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Post by codystarbuck on Mar 7, 2020 19:54:21 GMT -5
ps Forgot to mention, as comics became pretty much a boys' club, Love and Rockets, thanks to realistic portrayals of three dimensional women, warts and all, had a really large female fanbase. About the only comics to rival it were Sandman and Strangers in Paradise; maybe Elfquest. Los Bros wrote Las Mujeres as real women, with real personalities, real bodies (of all shapes and sizes), and real hopes and dreams and failures. Their work did much to encourage women to create their own comics, as more women seemed at home in the alternative comics world than the mainstream.
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Post by codystarbuck on Mar 28, 2020 20:23:36 GMT -5
Okay, now that I get a 4-day break from potential virus exposure, let's get back to Fantagraphics. When last we left, Gary Groth was insulting everyone at DC and Marvel and any indie publisher who beat them to the punch. Like most of the field, 1986 was the time to start dropping some new series on the market. This may be a bit random, but, we'll try to his some interesting or notable things. My history with some of Fantagraphics offerings are a little spotty; so, details may be sketchy. The Miracle Squad was a nice little series, from John Wooley and Terry Tidwell. The series is set in the early 1930s, at Miracle Studios, one of the residents of Poverty Row (home of the serial houses, like Monogram and Republic), churning out serials and monster films. Some gangsters try to muscle in on the studio and kill the owner. His son forms the Miracle Squad, a group of stuntmen and detectives, to take them down. It was a fun little series, which mixes in real Hollywood history, and pulp and serial adventure. Extras included text articles about B-Movies and the Poverty Row studios. Tidwell does a good job with the period, though his art is on the amateurish side. he makes up for it with enthusiasm and fairly good storytelling. he was also creator of the masked pulp adventurer The Twilight Avenger, which also seemed to have a lot of ladies ending up flashing their stockings and garters (and a few frillies). There was a second mini-series, later, at Apple Comics. If you like the old serials, gangster movies, film noir, pulps, hard boiled crime fiction or comic series like Crossfire and Wordsmith, this would be up your alley. It started out in color and finished in black & white, as Fantagraphics quickly found color comics to be too expensive. Anything Goes ran for 6 volumes. It was an anthology started to raise money to defend the Comics Journal from Michael Fleischer's lawsuit, over descriptions of him in an interview with Harlan Ellison, where Ellison was praising his work, suggesting his description of Fleischer as "bugf@#$" might have been accurate. Fleischer lost; but, Ellison and Groth got into over the lawsuit, which led to Groth trolling Ellison (not a good idea) for some years, including his juvenile Enemies of Ellison club, in the early 90s that ended up being a huge embarrassment for Fantagraphics, when most pros and fans sided with Ellison. They may have promoted mature comics; but, the Fantagraphics folks were anything but, in many cases. 6 issues were published, with work from Gil Kane, Bob Burdman, Dave Sim, Eastman & Laird, Stan Sakai, Alan Moore and Art Spiegelman. Critters was a long running funny animal series, which lasted 50 issues. The comic was Kim Thompson's baby and early issues were anchored by Stan Sakai's Usagi Yojimbo (as well as the popular Cutey Bunny). Later issues featured a revolving lead character, who got a full issue. The book was quite popular, for a while, before the black & white glut led to a decline in sales for a lot of that material. It outlasted other such series, such as Star*Reach's Quack and was the longest running funny animal comic, until Antarctic later surpassed it, with two series (Furrlough and Genus). As you can see, Fantagraphics was kind of following the pattern set up by Mike Friedrich and Star*Reach, as well as the Undergrounds, many of whom were fans of the old funny animal characters and artists, like Carl Barks and the Disney Ducks, and Walt Kelly and the Pogo comics. Particle Dreams was from Matt Howarth, of Those Annoying Post Brothers and Savage Henry fame. The series featured his Keif Llama, a pastiche of Keith Laumer's Retief series. Howarth's stuff is always great, anarchic fun. Now, we are on to the next star, at Fantagraphics: Peter Bagge. Bagge was frome Peteskills, New York, a military brat whose family life was anything but happy. He escaped as soon as he could and entered the School of Visual Arts, where he lasted thre semesters, before going off to do other things (including the magazine Punk, the newspaper Screw and Comical Funnies, which he sent to Robert crumb. Crumb turned over Weirdo to him, which he edited for three years. neat Stuf is a colelction of various comics by Bagge, though the stars quickly became the Bradleys, about the family life of Buddy Bradley, his sister Babs, brother Butch and parents Brad and Betty. The family dynamic was an exaggerated version of bagge's own household. Brad is an overweight slob, who is constantly griping, while Betty is a God-fearing "woman of the 80s." Babs is your typical teenaged girls, though plain in apeparance and wearing a retainer. Younger brother Butch is obsessed with the military, guns and killing and is eventually in the military, by the time he is older. Buddy is a sort of surrogate Bagge, though younger, who has tremendous fights with his family, escapes to old record shops, dates and hangs out with friends. he is a proto-slacker and would eventually become a Generation X poster child (though as an early Gen Xer, I hate that stereotype being dumped on those of us who were born at the beginning of the period, who witnessed the late 60s and the dawn of the 70s and didn't quite fit the media stereotype mostly formed by late Gen Xers). Neat Stuff also featured Girly-Girl, a manic female who ends up crushed underfoot by her biggest fan, Studs Kirby, a reactionary radio host, the repressed Junior, pop star Zoove Groover, Goon on the Moon, and Chet & Bunny Leeway. However, the Bradleys were the stars and soon became central to Bagge's work. buddy actually started out in Comical Funnies and would continue as Bagge ended Neat Stuff and transitioned into an older Buddy, in Hate. Hate finds Buddy after leaving home, where a series of moves eventually brings him to Seattle, where he works in a used bookstore and dates Valerie Russo, an upper-middle class girl whose father owns a radio station. Buddy rooms with leonard "Stinky" Brown and George Cecil Hamilton, an uber nerd and conspiracy theorist. Stinky as nearly pure ID, living for his next sexual encounter, totally without self-control and a source of great comedy. george is the opposite, extremely quiet and socially awkward. There is also Lisa Leavenworth, with whom Buddy had a one night stand and who works around the fringes, until Buddy and Valerie breakup and Lisa moves in. Eventually, Lisa becomes pregnant with Buddy's son and they get married and move back to New Jersey, where we see the older Buddy, in later Hate Annuals. Hate coincided with the burgeoning grunge musical movement and Buddy's relocation to Seattle put him smack dab in the middle of it. The verisimilitude gave Hate a major following in the alternative music crowd, which overlapped with the alternative comic world. Buddy became the grunge mascot, with flannel shirt and jeans, slacker attitude, hunt for booze and drugs and a good time. however, Buddy's musical tastes were more retro and Bagge bristled at the comparison to grunge and found it to be coincidental, as Buddy never promoted that music. Still, it greatly benefitted the series. Hate was one of the alternatives that I was drawn to, in the 90s, as it was less the whiny introspective thing that a great many alternative comics were, embracing a more exaggerated, comical style, that mixed various underground influences, with great characters. i came late to the game, but, when my store got remaindered copies of The Bradleys (reprinting those stories from Neat Stuff) I was hooked and soon started picking up Hate. My background was a bit more mainstream and peaceful than Bagge's; but, I enjoyed the sort of wild Archie-on acid dynamic of the work. the comparison isn't strong; but, I kind of felt like Buddy and his friends and family had similar, though more dysfunctional, ties to the Archie comics we all knew. Bagge became a modest celebrity, eventually finding himself featured on MTV, where they were trying to cultivate this big media alternative culture, which was often at odds with itself. The network was balancing music video programming with cutting edge animation programming, like Beavis & Butthead, Daria, The Maxx, The Head, and Liquid Television. it also featured nostalgia pop culture shows, like Remote Control, the "reality" programs The Real World and Road Rules, and their dating show, with Jenny Mccarthy and relationship and sex advice, with Dr Drew Pinsky and Adam Carolla. Spotlights were shown onto Bagge and Hate, Dan Clowes and Eightball, Chris Ware's Acme Comics Novelty Library and other alternative comics from Seth, Jessica Abel and more. Fantagraphics was at the forefront of the alternative comic world, as they served as a bridge from the Undergrounds and street-level comics and this new form of comic expression. We'll delve more into this world, next time, as we look at Dan Clowes and Lloyd Llewellyn and Eightball, which will lead to surprising success at the box office. Also, Terry Laban's Cud and Roberta Gregory's Naughty Bits.
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Post by mikelmidnight on Mar 30, 2020 11:37:21 GMT -5
Anything Goes ran for 6 volumes. It was an anthology started to raise money to defend the Comics Journal from Michael Fleischer's lawsuit, over descriptions of him in an interview with Harlan Ellison, where Ellison was praising his work, suggesting his description of Fleischer as "bugf@#$" might have been accurate. Fleischer lost; but, Ellison and Groth got into over the lawsuit, which led to Groth trolling Ellison (not a good idea) for some years, including his juvenile Enemies of Ellison club, in the early 90s that ended up being a huge embarrassment for Fantagraphics, when most pros and fans sided with Ellison. They may have promoted mature comics; but, the Fantagraphics folks were anything but, in many cases. 6 issues were published, with work from Gil Kane, Bob Burdman, Dave Sim, Eastman & Laird, Stan Sakai, Alan Moore and Art Spiegelman. There were enough big names in this series to keep my buying, but it was fairly lightweight. I felt like most of them were tossed off without much thought or else were reprints or stories folks had laying around. There were some gems to be found though. I ought to have gotten Critters, but I gravitated to Quack more and it failed to live up to that quality for me. Still, there was enough good stuff in there (especially by my fave Steve Gallacci) I probably would have enjoyed it if I'd stuck around. I haven't kept up with his digital-only comics but I was buying everything from Howarth at this point. Thanks for the profile on Bagge. I always wanted to like him, but something about his style stressed me out and I could never engage. I read a few shorter pieces in anthologies and always thought they were funny, though.
