The pages aren’t numbered because this commemorative tome is another of Chip Kidd’s scrapbooky executions that actively, deliberately, desecrate historic visual artifacts for the sake of flash and filagree, the by-now-boring consequence of a benighted sense of design and the designer’s overweening ego. Like most of Kidd’s work, the design draws attention to itself rather than providing an unobtrusive platform for displaying the content, a spectacular miscarriage of a book designer’s function.

Yes, I know: the current rage among book publishers is to produce books that are themselves works of art so that people will buy them for themselves not, necessarily, for the content. It’s a dodge intended to make books salable again in a competitive market: A cleverly designed book becomes an objet d’art, something you can’t find on the Internet, so you must buy it to put on the mantelpiece. But I like books for their content, and I don’t know why anyone would want the SHAZAM book: the quality of the visuals has been degraded to fit Kidd’s concept and much of the material is presented without accompanying text to explain what we’re looking at. In short, the book satisfies neither the art connoisseur’s passion for contemplating pictures nor the historian’s quest for information.

The book’s cover is a cute construction, typical of the kind of Kidding we get in his work. A cut-out shaped like the bolt of lightning that transforms young Billy Batson into superhero Captain Marvel obliterates most of the drawing of Captain Marvel to let us see inside the book — to the first page within, whereupon Billy’s magic word, SHAZAM, appears, each letter accompanied by the name of the god it invokes, a reprint of the litany frequently published in the comic book; through the bolt of lightning shape, we see only those initial letters, S-H-A-Z-A-M, spelling out both the magic word and the name of this book. Cute, as I said. But it serves no thematic purpose whatsoever in suggesting the book’s innards.

The content, organized by hodgepodge, consists largely of blow-ups of published comic-book covers and interior-page house ads, often distorted by the enlargement (skin-tone dots magnified, f’instance) and replete with whatever blemishes have accrued to them through the years of being stored in someone’s attic (folds in the middle, tattered edges), pages of promotional material for the Republic Pictures Captain Marvel serial (featuring Tom Tyler’s Jimmy Smits smile), and a few pages of original art, plus great quantities of advertising for Captain Marvel merchandise — buttons, figurines (several “rare” sirocco wood-composition figures), iron-on transfers, fan club literature, coloring books, whistles, rings, watches, pennants, key chains, caps, stationery, pins, paper dolls, and even a miniature golf course. The quantity of gewgaw stuff is impressive on its own, I suppose, and maybe that’s the reason this book was published; that, in fact, is most of the “information” to be derived from perusing this volume.

Among the only coherent pieces in the book is the first Captain Marvel story from Captain Marvel Adventures #1 (Spring 1941), the entire issue produced in two weeks or less by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, their only foray into Fawcett territory. The issue is noted in the history of the Fawcett’s superhero for its violation of the usual Captain Marvel tongue-in-cheek ambiance in favor of the usual Simon-and-Kirby pulsating action and for its complete and ghastly reinterpretation of the style of rendering nurtured by Captain Marvel’s visual stylist, C.C. Beck. The story is also reproduced herein directly from a badly out-of-register printing of the comic book; that’s Kidd’s way of doing things, but it inflicts serious damage on this book as a showcase of art.

Other members of the Marvel Family are present — Mary Marvel, Captain Marvel Jr., Spy Smasher and (wonderful) Hoppy the Marvel Bunny. Drawn, at first and for much of its run, by the incomparable Chad Grothkopf (who, we learn — one of the few fragments of actual information imparted in this book — wrote the synopses of his stories), Hoppy debuted in Funny Animals #1 (December 1942), “predating Superman’s Krypto the Superdog by more than thirteen years.” Since the two characters are not at all alike, why is this comparison appropriate?

The compilers of the book make a big deal of Mac Raboy’s polished rendering of Captain Marvel Jr. but make no mention of Bud Thompson, whose line was more fluid and less finicky, even though they publish a Thompson Captain Marvel Jr. cover. An error of commission rather than omission occurs when Spear parenthetically makes Quality Comics the entity that morphs into Marvel Comics; not so, but there appear few other errors of this sort, probably because there are few assertions of fact throughout.

Among the few tidbits worth having at hand is a portion of an interview with C.C. Beck in a 1970s issue of Fawcett Collectors of America wherein Beck says: “The Marvel Family characters were originally designed to be as different as possible from all of the comic books’ other tights-wearing strongmen characters, who were also often hooded or masked. The Marvel Family were supposed to look more like high school or college athletes.” Apart from this tantalizing fragment, there’s very little “history” of Fawcett’s comic-book venture.

One of the dishearteningly few highpoints for me in this book are two pages that reprint a World War II contest staged in late 1942 (near the end of our first year in the fray): called “Paste the Axis,” readers were invited to supply the verbiage for the speech balloons of caricatures in miniature of Hitler, Mussolini and Tojo, the dictators of the Axis nations, Germany, Italy and Japan. The caricatures are appealingly cute and amply disrespectful in a highly laughable mode; a treat for the eye and a balm for the heart.

