Rachel Edidin has given Hereville a glowing review on her blog, Inside Out. I’m very happy — Rachel works for a big comics publisher and is one of the people behind Girl-Wonder, and she’s also plain smart as hell, so she really knows what she’s talking about. Here’s a sample:

Hereville is good. It’s really good.

It’s the kind of good that makes me want to carry a copy with me at all times, just so that I can look at it every few minutes as a reminder that any world that produces books like this one is probably worth the benefit of the doubt.

Comics that can honestly be described as all-ages are few and far between. Knitting a narrative that appeals to adults and remains accessible to and appropriate for kids is no easy feat. Imbuing that story with layers of rich culture and tradition without overwhelming readers, and doing so while slyly subverting both form and trope take serious skill.

There are no spoilers in the full review, but there are criticisms of the artwork which will make more sense to folks who have read the entire story. I certainly agree with Rachel that the art changes (and, imo, gets better) as the story goes on. Rachel also thinks my coloring of the night-time scenes is too dark; I disagree, but I can see what she means, and a lot of people agree with her. I wanted to do something very different for my night-time scenes than I’ve seen other cartoonists do, but it may be I went too far; I’m still a bit of a fence-sitter on that question.

Those of you who are reading Hereville online will have to wait through another month or so of updates before you’ll get to see if you agree with Rachel about the night-time coloring or not. :-)

Brendan Douglas Jones has begun posting book three of one of my favorite webcomics, Breakfast of the Gods. “The war for Cerealia starts now. Who will live? Who will die? Who will stay crunchy in milk? Read on to find out!”

For folks who haven’t already been reading Breakfast of the Gods, book one starts here. But don’t read it if you’d be offended by graphic violence, or by violation of trademark. Lots and lots and lots of yummy violation of trademark.

(Actually, I think Breakfast of the Gods might fall under “fair use.” If it doesn’t, the law should be changed until it does.)

(Not totally relevant, but I only read yesterday that the vocalist who sings “You’re A Mean One, Mr. Grinch” in the Chuck Jones animated version, was also the voice of Tony the Tiger. I mean, it’s obviously the same voice, now that I think about it, but I never noticed.)

(And listening to that led me to this utterly delicious pop cover of the song by Sixpence None The Richer.)

For several days before Stumptown I was feeling nervousness and dread, and I was convinced that no one would buy “Hereville.” On the drive to Stumptown Saturday I felt so anxious about that, I worried I might vomit.

So things went better than I expected. :-)

I sold 65 copies of Hereville at Stumptown, which was enough to cover the costs of printing. In fact, between Stumptown sales and some other sales, the first printing of 100 copies is nearly sold out. (!) (But — I feel obligated to mention — you can still buy them here, if you want.)

Saturday night, Hereville won one of Stumptown’s treasured Trophy Awards, for “outstanding art.” (The winners are determined by a vote of Stumptown attendees.) That made me very happy. My friend Erika received three well-deserved awards for her excellent, funny, sweet, but adults-only strip Dar! The Trophy Awards are great, because the con organizers buy used trophies and relabel them. Mine is a female bowler with — get this — a cross on the pedestal! As you can see, it’s gone straight to my head mantle:

(On the Hereville webpage, which I don’t want to use for non-relevant political debates, I blurred out the Nader button. But I’m putting the unblurred pic here on “Alas” because I think it might amuse people.)

I also met some neat new people and saw some old friends, although less than I would have liked. (Onyxrising has a funny LJ entry about seeing me at Stumptown.) I didn’t get much of a chance to see the convention, because I spent almost all my time at my table pitching Hereville, but I really enjoyed it.

I also got to be a total mooch on my friends, who I relied upon for a lot of free labor. So thank you Jake Squid (ride to the con, day 1, plus setting up), Chris Baldwin (ride home), Kevin Moore (ride to the con, day 2), Jake Richmond, Katie Moody, & Ivy McCloud (sitting in for me when I was away), Charles Seaton (ride home, plus breaking down), and Kip Manley (more rides). (Can you tell I don’t have a driver’s license?)