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Post by codystarbuck on Mar 30, 2020 12:01:28 GMT -5
I'm not big on his politics; but, I enjoyed the Bradleys and Hate (what I've read of it, which was mostly the early issues, but I have the whole thing to read, now, in my collection of unread material, from 20 years of bookselling).
I couldn't really get into Dan Clowes or Chris Ware, when they were first getting attention; but, I came to appreciate them more, over time. Hate was less repressed than Eightball and more comedy-driven, which I enjoyed. Aside from Love & Rockets, my favorite of the alternative world was Terry Laban's Eno & Plum, from Cud, which I will get to.
I would hear about the alternative guys in the late 80s and the 90s; but, had to kind of mature into that work, after growing bored with superheroes and action-oriented comics. It was more towards the late 90s, into the 2000s when I started reading more of that material, especially when book collections were more common. I did dabble a bit, as I had picked up Fantagraphics' trade collection of Spain's Trashman. I was pretty stand-offish to the Undergrounds, but I kind of enjoyed the satire of it, when I flipped through it and then later came to appreciate some of the other Underground folks, like Gilbert Shelton and the Fabulous Furry Freak Bros. I started reading pekar, a bit, when Our Cancer Year came out. Crumb I still only can take in small doses.
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Post by electricmastro on Apr 2, 2020 21:05:28 GMT -5
ps Forgot to mention, as comics became pretty much a boys' club, Love and Rockets, thanks to realistic portrayals of three dimensional women, warts and all, had a really large female fanbase. About the only comics to rival it were Sandman and Strangers in Paradise; maybe Elfquest. Los Bros wrote Las Mujeres as real women, with real personalities, real bodies (of all shapes and sizes), and real hopes and dreams and failures. Their work did much to encourage women to create their own comics, as more women seemed at home in the alternative comics world than the mainstream. Interesting that you say that, because I think I recall many people accusing comics publishers of being boys clubs even today in 2020. Not sure if that’s due more to higher-up execs being bad or women just wanting more free creative control outside of superhero comics and the like though.
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Post by codystarbuck on Apr 2, 2020 21:32:46 GMT -5
ps Forgot to mention, as comics became pretty much a boys' club, Love and Rockets, thanks to realistic portrayals of three dimensional women, warts and all, had a really large female fanbase. About the only comics to rival it were Sandman and Strangers in Paradise; maybe Elfquest. Los Bros wrote Las Mujeres as real women, with real personalities, real bodies (of all shapes and sizes), and real hopes and dreams and failures. Their work did much to encourage women to create their own comics, as more women seemed at home in the alternative comics world than the mainstream. Interesting that you say that, because I think I recall many people accusing comics publishers of being boys clubs even today in 2020. Not sure if that’s due more to higher-up execs being bad or women just wanting more free creative control outside of superhero comics and the like though. I was referring more to readership; the publishers are still very much a boys club. Most women moved on to real publishing because of it. Jenette Kahn did a lot to improve things at DC; but, only for a certain period of time. The indies more often had better records for opportunities for women; just lower pay than DC or Marvel. Fantagraphics has been described, as a publisher as a real boys' club and the description of their offices sounds rather like a frat house.
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Post by electricmastro on Apr 3, 2020 19:39:18 GMT -5
Interesting that you say that, because I think I recall many people accusing comics publishers of being boys clubs even today in 2020. Not sure if that’s due more to higher-up execs being bad or women just wanting more free creative control outside of superhero comics and the like though. I was referring more to readership; the publishers are still very much a boys club. Most women moved on to real publishing because of it. Jenette Kahn did a lot to improve things at DC; but, only for a certain period of time. The indies more often had better records for opportunities for women; just lower pay than DC or Marvel. Fantagraphics has been described, as a publisher as a real boys' club and the description of their offices sounds rather like a frat house. Are they purposefully keeping women out, as that’s the feeling your post gave me, but I wasn’t sure.
