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Vocabulary > Arts > Books > Comics
http://www.marvel.com/wallpaper/fetchimage.htm?id=460&size=lg
added 10.7.2007
http://www.marvel.com/wallpaper/?character=Wolverine
http://www.marvel.com/wallpaper/fetchimage.htm?id=931&size=lg
added 10.7.2007
http://www.marvel.com/wallpaper/?title=CAPTAIN%20AMERICA
http://www.marvel.com/wallpaper/fetchimage.htm?id=1056&size=lg
added 10.7.2007
http://www.marvel.com/wallpaper/fetchimage.htm?id=1043&size=lg
added 10.7.2007
Michael Turner, 37, Creator of
Superheroines, Is Dead
NYT
6.7.2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/06/arts/design/06turner.html
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/obituaries/turner-fathom.pdf
comics
http://www.dccomics.com/
http://www.gocomics.com/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/comics
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/comics
strips / comic strips
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/jul/22/comics.pressandpublishing
yahoo > comics / editorial comics
http://news.yahoo.com/comics/090831/cx_janes_umedia/20093108
teenage magazine comic strips
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2007/mar/07/art.gender
William Elsworth Blackbeard
1926-2011
author, editor, anthologist and ardent
accumulator,
Mr. Blackbeard is widely credited with helping save the American newspaper comic
strip
from the scrap heap, amassing a collection considered the most comprehensive
ever assembled.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/01/arts/design/bill-blackbeard-comic-strip-champion-dies-at-84.html
Roy of the Rovers and other classic comics
return to newsstands March 2009
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/gallery/2009/mar/23/roy-of-the-rovers-classic-comic?picture=344934234
comics > Dark Horse Comics
USA
http://www.darkhorse.com/
comic book
http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/artsandentertainment/story/0,6000,1536970,00.html
comic-book sexism
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/dec/28/women-comic-book-sexism
Leslie Noel Daniels III
USA 1943-2011
one of the earliest historians of comic
books
— from the launching (off the doomed planet Krypton) of Superman in 1938
through the countercultural comix movement of the ’60s — and an author of horror
novels
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/15/books/les-daniels-historian-of-comic-books-dies-at-68.html
funnies
http://www.kingfeatures.com/features/comics/comics.htm
Charles Schulz's Peanuts / Charlie Brown strips
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/oct/11/peanuts-matt-groening-jonathan-franzen
Yahoo > Comics
http://news.yahoo.com/comics/090831/cx_janes_umedia/20093108
31 August 2009
character
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/sep/21/marvel-copyrights-jack-kirby
character > Dick Tracy
The history of Dan Dare, Pilot of the Future
When Marcus Morris and Frank Hampson created
Eagle at the end of the 1940s,
British boys and girls were still living under rations.
Dan Dare's bold colours and dashing storylines
captured the hearts of a generation
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/gallery/2010/dec/10/
dan-dare-history-frank-hampson#/?picture=369623145&index=0
hero
http://marvel.com/universe/Category:Heroes
http://www.dccomics.com/heroes_and_villains/
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/11/arts/artsspecial/11frazetta.html
superhero
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/08/books/sheldon-moldoff-batman-comic-book-artist-dies-at-91.html
Spider-Girl
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/nov/09/spider-girl-hero-waiting-for
Batman's first appearance - 1939 edition of
Detective Comics December 2010
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/dec/07/batman-comic-auction-first-edition
Superman
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/apr/29/superman-threatens-renounce-us-citizenship
First Superman comic sells for $1m
1938 edition of Action Comics No1
with cover showing superhero lifting car sets
record for comic book sale
February 2010
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/feb/23/first-superman-comic-sold-million
Superman > comic book artist > Joe Shuster
1914-1992
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/16/arts/16siegel.html
superheroine
villain
http://www.dccomics.com/heroes_and_villains/
draughtsman
comics
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/comics
comic book
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/feb/23/first-superman-comic-sold-million
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/book_extracts/article6569008.ece
Sheldon Douglas Moldoff
1920-2012
Sheldon Moldoff drew some of the most
recognizable superheroes
of comic books’ golden age without receiving recognition in his own right until
decades later
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/08/books/sheldon-moldoff-batman-comic-book-artist-dies-at-91.html
Eugene Jules Colan
1926-2011
a towering figure among comic-book artists,
whose depictions of some of the best-known characters in the genre
were lauded for their realism, expressiveness and painterly qualities
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/25/arts/gene-colan-comic-book-artist-dies-at-84.html
autobiographical comic book > Harvey
Lawrence Pekar 1939-2010
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/p/harvey_pekar/index.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/13/arts/design/13pekar.html
illustrator of comic books > Alfonso Williamson
USA 1931-2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/21/arts/design/21williamson.html
comic-book artist / illustrator > Frank
Frazzetta USA
1928-2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/11/arts/artsspecial/11frazetta.html
comic-book artist > Chester Brown
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/03/books/review/book-review-paying-for-it-by-chester-brown.html
comic-book artist > Michael Turner
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/obituaries/turner-fathom.pdf
comic artist > Charlie Adlard
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article6617758.ece
comic-strip artist > Jack Kirby
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/sep/21/marvel-copyrights-jack-kirby
John Higgins’ Razorjack
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/book_extracts/article6569008.ece
comic-book writer > Alan Moore
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/alan-moore
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/nov/27/alan-moore-v-vendetta-mask-protest
Alan Moore's dystopian comic book > Watchmen
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/jul/20/watchmen-zack-snyder-clip
DC comics
http://www.dccomics.com/
Marvel comics
http://www.marvel.com/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/nov/09/spider-girl-hero-waiting-for
http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,2210276,00.html
Marvel > Joe Quesada
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article5941759.ece
Doctor Doom
http://www.marvel.com/universe/Doctor_Doom
Sandman
http://www.marvel.com/universe/Sandman
Silver Surfer
http://www.marvel.com/universe/Silver_Surfer
The 99: Superheroes inspired by the qualities
of Allah
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/gallery/2009/jul/05/islam-religion-the99-comic-book?picture=349799869
Comic-Con
http://www.comic-con.org/
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/24/business/24avatar.html
Popeye
Published November 9, 1951
Pasted from Wikipedia
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/ce/Thimbledecem11951.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popeye
Primary source
http://ilovecomix.myjungledisk.com
http://www.comicstalk.com/superspider.jpg
http://www.bluetights.net/theplanet/showthread.php?t=16333&page=27
added 15.5.2007
The classic 1939
cover for
Superman #1
http://www.randomhouse.com/pantheon/graphicnovels/myth11.html
http://www.randomhouse.com/pantheon/graphicnovels/mythology.html
Wonder Woman made her debut
in
1941,
drawn by Harry Peter and written by William Marston.
http://www.randomhouse.com/pantheon/graphicnovels/myth14.html
http://www.randomhouse.com/pantheon/graphicnovels/mythology.html
Sheldon Moldoff, Batman Comic Book Artist, Dies at 91
March 8, 2012
The New York Times
By DANIEL E. SLOTNIK
Sheldon Moldoff, who drew some of the most recognizable
superheroes of comic books’ golden age without receiving recognition in his own
right until decades later, died on Feb. 29 near his home in Lauderhill, Fla. He
was 91.
The cause was complications of kidney failure, his daughter, Ellen Moldoff
Stein, said.
Mr. Moldoff drew covers for the first appearances of the characters Flash and
Green Lantern in 1940 and some of the earliest renderings of Hawkman. He also
contributed to the first issue of Action Comics, in which Superman was
introduced (though he did not draw the Man of Steel).
But he is probably remembered most for his work as a ghost artist on Bob Kane’s
Batman from 1953 to 1967.
“He would get the script, give it to me, and I would lay it out, finish it,
pencil it up and give it back to him,” Mr. Moldoff told The Asbury Park Press in
1999. “Now, being a ghost, you don’t say anything to anybody. You just work for
your boss and that’s it. So Bob took all the credit.”
Mr. Moldoff used a distinctive cartoonish style that complemented the
often-bizarre Batman plots of the 1950s and ’60s. He created some of the oddest
characters ever to grace Gotham, like Zebra Batman, Ace the Bat-Hound and
Bat-Mite. Among his hundreds of Batman covers is one showing Batman carrying
Robin’s body for a two-part 1963 story called “Robin Dies at Dawn.” (The Boy
Wonder pulls through.) But at a time when most artists went uncredited, Mr.
