2012 came a little early today: Vinnie Tartamella writes to tell us that Bluewater’s comics biographies were discussed on The View today, specifically the Barbara Walters edition, for which Tartamella provided the cover. For those who work during the day, The View is an hourlong discussion show in which a variety of colorful yentas talk about this that and the other thing, endlessly. To be honest, if you turned a camera on The Beat and her pals in about 25 years, or your mom right now, it would be exactly like The View.

According to Tartamella, the ladies also showed the covers of the Oprah Winfrey and Michelle Obama bio comics.

You can see Babs seems pretty enthusiastic in these screen caps, but Elisabeth Hasselbeck, as usual, looks like she just smelled a ten-day-old egg/turnip/limberger casserole.

• The Examiner reports that Eiichiro Oda’s One Piece is about to set a record for the biggest first printing ever for a manga in Japan with 2.85 million copies of volume 56 of the series.

One Piece Vol. 56, which will officially go on sale on December 4th in Japan, will eclipse the previous record for first print runs of 2.63 million copies set by both One Piece Vol. 27 and Vol. 55, according to Seikei News. One Piece reportedly has approximately 176 million total copies of its books in circulation.

Published since 1997, One Piece is the best selling manga of all times. In Japan it’s been adapted into 10 movies, a 400+ episode animated TV show, video games and anything else you can name. Despite being a perfect example of episodic storytelling, with a vibrant, memorable cast and endless supply of invention, the published version hasn’t caught on quite as well as Naruto here in the US — maybe because the version of the anime that aired here was so heavily edited and badly dubbed? To be fair, it’s hard to imagine the original airing unaltered on Saturday morning cartoon TV…luckily they don’t have Saturday morning cartoon TV anymore!

• In his always scorching liveblogging of Previews Chris Butcher mentions the amazing Seven Miles a Second by David Wojnarowicz and James Romberger, and flushes out the information that an expanded edition exists without a publisher via a tweet for Calvin Reid:

>@calreid: I think I Can answer. Reid & Reed planned a new revised edition of Seven Miles A Second, which was completed but has never been published. Reed pulled the plug on the imprint before we could pub. The new edition has about 20 new pages. I hope someone publishes it.
I think Seven Miles a Second is one of the great comics memoirs and an important record of David W. & of a seminal time in NY.

Ya hear that, publishers? A seminal, award-winning expanded edition of a comic by two respected arts figures without a home!

• Simon Jones reports that he’s ending the eroto-manga anthology magazine Comic AG with issue 110. Today’s publishing model made it more work than it was worth.

Comic AG is still breaking even, but that doesn’t mean it is without cost… it takes time and energy to put out issue after issue. So it was still a drain on our resources, if not financial, then spiritual. With each release, we were slowly marching toward an event horizon, a place of no return, where we’d have to ask ourselves the hard question: is this worth it? The answer is “no.” The answer was always “no.” The variable was when we’d reach this conclusion, not if.

Although now known as part of the San Diego Comic-Con’s portfolio of events, APE, the alternative Press Expo, as the brainchild of SLG president Dan Vado, and was held in San Jose for its first few years. Although Vado’s involvement with APE ended a while ago, he’s back at it with the San Jose Comics Festival, a series of one day events that he hopes will become part of a wider cultural festival. The first one will be held January 17th, 2010 with guests Landry Walker, Rich Koslowski and Jamaica Dyer. Details below:

SLG Publishing announced the founding of a new series of comics festivals focused on indy and small press comics and zines. The San Jose Comics Festival will be a series of single day events held throughout the year, but SLG President Dan Vado hoped that the event would grow into a larger, city-wide festival that would take place in the various galleries and public buildings in downtown San Jose. The aim is to create a comics related event that is different from that standard convention with an aim to becoming one of the biggest free events of its kind in the United States.

“We did a trial run of a single event in our warehouse earlier this year and we hit our projections in regards to attendance” said Vado. “As we try and develop and grow the festival we will reach out to the other galleries and to places like San Jose State and to the public library to host comic related events and allow attending artists, creators and publishers to set up and display their work.” While Vado’s previous convention brainchild, the Alternative Press Expo, was started as an event meant to spotlight the independent and alternative comics creators and publishers, the San Jose Comics Festivals will not focus on a single type of comic or creator “the Comics Festivals will be about people who do the work, regardless of what kind of comics they choose to produce” added Vado.

