Friday, August 11, 2017

The Post cracks The Nut Job 2

'The Nut Job 2: Nutty by Nature': Stale jokes and slapstick, the sequel [in print as Predictable premise and acorny jokes].

Pat Padua

Washington Post August 11 2017, p. Weekend 26
https://www.washingtonpost.com/goingoutguide/movies/the-nut-job-2-nutty-by-nature-stale-jokes-and-slapstick-the-sequel/2017/08/10/470e9606-792e-11e7-8839-ec48ec4cae25_story.html

Aug 11-13: Otakon at the Washington Convention Center

Otakon® is an annual celebration of Asian pop culture (anime, manga, music, movies, video games, etc.) and its fandom! Otakon is run by the non-profit organization Otakorp, Inc

https://www.otakon.com/

$100 for a three-day ticket

Sunday, August 06, 2017

PR: Small Press Expo Celebrates 10 Years of Koyama Press




For Immediate Release
Contact: Warren Bernard
Email: warren@spxpo.com
 
Small Press Expo celebrates the 10th anniversary of Koyama Press
 
Bethesda, Maryland; August 3, 2017
 
Koyama Press has been making comics and art books for a decade, and Small Press Expo is excited to celebrate their anniversary year with them with an incredible slate of comics, programming and a number of other celebration surprises. Koyama Press guests will include Connor Willumsen, Noel Freibert, Eleanor Davis, Sophia Foster-Dimino and more.

Founded in 2007, Koyama Press is a Toronto-based small press. Our mandate is to promote and support a wide range of emerging and established artists. Projects include comics, graphic novels, art books, and zines. We are known for our alternative edge and diverse range of titles that include a myriad of genres from autobiography to photography, from horror to humour, and more.
Small Press Expo is proud to present the following programs highlighting the 10 years of Koyama Press:

Kick Ass Annie-versary: Koyama Press Turns 10

Annie Koyama has championed the work of emerging cartoonists for 10 years. As a leading publisher of underground comix, her roster features the work of many of today's top names in the indie comics scene, including Michael DeForge, Aidan Koch, Alex Schubert, Daryl Seitchik, and many more. Join KP alumni, new and old, in a very special panel spotlighting one our favorite curators of small press cartoonists and their work. Moderated by Rob Clough of High-Low.

Koyama & DeForge: Lose, Everybody Wins


For nearly a decade, Annie Koyama (Koyama Press) and Michael DeForge (Sticks Angelica, Folk Hero) have been wowing readers with their strange and darkly humorous, ongoing anthology series, Lose. Join us for a special conversation with a celebrated, master cartoonist and an award winning publisher as we take an insightful look at one of small press publishing's greatest partnerships. Moderated by Ryan Sands of Youth in Decline.
Full lineup as well as times and locations to be announced in the coming weeks.
Additionally, Koyama Press will be debuting its Fall 2017 releases at Small Press Expo, including Sophia Foster-Dimino's Sex Fantasy, GGs I'm Not Here, and Patrick Kyle's Everywhere Disappeared.
  • Sophia Foster-Dimino's Sex Fantasy began as a loose, ephemeral zine that was produced in limited editions. These small comics in both size and length are esoteric and immensely personal. Covering a span of four years, the comics collected here build a relationship that is deeper than their elegantly drawn surfaces.
  • In GG's I'm Not Here, a young, second-generation woman wanders through her city and memories encountering the world through a camera's lens; her independence pulled by the gravity of familial responsibility. She drifts until she encounters what could possibly be her potential self.
  • A keen observer of the absurd, Patrick Kyle's stories in Everywhere Disappeared defamiliarize the machinations of life, work and art with droll dialogue and his angular, humanely geometric drawing and sci-fi settings that recall set design more than satellite images. Kyle's figures may be foreign, his settings strange, but his stories resonate deeply.
In the next few weeks, SPX will announce additional guests, special events, the 2017 Ignatz nominees and a full slate of programming.
 
Small Press Expo (SPX) is the preeminent showcase for the exhibition of independent comics, graphic novels, and alternative political cartoons. SPX is a registered 501(c)3 nonprofit that brings together more than 650 artists and publishers to meet their readers, booksellers, and distributors each year. Graphic novels, mini comics, and alternative comics will all be on display and for sale by their authors and illustrators. The expo includes a series of panel discussions and interviews with this year's guests.
 
