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24 May 2023
[comics] Brian Bolland – THE Cover Artist … Long Brian Bolland interview by the Cartoonist Kayfabe team.

21 April 2023
[comics] “My Imperative Was To Get My Family Through This”: Catching up with Stephen R. Bissette … Recent interview with Steve Bissette. ‘All that time that I was at the Kubert School, and then entering the comic book field, and laboring as a freelancer, and lucking into Swamp Thing, and having it blossom into what it blossomed into, and pushing it as far as we could push it, including losing the Comics Code Authority [beginning with The Saga of the Swamp Thing #29] – well, that was part of my fantasy, my path. “Can I play some part in making horror comics viable and dangerous again?” I gave it my all. If there’s anything I’m proud of, it’s that we fucking busted the Comics Code. They didn’t bust us.’
17 April 2023
[panda] Alan Moore The Adventures Of St. Pancras Panda … Early comic strip from Alan Moore, readably collected together on Archive.org.

Panels from St. Pancras Panda, an early Alan Moore comic strip.

30 March 2023
[comics] How Two Jewish Kids in 1930s Cleveland Altered the Course of American Pop Culture … A fresh retelling of the story of Superman’s creation. ‘That fateful morning when Jerry arrived with his fresh script, Joe rubbed the sleep out of his nearsighted eyes, put on his Coke-bottle glasses, then read all about the new-and-improved Superman. Joe got it immediately, smiled, and sat down to work. He drew as fast as he could as Jerry paced the wooden floor and narrated, describing the action using film lingo: close-up, long shot, overhead shot. Joe’s eyes were very bad, even with his glasses, so he drew very slowly and meticulously, his nose just an inch or so from the paper. The two spent the whole day—without taking a break, eating sandwiches that Joe brought in—creating Superman.’
21 March 2023
[comics] Incel Supernova: From a Single Comic Strip to the End of the Universe with Scott Adams – The Comics Journal … Abhay Khosla takes a deep dive into the world of Scott Adams. ‘The title of his book is correct. Scott Adams won. He won at comics – but with comics that abandon the whimsy or sadness of the great strips, and embrace resentment and isolation. He won at politics – thanks to a coarse grifter appealing to desperate people’s most racist instincts. He won at getting into arguments on the internet – an internet clogged with helpless people begging, pleading, crying that you GoFund their health care. He won at having money in a country that values nothing besides that. He’s a darling of a media too impotent and untrusted to even convince Americans that Donald Trump is a con man. He’s won in a game too grotesque for any decent person to still want to play.’
14 March 2023
[comics] Grant Morrison’s Judge Dredd [Part I | Part II | Part III] … A look back at Grant Morrison’s Judge Dredd stories. ‘Much has been, and continues to be, said about their work. And yet there is a gap. There is an odd little gap. A gap that exists not because nobody’s noticed it, but because it is seen and then brushed past. Grant Morrison’s Judge Dredd. People seem to go ‘Oh! They did that!’ and then they move right on. They tend to forget, more often than not. Those that remember, particularly 2000AD lifers, have already gotten an established consensus that hangs in the air, so it’s not something paid much attention to. It’s a thing of the distant past, like a vague shape that exists. You recall it, but then forget it.’
9 March 2023
[comics] Marshal Law: Not Approved by The Comics Code Authority! … Pat Mills brings us some obscure 1990s Marshal Law art by Kevin O’Neill.

Cover of Amazing Heroes - with Marshal Law by Kevin O'Neill.

8 February 2023
[politics] Felony free (non-woke) versions of children’s books for Florida … from Ruben Bolling’s Tom the Dancing Bug.

Felony Free Children's Books for Florida

25 January 2023
[comics] From Artist’s Board to Newspaper Page: How Comics Were Made in the Age of Metal Printing, 1910s–80s … A deep dive into how comics were printed in newspapers before photostats and digital.