Moldoff’s signature was never attached to the work.
With the advent of comic conventions and a growing comic culture, fans came to
recognize Mr. Moldoff’s work in the 1980s, according to a blog by Mark Evanier’s
blog, a comic-book writer and historian.
“The credits gradually were given to me,” Mr. Moldoff said.
Sheldon Douglas Moldoff was born on April 14, 1920, in Manhattan. By the time he
was 17 he was submitting freelance work to Detective Comics.
Mr. Moldoff was hired as an assistant to Kane out of high school, but left to
draw Green Lantern, the Flash, Hawkman and his own recurring character, Jon
Valor, the Black Pirate. In 1953 he began working as one of the chief ghost
artists on Batman, doing that work until 1967.
Later he worked with Kane on Courageous Cat and Minute Mouse, a Batman-inspired
cartoon featuring goofy animal superheroes.
His wife, Shirley, died 10 years ago. In addition to their daughter, Mr. Moldoff
is survived by two sons, Richard and Kenneth; his brothers Albert and Stanley;
four grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.
Sheldon Moldoff, Batman Comic Book Artist,
Dies at 91, NYT, 8.3.2012,
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/08/books/sheldon-moldoff-batman-comic-book-artist-dies-at-91.html
Gene Colan, Prolific Comic-Book Artist, Dies at 84
June 25, 2011
The New York Times
By MARGALIT FOX
Gene Colan, a towering figure among comic-book artists, whose
depictions of some of the best-known characters in the genre were lauded for
their realism, expressiveness and painterly qualities, died on Thursday in the
Bronx. He was 84 and lived in Brooklyn.
The cause was complications of cancer and liver disease, his son, Erik, said.
Most closely associated with Marvel Comics, Mr. Colan also drew for DC and other
publishers. At Marvel, he was best known for Daredevil (written by Marvel’s
editor in chief, Stan Lee), about a blind man with superpowers; the Falcon, one
of the first African-American superheroes, created by Mr. Colan and Mr. Lee;
Howard the Duck, written by Steve Gerber; and The Tomb of Dracula, which Mr.
Colan created with the writer Marv Wolfman.
Mr. Colan’s work was noteworthy on several counts. The first was its sheer
duration: He completed his first professional assignment in the 1940s and his
last a year or two ago. In between, his art was a mainstay of the Silver Age of
comics, as the period from the mid-1950s to about 1970 — a time of heady
artistic ferment in the field — is known.
The second was its prodigious volume: Over nearly seven decades he illustrated
many hundreds of comics, from the famous, including Batman, Wonder Woman and the
Hulk, to the possibly less so, including Ben Casey, Falling in Love and Captain
Britain.
The third was his visual style, by all accounts unlike that of any other artist
in the business. Where comic-book art tends toward deliberately flat, stylized
images, Mr. Colan preferred a realistic look that emphasized texture and
fluidity: the drape of a hero’s cape, tilt of a head, the arc of an oncoming
fist.
A lifelong film buff, Mr. Colan was known as a master of light and shadow, which
lent his work a noirish, cinematic quality.
“He was referred to as a painter with a pencil,” Tom Field, the author of
“Secrets in the Shadows: The Art & Life of Gene Colan“ (2005), said in an
interview on Friday. “Comic books had been put together like a production line:
There’s someone who writes the script, someone who would letter the words onto
the pages, someone who would do the pencil illustrations. And typically another
artist would come along with India ink and embellish those illustrations so they
would stand out for the printer. In Gene’s case, the pencils were so rich and
lavish that when the technology evolved to that point, the publishers stopped
putting ink on his pencils and reproduced the work just as it was drawn.”
Mr. Colan had lived for many years with glaucoma; since the early 1990s, Mr.
Field said, he was nearly blind in one eye and had tunnel vision in the other.
Throughout this period, his work continued unabated, and it was, in most
estimates, as fine as what had gone before.
Eugene Jules Colan was born in New York on Sept. 1, 1926. (The family name,
according to Mr. Field’s book, was originally Cohen.) He was reared in
Manhattan, where his parents ran an antiques business on the Upper East Side. He
studied at the Art Students League of New York and toward the end of World War
II served in the Philippines with the Army Air Forces.
After the war he joined Marvel (then known as Timely Comics), where his
assignments would include Captain America, Captain Marvel, Iron Man and
Sub-Mariner.
For DC (and its precursor, National Comics), Mr. Colan drew Batman, Hopalong
Cassidy and Silverblade.
Mr. Colan’s first marriage, to Cynthia Sanders, ended in divorce. His second
wife, the former Adrienne Brickman, died last year. He is survived by two
children from his second marriage, his son, Erik, and a daughter, Nanci Solo;
and three grandchildren.
Underpinning the realistic look of Mr. Colan’s comics was his fealty to
real-world models. For the Dracula series, he based the title character on Jack
Palance, whom he had seen play Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in a 1968 television
movie. Fittingly, Mr. Palance went on to play Dracula in a 1974 television
movie.
On another occasion, Mr. Colan needed to draw a particular make of handgun. “He
was such a stickler for detail,” Mr. Field said, “that he went down to the
police station and asked them to pull one out and show it to him.”
Gene Colan, Prolific
Comic-Book Artist, Dies at 84, NYT, 25.6.2011,
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/25/arts/gene-colan-comic-book-artist-dies-at-84.html
Harvey Pekar, ‘American Splendor’ Creator, Dies at 70
July 12, 2010
The New York Times
By WILLIAM GRIMES
Harvey Pekar, whose autobiographical comic book “American
Splendor” attracted a cult following for its unvarnished stories of a depressed,
aggrieved Everyman negotiating daily life in Cleveland and became the basis for
a critically acclaimed 2003 film, died on Monday at his home in Cleveland
Heights, Ohio. He was 70.
A spokesman for the Cuyahoga County coroner’s office said that no cause of death
had yet been determined. Capt. Michael Cannon of the Cleveland Heights Police
Department, which was summoned to Mr. Pekar’s home by his wife, Joyce Brabner,
told The Associated Press that Mr. Pekar had suffered from prostate cancer,
asthma, high blood pressure and depression.
Mr. Pekar (pronounced PEE-kar), who toiled for nearly 40 years as a file clerk
in a Veterans Administration hospital, applied the brutally frank
autobiographical style of Henry Miller to the comic-book format, creating a
distinctive series of dispatches from an all-too-ordinary life. His alter ego,
introduced in 1976, trudged on from episode to episode, quarreling with
co-workers, dealing with car problems, addressing family crises and fretting
over money matters and health problems.
“Harvey was like the original blogger, before there was an Internet,” said Dean
Haspiel, an artist who worked with Mr. Pekar on “American Splendor” and “The
Quitter,” his memoir. “He was ‘Seinfeld’ before ‘Seinfeld.’ Comics, which had
been power fantasies for 12-year-old boys, could now be about anything.”
Since he could not draw, Mr. Pekar enlisted top comic-book artists to do the
illustrations, notably R. Crumb, who had encouraged him to publish and
contributed illustrations for the first issues of “American Splendor.” Later
issues were illustrated by Gary Dumm, Greg Budgett and Mark Zingarelli.
“It dawned on me that comics were not an intrinsically limited medium,” Mr.
Pekar told Interview magazine in 2009. “There was a tremendous amount of things
you could do in comics that you couldn’t do in other art forms — but no one was
doing it. I figured if I’d make a try at it, I’d at least be a footnote in
history.”
Harvey Lawrence Pekar was born on Oct. 8, 1939, in Cleveland, where his parents,
Jewish immigrants from Poland, ran a neighborhood grocery store. The
neighborhood, once white, became mostly black in the 1940s, and Harvey was the
target of local youths who called him “white cracker” and routinely beat him up.
The experience, he later theorized, instilled a profound sense of inferiority.
After the family moved to a white neighborhood, Mr. Pekar found that the
constant fighting paid off. In one-on-one combat, he usually emerged the victor,
and he became a respected street scrapper. At the same time, he nourished
deep-seated anxieties and compulsions that made him fearful of taking on any
challenge, one of the major themes of “The Quitter” (2005).
A series of dead-end jobs led to enlistment in the Navy, which discharged him
when his anxieties made it impossible for him to pass inspections. Mr. Pekar
resumed working a string of low-paying jobs, usually clerical. In 1965 he found
a permanent roost with the Veterans Administration, where he turned down all
offers of promotion and remained a file clerk until he retired in 2001.
