Gold Digger #100

I thought it worth noting that today sees the release of issue #100 of Fred Perry's Gold Digger comic. It's actually the 154th issue of Gold Digger, as there was an original four-issue mini-series and a fifty-issue black-and-white series prior to the current color series.

Gold Digger is (as far as I know) the longest-running creator-owned comic series by an African-American; and also one of the longest-running creator-owned and -created series ever--to my recollection only Dave Sim's Cerebus (300 issues) surpases it, and Erik Larsen's Savage Dragon (142 issues and counting) is in the same longevity league. Fred does all the writing and art (including color) for each issue, and it comes out (mostly) monthly. That's in addition to various side projects Fred engages in as well.

With its sprawing cast, dense backstory and mythology, and heavily-stylized art Gold Digger may not be for everybody. But if you appreciate a long-running monthly adventure comic with a singular creative vision, you may want to give it a try (There are numerous manga-sized collections available from the publisher, Antarctic Press.)

Paul Hornschemeier Interview - Audio

Here's the raw audio of the on-stage interview I did with creator Paul Hornschemeier (Mother, Come Home; Let Us Be Perfectly Clear; etc.) at Saturday's Ann Arbor Book Festival:



(If the embed doesn't work, here's the direct link: download. It's about 64 MB.)

I unfortunately had the levels set too low, so you may have to turn your sound volume up pretty high to hear it.

It's over an hour long. I've done a few interviews in the past, but this was the first time I ever interviewed someone live and at length. As such, the topics of conversation kind of bounce around, but I still think it went well.

A big thanks to Paul, who was a great interview subject, interesting and entertaining, able to take my questions and run with them. If you're ever looking for someone to invite as a speaker, I can recommend him heartily.

Upcoming Interview with Paul Hornschemeier

On Saturday, March 17, as part of the 2008 Ann Arbor Book Festival, I'll be conducting a live on-stage interview with cartoonist & graphic novelist Paul Hornschemeier, creator of such works as Mother, Come Home & The Three Paradoxes. I've read some of Hornschemeier's work and liked what I've read, so I'm looking forward to spending the next couple of weeks boning-up on the rest of his oeuvre in anticipation of what should be an interesting interview. The interview will be at 3:30pm in the Kalamazoo Room in the Michigan League (on the Ann Arbor campus of the University of Michigan).

Review: Ganges #2

Ganges #2
by Kevin Huizenga
Fantagraphics, $7.95

I loved the first issue of Ganges, Kevin Huizenga's title in Fantagraphics & Coconino's Ignatz line of high quality oversized comics, and honestly didn't know if he would ever be able to meet or exceed the quality in future issues. Oh, how wrong I was (and delightfully so!)

The second issue of Ganges–which like the first centers around Huizenga's everyman character Glann Ganges–consists of two loosely-linked stories. The first is nothing less than a head-trip that somehow combines the aesthetics of Larry Marder's Beanworld with a Japanese fighting video game (a la Mortal Kombat). It's a tour-de-force that on its own would make this a comic worth our attention, but that's only the first third of this comic. It segues into the second story, "Pulverize," which begins by revealing that the game is one that the titular Glenn Ganges has been playing late at night. Glenn then falls into one of his frequent reveries in which he remembers his time spent working at a turn-of-the-century Internet start-up, and the frequent after-hours sessions the employees there spent playing a multi-player first-person shooter, Pulverize. Any further plot summary wouldn't do justice to the story, but suffice to say that Huizenga deftly interweaves his narrative, playing with the interaction between the real and virtual in a way that appears much more effortless than it is.

If there was any question as to Huizenga's role as one of the top cartoonists of the decade, Ganges #2 safely puts those questions to rest. There's no doubt that this comic will appear on my eventual best of 2008 list.

Rating: 4.5 (of 5)

Light Children Preview

Kyle T. Webster, artist and co-creator of the upcoming self-published graphic novel Light Children, dropped me an email and asked me to stop by their Website to give a look at the sample chapters they've made available. I don't as a rule review incomplete samples, but I will say that the art is very attractive and the story looks interesting. I'll be keeping an eye out for it when it comes out.

