Other Comics News Parade-O-Links 09162012

(Super fantastical Eric Canete art stolen from Eric Canete.)

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 09192012:

"While everyone at DC is excited by the advent of the newer, slicker Standard Format, we share mixed feelings over this change as we end our weekly association with World Color Press.  To our friends in Sparta, thank you for 37 years of loyal reliable service.  The "death" of the letterpress also marks the end of an era in comic books.  After all, those of us who grew up during comics' Silver Age will miss newsprint."  - Michael Eury, "Inside DC" editorial column from most DC Comics with a cover date of April 1992.

(Brad McGinty and Josh Latta at SPX, Saturday Sept. 15, 2012.  Provided by Erin Demetria Cassavaugh.)

• Jay-Z Christmas what a week amIright?!  If no one tried to burn you down or blow you up then I guess you had a pretty good week right?  High five for staying alive. 
• As you read this on Sunday or later on in the future,  SPX, the Small Press Expo is at least half way over or already gone.  Many of North America's finest and best smelling cartoonists have gathered, sold comics, shared laughs, given awards, accepted awards, turned in tickets for beers, consumed beers and headed back home born again full of all the magical thoughts that have never been thunked before that they will ponder and day dream about at their jobs in North America's finer coffee shops and pizza joints as they pour another cup and cut another slice for you dear reader.  For America!  Unfortunately, the dark one does rule this world and I was unable to attend this year's SPX.  But fear not!  My man, your man, our man, Henry Eudy is on the job.  As I type this, Agent Eudy is embedded in SPX zone.  He is in the heart of SPX.  In the very body of comics if you will.  He is on the floor, in the aisles, behind the tables, in the restroom with its terrifying hotel art, in the restaurants, in the bars, in the hotel rooms working his way through the world of small press comics like a human colonoscopy.  He fears nothing and he sees all.  He's taking names and burning off polyps with his lazer eyes.  And when he emerges from the bowels of comics, from comics' very sphincter, you dear reader of words and thinker of thoughts will be the first to see what he has to say.  Well, actually, I'll probably read it first and then post it.  But you will be second.  And second is pretty good.  Pretty good.

(Image stolen from Henry Eudy.) 

• Speaking of comic book shows that I did not go to, Josh Latta went to the Baltimore Comic-Con and it looked a lot like this. 
• Writing and drawing comics is easy.  Especially when someone already wrote and drew it for you. 
• Robot 6 has an interview with Eric Canete.  I think the most important goal comics as a whole should currently have is to steal back Eric Canete from animation. 
• Super pal Robert Newsome made a podcast.  I'm about 20 minutes into it as I type this and I'm enjoying it.  Speaking of Robert, how many copies of The Atomic Elbow Issue Three have you bought?  Despite what John Lennon told you, just wanting it may not be enough to end war but $5 will get you a copy of The Atomic Elbow. 

• Did I already tell you folks about this crazy a$$ art Josh Simmons did for a Reebok ad in Italy?  Reebok everybody.  Italy.  Life is strange people.  Life is strange. 
• Why is Beyonce emailing me?  Doesn't she know I only read Michelle Obama's emails?

• Professor X is a jerk.  And also, dead.  Again.  At what point do Heaven and/or hell just say 'oh F it not his bald cry baby again'?
• Wobama!
• Derik Badman and some other fine people are in Frank Santoro's New Talent Showcase. 
• Speaking of Derik Badman, how is it possible that I own Sectaurs comics but I don't own that Dragonlance comic?  I have failed you Nerderica. 
• Happy birthday (earlier this week) to Ben Towle.  Go read Oyster War. 
• Speaking of Mr. Towle, check out this review he did of the new Jessica Abel and Matt Madden Mastering Comics book. 
• Again with the Ben Towle: dig this amazing process gif he put together. 
• Everyone is talking about this young Brad McGinty kid.  Here and here  and here and here and here and here and everywhere and in some foreign language that uses letters my keyboard does not include!  This kid is bigger than Carly Rae Jepsen!  People are even doing Brad McGinty cosplay!  We here at file under other have never heard of the guy and have never posted anything about him but he seems to be a pretty good cartoonist/animator/print maker/t-shirt maker/hair model and people are going bat poo crazy over his prints and t-shirts.  He even makes real fake toys!  Who can stop him?!

