Rolling Comic Books 2020 Visions

...And also, I guess, be thankful Immortal Hulk hasn't had any major delays.

Everything's a blur to me but Saga's last issue was sometime in 2018 and it's not on the horizon. People will have just forgotten about it if/when it comes back.

If comics go digital the format will change/die - there's no incentive to do 12 issues and deal with all the staffing/delays/etc.. Everything will be original GNs on an intermittent schedule and all the smaller publisher stuff will just not exist.

12 monthly issues

I say that with some certainty because all the major events end up getting stretched and delayed for one reason or another and they only keep doing it because of the relationship with comic shops. Acting more like a book publisher (but really just building IP for the mass entertainment divisions) would let them cut a ton of staff costs.

I skipped around the Steve Bissette interview on Cartoonist Kayfabe (it's enormous) and he talks about his plans for Tyrant. He still definitely wants to do it.
I didn't know anything about his aborted trilogy of Swamp Thing novels.

I have to admit, while I am a big fan of Ed Piskor's work, I can't stand listening to or looking at the guy. Something about him.

That's harsh, and I love his voice! Maybe there's tons of slightly Mitch Hedberg sounding guys wherever he's from but it's a novelty to me.

I'm continually astonished how well an independent comic from the early 90s could do.

Also very interesting was Bissette talking about when he was deciding to give up comics, about a distributor that would have been much better than Diamond but died because Image chosen Diamond along with DC.

...one that wasn't Capital? No-one else had the same level of infrastructure.

It was Capital.

Yes, their big guns in the exclusivity wars were the moral victories of Kitchen Sink Press and whatever name James Owen was publishing Starchild under at the time.

Before the DC right-to-buy deal memo broke.

Fascinating mystery in here. At the 13 minute mark there is a japanese magazine celebrating american comics, with cosplay and japanese artists drawing some Marvel heroes; but also this "what in fuck is that?!" moment, something completely unfamiliar that I doubt is even american but looks amazing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4vu7NmQowA
I just love the stuff with flipping through trashy and obscure comics so much. In my days of back issue shop hunting I didn't see nearly enough stuff I didn't already know about but it was great when I did. Finding a Glenn Chadbourne comic was a special moment and there were some odd small press british comics and a ratty sword and sorcery comic I wish I picked up.
I'll never love most of this stuff completely but I feel some love has been reinvigorated and I should give some of the really bad 90s comics more credit because there's still things about them I really like, and a feeling that there was serious potential from these types of comics that was never really realized and a slightly different audience that could have been cultivated.

So much great comics-adjacent artists, too bad they had to all be on instagram (which I think is a pain in the ass to browse and you can't save images). Probably too many of them draw eyes similar though.

https://www.instagram.com/julimajer/
https://www.instagram.com/lilisignorini/
https://www.instagram.com/bl00mfield/
https://www.instagram.com/slimesistren/
https://www.instagram.com/annadegnbol/
https://www.instagram.com/odaiselin/
https://www.instagram.com/____gage____/
https://www.instagram.com/magsmunroe/

not a big fan of the paul pope inspired stuff but Oda Iselin's work is pretty intresting

A lot of these artists seemed to spring up after Jonny Negron and Lala Albert came on the scene and they all share some similarity, usually the eyes. Post-manga or something.

i thought this was fun in a repurposed batshit rightwing images sorta way
http://www.thenation.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Carlesgod_StaySane_Web-img-3.jpg

hashtag radiohead social media prophecy

I'm glad Print-On-Demand is becoming more prevalent in comics, half the books I read are POD these days. Seen Rick Veitch say it wouldn't reproduce pencil art that well but I hope it keeps evolving.
The Carter Ryder comics and public domain comics are the main things I'm aware of going POD, is there much else notable yet?

Sorry, Carter RydYr

I never really dug Chaykin but his interview was great, such a great knowledge of illustrators but his keen eye suggests he didn't choose his overpowering colorists at Image, or did he?

Still smiling at Choe saying "Ron Lim is a fuckin' pimp".

Re: Groth talking about Eisner, he thought Eisner's graphic novels were a purely cynical attempt at respectability. The acclaim for them seems to have dropped quite a lot.

i'm not a big fan of eisner's graphic novel work (tho lord knows i've tried) but the spirit is right up there with donald duck and mister natural in my pantheon

Contract With God is okay bcz he was stretching to find something new (after decades of desk supervision), To The Heart Of The Storm has some personal feeling involved, otherwise it’s trash melodrama.

