Festive Curated Conventioneering

I love 'comic-cons'. From stories of Phil Seuling's New York Comic Art Conventions of the 1970s to the current annual monster known as San Diego Comic-Con or attending the wonderful annual Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art Festival in Manhattan, events to celebrate the comics medium have, and still do, vary in surprising ways. Gail Simone (@GailSimone) just wrote on Twitter about a new convention in LA specifically to celebrate LGBT comics creators and fans called Bent-Con[be warned, some stuff on their site is sexually explicit].

The concept of the comics convention is evolving into some interesting avenues, and a new example of what it can be was put-up for the public this past weekend: The Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival. Entirely supported by Brooklyn, NY comics shop Desert Island Comics and publisher PictureBox, who together sent out requests for participation only to the creators, collectives, and publishers whose work they most enjoy. This allowed the event to be small, curated, and best of all FREE for all to attend since no fee was exacted from the exhibitors or artists to hold a table!

Why? In the words of the organizers themselves:

"It’s good to try new approaches to old models! We like this approach better than your standard free-for-all, and it makes a better experience for the random spectator, which is good for comics in general. It’s less like a typical small-press fair and more like an art fair or edited comic anthology. It’s frankly an expression of our own interests, which is intended as a positive contribution to the larger comic and art world." (from the festival website)

But if the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival is an experiment, it appears to be a highly successful one as this is the event's second year and everyone I communicated with had a great time. That's, both, on the exhibitor floor and on Facebook and Twitter after the fact.

One of the many pleasant shocks of the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival for me was the discovery that the Jack Kirby Museum offers, as a reward for membership sign-up, a mini-comic version of the singular example of the famous Jack Kirby making comics without editorial interference: "Street Code". It's about Jack growing up in New York City in the 1920s and it had never before been printed as a stand-alone comic. This is the guy who co-created characters like The Hulk, Captain America, and Darkseid bringing his fantastic design sense to the gang violence within, and the architecture of, the ghettos he grew-up in.

This is the museum's Rand Hoppe holding the comic in question:

I also saw the excellent comicsmith Jason Little (@beecomix) [who's in the above photo to the right] and spoke with him about publishing in print after publishing on the web, and bought his brand new mini-comic "Gimmick Illustrated" #1! And I saw and bought comics from the fine folk of Sparkplug Comic Books and the people who work together on the Sundays Anthology.

Bill Kartalopoulos (@bkny) ran SIX creator discussion panels from about 1 PM till just 40 minutes before the show's close at 9 PM. All the panels were held in the basement in which was built an impromptu stage and a screen with a small projector.

One of them was an introduction (for me) to the work of comicsmith Anders Nilsen. Guy creates some smart comics. He recently released "Big Questions" #15. (Nilsen maintains a website here.) This is Bill and Anders talking while the screen displays a page from a previous issue of "Big Questions":

Another of the panels was on the concept of editing comics. Who better to get than Francoise Mouly, the woman who edited her husband's famous comic "Maus". And another on hyper-detailed or hyper-textured art and whether or not it disturbs the flow of the reading experience in the comics medium. The answer-like thing we got was: No matter what the art looks like, the eye must be somehow guided though the images or the comic will fail to be readable. Which makes sense and is damn key to understanding comics!

The exhibitor hall (well technically it was a basketball court but who's counting?) was closing down as I was leaving and I took this photo on my way out the door:

I had a damn good time!

As I've said many times before, the fact that there are different kinds of comics is healthy and keeping that variety will depend largely on people being interested in them.

As such?

Events like this are important and I'm glad this one was packed.

~ @JonGorga

P.S.

The day afterward there was a nice festival tie-in event around the corner at The Knitting Factory:

Mark Newgarden's 35mm reels "Cartoonists and Comics On Camera: 1916-1965"

[12/9/2o1o EDIT: Make that 16mm!]

This was in "How to Draw Cartoons #3 - Expression" with Fred G. Cooper from 1944.

Very... edu-taining.

Godly Movements and Maimings

"Dawn of the Black Age" Part 1 from Shapeshifter Comics

The first thing that jumps out at you about this self-published comic isn't the gorgeous painted artwork. It's the production quality. Slick paper just shy of the quality Marvel and DC publish their corporate comics with, at the size of a double-sized issue (by the Big Two's standards). Plus the art reproduction is fine, the colors are sharp and the line-work clear. But there is a serious problem with the production involving the text and its integration with the page distracting the reader from the art and, more importantly, the story, that I'm going to explain later.

