Congrats to ADDTF for one solid year of reading comics naked.

Also, welcome back ADD and In Sequence.

Did I miss anyone?

 
Mission to Mars - Part 2

Before I continue, I would like to point out that David has finally stepped up to the plate and is relating his own Mars experiences, which parallel my own. Now, back to the story.

Due to overwhelming amounts of homework, J. couldn't come with me to Mars the next day. She was heartbroken, but I was determined to pick up a batch of cheap Archies to make it up to her. Sure enough, I hit paydirt right off the bat, with a boxful of the lousiest looking Archie comics you can imagine. I started to flip through the selection, pulling all the coverless ones I could find. In a store like this, it's just as much about the quantity as it is the quality. I wasn't even twenty Archies in when the proprietor stepped over and asked me if I needed any help. Service like this I was not expecting. I asked him if there was a general price for those comics without price tags, or if we were to ask him. Apparently, they have a very unique pricing system at Mars, in which the owner goes through each comic at the time of purchase and mentally calculates the cost based upon absolutely no system conceivable outside his Medieval Rock addled head.

I thanked him for his help, and turned back to the box o' Archies. Happily, Mars provides extraordinary service, as the owner decided take an hour out to discuss the inevitability of robots taking over the retail industry. In that hour I also learned that you could get cheap TVs from a warehouse built on swampland, and that his number is one off a guy in Detroit who sells drugs over the phone. He would have kept going, but his phone rang. I forgot to ask if it was for an order of killer Welland bud. The funny thing is that I had planned on spending the entire last two of the store's hours picking up lots of merchandise, but that time was cut in half by his monologue, and I didn't quite get to look at his entire selection. Score one for the robots.

Vowing to avoid eye contact from then on, I bent to the task of rooting through the worst organized slush pile of comic debris I have ever been a witness to. It was like a comic book massacre, with piles of them sliding onto the floor, crushing each other, their loose extra-large sandwich bag protection falling away to expose them to the grey fluorescent light. I feared for my soot-blackened fingers every time I reached under the table to move boxes of the Death of Superman around, though the fear of rats' nests was superseded by my love for comics.

Near closing time, I had gone through approximately 3/4 of the comic stock and had found only a small handful of titles that interested me. I was next in line after a pair of men who were negotiating with the owner over the price in bulk porno. They dickered him down to a fraction of his regular price, and the game became incredibly clear.

Tune in tomorrow for the stunning conclusion to my overwrought tale of going to a comic shop, with bonus comic-related Mp3. Or don't. This is only filler for while I'm gone, anyway.
posted by Steven at 2:39 AM

 
Mission To Mars - Part 1

Once again, I am off to Montreal for a weekend of delightful decadence and rampant quarter bin diving. Hopefully the Flat Earth Link-O-Matic will keep chugging along in my absence. Let's keep that Montreal-centric vibe we started off with yesterday with a look at one of that fair city's more colourful comic retailers.

The time before last that I visited this fair city, I took a trip to David Fiore's favourite vendor of comics and assorted pop culture junk, Mars. Since David is dragging his feet in talking about Mars in public, I'd like to jump in with my own thoughts.

Mars is by far the shabbiest, dirtiest, most disgusting retail store I have ever set foot in. I've visited many dozens of comic shops in at least eight countries, and nothing can compare. This is a comic activist's worst nightmare, the kind of ill-lit, moldy, uncomfortable basement ghetto that frightens anyone with the least bit of sense.

To hell with them. Me, I love a junk shop. If no one else is brave enough to dig underneath damp cardboard boxes full of hundreds of issues of Vigilante #28 to get to a digest copy of Superman Battles His Weirdest Foes, well, like the song says, if you don't like it, you go home.

J. was very excited at the prospect of entering Mars. She had seen it's distinctive cardboard signage many times as she strolled down the street, and was happy to finally have someone to go with. We were in a bit of a rush on the way to see Casablanca (Valentine's Day, what could be more romantic than browsing through old issues of Sgt. Rock?), so we only popped in for a second. The proprietor and his shaggy friend were seated near the entrance. They were both grizzled and unkempt, and it wasn't until the next time I was in that I noticed one of the owner's sideburns was much longer than the other. I asked what time they opened the next day. His response. "Um.....Uh....What time, what time...?" Two minutes of indecision. I was spellbound. "Sayyyyyyyy......around 12:30?" I was going to ask what time they closed, but I had a movie to catch.

In an effort to allow David a chance to play catch up, my trip to Mars will continue tomorrow.
posted by Steven at 4:29 AM

 
Free Comic Thursday - Misplaced

I read on a message board recently that one of the problems with comic blogs is that there are none run by artists. What a crock.

