Alan Moore Is Right And Everyone Else Is Wrong

(Who did this poster?

I would gladly credit & linkback.

Located it here at Achtung Baby!)

I honestly got obsessed with the whole Watchmen thing yesterday. Couldn't help it, had deadlines (which I still have, since I spent hours becoming a Watchmen Prequel Scholar by default).

The Daryl Cooke ones look like they will be good, kind of by accident, almost like just casting a perfect actor for a role instead of teaching someone what the role is about.

The others will likely just embody all the stupid xeroxing of "grim comics" that we have seen for the last zillion years. Grim, gritty Archie & Veronica etc etc.

Moore might be a curmudgeon, but he & Gibbons created something special and for that, I don't care what DC or anyone's legal rights are, they should just make some new comics and leave Watchmen alone as Something Good. (tm).

I kind of love Moore's Swamp Thing & Superman more. Swampy in particular had more of a freewheeling character to it. The ones where he's exiled into space and meets Adam Strange and has his own plant life Green Lantern adventure are just perfect.

God, he pretty much issued the perfect critique to the 80's Byrne Superman IN ADVANCE by doing those last 2 Silver Age Supermans. For that alone, DC & all of Warner "Communications" should do whatever he wants forever.

Fuck it all, the history of comics is the history of people getting to do weird stuff when no one's looking.

The Hernanadez Bros were right to get indie & stay indie.

That is all.

Great Interview with Berkley Breathed

Read the whole thing.

Vice: I’m curious as to how the writing process for Bloom County worked. Did you always know where you were heading, or was there an element of discovery as you wrote? Did you think in terms of seasons, sort of like television writing?
Berkeley Breathed: Your question presumes a reality so distant from the experience that any questions about process are meaningless—but perfectly reasonable. The problem is that you’re asking a guy who didn’t think of any individual strip or story line longer than it takes to read this sentence. I drew in a manic, sweat-flinging state of deadline panic EVERY week. Not most weeks. EVERY week. For ten years. I drew what occurred to me as I stared at the same blank strips I’d been watching for six days, and only because the plane that would deliver them to my syndicate editor was due to take off at 5:30 AM, about seven hours from that moment.

Ouch.
This is not how a comic strip should be drawn. This is not how ANY deadline should be handled by any reasonable, conscientious, grown-up professional. But as I wasn’t, they weren’t. The flip side of that confessional coin is that Bloom County would not have been what it was—whatever it was—if I’d been that thing I just described. It was art and writing born of chaos. It was the poison the madness needed. The new book—with all the chaos intact and not edited out, as it was in books before—shows that rather intriguingly.

Pondering Mazzuchelli...

Waiting for the full podcast/transcript of Mazzuchelli's MoCCA talk yesterday. One observation he made-that the work which is embedded in our collective cortex (Ditko, Kirby, Toth, Steranko etc etc) always looked so fresh and unlabored because it was done on deadline and with plenty of hustle.

There's always that paradox when artists of my generation labor to print on "just the right" degraded cardboard stock to begin to approximate the pulpy marks which seem more real to us than the so called "real" world.

Whenever I succumb to the temptation to add an additional color plate I am reminded that the masters did it with the most limited means, on the shittiest paper stock possible. (See the Neal Adams interview for more on this) But they brought to bear such intense sensibilities and such killer chops...

Think of Alex Toth working actual size on a kitchen cutting board as his drafting table.

Another great gem in passing was when D.M was asked if he preferred the "real" NY (where, alas, getting across town by webslinging or billy club rope is an insane fantasy) or the Ditko/Kirby one. He answered as we all answer. Of course the early Marvel universe is the one we prefer. The quiet understated amused tone of his matter of fact answer just underlines how much Jules Feiffer was onto years ago.

Buzz Buzz

1 more interview: Grant Morrison explains the hive-mind here

One bee is not particularly smart but group a number of bees together and at a critical threshold something interesting happens - a 'hive' emerges. That is to say, from the aggregation of a number of not very intelligent units, a mass intelligence emerges. The same thing happens everywhere in nature; a single sponge cell is a fairly aimless, hopeless animal but gather enough of them together and a colony intelligence is seen to develop which drives each individual along as part of a group endeavor.

So, now that we have the idea in our heads that 'intelligence' appears when systems become increasingly complex, we can approach my notion of 'living comics.'

Hang With Me Joe!

This is perfect:
More here.
Via the mighty Comics Journal blog. That and Comics Reporter are essential.

Comics Are Essential

Grant Morrison. Frank Quitely. Batman and Robin #1.

Yes.