That said, the fully-painted Renaissance-style Jack Kirby-design influenced art itself is absolutely breathtaking. Especially on the splash pages: It seems that the wider a canvas Zack Stella has to play with, the more remarkable the result. Makes lots of sense if he is using actual oil-paint, as it sometimes appears he is. The visual storytelling on the simpler pages is also very strong, a sign not only of Stella's skill but the inspiration in writers Daniel Agatino and Nicholas Franco. An early page composed of just four panels shows Umbra, one of the gods in the multi-cultural pantheon Franco and Agatino have brought together, turning into the villain of the piece. [The page above is the one before this transformation; although it is also a fine example.] Sliding steadily into darker visuals and more vengeful dialogue, both directly inspired by Lucifer's turn away from the Christian god in the opening chapters of John Milton's epic-poem "Paradise Lost".

Even better is this moment in which the archangel Mithra stands and challenges the corrupted god Umbra:

The art that sold me on the comic-book is on pages 2-3, a double-splash page revealing the pantheon presiding over multitudes of angels. Another standout splash page is the supreme moment of betrayal when an angel spills the blood of an archangel for the first time. (I suspect it won't be the last before the story is done.) And all of those pale in comparison to the introduction of the Broken Tower, Umbra's base of operations in the celestial city of Prana. My god, this art! Unbelievable work. Stella undoubtedly brings a 'fine art' sensibility to the comic.

Although, the smaller panels cramp Stella's art and details have a smudgy look to them. It was once said that the proof-in-the-pudding of the medium of comics would have been a comic-script written by Shakespeare with visual art by Michelangelo, in the words of good ol' Stan 'the man' Lee:

"If Shakespeare and Michelangelo were alive today, and if they decided to collaborate on a comic, Shakespeare would write the script and Michelangelo would draw it. How could anybody say that this wouldn't be as worthwhile an artform as anything on earth? Comics are merely a method of telling a story through words and art." (Stan Lee Conversations, 105)

"Dawn of the Black Age" is as close as we are ever going to get! The weird thing is... it's a rough mix: the ornamental prose gets ahead of itself and covers the art at times when the visuals could use space to breathe and the paints are occasionally ostentatious and squeeze the text out from its proper placement. Comics is not "merely a method of telling a story through words and art", but a separate medium requiring visual storytelling, and as such the visual progression from moment to moment needs to be clear and smooth. Agatino, Franco, and Stella hit that sweet spot on several pages, but not consistently.

Truly the worst thing about the book is the lettering. Not the actual letters, mind you, but the text-containers and their placement are awful. The choice to letter the entire comic with basic text fonts and photoshopped balloons and boxes made of unique colors is not a bad one (in fact, every god character gets a unique color, balloon-shape, and font and that's AWESOME), but when your text containers are carved out of the rest of the image instead of drawn free-hand, the balloon tails are going to look awkward. Worse still, in showcasing the art, the dialogue and narration was sometimes moved to the edges of panels or right into adjacent ones! [See examples at left.]

If you don't think speech balloon's tails and placement are important in comics, imagine trying to watch a movie so badly sound-mixed that you can't tell which character is speaking, when, or from where! [Again, see left.] No bueno.

THE LONG AND SHORTBOX OF IT?
This work is proof that good comics can come from the mixture of visual art and literature, but truly exceptional comics come from a careful synthesis of different skills that make something else entirely. "Dawn of the Black Age" itself is exciting, gorgeous, and smart, even though it's missing one of the key production/design elements of a good comic: lettering. I am being critical specifically because there is quality and professional effort in every other element.

Shapeshifter Comics needs to solve this problem (by hiring a professional industry letterer, perhaps) because some great material is getting lost inside a muddle of colored balloons and boxes and it keeps this comic from being really great. However, if the true litmus test is whether I'll buy the next part when it comes out next year, I'm too curious as to how this epic tale continues not to. Franco and Agatino have me.

"for neither gods nor angels must ever forget..."

~ @JonGorga

Mr. Spider-Man Goes To Town.

I thought about calling this post "Spider-Man Hits The Big Time, or "It's a Big Time For Webheads, or, even, "Big Time = Big Fun". None of those really rang true, and here's why:

Spider-Man has been big time since Amazing Fantasy #15 hit in 1962. Saying that this is Spidey's big time, that he's hit it big, that now's his moment- well, hasn't it been his moment for almost fifty years? Hasn't Peter Parker been slinging webs and helping offbeat kids get by since JFK was President? Hasn't he been to space? Hasn't he been in the Avengers? Hasn't he worked with the Fantastic Four and fought Galactus and been Marvel's flagship character since then?

