Van Jensen, who writes occasional comic articles for the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, spoke with Dean Haspiel, Mike Allred, Philip and Brian Phillipson, Chris Gumprich and Dennis Culver for a part article, part review piece on independent comics:

Another well-known creator who has resisted the urge to move full-on into mainstream titles is Mike Allred, creator of Madman. Like Haspiel, Allred also has worked for large publishers, but most of his focus has gone to very personal projects, such as his ongoing Madman series (Image, $ 2. 99 ). Of the various books he’s worked on, Allred says, “I love them all, but there’s no question that I flat enjoy Madman the most. It flows easy and is a crazy good time. It satisfies all my creative juices without any stress or fear or concern with how it will be received.” Madman tells the story of Frank Einstein, a former hit man who died and was reanimated with superpowers and burning questions about his past. It’s the only deeply existential book that features robots, aliens and beatniks as villains.

Allred also offers advice to aspiring creators, telling them to be their own worst critic, but to “never lose the desire to keep going.”

A few more random thoughts on APE, the people I met and some of the stuff I got while there …

–I had a nice conversation with Ryan Claytor, who has self-published And Then One Day, a series of autobiographical comics. Ryan’s a grad student down in San Diego studying autobiographies, and has managed to combine his comic love and studies.

In a month or so, Ryan will release And Then One Day #6 – The Autobiographical Documentary. He had the printer’s proof with him, and it looks pretty incredible. To create the book, he wrote questions about himself on flashcards, then chose people from his life — family, friends, ex-girlfriends, etc. He put them in a room with the flashcards and a tape recorder, told them to answer the questions, then left them alone. Then he took those interviews and turned them into a comic. Cool concept, and the final comic looks great.

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I think Pat Bussey’s story in Josh Howard Presents … Sasquatch is probably my personal favorite, as it combines humor and political commentary into the feel-good story of the year. Plus it’s just kind of weird, and in this case, weird is good.

Bussey’s the creator of The Horrible Pirates, a webcomic found on Viper’s website, which is also a lot of fun.

And now on with the show …

Garza: What was it like going from doing a regular strip to a stand-alone story like you did in Sasquatch?

Bussey: Since none of my writing makes a whole lot of sense, it’s not that different. In truth, the whole premise for this story was mapped out by Wes Molebash. I just took it and made it even more silly.

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College newspapers are just filled with comic book-related oddities today. In the Keene State College (New Hampshire) Equinox, writer Keith O’Neil, without caveats or criteria, offers up “the list of the top five comic stories of all time.”

Not his favorite comic stories; the top five comic stories of all time. “All time” apparently spans an entire decade, from 1985-86 to 1996. And “comic stories” apparently means “superhero stories.” From DC Comics.

O’Neil’s list runs the gamut from Batman: Year One and Superman: The Man of Steel to Crisis on Infinite Earths and The Dark Knight Returns. Kingdom Come gets the top spot.

Crisis on Infinite Earths and The Man of Steel? Really?

I don’t mean to slight the artists or, I guess, the works — both series loomed large in my formative comics-reading years — but those aren’t even (arguably) the best works by those creators. If I were itching to choose a Marv Wolfman-George Perez story, I’d pick “The Judas Contract” from New Teen Titans over Crisis, any day.

Curiously, though, Watchmen doesn’t make O’Neil’s cut. And I’m pretty sure it’s required by law to be on every best-of compilation.

So I’ll ask: What do you think are the “top five comic stories of all time”? You can even look outside of DC Comics and superheroes. I won’t hold you to 1985-86 to 1996, either.

The problem:  an Infinite Crisis ending so draining its principals have to take a year off to recover.

The response:  Publish next year’s comics immediately, and by the way, just to be complete, chronicle the “missing” year in a real-time weekly series.

The outcome:  No net bump in sales for the One Year Later titles, and 52 is DC’s one consistent success story from the past twelve months. 

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Tim Leong points to the international posters for Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. You can see all 10 at Marvel.com.

