Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Jason Little: Improving Comic Art
Words: Christopher Irving . Pictures: Seth Kushner
Jason Little dresses in bright colors like a villain from the Adam West Batman TV show; sitting in the dining room of his Kensington, Brooklyn home that he shares with wife Myla Goldberg and their two daughters, he’s decked out in a bright red shirt with green pants and a dark green blazer. He has such a sedate, laid-back personality in contrast with his vivid fashion sense. Perhaps his style is the balance to his mellow demeanor, a way to act out his high energy through his wardrobe?
Monday, March 29, 2010
Speak Italian?
Neither do we, but that doesn't stop us from digging the piece on NYC comics in the magazine, D-La Repubblica delle donne (The weekend supplement of La Republica, Italy's #1 newspaper) that came out this past weekend.
The nine-page feature story by reporter Anna Lombardi feature Seth's portraits and is seen through the eyes of Graphic NYC. Slap it in Google Translate and enjoy Italy's perspective on New York's Finest Cartoonists.
See the more page layouts below.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Dino in Overflow
Brooklyn's fantastic free magazine, Overflow, just did a sweet piece on Dean Haspiel for the Spring '10 issue. It's written by Brooklyn rocker-cartoonist-writer Jef Burandt, and we hope to hear more from him.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
For the Love of Comics #9: Vital History
Words: Christopher Irving
It all started with The Great Comic Book Heroes. Written by writer and cartoonist Jules Feiffer, Heroes reprints several comic book stories from the 1940s, bookended by Jules’ recollections of being amongst the first generation to grow up with comic books.
My bookshelf has grown since my father gave me his old copy when I was still a kid. Now I have dozens of books on comics history, but only a handful that I consider vital. I’m also not counting any reprint books, or books that are comprised of Q and A interviews (I consider those “resources”, not books). This is, by no means definitive, and I’m always open to hearing about any I might have missed.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Graphically Speaking: Superfuckers
James Kochalka's Superfuckers is like Legion of Superheroes in that it stars a cavalcade of super powered teenagers who share a clubhouse. It presupposes, however, that those granted with these powers and have made it onto the team may just be assholes. Big assholes. Imagine the worst of your high school strutting about fighting and fucking each other for four years. Now imagine them as simply rendered cartoon characters with retina-burning spandex outfits. Not a very pretty sight is it?
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Knockin' One Back with Ben Templesmith
Words: Christopher Irving . Pictures: Seth Kushner
“I know movie directors, and how they have to go on movie junkets to go around and talk endlessly, answering the same questions,” Ben Templesmith says over a drink in a pub near Grand Central Station. “It drives most of them pretty mad. I feel a bit like ‘I just want to go home now, and finish the book.’”
Its been a very full week for the Australian-born artist: He’d just arrived in New York in time for a signing event for his new book Choker, with writer Ben McCool; luckily, the first issue came out after a scheduling nightmare, one he’s been asked about a bit too repeatedly at this point.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
For the Love of Comics #11: How Meeting Mark Hamill in a Comic Book Store Changed My Life
Words & Pictures: Seth Kushner
A cloaked figure entered the second floor, Times Square location of Midtown comics. He glided over to the front counter and waved his finger at the clerk.
"You will take me to the photographer now."
That’s what Mark Hamill did on the day I was to meet him.
Actually, I’ve stretched the truth a bit. The events actually played out the following way:
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Graphically Speaking: DC Chronicles Series
Words: Christopher Irving
But as the years passed by, either the demand for reprints went down, or the standards went up. Whatever the case, the only way you could get your mitts on any Golden or Silver Age stuff was, mostly, through the overly slick overly computer colored (at times, though it gradually got better) DC Archives. Fifty clams for 200+ pages of hardcover color, great for someone who can swing it, but not-so-great for anyone without the income to support it. Me, I want my old comics to feel like old comics: give me flat colors and newsprint any day.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
King Con Panel: Al Jaffee and Peter Kuper
Words: Christopher Irving . Pictures: Seth Kushner
CHRISTOPHER IRVING: In honor of Mr. Jaffee’s Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions, we’ve decided to name the panel Stupid Questions for Two Mad Men. Also, in honor to Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions, I will periodically ask Mr. Jaffee a stupid question and see just how snappy the answer is.
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Crime Scene: The Bronx Kill
Words by Miles Archer
With Sunday night’s Academy Awards still fresh in my mind, I just couldn’t resist beginning this piece on the latest Vertigo Crime graphic novel with an Oscar-themed analogy.
Peter Milligan is to comic book authors as Glenn Close is to feature film actors.
Both are highly-skilled artists, and both have won the respect of fans and peers the world over. Both have never shrunk away from addressing challenging and very adult themes in their work, and in taking on those challenges have raised the bar for their colleagues in the process. Both have been dizzyingly prolific, working across a vast breadth of genres and styles in their chosen milieu and producing consistently excellent work for nearly three decades.
Both are also very much underappreciated.
Miller Returns!
But you can bet your ass we'll both be there on release day.
Graphically Speaking: Eisner/Miller
Words: Christopher Irving
The battle every interviewer faces is in figuring out just how much of themselves to put in a piece: Do they voice their opinions openly to the reader and subject, or do they fade into the background with the final piece, eliminating or paving around their questions?
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Will Eisner: The Spirit of Comics
Words: Christopher Irving . Photo Illustration: Seth Kushner
When Will Eisner spoke on the comics page, it was in a language that was distinctly no one else’s but his own. What Jack Kirby did with visual power, Will did for the art form and language of comics, bringing them on par with film and pushing (sometimes gently, others with force) for the medium to go beyond it’s juvenile beginnings and grow into an actual –
Art.
Form.
Friday, March 5, 2010
Graphic NYC Honors Will Eisner Week
This week, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, The Will and Ann Eisner Family Foundation, and seven locations throughout the country celebrate the life and works of the late, great Will Eisner! This second annual celebration encourages a widespread knowledge of the graphic novel and comic book, in honor of the trailblazing Eisner. Graphic NYC celebrates the father of the graphic novel in our own inimitable way: with a profile on March 9, in honor of the father of the graphic novels' birthday.
To learn more about Will Eisner week, go to www.willeisnerweek.com, as well as www.willeisner.com.
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Graphically Speaking: Smile by Raina Telgemeier
Words: Jared Gniewek
Monday, March 1, 2010
Talking Comics with Scott McCloud
Words: Christopher Irving . Pictures: Seth Kushner
“One of the nicest things about predicting the future is you can always say ‘I will be right’,” Scott McCloud elaborates in a Brooklyn café in the present. “If it hasn’t come out the way you wanted it to, you can go ‘It’s still about the future.’ I’ve been wrong about a few things, and I may have been right about a couple of things. Right now, everybody is rewriting that history, that future history. I can just leave it alone. You can never go back and change these things.
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