Monday's Strip by Stephen DeStefano has come to a hopefully temporary end, at least until we can coax some new strips out of Stephen. Here's this week's Weissman, plus links to other strips from around the web:
• Review: "...The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec Vol. 1 is finally seeing a U.S. release, and it’s long overdue. [...] The stories are romping adventures that would appeal to a young-adult crowd, but have plenty of edge and playfulness for grown readers; they function both as an evocation and sly satire of classic adventure stories like Tintin. The clever stories, with hidden meaning always skirting around their simplicity, are perfectly complemented by Tardi’s art; readers familiar with one of the greatest names in French comics will need no introduction, but newcomers will be blown away by his mixture of clean lines and rough edges, and his absolute mastery of mood as he delivers some of the finest illustrations of Paris ever crafted. [Grade] A" – The A.V. Club
• Review: "Little Maakies on the Prairie is... glorious filth rendered in high style, with frequent nods to E.C. Segar and George Herriman. It’s beautiful, it’s disgusting, it boasts a sentient goiter running amok, and it features a handsome landscape layout courtesy of Chip Kidd. Ultimately, it occupies some hinterland between hyper-repetitive and constantly surprising — not bad for a cartoon that began life scrawled on a barroom napkin. [Grade] A-" – The A.V. Club
• Review: "If Michael Weldon’s Psychotronic Guide To Film (and its follow-up) still sits on your shelf being of use, or at least making you smile, then Carlson and Connolly’s Destroy All Movies is the book for you. If these words mean nothing to you, then listen up: A world of film and a way of looking at them is about to open up that will change everything for you. [...] What it all adds up to is a wonderful, personal bizarre alterna-history of cinema. [...] This is a great book that will live with you for a long, long time." – John Mitchell, North Adams Transcript
• Interview: At Interview, Hunter Stephenson writes of Destroy All Movies!!!, "Like an algorithm zapped across a smoggy landscape of wastoid cinema and blown-out amps — from the sleaze of 42nd Street to Malcom McLaren's London — no suspect VHS or DVD was left unturned in the hunt for liberty spikes, rebellious acts, and agape mouths of paled normies. ...[E]ach film is allotted a paragraph to several pages for reviews, supplemental interviews, and analysis that range from wittily divisive (Todd Phillips's Hated) to impassioned reconsideration (Valley Girl), all written in a fluid, knowledgeable manner and laid out in the clean and smart design expected of Fantagraphics, the book's publisher," and talks to editors Bryan Connolly & Zack Carlson, who says "Penelope Spheeris's Suburbia... is actually my favorite film of all time, and it inspired the entire book on the deepest levels. Spheeris wanted to tell a story about believable kids and a horrible struggle, so she cast real kids to play those parts. It's almost entirely non-actors, and that movie is the wildest for me. Punk or not, it's the best movie I ever saw."
• Plug:Maximum Rocknroll plugs the Destroy All Movies!!! tour: "If you live near SF or LA and love punxploitation movies like I do, you’re in for a treat this weekend. Brush your long hair into a mohawk, get some sushi and don’t pay, then head to the movie theater for some bad dialog and pointless violence…"
• Review: "The inescapable ripples of long-ago events over which the characters we love had no control, and the ripples their own shitty actions send out, ensnaring others: That’s what hit me so hard about Three Daughters. Luba, Fritz, and Petra can have all the wacky sex adventures they can stand — they’re still paying for someone else’s sins in a way that can just clear the decks of their lives at a moment’s notice." – Sean T. Collins, Attentiondeficitdisorderly
This week's comic shop shipment is slated to include the following new titles. Read on to see what comics-blog commentators are saying about our releases this week, and contact your local shop to confirm availability.
