By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 1/18/2016
LA-based publisher Top Cow is hiring an an assistant editor to work out of their Culver City location. Qualifications include 2+ years of experience; duties include working with the creative team to traffic and schedule work flow. Good communication a must! Resumes can be submitted to [email protected]. Top Cow is the Image publisher run by […]
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 11/24/2015
§ Dave Itzkoff elides the Dark Knight III experience for the NY Times. It was pointed out a few times that this piece only interviews men and while I’m fully aware that many woman like Batman, I think this can be labeled a “guy thing” without too much outcry. § Forge magazine presents a short […]
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 10/30/2015
One of the more intriguing developments in recent years in comics retailing has been the resurgence of comics sales in national book chains. Yes I know there are fewer of them, but they are still here and Virgin Records and Blockbuster Video aren’t. Barnes & Nobles has expanded its graphic novel section a great deal, […]
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 10/6/2015
UPDATED WITH CAVEAT: Alex De Campi has pointed out that show ever has put this together used her slide on page rates without crediting her, which is a little uncool for a page that purports to have creators rights at heart — OTOH maybe they didn’t want any specific names attached to the project? There’s […]
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 9/18/2015
Long time comics colorist and con organizer Ken Feduniewicz has passed away.As a colorist Feduniewicz coloed Captain America, Dreadstar and many more as seen here. In 1976 he was among the first class of students at the Kubert School in 1976, going on to work in the Marvel Bullpen and with many companies, including Archie, […]
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 9/8/2015
COMIC BOOK CLUB w/DEAN HASPIEL! On this week’s Comic Book Club we have Emmy-winning Writer/Artist DEAN HASPIEL! He’s got an awesome new auto-biographical collection out called BEEF WITH TOMATO from Alternative Press. We’re going to talk about the book, New York City, Dean’s work on THE FOX and LIFE IN GENERAL. PLUS we’re going to […]
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 9/8/2015
Dragon-Con has the reputation for being an no holds barred exploration of fantasy and cosplay. It draws a lot of lookie-loos, as well, and there have been reports of harassment incidents for some time. Now, sadly, there is a report of a sexual assault that took place Sunday night. The victim has been drinking and […]
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 8/28/2015
Jack Kirby, the titanic force of US comics, would have been 98 years old today. While it makes you wonder what exciting things we'll be doing for his centenary, it's also a reminder that it's a good day to contribute to The Hero Initiative, as Kirby's granddaughter Jillian suggests in the above video. For several years, Jillian has promoted the Kirby4Heroes campaign to raise funds for the charity which aids creators in need. I can attest to the many people that this organization has helped, and in a field where 401ks are non existent, it's sometimes the only safety net poplar have.
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 7/11/2015
Image Comics imprint Top Cow announced a slew of new titles today at SDCC.
First up, we have Blood Stain, a series penned and drawn by Linda Šejić, wife of Sunstone and Rat Queens illustrator Stjepan Šejić. Like Sunstone, Blood Stain debuted as a webcomic. The series focuses on Elliot Torres, a chemistry major who’s fallen on hard times and takes a job with Dr. Vlad Stein, who’s rumored to be insane.
Next, writer-turned editor Bryan Hill will collaborate with artist Nelson Blake to produce Romulus, an action conspiracy series that pits the last member of a long lineage of mystical martial artists up against The Order of Romulus, a secret organization that has influenced the world from the shadows since the era of the Roman empire.
Then there’s September Mourning, a new comic whose Kickstarter just launched. Top Cow founder and artist Marc Silvestri will team up with singer Emily Lazar to create an elaborate multi-media experience by combining comics, music, and social media. The series focuses on “a lead character who finds herself split between worlds. She is a half-human, half-reaper hybrid who helps souls complete tasks they left unfinished before they died. Standing against her are the forces of Fate, who seems to have turned against humanity, no longer maintaining the balance between good and bad souls.”
Finally, writer and Top Cow president Matt Hawkins will team up with illustrator Raff Ienco to invite you into a Brave New World-esque future where individuality, creativity, and negativity have been suppressed by medicine and selective breeding. Despite this, one man and one woman manage to maintain the ability to think for themselves. When they meet, they’ll spark a revolution that will determine the ultimate fate of mankind.
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 7/2/2015
The first issue the Invader Zim comics, based on Jhonen Vazquez’s cult cartoon, arrives on July 8th, and Oni is making a big deal out of it because…well it is a big deal. The alien conqueror’s return will be celebrated in several ways: A panel The Return of Invader Zim, Saturday 7/11 at 2 pm in Room 29AB with Vasquez, original show staff and creative staff on the new Zim comic Aaron Alexovich, original show writer and comic staff Eric Trueheart, Inker on the new Invader Zim comic Megan Lawton, and Oni Press Editor-in-Chief James Lucas Jones. And then you will be able to buy a SDCC exclusive variant at the Oni Booth (#1833).
There will be signings but please note, tickets will be required for Friday and Saturday. Tickets will be given out at the Oni Press booth from the start of the show on respective days with fans selected for spots in those signings announced at the Oni Press booth and via Oni Press’ Twitter an hour before the Friday and Saturday signings. Attendees will be limited to signings for two items.
Thursday 7/9
11 am – Aaron Alexovich, Megan Lawton
Friday 7/10
4 pm – Jhonen Vasquez, Bryan Konietzko
Saturday 7/11
3:30 pm – Jhonen Vasquez, Aaron Alexovich, Eric Trueheart, Megan Lawton
Sunday 7/12
2 pm – Aaron Alexovich, Eric Trueheart, Megan Lawton
And here’s the variants!
This unique Jhonen Vasquez (creator of Invader Zim) cover (shown at top of post) for this first issue of Invader Zim #1 will be available at all retailers.
K.C. Green (Gunshow) variant available through Ghost Variant Partner Stores: http://bit.ly/1U95zbz
Vincent Perea (Where’s My Water?) variant available through Comics Dungeon: http://bit.ly/1GpfKo8
Aaron Alexovich (Invader Zim) variant available through Rebel Base Comics & Toys: http://bit.ly/1LDLzdv
Aaron Alexovich (Invader Zim) variant available through Midtown Comics: http://bit.ly/1ejTjEe
Julieta Colás (Rick and Morty) variant available through Books-a-Million stores :http://bit.ly/1JxsHx2
J.R. Goldberg (Jellyfist) variant available through Newbury Comics: http://bit.ly/1GPoTn1
Tyson Hesse (World of Gumball, Bravest Warriors) variant available through Hastings: http://bit.ly/1BZf5Ih
Mariel Cartwright (Skullgirls) variant available through GameStop: http://bit.ly/1U9alFN
Dave Crosland (Scarface) variant available through Hot Topic: http://bit.ly/1LDO6nT
Mariel Cartwright (Skullgirls) variant available through I Want More Comics:http://bit.ly/1FRXI7n
Ian McGinty (Bravest Warriors, Adventure Time) variant available through Diamond Comic Distributors: http://bit.ly/1FDMgAH
Bryan Konietzko (Avatar: The Last Airbender, The Legend of Korra) variant available through Oni Press at San Diego Comic-Con 2015
Standard retail cover by Aaron Alexovich (Invader Zim)
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 7/1/2015
§ Fusion’s comics page has some great content, for example this piece where 8 LGBT cartoonists share their reactions to legal same-sex marriage, with comics from Hilary Price, Sophie Yanow and Howard Cruse’s which is really marvelous. The one from Christopher Keelty, above, made me laugh the hardest though.