And I have to shout out to the awesome Rachel Edidin, of the also awesome org Girl Wonder, because several people bought Hereville because she told them to! (She also told me she’ll be reviewing Hereville on her blog sometime soon.) Plus, there’s the knitting… but I think that will be a post of its own, when the time comes.

Finally, I have to sincerely thank the folks whose tables were next to mine — the McCloud family, Larry Marder, and especially Jen Sorenson — for restraining themselves from strangling me after hearing my Hereville pitch hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times. (Jen and I were joking that when she went home, she’d bewilder her husband by mumbling “it’s about an 11 year old Orthodox Jewish girl” in her sleep.)

(And one more thank you — Photo of me by Jenn Manley Lee!)

Just a reminder that I’ll be at Stumptown this weekend… if you’re there, please come by and say hi. I’ll be the guy sitting under the big “Hereville” banner.

Triangle-Head is a character who shows up again and again in my doodles, and I’ve occasionally done cartoons about her, such as this 24-hour comic, which I see I drew an entire decade ago. Yipes! (That comic probably isn’t appropriate for all ages, by the way.)

About that dog, I’ve never been good at drawing that moving-back-and-forth-quickly effect — there’s been a bunch of times I’ve drawn it into my comics, only to redraw the panel without it because I didn’t like how it turned out.

My new Dollars and Sense cartoon is up!

D&S editor Amy Gluckman writes:

Women who came of age 20 or 30 years ago in the United States may be forgiven our surprise that the whole work-home-motherhood thing continues to be so fraught. Surely by now, many thought, women would not be sweating it—at least no more than men do. Wrong! The media can take some of the credit, for, among other things, continuing to play up the alleged mommy wars between “working” and “stay-at-home” moms. At a more basic level, many people (well, men) still seem to think homemaking and raising kids is basically a “Ten-Year Nap”—the (tongue-in-cheek, we hope) title of a current bestselling novel on the subject.

There’s also some interesting stuff about what happened to Japanese divorces when the laws about pension allocations to ex-spouses changed, but you’ll have to click through to read that. :-)

I hope everyone celebrating Pesach this week is enjoying it! (And for everyone else, I hope you’re enjoying eating your soft, moist, delicious bread! Mmmmn….)

The Angry Geologist has posted a review of Hereville, and — fortunately — doesn’t seem too angry about it.

First, I’ve been unable to nail down the time period and place this is supposed to be set in. We could be talking about an insular community in post-war Europe, or a 1950’s Levitton, or ten years from now. I mean I can nail it down a little bit- they didn’t have electric stoves or lightswitches in the 1400’s. Stuff like that absolutely fascinates me. And as far as we can tell from the kids’ point of view, magic more than exists in the world.

Second, the cast is entirely Orthodox Jewish (with the exception of the possible witch that Mirka and her brother meet, but you’ll have to read it to find out what’s up with that), and the creator Barry Deutsch really brings their family traditions to life. You don’t see too many of that particular faith in comics, and it’s a refreshing change of pace.

There’s more — you’ll have to go over to Angry Geologist’s place to read the whole thing.

Meanwhile, the blog Jewish Comics — which is exactly what it sounds like, a blog about Jewish comics (both Jewish creators and Jewish characters) — has very kindly linked to Hereville and posted a round-up of some other folks’ reviews. I had forgotten all about Mary Ellen Slayter’s Washington Post article from a few years back, and her pithy one-line description of “Hereville”:

What do you get when you cross “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and Isaac Bashevis Singer?

As a “Buffy” fan, I was very pleased with that. :-)

So please check out those links — and for anyone interested in the general topic of Jews in comics, you may enjoy browsing through the Jewish Comics archives.

From the Dollars and Sense blog:

Peter Wagner of the Prison Policy Initiative sent us this link to a recent article in Slate magazine. The article cites the curious phenomenon that professional baseball players are much more likely to be born in August than July. The author theorizes that August babies aren’t naturally better at baseball — they’re just older than their peers, because Aug. 1 is the normal cut-off date for youth baseball leagues.

The author concludes that this structural benefit for the August-born is a “small advantage can have an impact that lasts a lifetime.”