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Post by codystarbuck on Apr 4, 2020 21:47:18 GMT -5
I was referring more to readership; the publishers are still very much a boys club. Most women moved on to real publishing because of it. Jenette Kahn did a lot to improve things at DC; but, only for a certain period of time. The indies more often had better records for opportunities for women; just lower pay than DC or Marvel. Fantagraphics has been described, as a publisher as a real boys' club and the description of their offices sounds rather like a frat house. Are they purposefully keeping women out, as that’s the feeling your post gave me, but I wasn’t sure. There are certain elements that have misogynistic tendencies; but, it's not exactly a deliberate program. It's more that male editors and creators tend to be heard more than women, women have often been harassed, belittled, patronized, ignored, etc; and, because so many comics were aimed at males, from the 70s on, fewer women were interested in comics. Comico had Dian Schutz as the editor and she did a great job. However, when she started having issues with the owners, she moved on to Dark Horse. Barb Randel/Kessel was a junior editor at DC, hired by Dick Giordano, who moved up to regular editor and also scripted, with husband Karl (since divorced) and on her own. She moved on to Dark Horse and helped launch their Comics Greatest World line and then left it behind. Marvel, at one point, had Marie Severin in the art dept, Jo Duffy, Anne Nocenti, Louise Simonson, Rene Witterstatter (probably got spelling way wrong), Bobie Chase, Carol Kalish running the marketing, and some others I am forgetting, aside from several female colorists and letterers. DC had Jenette Kahn as publisher, Karen berger running vertigo, Alisa Kwitney, Mindy Newell, Gail Simone, Devon Grayson, Kim Yale (prior to her death), Jill Thompson, Colleen Doran (freelance, but did quite a bit of work for them) and some more that I can't recall, after working today and setting up a new computer. Eclipse had cat yronwode as editor and contributions from people like Trina Robbins, Joyce Babner and a few others. Dark Horse has had several women work for them in various capacities. Women are sorely underrepresented in comic book publishing, editing, writing and art, in general. There is a whole generation that has come into comics; but, via other avenues, with less of a focus on the mainstream publishers and more at the indies or with book publishers who are doing graphic novel and hybrid content. When I say boys club, I mean, much like other areas of business, men control things through both sheer numbers, sexist attitudes, ignorance and other conscious and unconscious reasons. American publishers have ignored female readers for so long, catering to a very narrow superhero group, that the rest of the business has reflected that. That has changed and retreated at different times, as people have moved in and out of comics. Prose publishing has vastly more women, as do all other entertainment media, per capita. Twomorrows Back Issue did an issue a few years ago about women in comics, with several creators sharing all kinds of horror stories, from fandom, professionals and others. Colleen Doran was harassed as a minor and an adult. Jill Thompson has spoken of harassment from Julie Schwartz, long-time DC editor. DC had to suspend an editor a few years ago, who should have been outright fired. You can find similar stories in other business fields; but, women have progressed more in those fields than comics.
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Post by electricmastro on Apr 4, 2020 22:31:55 GMT -5
Are they purposefully keeping women out, as that’s the feeling your post gave me, but I wasn’t sure. Comico had Dian Schutz as the editor and she did a great job. However, when she started having issues with the owners, she moved on to Dark Horse. Barb Randel/Kessel was a junior editor at DC, hired by Dick Giordano, who moved up to regular editor and also scripted, with husband Karl (since divorced) and on her own. She moved on to Dark Horse and helped launch their Comics Greatest World line and then left it behind. Marvel, at one point, had Marie Severin in the art dept, Jo Duffy, Anne Nocenti, Louise Simonson, Rene Witterstatter (probably got spelling way wrong), Bobie Chase, Carol Kalish running the marketing, and some others I am forgetting, aside from several female colorists and letterers. DC had Jenette Kahn as publisher, Karen berger running vertigo, Alisa Kwitney, Mindy Newell, Gail Simone, Devon Grayson, Kim Yale (prior to her death), Jill Thompson, Colleen Doran (freelance, but did quite a bit of work for them) and some more that I can't recall, after working today and setting up a new computer. Eclipse had cat yronwode as editor and contributions from people like Trina Robbins, Joyce Babner and a few others. Dark Horse has had several women work for them in various capacities. Interesting. I find it curious that, after listing various women that have worked in comics in recent history, with more that you can’t recall as you said, that you then go on to say: Women are sorely underrepresented in comic book publishing, editing, writing and art, in general. With that in mind, I’m inclined to ask if you had a certain percentage of women you had in mind that the industry could hire to move from the status of “underrepresented” to “represented,” as from what I’ve come to understand, “underrepresented” alludes to a number, though I rarely see concerned people attempt to narrow down on a number, and suggest how that number of women could be properly brought into the industry. I’d be thankful for any help you could provide on the subject.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 4, 2020 22:59:21 GMT -5
