On Friday, CR readers were asked to "Name Five Creators Or Five Comics That Are Being Published Today That Will Still Be Culturally Relevant In Some Way In 2100." This is how they responded. Joe Schwind * Robert Crumb * Jack Kirby * George Herriman * Bill Waterson * Charles Schulz ***** Joe Schwind * Superman * MAD * Far Side * Willie & Joe * Peanuts ***** Nat Gertler * Scott McCloud * Charles Schulz * Walt Kelly * Daddy Kubert * Howard Cruse ***** Mark Coale 1. Batman 2. Spider-Man 3. Charlie Brown 4. Mickey mouse 5. Uncle Sam ***** Robert Stanley Martin * Charles M. Schulz * Winsor McCay * Alan Moore * Eddie Campbell * Harvey Kurtzman ***** John Platt 1. John Porcellino 2. Alan Moore 3. Eddie Campbell 4. Warren Ellis 5. Joe Sacco ***** Marc Arsenault 1. Paul Pope 2. Gary Panter 3. Alan Moore 4. Moebius 5. Katsuhiro Otomo ***** Jamie S. Rich 1. Paul Pope 2. Mike Mignola 3. Shaun Tan 4. Naoki Urasawa 5. Emily Carroll ***** Danny Ceballos * Gary Panter * Lynda Barry * Gary Larson * Gabrielle Bell * Osamu Tezuka ***** William Burns * Alan Moore * Joe Sacco * Lynda Barry * Frank Miller * Charles Schulz ***** Tom Bondurant 1. Will Eisner 2. Neal Adams 3. Neil Gaiman 4. Garry Trudeau 5. Linda Medley ***** Dan Steffan * George Herriman * Jacques Tardi * Robert Crumb * Milton Caniff * Chris Ware ***** Max Fischer 1. Chris Ware 2. Akira Toriyama 3. E.C. Segar 4. Hergé 5. Los Bros Hernandez ***** Scott Cederlund 1) Love and Rockets 2) A Contract With God 3) Akira 4) From Hell 5) Acme Novelty Library ***** Scott Cederlund 1) Moebius 2) Jack Kirby 3) Osamu Tezuka 4) Jaime Hernandez 5) Alan Moore ***** Michael Dooley * Frank King * George McManus * Cliff Sterrett * E. C. Segar * Milt Gross ***** J. Colussy-Estes 1) Chris Ware 2) Rumiko Takahashi 3) Mike Mignola 4) Linda Barry 5) Marjane Satrapi ***** Patrick Ford * Crumb * Kirby * Herriman * Tezuka If I had to squeeze in five it would be Kurtzman, but he isn't in the same class as the others. ***** Ben Ostrander 1. Moebius 2. Frank Miller 3. Will Eisner 4. Eddie Campbell 5. Lynd Ward ***** Scott Dunbier * Winsor McCay * George Herriman * Robert Crumb * Jack Kirby * Harvey Kurtzman ***** Frank Juliano * Moebius * Los Bros Hernandez * Joe Sacco * Osamu Tezuka * Chris Ware ***** Frank Juliano * Acme Novelty Library * Captain America * Love & Rockets * The Simpsons * Spider-Man ***** topic provided by Joe Schwind ***** *****

... Linda Medley ***** Dan Steffan * George Herriman * Jacques Tardi * Robert Crumb * Milton Caniff * Chris Ware ***** Max Fischer 1. Chris Ware 2. Akira Toriyama 3. E.C. Segar 4. Hergé 5. Los Bros Hernandez ***** Scott Cederlund 1) Love and Rockets 2) A Contract With God 3) Akira 4) From Hell 5) Acme Novelty Library ***** Scott Cederlund 1) Moebius 2) Jack Kirby 3) Osamu Tezuka 4)

Source : The Comics Reporter

Explore : Authors, Culture, Entertainment, Literature, Neil Gaiman

In reply to Comic Book typography:

Ville,

Yearly, the Will Eisner Awards (sort of the Oscars for the comics industry) offer an award for best lettering.

Here are the nominees for 2011:

Best Lettering

- Darwyn Cooke, Richard Stark's Parker: The Outfit (IDW)
- Dan Clowes, Wilson (Drawn & Quarterly)
- Jimmy Gownley, Amelia Rules!: True Things (Adults Don't Want Kids to Know), Amelia Rules!: The Tweenage Guide to Not Being Unpopular, by Jimmy Gownley (Atheneum/Simon & Schuster)
- Todd Klein, Fables, The Unwritten, Joe the Barbarian, iZombie (Vertigo/DC); Tom Strong and the Robots of Doom (WildStorm/DC); SHIELD (Marvel); Driver for the Dead (Radical)
- Doug TenNapel, Ghostopolis (Scholastic Graphix)
- Chris Ware, Acme Novelty Library 20: Lint (Drawn & Quarterly)

I suspect digging around to find the past 20 years of nominees and winners would be a good place to start. Many of the artists you could approach directly through personal web sites and blogs.

best of luck and let us know your results.

Editor's Note: I'm going to have this up straight from the PR while I format. Refresh for the latest in linking and proper italics. Congratulations to all the nominees. -- Tom Spurgeon ***** The nominees were announced late Thursday for the 2011 iteration of the Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards. Return Of The Dapper Men led all nominees with five total; Morning Glories and Locke & Key managed four each. The awards are given out during a ceremony the Friday evening of Comic-Con International. Your nominees are: ***** Best Short Story * "Bart on the Fourth of July," by Peter Kuper, in Bart Simpson #54 (Bongo) * "Batman, in Trick for the Scarecrow," by Billy Tucci, in DCU Halloween Special 2010 (DC) * "Cinderella," by Nick Spencer and Rodin Esquejo, in Fractured Fables (Silverline Books/Image) * "Hamburgers for One," by Frank Stockton, in Popgun vol. 4 (Image) * "Little Red Riding Hood," by Bryan Talbot and Camilla d'Errico, in Fractured Fables (Silverline Books/Image) * "Post Mortem," by Greg Rucka and Michael Lark, in I Am an Avenger #2 (Marvel) ***** Best Single Issue (or One-Shot) * The Cape, by Joe Hill, Jason Ciaramella, and Zack Howard (IDW) * Fables #100, by Bill Willingham, Mark Buckingham, and others (Vertigo/DC) * Hellboy: Double Feature of Evil, by Mike Mignola and Richard Corben (Dark Horse) * Locke & Key: Keys to the Kingdom #1: "Sparrow," by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez (IDW) * Unknown Soldier #21: "A Gun in Africa," by Joshua Dysart and Rick Veitch (Vertigo/DC) ***** Best Continuing Series * Chew, by John Layman and Rob Guillory (Image) * Echo, by Terry Moore (Abstract Studio) * Locke & Key, by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez (IDW) * Morning Glories, by Nick Spencer and Joe Eisma (Shadowline/Image) * Naoki Urasawa's 20th Century Boys, by Naoki Urasawa (VIZ Media) * Scalped, by Jason Aaron and R. M. Guéra (Vertigo/DC) ***** Best Limited Series * Baltimore: The Plague Ships, by Mike Mignola, Christopher Golden, and Ben Stenbeck (Dark Horse) * Cinderella: From Fabletown with Love, by Chris Roberson and Shawn McManus (Vertigo/DC) * Daytripper, by Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá (Vertigo/DC) * Joe the Barbarian, by Grant Morrison and Sean Murphy (Vertigo/DC) * Stumptown, by Greg Rucka and Matthew Southworth (Oni) ***** Best New Series * American Vampire, by Scott Snyder, Stephen King, and Rafael Albuquerque (Vertigo/DC) * iZombie, by Chris Roberson and Michael Allred (Vertigo/DC) * Marineman, by Ian Churchill (Image) * Morning Glories, by Nick Spencer and Joe Eisma (Shadowline/Image) * Superboy, by Jeff Lemire and Pier Gallo (DC) ***** Best Publication for Kids * Amelia Earhart: This Broad Ocean, by Sara Stewart Taylor and Ben Towle (Center for Cartoon Studies/Disney/Hyperion) * Amelia Rules!: True Things (Adults Don't Want Kids to Know), by Jimmy Gownley (Atheneum/Simon & Schuster) * Binky to the Rescue, by Ashley Spires (Kids Can Press) * Scratch9, by Rob M. Worley and Jason T. Kruse (Ape Entertainment) * Tiny Titans, by Art Baltazar and Franco (DC) * The Unsinkable Walker Bean, by Aaron Renier (First Second) ***** Best Publication for Teens * Ghostopolis, by Doug TenNapel (Scholastic Graphix) * Hereville: How Mirka Got Her Sword, by Barry Deutsch (Amulet Books) * Return of the Dapper Men, by Jim McCann and Janet Lee (Archaia) * Smile, by Raina Telgemeier (Scholastic Graphix) * Yummy: The Last Days of a Southside Shorty, by G. Neri and Randy DuBurke (Lee & Low) ***** Best Humor Publication * Afrodisiac, by Jim Rugg and Brian Maruca (Adhouse) * Comic Book Guy: The Comic Book, by Ian Boothby, John Delaney, and Dan Davis (Bongo) * Drinking at the Movies, by Julia Wertz (Three Rivers Press/Crown) * I Thought You Would Be Funnier, by Shannon Wheeler (BOOM!) * Literature: Unsuccessfully Competing Against TV Since 1953, by Dave Kellett (Small Fish Studios) * Prime Baby, by Gene Luen Yang (First Second) ***** Best Anthology * The Anthology Project, edited by Joy Ang and Nick Thornborrow (Lucidity Press) * Korea as Viewed by 12 Creators, edited by Nicolas Finet (Fanfare/Ponent Mon) * Liquid City, vol. 2, edited by Sonny Liew and Lim Cheng Tju (Image) * Mouse Guard: Legends of the Guard, edited by Paul Morrissey and David Petersen (Archaia) * Trickster: Native American Tales, edited by Matt Dembicki (Fulcrum Books) ***** Best Digital Comic * Abominable Charles Christopher, by Karl Kerschl, www.abominable.cc * The Bean, by Travis Hanson, www.beanleafpress.com * Lackadaisy, by Tracy Butler, www.lackadaisycats.com * Max Overacts, by Caanan Grall, http://occasionalcomics.com * Zahra's Paradise, by Amir and Khalil, www.zahrasparadise.com ***** Best Reality-Based Work * It Was the War of the Trenches, by Jacques Tardi (Fantagraphics) * Picture This: The Nearsighted Monkey Book, by Lynda Barry (Drawn & Quarterly) * Special Exits: A Graphic Memoir, by Joyce Farmer (Fantagraphics) * Treasury of XXth Century Murder: The Terrible Axe Man of New Orleans, by Rick Geary (NBM) * Two Generals, by Scott Chantler (McClelland & Stewart) * You'll Never Know Book 2: Collateral Damage, by Carol Tyler (Fantagraphics) ***** Best Graphic Album -- New * Elmer, by Gerry Alanguilan (SLG) * Finding Frank and His Friend: Previously Unpublished Work by Clarence 'Otis' Dooley, by Melvin Goodge (Curio & Co.) * Market Day, by James Sturm (Drawn & Quarterly) * Return of the Dapper Men, by Jim McCann and Janet Lee (Archaia) * Wilson, by Daniel Clowes (Drawn & Quarterly) ***** Best Graphic Album -- Reprint * The Amazing Screw-on Head and Other Curious Objects, by Mike Mignola (Dark Horse) * Beasts of Burden: Animal Rites, by Evan Dorkin and Jill Thompson (Dark Horse) * Motel Art Improvement Service, by Jason Little (Dark Horse) * The Simpsons/Futurama Crossover Crisis, by Ian Boothby, James Lloyd, and Steve Steere Jr. (Abrams Comicarts) * Tumor, by Joshua Hale Fialkov and Noel Tuazon (Archaia) * Wednesday Comics, edited by Mark Chiarello (DC) ***** Best Adaptation from Another Work * Dante's Divine Comedy, adapted by Seymour Chwast (Bloomsbury) * The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, adapted by Joann Sfar (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) * The Marvelous Land of Oz, by L. Frank Baum, adapted by Eric Shanower and Skottie Young (Marvel) * 7 Billion Needles, vols. 1 and 2, adapted from Hal Clement's Needle by Nobuaki Tadano (Vertical) * Silverfin: A James Bond Adventure, adapted by Charlie Higson and Kev Walker (Disney/Hyperion Books) ***** Best Archival Collection/Project -- Strips * Archie: The Complete Daily Newspaper Strips, 1946–1948, by Bob Montana, edited by Greg Goldstein (IDW) * 40: A Doonesbury Retrospective, by G. B. Trudeau (Andrews McMeel) * George Heriman's Krazy Kat: A Celebration of Sundays, edited by Patrick McDonnell and Peter Maresca (Sunday Press Books) * Polly and Her Pals Complete Sunday Comics, vol. 1, by Cliff Sterrett, edited by Dean Mullaney (IDW) * Roy Crane's Captain Easy, vol. 1, edited by Rick Norwood (Fantagraphics) ***** Best Archival Collection/Project -- Comic Books * Dave Stevens' The Rocketeer Artist's Edition, edited by Scott Dunbier (IDW) * The Horror! The Horror! Comic Books the Government Didn't Want You to Read!, edited by Jim Trombetta (Abrams Comicart) * The Incal Classic Collection, by Alexandro Jodorowsky and Moebius (Humanoids) * Lynd Ward: Six Novels in Woodcuts, edited by Art Spiegelman (The Library of America) * Thirteen "Going on Eighteen", by John Stanley (Drawn & Quarterly) ***** Best U.S. Edition of International Material * It Was the War of the Trenches, by Jacques Tardi (Fantagraphics) * The Killer: Modus Vivendi, by Matz and Luc Jacamon (Archaia) * King of the Flies, Book One: Hallorave, by Mezzo and Pirus (Fantagraphics) * The Littlest Pirate King, by David B. and Pierre Mac Orlan (Fantagraphics) * Salvatore, by Nicolas De Crécy (NBM) ***** Best U.S. Edition of International Material -- Asia * Ayako, by Osamu Tezuka (Vertical) * Bunny Drop, by Yumi Unita (Yen Press) * A Drunken Dream and Other Stories, by Moto Hagio (Fantagraphics) * House of Five Leaves, by Natsume Ono (VIZ Media) * Naoki Urasawa's 20th Century Boys, by Naoki Urasawa (VIZ Media) ***** Best Writer * Ian Boothby, Comic Book Guy: The Comic Book; Futurama Comics #47–50; Simpsons Comics #162, 168; Simpsons Super Spectacular #11–12 (Bongo) * Joe Hill, Lock & Key (IDW) * John Layman, Chew (Image) * Jim McCann, Return of the Dapper Men (Archaia) * Nick Spencer, Morning Glories, Shuddertown, Forgetless, Existence 3.0 (Image) ***** Best Writer/Artist * Dan Clowes, Wilson (Drawn & Quarterly) * Darwyn Cooke, Richard Stark's Parker: The Outfit (IDW) * Joe Kubert, Dong Xoai, Vietnam 1965 (DC) * Terry Moore, Echo (Abstract Studio) * James Sturm, Market Day (Drawn & Quarterly) * Naoki Urasawa, Naoki Urasawa's 20th Century Boys (VIZ Media) ***** Best Penciller/Inker or Penciller/Inker Team * Richard Corben, Hellboy (Dark Horse) * Stephen DeStefano, Lucky in Love Book One: A Poor Man's Story (Fantagraphics) * Rob Guillory, Chew (Image) * Gabriel Rodriguez, Locke & Key (IDW) * Skottie Young, The Marvelous Land of Oz (Marvel) ***** Best Painter/Multimedia Artist (interior art) * Lynda Barry, Picture This: The Nearsighted Monkey Book (Drawn & Quarterly) * Brecht Evens, The Wrong Place (Drawn & Quarterly) * Juanjo Guarnido, Blacksad (Dark Horse) * Janet Lee, Return of the Dapper Men (Archaia) * Eric Liberge, On the Odd Hours (NBM) * Carol Tyler, You'll Never Know Book 2: Collateral Damage (Fantagraphics) ***** Best Cover Artist * Rodin Esquejo, Morning Glories (Shadowline/Image) * Dave Johnson, Abe Sapien: The Abyssal Plain (Dark Horse); Unknown Soldier (Vertigo/DC); Punisher/Max, Deadpool (Marvel) * Mike Mignola, Hellboy, Baltimore: The Plague Ships (Dark Horse) * David Petersen, Mouse Guard: Legends of the Guard (Archaia) * Yuko Shimizu, The Unwritten (Vertigo/DC) ***** Best Coloring * Jimmy Gownley, Amelia Rules!: True Things (Adults Don't Want Kids to Know), Amelia Rules!: The Tweenage Guide to Not Being Unpopular, by Jimmy Gownley (Atheneum/Simon & Schuster) * Metaphrog (Sandra Marrs and John Chalmers), Louis: Night Salad (Metaphrog) * Dave Stewart, Hellboy, BPRD, Baltimore, Let Me In (Dark Horse); Detective Comics (DC); Neil Young's Greendale, Daytripper, Joe the Barbarian (Vertigo/DC) * Hilary Sycamore, City of Spies, Resistance, Booth, Brain Camp, Solomon's Thieves (First Second) * Chris Ware, Acme Novelty Library 20: Lint (Drawn & Quarterly) ***** Best Lettering * Darwyn Cooke, Richard Stark's Parker: The Outfit (IDW) * Dan Clowes, Wilson (Drawn & Quarterly) * Jimmy Gownley, Amelia Rules!: True Things (Adults Don't Want Kids to Know), Amelia Rules!: The Tweenage Guide to Not Being Unpopular, by Jimmy Gownley (Atheneum/Simon & Schuster) * Todd Klein, Fables, The Unwritten, Joe the Barbarian, iZombie (Vertigo/DC); Tom Strong and the Robots of Doom (WildStorm/DC); SHIELD (Marvel); Driver for the Dead (Radical) * Doug TenNapel, Ghostopolis (Scholastic Graphix) * Chris Ware, Acme Novelty Library 20: Lint (Drawn & Quarterly) ***** Best Comics-Related Periodical/Journalism * Alter Ego, edited by Roy Thomas (TwoMorrows) * The Beat, produced by Heidi MacDonald (www.comicsbeat.com) * ComicBookResources, produced by Jonah Weiland (www.comicbookresources.com) * ComicsAlliance, produced by Laura Hudson (www.comicsalliance.com) * The Comics Reporter, produced by Tom Spurgeon (www.comicsreporter.com) * USA Today Comics Section, by Life Section Entertainment Editor Dennis Moore; Comics Section Lead, John Geddes (www.usatoday.com/life/comics/index) ***** Best Comics-Related Book * Doonesbury and the Art of G. B. Trudeau, by Brian Walker (Yale University Press) * Fire and Water: Bill Everett, the Sub-Mariner, and the Birth of Marvel Comics, by Blake Bell (Fantagraphics) * The Oddly Compelling Art of Denis Kitchen, by Denis Kitchen and Charles Brownstein, edited by John Lind and Diana Schutz (Dark Horse Books) * Shazam! The Golden Age of the World's Mightiest Mortal, by Chip Kidd and Geoff Spear (Abrams Comicarts) * 75 Years of DC Comics: The Art of Modern Mythmaking, by Paul Levitz (TASCHEN) ***** Best Publication Design * Dave Stevens' The Rocketeer Artist's Edition, designed by Randall Dahlk (IDW) * Polly and Her Pals Complete Sunday Comics, vol. 1, designed by Lorraine Turner and Dean Mullaney (IDW) * Return of the Dapper Men, designed by Todd Klein (Archaia) * 75 Years of DC Comics: The Art of Modern Mythmaking, designed by Josh Baker (TASCHEN) * Two Generals, designed by Jennifer Lum (McClelland & Stewart) ***** Hall of Fame Judges' Choices: * Ernie Bushmiller * Jack Jackson * Martin Nodell * Lynd Ward ***** *****

By Tom Spurgeon * Francois Vigneault wrote in to confirm that the second issue of Elfworld will be out for the Stumptown Comics Fest in Portland. Contributors included Daria Tessler, Dylan Horrocks, Jeremy Tinder, Matthew Reidsma, Marek Bennett, Eve Englezos, Josh Moutray, and Vigneault. If you go here and pre-order, you'll get a small discount and the satisfaction of knowing you helped cover printing costs. * I completely screwed up and didn't post a link to the big news that there will be a reintroduction of Sailor Moon and its preceding story into the comics market. Sailor Moon was either a key or the key manga in terms of the broadening of the market that took place making possible this last decade-long rush of enthusiasm for manga. * this is big, big news in the book world and still pretty big news as it crosses over into the world of cartooning: unearthed Dr. Seuss. * the critic David Brothers urges support for a few new and worthy comics, including The Comic Book Guide To The Mission. * the prolific Sean Phillips is working on a science fiction album for Delcourt. * did I remember to mention that Marshal Law apparently finally ended up at DC Comics? My bookmarks say, "No, no you did not." I have all of those comics, but a book collection would be nice, too. * a report on C2E2 from about ten days ago focuses on plans at DC's Vertigo imprint. It provides some insight as to how they do series development right now. Brigid Alverson was nice enough to gather together some news of various projects that intrigue her and put them in a single post. * speaking of big companies and their tendency to announce news of future publishing initiatives at cons, I'm not sure there's a lot of material that was announced at MegaCon, but I guess an announcement of a new Aquaman series qualifies. Aquaman seems to me one of those characters like Flash that's had a dozen or so series starts and stops, to the character's detriment, and with new series launches being up there with "killing somebody" in a limited toolbox to bump up a character's sales I'm not sure how they stop this trend of constant re-launches or if it's even possible for one of these new takes to catch on. * here are covers to a few DFC Library books due this Fall. * Sam Henderson extolls the virtues -- and the contributors list -- of the Kuti Kuti/Smoke Signal crossover from the Desert Island end of things. * totally missed it: Michael Oeming and Warren Ellis are working together on a project. Speaking of Ellis, it looks like the Kickstarter campaign for a film about the writer has more than met its goals. * and while we're on the subject of successful Kickstarter fundraisers, Mark Martin's was, so we can look forward to the result. This one called The Baku totally went over its suggested total, too. * there is apparently an article on Chris Ware's ACME Novelty Library #20 in The Point "a nonprofit magazine devoted to accessible intellectual discourse operated by graduate students on the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago." * this is coming to me right before I post this, so I can't give it as much attention as other sites, but Shannon Wheeler has signed a three-book deal with BOOM! That's a good match in that it provides Wheeler a more sophisticated entry into the Direct Market and gives BOOM! an anchor for their alt-comics pursuits. * somehow I missed out on the fact that Grant Morrison has written a gigantic tome about superheroes. Luckily, this site has readers like Jay Babcock to pick up after it. * finally, this interview at Comic Riffs with Matt Wuerker covers the editorial cartoonist signing with Universal as the primary syndicate for his editorial cartoon work. I don't have any sense if the recent Universal/United deal had any effect on editorial cartoonists or not, but this seems like a deal that exists in stand-alone fashion from recent goings-on. Wuerker's primary outlet is Politico. ***** ***** *****

Lego Little Red Riding Hood · Link roundup · New Mondo Star Wars poster · Copolla Dracula Lego Cubedude · Stanley Kubrick's Lord of the Rings, Starring the ... A balanced breakfast (and more) · Acme Novelty Library robot paper toy ...