An anomaly that is always present in the Golden Age Captain Marvel is his backside. Because he wore a thoroughly skin-tight costume, his buttocks could not be ignored. And whenever Captain Marvel is depicted from the rear, his buns are right there, clearly and lovingly outlined. Simon and Kirby, as the accompanying illo affirms, managed to avoid the kind of clarity that Beck and his minions regularly indulged. Walt Disney liked butts, too; he thought they were funny, and so his comedy was often achieved from the rear, so to speak. But Captain Marvel’s buns? Dunno. Did Wertham have anything to say about them?

Click through for larger images.

Click here for Part One of Nathan Wilson’s accompanying Williams II interview.

Tomorrow: demonstration and interview, Part Two.

Interview by Nathan Wilson

Freddie E. Williams II has had a career in comics that most artists could only dream of achieving.  Until a convention appearance in San Diego in 2005 where he submitted a portfolio to DC Comics’ talent search, Williams’ entrance into comics had been with shorter stints in 2005 as a penciller and inker with Image’s Noble Causes as well as a few one-shots.  The 2005 San Diego Comic-Con changed all that as his break into the “big two” came with Grant Morrison’s four-issue Seven Soldiers of Victory: Mister Miracle #2.

Talent and determination combined with a growing reputation for delivering his artwork either ahead of schedule or precisely on time won him the continued attention of DC, who assigned Williams as a fill-in artist on Aquaman and eventually made him the ongoing artist for Robin only one year after his SDCC portfolio review.  In addition to his continued DC work with Robin, Freddie illustrated one-shots and shorter runs on titles such as 52, Firestorm: The Nuclear Man, The Outsiders, Blue Beetle, Countdown and The Flash.  In 2009, Williams teamed with Matt Sturges on DC’s six-issue Final Crisis Aftermath: Run! and in early 2010 continued with Sturges on JSA All-Stars for 11 issues.  In addition to Morrison and Sturges, over the course of only five years, Williams has also collaborated with Adam Beechen, Mark Waid, Peter Milligan, Chuck Dixon and Fabian Nicieza on nearly all of DC’s top-tier character properties.

Williams attributes his success and abilities to his 1999 conversion from traditional pencil-and-ink work to a completely digital art environment.  Working digitally for more than years now, a transition and process that he describes in great detail with instructions and guidance in his The DC Comics Guide to Digitally Drawing Comics (2009), Williams took time away from his hectic schedule to speak with me about his digital canvas artwork and to record a video of his process.

NATHAN WILSON: Are you a completely digital artist or do you still complete roughs or page layouts traditionally?

FREDDIE E. WILLIAMS II: The vast majority of the time, I am all digital. Pages that I think will sell well or if I feel like I need to do some multimedia on a page like some ink splatters or some really brushy sort of work, which doesn’t come up very often, I’ll do the setup for the page digitally and then print out the structure onto art board and then finish it off traditionally so that I have an actual piece of original art later, that I can either sell or just so I can paint on it with ink splatters and stuff that feel more organic.  Doing work on paper I probably do three or four pages an issue.  I almost always do all my covers because those sell very well.  The original art market is too big and too profitable to ignore, so that was part of the reason to do it on paper.  But it’s also still fun to do stuff on paper.  JSA All-Stars #3 had a whole bunch of wild, splatter effects, so it was cool to cut out my little masks and attach them to the art and then splatter around it and clean it up.  It was like a return to the old days I guess.

WILSON: So in some ways, a special occasion can necessitate a change in media then.  Was your sequence in Grant Morrison’s Batman #700 an example of mixed media or something entirely digital?

WILLIAMS: No, that was 100% digital.  That was a 3-D model that me and a friend of mine named Drew both created.  There’s some behind the scenes projects I work on for DC that will show up in a comic book here and there but it’s basically establishing a definitive reference for the Batcave or the Batmobile or something like that, the Wayne Tower, the new Birds of Prey headquarters.  Basically, I create a 3-D version of that for inner-office reference or if a new artist comes on a book, the editors will give them these files I’ve made of the 3-D models so they can use those for reference.

WILSON: What specifically convinced you — the “ah ha” moment or awakening, if you will — that digital was the right move for you and your art?

WILLIAMS: The first one on a technology level; I was working for Hallmark Cards for seven-plus years, in downtown Kansas City.  They put you through some pretty intense training, which is a really good thing for me.  I knew Photoshop, which is how I got hired on there, but I learned a lot there though during that time.  My brain always comes from a comic-book point of view, a filter for comics — whenever I read a book or see a movie, even if it has nothing to do with comics, it’s all filtered into my mind as “how can this be used towards comics” or “what would this be if it was a comic.” It’s the same thing with technology.  Any time I see a piece of technology I picture to myself how can I use this towards a comic book.  So, one of those moments is when I was introduced to Hallmark’s work flow of how they used Photoshop and Illustrator is what comic books and Hallmark Cards have in common.  The definitive moment though that got me to branching into doing digital comic book work is when I was working for a guy who is a friend of mine now who was a very finicky editor for an independent comic book.  I would get a script from him, I would create thumbnails on paper, scan them in, and then e-mail them to him.  He would have a whole bunch of changes.  When I would first get these notes I would get back out my roughs, I had drawn on paper and erase a bunch of stuff, then redraw, then rescan, re-email, and that takes a lot of time.  So I started altering some of my roughs in the computer since they weren’t very big changes and I had them scanned in already, using the lasso stuff to resize stuff.  As I got more comfortable doing that I started doing the entire layouts digitally.  That was a big deal for me and I started doing more and more of that, seeing how much more I could add to the digital pages, detail-wise or final-line-art-wise that cut out the time of drawing it on paper and having to scan it.  That was probably anywhere from late 1999 to early 2001.

