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26 January 2003
[comics] New X-Men #136 — a great thread on Grant Morrison‘s latest issue of X-Men over at the comics forum on Barbelith … ‘There were worrying things about Xorn even in his stand-alone issue, and I remember this being discussed – “If I could save every life, I would” – but you can’t. And how do you deal with that realisation – how do you handle death? Morrison did actually say in an interview early on that NXM would be about death, and he wasn’t kidding. Xorn’s already got so depressed he nearly destroyed the world once – what if the senselessness of it all pushes him that close as well?’
22 January 2003
[comics] Fans Howl in Protest as Judge Decides X-Men Aren’t Human — the X-Men are apparently “nonhuman creatures” according to a Judge in New York … ‘To Brian Wilkinson, editor of the online site X-Fan (x-mencomics.com/xfan/), Marvel’s argument is appalling. The X-Men — mere creatures? “This is almost unthinkable,” he says. “Marvel’s super heroes are supposed to be as human as you or I. They live in New York. They have families and go to work. And now they’re no longer human?”‘ [via Pete and Pelvey]
20 January 2003
[comics] The Accidental Artist — interview with David Rees the creator of Get Your War On. ‘…despite rumors of hate mail, Rees says the response to the strip has been almost unanimously encouraging. “The positive outnumbers the negative 30-to-1,” he said. No one has made the slightest move to shut him down. “This is an awesome country!” he exclaimed. It’s hard to be sure whether he means it. On the other hand, it’s possible that Capitol Hill has just not yet noticed Rees. “It takes like 400 years for culture to get there,” he observed.’ [via Sore Eyes]
16 January 2003
[comics] Warren Ellis reviews Get Your War On. [Buy GYWO: UK | US] …  ‘This book, collecting the majority of the strips so far, is an amazing artifact; not only is it one of the few successful transferences of web material into print, but it clearly shows the guy growing into the work and, in a few short months, sees him go from clunky-but-funny into someone totally in control of his materials and timing.’
14 January 2003
[comics] Begging the Question — interview with Bob Fingerman the creator of White Like She and Minimum Wage … ‘NRAMA: So that’s the key to success?
BF: [laughs] Keys to happy living. Don’t draw comics, don’t write about comics, marry well.’
10 January 2003
[comics] Author Praised for Comic-Book on Palestine Tragedy — more on Joe Sacco and his comic Palestine … ‘Drawing on first-hand experiences, extensive research and more than 100 interviews with Palestinians and Jews, Sacco has gained access to unusually intimate testimony, giving space to details and perspectives normally excluded by mainstream media coverage. “I came from the standpoint of ‘Palestinian equals terrorist’,” Mr Sacco wrote. “That’s what’s filtered down in the course of watching the regular network news.” He makes no pretence of the observer’s invisibility and depicts his own initial disbelief of reported detentions and torture. Nor does he shy away from revealing his own ambiguities as a visiting Western journalist.’ [via Egon]
9 January 2003
[comics] Two Samples [ #1] [#2] from Joe Sacco’s Palestine comic. ”It’s good for the comic. It’s good for the comic. It’s good for the comic.’ [via Robot Wisdom]
8 January 2003
[comics] Eyewitness in Gaza — Observer review of Joe Sacco‘s Palestine … ‘Approaching such daunting topics with a disreputable and supposedly juvenile medium may seem futile, even absurd, yet Sacco’s greatest achievement is to have so poignantly depicted contradiction, oppression and horror in a form that manages to be both disarming and disquieting.’ [Buy Palestine: UK | US]
6 January 2003
[comics] Who Cares? — Jack Chick on 9/11 … [via Metafilter]  ‘Bob, now I know that Allah doesn’t really love me or even care about any Muslim. But Jesus, the Son of God, does. That’s why I must chose Jesus.’
