Scratches 1 , ed. Joost Swarte and Hansje Joustre. Scratch Books, October Finally, a book I can read! That sounds lame, but it's a fairly shrewd attempt to identify and fill a gap in the market. Raw , where Swarte was introduced to American audiences, was a swing at the same thing, albeit grounded in a time and place where the art world it had pretensions to was a tad more accessible than it is today. Scratches , by comparison, is as utilitarian as one of the fancy design periodicals it's dressed as - you can pick it up, open it at random, read a page or two, and put it down satisfied - or, alternatively, continue.
This book wears its confectionery status as a point of pride. With the inclusion of a few graphics-heavy articles, the impression at times is of reading a ridiculously overstuffed, evolved version of a Sunday funnies section - an ignored turn on the road that led us somehow from Winsor McCay and Lyonel Feininger to Garfield and the Family Circus. Maybe a context that Bendik Kaltenborn and Brecht Vandenbroucke miss in solo presentations of their work is here, as Swarte musters a gang of younger Dutch and Belgian cartoonists into a compelling case for Low Country comics having an identifiable regional flavor.
Deadpan, non-sequitur humor predominates, as do proficient drafting and a flair for visual invention. Sam Vanallemeersch exhibits his all-too-infrequently published drawing in a brightly colored bit of nonsense that begs to be pored over whenever the book is reopened. Guido Van Driel captures the strange sense of inevitability that pervades alien abduction testimonials in a po-faced retelling of a '70s close encounter.
Not everything in the book is great, of course - it has most Continental anthologies' tendency to privilege wordless formal exercises that go nowhere - but pound for pound it's an impressive package, a considerable offering of new European talent to the English-language market. Not new and not French, but who cares! The whole point of this is showing you cool shit, so behold: Drawn in and reprinted at pocket-novel size, this slightly archaic-feeling cosmic adventure illuminates a fascinating path explored but left untraversed by Crepax early in his career.
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It's Crepax as red-meat mainstream cartoonist, giving the people what they want. The panels maintain a gridded structure instead of splintering and fragmenting at fraught moments. Extreme close-ups and multiple-ground shots barely appear, with most panels presenting full figures beneath the invisible proscenium arch of classic newspaper comics. Sequences of tension don't freeze in amber and stretch out diagrammatically for pages the way they do when Valentina's in them, but proceed at more or less the usual speed.
Basically, this is a normal comic. But Guido Crepax sure didn't draw many of those, which makes it a curio worth unpacking. L'astronave pirata , funnily enough, is downright redolent with the flavor of s DC comics - the slightly staid and fusty ones that never caught the New Wave of sci-fi, illustrated with calm ad-art professionalism by guys like Murphy Anderson, Mike Sekowsky, and Carmine Infantino.
Crepax's personal aesthetic gels oddly if compellingly with that of the space age, Wally Wood bubble helmets distending into shapes that look like the probosces of giant, glittering insects and space suits rendered to look like Renaissance parade armor. This has got to be the most baroque space comic of all time; the zero-gravity setting makes the whole book look like a long, expertly choreographed ballet. The purest pleasure on offer here is just looking at panel after beautifully put together panel of Crepax's early, brush-heavy chiaroscuro style, which I'm more fond of personally than his gossamer pen-embellished mature art.
Crepax's ability to assemble areas of black and white into perfectly balanced compositions was frankly stunning. The way his marks interact with one another on the page has more immediate vitality than most artists' fight scenes. If anything, it looks even better shrunken down to this size - unfocus your eyes just a bit to take in the way the shapes and lines talk amongst themselves and you're looking at some pretty outstanding abstract drawing. Harsh angles and geometric shapes rendered all in black are entangled and abutted by whirls of twisting line, meticulous patterning giving way to bold graphic simplicity, often in the same panel.
Crepax's wide-ranging visual imagination goes much further afield than his content does, dreaming up spaceships that look like fantastic seashells, a tribe of women clad as giant butterflies, and extremely novel ways to depict water in an ink-drenched subaqueous sequence that resembles its creator's later work than anything else here. This is the kind of comic I'm almost glad I can't read; as spacefaring adventure I'm sure it's solid, but as something exotic and unknowable it intoxicates.
Today at the Comics Journal, we're spending our morning--and a healthy portion of our afternoon-- drinking in Matt Seneca's epic column on the comics he found in France. You'll want to make sure you've got a fine relationship with a good comics importer for this one, friend. Our review of the day comes to us from industry stalwart, Ryan Carey.
