Archive for the ‘Events’ Category

APE 2011

October 9, 2011

I’ve been told for years that I need to do the Alternative Press Expo, but it’s never worked out in previous years. However, between exhaustion with the goings on of the major publishers, a simple need to get out of town for a few days, and some leftover vacation days I had to use before they rolled over, this year turned out to be the ideal time to go. Dark Horse also has no institutional presence at the show (as far as I know I was the only person from DH there), so it was my first opportunity since interning at Top Shelf four years ago to spend a weekend steeped in comics without it being job related. I made a few connections and exchanged a few business cards, but most of the time I was just another fan.

The thing everyone told me about APE is that it’s like Portland’s Stumptown Comics Fest, which is both true and not. The energy is similar, with enthusiastic, friendly exhibitors and a strong DIY ethic. The mix of publishers, artists and academic exhibitors is a lot like Stumptown, though APE hasn’t gone in the “curation” direction that Stumptown has, so there’s a broader, more democratic range of people behind the tables.

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Public Reading and Out-of-Control Homage – My Week in Comics August 22–28

September 1, 2010

This week: Hanging with the King on Read Comics in Public Day, raining on the Internet’s parade, and What I Read.

I READ COMICS IN PUBLIC ON SATURDAY. LIKE USUAL.

I FORGOT ABOUT Read Comics in Public Day until I was walking home from Powell’s Books with a copy of Matt Kindt’s Revolver under my arm. Deciding whether I felt like stopping to read it in the park across the street from my apartment or inside, I remembered the event commemorating Jack Kirby’s birthday. Since the King was the inspiration for the choice of date, it seemed appropriate that I read something of his, so I stopped inside and brought out two issues of 2001: A Space Odyssey along with Revolver (I also cheated, finishing a George Saunders short story collection in between the two).

During the time I was out and about earlier in the day, I didn’t see anyone else participating, but having forgotten, I wasn’t paying attention, so who knows. There didn’t appear to be anyone else reading comics with me in Jameson Square by my apartment, so I took a space on a bench and jumped into 2001.

To be honest, it didn’t feel all that momentous. I read comics in the park all the time, and don’t feel any judging eyes on me when I pull out an issue of Batman on the bus. The realization that this wasn’t particularly different from any other lazy weekend when I felt like lying in the park made the whole occasion feel somewhat dated and defensive. If the notion is that a day in which a lot of people are spotted outdoors reading comics normalizes the sight, I think that train has already left the station. We’re well into the era where, at least in cities like Portland, no one cares if you’re reading comics, largely because they don’t care about comics at all.

Of course, Portland could be exceptional in that regard. Certainly comics are a major subculture here. Which is why I certainly don’t condemn the holiday, and I did participate afterall, even if it’s just as likely I’d have read Revolver or other comics in Jameson Square whether I was asked to or not. On Journalista, Dirk Deppey ridiculed the event for its lack of perspective, “Team Comics boosterism,” and its encouragement that fans “[act] like sheep.” While he’s completely right that it’s shameless boosterism, Deppey seems to have lost perspective himself slightly if he’s actually that annoyed.

I doubt I could be convinced an event like this is necessary these days, and it does have the usual defensive ring to it, but I have a hard time being bothered by it, as it’s clearly harmless and judging from the many photo galleries online people enjoyed themselves. Seems like that’s enough.

And now a message from the “Brendan hates fun” department . . .

WHEN IMITATION IS NOT FLATTERY

LESS HARMLESS is the unrelenting culture of homage in comics. The prevalence of homage in comics of all kinds is no surprise when nostalgia is such a force in comics generally and the largest companies still depend on decades-old characters for survival, but the reflexive way it is embraced is still unfortunate.

The most recent example is the “Joker and Lex” story in Superman/Batman #75, one of a number of two-page strips filling out the extra-sized anniversary issue. The Internet pretty much peed itself over the story, with several comics sites reprinting the story and writing it up in pieces that said little more than that the story existed and was awesome. So, homage mission accomplished. But putting aside the tiredness of the Calvin and Hobbes parody and the cynical way it hides a weak punchline behind a conceit sure to play on readers’ nostalgia, when reading this I couldn’t help but wonder how Bill Watterson, the creator of Calvin and Hobbes, might take the story.

Not well, I suspect. Watterson was an outspoken critic of what he saw as a lack of creativity or ambition in newspaper comics, and it’s hard to imagine him being all that amused by a writer and artist riffing on his characters using a set of even older characters. It’s hard for me to see this much differently from the bootleggers who made Calvin and Hobbes merchandise when Watterson himself chose not to.

