Original Art Sundays (Monday) No. 259: Sharp Invitations: Curt, sidebar page

Only a day off schedule this week, but pleased with the outcome.
I've been trying to find something to break the tension in the current story. Yes, it was a tense time, but I've read graphic memoirs that are so sad and unrelenting. It's often a rough road. Sometimes, as was the case with Rosalie Lightning, while the book was achingly well done, I couldn't bring myself to finish reading it.
Here I was, considering a way to break the tension, just for a narrative minute. As a result of Emil Ferris' massive and well-earned victory with My Favorite Thing Is Monsters at this year's Eisner awards (I voted for her in every possible category!), I was inspired to reactivate an old idea.
Sidebar: if you haven't read My Favorite Thing Is Monsters yet, do so ASAP.

For a while in the 90s, I was playing with pastiche romance comic covers. One of my favorites involved a cheerleader enrolling at Miskatonic University. I was also tickled by the word play of combining trans and lesbian as a monster thing.
Transylesbian. Ha!
I first worked up a version of this as a self-portrait idea for my senior year at MCAD, but instead I went with a black velvet painting, which I'm a bit sad I no longer have.
The idea for this fake cover resurfaced every now and then. I kept mulling that one day I'd find the right place for the idea to come to life, as it were.
And here we are.
The references in this are all over the place. Of course, there's the EC reference in the formatting and trade dress. I used my Ground Zero Press logo instead of the EC logo. While I'd like to channel some of the more decorative of the EC artists, like Crandall or Williamson, my loose style is more Johnny Craig. Craig told a good story, so I'm fine with that.
Other little things of note: of course, the Witch is wearing a Cheech Wizard hat. The werewolf rendering is inspired by the work of fellow Minnesotan Mike Ploog. He also tended to work in a freer style in his comics. Since the werewolf is supposed to be Curt, I also had to think about drawing a bald werewolf.
I suppose I could have thrown in a background, but for this one, I think simplicity is my friend.
Does it advance the story? Well, as alluded to above, I think perspective is crucial on this stuff. We're two pages away from things getting REALLY bad, and one of the things I've had to come to terms with is the contributions my emotional state made to these problems. Not to say I was at fault, because abuse victims are NEVER at fault, but as a former lover once told me, "you worry too much." So this is a mildly self-deprecating recognition of the inescapable fact that I worry too much.
Technical notes: I neglected to trim this page before starting it, so it's slightly disproportionate to the other pages. I'll either re-do it or scale it down and give it white border to conform to the other pages. The supplies used are pretty much the same as on the previous page:
Canson Recycled Bristol board
No. 3 and 6 Staedler pigment liners
lead holders, leads and graphite sticks
Magic Rub erasers
Crowquill pens
No. 2 and 4 Richeson synthetic brushes
Surprisingly, no white out on this one!
This might need a bit of fine tuning, but I'm pretty pleased with it as is. And I hope the readers have as much fun with it as I did. Even in a tough part of the story, you can't be grim all the time.
Next: back to the narrative, containing an unexpected declaration.

Original Art Sundays (Saturday) No. 198: Surrealist Cowgirls: Maggie's Fairytale, p.6

For some reason, I've had incredible issues with posting. See below for screed!
But here's the next page. The following page will post tomorrow, Sunday, November 30.

Sigh. Okay, numerous issues delayed this, mostly time and my own stubbornness. I really wanted to post the rest of the story all at once, but that proved impractical. The story is so close to done I can taste it. And I want to finish up a big batch of Cowgirls stuff in the next two weeks- no mean feat as I work 30 - 50 hours a week, not counting teaching and end of the semester testing and grading! Whew!
But it's time for this project to come together, at least in a Beta version.
Now thoughts on this page.
I like the top tier a lot. Simple and to the point. I really fought with the war panel. I'm very unhappy with it as it is. It has incredible energy but no focus. I'd like to rework it, but I'm still intimidated by the prospect of showing a whole war in one panel! I'm drawing inspiration from EC war comics and a recent reading of the Harlem Hellfighters graphic novel, which impressed me a great deal.
Still, the work and the joy of the Cowgirls continues. So close... so close...

Original Art Sundays (Tuesday) No. 175: Surrealist Cowgirls, last page

As promised, I was able to correct the scanning issue today.
Here's the last page of It Does This When I Hurt. It's an aftermath sort of page, where everyone says their goodbyes.