Which reminds me of this old cartoon of mine:

Many of you know this already, but I thought I’d make an “official” announcement that the paper edition of “Hereville: How Mirka Got Her Sword” will be premiering at Stumptown Comics Fest, this Saturday and Sunday, in Portland, Oregon.

The print edition contains 57 full-color pages of comics, and sells for $12.95. I’ve now seen a copy, and frankly, it looks good — the art and color reproduced very well, and the paper is a decent stock as well.

I’ve attended Stumptown every year since it began — in fact, I helped start it — and it’s an exceptionally good comic book convention, with a strong focus on creators (rather than three bazillion tables of dealers with long boxes). So I highly recommend attending — it should be both cheap and fun.

And if you do go to Stumptown, please stop by my table and say “hi.” (I’ll be the one sitting under a huge banner that says “Hereville”).

And by the way, if you’re not going to be able to make it to Stumptown, you can always buy Hereville directly from the Hereville website, in both paper and electronic editions. Plus, I hope to soon have a Wowio edition available — I should have news to post about that sometime in May.

Less than a week ago I was complaining that no one ever reviewed Hereville… Sometimes it’s nice to be proven wrong. Two more reviews of “Hereville” have appeared.

Sam at the ZenKatzen Times writes:

It’s glorious, deep, clever, and intelligent; finally, a take on the hero’s tale which doesn’t look like it was cribbed straight outta G.I. Joseph Campbell. Mirka won me over from the start.

If you’re comic cognosenci, you know about it already. I just have to go on record and say how much I like this work. It’s nifty.

Alas for me, I’m pretty sure Sam’s comment about the “cognosenci” isn’t true — hardly anyone reads “Hereville” yet. But I’m really optimistic about the growth in readership (I now get around 500 visitors a day — a month ago I was lucky to get 100), and reviews like Sam’s can only help.

And at Comic Book Thoughts, Ragtime writes:

The comic is called “How Mirka Got Her Sword,” and is about a young Orthodox Jewish girl who sets out to slay dragons, which has all the elements that my little Raggirls will love, and looks to be the first comic book to crack our Bedtime Story Ritual since The Courageous Princess.

Ragtime also picks out page 11 as her or his favorite page of Hereville so far. I often don’t like my own work, but that page is one I’m fond of. My favorite part of it is probably the teeny, tiny Mirka and Dragon figures falling to the ground in the last panel — they give me the giggles.

Getting a webcomic reviewed is more difficult than I would have imagined. I even made a preview website with the entire story, so reviewers could read the whole thing before making a judgement.

When I think about it, though, it makes sense that it’s hard: There are tens of thousands of webcomics out there, and precious few reviewers. I sent requests to a lot of reviewers asking them to consider critiquing “Hereville,” but until today, no dice. (I’m still hoping, though.)

Which brings me to some news: Deniselle of A Blog About Comics has posted a review of “Hereville” — the very first review of the complete “How Mirka Got Her Sword” story that’s ever been published. I’m feeling a bit gushy about that.

And it’s a positive review (phew!), fairly lengthy with some interesting analysis. Deniselle read a preview copy of the whole first story, so she’s read some stuff regular “Hereville” readers haven’t seen yet, but don’t worry, she was careful to avoid spoilers.

Mirka’s fixation with being a dragon-slayer is unexplained, which is interesting. It seems to arise from her personality, not be some fate cast upon her (Lord of the Rings style) nor a burden she has to come to terms with. She wants to be a dragon slayer because it’s who she is. Whether or not she’s meant to slay dragons is interestingly ambiguous.

Please head on over to Deniselle’s blog to read the whole thing. :-)

In comments, Nancy asked me to list my 10 or 20 favorite graphic novels. Actually, I posted a favorites list in 2003, but looking through the list now there are several comics I want to add. So here it is, reposted and updated.

I’m only considering graphic novels here — meaning only comics that are available as bound books (i.e., no webcomics, and no floppies), and no collections of comic strips. I’m also not including any superhero comics, mainly because even the best of them aren’t as good as the ones on this list. Maybe I’ll do follow-up posts listing favorite webcomics, strips, and superhero comics.