All of this is before even mentioning that Lex Luthor and the Joker are characters from the superhero genre, about which Watterson said this in the The Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book: “You can make your superhero a psychopath, you can draw gut-splattering violence, and you can call it a ‘graphic novel,’ but comic books are still incredibly stupid.” So would Watterson be impressed by a genre he hated “homaging” his creation to squeeze a little extra nostalgia out comics fans? Not likely.

That’s one of the things that bugs me about the culture of homage in comics culture. It’s so ingrained that it’s basically assumed to always be flattering. Comics creators and fans alike seem to have lost the ability to tell when an homage is appropriate and when it might actually be insulting. I’d like to see a lot more consideration before these sorts of things are published in place of original stories. I expect I’d see a lot fewer homages in general if that happened.

READ THIS WEEK:

  • 2001: A Space Odyssey #5 & #6 by Jack Kirby
    These issues turned out to be especially apt for Read Comics in Public Day, set in a 2040 (making them the first post-2001 issues) in which comics-style escapism is played out in elaborate, paid-for superhero experiences. “Comicsville” provides a costume, an enemy and a princess to save, letting people live out a fantasy of being a hero. The character playing the game at the beginning of the story looks like Captain America if he were a New God, but when the fantasy proves not enough, he joins the space program, where he encounters genuine alien weirdness and the Monolith.

    The “next issue” box says it will reveal more about the Star Children, but in the meantime, Kirby is really taking his time exploring variations on the themes of 2001, so I’m glad to get to read these relatively fast compared to their original, monthly schedule. I’ve begun to think of Kirby as an early practitioner of what we now call decompression in comics storytelling, probably because he wanted to let his cosmic style breathe. Just compare the number of splash pages and double splash pages in his 1970s Marvel work to the work he was doing with Stan Lee in the ’60s.

    It’s also been interesting to read through the letter columns in these issues. So far, a few people are asking where the series is going and why it doesn’t progress, but none seem upset by the relatively relaxed pace of the stories within each issue (still quick by modern standards—these two issue arcs would likely be longer today). If anything, they seem concerned that it’s coming out too fast. A letter in issue #6 complains that 2001 and a few other contemporaneous Marvel series debuted monthly, rather than the tradition of starting out bimonthly and speeding up once sale warrant it. I had no idea this was ever something that bothered people.

  • Batman #702 by Grant Morrison & Tony Daniel
    I’m really enjoying the threads coming together. The three interconnected books (this one flashing back to Bruce Wayne in Final Crisis, Batman and Robin seeing Dick Grayson and Damian Wayne putting the pieces together in the present, and The Return of Bruce Wayne following Bruce on his journey through time) add up to the most ambitious superhero epic since Morrison’s own Seven Soldiers. This doesn’t have the grandeur that had, but it is a wild ride.
  • Fantastic Four #532 by Jonathan Hickman, Neil Edwards, Scott Hanna & Paul Mounts
  • Gantz vols. 5–11 by Hiroya Oku
  • glamourpuss #7 by Dave Sim
  • Justice League: Generation Lost #8 by Judd Winick, Aaron Lopresti & Matt Ryan
    I think I’ll enjoy this more in collected form. From the library.
  • Monster vols. 12–13 by Naoki Urasawa
    Just keeps getting twistier and larger in scope. Love it.
  • Predators Film Adaptation by Paul Tobin & Victor Drujiniu
  • Predators: Preserve the Game by David Lapham & Allan Jefferson
  • Red Hood: The Lost Days #2 by Judd Winick & Pablo Raimondi
  • Revolver by Matt Kindt
    Kindt has to be the best American cartoonist currently making poignant character dramas that look and act like genre stories, not entirely unlike Jason, though going for elaborate design and plots rather than Jason’s deadpan fables.
  • The Smurfs: The Smurfnapper by Y. Delporte & Peyo
    I’ve never read any of this before. It’s funny and really nicely drawn. At a dollar this was a steal, and I’d pick up more. Also, they smurfing use “smurf” in smurf of other words a lot. And surprisingly often in place of words that could really only be expletives. All the smurfing time.
  • Superman/Batman #75 by Paul Levitz, Jerry Ordway, et. al
    Complaints about “Joker and Lex” aside, this was slight but fun. The main story is perfectly of a piece with the Levitz Legion of Super-Heroes series that I’m enjoying, and many of the shorts, like Steven T. Seagle and Teddy Kristiansen’s “It’s a Bat” are very cute. More of Duncan Rouleau’s “Krytpo vs. Ace” right now, please.
  • What a Wonderful World! vols. 1 & 2 by Inio Asano
    I really enjoyed this quiet, slice-of-life manga that’s actually grappling with much bigger things than it lets on, following a bunch of “ronin,” kids who have failed their school entrance exams and return again and again to cram schools to try again, and an assortment of other people living in the same neighborhood. It’s a short story collection, but the stories are loosely connected by the setting, some recurring characters, and themes of growing up, being stuck in a rut, old ties rejoined, and death. Watching over the whole thing are two shinagami, spirits of death, the treatment of which signaled to me just how opposite the tone is from mainstream manga. In Death Note, shinagami urge people to become mass murderers and take pleasure in the outcome; here a shinagami in the form of a young girl weeps at the death of a homeless man. It’s quite moving, and I’ll be looking for more work like this.

