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.

BERSERKOTRON page 38 at WEBCOMICS NATION










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R.I.P. AL WILLIAMSON

Al Williamson has died.

He'd worked in comics since the 1940s. He became part of the legendary EC comics stable. His longevity has meant that he has had an impact on many generations. I became aware of him when he did the Marvel Comics adaptation of The Empire Strikes Back in 1980:

 

Back then I could instinctively tell that this artwork was superior to other stuff being published. It’s classical style clicked with me, and coupled with the excitement about a new Star Wars, it was irresistible.

Williamson drew some of the spin-off Star Wars comics Marvel published too. This is from 1981, issue 50:

 

He’d been well known for his work on Flash Gordon in the 1960s, taking over the character drawn by Alex Raymond – himself a big influence on the young Williamson. The Flash Gordon movie of 1980 certainly had a different tone than the comics, but the adaptation was handed over to Williamson to draw, a choice which delighted fans:

 

I first saw Blade Runner on video in 1983 and was excited about a new film with Han Solo in it. However I quickly grew tired of it and went off to play with my cousins instead. A couple of years later Return of the Jedi Weekly in the UK began running Williamson’s Blade Runner adaptation as a back up strip. Wow – what artwork once again by this guy. I had to see the film again to re-evaluate it. The comic is beautiful:

 

By 1983 Return of the Jedi was ready to come out. The comic was advertised showing parts of Williamson’s artwork. It’s dynamite:

 

So he’d done Empire and Jedi, but not the first movie. If only he could have a go at adapting the original Star Wars, I thought to myself. There was another Star Wars comic by Williamson in Star Wars issue 98 in 1985. Bonus greatness:

 

I got my first taste of Williamson’s original Flash Gordon work in one of the Alan Class UK black and white collections. These were little treasure troves with plenty of prime Ditko, Kirby and other great little stories from the 50s and 60s. But what did I spot in the newsagent one day in the mid 80s? An Amazing Stories of Suspense cover featuring Flash Gordon which was unmistakably by Williamson:

 

An Art of Al Williamson book was released in 1983. I finally got a hold of it years later. It contained something I didn’t know had existed. Previously unpublished Star Wars strips drawn in 1978 chronicling the first movie:

 

After the Empire adaptation, Williamson got the job of doing the Star Wars newspaper strips. I cut a bunch of them out of a huge pile of Sunday Express magazines that were sat in the back on my biology classroom in the late 80s. They really are beautiful:

In the early 90s, Dark Horse Comics re-jigged and reprinted the strips, editing them so as to fit a standard comic book format, with Williamson expanding on his artwork and sometimes drawing entirely new pictures. So, for instance, the preceding Sunday strip became a two pager:

Another reprint came in 1992. Excellent EC work by Williamson - The Sound of Thunder from 1954:

Beginning in the late 80s Williamson put more time into inking comics. He made everybody he inked look better. Williamson’s work with John Romita JR. on Daredevil is generally regarded to be the latter’s best:

In 1995 Marvel put out a new Flash Gordon two part series by Williamson. Great stuff once again:

The last published new work by Williamson that I’m aware of was a Sub-Mariner story from last year:

Great to see those evocative lines in the sea background, and lithe figure work too.

Another strip he drew for many years was Secret Agent Corrigan, which is all going to be collected soon. Here’s a nice moody three panel sequence:

I’ve picked up other Williamson comics over the years. As much as I could growing up in a town without a comic shop.

Here’s a nice page from Alien Worlds in 1984:

There have been many more books on Williamson since The Art of... in 1983:

There has also been a collection of all his Flash Gordon work which looks tremendous. I’ve mock-complained with my friends that every time I turn around, someone else has brought out a book on Al Williamson! Didn’t stop me buying and enjoying them though…

I had just ordered The Al Williamson Archives which is due out in September. It’ll be a bittersweet experience looking through it now.