WILSON: Even though you mention having a comic mind, were you always working on comics even while you were at Hallmark then?  How did you make that transition and learn that comics and Hallmark cards shared the same production methods?

WILLIAMS: I’ve always had an interest in comic books.  That’s been my main goal ever since the earliest I can remember, so that’s all I’ve ever wanted to do.  Even when I was working at Hallmark, my goal was  to get into drawing comics for a living.  Hallmark was a great job, it was the best 9-5 job I’ve ever had, and really great people and the pay was good, but comics has always been my goal.  I had studied and read about how comics were created and about some comic-book artists’ traditional work flow, which is to draw on printer-size paper to get your layout, usually then you drive to Kinkos to get that blown up to 11×17, and then you lightbox that onto your art board in light blue and then start drawing on your art board from there.  Just the lightboxing part of that process alone, would be enough to make me never want to draw on paper again (laughs).  What it came down to was that scanning was a pain and so was running to Kinkos and then lightboxing those are all very meticulous things.  Some artists, when they have enough money, will have an assistant to do those things for them, but this is of course before I would have ever dreamed of hiring somebody to do that stuff for me.  By doing all of that stuff on the computer, you can save a ton of time! Instead of drawing a small rough layout (because sketching dynamicly can be aided by drawing small, you can just zoom way out in photoshop, making your document size look small, then instead of getting the rough layout blown up and lightboxing it, you can just zoom back in to the art, and draw right over the top of the digital roughs you just drew on your screen.  If you want you can still print all that out in light blue right on the art board, instead of lightboxing, so even if those are the only steps you do digitally, you’re still saving yourself a lot of time.

WILSON: With digital comic’s rising popularity and greater availability now more than ever, do you find more artists transitioning to entirely digital work environments to accommodate the shift in media?

WILLIAMS: Some might, but I don’t think it’s a primary motivation.  Right now there’s a nebulous concept of what the digital market is going to be.  Looking at somebody like Jim Lee who is very encouraging in wanting to have content digitally offered in some fashion — he’s still working traditionally.  I don’t think he feels any pressure to work in a digital fashion.  I don’t think that just because the end destination of something is supposed to be digital, means that you have to create it digital from the start.  That shouldn’t be the reason, in my opinion, to make someone want to go digital because their artwork will end up in a digital medium.  In general, I think it would be a smart move, though, for artists to look into the digital workflow because of the versatility and the time benefits it offers.

WILSON: Do you know if Jim Lee has tried digital methods though and why he has decided to remain within a traditional platform?

WILLIAMS: I toured the Wildstorm Studios after the 2010 San Diego Comic-Con and although I haven’t sat there and watched him work, I know Jim has one of the large Cintiqs, right next to his drawing table.  I believe the way he still works is that he does everything straight to the board.  He posts a lot of his process on Twitter (JimLee00), all of you should check that out.  I think when Jim gets to the very end after having the art scanned, he’ll use the Cintiq and Photoshop to clean up and tweak stuff digitally.  I’ve seen a video of him drawing the character Mayhem, holding two guns, but on the art board, Jim only drew one of those guns, then after the art was scanned, he used the lasso tool to duplicate it and move the gun into the character’s other hand so he didn’t have to draw both guns.  In short, Jim Lee works traditionally, and still only uses the computer as a post-production tool.

WILSON: It seems that it’s difficult to determine who is a digital artist and who isn’t in terms of getting credit for doing comics digitally or being asked about their art process and then admitting they do the artwork digitally.

WILLIAMS: There are quite a few who use various tools like Photoshop, Manga Studio and Google Sketchup, to varying degrees, and for quite a while now.  I think part of the reason that some artists don’t openly speak about the stuff they do on the computer is because they might only do a little bit, like Lee, so it’s just an additional tool they use, not a mainstay in their mind.  Then there are others who feel like they don’t want to give up trade secrets or feel it might diminish the impact of their work if someone knew they worked digitally.  People have asked me if I felt I was giving away trade secrets in the DC Comics Guide to Digitally Drawing Comics.  Honestly, I’ve never felt that way about stuff.  I’ve always felt like talking about it and comparing notes.  I’ve learned stuff from other people.

WILSON: Do you find that digital comics reflect your art better than traditional print methods for monthly comics?

WILLIAMS: The short answer would be no, but there’s a caveat to that I would add: The exception is with coloring.  Not to get too geek technical but the color range that can be achieved using four-, five- or six-color printing methods at the printing presses, that range of colors is called the gamut.  Even though you can hit a lot of colors at the printing press, you cannot achieve as many colors as you can on your computer screen.  Those really fluorescent colors of a mist or energy form is not achievable in normal printing methods unless they use a neon ink or spot-color printing process.  For example, the covers of JSA All-Stars, I do the pencils, inks and colors for them.  When I’m creating energy effects or whatever it is, I can go in Photoshop and check the gamut warnings to see if Photoshop is smart enough that it can say that these colors will not be achieved at the printing press.  If you’re doing it on a delivery system that will eventually be on an iPad or computer screens, you can go as bright and crazy as you want to.  I’ve been basically trying to create what looks like pen-and-ink artwork for print using digital means.  I don’t want it to look like it’s anything different than I did before.  That’s what I like.  Early CG attempts were too airbrushy and too rounded.