The Ignatz Award is a festival prize held every year at SPX recognizing outstanding achievement in comics and cartooning, with the winners chosen by attendees at the show.

As in previous years, profits from the SPX will go to support the SPX Graphic Novel Gift Program, which funds graphic novel purchases for public and academic libraries, as well as the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund (CBLDF), which protects the First Amendment rights of comic book readers and professionals. For more information on the CBLDF, visit their website at http://www.cbldf.org. For more information on the Small Press Expo, please visit http://www.smallpressexpo.com.



Friday, August 04, 2017

B'more Into Comics #15: Monica's Fight

B'more Into Comics, the quarterly minicomics show in Baltimore that's held in a bar, will hold its next event on Aug. 19 from 1-6 p.m. This show will benefit its co-founder, Monica Gallagher (Bonnie N. Collide, Assassin Roomate, Part-Time Princesses, and GFFs: Ghost Friends Forever) who is fighting breast cancer. The event's regular venue, The Windup Space, will donate a portion of all drink sales and B'more will host a silent art auction to directly help Monica.

Please also consider supporting Monica as she documents her fight via Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/MonicaGallagher


Art by Danielle Corsetto

Jason Reynolds is talking Spider-Man

He's at Hooray for Books in Alexandria right now giving an excellent talk on his new Miles Morales book.

Tomorrow he's at Fantom Comics.

Thursday, August 03, 2017

Aug 4: Jason Reynolds on Spider-Man at Hooray for Books


Jason Reynolds Presents Miles Morales: Spider-Man

Join us to meet critically acclaimed author Jason Reynolds as he presents and signs his new book, Miles Morales: Spider-Man. Miles is just your average teenager. Dinner every Sunday with his parents; chilling out playing old-school video games with his best friend, Ganke; and crushing on brainy, beautiful poet Alicia. He's even got a scholarship spot at the prestigious Brooklyn Visions Academy. Oh yeah, and he's Spider Man.


In addition to Miles Morales, we have special permission from the publisher of Ghost and All American Boys to sell the paperback editions before their respective official publication dates of August 29 and 30.


This event is free and open to the public. To join the signing line, please purchase Miles Morales: Spider-Man from Hooray for Books! To get your copy, please stop by the bookstore or call us at 703-548-4092.

August 5: Meet Astonishing X-Men writer Charles Soule this Saturday



The Curse Words Van Tour comes to Third Eye Annapolis!

CHARLES SOULE & RYAN BROWNE
Creators of the hit IMAGE series CURSE WORDS
11AM-2PM

Meet Charles Soule (Astonishing X-Men, Curse Words) & Ryan Browne (Curse Words) this Saturday!

First 30 in line get a Curse Words Tour Poster Print!

 

We're so pumped to be hosting one of the stops on the totally awesome CURSE WORDS Van Tour that's been going all over the country, and signing at some of the finest comic shops in the nation! 

Even better - our pals Charles and Ryan were cool enough to make us one of their SATURDAY stops, so even more of you can come out and meet them!

One of our favorite new IMAGE COMICS series of 2017 has gotta be CURSE WORDS, and the stellar work of CHARLES SOULE (DAREDEVIL, IVX, ASTONISHING X-MEN, and more) and RYAN BROWNE (GOD HATES ASTRONAUTS) continues to impress us with each issue!

They'll be signing copies of the graphic novel, as well as bringin a special TOUR EXCLUSIVE hardcover of CURSE WORDS! Plus, they'll be signing all their other projects (and you know Charles has a ton of great books under his belt ranging from ASTONISHING X-MEN to DAREDEVIL to IvX!)

Want the full scoop on the signing & all the cool stuff we've got going on? Click here for details

Click Here to Read all about Curse Words & Our Signing



New Yorker cartoon ads from Warren Bernard's collection continue

Cartoonist Michael Maslin has two more up on his website:

Part 8: James Thurber

Part 9: Mary Gibson

Previously unseen Richard Thompson art posted on his blog

Politics & Prose bookstore has Norse Mythology signed by Gaiman

Signed by Neil Gaiman 



When he came to the Wolf Trap Filene Center in July, Neil Gaiman generously signed copies of Norse Mythology for Politics and Prose, available to purchase in-store or online. Gaiman has long been inspired by ancient mythology in creating the fantastical realms of his fiction. Now he turns his attention back to the source, presenting a bravura rendition of the great northern tales. Through Gaiman's deft and witty prose these gods emerge with fiercely competitive natures and a tendency to let passion ignite their actions.  

