Author: Elayne Riggs

ComicMix week five

  • News
  • March 18, 2007

Time again for your one-stop shopping roundup of this week’s regular columns and podcasts!  Here are the columns:

And here are mellifluous Mike Raub‘s podcasts:

See below for the first regular Above and Beyond column from Glenn Hauman.  And don’t forget to check with us on weekends (and occasionally even during the week) for our special Opinion pieces and feature reports!

Advice from the pros

  • News
  • March 18, 2007

Not only are "the internets" a great place to find news (for instance, both CBR and Blog@Newsarama have the WizWorld LA scoops more than covered from the fan view, and Marv Wolfman from the pro view), but they’re invaluable as information tools if you know where to look.  One of the best places to read about life as a comic book professional is from the folks living it, who often have valuable words of wisdom to pass along to aspiring writers and artists.

Becky Cloonan talks about the world of Original English Language (OEL) graphic novels from manga companies, and compares how they’re put together here as opposed to the Japanese method.  A must-read for any artist planning on drawing that kind of a workload.

Stephanie McMillan examines how her own work is shifting from strictly editorial cartooning to a more strip-based focus, and how she tries to inject a more activist stance through the ideas she conveys with her writing and art.

And Colleen Doran conveys a couple of great cautionary tales about money — how little most professional writers really make, and the tendency so many creative people have toward throwing their money into get-rich-quick schemes.

Erin Go Bragh!

  • News
  • March 17, 2007

tain1-6201663We were casting about today hoping for an appropriate St. Patrick’s Day comic-related post, and the Redhead Fangirl didn’t disappoint, calling our attention to a company called Cló Mhaigh Eo in Claremorris, County Mayo in the West of Ireland.

They’ve been around a dozen years, and publish "books in Irish for children and young people as well as a series of acclaimed Irish graphic novels… Many Irish language learners throughout the world make extensive use of books from Cló Mhaigh Eo, particularly our children’s picture books."

Here’s their graphic novel list, and you can even click on several pages for translations from Gaelic into English.  Tip o’ the tweed cap for this one, redlib!

Booty call, fandom style

  • News
  • March 17, 2007

otakubooty-8650890Via Cheryl Lynn, yet another online meet-and-greet club has burst onto the scene with ambitions toward dispelling stereotypes about fans being weak in the social skills department.  This one’s called OtakuBooty, and specializes in bringing together "intelligent, funny, sexy" aficionados of Japanese animation, manga and gaming.

They claim, "Not all Internet communities are overrun by 13 year-olds arguing about DragonBall. Most OtakuBooty members are in their 20s and 80% of our members over the age of 18."  Which of course means a fifth are still legal minors. They continue, " OtakuBooty has a tight-knit community that has banded together for countless activities: a Full Monty-style fundraiser for Hurricane Katrina victims, raising money for a member who lost his apartment in a fire, and even clothing themselves in custom-made OtakuBooty hockey jerseys… And then there are the infamous parties."

Seems to me if you have that many underage members, you might want to be more careful about advertising Full Monty-style charity events and calling your parties infamous.

Lawsuit happy

  • Uncategorized
  • March 17, 2007

It’s beginning to look like ComicMix needs a Lawsuit Watch correspondent.  Reuters has the details (hat tip to IESB).

On Thursday, two NY-based artists filed suit against NBC Universal and the creators of Heroes claiming the popular TV show stole one of their plotlines from them, basing it "on a short story, a painting series and a short film the couple exhibited in 2004 and 2005." The 2005 exhibit at Hunter College was attended by two people identifying themselves as writers from Crossing Jordan (also developed by Heroes creator/executive producer Tim Kring) and who were believed to have taken copies of the artists’ work, thus lessening the likelihood that coincidence is not causality.  As Heroes has tried to depict, nothing’s coincidence anyway.

Also on Thursday, Carol Burnett filed a copyright infringement suit against the makers of Family Guy over an episode shown last April featuring an 18-second sequence depicting a "slightly altered version" of her signature cleaning-woman character in a segment last April, basically saying they used the charwoman-clone without her permission. A 20th Century Fox spokesdroid responded that the references amounted to parody, which shouldn’t even need to be said.

R2D2 handles your mail

  • News
  • March 16, 2007

r2d2-6968558Yahoo News has blown the pants off the USPS’ latest promotional gimmick, as it teams with Lucasfilm on March 28th, the 30th anniversary of the release of the first Star Wars movie, to remake some mailboxes in a familiar image.

