When you can’t sleep… A problem I rarely have. Jaia has it with more frequency.

Find out more about Global Freezing here on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays or at ComicsByEgg.com.

By Christian Beranek

I’m a huge baseball fan. The Yankees are my team. That’s why it’s a real treat for me to be a part of the “Pulse of the Postseason” promotion over at www.mlb.com this year, along with fellow comic book creators Joe Quesada, Matt Fraction and Emma Caulfield. Baseball represents a sense of adventure — teams battling over the course of a season to get a chance to play for the title. It’s a war of attrition. And this year, I’m predicting the Yankees win it all.

Here’s various videos my fellow comic book cohorts and I did for the MLB site:

Joe Quesada:

http://mlb.mlb.com/media/video.jsp?content_id=7051639

Matt Fraction:

http://mlb.mlb.com/media/video.jsp?content_id=7051721

Emma Caulfield and CB:

http://mlb.mlb.com/media/video.jsp?content_id=7078141&topic_id=7223784
http://mlb.mlb.com/media/video.jsp?content_id=7079289&topic_id=7223784

CB:

http://mlb.mlb.com/media/video.jsp?content_id=7080063
http://mlb.mlb.com/media/video.jsp?content_id=7079287

Christian Beranek co-founded and co-runs Disney’s Kingdom Comics. CB has a first look film/tv deal with Disney/ABC via his Lead Pipe Entertainment banner. He has several projects in development around town including Dracula vs. King Arthur, based on the graphic novel he co-created. He is currently working on his first novel and an album. CB is never late for dinner and invites you to add him on twitter: http://www.twitter.com/beranek.

Essential Dykes to Watch Out For
Written & Illustrated by Alison Bechdel
Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

I recently talked about reading Gilbert Hernandez’s Luba, noting that the book is effectively the sequel to Palomar, one of the two most affecting comics I’ve read in my life. The other most-affecting comic is Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, a staggeringly literate memoir of her coming out and her relationship with her deeply closeted father. After reading Gilbert Hernandez’s follow-up to his masterpiece, I went back to read Alison Bechdel’s creative lead-in to her own masterwork.

Dykes to Watch Out For, a newspaper strip that ran in independent gay and lesbian newspapers and online from 1983 until 2008, when Bechdel put the strip on hiatus to focus on her follow-up to Fun Home, chronicles the lives of a group of (mostly) lesbians. It balances political commentary against a long-running, often humorous, occasionally sad soap opera of romantic, professional and personal entanglements.

The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For compiles the majority of the post-1986 strips, when Bechdel began introducing her extended cast and moved the strip away from its early gag-a-day format. Now, those early strips … well, they’re a little choppy. Though Bechdel had been penning the strip for three years already, her art remained stilted. The character work showed some charm, but only occasionally rose above ordinary. It was a slow build, but by 1990 – with 18 more years worth of strips in the book, so there’s lots and lots of good stuff left – Bechdel had captured the elusive voice of an artist with something true to say.

As the strip grew more assuredly artistically, the depth of the characters grew exponentially. Perhaps the quality of the line work allowed Bechdel to show ideas that had always been brewing in the strip but never communicated clearly. Her ability to depict characters across the entire spectrum of experience added humanity to their storylines. Many comic book artists can illustrate highly detailed scenes, moments of exquisite carnage and impossible perspectives, but through it all, most of their characters continue to shout obscenely or cry melodramatically.

Bechdel’s lines are simple, but deep. Reactions come through with subtlety and nuance, and she’s able to balance her artistic accomplishments with characterization that is apparent without having to explain itself. When Clarice becomes enraged at Toni, the character’s sniping ire manifests that rage in clear, simply human terms.