Also, my list is deficient because I’m pretty ignorant when it comes to manga and Eurocomics. And the recommendations aren’t given in any particular order. And this list is by no means complete — there are lots of books I love that aren’t listed here. Nonetheless:

• Curses by Kevin Huizenga. To quote from a review on Amazon:
  

  The Ganges stories here vary greatly in length, from a three-page quickie that appeared in Time magazine to a forty-page adaptation of a Sheridan LeFanu story (”Green Tea”, for those keeping track). Ganges and his wife are the only solid connectors between the stories, but incidents and characters crop up again and again in different stories, so the volume has more of a feel of coherence than it otherwise would. Much of it reads rather like a magical-realist memoir; there’s a realistic setup (e.g., Glenn and his wife trying to have a kid…) that leads to a thoroughly absurd conclusion (…and the only way to do that is to steal a feather from an ogre who lives somewhere beneath 28th Street), or vice versa. It’s a good deal of fun, and Huizenga’s somewhat minimal drawing style is adaptable to just about anything (and there’s some wonderful versatility to be found between these pages).

  All true. To be fair, some of the early stories here drag a little, but the ones that don’t drag are so audacious and funny that it’s one of my favorites anyway. And the artwork, understated and influenced by early newspaper strips, is wonderful.

• Get a Life by Philippe Dupuy and Charles Berberian. These slice-of-life short stories about the life of a bachelor in Paris are a little bit sexist, and sometimes use stock characters; but the jazzy, cartoony artwork is brilliant, and the writing is funny and kindhearted. These stories are hugely popular in France, and a companion volume, Maybe Later, contains autobiographical short stories about the cartoonists’ lives (concentrating on their work lives).
• Baker Steet: Honour Among Punks, by Gary Davis. Sherlock Holmes reimagined as a punk woman of color in an alternate-universe London. Damn, I wish this series had lasted longer; but David did complete one full-length murder mystery, plus a couple of short stories. Davis’ stunning, detailed black-and-white penwork — and his obvious knowlege of the British punk scene¹ — make this comic one I can reread many times (it was written and drawn in the 80s). Some of it doesn’t age very well, though; in particular, there’s a radical feminist trans character who makes me wince now.
• Maus by Art Spiegelman. I don’t really need to describe this one, do I?
• Blankets by Craig Thompson. Great, thick autobiographical tale of the author’s first love and his journey from fundimentalist Christianity to disbelief. I reread this last week and was blown away again. I love Thompson’s expressionistic drawings, and his relaxed, takes-as-many-pages-as-it-takes approach to storytelling.
• Black Hole by Charles Burns. This thick horror graphic novel, about a venerial disease that causes bizzare and variable symptoms (full-skin peels, tails, cat-person-face, etc) among a community of suburban white teens, is fueled almost entirely by Burns’ mastery of mood. It’s creepy, it’s repressed, and it’s drawn in brushwork so lush and controlled that it seems a little inhuman.
• Fun Home by Alison Bechdel. Here’s how Time described it when they named it their book of the year: “The unlikeliest literary success of 2006 is a stunning memoir about a girl growing up in a small town with her cryptic, perfectionist dad and slowly realizing that a) she is gay and b) he is too. Oh, and it’s a comic book: Bechdel’s breathtakingly smart commentary duets with eloquent line drawings. Forget genre and sexual orientation: this is a masterpiece about two people who live in the same house but different worlds, and their mysterious debts to each other.”
• American Born Chinese by Gene Yang. The Amazon.com description: “Indie graphic novelist Gene Yang’s intelligent and emotionally challenging American Born Chinese is made up of three individual plotlines: the determined efforts of the Chinese folk hero Monkey King to shed his humble roots and be revered as a god; the struggles faced by Jin Wang, a lonely Asian American middle school student who would do anything to fit in with his white classmates; and the sitcom plight of Danny, an All-American teen so shamed by his Chinese cousin Chin-Kee (a purposefully painful ethnic stereotype) that he is forced to change schools. Each story works well on its own, but Yang engineers a clever convergence of these parallel tales into a powerful climax that destroys the hateful stereotype of Chin-Kee, while leaving both Jin Wang and the Monkey King satisfied and happy to be who they are.

