“D&Q, Fantagraphics, Slave Labor, Top Shelf… all produce a staggering amount of creator owned work. Warren Ellis touted both financial and critical success of Fell. And yet the aforementioned publishers have had to go begging hat in hand and must fight retailers for sales at conventions because the work isn’t selling as well as needed and who knows if or when Ellis will reward us with more Fell, which now seems to be on an annual schedule.”

- Robert Scott
(link via Heidi MacDonald)

 

Ye gods, where does one begin?

I can’t speak for SLG Publishing — it’s what they’ve called themselves for quite some time now, Robert — but of the other three publishers mentioned, Top Shelf and Drawn & Quarterly sent out an appeal for fans to buy their books because bookstore distributors went under while owing them money, while Fantagraphics did the same due to loans taken out because their bookstore distributor went under while owing them money. (All have since found better representation.) “Strong editors” and “publication schedules” had nothing to do with their predicaments, and I feel pretty confident in stating that if they’d waited for comics-shop retailers “beating down their doors for their work,” all three publishers would undoubtedly be out of business by now. The fact that these publishers are relatively healthy right now owes more to the fact that they got sick of waiting for sympathetic readers to show up in the Direct Market, and instead went off seeking out alternative markets where such readers might actually be found. And what do you know? It seems to have worked!

Fancy that.

Scott’s reacting to Robert Kirkman’s argument in favor of creator ownership here, and his general point seems to be “Whether or not you own the work doesn’t matter nearly as much as does getting it onto my shelves so that I can sell it to people,” which is about as clueless an argument as one can make. Kirkman’s point, by contrast, boils down to “We need fresh blood in the marketplace if comics are to survive, and milking Baby-Boomer/Gen-X nostalgia for characters young readers have very little interest in reading doesn’t seem to be cutting it. Since few people are stupid enough to remake Siegel and Shuster’s horrible mistakes in this day and age, I guess that means that we’re going to have to learn to sell new creator-owned work in comics shops, doesn’t it?” Which is a fine and sensible notion, all things considered. It’s a creator-centric argument, to be sure, but then Kirkman is a creator speaking to other creators — it’s sort of the perspective you’d expect from him, after all.

Silly Kirkman. Doesn’t he realize that his job in life is to make sure that the widgets he produces show up in Robert Scott’s store on time? Screw this creator ownership crap. So long as it looks like something his customers might buy and it shows up when Diamond Previews says it will, maybe with a Wizard article hyping it for a few extra sales, you don’t really need anything else, do you? Stop thinking of yourself, Kirkman! Quit your daydreaming! You’re starting to sound like those uppity art-comics shitheels, and look at what happened to them, all begging in the street an’ shit. Do you want that to happen to you? No sir, no you do not.

Yesterday I noted that denizens of the Direct Market had a nagging tendency to believe that their tastes somehow reflected greater American consumer habits more than they actually did. Perhaps I should have made that “deluded themselves into thinking that the entire goddamned universe revolved around their sorry asses,” shouldn’t I?

 

Oh, before I forget: Brian Hibbs responds to yesterday’s nastiness. I’ve replied in the comments section of Hibbs’ blogpost, to avoid yet another iteration of the twice-yearly weeklong blogwar he and I seem to perpetually wage. One retailer at a time, I figure. Heidi MacDonald, Simon Jones and Charles Yoakum have more on the subject, should you be interested, while Steve Holland ponders why their Dan Dare relaunch didn’t connect with buyers.

One correction: According to Hibbs…

In the Tilting Dirk linked to he misread this sentence: “FOC has pretty dramatically changed the way that comics retailers do business; in fact I’d suggest that it is one of the reasons that Marvel and DC are currently at or near 80% of the market in orders, because there’s “less risk” in ordering their material in a FOC environment.” That is entire DM, not Comix Experience. It is approximately 65% at Comix Experience, and Vertigo, and author focused sales (ie: Moore, Ellis, Moore, Ennis, etc,) is the bulk of that.

