Art

As many have noted, Frances Bean Cobain, long the innocent ping pong ball in a custody battle with her stability challenged mother, Courtney Love, and other family members, will be 18 in a few days. And to celebrate, she's been photographed by fashion designer Hedi Slimane, best known for his ultra-slim cut suits. Along the way Cobain shows off a tattoo based on a character by cartoonist Al Columbia (Pim and Francie) -- which should come as no surprise, since Cobain's art alter ego Fiddle Tim lists Columbia as an influence. These pictures from Slimane have gotten wide play and they are beautiful. If you scroll down the page you see his previous subject was Amy Winehouse. Given Cobain's genetic influences, (and her swift evolution from relatively healthy looking girl to goth idol) this all looks kinda creepy. But hey, it's probably all the lighting.

Two from Michael Dooley via Imprint, Print magazine's online component. Salon reprints a piece called How comics influence graphic designers with comments and examples from Chip Kidd, Seymour Chwast, Mark Chiarello, and more. And in this piece Dooley wanders around Comic-Con and talks to interesting people like David Mack, Peter Kuper and Matt Kindt.

Fresh off his Raiders of the Lost Ark/Popeye mashup, Chuck Forsman is mixing Jaws with Peanuts.. Prints are available -- collect the whole set!

Over on his blog, Norwegian superstar Jason has revealed the front and back covers for October's JASON CONQUERS AMERICA, a 32-page tribute to all things Jason:

Steam Crow is a publishers/novelty/poster/art company we've noticed at shows before because of their great display and attractive merchandise. They are not an outright comics publisher, as they concentrate on buttons, prints, art and so on but they do publish some books. Their style is distinctive -- a cute/horror/steampunk kind of mashup . They's just posted selling tips from San Diego that EVERYONE SHOULD READ, as it contains solid advice about making sales at the show -- despite being across the aisle from a giant movie booth. Although their product line makes this a bit different from a comic-only booth, the reality is that selling ancillary merchandise is a major revenue stream for most comics publishers these days, small and large, and these observations are valuable for just about everyone. A sample:

Every day in July the great Gabrielle Bell a href="http://gabriellebell.com/2011/08/01/31/"> posted a comic. . Out own July was a bit too chaotic for regular reading but it's all up now -- but only until August 15th. We caught up with our own reading, and it's a fascinating trip into a world of nosy supers, computer cables, post office frustration, lost keys, self doubt and survival. Check it out while you can ...and congrats Gabrielle.

Some lucky guy got an awesome commission.

Another winner in TCJ's cartoonist diary series.

Artist Brent Anderson has sent out an updated list of the art that was stolen from his car just after the San Diego Comic-Con. If you see any of this for sale, please contact him. Images of some of the stolen art can be seen on his art page.

We heard of a couple of car break-ins at Comic-Con, and one of the worst was artist Brent Anderson's :

"Brent Anderson had a lot of art stolen in San Diego. His car was broken into at the San Diego Zoo and the following original art was stolen: 50 pages from Astro City Vols. 1 & 2 & Local Heroes; AC: Dark Age Books 1 (#s 1-4), 2 (#s 1-4) & 3 (#s 1-4) (50 pages). Green Lantern and Rising Stars artwork was stolen as well. Please share this to as many venues as possible, to get the thief caught and the art returned."

From today's just concluded Image panel, Chew #20 includes 8 extra pages at no extra cost. We've been given an exclusive preview of pages from the issue, below. In addition, Chew #23 has been announced with the title "Big League Chew" -- it's out in October and includes a zombie-fied front cover.

None of this year's Russ Manning Award nominees created a bigger splash than Nate Simpson with the debut of his comic Non-Player. With it's gorgeous, fully imagined artwork it was the toast of the internet for a few weeks and sold out right away. LIke may recent Manning nominees, Simpson works in video game design -- not only artwork but character and story concepts; his resume includes Demigod, Space Siege, Supreme Commander 2, GoPets. the Starfleet Command series and dozens more.