Farel Dalrymple’s art is art you can love. It takes you to a good place where artist rankings and hipster factors don’t matter. This is just plain good stuff. I had a chance to chat with Farel at the Stumptown Comics Festival and this interview resulted. The man sure gets around and despite any modesty on his part, he is a drawing machine. Check out his LiveJournal. It says it all.

Farel Dalrymple is well known for his on-going comics series, Pop Gun War, published by Dark Horse Comics. He is the founder of the influential Meathaus collective and the winner of a Xeric Grant and Society of Illustrators Gold Medal. This year he is nominated for a couple of Eisner Awards for his collaboration with writer Johnathan Lethem on the Marvel Comics 10-issue series, Omega the Unknown. Currently, he is at work on The Wrenchies. This 250-page, full-color comic is a postapocalyptic fantasy that takes place 3,500 years in the future, featuring a group of street children called “The Bolts.” It is due out in 2010 by First Second. (more…)

A Sherlock Holmes mystery is solved. There’s been a lot of buzz over a reported graphic novel attached to the upcoming Sherlock Holmes movie starring Robert Downey Jr. As reported by USA Today, May 6, 2009, one of the movie’s producers,  Lionel Wigram, wrote a graphic novel and had an artist depict Sherlock Holmes in comic book form in order to help sell the project to studios.

The artist hired to do the pitch is John Watkiss and it wasn’t a graphic novel but a series of illustrations. An artist representative described the process: “As I understand it, John was contacted a few years back by Lionel Wigram in order to put together a similar series of pitch images for the Sherlock Holmes film, based on Wigram’s story treatment at that point. What followed were 14 amazing, large-scale black-and-white illustrations, which Wigram brought to a variety of production companies and Warner Brothers. Wigram credits John’s images as being the leverage that ultimately resulted in the film getting made.”

John Watkiss is a notable artist with a long history of doing film work, having worked extensively on Disney’s Tarzan, Atlantis, and Treasure Planet, storyboarding the entirety of Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow and an impressive series of paintings for a proposed trilogy of films of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman.

And there you have it, the image that turned the tide in favor of Sherlock Holmes with studio executives: the sword and nunchuck toting Holmes. And, along with that, another concept shot in the boxing ring. It certainly looks like the start of a successful graphic novel. I definitely support the idea of turning these illustrations into a book.

It has become a sought after book but the graphic novel which the upcoming Robert Downey Jr. Sherlock Holmes movie is based upon remains unpublished. Written by the film’s producer, Lionel Wigram, to help promote the viability of the project, it seems that this book was never meant for the general public. This is not to be mistaken with the current Sherlock Holmes comics series by Dynamite Entertainment. And, of course, this movie is not to be mistaken with the Sacha Cohen/Will Ferrell version.

And the money shot in the comic book that wowed investors? Sherlock looking all bed head and wielding a sword in one hand and a whip in the other. 

Director/writer Guy Ritchie, Robert Downey, Jr. and the rest of the cast, which includes Jude Law, Rachel McAdams and Mark Strong, all appear to be on top of their game. There’s been a lot of buzz about this one and that will just keep humming along with the first trailer for the general public to be released to accompany Terminator Salvation when it opens May 21. 

Set for a Christmas Day release, this movie promises to give the viewer a rough and tumble Sherlock Holmes more true to the original than what the casual observer may imagine. You’ll see a Sherlock Holmes who is handy with a sword and knows his boxing and martial arts. You’ll also get a pretty sweet mystery involving a sinister occultist. And lots of manly swagger between Holmes and his buff compatriot, Watson. These two mean to kick some ass.   

USA Today provides a feature story about the latest developments. Go to their site to see more photos. Now, the question remains, who will win over audiences and go on to become a franchise? Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes or the Sacha Cohen/Will Ferrell flick? Well, the one with Cohen and Ferrell sounds like it’s going to be really offbeat much like the one with Gene Wilder in the ’70s, The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother. It might be good but it will be too offbeat and a franchise like this can’t pull any punches. You want badass action for something like this, right? And, if you have to take sides, how can you pass up the guy who made Iron Man hip?  

Also, if you’re in a position to do so, someone snag me a copy of the Lionel Wigram Sherlock Holmes graphic novel. Then again, who knows, it may not have been intended to be more than a glorified storyboard but it could end being published and available everywhere for the holidays.

I Still Live: Biography of a Spiritualist

Written and Drawn by Annie Murphy

60 pages, 7 1/4″ x 8 3/4″, go online for price

ghostcatcomics.com

One of the highlights of my recent trip to the Stumptown Comics Festival was a chance to meet Annie Murphy, creator of the graphic novella, I Still Live: Biography of a Spiritualist. She has an easygoing quality about her that is reflected in her book where she smoothly maps out for us a world we don’t see enough of in comics.