WILSON: I know that in some cases, preview images on DC’s The Source blog have shown pictures of comic pages that look much darker in print when you’re holding the monthly book.  Have you ever experienced this or do you ever worry that what you create digitally may not carry over as clearly to the print medium?

WILLIAMS: Yes, but I would include that, in the coloring aspect, the problem’s a limited color gamut.  DC has pretty good quality control, meaning if they received press proofs that were out of whack or color lines were shifted, they’re not going to accept that. Of course there are going to be press variants and dot gain, a difference in the gamut and all that stuff. As for my line art, the answer is still no.  The coloring is what is subject to the biggest variants at the printing press.

WILSON: Since most artists have to scan original art into Photoshop or Manga Studio, do you believe cost and investment in the hardware and software or a simple lack of knowledge (or maybe even fear) about the technology is a greater barrier for most artists adopting a completely digital platform for comic art?

WILLIAMS: If you’re asking me if all those things are limiting or causing hesitations in going digital, then the answer is yes.  If you’re asking me which one is the biggest obstacle then I would say it would be combination the money involved In purchasing the hardware and software.  A guy who is working all traditional and has for years, and he has a monthly deadline he has to keep up with, he is under the gun deadline wise.  He knows that the way he’s currently working has worked out well for him for years.  So, they may feel like “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”  Why spend what little free time he does have away from work or sacrifice time to try to find another way to do stuff he already knows how to do.  To go out and spend six-and-a-half grand for a new computer system, scanner and printer and all the software and then start from the ground-up learning the hardware and software.  It can feel like a long limb for them to climb out on.

WILSON: I know traditional art supplies can be costly too, but I would imagine they’re nowhere near the cost of the technology involved here for the Wacom interfaces.

WILLIAMS: This is a weak point, but I’m going to make it anyway (laughs).  Because I don’t use paper nearly as much any more and because I don’t use pencils and ink as much any more.  I use them a tenth as much as I would if I was drawing a book traditionally.  The majority of the time I’m using those supplies is when I’m at a convention.  Those dollars do add up and accumulate as well and help to offset some of the expense of the digital stuff.

WILSON: I don’t want to reinforce the joke Brian Bolland has in the introduction to your work about pushing a button and the work automatically appears in Photoshop, so was it mainly a gradual process of trial and error for you to learn Photoshop could be used this way to create comics?  Was it like learning a new language or perhaps new method to produce the work?

WILLIAMS: When someone who doesn’t use a computer hears that I do art digitally, I think they picture in their mind that I just pick up a microphone that’s hooked up to the computer and say, “Draw Batman,” and then I go, “Draw him better” (laughs).  It was a very gradual process, one that is still evolving for me even today.

WILSON: It sounds like a very individualized experience, but did you learn this process solely on your own or did you have the benefits of learning from somebody else who had experimented with digital comic art?

WILLIAMS: I would say that it was probably 60% of my own trial and error, just making stuff up — the other 40% was guided with previous experience and my time with Photoshop from Hallmark.

WILSON: At Hallmark, was the hardware such as the Wacom available then or was this all mouse and keyboard direction?  I imagine there must of have been some digital pen interface?

WILLIAMS: We used a Wacom tablet interface called an Intuos.  Bamboos, which is what I use now, and the Cintiqs hadn’t come out yet.

WILSON: Have you tried the Cintiq?

WILLIAMS: I have tried the Cintiq, the combination of the heat that comes off of it and the fact that my hand was in the way of the artwork on the screen, has made me stick to my Bamboo.  Though I’ve got my eye on a slate computer, Axiotron’s Modbook Pro. It’s like a 15-inch Cintiq that you can carry around with you … due out the first half of 2011. That could be a game changer for me … We’ll see

WILSON: Was it difficult for you to go from paper to the Wacom tablet interface in terms of the touch and feel, and the pressure you’d put with tools against a paper surface?

WILLIAMS: It wasn’t very hard.  It was a process that was very gradual.  It took a good year-plus to do my first all-digital page.  That to me was a very comfortable learning curve because it was self-propelled.  It wasn’t like somebody stormed into my office and exclaimed, “You’re working traditionally today, but you have to flip the switch and go all digital by this Friday!” So, pretty comfortable.

WILSON: Have you ever discovered any limitations working digitally that you recognize could be fixed or overcome through traditional work, or vice versa?

WILLIAMS: I think anything that you wanted to do digitally, you could probably could.  You can emulate a traditional feel.  Painter can emulate a lot of traditional art looks and techniques with its interface.  When I’m working on a commission there’s an entertainment value in having no undo or going back in time to your History palette in Photoshop to change the way someone’s face looks or if I went out of control with an ink brush. That is a fun experiment.  I wouldn’t want to be held captive by that though on a regular basis and that’s one of the reasons I don’t work all-traditional because I like the versatility of being able to change my layout or flip the position of somebody.

WILSON: Do you ever miss the so-called “happy accidents” that would occur with traditional tools?