Bleeding Cool used to run a quarterly column called Gender Crunching that looked publisher by publisher at the number of woman filling creative and editorial roles in books released by the publishers that quarter. I am not sure if they still do it, but here is a link to the article from Autumn 2017) for an example. Here's the chart for DC for that quarter... here's a month by month breakdown for that quarter for DC... and some perspective for a period about a year long... here's the numbers for Marvel in the same period... here's a link to the page listing all the stories that use the #gendercrunching tag on the BC site if you want to explore more. Now just for comparison, in the same period, at Line Webtoons (a hosting site for webcomics) 42% of the creators were women and readership was roughly 50/50 between men and woman ( BC article) so it is not that there aren't women readers or talented female creators producing work out there, it's that they are not being hired in significant numbers by direct market publishers (the exception seems to be as assistant editors at Marvel, but with so many in assistant positions you have to ask/wonder why so few graduate to full editorial positions). The articles sometimes do other direct market publishers than Marvel/Dc, the installment I chose did not though. Sometimes they were in a separate article from the Marvel/DC number crunching. Tim Hanley, the writer behind the project that produced these articles, expalins his methodology and the goals of the project on his website here if you are interested. -M
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Post by electricmastro on Apr 4, 2020 23:21:11 GMT -5
so it is not that there aren't women readers or talented female creators producing work out there, it's that they are not being hired in significant numbers by direct market publishers (the exception seems to be as assistant editors at Marvel, but with so many in assistant positions you have to ask/wonder why so few graduate to full editorial positions). Thanks! And the graphs seem to support as if said, that there are indeed a considerable number of women readers and female creators working out in comics out there. Makes me wonder if it has more to do with the higher-ups at the direct market publishers being irresponsible in who they hire or more so a creative difference such as gravitating more towards the form of webcomics, as was also previously mentioned, and so on and so forth.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 4, 2020 23:24:44 GMT -5
Well, I don't think male creators have ever been harassed for going out after and having a milkshake the way female creators have been... Milkshake selfie controversy as reported in the Telegraphso there is certain segment of fandom that is openly hostile to female creators and editors in direct market comics. -M
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Post by codystarbuck on Apr 21, 2020 16:49:30 GMT -5
One of the "superstars" to emerge from Fantagraphics was Dan Clowes, who started with Lloyd Llewellyn ansd progressed into his Eightball comics, then his collections and original graphic novels... Dan Clowes was born and raised in Chicago, the child of an auto mechanic mother (!!) and furniture craftsman father. Not many people can say their mother was a mechanic, which already made him unique. He graduated with a BFA from the Pratt Institute, which is serious art credentials. He contributed to Cracked Magazine under pseudonymns, while also creating his own small press Look Mom Comics. Lloyd Lewellyn was a noir detective character created for his Uggly Family stuff in Cracked, which he then sent to Gary Groth, which led to Lloyd getting his own comic. Lloyd is a late40s/50s noir detective, as the series uses elements from noir film, 50s Lounge Culture, pulps and similar material. It was a satire, so it was all in fun, with a police sergeant named Red Hoerring and a sidekick named Ernie Hoyle. Clowes work on the series showed a wide variety of influences, from the hot rod art of Big Daddy Roth, 50s Lounge Culture graphics and other so-called "lowbrow art," surrealists, Crumb and the other Underground artists. Clowes' style is minimalist, with sparse background detail and angular figures, with much of the humor coming in the dialogue and arising from chaarcter moments. For instance, issue 4 has Lloyd wake up from an alcohol binge to find a dead man in his place (who he shoves intop his refrigerator. he then goes off to try to jog his memory and gets enticed into drinking, while a friend takes notes... It's a pretty basic noir story, along the lines of DOA. This is followed by "The Goo," a story involving living toothpaste and a story about red Hoerring (Red Hoerring's Blues). All are slightly off kilter, with humorous dialoge and surreal images. The last issue of Lloyd Llewellyn featured social satire, which would set the tone for Clowes' next work, the anthology Eightball. This is where Clowes really made his mark. Each issue featured short pieces, often gags, and a segment of a longer narrative, such as Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron, which features a man's search for his estranged wife. Clay Loudermilk is first seen in a prono theater, watching a BDSM fetish film, whose star is his wife Barbara Allen (as in the ballad), who is the film's dominatrix. His search gets Clay involved in a religious cult, conspiracy theories, crazy policemen, freaks and weirdos, while dreams play a huge part in the story. Clowes said the idea came from dreams he experienced, as well as those of his ex-wife. The world within is rather dour and downbeat, with kitsch, porn, fringe elements and more, establishing the nature of Clowes work. Much of the stories in Eightball are dealing in people and culture at the fringes, with cult followings; lowbrow art, low-budget movies, odd graphics, obsessive collectors in odd fields and the like. The story crossed through the first 10 issues, with an epilogue in issue #11. Ghost World followed in issues 11-18 and David Boring in 19-21, with the last two issues featuring shorter pieces. Ghost World features two teenage girls, Enid and Rebecca, who have graduated high school and are facing adult life, but spend their time criticizing pop culture, hanging out and swaying between wanting relationships with boys and wondering of they are lesbians. Clowes was already getting attention in comics, with people like Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman singing his praises in interviews and articles in hip magazines. The trade collections of the Eightball narratives would become staples of the graphic novel sections of Barnes & Noble (where I worked) and Borders, alongside Chris Ware's Acme Novelty Library, the works of Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman's Sandman (as well as the old superhero standbys). Ghost World brought even more attention, first in a graphic novel edition, which featured some alterations