23 January 2023
[comics] 10 Rules for Drawing Comics … A blog of lists of Rules about drawing comics. Matt Kindt’s rule number 6: ‘Movement and production. The two words my printmaking instructor Leon Hicks, at Webster University, said over and over again. Keep making work. It’s how Jack Kirby made his career. Ideas and art spawn more ideas and art.’
19 January 2023
[comics] Kevin O’Neill’s Mek Memoirs … Pat Mills digs out some early comics from Kevin O’Neill that got him a job on 2000AD in 1977. [More Mek Memoirs]

30 December 2022
[comics] After nearly 30 years, there’s finally a new issue of Miracleman by Neil Gaiman‘I’m a recent convert to the church of Miracleman, and even I felt those decades of anticipation building up as I opened up the latest issue of the story. I’m excited to see what comes next, and how this 30-year-old story ends up picking up in medea res. The layers of meta-text in this continuing story make for an incredible retrospective on the entire history of the superhero genre.’
24 December 2022
[comics] Christmas Eve Panic! … A surprise for Santa from Al Feldstein in 1953. Go read how Panic #1 got banned in Massachusetts.

Christmas Eve Panic!

2 December 2022
[comics] The Great Swamp Monster Confluence of 1971 … A great look at how three fictional swamp monsters for comics were created around the same time and place in the 1970s. ‘A couple of other odd coincidences involving Len Wein have a bearing on our tale of swampy confluence. Since the age of 14, Len had been best friends with Gerry Conway, the Man-Thing’s first scripter. Not only that—the two young comic book writers were roommates during the few months in which both the first Man-Thing story and the first Swamp Thing story were written.’
23 November 2022
[comics] An Appreciation of Kevin O’Neill, 1953-2022 … David Roach remembers Kevin O’Neill. ‘In an industry that could often default to a mass-produced conformity, Kevin was that rarest of things, truly unique, with an artistic voice that was unmistakably his own. In his long career he never once tried to fit in or compromise; indeed, he was seemingly incapable of being anything other than himself. ‘
21 November 2022
[moore] Fantasy Must Be Sharper: An Interview With Alan Moore ‘Davey Jones is a genius. I’ve only ever had brief contact with him, back in the 80s when he was working with an anarchist concern called, I think, Blast and I was briefly in touch with them and then I noticed his work coming out in Viz where he’s the author of so many of my favourite strips. I’m genuinely impressed that there’s such an incredible standard of craftsmanship throughout Viz, blinding cartoonists, writers, and creators on that book. I must admit that the only problem I have with Jones’ work — and it’s not any fault of his, it’s purely me — it’s Tin Ribs; the ghastly physical torture that is visited on Mr Snodgrass. Every issue he’s having slices of his skin ripped off [laughs] it’s a bit rich even for my blood!’
18 November 2022
[comics] Neurotic Boy Outsider: An Interview With Grant Morrison 30 years In The Making … Grant Morrison looks back at some of their British comics from the start of their career. ‘But certainly at the end of the eighties and the nineties, it was still that sense of we were there to protest. We were the working class and we’d suddenly got a grasp of these means of expression. We’d got hold of comic books, we could make our own records. It was that punk rock DIY thing that came through the comics.’
14 November 2022
[comics] Alan Moore Remembers Kevin O’Neill … I was very sad to hear of the death of Kevin O’Neill last week. The link above is what Alan wrote for a New York Times Obituary for Kevin. ‘I am going to miss him like I’d miss sunsets.’
7 November 2022
[comics] Ten years of 2000 AD… … Many of Tharg’s art, writing and editorial droids discussing the success of 2000AD in 1986.

