Last week CBS re-ran the Big Bang Theory episode featuring the gang meeting Stan Lee. The Marvel exec has a cameo toward the end of the story.
But the best touch, I think, occurred when one of the protagonists had to appear in traffic court, rather than going to the comic book store where Lee was signing books. The camera lingered on the judge’s nameplate long enough for us to get the point — his name was “Judge J. Kirby.”
I remembered this in-joke when I was reading Charles Brownstein’s Eisner/Miller: A One-on-One Interview. Amidst the discussions of problematic dialog balloons and color headaches, Will Eisner, creator of The Spirit and the graphic novel itself, among other things, notes in the section called “Talking Out of School” that he’s “delighted to see at long last that (Steve) Ditko’s getting credit …” for co-creating Spider-Man.
Frank Miller, author and artist of Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and Sin City, points out Lee wrote a New York Times article that finally gave tribute to the reclusive Ditko. Miller adds that Jack Kirby, too, was never “as exposed as Stan Lee was.”
The reason? Miller suggests “writers are often the ones who talk history the best. People who draw for a living tend to have less free time … and artists tend to be less articulate.”
Excelsior.
More on this book to come.
Several of the chapters in Roger Langridge’s “10 Steps to Happiness,” in his 2004 Fred the Clown book, are hysterical — particularly “Alphabet,” going from Fred the Amorous to Fred the Zoophyte (Langridge loves his word play); “Where the Smart Things Ain’t,” his play on Where the Wild Things Are with giant Pogo characters in pursuit of the protagonist; and especially “The Shoulders of Giants,” with its nod to Buster Keaton, Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, the Marx Brothers, Harold Lloyd, et al.
This last story in particular has a plot and a message rather than just another custard pie and a good gag.
Also attesting to Langridge’s talent are his variations on Peanuts, Garfield, Family Circus, The Phantom, Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend, the Yellow Kid, Krazy Kat, Blondie, the Hulk … and even Shakespeare. His brilliant essay on the Fred the Clown comic strip, by comics historian “Helvetica Darwin,” demonstrates his knowledge of newspaper strip legacy. (And it carries a laugh-out-loud final punchline.)
And I was delighted to see his inside reference to Doctor Who.
On the other hand, there’s a wide streak of truly unfunny incontinence jokes — no pun intended — that’s hard to ignore.
But maybe not all the stories are intended to play well with others. They bring a laugh, a pie in the face … and occasionally some really dumb, infantile jokes. Just like the socially troubled Fred himself.
Splat.
Also handed out on Free Comic Book Day this past Saturday was a sampling from David Petersen’s Mouse Guard Spring 1153, featuring the artist’s usual stunning and cute — yes, both stunning and cute at the same time — depiction of medieval warrior mice, rabbits and other woodland creatures.
The publication carried a promo for two upcoming Mouse Guard books — Mouse Guard: The Black Axe (starting with a September date) and Mouse Guard: Legends of the Guard (beginning in May). For the latter, it noted “Mouse Guard creator David Petersen handpicks a who’s who of artists and writers to come and play in his world, including Jeremy Bastian, Alex Sheikman, Ted Naifeh, Gene Ha, Sean Rubin, Guy Davis, Terry Moore and Mark Smylie!”
Which means Legends won’t have any of that stunning/cute art of Petersen’s. Maybe this was to give Petersen time to work on Black Axe.
But in any case, and no disrespect to the other guest illustrators, is that a good thing?
Among the samples given out on Free Comic Book Day this past Saturday was a preview combination edition of Magnus, Robot Fighter and Doctor Solar, Man of the Atom, with release dates of Aug. 04 and July 14 respectively.
The connection between the two comics, aside from both using commas in their titles, is they initially were owned by Gold Key Comics. The relaunches are from Dark Horse Comics, and the previews were written by Jim Shooter.
I recall adoring the art of the original 1960s Magnus, by Russ Manning. (I wasn’t the only admirer, of course, as there’s a Russ Manning Most-Promising Newcomer Award given out as part of the Will Eisner Awards.) His characters posed with the handsome grace of Grecian gods; when they moved — to run or to punch or karate-chop evil robots — he drew them as if they were statues, carved in the act of their heroic deeds (not dissimilar to Greg Land’s technique, though Land’s characters appear as if they’re cheerily posing for Rolling Stone covers).
Russ Manning’s Magnus, Robot Fighter is available in collected editions.
The Magnus preview given out on Free Comic Book Day was illustrated by Bill Reinhold. His robot fighters aren’t from the same polished school as Manning’s. But they do seem to move around a lot more.
OK, maybe this falls under the heading of shameless promotion, but here goes anyway.