Grant Morrison: 'Batman and Robin', which opens with the 3-part 'Batman Reborn' arc, is maybe more poppy, and more colourful, but it's also creepier. It's like David Lynch doing the Batman TV show.

(on Quitely's art) And he’s producing things like sound effects, because nobody does sound effects anymore. Everybody has given up on them, so what we’ve done is incorporate them into the artwork. When someone hits water, the water rises up and makes the “splash” effect. It just looks fantastic.

Read more here.
And here.

The common thread between this and The Brave and The Bold is an embrace of the character's whole history, including the Adam West incarnation.

Let's Get That Lousy Adaptation Taste Out Of Our Mouths Part 3

The Watchmen Saturday Morning Cartoon! Far, far better than that crappy movie, it's the sprightly mint tea to treat Lousy Comic Book Adaptation. Again, embedding would be better, but here's a link:

Let's Get That Lousy Adaptation Taste Out Of Our Mouths Part 2

The Brave and The Bold gets better and better. Artisanal granita for sophisticated fanboy palates whose tastebuds have been sullied by pathetic "graphic novel" adaptations.

I would have done an embedded video, but the geniuses at Cartoon Network layered so much extra cheese and pepperoni into their embed code the link is preferable.

As Der Spieg said, "if graphic is respectable and novel is respectable, what could be more respectable than GRAPHIC NOVEL?" Bring on the comics. Please.

BTW, Jackie Earle Haley, I respect the shit out of you, it's not your fault. As the interviews with you suggested, you really got Rorschach in all of his Ditko-ey glory. Alas. Hrrm.

Tom Spurgeon on Kirby: Grrrreat!

This sentence (on The Demon Omnibus Collection) makes me happy:

"I'm not sure that $50 judiciously spent wouldn't get you the whole series in comic book form, but I enjoy those comics very much so I'm not going to quibble. It's sort of like The Demon doesn't have any of the quantifiable things that other series of that period offer -- it's not thematically ambitious, it's not the best written, it's not the most visually splendid -- but it's Kirby at that point in his career where if he stood up too quickly a planet fell out of his pocket, and that's more than enough."

Tom Spurgeon, The Comics Reporter

Comics, Not "Graphic Novels", Pud

Courtney Crumrin creator Ted Naifeh talks to Comic Book Resources about moving away from pamphlet comics toward longer, more durable publications.

via Heidi McDonald

This is based on a lame aesthetic. Show me one flabby "graphic novel" with the raw power of Zap #0. It's the same mindset that values concept albums over amazing singles, thinking that the longer form is "deeper".

Work in comics form which needs to be longer is another matter. I think that the challenge is to keep the energy extended over a longer work. Seth, Bros Hernandez, Satrapi all do this with great brio.

Measuring comics by the standards of other media is usually based on some fundamental fallacy. (Watchmen movie, I am looking at you!)

Art Spiegelman Fills Out Questionnaire

Stuff he's been saying in one form or another for 30+ years in public. I was lucky enough to get turned on to the original Breakdowns via a review in The Comics Journal when I was in high school. Still the real deal, check it out here.
via The Comics Journal

Update: Bookworm podcast interview here.

Junot Diaz Video Interview

Gene Colan

Gene Colan, genius penciller of the Silver Age, is in poor health right now. More info here.
(via Comics Journal)

Gene Colan! I only know the work and not the man, but in some ways I feel like I do know him via the humanity of those pages and pages of his art which I have pored over.

His women are among the least stereotyped, even when wearing an all black unitard like the Black Widow did. But they were often sexy as well. How did he do it?

And what about the shadows in Dr. Strange, Daredevil and Nathaniel Dusk for example? How were they all so atmospheric and yet different shadows?

Here is a man who can make a pencil sing.

So, I don't know Gene Colan. But man, do I know some things about Gene Colan.

My deepest heartfelt best wishes for the Genial One and his family.

PS: (quote from Comics Journal):
Tom Spurgeon alerts us to the fact that the family of Gene Colan are having immense difficulties paying his medical bills. Caring readers who would like to assist them have two ways to do so:

1. You can bid in one of the Colans’ eBay auctions, which would not only put money in their hands but also net you a nice piece of art, to boot.
2. Do as I did, and make a direct donation via Paypal, where the Colans are registered as genecolan@optonline.net — just log into your account, hit the “send money” button, and insert said email address and the amount you wish to donate into the appropriate boxes. Oh, and you might want to mention the word “donation” prominently in the comments box, so the Colans don’t have to sort through a bunch of listings to find the eBay payments.