4 January 2003
[comics] Scarlet Traces: Digital Artwork Step By Step — Comic artist D’israeli’s guide to creating comic art digitally … ‘I miss the smell of ink and the feel of my fifty-year-old drawing pens against smooth drawing paper, but I don’t miss smearing ink across the page by accident or correcting with process white or trying to erase the pencil on a finished page and constantly finding you’ve missed a bit. Because I trained as a designer, I don’t value original artwork; to me it’s just a stage on the way to the finished product. On the whole, working without originals is a great relief. And I just love the Undo function.’ [via Bugpowder]
1 January 2003
[web] The Peanuts Arcana Tarot Deck … ‘Featuring Good Ol’ Charlie Brown’  The Hierophant: ‘…often represents learning with experts or knowledgeable teachers. This card also stands for institutions and their values. The Hierophant is a symbol of the need to conform to rules or fixed situations. His appearance in a reading can show that you are struggling with a force that is not innovative, free-spirited or individual. Groups can be enriching or stifling, depending on circumstances. Sometimes we need to follow a program or embrace tradition, other times, we need to trust ourselves.
29 December 2002
[comics] Ennis’ War Stories — Newsarama interview with Garth Ennis. ‘…what’s most fascinating is the psychology and the behavior of people at the sharp end — the kind of stories that come out of people at this extreme edge of human existence, one that we don’t even have to imagine, as we do with fantasy or science fiction, or even in some crime drama. We don’t have to imagine this, because it was real. In the case of the Second World War, it was the most crucial event in the history of the 20th Century. It defined the rest of the century — it’s real, it actually happened. The drama that comes out of that is more gripping than almost anything else that we take drama from.’
27 December 2002
[comics] Heroes and Villains — Edward Said reviews Palestine by Joe Sacco … [via Bugpowder] ‘…comics provided one with a directness of approach (the attractively overstated combination of pictures and words) that seemed unassailably true on the one hand and marvellously close, impinging, familiar on the other. In ways that I still find fascinating to decode, comics in their relentless foregrounding – far more, say, than film cartoons or funnies (neither of which mattered much to me) seemed to say what couldn’t otherwise be said, or wasn’t permitted to be said or imagined, defying the ordinary processes of thought, which are policed, shaped and reshaped by all sorts of pedagogical as well as ideological pressures. I knew nothing of this then, but I felt that comics freed me to think and imagine and see differently.’
23 December 2002
[comics] Time’s rates the Best Comics of 2002 … ‘Eightball #22. This single, self-contained issue of his regular series Eightball finds inspiration in the style of filmmaker Robert Altman. Its 29 shorts range in length from a single strip to several pages; each one works alone as well as with the others, weaving multiple characters and multiple stories into one cohesive whole.’
22 December 2002
[comics] Comic book feedback: Letters lose to the Web — the death of the letters page in US comic books … ‘DC Comics recently announced the end of its letters-to-the-editor pages in all of its titles, more or less admitting that no one was really taking the time to write and mail letters to superheroes anymore. DC’s decision to kill off letters — and with Marvel Comics inclined to do the same — is a surrender to the far superior powers of the Internet. Fans haven’t complained about the loss; they’re too busy flaming each other on comic book Web sites.’ [via Boing Boing]
19 December 2002
[xmas] Cut-Up Christmas Card — nice flash distraction from Steve Bell.
16 December 2002
[comics] Warren Ellis interviews Justine Shaw the creator of Nowhere Girl … ‘I think with comics, using pictures as well as words, you can do things you can’t do as well in books or maybe even films, you can get out ideas that are “between the lines”, that is, you never state something out loud, but give the reader a sense of that thing, let them make their own thing out of it. I really do comics because I am a fanatical anal-retentive control freak, and a comic allows me to do literally all aspects of the production work without having to depend on someone else for any of it.’
12 December 2002
[comics] Interesting / amusing thread on Barbelith about Jessica Jones having sex with Ant-Man Scott Lang in Alias #17 … ‘The thought of Brian Bendis sitting at the computer, alone in his study, brow furrowed in concentration as he struggles to satisfyingly craft a serious sex scene involving fucking ANT-MAN (or, as the case may be, Ant-Man fucking), is comical. The thought that there is a significant number of people who have the desire to actually read such a story is less funny, and to me, very tragic.’