WILLIAMS: They can still happen digitally, but there is more control digitally so it’s harder to have them.  A good example of one that can’t happen digitally is if you’re going for a spatter effect.  On paper, you might take a toothbrush, dip it in ink, and then flick your finger through it to create a spray.  You can’t predict every dot in the spray, but you know you want it somewhere over here.  Working digitally, it’s harder to create that sort of randomness.  I spent some time with my wife a few years ago filling up pieces of scratch Bristol board with textures and spatters in black India ink, let them dry, and then scanned them all in so that I have a library of textures that look organic that I can call upon and bring into the digital artwork.  For JSA All-Stars #3, the cover where Magog is getting punched in the face and there’s all these brush spatters in the background, that’s one of the reasons I wanted to do that traditionally because I wanted it to have that random, visceral, kinetic feel to it that’s hard to produce digitally.  You still can, but it would be harder.

WILSON: How has your digital process evolved since your time on Seven Soldiers of Victory: Mister Miracle in relation to technological advancements, your style, and your outlook on comic art?

WILLIAMS: My art style, I feel, has changed considerably.  I’ve been doing a lot of things differently.  Like character proportions and storytelling, I think, I hope it’s improved, but whatever the case is, I like the direction I’m going in now more than what I was doing back then.  What I was doing back then, I still enjoyed, but I’ve grown as an artist.  Technology-wise, the difference for the work flow has been the introduction 3-D (with Google Sketchup) and in Photoshop, there has been the introduction of java scripts.  I was introduced to Photoshop JavaScripts, when I did a presentation at Hallmark of how I draw comic books for DC at their monthly digital café meetings on digital work flows, new processes, etc. After my presentation, someone I had never met, but who has since become one of my best friends, named Jay, asked if I had ever used them, and I was like “Javawhat?” We have been working together on Photoshop JavaScripts ever since.

WILSON: Interesting, what do JavaScripts do in Photoshop?

WILLIAMS: Photoshop JavaScripts, are like really advanced macros and actions to do multiple changes within or across files.  They can change the names of layers for you, resize images and a whole bunch of cool stuff like that.  The JavaScripts have done a lot for me in what I call cardboard cutouts.  One of the ways that I work and recommend other people to work is to draw the entire background as if your characters aren’t going to be there and then on another layer above that, make a drawing of your character.  You make a cardboard cutout of that character by creating a knockout layer behind your character but above your background line art.  There’s a big shortcut using JavaScripts for cardboard cutouts; I offer that tool on my website www.freddieart.com

WILSON: Would you say that your writers and editors know beforehand about your digital work and has this ever affected your assignments?  To put it another way, has there been any apprehension of you working digitally from writers or editors that you know of for a specific book?

WILLIAMS: That’s a good question.  It’s not the first thing I say to a writer or an editor.  It’s not like I make it clear to them that I work digital.  If they want to know, I’ll ramble on for hours just like I am with you right now (laughs).  There has been some mentioning though. Like Matt Sturges:  When he and I started working together, I think he had an issue with a bunch of cars or a crowd of people and in parenthesis he wrote, “Freddie, can you just create one car and then clone it all over,” which I didn’t do because it would have been pretty noticeable.  It was obvious he was aware of it and was trying to help me out or think of way to use it as a benefit.  As far as a prejudice, I don’t think I’ve encountered a prejudice of people realizing I work digitally and then backing away from their enjoyment of it.  To my knowledge, I haven’t faced that especially with editors and writers.  I think if I was the first guy to do this, it would probably freak them out (laughs).

WILSON: I remember your story in the DC Comics Guide book about your apprehension of telling the editor that worked digitally, so I’m curious if artists have an apprehension of going digital if a similar fear exists on the part of the writers or editors who just don’t know the technology or have experience with it.

WILLIAMS: I’ve yet to face that.  As a matter of fact, I’ve faced the opposite, where the editors are openly amazed by the process.  They’re more fascinated or interested.  Editors only care about if the artist is able to create good-looking art and in a timely fashion.  Other than that, they usually don’t care.  If you were inking with a Snickers bar on a brown paper sack, but it looked awesome and you could do it on a regular basis, they would not care.  They’d say, “Awesome, just keep it up.”  And that is how I work now, it’s the Snickers-brown-paper-sack technology that I haven’t told anyone about (laughs). Look for that in coming months.

In the conclusion of this interview tomorrow, Freddie Williams II talks about his typical work day and pacing stories without a full script.

Satoshi Kon.

I was soaking my bones in a riverside rotenburo in the hills of Tochigi last month when news of anime director Satoshi Kon’s death flashed across my cell phone via text message.  Must be a macabre joke, I thought at first glance, though the friend who sent it isn’t given to jabs of dark humor.

Maybe a promotional gambit for Kon’s next work? His films are characterized in part by multiple realities and unexpected shifts among them, so that just when you think something is really happening, perhaps it isn’t. After all, typing or even thinking about the phrase, “the late Satoshi Kon,” just didn’t feel right.

But after returning to Tokyo and now New York, I have been forced to confront the banal and humbling truth: Kon, one of the most gifted, innovative and searchingly intelligent artists working in the anime medium and the film world at large, died on the morning of August  24 from pancreatic cancer–at the age of 46.