I couldn't remember the last time we reviewed some yaoi, and Ryan was happy to oblige. Did you catch Tim's not-so-subtle dig at me for linking to online comics? The best of list season is truly upon us, with a whole bunch of sites getting into the action. Meanwhile PW is shouting out the big books of Spring , three of which are definitely pulsing with great Satanic power.
But when it comes to best of lists, I, like Dominic Umile before me, have long since reserved my greatest excitement for this one: It ain't comics even if cartoonists do occasionally show up , but hey--we got a lot of those already. We've got two reviews for you today.
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First, Tucker Stone himself writes about M. A collection of minicomics by M. Comics that in other hands would have allowed for an exercise in crude mark-making so as to complement narrative tempo here play out with an eye towards broader legibility--this, more than other comics playing in the here-is-some-gnarly-shit-I'm-into genre, is a comic that won't seem foreign to a broader audience less willing to engage with obfuscation.
The three stories here all seem to be drawn from Harkness's life, or at least, from how Harkness chooses to present her life to others. Harkness uses the same stand-in throughout, an angular character who also served as lead in her previous book, Tinderella. Opening with a fast paced karaoke take on SZA that sees its protagonist tearing through enough life experiences to fill a whole shelf of comics from more sedate storytellers, this first tale features a bukkake sequence, a boot-removing assault as response to street-side cat-calling, a jail-bound musical, and a monster truck rally that makes it to outer space.
Harkness shows no loyalty to any particular layout, going from one-page splashes to jam-packed micropanels, often toying with the style in which she depicts her lead. The flexibility allows for odd flourishes that give the story a wry humor that might not otherwise come across with the song lyrics that stand in for actual text. Professional wrestling's relationship to the truth has long been a part of its appeal.
Performers play heightened versions of themselves; matches have predetermined outcomes but take legitimate physical tolls; and the pleasure of suspended disbelief accompanies the thrill of an in-ring comeback or betrayal. So it's perhaps not just for brevity's sake that Aubrey Sitterson and Chris Moreno's new book settles for something short of history in its title. Sitterson, the book's scripter, locates pro wrestling's origins in carnival athletic shows that crossed the country following the American Civil War, then follows its transformation into a worldwide phenomenon at the turn of the twentieth century.
Here and elsewhere, Sitterson has a weakness for excessive bolding "Catch wrestling allowed holds below the waist, mitigating the Russian Lion's power, but he proved indomitable and was soon recognized as the world champion in England" , and his constructions are often clunky "Much like in the carnival days, it would seem there was too much money on the table not to start at least partially compromising legitimacy for entertainment.
Even so, he makes these pages count, exploring the shady inheritances of wrestling's carnival pedigree and explaining how the tradition came to optimize its entertainment value. Any credible understanding of wrestling is an international understanding of wrestling, and here too, the book delivers. For the curious but uninitiated, Sitterson also clearly defines terms common to Japanese pro wrestling, e. Ryall will step into his new position on December Mostly I just like stuff with monsters and serial killers in it.
Kriota Willberg talks to Ellen Forney. One of my points in Marbles is the discovery that I am more creative stable. Stability is good for my creativity. Self-care and balance is a way to be more creative and innovative. Creativity is not necessarily fueled by mood swings.
Today at The Comics Journal, R. Harvey returns to with the first in a series of columns looking at the relationship, the careers, and the fall of Al Capp and Ham Fisher. We hope you'll join us for the duration!
It's rip-snorting--and here's how it starts:. The story of Al Capp and Ham Fisher, two cartooning geniuses, their rise to celebrity and their furious interactions with each other, is the stuff of epic adventure fiction, but here, it is fact. At the peak of their careers, in the s, they were superstars: Shamed by his colleagues at the height of his career, Fisher died by his own hand; Capp died in obscurity, disgraced by sensational news of his sexual scandals. Today's review comes to us from Leonard Pierce, who leapt back into the trenches to review one of the multiple comics that Noah Van Sciver put out this year.
He swung his left leg out sideways, almost dragging it forward for each step, and his stride had a practiced rhythm, a rolling gait punctuated by a profound dip every time he transferred his weight to his left leg, the wooden one. The man in the limousine was a cartoonist, and he thought he recognized the blue wrapping paper: The subject of this wager, the young man rolling along the sidewalk on Eighth Avenue near Columbus Circle, was a somewhat shabby specimen, who, despite the chill of the spring day, was hatless and nearly coatless. He had a shaggy mop of thick, black hair.
She let him stay in her attic without paying and even gave him a little money every day for food. He noticed the limousine slowing down as it pulled alongside him, and he watched as the rear window rolled down, and he saw the man in the back, seated next to a well-dressed woman. The man looked at him and said:.
