[comics] Counterculture Comics Hero Grant Morrison Gets a Biopic … Wired cover a new documantary about Grant Morrison … ‘Morrison has lived a very full life, from playing in rock bands to experimenting as a transvestite to becoming, like Alan Moore, a chaos magician. There’s a lot of fertile ground in his personality alone, to say nothing of his sometimes autobiographical comics. In the process, Morrison has become a counterculture icon primed for mainstream crossover.’

[comics] Go Look: Bill Sienkiewicz art for the 1980’s Dungeons and Dragons cartoon … (more…)

[comics] Skin … The Forbidden Planet blog remembers Skin the long out-of-print comic from Peter Milligan and Brendan McCarthy … ‘McCarthy’s art is astonishing, from the brutal leer on Martin’s face in one scene to the psychedelic, drug-fuelled sex scene with the young skinhead and some hippies (aided in no small part by Carol Swain’s brilliant colouring) which is a great example of how bloody amazing McCarthy’s art often is. Both art and story combine perfectly to tell a powerful tale of a disturbing subject and do so while denying the reader the normal emotional crutch of having a loveable but put-down hero to root for…’

[comics] Go Look: Jack Kirby’s Inglourious Basterds Comic Book Adaptation!

[comics] 70 Facts You Didn’t Know About Marvel Comics … ‘Artist John Romita Jr based the Daredevil villain Typhoid Mary on his ex-wife.’

[comics] Rediscovered: Joe Matt’s How To Be Cheap (more…)

[music] The Music Of Grant Morrison: Torturted Soul / October … Grant Morrison on vocals with The Fauves … ‘There was talk of some sort of CD of GM related stuff being collected a few years back but I don’t think anything ever came of it. A pity. Anyway, I have no record sleeve scan, so here’s a picture of singer and cat. Meow.’

[comics] A List Of Favorite Comic Book Cliches … ‘We’ll always have a soft spot for Julie Newmar as Catwoman in the 1966 “Batman” TV show, if only for the matter-of-fact way that she told Batman that they could both be happy if he’d just let her kill Robin.’

[comics] The Haiku of the Ancient Sub-Mariner … great gag strip from Evan Dorkin … ‘Angry, So Angry…’

[comics] Comic Tools … fascinating blog looking at the craft, tools and skills behind the art on a comic book page.

[comics] Smilin’ Stan Lee is on Twitter: ‘Uh oh! My appointment just arrived. Gotta get to work. To be continued tomorrow– or tonite if there’s time. Excelsi– whatever!’ [link]

[comics] Super-Social Networking: Superhero Facebook Status Updates … ‘Bruce Wayne is glad to see the new law requiring skylights in all buildings was passed.’ [via Sore Eyes]

[comics] Name Five Great Things About Steve Ditko … One of Evan Dorkin’s: ‘I have it on good authority that at a Valiant Comics shindig Ditko got up and went after someone who had taken his photograph, brandishing a chicken leg. No fracas or altercation took place, I just like the image of him shaking a chicken leg at the guy while explaining his reasons for not wishing to be photographed. If I remember correctly, the photograph was “taken care of”. I guess that’s not a reason why Ditko is great, but it is a reason why Ditko is Ditko. And Ditko is great.’

[comics] Abhay Khosla’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula [Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three | Chapter Four | Chapter Five]

[comics] A Review Of Big Numbers #3 by Alan Moore & Bill Sienkiewicz … ‘The opening chapters of his From Hell and Watchmen are compelling, but no one could guess those works’ ultimate richness from those chapters alone. The same would have been all but undoubtedly true of Big Numbers. The third chapter brings a fuller understanding of what was lost by the failure to complete more than a quarter of the book. The failure is beyond a disappointment; it’s about as close to an artistic tragedy as one can imagine.’

