Things are slowing down…and so are we.

§Joe Sacco’s amazing FOOTNOTES IN GAZA, one of the most important books of the year, is out tomorrow, and the AP runs one of the first of many talking about the book’s The Matter of the Day

Sacco said in doing so he is trying to create a balance to what he calls the United States’ pro-Israeli bias.

A scene in “Palestine” shows an Israeli woman asking: “Shouldn’t you be seeing our side of the story?” Sacco’s cartoon self replies: “I’ve heard nothing but the Israeli side most of my life.”

§ The Daily Cross Hatch surveys several comics types like Tom Hart and Robin McConnell on the best comics of the decade. Even familiarity with only half of the named books would show what an amazing 10-year-period this was for comics.

§ AND YET, Comics Alliance continues its stinging 15 Worst Comics of the Decade list, moving into the Crisis Era and all that was blechhhh inducing.

As an artist, Deodato Jr.’s hands are clean when it comes to the horrific events of the story, but there’s no arguing that his realistic linework served as a magnifying glass to the slash-fiction horror that is imagining Norman Osborn in flagrante delicto.

§ Lev Grossman looks at the best characters of the decade and a couple of them are from comics. The Venture Bros. and Firefly are faring well in these kinds of roundups.

§ Of all of these roundups, the most spectacularly masochistic must be Graeme McMillan’s The Most Important Events Of 2000-2009, Comic Style which shows that it was a horrible, horrible decade of trauma for the Earth in these parlous times.

§ Dan Kois at NY Mag has his best comics of 2009 list.

§ You may be sick of all the talk about GIRL COMICS, but howabout Kelly Thompson talking to editor Mariah Huehner.

§ Sad news regarding Cesar Feliciano: his young daughter has passed away.

§ But happy news from Kelly Sue DeConnick and Matt Fraction.

§

The art becomes blocky, ugly computer generated stuff, and within four pages the characters have met God. God takes them skinny-dipping at the dawn of time, and then the rest of the series is devoted to Jemas’ creationist-lite beliefs about the dawn of man, which involve Wolverine, the first human.

It is hard to know which sentence from Comics Alliance’s description of MARVILLE in their The 15 Worst Comics of the Decade, Part 1 is the most mighty. Truly, there were some great moments in infamy in the ’00s. Can’t wait for part 2!

§ The folks at The Hooded Utilitarian are holding a Ghost World Roundtable You’ll find links to posts by kinukitty, Charles Reece, Richard Cook, and Noah Berlatsky in the above link. BUT ALSO SEE
Shaenon Garrity’s take.

§ We did not know that A WIZARD’S TALE by Kurt Busiek and David T. Wenzel was coming back into print.

§ Marvel’s destruction of a Chicago landmark in a comic book draws local media attention. BUt even in fiction there are limits:

“My first choice was to blow up Wrigley Field,” he says. “[Marvel Comics Editor in Chief] Joe Quesada is so in love with baseball, he couldn’t imagine blowing it up.”

MORE BEST OFS:
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§ Headline of the day! Cartoonist to Perform With Human Woman in Festival, Okay now, before you think this is a great day for cartoonists as they graduate from holding hands with a Cabbage Patch Kid, to maybe sitting side by side with an American Girl, to practicing small talk and saying “I’ll hit you with a text later, okay?” with a Real Doll, a cartoonist has made it to the final plateau…but, no, Human Woman is the name of an Icelandic band, and controversial, taboo busting cartoonist Hugleikur Dagsson will be collaborating with them. A seasonal sample of Dagsson’s art above.

§ Comixtalk presents its annual roundtable on webcomics, this time with Gary Tyrrell, Delos Woodruff, Shaenon Garrity, Fesworks, Derik A. Badman, Brigid Alverson, Larry “El Santo” Cruz, and Johanna Draper Carlson, Among other important topics, they really, really seriously talk about the impending death of the floppy.