Duly noted. I apologize for the error; it must have been the Number of the Beast at work, I’m sure.

 

Above the Fold

• [Top Story] Borders Group cut its operating losses for Q2-2008, trimming roughly $50 million in inventory to report $9 million in operating losses, half what was reported this time last year. ICv2 has the gory details.

 

• [Top Story] Newspaper Armageddon Watch continues:
  • The Associated Press reports that revenues for the New York Times fell by 10.1% in the second quarter, with a staggering 16.2% drop in ad revenues.
  • In California, meanwhile, the Sacremento Bee has offered voluntary buyouts to “the majority of its full-time employees” in an effort to cut costs amidst an advertising slump. Ouch.

 

• [Top Story] ComicsList is tracking rumors that e-publisher Wowio is some two weeks late in paying its quarterly royalties. I spoke via email yesterday with one of the creators who claims not to have been paid yet — expect people to start coming forward with complaints by next week at the latest if nothing is done in the interim. (Link via Xaviar Xerexes.)

 

• [Publishing] Charts time! Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen drops just one place to land in the #14 slot in the latest USA Today top-150 bestselling books chart, while Frank Miller, Klaus Janson and Lynn Varley’s Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (cover pictured at right) leaps up from out of nowhere to land at #107.

  In Japan, the twentieth volume of Hiromu Arakawa’s fantasy-adventure series Fullmetal Alchemist debuts at #1 on this week’s Tohan top-ten bestselling manga list, knocking the 21st volume of Tomoko Ninomiya’s romantic comedy Nodame Cantabile into the #2 slot. Anime News Network has the translation. Is is sexist of me to note that the top-tree bestselling comics in Japan this week were all created by women?

 

• [Retailing] Rachel Oehring profiles North Carolina retailer Andrew Neal, whose Chapel Hill Comics has just moved into larger digs.

 

• [Retailing] In non-Deppey-related “let’s you and him blogfight” news, Tom Spurgeon comments on Kevin Church’s ire over a retailer who recommended customers away from inferior work stocked on his shelves, in turn prompting Church to respond.

 

• [Consumer News] Mike Sterling finds the most dubious items from the latest Diamond catalog, so you don’t have to.

 

• [Bottom Story] “Colin Powell and Cartoonist Marshall Ramsey to Speak at Same Conference” — actual headline found at the Editor & Publisher website.

 

Literary Comics

• [Profile] Tom Spurgeon interviews Kramers Ergot editor Sammy Harkham about the new, mega-oversized seventh volume.

 


• [Review] Rob Vollmar presents an extended interview with Understanding Comics author Scott McCloud. I should warn you that there’s a goofy Flash interface involved.

  Related: Andrew Wheeler on McCloud’s Zot! The Complete Black and White Collection. (Above: Meet 9-Jack-9, one of the villains found in the new Zot! collection, ©2008 Scott McCloud.)

 

• [Profile] Alex Cox interviews Action Philosophers co-creator Fred Van Lente.

 

• [Scene] Peggy Burns presents photos from a Lynda Barry signing in St. Louis earlier this week.

 


• [Review] Van Jensen on Raymond Briggs’ Gentleman Jim, now finally back in print. Related: The New York Magazine Blog has a four-page preview from the book. (Above: Jim and Hilda ponder living out their [well, Jim’s] fantasies in this sequence from the book, ©1980, 2008 Raymond Briggs.)

 

• [Commentary] Brian Barr examines the work of Schizo cartoonist Ivan Brunetti.

 

• [Commentary] Injury creator Ted May ponders the fate of the indy comics pamphlet. (Link via Chris Mautner.)

 

• [Commentary] Dick Hyacinth works toward his “best comics of 2008″ list with some provisional entries.

 

Pop Comics

• [Profile] I’m linking to Jennifer Contino’s interviews with Simpsons Comics editor Bill Morrison because honestly, how often do you get the chance to see Gilbert Hernandez draw a giant caveman Homer Simpson?

