21 December 2011
[comics] A Moment Of Cerebus … a blog dedicated to publishing something to do with Cerebus, Dave Sim and Gerhard every day.
13 December 2011
[comics] Dan Clowes On Book Shops … Clowes on the cover of New Yorker.
7 December 2011
[comics] Full and Uncut Interview with Alan Moore … the full text to a abridged interview in the Independent published online … ‘Comics is great if you’re working with an artist that you’ve got respect for and you’re working in a situation where there aren’t the arbitrary demands, just the general bullshit of the comics industry to deal with. I think that me and most of the artists that I respect, we’re too old for all that. We’re old, we’re tired [laughs], I just simply cannot be putting up with the petty interference that is part and parcel of the entertainment industry.’
2 December 2011
[comics] 2000AD – Dummy Issue Promo … fascinating look at a 1976 mock-up of the first issue of 2000AD. Looks very much like they were planning a sci-fi version of Action.
28 November 2011
[comics] Alan Moore – meet the man behind the protest mask … interview with Moore where he discusses the use of V for Vendetta masks in recent protests …
…More than 100,000 of the £4-£7 masks sell every year, according to the manufacturers, with a cut always going to Time Warner. Does that irk Moore?
“I find it comical, watching Time Warner try to walk this precarious tightrope.” Through contacts in the comics industry, he explains, he has heard that boosted sales of the masks have become a troubling issue for the company. “It’s a bit embarrassing to be a corporation that seems to be profiting from an anti-corporate protest. It’s not really anything that they want to be associated with. And yet they really don’t like turning down money – it goes against all of their instincts.” Moore chuckles. “I find it more funny than irksome.”
24 November 2011
[comics] Gallery Of Art From Gene Colan’s Dracula … missed this at Halloween but Colan’s art is always worth a look.
22 November 2011
[comics] ‘Superheroes are our dreams of ourselves’ … Alan Moore interviewed by the Independent … ‘He stepped away from mainstream publishing and film royalties: an act of artistic integrity that has seen him branded as everything from eccentric to bitter. Eccentric perhaps, in the way that writers often are, but bitter? Certainly not. The man that greets me is warm and affable, and delighted to be asked to talk about one of his favourite works, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. It’s a series he says is dear to his heart, particularly those more recent episodes published by the independent Knockabout Comics.’
16 November 2011
[comics] Bruce Wayne’s Medical Records … ‘By far the greatest contributor to patient’s ongoing morbidity are his multiple and seemingly ceaseless musculoskeletal injuries. The most significant of these was sustained several years ago, when he was rushed to GCGH with several fractures of his lumbar vertebrae, reportedly after falling while rappelling. Skeletal series obtained at that time revealed numerous (>20) areas of orthopedic injury in various states of healing, which could not be fully explained by recent fall, including areas of all extremities and many ribs; confirmatory bone scan similarly showed many areas of increased uptake. Patient’s robust stature is not consistent with osteogenesis imperfecta, and skin biopsy was negative for abnormal collagen and P3H1 or CRTAP genetic defects. Malignancy was suspected, but eventually ruled out following oncology consultation. Patient explained most of these (and most subsequent) injuries as being the result of membership in a private and apparently quite intense mixed martial arts club. Patient has denied being the victim of domestic abuse by Mr. Grayson following indirect and direct questioning on numerous occasions.’ [via jwz]
10 November 2011
[comics] Judge Dredd And Spikes Harvey Rotten Share A Moment … ‘You -Er- Look Wonderful, Spikes!’
8 November 2011
[comics] The High Cost of (Being) Death … interview with the woman who was the inspiration for Death In The Sandman … ‘Hadley explains how she went from begging for spare change and living in the infamous ‘80s Salt Lake City flophouse called Kill Pigs to gracing the pages of a world-famous comic. “Mike Dringenberg was a good friend of mine,” says Hadley. “He told me that he wanted to use me for a model for a character in a comic book, but I didn’t think anything about it.” It wasn’t until years later, the conversation long forgotten, that she leafed through an issue at a friend’s apartment in Houston, Texas and found Dringenberg’s original drawing of her looking up from the pages and a personal thanks from the author for the use of her image. “Hey, this is me!” she exclaimed, to the amazement of her friend.’
