Weekend Reading: Joe Casey, Thor, Dr. Spektor and Drew Friedman

Posted by Tom Mason Categories: Editorials, Movies, DC Comics, Dynamic Forces, IDW Publishing, Independent, Marvel Comics,

The War on Christmas is nearly done for another year, and there’s just enough time left for the War on New Year’s. Let's see what you should be reading this week:

Joe: This is simply a great, honest and open interview with Joe Casey, comic book writer/creator and co-creator of Ben 10. Perfect holiday reading from interviewer Tom Spurgeon at The Comics Reporter.

Thor: So there’s some controversy from an all-white group that’s upset that Marvel has cast an actor of color to play a Norse God in Thor. Ricky Sprague at Project Child Murdering Robot has a thought or two.

Polly: Animator Michael Sporn is happy that Dean Mullaney’s new book has arrived (as am I). Polly and Her Pals: the Complete Sunday Comics 1925-1927 comes from Dean’s The Library of American Comics via IDW.

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National Lampoon And Brian McConnachie

Posted by Tom Mason Categories: Editorials,

This isn’t really comics, but National Lampoon once boasted the best comics section of any publication of its era, and maybe any publication ever: Jeff Jones, Vaughn Bode, Bobby London, Shary Flenniken, Edward Gorey, B.K. Taylor, Gahan Wilson, Charles Rodriguez and many more were regularly featured along with cartoonists like Sam Gross, Jack Ziegler and B. Kliban. Brian McConnachie was an editor there for a number of years.

Brian would later write for SNL and SCTV and had there been other shows known by acronyms, he might’ve written for them too. I met him once and it was one of those situations that really only happens in New York, or at least in the New York of Woody Allen movies.

I was with a cartoonist friend on our way to lunch and amid shout outs of “Hey!” “How are you?” “You look well!” there was an outburst of handshaking and backpatting. Seconds later, I was being introduced to Brian, who probably forgot my name by the time he’d stepped off the curb 5 minutes later. Still, jokes and clever witticisms flew fast and furious, though I was only an observer, which would certainly be a good reason to forget my name.

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Will Jacobs & Gerard Jones: The Burly Boys

Posted by Tom Mason Categories: Editorials,

The “Burly Boys” is not quite a description of my pals Gerard Jones and Will Jacobs, the creators of The Trouble With Girls and writers of multiple books and comics, together and separately. But it is the title of one of their new projects. Jones you might know from his stints at DC and Dark Horse, or you might know him as the author of Eisner Award-winning Men of Tomorrow, the critically acclaimed history of the early days of comic books. Together with Jacobs, they’ve written for The National Lampoon and wrote the books, The Beaver Papers and The Comic Book Heroes.

They’re at it again with The Burly Boys, the adventures of Flint and Chip Burly, junior detectives, innocent and naive junior detectives, who find themselves in San Francisco during 1967’s famed Summer Of Love, where they’re investigating the disappearance of their old school chum Lucy Diamond. Here’s a little taste:

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