Tagged: comics

Review: ‘Red Colored Elegy’ by Seiichi Hayashi

red-colored-elegy-8097679Red Colored Elegy
By Seiichi Hayashi
Drawn & Quarterly, July 2008, $24.95

[[[Red Colored Elegy]]] is like no other manga you’ve ever seen, a blast of pop art- and film-inspired storytelling from 1971 that was hugely influential to a generation of Japanese youth but has never been published in English until now. It’s like the American underground comics of the same era in being a break from the mainstream comics of its place and era, but unlike them – and unlike anything else I’ve seen before [[[RAW]]] in the ‘80s – in its style and visual language.

Sachiko Yamaguchi and Ichiro Nishimoto are a young couple, both connected to the manga/anime world, living together in Tokyo but unsure of what to do with their lives, in the way of all restless young people everywhere. Ichiro wants to be an artist of some kind: he abandoned painting when he couldn’t make a living at it, and quits an animation job to work on a graphic novel that he can’t sell. Sachiko is a tracer for another animation company; she has only the ambitions of a girl in a story by a man: to get married, to have kids, to run a house, to have a life.

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Har-Asses, by Elayne Riggs

  • News
  • August 20, 2008

I must confess, I didn’t read a lot of San Diego con reports this year. My SDCC attending days are probably well behind me; in addition to Robin just not being as into comic conventions as my first husband Steve was (maybe it’s because, for many pros, conventions are part of their job, whereas for the rest of us they’re part of a hobby), between hotel and airfare costs the darn thing has just gotten ridiculously expensive, and that’s if you can get a room or a flight or even admittance at all.

Plus, there’s the mobility thing, which has started becoming less of an issue now that my new job has increased my physical activity to a level it hasn’t seen in a number of years and my 50-year-old body is responding accordingly, much to my surprise. Of course, this year’s excuse has also been the job thing; after being out of work over half the year, I wasn’t about to make plans to travel anywhere further than New Jersey during the first few months of my new employment!

But, aside from the always-enjoyable pictorials that many folks uploaded to their blogs, the two posts that piqued my interest the most this year had to do with harassment. Yes, we’re still talking about harassment in this day and age. But, as has been pointed out recently in response to hypocritical and sanctimonious politicians presuming to lecture Russia from their own lack of moral high ground with admonitions like “this doesn’t happen in the 21st century” — well yes, yes it does. Anything that’s happening now is by definition happening in the 21st century. One can certainly argue that we as a civilization ought to have moved beyond sexual harassment by now, but one can argue we should have moved beyond various forms of discrimination and intimidation hundreds of years ago as well. It’s still happening even today, and it still needs to be addressed.

Fortunately in the 21st century we have an amazing communications tool that, to our collective knowledge, has never existed before in the entirety of human history. This electronic paper trail certainly has its flaws, but it also helps hold people accountable when there’s no other recourse. So when Rachel Edidin writes an open letter decrying the behavior of someone at San Diego who sought hugs from unwilling strangers, it gets discussed in an open forum where all sorts of interesting observations are made. One commenter noted it wasn’t "necessarily a male privilege thing," while Rachel herself added "I was generally hella impressed with the general respect for personal space at SDCC. In crowds packed shoulder-to-shoulder, I encountered only a very little bit of pushing, and aside from Creepy Hug Guy, I didn’t have a single encounter that made me uncomfortable." Someone else pointed out that "In Canada pestering a stranger for physical contact is a form of criminal assault even if it’s not intended sexually." (more…)

Etch-A-Sketch Comic Art

  • News
  • August 19, 2008

Earlier this year I discovered the blog of the Etch-A-Sketchist. An artist whose medium is incredibly complex and heartbreakingly temporary: the Etch-A-Sketch. The child’s toy that is simple to learn but next to impossible to master. The Etch-A-Sketchist’s topics are heavily pop-culture influenced but breathtaking in their detail.

When I first discovered his site, I wrote him and asked if he ever did any comic book based images. He wrote back that he only had done a black costume Spider-Man, but I should check back at the end of the summer after all the superhero movies were released.

I made a note on my calendar program and, sure enough, there are lots to see now. I’ve posted a few after the jump.

Enjoy…. but don’t shake your screen.

(more…)

weill-1-4297233

Oh, by Dennis O’Neil

  • News
  • August 19, 2008

weill-1-4297233Sunday, August 17: 155 days left.

