Smash Pages Q&A: Joseph Remnant on ‘Cartoon Clouds’

The creator of ‘Blindspot’ and artist of Harvey Pekar’s ‘Cleveland’ discusses his first solo graphic novel from Fantagraphics, balancing his work as a storyboarding artist with his own projects, and more.

Like most comics fans I first got to know Joseph Remnant’s work from The Pekar Project. The web project featured the late great Pekar working with a number of artists and Remnant went on to draw Cleveland, a very personal graphic novel written by Pekar that was published after his death.

Remnant was making short work in his comic series Blindspot, in addition to recording music and working on various other projects, but Fantagraphics just released his first solo graphic novel, Cartoon Clouds. The book is about a group of students who have just graduated from art school, and are trying to find their own way and understand their feelings about art. Remnant admits that working on the project over the course of many years has meant that his own feelings about the characters and some of the issues he raises in the book have changed over time, though his linework is masterful throughout.

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‘Harvey Kurtzman’s Marley’s Ghost’ debuts for $2.99 on comiXology

Gideon Kendall, Josh O’Neill and Shannon Wheeler complete a long-lost Kurtzman adaptation of ‘A Christmas Carol.’

MAD Magazine creator Harvey Kurtzman once planned to adapt Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol into a graphic novel, but the project never came together — until now. Using Kurtzman’s original pages, thumbnails and notes, comiXology and the Kurtzman Estate teamed up to finish the project more than 50 years after Kurtzman first started on it, with the help of artist Gideon Kendall and writers Josh O’Neill and Shannon Wheeler.

Harvey Kurtzman’s Marley’s Ghost is now available on comiXology as part of the comiXology Originals line, for the introductory price of $2.99 — or you can read it for free if you’re a comiXology Unlimited or Kindle Unlimited subscriber.

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Smash Pages Q&A: Nilah Magruder on ‘M.F.K.’

The animator, illustrator and storyboard artist discusses the collection of her popular webcomic.

Nilah Magruder’s webcomic M.F.K. has been on hiatus recently but it remains a beloved by its fans (including me). The animator, illustrator and storyboard artist received the inaugural Dwayne McDuffie Award for the webcomic, an epic fantasy adventure about a hero on a quest – but not the kind of hero, epic or quest that most fantasy fans think about when they hear those words. Although it is very epic in a sense – journeys are hard for social recluses.

Last year saw the release of Magruder’s debut picture book, How To Find a Fox, and she’s currently working on a new book project, Creaky Acres. A print version of the the first three chapters of M.F.K. are out now from Insight Comics and Magruder answered a few questions about the book, promises she’s working on the comic, and more.

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Millar, Coipel team for ‘The Magic Order’ comic from Netflix

New comic debuts next year from the streaming giant.

When Netflix acquired Millarworld back in August, we were left with some quetsions around what this meant for the Millarworld comics themselves. While Mark Millar has been writing books like Kick-Ass, Superior and Secret Service for years now, he’s worked with various publishers like Image and Marvel’s Icon imprint to publish them.

Apparently we have a new comics publisher in town, and its name is Netflix:

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Brian Michael Bendis signs exclusive deal with DC Comics

Creator leaves Marvel for a ‘multiyear, multi-faceted deal’ with DC.

After almost two decades of writing stories for Marvel, Brian Michael Bendis has signed a “multiyear, multi-faceted deal” with DC Comics.

The publisher announced the news on Twitter this morning:

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Ken Niimura’s ‘Umami’ debuts from Panel Syndicate

Download the first issue now at a price of your choosing.

Ken Niimura of Henshin and I Kill Giants fame is the latest creator to join the Panel Syndicate crew, the digital comics imprint started by Marcos Martin and Brian K. Vaughan.

Umami, a black-and-white comic written and drawn by Niimura, debuts today on the site. It’s the story of a chef, a cook, giant birds and a quest for salt. The first issue is available via Panel Syndicate’s “name your price” model, like every other book they offer.

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Smash Pages Q&A: Roger Langridge on ‘The Iron Duchess’

The cartoonist discusses his latest book from Fantagraphics, as well as ‘Zoot!’, the status of ‘Criminy’ and more.

Roger Langridge has had a long career in comics, crafting a unique body of work that ranges from Fred the Clown to Abigail and the Snowman, The Fez to The Baker Street Peculiars, Art d’Ecco to Snarked. Langridge however is likely best known for a lot of the licensed projects he’s worked on which include Jim Henson’s The Musical Monsters of Turkey Hollow, The Muppet Show, and Popeye. It’s a shame, and not just because people who love The Muppet Show could pick up Fred the Clown and some of his other work and find that same love of wacky characters, vaudeville, silent comedy, music and hijinx.

