§ Do Anything, the new Warren Ellis column for Bleeding Cool, connects some dots:

Jack Kirby didn’t get to be an intellectual. That’s a label others stick on you. When Jack told Will Eisner, as recorded in Eisner’s book SHOP TALK, of the time in his career when he “began to intellectualise,” you can almost literally hear Eisner’s condescension come off the page. Art Spiegelman, struggling to say anything of import about Kirby in a conversation with Gary Groth, calls his work “dimwitted.”

When Jack Kirby’s army superiors, during his World War II service, discovered he was an artist, they put Private Kirby to drawing maps on scrap paper while in the field of combat. Will Eisner was illustrating manuals from his Pentagon posting as Chief Warrant Officer.

In 1997, Eisner tells an interviewer that when someone showed Kirby Eisner’s THE DREAMER, a book about the early comics industry and therefore depicting a young Jack Kirby, Kirby’s comment was “I didn’t think Will liked me that much.”


§ We neglected to mention that The Toronto Star has named Chester Brown’s LOUIS RIEL as one of the best books of “The Century So Far”.
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§ Matt Thorn went to a party for Moto Hagio, one of the Forty Niners, and perhaps “the most important cartoonist in the history of shojo.”

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§ Is Kiminori Wakasugi’s DETROIT METAL CITY the latest manga must-have? We think so, and so do David Welsh and Johanna Draper Carlson. Basically, it’s Spinal Tap/Metalocalypse in manga format. We hear both the anime and live action adaptations are aces, too.

§ Boston University is adding a Religion & Comics Collection courtesy of doctoral student A. David Lewis.

§ Dave Howlett’s Living Between Wednesdays column brings up some storytelling tropes like the “first page little head recap.” Maybe it’s our own mentally-challenged reasoning ability, but we LOVE the “first page little head recap.” What do the rest of you think?

§ We’re not that eager to go see TRANSFORMERS 2. A robot with a gold tooth, really?

§ Jill Thompson’s superpower, revealed.

§ Jeff Smith as Colleen Doran’s life coach:

But Jeff urged me to get A Distant Soil done as soon as possible. The challenge? Shave my head and keep it shaved until the book is finished.

Whew. I may have to come up with some other sacrifice. May I crop it boyishly short instead? Live with my natural color for awhile?

1 COMMENT

  1. Re: Detroit Metal City.
    This is a must-have in any form (manga, anime, live-action). But the reader needs an appreciation for dark comedy. Some of it is pretty twisted. No… really twisted.

  2. I thought Jill’s super power was being super nice. That or the ability to constantly appear in other people’s super hero comics.

  3. DMC is a very cute, if often off-color, comedy about Metal in Japan. All the rage a year ago.
    See the live movie with Gene Simmons in a supporting role!