[comics] On Writing, Collaboration and Superheroes … interesting look at the dynamics between writers and artists creating comics … ‘If Bendis and Maleev’s take on Daredevil falters at times in its disregard for the formal properties of comics, it is also guilty of rolling out age old tropes for the “revival” of superhero titles. One is left with the impression that mainstream comics writing has not only stagnated but in all likelihood regressed in the last decade becoming competent yet mediocre.’

[comics] Psychological Violence In Late 1970s/Early 1980s UK Girls Comics … notes from a talk at Interesting 2009 … ‘The huge success of Tammy, which ran from 1971 to 1984, was partially based on some actual research by IPC magazine into what girls enjoyed reading about. Apparently they liked to be made to cry. Vulnerable amnesiacs who avoided multiple, mysterious attempts on their lives to discover their parents had been killed in some kind of transport ‘accident’ sent sales figures of up to a quarter of a million a week…’

[comics] George And Lynne Explained … amusing explanations of the midly NSFW and sexist newspaper strip … ‘By the way one man is wearing a low cut back top and another wearing a vest and choker it suggests that they like her outfit for its fashion sense rather than the way it shows off her cleavage. So this is a gay super pub with its own multistory car park…’ [via Metafilter]

[comics] Dirk Deppey on Paul Levitz stepping down as publisher of DC Comics: ‘…one has to ask: How many initiatives has Levitz botched over the years? From the serial alienation of the company’s most profitable writer, Alan Moore, to the unholy debacle that was Minx — one of the many, many publishing lines created under his oversight that were badly conceived, badly executed, badly managed and badly promoted from start to finish — Levitz has in recent years presided over what can only be described as one of the most embarrassing periods in DC Comics’ corporate history.’

[comics] ‘Yes, Batman, here’s your namesake — Batman Jones!’ (more…)

[comics] Funny business … Jon Ronson visits the Beano’s offices … ‘When I arrived this morning, one of the writers, Claire, was sifting through the pile of letters that had come in from fans during the week. I picked one up at random. It was from a little boy, aged six. He had assiduously drawn a picture of a man standing outside a gym. “This is Jimmy Gym,” his letter read. “He should be in the Beano. He’s always in the gym training.” “Are you going to print this one?” I asked Claire. “No,” she replied. “The picture wouldn’t reproduce well.” She glanced at Jimmy Gym with a mix of compassion and steely resolve, and gently placed him in the No pile. “You have to learn to be ruthless,” she said.’

[comics] Neil Gaiman’s Bookshelves … can anybody spot where the comics are in these photos? (click on them for high resolution pics.)

[comics] By Day, A Mild Mannered Comic Strip Artist … Chris Weston – He Fights Crime! … ‘I held up my drawings, and the policeman’s eyes widened with astonishment! “That’s him!” he splutterd. ” ‘Ere, come and have a look at this!” he called to his colleagues. They trotted over, took a look and exclaimed “That is spot-on! It IS him!”. Seems they’d already picked up a suspect who matched my drawings exactly…’ [via Metafilter]

[comics] The Top 70 Most Iconic Marvel Comic Panels … a really strong list of key moments in the Marvel Universe.

[funny] For Sale in Gotham London: Batmobile replica 4.2 engine 1 years Mot and 6mths Tax (£8,500) … ‘It has titanium cup holders as used in the Bugatti Veyron which I won in an auction and the arm rest is autographed by Batman himself Adam West.’ [via LDN]

[comics] Comica Festival 2009 … the website for the London’s comic festival – guests this year include Joe Sacco, Eddie Campbell and Bryan Talbot … ‘Preparations are well under way for the sixth Comica Festival scheduled for November 6 to 26, 2009, to be held at the ICA and other London venues.’