to the art and the color palette. In 2001, Terry Zwigoff, who had directed the hit documentary Crumb, about the artist, would direct a film adaptation, starring Thora Birch, Scarlett Johansson and Steve Buscemi. The film did modest box office, but garnered a Best Adapted Screenplay nomination for the Academy Awards, which brought new light to the film and it soon became a cult favorite, especially among disaffected teenagers (are there any other kind?). The story is altered to fit Hollywood storytelling structures; but the main themes are there, even if some of the rougher edges have been smoothed out. The Comics Journal praised the film, while noting it wasn't a patch on the original material. They summarized it as being a lot better than could have been expected, even if it wasn't the art of the original. Clowes did co-write the screenplay, with Zwigoff.. Clowes switched to original graphic novels and moved on to other publishers, including book publisher Pantheon. He also published art for the New Yorker (which had Art Spiegelman is art director, for a time). However he was still part of that new generation of alternative/underground cartoonists that developed at Fantagraphics, until other outlets began appearing, like Drawn & Quarterly and book publishers. Another of that generation of alternative cartoonists is Roberta Gregory, creator of Naughty Bits. Gregory had been around for a bit, coming into comics via the Undergrounds, contributing to Wimmen's Comix and Gay Comix, including creating Feminist Funnies, which she self-published in her Dynamite Damsels series. In 1990, she joined Fantagraphics with Naughty Bits... It was here that Gregory, daughter of Disney artist Bob Gregory, gave the world Midge McCraken, aka Bitchy Bitch. The first issue opens with a bang, as a guy is looking at a collection of classic undergorund comics, including Crumb and the wife sees a comic depicting a man defecating ona woman's head, which draws a crowd of women, who argue with the male character about the exaggeration of things with the ingrained hostility and violence against women that it reflects, leading to the women duct taping, torturing and raping the man, in a fashion similar to the extremes of the "classic" material, but from a female perspective. It is just as over-the-top, but rather shocking, while hammering home its point by turning on its head the chief argument in support of some of Crumb's (and others) excess, by saying it is an exaggeration, and using that same exaggeration to make the counter-point. And that's just for openers! That is followed by a satire of Fantagraphics offices and Bitchy Bitch. One of the key elements is Midge's explosions of rage, while making pointed social commentary. The art has a very aggressive line and the fits of anger would send a psychologist to the couch for therapy; but, it is sharp, funny, and edgy. Midge shops at a lower budget store and rages, then tries a high end store and rages at the prices. Her personal ad gets answered and she rages about getting ready, the losers who rejected her, then meets the guy and is disappointed. Still, she hasn't had a relationship or sex in a while and lowers her standards while he calculates how much alcohol to pour in her to get her into bed. As you would expect, their goals meet in scenes that aren't particularly erotic, but way more honest than anything in the Eros line and Midge leaves to find her car stolen. It's all the kind of modern Underground material that you would expect, but with a razor-sharp edge and the seies would last 40 issues, which is a pretty long run for an indie company and an alternative comic. Bitchy Bitch would be turned into cartoons shown on the Oxygen Network and The Comedy Network, in Canada. The book won Gregory multiple Harvey and Eisner Awards, as well as an Inkpot, a Haxtur (international award) and a Lulu. Gregory continues to sporadically put out cartoons, such as her Real Cat Toons, and work on graphic novels, while also holding day jobs. Our third member of the Alternative world is Terry LaBan, creator and artist of Cud. he started out doing political cartoons for the Ann Arbor News, then started Unsupervised Existence, for Fantagraphics... The series was inspired by LaBan's own life, as it focuses on a young couple, Suzy and Danny. Suzy is an intellectual who hangs out with friends, trying to figure out what to do with her life. Danny supports them by driving a cab, in Cleveland. Also in the series was rock musician/performance artist Bob Binkum, who breaks up with his girlfriend and goes on a journey from Greece to India, filled with misadventures in a world where anything can happen. The series earned LaBan two Harvey Award nominations, in 1990, for Best New Series and Best New Artist. The two main storylines were collected separately, as Love's Not a Three Dollar Fare and International Bob. LaBan's work was a mixture of Underground influences and things like Dan DeCarlo and other mainstream cartoonists. This became more prominant in his next series, Cud, an anthology that featured the adventures of Bob Cudd, a performance artist from UE, but changed for this series. It also featured other stories, including my favorite, Eno & Plumb, about a Gen-X couple, that is a mixture of Gilbert Shelton and Dan DeCarlo. Eno & Plum started as minor characters; but, when LaBan moved the series to Dark Horse, they became front and center, as we follow their lives and Plum's wealthy father, who is an old hippy making money off of 60s nostalgia, while smoking giant joints that would make Bob Marley envious. LaBan would branch outside of the comics industry with illustrations in the news magazine In These Times, Blab, Mad, Nickelodeon Magazine and for Eggmont, doing Disney comics. He also wrote a Grendel Tales cycle, "The Devil May Care" (which is excellent) and some things for Vertigo, including The Dreaming. In 2001 he started the newspaper strip Edge City, a humorous look at modern family life. Next, we take a look at what Fantagraphics called a necessary evil, to survive in the marketplace and continue publishing quality and unique comic works. Come back as we take a guarded look at the Eros Comix line of so-called "adult" comics. We'll examine work by Fables' Bill Willingham, Gilbert Hernandez, Don Simpson, Tom Sutton, and European cartoonists, including Jordi Bernet, Georges Levis, and Franco Saudelli.
