Weekend Reading: Stephen Bissette, Jack Kirby, Stephan Pastis & Stan Lee

What ho, weekenders! And happy Canadian Thanksgiving to our hockeyless neighbors to the north!

Stephen Bissette’s Center For Cartoon Studies in White River Junction, VT has teamed up with the esteemed site Slate (via The Slate Book Review”) to launch the annual Cartoonist Studio Prize, with some real money attached for the winners. This looks like a heckuva good thing and thanks to all involved for putting it together.

Over the years, some of my favorite comics have disappeared from the newspaper as creators retired for various reasons. One of my favorites these days is Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis. Here’s Michael Cavna’s interview with him.

Click to continue reading Weekend Reading: Stephen Bissette, Jack Kirby, Stephan Pastis & Stan Lee

Weekend Reading: Bob Bolling, Dave Simons, Kirk Alyn and Chuck Jones

Hey Librarians! Pack up your decimals of Dewey and head out to Washington DC, where all the cool graphic novels are going to be talked about. It’s the American Library Association’s annual conference, and it’s set for June 24-June 29. Early Word has the word on all the graphic novel programming just waiting for you.

Dave Simons: It’s been one year since the death of the acclaimed artist Dave Simons and his friend Daniel Best and 20th Century Danny Boy remembers him with stories and quotes, like this one: “Here is my recipe for a winning comic book cover: Flame. Gorilla. Skull. Hot chick. Other elements of interest: Nazis, dinosaurs.” I would totally buy Flaming Gorilla Skull Chick Vs. Nazi Dinosaur #1 from any publisher. Even at $3.99. I’ll even write it. And I wish Dave was still alive to draw it.

Superman Serials: The Bijou Blog takes a look at those Superman movies that most comic book fans don’t care about: the old serials like Superman and Atom Man Vs. Superman, starring Kirk Alyn. “His Superman seems stern at times, then happy-go-lucky, but also happens to take a sadistic glee in cracking two crooks’ heads together. The cape appears to give him some trouble. Alyn is seen to push it out of his way several times and he never runs while in costume, doing more of a ballet leap to keep from tripping.”

Click to continue reading Weekend Reading: Bob Bolling, Dave Simons, Kirk Alyn and Chuck Jones

WEEKEND READING: BATMAN, GREEN HORNET, WATCHMEN, WALLY WOOD

The many tubes of the internets are always clogged with great stuff. Here’s a few pleasant time-killers to take the edge off a long work-week (for those of us still hanging onto a job) and ease us into the holiday weekend.

WATCHMEN: Still can’t get enough Watchmen linkage from all over the internets? Here’s one more: Doug Atkinson – whose last name means “too much time on my hands” in Esperanto – has gone through and footnoted/annotated all 12 chapters of the graphic novel (or issues, for you original serialized readers) in a highly detailed and analytical fashion. Debate on, you funnybook fanatics.

MORNING WOOD: Over at his blog, My Delineated Life, Tom Buchanan has a great post about Wally Wood’s tryout for Prince Valiant. King Features was looking for a replacement when Hal Foster retired and Woody was one of the applicants (as was Gray Morrow and the winner John Cullen Murphy). Tom’s got the facts and the samples. A must for fans – Wood would have been a great choice to carry on.
(h/t Booksteve’s Library)

WHAT’S UP, CHUCK?: Cartoonist Mike Lynch has a short but fascinating post about the time he met Chuck Jones, the great animation director.

GREEN HORNET I: Writer/Editor/All Around Good Guy Bob Greenberger has a knack for finding the most interesting projects to work on. I missed this post, but Bob Greenberger has announced, some time ago in fact, that he’s writing some new non-comics adventures of the Lone Ranger’s relative (no really, they are related) for Moonstone Books. You can find all about it at Bob’s blog and a little bit more at the Moonstone website.

GREEN HORNET II: Meanwhile, blogmeister Dave Olbrich, an old friend from the Ultraverse, has finally weighed in on the whole “Seth Rogen as Green Hornet” debate. I reserve all judgment – Mr. Olbrich went on record like this once before when he brayed that Michael Keaton was a bad choice for Batman. Casting decisions are always a fun debate – I cringed when supposedly-clean Robert Downey, Jr. was announced as Tony Stark but wasn’t he ten shades of awesome? So it’ll be interesting to see where a Green Hornet movie goes. Besides, true GH fans know that the real star of anything GH is Kato.

GREEN HORNET III: So he’s back in book form, and he’s coming back in comic book form, now what’s left? Oh, yeah, he’s coming back to comic books, too. The Scoop has the, well, scoop.

MARVEL COMICS: Why is Marvel Comics making it so hard for this guy to read and enjoy Marvel Comics?

That’s it for this weekend. If you’re celebrating, enjoy your holiday, and try to bite the heads off as many chocolate bunnies as you can, and then see how many Marshmallow Peeps you can stuff into an EC Comics hardcover slipcase. (My guess is 176.)