[comics] Recommended: Harker by Roger Gibson and Vince Danks … really nicely done British small-press crime comic. Harker – the classiest occult detective TV show you’ll never see (a review from Richard Bruton): ‘The genre trappings are all there. The police procedural investigation, the crime scene investigation, the autopsy, the legwork, the finding of the clues; it’s all there, exactly where it should be. Add to that the mysterious supernatural goings on to get one really great comic book series. But on top of a really lovely idea, really well executed the thing reads incredibly well…’

[comics] Watchmen’s Dave Gibbons on graphic art, computers and the dreaded Comic Sans … ‘There are people who specialise in lettering, and I’ve had my hand lettering made into a digital font. I picked up a copy of the Dandy the other week, and I was amazed to see that it was completely lettered in my hand-lettering font. It was quite a thrill, really, having been a Dandy reader years and years ago.’

[comics] Dan Clowes Interviewed … [via Waxy’s Links]

CLOWES: There’s a book that came out more than ten years ago − a 50th-anniversary index of the members of the National Cartoonists Society. It’s a book of photos and short bios of hundreds of old-time American cartoonists, and for some reason a few “younger” − I was thirty-seven at the time − non-members, such as myself, were included.

There are dozens of photos of these old codgers smiling with these stupid grins on their faces. But you can see the sadness underneath. It’s such a grim document. My friend [and fellow cartoonist] Chris Ware told me he had to actually hide his copy of the book, because he can’t bear to look at it.

QUESTION: What did you both find grim about it?

CLOWES: All these lives spent behind the drawing board; decades on a daily strip that no one remembers.

[comics] Hobo Darkseid is on Twitter: ‘SOME BELIEVE THIS SOCK OF NICKELS TO BE HALF EMPTY. DARKSEID BELIEVES IT TO BE HALF FULL. NOW HOLD STILL.’ [link]

[comics] The Official Creebobby Comics Archetype Times Table … containing a robot, a zombie, an astronaut, a monster, a Lincoln, a Vampire, a T. Rex, a ninja, an alien, a platypus and many many combinations…

[comics] Thoughts on the Forthcoming Howard Chaykin Blackhawk Collection … a look at one of Chaykin’s less well known comics from the 1980s … ‘This is a quintessentially Chaykin image. Why? Well, just gaze into Blackhawk’s eyes, and you’ll see the horrible truth: that Blackhawk totally seduced and bedded that swastika before shooting it to death and setting it on fire.’

[comics] Predator vs. Tintin …

[comics] Recommended First Comics … A bunch of writers from the Onion’s A.V. club discuss which comics to recommend to new readers … ‘Alan Moore’s and David Lloyd’s V For Vendetta is the good book I reach for when preaching to the heathens. Moore’s dense, self-loathing Watchmen seemed to turn off as many people as it turned on, at least when I tried to recommend it to newbies. But V For Vendetta’s mix of comfort-food dystopia, muted humanism, bleak poetry, and technical virtuosity is a far more palatable icebreaker, and one that serves equally as an entree into mainstream and underground comics. And the bottom line? In spite of its grim tone and literary air, it’s still got a guy in a cape and a mask kicking ass.’

[comics] Charlie Adlard: giving life to the zombies of the Walking Dead … the English artist of fabulous zombie comic The Walking Dead interviewed by The Times … Adlard: ‘The zombies are the easiest thing to draw in the book. I make them up as I go along! The hardest thing I find is doing pages and pages of people just talking to each other. The Walking Dead has lots of that but the challenge is to make it look interesting.’

[comics] Time is a Four-Lettered Word by Grant T. Morrison … scans of Near Myths #2 from 1978 – some of Grant Morrison’s earliest published work.

[comics] Grant Morrison Interview By The Onion A.V. Club … On what appeals to him about comics as a storyteller: … ‘The essentially magical qualities of inert words and ink pictures working together with reader consciousness to create a holographic Sensurround emotional experience. What else?’

[comics] Robert Crumb’s Genesis … scans from a preview of Crumb’s latest work taken from the New Yorker … [via Metafilter]

[comics] Reinventing The Pencil: 21 Artists Who Changed Mainstream Comics (For Better Or Worse) … On Chris Ware: ‘Ware marries his fetish for design with a singularly sardonic voice and a God’s-eye perspective on his characters, creating an overall tone that’s like a turn-of-the-century circus poster crossed with the post-war angst of literary lions like John Updike and Richard Yates. Ware’s influence is mostly seen among the younger alternative crowd and contemporary commercial artists, but his use of staccato pacing and visual repetition has popped up in a number of superhero comics over the past decade as well.’

