Tagged: comics

The Rules of Travel, by Martha Thomases

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  • January 12, 2008

You can tell it’s January by the seed catalogs in the mailbox. No matter how dark and gloomy the day might be, Burpee and other seed spreaders assure you that someday, soon, the sun will shine and plants will grow.

I’m thinking about a vacation.

“But, Martha,” you say. “You’re a glamorous, successful woman! You have an exciting career that takes you all over the country, where you get to hang out with interesting creative people, all expenses paid. Your job is comics. Why should you need a vacation?”

It’s true that I’m extremely lucky. I get to work in my chosen field and get paid for my work. I get to live in New York City, the veritable Center of the Universe™. Every time I get up in the morning, I have the opportunity to see masterpieces of the visual, audio and kinetic arts. Some of the finest merchants on the planet have their flagship stores within a few miles of my apartment, easily accessible by inexpensive mass transit. Restaurants compete to see who can offer the most exotic, the most exquisite, the most yummy of foods. Why would I need a vacation?

All of this is true. I spent most of my adolescence scheming of ways to visit New York. As soon as I moved here, I met people in the comics business, and exploited them to the best of my ability so that I could learn how to get into the business (thanks, Denny!). I’m livin’ the dream, baby. (more…)

Happy 78th birthday, Tintin!

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  • January 10, 2008

Today is the anniversary of a great comic debut: the funny pages revealed in 1929 the adventures of the worldly Tintin. That weird little mohawk, that smart, itsy dog, who knew the French could come up with something so, that is, tres, charming? Tintin was so popular in fact that it has been translated into over 50 different languages. But trulee, you ‘ahven’t experee-unst ze real Teenteen unteel you ahv red eet een zee oreejenal wan.

Marv Wolfman wins National Jewish Book Award

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  • January 9, 2008

This just in from Marv Wolfman:

I don’t know too many details or the specific category as I just got the phone call but my book, Homeland: The Illustrated History of the State of Israel has just won the National Jewish Book Award. This is supposed to be the most prestigious of all the Jewish organizations.  Once I learn more I’ll put it up on my website, but as I just got the call I thought I’d share it.

Homeland has previously won the Moonbeam Children’s Book Award for  non-fiction, the USAbooknews.com adult award for history/politics and  last week received a Notable Book for teenagers by the Sydney Taylor  Book Award for the Association of Jewish Libraries. That means the comic-based book, actually inspired by my old History of the DC  Universe book, has won non-comics acclaim for kids, teens and adults. As I say I don’t yet know the category for the National Jewish Book award but in that world this is the big one.

Homeland is drawn by Mario Ruiz and published by Nachshon Press.

Mazel tov, bubby.

Say It’s So, GI Joe!

The world is back in order and comic books are on their regular schedule again with a nice array of four color fun flooding into the comic stores this week, and a sizable stack of DVDs as well. ComicMix Radio steps up to the plate and fearlessly combs through them all!

Plus:

• It’s a grand slam sell out for the Ras Al Ghul story arc

• GI Joe gets a Wayons in the cast

• If you are burned out on Primaries, relief and a few laughs are just a click away

Press The Button and we’ll let you off the hook for at least one of your New Year’s resolutions!

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One More Day Too Many, by Mike Gold

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  • January 7, 2008
Damn. They blew it.
 
Pulling off those universe-shattering “everything you knew yesterday will be wrong tomorrow” budget-busting bookshelf-breaking crossovers is a bitch. Few of them prove to be worth anybody’s effort, most of them are contradicted within a few weeks of their conclusion, and there have been way, way too many such “events” for any of them to be actual events. 
 
Marvel’s Civil War was different. For one thing, it was actually about something – it took on issues and concerns that were metaphors for what has been going on in the so-called real world. For another, it had at least three really, really interesting story-threads: the devolution of Tony Stark’s humanity, the death of Steve Rogers (as opposed to the death of Captain America, which didn’t happen), and the outing of Spider-Man and the resultant impact it had on Peter Parker, his career and his family.
 
I was left with a degree of personal involvement that had been much greater than previously. Marvel had instituted real change, and while we all know change is a constant and that at some point some of it would be contradicted eventually – somebody, at some point in the future, will probably resurrect Steve Rogers, although I hope not – the “event” ended with my being more curious about what would follow than any other such mega-crossover. Silly me.
 
O.K. Now we get to the spoilers, so if you haven’t read the last few Spiders-Man, and you haven’t seen any of the covers or house ads, and you haven’t listened to the hubbub at your friendly neighborhood comics shop, and you’d temporarily gone deaf and blind after seeing Alvin and the Chipmunks, you might want to stop right here. Or you can view this as a public service. And now, back to our regularly scheduled rant.
 

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McFarlane, Sim, Kirkman, and Pigs? Oh my!

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  • January 6, 2008

Less than a week into the New Year and our monitor screen is already covered in sticky notes. Stand by for Operation Clean Up!

If you are one of the fans who want a look at its eagerly anticipated Todd McFarlane Productions’ The Simpsons Series 2 Action Figure Assortment then simply click here. As we told you, it isn’t just a few jpegs. The site has complete details on the figures, including their specifications and a number of high-quality, full-color photographs of the finished pieces, as well as photos of the packaging. The site also includes QuickTime VR movies of the figures and handy list of available retailers.

Everybody seems to be weighing in on Dave Sim’s new comic book project, Glamourpuss. You can see previews here. Keep in mind, it’s about a light year and a half away from Cerebus, Dave describes it as a parody of the fashion industry plus an homage to the classic “soap opera” comics strips of the 50s, like On Stage. It’s set to debut in April. 

