Mza’s Comments (group member since Jul 18, 2011)

Mza’s comments from the The Truth about Comix group.

picturebox called it quits;

http://www.pictureboxinc.com/blogs/pb...

Fanta raised over 200K for its Fall 2013 releases;

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/f...

it looks as if crowdfunding's th dominant model for comix publishers now

--mza.

for th good of all comix let's hope this gets funded, too:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1...

--mza.

ain't read his work, thks, ah'll check Ryuguden out

--mza.

persimmon Cup is some of that easygoing psychedelia that people find irresistible. There's no other project out there I'd rather see funded:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1...

--mza.

“You have to think that every comic book is made by someone who has the personality to sit alone and make a comic, just like every movie is made by someone who has the personality that they can walk into a room and get a lot of people to do things for them.”


http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs...

--mza.

story about how the half-breed Filipino Kirk Hammett came to be in temporary possession of the complete X-Men #1 original art by Jack Kirby:

http://originalcomicartlocator.blogsp...

-- a reminder that the skill set of successful businessmen and the skill set of successful artists rarely overlap in an individual ...

--mza.

deforge's generation of cartoonists might be the last to prefer print to web, consumption-wise:

I plan to keep designing comics for print. I guess the future of all that looks pretty grim, but it's the medium I prefer, and I can't imagine ever stopping unless all the photocopy shops in my city burn down, or the cost of Risograph ink quadruples or something. I mostly put web stuff up because it's the easiest way to spread my stuff out there, and I know other people like to take things in that way. I don't actually enjoy reading comics online myself, though. If I know a print version of a web strip is coming, I'll almost always wait for that. I have a hard time focusing on my screen when I'm reading.

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by...

On the other hand, perhaps everyone still loves print; it's just that they love reading comix for free more

--mza.

r.I.P. Carmine Infantino

"... the luscious Sergio Aragones/Nick Cardy Bat Lash and the active recruitment of Filipino artists among his most important, lesser-known efforts."

http://www.tcj.com/well-well/

--mza.

this 19-page story, published as a mini-komik some years back, was my introduction to Eleanor Davis, who's one of th most distinctive drawers of bodies in comix:

http://doing-fine.com/?p=153

There's no BIG book of her work yet, but there probably isn't another cartoonist not named Michael Deforge whose "debut" is more eagerly awaited by other cartoonists

--mza.

jim Rugg has a v. good post on his site about differences between digital and print colour, specifically the difference between the print and digital versions of Mike Mignola's Hellboy in Hell #1:

The function of print has changed dramatically in the last decade. I speak to many people who produce or want to produce printed editions because they are stuck in a 20th century mindset when print was a commercial or mass medium. A printed edition represents a certain validation or sense of a “real” object. This desire often supersedes any consideration of the nuance of printing as part of the creative process or for its expressive possibilities ...

Media guru Marshall McLuhan suggests that when a medium is no longer considered mass media, it needs to redefine itself or it becomes obsolete. I heard Art Spiegelman apply this notion to comics as “Comics now either will probably become an art form or disappear.”

http://jimrugg.com/?p=290

--mza.

a farewell to Cul de Sac by th guy who helped Richard Thompson try to keep th strip alive these past few months:

"I never felt inking Cul de Sac for Richard worked. It was like going into a theater to see Jerry Seinfeld do stand-up and watching Steve Martin deliver his lines."

Odd choice of comedians, but you get th picture

http://stacycurtis.blogspot.com/2012/...

--mza.

rest in peace, Joe:

"... comic books is rather singular in that it allows you to take chances. It allows you to make mistakes. In a 16-page story, all of it doesn’t have to be perfect. You can really go out on a limb and take chances. And, sometimes, those chances work great! And that makes you feel good. If it fails, fine. The majority of the effort does work OK. So it encourages you to take more chances ..."

http://www.tcj.com/allowances/

--mza.

ay yo if you like Gary Panter you will probably never find a better deal than this: two big slipcased hardcovers that were selling for $95, now $12.98

...... don't even wanna know what corporate shenanigans result in a discount like dat

http://bit.ly/SSxuM8

--mza.

this means if you have a tablet, and you hate paper comix, and the only reason you still read paper comix @ all is that that's the only way to read Love & Rockets , you win:

http://www.comicsreporter.com/index.p...

--mza.

"One of the interesting things about reading current comics is the truly international reach that small press artists now have. Thanks in large part to the internet, artists have a chance at reaching audiences from across the globe. It’s not just the web, however—in what seems like a fulfillment of Dylan Horrocks’s Hicksville , minicomics and handsome books are appearing from countries not necessarily known for their alt-comics scenes. In this column, I’ll be looking at comics by cartoonists from Poland, Latvia, England, Ireland, the Netherlands, and Turkey. (I’m still waiting for the Mongolian mini-comics mentioned in Hicksville to show up on my doorstep.)" -- ROB CLOUGH

pretty sure th pseudonymous asshole Santoro's talking about here is Paul Pope:

"Once upon a time in the 1990s there was a young man who started making very interesting comic books. He published them himself and then went on to fame and fortune. The big time. Along the way, he acted like a rockstar and stepped on the little people who helped get him there and lost many of his original fans because of his attitude. He stopped being a force of change long ago. Now he is stepping on the little guys again by falling in line with corporate culture – towing the party line by participating in the crass exploitation of one of the great works in comics that is rolling out as we speak."

If you're gonna read it, I'd say read it now before it gets deleted

--mza.

hey Yokoyama fans, here's an interview w/ the bro from back in November:

http://www.comicsalliance.com/2011/11...

His answers are terse and not terribly informative, but they were amusing to me in that they sound exactly like the English translations of the dialogue in his comix. The one big takeaway is that the guy has never been into comix of any kind -- neither Japanese nor American nor other countries'. Either that or he's taking the piss

--mza.

"Yes I collaborate in the foundation of Metal Hurlant with my ideas and revolutionary texts like 'The sexual life of Superman' where I was describing the Superman ejaculations so strong that the sperm going through the woman vagina, the whole body, the head and went away exploding the head and destroying a skyscraper."

"Yes, to make a comic it is a paradise. Evidently if you admire the drawing artist. You don’t have a greedy producer on your back. And you can invent without economical limits everything you want. If you want 10000 cosmic spaceships, it doesn’t cost more money than drawing a horse."

-- Jodorowsky

rare debate on feminism that actually goes somewhere useful, in comix form:

http://amrutapatil.blogspot.com/2011/...

--mza.