... Hey, it’s my list. Get your own, if you don’t like it. 1. The Acme Novelty Library No. 20 , Chris Ware, Self-published/Drawn & Quarterly, USA. I’m an unreserved fanatic when it comes to the work of Chris Ware. I make no bones about it. For me, he’s the most influential cartoonist of the last twenty years (with the possible exception of Lewis Trondheim), and he does things with...

Source : Memories Fade

Craft Whoa Alex Robinson After Daniel Clowes Exhibits/Events An Inkstud On Tour 01 An Inkstud On Tour 02 Industry Don't Forget Where You Are Your Artwork Is Not As Good As You Think It Is Interviews/Profiles CBR: Allan Heinberg CBR: Rick Remender The Comics Bureau: Simon M Scott Snyder Interviews Jeff Lemire Comics Alliance: Chris Roberson, Phil Hester Not Comics A Girl Genius E-Book Roger Mudd Comes Through For The Generals Publishing On Twilight Guardian Scaredy-Ass Marvel Heroes comiXology On The Android On Mouse Guard: The Black Axe #1 Reviews Gavin Lees: CBGB Matt Seneca: Various Sean T. Collins: X'ed Out Rob Clough: Elf World #1 Win Wiacek: Blabworld #1 Graeme McMillan: Stigmata Andrew Wheeler: Dark Entries Kate Dacey: Black Jack Vols. 1-2 Michael C. Lorah: Superman: Earth One Dave Ferraro: Tower Of Treasure Vol. 1 Jared Gardner: ACME Novelty Library #20 Sean Gaffney: Library Wars: Love & War Vol. 3

***** Here are the books that make an impression on me staring at this week's no-doubt largely accurate list of books shipping from Diamond Comic Distributors, Inc. to comic book and hobby shops across North America. I might not buy all of the works listed here. I might not buy any. But if I were anywhere near a comic shop, I would make that decision according to the evidence at hand. ***** SEP100166 BATMAN AND ROBIN #17 $2.99 SEP100009 KULL THE HATE WITCH #1 (OF 4) TOM FLEMING CVR $3.50 SEP100107 USAGI YOJIMBO #133 TAIKO PT 2 (OF 2) $3.50 SEP100611 CAPTAIN AMERICA #612 $3.99 SEP100500 WALKING DEAD #79 (MR) $2.99 SEP100545 ASTONISHING THOR #1 (OF 5) $3.99 SEP100646 THOR MIGHTY AVENGER #6 $2.99 SEP100170 BATMAN ODYSSEY #5 (OF 13) $3.99 These are the serial comic books that caught my attention, and not always for the reason that I think one should buy them. The Kull comic is up there because I think at the time of my life I was buying barbarian comic books there's no way I would have bought one with the word "witch" in the title. The Batman books are kind of interesting: that's the first post-Grant Morrison issue of Batman And Robin -- yeah, that doesn't make sense to me, either -- and the latest issue of that weird Hairy-Chested Batman Adventures that Neal Adams is doing. It's somehow appropriate that another Thor comic comes out at the same time that the now-canceled Thor The Mighty Avenger has its first post-announcement issue hit the stands. Walking Dead, Captain America and Usagi Yojimbo are about as reliable a trio of series as exists right now in genre comics. JUL100194 BOY COMMANDOS BY JOE SIMON AND JACK KIRBY HC $49.99 I have almost no familiarity with this seminal Golden Age work by the Simon/Kirby team, but they made comics that are almost always worth poring over. SEP100479 SWORD COMPLETE COLL DLX HC (MR) $99.99 I greatly enjoyed this in serial comic book form. As the Luna Brothers didn't move right into another project, I assume they're taking time away or looking into solo work for a while. AUG101177 7 BILLION NEEDLES GN VOL 02 $10.95 This is the one manga title that jumped out at me this week, although I could have completely overlooked something. This is Nobuaki Tadano's mainstream science-fiction thriller. SEP100998 ACME NOVELTY LIBRARY HC #20 (MR) $23.95 Book of the week and on the short list for book of the year. AUG101093 MISS DONT TOUCH ME GN VOL 01 (O/A) $14.95 AUG101092 MISS DONT TOUCH ME GN VOL 02 $14.99 The adventures of a brothel-employee virgin's life, interactions and occasional adventures: the new one, book two, has less of a thriller feel to it than the first, I think to its credit. JUN101002 SPECIAL EXITS HC $26.99 Joyce Farmer's new book about seeing to elderly parents. This book's appearance speaks well to comics' ability to rediscover certain voices and give their best work a publishing platform no matter when in life that best work comes. As long as there's some ability for a cartoonist to walk into a publisher with a big stack of page and walk out with a book contract, comics is going to be okay. AUG100727 SALIMBA GN $9.99 Older work by the late writer Stephen Perry and the still very active Paul Chadwick, with part of the proceeds going to Hero Initiative. ***** The full list of this week's releases, including some titles with multiple cover variations and a long, impressive list of toys and other stuff that isn't comics, can be found here. Despite this official list there's no guarantee a comic will show up in the stores as promised, or in all of the stores as opposed to just a few. Also, stores choose what they carry and don't carry so your shop may not carry a specific publication. There are a lot of comics out there. To find your local comic book store, check this list; and for one I can personally recommend because I've shopped there, albeit a while back, try this. The above titles are listed with their Diamond order code in the first field, which may assist you in finding comics at your shop or having them order something for you they don't have in-stock. Ordering through a direct market shop can be a frustrating experience, so if you have a direct line to something -- you know another shop has it, you know a bookstore has it -- I'd urge you to consider all of your options. If I didn't list your comic here, that's because I'm pertinacious. *****

Craft Deadlock Hellblazer Obviously Talking To A Man Video-Driven Look At Comics Technique History Krampus! Batman Is Better Than He Is Industry Aiee! Interviews/Profiles Boston Phoenix: Al Jaffee Not Comics Visiting The Den Whoa, Time Machine Walking Dead Merchandise Spider-Man Gets Hired Or Something Filipino Band Downloads From Gerry Alanguilan Publishing On Solipsistic Pop On DC In February Tracking Dustin Harbin Uncanny X-Force #3 Previewed Invincible Iron Man #32 Previewed Reviews Joe: Night Salad RC Harvey: Various Andrew Wheeler: Miki Falls Vol. 4 Johanna Draper Carlson: Various Conor Kilpatrick: Batman, Inc. #1 Vom Marlowe: Hyperbole And A Half Michael C. Lorah: The Green Woman Jeff Klingman: ACME Novelty Library #20 E. Peterman: Reignbow And Diva: Fierce! Johanna Draper Carlson: The Hunting Of The Snark J. Caleb Mozzocco: DC Comics: The 75th Anniversary Poster Book

Craft Lettering Samples Sketchbook Dump More Zombie Craft Colleen Coover Sketches Sean Phillips Draws From Life Darwyn Cooke Evokes Carmine Infantino Exhibits/Events At Thought Bubble Plan To See Lisa, Kate, Mike New Stuff At Thought Bubble Eating Brunch With Neil Gaiman History Yow This Is Great Batman Is Old Alternative Comics Revisited Let Wonder Woman Be Wonder Woman Industry Consider Looking At Evan Dorkin's eBay Offerings Interviews/Profiles IGN: Grant Morrison Lynda Barry On NPR MTV.com: Jeff Kinney Warren Ellis: Warren Ellis Paul Gravett: John Russell Not Comics I Had One Of These, Too Batgirl Fights For Equal Pay Toronto As Super Mario World Dustin Harbin Selling Sketches This Is Indeed Pretty Awesome Daniel Radcliffe Sings Tom Lehrer Publishing On Crime Comics A One-Pager From Paul Salvi Heroes For Hire #1 Previewed The Smith Brown Jones Instant Blues Kit Reviews Matt Seneca: Various Bill Sherman: Abattoir Rich Kreiner: Trickster Sean Kleefeld: Various Andrew Wheeler: Superfuckers Greg McElhatton: Ozma Of Oz #1 Ryan K. Lindsay: New Avengers #6 Sarah Boslaugh: Odd Is On Our Side Shaenon Garrity: Scott Pilgrim Vol. 6 Dave Ferraro: ACME Novelty Library #20 Michael C. Lorah: American Vampire Vol. 1 Colin Panetta: BPRD: Hell on Earth: New World #4 Erin Jameson: The Knight Life: Chivalry Ain't Dead Don MacPherson: The Oddly Compelling Art Of Denis Kitchen

These graphic novellas from Chris Ware have become something of a traditional early Christmas treat, usually appearing around this time of year with such little fanfare that they feel as if they've arrived completely out of the blue. And so it is with his latest: The ACME Novelty Library No. 20: Lint (Drawn & Quarterly) once again comes packaged as a rather lovely hardback, in a...

Source : Existential Ennui

As part of their yearly coverage of a range of books released into the various publishing market, Publishers Weekly has released the following selection of books onto its "best comics" list. It's decent list, but not a particularly laudatory one, to my eyes. I wouldn't sign off on a list that leaves off Wilson and Picture This! but includes Yummy, but nobody asked me to. As expected, the list hits a range of publishers as the PW list tends to. It might be worth noting that three same-cartoonist sequels to books on last year's PW list failed to make this one: Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour, Parker: The Outfit, and You'll Never Know: Collateral Damage. It may also be useful to acknowledge that while last year's list contained I believe a couple of works that had yet to come out, this one does not, which may point to a pretty dim end-of-year rush. PW's choices are: ***** * Acme Novelty Library #20, Chris Ware (Drawn & Quarterly) ***** * AX: Alternative Manga, Edited by Sean Michael Wilson and Mitsuhiru Asakawa (Top Shelf) ***** * Batwoman: Elegy, Greg Rucka and J.H. Williams (DC) ***** * Beasts of Burden: Animal Rites, Evan Dorkin and Jill Thompson (Dark Horse) ***** * Bodyworld, Dash Shaw (Pantheon) ***** * Duncan the Wonder Dog, Adam Hines (AdHouse Books) ***** * How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less, Sarah Glidden (Vertigo) ***** * Weathercraft: A Frank Comic, Jim Woodring (Fantagraphics) ***** * X'Ed Out, Charles Burns (Pantheon) ***** * Yummy: The Last Days of a Southside Shorty, G. Neri and Randy DuBurke (Lee & Low) ***** *****

On Friday, CR readers were asked to "Name Five Favorite Drawn And Quarterly Series/Books Not By Chris Ware, Seth, Chester Brown Or Joe Matt." This is how they responded. ***** Tom Spurgeon 1. The Aya Series, Abouet and Oubrerie 2. The Moomin Series, Tove Jansson 3. Berlin, Jason Lutes 4. What It Is, Lynda Barry 5. Get A Life, Dupuy and Berberian ***** Gary Sassaman 1. White Rapids by Pascal Blanchet 2. Picture This by Lynda Barry 3. The Golem's Mighty Swing by James Sturm 4. Summer Blonde by Adrian Tomine 5. Exit Wounds by Rutu Modan ***** Aaron Costain 1. The Paul books, by Michel Rabagliati 2. Berlin, by Jason Lutes 3. Eden, by Pablo Holmberg 4. Ojingogo, by Matt Forsythe 5. The gekiga collections of Yoshihiro Tatsumi ***** Michael Buntag 1. The Fixer, Joe Sacco 2. Gentleman Jim, Raymond Briggs 3. My New York Diary, Julie Doucet 4. Berlin, Jason Lutes 5. 32 Stories, Adrian Tomine ***** Justin Colussy-Estes 1) Dirty Plotte (Julie Doucet) 2) Awake Field (Ron Rege Jr.) 3) The Box Man (Imiri Sakabashira) 4) Vellevision (Maurice Vellekoop) 5) The Envelope Manufacturer (Chris Oliveros) (he's never going to finish that thing, is he?) ***** Daniel Boyd 1. Road to America -- Baru 2. Hicksville -- Dylan Horrocks 3. Berlin -- Jason Lutes 4. Crickets -- Sammy Harkham 5. 5 is the Perfect Number -- Igort ***** Karl Stevens 1. Dirty Plotte: Julie Doucet 2. Atlas/Hicksville (though of course it was originally published by Black Eye): Dylan Horrocks 3. Moomin collections: Tove Jansson 4. Vellevision: A cocktail of comics and pictures: Maurice Vellekoop 5. Make Me A Woman: Vanessa Davis ***** Michael Grabowski * Drawn & Quarterly Volumes 1 - 5 * Or Else, Kevin Huizenga * Crickets, Sammy Harkham * Big Questions, Anders Nilsen * Lucky Volumes 1 & 2, Gabrielle Bell ***** Joe Keatinge 1. Hicksville by Dylan Horrocks 2. The Walt and Skeezix series by Frank King 3. Masterpiece Comics by R. Sikoryak 4. A Drifting Life by Yoshihiro Tatsumi 5. Wilson by Daniel Clowes ***** Tim Clary * Berlin -- Jason Lutes * Dogs & Water -- Anders Nilsen * The Golem's Mighty Swing -- James Sturm * Or Else -- Kevin Huizenga * A Drifting Life -- Yoshihiro Tatsumi ***** Sean T. Collins 1. Pyongyang, Guy Delisle 2. Optic Nerve, Adrian Tomine 3. Or Else, Kevin Huizenga 4. Big Questions, Anders Nilsen 5. The ACME Novelty Library, Chris Ware ***** Danny Ceballos 1. Cecil and Jordan in New York Stories, Gabrielle Bell (the silver endpapers KILLS me) 2. Tubby, John Stanley (best Seth cover ever?) 3. King-Cat Classix, John Porcellino (I will be buried with my copy) 4. Dirty Plotte #1, Julie Doucet (she still has this issue's cover for sale on her website for a mere $5,000; anyone wanna buy one of my kidneys?) 5. Drawn & Quarterly 4, Chris Oliveros, editor (the issue with the amazing Herge bio-comic and the luscious Gasoline Alley Sundays) ***** Stergios Botzakis 1. Masterpiece Comics by R. Sikoryak 2. What It Is by Lynda Barry 3. Pyongyang by Guy Delisle 4. James Sturm's America 5. Vellevision by Maurice Vellekoop ***** Bill Kartalopou​los * My New York Diary * Satiroplastic * Masterpiece Comics * The Fixer * Sof' Boy Econo Combo ***** Marc Sobel 1. D&Q; Showcase (especially vol. 4 by Dan Zettwoch, Gabrielle Bell and Martin Cendreda) 2. Exit Wounds, Rutu Modan 3. The Push Man and Other Stories, Yoshihiro Tatsumi 4. Optic Nerve, Adrian Tomine 5. Market Day, James Sturm ***** Douglas Wolk 1. Or Else, Kevin Huizenga 2. The Walt & Skeezix series, Frank King 3. Against Pain, Ron Regé Jr. 4. Big Questions, Anders Nilsen 5. Cecil & Jordan in New York: Stories, Gabrielle Bell ***** Evan Dorkin 1. Drawn and Quarterly anthologies -- var 2. Market Day -- James Sturm 3. Moomin: Complete Tove Jannson 4. Walt and Skeezix -- Frank King 5. The John Stanley Library ***** Jeet Heer * Portraits from Life -- David Collier * Lucky -- Gabrielle Bell * My New York Diary -- Julie Doucet * Thirteen Going On Eighteen -- John Stanley * The Envelope Manufacturer -- Chris Oliveros ***** John Vest 1. Dirty Plotte, Julie Doucet 2. Nowhere, Debbie Drechsler 3. Indoor Voice, Jillian Tamaki 4. The Push Man and Other Stories, Yoshihiro Tatsumi 5. Shortcomings, Adrian Tomine ***** John Platt 1. King Cat Classix, John Porcellino 2. Melvin Monster, John Stanley 3. Walt & Skeezix series, Frank King 4. Map of My Heart, John P again 5. The Golem's Mighty Swing, James Sturm ***** Mark Mayerson * Market Day by James Sturm * Get a Life by Dupuy and Berberian * The Collected Doug Wright Vol. 1 * A Drifting Life by Yoshihiro Tatsumi * Thirteen Going on Eighteen by John Stanley ***** Buzz Dixon 1. Pyongyang by Guy Delisle 2. 13 Going On 18 by John Stanley 3. The Push Man & Other Stories by Yoshiro Tatsumi 4. The Summer Of Love by Debbie Dreschler 5. Wilson by Daniel Clowes ***** Eric Newsom 1. Paul in the Country -- Michel Rabagliati 2. Paul Has A Summer Job -- Michel Rabagliati 3. Paul Moves Out -- Michel Rabagliati 4. Paul Goes Fishing -- Michel Rabagliati 5. Pickle/Hicksville -- Dylan Horrocks ***** David P. Welsh 1. Red Snow, Susumu Katsumata 2. A Drifting Life, Yoshihiro Tatsumi 3. Aya, Marguerite Abouet and Clement Oubrerie 4. Moomin, Tove Jansson 5. Shortcomings, Adrian Tomine ***** *****

The editors at the influential comics sales channel Amazon.com are the first (I think) to release a top 10 of the year for the year 2010. D&Q; had three different books represented, while DC Comics had two. It's a fine list of quality productions, which is nice because you can avoid probing into how they were selected and who exactly voted and just sort of enjoy the list for what it has to offer. The top 10 are: ***** 1. The Art of Jaime Hernandez: The Secrets of Life and Death, Jaime Hernandez and Todd Hignite, Abrams ComicArts, $40 ***** 2. Batwoman: Elegy, Greg Rucka and JH Williams III, DC Comics, $24.99 ***** 3. X'ed Out, Charles Burns, Pantheon, $19.95 ***** 4. Market Day, James Sturm, Drawn & Quarterly, $21.95 ***** 5. King of the Flies: Hallorave (Vol. 1), Mezzo and Pirus, Fantagraphics, $18.99 ***** 6. 40: A Doonesbury Retrospective, GB Trudeau, Andrews McMeel, $100 ***** 7. Hellboy Volume Nine: The Wild Hunt, Mike Mignola and Duncan Fegredo and Dave Stewart, Dark Horse, $19.99 ***** 8. ACME Novelty Library #20, Chris Ware, Drawn & Quarterly, $23.95 ***** 9. Picture This: The Near-sighted Monkey Book, Lynda Barry, Drawn & Quarterly, $29.95 ***** 10. Wednesday Comics, Various, DC Comics, $49.99 ***** *****

Chris Ware: The ACME Novelty Library 20 at Adam Baumgold Gallery. "...This installment of the 'ACME Novelty Library' chronicles the life of Jordan Wellington Lint (b.1958) from cradle to grave, each year of Lint's life represented by a few representative seconds of consciousness per page. As he grows from child to sullen teen to angry young man to repressed upstanding citizen - and moves...

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Craft Up Close Cartolina Da Pittsburgh On A Panel From Rozz Tox #3 Tommi Musturi Makes A Poster Exhibits/Events Did You See This Camera At SPX? Mat Brinkman Show Recommendation History There Be Pirates Here On Monark Starstalker More Wacky TV Show Comics Industry These Reviewers Get Us Andy Khouri Makes Sacrifices For His Writing Interviews/Profiles CBR: Stan Sakai PS Print: Jeffrey Brown Suicide Girls: Gail Simone Bleeding Cool: Brad Rader TFAW.com: Richard Starkings The Long And Shortbox Of It: Fred Van Lente Not Comics A Visit To The Birthplace Of Superman Publishing X-Men #4 Previewed BTVS #37 Previewed Sex With Michael Kupperman On Multiplex: Enjoy Your Show Reviews Paul O'Brien: Various Matthew Brady: Various Rich Kreiner: Werewolf! Bill Sherman: The Dreaming Greg McElhatton: Thunderbolts #148 Deb Aoki: Hetalia: Axis Powers Vol. 1 Michael C. Lorah: The Thin Black Line Kate Dacey: Hetalia: Axis Powers Vol. 1 Sean T. Collins: ACME Novelty Library #20 Paul Montgomery: The Amazing Screw-On Head Noah Berlatsky: It Was The War Of The Trenches Andrew Wheeler: Star Craft: Ghost Academy Vol. 1 Rob Clough: Indestructible Universe Quarterly #4-5 Sean Gaffney: Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service Vol. 11

September 16 - October 23, 2010 60 EAST 66TH ST., NEW YORK, NY 10065 Adam Baumgold Gallery presents original drawings by Chris Ware from his new periodical The ACME Novelty Library 20, to premiere at the gallery from September 16 through October 23, 2010. The exhibition will feature the complete drawings for The ACME Novelty Library 20 (serialized in Zadie Smith's "The Book of Other...