On the side, however, Mr. Pekar began writing articles for Jazz Review in the
late 1950s, and later for British jazz magazines and Downbeat. He also struck up
a friendship, in 1962, with R. Crumb, a fellow jazz enthusiast and record
collector then living in Cleveland. In Mr. Crumb’s early work he saw new
possibilities in the comic-book form.
He began sketching out stories with stick-figure illustrations. Mr. Crumb,
impressed, encouraged him to publish and showed his work to other artists, who
also saw what Mr. Crumb saw. Mr. Pekar’s humble tales “from off the streets of
Cleveland,” as the subtitle to “American Splendor” has it, resonated with enough
readers to keep the experiment alive.
“I always wanted praise and I always wanted attention; I won’t lie to you,” he
told Interview magazine in 2009. “I was a jazz critic and that wasn’t good
enough for me. I wanted people to write about me, not me about them.”
The cantankerous Mr. Pekar, who published the first 15 issues of “American
Splendor” himself, became a regular on “Late Night With David Letterman” for two
years in the late 1980s, until he went on a memorable tirade against General
Electric, the parent company of NBC, and was dropped for several years from the
show’s guest list.
Wider fame came with the film, a quirky blend of documentary footage, animation
and fiction. Mr. Pekar and his wife were played by Paul Giamatti and Hope Davis,
but Mr. Pekar provided the narration and slipped into several scenes in both
live and animated form. He wrote about the film in “Our Movie Year” (2004).
In addition to “American Splendor,” Mr. Pekar wrote several biographies,
including “American Splendor: Unsung Hero” (2003), about the Vietnam War
experiences of Robert McNeill, a fellow worker at the VA hospital.
Mr. Pekar’s other books include “Students for a Democratic Society: A Graphic
History” (2008), “The Beats” (2009) and “Studs Terkel’s Working: A Graphic
Adaptation” (2009) as well as “Our Cancer Year” (1994), an account of his
treatment for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, which he wrote with his wife.
Mr. Pekar’s first two marriages ended in divorce. In addition to his wife, he is
survived by their daughter, Danielle.
Success did not seem to ease Mr. Pekar’s existential predicament. “Of course I
don’t think I have it made by any means,” his alter ego said in a cartoon in
Entertainment Weekly in 2003. “I’m too insecure, obsessive and paranoid for
that.”
Harvey Pekar,
‘American Splendor’ Creator, Dies at 70, NYT, 12.7.2010,
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/13/arts/design/13pekar.html
Al Williamson, Illustrator of Comic Books, Dies at 79
June 20, 2010
The New York Times
By DENNIS HEVESI
Flash Gordon fires his ray gun to blast a path toward Ming the
Merciless, tyrant of the doomed planet Mongo.
Secret Agent Corrigan crosses swords with his Carpathian nemesis as he rescues
the shapely Russian spy Karla Kopak.
Luke Skywalker straddles a winged serpent to swoop down the Great Well of the
distant planet Kabal.
Those are among the thousands of images Al Williamson sketched as one of
America’s pre-eminent artists of comic books and newspaper comic strips.
Mr. Williamson died on June 12 in upstate New York, his wife, Cori, said. He was
79.
In a career that lasted more than 50 years, Mr. Williamson worked for nearly
every major comics publisher, including EC, Marvel, King, Classics Illustrated,
Dark Horse and Dell.
“He was one of the more sublimely talented artists to work in mainstream
comics,” said Tom Spurgeon, editor of the online magazine Comics Reporter. “His
men were handsome, his women were beautiful, and the landscapes he drew — alien
or westerns or battlefields — always seemed lushly authentic. He made panels you
could lose yourself in.”
Mark Schultz, author of “Al Williamson’s Flash Gordon: A Lifelong Vision of the
Heroic” (Flesk Publications, 2009), a collection of Mr. Williamson’s Flash
Gordon images, offered a similar assessment.
“What made his work unique is that he incorporated the fluid motion of cinema
into his drawings,” Mr. Schultz said. “No other illustrator or cartoonist has
approached his ability to create an illusion of action.”
Mr. Williamson is probably best known for his interpretations of Flash Gordon,
the interstellar adventurer created by Alex Raymond in the mid-1930s. Mr.
Williamson illustrated Flash Gordon comic books in the 1960s and returned to the
character in 1980, drawing an adaptation of the Flash Gordon motion picture
released that year. In the 1990s, he produced a Flash Gordon series for Marvel
and later contributed to the Sunday strip.
Mr. Williamson first made his professional mark at 17 as the youngest
contributor to EC, the publisher of somewhat notorious horror tales, as well as
combat stories and science fiction. He specialized in illustrations for EC’s
Weird Science and Weird Fantasy titles.
For 13 years, starting in 1967, Mr. Williamson drew the newspaper strip “Secret
Agent Corrigan,” another adaptation of a character originated by Raymond in the
1930s, first known only as Secret Agent X-9.
When George Lucas, producer of the “Star Wars” movies, was asked who should draw
the comics version, he turned to the man whose Flash Gordon images he greatly
admired. With “The Empire Strikes Back” due for release in 1980, Mr. Williamson
began working on Marvel’s comic book versions of “Star Wars,” as well as a
newspaper strip.
Alfonso Williamson was born in Manhattan on March 21, 1931, one of two children
of Sally and Alfonso Williamson. His father, of Scottish descent, was a citizen
of Colombia, and soon after his son was born the family moved to Bogotá.
When the boy was 9, his mother took him to the movies. He saw a chapter in the
“Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe” serial, was enraptured, and started
sketching scenes from memory.
The family returned to New York when Alfonso was 13. He took classes at the
Cartoonists and Illustrators School in Manhattan (now the School of Visual
Arts), and was later hired by EC.
Mr. Williamson’s first wife, the former Arlene Sattler, died in 1977. In
addition to his wife of 32 years, the former Cori Pasquier, he is survived by
his sister, Liliana Gonzalez Williamson; a daughter, Valerie Lalor; and a son,
Victor.
The last Flash Gordon images drawn by Mr. Williamson show the hero leading
rebels in an attack on Ming’s mountain fortress, then dueling with Ming until
the tyrant leaps into a volcanic crater to avoid being captured.
“Which, of course, allows him to return another day,” Mr. Schultz said. “You
never want to show the reader the body.”
Al Williamson,
Illustrator of Comic Books, Dies at 79, NYT, 20.6.2010,
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/21/arts/design/21williamson.html
Frank Frazetta,
Illustrator, Dies at 82; Helped Define Comic Book Heroes
May 10, 2010
The New York Times
By BRUCE WEBER and DAVE ITZKOFF
Frank Frazetta, an
illustrator of comic books, movie posters and paperback book covers whose
visions of musclebound men fighting with swords and axes to defend scantily
dressed women helped define fantasy heroes like Conan, Tarzan and John Carter of
Mars, died on Monday in Fort Myers, Fla. He was 82.
The cause was complications from a stroke, said Rob Pistella and Stephen
Ferzoco, Mr. Frazetta’s business managers.
Mr. Frazetta was a versatile and prolific comic book artist who, in the 1940s
and ’50s, drew for comic strips like Al Capp’s “Lil’ Abner” and comic books like
“Famous Funnies,” for which he contributed a series of covers depicting the
futuristic adventurer Buck Rogers.
A satirical advertisement Mr. Frazetta drew for Mad earned him his first
Hollywood job, the movie poster for “What’s New Pussycat?” (1965), a sex farce
written by Woody Allen that starred Peter Sellers. In 1983 he collaborated with
the director Ralph Bakshi to produce the animated film “Fire and Ice.”
His most prominent work, however, was on the cover of book jackets, where his
signature images were of strikingly fierce, hard-bodied heroes and bosomy,
callipygian damsels in distress. In 1966, his cover of “Conan the Adventurer,” a
collection of four fantasy short stories written by Robert E. Howard and L.
Sprague de Camp, depicted a brawny long-haired warrior standing in repose on top
of a pile of skeletons and other detritus, his sword thrust downward into the
mound, an apparently naked young woman lying at his feet, hugging his ankle.
The cover created a new look for fantasy adventure novels and established Mr.
Frazetta as an artist who could sell books. He illustrated many more Conan books
(including “Conan the Conqueror,” “Conan the Usurper” and “Conan the Avenger”)
and works by Edgar Rice Burroughs (including “John Carter and the Savage Apes of
Mars” and “Tarzan and the Antmen”).
