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January 27 - DC Counter Culture Festival - Dr. Dremo's - 2001 Clarendon Boulevard in Arlington, Virginia
March 4 - Big Art Show - Gallery5 - 200 West Marshall Street in Richmond, Virginia
April 28 - Big Art Show - The Rock & Roll Hotel - 1353 H Street, NE in Washington, DC
September 8 and 9 - Baltimore Comic-Con - Baltimore Convention Center - One West Pratt Street in Baltimore, Maryland
October 12 and 13 - Small Press Expo - Bethesda North Marriott Hotel - 5701 Marinelli Road in Bethesda, Maryland
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Simplify
by marmar
Jumbly Junkery (No. 3)
by wormulus
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Jessica White
* Gender: Female
* Industry: Student
* Occupation: MFA - Printmaking
* Location: Iowa City : Iowa : United States
Interests
* max ernst
* edward gorey
* henry darger
* belle and sebastian
* zines
* prints
* books
* bubble tea
heroesandcriminals's Profile
Bio
Heroes & Criminals Press is me, Jessica, living and working and studying in Iowa City, Iowa. Most items you see here are printed at the amazing University of Iowa Center for the Book, where I'm working on a Book Studies Certificate along with an MFA in Printmaking. I spend most of my time drawing, printing, photocopying, stapling, bookbinding, and reading. Sometimes, I go to classes and do my homework.
Bittersweetness and Light: The Art School Chronicles
This is my first attempt at making a comic, done entirely in 24 hours during 24 Hour Comics Day, 2005. It's about my experiences as a first-year art grad student in Memphis, TN. I'm in the process of putting it online for the enjoyment/torment of everyone, but you can have a hard copy for $3.
I've just recently attended the 17th Annual Foil Imaging Workshop, a week-long workshop here at the University of Iowa that introduces the ethereal art of foil imaging. It utilizes foil, a double-layered polymer film, to add color and texture to a print or drawing. This heat-transfer method of applying colors is used commercially for book covers (hot stamping) and greeting cards, but Virginia Myers has developed the tools necessary for artists to utilize it in their own studios, by using a hot plate and a heated roller. Most people recognize the foils that come in gold and silver metallics or brightly holographic films, but there is a lot of variety, including opaque colors, translucents, pearlescents, and even a wood-grain. Some of my favorites are the translucent foils that can be layered for richer colors with more depth. For any curious artists looking for new materials to try, I highly recommend coming to the workshop next summer! You can see some exceptional examples of foil imaging in Jason Snell's artwork at RustyScissors.com.
Labels: art, events, printmaking
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flocking_%28texture%29
A demo on flocking and glittering has my work going in strange, fuzzy new directions.
Also, Karen Kunc, Richard Gere, and Kurt Wisneski gave a demo were they collaborated on a series of long narrative prints that echoed film strip imagery. They re-used a stack of blocks and stencils in multiple ways, repeating imagery that would come forward and fade away along the long strips of paper.
To see more of my artwork, please visit BittersweetnessAndLight.com. For the latest news and ramblings about prints and paper, go to BittersweetnessAndLight.blogspot.com.
publish, print, create
My friend Cody and I have officially started "Zine Friday", a once-a-week shindig for making and discussing zines, and whatever else comes up. We managed to spread out a little working space on the table, but got into a heated discussion about the differences between a press, printer, and publisher. We talked in circles for a while, and the only thing we know for sure at this point is that the lines are getting blurred, especially in the small- and independent-press world. As zinesters, we know all too well the many hats we have to wear, from the conception, the making of the original, the printing and binding, and funding, all done by one person. This is something I find appealing about zines and artists books, the determination of one person to put their own style of creativity into every step.
It's also appealing when zinesters/comic artists like Clutch create their own presses to publish others' work as well as their own (Tugboat Press, in this case). On top of that, we have the wonderful Microcosm, who publish and distribute, the IPRC, who provide the space and tools for others to self-publish as well as publishing for others, and Booklyn, who publish, distribute, and offer workshops, just to name a few in an ever-expanding world of self-publishing.
To bring it home, what about the Zine Machine? It's working hard as a little Iowa City distro, and one day, it might want to expand into publishing. Well, maybe not today...
(PS - Zine Friday is not a private party - let us know if you want to join us for some zine fun!)
LINKS
* Bittersweetness And Light
* Zine Machine
* Lucky Creature
* Art Bikes Cats
* FutureoftheBook
* PodPost
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Laced Candy
A short yuri piece. It's about two girls who team up for an English class project and find something exciting between them. This was a twenty four hour comic, and I wrote a commentary about it. Maybe I'll upload that too.
Readers who like Laced Candy also like...
Smex Girl Smex
Mystican Dreams
When She Was Bad
The Dragon and the Lemur
GIRLS DONT CRY
Drunk love
Blushes
Misfits
friendly conversations - yuri My Fake Heart!
HEARD
My Dream for Gaia
Strawberries And Mustard:: Yuri
Anya
SEEN: a 24 hour comic
Little Pink&Black Triangles
Gothic Lolita's. Search for the Angel.
The Coffee Corner
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Dreams of Zelia is a supernatural horror comic written and illustrated by Melissa Violet
SYNOPSIS: Dreams of Zelia is about a young telekinetic girl who is hunted by mysterious forces. Demons prey on her for her soul's power, and she must escape with the power of her magic ring (origins are unknown). Her soul is almost taken and she wakes up in a morgue. There she is found by a medic named Ethan who she realizes is a friend from her past. With the demons still out hunting for her she needs his help to get away. Is he someone she can trust? She has no choice but to wait and see. Check us out on Drunk Duck!
www.drunkduck.com/dreams_of_zelia
Melissaviolet is a 24 old art student from LA and has a freakin' awesome comic here on the Duck Dreams of Zelia! Unbelievable art work and major creepy scary mood!
I am an art student from LA, I am 23 and I work in an art gallery. I am a child of the night and I love vampires and anything dark, creepy and pretenatural. My inspirations are Neil Gaiman, David Mack and Laurell K. Hamillton. I love chocolate, books, art and writing. I am a member of CAG LA chapter. My first published artwork can be seen in last years issue of Psychosis.
Recommended Comics
* Genre: madscott *
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* Genre: CowboysAndAliens
* Genre: Hero By Night *
* Genre: Blood Nation
* Genre: watchdogs
* Genre: Johnny Saturn
* Genre: simply sarah
* Genre: Red Mantis
* Genre: The SuperFogeys
* Genre: Gunplay
* Genre: Consumed
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"Super Soap"
by Jim Coon
Eightball Graphics, Mini $1
www.jim8ball.com
Born February 28, 1967, Jim8ball aka Jim Coon lived in Cortland, N.Y. all his life and there's nothing wrong with that. Married since 1991 and has a daughter.
Ta-Daa! You made it! You have found the OFFICIAL Etsy store of Jim8ball (aka Jim Coon) and Eight Ball Graphics. Do you like mini comics? I drew my first comic book in second grade and though I never made it to the “big leagues” I still have stories to tell and I’ve found mini comics are the perfect outlet to appease the voices in my head! I have a wide range of comics for kids and adults. Don't worry though Mom & Dad, all of my titles that aren't suitable for kids are labled "for mature audiences". I want your money, but not at the expense of your children's souls, but I need your help. Please read all title descriptions before ordering! If you are unsure about a title please convo me here at Etsy or e-mail me at jim8ball@twcny.rr.com.
I always have my mini comics in stock so if there is a comic you want and you don't see it listed, please e-mail me. I'll be glad to list the book for you so check my sold items for books as well! If you like my mini comics, please tell a friend. Heck, tell TWO friends! I'd also be glad to draw an original sketch of any of my characters so please e-mail me any requests and I'll quote a price. Look through my store and have fun!
Jim8ball aka Jim Coon is a caricature artist, cartoonist, small press mini comic creator and if you ask his wife, actually a pretty nice guy. This paragraph is simply to help search engines find Jim Coon and Eight Ball Graphics. So, there's no need to read any further. No, seriously, go to another page. Try clicking on the caricatures page or maybe the comics page. You could also try the cartoons page. Okay, that should be enough.
=
A piece of superhero soap runs around a town preventing mayem, righting wrongs and making sure kids don't curse too much.
The drawings are very slick. Too slick. Too cartoony. The story was not much.
