[comics] Comics I Read In Series Form In The 1980s: American Flagg! … Tom Spurgeon On American Flagg … ‘That first 26-issue run felt like it spanned the entire decade. In actuality, issue #26 appeared a mere 25 months after the debut. Sometimes I wonder if the difficulty in repackaging American Flagg! for other formats comes down to something spiritual. The serial comic book edition was pretty close to perfect in its way: a regular visit to a giddy clash of satire, comedy, adventure-comic beats and general rudeness delivered with aplomb by an artist working at the far edge of his talent while being supported by able, compelling craftsmen. Reading American Flagg! as comics felt like getting a broadcast from someplace else and watching it on a broken, filthy, slapped-together computer screen.’

[comics] A Portal to Another Dimension: Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons, and Neil Gaiman … the Watchmen Panel at UKCAC ’86 – moderated by Neil Gaiman … ‘I think that because there’ve been a lot of fascist overtones in Marvelman [Miracleman] people assumed that the superheroes had taken over. There aren’t really any fascist superheroes in Watchmen. Rorschach’s not a fascist; he’s a nutcase. The Comedian’s not a fascist’ he’s a psychopath. Dr. Manhattan’s not a fascist; he’s a space cadet. They’re not fascists. They’re not in control of their world. Dr. Manhattan’s not even in control of the world — he doesn’t care about the world.’

[comics] Posy Simmonds Profile … by Paul Gravett … ‘Posy is simply one the world’s most sophisticated contemporary authors expanding the scope and subtlety of the graphic novel. Based in London, Posy has become renowned since the early Seventies, not only as a brilliant strip cartoonist for the national press, but also as a much-loved author and illustrator of children’s books.’

[comics] Dave Sim vs. Spider-man in 1985 … I believe this photo is from a lost episode of Miami Vice where Crockett and Tubbs bust some drug dealers at a comic convention.

[comics] Nick Abadzis Interviewed by Tom Spurgeon … long, readable interview with Nick Abadzis the writer/artist of Hugo Tate and Laika … ‘There’s too much crappy work out there to bother wasting time with, and a lot of good stuff that I do want to read, so it becomes a sort of exercise of the instincts, sniffing out the superior work or the stuff with a higher likelihood to engage. There is a lot of incredible talent working today and I do believe we are in a golden age of comics in some ways. It’s such a pleasure to come across the work of a cartoonist I haven’t encountered before and see with new eyes, their eyes. I get excited about that.’

[comics] Art Spiegelman visits Maurice Sendak in 1993 … ‘Childhood is cannibals and psychotics vomiting in your mouth!’

[comics] Before Watchmen, Nineteen Eighties Style … Bleeding Cool covers DC Comics first (failed) attempt at Watchmen II … ‘[A well placed DC source] confirms another anonymous ex-DC source that it was planned for Andy Helfer to write The Comedian and Michael Fleisher would be offered Rorschach.’

[comics] Cheque That Bought Superman Rights Sold For Super Price … ‘Jerome Siegel and Joe Shuster from Cleveland were paid $130 (£82) for all the rights to Superman by Detective Comics, later known as DC Comics.’

[alanmoore] BBC News confirms Alan Moore is the “Greatest Living Englishman” and “Knows The Score” …

[ipad] What’s On Warren Ellis’ iPad? … ‘Managing information is a big part of my job. So the topslice is: Twitterific, for Twitter. Flipboard. Reeder, for reading Google Reader (which is wired into Pinboard for saving links and Instapaper for reserving long articles for later). BBC news app. Guardian for iPad in Newsstand. Foreign Policy for iPad. The Economist in Newsstand. These are all daily, sometimes hourly checkpoints for me. Can’t do without them.’

[comics] Ware’s World: Inside The Home Of Cartoonist Chris Ware … pictures of the delightful home of one of the world’s most talented cartoonists! ‘As an unabashed admirer of Mr. Ware’s work, I’ve read many an interview with him, and I’ve seen photos of his historic home previous, but I wasn’t prepared by how amazing it would be. Ware’s collection lives throughout the warm and tastefully decorated home. Atop mantlepieces sit his handmade mechanical wonders like his Acme Book Dispenser, his Quimbies The Mouse and Sparky The Singing Cat sculptures. Behind glass doors live Gasoline Alley and Peanuts merchandise, Krazy Kat dolls, Buck Rogers rockets, and many other items of amazement from bygone eras.’