Details for some of the background for the current storyline in my online comic strip, Slipped, came from two books — a little from Andrew Hussey’s highly entertaining 2006 book, Paris: A Secret History (Bloomsbury USA), which I’ve been reading on and off since it came out, but even more from Jeffrey H. Jackson’s new book, Paris Under Water: How the City of Light Survived the Great Flood of 1910 (Palgrave Macmillan 2010).
Jackson’s book includes almost a score of entrancing photos taken during the flood, as well as a timeline that stretches from the “higher than usual” rainfall noted in the summer of 1909; through the explosion of a vinegar factory in the Ivry suburb on Jan. 25, 1910, after invading water sloshed together volatile chemicals; to the Seine’s receding to normal levels by March.
The author also provides insight into Prefect of Police Louis Lépine — the hero of the hour.
But here comes my confession: I introduced the character of Lépine in Slipped before I was able to get my hands on a copy of Paris Under Water. I’d read a bit about him in a New York Times review of the book, enough to admire Lépine’s efforts to save his city — and about his ever-present bowler.
What I didn’t learn until I started to read the actual book this week was how: a.) I got his personality pretty dead-on — a successful leader in such a crisis almost certainly would have to be unyielding, fierce (Jackson’s words) and tough; and b.) I got his looks exactly wrong (except for the hat, of course).
“Lépine was a small, wiry man, with a large forehead, steely eyes and stern gaze. A thick mustache and goatee framed his pursed lips,” Jackson writes. My Lépine is tall, possesses not much of a forehead to speak of and wears a bristled mustache, a la Mutt and Jeff. Maybe I’ll have him grow a beard as the story develops.
Now, my excuse for not waiting for more details concerning Monsieur Lépine is this. My characters hijacked control of the Slipped storyline about two months after I started the comic strip in 2008, and when we got to the Paris flood a few weeks ago, they were in a hurry.
As the Scarlet Sparrow and her traveling companions arrive in 1910 — actually their out-of-control giant spider-like tank drops them into the Seine — in Chapter 97, panel 4, a small boat can be seen on the horizon. As it paddles closer in succeeding panels and chapters, and unbeknownst to me, it’s revealed that boat carries Lépine and his (fictitious) assistant, Inspector Pomme de Terre.
And, by golly, that is what this Lépine looks like — a bowler, yes, but no goatee.
In response to Los Angeles’s and Anaheim’s attempts to lure Comic-Com International away from San Diego, that city’s officials are proposing it’ll offer $500,000 in hotel tax revenue to help defray convention organizers’ costs.
You can read about it here on Michael Cavna’s Comic Riffs blog on the Washington Post site, or here at the San Diego Union-Tribune.
Who would have thought this day would come, when big municipalities would squabble over some event about comic books — those evil things our parents tried to get us to stop wasting our time and eyesight reading?
Yes, I know the annual four-day event is about more than comic books. It’s about promotion for the host city, tourism, movie and TV show publicity, hotel-room occupancy, restaurants, taxis and buses …. That is to say, money.
P.S. The San Diego newspaper reports single-day and four-day tickets for this summer’s event are already sold out.
Todd Hignite’s In the Studio: Visits With Contemporary Cartoonists puts me in mind of Ron Goulart’s valuable 1975 book, The Adventurous Decade: Comic Strips in the Thirties. As Hignite picks the creative brains of today’s cartoonists at the top of their game — Robert Crumb, Art Spiegelman, Jaime Hernandez, Daniel Clowes, Seth, Chris Ware, Ivan Brunetti, Charles Burns and Gary Panter — Goulart tracked down writers and artists who launched a new approach to newspaper strips.
Goulart talked to — or found professionals who had worked with those who’d since died or vanished into obscurity — Milton Caniff (Terry and the Pirates) and Noel Sickles (Scorchy Smith), Chester Gould (Dick Tracy), John Dille and Dick Calkins (Buck Rogers), Hal Foster (Tarzan), Roy Crane (Wash Tubbs and Captain Easy), Harold Gray (Little Orphan Annie), Ham Fisher (Joe Palooka), Will Eisner (The Spirit) and many more. It’s chockablock with discussion of technique, inspiration and opinion, and you still can find copies in hardback and paperback.
The Adventurous Decade, in turn, makes me think of — hold on, this isn’t too much of a stretch — Giorgio Vasari’s Lives of the Artists. Born in 1511, Vasari studied painting under, and became friends with, Michelangelo in Florence. The Michelangelo.
As time went on, he gathered notes on other Florentine artists, which he published, in two editions, in 1550 and 1568, to much acclaim. (Influential ArtNews magazine has long called its briefs section “Vasari’s Diary.”)
Vasari’s subjects included, along with his pal Michelangelo, Titian, Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, Donatello, Fra Angelico, Botticelli and Fra Filippo Lippi, among others.
All three books serve as receptacles of great artists musing on great work — theirs, their contemporaries and their predecessors.
Read my earlier posts on In the Studio here and here.