As a prominent leader of the Spiritualist Movement, Ascha Sprague was one of the best known women in America in the 1850s. Her headstone defiantly reads, “I Still Live.” Taking inspiration from this, Annie Murphy has created a book named by The Comics Journal as one of the top ten minicomics of 2008.  It has gone on to win a Xeric Grant.  

Murphy draws wonderfully spooky landscapes and portraits of 19th Century Vermont which she mingles with the writings of Sprague. We see Sprague emerge from a near death illness, believing she was revived by spirits, and evolve from a medium of spirits to a trail blazer in the earliest stages of the women’s movement.

Sprague lived during a time of tremendous tumult in America and the world. Murphy recounts the upheaval, be it the Communist Manifesto, the genocide of Native Americans in the name of Manifest Destiny or the surge in popularity with communicating with the spirit world. She does this with haunting and distinctive style as she pieces together history.  The story flows as it makes use of carefully placed washes, black space and reverse lettering with a preference for full page or two page scenes instead of panels.

And always she returns to the words of Sprague that, in turn, help guide Murphy on her own life’s journey. It all comes down to trusting oneself and the spirits: “Begin as though thou hadst a work before thee that must be done. Begin as though thou lovedst that work. And time shall tell the tale. Begin with us as friends, assistants, guides to help thy way. The nearer thou dost come to us, the nearer we shall come to thee.” 

Murphy manages to balance all the parts to this book: biography, history and autobiography. We see Murphy at the start as she first discovers Sprague one day in October which she describes as, “a time when the veil between the worlds is thin.” At the end, Murphy is ready to reveal a little more of herself as we see her struggle with her own purpose in life. Throughout, we feel the urgency of author and subject as both seem to meld into one force of energy. 

I Still Live is anything but predictable as it is told with a gentle but determined voice. It is a great example of how wide open the potential for the comics medium truly is.

Interview with Julia Wertz, creator of I Saw You…Comics Inspired by Real Life Missed Connections. Who doesn’t love missed connections? Even better in comics form.

Girl-Wonder.org has a new blogger at 1000 Miles Outside Metropolis, and her first post is on the perils of reading indie comics in a lousy economy. Check it out.

Comicsgirl is actually looking forward to Marvel Divas. And she makes me rethink my snark. (h/t When Fangirls Attack)

Daryl Cagle’s Arlen Specter cartoon made me laugh, and I love when he posts his progress on a cartoon.

Suzie at Echidne of the Snakes takes on Dollhouse-as-boyfriend-test. Take note, gentlemen.

I totally love when political bloggers blog about comics. Attackerman on Wolverine.

Finally, don’t forget G. Willow Wilson’s May Day AIRlift project. Buy comics, help a good cause. You can indeed still participate buying from your local retailer…

We’re all trying to make our comics dollars go farther in the recession, with prices going up and all. G. Willow Wilson has an offer to give you even more incentive to spend your money on her Eisner-nominated comic, Air.

From her blog:

Whacky as it is, AIR is a book with a message. So, for every copy of AIR bought this May Day (Friday, May 1st), I will donate $1 to the Koru Foundation, a UK-based charity that helps impoverished communites the world over develop low-cost renewable energy projects, bringing climate-friendly electricity to villages without a single light bulb. Ironically, the people most threatened by climate change are those who had the least responsibility in creating it. I saw this firsthand in North Africa, where desertification is already destroying ancient farming cultures. By acting now, we can help ease the burden on our planet while bringing power to communities without it.

Here is what to do:

1. On Friday, May 1st, click here to purchase a copy of AIR: Letters from Lost Countries from Amazon.com
2. Email info [at] gwillowwilson [dot] com. Write ‘May Day AIRlift’ in the Subject line. In the body of the email, copy and paste your Amazon order number. Do NOT include any financial information, your address, or anything else! Just the order number.
3. Sit back, wait for your book to arrive, and feel good about having done something for our planet.

She doesn’t mention buying from your local comic shop, but since we all also want to support our local businesses while money is tight, maybe there’s a way you can figure out to do that too?

Either way, if you’ve been waiting for a push to try Air, this is a good one. I personally highly recommend the book–it keeps getting better with each issue, and the first trade will certainly be worth your money no matter how you spend it. But why not do it when it’ll do something good for the world as well?