[comics] Crumb On Others Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 … Robert Crumb On “Famous And Infamous” people. Crumb Meets Jim Morrison: ‘I forget what the exact circumstances were, but he brought Jim Morrison over to my house one day. I think I was still living with Dana at the time, but I don’t remember if she was there. S. Clay Wilson was there. But Morrison, he seemed really over the hill by then. It wasn’t too long before he died. He just seemed like a kind of puffy-looking, overweight guy who was burned-out from too many drugs. He just sat in the corner kind of mumbling. [laughs] He was wearing this greasy, suede jacket with that fringe hanging off the sleeves. He had greasy, long hair. He did not look like the adonis that you saw in the photos a couple years before. But you know, that kind of worship that he received, when you’re young, it’s really hard to survive intact. He probably took too many drugs, but I don’t know. I don’t know what his problem was. He didn’t seem brilliant or anything to me. He didn’t have any insight or anything interesting to say. He just seemed like the typical hippie you would see on Haight Street at that time, mumbling about the drugs and shit…’

[comics] Neil Gaiman and Todd McFarlane: The Story So Far (March 1993 – March 2012) … Pádraig Ó Méalóid tells the story of the long and convoluted legal battle between Gaiman and McFarlane over Spawn and Marvelman … ‘Although Gaiman and McFarlane’s first meeting in court was on the 1st of October, 2002, nearly ten years ago now, the cause of their dispute goes back nearly ten years before that, with roots set in place some years before that, again. So, in an attempt to put it all into some sort of context, I’m listing what I see as the main points of their dispute, in chronological order, as exactly as I can, along with some earlier events, to put it all into context.’

[comics] Alan Moore: The Biography … full length biography of Moore from Lance Parkin is due late next year … ‘This is going to be, I hope, the definitive literary biography that explores the life and career of Alan Moore and goes a little wider than either my previous book or Storyteller, placing Moore in the context of the British and American comics industry, as well as the underground, occult and countercultural scenes.’

[comics] Here’s One Way To Spend Drug Money: 18,753 Comic Books … ‘An associate told detectives that Castro’s comic collecting also seemed to have turned into a kind of mania, and he “began to struggle with money because he would spend his drug money on comic books,” court papers said. Castro pleaded guilty last year to multiple felony charges and was sentenced to 45 years in prison, the Post reported. As for all those comics? Federal authorities seized them, along with Castro’s Audi A8, Mercedes S500 and Lexus GS300.’

[comics] Grant Morrison Comic Bingo … a game to play whilst reading Grant Morrison comics …

[comics] St Pancras Panda … in an impressive feat of comic archeology Pádraig Ó Méalóid has unearthed a complete set of Alan Moore’s St. Pancras Panda cartoon strips published during 1978/79 in an alternative newspaper called The Back Street Bugle …

[comics] Jack Kirby Photo … great pic – I’m guessing it was taken in NYC during the 1930’s.

[watchmen] Twenty-One Not Exactly Original Notes On More Watchmen, Written At A Slight Remove … by Tom Spurgeon …

Ten days or so past the official announcement, I’m thinking More Watchmen may be best understood as a blow to comics’ dignity. It’s product, not art. It’s a limited, small series of ideas derived from a bigger, grander one. It’s sad. One thing that Watchmen did a quarter century ago was to underline certain values of craft and intent and creative freedom that have helped to yield enough equivalent expressions — to my mind even grander expressions — that we may now see this follow-up project for what it is: nothing special.

[watchmen] Revisiting Alan Moore’s Official “Watchmen” Prequel … fascinating look at a role playing prequel to Watchmen from 1987 which had advice and input from Moore & Dave Gibbons …

“Shortly after I picked up the Watchmen assignment I called Alan in Northampton,” says Winninger. “He was unbelievably nice and excited about the project. During that first call he spent almost two hours telling me exactly what was about to happen in the next nine issues of the comic, down to the level of individual panels and page layouts.” Winninger adds, “I still remember him saying ‘Right, issue 12. We open with six pages of corpses.’ I spoke with him several times thereafter to bounce my ideas for the adventure off of him, to clarify details to get his approval on the manuscripts and such.” And, as Winninger points out, Dave Gibbons provided original cover art for the Mayfair “Watchmen” books and added new interior art as well.

