Monday, April 25, 2011
Chris Named Publicity Director of Hermes Press
Hermes Press has just named Graphic NYC’s writer and co-editor Christopher Irving as Publicity Director of the company. Hermes Press publishes a growing line of original graphic novels that start with Lions, Tigers, and Bears, as well as archive-quality reprints of classic comic strips The Phantom, Buck Rogers, Brenda Starr, and Dark Shadows.
“What can I say? I’m thrilled to pitch in and help Dan Herman and Louise Geer with their ever-growing company,” Irving says. “I’ve known them for a few years and have seen Hermes Press grow up very quickly, and that’s not even counting what they have planned for the next year. The way things are going, they’ve become just as much a pop culture house as a publishing one.”
Irving entered the comic book field in 1999 as a features writer for Comics Buyer’s Guide, before becoming a contributor and Associate Editor of the multiple Eisner Award-winning Comic Book Artist magazine in 2002. After writing two books on comic book history and journalism, Irving and photographer Seth Kushner started work on the Graphic NYC online project in 2008, which will see print as Leaping Tall Buildings in Spring 2012 from powerHouse Books. 2010 saw the publication of Graphic NYC Presents Dean Haspiel: The Early Years from IDW Publishing, while 2011 sees the publication of his history of comic book based movie serials, tentatively titled The First Movie Superheroes, by Hermes Press. Irving will continue to juggle GNYC with his Hermes Press responsibilities.
The new blog, hermespress.tumblr.com, launched recently in a beta form, and officially launches today. It will be Hermes Press’ hub for information on upcoming and current releases, as well as Irving’s writing on the pop culture celebrated at Hermes. It is part of a new initiative by Hermes to create a greater online and digital presence.
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Seth Kushner's CulturePOP Photocomix book at MoCCA Fest
GNYC's own Seth Kushner has self-published a book of his CulturePOP Photocomix webcomic seen on ACT-I-VATE.com. They are a limited edition of 400, 36-pages, and are full-color. The dimensions are 5.5" x 8.5" horizontal format. The book collects four remastered versions of his profiles on; Sucklord, Baron Ambrosia, Lisa Natoli and Carlos 'Mare 139' Rodriguez.
Seth will debut it at the MoCCA Arts Fest this coming weekend on April 9 & 10, at the Lexington Avenue Armory. He'll be at the ACT-I-VATE/Undie Press table I1, on the south side of the Armory (the side with EXIT) sitting with Tim Hall, Chris Miskiewicz and Kevin Kobasic.
Please stop by if you plan to be at the show.
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Stan "The Man" Lee: 'Nuff Said!
Pictures: Seth Kushner
“I was ready to be a media star when I was twelve years old,” Stan Lee says with his usual gusto. “It just took all this time for the world to discover me.”
A month before, Stan Lee was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, a first for a comic book personality. It was just the tip of the iceberg for the personification of the footloose and fancy free comic book creator and all-around media personality, a comics pioneer who put a new spin on the threadbare and static genre of the superhero and made comic books—dare we say it—hip and cool?
But Stan Lee, born Stanley Lieber, is more than just a comic book visionary, the first self-made man of the comic book industry whose chutzpah sometimes eclipses his earlier struggles in the unforgiving comics world of the 1950s, then an industry hanging on by its fingernails as distributors went belly-up and crusading Senators sparked company-wide censorship.
Now in his late 80s, Stan exists as a cross between an ambassador for the medium, his distinctive moustache and glasses spotted in Marvel Comics superhero movies everywhere. It’s not just that Stan may have helped save the struggling comic book in the 1960s, with the Marvel line of troubled superheroes forged by him and a group of artists that earned him a star—it’s his clever use of cementing himself as a personality that has kept him on the collective radar. In an industry overpopulated by introverts, of his contemporaries who were often ashamed to work in comic books, Stan’s rise to a fame borne out of kitsch and hero worship is to be just as admired as his distinctive and catchphrases.
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