§ Cartoonist/educator Frank Santoro has announced his third Comics Workbook composition competition which has PRIZES:
1st place – $750 cash prize to the winner
2nd place – $200 credit at Copacetic Comics and 150 cash
3rd place – $100 credit at Copacetic Comics and 100 cash
plus four $50 honorable mention prizes from Big Planet Comics
————————————————-
Create a 16 page signature comic book narrative to the specifications below
§ Jennifer DeGuzman reports from the ALA with and its big push for comics and diversity and comics diversity
In a year marked by breakthroughs for graphic novels and comic books in libraries, a recurring theme in the comics programming at the ALA Annual Conference in San Francisco was pushing the boundaries of the medium’s acceptance. Comics programming at the conference, held at the Moscone Center June 25–29, kicked off with GraphiCon, billed as “The Minicon at ALA Annual.” This show-within-the-show was devoted to discussing gender, sexuality, and racial diversity in the comics medium, and reaffirmed the ability of graphic novels to present thematically challenging material to readers.
Kristy Shen and Bryce Leung of the We Need Diverse Books campaign hosted GraphiCon, which was organized by the ALA’s Graphic Novels and Comics Member Interest Group and branded with the hashtag #WeNeedDiverseComics. Other artists making appearances at GraphiCon and for booth signings included comics writer Brenden Fletcher (Batgirl, Gotham Academy), artist/writer Becky Cloonan (Gotham Academy, Southern Cross), alternative comics mainstay Ed Luce (Wuvable Oaf), rising star Noelle Stevenson (Lumberjanes, Nimona), and comics historian and creator Trina Robbins.
§ Stan Lee, a man of 92, was taken to the hospital on Sunday but then showed up in fine fettle on Monday night for the Ant-Man premiere. Is this man immortal?
§ That Wilson movie with Woody Harrelson and Laura Dern, based on the Dan Clowes graphic novel, is actually being filmed!
§ Leah Hayes has a new graphic novel about two women who seek abortions, a topic that comics haven’t covered in a while. It’s called Not Funny Ha Ha. Right wing website Newsbusters reports on the book with a ton o’ scare quotes:
It’s a new notion to make abortion “funny”: draw a graphic novel about abortion that doesn’t actually show an abortion. Because, well, the sight of baby remains is anything but. Hailed as the “first graphic novel about abortion,” Not Funny Ha-Ha by artist Leah Hayes illustrates two women going through the “abortion process.” In it, Hayes attempts to show an “often funny,” “even humorous look at what a woman can go through during an abortion.” Already some in the media have recognized the “abortion story that needs to be heard.”
§ And over at Wired, Laura Hudson has a very calm eyed look at why rape scenes are usually a signal for lazy storytelling. In laying out rape tropes, Hudson doesn’t even mention the one that was way more prevalent back in the day: rape as the “heroic turning point” for a female main character, much as having their family killed is the inciting incident for men. I guess we’ve moved beyond that.
§ Finally, I reckon Zainab won the internet this week by taking her Patreon money and using it to commission a comic by Jane Mai about ELCAF.
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 6/19/2015
Many people ask me, “Why don’t you do a podcast?” and I reply, “I do!” It’s called More to Come and it’s produced by Publishers Weekly. This week, I chat with Matt Hawkins, president and coo of Top Cow. Matt is more than just an inimitable Facebook poster (if you’ve read his stories about standing in line at the grocery store, you know what I mean.) He’s also an industry veteran who’s seen the highest highs and the lowest lows, and in this talk he dishes on the early days of Image and much more.
He also gives small publisher’s perspective on the recent discussion of page rates: basically these are low margins we’re talking about.
It’s something I’m sympathetic to even though it makes things rougher for all of us. It’s a big problem for the entire industry and it will take a group effort to change the status quo.
As a sidebar, here are links to the free #1 issues of a bunch of books Hawkins talks about in the podcast:
Tales of Honor Bred to Kill #1
Top Cow has always been very aggressive about free samples of #1s; it’s a tried and true method to get more eyeballs.
Disclaimer: As you can see if you look around, Top Cow is an advertiser for The Beat, however no promotional considerations were made for this post.
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 5/25/2015
§ It’s the week of Book Expo/Book Con, the latter of which could possible be called “sitcom co-star with a new book con” but that’s how it goes. Anyway, I’ll be at both events pretty much non stop so may not have as much time as I’d like to be posting, but the Elite Beat Operatives will be around to help out, so keep those cards and letters coming.
Anyway here’s a few little newsy notes:
§ Vulture’s Abraham Riesman has just completed another one of his “hero histories” and this time its The Secret History of Ultimate Marvel, with quotes from just about all the main players.
“When I got hired, I literally thought I was going to be writing one of the last — if not the last — Marvel comics,” says now-legendary comics writer Brian Michael Bendis, who wrote the first comic of the Ultimate line and will be writing the final one, too. When he wrote that first issue in 2000, the once-venerable Marvel was in chaos. “It’s so the opposite now, that people don’t even know.”
Here’s some context to understand the red-alert disaster the comics industry had become by the eve of the Ultimate experiment. In 1993, annual combined comics sales across all publishers had been close to a billion dollars; in 1999, that same number was a microscopic $270 million. In 1989, Batman was the most-talked-about movie in America; by 1999, the disastrous Batman & Robin had squirted a stink on the very idea of a cinematic comic-book adaptation. Marvel especially was feeling the burn: It went through a humiliating Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the late ’90s, saw wave after wave of layoffs, and executive leadership was shuffled every few weeks. In 1999, after years of comics-publishing dominance, the company lost its top spot in industry market share and watched its rival, DC Comics, take the throne.
§ A little bit more con fatigue? Wizard World Albuquerque, which had been planed for June 19-21, has now been pushed back a year to June 24-26, 2016. The show had only been announced at the beginning of April, bringing an existing Albuquerque event under the Wizard brand, but it was slated for the same weekend as Wizard World Comic Con Sacramento. The double booking for Wizard staff and very late start in promoting the show are the reasons for rescheduling. Refunds will be automatically issued to those who had already purchased admissions, photo ops and autographs, and people who brought tickets for 2015 will be admitted for free to the 2016 event.
§ The Denver Comic Con was held over the holiday weekend, with announced attendance of 101,500, up from 86,500 in 2014. Early reports indicate that the crowd was handled pretty well unlike past years where there were epic waits to get in. Sounds like it was a fun show, except for one tiny kerfuffle:
This is happening at #DCC2015. Let's see how this ALL MALE panel about women in comics goes #noneofthismakesanysense pic.twitter.com/hQZhfFc0CQ
— Christy (@GeekChristy) May 23, 2015
Janelle Asselin unpacks that here.
§ Some folks analyzed a year of New Yorker cartoons WITH CHARTS AND GRAPHS and found that most of them concern white dudes, the default human for all humor, laughter and storytelling in US society.
Out of 1,810 total characters, 1,277 (about 70.6 percent) were male, and 1,714 (94.7 percent) were white. As Michel notes, this is similar to the under-representation of non-whites in newspaper comics (which have about 2 to 4 percent non-white characters) and worse than children’s books (which have 5 to 10 percent).
§ However this is changing. Deborah Vankin reports for the LA Times that even animation students at CalArts are increasingly female:
Maija Burnett scanned her California Institute of the Arts classroom as nearly 60 new students filtered in, empty notebooks in hand. It was the start of the 2014-15 school year, and Burnett, director of CalArts’ character animation program, was meeting this crop of freshmen for the first time in her largest classroom, nicknamed “the palace.”
Surrounded by walls painted entirely black — more conducive to drawing — the students stood up, one by one, to introduce themselves. That’s when it hit Burnett that almost all of them were women.
