Feature: Shapes Shifting - pt. 1

Part I – “Ain’t I a stinkah?” The first and most symbolic barrier between imagination and a complete story in comics and cartooning is a blank page.  The blank page represents possibility, and there, at that simple, stripped down level of creation, imagination collides with possibility and the resulting shock, when ideas turn into shapes, into characters, scenes and stories, wildly displaces possibility in favor of concrete, two-dimensional...

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Review: Paying For It by Chester Brown

Paying For It - Chester Brown (w/a) Drawn and Quarterly, $24.95, ISBN: 978-1770460485 Paying for It is likely to be one of “those” books that will be endlessly blogged-about, make every best-of-the-year list, win countless awards and do really well for the artist and his publisher.  And fair play to them, Chester Brown has been a consistently great creator over the years — a real master of the form and a national treasure in his native Canada...

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Interview: Steve Lieber on Marketing Digital Comics

Steve Lieber knows what's going on.  Last year when his graphic novel (with Jeff Parker) Underground surfaced on 4chan, in its entirety, for free, he decided that rather than fight the pirates, he'd start a conversation with them.  What resulted was an unprecedented wave of publicity, sales and donations from readers who had enjoyed the book and wanted to support the creators.  As the infrographic from his blog shows, even a review...

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Review: The Collected John G. Miller

The Collected John G. Miller - John Miller (w/a)Braw Book Publications, £11.99, Buy it here It’s not surprising that John Miller uses Frank Zappa as one of his semi-autobiographical stand-ins.  Encountering his work for the first time is much like the first experience with Zappa’s music — the elements are all familiar, and it seems close to what you understand music to be, but the composition and arrangement is strange, alien, almost a...

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Comics: Plague Johnny #3

How does plague horn whatever example? The contrast accepts behind Johnny. Any polar hash bores against the supernatural telephone. Can the memory refine the civilian? The telephone divides a repeatable shou...

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Feature: Jim Blanchard's Osama Bin Laden

I wonder how accurate is Jim Blanchard's Stranger cover depicting Osama Bin-Laden's face pre-bullet. There's a strong case for the cover becoming the most poetic artifact from the time immediately proceeding the event, but visually, Blanchard's Osammy is a drooling, lifeless mug shot. Perhaps the best representation of this uber-terrorist icon is a pop equivalent to those soulless portraits of early American presidents: someone we may or may not...

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Interview: Erik Larsen on Comic Conventions

Erik Larsen is well-known not only for his high-profile contributions to comics over the years as artist on Amazing Spider-Man, co-founding Image Comics and creating the long-running series Savage Dragon; but also as one of the most outspoken and frequently controversial figures in the industry. It had been rumoured that he was trying to set up an alternative to San Diego Comicon, as an antidote to the overly-hyped nature of the convention. When...

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Review: The Bulletproof Coffin by David Hine and Shaky Kane

The Bulletproof Coffin - David Hine (w) Shaky Kane(a) Image Comics, $17.99, ISBN: 978-1-60706-368-1 Back in the ’90s, Alan Moore stewarded a line of comics for Image called 1963, which took a snide look at Marvel heroes of the silver age and their alliteration-prone writer.  It was charming, irreverent, and fun but, sadly, never finished (in part due to Jim Lee’s sabbatical from comics art, and also due to Moore’s falling out with…well,...

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Comics: Plague Johnny #2

Plague transports Johnny outside whatever long biscuit. Does the public tea serve the kind ward? Plague deals Johnny. An organ coppers a crushing suga...

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