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Jim8ball at Comic Space
Bulletin: Hey everyone! My name is Jim Coon and I am a small press comic creator from Cortland NY. I've been writing drawing and producing my own books my whole life. My first book was a rip off of a Japanese monster movie I saw called YOG! Monster from Space! After seeing the movie in the local theatre I ran home (actually, my grandpa took me to the movie and brought me back to his house) and with my trusty pencil I created MONSTER ISLAND! I was all of 6 years old! I'm gonna be 40 this year and I've been producing comics ever since. After creating such memorable characters as Lighting Bolt and Treeman I went on to a fantastic 15 issue run of my own Batman comic in 4th grade. That was followed by a 36 issue run of the Avengerkids that last well into the seventh grade! By the time I reached my senior year in high school Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns was shaping the way comics were written and drawn and I too found my comics taking a darker turn. My book about a blue skinned misfit called Suicide Club ran for 8 issues. The man character Davey (Williams) Stonebridge would appear in several comics over the next decade. Probably some of my best work in mini comics is my 25 issue run on my self published DEAD END. For the past few years I've been producing the classic " done in one" mini comics and those books can be found at my website at www.jim8ball.etsy.com. I'm also a regular exhibitor at Bob Corby's S.P,A.C.E. in Columbus Ohio and at SPX in Bethesda Maryland. MOCCA won't let me come to there show. I also set up shop at the Pittsburghcomicon. So I guess that's all you really need to know about me, if you wanted to know that much. I have a lot of experience printing mini comics so if you have questions please drop me a line and I'll do my best to help. Take Care! Jim
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BY HAND: Etsy Small Press Coalition
Team Members: dwippy, curbsidetreasure, cassowaryjewelry, madebymax, stilettoheights, paperandwords, artbureau, anongrrl, nickmain, sugarcookie, jim8ball, hedgiepig, heroesandcriminals, dinakelberman, artnoose, shannongerard, bluevalentinepress, mymy, freebananas, tenderlovingempire, melissam, susarto, sanderswatson, crafternoon, cartooncarolyn, spaghettikiss, JennySpeirs, kcqillustrations, slightlyBent, dismantled, thirteenthstory, lexacto, Chehime, FunkyQuail, flyinghaystacks, akcupcake, thimblescratch, kittenology
Kate Allen, Liz Baillie, Chris Schweizer, Duane Ballenger, Wide Awake Press, Jim8Ball, Gabrielle Bell's Lucky, A Wave Blue World's Adrenaline, Meathaus Issue 8, Paulette Poullet, Monica Gallagher, David Yoder, Joey Weiser, Douglas Frey, I Wish Comics, Rob Ullman, House of Twelve, Escape from "Special", Michael LaRiccia, Invincible Summer, The Chemistry Set, Jon Lewis' The Power of 6, Robyn Chapman, Joe Lambert's I Will Bite You!, Anders Nilsen's Don't Go Where I Can't Follow, Mike Dawson, Josh Cotter, Paul Pope, AdHouse Books,
The Center for Cartoon Studies, Alexis Frederick-Frost,
One Percent Press
Guests
* Aaron Renier
* ACT-I-VATE with:
* - Dean Haspiel
* - Nick Bertozzi
* - Josh Neufeld
* - Dan Goldman
* - Tim Hamilton
* - Leland Purvis
* - Michel Fiffe
* - Nikki Cook
* - Mike Dawson
* - Jennifer Tong
* - Ryan Roman
* - Jeff Newelt
* Adam Cogan
* Alan Moore
* Alec Longstreth I
* Alec Longstreth II
* Alec Longstreth III
* Alex Cahill
* Alex Cox
* Alex Robinson I
* Alex Robinson II
* Alison Bechdel
* Allen Spiegel
* Andy Hartzell
* Andy Runton
* Angel Fuentes
* Arie Kaplan
* Baz Renshaw
* Ben Rosen
* Bob Corby
* Brian Fies
* Brom
* Burns/Tomine Panel, MAF'06:
* - Charles Burns
* - Adrian Tomine
* Cameron Chesney
* Cathy Malkasian
* CCS students with:
* - Adam Staffaroni
* - Chuck Forsman
* - Emily Wieja
* - Joe Lambert
* - Jon-Mikel Gates
* - JP Coovert
* - Penina Gal
* - Sam Gaskin
* Chad Lambert
* Cheese Hasselberger
* Chris Pitzer
* Chris Schweizer
* Christopher Studabaker
* Dan Piraro
* Daniel Spottswood
* Dave Roman
* Dave Sim I
* Dave Sim II
* David Arroyo I
* David Arroyo II
* David Mack
* David Milloway
* David Petersen
* Derrick Kennelty-Cohen I
* Derrick Kennelty-Cohen II
* Donny Miller
* Doug Bratton
* Elizabeth Genco
* Eric Adams
* GB Tran
* Greg Ruth
* Hans Rickheit
* J. Chris Campbell
* James Sturm
* Jameson Lee
* Jamie S. Rich
* Jamie Tanner
* Jason Armstrong
* Jenny Gonzalez
* Jessie Garza
* Jim Coon
* Joelle Jones
* John Bergin
* John Green
* Jordan Michael
* Josh Bernstein
* Josh Cotter
* Josh Finney & Kat Rocha
* Karl Kerschl
* Ken Wong
* Kevin Colden
* Liz Baillie
* Liz Prince
* Lorenzo Etherington
* M.R. Petit
* Marcos Perez
* Marek Bennett
* Marion Vitus
* Mark Siegel
* Matt Feazell
* Matt Kindt I
* Matt Kindt II
* Matthew Wood
* Max Ink
* Megan Kelso
* Melinda Gebbie
* Memo Salazar
* Michael LaRiccia I
* Michael LaRiccia II
* Michelle Arcand
* Mike Dawson I
* Mike Dawson II
* Miss Lasko-Gross I
* Miss Lasko-Gross II
* MOME Panel, MAF'06:
* - Gabrielle Bell
* - David Bennett
* - Gary Groth
* - David Heatley
* - Paul Hornschemeier
* - R. Kikuo Johnson
* - Kurt Wolfgang
* Monica Gallagher
* Neil Kleid
* Neil Swaab
* Paolo Rivera
* Pat Lewis I
* Pat Lewis II
* Patrick Meaney
* Paul Gravett
* Paul Hornschemeier
* Pete Friedrich I
* Pete Friedrich II
* R. Kikuo Johnson
* Raina Telgemeier
* Renee French
* Rob Reilly
* Rob Walton
* Robert Goodin
* Roger Langridge
* Ryan Cody
* Ryan Dunlavey
* Sam Hiti
* Stephen R. Bissette
* Steve Chanks
* Steve Peters
* Ted McKeever
* Thomas Scioli
* Tom Williams
* Tony Consiglio
* Vernon Smith
* Victor Giannini
Sequential Skeletons
* Main Page
* Michael Zulli
* Kent Williams
* Grant Morrison
* Matt Wagner
* Dave Stevens
* George Perez
Linkage
* Aaron Renier
* Alec Longstreth
* Andy Runton
* The Beat
* Brian Fies
* Brom
* CBLDF
* Dan Piraro
* David Mack Guide
* David Petersen
* Donny Miller
* J. Chris Campbell
* Liz Prince
* Marcos Perez
* Matt Feazell
* Matt Kindt
* MoCCA
* Newsarama
* Neil Swaab
* Paolo Rivera
* The Pulse
* R. Kikuo Johnson
* Rocketship
* Roger Langridge
* Three Trees Studios
==================
From: iweargreenshoes
Kraftwerk song Autobahn, 1974/1975
Animation by Roger Mainwood(?)
autobahn kraftwerk wird fahn mainwood roger electropop
From: marianapoulain
a video from the german band kraftwerk.
um vídeo da banda alemã kraftwerk.
kraftwerk trans europe express
Post-Human Review (excerpt from TCJ #287) Print
Written by Tom Crippen
Monday, 03 December 2007
The Night Thoughts of Mort Weisinger
Mort Weisinger said he was suffering severe emotional problems during Superman's great 1960s era, when Weisinger was editor and mastermind of the whole Superman family of titles. This was the period of Kandor, Superman robots, the Phantom Zone, the different colors of Kryptonite. During this time, Weisinger said, he became so unraveled that his boss had to pay for a psychiatrist to put him back together. Weisinger said it happened because of deadline pressures and because he got into a sort of internal hair-pulling fight with Superman; he wanted to be more important than Superman, but Superman kept on winning. Strangely, no one has much of a reaction to the story. Gerard Jones, in his Men of Tomorrow, passes along Weisinger's claim with a "for what it's worth" air. Weisinger's own son says the Superman angle strikes him as a bit of a gimmick. He reports happy memories of his father during the alleged turmoil. "Every year my dad would let me take off from school and take a friend into his office in NYC," the younger Weisinger remembers. Notice the second item in the upcoming list: "We would read the giant comic proofs, sit in when he would berate an artist or writer, then go to a Yankees game in the afternoon." Kicking around employees was father-son entertainment. Maybe we're not dealing with emotional dysfunction here, just with a different species.
Yet there's no doubt that Weisinger was a man living in pain. He said it, his enemies said it. Neal Adams, a semi-defender, remembers asking Weisinger why he was so hard on people. Emotions heaved behind the gross, fat, ugly man's features, "and he said, 'I'll tell you... imagine that you get up in the morning and you go into the bathroom to shave, and you look into the mirror, and you see this face.'" That's sad, I guess, but to me it's also strange. Pouring your woe over the desk like you were slopping a bucket while an acquaintance sits there and wonders what he's looking at. Weisinger made a spectacle of himself. I've known a few office jerks, and several had their disturbing moments of this sort, when the inner child came peeping out like Gollum and you wanted to look away. A lot of jerks are people who barely have their personalities pinned together, and the resulting strain makes them unbearable. (Your mother told you bullies don't feel good about themselves, and that was true enough.) The assholes cope by means of spasms and outbursts and day-in, day-out little rituals that involve making others feel worse about themselves, and it all goes on forever. It's not just that Weisinger said nasty things, Arnold Drake once complained, it's that he said the same nasty things over and over, his little repertoire.