[comics] After Watchmen, What’s ‘Unfilmable’? These Legendary Texts … Wired looks at some susposedly unfilmable comics and books … On Sandman: ‘Too long. Spanning 74 issues and more than a decade, if you count spinoffs and standalones, Neil Gaiman’s decorated mythopoetic fantasy starring Dream, Death and other revered, abstract personifications is stuck in film limbo. “There is talk of an HBO Sandman,” Gaiman told Wired.com in March, “because no one quite knows what to do with it. But the truth is, if anybody is going to make [it] a movie, it will probably be a kid in film school right now to whom The Sandman was the most important thing ever. It will take the amount of commitment, dedication and madness that Peter Jackson brought to Lord of the Rings to get it on the screen…”‘

[comics] Stephen Frears drawn to Tamara Drewe … ‘Tamara Drewe, Posy Simmonds’s comic strip about a journalist who ruffles feathers in a rural writers’ retreat, is to be turned into a film by Stephen Frears. The director of The Queen and The Grifters is reported to have cast former Bond girl and St Trinian’s graduate Gemma Arterton as the title character, a newspaper columnist whose recent nose job transforms her into a seductive flirt, to the chagrin of the quiet village’s womenfolk.’

[comics] The Comic-Book Guide to SIM Hacking … report from the Register – you can download the comic here.

[comics] Go Look: Eight page preview of David Mazzuchelli’s new comic Asterios Polyp and a slideshow of Superheroes Decadence by Donald Soffritti (a look at what happens when comic heroes and villains get old).

[comics] The X-Men Universe Relationship Map … ‘Dashed Line – Signifies one of the parties is from an alternative reality.’ [via DYFL?]

[batman] What Batman Needs…

[comics] Alan Moore’s Youngblood Proposal … more notes from Moore on how to revamp some of Rob Liefeld’s Awesome characters … ‘Before I get onto the details of the first issue, however, I’d better run through some of my thinking on the restructuring of both the book and the Youngblood team into something at once new and at the same time “classic,” whatever that means in a field that produced Brother Power, the Geek…’

[comics] Grant Morrison Tells All About Batman and Robin …

One of my all-time favourite Batman panels was written by Haney and drawn by Jim Aparo and shows Batman strolling down the sunlit streets of Gotham, checking out the mini-skirted girls and accompanied by the line to end all lines: ‘Yes, Batman digs this day!”

[books] Michael Moorcock, Alan Moore, Iain Sinclair … notes from a talk the three writers gave in London last night … ‘Alan Moore discusses deadlines, and the frenetic life-style involved in popular writing. To be a periodical writer becomes your life. [..] Alan Moore says “Stuff leaks in from the future.” Alan Moore talks about sleep deprivation. Alan Moore says that craft becomes less conscious.’ [via Moleitau]

[comics] Swamp Thing #21 – The Anatomy Lesson … The classic second issue of Alan Moore’s groundbreaking run on Swamp Thing available as a PDF. (But what a shame about the weak digital recolouring in this reprint) … ‘He should have let me finish. He should have listened. Then I’d have been able to explain the most important thing of all to him. I’d have been able to explain that you can’t kill a vegetable by shooting it through the head.’

[comics] Steve Bissette on the Creation of Swamp Thing #20 … Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6 … a long multipart post (including many pages from the script!) on the first issue of Alan Moore’s run Swamp Thing. It’s an interesting issue – it was produced under considerable deadline pressure and has never been reprinted much because it’s a transitional issue as Moore deals with the plot the previous writer had left him with and sets up stage for the next issue – The Anatomy Lesson. [via Metafilter]