9 December 2002
[comics] Kookymojo Comics Cupid [ Part 1] [ Part 2] — Anna is recommending good comics to newbies … ‘It’s [..] interesting to see how David approaches the notion of comics: from the words up only, with little consideration for the immediate relationship between words and images. Many people do this, probably because comics are book- or magazine-like, even though these same people have no trouble grasping the combination of words and images you get in subtitled films. I didn’t find out what kinds of art or movies he likes to look at (though I get an idea from reading his blog), but in comics the art is as important as the words — a bad artist can ruin a perfectly well-written story, but the combination of art and words is one of the reasons why I love the medium so much, and why I’m so keen to encourage others to share it.’
5 December 2002
[comics] Newsarama do a Look Back at Daredevil: Last Rites … D.G. Chichester on Daredevil and Kingpin: ‘Here was a relationship that had grown cold and old. The Kingpin kept messing with Daredevil, Daredevil kept storming into his office and essentially saying, “I’ve had it with you fat man! You get in the way of justice one more time… no, I mean it, really, this time I’m serious… okay, so you crossed the line again but you do it just once more” and… It made Daredevil look prissy and ineffectual, and also took a lot of the charge out of the Kingpin. There was no surprise in his next craftiness because you knew it was just going to keep going and going and…’
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4 December 2002
[comics] Interview with an Umpire — a massive interview with Grant Morrison on Barbelith … ‘I was aware that I was holding a continuum, that’s when I started to develop ideas of comics as magic, comics as sigils, because I got to page 22 then I turned back to page 8; I thought, “I’m in this story which I don’t understand, I’ve read this bit, I can go back to the point where the characters don’t know what’s about to happen to them and I can experience it out of sequence” and I saw that this comic was this entire little universe/ continuum in it’s own right and also the wider implications; that the DC Universe and the Marvel Universe were also continuums in their own way created by people when I was a kid or before I was born. Maintained by people, who like these Demonic Corporations, maintained and kept these characters which were sustained by people who would come in and look after them; people who would come in and look after Scott Summers – it was that notion of the universe in your hands and the possibilities in that.’
2 December 2002
[comics] Seth and the City — profile of Seth … ‘He’s a self-acknowledged workaholic, often passing 12 hours a day hunkered over a drafting table in his small basement studio. But much of Seth’s time is spent creating editorial illustrations for major newspapers and magazines. The commercial work earns a decent paycheque, while Palooka-Ville is his personal obsession. He labours over every detail, hand-lettering every word and aiming to create “a perfect object.”‘ [via ¡Journalista!]
28 November 2002
[comics] Great Comic Panels #2, from Ghost World [Buy: UK | US] by Dan Clowes … 
27 November 2002
[comics] Geek Poet — yet another interview with Dan Clowes … ‘One person unimpressed with Clowes’s celebrity is Enid Coleslaw, the caustic, adorable 18-year-old heroine of Ghost World. In the book — published as a piecework between 1993 and 1997, then in one volume in 1998 — Enid attends a signing given by Clowes in her local comic-book store. She imagines a rugged, hard-bitten Bogart type, but Clowes — self-deprecating to a fault — depicts himself as a shabby, leering loser, sitting alone in a corner.”There was ‘nobody” there and he was like this old “perv’,” Enid tells her best friend Rebecca later. However, it’s worth noting that her name is an anagram of her creator’s. Indeed, Clowes has said that Enid and Rebecca represent two sides of his own nature.’ [via Egon]
25 November 2002
[comics] Recommended Graphic Novels for Public Libraries … ‘ I’m a librarian at the Greene County Public Library in Xenia, Ohio, and for the past few years I’ve been buying graphic novels (comic books, that is) for my library system. They’ve proven very popular at our libraries…’
24 November 2002
[comics] Nowhere Girl — beautifully put-together online comic. ‘…too much information for you?’
