Following the success of the “Graven Images: Religion in Comic Books and Graphic Novels” academic conference, Boston University doctoral student, comics scholar and comic creator A. David Lewis has been granted a Library Acquisitions Award to create a new “Religion and Graphica” collection at the university.

The collection, which will contain works like MAUS, Persepolis, and Sandman (and one assumes, Preacher and Testament, two of my personal favorites), will be part of the School of Theology Library (OK, maybe Preacher won’t be appropriate).

According to the press release, this will be the first library collection devoted exclusively to the study of comics, and it comes in a religion department. This might seem odd, though I’ve had conversations before about the similarity of comics to religion, particularly superhero comics. They’re fables, archetypal stories that give us advice on how to live our lives, as well as part of a weekly routine–the Wednesday trip to the comic shop. Comics are reassuring, and fans often are very resistant to change in their books or their routine.

Of course, there are many brilliant graphic works that deal very directly with religion. Which ones would you suggest the library, which has already started purchasing, not miss?

Scarlett Takes Manhattan

by Molly Crabapple and John Leavitt

48 pages, trade paperback, $12.95 US

Published by Fugu Press

Due out in July, Pre-Order thru Amazon

Sweet and naughty, Scarlett Takes Manhattan is an assured sexy romp through Victorian New York with the beautiful Scarlett on a journey of self-discovery. Warren Ellis calls it, “disgustingly wonderful.” Coming from the creator of some pretty sexy stuff, like Anna Mercury, you have to wonder what he means. Well, this book is absolutely erotically charged and delightfully so. Molly Crabapple has a deep love for her subject matter, vaudeville, erotica, comics, and it shows. Her evolution as an artist, with her illustration work and with Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School Cabaret, leads her to a successful first graphic novel. 

Two glasses of cocktails with cherries looking very much like boobs on page one prepares us for what lies ahead. We next find Scarlett in bed with her lover as she tells the story of her life. It all begins quite innocently enough as a girl from the slums, Shifra Helfgott, eighteen and sexually curious, goes to the city to see a circus parade. She witnesses two elephants copulating which foretells her life’s path mixing sex with show business.

This is the 1880s and so opportunities are slim to none for Shifra, poor, uneducated and orphaned. As a charwoman, she learns that providing sexual favors can help ease her life. It’s then that she crosses paths with theatre impressario, Daniel D’Lovely. She discovers her sexual appeal on stage and Daniel’s secret once they become lovers. In time, she realizes she’ll need to develop a talent in order to remain relevant in vaudeville. This leads to her becoming the star fire-eater, Scarlett O’Herring. 

Shifra’s transformation into Scarlett is handled with sensitivity. As the character gains more control over her life, she becomes more complex as well as more conniving. She reahes a point where she must choose between her friends and betraying them for even greater power and wealth. Here is where the story tackles a little politics and gives us a taste of the corruption of the times with a hint at how little has changed. We also further explore the unique relationship between Daniel and Scarlett and whether they can remain loyal to each other no matter how their lives evolve.

In the end, Scarlett Takes Manhattan maintains a nice head of steam. Nothing too heavy here. What is remarkable is Molly Crabapple’s approach. Considering how sex is portrayed in comics, let alone all media, it is refreshing how Crabapple maintains our interest by celebrating sex rather than exploiting it. What else would you expect from a cartoonist who appreciates toasted marshmallow milkshakes?

Maybe his illustration for the cover to The Lord of the Flies is permanently etched in your memory. Or perhaps you know him from his work with Neil Gaiman in The Sandman: Endless Nights. Barron Storey has been around for quite awhile creating amazing art and now it’s time for a retrospective.

Life After Black: The Visual Journals of Barron Storey is on display at the Museum of American Illustration at the Society of Illustrators. Covering a span of 30 years, the exhibit covers a selection of Storey’s 143 journals. The show runs from June 10 through July 31, 2009.

These journals provide a unique opportunity to see original work from a graphic narrative unfolding over many years. As Barron Storey puts it, “I do them for me but they are for you too. It’s the illustrator in me. They’ve been seen by a lot of people in my travels, but never like this.”

Barron Storey will be in attendance on June 12 for the opening reception. And he will deliver a lecture at the Society of Illustrators on June 16 at 6:30pm. In conjunction with the exhibit the Society has partnered with Materials For The Arts to provide journal making workshops on June 8 and June 15.

