May 2013
26 posts
Kleefeld on Comics: Musings On Invulnerability →
Last night, I went to dinner at a Mexican place along a pretty busy, urban street. Small place, but good food. We’re sitting there eating and the S.O. gets this quizical look on her face. I follow her gaze out the window to see this child of maybe 3 … Kleefeld on Comics
Musings On Invulnerability
Last night, I went to dinner at a Mexican place along a pretty busy, urban street. Small place, but good food. We’re sitting there eating and the S.O. gets this quizical look on her face. I follow her gaze out the window to see this child of maybe 3 or 4 wearing red shorts and a Superman emblem tank top standing by himself on the sidewalk. In the second or so it took me to realize that this...
Quick Apology
Just wanted to drop a quick note to apologize for the lack of blogging this weekend. As you may recall, I recently moved to the Chicago area and the S.O. and I have been house-hunting. We found a place, put in an offer that was accepted and about a week ago, they decided they didn’t want to sell to us after all and walked away from the deal. So we’re back to square one, with the added...
Reappropriating Symbols
I took an arcitecture course in college, and had to do a report on a local building. I opted for a local church, primarily because it was literally across the street from the apartment I was in at the time. The pastor there was friendly, and provided a tour. I quickly noticed, though, a number of swastikas embedded in the tile floor near the alter. Probably seeing my gaze, he proactively responded...
Kleefeld's Fanthropology #10: An Interview... →
from MTV Geek
Peter Linklage
Marc Tyler Nobleman walks readers through the cover design process for Bill the Boy Wonder. Kirk Taylor talks a bit about helping to work on Bazooka Joe and His Gang. Jim Shelly wonders why do people quit reading comics?
Runnin' Down A Dream
“Runnin’ Down a Dream” is the title of a Tom Petty song released in July 1989. The video for the song was almost entirely animated and was a clear homage to Winsor McCay’s Little Nemo in Slumberland.The video features Petty and characters that bear more than a passing resemblence to Flip and Dr. Pill. Several of the animation sequences harken back to specific events in the...
Two Quick Newspaper Anecdotes
We were visiting a friend’s place near downtown Chicago yesterday. She’s in a townhouse in an upscale, fairly hip, urban area. As we were walking to her place, I spotted a copy of the day’s Chicago Tribune on the sidewalk. Not litter, but a copy that was delivered to someone’s doorstep. Still in a clear, plastic bag along a busy sidewalk. This was pretty late in the...
Kleefeld's Fanthropolgy #9: An Interview America's... →
from MTV Geek
Mother's Day Comics
Running a bit later than I’d like today, but apparently Mother’s Day is a popular holiday for cartoonists. Here are the related cartoons I found on the subject today…
Seuling On Mike Douglas
Richard Pini posted this a while back and I’m really surprised it hasn’t made the rounds yet. It’s a ten minute clip of the Mike Douglas Show from 1977 featuring Phil Seuling. He posted it because Wendy Pini makes an appearance towards the end as Red Sonja, but there’s a lot of other fascinating stuff there.There are several things I’d like to point out here, some...
More Than I Can Read
I like to take advantage of free comics. Not just the ones from Free Comic Book Day, but somebody’s cast-offs or giveaways or any other promo books. That “#1s Promotion” that Marvel recently did with comiXology? I went ahead and downloaded all 700-some books, even though I’m pretty sure I won’t read most of them. You might be asking yourself why I would do that? The...
Bookshelves In Your LCS
One of the kind of cool side effects of Free Comic Book Day is that we always gets loads of photos from the insides of comic shops. This is cool because it promotes the popularity of comics and how comic shops are bustling places with ample customers, but it’s useful because it shows how other shops are laid out, and we can take best practice notes from some of them. In this year’s...
Kleefeld on Comics: MAYbe Some Links →
I’m running this a little earlier in the day than usual since a couple of this week’s items are time-sensitive. TONIGHT, at the SoHo Gallery for Digital Art, there will be a one-act play performed called “Last Days of The Brave & Bold” — which … Kleefeld on Comics
MAYbe Some Links
I’m running this a little earlier in the day than usual since a couple of this week’s items are time-sensitive. TONIGHT, at the SoHo Gallery for Digital Art, there will be a one-act play performed called “Last Days of The Brave & Bold” — which explores the idea of an imgained conversation between William Moulton Marston and Frederic Wertham. Plenty of interesting...
Top 10 Deaths In Comics
This is an idea I’ve shopped around a bit, but it’s a bit too morbid for most people, so I figured I could throw it up here since nobody reads this anyway. I’m not talking about character deaths, but we’re looking at the top 10 comic creator deaths in the comics industry. (I’m liberally swiping some of the text from Wikipedia.) Forrest J Ackerman - Though Ackerman was...
