May 31 2010

Heroes Con Presentation: Defective Comics

defective_comics

As we’ve done for the past two years, Craig Fischer and I will be giving another one of our mega-panels at Heroes Con this year.  The topic this go ’round will be DEFECTIVE COMICS: A Celebration Of Superhero Oddness and it’ll be held Saturday at 3:00 pm in Room 208AB.  Here’s the official skinny:

Defective  Comics: A Celebration of Superhero Oddness

Let’s face it: superheroes can be kinda dopey. For every cultural icon like Superman or Spider-Man, there’s five thousand off-beat B-listers (Bwana Beast? Sonny Sumo? Razorback?) lining up to die in the next big crossover event. For Heroescon 2010, Amelia Earhart: This Broad Ocean cartoonist Ben Towle and Thought Balloonist blogger Craig Fischer host a lovingly critical look at just how bizarre the superhero genre can be.

The event will include a presentation by Towle on the sad-sack super-man in Chris Ware’s Acme Novelty Library; a panel discussion with Colleen Coover, Evan Dorkin, Jeff Parker and Chris Pitzer; a talk by Crogan Adventures creator Chris Schweizer about art-comix creators crossing over into mainstream superhero comics; and clips from some of the weirdest and worst superhero films of all time. Excelsior?

If you’re going to be at Heroes Con this year (and you really should be, you know) please check it out.

May 30 2010

Heroes Con Seating Chart is Online

Like it says, the seating chart for this year’s Heroes Con is now posted.   Given that many of the folks in “Indie Island” are long-time Heroes guests, it’s usually the case that there are a bunch of folks who know each other all situated pretty close to one another.  I was really excited, though, to see that–whether by chance or design–this year’s table assignment creates an awesome “walk of shame” on one side of the 400 block of Indie Island.  Check it out:

hc10-diagram_print

(The final table on the end there, is Sally Bloodbath, whom I don’t know, but whose story in this year’s Wide Awake Press anthology was one of my favorites.)

May 21 2010

Empire Strikes Back Turns 30

Like I didn’t feel old enough already, now The Empire Strikes Back is 30 years old today.  I was (and still am) a huge Star Wars fan and while I love the original film, Empire came out when I was nine and had a far more profound impact on me simply because at that age I was really beginning to get into drawing.  The design elements of Empire are truly amazing–from the beautiful and unique color palates for each of the film’s major locations to the bizarre, almost art deco designs of the Cloud City.  I remember being particularly struck by the vehicles and other props in the opening Hoth sequence and can to this day draw a surprisingly-accurate Hoth rebel gun turret, having studied the film’s many design elements over and over from “The Art of The Empire Strikes Back.”  On a purely visceral level, I can still recall quite vividly the feeling of downright awe I experienced as a nine year-old seeing the opening battle scene of this film for the first time at the Navy base theater in Pearl Harbor where we were living at the time.  I’d pore over the film again and again in the years following via a bootleg VHS of the film my dad had somehow acquired back in the days when a VCR was an amazing new thing–that was about the size of a sofa cushion.

Anyway, in honor of the 30th, I’ve dredged up a few sketchbook drawings of Empire characters done by me, I’d guess at age ten or so:

yoda

bfett

(Remember, kids: always rough in your character lightly with pencil first.  That way you won’t run out of room and have to use masking tape to attach an sheet of paper for the feet!)

May 15 2010

New Cristophe Blain Book Out (in France)

I vowed off linkblogging a while back since there’re plenty of great full time comics news blogs around these days, but this seemed like a news item that might fall under the radar, so…

It looks like there’s a new Christophe Blain book out–alas just in French for now.  Blaine is one of my absolute favorite cartoonists working today, so I’m always keeping an eye out for new stuff from him, even if its something that I can only get from Amazon.fr and then just kind of muddle through/stare at rather than actually read.  Based on my entirely half-assed reading of the article on ActuaBD.com, it looks like this book is a fictionalized political drama written by Abel Lanzac (apparently, an actual French politician of some sort) and illustrated by Blain.   This seems to be atypical material for Blain, who is known (at least stateside) for things like Gus and His Gang, Isaac the Pirate, and Dungeon.  Given how French-centric the topic seems to be here, it seems unlikely that this book will wind up translated into English and published domestically, but you never know…

May 08 2010

Sketchbook 5/8 – Johnny Ramone

johnny

I guess that last drawing I did of Prince just got me in the musician-drawing mode… so here’s Johnny Ramone.  This is from a picture in the Henry Rollins book, Get in the Van, but I switched his denim jacket in the picture to the traditional “Brando” leather jacket usually seen on Ramones of any variety.