“Where are all the guys?” she recalls thinking.
CalArts’ blind admissions process meant administrators had reviewed portfolios without considering names or gender. “We were shocked to see so many women,” Burnett says.
When CalArts debuted its character animation program in 1975, it had just two female students. Today women make up 71% of its animation student body, and this month 16 women and 10 men graduated from the program. USC’s John C. Hench Division of Animation & Digital Arts is now 65% women.
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 5/12/2015
Although I live tweeted the ceremony with its grandeur and tradition, I neglected to list the WINNERS of the 2015 Doug Wright Awards which honor the finest in Canadian cartooning. The awards were presented Saturday night during TCAF in a ceremony enlivened by beloved antics from Seth, David Collier and author Don McKeller. The winners were:
Best Book
Fatherland by Nina Bunjevac (Jonathan Cape/Random House)
Doug Wright Spotlight Award:
Meags Fitzgerald, for Photobooth: A Biography (Conundrum Press)
Pigskin Peters Award:
“Swinespritzen” by Connor Willumsen
The Giants of the North Hall of Fame prize went to 93-year-old Merle “Ting” Tingley.
While there really would have been no combination of winners that would have been bad, I was especially pleased to see this line-up. Willmsen was a FOUR TIME nominee in this “experimental comic” category and rather than turn him into the Roger Deakins of comics, it was high time to recognize his growing body of bold and groundbreaking work. “Swinespritzen” is a particularly fitting breakthrough since he apparently drew most of it overnight while sitting on a park bench prior to last year’s Comic Arts Brooklyn festival.
Bunjevic’s Fatherland won out over the better known This One Summer, and while that book has won a ton of much deserved awards, Fatherland didn’t really get any attention her ein the US and it should. It’s a tense, dark memoir about a family torn apart by passions and politics, as a mother has to make a bold move to save her family from a danger coming from inside the family. Bunjevid’s dense, crosshatched art style is perfect for the story. I’m told it got some attention in Canada, but hopefully this award gets it more in general.
Fitzgerald’s Photobooth is another daring, innovative book mixing a history of the humble photobooth with the obsession that Fitzgerald and a small band of fans have for the vanishing technology, and once again, for a debut graphic novel it’s an amazingly accomplished piece.
US comics fans are probably not familiar with Ting’s work, but Seth’s speech about him made it clear why he was deserving of the award, and a video of the cartoonist—both mentally and physically incapacited— receiving an award from Seth inspired genuine emotion in the audience…so much so that as the next preseter Lynda Barry came up she had to wipe away tears.
The DWA ceremony is the one awards that you can’t miss, and this is part of the reason. The entire ceremony was lovely and wonderful, as are the winners.
The winners were decided by a jury that included Fiona Smyth, Zach Worton, and Conan Tobias.
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 5/2/2015
It’s Free Comic Book Day worldwide, and even if you can’t get to a shop, here’s one free comic you can read right now, Top Cow’s Free Comic Book Day book Tales of Honor: Bred to Kill #1 by Matt Hawkins and Linda Sejic. This issue is a zero issue for a new arc in the series, inspired by David Weber’s novels of the same name and done with his blessing.
The first issue of this second arc ships in June.
Hawkins is signing twice today:
10-2
FLYING COLORS
Oak Grove Plaza Shopping Center
2980 Treat Blvd
Concord, CA 94518
http://www.flyingcolorscomics.com/
4-6
TREASURE ISLAND COMICS
5018 Mowry Ave.
Fremont, CA 94538
http://treasureislandcomics.com/
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By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 4/1/2015
See I tolja, it’s hard to be funny about this stuff any more with satirical sites the Onion and Clickhole, let alone ACTUAL sites like Daily Caller, Upworthy and thenTaboola promising 10 celebrity dogs who have aged badly at the end of everything we read on the ‘Net. A few people tried. io9 of all places had the old DC, Marvel Announce Merger story, albeit with some nice characterization:
“It’s like pie,” said Paul Levitz, President and Publisher at DC. “All these great flavors thrown into a bowl, mixed up with a bit of sugar and nutmeg, and now they all taste great together.”
Isaac Perlmutter, CEO of Marvel, nodded in agreement from the back of Levitz’ head. “I think it’s the best for all parties concerned,” he said in a half-rasp, now utilizing the same vocal cords as Levitz. “This merger is something we’ve been looking forward to, for ages. And now it’s here.”
The now leaderless, anarchic confederation known as the Outhouse announced that Heidi MacDonald—that’s me—would be taking over as editor in chief following Christian Hofer’s ankling a month ago.
“We’re really glad to have Heidi on board,” said Outhouse Ace Reporter Jude Terror at a hastily convened April 1st press conference. “I think that she brings a level of respect and professionalism that, frankly, we could really use. Sure, associating with us is likely to drag her reputation down, but as long as we meet somewhere in the middle, it’s a net gain… for us at least.”
According to Terror, MacDonald’s tenure will begin immediately, “as soon as she reads this article and finds out she’s got the job. Yeah, maybe we should have asked her first. Well, I’m sure she’ll say yes.” “I mean, could you say no to this face?” Terror asked, making his best attempt at puppy dog eyes, but looking more like he was suffering from a bad case of indigestion. “Could you?! Don’t answer that.”
Bleeding Cool unleashed a string of posts that were so indistinguishable from their actual content that a few hours letter they had to make sure everyone know they were jokes:
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 2/5/2015
Written by: Bryan Hill, Matt Hawkins
Art by: Isaac Goodhart
Colorist and Editor: Betsy Gonia
Letterer: Troy Peteri
Publisher: Top Cow
Strange small towns commanded by dogmatic despots have long been a staple of post-apocalyptic fare like The Walking Dead. So when Postal #1 opens on a church sermon delivered by a preacher waving a gun at a man who is bound at the foot of the altar, it seems a familiar scenario. Perhaps this is what the comic wants us to think, lulling us into a false sense of narrative security to contrast with it’s intriguing final pages.
The sermon is cut short by a turn of the page and text that reads: 24 hours earlier. We are in the town of Eden, Wyoming and at it’s post office we meet Mark: a mail carrier who takes his job very seriously, with ritualistic attention to detail. He leads us through his day, which apparently includes transcribing letters that are damaged at his mother’s behest, calling it “policy.” Somehow I don’t think the USPS would agree. In this case, Mark transcribes a damaged letter that implicates a shady Eden resident in a drug operation. Wanting to “help” the man, Mark ends up stumbling right into the middle of his meth lab.
As the issue unfolds we meet a host of characters that border on cliches: A tall, “injun” man who speaks in an accent straight out of a John Ford western; the beautiful, sad, yet caring waitress who Mark yearns for; a cantankerous chef who only speaks French. Those cliche’s grind to a halt when we meet Mayor Shiffron, who also happens to be Mark’s mother. The Mayor lays out some of the rules of Eden to an overly muscled white-power newcomer and they aren’t exactly what you’d expect. This piqued my interest. The Mayors tense, cold relationship with her son was also a surprise. By the time I reached the books’ ending which recalls the strange, small town of Twin Peaks, I found myself wondering what the next issue would bring.
Postal #1 offers well-rendered characters, different in their build, height and affect which are colored nicely. The gray and pastel palate gives the effect of isolating the town, making it feel as if it exists outside of the world we know. The end of the book includes a dossier on the important characters we’ve met so far and provides some further clarity while also expanding the mystery of Eden. If Postal #2 avoids the pitfall of piling too many mysteries on top of each other, it could prove to be a solid new series.
