ALAN MOORE ON LIBRARIES

THE TENTH CIRCLE


Flicking through Judi Picoult's The Tenth Circle I saw these comics pages:



Well, that's a surprise. Not what I would have expected. A character in this book is a comic book artist, and there are examples of his work throughout.



The art is by Dustin Weaver, who has drawn Star Wars and X-Men comics. He seems to have been inspired by the 2003 Hulk movie in this work. Especially the panel in the middle of the page with the guy looking in the mirror, which is very like Eric Bana in the trailer.

It would seem that Picoult has done some research into comics fandom, referencing Wizard magazine and Lying in the Gutters. She has some knowledge, and so comes up with some hilarious scenarios, my favourite being Alan Moore, Todd McFarlane and Neil Gaiman all hanging out together at a deli.

You maybe know all this anyway! The book was a bestseller in 2006.

COMICS STAMPEDE 4

I was looking through a promotional booklet concerning the latest stamps from Royal Mail, which feature Gerry Anderson programmes. I knew I wanted those, but there were so many collector’s packs and what have you to choose from. It would cost a fortune if you were someone who had to have everything.
I spotted one presentation pack listing the contents (stamps, miniature sheet, etc.) with the following words: “There’s even a four page ‘comic’ in the style of the 60s kids magazine TV Century 21”. OK, so my mind was made up about which set I was buying. I don’t know why the text wrote ‘comic’ like that. It made me wonder if it would be a comic or something else more like a magazine.



I bought the pack today, and was pleased to see the ‘comic’ was indeed a comic, and furthermore a comic by Gerry Embleton. I well remember his art on Dan Dare in the 1980s, very nice stuff. I had been thinking about it lately actually, reminded of Embleton’s flying shark by a similar creature in the latest Doctor Who TV episode.

The comic focuses on the making of Thunderbirds. Here’s a page from it:

COMIC HEROES 4

About a year ago I was in a newsagents and spied a magazine sealed in a cardboard packet called Comic...something or other. I couldn’t make it out at first. I was definitely intrigued though, of course. When I looked more closely, I saw it was called SFX Presents Comic Heroes. Hmm. On the front were three movie heroes – the 2002 Spider-Man, 2008 Iron Man and another one I can’t remember. SFX is a glossy sci-fi magazine that also brings out other specials, along the lines of SFX Presents Vampires and things of that nature. So it seemed that this was their superhero movies one. I didn’t want to buy that, and certainly not for £8 without being able to look over the thing.

Months later I saw another Comic Heroes. This one had a picture of a recent incarnation of Captain America (possibly by Bryan Hitch), who is soon to be in his own movie. Cap is currently alive again after being dead, or missing, or not called Captain America any more, or no longer wearing the suit, or someone else is Captain America, or something.

By the time I saw a third edition, it had Alan Moore on front being interviewed. The taglines were (paraphrasing) "I don’t like the movies they make of my comics" and "I’m giving up comics". Moore is always an interesting interview subject, but neither idea/headline is particulary new. Again I wasn't going to buy this without seeing more.

When I was at a comics event in Edinburgh last Summer, someone mentioned Comic Heroes. Did I buy it? No. The Eddie Campbell comic inside was great.

Pardon?

I spent the next couple of weeks trying to find issue three to no avail. The Eddie Campbell bit was in a preview comic inside the sealed pack called “Sidekick” (groan).

It seemed the comic was not solely about superhero movies with a smattering of comics related material. It is a bona fide comics magazine on sale in regular newsagents. Bravo.

So I picked up the latest last week. The packet has an image from the forthcoming League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: 1969, and the cover itself features the Nautilis from that series. Nice preview pages too and a Kevin O’Neill interview. Paul Gravett is involved, with an article on Moebius. Dandy editor Craig Graham talks about the recent revamp. Dez Skinn writes about Doctor Who comics. Lew Stringer writes about British superheroes. Warren Ellis, Walt Simonson and others feature. The bias is definitely on US superhero comics, with some other genres covered. Nothing is particularly in-depth, but it’s all good fun.

It’s funny how the packaging gave me the wrong idea. Maybe they really should stop sealing it shut.

