June 28, 2000
[comics] Great site… The Periodic Table of Comic Books.
June 27, 2000
[books] Interesting interview with Alex Garland author of The Beach. Covers the story’s origins as a comic book… . “He had drawn a 60-page comic book, a noir-ish tale based on his experiences in the Far East. He had a go at translating it into a novel. The origins of The Beach, which is written like a sequence of discrete man-on-a-desert-island cartoons, remain apparent. Its comic-book blueprint helps to account for its storytelling pace, and why even in quite horrific and bloody scenes there is a Pulp Fiction element of slapstick.”
[comics] Great two part interview of Grant Morrison in Sequential Tart: [Part One] [Part Two] ‘It lets your head expand and it also throws you on your mettle. I always travel on my own and you find yourself in the middle of Bangkok and you think ‘what do I do?’ and that’s a great feeling to have – you solve it and you go about the world feeling fantastic because no-one knows who you are and no ones putting any personality on you – you can swam into any place and say ‘I’m James Bond!” (laughs)’ — GM on travel.
June 26, 2000
[comics] The New York Times on the problems facing the comics industry. ‘Even the staunchest supporters of comic books say that the industry is facing problems in everything from production to distribution to marketing. There are no hard and fast figures for the industry. Publishers and distributors are secretive about sales. In fact, the only figure that insiders agree upon is the number of comic-book stores. Today, there are fewer than 4,000, down from more than 10,000 during the comic boom in the mid-90’s. “I think people like comics as much as ever, but now it’s very difficult to buy them,” said Stan Lee, creator of Spider-Man and an icon in the industry. “There used to be so many places to buy comic books; there used to be a corner store in every city.”‘
[comics] According to Ain’t it Cool News Frank Miller may be teaming up with Darren Aronofosky for the next Batman film. [via Ghost in the Machine]
June 25, 2000
[reading] Buy this comic: From Hell by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell. Here’s a review from Salon. ‘As ambitious and affecting as anything ever rendered in pictures and word balloons, “From Hell” combines an intricate mystery, insightful social criticism and unflinching brutality capable of unnerving the most desensitized pop audience. It’s publication as a book promises to give it a new lease on life. That’s what happened with Art Spiegelman’s Pulitzer-Prize winning “Maus,” which was originally published in installments in the arty comic “Raw.” “From Hell” is the only graphic novel since “Maus” to rival its ambition and historical depth.’
June 24, 2000
[comics] Warren Ellis talks about the best comics you don’t read. ‘Harvey Pekar is as fucked a human as you’ll find, put bluntly. And he’s honest about it.’
June 23, 2000
[comics] The Washington Post on Marvel’s new range of comics aimed at kids. ‘Ralph Mathieu first got hooked on the Flash when he was 13 and has read comics the 25 years since. Now the owner of Alternate Reality Comics in Las Vegas, he believes that no matter how good comics are, convincing large numbers of kids and teens is an uphill battle. “Sadly, the number of kids who’ll pick reading for entertainment over video games, renting movies, the countless channels television offers, or the Internet, is a very small fraction,” he says. “I also think that today, more then ever, kids and teens regard superhero comics as geeky.’
June 20, 2000
[comics] The Guardian’s Steve Bell on the deaths in Dover. [Earlier BBC News Story]
June 16, 2000
[comics] The art of Dave McKean. Really great looking site.
June 15, 2000
[comics] August’s Preview Picks — good list of the best comics out in August.
June 14, 2000
[comics] Salon reports that Lex Luthor is to run for president. [via Ghost in the Machine]
June 11, 2000
[comics] Nice summary/FAQ about Kevin Smith’s comics from ViewAskew
June 10, 2000
[comics] Warren Ellis interviews Grant Morrison. “Fans of comics like INVISIBLES and JLA may be interested to know that I was Mr. DeFalco’s unwilling ‘bitch’ for most of the late 80s. Because I was quite young-looking and fairly skinny, I could quickly be done up with a bit of curtain as an ideal ‘visiting niece’ whenever one of Tom’s morbid testosterone build-ups was giving him grief.”
