FLOG! Entries tagged 'Patrick Rosenkranz'

Stumptown Photos

TheJenVaughn

Holy comicsolly! Here's photos from the Stumptown Comics Fest in Portland, OR. Dash Shaw was in attendance with New School, which flew off the table. WHY THE WAIT on pictures? We forgot our own con rules. To remain human you must 5-2-1-I: At least 5 hours of sleep, 2 meals a day, 1 shower and Ibuprofen at night. Four hours of sleep one night wrecked this gal and boy, did she pay for it.

Lots of our Fantastaff came to the show since it was so close! Me, Designer Emory Liu, PR Director Jacq Cohen, Dash and Office Manager Steph Rivers.

Table service: Dash Shaw signs the fore pages of Bottomless Belly Button.

Patrick Rosenkranz held some long, lovely conversations with fans of comics history and his book Rebel Visions. Patrick also led a Spain Rodriguez tribute panel, if you can ever take a class by him bring a recorder!

Dash talks to fans, cartoonists and the awesome Ming Doyle (who is both).

Obligatory "WE LOVE THESE BOOKS" shot, I'm holdin' Julio's Day by Gilbert Hernandez, Jacq is rockin' Ulli Lust's Today is the Last Day of the Rest of Your Life.

Talking comics and Fantagraphics with Julia Gfrörer (Black is the Color coming out in September), Patrick Rosenkranz and Dash.

Jacq sells Love and Rockets.

This cutie was all about the Carl Barks' Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge books.

Portland is awesome because there are cartoonists everywhere. And by everywhere I mean at bars or restaurants. We ran in to Greg Means, Alec Longstreth and Claire Sanders at the Red Flag on the way to the Top Shelf party.

Having the warehouse van proved useful driving home slightly drinky cartoonists. James Kochalka, Rachel Foss and Dash Shaw hold court in the back.

ACCESSORIES. We saw quite a bit. Ed Luce rocked some additional tags.

Dash signed the Stumptown sketch poster HIS WAY.

Patrick Yurick had the best NEW comics-related tattoo. It even has the Wattersonesque dropped panel borders for that comic beat.

Speaking of PANELS: Dash tickled the audience with this animation and comic panel. He's got comedic timing DOWN.

Here I am looking goofy alongside some of the smarter people in comics on a submissions panel: Allison Baker of MonkeyBrain Comics, Jamie S. Rich (talking about old Oni days), Bob Schreck and Sina Grace of Image and Skybound. Panel photo by Glenn Peters.

Our Kristy Valenti, Patrick Rosenkranz and Tom Spurgeon gave a beautiful Spain Rodriguez tribute panel. Photo by someone who still rocks a flash.

Book Appreciation! James Kochalka is a Jim Woodring fan!

Karl Stevens ooohhs and aaaahhs over Dash Shaw's New School.

Dark Horse's Brendan Wright caught Bark-handed!

INTERN POWER. We had several interns tabling with their own comics. Low-res intern Kevin Uehlein and Ben Horak on the edges of a beautiful comics table, Beth Hetland and Pat Barrett in the middle. Ben's shy so all you get is his sideburns.

Intern Nomi Kane and her comic spread. The Back of Ben Horak.

Dead dog after dinner at Hungry Tiger Too with Dash Shaw, Bayard Baudoin, Tom Neely, Zack Soto, Benjamin Marra and his lovely lady.

Tom Kaczynski gets goofy when others aren't watching.

Thanks for coming out! Olan Mills family photo by Joshin Yamada with me, Dash, Jacq and Tom Kaczynski of Beta Testing the Apocalypse.

Fantagraphics at Stumptown Comics Fest 2013 in Portland!

janice

Join us this weekend for the 10th Annual Stumptown Comics Fest at the Oregon Convention Center this Saturday, April 27th and Sunday, April 28th!

We're thrilled to announce that we'll be joined by special guests Dash Shaw, in town all the way from New York, and Portland's own Patrick Rosenkranz!

Speaking of Dash, we're also excited to present the debut of his latest books, along with a few other exciting debuts! Such as...

• 3 New Stories by Dash Shaw

• New School by Dash Shaw

• Castle Waiting Vol. 2: Definitive Edition by Linda Medley

• Julio's Day by Gilbert Hernandez

• Today Is the Last Day of the Rest of Your Life by Ulli Lust

• Walt Disney's Donald Duck: The Old Castle's Secret (The Complete Carl Barks Disney Library Vol. 6) by Carl Barks

• 50 Girls 50 and Other Stories (The EC Comics Library) illustrated by Al Williamson et al.; written by Al Feldstein et al.

• 'Tain't the Meat... It's the Humanity! and Other Stories (The EC Comics Library) illustrated by Jack Davis; written by Al Feldstein

Our artists will be partaking in programming throughout the weekend, so check out their panels!

Saturday, April 27th

12:00-12:45 pm // Meathaus Reunion: Becky Cloonan, Brandon Graham, Farel Dalrymple and Dash Shaw: A reflective spotlight on Meathaus luminaries, Becky Cloonan, Brandon Graham, Farel Dalrymple and Dash Shaw whose work has appeared in various Meathaus anthologies since 2002. These artists have each maintained their own strong modern stylistic identity receiving both critical and commercial acclaim. Marc Arsenault (Alternative Comics) will introduce the panel with a look at the SVA art groups and graduates that led to the creation of the Meathaus comics collective. (Room B114)

1:00-1:45 pm // Angels and Demons: The Mythology of S. Clay Wilson: Mythology may be the key to understanding the work of highly influential underground cartoonist S. Clay Wilson, from the self-mythology that Wilson invented and polished over the years as a dashing and dangerous figure, to his personal inner landscape where his archetypal characters dwell when they arena gracing the pages of Zap Comix, Thrilling Murder, or Insect Fear, to the body of language and lore passed down from his hillbilly ancestors. With Patrick Rosenkranz. (Room B117)

2:00-2:45 pm // Two-Faced Artist Lives Double Life in Single Body!: The joys and perils of straddling the worlds of fine art and comics with cartoonists Jon McNaught, Julia Gfrörer, and Daniel Duford, moderated by Chloe Eudaly. Join us for a conversation with our panel of artists, each of whom are experienced in the realms of fine art and comics. We'll explore how they came to work in two seemingly disparate mediums, how their work in each converges with, diverges from, and influences the other, and the the sometimes arbitrary or artificial distinction between the two. (Room B117)

5:00-5:45 pm // Dylan Williams Tribute Panel: Share some time with the friends and colleagues of comics' best friend as we all recount our favorite stories about the late Sparkplug publisher's life and celebrate his philosophy and work as an artist, scholar and publisher. Time permitting, we will also attempt to make sense of his passion for unsettling any and everyone who dared point a camera at him at festivals like this one. Panelists include: T Edward Bak, Julia Gfrörer, Tim Goodyear, David Lasky, Tom Neely; moderated by Milo George. (Room B114)

Sunday, April 28th

1:00-1:45 pm // Submissions Do's and Don'ts: Jen Vaughn (Fantagraphics), Jamie Rich (formerly Oni Press), Bob Schreck (Legendary Comics), Allison Baker (Monkeybrains Comics), and Sina Grace (Image/Skybound) will share their experiences slogging through the submissions pile, everything from finding a diamond in the rough to bartering with the mailman to stop delivering submissions. Your questions? Answered! Your comics published? We'll see. (Room B114)

2:00-2:45 pm // Dash Shaw's New School: Dash Shaw is a cartoonist and animator whose graphic novel New School debuts at Stumptown from Fantagraphics Books. In this spotlight presentation, he will screen and discuss his animations, including his Sigur Ros video and Sundance short Seraph, and show slides of the process behind creating New School as well as some of his other comics. Moderated by Fantagraphics' Jen Vaughn. (Room B111)

4:00-4:45 pm // DIY Publishing: For many micropublishers, making good books is easy; it's the marketing and the selling that's hard. Panelists Tom Kaczynski (Uncivilized Books), Zack Soto (Study Group), Chloe Eudaly (Reading Frenzy), Jason Leivian (Floating World Comics), Keenan Keller (Drippy Bone), and moderator Milo George will look at different printing processes and their costs and compare notes on production/distribution issues including pricing and sustainability. (Room B111)

5:00-5:45 pm // Spain Tribute Panel: Spain Rodriguez, legendary underground cartoonist, tore his way into hearts of readers like the beloved motorcycles that grace the pages of his comics. Patrick Rosenkranz, Jen Vaughn, Eric Reynolds, and Charles Brownstein take you though the wild days of Spain's work from his groundbreaking ZAP anthology contributions to adapting the life of Che Guevara. Get acquainted with this revolutionary cartoonist and his award-winning work. (Room B117)

So, stop by the Fantagraphics Booth this weekend at Stumptown, Booth Q1 right down the aisle when you first walk in!