This afternoon, I was chatting with a friend about her tattoo appointment. She’s planning on getting the Nautilus as drawn by Kevin O’Neill across her ribs (yay for comic book tattoos). I realized that I have yet to write my own review of the latest League of Extraordinary Gentlemen graphic novel, Century 1910. You already have Troy’s, but I have some other comments.

This League is a tease more than a complete story–it introduces new characters, heroes (Orlando, Raffles, and Carnacki, as well as “Jenny Diver,” the daughter of Captain Nemo) and villains, and builds to a surprising climax, but it leaves you panting for the next volume, rather the way the first one did.

The character of Janni/Jenny is really the backbone of the story, though she has little to say. Her story relies instead on O’Neill’s storytelling skills, and they’re certainly up to the challenge. Janni flees her father but cannot escape his legacy. The story is familiar, except normally it’s a son trying to avoid having to live up to his father, rather than a daughter fed up at her father’s wishes for a male successor. Janni’s final turn comes not really as a surprise, but still a thrill. For her, embracing her father’s legacy is less a surrender than a realization that she can do that on her own terms.

Orlando, Raffles and Carnacki may not be as flashy as Hyde and the Invisible Man, but they provide different opportunites for Alan Moore. This is less a book about monsters, as the first two were, and more a book about literature. As Troy notes, it reaches out into music and magic as well. But it was always telling that the main character, the one responsible for pulling together the original League, was a human woman who survived the attack of a monster rather than the monster himself.

Mina Murray remains stiff and proper on the outside, but apparently a bit more liberated in the bedroom. She is, as always, the brains and the wrangler of the operation, the one everyone gripes about and the one they can’t function without. And at the end of this book, while all the other characters are fighting, Mina’s best weapon is still her self-possession, her calm confidence while everything else is falling apart.

The book may be titled “League of Extraordinary Gentlemen,” and my friend may have referred to the first League as the manliest book on her shelf, but for me, the best parts of this new League are the extraordinary women. I can’t wait for more.

It is a painfully embarrassing moment and we can’t help but watch. She looks like she’s forced to take part in some initiation but it’s by her own design. Sara Goodman, age twelve or so, only wanted to dress up and look like Aunt Jemima for Halloween and join all the other kids in costume at school. That’s the premise for “Cakewalk,” a recent comic drawn by Nate Powell and written by Rachel Borman, which is full of the sweet melancholy of the best of Nate Powell’s work. His graphic novel, Swallow Me Whole, is up for three Eisner Award nominations (Best New Graphic Album, Best Writer/Artitst, Best Lettering) and shares the distinction of being the only graphic novel since Maus to be nominated for a Los Angeles Times Book Prize (Young Adult).  That presentation ceremony will be held on April 24.

Swallow Me Whole is a remarkable book which brings together a vision made up of exceptional outsiders just one step away from running away into the night. With his latest book, Powell has reached a landmark in his comics career. I was able to catch up with him at Emerald City ComiCon in Seattle and then conduct a subsequent interview. Nate was very thoughtful and generous with his time and it made for a great interview.

Blog@Newsarama: There’s a certain beauty in going back to the same story and telling it again. As a cartoonist myself, I suspect that earlier in your career you were finding your way as you retold a story and now it can be a deliberate act, the world of Nate Powell. What do you think?

Nate Powell: I wouldn’t say it’s deliberate by any means, but it is certainly unavoidable. Looking back at older comics of mine, it’s frustrating to realize that I had no concept of doing a story longer than 32 pages, even though I had a lot more to say. Those stories, especially “Conditions” and the main stories from Walkie Talkie, are confusing and cluttered because I tried to cram a whole world, or a year’s worth of thoughts into 32 pages. A few months ago I momentarily got excited to redraw It Disappears and “Autopilot” as 100 page stories, now that I understand a little more about patience and breathing room. Themes are constantly revisited, as are different incarnations of certain characters and activities. Most of that is due to unsuccessful attempts to communicate something in the stories, not that anybody can ever get it just right. I do feel that I worked a lot of themes out of my system in Swallow Me Whole, and it’s really exciting to work on new stories that are free of some older semiotic and thematic elements.

Blog@: The phrase, “swallow me whole,” keeps appearing in your work. How significant is it? Is there a story behind how it came about for you?