His late period is more interesting when serialised in the Spirit magazine, as there’s interesting contrasts between young-Eisner-when-he-was-good (and had good ghosts), businessman Eisner conducting interviews with various generations, and current Eisner trying to find a voice.

That's a shame if his reputation has decreased. I think his stuff is still very much worth seeking out.

I love all old funky 70s and early 80s Howard Chaykin. None of his character attempts (Ironwolf, Cody Starbuck, Monark Starstalker, Dominic Fortune, The Scorpion, etc.) really caught on but they all had a cool energy to them that really appealed to me as a kid.

Its too bad you could not license to put them all together in one book as that would be a cool compilation of a certain style.

Howard Chaykin was cool as fxxx the time I met him at the Chicago comic con as a teenager in the 80s. I think it was '87 they had a backroom for the artists row and it was like Howard Chaykin, Denys Cowan (sharing a table) and like two tables down was Harvey Pekar and Daniel Clowes. Someone like Chris Claremont was speaking and the gallery was really empty at the time, so we got to talk to all of those guys a bit. Good day.

I always liked Cookalein best of all Eisner's non-Spirit work.

Chaykin's visual style appeals to me but i have never been able to finish a single issue of anything he's written. My memory of his writing is that it feels like Frank Miller directed by Verhoeven. Can someone convince me to try American Flagg?

The first 12 issues of Flagg are good, and packed with enough still-timely cynicism and media commentary that it outweighs the typical Chaykin cocksmannery.

i'll give it a go sometime.
I've been exploring the Eisner nominees with mixed returns. Should i post my thoughts here or start a new thread?

Post thoughts here

R.I.P. Denny O’Neil.

I hadn't realized that a friend interviewed Denny O'Neill before a local comic convention. He accidentally misquoted him, saying that O'Neill's mom was in a nursing home and not an assisted living one, which O'Neill nicely corrected when he met him at the convention after the initial phone interview. I guess his mom lived in my city. My friend got to meet Denny's mom, who he brought to the convention, and she was also nice and seemed much younger than her age.

https://www.comic-con.org/awards/2020-eisner-awards-nominations

I find the Eisners to be VERY hit and miss as far as quality and scope goes but there are certainly worse year-past recaps of popular/semi-popular work in the field so hey, why not. I'll jump in by category.

By far the Best Short Story nominee this year is Emma Hunsinger's outstanding long-form public debut and coming of age story "How to Draw a Horse" from the New Yorker. If you haven't already, you should go read it right now at the link below. It's easily among the very best and most memorable short-form comic that I've seen in the past year.

https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/how-to-draw-a-horse

Hunsinger has a longer project, Chunk, up for free on her website that I read just before posting here; it's remarkably accomplished, thoughtful student work and also more than worth a go. I'm excited to see what she does in the future.

Miriam Libicki's story for The Nib, "Who Gets Called an Unfit Mother" is beautifully executed and timely but, like much of the Nib's comic work, is less like comics and more of an illustrated essay. I will read her Fanta book "Toward a Hot Jew" sooner or later; she's clearly quite talented as an illustrator but I don't know if she's a solid storyteller or not.
https://thenib.com/who-gets-called-an-unfit-mother/

Mira Jacob's "The Menopause" is stiff and poorly rendered. She's gotten really hot as a literary crossover creator but I find her work awkward and the writing dull. Her themes are worth exploring but the scripting is cliched and lacks illumination. This is a pet peeve for me but I'm not seeing any intent in using the art of comics as anything but to prop up literal cut-out figures. Libicki is at least a solid illustrator, this is clip art unsuccessfully utilized.
https://believermag.com/the-menopause/

Matthew Inman's "You're Not Going to Believe What I'm About To Tell You" is of a piece with everything he puts on his abundantly popular and deadly dull webcomic site The Oatmeal: it reads like the unholy child of xkcd and Penny Arcade, the art is Reddit Casual and the tone is 'particularly quirky TED talk'. That clearly works for some people. It does not work for me.
https://theoatmeal.com/comics/believe

I still need to read Ebony Flowers' debut graphic novel collection which includes the nominated title story "Hot Comb" from Drawn and Quarterly. The concept is of interest and the art seems very Aline Kominsky-Crumbesque (which i can hang with) but i wish EVERYONE WHO MAKES COMICS would stop using cursive lettering; it makes my eyes cross. Nevertheless, the critical praise suggests this definitely merits an effort to find. Will report back.
https://drawnandquarterly.com/hot-comb
https://blacknerdproblems.com/hot-comb-review/

ty for all that ulysses!
"How to Draw a Horse" was indeed very excellent! I'll get through the others too. (Though I've already read "Who Gets Called an Unfit Mother" which was good, and I agree with your criticism there)

"Crunk" was great and totally worth reading!

