Other Comics News Parade-O-Links 12212013

(Masters of the Universe No. 46 (UK) .  Stolen from James Eatock.)

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 12212013:

"Cartoon Network gravy train is a bit closer to those little handcarts where you pump the handle up and down and roll down the track behind the gravy train. It's a cool replacement for a lame dayjob, but from what I've been told the pay's about the same. All things considered, I'd rather be back in the David Heatley days than wait for Adventure Time/Regular Show/Steven Universe to save us all." -Sean T. Collins.

• Merry Christmas everybody.  And if you don't celebrate Christmas then, Merry Christmas!  And I don't mean that to be antagonistic or as a way to try and convert you to my religion.  I mean it exactly for what it is.  A greeting in the tradition of the customs in which I was raised and live.  It means that I wish you and yours good health, good fortune, merriment and joy this season.  If you or anyone from any culture, language or faith would greet me with well wishes in your own custom I would accept it graciously and appreciate your kind thoughts.  Respecting the customs of another human being does not mean that you embrace those customs or that you have been submissive to them.  I just means that for about a half a second, you mustered up the human strength to be polite to someone that was trying to be polite to you.  It's pretty easy.  Shalom.  Merry Christmas. 
• Robert Newsome over at Second Period Industries has prepared some Christmas music for you to download and enjoy.  Also, he let The Robot host his most recent podcast and it is a little bit scary. 
• It is the holidays so that means the Holiday Spurge is rolling out his holiday interview series faster than I can read them.  So far I have very much enjoyed the Paul Pope and Sean Collins/Joe Mculloch interviews. 
• I don't know that I've ever read an Ed Luce comic but the stuff in this Rob Clough piece looks interesting. 
• Chip Zdarsky has a hilarious hobby and this Sex Criminals cover is magical. 
• Frank Santoro put together a list of best of lists from 2006 to 2012 because that is the kind of thing Frank Santoro does. 
• Sparkplug could use your patronage. 
• It is ridiculous how good Boulet is. 
• The great Sam Henderson talked to CBR. 
• This week, a great many comics folk learned how to spell LaBeouf. I think the guy stealing from a Picturebox about page is twice as strange as him stealing from a comic to make a movie.  We give people Academy Awards for stealing from a comic to make a movie.  (Seriously people, Diablo Cody straight up used the Dan Clowes/Terry Zwigoff screenplay from Ghost World to write Juno and they gave her a freaking Oscar!  Of course Shia LaBeouf would steal.  The Academy practically commands you to!  Jeez-Its people.)
• This is literally the first best of list I've read this year where I thought, yeah, some of that stuff is pretty good. 
• Fluke really is awesome and it will also be on April 19th at the 40 Watt next year. 
• I hope someone is keeping score.  I'm starting to lose track. 
• I'm hopeful that all of Pussy Riot will be freed and will be able to live normal quality lives. But the only way I'll watch the Olympics is if Pussy Riot plays the opening ceremonies.  (After which, I will immediately stop watching the Olympics.)
• And finally..."ones for guns, I know at one, and the other's for whenever you're shootin' off your guns you can say whatever you want". 

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.
p.p.p.p.p.s.  Yeah, I do Instagram too now.  I guess it's a law or something.

Other Comics News Parade-O-Links 09022012

(Mister Fantastic entering the crossroads of infinity.  Like ya do.  By Jack Kirby.  Image stolen from imprint.)

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 09022012:

"I see that story first.  I feel that story first.  I know those people first.  When I put them down they've already lived.  And, I put them down as I'd like them to live on those pages.  My stories are very sincere.  My stories are people stories.
...Now, I didn't resolve the questions.  I'm a guy who lives with a lot of questions.  I see what's out there and I try to resolve that and I never can.  I don't think anybody can.  Who's got the answers?  I sure would like to hear the ultimate one.  But I haven't yet and so I live with a lot of questions.  And I find that entertaining.  I find that entertaining.  And uh, if my life would of went tomorrow it would be fulfilled in that manner.  I would say, the questions have been terrific."  Jack Kirby

• This week would have been Jack "The King" Kirby's 95th birthday.  There were lots and lots of posts and links as there should have been.  Actually, there should have been more.  Actually, everything should have been only Kirby for the whole week.  But alas.  Here is The Comics Reporter's Kirby link round-up.   And here is a really great piece on Kirby's use of collage.  I thought the "wake up and draw" twitter  thing was a lot of fun to follow.  You can scroll through the hashtag links here. 