NP: Strangely, I had no memory of putting that phrase in so many stories until I stumbled across them over this winter. It’s not personally significant, but in each of the three appearances it seemed to convey meaning in an appropriate way. It’s pretty easy for me to feel overwhelmed by an anxious, agoraphobic terror, and the imagery of being enveloped or swallowed by something does seem reassuring—even when the swallowing isn’t protective. Like in older Dracula movies, when he conceals his dirty work with a wave of his cloak over the body of his passed-out victim: the concept of Dracula’s power is so alluring and effective precisely because people secretly want to feel the security that comes with placing their sovereignty in the hands of something or someone else, even when that means the end of their agency, freedom, or dignity. Re-read Dracula—you get all dizzy and swoony during those moments of vampiric power, and you really sense the sexual allure of safety and domination represented by the vampire. The “swallowing whole” theme is both a refuge and a poison. In It Disappears, the “swallowing” is in reference to the way that snow, frost, rain, or the dark of night covers everything, slows everything during its temporary reign on earth, covering roads and markers of our civilization, reminding us how fleeting that civilization really is.

Blog@: How did your ten years working as a support person for people with developmental disabilities affect your work? I held a similar job for about two years and found it rewarding but draining and didn’t get much art done. It’s an all encompassing world, isn’t it?

NP: Well, it’s simply unavoidable that any line of work done over the course of a decade will deeply affect they way you perceive the world and the art that comes forth from it. For a few years, it hit me that about seventy percent of all the people I hung out with had disabilities of some kind. I grew up with developmental disabilities in my family, and until recently took for granted the special lens through which I navigated my world. Yes, the work is definitely rewarding but draining. There’s a constant turnover of people who work as direct care staff, and awareness of this high rate of turnover is one of the main reasons I’ve tried to stick with it for as long as I can. At certain times I’ve felt that working for folks with disabilities is something that is as important to me, or more important, than drawing comics. I know that, if I’m never able to make a living drawing comics, I’d be fine with direct care work as a primary means of employment. It is so all-encompassing, however, that you can get completely burned-out without ever realizing it, unless you practically force yourself to take regular breaks, trips, tours, and take special time off to focus on other parts of life. Human services work requires a predisposition to be dedicated and self-denying, but those same qualities are what provide for inevitable self-destruction if you’re not careful.

Blog@: You’re in a band and manage a punk record label. How does the punk ethos play a role in your comics?

NP: Fundamentally, I’d say I’ve been so used to the “do-it-yourself” ethic that it’s been difficult to ease up on wanting a hand in every aspect of the production, publication, promotion, and distribution of comics. Not that it’s an issue of trust—most of my publishers have been amazing—but that kind of direct involvement, and that degree of being in-the-know about the stages of production, are difficult to part with. I have absolute trust in the wonderful folks at Top Shelf, and working with them has helped me realize that some folks are way better at those aspects of production than I am. And on the other hand, working with Soft Skull, which required me to personally distribute hundreds and hundreds of copies of my own books, underlined why one can’t assume that a publisher is gonna be competent or responsible just because they can put up the capital to print something.

DIY punk and its culture have also greatly informed my expectations of any scene or community. When I was younger, I believed this quality of support and connectedness was unique to punk, and it was so exciting to see that the comics community is full of the same support, sacrifice, social networking, enthusiasm, and ingenuity. I feel at home with both, and have high expectations of both.

Blog@: From your collected works, Sounds of Your Name, there’s quite a variety of work that’s experimental. I am guessing a lot of the early stuff came out of your studies at the School of Visual Arts in New York City . You’ve said that NYC wasn’t your scene. But surely you enjoyed the tempo on some level. Could you describe what it was like for you as a student back then? And wasn’t it quite a leap of faith to go to SVA in the first place?

NP: Well, I liked living in New York a lot—it was Providence , Rhode Island that crushed my soul. I went to a year of college in DC, and realized I had no idea why I was there. I’d been drawing and publishing comics for years by that point but had only started to take it seriously again. I spent the next three years at SVA in New York , and was really excited to be there, surrounded by lots of folks who were as excited as I was, having teachers whose comics I’d grown up reading. Most of my time was spent strictly on comics; I’d return home to Arkansas during every school break in order to tour and record with my bands, or make new episodes of our DIY sketch comedy show. It was a very dualistic existence at that point, but seemed perfectly natural. I felt at home in New York , but honestly didn’t put much energy into making it my home. When I finished school, I had already booked three tours for the coming months, and had new stories to work on—at twenty-two, it was really easy to adventure onward and leave school in the dust.

Blog@: Can you discuss how you came to develop the characters in Swallow Me Whole? I see hints of Ruth in your earlier comics, right?

