez

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Go, Look: Smash Comics #1

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Random Comics News Story Round-Up

* I don't really know what this is a preview of, but someone liked it enough to send me the link.

* RC Harvey writes at length and with some measure of passion on the late Paul Conrad.

* John Romita Jr. draws Judge Dredd.

* not comics: I don't know where I picked up this link, I think it might have been sent to me, and I guess to say it's a cautionary tale for a lot of creative types working in the more working-class arts neighborhoods is a bit easy, but there it is.

* Ben Morse talks about DC's Dick Grayson character, probably one of the more likable people in their stable and the beneficiary of several quality runs of mainstream superhero comics (and a few odd ones). It's weird that that Scott McDaniel/Rodolfo Damaggio take on stylized superhero art didn't establish itself more firmly; I thought theirs were generally interesting comics to look through when they came in with the DC box when I worked at The Comics Journal oh so many years ago.

* Sean Collins introduces Marvel web site visitors to Frank Santoro, a great favorite of this site, on the occasion of his doing a Silver Surfer comic for the Strange Tales Vol. 2 project.

* Deb Aoki writes up and comments upon the spotlight panel presentation with Moto Hagio from this summer's Comic-Con, which turned into a career retrospective of obvious, considerable interest.

* the very smart and always thorough Brigid Alverson writes about the problems with review Shojo manga. It's probably not what you think.

* he's right: you should be reading the Same Hat! tumblr.

* this is nice: the AAEC talks up a pair of long-time contributors to that organization.

* I am both very much looking forward to this, and sort of not looking forward to this. I think you'll understand where I'm coming from.

* Ty Templeton picks the seven best gay characters in comics, and actually extends himself into more than one kind of comic. Although he forgot Batman.

* finally, this story of futility and first class, sustained griping is one of the more amusing things about mainstream comics you'll likely read this year, cooked to just the right temperature by Kevin Melrose.

posted 3:00 am PST | Permalink

Happy 59th Birthday, Mary Fleener!

posted 2:00 am PST | Permalink

Happy 48th Birthday, Tom Dougherty!

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Quick hits
Craft
Sean Phillips Inks
On Visual Metaphors
On An Alex Toth Panel

Exhibits/Events
Birmingham Zine Fest In Pictures

History
Mark Evanier On Jerry Grandenetti

Industry
Nostalgia & Comics Looks Great
Someone Give That Man A Shirt

Interviews/Profiles
CBR: Paul Guinan
CBR: Jonathan Maberry
Whatever: Brett Warnock
CBR: Felicia D. Henderson
Newsarama: Marc Guggenheim

Not Comics
I'd Buy One
Dashiell Hammett Wrote There

Publishing
Coming In November
On Phoenix Without Ashes
Piggy Brown, The Piglet Detective
Howard Stern Exhibits Good Taste

Reviews
Rich Kreiner: Various
Colin Panetta: Various
Ng Suat Tong: Red Flowers
Bill Sherman: Ides Of Blood
Sean Kleefeld: Amulet Vol. 3
Rob Clough: Nymphonomena
J. Caleb Mozzocco: The Order
Chad Nevett: Greek Street #15
Andrew Wheeler: Koko Be Good
Dave Ferraro: A Drunken Dream
Ryan K. Lindsay: Daredevil #510
Graeme McMillan: Daytripper #10
Sean T. Collins: Bound & Gagged
Sean Gaffney: Butterflies, Flowers Vol. 4
Colin Panetta: The Education of Hopey Glass
Paul Montgomery: The Unsinkable Walker Bean
Johanna Draper Carlson: Stepping On Roses Vol. 3
Kate Dacey: The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation
Colin Panetta: Curse Of The Mutants: Storm And Gambit #1

September 13, 2010

CR Review: City Of Spies

Creators: Susan Kim, Laurence Klavan and Pascal Dizin
Publishing Information: First Second, softcover, 176 pages, April 2010, $16.99
Ordering Numbers:

I found City Of Spies to be a dull slog, full of cliches, an ordinary story presented in a competent manner that I think wants to recall classic kids' adventure stories but doesn't have enough to say in its own, idiosyncratic way to exist as anything more than a weak echo of much better work. It feels like a pitch executed in comics form rather than its own thing, to an almost comic degree, and makes me wonder after the current state of First Second as a home for creator-driven efforts start to finish after a promising first few years out of the gate. The story of a 10-year-old girl forced to live with a socially-minded artistic relative that meets a lower class neighbor boy who draws her into Nazi spy hunting with at first mixed, then dangerous results more potent then the comics she draws, City Of Spies unfortunately... well, damn it, just re-read the first part of this ridiculous sentence.