You know, I remember when comics cost 12 cents, and floppies were the only format. (*Reaches for cane to beat some sense into the young’uns.*) That model worked because comics were a mass-market medium. Now comics cost $4 and can only be bought in special, inconveniently located stores. That’s fine if you’re marketing to the base, but you can’t bring in new readers if no one knows your product exists. That’s why I’m intrigued by Boom! Studios’ move back to the newsstand, which seems to be doing well. Put comics in front of the kids and they will buy them, especially if they are already familiar with the property (i.e. Toy Story, Wall-E, etc.). It’s not really an issue of technology, it’s distribution and marketing. I really think serendipity drives a lot of leisure purchases, especially where kids are concerned.

Cruz: I’m surprised it’s lasted in this format as long as it has. Paying close to $4 for what’s essentially something that’s Part 1 of a, say, 6 part story? Which you end up having to wait for the payoff over 8-10 months or so? That’s ridiculous. This is why everyone’s gravitating to the trade paperbacks: you get the entire story without the waiting period and its costs less. I think the death of the “floppy” comic is not only inevitable, but it’s also a good thing.

§ ICv2 continues its newsmakers interview series with Dark Horse’s Mike Richardson, Part One and Part Two:

Some people have said it’s bringing new people in. Let me say something. In 1988 when we did Aliens and it sold a bazillion copies we were told that’s bringing new readers in. You can jump forward to when the Sin City film came out and we sold a bazillion copies of Sin City and they said that’s bringing new readers in. And then 300 which I’m told has generated more income than any graphic novel ever, where we sold hundreds of thousands at thirty bucks a pop. We’re told it’s books like that that bring new readers in. How long they last I can’t tell you. There are books that almost act as phenomena in the comic business and they bring readers in. Then it’s the job of the publishers and retailers to create material that continues to bring them in.

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§ Must read: The Daily Cross Hatch polled cartoonists for their Best of 2009 lists and more than 40 replied.

§ Douglas Wolk posts The Best Graphic Novels of 2009 for Barnes and Noble.

§ Fantagraphics/TCJ honcho Gary Groth steps onto the balcony of his stronghold to to address the throng and gives a very cogent history of comics criticism while he’s at it:

You know why you’re here: You’re looking for honest, intelligent, robust criticism and commentary on comics and related media and, hell, maybe even a dollop of philosophical discourse because you’re the kind of gal or guy who isn’t discomfited with a little straying from the thematic farm. But in the course of mulling over what tcj.com means in the greater scheme of things, I began reflecting on the history of comics criticism and concluded that it may be worth reciting, especially for those of you who don’t even know that there’s such a shaggy and ramshackle series of events that could even remotely comprise a history of comics criticism.

§ Newly installed TCJ blogger Noah Berlatsky risks punishment in his very first blog post by commenting on the new TCJ.com’s rather spotty rollout. See also the comment thread. Our opinion? Good content eventually wins out, but you gotta be able to find it.

§ Related and this is a serious question: Why would ANYONE ever choose numeric post titles over SEO-friendly title-based post titles in WordPress?
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News from around yesterday:

§ DC announced LEGACIES, a 10-issue trip through the Five Ages of DC written by Len Wein with art by a rotating cast, including various Kuberts.

DiDio explained that while the series would touch upon all the marquee superheroes expected in a universe-spanning DC event, the crux of the story will have a very personal, ground-level feel. “We’re seeing the Flashes change. We see the Green Lanterns change. And we see how the world evolves around them by seeing it through the point of view of two characters and how their lives change and how their families’ lives change in watching the DC Universe grow. It has a bit of a ‘Marvels’ feel, which I still think is a wonderful book, and I think it’s wonderful to tell the history of the DC Universe in this manner. We tell stories, and it makes more sense to tell this info in a story than in text.”

Yet, despite that last sentence, it was also announced that DC is finally updating THE HISTORY OF THE DC UNIVERSE and WHO’S WHO IN THE DC UNIVERSE, the latter in 15 issues. The last WHO’S WHO came out in 1993, and there have been subtle changes to the DCU since then, so a new look might be warranted.

§ Geoff Johns is writing the FLASH like it was CSI.

§ Valerie D’Orazio is writing PUNISHER MAX

§ Matt Fraction is writing THOR, probably.

§ Now that’s more like it! At TCJ.com, Kent Worcester delivers just the kind of slapdown we need TCJ for.

