Send your Lawyerbear art, prose, poetry, etc to legal(dot)ursine(at)gmail(dot)com. Be Lawyerbear’s MySpace friend by visiting http://myspace.com/lawyerbear.
Comments Off | Posted: March 30th, 2007 | Filed under:Uncategorized
The first graphic novel to emerge from Vermont’s Center for Cartoon Studies, Houdini: The Handcuff King offers the reader a look at a single day in the master escape artist’s life. Jason Lutes and Nick Bertozzi take a minimal approach with this work, avoiding narration and the like to tell the story simply and clearly, and while that approach is something I usually applaud, this time I found myself left cold. Don’t get me wrong; this is a fine effort by two accomplished cartoonists, but it feels sterile and academic versus being evocative and thrilling.
What’s annoying is how right this could have been for me. I love books like Carter Beats The Devil (written by Glen David Gold, who provides an introduction here) and the story takes place on Harvard Bridge, a place that I could probably hit with a well-thrown stone and a bit of wind from my front porch. I’ve enjoyed both creator’s material in the past – Lutes’s Berlin and Bertozzi’s Ernest Shackleton webcomic engaged and entertained me handily, but the meat of this book feels like an exacting re-creation of what a historic graphic novel should be. It’s got the right elements: quality writing, beautiful art, but ends up being so very clinical.
All told, Houdini: The Handcuff King feels like it comes from a place called The Center for Cartoon Studies, not an interesting book in its own right. It’s probably telling that I found the overall design of the book, along with Gold’s prefacing material and the historical footnotes more interesting than the story pages inside.
Comments Off | Posted: March 30th, 2007 | Filed under:Uncategorized
Moving Pictures is Kathryn & Stuart Immonen’s new webcomic venture. The first two pages have been posted and this will continue every Friday. As expected, it looks fantastic.
I’ve posted three pages from Cover Girl #2 up in the official preview thread at the forum. It’s so very pretty – I almost hate that I’ve ruined it with dialogue.
Right now in Google News, there are 2586 stories about “Spider-Man” versus 559 about “Spiderman.” Some of the latter feature this recent incident (look at the photos,) where Alain Robert attempted to climb Kuala Lumpur’s Petronas Twin Towers with no gear.
Atomic Robo is on MySpace. I’m really, really looking forward to this series.
Another edition of The City Desk’s Friday Facts has come out and you’ll find startling statistics about the city, some of which involve apples.
Comments Off | Posted: March 30th, 2007 | Filed under:Uncategorized
Fridays mean a new installment of The Rack, the third most intelligent comic strip in the world. This time, a cast member begins a journey, leaving the womb of Yavin IV behind and confronting the demons inside.
Comments Off | Posted: March 29th, 2007 | Filed under:Uncategorized
OK, so there’s been a bit of a kerfuffle about Stephanie Brown aka Spoiler not having a glass case in the Bat-Cave, as she had played the role of Robin and had gotten herself murdered in an editorially-mandated crossover. It’s been going on for a while and led to the formation of Girl-Wonder.org and a dedicated campaign to give the murdered Stephanie a glass case in the Batcave. In fact, this is a bit of a fixation for a lot of the people there; I regularly see them posting their letters to DC in LiveJournal communities and the like. Out of curiosity, I hit the Grand Comics Database and looked for the issues she appeared in.
Stephanie Brown played the role of Robin for three publishing months, in comics that were cover dated July, August, and September 2004. As far as I can tell, this compresses down to a shorter time in the comics – probably a month to six weeks. The Girl Wonder folks make a very compelling argument about why there should be a memorial to the girl who wore the costume for such a brief amount of time, but I have a question.
Why is this so important? Wouldn’t the desired legacy of this short-lived Robin be better served by either supporting superhero comics with strong female roles or creating comics with female characters that can serve as an example?
A glass case being drawn into a single location won’t change anything substantial in the medium, will it? It’s not a solution; only a reminder that there was a problem.