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* Fantagraphics warehouse found: ACME Novelty Library #12. That one was a pain in the butt to find right when it came out. * I don't really understand this article in the New York Times about Harvey Pekar's legacy. In fact, it kind of made me uncomfortable. It doesn't sound to me any different than the stories you hear when any writer with work yet to be published passes away, and in fact is a lot less interesting than some of those stories. There's a number of suggestions made and a lot of people quoted for incidental color, but in the end it's too early for anyone to have decided anything about future projects so I'm scratching my head as to why this mix of sideways profile and gossipy innuendo was given so many column inches and not held until something actually happens. * as if to prove that comics is always a bit bigger than your perception of it, Calvin Reid profiles the Lerner's Graphic Universe books. * not comics: is Studio Ghibli in danger of closing? * I swear I wasn't calling out The Savage Critics; I seriously thought they might have moved their reviews somewhere else or had otherwise re-launched. It took me a while to catch up to speed when they expanded the roster. The good news is that Brian Hibbs writes a review. * not comics: Backstage provides a fine summary of the recent news story about Marvel and a casting diversity issue on one of their studio projects. * here are five underrated superhero comics bad guys. I always liked Klaw: the missing hand and freaky-ass costume are pretty great, although he's one of those heroes like the Living Laser where he either wins and kills the hero or somehow loses and gets his butt beat soundly and quickly. The Grey Gargoyle is one of those villains that really taps into the childhood imagination, but not in the way that suits modern comics storytelling. I always thought '60s Marvel had a collection of great bruisers for the reason that you had to have someone to balance out all the high-concept win-or-lose villains. Someone like Attuma doesn't have any choice but to try and fight you like a schoolyard bully, and you're going to get at least a page-long fight scene out of him on his worst day. Plus he wears a deeply unfortunate hat, a key to many a bad guy in comics and in life. * speaking of '60s Marvel, this walk through the fine print appearing in magazines published by Martin Goodman's comic book company -- not always called by its more famous names -- is pretty damn funny. * not comics: another Mark Evanier missive to writers, this time on why it's not always a bad thing that some writers are given a helping hand above and beyond some scientific appraisal of the pure talent on-hand in terms of each candidate an editor might choose. * the best Peanuts pop culture reference of them all is a dated one: the spoiling of Citizen Kane, long before spoiling was a notion. * finally, Douglas Wolk writes about one of the difficulties of working with a long-running title like Fantastic Four: work within the established parameters, run the risk of boring the readerships; work outside of them, run the risk of alienating the readers that don't consider those Fantastic Four stories. It's sort of an interesting dilemma, I guess, although the actual Fantastic Four mandate, that of a family running around having cosmic adventures, is so broad I don't see it being all that restrictive. Certainly a flamboyant mystery-solver like Nero Wolfe works under more specific restraints. In fact, I would imagine the broad conception of what makes a Fantastic Four story is a major reason why that series has never been reconfigured in a major way like most of the Marvel comics.

By Tom Spurgeon * ICv2.com is one of many sites to pick up on D+Q's formal declaration to distribute Chris Ware's 20th anniversary issue of ACME Novelty Library, one of the greatest comics series in history. * this announcement has been everywhere, but in case you haven't seen it: gifted cartoonist seeks publisher. * D+Q will be publishing Adrian Tomine's Scenes From An Impending Marriage in early Spring 2011. That should be a treat. * retailer Mike Sterling talks about an interesting piece of recent Marvel advertising that foreshadows a plotline in a forthcoming issue of Fantastic Four (I swear those "for" words weren't on purpose). One thing Sterling almost mentions but really doesn't is that the "oh, they're doing that again" effect is balanced against a "oh, Jonathan Hickman's doing his version of that" effect. * despite the fact that few folks wanted to see the movie in theaters, a lot of the Scott Pilgrim books have been sold, and I imagine this boxed set will do well. * the cartoonist Nate Neal has launched a web site in support of his new book from Fantagraphics, The Sanctuary. * the wrestler and children's book author Mick Foley is apparently going to write a comic book series. * it looks like young European indie cartoonist Bastien Vives share with some of his same-age North American cartooning peers the desire to make straight-up fantasy genre comics part of his overall output. * this interview with cartoonist Bryan Lee O'Malley suggests that he doesn't quite know what his next project will be, he already has a few concepts to choose from if he goes in that direction, and that it probably won't be something related to Street Stupid. * finally, two solidly-established webcomics bid their readers farewell: Ellerbyisms and The Everyday. Congratulations to both cartoonists on lengthy, honorable runs and best of luck in all future endeavors.

The landmark 20th volume in Chris Ware’s multiple Eisner Award-winning Acme Novelty Library series will be published in November and released by Drawn & Quarterly. The 72-page, full color, 9.25” x 7 ...

This spring, over the course of two weeks, I came across the Chris Ware Acme Novelty Library displace twice. It is gorgeous -- in an ideal world, it could be replicated in wood and everyone would have one in their...

Source : Doodles and Dailies (subscribe)

This spring, over the course of two weeks, I came across the Chris Ware Acme Novelty Library displace twice. It is gorgeous -- in an ideal world, it could be replicated in wood and everyone would have one in their...

On Friday, CR readers were asked to "Name Five Favorite Issues #5s." This is how they responded: ***** Marc Sobel 1. Nick Fury #5 2. Acme Novelty Library #5 3. Animal Man #5 4. Unwritten #5 5. Marvel Fanfare #5 ***** Tom Spurgeon 1. Pickle #5 2. Animal Man #5 3. Fantastic Four #5 4. Eightball #5 5. Nexus #5 ***** Stergios Botzakis 1. Airboy (1986 series) #5 2. Legion of Superheroes (1984 series) #5 3. Animal Man #5 4. Dork #5 5. Justice League #5 ***** Sean Kleefeld 1. Fantastic Four #5 (1962) 2. Avengers Forever #5 (1999) 3. Sensational She-Hulk #5 (1989) 4. Daredevil #5 (1964) 5. Marvel Spotlight #5 (1972) ***** Andrew Horton * Sandman 5 -- Because of the weirdness of the Justice League meeting Dream * Animal Man 5 (Coyote Gospel) -- Because it's the most beautiful parable against violence since... ohh the last Gospel * All-Star Superman 5 -- For the perfect encapsulation of Luthor's relationship to Clark/Superman * My Monkey's Name is Jennifer 5 -- Because his name is Jennifer! * Scott Pilgrim 5 -- Because it's the most recent one I've been able to read. ***** Joe Schwind * Arcade 5 * The Incredible Hulk 5 * Lloyd Llewellyn 5 * Piracy 5 * Teknophage 5 ***** Johnny Bacardi * Fabulous Furry Freak Bros. #5 * Spectre ('60s) #5 * Bat Lash #5 * Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD #5 * Swamp Thing ('70s) #5 ***** John Vest 1. Conan The Barbarian #5 2. Nick Fury Agent Of SHIELD #5 3. Silver Surfer #5 4. American Flagg! #5 5. Man-Thing #5 ***** John Platt 1. The Spirit #5 (Kitchen Sink) (The first time I owned anything by Eisner) 2. Dark Horse Presents #100 #5 (I just like the concept of 5 #100 issues) 3. Hellboy: Wake the Devil #5 (whoa) 4. B.P.R.D.: The Dead #5 (great monsters) 5. Milk & Cheese's First 2nd Issue (their fifth issue) ***** Scott Dunbier * Weirdo 5 * Shadow 5 (1974) * League of Extraordinary Gentlemen 5 (Vol. one) * Hot Wheels 5 * Swamp Thing 5 (1973) ***** Mark Coale 1. JLA (silver age) #5 2. Sandman #5 3. American Flagg! #5 4. Usagi Yojimbo (dh) #5 5. Astro City (first series) #5 ***** Chad Nevett 1. Transmetropolitan #5 2. Automatic Kafka #5 3. Avengers (vol. 3) #5 4. All-Star Batman and Robin, the Boy Wonder #5 5. Marvel Boy #5 ***** James Langdell 1. Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD #5 (Steranko's "Whatever Happened to Scorpio?") 2. Legion Of Superheroes #5 (an extreme "Now what next?" ending early on in the "Five Years Later" series) 3. Beware the Creeper #5 (seemed to establish Proteus as a substantial antagonist for the long haul) 4. Weirdo #5 (featuring "Unsung Heroes In The History of Humor," launching more attention being paid to outsider art in comics) 5. Nexus #5 (you're so right--"The Drinking Man's Tour Of The Galaxy" is one of the all-time greats) ***** Don MacPherson 1) Justice League #5 2) Starman #5 3) Alias #5 4) Crisis on Infinite Earths #5 5) All-Star Squadron #5 ***** Buzz Dixon 1. Eerie #5 2. Mad #5 3. Cerebus #5 4. 1963 #5 5. Beanworld #5 ***** Richard Barker 1. New Gods #5 2. Mister Miracle #5 3. Black Hole #5 4. All-Star Superman #5 5. Promethea #5 ***** Michael Dooley 1. Comic Art 5: Art Spiegelman 2. Fanfare 5: The Record Album Cover Art of Jack Davis 3. Ganzfeld 5: Japanada! 4. Kabuki 5: Metamorphosis 5. Nozone 5: Poverty ***** topic suggested by Marc Sobel; thanks, Marc ***** *****

By Tom Spurgeon * King Features has expanded its licensing arrangement with Dynamite to include Flash Gordon and Mandrake the Magician. I don't suppose there's any reason why those two licenses couldn't make for halfway decent modern comic books. I assume they'll look nothing like the above, although my memory is that the King comics tended to have eye-catching covers. * alt-comics pioneer Roberta Gregory has a web site up and has a new book out. Whoa, I had no idea. Whenever I think of Roberta I think of the late Jay Kennedy's constant praise for her work whenever my former employment by Fantagraphics became a topic of discussion. He was a great booster of hers. * the next ACME Novelty Library has a release date and cover design. * the big, important article of the week, and I'll probably pull something out of it for its own post, is Calvin Reid and Heidi MacDonald's tag-team coverage of the BEA just past from a comics point of view. There's a ton of stuff listed, everything from a forthcoming Sophie Crumb book edited/curated/midwifed by her parents to the Hardy Boys fighting zombies. Who knew zombies were interested in smuggling? * Steve Lafler has released a cover image for his forthcoming book El Vocho. Lafler is in the midst of putting together a tour in support of the book. If you're a fan, you should have this site bookmarked. * the writer Kurt Busiek talks about Dracula: The Company Of Monsters. The letterer Todd Klein talks about working on Neil Young's Greendale. * not comics: things are tough all over in the publishing world. I honestly have no idea why that image was in my bookmarks file. * the cartoonist Randy Reynaldo sent out a press release this week indicating that his Rob Hanes Adventures series will be collected in trade paperback form, with the earliest stories digitally re-lettered. * finally, JK Parkin caught word that Jason Little's Motel Art Improvement Service, serialized on-line, will come out in collected, print form from Dark Horse in November. I will be very interested to read that work in print and all at once.

On Friday, CR readers were asked to "Name Five Comics With Pretty Colors On The Cover." This how they responded. ***** Tom Spurgeon 1. Kuti #12 2. Dark Knight Strikes Again #3 3. More Fun Comics #54 4. Falling In Love #99 5. Tantalizing Stories #5 ***** Johnny Bacardi 1. Amazing Spider-Man 22 2. Red Rocket 7 #6 3. Swamp Thing #9 4. Promethea #8 5. Phantom Stranger #26 ***** Sean T. Collins * Kramers Ergot 4 * Paper Rad, BJ and Da Dogs * Final Crisis #1 * Acme Novelty Library #19 * Mercury ***** Cole Moore Odell 1. Green Lantern #8 (1960 series) 2. Justice, Inc. #1 (1975) 3. Strange Adventures #119 4. House of Mystery #131 5. Warlock #9 (1972 series) ***** Robert Stanley Martin 1. Love & Rockets, Volume Seven: The Death of Speedy 2. Doctor Strange 50 3. Moon Knight 24 4. Epic Illustrated 16 5. Moebius 6: Pharogonesia ***** Douglas Wolk 1. For Lovers Only #81 2. Finder #31 3. Cerebus #114 4. Batman #678 (Alex Ross version) 5. Paradax! #1 ***** Stergios Botzakis 1. Promethea #19 2. Shade the Changing Man, Vol. 2 #14 3. Aquaman Vol. 2, #1 4. The Uncanny X-Men and The New Teen Titans #1 5. Doom Patrol, Vol. 2 #26 ***** Danny Ceballos 1. Plastic Man #5 2. Little Lulu #73 3. Go Fly A Kite, Charlie Brown by Charles M. Schulz 4. Yummy Fur #4 5. The Greatest of Marlys by Lynda Barry ***** Des Devlin 1. Justice League of America #6 2. MAD #111 3. Drawn & Quarterly #3 4. Creepy #94 5. Richie Rich Millions #56 ***** Brian Moore 1. Area 88 #11 2. Jonny Quest Classics #1 3. Big Deal Comics & Stories #7 4. Drawn to You (one-shot) 5. Tales Designed to Thrizzle #1 (though the back cover, "Modern Chimp-Barbering Romance," is even better.) ***** Joe Schwind * Red Ryder #98 * Tales from the Tube * Black Hole #4 * Psychotic Adventures #3 * Classics Illustrated #50 (Tom Sawyer) ***** Scott Dunbier * Will Eisner, Spirit Section 10/6/1946 * Frank Frazetta, Famous Funnies #214 * Wally Wood, Weird Science #22 * Bernie Krigstein, Piracy #6 * Barry Smith, Epic Illustrated #16 ***** Michael DeForge * Batman Annual #8 (1982) * Eightball #18 * Arcade #3 * Tales from Greenfuzz #1 * Daredevil Yellow #2 ***** Gary Usher 1. Time For Love #46 2. Ghostly Tales #91 3. Phantom #74 4. Barney Google and Snuffy Smith #6 5. Scooby Doo Where Are You? #6 ***** Michael Dooley 1. Batman: Black and White #4 2. Eddy Current #8 3. Transit #4 4. Mister X #8 5. Batman: The Long Halloween #6 ***** Marc Arsenault 1. Super DC Giant #21 "Love 1971" 2. The Flintstones at the New York World's Fair 3. New Mutants #22 4. The Middleman: The Collected Series Indispensability 5. Heartbreak Hotel #3 ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****

Chris Ware, the brilliant comic-book artist behind the Acme Novelty Library , designed a May cover for capitalist-cheerleader magazine Fortune , only to see it killed. We can sort of see why. A high-res version of the image reveals tiny figures celebrating with wine and music on top of the golden skyscraper. One helicopter shovels money out of the Treasury building while another dumps...

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Es guionista (suyo es El Vecino, dibujado por Pepo Pérez o La tempestad, dibujado por Javier Peinado), crítico de cómic (dirigió las revistas U y Volumen), traductor (Spiderman) y ahora podemos decir que Santiago García es divulgador gracias a su obra más ambiciosa: La novela gráfica, editada por Astiberri.

Gracias a ella comprendemos porqué no llamamos cómic o tebeo a la obra contemporánea dirigida al público adulto. Puede ser un manga o un álbum al estilo europeo o americano pero, el prejuicio más importante que elimina Santiago García con su libro es que una novela gráfica no es la adaptación gráfica de una novela. No hace falta que tenga muchas páginas ni que narrativamente siga las reglas de la novela.

Antes de abordar su libro, es imprescindible leer estos cinco ejemplos que explican qué es la novela gráfica.

1. Maus, de Art Spiegelman

Spiegelman narra en Maus (1980) la vida de su padre, superviviente de Auschwitz. Esta relación entre biografía y novela gráfica marcará el devenir de ésta, como explica Santiago García en el vídeo, grabado en la planta baja de la librería Madrid Cómics, un lugar perfecto para encontrar un A-Z de la novela gráfica. Maus puede encontrarse en una edición de Planeta DeAgostini Cómics.

2. Persépolis, de Marjane Satrapi

La autobiografía continúa con la iraní Marjane Strapi. El tomo único de Persépolis (2000-2003) ha sido editado por Norma Editorial en 2007, coincidiendo con el estreno de la película del mismo nombre realizada por la propia dibujante.

3. Acme Novelty Library, de Chris Ware

Un ejemplo importante de cómo no todas las novelas gráficas parecen novelas a primera vista. En el trabajo de Chris Ware importa también el diseño y el libro como objeto. Esta preciosa edición que muestra Santiago García está realizada en España Random House Mondadori.

4. NonNonBa, de Shigeru Mizuki

El ejemplo japonés de esta cuidada elección es de Shigeru Mizuki, quien comienza a ver la luz ahora en España gracias a Glénat (Hitler, 2009) y Astiberri (que ha publicado en 2010 NonNonBa y próximamente lo hará con Operación muerte y GeGeGe no Kitaro).

5. El arte de volar, de Antonio Altarriba y Kim

El ganador del Premio Nacional de Cómic de Cataluña y uno de los favoritos para conseguir la Mejor Obra en el Saló del Còmic de Barcelona, El arte de volar es también una obra de biografía familiar publicada por Edicions De Ponent.

[Editor's Note: my friend Gil Roth sent me a report from this weekend's MoCCA Festival, an informal write-up intended just for me. It made me laugh, so I asked him if I could share it with CR readers, and he agreed. Please take it in the informal spirit offered. It struck me that this is what cons are: thousands of subjective experiences, no one on the record.] By Gil Roth So, I get to the front steps of the armory for MoCCA. You have to go up a full flight of stairs to get into the building proper. A MoCCA staffer asks, "Is anyone here buying tickets on site?" A bunch of us raise our hands. She says, "Okay. You guys come upstairs and buy your tickets." We proceed to leave the line, walk up, pay for our tickets, get stamped, and enter the show way ahead of our line-mates who actually paid in advance for tickets. I said to one guy, "What is this, Bizarro-Con?" ***** Eric Reynolds: Hey, Gil! I didn't recognize you! Have you lost weight? Or not wearing glasses? Gil: Nah, I just learned how to dress. ***** Santoro's Magic Box of Back Issues was mobbed every time I passed by Picturebox's table. ***** It took me three walk-throughs to find D&Q;'s tables. They were two rows over from Fanta. **** Peggy Burns is good at up-selling. I forgot to ask her about my Acme Novelty Library #19, which re-ran the same 12 pages at the end of the issue. I never did find out how that one ended. * * * There was a series of tables from a Scandinavian contingent. They looked a little puzzled by the whole setup, and it reminded me of the line from In The Loop, "You needn't worry about the Canadians. They're just happy to be there... Yes, well, they always look surprised when they're invited." * * * Pretty disparate crowd. A guy ahead of me on line was carrying a carved wooden walking stick; he and his friends were discussing Thor, which worried me for several reasons. Another guy wore a big deer-head (with antlers) made out of cardboard. He wore a fedora on top of that and had one of those suitcases that straps over your shoulders, to sell your wares (like a cigarette girl). I don't know what he was selling. * * * The guy behind me on the Jaime line, Marc Sobel, said he's writing a book about the Hernandezes. He had a magazine with a 1978 fantasy comic by Jaime. He signed it "James Hernandez." * * * The guy two spots in front of me talked to Jaime for a while and then took out an issue of The Forever People and asked Jaime to draw Beautiful Dreamer after this one panel. It took forever, which didn't strike me and Marc as funny. * * * Jaime was selling a drawing of Vivian, but it was just a headshot, and not a full-body (or 2/3rds, like my Penny Century drawing), otherwise I would've bought it. He also had illos of all the Ti-Girls. If there was one of the full squad, I might've bought that. * * * Marc Sobel said to the friend who was on the Jaime line with him, "My girlfriend probably wouldn't like it if I spent $100 on a Jaime drawing." I thought, "Man, my wife wouldn't be happy if I didn't come back with a Jaime drawing." * * * Charles Burns wasn't selling any art, which disappointed me. I bought the Big Baby collection, even though I have all the comics that are in it, so that he could draw something for me. He did it in pencil. * * * Kim Deitch was selling all sorts of art, including finished pages which were going at $1000 each. * * * Sikoryak looked younger than I thought he'd be. * * * On the way out, I saw Gahan Wilson walking by. I stopped him, shook his hand, and thanked him for the decades of great cartooning. He said, "Thank you so much, young man." ***** Gil Roth is a writer and editor who lives in the great state of New Jersey. You can check out his near-daily musings on things comics and otherwise at Virtual Memories. Find out what he bought at MoCCA and how much it cost him here. ***** ***** *****