The Big Three Return

There has been much speculation over the past year or so on the death of self-publishing, particularly for the comic book serial. Not surprising, as many self-publishers have either gone to established publishers (e.g. Linda Medley), gone to the Web (e.g. Phil & Kaja Foglio), or essentially given up (e.g. Mark Oakley).

I think that 2008 will be a make-or-break year. Three of the biggest names in self publishing have new projects starting up: Jeff Smith with RASL, Terry Moore with Echo, and the granddaddy of all Dave Sim with Glamourpuss.

The success of these three enterprises will tell us a lot about the viability of self-publishing comic books in the current era. Will their fans take to their new projects? And if so, will they buy the periodicals or wait for the inevitable trades? (Sim claims that the collection of Glamourpuss most likely won't come out until 2012 or thereabouts.)

However it goes, 2008 should make for an interesting year in comics publishing.

Making Rain Online

Way back in 2004, one of the very first comics I reviewed on YACB was Making Rain, a graphic novella by Ursula Murray Husted. I gave it 4.5 stars and named it one of the Best of 2004. At the time I stated that the only drawback to Making Rain was its relatively high price. But now Husted has put Making Rain up online, for free! That's a price that cannot be beat. So if you haven't read it yet, go and give it a try.

The Simpsons on Hulu

I've now got a Hulu beta account, so here's "Husbands & Knaves," the recent episode of The Simpsons that featured Alan Moore, Art Spiegelman & Dan Clowes as The League of Extraordinary Freelancers (complete with ads).

Twenty-One American Comics Works You Should At Least Be Aware of Before Comparing American Comics to Japanese Manga

Every so often someone out in the comics interwebblogosphere takes it upon themselves to compare "American" comics to manga, generally with the intent of showing why people prefer manga to "American" comics (usually: cheaper per page, longer, greater variety of subject matter). Almost invariably, when they say "American" comics they really mean "direct market super-hero comics" and they completely miss the wide variety of formats, lengths and subject matter of the broad range of comics in the Americas.

On the one hand, it's easy to see how one might be led to believe that American comics = Super-hero comics; if one walks into many comic book specialty stores in this county, they're likely to see super-hero comics dominating the displays.

But it doesn't take that much effort to venture out to see what other American comics are readily available. Now we can't expect everyone to be familiar with the works of Kevin Huizenga or Ariel Schrag or Jason Shiga or Carla Speed McNeil. But the following list of comics from the Americas aren't obscure, low-circulation comics; they're comics that have received plenty of press, been reviewed in non-comics-centric publications, and can be found at any well-stocked bookstore (and many have been turned into movies):

Dan Clowes, Eightball etc.
Dave Sim, Cerebus
Hervey Pekar, American Splendor
Neil Gaiman, Sandman
Frank Miller, Sin City & 300
Phil & Kaja Foglio, Girl Genius
Larry Gonick, The Cartoon History of the Universe
R. Crumb, works
Jeff Smith, Bone
Terry Moore, Strangers in Paradise
Alison Bechdel, Fun Home
Will Eisner, works
Steve Niles & Ben Templesmith, 30 Days of Night
Mad Magazine
Sergio Aragonés, Groo
Los Bros. Hernandez, Love & Rockets
Chris Ware, Acme Novelty Library
Craig Thompson, Blankets
Greg Rucka & Steve Lieber, Whiteout
Jim Ottaviani, works
Bill Waterson, Calvin & Hobbes

What you'll notice about the above works is that they cover a wide variety of subject matter: humor, horror, dark fantasy, memoir, non-fiction, drama, thrillers, steampunk, historical epic. And they come in a wide variety of formats: some are published first as floppies; others are OGNs, some begin their lives as Webcomics.

I'm not suggesting that everyone should have read all of these comics, but you should at least be aware of their existence before writing about "American" comics.