Dykes to Watch Out For is unapologetically political, and anybody who doesn’t lean left as Bechdel does will probably feel put off reading it. Yet the characters each exhibit diverse and fairly argued perspectives within the strip’s liberal outlook. Mo and Sydney frequently argue everything from gay marriage to patriarchal standards of beauty, and both viewpoints are presented fairly and levelly. In fact, one of the strip’s most interesting and challenging moments comes when Bechdel introduces a conservative-leaning lesbian into the group’s community, and despite a few jokes at her expense (though no more than any other character is subjected to during the strip’s twenty-year run), she shows an intelligent and rounded vantage point on the world herself.

Fun Home is perhaps the greatest and most important comic book ever published. (Yeah, that’s maybe a bold statement, but the book is. Read it if you haven’t. Read it again if you have.) That level of brilliance doesn’t develop overnight, and the progression of strips during its twenty-plus year evolution shows that Alison Bechdel experimented, stretched and transformed herself into one of the most important cartoonists working today in the page of Dykes to Watch Out For. Essential Dykes to Watch Out For is absolute must-read comics.

On my site I’m drawing a chicken wearing a people suit…

Find out more about Global Freezing here on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays or at ComicsByEgg.com.

Is this the end of the the Wicomico County, Maryland controversy regarding Goku’s pee-pee?: God, I hope so. The Wicomico school district in Maryland decided to pull the Dragon Ball manga digests from school libraries, after a grandstanding Wicomico County councilman brought photocopies of one of the volumes to a county council meeting. For a very smart discussion of issues revolving around manga censorship, controversy and perception in the U.S., I’d highly recommend this piece by Jason Thompson at i09.com.

Let there be press coverage!: R. Crumb’s version of The Book of Genesis continues to capture mainstream media attention, like these two pieces in USA Today, and these two pieces from National Public Radio.

“It suddenly occurred to me that a cartoon published in 1944 might not be familiar to folks younger than 75″: A staff writer for California paper The Sun on the great Bill Maudlin.

Blah blah blah X-Men blah blah mutants blah: Here’s a nice long review of the recent X-Men story arc “Utopia” by Paul O’Brien. I’ve found that I really enjoy reading about the X-Men, even if I don’t actually read their comics. Meanwhile, Tim O’Neil has some further thoughts about the X-Men franchises fall from the top of the super-comics totem pole (And finds himself intrigued by January’s cover for Wolverine: Origins. The solicitation copy doesn’t actually say, but that is who it looks like, right? Wow.)

“‘X-Men’ Star Too Old For Four”: Yeah, I don’t thin Sir Ian McKellen, as talented an actor as he is, can get away with playing a four-year-old. Oh, wait a minute, that’s not what this tidbit’s about—it actually refers to him being in a fourth X-Men film. Ah.

It’s like Speed, but with a pigeon in the Keanu Reeves role: Mo Willems, one of my favorite artists in the world, shares some fan art, including a sweet-looking movie poster.

Luba
Written & Illustrated by Gilbert Hernandez
Published by Fantagraphics

After the conclusion of Love & Rockets vol. 1 in 1997, Fantagraphics compiled all of co-creator Gilbert Hernandez’s “Heartbreak Soup” stories in a single hardcover edition, titled Palomar (named for the small town “somewhere south of the border” in which the stories unfolded). The Palomar hardcover edition is, with maybe only one other serious contender (Alison Bechdel’s impossibly literate and moving Fun Home) the most powerful and humane comic book experience of my life.

After a few creative side-trips and explorations, Gilbert returned to his most famous characters, focusing on one-time Palomar bathgiver and mayor Luba and her family as they settled in southern California. The sum-total of Hernandez’s “Luba” comics were assembled this past summer in the hardcover collection Luba. It’s probably not fair to expect Hernandez to issue another creative virtuoso like Palomar, but in the pages of Luba, he comes closer than might be expected.

Palomar’s success comes from Hernandez’s ability to spotlight, sometimes only briefly, sometimes for extended sequences, dozens of divergent citizens in the small village. Combining humor, drama, surrealism, family and community, all drawn with aplomb, Palomar’s denizens provide Hernandez the opportunity to explore and examine the range of humanity. The end result is a fully realized, morally complex, beautifully joyous and tragically sad portrait of human community.

