FLOG! Entries tagged 'Jules Feiffer'

Daily OCD 8/8/12

TheJenVaughn

The sweetest smelling Online Commentaries & Diversions:

•Review: Partially and fully-reviewed on Em & Lo and SUNfiltered respectively is new book Significant Objects by Joshua Glenn and Rob Walker. Em and Lo said, "The book also organizes the stories and objects into groups that will be more familiar to thrift-store shoppers, based on the items’ original intended use: novelty items, figurines, kitsch, toys, etc."

•Plug: Significant Objects editor Joshua Glenn showed up on Benjamin Walker's WFMU show "Too Much Information" as a correspondant. As if you needed another reason to listen to TMI.

•Plug: Bookstore of our dreams, Powells, listed Significant Objects as a staff favorite while the Very Short List, a site featuring different curator gems, focused on three objects within the book.

•Review: Detroit News takes a look at No Straight Lines, edited by Justin Hall. Eric Henrickson wrote, "If 'No Straight Lines: Four Decades of Queer Comics' isn’t the definitive look at the world of GLBT comics, it surely must come darn close. . . I knew there was a lot out there, but I was surprised at the depth of the genre — in sheer quantity and in quality. It’s also a great volume for comics historians."

•Review: Wandering Son, Volume 3 by Shimura Takako is reviewed on Experiments in Manga. Librarian Ash Brown says, "Shimura deals with her characters and with identity, particularly gender identity, with a tremendous amount of sensitivity. Wandering Son is one of the few comics that I have had the opportunity to read that has accomplished this as a fictional work rather than as a memoir." But that isn't all Wandering Son is about: "The fact that the characters aren't characters per se but actual individuals is one of Wandering Son's greatest strengths. Ultimately, the story isn't about the 'issues' surrounding personal identity so much as it is about the people themselves."

•Review: Hillary Brown of Paste Magazine examines Flannery O'Conner: The Cartoons, edited by Kelly Gerald. "Fantagraphics has done us a service of scholarship in publishing these early linocuts, executed for O’Connor’s high school and college newspapers, and the essay by editor Kelly Gerald that follows their reproduction makes some interesting connections to her later literary works, but most of them don’t stand on their own."

•Commentary: Drew Friedman visited MAD Magazine almost 40 years ago and wrote a little about his trip, picked up by Boing Boing.

•Plug: The MOST OCD-happy site of Hernandez Brothers mentions, Love & Maggie, lists the newest mentions of the month.

•Review: Pornokitsch goes WAY back to a sold-out Jules Feiffer illustrated novel, Harry, the Rat with Women. Jared says,"Everything is there and familiar, but somehow drawn and thin and somewhat ethereal; delicate but distorted." Now you know to get it when at Half-Price books!

Daily OCD: 7/28/11

mike

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "...I’ll admit it: I did not expect to read a Frank book whose final panel made me go 'Awwww!' ...[T]he journey [in Congress of the Animals] takes Frank so far afield that at some point (probably when he gets lost at sea and washes up on some distant shore) he ends up outside the Unifactor’s confines. New information can now enter his world... And at that point all hell breaks loose…which in a Frank comic is to say it doesn’t break loose at all." – Sean T. Collins, Attentiondeficitdisorderly

• Review: "I don't think I'll ever stop marveling at the amazing artwork [Woodring] fills his books with. It contains some of the most solid and tangible representations of fantastical objects and events I've ever seen, along with a deeply unsettling atmosphere, something that either creeps me out or turns my stomach to look at it. There's something about the plantlike growths on animal creatures, the gaping orifices, and the plentiful eyeballs that, while obviously unnatural, goes a step further into a visceral gut-punch, somehow keying into a subconscious urge to look away. This aspect of the work has been present in other Frank stories I've seen, but Woodring seems to crank it up to near-unbearable levels [in Congress of the Animals]..." – Matthew J. Brady, Warren Peace Sings the Blues

• Review: "I recently read the first volume of Jules Feiffer's collected Village Voice comic strips [Explainers], from the 1950s and early 1960s. Reading ten years' worth of weekly strips in a few days probably wasn't the best idea, but I was still amazed at how well Feiffer's early work has aged. Not just the stuff about relationships, but the stuff about politics still works. I guess that's not surprising, since relationships and politics haven't changed much in fifty years." – This Is So Gay

• Scene: Comic Book Resources' Sonia Harris recaps the Love and Rockets anniversary panel at Comic-Con, and in plugging the article (and commenting on Gilbert's revelations) at CBR's Robot 6 Sean T. Collins calls it "pure L&R-nerd heaven for a whole bunch of reasons," which is 100% accurate

• Scene: Corey Blake gives a first-person account of Cannibal Fuckface's appearance at our Comic-Con booth during Johnny Ryan's Prison Pit signing

• Interview: Bust Magazine's Erina Davidson has a Q&A session with Megan Kelso: "I try not to fall into the trap of thinking something is interesting simply because 'it happened to ME.' Personal memories and experiences are wonderful catalysts, and I think essential to making work seem believable and relatable, but they are rarely enough. One needs also to do some embroidery."