21 November 2002
[comics] Worth a Thousand Words — Salon on Dan Clowes and Adrian Tomine … On Twentieth Century Eightball: ‘The best are easily as testily thoughtful and revealing as Clowes’ works of fiction. And if they aren’t concerned with creating sustained narrative story lines, taken together they do tell us a lot about character — though the character revealed most is Daniel Clowes (represented either as himself or via a “transparent stand-in” in roughly half of the pieces). In contrast to his graphic novels, these strips resemble a Clowes manifesto, or perhaps the notes scrawled by his psychoanalyst. (Said analyst would probably have much to say about “The Happy Fisherman,” about a guy who walks around with a frozen fish stuck to his dick, “Ink Studs,” in which a penis serves as a paintbrush, and “Needledick, the Bug Fucker,” which is exactly what it sounds like.)’ [via Boing Boing]
19 November 2002
[comics] Searching For The Invisible Man — Ninth Art discuss Grant Morrison … [via ¡Journalista!]
‘WHEELER: I think the difference between someone like Morrison and Moore is that at 7:30 on a Friday night, Moore is probably out covering himself with goose fat and chanting to the moon, whereas Morrison is probably watching Top Of The Pops.
JOHNSTON: I actually think Moore is more likely to be down the pub.
WHEELER: Possibly. But communing. He’s communing with his Gods, and Grant Morrison’s communing with his. And I suspect that among Grant Morrison’s gods are S Club 7.’
15 November 2002
[comics] BY MARVEL BETRAYED! SOMEBODY SUES! STAN… LEE… FIGHTS…. ON! - It’s official: Stan Lee sues Marvel / Stan Lee Damage Report: Day Two — loads of coverage from ¡Journalista! … ‘Every time I think I’m done with the bastards, Marvel Comics finds a fascinating new way to wind up with egg on their faces. From trying to decide whether female comics fans are whores or sluts, to generating friendly waves of love from comics retailers, Marvel has finally scored the public-relations anti-coup for which they’ve been aiming: yesterday Stan Lee filed his lawsuit against Marvel.’
- Neilalien also has extensive links and commentary … ‘The way Neilalien sees it, both Lee and Ditko created Spider-Man. 50% each. Or, 100% each. Both men were critical to the success of the character- one designed and defined the character re: the costume, the angles, the poses, the shadows- while the other one huckstered books off the shelves, and wrote those defining Peter Parker monologues and themes. Both men are deified on this website re: Doctor Strange and Spider-Man. And both men are probably difficult to work with- the working relationship was doomed, as most great ones are.’
- Warren Ellis on Stan Lee: ‘… his position as Publisher Emeritus makes him a million dollars a year, just for the use of his name. The co-creator of Spider-Man, Steve Ditko, is the invisible man. No money, no participation, no mention. Perhaps he doesn’t care. Like Stan Lee didn’t seem to care, until a few weeks ago. I mean, a million dollars a year is pretty good. Until an American news program asked him how he felt about earning and owning nothing of last year’s cinema phenomenon and this year’s DVD phenomenon. I saw the clip. 30-odd years of media savvy choked. Hesitation is fatal in a medium like TV. He choked and burned and suddenly he couldn’t be 100% positive. Suddenly he was Jack Kirby.’
11 November 2002
[comics] Get Your Brain on with Cartoonist David Rees — an interview with the creator of Get Your War On … ‘He wishes the media, the Bush administration, and the American people would admit the truth about the devastating consequences of war — in both the Middle East and in our own country. He’s not opposed to fighting terrorism, he says: “It’s okay to be against dictators. What you want is for people to be free.”‘ [via ¡Journalista!]
