A friend of mine (who wishes to remain anonymous) shares my interest in finding swipes of famous illustrators and comic book artists. Neither of us begrudge these artists for swiping (that's the comics industry term for using reference material perhaps a bit too faithfully). After all, these artists worked under brutal deadlines and sometimes they had to cut corners to meet them.

"One of the great swipes," says my friend, "is Jack Kirby swiping a Hal Foster image and turning one panel that became an entire comics series and an integral part of the standing DC Extended Universe."

That swipe is well-known. But my friend found a swipe by the Great Jim Steranko which was previously unspotted:

"It appears that when Steranko painted the covers for the Shadow reprints, he swiped this cover from Spicy (Speed) Detective. The original artist was Hugh Joseph Ward and the periodical was Speed Detective June, 1945.

"The image below is more the norm: Steranko being swiped himself. Here Williams' pinball machine "Blackout" swiped Steranko's famous Nick Fury Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D issue number 6 cover for its scoreboard art:"

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Artist Janelle Hessig (who was a guest many times on Boing Boing's retired Gweek podcast) has launched a comic book publishing company in Oakland called Gimme Action. Tomorrow Gimme Action is releasing a new comic anthology by Liz Suburbia (who wrote and illustrated the excellent Sacred Heart in 2015).

Suburbia's anthology is called Thee Collected Cyanide Milkshake, which includes all seven issues of Liz's mini-comic Cyanide Milkshake.

As Janelle describes it, "the book takes you on a journey from hilarious single panel gags (a la Mad Magazine) to deeply personal autobio strips about subjects like anxiety and street harassment to horny sci-fi (favorite new genre?). If it sounds jam-packed, that's because it is. But it never feels fractured or inconsistent as it takes readers through a variety of experiences. Cyanide Milkshake is personally very precious to me and I feel honored that Liz has trusted me with her genius work. I truly believe this book will make the world 176 pages less shitty. It feels worthwhile to note that this book was created by a woman, published by a woman, printed by a women-owned press, and debuts at a women-run comic convention (Short Run in Seattle)."

Thee Collected Cyanide Milkshake ships November 1st, 2018. Ordering info is on the Gimme Action site.

Enjoy these sample pages:

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Today was a good day. A package from San Francisco artist Doctor Popular arrived in the mail. Inside were eight tiny publications, what he calls the Mini-Comics Mixtape.

He writes, "All 8 comics were drawn in under 24 hours with no planning in advance, so the stories can get a little out there." They're so good -- funny, offbeat and engaging!

Plus, he used a Risograph to print the comic books in two colors, which makes them look extra neat.

He's selling the set for $12 over at Etsy or through his site DoctorPopular.com.

Doc Pop previously on BB Read the rest

Giving generously to an important cause is cool. Y’all know what’s cooler? Giving generously to an important cause and, as a result, becoming the proud owner of a gorgeous piece of comic book art.

Cat Staggs — the co-creator of Crosswind and an artist on Wonder Woman ‘77 — was approached at a recent comic book convention and was commissioned by a fan, Danielle Van Lier, to throw together a gorgeous drawing of Wonder Woman. It was a sketch with a mission: to raise as much coin as possible for Immigrant Families Together. It’s a charity that focuses its efforts on improving the lives of families separated at America’s southern borders in the following areas:

• Raising funds through coordinated crowdfunding and individual giving in order to post bond for parents separated from their children • Paying bonds and providing pro bono legal representation to fulfill all legal responsibilities while awaiting trial so that they may be with their children • Arranging safe transportation from state of detention to the city where children are currently in foster care • When needed, finding long-term housing in the destination city while they await trial • Connecting parents with resources in order to sustain them during the process of being unified with their children • Working with local organizations and government to expedite the process of achieving full custody of their children while they await trial

Given the shitty way that the Trump administration has been treating families seeking safe harbor from the dangers of their homes, this is vital work. Read the rest

Tom Hardy continues his tradition of playing comic book characters whose main power is mumbling in the latest trailer for Venom. It's a fun-filled 3:14 that extols the virtues of teamwork, appreciating one another's differences and making the best of a bad situation.

