Today in Comics History, July 24: Happy birthday, Colleen Doran!

Born on this day: writer/artist Colleen Doran, one of the major figures in indie comics (and comics for the Big Two or Three) since the 1980s (A Distant Soil, Wonder Woman, Comic Book Tattoo,Morrison Hotel, Mangaman, Walt Disney's Beauty and the Beast, Amazing Fantastic Incredible: Stan Lee, The Sandman, American Gods, Orbiter, Snow, Glass, Apples, Spider-Man and many more!)


from A Distant Soil (1996 series) #35 (Image, November 2002)

Today in Comics History, June 10: Happy birthday, Charles Vess!

Born on this day: artist and comic book illustrator Charles Vess (Sandman, Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess' Stardust, Spider-Man, The Books of Magic, The Warriors Three, Rose, The Book of Ballads and Sagas, Blueberry Girl, and much more!)


from Marvel Age #54 and 90 (Marvel, September 1987 and and July 1990); text Mike Carlin (#54) and Chris Eliopoulis and Barry Dutter (#90); pencils and inks by Ron Zalme; colors by Paul Becton (#54) and Renee Witterstaetter (#90)
Happy birthday, Charles!


photo with Jeff Smith from Bone: Coda (Cartoon Books, 2016)

Today in Comics History, June 10: Happy birthday, Scott McCloud!

Happy birthday to comics writer, artist, and theorist Scott McCloud (Zot!, Destroy!!, The Sculptor, Understanding Comics, Reinventing Comics, and Making Comics)!

But sorry: I can't include any pictures of him in this post because he has never ever appeared in any comic books.









What are you waiting around here for? I told you, he's never been a character protrayed in comic books.









Oh, okay, okay.





from Understanding Comics (Tundra, 1993), by Scott McCloud
Here's he is in a Valentino/Don Simpson parody:


from normalman/Megaton Man Special one-shot (Image, August 1994), script and art by Jim Valentino, Megaton Man art by Don Simpson
A interview with Scott that's so all-encompassing it had to be split up into two issues of Vertigo books! (Remember when Paradox Press published McCloud?)



from "Subculture" in DC/Vertigo comics cover-dated August and September 2000
Happy birthday, Scott!


photo from Bone: Coda (Cartoon Books, 2016)

An Afternoon with Jeff Smith

Sundays around the Bully household are usually a pretty simple affair. Sleep until ten, get up, make Eggo waffles, watch cartoons, take a nap or two...it's all pretty casual on a lazy Sunday afternoon. Unless, of course, there's an expedition to be made and someone exciting to see, in which case I'm bounding out of bed at dawn and tugging on my sweater, eager and ready to get out into the world. What could make Bully so excitable on a quiet Sunday? Why, an appearance by Bone creator Jeff Smith at Symphony Space in Manhattan, as part of the popular Thalia Kid's Club series in the theater with the greatest name in the universe: The Leonard Nimoy Thalia! It's the logical place to have an event.




This very special Sunday begins not with Eggos but with brunch out at Cousin John's in Park Slope, Brooklyn. I'm having Eggs Benedict Arnold. Don't turn your back on them!



My good pal Randi was very sweet and shared her pamcakes with me. PAMCAKES! Yet another reason why Randi has great taste: she can pick a crackerjack breakfast item. Do not pour me on the pamcakes, Randi!:



I didn't take any photos of the Jeff Smith stage event at the Nimoy Thalia, but he put on a fantastic show. It was mainly geared towards kids, and there were a few hundred pre-teens and their parents in the audience, many of them clutching well-worn and frequently-read copies of the various volumes of Bone. Jeff was introduced and interviewed on stage by Matthew Cody (author of the upcoming young adult superhero adventure Powerless). Narrating a slide show of artwork, Jeff explained his influences (introducing the kids to Carl Barks's Uncle Scrooge and C. C. Beck's Captain Marvel), showed off pages from his childhood Bone comics, and explained how he designs and draws covers by showing several sketches in progress for the Scholastic Bone series and why he and the designers picked the final versions they did for excitement and drama.