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8 November 2002
[comics] Moore The Merrier — yet another interview with Alan Moore … ‘This planet has a physical geography with which we have already familiarised ourselves. But since the dawn of the first stories, there is a fictional geography, where the gods and demons live. We have created this big imaginary planet that is a counterpart to our own; and in some cases these places are more familiar to us than the real ones.’ [via Bullets]
7 November 2002
[comics] Big Mouth Types Again — Evan Dorkin has a web journal … [via Egon]  ‘…I realized that I’ve allowed many stupid things I’ve said or thought to be printed in comics and magazines, and I’ve regretted them and lived, so what the heck, I’ll give this here journal thing a whack and see what happens.’
6 November 2002
[wtf?] Superhero for Single Girls — a real life superheroine in NYC … ‘For the past seven years Terrifica has been patrolling New York’s party and bar scene, looking out for women who have had a little too much to drink and are in danger of being taken advantage of by men. She says she has saved several women from both themselves and predators who would prey upon their weaknesses — both from alcohol and a misguided notion that they have to go out drinking to find a companion. “I protect the single girl living in the big city,” says Terrifica, sporting blond Brunhild wig with a golden mask and a matching Valkyrie bra.’ [via Boing Boing]
4 November 2002
[comics] Unseen Artwork from Big Numbers … [via Egon]  ‘…with the world political situation as it is at the moment the political radical is put in a difficult position because, hum, how do you rebel against chaos? You know, much as political conspiracy theorists would like to think otherwise, the brutal truth of the thing is nobody’s in control, this is a runaway train. Nobody’s in control, there’s not some big conspiracy in control, whether it’s Jewish bankers or nazis or CIA spooks, the simple truth is that the world is a complex storm of mathematics, basically… Very complicated mathematics that is beyond human comprehension.’ — Alan Moore.
1 November 2002
[comics] Geek Chic — vaguely annoying profile of Adrian Tomine … ‘It was lunch hour and all manner of awkward-looking males were standing quietly around the [comic book] store, hardly looking up from their reading to see who was passing. Tomine headed straight to the back where the new releases are shelved. He browsed through a couple items, but quickly put them back where he found them, unimpressed. “It’s pretty rare that I actually buy comics now,” he says. Alternative cartoonists are a lot like music snobs that way. To be a high-caliber geek means maintaining high standards and discriminating tastes, and Tomine is of the highest caliber.’ [via Bugpowder]
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31 October 2002
[comics] The Transmetropolitan Condition — interview with Warren Ellis … ‘There are moments of pure, heart stopping beauty in the most tragic and broken environments. And the loveliest community on earth will not be able to eliminate the dog turd.’ [via Boing Boing]
30 October 2002
[comics] A useful directory of the Comics Forum on Barbelith. ‘They can’t kill Beak, he’s a Van Sciver creation, which surely bears as much weight as a Kirby creation!’ — Ethan Van Sciver.
28 October 2002
[comics] The Magus Speaks — extracts from Eddie Campbell’s interview with Alan Moore … [via Bugpowder] ‘Ah, Lost Girls. Can you imagine anyone else being able to get a wonderfully accomplished artist to spend thirteen years drawing pornographic material for them, customised to demand; being able to declare himself a pornographer and have everyone take it as some bold new intellectual position; or even claiming against tax for high class scud-books like The Art of the Marquis Von Bayros as “reference material”? No. You can’t. This is why I am a genius. “What are you doing in that bathroom, young man?” “Mother, I am doing highly paid reference work.”‘
26 October 2002
[comics] ¡Journalista! — the Comics Journal Weblog [via Bugpowder]
24 October 2002
[politics] The Friendly Dictators — political Trading Cards richly illustrated by Bill Sienkiewicz and originally published by Eclipse in 1990 … [via jwz’s LiveJournal]  ‘…”Captain General” Augusto Pinochet seized power from democratically elected President Salvador Allende in 1973, and buried Chile’s 150 year old democracy. “Democracy is the breeding ground of communism,” says Pinochet.’
