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

Also, welcome back ADD and In Sequence.

Did I miss anyone?

 
Kamandi (The Last Boy On Earth)

Everyone has their favourite Kirby comic. Fantastic Four. New Gods. Boys' Ranch. Even OMAC. But the true dark horse of this particular race has got to be Kamandi. To paraphrase Manowar, if you don't like Kamandi, you're no friend of mine.

One person who understands is Jarret Keene, whose mournful crooning tries to find answers in a post-apocalyptic world overrun by beasts and comes up wanting. Weep not for Kamandi, weep for all humankind.
posted by Steven at 1:02 AM

 
Biff! Bang! Pow!

I'm addicted to the Comic Book Idol, and though I had to cancel plans to participate (and blog about it) this year, I'll still be following it. 2005 will be my year!

The Oddball Comics Forum names comic references in non-comic movies.

The Comics Journal message board attempts to list all the Simpsons references pertaining to comics, and still falls short.

Rich Johnston has some awesome Chynna Clugston-Major DVD art up.

Wired article on Pixar and one of my favourite modern animation directors, Brad Bird of Family Dog and Iron Giant fame. Courtesy of Animation Nation.

CartoonRetro has a great old cartooning tutorial by Frank King, the creator of Gasoline Alley.
posted by Steven at 1:59 AM

 
Free Comic Thursday - Loxie and Zoot

ABSOLUTELY NOT WORK SAFE!

...unless, of course, your workplace is anything like mine. I wish I could forget most of the things I've seen and heard here.

When I started the Jenny Everywhere project, one of the things I wanted to make perfectly clear was that anyone looking to include Jenny in their work was not obligated to contact me for permission or to even let me know that they were going to use the character. This hasn't stopped me from snooping around and finding random, surprise appearances by Jenny in other peoples' webcomics, short stories, mutlti-media rave extravaganzas and porn sites (don't ask). One such pleasant surprise was Loxie and Zoot.

Loxie and Zoot are a young couple who run the Koala Bay Bares Naturist Resort. Nearly every character in the series is presented completely naked. One of the only regular cast members that warrents an exception to this rule is antagonist Tex Tyler, a "concerned citizen" who wants to shut down the resort for political gain. Loxie and Zoot is really quite light-hearted and sweet, and if one of artist Stephen Crowley's intents was to present this alternative lifestyle in a breezy, easy way for the benefit of clothed types, well, he succeeded.

I don't want to pick on the webcomic types by pointing out that the majority of strips you can find out there are amateurish hackwork. After all, the same could be said for just about anything, and I've contributed my own fair share of webcomic suckage myself. But it does get a little frustrating having to wade through so many webcomics to find something worth recommending. Loxie and Zoot is one of the best drawn webcomics I've seen yet, regularly updated three times a week, to boot. Lots of varying viewpoints, thoughtful backgrounds and well-defined anatomy (ahem), all presented within a pleasing style. What really impressed me was the sheer amount of differing ages, body types and ethnicities on display, a rarity in most any medium, but comics especially.

One of the purposes I had in creating Jenny, and one of my greatest frustrations, was in trying to diversify the image of a supehero character a bit by having a person of average size (with a little to a lot of heft) as a hero. What I discovered was that for many "average size" has come to mean the paper-thin physiques we're exposed to constantly through the media, or in this case specifically, comics. Even when the artists in question are made aware of this, the majority still have trouble drawing anything that could be proportionately related to the vast majority of people found in the real world. So, it's to Crowley's credit that Loxie and Zoot is one of those rare comics where a diverse sampling of human beings can be found.

The beginning of Jenny's appearance in Loxie and Zoot begins here, and I have to say, his depiction of her is one of my favourites yet.


posted by Steven at 3:24 AM

 
Writer Bob Haney hospitalized

According to Mark Evanier, Bob Haney, greatest superhero comic writer of all time, experienced a major stroke a few months back and is currently being cared for in a nursing facility.

If you're not familiar with Haney's work, I've written a few posts about the man, including links to full issues of his comics.

As I've also mentioned previously, DC Comics has kept not one, but two of Haney's most recent stories from print. It's funny that not only were these comics quite possibly the only items that would have made me give money to one of the big two in years, but the fact that they have yet to see widespread publication is just one more reason for me to stick to my convictions and not financially support DC Comics. It would be nice if DC would rectify this oversight and release one or more of these stories, or, even better, a "lost 80-pager" or trade of Haney's best work, including the unpublished tales. While I hope that we see more work from Haney in the future, it's shameful that an author who helped bring about so much lunacy in superhero comics was strung along like this and denied the royalties that could have made his situation easier.