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§ ICv2 sits down with Marvel’s Main Man Dan Buckley for a rare chat:
Part one:

And you see the subscriptions and the download sales coexisting as two different digital models? Yes. And for the time being yes. The consumer will decide. One delivers an experience to browse, it’s streaming. It will allow you to kind of take a look at stuff that you might not want to buy and own. The other one is something you can take with you anywhere. You download it and you can consume it at any time, any place. Each of those experiences will probably evolve into different things. We’re just going to have to see where it takes us. We’re in the great unknown here. We’ve tried to kind of feel our way through the room. No one’s turned the lights on yet. (laughter)

Part two: The part everyone will be talking about as Buckley notes the event mentality is being scaled down:

We’re trying to kind of cleanse the palate a little bit. I’m not saying that we’ll never do a line-wide crossover again. I just think the consumers, the retailers, our creators, our editors all need to breathe a little bit and tell some stories that they want to tell amongst themselves or by themselves. Hopefully that’s something that will excite the creative community. We still have to market it and package it in a way that people can understand it and get excited about it. I’m very excited about that approach, with lending the creators a little bit more time to chew amongst themselves. I’ve read what Fraction wants to do with Thor and it’s really cool stuff by itself. I’ve read what we want to do with Iron Man and I’m very excited about that. It will eventually lead into some other stuff, I’m not denying that, but I’d like to see where everyone takes it and see how it all kind of re-meets others again in the next couple of years.

§ Letting creators kind of run with the ball may be a good idea, as the “I’m getting too old for this sh*t” bug strikes more readers. Cheryl Lynn:

I’m as immature as I ever was, baby. Kicks to the face? I’m all about it. Explosions? Yes, please. Beefcake and cheesecake? By all means! Alpha Male posturing? Oh, yeah. Tough chicks? Bring ‘em to me. But here’s the problem for Marvel and DC. I’ve realized that Marvel and DC do not have a monopoly on any of those things. In fact, Dark Horse, Image, Fox, FX, Activision, and Rockstar Games have all done a much better job of fulfilling my desires as well as eliminating my pet peeves.

…and David Brothers:

Have you ever seen the cover to Amazing Adult Fantasy #9, the series that eventually gave birth to Spider-Man? It’s a Steve Ditko joint, apparently. It’s got this giant monster with underpants, a helmet, and boots on, and the cover copy says “Ever since the dawn of time, nothing can match ‘THE TERROR of TIM BOO BA!’” Below that, the copy declares “The magazine that respects your intelligence!”

The Avengers books don’t respect your intelligence. It’s another entry in this absurd game of “Can you top this?” where the villains are getting exponentially more vile (Dr. Light goes from goof-off idiot to stone cold rapist to rape addict to a guy who is doing something vile off-screen to a recently murdered young girl’s skull, the villain of Blackest Night literally has sex with dead bodies because he’s ka-razy go coconuts, even though before he just kinda shot laser beams at people, Moonstone suddenly wants to put it on anything with a third leg when before she was just a scheming psychologist-type) and the heroes are… stuck in 1961.

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§ DC continues its week of announcements. Yesterday it was War of the Supermen, and this time the internet greatly took exception to the cover, by JG Jones. Chris Butcher: The 5 Things Wrong With DC’s War Of The Supermen #0 Cover. Butcher cites such elements as Superman’s expression, Supergirl’s vacant look, a bad scan, and logo deficiencies. But really, all you need to read is this poster at DC’s own Source blog:

That cover is atrocious. Does Superman have the runs or something?

Funny, but upon inspection, what has really got Superman all het up appears to be a prolapsed uterus.

§ Not to be left out, there was a Wonder Woman announcement, as well. It seems the Amazon’s monthly comics will resume numbering with issue #600 in the summer.

§ David Brothers profiles and praises the most successful comic book of all times, ONE PIECE:

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§ Tucker Stone looks back at the decade in comics:

Although it would be hard to look at the last ten years of comics and see much of the decade’s woes frankly expressed, it’s not hard to see the seams of conflict that float beneath them. Marvel spent its time messing around with the same sort of surface-y relevance that used to be the purview of the 70’s clunky DC Comics about race relations and drug abuse comics, with stories like Civil War that could be seen as an exaggerated version of Red Staters versus Blue Staters. (Or Secret Invasion’s religious nuts are a-coming. Or Dark Reign, which was probably planned by a group who assumed America wasn’t gonna Choose Hopefully.)