In Luba, the focus is similarly broad, yet also more centered. With her move to America, Luba is united with two half-sisters she’d been unaware of. Helping the family acclimate and hiring Luba’s daughter Doralis as host of a children’s television program is another olden Palomar resident, kittenish, vain Pipo. With this core cast, including Pipo’s son, a soccer star, and their own families, Hernandez sets out to explore the concept of family.

Like Palomar, Luba was created serially and is, as a result, prone to bizarre digressions. In many ways, it is these side-tracks that give Hernandez’s work its power, however. Our lives don’t follow clean storylines, and nor do his characters’. Certain themes repeat frequently, notably Luba’s sister Fritz’s low self-esteem-fueled sexual antics, which manage to be both titillating and occasionally overwhelming. Even Hernandez seemed to realize that Fritz’s lascivious lifestyle smothers other storylines, as late in the narrative Luba explains that she dreamed about her other sister Petra trying to steal the spotlight while Fritz paraded nakedly. Luba was always one of Palomar’s most lusty residents, but she never achieved the degree of debauchery Fritz manages repeatedly during the more prurient side-logs found in this book.

Luba’s stand-out character, and seemingly the character primed to take the central role if Hernandez continues to follow the family line, is Petra’s daughter Venus. Precocious, intelligent and utterly unwilling to let anybody’s bull slide, Venus provides perspective on the family’s many dysfunctions. Her youthfully innocent observations regarding Luba’s inability to accept her daughters’ homosexuality, or regarding her mother’s desperate clinging to youth and inability to forgive, provide consistent context throughout Luba.

After exploring the many connections of the family dynamic and shining a bright spotlight on the most destructive qualities of the family, Hernandez builds the book to a tragic crescendo, then shifts into a more sublime depiction of the family’s most balanced members. The calmness and maturity of Guadalupe, Hector and Venus’s lives in the time after tragedy is offset by the bizarre, family-fracturing career shift for Fritz, leaving Venus and Guadalupe effectively in the eye of a potential hurricane, providing stability as the family’s unstable parts no longer interact with one another. In many ways, this section is its highlight, offering more even-keeled perspectives on life and love.

Although Luba doesn’t hit as hard as Palomar, it remains a compelling portrait of family in all its messy glory.  Alternately sexy and vulgar, beautiful and mean, optimistic and intolerant, Luba and her family encompass all the ugliness and amazement that comes with being part of the human entity.

I am so excited about Batman Unseen by Doug Moench and Kelley Jones, the second issue of which is due tomorrow (Preview here). The first issue magically transported me to a Wednesday afternoon in 1998 or so, and made me want to re-read Morrison, Porter and Dell’s JLA and Garth Ennis and John McCrea’s Hitman. Is this that feeling of nostalgia people are always talking about? Have I just never read a superhero comic book geared specifically toward my own personal nostalgia spot before?

Are any of this week’s books targeted at your personal nostalgia spot? Join me after jump to find out.

(more…)

By Jimmy Palmiotti

Well, got back this week [yeah, I spent a few days in Los Angeles having too much of a good time] from a very fun first time con in Long Beach California. Amanda and I were busy all weekend and really enjoyed the healthy crowds there and relieved that we had Paul Mounts, the Power Girl colorist, along with us on the trip so we could put the finishing touches on Power Girl #6 while there and truly relax.

At the con I got serenaded by a Jonah Hex fan [Don’t believe me… watch this video and laugh…] and had some wonderful dinners with close friends. A perfect weekend, really.

For the next few days, I spent my time going into and out of various meetings all over the map. These meetings usually consist of meet-and-greets and the talk of future projects. I am hoping two of the meetings I had will have something interesting come from them, but I have learned long ago that it’s usually not the case, and when they offer you bottled water when you enter the office, to always take it because it’s probably the only thing you are going to get.

Let me know how the Big Apple Con went. Amanda and I couldn’t make it because too much work right now.