Extrapolation From Mainstream Comics Articles
You ever notice that when a mainstream outlet writes a story about comics, they get things wrong? I mean, setting aside the (fortunately decreasing instances of) “Bif! Pow! Wham!” titles and the urban legends that have been propogating for years (almost anything said by Bob Kane, for example). They might cite Stan Lee as the artist who drew Spider-Man or that Superman was created by...
Thoughts On FCBD
If you’re reading this blog, you’re probably already aware that it’s Free Comic Book Day, so I won’t detail the specifics about it. But I stopped by a sort-of-local shop, one that I’d visited a couple times before, but never for FCBD. What struck me was how notably different it handled FCBD compared to other shops I’ve visited over the years. I’ve been to...
Kleefeld's 'Fanthropology' #8: Fandom As Big Data →
from MTV Geek
My #SuperMOOC Comic Assignment
Young Tony Stark
Before you go see Iron Man 3 and see how impressive Tony Stark is as a engineering genius, I would just like to remind you that his earliest science experiments were considerably less orthodox…
Con Booth Thoughts
I’ve seen the question of how to set up a convention booth crop up repeatedly in recent weeks (probably has something to do with con season getting underway) so I thought I’d throw out my thoughts on the subject. Speaking, of course, as someone who’s never actually had a convention booth, but a fan with degrees in both graphics and marketing. Let’s start with this shot of...
May The Links Be With You
Doc Jenkins interviewed David Mack. A lot. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. Daniel Peretti reviews Superman and Philosophy, a collection of essays about, well, Superman and philosophy. Peretti was less than impressed. “Most of the essays just ran together in my head. They’re kind of bland.” Neil Cohn finds a research study that shows people are better at tracking the story from a video...
April 2013
36 posts
Traffic ≠ Revenue
You’ve probably heard that ComicsAlliance is shutting its doors. Not because the folks working on it wanted to quit, but because site owner-AOL decided they didn’t want to support it any longer. You can find plenty of condolensces and messages of thanks going out to the crew who worked on it. You can add mine among them, but that’s not what I’m writing about here. According...
C2E2 Follow-Up
We’re now back to a normal (or as normal as things get around here) Monday after a weekend of C2E2. Great show, as I (and many others) have been posting about over the last few days. What’s striking to me about this, or any other show, is that part of its relative success is what YOU put into it as an individual. And I’m not necessarily talking about pros here, I’m talking...
C2E2 Impressions, Whatever Installment This Is
Yesterday was a fantastic day. Lots of great panels ranging from the history of comic book censorship to the future of digital and motion comics. I have to say that the panel presentation line-up has been very impressive. I’ve spent a good deal of the convention so far in the panels and there have been a number I’ve missed because they overlapped with any number of other great-sounding...
C2E2 Impressions, Day 2, Part 1
They just opened the doors for the show, so rather than wading through the insane line/crowd of people, I thought I’d take a few moments to check out the press lounge and add a few more notes to follow-up on yesterday. (Before I totally get overwhelmed and forget everything!) I was able to attend two of the panels from the Institute for Comics Studies. One was a screening of White Scripts...
Kleefeld's 'Fanthropology' #7: I Come To Bury... →
from MTV Geek
C2E2 Impressions, Day 1, Part 2
What strikes me about some panels is how much about comics so many people just don’t know. I don’t expect everyone to be experts across the board in all aspects of comics, but in a con setting, my initial thought is that the attendees aren’t just casual fans. And even if their individual focus is Marvel or manga or whatever, they have some familiarity with the various aspects of...
C2E2 Impressions, Day 1, Part 1
Figured I’d drop a quick post about the happenings at C2E2 (my first time at a Reed-Pop event) so far before the next panel starts. I actually started last night by meeting up with Brigid Alverson, Noah Berlatsky and Josh Elder for dinner, drinks and general merriment. Probably stayed up way too late but it was great to meet all of them in person for the first time. This morning, I got to...
Crockett Johnson & Crockett Johnson
When I was a kid, one of those great children’s books that got read repeatedly was Harold and the Purple Crayon. I think we had both the regular book in paperback, as well as a audio tape/filmstrip version that my dad must have picked up from the school where he taught. (Or perhaps just through resources he had access to because of his role as a teacher.) The story was simple, but very...
Links O' April
The entirety of Jack Kirby’s original art for an unpublished The Prisoner comic will go up for auction next month. Opening bid is $1.00 — I expect the price to go up a bit from there. Dana Gabbard has found and republished Charles Beaumont’s 1955 article from Fortnight Magazine called “The Comic World”. This is significant because it’s the first national...