Paprika's alternate worlds coexist.

As a director, Kon made four features–Perfect Blue, Millennium Actress, Tokyo Godfathers and Paprika–and was at work on his fifth, The Dreaming Machine. Eerily, he appeared to be especially active and lively in recent weeks, as the Internet buzzed with fans from East and West accusing American live-action director Christopher Nolan of plagiarizing ideas from Paprika for his Hollywood blockbuster, Inception.

Responding to the controversy on his blog, “Kon’s Tone”, last month, the anime director gently brushed aside fan complaints, noting that most artists are influenced by others and identifying examples in his own work–though he neglected to add that in his case, source materials have been openly acknowledged, in particular John Ford’s 1948 Western, 3 Godfathers, on which Kon loosely based Tokyo Godfathers.

Last autumn, I gave a talk at a symposium on anime hosted by the University of Missouri in St. Louis. Paprika was screened and discussed. Befittingly, my fellow panelists and I spoke of the film in language usually reserved for literature and other works of so-called “high art.” There was so much to see and ponder in a Kon film. I screened Paprika again this summer for students in an anime seminar at Temple University in Tokyo. Each time I watch it, I see more.

Feeling helpless in grief, I reached out to friends and authors worldwide to make sense of Kon’s legacy, and our loss.  Here’s what they had to say:

Helen McCarthy, author of nine books on anime, including the exhaustive and essential The Anime Encyclopedia: Japanese Animation Since 1917.

“Looking at his overall achievements as a director, writer and artist, Kon was working on the same level as Hayao Miyazaki at his peak. If Miyazaki had died at 46, we wouldn’t have My Neighbor Totoro. At 46, Tezuka hadn’t published Black Jack, or MW, or created some of his greatest short films. At 46, Hitchcock hadn’t even got as far as Stage Fright. Just think what we might have had from Satoshi Kon at 50, or 60.

“The painter Pablo Picasso once said ‘Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.’ For me, the uniqueness of his art is that, as well as the child remaining an artist, the artist remained a child.

“That places Kon very high among his peers. At the moment, Japanese animation, and Japanese film in general, has quite a few interesting directors who have reached the mid-point in their careers with solid achievement and huge potential, but Kon had moved beyond that. He was on the level of Rintaro, Isao Takahata and Hayao Miyazaki. Looking at his overall achievements as a director, writer and artist, judging him solely on his merits, Kon was working on the same level as Hayao Miyazaki at his peak. Looking outside anime, he was as sure of his own vision and method as Hitchcock or Cocteau. Not many people actually merit the term ‘auteur,’ but Kon did.

“Kon doesn’t pass judgment or lecture, he simply shows us the best and worst in the city and its people. He laughs at them, pokes fun at them, shakes his head in amazement at them. He allows them to be completely real, and in so doing, he opens the door for anything to happen. Anything is possible in a Kon film, because Kon is open to every possibility. When he misdirects or distracts us, it’s the mischief of a clever child having a bit of fun – we’re welcome to join in the game and try to outguess him, or we can just sit back and watch until everything becomes clear.”

American animation historian, critic and author Charles Solomon highlights Kon’s unique technical skills as a craftsperson.

“Kon stands out as a creator of unsettling originality. Many directors use flashbacks and dream sequences, but few could match Kon’s skill at integrating those elements into the narrative. He often  kept the audience off-balance, undercutting assumptions and calling what seemed to be the facts of the story into question. Watch the opening scenes of Paprika, when the heroine shifts from a sign on a building to the logo on a passing truck and so forth–the flow of visuals appears effortless, but would have been extremely difficult to do. Similarly, in Millenium Actress–my personal favorite of his films–the viewer moves from reality into the main character’s memories and films with a grace and fluidity only a major talent could create. Kon also used color with exceptional skill–the grey-blue palette of Tokyo Godfathers and the early sections of Millenium Actress make the viewer feel the winter cold the characters are experiencing. Kon was one of the most interesting and talented directors working in animation–not just in Japan, but in the world.”

Millenium Actress

The world beyond Japan had begun slowly waking to Kon’s genius–too slowly, according to many. Tokyo Godfathers was submitted for an Oscar nomination in 2003 and Paprika garnered some awards and praise in Europe, but nothing commensurate with Kon’s impact on Western artists.

“It may have been fortuitous, but Kon’s works tended to be very accessible to Westerners,” says Andrew Osmond, author of Satoshi Kon: The Illusionist, the only English-language book about the director. “He also educated foreigners about Japan. He told me that when Tokyo Godfathers premiered in New York, he was shocked that people were surprised to learn that Tokyo had a homeless problem. [The Kon-directed TV series] Paranoia Agent shows a Japan terrified of its younger generation, and Millennium Actress telescopes centuries of Japanese history, from the Heian era to World War II and beyond.”

Tufts University professor and author Susan J. Napier cites Kon’s humanism and empathy as transcendent features in his work.

“Kon should be considered not simply as a master animator but also as the descendant of an impressive line of postwar Japanese humanists, ranging from Akira Kurosawa to Kenzaburo Oe and certainly including Hayao Miyazaki. Like these other humanists, Kon shared a concern for social issues, the problems of being an outsider, and the ultimate fate of modern Japan. But his work was never heavy or tragic. Although he leaves behind a tragically truncated body of work, his playful, ebullient and visually stunning art is a lasting legacy of poignant delight.”

