FLOG! Entries - July 2010

Life Imitates Art

Eric

Here is a picture of Daniel Clowes, who took his son to the Alameda County Fair a couple weekends back, only to discover an unlikely act on one of the stages. Dan reports, "Unfortunately, we missed their set."

You can't make this shit up, folks.

Weekend Webcomics: 7/30/10 - double strips and the LAST Blecky Yuckerella

mike

The good news: you get two of each strip this week (they're doubled up on the page) since we missed last week's update due to Comic-Con! The bad news: see below...

This week's is the FINAL Blecky Yuckerella strip by Johnny Ryan EVER! Not a joke! Not an imaginary story! (Actually it's literally both, but we're not kidding about it being the last one.)

...and the first of this week's Barack Hussein Obama strips by Steven Weissman could've taken place at San Diego last week, while the second is a diplomatic disaster.

Things to see: 7/30/10

mike

Buckle in for two weeks worth of clips & strips — click for improved/additional viewing at the sources:

• Jaime Hernandez, 1977 (from friend/fan Bernie Ramirez on the Love and Rockets Facebook page)

• Anders Nilsen's Dennis Hopper for Cinefamily is magnificent

• How about a little Dennis the Menace/Lost mash-up at Big Shiny Robot?

• Moscow-born San Francisco-residing cartoonist Roman Muradov sends us some pages done in homage/tribute to Jason — they're good, and got a thumbs-up from Jason

• Again with the Comics presents a Scooby-Doo story drawn by... Ivan Brunetti?? (via Steven Thompson)

• Jason's sketch of Jean-Pierre Melville, plus more recent blog entries about Lino Ventura, Alain Delon, and summer reading

• Rosebud Archives presents a super-rare promotional flyer for Charles M. Schulz's Young Pillars

• It's the two latest weekly installments of "Cartoon Boy" from John Kerschbaum

• Gipi describes his new video "Antony" as "a classic film thriller"

• For The Bold Italic, Jon Adams profiles 3 real-life Bay Area Comic Book Guys (via Robot 6); also, two installments of Truth Serum

• From Kevin Huizenga, a new Amazing Facts and Beyond with Leon Beyond

• From Dash Shaw: a new silkscreen print; sketchbook pages; Ruined Cast sketches; The Lion King

• From Steven Weissman: "I, Anonymous" for last week and this week; Lumpy Noodle

• Frank Santoro gives another sneak peek at his Strange Tales Silver Surfer

• Drew Weing presents Set to Sea pages 112, 113, 114 & 115. Also, could someone snag me a set of these buttons?

• Tim Lane's Belligerent Piano episodes 21 and 22

• A 1950 profile of Jim Flora

• Johnny Ryan has a bunch of new prints for sale. We saw Matt Groening admiring the one above at Comic-Con, our own Kristy Valenti very happily bought the cat one, and the "Nachos" one is just 100% pure genius

• Debbie Drechsler's latest round of nature sketches features squirrels, birds, bugs & spiders

• From Mark Kalesniko, two sets of quick sketches

• Sergio Ponchione posts some pages of his artwork from Cattivi Soggetti, an anthology of noir stories written by Danielle Brolli

• Paul Hornschemeier's latest t-shirt design for his Forlorn Funnies Shirt Shop

• Noah Van Sciver posts an excerpt from Blammo #5

• From Josh Simmons & co: King Quackers, Skeezy Quacker, Quacker dreams, Quokkers, cupcake crimes

• Renee French has too many updates to link all of them individually; just go to her blog and work your way down. This, this, and this are highlights for me

• Steve Brodner's latest segment from PBS's Need to Know, "Obama Where Art Thou?" and his tribute to the late John Callahan

• I think the painting from Josh Simmons's House snuck into Hans Rickheit's Ectopiary

