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28 May 2009
[comics] For Sale on eBay: Maxx #1 by Sam Kieth.
25 May 2009
[comics] Jess Nevins annotations for League of Extraordinary Gentlemen – Century 1910‘Panel 6. “Misplaced memorials.” I trust one of my British readers can fill me in on what Moore is referring to. Is there a misplaced memorial at King’s Cross? There are memorials to veterans of World Wars One and Two–anything else? “Forgotten fires.” I’m assuming this is a reference to the King’s Cross fire on 18 November 1987, which killed 31 people in the King’s Cross St. Pancras station. I’m not particularly sure why this counts as “forgotten”–even I, American that I am, knew about it. (Is the King’s Cross fire memorial plaque in the station misplaced somehow?)’
24 May 2009
[comics] Doonesbury — I Need Moral Clarity(more…)
23 May 2009
[comics] DC Comics 40 Years Ago … lovely blog looking at DC’s very varied output in the late Sixties.
20 May 2009
[comics] Review of the Walking Dead Compendium Vol 1 … Tom Spurgeon reviews Robert Kirkman’s Zombie Apocalypse Soap-Opera‘Although the jury may still be out on its value as art simply because so much depends on choices to come, Walking Dead is an entertaining comic book that I imagine is a great boon for the Direct Market shops that have invested in its appealing mix of popular genre, serial pleasures and solid craft elements.’
19 May 2009
[comics] David Mazzucchelli Master Post … great Scans_Daily posting showing the artistic evolution of David Mazzucchelli … ‘It was during his run on Daredevil where Mazzucchelli’s style grew beyond the Marvel House Style, especially during the “Born Again” storyline written by Frank Miller. Any of you guys heard of it? I hear it’s pretty good.’
17 May 2009
[search] Wolfram Alpha … The Search Engine Of Choice for Supervillains … Who is Clark Kent?Who is Bruce Wayne?Who is Peter Parker?

Wolfram Alpha: Who is Bruce Wayne?

15 May 2009
[comics] Grandville Trailer … a trailer for the latest comic from Bryan Talbot(more…)
13 May 2009
[comics] Grant Morrison’s Multiversity … interview with Morrison on his new project for DC … ‘ I’ve been working on this way in advance. I have started a lot of the books and I’ve almost finished a couple of them. I really want to do them ahead of time so every little detail is right. I want this to be big. I kind of thought “Final Crisis” would be the big one and then I realized I had to tell this Multiverse one. So this is the real big epic that comes up next.’
12 May 2009
[comics] Canada’s Comic-book Hero … interview / profile of Seth‘Seth characterizes his world as both “grandmotherly, in that it’s like this desire to create this cozy 1930s, 1940s kind of environment” and “kind of adolescent because the place has a lot of toys. There’s something about the teenage boy, trying to create your perfect teenage room. “I can’t live unless I’ve got control of the aesthetics,” he declares. “If I want a couch, it has to be an old couch — unless it’s really successful at pretending to be an old couch.” Luckily, his wife, a 32-year-old men’s hairstylist who met Seth while working as a model in a life-drawing class he was taking, doesn’t have strong views on decor (although they did “feud” briefly earlier this year over her wish to put a Sylvania colour TV set in the living room).’ [via Waxy]
10 May 2009
[comics] Quimby The Mouse … an animation by Chris Ware for This American Life.
8 May 2009
[lists] 10 Best Head-Scratching Stories, Explained‘Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth: Jimmy relives his granddad’s life. He finally meets his father, who then dies. Superman can’t save him.’
4 May 2009
[comics] Brendan McCarthy finds a lost Doom Patrol Script from Grant Morrison [Page 1 | Page 2] … ‘I found this DOOM PATROL script the other day that I had doodled all over, from Grant Morrison… It was an episode that Grant wrote for me to draw back in 1991/92 or thereabouts: I asked for an old style DC ‘imaginary story’ with Danny The Street as the central character. But by the time the script turned up, I had to do a film so I couldn’t draw it’

