Friday, July 12, 2024

You Don’t Need a License to Drive a Sandwich – This Week’s Links

July 12, 2024 Philippines , Pinoy 0 Comments

We’re a mere fortnight out from this year’s San Diego Comic-Con now, in what I (mathematically inaccurately) view as the halfway point of the year, and you’d expect that it would be a quiet couple of weeks for news, with publishers wanting to keep their powder dry before the festivities, however, I’m here to remind you that making assumptions makes an ass out of ‘u’ and ‘mptions’, and so there are yet more links this week, unending, below.

This week’s news.

• Penguin Random House announced this week, twenty months after the US Department of Justice blocked the company’s attempted acquisition of fellow publisher and distributor Simon & Schuster, that they have acquired comics publisher Boom! Studios, which will become part of Random House Worlds when the deal completes later this summer - Boom’s founder and chairman Ross Richie will not be moving with the company, per a social media post, and the departure of President of Publishing and Marketing Filip Sablik was announced last month - The Beat has a round-up of various other aspects of the sale, but it seems that the company’s press release ahead of February’s ComicsPRO meeting, which stated that “2024 will be a transformational year,” was not underselling things in retrospect.

• In memoriam, remembering those the world of comics has lost, and news was shared this week of the passing of The Puma Blues and The Sandman artist and painter Michael Zulli, who has died at the age of 71 - TCJ’s 2016 interview with Zulli can be read here.

This week’s reviews.

TCJ

• Tom Shapira reviews the building groove of Walter Scott’s The Wendy Award - “I enjoy Scott’s cartooning as a rule; he’s not exactly breaking new ground, but he is willing to commit to the humor of the scene. The structure – while each collection has a larger story it’s divided into short sections that often stand on their own – helps the punchiness of the story.”

• Kevin Brown reviews the necessary anger of Mark Doox’s The N-Word of God - “Doox’s title refers to the mirror image of Sambo and Christ, as Sambo points out that the Word of God is different from the N-Word of God – essentially, the ways in which people have used Christianity as a validation for racist ideology. Sambo then, seems to present a message that would prevent Black people from making any progress. In actuality, however, he represents all they have had to suffer to survive in an openly white supremacist society.”

 

AIPT

• Rory Wilding reviews the well-trodden territory of Scott Snyder, Dan Panosian, et al’s Canary.

• Keigen Rea reviews the fundamental successes of Dustin Weaver’s Paklis: 1949.

• Chris Coplan reviews the heartfelt gore of Zack Kaplan, Fico Ossio, et al’s Kill All Immortals #1.

• David Brooke reviews the gritty start of Curt Pires, Rockwell White, Diana Nguyen, et al’s Endless #1.

• Collier Jennings reviews the layered metafiction of Chip Zdarsky, Rachael Stott, Eren Angiolini, et al’s The Domain #1.

• Michael Guerrero reviews the winning relaunch of Jed MacKay, Ryan Stegman, et al’s X-Men #1.

• Michael Compton reviews the intricate plotting of Steve Foxe, Jonas Scharf, et al’s Dark X-Men: The Mercy Crown.

• Kevin Clark reviews the fascinating beginning of J.M. DeMatteis, Rick Leonardi, et al’s From the DC Vault: Death in the Family – Robin Lives! #1.

 

The Arts STL

Sarah Boslaugh reviews the ultimate triumphs of Sophie Adriansen and Mathou’s Proxy Mom: My Experience with Postpartum Depression.

 

The Beat

• Clyde Hall reviews the character empathy of Patton Oswalt, Kyle Starks, Jordan Blum, Ryan Browne, et al’s From The World of Minor Threats: Barfly #1.

• Joe Grunenwald reviews the overblown writing of J.M. DeMatteis, Rick Leonardi, et al’s From the DC Vault: Death in the Family – Robin Lives! #1.

• Steve Baxi reviews the narrative balance of Gerry Finley-Day, Dave Gibbons, Cam Kennedy, Colin Wilson, Brett Ewins, et al’s Essential Rogue Trooper – Genetic Infantryman.

• Kerry Vineberg reviews the powerful climax of B. Mure’s Disciples of the Soil.