• Tom Kaczynski's sketches from the La Mano 2nd Annual Report and another show

• Something new & untitled from Joe Kimball

Daily OCD: 7/30/10

mike

Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "Intentionally or not, Mome #19 is almost a theme issue, with the usual mix of abstraction and autobiography giving way to multiple narrative-driven stories with their roots in genre fiction. ... All-in-all, a solid outing for one of the best (and last) alt-comics anthologies on the market. [Grade] B+" – The A.V. Club

• Review: "Rhymes, lyrics, words used by your grandma (and only if they had emigrated to the U.S.) and situations that have been extinct for many years are the main features of Culture Corner. But when is this so bad? ... So this is a release of great value for fans of Wolverton, but also a great opportunity to learn about one of the most famous and funny in the business." – Thomas Papadimitropoulos, Comicdom (translated from Greek)

• Comic-Con: Eden Miller of Comicsgirl reports on the Moto Hagio spotlight panel at Comic-Con last week

• Interview: Frank Santoro joins Brandon Graham, Michael DeForge, and host Robin McConnell for an Inkstuds roundtable on "fusion in modern comics"

Moto Hagio meets Ray Bradbury at Comic-Con

mike

Photo by Matt Thorn, who describes the historic meeting between these two greats in his blog report from Comic-Con. Bradbury is holding a copy of A Drunken Dream and Other Stories.

Graphic Details: Jewish Women�s Autobiographical Comics at Cartoon Art Museum

mike

This looks like an excellent and well-due survey of a robust but underacknowledged area of comics: "Graphic Details: Confessional Comics by Jewish Women" opens at San Francisco's Cartoon Art Museum on October 1, featuring work by Vanessa Davis, Bernice Eisenstein, Sarah Glidden, Miriam Katin, Aline Kominsky-Crumb, Miss Lasko-Gross, Miriam Libicki, Corinne Pearlman, Sarah Lightman, Sarah Lazarovic, Diane Noomin, Trina Robbins (above), Racheli Rottner, Sharon Rudahl, Laurie Sandell, Ariel Schrag, Lauren Weinstein, and Ilana Zeffren.

From the announcement: "The Forward, the leading independent Jewish weekly newspaper and web site, is media sponsor, and will publish the show’s catalog as an eight-page newspaper broadsheet. The catalog will include the last story written by Harvey Pekar, the legendary writer and pioneer and autobiographical comics. Pekar had been collaborating with artist Tara Seibel on the essay for 'Graphic Details' at the time of his death."

Get all the latest details and updates on the Graphic Details blog or on Facebook.

Congratulations to Inkpot Award winners Peter Bagge, Moto Hagio & C. Tyler!

mike

This is somewhat belated news, but we didn't get the photo uploaded until just now: Peter Bagge, Moto Hagio and C. Tyler were all awarded with Inkpot Awards at Comic-Con this year! Above, Peter and Carol pose with their trophies; Moto didn't bring her trophy to her signings, so if anyone has photos of her receiving or holding the award, we'd love to see them!

Update: found at Comicsgirl!

Comic-Con Day 3 Part 3: Hernandez Bros., Moto Hagio, Stephen DeStefano

mike

Xaime!

Beto!

Mario!

My favorite photo of the Con: a next-generation fan enjoying a comic by a next-generation artist (Natalia's The Cat Eyes #1)!

It became a daily thrill seeing what Moto Hagio would draw on our whiteboard for each of her signings:

Stephen DeStefano was very generous with fans:

Final done-in-one Day 4 update coming soon...

Daily OCD: 7/29/10

mike

Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Tunes: At Largehearted Boy, Cathy Malkasian provides a musical playlist for her new graphic novel Temperance

• Interview: Snap Judgment's Stephanie Foo talks to Mome contributors Jon Adams & Robert Goodin, among others, about their superhero juvenilia in a slideshow with audio

• History: At Comics Comics, Tim Hodler posts a 1954 letter from Charles M. Schulz to Walt Kelly provided by Jeet Heer

• Plug: Eat, Sleep & Read! spotlights Artichoke Tales by Megan Kelso

• Comic-Con: For MTV IGGY, Deb Aoki covers Moto Hagio's appearance at Comic-Con: "Besides signing copies of her new book and sketching for fans, Hagio also talked about her work at two panels, charming the crowd with her wit and honesty."