The Oregon Convention Center is located at 777 NE ML King Blvd, several blocks away from the Lloyd Center Shopping Mall, and conveniently located next to a Portland Tri-Met MAX Line stop for accessibility.

Daily OCD: 4/26/12

mike

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Profile: Esteemed underground comix historian Patrick Rosenkranz at The Comics Journal: "Spain Rodriguez acknowledges that age hasn’t necessarily brought wisdom, but it does help him appreciate his youthful adventures more, especially the unique experience of growing up in Buffalo, New York in the 1950s, which he portrays in his latest book, Cruisin' with the Hound.... This new volume from Fantagraphics Books tells more about his childhood, the guys and girls in his neighborhood, early encounters with sex, religion, and science fiction, and the birth of rock and roll." Sample quote from Spain: "Each moment is unique. That’s the thing about comics. If affords you the potential to be able to capture that moment, probably more than anything else. It has certain objective and subjective potentiality. It’s something that nobody else can do. Each person is unique, each person sees things in their individual way and comics give you that opportunity."

• Review: "A book with 400 pages of Alex Toth comics is a dream come true. Toth is one of the early greats of comics. Many of the golden age and early silver age comic artists made drawings that were charmingly crude, but there were a few supergeniuses among them. Alex Toth's art is obviously a cut above a lot of his peers. His understanding of how to use areas of black is unequaled. Cartoonists like Frank Miller and Charles Burns, who really like to use as much black as possible, owe a lot to Toth as a guy who really broke new ground in blacking it up. If you want to learn something about shading and composition you go get this book [Setting the Standard] and just black out." – Nick Gazin, VICE

• Review: "I still like looking at Ditko's stuff and think his work is valid. He's not a great drawer but he is clearly full of intense feelings and a lot of rage. Although his actual rendering skills aren't as strong as someone like Toth his ideas, feelings, and visual concepts are strong. This book [Mysterious Traveler] collects various sci-fi and horror comics he drew that are all pretty fun to look at and have neat visual ideas littered throughout." – Nick Gazin, VICE

• Review: "[Glitz-2-Go] deals with feeling unattractive and dressing kinda like a drag queen and being dissatisfied with relationships. The Didi Glitz comics were produced at a time when doing art about the hidden perversions of the 50s was big. Pee Wee Herman, Blue Velvet, John Waters, a lot of stuff Devo did — it all fits in with this book." – Nick Gazin, VICE

• Interview: At PSFK, an excerpt of Rob Walker talking about Significant Objects in Need to Know Magazine: "People value and are attracted to stories, and this often plays out in the world of objects. What we tried to do is take that observation in a different direction. Instead of a traditional story ‘about an object’ (where it was made, why it’s so great, how it will make your life better), we wanted creative writers to invent stories inspired by objects, which can lead to all kinds of unpredictable results. And in this case, the results turned out to be strong enough that the stories stood on their own."

• Commentary: A Fletcher Hanks creation tops Pip Ury's list of "6 Great Old-Timey Comics for (Traumatizing) Kids" at Cracked: "Fantomah, Mystery Woman of the Jungle is often credited as the first comic book superheroine, debuting in early 1940 and predating Wonder Woman by almost two years. Whoever decided she counted as one, however, has an extremely loose definition of what superheroing entails -- for starters, as far as we know superheroes aren't meant to be mind-numbingly terrifying."

Daily OCD: 8/4/11

mike

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• List: The Hooded Utilitarian, nearing the top of their results in their International Best Comics Poll, reveals George Herriman's Krazy Kat at #2, with a brief essay by Jeet Heer

• Review: "...The Comics Journal #301... is crammed with fantastic content. The volume's texture, heft, and text make it the readers' equivalent of a dense slab of chocolate cake.... In short, Gary Groth and his editorial team have produced a stellar contribution to comics history and scholarship. It is a feast for comics aficionados and neophytes alike. " – Casey Burchby, SF Weekly

• Plug: The Forbidden Planet International blog shares our latest update on Walt Disney's Donald Duck: Lost in the Andes with its readers, and then bums them out with news of the book's unavailability in the UK

• Plug: "I second Tom Spurgeon’s recommendation of Bill Mauldin’s Willie and Joe Back Home. I was amazed by how brutally frank the comics are, and how affecting. I actually prefer it to his WWII work — it’s even more impassioned, and the cartooning loosens enough to show off a really expressive, cutting line." – Dan Nadel, The Comics Journal

• Plug: "Alex Chun has a new volume available from Fantagraphics Books in his series which profiles the 'few dollars a drawing' gag writers who sold work to the Humorama line of digest publications during the 1950s and into the early 1970s. As I have been writing on the lesser known artists who contributed, with the scant information available...I eagerly await the book!" – Jim Linderman, Dull Tool Dim Bulb

• Interview (Audio): Patrick Rosenkranz discusses Vancouver-based underground comix artist Rand Holmes with Vancouver-based Inkstuds host Robin McConnell in advance of the Holmes exhibit and presentation this Saturday at Vancouver comic shop Lucky's. Vancouver!

• Analysis: At Entrecomics, Alberto Garcia examines the Steve Ditko influence/homages in some of Gilbert Hernandez's early work — even if you don't read Spanish, the images will have you going "ah-haaaa..."

• Lore: Kim Deitch's "Mad About Music: My Life in Records" column returns over at TCJ.com, with more on Elvis Presley and the early days of rock 'n' roll

Rand Holmes Retrospective This Saturday

janice

Vancouver residents are surely "lucky," because this weekend, Lucky's Comics presents a Rand Holmes Retrospective featuring original artwork by Rand Holmes, curated by Martha Holmes and Patrick Rosenkranz, author of The Artist Himself: A Rand Holmes Retrospective.

Author Patrick Rosenkranz will be in attendance, and will be giving a presentation on one of Canada’s most revolutionary artists! Don't miss it!

The event kicks off at 7:00 PM. Lucky's is located at 3972 Main Street in beautiful Vancouver, BC, Canada.

Shakin' Up Stumptown 2011

janice

... And by that, I mean, I had three Burgerville Northwest Cherry Chocolate Milkshakes in the two days we were in Portland, Oregon for the 8th Annual Stumptown Comics Fest. They even put espresso shots in my milkshakes. God bless Burgerville.

The calm before the Stumptown storm!

So, WOW! Thank you so much to everyone who came by our booth at Stumptown this year! Mike and I had a blast! Hate Annual #9 flew off the racks, with Jason's latest Isle of 100,000 Graves also selling out quickly.

We were thrilled to be joined by editor Patrick Rosenkranz. While we weren't able to make his panel on the underground comix movement, we could tell from the fans attending his signing that it must've went great! One fellow came by with a huge stack of Zap Comix in hand, including a rare copy of the first printing of #1!

Speaking of successful panels, T. Edward Bak had several of his attendees dropping by the booth, grabbing fistfuls of Momes! Here he is, showing some of his original artwork. Mike pointed out that you can always tell which issues of Mome T. Edward is in by looking for the black pages on the fore edge! (And yes, we had to consult Google to figure out what the sides of a book are called.)

Mome contributor Jeffrey Brown was signing with our booth neighbors Top Shelf, and leaned over for a chat with T Edward. Note: this happened on the next day from the other picture posted above; it's not like T Edward brought two sets of clothes. He's not Lady Gaga.

[Speaking of Jeffrey, here's one of my favorite overheard quotes of the weekend -- girl, on cellphone: "Hello? Mom, I gotta call you back. I'm standing in front of Jeffrey Brown."]

