Here are some things I found interesting in the world of minicomics, comic books, graphic novels, small press, self publishing, zines, webcomics, cartoons, digital comics, other, etc. during the week ending 08262012:
"I mean, the comic had two starts, one was a false start where all I wanted to do was a William Burroughs version of Jack Kirby's The Boy Commandos because I thought it was such a cool name and DC owned the characters so you had Boy Commandos that just sounds like a Burroughs story, so it started out as this basic notion of psychic boy scouts and Baden-Powell was involved in it at one point but, it just completely changed and they said well this is so far from the original that why should they leave the title and why don't you just make something up and I went through Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable and found the 'Invisibles'. So that was it. The first four issues I knew it was gonna be a boy's initiation in to this occult secret society. Then in issue 2 I went to Kathmandu and had basically an alien abduction experience. And that changed the entire series..." - Grant Morrison
- "Back home, Tony Blair's been putting up cameras on every street corner, he's talking about putting cameras in people's homes, he's got rid of trial by jury... I mean this is like fascist Britain 1999, you know. But the more he does this, the weirder things get. The more cameras you put up, the more people start acting like movie stars. The more people start acting like movie stars, the weirder things get. And then the more cameras they put up, and the weirder it gets! So let 'em bring the camera and I'll fuckin' act the shit out of these bastards. Let's have the camera- let's have cameras everywhere, and show them what we can do." -Grant Morrison 1999.
- Ah 1999. I remember it like the back of the cough syrup stained cover box to a VHS copy of Natural Born Killers. It was a quarter til midnight every moment of ever day for an entire year. And then it was over and all that was left was the bill.
- The Invisibles comic book series was and remains my favorite comic book series. It has now been collected in a great big Omnibus edition. It is very expensive. But it appears to be mostly complete and includes the additional stories that happened outside of the comics series. I wonder if it has the letters pages though? There was some critical stuff in those things. If you pick up the Omnibus or start a read through of the comics I suggest you visit The Bomb and check out the issue guides for annotations.
- I need you to go give Gabby Schulz some money so he can post more comics for me to read.
- Matt Seneca and Sean Witzke continue to go through the great DC comics Solo anthology series. They most recently talked about the Mike Allred book which I liked a lot. Maybe the best cover on a DC comic... ever? I particularly liked the write up on Howard Chaykin's issue. (Because beloved reader, in case you have not figured it out by now, I'm totally in the bag for Chaykin.) This reminds me that I need to dig though the basement and find all my Solo issues and figure out which ones I don't have and round up the rest. I seem to remember the Pope, Chaykin and Cooke issues as being the best but I don't know if I read all of them.
- Speaking of Chaykin. Is Marvel's Star Wars issue 1 the most re-printed comic of all time? I'd guess that title goes to Action Comics 1 but it has to be close right? If you include all the reprints, collections, treasury editions, trade paperbacks, Dark Horse reprints and the promotional re-prints that have been added to other merchandise around the world there has to be a ridiculous amount of copies out there. I'm sure I own it in at least 10 different formats. I bet more people have laid eyes on Howard Chaykin Star Wars art than art by any other artist of his generation. No numbers to back that up but, Star War man. Star Wars!
- Which is great because not nearly as many people will get to read Chaykin's Black Kiss 2.
(Image of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers mascot or possibly a comic book character stolen from Fox Tampa Bay.)
- "anarchist graffiti"? Tampa? 99? I blame Captain Fear. Oh hey, Warren Sapp has a new book out. I think this calls for some link haiku!
(Image of the possibly dangerous and chaos causing home grown terrorist 99 in Tampa Florida stolen from the Tampa Bay Times.)
(Image stolen from twitter. I mean, obviously.)
- We all know everything we will ever need to know about all the things we know we should know about. Until someone stumbles upon some new old Jack Kirby comics and we don't know anything. Again.
- Speaking of Jack Kirby. Did you know he was using Gotham City in a Fawcett comic before Bill Finger changed the name of Batman's city to Gotham? And Bob Kane had not a single thing to do with any of it.
- Did you know that you can order the great Gary Panter's new Dal Tokyo book now? Or at least just go watch that video.
- The great Ben Towle is here to make you a better sketchbooker and cartoonist.
- Ex-sexy-celsior!
- Working with Matt Fraction seems like it would be a lot of fun.