DC went in a different direction, embracing the public’s love for nostalgia mixed with Will Ferrell’s adult man-child films, and started telling various kids’ Crisis stories with hard R plot twists. Manga publishers underestimated their audience, then overestimated it, and are now currently in the throes of figuring out how big, exactly, it is. Companies like Fantagraphics and Drawn & Quarterly kept their toes in the new, but found that the market for high-priced reprints of classic comics was strong enough to make a Comics Criterion Collection viable.

§ IGN also looks back at comics in 2009, although they mention precisely 6 companies.

§ Speaking of looking back, Xavier Xerexes looks back at Past Predictions for Webcomics. How’d we do?

§ 30-year-old man Geoff Klock begins to move on

Tim says “I was easily reading 25-30 comics a week in 2008, I’m down to 8-10 a week right now.” Well I used to read 4-6 comics a week and now I am down to one — Morrison’s Batman — that I am getting, not be cause I like it, but because Morrison-Stewart and Morrison-Quitely have enough capital built up with me that I sort of owe them at this point. But just barely. Oh, and I get Detective Comics because the JH Williams art is awesome, but I also have this bad habit of just forgetting to buy it, which I supposed speaks to my involvement being minimal. It is the kind of thing I would like to admire in a nice hardcover. Because I am not invested in the story, only the art, I was never really “hooked,” though I will eventually get every issue.

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§ Your must reading link: Abhay Khosla analyzes Dark Reign in terms of vagina dentata, Freud’s theories of the head as symbol of secret desires, the castration anxiety behind many of Marvel’s most recent event comics:

The obvious conclusion to draw from DARK REIGN: THE LIST– X-MEN #1 is that at the close of 2009, a woman with an appetite for sex is apparently the very definition of fear and horror for Marvel comic creators and their audience.

You may or may not agree, but Khosla makes a pretty good case. Isn’t it time we put the subtext back into comics?

§ But as much as we love Abhay, this is unquestionably the greatest comics review ever, esp. the bit about the broken heel.

§ For the NY Times, Douglas Wolk reviews a bunch of mostly excellent recent comics , includes works by Kyle Baker, Lily Carré, Gabrielle Bell, and Michael Kupperman.

§ This week’s trip down memory lane by for former Marvel Bullpenner Scott Edelman goes back to 1956 for a DC Comics Slogan Contest.

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§ We haven’t seen this “beautifully sad” comic BADGER: THEN AND NOW by Howard Hardiman, but after reading about it on the Forbidden Planet blog, we want to.

§ Colorist and teacher Jose Villarubia is profiled in the online bmore magazine.

§ The producers of Time’s Techland blog wanted us to alert you that they cover comic books.

§ Kurt Busiek has created many, many characters.
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§ High school mash-up of the Red Skull and Batman? No. Golden Bat, a Japanese superhero who predated Batman and Superman.

He was first seen in 1931 (seven years before Superman first took flight and eight before that Gotham City fellow who dressed like a bat) and his exploits were told in kamishibai, which was street theater that used painted illustrations.

The LA Times’ Liesl Bradner explores kamishibai, the Japanese street paper theatre that had a powerful influence on manga. The intriguing medium is explored in the new book Manga Kamishibai: The Art of Japanese Paper Theater.

§ Wired has the latest on that Grant Morrison documentary that has been in the works for a while. The blog post mischaracterizes the effort as a “biopic” which implies some sort of film starring James MacAvoy covering the artist’s triumph over drug addiction and a distant father with the help of a good woman.

§ The New York Times has a graphic novel gift guide curated by George Gene Gustines.

§ DC’s VP of creative services, Ron Perazza, has collated his tweets on making comics, breaking in, and so on into a blog called Perazza. Some of it’s pretty 101:

Don’t paste someone’s art or design into your own; for example as a movie poster, picture in a frame, logo on a t-shirt, photo of a skyline in the background, etc. If you don’t have the permission of the copyright holder of that art or logo then it’s infringement.

Some is a little more inside baseball:

Distorting anatomy or picking specific camera angles simply for the sake of making certain parts of women bigger or more prominent is rarely actually needed in storytelling and usually comes across as sexist objectification – which is probably not the kind of reputation you want to build.