A while back, CR readers were asked to "Name Five Comics You Remember Waiting On, Including Either One That Never Came Out At All Or One You're Still Waiting On." This is how they responded. Tom Spurgeon 1. D'arc Tangent #2 2. Camelot 3000 #12 3. King-Cat #63 4. Planetary #27 5. Pogo Volume One: Through The Wild Blue Yonder ***** Matt Seneca 1. X-Statix #1 2. Acme Novelty Library #16 3. Kramers Ergot #6 4. The Complete Terry and the Pirates Vol. 4 5. Grant Morrison and Jim Lee's Wildcats #2 ***** James Langdell 1. Strange Adventures #217 (which came out, but didn't continue the mind-bending finish of the Deadman story in #216) 2. Hepcats #13 (which never did come out) 3. Swamp Thing #88 (which came out, but without Rick Veitch's "Morning of the Magicians") 4. Green Lantern #199 (the "Ignition" issue ending a series of issues with countdown number titles, running parallel to Crisis) 5. Mage Volume 1 #15 (a fine culmination to a well paced buildup through the series) ***** Michel Fiffe 1. Pogostick #3 by Al Columbia & Ethan Persoff. [Number 2 came out in 2003. A new issue has been in the works according to Columbia.] 2. Avengers mini-series written and drawn by Tony Salmons. [From back in 2004 or '05?] 3. Dork #12 by Evan Dorkin. [Not sure if he's even working on one. Is the series over for good?] 4. FCHS by Vito Delsante & Rachel Freire. [From Adhouse books: "Due to smaller than expected advance orders, this title has been canceled. We suggest you check out the creators' sites to stay informed of progress."] 5. Dark Knight Strikes Again #3 by Frank Miller & Lynn Varley. [I was lucky enough to not have to wait for Ronin or the DKR due to the collections later on, but waiting for these was painful. I absolutely loved every issue.] ***** Mauricio Matamoros 1. Neonomicon 1 2. Pluto 8 3. Special Forces 4 4. Planetary 27 5. Promethea 32 ***** Seth Hurley * The Pirates of Coney Island #7 * Strangehaven #19 * The Expatriate #5 * '76 #6 * Gutsville #4 ***** John Platt 1. Scud the Disposable Assassin #24 (the creator's bad breakup almost put this series in an early grave) 2. Jack Staff #14 (a year between issues!) 3. The Complete Ragmop (finished in graphic novel form after the aborted comic-book version) 4. Cerebus #300 (I waited until the whole thing was published to really read it.) 5. Hellboy's Mexican lucha libre adventure (finally coming out next month?) Honorable mention: Steranko's Red Tide, which exists, but I've been waiting for the new edition for years. ***** JE Cole * Wintermen: Every single issue! * Battle Chasers #10 * Cannon God Exaxxion: TPB's #6 and 7 * Planetary #27 * The Ballard of Halo Jones: Books 4 and 5 ***** Jean-Paul Jennequin 1. Watchmen #9 2. Zot #1 3. Uncanny X-Men #104 4. The weekly Journal de Tintin when I was a subscriber -- I still love getting comics by mail. 5. Marvel #14 -- This was the French comic that was published in 1970-71 and had the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man and Captain Marvel in it. Three months after it was supposed to come out, the letters column in sister monthly Strange explained that Marvel had been classified as not for sale to minors, so the publisher had to cancel it because this year -- and just this year -- the VAT for such magazines was 33%. This made me -- and many other French kids -- a lifelong enemy of censorship. ***** Christopher Cudby * Ninja * Wetworks #1 * League of Exraordinary Gentlemen Vol. 2 #6 * New Universal: Shockfront Vol. 2 #3 * Bizarre Boys by Grant Morrison, Peter Milligan and Jamie Hewlett ***** Don MacPherson 1) Daredevil: Target #2 2) The Twelve #9 3) The Authority #2 (Grant Morrison/Gene Ha run) 4) The Rucka/Williams Batwoman run 5) All-Star Wonder Woman #1 ***** Chris Arrant 1. Planetary #27 2. Dusty Star #2 3. American Flagg! collection 4. Grant Morrison's Wildcats & Authority 5. Fell #10 ***** Buzz Dixon 1. D'arc Tangent #2 2. Big Numbers #3 3. 1963 Annual 4. Love and Rockets #50 (original series) 5. Cerebus #300 ***** Grant Goggans 1. Dan Dare in the continuation of the "Servant of Evil" / "Traitor" storylines by Tom Tully and Dave Gibbons. 2. Doctor Who: "Evening's Empire" by Andrew Cartmel and Richard Piers Rayner. 3. The fourth, fifth and sixth issues of both League of Extraordinary Gentlemen miniseries 4. Calvin & Hobbes, when it went on that agonizing hiatus in the mid-'90s. 5. Samantha Slade: "La Revolution Robotique." Any day now, Tharg! ***** Danny Ceballos 1. Batman #407 2. Yummy Fur #18 3. Drawn and Quarterly Volume #4 4. Sandman: The Dream Hunters #4 5. Fantagraphics' FCBD Weathercraft and other unusual tales ***** Greg McElhatton * Miracleman #23 * Seven Soldiers of Victory #1 * Akira #34 * Jack Staff #12 * Big Numbers #3 ***** Gabe Roth Watchmen #11 Watchmen #12 Seven Soldiers #1 Scott Pilgrim Vs. the Universe Zot! #37 ***** Will Pfeifer 1. Return of the Dark Knight #4 2. Camelot 3000 #12 3. That American Flagg hardcover collection 4. The Lost #4 (never did -- or will -- appear) 5. Comics as Art: We Told You So -- I'm still hoping this will hit the stands eventually ***** Matthew Craig 1. Hulk Weekly (Marvel UK, 1979/80) 2. Amazing Spider-Man #400 3. Transmetropolitan Vol. 10: One More Time 4. Planetary #12 5. Grant Morrison's Batman (TPB editions) ***** Mark Coale 1. Sandman #16 2. Watchmen #12 3. Miracleman #15 4. American Flagg! #26 5. Secret Society of Super Villains #16 ***** M. Blind 1. Kodansha USA (and no, reprints of Dark Horse GNs didn't count) 2. Aria Vols. 6-12 3. Clover Vol. 5 4. Seraphic Feather Vols 7-9 5. Beck: Mongolian Chop Squad Vols 12-34 ***** Robert Martin 1. Big Numbers #3 2. Xenozoic Tales #15 3. Edge #4 4. Violent Cases 5. Alack Sinner: Nicaragua ***** Paul Dwyer * Explainers: The Complete Village Voice Strips (1956-1966) * Abstract Comics: The Anthology * Pim & Francie: The Golden Bear Days * Pictures That Tick (in paperback) * Art in Time: Unknown Comic Book Adventures, 1940-1980 ***** Sam Humphries 1. Havok and Wolverine #3 2. Stray Bullets #41 3. The Invisibles Vol. 3 #1 4. The Collected THB 5. Wildcats Vol. 4, #2 ***** Jonathan Baylis * Coventry #4 * Hepcats #13 * Planetary #27 * Miracleman #25 * Tales of the Beanworld #22 ***** Andrew Mansell 1. Nemo: The Classic Comics Library #31 2. Miracleman #25 3. Plastic Man Archive Vol. 9 4. Nexus #99 5. Rubber Blanket #4 ***** Sean Kleefeld 1. Dorothy #8 (never published) 2. Mad Science #3 (never published) 3. The Atheist #4 4. Rocketo #5 (never published as a stand-alone issue) 5. The Oz/Wonderland Chronicles #4 (still waiting) ***** please remember that it becomes a total time suck to do these when people don't follow the very basic directions *****

Noted film blogger Ed Howard has released a list of top 60 works of the decade, with commentary on each member starting here, moving through here, and ending here. It's a fine list, and worth your time to read every entry if you're a big ol' comics geek like I am. 60. Cerebus, Dave Sim & Gerhard, 1998-2004 59. Sleeper, Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips, 2003-2005 58. Popeye and Olive/P+O, Richard McGuire, 2002 57. The Ticking, Renee French, 2007 56. Planetes, Makoto Yukimura, 2001-2004 55. Incanto, Frank Santoro, 2006 54. Lumakick, Richard Hahn, 2002-2004 53. Masterpiece Comics, R. Sikoryak, 2000-2009 52. Tales Designed To Thrizzle, Michael Kupperman, 2005-ongoing 51. The Beast Mother/Mome Stories, Eleanor Davis, 2006/2007-2008 50. Automatic Kafka, Joe Casey & Ashley Wood, 2002-2003 49. Elvis Road, Elvis Studio, 2007 48. 100 Bullets, Brian Azzarello & Eduardo Risso, 1999-2009 47. Eightball #23: The Death Ray, Daniel Clowes, 2004 46. What It Is, Lynda Barry, 2008 45. Yotsuba&!, Kiyohiko Azuma, 2003-ongoin 44. Skyscrapers Of The Midwest, Joshua Cotter, 2005-2008 43. Powr Mastrs, C.F., 2007-ongoing 42. Abstract Comics: The Anthology, Andrei Molotiu (editor) & various, 2009 41. Asterios Poly, David Mazzucchelli, 2009 40. Y: The Last Man, Brian K. Vaughan, Pia Guerra, Goran Sudzuka, etc., 2002-2008 39. Sexy Voice and Robo, Iou Kuroda, 2000-2003 38. Likewise, Ariel Schrag, 2009 37. Lost Girls, Alan Moore & Melinda Gebbie, 2006 36. Black HOle, Charles Burns, 1993-2004 35. Alias, Brian Michael Bendis & Michael Gaydos, 2001-2005 34. Pluto, Naoki Urasawa, 2003-2009 33. Louis Riel, Chester Brown, 1999-2003 32. A Drifting Life, Yoshihiro Tatsumi, 2009 31. Madman Atomic Comics, Mike Allred, 2007-2009 30. Epileptic/Babel, David B., 1996-2003/2004-2006 29. Chimera #1, Lorenzo Mattotti, 2006 28. Dogs and Water, Anders Nilsen, 2004 27. The Dark Knight Strikes Again, Frank Miller & Lynn Varley, 2001-2002 26. The Squirrel Mother, Megan Kelso, 2001-2006 25. Gyo, Junji Ito, 2001-2002 24. Multiforce, Mat Brinkman, 2000-2005 23. Gogo Monster, Taiyo Matsumoto, 2000 22. How To Be Everywhere, Warren Craghead III, 2007 21. Omega The Unknown, Jonathan Lethem & Farel Dalrymple, 2007 20. The Filth/Seaguy, Grant Morrison, Chris Weston & Gary Erskine, 2002-2003; Grant Morrison & Cameron Stewart, 2004 19. The Blot, Tom Neely, 2007 18. Finder: Dream Sequence, Carla Speed McNeil, 2003 17. Ninja, Brian Chippendale, 2006 16. The Lute String, Jim Woodring, 2005 15. Achewood, Chris Onstad, 2001-ongoing 14. Promethea, Alan Moore, J.H. Williams III, Mick Gray et al, 1999-2005 13. Alias The Cat, Kim Deitch, 2002-2005 12. Bottomless Belly Button/MOME Short Stories, Dash Shaw, 2008-2009 11. Alec/The Fate Of The Artist , Eddie Campbell, 2000-2002/2006 10. Mary-Land, Mary Fleener, 2002-ongoing 9. X-Force/X-Statix, Peter Milligan & Mike Allred, 2001-2004 8. ACME Novelty Library #18-19, Chris Ware, 2007-2008 7. Safe Area Gorazde, Joe Sacco, 2000 6. Asthma, John Hankiewicz, 2002-2006 5. Kramers Ergot, Sammy Harkham (editor) & various, 2003-2008 4. Ganges/Curses/Or Else, Kevin Huizenga, 2007-ongoing/2002-2004/2004-2008 3. New Engineering/Travel, Yuichi Yokoyama, 2004 2. Jimbo In Purgatory, Gary Panter, 2000 1. Love and Rockets Vol. II, Jaime Hernandez, 2000-2008 ***** *****

On Friday, CR readers were asked to "Name Five Memorable Entryways in Comics." This is how they responded. Tom Spurgeon 1. Porch/Stoop, Avengers Mansion 2. Tube teleportation system in JLA satellite 3. Charlie Brown's front stoop 4. Reception Area In Baxter Building 5. Rainbow Bridge Heading Into Asgard ***** TUCK! 1. Boom Tube (Kirby's Fourth World) 2. Negative Zone Portal (Baxter Building) (Fantastic Four) 3. Ptuii Tube (Rog 2000) 4. Wayne Manor Library/Entrance to the Batcave (complete with bust of William Shakespeare) (Batman) 5. Knight's Past storefront (Starman) ***** Philip Rippke 1. The grandfather clock entrance to the Batcave 2. The stone steps leading down to Munden's Bar 3. The Boom Tube into New Genesis 4. The lobby of the New Eden Police Department's 39th Precinct 5. The door to Kadie's Club Pecos ***** Rich Tommaso 1. TINTIN -- King Ottokar's Sceptre; cover 2. CEREBUS -- High Society; Telephone book cover 3. ROCCO VARGAS -- Triton; Page One 4. B.P.R.D. -- The Warning; Practically every chapter has a grand entrance! 5. GROO -- The Pescatel Issue ***** Ali T. Kokmen 1. The courtyard of the Hall of Justice in the old SuperFriends cartoons. 2. The JLA transporter tubes 3. The giant key pointing the way to Superman's Fortress of Solitude 4. The road to the Batcave in the 1960s "Batman" TV show, especially that road barrier that would automatically lower when the Batmobile came by in comically fast motion. 5. The entranceway to the very first comic book specialty store I ever walked into back in the early 80s. Truly, for any comics fan of a certain age, the first time you went to a dedicated comics store--and came to realize that you'd never again have to depend on the vagaries of newsstand distribution, nor endure the disdain of a shopkeeper who'd take your money but never understand your hobby -- ah, that was a moment of as much pure joy as anything first love could offer. ***** Cole Moore Odell 1. The door to the Fortress of Solitude 2. Detective Jim Corrigan's cement-filled barrel to heaven 3. The windowless, doorless non-entry of Dr. Fate's Salem tower 4. The belt-activated elevator to the top five floors of the Baxter Building 5. The subway tunnel leading to Shazam's cavern ***** Buzz Dixon 1. That big giant key and lock outside Superman's Fortress of Solitude 2. The "cork" in the bottle city of Kandor 3. Duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-DUH--BAT-POLES! 4. The bulging vault door to Scrooge McDuck's money bin 5. Little Annie Fanny's ***** Johnny Bacardi 1. The stoop at the beginning of Eisner's Spirit story "Ten Seconds" (with the kid bouncing the ball and singing "A, my name is Anna...") 2. The front entrance to Daimon Hellstorm's Fire Lake mansion, esp. in the Ellis/Manco series 3. The front entrance to Rah El Rex's wax museum in Starstruck 4. The door in the Angel Islington's lair in Mike Carey and Glenn Fabry's adaptation of Gaiman's Neverwhere 5. Any of Dr. Strange's trademark Ditkoeque dimensional doorways ***** Sean T. Collins The black door in Asahi Elementary School The school gate of the El-Ameeriah School The gate to Arkham Asylum The grandfather clock conecting Wayne Manor to the Batcave The gates of Mornemont ***** Andrew Mansell 1. Nightcrawler's Brimstone and BAMF 2. The door to Nexus' Chamber guarded by Kreed and Sinclair 3. The microscope slide that leads to Sub-Atomica in the FF 4. The Entrance to Hell used by Morpheus in Season's of the Mist 5. The "DOOR!!" to the BLEED in Authority ***** Dave Carter 1. Superman's Fortress of Solitude, with that enormous key 2. The Bat-pole entrance to the Batcave 3. Beanish's "Secret Sketch" in Beanworld 4. The Gates of Hell in Sandman #23 5. The Boom Tube in Kirby's New Gods. ***** Marc Arsenault 1. Temple Bar Gate in Sweeney Todd (Gaiman, Zulli) 2. Sandy's mouth in Swamp Thing 43 3. Little Nemo's Bed 4. The offices of Horizons Unlimited in Steve Canyon 5. Wildwood Cemetery in The Spirit ***** Robert Stanley Martin 1. The dimensional portals in Ditko's Dr. Strange (take your pick) 2. The doorway to Nite Owl's brownstone in Watchmen 3. The gate to Auschwitz in Maus 4. The skylight to Peter Parker's East Village apartment in the Ross Andru Spider-Man days 5. The door to the Fortress of Solitude in the Weisinger/Schwartz Superman ***** James C. Langdell 1. Phantom Zone frame floating into the void 2. Chained door to the writer's apartment in Cages 3. Secret tunnel for Batmobile access to the Batcave 4. Distortion Area (access to the Negative Zone) 5. Functional square door labeled "Super Hero Club" leading into an inverted rocket ***** Evan Dorkin 1. Portal to the Negative Zone 2. Boom Tube opening to anywhere 3. Frank. N. Stein's castle doorway w/welcome mat trap 4. Vault door/diving platform to Scrooge McDuck's money bin. 5. Subway entrance that leads to the wizard Shazam. ***** Russell Lissau 1. The fake bookcase (or grandfather clock) passage to the Batcave 2. The giant key needed for the Fortress of Solitude's front door 3. The Tardis' front door 4. The Batcave's road through a waterfall for the Batmobile 5. The skylight of Matt Murdock's apartment building ***** Bill Matheny 1) The Boom Tube from Kirby's Fourth World 2) The Giant Key and Door of Superman's Fortress of Solitude. 3) The cool time platform that Reed Richards built in the sixties. 4) The door to Uncle Scrooge's money vault. 5) Ditko's entrance and foyer to Dr. Strange's Sanctum Sanctorum. ***** Tom Bondurant 1. The giant golden mountainside door to Superman's Fortress of Solitude (with accompanying "airplane marker" key, of course) 2. The secret elevator, concealed in a giant artificial tree, connecting the Wayne Foundation penthouse with the downtown Batcave 3. Calvin's front door, often thrown open unexpectedly by an overzealous Hobbes 4. Danny the Street's festively masculine storefronts 5. Reed Richards' portal to the Negative Zone ***** Scott Dunbier 1) Famous Funnies #213 cover, with the creature coming through the bulkhead. The finest Frazetta Comic book cover bar none (yes, including WSF #29) 2) Weird Science #16 cover by the great Wally Wood 3) The WOW Page from The Rocketeer, where the door is knocked from its hinges revealing Betty in the buff. 4) Bessie the Cow, stuck in a black hole in the first Jack B. Quick story by Alan Moore and Kevin Nowlan. 5) The first appearance of Swamp Thing ***** Don MacPherson 1) The grandfather clock leading from Wayne Manor to the Batcave. 2) The hall of seven sins leading to Shazam's throneroom in the Rock ofEternity. 3) The main foyer of the X-Mansion in Westchester, NY. 4) The SHIELD Helicarrier's flight deck. 5) The foyer of the Sanctum Sanctorum. ***** Mark Waid 1. The door to Superman's Fortress of Solitude 2. The who-could-this-possibly-fool barberpole-striped road-closed barrier exactly 14 miles outside Gotham City 3. The entrance to Luthor's Lair 4. The gateway to Arkham Asylum 5. The cork to the Bottle City of Kandor ***** Justin J. Major 1. The grandfather clock entrance to the Batcave (Batman serials) 2. The Shakespeare bust to the bookcase to the Batpoles entrance to the Batcave (Batman TV series) 3. The security gate on the Great Outdoor Fight Arena (Achewood) 4. The Super-Keyed, Super-Locked door to the Fortress of Solitude (Superman) 5. The stoop in Chris Ware's "Building Stories" (Acme Novelty Library) ***** Jacob Covey 1. Manhole into the sewers of New York City. 2. Transmat in the TCRI building. 3. Living room window of April O'Neil's New York City apartment. 4. Front door to the Northampton barn belonging to Casey Jones' family, specifically on Dec. 19. 5. Newspaper draped over Raphael's face, as he lies unconscious in the shit-fed sewer on, presumably, Dec. 23. This last threshold being only a metaphorical one demarcating the thinly constructed wall between the debilitating realities of life and the inner torture of youth's frank and fiery idealism. ***** Stergios Botzakis 1. The Batpole 2. The giant door to Superman's Fortress of Solitude 3. Dagwood Bumstead's front stoop 4. Boom Tube 5. Zeta-Beam ***** Uriel A. Duran 1) The Fortress of Solitude's classic steel door with huge arrow key 2) Waterfall in front of the Skull Cave 3) Wooly mammoth fossil 'protecting' the unexplored valley where Scrooge McDuck got rich 4) Any window used by Spider-man 5) Boom Tubes ***** Sean Kleefeld 1. Kirby-designed Negative Zone portal (Fantastic Four #51) 2. Byrne-designed Negative Zone portal (Fantastic Four #251) 3. Entry gate to Mechanicsburg (Girl Genius, Vol. 7) 4. The SHIELD babershop 5. Boom Tubes! ***** topic suggested by James C. Langdell ***** *****

* I sure hope Geoff Johns' smack talk here doesn't mean every mainstream comics promotional effort from now on is going to sound like a wrestling interview. * it's hard not to enjoy what seems like a recent wave of unearthed Charles Schulz ephemera, like this golf advertisement. * missed it: Mason Mastroianni now signs his name to his grandfather's strip, B.C.. That's awesome, as you only see that on legacy strips a part of the time. Also awesome is that Mastroianni is apparently a member of the stylish workplace attire club. * I'm about a decade too old to fully understand the humor of these GI Joe valentines, but my generation just got down unleashing 20 years of Scooby Doo and Good Times jokes, so it's not like I get to complain. * Jim Kingman talks about the bad ol' days of comics distribution. You can see why people of this generation are enamored of comic book stores -- as I'm fond of saying, they had all the comics. * the writer Sean Kleefeld brings our attention to an ongoing old comic book auction that's bound to set some kind of record. * snowbound people looking for a little reflection of their plight in comics form can choose between There's Snow Business Like Snow Business and the Calvin and Hobbes Snow Art Gallery. * Rob Clough has released his list of top 100 comics for the '00s, although it's odd in that there are only 50 of them. Oh, well. I started writing this before I noticed they had the posts mis-titled, so you're only going to get the first fifty from me. You can go look up the rest at TCJ if they ever post them. As far as that first 50, they are:1. Ice Haven, Daniel Clowes (Pantheon) 2. Acme Novelty Library #19, Chris Ware (Drawn & Quarterly) 3. Safe Area Gorazde, Joe Sacco (Fantagraphics) 4. Snake & Bacon's Cartoon Cabaret, Michael Kupperman (Harper) 5. Non #5, Jordan Crane (Red Ink Press) 6. Epileptic, David B. (Pantheon) 7. Asthma, John Hankiewicz (Sparkplug Comic Books) 8. Recidivist #3, Zak Sally (La Mano) 9. Supermonster #14/Or Else #2, Kevin Huizenga (Drawn & Quarterly) 10. You'll Never Know, Carol Tyler (Fantagraphics) 11. Footnotes in Gaza, Joe Sacco (Metropolitan) 12. 1-800-MICE, Matthew Thurber (PictureBox) 13. Cecil and Jordan in New York: Stories, Gabrielle Bell (Drawn & Quarterly) 14. Little Nothings, Lewis Trondheim (NBM) 15. What it Is, Lynda Barry (Drawn & Quarterly) 16. Kramers Ergot #4, Sammy Harkham (Avodah Press) 17. Schizo #4, Ivan Brunetti (Fantagraphics) 18. The Frank Book, Jim Woodring (Fantagraphics) 19. Willie and Joe: The WWII Years, Bill Mauldin (Fantagraphics) 20. Petey and Pussy, John Kerschbaum (Fantagraphics) 21. Wormdye, Eamon Espey (Secret Acres) 22. Bughouse, Steve Lafler (Top Shelf) 23. I Killed Adolf Hitler, Jason (Fantagraphics) 24. The Imp #4, Dan Raeburn (self-published) 25. We are on Our Own, Miriam Katin (Drawn & Quarterly) 26. Spaniel Rage, Vanessa Davis (Buenaventura Press) 27. Eiland #4, Tobias Tycho Schalken & Stefan JH Van Dinther (Bries) 28. Bookhunter, Jason Shiga (Sparkplug Comic Books) 29. The Mother's Mouth, Dash Shaw (Alternative) 30. The Complete Peanuts Vol. 1, Charles Schulz (Fantagraphics) 31. Kampung Boy, Lat (First Second) 32. Dungeon: Zenith Vol. 1, Lewis Trondheim & Joann Sfar (NBM) 33. Hey, Wait..., Jason (Fantagraphics) 34. Ironclad, Dan Zettwoch (self-published) 35. Get A Life, Philippe Dupuy & Charles Berberian (Drawn & Quarterly) 36. The Diary Of A Teenage Girl, Phoebe Gloeckner (Frog Press) 37. The Squirrel Mother: Stories, Megan Kelso (Fantagraphics) 38. Eightball #23: The Death Ray, Dan Clowes (Fantagraphics) 39. The Three Paradoxes, Paul Hornschemeier (Fantagraphics) 40. An Anthology Of Graphic Fiction, Cartoons And True Stories Vol. 1, Ivan Brunetti (Yale) 41. Drawn And Quarterly Vol. 4, Chris Oliveros (Drawn & Quarterly) 42. Inkweed, Chris Wright (Sparkplug Comic Books) 43. Late Bloomer, Carol Tyler (Fantagraphics) 44. Louis Riel, Chester Brown (Drawn & Quarterly) 45. Mcsweeney's Quarterly Concern #13, Chris Ware (McSweeney's) 46. Mome Vol. 12, Eric Reynolds & Gary Groth (Fantagraphics) 47. Six Hundred Seventy-Six Apparitions Of Killoffer, Killoffer (Typocrat) 48. The Rabbi's Cat, Joann Sfar (Pantheon) 49. We All Die Alone, Mark Newgarden (Fantagraphics) 50. Wimbledon Green, Seth (Drawn & Quarterly)That's a good list. Clough writes a blurb for each choice, so please follow those first two links. I'll run links to a a third and fourth post at some point assuming they show up on TCJ.com. They may already be on there somewhere; it's a confusing place. * the writer Matt Fraction writes in enthusiastic fashion about the just-completed second Phonogram series. * I guess it's nice that Jon Goldwater is doing press for a new Archie-related project, but the project itself sounds pretty uninspiring and oddly ageless, like it could have been done any time over the last 25 years. * Darryl Cunningham lets us see a couple of pages from his follow-up to his forthcoming Psychiatric Tales. * finally, here's a summary write-up of all the Jack Kent stuff floating around right now, including the new and I think pretty wonderful IDW book.

