Thursday, April 29, 2010
Comics and Music: Looking at Two Cross Pollinations
Comics and music have many things in common. The use of rhythm and synchopation to drive the root of the piece. The use of texture and "color" to set mood. The use of lyricism in dialogue and song writing. Pacing, dynamics, positive and negative space. Subject matter. Crippling dependence on genre convention. Scapegoating for juvenile delinquency.
The way we listen to music has changed drastically in the last ten years. Music appreciation seems more akin to a traveling soundtrack than an end in itself. Tunes are rocked out to while commuting or working. It tends to be in the background for most of us. I grew up in a dark room with a pair of headphones. Hanging out listening to records is still done, but it seems to be the exception rather than the norm. I, along with many folks, used to enjoy cutting off the outside world and enjoying music for itself. Letting it comment on nothing other than whats fuming in the old brain pan.
Monday, April 26, 2010
It's All Gold: Jim Shooter's Return to Gold Key
Words: Christopher Irving . Pictures: Seth Kushner
Sitting across the table in a café near Grand Central Station is Jim Shooter, former Editor-in-Chief of Marvel Comics, founder of VALIANT and DEFIANT Comics, former boy wonder behind the Legion of Superheroes…He’s one of the most controversial figures in comics, a self-made man who grew up in Pittsburgh and struck out as a comic book writer while still in high school; he saved Marvel Comics in the late ‘70s and made them king of the comic book hill, generating a fair share of enemies through his allegedly tough editorial style.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Neil Gaiman Has a Call
Words: Christopher Irving . Picture: Seth Kushner
Neil Gaiman, holding a cell phone to his left ear in the fluorescently-lit halls of DC Comics, walks right past me as I emerge from a stairwell. Wearing his trademark black clothes, he trucks on down the hall, heading to wherever it is he has to be. It’s February 21, 2007 (my thirtieth birthday) and, for the second time in my life, I have a near-miss with saying “Howdy” to the most influential writer in my life.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Graphically Speaking: The Unclothed Man in the 35th Century AD
Words: Seth Kushner
I first saw Dash Shaw’s work when I flipped through his 2008 book, Bottomless Belly Button at that year’s MoCCA Fest, where it was one of the buzz-worthy new releases. Just browsing at it at the Fantagraphics table didn’t convince me to pick it up. Sure, its 700+ page length was certainly audacious for a debut book, but the art struck me as simplistic. All of the positive reviews got me to pick it up a few months later and then, while actually reading it did I get what all the fuss was about.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
The New Look of the CBDLF
The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund just launched their new website, designed by Charlie Orr and featuring photos by our own Seth Kushner.
"The concept Charlie and and CBDLF Executive Director Charles Brownstein had was to use my cartoonist portraits to give a face to the organization," Seth says. "The photo (with a quote from each artist), located in the upper right corner of the main page, changes when you refresh the page."
Currently, there are several cartoonist photos being rotated on the site, including Paul Pope, Dean Haspiel, Neil Gaiman, Molly Crabapple, Ben Templesmith and more. A roll-out of more images is planned in a few months.
Go to cbldf.org and help support a good cause.
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Graphically Speaking: The Flash #1
Words: Christopher Irving
A mile from my house growing up, there were three spinner racks I used to frequent for my comics on Wednesdays after school. The modest stack usually sat in the flat paper bag for the walk home, except for The Flash, which I read while walking home.
I’d loved the show, ill-fated to last just one season, and it turned me into a diehard Barry Allen fan, when Wally West was fighting to dig out of the whiny loser category. He did, with the help of William Messner-Loebs, but it was Mark Waid who made Wally my favorite Flash. I walked to the store then. When Mike Wieringo came on as penciler a few issues into Waid’s seminal run, I started running.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
MoCCA Fest 2010: The Art of the Superhero
MoCCA Fest '10: The Art of the Superhero: When Singular Vision Meets Popular Mythology
Panel moderated by Jeff Newelt
April 10, 2010
Graphic NYC has teamed up with our friends Charlito and Mister Phil at Indie Spinner Rack to present this historic panel discussion in both audio and written form. Click the arrow to listen and/or scroll down to read.