• Interview (Audio): Our Associate Publisher Eric Reynolds appeared on Ed Wenck's program on Indianapolis news radio station WIBC to talk about our forthcoming EC Comics and ZAP Comix reprint projects — listen to the segment here

Announcing Our MoCCA 2011 Schedule!

janice

We're thrilled to present the Fantagraphics guide to the 2011 MoCCA Fest, happening this weekend Saturday, April 9th and Sunday, April 10th at the Lexington Avenue Armory in New York City! Print this out and use it as your shopping checklist and your weekend schedule!

First off, take a look at all the amazing new releases that we will be debuting at the show! Many of these books won't be in stores for several more months, and copies are limited, so make our table your first stop, or risk missing out!

• Approximate Continuum Comics by Lewis Trondheim
• Captain Easy Vol. 2 by Roy Crane
• Celluloid by Dave McKean
• Congress of the Animals by Jim Woodring
• Hate Annual #9 by Peter Bagge
• Isle of 100,000 Graves by Jason
• Take a Joke by Johnny Ryan
• Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse Vol. 1 by Floyd Gottfredson [Unfortunately, this one won't make it after all!]
• Wandering Son Book 1 by Shimura Takako
• Yeah! by Peter Bagge & Gilbert Hernandez
• The Comics Journal #301, edited by Gary Groth
• Eye of the Majestic Creature by Leslie Stein

Secondly, check out our jam-packed schedule of awesome authors who will be signing at the Fantagraphics table over the weekend. Not only will they be signing our books, but several of them will be bringing previews of works-in-progress!

Saturday, April 9th
11:30 am-12:30 pm     Derek Van Gieson / Nate Neal / Sara Edward-Corbett
12:30 pm-1:30 pm    Stephen DeStefano / Mark Newgarden
1:30 pm-2:30 pm        Kim Deitch / Peter Bagge
2:30 pm-3:30 pm        Gahan Wilson / Charles Burns / Tim Kreider
3:30 pm-4:30 pm        Michael Kupperman / Ted Stearn / Dash Shaw
4:30 pm-5:30 pm        Paul Hornschemeier / Leslie Stein

Sunday, April 10th
11:30 am-12:30 pm   Derek Van Gieson / Sara Edward-Corbett
12:30 pm-1:30 pm      Kim Deitch / Gahan Wilson
1:30 pm-2:30 pm       Leslie Stein / Michael Kupperman / John Kerschbaum
2:30 pm-3:30 pm       Drew Friedman / Peter Bagge
3:30 pm-4:30 pm       Ted Stearn / Paul Hornschemeier
4:30 pm-5:30 pm       Stephen DeStefano / George Chieffet (tentative) / Nate Neal

update: George Chieffet will be unable to join us on Sunday, but John Kerschbaum has been added to the 1:30 pm slot that day!

another update: Tim Kreider will be joining us on Saturday afternoon at 2:30 pm before his panel at 4:30 pm!

All this and more awaits you at the Fantagraphics booth, located at #J1, J2, K1, K2.

And finally, get a gander at all these great panels! If you haven't already heard from The Daily Cross Hatch, they've added a second room this year, and they'll be doing more one-on-one conversations like the ones with Gahan Wilson and Peter Bagge listed below! You won't want to miss it!

Saturday, April 9th

11:30 am // Teaching Comics: Jessica Abel joins fellow panelists Bill Kartalopoulos and Tom Hart in a discussion from reading for content/visuals, to teaching how to “read” their visual rhetoric, to thinking about how to tell a story visually, what makes comics worth teaching? (Room A)

1:30 pm // Building a Book, From Start to Finish: Mark Newgarden moderates a panel with Stephen DeStefano (as well as Ben Katchor and Lauren Redniss), with an exploration of the blood, sweat, and tears that go into making a book. (Room A)

1:30 pm // Gahan Wilson: Playboy and Beyond: We explore the long, storied career of satirist Gahan Wilson. (Room B)

2:30 pm // Volunteer of the Year: Peter Kuper will present Al Jaffee with the Klein Award! (Room A)