There was a slight drift on the board as I inked the borders, so there's a hinky angle to the last two panels. I don't mind it. If I didn't say anything, you might not even notice it.
The little dude holding the "The End" sign is a loose swipe of a Joe Orlando character from a late issue of Weird Science.
I debated a different ending, foreshadowing a new threat, but I thought, nah. Let's give them all some time to be happy.
I have a one-page Cowgirls thing, just a little fun thing, on the board right now. There's another short Cowgirls story I have in mind, probably three pages, and I want to do paper doll pages of Tolcanan and Kay Seurat-Seurat.
But after I finish the page I have on the board now, I have a short assignment that's due February 3, a 3 or 4 page story unrelated to my usual cast of characters.
It feels good to have this one done. The idea for it grew out of a pun I sang whimsically in 1987, while watching the second version of  Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much. I added the pun, and the character it inspired, to another story idea ten years later. After doing four pages, I put it aside, only to come back to it a couple years ago. So the story is either 37, 27 or two years old, or else it's brand new. Take your pick.
Don't you just love time?
Next: the one-pager.

Comic Book Legal Defense Fund: MN Field Report on Free Speech

The spiffy "new: CBLDF logo, a couple years old now!

I've been procrastinating this post for a while, but with San Diego ComicCon right around the corner and the 4th of July fading into the past as I prepare for the second wave of summer classes, I don't want it to be too long overdue. And in light of the CBLDF auction scheduled for that huge event, this seems the ideal time to correct the oversight.
Back in May, I volunteered to run the booth so the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, of which I've been a supporting member for the past decade plus (skipping one year when I was too broke), would have a presence at the MN Comic Book Party, AKA SpringCon.
I'd like to offer a summary of the event.
The first day I was aided by longtime friend and fellow comic book geek Jesse Haller.  Jesse and I have countless discussions on the nature of comics, and endless fun dishing comic book gossip. Jesse was great about creating an effective setup, putting his retail and merchandising experience to work to make the booth shine. He also covered the booth for a couple hours while I had lunch with our mutual friend Frenchy Lunning!

As to the booth itself, it took a while for some of the patrons to figure out what the deal was. But very soon, after the initial burst of people mad to get to the comics (our booth was right by the door!), things settled down and people stopped to talk about the work of CBLDF, and to contribute to the cause.
The degree to which some patrons didn't get it at first was made clear by some folks asking for deals on our books!
Since I wasn't sure of the demographic, I just told the CBLDF people to send stuff they thought apropos. I quickly saw my mistakes. Here's how the event went down:

• This is a family-friendly Con. The items for kids and the small ticket items sold out. 
• Lots of folks buy art at this Con! Some of the limited edition prints would have gone over well.
• Neil Gaiman remains very popular here. The signed 1st printings of The Graveyard Book sold out. IN light of that, if we run the table again, including some of the limited edition prints might be a good idea.
• While we had ample stories of the big cases that CBLDF has helped with, there are many smaller instances that get overlooked. The owner of B & B Comics in Bemidji told us of the organization's help in quieting a "concerned parent" irate over a Frank Miller poster. I also knew from past conversations that Tyler Page, whose strip Nothing Better is linked to screen left, had assistance from them with a rather odd legal threat he received over the content of his strip.

Camille, Lady Liberty and Diana!

Day Two saw me aided by Manga fan and aspiring veterinarian Camille McAloney. Her enthusiasm and ability to engage people really helped our sales and communication efforts!
Both days were made for me on a personal level by encountering so many old friends, quite unexpectedly, including one of my favorite former students and the gent who first hired me to teach! Seemed like every time I looked up, there was someone else I knew! That was so positive, just what I needed coming off a rough year.
But it wasn't about me, it was about the cause.
We raised right around $600, give or take, at the table. And SpringCon gives a significant portion of its art auction proceeds to CBDLF as well, so the organization made a decent piece of change for The Cause.
CBLDF has been in existence since the Friendly Frank's bust in the early 1980s led to Greg Ketter and Dreamhaven throwing The Irish Wake for the First Amendment, an event which I was privileged to attend. This was a direct precursor to the CBLDF. Among hundreds of subsequent cases, they defended a comic book store owner who was arrested for selling  an adults only comic book to an adult.
The mind boggles.
While the problem has diminished a bit, there remains a huge need to protect the rights of comic book creators, publishers and retailers from people who engage in censorship, which is, in the words of Mark Twain, "telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it."
And just for fun, here's a SpringCon attendee in the role of a Wally Wood EC Comics spaceman!

RIP Ray Bradbury: a comic book memory

As most of you have heard, we lost Ray Bradbury yesterday. He was 91. It's a good run.

