Comics Enriched Their Lives! #11

Two more, by request:

CUT THE UNFUNNY COMICS, NOT ‘SPIDERMAN’

I can’t believe that you’re cutting “Spiderman” — the only comic strip in the Globe, except for “Doonesbury” half the time, worth reading. Do think again in making way for what sounds like one more jejune set of unfunny panels pitched at the nonexistent (or at least nonreading) X-generation.

And what ever happened to “Mac Divot” — the most helpful set of golf tips I ever read?

JOHN UPDIKE
Beverly Farms

—From a 1994 letter to the editor of the Boston Globe.

And:

The encounter, when all was said and done, had been no stranger than those in ‘Krazy Kat,’ which had given me my first idea of the American desert.

—John Updike, in “A Desert Encounter,”
from the October 20, 2008 issue of The New Yorker.

I remember really enjoying reading the Spider-Man comic strip in the early '90s, but mostly in a kind of stupefied amazement at the lengths it took to stretch out a single plot point from Monday to Saturday (presumably so Sunday-only readers wouldn't get lost). I wonder what Updike saw in it, assuming his letter wasn't a put-on. I was just a stupid kid at the time, so maybe I was missing something...

[Thanks, Jeet.]

Comics Enriched Their Lives! #10

In the imaginary interviews I sometimes have with The Paris Review I have happily envisioned myself making long heterogeneous lists of predecessors in answer to that inevitable question: I'd say, "My lasting literary influences? Um—The Tailor of Gloucester, Harold Nicolson, Richard Pryor, Seuss's If I Ran the Circus, Edmund Burke, Nabokov, Boswell, Tintin, Iris Murdoch, Hopkins, Michael Polanyi, Henry and William James, John Candy, you know, the usual crowd."

—Nicholson Baker, U and I

That Nicholson Baker likes comics is no shock, I know, and I promised I wouldn't post any more of these things unless they were interesting, but I like this quote enough that I don't mind being a hypocrite.

Herbert Crowley : He Liked to Sing?

A received an email this morning from a nice fellow named Max Mose, who discovered this tidbit about Herbert Crowley ("famous" for The Wigglemuch, as featured in Art Out of Time) in
Popular Prints of the Americas (A. Hyatt Mayor, Crown Publishers, 1973), which reads: “Crowley was born near London in 1873. Though he studied singing in Paris, he could never bring himself to face an audience. Then, while working in a mine, he discovered that he could draw. His late-found career took him eventually to the New York Herald, where he drew the Wigglemuch from about 1910 to 1914. In his solitary imagination, this creature with no legs on its far side became more actual than anybody he met on the street. Crowley could tell you exactly when it slept, what it did and did not eat, how it laughed, and that it whistled like you or me.” Well, this is all news to me! The actual dates of the run are off, but the rest of it... who knows? Sounds like the kind of thing an artist might write about himself. I know that he had some shows of his artwork on 57th St. in NYC in the 20s... and that the Met has some works on paper of his in storage that I have, to my shame, not gone to request, but beyond that, well, I cast wide nets, but don't tend to dig deep holes. But in this case I should. Thanks, Max!

Moving Drawings

A few odds and ends here. I'm sure I'm the last person to know this, but wow, Dark Horse is releasing the first volume of the Jesse Marsh Tarzan series now! His work has an incredible arc to it, from early drawings that look carved from stone to mid-period, more fluid pen lines, to his last scratchy, near-abstract images that Russ Manning claimed was due to his declining eyesight. He was a great artist, and the Tarzan work is among my favorite work of his. There's a great Jesse Marsh web site here from which I stole the gorgeous image above. Marsh will be in the second Art Out of Time, which I should be working on instead of doing this.

Also, been thinking about Victor Moscoso lately for another project, and friend Norman pointed out an amazing series of animated shorts Moscoso made sometime in the late 60s or early 70s. What I love about these is how it takes him out of psychedelia and suddenly he seems wonderfully in line with drawers like Milton Glaser and Heinz Edelmann. He had the same transformative impulses and shared with Edelmann a pen line of such urgency and clarity that it's impossible to look away. It's a sharpness -- a tiny bit of grumpiness. Moscoso was certainly the best colorist and overall designer of his S.F. (and perhaps North America in general) contemporaries, but people sometime forget about that wicked penline. The thing that stood out for me the most in the recent Crumb show in Philadelphia was, in fact, the original jam pages Moscoso worked on. Where everyone else looks like they're carefully cartooning a gag, Moscoso's marks come on like brush-fire -- just decimating the very formidable competition. Just brutal and immediate and delineating modern-psych design forms. Anyhow, enjoy these little films. I don't know much about them but maybe someone can fill us in in the comments.