Images from 2001: A Space Odyssey © MGM, I guess. Rights issues are why this hasn’t been reprinted, right? Let’s say MGM. Images from “Joker and Lex” © DC Comics. But come on. Really. Images of Subarashii Sekai (What A Wonderful World!) © Inio Asano. Nice and simple.

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Posted in DC, Events, Jack Kirby, My Week in Comics | 3 Comments »

Scott Pilgrim on the Screen and on the Wall – My Week in Comics August 1–7

August 9, 2010

This week: What being a movie actually brings to Scott Pilgrim, a look at some Bryan Lee O’Malley originals and a super-sized What I Read.

BOY, HE’S SURE BEEN WRITING ABOUT THE SCOTT PILGRIM MOVIE A LOT FOR SOMEONE WHO CLAIMS NOT TO BE ALL THAT ENTHUSIASTIC

I’VE WRITTEN BEFORE about my reservations regarding the film version of Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World. I got a chance to see it at a screening here in Portland last month and, while some of that trepidation turned out to well founded, I was pleased to see much of it prove baseless. Overall, I came away feeling the movie was flawed, but a lot of fun, and even if it doesn’t quite capture the charm of the original, it comes close enough to consider the movie a success. But the greater realization came from the very appreciative audience I saw it with.

The Scott Pilgrim series works wonderfully as comics, taking advantage of the form in countless ways and drawing much of its comedy from manipulation of comics’ rules. In that respect there’s very little for a movie to add, but the best thing it can offer by far is the audience experience. Scott Pilgrim has always been a crowd-pleaser without a crowd, since reading is a solitary experience, not generally given to group cheering (as Warren Ellis memorably put it, when we open a comic we “come in alone”). And so the theater I saw the movie in was filled with people who loved the books or, like the friend I brought, had never read them but was looking forward to a loud, rowdy time, shared with a crowd.

I’m still never going to be convinced that most books or comics need to be made into movies, that they are any more interesting as movies or for having been made into movies, but watching Scott Pilgrim did remind me that there is an impulse when we love something to share it, and movies are perfectly suited to sharing an experience.

As for the movie itself, I had a good time. It works best when it takes advantage of the film form like the original did with comics, with clever editing carrying conversations across scenes and getting laughs from changes to characters’ appearances between cuts. It doesn’t work quite as well when it wears its comics influence too obviously on its sleeve, and I quickly got tired of tricks like ringing phones shooting out visual RRIIIINNNNGG sound effects. As Scott, Michael Cera surprised, turning in a better performance than I’ve seen from him before. He didn’t stretch quite far enough, but at times he was almost convincing as a cocky dim bulb. The supporting actors were excellent, and Ellen Wong as Knives in particular made as much as possible of her role, despite the script simplifying her arc considerably. In general, the changes made for concision work, even solving the problem I had with the comics of too many similar peripheral characters, and many of the original lines are as funny as anything in the comic.

Where Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World is less successful is in the thematically confused climax, which like the comic feints away from the actual conclusion, but in a way that doesn’t feel like it resolves properly, leaving a few characters and subplots hanging and presenting a final confrontation that is anti-climactic. The need to move the story along makes the last third of the film an unbroken series of fights, and the lack of any breaks becomes somewhat tiresome. I found myself wishing as well that more was made of the setting. While the comics are full of real locations and give a sense of Toronto, the movie takes place largely in apartments, clubs and on nondescript snowy streets. Since the unusual setting was part of the comics’ charm, it’s disappointing to see it largely absent from the film.

Most irritatingly, in classic Hollywood fashion, much of the subtext of the story turns into dialogue, Ramona in particular explaining to Scott, and us, what the story is really about. Not only are viewers likely to get the point even without being told, but one of the pleasures of the series is how well it works on both the surface and subtextual level, so it’s enjoyable whether one delves below the surface or not. It’s also always a little depressing when a movie assumes you aren’t smart enough to grasp its subtext.

Those objections aside, the film is fast-moving, funny and very entertaining, only dragging a bit in the third quarter leading up to the last evil ex. It doesn’t come close to matching the affection I have for the books, but it was a pleasure to experience it in a crowd setting. And the friend I mentioned, who hadn’t read the comics (and isn’t really a comics person at all, actually)? On the way out, he said he planned to buy the books soon, which is about as positive a review as a comics movie can get.