NP: Well, the core narrative of the book came to me in a dream I had in October 2001. Perry and the parents were fully formed at that point, and Ruth was a hybrid of herself and a giant, waxy Keroppi-style frog child in the dream. I was also cooking up a comic called “Lightness” at the time, and Ruth was the protagonist in that book. Within a year or so, the two books merged seamlessly and some of the missing narrative components turned out to be related. For the most part, Ruth’s appearance and lots of her personality are patterned after my most beloved best friend. Perry is physically based on another of my best friends. Memaw is very similar to my grandmother, and a lot of her delusional scenes are lifted directly from the last few months of her life, as her cancer treatment began to take a neurological toll. It’s true that there are some similarities between Ruth and the little girl in “Autopilot”, a story I did in 2000 for Walkie Talkie, but those similarities are more due to the revisitation of themes and devices we discussed earlier.

Blog@: Considering that both Ruth and Perry are struggling with schizophrenia in Swallow Me Whole, they still manage to achieve rites of passage for high school: finding a job and someone to date. In that respect, they’re doing better than a lot of kids. Was it important to have them as fully integrated into society as possible?

NP: Certainly. One of the things I was most interested in working with in the book was the reader’s changing expectations of each character, based on their life circumstances. A lot of Ruth’s experiences are ambiguous in that they could represent her subjective experience as a teenager with schizophrenic or obsessive-compulsive issues, and they could also convey the subjective experience of just being a teenager. Ruth struggles a lot with being heard and respected, with finding a little dignity and sovereignty in her life; this issue is magnified once she has the stigma of someone with a mental disorder. After the “Baby Ruth” candy bar incident, the school faculty as well as her parents contextualize the situation through her disorder while she vies for people to listen to the reasons which might push anyone to act in such a heavy-handed way.

Whether someone grows up with or without diagnosed disorders or disabilities, it’s hard enough feeling like shit as a teenager, especially as one acutely dissatisfied with the world around you. I’ve never intended Swallow Me Whole to be a book “about disorders” or anything, as it has as much to do with those issues of sovereignty as love, death, disaffection, loss, and idealism.

Blog@: How important was it to set this book in a small town setting and to comment on it? You get an opportunity to call out some small town bad behavior.

NP: The narrative takes place in a community similar to the one in which I grew up, which is a metropolitan area of a couple hundred thousand people. I contest the notion that racism, ignorance, boredom, and regionalism are behaviors indicative of a smaller town. Growing up in the Little Rock area, I certainly considered smaller towns to be more backwards than my town, but it wasn’t until leaving home that I realized this isn’t necessarily the case. In fact, I think that the social frameworks of racism, sexism, homophobia, and xenophobia thrive from the misconception that these are small-town issues that don’t exist in larger areas. My next book Any Empire focuses on this issue, specifically how Midwestern racism and paranoia thrives from the notion that racism is a Southern problem. My new home of Indiana is far more fucked-up and backwards than Arkansas , and that’s one of the main reasons—a lot of white folks here feel like they have a free pass to be racist assholes because they’re free from mainstream blame in their sheltered, homogenous Indiana environment.

Blog@: Clearly, Swallow Me Whole is an achievement in your growing theme of wonderment. Do you see yourself as focusing on this sense of wonder?

NP: I do feel that my comics focus on the sense of wonder at a universe much larger, more powerful, and mysterious than we can grasp. I find a little peace and ease in realizing how small human beings are, and try to balance that with a focus on the concrete issues with which we struggle. I guess that would be wonder. A lot of that narrative sense is informed by heavy metal of the 1970’s and 1980’s, in which lots of lyrics focus on a narrator expressing disbelief at a fantastic event occurring before his very eyes. Bruce Dickinson does a fine, fine job at conveying that sense of wonder and disbelief.

Blog@: Is there anything you’d like to say to young people out there who are not sure about where their lives are heading?

NP: It’s all true—no one is sure where their lives are headed, and death is the inevitable result. There is no objective meaning or order. Find your own. (I’m not trying to be a downer, but people always try to cram structural frameworks down people’s throats. I mean what I say—make your own meaning, your own noise.)

Blog@: There’s your comments in your comcis about how the X-Men provided you with a social conscience. Anything you’d like to add to that? Maybe some other influences in books, movies, your life? I would think someone like yourself, drawing comics since you were four, is really tuned into the world.

NP: The two biggest (and earliest) political influences in my life were X-Men and speed/thrash metal. I got into both in mid-1990 right as I turned twelve, and both finally seemed to rip open dialogues about war, nationalism, intolerance, alienation, and idealism. Specifically, the 1985-87 Claremont X-books, and the band Anthrax. Growing up with hair bands and G.I.Joe comics, I really didn’t have much of a concept of art and music even having any real content. It blew my mind that folks were making songs and stories about being a misfit, about disaffection, about struggling against the dominant schema. One reason that punk was a natural step was thanks to Anthrax and Chris Claremont.

