I've been checking out some random manga on Hoopla. My experience with manga is pretty limited, being a short time in the 90s when they first started issuing paperback collections. This particular series is from one of those early publishers, but this seems to be a current popular series of very funny stories about a hapless office worker and her new cat. Not earth-shattering but a good read.
These are the last Astro Boy stories from Osamu Tezuka. Pretty standard, zany adventures, but nice to have such a huge chunk of his work readily available.
This is a surprise series, on first look the art is not very exciting and the stories seem repetitive. It turns out the flat art perfectly conveys the exaggerated humor/horror that is a Kago specialty. Reminds me of OROCHI by Kazuo Umezu, with a finer line and a vein of silliness.
I don't even know what caught my eye about this manga to begin with, however it turned out to be my favorite of the group. The combination of supernatural elements with the drama of the protagonist returning home for a funeral after being away make for a riveting start to this series.
Libby and Hoopla apps both offer ebook Manga with a library card, with Hoopla having a wider selection. I found the BATTLE ANGEL ALITA series on Internet Archive.
DISCLAIMER: I have two contributions to this issue. My first ever interview, with Brooklyn artist Speed Paste Robot AKA Steven Solomon (a big public Thank You to Steven!). And, a news piece on a flurry of alternative comics events in NYC earlier this year. My impressions on the rest of the issue follow:
I was most looking forward to Terence Fuller's interview with Sean Scoffield who he had mentioned in several of his videos (and even shown some of Scoffield's incredible original art, if memory serves). Sean Scoffield does not disappoint. I love all the information about The Beguiling and the early business of stocking and selling alternative comics. His comments on his comics career are full of new-to-me information, and this great matter-of-fact self-appraisal:
"Well, I went to art school. I was always into comics. Comics got me drawing. I was very good at it. I drew some comics, but, you know, nothing really ever happened. Drawing a comic takes a lot of time and a lot of effort. When you're not getting paid..." Then Scoffield spends the rest of the interview on his wide-ranging art career, fascinating stuff.
Every issue has a surprise contribution I didn’t see coming. Ryan Carey's examination of a long forgotten Steve Gerber 90s Marvel series certainly fits that category. I've been a fan of Gerber's since being permanently scarred by an early issue of HOWARD THE DUCK in elementary school in the late 70s. This entry in Gerber's bibliography is both incredible and inevitable, with another of his not necessarily nuanced, but complex, dissertations on the culture of violence.
I swear I'm not being paid to say this, but editor Colin Blanchette is really coming into his own as an interviewer. His specialty, in my view, is giving new, little-known, or just plain forgotten cartoonists their chance to tell their story in their own voice (also see his feature-length interview with Beth Hetland in this issue). I immediately recognized Andrew Zaben's name on the cover, at a certain time his books were ubiquitous in Fantagraphics catalogs. So much so, I always wrongly believed Fantagraphics published Zaben's books! This quote on how he came to create his graphic novels is priceless in it's logic:
The cover to DREAM BIG DREAMS...
all three covers from GCD
MYSTERY OF THE FIRST FOOTNOTE: Due to space considerations our first question and answer were edited out of the Steven Solomon interview leaving a dangling footnote. Below is also a favorite Neal Adams page from Steven Solomon...
I have to ask, where did you study sculpture and how did you come to apply that to "create[...] a series of cartoon-influenced figurative work through the early 2000s"?
I started my journey wanting, like every red-blooded comics fanboy of my era, to BE NEAL ADAMS. (audience laughter, some cheering.)
This led me on many farcical rabbit trails which ended up with my enrolling in a very academic sculpture program… But it also resulted in my then wanting to BE ALBERTO GIACOMETTI. (more audience laughter, some heckling.)[1]
Once I worked slowly and painfully through this drawn out student period cartoony figuration tendencies, which always persisted in my sketchbooks and side projects, emerged in painting.
The line between “painting” meaning an exploration of a single image where the interaction between materials and ostensible subject matter and “comics” where the panels equal a certain time frame and have a storytelling thread (however that story is being told) is a blurry boundary sometimes.