I don't want to make City Of Spies sound like the worst comic in the world. It's not. The script work is accomplished: the characters are clearly and consistently signified, the broadly-conceived motivations stay on point, and the leads are likable. The cartooning can be lively and the neighborhoods depicted fun to take in. The problem is that there's no urgency here, no inner life, no desire to communicate anything fresh and original beyond executing its mostly obvious, hackneyed plot points. The craft chops on display aren't superior in a way that might transcend that fundamental lack of ambition. I never felt like I was looking at New York, I felt like I was looking at a generic cartoon story from an adventure comic, in much the same way the characters never stop being characters in such a story. Still, I'm certain City Of Spies will have its fans, among younger children who haven't encountered this kind of work, older children looking for something less challenging to consume and among the gatekeepers and adult readers who will at times revel in something that hits all the comfortable markers. It took me multiple times to finish it, and I'm not going back.

posted 5:00 pm PST | Permalink

Comics Industry Picking Up Its Own 2012ish Doomapocalyptigeddon Vibe

I'm not meaning to throw down the gauntlet Nerd Court style and say that 100 percent every article out there suggests bad times ahead, let alone that I endorse any specific view of said future, but it feels to me that in several places we're starting to see the three-pronged notion that a) something may be broken about the way standard mainstream comic books get from creators into the hands of readers, most notably the price point b) this could have industry-changing ramifications down the line, c) if nothing else, the inevitability of on-line serial comic books will put these changes into play sooner rather than later.

Keeping that in mind, there were two pretty good posts of general industry analysis over the weekend. The first is Douglas Wolk's article about the high price of comic book in his column at Techland. I think he's fudging the $.75 price point by a couple of years (I'm pretty sure most were a dollar by 1988) and I think he makes too much of the $20 price point, but a lot of the rest of it he gets right, I think. He notes that a lot of comics buyers are used to paying a set amount for a comics reading experience instead of paying whatever is necessary for a specific set of comics, so a price change that distorts how many comics you can by for X dollars distorts the way people buy. If you're a $10 a week buyer and the comics you choose from go from $3 to $4, you're more likely to go from buying three books for $9 to two books for $8 than you are to chase a title up past $10. This is also why any significant change -- say a move from being able to get six comics for $20 to five comics -- can make people reconsider the entire experience of buying comics as an activity. Wolk also suggests that comics companies may be pushing the price point on purpose to pave the way for online serialized comics, which I think gives a little too much credit to the nefariousness of mainstream comic book companies, but I guess you never know.

Sounding more concerned is retailer Brian Hibbs in his latest column at CBR. I think much of what Hibbs is saying about the way the mainstream companies are self-sabotaging a profitable and pleasurable way of doing business is dead-on, although he comes dangerously close to implying several times that the current system is awesome in part because of the way it manipulates readers into making purchases past their better judgment. I don't think you have to suggest comics serialization has to maximize profits in order to be a system worth keeping, let alone maximize them through a targeted audience -- I think it's enough to point out that there are particular joys and specific value to be had from that kind of experience that should be taken care of rather than pushed and pulled and manipulated and tossed aside to jump on something new. Also worth digging into is the comments thread at Hibbs' own site in a post announcing the article, particularly Stuart Moore's comment that sales don't reflect the kind of anecdotal evidence we're seeing out there, and Abhay Khosla's fantastic point that the explosion of comics out there has fractured buying habits to the point where it's become hugely difficult for retailers to make smart decisions based on their customers' buying choices.

I bet we're going to see a lot of this kind of theorizing between now and the end of the year.

posted 10:00 am PST | Permalink

Your Danish Cartoons Hangover Update

* reports are ripping through the wires concerning rumors that a man who caused an explosion in a Copenhagen hotel was on his way to cause destructive chaos at the Jyllands-Posten newspaper building housing the publication that published the initial Danish cartoons. As you may or may not recall, when David Coleman Headley made himself available to help commit certain terrorist acts the organizations he contacted were adamant that the newspaper building be blown up as opposed to some other less extreme and less ridiculously hard-to-pull-off act against the publisher.

* a Danish grocery store chain won't carry Danish cartoons cartoonist Kurt Westergaard's biography when it comes out in November, they decided to announce ahead of time for some odd reason. The Monster & Critics post that started it all passes along false information that the bomb-in-turban Muhammad cartoon for which Westergaard is best known will be on the cover of that book; the publisher has denied that strongly, and the cover they've released has nothing of the kind on it.

