Comics For Serious Interviews LARRY MARDER

Here is the interview we promised long ago via Twitter!

We stumbled upon the opportunity to interview Larry Marder when we met him at the Small Press Expo. If not for getting the chance to meet him, we probably would have never been motivated to ask him for an interview because we are such big fans of his work! Essentially, when we met him, we attacked him with similarly complex questions and he was just as friendly, down-to-earth and interesting a person as he seems in this interview thus, setting the stage for us to arrange an interview.

Keeping in mind that some may not have been exposed to Beanworld before, we hope fans will gather little known information about his work and Beanworld newcomers will be able to use information in the interview to supplement their purchase of the Beanworld Holiday Special which comes out today!

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COMICS FOR SERIOUS: One of the best things about 'Beanworld' is how it feels like its own well, world, while also having many connections to this world. It's both really rarified and also universal. Things have clear connections to this world but they also don't function as metaphors or anything. We're thinking of specifically the Clang Twang and how it seems to translate to be about drugs, but you know, putting it like that simplifies it. Explain the process for translating or sort of translating our world to the Beanworld.

LARRY MARDER: I’m a firm believer in Marcel Duchamp’s observation that it is the viewer that makes the painting. I think that art begins with an artist making a suggestion. Then later, at a different place and time, a person experiences the work of art. In Duchamp’s world that person was a viewer. In my world that person is a reader. In a lot of ways Beanworld acts as a mirror. People peer into it and see themselves.

I can certainly understand that the Clang Twang story can be interpreted as a metaphor about drugs. But that wasn’t my intent. At least not in the vein of “Just say no!” sloganeering. It was more in the vein of anything that can be a powerful force for good, may well have a dark side too.

The original impulse for “The Clang Twang!” came from the phrase “Perilous Music.” It just popped into my head one day when I was riding on the L in Chicago. I had no idea what it meant whatsoever. But it seemed important so I wrote it down on a scrap of paper.

The idea of something “perilous” came to me through study of Arthurian Romance. “Perilous objects” are in the Grail stories. I was particularly tickled by the Perilous Chair and the Perilous Bed. Both were fairly mundane household objects that metaphysically transformed into really awful things of terror if you were the wrong person to plunk your butt down upon them.
The Perilous Chair gobbled up whoever wrongfully sat on it. The Perilous Bed attacked whatever weary pilgrim attempted to sleep in it. In the stories it spins around the room and swords come out of the wall and scary stuff like that. The idea of something that is good also having a hidden “perilous” side stuck with me. After all, when you are exhausted and in need of one, what is nobler than a bed or a chair?

And then there was Bob Marley. When I was first doing a lot of the earliest groundwork for Beanworld in the mid ‘70s, I was listening to a lot of reggae which was still fairly new to American ears. In the song “Them Belly Full” there is a passage where he sings:

"Forget your troubles and dance,
Forget your sorrows and dance,
Forget your sickness and dance,
Forget your weakness and dance"

Well, hell, if that isn’t one of the most concise descriptions of the deep relationship between music and people; I don’t know what is. Music heals.

So, in the case of Beanworld, in “Beanish Breaks Out” it was established that the Boom’r Band, through their rhythms and songs, have a strong healing power. The Boom’r Band’s powers are a source of healing and wellness. I knew that there had to be a flip side to that and it was while thinking about that that the phrase “Perilous Music” took hold in my head and the story came out using the elements that I already had on my palette: the Mystery Pods.

The relationship between Mystery Pods and music is always going to be incredibly important in the growth of the Bean culture. It just so happened in the first outing, things went really bad. But in the second outing “New & Improved Gunk’l’dunk!” we see that something that seemed bad, given a new context, can be a pretty good thing after all.

C4S:Why beans? There are some early sketches in the back of the old trades that show you arriving at the style, but how did you settle on the look of Beanworld?

LM: Practice. I drew the basic bean shape over and over, year after year, and arrived at the basic four circle proportions that I do my best to follow.

My relationship with Beans started on the day I was born. I was a difficult birth and when I finally arrived, my head was smooshed in and lopsided to one side and my Mom’s words when she saw me for the first time were “What’s wrong with him? His head is shaped like a lima bean!”

Needless to say, I heard that story my entire childhood. In art school, as I was thoroughly under the influence of the Conceptual Art movement, I was struggling to find a way to tell comics stories without being what I call a “renderer.” At the time comics was under the influence of artists like Neal Adams and Barry Windsor-Smith. And those guys were as close to-realism as one could get using clunky four color litho presses on low grade newsprint. Did I like reading the work of those guys? Absolutely. But I recognized that I couldn’t draw like them no matter how much I tried. So I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what I could do and was very much under the influence of the crazy things going on in the art world in the 60’s and early 70s. The overwhelming message of that era was that art should be something to think about as opposed to something to look at. The Bean comics that I created for my weekly strip in my college newspaper get pretty close to the kind of minimal, conceptual type of comics I was looking for. Just simple beans making gestures, no backgrounds other than a horizon line, and voice balloons.

C4S: You've mentioned that you've worked in marketing/advertising, obviously for IMAGE comics, but other places as well. The beans are iconic and simple like a good piece of advertising or commercial art. Not that you intended Beanworld to be popular in that sense, but how did advertising and that sense of connecting with consumers translate to your creative work?

LM: I worked almost exclusively in print advertising for almost two decades. Most of the accounts I worked on were business-to-business clients. B2B, as it is called, is commerce between two businesses as opposed between a business and a consumer. That meant that we were often faced with the task of making complicated ideas as simple as possible for a purchasing agent. For most of my career, the magazines I did ads for were trade journals.

I learned how to streamline ideas and communicate as quickly and as simply as possible through words and pictures.

I learned how to choose the right fonts to best communicate the message in the headline. You can’t let a favorite font compete with the shape and flow of the letter forms of the individual words in the headline itself. I decided what the illustration or photograph would be and what it would look like. I hired the people who did that work. I was the casting agent for the models in the ads. I did a little bit of everything and all of ultimately is a form storytelling. A good ad tells a compelling story about a product for sale. For me, this was excellent training for making decisions for Beanworld.

C4S: What is your artistic education and/or formal education background? Beanworld is simple and immediate but do your artistic interests extend beyond that or to other areas?

LM: I had a crazy art school education. I have a BFA from Hartford Art School, Hartford CT.

During those years the school was split right down the middle between the Conceptualists and the Renders.

My years there, 1969-1973, were the hey-day years of Conceptualism. I had terrific teachers. I was quite good friends with Jan Groover, who was on the faculty then, and her husband, Bruce Boice. They never discouraged me in my quest to find my way in comics.

I was very influenced by the most important artists of the day Robert Smithson, Mel Bochner, Dorthea Rockburne, Vito Acconci, James Lee Byars, Gilbert and George. And also by the Pop Artists Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg. If I had to sum up what I remember most about those years, it would be that we spent a lot of time investigating the key questions of “What is a thing? What is an idea?”.

Even though I was heavily on the Conceptualist side of things, I was also influenced by Rudolph Zallinger, who was the most revered faculty member of the Renderers. I took spent a semester or two in a class of his where he taught us how to paint in the medium of egg temperas. We had to grind our own pigments and mix them with egg yokes.