Also of great importance was growing up with my brother Peyton, who’s six years older than me and has high-functioning autism and a few learning disabilities. It wasn’t until I was 20 or so that I realized I grew up with a unique and specific view of families, communication, affection, and child development. That’s one of my prime motivators for working with folks who have disabilities, and for trying to be more aware of both my social privileges and perspectives I take for granted.

Blog@: Lastly, we all look forward to your next book with Top Shelf, Any Empire. Any other comments about that or working with Top Shelf in general?

NP: I couldn’t imagine working with a better, more approachable, supportive bunch than the Top Shelf folks. Any Empire falls somewhere between being a graphic novel and a comics essay. It’s largely about living in a culture of distrust, and about how much energy goes into keeping people afraid of each other. About how, when, and why we might work to break free from that framework. Specifically, it’s how paranoia, racism, and distrust serve the interests of a state, and how any state’s prime directive is its own survival, even in defiance of a democratic majority. The personal elements intertwined have to do with being a military-obsessed kid, moving from home to home, growing awareness of being a misfit, looking for love and peace, and trying to quiet those paranoid and self-destructive voices within myself.

The book will hopefully be out at the end of 2010. I’m also simultaneously drawing a graphic novel called The Silence of Our Friends, written by Mark Long and Jim Demonakos, and hopefully published by First Second Books (though we have no solid publisher at present). That’ll hopefully be released at the end of 2010 as well.

Image’s Comic Book Tattoo, a 500-page beauty of a collection of comics inspired by Tori Amos songs, was nominated for Best Publication Design at this year’s Eisners (as well as Best Anthology), and designer Tom Muller took some time out to explain just how the design for the book took shape, complete with some images from the process.

Click to read on…

(more…)

This Friday, April 17, Miss Lasko-Gross will be signing her new graphic novel, A Mess of Everything at the Rocketship store in Brooklyn. Kevin Colden will also be there, signing his Eisner-award nominated graphic novel, Fishtown.

Rocketship is located at 208 Smith Street, Brooklyn, NY, and their parties are always excellent. Go forth and check it out.

Apparently one of the casualties of what’s being called #amazonfail, the delisting of suddenly so-called “adult” books from Amazon Rankings, is Alison Bechdel’s award-winning graphic novel Fun Home.

But don’t worry. You can still get Mein Kampf and porn.

(thanks to Laura Hudson for the h/t)

*Edit: Fun Home appears to have its sales rank now. Other books still missing them. Will keep an eye on this.

Update: According to various sources, Amazon has reported that the sales rank dropping was caused by a “glitch” that is being/has been fixed.

So the odds on seeing any of my favorite Gaiman works on the big screen have always seemed slim. But I love playing the casting game anyway. Today Splash Page noted that actress Emmy Rossum is interested in playing Death (among other roles), and suddenly I could see it.

What do you think?

Love is a Peculiar Type of Thing

by Box Brown

96 pages, 5 1/2″ x 8 1/2″, $10 US

Pre-order: Available in DIAMOND Previews starting April 1st 

On Sale: June 3rd, 2009 

http://www.boxbrown.com/book/

I’ve read the Xeric Grant winning Love is a Peculiar Type of Thing and, just as the last page suggests, I went to the Box Brown website to read his webcomic, Bellen!, because I ended up wanting more. Yeah, I’m hooked.

Much like the panels melt away in the comic strips of Tom Hart and you see his main character, Hutch Owen, come to life, the same can be said for Box Brown’s Ben and Ellen. That is a high compliment indeed, if you know Tom Hart’s work. Even though Brown is still new to the comics game, I feel confident that he has a good handle on things. Like the work of Tom Hart or James Kochalka, to name just a couple of artists working in a similar vein, Brown manages to find new ways for the venerable comic strip to spring to life. His comics do not rely on formulas. You are more likely not to find anything resembling a punch line. Observations are top priority and characters get to have their say until they’re good and ready to wind themselves down.

Prose and art is elegantly spare. We’re down to the essentials like a best friend sitting down for a beer. Maybe an attempt will be made to grapple with the big questions for awhile before everything mellows out and we all just chill. Love is a peculiar type of thing. Yeah man, it is.

Box Brown’s alter ego, Ben, is a simply drawn young man trying to make sense of the world. Lucky for him, he has found his soul mate, Ellen. So, time together is precious and we see them revel in their romance. Cute stuff to be sure but not too cute since neither Ben nor Ellen are especially cute by themselves, at least not in an annoying way. The chemistry between them works and makes for engaging storytelling.