Tuesday, August 01, 2017

Signed Lois Lane book on sale at Second Story Books

9-206-1277948 Larry Thomas Ward
TRUTH, JUSTICE, & THE AMERICAN WAY
THE LIFE AND TIMES OF NOEL NEILL: THE ORIGINAL LOIS LANE 
[SIGNED] 
Los Angeles, California: Nicholas Lawrence Books, 2003. First Edition. Authorized biography of the original "Lois Lane", Noel Neill. Covers her years in vaudeville and radio as a child, singing with Bing Crosby's band in the late 1930s, film work from 1941 to 2002, and all of her work in the Superman television series. Extensive commentary from Neill regarding her relationships with George Reeves ("Superman") and others. Inscribed on title page by both Noel Neill and Larry Thomas Ward. [Following an extended illness, Neill died in Tucson on July 3, 2016, at age 95.] Large format paperback, 158 pages.
9-206-1277948          $110


   

Cavna on Rick and Morty

'Rick and Morty' creators reveal the long creative road to tonight's Season 3 return

[substantially different in print as The brains behind 'Rick and Morty', Express (August 1, 2017), p. 22

Monday, July 31, 2017

Another positive review for King Kirby play

Review: 'King Kirby' at Off the Quill, Performing at Greenbelt Arts Center

By
DC Metro Theater Arts
July 30, 2017
http://dcmetrotheaterarts.com/2017/07/30/review-king-kirby-greenbelt-arts-center/

Warren Bernard's collection of New Yorker ads continues

Preacher season 2 reviewed in The Express

They haven't put this online yet, but I wanted to get it out there so people in DC can pick up the paper on the evening commute.

A multitude of sins: 'Preacher' offers up some unholy terrors.
Marc Silver
Express (July 31, 2017): 19

Bob Batchelor on the birth of Spider-Man echoed in local 'King Kirby' play currently running

Coincidentally, a press release from Bob Batchelor came through today that ties in strongly with the play King Kirby which is currently running in Greenbelt. The paragraph where Goodman asks for more Westerns (or whatever is selling) is a recurring episode in the play, as is this characterization of Stan Lee. In his upcoming biography of Stan Lee, Batchelor writes about the creation of Marvel's first superhero character, and Jack Kirby's role in it. With his permission, here's info on his book and the excerpt (which, if you think it gives Lee too much credit, bring it up with Bob please).

Fifty-five years ago the Amazing Spider-Man debuted in a comic book series that faced cancellation for low sales. If it weren’t for a stream of fan letters and readers gobbling up the book, one of the world’s most iconic superheroes would have died an untimely death.

T​he story behind Spider-Man’s creation and appearance in Amazing Fantasy #15 is a tale filled with intrigue, and more importantly, Stan Lee’s calculated risk. The famed editor and writer deliberately ignored his boss – publisher Martin Goodman – who rejected the character, because “people hate spiders.” Unable to get Spider-Man out of his head, Lee had an origin story printed in AF #15. The overwhelming response and extraordinary sales would transform Marvel from a publishing also-ran to the hippest, hottest publisher on the planet.

Below is a 1,500-word excerpt on Spider-Man’s creation by noted biographer and cultural historian Bob Batchelor, which is excerpted from his new book Stan Lee: The Man Behind Marvel (published September 15, 2017).

Batchelor, who teaches at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, is the author of more than 25 books, including Stan Lee: The Man Behind Marvel (Rowman & Littlefield, September 2017, adult trade, retail $22.95). Amazon: http://amzn.to/2q4lNYe

A lifelong comic book fan and noted media resource, he has been an editorial consultant for numerous outlets and been quoted in or on BBC Radio World Service, Today.com, Columbus Dispatch, msnbc.com, The Miami Herald, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Dallas Morning News, Taiwan News, Associated Press, The Guardian, and The Washington Post.

Spidey Saves the Day!
By Bob Batchelor


All lean muscles and tautness, a new superhero bursts from the page. Swinging right into the reader’s lap, the hero is masked, only alien-like curved eyes reveal human features, no mouth or nose is visible. His power is alarming: casually holding a ghoulish-looking criminal in one hand, while simultaneously swinging from a hair-thin cord high above the city streets. In the background, tiny figures stand on rooftops, looking on and pointing in what can only be considered outright astonishment.