Zallinger was a creator of worlds. His monologues about the creation and execution of his humongous mural at Yale’s Peabody Museum, “The Age of Reptiles” were something I sort of nodded through at the time. But over the years, the influence of his words have resonated loudly in my mind as I created Beanworld. He always used to say “Set up the boundaries of logic and then you can do whatever you want as long as you don’t violate those boundaries” Good advice for a fantasy dimension builder.

C4S: Language plays a huge role in Beanworld. Both in how the different characters speak and the labeling and description of things. Things like the apostrophe in Boom'r and Gunk’l’dunk, where did that come from? And terms like "chow down pool," and "breaking out", where does this come from?

LM: A lot of these words and phrases are just things pulled out of my life. Chow Sol’jer is rooted in Bill Mauldin. I was fortunate enough to have grown up in a house in the ‘60s where ‘40s era first editions of “Up Front” and “Back Home” were on the shelves of my parent’s library. Willie and Joe used the term “sojer.” So my soldiers just had to be named something like that and I chose “sol’jer.” But I was also thinking about Cheyenne Dog Soldiers too. It’s all goes into my head and I’m never quite sure what might come out.

Why all the apostrophes? Beats me. Maybe I swiped some of it from Krazy Kat. When I’m crafting new words and phrases for Beanworld I want the words to look good on paper and sound interesting when spoken. My late younger brother, Jon, was much better at making up these sorts of words than I can ever hope to be.

C4S: So Mr. Spook, the Hoi-Polloi and Dreamishness are definitely similar in some way, but does evolution play a part in their relation, or is there some other system? Not really looking for any spoiler alerts, just some hints or clues about it.

LM: Everything and everyone in Beanworld is connected in some way. My only advice is to follow your hunches based on the visual clues. If things in Beanworld look similar, chances are there is a solid reason for it.

C4S: A lot of care has gone into creating the BW environment, and with the Myspace DHP story we see a clear environmentalist side in the characters. We sort of found out from speaking with you at SPX that there were maybe things you would've changed if you'd had more time to work with the DHP stuff, but is this something you're passionate about expressing in the BW?

LM: I got too ambitious in the MDHP piece. I had to pare it down farther than I would have liked to but 8 pages is 8 pages and that was all I had to work with. My first draft of that story would have easily filled a 30 page issue of TOTB. All of that stuff will end up being used elsewhere.

I do have a “green” impulse in my story telling. It started out when I was doing advertising work for companies selling extremely dangerous chemicals. It was enhanced in my studies of Native American mythologies. On the other hand, I’m not what anyone might call a “tree hugger” either. I just tell my stories the way my stories tell me to tell them to others.

C4S: What, if anything, would you compare the Boom'r Band's music to in real life?

LM: Any sort of music that can be successfully accomplished with a guitar, bass and simple percussion. That said, I’ve always been pretty evasive about what the Boom’rs sound like to me. It’s no secret that the rhythms of the Clang Twang were a variation on the Bo Diddley Beat which is itself a riffing of the Hambone beat, which in turn, probably goes back to the Olduvai Gorge or something equally ancient.

The look of the Boom’rs was influenced by the look of the rockabilly retro band the Stray Cats. And so at that time, I sorta heard a rockabilly sound in my head.

Nowadays, I listen a lot to The Original Carter Family. Their instrumentation was mostly just Mother Maybelle Carter on her guitar with her cousin Sara sometimes on autoharp. Maybelle had an original and extraordinary upside down style of hammering the melody on the bass strings and keeping up the tempo by strumming the upper register strings. This style became known as the “Carter scratch.” The Carter Family had a way of arranging their songs that was pretty unique in its time. For many years they were broadcasting nationwide on the radio every day. They had an incredible influence on the musicians that became the mainstays of folk music, country music and rock’n’roll. So for me right, right now, there is a lot of Carter scratch in their sound as I writing and drawing their sequences.

When I used to travel to Hong Kong all the time, there was a really fabulous Italian restaurant in the Royal Garden Hotel called Sabatini. The Yeh brothers, who’s factories made a lot of the McFarlane Toys during that time, used to take us there all the time. Sabatini had a house trio of Filipino musicians made up of two acoustic guitars and a stand up bass. I guess I saw them do their wandering minstrel thing dozens of times over the years. For tips they took requests and could play virtually any song from any culture in any language. I even heard them play the most incredible acoustic version of Jimi’s Hendrix’s Purple Haze. I used to study them quite carefully because I knew these guys are the closet thing I’ve ever experienced to the Boom’r Band.

C4S: What's the role of feminism in Beanworld? Professor Garbanzo is the leader of the Beans in many ways and she's a woman. Although gender doesn't seem to entail the same things in the Beanworld, it's still a really interesting choice.

LM: Of course that entirely depends on what one’s definition of feminism is. It seems to have gotten quite fractured over the last 40 years. But if you mean the political, social, and economic equality of females, that is a given in Beanworld society. Gender is more of a moiety, your home team, than something sexual. Gran’Ma’Pa is the source of Baby Beans and Gran’Ma’Pa is given Reproductive Propellant by the Goofy Service Jerk delivery service. In the color stories you can see that the basic Beans are color coded by red for the sisters and blue for the brothers. Beans that have broken out adopt their own coloring but they retain the gender designation they were born with.

C4S: In terms of universality mentioned before, there's a sense of Mr. Spook as in some ways being the hero but also the "brawn"--he's often angry--and Garbanzo being the "brains" (she's a Professor after all). These are sort of well-played tropes that never don't work...are you thinking in terms of myth or pop culture or what when you apply these?

LM: Absolutely. They are archetypes. They are individuals, yes, but they are also filling a pre-determined slot in the Beanworld population.

C4S: Do you have a favorite(s) cartoon(s) or comic(s)? Ones that influenced Beanworld and even ones that didn't? There's a very definitive sense of movement and animation to the bean characters, was this informed by other work?

LM: Jack Kirby, Robert Crumb, and Dr Seuss had the most influence on me growing up. Later I discovered Carl Barks, George Herriman, and Windsor McKay.

I watched a lot of TV growing up in the ‘50s and ‘60s and that meant that I saw a wide variety of animation on local after school television shows. I always gravitated towards the Fleisher stuff first, the Warner Brothers stuff second, and the Disney stuff last. About 20, 25 years ago, as an adult I discovered the silent Felix the Cat cartoons and that stuff just dug into my brain and exploded.

C4S: What made you start working on a comic book? Especially a small press, black and white comic in a time where the market was even smaller. You're part of the second wave of self-publishers, were you reading the earlier, late 70s stuff? Underground comix? Super hero stuff? Beanworld seems wonderfully disconnected from comics trends, it's imaginable that you'd not even be a big comics fan. What have you read, did you read, do you read?

LM: I don’t know. After struggling with Beanworld for a long time, after I discovered Gran’Ma’Pa as the nexus of the Beanworld/Hoi-Polloi food chain, I just knew that now was the time to start drawing Beanworld comics. I had no idea if anyone might ever see it beyond a small circle of friends and family. My favorite comics growing up were basically any Marvel Comic but with special emphasis on the Lee/Kirby collaborations. I loved following Kirby’s Fourth World at DC as it came out over the two years of its existence. I looked forward to reading every issue of Conan, Master of Kung Fu, Dracula, Man-Thing, Howard the Duck in the ‘70s.