EDIT: Someone just did.

sunday sunday

Do Atlas Comics have the best logos, or what?

I miss Watterson

Your PShaw! for the day.

The YES WE CAN Sale!

In the spirit of hope (and commerce) PictureBox is holding a massive, two-week sale on nearly everything on our web site! It’s a cold world out there, but what better way to pass the time than curling up with a visual book! Each book is a stimulus package for the soul! Plus every purchase from now (January 16) until February 1 will include a FREE copy of Paper Rad’s DVD Problem Solvers.

So, here we go:

* Been curious about Overspray: Riding High with the Kings of California Airbrush Art? This masterpiece has been lauded by everyone from Women’s Wear Daily to the New York Times to Eye Magazine, and it can be yours for just $20!

* Ever wondered about who made the best record covers of the 1970s? In awe of Houses of the Holy, Dark Side of the Moon and Electric Warrior? No need to be frightened, for all will be revealed by buying For the Love of Vinyl: The Album Art of Hipgnosis. It, too, can be yours for $20!

* Beguiled by mythical trappings and enamored of contemporary art and writing by my generation’s best imaginations? Then dig into Trinie Dalton’s MYTHTYM for just $15! It’s like going to a museum, reading the best book ever written, and watching a movie all at the same time!

* Curious about the book about which the New York Times exclaimed: “Few cartoonists of the moment are weirder or more original than Yuichi Yokoyama - his work obsessively diagrams architecture and design … Travel is remarkably entertaining.” Travel can now be yours for just $9.95!

* Want to dip into a graphic novel on nearly ever top ten of ‘08 list? Interested in Dune? Philip K. Dick? What about masterful drawing? Well, my friend, check out C.F.’s Powr Mastrs 2, now just $10!

* And then there’s Monster Men Bureiko Lullaby! The Village Voice crows: “By depicting human behavior at its worst, Nemoto recalibrates the limits of what we can bear to consider on a page of comics.” Damn straight. Yours for $8.95!

* Many consider Lauren Weinstein’s The Goddess of War a shortform masterpiece of graphic storytelling. I sure do! Richard Gehr calls it a “A blend of Marvel’s Thor comic, a Wagnerian space opera, and Anthony Mann’s Westerns” Sounds right to me! Yours for just $7.95!

* And, good heavens, where else can you find Michel Gondry’s visionary memoir/manifesto/guru-text You’ll Like This Film Because You’re In It? The man is a genius, and the book is a helluva a lot of fun to read. Inspirational and educational too! Now just $6.95!

* Wait a minute, what about The Ganzfeld 7? Co-edited and designed by Paper Rad’s Ben Jones, this final issue actually elicited an email from one notoriously cranky woman stating “It’s the best thing ever! And I’m not even stoned!” Yours for just $25.00!

* I know you’ve been wanting to buy Gary Panter, which remains PictureBox’s finest hour, but needed to first purchase a pedestal to hold its 10 pound weight. Now you can, since it’s just $30!!!!!

* All of these books, not to mention our older, equally remarkable books, like Frank Santoro’s Storeyville (just $8.95), Brian Chippendale’s Maggots (just $8.00), Cheryl Dunn’s Some Kinda Vocation (just $8.00) and Paper Rad’s Cartoon Workshop/Pig Tales (just $6.95) are all on sale. Not to mention prints, posters and much much more. Get down with it!

* And remember, PictureBox wants you to have these books because we have your best interests at heart!

This sale will self-destruct on February 1.

Happy hunting.

Love,

PictureBox

Oh, Herbie.

Dan wrote a review of the first two Herbie Archives in the latest Bookforum, and it's now available online. (Good ol' Joe McCulloch wrote a review there, too.)

No Recess

Long journal entry getting edited down --so until then..

















Gary Panter and co. skankin' to tha beat

Yokoyama Amazes

A Brit adrift in Japan has reported back to me. Mr. Jon Chandler, a fine cartoonist in his own right, sent me a link to these unbelievable photos he took of Yuichi Yokoyama doing a live painting demonstration a few days ago. Follow the link and pick your jaw off the floor. Thanks, Jon.