As an example, let’s look at one of the stories, “Your Sins Will Be As White As Snow.” This tale runs for nine pages and is ambitious in its scope. Ben is in the park when he meets up with an old man sitting at a park bench. Like an innocent child, Ben accepts from the man a little pamphlet which turns out to be one of those infamous comic book religious tracts by Jack Chick. As if empowered by an epiphany, Ben reports back to Ellen about his discovery. Ellen, who clearly knows about Jack Chick comics, tries to provide a voice of reason. Ultimately, obsession wins over reason as Ben must answer for his sins in hell to the one and only, Jack Chick.

Comic strips are a very unique art form and everything needs to be in place, the characters, the timing, the story, to maintain that delicate balance that allows the panels to melt away and carry you off. It looks like Box Brown is on his way.

And for more on Box Brown, read on my friend, to my interview with him here at Newsarama.

Four years ago, Box Brown says he was a fan of comics without any background in art. He started drawing comics and posting them to his LiveJournal where the webcomic, Bellen!, emerged. When Top Shelf 2.0 launched last year, Brown was asked to contribute some longer comics. The first was a six page comic called “Love is a Peculiar Type of Thing.” When Brown applied for a Xeric Grant, he had completed about 30 pages of a proposed 96 page collection, Love is a Peculiar Type of Thing. 

Now, he’s a Xeric Grant winner with a book to sell. He’s also set to have his comic strip, Bellen! picked up by United Feature Syndicate’s comics.com. I had an opportunity to interview Box Brown and ask him about his good fortune and his thoughts on comics.

Just to give a little context, as all of us swimming in comics are aware, Diamond is the one big distributor of comics which handles all the big publishers as well as smaller publishers. What’s happened is that, due to the recession, Diamond needs to cut back on what books it will distribute and so has set a pretty high benchmark on pre-orders from comics retailers. If a comic doesn’t get enough pre-orders, it won’t be distributed. Not a problem for big publishers. A problem for everyone else. You can get the full story on Diamond from Heidi MacDonald over at The Beat.

A ray of hope for the small publishers is that Diamond has a history of willing to bend the rules. One glowing example is that it is willing to give special consideration to Xeric Grant winners and that’s where Box Brown comes in. His book is in the April Edition of Diamond’s Previews, the listing that comics retailers use to determine what to order. His book is due out in stores in June.  Ask for it at your local comic shop. Every little bit helps.
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It is no secret around here that I love Ryan Kelly’s art. I also love comics with musical themes and riffs off of pop music (hence my repeated shilling for Phonogram and Comic Book Tattoo). So when I read about the Side B anthology at Kelly’s blog, I fell in love. I must have this. You must have this too.

From the website:

Music touches our lives every day. It is an influential and defining part of all generations and cultures. We have compiled an anthology full of stories about the influence that music can have on life - be it the life of the artist as and individual or on the creative process.

Over 200 pages of lost lovers, rocking out, spirit guides, ghosts, and dinosaurs - it’s like an action adventure comic for the music lover in all of us. (Edited by Rachel Dukes, published by Poseur Ink.)

And so. I must have it. I also appreciate anthologies chock-full of people I’m unfamiliar with, dotted with names I know and love. They give me an opportunity to find so many new and wonderful artists and writers whose work I can follow for years, and yet guarantee that they’ll be worth my hard-earned dollars.

The theme here, though, would probably make me want it no matter whose work was in it.

They have preview images at the site. Go check it out. Then call your local shop and pre-order.

Because it’s Thursday, I’m swamped, but the rest of the blogosphere hasn’t been slacking.

Dollhouse: I’m not gonna lie, I skimmed this review because I haven’t watched this episode yet. However, some of the insights noted struck me, so I’m linking here. Also because I mean to write more about Dollhouse, which I think is steadily improving–and growing more challenging–with each episode.(h/t When Fangirls Attack)

The Blockbuster Mentality and the Invisible Audience: about how the magical male 18-35 demographic became so in Hollywood, with interesting possible extrapolations to the comics industry.

Joelle Jones, whose art I fell in love with on Token, links to a preview of her new Oni Press graphic novel with Jamie S. Rich, You Have Killed Me. Her art is worth it on its own, but the preview looks pretty fabulous.

Jezebel notes that Good Morning America has finally resolved the question: “Are There Vampires Among Us?” And in related news, Gawker assures us that Boston Latin High School is not, in fact, crawling with vampires. (Too bad, as I’m heading to Boston this weekend).

Daryl Cagle has a North Korea-related political cartoon that made him laugh. It made me laugh, too.

Finally, Splash Page posted this story about an autistic boy saved from a ledge by a man in a Spider-Man costume, which reminded me that Rachel Maddow actually had video on the other night. So here’s the video. Enjoy!