(Image of some one who may not be Brad McGinty stolen from Shawn Daughhetee's facebook page.)

• The Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum has announced The Dylan Williams Collection.  It sounds pretty great. 
• Matt Seneca will not stop until everyone believes that Brendan McCarthy created everything you love.  He may be right. 
• Geoff Johns is burning in hell. "The box is you Dustin!"
• Remember how I've told you like a half dozen or so times to check out the excerpt Julia Wertz had been posting from her upcoming book?  (Which I think debuted at SPX.)  Well, she's posted the last page of it so you can go read the whole excerpt now.  I liked it. 
• They sho is a lot of great stuff you can buy real cheap at Top Shelf right now. 
• People, I'm not afraid to say that I kinda love Dale Earnhardt Jr.  "You shouldn't waste the years in between."  I've watched that video three times.    
• I'm all but certain that Chris Sims has kidnapped Tom Batiuk and is forcing him to create Funky Winkerbean strips solely to satisfy his own twisted imagination.  It is quite possible that Sims himself is not aware that this is happening.   
• Perhaps uncle Perry can explain it for us. 

• Jumpin' jimminy Christmas sticks.  Look at this Chris Weston art for an Akira movie that is apparently never to be. 
• Hey, let's go ahead and ignore the fact that this column is wayyyy too long and add a new ongoing feature that I may or may not ever remember to do again next week in the Parade-O-Links.  Let's call it....

THE BEST SINGLE PRINT COMIC I READ LAST WEEK

(Image stolen from comicbook.com)

The best comic I read last week might have been Action Comics #0 but that pencil-no-ink-kinda-painterly-style of art they used in that thing makes my stomach hurt.  Hate that style.  So, we'll say the best print comic I read last week was Animal Man #0 by Jeff Lemire, Steve Pugh and a whole bunch of other people.  There is no reason for this comic to exist other than to get Animal Man readers to spend another $2.99.  It does not add anything to anything or give you anything you need.  If you are me, and I know you are, then you have read Animal Man's origin several times and all the new information has already been alluded to in the current Animal Man series.  What you get here is it just being acted out.  But it is good.  There are a few clever twists on the Animal Man origin story that had not yet been fully played out in the New 52 version of the character.  But who cares?  All that really matters is that when you match up Jeff Lemire's imagination with Steve Pugh's art the result is gross and creepy in the best way.  It's fun.  I like it.  And, most of the other comics I read this week were Batman comics from the 90s.  And they were mostly awful. 

• Well, I guess that's about enough of all that.  Let's wrap this column up shall we.  Oh, what?  You say you need some link haiku?  You say you can't make it through one week to the next without some link haiku?  Oh, alright.  I feel ya bro.  I feel ya.  

Silent on taxes

Pootie done did it again

To protect my stacks

• And finally... Well, it turns out that ambulance doesn't have breaks on the mother...

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.

11 comics I liked in 2011: Part 2 : Ben Towle's "Oyster War"

EDITORS NOTE: I'm over "best of" lists.  I came to the realization that I personally only read them to see if the list agrees with my opinions and if it does not then I instantly forget about it.  I assume that I'm not the only one that sees them this way.  So instead of a meaningless list I am posting a series of eleven individual reviews of comics I liked in 2011.  These comics will be reviewed in no particular order.  It was not my intention to wait until late in the year 2012 to post about these 11 comics but, events occurred.  Thank you for your patience.  Thanks for reading.

Oyster War by Ben Towle
Webcomic available for free right now on teh intronet

Oyster War may be the most complete ongoing webcomic I read in 2011.  (And in the present tense days of 2012 as well.)  Excellent drawing, cartooning, storytelling, layouts, writing, dialog, character design, colors, letters etc. etc.  All the things a great comic needs are there.  The comic is a mix of historical fiction, folklore and cartoon comedy adventure.  And not just any kind of adventure, nautical adventure!  Popeye meets Patrick O'Brian.

