Clark Burscough | November 1, 2024
And so, we arrive at the final This Week’s Links before the upcoming presidential election, with a selection of reading/viewing/listening, below, to distract from the feverish pitch of the political dog and pony show’s grandest spectacle - due to the mystery of time zones I can only assume I’ll be asleep, as usual, when the result is announced, therefore I will just have to hope that some news channel or another will have a 5-minute piece on the outcome the next day.
ザリガニ釣り pic.twitter.com/DSWwvUtByj
— 西村培 (@tsuchikani) October 30, 2024
This week’s news.
• Starting off this week’s selection with some comics honours news out of Japan, as it was announced that Chiba Tetsuya, creator of Ashita no Joe, will be one of this year’s recipients of the country’s Order of Culture, which recognises individuals who have made outstanding contributions in developing Japanese culture - Chiba will be the first mangaka to receive the honour in the order’s history.
• Comics market news: ICv2 released a white paper on comics sales in the direct market at last month’s New York Comic Con, with sales up for the spring and summer seasons compared to 2023 – Forbes also has a dive into the figures, which suggest a recovery of the market following last year’s drop in sales compared to the record highs of the early of the 2020s.
• Auction news, and items from Christine Farrell’s complete collection of DC comics went under the hammer last week, with sales totalling $5.26 million - big ticket individual sales from this initial lot included a copy of Action Comics #1 which sold for $324,000, and a copy of Flash Comics #1 which sold for $174,000.
Watch Junji Ito (@junjiitofficial) lock in while he draws modern horror!
➡️ Enter to win the shikishi in this video: https://t.co/h5aIdTsO5k pic.twitter.com/M469iu3dcF
— VIZ (@VIZMedia) October 15, 2024
This week’s reviews.
TCJ
Emily Rems reviews the intriguing interconnections of Laura Pérez’s Ocultos, translated by Andrea Rosenberg - “In her afterward to the book, Pérez dedicates Ocultos, in part, to “those who, delving into the mysterious worlds of our reality, make life more interesting and more free.” It’s a pleasure to watch the author and illustrator assert her own place in this esoteric lineage. Giving both voice and form to sensations and experiences that so often evade conventional language, Pérez says the unsayable through the evocative symbology of her art.”
AIPT
• Colin Moon reviews the manic evolution of Josh Simmons’ Jessica Farm.
• Collier Jennings reviews the unique approach of BOOM Studios’ Power Rangers: Across the Morphin Grid #1.
• David Brooke reviews the horror tropes of Marvel Comics’ Venomverse Reborn.
• Nathan Simmons reviews the teeming details of G. Willow Wilson, Mike Perkins, et al’s Poison Ivy/Swamp Thing: Feral Trees #1.
The Beat
• Zack Quaintance reviews the slowburn creeps of John Smith, Edmund Bagwell, et al’s Cradlegrave.
• Adam Wescott reviews the formulaic action of GMT’s Burning Effect.
• Tim Rooney reviews the corporate mandates of Zeb Wells, John Romita Jr., et al’s Amazing Spider-Man #60.
• Diego Higuera reviews the character explorations of G. Willow Wilson, Mike Perkins, et al’s Poison Ivy/Swamp Thing: Feral Trees #1.
• Clyde Hall reviews the cautionary messages of Maytal Zchut, Leila Leiz, et al’s It Happened on Hyde Street – Devour.
• Jordan Jennings reviews the solid start of Cullen Bunn, Joe Bocardo, et al’s The Hexiles #1.
Broken Frontier
• Andy Oliver has reviews of:
- The masterful humour of Chris Baldie’s Jaques and the Great Art Theft.
- The wistful reflections of Cara Brown’s Everything’s Fine: An Autobiographic Short.
- The ambitious construction of Bhavani Bala’s Avial.
• Lydia Turner has reviews of:
- The liberating self-discovery of Asia Miller’s Lindsey Cheng Dates a White Boy!!!.
- The cheerful collecting of c.lemieux’s Gnome Granny.
- The visceral minimalism of Otava Heikkilä’s The Second Safest Mountain.
From Cover to Cover
Scott Cederlund reviews the shallow fun of Tom Scioli’s Godzilla’s Monsterpiece Theater; and the narrative architecture of James Tynion IV, Álvaro Martinez Bueno, et al's The Nice House by the Sea #4.
House to Astonish
Paul O’Brien has capsule reviews of Marvel Comics’ X-Men: From the Ashes Infinity Comic #20, X-Men #6, X-Factor #3, and Dazzler #2.
Kirkus Reviews
Have starred capsule reviews of:
• The vivid worldbuilding of Richard Ashley Hamilton, Marco Matrone, et al’s Tectiv.