IN PREVIEWS: First business of the day: I DID NOT write Spartacus #3 for Devil’s Due. It is listed in the new previews and it is incorrect. I really couldn’t tell you who did, but it’s not me for sure. I came in and did issue 2 and that’s it for me. I just wanted to warn the retailers I know and cherish and make you guys aware of this. Stuff like this drives me to drink.

JONAH HEX #50: I actually WILL be inking this issue over Darwyn Cooke… even though it’s NOT listed in the new previews. Lol… it’s been almost 2 years now since I inked a book and why not break that streak and get on one of my favorite ones and get to work. I am flattered Darwyn wanted me.

(more…)

Dungeon: The Early Years vol. 2: Innocence Lost

Written by Joann Sfar and Lewis Trondheim

Illustrated by Christophe Blain

Published by NBM

NBM’s English translations of Sfar and Trondheim’s humorous fantasy series, Dungeon, continues to prove that I enjoy fantasy far more than I ever suspected. Two more adventures of Hyacinthe, the future Dungeon Keeper (seen in the Dungeon: Zenith series), are compiled in this book, including the finale of his time as the avenging Night Shirt of Antipolis.

With Christophe Blain aboard as The Early Years‘ illustrator, “Dungeon” continues to look sharp, filled to the gills with imaginative character designs, fast-moving action, a magnificent sense of scope, and truly impressive use of shadows and light. Blaine’s ability to communicate details of the characters through their nuanced posture and facial expressions adds considerable depth and emotion to the witty and twisted script by the European masters Sfar and Trondheim.

Sfar and Trondheim are, of course, legends, and their combined writing showcases all their individual strength and more. The smart and witty dialogue keeps the story bouncy, yet they’re also able to pull back and allow the art to carry the narrative and establish the mood in multiple, high effective sequences, including the first story’s finale. In opposition to Dungeon’s overall light-hearted tone, the writing tandem also provides several dark twists, while jamming surprise after surprise into each scene. Dungeon has elements of parody, but its creators’ obvious love for the adventure-fantasy genres keep the characters real and the circumstances compelling.

Dungeon: The Early Years vol. 2: Innocence Lost is the latest reminder of the great work being done in comics, a testament to the fun, adventurous style of storytelling many readers claim to want from their sequential arts entertainment.  Although Dungeon seems to be a successful series for NBM and its creators, it’s the type of high-quality, creepy, funny, startling fantasy that deserves an even wider audience.

“[T]he country’s two greatest cultural figures are both artists, and as of this year those two bowler-hat-loving Belgians…are being celebrated with their own museums. Not that they would have celebrated together, had they had the chance. The two couldn’t have been more different”: Who are Beglium’s two greatest cultural figures? Tintin creator Hergé and surrealist René Magritte, according to this article from The Globe and Mail.

Not quite comics: Here’s a nice profile of Charles Monroe Schulz Jr., who now shares a publisher with his late father, Charles Schulz—Fantagraphics. Unlike his father, Schulz isn’t a cartoonist, but a prose novelist, and his works are among the first that Fantagraphics has published.

“Nowadays it looks like Iron man is always getting hit with Photoshop effects. It ain’t the same, baby”: Cartoonist Evan Dorkin offers his thoughts on the passing of George Tuska, including his fond memories of Tuska’s work during the ‘60s and ‘70s.

“Goldsman won’t exactly apologize for the film, but he comes pretty close”: That’s from this entertaining Los Angeles Times entertainment story, profiling screenwriter Akiva Goldsman. The film he won’t exactly apologize for, but comes pretty close to is, of course, 1997’s Batman and Robin, which the president of production at Marvel Studios is quoted as calling maybe the most important comic-book movie ever made, in that it was so bad that it demanded a new way of doing things.

This just in! Steve Ditko book to be awesome: Seriously, just look at this thing. Wow.

This is my first experiment with trying to reproduce action lines in color.

Find out more about Global Freezing here on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays or at ComicsByEgg.com.

