Tag: Jeff Smith

Mariko Tamaki, Jeff Smith, Elsa Charretier, ‘Monica’ + more win at the 2024 Ringo Awards

The winners were announced during a ceremony held at the Baltimore Comic-Con this weekend.

This year’s Ringo Awards winners were announced last night during a ceremony at the Baltimore Comic-Con.

This marks the eighth year for the awards program named for artist Mike Wieringo, the artist of Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, Tellos and more who died in 2007.

Besides the Ringo Awards themselves, other awards were given out during the ceremony, including three from the Hero Initiative. Marvel Executive Editor Tom Brevoort received The Dick Giordano Humanitarian of the Year Award, while artist Klaus Janson received the Hero Initiative Lifetime Achievement Award.

Artist Tom Raney received the first Brogan Fidelity Award. According to the Hero Initiative,”this new award honors creators who have demonstrated an exceptional commitment to the comic book medium and its fans, embodying the spirit of perseverance, passion and excellence, in the spirit of the late Dr. Kevin Brogan.”

 The Mike Wieringo Comic Book Industry Spirit Award went to the comic The Hunger and the Dusk, by G. Willow Wilson and Chris Wildgoose, and published by IDW. This award is selected every year by perennial jurors Todd Dezago, Craig Rousseau, Mark Waid and Matt Wieringo, Mike’s brother.

Congratulations to this year’s winners:

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Smash Pages Q&A | Iron Circus invites you to the ‘Perfect Crime Party’

Hear confessions from 13 contributors to the publisher’s latest crime-themed anthology, which is currently being crowdfunded through BackerKit.

Since 2007, C. Spike Trotman’s Iron Circus Comics has been crowdfunding and publishing themed anthologies, many under the guidance of editor Kel McDonald. McDonald’s latest project, Perfect Crime Party, featured a fun prompt for creators — What’s the perfect crime, and what do you think you could get away with?

The result is an anthology packed with talent, containing 25 stories and more than 300 pages. The stories run the gauntlet of genre and settings, from more traditional crime stories to tales of the supernatural to one set in Ancient Greece to one involving Santa Claus. Several of the creators involved agreed to answer a few questions about their stories, and maybe even incriminate themselves in the process.

I’ve included the complete list of contributors at the end, but for today’s rapid-fire round-robin, we have answers/confessions from Amy Chase, Bevan Thomas, Chuck Harp, David Brothers, Illuminated, John Konrad, Kit Mills, Mariah McCourt, Nick Mamatas, Reetta Linjama, Rodrigo Vargas, Tayson Martindale and Van Jensen. You can check out a few sample pages, as well as Jeff Smith’s cover.

So without further ado, let’s plan a crime.

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Jeff Smith will collect his college paper comic strip ‘Thorn’

A Kickstarter campaign for the strips that serve as the precursor to ‘Bone’ will launch in October.

Prior to the release of Bone as a comic book — and it eventually becoming a worldwide phenomenon — Jeff Smith had a college comic strip called Thorn. It introduced several of the characters who would eventually evolve into the ones we know and love in the Bone series, including Thorn and Phone Bone. In fact, Smith would reference many of those early strips directly in the early issues of Bone.

Thorn has never been collected in its entirety, but that will change when Cartoon Books launches a Kickstarter later this year for Thorn: The Complete College Strips.

“Talking Jeff into this book wasn’t easy, but fans have been asking us for years,” said Cartoon Books Publisher Vijaya Iyer, Smith’s partner.

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The Reuben Award: NCS announces nominees for Cartoonist of the Year

The winner will be revealed in September.

The National Cartoonist Society has announced the nominees for the 2022 Cartoonist of the Year, commonly known as The Reuben Award. These follow the NCS divisional award nominees, which were announced in early June.

This year’s list includes several cartoonists who have been previously nominated, and one notable new addition for comic book fans:

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Quick Hits | Hotel strike impacts Comic-Con events

Plus: Rick Veitch, Noah Van Sciver, Jeff Smith, Coagula and the infamous Hall H line!

Conventions | Both Voice of San Diego and ICv2 report on the workers’ strike at the Hilton Bayfront Hotel in San Diego, which is adjacent to the convention center where Comic-Con International is held every year and where many CCI events and panels are held. According to Voice of San Diego, workers and management have been negotiating for months, but could not come to an agreement.

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Slugfest | The Massive-verse expands with ‘The Dead Lucky’

A round-up of comics publishing news from Image, Marvel, Top Shelf and more.

Slugfest is a roundup of cool announcements about projects coming to a shelf near you from comics creators, publishers and more. Hit the links for more information.

The Massive-verse — that’s the collection of titles headed up by Kyle Higgins that include Radiant Black, Inferno Girl Red and Rogue Sun, among others — will expand in August with a new title, The Dead Lucky.

Melissa Flores, French Carlomagno, Mattia Iacono and Becca Carey are the creative team for the new title.

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CXC plans some in-person events for 2021, announces the Tom Spurgeon Award

This year’s Cartoon Crossroads Columbus will be a hybrid event, with some events hosted online and some in-person.

Cartoon Crossroads Columbus has announced that this year they plan to return to hosting live crowds, as this year’s event, scheduled for Sept. 30-Oct. 3, will feature both in-person and online events.