I still think most comics benefit from the intimate author-reader relationship, though, so let’s not go crazy, okay?

SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE FLOATING WORLD


Click on any image for a larger size

SPEAKING OF Scott Pilgrim, my local comics shop, Floating World Comics, opened a gallery show of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s original art from the series on First Thursday (a monthly, citywide night of art and other exhibits) this week. The show was pretty full when I arrived, and stayed that way for a few hours, tapering off before the store closed at 10PM. There was a lot of movement, with people coming in to see the art and leaving, replaced by new visitors, but it being a Portland event, there were also a lot of comics people sticking around to chat and drink the free PBR and Full Sail Session lager. Vancouver, BC, cartoonists Brandon Graham and Simon Roy were in store for a signing as well, receiving less attention than the exhibit, but each with a steady trickle of fans showing up to chat and receive a sketch.

I knew it was a fantasy, but in the back of my mind I hoped this might be the last moment in which Scott Pilgrim art would be selling at a price I could afford it. Alas, the originals on display were $1,000 apiece, which I could technically pay if it wasn’t important to me to eat, at all, for the next few months.

Still, it was a pleasure to look at the artwork up close, and fascinating to see how the work broke down between the work O’Malley did on the boards and what was done digitally or by assistants. Since each original was accompanied by a copy of the published page, all the space left for toning, unfinished backgrounds and spotting of blacks was evident, like in this page:

On this page, it appears that an entire panel has been left for an assistant to ink:

Here some of the second panel is uninked, but more interestingly, Kim Pine’s throat is inked black, but in the final version O’Malley has decided to simply black in her whole mouth except for her tongue:

And finally, these two pages made me desperately wish I wasn’t poor:

READ THIS WEEK:

Between a much-needed day off spent napping and reading, and the effort I made to turn my old minicomic storage system (spread out on surfaces all over my apartment) to a new one (in one box)—which led to reading several I hadn’t gotten to before—this was a big comics-reading week.

  • Adventure Comics #516 by Paul Levitz, Kevin Sharpe, Marlo Alquiza, Jeff Lemire, Mahmud Asrar & John Dell
    Brightest Day: The Atom Special by Jeff Lemire, Mahmud Asrar & John Dell
    Sweet Tooth #12 by Jeff Lemire
    Comics is a funny thing; behind a nifty, paint-by-numbers cover, DC’s most indie-style series, Sweet Tooth, goes for an issue-length homage to issue #10 of Crisis on Infinite Earths, perhaps its most superhero-y series ever. Definitely some unexpected mashups coming from the current generation of young cartoonists’ apparent affection for both mainstream and indie comics (everyone caught the Watchmen reference in Matt Kindt’s 3 Story, right?). Anyway, I’m really enjoying the narrative experiments Lemire has been trying out in Sweet Tooth, with #10 my favorite so far. Meanwhile, in The Atom and Adventure Comics, Lemire makes his, I think, superhero debut. It’s definitely wobblier so far, but I’m happy to give it a chance to pick up based on Lemire’s track record.

  • Avengers #3 by Brian Michael Bendis, John Romita Jr., Klaus Janson & Dean White
    Liked this more than #2, less than #1. I may just stick with New Avengers, both issues of which I’ve enjoyed so far.
  • Blacksad by Juan Díaz Canales & Juanjo Guarnido
  • Chi’s Sweet Home vol. 1 by Konami Kanata
    Not sure yet if there’s enough here to keep me coming back, but I had already preordered vol. 2, so I’ll decide after I read that. Definitely cute, though.
  • Chronicles of Wormwood by Garth Ennis & Jacen Burrows
    Crossed by Garth Ennis & Jacen Burrows
    Thumbs up for Avatar giving Ennis and Burrows these outlets for whatever they want to do.
  • Comic Book Comics #1 by Fred Van Lente & Ryan Dunlavey
    Opening with the clearest explanation I’ve ever read of just why exactly The Yellow Kid was so revolutionary, this goes on to recount the history of comics in extremely entertaining fashion. It actually reminds me slightly of glamourpuss, but broader in focus and without the frequent breaks for fashion magazine parodies. I’ve actually been borrowing this from a friend for probably over a year (which you totally cannot do on the iPad—the iPad would prevent me from being a jerk who doesn’t give something back for a year. Buy an iPad and Brendan Wright won’t “borrow” your comics and take a year to give them back. Apple, you can have that ad idea for free), so he’ll probably be happy to get it back, while I wonder what took me so long to read something so enjoyable.
  • Controller by Robin Enrico
    I bought this pretty much just for the packaging. The cover of the comic is a Nintendo cartridge, complete with the illustration and title being on a sticker, and the whole thing comes in a paper sleeve like the sleeves Nintendo games came in. Turns out the story inside isn’t too bad either, a “semi-autobiographical” short that gets into how video games both provided the main character with escapism at a pivotal moment and threatened to ruin his social life through subsequent addiction. You don’t see those two sides both addressed in the same place often.
  • Cromartie High School vols. 1 & 2 by Eiji Nonaka
    I’ve never seen any manga like this before. I’m still on the fence about it after two volumes; I got a few good laughs out of each one, but it feels like a formula has been pretty quickly established, and if the author’s notes are serious, he doesn’t seem to know where it’s going. It’s funny stuff, the kind of absurdist humor I didn’t know existed in manga, but American humor it reminds me of is niche enough that I can see why it hasn’t made it big in English. However, I also watched the two anime episodes that came packaged with volume one, and while I don’t have cable and can’t say for sure, I’d be shocked if this hasn’t shown on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim. It seems like exactly the type of humor their shows are built on.
  • Dead Lands #1 by Simon Roy
    Good Business by Simon Roy
    Pillow Fight by Brandon Graham
    Universe So Big #2 by Brandon Graham
    These all come from the Brandon Graham/Simon Roy signing that Floating World held alongside the Scott Pilgrim art show. I was already a fan of Graham from King City and Multiple Warheads, but Roy is new to me, though clearly someone to look out for.