“There are three major legs to pop culture in America: movies, television, and comic books. One leg is doing a mission creep on the other two”: So says Travis Pullen at Filmfodder.com. Obviously movies and television are about as interested in comic books—or at least stories and characters taken from comic books—as they’ve ever been before. But are comics really a third pillar of American pop culture, akin to film and television? Not, I don’t know, music, or sport or video game?

“He was the father of political cartooning for everybody”: That’s political cartoonist Mike Peters on Herb “Herblock!” Block in this piece on the Washington Post’s website. It’s a nice post about a show at the Library of Congress dedicated to the work of the the late, influential cartoonist, and includes thoughts on him and his work from several other cartoonists like Peters.

“Brian Azzarello’s ‘Filthy Rich’ a gritty piece of pulp”: That’s the headline of a Chicago Tribune review of Azzarello and Victor Santos’ original graphic novel for the new-ish Vertigo Crime sub-imprint. It’s weird too because I looked at the book, and I thought it was printed on rather high-quality paper that was nice and smooth and…oh, they’re using “gritty” and “pulp” metaphorically, huh? Nevermind then.

“Nathan Fillion Wants To Be The Greatest American Hero”: No he doesn’t, does he? Stop trying to get cast in superhero movies, Fillion! I like you right where you are in Castle.

Are you seeing this, Archie Comics?: If you’ve ever wondered what James Kochalka’s Sonic the Hedgehog might look like, wonder no more.

Speaking of Archie Comics…: I guarantee they’d get one thousand times more mainstream media coverage with this particular wedding than for either of the ones they’ve announced so far.

“A special comment where I draw spurious and perhaps false parallels and analogies and yet still manage to make more sense than an office full of Alaskan Prosecutors”: Remember Wednesday’s Linkarama, in which I linked to an Anchorage Daily News article about some in Alaska state government considering criminalizing sexually explicit drawings and cartoons of children as if they were actual child pornography? (It’s okay if you don’t, as I just re-linked to it again).

Well Matt Blind had an excellent post on the subject, one in which he brings up the legality of hunting as something to consider when folks want to criminalize certain things for their potential to maybe someday cause harm somehow:

Claiming that seeing offensive comics (which aren’t people) will lead to someone doing nasty, nasty things to real people is like saying shooting and field dressing animals (which aren’t people) will lead to someone doing nasty, nasty things to real people.

…

While hunters own guns and knives and have experience in, for example, stalking prey, killing, watching a wounded creature die without feeling sympathy, inserting a knife into a hip and working it to pop the joint and sever the tendons so the haunch can be removed from the rest of the rapidly cooling carcass, skinning their kills, and eating the roasted flesh of their victims.

And I’d be willing to bet more Alaskans own a rifle than a single volume of pornographic, drawn material of either Japanese, European, or Domestic provenance.

More at the link. (Via Dirk Deppey).

This is not at all what I imagined when I heard the words “adult comic books”: The Toledo Free Press takes a look at the Toledo Museum of Art’s new exhibit, the traveling “LitGraphic: The World of the Graphic Novel.” By “adult comic books” they just mean stuff like Sandman, Will Eisner and Lauren Weinstein.

I could watch Tucker Stone getting hit by comic books all day: There’s a new episode of Stone’s “Advanced Common Sense” web video comics commentary thingee available, and if you’re a fan of the “lightning round” portions, wherein someone off-camera throws comics at him while he attempts to catch and review them before the next ones gets thrown, you’ll love this one. Towards the end there’s a few minutes worth of outtakes of him getting hit with comic books and trades. You know, I think they’re shooting those things at him out of some kind of cannon…

“…vampires in popular culture vary pretty widely in quality, which makes them the perfect unit of greatness for a given comic”: Invincible Super-Blogger Chris Sims has had a busy week, between hosting Dracula Week on his home blog and pitting the Disney version of fairy tale characters versus their Fables counterparts at Comics Alliance, but his greatest contribution to American culture this week is definitely his invention of The ISB Draculometer, which he uses to evaluate this week’s comics. It’s the only place on the Internet where you can find out how Adventure Comics #3 is like Spike from Buffy The Vampire Slayer or how Nomad: Girl Without a World #2 is like Count Chocula. (I look forward to a blurb on the cover of the eventual Nomad trade saying “It’s the Count Chocula of comic books!”)