I read every underground comic I could get my hands on and tried to memorize every line on every page. I liked not only Crumb, but all the Zap! guys. Shelton, Moscosco, Griffen, Wilson, Armstrong. And the Bijou guys too. Jayzie Lynch and Skip Williamson.

I followed the industry through periodicals like The Comics Reader and The Comics Journal. But when it came to Beanworld, I pretty much figured I was out there in the wilderness on my own.

C4S: Why do you think there's such a spilt in how people feel about BW? Do you think this'll change with the new printings and the new audience it receives? Not a split in the sense that there's really anybody who actively dislikes the comic, but people seem to love it or just accept it. Do you think its context changing through republishing it (and the new issues!) will help the comic?

LM: I certainly hope so. It was often said; when Beanworld was first published in the ‘80s that it was “twenty years ahead of its time.” If I’m lucky that will prove to be true. But you d cite something that does seem to be true. The people who love Beanworld do tend to love it a LOT. I just hope that as the Beanworld wends its way though the current distribution system for comics and books, that more and more of those people who can love it, will discover it on a shelf at a book store or at their library.

C4S: Do you think BW could benefit from being recontextualized as "old" with the release of the new volumes? Is there going to be this market coming from an interest in the "retro" trend?

LM: I consider the books on the schedule to be a reboot of the Beanworld franchise. They are not archival projects, which often come across as museum displays of days of yore. Sure, the first two volumes are re-presentations of work that has been published before, but they’ve been rescanned from the original art, and the meticulous digital work that Matt Dryer did at Dark Horse is much, much closer to the things I drew than the stuff that was printed from film negatives the first time around.

I hope that Beanworld will be received as something that feels both old and new. I call it a “new fangled, old fashioned look.” I guess that might also be a definition of contemporary retro.

C4S: Discuss the challenges artistically and aesthetically in making the DHP Color Beanworld strip. When we spoke at SPX, you were really great about not being bummed that we were a little critical of it, and we'd like to know the process and challenge in the page limit, color expectations, etc.

LM: My first attempt at a color Beanworld comic story was the Asylum story more than a decade ago. It was colored in full blown Image-style color and I think it is safe to say, by all accounts, it has not held up at all. Eventually I’ll recolor it myself and reprint it.

The MDHP story was my first attempt at coloring a full Beanworld story. I was generally happy with my color work, particularly the stuff I did transitioning the “?” into the “!” on page 7.

Let’s face it. We were all nervous going into this story. When you have a hiatus of the length that Beanworld had, and it makes its return, the anticipation is going to run very high on all sides, both mine and the readers. It would almost be impossible for there not to be some disappointment.

And to have a black and white book, return in color yet, just raised the stakes. Same for the Holiday Special. But, now, Beanworld returns to black and white and next year’s original graphic novel, “Remember Here When You Are There!” is the real return of Beanworld. It picks up exactly where Tales of the Beanworld left off and resolves a whole bunch of things. And of course, also opens up just as many new doorways.

As far as your review, how can anyone get bummed out by an honest opinion? Particularly when the critic has targeted the same things I knew were some less than strong decisions I’d made. But I’m not giving up the color fades on the skies when I work in color. When I do them as solids, they just look too uninteresting to me. So we shall continue to disagree on that one.

C4S: We were a little speculative about the Xmas issue, because of conflicts it can have with things that shouldn't exist (or haven’t previously existed) in the BW, like snow (theres never been anything about precipitation) and the santa hats we see on the cover? Again, no spoilers, but hints as to how that stuff can be worked in? At the same time, it's awesome if you're just throwing it all in there without Beanworld logic. How do you decide when to include this or that and when not to?

LM: Well as you know by now, that was just a cover. It does sport a disclaimer that says “Caution: Absolutely nothing depicted on this festive cover appears in the story inside.

Beanworld characters have strayed out of Beanworld only twice: a cameo appearance in Scout #17 and the Total Eclipse mini-series. In Scout Mr. Spook and a multitude of Chow Sol’jers appear to him in a vision and help him defeat a demon during a sweat lodge ceremony.

In Total Eclipse, Doug Moench’s Aztec Ace characters come and whisk Beanish off on a Hero’s Quest when Dreamishness seems to go into an eclipse. In that adventure he meets Miracleman and other heroes of the Eclipse Universe. I thought Marv Wolfman did an excellent job of getting Beanish into the story and not violating the trust of the Beanworld readers of that time.
But, believe me, after those two sequences, I’m in no hurry to do anything like that again any time soon. I’m just going to focus on telling the Beanworld tales as they occur inside the Big-Big-Picture, not outside of it.

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Just because we’re interested...

What is your favorite movie/TV show/Cartoon?

Lost, Fringe, House, Countdown with Keith Olbermann, The Rachel Maddow Show, Morning Joe. And I watch a lot of old movies on TCM. A lot!

What are you currently reading?
--Which comics?

As far as new comic periodicals, Jeff Smith’s RASL is the only comic I consistently read. Everything else seems to be catch as catch can. As far as vintage comic, I’m slowly my re-reading every Jack Kirby collection that I have in my library. I recently finished OMAC and Silver Star. Totally whacked out stuff. I loved it.

--Other than comics?

I mostly read non-fiction. I’m slowly savoring reading “Affectionately, Marcel: The collected correspondence of Marcel Duchamp.”
I’m looking forward to reading Neil Stephenson’s “Anathem” at some point in the next year.

What are you currently listening to?

--Favorite new song/album/artist?

I know absolutely nothing about contemporary music.

--Favorite old song/album/artist?

The Carter Family Anthologies, Boswell Sisters, Howlin’ Wolf, Fletcher Henderson are what I have been listening to the most lately.

If you could collaborate with any comics writer or artist—who and why?

Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Jeff Smith, and/or Matt Wagner I appreciate their individual sensibilities when it comes to understanding the brands of mythology that I am interested in too.

NON-COMICS PEOPLE TALKING COMICS: Armond White on Spain's Che

Pointing out each and every screw-up by a non-comics print or internet publication covering comics is a real fun pastime for us comics fans, but it's just as well that those times when mainstream coverage of comics is good, that we point it out.

Armond White, awesomely argumentative film critic for the New York Press reviews the Stephen Soderbergh film Che and sets-up a quick contrast between it's hyper-objective, intellectualized indulgence and O.G status comics legend Spain Rodriquez's "graphic novel" Che: A Graphic Biography.

The heading for White's review is "Steven Soderbergh’s indulgent Che opus can’t compete against a comic book" which is both White's critical opinion simply stated, and also, a heading that mocks the "good for a comic book" contempt those popular press articles about comics all too often have. White's sort of mocking the dim-witted aspects of Soderbergh's Che--"even a comic book is better than this movie!"--at the same time, the dim-witted critics praising the movie (and writing "comics ain't for kids anymore" articles), and teasing you with a quick explanation of the brilliance of Spain's Che:

"In Spain Rodriguez’s new comic-book novel, Che: A Graphic Biography (Verso), a poignant narrative interruption recounts Rodriguez’s own memory of living through the Cuban missile crisis. It makes Che’s significance personal and immediate. Soderbergh doesn’t bother; he’s above the personal revelations of Latin American political drama as risked by Alex Cox’s Walker and Pontecorvo’s Burn. Neither rabble-rousing politician, humanist historian or trailblazing artiste, Soderbergh’s a Pseud."