For people like Weisinger, day-to-day life isn't so different from a low-level breakdown; at least, I think it's a bit weird to tell one person after another about how you're going to wipe your ass with his script. Wayne Boring, after Weisinger fired him as the second-string Superman artist, drew a cartoon of Weisinger that showed two boxes of pills dropping out of his pants, one box marked "Uppers" and the other "Downers." So an enemy says Weisinger had a drug habit, and Weisinger says he was just falling apart. Either way he was a mess right when a million of us were letting the man's products into our head.
Silver Age Superman is my guess as to the baby boom's elemental comic book experience. Maybe I think that only because it was mine — they were the comics that I liked the most when I was just old enough to read. But I'm pretty typical about these things. When the first wave of baby boomers hit 8–12, the period's target age for comics, the comics they bought were Weisinger's Superman titles. Superman comics were read by the most kids at the youngest age. Marvel was what we moved on to; DC was baby stuff, but that means it got wedged pretty far inside our minds, into a zone more warm and private than some of us (by which I mean myself) like to realize. Giant red ants, household animals with capes, dialogue balloons about the compressibility of Superman's costume — it's all one of the biggest exhibits in the superhero hall of fame. The sheer number of Weisinger-provided gimmicks even helped bring on a new stage in pop-culture development. They recurred from issue to issue and title to title over enough years to produce a self-contained body of lore — what by 1965 Weisinger described as a "mythos."
Of course Marvel was building a universe too, but the Marvel version leaned more on continuing storylines — love troubles were a favorite — and on guest spots by heroes and villains in titles where they normally didn't belong. Weisinger's approach leaned more on knowledge. Clued-in readers knew what the Superman Emergency Squad was and could list the different varieties of Kryptonite. That doesn't make the Weisinger approach superior, but lore of this sort has become central to the geek pop-cultural experience, and Weisinger had his system in full swing before Star Trek got on the air and when Tolkien was just starting to break out in paperback.
This treasured geek memory has an uncomfortable side. Weisinger was a hell of a man to keep around children. Of course, a lot of Silver Age DC has an unhealthy, neurotic air. The Flash doesn't just find himself with a giant domed head — people laugh at him for it. Batman has to go limping out of town, ragged and feeble, and behind him a massive orange sun is setting; not only that, but it's lopsided. DC covers back then had a weakness for rejection. Marvel heroes might get beaten, but DC heroes were denied love. They were humiliated and betrayed, exiled, told no one needed them now ("We Have Hyper-Man!"). Marvel heroes knew they would have their ups and downs with the public. DC heroes existed to be paragons, the best face of authority; society's love was built into the deal. Then the deal would get revoked and the poor hero would find himself denounced as a failure or hypocrite. Fingers drawn by Neal Adams would point at the supposed hero. Of course, in any given story, events pretty soon bounced back to normal. DC practiced bungee storytelling — a story's appeal depended on one extreme image, a cover or title page, that showed circumstances being dragged as far as possible out of normal. The rest of the story was spent on letting them hurtle back where they belonged. By story's end, reality had hit reset and the next story could go ahead.
When it came to superheroes, a DC editor's target audience was too old for happy larks but too young for continuing storylines. It made sense to grab the kids with the promise of isolated, extreme events, but the events couldn't involve a lot of shooting or fighting (house rules). They had to be extreme in some other way, such as a messing about with reality's basic terms. Superman wasn't supposed to have a lion's head, but he did have a lion's head. Superman never goofed off, but here he was goofing off. One advantage of this approach, to get technical, is that the jolt comes from the break with a basic reality; the thing that constitutes the break doesn't have to be so remarkable in itself. A man goofing off is nothing, really. But Superman goofing off... It's a given that Superman does not sit around taking it easy, and the given makes the story possible. When you're generating plots, an approach like this really slashes your expenditure of imagination. That pays off if your job requires the generation of more than a hundred stories a year for the same small group of characters.
A child's basic reality is that his family and friends either want him or don't want him. Young kids don't experience much in between, or at least don't process it as such. They feel either loved or unloved, and the second is a very dramatic event indeed. Hence somebody like Julius Schwartz, who sounds like a pugnacious but healthy character, could have his neurotic covers for Flash and Batman. But I'm willing to bet that Mort Weisinger used the gimmick more often and more brutally. He could dream up quite elaborate situations just to show someone being shit on. Superman floats, helpless as a ghost; enlarged Kandorians are unwittingly about to destroy their home, and not only can Superman not warn them, he has to listen as they take time out to say mean things. ("We'll never free you from the Phantom Zone, because for years you pretended there was no way to enlarge our bottle-city!") Or we have a cover showing Superman in a headlock, trapped there by a bruiser using one arm, and the bruiser has a little half-smile tugging at a corner of his mouth. This is an imaginary story set on Krypton, so Superman doesn't have his uniform and we recognize him by his curl and the red-blue color scheme of his clothing. In the background, a man holds up the Superman uniform (with a clothes hanger). "You win, Knor-El! By defeating your brother, Kal-El, you've gained the right to wear this uniform! From now on, you'll be earth's Superman!" The man, of course, is Jor-El, Superman's father, and he has his own tucked-mouth little grin.
Weisinger would show humiliation; he would show parents rejecting children. He needed covers, of course, but I don't think he could have played this angle so heavily, over so many years, if it didn't suit him. Weisinger was a sick man. He said he became jealous of Superman, and to me the key fact here is that Superman does not exist. Yet when Weisinger thought about Superman, he felt crowded. Thinking about Clark Kent, he figured Clark must feel the same way, that Clark must be jealous of Superman too; it was the one little insight Weisinger had on tap after 30 years of editing the series. And Superman himself, Weisinger figured, would become jealous — if, say a miniature replica of Superman emanated from his palm and hurried off to perform super-tasks and the public made a fuss over the little thing. ("I'm no longer Superman! I'm just a... a place for that strange form to occupy! I must get rid of it... But how?") Anything at all could threaten Weisinger's sense of his right to exist.
============================================================================
Girl-wonder.org and When Fangirls Attack!
Gail Simone (excerpts from TCJ #286)
Len Wein, one of my very favorite writers, told a story that when he got permission for Alan Moore to have the Joker shoot Barbara "Batgirl" Gordon in the spine, he says that he yelled delightedly down the hallway, "Cripple the bitch!"
I think, just as much as the speculator craze, that kind of thinking was a nail in the coffin of mainstream comics. Can you imagine a major medium — books, movies, television — that didn't actively court the female consumer? It's insane, it's antiquated, and when manga nearly ate mainstream comics alive, it's hard to say it's undeserved.
Decimate the small pool of viable, likeable female characters and you are likely saying goodbye to not just the current, but the future female audience.
My goal was to ask what it meant, not condemn every comics pro or reader, but several thousand people with poor reading skills will forever brand me either a gender traitor or a man-hater, whichever makes them more fake-outraged.
It's like being double-closeted. First, you read comics, and then, you're a fucking girl who reads comics. And at the time, it felt like there was at best apathy for you from the major companies, and more than a little hostility there, as well. For all the world, it felt like a NO GURLZ ALOUD sign was hung on the door, and I'm a bit too stubborn to leave that as it lies.
The thing is, I knew the trend was dying before the site even went up, which is why I never really updated it. A lot of newer writers were coming up who, for better or worse, seemed to pay attention to the female characters a little more. There was some Brit influence, which I think had a maturing effect on the storytelling, as well.
For years I downplayed the entire effect of the site—I simply didn't believe it had any real long-standing footprint, until I started knowing some of the higher-ups at DC and Marvel where they would
Then, out of nowhere — and keep in mind, this asshole doesn't know me at all — he starts telling me how heavenly it is when his "lover" lets him ejaculate on her face, and asking me about my sex life. One minute, "Oh, you're right, the plight of women in comics, woe, oh, woe," and the next it's outtakes from this guy's porn-move repertoire.
I wrote him back and scared the shit out of him and got an apology, however mealy-mouthed it was. But it does sort of show the mind-set. Girls reading comics? They're freaks, not real people. That was a Fantagraphics guy, by the way, not a superhero creator.
Warren Ellis seems to write them by the truckload. Marc Andreyko is great. Dan Slott writes nice females. There are some choices now, and it's working. If you go to my signing line at a comics con, you'll see a higher percentage of females readers than most any other superhero writer, sometimes by a factor of two or three or more.
Another archetype gone wrong is the mopey, broken superheroine, usually with a sexual dysfunction and probably some bladed weapon. After "grim and gritty," we went through this phase that I call "drab and dreary," where some very well-meaning writers seemed to feel the way to earn critical praise was by creating the same personality over and over again, sort of a joyless, vicious and angry.
I want to create Clowny, the Happy Clown Who Farts Rainbows.
It sounds like the ravings of heroin addict, but damn, it's fun stuff to write.
========================================================
In the middle of 1930, Otto Soglow introduced a new character that would launch the next stage of his career, an unnamed and silent King who trudges through his daily offices in a daze, longing for any excuse to step away from it all, even if just to pick up the milk at the castle door. By 1931, the "Little King," as he came to be known, was a regular feature in the magazine's pages, caught up in absurd rituals and ceremonies and longing to break away to the open road. The joke, for those who cared to look for it, depended primarily on Soglow's long-running theme: In a society in which individuals are imprisoned by social categories like class, gender and sexuality, everyone is wearing costumes that fit as poorly as the King's crown. Our little king no more belongs on the throne than Bill's unnamed colleague belonged in the sewer. The King always jumped at any excuse to join the staff in the kitchen, to slide down the banister, even, in the last Little King cartoon for the New Yorker in 1934, to join the people in rioting against his monarchy.
