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ComicMix Columns/Features for the Week Ending June 8, 2008

Greetings from the MoCCA Art Fest, where ComicMix will be out in force today!  We’re probably having the time of our lives, having prepared this roundup well beforehand.  Good thing, too, as we keep adding more new features!  Here’s the scoop on what our columnists and feature-ists have brought you this past week:

Back to the fun at the Puck Building!  Or is that the pun at the F– no wait, that can’t be right…

MoCCA Recap: Day One – Heat, Buzz, Star Wars and Dinosaur Comics

With one day down, I still feel pretty good about declaring MoCCA Arts Festival my favorite comics event thus far this season.

Sure, it doesn’t have the numbers or names of New York Comic Con or San Diego’s Comic-Con International, but it also doesn’t have 100,000 people vying for seats in 1,000-chair auditoriums and competing, mind-numbingly overpowered loudpseakers at every other booth. What it does have, however, is a great opportunity to actually meet, greet and have an honest-to-goodness conversation with professionals at every level of the industry.

So how did the first day go?

Well, I arrived a few hours after the doors opened to the show — just about the time the weather outside turned from "oppressive" to "unbearable," but before the transition to "stay the hell inside at all costs" occurred. After bumping into Fleen.com’s Gary Tyrrell, the main mustache himself took me on a whirlwind tour of the show, culminating with my purchase of Harvest Is When I Need You The Most, the Star Wars fanbook featuring the work of eight cartoonists paying homage to the film franchise. The Harvest crew had only brought 50 with them to the show, and I believe I purchased one of the last dozen-or-so remaining. (more…)

Popeye and the Langridge of Heroism, by Michael H. Price

  • Uncategorized
  • June 8, 2008

popeye-vol-2-5391414The breakthrough of the season, as far as superhuman heroism goes, might lie beyond such big-screen spectacles as Iron Man and the June 13 opening of The Incredible Hulk. The watershed lies, in part, in a set of Popeye the Sailor cartoons that have gone largely unseen – in authentic form, anyhow – since the late 1930s and the earlier 1940s.

A companionable development is a new series of hardcover books reprinting the original Popeye comic strips of writer-artist E.C. Segar. The current volume is Popeye Vol. 2: “Well, Blow Me Down!” (Fantagraphics Books; $29.95). A third collection is due in the fall. The elaborately packaged Fantagraphics shelf commences at the commencement with Popeye Vol. 1: “I Yam What I Yam.”

The books qualify as near-architectural marvels in their own right – towering, heavy-stock packages with die-cut front-cover windows and an interior design that showcases many days’ worth of the newspaper feature with each spread. A full-color section devotes a page to each of what originally had served as Sunday-supplement episodes, complete to the extent of reproducing Segar’s subordinate feature, Sappo, about a household in perpetual turmoil.

The stories in Vol. 2 include a wild Frontier Gothic pitting Popeye’s entourage against a mob of cattle rustlers; and a scathingly funny commentary upon charity-vs.-greed, in which Popeye attempts a banking career in defiance of all practical sense. There surfaces a gemlike example of Segar’s gift for mangling and/or improving upon the langridge: When Popeye uses the adjective liberous, does he mean “liberal,” or “generous,” huh? Neither – he means liberous, and So There. The book also sports a touching tribute to Segar from Beetle Bailey’s Mort Walker.

(more…)

ComicMix Radio: Action Guaranteed For ‘Incredible Hulk’

No matter what turns up on the big screen next week, The Incredible Hulk will be action-packed. That’s the promise we got from director Louis Leterrier, plus:

— William Messner-Loebs goes Boom!

— The Hulk producer acquired more comics

— Baseball cards go digital, but how do we get the gum?

And are you shocked? More sellouts at Marvel. Get the scoop now by pressing the button!

 

 

 And remember, you can always subscribe to ComicMix Radio podcasts via badgeitunes61x15dark-5528797 or RSS!

 

Happy Birthday: Graham Ingels

Born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1915, Graham Ingels began work early, joining the work force at 14, shortly after his father died. At 16 he began doing art jobs. He married at 20 and entered the Navy at 27 in 1943. After WWII, Ingels worked for Fiction House, Magazine Enterprises, and several other comic book and pulp magazine publishers.

In 1948, he began drawing Western and romance stories at EC Comics. He switched to the horror line—Tales from the Crypt, The Vault of Horror, and The Haunt of Fear—as soon as they began and was quickly dubbed “Ghastly Graham Ingels” for his facility with the genre. By 1952, Ingels was even signing his work as “Ghastly.”

After the horror line was canceled in the early 1950s, Ingels contributed to other EC lines, and then did some work for Classics Illustrated after EC folded in the mid-1950s.

He later taught art in Westport, Connecticut, and then became an art instructor in Florida. Ingels died in 1991.