 


• [Review] Joe McCulloch on the first issue of Grant Morrison and J.H. Williams’ Final Crisis: Superman Beyond. (Above: panel from the issue, ©2008 DC Comics.)

 

• [Review] Johanna Draper Carlson on the fourteenth volume of Will Eisner’s Spirit Archives.

 

• [Review] John Mitchell on Jim Munroe and Salgood Sam’s post-Rapture drama, Therefore Repent!

 

• [Review] Richard Bruton on Andi Watson’s all-ages Princess at Midnight.

 

• [Commentary] Steven Grant explains why Spider-Man co-creator Steve Ditko was partly culpable for the shafting he’s received over the years by Marvel Comics. Jarett Kobek responds.

  Related: Fish Griwkowsky reviews Blake Bell’s book Strange and Stranger: The World of Steve Ditko, which kicked off the big war of words.

 


• [Comics] Harry Lee Green gives us a generous collection of Captain Marvel stories. As you can tell from the illustration, dumb retrograde ethnic depictions are involved. (Above: sequence from “Captain Marvel Retires!” originally printed in Whiz Comics #58 and reprinted in Captain George’s Comic World #22 — written by Otto Binder, artist unknown — ©1944 Fawcett Publications.)

 

• [Comics] All Star Superman in eleven panels.

 

Manga

• [Profile] Charles Solomon speaks with Bleach creator Tite Kubo, and reviews the series as well..



 

• [Scene] Hong Kong cartoonist Lau Wan Kit’s Feel 100% (cover pictured at right) has won the second annual International Manga Awards, held by Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Anime News Network has the details.

 

• [Scene] Deb Aoki reports from Comitia, Tokyo’s annual gathering for independent and original comics (as opposed to fan stories of existing titles, tend to which dominate the more popular Comiket).

 

• [Commentary] Librarian Eva Volin looks at the demand for middle-school aged manga.

 

Comic Strips

• [Commentary] There’s a massive conflict-of-interest factor here, of course, but screw it — I really like Jacob Covey’s quick appreciation of Dennis the Menace creator Hank Ketcham.

 

Digital Comics

• [Analysis] Sean Kleefeld continues his examination of online comics readers.

 


• [Review] Gary Tyrell on Chris Onstad’s Achewood: The Great Outdoor Fight. (Above: sequence from the book’s online serialization, ©2006 Chris Onstad.)

 

• [Comics] Bik & Beep talk politics.

 

Cartooning

• [Profile] Brian Heater speaks with Jews and American Comics editor Paul Buhle.

 


• [Art] Mike Lynch presents a collection of Little Lulu creator Marge Buell’s 1938 illustrations for the book King Kojo, by Ruth Plumly Thompson: part one, part two. (Above: one of the illustrations, ©1938 the David McKay Company.)

 


• [Art] Golden Age Comic Book Stories offers a gallery of Charles Robinson’s 1913 drawings for The Happy Prince & Other Stories, by Oscar Wilde. (Above: a drawing from the gallery.)

 

• [Snark] A letter to the Washington Post. (Link via Mike Rhode.)

 

Comics Culture

• [Commentary] Gary Panter on beavers and fishing… because someone has to tell you about these things.

 


• [Your Drawn! link of the day] Brian Ballinger presents one of the most unique process presentations to come down the pike in quite a while. (Above: image from the linked post, ©2008 Brian Ballinger.)

 

• [Your not-comics link of the day] Michael Milstein looks at NASA’s plan to bomb the Moon and find water. (Link via Slashdot.)

 

• [Your Hey Oscar Wilde! It’s Clobberin’ Time!! link of the day] Here’s science-fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke, as drawn by Jeff Lemire.

 


• [Your Scans_Daily link of the day] From the pages of 2000AD, Alan Moore and Mike White’s “Eureka!“ (Above: exact publication date unknown, though it obviously first hit print sometime in the early 1980s; ©2008 Rebellion.)

