The Comics Super Blog!
Christopher Sebela, Gavin Guidry, Marissa Louise and Micah Meyers seek to crowdfund a new historical occult adventure miniseries
Christopher Sebela (High Crimes, Evolution, Short Order Crooks) returns to Kickstarter for a very timely miniseries — one set in the 1920s — that pits Harry Houdini against Arthur Conan Doyle in a “battle of wills, words, faith, science, fisticuffs, handguns and magic.” And he’s joined by artist Gavin Guidry, colorist Marissa Louise and letterer Micah Meyers on The Death Defying, which is now up on Kickstarter.
Continue reading “Houdini and Doyle collide in ‘The Death Defying’”
Noting a commitment to ‘eradicating harassment,’ DC fires Berganza five years after the last publicly reported harassment incident.
Multiple outlets, including Buzzfeed, are reporting that DC Entertainment has fired Eddie Berganza, the longtime editor whose history of alleged sexual harassment was brought back into the limelight by the outlet on Friday.
The official statement from DC Entertainment reads:
Warner Bros and DC Entertainment have terminated the employment of DC Comics Group Editor Eddie Berganza. We are committed to eradicating harassment and ensuring that all employees, as well as our freelance community, are aware of our policies, are comfortable reporting any concerns and feel supported by our Company.
The founder of October’s ‘Inktober’ event discusses this year’s event, his latest chidlren’s books and his forthcoming graphic novel ‘SkyHeart.’
For some people, Jake Parker is the talented children’s book illustrator behind books like The Girl Who Wouldn’t Brush Her Hair, The Little Snowplow, and the just-released The 12 Sleighs of Christmas, written by Sherri Duskey Rinker. Some of us though remember Parker as one of the artists who first made a splash in the Flight anthologies and went onto write and draw the Missile Mouse series of graphic novels and The Antler Boy and Other Stories, which collected his short comics work.
He is also the man who started Inktober, which went from a personal challenge to himself that he posted online to something much bigger. This year Inktober was bigger than it’s ever been. In 2015, just under 330,000 posts on Instagram were tagged #inktober2015, and this year more than 3.2 million were tagged #inktober2017. This doesn’t mean that everything was without controversy. Parker responded to the question of whether it’s possible to participate in Inktober if one works digitally and Parker’s statement, which read in part “The spirit of Inktober is self improvement, and there’s no better way to master your craft than to draw without a safety net” was not liked by some people and so I asked him about Inktober and his new book.
Continue reading “Smash Pages Q&A: Jake Parker on Inktober and more”
DC brass protected Berganza at the expense of the women who worked there.
Right now, DC group editor Eddie Berganza is the comics industry’s poster child for sexual harassment, our own private Harvey Weinstein, thanks to a Buzzfeed article that brought the story of his misdeeds, and DC’s handling of them, to a wider audience.
People are calling for Berganza’s head on a platter, but they probably won’t get it. DC did in fact sanction him at the time: After he “forcibly kissed” a creator at a party during WonderCon in 2012, DC demoted him and banned him from conventions. When the incident hit the comics news, he sent an e-mail to his superiors apologizing and vowing it wouldn’t happen again. It’s conceivable that he actually did have some sort of epiphany and change his ways. He doesn’t seem to have repeated this behavior since, and it would certainly be difficult for DC to fire him now for something that was acknowledged and dealt with, however inadequately, seven years ago.
That doesn’t mean no one should be fired, though. What I find most alarming about this story is not Berganza’s antics per se but the way that the DC brass protected him at the expense of the women who worked there.
Continue reading “Missing the point: The Eddie Berganza story”
Awards, best of the year, comics journalism comics, and how the shift in retail channels is changing the industry.
The Best of the Year lists are starting to roll out. Katie Green’s Lighter Than My Shadow tops Amazon’s list, which also includes Jeff Lemire and Dean Ormston’s Black Hammer and Emil Ferris’s My Favorite Thing Is Monsters. That book shows up on Publisher’s Weekly’s list as well, but the similarities end there.
Continue reading “Comics Lowdown: My Favorite Thing Is Comics”
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.
Continue reading “Smash Pages Q&A: Joseph Remnant on ‘Cartoon Clouds’”
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.
Continue reading “‘Harvey Kurtzman’s Marley’s Ghost’ debuts for $2.99 on comiXology”
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.
Continue reading “Smash Pages Q&A: Nilah Magruder on ‘M.F.K.’”
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:
Continue reading “Millar, Coipel team for ‘The Magic Order’ comic from Netflix”
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:
Continue reading “Brian Michael Bendis signs exclusive deal with DC Comics”
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.
Continue reading “Ken Niimura’s ‘Umami’ debuts from Panel Syndicate”
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.
Continue reading “Smash Pages Q&A: Roger Langridge on ‘The Iron Duchess’”