The resurgence of pantomime comics in the early 1930s is an interesting phenomenon in its own right, especially given that it coincided with the rise of sound film. Just as the movies learned to talk, comics began to experiment with what they could accomplish without words.
Cartoon advertising was taking off, and Hearst's syndicate was moving into a leadership role in this growth field. The pantomime comic was especially adaptable for advertising purposes, and Hearst quickly latched on to the idea of securing Soglow's Little King for both his comics supplement and for advertising.
Appropriately, Soglow created his forerunner for the King's arrival in the form of an Ambassador.
But the joke is also, of course, an inside one, a joke on the lawyers whose contracts required him to create the Ambassador in the first place, on the marketplace that will surely not even care about the difference (as the King's many transformations in advertising and licensing suggest), and on the casual reader who will likely not even notice the change from Ambassador to King.
==================
FARAGO: You're a graduate of the Joe Kubert School, right? When was that? Who were your instructors? What was your main field of study there?
LIEBER: I was there from 1987-90. Some of the better known teachers were Joe Kubert, George Pratt, Irwin Hasen, Phillip "Tex" Blaisdell, Hy Eisman, and Ron Wagner. At the time, the school only had two programs: cartooning/illustration and animation. Everyone has the same courses first year, then for your second and third, you decided if you wanted to be pursue illustration or animation.
Like a lot of freelancers, I sort of eased in rather than breaking in. You pick up one job after another until you start to notice that most of your income and most of your time at the board seems to be comics-related. I'd say it was two years from graduation to full-time comics. My first professional work was inking and lettering a small-press comic called Roadways. After that, I found myself assigned to draw a Western, a caveman story, some war comics, then Hawkman.
FARAGO: For a comic that's got so much snow in it, Whiteout has a wide variety of textures, tones and other effects, depending on what each scene requires. Can you run down the list of art supplies that you need on hand when creating an issue of Whiteout?
LIEBER: Well, in my pre-digital days, any given page might have unerased pencil, black ink ink applies with pen, watercolor brush, bristle brush, toothbrush, white paint, homemade screen tones, razor-scratching sandpaper, pasted Xeroxes, thumbprints, Q-tip prints, grease crayon — anything I could possibly use to make paper feel like Antarctica. With Thaw, I'm going to bring in the things I've since learned about working digitally.
DC's Top 5 Writers mentions GREG RUCKA,
(also Geoff Johns, Grant Morrison, Mark Waid and Judd Winick.)
ANDREW FARAGO: What led to your first foray into the comic book...
GREG RUCKA: This is actually going to be fun, because this ties to Fantagraphics. I went to school in Monterey, Calif., with a guy named Scott Nybakken who worked with The Comics Journal. And Nybakken left the Journal and moved to New York to work for DC. As I said, Jen and I would go to San Diego and I would go to San Diego and talk to any editor who made the mistake of standing still too close to me, and say, "Can I get work?"
And they'd go, "Go away!" And even once I'd been published, I'd put books in front of people and they'd say, "That's very nice. Go away!" Nobody would give me the time of day. I think the only editor who actually engaged me in a conversation prior to me getting my first gig was Stuart Moore, when Stuart was at Vertigo. But because the novels were coming out, and because Scott worked at DC, Scott was able to get the books in front of Patty Jeres just to say, "Hey, my friend wrote these." And I would see Patty at the conventions. Patty introduced me to Bob Schreck when Oni had their first appearance at San Diego. It was before they had anything out. Bob and I had a meeting at the Con and he sort of looked at the books and said, "You don't want to adapt these?"
And I said, "No. They're novels. That would be silly."
He said, "Well, what are you thinking about?"
I said, "I wanna do this story about a federal marshal in Antarctica, because I think that's the perfect comic-book story. I think you need the visuals there."
And then Whiteout led, almost directly and again via Patty Jeres, to DC because it is Patty who then, at a Wonder Con the following year, says to me, "You know, if I'd thought you had any interest in writing Batman I'd talk to Denny."
And she said, "Well, OK 'cause they just had a bloodletting in the Bat-group [Laughs.] And they're looking for people." So, the way Patty tells the story is that she walks into Denny O'Neil's office when he was still group editor, and she's got my first novel in one hand, Keeper, and my second novel in the other hand, Finder, and she walks in and she says, "Denny, there's this write — " and that's about as far as she gets before Denny says, "Where did you get that?" pointing at the second book, Finder.
And she says, "Well, the author is — "
He said, "I've read the first one. I loved it. I've been looking for a second one everywhere. Can I have that?"
And she says, "Well, it turns out he's going to be coming to town and he's doing this thing for Oni Press."
I came to New York to meet with my publisher at Bantam and I went by DC, and Denny and I went to lunch and had a great conversation, mostly talking about his work on The Question, which, to this day, is possibly my favorite thing that he's done. We had a great meal, and he said, "OK."
It's one thing to say you can write a novel. It's another thing to say you can write a comic, because they're not the same thing. This is a huge problem and we've seen it in the industry, especially in the big houses. Just because you can write a movie doesn't mean you can write a good comic. Again it goes to that pejorative sort of comic-book thing, you know, this bastardization of the form that says, "Oh, this is easier." It's not. It's different. There are different rules.
I turned into the primary water-bearer on the project.
Question: You're sort of at the forefront of Marvel and DC recruiting novelists to come in and take a stab at their characters, aren't you?
Answer: I'm usually really skeptical about any prose book that has a superhero.
I don't think they thought of me as a novelist
I tried really, really hard to get [Mystic River author] Dennis Lehane to do something for DC and he doesn't have any interest and then it turned out he was doing The Wire, so I can't blame him. [Laughs.] But there have been a few I've talked to about it. Gary Phillips, who's represented by the same guy that represents me these days, and who I think is really, really talented. I think Gary's got gunshot in his prose. Very, very dynamite. But, no, I can't really go down a line and say, "I responsible for this. I'm responsible for that." There's this myth that I talk to a lot of writers. I don't. Or a lot of novelists. There aren't many that I correspond with. Most of my artistic socialization, if that's a phrase, is with other comics people these days.
The way I got roped into that is that I was in Paul Levitz's office with Dan DiDio and Geoff Johns, when we were talking about what we needed to do post Geoff writing Infinite Crisis and Dan had said, "So, we want to do this one-year jump."
And Paul said, "You can't." [Laughs.] He said, "We have to see that year."
And then Paul said, "You know, maybe do it something like 24." [Laughs.]
And Dan got that Rasputin look that he gets. He'd come in with a big posterboard. He was going to show all of the plans, and he closed it. He put it under his arm, he looks at Paul, he says, "We'll be back."
And we all marched out of the office, went back down to Dan's office, and like, "A weekly comic. Oh, my God. Can we do this?" I was immediately taken by the idea. I thought it was a great idea. I was also foolish enough to look at Geoff and say, "We can do it, you and me. We can do it." [Laughs.]
And Dan DiDio said, "You will die. There need to be other writers coming in."
It sort of went from there. Steve Wacker stood up when it was presented to the editors and said, "I'll do it. Give it to me." I think all the other editors were like, "This is insane." I think Wacker then walked out of Dan's office, having got the gig and everybody was like, "You... suicide attempt. You're falling on your sword? What are you doing there?" But that's how I got roped into it.
We got together in New York for like three days at a time and we would sit in a conference room and it was Grant, Jeff, Mark, myself, Dan, Jann Jones, Ivan Cohen, J.G. Jones and Keith Giffen in the room, and it started.
The three tent-poles of the universe were off-duty for that year. The slug was, "A year without Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman, but not a year without heroes."
So, the initial approach had been: what corners of the universe do we want to talk about and what sort of things do we want to talk about? So, we want to talk about the space-opera aspect, so we need space characters. Who can we do? And all of a sudden Grant says, "Let's use Buddy." So, Animal Man gets thrown in. And "Are we gonna use Captain Comet or are we going to use Adam Strange?" "Let's go with Adam Strange." So, there were all sorts of discussions like that. "Who do we want on the ground?" "Oh, let's go with Montoya. She's a good street-level character coming out of Gotham Central at that point. She had a great beginning for the arc. Who can we team her with?
Say you got to do it in four pages instead of in eight, it's harder to do it in four. The writing had to become more efficient.
Right now, the plan is to serialize first. I can't speak for Greg's intentions, but I really like the four-issue rhythm and the accelerating tension that you get when you build cliffhangers right in to the story's framework.
========================================================
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXa9tXcMhXQ&feature=related
From: ApriliaRS125
Classic 1977, Kraftwerk videoclip of The Robots
(Kraftwerk, the pioneers of electronic music)
videoclip electronic techno
=========================
From: StudioJFISH
Daedelus performing at Cinespace/Dim Mak Tuesdays 08/02/06
Mixing DJ
http://i237.photobucket.com/albums/ff186/Carter_Goodrich_Esq/intercontinental/playboy/INTERSTICIAL_JERK/Monsanto_Westinghouse066.jpg
Boys get video games, girls get comics
Again to magnify.
Dear Louis,
Thank you for your recent request to join the Deitch Projects Mailing List.
By Clicking Here, your email address, luxxcorp@tampabay.rr.com will be added to our double opt-in mailing list.