This exhibit features original art and journals as seen in the book, Life After Black and The Marat/Sade Journals. Work from “Despair” in The Sandman: Endless Nights will also be on display.

Barron Storey’s work has appeared in Time, National Geographic, The Saturday Review and his work is permanently on display at the National Air and Space Museum, The American Museum of Natural History and the National Portrait Gallery. He continues to inspire others as an illustrator, graphic novelist and noted educator. His work has influenced many artists in comics including Bill Sinkiewicz and Dave McKean.

Ghost Comics

An anthology edited by Ed Choy Moorman

176 pages, 6″ x 9″, $10 US

www.edsdeadbody.com

There is so much good stuff emerging from the MoCCA Comics Arts Festival and here is one fine example: Ghost Comics, an anthology to benefit RS Eden, an agency for changing lives in Minnesota. Put together by Ed Choy Moorman, this book recently won a Xeric Grant.

One standout is Evan Palmer’s story, “The Trials of Sir Goodnight.” The sharp clean lines and details are very impressive, especially the panel that cuts to the severed head of the beast. The anthology bio section mentions that Palmer does background drawings for Vertigo’s The Unwritten. What a cool gig for a recent art school grad!

Another must-see is Kevin Cannon’s “The Architecturons” which is, you guessed it, a parody of The Transformers made up to be super-powered architecture. This is the one piece that stretches the ghost theme to the most absurd level.

If I were to do a ghost theme comic, I’d go with something about ghosts from our former selves. Some contributors agree such as Lucy Knisley’s “Unlearning Curve” where she looks back on life in her teens. It’s a nice piece by the creator of the celebrated, French Milk. I also liked Will Dinski’s “Mind-Mapping” which follows the struggles of a man haunted by the ghosts of past mistakes and mishaps.

A couple of melancholy pieces that work well include Jeffrey Brown’s “Great Ghosts.” His page is a nice example of what he does best: showing how awkward and disconnected we can be when that’s the last thing we really want to be. Ed Choy Moorman’s “Dear Dave” is on a similar track complete with playlist.

And then there are a couple that really spooked me. One is John Hankiewicz’s “The  Offering” which you’ve got to read over until you’re ready to move on. Set in a church just off the highway, a young man peers at a very strange ritual throughout the night.

The other particularly eerie tale is Hob’s “The Witness” which might make a beautiful answer to whatever happened to Winsor McCay’s Gertie, the Dinosaur. It is certainly full of that type of wonderment. For fans of Hob, this finds him in true form.

And props to Allegra Lockstadt for such an awesome cover illustration.

Woman King

Written and Drawn by Colleen Frakes

88 pages, 5.5″ x 5.5″, $7 US

www.iknowjoekimpel.com

www.tragicrelief.blogspot.com

Here is a quintessential comic from MoCCA making its debut this year: Colleen Frake’s Woman King, a continuation on her take on fables and myth. Since her Xeric winning Tragic Relief, her work has gotten sharper and the scope of her storytelling keeps getting more complex. A recent graduate of the Center for Cartoon Studies, Frakes finds herself coming into her own with Woman King giving us a distinctive style and vision.

This is a hero myth turned on its head about the nature of war. In the middle of this is a girl being raised by wild bears. The bears are depicted as normally fun-loving gentle creatures who are led by one bear to rid the forest of abusive humans. Well, all humans, actually, except for the girl.

There is a fascinating internal logic at play in Woman King. The bear leader’s message is kill or be killed. The girl, a sort of Patty Hearst among terrorist bears, is becoming wiser to her surroundings, finding evidence that the bears are no better than the humans, but her sympathies remain with the bears. In one sense, I am intrigued mostly by the relentless telling of this tale. The characters are so vividly rendered and the pacing is spot on. But, to be sure, there is a satisfying ending to this thoughtful little tale.

Last week, the Houston Chronicle reviewed Drawn & Quarterly’s new edition of 32 Stories: The Complete Optic Nerve Mini-Comics and Shortcomings, both by the excellent Adrian Tomine. It’s not a bad little piece, especially from the Chronicle, whose motto is “Yeah, we suck, but we’re the only paper in town, so eat it, Houston”. The introductory sentence is the best part:

Hand Adrian Tomine a business card and a pen, and he can sketch out a fully realized narrative on the back.