Grant Morrison Script For Doom Patrol Doodled On By Brendan McCarthy

3 May 2009
[comics] Steve Bell Interviewed‘For all that his politics may be congenial to Guardian readers, there’s something about Bell’s style that doesn’t seem to sit too well with the paper’s generally earnest attitude. “I did used to get quite a number of disapproving letters, though these days I don’t – I get emails slagging me off instead” he says. “It has been said that I’m the kind of Id of the Guardian, running around waving my arms in the air while everyone else is having these deliberations. I don’t know, to be honest”.’ [thanks Phil]
1 May 2009
[comics] Dave Sim and Cerebus at Coventry Cathedral in 1989 … by Sim and Gerhard – the front cover to Fantasy Advertiser #115.
29 April 2009
[comics] Alan Moore’s Glory Notes … a proposal from Moore on how to revamp one of Rob Liefeld’s Awesome characters … ‘I suppose this as good a time as any to discuss my ideas about how the sexuality in Glory should be handled. As with my notes on Youngblood, my central idea is to prime the story with plenty of open spaces for the readers’ filthy, disgusting thirteen year old minds to inhabit… which is only natural… without doing anything that is anything other than entirely innocent and in keeping with classic comic tradition. I think the word for our best approach is “disingenuous”.’
28 April 2009
[comics] The Ten All-Time Best Long-Running Comics Series … great list from Tom Spurgeon … On Dave Sim: ‘I don’t know yet what I think of it as an artistic achievement, but I greatly enjoyed huge swaths of it. The further away from its published conclusion I get the more I’m convinced that it’s something special in terms of comics history, and the further along I get in my own artistic journey the more I’m certain that even if he doesn’t realize it, Dave won.’
22 April 2009
[comics] Neil Gaiman Writes a Final ‘Love Letter to Batman’ … Wired on Gaiman and Andy Kubert’s Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader? … ‘Well, the great thing about Batman and Superman, in truth, is that they are literally transcendent. They are better than most of the stories they are in. That’s jut Sturgeon’s Law: “90 percent of everything is crap.” Can you imagine how many thousands, or millions, of words have been written on Batman? Try to read them and you’re looking at 100,000 pages, perhaps a million, and you can assume that 90 percent of it is crap. Yet the 10 percent, and even better the 1 percent of that 10 perfect, is absolutely glorious. That pays for everything.’
21 April 2009
[comics] Brendan McCarthy Art Show at Orbital Comics: ‘Featuring a lost image from the graphic novel SKIN, some drawings from a new comic project, DREAMTREES, a number of published ARTOONS from the CRISIS period of the early 90’s and more pictures from Brendan’s archive of unpublished art. Brendan is currently working on a new Spider-Man/Dr Strange mini series for Marvel Comics, out later this year.’
20 April 2009
[comics] Typeface Inspired by Comic Books Has Become a Font of Ill Will … profile of the designer of Comic Sans‘Mr. Connare says he pulled out the two comic books he had in his office, “The Dark Knight Returns” and “Watchmen,” and got to work, inspired by the lettering and using his mouse to draw on a computer screen. Within a week, he had designed his legacy.’ [via More(ish)]
15 April 2009
[funny] Uncomfortable Plot Summaries … from postmodernbarney.com‘DAREDEVIL: Blind man pisses off crime boss, gets all his girl-friends killed.’
8 April 2009
[comics] Kyle Baker’s Batman at the Diner‘So, really, what’s with the costume?’
6 April 2009
[comics] All The Joy I See Through These Architect’s Eyes … comic artist D’Israeli looks at Mega-City One through the art of various artists who have visualised it over the years … On Carlos Ezquerra: ‘Though his Judge Dredd pilot strip was never published, the last page (a full-page view across the city) was used as a back-cover of Prog 3. I remember seeing this aged about eleven and it absolutely blew my mind. The sense of scale, the strangeness of the designs, the feeling of the future as a gritty, exotic place formed by unguessable processes, all of this generated an excitement I’ve rarely felt from comics or any other medium. Along with Italian Massimo Bellardinelli, Ezquerra dragged 2000AD away from the comfortable visual tropes of the 1950’s and, importantly, gave it a signature visual style that distinguished it from the blocky, industrial designs of the recently-released Star Wars. That one page set a visual and imaginative standard for later creators to aspire to; ironically, as a leftover page from a rejected strip, it may be the most important piece of work Ezquerra ever did, and in its influence it may make him one of the most important artists in British comics in the last 30 years.’
3 April 2009
[comics] Bear Alley … a fantastic comics blog covering all aspects of old and new British comics from Steve Holland … On The Perishers: ‘I was particularly taken with the “eyeballs-in-the-sky” sequence which was reprinted that year. The original strips dated from 1979 and, for those who never followed the story, each summer the Perishers—Wellington, Masie, Marlon and Baby Grumpling—would visit the beach at St. Moribund’s. Boot, Wellington’s huge, hairy, hungry dog, would visit a rock pool each year to the amazement of the crabs inhabiting the pool; it has become a religious experience for many of the crabs whilst other crabs, more dedicated to science, try to debunk the God-like status of the eyeballs-in-the-sky…’
2 April 2009
[thisisgood] What the Hell is Grant Morrison Smoking? … from Bob Mitchell in the 21st Century‘I got six chambers of semi-jacketed realism aimed right at your Sea of Tranquilility. Drop the rock.’
31 March 2009
[comics] Rejected Rorschach Blots … from Kyle Baker. [thanks Tam]
29 March 2009
[comics] Five Kinds Of Serial Comic Books I Prefer To Buy Right Now Over New Ones … another interesting comics list from Tom Spurgeon … On Kirby Comics from the 70’s: ‘…it’s like reading comics brought home by a father who is taking sales trips to an alternate dimension full of crazy people.’
27 March 2009
[comics] Pádraig Ó Méalóid (aka Livejournal’s Glycon) reveals the story behind Big Numbers #3 making it’s way to the internet‘Anyway, the story I heard was that Al Columbia completed this issue, had it sent off for lettering and then went a little crazy and refused to release the art for publication … In any event, this art did exist long enough for it to be photocopied.’
[comics] Eddie Campbell on Big Numbers: ‘Another thing I remembered, and I don’t think I ever mentioned it to Alan, but I always felt a certain resentment that Billy the Sink got Big Numbers and blew it while i was stuck drawing Jack the bloody Ripper for ten years (I once described it as a penny dreadful that costs thirty five bucks). I stand by my opinion that Big Numbers was the superior idea and would have been Alan’s masterpiece.’
26 March 2009
[comics] Big Numbers #3 … the complete issue of Alan Moore and Bill Sienkiewicz’s unpublished Big Numbers #3 has been posted to Flickr …