Pulp Secret has a webcam interview up with Nathan Fox, the artist for the recently released DMZ #18. Give it a look:

At Broken Frontier, Gail Simone talks about leaving Birds of Prey, and taking on Wonder Woman:

BF: The impulse of many new writers on Wonder Woman is to try and completely reinvent the character and series, a source of frustration to many fans. Why do you think this affects Diana more than the other members of DC’s “Trinity?”

GS: I think people bring their own baggage to Diana a little more than to the other two. Superman and Batman don’t particularly represent masculinity, but even to the non-comics-reading public, Wonder Woman is a massively powerful feminist symbol. And everyone defines that differently. My goal here is to tell the most powerful and eye-popping stories I can tell, and let the strength of Diana’s ACTIONS carry the message.

I love that Simone refers to Black Canary as the Fonzie of Birds of Prey: “That was always my thinking, and I think that’s why people responded to her. I treated her like an A-lister and the more we did that, the more others did as well.”

I never thought I was much of an action figure/toy collecting kind of guy. That is, until I started raising step-kids — who have since honored me and my Ms. with a grandchild (for her sake, I’ll refer to her for now as Baby Gojira).

The presence of my stepkids and Baby G in our lives (albeit these days from a distance) reminded me that being an adult and a trusted caregiver afforded me the pleasure and opportunity of walking in both worlds, often at the same time. Think “With great power comes great… you know what” and you’ll know what I mean…

Along those lines, I was really floored to see the variety of Spider-Man 3 toys jammed to the ceiling at my local department store — until they start advertising in this space, they’ll be referred to as The Red Bullseye — from web shooters, to rocket cars, chairs, masks, backpacks, skates and, even ridiculously flimsy baseball bats.

As a public service to Spidey fans and Blog@ readers, I gladly volunteered to snap a few pictures of the strange and cool images of toys whilst flitting around young hordes of The Red Bullseye stockers (yep, my Barney Fife-like Spider-Sense still tingles on occasion) for your information amusement.

FYI: As far as I could see at the one store I shopped, only one toy was completely sold out. Hit the link for what could be the most hard-to-find Spidey 3 toy of them all, then hit the jump for more toys.

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Steven Grant, as is his thing, fears the worst:

It’d be nice if in this “year of the comic book” comics sales in general would pick up for a change, but I guess when it rains during a long drought it’s impolite to ask for drinking water too. The only thing that bothers me about this is the inevitable backlash.

No, not that backlash. This one.

See, there are two kinds of people in Hollywood now: those who grew up with comics and love them, and those who didn’t and don’t and sit scratching their heads trying to figure out what the big deal is. (The third group is those who never read comics but now find them oddly fascinating, but those are mostly actors, who aren’t germane to the discussion.) The first group is mostly younger guys with their own projects, like Allan Heinberg (now writing for Marvel) or their own production companies, like Benderspink. (There are a lot of highly placed comics geeks at Benderspink.) They’re the guys who will be making all the real decisions in Hollywood in 20 years.

The second group are the guys making the decisions now.

So what I anticipate in a year, year and a half, should SPIDER-MAN III and FF II be the big box office guns expected, we’ll see another round of superhero parody films. Why? Because there’s still a widespread assumption that all comics are superhero comics, people who know comics the least cling the most to that assumption, and the second group is made up of people who know comics the least. And since they believe – correctly, but so what? – that superheroes are an innately silly idea (the success of HEROES (NBC, Mondays 8P) is not likely to change their minds, since that has pretty much gone out of its way to not refer to any of its “heroes” as superheroes, and, like SMALLVILLE, doesn’t put its heroes in gaudy costumes, which is their shorthand for “see? These aren’t really superheroes!”; SMALLVILLE’s longevity isn’t much of an argument in those circles either, since being a hit on The CW (Thursdays 8P) is like being the world’s tallest midget) they’re pretty much suckers for any pretty face with script that says, “Let’s mock the whole idea of superheroes.”