384-page black & white 5.75" x 8.25" hardcover • $29.99 ISBN: 978-1-60699-405-4
"...[A] second thick (384-page) hardcover compilation of Linda Medley’s well-regarded folkloric/fairy story exploration, now as pertinent a bridge between ’90s comic book self-publishing and current YA comics interest as its former publishing cousin Bone. I presume this includes all of the Fantagraphics-published Vol. II material thus far, totaling 15 issues... [Yes. – Ed.]" – Joe McCulloch, Comics Comics
"You know how some comics seem to be collective community efforts, in that they traffic in styles and ideas that are on the minds and coming out of the fingertips of the art form's chattering class? Linda Medley's quiet, humane fantasy is the opposite of that, a creation wholly her own." – Tom Spurgeon, The Comics Reporter
"...[M]y book of this week [is] Castle Waiting Volume 2. The first Castle Waiting book was one of my Best of 2006, and I anticipate similarly great things from the followup. Linda Medley puts out a wonderfully fresh and modern take on fantasy conventions, including the title castle with its exotic and magical inhabitants." – Johanna Draper Carlson, Comics Worth Reading
"The other highlight of the week has to be the second collection of Linda Medley’s Castle Waiting. The publisher describes the comics as 'witty and sublimely drawn fantasy [that] eases into a relaxed comedy of manners,' which is perfectly true. It’s really a treat of a series, one that I bought in pamphlet form and will buy in its collected state, which almost never happens." – David Welsh, The Manga Curmudgeon
"If I had $30… I’d give it all to Fantagraphics in exchange for the second volume of Castle Waiting, the long-awaited continuation of Linda Medley’s story. I’ll confess I haven’t read the first volume yet—maybe that should be my splurge—but my librarian friends strongly recommend it, and their description of an updated fairy tale with a modern sensibility makes me want to give it a try." – Brigid Alverson, Robot 6
"I believe this concludes the parts of this very sweet, very good-natured, apparently open-ended fantasy series that writer/artist Linda Medley has serialized thus far. As with the otherwise entirely different A Hard Day's Night, I started enjoying the series much more when I realized that nothing much was actually going to happen at any point." – Douglas Wolk, Comics Alliance
"FACT: I can't stand fantasy. Except for this. This is the real deal. Likable characters, exotic setting that doesn't spend hours wanking the reader for being a nerd that knows their Dungeons and Dragons, and a real story about people." – "Lydia Park," The Rack
120-page black & white 12" x 5" hardcover • $19.99 ISBN: 978-1-60699-392-7
"This is neither French nor a comics version of an old children’s book, and yet it seems so of a kind! Maybe it’s the 'Little,' or Tony Millionaire’s affinity for vintage cartooning and illustration, or perhaps Maakies simply goes with everything." – Joe McCulloch, Comics Comics (see below for context)
"I think Tony Millionaire may be in that slightly-taken-for-granted phase of his career right now, and that's not fair. Sometimes it is, just not with Tony. I can't imagine not owning all of these, even if the rest of my collection is barbarian comics." – Tom Spurgeon, The Comics Reporter
"The newest collection of Tony Millionaire’s comic strip. It’s two years worth of drunk comics." – Benn Ray (Atomic Books), Largehearted Boy
48-page full-color 8.5" x 11.25" hardcover • $16.99 ISBN: 978-1-60699-403-0
"...[O]ne of the highlights of this week’s releases: Fantagraphics’ The Littlest Pirate King, an English edition of the 2009 album Roi Rose by the redoubtable David B., himself working from a Pierre Mac Orlan prose story (from 1921, I believe). It ‘s a lovely presentation..." – Joe McCulloch, Comics Comics (it's a full review, do go give it a read)
"David B., one of comics' mightiest visual talents, with an adaptation of an all-ages tale full of dream logic and creepy things. How could you walk by and not at the very least hold it in your hands for a time?" – Tom Spurgeon, The Comics Reporter
"I’m a sucker for anything French artist David B does, so I’ll be sure to snatch and grab a copy of The Littlest Pirate King, his latest entry on American shores, an all-ages titles about a young boy who leads a group of undead pirates." – Chris Mautner, Robot 6
