ZINE LOVE - SMALL (PRESS) OAKS

 
Iestyn Pettigrew asked me questions about my influences and inspirations over at Zine Love website.

I mention Peter Bagge, Blade Runner, Bugs Bunny, Comic Books are Burning in Hell, Danger Mouse, Steve Howe, Tim Kelly, Jack Kirby, James Kochalka, The Police, Treehouse, Carol Tyler, and Al Williamson.

Have a look here.

NEVER IRON ANYTHING: The Cute Manifesto

I enjoyed discussing James Kochalka's The Cute Manifesto on Tony Esmond's podcast Never Iron Anything.

We talked the ins and outs of the book, and also stopped off for digressions on Star Trek comics and Barry Windsor-Smith's upcoming Monster comic.

Have a listen here.

THAT COMIC SMELL: The Top Three Creators of All Time

The latest episode is online now.

This was a livestream video as part of the online SparkCon held over the weekend by Aaron Rackley and Fair Spark Books.

Have a watch on YouTube here.

COMICS FOR THE APOCALYPSE

I was the guest on Samuel George London's Comics for the Apocalypse podcast lately.

A great idea for a podcast; a kind of Desert Island Discs for comics.

Have a listen here.

SPOILERS!
Here are the comics I talked about:
The Cute Manifesto - James Kochalka; Eagle - Ian Kennedy; From Hell - Alan Moore, Eddie Campbell; Hate - Peter Bagge; The Incredible Hulk Pocketbook - Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko; Perry Bible Fellowship - Nick Gurewitch; Rosalie Lightning - Tom Hart; Star Wars Weekly #15 - Roy Thomas, Howard Chaykin.

THAT COMIC SMELL - TIMES THREE!

Three new episodes of the podcast are now available online!
The topics are:

VERTIGO

From the website:
"This time around the folks here at That Comic Smell are joined by a special guest, Allan Lowson! www.amazon.com/Allan-Lowson/e/B00J9CXP16
Allan is best known for his work “Tinker Tales” in motorbike magazine “BSH (Back Street Heroes)” and we were lucky enough to have him join us for a couple of sessions, with this being the first.
We delve into the dark, funny and incredible world of “Vertigo Publishing”
The folks here discuss it’s inception, some of the beloved titles that have came from the imprint and tell of some of their favourites and firsts.
All of this and more on the podcast that just loves Karen Berger. It’s true.
[These are some of the titles we discuss]
Black Orchid (Neil Gaiman, Dave McKean)
Hellblazer (Peter Milligan, Giuseppe Camuncoli, Garth Ennis, Steve Dillon)
Fables (Bill Willingham, Lan Medina, Mark BuckinghamSteve Leialoha, Craig Hamilton)
Flex Mentallo (Grant Morrison, Frank Quitely)
V for Vendetta (Alan Moore, David Lloyd)
Top 10 (Alan Moore, Gene Ha)
Preacher (Garth Ennis, Steve Dillon)
Shade the Changing Man (Peter Milligan, Chris Bachalo)
We3 (Grant Morrison, Frank Quitely)
Sandman (Neil Gaiman, Various Artists)
Tansmetropolitan (Warren Ellis, Darick Robertson)
Jack of Fables (Bill Willingham, Lilah Sturges, Tony Akins, Andrey Pepoy)
The Exterminators (Simon Oliver, Tony Moore)
The Invisibles (Grant Morrison, Various Aritsts)
Federal Bureau of Physics (Simon Oliver, Robbi Rodriguez)
Greek Street (Peter Milligan, Davide Gianfelice)
DMZ (Brian Wood, Riccardo Burchielli)
Saga of the Swamp Thing (Alan Moore, Stephen Bissette)
Northlanders (Brian Wood, Various Aritsts)
The Books of Magic (Neil Gaiman, Various Artists)
iZombie (Chris Roberson, Michael Allred)
Kid Eternity (Ann Nocenti, Sean Phillips)
Outlaw Nation (Jamie Delano, Goran Sudzuka)
Sheriff of Babylon (Tom King, Mitch Gerads)
Sandman Mystery Theatre (Matt Wagner, Steven T. Seagle, Guy Davis)
American Vampire (Scott Snyder, Stephen King, Rafael Albuquerque)
Ministry of Space (Warren Ellis, Chris Weston)
Lobo (Alan Grant, Simon Bisley)"

JUSTICE LEAGUE INTERNATIONAL

From the website:

"This time around the folks here take some time to talk about a specific book. We explore the epic world of our favourite Justice Leaguers in Justice League International Vol.1

We go through the first volume from cover to cover (Almost) and talk about some of our best bits, least favourable bits and answer the main question… Did we all enjoy it?