I'm betting the movie'll be just like the Odd Couple, but with more eviscerations. Read the rest

When you've got a 77-year-old hunk of intellectual property that can breathe underwater and talk to fish, it's not a bad idea to update it so that it's relatable for a modern audience. In the case of what I'm seeing in this first trailer for the Aquaman movie, I feel like DC may have missed the mark by about 20 years. It is so grim-dark and EXTREME that you'd swear that 1990s Todd McFarlane was called in as a consultant.

I love DC comics. I grew up with them. I really want their movies to do well. But I'm not sure that this is the right way to go. Read the rest

I grew up reading comic books. Green Lantern was my childhood superhero (do not talk to me about the movie.) I loved the X-Men, too. Batman? Hell yes. In my late teens, I graduated into Hellblazer, Shade: The Changing Man and honestly, pretty much anything that Vertigo printed. Sadly, when university rolled around, I was too much of a broke joke to afford extras like the occasional funny book.

Of late, I’ve been catching up on what I missed.

I’ve read to the end of Hellblazer (so good!) and pick up Saga, Trees and Injection on a regular basis. But I don’t know what to read next. I like dark gritty stuff—I came of age in the 1990s—and I’m not sure what to check out. As I live in an RV, even though it’s a big one, I don’t have space to build up a huge collection of comics, trade paperbacks or graphic novels. What ever I consume needs to make it to my eyeballs, via my iPad or Kindle.

What do y’all think I should try next? Do you have any favorite titles that I should take for a spin? If so, what do you like about them and why, based on what I’ve told you that I dig, would I find to love in them?

Help a fella out?

Image via Flickr, courtesy of Sam Howzit Read the rest

Steve Ditko, the pioneering comic artist who co-created Spider-Man and Doctor Strange, has died. He was 90 years old. From The Hollywood Reporter:

In 1961, Ditko and Lee created Spider-Man. Lee, the editor-in-chief at Marvel Comics, gave Ditko the assignment after he wasn't satisfied with Jack Kirby's take on the idea of a teen superhero with spider powers. The look of Spider-Man — the costume, the web-shooters, the red and blue design — all came from Ditko. Spider-Man first appeared in Amazing Fantasy No. 15. The comic was an unexpected hit, and the character was spun off into The Amazing Spider-Man. Ditko helped create such classic Spider-Man characters as Doctor Octopus, Sandman, the Lizard and Green Goblin. Starting with issue No. 25, Ditko received a plot credit in addition to his artist credit. Ditko's run ended with issue No. 38.

In 1963, Ditko created the surreal and psychedelic hero, Doctor Strange. The character debuted in Strange Tales No. 110, and Ditko continued on the comic through issue No. 146, cover dated July 1966.

After that, Ditko left Marvel Comics over a fight with Lee, the causes of which have always remained murky. The pair had not been on speaking terms for several years. Ditko never explained his side, and Lee claimed not to really know what motivated Ditko's exit...

The reclusive Ditko was known as the "J.D. Salinger" of comics. From the 1970s on, he rarely spoke on the record, declining almost every interview request. He sat out the publicity booms that accompanied the Spider-Man films and the Doctor Strange movie.

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A copy of Action Comics #1 (1938), featuring the first appearance of Superman, is on the auction block. The current bid is $300k and Heritage Auctions says it could go up to $600k or more.

The book considered by many to be the “Holy Grail” of comics collecting is expected to compete for

top-lot honors at Auctions’ Comics & Comic Art Auction May 10-12 in Chicago in what could be the most lucrative comics auction ever held.

“This auction has a chance to be among the largest comics auctions of all time, if not the largest,” Heritage Auctions Comics Director of Operations Barry Sandoval said. “It will be in a vibrant city that is easy to reach from just about anywhere, and we have an extremely strong collection of valuable comic books that will draw the attention and interest of comics collectors from just about everywhere.”

Action Comics #1 (DC, 1938) CGC VG 4.0 Cream to off-white pages (est. $650,000+) is among the most coveted comic books in the hobby. The issue generates major interest regardless of its condition, and this is one of the highest-graded copies ever offered by Heritage Auctions. Ernst Gerber's The Photo-Journal Guide to Comic Books rated it "scarce,” and CGC's census lists just 40 unrestored copies. The first appearance of Superman launched the Golden Age of Comics, and every superhero that followed is in debt to the character created by writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster (artist). The issue also sits atop Overstreet's “Top 100 Golden Age Comics” list.