Alex Ross has painted the cover art for the upcoming “Saviour of the Universe” edition of Flash Gordon.  The DVD will be released August 7.

(Found via The Digital Bits.)

Justin Gray talks to Comic Bloc about writing for the big two:

I’m not going to lie and say that I don’t enjoy being able to do my own thing month in and month out, but I also don’t see the connected nature as a hindrance to creativity. Where the problems arise is when all of the major guidelines aren’t in place like say in the instance of [DC's Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters] having a different president in office. To me that’s a small thing but to fans onboard with the unified theory this causes questions to arise. At the end of the day it comes down to writing the perfect story. With Heroes [for Hire, for Marvel,] the Civil War connections were heavily watched over by three editors. We were given a handful of hard lines not to cross particularly with regard to Iron Man. Keeping in mind that I am not as involved with the Marvel Universe as I am with DC; what I see in the DCU is a constant motion of evolution. Not to get all metaphysical, but the DCU is close to a living thing that continues to move forward in a number of directions and while that is tremendously exciting occasionally things are going to slip through.

Somewhere, Grant Morrison is smiling.

On the Gelatometti blog, Jim Lee rolls out his penciled art for the covers of All-Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder #5-7, scheduled for release in May, July and September.

Wayne’s post on the just-announced Bryan Talbot book from NBM led me to wonder what other titles we might have to look forward to in the near as well as distant future. Here’s some other book news I found on the Internet ether:

* Over at Flog, Eric Reynolds noted that Wilfred Santiago (“In My Darkest Hour”) is currently working on a biography of Roberto Clemente, which is due to be published next year. They’ve even got a Web site and trailer up to promote the book.

* This news leads Tom to note that the second Center for Cartoon Studios biography will be on Satchel Paige by James Sturm and Rich Tomasso.

* Alison Bechdel of “Fun Home” fame says she’s working on another memoir, due in stores in 2009. Unfortunately that also means she’ll have to scale back on production of her regular strip, “Dykes to Watch Out For.” Hey, you can’t make an omelet, etc.

* “Action Philosophers” creators Fred Van Lente and Ryan Dunlavey sent out a press release noting that the ninth issue of the , due out in July, will be the final one. The good news that is they have two other, rather intriguing series in the pipeline: one detailing the lives of U.S. Presidents; the other delving into the history of the comic book industry.

* If you scroll down here, you can see the cover for the next volume of Drawn and Quarterly’s Moomin. If you go here you can see the cover for the first of the new Pogo volumes.

* The Association of American Editorial Cartoonists has a story up on R.C. Havey’s hotly anticipated biography of Milton Caniff, which will apparently be in stores next month.

* Over on Comics Comics, Dan Nadel reveals that PictureBox will publishing the work of avant-garde manga-ka Yuichi Yokoyama. The first book, New Engineering, will be out in October. The second, Travel, will be out in 2008, with hopefully more to follow soon afterward. Describing Yokoyama’s work is tough, so I’ll let these folks do it for me instead. Trust me when I say that this is very good news though. Best I’ve heard all day.

With another Marvel retreat going on right now, the Bendis Board considers messages that they want to send to the writers and editors planning what’s upcoming for Marvel’s books:

“War is good for absolutely nothing and we’ve already had the Civil War and World War Hulk. Enough for now. Plus, I’m quite fond of the new Marvel status quo and I’d like to see you guys run with it rather than upturn it again with yet another Biggest Event Ever.”

“Don’t kill Mary Jane. Bring back Howard The Duck.”

“Are Bendis and Bru fighting over who they get to kill next?”

“enough with the nostalgic retro revivals already. can’t we have some new stuff for our own generation? y’know, like they had in the 80s to get all this stuff in the first place?”

