Vertigo seems to have a sleeper hit on their hands in Bill Willingham's 'Y: The Last Man'. But even with that, a look at the diamond sales figures for dec show that the market is overwhelmingly kiddie/toy/action heavy. Don’t get me wrong, I don't have it out for the books that are doing well, but I wish there were a few more like Y out there in terms of drawing readers. I still think the potential is there; we just need to figure out how to get the readers attention.

I can't help feeling like the stuff that seems to do the best plays to the lowest common denominator. Maybe I’m fooling myself, that is the trend in TV and Film as well. But I refuse to accept that it's the best way to go. Easy maybe, but easy doesn't fulfil me as an artists and story teller.

Watching Robert Redford on a rerun of Charlie Rose last night I heard a lot of similar sentiment from him about the current trends and the roll of what he referred to as 'merchant' mentality in Hollywood. As current rumours show, we got that bad in the comics biz.

SOUL FOOD


Some new illos online by yours truly, illustrating a short story by Jim Rossignol @ OPi8.com.

I wanted to do a few more for this one, but stomach flues had other ideas. Just the same though, i like these, and the story is a bit of neo-Victorian ultraviolet fun.

Ever had soup at a restaurant that was just so bad you felt compelled to murder someone...?

Been hitting my head on the old wall on PIN CITY, artist’s version of writers block. The problem is, if I can't see it in here (max points at his head) then it's near impossible to put it there (points at evil blank sheet).

So, to help jumpstart things I cracked out some clay and made a bust of Joseph. Might end up doing the whole cast.

Not sure if it will help me yet, but one thing that came out of this, I reminded myself I like to sculpt too. :)

a.j reads a lot of books, armfuls from the library every month. A perk for me is a parade of interesting selections that pop up for a few weeks around the house. One recent borrowed pleasure was a book about Giacometti

From 'the Artchive': "Alberto Giacometti is, both because of the nature of his work and because of his close friendship with the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, the artist most closely identified with the Existentialist movement. Part of his art-historical importance springs from his defence of figuration at a time when the advantage was with abstract art. He was born in October 1901 in Italian-speaking Switzerland and came from an artistic background - his father, Giovanni, was a well known Post-Impressionist painter."

Some highlights from the book


I could try to say something here, but that would just be bla bla bla.

Update: We ended up buying some more books of Giacometti's work, and my mother got us a great set of books about him and his brother. Also read 'A Giacometti Portrait', the first person account of sitting for a portrait by Giacometti by James Loard. Interesting fella. Quite the drama queen.
I was never one to get to involved in the study of artists in the past, I just looked at their pictures. But Now i find myself increasingly interested in them as people. I've since read quite number of books and several artist, have found it all very enlightening.

Interesting to listen to one of my first influences, Frank Miller, on NPR.

File under: If they had had something like this when I was a kid…

…So you say you want to make comics, I have just the site for you. All I can say is ‘wow’ and ‘about time’.

Now,read this
and these
And learn.

Almost forgot to mention, a few more seconds of fame tonight for me as ZED TV showed a painting of mine as part of thier projected set...



..ZED is a web submission based late night arts and culture TV show launched this year by the CBC. A bit sound bite oriented (when they featured a comic of mine last fall you would have missed it if you blinked) but not bad a show all in all, score one for the CBC, a multimedia Brave New Waves for the 21st C.
The notice they e-mail you said nothing of what they would do the with the painting, how it would be used, so I was mildly surprised to find it prominently projected on the wall behind the host far at least the last part of the show (I had missed the first taking care of a.j. who caught my stomach bug). Well, that was nice. :)

Oh woopie! this should be fun :[





Well nothing like interesting research to take ones mind off trouble.

Been web hunting the last few days for architecture reference, trying to fill my mind with the physical forms of interesting building shapes for PIN CITY.