Jeff then had all the kids in the audience draw a character on a supplied sheet of paper. His only instruction: "make your character either happy or angry." He then showed off a few dozen of the kids' drawings on the big screen and asked each one of the young artists to talk about their character and what was going on in the drawing. I was impressed by the skill and range of these young artists (me, I can barely hold a crayon! Well, it's more difficult with hooves). A huge number of them drew their own original creations, and some even broke up their paper into comic panels with action and story sequence. Jeff was full of praise for their work, pointing out some of the visual shorthand older comics fans take for granted: speed lines, furrowed eyebrows to express anger, posture as a function of strength or action—these kids had the fundamentals, and all were eager and excited to talk to the crowd about their creations. I especially liked one kid who had designed a character named "Grandpa" and his various alter-egos, including "Baby Grandpa." I would so buy a comic book named "Baby Grandpa."

A Q&A session finished up the stage show, with only one rule: "kids can ask questions, adults can't." Excellent rule, as the kids came up with great questions about where Jeff got his ideas, where the Bones' names came from (Fone Bone? From Don Martin's frequently Fonebone characters), and why the stupid, stupid rat creatures have trimmed ears and tails. Jeff was fantastic with the kids: encouraging, funny, and patient.

The event then moved to the Symphony Space café, where Jeff signed books and talked with the kids for about another hour and a half, the line snaking around the seating area and up the stairs. I patiently stood in line to meet Jeff, and the wait went by fast, thanks to spending time chatting with the delightful Randi:



I love Randi! She is so nice to me. Thanks for taking me to see Jeff Smith, Randi!



At last I got up to the table and got to meet the Great Man himself. He was very cheerful as I chatted with him for a moment. I believe I was the only stuffed bull he's had come out to one of his signings.



Even though he'd already signed a bajillion books so far that afternoon, he kindly signed my big Bone phone book and sketched me a quick drawing of Fone Bone and Ted the Bug. Thanks, Jeff!



When we came out of the Leonard Nimoy Thalia it was starting to snow! I was glad I'd worn my warm winter fleece hoodie:



Snowflakes were as big as canned hams by the time we reached the subway entrance. Quick, into the subway before we get turned into snowmen! And snowbulls. And snowrandis.



Coming in from the snow on a cold Sunday afternoon, there's no better treat than a steaming mug of hot chocolate with mini-marshmallows:



In fact, the only thing better than just a mug of hot cocoa is reading Bone while you sip it! Thanks for a great fun day, Jeff Smith!


Read Jeff Smith's blog entry on the event at Boneville.com

Fun Fifty of 2007: Part 4 of 5

Here I am, wallowing in a big pile of comics, books, DVDs and croissants I've been saving up since last year, sorting them into piles of varying level of that indefinable quality of what we call funness. Over here, in the back, is that big towering pile of issues of Civil War and World War III, all destined for the dustbin. Those are not fun. So from that, we can deduce: "War! Huh! What is it good for?" To which the only possible answer is "Absolutely nothin'!" But here, a little closer to me, is a pile of ten things which are so fun they can only get numbered as some of the Fun Fifty of 2007. More sp'fically, and mainly 'coz we did numbers 30 through 21 yesterday, these are numbers 20 through 11. In that order. Starting with this one...


#20: THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN: THE BLACK DOSSIER Probably one of the most eagerly awaited comics of the year (because it was actually due in 2006), the sequel to Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill's metafiction high adventure comics brings back Mina Harker and Alan Quatermain into the strange and bizarre world of 1958 Britain (curiously enough, a 1958 that's post-1984). As always, part of the fun is in spotting the literary allusions and characters that sneak in—I howled with delight when I spied a Winged Avenger comic book from the Avengers TV series, and Moore writes one of the funniest, and perhaps most hapless, James Bonds since Ian Fleming. If I gotta make a few quibbles? Well, most of all, it doesn't really seem to tell a story, being more concerned with a series of documents within the book which tell past histories of the League. To my eyes, Moore's pastiche of P. G. Wodehouse crossed with Lovecraft, which I have to review one of these days, isn't especially convincing on a literary level, but it's at least fun. And if the ending is the equivalent of a big splashy Broadway musical number that wraps up the story but doesn't really make any sense, well, then at least it's in 3-D. Any book that comes with 3-D glasses? I'm so there.


