Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Cousin Corinne's Reminder: A Graphically Speaking Review
Literature, it turns out, is a genre. Like, say, narratives working within the horror genre, narratives working within the literary genre share themes, moods, character types, and other classifying structures readers expect to call, “literary.” So, modes of storytelling such as prose, poetry or comics, are just that: modes of storytelling. While nothing new, this proper distinction between form and genre is important as regards comics, where those readers who avoid reading comics often conflate the genres that comics are most famous for telling (superheroes, and children’s adventure stories) with the form by which they are told (sequential art). This is all to say that comics (or “comix”—spelled such so as to avoid associations with stand-up comedians, presumably)—this is all to say that comix are invading your literary journals.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Jim Lee: 4 Color Portrait
Picture: Seth Kushner
Words: Christopher Irving
There's something about Jim Lee's art that doesn't get old. His marrying of manga influences with tried-and-true American ones still looks bad-ass, turning thirty-somethings weaned on his X-Men work back to being the fanboys who first read his comics in the early '90s.
The past decade has seen Lee fulfill every wanna-be cartoonists wanna-be dreams: chances to draw Batman, design a DC Comics video game, and become co-publisher of DC Comics.
And that's a not a bad thing.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Mike Mignola: 4 Color Portrait
Picture: Seth Kushner
Words: Christopher Irving
This is the first of Seth's experimental photo-collage series of artist portraits, the 4 Color Portrait, marrying the creators with their projects.
Okay, follow this: curmudgeony guy with horns, a gun belt, trenchcoat, who just happens to be the Beast of the Apocalypse and fights ghosts, Lovecraftian monsters, demons, fairies.
Oh, and his best pals are a girl who goes up in flame, a fishman, and a dude made out of gas.
Somehow, Hellboy became a hit. Between Mike Mignola's distinctive minimalist art (which looks easy, but is deceptively complicated. Have you ever tried to copy it?), and the quirky and distinctive writing, it's easy to see how. Hellboy is our favorite Hammer horror films, late Saturday night b-movies, Jack Kirby monster comics, old world fairy tales, and creepiest campfire ghost stories, all rolled into one.
So what's not to love about Hellboy or his inimitable creator, Mike Mignola?
Not a damn thing.
Monday, May 17, 2010
The Hypothetical Neil Gaiman book cover
Picture: Seth KushnerDesigner extraordinaire Charlie Orr's Hypothetical Library has been a project of interest to us here at GNYC since it's inception earlier this year.
"The idea behind the blog was to create an opportunity for a part-time book cover designer to collaborate, with a wide range of amazing, contemporary writers on a project outside of their normal body of work," Orr says in his blog's intro. "The catch is that these books will never really exist." He elaborates - "I ask each writer to provide flap copy for a book that they haven’t, won’t, but in theory could, write, and then I design a cover for it."
This week's installment show readers the hypothetical cover for author Neil Gaiman's If You Read This Book The World Will End. Teaming up with Orr is GNYC's own Seth Kushner, who photographed the constructed book seen in the photo above.
This week's entry has taken several months of planning, as Orr's concept required the involvement of: a sculptor/metal artist, digital print house, a locksmith, an audio engineer, a voice artist, and an html 5 programmer, (for an audio book, and an e-book cover which will be posted later in the week) a photographer, and Gaiman himself.
Other authors who's recently received the hypothetical treatment from Orr include; Colum McCann, David Lehman, Lydia Millet and Kierán Suckling, Thomas Kelly, Brian Evenson,and cartoonists Gabrielle Bell and Nick Abadzis.
Check out the Hypothetical Library every week for more creative book covers to book which will never exist. Though, I hear Mr. Gaiman mentioned that he may want to actually write If You Read This Book The World Will End someday.
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Twisted Savage Dragon Funnies!
Then, every month Fiffe edits a different alt comic creator contributing their vision of the Savage Dragon. Future contributors include: Andrew Dimitt, Kiel West, Ulises Farinas, Chris Sanderson, Conoro Hughes, Kat Roberts, Hyendo Park, Pedro Camargo, Jason Thibodeaux, and others.
For the Love of Comics #12: Josh Bernstein's Royal Flush
Words: Seth Kushner
Once upon a time, magazines were filled with illustrations by the top artists of the time. Sure, today’s mags still use the occasional illustration and the the New Yorker features weekly illustrated covers by the likes of Dan Clowes, Adrian Tomine and others, but the days of Norman Rockwell’s Saturday Evening Post Covers are long gone. Photography has long since replaced traditional magazine illustration, but not so at Royal Flush magazine. I recently spoke with Royal Flush Publisher/Editor Josh Bernstein.
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Graphically Speaking: Art in Time
The best part about researching comics history is finding the weird and esoteric shit.
Dan Nadel does that in Art in Time: Unknown Comic Book Adventures, 1940-1980
, the follow-up to his Art Out of Time
, where he presents the works of artists either unknown or through genres not known of them. So, in short, he either posits artists you may never have heard of, or he shows artists you have heard of working in genres they might have flirted with.
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Jaime Hernandez: Love, Rockets, Punk Rock, and Comix
Words: Christopher Irving . Pictures: Seth Kushner
“I set my own rules and knock down old ones. Maybe I should work more on knocking down my oldones,” Jaime Hernandez says with a shrug. Says with a cool wisdom, as if his life’s work isn’t really that big a deal.
At least not to him.
“That’s how Love and Rockets started: we were just cocky and didn’t know we could fail. We went ahead and published the first one ourselves and didn’t care what the outcome would be, we just wanted to be printed. Hopefully we could sell it and make money, but there was no one to tell us not to. That was the punk part of it. The more we got good response, the more we kept doing it.”
Sunday, May 9, 2010
The Truth Behind Dino
Not absolutely absolute final cover image
Design by Seth Kushner
Words: Christopher Irving
Four years ago, I took my first trek to New York, where I interviewed Dean "Dino" Haspiel for a book that didn't happen.
Now, without the constraints of censorship, and the creative freedom and space to do it right, we're releasing Graphic NYC Presents: Dean Haspiel the Early Years this October through Desperado Publishing and IDW! This 240 page book combines reprints of Dean's early work with an exclusive retrospective essay on Dean's life and career, done in the trademark GNYC style.
The two elements are woven together to create a linear and fluid read designed by Rich Fowlkes, smattered with photos by Seth and guest photographer Ryan Roman. Not only will you get the scoop on Dean's life and career, but we also reprint several of Dean's autobio and Billy Dogma work!
And there just might be an unpublished treat or two included...
We'll give updates and a sneak peek (or two) the closer we come to the release date.
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Graphically Speaking: Wilson
Words: Seth Kushner
Wilson is an asshole. It’s a fact that is clearly evident on the first page of Dan Clowes’ new book, when the title character asks a woman passerby on how life is treating her. She begins to tell him, complaining of her computer problems in detail, but Wilson cuts her off –
“For the love of Christ, don’t you ever shut up?”
Monday, May 3, 2010
Gene Colan: On Vampires, Shadows, and the Industry
Words: Christopher Irving . Pictures: Seth Kushner
Gene Colan has a secret: despite being a groundbreaking horror artist, with almost living shadows seeping through his work, despite defining the iconic comic book Dracula, despite injecting Gothic horror onto the comics page –
Gene Colan was scared of monster movies and the dark as a kid.
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