Guitar Not Comics

This is the cover for a revised version of an instructional book I wrote that has just been re-released. I didn't come up with the title and the picture is not of me . . .

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Shamrock En Espanol

Recently I received out of the blue a copy of a Spanish edition of Mome in the mail, published by La Cupula. While I can only be awed and bewildered by the seemingly thankless effort involved in translating my work, I can also see how it must have proven difficult. In panel two, 'This be a sham reel" has become, near as I can tell, "This dance is pure theater." Also, "Stamps: They Can't Be Licked" has become, I think, "Stamps: Without Rival."

In the future, I suggest translating Mome as Momias...


Or even better perhaps, "Psychological Traumas from the Secret Archive of a Psychiatrist." I bought this historieta last year in San Diego mainly because of the box of Premium crackers in the upper right.

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(Trapped Inside) The Magic

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Clowes New Yorker Cover

The May 12th issue of the New Yorker features Dan Clowes art on the cover(s)!

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Wizard Top 200

Dan Clowes's Enid Coleslaw, Chris Ware's Jimmy Corrigan, and Jaime Hernandez's Maggie and Hopey appear on the "Top 200 Greatest Characters of All Time!" list in the current issue of esteemed industry news and investment advice periodical Wizard. An interesting and surprising piece is the sidebar "Who's Sadder: Jimmy Corrigan or Earth-2 Aqualad?" Spoiler alert: Number 1 is

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Comics: Art versus Action

Do you like fight scenes? I do, and Ted May's Injury Comics 2 has some of my favorites.

What makes the comic so unusual is the way it combines what could be considered a staple of art comics—autobiography—and a staple of mainstream comics—the fantasy action/adventure story. Jeff Wilson and May scripted the first of the comic’s two stories, “Hair of the Dog,” a tale of metal-heads, stoners, carnies, and failed romance based on Wilson’s teenage years during the 1980s and drawn by May, who wrote and provided layouts for the second story “Your Bleeding Face,” with finished art by Jason Robards. Continued from Injury 1, it features a cyborg named Manleau who takes on a gang of punks known as The Barnyard Animals. As Manleau and the Farmer brawl, the cyborg breaks out a number of his patented moves (at least I assume they are patented; they have names . . .):

The story has a lot of great pages like the one above; there’s a real interest here in creating layouts that change as the story moves from dialogue/conversations to action. Those who are interested in intelligent but not overly-clever layouts will find a lot to look at. The sci-fi inflected Manleau story is not a parody of or a self-conscious commentary on mainstream comics, but rather a straight-up action story done with a genuinely humorous approach (with many great jokes and puns) that I rarely see in Marvel and DC comics. I don’t want to spoil too much of the goodness, but here’s a tease of a panel plus a little extra that continues in the fight mode:

This story works well in the stapled comic book in part because it’s the type of ‘tale’ we have associated with this format since the 1960s. Also in that spirit, May’s information page reads a little a Stan Lee “Soapbox,” with funny descriptions of the stories and invitations for readers to write in with comments and to participate in a fill-in-the-word-balloon contest. And the back cover has a Kirby-flavored full-color drawing:

Yet, it would be wrong to think of this comic as a nostalgic throw-back; and “The Hair of the Dog” is certainly nothing like a Marvel story:
[Well, maybe Gobbie's "metal-sense," which tingles when the dudes crank up Witchfinder, is Marvel-esque.]

And, for no particular reason other than I like it, here's a great series of expressions from "Your Bleeding Face," especially the one on the Veronica-inspired character Pig:

The comic contains over 40 pages of story in crisp black and white, beautiful color covers, and no ads. A more detailed preview can (and should) be checked out here. It’s refreshing to read a comic whose only pretense is to entertainment and yet is so intelligently done that it encourages re-reading rather than a trip to the long-box to file it away.

[Disclaimer: I was involved in a small way with the production of this comic--so that makes this post not a ‘review’ as much as a little ‘boosterism’ for a comic I really like.]

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Reminders

These were mentioned on many blogs when they first appeared, but you shouldn't forget about:

Leon Beyond: new strips by Ted May, Kevin H., and Dan Z. are here.

Jordan W. Lint: Part 2 of Chris Ware's serial is in the latest VQR. It's a comic-friendly issue, with a cover by Art Spiegelman, a comic by Ross MacDonald, and an essay on cartoonist Rory Hayes by his brother, Geoffrey.

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Universe

An attractive Ditko page from Marvel Spotlight #9, 1980.

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Room 26 Cabinet of Curiosities

Take a look through the Room 26 Cabinet of Curiosities, a great blog best explained in their own words:

Room 26 Cabinet of Curiosities features new acquisitions, unique documents, and visual and textual curiosities from the collections of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. This ongoing exhibition is curated by Tim Young, Associate Curator of the Modern Books and Manuscripts Collection, and Nancy Kuhl, Associate Curator of the Yale Collection of American Literature.

Among the interesting work they feature you'll find: The Real adventures of Tintin, and this fun and beautiful piece of ephemera: The Test Flight of Sky Robin.

Wow, there is just too many incredible things shared at that site.
Click below to see a random sampling of stuff you will find in the archives.

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Tomine's Scene

Had it been widely available, Adrian Tomine’s 2007 mini comic Scenes from an Impending Marriage likely would have made its way onto many best-of lists.