>>>Found this last night,
very interesting site if you like
this sort of thing.
Kmt Space: African Art & Architecture. A huge collection of small samples of African and Modernist building design. For a quick overview of the site's contents go to the site map

There WAS an Ben Katchor lecture Today, "The Great Museum Cafeterias of the Western World", a reading/slide presentation of one of his earlier works.
Good stuff, delivered in Ben's usual 1940's board sports announcer manner. As my friend Sherwin said (paraphrasing) 'it's interesting hear about someone’s obsession, and follow his path through it as he drives the point into the ground'. A very apt description of Ben's work.

Good Permanent Damage column this week at CBR, wish I’d seen the episode of 60min Steven Grant talks about. His read on the industry from watching that jives with my own impressions right now, which is both good and bad.

I hope the kids at Marvel don’t totally drop the ball on this, in the long run broadening their market to include as many other genre and creative relationships with the talent pool other than the corp controlled WFH projects they focus on now will be the key to any long-term survival.

They should not put this off, do it NOW, while slightly fat on Movie Money and can afford some small risks in the interest of investing in their future as a publisher.

Vertigo , the only big company in the Comics Biz in America really trying to make a serious go of it in markets other than the spandex set, got it’s start in a boom period. And it has taken a while to make the headways it has in the book market, & with mature readers. Just ask Karen Berger (Ed in chief), it’s been hard work and it will be a few more years before they can say they are ‘there’ in the way that they’d like to be.

Meanwhile a number of book publishers are looking to get in on the action as well with their own new imprints. And there are more and more Anthologies popping up all the time, featuring story driven Modernist, Impressionist, Romance, Historical, Horror, Contemporary Fiction and Sci-Fi narratives, aiming to take up residence in the News-stand market and other previously untapped routes to readers.

If Marvel waits to long they will be SO far behind in the game they’ll have to buy a farm team. And if things don’t play out in Hollywood, they may not even have the $ for that in a few years.

What are the odds of that?
This is Hollywood we’re talking about.

Could work out as well I suppose, With the big M merging with or acquiring a small shop like Slave Labor, Alternative, or even (gulp!) Fantagraphics…you never know man…but it would be nice if Marvel would contribute to the building of the industry for once, rather than simply continuing to milk it, as has been their #1 strategy/approach to the industry for the last ….I don’t know how long.

They were showing some glimmers of this sort of thinking a while ago but they came up nervously short of going for it they way they should be.

Ben Katchor lecture Today
At the McGill School of Architecture
William Hobart Molson Lecture by Ben Katchor
(comic artist, NYC)
Title: "The Great Museum Cafeterias of the Western World",

Macdonald-Harrington Building,
815 Sherbrooke Street West,
Room G10,
6:30 pm
here
Contact: 514-398-6704.

Hey, wait a sec, I thought they had 7 days before the first deadline...

...Suprize surprise, Bush likes the blitzkrieg method.

And they have invented the "CHIP IN THE HEAD" device, now what to do with it, what to do...
...maybe I can connect it to a robot who will draw my pages for me while I’ll just think about them.

Well, until then I’ll just have to do it the old fashion way.
Slowly.

And with that, i give you PIN CITY, page 1. PIN CITY.




Only hundreds left to go, ha ha ha.

So the UN has unanimously passed the resolution requiring Iraq to disarm.

Ball in play.

Now we find out just how serious Iraq is in all their recent claims of peaceful intent.

Personally I’m hoping they are serious about it and can manage to meat the tight deadlines, though even Hans Blix has pointed to the first one month deadline as being a tight fit, citing Iraq’s large Patrol industry.

I can’t help but suspect that it is one of many possible booby-traps a consolatory version of Iraq may set off, triggering the way to eager for blood Bush admin. One of my all time biggest problems with the US right wing is the apparent junky like attraction to war and siege politics.

About to go meat up with a.j for an art opening, recent work from Sherwin Tjia, a regular at the jams and the man behind the pedigree girls. If you're in the area check it out. It'll be nice to get out this week, been at my desk way to long.