 

Broken Frontier

• Lindsay Pereira reviews the quiet anger of Yamada Murasaki’s Second Hand Love, translated by Ryan Holmberg; and the delightful weirdness of Tove Jansson and Lars Jansson’s Moomin Adventures: Book One.

• Lydia Turner reviews the brilliant versatility of Einat Tsarfarti’s I’m a Mess: A Guide to a Messy Life, translated by Annette Appel; and the varied monsters of Cullen Bunn, Brian Hurtt, et al’s The Midnite Show.

• Andy Oliver reviews the energetic fluidity of Shane Melisse’s Skate Knight, and the inventive experimentation of Norm Konyu’s A Fall from Grace.

 

House to Astonish

Paul O’Brien has capsule reviews of Marvel Comics’ X-Men: From the Ashes Infinity Comic #4, Deadpool vs. Wolverine: Slash ’Em Up #3, X-Men: Blood Hunt – Psylocke #1, and Wolverine: Deep Cut #1.

 

Publisher’s Weekly

Have capsule reviews of:

• The stunning vividity of Julie Heffernan’s Babe in the Woods: or, the Art of Getting Lost.

• The delightful dreamscapes of Ken Krimstein’s Einstein in Kafkaland: How Albert Fell Down the Rabbit Hole and Came Up with the Universe.

 

Solrad

Tasha Lowe-Newsome reviews the packed history of James Spooner’s The High Desert. (black. punk. nowhere).

 

Women Write About Comics

Nola Pfau reviews the vanilla rebrand of Jed MacKay, Ryan Stegman, et al’s X-Men #1.

This week’s musical theatre.

The arrival of a musical adaptation of Naoshi Arakawa’s Your Lie in April on London’s West End garnered a fair bit of press, with mixed reviews from the London Evening Standard, The Guardian, London Theatre, The Stage, The Telegraph, and WhatsOnStage, and interviews at Anime News Network with composer Frank Wildhorn and the cast of the musical.

This week’s interviews.

TCJ

Gina Gagliano interviews Siobhán Gallagher about Full of Myself, the process of condensing your life down to book form, and choosing to be open about one’s issues rather than hiding them away - “Kind of like how my body image and perception of self have changed, my self-portraits have evolved over the past decade and I feel like the “me” I draw now is the right “me.”  I introduce the book with a narrative disclaimer that I was much more comfortable drawing myself than I was going out and being myself, and that I also wanted to represent myself “accurately” in case the reader judges me.”

 

AIPT

Chris Coplan speaks with Scott Hepburn and Kyle Starks about From the World of Minor Threats: Barfly and taking silly ideas seriously, and with Steven S. DeKnight about Hard Bargain and finding the right artist for your story.

 

The Beat

• Ricardo Serrano Denis talks to Joseph P. Illidge about The Epiphany Engine, and how the project celebrates 30 years of Black comic book publishers.

• Samantha Puc chats with Jordan Morris and Bowen McCurdy about Youth Group, teen years and 90s fashion, and Doom inspirations.

 

Forbes

Rob Salkowitz interviews Comic-Con International’s David Glanzer about the possibility of San Diego Comic-Con leaving its titular city, and the hotel issues that could drive such a change.

 

Frieze

Esmé Hogeveen speaks with Walter Scott about The Wendy Award, entering Wendy’s influencer era, the award the book is/isn’t satirising, and picturing the messiest version of yourself.

 

Publisher’s Weekly

• John Maher talks to Mark Siegel about 23rd Street Books, what to expect from the new Macmillan imprint, and how First Second will grow alongside it.

• Rob Salkowitz chats with Tapas’ Jaden Kang and Alex Carr about US and Japanese market comparisons, bringing more titles to print, and opportunities following Webtoon’s IPO.

 

WHYY

Peter Crimmins talks to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania’s David Brigham and cartoonist Signe Wilkinson about the ‘Cartoons as Political Speech in Colonial and Contemporary America’ exhibition.

This week’s features and longreads.