Robert Crumb reportedly has inked the last page to his interpretation of The Book of Genesis due out by W. W. Norton this fall and going by the title, Robert Crumb’s Book of Genesis. In fact, he’s completed every last bit: the cover, the intro, the commentary and a map that begins the 201 page book. We’ve gotten only a few glimpses of this project. The best is in connection with Phoebe Glockner’s photo comic report from the Angoulême comics festival in 2005 from which the above photo is taken.

The following quote from Crumb is well worth looking back on too. Art critic Robert Hughes interviewed Crumb for Time in 2005 and, after admiring Crumb for having the same distaste for Andy Warhol, gets the master to focus in what it was like to see God, so to speak:

HUGHES: Is God going to look like Mr. Natural?

CRUMB: Nah. He has a white beard but he actually ended up looking more like my father. He has a very masculine face like my father. My problem was, how am I going to draw God? Should I just draw him as a light in the sky that has dialogue balloons coming out from it? Then I had this dream. God came to me in this dream, only for a split second, but I saw very clearly what he looked like. And I thought, ok, there it is, I’ve got God.

I know I’m behind the times on this one, really. It’s been recommended to me over and over by comics folks and even those who don’t normally read sequential art. But I finally got around to reading Blankets this week, mostly on Monday when I was sick in bed all day, and it was just as beautiful as promised.

Thompson’s story is billed as a first-love tale, and it is, but it’s more importantly a coming-of-age story, a story of a young man finding love and freedom amid the loss of his faith and family.

I wanted a happy ending, a satisfying ending, but real life doesn’t come with those. Instead, Thompson has woven the threads of his religious upbringing, his relationship with his brother, and his first relationship into the what makes his protagonist the man that he is.

The gradual revelations of the narrator’s own unreliability and failings, scattered throughout the horrors of childhood, the teenage years, and the pains of love and loss, make this far more complex than the usual coming-of-age story.  Thompson is unflinching, laying bare all the messiest, scariest, most embarrassing moments and by doing so both conveying their power and stripping them of it.

Most readers won’t know what it was like to grow up in an evangelical family like the one in Blankets, but the fear and discomfort of growing up and realizing that you don’t fit into your family anymore is universal. And the love story is poignant and beautiful, as comforting as the titular blankets and yet still confusing, painful, and even lonely.

Thompson’s art is simple, but magical, showing us the full inner life of a dreamy teenage boy and bringing us to all the heavens and hells of adolescence.

The best first love stories make you remember what it felt like to have your heart touched for the first time, and this book does that and then some.

Why haven’t YOU read it yet?

I don’t know if you’re familiar with Molly Crabapple, but I’ve blogged about her several times here at Blog@. Clearly, in other words, I think you should know her and her work. The creator of Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School, Crabapple creates visions of a gorgeous and slightly twisted past New York, with vaudeville flavors and a steampunk edge.

And now her first graphic novel is coming your way. You know you want it. I want it. I’ve been following her webcomic, Backstage, at Act-I-Vate, but I want a piece of her that I can carry in my purse for all those moments when I need something sweet and sharp, smart and sexy.

Keep an eye out here for more.

Slow Storm

Written and Drawn by Danica Novgorodoff

First Second, 176 pages, $17.95 US

Slow Storm is the story of a modest young woman yearning for more from life. From this starting point, Danica Novgorodoff goes about fashioning a graphic novel that reads like an expression of a dream, complete with uneven pacing and leaps in dramatic storytelling, which is actually what gives it its vitality.

As the dark skies grow more menacing over the Kentucky hinterland during tornado season, Ursa Crain, a female firefighter, finds herself in a fire truck with a crew answering a call. Just prior to this scene, we’ve been introduced to the struggles of Rafi, a Mexican illegal immigrant. As if through telepathy, Ursa begins to muse and speak lyrically about what it would be like to have to leave behind your country and all that you knew. Completely out of left field, she goes on: “Do you think then - if you couldn’t ever see this countryside again - then would you remember driving through Oldham County like it was some kinda…like a…beautiful fantasy?” Pretty trippy stuff. Well, it works fine with me. Welcome to Danica Novgorodoff’s world and feel free to dream along.

I say read this more like you would poetry or something on the unconventional side. There are fantasies within fantasies to be found here. One of the most interesting is when it appears that Ursa has intentionally trapped her brother in a raging fire and assured his death. This is all played out in a very deadpan way leaving you to wonder what exactly happened.

Both Ursa and Rafi, from the first time they meet to their only moment of intimacy when their hands touch, remain totally deadpan cool. No one ever expresses anything in this book with just a facial expression. That’s not what you need in a book like Slow Storm.