[My second favorite overheard quote of Stumptown comes from our own Customer Service Representative Ian Burns, who was trying to unload his leftovers from lunch: "It is really hard to give away meat in Portland."]

Speaking of Mome, we're always delighted to have the multi-talented Andrice Arp join us. Not only was she signing copies of Mome (including Volume 15, which features her cover art), but she also brought mini-paintings and a totally awesome flip-book she designed, inspired by the A-ha video for "Take On Me." Yeah, that's right.

And finally, editor Jacques Boyreau joined us, engaging customers with his collection Portable Grindhouse. Jacques is always great to talk movies with, and a former French film critic even stopped by to discuss cult classics! And who's that to the left in the pic above? Why it's Monster Parade artist Ben Catmull!

Ben had his own table this year at Stumptown, featuring his award-winning 2001 comic Paper Theater, and some freakin' insane letterpress prints, both of which you can acquire straight from the gentleman himself.

The biggest buzz of the weekend was over the move from the old location (The Lloyd Center) to the much-larger Oregon Convention Center. And yes, while I missed the windows and nearby park of The Lloyd Center, I've really only got one word: Burgerville.

You can check out lots more pics from our Stumptown adventures on the Fantagraphics Flickr page here. And the fun don't stop, as Mike and I are now gearing up for TCAF! Hope to see you there!

Announcing Our Stumptown 2011 Schedule!

janice

Join us this weekend for the 8th Annual Stumptown Comics Fest in Portland, Oregon! It's their first year at the Oregon Convention Center, and we'll be there Saturday, April 16th and Sunday, April 17th, with some of our amazing artists and editors, and both new books and favorite titles. Marketing maestro Mike Baehr and I are looking forward to seeing everyone!

Get your hands on early copies of these Fantagraphics titles:

• Love From the Shadows by Gilbert Hernandez
• 21: The Story of Roberto Clemente by Wilfred Santiago
• Hate Annual #9 by Peter Bagge
• Isle of 100,000 Graves by Jason

And we've got an exciting signing schedule in store for you, with a couple of our acclaimed Mome artists, and a couple of our incredible editors:

Saturday, April 16th
1:00-2:00 PM          Patrick Rosenkranz
2:00-3:00 PM          T. Edward Bak
4:00-5:00 PM        Jacques Boyreau
5:00-6:00 PM          Andrice Arp

Sunday, April 17th
2:00-3:00 PM          Patrick Rosenkranz
4:00-5:00 PM          T. Edward Bak
5:00-6:00 PM          Andrice Arp

You can also get your books signed by artists Ben Catmull and Jeffrey Brown, who will be signing at different tables at the show, and swing by the Profanity Hill table to say hi to Fantagraphics' own Jason T. Miles!

And in celebration of the latest issue of Hate Annual, we'll be doing some fun giveaways, thanks to our friends at AmericaWare, who've just debuted a collection of Peter Bagge t-shirts! Just come by the Fantagraphics table for your chance to win a shirt featuring the loveable Lisa! You know you wanna be BAD!

(And if you live in Seattle, you can check out t-shirts from Bagge, Woodring, Wolverton and Blanchard at the Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery!)

Where can you find us at Stumptown? Why, at booth #304!

And while at Stumptown, be sure to take in some panels featuring Fantagraphics artists and staff!

Saturday, April 16th

11:00-11:45 PM // Process in the Periphery: Natural History and Narrative Explorations in the Biography of Georg Wilhelm Steller: A presentation of artist T Edward Bak's current work-in-progress with an examination of challenges in illustrated historical exposition. (Room A104)

12:00-12:45 PM // Sex, Drugs & Insurrection: The Underground Comix Movement: During the underground comix era artistic freedom was a non-negotiable starting point. Audacity, iconoclasm, and experimentation became the new standards for success. Comics this raw and explicit had never seen print before. This presentation is not for the young or squeamish. Presented by Patrick Rosenkranz (Room A106)

2:00-2:45 PM // Comics as Journalism: Mike Rosen, editor of Oil and Water, moderates a discussion about using comics as a form of journalism, tackling stories in ways that traditional prose journalism doesn't. Join Shannon Wheeler, Sarah Glidden, Matt Bors, and Steve Duin. (Room A105)

3:00-3:45 PM // How To Publicize Your Comic: Fantagraphics Director of Publicity & Promotions, Jacq Cohen, goes over the step-by-step process of creating a publicity plan for a comic and gives pointers on how to promote yourself and your book. (Room A104)

3:00-4:45 PM // Teaching Comics: College-level comics courses are a fairly new phenomenon, but the schools offering them have already met with great success. Join educators Brian Michael Bendis (PSU), Patrick Rosenkranz (PNCA), Trevor Dodge (CCC/PNCA), and Nicole Georges (IPRC) in a panel hosted by Dark Horse executive editor Diana Schutz (PCC) as they share their experiences in the comics classroom and bring you up to date on courses now available nationwide. (Room A106)

Sunday, April 17th

2:00-2:45 PM // Douglas Wolk: Page One: We'll look at some great opening pages of comics, and discuss how they instantly establish a look and feel for what comes after them (including some Fantagraphics titles!). Hosted by critic Douglas Wolk. (Room A104)

6:00-10:00 PM // Stumptown Comics Fest Afterparty: See the Stumptown Cartoonist Show, featuring artwork by Andrice Arp and many, many other artists, at Pony Club Gallery (625 NW Everett Street #105).

We'll see you there!

Daily OCD: 4/6/11

mike

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "...The Arctic Marauder [is] a gorgeous, sprawling tale that — thanks to translator Kim Thompson's finely tuned ear for tone — boasts chewy Vernian narration... Call it ur-steampunk — one of the works that laid the groundwork for a genre that would, just a few years later, fill bookstore shelves with soot, goggles and gutta percha. [...] Tardi's arctic seascapes and undersea trenches are things to marvel over, as is his ability to evoke the eerie undulations of the Aurora borealis with just a few finely scratched lines. The Arctic Marauder is at once a loving homage and a smart satire; it's also, not for nothing, a rollicking adventure. Pick it up, and get rollicked." – Glen Weldon, NPR's Monkey See

• Plugs (Video): The Backroom video comics podcast features The Arctic Marauder by Jacques Tardi and 21: The Story of Roberto Clemente by Wilfred Santiago at the 30:00 mark

• Review: "Tardi is one of France's most famous creators, and Adele Blanc-Sec, the cynical author turned adventurer, is his most famous creation. [...] I am very happy to see that Fantagraphics has decided to republish the first two stories in a beautiful hardcover book, with another book to follow next year. [...] The adventures are by turns funny, weird, and surprising. They are reminiscent of Tintin, if Tintin was a cynical Frenchwoman instead of an idealistic boy." – John Anderson, The Beguiling

• Review: "...[T]he colorful (in many senses of the word) collection The Artist Himself... is a smorgasbord of senses working overtime, the coffee table book of the year for raunch-loving pop art fans and literary hedonists alike. [...] One of Canada’s best pop cult artists, Holmes lived far too hard and died way too young. I can’t imagine a better book being put together about him, though. The Portland-based [Patrick] Rosenkranz (whose earlier underground comics compilation Rebel Visions is a tidy and sweet sweep of the entire field) has written a beautiful biography of the 60s-born underground cartoonist..." – Chris Estey, The KEXP Blog

• Review: "You can tell by the cover [of R.I.P.: Best of 1985-2004] that it bodes pretty badly for all those involved, from have-a-go-heroes, souped up for the occasion Charles Atlas-stylee, to those covering their murderous tracks, now newly addicted to cleanliness. Indeed both virtue and godliness play their part here, though neither is rewarded. These very short stories are like ten-second episodes of Roald Dahl’s Tales of the Unexpected and really challenge you to think, but they’re so concise and precise that it makes that a joy rather than a chore. [...] The medium employed... is scratchboard: that blank-slate of black upon which you work in reverse, scratching out shivers of white with a needle, sharp compass or random sterilised murder weapon. It works enormously well for stories so penumbral, yet on occasions the panels break out as blindingly as the light which fills them." – Stephen L. Holland, Page 45

• Analysis: At Robot 6, Matt Seneca takes a close look at a 2-panel sequence from Prince Valiant Vol. 3: 1941-1942: "Foster’s composition is wonderfully harmonic: two chords, beautifully struck in a rich and assured ink line, that complement each other perfectly. Though the panels use different camera angles and depict different subjects at different distances from the action, they share a remarkable symmetry."