I am Iron Man... Or I am Monty

Dial B for BLOG, a great comics blog, has a series dedicated to Iron Man in advance of the film opening.


I wound up using Iron Man as an icon in some paintings 10 years ago as a stand in for myself for various reasons which I may write about at some point. I will post some of these when I can dig them up. It was the Don Heck version of the character that I somehow connected to in doing those things, and the way the black eye slits and blocks of color slipped so easily into the way that I was working.

It is a strange moment in the culture when these pulpy obsessions get exposed to the light of the mainstream. At the same time, I have more hope that this time they will get it right somehow. Favreau and Downey + Black Sabbath? Nerdcore, man.

No doubt it will all feel just right for at least the runtime of the film in the front row, I go for complete suspension of disbelief for at least the duration of the actual experience.

In other comics news, keep reading Monty! Jim Meddick has just hit his stride:

Happy Seders...

Siegel and Schuster Created Superman in 1938, MF!

From Joe Schuster's wiki page

Neal Adams on the late-1970s settlement from DC Comics for which he and other comics creators fought: "Others made millions while Superman's creators lived in near-poverty. Jerry was a clerk and Joe was a legally blind man who lived in his brother's apartment, slept on a cot, and worked as a messenger. I met and fought for their small remaining rights when they both turned only 60 years old. Not 'old' by any definition. The battle took months and the settlement was meager, but it let the men live the remaining years of their lives with dignity. You know what they cared about most? They cared about having their names, once again, associated with their character, Superman! Why? Because it was what they were as people. They were their work."

When Jack Kirby went to DC, he actually called up the creators of Superman to get their blessings before doing his version of the character. (From Ronin Ro's Tales To Astonish.)

Court ruled finally in Siegel and Schuster's favor this week. More here. (Via Comics Journal)

Steve Gerber Rest In Pissed-Offness

Steve Gerber, who died at 60 this past Sunday, went out with his writing boots on. Check his blog for some of his last entries.

He affected many of us at an impressionable age, with stories like "The Kid's Night Out" in Giant Size Man-Thing #4. Here is a link to The Comics Journal coverage.

From the Wiki: "Gerber initially penned standard superhero stories for titles such as Daredevil and Sub-Mariner, but soon developed an individual voice that mixed adventure with social satire and absurdist humor. In one issue of The Defenders, for example, a group of supervillains, tired of always being beaten by the good guys, seeks out a self-help guru for motivation."

More:
I keep thinking about "The Kid's Night Out" when I try to think of what it meant to be reading Steve's stuff as a kid. But it's more than that and it's part of my life. What a great gift those comics were. I remember being bugged by my hebrew school teacher b/c I was reading a copy of Man-Thing instead of studying my Bar-Mitzvah material. HA! That mediocre teacher didn't impart a fraction of the morality, humor, meaning and even, yes, Jewish values that Gerber's comics did in those days.

Here is a link to The Comics Journal's interview with Steve Gerber in the late 70's.

"They dig a hole. And they put you in it." Ah, we will miss you, Steve.

Rest in peace.

Hayoung Shin's Yokocho Illustrations Now Online

Hayoung Shin does these illustrations at Village Yokocho. She has finally posted a bunch of these and other drawings online. Check it out.

I always like the disgruntled or terrified foodstuffs, animals and veggies on her menus.

Keep reading Monty

If They Outlaw Comics Torrents, Then Only Outlaws will have...

Marvel & DC are trying to kill popular comics torrent-linkers, but before they have their own digital comics solution in place.

In short, the parallel with Napster is all in place, but what will be the iTunes type of solution?

I bought New Gods in pulp, in collected book set and then I downloaded the .cbrs. Same with Watchmen (well, I got the book as a gift, but still...). So, I bought 'em legally 2x. The scans are a great format.

Mini rant: The multigig 1960's Kurt Schaffenberger Lois Lanes? Well, I am still waiting for the trade paperback of those, man! (What, DC, too busy killing off Big Barda? Oh, that's another rant and not a pretty one. Suffice to say that Barda will outlive us all.)

Cbrs are the mp3s of online comics, and the scan-and-posting crowd is pretty meticulous about their craft. The reasonable solution is probably DRM free authorized downloads with ads. I don't know what the mainstream comics publishers clear, but a buck a comic is probably alot. Plus they can still publish the collected graphic novels, distribute in bookstores and clean up.

Marvel is doing Rhapsody style subscriptions, but they don't have the newest stuff available. DC is doing an artistically more experimental format actually setup for the computer screen, but, hey, where is Grant Morrison?

Interesting perspectives on this issue:
mightygodking
businessof content