Archive for August, 2007
Our own Andy Bennett and friend of Ferret: Sean McKeever will be signing at Alley Cat Games & Comics tommorow. Part of their Grand Opening celebration in Dublin (Ohio). Things kick off at 12noon. As crazy as the layout is on Sawmill, it’ll be interesting to see how the shop fares in an area where two comic shops have faded.
Hey, Tom — I heard about that Surly Girl show and it’s on Saturday. I’m going to try to put in appearance.
And in other news … Andy Dick was arrested for public urination at the Funny Bone.
I breezed thru the Other Paper and ran across an interview with Denny Griffith. Still the head of CCAD and buying up property like there was no tommorow. An insane amount of property to better the school’s footprint on downtown. Which is pretty much what the board wanted it seems. While the school’s Illustration program has blossomed, the program that Canzani had created has stagnated. By all accounts anyway. The board wanted a cheerleader, the student’s got a watered down education. Keeping students in by fudging crits and milking them to feed the machine. CCAD used to have a rep as being hard as all get out. I remember people walking out crying during some crits. It was a badge of honor to survive the program. Even freshman year.
I don’t know why I really care about this but I do. I’d like to see a leaner smaller student body. Smaller classes and an art school that doesn’t take up five city blocks for the sake of image. If you want to fix the rep of ‘CCAD grads doing dry wall and painting in the evenings’ that’s your real solution.
Sunday Comix Collective is having a one day show at the Surly Girl this weekend. The Alive blurb , Surly Girl site, and the S.S. website mention nothing of what day the show is. Sunday maybe?? Headed by Max Ink, Micheal Neno and others. The show plans on a live comics jam and sports art on the walls by the collective.
edit: It’s Saturday night. Thanks Tony.
The Engine winds down tonight. Say what you will about Ellis but it was one hell of a forum. I hope the new Panel and Pixel forum keeps up the dialogue. The real magic of the Engine was the Creator’s Conference thread. It was exclusive to working pros only. There was alot of knowledge spewed forth about the ins and outs of this industry. It was the first time I saw pros open up about their experiences. Stuff I wish would come out in interviews sometimes. It had a nice balance between the pretentious Journal board and well most other comics forums. The knixing of cape chat was refreshing.
There is the ning site which is an interesting format in and of itself isn’t nearly as hopping. I’ve been on it for a couple of weeks and it appears as though the traffic came and went. It seems once Rantz’s forum was announced, the ning forum slowed down. Evolving into it’s own thing I suppose.
My brother, who happens to work at Battelle, e-mailed me with a heads up that tonight’s episode of Mythbusters on the Discovery Channel. As part of their “Superhero Hour” theme, they will feature Battelle’s Jim LaBine talking about his invention, something called the TAIL System (I have no idea what it is.) Here’s the show’s description from the Mythbuster website:
“MythBusters – Superhero HourYou’re not seeing things. As uncomfortable as it is, it’s true. The Mythbusters are wearing their underpants on the outside. And why? Because this episode is the Superhero Hour — the Marvel comic maestros are put under the MythBusters microscope.”
You can catch the episode at these times:
Aug 29, 9:00 pm
Aug 30, 1:00 am
Aug 30, 7:00 pm
I got in Project:Rooftop today for the tribute to Ringo: for my redesign of Impulse. Flash/Impulse redesigns all week I believe. Thanks to all the folks at PR.
The much ballyhooed CCI Comics lit panel, now in mp3 form. Courtesy of the Comics Journal (thru September so get to clicking). Featuring panelists Cecil Castelluci, Douglas Wolk, Sara Ryan and many more. I’d go to more panels if Douglas Wolk booked them or maybe a couple per con. To balance out the kharma of the sad Babylon 5 reunion panel.
Another week, another page from the past. Guess away…
(click image to Nuyah-size)
(previous weeks: 9/12/2005, 9/19/2005, 9/26/2005, 10/3/2005, 10/10/2005, 10/17/2005, 10/24/2005, 10/31/2005, 11/1/2005, 11/2/2005, 11/3/2005, 11/4/2005, 11/5/2005, 11/6/2005, 11/7/2005, 11/14/2005, 11/21/2005, 11/28/2005, 12/5/2005, 12/12/2005, 12/19/2005, 12/26/2005, 1/2/2006, 1/9/2006, 1/16/2006, 1/23/2006, 1/30/2006, 2/06/2006, 2/13/2006, 2/20/2006, 2/27/2006, 3/6/2006, 3/13/2006, 3/20/2006, 3/27/2006, 4/3/2006, 4/4/2006, 4/5/2006, 4/6/2006, 4/7/2006, 4/8/2006, 4/9/2006, 4/10/2006, 4/17/2006, 4/23/2006, 5/1/2006, 5/8/2006, 5/15/2006, 5/22/2006, 5/29/2006, 6/5/2006, 6/12/2006, 6/19/2006, 6/26/2006, 7/3/2006, 7/10/2006, 7/17/2006, 7/24/2006, 7/31/2006, 8/7/2006, 8/13/2006, 8/21/2006, 8/28/2006, 9/4/2006, 9/11/2006, 9/18/2006, 9/25/2006, 10/2/2006, 10/9/2006, 10/16/2006, 10/23/2006, 10/30/2006, 11/6/2006, 11/13/2006, 11/20/2006, 11/27/2006, 12/4/2006, 12/11/2006, 12/18/2006, 12/25/2006, 1/1/2007, 1/8/2007, 1/15/2007, 1/22/2007, 1/29/2007, 2/5/2007, 2/12/2007, 2/19/2007, 2/26/2007, 3/5/2007, 3/12/2007, 3/19/2007, 3/26/2007, 4/2/2007, 4/5/2007, 4/9/2007, 4/16/2007, 4/23/2007, 4/30/2007, 5/7/2007, 5/14/2007, 5/21/2007, 5/28/2007, 6/4/2007, 6/11/2007, 6/18/2007, 6/25/2007, 7/2/2007, 7/9/2007, 7/16/2007, 7/23/2007, 7/30/2007, 8/6/2007, 8/13/2007, 8/20/2007)
My wife saw a commercial for a Travel Channel show called “No Reservations” with Anthony Bourdain. Sounds like the show goes to different cities and samples the food and locales. This week (Monday 10 PM), Bourdain travels to Cleveland and meets up with Michael Ruhlman and Harvey Pekar to get a tour of the city.