Quite the renaissance man, artist Salgood Sam has a sizable and continually updated selection of comic and illustration work available for your perusal, has a personal blog, and runs one of my favourite all-comic blogs, the Canadian-centric Sequential. As if that wasn't enough, he's also one of the people behind the monthly Montreal Comix Jam, and his sense of web design alone is a piece of art. I still regret not taking him up on his offer of integrating Flat Earth into a larger Canadian comics art scheme, if only to see what he would have done with it. There's plenty more, but why should I make the rest of us look any worse by comparison?

One of my favourite stories of his, the wordless Misplaced, was dreamt by A.J. Duric and appeared in the zine Mensuhell. But don't stop there. Check out his full range of work.
posted by Steven at 2:45 PM

 
Rock Out!

My illness has been dogging me since Friday, changing ever so slightly day-to-day. Last night at work I was feeling a considerable amount of pain and my co-workers took turns guessing at what might be ailing me. Guesses included food poisoning and a burst appendix. When I got home I became a little feverish again. Mistakenly worried that I might have to go in for surgery of some sort, I decided to dash off a short note in case something awful happened. Here's an excerpt.

"My sole request is that the kitties be taken care of and that they not be separated. That, and I'd like a Viking funeral, if Mom will let you."

The pain wasn't so bad today, but I sauntered over to the walk-in clinic just to make sure. Turns out it's just a kidney stone. Whew!

This is all just my way of telling you that I've exhausted my supply of "rainy day" posts, and have no more filler. Um.

Storyboards for the movie Amelie!
Photo essay of the Liliane book launch!
John Updike's fan letter to Little Orphan Annie creator Harold Gray! (Courtesy of Bugpowder)
posted by Steven at 3:30 PM

 
'Lil Ainjil



There's a lot of Krazy Kat oddities making the rounds. The mysterious photo above was posted on The Comics Journal message board. If only Furries were still that hot.

Here's a fairly good modern stop-motion version of the characters that you would do well to watch without the sound. The animation is nice, but the voice-over is horrendous.

If you're interested in something of an older vintage, you can watch an entire 1916 Krazy Kat kartoon called Krazy Goes A-Wooing, courtesy of the fine folks at Krazy.com, the best online source for Krazy Kat information.

Finally, yet another TCJ message board thread discusses the various appearances Krazy and Ignatz have made in music.
posted by Steven at 4:47 PM

 
Classics Illustrated

"I especially like that you focus on material that others might dismiss as too nostalgic, too silly, or too non-superhero." - a welcome message from a fellow blogger.

It really saddens me to hear a comic fan say that he or she has lost interest in the medium. I can understand becoming burnt out or bored with their normal fare, or shifting interests without also changing their type of purchases, but it still bothers me, largely because any piece of art is like a gateway into all the art that influenced, or was influenced, by it. It never ends, and the journey is always full of variety and surprising revelations.

That's what keeps this blog so exciting for me. I don't anticipate what I'm going to talk about, or even discuss what I already know. Nearly every entry is a learning experience for me, and a throwaway piece of trivia found while researching a minor topic for your run-of-the-mill post might prompt a week's worth of exploratory delight.

Among the magazines I purchased a few weeks ago were two issues of Illustration magazine. I was put off of them at first, thinking that they would be dry and not the sort of thing I was interested in. In fact, I only picked up one at first. After leafing through it at home, I decided right away to return and buy the other.

They're wonderful reads, with the best possible reproduction for a magazine format for all those stunning commercial illustrations. Not content to simply focus on one aspect of its subject, Illustration magazine covers illustrators new and old, their lives as well as their work, from lurid paperback covers to cowboy comics, from sword and sorcery to coca-cola ads.

Upon finishing the first issue, I was already convinced Illustration magazine was a labour of love. What really made it hit home was that any issue that went out of print was presented, in full, on their website in .pdf format. Obviously, editors Dan and Matt Zimmer don't just want your money, but are willing to go even further in promoting great, neglected work.

Go on, indulge yourself in senuous watercolours, gouche, pen and ink. Of special interest to comic fans are their articles on Frank Frazetta and Sam Savitt, though they're all filled with beautiful images.
posted by Steven at 2:29 PM

 
Who's Afraid?

A couple years back, a comic strip created by Disney employees during the strike of '41 ended up on Shane Glines' old message board. I always regretted not saving it. Happily, he's reposted the strip on his new board. But you probably already knew that, because you're a regular at the best damn animation blog in the whole wide world, right?
posted by Steven at 3:31 PM