Anyone versed in science fiction, fantasy and horror knows his work. Many of us (like me) begin with it.
I found a copy of R is for Rocket in my grade school library. Coupled with the short story The Man in a Boy's Life SF anthology I got somewhere, I developed a fascination with his sensitivity and use of language, even if I didn't fully understand it at age 8.
But as I did with Lord of the Rings and The Stars My Destination, I kept coming back to the work(s), finding new treats and possibilities every time.
My favorite works of his remain unchanged over the last ten years or so: his screenplay for John Huston's Moby Dick, the novel Something Wicked This Way Comes, The Martian Chronicles, and some of his SF poetry.

THEY HAVE NOT SEEN THE STARS

They have not seen the stars,
Not one, not one
Of all the creatures on this world
In all the ages since the sands
First touched the wind,
Not one, not one,
No beast of all the beasts has stood
On meadowland or plain or hill
And known the thrill of looking at those fires.
Our soul admires what they,
Oh, they, have never known.
Five billion years have flown
In turnings of the spheres,
But not once in all those years
Has lion, dog, or bird that sweeps the air
Looked there, oh, look. Looked there.
Ah, God, the stars. Oh, look, there!

It is as if all time had never been,
Nor Universe or Sun or Moon
Or simple morning light.
Those beasts, their tragedy was mute and blind,
And so remains. Our sight?
Yes, ours? to know now what we are.

But think of it, then choose. Now, which?
Born to raw Earth, inhabiting a scene,
And all of it no sooner viewed, erased,
As if these miracles had never been?
Vast circlings of sounding fire and frost,
And all when focused, what? as quickly lost?

Or us, in fragile flesh, with God's new eyes
That lift and comprehend and search the skies?
We watch the seasons drifting in the lunar tide
And know the years, remembering what's died. 
 But what I'd really like to talk about is his work in comics.
This is not intended to be exhaustive. It's a retrospective of my experience of the man's work.

The story of his bemused chiding of EC publisher Max Gaines and editor Al Feldstein is pretty common knowledge. My first exposure to these stories, given the lack of reprints in the late 1960s and early 1970s, was in the form of a couple Ballantine paperback collections of the EC stories, Tomorrow Midnight and The Autumn People. Both had Frazetta covers. 
In 1978,  when Russ Cochran's EC Reprint series of slip-cased hardcover editions began to come out, I had a subscription. In devouring the supporting material, I learned of the infamous letter to EC, politely chiding them for neglecting to pay his royalties on a story of his that they'd actually lifted!
The upshot, of course, was that he agreed to further adaptations. One of these, The Flying Man, contains eloquent art by one of my personal favorites, Bernard Krigstein.
I'm sure I read other Bradbury adaptations in comics over the years, but the next one that triggers in my memory is a poem on Viking Lander I that was included in Mike Frederich's "ground level" comic experiment, Star Reach, issue 6. The idea behind the "ground level" movement was that comics could take the energy and freedom of the undergrounds and temper it with more, ahem, lucid storytelling of overground, or mainstream comics. Sometimes it worked, sometimes not. The issue containing the Bradbury poem was particularly strong overall, incorporating a delightfully aggressive and melancholy Elric story by old Madison acquaintance Steven Grant and illustrator Bob Gould. The Bradbury poem in that issue was framed by an Alex Nino illustration, enhancing my burgeoning fascination with Fillipino comic artists.
Bradbury slipped in and out of my radar over the ensuing years. I was fascinated by the film adaptation of Something Wicked This Way Comes, despite the depiction of  rolling hills in Illinois!