About 400 mailboxes in 200 cities across the country will be wrapped in a special covering to make them look something like the droid R2D2 (judge for yourself at right).

The post office isn’t saying which ones, but they have a somewhat tepid teaser about the event.

The pants references above?  If you’ve never played Star Wars Pants, you’re really missing something.  Let’s hope it’s not those trousers, or I’d find your lack of pants disturbing.

(And if you didn’t catch the Annie Leibovitz photos from the Star Wars edition of Vanity Fair two years ago, they’re making the rounds again… love the group shot!)

Estrogen month update

  • News
  • March 16, 2007

Maybe it’s because of Women’s History Month, or maybe it’s the time of (wo)man.  But for those of us who like to idealize (rather than fetishize or objectify) women superheroes, there’s a lot of good stuff online right now.

Besides getting their fill of Buffy and Wonder Woman, readers can linger over Alan Kistler’s exhaustive two-part profile of the Amazon princess (here’s part one and part two).  On the artistic end, Project Rooftop and GirlWonder.org are co-sponsoring Supergirl Week, featuring entries from last month’s Draw Supergirl online artfest. And in the area of personal epiphany, Marvel artist Brian Denham talks about his moments of revelation and self-education about drawing women in comics.  Even the lone woman character with a speaking role in the movie 300 gets a nice review/analysis from Purtek at the Hathor Legacy.

As ever, When Fangirls Attack is your best bet for links to posts on the worlds of super-females.

Jay Kennedy RIP

  • News
  • March 16, 2007

According to an announcement from the Hearst Corporation, King Features Syndicate editor-in-chief Jay Kennedy died yesterday while on vacation in Costa Rica. He was 50 years old.

"Jay had a profound impact on the transformation of King Features as a home for the best new and talented comic strip creators in the country," said Bruce L. Paisner, executive vice president, Hearst Entertainment & Syndication. "He was an extremely creative talent himself and we are indebted to him for all he did."

Kennedy joined King Features in 1988 as deputy comics editor and became comics editor one year later. He was named editor in chief in 1997. He previously served as cartoon editor of Esquire magazine,and was a humor book agent and a cartoon consultant and editor for magazines and publishers, including People. In 1985, Kennedy guest edited r the "European Humor" issue of The National Lampoon.

Kennedy wrote articles about the history of cartooning, and profiled cartoonists and contemporary comics for magazines including New Age Journal, Heavy Metal, New York, The IGA Journal, and Escape, an English bi-monthly. He was also the author of "The Underground Comix Guide," published in 1982.

Before graduating with a sociology degree from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, Kennedy studied sculpting and conceptual art at The School of Visual Arts in New York City.

I recall having corresponded with Kennedy on several occasions, probably asking some questions or other about women cartoonists at King Features, and always found him knowledgeable and pleasant.  ComicMix offfers our deepest condolences to his family and loved ones.

Bechdel goes to college

  • News
  • March 16, 2007

bechdel-fl-8834686Alison Bechdel reports in her blog, "I just finished a two-day visit at Miami Dade College, sponsored by the Florida Center for the Literary Arts, where I talked  about Fun Home to a staggering array of classes, from Art to English to Human Growth and Development to The Graphic Novel." 

No fair, why couldn’t there have been Graphic Novel classes back in ancient times when I was in college?

Bechdel also spoke at the Gay-Straight Alliance meeting (whence this photo comes) and did a reading at the Broward County Public Library, which she details as one of her more interesting experiences in the Fun Home tour.  And speaking of libraries, she’s very happy to hear that the Marshall (MO) PL has voted to return Fun Home (as well as Craig Thompson’s Blankets) to their shelves, as are we.

buffy-7840427

Buffy wows ’em

  • News
  • March 16, 2007

buffy-7840427The notable part of Dark Horse’s announcement about selling out its initial print run of Buffy: Season 8 #1 is that it actually announced how large that print run was.  It’s common to hear about sell-outs these days, but hard to tell whether they’re actually puffed up to look more important than they are because companies never say how many comics a sell-out constitutes.

So congrats to Dark Horse that this much-anticipated success lived up to the hype, as did the movie based on that little book of Frank Miller’s that they published a few years back.  Over a hundred thousand issues of any monthly comic book periodical these days is very welcome news, even more so when the book is presumed to have wide appeal beyond American comics’ usual demographic.

Needless to say, Dark Horse is going back to print.

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