The producers must have been fans of the American Splendor movies because there will be comic illustrations featured in the show, and Pekar has comic strips on the Web site about the show.
The Onion’s A.V. Club has a long, in-depth interview with Fables creator Bill Willingham.
“I was not going to pitch it to DC, simply because it wouldn’t fit in their whole superhero universe. I didn’t think it was a really good Vertigo book, since all of their books kind of had a universal look at the time, of pouty teenagers with lots of face shrapnel and tattoos, railing against The Man. It really wasn’t that kind of book, so I just assumed they wouldn’t be interested in it.”
And here’s a snippet on a topic I’m interested in: creator-owned work vs. work-for-hire:
“You hear sometimes that people who create their own stuff save all their good ideas for their own properties, and don’t spend them on the company-owned projects. I disagree with that. My personal theory is that we’ve all got this bucket full of good ideas, and if you just hold onto them, your bucket never gets fuller. There’s only so many you can hold at a time, but as fast as you use them up, it fills up again with more good ideas. My notion is to spend everything you’ve got coming through your head as fast as you can, and you’re guaranteed to get more good stuff.”
I saw this and thought of Craig. Enter the work of Brandon Bird.
Continuing the tour of my favorite comics from the worst era to be a collector, the mid-80′s to mid-90′s. Here’s a book that should have been better: Marvel’s twice-monthly anthology series, Marvel Comics Presents. A book saddled with a permanent Wolverine lead feature in the early 90’s should have had the freedom to be more experimental with it’s backup features, but except for the occasional gem featuring an obscure character they generally ran pretty ordinary material with some rather low-rent contributors. Every now and then, however, they struck gold, as is the case with this issue.
Marvel Comics Presents # 81
I’m not old enough to have collected the Barry Smith issues of Conan, but a friend of mine who quit collecting in the mid-80’s is a big fan. I broke out my MCP issues with Smith’s Weapon X series to lend him, but decided to give the comics a read first myself. I was pleasantly surprised to discover this gem of an issue in the middle of the run. Taking a closer look:
Smith’s Weapon X was billed as an origin of Wolverine, but it basically just shows everything happening to the character that readers already knew: a bunch of scientists kidnap the mutant and surgically give him a metal skeleton. The mystery of who they are or who they represent is maintained as we’re treated to thirteen issues of Logan being put through utter agony before breaking loose and butchering everybody. The only new insight we are given to the character’s backstory is in the form of the project’s leader, a bald guy who answers to the title “Professor.” This might explain Wolverine’s issues with specific authority figures later down the road. In any event, the series represents thirteen episodes of beautiful Barry Smith artwork, such as the splash page from this particular issue:
That’s the main feature; now on to the backup stories provided by unknown artists with unexceptional talents. Immediately following the Wolverine story is… Holy crap, a Steve Ditko Captain America?!!? Eight wonderful pages, the concluding chapter of a two-part story by one of the great masters, also (like Roy Thomas from the previous post) entering his fourth (or fifth?) decade of making the coolest comics around. Ditko’s work is always a joy to behold, and he’s in top form with this story of Cap trying to unravel the mystery of the villain Wargod’s secret identity. This makes me want to dig out some of my old issues of Speedball…
The third story is an Ant Man episode drawn by James Frye, whose work looks kind of like Phil Hester’s here—but only kind of, and this was years before Hester. I’m sure to this day he treasures this comic, the issue he drew with two old school legends; him and the other kid who drew the last story in the anthology, a one-part Daredevil feature… Wait a minute, the credit box says Marshall Rogers!
Okay, so it’s Marshall Rogers as he’s heading into the “Fat Elvis” era of his career (“Dark Detective,” anybody?) but let’s give the guy the helluva lot of respect he deserves. Kudos also to the editor who managed to get these guys all together between the covers of a single comic book; I’m surprised there isn’t a banner on the front screaming the creators’ names in huge letters, though not having it there made for one hell of a pleasant surprise as I was giving these issues a browse before sending them off.