• The wondrous fabulism of Dean Stuart’s Cassi and the House of Memories.
• The subtle lessons of Meredith McClaren and Andrea Bell’s Crumble.
Montreal Review of Books
• Sasha Khalimonova reviews the distinctive communication of Cole Degenstein’s It Really Is.
• Emily Raine reviews the emotional realism of Tara Booth’s Processing: 100 Comics That Got Me Through It.
• Billie Gagné-LeBel reviews the shining creativity of Marc Bell’s Raw Sewage Science Fiction.
Solrad
• Ian Cordingley reviews the interesting tropes of Owen Pomery’s The Hard Switch.
• Alex Hoffman reviews the enthralling layers of Yasmeen Abedifard’s When to Pick a Pomegranate.
Happy Halloween! 🎃
My only ink contribution for the month, slapped some red color digitally though. pic.twitter.com/ysyv4HDLkk
— Yufei(´-ω•`)🔎 (@KanzakiYufei) October 31, 2024
This week’s interviews.
TCJ
Zach Rabiroff interviews Desert Island’s Gabe Fowler about the store’s recent geographic upheaval, rental logistics, and retail history - “There's plenty of comic stores in New York, not as many as there used to be, but they didn't quite serve this particular niche interest of the very elusive self-publishing culture that I love the most. The big two Marvel, DC stuff, there's stores all over New York that have it, all that stuff. I was aimed at the underrepresented material and trying to fly the flag. And you know, it has a slight activist aspect where I want to help those people live a life through art or give a context of that art.”
AIPT
• Chris Hassan talks to Benjamin Percy about Hellverine and Deadpool/Wolverine, working across the Wolverine family, and demonic codependency.
• Chris Coplan speaks with Emma Rios about Anzuelo and the transformative experience of making the book, Luke Stokes and Caleb Ady about Aruku Akumu and samurai history, and the 3W/3M crew about crowdfunding their new project.
Artblog
Roberta interviews Sheena Howard about Black Comics - Politics of Race and Representation, discovering comics, and building audiences.
The Beat
Jared Bird speaks with John Harris Dunning about Summer Shadows, Greek island inspirations, the genesis of stories, and collaborating with Ricardo Cabral.
Berkleyside
Joanne Furio interviews Eric Drooker about Naked City, covers for The New Yorker, and the way the Big Apple can take over your dreams.
BookTrib
Jim Alkon speaks with Tim Mulligan about Snitchland, the family focus on the Witchland series of books, and the joys of scary stories.
Broken Frontier
• Ellie Egleton interviews Oscar Osorio about A Never-Ending Adventure, the myriad personal influences on one’s work, and economist decision-making processes.
• Andy Oliver talks to Emilia McKenzie (aka Emix Regulus) about The Troublesome Stone and public transport preferences, and to Shuning Ji about My Mum is a Wolf and the lived experiences behind the comic.
Forbes
Rob Salkowitz speaks with Dave Chisholm about Spectrum and Plague House, the density of periodicals, and the shared need for good timing in music and horror.
The Guardian
Sam Wolfson interviews Charles Burns about Final Cut, childhood reading, creative block, and the pure control of comics making.
The Hollywood Reporter
Borys Kit talks to James Tynion IV about Something Is Killing the Children, the genesis of the comic, its expansion from mini-series to ongoing, and the rapid growth of its audience.
ICv2
Rob Salkowitz speaks with Prana: Direct Market Solutions’ Adam Freeman about the company’s new sales measurement tool and the challenges inherent to normalising store-derived datasets.
NPR
Scott Simon interviews David F. Walker and Marcus Kwame Anderson about Big Jim and the White Boy, the action inherent in the story, and the realities of Huck and Jim’s friendship.
Publisher’s Weekly
Andrew Farago speaks with Kevin Eastman, David Avallone, and Ben Bishop about Drawing Blood, original titles, and the genesis of their collaboration.
The Seattle Times
Paul Constant talks to Arcane Comics and More’s Kenshi Toll about the store’s evolution, the shop’s customer service ethos, and graphic novel and periodical markets.
This is how the original inks looked for The Crocodile Mom by the way! They turned out quite nice imo pic.twitter.com/JHa2AcGrsM
— Rowan (@Skulkingfoxes) October 30, 2024
This week’s features and longreads.
• Here at TCJ, Andrew Farago writes in remembrance of cartoonist and animation artist Robert Michael “Bob” Foster, creator of Myron Moose Funnies, who passed away earlier this year at the age of 81 - “Although his comics career went on permanent pause, Foster’s animation career continued to thrive, and he enjoyed steady work from Hanna-Barbera on all-new cartoons as well as series that showcased the classic H-B characters in new scenarios and settings.”