I Hope They Never Have to Draw Spider-Man

Regarding Valerie D'Orazio's write-up of the Friends of Lulu panel at the The Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art:

I hope that none of the talented young women cartoonists on the panel ever reach the point in their careers where they feel that they have to draw for Marvel or DC. If they want to--like Nikki Cook says she does--then that's fine, but then I hope they're coming at such an endeavor from a position of strength. These ladies already have graphic novels out or in the works from Top Shelf, Fantagraphics, First Second and Wiley; going to DC or Marvel would seem to be a step backwards in their careers. Let's hope that their inaugural efforts do well enough that they can continue to work on their own projects and not on corporate trademark maintenance.

Zot!

So just a couple of days ago I was thinking that it was odd that Scott McCloud's Zot! was out of print. With his popularity as the creator of Understanding/Reinventing/Making Comics, it seemed a natural to make his seminal, highly praised work available again.

And then lo and behold, this week's PW Comics Week shows up, and Zot! is being reissued, in its entirety, as a massive 576-page volume collecting the black and white issues.

On the downside, while the first ten issues were originally in color, they will be in black & white in the collection (the remaining issues were originally in black & white). On the plus side, $23 for the entire Zot! saga is a fantastic bargain on some great comics.

Edit: Unfortunately, the collection will not contain the first ten issues that introduced the characters. While these issues were perhaps not as strong as the later issues, they form the basis of the series and what came after (fortunately for me I already have the original trade collection of the first 10 color issues!)

Start saving your pennies for summer 2008!

(As a service to the comics community, I will now start to think really hard about another lost Eclipse classic, Larry Marder's Beanworld...)

(Edited because I misread an important part of the announcement article!)

Undiscovered Gems 2 Day 3

Two more entries in the Undiscovered Gems 2 Contest:

The Dane writes to tell us:

Clan Apis is a wonderful book for two reasons. In the first place it fulfills all the typical demands of storytelling. It's funny, exciting, interesting, and emotive. You'll laugh. You'll cry. Et cetera. In the second place, Clan Apis does something amazing. It actually comes off as a work of non-fiction, explicating and illustrating the secret lives of bees. And doesn't bore the reader into giving up partway through. I had read the back cover on several visits to my local seller and put the book back on the shelf several times. It just didn't sound interesting. At last and after a great many months later, I decided to purchase it as I had already gone through most of the books my seller stocked. After that, it sat on my to-read pile for another month or two. Then I finally read it and was...surprised. I was engrossed. Jay Hosler had created something amazing and no one had told me. I've since read it multiple times and given it to my wife's students to enjoy as well. Good stuff!

And Joe Szilvagyi writes:

My recommendation for the undiscovered gems list is The Surrogates written by Rob Venditti with art by Brett Weldele published by Top Shelf. The writing paints an incredibly credible view of the future where people choose to experience life through surrogate androids that transmit all sensory information to the user. It manages to run through a crime story that explores the benefits and drawbacks of this technology without coming across as preachy or too technical. Best of all, the art is quite solid with well thought out colour schemes and dynamic compositions.

Thanks to Joe and The Dane for their recommendations; they've been entered into the drawing for The Best American Comics 2006, which will be awarded next Wednesday. There's still time for you to enter!

Undiscovered Gems 2 Contest

In honor of my 3rd blogiversary next Wednesday (August 15), I'm having another contest!

The Undiscovered Gems 2 Contest will operate a lot like last year's anniversary contest. This year the grand prize is a hardcover copy of The Best American Comics 2006, edited by Harvey Pekar. It includes works by a number of luminaries in the comics field, including Kim Deitch, Alison Bechdel, Joe Sacco, Chris Ware, Rebecca Dart, Jamie Hernandez, Alex Robinson, Jessica Abel, Rick Geary, Tom Hart, Linda Barry, Robert Crumb, and many others.

There will probably also be some runners-up prizes, though I'm not sure yet how many or what they will be.

So how do you enter? I'm glad you asked!