Thank you for expressing interest in Deitch Projects.
=========================================
January 27 - DC Counter Culture Festival - Dr. Dremo's - 2001 Clarendon Boulevard in Arlington, Virginia
March 4 - Big Art Show - Gallery5 - 200 West Marshall Street in Richmond, Virginia
April 28 - Big Art Show - The Rock & Roll Hotel - 1353 H Street, NE in Washington, DC
September 8 and 9 - Baltimore Comic-Con - Baltimore Convention Center - One West Pratt Street in Baltimore, Maryland
October 12 and 13 - Small Press Expo - Bethesda North Marriott Hotel - 5701 Marinelli Road in Bethesda, Maryland
=======
Simplify
by marmar
Jumbly Junkery (No. 3)
by wormulus
=============
Jessica White
* Gender: Female
* Industry: Student
* Occupation: MFA - Printmaking
* Location: Iowa City : Iowa : United States
Interests
* max ernst
* edward gorey
* henry darger
* belle and sebastian
* zines
* prints
* books
* bubble tea
heroesandcriminals's Profile
Bio
Heroes & Criminals Press is me, Jessica, living and working and studying in Iowa City, Iowa. Most items you see here are printed at the amazing University of Iowa Center for the Book, where I'm working on a Book Studies Certificate along with an MFA in Printmaking. I spend most of my time drawing, printing, photocopying, stapling, bookbinding, and reading. Sometimes, I go to classes and do my homework.
Bittersweetness and Light: The Art School Chronicles
This is my first attempt at making a comic, done entirely in 24 hours during 24 Hour Comics Day, 2005. It's about my experiences as a first-year art grad student in Memphis, TN. I'm in the process of putting it online for the enjoyment/torment of everyone, but you can have a hard copy for $3.
I've just recently attended the 17th Annual Foil Imaging Workshop, a week-long workshop here at the University of Iowa that introduces the ethereal art of foil imaging. It utilizes foil, a double-layered polymer film, to add color and texture to a print or drawing. This heat-transfer method of applying colors is used commercially for book covers (hot stamping) and greeting cards, but Virginia Myers has developed the tools necessary for artists to utilize it in their own studios, by using a hot plate and a heated roller. Most people recognize the foils that come in gold and silver metallics or brightly holographic films, but there is a lot of variety, including opaque colors, translucents, pearlescents, and even a wood-grain. Some of my favorites are the translucent foils that can be layered for richer colors with more depth. For any curious artists looking for new materials to try, I highly recommend coming to the workshop next summer! You can see some exceptional examples of foil imaging in Jason Snell's artwork at RustyScissors.com.
Labels: art, events, printmaking
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flocking_%28texture%29
A demo on flocking and glittering has my work going in strange, fuzzy new directions.
Also, Karen Kunc, Richard Gere, and Kurt Wisneski gave a demo were they collaborated on a series of long narrative prints that echoed film strip imagery. They re-used a stack of blocks and stencils in multiple ways, repeating imagery that would come forward and fade away along the long strips of paper.
To see more of my artwork, please visit BittersweetnessAndLight.com. For the latest news and ramblings about prints and paper, go to BittersweetnessAndLight.blogspot.com.
publish, print, create
My friend Cody and I have officially started "Zine Friday", a once-a-week shindig for making and discussing zines, and whatever else comes up. We managed to spread out a little working space on the table, but got into a heated discussion about the differences between a press, printer, and publisher. We talked in circles for a while, and the only thing we know for sure at this point is that the lines are getting blurred, especially in the small- and independent-press world. As zinesters, we know all too well the many hats we have to wear, from the conception, the making of the original, the printing and binding, and funding, all done by one person. This is something I find appealing about zines and artists books, the determination of one person to put their own style of creativity into every step.
It's also appealing when zinesters/comic artists like Clutch create their own presses to publish others' work as well as their own (Tugboat Press, in this case). On top of that, we have the wonderful Microcosm, who publish and distribute, the IPRC, who provide the space and tools for others to self-publish as well as publishing for others, and Booklyn, who publish, distribute, and offer workshops, just to name a few in an ever-expanding world of self-publishing.
To bring it home, what about the Zine Machine? It's working hard as a little Iowa City distro, and one day, it might want to expand into publishing. Well, maybe not today...
(PS - Zine Friday is not a private party - let us know if you want to join us for some zine fun!)
LINKS
* Bittersweetness And Light
* Zine Machine
* Lucky Creature
* Art Bikes Cats
* FutureoftheBook
* PodPost
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Laced Candy
A short yuri piece. It's about two girls who team up for an English class project and find something exciting between them. This was a twenty four hour comic, and I wrote a commentary about it. Maybe I'll upload that too.
Readers who like Laced Candy also like...
Smex Girl Smex
Mystican Dreams
When She Was Bad
The Dragon and the Lemur
GIRLS DONT CRY
Drunk love
Blushes
Misfits
friendly conversations - yuri My Fake Heart!
HEARD
My Dream for Gaia
Strawberries And Mustard:: Yuri
Anya
SEEN: a 24 hour comic
Little Pink&Black Triangles
Gothic Lolita's. Search for the Angel.
The Coffee Corner
============
Dreams of Zelia is a supernatural horror comic written and illustrated by Melissa Violet
SYNOPSIS: Dreams of Zelia is about a young telekinetic girl who is hunted by mysterious forces. Demons prey on her for her soul's power, and she must escape with the power of her magic ring (origins are unknown). Her soul is almost taken and she wakes up in a morgue. There she is found by a medic named Ethan who she realizes is a friend from her past. With the demons still out hunting for her she needs his help to get away. Is he someone she can trust? She has no choice but to wait and see. Check us out on Drunk Duck!
www.drunkduck.com/dreams_of_zelia
Melissaviolet is a 24 old art student from LA and has a freakin' awesome comic here on the Duck Dreams of Zelia! Unbelievable art work and major creepy scary mood!
I am an art student from LA, I am 23 and I work in an art gallery. I am a child of the night and I love vampires and anything dark, creepy and pretenatural. My inspirations are Neil Gaiman, David Mack and Laurell K. Hamillton. I love chocolate, books, art and writing. I am a member of CAG LA chapter. My first published artwork can be seen in last years issue of Psychosis.
Recommended Comics
* Genre: madscott *
* Genre: Horribleville
* Genre: Grog
* Genre: Blip
* Genre: CowboysAndAliens
* Genre: Hero By Night *
* Genre: Blood Nation
* Genre: watchdogs
* Genre: Johnny Saturn
* Genre: simply sarah
* Genre: Red Mantis
* Genre: The SuperFogeys
* Genre: Gunplay
* Genre: Consumed
===================
"Super Soap"
by Jim Coon
Eightball Graphics, Mini $1
www.jim8ball.com
Born February 28, 1967, Jim8ball aka Jim Coon lived in Cortland, N.Y. all his life and there's nothing wrong with that. Married since 1991 and has a daughter.
Ta-Daa! You made it! You have found the OFFICIAL Etsy store of Jim8ball (aka Jim Coon) and Eight Ball Graphics. Do you like mini comics? I drew my first comic book in second grade and though I never made it to the “big leagues” I still have stories to tell and I’ve found mini comics are the perfect outlet to appease the voices in my head! I have a wide range of comics for kids and adults. Don't worry though Mom & Dad, all of my titles that aren't suitable for kids are labled "for mature audiences". I want your money, but not at the expense of your children's souls, but I need your help. Please read all title descriptions before ordering! If you are unsure about a title please convo me here at Etsy or e-mail me at jim8ball@twcny.rr.com.
I always have my mini comics in stock so if there is a comic you want and you don't see it listed, please e-mail me. I'll be glad to list the book for you so check my sold items for books as well! If you like my mini comics, please tell a friend. Heck, tell TWO friends! I'd also be glad to draw an original sketch of any of my characters so please e-mail me any requests and I'll quote a price. Look through my store and have fun!
Jim8ball aka Jim Coon is a caricature artist, cartoonist, small press mini comic creator and if you ask his wife, actually a pretty nice guy. This paragraph is simply to help search engines find Jim Coon and Eight Ball Graphics. So, there's no need to read any further. No, seriously, go to another page. Try clicking on the caricatures page or maybe the comics page. You could also try the cartoons page. Okay, that should be enough.
=
A piece of superhero soap runs around a town preventing mayem, righting wrongs and making sure kids don't curse too much.
The drawings are very slick. Too slick. Too cartoony. The story was not much.