 

Events Calendar

 

Events Calendar

Today:

• August 28 (Edmonton, Alberta): Cartoonist and historian Trina Robbins will present a multimedia lecture on female cartoonists of the 20th century at Happy Harbor Comics on 124th Street, beginning at 7PM. beginning at 7PM. Details here.
• August 28 (Los Angeles, CA): Christos Gage, Flip Schultz, Sax Carr and Mandy Amano join host Robbie Peron for another episode of Comics on Comics, taped before a live audience at Golden Apple on Melrose Avenue, beginning at 7PM. Details here.

 

This Week:

• August 29-31 (Belfast, Northern Ireland): MeCon takes place at the Queen’s Student Union on University Road. Guests include Charles Stross, Paul Holden, John McCrea and others. Details here.
• August 29 (Edmonton, Alberta): Cartoonist and historian Trina Robbins will be signing books and meeting readers at Happy Harbor Comics on 81st Avenue, from 5-7PM. Details here.
• August 29 (Seattle, WA): Join Daniel Clowes for an opening reception of an exhibit featuring his art from the classic novel Ghost World, complete with discussion moderated by Gary Groth. It all takes place at the Fantagraphics Bookstore and Gallery on Vale Street, from 6-9PM. Details here.
• August 30 (London, England): London Underground Comics play host to some of your favorite indy cartoonists during Low Energy Day at Camden Lock Market, from 10AM-6PM. Details here.
• August 31 (San Pablo, Philippines): The Komikero Artists Group celebrates its sixth anniversary with a meet-up at Sampalok Lake, beginning at 10AM. Details here.

 

Next Week:

• September 6-7 (Reading, PA): The Comic Geek Speak Super Show takes place at the Greater Reading Expo Center on Twelfth Street. Guests include David Petersen, Danielle Corsetto and more. Details here.
• September 6 (Chicago, IL): A number of experts will participate in a symposium entitles “Chester Commodore and Jackie Ormes: Pioneering Cartoonists of Color” at the Carter G. Woodson Regional Library on Halsted Street. Details here, or call 312-747-6900 for more information.
• September 6 (Asbury Park, NJ): Boiled Angel Fest is a benefit to help cartoonist Mike Diana pay his legal fees, and takes place at Asbury Lanes on Fourth Avenue. Admission is ten bucks. Details here.

 

Want to see your comics-related event listed here? Email a link to dirk@tcj.com and let me know. Please include an online link to which I can send people for more information. No sales-only events, please — it’s nice that you’ve marked things down at your store or website, but I won’t be listing it here.

“Achewood: The Great Outdoor Fight is to comic books as Steve Buscemi is to Orlando Bloom.”

- Nina Stone,
writing the single best sentence
you will read in a review this week

 

More on Virgin Comics’ failure to find an audience: Tom Spurgeon and Brian Hibbs make essentially the same argument in reaction to yesterday’s mini-rant — that Virgin didn’t make comics that anyone actually wanted to buy. Tom puts forth the argument in fairly straightforward fashion:

I would be hesitant to put all of the blame for Virgin’s predicament or even a significant amount of blame on the Direct Market of comic book and specialty shops. I would point to a broader reason: they didn’t make comics that a lot of people wanted. Certainly the DM is calcified to an unbelievable degree. Not only is it absolutely conditioned to sell American mainstream superhero comic books, it’s at the point where it’s becoming more and more defined by its ability to sell certain books of that type rather than all of them. You can count the successful crasher to that particular party on one hand.

At the same time, Virgin certainly seemed to offer bookstore-ready books in addition to comics. Since I don’t recall the books setting the world on fire any more than the comic books, and without some inside knowledge of the company that tells me they were banking on serial comics sales to the exclusion of any other revenue stream, it’s hard for me to say that it’s the market rather than the works themselves that were at fault.