Let's just say that I think calling it the "Big Time" era might be a little disingenuous. Still- although the branding might be misguided, the change in status quo must come as welcome to certain corners of Spidey fandom. The Brand New Day era, despite producing some great stories (including a Fred Van Lente written issue featuring the Spot that was one of my favorite comics of 2009), wasn't very well received, mostly because of the poorly conceived story which preceded it also wasn't very received. Getting rid of the brand, then, was probably a huge boon for Marvel marketing and taking solo writing reigns was certainly a boon for writer Dan Slott.

Slott, who had been one of the rotating team of "webheads" responsible for delivering the book on time thrice monthly during Brand New Day, has been given sole writing duties on the book (now bimonthly but at 40 or so pages an issue) for the forseeable future. Given all this, and because I have found Slott to be a singularly entertaining writer of comics, I figured I'd give this new status quo a shot, buy myself the first few issues, see how it stacked up.

Near as I can tell, it stacked up alright. I'm new to the Spidey game (much newer to it then Gorga, at any rate), so I wasn't particularly attached to either the pre- or post-Brand New Day status quos, but my understanding is that poor Peter Parker has really been having a tough time of late, so it's good to see one of the good guys, well, making good. Still, the first part of #648 didn't quite ring true. The character's voices didn't seem quite right- a little stilted, a little overplayed- and this was particularly true of Spidey, who Slott writes, albeit briefly, as just too sloppy and sentimental for my taste. Once we get past the seemingly obligatory team-up (which features a clever, if overwritten, climax), things get a little bit better. Peter's voice is a little stronger, his personality a little more assertive and the pieces just sort of fit together better. It feels like the start of a Spider-Man story rather than a half rate Avengers yarn. There's even a fantastic bit at the end where author and artist Humberto Ramos work together perfectly, and the result is clever use of the comics medium to display precisely what Peter is thinking. Still, Slott goes out of his way to prove Peter's a schmuck (he can't pay his rent! He's been run out of the photojournalism biz!) and then way the other way to remind he's not (Doc Ock, Aunt May and the Human Torch all use the word 'genius' to describe our dear hero).

By the time we hit the second issue, #649, though, Slott's hitting his stride a little bit more. The rise of a new goblin, Pete's first day at his new job, the team-up with Black Cat- it all works. And it all works well. Slott's Spidey may not quite be what we expect, may be a little different from the Peter Parker we've seen around these parts recently, but that's just what we need right now, at the beginning of a new era. Although the characterization is at times ham handed, the author does deftly and subtly make some interesting moves, particularly in suggesting that Peter is a reactive rather than proactive thinker, that he's a situational genius and not one that can work in a vacuum. It's a brilliant thought- let's see where he takes it.

Ramos works great for this story, too, which helps turn the pages even when Slott doesn't hit his mark. His work is both kinetic and blocky, a synthesis of two styles that I love which are rarely integrated very well. The thick black lines are complemtented by brilliantly cartoony and just-this-side-of garish colors that really bring out parts of the storytelling, parts that might go unnoticed otherwise.

So, how is the new status quo so far? Pretty good, by my reckoning, but not quite good enough. I've got faith in its creative team and it is quite a lot of fun, so I'll hang on for a few more issues to see how it goes, but unless they step it up (and, to be honest, I'm expecting they will) we may need to wait a little longer for Spidey to really hit it Big.

(Sorry.)

A Whole Lot O' Nothing

Over at CBR today there's a brand new Cup o' Joe interview with Marvel EiC Joe Quesada.

It's the most boring interview I've ever read. Quesada doesn't actually say anything. He doesn't really answer any of the questions and, for the most part, he seems alright with that. This is alright, I guess; he can't comment, he doesn't want to give anything away, whatever.

I wonder why we still even care what this schmuck has to say. I don't say that because I don't like Quesada- I think he's a fine artist, and that he's made some mistakes, but so has everybody else. My problem is that, not as a creator but in his capacity as EiC, he never actually says anything interesting, anything of value. That's his job, and I get that, but when do we bite back? When do we say enough is enough? But treating any of these guys like they're actually going to tell us something, we're just selling ourselves short. They know they've got us, because we hang on their every word even when they aren't actually saying anything.

Like everything else in this business, it's a great scam if you can get it going. But I, for one, can't take it anymore. Don't want to go to panels where everyone cheers for comics they aren't reading and read interviews with editors who hem and haw about the cancellation of books or the death of a character. I get it, it's a business. The companies have to make money. But we treat them like they owe us something, and then we go back for more anyway when they give us nothing.