===
Jim8ball at Comic Space
Bulletin: Hey everyone! My name is Jim Coon and I am a small press comic creator from Cortland NY. I've been writing drawing and producing my own books my whole life. My first book was a rip off of a Japanese monster movie I saw called YOG! Monster from Space! After seeing the movie in the local theatre I ran home (actually, my grandpa took me to the movie and brought me back to his house) and with my trusty pencil I created MONSTER ISLAND! I was all of 6 years old! I'm gonna be 40 this year and I've been producing comics ever since. After creating such memorable characters as Lighting Bolt and Treeman I went on to a fantastic 15 issue run of my own Batman comic in 4th grade. That was followed by a 36 issue run of the Avengerkids that last well into the seventh grade! By the time I reached my senior year in high school Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns was shaping the way comics were written and drawn and I too found my comics taking a darker turn. My book about a blue skinned misfit called Suicide Club ran for 8 issues. The man character Davey (Williams) Stonebridge would appear in several comics over the next decade. Probably some of my best work in mini comics is my 25 issue run on my self published DEAD END. For the past few years I've been producing the classic " done in one" mini comics and those books can be found at my website at www.jim8ball.etsy.com. I'm also a regular exhibitor at Bob Corby's S.P,A.C.E. in Columbus Ohio and at SPX in Bethesda Maryland. MOCCA won't let me come to there show. I also set up shop at the Pittsburghcomicon. So I guess that's all you really need to know about me, if you wanted to know that much. I have a lot of experience printing mini comics so if you have questions please drop me a line and I'll do my best to help. Take Care! Jim
===================================
BY HAND: Etsy Small Press Coalition
Team Members: dwippy, curbsidetreasure, cassowaryjewelry, madebymax, stilettoheights, paperandwords, artbureau, anongrrl, nickmain, sugarcookie, jim8ball, hedgiepig, heroesandcriminals, dinakelberman, artnoose, shannongerard, bluevalentinepress, mymy, freebananas, tenderlovingempire, melissam, susarto, sanderswatson, crafternoon, cartooncarolyn, spaghettikiss, JennySpeirs, kcqillustrations, slightlyBent, dismantled, thirteenthstory, lexacto, Chehime, FunkyQuail, flyinghaystacks, akcupcake, thimblescratch, kittenology
Kate Allen, Liz Baillie, Chris Schweizer, Duane Ballenger, Wide Awake Press, Jim8Ball, Gabrielle Bell's Lucky, A Wave Blue World's Adrenaline, Meathaus Issue 8, Paulette Poullet, Monica Gallagher, David Yoder, Joey Weiser, Douglas Frey, I Wish Comics, Rob Ullman, House of Twelve, Escape from "Special", Michael LaRiccia, Invincible Summer, The Chemistry Set, Jon Lewis' The Power of 6, Robyn Chapman, Joe Lambert's I Will Bite You!, Anders Nilsen's Don't Go Where I Can't Follow, Mike Dawson, Josh Cotter, Paul Pope, AdHouse Books,
The Center for Cartoon Studies, Alexis Frederick-Frost,
One Percent Press
Guests
* Aaron Renier
* ACT-I-VATE with:
* - Dean Haspiel
* - Nick Bertozzi
* - Josh Neufeld
* - Dan Goldman
* - Tim Hamilton
* - Leland Purvis
* - Michel Fiffe
* - Nikki Cook
* - Mike Dawson
* - Jennifer Tong
* - Ryan Roman
* - Jeff Newelt
* Adam Cogan
* Alan Moore
* Alec Longstreth I
* Alec Longstreth II
* Alec Longstreth III
* Alex Cahill
* Alex Cox
* Alex Robinson I
* Alex Robinson II
* Alison Bechdel
* Allen Spiegel
* Andy Hartzell
* Andy Runton
* Angel Fuentes
* Arie Kaplan
* Baz Renshaw
* Ben Rosen
* Bob Corby
* Brian Fies
* Brom
* Burns/Tomine Panel, MAF'06:
* - Charles Burns
* - Adrian Tomine
* Cameron Chesney
* Cathy Malkasian
* CCS students with:
* - Adam Staffaroni
* - Chuck Forsman
* - Emily Wieja
* - Joe Lambert
* - Jon-Mikel Gates
* - JP Coovert
* - Penina Gal
* - Sam Gaskin
* Chad Lambert
* Cheese Hasselberger
* Chris Pitzer
* Chris Schweizer
* Christopher Studabaker
* Dan Piraro
* Daniel Spottswood
* Dave Roman
* Dave Sim I
* Dave Sim II
* David Arroyo I
* David Arroyo II
* David Mack
* David Milloway
* David Petersen
* Derrick Kennelty-Cohen I
* Derrick Kennelty-Cohen II
* Donny Miller
* Doug Bratton
* Elizabeth Genco
* Eric Adams
* GB Tran
* Greg Ruth
* Hans Rickheit
* J. Chris Campbell
* James Sturm
* Jameson Lee
* Jamie S. Rich
* Jamie Tanner
* Jason Armstrong
* Jenny Gonzalez
* Jessie Garza
* Jim Coon
* Joelle Jones
* John Bergin
* John Green
* Jordan Michael
* Josh Bernstein
* Josh Cotter
* Josh Finney & Kat Rocha
* Karl Kerschl
* Ken Wong
* Kevin Colden
* Liz Baillie
* Liz Prince
* Lorenzo Etherington
* M.R. Petit
* Marcos Perez
* Marek Bennett
* Marion Vitus
* Mark Siegel
* Matt Feazell
* Matt Kindt I
* Matt Kindt II
* Matthew Wood
* Max Ink
* Megan Kelso
* Melinda Gebbie
* Memo Salazar
* Michael LaRiccia I
* Michael LaRiccia II
* Michelle Arcand
* Mike Dawson I
* Mike Dawson II
* Miss Lasko-Gross I
* Miss Lasko-Gross II
* MOME Panel, MAF'06:
* - Gabrielle Bell
* - David Bennett
* - Gary Groth
* - David Heatley
* - Paul Hornschemeier
* - R. Kikuo Johnson
* - Kurt Wolfgang
* Monica Gallagher
* Neil Kleid
* Neil Swaab
* Paolo Rivera
* Pat Lewis I
* Pat Lewis II
* Patrick Meaney
* Paul Gravett
* Paul Hornschemeier
* Pete Friedrich I
* Pete Friedrich II
* R. Kikuo Johnson
* Raina Telgemeier
* Renee French
* Rob Reilly
* Rob Walton
* Robert Goodin
* Roger Langridge
* Ryan Cody
* Ryan Dunlavey
* Sam Hiti
* Stephen R. Bissette
* Steve Chanks
* Steve Peters
* Ted McKeever
* Thomas Scioli
* Tom Williams
* Tony Consiglio
* Vernon Smith
* Victor Giannini
Sequential Skeletons
* Main Page
* Michael Zulli
* Kent Williams
* Grant Morrison
* Matt Wagner
* Dave Stevens
* George Perez
Linkage
* Aaron Renier
* Alec Longstreth
* Andy Runton
* The Beat
* Brian Fies
* Brom
* CBLDF
* Dan Piraro
* David Mack Guide
* David Petersen
* Donny Miller
* J. Chris Campbell
* Liz Prince
* Marcos Perez
* Matt Feazell
* Matt Kindt
* MoCCA
* Newsarama
* Neil Swaab
* Paolo Rivera
* The Pulse
* R. Kikuo Johnson
* Rocketship
* Roger Langridge
* Three Trees Studios
==================
From: iweargreenshoes
Kraftwerk song Autobahn, 1974/1975
Animation by Roger Mainwood(?)
autobahn kraftwerk wird fahn mainwood roger electropop
From: marianapoulain
a video from the german band kraftwerk.
um vídeo da banda alemã kraftwerk.
kraftwerk trans europe express
Post-Human Review (excerpt from TCJ #287) Print
Written by Tom Crippen
Monday, 03 December 2007
The Night Thoughts of Mort Weisinger
Mort Weisinger said he was suffering severe emotional problems during Superman's great 1960s era, when Weisinger was editor and mastermind of the whole Superman family of titles. This was the period of Kandor, Superman robots, the Phantom Zone, the different colors of Kryptonite. During this time, Weisinger said, he became so unraveled that his boss had to pay for a psychiatrist to put him back together. Weisinger said it happened because of deadline pressures and because he got into a sort of internal hair-pulling fight with Superman; he wanted to be more important than Superman, but Superman kept on winning. Strangely, no one has much of a reaction to the story. Gerard Jones, in his Men of Tomorrow, passes along Weisinger's claim with a "for what it's worth" air. Weisinger's own son says the Superman angle strikes him as a bit of a gimmick. He reports happy memories of his father during the alleged turmoil. "Every year my dad would let me take off from school and take a friend into his office in NYC," the younger Weisinger remembers. Notice the second item in the upcoming list: "We would read the giant comic proofs, sit in when he would berate an artist or writer, then go to a Yankees game in the afternoon." Kicking around employees was father-son entertainment. Maybe we're not dealing with emotional dysfunction here, just with a different species.
Yet there's no doubt that Weisinger was a man living in pain. He said it, his enemies said it. Neal Adams, a semi-defender, remembers asking Weisinger why he was so hard on people. Emotions heaved behind the gross, fat, ugly man's features, "and he said, 'I'll tell you... imagine that you get up in the morning and you go into the bathroom to shave, and you look into the mirror, and you see this face.'" That's sad, I guess, but to me it's also strange. Pouring your woe over the desk like you were slopping a bucket while an acquaintance sits there and wonders what he's looking at. Weisinger made a spectacle of himself. I've known a few office jerks, and several had their disturbing moments of this sort, when the inner child came peeping out like Gollum and you wanted to look away. A lot of jerks are people who barely have their personalities pinned together, and the resulting strain makes them unbearable. (Your mother told you bullies don't feel good about themselves, and that was true enough.) The assholes cope by means of spasms and outbursts and day-in, day-out little rituals that involve making others feel worse about themselves, and it all goes on forever. It's not just that Weisinger said nasty things, Arnold Drake once complained, it's that he said the same nasty things over and over, his little repertoire.