I would dispute this to the extent that I’ve never actually seen a Virgin TPB in a chain bookstore — and I keep a regular watch on the shelves of my local Borders and Barnes & Noble branches — so while I’m not privy to the company’s marketing tactics, it seems to me that either they never really had a proper mass-market strategy in place, or said strategy was so badly bungled that it effectively left the company at the mercy of the Direct Market by omission.

As I said yesterday, I haven’t read enough Virgin-published comics to make a judgement as to the various titles’ quality, but I’m not sure that it makes a difference where my argument is concerned. Lots of books that I think are badly executed nonetheless find readers (see: Marvel’s Civil War). The question is, can they find the market where such readers might be available? I argued yesterday that because Virgin’s outreach seems to have been restricted to the Wednesday Crowd, the answer was effectively “No.” This is not to say that the majority of comics-shop patrons are wrong to hold the tastes that they enjoy, but rather that said tastes were simply too specific to be of much use to Virgin Comics’ marketing department. Tom and I seem to be on the same page here, so I’m not really sure where the point of disagreement lies. There’s a certain amount of Schrödinger’s Cat to all of this, it seems to me.

(An aside: I think CrossGen’s problems had more to do with timing and proximity than anything else: timing in that a market for graphic novels in bookstores didn’t really exist until Viz and Tokyopop built one, and CrossGen came along too soon to really take advantage of the results; and proximity in that their works looked too much like Marvel and DC’s offerings for non-enthusiasts to be able to distinguish them from the herd, even with the expensive bookstore dumps they were buying — which is ironic, given that said comics suffered in the Direct Market from the perception of not being enough like more familiar comics, despite a number of them being genre-bent superhero comics in all but name.)

At least Tom was cordial about it. Shorter Brian Hibbs:

Okay, cheap shot, I know. Here’s Hibbs for real:

Unlike Dirk, I don’t believe that the issue is the Direct Market. Dirk’s argument basically goes like this: “DM retailers are big poopy heads. Neener-neener-neener!” This is largely Dirk’s argument about every and anything involving comics, and it is kinda goofy, really, because it assumes that it is the RETAILER that is responsible for sales, and not, say, THE PUBLISHER.

I realize that this will probably fall on deaf ears (Lord knows, it so often has in the past), but Hibbs’ tendency to treat every criticism of the market as though someone were laughing at his genitals inevitably results in his missing the point, so let’s take it from the top, shall we?

The problem isn’t with retailers. As I noted wa-a-ay back in 2003, the problem with the Direct Market — to the extent that there is a problem, depending on your perspective — is that every element of the distribution network, from major suppliers all the way down to end consumers, is so rigidly locked in place as to effectively make change impossible regardless of where in the network you happen to be. Hell, Steve Geppi can’t convince customers to buy more than a handful of his beloved Disney titles, and he fucking owns the place.

I’ve noisily resisted this point in the past, but time and observation finally brought me around to acknowledging that the Direct Market is little more than a superhero-delivery system. Whether this is a problem depends upon whether or not you mind. As a dyed-in-the-wool capitalist, I really have no choice but to acknowledge that the superhero fans who by and large built and maintain said market have every right to dictate its contents*. On the other hand, such fans in general — and Hibbs in particular — tend to delude themselves into believing that their tastes somehow reflect greater American consumer habits more than they actually do, and this is where the argument inevitably hits the rocks. Again, Brian Hibbs:

So, I sat down with Sharad and the marketing guy (funnily enough, at a Marvel cocktail party for retailers) and looked over their launch strategy (at that moment they were only talking about the Indian comics), and quickly saw that it probably wasn’t going to work — they planned to launch with not one, but FOUR different titles based on Indian myths. They were certainly gorgeous looking things — some of these artists could REALLY draw — but the problem was that they were working drastically against the public’s belief-in-interest. It’s not that Americans might not be interested in the Great Goddess Devi, or modern retellings of the Sanskrit epic cycle of Ramayan — it’s that they have no idea that they might be.