Grant Goggans is the Hipster Dad. Although he's the newest person participating in this series in terms of my reading his work regularly, Goggans has already impressed me with the certainty of the relative straight-forward approach he employs. Grant Goggans does the heavy-lifting required to make himself a stopping point on-line without anyone in particular calling attention to what he does. He grabs comics with both hands. Goggans has a particular passion for the comics spinning out of the UK's long-running 2000 AD. I'm fascinated by a lot of those comics myself, their constant cycle of not quite ever getting over with US audiences, so it seemed a perfect topic for discussion. ***** TOM SPURGEON: Grant, you're an Internet discovery for me, and I know absolutely nothing about you. Could you talk a bit about how you went from reading comics to writing about them, your basic comics resume? Are you a dad? Are you a hipster? GRANT GOGGANS: I was probably never really a hipster, although I have read all the required music magazines, own lots of vinyl, lived for years in a college town (the best one, Athens) and spend most of my music money at independent record stores. Yet I never really went out enough to develop a really refined sense of scene snobbery. I missed almost all the early days of the Elephant 6 collective, and Cat Power's booze-ups, because I was happier staying in and watching Homicide: Life on the Street, really. I am certainly a dad, and from 2003 to 2008, I was raising my two wonderful children by myself. One Saturday in 2004, we made the usual trek from suburban Marietta, where we live, down to Decatur to buy PJ Harvey's album Uh Huh Her from Wuxtry Records. A girl who worked there for a time teased me about my situation, handing the album across the counter while my daughter bawled for Jake's Ice Cream, and gave me the nickname "Hipster Dad." I'd like to think she was just being playful, although the name "hipster" has certainly taken on a pretty awful reputation. I love it, though I think it made several of my friends cringe when I adopted it. I started blogging in December 2000 to promote my own comic. From 1998-2003, I wrote and drew The GMS Legion, an office-photocopier book which was inspired by classic LSH fandom and a desire to do a 1980s period piece set in high school. It was an update of notebook paper comics I did when I was 12. I was never at all successful, nor particularly good, but I did 13 issues, each 80-100 pages long, and did a couple of short strips for the first few Fluke anthologies before the reality and demands of single fatherhood and full time work got pretty heavy and I packed it up. I joined LiveJournal in June 2001 and immediately cajoled everybody I knew to get one as well. Very few of them still use it regularly. In the fall of 2004, I started doing the features which became my old "Weekly Comics Hype," trying to push DC's short-lived line of 2000 AD reprints whenever there was a new one out, or some other easily-purchased comic or collection whenever there wasn't. I've had a lot of luck with that, and several friends and readers who haven't read comics since they were kids have told me they've enjoyed trying the books I recommend. A couple of years ago, during some incident when LJ was sold to the Russians or something, there was talk that it might shut down. LJ was my only real web presence or social media, so I decided to branch off into separate sites on blogspot. I have The Hipster Dad's Bookshelf for all my book and comic reviews and try to update it at least twice a week. Reprint This! is updated twice a month and it rotates between a celebration of an out-of-print property and a follow-up article, usually with a review of an archival reprint and a bit of news about forthcoming collections. Thrillpowered Thursday is a weekly 2000 AD blog, but I'm actually taking a break from that for a couple of months while I work on a guide to the library of Doonesbury books, and reread as much of that as I can. I hope to have this new blog at least started before the end of January. SPURGEON: Your most appealing choice to me was 2000 AD. That's not only an enormous work covering thousands of pages this decade, it's a series in which you seem to have a phenomenal and fervent interest . So I guess my first question would be how did you start to build your current level of interest in the magazine, have you personally been reading it for a very long time? GOGGANS: I have been a loyal squaxx dek Thargo since 1986, actually. I was very lucky to have a best friend, Dave Merrill, who now lives in Toronto, during that awful period when you're 15 and realizing that Marvel Comics aren't fun anymore. He had already graduated to books like Zot! and Flaming Carrot and the Eagle Judge Dredd reprints, books I'd never have considered reading as my superhero fandom ebbed. If he hadn't been around to say "No, you don't need to read Secret Wars II, you can read this instead," I'd have probably dropped comics entirely. I liked those Eagle Dredd reprints a lot, even if those great covers by Brian Bolland looked so much better than the poorly-colored, re-sized artwork inside. Eventually I found proper thrillpower in its raw, original form, and it blew my mind. Lots of the Atlanta-area comic shops carried back issues of 2000 AD then, even if none of those stores -- Oxford, Dr. No's, Titan -- seemed to have a consistent run of them. I think every time I went to any of them, I'd find a new back prog that I needed. Of course, I was pretty broke all the time even by the standards of a teenager in the 1980s, so I could only afford to build my collection very, very slowly. (You know, it's just occurred to me that all of those stores I mentioned are still around after more than a quarter of a century! Oxford's not as fun as it once was, while Titan Games & Comics has really become a very good chain, but still, 25 years in this market, they must all be doing something right, huh?) There's something about 2000 AD's classic format, the "bog roll" newsprint as it's called, that was so appealing to me. I guess it seemed so esoteric, having all of these wonderful worlds and all that terrific artwork in such a fragile delivery system. Even the advertisements for these odd foreign products like Weetabix, Spectrum computers and records by Alien Sex Fiend kept me captivated. I also fell in love with the silly affectation of a "Command Module" of Betelgeusians in boiler suits and creator droids assembling the comic, so even as the quality of the content dipped for a few years in the early '90s, I kept reading because it was so different and so much fun. SPURGEON: How have the years 2000-2009 treated 2000 AD? Are there two or three efforts within its pages you can point to as personal highlights? Do you have a take on how this era of the magazine is different than previous ones? GOGGANS: I think it's been an excellent decade for the comic. There were lots of ownership and editorial upheavals through the 1990s, but 2000 AD has been owned by Rebellion for a decade, and has had a single editor, Matt Smith, since 2002. Maybe the late '90s were a little wilder, when David Bishop was editor and throwing something new and weird at the wall every third week to see what would stick, but Smith's been a spectacular Tharg and really brought strong consistency to the comic. You just get some exceptionally high-quality SF every week. Smith's really worked at developing talent, which is one of 2000 AD's most important missions, and giving them room to create series and serials which can interlink and form intricate little comic universes. Ian Edginton gradually let us see that the worlds of his pirate adventure The Red Seas (drawn by Steve Yeowell) and the Victorian crime drama Stickleback (drawn by D'Israeli) are the same, and Si Spurrier did something similar with a wild, downbeat future war serial called The Vort (also drawn by D'Israeli), surprising us with the revelation that it's set in the universe of his cranky, robot-shagging, torturer-for-hire Lobster Random, which is drawn by Carl Critchlow. The most recent run of Robo-Hunter, which is a firm favorite, features the granddaughter of the original character. Another really nice benefit to the comic affording so much freedom to its creators is that they can take breaks and come back fully charged. Robbie Morrison took a very long time off from Nikolai Dante while he wrote The Authority for Wildstorm, and it came back better than ever. In a perfect world, Nikolai Dante would get deserved accolades from everybody as the best comic of the decade. When Simon Fraser returned as the artist, I punched the air and was accosting strangers in the street to tell them the good news. The other thing that really defines 2000 AD in the decade, to me, is the resurgence of Pat Mills. His work in the 1990s just didn't appeal to me, for a number of reasons. I'm just getting into his return in my Thrillpowered Thursday blog, but basically what happened is that he had some disagreements with Smith's predecessor as editor, Andy Diggle, and left the comic in 2001, focusing on publishing in France. Smith lured Mills back, and unfortunately he brought Slaine with him. (That and Dan Abnett's Sinister Dexter, both of which I once enjoyed, are the two strips which 2000 AD could cancel forever and I wouldn't lose a minute of sleep.) But Mills also created several new series, Black Siddha, Defoe and Greyshirt, all of which are completely terrific, and he's resurrected some of his classic characters, The ABC Warriors and Savage, for really wonderful new stories. I enjoy many of the newer writers a great deal, but when Pat Mills is in the prog, everybody's got to take it up a notch. SPURGEON: The people I know into Dredd and the other 2000 AD serials are fiercely devoted, and yet there never seem to be enough people like them to make the magazine even a modest hit in North America. I want to talk about the structural issues in the next question, but are there artistic reasons this material in general may not find a significant number of fans? GOGGANS: That's a tricky question I've considered for years, and I've never quite found the answer. It's clear that 2000 AD's format of wild, over-the-top SF melodrama is one that just never found a broad market in this country. People do find it, but they didn't find it in the big numbers that were needed 20 years ago to make it a long-running, known hit property. I think that when you're a teenager, you hit the point, for at least a few years, where you want to put away the superhero fight club comics. You start to see through them at the same time you discover kissing and your own music, not your parents'. I'm not suggesting 2000 AD is all that mature -- it can be shamelessly, stupidly, lovably adolescent -- but, as far as the North American comic experience goes, it doesn't really fit anywhere other than where it did in the '80s, when you could grow up from superhero fights to Zot! and Flaming Carrot and maybe Cerebus or Love & Rockets or Neat Stuff. I don't think that "step-up" exists today. My son loves Shaman King, Naruto and all the other Shonen Jump titles, and when he steps back from comics in a few years, as he invariably will, I wonder whether anything will be around to captivate him as an older teenager. Maybe if the delivery system in the '80s had been better, or Titan Books' old line of reprints more attractive to this market, you'd see many more fans today. Many of the same late teen boys who fell in love with Hopey and Maggie could have fallen in love with Halo Jones and Judge Anderson and there could be a much larger fanbase today. SPURGEON: How hard has Rebellion -- in addition to fans like yourself -- been hit by the current, half-cracked state of comics shop distribution? If I remember correctly, despite an aggressive trades program not all of the books they've done have even been offered here through Direct Market channels in the first place, let alone supported in a way that might allow them to build. GOGGANS: It's been a disaster, Tom. I think a percentage of the blame is certainly Rebellion's, but the overwhelming bulk of the problem, lately, is Diamond. I talk to shop owners all the time, and I really cannot understand how it's possible to screw up anything as simple as accepting deliveries and shipping them to stores. Diamond has really hurt small publishers like Rebellion and Yen Press. Their announcement about new minimums making life easier for retailers might as well have been made on an aircraft carrier with a "mission accomplished" banner. It would be churlish to blame everybody else for 2000 AD's problems, so yes, the failure starts at home. Rebellion reminds me of Bryan Ferry in 1972. He said that Roxy Music was off to conquer America, and they spent four weeks opening for Jethro Tull and Ten Years After in towns like Augusta, Chattanooga and Fayetteville, then came home and complained that America didn't get it. You can't effectively promote your product, whatever your product, without spending money and grabbing every potential customer by the shirt collar and screaming at them, basically. Rebellion's never done anything so loudly, never signed on for Free Comic Book Day or big ads in Previews or any kind of retailer-focused initiative, and they've devoted their North American promotion squarely on San Diego. I know Comic-Con is huge, but that's just a polite murmur if that's all you're going to do. But really, it's Diamond where the current problem lies. Now, maybe if Rebellion had been buying full-page ads and making Diamond happy with ad revenue for the last few years it wouldn't have been a candidate for this year's purge, but who knows? It's still Rebellion's job to make people interested in their product, and they didn't do it. Yet for ages, buying 2000 AD, the Judge Dredd Megazine and all the books was simple: Diamond shipped two issues of 2000 AD every other week. About once a year, they'd hiccup, skip a shipment and ship four the next time. Everybody was happy. At some point last fall, the wheels went off. There'd be a six-week gap between issues and then four would show up. Six weeks later, the missing two would show up, along with two of the next four. It wasn't just my shop; I speak with fans all over the country and employees of several stores in this area. As far as 2000 AD is concerned, that ship list you see at Diamond's site does not reflect reality, and depending on which warehouse ships product, your store could be weeks ahead of or behind the listing. My wife and I took a honeymoon road trip up to Montreal and back this summer, just before the "prog packs" began, stopping in all sorts of comic shops, and there were issues available in Boston shops we never saw in any Atlanta store, and we got issues here that stores in other cities apparently didn't. In September '09, my shop received an issue from November '08 which I had picked up at Boston's Million Year Picnic in July. This wasn't a reorder; Diamond just finally found a copy. Maybe I'll get the seven mid-2009 issues that I am still missing by next Halloween. So to combat this problem -- a recent problem of their own bungling creation -- Diamond decided to start soliciting the prog in a monthly polybagged package of four-five issues. They don't ship them. Atlanta stores -- three of them anyway -- got the July-offered "September pack" the day before Thanksgiving. That's the day that Diamond's public ship list claimed we'd be receiving the "October pack," which did arrive in Chicago stores. Here, it actually arrived the week before Christmas, when nothing was showing on the ship list. The issue of missing books is another story. Diamond canceled orders for about a half-dozen trade paperback editions because those orders were low. That's unfortunate, but also, disagreeably, understandable. Even if they run a lousy business, Diamond still has a bottom line, and Rebellion didn't create any excitement or demand for those books. There are several other titles, however -- Rebellion releases about two a month -- which Diamond never offered at all. I have also heard several complaints that Diamond doesn't keep enough stock of the books, forcing customers who do hear Rebellion's polite murmurs and want to try them out to wait for very long backorders. All of the books -- and they're terrific books, beautifully designed and printed -- are available from British bookstores or Amazon UK, but I don't want to spend money there, I want to spend it at my "local" shop in Athens, Bizarro Wuxtry, and give them my money. It's the best comic shop I've ever visited; only about two others come close. I could talk for hours about how wonderful Bizarro Wuxtry is, and how they deserve as much of my funnybook money -- and everybody else's -- as is feasible. But if Diamond won't give them the comics that I want to buy, I have no choice but to use the Internet to shop. It's ridiculous! SPURGEON: It was once suggested to me that John Wagner is the most under-appreciated mainstream comics writer of all time. Can you talk about some of his work in the magazine this decade? I'm thinking particularly of Origins, although if you have other works in mind, please expound. GOGGANS: He's more than the most under-appreciated, I think he's just about the best, full stop. He may not always be my favorite -- he doesn't blow my mind or break my heart as often as Grant Morrison or Gilbert Hernandez -- but nobody's as consistent as John Wagner in bringing the quality. It's not only on Judge Dredd, although he's been comparatively quiet this past decade, mainly working just on Dredd and Strontium Dog, which is also excellent. He's nowhere as proficient as he was in the '80s, when he and Alan Grant were co-writing about twelve scripts a week for four different weekly anthologies. Origins is a really good place to start for modern Wagner, although I think it's less friendly to new readers than would be ideal. This was a lengthy epic which ran from the fall of 2006 to the spring of 2007, and finally explored the huge global wars that gave rise to the current "Dreddworld," with the Mega-Cities and the judging system, in the 2070s, several years before the beginning of the comic. This story is told in fragments by various characters while Dredd and some associates carry out an important mission in the Cursed Earth. While they're out in the desert, Dredd learns that he has a number of natural-born clone relatives, but they're all mutants and, consequently, it's illegal for them to enter his city, or anybody else's city for that matter. None of the Mega-Cities allow "genetic abnormalities." By the end of the story, Dredd has realized that his world got pretty far away from Chief Judge Fargo's hopes and dreams, and that the mutant laws are long overdue to be retired. So throughout 2007 and 2008, Wagner and the other Dredd writers, most notably Al Ewing, started exploring life in the city where mutants could finally live legally. Unfortunately, it's a powder keg of 400 million mostly unemployed, undereducated, lunatic bigots who've been told all their lives that muties are those terrible people who have to live in the desert, suddenly forced to share space with them. In a city where race, gender and sexual orientation stopped really mattering long ago, nobody ever really had to deal with hate crimes before, and Dredd chose to exhaust all his stock of goodwill and respect among the people and his fellow judges fighting for mutant rights. The real heartbreak finally came this year: Dredd lost. He and Chief Judge Hershey's regime are seen as failures and political embarrassments. So Hershey has been sent packing to a desk job on a frontier outpost on another planet and Dredd's been kicked into the desert to oversee some Mega-City-constructed townships for mutants, along with some failing, mediocre judges as his ineffective support staff. In other words, if the old man likes mutants so damn much, he can go live with them. They've even kicked out his protege to live and work there, to shove his legacy under the rug. Every bit of it, from the allegory of gay marriage being overturned by voters in Maine and California, to the effect it's had on characters we've grown to love, is heartbreaking and powerful stuff. I can't think of any other comic which has allowed a hero to lose so stunningly… Well, it's not all heartbreaking. Mega-City One's mayor is really a serial killer who Judge Dredd believes has been dead for years. That's pretty funny! SPURGEON: It seems astonishing to me to be talking about 2000 AD, with its particular publishing schedule and devotion to serial storytelling, when it seems like that was an outdated mode a couple of generations back. With trades collecting a lot of material, do you still think of 2000 AD as the primary delivery method for these stories? Are there specific pleasures in that format you think other comics efforts could exploit on their own behalf? GOGGANS: Andy Diggle famously described 2000 AD, at its best, as delivering you shot glasses of rocket fuel. You may not like every episode of every tale, but all five episodes each week should try and knock you on your backside with excellent characters in fast-moving, over-the-top stories. Nothing else in comics can give you that thrill, and it's the highwire, anything-goes weekly nature that makes reading 2000 AD so fun. Actually, something that came pretty close, to me, was Kyle Baker's lovely, ridiculous Hawkman story in Wednesday Comics, where the stakes and the scenario kept getting higher, dementedly so, every week. If DC would commit to publishing something like that every week, with a rotating, flexible lineup of stories and creators, not tied to continuity, I would consider buying it. That and the Supergirl story by Jimmy Palmiotti and Amanda Conner were just hugely entertaining. Really, with 2000 AD, the format is a big part of the fun. Nikolai Dante, Stickleback and Savage would be among my favorite comics this decade regardless of how they're approached, but watching them unfold in cliffhanger fashion week-to-week is what keeps readers hooked. You can tell that some stories are "written for the trade" -- Pat Mills seems to design his storylines in 60-page chunks, rather than ten six-page episodes -- but there's a real sense of excitement to having stories come and go, with new talent trying out a Future Shock in between larger epics. And once you buy into the business of the comic being edited by a space alien who talks in far-out intergalactic slang, with druids sneaking office gossip into the copyright information each issue, you're in for a whole new layer of fun. I suppose Mad is the only other comic that would promise readers that certain, unpopular writers won't be back because they've been fed to a maniacal garbage grinder. SPURGEON: Is 2000 AD still published ten years from now? Will it ever be a hit in North America? GOGGANS: Hopefully, and probably not. Rebellion, sensibly, keeps quiet about the business end of things, but the feeling is that any international sales are just gravy to an operation that needs to perform strongly in Britain, on the newsstand and through subscriptions, which it seems to have done well for more than 30 years. Obviously an increased American presence could help their bottom line, but I wonder just how much is possible. It isn't very "hipster" of me, but I quite like minor league sports, and if you ever want a sobering reality check of how small and insular our hobby really is, try comparing those ICv2 sales estimates to the reported paid attendance of even small market teams. On Thanksgiving night, I watched a AA ECHL team in Duluth host a team from Charlotte with a crowd about the same size as Savage Dragon's nationwide audience. In the direct market, 2000 AD apparently doesn't even sell the 3000 copies it seems to take to reach the bottom of that chart. I think that it's certainly possible for 2000 AD to grow, but it will take a lot of work from Rebellion to finally capitalize on Judge Dredd's name recognition. However, with the Diamond situation as awful as it is, broader success probably won't come in the direct market, and so the public won't easily see, on a chart, whether they're successful at it. You can actually download the comic every week at Clickwheel for less than Diamond charges for a physical copy, and get the full line of books from British sellers who keep it in stock, bypassing Diamond entirely. Unless, like me, you have tremendous loyalty to a much-loved comic store, there's no need to leave the house to get these comics at all. Clickwheel is a very good delivery system. I've begun using it to read the prog week-by-week while hoping for the hard copies to show up for my library, and I like that they have many titles from several British small-press companies available. Rebellion was very forward-thinking in getting this system ready for digital delivery, but I fear it will be quickly swamped by Longbox, should that get up and running, with its planned lower prices and broader selection. I hope that Rebellion is looking forward to the next platform after this. I wonder whether the next generation of Kindle or Nook will be set up for comics, and if so, 2000 AD should be ready for that. There are probably other things that Rebellion could be doing to increase their characters' visibility. I suppose my opinion's not worth as much as a highly-paid marketing consultant, but maybe reaching around the direct market with lots more convention appearances is the right way to go. Finding some common ground with Grant Morrison to reprint Zenith and even present new stories would be an enormous selling point. Announcing that, or similar projects, from panels at big American shows where there's lots of blogger media would be a great idea, rather than letting rumors slip out via Amazon advance listings, which seems to be how it goes today. Getting review copies of books to that same blogger media, to everybody with an audience, is another. Bringing back Samantha Slade for a 26-week residency is another. Well, possibly not that last one, but it would make me very happy, anyway! ***** * 2000 AD, Various, Rebellion, Tabloid, weekly. ***** This year's CR Holiday Interview Series features some of the best writers about comics talking about emblematic -- by which we mean favorite, representative or just plain great -- books from the ten-year period 2000-2009. The writer provides a short list of books, comics or series they believe qualify; I pick one from their list that sounds interesting to me and we talk about it. It's been a long, rough and fascinating decade. Our hope is that this series will entertain from interview to interview but also remind all of us what a remarkable time it has been and continues to be for comics as an art form. We wish you the happiest of holidays no matter how you worship or choose not to. Thank you so much for reading The Comics Reporter. * CR Holiday Interview One: Sean T. Collins On Blankets * CR Holiday Interview Two: Frank Santoro On Multiforce * CR Holiday Interview Three: Bart Beaty On Persepolis * CR Holiday Interview Four: Kristy Valenti On So Many Splendid Sundays * CR Holiday Interview Five: Shaenon Garrity On Achewood * CR Holiday Interview Six: Christopher Allen On Powers * CR Holiday Interview Seven: David P. Welsh On MW * CR Holiday Interview Eight: Robert Clough On ACME Novelty Library #19 * CR Holiday Interview Nine: Jeet Heer On Louis Riel * CR Holiday Interview Ten: Chris Mautner On The Scott Pilgrim Series * CR Holiday Interview Eleven: Tim Hodler On In The Shadow Of No Towers * CR Holiday Interview Twelve: Noah Berlatsky On The Elephant And Piggie Series * CR Holiday Interview Thirteen: Tucker Stone On Ganges * CR Holiday Interview Fourteen: Douglas Wolk On The Invincible Iron Man: World's Most Wanted * CR Holiday Interview Fifteen: Jog On Death Note * CR Holiday Interview Sixteen: Ben Schwartz On BPRD ***** ***** *****