For many years my admiration of Williamson was such that I thought the best word to describe his work was “impossible”. How could anyone draw entire comic books to that standard? It just seemed impossibly good. As I got older I realised that it came down to bloody hard work. Williamson didn’t have a magic paintbrush that produced this stuff, he had talent and had to sit down and put the hours in to make it all look so good.

I was paralysed in my own drawing by Williamson. For a long time, I thought I had to measure myself against him. I could never reach that level (no-one did), so I was stuck. I finally had to throw him away completely from my thinking when drawing my own stuff, which finally liberated me.

Now I’m free to enjoy and marvel at the beautiful artwork that is still there on the page.

Thank you, Al Williamson.

BERSERKOTRON page 37 at WEBCOMICS NATION












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MEDIA SCANS MAY 2010

The Observer 2nd May runs a review of David Small's Stitches...

Financial Times 8th May on Tin Tin's owners...

TV chat show host Jonathon Ross has written a comic. An interview from The Times 8th May...

The Courier 10th May has an interview with Dundee Literary Festival Director Anna Day, stating that Pat Mills is "a massive artist", and that the festival will attract "people who have a historical interest or an intellectual interest in comics as pieces of art almost..."

A review of Philippa Perry and Junko Graat's Couch Fiction in The Guardian 15th May...

From The Times 21st May, Molly Norris starts "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day"...

...and so Pakistan blocks Facebook and YouTube...

Woodrow Phoenix's favourite toys. The Guardian 22nd May...

Who knows why certain books are picked up by newspapers? Here's The Times from 22nd May. They've got Alain de Botton to review Couch Fiction too...

Tin Tin for sale. Daily Telegraph 25th May:

BERSERKOTRON page 36 at WEBCOMICS NATION
















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COMICS STAMPEDE 3

Well, here he is...

A nice Hulk sheet from Madagascar in 1999.

Artists include Sal Buscema, Steve Ditko, Gary Frank, Ron Garney, Dale Keown, Jack Kirby, Adam Kubert, Marie Severin and Herb Trimpe.

BERSERKOTRON pg35 at WEBCOMICS NATION














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GUEST BLOG: ANNA ZANFEI

I met Anna Zanfei in 2007 at a comics conference, where she gave a talk on webcomics. She had interesting and new things to say about the medium. We got chatting after the event, had a good laugh and argued about Eddie Campbell - I said he was great, she said he was brilliant.

We’ve kept in touch since then, and she’s been kind enough to say nice things about my comics. She’s done it again here. Modesty should dictate that I don’t publish it, but my ego is too pleased – if slightly embarrassed.

As with my previous guest, I asked Anna to write anything she wanted as long as it was comics based. She hasn’t previously made any comics as far as I’m aware, so what she sent me was a bit of a surprise...

Hi . My name is Anna and I'm Italian. I live in the North of Italy not too far from Austria. In my area people love skiing and hiking and in the summer they usually like swimming in one of the hundreds of natural lakes of the surroundings. Trento is a nice, clean and very old city. I basically teach English as a foreign language to students of literature, printing, arts and linguistics. To find a common ground for students in my courses I use comics and editorial cartoons as well as graphic novel dedicated to Shakespeare. Let me explain: when I talk about comics I can talk about the power of a graphic interpretation of Shakespearian original texts; I can also speak about typography as an evocative and iconographic tool and how web comics work; I can speak about the way editorial cartoons can use language, colours and caricatures and compress a whole story and a critique in a single panel; and finally I can look at the dialogue and the titles and speak about language creativity. In this way all my students can be interested and because I'm using the tools of their professions to explain how English works. Out of the classroom I have the chance of presenting at conferences and I publish articles on web comics and also regular comic books.

I love autobiographical comics and comics that look at how young people, and of course women of all ages, communicate. I'm a fan of Jessica Abel for her dialogues, of Posy Simmonds for her multimodal graphic novels and of course I love the work of David Robertson because of his elegant, almost abstract way of drawing and his impressive creativity.

This comic strip is representing myself when I began studying linguistic creativity and I was wondering if comics could be of any use to understand how language creativity works.

(Click on comic strip for larger image)