Kibbles ‘n’ Bits 8/3/2017: You won’t believe what Comic-Con looks like now!

§ Nice Art: Kurt Busiek spotted a listing for an Artist Edition of Jack Kirby’s Prisoner, an abandoned continuation of the 60s TV classic. From one crazy visionary (McGoohan) to another (Kirby.) This will be güd!

Drawn by two of the true great comic book legends, Jack Kirby and Gil Kane, this is a facsimile collection of a ‘long-lost’, unpublished legendary comic book based on the cult classic 1967 British TV show, The Prisoner, co-created, written, directed and starring Patrick McGoohan (Scanners, Braveheart).

 

§ This is my first link round-up in weeks so of course here are links to writings about the now two weeks past San Diego Comic-Con 2017! First off, D&W’s Peggy Burns is back with a truly epic and wonderful con report, that has photos and news and gossip galore. THIS is how we used to do con reports c. 2005. What a glorious time it was. But there’s also a sharp observation:

So the one non-D+Q event I did attend this week was the Roxane Gay panel who spoke to a SRO crowd of mostly women. She talked about how much fun she was having at Comic-con! It’s easy to talk about how Comic-con has changed. And while I would like for the show to be more hospitable for small presses, or be open to the casual fan off the street, if I have to choose between a show that supports female creators, and where more women feel a bit more comfortable and welcomed there, and I get to see feminist icons (Did I mention that Abby and Ilana from Broad City were there?!) or a convention with porn booths and heavy with cheese cake culture, I’ll take the present Comic-Con, thank you very much. And I say that with Heavy Metal as our neighbor, who actually has toned down the sexy, people! But perhaps they amped up the fratty a bit this year. You win some, you lose some.

D&Q is very picky about the cons it attends, and this is a reminder that there are still plenty of comics in Comic-Con and it is better than it was when it was a sausage fest.

§ Women Write About Comics ALSO went to Comic-Con, and they had a god time even if it was a bit crowded, and unleashed a modest proposal:

Also, I know this is largely in the hands of the studios, but would it really be so terrible if they allowed live streaming of Hall H panels to nearby Petco Park, or elsewhere? They release the trailers online almost simultaneously now anyway, and Petco Park seats about 40,000 people versus Hall H’s 6,000. They would still get people sleeping in lines for Hall H for those who want the more intimate experience, but live streaming those panels would make everything feel so much more accessible and welcoming for the other 95% of badge holders who don’t get to fit into Hall H!

I’ll get into this if I ever finish my con report (ha) but studios WANT the exclusivity of the Hall H experience, I’ve decided. It’s about buzz not about exposure.

§ Oooooo, Comic-Con’s black market! What do you think it will be? Badges? Drugs? Or maybe, illegal bootleg videos?

§ Speaking of Kirby, Caleb Orreccio at Comics Workbook has a nice Kirby appreciation.

§ Along with bad cons, there was a First-ever Texas Latino Comic Con and it went SUPER WELL!

§ Blerd City, here in NYC, also went well, but Emotions Ran High:

In a room of about 30 audience members, panelists from the Women in Comics Collective spoke about the challenges black women face in the predominately white male industry. The panel started out by discussing the merits of black people accepting roles as slaves in HBO’s controversial new show, Confederate, but quickly turned into an emotional tête-à-tête when Marvel artist and panelist Alitha Martinez said, “I’ve been trying so hard to be an artist that the last thing I want to be known is as a black, Hispanic, female artist.” Which then prompted cosplayer Geisha Vi to say, “It’s important for it to be there in the beginning because it lets other people know who you are and that they too can be where you are. I know you don’t want it to be the modifier to your work-,” before being cut off by Martinez as she walked off the panel and out of the conference. Continuing her point, Vi said that race and gender labels shouldn’t matter, but they do, and should be embraced because they can inspire other people from similar backgrounds.

 

§ Nicole Georges (Calling Doctor Laura) is back with a new graphic novel called Fetch about her relationship with her sometime bad dog. This book will hit a nerve, I predict. Paste has the first interview:

Paste: It’s been four years since your last book [Calling Dr. Laura]. What’s your usual pace of production? You seem like a fairly deliberate artist/writer. Is that a fair characterization? Or have you just been busy with other things?

Nicole Georges: It takes a very long time to draw 300 pages. I think it’s fair to say I am fairly deliberate. Here’s the breakdown: I conceived of, outlined and pitched this book in 2013, after my Calling Dr. Laura tour. I drew and wrote the story in 2014, redrew and edited it three to six months later, got edits from my publisher and started penciling and inking it in 2015. After the initial writing and editing was done, I drew the whole thing over the course of about two years. If I had to do it again, I would have given myself a little more time, because drawing a comic is very isolating, and to do two pages (either penciled or inked) a day every day means saying no to a lot of human interaction. I always have other side projects going to keep my mind active, and to pay bills, but I have stayed pretty focused and honed-in on finishing Fetch.

