Tagged: art

Review: ‘Burma Chronicles’ by Guy Delisle

With all of the past year’s insanity in Burma — mainly monk uprisings and government oppressions — you’d think Guy Delisle’s nonfiction comic Burma Chronicles would be especially topical. But you’d be wrong.

As is Delisle’s style, he passes up on the chance to take an expansive view of the country where he lived for six months (he’s written previously about stints in Pyongyang and Shenzhen).

Instead, the book is almost self-centered in how it simply recounts Delisle’s experience as the husband to a Doctors Without Borders. He depicts himself as the ultimate average Joe, a dude content to live life as it comes.

Most of the cartoons are of little moments, like Delisle venting about the sporadic electricity (and sporadic air conditioning), or his hunt for ink to finish a book.

That isn’t to say he doesn’t experience Burmese culture or interact with the locals. He does, but the majority of what he includes in the book are little innocuous windows into the country.

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Foster Children, by Elayne Riggs

Foster Children, by Elayne Riggs

  • News
  • July 30, 2008

It’s finally official. On Saturday in San Diego, IDW announced a new project based on Peter David’s Sir Apropos of Nothing series of novels, to be written by Peter with art by Robin Riggs. “Art” as in pencils, inks and colors — or, as those wacky Brits say, “colours.” Don’t ask me why, they have enough trouble pronouncing words correctly without trying to spell them right as well. Anyway, Robin and I are both pretty excited about this miniseries, and not only because the offer came at the same time as my current job offer so it means we both get to celebrate employment at the same time.

First of all, it’s Peter, whom we’ve both known for a long while and who’s an absolute delight even though he’s never introduced us to his equally-famous friends like Harlan Ellison and Billy Mumy. Secondly, I love the character of Apropos… well, not exactly “love,” he’s kind of a despicable rogue, but I love his adventures, and I love the conceit of a character who’s supposed to be secondary and an afterthought suddenly being the protagonist of his own stories. It’s kind of like if women were lead characters in their own right instead of love interests and fridge fodder! What a concept!

Anyway, the other reason I’m loving the idea of Robin doing a Sir Apropos comic book series is, even though it’s going to be parodying bits of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower, art-wise Robin wants to bring to it a sort of Hal Foster Prince Valiant vibe. I think the first story Rob and I ever did together, a 2-pager called Sailor’s Wife, had this sort of feel to it, and the whole medieval atmosphere worked really well with his penciling style.

So Rob has been immersed in Foster these past few weeks, going over all his Prince Valiant collections, studying them for inspiration and visual ideas. He even taped together a number of 11 x 17 sheets to make a page (see photo) the size at which Hal Foster originally worked. It’s easy to see how much more illustrative you can get when you’re working 30 x 40. But it takes a true master to know how to draw so that no detail is entirely lost in the reproduction.

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SDCC Interview: Mike Mignola on the Hellboy Universe

  • News
  • July 29, 2008

Mike Mignola, creator of Hellboy has certainly been a star in the comics scene for some years but the spotlight must be shining a little brighter now that his franchise  includes two hit movies.  We were lucky to get a chance to talk to him briefly at the show this year about the future of his book, the impact of the movies on his own storytelling, and the difficulties of letting go of the art chores on the book.

“If I get hit by a bus tomorrow, I don’t know what’s going to happen to the book,” said Mignola about the notion of passing the book off to other creators.  He said he couldn’t imagine letting go of the character the way Todd McFarlane has let other people work on his most popular creation, Spawn.

When asked if, given that, it was hard to stop being the artist on the book, Mignola said it was at first — but he really likes the look of the book these days and he’s fond of the work Duncan Fegredo has done for the book.  “Besides,” said Mignola, “if I was still doing the art it would take forever.”

Readers of Hellboy are undoubtedly aware of the way Mignola uses real-world mythology, so we asked him what we should be brushing up on for his upcoming books.  He said they were going to be doing a take on some British mythology and that the content would be similar to the second film in a few ways.

We also asked if he was concerned that Guillermo del Toro’s film franchise seems to be building to a very different conclusion than his comics are. “The only thing that worries me is that the third movie will come out too soon,” said Mignola. Adding that he had a very firm plan for the comics and that this plan might take 15 years to be realized in the comics.

Review: ‘Swallow Me Whole” by Nate Powell

Review: ‘Swallow Me Whole” by Nate Powell

Swallow Me Whole
By Nate Powell
Top Shelf, September 2008, $19.95

Ruth and Perry are stepsiblings, somewhere in the South – people say “shoore” for “sure,” biology teachers can’t even say the word “evolution,” and the kids’ slowly-dying, live-in grandmother is called “Memaw.” It also seems to be sometime in the late ‘80s, from the clothes and the music and the hair.