[comics] The New York Times: DC Comics Plans Prequels to Watchmen Series …

Mr. Moore, who has disassociated himself from DC Comics and the industry at large, called the new venture “completely shameless.”

[comics] Chaykin’s Shadow is back… ‘The Howard Chaykin issues were great, the Andy Helfer, Bill Sienkiewicz and Kyle Baker issues were magnificent. And to be honest, I’d rather given up hope of ever seeing them again.But maybe not – because after securing the rights to The Shadow in 2011, Dynamite Entertainment has finally announced they’ll be reprinting the Howard Chaykin 4 issue Shadow: Blood & Judgment series from 1986…’

[comics] What If Herge And H.P. Lovecraft Had Collaborated? …

[comics] Joe Colquhoun Interview From 1982 … fascinating interview with the artist of Charley’s War and apparently the only one he ever did. Spotted on the well-done Charley’s War website … ‘I’ve tried very hard to bring out the realism in the trenches and most of the sequences in the story are based on factual incidents. That might lead to a certain amount of authenticity which is possibly lacking in the more blood and thunder, action-packed World War 2 stories. Finally, and this is only my own opinion, it illustrates a period that was already dying then. When words like Honour, Duty, Patriotism meant something, I think most decent kids reading this epoch, will have a sneaking, almost atavistic feeling that in this present sick and rather selfish world, with violence and amorality seeming to pay dividends, they may think they’re missing out on something.’

[people] Ronald Searle Obituary written by Nigel Molesworth of St Custard’s …

ART is for weeds and sissies whose mater hav said Take care of my dear little Cedric, he is delicate you kno and cannot stand a foopball to the head. Whenever anebode mention Art they all sa gosh mikelangelo leenardo wot magnificent simetry of line. Shurely the very pinnackle of western civilisation etc.etc. Pass me my oils Molesworth that I may paint my masterpeece. The headmaster sa gosh cor is that the medeechi venus hem-hem a grate work so true to life reminds me of young mrs filips enuff said.

Molesworth sa on the contry the most beatiful form in art is a Ronald Searle GURL from St Trinian’s in a tunick with black suspenders and armed with a hockey stick to beat the daylites out of another gurl or maybe just a teacher chortle chortle.

[watchmen] Doomsday Clock moves one minute closer to midnight … ‘The Doomsday Clock, a symbolic gauge of nuclear danger, has moved one minute closer to midnight because of “inadequate progress” on nuclear and climate issues. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BAS) announced the move – to five minutes before midnight – on Tuesday.’

[comics] Charlie Brooker on Batman: ‘There’s a new Dark Knight film out this year. Calling Batman “the Dark Knight” is like calling Papa Smurf “the Blue Patriarch”: you’re not fooling anyone.’

[comics] Were Rorschach’s Speech Patterns Based On Herbie, the Fat Fury? … ‘When discussing Rorschach, [Alan Moore] shared that the tone of his diary was inspired by the letters Son Of Sam David Berkowitz sent to the news papers, and (confirming my own theory) that his speech patterns were based on Herbie the Fat Fury.’

[comics] Ronald Searle was our greatest cartoonist – and he sent me his pens … Martin Rowson remembers Ronald Searle … ‘It is interesting to note how men of Searle’s generation – Spike Milligan being another notable example – translated the unimaginable trauma of the war into stuff like St Trinian’s or The Goon Show. And how distinctly unsettling it is to when you look at the drawings he produced in secret on the Burma Railway, and then see direct visual quotations of torture and beheadings in his later St Trinian’s cartoons. Even if most Britons will remember him as ‘the St Trinian’s cartoonist’, Searle was much more than that. Without him, it’s almost impossible to imagine cartoonists like Scarfe or Steadman or the subsequent generations inspired by them.’