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 1/20/2015
§ The March crew of Rep. John Lewis, Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell talk a little about why we need this message and these reminders now with EW’s Joshua Rivera.
Congressman Lewis is aware of this, and it’s his hope that people will take the time to reflect on what came before. “This book is a guide, we can use it,” says Lewis. “This is what people tried to do, this is what people did in the late ’50s and the ’60s to try to make things better.”
§ Kelly Thompson previews some of the upcoming 2015 books that look good. It’s going to be a busy year!
§ A Funky Winkerbean/Dick Tracy comic strip crossover is HAPPENING. And Chris Sims is on it.
§ Hilary Brown has an interview with Michael DeForge mostly about First Year Healthy, and some GAWJUS preview pages.
Paste: This project also continues your interest in rural settings. You didn’t grow up in the country, right? Where does your fascination with it come from? DeForge: I’ve only lived in cities. For First Year Healthy, it was important that the story be about reintegrating into a small community, and a rural town seemed like a good setting for that. I wanted to write about the ways a tight-knit community can be supportive, and the ways it can be suffocating. There’s also something very romantic and Canadian about rural settings, which has probably wormed its way into my work.
§ I know I shouldn’t link to something that was shared over a million times but Here’s What The Cast Of “Scooby Doo” Looks Like Now.
§ Mariah Huehner, one of a handful of people that I can go full Quenya with, is recapping The Silmarillion for The Mary Sue and she gets right on it with the story of Fëanor, the jerkiest elf of them all. I can’t wait until she gets to Thingol, who might have been the second jerkiest.
If you got the impression that, at worst, elves were just kind of aloof and mopey from LOTR, well, I’m here to tell you: they can be EPIC assholes, too. And one of the biggest jerk elves, one might even call him The High Elf King of Douchebagdom, is Fëanor.
§ Cartoonist Brian Fies (Mom’s Cancer) went to all-ages oriented show LumaCon I and liked it.
What it was was charming, and the most positive experience I’ve had at a comic con in a long time. Small, simple, low-key, unpretentious. One old comics hand told me it reminded him of the San Diego Comic-Con when it started in the ’70s. The whole thing fit into one large round room at a fairgrounds, with a raised platform for panels and speakers, an Artists’ Alley, a hands-on craft zone, LARPing (live-action role playing) outdoors, and a bake sale. I’ve never been to a convention with a bake sale before.
§ Speaking of con reports, this Blerds preview of last weekend’s two big diversity-themed shows was excellent, but I couldn’t find any actual reports on either the Black Comic Book Festival here in NYC or the Black Comix Arts Festival in SF. Did you go? Send links or reports!
However, here is a video of a panel on publishing from the BCBF, with moderator John Jennings (of SUNY Buffalo and creator of “Kid Code”), and panelists Zetta Elliott (“The Deep”), Alex Simmons (“BlackJack”), and Tim Fielder (“Matty’s Rocket”).
§ An unknown woman with very nice nails has made nearly $5 million by posting videos of her opening toy boxes on YouTube.
An unidentified individual or group responsible for uploading videos that simply show a woman opening Disney toys made an estimated $4.9 million last year, more than any other channel for 2014, according to OpenSlate, a video analytics platform that analyzes ad-supported content on YouTube. Almost nothing is known about the person or people behind the channel, DC Toys Collector (DC), which exclusively features a young woman in intricately painted nails removing the toys from their packaging and then assembling them. The account did not respond to a YouTube message.
§ The AV Club’s Noel Murray look’s at Matt Groening’s Life In Hell, and compares it to the tradition established by Zap:
In 1977, shortly after Groening moved to Los Angeles, he started drawing little cartoons for his friends to illustrate how miserable he was in his new home, using nervous-looking rabbits as his characters. He titled the comics “Life In Hell,” and eventually started publishing a weekly strip under that name in the Los Angeles Reader (where he was also writing an offbeat, highly personal music-review column). Sometimes Groening used his space in the Reader to produce one huge single-panel cartoon. Sometimes he broke the space up into more conventional multi-panel strips, with dialogue and narratives. Often he just squeezed in art and text everywhere he could, dumping all of his ideas about culture and politics onto the page and treating Life In Hell like his weekly sketchbook.
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 12/12/2014
§ According to a recent interview, Norman Reedus and his fellow Walking Dead crew mates have their own little Comic-Con ritual, just as do you and I. Like, mine is going to the CVS in the mall and eating the berry pancakes at the Hyatt. Yours may be breakfast at Cafe 322 or buying a piece of original art from a favored booth. But because celebrities aren’t really just like us, they are god-like being made of light and peach nectar, their Comic-Con rituals are epic and recall ancient Norse manhood rites:
“We all do actually. All of us do that. I was doing it [the other] night with Greg [Nicotero] and Steven [Yeun] and Andy [Lincoln] and Chandler [Riggs], because I found all these pictures that when we were in Comic-Con, in San Diego, we have this ritual where we get up super early, and we meet down on the beach in bathrobes and then we just run into the ocean and it’s freezing, but it’s like, it’s become a tradition now, so I found all these photographs, and we had a little text chain going on,” Norman told Access. “Yeah, we do it all the time.”
§ I think the most consistently well written site about comics that I check every day is Women Write About Comics. And not just one or two writers but the whole site. I was happy to see Claire Napier get some mentions in the Comics Spire best comics writing list, but I also greatly enjoyed Megan Purdy’s piece on est em’s manga version of Carmen.
em est’s Carmen, an erotic, gay manga, is a story that works on the heart more than it does the head, but her reinterpretation is clever too — and not just because she found a way to put a new spin on it. In her Carmen, Jose is in a relationship with the toreador, here called Lucas, after the character in the Prosper Mérimée novella, rather than the opera which calls him Escamillo. Oh yes, did I fail to mention that Carmen is also a novella? It’s the source for the opera and leans quite heavily on Carmen’s unfaithful nature and Jose’s meanness. (So hard out here for a man.) In em est’s Carmen, she’s still the object of Jose’s obsession, but rather than being possessive of her, he is fixated, befuddled, and frustrated by her: “I envied her. She was everything I’m not. Perhaps I even wanted to be Carmen.”
CA: What do think is the “state” of autobio comics today? It has very DIY roots, but with creators like Lucy Knisley, Alison Bechdel and yourself growing in prominence, it feels like a whole different ballgame than even a few years ago.
LP: I actually think that there have been ebbs and flows as far as autobio comics, and their visibility is concerned. In the early 2000s there was Craig Thompson‘s Blankets, and American Elf by James Kolchalka was very popular. Jeffrey Brown became astronomically popular because of Clumsy and Unlikely. Incidentally all of those books are Top Shelf, and that’s why I felt like my work fit with them. Then it seemed like there weren’t that many autobio comics being published, although there were a lot of diary comics online. I think the focus now is on “graphic memoirs”, and it’s really great to see that women cartoonists have been leading the charge; some of my favorite books in the genre are Calling Dr. Laura by Nicole Georges, Smile by Raina Telgemeier, and Tangles by Sarah Leavitt.
§ TCJ spotlighted a book that I had not heard of or even received a galley of: Funnybooks: The Improbable Glories of the Best American Comic Books by the noted comics historian Michael Barrier which examines the cozy, security-inspiring world of 50s funny animals comics.
In mid-20th century America, the comics published by Western Printing & Lithographing Company under the Dell label were inescapable. It had the market cornered on non-superhero licensing: comics with characters from the Disney, Warner Bros., MGM and Walter Lantz animation studios; Marge Buell’s Little Lulu; Johnny Gruelle’s Raggedy Ann; Tarzan; the Lone Ranger. Popular characters were the pull, but master cartoonists and storytellers like Barks, Walt Kelly and John Stanley were the reason people kept staying and kept certain titles’ circulation up to a million copies.