Our man the brush clearer is back in Crawford, taking it easy. Having already set a record for presidential vacation days, he’s obviously trying for a record that no future chief executive can possibly hope to break. This may not be how everyone would like to be remembered.

Back when I occupied the celestial throne that is the sinecure of all those noble beings known – here you may genuflect – as editors … make that Editors – this was the time of year when life got calmer. Big travel was done – no trips to distant cities to attend conventions – and the increased summer publishing load completed. We put out fewer issues in the fall because, conventional wisdom had it, the kids were too busy with school concerns to bother with funny books. The same logic dictated that during the summer we cram the newsstands because, presumably, the nation’s youth had nothing better to do with their long, humid days than to laze around getting massive four-color fixes and, besides, since they didn’t have to buy crayons or switchblades or whatever school kids bought, they had disposable income to spend on our productions. Which, of course, was why late spring and early summer demanded industriousness from editorial types. Those printing presses out there in the Midwest were maws…

All that was probably true once. But because the ways comics are marketed, and to some extent read, I doubt that it is true now. But I don’t know. Any editors – working editors, that is – care to enlighten the old man?

The point is, though I was a comics editor at the two major companies for about 23 years… I don’t know. I have a sense that the business has changed a lot in the seven years since I occupied the celestial throne mentioned three paragraphs ago (seven years already?). My skills might be more-or-less okay (though I’m not even sure of that), but my attitudes and assumptions would need work.

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Review: ‘Flight, Vol. 5’ edited by Kazu Kibuishi

 flight-51-4889565Flight, Volume Five
Edited by Kazu Kibuishi
Villard/Random House, July 2008, $25.00

As always, the stories in the annual [[[Flight]]] volume are gorgeous and fun, created by a group of artists who worked on storyboards and other art for animated movies, and Flight is easily the most visually diverse of the new breed of mass-market comics anthologies.

But I can’t help but think that most of these stories are square watermelons – the products of creators trained and taught to run their imaginations down narrow channels to produce upbeat, kid-friendly stories with defined beats and clear morals. Nearly every story in Flight 5 could be seen as the treatment for a big-budget “family” animated movie, and many of them feel explicitly like the first scene or two of such a movie. Even once these guys – and all but two of them are guys, which some people may find notable – have been given the freedom of Flight, they continue to tell stories in that one, confined mode, like so many victims of Stockholm syndrome unwilling to leave their own prisons.

The stories are each well-told, but, as they pile up one after another, the number of naïf protagonists learning about the world (often under mortal peril) become just more variations on the same theme. There’s the fox-like world-saver of Michael Gagne’s “[[[The Broken Path]]],” the anthropomorphic fox-man of Reagan Lodge’s “[[[The Dragon]]],” the self-consciously ironic Bigdome of Paul Rivoche’s “[[[Flowers for Mama]]],” Dave Roman’s series of folks who could all be “The Chosen One,” the probably-delusional child Princess of Pluto in Svetlana Chmakova’s “On the Importance of Space Travel,” and – the youngest and most obvious lesson-telling of all of these – boy hero of Richard Pose’s “Beisbol 2.”

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Amazon Now Selling Comic Subscriptions

  • News
  • August 17, 2008

Maybe some bean counter finally tallied up all those comic book trade paperback sales. But Amazon.com, the world’s largest online retailer of, well, just about everything is now offering comic book subscriptions. Not for collected editions, but the regular old monthly books that some call “floppies.”

Is this a direct attack against your local comic store? Hardly. Amazon has been offering magazine subscriptions for years now. Adding comics to the mix is just an expansion of that business.

The offerings from Amazon are for the more mainstream, monthly comics. Not the best-sellers only found in direct market shops, like Secret Invasion, but titles more likely to appeal to the “My son really liked the Dark Knight movie, so let me get him a subscription to Batman” set.

It’s true that this could potentially take some casual market dollars out of dealers’ hands, but today’s shared universe, interconnected comics might have those readers seeking out stores for more titles. And think of the benefit to readers who live nowhere near a comic shop.

Robert Kirkman’s Creator-Owned Call-Out?

Reaction to Robert Kirkman’s recent "mission statement" video has been creating quite the buzz around the comics industry lately, and rather than surfing every message board, column and blog in the comics world to find out what everyone’s saying, there are a few good places to go for roundups.

