STWALLSKULL » 2009

HEY! KIDS! COMICS! : Four Color Comics at Cool-Mo-Dee : February 25th, 2009

February 25th, 2009 | Category: Carl Barks, HEY! KIDS! COMICS!, John Stanley, Walt Kelly

Much like the Crosseyed Cyclops I mentioned yesterday, Cool-Mo-Dee has also posted a whole comics collection worth of great old comics. Recently they’ve been doing the world the great service of focusing on one of my favorite series of all time… which is also I believe the longest running (numerically) comic title of all time… Dell’s Four Color series.

Dell licensed and published most of the popular highly recognizable children’s icons of the era that they were in business, and they had most of the best children’s cartoonists working for them (Barks, Kelly, Stanley, and many others) from the 30’s through the 60’s.

I’m not sure how frequently Four Color came out (weekly? bi-monthly?) but the last issue was numbered #1354. It was not a conventional series featuring one character, but a long series of one shots featuring Dell’s huge library of popular licensed characters.

Four Color’s run includes the first Donald Duck comic and the first Uncle Scrooge comic among other wonderful things… many of the greatest adventure tales of Carl Barks were Four Color one shots. Walt Kelly did a huge body of brilliant non-Pogo work for children in the Four Color books in a number of different titles.

Titles that proved particularly popular were often spun off into their own series, so Four Color was very much a testing ground for Dell as well. The vast majority of the Four Color comics have never been reprinted and probably never will be.

Pictured above is a typically charming cover to a typically charming issue of Raggedy Ann (Four Color #72), which you can download here.

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INTERESTING LINKS: Kevin and Zander Cannon Talk about T-Minus at Newsarama: February 25th, 2009

February 25th, 2009 | Category: INTERESTING LINKS

TODAY’S FEATURED ITEM:

My good friends Kevin Cannon and Zander Cannon have an interview up about their upcoming graphic novel about the space race, T-Minus (written by Jim Ottaviani, who was interviewed earlier) at Newsarama. The interview includes preview images of some of their typically gorgeous pages. Note that this project features space monkeys, so you know you won’t want to miss it.

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CRUMBLING PAPER: Winnie Winkle, The Breadwinner (strip #3)

February 24th, 2009 | Category: CRUMBLING PAPER, Martin Branner, Ye Olde Comics and Stuffe

Here’s another example I scanned of Winnie Winkle, The Breadwinner from 1930 by Martin Branner.

Click the image to view the full strip.

Click here to read more examples of Winnie Winkle at Barnacle Press.

See another Winnie Winkle Sunday strip here.

Click here to read an old article on Martin Branner at the Stripper’s Guide here.

Click here to read Louie the Lawyer by Martin Branner at the Stripper’s Guide here.

Click here to read about Martin Branner at lambiek.net.

Click here to read about Winnie Winkle at Don Markstein’s Toonopedia.

See some interesting Winnie Winkle original art here.

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HEY! KIDS! COMICS! : CREEPY and other Comics Magazines at the Crosseyed Cyclops : February 24th, 2009

February 24th, 2009 | Category: HEY! KIDS! COMICS!

TODAY’S FEATURED ITEM:

The Crosseyed Cyclops blog has a whole comics collection worth of great stuff posted already, but of particular note is their devotion to posting black and white comics magazines of the sixties and seventies. They just posted a huge portion of the run of Creepy (pictured above is the great Jack Davis cover from the first issue). These magazines are particularly hard to collect in my experience due to their non-standard format making them more obscure… many comics shops don’t have magazines in their back-issues (and fewer and fewer comics stores have back issues at all these days… it took me many years of pre-Ebay hunting to find complete sets of Love and Rockets and the lousy Howard the Duck magazine). They also rarely get reprinted, which is probably also due to the non-standard format and the anthology nature of most of them, among other things. There is a lot of wonderful neglected work by many great cartoonists in these things, and a whole lot of it is now available for free thanks to the Crosseyed Cyclops.

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INTERESTING LINKS: Alan Moore Interview at WIRED : February 24th, 2009

February 24th, 2009 | Category: INTERESTING LINKS

TODAY’S FEATURED ITEMS:

WIRED recently posted interviews with Watchmen creators Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, in anticipation of the upcoming, unfortunate movie adaptation. The interview with Moore, who wants nothing to do with the movie (and discusses at length the reasons why) is typically fascinating reading. Of particular note is the last page of the interview, where Moore talks quite a bit about his upcoming magical grimoire he is currently working on, The Bumper Book of Magic. It sounds like it should be incredible.

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CRUMBLING PAPER: Winnie Winkle, The Breadwinner (strip #2)

February 23rd, 2009 | Category: CRUMBLING PAPER, Martin Branner, Ye Olde Comics and Stuffe

Here’s another example I scanned of Winnie Winkle, The Breadwinner, with the footer strip Looie Blooie, Attorney at Law, from 1933 by Martin Branner.

Click the image to view the full strip.

Click here to read more examples of Winnie Winkle at Barnacle Press.

See another Winnie Winkle Sunday strip here.

Click here to read an old article on Martin Branner at the Stripper’s Guide here.

Click here to read Louie the Lawyer by Martin Branner at the Stripper’s Guide here.