Shortbox Comics Fair is coming in October, here are previews of three titles found on their timeline:
Xulia Vicente is a Spanish cartoonist who has previously contributed to Shortbox and been published by Silver Sprocket bluesky
Olivia Stephens (DARLIN AND HER OTHER NAMES and many others) part of BALLAD FOR BLACK CASSANDRA bluesky
Erin Roseberry previews their Shortbox comic THE MAKER OF GRAVE-GOODS bluesky
Maria Capelle Frantz (THE CHANCELLOR AND THE CITADEL) sketchbook page bluesky
Raven Clemens (THE PARADOX OF GETTING BETTER) character studies bluesky
Andrew Neal (MEETING COMICS) notes for a future comic bluesky
Karl Christian Krumpholz pencils for West Colfax illustration bluesky
Creepy Delaine Derry Green painting-in-progress bluesky
Always great to get a look at Joshua W. Cotter's work on NOD AWAY VOLUME 3! bluesky If you want to see more and support the completion of this book, subscribe to Joshua's patreon
Speed Paste Robot AKA Steven Solomon is always sharing his unique drawings, hopefully culminating in a another mini-comic! bluesky
Bluesky may be a little quieter, less interactive than "old twitter", yet you can see above talented cartoonists are still making use of it to share there WIP.
Distributors: Bud Plant, Well News Service, Seagate Distributors
"The 32 page comic will be extinct in 5 years, and there will be fewer titles around, in all probability only the titles such as SUPERMAN, BATMAN, WONDER WOMAN, SPIDER-MAN, FANTASTIC FOUR, THE HULK, and maybe CONAN. There will be more dollar books and trade sized paperback books similar to TIN-TIN."
-Future First Comics publisher Mike Gold predicting the future of comics!
1. THE COMICS GUILD: A Professional Guild to Protect the Rights of Visual Creators: A Report by Gary Groth
Part One: THE NEW COPYRIGHT LAW
Part Two: WHAT DO THE PROS THINK?
Part Three: BIRTH OF THE GUILD: MAY 7, 1978
At thirteen pages this is the most ambitious investigative article since the Alan Light expose in the very first issue (TNJ #27). The Comics Guild was an idea by Neal Adams in response to the infamous "work made for hire" language from the January 1, 1978 copyright revision that was exploited by Marvel and DC back then. Gary Groth breaks the story up into three sections. Part One is a historical look at past attempts at organizing comics professionals and the origins of this Comics Guild; Part Two is a survey of 35 comics creators that gives an oral history of the Guild that wasn't; and, Part Three is a transcription of the initial May 7, 1978 meeting of 44 interested parties at Neal Adams' Continuity Studio. Nothing ever came of this attempt, but it's fascinating reading the conflicts and apathy that caused it to be stillborn.
2. Dave Sim's COMICgraphics advertisement
from TCJ Archive
Dave Sim drumming up business a few months before CEREBUS #1 went on sale in December 1978 (date according to GCD).
3. COMICS REVIEWS: CLAIRE BRETECHER: Triumphant Despite Traitorous Translation by Kim Thompson
"Translation is a difficult craft (or art). If the translator is less than fluent in the language of origin but fully conversant with the target language, the result is frequently a grammatically, idiomatically, and dialectically 'correct' translation, but unfaithful to the original and in some cases downright nonsensical. On the other hand, if it is the target language that is the weaker of the two, awkward and ruptured translations abound.[...]"
GCD
Kim Thompson compares and contrasts the original French-language version of Claire Bretecher's comics and Valerie Marchant's English-language translations for THE NATIONAL LAMPOON PRESENTS CLAIRE BRETECHER. Given Thompson's future career translating so many classic European comics for Fantagraphics, this review gives invaluable insight into his thoughts on translating foreign work.
4. FANDOM REVIEW: THE COMIC READER: Comic Fandom's Oldest Newszine by Marilyn Bethke
"TCR's shortcoming is not that it fails to accomplish it's goals, but that it's goals are so low that they are accomplished with ease."
Bethke respectfully eviscerates Mike Tiefenbacher's news gathering practices and narrow focus. Very reminiscent of much later JOURNAL criticisms of Don and Maggie Thompson's CBG.
5. SUSPENDED ANIMATION: METAMORPHOSES: The Greeks Must Have Had a Word For It by Jim Korkis
"METAMORPHOSES, which was produced, written, and directed by Takashi for the Sanrio Film Corporation, is a film filled with beautiful images, but it's emotional promise seems to have been buried before those images were even committed to celluloid."
Jim Korkis reviews a very unusual...enterprise. A Japanese company hires a Japanese animator to produce an animated feature in Hollywood employing U.S. animators. Korkis is not sold on the final product and dissects the films problems in depth, see for yourself below...
"Metamorphoses" released as...
"Winds of Change" (1979)
HONORABLE MENTION: "The Gerber Story" by future Eclipse Enterprises Editor-in-chief cat yronwode. A review of CAPTAIN AMERICA 221-225.