• I wrote an article about a wrestling event for the new issue of The Atomic Elbow. You can go buy that now.  I know that does not have much to do with comics but it does have a lot to do with me and hey, this is my boat y'all.  Oh wait, The Atomic Elbow totally does have comics in it so, yeah, this is totally the comics news of the week.  Totally!
• Here is a nice write up on the David Mazzucchelli’s Daredevil: Born Again Artist’s Edition including some great sample pages that are worth a look.  I think I have most of those comics in their original form in my basement.  If someone would come over and mow my yard for me I'd love to sit down and read through them again.  Also worth mentioning is that Tom Spurgeon called the TCJ "snotbag haters" in his twitter link to the article and that made me laugh pretty hard. 
• The only way I'm going to pay for a Geoff Johns written Justice League of America comic is if one of the members of the team is Shannon Smith.  But, I do kinda like that new line up.  I like Green Arrow, Katana, Stargirl and Hawkman anyway.  Weird that Steve Trevor has become Steve Rogers in the New 52.  (And by weird I mean totally unimaginative and dumb.)
• Robot 6 talks to Van Jensen. 
• I talked about Ben Towle's Oyster War. 
• Agreeable Comics could use some help keeping the site paid for.  If you like their webcomics, then maybe you should do that.  Sometimes I feel like we should all be giving money to any and all webcomics creators that don't bother us with a kickstarter.  And lets just take a moment to say, dang, Kevin Church is involved with a lot of webcomics. 

(Somebody finally noticed it was Spider-Man's anniversary.  And it was Canadians.    Image stolen from Fan Expo Canada's Pintrest page.  I think this is the first time I've linked to a Pintrest page, and yes, I died a little.)

• Speaking of birthdays, The Comics Reporter pointed to this post at Pappy's about Tarzan's 100th birthday.  I love Tarzan so much.  You people just can't even understand my Tarzan love. Happy birthday Tarzan!
• Here is a piece on a book about the invaluable Marie Severin.  (Check out that Foom cover.)
• Alex Segura has moved from Archie to be the publicity guy at DC.  I usually don't talk about this executive level kind of junk but over the past several years, Archie has been light years better than DC or Marvel.  DC's publicity strategy appears to have been to try to piss off and show utter contempt for the audience and the creators at every opportunity.  So, this should be a huge upgrade.  I suggest the first thing Segura do is make a company wide policy that Dan Didio never gets to speak to the press or the public ever again.
• Back on Tuesday, it was read comics in public day.  Or as I like to call it, Tuesday.  Ladies read comics too.  I have never been a lady so, um, high five ladies!
• THIS JUST IN!!  R. Crumb is uncomfortable with change.  (And offended by a milk carton.  I can relate.  Just this morning I had to tell a 2 liter plastic soda bottle to step off.  Step off!)
• R. Crumb also said some things about some other famous and historical people. 
• Oh, and by the way, this week was R. Crumb's birthday too.  Happy birthday to one of the world's greatest living cartoonists.   
• Whole. E. $#iT.
• What's going on with Brad McGinty this week you ask?  Predator t-shirts is what's up. 
• Children please!  Do not try to be Bigfoot! (Adults either.)

• There is a schedule up now for MorrisonCon.  People have taken shots at the arrogance of Morrison and his backers for even having this thing but it looks fun to me.  Totally not a comic book convention so you can't really hold it to that kind of cost versus value comparison .  It's more of a seminar or some other thing I can't financially afford to really think about or understand.  But hey, if you've got the money to hang out with rock stars and comics madmen then go crazy.  How much does it cost?  If you had to ask then you can't afford it. 
• I had a dream this week where I went to SPX.  In the dream I went by the tables of all the creators I wanted to buy things from only to find that they were all outside playing basketball.  So I go outside and sure enough Box Brown and a bunch of other cartoonists I follow on twitter are playing basketball.  I go back inside and laid some money on Box Brown's table and took 5 new minicomics in exchange.  Because, yeah, he will probably have 5 new mini comics for sale.  I knew this was a dream, not because cartoonists were playing basketball but because in the dream, I could afford to go to SPX.  I think the lesson in all of this is that Box Brown probably will have a lot of new books at SPX and you should probably go buy them if you have the means. 
• Oh, and speaking of SPX, I guess as you read this we are less than two weeks away from the big weekend.  Panel Patter continues to build that bigger boat. 
• Jive.  Talking.  Wizards.  Oh crazy Neal Adams Batman.  Don't ever change. 
• Do you subscribe to and or collect the box tops off of Ashley Holt's illustrated tantrum blog The Symptoms?  You probably should.  Last week's rant on litter and/or smoking and bothering him in general was a good 'un.
• I saw this podcast linked on Josh Latta's facebook page and I listened to it mainly because it was called Mini Trunks and I thought that was funny.  There is a lady on there talking about how she got into comics which was basically through Buffy The Vampire Slayer, comic book movies and her iPad.  Which, is so far removed from how I first accessed comics that she may as well be talking about how the people on Mars prefer to build their tacos.  Fascinating.
• In other podcast news, Dave Sim's glamourpuss and other people and things are burning in hell.  (In which Matt Seneca reveals that Kyle Baker is starting his own cartooning school and that he has announced it by taking some business cards to Frank Santoro's comic book swap meet.)  I think I've linked to every episode of Comic Books Are Burning in Hell since it started.  I hope that you, dear reader, have caught on to the idea that I think it is a pretty swell podcast.  I only understand about half of what those guys are talking about but each of them hold in their brains more information than could possibly be healthy.  It is the least we can do to listen to their podcast and hopefully take some of that information away from their burden. 