Well, no, even I don’t believe that Americans (as a mass) ARE actually interested in any of that, but of the half of a percent that might be, you’re going to have to actively tell them such things exist if you want to have a chance of them buying it.

How exactly would Hibbs know that “Americans (as a mass)” wouldn’t be interested in what the company publishes? It’s certainly not from his own sales experience. By his own account, Marvel and DC create some 80% of what Hibbs orders and sells, and contrary to his claim that he does a “a pretty [good] job” of reaching a broad cross-section of American readers, it’s likely that a good 80% of the comics most non-DM consumers read aren’t published by Marvel or DC. Viz, Scholastic and Andrews and McMeel, yes. Marvel and DC, no.

Would a proper push in the booksellers’ market have helped Virgin Comics’ sales? Since they didn’t make such a push, the question is as academic as Hibbs’ assertion that “half of a percent” of the American market — that’s 1.5 million people, by the way — might be interested in the company’s product. Weirdly, Hibbs himself goes out of his way to point out that no real attempt was ever made to sell comics to the mass market, whereas a sincere and extended attempt was obviously made to sell them to the comics-shop crowd, which is exactly the point that I made yesterday. As Hibbs himself notes:

Picture this. You’re a big strong corporation with a global brand. You’re, dunno, off the top of my head, Kodak. Some bright and passionate light really really believes in comics, and wants to do a line of comics based around photography and photographers. You’ve managed to convince someone on the Board of Directors to fund this for a while, but you have a finite budget for promotion. Do you 1) Take out expensive ads in Wizard, Previews, trying to convince superhero-oriented customers to buy “Ansel Adams: The Wizard’s Eye” and “Paparazzo Tales!” and whatever, or do you 2) tell people who are interested in photography and photographers that there are comics about their interests, and here’s where you find them…?

Or as I put it yesterday:

The Direct Market of comics shops served as the primary outlet for Virgin’s products in North America, and this virtually guaranteed the company poor sales figures from day one. Setting the question of content aside — I haven’t read enough Virgin Comics to speak to that — the impression I received from reading Virgin press releases and such was that they assumed their work would be available to a broad cross-section of young American readers, and this simply wasn’t the case.

So why did Hibbs mount such a big, defensive rant? Beats the hell out of me, though I sort of suspect it to be little more than reflexes; so much as look crosseyed at conventional funnybook wisdom and Hibbs seems to take it personally. I will say this, though: If he gets any closer to the notion that the Direct Market is all but useless to anyone not actually publishing Batman and Wolverine comics, it’ll probably knock him over.

* Just as every cartoonist and publisher not being served by said market have every right to seek their fortunes elsewhere, and every customer not being served by said market the right to say “Fuck this shit” and start ordering from Amazon.com, where the service is more reliable and offers a far greater variety of material.

(Above: sequence from Bill Watterson’s The Essential Calvin and Hobbes, ©1988 Universal Press Syndicate.)

 

Above the Fold

• [Publishing] Vaneta Rogers talks to Aspen Comics editor-in-chief Vince Hernandez about the company’s future without founder and reason-for-existence Michael Turner.

 

• [Retailing] Kat Lee speaks with Terrace, British Columbia shopowner Gerry Mattson, whose Your Comic Encounter shop is moving into larger digs.

 

• [Bottom Story] “Apple Censors Digital Comics” blares the Information Week headline (don’t bother clicking; there’s an interstitial ad involved). Well, no they didn’t, not really. Apple simply refused Murderdrome, the first content offering of the Infurious company’s Comic Reader software, from download for the iPod and iPhone due to “content issues”. Violent imagery, apparently. A number of other commentators — here’s The Register and Macworld as examples — have noted that Apple doesn’t impose similar content restrictions on video or music, which is stupid and hypocritical, but guess what? It’s Apple’s back yard, and they can set whatever rules they like.

  This, by the way, is why I’ll never buy an iPod. Well, that and the whole DRM thing.