2:30 pm // Dash Shaw and Brecht Evens in Conversation: Dash Shaw and Brecht Evens are among the most prodigious and prolific young artists working in comics today. Both began publishing ambitious work while still in school, and both have since gained notice for their lush, inventive, and thoughtful comics. (Room B)

4:30 pm // The State of Editorial Cartooning: Brian Heater presents a panel with Tim Kreider (along with Ruben Bolling and Ted Rall) on the trials and tribulations of creating political cartoons in 2011. (Room A)

5:30 pm // MoCCA Presents the Cross Hatch Carousel: Cartoonists and voice actors perform live comics readings, featuring our own Michael Kupperman and Ted Stearn, as well as Jeffrey Lewis, R. Sikoryak, Kate Beaton, Lisa Hanawalt, Julie Klausner, and more. (Room A)

Sunday, April 10th

12:30 pm // Almost True: Calvin Reid leads a discussion on where autobiography and fiction collide with Gabrielle Bell and Leslie Stein (and Joe Ollmann and Pascal Girard). (Room A)

1:30 pm // Peter Bagge: A History of Hate: Brian Heater spotlights Peter Bagge, in a one-on-one conversation with one of alternative comics’ most influential and enduring voices. (Room B)

1:30 pm // The Enterprising Will Eisner: Charles Brownstein leads a panel with Jules Feiffer, as well as Denis Kitchen and Paul Levitz. Come learn about who Will Eisner was as an entrepreneuring artist in a time when New York was the center of the commercial art universe, and how his art was shaped by that environment. (Room A)

3:30 pm // Ink Panthers Live: The popular podcast live, with special guests, like John Kerschbaum. (Room B)

So, get ready! -- and we'll see you at MoCCA!

An Evening with Jules Feiffer at the Society of Illustrators Nov. 10

mike

Jules Feiffer gives a talk at the Society of Illustrators in NYC on Wednesday, November 10 at 6:30 PM. More info and tickets here.

A half-dozen Comics Journal back issues back in stock

mike

Just found in a neglected cranny in our warehouse, the following 6 issues of The Comics Journal, previously thought to be sold out! There are some classic issues in this batch, including the notorious Groth vs. McFarlane throwdown, the "Violence in Comics" issue featuring Wertham & Woodring, and some rare early Dan Clowes sketchbook pages. There's only a handful of each so get them while you can:

#68: Two panel discussions with Frank Miller, Denny O'Neil, Louise Jones, Roy Thomas, Julius Schwartz, Jim Shooter, and Len Wein. X-Men cover by Kevin Nowlan; a Guide to Holiday Animated Specials; Rick Marschall; R.C. Harvey; Superman II; more!

#124: Jules Feiffer speaks out in a far-ranging interview that covers politics, Will Eisner, the Popeye movie, Jack Nicholson, working for Playboy, and more. Plus the legendary "Summer Reading List," "Funnybook Roulette," news and more!

#133: Special "Violence in Comics" issue with a lurid cover by Jim Woodring and featuring interviews with Dr. Thomas Radecki and Dr. Fredric Wertham; "Siren Song of Blood": the rise of remorselessly violent vigilantes; Comics on Trial 1954: a look back at the infamous Senate hearings; more!

#144 : Tim Truman is grilled with customary mercilessness by Gary Groth about the art and business of comics; Jack Jackson's review of "Blueberry"; an interview with Bernie Mireault; Caribbean comics; and a sketchbook by Dan Clowes!

#152: Art vs. commerce! Todd McFarlane takes on Gary Groth in a no-holds-barred interview. Then Chris Claremont speaks up for the first time since his dismissal from Marvel. Alan Moore and others also weigh in. The cover: Gary Groth's decapitated head!

#272: Interviews with political cartoonists Steve Bell & Jeff Danziger; part 2 of Gary Groth's interview with Jerry Robinson; John Stanley's Thirteen presented by Seth; reviews of Epileptic, Promethea, Embroideries; and much more!

Daily OCD: 3/23/10

mike

Online Commentary & Diversions:

• List: Booklist's Ray Olson names the Top 10 Graphic Novels of the past 12 months, including You'll Never Know, Book 1: A Good and Decent Man by C. Tyler ("Alt-comics veteran Tyler fully demonstrates her artistry in a book about her father’s WWII experiences, her childhood and present struggles raising her daughter, and her growing realization of war’s long-term effects on soldiers and their families.") and A Mess of Everything by Miss Lasko-Gross ("With washed and faded and wildly varied artwork and writing that sounds utterly like a teen’s voice, Lasko-Gross makes high-schooler Melissa’s late-teen experience real enough to nip incipient nostalgia in the bud.")