Transcribed by Christopher Irving . Pictures by Seth Kushner
NEWELT: Hi, I’m Jeff Newelt and I am the moderator of this here panel, and also the comics editor of SMITH Magazine, Heeb Magazine, Royal Flush Magazine and The Pekar Project. (Applause)
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
The Faces of MoCCA Fest 2010
Words & Pictures: Seth Kushner
I look forward to the MoCCA Festival every year. It always felt like the anti-Comic-Con to me. It was intimate and indie, never crass and commercial. MoCCA Fest has always been about the art and love of comics and a great place to discover new books. Last year presented a slight bump in the road with a change in venue from the classy Puck Building to 69th Regiment Armory. Gone were the white pillars and billowing drapes of the Puck Building and in their stead was a sweltering inferno of 90+ degree temperatures and a vast florescent lit space, which seemed reminiscent of church basement comic cons of yesteryear. Even with all that, I still had a blast. Even at it's worst, MoCCA Fest was still the best con around.
Monday, April 12, 2010
Seth Kushner's CulturePOP: "Photocomix Profiles of Real-Life Characters" launches today
New profiles every Monday, starting 4/12 on ACT-I-VATE.com
Seth Kushner loves comics and loves taking photos of interesting people. Over the past year, Seth began experimenting with combining the two passions, in the form of photocomix, AKA fumetti, first popularized in the U.S. with Harvey Kurtzman's Help and later in Robert Crumb's Weirdo. In those cases the photocomix were played for laughs, but Seth's doing something different: a fusion of photojournalism, personality profile, and comix. His first photocomix profile was of Harvey Pekar, for GRAPHIC NYC, the comics journalism site he co-edits, and the reception was so positive it set Seth to concocting an ongoing photocomix project.
"What Seth achieved with that Pekar interview-cum-comic was a triumph," said Jeff Newelt, Harvey's editor on The Pekar Project. "He took key moments of an interview, matched the words with photos he took, and sequentially arranged the results so as to read as smoothly as an American Splendor comic. I work with four artists who masterfully illustrate Pekar's words, and I was dumfounded by how much Seth's experiment succeeded."
"Seth Kushner's omniscient lens distills NYC's brave and bold into graphic time capsules," says Dean Haspiel, creator of Billy Dogma, & The Alcoholic.
With Culture POP, Seth's shines his flash on the lives of subjects including poet Caits Meissner, sousaphonist/producer Clark Gayton, singer/songwriter Elyssa Loveless, designer John D'Aponte, graffiti artist/sculptor Carlos "Mare 139" Rodriguez, yoga instructor Melisa Winitzsky, former US champion rhythmic gymnast Olga Karmansky, toy designer Super Sucklord, author Douglass Rushkoff, VJ Jonny Wilson of Eclectic Method, artist Jen Ferguson and more TBA.
CulturePOP is co-curated by Jeff Newelt, and edited by Dean Haspiel.
Seth Kushner — shoots portraits of celebrity-types for such publications The New York Times Magazine, Time, Newsweek, Businessweek, L'Uomo Vogue and others. Seth's first book, The Brooklynites, (with Anthony LaSala) was published by powerHouse Books in 2007 and was) considered ”a terrific coffee table photo/interview book” by The New York Times. Currently, he's co-editing the comics journalism site Graphic NYC (www.NYCGraphicNovelists.com) with Christopher Irving and working on his next book on comic book creators. Seth first comics work was Schmuck, with artist Kevin Colden and can be seen on ACT-I-VATE.com
Friday, April 9, 2010
Dean Haspiel's Street Code soundtrack
Gene Colan Injured, Artwork Missing
More importantly, though, our best thoughts and wishes go out to Mr. Colan.
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Graphically Speaking: Never Forget, Never Forgive
Words: Christopher Irving
I’m admittedly not a fan of manga; it’s not that I dislike the genre/approach and all of its trappings, it’s just that I never really had a chance to discover it. Considering how much is out there to read at a pretty cheap price, I realize that’s a lame-ass excuse.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Dick Giordano: It Had to Be For Love
Words: Christopher Irving
“From what I’ve learned, you get your best from people by letting them do what they did best,” Dick Giordano said in 1999. “Sometimes it’s just a matter of choosing this person and letting them alone. What basically sums up my editorial policy is to hire the right person for a romance book, and he’ll do a damned good romance book, or whatever the subject matter.”
Monday, April 5, 2010
Friday, April 2, 2010
Graphically Speaking: The Troll King
Writer: Jared Gniewek
Sometimes the act of reading a piece of fiction is a journey unto itself. Folks say that, and it brings to mind lame pictures of Kirk Cameron in a sweater looking laid back with a copy of The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe resting on his knee and Captain OG Readmore lurking over his shoulder like a stalker and some pastel drawings of dragons flying up and out of the pages. It's cliche' and I'm one of those guys that loves when he can coldly and unironicaly drop a cliche' and have it work. The Troll King takes you on a journey. Read, explore, fuck dragons...you won't be the same afterward. Reading is Awesome (right Kirk?).
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