Towle draws so well he could have just drawn a different boat picture on each page and I would have been happy but the characters are also very interesting.

Love this guy!

And the rest of the cast is great as well.  The first few scenes where the Captain recruits his team are perfect.  This is the most playful work I've seen by Towle so far.  Both in the characters and the plot.  Every panel is crammed packed with fun. Just look at all the back ground details.  Cool looking boats and houses.  Cool looking back ground characters.  Every panel is thoroughly thought out and fully realized but none of it feels calculated.  It feels like a solid tangible living cartoon world you could visit.  You can really get lost in this thing.

A big part of the fun in following Ben Towle's Oyster War is just following Ben Towle.  Ben just can not stop him self from being a teacher so he is always sharing great behind the scenes process stuff.  If you follow Ben on twitter and/or G+ as you follow Oyster War you can see sketches and sneak peaks in pretty-close-to real time as he is making the comic.  I personally think Oyster War will eventually be a print classic so it is super neat to get to see it being built from the ground up.  You should probably go do that.  

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.

Other Comics News Parade-O-Links 05272012

(Image stolen from Ben Towle's G+ page.)

Just because file under other does not currently have a lot of time to talk about all the wonderful things that should be filed under other it does not mean that wonderful things are not happening.  Here are some things if found interesting in the world of minicomics, small press, self publishing, zines, webcomics etc. during the week ending 05272012:

• I guess the biggest non Avengers related news in comics this week was that Marvel and DC decided that it was time to make some money off homosexuality.  All I have to say about that is that Life With Archie #16 was a very good comic.

• The great Ben Towle posted a little write-up on Dan Zettwoch's minicomic Tel-Tales on his G+ page.  Zettwoch makes some great looking books with very strong design.  Certainly worth a look if you have not read any of his stuff before.

• In other Ben Towle news, Alpha Books kicked off this week.  This is the third (I think) weekly alphabet art challenge series.  Basically, folks draw characters from books for each letter of the alphabet.  There is already a lot of great art to check it out so you should go do that.  Maybe you should join in.  No shame in being a few letters behind. 

• Eleanor Davis did this and it was pretty great.

• There were a couple of solid new-ish podcasts from new-ish podcasters.  Jim Rugg interviewed Rob Liefeld at Tell Me Something I Don't Know and it is fascinating.  Matt Seneca, Tucker Stone and McCulloch have a new podcast called Comic Books are Burning in Hell.  The first two episodes are a bit of a test flight as the guys figure the whole podcast thing out.  I'll warn ya, it's pretty brutal.  The audio is not great and they have no real format.  It's just three guys talking about comics they have read.  And it is not comics they all have read so that eliminates a lot of chances for real discussion.  But these cats are three of the better writers-about-comics in all of the introwebs.  They don't need a lot of format to keep my attention.  There is a lot of knowledge between those three brains and a lot of what they talk about are comics that I have not yet had a chance to read.  I could feel my known comics universe expanding as I listened.  But again, it is pretty brutal.  These guys are intensely opinionated and they all like to use a machine gun barrage of F bombs to illustrate their viewpoints.  Much of the discussion leans toward the negative so listening to it is a lot like putting your brain in an I-know-you-are-but-what-am-I contest with Albert Einstein and Don Rickles.  But my brains is pretty strong so I think I can handle it for an hour a week.  If these guys hold themselves to just 5% of the quality level they demand from the comics creators they talk about then I'm betting this will soon become one of the better comics podcasts. 

• In other Tucker Stone news-  dang, this thing looks like a lot of fun.  

• This is kind of old but cartoonist, animator and Curly Hair Pageant Grand Champion Brad McGinty has a bunch of cartoons up that I did not notice until this week.  The outer space one is very funny.  Oh, and a thing called McGintyfest is going to happen at HeroesCon? What?