§ Many people linked to this piece on the dearth of mid-level moviemaking that I alluded to the other day. It’s a must read for laying everything out in a clear, numbers-oriented way. But the ascendance of superhero movies looms large. Steven Spielberg went on record with some dark foreboding thoughts a while ago, even if hearing the guy who INVENTED huge summer blockbusters with Jaws fret about their takeover was being hoisted on a box-office blasting petard. But, cycles end eventually:
How long, then, will the current filmmaking model hold? No less an authority than Steven Spielberg predicted last year, “There’s going to be an implosion where three or four or maybe even half a dozen of these mega-budgeted movies are going to go crashing into the ground, and that’s going to change the paradigm again.” Ted Hope agrees. “You look at the worst summer attendance [in 2014], box office dropped 15 percent, people like [DreamWorks Animation CEO and former Disney chief Jeffrey] Katzenberg saying that movies aren’t a growth industry, everything pointing toward the collapse of the foreign sales model.”
So, where does he think it’s going? “It feels incredibly vulnerable to me,” he says. “Look, I’m surprised the superhero stuff has the legs that it does, but you look at what Warner Brothers and Marvel have mapped out, you add into it all of the Universal monster movies and all these others platform plays, and you better hope that nobody’s taste changes for the next five years, you know? That’s not a diverse portfolio!”
§ Autostraddle had this list of 25 Queer and Trans Women Comic Creators to Support this Holigay Season!, but really these creators would all be good even if they were straight white men.
§ I asked for reports on Comic Arts LA and there were several, generally painting a sanguine picture.
§ It seems that Winter Con was also a hit, prompting some to seek the freedom of the outside world:
Among the numerous attendees dressed as their favorite comic book characters was Rafael Vargas, 30, an employee of Brookdale Hospital and resident of Ozone Park, who was in character as Venom, one of Spider-Man’s fiercest enemies. “This is my first show dressing up, but it’s great. I’m nervously excited,” said Vargas, whose words were muffled by his mask. “It’s awesome to see all these artists come together. It gives people who are into comics and sci-fi a reason to leave their house.”
§ In all the excitement of late, I neglected to link to this charming video of Dick Cavett & Al Jaffee talking about cartooning in a limo.
§ A terrible crime was committed in Wichita when someone stole $300,000 worth of old comics. Police continue to hunt for the culprit.
Mark Rowland, owner of River House Traders, says he lost more than $300,000 in the theft. But Rowland says he’s more upset because he’s owned some of the items for more than 50 years. KAKE-TV reports there is no description of the suspect, only that he left in a dark-colored car. Rowland now has a security system and says he will store some of his more valuable collectibles elsewhere.
§ I link to The Digital Comic Museum every coupe of years, but here’s a longer appreciation of this repository of public domain comics.
The Digital Comic Museum knows that feeling and has obliged by making a vast quantity of vintage comics available for download free of charge. These are not just ordinary comics, but rather genuine vintage editions, many of which are exceedingly rare and obscure. That’s because all the comics featured are in the public domain and copyright free — which also means they’re old. The cutoff copyright date is December 1959, for example. Not surprisingly, many comics represent the mindset, politics and concerns of their era and some are not particularly politically correct, at least by current standards.
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 11/20/2014
§ Roz Chast did not win the National Book Award—Evan Osnos won for Age of Ambition— But she’s still a winner in my book! There ceremony also saw Neil Gaiman presenting Ursula K. LeGuin with a lifetime achievement type award. LeGuin had things to say:
As she delved into the state of the publishing industry today, Le Guin’s speech was not without message. “Right now, I think we need writers who know the difference between the production of a market commodity and a practice of an art,” she said. Le Guin, too, referenced the Amazon issue, citing a “profiteer trying to punish publishers for disobedience.” She continued, “I have had a long career and a good one, in good company. Now, here, at the end of it, I really don’t want to watch American literature get sold down the river. We who live by writing and publishing want and should demand our fair share of the proceeds. But, the name of our beautiful reward is not profit. Its name is freedom.”
§ Rob Salkowitz recently summed up Five Trends In Digital Comics To Watch including Google maybe not being in the mix on digital comics yet. And also this blunt assessment that sort of points out the elephant in the room:
Dark Horse Digital needs… help
There is no polite way to say this: Dark Horse’s app was already falling behind in 2012. The company has left piles of money on the table by cutting itself off from the broader market and denying readers a decent digital experience.
On the upside, this situation has kept Dark Horse from getting entangled with Comixology, even at the level of core technology (Comixology tech powers most of the industry’s “white label” publisher apps, including DC and Marvel). Dark Horse would be well advised to get out of the app business and turn its digital distribution over to a competent partner. That presents a good opportunity for anyone ready.
§ I loved this post: Ines Estrada looks back on 2014 and it was pretty great from the micro press/small press/ indie side…at least artistically. I assume everyone is living on a single can of tuna a day as they share precious Risograph ink cartridges, but the comics look great.
§ Welp, that new Wonder Woman by the Meredith and David Finch team came out yesterday. Tim Hanley was underwhelmed. Tech Times felt it
“deliver[ed] some captivating mysteries” and Graphic Policy felt it “does what it needs to have done.” One thing is for sure, WW is back to having that whole “boobs and butt” look.
§ Speaking of BnB, J. Caleb Mozzocco comments on the return of 90s icon Jim Balent:
Here his art isn’t even recognizable (to me) as that of the same guy, but I guess it has been 20 years or so. I’m guessing it’s largely the coloring, which gives the figures a sickly, wax dummy-like appearance. The way Catwoman’s kicking though, that’s definitely a Balent pose. And, looking closely, they’ve definitely got Balent proportions…although, like I said, Harley’s breasts look remarkably realistic, at least in the way they get smooshed like real breasts when wearing a super-tight corset (Also, that’s a really nice background and, if you look closely, you’ll find a cat shape hidden in it, something Balent used to do with his covers for the Catwoman).
§ The 4th Letter Blog, mainly run by David Brothers, with help from Gavin Jasper, is closing up shop. Brothers now has a busy job with Image Comics, and it had fallen into silence, so it’s no surprise, but let’s give it the 21 kb salute…or whatever you ive when a website goes away. Brothers was a passionate advocate for Manga and for diversity and lots of other stuff. He’s taken his passion behind the scenes now and that’s good, but so few really strong “personality blogs” remain…their time has passed I guess.
§ - Andrice Arp interviewed Simon Hanselmann for Gridlords and it was highly amusing. Hanselmann totally has the comics rock star thing down pat.
§ A look at this years Best American Comics by Paul Morton is called Emancipation from Irony—and Scott McCloud did catch a certain zeitgeist, even if it is a bit normcore.
The Best American Comics 2014 reads as a sequel to McCloud’s theoretical studies. Previous guest editors instructed readers to thumb through the anthologies and choose work that interests them most just as they would browse the shelves in a comics shop. McCloud asks that you read his anthology in order, cover-to-cover, and that you treat it as a critical narrative. He divides his book into discrete sections, presenting a taxonomy of genres. The book is an argument on the state of comics in the second decade of the 21th century.
§ As a counterpoint to the above there’s the upcoming The Mammoth Book of Cult Comics
§ Peoples like to make lists. Here’s Paste Magazine’s 10 Great Comics for Adolescent Girls.