Daily OCD: 12/27/10

mike

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• List: Comic Book Resources begins counting down their Top 100 Comics of 2010. In the first batch:

#87: Prison Pit Book 2 by Johnny Ryan: "Absurd, crude, lewd, funny, entertaining, twelve kinds of wrong, one of the most effed-up books I've ever read. It's burned into my brain and I can't get it out. And I love it." – Chad Nevett

#99: A Drunken Dream and Other Stories by Moto Hagio: "I'd never heard of Moto Hagio until Fantagraphics published this best-of collection of her stories, and it's easy to see why Hagio is one of the queens of shojo manga in Japan. The short story 'Iguana Girl' (about a girl who grows up with her mother treating her like she is an iguana) is strong enough to make you feel like you've gotten your money's worth, but the remaining nine stories are also all excellent to boot." – Greg McElhatton

• List: Dave Ferraro of Comics-and-More ranks Moto Hagio's A Drunken Dream and Other Stories at #6 on his 10 Best Manga of 2010: "Moto Hagio's artwork is stunning. Her storytelling is fluid, her characters expressive, and her drawings in general are beautifully arranged and look effortless. Each and every one of the ten stories in this 'best of' collection of short stories... are enchanting, full of warmth and wonderful characters, and brimming with emotion. [...] A very necessary project, done right."

• Review: "Uptight #4 is an example of that increasingly-rare animal: a satisfying alt-comic book. [...] It speaks to Crane’s versatility that he can pull off a slice-of-life relationship story and a fable in the same comic book." – Rob Clough, The Comics Journal

• Review: "...[J]ust about the sweetest graphic novel imaginable... it's a lovely, positive collection, with fine drawing and characters that are well worth spending some time with. ...[T]his is a story about people and how they live together and support each other. That kind of story is so vanishingly rare in comics that it should be treasured when we do find it — particularly when it's as lovely and engaging as Castle Waiting." – Andrew Wheeler, The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.

• Review: "Deitch's mad brew of semi-psychedelic farce and skewed reality takes the actual (and factual) short-lived tenure of an obscure 1950s-era kiddie-show host as source material and extrapolates a fantastical set of circumstances with humans, demons, not-so-funny animals and other characters — including Deitch himself. Reading this book [The Search for Smilin' Ed] is a wild ride; Deitch's prodigious storytelling talents and graphic craftsmanship keep things moving — and compelling." – Richard Pachter, The Miami Herald

• Plugs: At Comics Comics, Jeet Heer singles out The Artist Himself: A Rand Holmes Retrospective and The Search for Smilin' Ed by Kim Deitch as two recent books deserving of more attention from critics and readers, calling the latter book "a delight not just because it gives us one of Deitch’s most deranged meandering tall tales but also because the whole handsome package was designed to highlight the cohesiveness of Deitch’s world-making project, the way his fictional universe and its large cast make up a single unfolding story."

• Interview (Audio): Anders Nilsen is the guest on the new episode of The Comix Claptrap podcast

• Profile: New York magazine catches up with R. Kikuo Johnson in a new follow-up on a 2005 "ones to watch"-type article

• Feature: At Robot 6, Chris Mautner takes you to "Comics College" with recommendations of how to approach the work of Charles M. Schulz (like which volumes of The Complete Peanuts to start with)

• Opinion: At TIME.com – Techland, Douglas Wolk's "What I'm Grateful For in Comics, 2010" includes "Lots of long-gone creators have been returning to the new-comics trenches, and many of them are as limber and powerful as ever. [...] I... wouldn't have imagined that Joyce Farmer would be doing the best work of her career in 2010, but Special Exits knocked me flat," and "The fact that Jason puts out a book every nine months or so and has a substantical, enthusiastic readership makes me proud of the entire economic structure that makes that possible."

• Coming Attractions: More Douglas Wolk at TIME.com – Techland, this time listing "What We're Looking Forward To in 2011," including Love from the Shadows by Gilbert Hernandez ("the most twisted, perverse book he's ever created, which is saying something. It's lurid, hypersexual, violent, incredibly disturbing, and totally fun") and The Armed Garden and Other Stories by David B. ("gorgeous work, and unlike anything else in contemporary comics")

Daily OCD: 12/8/10

mike

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• KEXP's Chris Estey names 3 of our books among the Most Rocking Comix 2010:

"King of the Flies: 2. The Origin of the World... is the second volume in a three-book series on the creepy doings of a Twin Peaks-like small city seriously doped and boozed, thrashed by random violence and impulsive sexuality, the old deforming the desires of the young, and unfulfilled ghosts melt through everyday lives. [...] It is a multi-leveled, wide expanse of delicate things falling apart and souls keeping it together somehow, full of... sexy, damaged, freaky people. That you somehow care deeply for, even if they can’t help but hurt themselves, stalk each other, and screw with the universe itself."

"Illustrative Ibogaine, Woodring’s own cartoon-streamlined use of false world-obliviating imagery makes God’s invention of time seem like a quaint abstraction. [Weathercraft] is as necessary as Genesis by Robert Crumb, the Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators, Philip K. Dick’s UBIK, The Art of War by Sun Tzu, and 2001: A Space Odyssey."

"A fantastical study in a Civil War, this exquisite graphic novel [Artichoke Tales] shows how wide-spread political conflict tears at the very fibers of our families and ourselves, the loops of antagonism between loyalties cursing generation after generation. Like the very best indie pop/rock (Bright Eyes, the National), its mastery is in seeming transcendent but revealing immense pain beneath every battle and rejection."

• Review: "It isn’t often that a reference book succeeds at being as entertaining as it is informative, but Destroy All Movies juggles both with masterful ease. The lengths they’ve gone to in order to identify any and all reference to punks or punk rock culture in film is staggering and makes the book the end-all-be-all of its esoteric subject matter. Even if you feel at arms length with the source material, I can assure you there is no shortage of insight and laughter to be gleaned from this glorious time capsule of sociological film knowledge." – Brian Salisbury, Hollywood.com

• Review: "By the time the narrative concludes (sadly in some respects, asking the big questions – ‘why do people leave?’ – thereby combining the lightness and comedy we’ve come to expect with that gradually darkening thoughtfulness that has been apparent even from the days of Sssshh! and Hey, Wait...) all you want to do is flick back to the start and start over again. So you do. [...] All told, Werewolves of Montpellier is easily as good as everything else Jason has produced. [...] You should check out Werewolves of Montpellier. In fact you should hastily work your way through Jason’s back catalogue... Consider it medicine for your soul." – Peter Wild, Bookmunch

• Review: "The suite of stories Gilbert Hernandez contributed to the relaunched, graphic-novel-format Love and Rockets: New Stories might be his most complex work yet. [...] It was only in reading Beto’s stories in all three volumes that the Chinese puzzle-box intricacy of what he’s doing here revealed itself to me. [...] All told, you could wrap these stories up between two covers and come up with a book of absolutely crushing intelligence, emotional heft, and visual power — a book among the best of Gilbert’s career." – Sean T. Collins, Attentiondeficitdisorderly

• Plug: "Seattle-based, world-slobbered, excellent comics and dazzling-arts publisher Fantagraphics is really going all out for their 4th Anniversary Party this Saturday, December 11, 2010. It will be thrown at their awesome store in Georgetown, and promises 'the season’s most festive party featuring amazing music, comix, art, and more!'" – Chris Estey, Three Imaginary Girls

• Plug: "The cartoonist and illustrator Rand Holmes, who died at Lasqueti Island eight years ago, created hippie hero Harold Hedd, one of the more memorable fictional characters of the 1960s. Among the cognoscenti, Mr. Holmes is a peer of R. (Mr. Natural) Crumb and Gilbert (Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers) Shelton. A 328-page retrospective [The Artist Himself] was released this summer by Fantagraphics Books." – Tom Hawthorn, The Globe and Mail

Daily OCD: 10/19/10

mike

Online Commentary & Diversions returns after a post-APE hiatus and subsequent sick day:

• Review: "Good Jaime Hernandez comics are always just about the most satisfying books that money can buy, and I was so impressed with how the pleasure of seeing contemporary Maggie again for the first time in far too long [in Love and Rockets: New Stories #3] gave way to the satisfaction of seeing another building block in her curious history, and then everything turned unpleasant in a way that was equally bleak and fascinating. Watching Jaime fit everything together the way he does is breathtaking. Recommended for adult readers." – Grant Goggans, The Hipster Dad's Bookshelf

• Review: It's still "Love and Rocktober" at Sean T. Collins's Attentiondeficitdisorderly: "If Ghost of Hoppers was Maggie's confrontation with adulthood, The Education of Hopey Glass serves up the equivalent for Hopey and Ray. It's fascinating to me to see where their lives have taken them versus where they were — and more importantly, what they represented to Maggie — when they were first juxtaposed. [...] What makes these two stories compelling and connects them to one another beyond the basic idea of the characters coming to terms with their age is how much the stories rely on the kinds of things only an artist of Jaime's caliber can pull off for their telling."

