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My SDCC 2006 - Part Four
Yes, it's still only Friday afternoon. I know what you're thinking: How long can he go on with this?!. Don't worry. I was also at SDCC on Saturday, but I don't think all that much happened. Probably only a single entry. Friday was my big day and night.
So after the Drawn & Quarterly booth, I took a few more steps over to Buenaventura, which had the must-buy eighth issue of Comic Art, now more an annual trade paperback than a magazine. It comes with a tiny book by Seth called 40 Cartoon Books of Interest that is just wonderful--and kudos to Christopher Butcher and his The Beguiling boss Peter Birkemoe for helping with the scanning of the books in question. I want to review this very soon, so I won't say more about it here, but about Comic Art, I have to say that any true comics enthusiast should be snatching it up.
At the booth, I also picked up the latest Kramers Ergot, another pretty essential book, as well as the most recent King-Cat Comics & Stories, Dan Zettwoch's Ironclad, Tom Gauld's Guardians of the Kingdom, and my first Souther Salazar book, Destined for Dizziness, which is very cute and appropriate for children but I have no idea how representative it is of his body of work. There was also a dvd of animation by Paper-Rad which looked pretty cool but I was already dropping over $100 here (I bought an extra Comic Art for a pal).
Right next to their booth was one I'm not even sure the name of, but I bought a $40 Jordan Crane print I found utterly haunting and wonderful. It was a guy walking away from a telephone call box by the road (it was in the foreground), not noticing waves of ghosts following him like a school of fish). It resonates even more if you've read the second story (part 1 of "Keeping Two") in Crane's new ongoing series, Uptight, though it's not explicitly related. In fact, most of the Crane prints available at this booth (there were other artists as well, but he dominated) were rather morbid: a woman engulged in flame, a hand putting out a cigarette on the opposite arm, but there was a wonderful street life triptych for $150 (you had to buy the set) that culminated in a couple squatting together on the sidewalk, kissing. I'm moving into my condo at the end of September, and to me, it's very hard to find comics art I think is good enough (and not too violent, scary or sexy, as I have kids) to hang up on the wall. You can see the ghost print in the upper left, the cigarette hands next to it, and part of the earth-toned triptych below that, courtesy of Kevin Church.
Crane had somehow not signed my print, but quite luckily, he was signing at the Fantagraphics booth right when I bought it, so it was easily accomplished. He said that "Keeping Two" is planned to take eight issues, at which point I would assume it will be collected, and on nicer paper, though I love that you can have such a fine piece of altcomix for only $2.50 these days. Crane's a nice guy and really seems to have a twinkle in his eye, which isn't something I say about anyone. Anyone who isn't drunk, I mean.
Around this time I hooked up for a second time, and a longer chat, with comics writer and writer about comics Matt Maxwell, who's done a swell job with his own SDCC coverage. Matt has more of a Speakeasy horror story than me, as I'm only out one script and an outline of something I could pretty easily rework elsewhere. An early plan for my annual posse was to meet up by the Boom! Studios booth periodically, but seeing as how Adam Fortier was working that booth, I really never went there. Again, no real hard feelings on my part, but I just didn't feel like dealing with it. I considered getting Yoshitaka Amano's Hero book there (originally intended for Speakeasy), but I'm not a huge fan and can always get it elsewhere if I want.
I'm almost to the Eisners, which will be a separate post, so let me just throw in this Dan DiDio anecdote from a first person source who shall remain nameless. This source, a writer of a licensed, action-heavy comic from a non-DC/non-Marvel publisher, was introduced to DiDio by a mutual acquaintance. DiDio shakes his hand asks, "What do you write?" The writer tells him the title of the book, and DiDio says, "I'm sorry," and walks away, an utter prick. I mean, the writer isn't doing porn or anything; it's a well-known book of the sort that could easily lead to work for DC. And fans fret about how DiDio treats fictional characters.