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Woody Harrelson and Thora Birch narrate this video profile of the great cartoonist Daniel Clowes, creator of Eightball.

Daniel Clowes’ brand of funny verges on bleak. Over his 25-year career, through works like “Ghost World,” “Eightball” and “Wilson,” the cartoonist has lead the way for a new kind of comic hero, one that’s misanthropic, dry and on the outside of conventional norms. Now, with an Oscar nomination and features in places like GQ and the New Yorker, Clowes has been on the front lines of the new age of comics, bringing graphic novels to the big screen and to the wider public. This is the story of how one cartoonist changed an industry, as set to the unmistakable vocal stylings of Woody Harrelson.

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Ooo, betrothed comic book nerds, this one's for you. Mallory McKenney of Wisconsin makes wedding bouquets and boutonnieres by cutting up upcycled comics. From Batman to the Wolverine, and just about any character in between, the Milwaukee crafter can whip up something super for your big day.

Before you get all up in arms about the comics she's chopping up, Mallory's husband Nick explains her source, "...she actually buys damaged comic books for super cheap from a couple comic book stores here in Milwaukee, so she’s definitely not using ones that anyone would want otherwise. The only real exceptions are if people request really specific comic books or characters that aren’t super popular and didn’t appear in too many issues."

She sells her creations in her Etsy shop, glamMKE. Prices start at $10 (for a single flower) and go up to $200 (something for the entire wedding party).

(reddit) Read the rest

In this excerpt from Dark Horse Comics's 40th Anniversary Ashcan issue of ElfQuest, available today in comic stores, Hannah Means-Shannon explains how Wendy and Richard Pini showed indies the way in an age before crowdfunding.

After being cheated for many years at Marvel (where he created and/or wrote and drew Captain America, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man, Thor, The Fantastic Four, The Silver Surfer, the Black Panther, Dr. Doom, and many other iconic characters) Jack Kirby went to DC in the early 1970s with more creative control and some of the wildest ideas in the history of comics. This Jack Kirby Fourth World Omnibus, coming out in December, has the complete run of his Fourth World series: Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen, The New Gods, The Forever People, Mister Miracle, and the graphic novel, The Hunger Dogs.

It is 1,536 pages long!

In 2008, John Hodgman reviewed an earlier edition of Jack Kirby's Fourth World Omnibus for the New York Times. Excerpt:

“KIRBY’S HERE!” shouted bold sunbursts on the cover of early Kirby issues. The Fourth World was to be his liberation — the place where he would at last get to do his own thing.

The results were startling. Kirby fans already knew that his art was muscular and kinetic, and in this collection, he’s at the height of his powers. His characters are always in motion, leaping and punching at impossible angles, straining at the panels that try to contain them. Kirby’s writing was the same way. His stories were linear — even primitive. But there is something powerful and melancholy and personal that weeps in Orion’s epic, city-smashing rages.

At other times, though, the pages cannot seem to keep up with Kirby’s astonishing imagination.

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The Comic Book Plus site has an unbelievable trove of over 33,000 Golden Age and Silver Age comics books, scanned and ready to be read in full. Once you get drawn into it, it's like you're a kid sitting on the floor, surrounded by piles of rare and amazing comic books you'd never imagined you'd ever get to read.

I love the Dell comics section, particularly the Four Color series. This is a series that was published several times a month, featuring mostly licensed one-shot comics. The quality of the art and writing is surprisingly high, and the comic book versions of obscure sitcoms (Car 54, Where Are You?), cartoons (King Leonardo and His Short Subjects), adventure shows (Sea Hunt), and tons of other material are fascinating and hilarious (intentionally and otherwise).

Where else would I have discovered King of Diamonds, a comic book based on a short-lived TV show about detective John King (Broderick Crawford) who ONLY takes cases involving the recovery of stolen diamonds? The guy is weirdly obsessed. And he's a comic book hero who looks like this:

(art by Mike Sekowsky, Frank Giacoia)

I have no comment on the site's claim that all the comic books on the site are in the Public Domain, except to say that it's so obviously in everyone's interest that these comics are made available for people to see, and no one's economic interests are harmed in the least. Read the rest

Originally published in 1978, Will Eisner’s A Contract With God “existed in its own continuum, patiently waiting for the rest of its kind to quietly arrive…” says Scott McCloud in his introduction to the hardcover edition, released in celebration of what would have been Eisner’s centennial year. McCloud’s intro, the publisher’s following “Brief History,” and Eisner’s own preface firmly contextualize the work and its creator within its time and the larger comics scene to which Eisner was so integral. With or without the history, it is nearly impossible to imagine a reader not being blown away by this collection.

