As a production person– and possibly the youngest person in comics production today who still worked in analog before digital– I found Colleen Doran’s discussion of reprinting A Distant Soil fascinating.
http://www.adistantsoil.com/2014/05/16/comic-art-negatives-now-with-more-negativity/
Following up on this post which goes into detail about comic art negatives. IF YOU HAVEN’T READ THAT, you may be lost if you read the rest of this. I
For your perusal:
http://irenevartanoff.wordpress.com/2014/04/18/about-marvel-comics-original-artwork-in-the-1960s/
As many people know, I was in charge of the Marvel art warehouse (actually, a moderately large locked room in an industrial building) in the mid-1970s. I did an exhaustive inventory of all Marvel Comics original art. The details of that inventory…
Running around doing too much today, but if you’ve been enjoying our columns from Dennis O’Neil, John Ostrander, and Mindy Newell on the topic of heroes and superheroes, you might want to look at what Charles Stross has to say about it:
Where do heroes come from?
I will confess that I find it difficult to write fictional heroes with a straight face. After all, we are all the heroes of our internal narrative (even those of us who others see as villains: nobody wakes up in the morning, twirls their moustache, and thinks, how can I most effectively act to further the cause of EVIL™ today?). And people who might consider themselves virtuous or heroic within their own framework, may be villains when seen from the outside: it’s a common vice of fascists (who seem addicted to heroic imagery—it’s a very romantic form of political poison, after all, the appeal to the clean and manly virtue of cold steel in subordination to the will of the State), and also of paternalist authoritarians.
But where does it come from?
via The myth of heroism – Charlie’s Diary.
A lot of “The Literature Of Ethics” here, and an unintentional connection between pre-monotheistic mythologies, Lois Lane and Lana Lang, and Betty and Veronica. Serioiusly.
Criminy. Devin Faraci sitsus down for “the talk”.
http://badassdigest.com/2014/05/18/we-need-to-talk-about-spider-man
As AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2 underperforms Sony must be considering how to fix their flailing franchise.
Is this simple sequel fatigue and diminishing returns, or is it possible that we might be seeing the first superhero movie domino fall?
Suddenly, a lot more seems to be riding on X-Men: Days Of Future Past this weekend…
I’m ending my comic strip, The City, after 24 years. Here’s the final strip.
I’m ending the strip So I can concentrate full-time on graphic novels. It’s all good. I’m not slinking away from a failed endeavor as a washed-up has-been. I’m leaving it behind in a blaze of glory, as a newly minted, internationally-best-selling comix creator. The past couple years have been the best of my career. After 30 years of toil as a (at best) cult favorite to suddenly find success? I’m loving every fucking minute of it! I simply no longer have the time, nor, quite frankly, the desire, to devote to The City. Typically, it takes almost two full workdays to write and draw one strip. That’s time better devoted to other projects.
Now this is just weird. But fun and oddly watchable.
http://www.harveyawards.org/2014/04/06/harvey-awards-2014-nomination-ballot-now-online/
The Executive Committees of the Harvey Awards and the Baltimore Comic-Con are proud to present the official Nomination Ballot for this year’s Harvey Awards, honoring work published in the 2013 cale…
Sigh… it seems to happen earlier every yea– What? How could you forget that the third Monday in May is Miracle Monday? Elliot will be very disappointed in you…
If you have no idea what I’m talking about (Ma nishtana ha-laila ha-zeh mi-kol ha-leilot) [[[Miracle Monday]]] is the third Monday in May. It’s from a Superman novel of the same name written by Elliot S! Maggin and published in 1981. I highly recommend reading it, if you haven’t read it before. Here’s a taste:
On Miracle Monday the spirit of humanity soared free. This Miracle Monday, like the first Miracle Monday, came in the spring of Metropolis, and for the occasion spring weather was arranged wherever the dominion of humanity extended.
On Uranus’s satellites where the natives held an annual fog-gliding rally through the planetary rings, private contributions even made it possible to position orbiting fields of gravitation for spectators in free space. On Titan, oxygen bubbles were loosed in complicated patterns to burst into flame with the methane atmosphere and make fireworks that were visible as far as the surface of saturn. At Nix Olympica, the eight-kilometer-high Martian volcano, underground pressures that the Olympica Resort Corporation had artificially accumulated during the preceding year were unleashed in a spectacular display of molten fury for tourists who walked around the erupting crater wearing pressurized energy shields. At Armstrong City in the Moon’s Sea of Tranquility there was a holographic reenactment of the founding of the city in the year 2019, when on the fiftieth anniversary of his giant leap for mankind the first man on the Moon returned, aged and venerable, to what was then called Tranquility Base Protectorate, carrying a state charter signed by the President of the United States. The prices of ski lift tickets on Neptune inflated for the holiday. Teleport routes to beaches and mountains on Earth crowded up unbelievably.
Interplanetary wilderness preserves became nearly as crowded with people as Earth cities. Aboard the slow-moving orbital ships that carried ores and fossil materials on slowly decaying loops toward the sun from the asteroids, teamsters partied until they couldn’t see. On worlds without names scattered throughout this corner of the Galaxy, where Earth’s missionaries, pioneers and speculators carried their own particular quests, it was a day for friends, family, recreation and-if it brought happiness—reflection.
But why did it become Miracle Monday? And what was the first miracle? Go get a copy and read.
Columns / Glenn Hauman / News
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