All that and more on the only podcast that has the biggest affinity for Martian Manhunter. That Comic Smell!

[Some of the other titles we discuss]

Formerly known as the Justice League aka. Super Buddies (Keith Giffen, J.M.DeMatteis, Kevin Maguire, Joe Rubinstein)

Godzilla Oblivion (Joshua Fialkov, Brian Churilla)

Black Science (Rick Remender, Matteo Scalera)

Batman & Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Freddie Williams, James Tynion)

Concrete (Paul Chadwick)

Sandman (Niel Gaiman, Various Artists)

Valerian and Laureline (Pierre Christin, Jean-Claude Mézières)

Treehouse (Various Creators & Artists)"

COMICS WITH MEANING

From the website:
"Your ears are being invited to join us in discussing “What makes a Comic meaningful?”
The folks here let us know what comics mean to them and what they define or don’t define as a “Meaningful Comic”
So pull up a chair. Grab a cuppa. Grab a biscuit or a slice of cake. Hell, grab an alcoholic beverage if that’s where you are right now and become the extra member at the kitchen table for another rousing episode of the only podcast to be due some commission from Paco Roca. That Comic Smell!
[Some of the titles we discuss]
The Sketchbook Diaries (James Kochalka)
Wrinkles (Paco Roca)
Death of Superman (Dan Jurgens, Jerry Ordway)
Battle Angel: Alita (Yukito Kishiro)
Thanos: Redemption (Jim Starlin, Al Milgrom)
Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth (Chris Ware)
Next Wave: Agents of H.A.T.E. (Warren Ellis, Stuart Immonen)
La Muerte De Guernica (Paul Preston, José Pablo García)
Chronology of ALL Star Wars Comics (David Mas)
Concrete (Paul Chadwick)
RASL (Jeff Smith)
David Boring (Daniel Clowes)
An Asterix Adventure: The Mansions of the Gods (Rene Goscinny, Albert Uderzo)
Justice Riders (Chuck Dixon, JH Williams III, Mick Gray)
Justice League of America: The Tornado's Path (Brad Meltzer, Ed Benes)
Strong Female Protagonist (Brennan Lee Mulligan, Molly Ostertag)"

24 HOUR COMICS DAY REDUX

I took part in 24 Hour Comics Day at the weekend. 10am Saturday – 10am Sunday, at the Dundee Comics Creative Space.

I've done it before. I was jokingly telling people that it took me 7 years to get over the previous go round, but there may have been a hint of truth in it.

I went into the event with a few lessons learned. Last time I did six panel pages throughout, and I decided to go between 1 and 3 this time. I also had a more square format page in mind rather than an A4. I was thinking of a comic like James Kochalka's Quit Your Job.

The best decision I made was to write and layout the whole story before I started drawing any pages. That really changed the feel of the entire day. Instead of blindly forging on, hoping it was all gonna come out okay, I already had my solid ground to work on.

As I worked through the day and night, I posted photos on Facebook and Twitter. Here's what I put up:

1.13pm: 2 pages done. 22 to go. Time for lunch.

4.11pm: Hey! 3 more pages. Coffee time.

6.58pm: Pages 6-10. Pizza has been ordered. 24 Hour Comic Day continues.

10.27pm: Here's pages 11-14.

12.49am: Pages 15 and 16. It's still 24 hour comic day even though it's tomorrow now.

3.20am: Here's pages 17-20. I'm still at it for 24 hour comics day. In body anyway, not sure where my brain's wandered off to.

5.20: Finished! My pages for 24 hour comic day, under the protective eye of a promo poster for DKIII: The Master Race.

Rebecca at the Dundee Comics Creative Space was also tweeting pictures of the event throughout. Here are a couple:

This event was attended by comics students and artists from the local area, and there was a lot of serious talent on show. The Dundee scene is truly booming and very inspirational at the moment.