• Reviewer: For the Wall Street Journal, Alexander Theroux reviews Gary Shteyngart's new novel Super Sad True Love Story

What Comic-Con Means To Me

Eric

My name is Eric, and I'm a recovering Comicon attendee.

Okay, that's a loaded opener and implies that I had an unhappy experience this year. I didn't; I just couldn't resist. But my way of navigating the show and finding ways to make it more enjoyable have definitely evolved over the years. I've been to every Comic-Con but one since sometime in the early-to-mid-1980s (and I'm only 39 -- you do the math), long before the current convention center was built. I've gone as a child, an adult, a fan, a retailer representative, a journalist, a publicist, and a publisher. I know my way around the show. And the way that I've found I can make the best of it anymore is, frankly, by making the least of it. I've given up on trying to soak in as much as I can and find I'm happier if I let go and try to soak in as little as I can. Work the booth, talk to fans, enjoy a few quiet dinners, go to the Eisners. That's about the extent of it. Forget walking the floor, forget hitting the best parties, forget cramming as much into as little time as possible. It's madness, and my body can't take it anymore.

So, Mike Baehr has already chronicled the Fanta goings on at Comicon far better than I ever could -- I still can't figure out how Mike had time to take pictures and tweet all day, every day, while he was also constantly helping customers and our authors and barely had any breaks for about six days straight. Mike rules.

But here's what I can tell you: On behalf of all of the Fantagraphics staff, I really want to thank everyone who came all the way down to our end of the hall with a little bit of money left in their wallets and bought some books from us. When you think about it, what with all of the hundreds of thousands if not millions of items that are for sale at Comic-Con, to know that enough people find what you're doing worthwhile enough to cover our significant expense of exhibiting is really kind of incredible. I say that as someone who knows our books are great; I just don't necessarily expect anyone else to agree with me. So when you do, well, it makes us feel good, and I know I can speak for everyone we had down there that we honestly enjoy talking to the people that read our books. We have a lot of really nice customers. My biggest fear about Comic-Con is that it is getting so big that casual comics readers unwilling to make plans a year in advance are getting squeezed out by hardcore fans who only want to see Twilight panels or whatever. That's not to sound anti-Hollywood; it's just the reality of the logistics of Comic-Con anymore.

That said, I kept telling folks all weekend that even though it's in my nature to complain, I had almost nothing to complain about in regard to this year's show (which I realize makes for a boring con postmortem). Yes, I find it weirdly condescending and annoying that every retail worker in downtown San Diego now seems to wear some generic comics-related t-shirts or capes for five days straight (especially when you know they're being forced to do it and probably resent it every bit as much). But so be it. When I go to a nice restaurant downtown, I can promise you that I'm not so hungry to relive my day on the floor that I need Green Lantern-themed cocktails or steaks named after the wild creatures of Pandora. But I will be famished enough to forgive it.

Oh, sure, I could complain about "Hollywood," I suppose. At the Eisner Awards, I was sitting with two nominees in one of the categories that the cast of Scott Pilgrim presented. Given that one of the other nominees actually was a Scott Pilgrim book, I guess I could complain that the presenters effectively eliminated any element of surprise over who was going to win. But really, we just thought it was funny. If you can't laugh during the Eisners, you're in for a long night.

So, I can dig it. My 13-year-old con-going self would have stabbed somebody in the eye to see a panel about an Avengers movie. Nowadays, I'm fairly ignorant to the pervasiveness of the cult of celebrity of Comic-Con. I'm good at tuning things out. This year, I noticed the creeping influence of tinseltown less within the show than I did outside. As soon as I stepped outside the convention, that's where I felt the constant, sensory assault of shameless hucksterism, with sidewalk salesmen shoving video game and movie-related hype left-and-right into my face and hands whether I wanted it or not (I didn't). The con itself is a breeze compared to walking up First Ave. on Saturday night at 7PM.