* I can't remember the time someone in the traditional comics blogosphere commented on the Danish Cartoons, so I was happy to see Sean T. Collins engage a related issue or two at the bottom of this post.

* finally, as one might have expected, Germany Chancellor Angela Merkel has been slammed for both providing the keynote speech at an awards ceremony in Potsdam that honored Kurt Westergaard, and for the free-speech elements of that address.

posted 9:00 am PST | Permalink

Not Comics: Roy Krenkel Does ERB

posted 8:30 am PST | Permalink

How To Spend $100 At A Funnybook Sale In Less Than A Minute

I know sales aren't really news, and that it's dubious as hell to take time out of the news day to talk about the attempt to sell comics published by one of your advertisers, but I hope you'll indulge me here. I turned on the computer yesterday to get football scores because the networks provide fantasy football information now and it takes them about 14 minutes to grind through the entire schedule. In doing so, I see the announcement note from Chris Staros for this sale.

You always pay attention to sales from Chris Staros because Top Shelf had the most important publisher sale of the last 25 years -- their initial one to save the company, which became a model for such efforts and was a practical symposium on the state of the market at that time. This one is nothing like that. As far as I know, and that's reasonably far, there are no dire consequences attached to this attempt by the publisher to move some books. Still, like any publisher that has to manage cash flow and warehouse space, and for any agency that works in comics where there's such a scattered disconnect between comics and comics readers that every effort to sell something might be the only way you get something in the hands of that particular reader, all such endeavors have their place of importance.

What struck me enough to want to write about it, though, is how much good stuff could be scooped up for a modest (in comics-buying terms) investment. I rifled through the list quickly to see how I could spend $100 and this is what I came up with after about 45 seconds and then a tiny bit of pruning. It's only a sample list, but... well, you'll see.

*****

Alec: The Years Have Pants -- HARDCOVER $49.95 $25.00 (US)
This was my book of the year (archival/collection division) from 2009, and I think within its pages are some of the best comics of all time. I can't imagine any adult comics reader not wanting this in your personal comics library unless Eddie Campbell is that one cartoonist you're allergic to like kids are to broccoli (we all get one gimme like that) or you'd get mad reading it waiting for him and Danny Grey to change into their costumes already. I mean, maybe you wouldn't like it as much as I would, but $25 for all those comics is just stunning.

Far Arden $19.95 $10.00 (US)
A surprisingly affecting adventure comic book that for the improvisational method of its creation has a strange, furtive rhythm unlike anything you'll read a year on either side. Plus the creator's name is Kevin Cannon, which is one of those names that only cartoonists seem to have.

The Ticking $19.95 $10.00 (US)
Micrographica $10.00 $3.00 (US)
Two by the great Renee French. The Ticking was a huge step forward in the always-amazing image maker's ability to use that visual power in an extended narrative. Micrographica is more of a lark -- it's French drawing really, really small -- but the important words there are "it's French drawing." She's one of the few cartoonists I'll buy anything she does sight unseen.

Carnet de Voyage $14.95 $10.00 (US)
This isn't as much of a discount on this book of Craig Thompson's travel journal as some of the other selections, but I know a lot of people that for whatever reasons never got around to buying it. At the same time, I know a lot of young cartoonists who bought it in a hurry after being floored by Blankets, and I think it's one of those surreptitiously influential comics of the last several years.

Super Spy (Vol 2): The Lost Dossiers $12.95 $5.00 (US)
Matt Kindt is a unique talent, and a thoughtful author. I think he's also at the point in his career where everything he does should at least be read and considered and mulled over.

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (Vol III): Century #1 $7.95 $5.00 (US)
Well, if you're buying $100 in comic books you're going to want some pulp in there between the art books and the autobiography, and this is one of the best series in comics right now for just that purpose. Plus I find Mina Harker super-funny.

Sketchbook Diaries (Vol 1) $7.95 $3.00 (US)
Sketchbook Diaries (Vol 2) $7.95 $3.00 (US)
Sketchbook Diaries (Vol 3) $7.95 $3.00 (US)
Sketchbook Diaries (Vol 4) $7.95 $3.00 (US)
I like these oversized comic book collections of James' work, although it's available in a fancier format and, of course, on-line. That's a nice chunk of his diary work for $12.

