The Big Three Return

There has been much speculation over the past year or so on the death of self-publishing, particularly for the comic book serial. Not surprising, as many self-publishers have either gone to established publishers (e.g. Linda Medley), gone to the Web (e.g. Phil & Kaja Foglio), or essentially given up (e.g. Mark Oakley).

I think that 2008 will be a make-or-break year. Three of the biggest names in self publishing have new projects starting up: Jeff Smith with RASL, Terry Moore with Echo, and the granddaddy of all Dave Sim with Glamourpuss.

The success of these three enterprises will tell us a lot about the viability of self-publishing comic books in the current era. Will their fans take to their new projects? And if so, will they buy the periodicals or wait for the inevitable trades? (Sim claims that the collection of Glamourpuss most likely won't come out until 2012 or thereabouts.)

However it goes, 2008 should make for an interesting year in comics publishing.

New Library Comics: Week of January 7, 2008

Here's a list of the comics we added to our library collection last week:


Abel, Duane M. Zed : backstage pass : a cartoon collection / Carrollton, Ohio : Published by Corkey Comics, c2005.

Brubaker, Ed. Point blank / La Jolla, CA : WildStorm Productions, c2003.

Brubaker, Ed. Sleeper / La Jolla, CA : WildStorm Productions, 2004-2005. vols. 1-4

Chippendale, Brian. Battlestack galacti-crap foods. [Sunderland, England] : Reg Vardy Gallery; School of Art, Design, Media and Culture; University of Sundrland, 2005

Eisner, Will. Fagin the Jew / New York : Doubleday, 2003.

Fortier, Ron. The Boston Bombers special / Plymouth, Mich. : Caliber Comics, 1997.

Gaiman, Neil. The absolute sandman / New York : DC Comics, 2006- vol. 2

Graphic witness : four wordless novels by Frans Masereel, Lynd Ward, Giacomo Patri and Laurence Hyde / Richmond Hill, Ont. : Firefly Books, 2007.

Lewis, Jon. Ghost ship / San Jose, CA : Slave Labor Graphics, c1996- no. 1

McInturff, Don. The mighty offenders / [Richmond, Va.] : Young American Comics, 2004-

Owen, James A. Starchild / Mesa, AZ : Taliesin Press, c1993- no. 12

Stoops, Tracy. Dark fury / Plymouth, Mich. : Webb Comics, [2002]- no. 1

Styrk, John. Boomtown scabs / [Belleville, Mich.?] : Boomtown Press, 2005- nos. 1-2

Tagami, Yoshihisa. Grey / San Francisco, CA : Viz Comics, c1988- no. 1

Takemiya, Keiko, 1950- To terra -- / New York : Vertical, 2007- vol. 3

Van Lente, Fred. Cowboys & aliens / Los Angeles, Calif. : Platinum Studios, 2006.


This listing is now available as an RSS Feed!

Monkey Covers

Sunday is Monkey Covers day here at YACB. Because there's nothing better than a comic with a monkey on the cover.

Today's cover hails from 2006: Disney's Comic Zone vol. 2, featuring Art Balthazar's Gorilla Gorilla.

(Standard disclaimer about double-names gorillas not really being monkeys applies.)

Image courtesy of the GCD. Click on the image for a larger version.

Favorites of 2007 - Comic Books

Last Tuesday I presented my picks for my favorite graphic novels and manga of the past year. Today I complete my wrap-up with my favorite "pop" comics from 2007:

Superhero Comics


All Star Superman by Grant Morrison & Frank Quitely

If the twelve-year-old Dave from 1982 to come forward in time twenty-five years, this is the sort of comic that he would be delighted to see. As such, All Star Superman tickles not just my inner twelve-year-old super-hero itch, it also appeals to thirty-seven-year-old Dave's desire for intelligent, well-crafted stories with gorgeous artwork. It is also the work of a maturing Grant Morrison, trading the surface flash of his JLA and the showy weirdness of Doom Patrol for something with more subtlety.




Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane by Sean McKeever, Takeshi Miyazawa & David Hahn

Where A-S Superman strikes at my inner-twelve-year-old boy, Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane appeals to my inner twelve-year-old girl. I don't think there was a single issue of this that when I finished I didn't say to myself: "That was a darn fine comic." These out-of-continuity tales of MJ & Peter in high school had just the right amount of angst, sentimentality and humor. The title was canceled with McKeever's departure for a DC exclusive (where so far his talents are being wasted on drudge like Countdown). Although Terry Moore has been tapped to restart the title sometime in 2008, it remains to be seen if this will come to pass since apparently Spider-Man no longer loves Mary Jane in the Marvel Universe.




Marvel Adventures The Avengers by Jeff Parker, Juan Santacruz, Raul Fernandez, & Leonard Kirk

Issue #12, featuring "Ego, the Loving Planet," was quite simply the most fun super-hero comic of the past five years (at least). Add in issue #9's story featuring the Avengers transformed into M.O.D.O.C.s with one of the most brilliant covers of the year, the Giant Size Special featuring Parker & Kirk's Agents of Atlas, and several other enjoyable done-in-one stories. Would that all of Marvel's super-hero comics be this enjoyable to read!




Love & Capes by Thomas F. Zahler

Super-heroes as romantic comedy have been done before, but Zahler's take in Love & Capes is so spot-on that it rises to the top of the pack. All the main characters are intelligent and nice with a sense of humor about themselves that they're easy to like and root for. Zahler's art is done in an attractive animated style in an eight-panel grid, and he packs in a lot of story and characterization into each issue.




