Culture

BY JEN VAUGHN - Comic writer, podcast host and serial blogger at his own website, The Invincible Super Blog, and Comics Alliance, Chris Sims sat down to have a chat with me about his upcoming Dracula comic to be fully released on Monday, October 31st, also known as Halloween. Six delicious pages are up as a preview now.

Although it would be equally suitable for a 28 days of Valentine feature, we'll file Jonathan Case's new GN DEAR CREATURE under Halloween just because it stars Grue, a deep sea monster. Encountering volumes of Shakespeare beneath the waves, he decides to come to shore to look for romance, and finds it with a woman named Giulietta...but nothing is as it sounds like it will be. This was one of the most unexpected GNs we encountered all year, especially coming from Tor Books. It's kind of loopy but very sweet and the art, in pristine black and white, is hugely expressive.

Over on her site, Colleen Doran is posting her out of printGothic short story "Three Black Hearts"a page a day until Halloween.

Looking upon the images of this check inspires both awe and revulsion. Awe that such a key part of American cultural history has been found. Revulsion that the American comic book industry was birthed in exploitation of the creators. And before anybody gets up in the comments to complain about "the greedy family," know that buying all rights in perpetuity was not necessarily the standard even in 1938.

Another haunted webcomic, this time Red Light Properties Dan Goldman's creepy series about a real estate agency that specializes in cleaning up then selling haunted houses. Cory Doctorow gave it a big plug the other day:

Okay we kinda fell off the track there with our Halloween feature but we'll play super catch up until the big day. here's Stephen Price's take on Hellboy as Eustace Tilley, the New Yorker's cartoon mascot, in a submission for their annual Eustace Tilley art contest.

HABE writes with some links to webcomics suitable for the spooky season, starting with his own anthology The Midnight Tea Party, a Goth Lolita collection of tales, and "Fairy Soup" illustrated by Ashley Cope, creator of Unsounded (below).

While news of great corporate conglomerates headlines the comics world news of late, it must always be remembered this is an industry of people and art, and the vibrancy of the the two coming together. Frank Santoro has been running an awesome series of "Local comics scene" reports at TCJ, and they are welcome reminders that the indie spirit of like-minded souls sitting in diners and sketching and talking over coffee and Strathmore is alive and well. We'd love to visit each and every one of these scenes. It's also of note that in these economic hard times, sometimes creativity thrives where money is scarce.

You had us at dinosaur, Dustin Harbin. And with "colored by Sam Bosma and Kali Ciesemier" you chained us up and threw away the key.

I don't know who Richard Famous is -- a gay British man who makes little-watched YouTube videos -- but what he has to say about "the brokeback pose" and how hyper-sexualization depowers female comics characters is pretty dead on.

Was it worth braving the crowds? Are comics the center of attention at NYCC? How good was a $5 hot dog taste? And what does I.M. Pei have to do with it anyway? This is it -- the one you've been waiting for!

An iconic — and, they say, ironic — Roy Lichetnstein painting based on a drawing by William Overgard is expected to sell for $35-45 million at a Christie's auction. In 1988 the painting sold for $2.1 million, but a recent Lichtenstein sale for $42.6 million suggest the market for his work has expanded a bit more. The painting has been shown at the Guggenheim Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.