Where My Money Went: December 10th

Every Wednesday, I push the limits of my budget for my comic addiction. This is where my money went this week:


I hate Superman. He just doesn't do it for me, but in the few stories I do enjoy (Birthright, For All Seasons, a few others) are about him as a sad character, not a hero. I don't want to see him as this cry baby all the time, just the dude is possibly immortal, will out live everyone he loves, and has to save the world five times a week and still hold up a day job. I have a hard time doing anything productive with my free time and I don't even try that hard at my job. I want to see his humanity over his super-humanity.

Last issue Supes finds a boy he thought he had saved from Vampiredom stealing plasma from a hospital. Feeling a debt to the boy (and I'm sure himself) Superman takes him to Dr. Langstrom (aka the Man-Bat) to try and extract the Vampire genes inside him. While there, Werewolves attack and Langstrom does the unthinkable, becoming Man-Bat again by taking an experimental batch of his serum. Superman fights off the Werewolves, but since he's vulnerable to their attacks, isn't much use unless he kills the Werewolves, but Superman isn't a killer, he's a hero.

Man-Bat rips flesh and throws the Werewolves around, proud of each kill and eager for more. Superman can only fend off the monsters long enough to wait for an opening to throw them to his ally. He could never bring himself to kill the beasts but knows what needed to be done, despite his farm boy morals, aiding in their deaths. Feeling guilty, he gives Langstrom the antidote and returns his attention to the boy, someone he can save instead of kill. These are times I like Superman.


This comic was $3.99 for what you could have figured out from last page of Secret Invasion #8, a bunch of ads (including two double pager spreads!), and three previews. The art is awful, quite frankly worse than last week's What If: House of M bullshit, I mean come on, Namor a jewish guy with a receding hair line? With a five o'clock shadow? I'm basically this Marvel stooge but even I couldn't get into this one. What a waste of money.


Speaking of poorly drawn Marvel comics, let's get into What If?: Fallen Son. Marvel is just allowing amateurs to do the current run of What If? books, which is the only explanation for how terrible this comic looks. The pages are full of incomplete faces, bodies and limbs, hidden or drawn only in part with bad coloring for cover up. At least Rob Leifeld drew faces and chests, there are twenty one feet in this issue, but only four of which make sense.


In Batman Confidential: "Do You Understand These Rights?" we're given The Joker and Batman at their best. The Joker is a murdering unknown psychopath who can't be trusted with anything from a peanut to a pillow, making jokes and laughing while killing everyone around him. Batman is in the shadows and wearing disguises, exchanging notes with Gordon who is still unsure of the new masked vigilante.

Joker is declared guilty, and shortly after kills another with a banana peel. Taken to a Psychiatric Hospital where he will no doubt escape, he manages to look dangerous with that smile and hair. Gordon takes a bullet from a cop who is sick of the super-crime freaks in his city, just adding another case to Batman's plate.

The colors are classic, as in 1987 comic vibrant, Joker jumping off the page while Batman stays in the back, Gordon and other "normal people" making a perfect middle ground. It's writing is light enough for anyone but keeps you at an arm's length, never giving you too much information about where the series is going while still keeping you interested. It's everything a comic should be.


After all my Marvel hate this week, it's only fair I review Wolverine: Flies to a Spider. A new Wolverine comic comes out every week, but not all of them are worth it, this one being exceptional. Even for being the "best at what he does", Wolverine still has a heart, especially around the holidays, the issue taking place on New Year's Eve. Wolverine walks into biker gang "Road Dogs" regular bar, takes out everyone wearing colors, and sits down. No matter how many people they send in, he takes them out quick and easy, not uttering a word. The gang's leader calls in for a favor from the man they run drugs for, a big time Mob Boss who is currently paying off local law enforcement to cover up the death of a young girl caused by the Road Dogs.

Wolverine goes through all the muscle sent after him while being kept company by an old drunk trucker, the uncle of the young girl killed, who is just happy to see someone fighting for the right thing. Not even remembering the murdered girl's name, the boss blows Wolverine off as another tough guy and decides to come out with the big guns to take care of him. Logan turns the dead gang's bikes into bombs with their gasoline and flares, killing all the hired muscle and badmen who came for him. Standing over the dying Mob Boss' body, he reaches into his back pocket and pulls out a newspaper article, uttering his only words in the comic "Her name was Ruthie Jordan."

Travis Charest's Spacegirl

I stumbled onto this after reading the Charest drawn story in The Metabarons: Alpha and Omega. You can read Spacegirl Vol. 1 online right here and the rest at Charest's MSN group here. The story is something straight out of Flash Gordon especially the episodic feeling of reading each panel individually online. The art is out of a Bilal/Moebius handbook. The combination of 30s space writing and European space art turns out pretty good.

Charest comments that, "Spacegirl came out of wanting to draw something as fast as possible" (newsrama) and reading it feels like it carries itself through it's own momentum. It's sort of a great change from most comics that feel weighed down by labor intensive artists.

From 2000-2007 Charest was one of these labor intensive artists while working on Metabarons: Dreamshifters. He moved to Paris to work on the project and and was painting the entire thing. He only produced a limited amount of pages in the entire seven year span due to a grueling process of painting each page three times. The pages that are in Alpha and Omega are stunning and the closest feeling of Jodorowsky's movies that I've seen.

Haunted Tank #1: Second Take

There is a scene toward the end of the premiere issue of the new Haunted Tank series in which the tank squad stumbles into an ambush of four enemy tanks. The Iraqis are caught somewhat unaware by the approaching Americans, but are still able to muster up in time to deal what should be the death blow to these unfortunate invaders. In gallops General Jeb Stuart CSA (Retired, or Deceased, rather), who, having been run off by his African-American namesake, returns in the nick of time and beheads the unsuspecting Iraqis, setting up the uneasy peace that will define his relationship with eponymous tank's crew.

As the dust settles and the crew of the tank realize that once again, their asses have been saved by this "antiquated relic trying to stay relevant," Sergeant Jamal Stuart, instead of thanking him, suggests that the fact that he is still walking the earth, serving with his progeny implies that he has some atoning to do for his actions during his lifetime. This moment crystallizes one of the major problems with the execution of this issue. Marraffino has laid the mechanics of his script a little too bare--we are forced to witness how he included the bit about Jeb Stuart commending himself to God on his death bed in order to set up this confrontation. It is sloppiness like this that makes what could have been a legitimately thoughtful and deeply humorous comic into one mired by clunky dialogue and a self-serving agenda.

It's important to point out that just about everything that Brandon cites as a positive in his review is basically true. Marraffino and Flint have somehow managed to take what is at base an amazingly absurd and problematic conceit and turn it into a comic that, at least in its basic premises, works as a fun meditation on the paradoxes of war and military culture for our post-modern age. The problem, then, is that the writer has been allowed to get a little overzealous in the execution and this has had the unfortunate effect of undermining a lot of what should work in the comic's favor.

A good example of this comes in the initial dust-up leading to Jeb's first appearance. As the tank squad rumbles along the miles of Iraqi desert wasteland, they are beset by a sudden explosion, revealed to be the result of a rocket-propelled grenade fired from a Toyota pickup filled to bursting with Arabs sporting all manner of light arms. As the Arabs approach their quarry, one of their number shouts, "Come, my Syrian brothers! Let us think of ways to spend Saddam's money!"