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Post by codystarbuck on Apr 28, 2020 14:15:50 GMT -5
In 1990, Fantagraphics was feeling the pinch. Although they published some acclaimed works, their sales were not huge and they had mostly abandoned attempts at color comics and the bloom was well of the rose for the Black & White Boom (pretty much dead). So, the publisher was at a crossroads about how to generate enough revenue to continue to support the lesser selling, but widely acclaimed books. They settled on the idea of publishing porn comics. Of course, this immediately brought a backlash as their editorial stance had always been about quality (you can argue whether they delivered that with specific books; but, that was their stated aim) and now they were producing porn comics. This was the company that routinely took shots at more mature work at DC and Marvel (well, more DC as with Vertigo and other projects they were producing more of that material) and gave it left-handed compliments, stating things like "Saying it is great compared tot he mainstream is faint praise, given how bad the mainstream is..". It seemed rather hypocritical. It was; but, it wasn't entirely unprecedented. Fantagraphics had already published comics with sexual situations and nudity, including their critical darling Love & Rockets. So, it wasn't a big leap to doing an adult line. Some would argue that it matched a trend towards material aimed more at adults. At first, Fantagraphics offerings seemed to back up that idea, as they went for a combination of foreign erotic reprints, classic adult comics and new material by noted creators. They dubbed the line Eros Comix and put out a selection of titles from the start. Bill Willingham had made a name for himself, to a point, on Elementals, at Comico. Comico had looser restrictions and Elementals had had a more adult tone than many superhero comics. With Ironwood, Willingham went into full on erotic fantasy. The story tells of a young dragon who lives in human form, because he hasn't become powerful enough to obtain full dragon form. Willingham used many fantasy story conventions and then added a bawdy sense of humor to it, giving it more of a European flair. It was like D&D, with sex. I looked at the first few issues, but don't believe I collected the rest. It was fine for what it was; but, wasn't that funny (as I recall) or that engaging. Willingham put out 6 issues in fairly consistent frequency, then took 4 years to produce further issues. It did sort of hint at what he would do, in the future, with Fables, though they are two wildly different approaches to fantasy literature. Liz and Beth was a European reprint of stories by Georges Levis, a pseudonym of Jean Sidobre. Sidobre had worked as an illustrator of comics since post WW2, adapting children's books, such as the Famous Five series, as well as such literature as the OSS 117 series of spy novels. He took the name Georges Levis to produce erotic comics, featuring his two heroines and their erotic misadventures. The stories are more than just nudity and sex, as they become involved in mysteries and other types of stories, though each adventure includes sexual scenes. Some are more romantically erotic and others get into darker worlds, including a storyline where one or both is held prisoner by a would-be rapist. The approach is mature in the correct sense, as there are legitimate reasons for sex to enter the story and it is not the main focus, though it it central to the story. Levis' arrt is well above the standard of the average Underground or usual porn comic. Birdland was from Love & Rockets Gilbert Hernandez and features a trio of women, two of whom work as strippers and another as a therapist. It has a bit of an Underground sensibility and reads like a randier version of Love & Rockets. Sex is rather explicit within it, though there are real characters, not just a body to carry sex organs. The humor that you would expect is also there; but, it is definitely not for everyone. If you are curious about Hernandez' other work, it is worth reading, providing you have no problems with explicit sex scenes. I Want to Be Your Dog is from Ho Che Anderson, creator of the excellent King graphic novel, about Martin Luther King. This work, taking its title from The Stooges' punk favorite, and deals with the lives of a vast group of characters in the Toronto African-Canadian community, particularly the BDSM subculture. This is a true "adult" work in every sense and Anderson brings his scratchy, angular style to the work. Anderson's art invokes Sienkiewicz and McKean as well as their influence Ralph Steadman. This just doesn't deal with BDSM imagery for titillation but deals with people involved in the scene, for good and bad. It deals in relationships as much as power exchanges and is filled with "real" people. Two Hot Girls is more of sex for sex' sake, as it largely consists of sexual vignettes. At the same time came a selection of titles from one Anton Drek.... Anton Drek's work was basically humorous comics, with a sexual focus, but the art seemed awfully familiar, especially if you had read Megaton Man. That was because Anton Drek was artist Don Simpson, in the worst kept secret, ever. As a reviewer pointed out, you couldn't hide Simpson's style, any more than you could Basil Wolverton. These are pretty funny, much like his more mainstream work. Simpson wasn't the only mainstream artist (well, indie artist) to moonlight for Eros. An artist known as Dementia was none other than Tom Sutton. Domino Lady was a pulp adventure comic, from Ron Wilber, with healthy doses of T&A and nudity and a bit of sex, though less than other titles in the line. The initial mini was followed by a jungle adventure. Reveltry in Hell was a pulpy horror tale and Wilber also produced a spoof on Russ Heath's Cowgirls at War comic, with Bondage Girls at War, moving into deeper fetish territory. Classic adult comics came in the form of reprints of Wally Wood material... Cannon collected Wood's hardboiled adventure strip, complete with nudity and sex, as it originally appeared. Sally Forth was Wood's