“I’m going to agree with some of the previous posters here – I’d much rather have a few more years of self-contained stories than another mondo-huge Marvel event. It seems to me that, that way, creators have more freedom to tell the stories they want to tell, AND you’d be able to explore the status quo of the Initiative Marvel Universe some more. One of the things that kind of annoyed me as a fan was, Marvel had a golden opportunity to explore a drastically-altered status quo after the House of M, but it felt to me like there was just a big rush to get on with the NEXT big event, so things like the 198 and the corruption in SHIELD, not to mention the New and Young Avengers, weren’t really dealt with. I would have liked to see some further exploration of those things. So please, consider postponing your next senses-shattering event for a while, so we can get used to this new and more unpredictable MU before it’s brought crashing down around our ears again. (Though, to be fair, I have every confidence that you’d bring said universe crashing down with style and panache.)”

Of course, those who are posting from the retreat itself have already hinted at another crossover in 2008…

Congratulations are due to a pair of cartoonists this week. First, to Steven Cloud, whose webcomic Boy on a Stick and Slither became a part of the Comics.com family (that’s United Media’s site) this week.

Next, congrats are also due to Michael Kupperman of “Tales Designed to Thrizzle” fame, who not only garnered an Eisner nomination, but also is contributing a series of strips entitled “The Spoily Brats” to the new paperback editions of the best-selling “A Series of Unfortunate Events” books by Lemony Snicket. Hooray for supplimental material!

Does anyone actually enjoy Cathy in an unironic fashion anymore? Zuska sure doesn’t. In fact, one recent strip left her particularily irate:

Cathy is at a cosmetics counter where a saleslady or esthetician in a white lab coat points at a chart explicating some beauty product, and reads ingredients from the list to Cathy. Cathy has a stupefied expression on her face and replies “Huh?” to each mention of an ingredient or property of the product. Finally the saleslady says

By paralyzing the brain with scientific mumbo-jumbo, we reduce the muscle contractions that help create wrinkles…and TA DA! Who needs Botox?

This is evil in so many ways I can’t even begin to describe it. Women’s brains will be paralyzed by the contemplation of a list of chemical ingredients in makeup products? Because, you know, it’s all science-y and everything. But hey! It’s all good, because it prevents wrinkles! Which is all we really care about anyway!

I don’t know that it’s worth getting that upset over, but I thought I’d share anyway because, hey, she’s making fun of Cathy.

I can’t decide whether this piece in Kent State University’s student newspaper about one fan’s reaction to the death of Captain America is someone having a laugh, or the saddest thing I’ve read in a long, long while.

Allow me to introduce sophomore Sebastian Clark:

“I felt like a family member died and of course my friends made fun of me, because he is just a comic book character,” Clark said. “My response was ‘How long have you known your best friend?’”

One can tell Clark loves comics just by looking at his left arm — it’s covered in tattoos of the characters. On the inside of his left bicep is a black outline of Captain America, which at the time he did not have the money to color in. Other Marvel comic staples, such as Peter Parker and Thor cover his arm.

“I decked my arm out in the most ridiculous Marvel images,” he said. “I haven’t liked anything the way that I do comics in 19 years. They mean certain things to me.”

I just hope he doesn’t find out about the burrito incident.

Italian researchers say a spider-suit that would allow people to climb walls and shoot webs like a certain friendly neighborhood superhero could be just a decade away.

According to this article, by mimicking the way geckos hang upside down from walls, the scientists have developed a method for creating surfacing-gripping “spider silk.”

The insurance-selling little lizards accomplish that feat thanks to millions of tiny hair-like setae that cover their feet.

“The first prototype of a Spider-Man suit might be ready in a decade or so,” says one of the scientists. It’s unclear whether he has a connection to Stark Industries.

Researchers say they have Spider-Man’s webbing covered, too: They’ve already made web-like cable constructed of four million nanotube fibers.

SLG Publishing has announced the July release of Jellyfist, “a new work of collaborative nonsense” written by Jhonen Vasquez and illustrated by J.R. Goldberg.

The 48-page full-color book was, according to the press release, “produced in a climate of tension, aggression, meandering conversations and ego-clashing arguments.”

Oh, just go read the press release. It’s pretty entertaining.

Jellyfist, which will retail for $5.95, is available for preorder.