Without getting too wonky, the first of these commands displays a lamentable lack of understanding of the dynamics of tribe, ethnicity and nationality which proved so problematic to the American military's handling of the post-conflict insurgency. The Arab nation-state is a relatively recent invention, in most cases arbitrarily delineated by the French and British governments at the end of the first World War. By and large, the people living in the vast swaths of territory straddling the Syria/Iraq border would identify primarily by their tribal affiliations, and for all practical purposes have historically ignored that artificial political boundary. As a matter of fact, the only people who might identify themselves as "Syrian" in this way, live in places like Damascus in a manner more akin to our own, than to these apparent Bedouin warriors.

The second command is even more problematic, in that it completely undermines the correlation that Marraffino later draws between the southern position in the American Civil War and the Iraqi Arabs defending their homeland in this current conflict. Jeb's lamentations about foreign invaders may conveniently ignore the central position that slavery held in the impetus for southern secession, but it still represents the major reason why poor whites--easily the population most hurt by the institution of slavery, after the slaves themselves, of course--fought in such great numbers in that conflict. By reducing these Arabs' motives for fighting the Americans to strictly financial terms, Marraffino succeeds in perpetrating the very racial arrogance that the series appears to be trying to turn on its head.


All of this being said, the series is not without its redeeming qualities. As Brandon mentioned, Henry Flint's Seth Fisher-style, cartoony-realism gives nearly every panel something which holds the eyes. Moreover, their is some real ironic brilliance in some of the comic's more elaborate humorous set-pieces. The groaning, too obvious reference to sand people is redeemed in the following panels when a member of the tank squad shouts, "Look! Weapons of mass destruction!"--the next panel revealing a shitting camel. Probably my favorite moment of the book comes in the exchange between the Stuarts, in which Jeb seems to be just missing Jamal's euphemistic references to slavery--the juxtaposition of Jamal's righteous indignation, Jeb's pompous ignorance and Johnson's utter cluelessness is comics gold.

TOKYO ZOMBIE BY: Yusaku Hanakuma

I'd accuse George Romero of stealing ideas from Tokyo Zombie, but that would imply he was in touch with pop culture on any level. Baldie (or Hage in Japanese) and Afro (or Afro in Japanese) spend their days working in a factory and practicing Martial Arts. After killing a shit talking company higher up, they bury the body on "Dark Fuji", a mountain of trash and whatever else you can hide in a hole. Once noxious industrial waste becomes involved, all the dead bodies placed there come to life, quickly turning Tokyo into a zombie wasteland.

Afro and Hage get out of the area, but while on a food run Afro gets only snacks forcing the older, more responsible, Hage to head back for essentials. While saving a dog, he gets bit, and understanding the inevitable, he takes one for the team and jumps out of the truck. Forced to drive on, Afro and his dog travel for years finding themselves behind the "safe" walls of a militia protected city, the wealthy ruling over all. While most poor break their backs doing manual labor, Afro breaks the backs of zombies in "Zombie Fight", where former pro-wrestlers and fighters take on zombies for food and the opportunity to live behind the walls.

Tokyo Zombie touches on a lot of issues plaguing Japan and America, from simple shit we all deal with when being "working class" and serving the more fortunate, to the value of art in the internet culture, "reality tv" world we live in. Afro's Jiu-Jitsu isn't nearly as appreciated as the other fighter's fake slams and attractive kicks. Accessibility and simplicity over difficult complicated works.

Yusaku Hanakuma, the writer and artist of this book, is a "heta uma" artist, which translated literally means "so bad it's good". His drawings look like something you'd find on someone's desk, all shitty with the occasional perfect hand or mouth. The teeth on Hanakuma's zombies are down right scary, seeming out of place in a good way. The action sequences read better than most X-Men fight scenes, each panel directing the next. The same sound effects are used for fucking and flesh eating, which add an idea of satisfaction zombies get from eating. It's also gross.

There's the instant satisfaction of seeing someone smash a bat over a coworker's head who makes more money than they do but doesn't work as hard. There's the dick and fart jokes that make it great, particularly when a fucked up gym teacher who works his students too hard is burying one who couldn't take "one love tap" gets his dick chomped off while jerking off to trash porno.

All the fucked up people you know are present in one way or another, the awful customers, annoying people on the sidewalk, and your friend who buys pudding but doesn't grab spoons. It's a little bit of everything while still being something completely new.

BONUS:

Tokyo Zombie movie trailer!!

Joann Sfar Music Videos

Here's a couple animated music videos of illustrations by Joann Sfar (of The Rabbi's Cat 1 and 2, Vamipre Loves and Little Vampire fame, among others). The first one is for "Tes Lacets Sont Des Fées" by Dionysos and the second is "Hyacinthe" by Thomas Fersen.





Sweet French music, giant vampire dude and subway troll: that's a good look.

Paul Pope: MICK JAGGER OF COMICS

In the back of the Paul Pope issue of DC’s Solo series, there is a quote referring to Paul Pope as the Jim Morrison of comics.



This is inaccurate for several reasons. Comparing Pope to Morrison understates his creativity and influence. While the Doors are a ‘legendary’ band, their creativity and impact on music is not as significant as say, The Rolling Stones. Admittedly, equating Pope with the Rolling Stones would be an overstatement, but comparing him to Mick Jagger seems fitting. The evidence for this comparison is subliminal; Paul Pope actually looks more like Mick Jagger than he does Jim Morrison. Jagger was not only the lead singer of a super-influential rock band but he was also known as an individual who was a style icon that created the ‘rock star’ persona. Pope is similarly complex. He makes great, really creative and influential art but he’s also an ‘image’.

The "Pope" of Comics
Through the 'world-lens', Pope is always first, a comic book writer and artist. He's more hip and creative than the typical indie comics creator yet, also more popular and more successful. He's able to pull this off because he stays true to the comics medium; his style remains cartoon-ish while still being 'edgy' and still cannot be criticized for lacking craft or content. The best example of Pope's grasp of the comics realm is Batman: Year 100. It's considered a contemporary classic by most comics-fan standards. Pope takes an iconic superhero and reinvents his look while retaining Batman's mysterious persona and writing an atypical story.

Recently, Pope took another crossover opportunity through designing some clothing for Donna Karan New York.

Ultimately, for the comics-outsider looking in on DKNY, it's a really interesting look: she invites a famous comics artist to do some designs = makes the line look more diverse and fundamentally, Pope is a fitting artist for DKNY. DKNY has always been going for androgynous, urban look and Paul Pope's understanding of female sexuality combined with his appreciation for the 'male rogue' totally fits the bill. But being that I was looking in from the other side of the tunnel, I really wanted it to be a Paul Pope fashion experience. I really pictured it as being a variation on his personal style: maybe awkwardly constructed white tee-shirts and other items that are just as unpredictable and fresh as his art.

But instead, I was totally underwhelmed by an Ed Hardy-esque line of clothing that just placed his art on clothing. I reference Ed Hardy because the brand has a habit of uncreative design placement and one of the biggest problems with the Pope DKNY line is it does nothing new or creative with the integration of the art with the clothing. I'm not sure how much control Pope had over the line despite having his name and art being associated with it thus, the outcome does not affect him but rather, just suggests that he's either a. gettin' that cash or b. toying with the idea and may do something better later.