Comments Off | Posted: March 29th, 2007 | Filed under:Uncategorized
The Boston Globe covers the upcoming Comic Book Show (that’s its name: The Comic Book Show) in Nashua, NH (which I may or may not be attending,) focusing on Johnny Raygun creator Rich Woodall and offers this tidbit:
The guest of honor will be David Finch, creator of Marvel’s “Arthur Moon” series. He will offer a limited-edition sketchbook and prints.
I don’t want to be that guy (especially considering yesterday’s Glyph Awards post,) but it seems that going to the Marvel website and verifying a title’s name wouldn’t be that much work for a professional journalist. Apparently, though, this reporter is anything but. Check out this quote from the organizer, which I’m not even going to elucidate with commentary:
“People need to realize comic books are not just a silly cartoon, they are a graphic novel,” said [Christian] Miller, who owns the complete Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle collection. “They can be very intelligent and make you think, like any other artistic medium.”
OK, no, this has to be said: I’ve met Christian Miller a couple of times now. He strikes me as a remarkably intelligent, sharp man who happens to be in the business of selling comic books. He’s very, very savvy and he’s doing his level best to bring better comics shows to an area that has been woefully bereft in that regard. Yes, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie is at the top of the box office, but that has nothing to do with the story Lisa Panora was writing. She could have possibly mentioned that Miller recently ran a well-received show in Boston or that he owns a successful comic book shop. I’m just saying.
I am simultaneously embarrassed and delighted by the existence of this video, as one of my earliest memories is watching this while playing with blocks on the living room floor. I’d hate to think that this may be why Muhammad Ali has been one of my heroes for as long as I can remember.
The I Am The Greatest cartoon (which, admit it, has a freakin’ amazing opening sequence) was aired on NBC in 1977, the middle of Ali’s second reign as heavyweight champion of the world. Made by Farmhouse Productions, it lasted a single season and featured Ali acting as a sort of fix-it guy who wandered from situation to situation. The Champ provided his own voice, and, interestingly enough, the show featured his PR man Frank Bannister as himself.
This isn’t, however, the most ludicrous thing Ali did in the late 70s. This is:
Comments Off | Posted: March 28th, 2007 | Filed under:Uncategorized
The Glyph Awards are coming up, recognizing the “Best Comic” showing black characters in a featured role. Here’s a list of the nominees:
Black Panther: The Bride by Reginald Hudlin, Scot Eaton & Klaus Janson
Crisis Aftermath: The Spectre, Will Pfeifer & Cliff Chiang
Firestorm the Nuclear Man #28-32 by Stuart Moore, Jamal Igle & Keith Champagne
New Avengers #22 by Brian Michael Bendis & Leinil Francis Yu
Storm by Eric Jerome Dickey, David Yardin & Lan Medina and Jay Leisten & Sean Parsons
Now, while I am distinctly of the mind that awards like these are a positive thing, this suffers a bit from GLAAD Syndrome. The fact is that each of these selected titles, as good as they may be (I rather liked the New Avengers issue, for instance), come from Marvel or DC. For an awards show aimed at promoting diversity in comics, I think it’s a shame that only superhero comics from the Big Two were represented. Where’s Nat Turner, a much-praised true story completely written and drawn by Kyle Baker, a black creator with his own imprint? How about the third volume of Rob Vollmar and Pablo Callejo’s Bluesman, a piece of smart Depression-era fiction that featured a now-frequently-overlooked portion of black culture?
Thankfully, alternate choices not listed on the official ballot can be e-mailed to rich.watson@gmail.com.
Edit: Commentor Joe notes:
Nat Turner won the Glyph Award for Story of the Year in 2006 (and Kyle Baker won best artist, and the cover to Nat Turner #1 won Best Cover).
Maybe the concluding volume missed the cutoff for the Glyph awards, but it’s still a bit like an Almodovar movie getting nominated for Best Screenplay and Best Cinematography while Michael Bay and Jerry Bruckheimer get to walk away with the Best Picture (as voted by the fans,) innit?
(In last year’s case, it was the first Black Panther collection, something I’d call a crying shame and proof that my elitist attitude in regards to “Fan” awards serves a purpose.)