First off, here’s the video that started all of the hub-bub:

 

 

 

While the banjo music used in the video has actually prompted a discussion of its own on some sites, JK Parkin over at Blog@ has put together an exceptionally comprehensive roundup of who’s saying what and where it’s being said around the ‘Tubes. Naturally, one of the busiest (and awesomely snarky) chats about the video is currently underway over at The Bendis Board, including this bit from Bendis himself: " … coming soon from image comics: MASSIVE GENERALIZATIONS!!" More can be found at the sites Parkin lists in the roundup, with others poppingup here and there on various other sites. (Or possibly, this one?)

Canadians in Comics: An A-Z Guide

  • News
  • August 14, 2008

Over at Hypergeek, newly citizen-ized Edward Kaye has decided to celebrate his Canadian residency by profiling comic book creators who also hail from areas north of U.S. border. That in itself is an ambitious project fur sure, but he’s doing it in A-Z form. He kicked it off yesterday with a look at the career of Adrian Alphona, co-creator of Marvel’s teen superteam Runaways.

Adrian Alphona is known for his intricate linework, incredible grasp of the human figure, as well as a good understanding of teen fashion. Many fans of Runaways have commented that the characters actually look like people you could find in Los Angeles, the city which provides the primary setting for the title.

A-Z of Canadian Comic Book Creators looks to continue with 25 more profiles of north-of-the-border comics people, so now it’s time to start taking bets on whether he’ll be able to find that many Canadian creators with the appropriate letters in their names.

No pressure, Edward, no pressure…

Unscripted, by Elayne Riggs

  • News
  • August 13, 2008

Last weekend, New York City had its annual Del Close marathon. I’m sure our esteemed editor Mike Gold and my fellow columnist John Ostrander were somewhere about, if only in spirit. I was home doing housework, lounging about and occasionally glancing at the Olympics. Which can be tough, by the way, if you’ve got a female gaze. I do wish the men’s and women’s sports getups bore a bit more resemblance to each other, kinda like the outfits most of the countries wore during the Parade of Nations.

But instead we have women’s volleyball team uniforms, for both the indoor and beach variety, that consist of either porn-movie short-shorts or bikini bottoms, while the guys get to wear nice loose regulation exercise-type shorts. I cry unfair! Butt shot after butt shot, and the only time my prurient interest is slightly catered to is when it rains and the boys’ clothes start to lovingly cling to them… er. Ahem. Where was I? Oh yeah, and what’s with the creepy male coaches for all the women’s teams? In this day and age that’s as unseemly as me drooling over young nubile volleyball-playing boys… Uh. Well.

So, I’ve been sitting here improv’ing on my computer keyboard. I do that a lot. Maybe it’s the writer’s version of riffing on a jazz tune. Or was that reefering? I’m so not hep. Robin says our marriage sometimes feels like a never-ending improv routine. I think the best marriages ought to be like that, with two well-matched partners constantly playing off each other. Of course, as accident-prone as I am, I could wish my particular situation involved more wit and less slapstick, but there you are. (more…)

ReVamp Vampirella and Win!

  • News
  • August 12, 2008

vampirella19zx0-00-3204157This is pretty much the contest that defines the term "revamp," folks. Harris Comics and the Project: Rooftop crew are looking for aspiring artists to redesign the buxom bombshell Vampirella and win a variety of prizes provided by the Vampirella publisher. Vampirella is celebrating her 40th anniversary next year (not bad for a 40-something, eh?) and interested artists can win the following:

Grand Prize (1) –
The winning entry will appear as a pinup in a future issue of Vampirella, and receive two comics signed respectively by Joe Jusko and Dan Brereton.

Second Prize (1) –
A Vampirella wall poster illustrated by Jose Gonzalez, and receive two comics signed respectively by Joe Jusko and Dan Brereton.

Third Prize (1) –
A Vampirella T-shirt illustrated by Stephen Segovia, and receive two comics signed respectively by Joe Jusko and Dan Brereton.

In addition to these prizes, the finalists selected by the judges will also be up on a fan poll at Vampirella.com for the "Fan Selection" prize of a limited edition Vampirella print.

The judges for the contest are a trio of notable Vampirella names, including original Vampirella costume designer Trina Robbins, frequent series artist Joe Jusko and upcoming Vampirella Quarterly artist Dan Brereton. Send in your submissions to projectrooftop@gmail.com, with the subject line: "ReVamp" — and keep your fingers crossed.

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