A Healthy Selection

Richard Gehr casts his eyes to the gutter this week in the Village Voice and finds (besides Tim's own Gorey find) Monster Men Bureiko Lullaby. He notes that "By depicting human behavior at its worst, Nemoto recalibrates the limits of what we can bear to consider on a page of comics." Damn straight. I have to admit, aside from my own publisher-like needs, as a critic I feel like Monster Men was criminally overlooked in 2008. With the release of this book and Hanakuma's Tokyo Zombie we've gotten our first North American look at two of the seminal alternative Japanese graphics novels of the last 20 years. There have been anthologies, but never full length works. It's a funny thing -- but perhaps not unexpected -- as though Jimbo and Black Hole were released in another language and more or less ignored. What do these two books say about the form? And lurking in the background is that both emerge from King Terry's formulation of Heta-Uma as a valid way to make comics -- that this bad/good style is arguably a dominant one in the Japanese underground is worthy of notice. Terry, in fact, has packaged both artists works, and designed the North American Nemoto book as well. As far as I can tell, he's exerted an influence similar to that of Art Spiegelman (editor/packager/mentor) on the Raw generation. I hope there's room for more material, but I wonder if the sales will make it feasible. They're not easy reads (well, Hanakuma is easier than Nemoto, but still...) Remember, there's a trove of material corresponding to our own 30-odd year history of alternative comics, and a tiny, tiny fraction of it has been shown here. I imagine Top Shelf's Ax anthology will help remedy that, and of course the mighty D&Q continues to shine light on unseen parts of Manga history. Anyhow, all of this is to say that I'd selfishly love to see an article about all of this by a writer far better informed than I am. So, get on it already!

Comics Comics 3 Now Available as a Free Download!

Yes, that's right, you can now download our third issue for free over on the right sidebar. (And the print version of it is currently available on sale for over half off at the PictureBox site.)

If you forgot, this is the issue that includes:

*Sammy Harkham's interview with Guy Davis (and their collaboration on the cover)

*The legendary Kim Deitch explaining the Meaning of Life

*Dan picking bones with the Masters of American Comics show

*David Heatley and Lauren R. Weinstein in conversation (they also collaborated on a brand-new oversize drawing)

*The long-awaited (by me) conclusion to my article on Steve Gerber

*The beloved Joe McCulloch on Mutt and Jeff

*An illustrated list from Renée French

*An amazing back cover by Marc Bell

*Plus about a million other things. At the time, Tom Spurgeon called it our best issue. All your friends have been reading this over and over again for more than a year! Don't miss out!

Ray Yoshida 1930-2009

Ray Yoshida: "Comic Book Specimen - #2 - Right Profile," 1968

Ray Yoshida: "After an hour," 1968

I got a rather sad email this afternoon. Ray Yoshida, a crucial figure in the birth of the Hairy Who and their colleagues in mid-late 1960s Chicago art, passed away a few days ago after a sustained illness. He was 78. As an instructor at the Art Institute, Yoshida taught the likes of Roger Brown and Christina Ramberg, and was an older contemporary and champion of Jim Nutt, Gladys Nilsson, and Karl Wirsum, among others. He is credited with being a force for cohesion amongst the artists of the time, as well as an early supporter. His own work, beautifully redered paintings that bring figuration close to pattern-making and abstraction, and luminous, jigsaw puzzle-like collages, is also extremely powerful and important. I never met Yoshida, to my regret, but he was spoken of warmly by Nutt and Nilsson, and his New York gallerist, Adam Baumgold. He is the second crucial figure from that period to pass in recent months. Don Baum, who first exhibited the Hairy Who at the Hyde Park Art Center, died a few months back. Baum, an artist and curator, was an important early champion of the work. I visited him in 2005 and recorded a long interview. He was a very sweet, and sharp man, surrounded by the work of the artists he so loved. I'm grateful to have met him. In any case, all of this reminds me how much I love the work of that period, and how still under-researched it remains. My condolences to the Yoshida family, and, belatedly, to the Baum family.

In a Sentimental Mood

This somewhat obscure Edward Gorey book will probably be all over the comics internet by noon, so if you want to disdainfully inform your computer "friends" that you've already seen it, check it out now. [UPDATE: The old link went down; a new link is here.]

[Via a little bird.]

(ozzy voice) "ALL RIIIGHT NOW!"