Caplin aspired to be that spring of And he had even sold a few cartoons from time to time, both in New York and in Boston. And now, six months later, he was back in the Big Apple for another try at fame and fortune. In New York, 82 breadlines filled a million jobless bellies, but 29 New Yorkers would die of starvation that year. Capp did the Sunday strips, and within a few months, he was writing as well as drawing them.
Two giants in their field, and yet when they came together, each was brought low, undone, by the same lie. And then each would destroy himself. And in their self-destruction, they would share a star-crossed fate as surely as if joined at the hip that day they met on Eighth Avenue near Columbus Circle. He may not be the only cartoonist to be so defrocked. But his is surely the most famous case in the annals of the Society. His exit was noisy. For a brief while. And then, all fell silent. He committed suicide within a year of the disgrace of his banishment.
And the silence is only one of the strange elements in this ignoble episode. The story of the feud is juicy with the sort of morbid sensation that enlivens supermarket tabloids: But there is high drama in the tale, too, in the impulse to self-destruction. And there are also contradictory aspects in the traditional rehearsal of the story, puzzles never quite solved.
So it seemed to me a story worth exhumation, one of those legends that begs for careful inspection. Weiss speaks with an admirable precision, clipping his words into a lilting syntax as he goes. Fisher was not a nice man, he said. My curiosity piqued, I decided to look into the sordid tale of the feud between Fisher and Capp. And when I did, I found in the contradictions truths that, it seemed to me, had long been overlooked. Weiss spent most of his cartooning career with one or the other of two newspaper comic strips, Mickey Finn and Joe Palooka. By the time Weiss arrived at the strip, Fisher had been dead for years.
Photo by Poch Bros. While still a teenager attending the High School of Commerce in New York City, Weiss visited many cartoonists in their studios, seeking advice about how to enter the profession. Among those he visited was Ham Fisher. It was about or , very early in the run of Joe Palooka , and Fisher had an apartment in the Parc Vendome, a posh apartment building in Manhattan. So, he befriended Flagg and moved into the same apartment house as he lived in. Ham was very nice when I saw him back then. He gave me a drawing.
I recall he was telling the cabbie stories of the things he was doing for the soldiers through the comic strip and with chalk talks in hospitals and things like that. And when the cabbie heard everything Ham had to say — apparently the cabbie was already a veteran, and he started to tell Ham stories about his Army life, and at that point, Ham lost interest. Fisher was widely known and liked in the sporting world.
He watched every notable prize fight from the press box, and the fans were reportedly as eager to see him as they were to see the fight. He was welcome in every training camp and fight gym. Joe Palooka was without question one of the most popular comic strips of the period. Fisher told action-oriented adventure stories, full of exotic incident as well as a healthy dose of humor. And he was expert at prolonging the agonies he inflicted upon his characters, creating suspense-filled storylines the equal of any contrived by his cohorts in the cliffhanger game.
It was in the air. The inspiration for Max, according to William C. But how else do you describe such an uncomplicated character? He is, after all, a professional boxer. Except those of his opponents in the ring. And humble, relentlessly humble. He embodies clean living, clean talking and clean thinking, not to mention honesty, courage, tolerance and devotion to duty, country, mother and apple pie.
Even his face is uncomplicated: Manly lantern jaw, tiny nose, gigantic shock of forelock, wide-open eyes. Or of anything mean, small, or even remotely unkind. With Joe Palooka, what you see is what you get. Simply stated, he is an ideal. An American ideal of manhood. Or of knighthood, for that is what he is: There are, for example, plenty of boxing matches, and Fisher made engrossing stories out of them.
They are skillfully and realistically choreographed, every move carefully plotted. And every move that is depicted is given significance in the story, too; no wasted motions here. Radio announcer narrates Palooka match blow by blow. He says things like: Throughout his run on the strip, Fisher reflected the beliefs of his audience. Joe Palooka was, above all else, a sentimental strip. But it was unabashed, traditional American sentiment, born and bred in the custom and aspiration of the American spirit. Its raw sentimentality may undermine our interest these days; but during the years of World War II — and for a period both before and after — the strip was in perfect step with the times.
The great quality that lifts the strip to the very top is simply the heart in it, the human love.
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In this respect, Ham Fisher resembles Milton Caniff: Neither spoils his work with preachiness. Simple people [took] as an ideal the big, graceful guy with thunder in his fist and with humility in his heart. He was one of them. Year after year, Fisher told a riveting story. And his stories gave his readers something to admire, to emulate. And to understand the near disappearance of Joe Palooka from the pantheon of comic-strip greats, we have to know something more about Ham Fisher.