…but click around…you’re sure to find something of use, including many links to other resources.

§ Rob Martin reviews the new collection of Alex Raymond’s Rip Kirby, Volume One: 1946-1948

The naturalism on display is astonishing; there’s none of the hammy gesticulating one sees in less capable hands. Raymond’s character effects are occasionally so subtle that one may stare at a panel over and over again, wondering just how he pulled it off. In one scene, Kirby is beset upon by two children who insist on sitting in his lap and pestering him about his gun. Raymond shows Kirby in medium shot, and he isn’t doing anything but sitting, but his annoyance comes through hilariously. The effect is achieved primarily by the suggestion that Kirby is staring blankly past the children, and Raymond’s precision is extraordinary: Kirby’s face takes up less than half an inch on the page. Raymond’s handling of lighting effects is also superb, and his attention to detail in the clothing designs and set decoration is all but incomparable.

To which I’ll add, in this random panel from Google images, you see all that makes a master artist: the precise contrast keeping everything in the very busy composition clear, even the complicated shape of the hands holding the gun against the doorway several feet back. And that’s in a crappy scan. The guy was good.

§ Chris Butcher finishes his live blogging of this month’s Previews and finds many products he feels are overpriced. Click the link to find out why!

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§ 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.

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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.

§ The great Seth will make anyone whose work was ever improved by an editor feel like a piece of sh•t:

For example, I don’t know how anyone can stand to work with an editor. I don’t really know how fiction writers have become used to that idea. I can understand working with a proofreader: that makes sense to me. But even working as a prose writer, if there was someone changing around all the sentences in an article I had written and as a result of that it turned out to be a better-written article, I’d have to conclude at the end that I wasn’t much of a writer.

§ We are as happy as Laura Hudson is that Superf*ckers will be collected. James Kochalka’s completely delirious superhero parody could probably be redrawn by Ivan Reis and only a few people would notice. Cover, above.

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§ Over at io9, Graeme McMillan has an insightful post entitled Why James Rhodes Is Comics’ Ideal Black Hero:

If there’s one rule for black superheroes, it’s that they’re never the stars of the show (Or, at least, not for very long; attempts like Black Lightning or the Milestone books are always, sadly, done in by falling sales). Yes, you could make an argument that Black Panther contradicts that, but I’d just invoke the “He’s the exception that proves the” clause and move on quickly*. Despite headlining his own books twice in his career – something that doesn’t really mean anything, no matter how good those books were; remember, Marvel once published Street Poet Ray and Power Pachyderms, so anything goes there – Jim Rhodes is, and always will be, a sidekick to Tony Stark’s Iron Man.

David Brothers comments as well.

§ Librarian Robin Brenner looks at her circulation stats to figure out what’s really popular and there’s a pretty good chance that something on the list will surprise you. For instance, CASE CLOSED is really popular. On second thought, you will either be surprised or find something to back up your long-held beliefs on this list.

§ Rich Johnston sends a chill down our spines with the disturbing news that the exhibitor lottery for hotel rooms for San Diego Comic-Con 2010 has already taken place Of note: The Hyatt is no longer on the hotel list. Oh dear god, this year’s Hoteloween is going to be brutal.

§ The end of the decade, as normal humans account it, draws nigh, and Tom Spurgeon is kicking things off with The 83 Best Superhero Projects Of The Decade We’re Leaving.

§ A short, nice interview with First Second’s Mark Siegel.

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§ Tucker Stone is at it again.

§ Is someone making a book of Stan Lee’s tweets? They should.

The reason I always say “good night” is I don’t want you staying up for hours denying yourself sleep, desperately waiting for my next tweet

§ Jog examines the ORIGINAL Astro Boy.

§ Cartoonist Berkeley Breathed is also doing the happy dance that there will be no 20000 Leagues remake.

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§ Bully salutes Spider-Ham, perhaps the only Marvel character whose design was inspired by Terrytoons.