Simply email me your recommendation of a comic that you think is worthwhile, but that you don't think that very many people have read. What I'd like to do through this contest is give you all the opportunity to share an undiscovered gem with the rest of the comics Intraweb. Thoughout the next week until the end of the contest on the 15th I'll be posting here on YACB the picks that you send me.

Your entry should include:

• Your name (tell me if you wish your name to be used when I post your pick)
  
• Your address (I won't share your address or your email with anyone!)
  
• Your pick, with a sentence or brief paragraph describing why you recommend it.
  
• The phrase 'Undiscovered Gems 2' in the subject line
  

On the evening of August 15th the winners of the Undiscovered Gems 2 Contest plus the runners-up prizes will be selected at random, and announced here on this blog.

The fine print:

• You must be 18 or older and reside in the United States to enter. (If you are outside the U.S. you can still send your recommendation pick, but you will not be elligible to win a prize.)
  
• Only one entry per person
  
• Deadline for entry is 6pm EDT on Wednesday, August 15, 2007.
  

So go ahead and enter today! (Or tomorrow, or anytime before next Wednesday.)

(You may receive an auto-reply saying that I am out of the office. Be assured that I have received your entry; there is no need to send it again to any other email.)

(Last year's undiscovered Gems: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5, Day 6.)

Shameless Friend Promotion

Pal Sara Ryan has not one, not two, but three new comics coming out, just in time for ComicCon:

Click is a story that fills in the gap between her two well-received YA prose novels. It's drawn by Dylan Meconis (who also drew the recent Wire Mothers from GT Labs).

Einbahnstrasse Waltz is a stand-alone story about a high school orchestra trip to Europe, drawn by Cat Ellis (an animator making her sequential comics debut).

And there's the third issue of her irregular ongoing Flytrap, with art once again by Ron Chan.

Sure I'm biased, but I'm sure they are all three fabulous. If like me you can't make it to ComicCon, there should be online ordering info available soon.

Market Share: So What?

Warning: Rambling rant ahead.

The big news from the June sales figures from Diamond was that Marvel trounced DC on market share, 44% to 27% (in dollars). But why should that matter?

In practical terms it doesn't. Unless you hold so much of the market share that you can dictate terms of the market (like Microsoft in operating systems, or Apple in digital music sales), being #1 in market share doesn't mean much. Let's face it, after the Heroes World fiasco, any threats that Marvel might make about leaving Diamond won't be very convincing.

What really should matter is profit. And that's what's missing from all the sales figures, because we have no idea how much it cost to produce any of these comics. Does Marvel make more profit from an issue of The Dark Tower than DC does from Justice League of America? We'll never know.

Sure 52 was a huge seller for DC week after week, but how much did they have to pay Waid, Morrison, Johns, Rucka, Giffen and all the artists involved for each issue, not to mention all the editorial time necessary to push out a weekly series. (There are also opportunity costs involved; would DC's relaunches of Superman, Flash, Wonder Woman et al. have floundered so badly if editorial's attention hadn't been distracted?)

Never mind the fact that the Diamond numbers are just one segment of the total comics market these days, and they present a very short term glimpse at that. I still maintain that one of the most successful comics of recent years must be Fables, given its strong trade sales in both the direct market and regular bookstores, and its seeming evergreen status.

Market share doesn't really mean much. Look at how many years General Motors was the #1 automobile seller in North America, yet for many of those years, especially recently, they were losing money hand over fist.

In my experience, those who tout market share position or gains do so because that's the only good news they have; it distracts from the fact that they aren't making profit.

Unless making profit isn't your goal; which is the case at both DC and Marvel.

Positioned as it is as a minor part of the Time-Warner publishing empire, DC's goal isn't to make money. It's to a) protect the trademarks of their iconic assets (Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, etc.); and b) generate content that can be exploited by other arms of the empire, like movies and television. Any actual money made from publishing comics is probably nice, but I bet there are many years in which the DC Comics division operates at a loss.

