Four Color Comics

The teaser trailer for Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer is out.

I firmly believe that this film is going to bomb. I’m not sure that those inside the insular comic book world realize just how stupid the concept of the Silver Surfer is. Try explaining it to your wife or girlfriend: he’s a silver man from space who rides a silver surfboard. They’ll laugh til they cry.

Best American Comics 2006

The not-so recently released Best American Comics 2006, guest edited this first year by the remarkable Harvey Pekar is a supremely enjoyable book & perfect gift for the casual comic lover in your life (serious comic lovers ought to already own a copy). This book is the very first in the series of annual editions edited by Anne Elizabeth Moore (& guest edited each year by someone super-duper famous in much the same way they put out the Best American Short Stories series).

While I have not, admittedly, actually read this entire book, I feel confident in reviewing and recommending it, because a) I read the first four comics in the book & b) know this is exactly the sort of gift I myself would love to receive and am a casual comic lover. Since this is a sort of gift-guide review of the book (think of it as a moderately interesting amazon.com review) I feel I’m allowed to make the call.

First off, the cover—In the butchered words of Benjamin Katz, (whose words are allowed to be butchered because he’s a fictional, squiggly character) “Once you see the cover, you know, you pretty well know what you’ve got”—it’s lovely. Blue-ly bound & a great spread of an enticing comic on the hardcover cover (no dust jacket). The very first comic in the book is “The Life of Onion Jack”, which I found to be one of the most enjoyable comic reads I’ve had in years. It’s hilarious and modest and fascinating. A refreshing look at the superhero genre, from the entirely opposite side.

The next two comics by Kim Deitch & Anders Nilsen are interesting but overblown, I think. They suffer from the insecurity inherent in the genre, feeling that they need to ‘say something deep’ to bring gravitas to the medium, rather than exploring a medium for what it is capable of and doing serious work within those areas. I do not, however, mean to dismiss the two comics entirely. “Ready To Die” and “The Gift” are well drawn, well written comics. They are interesting, insightful (particularly Deitch) and worthwhile, but the fact that they’re two of the first three collected in this ‘best of’ collection makes me wary of where the collection is going.

It’s not that I mean to say that the comic strip is incapable of dealing with serious topics, but I think these two strips suffer from wanting to “be” too much from the start. Instead of simply telling their story, I feel that both pieces begin wanting to prove something about the comic strip and what it’s capable of. They struggle to be a piece of comic art, before simply being a good comic. Nevertheless, the collection as a whole is definitely worth checking out.

American Elf

This is a bizarre collection of personal essays by James Kochalka written as an autobiography of a cartoonist who portrays himself as an elf. I have only just started the book, and it is bizarre and fascinating, but in just the first few pages I definitely get a sense that this (rather large) collection will be worth digging through.

The strips are somehow reminiscent of Jim’s Journal, in the daily minutia that they deal with, but the artwork is more serious and it’s not so entirely tongue in cheek. It’s hard to tell what Kochalka’s overall project really is here, or whether he has a big picture idea of this book at all (if not, I think that’s totally acceptable). The book also has an odd, lovely introduction written by Moby, for all you folks out there who just can’t take “Play” off your iPod yet.

Dr. Katz, Profession Therapist (DVD)

While not strictly a comic, this series is the most comic (in every sense) cartoon I’ve ever seen, and if you have a comic enthusiast in your life who doesn’t own (or even know) Dr. Katz, head to your local DVD dealer and see if they’ve got a copy. The first two seasons are now available on DVD (it’s not the sort of thing where you’ll miss out if you don’t see the pilot first) and the show is so unbelievable dry, hilarious, and squiggly, it’s hard to stand.

This show is almost perfect. It’s the tv show that I’ve waited my whole life to experience, but didn’t know I was waiting for. The regular cast performs the material so straight that the comedy is often tragic feeling, and Dr. Katz is a psychologist to the stars, so many of today’s (or last Thursday’s) biggest stars appear on the couch, including Jon Stewart, Ray Romano & Dave Chappelle (among many many others). This DVD will be the gift your comic enthusiast has always wanted, that they didn’t even realize they wanted.

• PULPHOPE
  Weblog for comics creator Paul Pope. I’m not sure how widespread his work is (since I don’t keep touch with comics mainstream), but I loved THB back in the mid-nineties.
  (tags: comics creators blogs)
• TIME Europe Magazine: Dec. 11, 2006 — Master of the Dark Arts - 1
  Review of new biography of Mervyn Peake, one of the untold masters of fantasy.
  (tags: fantasy books)

Your Mom’s Basement has published an hilarious parody.

YMB’s crack investigative team has unearthed the long rumored, but never confirmed, collaboration from 1983 between Marvel’s Chairman Emeritus Stan Lee and religious comic tract creator Jack Chick. Long out of print and now only infrequently stumbled upon in the odd truck stop bathroom (as all good religious witnessing tracts should be) YMB is now able to present to you “Galactus is Coming!”

My formative years as a boy were spent exposed to both the wonders of Marvel Comics and the strange terrible beauty of Chick tracts. (My grandmother bought these to have around the house to scare the grandchildren. They did the job.) This mash-up is spot on. I love it.

A silent film from 1911 in which Windsor McCay experiments with animation using characters from Little Nemo.

This stuff is great!

Here’s a clever idea, with an amusing implementation: take a month’s worth of comic strips (in this case, Mary Worth comic strips from the spring of 1998) and make a live-action movie based on them!

The results are hilarious. But I’ll be this could be a lot of fun with strips of all sorts.

The Sony Pictures Classics site has a set of stills from the upcoming film adaptation of Marjane Satrapi’s graphic novel Persepolis, the story of a young girl raised amdist the upheaval in Iran at the end of the 1970s.

I’m pleased to see that the film is animated. This suits the subject matter in a way, and allows for greater artistic freedom.

• The Education of Sky McCloud
  Scott McCloud is giving his children a non-traditional education. It seems to be yielding fantastic results.
  (tags: comics education)
• How “For Better or Worse” is Made
  A slideshow documenting the process for creating this comic strip.
  (tags: comicstrips craft)

• Comics Should Be Good! » Comics you should own - Doom Patrol #19-63
  I find Grant Morrison tedious, but I will still give this a try.
  (tags: comics recommended grantmorrison doompatrol)