  • glamourpuss #6 by Dave Sim
  • Legion of Super-Heroes #3 by Paul Levitz, Yildiray Cinar, Francis Portela & Wayne Faucher
  • The Man with the Getaway Face by Darwyn Cooke
    Loved the bigger size. I’m looking forward to The Outfit, but it’s too bad this format is a one-off.
  • Over the Surface #1–#2 by Natalie Nourigat
  • Scarlet #1 by Brian Michael Bendis & Alex Maleev
    One of the best debuts I’ve read in a while. I am definitely a Bendis fan, but having largely opted out of the major Marvel universe stuff the last few years, this is the most excited I’ve been by a new project of his in ages.
  • Secret Warriors vol. 2: God of Fear, God of War by Jonathan Hickman, Alessandro Vitti & Ed McGuinness
  • Strange Science Fantasy #1 by Scott Morse & Paul Pope
  • Twin Spica vol. 2 by Kou Yaginuma
    The people who tell you this is good are right. Once again reminds me why as a kid I wanted to be an astronaut. This is great stuff.

  • Ultimate Comics Spider-Man vol. 1: The World According to Peter Parker by Brian Michael Bendis & David Lafuente

Images from Scott Pilgrim movie © Universal Studios. Images from Scott Pilgrim © Bryan Lee O’Malley. Images of Sweet Tooth © Jeff Lemire.

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Posted in Bryan Lee O'Malley, Events, Floating World Comics, Movies, My Week in Comics, Oni Press | 1 Comment »

Daniel Clowes talks Wilson, comics and his career at Powell’s

May 17, 2010

Left, moderator Greg Netzer. Right, Daniel Clowes discusses the cover of Eightball #1.

DANIEL CLOWES IS CURRENTLY on a book tour supporting his very funny new book from Drawn & Quarterly, Wilson. While the book tour hasn’t been a traditional part of being a cartoonist, it is becoming more common, and Sunday saw Clowes appear at Powell’s City of Books in downtown Portland.

Clowes spoke to a full audience, every seat filled and a large crowd standing behind and around the chairs. Rather than read from Wilson, Clowes gave a retrospective presentation of his work and career, mixed with a “this moment in comics”-type overview of the time in which he broke in, covering a lot of the background on himself and his work that wouldn’t be easy to find elsewhere, with a sardonic, self-deprecating sense of humor familiar from his comics. Most of the presentation slides were of covers and pages of representative stories and books from Clowes’s career, but a few were photos, such as one (featuring, I assume, Fantagraphics cartoonists) that Clowes said illustrated what comics were like when he began than any covers he could scan would.

Clowes began with a self-portrait by Wally Wood, juxtaposed with an actual photo of Wood at work, one heroic and the other squalid, explaining that the first represented the heroic image of the cartoonist that the young Clowes dreamed of emulating, and that the second, despite the contrast, had a similar effect. Clowes continued through his youthful desire to work for MAD and the lesser accomplishment of drawing for Cracked, “the methadone to MAD’s heroin.” Clowes never did make it into MAD, but noted that his dad had dreamed of him instead drawing covers for The New Yorker and, showing the covers, declared his dad had “won.”