• A new issue of the professional wrestling zine Atomic Elbow is available.  I just got mine in the mail and it looks pretty great.  It features a couple of illustrations from cartoonist Box Brown.  I have not read it yet but I cannot overstate how much I enjoyed the 1st issue.  I suggest you try to get both issues.  I spent most of the past decade intentionally ignoring professional wrestling so I'm only familiar with a small part of the subject matter but the writing is strong enough that I don't care. 

• Apparently Josh Latta's next Rashy Rabbit will be a 64 page color special.  Can't wait.
• Rob Ullman has new comic that he is "serializing on the ol' blog in advance of printing it up as a mini-comic". It looks really great. You can read the 1st installment here.

• Rob Clough continues to almost single-handedly carry the burden of minicomics criticism.  This week he also took a thorough look at the state of kids comics.  

And that's just a taste of some of the interesting things going out there in the wonderful world of comics and things.  (I sure used the word "lot" a lot in this piece.)  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.

Two comics you should read online right now.

I wanted to share links to a couple of comics you can read online for free right now.  

The great Ben Towle is serializing his new "graphic novel in progress" The Oyster War online.  It is clever, fun, exciting and beautifully drawn.  There is some master class level drawing going on here and the colors are perfect.  Everything about it is inspiring to me.  The drawing, lettering, colors, story telling and especially the character designs.  It's just packed with great stuff to look at.  And boats!  I love boats.  Every single panel so far has been great.  The comic starts here.  Do yourself a favor and check it out.

Ben will be at HeroesCon next weekend.  You should check out his stuff in person.  I'm sure that he will also be moderating a panel or three because his head is full of brains.

My pal Brad McGinty has re-modeled his website and has made his complete graphic novel Wysteria available online.  I talked in depth about the Wysteria minicomics a while back in a fuo review.  They are some of my favorite minicomics of all time.  The online version includes the conclusion to the book which I have not yet read.  I'm trying to hold out to read it on paper first but only because I'm weird.  I will probably fail to hold out though because it looks really fantastic and I'm anxious to read the whole thing in one chunk.  Wysteria is a fascinating adventure and features some rich and wonderful art that I can get lost in of for hours.  You should check it out.  (Brad is also taking pre-orders for a hardback version.)

Brad will be at HeroesCon next week.  You should buy up all his comics and hit him up for a sketch.  Brad is one of the great guys to watch draw. He is super fast and amazing with a brush.  Make sure to check him out on Indie Island.  

Your best pal ever,

Shannon Smith

Is there a proper name for the "it doesn't matter if it's good as long as you made it" camp of comics creation?

A month or so ago I moved an additional end table into my living room.  The end table was in my parent's living room when I was growing up. It is at least 30 years old.  I has a nice big space for magazines and books.  The four books inside it right include a huge hardback Atlas, McSweeney's 13, The Best American Comics 2007, Ulysses and a Disney Princesses book. 

A week or so ago cartoonist Ben Towle posted this little article about a comic he made when he was a child.

At about 5:30 today I was relaxing in my living room with my wife and daughter after having finished dinner.  I had a turkey burger from Hardees.  Can you believe Hardees has a turkey burger?  I already knew the ending to the episode of Dora that my daughter was watching.  I grabbed Best American Comics 2007 from the end table and started flipping through.  Not reading.  Just looking at the art.  I'm working on several comics right now and I like flipping through anthologies.  Not to steal or to lift but just to get me thinking.  The great thing about anthologies is that you can see so many different ways of looking at the world right there in one book.  The only two comics that I stopped to really study at this time were by CF and Paper Rad.  No matter how many times I read those comics I can't make any sense of them.  Well no more sense than The Beatles Yellow Submarine movie made at least.  But, they hold my attention for sure.  They make me think.  Make me ask questions.  They challenge me.

By the way.  Paper Rad's comics look like this...

At 6:30 this evening I watched the new episode of Batman The Brave and the Bold.  It's my favorite TV show.  The episode was about Superman and it was the best Superman cartoon I've ever seen.  It was everything you need to know about Silver Age Superman in 22 minutes.  During the show there was a commercial for an upcoming TV show on Cartoon Network that looks like this...