Within the con, I keep to the comics end of the floor and rarely set foot more than a row or two past our own aisle towards the "popular" end of the show. It's civil and peaceful; everybody likes each other. And if you get bored, there's a lot of good books to read, and a ton of really great cartoonists who will do free drawings for you. If you come next year, see for yourself. And if you came this year, thank you.

Georgetown Records & Fantagraphics Bookstore Host a Party for COVER STORY Vol. 2 on Aug. 14

LarryR

Georgetown Records and Fantagraphics Bookstore Host a Party for COVER STORY: Odd, Obscure and Outrageous Album Art on Saturday, August 14.

Spend a hot August night with cool music and art at Georgetown Records and Fantagraphics Bookstore in Seattle. The party celebrates the publication of COVER STORY Volume Two: Odd, Obscure and Outrageous Album Art on Saturday August 14 from 6:00 to 9:00 PM. Contributors Aja West and Cheeba preside over the festivities with a show of album art from the book, a book signing, and a rare combined DJ appearance.

COVER STORY Volume Two: Odd, Obscure and Outrageous Album Art continues a graphic narration of the vibrant subculture of record collecting through the art of the album cover. This edition examines strange and bizarre record covers from across the country and around the globe, illuminating the imaginative past of twelve-inch masterpieces - sadly absent in this era of digital downloads. Published by Wax Poetics in association with powerHouse Books, this colorful 228 page volume celebrates an eccentric era when artistic visions were often so absurd and grandiose they frequently extended beyond the boundaries of the recording and onto the album covers themselves.

The artwork for the COVER STORY series is selected by the staff of Wax Poetics magazine, including Seattle siblings Aja West and Cheeba. Both brothers have colorful backgrounds, recording music together and separately, collaborating with an amazing assortment of players along the way. Both also associated with celebrities early in their careers: Aja as the music assistant to comedian Conan O'Brien and Cheeba with the illustrious Dust Brothers production duo. Their first recording together was a remix for the Fight Club film that appeared in the Japanese and European version of the soundtrack. They now play in each other's projects: Aja's The Mackrosoft and Cheeba's Cheebacabra.

First published in December 2001, Brooklyn-born Wax Poetics was originally created for a concentrated market of music aficionados. It has since expanded to make musical anthropologists out of average music listeners — illuminating the dark corners of our sonic past while also striving to give new and innovative artists broad exposure.

Georgetown Records and Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery share retail space at 1201 S. Vale St. (at Airport Way S.). Phone 206.658.0110. This event coincides with the lively Georgetown Art Attack featuring free visual and performing arts presentations at several locations throughout the historic industrial arts district.

New print from Barry Windsor-Smith

mike

Barry Windsor-Smith fans, we are pleased to share the following announcement with you:

Windsor-Smith Studio is pleased to announce the publication of

POETRY

A stunningly colored work printed by the giclée process, making the reproduction as beautiful as the original painting.

This signed and numbered limited edition of 375, in a deluxe, foil stamped presentation folder, features a 20" x 12 3/8" image on 22" x 15" UltraSmooth heavy 100% cotton rag, acid free & pH buffered paper.

The price is $135, including insured shipping.

POETRY is available from Glimmer Graphics, at their web site:
http://www.glimmergraphicsprints.com/Poetry.html

Comic-Con 2010 panel audio-rama

mike

Jamie Coville of TheComicBooks.com has posted audio of several panels at Comic-Con 2010, including: the Spotlight on Moto Hagio (MP3); the Spotlight on Peter Bagge (MP3); the Comics Criticism panel with R.C. Harvey, Gary Groth and others, moderated by Ben Schwartz (MP3); the Comics Reprints Revolution panel with Gary Groth and others (MP3); and the Bill Everett panel with Blake Bell & Wendy Everett (MP3). Thanks to Blake Bell for the tip-off! Illustration swiped from Johnny Ryan's Facebook page.

