The News Blog of Comics Culture
As Dave Sim noted the other day, Wendy and Richard Pini, creators of Elfquest, the pioneering indie comics fantasy, held on to all of their artwork. And now they are bequeathing it to Columbia University’s archives. The PR below explains all you need to know, but we should note that Columbia’s tireless librarian and comics-scholar Karen Green has been busy indeed.
TweetPoisoned Chalice Part 3: Marvelman Falls [Previous chapters: Introduction, 1: Prehistory, 2: Marvelman Rises] The actual work on the Marvelman titles was done by various artists, and Mick Anglo goes into quite a bit of detail about them and their different styles in Nostalgia: Spotlight on the Fifties. The outstanding Marvelman artist amongst all of [...]
The other day we were joking about 80s comics weirdos/iconoclasts/content creators like Bob Burden and Steve Lafler — post-underground cartoonists who turned out sizable, notable bodies of work that appeared mostly in serial form, mostly based around very strong characters. It’s a format that has all but vanished. But here’s another near legendary practitioner of the same, Canadian legend David Boswell, creator of Reid Fleming, World’s Toughest Milkman. Boswell has just put all of Fleming’s adventures online in a pay-what-you-wish format, which most people will take to be free, but be a good sport and drop a few bucks, won’t you?
Throughout the month of February, the Ohio Art League is showcasing a comic art exhibition curated by Ken Eppstein, creator, publisher and chief muckity-muck of Nix Comics, a local comic book publisher. Not only has Eppstein put together a delightful display showing the process in which a comic has made, he’s also arranged for three presentations about the past, present and future of comics in Columbus.
A must read and a must-read for masochists top our linkage today, both returning to topics that were much on the minds of anyone in comics about 30 years ago — oldies but goodies.
First and most importantly, library professor Carol Tilley has been going through Dr. Fredric Wertham’s notes and found out that he was, to use a technical term, full of hooey.
Superman, co-created by writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster, first appeared in Action Comics #1 in June 1938, published by Detective Comics Inc, a fore-runner of National Periodical Publications and DC Comics. Virtually overnight it became a huge seller, and is running to this day, with uninterrupted publication for well over seventy years. A vast amount has been written over the years on the history of Superman, and by people substantially more qualified than I, but one claim, that Superman was based on the character of Hugo Danner, from Philip Wylie’s novel Gladiator, (Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1930), has some relevance to the larger story of Marvelman and, although I decided that it might be too far back to start this series of articles, if you’re interested in reading what I have to say about it, you should go read this article, and then meet us back here.
The comic character Marvelman has a fascinating – and probably unique – history in the field of comics. His extended origin goes all the way back to the very beginnings of the American superhero comics industry, and it seems likely that his ongoing story will stretch on well into the future. It involves some of the biggest names in comics. It’s a story of good versus evil, of heroes and villains, and of any number of acts of plagiarism and casual breaches of copyright.
If you read only one think piece on comics by a great cartoonist today, you should read The Literaries by Eddie Campbell. The piece spins off of the current discussion on the place of EC comics which I mentioned the other day. Campbell’s response is specifically to Ng Suat Tong’s declaration that EC comics were mostly well-drawn pulp.
Preliminary voting is in on this year’s Eisner Award Hall of Fame and the judges have selected Mort Meskin and Spain Rodriguez for automatic inclusion.
In the tradition of advocacy cartooning through the ages, the NY-based political comics anthology World War 3 reminds us that the late Ed Koch, former mayor of New York, wasn’t always a beloved avuncular figure. Contemporary cartoons from Eric Drooker, Steve Brodner and Tom Keough take on Kach’s handling of the homeless, affordable housing and police brutality.
In case you missed last night’s PBS documentary on Superheroes, you can watch it above—or at this link if the embed isn’t working. The program includes Wizard World all-star festival of folks like Lou Ferrigno, Burt Ward, Adam West and Lynda Carter talking about playing superheroes. They are all veteran charmers, and when we have a spare 53 minutes, we plan on watching the whole thing. A supporting webpage has background and stills—such as the above one of Julie Newmar as Catwoman—and some extra videos.
Art comix publisher PictureBox has announced a new line: Ten Cent Manga, which will be curated by manga exert Ryan Holmberg (you can read some of his insightful manga writing at The Comics Journal.) We’re told the line will include “famous titles by superstars, as well as single-artist volumes and anthologies of comics by forgotten geniuses.”
Research for Sean Howe’s Marvel Comics: The Untold Story has dug up a lot of long-forgotten dirt, but here’s a particularly sad one:Marvel selling art by Romita, Sinott, Kane, Sal Buscema and more to a Winnipeg art gallery for $1000:
And oh how yore they are. Alan Light, founder of The Buyer’s Guide/Comics Buyer’s Guide is one of the most organized flickr users we’ve ever encountered and he has a couple of sets from the history of TBG/CBG that those reminiscing about the now cancelled publication might enjoy.
In a brief, statement, publisher F+W announced the closing of CBG, the Comics Buyer’s Guide today. The magazine’s 42 year run will end with issue #1699, one shy of the farewell #1700 that the collectors it appealed to would have liked.
The cause of death was the usual suspects:
Tweet Via Midtown Comics, A recent letter from Steve Ditko. A recent letter from Steve Ditko to one of our customers. He asked Steve what he remembered about designing Spidey’s costume. #ditko #spiderman (at Midtown Comics) 50 years is a long time…and Stan Lee doesn’t remember anything either. The intensely private Ditko has long refused [...]
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