Art

After reading Bon Alimagno’s excellent interview/evaluation with colorist Erick Arciniega on iFanboy, I decided that it was time for more of us to start jumping on the coloring bandwagon. Getting the right colorist on a comic can be crucial to the success of the book, and yet there’s really very little coverage of this side of the industry available. With that in mind I contacted colorist-whizz (and nicest man alive) Val Staples, whose recent credits include books like Swamp Thing, New Mutants, Deadpool and Hulk, to get a basic insight into his life as a colorist.

Not quite comics, but hours of fun: The design blog Grain Edit features work by several cartoon-affiliated folks, and sums up the look of the day (as defined by the Mid-Century influence, whatever you call it) very nicely.

Afternoon diversion: Well, well, talk about tying up all our themes in one handy image, while tooling round we spotted the cover to the new edition of Women, Art, and Society by Whitney Chadwick, which covers:

This acclaimed study challenges the assumption that great women artists are exceptions to the rule who “transcended” their sex to produce major works of art. While acknowledging the many women whose contributions to visual culture have often been neglected, Whitney Chadwick’s survey reexamines the works themselves and the ways in which they have been perceived as marginal, often in direct reference to gender.

Mitch O'Connell is known as a wonderful artist in a vintage/pin-up style. He also has a huge collection of old comics. And at a perhaps unthinkable cost to himself, he's used that collection to give us one of the great treasures of our age: Sex in Comic! The top 100 strangest, suggestive and steamy vintage comic book panels of all time! Here are three excerpts but the whole thing has us gasping for air.

The collectible retro poster craze is burning up, man. Now artist Juan Ortiz is creating 80 retro style Star Trek posters-- one for each episode of the Classic Trek. The first four posters, from Quantum Mechanix, are a set of 18x24 plated-printed lithographs on 100-pound, aqueous-coated, satin-finish paper. The set is available for a mere $34.95 from startrek.com and many other fine retailers.

As you may have heard, nail art is all the rage these days, and its getting more and more ornate. And some ladies are going for comics inspired pieces, such as this, by Brooklyn's Fleury Rose, who created this design for someone going to the Dark Knight Rises premiere in New York, who got to show them off to director Christopher Nolan, even. Who wouldn't want to sport these dark knails?

After a successful roll-out at C2E2—and in light of how artists everywhere are doing it themselves—DC Collectibles is making more than 20 new posters available at their online store, all in the highly designed style that has become so popular with things like the Alamo Drafthouse and so on. Can we say, it's about time? You can see all the prints here—no creators given, alas, in the licensed style of the Warners and Disney stores, but there are some nice items.

Over the weekend, we were hanging out with the local cartooning scene, and the locals were buzzing about last week’s surprise news that The Museum of Comics and Cartoon Art was transferring all of its holdings and activities to the Society of Illustrators, a more venerable New York institution that spotlights already–recognized greats like Leyendecker and Rockwell. While there was much speculation, a MoCCA insider told us that they would not be involved with the new entity, as it had been transferred in total to SoI. What we're looking at is an entirely new operation, in effect. If the transfer has removed New York City's only dedicated comics exhibit space and social center, the new home is definitely a landmark in its own right. The Society of Illustrators itself goes back over a hundred years, and has seen all the greats from Gibson to Rockwell to Peak to Crumb come through its doors—doors of a midtown building which was once a carriage house for legendary kazillionaire J. P. Morgan. The differing paths of the comics and illustration worlds is perhaps shown by the operating budgets of both institutions—SoI's is $1.3 million; MoCCA's was $300,000.

RUN! DO NOT WALK! To Domatile Collardey's Wreckhall Abbey, a new comic about a private school for girls in the proud tradition of St. Trinians and more. Holy crap, this looks AMAZING.

Following the sudden closing of its physical space earlier this year, the fate of New York's Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art was in question. Now its future direction has been announced: MoCCA is transferring its assets to the more than 100-year-old Society of Illustrators. The SoI, as it is known, will install a permanent gallery from MoCCA's holdings, as well as stage special exhibits, the first of which will be 2013's “The Comic Art of Harvey Kurtzman,” which opens in March. The Society of Illustrators will also continue running the MoCCA Festival in its Armory location.

Stately Beat Manor approves of David Aja art. Click for larger images. HAWKEYE #2, written by Matt Fraction with art and cover by Aja, goes on sale September 5.

While you may not be interested in sporting events, the history of Olympic Mascots ties into such familiar Beat territory as licensing and furries. According to the Smithsonian , the Germans, who innovated the pictographs we spotlighted earlier, also invented the Olympic mascot with Wendi, a lovable dachshund who introduced the 1972 Summer games in Munich. It was only the beginning of a parade of characters hated and loved, but most often hated.