Please Release $5.00 $3.00 (US)
Not the punch in the face that Swallow Me Whole was a for a lot of readers, but a fine pick-up if you left that one wanting more. I remember being taken with some of the formal flourishes here.

Tales of Woodsman Pete $7.00 $3.00 (US)
Lilli Carre is a potentially significant talent and this is a solid book in and of itself, not just for its place in what one hopes will be a long career.

Regards From Serbia $19.95 $3.00 (US)
Aleksandr Zograf's comics aren't for everybody, as his work can be difficult for certain readers to engage, but I'd pay $3 to have him sit and a bar and tell me stories, so this collection at this price is kind of a no-brainer.

Hutch Owen (Vol 1): The Collected $14.95 $3.00 (US)
Hutch Owen (Vol 2): Unmarketable $14.95 $3.00 (US)
I genuinely love Tom Hart's Hutch Owen comics, to the point I'll read pages out loud. There was a time back in 1994-1996 when I believed everyone else would one day join me. To have this many pages of it for that price, yow.

Dear Julia, $12.95 $3.00 (US)
A very pretty comic from the illustrator Brian Biggs, one of those creators that never quite found purchase in the barren late 1990s alt-comics landscape. I actually like the comic books more than I did the collection, but it's hard to look past that price point.

The Man Who Loved Breasts $4.00 $1.00 (US)
Jack's Luck Runs Out $3.50 $1.00 (US)
Two comic books, because you should always buy comic books if you can. It is worth owning Robert Goodin's comic book just to have it on your coffee table where your friends will laugh when they see it. And who wouldn't want to stare at multiple pages of crazy-ass color work from Jason Little?

*****

So that's that. A huge pile of fascinating funnybooks, including one of the great works in comics, for the price of about nine weeks of following a mainstream superhero "event" comic. The thing is, you could definitely go a number of different ways here -- you could easily swap out Essex County for The Years Have Pants and Jeffrey Brown for James Kochalka, and then go apeshit on Owly collections and have a fine set of books in no time. All of the European stuff they've been doing is up there. There's an Actus book I totally blew by on my initial run-through for like 85 percent off!

And that's my point. You have to admit we live in a pretty amazing era for comics when even the discount sales hold holy treasures and multiple ways to climb the mountain. Spend $100, spend nothing at all: this is one more reminder of how great it is to be reading this art form at this time.

posted 8:00 am PST | Permalink

Go, Look: John Stanley Gag Strips

posted 7:30 am PST | Permalink

Missed It: Richard Thompson Pays Tribute To Blondie On Its 80th

posted 6:30 am PST | Permalink

Go, Look: Linda Lark #1

posted 4:00 am PST | Permalink

Go, Look: Believe It Or Not! #1

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Go, Look: Emulating Batman

posted 4:00 am PST | Permalink

Go, Look: Dark Mysteries #4

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Random Comics News Story Round-Up

* some odd chain e-mail purporting to be about semi-censored Australian cartoonists turns out to be an even odder fake chain e-mail that uses not-censored-at-all North American cartoonists.

* Jason T. Miles really digs into Seven Miles A Second. I think it's interesting how works like that have a second life with readers that discover them a while later, or for whom they really work in weird and astonishing ways.

* Ben Morse lists a bunch of characters that should work but don't right now at the current mainstream comics companies. The problem isn't lack of creators willing to pull these characters apart to find something that works, it's that the industry has shifted to a point where this kind of effort has moved from barely but consistantly rewarding in a publishing sense (a shot in the arm to a company's monthly sales profile across a line) to long-shot of being potentially rewarding but likely not at all (a concept or take that can be moved into one of the five or six books with which these companies are primarily concerned; a movie-friendly refashioning).

* if you want to know when everything went to shit, Marc Arsenault has a 10-day period he'd like to suggest.

* one of my favorite subjects: the circus comics of Josh Simmons.

* let me assure everyone that we're all equally not cool.

* not comics: goodbye, you stupid, annoying show.

* if you are a nice person and an old-time mainstream comics fan, you will likely take seriously this request to perhaps send Joe Sinnott a card or letter.

* finally, I don't know that I've said so, but I like this feature that Bully does where he compares original covers with re-done covers for a future collection or a reprint series, something that's interested me since I looked at a few of the weird ones Gil Kane did for X-Men during its hiatus period. I can't imagine a better way to track some of the artistic and cultural quirks that settle into the day-to-day view of those companies at different times in their history.

posted 3:00 am PST | Permalink

Happy 51st Birthday, Kent Worcester!