Month: September 2018

Smash Pages Q&A: Eric J. Garcia is Drawing on Anger

The creator of El Machete Illustrated discusses the latest collection of his work from Latinographix.

Since 2004, Eric J. Garcia has been making the weekly syndicated political cartoon El Machete Illustrated. The strip is brilliant and scathing look at veterans issues and immigration, imperialism and history. Comics are just one of the many field Garcia works in. He’s a teaching artist, a muralist sculptor, and painter who has created public art projects and whose work has been in museums around the country.

The Latinographix imprint is publishing a collection of Garcia’s comics, Drawing on Anger: Portraits of U.S. Hypocrisy, a selection of his work from 2004 to 2017. Garcia is also one of many contributors to the new anthology Tales From La Vida: A Latinx Comics Anthology. Drawing on Anger comes with advance praise from cartoonists and scholars, and like all great collections manages to provide a sense of not just what Garcia thinks, but how he thinks.

Garcia will be at SOL-CON this weekend at Ohio State University in Columbus, where the book will be debuting, and he was kind enough to answer a few questions about his comics work.

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Norm Breyfogle has passed away at age 58

The artist most associated with Batman in the late 1980s/early 1990s and the co-creator of Malibu’s Prime passed away this past Monday.

Norm Breyfogle, one of the artists most associated with Batman in the late 1980s and early 1990s, has passed away. His friend Daniel Best posted the news on Facebook.

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IDW enlists Michel Fiffe for a new G.I Joe miniseries

‘G.I. Joe: Sierra Muerte’ debuts next spring.

Copra creator Michel Fiffe has heard the call — “Yo Joe!” — and will tackle the G.I. Joe team in a new miniseries, G.I. Joe: Sierra Muerte.

“Love and loss, combat and cunning, cheap laughs and high stakes – this is everything I want in a G.I. Joe comic,” Fiffe told Nerdist. Fiffe’s story will feature Snake Eyes, Roadblock, Lady Jaye, Scarlett, Rock ‘n Roll, Gung-Ho, Stalker and Flint, who go rogue on a rescue mission.

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Smash Pages Q&A: Tom Peyer on AHOY Comics

The editor-in-chief of the new comics line discusses how the company was formed with longtime friend and collaborator Hart Seely, the first two titles (which Peyer is writing) and more.

Tom Peyer has had a long career in comics as a writer and editor. He’s written a long list of superhero titles including Hourman, Legion and The Flash. He co-wrote Cruel and Unusual with Jamie Delano, and with Rachel Pollack, New Gods. Peyer was also a longtime editor at DC and was one of the founding editors of the Vertigo imprint.

His new project is AHOY Comics, where he is the editor-in-chief and has written the first two titles from the publisher. The Wrong Earth is a superhero series with artist Jamal Igle, essentially about how the Adam West Batman and The Dark Knight Returns Batman change places. Coming out this week is the second title, High Heaven, a dark comic tale of the afterlife drawn by Greg Scott. Both series contain other material, including short comics and prose stories and various other backup material. Hashtag: Danger, a backup series by Peyer and Chris Giarrusso will appear in the pages of High Heaven.

The publisher of AHOY is Hart Seely, who Peyer has long been friends and collaborators with. The two previously edited O Holy Cow!: The Selected Verse of Phil Rizzuto, a book of found poetry by the Hall of Fame baseball player and broadcaster. With High Heaven #1 out this week, I reached out to ask a few questions about the imprint, assembling a comics magazine and not going for laughs when writing the absurd.

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Comics Lowdown: Olivia Jaimes to appear at CXC

Plus: Kazu Kibuishi, Katie Green, Zunar and more!

Olivia Jaimes, the pseudonymous artist who has revitalized the comic strip Nancy, will be a guest at the Cartoon Crossroads Columbus comics festival in Columbus, Ohio, next weekend. There has been considerable speculation about Jaimes’s real identity, and CXC will be asking the 40 or so lucky attendees at her panel to check their phones at the door to protect her privacy.

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‘Buffy’ comics license moves to BOOM! Studios

Buffy and the gang follow ‘Firefly’ from Dark Horse to their new home at BOOM! Studios.

After about two decades at Dark Horse Comics, the Buffy the Vampire Slayer license has moved to BOOM! Studios.

The move isn’t too surprising, Buffy creator Josh Whedon mentioned that Fox was taking back the Buffy license this past summer in an interview with CBR’s Kiel Phegley. BOOM! announced they had the Firefly license, also a Fox property, not long ago, and Fox has a minority stake in BOOM!.