26 October 2022
[comics] Marvel’s Miracleman Omnibus shows how Alan Moore paved the road to Watchmen… Slate on Marvel’s reprint of a full collection of Miracleman along with a look at it’s impact. ‘It’s remarkable how powerful the book remains in spite of its occasional unevenness. Moore is easily the medium’s most important just-writer (as opposed to writers who draw their own scripts, which Moore does very rarely), having demonstrated a complete grasp of its intricacies and potential almost from the beginning of his career. He is, in some sense, a composer, and the people working in comics who can match that formidable perfection are cartoonists themselves—no other writer really comes close.’
14 October 2022
[moore] Watchmen author Alan Moore: ‘I’m definitely done with comics’… … Another interview with Alan Moore in the Guardian and here is a review of Illuminations – his new collection of short stories. ‘He shuns new tech to the extent that we speak down a landline, so I can’t see the lavishly bearded face from which his gentle Northampton burr issues. “When the internet first became a thing,” he says, “I made the decision that this doesn’t sound like anything that I need. I had a feeling that there might be another shoe to drop – and regarding this technology, as it turned out, there was an Imelda Marcos wardrobe full of shoes to drop. I felt that if society was going to morph into a massive social experiment, then it might be a good idea if there was somebody outside the petri dish.” He makes do, instead, with an internet-savvy assistant: “He can bring me pornography, cute pictures of cats and abusive messages from people.”’
21 September 2022
[moore] Discover Alan Moore’s Surprising First Published Superman Stories … A look at some long-forgotten UK published stories from Alan Moore. ‘That second Superheroes Annual in 1983…There was a two-page text piece by Alan Moore, with illustrations by the brilliant Bryan Talbot. The story was titled “Protected Species,” and it was about an alien who traveled the universe collected endangered species from lost planets that he would then bring to his bosses who would keep the survivors on a sort of zoo…’
19 September 2022
[comics] “Westminster.”

From Hell - Westminster

8 September 2022
[tintin] Fake Tintin – The Horror of LV-426 … I will never tire of fake Tintin/Alien mashups.

Fake Tintin - The Horror of LV-426

25 August 2022
[comics] Neil Gaiman on the Secret History of ‘The Sandman,’ from Giant Mechanical Spiders to the Joker … Long interview with Gaiman on The Sandman comics, TV series, Alan Moore, his history with DC Comics and much more. ‘I love that the House of Secrets and the House of Mystery are on screen. I love that Asim Chaudhry and Sanjeev Bhaskar are respectively Abel and Cain. I love the fact we’ve got Goldie and Gregory the Gargoyle. I look at Gregory and I’m just sad that [artist] Bernie Wrightson is no longer with us, because I wish he’d lived to see Gregory the Gargoyle flying around on the screen, this thing that he made. I love all that. I think that’s so much fun. And I love the fact that if you want to do weird deep dives into DC chronology, you have Lyta Hall, who in some versions of DC Comics existence — not really the one that we were in even by the time we got to the comic — but there is a level in which she’s Wonder Woman’s daughter. And perhaps she is, we’ll never know.’
19 August 2022
[comics] Interview: Joe Colquhoun … Charlie’s War artist Joe Colquhoun interviewed in 1982 by Lew Stringer. ‘I found Roy [of the Rovers] a bit of a boring subject, not being a great fan of football, and after four or five years of drawing those bloody hairy-arsed footballers tearing around morning, noon and night, it got me down a lot.’
12 August 2022
[comics] What if Rob Liefeld had drawn Watchmen?

What if Rob Liefeld had drawn Watchmen?