The next San Jose Comics Festival will be held on January 16th  at the SLG Publishing gallery/warehouse compound in downtown San Jose. Attending artists will be announced at the event website www.sjcomicfest.com. Attending artists at the inaugural event included Jamaica Dyer (Weird Fishes) Rich Koslowski (3 geeks) and Landry Walker (Tron, Little Gloomy). Admission will be free.

For more information about the San Jose Comics Fests contact Dan Vado via email at
dvado@slgpubs.com 

At his LJ, which often explores comics fandom and history of the early ’70s, Scott Edelman unearths an issue of Comics Reader from June 1973 with a cover by a “future comic-book writer and editor, not at all known for being an artist.” We’ve posted a bit of the cover — go over to Scott’s blog to play along.

A lot of the writer/editors of the ’70s had artistic aspirations at the start of their engagement with comics, or at least could doodle pretty damned well. We can think of Marv Wolfman, Len Wein, Archie Goodwin, and Mark Evanier off the top of our head. We could swear Mike Carlin actually wrote and drew a comic for SLG back in the day, but the internet has expunged all records of it, so maybe we imagined that? Grant Morrison has been known to do convention sketches of many different Marvel and DC characters. Alan Moore has drawn comics. Our sketchbook includes a drawing of Sandman by Neil Gaiman. Doubtless many more — add to the list!

But anyway, who drew that piece? It isn’t Paul Levitz or Scott himself.

Via Bleeding Coolm a peek at a new Rick Veitch project, The Spotted Stone.

Veitch describes The Spotted Stone as a “kissing cousin” book to Can’t Get No – it is currently without a publisher.

Troop 142. Click for a larger version.

From her entries in Giant Robot’s Post It show.

• Despite a 70 percent drop-off, TWILIGHT stayed atop the Thanksgiving box office. But it got some competition from a film where Sandra Bullock mentors an offensive tackle, proving that teaming up somebody small and cute with somebody big and scary (but likable) still works!

• The first official photos from THE LOSERS have been released!

Sexy, aloof, multiethnic team of tough guys? Check.

Hot chick in a lacy tank top? With guns? Double Check! Sign us up.

• Codpiece alert! EW has revealed stills from an episdoe of Smallville that features Doctor Fate, Stargirl, Hawkman, and Green Arrow.

It is definitely a comfort to us that we live in a day and age when television producers take the time and effort to make sure that a Dr. Fate costume doesn’t look stupid when worn by a real actor.

§ Charles Hatfield reminds us that JH Williams IIIis a total badass who is able to mix formalist experimentation with affecting and evocative storytelling.

And then there’s JH Williams III, in whom graphic experimentation, the demands of narrative drawing, and the conventions of genre are perfectly counterpoised. These days, in the wake of the so-called widescreen genre aesthetic — all those hyperrealist godchildren of Adams and Ross, artists like Bryan Hitch and Steve McNiven and the more interesting John Cassaday — Williams is the new master of trick layouts, the one artist who is, month after month, doing more than anyone else to reinvigorate page design in mainstream comic books. Though capable of, indeed comfortable in, hyperrealism, he has, like Frank Quitely and few others, a flare for design that reintroduces a graphic energy to the straitened pages of today’s mainstream comics.

DC’s collection of the Rucka/Williams Detective/Batwoman series is coming out in June. Surely it will find a place in the Expedit.

§ Blogger Christopher Allen interviews blogger Sean T. Collins and there is much talk of reviewing and blogging that is of interest. We became particularly nostalgic at Collins’ evocation of the Early Days of the Comics Blogosphere when we were all so young and things were so simple.

§ Tom Spurgeon’s gift giving guide for 2009 includes many excellent suggestions, and also what comics his mother likes, which is more useful than you’d think.

(more…)

The Beat definitely lapsed into blog-silence this holiday weekend, but it was for a very good cause — the ongoing re-shelving and organization of our Hoarders-like graphic novel library. While we had the idea of the end result being the comics equivalent of Cribs — a Shelf Porn pictorial — we realized that releasing too much information about Stately Beat Manor’s ultra-high end layout and design would cause a national security breach that would make the Salahi Incident shrivel to insignificance. So alas, it must dwell only in the imagination.