HOW TO READ A COMIC ALOUD TO AN AUDIENCE

I had a blast performing three of my stories for DeeCap - an event held as part of Dundee Comics Expo last Saturday.
 
I had read Sam (Magic Whistle) Henderson’s article on reading comics aloud to a group at tcj.com and had thought it interesting but strange – besides self-promotion, why is doing that a good idea? A notion that is looked at in Henderson’s article. I didn’t think much more about it until I received an e-mail from cartoonist Damon Herd asking if I’d like to take part in DeeCap. I found myself saying yes because despite the above concerns, I also thought “why not?” It would be an interesting challenge to covert the usually private reading experience into a group event.
 
Comics creators are often reticent to use silent panels on their pages, but I’m not as I think they’re powerful. I’ve dealt with them before when reading comics aloud to someone else. You’re reading away and then go silent while they look at the picture. Do you let the panel be silent or not? I decided yes, if the comic is strong enough the information will get across.
I wanted to control the timing of the story – so split up three stories into 139 single panel scans on slides, and used a remote to control the speech patterns. In the event, this decision allowed me to linger on any that were getting a good laugh, or had some chicken fat I thought might be picked up by the audience.
 
Interesting thing about this is that the comics page became irrelevant. I’m increasingly thinking the comics page as a unit, while of great interest to me as a comics reader/practitioner is of no interest to a casual reader. I think a page of comics is sometimes too daunting to a non-comics reader. They are accustomed with a regular novel to starting on word one and continuing in that fashion until the book ends. I have observed that James Kochalka’s ‘Quit Your Job’, with its panel a page is an easier read for some. I can see myself trying something like this in the future when the right story or idea comes along.
There were three other presenters and all our styles were different. We had running the perimeter of the room around the audience, a ticking sound effect and a good old fashioned sing-along. The event was good fun and the audience really seemed to enjoy it.
I also put the cover of Dump #2 onscreen as part of my presentation. Here it is…
 

BORDERS IN TROUBLE

Wow. Something really was going on at Borders. I observed they were pretty switched on regarding comics, i.e. a decent graphic novels section, stocking Crikey! magazine, and US Marvels. I then saw that they had Nickelodeon Magazine on sale too.

Over the years, I’ve read online on various bulletin boards people discussing this kid’s comic based on the TV cartoons of Nickelodeon, and how it features a lot of top notch cartoonists including Nick Bertozzi, Sam Henderson, Kaz, James Kochalka, Roger Langridge, Jason Lutes, Brian Ralph, Scott Roberts, Art Spiegelman, Jay Stephens etc. Really a ludicrously good roster of people, and many more too. But this was the first time I’d seen it in the flesh, as it were, and so I was all set to write it up, when news of Borders going into administration appeared. It’s a great shame.

Then I saw yesterday they are even stocking Dodgem Logic, Alan Moore’s new magazine!

I hope something can be sorted out, because someone at Borders really knows their stuff and is making a good effort to get in quality stuff.

TAKE FIVE (HAPPY ANNIVERSARY HULK part 6)

Here are five more Hulk artists I think are just groovy.

First up is Ron Wilson, who did very little Hulk as far as I know, but I love what he did in the late 70s...

Black and white, as it appeared in the British magazine I read it in, but 7 year old me has helped by colouring the Hulk figure using watercolours in panel 2 and a felt tip pen in the last one.

Okay, now let’s have Hellboy creator Mike Mignola’s work from the mid 80s. Mignola took over the comic when Sal Buscema left. He stayed around long enough to draw “Monster”, one of the all-time great Hulk stories. Here's the splash page...

John Romita Jr. took after his dad and became a Marvel artist, beginning in the 70s. He’s done good runs on X-Men and Spider-Man. By 2001 he was on the Hulk, and again he did good solid work...

In 2003 Bruce Jones was writing the comic. He wrote it as a mystery, with Banner on the run, rarely showing the Hulk, etc. Around the time of Ang Lee’s movie a slight change of pace ran in the comic – a story drawn by Leandro Fernandez. I like his style...

Last up is James Kochalka. He is one the best writer/artists out there today. Check him out here. His version of the Hulk touches on everything that is scary, magnificent, stupid and sad about the big green one...