“Paperback publishers have been known to buy one of his paintings for use as a
cover, then commission a writer to turn out a novel to go with it,” The New York
Times reported in 1977, the same year that a collection of his drawings, “The
Fantastic Art of Frank Frazetta,” sold more than 300,000 copies.
Frank Frazzetta was born in Brooklyn on Feb. 9, 1928, and as a boy studied
painting at a local art school. (Early in his career, he excised one z from his
last name because “with one z it just looked better,” Mr. Pistella said. “He
said the two z’s and two t’s was too clumsy.”)
Mr. Frazetta began drawing for comic books of all stripes — westerns, mysteries,
fantasies — when he was still a teenager. He was also a good enough baseball
player to try out for the New York Giants.
The popularity of Mr. Frazetta’s work coincided with the rise of heavy metal in
the early 1970s, and his otherworldly imagery showed up on a number of album
covers, including Molly Hatchet’s “Flirtin’ With Disaster” and Nazareth’s
“Expect No Mercy.” Last year, Kirk Hammett, the lead guitarist for Metallica,
bought Mr. Frazetta’s cover artwork for the paperback reissue of Robert E.
Howard’s “Conan the Conqueror” for $1 million.
Mr. Frazetta married Eleanor Kelly, known as Ellie, in 1956. She served as his
occasional model and as his business partner; in 2000 she started a small museum
of her husband’s work on their property in East Stroudsburg, Pa. She died last
year.
Mr. Frazetta is survived by three sisters, Carol, Adel and Jeanie; two sons,
Alfonso Frank Frazetta, known as Frank Jr., and William Frazetta, both of East
Stroudsburg; two daughters, Heidi Grabin, of Englewood, Fla., and Holly
Frazetta, of Boca Grande, Fla.; and 11 grandchildren.
After Ellie Frazetta’s death, her children became embroiled in a custodial
dispute over their father’s work, and in December, Frank Jr. was arrested on
charges of breaking into the family museum and attempting to remove 90 paintings
that had been insured for $20 million. In April, the family said the dispute
over the paintings had been resolved, and the Monroe County, Pa., district
attorney said he would drop the charges.
Frank Frazetta, Illustrator,
Dies at 82; Helped Define Comic Book Heroes, NYT, 10.5.2010,
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/11/arts/artsspecial/11frazetta.html
Algorithm and Blues
NYT
27.9.2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/27/books/review/Holt-t.html
Algorithm and Blues
September 27, 2009
The New York Times
By JIM HOLT
Well, this is unexpected — a comic book about the quest for logical certainty
in mathematics. The story spans the decades from the late 19th century to World
War II, a period when the nature of mathematical truth was being furiously
debated. The stellar cast, headed up by Bertrand Russell, includes the greatest
philosophers, logicians and mathematicians of the era, along with sundry wives
and mistresses, plus a couple of homicidal maniacs, an apocryphal barber and
Adolf Hitler.
Improbable material for comic-book treatment? Not really. The principals in this
intellectual drama are superheroes of a sort. They go up against a powerful
nemesis, who might be called Dark Antinomy. Each is haunted by an inner demon,
the Specter of Madness. Their quest has a tragic arc, not unlike that of
Superman or Donald Duck.
So, at least, the creators of “Logicomix” would have us believe. First published
last year in Greece (where it became a surprise best seller), the comic book —
er, graphic novel? — is the brainchild of Apostolos Doxiadis, previously the
author of a not-bad mathematical fiction called “Uncle Petros and Goldbach’s
Conjecture.” For expert assistance on logic, Doxiadis called on his friend
Christos Papadimitriou, a professor of computer science at Berkeley and the
author of a novel about Alan Turing. The art was done by Alecos Papadatos
(drawings) and Annie Di Donna (color).
All four collaborators pop up in interludes throughout the book. (Doxiadis,
evidently a handsome fellow, is drawn to look rather like Robert Goulet.) We see
them chatting in the artists’ studio or strolling around contemporary Athens,
accompanied by an adorable dog called Manga (Greek slang for “cool dude,” not a
reference to Japanese comics). They argue about the developing
logic-and-madness theme and fret over whether there’s too much or too little
technical stuff for the average reader. It’s almost as if they want to pre-empt
the stern judgment of the reviewer. Fat chance.
The story proper opens on Sept. 4, 1939, three days after the Nazi invasion of
Poland. Bertrand Russell is giving a public lecture at an American university on
the role of logic in human affairs. Angry isolationists in the audience
challenge Russell to explain how logic could justify participating in a world
war. Ah, he responds, but what is logic?
In a series of flashbacks, Russell recounts his epic struggle with that
question. We see him first as a little boy, in the 1870s, being brought up by
his grandparents after the mysterious — to him, at least — disappearance of his
mother and father. (Before succumbing to disease, Russell’s parents lived in a
scandalous ménage-a-trois with a rather sinister amateur scientist.) Russell’s
grandfather, Lord John Russell, a Whig aristocrat and reformer, had twice been
prime minister, but it was his dour and pious grandmother who dominated his
childhood. Not only did he suffer from crushing loneliness, but it was borne in
upon him that his Uncle Willy had to be shut away as a violent lunatic. (His
Aunt Agatha was none too sane either.) This was the beginning of his lifelong
terror of hereditary madness, and the impetus for many a nightmare, which the
cartoonists depict with lurid relish.
The adolescent Russell sought refuge in the abstractions of mathematics. (In his
autobiography, he claimed it was his love of mathematics that saved him from
suicide.) His vision of an enchanted logical world was jarred, however, when he
reached Cambridge and found that mathematics as practiced there was little more
than a bag of calculating tricks, sloppily based on physical intuition rather
than rigorous proof. If certain knowledge was to be achieved, he grew convinced,
the house of mathematics had to be rebuilt from scratch on firm logical
foundations.
Russell’s quest for certainty coincided with a busy erotic career. We see him
courting Alys, the pretty American Quaker girl who would become the first of his
four wives. (The cartoonists inexplicably neglect to depict what Russell later
described as “the happiest morning of my life,” when Alys allowed him to kiss
her breasts). The young couple set off on a tour of the Continent, where Russell
seeks out Gottlob Frege, the greatest logician since Aristotle, and Georg
Cantor, the creator of the mathematical theory of infinity. Both men, to
Russell’s consternation, prove to be slightly daft. In Paris, at the 1900
International Congress of Mathematicians, he witnesses a titanic clash between
Henri Poincaré and David Hilbert, the two greatest mathematicians of the day,
over the importance of intuition versus proof. Returning to England, Russell
spends the next decade laboring with Alfred North Whitehead to complete the epic
“Principia Mathematica” — all the while doing his best to seduce Whitehead’s
comely wife, Evelyn. Their (stillborn) masterpiece runs many thousands of pages,
a mere 362 of which are required to prove the interesting proposition “1 + 1 =
2.”
All of this is presented with real graphic verve. (Even though I’m a text guy, I
couldn’t keep my eyes off the witty drawings.) To ginger up the story, the
authors often deviate from the actual facts. As they admit in an afterword,
Russell never met Frege or Cantor in the flesh. Nor, I am fairly certain, did he
ever say to Whitehead, “I’m tired, man.” (You expect Whitehead to reply, “Me
too, bro!”) We are assured, however, that no liberties have been taken with “the
great adventure of ideas.” And for the most part the ideas are conveyed
accurately, and with delightful simplicity. If you don’t know much about
infinity, for instance, you are invited to check in to “Hilbert’s Hotel” —
which, with its infinite number of rooms, can miraculously accommodate
additional guests even when it’s completely full.
There is one serious misstep, though. It has to do with the notorious paradox
that Russell discovered in the spring of 1901: the paradox of the set of all
sets that don’t contain themselves as members. (Think of the barber of Seville,
who shaves all men, and only those men, who do not shave themselves. Does this
barber shave himself or not? Either possibility yields a contradiction.) The
authors have fun unpacking Russell’s paradox, but they exaggerate its fallout.
The paradox did ultimately doom Russell’s (and Frege’s) project of reducing
mathematics to pure logic. However — and this is something that Russell himself
failed to realize, along with the authors — it left mathematics pretty much
undisturbed. When Cantor heard of Russell’s paradox, he did not react like a
madman, the way “Logicomix” caricatures him. He calmly observed that it did not
apply to his own theory of sets, which evolved into the present-day foundation
of mathematics.