Noah Berlatsky is the prolific critic behind the team blog Hooded Utilitarian, which was folded into the TCJ.com family in early December. One of his choices was the Elephant and Piggie series, from the illustrator and occasional cartoonist Mo Willems. The re-emergence of comics for a wide variety of children is definitely one of the major comics publishing trends this decade, both from comics publishers and from traditional ones, and the Elephant and Piggie books are not just reminiscent of comics but straight up examples of the form. I'll let Mr. Berlatsky explain the rest. -- Tom Spurgeon ***** TOM SPURGEON: Give me the basics on this one, Noah. I know Elephant and Piggie is a series, and I think it may be aimed at the kids in the first half of elementary school. How many books are there -- what's the scope of our discussion here? NOAH BERLATSKY: Willems' books are actually generally aimed younger than elementary school; my son loved them from when he was three, probably, and still enjoys them at six, though they may be getting just a little young for him. The Elephant and Piggie series has multiplied fast; Willem started writing them in 2007, and as of now trusty wikipedia lists ten, with another (I Am Going!) scheduled for early 2010. I think we've read them all and own almost all... at least in theory. Finding things on our children's bookshelf is, alas, often a dicey proposition. SPURGEON: I know Mo Willems as a cartoonist more by his travelogue in pictures You Can Never Find A Rickshaw When It Monsoons, and am only aware of the success of his career in kids' books, not so much what that work is like. How did you discover this specific work? Are you a fan of Willems? BERLATSKY: That's funny; while I have vague name recognition on his travelogue, I've never seen it or even read very much about it. I found Willems because I'm a dad, so we're often in the children's book section. I don't remember anyone recommending these even; I think we just picked one up at the bookstore and loved it. Since then we've found a number of his other books and series, and, yeah, they're all pretty great. His pigeon series ("Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!") is maybe as good as Elephant and Piggie. The Knuffle Bunny series is extremely cute as well. He's got a couple of others that I don't like quite as much -- Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed has one of those "everyone be yourself!" morals that I kind of never need to read in a children's book again. But generally, yeah, he does great work. SPURGEON: What made you think of this work specifically in the context of comics? Is the work like a pair samples I've seen on-line in traditional comics form? How much work have you seen in children's books that's more or less is comics and how much is merely reminiscent of comics? What would you suggest if someone were interested in doing some exploration of those kinds of works? BERLATSKY: I don't think it's an issue of seeing it in the context of comics; Willems' work is comics. He uses cartoony simplified animal characters and makes extensive use of comic tropes like motion lines and speech bubbles. The narrative is entirely advanced through sequential action; the movement and words of the characters directly tell the story; it's absolutely not text with illustrations. Some of the chicken books even use panels. The only reason you wouldn't call it a comic is because it's not sold through the direct market, basically. I think in terms of what's out there in children's books that I've seen, that are like comics, Willems is maybe out on one end of a continuum, but he's certainly not alone or unique. Children's books regularly make use of speech bubbles, for example, and many of them mix comics tropes with some text explanation in varying degrees. Obviously there's Maurice Sendak's In The Night Kitchen, which is a Winsor McCay tribute. Mercer Mayer's A Boy, A Dog, and A Frog is a wordless comic; many of his other classic books rely on images to move the story (as in a couple of spots in There's A Nightmare In My Closet.) Sandra Boynton uses speech bubbles liberally, and her books can often read as comics I think. Satoshi Kitamura is a Japanese expatriate living in Britain who writes both manga and manga-influenced books; and plays very consciously with ways that comics can be children's books and vice versa. Calef Brown's stuff looks a lot like Fort Thunder... I think there are really lots of examples. It's true that a lot of it maybe wouldn't be called comics by Scott McCloud, but I think in some ways that actually indicates it's healthier, more adventurous medium. SPURGEON: Are you familiar at all with Toon Books? Those are comics outright, although one difference is that because Francoise Mouly wanted them to be of value to children in an educational sense you have some input as to the types of language that will work, the clarity of certain visual keys... where does that kind of comics effort fit into your fluid continuity between the two forms? BERLATSKY: I haven't seen these, though I did see the Spiegelman/Mouly anthology Little Lit which I thought was pretty dreadful overall. There are a number of great comics for kids, though. Jill Thompson's Magic Trixie is a favorite in our house. Lewis Trondheim's Li'l Santa books are great, too... and for that matter, my son really enjoyed having me read Asterix to him. The Marvel Adventures series vary widely in quality, but are overall pretty good... and the DC children's series Tiny Titans is particularly good, making use of a more children's booky art style that also happens to be vastly superior to most of the art in mainstream titles. I think more superhero comics aimed at kids and marketed as children's books seems like a no-brainer in a lot of ways. Marvel and DC have taken some steps in this direction... but really, the market there seems potentially much larger than the Direct Market, it seems to me. SPURGEON: What do you think makes successful character designs for works like these? It struck me looking at a photo of the stuffed animals that Willems nailed something here, but when I look at the actual drawings I'm not sure I can qualify what exactly that it is. Why do these characters work, particularly for their intended audience? BERLATSKY: I'm not sure I can really answer that exactly; four- to six-year-olds like lots of things for reasons I find more or less baffling (Bakugan... I confess; I don't get it.) I can talk a little about why I myself find Willems work effective, though. He has a lovely line -- not sure what he's using exactly, but he gets a lot of texture, and the forms are simple but fluid. His facial expressions are wonderful too; he's got some great eyebrows and does wonderful things with mouths and eyes. It reminds me a little of Kate Beaton, actually; just a real knack for expressing a lot with a few strokes. SPURGEON: In your essay on the books, you suggest that they have a slapstick quality that strips don't have anymore. What exactly do you mean by slapstick quality? Can you pinpoint that? Because these don't seem exemplars of slapstick: they're not out of control or super-manic or close to violent. Is there something essential here that makes something slapstick in your eyes that doesn't have to be pushed to the nth degree? BERLATSKY: I guess what I was thinking of here is the way that the characters are so much in motion. They're always skipping and bounding, moving around the page in complicated patterns with dotted lines showing their paths. Even if they just stand there he's often got motion lines showing how and where there feet and heads and hands are twitching. You're right of course that they're very gentle books; nobody's getting crushed by rocks or even hit with pies. But there's an energy there that still says slapstick to me, even if it's just the moment in I Will Surprise My Friend where they jump out from behind a rock and scare each other so badly that they leap in the air and shriek and fall over backwards. You hardly see that kind of expressive, expansive physical humor in contemporary comic strips, it seems to me, because, among other reasons, there's just not room. Part of the effectiveness of Willems' humor and movement is that it occurs on a full page. Reduce it down to strip size and some of those motion lines would pretty much completely disappear. I could be wrong here I suppose; I don't read a ton of strip comics these days -- I guess the one's I'm most familiar with are Get Fuzzy and Dilbert. And I actually think both those strips are funny -- though Dilbert is remarkably ugly. But I certainly don't see much use of this kind of physical humor in either of them, nor in other strips I've occasionally glanced at. As another example, if Chris Onstad was a third of the cartoonist Mo Willems is, I might actually find Achewood tolerable. SPURGEON: Why do you think strips don't have that manic quality anymore? Is it a cultural development, a formal restriction based on size, a self-consciousness about low-class roots? BERLATSKY: Well, as I said, I think a lot of it is size for newsprint…though why it's the case for webcomics I really can't fathom. Though you know, if I have to pull something out of my posterior, it could be that webcomics aren't really for kids for the most part. I think a lot of the physical humor is something kids really enjoy especially. I think adults, on the other hand, can be satisfied by just having some punchline about the HR department even if the drawing looks like a kind of stale wad of gum that would probably sigh and fart and expire if you even suggested to it that it might put a motion line over near its left elbow there. And if you can be satisfied with that... well, good drawing is difficult and rare. Folks who can do that can probably make a living doing something more likely to be lucrative than webcomics. Though, to be fair, Kate Beaton is a fine artist... though she doesn't really do the kind of slapticky action I'm talking about either. I don't know. The truth is, I don't know enough about webcomics to speculate about this very effectively. But why let that stop me? You know, most monitors aren't necessarily going to allow for full page movement either the way the elephant and piggie books do. I think there's an argument to be made that physically and logistically, books just do this sort of thing better than computer screens, at least at the moment. SPURGEON: How much about how the Piggie and Elephant books work has to do with its very basic but obviously effective coloring? Can comics learn anything from children's book illustration in terms of visual language? BERLATSKY: I don't think the color work in Mo Willems is necessarily spectacular; he keeps things pretty simple, and it looks fine, but I don't know that I'd make huge claims for it beyond that. I think if you were going to learn something from Willems' color work, it might be "first do no harm." And, yeah, god knows that colorists on mainstream comics could stand to learn that lesson. 
 SPURGEON: What exactly were you suggesting in terms of a move on-line as a possibility we'll see more work of this type from comics-makers? It seems like you're talking about that cartoonists will be able to take more time to work on more material, but then you cite as a counter-example PvP, which is a daily strip. BERLATSKY: I was thinking of more time and more space. I probably didn't know anything about the mechanics or timing of PVP when I said that except that I thought it was (and that it is) ugly. But... perhaps the demand for daily content on the web could explain part of why there hasn't been an impetus to try more formal experimentation, or at least variation. SPURGEON: It seems like you're for a greater variety of ways of doing things generally, that you have an aversion to the kind of ossification that come with hard categories and boundaries. Is that a fair assessment? It seems like the decade has been really push and pull that way, with a lot of hybrids being published but also a stronger definitional sense of comics. Would comics in general be better off if folks embraced and paid attention to more forms of visual storytelling than the ones usually strictly defined as comics. Is that where comics is going? BERLATSKY: I think it's a fair assessment more or less, at least in regard to comics. I don't think it's a particularly controversial stance to say that American comics with the direct market has gotten itself in a rut in terms of both genre and marketing that it would do well to try to get out of. Some of the alternative models -- like manga -- I quite like; others, like the more literary memoirs following in the wake of Maus, I'm not such a fan of; still others, like webcomics, I'm largely ignorant of. But, yeah, aesthetically and market-share wise, I think comics can only be aided by trying to reclaim some of the limbs that have been lopped off over the years. And I think children's books could certainly be an important part of that. ***** * Watch Me Throw the Ball!, Mo Willems, Hyperion, picture book, 64 pages, 1423113489, March 2009, $8.99 * My Friend is Sad, Mo Willems, Hyperion, picture book, 64 pages, 1423102975, April 2007, $8.99 * Today I Will Fly, Mo Willems, Hyperion, picture book, 64 pages, 1423102959, April 2007, $8.99 * I Am Invited to a Party!, Mo Willems, Hyperion, picture book, 64 pages, 1423106873, September 2007, $8.99 * There Is a Bird on Your Head!, Mo Willems, Hyperion, picture book, 64 pages, 1423106865, September 2007, $8.99 * I Love My New Toy!, Mo Willems, Hyperion, picture book, 64 pages, 1423109619, June 2008, $8.99 * I Will Surprise My Friend!, Mo Willems, Hyperion, picture book, 64 pages, 1423109627, June 2008, $8.99 * Are You Ready to Play Outside?, Mo Willems, Hyperion, picture book, 64 pages, 1423113470, October 2008, $8.99 * Elephants Cannot Dance, Mo Willems, Hyperion, picture book, 64 pages, 1423114108, June 2009, $8.99 * Pigs Make Me Sneeze!, Mo Willems, Hyperion, picture book, 64 pages, 1423114116, October 2009, $8.99 ***** This year's CR Holiday Interview Series features some of the best writers about comics talking about emblematic -- by which we mean favorite, representative or just plain great -- books from the ten-year period 2000-2009. The writer provides a short list of books, comics or series they believe qualify; I pick one from their list that sounds interesting to me and we talk about it. It's been a long, rough and fascinating decade. Our hope is that this series will entertain from interview to interview but also remind all of us what a remarkable time it has been and continues to be for comics as an art form. We wish you the happiest of holidays no matter how you worship or choose not to. Thank you so much for reading The Comics Reporter. * CR Holiday Interview One: Sean T. Collins On Blankets * CR Holiday Interview Two: Frank Santoro On Multiforce * CR Holiday Interview Three: Bart Beaty On Persepolis * CR Holiday Interview Four: Kristy Valenti On So Many Splendid Sundays * CR Holiday Interview Five: Shaenon Garrity On Achewood * CR Holiday Interview Six: Christopher Allen On Powers * CR Holiday Interview Seven: David P. Welsh On MW * CR Holiday Interview Eight: Robert Clough On ACME Novelty Library #19 * CR Holiday Interview Nine: Jeet Heer On Louis Riel * CR Holiday Interview Ten: Chris Mautner On The Scott Pilgrim Series * CR Holiday Interview Eleven: Tim Hodler On In The Shadow Of No Towers ***** ***** *****