22 October 2002
[comics] Mists of Time — Warren Ellis discusses Alan Moore’s out-of-print work … On Moore and Sienkiewicz’s Brought To Light: ‘ It’s an absolute tour de force. Sienkiewicz produces mad images, political caricature via Ralph Steadman, slapping down anything that might work — photocopies, splatter, bits of metal, anything that might work. The Eagle, pissed out of his mind and coked to the tits, hunches there at the bar and vomits out the secret history of the American century — impeccably research documentary coming out of the beak of a fictional beard. Remember the best bit of the film JFK? Where Donald Sutherland lays out the whole thing in one long riveting monologue, and then concludes it with a sigh, and: “Well, I never thought things were the same after that.”? It’s like that, only funnier and scarier and more compelling. It demands it be read in one sitting, and it just sears with passion and commitment.’
20 October 2002
[comics] Garth Ennis interviewed by Jimmy Palmiotti … ‘I was talking the DC editor Dan Raspler about good artists for war stories, and Carlos [Ezquerra]’s name naturally came up. Dan pointed out that no one’s really done a story about the Spanish civil war, at which point a lightbulb went on over my head. It seems odd that Carlos has been drawing for over thirty years and he has never done a story set in his own country, never mind one of its most important moments in its history. Well, here we go…’ [Related: Carlos Ezquerra’s Home Page]
11 October 2002
[comics] Speaking with Frank Miller — First part of a Pulse Interview … On his reaction to 9/11: ‘I threw out all my notes for future stories. I started developing new ones. Being an obvious person, I had terrorists as villains in every one of them and I’m working on those stories right now. I feel like people talking about getting over 9/11 or moving along and so on, and I’m like yeah yeah, just like Jack Kirby got over Pearl Harbor. It ain’t gonna happen. This is my story now. And maybe for the rest of my life. It may be. I don’t know. It’s what I’m pursuing in every story now. I feel like my world has been reconfigured. I’m at the peak of my powers and talent, and I’m going to address this because every other story seems so tiny and out of it.’
10 October 2002
[comics] Is There A God? — the Onion asks a bunch of celebs the Big Question … [thanks Matt.] Frank Miller: ‘I don’t think so.’
Stan Lee: ‘Well, let me put it this way… [Pauses.] No, I’m not going to try to be clever. I really don’t know. I just don’t know.’
Alan Moore: ‘[Laughs.] Well, I can’t move for them, quite frankly. I’m looking at about 12 of them from where I’m sitting at the moment. I’m kind of swamped for choice. Yeah, there’s probably tons of them. There’s probably a swarm of gods.’
9 October 2002
[comics] Weblogs and Comics: How weblogs can help the comics community — a how-to guide from Pete Ashton … ‘[Weblogs] essentially allow the artist to communicate and create outside of the usual channels, be they self publishing their own books or being published by a company. They add the human aspect that their readers would otherwise miss out on.’
8 October 2002
[politics] We’re Shit And We Know We Are — cartoon from Steve Bell.
7 October 2002
[comics] Meditations in Red [Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5] — Grant Morrison does Shang-Chi – Master of Kung Fu! [via The Barbelith Underground] 
1 October 2002
[politics] ‘If only we had known back then’ — Steve Bell on Edwina Currie and John Major … ‘It’s not often that I actually gurgle with delight, but I must confess that is exactly what happened when I awoke to the news of Edwina Currie’s affair with John Major. Having spent so many years drawing Major as a hapless gawk with his Aertex Y-fronts always worn outside his dull, charcoal-grey suit I was faced with the fact that he was also a sex-romping superstud who could keep it up for at least three hours (according to the News of the World).’
28 September 2002
[comics] Alan Moore in Egomania #2: ‘”Approaching forty […] I was also starting to become more and more fascinated by the big taboo question of creativity, which also leads on to the big taboo question of consciousness, namely, “What is it and how does it work?” And also, of course, “How can I profit from it, move to Peterborough and live like a king?”‘ [via WEF]
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