It is true that Cantor did suffer fits of madness (the magus of infinity died in
a mental asylum), as did many other figures in this story. Frege, the consummate
logician, ended up a foaming anti-Semite. Kurt Gödel, who proved that no logical
system could capture all of mathematics, starved himself to death out of a
paranoid fear that people were poisoning his food. Russell maintained his own
grip on sanity, but his fear of hereditary madness was borne out when his elder
son became schizophrenic and his granddaughter, also schizophrenic, committed
suicide by setting herself afire. Russell’s philosophical confidence, however,
was shattered by his onetime pupil Ludwig Wittgenstein, who made him realize
that he had never really understood what logic was.
Is it madness to be driven by a passion for something as inhuman as abstract
certainty? This is a question the four creators of “Logicomix” ponder as, in a
beguiling coda, they make their way through nighttime Athens to an open-air
performance of the “Oresteia.” Oddly enough, Aeschylus’ trilogy furnishes the
concluding wisdom, which, at the risk of triteness, I’ll condense into a
mathematical inequality:
Life > logic.
Jim Holt is the author of “Stop Me if You’ve Heard This: A History and
Philosophy of Jokes.” He is at work on a book about the puzzle of existence.
LOGICOMIX
Written by Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos H. Papadimitriou
Illustrated by Alecos Papadatos and Annie Di Donna
347 pp. Bloomsbury. $22.95
Algorithm and Blues,
NYT, 27.9.2009,
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/27/books/review/Holt-t.html
Michael Turner, 37, Creator of Superheroines, Is Dead
July 6, 2008
The New York Times
By GEORGE GENE GUSTINES
Michael Turner, a popular comic-book artist who came to fame in the mid-1990s
and was best known for creating two sexy female lead characters, Witchblade and
Fathom, died on June 27 in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 37.
The cause was complications from treatment for bone cancer, his colleague Vince
Hernandez said in a statement.
Armed with only a hastily assembled five-page sample of his work, Mr. Turner was
discovered at a comic-book convention in 1993 by Marc Silvestri, one of seven
artists who founded Image Comics in 1992. Within months, Mr. Turner went from
waiting tables to being a top-selling artist.
Mr. Turner, along with Mr. Silvestri and a few others, soon created his
best-known character, Witchblade, named after a supernatural weapon that affixed
itself to the arm of Sara Pezzini, a homicide detective in New York; the
transformation left her provocatively clad, armed and dangerous.
The novelist and part-time comic-book writer Brad Meltzer, in a special edition
of the comics-industry magazine Wizard that was devoted to Mr. Turner before he
died, said: “Anyone who says they didn’t become aware of Mike when they saw one
of his hot girl drawings is a liar. That’s when he hit the radar.”
Witchblade first appeared in comic books in 1995 and became the basis of a
live-action series on the cable channel TNT in 2001. It ran for about two
seasons.
In 1998, Mr. Turner created the aquatic Fathom, published by Top Cow
Productions. In her secret identity Fathom was a marine biologist with a model’s
looks named Aspen Matthews.
Two years later, Mr. Turner learned he had a type of cancer called
chondrosarcoma in his right pelvis. He lost his hip, 40 percent of his pelvis
and three pounds of bone and underwent nine months of radiation therapy. He
eventually went into remission, only to have the cancer return several times.
In 2002, Mr. Turner founded Aspen MLT, an entertainment publishing company. The
L stood for Lane, his middle name, which he rarely used. The company’s comics
were delayed by a yearlong legal battle with Top Cow regarding the rights to
Fathom and other properties. The case was settled out of court the next year.
In 2004, Mr. Turner began contributing work to DC and Marvel, the comics
industry giants. His cover art brought him particular attention, including his
illustrations for Identity Crisis, a top-selling seven-part mystery written by
Mr. Meltzer, in which DC superheroes, including Superman, Green Arrow and
Hawkman, are forced to question their culpability in a vengeful murder.
As with every cover they worked on, “Mike and I spoke at length about the
design” of the final one for the project, Mr. Meltzer wrote in an e-mail
message. The cover presented the characters as empty costumes, which ambiguously
represented either the end of the age of superheroes or a rebirth.
Mr. Meltzer continued: “The only thing we argued about, as only two geeks can:
whether Batman’s cowl should be flat and empty, or stiff and armored. I lost. He
won. And he was right. But make no mistake, with Mike gone, the capes and cowls
are most certainly empty. His covers were the first thing every reader saw. And
he was the one true ‘big name’ on the book. That’s why people picked it up.”
Fans were important to Mr. Turner. He was always appreciative of people who
stopped to say hello at conventions, and he signed countless autographs, even
when he was confined to a wheelchair, Gareb Shamus, the publisher of Wizard,
said.
Mr. Turner was born in Crossville, Tenn., on April 21, 1971, and is survived by
his mother, Grace, and his brother, Jake.
In high school, Mr. Turner took an art class, but he mostly drew for his own
amusement. In 1993, he was encouraged to put together a sampling of his work and
to attend the San Diego Comic-Con, the nation’s largest comic convention. It was
there he met the staff of Top Cow.
“We gave him his first shot,” Mr. Silvestri said. “That will always be
important: that we had a little something to do with bringing Mike to the world
of comics.”
One of the first tests for the new artist was to draw a building. It looked
awful, “like a lump of bread,” Mr. Silvestri recalled. Still, he found Mr.
Turner so affable that they tried again, this time with help from a reference
book on New York architecture. The results were remarkable.
“I did a double take,” Mr. Silvestri said. “It was beautiful, incredible. More
than I would’ve possibly expected from a seasoned professional. I asked him flat
out, ‘Where did this come from?’ He said, ‘No one ever told me to look at a
picture before.’ ”
Michael Turner, 37,
Creator of Superheroines, Is Dead, NYT, 6.7.2008,
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/06/arts/design/06turner.html
Grossman Land
July 2, 2008
6:43 pm
The New York Times
By Steven Heller
In his 40-plus year career as a cartoonist, illustrator, sculptor and
animator Robert Grossman has created numerous political comic strips for
mainstream and alternative magazines. These strips acerbically address issues of
the day, most often before they are on the popular culture radar screen.
His earliest strips in the 1960s included “Captain Melanin,” which featured
one of the first black superheroes; “Roger Ruthless of the C.I.A.,” which
questioned the agency’s work; and the comically veiled Richard M. Nightcrawler,
an insect with henchmen named Haldebug and Ehrlichbug. In the 70s, his strip
titled “Zoonooz” featured a menagerie of anthropomorphic beasts, including
President Gerald Duck.
The 80s brought us Cap’n Bushy, in which a squirrel that looked a lot like
President George H.W. Bush fought the evil Saddy the Baddy. And in the 90s,
there were Bill and Hilma Klintstone who lived in the Stone Age town of Bigrock.
The deft way in which Mr. Grossman captures the essential truth behind his
characters have impressed many fans and followers.
His most recent political comics, which began in The New York Observer and
migrated to The Nation, are now collected under his own Web site, O-manland.
They follow the ins and outs of the 2008 presidential campaign. Indeed, Mr.
Grossman was one of the first American comic strip artists to cover the campaign
consistently. Since I’ve long admired his work, I took the opportunity of the
launch of his Web site to discuss with him what makes his satire work so well.
Steven Heller: Why O-manland?
Robert Grossman: O-manland is just the name of the site/blog that I put online a
couple of days ago as the repository of all the comic strips I’ve done so far
regarding the election. I dreamed up the character called O-man exactly a year
ago for an installment of “Observer Campaign Comics,” a weekly strip I started
last April, which was discontinued last October. Since then I have been doing a
monthly strip in The Nation magazine in a space called “Comix Nation” that I
share with Steve Brodner, Ward Sutton, Francis Jetter, Rick Meyerowitz, Bob
Blechman and others.
Q: Why not do McCainland?
A: John McCain has appeared a few times in the current series, most recently as
an old veteran who magically transforms into an unstoppable war machine called
Flyboy McPlane. I expect to do more with him, perhaps dog-fighting with O-man
who also flies.
Q: Do you think of yourself as partisan, or are you an equal opportunity
satirist?
A: I don’t think cartoons are ever “for” anything. The idea is to ridicule
everything, although you are free to guess for whom I am likely to vote when the
time comes.