 

Literary Comics

• [Profile] Missed it: Paul Buhle looks at the work of Kramers Ergot mastermind Sammy Harkham. (Caught it: Tom Devlin.)

 

• [Profile] Brian Heater presents the second installment of his multi-part interview with Swallow Me Whole author Nate Powell.

 

• [Review] Matthias Wivel on Lynda Barry’s What It Is.

 

• [Review] Sean T. Collins on Tom Neely’s Melvins-inspired Your Disease Spread Quick.

 


• [Review] Rob Clough on the new collection, Where Demented Wented: The Art and Comics of Rory Hayes. (Above: splash panel from a story originally published in Bogeyman Comix #1, ©1969 Rory Hayes.)

 

Pop Comics

• [Profile] Brian Cronin introduces us to the work of classic DC Comics artist Ramona Fredon.

 


• [Review] Sandy Bilus on Jordan Mechner, A.B. Sina, LeUyen Pham and Alex Puvilland’s Prince of Persia. (Above: sequence from the book, ©2008 Ubisoft.)

 

• [Review] Greg McElhatton on the first four issues of Matt Fraction and Salvador Larroca’s Invincible Iron Man.

 

• [Review] Eva Volin on Eleanor Davis’s new children’s comic, Stinky.

 

• [Commentary] Will Warner Entertainment find gold with “darker” versions of their DC Comics properties? Tucker Stone finds a cautionary tale in the comics themselves.

 


• [Comics] Karswell offers up a real treat: John Rosenberger’s “The Beast From the Deep,” adapted from the Ray Bradbury short story “The Fog Horn.” (Above: sequence from Tales of Horror #7, ©1953 Toby.)

 

• [Snark] Mark Millar: The last person on Earth willing to use the word “extreme” to describe his own work in public. What a complete dork.

 

Manga

• [Profile] Dick McVengeance speaks with hentai artist Hiroki Otsuka:

  “You’ve been at this for more than 15 years. Is there anything you won’t draw?”

  “Rape.” He said, sobering up right away. “It’s really not something that’s pleasurable for women. Really, it’s the pent up sexual frustration of someone who doesn’t really have much, if any, experience with women that draws this sort of stuff.” It surprised me that he was so strongly against it — not rape itself, but it’s use as a plot device in any sort of erotic work in Japan. The trope is so [ubiquitous] that there’s even The Rapeman. But not for Otsuka. If there’s going to be sex, he wants there to be some sort of meaning to it.

 


• [Review] Eddie Campbell on Seiichi Hayashi’s groundbreaking gekiga novel, Red Colored Elegy. (Above: an evocative image from the book, ©2008 Seiichi Hayashi.)

 

• [Review] Michelle Smith on the first volume of Akira Hiramoto’s Robert Johnson fantasia, Me and the Devil Blues.

 

• [Oddity] Captain Kirk vs. teddy bear.

 

Comic Strips

• [Profile] Michael Cavna speaks with “semi-retiring” For Better or For Worse creator Lynn Johnston.
  

  Related: You have to love a Washington Post article on Johnston’s strip that runs under the headline “Something for Everyone to Hate.” You just have to:

  Elly became intolerably sentimental as a retiree, after she sold the bookstore. Her husband, John, the dentist, retreated into a symbolically sexless world of model railroads. Their son Michael hit it big with a best-selling novel (About what? We never learned) and he and his wife, Deanna, bought the old Patterson family home, somewhere in the suburbs of Toronto. Little sister April Patterson’s band, the Archies-esque 4-Evah, broke up, then got a new singer, making them 4Evah & Eva. Elizabeth (a.k.a. Lizardbreath) gave up her new life teaching native people in the Canadian hinterlands to move home and marry Anthony, her boring high school boyfriend.

  If all of this means nothing to you, then carry on with your life.

  For everyone else, let’s take one more opportunity to cringe.

  (Above: sequence from today’s strip, ©2008 Lynn Johnston Productions, Inc.)