The Spirit by Darwyn Cooke

Cooke successfully updates Eisner's The Spirit for the modern age while still remaining a classic feel as The Spirit. Plus, his art is very pretty to look at.




Shazam!: The Monster Society of Evil by Jeff Smith

Smith's Shazam! miniseries was a comic not without its faults, but it makes it onto this list on the pure power of Smith's version of Mary Marvel. Every time Mary appeared on panel, the comic raised its normal entertaining level up to pure delight.



Other Comics


The Nightly News by Jonathan Hickman

The most graphically-innovative comic of the year, and also the angriest. Hickman's The Nightly News requires a shift in the way that one normally perceives and reads comics, requiring that the reader enter a level of engagement with the material that reject a surface experience. The comic also frequently lies to its readership in its tale of secret societies, violence and corporate media, which again forces a closer reading of the material. It remains to be seen if Hickman's approach will work with other material, but for this subject matter it's near perfect.




Glister by Andi Watson

An all-ages title that works on multiple levels, Watson's Glister is an engaging story of a precocious girl who deals matter-of-factly with the strange happenings in her life, including literal ghost writers, wandering houses, and missions to faerie. It reminds one of cherished novels of childhood without seeming derivative.




Honorary mention: not at the top of the list, but still greatly enjoyed this past year were Fables and Jack of Fables; DMZ; Y, the Last Man; Captain America; Green Lantern's "Sinestro Wars"; Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel: After the Fall.

Live Comedy Show! (No dead guys)

Next month, February '08, I'll be making an increasingly rare stage appearance at San Francisco's legendary Purple Onion. I'm not doing the full-on "Bizarro Baloney Show" as I did last time I was there in '06, this will be more of a regular stand-up comedy show.

A brilliant comedian named Johnny Steele will open with a 30-minute set that will hurt you. This guy is drastically, fall-down, pee yourself, sore-stomach-muscles-the-next-day, pray-for- the-apocalypse funny – just the sort you would never want to follow onstage. Then I follow him with an hour set of my own.

My built-in excuse for not being as funny as Johnny, though, is that I'm not really a stand-up comic. I'm a cartoonist who occasionally does stand-up. If Johnny ever wants to challenge me to a drawing contest, then we'll see who the lame-ass pretender is. But on February 22nd, I'll be the lame-ass pretender, so come watch if you're in the area. It's a small venue and will sell out, so get your tix now, mon ami.

http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/26425

Favorites of 2007 - Graphic Novels & Manga

Let me state up front that this is not necessarily a 'Best of' list; I didn't have time to read everything and I'm sure that there's some good stuff that came out in 2007 that I just haven't gotten to yet.

That said, here are my picks for my favorite graphic novels and manga from 2007 (I'll follow later in the week with a post on favorite comic books):


Original Graphic Novels:


The Arrival by Shaun Tan

The Arrival actually came out in 2006 in Tan's native Australia, but it didn't really hit U.S. shores until this year so I feel justified in including it. Tan, generally a creator of picture books for children, has created a wordless graphic novel that seeks to give the immigrant experience to the reader. Our nameless immigrant travels across the ocean to a strange land; at first we think we're in a early 20th century on Earth milieu, but soon we discover that we're in a world that clashes with the bizarre and wouldn't be out of place in a Jim Woodring comic. The sights are odd, the flora and fauna are odd, the customs are odd, and we don't understand the language. I don't know if it's possible for a comic to be a truly immersive experience, but The Arrival comes about as close as possible.



Bookhunter by Jason Shiga

Set in the early 1970s, Shiga's Bookhunter takes the police procedural and sets in the world of a major city public library. For anyone who enjoys a good comic this is entertaining; for a library geek like myself, it's paper-and-ink crack. Bookhunter goes a long way in solidifying Shiga's reputation as an unheralded comics genius. (You can read Bookhunter online in its entirety here, though I strongly suggest that this is a comic best experienced in print.)



Zombies Calling by Faith Erin Hicks

You might expect that at this point there wouldn't be anything new in zombie comics. I would have thought such an opinion to be correct, had it not been for Faith Erin Hicks' debut graphic novel Zombies Calling. Three university students find to their surprise that their campus is being overrun by zombies, and they use their knowledge gleaned from watching zombie movies to survive. It has just the right mixture of humor, satire, action, drama and pathos; and Hicks's agreeable art (reminiscent of fellow Canadian Brian Lee O'Malley) is perfect for this kind of story.


Manga


Yotsuba&! by Kiyohiko Azuma

2007 saw the resumption of English publication of one of my all-time favorite manga series, Kiyohiko Azuma's delightful slice-of-life comedy Yotsuba&! No other comic being published today makes me laugh so much, and it's good clean fun at that. Charming, sweet and fun, it serves as a perfect example of how to make good comics.



Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms by Fumiyo Kouno

A collection of two (or three, depending on how you count them) stories dealing with the long-term effects of the atomic bomb on the people of Hiroshima, Kouno's Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms pulls off the tough task of being an 'important' work without seeming like it's trying to hard. Despite the sometimes depressing themes, this is not a depressing book. We see the bomb as a ghost hanging over the people, but it is a ghost that they learn to deal with. Heartbreaking, yet strangely uplifting in the way the characters not just survive but also live. It has stayed with me ever since reading it.

2007 Fiesta Bowl

While there were a few good bowl games this year, there was nothing to compare to excitement that was the conclusion to last year's Fiesta Bowl. Now thanks to Hulu, we can all relive it.

We pick up late in the fourth quarter as Boise State, with an eight point lead, is trying to run the clock out against Oklahoma...