Three Things | Tinto Press, Greg Smallwood, Uncle Jerk

Here are three things to support, to read and to watch today.

Three Things is a new column that spotlights, as the title states, three things from comics today (or yesterday or whenever). It’ll be three things with links, no more, no less. It’s also the third edition, so, y’know, three is the magic number and all that.

1. To Support: Tinto Press kickstarts its 2022 line-up

Small press publisher Tinto Press is crowdfunding its 2022 line-up, which includes new books by Mike Bender, Denis Kitchen, Karl Christian Krumpholz and Julian Brier. The Colorado-based publisher has released a wide variety of comics since 2012, and I believe this is their second time to turn to Kickstarter.

It’s a nice line-up of books, which include:

  • Denis Kitchen’s Creature From the Subconscious hardcover, which collects drawings by the legendary artist, publisher, historian, and “Comix Activist.”
  • Mike Bender’s The Kid, the Troll,  the Wolf, and the Hearse; Bender is the writer of Not Another Teen Movie, and this new book parodies The Boy, The Mole, The Fox, and The Horse
  • Julian Brier’s Cats of Ostia Antica trade paperback; I own this one in hardcover and would recommend it. It’s a wordless graphic novel about an old Italian man’s journey to the afterworld, shepherded by the spirit cats from a sleepy Roman village.
  • Karl Christian Krumpholz’s Queen City hardcover; previously released as a softcover, it features comics, history and architectural illustrations of Denver

You can pledge to get one or all the books on the list, either in digital or rpint. The Kickstarter, which has already reached its goal, ends June 11.

2. To Read: Greg Smallwood’s thread on his design influences

Greg Smallwood is a prolific cover artist in addition to his interior work on comics like Moon Knight and The Human Target, his current series with writer Tom King. We were talking about this amongst ourselves earlier, about the design work he puts into each issue and how it may be some of his best work yet. Given how adept he appears, it was interesting to me to see him say “I handle a lot of design for the HT series but I had no formal training so everything I’ve learned is thanks to the amazing resources that are available out there,” on Twitter.

So, for those who are interested in design and process, especially when it comes to comics, I’d recommend this thread from Smallwood on the resources he’s been using for the book.

Head over to Twitter to see the whole thing. The Human Target is on hiatus right now and will return for its second half in the fall, but DC has announced a Tales from the Human Target one-shot and a collection of the first six issues, for August and September, respectively.

3. To Watch: Uncle Jerk on YouTube

Finally this week, Shane Bailey introduced me to Uncle Jerk’s Comic Book Corner on YouTube, and, despite what you might think, the host is anything but a jerk. He does some wonderful deep dives on different comic series, from Garth Ennis’ Punisher to Scud the Disposable Assassin, which received a two-parter in his most recent video. Check it out; there’s a lot to find there. Here’s part one of Scud:

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