“His films were always at the top of my list,” adds Frederik L. Schodt, manga authority, translator and author of the classics, Manga, Manga, and Dreamland Japan.  “More than almost any other animator in Japan, [Kon] had truly liberated himself from what anime was supposed to be.  He didn’t envision his audience to be mainly young children or adolescents, and he shied away from creating stories laden with robots, cute sexy girls, and inane, formulaic, feel-good plots.  As a result, he was able to create works that stand up well to the best in serious live-action film making.

“But he was also able to exploit the strengths of hand-drawn animation, and to utilize its potential for infinite deformation and flexibility, while still retaining a special human warmth. In the process, he created something uniquely powerful, a blend of the reality we live in, with the borderless imagination of his own mind.”

Try it again: “The late Satoshi Kon.”

Nope. Still doesn’t feel right. Not at all.

TinierMe CEO Masaru Ohnogi in Tokyo. TinierMe hit half-a-million U.S.-based users this week.

Recently I’ve been writing a lot in this space and elsewhere about the critical roles played by interactivity and participation in the appeal of Japanese popular culture both in and outside of Japan. I devoted an entire chapter to the topic in my book, Japanamerica, because it seemed so revealing: “The draw of DIY (Do It Yourself)” addresses in part the participatory nature of Japanese comics and animation aesthetics, with their generally minimalist, 2D designs inviting the visual engagement of viewers’ own imaginations.

But the main reason the DIY chapter garners attention from readers, critics and students today is that it examines otaku, or über-fan-oriented pursuits such as cosplay (costume play), the role-playing activity that has fast emerged as one of the principal drivers of global anime fandom.  Cosplaying fans at conventions and expos across the country are the most visible and vibrant sign of a fully engaged community.

Problem is: Japanese animation studios make neither pennies nor yen from cosplay, however popular it becomes, because they remain mired in the DVD-sales-marketing doldrums.

Enter the gaming scramble.

Last spring in New York, I got wind of an enterprising new virtual reality game called TinierMe. The principal developer, the Japanese gaming company GCrest, a division of CyberAgent Inc., had opened an office in San Francisco in 2009 for the U.S. launch of its virtual reality portal, featuring decidedly anime -style characters and visuals.

This summer, the site announced that it has surpassed the one-million user milestone, and today boasts over 1,175,000 distinct users.  But this week, an even more significant number hits the streets and screens: over half a million of TinierMe’s current users worldwide are based in the United States, suggesting that the American audience for Japanese-made and -styled characters and environments continues to expand, even in a decidedly lackluster consumer market.

TinierMe welcomes you.

Having just launched in October of last year, TinierMe hasn’t even celebrated its first birthday.  “As a point of comparison,” says Sarah McNally from GCrest’s Tokyo office, “the Japanese version of TinierMe, [called] ‘AtGames,’ which has been in business for about four years, has about two million users.”

Imagine Second Life with anime-character avatars designed by a team of Japanese artists, giving American and other English-speaking fans a chance to cosplay virtually, to create their own anime-inspired avatars anytime they want, rather than waiting for the next area anime convention. Amid the seeming paradox of declining anime DVD sales and escalating numbers of overseas fans attending conventions and expos, entrepreneurs are beginning to see opportunity: Reach the fans via new networks of accessibility, and you just might survive, or even thrive.

“Our goal is to become a virtual Disneyland,” Masaru Ohnogi, head of GCrest America, told me when we met in the parent company’s Tokyo headquarters. “We want to entertain people all over the world, with music, games, anime…everything.  Most people have compared us to Gaia online, which has an American version of anime characters,” he adds, citing the California-based enterprise. “But that look remains foreign to us. It doesn’t really look like anime, Japanese-style.  So we’re taking a uniquely Japanese approach.”

That approach involves playing a bit of insider baseball with U.S.-based fans of a capacious anime playground.  In the spring, TinierMe rolled out the hipster Japanese character “Gloomy Bear,” a kind of grotesque twist on so-called ‘kawaii’ or super-cute iconography.  And this summer, an avatar (called a “Selfy,” in TinierMe-speak) of Hatsune Miku, the virtual celebrity pop-singing idol who has achieved superstar status, especially in Japan’s otaku community, entered the game.

Gloomy cool: "Gloomy Bear" avatar

“Most of our users know a lot about Japan,” adds McNally.  “They even use Japanese names for their avatars, like Keiko.  There are even users whose names are based upon [Miku’s nickname] ‘Hatsumiku.’  I just looked up ‘Hatsune’ in nicknames and found 300 users, like Hatsune-san, Hatsunemik-10.”  She assures me that more Miku releases will come later this month.

Ohnogi’s enthusiasm and knowledge are exceptional: Few Japanese content companies seem to possess the confidence and ambition necessary for reaching out to overseas fans–or to even bother finding out who they are–at a time when most are vacating their U.S. offices in 2010, cutting back on expenses, turning inward just as their Asian competitors may be usurping them.

Indeed, much of the gaming scramble is moving in the opposite direction, with American companies muscling into Japan’s estimated $2 billion market. U.S.-based Zygna’s (“Farmville”) heralded $150 million alliance with Japan’s Softbank this summer was followed late last month by CrowdStar’s tie-up with Japanese game studio Drecom.