I’m afraid I have to call shenanigans on that one. Therefore, I will give an entire long box full of Valiant, Malibu, and CrossGen comics to anyone that can produce a business card with a fully-realized, original comic story by Adrian Tomine. No cheating, either; I know what Freytag’s Pyramid looks like. I want the whole works: exposition; rising action; climax; falling action; and a denouement.

Yesterday Ultimate Spider-Man #133, the very last issue of the nine-year-old ongoing series, shipped. I don’t think I could have been more disappointed and unhappy with the way it ended if I turned to the last page and Brian Michael Bendis himself somersaulted out of the book, punched me in the stomach, and then magically disappeared with my wallet.

I wasn’t disappointed because the work in the comic itself was sub-par, and this piece isn’t really a review anyway (though it sure is long; if I were you I’d skip it entirely), and I wasn’t all that terribly disappointed that the series had come to an end, although I’ve greatly enjoyed reading it over the last almost-a-decade, and have long considered it one of the best super-comics being produced regularly.

Rather I was disappointed because of the way that it ended, as it seemed antithetical to the way it began and the way it was for most of its long existence, and the available evidence seems to point towards the next incarnation of a Bendis-written Spider-Man with the word “Ultimate” in the title remaining antithetical to the Ultimate Spider-Man that was.

When the book launched in 2000, and the Ultimate line with it, the concept sounded simple enough, even if it was perceived as risky from Marvel’s perspective (and the perspective of plenty of industry watchers).

As good as any Marvel comic book might be, as naturally interested as any potential reader might be in reading a Marvel comic, they’re going to have to contend with decades worth of continuity, spread across thousands and thousands of pages of comics collected in hundreds of trades. Even if the books are made as accessible as possible, and are perfectly new-reader friendly, their age and the perception of impenetrability, of having missed the boat, will keep new readers away.

So instead of ignoring these potential new readers, who are going to have their interest in Marvel comics primed by the Hollywood movies that were then just about to enter their boom period, why not create a whole new line for them? Why not reboot the Marvel Universe, keeping everything about the characters and scenarios that was more or less timeless, but updating them so they were of the 21st rather than the mid-20th century, and applying modern creative sensibilities?

Looking at the numbers available to those of us who don’t work for Marvel, I don’t know how well it worked. Perhaps not as well as Marvel might have hoped (That is, it’s not like one-in-three people who saw the Spider-Man movies bought a subscription to Ultimate Spider-Man or anything). But anecdotally, I know from personal experience it worked. Ultimate Spider-Man and Ultimate X-Men were my gateway comics into the Marvel Universe and the Marvel line, as I know they were for others, and, for a couple years at least, I associated the Ultimate brand-name with good comics I could confidently read without worrying I’d feel like I walked in on the middle of the movie.
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The Hound of the Baskervilles

Adapted by Ian Edginton, Illustrated by I.N.J. Culbard

144 pages, Full color, published by SelfMadeHero

I’ve done some sleuthing and have found the graphic novel to enjoy amid the hightened interest in Sherlock Holmes generated by two upcoming major motion pictures. That book is SelfMadeHero’s  The Hound of the Baskervilles. Check out their whole line up of classics including Manga Shakespeare!

It shouldn’t matter but I love the fact that the offices of SelfMadeHero are just a few doors down from where the original author of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, lived and worked. That close proximity must have added to the drive to create something special and these guys have done it.

This is no cut and paste transfer from prose novel to graphic novel. Instead, it is in tune with the comics medium. Holmes is a dynamic presence with a prominent cartoony chin and without the deerstalker cap and calabash pipe. Watson is also his own man in comics with wavy hair and a smart rugged mug.

I.N.J. Culbard’s art brings every character to life with his well placed brush strokes. An expressive mark across the face, from brow to cheekbone, is his trademark. The comics have a spare quality combined with a nice eye for essential details. The living quarters of Holmes and Watson set the tone for the book which is grounded in solid layouts and interesting textures.

Edginton does a beautiful job of reworking the prose novel’s many nuanced observations. In the original novel, for instance, Watson can linger upon how the foggy moor is far more suitable for prehistoric rather than modern people. A well-crafted sentence and image, in the graphic novel, does well to replace the prose novel’s longer digression.