#19: GROO 25th ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL He's back! The greatest barbarian of the modern comics age returns with a vengeance, aptly drawn by MADman Sergio Aragonés, with Mark Evanier doing whatever it is that he usually does. One of the great joys of a new Groo story is that it's almost exactly like every other Groo story, and there aren't many series in which you can say that as a positive. Plus, plenty of special features, including a funny and clever "Groo Alphabet." And it leads into the first Groo series in years, Groo: Hell on Earth, which ain't half as dismal as it sounds. Groo is always silly, never stupid, and as long as Evanier and Aragonés keep puttin' 'em out, I'm standing in line with my dimes to buy 'em.


#18: SHAZAM: THE MONSTER SOCIETY OF EVIL Jeff Smith proves there's life after Bone in this delightful, colorful, and sometimes creepy reinvention of the Captain Marvel legend, which , while making changes to the mythos, preserves more of the joy, charm, and adventure of the original C. C. Beck creation than the current dark-spirited The Trials of Shazam mainstream DC comic does. Smith's tale springs from the classic Monster Society serial of yesteryear but adds his own touches, including the most charming Mary Marvel ever put on paper. Shazam is one of those rare comics that'll appeal to adults as well as children, and I repeat my original request when I first reviewed this: pick up a copy for a kid as well and I bet you'll get him or her hooked.


#17: POPEYE VOL. 2 "WELL BLOW ME DOWN!" For the first time since comic strips were regularly and frequently published in mass market newsstand paperbacks, we're living in a Golden Age of newspaper comic strip reprints, and the range and quality of the projects is enough to please even the fussiest of collectors and fans. Dick Tracy, Peanuts, The Far Side, Gasoline Alley, Dennis the Menace, Pogo, and many more to come are all being reprinted in beautiful archive editions. I'm a big fan of all of 'em (tho' I likely won't be buying The Complete Mary Worth, Volume 1: Mary Meddles in The Affairs of Others). But by far my favorite new reprint project has been Fantagraphics's monolith-sized reprints of Thimble Theater starring that spinach-chawin' sailor man, Popeye. Volume 2, as beautifully designed as the first (with a hard-board cut-out cover and large pages that preserve a full week's worth of continuity). The Popeye stories in this book are some of the best comedy and adventure tales told in the medium: The Rough-House War, King Popeye, and Skullyville (Toughest Town in the World!) Plus, nearly two years of full-page, full-color Sunday strips (including the lower-tier "Sappo" strip by Segar), and an extensive historical essay by Donald Phelps. Pure joy—the only way this could be better were if the book had a scratch-'n'-sniff spinach-scented cover.


#16: THE SIMPSONS MOVIE Eighteen years in the making (sorta) made The Simpsons Movie eagerly awaited, and it didn't disappoint, unless you're one of those cynical, curmudgeonly critics who claim the series hasn't been funny since Mister Plow. Me? I howled with laughter, cheered with excitement and sniffled during the sad bits. It's a bigger and broader story than your average 22-minute TV episode, with more detailed 3D animation and backgrounds but still the same loveable characters (and a few new surprises). You might lament that your favorite didn't get much screen time (me, I was disappointed there wasn't more to do for Mister Burns), but how can you not love a movie that introduced The Sensational Character Find of 2007: The Amazing Spider-Pig:



#15: EMPOWERED Let's get this out of the way right from the start: little stuffed bulls shouldn't be reading Empowered. Uh uh. No way. Not until they're at least late-teenage stuffed bulls. There's enough sex, violence, and near-but-not-complete nudity to rate this a "mature audiences only" and safely shrink-wrap away the naughty bits. But if I were allowed to review this, I'd probably tell you not only how sexy but how relentlessly funny it is: the adventures of a superheroine with serious self-esteem issues (she more often hostage than hero), her burly boyfriend Thugboy, BFF Ninjette, and TV-addicted interdimensional conqueror The Caged Demonwolf. Adam Warren (Dirty Pair, Gen13) is turning out some of the most beautiful work of his career, gorgeously reproduced to look like the original pencils, and the sexy girls and guys stretched out across the pages don't distract from Empowered being one of the most incisive and satirical looks at hero worship and the cult of celebrity in a world with superbeings. It's a pity that superhero fans probably won't pick this up because it looks like manga—and a pity that manga fans won't pick this up because it looks like superheroes. They're missing out on one of the comic delights of 2007 (with more volumes to come in 2008).