§ Cartoonist Ted Slampyak drew Little Orphan Annie until it was cancelled, and his own Jazz Age Chronicles. He also draws occasional informational comic strips for The Art of Manliness, such as this truly essential one showing How to Gird Up Your Loins which tuns out to be a very practical and important thing.
§ Finally a followup to that Matt Thurber Letter to a Young Cartoonist that we were all talking about a few weeks ago in the form of a letter FROM a young cartoonist :
I am a 19 year old young cartoonist who lives in Malaysia. WHAT? MALAYSIA? If not for the two airplane incidents, I am quite sure the majority of the US population will not know where Malaysia is at all, let alone comic creators in Malaysia.
Which is interesting isn’t it? Here’s something to consider: would people like you, the comment reader, be able to notice Malaysian creators if not for the internet? Would people like you know who Hwei (lalage) is? Would people like you be able to know who I am (well, hello, I am here and I don’t mind work)? Let’s take this further: would people like you be able to read European comics, South American comics, Indian comics, Russian comics, Australian comics, Indonesian comics, African comics, even some AMERICAN comics, if not for the internet?
Would we even have this comic surge right now without the internet?
The reason why we even have a comic surge in the first place is because we’ve finally opened up doors for creators of different races, cultures, nationalities, identities, opinions, political parties, viewpoints, EVERYTHING to express themselves. And that’s good! Because this opens up the audience too!
To shift away from the internet is to reduce opportunities for young cartoonists like me. To reduce flavour in an increasingly globalised industry.
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 10/21/2014
Here’s a new movie about cartoonists and comic book making: Comic Book Artists: The Next Generation, which spotlights creators Raid Studios in Toronto, including Ramon Perez, Francis Manapul, Kalman Andrasofsky and Marcus Antony To. Some promising up and comers named Stan Lee and Jim Lee also appear—I believe they are unrelated. It’s a nice look at the artist’s studio and the collegial spirit that evolves from it.
You can watch for free at AT&T’s Uverse Buzz site. It’s produced by Boom!’s Stephen Christy, FJ DeSanto and Bradley Cramp and directed by Chris Kasick. On his FB page, DeSanto wrote:
After months of hard work, here’s our documentary, COMIC BOOK ARTISTS: NEXT GENERATION, which premiers today on AT&T Uverse Buzz. I produced it with Bradley Cramp and Stephen Christy and is directed by the supremely talented Chris Kasick . Brad’s amazing team at Digital Kitchen brought this all to life (especially Leslie, Paul and of course Nik) and we are so lucky to have such a high quality show.
Showcasing the talented creators from The Raid Studio, the doc takes you through the trails and tribulations of being a modern day comic book creator. Besides the awesome Raid guys, Marcus Anthony To, Ramón K Pérez, Kalman Andrasofszky, and Francis Manapul, the energetic duo Jackson Lanzing & Collin Kelly make a cameo. To share their perspective on the history of the industry and how it has evolved over the years, we were fortunate Stan Lee, Jim Lee, and Filip Sablik appear as well. If you love super heroes like Batman and Spider-Man or just comics in general, you’ll appreciate this unique look into this world.
And here are some screen shots:
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 10/21/2014
Here’s a new movie about cartoonists and comic book making: Comic Book Artists: The Next Generation, which spotlights creators Raid Studios in Toronto, including Ramon Perez, Francis Manapul, Kalman Andrasofsky and Marcus Antony To. Some promising up and comers named Stan Lee and Jim Lee also appear—I believe they are unrelated. It’s a nice look at the artist’s studio and the collegial spirit that evolves from it.
Watch Comic Book Artists: The Next Generation for free was originally published on The Beat
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 9/2/2014
What a tiring week it has been even though I’m technically on vacation. You are probably sick and tired of reading about the irrational, emotion-based attacks on women who write about pop culture on the internet, specifically video games. Andrew Todd’s Video Games, Misogyny, And Terrorism: A Guide To Assholes pretty much summed it up, a week in which video game reported Anita Sarkeesian was forced to leave her home over threats, all because she dared to suggest that video games are….sexist. Big shocker there. In addition, a female game creator was harassed over doing in her private life what men consider their right. Devin Faraci also posted a piece called Why I Feel Bad For – And Understand – The Angry #GamerGate Gamers that got a bit more to what fascinated me about all of this: why are women the enemy? Why must they be controlled (at best) and brutalized (at worst) by the majority of human societies? Faraci writes:
Sarkeesian was, in a lot of ways, the lighting of the fuse that finally exploded with Zoe Quinn. Together these women represent everything that threatens these boys – women entering their space, being sexual but not sexual with them, forcing them to examine the seedy and anti-woman power fantasies that are playing out in too many games. The clubhouse has been invaded and it’s getting redecorated and nobody asked them first. Understanding all of this doesn’t mean excusing it, and God knows I don’t. But understanding all of this does leave me at a loss – I don’t know how to get through to these kids. Devils like Owens and Aurini and anonymous hatemonger Internet Aristocrat have the ears of these kids because they offer soothing reassurances that the angry gamers are right and the entirety of the world is wrong. They’re recruiting young people for hate. They’re turning the sense of marginalization these kids feel into hate for other marginalized people, a standard tactic of Neo-Nazi groups, for instance. I, for whatever reason, was always a liberal-leaning person, and while I might have grown up using 1980s street language that would get me boycotted today, I never would have bought into the line of woman-hating hogwash these guys are peddling. This is the only place where I find myself unable to understand these kids – if you feel so put-upon, why are you putting upon others?
I had my own internet kerfuffle last week when this site came under a DDOS attack, getting shut down for an afternoon and slogging along for a few more. I launched as thorough an investigation as I could, and while I don’t know that it was a personally based attack…I don’t know that it wasn’t either. I’ll never know. I do know that I had to take some security steps I should have taken a while ago and that’s just common sense for anyone running a moderately trafficked website. But it’s still kind of shitty that I even have to think about something like this.
I’m reminded of a statement Joss Whedon made SEVEN YEARS AGO after a 17-year-old Iraqi Kurdish girl was stoned to death in an honor killing while men watched and made videos on their cel phones. Whedon wrote:
What is wrong with women?
I mean wrong. Physically. Spiritually. Something unnatural, something destructive, something that needs to be corrected.
How did more than half the people in the world come out incorrectly? I have spent a good part of my life trying to do that math, and I’m no closer to a viable equation. And I have yet to find a culture that doesn’t buy into it. Women’s inferiority – in fact, their malevolence — is as ingrained in American popular culture as it is anywhere they’re sporting burkhas. I find it in movies, I hear it in the jokes of colleagues, I see it plastered on billboards, and not just the ones for horror movies. Women are weak. Women are manipulative. Women are somehow morally unfinished. (Objectification: another tangential rant avoided.) And the logical extension of this line of thinking is that women are, at the very least, expendable.
It’s historically part of the “heroic ideal” to stand up against bullies and to stand for the downtrodden. Somehow, when the downtrodden has no Y chromosome, it becomes less cool, and that’s where all this gets really confusing. The male rationalization, bigotry, and downright insanity on display in these weeks is what is the most disturbing, and you guys who aren’t crazy better start stepping up.
As I think I mentioned on twitter, online isn’t about life, it IS life now, for everyone. It’s commerce, it socializing, it’s education, it’s work. It behooves any society that pretends to be free to keep this vital means of communication equally available to ALL. Respect has to be earned but it isn’t gender based.