Similarly, Marvel's goal--until recently--was to make money from licensing their characters; now that they're making their own movies, it'll be to generate content that can be exploited on celluloid. Again, profit from publishing comics is nice, but the potential money that comes from a successful Iron Man movie is far greater than any that can be made from an Iron Man comic book.

And where does all of this leave us, the readers? Unless we own stock in Marvel or Time-Warner, it shouldn't matter one lick. As long as there are comics being published that we want to read, it shouldn't matter where the big two stand against each other in terms of market share.

Except...

When the big boys are playing market share games, they are likely to push out an enormous number of titles month after month, in the attempt to crowd each other off the shelves. This has two effects: One, Marvel or DC may keep a marginal selling title around a little longer just to keep shelf space (and I stress 'may,' as they are just as likely to cancel it and put something else in its place). Two, they potentially push titles from other publishers off the shelves, other publishers who do rely on profit (or at least breaking even) to survive.

The good news is that the trend--at least in dollar sales--is in growth. But in the direct market served by Diamond, most of the growth seems to be going to Marvel & DC, and there doesn't seem to be much trickle-down. If everybody were playing the same game, "Let's Make Profit," then things might be different. But Marvel & DC aren't playing for profit, they're playing for visibility, operationalized as market share. It's like a bunch of eight-year-olds playing tag on the same field that a bunch of junior high kids are playing tackle football.

Somebody's going to get stomped.

Which American Comics?

In yesterday's ¡Journalista!, Dirk hilights an 1.5-year-old post on Manganews, a translation of an essay by Yoshikazu Hayashida: "What makes Globalization of Japanese Comics Successful?" Go read it; I'll wait here...

Back? Okay!

The essay starts out well, with Hayashida making the accurate argument that the format of American serial comics (24- to 32-page monthlies, full-color, good quality paper) has driven the artform into a niche; whereas the Japanese standard format (large anthologies printed on the worst paper possible) has allowed manga to prosper and acquire a critical mass of content that is being exploited throughout the world.

There are historical reasons for this. At one time American comics were lengthier, had multiple stories per issue, etc. But as price pressures hit, American publishers struggled to keep the price at 10¢, lowering the page count (and ramping up the ad space) to keep the price of comics at a perceived sweet spot that could be afforded by children. In doing so they priced themselves right out of the newsstand and into comics specialty shops.

However, later in the essay, Hayashida goes off into flat-out wrong territory.

There is another reason why American comics stick to super heroes, aside from the page limit. It is because it is convenient for publishers to keep copyrights to themselves. Comics dealing with super heroes aren’t drawn by one author only. Numerous comic artists and writers draw the characters. The end result of this is that publishers insist that the creators can hold no copyrights. This an obstacle to the development of American comics and prevents improvements in quality.

I'm sure that this will come as news to comics creators like Dave Sim, Wendy & Richard Pini, Kevin Eastman & Peter Laird, Jeff Smith, Terry Moore, Chip Ware, Alison Bechdel, Sergio Aragones, Kevin Huizenga, Colleen Doran, Frank Miller, Brian O'Malley, etc.!

The statement that "publishers insist that the creators can hold no copyrights" is demonstrably wrong, even for the big two.

Hayashida makes the common mistake that American Comics = Super-heroes. They're not. Outside of comic specialty shops, they're not even in the majority.

Oddly, it was the exact same historical market conditions that led to the slimming and ghetoization of American comics which also led to the small-press and self-publishing movement. This movement has led not only to greater creative control and ownership, but also to great creativity and experimentation. I would argue that the past 30 years has seen at least as much experimentation and creativity in North American comics as in Japanese Manga (though admittedly my knowledge of the underground and art-manga movements in Japan is spotty at best).

While we're at it, let us put to rest the argument that there is no creativity or quality in corporate-owned super-hero comics. Watchmen, The Dark Knight Returns, Morrison's Doom Patrol, Gaiman's Sandman; all American corporate-owned comics, and all quite successful on both a creative and commercial level. Sure they are the exception rather than the norm, but they do exist and we'll continue to see the occasional gem surface.