[comics] Batman Says… Stop, Look and Listen

[comics] Abhay Khosla tries to predict the Watchmen 2 Announcement …

Allusion to Alan Moore’s prickly relationship with the company— Moore is “unavailable” for comment at time of press and/or declines to comment. Maybe, maybe he says something pithy like “All of those characters are already dead to me. I’m busy writing a 10,000 page poem about a molehill’s evolution over 20,000 years. But why doesn’t anyone working in comics have their own ideas, I wonder?” (Jason Aaron tells him to fuck himself again 4 months later, then goes back to architect-ing X-Men vs. The Hulk crossovers).

[comics] Steve Bell’s political cartoons of 2011 – in pictures … gallery of Bell’s best work — the G8 Madness cartoon is definitely worth a second look.

[comics] A Moment Of Cerebus … a blog dedicated to publishing something to do with Cerebus, Dave Sim and Gerhard every day.

[comics] Dan Clowes On Book Shops … Clowes on the cover of New Yorker.

[comics] Full and Uncut Interview with Alan Moore … the full text to a abridged interview in the Independent published online … ‘Comics is great if you’re working with an artist that you’ve got respect for and you’re working in a situation where there aren’t the arbitrary demands, just the general bullshit of the comics industry to deal with. I think that me and most of the artists that I respect, we’re too old for all that. We’re old, we’re tired [laughs], I just simply cannot be putting up with the petty interference that is part and parcel of the entertainment industry.’

[comics] 2000AD – Dummy Issue Promo … fascinating look at a 1976 mock-up of the first issue of 2000AD. Looks very much like they were planning a sci-fi version of Action.

[comics] Alan Moore – meet the man behind the protest mask … interview with Moore where he discusses the use of V for Vendetta masks in recent protests …

…More than 100,000 of the £4-£7 masks sell every year, according to the manufacturers, with a cut always going to Time Warner. Does that irk Moore?

“I find it comical, watching Time Warner try to walk this precarious tightrope.” Through contacts in the comics industry, he explains, he has heard that boosted sales of the masks have become a troubling issue for the company. “It’s a bit embarrassing to be a corporation that seems to be profiting from an anti-corporate protest. It’s not really anything that they want to be associated with. And yet they really don’t like turning down money – it goes against all of their instincts.” Moore chuckles. “I find it more funny than irksome.”

[comics] Gallery Of Art From Gene Colan’s Dracula … missed this at Halloween but Colan’s art is always worth a look.

[comics] ‘Superheroes are our dreams of ourselves’ … Alan Moore interviewed by the Independent … ‘He stepped away from mainstream publishing and film royalties: an act of artistic integrity that has seen him branded as everything from eccentric to bitter. Eccentric perhaps, in the way that writers often are, but bitter? Certainly not. The man that greets me is warm and affable, and delighted to be asked to talk about one of his favourite works, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. It’s a series he says is dear to his heart, particularly those more recent episodes published by the independent Knockabout Comics.’

[comics] Bruce Wayne’s Medical Records … ‘By far the greatest contributor to patient’s ongoing morbidity are his multiple and seemingly ceaseless musculoskeletal injuries. The most significant of these was sustained several years ago, when he was rushed to GCGH with several fractures of his lumbar vertebrae, reportedly after falling while rappelling. Skeletal series obtained at that time revealed numerous (>20) areas of orthopedic injury in various states of healing, which could not be fully explained by recent fall, including areas of all extremities and many ribs; confirmatory bone scan similarly showed many areas of increased uptake. Patient’s robust stature is not consistent with osteogenesis imperfecta, and skin biopsy was negative for abnormal collagen and P3H1 or CRTAP genetic defects. Malignancy was suspected, but eventually ruled out following oncology consultation. Patient explained most of these (and most subsequent) injuries as being the result of membership in a private and apparently quite intense mixed martial arts club. Patient has denied being the victim of domestic abuse by Mr. Grayson following indirect and direct questioning on numerous occasions.’ [via jwz]

[comics] Judge Dredd And Spikes Harvey Rotten Share A Moment … ‘You -Er- Look Wonderful, Spikes!’