§ As promised in our comment section, Shaun Manning interviews Gilbert Hernandez about TROUBLEMAKERS, his new book:

All of Hernandez’ characters, though, share the thrillseeker mentality. “Each person in the story only knows that getting away with something works better than earning it honestly,” the artist said. “The 4 main characters are attractive people, for the most part, but they are drawn to shady doings because it turns them on. This type of immaturity is glorified everywhere you look, so why work a 9 to 5 job? Fritz’s character brings up the obvious question of ‘Why doesn’t she just marry a rich guy?’ Because she would get bored right away. She’s the type of person I like to compare to ‘monkeys with dynamite.’”

§ Kristy Valenti investigates the work of Frank Tashlin, whose body of work goes far beyond directing CINDERFELLA.

Tashlin also wrote and drew three children’s books that could easily function as graphic novels for adults today: The Bear That Wasn’t (1946) The Possum that Didn’t (1950) and The World That Isn’t (1951). Two of these, The Bear That Wasn’t and The World That Isn’t, were hiding inside library binding at my local branch.[4] The World That Isn’t is a satiric, rise,-fall,-and-rise-again-of-man story, of the type that cartoonists still do today. Its pen-and-ink lines are controlled, flattened and simplified, with occasional tight curlicues.

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§ Shouldn’t we just run a feed of Comics Comics here since we link to almost EVERY post? Anyway, Dan Nadel shares the contents of his mental desk drawer, including a contemplation of George Wunder, (above).

Where are all the letters and such? Where are the diary entries that explain his inky grotesques? He had a way of depicting giant craniums that verges on abstraction. Wonderful, odd stuff. But who was he? Caniff we know, right down to his shoes. But Wunder? I dunno. Wood assisted him at one point, I know that. And he apparently was in the military sometime. But what else? Ah well.

Wunder was the artist tasked with the thankless job of working on Terry and the Pirates after Milton Caniff left the strip for Steve Canyon, which he had more ownership stake in. Now, while Wunder is no Caniff, there is undeniably something obsessive and compelling about his dense, near grotesque art as well. Nowadays, it’s not hard to see Wunder doing some kind of indie book for Fantagraphics with that kind of style.

§ Also at Comics Comics a roundtable discussion of Al Columbia’s deeply disturbing PIM & FRANCIE kicks off.

§ This week in PW Comics Week!

•The Beat talked to Nick Barrucci about Dynamite Entertainment’s last five years.

•Terri Herd talked to Jim Salicrup about the Wimpy Dead Kid.

• And Evie Nagy found out what Paul Pope did in the new issue of Royal Flush that was so filthy it had to be polybagged.

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§ HUGE NEWS! Björk has written a song about Moomins!

§ This interview with early Bullpenner and romance editor Irene Vartanoff is fascinating:
By the time I was out of college, I had already been a frequent visitor to DC Comics. It was not hard to convince them to give me a try, and in 1971 I worked simultaneously on superhero and romance stories. People at DC were extremely welcoming and I was insufficiently grateful at the time. I was very young, and arrogant enough to dare to go to the big city, but not quite ready for it on several levels. I did not ride out my moments of self-doubt to writing success in comics. I was a sheltered girl from the suburbs who was trying to make it in a strange place as a freelancer, without much support system or money. After a while, I had to take a break and go back home.

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§ Is this the only account of the Ware/Groening/Barry/Feiffer summit at the Chicago Humanities Festival? Witness Todd Allen says it was more of a wake for alt. comics:

The level of pessimism at this panel was a bit depressing. Nobody was really suggesting alternate venues. I think it was Barry that compared comics to having a baby and wanting the baby to make money and pay the rent. Ware went a step further, saying “it’s a problem to make a living” and “do it for yourself, don’t expect to make a living.”

So there you have 3 out of 4 of alt weekly comics’ biggest stars of their respective periods saying you can’t make a living at it and two of them questioning whether you should try.

The death of alt-weekly comics strips comes despite the fact that local newspapers are holding their own in the ongoing media extinction. Maybe this is just because they don’t spend money on frivolous things like…comic strips.

§ Everyone is talking about teen-age Dave Sim’s take down of Jack Kirby:

I maintain, as I have for some time, that Kirby has little or no talent. His writing disgusts me even more than the early work of Gerry Conway. His creations seem to be of less than human quality.

We’d make fun but we didn’t much like Kirby when we were kids either.

§ Bart Beaty has an Angoulême update.

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