• Review: "Man’s oldest gynophobic horrors and most simplistic delight in sheer physical dominance are savagely delineated in this primitive, appalling, cathartic and blackly funny campaign of cartoon horror. Resplendent, triumphant juvenilia is adroitly shoved beyond all ethical limits into the darkest depths of absurdist comedy. Not for children, the faint-hearted or weak-stomached, [Prison Pit Book 2] is another non-stop rollercoaster of extreme violence, profanity and cartoon shock and awe at its most visceral and compelling. ...[T]his book is all-out over the top and flat out hilarious. Buy and see if you’re broad-minded, fundamentally honest and purely in need of ultra-adult silliness." – Win Wiacek, Now Read This!

• Plug: "...Johnny Ryan’s Prison Pit Book 2... is the funniest shit I’ve read in years." – Sean Witzke, Robot 6

• Review: "Bitter, haunting stories [by Zak Sally] like 'The Man Who Killed Wally Wood' and 'The War Back Home' show a striking willingness to ask uncomfortable questions about himself and the world around him. His account of Dostoyevsky’s time in prison is a real highlight and I think marks a turning point in his storytelling ability. And the fearless, self-lacerating essay he provides at the end brings the book to a near-perfect close. Really, [Like a Dog] is a tight little collection." – Chris Mautner, Robot 6

• Review: "There’s fourteen stories in all in this anthology, beautifully scanned, restored, and reproduced in all their four-color glory. [...] There’s a lot of fun to be had in these pages. [...] Boody properly showcases a sizeable enough collection of complete comics stories by the wildman inkslinger from Texas, finally elevating Rogers into the pantheon he’s always been part of — if only enough folks had been able to access his work. At last, they can!" – Steve Bissette, The Schulz Library Blog

• Review: "The publication of Rebel Visions was a vital riposte to [a] tide of apathy, a vast and authoritative work built for the clear purpose of documenting the entire history of the US underground revolution in a definitive fashion: a not inconsiderable task given the various tributaries that have spewed forth since the early 1960s. [...] Rosenkranz diligently weaves a number of divergent themes using the oral histories of most of the major participants." – Kevin McCaighy, Exquisite Things (via ¡Journalista!)

• Interview: Kat Engh of Geek Girl on the Street chatted with Megan Kelso at APE over the weekend: "I like writing and movies and music and art forms that are about more than one thing. I’m really fascinated by that, and I think that comics really lend themselves to that kind of layering and layers in conflict, because you’ve literally got two tracks of information with pictures and words, and because they’re so separate from each other, they lend themselves to doing different things at the same time. I’ve always thought that if a comic’s not doing more than one thing, it’s not taking advantage of what is, so yeah, I’d say I actively strive for that."

• Interview: At Comic Book Resources, Chris Mautner talks to Fire & Water author Blake Bell at length about Bill Everett — "I think Everett is as unique a stylist as Ditko is. When you see Everett's work, you automatically know who it is if you have any inkling about any of the Silver or Golden Age artists. Secondly, in his own way he's as influential as Ditko. Without question, Everett created the antihero in superhero comics back in 1939 when he introduced the Sub-Mariner. There was no other comic book character like him." — and upcoming volumes of The Steve Ditko Archives.

• Interview: It's the second part of Brian Heater's conversation with Drew Weing at The Daily Cross Hatch: "It’s such a weird time where so much stuff is available online, though I went out of my way to make the book a nice little object. And I feel like it does read better in book form, because it’s a format that you can more lovingly pore over the detail."

• Interview: At Gapers Block, Rose Lannin talks to Jeremy Tinder, who makes his Fantagraphics debut in Mome Vol. 20. This quote is relevant to the Mome story: "I grew up reading newspaper strips, like Garfield. I think it was around age 5 when I really started getting into Garfield and tracing it out of the paper every day. [...] Garfield was my focus in life for six years, I was so into it."

• Coming Attractions: Bleeding Cool's Rich Johnston reports here that "...[I]t seems that Fantagraphics, as part of their current attemp to to translate every French comic book in existence, has seized upon [David B.'s] book, Le Jardin armé et autres histoires or The Armed Garden and are to publish it in August next year," and here about our translation of Tardi & Manchette's Like a Sniper Lining Up His Shot, "...planned for August next year. Which, in terms of European-to-American translation is light speed."

Daily OCD: 9/27/10

mike

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "This mammoth collection [What Is All This?] presents five decades of Dixon: sex, frustration, and attempts at deeper communication, mostly missed. The 62 stories evoke neuroses, delusion, banality, and everyday absurdities in deceptively simple sentences... There are echoes of Ernest Hemingway and prefigurings of Raymond Carver's lower-middle-class minimalism infusing tales of scrappers and scrapers... Usually sublime, sometimes sloppy, and occasionally bewildering, these stories are a testament to an impressive career spent too much under the radar." – Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) [Temporary link]

• Review: "With its mix of sci-fi, romance, tragedy and comedy, A Drunken Dream is a memorable manga journey that shouldn't be missed or dismissed. [...] Drawing from deeply-felt personal experiences, Hagio draws stories for every person who has felt like an outsider, who has regretted past actions that can never be erased, or who has longed to be accepted for being who they are, not what people want them to be. These ideas sound so simple — but when touched by Hagio's pen, this is punch-in-the-gut powerful. [...] ★★★★1/2" – Deb Aoki, About.com: Manga

• Review: "While they may not be standard children’s books, they are fun and entertaining and full of stuff kids would like, without being obscene or intended for mature audiences. They are the kind of books you would want your kid reading if your kid wasn’t a total dork. [...] You get the feeling of reading old fairy tales, where the Prince wasn’t always charming, the villains would erect down right disturbing and evil plots against the characters and the story, or just the world in general was presented as a harsh reminder of reality. [...] Tony [Millionaire]... really lets his imagination run with his latest book, Billy Hazelnuts and the Crazy Bird. [...] With or without children, you can feel good about reading this book." – Brian Jones, Flash Flood Media

• Review: "Artichoke Tales is by any definition a remarkable book — the first graphic novel by Megan Kelso, who has so far worked largely in the short story form, and a book that displays at every page Kelso’s unique voice as a graphic storyteller and the care and attention she lavished on this project over the past several years. [...] This is a beautiful book, at times a heartbreaking book. One feels the precision and thought behind every word, every line, all of it edited down and arranged to a spareness that is paradoxically lush and textured." – Jared Gardner, Guttergeek

• Coming Attractions: "Why aren’t there more sports comics? More to the point why aren’t there more absolutely wonderful looking sports comics like Fantagraphics 2011 release 21: The Story of Roberto Clemente by Wilfred Santiago?" – Richard Cowdry, The Forbidden Planet International Blog Log

• Plug: "[Rip M.D.] seems to be a comic more geared to a juvenile public, but should be pretty cool because there are a lot of monsters, really violent werewolves, zombies, and best of all, vampires that do not sparkle!" – Submundo Mamão (translated from Portuguese)

• Interview: Guttersnipe's Shawn Conner talks to Patrick Rosenkranz about his new book The Artist Himself: A Rand Holmes Retrospective: "One thing’s for sure with Rand; there are a lot of good cartoonists who are not very interesting people. But he was both, an interesting person and a great cartoonist. That’s what interested me in the story."