Like most comics festivals and conventions, CXC went all virtual for its 2020 show due to the COVID-19 pandemic. CXC said some events this year will be online only, including the CXC Expo, and several of the in-person events will be broadcast online. They plan to follow the city of Columbus’s health guidelines and the recommendations of its programming sponsors when determining any necessary precautions. More details on programming and locations are forthcoming.

“Every Fall the art community in Columbus comes together for CXC, and once again we’ve put together an incredible guest list of creators,” said Bone creator Jeff Smith, CXC’s co-founder and artistic director. “Whether in person or online, we have events and activities planned for anyone who likes cartoons. Which is everyone!”

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Comics Lowdown | Zunar is in trouble again

Plus: A new graphic novel looks at Japanese Americans who resisted internment.

Zunar’s cartoon critiquing the minster of the state of Kedah, who canceled the festival of Thaipusam. The cleaver says “No Thaipusam” and the caption on the right reads “Kedah’s inhabitants lived in peace until he came.”

The Malaysian political cartoonist Zunar is in trouble with the law again. Police in the state of Kedah have summoned him to appear before them on May 7 (the original date, given in the linked article, was May 2 but it was rescheduled) for violating the country’s sedition law, a much-criticized relic of its colonial past, with a cartoon criticizing the Kedah state minister’s decision to cancel the traditional Tamil Hindu festival of Thaipusam.

Zunar got into lots of trouble during the tenure of Prime Minister Najib Razak, whom he mocked endlessly for his corruption; Razak was not amused and his government repeatedly raided Zunar’s studio, confiscated his books, banned him from traveling, and brought charges against him that could have led to lengthy prison sentences. The pressure eased once Najib was voted out.

Ironically, Zunar’s latest skirmish coincides with World Press Freedom Day, which was Monday; several national and international groups have criticized the Malaysian government for its repressive stance.

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Jeff Smith returns with a crowdfunding campaign for ‘Tuki: Fight for Fire’

The creator of ‘Bone’ and ‘RASL’ is crowdfunding two volumes of his latest project.

Jeff Smith, creator of one of the best-ever kid’s comics of all time, Bone, and the science fiction romp RASL, is crowdfunding his next project — the resurrected Tuki: Fight for Fire.

As longtime fans of the creator know, Tuki started life as a webcomic back in 2013. It grew from Smith’s love of fantastic heroes of pulp fiction, mythical lost realms and human evolution.

“I’ve always been fascinated by evolution,” Smith writes on the project’s Kickstarter page. “I visited Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, the famous archaeological site occupied by many early humans over time. Standing down amongst the rocks and dirt, looking up at the swaying trees above the gorge, I had a vision of multiple human species walking around and interacting with each other. It was almost like seeing an echo of something that really happened.”

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What Are You Reading? | Red Goblins, celestial avatars, Klan smashers and Texas blood

See what the Smash Pages crew has checked off their ‘to read’ list lately.

Like I said last week, summertime is the right time for crossovers and comics. This week brought us a taste of Empyre, Marvel’s big crossover event featuring the Avengers, The Fantastic Four, the Kree, the Skrulls, the Blue Area of the Moon, the Swordsman and all that crazy cosmic space action Marvel fans have come to know and love. You can see Carla’s thoughts on it below, along with a list of comics Shane has been buying for his kids and Tom’s thoughts on two politically minded books from DC.

You can tell us what you’ve been reading in the comments below or on social media.

Shane Bailey

Lately my kids have started wanting to read more comics. My little one has always been into them, but now the older kids are as well. So I let them pick out their own comics to read on comiXology Unlimited.

My 9 yr old son picked Amazing Spider-Man: The Red Goblin by Dan Slott and Stuart Immonen, and he loves it. He wouldn’t stop commenting on how crazy scary Norman Osborn is, how it was gross when Carnage bit the head off a rat, and during one issue when the Goblin had a captive and was interrogating him, he wondered aloud over who it was, making guesses and gasping when he found out who it was and that Norman knew who Spider-Man was. It’s great seeing him get excited at things that are old hat for me. It made me appreciate those moments more.

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CBLDF announces the Rory D. Root Comics Ambassador Grant

New program offers grant money to retailers to encourage ‘community building through the creation of events promoting comics as a valuable form of free expression.’

The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund has announced a new grant program aimed at “encouraging community building through the creation of events promoting comics as a valuable form of free expression.”

The Rory D. Root Comics Ambassador Grant is named for the beloved owner of the Berkeley, California-based comic shop Comic Relief, who passed away in 2008.

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Support free speech with these ‘retro’ CBLDF designs

Get shirts, hats, phone cases and more featuring artwork by Frank Miller, Jeff Smith, Mike Allred, James Kochalka, Jim Lee and many others.

Over the years comic creators have donated artwork to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund for use on membership cards, T-shirts and other premiums. Many of them quickly sold out and haven’t been available for a while — until now. CBLDF has launched a Threadless shop, offering shirts and other items featuring some of their “retro” artwork.

For instance, you can get a shirt featuring Mike Allred’s Lady Liberty drawing, which graced the cover of a CBLDF anthology in 2014. There’s also Frank Miller’s Defiant Fist, which would look great on a throw pillow. Or this patriotic Bone artwork, if you’re looking for something for the kids. Additional artwork by Cliff Chiang, Terry Moore, Jim Lee, Judd Winick and more can also be found on the site.

Proceeds benefit the fund, so head on over to Threadless to check them out.