If Tim Hodler isn't my favorite critical voice of the last half-decade, he's in the top three. The New York City-based writer and editor is part of the Comics Comics gang via his participation in The Ganzfeld. I think he has a way of sliding up and over the rhetorical pile-ups that accumulate around various comics works and getting at their heart in clear, forceful language. I was delighted that we ended up picking Art Spiegelman's In The Shadow Of No Towers for our chat. For obvious reasons, that book will be remembered as a comics publication tied into this decade. -- Tom Spurgeon TOM SPURGEON: Tim, I'm going to apologize in advance for a few more questions of set-up than usual. First of all, can I ask you about your personal experience with 9/11? Were you in the city? What are the memories that stick out to you now about that time just after, your own reaction and what you observed from others? TIMOTHY HODLER: Oh, good! If there's one thing I've learned over the last eight years, it's that everyone loves hearing about what you were doing on 9/11. My fairly typical for a New York City resident story: I was lying in bed, listening to my clock radio and procrastinating the start of my work day when I heard a loud bang that may or may not have been one of the planes hitting the World Trade Center. I lived in the Park Slope area of Brooklyn at the time, and don't really know if I was actually close enough to hear the collision, but when I got up and turned on the television, CNN was reporting that an airplane had hit the towers. At first, it didn't really sink in as anything more than a freak accident, and I was late for work, so I just kind of goggled for a moment before showering and heading for the subway. When I learned that the trains into Manhattan weren't running, I thought, "Great, one more thing is going wrong." Then I noticed that everyone on the street seemed incredibly frightened, and I began to realize the magnitude of what had happened. Fortunately, I did not know anyone personally who died in the attacks, but like everyone else in New York, the following days and weeks and months were very frightening. I won't rehearse the details everyone has heard a million times (Giuliani, cell phones, ashes, etc.). I was working at New York magazine at the time, and in charge of the letters page, and that became a slight issue after anthrax attacks began that were believed to be targeted at the media. There was a strange but strong feeling of community in those days, which you could tell even at the time was fleeting. When a young person went out at night to a show or a concert or party or something, it felt like an act of communal bravery, like an existential act in the face of apocalypse. You know, someone would always take the opportunity to shout into the microphone some New Normal bravado like, "We're still here!" or something angrier and more profane. Occasions like that were obviously stupid but in the midst of a crowd (and the times) carried an emotional charge. Another difference, I found, is that at any moment, an intense argument could start between people who were friends, each taking on uncharacteristic stances. In retrospect, the intensity of those days is hard to comprehend. The last strange thing from that time I will mention is that on the night of September 11, my now-wife and I walked to the shore of the East River in Williamsburg, Brooklyn to look across the water at downtown Manhattan, and found a large crowd of scores of people already there, staring in silence at the pillars of smoke where the WTC once stood, which were framed by a bizarrely technicolor sunset. I have to admit that I felt a little like a lemming, but also like it was somehow important to participate, for reasons I can't articulate. It didn't feel ghoulish until we spotted a tattered denim-and-leather, tattooed Williamsburg couple, groping each other and making out like there was no tomorrow. Based on the looks people were giving them, not many appreciated their disaster-inspired exhibitionism, but somehow it really brought out the surreality of the situation for me. Very extreme Thanatos versus Eros stuff, all wrapped up in a designer clothing. I was disgusted by them at the time, but I'm not sure I was right to be. SPURGEON: Have you read or seen any other 9/11-related art that weren't comics, like Oliver Stone's World Trade Center, the Onion's post-9/11 issue or Paul West's The Immensity Of The Here and Now? What stands out to you almost a decade later and why? HODLER: Hmm. I don't know how much September 11th-related art I've actually seen. I mean, Reno 911 was okay, but lacked focus. (That's not funny, so pretend I didn't say it.) I didn't see the Oliver Stone movie or read the Paul West novel, but I did read the Onion issue, and found it mostly solid but underwhelming. Like, it wasn't really bad, but not nearly as funny as everyone made it out to be. I mean, take something like the "God Angrily Clarifies 'Don't Kill' Rule" -- not really a laugh riot, and the ending ("God's shoulders began to shake, and He wept.") is sentimental to a fault. I think a lot of that issue was like that. But there's question but that it seemed to serve a necessary function for a lot of people. I could never tell how sincere people were being when I heard the constant refrain about needing "permission to laugh again." When David Letterman teared up on his initial return to television, it felt genuine and moving, but six or seven weeping television hosts later, it started to feel like kabuki theater or something. (Of course, kabuki apparently fills a cultural need, too.) In fact, I would say almost all of the art I've experienced that was intended to be a direct response to the attacks, from Don DeLillo's Harper's article and novel to the statue of a falling woman that stirred up a lot of controversy in the New York tabloids at the time, struck me as pretty strongly inadequate. Michael Moore's an egomanical boor, but the opening of Fahrenheit 9/11, which used audio from the World Trade Center attacks that morning, actually brought me to tears in the theater -- the one and only time I have ever cried at the movies. I actually resented him for including those recordings, which felt like an exploitative sucker punch. (That is also why I have yet to see United 93, an experience I had no interest in reliving, though I've heard some good things about it, and maybe I should.) In general, I have preferred works that indirectly approached the events to ones that tackled it head on. It is quite possible that I am forgetting more than one work that deserves more praise. SPURGEON: Do you think there are difficulties specific to this event in terms of making art about it? I've had it suggested to me that the event itself was such an artistic experience on the ground and on TV that it makes suspect other takes on the same circumstances. But I'm not sure why that is. Is it harder to make 9/11 art than it was to make art about Pearl Harbor? What makes it different? HODLER: Is there a lot of great Pearl Harbor art that I am unaware of? The Michael Bay movie was fairly hilariously despicable, and 1941 is justifiably considered a debacle, but I guess From Here to Eternity had its moments. [Spurgeon laughs] I think it is impossible for an artist to wholly capture the experience of a person walking down the street to buy a sandwich, much less the violent deaths of 3000 persons in a politically inspired attack that ended up effecting the lives of nearly everyone on the planet. Which doesn't mean it shouldn't be tried; I'd love to read a novel that really brought to vivid life the whole sandwich-buying experience. Your point about the vast amount of media exposure that 9/11 received from the get go is an interesting one to ponder -- if 24-hour cable news channels existed in the days of "King" Arthur, would we ever have gotten a book as miraculous as Mallory's Le Morte d'Arthur? My guess is no, we wouldn't, and yes, our art and literature has been impoverished by internet-enabled information overload. But that's just how I feel today. On other days, that position would feel like myopic whining. There have always been obstructions to creating complicated, life-enriching art; it's just the nature of the obstacles that change, not their magnitude. SPURGEON: In comics, specifically, did you experience any of the comics tribute issues that came out in the months after 9/11 or have you looked at them or considered them since? The newspaper strips did one as well later that year. Can you articulate a thought or two on the kind of art that resulted? While I'm sure everyone who approached the project did so sincerely, I had a negative reaction to a lot of that art. To paint in broad strokes, I thought the one with the crying superheroes were silly to the point of insult, the ones with people standing outside and musing on the state of the universe were self-indulgent and the ones with patriotic leanings seemed knee-jerk, angry and ill considered. That makes this question loaded as well as rambling, but did you have similar reactions. What did you think then and what do you think now? HODLER: I read the 9/11 Emergency Relief anthology from Alternative Comics when it was published, mostly because my wife was invited to participate and received free copies in exchange, and I read the two DC "Artists Respond" charity anthologies this month, after you invited me to participate in this interview. (I had skimmed them, and the Marvel book, back when they were first published, but didn't read them very thoroughly at the time.) My reactions then and now are extremely similar to yours. In the Alternative book, I found the shorter strips most tolerable, and least risible. Harvey Pekar and Tony Millionaire's modest and clear-headed opening contribution ("I bet it doesn't get any easier from here.") inspired hopes that the rest of the collection couldn't satisfy, though as I mentioned, there are a few strong entries here and there. The stories in both this and the DC books about comic-book fans who just can't believe that Superman didn't save them are and were disheartening, though I remember feeling more sympathy for their emotional stunted nature in 2002, both because the books were for charity, and because many of the cartoonists who participated didn't have a history of artistic ambition. Taking on 9/11 as your first serious attempt at art would be pretty daunting. That said, there was one terrible category you didn't mention: the rambling, twelve-page diary comic stories capturing every mundane detail of the cartoonist's day on September 11, and imbuing it all with terrible significance, even though almost all of them revolved around watching television and talking to Mom on the telephone. (I know I'm asking for it after my answer at the beginning of this interview, but I tried to keep it short and unassuming -- and more importantly, I wouldn't have brought it up if you hadn't asked! I swear.) But yes, supervillains crying over terrorist attacks are moronic, the "philosophical" strips are incredibly underwhelming, and the political strips didn't help much. I did like that Dean Haspiel didn't hesitate about drawing himself shirtless and in boxer-briefs, even in this context. That made me laugh, in a good way. And Frank Miller's "I hate God" strip is fascinating in a keeping-tabs-on-the-progress-of-his-evolving-and-inscrutable-political-philosophy kind of way. There are other strips worth talking about, but I've probably gone on long enough, and anyway, who's rambling now? SPURGEON: There was an interesting notion that was floated around the time of the 9/11 tribute books that they were important divorced from their content because industries that support art forms make books of that kind at turning points in history, have some sort of reaction. To bring it to No Towers, you could also say that art forms that function in a certain way make tribute books and foster books in reaction. Do you think there's anything to that sort of artistic responsibility? HODLER: I can understand why someone in an editorial or publishing position would think, "We need to cover 9/11," or why a weekly or daily cartoonist (especially a political one) would feel obligated to respond to an event of that magnitude. I mean, it would have been weird if Garry Trudeau had just gone on as if nothing had happened. That being said, I would hesitate before dictating to artists any specific responsibilities. I think artists are responsible to their own vision, that they have a duty to express artistic truth (a slippery word) as they see it to the best of their ability. But I think a world in which every cartoonist was forced to publish a response to 9/11 would lead to an enormous amount of bad art. See the contents of the previously mentioned anthologies for evidence of my position. SPURGEON: Are there any works in which you can detect the presence of 9/11 that maybe doesn't work with it explicitly? Is there a hangover that effects the art, and if not, why not? For example, I've wondered after how it hasn't changed the scale of superhero comics, where in the real world this destruction of a few buildings turns the world upside own and in these stories they're frequently leveling entire city blocks in this kind of unrelenting series of physical horrors. But I could imagine a similar effect in any number of comics… is there anything resembling a 9/11 hangover you can think of? HODLER: This is an interesting question for sure, and the answer to it will probably be obvious in hindsight, a decade or two from now. I think in some sense 9/11 itself hasn't caused a hangover (besides a temporary moratorium on disaster movies, and then, as you imply, an intensification of the CGI explosions in them now that they're back), but that subsequent events made possible by it have, such as the Patriot Act, Iraq, Abu Ghraib, et cetera. I'm not sure if I'm reading you right in your comment on superhero comics, but if you're saying that there seems to be even more city-destroying mayhem than before, I think you're probably right, or at least it feels that way. One other thing that has changed is that both of the big superhero companies, Marvel in particular, seem to have figured out that piggy-backing on current events, even in the most half-assed way, can lead to media coverage. This is a pretty obvious thing to point out, but it's still maybe worth mentioning that line-wide events like Civil War and Dark Reign, et cetera, are largely fueled by recent world history, which I think is fairly new for superhero comics, at least to this huge extent. And of course, you have the constant dark "crises" at DC as well, which may not be new, but certainly grew more unrelenting. It's hard for me to tell how much of this is due to recent politics and how much is due to the state of the market as a whole, but it's there. It is fascinating to me how much "alternative" comic-book artists have avoided the politics and history of the Bush era. It's a far cry from the underground days. I don't know whether that's good or bad, but it's understandable, as it's hard to make political art that is actually art. But I remember when Zap #15 came out, which included a Gilbert Shelton Wonder Warthog story that took on contemporary American politics. It wasn't really a particularly good strip, actually, but it still felt like something of an indictment of the timidity of so many current younger cartoonists. Then again, the culture has changed, and as I said above, I don't believe that artists have a responsibility to take on these things unless they feel the calling. It still seems remarkable that so few do feel the calling. I also think that without Osama bin Laden, Lord of the Rings would not have won Best Picture. SPURGEON: Can you give me a few sentences of thought on Art Spiegelman, where he stands in your personal pantheon of comics creators and as an arts figure generally? Did you have expectations based on that view when opening this book? HODLER: Art Spiegelman is unarguably one of the most important figures in comic-books of the past thirty-five or so years, but he's never been a particular favorite of mine. I find his persona grating; he is sometimes comes off as irritatingly self-involved, and his critical enthusiasms often appear curated for hip credibility and respectability (an odd thing to claim of a cartoonist, I know, but still). These very personal, unfair, and probably irrelevant criticisms aside, Maus was the first comic I ever read with unmistakable artistic ambitions, and I still think it one of the very greatest, most successful, and most moving single works ever created in the medium. That alone earns him a lifetime pass, and when you add the nearly impossible to overstate influence of RAW, you've got two lifetime passes, which is a record for American cartoonists. His critical essays are pretty much unfailingly insightful and deeply considered, even when I disagree with them, and he's produced a handful of New Yorker covers that will probably be considered classics for as long as the magazine is remembered. Breakdowns and the new memoir are interesting and important minor works, but I'm not much of a fan of most of the other comics and illustrations I have seen from him. His recently published sketchbooks are valuable and surprisingly revealing, of not only his artistic limitations, but also his insecurities, and what I (cringe to) call his generosity in allowing readers access to them. Oh, and the Toon Treasury of Classic Children's Comics he co-edited this year is impeccable. In terms of my expectations towards In the Shadow of No Towers: I had read some of the strips in their serialized form, and did not have high hopes for the book as a whole, but was still very interested to read it -- as I will be in nearly anything he chooses to publish -- for all the reasons stated above. SPURGEON: Spiegelman was busy enough with various comics and related projects in the 1990s that we sometimes forget In The Shadow Of No Towers was his first major comics project after Maus. Is there anything in the reading of it that indicates its place in Spiegelman's career to you? How does it function as a follow-up to that work? As I recall, there are outright references to this work following Maus in the introduction and in the text. HODLER: Earlier you brought up the question of whether or not artists had a responsibility to cover 9/11. Besides a few stray references in the text to the earlier work -- none of which seemed particularly resonant to me -- I think the main influence that Maus had on No Towers was to make its creation inevitable. Maus made Spiegelman the go-to guy for taking on the unspeakable. I don't think it functions as a follow-up in any other meaningful way, and think Spiegelman was wise to avoid making the connections too prevalent or obtrusive -- though they are there a bit. Mostly, Maus makes No Towers look bad. SPURGEON: As you've probably guessed, I struggled greatly with In The Shadow Of No Towers as a response to 9/11, and I wondered how you looked it. Looking at it recently, I saw a bunch of discordant elements that never really cohered to pull things in any one direction. There's an element of reaction by making art, but also a repudiation of past artistic approaches and this outright nostalgic celebration of a lost past. How do you think No Towers functions as Spiegelman's response to what he saw and how he was feeling? HODLER: In his introduction, he calls it "a slow-motion diary of what I experienced while seeking provisional equanimity," and that strikes me as accurate. More than any of his other comics, with the possible exception of "Prisoner On The Hell Planet," No Towers reads something like art-as-therapy. Much of it appears haphazardly put together, sloppily argued -- often crudely drawn -- and straining for a significance it's unable to articulate for readers. And yet, at least to someone who lived in New York in that era, it definitely evokes the emotional state of those years -- which were often enormously frustrating and confusing and panic-strewn. It doesn't appear to me he was able to shape a lot of the raw emotional subject matter into a cohesive whole, but the parts are there. Or at least some of them are. The most fundamental problem with the book to me is the fact that Art Spiegelman didn't have much of a story to tell -- nothing really happened to him! Or at least, not much more than happened to me. All he did was see one of the planes hit, and then go take his kids out of school. This wouldn't necessarily be a problem if so much of the comic didn't revolve around the idea that the experience was profound and of universal interest, something he never convincingly demonstrates. One of the more interesting failed communications in the book can be found in what Spiegelman calls "the pivotal image of my 9/11 morning -- one that didn't get photographed or videotaped into public memory but still remains burned onto the inside of my eyelids several years later ... the image of the looming north tower's glowing bones just before it vaporized." This image, as he created it with computer software, is repeated throughout the ten strips that make up the book, and doesn't really register at all. It's not a powerful image, except apparently in Spiegelman's mind -- instead it just looks cheesy and half-baked. That the symbol so pivotal to Spiegelman, something I would not have guessed if we didn't have the introduction -- and obviously we do have it so we should keep that in mind, comes off as so underwhelming is indicative of many of the book's shortcomings. Despite the book's flaws, it still holds a lot of interest, if only to see how such formally minded an artist as Spiegelman attempts -- and fails -- to solve various problems of representation. And while it often appears overwrought and out-of-control, Spiegelman openly admits as much within the strip itself, and there is, or was -- this is one of the ways a book like this can date itself -- something cathartic about his willingness to attack the then-prevailing let's-conquer-Iraq-and-by-the-way-you're-a-traitor mindset so unequivocally. It sometimes seems impossible to believe just how dramatically limited the public expression of dissent really became. I think it's only in the last strip that Spiegelman really succeeds in his aims -- despite the fairly obvious visual metaphor he creates by formatting two columns to resemble the twin towers. In that one, he recounts an interview he gave to NBC for the 9/11 "Concert for America" as part of a collection of conversations with "typical New Yorkers." For the first time in the book, he describes an experience that really is fairly unique, and he manages to make something funny and poignant out of it. The gears-switching in the final panels displays an awareness and control mostly absent from the rest of the book. Not enough to save it, but enough to make me wonder what he could have done with this subject if he'd waited a few years before taking it on. But then we wouldn't have got the book we do have, which is almost more fascinating because of its flaws. Hell, Spiegelman's already made a near perfect book, maybe it's more rewarding now to work without a net and see what results. SPURGEON: A lot of my comics-reading friends seemed to have a hard time with Spiegelman's choice to look at old art work, both as an appropriate or even interesting way to process the event. How do you view that impulse from Spiegelman? Does it work for you, both as an inquiry of its own and as it's presented here? HODLER: I don't know. I didn't quite buy Spiegelman's claim that no art could get past his defenses in those days except for these old comic strips; the idea that everything from Aeschylus to Rembrandt to Beethoven was useless next to Happy Hooligan is alien to me. But I love old comics too, and the idea of reviving them for a contemporary audience is admirable. (It's interesting that this book came out a year before So Many Splendid Sundays, and in a way, was one of the first books in the recent wave of reprinting old strips in something approaching their original size.) For the most part, unfortunately, I don't think he was able to really make the connections between his project and the older work cohere in any meaningful way. It was nice to see them, but their connection to current events seemed a stretch at best. Except, I guess, for the reminder they give that even dramatic and monumental events usually lose their force and meaning for later generations. SPURGEON: Does looking at In The Shadow Of No Towers now engender a different set of reactions than earlier readings? What maybe stands out now that wasn't apparent then? HODLER: One thing that struck me upon re-reading it at this late date is just how much context it is necessary for the reader to provide on his or her own: just as in the political cartoons Spiegelman has claimed not to want to emulate, very little of the symbols are explained. Why is Cheney portrayed as slitting the American eagle's throat? You'd never know from these comics alone. Also, the crudeness of the drawings and rudimentary experimentation with computers seems far more forgivable to me now than it did in 2004. I basically find it no more impressive aesthetically than I did then, but am more drawn to it as an emotional experience and as a rather audacious act of self-revealment. SPURGEON: One of the ways this book functions as a book of the decade is in its unorthodox presentation and formatting. I know that a lot of people were dissatisfied with it at the time, but how do you feel about this book as an object? HODLER: I think that ideally it would not have been marketed as a $20 oversize book, packaged in such a way as to appear weighty and large, when it really consisted of only ten original comic strips and a handful of reprints. I'm sure market considerations drove that decision, but it isn't surprising that so many readers felt cheated. I remember thinking at the time that it took some guts to put out a ten-page book with pages thick enough to make it look like 200 pages. I mean, look at how much more you got in just one similarly priced volume of Maus. Still, now that my $20 is five years gone, the sense of being taken for a ride has faded. I like that the strips are big. Perhaps it would have been better published as a softcover, but Pantheon probably wasn't interested in letting a potential cash cow gift book like this slip by unexploited. It's nice to have some large examples of [Lyonel] Feininger and George McManus, at least. SPURGEON: Spiegelman had another chance -- an earlier chance -- to comment on that world event: his New Yorker cover with the black on black towers. Do you have any comment on the effectiveness (or not) of that image, and how it might relate to his more considered efforts later on? HODLER: It's hard for me to imagine many cover illustrations that could have portrayed that event without cheapening it; Spiegelman's cover was an elegant and impressive solution. The most obvious way it relates to the book is in its re-appearance on the latter's cover, and in the inspiration it presumably provided for the title. It is funny, though -- the best two pages by far created by Spiegelman were this early cover image and the last strip, nearly two years later in conception. ***** * In The Shadow Of No Towers, Art Spiegelman, Pantheon, 9780375423079, 2004, 42 pages, $19.95 ***** This year's CR Holiday Interview Series features some of the best writers about comics talking about emblematic -- by which we mean favorite, representative or just plain great -- books from the ten-year period 2000-2009. The writer provides a short list of books, comics or series they believe qualify; I pick one from their list that sounds interesting to me and we talk about it. It's been a long, rough and fascinating decade. Our hope is that this series will entertain from interview to interview but also remind all of us what a remarkable time it has been and continues to be for comics as an art form. We wish you the happiest of holidays no matter how you worship or choose not to. Thank you so much for reading The Comics Reporter. * CR Holiday Interview One: Sean T. Collins On Blankets * CR Holiday Interview Two: Frank Santoro On Multiforce * CR Holiday Interview Three: Bart Beaty On Persepolis * CR Holiday Interview Four: Kristy Valenti On So Many Splendid Sundays * CR Holiday Interview Five: Shaenon Garrity On Achewood * CR Holiday Interview Six: Christopher Allen On Powers * CR Holiday Interview Seven: David P. Welsh On MW * CR Holiday Interview Eight: Robert Clough On ACME Novelty Library #19 * CR Holiday Interview Nine: Jeet Heer On Louis Riel * CR Holiday Interview Ten: Chris Mautner On Scott Pilgrim ***** ***** *****