However we can share the satisfaction of finally uniting so many brethren at long last — all the LOVE & ROCKETS collections in order, the works of Kyle Baker and Rick Veitch united in orderly fashion, Adrian Tomine and Tom Hart sections, Carol Tyler and Carol Swain, House properly shelved with Jessica Farm, and so on. Truly a majestic feeling.

The engine of this renaissance? Of course, it is the mighty Expedit:

(more…)

Last year’s ABANDONED CARS by Tim Lane, was a solid debut that didn’t get a lot of attention, which is a shame because Lane’s gritty, hardboiled stories were a nice counterpoint to comics’ occasional excess of shoe-gazing. Anyway, a paperback edition is coming out next year, and it will have two variant covers, recalling the dog-eared pulps of the past. One of them is above, but you’ll need to go to the link for the other.

Worth 1000 is having one of their Photoshop contests. This one involves animals as superheroes, and if you thought we would link to a picture of a monkey, you thought wrong.

Tomer Hanuka explains his approach to the cover for The Kiss Murder:

Illustration is like acting. you need to invest a strand of authentic emotion to make it work. otherwise it feels artificial. So you try to embody, in your head, the protagonist. Let’s see: you’re a slender man of Turkish descent who’s a computer wiz, a private detective, a black belt and an Audrey Hepburn look alike. most prominently you are a transvestite. you sit in your night club, ready to punch someone softly or kiss him to death. either-way it’s a deadly move. and then an epiphany: it’s in the shoulders– that potent combination of strength and sensuality. a pair of slender, well defined, boney yet muscular shoulders. a glorious pedestal for your pretty face.

Step by step in the link.

It’s Black Friday, people. Remember to be kind to the harried and overstressed retail employees.

We have much to be thankful for this year, and hope that everyone reading this is enjoying a safe, happy holiday.

One of the things we have to be grateful for is that Norman Rockwell’s “Freedom From Want” — of a series of four paintings saluting the Four Basic Freedoms– has to be one of the most parodied images of all times, so we always have something to post here.

This Redneck Thanksgiving from MAD Magazine is almost as well known. I have it in my little book of facts that it’s by Will Elder – I’m sure the peanut gallery will swiftly correct me if it isn’t.

(more…)

“In the Core Marvel Universe, a “gritty crime story” is one
where a blind lawyer ninja dressed as the Devil fights
a massive Sumo wrestler with a cane that shoots lasers…”

“Why is the living embodiment of love something called the Predator?”

If you thought yesterday’s A.V. Club Best Comics of the Aughts list was going to tiptoe by unnoticed and uncommented on, you were wide of the mark by a fair bit. Sean T. Collins delivers a total smackdown, from the lack of manga to the last of KRAMERS ERGOT to the lack of an ordered list.

By simply listing 25 books in alphabetical order, this list avoids making difficult and absolutely crucial distinctions regarding quality, dodging the hard work necessary to back those distinctions up with considered criticism. I don’t know what good a Best of the ’00s list that sits The Goon right next to Louis Riel does anybody under any circumstances, but at least a countdown would provide context; juxtaposing two books like that through sheer alphabetical accident provides us with no window into its authors’ critical worldview(s), and actually may do more harm than good in terms of articulating what matters. Frankly, I feel like it’s a cop-out.

Although a lot of the analysis on the list was flimsy, I’m actually not so big on the ordered list, really — this isn’t a slalom race. Why does someone have to come in 7th? Do we really need MORE arguing on the internets? Do we have the time to PROVE that Sean Phillips is a better artist than R.M. Guéra?
(more…)

When we ran the press release announcing the new New England Comic-Con last week, we were puzzled by one aspect of the acquisition by con impresario Gareb Shamus: namely that the show acquired had been running for 35 years. As revealed in the comments section and now a post by A. David Lewis, that’s because the show Shamus acquired was run only once by its current owners. Lewis lays out the facts and digs up all the scuttlebutt, as well:

My sources (who at this time wish to remain nameless) say that Shamus, indeed, is taking part in the show run once by Harrison. That is not a typo: It wasn’t “once run” by Harrison but, rather, run only once by him. Prior to that, it was overseen by Monkeyhouse Entertainment/Primate Productions as “The Boston Comic Book & Toy Spectacular,” frequently taking place at the Boston Radisson. (Note the convenience of dropping the “& Toy” from its title.) This no-frills, recurring event passed to Harrison recently when its original show-runner alledgedly got into trouble with the authorities for assaulting a person. Moreover, attendance at the latest Spectacular was less than 200 people, putting Harrison et all in dire straights.