The Japanese, North American, and European comic markets all took different paths of development over the past forty years. With the advent of globalization we're now seeing that divergent paths starting to cross again; a situation that I think will be beneficial to the art of comics as a whole. But to claim that one market is inherently more creative than another is sheer folly.

Zombies Calling in November

I'm looking forward to Zombies Calling, an OGN from Faith Erin Hicks being published by Slave Labor in November. It's a zombie comic about people who have actually seen zombie movies; kind of a graphic novel of the Zombie Survival Guide done with a style and attitude not unlike the Scott Pilgrim comics. Read more about it at Hicks's Website, and spy some preview pages at this week's "All the Rage".

Review: Living Statues

Living Statues
by Emily Blair, $3.50

John Martin, a high school art teacher, has brought a group of students to Florence, Italy, on an educational trip abroad. John last visited Florence while in college, but he finds that the present-day Florence doesn't match the city of his memories. His general feeling of ennui moves towards depression as he fixates on one of the "living statues" in the city, a young man who lives in the same apartment complex where John and his group are staying. For John, this young Italian who plays at being Michaelangelo's David (a vastly overrated sculpture, in John's opinion) becomes the symbol of everything that is wrong with contemporary life.

Living Statues is a story about becoming enslaved to memory, living so much in the past that one cannot appreciate the present. Blair unfolds her tale like an onion, and her heavily inky artwork fits perfectly with the story she is telling.

Emily Blair may not produce comics very often (I reviewed her last comic, Soap Opera over two years ago), but when she does it's worth tracking down.

Rating: 4 (of 5)

A review copy of this comic was provided by the creator.

Quick Top Shelf Reviews

Quick reviews of three floppy/pamphlet comics from the latest box of Top shelf review copies:

Please Release
by Nate Powell
Top Shelf, $5.00

A collection of four short autobiographical stories. The two that are most interesting concern Powell's day job working with developmentally disabled adults. Powell is a talented artist and his sense of design and layout is strong enough to make these potentially navel-gazing and text-heavy stories into works that are visually interesting to look at.

Rating: 3 (of 5)



Feeble Attempts
by Jeffrey Brown
Top Shelf, $5.00

Speaking of navel-gazing, here's a collection of short comics by one of comics' prime practitioners. Unfortunately Brown's chosen style for his autobiographical stories isn't all that interesting, and if you've read one Jeffrey Brown story about how he can't relate to his girlfriend(s) you've pretty much read them all. On the occasions when Brown breaks out of his usual mode and provides us with a super-hero parody or religious commentary the stories become interesting, but they're too few and far-between in this collection.

Rating: 2.5 (of 5)



Superf*ckers Issue 279
by James Kochalka
Top Shelf, $5.00

I know that there are Kochalka fans out there who love this comic, but I really don't get it. A bunch of vignettes about twenty-something super-heroes with foul mouthes making potty and sex jokes. It's kind of like ''The Boys'' without a plot, humor, good art, or anything else worthwhile. Which maybe is the point of the comic, but it's a point I can do without.

Rating: 1.5 (of 5)



Review copies of the above comics were provided by the publisher.

Review: Lone Racer

Lone Racer
by Nicolas Mahler
Top Shelf, $12.95

The titular Lone Racer in Austian cartoonist Nicolas Mahler's graphic novella is on the verge of being washed up. Facing the prospect of never winning annother race, he hangs out at the local watering hole with his best friend rubber and visits his chronically ill wife in the hospital. In the first chapter LR considers joining his mechanic on a bank heist. In chapter two he considers an affair with a damaged though recovering divorcee. And in the third and final chapter he attempts a comeback.

At first glace Mahler's artwork appears crude, as though drawn by a third-grader. But it's deceptively so; the pacing, structure and layouts are impeccable, and the childlike simplicity of the overt style belies the adult concerns of the narrative.

At just under 100 pages Lone Racer is a quick read, but a satisfying one that will stay with the reader.

Rating: 3.5 (of 5)

A review copy of Lone Racer was provided by the publisher.