“As somebody who literally learned to read by studying Unknown Soldier comics when I was three years old and has never stopped loving the medium, it took me a long time to realize that a lot of people just don’t care about comics. It took me even longer to realize that there was nothing wrong with this — that people didn’t have to like the same things I did, even if those things were obviously business.”

 

Contact me ♦ Follow me
¡Journalista! Homepage ♦ RSS Feed
¡Journalista! 2.0 Archives ♦ ¡Journalista! 1.0 Archives

 

 

Recently posted to our homepage:

• Bizarro Rich Kreiner reviews Wednesday Comics.
• Tom Crippen presents the conclusion of his three-part Mort Weisinger resource list.
• As always, R.C. Harvey covers the funny pages.
• Over at The Hooded Utilitarian, Noah Berlatsky reviews the Moto Hagio short story “Angel Mimic.”

A correction: I totally managed to miss the point of this story yesterday, in which an Ohio Coroner pronounced that American Splendor creator Harvey Pekar had died of an accidental overdose. Rushed for time, I followed the lead of the story’s headline and merely stated that Pekar had died of “natural causes,” which was the coroner’s end ruling, but wasn’t exactly an accurate description of the circumstances. I regret the error.

And assuming I can get it right today, here’s the news…

 

Above the Fold

 

Life in interesting times

• Japanese publisher Enterbrain has withdrawn both volumes of Kazuaki’s Kai Yorihito Kaiyori Shiki over the unauthorized use of photographs.

 


Ron Embleton’s strip was a fixture in Guccione’s magazine.
• Did you know that Penthouse Magazine founder Bob Guccione was working as a cartoonist when he created said porno mag? I didn’t know that until learning this morning that he just died at the age of 79.

 

• Illinois retailer Glen Soustek:

  I have to wonder how much of the downward trend in comic “sales” is simply comic dealers abandoning the failed concept of ordering 100 of a book in order to get a variant they can dump on eBay for $10 and then selling 10 of the original 100 they ordered and tossing the other 90 in a quarter bin just days after arrival. We see this sort of thing in the Chicagoland area all the time — west-suburban landfills are glutted with this stuff.

 

 

 

Profiles

 

• Richard von Busack on Charles Burns

  A conversation with the X’ed Out author.

 

Also

• Michael Cavna on Dave McElfatrick
• Peter Rowe on Lalo Alcaraz
• John Hogan on Barry Deutsch
• John Hogan on Eric Hobbs
• Karl Kelly on 2000 AD editor Matt Smith

 

Reviews

 

• Paul Di Filippo on X’ed Out
  
  ©2010 Charles Burns.

  “When discussing the eerie, enigmatic, and creepy work of master cartoonist Charles Burns, the obvious comparison is to the cinema of David Lynch. In fact, if you Google the names of the two creators together, you’ll get nearly ten thousand shared hits. And it’s true that both artists employ transgressive characters and events, odd juxtapositions, surreal segues, meticulous contemporary naturalism, arcane symbolisms, dream logic, and primal tropes of violence and sex. But in Burns’s newest, X’ed Out — which is the first 56-page installment in a longer tale of indeterminate length — I found myself thinking of earlier models for the type of story Burns seems bent on telling. Namely, two great fantasists at either end of the Victorian period: George MacDonald and David Lindsay.”

 

Also

• K.C. Carlson on Beetle Bailey: The Daily and Sunday Strips 1965
• Tom Spurgeon on The Unsinkable Walker Bean
• Beth Davies-Stofka on Barney Google: Gambling, Horse Races & High-Toned Women!
• Andrew Wheeler on The Good Neighbors Book 2: Kith
• Michael Lorah on A Drunken Dream and Other Stories
• Bill Sherman on Saving Life Vol. 1

 

Commentary

 

• Deb Aoki: Yaoi and yuri manga at NYAF 2010

  Transcription of a panel in which the participants discussed the gay-and-lesbian perspective on same-sex romance genres created (mostly) by and for straight women.

 

Also

• Joe Queenan: Why I love Peanuts
     (Thanks to Alan Fiore for e-mailing me the link.)
• Matt Seneca: on Vaughn Bodé

 

Comics and Art

 

• Paddy Brown: “Rise at Sundown”
  
  ©2010 Paddy Brown.

  A 24-hour comics fantasia.

  (Link via Andrew Luke.)

 

Also

• What Things Do: Jordan Crane’s “Dark Day”
• Golden Age Comic Book Stories: Michael Kaluta’s Shadow art
• Sam Henderson: Bill Holman’s Smokey Stover
• Harry Lee Green: Jack Davis’ “Lower Berth!”
• Steven Thompson: Joe Orlando’s “The Dunce”
• Steven Thompson: Bernard Baily’s “Trouble in Malted Mesa!”
• Steven Thompson: Joe Donohoe’s “Fearless Fellers”
• Ger Apeldoorn: Lou Fine’s “Jimmy Gets His Story” (maybe?)
• The Horrors of It All: “Live With a Man”
• Cat and Girl: The tyranny of the subconscious
• Allan Holtz: Animal Land
• Ben Towle: ’80s X-Men as drawn by E.C. Segar

 

Multimedia

 

• YouTube: Julien “Jul” Berjeaut
  

  Daryl Cagle speaks with the French political cartoonist and graphic novelist

 

Comics Culture

 

• Prism Comics: 2010 Queer Press Grant recipients announced

  Congratulations to J.T. Ford and Jon Macy — details at the link.

 

• Your Not-Comics Link of the Day:
  

  A cat admonishes his master for losing his head over a woman in Osamu Tezuka’s short film, Male.

 

Events Calendar

 

Today:

 

• Oct. 21 (New York City, NY): Denis Kitchen gives an artist’s talk at the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art on Broadway, beginning at 7PM. Details here.

 

This Week:

 

• Oct. 23 (Los Angeles, CA): Fogtown artist Brad Rader will be signing books and meeting readers at Meltdown Comics on Sunset Boulevard, from noon-2PM. Details here.
• Oct. 23 (McMurray, PA): Meet Scary Godmother creator Jill Thompson at Pittsburgh Comics on McMurray Road, from 2-5PM. Details here.
• Oct. 23 (Portland, OR): Vanessa Davis and Julia Wertz will appear for a slideshow presentation, Q&A and signing at Reading Frenzy on Oak Street, beginning at 7PM. Details here.

 

Want to see your comics-related event listed here? Email a link to dirk@tcj.com and let me know. Please include an online link to which I can send people for more information. No sales-only events, please — it’s nice that you’ve marked things down at your store or website, but I won’t be listing it here. (Note: Under no circumstances will I link to a Facebook page. Seriously, what idiot “advertises” their event solely on a website that requires registration to see the advertisement?)