• Review: "This charming collection of stories from the long-running and much acclaimed Love and Rockets explores friendship and romance through the interconnected experiences of several characters over many years. ... What's impressive about Hernandez's work isn't so much each story on its own as it is how all the pieces fit together into a whole world that's almost but not quite like our own. ... Hernandez's gorgeous art is both expressive and simple... It all comes together to construct a world and people easy to relate to." – Publishers Weekly

• Review: "Tardi's work which is distinguished by an unstinting attention to locale and detail, captures the true horror of war in a way that no other artist has been quite able to achieve. ... [It Was the War of the Trenches] is the story of man against the system, with the system as the ultimate winner. This is a story for our times." – Peter Richardson (via ¡Journalista!)

• Profile: Benjamin Ivry of Forward looks at the career of Jules Feiffer, who says "From my earliest cartoons, I’ve tried to work in front of audiences who may not be happy with what I’m saying. In the then left-wing Village Voice, I criticized the student left and they weren’t happy. I don’t find it fun to work before audiences who would agree with me; I prefer to challenge their preconceptions. My role is to push and prod and challenge, and I try to do it pleasantly rather than otherwise."

• Interview: Big Think presents a multi-part video interview with Jules Feiffer

• Interview: Robot 6's Chris Mautner talks to Matt Thorn about editing our upcoming manga line: "My goal is to make a line that will appeal to the twenty-something Sailor Moon/Pokémon generation that feel they've outgrown the bulk of what is currently available, and that will also appeal to intelligent grown-ups who just enjoy a good read, but have never seen themselves as readers of manga, or even comics. I'd like to provide these people with smart, high-quality, accessible manga."

• Hooray for Hollywood: That Popeye movie is going to be in 3D, will not co-star Supergirl

Daily OCD: 12/23/09

mike

Christmas Eve Eve Online Commentary & Diversions:

• List: We published 6 of John Seven's top 10 "Decade's Best: Comics - Archives & Collections": The Complete Peanuts, Explainers by Jules Feiffer, the two Fletcher Hanks books, Humbug, Locas by Jaime Hernandez, and Supermen! The First Wave of Comic Book Heroes 1936-1941

• Review: "The packaging... is brilliant and the actual product is no less magnificent. The quality that Fantagraphics put into [Portable Grindhouse: The Lost Art of the VHS Box] is top-notch. The card and paper stock could not be more perfect. The high resolution pictures and scans of each of the films are almost like you are holding the original. ... This is a 'must-have' for genre fans, collectors and art lovers alike." – Cinesploitation

• Review: "Huizenga delivers a quiet tour de force [in Ganges #3] that shows confident cartooning that thrills through its ease and craftsmanship,... documenting a normal life with a sharp eye and a penchant for gentle revelation." – John Seven, Worcester Magazine

• Review: "...Krazy Kat is that most unlikely of things: poetry fostered and cared for unquestioningly by commerce." – David Mathews (an edited version originally appeared in The New Indian Express)

• Plugs: Fictional or not, The Rack's Lydia Park says re: Sublife Vol. 2 "John Pham is just beyond good. So many great ideas executed perfectly. Think Chris Ware meets Kevin Huizenga" and re: The Unclothed Man in the 35th Century A.D. "Dash Shaw is incredible."

• Interview: The Daily Cross Hatch's Brian Heater has a wonderful chat with Carol Tyler (part 1 of 4): "Everything is more complicated. Everything is layered. I think as you grow older, you have this experience, but then you also, exponentially, have all of these others, due to the fact that you’ve just lived longer. You’ve met more people, and you’ve been around, and done all of these things. I try to boil it down and try to figure out the best way to do this. A collection of symbols and the right words—I really try to be a wordsmith, but I’m not! Argh! I try to pick the right words and the right way to get an idea across. Sometimes you just have to shoot it out there like bullshit and other times you have to make it more poetic. You have to balance that."

• Interview/Preview: The ubiquitous Dash Shaw talks to Rick Marshall about The Unclothed Man in the 35th Century A.D. at the MTV Splash Page blog (where there is also a 5-page sneak peek of the book): "I felt like I learned so much by drawing every day. If you want to get better at drawing the human figure, doing an animated series will definitely do that for you."