4 November 2011
[comics] Art Spiegelman: ‘Auschwitz became for us a safe place’ … Art Spiegelman on Maus and MetaMaus. .. ‘The shock of Maus, and the source of its great and enduring power, lies in Spiegelman’s absolute refusal to sentimentalise or sanctify the Survivor, in this case, his father. During the war, Vladek lost his six-year-old son, Richieu, poisoned by the aunt to whom his parents had sent him for safe-keeping, in order that he might avoid the gas chambers; he lost most of his extended family, and he endured months of the most appalling fear and hardship in Auschwitz-Birkenau and, later, Dachau. But unimaginable suffering, Spiegelman wants us to understand, doesn’t make a person better; it just makes them suffer.’
2 November 2011
[comics] A STRONGER LOVING WORLD .. the Moment Of Moore I’ve been waiting most of the year to post! ‘Midnight, November Second.’
[comics] Hark A Vagrant: Tycho …
28 October 2011
[comics] Charlie Higson’s list of favourite comic books and graphic novels … ‘I grew up on Tintin and Asterix, and for many people in the UK they are the only graphic novels they are aware of. The French call this style of pure, clean, solid artwork la ligne claire, and it’s a style that works brilliantly for kids. I used to lose myself for days in the detail of these pictures.’
27 October 2011
[comics] Dan Clowes interviewed by the Onion’s AV Club … ‘The Death-Ray really should have been a graphic novel to start. I have no idea why I did it as a saddle-stitched comic, other than I just couldn’t bear to stop Eightball somehow. It just seemed like, “How can I end Eightball?” I remember when the Hernandez brothers first ended Love And Rockets, thinking, “How could they do that? It’s the end of an era!” [Laughs.] So it was really more about that, not being able to move on. But it really makes no sense as a magazine, and it’s just so unavailable to so many people. I really want people to read the book, and bookstores never sold an issue of Eightball because nobody knew what it was.’
21 October 2011
[comics] V for Vendetta masks: Who’s behind them? … ‘Anybody watching coverage of the demonstrations may have been struck by a repeated motif – a strangely stylised mask of Guy Fawkes with a moustache and pointy beard. Wikileaks founder Julian Assange arrived at the Occupy London Stock Exchange protest to make a speech wearing one of these masks. He took it off, reportedly at the insistence of the police.’
19 October 2011
[comics] How could they do this to Tintin? … another negative look at Speilberg’s Tintin Movie – this time from Nicholas Lezard … ‘As it is, the film has turned a subtle, intricate and beautiful work of art into the typical bombast of the modern blockbuster, Tintin for morons, and the nicest things one can say about it are that there’s a pleasing cameo of Hergé himself in the opening scene, the cars look lovely, indeed it is as a whole visually sumptuous, and (after 20 minutes or so of more or less acceptable fidelity; and the 3D motion-capturing transference of the original drawings is by far the least of the film’s problems) it usefully places in plain view all the cretinous arrogance of modern mass-market, script-conference-driven film-making, confirming in passing that, as a director, Spielberg is a burned-out sun.’
18 October 2011
[comics] The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret Of The Unicorn – Review … a disappointing look of Speilberg’s Tintin film: ‘…while the big set pieces are often exuberantly handled, the human details are sorely wanting. How curious that Hergé achieved more expression with his use of ink-spot eyes and humble line drawings than a bank of computers and an army of animators were able to achieve. On this evidence, the film’s pioneering “performance capture” technique is still too crude and unrefined. In capturing the butterfly, it kills it too. What emerges is an array of characters (puffy, moribund Haddock; opaque, inexpressive Tintin) that may as well be pinned on to boards and protected by glass.’
12 October 2011
[comics] Kids Say The Stupidest Things: The Wit And Wisdom of Naughty Children … Children who kill – in their own words by Evan Dorkin … ‘Murder Isn’t That Bad. We All Die Sometime.’
11 October 2011
[comics] It’s 1969, Ok? … Kevin O’Neill interviewed by Pádraig Ó Méalóid …
Kevin O’Neill: It’s a pity we couldn’t have used Marvelman, ‘cause I always liked him when I was a kid, I thought he was a fantastic character, but it’s… it’s one of those characters that is now almost toxic, anyone who touches Marvelman, it’s like a curse, you know, you just want to pass it straight on, which is a terrible state of affairs for the character to end up in.
Pádraig: As I said, I’ve researched the thing in enormous detail for the past several years. The book was going to be called Poisoned Chalice, because both Alan and Neil refer to it as a poisoned chalice in different interviews I saw, and now I find that my own curse of Marvelman…
[Earlier I had mentioned to Kevin that the book I’ve written on Marvelman is now without a publisher, as MonkeyBrain Books, who had contracted to publish it, were taking a break from publishing, at least for the time being, leaving it without a home for the moment.]