• Profile: "Some artists seem to have had greatness as their destination as surely as if a tracking device had been implanted in their genes. Some veer toward it capriciously like a demon had seized the wheel. They start with a talent — to which they feed — in bites and gulps — their times; and, once expressed, the result is… YOWL! One of these was the underground cartoonist Greg Irons, the subject of Patrick Rosenkranz’s overlooked — and fascinating — retrospective You Call This Art?!!" – Bob Levin, The Comics Journal

• Event: On his blog, Blake Bell reports from his Fire & Water book launch & presentation with Wendy Everett in Toronto on Saturday

Daily OCD: 9/24/10

mike

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "We are witness to a man's life unfolding, unraveling, before us in a series of postcards that leave nothing — or is it everything? — to the imagination. I don't know Drew Weing, or whether he's lucky or good, but in Set to Sea , he has reminded me once again just how much story you can share in a brief flurry of comic panels, so long as you know how to trim the sails and catch the wind." – Steve Duin, The Oregonian

• Review: "...Set to Sea... is so much more than a hauntingly inspiring story about a poet who ends up on a sea vessel. It is so much more than page after page of highly-detailed illustrations. It feels like a small precious art book full of engravings or paintings on each page or an old illustrated maritime novel. [...] Weing’s art is mesmerizing. You could stare at one page for hours. Each page is carefully planned and crafted to maximize its storytelling ability and it is easy to see the love and effort that went into each line and crosshatch." – Shawn Daughhetee, The HeroesOnline Blog

• Review: "The pages [of Set to Sea] are incredibly expressive, able to convey longing, panic, rage, camaraderie, mourning, and ultimately peace. Weing manipulates whole compositions to achieve these effects, not merely the expressions on characters’ faces." – Joshua Malbin

• Review: "Drew [Weing] uses the possibilities of the medium to perfection [in Set to Sea], telling the life story of the guy page by page, somehow pulling the impression of a richly lived life through scattered moments." – Kevin Bramer, Optical Sloth

• Review: "Imagine Sad Sack stepping out of his cartoon world and into ours — warts and all — and that’s what Lucky in Love almost feels like. [...] The real star of the show here is artist DeStefano, who mixes up this 1940s world as one-part humor strip outrageousness, and one-part gorgeous Will Eisner-style dramatic noir — a real visual tour de force." – John Seven, Worcester Magazine

• Review: "Revealed in these pages [of A Drunken Dream and Other Stories] are gentle but dark stories that are preoccupied with the loss and alienation that their intended audiences no doubt feel, often without any tangible reasons beyond the purely psychological. Several stories stand out for cherry pickers, but you’ll be rewarded by each entry." – John Mitchell, North Adams Transcript

• Review: At The Hooded Utilitarian, Noah Berlatsky examines (and spoils) the first four stories in A Drunken Dream in his own inimitable fashion

• Review: "...The Artist Himself... present[s] a compellingly fresh... approach to the history of the medium... What makes The Artist Himself unique is in the title itself — Rosenkranz has constructed a sprawling portrait of Rand Holmes as a man in conflict with the 'the artist himself' — a man trying to carve out a way to live that allowed for art (never an easy feat) and an art that somehow made sense in his life. ...[A]side from the obvious benefits of learning about Holmes, I found myself selfishly drawing tremendous inspiration from Rosenkranz as he demonstrated the richness possible in writing the history of comics. He draws the curtain back as if to say, 'see, here’s someone you hardly think of, who lived an extraordinary life, and it’s a life that must be reckoned within the history.' It radically broadens what we think of as a cartoonist’s life, and in that Rosenkranz has given us a great gift." – Dan Nadel, Comics Comics

• Review: "If Love and Rockets: New Stories #3 only contained Gilbert Hernandez’s 36-page 'Scarlet By Starlight,' it would still be one of the most significant new comics of the year. [...Jaime's] 'The Love Bunglers' and 'Browntown' offer the kind of rich, intricate stories — packed with sharp observations about human desire and self-justification — that only an author with 30 years of experience with these characters could write. But readers don’t need to have read all the previous Maggie tales to follow them. Everything a newcomer needs to know is woven neatly into the stories themselves... There are acclaimed filmmakers and novelists who can’t do what Jaime Hernandez does — or Gilbert, for that matter. When the two of them are at their most inspired, as they are here, they make almost every other comics creator today look like a fumbling hack. [Grade] A" – The A.V. Club

• Review: "I won't pretend to have a clue as to what Beto's trying to do with this stuff; sometimes he seems to be paying tribute of sorts to junk cinema and/or comment on the current state of the movies, and sometimes it seems like he just wants to draw to naked dudes beating a cop to death with a rock. ...Jaime is note-perfect throughout, using every nuance and trick at his command to engage and move the reader. It's a masterwork, and I'll be damned if I can tell what he'll do for an encore. ...[T]his one brings the goods. If you care at all about this series and those characters, you'll want to get this [issue of Love and Rockets: New Stories]..." – Johnny Bacardi, Popdose

• Review: "...[T]his one is really damn good, with a typically surreal and horrifying story from Gilbert and an excellent bit of character work from Jaime. Isn't it awesome that stuff on this level is what we've come to expect? [...] Yes, it's another great issue of one of the best comics series of all time; what else is new? Jaime and Gilbert are rightfully revered as all-time great creators, but the fact that they are still pumping out incredible work and bettering themselves, sure to keep doing it for as long as possible, should make readers celebrate their wealth and fortune. Even if everybody else quit, we would still be pretty lucky. Long live Love and Rockets!" – Matthew J. Brady, Warren Peace Sings the Blues

• Review: "You open a Xaime story, you know what you’re gonna get. He’s a known quantity/quality on the richest level... With Xaime, you’re going to get a perfectly-told Locas story: clean... and humanistic and relatable, funny, sad, the whole package. Beto, on the other hand …. His shit is scary creative, and sometimes just scary. Gilbert is the higher mathematics, you know what I’m saying? Ever since 'Human Diastrophism' I haven’t felt safe in his company, haven’t trusted that crazy bastard. Because he will do some fucked-up shit when you least expect it. [...] So, boom, right on Jump Street of Love and Rockets: New Stories #3 there’s a Gilbert story. Deep breath. Okay. In we go with gun and flashlight." – Rob Gonsalves, Rob's Comics Zone

• Review: "The colors are garish, the stories grotesque, and the art much freakier than the norm. Where EC’s comics are more akin to the drive-in fodder of American International Pictures, the comics in Four Color Fear are the equivalent of a David F. Friedman grindhouse roughie: lurid, exploitative, and just plain wrong. In short, this book is awesome. Making it even more awesome is Sadowski’s annotation: ...the layer of scholarship is enough to make reading about decaying zombies and devil-worshippers seem almost ennobling. [Grade] A-" – The A.V. Club

• Review: "Caricature is a bit of a dying art, but there’s still a place for it, especially in a celebrity-obsessed culture like ours that goes out of its way to make its idols look even better than they already do. That’s why we need Drew Friedman, whose precise, pointillist style has been putting the rich and famous to the sword for decades. His new collection, Too Soon?: Famous/Infamous Faces 1995-2010, features another round of his inimitable caricatures, which manage to make everyone from venal creeps to well-meaning politicians look alternately hideous and noble. Friedman is still at the top of his game... [Grade] B+" – The A.V. Club

• Review: "One of the lesser-known lights of the Golden Age, illustrator Mort Meskin was a prolific workhorse whose angular, action-packed style and use of deep shadow effects would prove a huge influence on Steve Ditko. From Shadow to Light: The Life and Art of Mort Meskin, a new biography of Meskin compiling exhaustive interviews with his peers and extensive cooperation from his sons, doesn’t lack for material. It also has plenty of great anecdotes, and through quality reproductions, it skillfully makes its case that its subject was a very talented artist. [Grade] B-" – The A.V. Club

