The Eternal Smile
By Gene Yang and Derek Kim
First Second
It’s a testament, of course, to Derek Kirk Kim’s abilities as an artist that, upon first glance, there are no immediately discernable similarities between the three short stories that make up The Eternal Style. The artist adopts a vastly different aesthetic for each of the three pieces—three styles which might easily be mistaken for the work of three different artists. It’s a testament to Gene Yang’s ability as a writer, however, that despite the works’ clear differences, its the unified nature of the three pieces that ultimately stays with the reader.
On their face, the three works could hardly be more different. Duncan’s Kingdom is a fantasy story, set upon the backdrop of a medieval kingdom under siege by an army of glowing-eyed frogmen. A hero is tasked with the destruction of said army, so that he might win the hand of a fair maiden. Kim adopts a quasi-fantasy style for the piece, at times taking cues from artists like Mike Mignola.
The artist’s style shifts abruptly for the next story. Opening with a cover page paying a less than subtle homage to Carl Barks’s Uncle Scrooge, the second story, which lends its title to the book, uses aesthetics borrowed from American and Japanese funny animal comics to tell of a covetous frog who will stop at nothing in pursuit of fame and fortune.
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Tags: Derek Kim, First Second, Gene Yang, The Eternal Smile
Emily the Strange was born on the bottom of a skateboard deck—an odd little girl created to be a one-off character for the Santa Cruz Skateboard company. Soon she appeared on t-shirts. A decade later, she became an industry—comics and books and stickers and stationary, and even a limited edition guitar, endorsed by Lil’ Wayne.
For the past 15 years, skateboard-turned-graphic designer Rob Reger has over seen Emily in her various forms, from the image of a black cat-loving 13-year-old goth girl to the fleshed out star of her own novels—an evolution that will continue on into a feature film slated for release in 2010.
We sat down with Reger at the New York Comic Con, to discuss how the girl who started life as fodder for a skateboard grew into a full-fledged phenomenon.
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Tags: Darkk Horse, Emily the Strange, goth, Rob Reger, Santa Cruz
Before accepting a full-time gig at Harvey Kurtzman’s Mad Magazine, Al Jaffee kicked around the comics industry, writing anything his editors would throw at him, from funny animal books, to “teenage material,” to army comics, to crime books. The artist even dabbled a bit in the superhero genre—albeit with a distinctly Jaffeean take on the subject
It was his boss at Timely—a young editor by the name of Stan Lee—who assigned Jaffee work on a title called Super Rabbit. Under the artist’s control, the superhero was transformed into something different than the rest of the books on the market. The costumed lagomorph became a hero with problems—normal, everyday problems.
It was a decision, perhaps, that would have an impact on Stan Lee’s later success (if only subconsciously), as Timely became Marvel and the editor churned out book after book of venerable heroes, decidedly real world counterparts to the supermen who dominated the industry.
In this second part of our interview with Jaffee, we delve into the artist’s pre-Mad work and discuss how the early world of comic books shaped the artist’s later successes in the industry.
[Part One]
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Tags: Al Feldstein, Al Jaffee, Fold-in, Harvey Kurtzman, Mad Magazine, Marvel, Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions, Stan Lee
When Sean Seamus McWhinny was four, he ran down a hallway in his parents’ house, leaving a trail of red crayon on the wall as he went. Years later, while watching Saturday morning cartoons, he practiced drawing by rapidly copying the gestures of the Warner Bros. characters on TV.
Since growing up, he began a semi-weekly, semi-autobiographical webcomic called Diary of a Catering Whore based on his experiences as a catering waiter/bartender in San Francisco. Hard copies of his work can be purchased through Prism Comics or Indy Planet.
His current projects include Rat Diva, a celebrity photo book spoof about an old Hollywood glamor diva of stage and screen, who happens to be a rat, and Bunny Man, about his experience as a mall Easter Bunny. Publishers? Eh? You listenin’? Could be the next David Sedaris over here.
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The Laugh-out-Loud Cats Sell Out
By A. Koford
Abrams
For better or worse, we live in the age of the meme. In some form or other, the concept has existed since the beginning of recorded history, but, given the modern ubiquity of the Internet, culture is being disseminated at a dizzying pace, spread through blogs and Websites and e-mail, becoming ever more fragmented and ephemeral. In fact, it should be regarded as something of a marked success for those pop-cultural Internet touchstones capable of remaining in the public conscious for longer than a week or two.
By that measure, the Lolcat is downright canonical. One of the most persuasive Internet memes of the decade, the concept is something of a critical mass the Web’s love of silly animal pictures with its devotion to forced misspellings and malapropism, marrying the two into works that seem to imply, among other things, that if cats could indeed speak, they would likely do so poorly. Love it or hate it, the Lolcat shows no sign of slowing. In fact, if one can indeed predict the meme’s downfall, it will likely be from cannibalization on the part of the many sub-memes it’s spawned.
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Tags: Abrams, Adam Koford, John Hodgman, Laugh-out-Loud Cats, Lolcats
“I was trying shut the radio off and had type flying in the air,” Al Jaffee laughs, taking the call off of speakerphone. He’s in the middle of fold-in at the moment—“engrossed” as he happily puts it. It is, of course, exactly what one would expect the artist to be working on at 5:30 PM on a Wednesday night—or, really, any time, for that matter. Since 1964, the artist has created, by his estimation, more than 400 of the things, which have graced the back cover of all but three issues of Mad Magazine over the course of the past 45 years.