The next comic book work involving Bradbury that I remember reading was the 1985 adaptation of Frost and Fire, part of a series of ambitious graphic novel SF adaptations of classic SF(and some noteworthy newer works, like Arthur Byron Cover's Space Clusters, again illustrated by Alex Nino!). Frost and Fire was illustrated by veteran inker Klaus Janson, most celebrated at the time for his  work with Frank Miller on Miller's initial Daredevil run. It's a successful collaboration, seamless in most places. The Bill Sienkiewicz cover art is well suited to the tone of the story.
Following that, there were the Topps adaptations of Bradbury's work. Topps was a short-lived but ambitious 1990s comic book publisher, an extension of  the Topps bubblegum card company. As you might expect from that, most of their line consisted of licensed properties, including The Lone Ranger, The X-Files and Xena. I recall two series, Ray Bradbury Comics (collected as multiple volumes of The Ray Bradbury Chronicles), a serialized version of The Martian Chronicles, and a one-shot of The Illustrated Man. As an anthology, the latter was uneven but usually worthwhile. I recall a particularly sensitive collaboration with P. Craig Russell on the story The Visitor. I've gushed over Russell's work in the past. Suffice to say that despite some printing issues, the work is worth searching out.
Those are my memories of Ray Bradbury's work in comics. I know it's far from a comprehensive list of comic book work , if such a thing exists.
 And it's not intended to be complete.There must be a Bradbury comic book bibliography, but I've not found one. I note with some sadness that there's no Bradbury entry at Lambiek, a site I've come to regard as a source of record on comic matters.
I did have one last comic book related Bradbury encounter. My colleague Dana Andrews and I were haunting the dealer's floor, down by Artist's Alley at SDCC a few years ago.  We heard a loud shout behind us- "Make way, make way! Make way for Ray Bradbury!" His honor guard forming a snowplow wedge, Ray Bradbury was wheeled by us, generating spontaneous applause as he passed. I gave him a smile, which I remember him returning. No way of knowing if that smile came from his head or my wishful thinking, but he did have a reputation as having a bit of an eye for the ladies.
Sad to think there will never be another Ray Bradbury story, barring printings of works already scheduled, if such there be. But like his peers, the other humanists of SF (Sturgeon, Simak, and Kress come to mind in this context), I think the line the fictional version of Twain uttered in an episode of ST: TNG comes to mind: "All I am is in my books."
His eloquence shows in this classic scene. Goodbye, Grand Master of Science Fiction.

And then the son saves him, and then he saves his son, and they live to the happy ending.

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Just a quick note to let my faithful readers, if such there be, know I've not forgotten to blog. I'm just swamped with encyclopedia entries and teaching. As I am submitting the last of the current batch of entries and revision in the next couple days, and I'm done teaching for the week after Tuesday, Wednesday looks promising for catching up.
Meanwhile, here's the cover of a book due out very soon that includes my essay on homoerotic subtext in EC Comics.

For more about this volume, here's its solicitation at its source, McFarland Press. I'm very excited to see this in print!
I'm sorry! I'll work faster, really!

Best comics of 2010: No. 6: Sam and Twitch: the Writer

Another book that slipped by me for years.
I have little use for most of the Spawn franchise. I enjoyed some of the guest creators' work in early issues, and the rest of the stuff Alan Moore did for Image, while far from his strongest work, was an engaging read. But in general, Spawn leaves me cold.
These two detectives, Sam Burke and Maximillian "Twitch" Williams, were spawned (yeah, I know, I did that on purpose just to get it out of the way) of the early series. They were sufficiently well received to get their own titles, a series of shorter and longer minis.

It's tense, witty and gritty detective stuff. There's an unflagging loyalty between Sam, the muscle, and Twitch, the mind. It's brutal and ugly, but like Warren Ellis' FELL, it's ultimately about holding onto your humanity in the face of that brutality.

The 2010 series, by writer Luca Blengino and artists  Luca Erbetta (pencils), Fabio Bono (inks) and Filippo Rizzu (colors), deals with a killer who is carving a novel into his/her victims, word by word. 

 

The book is a tough read at times, not so much because of the content, but because of the visual style. The art is gritty, sketchy and full of detail, bringing to mind Alex Maleev's Daredevil run. Since Maleev's Daredevil writer, Brian Micheal Bendis, also wrote an earlier Sam & Twitch run, that's not surprising.  But the real issue is the text.
No word balloons here. Free floating text, reversed out of the art and connected to the speaker bu a simple line. It scans, but it takes some getting used to.

This is far from the first comic book to use typesetting. Even before the digital revolution (whatever that is), EC Comics were lettered using a Kroy lettering machine that created incredibly uniform text.

And Walt Kelly typeset the speech of his sideshow barker P.T. Bridgeport, though he may have just used presstype- it's been a while since I've seen a Pogo original to confirm, but I recall seeing some text pasteups.

In aid of their detection, Sam and Twitch enlist the aid of a graphologist to help them decipher the text, and locate its murderous author, if the killer is indeed the writer,

As our detectives search for the killer, they are put at risk. Following an uncompromising fight, Sam is hospitalized as Twitch has the final encounter with the killer.
Much as with Holmes and Watson,  Mulder and Scully, or in an unlikely way, House and Wilson, Sam and Twitch are a team with a specific personal chemistry and a bond of camaraderie.
These sample pages only allude to another aspect of this series. It's quite bloody. Most of the time, I don't care for that. Here, it works and it serves the story.
I'm a bit embarrassed that these characters slipped by me for so long. Rest assured, I'll not bypass them again.
Tomorrow: Best of No. 5, a very tasteful book.