In this week’s Previews, there’s a new book from David Yurkovich, wherein he reworks some of his older material. I think his Seinfeld-meets-superheroes Less Than Heroes is an overlooked gem and this looks to have the same amount of zip and pluck:
Agent Swete — an unlikely hero comprised of organic chocolate and a member of the FBI’s Food Crimes Division — and his sharp-tongued partner, Anderson, investigate a series of bizarre, food-inspired crimes. Along they way they encounter a variety of characters including an extraterrestrial canine named Geoffrey, writer Ernest Hemingway, an organized crime lord intent upon finding the life-enabling ‘eternity pasta,’ and an eerie, all-devouring trio known as The Metabolators. This collection includes the Xeric-grant awarded origin tale of Agent Swete, a never-before published Death By Chocolate tale, and an essay by Yurkovich on the creation of the series. Every page has been reworked by Yurkovich, making Redux the definitive edition of these stories.
Sounds fun and maybe a bit Rex Libris, which can’t be a bad thing at all.
So, Sterling was going on a bit too long about the second print of Captain America #25 and whether or not it’s going to sell. I’d say there’s at least some interest still there. I stopped by Comicazi for a bit yesterday afternoon and there were two phone calls and a drop-in looking for the book in the span of 30 minutes, so that must mean something. Of course, these were people that were inducted into “the scene” already, but I’d say that the overall interest is still there, at least for a bit longer. Me, I’ve not even read it because (and I’ve mentioned this before) I think Brubaker’s doing a fine, fine job writing a Captain America story I’m not at all interested in reading. High quality, but Grim Captain America is not my thing at all.
Chris Butcher’s latest post on breaking a young girl’s heart and yaoi fan culture is a fantastic piece of writing.
I’ve posted about fangirl entitlement before. Mostly it comes up in relation to yaoi, and the fans therof. Straight girls and women deciding to boldy stake a claim on homosexual sex, logic or cultural appropriation be damned. But I invite all of my non-manga readers to really spend a day visiting anime and manga fandom: It’s fucking monstrous. You’ll find many of the most reprehensible children imaginable, running wild across forae that encourage their stupidity and encouraging a sort of fake-drama-based high school clique system that rules every facet of their lives. I hate to say this, but the Newsarama commenters, as atrocious as they are, don’t hold a candle to some of the bullshit I’ve seen.
Vado:There have been books we’ve published where, interestingly enough, the [sales] numbers weren’t that great to begin with in the book market, but a lot of them came back. With something like Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, where there’s a consistent flow and people know what to order and what to sell, and they can count on it, the returns are kind of minimal. But there are a couple of things where we’ve sold probably less than 300 copies into the book market, and out of those 300 copies over half of them will have come back. You become grateful that they didn’t order 3,000 of them
Wow, I didn’t mean for this to turn into a linkpost, but with such glorious treats awaiting your clickage, how could I resist?
Oh, and in case you’re wondering: no Nitroglycerin today. Things didn’t quite gel for us on that front, but next week, it’ll be back in full effect with the promotional hijinks and wackiness you’ve come to expect from Birdie and myself.
Finally, I encourage you, the intelligent (and frequently very sexy) readers of this blog to check out my new forum. It’s been growing nicely, everybody’s been damned polite, and it gives you a place to post your intelligent thoughts about this week’s comics if you don’t blog yourself. Isn’t that a Good Thing?
Comments Off | Posted: March 28th, 2007 | Filed under:Uncategorized
We hear your cries every week: “Woe is me! I can not figure out what to buy when I visit my local comic shop!” Our response is steady and unswerving: go ask the staff of Yavin IV, California’s most leading fictional comic book and pop-culture emporium. If you can’t find something you’ll like among their picks, then maybe you need to stop reading comics, my friend.
This is a page from a never-released anthology where various comics creators were given the charge of depicting Batman’s death1. I got it out of Modern Masters: Kevin Maguire, a book I can’t recommend enough if for nothing more than the exhaustive interview with one of my favorite artists.
1I really hope it was going to be called The Many Deaths of the Batman
Comments Off | Posted: March 26th, 2007 | Filed under:Uncategorized
We’re using Midtown’s list again and formatting things a bit differently, so here’s the outstanding picks for the week of March 28, 2007. Again, I’m not picking out every comic worth buying, just saying “Hey, here’s what’s interesting.”