At 87, Jaffee’s speaks of himself in the same self-deprecating tones his fans have come to know and expect from his work, a sense of modesty that hardly betrays his position as one of the most beloved humor cartoonists of the past half-century. The artist is quick with joke for nearly every topic we broach during our discussion, though the one that inadvertently kicks off the interview hits a little too close to home—the death rattle of the American publishing industry.
In late January of this year, it was announced that Mad, America’s premier humor magazine, will become a quarterly, after 55 years as a monthly publication. It is, of course, a sign of the times, if ever their were one, a sign that the magazine is continuing to struggle at the hands of newer forms of media, seven years after finally caving and including advertisements in its printed form. It’s also a sign, Jaffee adds, half jokingly, that “humor is dying.”
Pop cultural bemoaning aside (though, honestly, who can blame the guy?), Jaffee proves himself once again to be the consummate storyteller, a man with a fantastic yarn for nearly every question one might toss at him, from his days attending classes at The High School of Music & Art in New York alongside future Mad staffers Harvey Kurtzman, Al Feldstein, and Will Elder; to his time spent as an artist/writer for Stan Lee at Timely Comics; to creation of some of Mad’s most enduring features. Few have seen as much of the industry as Al Jaffee an even fewer can tell its story quite so well.
Filed under: Interviews | 4 Comments
Tags: Al Feldstein, Al Jaffee, Fold-in, Harvey Kurtzman, Mad Magazine, Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions
At a comics convention, an early stages movie deal is something of a 300-pound gorilla—something everyone wants to discuss, but still tries hard not to jinx. In this industry we’ve seen countless optioning deals come and go, so when a creator announces that they’ve got the ball rolling on a project, it can be difficult to broach the subject.
The Goon creator, Eric Powell, while slightly apprehensive, seems fairly confident in a recent deal struck for his most famous creation. And really, the artist has every right to be. After all, he’s got David Fincher in his corner. A self-proclaimed fan of the Dark Horse series, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button director has signed onto the project as a producer. Powell has begun working on treatments for the film, and, by all accounts, the early animation looks extremely promising.
In this second and final part of our interview with Powell, we discuss working for the Hollywood machine and what it’s like letting his creation go, ever-so-slightly, in order to explore mediums outside the insular comics world.
[Part One]
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Tags: Bizarro, Dark Horse, David Fincher, Eric Powell, Superman, The Goon
Guest Strip: Chuck Forsman
In 2008, Chuck Forsman graduated from The Center for Cartooning Studies. Soon after, he won the prestigious Ignatz award for his outstanding series Snake Oil, which is up to its third issue.
Unable to resist the charm of White River Junction, Forsman still lives in Vermont, and will make you a sandwich if you’re lucky.
You can look for his comics in the new Awesome 2: Awesomer anthology published by Indie Spinner Rack and Top Shelf.
You can also catch him this year at TECAF, MECAF, MoCCA, HeroesCon, and SPX.
Prevously, his mini-comic Snake Oil #1 was reviewed by the Cross Hatch HERE.
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Tags: Center for Cartooning Studies, chuck forsman, chuck mcbuck, club foot, ignatz, snake oil
Comics on Fire #1 by Paul Hack
Comics on Fire #1
by Paul Hack
Self-published
Paul Hack is a great name for a cartoonist. I hope he invented it for himself, but maybe he was just born lucky.
Comics on Fire #1 is full of short gag comics about outerspace, science, life and household objects. Basically it’s mash-up of different styles and ideas with the common thread of comedy.
The humor is what makes this a cohesive book, despite the diverse subjects and artistic styles. So whereas some first or experimental mini-comics come off as a jumble of dissimilar ideas leading you to different conclusions about the author’s intent or ability, the point of Comics on Fire #1 is always to make you laugh, and Hack hits the mark every time.
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Tags: comics on fire, gag comics, paul hack
Boody: The Bizarre Comics of Boody Rogers
Edited by Craig Yoe
Fantagraphics
“Now Boody could write funnier than Elzie Segar,” writes Craig Yoe in his intro, “create more excitement than Milton Caniff, draw more amazing than Frank Frazetta, ink slicker than Wally Wood, make sexier girls than Dean Yeagle, letter better than Artie Simek, and his comics were loonier than Fletcher Hanks’s.” One can, of course, forgive Yoe for the touch of hyperbole—after all, as the editor of Boody Rogers’s first official anthology, one would certainly hope that the author was among his biggest fans.
Anyone doubting Yoe’s initial bout of enthusiasm—or perhaps chalking his a bit of tall tale yarn spinning up to an attempt to keep with Rogers’s wild west upbringing—will, hopefully be won over a page later, when the other describes his first encounter with the artist’s work, in amongst a pile of Little Lulus and Supermans and Uncle Scrooges, spread out on his childhood bedroom floor. Such youthful memories certainly place Rogers in good company—among easily some of the most influential books of that golden age. By the end of his introduction, there’s little room for doubt. Yoe unquestionably considers the late-artist to be one of the medium’s greats, and, as the book opens, the reader is ready to play along with the premise that Rogers is, perhaps, the era’s unappreciated genius—a producer of work too far ahead of its time to be sufficiently appreciated by the huddled pulp-reading masses. After all, the Arf Forum-editor certainly knows his stuff when it comes to vintage cartooning.
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