The Book About Moomin, Mymble and Little My

Written & Illustrated by Tove Jansson

Published by Drawn & Quarterly

D&Q’s done very nice work collecting Tove Jansson’s trippy and delightful comic strip Moomin into a series of high-quality hardcovers. Every successive edition has been a treat of silliness, whimsical logic, family values and bizarre rural landscapes. Moomin, however, did not begin life as a comic strip. Rather, Ms. Jansson’s odd little hippopotamus-like family had their origins in children’s books. Later, picture books followed, and in 1954, the comic strip finally debuted. Justified by the success of the charming comic strip archives, D&Q has begun creating replica editions of the Moomin picture books, starting with 1952’s The Book of Moomin, Mymble and Little My.

For readers familiar with Jansson’s Moomin comics, experiencing Moomin’s travails in the form of a picture book is likely to be somewhat familiar – the whimsical tone and uplifting outlook remain unmolested – and jarring – the reliance on rhyme and rhythm make for a very different reading experience. Whether the experience is better, worse or simply different is going to be entirely on each reader. I found the simply rhyming scheme slightly distracting, repeatedly losing any sense of what was occurring. Yet Jansson’s language, marked by references to unusual creates like the Hattifatteners, flows confidently, moving Moomin and Mymble (and My) from one surprising circumstance to the next with certainty and inimitable style.

Jansson’s loopy illustrations seem to benefit from the format, as her use of simple color schemes and the larger canvas afforded by the page size offer a more perplexing and delirious vision of MoominValley. The book’s most obvious feature is that every page has a cut-away section, allowing peeks into the preceding and succeeding pages. The windows into the future don’t provide much story value other than to play off each page’s final rhyme, inevitably a suggestion to guess what zaniness will occur next, but certainly many young readers will enjoy the game.

Although the picture book does not match the dream-logic, wandering stories of the Moomin comic strip (which comes thoroughly recommended), D&Q’s first replica edition of Tove Jansson’s picture books, The Book about Moomin, Mymble and Little My is still a trippy good time, and suggested reading for anybody with young children who enjoy adventurous tales in fanciful lands.  And it’s a treat to see comics publishers expanding their repertoire with diverse graphic storytelling projects.

And [drum roll]: White!

The final page of the Getting a Piece of Asp short I wrote for David Rodriguez and Dave Reynolds’ ShadowGirls is up. I had a lot of fun getting to play with David and Dave’s characters and world. They really have a wonderful comic and I cannot recommend it enough!

[Link to cover and Page 01] ShadowGirls: Getting a Piece of Asp Cover / Page 01

Find out more about Global Freezing here on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays or at ComicsByEgg.com.

Things Undone

Written & Illustrated by Shane White

Published by NBM

Shane White’s Things Undone has one particular trait that may draw some readers in, but in the end, it’s a gimmick that works against the book’s success. The book’s protagonist, Rick, feels his life spiraling out of control, largely due to his own refusal to make decisions or take control of his indifference. Consequently, as his life slips away, Rick begins to turn into a zombie – literally (or perhaps figuratively, you decide in the end). It’s a conceit that will grab some genre fans’ attention, but zombie fans are likely to find the effect wasted and non-genre fans will find it simply pointless.

The problem is that, outside of a few body-pieces-falling-off gags, the zombie element has no real import on the story. Sure, it’s cute when Rick staples his ear back on, but it’s a one-panel gag amid pages and pages of non-zombie content. It’s ultimately about Rick, his girl, his coworkers, and his own ennui. The supernatural elements don’t add to the narrative; they distract from it.

(more…)

Interested in comics events? Well, look no further! As always, fans and industry folks, if you have an event you’d like us to promote, just e-mail us at newsaramaevents [AT] gmail [DOT] com.

