Blog Archives
Comic-Con Guide for Beginners (and How Comic-Con Can Improve)
As mentioned on Monday, The Comics Observer‘s Corey Blake has been commenting on Comic-Con International: San Diego this week.
At Comic Book Resources’ Robot 6, where he’ll now be blogging weekly, he challenged the notion of who should be going to Comic-Con and why they can’t, and offers some solutions and alternatives.
He also gave Four Tips for Beginners in the following Navigate the Arts interview, which you can watch right here:
More interview segments were recorded, so keep checking back for more installments.
Let us know your thoughts and questions about Comic-Con in the comments below. Did you go this year?
LA Times Book Prize Finalist: Garden by Yuichi Yokoyama
The Los Angeles Times Book Prizes are a set of awards for excellence in literature held annually since 1980. They are given to books published in the United States within the previous calendar year by a living author(s). Winners receive a citation and $500 for each category. The finalists for each category were announced recently, and the Graphic Novel category, the newest to be added to the prestigious prizes, has an impressive line-up. The Comics Observer looks at each Graphic Novel finalist in the build-up to tonight’s award ceremony.
Garden by Yuichi Yokoyama
Garden by Yuichi Yokoyama, as described by publisher PictureBox: “A group of friends is attempting to enter a garden just beyond a wall. When they succeed, the garden they finally enter is no Eden, but rather a massive landscape of machines, geometric forms and all manner of nonorganic objects. To his signature vivid visual style, Yokoyama has added more dialogue than in past works, fleshing out the characters and allowing them equal billing with his spectacular architectural creations.” Garden is the only manga on the list of Graphic Novel Finalists for this year (no manga last year). The story is essentially an excuse for Yuichi Yokoyama to draw whatever crazy thing he wants, as the reader is taken on a tour of a hyper-kinetic landscape with man-made objects intruding on nature.
For better insight on what makes Garden so special, check out Sean T. Collins’ interview with Yuichi Yokayama about the book and some of his past work, along with previewing six pages of Garden. There’s also a solid review by Douglas Wolk on TIME’s Techland blog which explains Yokoyama’s unconventional approach to storytelling, adamantly refusing to provide answers to his mysteries or much, if any, character development.
Three years in and the LA Times Book Prize has yet to award the Graphic Novel category to manga. As mentioned, there was no manga Finalists last year. In 2009, the first year for the Graphic Novel category, Taiyo Matsumoto’s GoGo Monster, published by VIZ Media, was named as a Finalist. Also a Finalist in 2009 was Bryan Lee O’Malley’s heavily manga-influenced Scott Pilgrim, Vol. 5: Scott Pilgrim vs. the Universe (published by Oni Press). Neither won that year. Tonight we’ll find out if Garden will be the first manga to win the Graphic Novel LA Times Book Prize.
Comics College reveals Essential Reading of Comic Book Masters
One of my favorite regular columns is the monthly Comics College by Chris Mautner at Robot 6, hosted by Comic Book Resources. Each entry is a great introductory overview of what’s best to read from the great comic book masters and why they are so good, making this a fantastic source for newcomers or people who’ve always wanted to expand their reading. It also covers their lesser known work and stuff that maybe should be avoided.
The great part of the column is that it is looking at masters from all over the art form of comics. It’s not just superhero creators, or just alternative comics creators. It’s both those, as well as manga, newspaper strips, underground comics, euro-comics, comics journalism and more.
This month’s subject is the Norwegian cartoonist simply known as Jason. This prolific creator tells funny genre mash-ups with a deadpan economy of dialogue and understated emotion with characters struggling over love and guilt. Next month, George Herriman will be featured. His classic comic strip Krazy Kat is among the most highly regarded in the history of comics.
The Comics College column debuted in August 2009 and has covered the following comics masters past and present (click on the link to be taken to the column):
- Los Bros. Hernandez (Love and Rockets)
- Jack Kirby (The Fantastic Four, Jack Kirby’s Fourth World)
- Osamu Tezuka (Astro Boy, Phoenix)
- R. Crumb (Zap Comix, Book of Genesis)
- Neil Gaiman (Sandman, Mr. Punch)
- Chris Ware (Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth, Acme Novelty Library)
- Lewis Trondheim (Dungeon, Little Nothings)
- Harvey Kurtzman (Mad Magazine, Frontline Combat)
- art spiegelman (Maus, In the Shadow of No Towers)
- Eddie Campbell (Alec: The Years Have Pants, The Fate of the Artist)
- Harvey Pekar (American Splendor, Our Cancer Year)
- Kim Deitch (The Boulevard of Broken Dreams, Shadowland)
- Kevin Huizenga (Ganges, Curses)
- Hergé (Tintin)
- Charles M. Schulz (Peanuts)
- John Stanley (Little Lulu, Melvin Monster)
- Seth (George Sprott: 1894-1975, Wimbledon Green, It’s A Good Life If You Don’t Weaken)
- Frank Miller (The Dark Knight Returns, Sin City)
- Joe Sacco (Safe Area Gorazde, Palestine)
- Jason (I Killed Adolf Hitler, Hey Wait…)
- George Herriman (Krazy Kat)
- Jack Cole (Plastic Man, Betsy and Me)
- Adrian Tomine (Summer Blonde, Scenes from an Impending Marriage)
- Grant Morrison (All-Star Superman, We3)
- Jessica Abel (La Perdida, Artbabe)
- Gabrielle Bell (Cecil and Jordan in New York, Lucky)
- Scott McCloud (Understanding Comics, Zot!)
- Charles Burns (Black Hole, Big Baby, X’ed Out)
- Jacques Tardi (It Was the War of the Trenches, West Coast Blues)
- Phoebe Gloeckner (A Child’s Life, The Diary of a Teenage Girl)
- Marjane Satrapi (Persepolis, Chicken with Plums)
- David B (Epileptic, Babel)
UPDATE: I’ll keep updating the list as new entries get posted.