Regardless, get well soon, Mr. Haney. You're the best.
posted by Steven at 12:37 AM

 
The Incredible Hulk was here

I imagine most people have at least a few hobbies or have a lifestyle that connect them in some way to complete strangers. It may be reflected in a style of dress, like wearing a favourite band t-shirt, enjoying a particular type of book, comic, magazine, music or sport, knitting a scarf, taking drugs or any of a million different things. Some sort of signifier that this person belongs to the same tribe. For me, I've had conversations with strangers based on shoes, choice of buttons, Astro Boy tattoos and much more. While most I'll never bump into again, I do see some of these people on an irregular basis, either because we frequent the same locales, or just by chance. Sometimes I'll even talk with completely different strangers who I'm connected to via strangers previously met, or encounter some remnant of their presence through their art or some form of destruction (or both), usually visited on public spaces. But other then these brief encounters, the majority of our time is spent living our own lives, completely seperate and oblivious from those random acquaintances. If they or I were to disappear, it would matter to the other as nothing more then a footnote in their lives, if they even ever knew or thought about it.

The above is precisely what I like about early Marvel comics continuity. I believe that at least one of the reasons early Marvel succeeded was because it did feel like the characters shared a city, if not a neighbourhood. People with lifestyles as unique as superheroes wouldn't necessarily know each other right off the bat, and may never even meet, or just catch fleeting glimpses as they barely missed one another during an incident that would attract their type. Maybe a novice would shyly watch a living legend from afar, unable to gather the courage to speak to them, or be familiar with the hero through his or her handiwork only. They may have heard of each other through mutual acquaintances or through the grapevine, but it's a big ol' world, and it would be easy to miss one another completely. Like a very loosely based clique, this small handful of colourfully costumed superheroes would definitely feel a kinship and mutual attraction to one another based upon their shared experiences. But even when they did meet, those exchanges wouldn't necessarily jibe with their regular routine. Not just neighbourhoods, but worlds would temporarily collide, only to return back to as regular a timetable as life allows.

Though he's talking about fringe titles in this excerpt from his recent essay on continuity, Paul O'Brien could be describing the entirety of the first few years of Marvel's output.

"And everyone tends to fall into the trap of using "continuity" to mean "continuous interaction between different titles". Strictly speaking, it ought to just mean mutual consistency and the absence of contradictions. You can achieve that without any real interaction between titles. Even at their most continuity-minded, Marvel and DC have always featured a handful of titles off on the fringes of continuity that have drifted gently about their business, completely unaffected by anything else around them - simply because they were so far removed from anything else that the question of mutual consistency never really arose."

Eventually Marvel drained most of the mystery from the concept, allowing large groups of characters to congregate with ease. It seemed as if there were nearly as many superheroes as regular people. One of the only times I can think of that recalled the feel of early Marvel was the introduction of, wait for it, Cable. A character never seen by the comic reading public before, but familiar to many of the other heroes in the Marvel universe. It really threw quite a few fanboys for a loop. To their thinking, a character as supposedly well-known and important as Cable could not have remained hidden for so long without them knowing about it. To them, the world and its history had long ago become this tiny thing, neatly cataologued and stable. Everything made sense. But it shouldn't.

I don't know exactly what Paul O'Brien meant by the word "believable" in his essay on continuity, the one part David Fiore objects to. In a way, I agree with David. One artist with complete control over his creation will most likely present something more cohesive and consistent, but potentially less fun, then a universe shared by many. But just when is the real world ever cohesive and consistent? The left hand rarely knows what the right hand is doing, and a variety of interpretations and slightly off-kilter continuity is the element of inadvertent, lo-fi surprise that can make shared universe superhero comics not only fun, but also somewhat chaotically believable.
posted by Steven at 3:20 AM

 
Creeoy!

Completely creeptacular fashion spread, fusing real peoples' bodies with grotesque cutesy-pie Dave Cooper heads. Click for the pictures, stay for the idiotic responses found below. Via a fairly large thread at the Comics Journal message board, where a topic so simple can meander into something so needlessly complex.
posted by Steven at 6:53 PM

 
Just don't call them cartoons

I volunteered for the Ottawa International Animation Festival the past two years and will most likely do so again this year, if they'll even let me considering the incident with the yo-yo. Anyway, I was sent a newsletter detailing upcoming events for this year's festival. I realize it's not for many months yet, but 2004 is going to be so great I can hardly contain myself.

There will be a Miyazaki retrospective, including Porco Rosso, the film of his I most want to see. Roger Ramjet creator Fred Crippen will also be given a retrospective as hosted by Cartoon Brew's Amid Amidi. I hope he brings more copies of Animation Blast like he did for the Gerald McBoing Boing screening. The one issue I have is falling apart from my reading it so many times. I was the only person in my class who remembered Roger Ramjet, which made me feel unbelievably old. Adding to this elderly sensation is the incredible excitement I'm experiencing for the Fleischer Studio Popeye program. And this is on top of all the usual workshops, competitions, and French, Canadian, Birdman and Russian exhibitions.

If anyone needs a place to crash, let me know.
posted by Steven at 2:49 AM