How Reed REALLY Thinks Of Sue (NSFW)
Mike DeCarlo recreated the opening splash of Fantastic Four #27… with a bit of risque twist.So here’s the question I have… The original comic this was based on was published in 1964. Sue was treated in a very misogynistic manner back then, which should come as no surprise — many women were treated in such a way, especially ones in fiction. This recreation was made in 2008...
Earth Day Comics
Here’s this year’s collection of Earth Day themed comics… the ones I could find, at least. Not as prominent as in some past years, but I’m pleased to see it still gets some traction.
Find Me At C2E2
Now that I’m in the Chicago area full-time, I’ll finally be able to get to attend C2E2. I’ll be wandering around all three days — if you happen to see me (look for the hat!) feel free to stop up and say hi. For anyone interested, here’s a (tenative) list of the panels and such that I’ll be trying to check out… Friday, April 26, 2013 ComicsPRO: A Retail...
Digital Comics In Higher Ed
I’m taking Christina Blanch’s Gender Through Comic Books online course right now. It’s a great class so far and I’m getting a lot out of it, but that’s not what I’m going to talk about. Rather, I want to focus on the use of comics as classroom reading material. There are any number of classes that can (and do) use comics as part of the reading material. But...
Princess Revelation
I never cared much for Disney’s princess marketing campaign. I’m not a big fan of Disney’s movies anyway — I think their stories are banal at best. Great animation, but the stories are trite and overflowing with moralistic platitudes. But I came across a quote about them recently that I think really speaks to why I dislike the idea. It comes from Andy Mooney, who was the...
Kleefeld's 'Fanthropology' #6: From Superman To... →
from MTV Geek
Kleefeld on Comics: The Superman Birthday... →
Here’s the short version of the basic conversation I saw online today… Person 1: “Yay! The man of steel turns 75 today! Happy birthday, Superman!” Person 2: “Let’s not forget that he was created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, and they got … Kleefeld on Comics
The Superman Birthday Conversation
Here’s the short version of the basic conversation I saw online today… Person 1: “Yay! The man of steel turns 75 today! Happy birthday, Superman!” Person 2: “Let’s not forget that he was created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, and they got royally screwed! DC has man hundreds of millions of dollars off their character and treated them like shit!” Person...
Links About Stuff
Ken Quattro republished Karl Schadow’s article “That’s The Spirit” which delves into a great detail about The Spirit radio show from the early 1940s. Henry Kujawa has a great four-part series looking at the early days of Marvel’s Daredevil comic. I particularly liked his guestimation on how that whole Savage Land story came about. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4. Kind...
Kleefeld on Comics: Flying Marvels As Theme Decor →
I stopped by Portillo’s after dinner tonight for a cake shake.* I’ve been to the chain before, but never this particular one. Like all the Portillo’s, it has a 1950s’ diner feel with lots of movie posters and signage indicative of the time period. And what … Kleefeld on Comics
Flying Marvels As Theme Decor
I stopped by Portillo’s after dinner tonight for a cake shake.* I’ve been to the chain before, but never this particular one. Like all the Portillo’s, it has a 1950s’ diner feel with lots of movie posters and signage indicative of the time period. And what do I happen to see JUST above the cash register, but this… Enclased in an acrylic showcase are a set of Marvel...
International Sales
ICv2 shares some sales numbers from Image’s March 15 releases; more interestingly, this is the first time that I’ve seen international numbers given. As noted in the article, we’ve seen Diamond UK estimates before (usually wrapped up in overall Diamond numbers) but not for anywhere else. What’s immediately striking, I think, is that worldwide numbers for each of the titles...
How To Catch Boys On The Cheap!
Courtesy of Intimate Love #27 circa 1954. Artwork by Arthur Saaf. Writer unknown… but probably not a woman.
Never So Far To Fall
I read the original ElfQuest series back in high school. Early in the series, Cutter and Rayek are competing for Leetah’s affections and she can’t decide who to choose. The elder of the group, Savah, has the two take on a series of challenges to see which is more worthy. The final challenge for each elf to directly confront his greatest fear. Cutter’s is a fear of heights and he...
Why I Watch Strip Search
The past couple of years, I haven’t posted much about webcomics here at the blog since I’d been working on my webcomics column over at MTV Geek. But as I’ve got a very different type of column now, I figure it’s more fair game to talk webcomics over here from time to time. Strip Search, if you’re unfamiliar with it, is a reality game show about webcomics. More...