A similar anecdote accompanied each book and film project, from his first comic book, Lloyd Llewellyn—so named for Superman’s “LL” naming convention—which he sent to Fantagraphics for criticism and was surprised to get, as a reply, an offer to publish it, all the way through Wilson, which Clowes said he began working on while his father was in the hospital with a terminal illness. Working on the strips that comprise the book, he said, kept him busy, and the more he added, working in a variety of art styles, the more he found the character, a sort of Clowes-gone-wrong.

Clowes was accompanied on stage by Greg Netzer, a local literary figure and the Executive Director of Portland’s Wordstock literary festival. Unfortunately, as fascinating as the presentation was, it was a poor forum for a moderator to add anything. Clowes said he had someone on stage with him—a different person at each stop on the tour—to keep the presentation fresh, to keep him interested, and to open up the possibility of a moderator surprising him with a question. However, the fact that Clowes had previously chosen the images and the order in which they appeared limited Netzer’s options for questions, and many slides that Clowes might otherwise have commented on by saying, “This cover is . . .” instead had the not-very-different, “So, what’s this cover?”

The audience Q&A covered a broad range of topics, from Clowes’s experiments in surrealism and automatic writing in Like A Velvet Glove Cast In Iron (Clowes admitted to confusion that anyone found the book opaque, until he reread it a few years ago and wondered how he ever thought it could be clear), random celebrity stories (Laurence Tierney terrorizing Clowes and Terry Zwigoff when they auditioned him for “Porn Shop Clerk” for the film version of Ghost World), to his relationship to editors (they only see the work when it’s done—the proof-reading is done by Clowes’s wife, who “knows better than to say anything positive or negative”). On the topic of Wilson’s release in hardcover without first being serialized, Clowes said that, while stapled comics had once been what everyone made, they now felt like an “affectation” with book-length comics receiving more attention and representing the growth area of the field.

After the talk, there was a signing, and a long line formed, stretching a ways back into the store. In addition to books and comics, people had brought DVDs, and the couple behind me expressed regret that they hadn’t brought their Enid doll. While getting my books signed I asked Clowes about the decision to give the presentation rather than a reading, readings of comics being a difficult thing to pull off (and the topic one of particular interest to me). He noted that some people do it, but said that his main opposition to the idea was that he didn’t like to do voices for the characters, forcing a little too much authorial interpretation on the crowd. The publisher had wanted him to talk mostly about Wilson, but he preferred the retrospective approach, particularly for younger readers “who are coming in in the middle,” providing a context and history that isn’t really available elsewhere.

The focus on connecting with younger readers, many of whom were only children when Lloyd Llewellyn or Ghost World were coming out, was also a welcome bit of optimism. Hard to imagine Clowes’s Wilson, who sees little value in the modern world and nostalgically longs for a better time, considering them a worthwhile part of the audience, but Clowes himself seemed quite happy to have drawn so many readers of different ages. As I fall into the category of people who know Clowes’s work but lack firsthand experience of the comics world when he started, I was pleased to get to hear the stories and context of a quite different time in comics.

Posted in Daniel Clowes, Drawn & Quarterly, Events, Powell's Books, Readings/Signings | 1 Comment »

I went to Wordstock to look at Pictures

October 12, 2009

Not entirely true. I did book things at Wordstock, too. But I took pictures of the comics stuff.


The main convention hall

Wordstock, for those not in Portland, is an annual literary festival held at the Oregon Convention Center and sponsored by, among others, Portland landmark Powell’s Books, the largest independent bookstore in the United States. Last year, the graphic novel was among the main themes of the show, and the Stumptown Foundation established the Graphic Novel Garden as a miniature Stumptown Comics Fest within Wordstock.

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Posted in Books, Events, Jamie S. Rich, Joëlle Jones, Shannon Wheeler, Stumptown, View From Portland, Wordstock | Leave a Comment »

And then there was Stumptown 2008

May 1, 2008

WHEW! THREE OF THOSE IN THREE WEEKENDS. Still, if I had to finish up with one of them, Stumptown’s the one, as it affirmatively answers the age-old question: “Can a con be big enough to sum up a local scene and attract top-flight out-of-town talent while staying mellow?”

The floor was definitely busier than last year, but it didn’t overtax the Lloyd Center Doubletree’s Exhibit Hall. It was one of the nicest weekends in Portland so far this year, and sunlight poured in through the windows that ran the length of one side of the room. The whole affair had a friendly vibe, from the people manning the admissions table, where I picked up my volunteer badge (full disclosure), to the exhibitors who called passersby over to see their books, to the few scattered retailers, who gave warm hellos and mingled.


Craig Thompson

Most tables had a steady stream of visitors, but never seemed overly crowded––the only significant line I stood in all weekend was for Craig Thompson’s brief signing after his spotlight panel on Saturday. Headlining guests always had people at their tables, but had plenty of time to chat with each visitor.