  Yang skillfully weaves these affecting, often humorous stories together to create a masterful commentary about race, identity, and self-acceptance that has earned him a spot as a finalist for the National Book Award for Young People.”

• Ordinary Victories by Manu Larcenet. I’ll quote Publishers Weekly:
  

  French cartoonist Larcenet has created a leisurely story about Marc, a 20-something photographer, who is embroiled in crisis in both his life and art. His artwork is not satisfying him; his elderly parents and working-class childhood are weighing on him; and his crippling panic attacks have become more frequent. On the other hand, he falls in love and hatches a new photography project aimed at exploring and redeeming his shipyard roots and ailing father. But this is not just another coming-of-age tale. Through his characters, Larcenet presents a vision of French politics, history and society, weaving all of these strands together to create a multilayered book. The dialogue is insightful and sometimes painfully realistic; the artwork firmly roots readers in the French landscape and milieu while maintaining a cartoonish distance with the character designs and expressions.

• Notes For A War Story by Gipi. Possibly the best comic I’ve read all year. Despite the title, it’s not what people usually think of as a war story; there are no battles, and the characters aren’t in the army. They’re three young men trying to find a way to get by in a region ripped apart by war. It’s a story more about how war interacts with class, friendship, and the hunger of young men for male role models. Plus, Gipi’s drawings are awesome.

  There are very cheap copies available on Amazon.

• From Hell, by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell. The grimmest of Moore’s comics (which is saying a lot), but also the one with the most texture and richness. This is also the only Jack The Ripper story I’ve ever seen which makes the victims into real characters, rather than just generic ripper-bait.

  (They made a terrible film based loosely on this comic, but you shouldn’t judge the comic by the film — the film really butchered it. As it were.)

• Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud. The single most essential work of non-fiction about comic books is a comic book, and a damn entertaining one. This is the one book to read if you want to deepen your understanding of how comics work. Scott’s recent sequel, Making Comics, is also terrific, especially if you’re interested in creating graphic novels yourself.
• Stuck Rubber Baby by Howard Cruse. This coming-of-age story about a young gay man in the South during the 1960s civil rights struggles is the most criminally underread comic book of the last decade - one of the few comics that could sit next to Maus on your bookshelf and not be outclassed.
• Palestine by Joe Sacco. This nonfiction comic describes Sacco’s time spent in Palestine. Sacco’s depiction of the situation in Palestine is humanizing and spectacular, and it’s made palatable by his evident doubts about his own purpose in going to Palestine. (This is one of several journalistic comics by Sacco, all of which are fantastic).
• Cages by Dave McKean. “McKean is also an accomplished cartoonist in his own right. This is his magnum opus to date: an immense, pulsing graphic novel that’s also a treatise on art, creativity and the uses and misuses of technique. Originally serialized between 1990 and 1996 (and collected in 1998), it’s been out of print for several years. The book’s plot is fairly rudimentary: a painter, a writer and a musician who live in the same apartment building find their lives intersecting. But the book’s gradual shift from literalism to fanciful allegories and stories-within-stories mostly serves as the springboard for a visual tour de force.”
• Paul Auster’s City of Glass. Usually, adaptations of novels into comics suck. This is the exception - an adaptation with as much wit and depth as the original. What makes it work is Paul Karasik’s and David Mazzucchelli’s cartooning, which combines simple (but incredibly well-chosen) lines with wildly playful, sometimes surreal layouts that explore the novel’s themes of identity and obsession. Amazon currently has used copies of this available for only two bucks.

  So what’s it about? Umn, on the surface, it’s sort of a hard-boiled detective novel, except it’s really about an author of hard-boiled detective fiction who gets sucked in to pretending he’s an hard-boiled detective, and one of the false identities he takes on is Paul Auster, the author of the novel this comic is based on.