panels from Big Numbers 3

25 March 2009
[comics] The 20 Best Movies Adapted from Comic Books … interesting list to ponder … ‘American Splendor (2003. USA) Welcome to the esoteric life and times of Harvey Pekar, a cranky file clerk from Cleveland whose cult-fave self-published comix used to get pimped back in the day on the David Letterman show. Paul Giamati does a fantastic job of portraying Pekar, and even more eerie is how dead-on some of the supporting cast are at channelling Robert Crumb and Tobey Radloff. Pretty much a perfect movie about one of the most important autobiographical comics to ever come out of the underground.’
23 March 2009
[comics] Hollywood super-hairo: the comic book genius who won’t make a penny from £65m Watchmen … Alan Moore as viewed through the lens of really poor tabloid journalism … ‘The movie adaptation of his comic book Watchmen has raked in more than £65million since its release this month. But writer Alan Moore will not receive a penny – although it looks as if he could do with a pound or two for a trip to the barber. The eccentric writer lives in a modest terrace house in Northampton and remains a recluse amid the hype surrounding the Hollywood blockbuster.’
[comics] The Electrick Hoax Revisited… Brendan McCarthy revisits some of his earliest work and his first collaboration with Peter Milligan …

mccarthy-electric-hoax

22 March 2009
[comics] Advice Rorschach Says… ‘American Love – Like Coke In Green Glass Bottles… They Don’t Make It Anymore.’ (more…)
20 March 2009
[comics] Grant Morrison Talks Brainy Comics, Sexy Apocalypse

‘We know we’ve fucked up the atmosphere and doomed the lovely polar bears and we can’t even summon up the energy to feel guilty anymore. Let the pedophiles have the kids. There’s nowhere left to turn and no one left to blame except, paradoxically, those slightly medieval guys without the industrial base. What’s left to believe in? The only truly moral, truly goodhearted man left is a made-up comic book character! The only secular role models for a progressive, responsible, scientific-rational Enlightenment culture are … Kal-El of Krypton, aka Superman and his multicolored descendants!

So we chose not to deconstruct the superhero but to take him at face value, as a fiction that was trying to tell us something wonderful about ourselves. Somewhere, in our darkest night, we made up the story of a man who will never let us down and that seemed worth investigating.’

19 March 2009
[comics] Just Imagine… Social Media’s Watchmen … a twitter from Ozymandias via BeaucoupKevin.
18 March 2009
[watchmen] Charlie Brooker On Watchmen: ‘Fun as a massive great spectacle, but it surely can’t make any sense whatsoever to anyone who hasn’t read the comic; it was a bit like watching an impressive animated version of a collection of snatched memories of what the comic was like, if you see what I mean.’
17 March 2009
[comics] Quotes on Comics … Bill Clinton: ‘When I was 13, I made a very foolish short-term business investment: I set up a comic book stand and sold two trunks full of comic books. Made more money than I had ever had in my life. But if I had saved those trunks, they’d be worth $100,000 today.’
16 March 2009
[comics] Advice Rorschach Says…

Advice Rorschach Says...