• Interview: The Comics Reporter's Tom Spurgeon talks to The Comics Journal's Kristy Valenti, focusing on Little Nemo in Slumberland: So Many Splendid Sundays but touching on other topics as well

• Things to see: Kevin Huizenga brings us some holiday freakonomics in Amazing Facts and Beyond with Leon Beyond

Daily OCD: 11/13/09

mike

Online Commentary & Diversions with a hockey mask:

• Review: "[Jacques] Boyreau’s new art book, Portable Grindhouse, is more than a stunning collection of VHS box art. Anyone with a sense of nostalgia for cruising the shelves at the local Video Depot will recognize old favorites alongside more than a few bizarre rarities within its pages, and if you don’t feel a sense of loss over the current state of DVD box art, you just don’t have any feelings. ... Like the VHS boxes of old, Boyreau’s introductory essay is less a history of the VHS format and the culture of the rental business than it is a heady evocation of how exciting it was when it first arrived. ...[A] book as lovingly edited as this could only have been put together by someone whose appreciation for these objects is matched by a real love of cinema." – Matthew Caron, Vol. 1 Brooklyn

• Review: "...West Coast Blues... is... a tightly-plotted little crime noir, just the sort of thing that today's discerning comic book readers seem to be interested in... It's noir by way of existential hell, which, let's face it is very French. This is... an admirable book, tightly plotted and full of great cartooning moments. ...You Are There is a heavily dense and convoluted book... presented with a decidedly absurdist and surreal air. ... You Are There constantly skirts the edge of comedy — it knows the language and does the dance — but never becomes the outright farce it so clearly and consistently hints at evolving into. ... Whatever flaws these two books might posses, they and Tardi remain too interesting and rich to be easily dismissed." – Chris Mautner, Robot 6

• Interview: Martha's Vineyard Magazine's Karla Araujo has a Q&A with Jules Feiffer ("Success is nothing to sneeze at, but failure has many possibilities"), followed by an excerpt from Feiffer's upcoming memoir Backing Into Forward

• Reviewer: Laura Warholic author Alexander Theroux's latest book review for The Wall Street Journal tackles the posthumous Nabokov novel The Original of Laura

Feiffer & Ware at Chicago Humanities Festival Nov. 7

mike

Jules Feiffer and Chris Ware appear at the Chicago Humanities Festival at the Francis W. Parker School on Friday, Nov. 7. From 1-2 PM, Feiffer presents a lecture on "Depression-Era Humor": More info here. And from 4:30-6:00, Feiffer and Ware appear on a panel titled "The Not-So-Funny Situation of Alternative Comix" alongside Lynda Barry, Matt Groening and moderator Michael Miner of The Chicago Reader: More info here.

Daily OCD: 10/15/09

mike

Not sure if there will be an Online Commentary & Diversions update tomorrow or Monday, as your humble correspondent will be en route to and from San Francisco for APE. Say, we should have an APE announcement coming up any time now.

• Review: "Femke Hiemstra, a Dutch artist, was 'raised on liquorice and buttermilk,' in her words. Fittingly enough, her work is an alluring mixture of sweet and sour. ... Hiemstra... does a wonderful job of offsetting her cuteness with a measure of tears, skeletons, Venus fly-traps and demons. The palette, meanwhile, is unrepentantly pretty — can we call it girly? — and Hiemstra's paintings emit the sort of candy-charged excitement of Halloween night. Rock Candy is a jewelbox of a book, with its deep mauve die-cut cover and metallic red lettering. ... Rock Candy is... a delightful new work for those who like liquorice and buttermilk, or better yet, both." – Molly Young, More Intelligent Life

• Commentary: Chris McLaren of Homo Sum looks at a Jules Feiffer strip from Explainers that remains relevant after all these years

• Potpourri (in the Jeopardy! sense): Dame Darcy is gearing up for a witchy Halloween

• Events: Comic Book Resources' Steve Sunu reports from the Stan Sakai spotlight panel at Baltimore Comic-Con

• Contest: Dust off your Enid Coleslaw glasses, Buddy Bradley flannel, etc. and enter The Daily Cross Hatch's indie-comics costume contest

• Things to see: A couple of recent commissions by Anders Nilsen

• Things to see: Budding genius Charles Weissman draws Popeye

Daily OCD: 9/2/09

mike

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "From the opening panel until the final words, Tardi's adaptation of Manchette's crime novel [West Coast Blues] sizzles with a dazzling graphic intensity... Much like the 1950s American crime novels they emulate, Tardi and Manchette offer a impressive display of destructive violence, wanton love, and disregard for life. Showcasing Tardi's singular artistic talents, the brilliant West Coast Blues emerges as one of the best crime graphic novels ever produced." - Rick Klaw, The SF Site: Nexus Graphica