• Review: "The 1930 DeMoulin Bros. catalog, or Catalog No. 439: Burlesque Paraphernalia and Side Degree Specialties and Costumes, ...reached the jester of a more or less pronounced sadistic orientation, and offered them the tools and effects that made it possible to fool friends (?) to put their heart in their throat and give them pain here and there. Fantagraphics Books has recently reprinted the directory again (along with several essays that comment on product selection in a cultural perspective)... Although one might prefer to avoid being exposed to the tricks that comprise the DeMoulin catalog, I must admit that I laughed both three and five times when I looked through the offerings. Most of us probably have a little sadist in us, I guess." – Kjetil Johansen, Nekropolis – Den Historiske Bloggen (translated from Norwegian)

• Plugs: "Well, in our rambunctious endeavour to keep up with the literary radness of the Northwest, we... want to point you toward [Jim] Woodring’s newest graphic novel, Weathercraft, which is out now from Seattle-based publisher Fantagraphic Books. In addition to Weathercraft, we personally recommend their series Love and Rockets, from Los Bros Hernandez. If you’re looking for some reading that really is graphic, like super sexy female bodies comin at ya with homoerotic undertones that are never unleashed but still drive you crazy, you’ll want to pick up Love and Rockets. This series is an endlessly delicious ride through the relationships of men and women in crappy southern California neighborhoods." – Lori Huskey, Dark Sky Magazine

• List: Graphic Novel Reporter's "Fall Graphic Novels List: Essential Reading for the Season" includes The Complete Peanuts 1977-1978 by Charles M. Schulz, A Drunken Dream and Other Stories by Moto Hagio, Unlovable: The Complete Collecton by Esther Pearl Watson, Fire & Water: Bill Everett, the Sub-Mariner and the Birth of Marvel Comics by Blake Bell, From Shadow to Light: The Life & Art of Mort Meskin by Steven Brower, You'll Never Know, Book Two: Collateral Damage by C. Tyler, Love and Rockets: New Stories 3 by the Hernandez Bros., Prison Pit: Book 2 by Johnny Ryan, The Sanctuary by Nate Neal, Zippy: Ding Dong Daddy from Dingburg by Bill Griffith, The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec Vol. 1 by Jacques Tardi, Bent by Dave Cooper, Mome Vol. 20, Forlorn Funnies Vol. 1 by Paul Hornschemeier, and Unexplored Worlds: The Steve Ditko Archives, Vol. 2

• Profile: Robot 6 presents a "Comics College" introductory guide to the work of Kim Deitch, written by Deitch Universe expert Bill Kartalopoulos: "Kim Deitch is an enormously vital and prolific cartoonist who was also one of the charter members of the underground comix scene that changed comics in the 1960s and 70s. [...] More than forty years later, Deitch stands as one of the few underground cartoonists who has steadily and consistently produced a large body of important work, spanning every available format from the alternative weekly comic strip to the graphic novel."

• Interview: Al Jaffee touches briefly on his Humbug days in this extensive Q&A with Mother Jones's Michael Mechanic: "I loved Harvey [Kurtzman] and I miss him to this day. He was a very, very inspiring guy. He was inventive and inspiring and he also was just a scrupulous editor. He could catch things that most people would just say, 'Let it go through, it really doesn't matter; who's going to know?' But once Harvey pointed it out, I would change it even if it took me the whole day. Harvey knew how to make things work because he wasn't greedy, he wasn't successful." (Via ¡Journalista!)

PATRICK ROSENKRANZ AT PNCA

jmiles

Underground Comix Scholar, Patrick Rosenkranz will be teaching an 8 week History of Comics program at the Pacific Northwest College of Art. Rosenkranz's contribution to the medium of comics is monumental and his class is sure to bring it. There's a lot of comics noise down in Portland, so if you're reading this and live in The City of Roses then you need to start smelling the roses and listen up! If you happen to pay sales tax and pump yer own gas then I implore you to check out the brand new The Artist Himself: A Rand Holmes Retrospective as well as You Call This Art?! A Greg Irons Retrospective (only a couple of copies left!) and the indispensable Rebel Visions: The Underground Comix Revolution 1963-1975 .

Patrick Rosenkranz (L) & Peter Bagge (R)

Daily OCD: 8/31/10

mike

Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "It's hard not to get swept away your first time reading this book through. The gentle tug of the stories' allure that keeps you reading is hard to ignore so it's recommended you give in. Read it all the way through at your own pace. Once you're done, wait a few days or a couple weeks even, and then read it again. A Drunken Dream and Other Stories is a collection of subtleties as much as it is one of short stories. While the plots themselves are straight-forward enough (taking to mind how strange some can be), the emotional tone of each individual experience is where these stories truly pack a memorable punch. [...] Inside and out, Moto Hagio's A Drunken Dream and Other Stories is a mature collection of stories that aims to provoke thought and feeling and succeeds endearingly at just that. A piece of manga history that only becomes more engaging with each subsequent read, A Drunken Dream presents a great opportunity to experience the charms, both subtle and poignant, of Moto Hagio's craft." – Lissa Pattillo, Anime News Network

• Review: "While reading A Drunken Dream and Other Stories, it felt like I was not so much reading the stories as getting submerged in pure book, and rather than try to explain why that is, I just feel the need to force everyone I know to buy it while making vaguely incoherent happy cries. [...] It is a dazzling treat, and will mesmerize you. [...] If this doesn't win some awards it will be a travesty. Wholeheartedly recommended." – Sean Gaffney, A Case Suitable for Treatment

• Tweet of the Week: "Best story in Drunken Dream is the antisocial girl/puppy one, though it's missing the last page where Mr. A kicks the shit out of everybody." – Joe "@snubpollard" McCulloch

• Review: "...[T]his superb retrospective compilation and biography [The Artist Himself: A Rand Holmes Retrospective] featur[es] scads of sketches, reproductions of drawings, cartoons and the paintings he created in his later life..., preserved with a copious collection of his wickedly wonderful underground and alternative comic strips for fans and soon to be devotees. [...] Rand Holmes was a true artist in every sense of the world and mostly produced work intended to change society, not fill his pockets. This book is a wonderful tribute and one any grown-up art lover will marvel at and cherish." – Win Wiacek, Now Read This!

• Review: "As usual with Jason, these stories [in Low Moon ] are blackly funny, with characters whose core motivations are often unknown. [...] He's been a creator of great stories for many years, but there has always been something glancing and surface-y about his works before. Jason has always been deadpan, but he's showing, some of the time, unexpected depths in that pan." – Andrew Wheeler, The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.

• Review: "There are books that can be easily reviewed — they have straightforward plots that either make sense or don't, characters whose motives are explicable and definable, and settings that relate to places in the real world. And then there are the works of Jim Woodring, where nothing is explained, nothing is stable, and nothing is like anyone else's work. And it's absolutely goddamn genius. [...] There is no one like Jim Woodring, and comics are immeasurably strengthened by the fact that he's chosen this art-form to work in. [...] If you have any feeling in your soul, Weathercraft will confuse and mesmerize you." – Andrew Wheeler, The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.

• Plug: "At the age of seven (right on schedule!) Dylan has discovered Charles Schulz, and has polished off my entire collection of The Complete Peanuts hardcovers, from 1950 to 1976. As a result, by my math, he has read nearly 9,500 daily and Sunday strips. Most published before I was born, let alone before he was born." – Ken Jennings

• Plug (no pun intened): "Michael Kupperman is a funny guy, and pretty weird. His Tales Designed to Thrizzle carries on the madness... This one, however, rises to new heights with its appreciation of DRAINAGE!" – Lichanos, Journey to Perplexity

• Plug: "Drew Weing has finished his nautical adventure Set to Sea, bringing the story neatly back around in a circle. Told in a series of beautifully drawn single panels, Weing’s comic is the story of a sea-loving poet who gets shanghaied and learns the real thing is rougher and yet more beautiful than he had imagined. Fantagraphics has published a lovely print volume, and Weing is selling the original panels as well." – Brigid Alverson, Robot 6

• Interview: Our Italophone readers (or readers with the patience to work through a slightly jumbled autotranslation) will want to check out Comicsblog.it's interview with Set to Sea creator Drew Weing

• Coming Attractions: "It seems like it’s been forever since the gorgeous hardcover collection of the first set of Linda Medley's Castle Waiting stories. Fantagraphics will release 384 more pages of charming comics about the family-of-choice residents of a falling-down castle along the way." – David Welsh, The Manga Curmudgeon

• Analysis: Looking at the introduction of Helicopter Snoopy in The Complete Peanuts 1977-1978, Mike Sterling recalls when "I began to realize Peanuts was getting a little strange..."