Scenes features a stripped-down approach to storytelling in a simply designed, attractive book, two hallmarks of Tomine’s work. It includes six strips (each is 1 to 4 pages) and two single-panel full-page gags, all of which narrate humorous moments as Tomine and his then-fiancée-now-wife, Sarah, prepare for their wedding. They almost hire a DJ, who gives them some CDs so they can “get a sense of his flow,” but they’re not feeling it; they visit a salon, where Adrian supportively comments on—and according to Sarah, tries to decide upon—her wedding-day hair style. The couple also undergoes the “bizarre ritual” of registering for wedding gifts; and they negotiate their two families’ request for different kinds of traditional ethnic entertainment.

In the indicia Tomine writes that “some of the characters and . . . events . . . are fictitious, or at least highly distorted for the sake of clarity and/or humor,” reminding us that, as with all autobiography, Scenes should not be taken literally, though it’s fun to do so. And Tomine’s work, like that of many artists I like, is often far funnier than it's given credit for. And his sense of humor is on full display here. The comic is only 16 pages, but Tomine packs a lot of comedy into the small 6-9 panel grids, making it feel far longer, like a typical full-size comic book. When I talked about the comic with someone who had read it, he recalled it being around 30 pages . . .

Tomine takes a looser approach in Scenes than he does in recent work like 2007’s Shortcomings where, for example, each panel shows a high level of detail, with backgrounds that are meticulously drawn:

The comic features a polished version of the style that Tomine uses for strips in his sketchbook, as in this one from his 2004 collection, Scrapbook

and it has an incredibly appealing breezy and minimal visual look that’s cute and almost delicate, with a thin and relaxed, natural ink line (the only straight lines to be found are the panel borders).

And its cartoony-ness is a little like that of Tomine’s recent New Yorker cover

or in his story The Donger and Me, which first appeared in Giant Robot a few years ago and more recently was posted on NPR’s webpage:
As in Tomine’s other comics, what stands out in Scenes is the way he connects facial expressions and body gestures, though here they have more of the exaggeration typical of newspaper comic strips (a few panels show a clear debt to Peanuts). In one scene—a phone conversation with the almost-hired DJ— Sarah’s facial expression changes slightly from panel to panel—the eyebrows shift slightly, the head moves up or down, she bites a fingernail then a thumbnail, and the gentle comedy of the visuals matches the quickly shifting rhythms of the conversation’s ebb and flow. There’s a lot of charming self-deprecating humor, as in “Poor Us,” where Tomine draws attention to the couple’s narcissism as they obsess over problems with the wedding and honeymoon plans. This story, too, shows Tomine’s skill at cartoon gestures; it includes a perfectly executed nine-panel sequence of distinct poses that ends in a great moment of Peanuts-esque self-pity.

In the mini comics tradition, each copy (a few hundred were made) was hand-assembled, and in a way it’s a throwback to Tomine’s roots, as the early numbers of his series Optic Nerve were assembled and self-published (Tomine recount his self-publishing history in the introduction to his mid-'90s collection 32 Stories). But the fact that this comic was self-produced in a short period of time shouldn't mislead us. It’s the polished work of a confident and sophisticated cartoonist who knows how to work to great effect with an economical visual style and a compressed narrative sense.

All in all, a perfect mini comic.

A few panels from Scenes:



The Shortcomings Site
The "Donger and Me" at NPR.org
Tomine Interview at The Believer
Tomine's Official Site

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Al Jaffee and his MAD Fold-Ins at The New York Times.

The New York Times has a feature on Al Jaffee with a really nice interactive collection of MAD Fold-Ins.

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Sof' Boy Time

Found these at my local comic shop today, "new comic day."

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Great Garloo

Sorry for another Youtube post. This commercial is just amazing. With features that walk the fine line between cute and horrible, Garloo looks like something that might have inspired Charles Burns' work. Nice control unit too. A steering wheel and rocker switches. Pretty neat.

Seen on the Watchismo Times.

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Lydia

If you are not interested in children's literature or nineteenth-century America, then you might want to stop reading.

If you are, I have an essay on Lydia Sigourney (the woman pictured above), in the current issue of "Children's Literature Association Quarterly." Here's a summary of the essay by the journal's editor:

--Ken Parille's "'What Our Boys Are Reading'" reveals the limitations of our received view of boys' reading as reinforcing "notions of male authority and privilege," in contrast to the disciplinary function of girls' reading. By examining Lydia Sigourney's writings about boyhood literacy alongside her biography of her son, Andrew, who died at the age of nineteen, Parille investigates Sigourney's critique of the "harmful norms" of "boyhood masculinity" perpetuated by the idea of "heroic imitation" in antebellum literary culture. Parille demonstrates that Sigourney's insistence that reading should cultivate boys' "domestic virtues" is echoed in later fiction for boys, such as Francis Forrester's Dick Duncan. Modern critics' tendency to divide nineteenth-century children's literature into "boys' books" (Twain) and "girls' books" (Alcott) obscures the complexity of both boys' reading and authors' attitudes toward the young. By questioning our reliance on "familiar classification of authors . . . by gender or perceived literary seriousness," Parille asks us to re-examine our "long-held beliefs" about boyhood. --

This link to a PDF likely only works if you are on a computer at a university with a subscription:

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/childrens_literature_association_quarterly/v033/33.1parille.pdf

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(Even Farther Behind) The Magic

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