• Review: "[West Coast Blues] is slyly funny without being jokey; thrilling without ever seeming manipulative; cool, distant and ironic in its narrative voice; immediate in its depiction of violence. What do Tardi's illustrations add? Mostly a crowded sense of daily life, an ironic, sense-sharpening departure from the dark, shadowy atmospherics that sometimes nudge noir toward mere style." - Peter Rozovsky, Detectives Beyond Borders

• Review: "If you were a Martian trying to figure out America in the second half of the 20th century, you could do worse than to start by reading Jules Feiffer’s Village Voice cartoons [collected in Explainers]." - Sarah Boslaugh, PopMatters

• Review: Patricia Portales's review of Your Brain on Latino Comics (University of Texas Press) for the San Antonio Current includes mentions of the Hernandez Brothers and Wilfred Santiago

• Things to see: Santa gets a knee to the gut courtesy of Tim Lane

• Things to see and buy: New items in the 46 Million benefit auction organized by Anders Nilsen, including album cover art by Zak Sally

Daily OCD: 7/17/09

mike

We didn't forget the Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "The Lagoon is a horror story, if a low-key one; like much of the best horror it makes the connection between horror and the absurd... [Lilli] Carré's sinuous, snaking treatment of sound provides a through-line... but it still feels disconnected in ways that few writers today are gutsy enough to attempt. The overall effect is like Clive Barker fed through a twee filter. This'll stick to you." - Sean T. Collins

• Review: "Who knew that Prince Valiant, a comic strip I always assumed appeared next to the word 'boredom' in the dictionary, was so vibrant, colorful, action-packed and gosh-darned fun?... This new edition [Prince Valiant Vol. 1: 1937-1938] ups the ante not just through the fancy hardcover, but via state of the art technology that allows for a pristine detail and rich color that’s about as close to Foster’s initial intentions as we may ever be likely to get... The strip is full of brio and vigor and hits the ground running right from the start... Foster’s fight scenes are sumptuous in detail but economical in execution, with Foster rarely showing a glinting sword unless it’s either about to or already has carved someone in half... In a world where too often most art turns out to be exactly as shallow as first glance suggests, it’s nice to discover that something like Prince Valiant is capable of surprising, and even enthralling, the modern reader." - Chris Mautner, Robot 6

• Interview: The wheres and whens are a little confusing, but I guess Indy Mogul's The Reel Good Show did or is doing a live video interview with Dash Shaw today... if it gets archived we'll link it

• Events: As part of his current residency at Dartmouth College, Jules Feiffer gave a lecture Wednesday; The Dartmouth's Fan Zhang has the report (via The Daily Cartoonist). A highlight: "I was doing what so many comic book artists at the time were doing — I was stealing. You learn by stealing, you learn by swiping and, God willing, you emerge into your own style." Zhang also reports that Feiffer will participate in a panel discussion with fellow cartoonists Edward Koren, Edward Sorel and Jeff Danziger on politics in cartooning on August 12

Daily OCD: 7/15/09

mike

A brief yet interesting installment of Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Profile: "I loved comic books and, if you read enough of them, they’d give you a sort of caffeine high." - Jules Feiffer, in a lengthy conversation with NYC Graphic's Christopher Irving

• Profile: Norway.com puts together the scoop on native son Jason and Low Moon

• Things to see: Dylan Horrocks presents his story from Dirty Stories Vol. 2 online for your reading enjoyment (NSFW)

• Things to read: A great essay by Tim Kreider for The New York Times "Happy Days" blog

• Staff: New vispoems and essay from our own Nico Vassilakis

Harry Nilsson's "Popeye" Demos

Eric

Not comics, but kind of fun. Harry Nilsson's demos for Robert Altman and Jules Feiffer's POPEYE movie, over at Bedazzled.

Daily OCD: 6/22/09

mike

Let's see what Online Commentary & Diversions are out there:

• Review: "[Michael Kupperman's] work is sublime in the truest sense of the word, speaking to me as a reader in ways that can be discussed and broken down but not quite fully communicated in their Rightness... About the only other humorists who have affected me in the same way were the Marx Brothers... Kupperman saturates each page [of Tales Designed to Thrizzle Vol. 1] with crazed ideas, bizarre connections, and references that aren't really references. Even a reader who may not be familiar with what Kupperman's (often obliquely) mocking is still pulled full-tilt into the gag. No matter what the concept, once Kupperman's laid his hands on it, it's no longer recognizable as anything but his." - Rob Clough

• Review: "...[T]he deadpan expressions of the characters [in I Killed Adolf Hitler] say more than pages of words could say... there’s a kinda sweet little love story in there about the protagonist and his girlfriend, and what they find out about themselves and each other in the process of trying to correct history." - Thinking About...