• Here at TCJ, Matteo Gaspari writes on the work of Fulvio Risuleo and Antonio Pronostico, exploring the nasal twist of Sniff, the narrative games of Tango, and the playfulness of L’eletto - “I loved working with Fulvio and Tonino on NapoliTopor, and I’m proud I contributed to its existence. I love that it’s a complex book that talks about lots of things; I love that it’s a somewhat rare example in contemporary narrative of a father-son relationship that’s not toxic. The father here isn’t absent, nor is he violent. He’s not the origin of inescapable trauma. He’s … what a father should be?”

• Also for TCJ, Andrew Farago writes in remembrance of writer Peter B. Gillis, co-creator of Strikeforce: Morituri, who passed away last month at the age of 71 - “But academia never held the same appeal for Gillis that comic books did, and he made the decision to leave grad school to return to his family home in White Plains, New York, just a short commute from New York City and the hub of American comic book publishing.”

• For The Progressive Magazine, Hank Kennedy profiles political cartoonist Mohammed Sabaaneh, writing on the inspiration Sabaaneh found in the work of Naji al-Ali, and Sabaaneh’s work “under Israeli military censorship”.

• For The New Yorker, Sofia Warren profiles cartoonist Mort Gerberg, through the medium of comics, looking back on Gerberg’s fifty-nine years of cartooning, and lessons learned during that time.

• Over at The Beat, Arpad Okay’s ‘Critical Thinking’ feature continues, with this edition exploring the problems and solutions raised for the comics form as presented in Teaching with Comics: Empirical, Analytical, and Professional Experiences.

• For Shelfdust, Steve Baxi gives a blow-by-blow analysis of Akira Toriyama’s Dragonball Z #36, as questions of technique and power put the spotlight on the physicality of Toriyama’s fight scenes.

• Over at Women Write About Comics, Kathryn Hemmann writes on Machiko Kyō’s Cocoon, its subversion of the mythologising of military service by the establishment, and the book’s focus on emotional intimacy.

• From Cover to Cover’s Scott Cederlund looks back on Richard Corben’s work in the Hellboy universe, the anchoring solidity of Corben’s character work, and the humanity with which it imbues the comic’s eponymous red hero.

• From the world of open-access academia, in the Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, Goutam Karmakar writes on Jeyanthi Manokaran’s Chipko Takes Root, exploring how such works can be used to engage and enthuse younger readers about environmental causes.

• For Image&Narrative, Nicolas Labarre examines the layered incorporation and modification of Thomas Wyeth’s painting Christina’s World into Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon’s Preacher #43, including the issue’s cover by Glenn Fabry, and the irreducibility of such artistic works in other forms.

• Paul O’Brien’s survey of the various villains of Daredevil continues, over at House to Astonish, as issue #30 bids a hale and hearty halloo to the purple prose of Gerry Conway, and Quothar is there too.

• Mike Peterson rounds up the week’s editorial beat, over at the Daily Cartoonist, as there are now four months until the presidential election.

This week’s audio/visual delights.

• Comics Grinder's Henry Chamberlain spoke this week with Paul Peart-Smith about adapting W.E.B. Du Bois’ Souls of Black Folk, returning to comics-making after work outside of the field, and the contemporary considerations when adapting Du Bois’ work.

• John Siuntres welcomed Michael Avon Oeming to the Word Balloon, as they spoke about After Realm, Blue Book, William of Newbury, and Galaxy of Madness, as well as crowdfunding campaigns, anthropomorphism, and upcoming comic con appearances.

• MOLCH-R was joined by Al Ewing and Boo Cook for the latest edition of 2000 AD’s Thrill-Cast, as they spoke about crossing over Zombo with the Harlem Heroes, and Steve Morris and Tiffany Babb started a new 2000 AD retrospective book club series as they spoke about Ian Edginton and Steve Yeowell’s The Red Seas.

• David Harper welcomed Christian Ward to this week’s episode of Off Panel, as they spoke about Spectregraph, scheduling creator-owned work and work-for-hire, the ups and downs of crowdfunding, and the frightful appeal of horror.

No more links this week, for while they are unending our time is not, and so let’s rest, recover, and reconvene seven days hence.



The post You Don’t Need a License to Drive a Sandwich – This Week’s Links appeared first on The Comics Journal.


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