• The Frank Book by Jim Woodring. This is as wonderful as it’s indescribable. The Publishers Weekly description is okay: “Woodring, a modern master of hallucinatory cartoon fables, specializes in comics that look normal but aren’t. Woodring’s hallmarks are inventive, often bizarre creatures who inhabit otherworldly landscapes and dreamlike narratives. This book’s hero, Frank, is a catlike anthropomorph who lives in a surreal, exotic world.” But it fails to mention how horrifying and grotesque Woodring’s dream-world often is.
• Love and Rockets, the amazing comics of brothers Gilbert and Jamie Hernandez. The trouble is, there are so many reprints, it’s hard to know where to begin. There’s a huge volume of Gilbert’s comics, Palomar: The Heartbreak Soup stories, but it’s currently out of print. If your library doesn’t have that, I recommend starting with Human Diastrophism, which is astounding. Gilbert’s work features magical realism taking place (mostly) in a small village - I’m not sure if it’s in Mexico or Central America - but the stories are stunning, with some of the best-realized characters ever seen in comics.

  Jamie Hernandez’s huge reprint book Locas: The Maggie and Hopey Stories is still in print, and if you don’t mind being spendy it’s worth it. But if you want a more reasonably-priced sample, maybe you’re better off starting with volume 3 or thereabouts. Anyhow, Jamie Hernandez draws better than almost anyone in comics; his spare, efficient lines and black spotting are flawless. His writing is terrific, too; part slice-of-life, part soap opera, focusing on twenty-something punk Mexican-American women living in L.A.. Totally absorbing.

• Ghost World by Daniel Clowes. They made a pretty good movie of this comic, but the original is much better (and tells a significantly different story). This book, about two teenage girls, charts out one of those friendships-that-will-last-forever that people have in high school, and why it doesn’t even last to college.
• Playboy by Chester Brown. An autobiographical comic about Brown’s experiences (and particularly adolescent experiences) with Playboy magazine. Intelligent, disturbing, asks more questions than it provides answers.
• It’s a Good Life, if You Don’t Weaken by Seth. An autobiographical (or is it?) comic about art and obsession, focusing on Seth’s search for an obscure 1940s cartoonist. “While trying to understand his dissatisfaction with the present, Seth discovers the life and work of Kalo, a forgotten New Yorker cartoonist from the 1940s. But his obsession blinds him to the needs of his lover and the quiet desperation of his family. Wry self-reflection and moody colours characterize Seth’s style in this tale about learning lessons from nostalgia.”
• Mr Punch, by Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean. Gaiman’s famous for Sandman, but Mr Punch is a much better comic. “Neil Gaiman has several recurring themes to which he revisits again and again like the swallows returning to Capostrano. Foremost among these is the persistence of memory, which is the theme of ‘The Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy of Mr. Punch.’ … The tale revolves around a Punch n’ Judy show at a seaside carnival and how it acts as a trigger for a young boys memories of his family. As with much of Gaiman’s work, there are tales within tales here, and the real story he tells is more implied than elucidated upon.”
• The Complete Crumb Comics Vol 17. I know that starting with Vol 17 seems weird, but the comics collected here - short stories from the last few issues of Weirdo and from Hup - are among the best Crumb has ever done. However, Crumb’s misogyny will rightly repel a lot of “Alas” readers.
• Hicksville by Dylan Horrocks. “World-famous cartoonist Dick Burger has earned millions and become the most powerful man in the comics industry. However, behind his rapid rise to success, there lies a dark and terrible secret, as biographer Leonard Batts discovers when he visits Burger’s hometown in remote New Zealand.” A mix of extreme cleverness, good writing and genuine love of comics makes this graphic novel so much better than you’d expect it to be.

  Plus, I love Horrocks’ drawing, which disdains trying to impress readers with a flashy surface, and instead impresses with stunningly great everything-but-the-surface.

• Bone by Jeff Smith. This is a pure epic fantasy adventure, with good characters and a plain joy in cartooning that shines out of the pages. If you can’t stand the fantasy genre, then you won’t like this, but otherwise it’s a classic. Just start with volume one and keep on reading.
• When I originally wrote this post, I said: “Beanworld deserves to be an all-time classic, but it’s marred because Larry Marder never completed it.” However, Larry Marder is now restarting Beanworld, which makes me very happy. Probably that means there will be new reprints coming out soon, too.
• Cerebus should have been an all-time classic, but unfortunately Dave Sim suddenly turned into an extreme misogynist and religious fundimentalist and ruined the story in the last quarter. Nonetheless, some of his work before he lost it includes some of the best comics ever done: In particular, High Society, Church & State, and Jaka’s Story are amazing achievements. High Society is the place to begin; it’s actually the second volume of Cerebus, but you can follow the story well anyway, and the first volume isn’t nearly as good.