June 9, 2000
[comics] Yesterday was a good day to visit a comic shop…. The first issue of Grant Morrison’s Marvel Boy came out along with Scott McCloud’s Reinventing Comics. “Comics offers a medium of enormous breadth an control for the author — a unique intimate relationship with it’s audience — and a potential so great, so inspiring, yet so brutally squandered, it could bring a tear to the eye.” — Scott McCloud
June 8, 2000
[comics] Grant Morrison issues a call to arms. “This is simple: if you really hate comics so badly you want to see them die, then keep filling the message boards with frustrated, ignorant bile (I’ve been reading some of this stuff and a lot of guys out there really need to get laid or take up meditation). Otherwise, let’s have a momentary ceasefire to figure out ways of rebuilding the profile of the entire comics medium. The responsibility is with us; we all know how awful it is and how crap comics are. We’ve all heard that tired old song of self-loathing long enough and it’s getting to be a real drag. If you think there’s no hope then please f*** off, die quietly and prove yourself right.” [via Barbelith]
June 7, 2000
[comics] Great Steve Bell Cartoon on Elitism and William Hague in the Guardian today. “I, Commonsense Man shall wreak vengence on the Liberal elite”
[comics] Warren Ellis asks: Why Comics? “Comics are just words and pictures. You can do anything with words and pictures.” — Harvey Pekar.
June 6, 2000
[comics] Bill Clinton tells Russia that he had in the past a used comic book business: “”In my lifetime, I probably had ? earned money doing 20 or 25 different things. I’ve built houses, I’ve cleared land, I’ve worked in a grocery store. I had a used comic book business. Obviously, I was a musician. I made money as a musician. I’ve been a teacher. I’ve done a lot of different things in my life.”” Totally weird if it’s true… [via Ghost in the Machine]
June 5, 2000
[comics] Yet another Dave Sim Misogyny Page. “Behind this…lies the Greater Void, the Omnivorous Engine which drives every… institutionalised waste of human time and energy, which drives, in point of fact, our entire degraded society. The wife and kids.”
June 4, 2000
[comics] newsUnlimited profiles Steve Bell. “Steve has the idea, writes the words, does the drawing. He can do leader- page cartoons which – in their infinite detail – look as though they must be condensed versions of a much bigger cartoon. (Not so: what you see is virtually the size you get.) He can do illustrations that can dominate a whole page. And then there are the strips. Then there is If?”
June 3, 2000
June 2, 2000
[comics] The Grand Comic Book Database — These people take their comic books seriously!
June 1, 2000
[comics] newsUnlimited talks to Alan Moore. “‘I can remember the exact panel during the writing of From Hell when I became interested in magic,’ he says. ‘Gull says that one place that gods inarguably exist is in the human mind. I wrote that sentence, and noticed the word ‘inarguable’, which is quite a big word, and that was the beginning of the end. I thought, ‘I can’t see why that isn’t true. And if it is true, then I’m probably going to have to change the whole of my life to fit around it.'”
May 31, 2000
[comics] Dork is one of my very favourite comics. You can find more from Evan Dorkin at the House of Fun. [voice-in-head: must…. buy… Eltingville T-Shirt!!]
May 30, 2000
[comics] Nicely designed comic site: Alex Tam’s Starman Compendium.
May 29, 2000
[comics] Alan Moore in Love. “Oh, Darling? I know it’s difficult for you! It’s difficult for ME, as well! I mean, you ARE married, and English, and you have two lovely daughters my age, and you seem to think you can levitate, and you’re always talking about your birth caul, and you haven’t had a haircut since Elvis was popular, and you produce a ten page book of footnotes after every date, and I have so little to offer a man like you?!” [via Adventures At 50 Feet]
May 28, 2000
[comics] Alan Moore asks “What is reality?“
May 27, 2000
[comics] Rich Johnson on The Cult of Warren Ellis. “And the thin and wiry Our Lord Warren Ellis was no longer thin and wiry, and started to buy Armani suits and some of his followers thought to themselves, hang on, he’s raking it in with this Excalibur lark.”
May 26, 2000
[comics] Excellent Daredevil website [via pearls that are his eyes]
May 25, 2000
[comics] Cool Beans! There’s a new issue of Stray Bullets out…
May 24, 2000
[comics] Frank Miller talks about the sequel to Dark Knight Returns.
May 23, 2000
[comics] Nicely illustrated Eddie Campbell interview. “[…]but I would say that the impetus to draw these pages derives from an urge to record the world around me, to record a little piece of now and save it for tomorrow. “
May 22, 2000
[comics] Old Warren Ellis interview. “Hm. Jamie’s one with the monkey was brilliant. The first episode of his FEAR MACHINE sequence was marvellously solid, too. Several of Garth’s issues were standouts, including the Special, “Confessional.” Gaiman’s “Hold Me” was, to my mind, one of the most honest and natural things he’s ever done, certainly among his best work. I’d be hard pressed to choose a single issue.” – what’s his favourite issue of Hellblazer.