[comics] The High Cost of (Being) Death … interview with the woman who was the inspiration for Death In The Sandman … ‘Hadley explains how she went from begging for spare change and living in the infamous ‘80s Salt Lake City flophouse called Kill Pigs to gracing the pages of a world-famous comic. “Mike Dringenberg was a good friend of mine,” says Hadley. “He told me that he wanted to use me for a model for a character in a comic book, but I didn’t think anything about it.” It wasn’t until years later, the conversation long forgotten, that she leafed through an issue at a friend’s apartment in Houston, Texas and found Dringenberg’s original drawing of her looking up from the pages and a personal thanks from the author for the use of her image. “Hey, this is me!” she exclaimed, to the amazement of her friend.’

[comics] Art Spiegelman: ‘Auschwitz became for us a safe place’ … Art Spiegelman on Maus and MetaMaus. .. ‘The shock of Maus, and the source of its great and enduring power, lies in Spiegelman’s absolute refusal to sentimentalise or sanctify the Survivor, in this case, his father. During the war, Vladek lost his six-year-old son, Richieu, poisoned by the aunt to whom his parents had sent him for safe-keeping, in order that he might avoid the gas chambers; he lost most of his extended family, and he endured months of the most appalling fear and hardship in Auschwitz-Birkenau and, later, Dachau. But unimaginable suffering, Spiegelman wants us to understand, doesn’t make a person better; it just makes them suffer.’

[comics] A STRONGER LOVING WORLD .. the Moment Of Moore I’ve been waiting most of the year to post! ‘Midnight, November Second.’

[comics] Hark A Vagrant: Tycho …

[comics] Charlie Higson’s list of favourite comic books and graphic novels … ‘I grew up on Tintin and Asterix, and for many people in the UK they are the only graphic novels they are aware of. The French call this style of pure, clean, solid artwork la ligne claire, and it’s a style that works brilliantly for kids. I used to lose myself for days in the detail of these pictures.’

[comics] Dan Clowes interviewed by the Onion’s AV Club … ‘The Death-Ray really should have been a graphic novel to start. I have no idea why I did it as a saddle-stitched comic, other than I just couldn’t bear to stop Eightball somehow. It just seemed like, “How can I end Eightball?” I remember when the Hernandez brothers first ended Love And Rockets, thinking, “How could they do that? It’s the end of an era!” [Laughs.] So it was really more about that, not being able to move on. But it really makes no sense as a magazine, and it’s just so unavailable to so many people. I really want people to read the book, and bookstores never sold an issue of Eightball because nobody knew what it was.’

[comics] V for Vendetta masks: Who’s behind them? … ‘Anybody watching coverage of the demonstrations may have been struck by a repeated motif – a strangely stylised mask of Guy Fawkes with a moustache and pointy beard. Wikileaks founder Julian Assange arrived at the Occupy London Stock Exchange protest to make a speech wearing one of these masks. He took it off, reportedly at the insistence of the police.’

[comics] How could they do this to Tintin? … another negative look at Speilberg’s Tintin Movie – this time from Nicholas Lezard … ‘As it is, the film has turned a subtle, intricate and beautiful work of art into the typical bombast of the modern blockbuster, Tintin for morons, and the nicest things one can say about it are that there’s a pleasing cameo of Hergé himself in the opening scene, the cars look lovely, indeed it is as a whole visually sumptuous, and (after 20 minutes or so of more or less acceptable fidelity; and the 3D motion-capturing transference of the original drawings is by far the least of the film’s problems) it usefully places in plain view all the cretinous arrogance of modern mass-market, script-conference-driven film-making, confirming in passing that, as a director, Spielberg is a burned-out sun.’

[comics] The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret Of The Unicorn – Review … a disappointing look of Speilberg’s Tintin film: ‘…while the big set pieces are often exuberantly handled, the human details are sorely wanting. How curious that Hergé achieved more expression with his use of ink-spot eyes and humble line drawings than a bank of computers and an army of animators were able to achieve. On this evidence, the film’s pioneering “performance capture” technique is still too crude and unrefined. In capturing the butterfly, it kills it too. What emerges is an array of characters (puffy, moribund Haddock; opaque, inexpressive Tintin) that may as well be pinned on to boards and protected by glass.’