The superhero is off-center, frozen in a moment, as if a panicked photographer snapped a series of frames. The image captures the speed, almost like flight, with the wind at his back. The hero’s deltoid ripples and leg muscles flex. Some mysterious webbing extends from his elbow to waist. Is this a man or creature from another world?

The answer is actually neither. Looking at the bright yellow dialogue boxes running down the left side of the page, the reader learns the shocking truth. This isn’t a grown man, older and hardened, like Batman or Superman, one an existential nightmare and the other a do-gooder alien. No, this hero is just a self-professed “timid teenager” named Peter Parker. The world, he exclaims, mocks the teen under the mask, but will “marvel” at his newfound “awesome might.”

It is August 1962. Spider-Man is born.

Spider-Man’s debut in a dying comic book called Amazing Fantasy happened because Stan Lee took a calculated risk. He trusted his instincts. Rolling the dice on a new character meant potentially wasting precious hours writing, penciling, and inking a title that might not sell. The business side of the industry constantly clashed with the creative, forcing fast scripting and artwork to go hand-in-hand.

In more than two decades toiling as a writer and editor, Lee watched genres spring to life, and then almost as quickly, readers would turn to something else. War stories gave way to romance titles, which might then ride a wave until monster comics became popular. In an era when a small group of publishers controlled the industry, they kept close watch over each other’s products in hopes of mimicking sales of hot titles or genres.

Lee calls Marvel’s publisher Martin Goodman, “One of the great imitators of all time.” Goodman dictated what Lee wrote after ferreting out tips and leads from golf matches and long lunches with other publishers. If he heard that westerns were selling for a competitor, Goodman would visit Lee, bellowing, “Stan, come up with some Westerns.”[1​] 

This versatility had been Lee’s strength, swiftly writing and plotting many different titles. He often used gimmicks and wordplay, like recycling the gunslinger Rawhide Kid in 1960 and making him into an outlaw or using alliteration, as in Millie the Model.

A conservative executive, Goodman rarely wanted change, which irked Lee. The writer bristled at his boss’s belittling beliefs, explaining, “He felt comics were really only read by very, very young children or stupid adults,” which meant “he didn’t want me to use words of more than two syllables if I could help it…Don’t play up characterization, don’t have too much dialogue, just have a lot of action.” Given the precarious state of publishing companies, which frequently went belly-up, and his long history with Goodman, Lee admits, “It was a job; I had to do what he told me.”[​2​]

Despite being distant relatives and longtime coworkers, the publisher and editor maintained a cool relationship. From Lee’s perspective, “Martin was good at what he did and made a lot of money, but he wasn’t ambitious. He wanted things to stay the way they were.”

Riding the wave of critical success and extraordinary sales of The Fantastic Four, Goodman gave Lee a simple directive: “Come up with some other superheroes.”[3​] The Fantastic Four, however, subtly shifted the relationship. Lee wielded greater authority. He used some of the profit to pay writers and editors more money, which then offloaded some of the pressure.

Launching Spider-Man, however, Lee did more than divert the energy of his staff. He actually defied Goodman.

For months, Lee grappled with the idea of a new superhero with realistic challenges that someone with superpowers would face living in the modern world. The new character would be “a teenager, with all the problems, hang-ups, and angst of any teenager.” Lee came up with the colorful “Spider-Man” name and envisioned a “hard-luck kid” both blessed and cursed by acquiring superhuman strength and the ability to cling to walls, just like a real-life spider.[4​]

Lee recalls pitching Goodman, embellishing the story of Spider-Man’s origin by claiming that he got the idea “watching a fly on the wall while I had been typing.”[​5​] He laid the character out in full: teen, orphan, angst, poor, intelligent, and other traits. Lee thought Spider-Man was a no-brainer, but to his surprise, Goodman hated it and forbade him from offering it as a standalone book.[6​]

The publisher had three complaints: “people hate spiders, so you can’t call a hero ‘Spider-Man’”; no teenager could be a hero “but only be a sidekick”; and a hero had to be heroic, not a pimply, unpopular kid. Irritated, Goodman asked Lee, “Didn’t [he] realize that people hate spiders?”[​7​] Given the litany of criticisms, Lee recalled, “Martin just wouldn’t let me do the book.”[8]

Realizing that he could not completely circumvent his boss, Lee made the executive decision to put Spider-Man on the cover of a series that had previously bombed, called Amazing Fantasy. Readers didn’t like AF, which featured thriller/fantasy stories by Lee and surreal art by Steve Ditko, Marvel’s go-to artist for styling the macabre, surreal, or Dali-esque. It seemed as if there were already two strikes against the teen wonder.