May 21, 2000
[comics] Adrian Tomine’s diary on Slate explains why cartooning is better than a real job: “Producing an issue of my comic book is a slow, arduous process, and right now I’m a little more than halfway done with Issue 7. Last night I spent more than an hour tinkering with one line of dialogue. I tried five or six different variations, finally settling on the simplest and shortest: “What the hell’s your problem?” Brilliant, huh?”
May 20, 2000
[comics] How to be cheap by Joe Matt.
May 17, 2000
[comics] Warren Ellis seems to be doing a lot of little bits of writing for themestream. Of special note: Warren Ellis: Why I Write Comics and England, In The Summertime: LIQUID CITY
May 14, 2000
[comics] Lots of interesting rumours about comics over at Ramblings 2000. Mark Millar talks about his new vampire TV series for Channel 4 called Sikeside: “The big difference between me and Buffy is that Sikeside is going to be the most appalling thing ever seen on TV… and I mean in terms of bad taste. It really, really, really, really is absolutely horrific and a response to all the overseas vampire dross we’ve been subjected to. I promise you won’t have seen this stuff before.”
May 13, 2000
[comics] Warren Ellis talks about Cerebus. “Dave Sim is more than a little mad, as I think anyone who’s read a great deal of CEREBUS would attest to. Us old lefties instinctively shy away from someone who communicates what is at best gynephobia and at worst pure bloody misanthropy in the way that Sim does, even allowing for the dichotomy between auctorial intent and personal belief. But as a creator I keep coming back to Sim for his masterful, hugely inventive storytelling. Creatively, he’s the mutant bastard child of Will Eisner, The Studio artists (Barry Windsor-Smith and those guys) and Chuck Jones.”
May 11, 2000
[comics] Marvel to abandon comics for videogames and Movies? “The simple paper medium of comic books just isn’t cutting it in the age of video’s flashy special effects, explosive audio and interactive action.” – The Wall Street Journal. [via Ghost in the Machine] SOMEBODY DIES! BY MARVEL BETRAYED!! EVERY BUSINESS EXEC MY ENEMY… COMICS… FIGHTS… ON! I’M BORN AGAIN! A COMIC BOOK WITHOUT HOPE…. IS A COMIC BOOK WITHOUT FEAR!!! MY… SPLEEN… EXPLODES…
May 8, 2000
[weblogs] USS Catastrophe — a weblog about comics…
May 6, 2000
[comics] Shit! People are still worrying if Dave Sim is a misogynist or not! “If you look at her and see anything besides emptiness, fear and emotional hunger, you are looking at the parts of yourself which have been consumed to that point.” — Dave Sim. If you’re interested check out cerebus.org for more details on Sim’s comic….
May 5, 2000
May 1, 2000
[comics] Whatever happened to Reverso-Brendan McCarthy? [via 2000AD Links Project]
[comics] Comicon reports Alan Moore is to change his name to “Alan Marvel-Vagina!” [second story on that page]
April 30, 2000
[comics] PopImage has a fantastic profile on Matt Wagner and his work (creator of Grendel, Mage and various other comics).
April 29, 2000
[comics] DC Comics ordered the complete print run of Alan Moore’s League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen #5 destroyed because the reproduction of a Victorian age advertisement contains the phrases “Marvel Douche Company” and “vaginal”. Moore comments: ‘My parents raised me as a gentleman and everyone at Marvel should rest assured that I would never make reference to any person there as a “douchebag”.’
April 28, 2000
[comics] “Nothing ends that isn’t something else starting. So which side are you on? Do you know yet?” I’ve just read the last issue of the Invisibles… [Personal Shite]
If you want to find out more about the Invisibles check out: The Bomb and the Nexus.
If you want to find out more about the Invisibles check out: The Bomb and the Nexus.
April 27, 2000
[comics] The final issue of the Invisibles is out. I still have not got a copy — deliveries in the UK were delayed by the bank holiday on Monday!
[comics] Warren Ellis reports that he will produce a run of three-issue serials, original graphic novels and trade paperbacks for Image Comics.