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Manga Friday: Monkeying Around

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  • January 4, 2008

I’m often most interested in the decadent phase of an artistic movement, the point when it starts turning on itself. Snarky parody, convoluted derivative plots, art that’s clearly a rip-off of someone else’s style – this and more amuses me. So I’m happy that I finally gave in to temptation and picked up Even a Monkey Can Draw Manga.

I found it on the “how to draw” shelf, which sort-of makes sense: it’s a parody of books about how to draw manga. But I tend to doubt it’ll find many readers over there; I expect the people looking for drawing guides are serious, devoted, dour young folks who won’t be in the mood for zany humor. (The fact that this book was published in 2002, and one lonely copy was still poking around on the shelf, tends to support that idea.)

But, if you do manage to find it, Monkey is quite funny. In it, fictionalized versions of the creators (Koji Aihara, 19 years old and Kentaro Takekuma, 22 years old, as they’re billed in the book) talk about how they’re going to conquer the world of manga, in a very funny overwrought style, full of full-face close-ups. (Which are also essentially the same in every single episode; there’s some very obvious humor and some sly hidden humor in this as well.) Takekuma, the older, seasoned manga pro, then proceeds to teach Aihara the lessons of manga – this book contains the first nineteen of them. (There’s a second volume promised at the end; I don’t know how much more material appeared in Japan.)

The lessons start with the very obvious and basic – drawing borders, facial expressions, and then figures. (Takekuma recommends copying from other artists to do that last one, gleefully insisting that everyone does it.) Then Takekuma moves on to explaining where ideas and stories come from – everyone else’s stories and ideas, of course. After that, there are a series of lessons about particular manga genres, which are in turn shows to be completely cliché-ridden and obvious. (more…)

Everything Old is New (Year) Again, by Elayne Riggs

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  • January 2, 2008

elayne100-8464252It’s the first business day of 2008 and, as I noted a few weeks ago, time for many pop-culture mavens to present their Best of 2007 lists. Alas, I will not be one of those. I can’t remember most of what I read in 2007, a blur of a year for me at the best of times due to the losses I suffered. But this isn’t new for me; I can barely remember the fiction I read or watch more than a half hour or so afterwards. It’s just the way my mind works. The only time I was able to do yearly wrap-ups and "Best Of"s was when I was regularly reviewing about a dozen comics every week, because I could refer to my previous work, but even then it was tough because I didn’t grade the stuff, I just talked about it.

My low retention rate is one reason why re-reading cherished books I’ve had for years is so fulfilling to me. It contains both the comfort of revisiting something vaguely familiar to me and the excitement of seeing it all anew. I was very happy to have received so many comments on my last column (thanks so much, all!). Obviously children’s books are beloved by a lot of adult pop culture geeks besides me. That’s really wonderful, and I think it proves the point that all-ages stuff really does mean stuff written for the young and the young-at-heart, rather than exclusively for the young. (It probably doesn’t hurt that we’re all comics people too, and have all experienced the knee-jerk reactions of many non-comics readers that we’re too old for our hobby, with its accompanying implicit assumption that all-ages literature ought not be enjoyed by, well, all ages.)

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Thar Was The Year That Was

The ball has dropped and Time Square is swept clean, but ComicMix Radio wants to be among the last to drive a nail into 2007 with our own lists of the Cool and the Not So, including our choice for one of the most under appreciated runs in comics (and the picture gives it away) .

Plus:

• It’s quality over quantity this week in our list of new comics and DVDs, which might give you a chance to catch up on all the stuff you bought in December

•  Todd McFarlane shows off The Simpsons

• Image restarts The Golden Age Of Comics

Pressing The Button now is even cooler than it was last year!

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Yeah, Robert Burns got it right…

  • News
  • January 1, 2008

No doubt you’ve seen the awesome (and I mean that in the traditional sense of the word) response to John Ostrander’s column last week in tribute to our friend Paul (Zeus) Grant. As of this writing, there have been 78 responses to John’s piece — quite a lot for an upstart operation such as ours. Lots of good people: old friends, folks I haven’t heard from in a while, industry professionals, fellow comics fans. Damn, what a turnout.

Paul would have been pleased. Well, not with the "his death" part – we all could have done without that. But as one of the very first comic fans to understand, appreciate and act upon the relationship between the Internet and comics fandom, he was the grandfather of this project, as well as the many, many others to be found online. So it is most fitting that this genuine outpouring of love, this virtual wake we’ve been having, is being done in honor of him.  Coming at the end of the year, at the moment of auld lang syne... how fitting. And how grounding.

Comics fandom was founded, in part, to honor the first generation of writers and artists who had no choice but to survive the humiliating travails of Fredrick Wertham and the funny book burnings of the late 40s and 50s. Most of those folks are gone now, but most of them knew the respect that we have for their work. They knew their names would live on. They might not have seen efforts such as the Grand Comic Book Database, but they saw their names in the fanzines, the comics history books, and on the autograph pads at decades of conventions.

And now we’re losing the first generation of comics fans. Jerry Bails died about 13 months ago, Paul this past month. Others of our founding fathers and mothers passed previously, of course, but now it’s becoming clear that we must honor those who got the ball rolling, in mimeo-zines all the way up to the Internet.

John did a swell job last week honoring those who put it all together. Thanks, bro.

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Seeing as how I’m filling in for Denny, I want to honor this time-slot with a RECOMMENDED READING offering. But, unlike Mr. O’Neil, I’m going to recommend a comic book — a mini-series one-third done that will no doubt be anthologized: Kyle Baker’s take on Iraq War II, Special Forces, from Image Comics. Perhaps the most important comic on the racks right now.

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