Norm Feuti’s Gil Debuts From King Features
Posted by Tom Mason Categories: Editorials, Interviews,
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Congratulations to Norm Feuti on Gil!
He started the strip as a webcomic, then put it on hiatus to work on other things, then brought it back through King Features. You can read about that process here.
It debuts this week in classic newspaper syndication (you can also find it online).
It’s a great, funny strip and Feuti’s an excellent cartoonist.
I interviewed him awhile ago when he was first starting on Gil and I wish him nothing but success.
Bookmark the strip, write to your local paper to make them aware of it, and read the heck out it.
There’s also the Gil Blog with lots of fun extras to enjoy.
[Artwork: Gil, © Norm Feuti]
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Weekend Reading: Batman, Clint, Shooter, Granito And Rozum!
Posted by Tom Mason Categories: Editorials, Interviews, Movies, Reviews, DC Comics,
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I have an idea for a great drinking game. Surf the internet and every time you come across a link to Bleeding Cool’s expose of Rob Granito, take a drink. You’ll be Lohan’ed before Monday. In the meantime, I await the Bluewater biography of Mr. Swipey McSwipe-swipe.
Let’s see what else is out there:
Batman: The writer Lance Mannion tries to teach his sons about Batman.
Liberty: Writer Martin Powell gets interviewed at Broken Frontier. Subject: his children’s books and The Halloween Legion and Liberty Unlimited, both of which I’m really looking forward to.
Blood: Mark Wheatley, Marc Hempel and Ricky Shanklin’s graphic novel Blood Of The Innocent is marching toward the big screen. Breck Eisner (The Crazies) is attached to direct and Bill Marsilii (Deja Vu) is writing the screenplay. According to Scoop: “The original comic book series set Dracula against Jack the Ripper and was published by Warp in 1985.”
Click to continue reading Weekend Reading: Batman, Clint, Shooter, Granito And Rozum!
Weekend Reading: Comic Con International, Gene Colan and The Inferior Five
Posted by Tom Mason Categories: Conventions, Editorials, Movies, Television, DC Comics,
Apparently, there’s some kind of comic book thing going on in San Diego. I hope enough people show up and it catches on. I never get tired of hearing jokes like that!
The talk of the convention – or I should say one of the talks of the convention – is that DC is getting ready to make the move to the West Coast where its big daddy Warner Bros. is located. It makes a lot of sense, from a dollars-and-cents pov. You can get a lot done faster if your comic book resources are right next door to your movie resources and you don’t have to fly everyone out for meetings or Skype 10 times a day. More importantly, if DC’s on the Warner lot or in a building that Warner is already paying for, they could eliminate the overhead on their NY offices (which could be a huge annual chunk of bucks). And since corporations routinely operate this way, it’d be a sneaky way to have mass layoffs of the people who can’t or won’t go and get rid of any entrenched deadwood that’d be too hard to dismiss without cause.
Click to continue reading Weekend Reading: Comic Con International, Gene Colan and The Inferior Five
Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster: Funnyman
Posted by Tom Mason Categories: Editorials, DC Comics, Independent,
After many years of struggle, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster hit the comic book jackpot with their creation Superman, only to see it slip away from their control and for DC Comics to keep not just the rights but almost all the money as well. One of the many dark chapters in the building of the comics industry – businesses profiting by taking away the rights of creators.
Frustrated by their attempts to negotiate with DC, and out of work when DC dumped them for complaining (and filing suit), they did what creators do: created another property where they were determined to get a better deal for themselves.
The project was Funnyman, a red-headed TV comedian who fought crime. Unfortunately, the self-titled comic book, for Vince Sullivan’s Magazine Enterprises, lasted just 6 issues in 1948 and a companion newspaper strip defined the term short-lived.
Click to continue reading Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster: Funnyman
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Roy Crane, Wash Tubbs, Captain Easy and Buz Sawyer
Posted by Tom Mason Categories: Editorials, Interviews, Independent,
It’s easy to toss around the word “genius,” especially when it comes to comics. We all have our favorites and we all like to think ours are the great ones. But one look at Roy Crane’s work and anyone can see that he definitely was worthy of the “genius” tag.
Crane created two great adventure classics, Wash Tubbs (which later became Captain Easy) and Buz Sawyer, with Wash being called the first true newspaper adventure strip. He’s been dead for 30 plus years, but looking through his strip work, you can see his influence in comics from Milton Caniff to Alex Toth to Howard Chaykin. Even the modern strip, Rip Haywire by Dan Thompson shows a Crane influence as does Randy Reynaldo’s Rob Hanes.
And in a classic Comics Journal interview, Art Spiegelman calls Crane an influence on Jack Kirby.
Continuing my series on cartooning and cartoonists, Roy Crane wrote about himself and his work back in 1964. This is pulled from an oversized saddle-stitched magazine from Allied Publications with the creatively-challenged title These Top Cartoonists Tell How They Create America’s Favorite Comics. It featured an introduction by Beetle Bailey’s Mort Walker and was compiled by Allen Willette.
Here’s Crane on Crane:
Click to continue reading Roy Crane, Wash Tubbs, Captain Easy and Buz Sawyer
Weekend Reading: Comic Con International, Tom Peyer, Ultraverse and Paul Cornell
Posted by Tom Mason Categories: Conventions, Editorials, Interviews, Movies, Reviews, Television, Independent,
Comic Con International in San Diego is closer than you think. Years ago, I started compiling my own list of convention secrets starting with a great place to go to the bathroom that’s tucked away in a corner, just minutes from the convention floor, and no one seems to know about it. Then I read the list compiled by Tom Spurgeon at The Comics Reporter and I am ashamed of my own ineptitude. If you’re going to the con this summer, you need to read Tom’s list of 135 tips.