Dark Horse
Mail Vol 3: I’ve been very much impressed with the supernatural manga that Housui Yamazaki has been involved in. His art on Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service captures the matter-of-fact, deadpan tone of the title perfectly. I may like his solo title title a bit more, though: Mail has got a fantastic hook and a sense of zip that I wish stateside franchises in the same vein (The Dresden Files, anyone?) had.
DC
Batman #664: While the previous issues pulp excursion didn’t bother me that much, outside of the fairly dodgy CG art (probably because of my love for the homaged material,) I’ll be happy to see Morrison doing what he does best. Batman: Snow: I’m buying this purely for the Seth Fisher art, which I’m quite sure is going to be gorgeous. There’s a strange bit of coicidence involving death and Batman here, isn’t there?
Hyperion
Houdini: The Handcuff King: The first book from the Center of Cartoon Studies released to the open market, and it looks to be a heck of a slam-dunk with writing and layouts by Jar of Fools creator Jason Lutes and art by Nick Bertozzi. Since I read Carter Beats The Devil a few years ago, I’ve had a rekindled fascination for the days when escape artists like Houdini could cause an entire town to shut down while they performed their stunts. You can see a preview here.
Image
Pirates Of Coney Island #5: My love for this book is almost unholy. So beautifully lurid and gleeful in its brutality.
Marvel
Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane Volume 1: The best Spider-Man title on the stands, in oversized format so it slides neatly besides my Runaways trades. It appears that the digests have done well for Marvel, but this is my preferred format for the series.
Comments Off | Posted: March 26th, 2007 | Filed under:Uncategorized
Whoever recommended it (Julian?) was right about Ennis’s 303. What a great, brutal piece of lean, smart storytelling that was. I’d make some kind of Ellroy-meets-Tom Clancy comparison, but it would do this a disservice. Jacen Burrows is a perfect artist for this, with clean lines and great storytelling.
One thing, though – it’s kind of disconcerting to see Avatar do comics I want to read. I thought Ellis’s Apparat experiment was a fluke, but with this, the upcoming Black Summer and the good things I’ve been hearing about Chronicles of Wormwood from people I trust, it’s like they’re a real publisher, instead of the titty-book-and-dead-licensed-properties factory I’d considered them for ages.
Picturebox’s Pig Tales / Cartoon Workshop split book had gotten good notices from people I trust, so I decided to order it when Diamond finally decided to carry the publisher’s work. I hate to be that guy that doesn’t get it, but…I just don’t get it. I want to support this sort of thing, but man…the entire thing’s an incomprehensible,poorly group of squiggles loosely tied together.
After reading it, I had a horrifying thought: is this what the previous generation sees when they catch Aqua Teen Hunger Force on the TV? Have I become old?
While I’m on the subject of Adult Swim: if Cartoon Network ever did a Frisky Dingo licensed comic book featuring Awesome X, I would write it for pennies.
Christopher Bird’s done another remix, this time featuring a recent issue of Teen Titans. Any Titans comic that features the sentence “Your science-juice is stronger than Slade’s!” gets points from me.
I picked up the first issue of the original Secret Six the other day from Comicazi and boy, it’s just fantastic. Obviously riffing off Mission Impossible and the Bond craze of the time, there’s a momentum and energy you’d never be able to pull off today. Heck of a setup, and the story opens on the cover. This is one of those books I’m going to have to pick up in back issue bins because I really doubt DC is ever going to issue a trade for this.
(Watch, they’ll do this and a Swing With Scooter collection just as my collections are complete.)
It also featured the ad below…
I’m naming my first child Johnny Peril Church. You can’t stop me.
The first graphic novel to emerge from Vermont’s Center for Cartoon Studies, Houdini: The Handcuff King offers the reader a look at a single day in the master escape artist’s life. Jason Lutes and Nick Bertozzi take a minimal approach with this work, avoiding narration and the like to tell the story simply and clearly, and while that approach is something I usually applaud, this time I found myself left cold. Don’t get me wrong; this is a fine effort by two accomplished cartoonists, but it feels sterile and academic versus being evocative and thrilling. 