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Smash Pages Q&A: Summer Pierre’s ‘All the Sad Songs’

The creator of ‘Paper Pencil Life’ discusses her latest book, poetry and more.

Summer Pierre has been making comics for years in the pages of her series Paper Pencil Life and in magazines and anthologies, including Mutha Magazine, The Rumpus, Ink Brick and Bottoms Up! She’s illustrated All the Pretty People by Ariel Gore, It’s Not You, It’s Brie by Kirstin Jackson and other books.

This month Retrofit is releasing Pierre‘s graphic novel All the Sad Songs. The book is about music, which sounds amorphous and vague, but Pierre begins by examining mix tapes she made and still has, the songs and the bands that defined her life, her own music and the years she spent in her twenties singing in clubs and cafes around Boston. Pierre and I have been running across each other at shows in recent years and often end up talking about poetry. When she mentioned that she had a book coming out, I asked if we could talk about the book and her work.

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Smash Pages Q&A: Ivan Brunetti’s ‘3×4’

The cartoonist and illustrator discusses his latest project for Toon Books.

Ivan Brunetti has had a unique career in comics. He’s the cartoonist behind comics like Schizo, Hee! and Haw! He’s a noted New Yorker cover artist and illustrator in addition to being the author of the books Cartooning: Philosophy and Practice and Aesthetics: A Memoir. In 2017 Toon Books published Brunetti’s first book for children, Wordplay, and this fall they’re publishing his second.

3×4 is about numbers and math, but also about art. It focuses on the children that readers might remember from his first book and gives them a new homework assignment. I asked him about how he worked on the new book, the relationship between art and numbers, and what he’s thinking about next.

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Davis, Ostertag and more take home 2018 Ignatz Awards

Annual awards presented at the Small Press Expo honor excellence in independent comics.

Eleanor Davis, Richie Pope, Molly Ostertag and Carta Monir are among the winners of the 2018 Ignatz Awards, as presented last night at a ceremony held in conjunction with the Small Press Expo (SPX) in Bethesda, Maryland.

Ignatz image by 2017 Promising New Talent winner Bianca Xunise.

The Ignatz, named after George Herriman’s brick-wielding mouse from his long running comic strip Krazy Kat, recognizes exceptional work that challenges popular notions of what comics can achieve, both as an art form and as a means of personal expression. The nominees for the ballot were determined by a panel of comic artists: Mita Mahato, Carolyn Nowak, kevin czap, Leila Abdelrazaq and Taneka Stotts. The votes for the awards were cast by the attendees at the show

The complete list of nominees can be found below, with the winner in bold.

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High school is hell in Lemire + Lenox’s ‘Black Hammer: Cthu-Louise’

The ‘Plutona’ creators return for a one-shot this December set in Lemire’s ‘Black Hammer’ comics universe.

The team that brought you Plutona is back, as Jeff Lemire and Emi Lenox come together once more to present Black Hammer: Cthu-Louise, set in Lemire’s award-winning comic universe.

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SPX, TCJ, OMG: A Hot Take

Brigid Alverson responds to a recent opinion piece on TCJ.com and shares her thoughts on comiXology/Amazon’s presence at this weekend’s Small Press Expo.

I know that contentious commentary is part of the The Comics Journal brand, but maybe it’s time to drop it. Especially because the latest article isn’t just mean-spirited, it’s straight-up wrong.

I am referring, of course, to RJ Casey’s recent post, ominously titled “A Plague Comes to SPX,” in which he warns that Amazon is poised to ruin comics.

I’m at SPX, and I went to the exhibitors’ reception last night, where, like everyone else, I got a copy of Hit Reblog, the book he disparages:

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Marvel cancels Cain, Mohan, Koch’s ‘The Vision’ miniseries

This decision comes a month before retailers’ orders for the first issue were due.

Chelsea Cain’s second Marvel series has been canceled before it had a chance to even begin. Newsarama reports that The Vision, by Cain, her husband Marc Mohan and artists Aud Koch and Jordie Bellaire, will no longer arrive in November, the month for which it was previously solicited.

The new miniseries, which was announced this past summer in San Diego, would have followed in the same vein as Tom King and Gabriel Hernandez Walta’s critically praised run on the character, which introduced his family, including Viv Vision, who currently appears in The Champions. This decision comes a month before retailers’ orders for the first issue were due.

Cain addressed the cancellation on Twitter:

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