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 8/7/2014
The other day we told you about artist Randy Queen going postal on a Tumblr that was mocking his art a wee bit. In a stunning example of the Streisand Effect, his attempt to quell criticism only opened him to more criticism. It should be noted that a comment on the above post by Jimmy Palmiotti suggested that we shouldn’t be to quick to rush to judgement, and indeed, in a Facebook post, Queen basically apologized citing stressful issues in his life: Hey everyone, Just wanted to clear up a few things that happened this past week. I have been having a very hard time in my personal life with the loss of my mother and my marriage having fallen apart and found myself in a very vulnerable and fragile state of mind. There were posts on the web criticizing my artwork that were brought to my attention and added to my stress. I reacted without thinking it through, but have now stopped, realizing my response was the wrong one to take. I am doing my best, each day, to get myself back on my feet and getting my life in a better place and realize now that I have just try to move on and get back to my art, the thing I find the most joy in these days. I want to thank those professionals, friends and family who have been giving me their support, understanding and love. Thanks for listening. ~ R
So yeah, humans do things and then we move on. Let us forgive and forget and go back to making merry, and wish Queen the best for getting things in his life back on track. Above art from the Darkchylde site.
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 7/25/2014
In case you missed the first portion of this special two-parter, it was revealed that Batman has conquered America and has established his black Bat-capital in a cave in Branson, Missouri.
That is not entirely true, but I do hope something of the story in the Bald Knobbers (cringey name aside) rang true for Batman fans. The vigilante story is old and real in America.
But is it enough to explain Batman’s popularity? We know many possible fictive sources for Batman – detective stories, operas, and movies – but what about other real ones?
There are a few possibilities. Both Bob Kane and Bill Finger, the co-creators of Batman, probably attended the 1939 New York World’s Fair. One of the Fair’s regular attractions was the skydiving “Bat-man”:
There were many “Bat-Men” who jumped all over the country. They were so popular that Major Malcolm Wheeler Nicholson (who basically invented comic books), urged America to “consider the possibility of bat-man troops!” in a 1941 article.
But this might just be distraction, like billowing smoke from a Bat-capsule. We don’t really go to air shows that much anymore, after all. Is it Batman’s design motif? The vampire bat doesn’t even crack the top 25 of National Geographic Kids’ most popular animals. Certainly the car and Kevlar help, but you can’t last 75 years with just a black cape and pointy ears.
Batman’s creators might help provide answers. You probably know Batman’s artistic origin already, but the general public may not, so we have to keep repeating it. Bob Kane was a fledgling New York artist supposedly jealous of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, the two creators of Superman. Kane pleaded to editor Vin Sullivan, who gave him a weekend to create a new superhero.
Kane needed help, so he approached Bill Finger, a former shoe salesman whom he had worked with previously on some Western comics. The result of their new collaboration was Batman’s first appearance in Detective Comics #27 in 1939. Finger wrote the script and Kane drew the action. Kane got the byline. How and why this happened is not fully known. Kane was a hustler and Finger was meek, though there was probably more to it than that. After all, most of this story, if not all of it, was first told by storytellers.
In that first issue, Kane swiped liberally from Henry Vallely and copied poses from “Flash Gordon.” Finger’s first script was probably inspired by pulp stories like “The Black Bat,” movies like “The Bat Whispers,” and a Shadow story. Superman had been crafted over several years and was something really brand-new. Batman was a smoky concoction of vigilante stuff thrown together to create a quick, commercial superhero.
Finger worked on Batman comics, including the first telling of the origin, in complete anonymity for decades. Kane drew only sporadically and wore ascots to parties. Finger is acknowledged by many as being responsible for some of the major chess pieces of the mythos. Kane appeared on The Tonight Show and died rich at 84. Finger died poor and alone at 59. This year, Kane is going to receive a posthumous star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
As a consequence, fandom has not been kind to Bob Kane. Any mention of him at a Comic-Con panel usually results in some story about him stiffing a dinner bill forty years ago or bragging about supposedly dating Marilyn Monroe. In his autobiography, Kane even waxes breathlessly about fighting a gang as he swung around a lumberyard. Kane also claimed to have drawn the monthly Batman comic for decades when he positively did not. And he didn’t publicly recognize Finger’s contributions to Batman until after Finger was dead.
Still, there is no question that Bob Kane is the co-creator of Batman. He drew the first appearance of the character. For comics – which are words combined with images – that is half the whole world.
Still, Kane (and to some extent DC’s) treatment of Finger is considered by many to be wrong, even criminal. It is well-documented and crusaded upon, as it should be. But I am interested in crime of a different sort here.
Bill Finger’s early days have been mostly lost to time. Born in Colorado in 1914, Finger grew up with his immigrant parents and a sister. His father Louis, according to his World War I draft card, was a “cloak-maker.”
Bob Kane was born Robert Kahn in 1915. When he was born, his parents ran a candy store in New York City. His father later worked for the Daily News as a typesetter.
Both Kane and Finger grew up on the Grand Concourse, a nearly five-mile stretch in the Bronx. They stared up at art deco buildings and gargoyles.
They were not friends as kids. But they both saw bad things. Real things.
Crime in New York City during the twenties and thirties was on an escalating slope. On August 1, 1931, the New York Times ran a table titled “Homicides by Shooting.” In fifteen years, the number of murders in New York City tripled from 108 to 316. By 1939 – Batman’s debut – the rate had reached nearly two murders a day.
Every day, the papers were a blotter of theft and murder. Gangsters, passerby, and children were robbed and killed in streets and doorways. In April of 1939, the papers reported the tragic story of a brother and sister coming home from the movies to find their parents shot dead on the floor.
People lived in sadness and fear. It eventually turned to anger. When five children were struck down by stray bullets in the Bronx in 1931, Police Commissioner Mulrooney vowed that “We’re going to meet force with force…If they want war, we’ll give it to them.” Several articles urge the formation of “vigilante committees” to enforce the law themselves.
This is where Batman began.
In late 1937, when Kane was just breaking in and earning around $25 a week. A small article appeared in the November 28, 1937 issue of the Times titled “Woman, 75, Killed in Street.” It read:
Mrs. Augusta Kahn, 75 years old, of 1,160 Grant Avenue, the Bronx, was fatally injured shortly after 5 P.M. yesterday while crossing Broadway at 115th Street. She died on her way to Columbus Hospital . . . Alexander Novinsky, 26 years old, of 6,802 Nineteenth Avenue, Brooklyn. Novinsky was held on a technical charge of homicide.
Bob Kane’s mother was named Augusta Kahn.
But this wasn’t her. It was a different woman. It was someone else – a double somehow– who was very real. Was Kane even aware of the story? Who knows, though someone surely must have noticed it in the paper and told the family. Kane was living with his parents at the time. If he did know of it, it must have provoked a visceral response. Especially because of what would happen next:
Alexander Novinsky, 27 years old . . . arrested Nov. 28, last when an automobile he was driving struck and killed Mrs. Augusta Kahn . . . was discharged yesterday by Magistrate Edgar Bromberger in Homicide Court for lack of evidence tending to show culpability.
The driver who killed the other Augusta Kahn — someone else’s mother — went unpunished. Novinsky walked scot-free. Was it an accident, or something else? The courts ruled that there was not enough evidence to pursue it.
Just as forty unpunished murders provoked a solider to don a mask in the Ozarks, so might crime in the Bronx have inspired a fictional character to do the same. The cowl, the cape, the symbol and all the pulp stories and films that inspired the look of Batman — is a smokescreen. Crime is why it stuck.