I’ll be picking it up from now on. I might even subscribe.

TARDI

I never read much in the way of war comics while growing up. Probably one of the few comics genres I did miss out on.
I've had occassion to look into comics based on World War I lately though. I decided to check out the new collection of Jacques Tardi's It Was the War of the Trenches. I've read the bits of Tardi that were in Raw years ago and so was pretty sure this would be good.
Well, it is a very powerful piece of work indeed. Many many haunting scenes. Beautifully drawn images. It's exemplary.

As a taster here is a video of Tardi working on just one of the panels in the book...

GERALD SCARFE and DUNDEE COMICS DAY

The latest International Journal of Comic Art (Volume 12, No. 2/3) has been published. I have a couple of articles in there.

They’re reviews of two events from The University of Dundee. One is on Gerald Scarfe’s illustrated talk, and the other is on the third Dundee Comics Day. The latter featured David Bishop, Crawford Coutts, Warren Ellis, Gary Erskine, Mel Gibson, Alan Grant, Ian Hague, Peter Hughes Jachimiak, Ian Kennedy, Bill McLoughlin, Keith Robson, Julia Round, Roger Sabin and Emma Vieceli. More information can be found here.

GUEST POST: STUART MUDIE













I am writing this with a comic on my desk - more precisely, a calendar featuring a single-frame cartoon taken from what is undoubtedly my favourite comic strip ever, The Broons.

The Broons is a comic that is published every week in the Scottish newspaper "The Sunday Post". It first appeared on 8 March 1936 and, while I haven't been reading it for as long as that, I have been reading it for as long as I can remember. The Broons, along with its sister comic Oor Wullie, plays a big part in many Scottish childhoods, and their Annuals are an eagerly awaited Christmas gift in many households, including my own.

For me, the success of these comics - both The Broons and Oor Wullie are veritable Scottish institutions - is all down to nostalgia: nostalgia for a working-class past in which large families all lived on top of each other in tenement flats that were, I'm sure, considerably less charming to live in at the time. Even when modern life creeps into the stories from time to time, we are often still left with the impression that "the good old days" were best. In my case, the comics remind me a little of my own upbringing, a little more about the stories my parents used to tell about their childhoods, and a lot about the joy I used to feel on reading them as a boy.

I am also a huge fan of the language used in the comics, since they are written in Scots (although depending on the period, it is often a highly anglicised version of Scots) and it is rare if not unique for the language to have such widespread, national exposure over such a long period of time.

And what a long period of time it is! Next year will see the 75th anniversary of the first Broons comics. How much of the work of today's comic book artists will, like these characters created by Dudley Watkins, still be being read every week three quarters of a century after their birth? Not many, I suspect.

For more on my good friend Stuart check out his website here and his blog here.

GARFIELD DISSES REMEMBRANCE DAY

Jim Davis’ Garfield is deliberately designed to be completely inoffensive, so as to run in as many papers as possible. It has become something that can be depended on to be innocuous. This week I opened up the local paper and found this on Thursday past – Remembrance Day:








One could be forgiven for thinking Davis had thrown a wobbler and put a political viewpoint into his cartoon. A contentious one, at that. But no, as far as I understand, Davis writes them a long time in advance. It would seem the distributors and newspaper teams have learned to trust Garfield so much that they don’t bother reading it.

HARVEY PEKAR

I didn't see this coming at all. Harvey Pekar - author of American Splendor - has died. It was a unique comic which deliberately chronicled the mundane aspects of life.

He reached a wider audience through the American Splendor movie in 2003. In June this year, Dougie Anderson wrote an article showing how a non-comics reader came to appreciate Pekar's work. Have a read here.

To get an idea of where Pekar was coming from, here is an interview from April 2010.

His influence on comics is profound, if subtle. Pekar was never shouting, and he could all too easily be overlooked, or disregarded after one reading. The effect of his stories has been cumulative - his tenacity meant that he amassed a sizeable body of work that did shape what succeeding generations of cartoonists thought was possible.

The world of comics is a poorer place now he's gone.

SHIOT CROCK 16

The latest Shiot Crock anthology is out now and available here. It has an eight page story by myself in.