lighter sex spoof, more along the lines of Harvey Kurtzman and Will Elder's Little Anny Fanny. Woods other sex comics, including Malice in Wonderland, Pipsqueak Papers, and Wizard of Ooz were also reprinted and a combined graphic album collected all of it: Naughty Knotty Woody. Fantagraphics also collected Gray Morrow's Amora erotic fantasy comic, as well as reprinted Frank Thorne's Ghita and Lann... Eric Stanton's The Kinky Hook and Sweeter Gwen were also reprinted by Eros.. The Kinky Hook was a bondage themed story by Stanton, which may or may not have had inking done by Steve Ditko. The pair shared a studio (something Ditko denied, at one point, until photos of them in the studio appeared). It looks very Ditko and Stanton did pick up a lot of Ditko's stylistic touches, especially while they worked in the same space. Sweeter Gwen is Stanton's homage to the bondage melodrama The Adventures of Sweet Gwendoline, by John Willie. One of Stanton's early jobs was to draw bras and panties directly onto Willie artwork, featuring nude figures, published by Irving Klaw (who published the famous photos of Bettie Page). Klaw wanted no nudity or sex in his material to avoid problems with the government (it didn't work) and had Stanton make the changes directly on the original art, even after Stanton showed him he could do it with overlays. In interviews he said it broke his heart to mar Willie's work. The original strip was done as a straight adventure melodrama, with an innocent girl kidnapped by the evil Sir Dystic Darcy and the Countess, to gain control of Gwendoline's father's land. There were a couple of unfinished strips, then a long adventure, The Race for the Gold Cup, where Darcy tries to rig a horse race. Stanton follows the basic premise (Gwen and secret agent U-89 kidnapped, as well as turning the tables) and ups the humor quotient, poking loving fun at the original. Again, this is fetish, with no actual sex depicted. On the European side, Eros published three mini-series and collected editions of the bondage and foot fetish adventure comic, The Blonde, by Franco Saudelli... These are pretty much just fetish stories, with the Blonde, a notorious masked thief, who finds herself caught up in bigger crimes after escaping prison. The basic story has The Blonde in jail and escape by overpowering a female visitor, tying her up and escaping dressed as that person. Then, she either pokes her nose into a crime where she has been framed or stumbles onto a bigger conspiracy while committing a burglary. Violence is minimal (more implied than shown) and humor is a key feature. Saudelli is a real fetishist and features lots of panels of feet and bondage throughout; but, there is a story there. The Blonde would make a cameo, as an art print, in an issue of Peter David and George Perez's Sachs and Violens adult adventure comic, ironically, in a scene where a receptionist gets tied up by JJ Sachs, while the print of The Blonde looms overhead. Eros had plenty of other fetish strips, ranging from softcore pin-ups to hardcore stories. German artist Mathias Schultheiss (Propellerman, Bell's Theorem) had a reprint collection at Eros, titled Talk Dirty. The story focuses on a pair of anonymous lovers, who meet in secluded areas for sex, but their game goes awry when the rules of their game are broken. Schultheis is a heck of an artist and storyteller, though this is far more explicit than previous work. Eros published more and more, as the 90s progressed and into the new millennium, with decreasing quality and maturity as time wore on. Some of it was outright cheap porn, crudely drawn and with little in the way of story. Others were things like adult manga stories, superhero sex spoofs, or just pin-up books. Some of it had that Underground sensibility; but, there was a certain percentage that was pretty bottom end of the spectrum. It is easier to defend more of the early material as being harmless, sharply satirical, naughty fun, or great artistry; but, it became harder and harder to justify the existence of the line as anything other than cheap porn for a fast buck. Next, we return to Fantagraphics main line, with some more odds and ends, plus a quick survey of some of the classic comic strip reprints.
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Post by mikelmidnight on Apr 29, 2020 11:35:58 GMT -5
Obviously it'd be hypocritical for me to criticize Fantagraphics for publishing porn But still, little of the Eros line interested me at the time. Birdland was from Love & Rockets Gilbert Hernandez and features a trio of women, two of whom work as strippers and another as a therapist. It has a bit of an Underground sensibility and reads like a randier version of Love & Rockets. Sex is rather explicit within it, though there are real characters, not just a body to carry sex organs. The humor that you would expect is also there; but, it is definitely not for everyone. If you are curious about Hernandez' other work, it is worth reading, providing you have no problems with explicit sex scenes. What surprised me about this comic is that honestly it wasn't any dirtier than Love & Rockets sometimes got (granted it was more focused on the sex scenes). I loved Birdland, although when Beto moved Earth-2 versions of its characters into L&R, it initiated a creative decline in his work for me. This was my introduction to Anderson and it's a fine comic, although curiously unerotic and not actually all that well-disposed to BDSM. Curiously, it's not even all that explicit, and would have fit in better as a Fantagraphics book. I already had the big b&w volumes of Cannon from Wood, and it's enjoyable enough. Sally Forth never interested me. Was the artist still alive at this point? I'd like to think he made some money from these reprints. Fantagraphics also collected Gray Morrow's Amora erotic fantasy comic, as well as reprinted Frank Thorne's Ghita and Lann... This debate confuses me as these look more like Ditko pencils, inked by Stanton, than the other way around ... unless Ditko's inking completely obliterates any other artist.
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