Q: Some people argue that caricature is undignified when it comes to
depicting presidents or presidential candidates, what do you think?
A: Undignified? Virtually anything has more dignity than lying and blundering
before the whole stupefied world, which seems to be the politician’s eternal
role.
Q: What distinguishes your strips from more traditional editorial cartoons
is, well, your sense of the absurd. One of your strips titled “Fancy That!”
appeared late last and introduced the notion that Hillary Clinton is a fan of
ferrets. Where did that come from?
A: Absurd? Surely you’ve noticed that reality is absurd. Rudy Giuliani’s
excoriation of ferret owners really happened as quoted. It was only logical that
Mrs. Clinton might have seen that as an opportunity to gain support.
Incidentally, since no one seems to have picked it up, I’ll point out that my
picture of Hillary Clinton and the ferret is solidly based on a painting by
Leonardo da Vinci of a woman fondling a weasel.
Q: You also introduced Maria the Mechanical Woman from Fritz Lang’s classic film
“Metropolis” into your strip. Forgive me for asking but what does she have to do
with the price of campaign commercials?
A: Although mechanical women have cropped up here and there in the past — think
of Coppelia in the Tales of Hoffmann — the lady robot in “Metropolis” stands out
for me as a paragon of the idea. George Lukas said she was the inspiration for
his C3PO. I was looking for someone who could coach Hillary Clinton in
likeableness. I had already given Michael Bloomberg a personal robot —
Macro-Mike, the good government golem — so I thought Maria could be that robot’s
great grandmother. I confess I didn’t know she was named Maria until I googled
“Metropolis.” but then I thought, why not?
Q: It is sometimes easy to cross the line between satire and insult, even
outright slander. So, where do you draw the line?
A: If satire isn’t at least a little insulting what’s the point of it? Slander
is a legal term, but I believe the courts have generally held that parody is a
form of protected expression.
Q: Speaking of crossing the line, your “Oh Obama” strip that ran on May 27,
in The Nation raises an unpleasant specter of harm coming to Barack Obama in a
song sung by Hillary Clinton. While a clever play on the lyrics of “Oh Susanna,”
don’t you think it was in bad taste?
A: Some of the readers of The Nation took strong offense and I had to point out
to them that Hillary Clinton had more than once brought up the subject of Robert
F. Kennedy’s assassination as a reason she was prolonging her campaign. Keith
Olbermann practically went nuts on the air raging at her about it, and other
commentators loudly tsk-tsked as well. As far as I know I’m the only one who
made up a song about it, and a danceable one at that.
Q: How do you see your strips evolving as the campaign wears on? Do you have
a plan?
A: Of course I don’t have a plan for how the strips will go because they depend
on how the election goes, which is delightfully unknowable. In January, we
thought we would be looking at a contest between Hillary Clinton and Rudy
Giuliani. Now that would have been funny.
Q: Hey, I noticed a character in your strip titled “Taint Funny” that looks
suspiciously like me. Is it?
A: By golly, the arugula analyst in “Taint Funny” does look a bit like you! Do
you think I need a disclaimer in tiny print saying: Any resemblance to persons
living or dead is purely coincidental?
Grossman Land, NYT,
2.7.2008,
http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/02/grossman-land/
From Trash to Auction, Faster Than a Speeding ...
Well, You
Know
June 30, 2008
The New York Times
By GEORGE GENE GUSTINES
Comic-book collectors like their numbers. They know that the first issue of
X-Men, which introduced Marvel’s mutant superheroes, was published in 1963 and
had a cover price of 12 cents. They also know that today a copy of that issue,
in near mint condition, is worth $16,500. (Parents, take note.)
And while the market for back issues is well established, more and more
collectors are turning their attention to the hand-drawn covers and interior
pages that make up a comic book. This original art has become the focus of
auctions with sales in the five and six figures. It’s a surprising turn of
events for work that in the early days of the industry, was considered so
unimportant that it was used to sop up ink or spilled coffee, given away to fans
or even destroyed outright.
The art eventually stopped being discarded, and in the 1970s it generally became
policy to return the covers and pages to the artists, many of whom began selling
it to fans and collectors, who are hungry for it. Last month the cover of Weird
Science No. 16, from 1952, drawn by Wally Wood, sold for $200,000. In February
an inside black-and-white page from the 1963 X-Men No. 1, by the influential
Jack Kirby, sold for $33,460. Late last year two color paintings by Alex Ross,
used as covers for a recent Justice League story, were sold by his art dealer
for $45,000 and $50,000. In 2005 an auction for the black-and-white cover of
Batman No. 11, from 1942, by Fred Ray and Jerry Robinson, closed at $195,500.
The sales reflect the range of what entices collectors: from the wide-ranging
work of Mr. Kirby, the “King of Comics,” to rarities like the early Batman cover
to lavishly painted depictions of classic superheroes by the critically
acclaimed Mr. Ross.
“From the ’60s and the ’70s, when these markets were just beginning, it’s been
shocking,” said Jerry Weist, 58, author of “The Comic Art Price Guide.” “And to
the old-timers we can hardly believe it. We felt vindicated when we started to
see covers sell for five, six or seven thousand dollars in the ’70s. Now it’s
gone beyond that. I’m pretty much priced out of the field.”
Collectors of original comic-book art sound like a subculture within a
subculture, and that’s fine with many aficionados. “There was a thrill in
finding something nerdier than collecting comics,” said David Mandel, 37, an
executive producer of the HBO series “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” who first bought
original art during a visit to the San Diego Comic-Con in 1995.
Mr. Mandel has pieces that would make many fans drool, like the cover, by Gil
Kane and Dave Cockrum, of Giant-Size X-Men from 1975, which trumpeted Wolverine,
Storm and others as the new incarnation of the mutant team, and the 1982 cover
of Daredevil No. 181, by Frank Miller, depicting the death of Elektra, the title
hero’s girlfriend.
His collection also includes the last four pages from “The Killing Joke,” a
seminal 1988 story that helped usher in a new level of maturity for comic books.
That Batman tale chronicles a possible origin for the hero’s nemesis, and was
written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Brian Bolland. In November the last
page of the story became available at Heritage Auction Galleries in Dallas. Mr.
Mandel landed it for just over $31,000.
“The story ends with them laughing, taking a moment in their relationship to
laugh,” Mr. Mandel said. “As a reader and as a comedy writer, it resonated.”
More so than with comic books — where multiple copies of even the most
sought-after issue exist — the original art they are produced from satisfies a
collector’s desire for the exclusive. “If I have the original hand-drawn cover
to, say, an issue of X-Men, that’s the only hand-drawn cover to that issue of
X-Men. It’s one of a kind. Anyone who has a collecting gene can respond to
that,” Mr. Mandel said.
The value of any original comic-book art begins with its creator. “If it is
Superman drawn by Curt Swan, it’s worth a lot more than Superman drawn by Joe
Schmo,” said Joe Mannarino, who owns Comic Art Appraisal and All Star Auctions
in Ridgewood, N.J., with his wife, Nadia.
Mr. Swan, who died in 1996, drew Superman regularly from the 1950s through the
1980s. The value of a page of his art is also contingent on what is depicted
(Superman in action or supporting characters talking?) and whether the issue is
significant. (First appearances and important stories are more valuable than
routine adventures.) An attempt to recapture the collector’s childhood comes
into play too.
“An awful amount of the money being spent is certainly connected to the
baby-boom generation and their sense of nostalgia,” said Mr. Weist, the
price-guide author.
Nostalgia is certainly something Mr. Ross, 38, is familiar with. His first major
comic-book project was in 1994, for Marvel, and it retold the early days of the
Marvel universe of heroes through the eyes of a photojournalist. His reputation
for photorealistic renderings of superheroes was cemented two years later by
Kingdom Come, a lavishly painted comic that envisioned a future DC universe with
irresponsible superheroes run rampant. The project pushed prices for his
original art from hundreds to thousands of dollars a page.
“Images of DC and Marvel characters are the best sellers, bar none,” said Mr.
Ross, who sells many pieces at alexrossart.com. “It’s also what I enjoy to
illustrate the most. It’s what the buyers of similar backgrounds as myself want.
They want the thing they grew up with.”