A Contract With God explores the everyday extremes of human experience through the tenement building at 55 Dropsie Avenue. Residents strive, struggle, and schlep through the graphic short stories. Eisner explores the themes therein on multiple levels, with text and illustration that are cuttingly resonant. His characters fall in and out of faith in God, man, and love. Some are blindly optimistic and others rawly matter-of-fact in their realism. Some are both.

The stories are a fictional fleshing-out of Eisner’s life. The title story stems from his own experience of losing a child, The Street Singer and The Super from imagined realities of the characters in and around his own tenement, and my favorite, Cookalein, in some ways the most complex story in its interconnected and contrasting experiences of class, romance, and sex across its cast of characters, is what Eisner calls “a combination of invention and recall.” All the stories, in all the ways they are told, are violent, sad, intense, and beautiful. Read the rest

Someone has already bid $80,000 on a near-mint copy of Suspense Comics #3 from 1944, with a cover by Alex Schomburg. This is the type of comic book that led to the moral panic resulting in a senate hearing on the rampant sexual perversion and violence in comics and the collapse of the comic book publishing industry, as chronicled in David Hadju's excellent book, The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America.

In 2015, a copy of Suspense #3 in similar condition sold for $173,275.

Here's a complete scan of the issue, in case you are interested. There's nothing lurid inside, other than some light homoerotic bondage.

From Heritage Auctions' website:

Suspense Comics #3 Mile High Pedigree (Continental Magazines, 1944) CBCS NM- 9.2 White pages. This white-hot Golden Age issue, driven by the "classic" Nazi bondage/torture cover by Alex Schomburg, has been climbing the list of Overstreet's Top 100 Golden Age Books for years. It's currently at #26, up from #38 in 2012, and #63 in 2007. It's no surprise that the Mile High Copy is the finest known, but that there is a Mile High Copy at all will be a surprise to some. Until recently the common opinion was that a Mile High Copy of the iconic issue didn't exist! Overstreet rates it "scarce", and Gerber goes even further, assigning it a "9" or "very rare"! CGC hasn't certified a higher grade than VF 8.0 for the book, although we have been fortunate enough to have offered the impressive Pennsylvania Copy in 2015, a CBCS VF/NM 9.0, which realized a record-setting $173,275!

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The great illustrator Drew Friedman will be exhibiting the portraits he painted for Heroes of the Comics and More Heroes of the Comics at the Museum of Illustration in NYC May 2 to June 3, 2017. (Read my reviews here and here).

Drew Friedman’s two recent books Heroes of the Comics and More Heroes of the Comics, published by Fantagraphics books, depicted the great early comic book creators who entered into the dawn of the business between 1935–1955, a milestone in the early history of comic books. The Museum of Illustration at the Society of Illustrators is proud to present 100 original, meticulous color illustrations from Friedman’s two books.

Among the colorful subjects are comics pioneer Max (M.C.) Gaines, the creators of Superman Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster, and Superman publishers Harry Donenfled and Jack Liebowitz, and comic book legends including Batman creators Bob Kane and Bill Finger, Will Eisner, (the subject of a large concurrent exhibition also at SI celebrating his 100th birthday), Jack Kirby, Martin Goodman, Harvey Kurtzman, Stan Lee, Wally Wood, William M. Gaines, C.C. Beck, Joe Kubert, Jack Cole, Steve Ditko, Al Jaffee, Carl Barks, Jules Feiffer, James Warren, and many more. Also included in the gallery will be several early female creators including Marie Severin and author Patricia Highsmith who began her career writing for comics, and several African American creators, among them Matt Baker, Alvin Hollingsworth and Orrin C. Evans. The greats and the near greats, many long forgotten with the passage of time but who deserve recognition for their work, now revived in Friedman’s two books and this exhibition.

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