After you’ve finished reading Tom’s tips, here are a few other links to brighten your weekend…
Want To Be A Writer?: Of course you do. Who doesn’t? Step into any cocktail party or backyard barbecue and it’s full of people bursting with ideas, if only they can find someone who could take a few minutes to write it all down for them. The real trick is finding places that might be interested in publishing something once it’s all written down. If you feel like writing some stuff down, John Scalzi (the Hugo Award-winning sf author) and Wil Wheaton (yes, that Wil Wheaton) have joined forces to create a writing contest that’s win-win-win for all. Maybe even you.
Weekend Reading: Vertical, Fantastic Four, Cowboys & Aliens and Lost
Posted by Tom Mason Categories: Editorials, DC Comics, Independent, Marvel Comics, Viz Media,
Happy holiday weekend for those of us in the US who love a long weekend, some grilled meat and a cold Pabst Blue Ribbon. And since there’s no football game, you can spend that extra time surfing the internet. Here are some links to fill the game-less void:
Vertical: Given the significant changes at manga publishers Viz (massive layoffs) and CMX (DC shuttered the division), it’s interesting to read about someone with a little different take on events. Rod Lott at Bookgasm has a chat with Ed Chavez at Vertical (publishers of Osamu Tezuka’s Black Jack, among other things). “While I will always say there is plenty of grade-A material to license from Japan available, access to those properties has become quite limited over the last three to four years. I find it curious that this lack of competition has occurred during the recent decline of the U.S. manga market.”
Steve Perry: The death of the Thundercats and Timespirits writer is just about the saddest way for a comic book creator to go. Johnny Bacardi exchanged correspondence with him recently, but I don’t want to spoil his story, except to say that it’s one you’ll want to read.
Click to continue reading Weekend Reading: Vertical, Fantastic Four, Cowboys & Aliens and Lost
Robert G. Baldwin: Rupe and Freddy
Posted by Tom Mason Categories: Editorials,
Freddy is another one of those “forgotten” comic strips that ran for quite a long time, 1956-1980 and then disappeared. If you don’t know to look for it, you might never find it.
Continuing my series on cartooning and cartoonists, Rupe wrote about himself and his work back in 1964. This is pulled from an oversized saddle-stitched magazine from Allied Publications with the creatively-challenged title These Top Cartoonists Tell How They Create America’s Favorite Comics. It featured an introduction by Beetle Bailey’s Mort Walker and was compiled by Allen Willette.
Here’s Rupe on Rupe and Freddy: “Although I sign my work ‘Rupe,’ my real name is Robert G. Baldwin, and I was born in Washington, DC. I’m fifty years old, and I have five children, ages 11 to 22. Four boys and one girl. Frequently the family gathers around my finished work for discussion and, I hope, for a good laugh.
Click to continue reading Robert G. Baldwin: Rupe and Freddy
Q&A: James Childress & Conchy (1975)
Posted by Tom Mason Categories: Interviews,
A million years ago, when I was but a small boy, my favorite comic strip was - and still is - Conchy by James Childress. The strip was about a group of beachcombers and it had the wackiness of early B.C. by Johnny Hart mixed with the philosophical melancholy of Charles Schulz’s Peanuts. And it was extremely well-drawn. I found out about Conchy in some obscure comic magazine, then realized it was not running in my local paper, The Roanoke Times & World News (because there had to be room for Dr. Smock, right?). But it did run in the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Being too broke to spend the money every day to get a copy of an out of town paper, I pulled a pre-Google and read it for free: by going to the local library every Sunday afternoon and reading a week’s worth of strips in one sitting.
I loved it and I started to piece together a history of the strip and its creator. Childress himself was syndicating the strip on his own - no big syndicate to support and promote him. I remember being impressed by that gutsy DIY attitude; I had no idea such a thing was even possible. He worked his way up as an independent and subsequently got Conchy picked up by the same folks that syndicated Walt Kelly’s Pogo, Publishers-Hall.
Click to continue reading Q&A: James Childress & Conchy (1975)
Remembering Calvin & Hobbes by Bill Watterson
Posted by Tom Mason Categories: Editorials, Interviews,
Can it really be just 14 years ago - December 31, 1995 - that Bill Watterson said goodbye to Calvin and Hobbes and left the comics pages and most of us very, very sad? That’s longer than the 10 years that the strip ran. In honor of the anniversary of Calvin And Hobbes’ retirement, here’s a quote from Watterson about how the strip came to be:
“It was a slow process, and actually what happened is another odd coincidence. One of the strips I’d sent (the syndicate) had Calvin and Hobbes as minor characters. Calvin was the little brother of the strip’s main character, and Hobbes was like he is now, a stuffed tiger that came to life in Calvin’s imagination. One of the syndicates suggested that these two characters were the strongest and why didn’t I develop a strip around them? I had thought they were the funniest characters myself, but I was unsure as to whether they could hold their own strip. I was afraid that maybe the key to their wackiness was the contrast between them and the more normal characters in the rest of the strip. I wasn’t sure Calvin and Hobbes would be able to maintain that intensity on their own. But I tried it, and almost immediately it clicked in my mind; it became much easier to write the material.
Click to continue reading Remembering Calvin & Hobbes by Bill Watterson
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