§ Sam Riedel on Booger, Gender, and Simon Hanselmann’s “One More Year”, the rare review of a book which seems to get a trans/NB/gender queer character right.

Some people just know how to work a red carpet. #Domino #DeadPool2 pic.twitter.com/llCc8JfKT6

— Ryan Reynolds (@VancityReynolds) July 31, 2017

§ Ryan Reynolds tweeted Domino from Deadpool 2. He lives for this stuff, doesn’t he?

§ There was a rash of New Yorker cartoonist-inspired stories this week! Here’s a long post on Liza Donnely’s live sketching Stephen Colbert:

The result ended up providing an unconventional look into what it’s like to watch Colbert host “The Late Show” from within the theater. The illustrations present different angles of scenes viewers of the show are used to seeing on their laptops and televisions. Donnelly had a monitor in front of her in case she “wanted to see the faces a little more closely,” but the fast-paced nature of live illustration doesn’t allow for refined details. Faces are slightly warped as Donnelly is trying to capture the essence of what is going on rather than present what could be captured by a camera.

 

§ New cartoonist in residence Ellis Rosen has some rejected ideas which usually end up being early as funny as the ones that made the cut:

We were pleased, then, to discover that Rosen was succeeding gifted artists Emily Flake and Tom Toro as one of The New Yorker’s daily cartoonists-in-residence, responsible for crafting up-to-date comedic commentary on current events. Since taking up the post earlier this week, Rosen has had plenty of material to work with.

 

§ Also this.

§ Here’s a video of dear, dear Karl Urabn being interviewed at a press line at SDCC, and, first, chaos! Second, Karl has such dark circles under his eyes. Is he getting enough sleep???? This all led me to find this headline: Thor Ragnarok Improvised 80% Of The Movie, Says Director. Oh my.

“I would say we improvised probably 80 percent of the film, or ad-libbed and threw in stuff. My style of working is I’ll often be behind the camera, or right next to the camera yelling words at people, like, ‘Say this, say this! Say it this way!’ I’ll straight-up give Anthony Hopkins a line reading. I don’t care.” The director didn’t clarify exactly what he meant about the amount of improvisation, but I assume he means that 80% of the dialogue in his current cut is an alternate, off-the-cuff lines that were improvised or ad-libbed on the day. From the outside looking in, that seems like an astonishingly high percentage, and if it’s accurate, Waititi must have shot this thing like a Judd Apatow comedy: the actors say the lines as written in Eric Pearson’s screenplay, and then he gives them some time to freestyle a little and play around to maybe find a better version of the same thing.

I noted of the Thor footage that the tone of the movie seems a lot like Guardians of The Galaxy, or even GotG 2, which was one of the most self indulgent comic book movies of all times, because it seemed like every little joke and adlib made the movie.
This news of  improv does not make me feel confident about Thor Ragnarok, but director Taika Waititi does have solid comedy shops at least.

§ I also found this headline: Jackie Earle Haley On Why There Were No ‘Watchmen’ Sequels. 

Um, could it be because…THERE CAN BE NO SEQUELS? Actors are often not as knowledgeable about the material they work on as you might think:

“I wish they would have gone on. You know, I think they probably would have gone on and done more films with Watchmen, different versions of it, because I think there was enough success that they could have gone back in time or done something with it. But I think the thing that really kind of held it up was the fact that there was this contention of ownership between Warner Bros and Paramount.”

 

§ Finally, when I saw this headline, I got so excited:Mads Mikkelsen as Doctor Doom
Damn that would be so awesome, I thought! Mads Mikkelson’s cheekbones in a Marvel movie. But then I thought..waitaminnit……he was already IN a Marvel movie and he looked like THIS:

Granted that was Sony, but then Fox took Oscar Isaac, the internet;’s boyfriend, and made him look like this:
, basically your grandma after she had a little too much tea and decided to make doilies out of tin foil.

Seriously, what is wrong with these people? STOP TAKING OUR HANDSOME TUMBLR SUBJECTS AND TURNING THEM INTO GUYS WITH WEIRD SHIT ON THEIR FACES. 

As for the Doctor Doom thing, that’s just chatter, and besides, I guess he’ll be in a mask all the time. No cheekbones. Sad.

“Yeah, it’s always interesting,” Mikkelsen said. “They are experimenting with doing some of the villain’s stories as well. Let’s see if they do that. I’m not familiar that they’ve done it with anyone yet. They haven’t done it with The Joker [and] they haven’t done it with The Penguin. So, we’ll see when that day comes.”

We’ll see, Mads. We’ll see.