The "Pope" of Cinema
One of the most striking aspects of Pope's comics work is his ability to be cinematic. He composes frames the way a director would compose shots. For example, in this page from 100% (which he cites as being “a graphic movie” right on the front of the issues), without words, he creates tension and an overall, mood when they are illegally buying a gun.



Without words, the perspective changes on this page really express the apprehensive feeling. The page starts with a long two-shot of the girls and then cuts to a tight shot of the man’s hands on his bag. The “camera” then pulls back and puts the scary-dude with the guns in perspective; he’s gross. Again, the focus is tight on his hands and then cuts to a tight two-shot of the girls on the couch, now leaning forward with interest. Lastly, Pope takes almost half the page up with a huge close-up of his gnarly hands about to open the sack of guns. He uses the action of turning the page to accentuate this feeling as, the guns are shown in a similarly large frame, immediately on the next page.

It’s not that other comics artists don’t utilize comics in the same cinematic way, it’s that it is not often that it is used when discussing the same topics. In this page from 100%, it’s being utilized to express the timid innocence of the characters while doing something illegal, dangerous and out of character.

Pope’s ability to synthesize a cinematic feeling into comics has origins in his combined ability to both create an unfamiliar setting and fill it with well-rounded characters but furthermore, because Pope seems to be an incredibly interesting person, his taste in movies. Upon viewing his myspace, it's apparent that Pope is interested and influenced by a lot of movies, books, and music.

Evolution of Influence
When I say ‘influenced’, I mean he's clearly been affected by art and this in turn, makes his art whole. You can't pick out any one favorite or interest and say, "he's definitely ripping this off" because when a person is truly affected by art, it becomes a somewhat of a circular process. To me, it seems easier to visualize this process than to outright describe it so, I made this incredibly nerdy graph… META-MOMENT:

In order to ultimately increase artistic progression, the circle of internalization has to be completed. Stopping at any point within the circle would result in being at a point lower than the original point of exposure. Once through the internalization circle, all points yield higher artistic progression.

In relation to this graphed theory, if a young comic book artist read and really enjoyed Batman: Year 100 and then, immediately sat down to draw his or her own Batman comic, he or she would likely sit down make something really derivative of Year 100. This same comics artist…let’s just say 10 years later… and many influential comics better, may subconsciously take a small aspect of Year 100 and integrate it into a totally different story.

When I say “subconscious”, I’m really just meaning that the art they are referencing has become so much so a part of their attitude that it can be recontextualized. So, when an artist is drawing something similar to art they have seen before, they are able to separate their reference from its original context and weave it appropriately into their ‘new’ creation. I think this is especially the case with Pope. It seems to me that Pope's influences vary greatly. In any one of the items in his eclectic lists of his favorite/interests, if you are aware of it, you can see how that item is a small part of what he has produced rather than the opposite: reading a comic and being able to pick out the influences.

For example:
In his musical interests, he lists Brian Eno and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. When I think about the two in relation to Pope, I can connect both to parts of his work. I see Yeah Yeah Yeahs as being influential to the tone and style of characters. They are a female-led indie rock band; they are young and fresh. Karen O.’s, the lead singer, style and appearance reminds me of some of Pope’s female characters while, Brian Eno’s music, in my head, could be cinematically playing in the background to any of his comics because Eno makes this electronic music with a notoriously cinematic tone.

Think: "Here Come The Warm Jets" playing over “S’’ using the eponymous substance in the Grand Central Station bathroom in issue one of Heavy Liquid.

The "Pope" of Fine Arts


Despite Paul Pope’s fame, he does not release new material with any predictable frequency. So, when I was researching the new Haunted Tank series, I was surprised to see that Paul Pope was doing the cover for the second issue.

Truthfully, the cover blew me away.

As always, the quality of the work is outstanding but what ‘makes’ the cover is in the details. The tone of the colors makes the picture seem distant and snapshot-like. The genius of the colors, assuming that Pope actually did them, is the subtle gradient from the upper-most sky to the horizon and from the ground to the horizon. The gradient bookends the top and bottom of the cover making the scene within seem panoramic. The horizon with the setting sun followed by light from the tank gun assists the viewer’s eye to scan the page from left to right. Moreover, the contrast of the sharp edges defining the light from the tank gun and the “light splatter” represents the same antagonism of a heavy-weight war machine being led by a ghost riding a ghost horse. It’s these subtle parallels made by Pope, which make his work so significant; there is much more to think about within his art than meets the eye. This is what makes Pope’s art less disposable than most other comic book art.

Powerful Panels: ABC Warriors

ABC Warriors: The Black Hole is one of those comics that sums up these Powerful Panels posts. Every issue has at least one or two that force you to pause and take a closer look at what’s going on. Every panel gives the feeling that it could stand on its own and still have some meaning. It’s the equivalent of reading a book with all exclamation points or listening to Ghostface rap, rapid-fire details, ALL THE TIME.
Simon Bisley illustrates the most exciting issues. His art is a strange combination of extremely detailed realism with a cartoony surrealism. In the above panel you can see every wire on the robot, Mongrol, and every spike on the boot of the guy he’s crushing, but the tear of the woman, Lara, is exaggerated. This gives the indication of two separate worlds: the real world and the one inside Mongrol’s head.

The writing has the same weird contrast as the art. It’s extremely detailed, giving you way more information than you need to know, but the plot and characters are like something someone wrote in middle school. The art is really what keeps you turning the page. It fills gives meaning to what is being described. We know that Lara is always in Mongrol’s thoughts but having her hair as the background of the panel gives the thought a visceral quality.
A technique that Bisley employs with great effectiveness is the use of shadow. He blacks out the entire background so that only the characters are visible. It’s especially effective because so many of the panels are jammed with detail that it immediately stands out. The battle freezes and we are forced to focus on the act of the panel. It wouldn't be nearly as significant if you were just reading the text. The two characters haven’t known each other for long enough for it to really mean anything to the reader, but the strangeness of this panel and its black background makes it tangible.

This page uses all of the techniques: the baby is cartoony, the robot is detailed, and the last panels background is black. The death of the babby has a particularly uneasy effect because it happens off-panel. We’ve already seen so much violence that it’s really kind of stunning when we don’t see this death. The issues are in the super-short 2000AD magazine format so everything is dense and rushed. When the comic slow things down and focuses on a moment or a specific action it’s super effective.

Haunted Tank #1

The old Haunted Tank series was about a contemporary soldier named Jeb Stuart that's protected by the ghost of J.E.B Stuart, a Confederate General. I've never read it and it's probably pretty cool but a little dumb and whether you're a P.C super-sensitive type or not, the concept that the descendant of Confederate soldier protects one of his ancestors in war--implicitly drawing a connection between the Civil War and later wars--is a least little bizarre or, "problematic" as they like to say at Liberal Arts school.

So what Marraffino wisely does is base the comic around these "problems", comment on them, switch it up, and still keep the pulpy fun and some of the jingoism intact. The first thing the story does, after a totally bad-ass appearance by J.E.B Stuart manning a tank and shooting up some insurgents, is make an interesting connection between the Iraq War, America's aggression, and the sectarian violence going on in the Middle-East. Following an quick origin story that's a little sloppy (the transition's made by a soldier literally asking J.E.B "What's your story anyway?"), J.E.B explains his devotion to the South in a way that side-steps slavery: "When a foreign power seeks submission of one's sovereign state, an indistinguishable hatred fuels inexhaustible defiance." The implication of that defense by J.E.B, whether justified or not, is that it's the same mindset working throughout the Middle East.