Brooklyn, N.Y.:

October 17, 7:00pm - 9:00pm High Moon, Box 13 and comiXology!
On Saturday, October 17th, Bergen Street Comics and comiXology are proud to co-host the Brooklyn launch party for critically acclaimed creators, David Gallaher and Steve Ellis. Join us as we celebrate the launch of the print version of their online Zuda Comic “High Moon,” as well as “Box 13,” created by Gallaher, Ellis and Scott O. Brown. “Box 13” is a 13-part, a neo-noir thriller, and serialized digital comic, launching exclusively through comiXology and available on October 13.

New York, N.Y.:

TODD MCFARLANE SIGNING IN NEW YORK CITY THURSDAY, OCTOBER 15TH
Todd to Face Off with Fans at ‘NHL Powered by Reebok’ Store
October 09, 2009
Copyright 2009 TMP International, Inc.

Come celebrate the start of hockey season and the launch of McFarlane Toys’ NHL Legends 8 action figure line with Todd McFarlane at the NHL Powered by Reebok store, located at 1185 Sixth Avenue, between 46th and 47th Street in New York City.

Todd will be signing purchased NHL SportsPicks figures for the first 125 people on Thursday, October 15 from 6PM to 8PM. Autographs will be limited to NHL store purchases made the day of the event and one outside item, time permitting.

McFarlane Toys’ newest NHL Legends line-up features: Theo Fleury, Calgary Flames; Wayne Gretzky, Edmonton Oilers; Mario Lemieux, Pittsburgh Penguins; Tim Horton, Toronto Maple Leafs; Terry O’Reilly, Boston Bruins; and Terry Sawchuk in Detroit Red Wings and Toronto Maple Leafs jerseys.

For more information, contact the NHL Powered by Reebok store at 212-221-6375.

Santa Rosa, CA:

Pixar Panel Discussion

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17 ● 2–4pm

Pixar’s top designers, including Bob Peterson (writer/director), Ricky Nierva (production designer), and Jason Deamer (art director), will answer questions and talk about creating 3-D computer characters for the big screen.

Charles M. Schulz Museum, 2301 Hardies Lane, Santa Rosa, CA 95403

(707) 579-4452 | http://www.schulzmuseum.org/

Nashville, TN:

Oct 17-18
The Nashville Comic and Horror Festival

Tn state fairgrounds
Oct 17-18
Admission only $10  - save $2 with 3 canned good donation to the rescue mission

Over 70 guests:
Brian O’Halloran (Clerks and Clerks2)
Glenn Shadix (The voice of the mayor in Nightmare Before Christmas)
Dick Warlock (Mike Myers in Halloween 2)
Dawn of the Dead Zombie Reunion
Chris Claremont, Gary Friedrich, Jay Leisten  - Comic Book Superstars
and lots more
VIP still open and the next 30 VIPs receive a free Zombieland hat and full size poster
Email about VIP
See all this on the website:
http://www.comiccitytn.com

Plano, TX:

October 21 David Doub Comic Book Signing
The writer of the graphic novel Dusk will be hitting Lone Star Comics #8 on Wednesday, October 21st! The address is 3100 Independence Parkway #318, in Plano, TX. For more information, check out www.mycomicshop.com/ourstores/plano.

Out of curiosity, do any of our Blog@ readers here use their library to borrow comics from?

Because I love doing so. Sure, a big part is that I live in a metro-sized condo and have finite storage space, and I’m planning for a spring wedding and have a finite budget, but even without those limitations, there are a lot of books that I appreciate reading but simply won’t ever read again. So why bother keeping a copy, or using the resources to print and ship a book that’ll lie in a box or on a shelf, unread, for the rest of its existence?

Anyway, I was just wondering if anybody else enjoyed discovering comics for free like I do.

Now, as I said, I love being able to read comics that I don’t particularly want to keep or reread, but I do sometimes find at the library comics that I’d read again and again. Continuing my recent obsession with Norwegian cartoonist Jason, I borrowed Fantagraphics’ translation of The Iron Wagon. Based on Stein Riverton’s same-titled Norwegian mystery novel from 1909, Jason’s version is described as a loose adaptation.  And it’s great.