But Ohnogi proffers an alternative approach: Instead of attacking overseas fans for their seemingly limitless and illegal access to anime visuals, why not get to know them?

“Over 70 percent of social networkers are under 20 years old,” he says, pointing to a page of colorful statistics and graphs on his netbook. “Around 63 percent of them are female. You have to know your audience in order to reach them.

More Miku on the way.

“We take down the site for maintenance twice a week, because part of what we’re selling is Japanese-style quality. I believe that you can sell to American fans who trust the quality of the Japanese product. We give them both free access and paid options. Lots of choices. You really need to understand both cultures to make it work.”

Traversing the cultural divide and making it work is never an easy proposition.  But paying attention to the character and demands of your audience at least gives you a shot at capitalizing on them.

If the phrase “left Shachtmanite” rings a bell, then you have probably heard of a magazine called New Politics. Currently published twice a year by an all-volunteer editorial collective, the journal was launched in 1961 by Phyllis and Julius Jacobson. The magazine flourished in the sixties, with contributions by democratic leftists like Michael Harrington, Hal Draper, Martin Glaberman, Mario Savio, Herbert Hill, Barbara Garson, Gertrude Ezorsky, Murray Bookchin, and the Polish dissidents Jacek Kuron and Karol Modzelewski. By the late seventies, the audience for an intellectual magazine of the left that firmly rejected Soviet and Chinese Communism, the Democratic Party, and various fashionable nostrums had shrunk considerably, and the Jacobsons closed shop. They revived the journal in the mid-1980s, and restarted the arduous work of recruiting readers, contributors, and editorial board members. At present NP‘s main editors are Betty Reid and Marvin Mandell, veteran socialists who have opened the magazine up to a new generation of writers. The magazine’s website may be found at www.newpol.org.

For a period of about fifteen years, from the start of the 1990s through the middle of the 2000s, I served on the NP editorial board, reading manuscripts, donating money, and recommending potential contributors. I also cranked out book reviews. Only a couple of its members were full-time academics, and the orientation was very much toward the general, non-academic reader. The project had an old-school flavor that I very much appreciated. Tragically, Phyllis suffered a debilitating stroke in 2000, and Julius passed away three years later. The magazine was subsequently revamped, but it retains the animating framework and sensibility of its earlier incarnations.

The magazine’s fiftieth anniversary is next year. Someone should put out a “best-of” collection, or at least bake the editors a nice cake. Looking back, my own contributions were modest at best – two or three articles on Labour in Britain, a short editorial on the Gingrich revolution, plus the aforementioned reviews – but I like to think I had a positive effect on the look of the magazine. Starting in 2004, I introduced a new feature at the very back of the magazine, “Words and Pictures,” that spotlights radical cartoonists. Over a dozen cartoonists have been featured to date, from Peter Kuper and Sabrina Jones to Ruben Bolling and Steve Brodner. The latest issue includes a piece on Tom Kaczynski (more on him later). Also, I recruited the legendary graphic designer Bob Gill to do the covers.

Here’s the last cover that used the old format, followed by the first Gill cover. The first image is a little small, but the distinction between the two approaches should be obvious:

Other Gill covers. This one imagines the techno-soldier of the future:

This one sums up the 2004 presidential election:

Raul and Fidel in close conversation:

The clenched fist:

Uncle Sam:

The man in the proverbial closet:

My personal favorite, to date. Clean, direct and nuanced, all at the same time:

So who is Bob Gill, you ask? Gill is the cofounder of Fletcher/Forbes/Gill, the forerunner to the design studio Pentagram; he has worked for numerous publishers and magazines; he has illustrated and written several children’s books; and he won awards for his art direction. He has also written several books on design, including Graphic Design Made Difficult (1992), Graphic Design as a Second Language (2004), and Words into Pictures (2009). He had a hand in putting together Beatlemania, the musical, and, according to both wiki and imdb, he directed Double Exposure of Holly (1976), starring Jamie Gillis and Annie Sprinkle. And he’s taught design at the Royal Academy of Art, Pratt, Parsons and the School of Visual Arts.

These days, most political magazines feature photographs, or artfully arranged text, on their covers. Gill’s covers are illustration-centered, with punchy images and bold, sans serif lettering. His visuals are invariably straight-to-the-point – a man in the closet, an economic arrow pointed downward, a gleeful-looking governor – but elegantly constructed. His NP covers are fun to look at.

We’ll be moving on to some other hot items with the next post so feel free to soak up the goodness of the Do It Yourself Kit…

Poison. Gun. Knife. Axe. There is you kit, ready to go.

Here we have the old Do It Yourself Kit.
Always a handy thing to have around the house…

More of the same which may or may not be related to comic books…A grab bag of miniature drink related items including a jug of milk. Let the party begin…

Stuff I own which may or may not be related to comic books…
The Design category on the left looked a bit lonely so I thought I’d make a post.  This image is of an item that I own but I’m not allowed to talk about. No kidding. I just can’t stomach more people hunting for these secret fun packs on eBay… So, here we are with a real deal mystery.
Does anyone have a clue who the artist was for these cards (Design!)..?