• Review: Tom Spurgeon at The Comics Reporter looks at Peter Bagge's science-history strips for Discover magazine

• Plug: "Low Moon: New Jason!... I think these are mostly shorts... I'll read the hell out of them. I love Jason." - Matthew J. Brady

• Events: The Los Angeles Times reports from Jules Feiffer and Elliott Gould's recent appearance at Cinefamily

• Profile: "...The Brinkley Girls [was] a sophisticated series capturing the modern American working girl with a combination of glamour, spunk, feminine allure and curly hair..." - "I Want to Be a Brinkley Girl," First Person Singular

• Things to see: It's the latest strip for Vice by Johnny Ryan. Looks like he's doing their infamous "DOs & DON'Ts" for the new issue, too... look out!

Feiffer & Gould tribute in L.A. Sunday!

Eric

Sunday, June 21, 8PM

An event featuring Jules Feiffer, Elliott Gould, and Little Murders!

Family presents: A Tribute To Jules Feiffer (feat. Little Murders)
Cinefamily hosts another "Family Sunday", where our good friends at Family Bookstore will bring in one of their favorite people to curate and introduce a night of films. This time around, Family brings us Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist/author Jules Feiffer (who in turn is bringing Elliott Gould!), whose pieces appeared in the Village Voice for over 40 years, and whose film adaptation of his stage collaboration with Elliott Gould resulted in one of the funniest, most vicious social satires of the '70s. A bitter black comedy caked in post-'68 disillusionment, Little Murders is an off-the-wall cocktail of fairy-tale, farce, paranoia thriller and comedy of errors. As Alfred Chamberlain, a shut-in photographer so resentful of his own success that he's turned to taking photos of feces, Gould personifies the deep ambivalence of the era, delivering a performance both poignant and irreverent. Alfred improbably falls in love with Patsy, a waspy Manhattanite whose unwavering determination to happiness in a crumbling society gives Alfred a reason to believe - at least, until random acts of terror shatter their dreams. Hilarity does eventually ensue, thanks in part to some unforgettable appearances by Alan Arkin (who also directed the film) as a hysterical detective, and Donald Sutherland as a hippie priest officiating what is easily the greatest wedding sequence in cinema.

Feiffer will also be screening excerpts from his little-seen 1985 TV movie Grown-Ups, starring Charles Grodin, and will sign books following the screenings.

Daily OCD: 6/17/09

mike

Still catching up with Online Commentary & Diversions. There's more, but I'm out of time, so more catch-up tomorrow!

• Review: "The backbone of the family, and also its Achilles heel, Luba is a larger-than-life personality who jumps off every page, whether she's the focus of the segment or just a background player. [Gilbert] Hernandez collects over 100 stories here, ranging from graphic novellas to single-page episodes, with his usual dizzying cocktail of sexual intrigue, humor and soap opera-style angst." - Publishers Weekly (Starred Review - near end of page)

• Review: "[You'll Never Know Book 1] becomes a meditation on how the 'art' of our lives, its story, is found all around us, if we but pay attention... [R]ecommended... [and] illuminating." - Mark London Williams, The SF Site: Nexus Graphica

• Review: "There are two excellent interviews in the back of [Blazing Combat]... The interviews are part of what makes the comic so fascinating. Of course, it wouldn’t matter if the stories weren’t good, and they are... [Archie] Goodwin does a fine job keeping each story fresh and even getting into the heads of the characters... It’s a testament to Goodwin’s ability that he manages to write 28 (generally) anti-war stories, but never feels like he’s simply repeating himself... The art helps the book shine, as well... There’s not a poorly-illustrated story in the entire book, and some are eerily beautiful... These are both excellent comics and fascinating historical documents, and Blazing Combat is totally worth a read." - Greg Burgas, Comic Book Resources

• Review: "...[T]here’s an undercurrent in this anthology [Boody: The Bizarre Comics of Boody Rogers] that points to something curious and bizarre that’s worth the same sort of glance as a fake freak in a smarmy sideshow." - the johnandjanaverse

• Profile: Publishers Weekly talks to Trina Robbins about editing our "luscious" collection The Brinkley Girls: The Best of Nell Brinkley's Cartoons from 1913-1940. Sample quote: "It's just fascinating to me that you can open your dictionary and go to G and find Gibson Girls but you can't find Brinkley Girls under B."