The plot revolves around a writer tagging along with a detective to solve the mystery of the murder of an upper crust woman’s suitor in an idyllic rural community.

The tenor of the dialogue and the methodical pacing are evidence of the story’s early 20^th century origins, yet Jason still makes the story entirely his own. As with other comics of his that I’ve read, Jason’s The Iron Wagon moves very quickly, remains slightly absurd in even the most dire of situations – largely due to Jason’s peculiar anthropomorphic characters and deadpan delivery – and simply doesn’t take itself so damn seriously.

The ending, though predictable on a plot level if you’ve read this type of story, achieves a wonderful absurdity due to Jason’s downbeat pacing. Jason’s comics are driven by plot, with character registering as an afterthought. By keeping the narratives short and the pace quick, with quiet, somber beats punctuating, Jason creates filled with eccentric worlds where anything goes. Even when he’s recreating a piece of period storytelling, his voice adds a freshness and lightness that makes even a haunting mystery tale seem entirely new and upbeat. In fact, there’s a downright comical element to the “haunting” scenes in this book.

All of which is to say that Jason’s The Iron Wagon is a rollicking good time, and exactly the sort of escapist adventure comics that I wish there were more of. I’m glad I can find them in the library, but Jason’s work is among the few borrowed comics that would’ve been worth the purchase price and required shelf space. It’s available at my library, and hopefully at yours too. If you haven’t read Jason, you really should check his work out.

More snow. More Keesa. It’s what we do here.

Page 08 of Getting a Piece of Asp is up at David Rodriguez and Dave Reynolds’ ShadowGirls site. [Link to cover and Page 01] ShadowGirls: Getting a Piece of Asp Cover / Page 01

Find out more about Global Freezing here on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays or at ComicsByEgg.com.

School Library Journal on that Dragon Ball thing: Brigid Alverson puts together a little roundtable regarding a Wicomico County councilman bringing up the contents of Akira Toriyama’s Dragon Ball at his Maryland county’s council meeting after a nine-year-old borrowed a volume of the series from his grade school library.

Meanwhile, in Alaska…: Should sexually-explicit drawings or computer-generated images of children be treated the same as actually child pornography, created by abusing real children? It’s a question apparently being considered by some in Alaska state government, according to this piece in the Anchorage Daily News (A piece which, by the way, mentions “anime” four times and “cartoons” four times, but never mentions manga or comics at all.) Simon Jones of Icarus Publishing, which specializes in erotic manga, has some thoughts. (Link swiped from Dirk Deppey)

“Lynda Barry injects some ‘Kapow!’ into comic book talk”: I read this entire article looking for the part where Barry says “Kapow!” And she never does. She does say “Goddam” once though, and in a positive reference to Family Circus, no less.

Here’s something you don’t see every day…: A feature story profiling Berkeley Breathed. Oh wait, you do see this every day now, don’t you? Well here, look at another one.

“Are Comics Like Reading with Training Wheels?”: No, no they are not.

“He was a creative talent that did a great deal in moving the Marvel Universe forward over a number of years”: Who was Marvel’s fourth most prominent superstar creator of the 1980s, following Chris Claremont, Frank Miller and John Byrne? Marc Mason makes the case that it was Al Milgrom.

What’s that? Mephisto Vs. Premiere Hardcover doesn’t deal with Marvel’s most diabolical character fighting their Premiere Hardcover format? Instead it collects a four-issue miniseries from the 1980s by Al Milgrom and John Buscema called Mephisto Vs., in which the marriage-eating villain fights the Avengers, the FF, and two X-Men teams?

Oh.

Well, that will probably be a better fight then. It’s a $20, 144-page collection.

What else is due out in shops this week? You won’t have to sell your soul and/or marriage and twenty years worth of continuity to find out. Just join me after the jump.

(more…)