Despite these odds and his boss’s directive, Lee says that he couldn’t let the nerdy superhero go: “I couldn’t get Spider-Man out of my mind.”[9] He worked up a Spider-Man plot and handed it over to Marvel’s top artist, Jack Kirby. Lee figured that no one would care (or maybe even notice) a new character in the last issue of a series that would soon be discontinued.

With Spider-Man, however, Kirby missed the mark. His early sketches turned the teen bookworm into a mini-Superman with all-American good looks, like a budding astronaut or football star. Lee put Ditko on the title. His style was more suited for drawing an offbeat hero.

Ditko nailed Spider-Man, but not the cover art, forcing Lee to commission Kirby for the task, with Ditko inking. Lee could not have been happier with Ditko. He explained: “Steve did a totally brilliant job of bringing my new little arachnid hero to life.”[10] They finished the two-part story and ran it as the lead in AF #15. Revealing both the busy, all-hands state of the company and their low expectations, Lee recalled, “Then, we more or less forgot about him.”[11] As happy as Lee and Ditko were with the collaboration and outcome, there is no way they could have imagined that they were about to spin the comic book world onto a different axis.

The fateful day sales figures finally arrived. Goodman stormed into Lee’s office, as always awash in art boards, drawings, mockups, yellow legal pads, and memos littering the desk.

Goodman beamed, “Stan, remember that Spider-Man idea of yours that I liked so much? Why don’t we turn it into a series?”[​12]

If that wasn’t enough to knock Lee off-kilter, then came the real kicker: Spider-Man was not just a hit, the issue was in fact the fastest-selling comic book of the year, and maybe that decade. Lee recalls that AF skyrocketed to number one.[13]

The new character would be the keystone of Marvel’s superhero-based lineup. More importantly, the Fantastic Four and Spider-Man transformed Marvel from a company run by imitating trends into a hot commodity. In March 1963, The Amazing Spider-Man #1 burst onto newsstands.

Fans could not get enough of the teen hero, so Lee and Marvel pushed the limits. Spider-Man appeared in Strange Tales Annual #2 (September 1963), a 72-page crossover between him and the Human Torch. And in Tales to Astonish, which had moved from odd, macabre stories to superheroes, Spidey guest-starred in #57 (July 1964), which focused on Giant-Man and Wasp. When The Amazing Spider-Man Annual #1 appeared in 1964, with Lee dubbing himself and Ditko “the most talked about team in comics today,” it featured appearances by every Marvel hero, including Thor, Dr. Strange, Captain America, and the X-Men.

Spider-Man now stood at the center of a comic book empire. Stan Lee could not have written a better outcome, even if given the chance.

All this from a risky run in a dying comic book!

______________________________
_

[
​1​
] Mark Lacter, “Stan Lee Marvel Comics Always Searching for a New Story,” Inc., November 2009, 96.
[
​2​
] Don Thrasher, “Stan Lee’s Secret to Success: A Marvel-ous Imagination,” Dayton Daily News, January 21, 2006, sec. E.
[
​3​
] Quoted in ibid.
[
​4​
] Stan Lee and George Mair, Excelsior! The Amazing Life of Stan Lee (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2002), 126–27.
[
​5​
] Ibid., 126.
[
​6​
] Roy Thomas, “Stan the Man and Roy the Boy: A Conversation between Stan Lee and Roy Thomas,” in Stan Lee Conversations, ed. Jeff McLaughlin (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2007), 141.
[
​7​
] Lee and Mair, Excelsior!, 127.
[
​8​
] Thomas, “Stan the Man,” 141.
[
​9​
] Lee and Mair, Excelsior!, 127.
[
​10​
] Ibid., 128.
[
​11​
] Ibid., 128.
[
​12​
] Ibid., 128.
[
​13​
] Stan Lee, Peter David, and Colleen Doran, Amazing Fantastic Incredible: A Marvelous Memoir (New York: Touchstone, 2015), n.p.