The Comics Bureau

Scott McCloud writes up some inter­est­ing thoughts on autobiography;

It’s a real open ques­tion whether any auto­bi­o­graphy can ever be more than 95% true. Mark Twain stip­u­lated that his mem­oir not be pub­lished until 100 years after his death (this year!), pre­sum­ably so that he could be 100% honest—a full imple­ment­a­tion of the Mys­tery Quote—but from what I’ve heard, the old guy doesn’t come across as par­tic­u­larly object­ive while rant­ing about his many late-in-life grudges.

Emo­tional hon­esty and fac­tual accur­acy aren’t the same thing after all. Twain may have thought he was hit­ting 100%, but maybe nobody can ever get past 95%. And maybe say­ing so upfront, as White and Hernan­dez both do in their own fash­ion, is the most hon­est way to start.

He also intro­duces us to Tracy White, whose book ‘How I Made it to 18′ is out now. Go and check out her web­site as a mat­ter of pri­or­ity. You should also check out an anim­ated excerpt of the first chapter on youtube.

Also intro­duced is Lea Hernan­dez, whose Near Life Exper­i­ence is great;

Head over to Bleedin Cool to read a short art­icle on Diamond’s sales fig­ures for the last fin­an­cial year.

This April, it is estim­ated that Dia­mond Com­ics Dis­trib­ut­ors sold 5,567,648 of the top 300 comic books to Amer­ican comic stores. The pre­vi­ous April, it is estim­ated they sold 6,733,040 of the top 300 comic books.

That’s a drop of a fifth, year on year.

There has been plenty writ­ten about the latest Sol­ipsistic Pop recently. I par­tic­u­larly liked this writeup at Avoid The Future;

Some­thing that becomes more and more appar­ent when read­ing through this volume is how much more fluid it feels in terms of con­tent than its predecessor. Humberstone has done a com­mend­able job as editor, find­ing the elu­sive alchemy that gives an antho­logy the bal­ance between over­arch­ing cohes­ive­ness and styl­istic variety. Diverse in art and nar­rat­ive approaches, Sol­ipsistic Pop 2 really feels like a gate­way into the often unseen spec­trum of com­ics tal­ent in the UK.

Have a look through the list of con­trib­ut­ors and their web­sites here.

Douglas Wolk, writ­ing for Tech­land, writes up eight ques­tions for com­ics cre­at­ors at the begin­ning of a new pro­ject;

2. What is it going to look like?

How does it look dif­fer­ent from every other comic book out there, includ­ing oth­ers drawn by the same per­son? There are no great gen­eric car­toon­ists; first-rate car­toon­ists treat style and design as integ­ral ele­ments of every indi­vidual pro­ject, and it’s gen­er­ally true that the more pre­med­it­ated a par­tic­u­lar comic’s look is, the bet­ter it comes out. (The Dark Knight Strikes Again doesn’t look like Sin City, which doesn’t look like 300…) This also extends to col­or­ing, of course. Think of Patri­cia Mulvihill’s work on 100 Bul­lets, say, or what Frank D’Armata’s been doing on Invin­cible Iron Man lately: they’re dis­tinct­ive, care­fully thought out, and hugely import­ant to the way both series work.

Head over to Flavorwire.com to have a look at some illus­tra­tions for Cor­mac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian;

Draw­ing com­par­is­ons to both Dante’s Inferno and Her­man Melville’s Moby Dick, Cor­mac McCarthy’sBlood Meridian is a work of genu­ine mad­ness, and one of the most viol­ent books in con­tem­por­ary lit­er­at­ure. Zak Smith (who pre­vi­ously illus­trated each page of Gravity’s Rain­bow), and five other artists (Sean McCarthy, John Mejias, Craig Taylor, Shawn Cheng, and Matt Wiegle) have taken on the daunt­ing task of illus­trat­ing every page of the grizzly tale. The styles range from haunt­ingly vivid to extremely abstract, each image com­ple­men­ted with a quote from the source mater­ial that served as its inspiration.

Head over to the World Com­ics India site to look at some superb Wall­poster Com­ics — inform­a­tional com­ics cre­ated by com­munit­ies that deal with local issues, includ­ing cor­poral pun­ish­ment in schools;

The school teach­ers of Maha­ra­jganj in Uttar Pra­desh are a wor­ried lot. Gone are the days when they could pun­ish stu­dents at will, for the most ridicu­lous reas­ons, slap them, beat them with sticks, or make them sit or stand for hours in uncom­fort­able, pain­ful and awk­ward pos­i­tions. The age-old notions of a good teacher – a strict dis­cip­lin­arian who would use the rod lib­er­ally on his stu­dents – is being ques­tioned and chal­lenged, by the stu­dents themselves.

Well worth check­ing out is their  Com­ics Manual, that runs through the entire Wall­pa­per Com­ics pro­duc­tion pro­cess, from con­cep­tion to deploy­ment. Not just a com­ics manual, this is a primer for social act­iv­ism and social engage­ment. Drop everything imme­di­ately and devour the entire site right now.

Once you have fin­ished read­ing the site, head over to Zee­news to read a fas­cin­at­ing inter­view with World Com­ics founder, Sharad Sharma;

It is simple, easy, non-threatening and can con­vey a power­ful mes­sage. But it is not just World Com­ics India, which is using comics/ car­toons to deliver social mes­sages, but across the world sev­eral organ­isa­tion are doing the same. The dif­fer­ence is they have done the same job by hir­ing artists, and we have done it by teach­ing com­mon people. Since the com­mon people are the ones who pro­duce them, so the 100% own­er­ship of the con­tent is theirs. They know the artists liv­ing next door. It is not for mass dis­tri­bu­tion, but for local use – so they pro­duce say 20 copies.

Check out these fant­astic clos­eups of old com­ics. Really gor­geous stuff.

If you know me, you will know that I love Michael Kupperman’s work. Straight up LOVE IT. I am there­fore very excited to hear about the com­ing ‘Tales Designed To Thrizzle #6′.

Head over to the Fan­tagraph­ics site to read a four-page excerpt. Fant­astic stuff.

The fab­ulous War­wick John­son Cad­well posts up his story ‘Gungle Hunt’ that you can read here.

The equally fant­astic Joe List posts up his strip from this year’s Uk Web & Minico­mix Thing antho­logy here. Happy reading!

Although it is only an exert, read through Thomas Wellmann’s excel­lent Der Zie­gensauger.

If you have any other sug­ges­tions for some free com­ics, get in touch and I’ll link ‘em up.

What The Cool have char­ac­ters from Charles Burns’ Black Hole in real life from pho­to­grapher Max Oppen­heimer and pros­thetic artist Bill Turpin. Urghh.