 

Digital Comics

• [Commentary] Charlie Sorrel would just as soon not read comics on an iPhone. (Link via Sean Kleefeld.)

 

Cartooning

• [Review] Chris Mautner on comics-instruction books by Lynda Barry, Jessica Abel, Matt Madden and Kyle Baker.

 


• [Art] The ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive gives us a selection of early model sheets from the UPA cartoon studio. (Above: You can almost hear Jim Backus doing the voice, can’t you?)

 


• [Art] Paul Giambarba offers a well-illustrated appreciation of German poster artist Ludwig Hohlwein. (Above: from the site, an example of Hohlwein’s craft. Link via Donald Pittenger.)

 

The Comics Press

• [Potpourri] Highlights from this week’s Publishers Weekly comics-news email: Calvin Reid investigates the shutdown of Virgin Comics’ North American publishing initiative; Laura Hudson speaks with DC Comics president Paul Levitz about the company’s online-comics initiative; Wil Moss talks to Comics Foundry’s Tim Leong and the aforementioned Laura Hudson; and Anne Ishii reviews Dirk Schwieger’s book on Japan, Moresukine.

 

Comics Culture

• [Commentary] Jeff Lester takes a whack at the “50 things I like about comics” meme.

 

• [Your not-comics link of the day] The world’s oldest known joke. (Link via Slashdot Idle.)

 

• [Your Hey Oscar Wilde! It’s Clobberin’ Time!! link of the day] Here’s Dashiell Hammett’s famous detective Sam Spade, as interpreted by Scott Morse.

 


• [Your Scans_Daily link of the day] Two words: Sexy Commando. (Above: Your guess is as good as mine. ©2008 Usuta Kyousuke.)

 

Events Calendar

Today:

• August 27 (Montreal, Quebec): Matt Forsythe debuts his latest work, Ojingogo, at the Drawn & Quarterly Store on Bernard, beginning at 7:30PM. Details here.

 

This Week:

• August 28 (Los Angeles, CA): Christos Gage, Flip Schultz, Sax Carr and Mandy Amano join host Robbie Peron for another episode of Comics on Comics, taped before a live audience at Golden Apple on Melrose Avenue, beginning at 7PM. Details here.
• August 29-31 (Belfast, Northern Ireland): MeCon takes place at the Queen’s Student Union on University Road. Guests include Charles Stross, Paul Holden, John McCrea and others. Details here.
• August 29 (Seattle, WA): Join Daniel Clowes for an opening reception of an exhibit featuring his art from the classic novel Ghost World, complete with discussion moderated by Gary Groth. It all takes place at the Fantagraphics Bookstore and Gallery on Vale Street, from 6-9PM. Details here.
• August 30 (London, England): London Underground Comics play host to some of your favorite indy cartoonists during Low Energy Day at Camden Lock Market, from 10AM-6PM. Details here.
• August 31 (San Pablo, Philippines): The Komikero Artists Group celebrates its sixth anniversary with a meet-up at Sampalok Lake, beginning at 10AM. Details here.

 

Next Week:

• September 6-7 (Reading, PA): The Comic Geek Speak Super Show takes place at the Greater Reading Expo Center on Twelfth Street. Guests include David Petersen, Danielle Corsetto and more. Details here.
• September 6 (Chicago, IL): A number of experts will participate in a symposium entitles “Chester Commodore and Jackie Ormes: Pioneering Cartoonists of Color” at the Carter G. Woodson Regional Library on Halsted Street. Details here, or call 312-747-6900 for more information.
• September 6 (Asbury Park, NJ): Boiled Angel Fest is a benefit to help cartoonist Mike Diana pay his legal fees, and takes place at Asbury Lanes on Fourth Avenue. Admission is ten bucks. Details here.

 

Want to see your comics-related event listed here? Email a link to dirk@tcj.com and let me know. Please include an online link to which I can send people for more information. No sales-only events, please — it’s nice that you’ve marked things down at your store or website, but I won’t be listing it here.