Well, that is enough drama for one paragraph!

(more…)

Is the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal just trying to make us fret over the day when we can no longer Google their articles? The finance paper has had a recent rash of comics/animation related stories. Perhaps the most stark is this account of the dwindling fortunes of Japanese animators:

Morale is low. Industry executives estimate nine out of 10 new workers quit within three years, with the many talented employees leaving for better-paying jobs in areas like videogames. A survey conducted this year for industry executives showed that animators in their 20s made just 1.1 million yen ($11,000) a year on average, while those in their 30s earned 2.1 million yen.

Yasuna Tadanaga, 23 years old, left her position as an animator at a small Tokyo studio last year, only six months after landing what she thought was her dream job. To meet deadlines, Ms. Tadanaga worked 13 to 14 hours each day. During one month, she was given just one day off.

The grim state of the anime workers is because so much work is being farmed out to cheaper studios in Korea and China. Can’t someone do something? We hear Lou Dobbs is free.

¶ While a WSJ article on manhwa is mostly very positive, it’s not a free ride there, no sir. It seems that while everyone is off undercutting Japanese animators, it’s the Korean manhwa artists who are feeling the pinch at home from That Darned Internet. Trickle down economics, for sure.

Now artists are feeling the effects of free online content, despite manhwa’s growing popularity. Ten million Koreans read free Web comics, while only three million choose to pay, according to the Korean Culture and Content Agency, a government-affiliated body that promotes Korean arts around the world. In the past two years, at least 10 Korean cartoon magazines have stopped publication due to a lack of subscribers. South Korea only has 12 such magazines now, compared to 300 in Japan.

Even with the chunk of paying readers, many artists say they don’t receive a fair share of their Webtoon revenues. A Web site publisher usually pays a flat fee to cartoonists, then charges the readers a fee to view the cartoons, Mr. Park says. In this system, the publishers’ revenues hardly reach the artists. He is currently planning a Web site that will give a portion of the fees to the artists, possibly cutting out the publishers. The plan, unfortunately, still fails to address the illegal pirating of manhwa that has become so rampant.

¶ Moving back to the Occident, there’s a very interesting piece indeed on how Wikipedia updating is slowing down as volunteers walk away due to increased regulations and more nitpicking. Comics even rear their head:

Nina Paley, a New York cartoonist who calls herself an “information radical,” had no luck when she tried to post her syndicated comic strips from the ’90s. She does not copyright their artwork but instead makes money on ancillary products and services, making her perfect for Wikipedia’s free-content culture.

It took her a few days to decipher Wikipedia’s software.”I figured out how to do it with this really weird, ugly code,” she says. “I went to bed feeling so proud of myself, and I woke up and found it had been deleted because it was ‘out of scope.’”

A Wikipedia editor had decided that Ms. Paley’s comics didn’t meet the criteria for educational art. Another editor weighed in with questions about whether she had copyright permission for the photo of herself that she uploaded. She did.

¶ But the road to Nina Paley doesn’t end there– another piece breaks down how she manages to make $55,000 by giving away her animated film for free. There’s a lesson there for us all, methinks.

Artwork: A still from Paley’s Sita Sings the Blues.

Gerry Alanguilen writes that illustrator Sonny Trinidad has passed away in the Philippines. Known in the US for his work on Conan, Dracula, Morbius and DEADLY HANDS OF KUNG FU, Trinidad was also known as Celso Trinidad.

won the Best Serial Illustrator award during the 1984 KOMOPEB Parangal sa Komiks. His work VIRGA also won in the Best Novel Illustration Fantasy Category.

A native of Sta. Rosa, Laguna, Trinidad’s first professional exposure to comics came by way of working as an assistant to Francisco V. Coching, which would explain the similarity of his early work to Coching.

It must be said, in addition, Sonny Trinidad had the greatest name of any comics inker ever.