#14: TORCHWOOD SERIES 1 Rearrange the letters of "Torchwood" in the correct order and you know what you wind up with? That's right: Hot Rod Cow. For those of you who aren't interested in the weekly series about a little stuffed race car driver, check out Torchwood, the Doctor Who spin-off that's done more for Welsh tourism than any production since How Green Was My Valley. John Barrowman is back as Captain Jack Harkness, surrounding himself with a crack team of experts to investigate the crimes beyond the skills of the Cardiff police—or indeed, the imagination of most mortal men. Darker and grimmer than Doctor Who, but never bleak, Torchwood brings sensibility of The X-Files into the twenty-first century with a compelling cast of characters whose stories grow and intertwine throughout the season. And when it clicks, it strikes dead aim at your heart and brain at the same time: stand-out episodes like "Captain Jack Harkness" and "Random Shoes" had me on the edge of my seat and reaching for my handkerchief to sniffle in at the same time.


#13: COVER GIRL Remember those old To Tell The Truth episodes where a panelist would exempt himself from the final round because he already knew the secret contestant? Well, in the interest of true and honest disclosure, Cover Girl co-creator Kevin Church (mastermind of BeaucoupKevin(dot)com) is a pal o' mine. And yet, I'm including his comic in my Fun Fifty. Or, as an instant message conversation 'tween yours little stuffed truly and that paragon of Pet Shop Boys fandom went:

bully: i have to decide what comics I'm going top put in my year-end Top Fifty.
kevin: Well, that's easy.
kevin: COVER GIRL #1-5
kevin: TEN TIMES EACH.


Well, I did have 49 other choices, Kevin, but you get one slot right here for your, co-creator Andrew Cosby, and artist Mateus Santolouco's fast-paced, funny, and beautifully drawn action adventure of an up-and-coming movie star and the gorgeous and deadly bodyguard assigned to protect him after he saves the wrong girl from a car crash. Cover Girl is both fast-paced and dense—this is not a fast five-minutes-per-issue read, and Church's genuinely funny yet believable dialogue rewards re-reading. For my money, it's the most entertaining Hollywood-based comic book since Crossfire. Someday, this will be a Hollywood film, and you can say you read it in comic book form before you bought the action figures and got the McDonald's Happy Meal.

Now can I have my tricycle back, Mister Church?


#12: THE ART OF BONE Jeff Smith goes for the hat trick and makes his third appearance on the Fun Fifty list with this dazzling oversized gift book covering the design and evolution of his award-winning Bone series. Beautiful full-color reproductions of covers minus logos, penciled roughs, extensive history and commentary, plus a large collection of Smith's college-era "Thorn" comic strips which inspired Bone. If you're a Boneophile, this is the closest thing to pure heaven—at least until Smith starts work on the sequel Bone 2: Electric Boogaloo.


#11: HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS In the course of the Fun Fifty, I've mentioned a few eagerly anticipated 2007 projects—but none have been so intensely awaited worldwide than the concluding volume of J. K. Rowling's Happy Potter series. We've followed Harry from age 11 to age 17 and bought billions of his books, and if you're a fan, the final adventure doesn't disappoint—the last standoff against Voldemort and his minions, a search for mystic talismans as well as the mysterious past of Dumbledore, and more deaths than an issue of What If?. I could be Scroogesque and complain about the massive infodump chapters, including one that brings the climatic battle to a complete halt while we rewind to the past of Harry's family, and that Rowling really could have used an editor in some sections, but I can't deny I awaited this book with increasing excitement the nearer its release approached, and that I devoured it in one night of eager reading...and that I read it all over again the next day. No spoilers here from me if you haven't read it, but the final three words of Deathly Hallows are not only a summation of Harry's life but also a reflection of our contentment with the entire saga.


Well, that's all, folks! The most fun comics, movies, books and all kindsa other stuff in 2007. I sure hope you enjoyed it, and you'll join me around this time next year when I look back at 2008 and tell you how much fun we had reading that Secret Invasion and Final Crisis thing, and how much we laughed in relief and joy when Stephanie Brown, Steve Rogers, and Mary Jane Watson-Parker all showed up together in the shower in the morning after a terrible long nightmare...

Oh, wait! Not done yet! There's ten more to come! So, tune in tomorrow and we'll take the final swing through the Ten Most Fun of 2007. There'll be laughter, and tears, and Skrulls. And this time...it's personal!