Daily OCD: 8/25/10

mike

Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "What to say about Catalog 439? It's a crazy-arse thing, full of richly illustrated intricate drawings of smartly dressed men torturing each other with ridiculous devices. [...] What you get with this book then is not just a fascinating glimpse into a little known corner of American social history, but the template for many of the ad pages from the silver and bronze age comics that so many of us comic collectors love. I really enjoyed it and, although it isn't about comics, I would recommend it to anyone with an interest in the history of comic book advertising." – Dom Sutton, London Loves Comics

• Review: "At this point, I don’t know what else there is to say about Jamie Hernandez or Love and Rockets. I suspect that one day he’s going to make a truly terrible comic, if only because he must feel at least a little bit bad about showing nearly every other creator up so often. ...Penny Century is yet another masterpiece from a guy who turns them out seemingly like clockwork. If you haven’t read it, you need to. ...Jamie Hernandez’s exploration of life continues as an unimpeachable standard for comic book mastery." – Michael C. Lorah, Newsarama

• Review: "[Artichoke Tales] is far and away the best comic I've ever read from Megan Kelso, succeeding on almost every level. Her clear-line style gives an airy ease to her often detail-heavy drawings of nature and the people who inhabit it; similarly, her complex exercise in fantasy worldbuilding — and I don't mean detailed maps with funny names, I mean real worldbuilding, constructing cultural and religious and economic structures rooted in environment and history and exerting macro and micro influence across the lives of all the characters involved — is subsumed into an absorbing, briskly moving house-divided family soap opera. [...] I dug this book to a degree that surprised me and look forward to returning to it. It's a rich vein of alt-fantasy being tapped here." – Sean T. Collins, Attentiondeficitdisorderly

• Review: "Kelso's simple line and rounded forms belie the seriousness of the story. [...] Ultimately, Artichoke Tales is not so much a story about conflict as a story about the people reacting to the conflict, doing their best to live lives of integrity in a land of constant unrest. Although good intentions are often thwarted, it ends on a note of hope." – Brigid Alverson, Graphic Novel Reporter

• Plug: "I picked [A Drunken Dream and Other Stories] up at San Diego and it's one of those 'seminal' manga works that actually lives up to its hype. If you like Tatsumi, this is a good bet." Lydia Park, Ask Yavin IV (Funny, we don't remember seeing her at San Diego... That's a joke because she's a cartoon character.)

• Plug: "This is amazing news — one of my favourite cartoonists finally receives his due. I was starting to think that he had slipped through the cracks of cartoon history. ...[Rand Holmes] was a fantastic draftsman, surprisingly old-school, and his meticulous inking something that I could only ever hope to dream to aspire to." – Rod Filbrandt

• Plug: "...[T]he second volume of [Johnny Ryan's] battle epic Prison Pit... is amazing, nasty, and Lovecraftian." – Ryan Sands, Same Hat!

• Interview: "Newsarama: Billy Hazlenuts is like a children’s fable gone wrong, reminiscent in way of the old, dark Grimm Brothers tales with a modern, high-octane approach. Is that what you’re going for? Tony Millionaire: Take a closer look at those Grimm's Fairy tales, or even better, Hans Christian Anderson, and you'll tell me my stories are chocolate milk sopped on toast compared to that stuff."

• Roundtable: The participants in The Comics Journal's roundtable on The Best American Comics Criticism file their first response posts: Here’s Caroline Small, Ng Suat Tong and Jeet Heer

• Commentary: Robot 6's "Quote of the Day" comes from our very own Gary Groth

Daily OCD: 8/24/10

mike

Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "Early reviews of The Artist Himself: A Rand Holmes Retrospective are heralding it as a much-deserved tribute to a forgotten genius... Around these parts, Holmes, who passed away in 2002, has been a revered figure for decades. [...] Through excerpts from the artist’s own journals and interviews with those who knew him, Patrick Rosenkranz presents his subject as a man of contradictions, both prodigiously gifted and painfully insecure. [...] Holmes’s art was always marked by sharp visual wit and a sometimes astonishing attention to detail. He was indeed a genius, and thanks to Fantagraphics, he won’t be a forgotten one." – John Lucas, The Georgia Straight

• Review: "...High Soft Lisp remains another Gilbert Hernandez winner. Frank and trippy, sexy and creepy, nobody working in comics creates worlds as deep or intriguing as Gilbert Hernandez’s." – Michael C. Lorah, Newsarama

• List: io9 names Johnny Ryan's Prison Pit: Book 2 as one of "30+ comics that we're craving this fall"

• Interview: At the KEXP blog, Chris Estey talks to Peter Bagge about his band Can You Imagine?: " The main reason I took up the guitar and abandoned the drums was so I could have more control over what type of music my band plays and how. Pop rock from the 60s is obviously my favorite kind of music, but I also loved punk and new wave from the late 70s, since those bands broke free from the self important and self indulgent style of music that was ruining rock. I also loved that the self deprecating humor they all exhibited (or that the best bands did, anyway)."

• Roundtable: The Comics Journal's Best American Comics Criticism roundtable continues, with contributions from Caroline Small, Brian Doherty and Jeet Heer

Win The Artist Himself & other prizes from Logo & Modern Tonic

mike

Enter to win a prize pack that includes The Artist Himself: A Rand Holmes Retrospective by Patrick Rosenkranz along with another book, 2 DVDs, and 6 CDs from the Logo cable network and pop-culture site Modern Tonic! Rules & entry form are here.

Daily OCD: 8/13/10

mike

Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "...[Rand Holmes] could tell a story, and he hit his stride with lengthy action-comedy epics like 'Wings Over Tijuana' and 'Hitler’s Cocaine,' which explored the shadier sides of drug culture in a style that veered from the shockingly real to the morbidly slapstick. Imagine a Jack Davis MAD magazine piece with heavier overtones; that was Holmes at his best, and that best is well-represented in The Artist Himself. [Grade] B+" – The A.V. Club

• Review: "Drew Weing’s breezy, lyrical graphic novel Set to Sea... tells a simple story about art and experience, delivered in one-step-follows-another fashion. Weing’s cartoony figures and detailed backgrounds — rendered with precise cross-hatching — suit his one-picture-per-page format well, making Set to Sea look like an animated film slowed down to a slideshow. ...Weing’s beautiful art and masterful pacing are so pleasurable that Set to Sea stands up to multiple reads. It’s a catchy little tune that sounds better with each spin. [Grade] A-" – The A.V. Club

• Review: "Fantagraphics has taken care to showcase Hagio’s work in as beautiful a package as possible. ... For the right reader, adult or teen, man or woman, these stories [in A Drunken Dream and Other Stories] can be windows into a world where finally they can see themselves, both their strengths and their flaws. That’s a powerful thing for a book to be able to do and it takes a masterful craftsman like Hagio to be able to do it." – Snow Wildsmith, Graphic Novel Reporter

• Review: "Temperance is a story of awakening and transformation — physical, emotional, and spiritual. A profoundly empathetic reflection upon the systemic societal problems of culturally ingrained violence and brainwashing, Temperance is profound, meaningful, and deserves to be read and reread at length." – Midwest Book Review/ComicList

• Plug: "The excellent graphic novel Special Exits is soon coming out from Fantagraphics. It is a labor of love of more than 10 years by the American comic artist extraordinaire Joyce Farmer. ... Of course another reason I am excited about the publication of Special Exits is because I’ve seen it grow and take shape throughout those years as Joyce Farmer has honored me with her friendship. Some of my students at the Ornerakis Cartoon School would also remember her as she was gracious enough to present her work to them. I am really looking forward to have the book in my hand and re-read it again and again as I think it is one of the best graphic novels ever created!" – Elias Tabakeas, Kailoipalogion

Preview The Artist Himself: A Rand Holmes Retrospective at Graphic Novel Reporter

mike

Get a 9-page sneak peek of Rand Holmes art and comics from The Artist Himself: A Rand Holmes Retrospective by Patrick Rosenkranz at Graphic Novel Reporter!