14 March 2009
[comics] Man dressed as the Joker from Batman films shot dead by police‘The dead man, who was said to be obsessed with the character, was wearing full costume and makeup when he was challenged by officers in a national park in Virginia, according to legal documents.’ [via Warren Ellis]
12 March 2009
[comics] Amateur crimefighters are surging in the US … [via As Above] …

‘There are, according to the recently launched World Superhero Registry, more than 200 men and a few women who are willing to dress up as comic book heroes and patrol the urban streets in search of, if not super-villains, then pickpockets and bullies. They may look wacky, but the superhero community was born in the embers of the 9/11 terrorist attacks when ordinary people wanted to do something short of enlisting. They were boosted by a glut of Hollywood superhero movies. In recent weeks, prompted by heady buzz words such as “active citizenry” during the Barack Obama campaign, the pace of enrolment has speeded up. Up to 20 new “Reals”, as they call themselves, have materialised in the past month.’

[comics] A Serial Killers Guide To faking Human Emotions … from All Knowledge is Strange

serial-killers-guide

11 March 2009
[comics] Grant Morrison: Final Crisis Exit Interview [Part 1 | Part 2] … Grant explains everything … ‘Every time I read about the agonizing pains of ‘event fatigue’ or how ‘3-D hurts my head…’ or how something’s ‘incomprehensible’ when most people are ‘comprehending’ it just fine, it’s like visiting a nursing home. ‘Events’ in superhero comic books FATIGUE you? I’m speechless. Admittedly they do tend to be a little more exciting than the instruction leaflets that come with angina pills but… ‘fatigue’? Superhero comics should have an ‘event’ in every panel! We all know this instinctively. Who cares ‘how?’ as long as it feels right and looks brilliant?’
10 March 2009
[comics] An Interview With The moderators of Scans_Daily‘I went through my bookcase at the weekend and looked at all of the stuff that I would never have discovered without scans_daily. I had Irredeemable Ant Man, My Faith in Frankie, Marvel Knights Fantastic Four (read the predictably unpredictable team-mates scene in “Wolf at the Door” and tell me that that isn’t exactly what Reed Richards should be like), Ex Machina (which is now an obsession and I’m taking First Hundred Days to my grown up book group as a change of pace from Tale of Two Cities and The Kite Runner), Five Fists of Science, The Order (I managed to market that to a few people on the community), The Immortal Iron Fist and Spider-Man loves Mary Jane. Of course, that’s just one person and evidence like that won’t convince anybody.’
9 March 2009
[comics] Tom Spurgeon Reviews Watchmen‘Unless you were playing book bingo, there was little that was transcendent or particularly memorable about any of the moments from movie. I’m having a hard time latching onto anything a mere 10 hours after sitting in the theater watching it, a single moment like that weird shimmy that Heath Ledger did in the nurse’s outfit in Dark Knight or Robert Downey relishing a hamburger while announcing a major life decision in Iron Man or Clark Kent getting out of his own head for a moment by racing a train in Superman.’
7 March 2009
[comics] Watchmen Links on LMG — just a reminder that I’ve posted a ton of links to interesting Watchmen stuff on the internet in the past. I recommend: A PDF of a few Pages Alan Moore’s Script for the comic, Something Awful Photoshops Watchmen and A Reconstruction of the Tales of the Black Freighter Comic. Finally, if you haven’t already – go and buy the comic book. You won’t regret it.
6 March 2009
[comics] Who Makes The Watchmen? … A illustrated guide to the tortured history of the production of the Watchmen movie … ‘Hurm. Snyder and Tse seem to have faithful adaptation. Minus the squid. But keeping the violence. Fine with me.’
[comics] Review of the Watchmen Movie by Pádraig Ó Méalóid … a real Alan Moore fan reviews Watchmen … ‘There is a scene in the film where Doctor Manhattan is being interviewed in a television studio, just before he abruptly leaves the Earth to go to Mars. He describes something – I don’t recall what at this point – as being as useful as a photograph of Oxygen would be to a drowning man. And this is actually the most apt description I can think of for this film: It looks a lot like the original Watchmen book, but has none of its grace, or beauty, or subtlety, or sinuously beautiful timing.’
5 March 2009
[comics] rorschachsdiary … if Rorschach had a blog it would be on Livejournal… ”yet another example of government oppression: hear scans_daily down for good. irritated; will not have to pay money to find out how the black freighter spin-off turns out. expect veidt behind it…” [via jzw]
3 March 2009
[comics] Alan Moore, the man with a graphic vision … the Observer profiles Alan Moore …‘As novelist and Watchmen fan Susanna Clarke puts it: “He took something very American – the superhero comic – reinvented it [more than once] and sold it back to them.” And, one might add, didn’t even want to keep the profit he made on the deal.’