Click here to read about Martin Branner at lambiek.net.

Click here to read about Winnie Winkle at Don Markstein’s Toonopedia.

See some interesting Winnie Winkle original art here.

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HEY! KIDS! COMICS! : Michael Furious’ DOGS : February 23rd, 2009

February 23rd, 2009 | Category: HEY! KIDS! COMICS!

TODAY’S FEATURED ITEM:

My friend Michael Furious has started a fun project online called DOGS that he is hoping to fuel with some audience participation. He is going to base what happens in the comic on comments received from the audience as to where they think the story should go.

That man can draw! The easiest way to view it is as a Flickr slideshow here. Do yourself a favor, go check it out, and then give him some feedback on where you think the story should go.

Here are the rules to participate.

Here is the spiel from Michael…

I’d like to invite everyone to participate in a comic experiment I’ve just started, called Dogs.

The idea is based a little off of some meditations on Charles Dickens public readings, the nature of the internet, and just wanting to have a little fun. The comic is not.

So what I’ve done is draw the first 27 pages of story, which provides a cast of characters, a setting, and several possible plot devices and hooks. The hope is that you, the reader, will drop by and leave comments. Who you think is who. What you think is what. What will happen next? And so on.

Then I draw more pages of story and around and around it goes.

The full “rules”, and story, are here.

(I know, I know. LJ is made of blinking lights and fail. So is my knowledge of code.)

You can also find it here.

A sample page:

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INTERESTING LINKS: MOMEntum Show at MCAD: February 23rd, 2009

February 23rd, 2009 | Category: EVENTS, INTERESTING LINKS

TODAY’S FEATURED ITEM:

I’m very excited about an upcoming gallery show at MCAD in Minneapolis featuring the work of the artists in Fantagraphics’ MOME anthology (including locals Tom Kaczynski and Zak Sally). MOME is the best ongoing comics anthology around these days in my view, and the talent in it includes many of the best cartoonists working today. Needless to say, if you’re in the area, you won’t want to miss this… the opening reception is March 6th. More info here.

Also on March 6 is an afternoon lecture at 1PM with Mome editor Eric Reynolds. Find out more about this related event here. April 9th there will be a gallery talk with Tom Kaczynski and Zak Sally starting at 6:30 p.m.

Also of note! on March 1st, there will be a screening at MCAD of the new movie Will Eisner: Portrait of a Sequential Artist. More info here.

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THE PEANUT GALLERY: Wait a Week to Watch the Watchmen

February 17th, 2009 | Category: COMICS, Cartoonists, GOOD CAUSES, MOVIES, THE PEANUT GALLERY

I started a Facebook group here that I encourage you all to join encouraging people to wait a week (or more) to watch the movie adaptation of Watchmen. Here is what I posted there:

The movie Watchmen was made without the consent or participation of the writer of the book, Alan Moore.

Out of respect for Mr. Moore, members of this group should wait at least one week (preferably more) after the theatrical release of Watchmen to watch it, as a small protest to the consistently poor treatment of Mr. Moore by Time Warner and DC Comics. DC comics, it should be noted, has a long and notorious history of poor treatment of cartoonists, going back at least to screwing a couple of teenagers out of the rights to Superman.

I am not arguing that it is wrong to go see the Watchmen movie if you really want to. I am just suggesting you wait a bit to see it, out of RESPECT for the person who wrote it, as his wishes for it are not being honored.

I repeat… this is an issue of RESPECT. It is not a legal issue. It is not an issue of artistic merit, or lack thereof. It is not even an issue of being completely sick of seeing marketing for this movie everywhere, even though I certainly am. It is an issue of respecting the intent of an artist whose works you respect.

Furthermore, a week is a VERY small time to wait if you really want to see this thing. It is an important time to the Time Warner Corporation, however, as how a movie is received in its first week very much effects how successful it is overall.

I’ve read many objections to Mr. Moore’s complaints about the film. Yes, Mr. Moore was doing work for hire… yes, he sold the rights to Watchmen. It was certainly a bad business deal.

Mr. Moore signed a contract where the rights to Watchmen would return to him after the book had been out of print for a designated period of time. At the time Watchmen came out, there was no precedent for a graphic novel NOT going out of print. Watchmen, Dark Knight and Maus changed that. Mr. Moore naively thought at the time he signed the contract that he would get the rights back, and DC Comics was happy to exploit him.

Regardless of whatever mistakes Mr. Moore has made in this instance, his works have greatly enriched my life. Out of respect for him, I don’t think it is asking a lot to wait a week or two to see whatever travesty they have made of his book on the screen… or, better yet, you could choose not to see it at all.

The book is still on the shelf, and will always be the best way to experience this masterpiece of comics fiction. Why not do yourself a favor and read it instead of watching the Hollywood aberration?

If you’ve ever read and enjoyed any of the wonderful works of Alan Moore, please consider affording him this extremely small favor.

Here is an interview with Alan Moore on the subject at Entertainment Weekly.

Here is an overview of Mr. Moore’s history with the movie business from the New York Times.

For another view on this, see this interview with Watchmen artist Dave Gibbons, who approves of the movie.

Slime-coated Hollywood producer Don Murphy calls Alan Moore a hypocrite and a liar, and completely misses the point, as you would expect.