10 August 2022
[comics] The definitive guide to the many editions of Sandman … Useful reading order to Sandman along with a guide to the many different editions of the series. ‘The cheapest way to read is at your nearest library. For those willing to splash, there are many different editions to collect the series; Single Issues, TPB, Deluxe, Omnibus, and Absolutes. For non-comic readers, it is recommended that you decide on a format/edition and stick with it to avoid confusion as different editions cover varying amounts of content per volume.’
8 August 2022
[comics] The 100 Most Influential Pages in Comic Book History … A wide ranging look at 100 pages that changed comics. ‘Hawkeye No. 11 (2013): The highlight of the run came in Hawkeye No. 11, an issue told through the eyes of Lucky, a dog that Hawkeye adopted in the first issue of the series. Lucky (or Pizza Dog, as he thinks of himself, due to his taste for pizza) sees the world through a series of nonverbal signifiers (the book’s letterer, Chris Eliopoulos is credited as “production” for the issue, as he delivers a lot more than just lettering in the issue). It’s Chris Ware–esque diagram artwork, but with a great deal more heart behind the experiences of Lucky. This was one of the most acclaimed single issues of the past decade, winning an Eisner Award for Best Single Issue.’
1 August 2022
[comics] John Wagner and Alan Grant Interviewed in 1988 … I was very saddened to hear of Alan Grant’s passing last week – below is a funny story from him in the linked interview. ‘A freight company hired me to find out where a million and a quarter pounds missing from the books had gone, and I’d not got the slightest idea where it had gone and didn’t even know where to start looking. So I compromised by burning the books. By the time I’d finished they’d no idea what they had or what they didn’t have. The funniest thing about it was that when I eventually told them I couldn’t take it any more and I was leaving to go back to Scotland immediately because my granny had died or something, they said “That’s a great shame. You were doing so well we were going to give you our Heathrow account. There’s 5,000,000 pounds missing there.” And I was travelling home from Tilbury at night ripping up the books and throwing them out of the train window. IPC did eventually take me on for a partwork called “Birds of the World,” and I was there until it closed down after six months.’
11 July 2022
[akira] A Collection of Every Akira Video Game Ever Made‘Akira was one of my favorite films as a teen and I remember hearing rumors of a video game version, but I could never find it. Eventually, I just filed it away as a myth, like the supposed Akira live action film adaptation starring Leonardo DiCaprio. Not only are these games real though, you can even be able to play them thanks to ROM archivists…’
28 June 2022
[comics] The Crisis Generation … Garth Ennis, John McCrea and Sean Phillips interviewed about their work on Crisis.

8 June 2022
[comics] Ed Brubaker on the Reckless series, L.A. 1980s pulp fiction‘With a slew of Eisner Awards to his name and a reputation as one of the industry’s most popular storytellers, Brubaker set out to do something new not by choice but out of necessity. Comics are created on a tight schedule. When the pandemic hit, not only did comic book shops around the country shut down — so did the printers and distributors. It was a bleak time for the business. “Everybody in comics panicked,” Brubaker said. “How are we going to be able to keep making comics? Are all the stores going to go out of business?”’
24 May 2022
[moore] Alan Moore On ‘From Hell’ – Interviewed In 2002 … Future biographers of Moore, please take note of this quote: ‘I do get some funny phone calls. Nicolas Cage phoned me up a few times because he likes my stuff. He seems nice enough, but he phoned me once to ask for advice on his love life. It must be a lonely existence being a film star…’
23 May 2022
[comics] Garth Ennis and Kevin O’Neill on Reviving the Infamous Kids Rule OK! for Battle Action Special … Wonderful interview, with lots of British 70s comics history from O’Neill. ‘I was often asked to change little small things in my artwork for ludicrous reasons later on. But the fallout from Action, which the Garth story is built around, was massive at the time because you cannot underestimate the power of the tabloid newspapers when they turned on comics. I believe Action was torn up on a BBC show called Nationwide with Frank Bough, who was disgraced years later for various misdemeanors, but he tore up a copy of Action on-screen as worthless trash. That was the atmosphere. I don’t think 2000 AD could have been canceled before it was launched because too much time and money had been spent developing it, but by God, it probably came close. And nobody knew what was happening.’
13 May 2022
[art] My brother the superhero: how the death of comic book legend Steve Dillon inspired a creative awakening … A powerful piece on how Glyn Dillon reacted to the death of his brother Steve. ‘Steve’s death changed his younger brother’s life in all sorts of ways. When it happened, Glyn was working at Pinewood Studios as a costume designer on the latest Star Wars movie. It was work he loved but it also involved long, stressful hours and it had been nagging away at him that what he really wanted to do with his life, ever since he was a teenager, was paint. This family tragedy gave him the push to pursue his dreams. “At first I thought about doing a comic [about Steve’s death], but the feelings felt too big for that medium,” he says. “I needed to do something different, more physical, standing up, climbing a ladder.”’
4 May 2022
[comics] Arena: The Comic Strip Hero… … A look back in 1981 at the success of Superman with interviews from the creators Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster and other comics artists such as Will Eisner and Art Spiegelman.