1. Well, for all I know, he made it all up. But if so, he did it convincingly. (back)

This is a design for the banner that I’ll be hanging behind my table at Stumptown, where I’ll be premiering the dead-tree edition of Hereville. The banner is planned to be eight feet wide by three feet high (gulp). I’ll be hanging it from a mounting device I’m building myself out of PVC pipe. It feels more than a little embarrassing — there’s nothing in the world I hate more than selling myself — but I’ve decided I really want to go all-out on this.

So the first question is, what do folks think of the design? It’s really just a variation of the webpage header.

And my second question is, how high off the ground should I get this? The plan I downloaded is for an eight foot high display, so the banner would start at five feet off the ground and end eight feet off the ground. Is that high enough, or should be using a nine foot or ten foot plan instead?

Any advice would be appreciated.

UPDATE: Second attempt:

UPDATE AGAIN: Second attempt, slightly tweaked:

(Links NSFW. Depending on your workplace, I guess.)

Bechdel doesn’t seem too torn up about it, though.

From KSL channel 5 in Utah:

Time Magazine voted it the book of the year, but some students are calling it pornographic and asking it be removed from their curriculum.

Thomas Alvord, with the group “No More Pornography,” says, “The issue is exposing people to pornography.”

The issue is with “Fun Home,” a book assigned for reading in a mid-level English class at the University of Utah. The class introduces students to different literary genres. In the case of “Fun Home,” it’s told in the style of a comic book. The story centers around the author as she comes to terms with her own and her father’s homosexuality.

Drawings depicting sex acts are included in the 230 page novel. A student in the class was offended and approached the group “No More Pornography,” which made headlines earlier this year when it staged a successful protest of music videos shown a gym in Provo. The group has started an online petition in protest of the book. […]

The student in question accepted an alternate assignment but would like to see further changes. The university has no plans make any. It says while a student has the right not to read the book, other students in the class have the right to judge for themselves.

“No More Pornography” hopes to continue talking with the University of Utah and will continue the online petition. The group is also asking that filters be installed on campus computers to prevent students from accessing explicit images.

I’m pretty sure these are Christian anti-porn activists, not Feminist anti-porn activists. But this still reminds me of one of my primary arguments against the MacKinnnon/Dworkin anti-pornography legislation, back when that argument hadn’t yet been made moot by court rulings that the M/D ordinance was unconstitutional: Any anti-porn legislation that isn’t extremely narrowly defined will be used by right-wing Christians to harass queer and feminist cartoonists.¹

Fun Home is, for those of you who haven’t read it, one of the best American comics of the last decade. I posted about Fun Home previously here.

Curtsy: Dykestowatchoutfor.com and Journalista.

Illustration beyond the fold is NSFW.

Read the rest of this entry »

1. And other sorts of artists, as well, I suppose. But it’s only cartoonists who are really important, needless to say. (back)

Quoting Journalista:

Last Wednesday, U.S. district judge Stephen G. Larson issued a summary judgment in the lawsuit between DC Comics/Warner Brothers Entertainment and the estate of Superman co-creator Jerome “Jerry” Siegel, giving half of the copyright to the original Superman story published in the 1938 Action Comics #1 back to the Siegel estate and backdating said ownership to 1999, when the Siegels filed notice of termination. Jeff Trexler broke the news on Friday afternoon and posted a copy of Larson’s full 72-page ruling to his website; on Saturday, the New York Times and the Bloomberg wire service had both issued news stories covering the landmark ruling. Both Jeff Trexler and Brian Cronin have crafted FAQs answering basic questions, and Andy Khoury discusses the judgment with intellectual-property lawyer Brendan McFeely. The best reading on the subject is really Judge Larson’s summary judgment itself, however: It’s an entertaining and informative document that contains a full history of the creation of Superman, a summary of how the case has progressed to date and of course includes Larson’s erudite resolution of several important issues involved in the case. Oh yeah, and in the appendix, a color reproduction of the original Superman story itself. Hey kids! Comics!