• Have I talked about that Flaming Carrot kickstarter? It appears to be fully funded but you can still get in on taking home some great stuff for yourself.  I heart Flaming Carrot quite a bit. I'd like to have it just to read about Oxy Man who apparently has no super powers but does not care because he's on Oxycotin.  Gotta love Bob Burden. 
• Alex Pappademas has a great article about the David Lynch Twin Peaks movie Fire Walk With Me at Grantland.  I can't think of anyway to trick you into thinking it has anything to do with comics but it is a really great article a bout a movie I really like and it gives me an excuse to tell you my personal Twin Peaks story.  I'd been looking for an excuse for a long time.  Here it goes.  I never saw the Twin Peaks TV show during its broadcast run.  I was in high school and my local ABC affiliate just did not show it.  They did not show a lot of things I wanted to see.  They did not show The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles either.  They sucked.  Viciously.  But, I heard about Twin Peaks and was interested in seeing it.  Cut to my college years and I'm watching all the weird movies I can get my hands on because that's what you do.  My major was communications (yeah, I know) and my concentration was film production.  So, I watched a lot of movies.  I became a big David Lynch fan.  Dune was a favorite.  My buddies and I watched Wild At Heart enough to have most of the dialog memorized.  Fire Walk With Me came out in 1992 and I was curious but never saw it.  I finally saw it on VHS sometime around 1994.  Having not seen Twin Peaks, I was totally confused.  It seemed like three movies.  One being a weird comedy FBI mystery thing.  One being the most messed up episode of 90210 ever.  And the third being and absolutely terrifying horror film that didn't make any sense.  But I liked it.   The movie is a mess that makes very little sense but there are some fantastic performances in there.  Evey actor, every face, every line is fascinating.  So, for years, the movie existed in my mind as this crazy art film that did not make any sense.  Cut to spring of 2011. I had surgery and had to sit upright on my couch for about two weeks.  I finally watched Twin Peaks on Netflix.  (Side note, there are probably a lot of ways that you could watch Twin Peaks but hopped up on pain killers is the correct way.)   It became one of my all time favorite TV shows.  Love.  It.  So I thought that I would revisit Fire Walk With me and that it would all make sense.  Not so much.  I watched it on DVD and left feeling the same as when I first saw it.   It seemed like three movies.  One being a weird comedy FBI mystery thing.  One being the most messed up episode of 90210 ever.  And the third being and absolutely terrifying horror film that didn't make any sense.  But I liked it.  I like it a lot. 
• Oh, and I once met "Little" Jimmy Scott who sings the song in the video below.  What a voice. 

• "The one common ground all cartoonists have is a self-deprecating narcissism."
• One day Rob Clough will have read every comic book in the world which you have never heard of.  On that day he will then sit down and watch some basketball.  But before he does that he's gonna write another article for TCJ about Trubble Club #5. 
• Derik Badman wrote about comics and poems and poem comics and comic poems.
• Which is all the excuse I need to load another round in the link haiku love gun!

Pants on fire walk with

Stericycle liar

Snotbag haters chair

• And finally:  We're not gonna talk about Judy at all. 

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.

Other Comics News Parade-O-Links 07292012

(Yep. Marvel made a Laff-A-Lympics comic.  Image stolen from Comic Vine.)

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 07292012:

• The only Olympic games I ever cared about were the Laff-A-Lympics and Bullets and Bracelets.  (Hat tip to Noah Berlatsky.)
• R. Crumb and some other old rich guy from France made a cartoon.  R. Crumb is "down wit dat". 

• I wrote a report on RobCon.
• I wrote a review of Dracula the Unconquered.
• I tried to mow my yard but the blade got bent so I guess my days of giving an F what my yard looks like are over. 
• Grant Morrison is going to stop making superhero comics (exactly like he did when he left X-Men and made some more personal stuff for a while) and then eventually, I'm positive, he will make superhero comics again because of course he would and he is totally not leaving superhero comics, he is just leaving those superhero comics. 
• In other things that are totally not news I'm going to stop eating Fritos.
• Until tomorrow when I start eating Fritos again.
• With Morrison out of the way, I'm ready to write Action Comics.  Email me. 
• Marjane Satrapi's Chicken With Plums is a wonderful book and it looks like it will be a wonderful movie.