Kevin O’Neill: Isn’t that weird?
25 September 2011
[comics] Snowball 99 … a tumblr dedicated to Howard Chaykin …
24 September 2011
[comics] William Gaines testifying On Behalf Of Comic Books In the 1950’s: ‘Jimmy Walker once remarked that he never knew a girl to be ruined by a book. Nobody has ever been ruined by a comic.’
23 September 2011
[comics] Chiropractic … a beta-version of a comic strip about Chiropractic Therapy for Darryl Cunningham’s Science Tales book.
21 September 2011
[momentOfMoore] How Alan Moore Introduced Himself To American Readers… ‘When he is an old man, he will look like the evil twin brother of Father Christmas.’
20 September 2011
[comics] Why We Will Read Cerebus … another attempt to evaluate Dave Sim and Cerebus … ‘[Dave Sim] is a very smart man, and even at his worst he expresses his (often completely illogical) ideas with such forceful conviction that you cannot help imagine yourself in some kind of personal dialogue with him. After reading 300 issues of Cerebus, the reader feels / believes / thinks that he or she knows Sim. Tim Callahan is right to stress the fact that Cerebus is “as autobiographical as any comic book ever written.” That is precisely why it is so hard to separate the man from the work. It’s not just that Sim’s ideas permeate the book, it’s that Sim permeates the book, to the point where any discussion of the book inevitably devolves into a discussion of Sim himself.’
19 September 2011
[comics] Brannon Costello Interviewed By Tom Spurgeon … interesting interview discussing Howard Chaykin – Costello has just compiled a book of interviews with Chaykin … ‘I’d also argue that Chaykin was the most successful of the design-oriented mainstream artists up until the mid-1980s to use design not just for dramatic effect but also to develop a set of themes or even an ideological worldview. And I think the fact that Chaykin continues to work steadily in the mainstream, using pop comics as a vehicle to explore new angles on his recurring themes and obsessions in his own voice and with a great deal of craft, is remarkable. He’s not the only creator of his era still doing that sort of work, but he’s one of a few, and certainly one of the most prolific.’
14 September 2011
[comics] The V for Vendetta mask: a political sign of the times … ‘More than 100,000 [V For Vendetta] masks a year are now being sold.’
8 September 2011
[comics] Bargain Bin #6: Alex & Droogs … What If Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange was a comic book?
7 September 2011
[comics] Go Look: First Page From Alan Moore’s V For Vendetta Script ‘Vengeance’
31 August 2011
[comics] Masked Anonymous Protesters Aid Time Warner’s Profits … ‘The mask resonates with the hackers because it was worn by a rogue anarchist challenging an authoritarian government in “V for Vendetta,” the movie produced in 2006 by Warner Brothers. What few people seem to know, though, is that Time Warner, one of the largest media companies in the world and parent of Warner Brothers, owns the rights to the image and is paid a licensing fee with the sale of each mask.’
29 August 2011
[comics] Grant Morrison on the Death of Comics … a non-standard interview with Morrison – well worth reading if you follow his work …
With comics, the quality now is better than it’s ever been, there are more people now who are really good at what they do, doing what they do. Everything’s available for free, I think that’s the real problem, nobody wants to buy it anymore. One comes out, you see it immediately online and you can read it. That’s the way people want to consume their information, the colors look nicer. I think that’s more the problem, but that’s a problem for everybody, it’s not just for comics, everyone’s going to start feeling that one.’ — Morrison discussing the death-spiral of superhero comic books
25 August 2011
[comics] A post on Scans Daily revisiting the first issue of ROM Spaceknight from 1979 … ‘ROM SPACEKNIGHT issue 1 gives us all of the pieces of the story that will span nearly 80 issues. It starts out like a 50s sci-fi monster movie, only the strange being from outer space is actually here to help humanity, but because of his foreboding appearance and the ambiguity of his actions (and the general suspiciousness of folk in the Marvel universe), he’s believed to be a rampaging monster. Meanwhile, the enemy he has hunted for two centuries appears to be regular people, due to their shapeshifting abilities. An everyman human meets the “alien monster” and the beginning of a friendship is formed, and we learn the broad strokes of ROM’s origin: a highly advanced culture, with little to no martial presence took a great chance on an untested and dangerous technology, leaving its defenders with diminished “humanity” that they will always pine for.’