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Posted in Brian Michael Bendis, Craig Thompson, Events, Matt Silady, Scott McCloud, Steve Lieber, Stumptown, View From Portland | 1 Comment »

View From Portland: The Portland Comic Book Show

April 13, 2008

Comics month continues with the semi-annual Portland Comic Book Show!

I should start by saying that I have tons of nostalgia for this show. I’ve never had much nostalgia for individual comics, but I still remember being twelve or so and walking around the Memorial Coliseum and being amazed to see so many comics. Compared to a major con, it’s a pretty small affair, but at the time it seemed huge. I’d never shopped for comics anywhere but my local store, Sandy Grand Slam (later Interzone Comics), so this was my only regular exposure to anything beyond their inventory.

The show is also where I first met professional comics writers and artists. A socially awkward preteen who hadn’t fully developed my tastes yet, I looked at the list of attending artists’ work and simply brought everything on the list that I owned. Upon arrival, I stood silently in front of a series of artists I wasn’t deeply familiar with while they signed stacks of every comic of mine they’d ever been involved in. While I eventually started to have favorites and began to anticipate some people’s arrival, early on I just knew that getting my comics signed was part of fandom, and that it was cool.

Over the years, it’s hard to know how much the show shrank and how much my own experience had simply broadened, but talking to dealers today, they agreed with my memory that for years there were fewer and fewer tables and the floor was less and less crowded (The show itself is held less frequently now, as well). In the last few years, I’ve been gratified to see it appear to be back on the upswing.

The show itself is evolving, perhaps due to competition from the Stumptown Comics Fest, which is in two weeks. The last show featured a writers panel, this time there were two “talk/demonstrations.” It’s not much, but the trend is in the right direction. Both talks were informal, rambling affairs, punctuated by live sketching and audience questions––entertaining stuff.

The first of these was Shannon Wheeler’s talk. I didn’t record it in great detail, as much of what he had to say is covered in my interview with him and my coverage of his similar talk at Powell’s Books last year, though there were some gems. One highlight was Wheeler’s explanation of he and his Austin cartoonist friends’ attempt to develop a gimmick for an issue of their anthology comic, JAB. Unable to afford die-cutting or foil, they came up with a uniquely Texan solution: they shot the comics with a gun. They laid stacks of JAB issues on the ground and fired a .22 rifle through an appointed spot, the art of each page incorporating the hole. Variant covers were achieved through the use of higher caliber bullets, making JAB “the only comic where the more damaged it is, the more it’s worth.”

Much of the talk was about the Too Much Coffee Man Opera; Wheeler left the show to catch the matinee before returning to his table on the floor. Talking about the difficulty of writing the libretto, he said, “I didn’t really realize you could go out and get a rhyming dictionary.”

The second talk was by Stan Sakai of Usagi Yojimbo fame. The crowd had a wide diversity of ages, clearly including a lot of equally excited parents and children. Noting Usagi Yojimbo‘s upcoming 25th anniversary, Sakai commented that Usagi is “probably older than most of the people in this room. Makes me feel old.” Questions came from both young and old audience members, and the sketches generated during the talk proved a hit with the whole age range.

Sakai began by explaining the origin of the word “cartoonist,” which comes from the Italian word for cardboard, “cartone.” Once a master painter sketched his subject, several assistants were involved in copying it onto the surface he would paint on. The assistant’s assistant poked holes in the cardboard as part of making a grid. He was “il cartonist.” Therefore, Sakai joked, the name for his profession comes from “the flunky’s flunky.” He went on to describe his lifelong comics habit––he bought Fantastic Four #2 because it was 10¢, while DC Comics of the day were 12¢––and preempted the “why a rabbit question,” explaining that he was developing a samurai story and happened to sketch a rabbit whose ears were tied into a samurai’s top knot. He considered whether all of the characters should be anthropomorphic or if only Usagi should be an animal, “but that just sounded stupid to me.”

Sakai then went on to address the common question of where he gets his ideas, saying that “every. . . artist will say, ‘I don’t know’”. Adding that, “Usagi is not written for you; it’s written for an audience of one: me,” he talked about how the flexibility of the concept behind Usagi Yojimbo allows him to incorporate virtually any kind of storyline or character he wants. Next, Sakai illustrated how he creates an issue of Usagi Yojimbo. To demonstrate the thumbnail stage, he asked a child named Maxwell in the front row to give him the sequence of events that made up his day. Following along, Sakai created a thumbnail, labeled “Maxwell’s Day.” From there he held up penciled and inked art, as well as the “obsolete” steps of color guides and separations––a young girl a row behind me gasped in delight as the four color transparencies added up to a complete cover image.

