§ Indie icon Adrian Tomine is interviewed at The Comics Reporter. His new art book NEW YORK DRAWINGS is shockingly good:

TOMINE: I feel like I came along… the timing was just perfect for my age and my interests, for when I tried to thrust my work upon the world and everything, that I really got to benefit with each step of acceptance of comics in America. As an art form. I’m not sure I would have had the determination and humility that was required of people like the Hernandez Brothers and even Dan to a degree, to have your work relegated to the porn section of the comics stores, and have these endless explanations to normal adults in terms of what you do for a living. [laughs] All these things they made the world safe for.

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§ Speaking of comics’ greatest generation, I neglected to link to the actual four-way pow-wow between Jaime Hernandez, Gilbert Hernandez, Dan Clowes and Chris Ware, as moderated by Sean T. Collins for Rollingstone.com.

Clowes: There’s always gonna be that resentment. I had that when I was 25: “What makes that guy so great?” But then you hit a certain age and go, “Oh, I see.”

Jaime: Sometimes, even if you don’t particularly like the work yourself, you can’t argue with what’s on there, or what people who actually know what they’re talking about are saying about it. Personally, I keep it to myself.

Gilbert: I have a pretty good eye, and I have yet to see any cartoonists that do what these three guys have done, but better. Nobody’s done it, because we’ve placed our personalities in what we do, and that can’t be repeated.

Ware: That’s fundamentally the goal. You guys certainly did that amazingly well. I can’t think of two other guys who did it better.


Still unexplained: why Clowes is portraying a character from an Oliver Stone movie.

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§ I cannot improve upon i09’s decription of this comic: Clever comic explains where the letters of the alphabet got their shapes

§ A sharp-eyed Rob Liefeld spots Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Inkpot award on his shelf behind interviewer Lesley Stahl:


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Unremarked upon: Stahl’s shockingly unflattering crimson lipstick and Ah-nuld’s complete lack of comprehension of or contrition over the ethical impoverishment of his behavior. And you elected this man governor, California.

§ Here are some links from last week: Jamie Alexander, who plays Sif in Thors I and II injured herself on the set of Thor II so badly she had to be hospitalized for a few days. How did it happen! Was she swinging a sword? Leaping on a horse? Bowling with Chris Hemsworth?

Alexander slipped as she was walking on the set while it was raining, according to her publicist Craig Schneider, who wouldn’t reveal the exact nature of her injury. He noted that her injury is not, by any means, putting a halt on the production of “Thor,” and noted that it “worked out” since the film was forced to work around the rain anyway, and that they were able to shift the shooting schedule to accommodate Alexander’s recovery.


Note to Alexander: Come up with a better story.

§ George R.R. Martin’s love of tragic, doomed characters was birthed by the tragic, doomed life of Wonder Man

GEORGE R.R. MARTIN: Oh, yes, I liked Wonder Man! You know why? Now it’s coming back to me vividly. Wonder Man dies in that story. He’s a brand new character, he’s introduced, and he dies. It was very heart wrenching. I liked the character; he was a tragic, doomed character. I guess I’ve responded to tragic doomed characters ever since I was a high school kid.

§ This early review of the Arrow TV show reveals more about the reviewer than about the show:

Following the screening we were also treated to a Q&A with the cast. It was interesting to hear them talk about Green Arrow comics. People foolishly asked them what their favourite Green Arrow books were and bull shit questions like that. These are actors, they don’t read stupid comic books. But actually a bunch of them had! I guess they were encouraged to do their homework and they really did. Stephen Amell mentioned that the only people who care about this property more than the loser geeks in the crowd (not his actual words) were the writers for the show and I believe it.

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§ A One Piece store has opened in Tokyo! The store will carry over 10,000 items and there’s a list of some of them in the link. The items carried include boxer shorts, but a straw hat is not mentioned.

§ Cartoon life around the world: Meet Hameeda, a 25-year-old cartoonist in India whose work is aimed at young Urdu and Hindi women:

The 25-year-old Hameeda was once where these girls are today. She knows their lives and constraints. “The Urdu and Hindi cartoons I create are not just a way to express my inner feelings, they are a means to spread the knowledge of rights, leadership and adolescence issues among less-privileged girls and women,” says Hameeda, whose hands are always busy sketching on paper.

§ How did we not link to the interview with Drawn & Quarterly’s Tom Devlin previously? Devlin travels Scandinavia to find great kids comics—Pippi Longstockling and the Moomins—and then brings them over to North America. He is a hero!

I would say that I wanted to expand the audience for these comics. We did really well with them here in North America and the UK and we sold our version to a number of European countries and I just started to think “how can we get more of these books in people’s (kids’) hands.” I had heard from a number of people who said that their children MUCH preferred color comics to black and white comics and it dawned on me that we should try coloring these strips and make a less expensive softcover version that kids could carry around in their backpacks. So we colored a few strips and presented them to Tove’s niece, Sophia, who runs the licensing of the Moomin Characters, and she loved it so we moved forward. Those books are just hitting stores now but I’m really excited because the strips really hold color well. I think people will be shocked how beautifully they turned out.


§ Here’s that animated LOOPER trailer you’ve been hearing about. We saw LOOPER at a screening last week and our total hatred of time travel movies was trumped by our total love of Joseph Gordon Levitt movies, and the general cleverness and humanity of the script. Economical filmmaking in every regard.

§ You read all the way down here for the waffles. And here they are.

2 COMMENTS

  1. You know what else Wonder Man does in that story? He switches sides. I think that’s just as much a hallmark of Martin’s work as the Tragic, Doomed Character: the villain who rises (or the opposite, the hero who falls).

  2. Re Arrow, didn’t Halle Berry have more or less that attitude when she was in X-Men?

    Also: Chris Ware looks like Christie, the Notting Hill serial killer.

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