Again, it's hard or maybe just too early to fully parse this connection out, but it certainly makes the connection between modern times and the Civil War more complex than they apparently were in the original incarnation of the series. Marraffino moves on though, not giving the irony of J.E.B's word as he's standing in the desert with soldiers fighting a war based a great deal on American aggression too much importance, instead interrupting it with a black soldier (named Jamal) who attacks J.E.B's support of slavery and the ugly violence that it entailed. It's one more quick, important aside that the original series presumably didn't touch upon that sorta needs to be addressed and Marraffino's smart to get it all out of the way, even if it feels a bit jumbled.

Ultimately too, the jumbled nature of how plot points and ideas are conveyed isn't a big deal because the comic's based on an insane premise in the first place and also, there's worse things for a comic book writer to do than stuff too much into an issue. Plus, it all pays off and the lack of subtlety's forgotten when the hook of the series--a genuine shocker--is revealed. J.E.B explains why he chose the tank he's chosen to haunt, explaining it's his "sacred duty" to protect his "descendants in battle" and he puts his hand on the shoulder of the white soldier. Two frames reveal the last names of the soldiers, the white one (Johnson) and the black one (Stuart). In a really funny panel, in which General J.E.B Stuart's eyes turn to shocked little circles, he realizes that indeed, his descendant is Jamal Stuart. The shock's equal on Jamal's part who tells J.E.B to beat it.

And it's this point where the comic gets really complex and not just like, smart for a comic book. Jamal and J.E.B are equally surprised and perturbed by their connection, for different reasons yes, but this kind of plurality is refreshing as it doesn't stop or fall back on simple, stock characters to represent a race or ideology. You start to see all of these weird connections between how the characters are represented, as J.E.B's dialogue is written with a slightly exaggerated Southern Gentlemen accents (all "mah" and "ah") immediately recalling the unfortunate trend in comic to make all black characters speak with verbs that end with the "g" and fill-out their sentences with "Yo" or "dog". There's also some fun reversals of expectation. The black guy's name is the typically "black" name of Jamal, but he's hardly racist or accidentally-racist caricature, he's the Sergeant, the guy in charge.

He's also illustrated with a little more subtlety too. Artist Henry Flint does some wonderful work throughout, finding this balance of realism and rubbery fun, and he takes the time to differentiate faces and ethnicities in fairly impressive ways. The Middle-Eastern soldiers, despite being in the comic mainly to be shot-up or beheaded by J.E.B, aren't drawn to look anymore menacing or scary than anybody else- they've got the same resigned calm on their faces as American soldiers, even as they praise one another during battle. Flint's got a tough job ahead of him, as almost the entire issue takes places in the middle of the desert with only sand and horizon as background, but he focuses on intense, detailed close-ups full of dots of dust and the realistic wrinkles of clothes and gear, and then will leap to a beautiful but still raw-looking wide-shot. Put it this way: After browsing the book's art a couple times, I'm actually disappointed I grabbed the Joe Kubert cover and not Flint's own.

If Flint's work was a little less conventional, he'd be ready for the Seth Fisher award in terms of occupying this weird space of being realistic but cartoon-like expressive and ready to surprise you at every page-turn. That's the perfect art for this book too because Frank Marraffino's update on this DC war comics classic is both faithfully sincere and aware of the inherent absurdity of a story about a tank haunted by a Confederate Civil War general. Brilliantly too, Marraffino plays off of that classic series in a way that I hesitated spoiling for you, but since it's hinted at on the cover and really will bring smart readers that may have dismissed this comic over to the fold.

Where My Money Went - Dec. 4th

Every Wednesday, I push the limits of my budget for my comic addiction. This is where my money went this week:


Secret Invasion may be over, but the ripples it has caused will be felt in the Marvel Universe for years to come, or at least until the next event book. Stark returns to the battle field sporting an "old school' suit not attached to the Stark Tech main frame, and despite the throwback look, he's still seen as more of an enemy than a hero to his peers.

Skrulls are defeated, and everyone is looking at the Skrull Queen/Spider-Woman and ready to kill her, the heroes becoming momentary villains for the good of earth, when Norman Osborne shoots her in the head. The entire world sees this act and dude becomes the hero of the war, sorta like a Giuliani in 9/11, except people managed to forget Osborne was you know, the Green Goblin. Everyone goes their own way and it's revealed that Osborne has gathered together an intense group that mirrors the Illuminati, so much that Namor has joined up. Bringing the Prince of Atlantis back in as a bad guy is an idea that opens lots of doors. Emma Frost of the X-Men is also there, along with Dr. Doom, Loki, and The Hood. I can see what all of these people have to gain from an alliance with Osborne, but Emma Frost? What is going on in the world?


X-Men Noir feels half like an old pulp novel without the grit and half like Marvel 1602 where you know the characters are based on Marvel's cast, but you can't always place them. Someone's killing Xavier's "X-Men" who are hinted at being powered, but no one is giving it up, similar to Sub Mariner: The Depths in that it forces you to question if it's a fantasy book or not. It's not a very strong issue but it's not weak enough for me to write it off yet, right now it just feels like X-Factor but not as interesting.


What If?: House Of M should be an easy sell. What if instead of Scarlet Witch taking all mutants' powers away, she took all super powers away from all meta humans? Black Bolt would be able to speak but powerless, Namor wouldn't be able to breathe under water, Wolverine could be killed. Captain America ages in a matter of moments, becoming what we can only assume is dust. For some it'd mean a chance at normal life, but others it means losing the only life they ever wanted.

I have nothing but great things to say about the writing and story, the art however, was the worst thing ever. Imagine the cliche graffiti that every weird nerd in UFO pants does in your high school, but applied to super heroes. The artist ignores anatomy completely, arms and legs all different lengths, and the faces are even worse, contorting in ways only mud does. It's the kind of art you see in sad 90's independent comics and show your friends because you can't believe "Universe Extreme Comics" would even publish it.

It's simply amateur work that pushes you away from books you want to read. GURU eFX tries to hide the pencil's mistakes with digital coloring but just accentuates the problems, placing Liefeld shine and "ink" to cover blank spots. If it were hand inked some of the problems could have been corrected, even Liefeld used an inker. What was Marvel thinking here?

Archer Prewitt > Chris Ware

Archer Prewitt's Sof Boy comic is a 90s indie classic--and woefully OOP!--about a cute, marshmallow-y guy getting kicked and tortured in a bunch of ways and always sort of still keeping his spirits up. It's really hilarious and oddly affecting. Prewitt's also in the band The Sea & Cake who released Car Alarm a couple of months ago, and it's easily one of the best albums of the year that isn't an hour of shredding.


This month also marks the release of an action figure of Raymond Scott, which Prewitt did the design work for; for those not aware, Raymond Scott was the guy who composed a lot of the music that ended up in Looney Tunes cartoons and was also this totally crazy electronics music inventor and pioneer. Here's more information about him that I wrote, for those who care.

One of the more interesting aspects of Prewitt's design is how it has the same feeling as his work on Sofboy and other stuff, this kind of determined line that's still scratchy and a little ugly, but is smooth and clean like conventional advertising. He still finds places to make it interesting and so, it isn't cold or harsh. He's one of the few graphic designers around that isn't sort of making advertising art that's about advertising.