I have no idea what we do about this except cease caring. And I don't want to do that. And I know none of you want to do that. Because we love comics. But I think maybe it's time we reevaluate our relationship with the companies- maybe it's time we vote not with our voices but with our dollars. Don't like the new price points? Walk away. Don't think Quesada says anything in an interview? Don't click on the next one.

But I don't know how we are ever going to get them to treat us like real customers until we stop treating them like fanboys and start treating them like a business. They don't owe me anything, and I don't owe them anything.

And that's how it should be.

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A quick aside: this is why Rich Johnston is really the only comics reporter worth a damn. There are plenty of fantastic comics analysts, interviewers and reviewers, but if you want the straight dope on a rumor or a rumble, Bleeding Cool is where you'll get it. Sometimes I wonder why I even bother to go to CBR or Newsarama anymore.

Talking Over Balloons: artist Reilly Brown

In the strange, painful, but wonderful career of comic-book penciling perhaps the most strange, painful, but wonderful job you can get is to draw a small 'tie-in' part of a larger ongoing crossover 'event' story. With dozens of comic-books arriving on different weeks, all expected to create one multi-angle story, scripts change, continuity flows, schedules are tight and the number of corrections any one artist must make to keep that ongoing continuity mostly accurate in any one comic could be staggering. And undoubtedly makes for a challenging assignment.

So The Long and Shortbox Of It has secured an interview with Reilly Brown, Marvel artist who was himself recently put into this challenging position. Reilly's (@Reilly_Brown) work can be seen in this year's Hercules "Heroic Age: Prince of Power" mini-series, the wonderful back-up story that appeared in "Chaos War" #1 and the upcoming "Chaos War: Alpha Flight" one-shot written by Jim McCann (@JimMcCann) hitting comic-book stores everywhere tomorrow!

Jon Gorga: Let's get right into the delightful muck of continuity right away, you drew the back-up feature in "Chaos War" #1 that explained where one of the central characters, Hercules, has been cosmically stuck since the events of "Assault on New Olympus" and you also drew the "Alpha Flight" one-shot coming out this week that ties-into the larger "Chaos War" 'event'. Now, as I understand it, despite the fact that you've had an involvement with the past and the present of this story as well as the character himself you would still probably find that if you draw Hercules into a page of "Chaos War: Alpha Flight" you would find some surprising notes about how he looks NOW: wounds, hair, bags under his eyes, damage to his costume and any number of crazy other things that can happen to a demi-god in the Marvel Universe. Without giving away anything you can't, is that an accurate assessment of the game?

Reilly Brown: The majority of the coordination of these events takes place with the editors and writers, so if you really want the nitty gritty on planning a crossover event, you should ask them.

For my part I'm mostly at the mercy of what's in the script, which do contain certain notes about characters to keep me up to date. For instance in the Chaos War event, Mikaboshi the Chaos King is constantly growing throughout the story, and that's something that the script for Alpha Flight mentioned, but I really didn't feel that was any different than any other note I might get in a story set in a shared universe like Marvel's. For instance, scripts frequently have reference photos attached to them, usually containing images of character's most recent appearances, so as long as I use that as a guide, I should be in the clear.

The most specific note I've seen went to another artist based on something I drew. The short Hercules story that appeared in Chaos War #1 was originally planned to appear in an earlier comic, so I actually drew it a while ago, while the last Incredible Hercules story, "Assault on New Olympus" was going on which was drawn by Rodney Buchemi. In the final issue, there's a scene where Typhon is breaking Hercules' bones, and the script was written to specifically match how I was drawing my story, with his left arm and right leg being the ones that were broken.

JG: That's an impressive display of continuity editing right there: two stories showing the same moment drawn in a different order than they were published, but specifically coordinated to match. Reilly, explain to us, for the hell of it and for anyone who isn't a huge follower of mainstream superhero comics, what is a crossover 'event'? Or perhaps, if you prefer, what are these things that Marvel and DC Comics produce that involve lots of different ongoing comic-books and mini-series woven together? I'm curious about the artist's point-of-view in this narrative machine.

RB: Ha! Does anyone not know? You can't even avoid them these days!

The simplest way to describe a comics "event" is to say that it's a story that takes place in more than one comic book series, and lately the main way to do that is to launch several new series that are specifically based on that event, such as my comic that's spinning off of Chaos War, Chaos War: Alpha Flight.

It's a story that doesn't just affect a single character, but an event that happens in the fictional world that effects everyone, and several characters will have their own stories about how they're dealing with the event.

In the end, if the characters were to meet up later, they could ask each other "what were you doing when the Chaos King attacked?" and we'd have their answer.