Comic-Con Day 3 Part 2: Peter Bagge, Dame Darcy & Tony Millionaire

mike

We packed three powerhouses of alternative comics behind one table and the result was one of our busiest signings in a week full of busy signings!

Peter Bagge was kept busy by a long line of fans requesting sketches of Bizarro, Buddy Bradley and so on:

He also used the occiasion to debut his band's new CD!

Dame Darcy brought along her usual assortment of lovely couture dolls and other merch:

Poor Tony Millionaire got lost in the convention hall for a while but quickly settled in for a brisk round of signatures and Drinky Crow sketches:

Tony was joined by a camera crew from our pals at Bright Red Rocket, shooting footage for an in-progress documentary about Tony.

Comic-Con Day 3 Part 1: signings galore

mike

Our Saturday morning kicked off, appropriately enough, with Mitch Schauer & Mike Vosburg, co-creators of our new all-ages graphic novel RIP M.D.

Next up, Blake Bell, Andrei Molotiu (seen here talking with Douglas Wolk I believe) and Ben Schwartz & son joined us:

Here's Ben meeting actor James Urbaniak, whom you may remember from his portrayal of Crumb in American Splendor and whose voice you may recognize as that of Dr. Thaddeus Venture:

Tim Hensley met eager fans, hawked copies of his Victor Banana CDs, and signed copies of Wally Gropius:

Carol Tyler brought some amazing collectibles to sell, including copies of You'll Never Know Book 1 signed by her dad (the "Good and Decent Man" himself) and a copy of the Twisted Sisters compilation signed by every contributor:

To be continued...

Michael Kupperman gets Sexy, Law & Orderly

mike

Twitter user Jesse Mack posted this glimpse of Michael Kupperman's artwork from The Sexy Book of Sexy Sex by Kristen Schaal & Rich Blomquist (who, Kupperman notes, met working on Kupperman's Snake 'n' Bacon Adult Swim pilot).

In closely related news, Kupperman also notes that he contributed as a writer to the book Sex: Our Bodies, Our Junk.

And in a last bit of Kuppermanic news, he has the following piece in the Law & Order-themed art show "These Are Their Stories" at Gallery Meltdown in L.A. opening tonight at 8:

Daily OCD: 7/28/10

mike

Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Interview: The Minneapolis City Pages talks to Zak Sally about the "2nd Annual Report," a big old hootenanny celebrating and benefitting his small press imprint La Mano which took place at Eclipse Records in Minneapolis last week (which we found out about too late to Flog, dang it): "La Mano is what it is, the stuff I love. A celebration of stuff that people make and create by hand. Last year was great, and if every year there could be a sort of one spot where all that stuff is able to happen in, I'm happy as a pig in shit!"

• Comic-Con: Jason Geyer of Action Figure Insider declares our Floyd Gottfredson Mickey Mouse announcement "the biggest news at Comic-Con 2010"

• Comic-Con: Comic Book Resources' Sonia Harris recounts a happy encounter with Jaime Hernandez at our booth

The Summer of HATE!

LarryR

You know the old saying: "If you remember the 60s, you weren't there." For me this cliché also applies to most of the 80 and 90s. Rampant grunge nostalgia has given rise to no fewer than a half-dozen recent or soon-to-be-published books on the subject. As a peripheral player in Seattle's proto-grunge punk scene, I've been asked repeatedly to recount the specifics of my misspent youth to a cadre of eager young "rock historians." Hell, I'm lucky if I remember what happened last week, much less 25 years ago.

Thankfully we had Peter Bagge to chronicle the entire era. His comic book series HATE went far beyond simple satire. Buddy Bradley and his gang of hapless losers helped fashion the attitudes and aesthetics of the movement. It's a sure bet that BUDDY DOES SEATTLE, collecting the first 15 issues of HATE, more accurately reflects the grunge milieu than an entire library of murky oral histories. In a prescient 1992 review, Bruce Barcott of the Seattle Weekly observed, "Twenty years from now, when people want to know what it was like to be young in 1990s Seattle, the only record we'll have is Peter Bagge's HATE." If you too are gripped by grunge nostalgia, or just curious about the period, skip the revisionist histories and pick up a copy of the real deal.