"I’m very tempted by the new volume of Batman: The Brave and the Bold and Castle Waiting, but they’re both trumped by David B and his ghost pirates in The Littlest Pirate King. Still, since I’m splurging, let’s just get all three." – Michael May, Robot 6
"A children's graphic novel — well, older children, anyway — by the great French cartoonist David B., based on a short story by Pierre Mac Orlan about a child commanding a ship of undead pirates. All the best things in one place, basically." – Douglas Wolk, Comics Alliance
272-page black & white/duotone 6.5" x 8.75" hardcover • $24.99 ISBN: 978-1-60699-414-6
"Being another of the week’s Fanta hardcover collections, an omnibus edition of the publisher’s first three translated books by Jason. Hey, Wait… almost certainly requires no introduction... Sshhhh! took the form of wordless seriocomic vignettes relating to one of Jason’s silent clown-type wanderer characters, while The Iron Wagon spun around for a dialogue-heavy adaptation of a formative Scandinavian mystery novel… oh wow, maybe that should be on the cover these days." – Joe McCulloch, Comics Comics
"The comics here are pretty great, although I greatly prefer the individual books to these omnibus collections. They're first class and everything, but I think those individual Jason book are about as perfect as they come production-wise. Still: Jason, and the comics that put him on the North American alt-comics map." – Tom Spurgeon, The Comics Reporter (Please note that, even if you agree with Tom, several of the original books are out of print.)
"Fantagraphics collects another trio of Jason stories in the trilogy format they’ve been re-releasing some of his work in. This $25, 270-page hardcover includes Hey, Wait, Sshhhh! and the long out-of-print The Iron Wagon." – J. Caleb Mozzocco, Newsarama
"Reprints of three of the Norwegian cartoonist Jason's early books: 'Hey, Wait...,' 'Sshhhh!' and 'The Iron Wagon.' The first of those is particularly terrific, and maybe the first instance of Jason's habit of creating books that midway through abruptly turn into very different sorts of stories." – Douglas Wolk, Comics Alliance
Collecting 2 years of strips 2007-2009. More booze-soaked buffoonery, lyrical passages, violence, sentimentality, and poop jokes with Drinky Crow & Uncle Gabby. Lowbrow yuks and elegant cartooning from comics' true drunken master.
"Tony Millionaire’s Maakies does not appear on the comics pages of daily newspapers, but lurks darkly instead in our nation’s alternative weeklies...
"Uncle Gabby, a monkey, and Drinky Crow, an alcoholic crow, are characters of pure, ginned-up id, engaging in high jinks that range from the boobish to the bizarre: making 'booze cream' from the milk of drunken cows in one panel, going to prison to have time to read Swinburne in the next. The humor is often so lowbrow as to be subterranean. If Gasoline Alley is preoccupied with life's slow unfolding, Maakies is fascinated by its swift, violent ends. It is difficult to count the times Gabby or Crow have been mutilated, shot in the head, eaten, burned in hell.
"And yet Millionaire, raised by an art-teacher by the sea, can draw the living spit out of a ship or a giant squid. It is just as likely that Maakies will feature one character vomiting into another’s mouth as it will a wordless, befuddling, beautiful parade of intricately rendered church spires and tall buildings. It sways this way between the very low and the very high; the only applicable adverb here is drunkenly, for as the name might suggest, there is a lot of boozing in Drinky Crow's life. This may offend (or may be the least of the offenses), but I would bet if you counted Crow's tipples against the number of highballs the Lockhorns had consumed, it'd come out even. And in his surrealist impulse and draftsman’s brio, Millionaire is the closest thing we have to George Herriman of Krazy Kat."
— John Hodgman, The New York Times
Bonus Savings: To celebrate the release of this newest volume, for a limited time, all available previous Maakies volumes are 20% off! Complete your collection!
Our weekly strips from the Steves, plus links to other strips from around the web (apologies for tardiness — things got a little ahead of us last week as they sometimes do):
In addition to our weekly strips from the Steves, we'll now be bringing you links to other strips from around the web which previously appeared in our "Things to See" posts. Why? I dunno, it just kind of seemed to make sense.