Ashcroft says customs agents will use intelligence-based criteria – not race, or ethnicity when screening visitors to the US from Canada. This comforts me little. Oh no, they aren’t discriminating, just being safe, I know. So safe...ha. So they are going to crack down on visa abuse, make sure you "stick to your plans" while visiting, and finger print any one who may merit the attention.

Supposedly this is just an updated version of the system used in the EU, who are, we are told, very experienced with tracking the movements of & controlling high risk aliens.

Orwell, you fucker, stop laughing.

Blood and Thunder all around. The Prime Mister is contemplating a snap election, and running again, or at least trying to snap his cabinet in line by suggesting he might just stick around for a while rather than retire…

…and down south, Bush is getting his war on. Just all a mater of time...ug

I've been fixing up the place
Cleaned up the layout and added some relevant links to the Blogg here.

Thinking about taking up a martial art, Tai-Qi perhaps, something restorative.

Not even original

I get so much crap junk email, it boggles the mind. Well it probably doesn’t, it’s common isn’t it. What really boggles is the incredible number of scams, dead African ambassador’s widow or lawyer or butler, looking to give you a fortune. All they want is your bank account number so the can basically launder their money through your account. Usually with placations to your ego with testimonials to you’re reputation in the international community as a good person. As if. Do I look stupid? Ok, don’t answer that..

So many of these, or TIERED old mail pyramid scams with email lists replacing letter stuffing…so many I have to think that a lot of people are still falling for it, in large enough numbers to reward the minimal effort it take’s to run an email scam.

It’s an international suckers lottery.

And they all voted republican in the US this week. :D

That wouldn’t be as sad if it weren’t for the fact that it wouldn’t have made that much difference if they had stayed democrats. :(

The Bush mobile is just gona’ go a smidge faster now.

Keep staring at the page, scratching my head, thinking there is something missing....

Talked to Colin at the group of N gallery where i go for life art and worked out the details of holding the next three jams in his space, should be fun, more latter.

Watching a copy of Apocalypse Now Redux, Vittorio Storaro work on the camera making me drool.

Back to that page now, hmmm.

Warren Ellis ponted out this article on a message board, which resulted in some interesting chatter.
Can’t share all that with you but this was my two cents on the topic…
----------------------

I’ve been thumping on this soap box for as long as I can remember, no thanks to me I’m sure I’ve heard it echoed in more and more discussions and rants on the topic.

If anything I think I picked up one a subtle despairing tone in Kim’s piece…? Go figure ;)

It seems to me there is a growing number of books that fall into this category in the north american comics market, a lot if not most of Oni, Vertigo, Slave Labour books & etc, and Indies like El Capitan are putting out material that fits that “large genre midrange with a high LCD” that exemplifies the $Ideal$ Pop Art/Mass market model.

At this point we may not have the sales to show it,
but I think that has more to do with the numbers of readers
than a lack of books/content (though we can always use more talent).
Which brings us back to that old “attracting new readers” grind,

My soapbox
- General continued progression of the art form. Goes without saying I think, we always need to be getting better at this, telling stories. Not settling back into a predictable rut of doomed mediocre.

- Increased accesses to readers through multiple markets, old and new.
Specialty Shops, Chain Book Stores, News Stands, Libraries, etc,
all have been viable markets for comics in various countries.
The question is not finding a market for comics,
It’s finding the market that fits your comic.
Or, in the case of large commercial publishers,
the comic & format that fits each market.

- Continued maturing in Creators & Publisher’s formatting, marketing and support of books. I tend to favour the trend towards the trade paperback/GN format, noteworthy the format of choice in the case of the Euro market. Also I don’t think there’s a reason large cheep weekly, monthly, or annual anthologies can’t work here the way they do in Asia given the right content and form.
Potentially a market as large as North America could support much more than just one format for comic books. And keep your eye on web-based formats and delivery, a potential global market.

All of the above would serve the goal of expanding the midrange market as well as ether end, increasing demand and attracting talent.