• Brad McGinty has some amazing new prints and stuff for sale in his new store. 
• The four greyhound jockeys of the comics apocalypse continue to burn comics in hell.
• Rob Clough covered a whole bunch of comics from recent CCS grads. Here, here,  here, here and here. 
• Alternative Comics is back!  I'm pretty happy about that.  When I first moved to a civilized area of America and discovered comic shops that carried alternative comics it was the books published by Top Shelf and Alternative that first jumped out at me.  A lot of my favorite cartoonists came out of those first few years at Alternative.  
• David Mack talked to Ted x.
  
• TCJ reviewed Josh Simmons new book The Furry Trap.  I really want that book. 
• I always love it when Josh Latta reviews candy or toys.  Here is a Batman robot thing.  Here is one on a Mickey Mouse toy.  
• Cartoonists on the world we live in. 
• And finally:  Put on your ranting shoes...

Kickstarter, Kickstarter, Kickstarter.  Dan Nadel finally reached the breaking point and used one particular project as a target for a bunch of anti-Kickstarter arrows he had been sharpening up.  Oooh ranting!  Don't mind if I do!  

Kickstarter is today the same thing that I thought it was on the first day I ever heard about it.  A crowd funding tool with a social networking feel.  And I'm okay with that 100%.  Or, maybe 95%.  Let me break it down.  Here is what I like about that.  I like that it has made it very easy to help creators in completing and producing new work.  I like that you as a reader/customer can get in on the "ground floor" and pre-order the work and get special exclusives and junk.  That is neat.  That is like getting issues of Bantha Tracks in the mail as you wait for Return of the Jedi to be released.  I dig it.  I also like that some crazy stuff that “might not exist without it” can exist.  Yayyy crazy stuff.  I also like that it seems to help make books available faster than the normal 18 month to three year turn around we see with publishers. 

Now, let me break down what creeps me out about Kickstarter.  Dan Nadel touches on one part of it.  Amazon.  Maybe this is my years in book retail talking but Amazon is not a friend to be trusted.  Amazon is the nuclear power plant you don't want in your back yard.  Its power is undeniable.  It is more efficient, cleaner and less expensive but it may leave you pissing radioactive blood.  So you run down the street to where the hospital used to be and there is just an ugly zit faced kid there now.  He holds up his cell pad pod phone and tells you that if you want the medicine to get rid of the "glow piss" then you are going to have to order it from Amazon.  

But the Amazon problem is a part of the cost of capitalism right?  I know that is an over simplification but if you are going to use a tool you probably have to pay for it sometime right?  And that’s what Kickstarter is.  It is a tool.  And my biggest problems with Kickstarter are not with the tool but how people have chosen to use the tool.

When Kickstarter began I think that a lot of people, myself included, saw it as this great way of crowd funding projects that the publishers could not presently invest in.  These were underdog projects that “would not exist without it”.  There was a feel good story vibe about it and the comics community got behind it.  And not just in comics.  The New York Times called it “the people’s NEA”.  We collectively granted it the kind of goodwill a great charity would deserve.  We liked, we shared, we tweeted, we re-tweeted, we backed etc. etc.   

All the bloggers got behind it and started giving different Kickstarter projects free publicity.  Free PR.  And that my friends is probably where it got a little bit gross.   That is when it became no longer just a crowd funding tool but it became a PR tool.  That my friends is when existing publishers and existing successful creators that don’t need crowd funding started paying attention.  And now, it is not a crowd funding tool for those guys.  It is a new publishing model with a built in free PR machine.  

And I’m not against new publishing models.  And I guess a new PR machine is no worse than an old PR machine.  But it is important to remember why that free PR machine is there.  The comics community got behind Kickstarter in a big way and gave it free PR because of what we thought it was.  Because it was the little guy.  It was all of us in it together.  Because it was someone taking a chance and trying to make something that “would not exist without it”.  That free PR machine was built on the backs of the little guys and the crowds they created.  The crowd part of that crowd funding was built on a well intentioned community that wanted to be a part of something new and positive.  

And now, we have this.  And it is gross.  That is Michael Phelps showing up at your kid’s swim meet.  At first it is a big deal and the news vans show up and everyone gets their picture in the paper.  All that attention can’t be bad right?  But then you notice that Michael Phelps took all the kids’ medals and trophies home with him. 

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.