I think that much of what we claim to like about Batman is a complete cop-out. The most common explanation of the character’s popularity is his “humanity.” What that usually means is that anyone – if they had enough money, ninja training in Nepal, gadgets, and a sidekick – could be Batman. But none of us really believes that. Batman is not real, even though we constantly act like he is. The only thing real about him is his genesis in crime, whether it is a story in a comic or the story of his creators.
When James Holmes killed twelve people at a midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises on July 20, 2012, the press made connections to the killer being inspired by the Joker. Most of this has since been dismissed, but it speaks volumes that this explanation was the first one that made any kind of sense to the general public. Not that Holmes was clearly psychotic and a killer, but that our response to him, at first, involved Batman. When Holmes first appeared in court several days after the shooting, survivors of the massacre showed up to the courtroom wearing Batman t-shirts.
The current writer of the monthly Batman comic, Scott Snyder (who also teaches creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College) has a theory about Batman that might help. In Batman #27 (note the number), Snyder (alongside collaborator Greg Capullo on art) has Alfred dramatically assess Bruce Wayne’s mission:
You keep us all around to bear witness, to see that you can do the thing that none of us could do for you. That none of us were there in the alley that night, not Gordon, not me, not anyone in this city. And you’re out to punish us for that every night.
What Batman has made us watch for seventy-five years – an epoch in pop culture – is a one-man war that most of us don’t know how to fight. Batman isn’t about hope; it’s about fighting back against things bigger than us — crime, characters, and the Batkid’s cancer. It is not a place of light or peace or even nobility. It is a street in a city. Most of us can’t jump around on rooftops. But we can imagine that action — that rebellion — when we wear the black t-shirt. That we can do.
Batman is the most popular superhero in America because we all want to hit something sometimes. This applies to fandom as well. Sometimes it can be fairly vacant — Affleck, nipples — but sometimes it is more important. When Batman character The Spoiler, a teenage girl, was killed in the comics, fans began protesting the lack of a memorial to her in the comics’ Batcave. Marc Tyler Nobleman (with Ty Templeton) produced a book about Finger and led a massive campaign to get a Google Doodle to honor the writer. Filmmaker Kevin Smith (who has built an empire around a Batman podcast) also helps to run The Wayne Foundation, a non-profit group dedicated to help stop the sexual traffic of children. Finger documentaries are being funded, Glen Weldon has a cool new book on the horizon, a new Batgirl is making waves, and for the first time, Bill Finger’s name was credited on a Batman comic. That last one has a simple explanation.
What matters is that these endeavors – all of them real – are small vigilante acts done in the name of Batman. It is not the fictional character or the dead men we rally around, it is that central story in Crime Alley. That’s the one that gets us. That’s the one that inspires us to do things, try to help, or just like Batman. That is where the humanity — and popularity — of Batman really lies: in the detective and the crusader, not the pull-ups in a cave.
On November 24 of 1939, just a few months after Batman’s debut, the winners of a kids costume contest were announced in the Times:
I won’t argue that “The Bat Man” is an infinitely better costume than “cotton picker” or “camera,” but Angelo Carbone didn’t just want to win a free chicken. With the exception of the boxer, all of the other costumes sound parent-selected. Not “The Bat Man.” Angelo saw something in a comic he liked and went for it. He saw something he needed to be.
As I write this in Cleveland, there was a break-in last night at the university I teach at. Three students – all studying – were robbed at gunpoint in the common room of their dorm. A few weeks ago, in the middle of a sunny day, young men walked into my favorite neighborhood bar, The Colony, and shot the owner, Jim Brennan, dead.
Why is Batman so popular? Look around you and read the news.
This is Batman Country. That should both empower and terrify us.
P.S.
Speaking of detectives: there is one last mystery to bring up.
In the late nineties, a story surfaced out of Boston suggesting that another artist may have created Batman well before Kane and Finger (and not Siegel and Shuster, as I’ve half-suggested before).
Frank D. Foster II was a cartoonist who worked with Al Capp in the thirties. When he couldn’t get regular work, he abandoned comics for a job at what would become the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
Supposedly, Foster had samples of a character named “Batman” that he shopped around New York before leaving for Washington — well before 1939. When Foster later saw fully-realized Batman comics in the forties, he was stunned — had they stolen his character? Foster and his family talked to an attorney in 1975, which was also when Siegel and Shuster’s plight was all over the news. After Foster died in 1995, his son Frank continued to ask questions. His website. OriginalBatman.com, reads: “Although there is no hard physical evidence, there is little room for doubt that people at DC saw the drawings. Most likely it was Bob Kane himself who was at DC at the time and claimed credit for creating Batman.”
The problem is that there were no superheroes in 1932. Not til Superman. And these sketches are definitely of a superhero – the bottom face also looks very much like a Bill Everett Sub-mariner (thanks to fellow Beat contributor Jeff Trexler for that). At one point, Foster places the drawing even earlier, in the twenties. None of this is impossible, of course, but if true, then Foster’s Batman would have been the first superhero.
There are other problems of dates and letters, but take a look for yourself. Foster’s 1975 interview with the lawyer provides fascinating insight into how artists worked back then. And how the fallibility of memory complicates everything.
Is there any way to prove that Kane and Finger saw Foster’s drawings? They never mentioned him. Or did they?
In 1960, when Batman was well-established, Bill Finger wrote a script for Batman #135 called “Crimes of the Wheel.” In the story, the Dynamic Duo breaks up a gambling den, sending its leader, a man nicknamed “Big Wheel” to jail. He escapes and puts on a bright costume that is a garish copy of Batman’s. Now a villain with who uses wheel gadgets, he calls himself “The Wheel” (hey, it’s still better than “Bald Knobbers”).
His ridiculous costume looks like a garish version of Batman’s. But he’s a moron and soon gets tossed back in jail. He gets made fun of — by other criminals, by Batman and Robin — for the entire issue. The character’s name who steals Batman’s shtick but fails? Frank Foster.
Is this pure coincidence or a hidden in-joke? On his website, Foster’s son says of the original drawings by his dad:
I know he created Batman. It’s the first Batman. It was there, at the same place, at the same time Batman was published. There has to be a connection. The possibility of two men in 5,000 years of history arriving at the same character who’s a hero of the night, with the same name of Batman, at the same time, at the same place on the earth, is zero.
I don’t know what to make of Foster, but I do know that the possibility is never zero when it comes to talking about comics and culture. If we think of Batman as a cape and cowl, then sure, but as the fictional embodiment of our own fear of crime and desire for vengeance? That is more universal than zero. Perhaps more than we’d like to admit.
If you’re at Comic-Con, come to “Who Created Batman?” on Fri. from 2:30-3:30 in Room 26AB for a panel with Travis Langley, Tom Andrae, Athena Finger, Marc Tyler Nobleman, Denny O’Neill, Jens Robinson, Arlen Schumer, Michael Uslan, Nicky Wheeler Nicholson, and myself. PW is calling it one of the 14 Best Panels at Comic-Con.
Brad Ricca is the author of Super Boys: The Amazing Adventures of Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster – The Creators of Superman, now available in paperback. He also writes for StarWars.com. Visit www.super-boys.com and follow @BradJRicca.
Y’know, if you’re gonna use a fancy word to make yourself smart, you’d better make damn sure you know what it means, or it defeats the entire purpose.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/elide
I do believe all the ideas you’ve introduced for your post.
They are really convincing and can definitely work. Nonetheless, the posts are too short for starters.
May you please prolong them a bit from next time? Thanks
for the post.
>> comics events such as this panel on Image comics featering the DeFractions, Greg Rucka and other Portland locals.>>
I don’t know which of us you’re confusing with Rucka, but Greg wasn’t there…
kdb