- The Comics Reporter talks a little bit about Dave Sim's glamourpuss coming to an end. I only read the first issue and it gave me brain damage. I have since asked on twitter if the thing ever stumbled upon a plot or characters and apparently it did not. Which makes it even more fascinating to me. I'd like to have the rest of the issues but I don't want to pay for them and I'm half afraid to read them. Which reminds me of this video which may be as close to capturing madness in the act as we are going to get. "The eyes really are the hardest part."
- But if you thought Dave Sim had the market cornered on crazy then you need to take a look at Neal Adams' Batman Odyssey in which we learn that the Earth is expanding and there are dinosaur riding Batmen underneath us right now!
- Former blue jeans model turned twitter sensation Rob Liefeld is out of DC's New 52. He was big part of the relaunch and was a go to guy around the issue 7 to issue 9 re-launching of the re-launch that several of the titles went through. I never read any of his New 52 comics but I can tell you that I read Superman and it was and is an editorial train wreck. It looks like Liefeld's reasons for leaving are similar to George Perez's reasons for leaving Superman. I honestly wish they would give that one to Liefeld right now. If nothing else, seeing him take on the readers and critics on twitter every month would have been worth the cost of teh intronet.
- You tell me. What the F were you doing when you were 24?
- Speaking of Superman, he and Wonder Woman are gonna go all smoochie face. Well, it's about damn time since that has never happened before. (Seriously, you gotta watch that Good Morning America video and see the horror on those guys faces when they hear Superman left Lois.)
- Smith Micro is offering a free beta version of some software that would allow you to make motion comics. I can't think of a reason why anyone would want to though. I imagine that playing around with it might be fun though and I can see using it as a neat way to make promotional things for comics. Just don't ask me to read your motion comics. If I wanted them to move I'd tie them to the back of one of my cats then get the laser light out.
- They need to get Mulder and Scully or Doctor Who to deal with this sort of thing.
- Pretty big? Like as big as an overweight basset hound? Like, big enough you might have to pick it up and carry it down the steps because its belly drags?
- Brad McGinty keeps on owning teh intronets. This week (or possibly last week, who can keep up?) he posted a hole bunch of Man-Dar cartoons that have to be seen right now.
- Continuing the weekly Brad McGinty section of this column, Brad has joined up with Crowded Comics. They make the comics, you write the punchline. Kind of reverse engineered comics. I think this is his first entry.
- Yowwwwwzaaaa!
- Eleanor Davis draws her husband Drew Weing's awesome display of super powers.
- Julia Wertz continues to post an ongoing excerpt from her next book. Great stuff. Especially if you spent a lot of time in the library as a kid.
- Speaking of Julia Wertz, Rob Clough talks about some minicomics from her and other folks.
- Miracleman, Batman, Dungeon Quest, Judge Dredd and Godzilla are burning in hell. Speaking of Miracleman, the way I first saw it and probably my first Alan Moore comic ever was through Mile High Comics. Back in the days before teh intronets and before I had even discovered comic book shops, I would order comics through the Mile High mail order catalog and they would often throw in some freebies. One time I got a free Alan Moore Miracleman. What world did that come from. I was reading GI Joe and Transformers at the time. That was like PBS airing and episode of The Sopranos between Sesame Street and Electric Company. Mind = sploded.
- SPX is getting closer and closer. Like a shark. Cage goes in the water, you go in the water. SPX's in the water. Our SPX. Farewell and adieu to you, fair Spanish ladies. Farewell and adieu, you ladies of Spain. For we've received orders for to sail back to Bethesda, MD. And so nevermore shall we see you again. Wait, what were we talking about? Oh yeah, SPX. Panel Patter continues to shine the spotlight and Exile on Plain Street will catch that SPX for you, but it ain't gonna be easy. Bad fish. Not like going down the pond chasin' bluegills and tommycods. This SPX, swallow you whole.
- And finally- In case you were wondering what it's all about...
Oh, and one more last thing! Did you know you can leave comments on these posts here at file under other? It's true! And, I'll probably respond. Twitter and facebook killed the message boards but that's no reason why you can't argue with me, praise me or leave me recipes. It's your intronet. Have fun!
And that's just a taste of some of the interesting things going out there in the wonderful world of comics and things. I can't keep up with it all but I do keep up with a lot of it on twitter and I try to re-tweet the good stuff. You should probably follow me there. If you did something to make comics better this week then high-five!
Your best pal ever,
Shannon Smith
p.s. Say you want a leader but you can't seem to make up your mind. I think you'd better close it and let me guide you to my twitter feed.
p.p.s. Let's pretend we went to high school together on facebook.
p.p.p.s. Google + is another place you can read the same thing I posted here.
p.p.p.p.s. I'll tumblr for ya.
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