Gary Panter, punk rocker no more. Me and Ray Sohn are determined to turn him into a metalhead, so we're blasting live Black Sabbath really fuggin' loud all day long while we bust out his mural here at the Taubman Museum in Roanoke, VA. We finally finished the underpainting. Tomorrow and beyond the rest of it will take shape. Stay tooned.

If Ya All Alone, Pick Up the Phone

Matt [Groening] and I totally dug each other from the very first, though from a distance—because I thought he was really square and I believe he thought (rightly) that I was an excitable and intense hippy. Once he became editor of our school paper, I used to write the most insane letters to the editor I could think of, signing any kind of name to them, and he would print them. He probably knew who they were from, but I liked thinking he had no idea.

I used to love dropping in at the paper to stare at him because he looked like the straightest guy on the whole campus. This was in 1976 at a hippie college in Olympia, Washington.

He actually wore a shirt and pants. A shirt with buttons and actual pants.

That's Lynda Barry talking, in an interview published in issues 54 and 55 of The New-York Ghost. I'd post PDFs of the issues, but I'm not sure it's kosher. But you can get free copies by going to the Ghost site and asking, I think. (At least issue 55. Don't get mad at me if I'm wrong, please.) It's worth it for Barry fans. Only a few paragraphs of Don Quixote stuff before it gets good.

Clean Up Crew

Sorry for the holiday drop in posting. If you missed us, Eric Reynolds graciously volunteered to fill in for Frank over at the Fantagraphics blog the other day.

Until we get back up to speed—which shouldn't take more than a month or three—here's a bunch of random stuff that needs posting before I forget about it.

1. The percentage of Comics Comics readers who don't also follow the Comics Reporter probably approaches zero, but it would still feel a little odd not to note that Tom Spurgeon included Dan in his annual series of holiday interviews this year. You can read that discussion here.

2. Tom also interviewed the ultimate love-him-or-hate-him comics critic, Abhay Khosla (I kind of love him myself, at least when I'm in the right mood). It's a good enough interview that I would've been tempted to link to it in any case, but he says enough nice and/or interesting things about PictureBox, and Comics Comics in particular, that my hand was more or less forced. I feel like maybe I should be offended by his comparison of us to "foodies", but I'm having a hard time working up any indignation. Is Dan's repeated praise of Howard Chaykin's Photoshop skills on Punisher War Journal really an example of a gourmand's taste? Seems more like a rationalized junk-food addiction to me. (And I like Chaykin.) I guess I'm trying to say I'm not sure we really deserve such credit. I mean, maybe sometimes, but usually we're probably closer to A Hamburger Today than Gourmet. (I have no point. And on top of that, I don't know what I'm talking about. This is really just an excuse to think about the Bacon Hamburger Fatty Melt.)

3. The always thoughtful Rob Clough, who may be the comics-internet polar-opposite of Abhay Khosla (at least in terms of temperament), also recently praised Comics Comics 4, and with almost embarrassing enthusiasm and kindness. This only goes to show the awe-inspiringly broad appeal of CC. Still, his review is worth reading if only it convinces a few more people to check out the great and under-appreciated Mineshaft, the other magazine he considers.

4. Finally, I'm not about to start linking to a bunch of year-end best of 2008 lists (if you really like those things, then Dick Hyacinth has you covered), but Tucker Stone's top ten at comiXology is the first place I've seen an extended take on one of the year's other most under-discussed gems, Monster Men Bureiko Lullaby, and it's worth pointing out for that reason alone.

"Incentivize the People and Monetize Shit"

Yes, that's right, we're all about that. And etc. Frank gets really mad when I post promotional stuff here, which makes me want to do it even more. Anyhow, I can do whatever I want now because Frank is in Roanoke, VA helping Gary Panter paint a giant mural in a museum. He's probably only thinking about comics 90% of the time, as opposed to his usual 99.9999%. Phew. Anyhow, I will include some non-promo shit here in the form of promised commentary on recent additions to my nightstand: Captain America: America First, Madman #12, Little Orphan Annie Vol. 1, Bat-Manga, and some other stuff I can't remember right now. Why do I keep returning to Chaykin to such diminished returns? I dunno. I'm sure it has something to do with that damn photoshop he uses so well -- weilding it like a blunt instrument. Anyhow, the real reason for this post is to announce to all you art buying types that, for (almost) the first time ever, C.F. is selling some comics pages. It's the complete story from The Ganzfeld 4, later reprinted in Chris Ware's edition of Best American Comics. The pages are here. Email to reserve them. Go get 'em.