From Trash to Auction,
Faster Than a Speeding ...Well, You Know, NYT, 30.6.2008,
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/30/arts/design/30comi.html
Comics Publishers Cautiously Go Online
November 13, 2007
Filed at 8:32 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Marvel is putting some of its older comics online
Tuesday, hoping to reintroduce young people to the X-Men and Fantastic Four by
showcasing the original issues in which such characters appeared.
It's a tentative move onto the Internet: Comics can only be viewed in a Web
browser, not downloaded, and new issues will only go online at least six months
after they first appear in print.
Still, it represents perhaps the comics industry's most aggressive Web push yet.
Even as their creations -- from Iron Man to Wonder Woman -- become increasingly
visible in pop culture through new movies and video games, old-school comics
publishers rely primarily on specialized, out-of-the-way comic shops for
distribution of their bread-and-butter product.
''You don't have that spinner rack of comic books sitting in the local
five-and-dime any more,'' said Dan Buckley, president of Marvel Publishing. ''We
don't have our product intersecting kids in their lifestyle space as much as we
used to.''
Translate ''kids' lifestyle space'' into plain English and you get ''the
Internet.'' Marvel's two most prominent competitors currently offer online
teasers designed to drive the sales of comics or book collections.
Dark Horse Comics now puts its monthly anthologies ''Dark Horse Presents'' up
for free viewing on its MySpace site. The images are vibrant and large.
DC Comics has also put issues up on MySpace, and recently launched the
competition-based Zuda Comics, which encourages users to rank each other's work,
as a way to tap into the expanding Web comic scene. Company president Paul
Levitz said he expects to put more original comics online in coming years.
''We look at anything that connects comics to people,'' Levitz said. ''The most
interesting thing about the online world to me is the opportunity for new forms
of creativity. ... It's a question of what forms of storytelling work for the
Web?''
For its mature Vertigo imprint, DC offers weekly sneak peeks at the first five
or six pages of upcoming issues. The publisher also gives out downloadable PDF
files of the first issues in certain series, timed to publication of the series
in book or graphic novel format.
The Web release of DC's ''Y the Last Man'' sent sales of that book collection
soaring at Bridge City Comics in Portland, Ore., the shop's owner Michael Ring
said.
''They really do tend to be feeder systems,'' Ring said of online comics. ''They
give people that initial taste.''
For Marvel, the general public has often already gotten its initial taste
through movies like ''Spider-Man'' or the ''Fantastic Four'' franchises.
The publisher is hoping fans will be intrigued enough about the origins of those
characters to shell out $9.99 a month, or $4.99 monthly with a year-long
commitment. For that price, they'll be able to poke through, say, the first 100
issues of Stan Lee's 1963 creation ''Amazing Spider-Man'' at their leisure,
along with more recent titles like ''House of M'' and ''Young Avengers.'' Comics
can be viewed in several different formats, including frame-by-frame navigation.
Ring expects Marvel's effort to put a slight dent in the back-issue segment of
the comic shop industry, where rare, out-of-print titles sell for hundreds of
dollars on eBay and at trade shows.
Though most comic fans are collectors, some simply want to catch up on the
backstory of their favorite characters and would no longer have to pay top
dollar to do so.
About 2,500 issues will be available at launch of Marvel Digital Comics, with 20
more being released each week.
------
On the Net:
http://marvel.com/
http://www.dccomics.com/
http://www.zudacomics.com/
Comics Publishers
Cautiously Go Online, NYT, 13.11.2007,
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Comics-Online.html
Ideas & Trends
You’re a Good Prop, Cruel Muse
October 14, 2007
The New York Times
By RANDY KENNEDY
THE cult of the suffering artist, that gaunt, rheumy-eyed creation of
Romanticism, was all about introspection and isolation, so it didn’t exactly
bequeath a handbook.
If it had, a few artists probably would have been cited as examples to emulate.
Van Gogh, of course, as the depressive in chief. “The more I am spent, ill, a
broken pitcher,” he wrote shortly before the earlobe incident, “so much more am
I an artist.” Rimbaud, with his description of the artist as he who “exhausts
all poisons in himself and keeps only their quintessences,” would have been
included. And even such late entries as the novelist Ford Madox Ford, who wore
his artistic hair shirt extra scratchy, piling up miseries and misdeeds:
bankruptcy, depression, incarceration, agoraphobia and infidelity (with his
wife’s sister, no less). He described his youth as a period of “moral torture.”
To make room on this list for Charles M. Schulz, hugely wealthy and long famous
creator of a beloved bunch of cartoon kids and their zany beagle, might seem
like a stretch, or a gag from “Peanuts” itself. But since Mr. Schulz’s death
seven years ago — in fact even while he was alive — the image of him as an
unhappy, lonely and bitter man who drew deeply on his discontent to create his
comic strips has gained ground. And with the publication this week of a highly
anticipated biography by David Michaelis, “Schulz and Peanuts,” that examines
seemingly every disappointment and slight (real or perceived) in Mr. Schulz’s 77
years, his reputation as tormented creative soul seems poised only to grow.
The book was written with the cooperation of Mr. Schulz’s family, but in the
weeks leading up to its release, some family members have criticized it, saying
that it overemphasizes his melancholy and chilly side at the expense of other
aspects of his personality — his generosity, his sense of humor, his love of
family and, in many ways, his resolute normalness.
“It’s not a full portrait,” Jean Schulz, his second wife, told The New York
Times last week. Monte Schulz, his son, called it “preposterous.” Mr. Michaelis
has defended himself, saying that after years of research and hundreds of
interviews with those who knew the cartoonist best, “this was the man I found.”
Such arguments are nothing particularly new in the world of biography. Writers
and loved ones often end up staring each other down across a big chasm
separating substantially different versions of a subject both claim to know
intimately. But in the case of Mr. Schulz, the dispute seems to bring up a more
fundamental question, whether almost two centuries after outlaws like Byron and
Chateaubriand linked suffering and creativity, a connection that probably would
have baffled Shakespeare or Swift, we still have a deep-seated need to believe
in the idea of the tortured artist, to think that the only enduring ones are the
really unhappy ones, even if we’re talking about syndicated cartoon-strip
artists.
While Mr. Schulz took pains to say that he did not see his cartoons as serious
art, critics and writers have tended to disagree, some comparing his career to
that of Balzac in scope. The short-story writer George Saunders has said that
“Peanuts” prepared him for Beckett. But it doesn’t necessarily follow that the
man behind that work was a Balzac or a Beckett, or more than a very talented and
insightful popular entertainer. And this is the ground in which Mr. Michaelis
has gone to work, depicting Mr. Schulz as a much more self-aware and
autobiographical artist than has been understood previously, a conduit for his
times and the timeless subjects of art: longing, love, heartbreak,
disappointment, distrust. (One strip, drawn when Mr. Schulz’s first marriage was
breaking up and his wife, suspicious of an affair, was questioning his phone
bills, shows Charlie Brown yelling at a lovesick Snoopy: “And stop making those
long-distance phone calls!”)
Looked at simply as a narrative problem, it is not hard to see why any
biographer would want a strong framing device in trying to tell the story of Mr.
Schulz. He was a homebody workaholic whose passions, other than his strips, were
golf and hockey. He was a Sunday school teacher who was not only a teetotaler
but disdainful of drinking and those who did it. His favorite ice cream was
vanilla. A woman who knew him at the height of his early fame described him as a
“genius at becoming invisible.”
In trying to mine the sources of a lifelong gloom it’s not easy to figure out
where his demons might have come from — except a naturally oversensitive and
crabby personality.
He had, by conventional measures, what George Plimpton (speaking of himself)
called a “non-unhappy childhood.” His father, an industrious barber in St. Paul,
had work throughout the Depression. His mother could be aloof and withholding
and died when he was 20. But it was she who took him to his first comics show;
she knew he was smitten.
Stacked up against the sundry misfortunes that were courted by or fell on the
heads of history’s best-known tortured artists — prostitute mothers (Jean
Genet); drug addictions (Coleridge); physical deformities (Toulouse-Lautrec) —
those that Mr. Michaelis describes in Mr. Schulz’s youth sound tame and
sometimes a little silly. His father used to give him funny haircuts; he had to
sleep in a room with his grandmother, who snored; he was afraid of girls and had
a crushing Norwegian sense of humility; he was terrorized by schoolyard bullies,
though those who knew him at the time can’t remember an instance of him actually
being walloped by any.
