* Career highlight: I interviewed Daniel Clowes about his new book/old New York Times strip Mister Wonderful for The Comics Journal.
I immediately thought, “I should try to think of who would be the ultimate, quintessential New York Times Magazine reader—a schlubby, middle-aged guy, the kind of guy I would see reading the New York Times on Sunday morning at a café in Oakland—and make him the hero of this romance.”
* I was quite excited to see that my friend and collaborator Matt Wiegle put up a post on his coloring process for Destructor today. Look at this thing, man.
* Mome, Fantagraphics’ long-running anthology and page for page the heftiest alternative/art comics anthology in American history, is calling it quits with this summer’s volume 22. Obviously, I’ll miss it quite a bit. Tom Spurgeon broke the news and revealed the reason why: Editor Eric Reynolds wants to spend his energies elsewhere. The Comics Journal’s Rob Clough interviewed Eric at greater length about his decision. At Robot 6 I chimed in with some thoughts on the series’ evolution, high points, and possible successor institutions, one of which is likely your RSS reader. And Fanta’s Mike Baehr has preview pages from the final volume.
* Searching through my bookmarks for MoCCA reports I recall that I’ve seen a lot of people say that minicomics sales were for shit this year, yet the only in-depth report I’ve got saved is from L. Nichols, who said she had her best year yet (not good enough to come back next year, fwiw, but still). Peggy Burns from Drawn & Quarterly has the best photos. Dan Nadel’s pix are pretty good too. So are Nick Gazin’s.
* Adrian Tomine, Optic Nerve #12, August. Woo! Apparently it contains “Amber Sweet,” which was his very good piece for Kramers Ergot 7, or at least a story that shares that title.
* Tom Brevoort takes the high road in talking about the need for diversity in superhero comics. That takes patience.
* Whoa, wait, Conor Stechschulte is doing an erotic comics anthology called Sock that Zach Hazard Vaupen’s contributing a strip called “Anal Sex” to? People, you need to tell me this kind of thing.
* My favorite part of this Topless Robot interview with Jeffrey Brown about his Transformers parody Incredible Change-Bots Two is the part where he says he liked the Insecticons so much that he’d make them the good guys when he’d play with them even though they were “really” evil. That was such a part of playing with action figures when I was a kid — the way your favorites and fascinations warped the established storylines and continuity established by the TV shows or what have you. I made the Rat King a huge huge antagonist for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles; I think they teamed up with Shredder against him. For me, the “main” G.I. Joes weren’t Duke or Hawk or Flint, but Mainframe and Roadblock.
* I’m not even close to having finished this interview with Anders Nilsen, which means it’s quite long, which is a good thing where interviews with Anders Nilsen are concerned.
* Comixology’s Karen Green on comics about animal rights. I love Sheep of Fools; I think I’d die if I saw Sue Coe’s book about the vivisection of dogs. (Via Graphic Ladies.)
* Matt Seneca is posting pages from his graphic novel in progress Affected at its own site.
* The lineup for Floating World’s house anthology Diamond Comics is rock-solid.
* Here’s an exquisitely nerdy post from Tim O’Neil on various points of superhero interest and disinterest.
* All bound for Mu-Mu land: Tom Ewing spent the week blogging about the KLF. The fact that there was a huge dance hit in the ’90s featuring Tammy Wynette singing Illuminatus! references is quite possibly my single favorite crazy thing in the history of pop music.
* Now here’s something you don’t see every day: a lengthy interview with John Carpenter’s musical collaborator Alan Howarth.
* Finally, fucking Axe Cop is astounding.
Tags: Carnival of souls, comics, links, music
Yeah, last I heard it was gonna be called Sock anyway. It was supposed to be ready for mocca, but there were some delays I’m told.
That’s a great point about action figures – I always had a “team” of favorites, usually cobbled together from Transformers, Gobots, M.A.S.K., and G.I. Joe good guys and bad guys. (Zartan was always a good guy – how couldn’t he be, when I spent so much time making him change colors for my friends on the schoolbus! Also, I loved M.A.S.K. so, so much.)
Kind of parallel to that, a lot of my favorite fictional characters are ones who make almost-impossible transitions from villain to hero (or maybe semi-hero). It’s always fascinating to watch a creator push a character right up to the edge of Lost Cause Evil and slowly draw them back – something that’s done especially well in my twin loves, ASOIAF and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Wiegle’s process puts me in mind of D’Israeli’s:
disraeli-demon(dot)blogspot.com/2007/01/notes-from-cupboard-of-doom.html
disraeli-demon(dot)blogspot.com/2007/08/how-does-that-go-again.html
Fascinating stuff, tablets. Can’t dispose with the pen & paper, myself– I like the physical finished product too much.