Fred the Clown: The Iron Duchess shows Langridge’s love for old silent films, in particular those of the late great Buster Keaton. Langridge likes to use Fred as a character the way old silent comedians played the same “character” in one film after another. The book manages to combine a mad scientist, a wealthy man and his daughter, the making of a film, a horse, a pig, a train chase, and much more. It manages to be a madcap adventure, but also a beautifully structured story with multiple threads moving along and leading to some strange and hilarious surprises by the end. The Iron Duchess is out now from Fantagraphics Books, and Langridge has also released Zoot! #1, a new one-man anthology that is a available from his website.

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Josh Simmons creates more bootleg Batman

Simmons teams with artist Patrick Keck for “Twilight of the Bat.”

A few years back Black River creator Josh Simmons shared with the world a very wellreceived and unauthorized Batman comic, which you can read right now on the Study Group website.

Now Simmons has returned to “G—– City” with artist Patrick Keck to tell another story about “Bats,” his buddy “Joke Man” and some mysterious cupcakes. “Twilight of the Bat” debuted this past weekend at the Short Run Comix and Arts Festival in Seattle, and is now available on the Cold Cube Press website.

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Comics Lowdown: One cartoonist free on bail; another remains in prison

Plus: Kickstarters, Leo Baxendale, and how Chuck Rozanski escaped poverty—with comics!

Indian Cartoonist Free on Bail: A judge in Tirunelveli, Tamil Nadhu, India, has granted bail to cartoonist G. Bala, who was arrested on Nov. 5 for creating a “demeaning caricature” of several local officials. The cartoon critiqued the local government, including the collector, after a laborer and his family who were in deep debt to loan sharks set themselves on fire in front of the collector’s office. The entire family, including two children ages two and four, died of their injuries.

“The self-immolation and the burning children disturbed me a lot… I could not sleep for two days as if my children had charred. I had done nothing personal against the Collector, the complainant of the case against me. When he initiated steps for the ‘Wall of Kindness’ to help the poor, I felt so proud about him. When he failed to act on the repeated petitions of a usury victim, it forced a youth to take the extreme step that disturbed me a lot and I just reflected my agony through my caricature,” a visibly moved Mr. Bala told the waiting reporters while emerging from the court after being enlarged on bail.

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Religious police shut down Libya Comic Con

Police arrested “anyone with a badge” for corrupting youth, importing foreign influences, and inciting violence.

The Rada Special Deterrence Force (SDF), a religious police force that acts for the UN-backed Libyan government, raided the Libya Comic Con on Friday evening, shutting down the convention and arresting the organizers as well as participants.

“Anyone who was wearing a badge” was arrested, according to an account by one of the organizers, who asked to be anonymous, in the Libya Herald. Apparently the police assumed that anyone wearing a badge was an organizer, so participants and visitors were scooped up in the raid. While some of those arrested were released later that night, six members of the organizing committee remained in custody on Saturday. The organizer said that the police had beaten and shaved the heads of some of the attendees who were released, as well as giving them a religious lecture. “They were told that Libya was a Muslim country, not a free/liberal country,” he said.

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Smash Pages Q&A: Lee Francis on The Indigenous Comic-Con and more

The publisher, retailer and convention organizer talks about Albuquerque’s upcoming convention, Native Realities Publishing and much more.

Dr. Lee Francis IV is the CEO and publisher of Native Realities Publishing, which has made a mark with comics like Tribal Force, Hero Twins and The Wool of Jonesy, and graphic novels like Tales of the Mighty Code Talkers and the upcoming Deer Woman: An Anthology.

Francis also runs Red Planet, a bookstore in Albuquerque, NM, and The Indigenous Comic-Con. The show takes place next weekend, November 10-12, in Albuquerque with additional events on Nov. 9. We spoke about publishing, the convention, and being an indigenerd.

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Comics Lowdown: Court strikes down gag order in ‘comic-con’ lawsuit

Plus: Top graphic novels, comics retail chat and two new manga from Jiro Taniguchi!

The 9th U.S. District Court of Appeals ruled on Monday that a gag order imposed by a judge in the trademark lawsuit between Comic-Con International and Salt Lake Comic Con is unconstitutional. The case stretches back to 2014, when Comic-Con International, which produces the San Diego comic con, sued the organizers of Salt Lake Comic Con over the use of the term “comic con,” which CCI claims it owns. The Salt Lake organization countersued, claiming the term is widely used by other conventions and is a generic term. The trial is scheduled to begin on Nov. 28, and because they were concerned that Salt Lake’s postings about the issue on social media would taint the jury pool, CCI asked that they be restrained from commenting publicly about the case. U.S. District Court Judge Anthony Battaglia placed a strict limit on what Salt Lake could post about the case, and limited that even further after CCI claimed that Salt Lake violated the ban. However, the appeals court overturned that order on Monday, saying,

San Diego Comic-Con has presented no evidence as to how many, if any, of the approximately 35,200 Twitter followers are registered voters in San Diego and Imperial counties and how many, if any, of the 120,000 attendees of the 2014 Salt Lake Comic Con in Utah are even possibly members of the current San Diego-area jury pool.

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