Together, Culbard and Edginton give us a true comics adaptation of this famous murder mystery surrounding a phantom creature in the Devonshire moor. It is a wonderful tribute to a book that was a Harry Potter sensation in its day. When it first came out in 1901 as a serialized story in The Strand Magazine, long lines awaited each installment. And more than just a tribute, this graphic novel is a cool and fun read too.

Senator Kelly and William Stryker will be furious to hear the news.

The Onion reports that President Obama has vetoed the Mutant Registration Act:

I personally think this is a pretty good thing.

I mean, it’s not like mutantkind is building an army in San Francisco, or creating black ops killer teams that could potentially rend the space-time continuum, right? Right??

That said, I’m hoping Obama’s act doesn’t open up worser things for mutantkind. Time will tell, right?

Old Man Winter and Other Sordid Tales

Written and Drawn by J. T. Yost

56 pages, 6 5/8″ x 10 1/4″, $6.95 US

www.birdcagebottombooks.com

An old man in the inner city living a lonely and desolate existence not much removed from the young people he tries to befriend is the lumpy little frame that J.T. Yost hangs his social commentary on. The old man, quite an unlikely hero, is up to the task and shines with humor and character in this Xeric Grant winning comics collection, Old Man Winter and Other Sordid Tales.

Yost states that the old man character is loosely based on a customer who frequents the art supply store where he works. Having worked in an art supply store myself (mandatory or inevitable for many an artist), I appreciate the details and cadences captured here: the monotony and need to create stories out of anything around you.

Within just a few panels, Yost brings to life a little drama taking place in the space of a couple of neighborhood blocks. Down to the pigeons and flies lingering over a garbage bag, a perfect gritty tale is told. A new tale that sets the tone for other previously published works.

“Old Man Winter”  leads you to “All is Forgiven,” a tale about the abuses of lab animals. A bit heavy-handed for some and probably spot-on for just as many, the actual story and execution is credible. The same can be said for a story about the darker side of circus life which has solid design sense. “Roadtrip,” a tale about the abuses of the meat industry, proves disturbing but it is also a masterful interplay of the story of a girl and the fate of a cow.

“Logging Sanjay” is the other story in this book based directly from life. As the title suggests, someone is the victim of something. Set in rural Georgia, this is a confessional of sorts about two teens who repeatedly torment another teen they call their friend. The character development is engaging. Yost has a way with bringing out the more animalistic qualities of humans that is very effective.

If there is one message Yost would want to make clear it is that we humans are more like animals than we’d care to admit. For more on J.T. Yost, please read on to my interview here at Newsarama.  

J.T. Yost recently won a Xeric Grant for his book, Old Man Winter and Other Sordid Tales. He is an emerging talent with a lot to say. For those of you interested in how one cartoonist on the rise, out in Brooklyn, keeps it together, read on.

Blog@Newsarama: I appreciate all the stories in your collection. Each is different, created at different times, but part of a whole as it came together for this book. Your vision appears to be to look at life head-on and expose the truth. Is that the voice you intended for your book?

J.T. Yost: With the exception of “Old Man Winter”, all of these stories were created within a framework of “rules”. For instance, “All Is Forgiven…” was for an anthology called BIZMAR. Each story had to include six familiar icons of comics: Bunny, Insect, Zombie, Monkey, Alien and Robot. I had an idea of what most of the stories submitted would be like, so I wanted to do something diametrically opposed. I worked the icons in subtly so that it could work as a stand-alone comic, and since I knew most of the subject matter would be humorous I attempted something more serious.

Animal welfare and vegetarian/veganism is extremely important in my life. I’m not a very confrontational person, so I use comics to convey what I believe to be an important message. Critics have faulted me for including so many comics dealing with these issues in one collection, but I believe I approached each in such a different manner that it doesn’t detract from their impact.

I spend a lot of time researching factory farm conditions, slaughterhouse practices and other facets of meat processing, and although I am surely biased I do try to present a truth that some may not be aware of. I have been accused of lacking subtley, and I suppose I am guilty to an extent. That’s actually something I’m working on in current comics. It’s difficult to present these horrible truths so close to my heart without coming across as preachy. (more…)

Here is a quick run-down on the latest about the new Pop Gun War. Emily is somewhere on tour with her rock band and is staying at some seedy Motel in the middle of nowhere. She slams the door on a nosy mailman and that seems to set off a chain of events. Like Alice in Wonderland, she gets propelled down a portal to another world full of dark mysterious figures. (more…)

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.