Still to come: Most of the stuff I said was to come in this installment...the Miller pimp hat, the morbidly obese cartoonist, Dean Haglund and Bill Morrison and parmesan and the Rob Liefeld superhero horse joke.
So after the Drawn & Quarterly booth, I took a few more steps over to Buenaventura, which had the must-buy eighth issue of Comic Art, now more an annual trade paperback than a magazine. It comes with a tiny book by Seth called 40 Cartoon Books of Interest that is just wonderful--and kudos to Christopher Butcher and his The Beguiling boss Peter Birkemoe for helping with the scanning of the books in question. I want to review this very soon, so I won't say more about it here, but about Comic Art, I have to say that any true comics enthusiast should be snatching it up.
At the booth, I also picked up the latest Kramers Ergot, another pretty essential book, as well as the most recent King-Cat Comics & Stories, Dan Zettwoch's Ironclad, Tom Gauld's Guardians of the Kingdom, and my first Souther Salazar book, Destined for Dizziness, which is very cute and appropriate for children but I have no idea how representative it is of his body of work. There was also a dvd of animation by Paper-Rad which looked pretty cool but I was already dropping over $100 here (I bought an extra Comic Art for a pal).
Right next to their booth was one I'm not even sure the name of, but I bought a $40 Jordan Crane print I found utterly haunting and wonderful. It was a guy walking away from a telephone call box by the road (it was in the foreground), not noticing waves of ghosts following him like a school of fish). It resonates even more if you've read the second story (part 1 of "Keeping Two") in Crane's new ongoing series, Uptight, though it's not explicitly related. In fact, most of the Crane prints available at this booth (there were other artists as well, but he dominated) were rather morbid: a woman engulged in flame, a hand putting out a cigarette on the opposite arm, but there was a wonderful street life triptych for $150 (you had to buy the set) that culminated in a couple squatting together on the sidewalk, kissing. I'm moving into my condo at the end of September, and to me, it's very hard to find comics art I think is good enough (and not too violent, scary or sexy, as I have kids) to hang up on the wall. You can see the ghost print in the upper left, the cigarette hands next to it, and part of the earth-toned triptych below that, courtesy of Kevin Church.
Crane had somehow not signed my print, but quite luckily, he was signing at the Fantagraphics booth right when I bought it, so it was easily accomplished. He said that "Keeping Two" is planned to take eight issues, at which point I would assume it will be collected, and on nicer paper, though I love that you can have such a fine piece of altcomix for only $2.50 these days. Crane's a nice guy and really seems to have a twinkle in his eye, which isn't something I say about anyone. Anyone who isn't drunk, I mean.
Around this time I hooked up for a second time, and a longer chat, with comics writer and writer about comics Matt Maxwell, who's done a swell job with his own SDCC coverage. Matt has more of a Speakeasy horror story than me, as I'm only out one script and an outline of something I could pretty easily rework elsewhere. An early plan for my annual posse was to meet up by the Boom! Studios booth periodically, but seeing as how Adam Fortier was working that booth, I really never went there. Again, no real hard feelings on my part, but I just didn't feel like dealing with it. I considered getting Yoshitaka Amano's Hero book there (originally intended for Speakeasy), but I'm not a huge fan and can always get it elsewhere if I want.
I'm almost to the Eisners, which will be a separate post, so let me just throw in this Dan DiDio anecdote from a first person source who shall remain nameless. This source, a writer of a licensed, action-heavy comic from a non-DC/non-Marvel publisher, was introduced to DiDio by a mutual acquaintance. DiDio shakes his hand asks, "What do you write?" The writer tells him the title of the book, and DiDio says, "I'm sorry," and walks away, an utter prick. I mean, the writer isn't doing porn or anything; it's a well-known book of the sort that could easily lead to work for DC. And fans fret about how DiDio treats fictional characters.
Still to come: Most of the stuff I said was to come in this installment...the Miller pimp hat, the morbidly obese cartoonist, Dean Haglund and Bill Morrison and parmesan and the Rob Liefeld superhero horse joke.
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