15 April 2022
[comics] We Apologize For Publishing Darkseid’s Anti-Life Equation … All is one in Darkseid! ‘Naturally, the staff and ownership of Hard Drive don’t encourage anyone to die for Darkseid; we encourage conversation. As the current and eternal ruler of the dread planet-fortress Apokalips, Darkseid is a public figure of note. While we pointedly disagree with cosmic genocide, we considered his perspective on the fabrege egg we call life newsworthy. Now it’s clear that no conversation can take place after cutting out your own tongue. We’ve removed Darkseid’s editorial, at great human cost. Our Opinion editor caught a glimpse of the equation as he deleted the page, snuffing the flame of his mortal soul and replacing it with loyalty to Darkseid.’
12 April 2022
[comics] Incredible photos of S.F.’s legendary first comic book store have surfaced — 50 years after we lost them‘The photos show a tiny store where every square inch from floor to the high ceiling is covered with comic book racks and comics displayed in plastic wrap. Arlington stands like a bird on a perch, looking over his customers on the low rung of one of several ladders. A mix of sullen-looking men and wide-eyed children browse horror comics, Tales of the Green Beret and some of the earliest Marvel X-Men issues.’
1 April 2022
[comics] Creating the Judge Dredd by Brian Bolland Apex Edition: A How-to Guide for the Rash and Enthusiastic … David Roach on the difficult search for Brian Bolland’s 2000AD work for an artist’s edition book. ‘At first the page count was uncertain, as we weren’t sure how many pages it would be possible to find, but ideally it was going to be 96, rising to 144 or higher if possible, though at times that felt like a far-off dream. But what that meant was that we were aiming to include as much as 1/3 of his entire British output, which was quite a sobering thought. One complication in tracking down Brian’s pages was the haphazard way in which these early pages were disseminated among collectors. IPC, 2000 AD’s first publisher, had a blanket policy of not returning artwork, something which only changed in the ‘80s in the face of mounting pressure from its artists. In the intervening years, however, numerous pages were stolen from offices and storage warehouses, often turning up for sale in London comic shops, much to the artist’s frustration. As 2000 AD’s most popular artist, Brian’s art was particularly prized and most persistently stolen, and, to this day, certain strips, including his first Judge Death serial, have never surfaced again.’
21 March 2022
[comics] Zorro in Arkham: Reflecting on a Legendary Batman Saga With Writer Grant Morrison, Part 1‘Dan asked me to write Batman…. He likely saw more potential in Damian than I did, and he was right. I’d figured out that Batman as a concept was impervious to pretty much any assault. Camp Batman worked, serious Batman worked, Lego Batman worked. Dad Batman? That would work too. There had been a few ‘son of’ stories over the decades, some written by Alfred the butler as literary amuse bouches, imaginary tales of the next generation. I had the title Batman & Son in my head, like a family business, like Steptoe & Son or, for US readers, Sanford & Son. I gambled that having a deadly aristocratic ninja brat for a kid would only make Batman cooler and add some extra complexity to his mythos…’
10 March 2022
[comics] The Lawsuit that Reshaped Sonic the Hedgehog Comics … I’ve always known that Archie’s Sonic the Hedgehog comics were long-running and complex, but I’ve never heard about the legal case that led to a complete reset of the series. ‘Things started looking grim in late 2012, when Archie suddenly fired its entire legal team. The company had been unable to produce Penders’ work-for-hire contract, which would have given control of his creations to Sega. Penders claimed the contract had never existed. A heavily circulated Tumblr post outlining the case (which has been corroborated as a reliable source by Penders) explains that while Archie did provide a photocopy of a contract allegedly signed by Penders in 1996, Penders claimed that the document was a forgery. That it was neither an original copy nor a contract from the beginning of the writer’s tenure at Archie meant that its validity was questionable. Making things worse, Archie couldn’t produce an original copy of any previous contributor’s contract, meaning that any writer or artist who had worked on the Archie Sonic line could potentially follow in Penders’s footsteps and reclaim their work.’
2 March 2022
[comics] “True Believer: The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee” Author Interview by Tegan O’Neil … Abraham Riesman discusses his new biography of Stan Lee.