I had no idea that there was a Paper Rad cartoon and the last place I would have ever expected to see it is on Cartoon Network.  My jaw was on the floor.  You may as well have driven up my driveway in a Hostess Fruit pie with Ghadafi singing that Friday song.

At about 6:40 I logged in to twitter so that I could tweet about how awesome the Batman episode was.  (You should be following me on twitter already.)  Don't worry, my wife already informed me that I am a dork.  On twitter, I saw that Adam Casey had posted this question, "Is there a proper name for the 'it doesn't matter if it's good as long as you made it' camp of comics?"

Maybe it was the Red Bull I drank after diner but, my head started spinning.

"Is there a proper name for the 'it doesn't matter if it's good as long as you made it' camp of comics?"

"Is there..."  Well, I could answer yes or no.  How about maybe?

There are several questions in there. Or at least it raises several other questions.  The 'it doesn't matter if it's good as long as you made it' camp of comics certainly exists so in theory anything that exists can have a name so, yeah, there could be a proper name.  But what is it?

Comics comics comics comics comics freaking comics.  Back in the days of The Comics Journal's message board there would be endless arguments/discussions on the merits of comics that are created just for the sake of creating comics.  I'm all for 'em.  Go make comics.  Go crazy!

But do they have merit?  Are they art?  What the expletive is art anyway?

I have no idea.

But here is what I want art to be.  Here is what I look for in art...

Art is a creation that creates a reaction in it's audience.  Can it make you think something you were not thinking?  Can it make you feel something you were not feeling?  Can it make you remember something you did not know you forgot?  Can it even on the most atomic, invisible, intangible level make you feel alive?

That's art to me.

So, is making comics just to make comics making art?  Is practice art? Is craft for the sake of craft art?

Sometimes?

Is it great art?  Not often?

I love football.  Love to watch the NFL.  I have absolutely no interest in watching a football team practice.  Or even pre-season games. Football for the sake of football.  That's not football to me.  It's practice.

So again, comics for the sake of comics.  Is it art?  No.  Or, well, maybe sometimes.

Let's go back to Ben Towle's comic he made when he was a little kid.  Go look at it.  It's charming right?  It's funny too.  It's certainly comics.  Is it good comics?  Well, it's not Charles Schulz. It's not Moebius.  It's not Jack Kirby.  But it's comics.  Is it art?  I bet Ben would say that it is not art.

I think it's art.  I think it's good art.  I look at that and it takes me to a forgotten place.  I think of the drawings I made when I was a kid.  I can feel the hardwood floor.  I can smell the room.  I can feel the crayons.  I can smell the newspapers I was imitating.  It makes me laugh and feel alive.  It's art.

But the creator does not matter.  It does not matter that I know Ben.  It does not matter that I know how great the comics he makes now as an adult are. It does not matter that I saw it on his blog.  I could have found it in a yard sale box.  What matters to me is the connection between the work itself and the audience.  So, relate that idea back to the question of comics made for the sake of making comics I and I still don't have an answer because I don't care why it was made.  I don't care about the creator.  I care about the point of impact between comic and audience. 

I hear artists talk about little projects they do as "just being an exercise" to them.  Little things they do for practice.  I do it myself.  They probably do not think of that stuff as art.  But, wrap it up as a little minicomic and take it to a show.  Maybe it's some kid's first minicomic.  Maybe it blows their mind and inspires them to make comics.  Is it art then?  I think it just became art.

So forget about the creator.  We just have the comic and it's audience. 

"Is there a proper name for the 'it doesn't matter if it's good as long as you made it' camp of comics?"

What do you call a creation that is not dependent on it's own quality but only on the perception of whoever ends up seeing it?

What do you call a thing that only matters if someone notices it?

I have no idea.  I'm open to suggestions.

Your best pal ever,

Shannon Smith

Editors note:  Talking about these things is very dangerous.  While writing this blog post I crashed a laptop and a PC.  Immediately after posting my initial draft, my daughter woke up crying then threw up.  You have been warned.