 

The Art of Harvey Comics Exhibit Announced

Later this month, Richie Rich, Casper the Ghost and the rest of the Harvey Comics crew will be the focus of a new exhibit in San Francisco’s Cartoon Art Museum.

According to Diamond’s industry news site, Scoop:

Beginning June 28, 2008 and running through November 30, the Cartoon Art Museum will host “Harvey Comics: From Richie Rich to Wendy the Witch: The Art of Harvey Comics,” an exhibit celebrating the art and characters including Casper, The Friendly Ghost; Wendy, The Good Little Witch; Richie Rich, The Poor Little Rich Boy; Hot Stuff, The Little Devil; Sad Sack; Joe Palooka; Little Dot; Little Audrey; Little Lotta, and many more. Original art from various Harvey comic books and merchandise by the likes of Warren Kremer and Steve Muffatti, who together defined the Harvey “look,” will be on display along with artwork by Ernie Colón, Sid Couchey, Howard Post, Fred Rhoads, Ham Fisher, Dom Sileo, Marty Taras, and many more.

There would seem to be a lot for Harvey Comics fans to like about this exhibit, but let’s hope they gloss over the ’90s film adaptations of Richie Rich and Casper the Friendly Ghost. shudder

J.K. Rowling’s Harvard Commencement Address

The most recent class of Harvard University graduates were ushered out of their college years by none other than Harry Potter novelist J.K. Rowling this week, who gave a commencement speech titled "The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination."

The Harvard University Gazette has published a full transcript of the speech, which includes the following thoughts on failure and how it relates to some of the graduates she addressed:

I am not dull enough to suppose that because you are young, gifted and well-educated, you have never known hardship or heartbreak. Talent and intelligence never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the Fates, and I do not for a moment suppose that everyone here has enjoyed an existence of unruffled privilege and contentment.

However, the fact that you are graduating from Harvard suggests that you are not very well-acquainted with failure. You might be driven by a fear of failure quite as much as a desire for success. Indeed, your conception of failure might not be too far from the average person’s idea of success, so high have you already flown academically.

Rowling also received an honorary doctor of letters degree from the university.

 

(via Pop Candy)

Me, Come MoCCA – by Martha Thomases

I like New York in June. How about you?

There’s all the hippie, flower-child kinds of reasons. The days are warm; the nights are cool. The leaves provide dense shade, like stained glass windows from a Tiffany dream. The humidity is low, so the garbage isn’t baking on the sidewalks. Nature is reborn. It feels good to have a body.

There are also the 21st Century Geek Squad reasons. Free music in the parks. The summer movie season is at full throttle. The big cross-over events in comics are up and running, and, even when I don’t like them, they make the comic shops fun to be in on Wednesdays (fanboy fight!). Network TV is all reruns, but the cable networks bring in new stuff. The Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art has a show on superhero costumes.

Best of all, there’s MoCCA.

More precisely, the Art Festival sponsored by the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art. Usually held on the last weekend in June, this year, instead, it’s being held on the first. Today and tomorrow.

Now, if you’re a regular reader of these columns, you may have noticed that my tastes run to the pop. I like my comics fantastic. True, I also enjoy believable characterizations and witty dialogue, but mostly, I look to comics for escapism. Any coincidental addition of artistic merit to my entertainment is a bonus. (more…)

Webcomic News Roundup: MoCCA, Silly Sketches and Somber Tales

I’ve spent most of the day looking over MoCCA Art Festival schedules and guest lists for this weekend, so it’s been a light one here at ComicMix. Before I slide back into MoCCA madness, here are some short bursts of info and links from the webcomics scene that I’ve been meaning to share.

Yesterday, Diesel Sweeties creator Rich Stevens ended "two years of procrastinating" by announcing the launch of online tee shirt store teeshirtparty.com. Simply put, the store will feature "our favorite tee shirts designed by independent artists and bloggers." Go ahead and give it a look.

On a side note, I would also like to point out that, out of the five artists currently associated with Tee Shirt Party, ComicMix has already interviewed (or is in the process of interviewing) four of ’em. Expect to hear from me soon, John.

In his first of two mentions in this roundup, Fleen’s Gary Tyrrell sparked an interesting comment-thread debate when he posted his thoughts on Hero By Night creator DJ Coffman’s parting of ways with Platinum Studios. (more…)

The Religious Implications of ‘Doctor Who’

Various news sites are reporting that church leaders in England are studying the "religious parallels" between the BBC television series Doctor Who and certain themes of Christianity.

According to Telegraph:

They have been urged to use examples from the programme in their sermons in an attempt to make Christianity more relevant to teenagers.

At a conference last week, vicars watched Doctor Who clips that were said to illustrate themes of resurrection, redemption and evil.

It analysed the similarities between the Doctor and Christ, and whether daleks are capable of change.

The reports mention a few other examples, including The Doctor’s time-travelling TARDIS as a representation of a church and, as Wired blog "The Underwire" pointed out, they both appear in Christmas specials. 

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