This post has been in progress for nearly a month now... with so much to catch up on, I'll just be highlighting a few selected items and then giving you links to the regularly-updated stuff. As always, click for better viewing and possible commentary at the sources.
• Jason reveals the cover art for the French edition of Isle of 100,000 Graves (L'Île aux 100 000 Morts); plus early strips, illustrations, outtakes and film reviews at his Cats Without Dogs blog
• A new war-story page by Tim Lane, with interesting background info; plus recent installments of his ongoing Belligerent Piano strip at his Jackie Noname blog
• At Gabrielle Bell's Lucky blog, the concluding installments of her "San Diego Comic-Con Comicumentary" (which Anthony Vukojevich interprets at Repaneled) and some "embarrassing older work"
More fan tattoos are coming out of the woodwork! Above, Drinky Crow in the clutches of an cephalopod by Ximena Quiroz of Portland's Skeleton Key Tattoo (who also does a pretty good Woodstock) on the leg of one Aaron Lauer (thanks to Janice for the link). Below, James Henry Dufresne's Little Enid, shared with us on our Facebook page.
120-page black & white 12" x 5" hardcover • $19.99 ISBN: 978-1-60699-392-7
Ships in: November 2010 (subject to change) — Pre-Order Now
Collecting 2 years of strips 2007-2009. More booze-soaked buffoonery, lyrical passages, violence, sentimentality, and poop jokes with Drinky Crow & Uncle Gabby. Lowbrow yuks and elegant cartooning from comics' true drunken master.
"Tony Millionaire’s Maakies does not appear on the comics pages of daily newspapers, but lurks darkly instead in our nation’s alternative weeklies...
"Uncle Gabby, a monkey, and Drinky Crow, an alcoholic crow, are characters of pure, ginned-up id, engaging in high jinks that range from the boobish to the bizarre: making 'booze cream' from the milk of drunken cows in one panel, going to prison to have time to read Swinburne in the next. The humor is often so lowbrow as to be subterranean. If Gasoline Alley is preoccupied with life's slow unfolding, Maakies is fascinated by its swift, violent ends. It is difficult to count the times Gabby or Crow have been mutilated, shot in the head, eaten, burned in hell.
"And yet Millionaire, raised by an art-teacher by the sea, can draw the living spit out of a ship or a giant squid. It is just as likely that Maakies will feature one character vomiting into another’s mouth as it will a wordless, befuddling, beautiful parade of intricately rendered church spires and tall buildings. It sways this way between the very low and the very high; the only applicable adverb here is drunkenly, for as the name might suggest, there is a lot of boozing in Drinky Crow's life. This may offend (or may be the least of the offenses), but I would bet if you counted Crow's tipples against the number of highballs the Lockhorns had consumed, it'd come out even. And in his surrealist impulse and draftsman’s brio, Millionaire is the closest thing we have to George Herriman of Krazy Kat."
— John Hodgman, The New York Times
Download an EXCLUSIVE 12-page PDF excerpt (<1 MB).
Bonus Savings: To celebrate the release of this newest volume, for a limited time, all available previous Maakies volumes are 20% off! Complete your collection!
Periodic clips & strips — click for improved/additional viewing and possible artist commentary at the sources:
• Jason presents two cover illustrations: one for a biography of Henrik Ibsen, the other for a 1989 issue of a Norwegian fanzine (oh yeah, and the cover for his next Fanta collection What I Did is in there too)
"Greetings, stranger of the future. If you are reading this, it means the written word has survived, that the world of tomorrow still exists, and that for some reason my ramblings are still considered worth reading. My name is Mark Twain, and I write these words to you in the good old days of August 2010."
• Richard Sala presents a whole bunch of production, concept, and storyboard art from his animated serial "Invisible Hands" from MTV's Liquid Television, in 4 installments (so far) hereherehere and here, with commentary
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