Today on the site, Frank M. Young completes his two-part examination of the unfairly obscure midcentury cartoonist Cecil Jensen. Many webcomics are later complied into graphic novel volumes, the majority of which are self-published. Yet while this digital revolution has handed both production and promotion tools to the people, few webcomics have actually garnered critical reception, and fewer still are able to gather enough visitors to make any sustainable profit.
With many of these comics being treated as part-time endeavours for enthusiasts, the lack of profit involved means that many creators often opt for simpler, three-panel narratives similar to the comic strips found in newspapers in favour of more ambitious webcomic projects. But on a positive note, the digital material that is being created on a daily basis is potentially unrestricted; though the harsh reality is that, like the creators that formed Image, many aspiring artists and writers appear to simply want to replicate the worlds formed by Mavel and DC.
But there is still enough interesting and varied independent work out there to satiate the comic industries many demographics; some markets, such as teenage girls, are sectors that have been severely overlooked by mainstream publishers in the past. Some comic journalist believe that micro-transactions and iPod integration will soon allow independent creators to reap reasonable rewards for their efforts, though this is still yet too be witnessed. Despite flagging sales and an increasingly older readership — ironically all in the face of hugely commercial comic-based movies — the comic book industry has arguably reached a creative zenith.
With little money to be made from the comics themselves, Hollywood studios and videogame publishers seem quite content to dip into these creative universes without feeling inclined to tinker with the comics themselves. Yet some might see this as a good thing, and with the rise in digital comics the medium appears to be once more returning to its creative roots. Though the tradition comic medium is unlikely to ever see the enormous sales it once enjoyed, the medium itself is finally seeing sincere interest from the press and art world alike. This exposure can only be a good thing.
Nevertheless, there is work to do, and comic publishers and underground creators alike will need to learn from past mistakes if the industry is to once again prosper. These points are largely aimed at Marvel and DC; both of these publishers have always been a perfect starting point for young readers to enter the earliest stage of their comic book habit:. Comic books have, by their very nature, become a specialist interest. In many ways this is beneficial, creatively speaking — the collectors continue to lap up new material on release while a larger audience waits for collected volumes.
The Old School: Classic Strips That Continue To Shape Comics
The problem is that to a new reader the graphic novels are just as confusing:. Strapped for cash, he heads for the graphic novel section in his local library — that such a thing now exists is proof of progress — grabs a few volumes and drags them home. Not that Billy Bash could have known though; each of the volumes he holds all have a number 1 on the spine. Marvel and DC are probably the most guilty of this one — restarting trade paperback collections of their flagship titles time and time again.
Image does a fine job with its recent graphic novels; titles such as Invincible and The Walking Dead are clearly labelled with separate colour schemes and layouts and distinctive spine designs. This works extremely well and essentially means that anyone can enter the latest issue of Spider-man with a reasonable idea of what is going on. Were it to become commonplace for monthly titles and graphic novels to include a page or two of detailed back-story the lasting effect could only prove favourable. Make no mistake, every comic buyer is in their heart a completist.
How do the publishers replay our loyalty? An International Bibliography by John A. I'd ask him about his thought process and how he approaches both the human form and drawing in ink. I'd ask him about his philosophies behind page and panel design and what he thinks is most important about advancing a story.
I'd want to know who inspired him and whose art he looked to as he was learning his craft. I'd ask him what kind of underwear he prefers if I thought it would help me draw as well as he could. I doubt it would, but it couldn't hurt to ask! It doesn't always work, but sometimes it leads to other things. You've just got to do something. You can't just sit there, or else you'll make up grocery lists. Gilbert George Benjamin Luks: I think that animation is a marvelous medium. An artist can take a pencil and put the city of Rome or a strange planet on a small piece of paper and have a character do anything at all that comes to your imagination.
There is no other medium that allows you to so control every frame of film to exactly what you want to have happen. To provoke a deeper examination of current events. Robb and Richard D. Harvey and Dave Blanchard - Book Reviews: Mickey and the Gang: Book One by Frank O. It's easy to make fun of adults. They're all we have, and a comic book is the perfect place to do it. Jensen 64 The Thin Black Line: Popeye the Seller Man by Brian K. I'll bring the spinach. I don't think the person exists who is going to be a nonpareil writer, designer and animator.
Those three areas really require three different kinds of thinking, skills and aptitude. In some ways, we've produced a generation of people who do second-rate design and animation - not because they don't want to be better, but because there's no opportunity or motivation to use their expertise. Humbug by Harvey Kurtzman; The Simpsons: A Retrospective by Jason E. She and I got along great. I would trade her cute stuff for gross stuff, and it made a nice balance.