Other topics included the importance of research: “It only enhances the story,” and the lack of research ruins an artist’s credibility. Asked about his hand-lettering, he professed to be “computer illiterate.” On Usagi’s long-standing connection to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Sakai noted that the two started at nearly the same time, and once the Turtles’ cartoon took off, Eastman and Laird asked him, “Want a toy?” They told him to have his people call their people. “I didn’t have any people. So they gave me some of their people. So for awhile we had some of the same people.” Finally, when asked the best part of his job, Sakai replied, “working at home.” He went on to say how lucky he was that his publishers over the years have largely left him alone, only seeing art when an issue is finished and trusting him to produce work on his own.

Back on the floor, it quickly became clear what kind of show this was for me. Sometimes I’m in the mood to get on the floor and dive into the 50¢ bins and other times I want to fill in holes in my trade paperback collection at half price (or at one table, three for $10). Today fit firmly in the latter, so I walked away with some Usagi Yojimbo I hadn’t read, some Fantastic Four, some Jaime Hernandez, and a few others. The coolest purchase by far was a set of Usagi sketchbooks directly from Sakai when I visited his table (which was very popular––even Darth Vader came over for a photo with him). While many sketchbooks are just that, Sakai’s are outtakes and “making of” material from Usagi Yojimbo, including pencils, thumbnails, alternate endings to issues and in one case a complete maybe-in-continuity story that’s never made it into the series. They are no doubt among the nicest convention mementos I’ve seen.

Both Sakai and his neighbor at the next table, Matt Wagner, were generous with their time, chatting in between signings and sketches. Wagner promised a big revelation for the ending to the current Grendel series, saying that Hunter Rose would prove to be even more evil than we’d known. I also talked with Kieron Dwyer, whose Starbucks boycott continues apace. Sadly, Tom Orzechowski had a last-minute lettering assignment and didn’t make it––I’d been looking forward to talking with him about his work on The Escapists, one of whose main characters is a letterer.

Once again, a great reminder of a childhood misspent among costumed people and moldy old comics, while the addition of panels and talks has helped to keep things fresh. Comics month is going well.

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View From Portland: It’s Comics Month!

April 5, 2008

MAYOR TOM POTTER SAID SO.

If this comes as news to you, you’ve already missed over a half dozen events and are nearly seven hours into missing another. There are dozens more through the month. These are heady times here in rainy Portland.

My own comics weekend began with a sneak peak at Nicholas Gurewitch (Perry Bible Fellowship)’s work over at Floating World Comics––the show continues through the month (along with Tony Millionaire art that I did not see), and Gurewitch himself will be at the store for a reception April 24th.

Next, I caught the new restaging of Shannon Wheeler’s Too Much Coffee Man: The Opera at the Portland Center for the Performing Arts Friday night. In addition to a smoother staging of the original one act show, a new second act (co-written by local cartoonist Carolyn Main) takes the cast to Mars for a wackier follow-up that’s closer in tone to the original comics. I had a great time, and the party afterwards featured all of the free Too Much Coffee Man coffee stout (with caffeine!) that one could drink. In between chatting up the opera stars and other attendees, I was able to do the circuit of “Meanwhile: An Exhibition of Comic Book Art,” a cool mix of alternative and mainstream comics original art displayed throughout the lobby. Later, everything moved to Suki’s Bar for karaoke, where the promise of opera singers making with the pop tunes went unfulfilled, though others from our group showed what they were made of.

Today began with a meeting of the committee setting up this month’s Stumptown Comics Fest, where I’m now an official sitter-inner, with perhaps a slightly bigger role in the future. Everything looks roughly on track, with all of the little details that go into planning panels, workshops, promotions, exhibitor space, etc. getting finalized and attention beginning to turn to next year.

Straight from the meeting, it was off to Cosmic Monkey Comics to check out the 24 Hour Comics Challenge, still in progress. In addition to seeing an old friend there and probably distracting him from his pages, I visited the “press box,” the balcony from which Top Shelf’s Leigh Walton was master of all he surveyed. A hardier soul than I, he’ll be there for the whole event, until 10AM tomorrow. His live-blogging continues over at Picture Poetry.

So already it’s a big month, with tons more to come. Next weekend sees the Portland Comic Book Show, with headliners Matt Wagner and Stan Saiki (who will be giving a “talk/demonstration”), Marjane Satrapi is in town for a talk Monday, TMCM: The Opera continues through the month and, biggest of all, April 26th and 27th will be this year’s Stumptown Comics Fest. Last year’s was my first real convention and I can’t wait for this year’s (though Con season actually starts for me the weekend before in New York).

If you live in Portland, or have always wanted to visit, be sure to check out the calendar of events for Comics Month. We’ll out-comics almost any town out there.

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