JG: That is about as succinct an explanation I can imagine, so tell us how "Chaos War: Alpha Flight" fits into the larger story of the main "Chaos War" mini-series?

RB: Without giving too much away, at one point in Chaos War #3, we've seen that the Chaos King attacks all the pantheons of the world, including all those pantheon's equivalents to heaven and hell. As Alpha Flight fans know, Snowbird is the daughter of an Inuit goddess, so this attack effects her directly. Also as Alpha Flight fans regretfully know, many prominent Alphas are dead, so when heaven and hell get attacked, this effects them as well.

JG: Did you communicate with the other artists like the main series' artist Khoi Pham and the artist on the excellent one-shot "Chaos War: Chaos King", Michael William Kaluta, about how they are drawing the characters, scenarios, objects and on and on required to make the story tick? Is simple comic-to-comic continuity for the things like where a shirt is torn or what time of day it is at any given time managed purely by the writers and editors or some combination of everybody? Where do those continuity notes come from?

RB: Keeping everything straight is really a team effort, but like I said before, it's the writers and editors who figure out most of the nitty gritty. From time to time I'll read the script and ask for more information about things, and the editors are always happy to provide it.

As Chaos War got bigger, someone put together a database with all the scripts and all the art that had been turned in at that point for easy reference, and that was really useful. Also, I'm good friends with Khoi Pham, so we're in frequent communication anyway, so I was always aware of what he was up to.

JG: Have you begun to feel a special connection with the son of Zeus? You've drawn him now in the "Prince of Power" mini-series and a few other places.

RB: Yeah, I've been drawing Herc on and off for a while. First in the Hulk vs Hercules 1-shot, then the infamous "Replacement Thor" story in Incredible Hercules (which was actually reprinted recently in a Thor vs Hercules greatest hits collection, which is pretty cool), then a few fill-in pages in "Assault on New Olympus," and the Agents of Atlas backup stories in the Hercules: Funeral for an Avenger issues, and then Prince of Power and the recent Chaos War short, including designing his new costume.

So yeah, me and the Lion of Olympus are pretty tight at this point!

Fred Van Lente and Greg Pak are great to work with, and have been doing an awesome job with all their Hercules stories, and honestly, working on Herc's the most fun I've had at Marvel since working on Cable & Deadpool a few years back, and some of the stuff I'm most proud of.

JG: That's always great to hear a creator say! I'd imagine after re-designing his costume yourself, you must have a rather detailed understanding of how it would be affected by different circumstances. Tell me, I'm also curious about the other end of the spectrum. What if you suddenly have to draw a corporate Marvel character you've never drawn before? Do you have an official character sheet from a database of some kind to use as reference? Or are you just expected to Google everybody as best as you can?

RB: Ha! Google really is the best reference you could ask for! The writers and editors are pretty on top of things as far as getting reference to me, and I can always ask if there's something else I need to know, plus I typically do my own research anyway-- usually based on Google and Wikipedia. AlphaFlight.net was a significant resource to both me and Jim McCann while working on the new issue.

So to any fans out there-- keep your Marvel fanpages up to date!! The creators ARE looking to you for reference!

JG: That is very funny to me, because the first two sites I ever built were Spider-Man fan pages. I was probably twelve-years-old at the time! Are there more short back-ups coming from you in the "Chaos War" 'event'? What's next on your drawing board?

RB: Alpha Flight's the last Chaos War-related thing you'll be seeing from me. Next up for me are a couple of Amazing Spider-Man backup features, a cover to an upcoming Thor issue, as well as a creator owned thing I've been slowly working on over the past year that I'm almost ready to come out with. Expect to hear more about that in the new year.

JG: That is very exciting, Reilly! The Long and Shortbox Of It wishes you luck in expanding into this new stage of your comics career! New creator-controlled characters and stories are the backbone of any narrative art. We also thank you for making the time to do this for us, of course!

RB: It was my pleasure! Thanks for the interest in the project! We'll have to do this again sometime. And don't forget--Chaos War: Alpha Flight comes out on Wednesday! Look for it at finer comic book stores near you!

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And there you have it Long and Shortbox readers! The artistic side of shared universe storytelling in its glory and complexities. A whole lot of work goes into them funny-books, right? When a crossover 'event' is carefully structured, marketed, scheduled, edited, written, drawn and colored, it is one of the most alive forms of fiction out there because it moves and changes on schedule with the real world!

Check out Reilly Brown's blog at Outpost 51 here on blogspot and his work in the Alpha Flight one-shot out tomorrow!