The heirs of Joe Schuster, the other co-creator of Superman, could get ownership of the other half of the copyright by 2013.

More from Journalista:

I wish I could remember where I read it — I’m tempted to credit either Neal Adams or R. Fiore — but one of the most damning things I ever read about the Siegel and Shuster legacy was that it was a refutation of the American Dream. One of the defining principles of the United States, after all, has always been the notion that regardless of the circumstances from which you began in life, if you came up with the right idea or hit the right motherlode you would profit from it accordingly, and pass the wealth along to your family when you died. I don’t know if the “rags to riches” story was invented by an American, but it was almost certainly perfected by one.

The story of how Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster brought Superman to DC Comics, and how DC subsequently treated them, turns this notion on its head. $130 and a job — that’s what Siegel and Shuster got, and they only had the latter so long as they were willing to play ball.[…]

Abhay Khosla refers to all of this as “the original sin of comics,” and he’s quite correct to do so. Arguments that Siegel and Shuster “should have known better,” circulating on comments threads all weekend, should be met with derision by right-thinking people. (”But — but Bob Kane¹ knew better,” said the strawman standing conveniently nearby. So? Bob Kane’s father was a successful East Coast lawyer. Siegel and Shuster were average kids from Ohio. They didn’t know copyright law from diamond mining.)

There’s lots more good stuff at Journalista, so go read.

Unfortunately, the precedent set by this case — even if it’s not overturned — is, due to a technicality, not likely to be applicable to comic books other than Superman. And exactly what this will mean in the long run is still up in the air.

But, symbolically, this is a wonderful victory for creators’ rights.

1. Bob Kane co-created “Batman.” (back)

The first “Hereville” story is now available in electronic form! This comic is 57 pages long (not including covers, title page, and stuff like that) and in color.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the comic, you can read the first 18 (and counting!) pages for free by going to www.hereville.com. Here’s what the Webcomics Examiner had to say about it:

Barry Deutsch’s Hereville is the story of Mirka, a young girl living in the orthodox Jewish commune of Aherville. She is a strong-willed girl, who dreams of becoming a dragon slayer, while struggling with the duties imposed by being a female in a community that values traditional gender roles. The story is leisurely and steeped in cultural tradition; even troll killing must wait until after Shabbot rituals. Smart, yet heartwarming, quiet, yet with a genuine sense of adventure.

I’ll be selling the dead tree version beginning in May — but I’m taking pre-orders now, to help defray printing costs. Buy a copy! Buy 5 to give to your friends! Buy 35 to give out to strangers on the street!

Ahem.

For details on how to buy either the dead tree version, or an E-copy, or even a copy with a sketch in it, please head on over to the Hereville website. Thanks.

I’ve decided to experiment with posting scans from my sketchbook here. Hope folks enjoy it. You can click on it to see the bigger sizes on Flickr.

People who flip through my sketchbook always ask me if these drawings are supposed to be of any particular individual. It makes me wonder what the people they know look like.

Please feel free to use this thread to post whatever comments and links you’d like. Self-linking and self-quoting is encouraged.

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Take this observation test.

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Bean pointed this out to me… A musical that was rehearsed and performed with the permission of the mall, but none of the customers and only the necessary mall staff had been warned it was going to happen. (More info here).

I love stuff like this. You should also check out the surprise musical “Teach!,” if you haven’t seen it.

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A comparison of the same scenes from Star Wars, both in American comics and in manga. The result: Manga does it a hundred times better, mostly because of the space restrictions of American comics.

I will be among several political cartoonists exhibiting their work this Saturday at Holocene in Portland this weekend to raise money for the McKenzie River Gathering (MRG) Foundation. Several Cartoonists With Attitude will be represented, including local folks like Barry, Matt, and Shannon. Also Alison Bechdel, Tim Eagan, Jim Siergey, and many other great toonsters. Hope to see some local PDX folks there!

Update: I see that Kevin has totally plagerized this post. I can’t beleive that someone would be so lazy as to just cut and paste the text of someone else’s post and try to pass it off as his own. Next time I see that guy I’m gonna punch him one right on the snout.