Patricia Hampl, a memoirist and poet who grew up in St. Paul and teaches at the
University of Minnesota, suggested that our desire to think of good artists as
fundamentally troubled stems from a need even now — perhaps particularly now, in
the age of entertainment’s dominance — for art to be something separate from our
quotidian lives, something almost spiritual.
“People don’t want to believe that someone like them could just sit down at a
typewriter or a desk and create something great or timeless,” she said. “It’s
got to be the product of a lot of misery and angst.” She compared the impulse to
that of conspiracy theorists and their reluctance to believe in the banality of
evil: “It’s hard to accept that a guy could just go up into a building and shoot
the president.”
Morris Dickstein, a professor of English at the Graduate Center of the City
University of New York, said he believed that despite the cliché of the
suffering artist, pain still deserved a whole lot of credit as a catalyst for
creativity. “People who have always had a happy life and lived on an even keel
and haven’t had a lot of misfortune really don’t tend to be creative people,” he
said. (Though of course there are many contemporary examples of successful
writers and artists who seem to have gotten by with fairly contented lives: John
Updike? Jeff Koons?)
Perhaps in today’s era of acute awareness of our depressions and neuroses, Mr.
Schulz’s, as mild as they might have been, were simply enough to qualify him for
membership in the modern miserable artists’ club. Or, as Mr. Dickstein
suggested, maybe there wasn’t a need for a monumental amount of misery but for
just enough to fit the funny pages.
“It got filtered into a medium that we don’t think of as deep,” Mr. Dickstein
said, “and certainly not as being dark.”
And yet in its own way “Peanuts” could make a bit of newsprint as forlorn as a
set for “Waiting for Godot” (with a kite, of course, caught in the naked tree
and a doghouse somewhere in the distance). As Mr. Schulz himself summed it up:
“All the loves in the strip are unrequited; all the baseball games are lost; all
the test scores are D-minuses; the Great Pumpkin never comes; and the football
is always pulled away.”
You’re a Good Prop,
Cruel Muse, NYT, 14.10.2007,
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/14/weekinreview/14kennedy.html
Collector Buys Coveted Batman Comic
October 10, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:26 p.m. ET
The New York Times
ELLWOOD CITY, Pa. (AP) -- Holy collectibles, Batman! A near-mint copy of
Detective Comics 27, a pre-World War II comic featuring Batman's debut, was
recently found in an attic and sold to a local collector.
The comic is considered to be the second-most valuable available and can fetch
up to $500,000. The only comic considered more valuable is Action Comics 1,
where Superman makes his first appearance.
Collector Todd McDevitt said the Batman issue he bought is worth about $250,000,
but he won't say how much he paid for it or who sold the book to him.
''It was a typical story of someone cleaning up junk in their attic and finding
an old comic book and wondering if this was one of those ones that was worth a
lot of money,'' McDevitt told the Beaver County Times.
McDevitt, owner of the Pittsburgh region's five New Dimension Comics stores,
said he has been saving money since 1986 so that he could buy a valuable comic
when it appeared.
When the seller walked in with the Batman issue, ''my eyes almost popped out of
my head,'' McDevitt said. ''I guess I should have been more reserved, but I'm
not a very good poker player.''
Experts estimate there are between 20 to a few hundred copies of the Batman
debut.
McDevitt's comic now sits safely in an airtight bag in a bank vault. On
occasion, he takes it out to show friends and customers.
''I've been toying with the idea of reading it, but I haven't yet,'' he said.
''I'm going to savor it.''
Collector Buys Coveted
Batman Comic, NYT, 10.10.2007,
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Batman-Comic.html
DC Comics launches online search for new superheroes
Tuesday July 10, 2007
Guardian
Ed Pilkington in New York
The publishers of some of the most cherished names in comic book
history, including Batman and Superman, are launching a website designed to open
up the world of comics to a new generation of web-literate and talented
amateurs.
DC Comics, a division of Warner Brothers Entertainment, is
setting up a web imprint called Zudacomics.com in the hope of filtering out the
best young writers and artists from the current boom in web comics. The best
entrants will be awarded a year-long contract to produce content that will
feature on the web and in print.
The first of a monthly series of competitions will be launched in October. The
company's executives will boil down the entries to the best 10, which will be
voted upon by registered members of the site.
Paul Levitz, the publisher of DC Comics, would not specify how much the winners
would be paid over their year's contract, but he said they would receive an
up-front fee, followed by royalties on any strips that made it into print.
"People creating their own comics and putting them up on the web has become a
phenomenon in our field, but many artists haven't worked out how to monetise
their efforts. We hope to bring some of those people on board, to the benefit of
both sides," Mr Levitz said.
Of DC Comics' famous stable of characters, Batman and Superman were created by
in-house draughtsmen. Wonder Woman, the superheroine who was as beautiful as
Aphrodite and stronger than Hercules, had a less traditional start in life: its
creator, a psychologist called William Marston who believed in women's
empowerment, was approached by DC Comics after he wrote an article in 1940 for
Family Circle magazine about the growing comic book industry.
More recently, the craze in manga comics has helped the comic industry to avoid
the troubles of other print media in the US which have suffered falling
circulation due to migration to the internet. This autumn 87 new manga series
are planned, according to the comic news website ICV2.
DC Comics launches
online search for new superheroes, G, 10.7.2007,
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/art/news/story/0,,2122552,00.html
Marvel Comics Buries Captain
America
June 30, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 4:48 p.m. ET
The New York Times
NEW YORK (AP) -- It's a funeral
fit for a superhero.
In the drizzling rain at Arlington National Cemetery, thousands of grieving
patriots solemnly watch as the pall bearers -- Iron Man, the Black Panther, Ben
Grimm and Ms. Marvel -- carry a casket draped with an American flag.
Yes, folks, Captain America is dead and buried in the latest issue of Marvel
Comics, due on newsstands the morning after Independence Day. After 66 years of
battling villains from Adolf Hitler to the Red Skull, the red, white and blue
leader of the Avengers was felled by an assassin's bullet on the steps of a New
York federal courthouse.
He was headed to court after refusing to sign the government's Superhero
Registration Act, a move that would have revealed his true identity. A sniper
who fired from a rooftop was captured as police and Captain America's military
escort were left to cope with chaos in the streets.
But the sniper didn't act alone, and didn't even fire the shot that killed the
captain.
Writer Jeph Loeb has been busy working through the stages of grief in the most
recent issues of Marvel Comics. A book centered on Wolverine dealt with denial;
one with the Avengers covered anger; and Spider-Man battled depression.
With the story line so relevant to present-day politics, and the timing of the
latest issue so precise, it's hard not to think the whole thing is one big slam
on the government.
''Part of it grew out of the fact that we are a country that's at war, we are
being perceived differently in the world,'' Loeb said. ''He wears the flag and
he is assassinated -- it's impossible not to have it at least be a metaphor for
the complications of present day.''
But Loeb says he was working with more personal material: the death of his
17-year-old son from cancer.
''So many people have lost their sons and daughters over the years, for the
greater good or to cancer or other horrible things,'' said Loeb, an executive
producer for NBC's ''Heroes.'' ''I wanted this to be something people would
identify with.''
In the final frames of the book, the Falcon delivers a eulogy asking superheros
old and young to stand up and honor Captain America. Loeb did a similar thing at
his son's funeral.
''It was this moment where I realized that we were all different, but this boy,
my son, made us all connected,'' he said. ''It was powerful.''
Captain America, whose secret identity was Steve Rogers, was an early member of
the pantheon of comic book heroes that began with Superman in the 1930s.
He landed on newsstands in March 1941, nine months before Pearl Harbor --
delivering a punch to Hitler on the cover of his first issue, a sock-in-the-jaw
reminder that there was a war on and the United States was not involved.
Since then, Marvel Entertainment Inc., has sold more than 200 million copies of
Captain America magazine in 75 countries.
In the most recent story line, he became involved in a superhero ''civil war,''
taking up sides against Iron Man in the registration controversy, climaxed by
his arrest and assassination.
Marvel says you never know what will happen. He may make it back from the dead
after all, although Loeb says that question isn't really important right now.
''The question is, how does the world continue without this hero?'' he said.
''If that story of his return gets told further down the line, great. But
everyone's still been dealing with his loss.
''They aren't going to wake up and it's a dream, like it's some episode of
'Dallas.'''
------
On the Net:
www.marvelcomics.com
Marvel Comics Buries Captain
America, NYT, 30.6.2007,
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Captain-America.html
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