While you're at it...the most splendid comic book of the summer is Peter Bagge's HATE ANNUAL #8. From the first page you'll be reminded why you so closely identified with the series in the first place: Sexy and silly, but with an unmistakable air of familiarity. This book gives you an uneasy feeling like, "Hey, I think I know these people. Omigawd! That's me!" An imperative addition to your summer reading list.

Gary Groth down under for GRAPHIC next week

mike

Our fearless leader Gary Groth will be traveling to Australia next week to participate in the GRAPHIC festival at Sydney Opera House. Gary will be presenting a special "Focus on Fantagraphics" talk on Sunday, August 8, at 11 AM, giving an overview of the company and its mission from the early days of The Comics Journal through the present day. Apparently there's currently a 2-for-1 deal on tickets for the session if you use the code "comic" when booking online or by phone at (02) 9250 7777.

If any of our antipodean friends have any suggestions as to where in Sydney Gary might be able to indulge his prodigious sweet tooth during his visit, please leave a comment.

Robert Pollard's NYC Art Show

Eric

Robert Pollard has a new art exhibit in NYC on August 27/28. Its open to the public, so come on down!

As writer Rick Moody put it in his introduction to Fantagraphics' TOWN OF MIRRORS: THE REASSEMBLED IMAGERY OF ROBERT POLLARD, "The visual art of Robert Pollard ... is uncanny, moving, strange, and it summons a dark melancholy.... We are lucky to have these riddles to ponder and unlock."

THE 45 SPACE in New York will host "The Public Hi-Fi Balloon," an exhibit of collages by Robert Pollard incorporating pictures, words, and sound on August 27 and 28, 2010.

Pollard, whose super-human productivity as a songwriter is the stuff of
indie-rock legend, created most of the works for this show in the past six
months. "I've been working long hours daily getting ready for this show," he says. "It's going to be insane."

Among the works on display will be more than 60 imaginary record sleeves, as well as dreamed-up magazines and coffee table books. "You can see Duchamp in Pollard's collages, as well as the influence of the painterly spaces of De Chirico and Yves Tanguy," wrote Moody in the introduction to Town of Mirrors. Moody also noted "a residual pulse in the images of the swinging sixties, not the flowers-in-their-hair iteration, but the dark bad-acid psychedelia of that low, dishonest decade."

Pollard is the leader of the seminal indie-rock band Guided by Voices, which emerged from Midwestern obscurity in the early 1990s to conquer the national scene with such transcendentally lo-fi albums as Bee Thousand, Alien Lanes, and Under the Bushes, Under the Stars. One of Spin magazine's "Top 50 Rock & Roll Front Men of All Time," Pollard recently electrified fans and critics alike when he announced that the original lineup of Guided by Voices would be reuniting for a series of shows this fall.

Pollard created the cover art for most Guided by Voices releases, not to mention those of his many other musical projects. The cover collage for Guided by Voices' 1997 album Mag Earwhig was displayed in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio.

Pollard's music and his visual art are unified at a fundamental level. "They
both have to do with re-assembling familiar imagery to create interesting
landscapes," he says. "One with sight, the other with sound."

Pollard was introduced to the New York art world in 2007, when visual artist Todd DiCiurcio and actor Michael Imperiole co-hosted "Do the Collage," a show that included the original art for several classic Guided by Voices album covers. DiCiurcio will co-host "The Public Hi-Fi Balloon" with Vanity Fair executive online editor Michael Hogan.

The 45 Space is located at 45 Bond Street (between Lafayette Street and the Bowery) in Manhattan. Opening night is Friday, August 27, from 6 p.m. to 11 p.m. The exhibit will also be open to visitors on Saturday, August 28, from 2 p.m. until 11 p.m.