For people like Weisinger, day-to-day life isn't so different from a low-level breakdown; at least, I think it's a bit weird to tell one person after another about how you're going to wipe your ass with his script. Wayne Boring, after Weisinger fired him as the second-string Superman artist, drew a cartoon of Weisinger that showed two boxes of pills dropping out of his pants, one box marked "Uppers" and the other "Downers." So an enemy says Weisinger had a drug habit, and Weisinger says he was just falling apart. Either way he was a mess right when a million of us were letting the man's products into our head.
Silver Age Superman is my guess as to the baby boom's elemental comic book experience. Maybe I think that only because it was mine — they were the comics that I liked the most when I was just old enough to read. But I'm pretty typical about these things. When the first wave of baby boomers hit 8–12, the period's target age for comics, the comics they bought were Weisinger's Superman titles. Superman comics were read by the most kids at the youngest age. Marvel was what we moved on to; DC was baby stuff, but that means it got wedged pretty far inside our minds, into a zone more warm and private than some of us (by which I mean myself) like to realize. Giant red ants, household animals with capes, dialogue balloons about the compressibility of Superman's costume — it's all one of the biggest exhibits in the superhero hall of fame. The sheer number of Weisinger-provided gimmicks even helped bring on a new stage in pop-culture development. They recurred from issue to issue and title to title over enough years to produce a self-contained body of lore — what by 1965 Weisinger described as a "mythos."
Of course Marvel was building a universe too, but the Marvel version leaned more on continuing storylines — love troubles were a favorite — and on guest spots by heroes and villains in titles where they normally didn't belong. Weisinger's approach leaned more on knowledge. Clued-in readers knew what the Superman Emergency Squad was and could list the different varieties of Kryptonite. That doesn't make the Weisinger approach superior, but lore of this sort has become central to the geek pop-cultural experience, and Weisinger had his system in full swing before Star Trek got on the air and when Tolkien was just starting to break out in paperback.
This treasured geek memory has an uncomfortable side. Weisinger was a hell of a man to keep around children. Of course, a lot of Silver Age DC has an unhealthy, neurotic air. The Flash doesn't just find himself with a giant domed head — people laugh at him for it. Batman has to go limping out of town, ragged and feeble, and behind him a massive orange sun is setting; not only that, but it's lopsided. DC covers back then had a weakness for rejection. Marvel heroes might get beaten, but DC heroes were denied love. They were humiliated and betrayed, exiled, told no one needed them now ("We Have Hyper-Man!"). Marvel heroes knew they would have their ups and downs with the public. DC heroes existed to be paragons, the best face of authority; society's love was built into the deal. Then the deal would get revoked and the poor hero would find himself denounced as a failure or hypocrite. Fingers drawn by Neal Adams would point at the supposed hero. Of course, in any given story, events pretty soon bounced back to normal. DC practiced bungee storytelling — a story's appeal depended on one extreme image, a cover or title page, that showed circumstances being dragged as far as possible out of normal. The rest of the story was spent on letting them hurtle back where they belonged. By story's end, reality had hit reset and the next story could go ahead.
When it came to superheroes, a DC editor's target audience was too old for happy larks but too young for continuing storylines. It made sense to grab the kids with the promise of isolated, extreme events, but the events couldn't involve a lot of shooting or fighting (house rules). They had to be extreme in some other way, such as a messing about with reality's basic terms. Superman wasn't supposed to have a lion's head, but he did have a lion's head. Superman never goofed off, but here he was goofing off. One advantage of this approach, to get technical, is that the jolt comes from the break with a basic reality; the thing that constitutes the break doesn't have to be so remarkable in itself. A man goofing off is nothing, really. But Superman goofing off... It's a given that Superman does not sit around taking it easy, and the given makes the story possible. When you're generating plots, an approach like this really slashes your expenditure of imagination. That pays off if your job requires the generation of more than a hundred stories a year for the same small group of characters.
A child's basic reality is that his family and friends either want him or don't want him. Young kids don't experience much in between, or at least don't process it as such. They feel either loved or unloved, and the second is a very dramatic event indeed. Hence somebody like Julius Schwartz, who sounds like a pugnacious but healthy character, could have his neurotic covers for Flash and Batman. But I'm willing to bet that Mort Weisinger used the gimmick more often and more brutally. He could dream up quite elaborate situations just to show someone being shit on. Superman floats, helpless as a ghost; enlarged Kandorians are unwittingly about to destroy their home, and not only can Superman not warn them, he has to listen as they take time out to say mean things. ("We'll never free you from the Phantom Zone, because for years you pretended there was no way to enlarge our bottle-city!") Or we have a cover showing Superman in a headlock, trapped there by a bruiser using one arm, and the bruiser has a little half-smile tugging at a corner of his mouth. This is an imaginary story set on Krypton, so Superman doesn't have his uniform and we recognize him by his curl and the red-blue color scheme of his clothing. In the background, a man holds up the Superman uniform (with a clothes hanger). "You win, Knor-El! By defeating your brother, Kal-El, you've gained the right to wear this uniform! From now on, you'll be earth's Superman!" The man, of course, is Jor-El, Superman's father, and he has his own tucked-mouth little grin.
Weisinger would show humiliation; he would show parents rejecting children. He needed covers, of course, but I don't think he could have played this angle so heavily, over so many years, if it didn't suit him. Weisinger was a sick man. He said he became jealous of Superman, and to me the key fact here is that Superman does not exist. Yet when Weisinger thought about Superman, he felt crowded. Thinking about Clark Kent, he figured Clark must feel the same way, that Clark must be jealous of Superman too; it was the one little insight Weisinger had on tap after 30 years of editing the series. And Superman himself, Weisinger figured, would become jealous — if, say a miniature replica of Superman emanated from his palm and hurried off to perform super-tasks and the public made a fuss over the little thing. ("I'm no longer Superman! I'm just a... a place for that strange form to occupy! I must get rid of it... But how?") Anything at all could threaten Weisinger's sense of his right to exist.
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Girl-wonder.org and When Fangirls Attack!
Gail Simone (excerpts from TCJ #286)
Len Wein, one of my very favorite writers, told a story that when he got permission for Alan Moore to have the Joker shoot Barbara "Batgirl" Gordon in the spine, he says that he yelled delightedly down the hallway, "Cripple the bitch!"
I think, just as much as the speculator craze, that kind of thinking was a nail in the coffin of mainstream comics. Can you imagine a major medium — books, movies, television — that didn't actively court the female consumer? It's insane, it's antiquated, and when manga nearly ate mainstream comics alive, it's hard to say it's undeserved.
Decimate the small pool of viable, likeable female characters and you are likely saying goodbye to not just the current, but the future female audience.
My goal was to ask what it meant, not condemn every comics pro or reader, but several thousand people with poor reading skills will forever brand me either a gender traitor or a man-hater, whichever makes them more fake-outraged.
It's like being double-closeted. First, you read comics, and then, you're a fucking girl who reads comics. And at the time, it felt like there was at best apathy for you from the major companies, and more than a little hostility there, as well. For all the world, it felt like a NO GURLZ ALOUD sign was hung on the door, and I'm a bit too stubborn to leave that as it lies.
The thing is, I knew the trend was dying before the site even went up, which is why I never really updated it. A lot of newer writers were coming up who, for better or worse, seemed to pay attention to the female characters a little more. There was some Brit influence, which I think had a maturing effect on the storytelling, as well.
For years I downplayed the entire effect of the site—I simply didn't believe it had any real long-standing footprint, until I started knowing some of the higher-ups at DC and Marvel where they would
Then, out of nowhere — and keep in mind, this asshole doesn't know me at all — he starts telling me how heavenly it is when his "lover" lets him ejaculate on her face, and asking me about my sex life. One minute, "Oh, you're right, the plight of women in comics, woe, oh, woe," and the next it's outtakes from this guy's porn-move repertoire.
I wrote him back and scared the shit out of him and got an apology, however mealy-mouthed it was. But it does sort of show the mind-set. Girls reading comics? They're freaks, not real people. That was a Fantagraphics guy, by the way, not a superhero creator.
Warren Ellis seems to write them by the truckload. Marc Andreyko is great. Dan Slott writes nice females. There are some choices now, and it's working. If you go to my signing line at a comics con, you'll see a higher percentage of females readers than most any other superhero writer, sometimes by a factor of two or three or more.
Another archetype gone wrong is the mopey, broken superheroine, usually with a sexual dysfunction and probably some bladed weapon. After "grim and gritty," we went through this phase that I call "drab and dreary," where some very well-meaning writers seemed to feel the way to earn critical praise was by creating the same personality over and over again, sort of a joyless, vicious and angry.
I want to create Clowny, the Happy Clown Who Farts Rainbows.
It sounds like the ravings of heroin addict, but damn, it's fun stuff to write.
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In the middle of 1930, Otto Soglow introduced a new character that would launch the next stage of his career, an unnamed and silent King who trudges through his daily offices in a daze, longing for any excuse to step away from it all, even if just to pick up the milk at the castle door. By 1931, the "Little King," as he came to be known, was a regular feature in the magazine's pages, caught up in absurd rituals and ceremonies and longing to break away to the open road. The joke, for those who cared to look for it, depended primarily on Soglow's long-running theme: In a society in which individuals are imprisoned by social categories like class, gender and sexuality, everyone is wearing costumes that fit as poorly as the King's crown. Our little king no more belongs on the throne than Bill's unnamed colleague belonged in the sewer. The King always jumped at any excuse to join the staff in the kitchen, to slide down the banister, even, in the last Little King cartoon for the New Yorker in 1934, to join the people in rioting against his monarchy.