And they’re both – how should I put this? Oh, let’s use the jargon – both are very far from neurotypical. Perry hallucinates a tiny wizard who makes him draw incessantly for “missions.” And Ruth may even be schizophrenic: she hears voices and feels patterns in everything around her, particularly with insect swarms. She has a huge collection of insects in jars in her room; she’s stolen at least some of them from school, but it’s not clear where they all came from. When she finally has a break at school and is taken to the nurse’s office, the school cop immediately assumes she’s high and starts loudly questioning her about drugs – she doesn’t get diagnosed has obsessive-compulsive for several days.

[[[Swallow Me Whole]]] is a slow, swirling, uneasy book, centered mostly on Ruth and her efforts to live in the world – talking to her Memaw, getting a work-study job at the museum, trying not to be swallowed up by the massive swarms of insects that comfort her and that may, or may not, be real. (Don’t decide either way until you get to the end.) It begins with a few short scenes set about five years earlier, when Ruth and Perry are both pre-teens and Memaw’s hospitalization ends with her moving in with them and their parents. From there, it’s hard to say how much time Swallow Me Whole covers, since there are no external markers. They go to school but we don’t see school begin or end for the summer. We don’t see the seasons change. Scenes could be separated by a day or three months. It’s all now; it’s all happening, like life, one thing after another after another.

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Image Founders ‘United’ for Comic Series

  • News
  • July 26, 2008

It’s been a big week for Image, which started early on Comic-Con with the revelation that Robert Kirkman is joining the publisher as a partner.

Friday brought word that all the Image founders (minus Jim Lee) will be joining together on a six-issue miniseries called Image United. They’ll be providing art, while the story comes from Kirkman.

The artists are: Erik Larsen, Rob Liefeld, Todd MacFarlane, Whilce Portacio, Jim Valentino and Marc Silvestri.

Comic Book Resources caught up with Kirkman, who explained a bit about the project (which scores an amazing 100 on the Probable-Delayometer):

It’ll be a six-issue series. It’s not going to focus on individual characters in the issues. It’s going to be an all-encompassing, grand, epic crossover featuring all the characters together – intermingling and working together and fighting together. It’s going to have the unprecedented art team of all the Image founders minus Jim Lee, and it’s going to have every creator drawing their own characters, so it’s going to be a hodge podge of different art on every page where all of the Savage Dragon figures are going to be drawn by Erik Larsen and all of the Youngblood characters are going to be drawn by Rob Liefeld. Every time Spawn appears, he’ll be drawn by Todd McFarlane and so on and so on. It’s going to be a unique reading experience, and we’re very excited about that.

Manga Friday: ‘Me and the Devil Blues’

Manga Friday: ‘Me and the Devil Blues’

  • News
  • July 25, 2008

It’s unofficially been Blues & Jazz week here in my reviews – and, if you’re wondering how Erotic Comics fit in there, you don’t know what the word “Jazz” means. So, for Manga Friday, here’s the first book in a series that retells the life of blues legend Robert Johnson from a very different perspective.

Me and the Devil Blues, Vol. 1
By Akira Hiaramoto
Del Rey Manga, July 2008, $19.95

If you know anything about Robert Johnson – the archetypal bluesman, who came out of nowhere to record 24 songs and then die young – it’s that he sold his soul to the devil, one night at a Mississippi crossroads, to get his amazing ability to play and sing. Is it true? Well, it’s a damn good story, and that’s what matters most.

Speaking of damn good stories, Akira Hiramoto weaves one here, drawing from the legends and few known facts of Johnson’s life and bringing in careful research on the rural Mississippi of the ‘30s, plus his own speculation and fiction. In a life as full of holes and mysteries as Johnson’s, the only way to tell a story is to make it up.

Hiramoto starts his story in 1929 with a young man called RJ, who works on a plantation, dreams of becoming a bluesman (though he’s not very good at singing or guitar playing), is harried by his domineering sister Bessie, and loved by his pregnant wife Virginia. He sneaks off to the local juke joint just about every night, to drink, talk with his friends, and hear the blues. He keeps trying to play, but never gets far – he really is lousy. The traveling bluesman Son House tries to explain to RJ what the blues is, but RJ doesn’t quite get it.

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Watchmen Comic Gets Animated on iTunes

Watchmen Comic Gets Animated on iTunes

  • News
  • July 25, 2008

Creators have been struggling with how to bring comics into the digital age: CD-ROMs, subscription based services like Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited, or for free on the web like ComicMix.