23 August 2011
2 August 2011
[comics] Go Look: Be Pure! Be Vigilant! Behave!
28 July 2011
[comics] Alan Moore Takes League of Extraordinary Gentlemen To The ’60s … yet another wide-ranging interview with Alan Moore … ‘My position on punk was that I loved the music and I wanted to be involved in it. But unlike some of my associates, I wasn’t going to go out and get my haircut or spiked up. This was their generation, they were all much younger than me, and they deserved to explore it in their own way. Of course, I found out later that John Lydon was about, what, eight months younger than me! [Laughs]’
27 July 2011
[comics] Annotations to League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Volume III Chapter Two, a.k.a. Century: 1969 … The Latest League Annotations from Jess Nevins … ‘Panel 2. If “Hot Chicks” is a reference to anything I’m unaware of it.’
[comics] Alan Moore and Demi Moore …
25 July 2011
[comics] Grant Morrison: My Supergods From The Age Of The Superhero … Grant Morrison Chooses His Favourite Superhero Moments … On Marvelman: ‘There are beautiful sequences where the superheroes are escorting Thatcher out of No 10 and she’s sobbing helplessly: suddenly there’s this new power that bombs can’t stop, weapons can’t stop. The whole last issue is this fabulous liberal fantasy of what the good guys would do if they got in charge and got rid of all the bastards! I like it much more than Watchmen; it was a real triumph for lefties everywhere!’
17 July 2011
[comics] Tugging Your Coat … Mike McMahon’s got a blog! … ‘I love Joe Pineapples, a real pleasure to draw. Wonderful piece of character design by Kev O’Neill.’
15 July 2011
[comics] The Artists’ Artist: Graphic Novelists … with contributions from Peter Kuper, Bryan Talbot, Posy Simmonds, Ariel Schrag, Martin Rowson and Lynda Barry. On Chris Ware: ‘Chris Ware is an American cartoonist whose work is so unusual that some hesitate to call what he is doing “comics”. When I read his work, I get a Wright brothers feeling of being in something big, right as it’s being invented. Eventually we will know what to call what he does, but for now “graphic novel” is all we have.’
13 July 2011
4 July 2011
[comics] A Moment Of Moore [Twitter | RSS Feed] … six months of daily Alan Moore posts – check out the Archives … ‘Every Damned Link.’
1 July 2011
[comics] Excerpt from “Irredeemable: Dave Sim’s Cerebus” … part of a longer-form essay in Comics Journal #301 … ‘Sim may well be a wackjob or an acid casualty, but he is also, I would argue, one of the greatest living cartoonists.’
25 June 2011
[comics] Garen Ewing: from a Golden Age to a rainbow orchid … missed this when it was first published: comic creator Garen Ewing interviwed by Mondoagogo … ‘One of my very favourite comics was, and is, Charley’s War, but I’m not certain that I feel particularly influenced by Pat Mills – but I’m sure it must be there in the mix to some degree. What child that grew up in the 1970s and went on to make their own comics doesn’t have Pat Mills in there somewhere?!’
22 June 2011
[comics] Mike Sterling: ‘I’m still kind of weirded out that I just saw a major Hollywood movie that featured Kilowog as a character. This is not the future I was expecting.’
18 June 2011
[comics] “When I first heard about virtual reality I thought: is there any other kind?” … Alan Moore interview from the New Statesman … Moore on Books: ‘I accept that things change and that the future of reading might be in the form of a Kindle or an iPad, but somehow I tend to think that the book is perfectly adapted. It’s like a shark; sharks haven’t evolved in millions of years because they don’t need to. They’re really really good at being sharks I think the same is true of a book.’
13 June 2011
[comics] Unpublished Tintin: The Hugged Face … by Dan Hipp … [via The Forbidden Planet International Blog Log]
8 June 2011
[comics] Grant Morrison’s Doom Patrol Run Began 22 Years Ago …
So in prepping my post for tomorrow, I realized that Grant Morrison’s DOOM PATROL run began 22 years ago. #fallingoverdeadfromoldage
Mike Sterling
mikesterling
7 June 2011
25 May 2011
[cartoons] Steve Bell On 30 Years Of Political Cartooning At The Guardian … ‘Nick Clegg, a rather poor clone of Cameron, who in turn is a tribute act to Blair, who is himself channelling Thatcher. And who was she channelling? Her father, Alderman Roberts, the grocer of Grantham town? Winston Churchill? Adolf Hitler? Beelzebub? Who can say?’