The resurgence of pantomime comics in the early 1930s is an interesting phenomenon in its own right, especially given that it coincided with the rise of sound film. Just as the movies learned to talk, comics began to experiment with what they could accomplish without words.
Cartoon advertising was taking off, and Hearst's syndicate was moving into a leadership role in this growth field. The pantomime comic was especially adaptable for advertising purposes, and Hearst quickly latched on to the idea of securing Soglow's Little King for both his comics supplement and for advertising.
Appropriately, Soglow created his forerunner for the King's arrival in the form of an Ambassador.
But the joke is also, of course, an inside one, a joke on the lawyers whose contracts required him to create the Ambassador in the first place, on the marketplace that will surely not even care about the difference (as the King's many transformations in advertising and licensing suggest), and on the casual reader who will likely not even notice the change from Ambassador to King.
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FARAGO: You're a graduate of the Joe Kubert School, right? When was that? Who were your instructors? What was your main field of study there?
LIEBER: I was there from 1987-90. Some of the better known teachers were Joe Kubert, George Pratt, Irwin Hasen, Phillip "Tex" Blaisdell, Hy Eisman, and Ron Wagner. At the time, the school only had two programs: cartooning/illustration and animation. Everyone has the same courses first year, then for your second and third, you decided if you wanted to be pursue illustration or animation.
Like a lot of freelancers, I sort of eased in rather than breaking in. You pick up one job after another until you start to notice that most of your income and most of your time at the board seems to be comics-related. I'd say it was two years from graduation to full-time comics. My first professional work was inking and lettering a small-press comic called Roadways. After that, I found myself assigned to draw a Western, a caveman story, some war comics, then Hawkman.
FARAGO: For a comic that's got so much snow in it, Whiteout has a wide variety of textures, tones and other effects, depending on what each scene requires. Can you run down the list of art supplies that you need on hand when creating an issue of Whiteout?
LIEBER: Well, in my pre-digital days, any given page might have unerased pencil, black ink ink applies with pen, watercolor brush, bristle brush, toothbrush, white paint, homemade screen tones, razor-scratching sandpaper, pasted Xeroxes, thumbprints, Q-tip prints, grease crayon — anything I could possibly use to make paper feel like Antarctica. With Thaw, I'm going to bring in the things I've since learned about working digitally.
DC's Top 5 Writers mentions GREG RUCKA,
(also Geoff Johns, Grant Morrison, Mark Waid and Judd Winick.)
ANDREW FARAGO: What led to your first foray into the comic book...
GREG RUCKA: This is actually going to be fun, because this ties to Fantagraphics. I went to school in Monterey, Calif., with a guy named Scott Nybakken who worked with The Comics Journal. And Nybakken left the Journal and moved to New York to work for DC. As I said, Jen and I would go to San Diego and I would go to San Diego and talk to any editor who made the mistake of standing still too close to me, and say, "Can I get work?"
And they'd go, "Go away!" And even once I'd been published, I'd put books in front of people and they'd say, "That's very nice. Go away!" Nobody would give me the time of day. I think the only editor who actually engaged me in a conversation prior to me getting my first gig was Stuart Moore, when Stuart was at Vertigo. But because the novels were coming out, and because Scott worked at DC, Scott was able to get the books in front of Patty Jeres just to say, "Hey, my friend wrote these." And I would see Patty at the conventions. Patty introduced me to Bob Schreck when Oni had their first appearance at San Diego. It was before they had anything out. Bob and I had a meeting at the Con and he sort of looked at the books and said, "You don't want to adapt these?"
And I said, "No. They're novels. That would be silly."
He said, "Well, what are you thinking about?"
I said, "I wanna do this story about a federal marshal in Antarctica, because I think that's the perfect comic-book story. I think you need the visuals there."
And then Whiteout led, almost directly and again via Patty Jeres, to DC because it is Patty who then, at a Wonder Con the following year, says to me, "You know, if I'd thought you had any interest in writing Batman I'd talk to Denny."
And she said, "Well, OK 'cause they just had a bloodletting in the Bat-group [Laughs.] And they're looking for people." So, the way Patty tells the story is that she walks into Denny O'Neil's office when he was still group editor, and she's got my first novel in one hand, Keeper, and my second novel in the other hand, Finder, and she walks in and she says, "Denny, there's this write — " and that's about as far as she gets before Denny says, "Where did you get that?" pointing at the second book, Finder.
And she says, "Well, the author is — "
He said, "I've read the first one. I loved it. I've been looking for a second one everywhere. Can I have that?"
And she says, "Well, it turns out he's going to be coming to town and he's doing this thing for Oni Press."
I came to New York to meet with my publisher at Bantam and I went by DC, and Denny and I went to lunch and had a great conversation, mostly talking about his work on The Question, which, to this day, is possibly my favorite thing that he's done. We had a great meal, and he said, "OK."
It's one thing to say you can write a novel. It's another thing to say you can write a comic, because they're not the same thing. This is a huge problem and we've seen it in the industry, especially in the big houses. Just because you can write a movie doesn't mean you can write a good comic. Again it goes to that pejorative sort of comic-book thing, you know, this bastardization of the form that says, "Oh, this is easier." It's not. It's different. There are different rules.
I turned into the primary water-bearer on the project.
Question: You're sort of at the forefront of Marvel and DC recruiting novelists to come in and take a stab at their characters, aren't you?
Answer: I'm usually really skeptical about any prose book that has a superhero.
I don't think they thought of me as a novelist
I tried really, really hard to get [Mystic River author] Dennis Lehane to do something for DC and he doesn't have any interest and then it turned out he was doing The Wire, so I can't blame him. [Laughs.] But there have been a few I've talked to about it. Gary Phillips, who's represented by the same guy that represents me these days, and who I think is really, really talented. I think Gary's got gunshot in his prose. Very, very dynamite. But, no, I can't really go down a line and say, "I responsible for this. I'm responsible for that." There's this myth that I talk to a lot of writers. I don't. Or a lot of novelists. There aren't many that I correspond with. Most of my artistic socialization, if that's a phrase, is with other comics people these days.
The way I got roped into that is that I was in Paul Levitz's office with Dan DiDio and Geoff Johns, when we were talking about what we needed to do post Geoff writing Infinite Crisis and Dan had said, "So, we want to do this one-year jump."
And Paul said, "You can't." [Laughs.] He said, "We have to see that year."
And then Paul said, "You know, maybe do it something like 24." [Laughs.]
And Dan got that Rasputin look that he gets. He'd come in with a big posterboard. He was going to show all of the plans, and he closed it. He put it under his arm, he looks at Paul, he says, "We'll be back."
And we all marched out of the office, went back down to Dan's office, and like, "A weekly comic. Oh, my God. Can we do this?" I was immediately taken by the idea. I thought it was a great idea. I was also foolish enough to look at Geoff and say, "We can do it, you and me. We can do it." [Laughs.]
And Dan DiDio said, "You will die. There need to be other writers coming in."
It sort of went from there. Steve Wacker stood up when it was presented to the editors and said, "I'll do it. Give it to me." I think all the other editors were like, "This is insane." I think Wacker then walked out of Dan's office, having got the gig and everybody was like, "You... suicide attempt. You're falling on your sword? What are you doing there?" But that's how I got roped into it.
We got together in New York for like three days at a time and we would sit in a conference room and it was Grant, Jeff, Mark, myself, Dan, Jann Jones, Ivan Cohen, J.G. Jones and Keith Giffen in the room, and it started.
The three tent-poles of the universe were off-duty for that year. The slug was, "A year without Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman, but not a year without heroes."
So, the initial approach had been: what corners of the universe do we want to talk about and what sort of things do we want to talk about? So, we want to talk about the space-opera aspect, so we need space characters. Who can we do? And all of a sudden Grant says, "Let's use Buddy." So, Animal Man gets thrown in. And "Are we gonna use Captain Comet or are we going to use Adam Strange?" "Let's go with Adam Strange." So, there were all sorts of discussions like that. "Who do we want on the ground?" "Oh, let's go with Montoya. She's a good street-level character coming out of Gotham Central at that point. She had a great beginning for the arc. Who can we team her with?
Say you got to do it in four pages instead of in eight, it's harder to do it in four. The writing had to become more efficient.
Right now, the plan is to serialize first. I can't speak for Greg's intentions, but I really like the four-issue rhythm and the accelerating tension that you get when you build cliffhangers right in to the story's framework.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXa9tXcMhXQ&feature=related
From: ApriliaRS125
Classic 1977, Kraftwerk videoclip of The Robots
(Kraftwerk, the pioneers of electronic music)
videoclip electronic techno
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From: StudioJFISH
Daedelus performing at Cinespace/Dim Mak Tuesdays 08/02/06
Mixing DJ
http://i237.photobucket.com/albums/ff186/Carter_Goodrich_Esq/intercontinental/playboy/INTERSTICIAL_JERK/Monsanto_Westinghouse066.jpg
Boys get video games, girls get comics
posted by LUXXXCORP at 11:49 PM
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