When I read "The Menopause" I recognized the artwork from Mira Jacob, hate the clipart + photocomic style and it's hard to get to past for me. That said, the story is funny and I did like the goofs on Dale Carnegie (his book remains popular btw).

The Oatmeal article is... fine. Pretty much what you said, it's the TED talk method. I don't despise it because I get that they're going for a broad audience, the dumbing down is exactly why it exists.

Hopefully "Hot Comb" gets put up somewhere

Nothing to add (I also really liked Hunsinger and struggled to read the Jacob story) but thanks for pointing me towards How to Draw a Horse and Chunk, both so great

http://www.thenation.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/BLACK_LIVING_COVER_Sikoryak_CMYK-Nation-img.png
sikoryak coming through

Two sets of grooming / sleaze allegations over the last few days.

One is Aviva Artzy (and others) regarding Cameron Stewart

https://www.comicsbeat.com/cameron-stewart-sexual-misconduct-allegations/

And the other is Katie West (and others) regarding Warren Ellis

http://www.multiversitycomics.com/news/warren-ellis-allegations/

ugh

Super disappointed but not entirely surprised to hear that about Ellis.

Yeah, that's a good description of where I'm at.

Same here.

Ellis got exposed, chatlogs and cam-caps and all, 15 years ago, so I was very not surprised.

Ah, I'm not the only one that remembers that (and so not too surprised here either).

I never saw that and bringing it up now feels like an empty shrug to the women who either didn’t see it, or gave a man the benefit of a doubt that past behavior wouldn’t predict his actions in the future. Or that that behavior didn’t seem as bad as it could have been, not realizing how it’d affect them.

I’m always at least mildly surprised when someone’s vaguely seedy behavior indicates actual exploitative behavior, or when people don’t learn from publicly being outed, because I guess at heart I have this naivety that people will try to do better.

I saw that Chip Zdarsky mentioned Stewart on twitter in the context that he saw him dating younger women, although not the age difference indicated by grooming, when they shared a studio and felt bad about not seeing signs. But without community, including men who are willing to be open to calling things out, it’s difficult. If a woman in my field knew my colleague was abusive, am I approachable? Or did I know and was already protecting him?

Hadn't heard these accusations against Ellis until now, but even when he was a fan/just starting out as a writer he was a total arsehole in person/public.

bringing it up now feels like an empty shrug

absolutely not intended - given all of the openly known sexual abusers aggressively protected by DC and Dark Horse and DC and DC in the years since, I'm very saddened that he was apparently able to cruise right back along with the same grooming behaviour, except even more exploitative & no benefit-of-the-doubt re consensuality from his cult-of-personality message board, with the earlier revelations somehow not even making it into one of the whisper networks.

This is obviously not specific to this situation:

Guys: you know that dude who said something creepy about women to you once or twice, but seemed fine after that? That dude was testing you. Pushing your boundaries to see how you'd react, the same way they push the girls they prey on.

— Stacy King (@stacyking) June 17, 2020

Dave Sim has, to all intents and purposes, retired from comics. (What's that?, I hear you cry, We thought that had happened over a decade ago!)

http://momentofcerebus.blogspot.com/2020/06/breaking-strange-death-of-alex-raymond.html?m=1

Even the fanbase stuff - and I was/am still buying the Archive prints when they crowdfund as they're pretty fascinating historical documents - is making less than no money and Dave getting by on about $85CAD a week. His move to the puritanical life at the turn of the century might have made him better placed than most to eke out meagre income, but he's clearly sick of even trying any more.

The dude who's been drawing Dave's comics for him, unpaid, for several years is further into the blog expressing his frustration that Sim has been erecting completely arbitrary barriers to his own success for a long time, so that he can blame those as an excuse for not publishing, and continue his martyr complex. The post includes a link to a letter he wrote Sim over three years ago yelling at him about this.