• Also for TCJ, Hagai Palevsky examines the workings of the aesthetic mechanisms of Charles Burns, and how this machinery oftentimes works against its operator - “The problem with style, any style, is that, if the artist fails to interrogate it (and what exists outside of it) over time, it will inevitably collapse in on itself, straying farther and farther away from what it tries to depict. This becomes even more of a problem when you attempt to evoke someone else's style.”
• More for TCJ this week, as Jon Holt and Ayumi Naraoka present a translation of a chapter from Shimizu Isao’s Manga ga kataru Meiji/Meiji manga yūransen focused on the portraiture of Morita Tasaburō - “These sketches depict a side of their personalities that biographers and reviewers do not describe. The person’s personality emerges so vividly because the artist gives iconic depictions of them, like you see in a manga.”
• Finally for TCJ, Joe McCulloch writes on Alan Moore, Steve Moore, et al’s The Moon and Serpent Bumper Book of Magic, the magical concepts contained therein, and the thinking required by the reader of this accessible tome - “The coin, we are told many times, is the elemental weapon of earth. Unless you are very fortunate, you will have to live and work in precarity, as a renter eking out your sustenance from things your boss owns, and the material world is best addressed in material terms, lest we cast a shimmering glamour onto our chains and believe ourselves held in the talons of angels.”
• For more on Moore from Moore, The Guardian has an op-ed by Alan Moore looking back on the decade passed since opining on the state of pop culture fandom, the alt-right movements that subsequently co-opted sections of this, and why it’s okay to just enjoy something for the sake of it.
• Over at The Yale Review, Chris Ware writes in celebration of the 50th anniversary of Richard Scarry’s Cars and Trucks and Things That Go, as a new deluxe edition of the book arrives, looking back on the wider life and work of Scarry, including an experience of World War II somewhat different than the norm.
• For NPR, ahead of last weekend’s sale of items from Christine Farrell’s comprehensive collection of DC comic books, Liam Elder-Connors previewed some of the rarities going under the hammer, and looked back on the history of the collection.
• Steve Morris’ Spawn de Replay continues, overy at Sheldfust, as this time out the big-legged arbiter of hell is a force of pure id in Spawn #7, and the toyetic action is moving apace.
• As the ShortBox Comics Fair draws to a close for another year, the team at Women Write About Comics pick their favourites from this year’s crop, including Asia Miller’s Lindsey Cheng Dates a White Boy!!!, Jade LFT Peters’ Last Stop, Laura Knetzger’s Being Useful, Shee Liu’s Beetle, CR Chua’s Goodbye Apple Island, and Mohnfisch’s Aglæca.
• Mike Peterson rounds up the week’s editorial beat, over at The Daily Cartoonist, as billionaires did as billionaires will in the run-up to this year’s presidential election.
new ✍️ pic.twitter.com/wlgmDk0NPl
— caro (@cash__browns) October 29, 2024
This week’s audio/visual delights.
• A couple of meetings of the New York Comics & Picture-Story Symposium, as Lilli Carré hosted a talk from Yara Elfouly on unexpected encounters with comics, in the illustrated survey ‘Turning Corners Like Reading Pages: Comics as Tombs, Temples, and Mind Palaces’; and Bill Kartalopoulos hosted a talk from Eli Valley on Museum of Degenerates: Portraits of the American Grotesque and comics making as a dialogue with comics history.
• Henry Chamberlain welcomed Carol Lay to Comics Grinder to speak about My Time Machine, the influence of HG Wells’ concepts, AI hive minds, and how real-life events can throw off the making of fictional stories.
• Brian Hibbs welcomed Patrick Horvath to the latest meeting of the Comix Experience Graphic Novel Club, as they spoke about Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees, film making and comics making, the coexistence of anthropomorphic and non-anthropomorphic animals in fictional worlds, and colouring as meditative practice.
• David Harper was joined by Ryan North for this week’s edition of Off Panel, as they spoke about Fantastic Four and The Rise of Emperor Doom, webcomics archaeology, questions of continuity, and lessons learned from studying computer science.
• A NYCC debrief from Publisher’s Weekly’s More to Come this week, as Kate Fitzsimons, Meg Lemka, Heidi MacDonald, and Calvin Reid discussed reactions from the show floor, the growing manga/webtoon share in western markets, and this year’s Harvey Award recipients.
— 🌙 (@moooncash) September 30, 2024
No more links this week, but if you run out then I’m sure there’s plenty else to be getting on with.
HOOKJAW! BATTLE/ACTION #3 - OUT NOW!@2000AD @Rebellion pic.twitter.com/TiLypsr5fV
— John McCrea @Dead Eyes-the Empty Frames due Sept (@mccreaman) October 30, 2024
English (US) · 