A full-page ad in the most recent issue of Entertainment Weekly magazine gave readers a link to download the premiere episode of Watchmen Motion Comics for free on iTunes. Motion Comics is Warner Premiere’s new videos of comic books animated with full audio.

In many ways, it’s like those old Marvel cartoons where they took comic art and moved mouths and use limited animation to move cut-out pieces of art. But this time, they’re using modern digital manipulation technologies. The effect is weird, but it works. It’s Dave Gibbons’ art, but it’s moving.
 

Review: ‘Erotic Comics’ by Tim Pilcher

Review: ‘Erotic Comics’ by Tim Pilcher

Erotic Comics: A Graphic History from Tijuana Bibles to Underground Comics
By Tim Pilcher with Gene Kannenberg, Jr.
Abrams, March 2008, $29.95

We’ve reached an interesting point in modern culture, when even something as disposable and downmarket as sexy comic books can be the subject of a classy art book from a major publisher. Abrams is about as respectable an art-book publisher as you could find; they’re the official book imprint of both the Whitney and Guggenheim museums. And they’re also the publisher of [[[Erotic Comics]]], a well-crafted and thoroughly conventional art book with lots of pictures of comics panels featuring people at least half-naked – if not actively engaged in various lascivious acts.

Erotic Comics is, except for the smutty pictures, an absolutely standard coffee-table book – printed at a large but comfortable size, not too expensive, with several color reproductions on each spread, occasional background images as well, helpful, detailed captions, and a body text that’s thin beer but perfectly acceptable. It makes no sweeping claims for the field of erotic comics, and is content mostly to show some pictures and retell the same old stories about the men who drew them.

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SDCC ’08: PopCandy Looms Large

SDCC ’08: PopCandy Looms Large

  • News
  • July 18, 2008

While keeping a running tally of all the events of note at this year’s Comic-Con International is a job best left to the professionals, I can’t help but draw attention to one event that caught my eye — mainly because of its outstanding promotional art.

Check out the poster for Saturday evening’s PopCandy Meetup, painted by USA Today illustrator Keith Simmons, and based on the original art from Attack of the 50 Foot Woman:

I’ll certainly be there with one or more other members of the ComicMix crew, so if you’re interested in dropping by, here are all of the details. Be sure to RSVP ahead of time, as PopCandy’s Whitney Matheson has promised one-of-a-kind giveaways to everyone who does so.

Review: ‘Strange and Stranger: The World of Steve Ditko’

As a history of Steve Ditko’s career as a comics artist, Strange and Strange: The World of Steve Ditko is an unquestionable triumph, the latest in a top-notch series of art books from Fantagraphics.

Blake Bell’s book ($39.99) features hundreds of beautifully reprinted Ditko pages, from his earliest horror stories to his triumph with Amazing Spider-Man run to his eventually paying-the-bills work in cartoon coloring books. This art comes with insightful analysis from Bell, who even gives side-by-side comparisons with art from some of the artists who inspired Ditko.

Yet, I came away from the book disappointed, because as well as it explains Ditko as an artist, it hardly begins to explain him as a man.

Admittedly, that’s a tough task, as the reclusive Ditko hasn’t been interviewed since bell bottoms were cool (or thereabouts), but it’s the task Bell sets out upon. The chapters accompanying the art read more than anything like a more-detailed Wikipedia page, full of facts but empty of story.

We hear about all the important moments in Ditko’s career, often fleshed out through the quotes of his acquaintances, but we hear less than whispers of his personal life or childhood. Perhaps Bell put on a reporter’s hat and tried to find some such information, but if so, he includes neither that information nor an account of how he failed to obtain it.

The few included quotes from Ditko are flatly boring descriptors of his work, overladen with parentheticals. And, again, they only hint at who he is.

For people who come in with a familiarity of Ditko’s story, like ComicMix editor Mike Gold, that’s a pardonable offense. But for any more unfamiliar reader looking to [[[Strange and Stranger]]] as a true biography, they’re sure to find it sorely lacking.

There’s a clear narrative to Ditko’s life; it’s a tragic story of a man who followed the philosophy he thought would make him great, but instead Ayn Rand’s objectivism would prevent him from achieving that greatness. And that story remains untold.

Van Jensen is a former crime reporter turned comic book journalist. Every Wednesday, he braves Atlanta traffic to visit Oxford Comics, where he reads a whole mess of books for his weekly reviews. Van’s blog can be found at graphicfiction.wordpress.com.

Publishers who would like their books to be reviewed at ComicMix should contact ComicMix through the usual channels or email Van Jensen directly at van (dot) jensen (at) comicmix (dot) com.

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