• Profile: I don't think I would have guessed that Joost Swarte was influenced by Ed "Big Daddy" Roth, but so says he: The Walrus spotlights Swarte, who provides a cover illustration for the current issue, and whose long-gestating Fantagraphics collection Modern Swarte is still in the works

• Interview: Zak Sally professes a longstanding crush on Maggie & Hopey in a Q&A with Minnesota Reads

• Interview: At Newsarama, Zack Smith enjoys a lengthy chat with Jules Feiffer (and breaks the news to him that Explainers is nominated for an Eisner Award... oops, sorry Jules)

• List: Moolies posts his/her (?) "Top 10 graphic novels," including Safe Area Gorazde by Joe Sacco ("It's truly appalling reading, and the reason is because he's such a great artist, and a great listener too"), Peter Bagge's Buddy Bradley saga ("There's so much painful and embarrassing truth in Bagge's work, and it's carried along by a sharp, wisecracking sense of humour"), and Love and Rockets ("A stunning, extraordinary, even feminist (or humanist) body of work... It's always a joy, and I'm so glad they're still writing these stories")

• Plug: "We should all learn about Nell Brinkley in college. So if you’re currently in college, go check out The Brinkley Girls already. And if you’re out of college already, well go check it out anyway, because everyone seriously needs to see this book—Brinkley was that good." - J. Caleb Mozzocco, Newsarama

• Plug: "As fans of art and cool things in general we are thankful to a friend who sent us the following link to: The Brinkley Girls: The Best of Nell Brinkley's Cartoons from 1913-1940, edited by Trina Robbins... Nell was an amazing illustrator." - The GIV Family Blog

• Plug: Joakim Gunnarsson raves about the "fantastic" black & white edition of Prince Valiant Vol. 1, with photos

• Plug: Comic Book Junkie takes note of our video previews on YouTube (which are also visible, alongside extensive photo previews, in our Flickr stream)

• Plug: Annika in London recommends Leah Hayes's "beautiful book" Funeral of the Heart for the second time

• Plug: 999 spotlights Jason's Low Moon and, according to the Google translation from Spanish, calls us "blithe kids"

• Things to see: Airforce Amazons illustrates a blog post of topical world events with a two-page spread from Joe Sacco's Safe Area Gorazde

• Things to see: Friedman (Drew) does Ferrell (Will) for the NY Observer

Feiffer at Cinefamily in L.A. 6/21

mike

Appearance by Jules Feiffer 6/21! Poster by Johnny Ryan! So much great comedy I weep explosively for not living in L.A.! Info/tickets here. (Via event co-sponsor The Sound of Young America.)

Daily links: 4/8/09

mike

• Plug: In an interview with Newsarama, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Junot Diaz says "I adore that Richard Sala miniseries Delphine that he's putting out through Fantagraphics" (new issue out this summer!)

• List/reviews: The Metabunker names and reviews their selections for the best comics of 2008, including Explainers by Jules Feiffer ("After half a century, Jules Feiffer’s classic Village Voice strips read at once as a succinct period portrait and an eloquent portrayal of everyday human affairs at any time... His nervous line captures well both the specific anxieties of the time, and the more general ones of simply being alive, with empathy and humour, while his unadorned, precise language captures with precision the way we continue to verbalise these problems to each other and ourselves, most of the time without making much sense. Revelatory and funny human white noise.") and Bottomless Belly Button by Dash Shaw ("...such a rare example of a young artist pulling out all the stops — as a young artist should — creating a vibrant cacophony of formal experiments and engrossing storytelling.")

• Review: Polish site Motyw Drogi looks at The Left Bank Gang by Jason — here's the rough Google translation, for what it's worth

• Preview: At Boing Boing, Cory Doctorow links to the ICv2 preview of The Wolverton Bible and says the artwork looks "appropriately groovy and sinister"

• Things to see: Along with our PR for the Humbug event at the Strand in NYC next week, Stephen Kroninger posts scans from his own personal Humbug collection which are well worth a look

2009 Eisner Nominees - On Sale!

mike

The nominees for the 2009 Eisner Awards have been announced and we are pleased to report that our publications have received 7 nominations in various categories. To celebrate, for a limited time we're offering 15% off nominated titles -- click here to browse and buy! And the nominees are:

Best Short Story
• "Glenn Ganges in 'Pulverize,'" by Kevin Huizenga, in Ganges #2

Best Humor Publication
• Petey & Pussy by John Kerschbaum

Best Archival Collection/Project—Strips
• Explainers by Jules Feiffer
• Willie & Joe: The WWII Years by Bill Mauldin

Best U.S. Edition of International Material
• The Last Musketeer by Jason

Best Comics-Related Periodical/Journalism
• The Comics Journal, edited by Gary Groth, Michael Dean, and Kristy Valenti

Best Publication Design
• Willie & Joe: The WWII Years, designed by Jacob Covey