There's a lot of time spent on making it aesthetically pleasing but as much time's spent on making it sort of making it look uneven or a little drunk or something: Scott's angular proportions, puffy lettering of varying size, etc. Also, so much "cool" design work falls back on the obviously incredible work of the 50s and early 60s but here it makes total sense as it's Raymond Scott's era. It's when he was making most of his music and it's the only era that was crazily open-minded and corporate-minded enough to see Scott's electronic compositions as making sense of commercial background music. This odd mix of the avant-garde and bottom-line economics.

Prewitt's design work comes especially illuminating when compared to another Chicago-based comics dude/graphic designer, Chris Ware. Ware's work is formally obsessive and yeah, that's the point and all, but it's something that both makes his work immediately identifiable and frankly, not that interesting over time.

Other than the sheer craft, there's not a lot of joy or exuberance in Ware's work and worse, even when he's aping ragtime-era record sleeves, there's this odd level of irony or way of putting it all in quotes. Prewitt's work's steeped in the past too, but he seems less interested in up-ending America's ugly past--the kind of dumb Zinn-thought most of us get over by college--through design and irony, than infecting some joy and a touch of chaos into our lives.

The Scott design also reminds me of The Sea and Cake's video of their cover of David Bowie's "Sound & Vision":


Prewitt's done some action figure design work before as seen below. There's the toy of another electronics innovator Robert Moog (inventor of the moog synthesizer, obviously), a particularly hilarious one of the Kauffman brothers from Adaptation, and some dolls of Prewitt's early band, The Coctails:

Wolverine: Origins

I'm one of the few people I know who hasn't seen The Dark Knight, even though I'm a bigger fan of the comic books than most of the people around me. It's not that I don't want to watch it, it's just that after seeing the initial artwork and stills for two years, the hype was gone for me. Hellboy 2: The Golden Army came out around the same time and had few ads and trailers, making the movie experience new and exciting when you went into the theater. I wanted to see it more because I had less on hand about it.

Wolverine: Origins comes out in five months and Marvel has kept it quiet. They've already revealed Sabretooth, Deadpool, The Blob, Gambit, and a few others I'll let the nerds sort out, but I'm sure that's just the beginning of Wolverine's Rouge's Gallery appearances. Seeing Logan and Creed storm the beaches and argue over soldier politics is exactly what this movie should be, and not just Wolverine cutting up ninjas (not that that wouldn't be cool).

From the looks of it, a good portion of the film will be pre-claws, but there's no indication as to whether or not they'll be taking it back to his childhood. I'm hoping to see Wolverine in his orange and brown costume, and not just the black leather they've decided is cool.

Here are a few stills that were released to make up for the bad quality of the video:

Today Is Brandon Graham's Birthday!

Happy birthday, dude.

Love,
All of us

(Everyone else ought to go and buy his books. They are awesome.)

Glamourpuss #4

While Dave Sim's got quite a reputation--partially, deservedly so--for being a rather angry and contemptuous dude, it's interesting that Glamourpuss is first and foremost a celebration of comic book art. It's also a pretty intellectually rigorous comic book and if all continues to go well, the only stone-cold masterpiece being put out right now.

Usually, when words like "masterpiece" or "intellectually-rigorous" are invoked in terms of comic book, it's from a comic or graphic novel that screams-out "this is a very smart comic book, I bet you didn't know comic books could be so smart!". The point behind Glamourpuss though, is, "this is how smart comic books already are!"; it has no contempt for the craft or the art-form and doesn't feel the need to take on anything more than comic art itself to show you why comic books are great. Glamourpuss is in love with comic books.

You feel his appreciation in the extended rant about Alex Raymond or the like, side-bar tangent on Bernie Wrightson's arduous inking technique, which he describes with a mix of awe and humor: "So much for the "secret" of Wrightson's ink line...everyone at the demonstration decided to find someone...anyone else's ink line to imitate". And of course, it's accompanied by Sim's amazing recreation of a Wrightson image. Is the implication there--similar to his rant on the previous page about Raymond's amazingly brush-inked cross-hatching--that Sim himself mimicked the artists' "absolutist perfectionism" when inking his recreations?

One of Sim's most thought-provoking points in issue #4 has to do with the problems of reproduction, especially as it pertains to the thin inks of Raymond's "nightingale style". Sim does the amazing and very fun thing of recreating a panel of Raymond's work and then, recreating a shoddy Spanish reproduction to illustrate how the brights and hatching of the work turn into thicker lines and lumps of black. It's fascinating and something I've never considered and somehow I think, illustrates the point better than if Sim were to have put actual images of the two works next to one another and not recreations of both of the works.

After last month's rather half-baked issue, it's good to see Sim totally back on track. While I doubt he'll ever achieve the Pynchon or David Foster Wallace-esque mix of empathetic ennui and detached irony that he did in #2's rant from glamourpuss about therapy, he's back to lots of little dense chunks of text and a really obsessive focus on the inner-workings of the comic craft too. There's still this pesky mix of condescension and flat-out misinformation about fashion and how women digest it, but that's to be expected and is an interesting contrast to the joy found in the comic book craft section.

After last month's issue, Monique suggested that maybe the whole thing was on-purpose. Since Sim was dealing with the angry, ugly rivalry between comic artists, maybe the issue was to reflect that coldness. Sim too, being something of a playful knee-jerk artist, might've also been showing readers like me that indeed, Glamourpuss' brilliance comes out of the apparent disconnect between the fashion stuff and the comic book history lessons. When the fashion satire got really ugly and the comic book history presented something ugly, it made too much sense...it's good Sim's gone back to the ragged disconnect of his two obsessions with the only connecting piece being his stellar art.

Newsarama Changeover

As you've no doubt read somewhere on the internet, most of the Newsarama team is no longer doing the comics blog. They've been replaced--after what seems like a big, long series of contract-y type disputes and no lived-up-to promises--with a crew of new people and a couple of people that've been a part of the site but not the part of the site.

After one day, the blog doesn't look that different or rather, if the names were all switched back to the familiar names, I'd would have thought it was a kinda off but not that different from any other day at Newsarama. The posts seem a little more formal and little more comfortable with just sorta towing the party line of comic news or press-releases pretending to be news, but that could have as much to do with everyone being new and nervous as it does them maybe being less interesting bloggers.

Still, the fact that this is where Newsarama stands is sort of depressing and frustrating. It's mainly just depressing because the group that bought Newsarama, Imaginova, scooped it up, didn't do anything with it, and alienated the staff (the people that made the site a site worth purchasing mind you). While the staff wasn't let go, it seems clear from delightfully honest accounts like this that continuing would've been both frustrating and kind of degrading...and that's if you know, it wasn't one of those "get these guys to quit so we don't have to fire them" type deals.

Clearly the site (or investment as Imaginova sees it) must go on and replacing the staff was necessary, but it seems to me, a good example of corporate interests totally missing the point of internet writing, blogging, whatever and the readers of these sites not having--or maybe not having--good enough taste to be discerning. Shouldn't Newsarama be treated by all us comics nerds as a site that needs to prove itself? I've removed it from the blogroll until it proves itself to be the fun, informative, news-y but ready to call "bullshit" on something site that made me read it in the first place.