You can try to glean life lessons from Stan’s arc, but I feel like they’re all relatively obvious: thou shalt not lie, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not covet, and so on. The harder thing to process is the twofold ambiguity of his life.

There’s the factual ambiguity of who created the Marvel pantheon, which is a dilemma that will probably never be resolved. And then there’s the moral ambiguity of asking whether he was a “good” man or not, which is a similarly unanswerable question, albeit for different reasons. The human mind wants to reject ambiguity; we want to say some things are incontrovertible facts and that the people we like or hate are objectively good or bad. But the reality of existence is uncertainty: constant, chaotic, and infuriating. You can either lie to yourself for certainty—and, to be sure, we all have to do that for certain aspects of life—or you can be honest and confront the answerlessness of the world.

1 March 2022
[comics] Kevin O’Neill’s ‘Mek Memoirs’ … Scans from an obscure, early Kevin O’Neill robot comic. More details on Kev’s early work here.

Kevin O'Neil Mek Memoir Comic Cover

3 February 2022
[comics] Leo Baxendale: Bash Street UnPlugged … A Radio 4 documentary from 1995 about Leo Baxendale the creator of the Bash Street Kids, Minnie the Minx and Sweeney Toddler comic strips.
31 January 2022
[comics] “We Get To Do Whatever We Want!”: An Interview with Sean Phillips … Covering Phillips long career. On Vertigo Comics: ‘Looking back I can see Vertigo was something special and changed comics for the better, but I couldn’t see that at the time. When I’m drawing a comic I’m focused on one panel at a time and it’s difficult to see the bigger picture.’
20 January 2022
[comics] ‘I read all 27,000 Marvel comics and had a great time. Here’s what I learnt’ … Douglas Wolk’s tour guide to Marvel Comics. ‘The reading stage went on for longer than I thought it would. It turns out my brain can only handle so much gaudily coloured, hyper-violent soap opera in a single day. The high point may have been wrestling with the thoughtful, exquisitely drawn, yet problematic 1974-1983 title Master of Kung Fu, which introduced the character of Shang-Chi, who recently made it to the big screen. A taut, introspective espionage thriller whose antagonist is Fu Manchu, the series became, over time, both more impressive and – for its racist portrayals – more wince-inducing.’
29 December 2021
[comics] Roscoe Moscow: Who Killed Rock’n’Roll? Parts: 1-10 | 11-20 | 21-30 | 31-40 | 41-50 |51-60 … Early Alan Moore strip from 1979-80 published originally in Sounds.

Roscow Moscow Comic Strip

24 December 2021
[comics] A Hellraiser Christmas from Kevin O’Neill … [via Twitter]

15 December 2021
[comics] Blocky Mania: The Perfection of Artist Mick McMahon … A nice overview and gallery of the art of Mick McMahon. ‘Few other artists have illustrated Judge Dredd, Tank Girl, Batman (in issues of the fondly-remembered Legends of the Dark Knight anthology series; McMahon has said that he drew it for the money, and he thinks it shows in the finished pages), and Sonic the Hedgehog, but McMahon’s run on the latter character is as important for a generation of readers as his Dredd was for their parents. He also got into design work for video games and toys, and started introducing digital tools into his process. McMahon never stopped moving forward, no matter what.’

Mick McMahon - Some Sky