Chris Mautner and I shared a comics shop before either of us did any work related to comics: Joe Miller's The Comic Store in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. We met in the 1990s after I had moved from central Pennsylvania to Seattle. It was my pleasure to use his work at The Comics Journal in the late 1990s. He's since gone on to a fine run of writing about comics for sources as wide-ranging as the Harrisburg Patriot-News, his own Panels and Pixels and CBR's intimidating comics blog Robot 6. He submitted a short list that included Bryan Lee O'Malley's Scott Pilgrim. I think that's undoubtedly one of the comics of the last ten years -- look at those covers! -- and I was excited to mull over its success with Chris. -- Tom Spurgeon ***** TOM SPURGEON: Here's a simple question, I hope. How did you discover the Scott Pilgrim work, and if your relationship has changed since that initial encounter, how would you describe those changes? Do you like it more now than you did at first, for example? CHRIS MAUTNER: If memory serves I discovered it a bit before the third volume came out, which would be around ... [sound of shuffling papers]... 2005? 2006? Somewhere around then. I believe like most folks I learned about the series through word of mouth over the Internet. I remember Heidi raving about it at the time and a few other folks as well. Remember that store Riot that Jason Richards owned? He'd always talk up SP whenever I was in his store and I believe I ended up buying the first two volumes from him. It was the sort of thing where "everyone says this is awesome, so I suppose I should at least give it a try." To my delight and surprise, I enjoyed it thoroughly, which is usually not the case in those sorts of instances. I definitely think my appreciation for the series has deepened over time, if only because O'Malley has shown that he's not interested in having the series just be a light, fluffy comedy. There are those elements, of course, and I enjoy them for what they are, but it's apparent with each subsequent volume that he's trying for something a bit more emotionally complex and studied than a simple action-flavored rom-com, if I can use that abysmal term. SPURGEON: One of the things most obviously known and celebrated about the comic is its assimilation of videogame approach to visuals, characterization, timing and even narrative structure. You among all the writers about comics I know have a background writing about videogames, and I wonder how much the knowledge you have of that field drives your appreciation of O'Malley's work? Beyond noting those similarities, do you think O'Malley is using them in a creatively satisfying way? Is there a specific moment or two from the books that speak to you this way? MAUTNER: There have, of course been comics about video games before -- Penny Arcade springs immediately to mind, and I'm sure there were Donkey Kong and Zelda comics back in the day -- but O'Malley is the first cartoonist to my mind to use videogame tropes as metaphors for the characters' inner emotions and states of mind. I know some critics find them kind of glib, I think that was a sticking point for whoever it was that wrote that negative review in TCJ, as though he's doing them "just because" in that kind of facile Dennis Miller sort of way, but I think that's too easy a complaint. It seems easily apparent to me that these references carry more significance than "Hey, Sonic. I used to play that, too." It's important to note, I think, that most of the references are what one would consider "old-school." There's a nostalgia factor at work there (deliberately so, I think). O'Malley doesn't reference "Halo" or "Madden" or whatever the big video games of the past few years have been -- I've been out of the gaming scene for awhile -- but the big "classic" titles like Street Fighter, Sonic the Hedgehog and Super Mario World. I think these gamers are a real cultural touchstone for a lot of people from O'Malley's generation, in the same way that, say, the Beatles and Stones were for Baby Boomers or Saturday morning cartoons were for Gen Xers, if I can make a ridiculous statement like that. I actually think O'Malley's videogame references are one of his more obvious tics. Everyone notices them but no one seems to really notice or say much about his manga and anime influences (other than Jog, who made it the focal point of his interview with him at SPX two years ago). He's one of the first (if not the first) North American cartoonists to successfully incorporate manga idioms into his own style. I hate to say it, but most of the other "OEL" creators, to my mind, come off as desperately trying to ape manga but only getting the surface elements and coming off as ill-thought out and shallow. I don't think you can say that about Scott Pilgrim. In many ways I see Scott Pilgrim as the dividing line between the new and upcoming generation of cartoonists and the established folks. It's a demarcation point, a push pin in the time line, same as Zap Comix was in the '60s and Love and Rockets was in the '80s. I'm not making an aesthetic comparison here, I'm saying in terms of a historical shift, Scott Pilgrim is something you can point to and say "Here is when a new generation of cartoonists started drawing on influences outside of the traditional comics sphere of influence (EC, the undergrounds, Marvel/DC) and looking to other works, most notably manga." Does that make any sense? SPURGEON: Are there any ways that you feel at a remove from the work? It's by a younger cartoonist, and I remember when I first started reading works by cartoonists from a generation emerging after my own there were frequently ideas and approaches I found tricky to negotiate. How do you reconcile with this comic, and maybe comics generally, that are outside your own immediate experiences? Put another way, do you feel that there's enough that's universal in Scott Pilgrim that people can react to it no matter if they're in that headspace and that general world right now? What exactly are those elements? MAUTNER: Good question. I suppose I feel a bit of a reserve in that I'm in my late 30s and am married with kids and have a midlife crisis waiting for me on the horizon. The sort of angst that Scott and his crew are engaged in -- figuring out who they are, what they want to do with their lives, if they're capable of love and commitment -- is something I've already been through. Having said that, it's not like I can't identify or remember having those sorts of experiences and feelings, even if I didn't experience them as intensely -- or comically -- as Scott. I think O'Malley is touching on some pretty universal emotions. More to the point, I think there's bit of wish fulfillment in that Scott Pilgrim is how we'd like our 20s to be -- to be in a band and going to clubs and bars and having a large group of lovable friends and constantly saying witty things. I think O'Malley's genius lies in how he manages to subvert that in the last two volumes, hinting that Scott's feckless ways may be entertaining, but isn't really that great a way to live your life. Honestly, I'm not sure I've ever come across a comic that made me feel on the outside looking in. I think a good comic invites you in and makes you feel a part of whatever world it's creating and a bad one leaves you standing awkwardly around with a confused look on your face. I suppose that's too simplistic an answer though. What about you? Did you have trouble accessing Pilgrim in the way you describe? Did the anime and game references leave you scratching your head? SPURGEON: Not really, I guess the references I don't get kind of blow by. I realize afterwards I might not be understanding some of the material on a certain level, but it doesn't feel like I'm missing out, if you know what I mean. I'm sort of surprised how comfortable the work feels to me. Maybe I've adjusted to seeing those things through other people's eyes, as you suggest. It does sort of feel like I'm hearing about my friends' kids and their circle of friends than about my own experiences or those of my peer group. But the experience seems grounded and real to me, even if it's on somebody's plate down the table rather than on my own. The characters work for me. What is it that O'Malley does that people are able to imprint on or just enthuse over when it comes to the characters in the books? MAUTNER: I think the characters are the central appeal of the series. I think O'Malley's characters and how he's deepened his portrayal of them over time, so that even walk-ons like Young Neil are shown to have a bit of depth and and complexity to them, is what continues to draw people to the series. I think it's really as simple as O'Malley's cast is filled with likable people that resemble folks we know or have bumped into just enough to allow for reader identification. Again, I think that issue of fantasy and wish fulfillment plays into the series' success as well. Who wouldn't want to live a life where you get to fight robots and ninjas, play bass in a band and have a witty gay roommate while trying to win the heart of your true love? SPURGEON: I think this was true of Peter Bagge's work in the 1990s, but do you think people dismiss or underestimate O'Malley's work because it's frequently funny and drawn in a lively fashion? Do you feel the general reaction to Scott Pilgrim has exposed anything about how we look at comics this decade, what we like and dislike and why? MAUTNER: You forgot to mention the fact that it's been very successful. If there's one thing people are quick to hate, it's something that everyone else loves, especially a quick success that comes from a relative newcomer like O'Malley. To answer your question: yes, I do think people tend to dismiss SP because it's funny and lively. It's not a problem that's particular to comics. It's the old "comedies never win Oscars" thing. I think because it's funny and cartoony, and has stuff like ninjas and video game references, SP is seen as lightweight, middlebrow fare. I don't think it is at all, but I think that's the general perception by some critics, especially those in the more art/indie comix side of the room. Like I said earlier, I think for better or for worse, Scott Pilgrim has become the standard bearer for the new generation of comics and cartoonists who draw from more sources than just Chris Ware or Frank Miller. People like Hope Larson (duh), Brandon Graham, Corey Lewis, Jason Shiga, a lot of the Oni and SLG folks, etc. SPURGEON: I believe this is the only work discussed in this short series of interviews that's serialized in book form, which interests me for a lot of reasons. There's something about the experience of a sprawl of work, where the people following the work get to return to it time after time. Given that you've seen his work over a number of years in this decade, how is O'Malley a different cartoonist in book five than he was in book one? In what ways has he managed to sustain a level of visual quality that allows the series to cohere? MAUTNER: One of the best things for me about reading Scott Pilgrim is you get to see O'Malley steadily improve as an artist and storyteller. His line has become a lot more confident and tighter as the books have progressed. His storytelling skills have increased exponentially as well. It's exciting to see him take chances with the narrative, via flashbacks or what have you. You get the sense he's constantly trying to up his game. It's like you're watching an artist turn from neophyte -- for want of a better word -- to professional, but over the course of one series instead of from work to work, which is usually the case these days. SPURGEON: One of the nice things about these books is that there is a sense of progression, a growing sense of maturity without that notion being pressed -- one of the great traditional strengths of serial art when it's done well. Do you also look at these books in terms of the ideas they communicate on the issues broached? Does Scott Pilgrim say something to you about idea like commitment and friendship and love? MAUTNER: Oh yeah, absolutely. I think those are the main themes of the series -- as a former English major, I'm always looking for "themes." Actually, I think the major theme of SP is the issue of maturity, in the sense of being willing to change your personality or your bad behavior in order to make a more stable and happy life for yourself. There's a scene in Volume 5 where Ramona calls Young Neil an asshole and he replies, "I'm young, I'll grow out of it." It occurs to me in rereading these books that that line is pretty much the epigraph for the series as a whole. Only I think O'Malley would put a question mark at the end of that sentence. SPURGEON: Do you think the fact these books are regarded differently for their almost instant relative success in the comics world and now the film puts pressure on a project like this one, or even potentially changes the work from what it might have been? MAUTNER: Well, success is a bitch and the fact that it's being made into a film that shows all signs of becoming a cult hit will probably create even more of a backlash against the books. I think in the case of Scott Pilgrim, it's pretty clear that O'Malley has had the basic framework of his story set up from the beginning and isn't going to do very much to change it at this point just to answer to the prevailing winds of angry reviews or message board posts or what have you. I've got no business giving anyone career advice, but I hope that whatever O'Malley does for his next project after SP he doesn't attempt some sort of super-serious dramaturgy just to show that he is indeed capable of handling serious stuff. I think that would be a mistake. SPURGEON: How much do you think your opinion of the work could change according to how the series ends? Do you feel sometimes that we rush to judgment about books given that they're frequently serialized either in print or on-line? MAUTNER: Yes, we do frequently rush to judgment, but that's human nature. How many times do we avoid a movie based on the trailer or TV show based on the first episode, etc.? Certainly I think we can both rattle off a number of comics with lengthy stories we've passed on after only reading an issue or two. It's certainly possible that the final two volumes of SP could completely alter our perception of what's come before, though I hope it would do so in a good way. SPURGEON: Where would you detect or how would you measure the book's influence? What's important and emblematic of the decade about Scott Pilgrim? Why are people singularly disappointed when it doesn't appear on best-of lists or enter into the conversation about books of the decade? MAUTNER: Are people disappointed? I'm kind of at a loss as to what the general consensus is on the series. I know there is a huge fan base and some folks who hate it but that's about it. SPURGEON: All I mean is that Scott Pilgrim has very, very devoted fans who are confident of its quality to the point where it not making a list is a cause for indicting that list. I've seen a couple of comments like "No Scott Pilgrim? No way!" I haven't seen, "No The Ticking? No way!" I think that people are so willing to stick up for it is an admirable quality, and suggests how hard the work has hit with a lot of its readers. MAUTNER: It does seem like it tends to get ignored whenever people make up those end of the year lists though doesn't it? I, for example, completely forgot until working on this with you that volume five came out this past February! I probably wouldn't haven't even thought to have included it on my best of '09 list otherwise. And I like Scott Pilgrim! I tend to think that's because it came out early in the year and there have been so many good books in general this year -- to offer another movie analogy, it's the old "the academy only nominates movies that come out in the fall" schtick). I do think Scott Pilgrim gets buried a little bit just by the weight of quality work that's out there. Our inner snobs are probably pushing to dismiss it because it is so light and -- delightfully -- silly at times. It's not about big, weighty issues like Footnotes In Gaza or engage in lots of obvious formalist tricks like Asterios Polyp. Has volume five been on anyone's "best of list" so far this year? SPURGEON: I'm sure it has been. MAUTNER: Would you include it on yours? SPURGEON: I haven't even begun to think about mine yet. I get your point, though. MAUTNER: I think ultimately Pilgrim's influence will be seen in the works of the coming generation. Like I said, I think this series is going to be a touchstone for creators of a certain age and I wouldn't be too surprised if the next couple of years of CCS and SVA grads start listing Scott Pilgrim as one of their biggest influences and we see it referenced in their own comics. I think once the series is done and people have time to contemplate the whole work, its critical cachet will go up a bit as well. ***** * Scott Pilgrim, Volume One: Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life, Bryan Lee O'Malley, Oni Press, softcover, 168 pages, 9781932664089, 2004, $11.95 * Scott Pilgrim, Volume Two: Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Bryan Lee O'Malley, Oni Press, softcover, 200 pages, 9781932664126, 2005, $11.95 * Scott Pilgrim, Volume Three: Scott Pilgrim & the Infinite Sadness, Bryan Lee O'Malley, Oni Press, softcover, 192 pages, 9781932664225, 2006, $11.95 * Scott Pilgrim, Volume Four: Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together, Bryan Lee O'Malley, Oni Press, softcover, 216 pages, 9781932664492, 2007, $11.95 * Scott Pilgrim, Volume Five: Scott Pilgrim vs. The Universe, Bryan Lee O'Malley, Oni Press, softcover, 184 pages, 9781934964101, 2009, $11.95 ***** This year's CR Holiday Interview Series features some of the best writers about comics talking about emblematic -- by which we mean favorite, representative or just plain great -- books from the ten-year period 2000-2009. The writer provides a short list of books, comics or series they believe qualify; I pick one from their list that sounds interesting to me and we talk about it. It's been a long, rough and fascinating decade. Our hope is that this series will entertain from interview to interview but also remind all of us what a remarkable time it has been and continues to be for comics as an art form. We wish you the happiest of holidays no matter how you worship or choose not to. Thank you so much for reading The Comics Reporter. * CR Holiday Interview One: Sean T. Collins On Blankets * CR Holiday Interview Two: Frank Santoro On Multiforce * CR Holiday Interview Three: Bart Beaty On Persepolis * CR Holiday Interview Four: Kristy Valenti On So Many Splendid Sundays * CR Holiday Interview Five: Shaenon Garrity On Achewood * CR Holiday Interview Six: Christopher Allen On Powers * CR Holiday Interview Seven: David P. Welsh On MW * CR Holiday Interview Eight: Robert Clough On ACME Novelty Library #19 * CR Holiday Interview Nine: Jeet Heer On Louis Riel ***** ***** *****

The cartoonist and artist Frank Santoro has in the last few years become one of my favorite thinkers about comics, and I'm always pleased to spend some time basking in his opinions about and love for the comics form. I don't care if that means reading a piece he wrote for Comics Comics; enjoying from the audience a confrontational, rollicking appearance on a small-press show's panel; or simply listening to him hold forth from behind his box of curated 1980s comic books -- I'm there. Within comics' tiny world he's that wonderful cliche "a force of nature," and my enjoyment of comics over the last few years would be poorer without Santoro around. I wanted to revisit Mat Brinkman's jaw-dropping Multiforce with Frank. While I've been basing one or two questions per chat on what this year's interview subjects have written about the comics they've selected, when that's possible, I like Frank's original essay on his choice so much that for a few questions there I basically just made him re-argue the whole thing, only this time so we could watch. Sorry, Frank. You're welcome, everybody else. -- Tom Spurgeon ***** TOM SPURGEON: Frank, I don't think we've talked about this before, but how exactly did you end up writing about comics as well as making them? Have you always done that, or is that a new thing in your relationship to art? Has it had a beneficial or detrimental effect on the way you make art, to operate from an analytical point of view? FRANK SANTORO: I'm just doing my best Bill Boichel impression. He's such an amazing talker. I learned so much from listening to Bill ramble on and on. He can really articulate all these far flung ideas about comics. I just tried to do that when we started Comics Comics. And starting Comics Comics was just Dan, Tim and me wanting to write about comics the way we talked about them. So... I dunno. Before that I was assisting painters. Like abstract painters and portrait painters. So I had to be able to talk to them about their work while it was being made. Lots of thinking on my feet and trying to explain things that have no way of being concretely explained. Artists seem to talk about things differently to each other than they do when speaking to the audience or a critic. I thought if I started writing about comics I could represent a different viewpoint. It's helped me in how I go about making things. I'm more alert, more aware of what my motivations are when working. And most importantly, I'm more aware of what I'm trying to say in my work and how I want to present that work to the audience. SPURGEON: Multiforce originally appeared in Paper Rodeo, one of the most influential comics publications of the last 20 years. Is that where you encountered this work? What was your impression of Paper Rodeo generally? SANTORO: I first encountered Multiforce in Paper Rodeo, yes. Dan Nadel showed them to me in like 2004. I was late to the party. My impression of Paper Rodeo was that it was a sloppy mess. I didn't like it. It took me awhile to "see" what was going on. It's wildly uneven. But that's its charm. And don't forget it was sort of antithetical to the spit and polish of "literary comics." So that's charming, too. Or was back in 2004. I read all the Multiforce strips when Dan tore them all out of Paper Rodeo and collected them all in one binder for his own reference and reading pleasure. That was when I really began to study the strips. It helped me to see how connected those serialized strips were. And how sophisticated the construction was and how it all read as a comic strip. SPURGEON: In your short collection of notes on Multiforce you talk about not really engaging with Brinkman the cartoonist as much as with some of his other artistic pursuits. What is it you prefer about Brinkman as an artist? SANTORO: The drawings look so different in person. Seeing his work in a gallery is just so immediate. His line, the ink, the paper -- it's just gorgeous stuff to behold. It's just so successful as drawing. His exhibition at Fumetto this year was amazing. Maybe 50 drawings of grotesque heads. All good. All made with no hesitation. They radiated heat. The comics are more like collages, I think. He's assembling bits, gags, action, etc in Multiforce and he's doing it in such an organized, complex fashion that it's a little overwhelming. That's the opposite approach, I think, of the single large drawings that are for an exhibition. One is an intimate reading where prolonged engagement is encouraged. The other is a public display where immediacy counts. It's not about preferring one or the other -- the comics or the work done for exhibitions. I simply appreciated him first as a poster artist, designer and sculptor before I appreciated him as a cartoonist. I mean, he may have created some of the most memorable "rock posters" since the Fillmore posters of the 1960's. And I haven't even mentioned Forcefield. SPURGEON: I know this may be a frustrating, but can you describe exactly what you mean when you mention the architecture of the world in Multiforce? How wide a conception are we talking? SANTORO: I don't mean "world building." I mean how he effortlessly scales from tiny detail to mammoth proportion in a three panel sequence. That's very difficult to do convincingly. Brinkman's skill lies in his phrasing style. He constructs pages out of connecting routines. So the narrative itself is built into the segments. The routines, like a giant head rolling down a hill, aren't front and center like in most comics. They're like backdrops for the gag cartoons that float around. There's a tension between the elements. It's an expansion on his earlier style which was much more about following a main character through a landscape. In contrast, the phrasing style of Multiforce is more like a diagram. It grows and grows and builds upon itself like a city; like a shattered mirror. That's the architecture as I see it. It 's the drawing. It's the scaling of panels in an organic manner that is pleasing to look at. There's evident vibrancy in the lines and forms. Those all build together in ways that I rarely see. Figures, landscapes, psychic space. Brinkman's offering a glimpse into a real world. A wide world. SPURGEON: Do you think that the spiraling effect that you talk about, that Brinkman's pacing comes from the creation of places of visual interest and then allowing readers to move between them, is entirely a conscious one on Brinkman's part? Is it a strategy that he employs to a specific narrative effect, or a just an outgrowth of his way of conceiving story and narrative? SANTORO: I think it's just natural to him. And the reason why it's appealing for me as a reader is that it feels natural to read. He's as conscious of it as any artist is to what "feels right." I also think that this natural strategy is something that was honed by doing "straight ahead" comics first and then sort of experimenting with ways of composing large pages with smaller fragments. The spiraling effect is something that goes back to the architecture of the pages themselves. Despite the left to right, top to bottom arc of the reader's eye, the page is experienced as a whole all at once. And Brinkman's beautiful arrangements are like nothing I've ever experienced so completely in comics. The arrangements don't feel rigid or cold. They feel natural. He understands how to move the reader through the page. He doesn't zoom you around the page or bog you down in detail. The centers of visual interest are fragments of the whole. And all these fragments sort of fold back on each other and build up. My eye spirals around the page when this happens. It reads like a web. And one could say that he built his pages in this fashion. A sort of ramshackle symmetry. SPURGEON: I agree with you that Multiforce has a strong narrative component, but I was wondering just how we know that, given how so much of what Brinkman's artwork asks us to do is dance playfully in and out of these startling visual tableaux. When we're looking at these page as a map, or as a lively Sunday page from some distant planet, how are we still sensing the story? Or we reading it both ways at once? Do we eventually settle in for a more standard reading? SANTORO: Yah. My "return readings" are more standard now. I still experience it all at once, it dances around but now I, as a reader, feel more settled. There's so much to see, to explore that I find new paths to follow. The story surrounds me & I'm aware of it but it's like a war or something. It's the background. Giants are destroying castles in the background and Micromen are making me laugh in the foreground. Each page is a main event with an undercard. I mean I can see how one could say "I don't see the plot" or wonder where the main narrative thread is going -- but Brinkman's phrasing style gives me a more complete reading experience. How does he accomplish this? I really don't know. It's uncanny. I think there is such a remarkable fusion of storytelling and drawing in Multiforce. I just get lost in there. It crushes me. Good storytelling, good sequencing. And great drawing. Man. SPURGEON: Can you talk a little more about how you feel that Multiforce is of its time? Is it just the complexity of it that feels right now to you? Is that more of general feeling than maybe one that can be qualified? SANTORO: The short answer for me is: Love and Rockets mirrored the '80s, ACME Novelty Library mirrored the '90s, and Multiforce mirrored the '00s. The longer answer is: I've seen how people far and wide react to Brinkman's work. It's really interesting. The director of Fumetto in Switzerland spoke his name with reverence. His peers in the fine art world also speak very highly of him. There are very few people whom I respect who don't "get" him. He's himself through and through. Genuine. Sincere. A serious craftsman. Artisan. Artist. Cartoonist. Same thing. Same reaction on both sides of the fence. Does that qualify him as "of his time"? Maybe. But I think it's more of an echo of how far his voice has carried. SPURGEON: How much do you relate to the gaming aesthetic that so many people seem to immediately latch onto? Is it fair to simply describe what Brinkman does here in terms of it being like a video game? SANTORO: Sure if that's a gateway for readers to engage the work. That's an easy "in," y'know? So, go for it if that's the way the work speaks to you. Because once you're "in the game" you can see and feel how far it goes. You can keep playing so to speak. And then I think the reader will connect to other elements that are beyond its genre trappings. SPURGEON: I know this is sort of a ridiculous thing to ask, Frank, but how much of what Multiforce accomplishes do you think can inspire people beyond the excitement we all feel when encountering a significant work? I know that when I first saw Chris Ware's work in an issue of New City, it immediately suggested to me a way of doing comics where I could imagine other people doing something along those same lines, and I'm not sure I can conceive of what work that was inspired by Brinkman would even look like. How much of this work is for Brinkman alone and how much does it speak to other artists, do you think? SANTORO: I really feel that Brinkman taps into some universal voice. And like I said I've seen audiences respond to it. It may be how well he draws or what he draws, I don't know, but Brinkman's voice carries and it resonates with the crowd. Funny, scary, pretty. Gorgeous drawings that scare the shit out of you and then make you laugh. Audiences love that. I love that. I think it's inspiring work. I can definitely see Brinkman's influence on comics. There's a seduction to the drawing and I can imagine kids wanting to ape it. And I mean that simply because it looks easy to draw. That's the seduction: it looks easy. But it ain't. And I think that's how or why it speaks to other makers of art. It's like hearing a really good band live and not quite believing it, wondering, are these guys really that good? You look around the room and everyone is just digging the band. And then later everyone agrees that was an awesome show, maybe one of the best shows they've ever seen. To me, that's how Brinkman's been working audiences for over a decade. ***** * Multiforce, Mat Brinkman, PictureBox Inc., 22 pages, Spring 2009, $15 ***** This year's CR Holiday Interview Series features some of the best writers about comics talking about emblematic -- by which we mean favorite, representative or just plain great -- books from the ten-year period 2000-2009. The writer provides a short list of books, comics or series they believe qualify; I pick one from their list that sounds interesting to me and we talk about it. It's been a long, rough and fascinating decade. Our hope is that this series will entertain from interview to interview but also remind all of us what a remarkable time it has been and continues to be for comics as an art form. We wish you the happiest of holidays no matter how you worship or choose not to. Thank you so much for reading The Comics Reporter. * CR Holiday Interview One: Sean T. Collins On Blankets ***** ***** *****

Sean T. Collins lives in Leavittown, New York and was I think the first writer to be receiving assignments simultaneously from Wizard and The Comics Journal. He currently writes for the CBR team blog Robot 6 and for his own blog at Attentiondeficitdisorderly Too Flat, in addition to a number of print and on-line clients. Collins has an interesting critical voice for several reasons; one that I find particularly useful is that he wandered into this current age of excellent comics as a blank slate. There's not a lot of an industry bottoming out in the late 1990s evident in Sean's writing, as I'm sometimes afraid there may be in my own. Collins and I settled on Craig Thompson's massive Blankets, published by Top Shelf in 2003. ***** TOM SPURGEON: Where did Blankets hit you on your personal discovery of comics and graphic novels? You have one of the more immediate immersions into the art form, so it's always a question I like to ask you. Had you read a lot of big comics like this one before? SEAN T. COLLINS: It's funny you should ask this. Just a couple days ago I was talking with a friend about whether or not I should do a best-of-the-decade list, and he suggested I think of doing one as a guide for people who are interested in discovering what's good out there but didn't know where to begin. I realized that that was pretty much my story, this decade. Prior to 2001, I wasn't really a "comics reader," though I'd read comics, including Jimmy Corrigan in the individual ACME Novelty Library issues. But once I got started in earnest, I jumped in with both feet. Blankets memorably debuted at MoCCA in 2003, along with Kramers Ergot 4 and The Frank Book, both of which I also picked up, which I think gives some indication of where I was at in terms of my interest in ability to read sophisticated comics. Looking over my best-of list for 2003, there's Mat Brinkman, Gilbert Hernandez, Marc Bell, plenty of Ware... in other words Blankets wasn't a "gateway comic" for me, it was something I consumed alongside serious literary and avant garde comics, in the same way I consumed those comics. And alongside plenty of Nu-Marvel books too, of course. That said, in one respect at least there was no comparing Blankets to anything else, and that was that it was the longest original graphic novel ever published up to that point, in North America at least. So in that sense I hadn't "read a lot of big comics like this one before" -- no one had, because they didn't exist. Bottomless Belly Button and A Drifting Life were a long ways away. SPURGEON: Had you formed an opinion about Craig Thompson? Were you familiar with his previous work? COLLINS: I'd read Good-Bye, Chunky Rice and liked it a lot, yes. To tie this back to the previous question, that was one of the most applicable contexts in which I could place Blankets, or at least Craig -- the rapturous and wistful alternative comics starring cute little big-round-headed guys that were all over the place earlier in the decade. I'm thinking of things like Jordan Crane's The Last Lonely Saturday, which had been a real landmark for me, and a Martin Cendreda mini-comic called Zurik Robot, and even Jimmy Corrigan. There's really not a huge leap to be made from the snowy and heartbreaking flashback chapters of Jimmy Corrigan to either Chunky Rice or Blankets, even though Ware and Thompson's approaches to line and layout are obviously very different. Another important bit of context for me at that time was Will Eisner's work. When I first read Eisner I wasn't cognizant of the controversy over whether he really merited all the accolades heaped upon him, especially for his later and ostensibly more mature works. From where I was standing he was universally acknowledged as the pioneer of the graphic novel, the Orson Welles of comics. What had happened was I'd interviewed Frank Miller for my job at the Abercrombie & Fitch Quarterly and he'd enjoyed it so much that right then at the end of the phone call he offered to hook me up with Eisner for the next issue. So I devoured pretty much any Eisner that Jim Hanley's Universe had in stock from A Contract with God onward. Eisner's nakedly emotional approach to narrative, his looseness and borderless freedom with layout, the pantomime body language of his characters, the sweep and lushness of his brushwork, the autobiographical stuff, even his depiction of rainstorms and snowstorms -- that all set me up for Blankets in many ways. Finally, Blankets was something you could grasp in terms of its position as part of Top Shelf's line. The same year Blankets came out and my wife and I befriended Craig, we picked up Clumsy and Unlikely for free courtesy of Brett Warnock and Chris Staros, and we befriended Jeffrey Brown. So their line at the time, even though it contained From Hell and Hutch Owen and plenty more besides, was spearheaded by these heart-on-sleeve Midwestern indie-rock-soundtracked first-love autobiographies. That was an important frame for the book as well.