Ragged Claws Network

I’m a bit late to the party, but knocking about on the Web this morning I happily discovered that on October 2nd, 2009, the Directors of Spectrum, an annual showcase of “The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art,” announced that Richard Corben would receive the Spectrum’s 2009 Grand Master Award. Previous recipients of the award include Frank Frazetta, Don Ivan Punchatz, Leo and Diane Dillon, James E. Bama, John Berkey, Alan Lee, Jean Giraud, Kinuko Y. Craft, Michael William Kaluta, Michael Whelan, H.R. Giger, Jeffrey Jones, Syd Mead, and John Jude Palencar. A biography and full appreciation of Corben appears in Spectrum 16, on sale now. Congratulations, Richard!

BONUS LINK:

Book Review: Spectrum 16: The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art

Here’s a book I never expected to see reprinted. It’s Barron Storey’s The Marat/Sade Journals, a visual diary that uses the play Marat/Sade by Peter Weiss as the jumping off point for a raw, painterly exploration of the deep despair of “an ageing artist” forced to deal with the end of a romantic relationship. The book was first published in 1993 by Tundra Publishing and limited to 1,000 copies, and the price of a good, used copy has since climbed into the hundreds of dollars in the collector’s market. The new edition by Graphic Novel Art, re-edited by the artist — 80% of the art has been re-scanned from the originals — with an introduction by David Mack, a new drawing by Dave McKean, and an afterword by Storey himself, is printed on silk-varnished 140gr paper and includes a sewn binding (rather than the glued binding of the first edition) to make the book feel more like one of Storey’s actual journals.

DETAILS:

Barron Storey: The Marat/Sade Journals
132 pages
6.4″ x 9.4″ x 0.8″
Full colour

PURCHASE LINKS:

Buy Barron Storey: The Marat/Sade Journals from the publisher on ebay

Buy Barron Storey: The Marat/Sade Journals from Gallery Nucleus

Buy Barron Storey: Life after Black (the sequel to The Marat/Sade Journals) from the publisher on ebay

[N.B.: I receive no money at all from the sale of this book, which I ordered for my personal library just yesterday; my recommendation is free.]

BONUS LINKS:

Barron Storey: The Journals — follow the progress of Storey’s latest journal pages on blogspot.

Paint it Black: Carl Wyckaert on Barron Storey’s Life After Black — an interview with Barron Storey’s publisher, the owner of Graphic Novel Art, based in Belgium.

Review of Barron Storey: Life after Black

As advertised on the Corben Studios Web site, Odds and Ends is to be a 32-page, black-and-white collection of unfinished, cancelled, and abandoned projects as well as works in progress, including the second chapter of From the Pit, book and CD covers, and more. No specific release date has been announced, but if this little project does eventually come to fruition, it will be the first publication from Corben’s own Fantagor Press that we’ve seen in a long time.

DODGEM LOGIC: Colliding ideas to see what happens.

Forty years after the uproarious heyday of the alternative press, writer Alan Moore is launching the 21st century’s first underground magazine from his home town of Northampton, a community that is right at the geographical, political and economic heart of the country; one which has half its high street boarded up and is at present dying on its arse, just like everywhere else.

Drawing upon an overlooked and energetic pool of local talent as well as numerous friends and co-conspirators from comic books, the arts or entertainment, Dodgem Logic sets out to provide a splash of subterranean exotica in a bleached-out cultural and social landscape. Published every other month by counter-culture veterans KNOCKABOUT, Dodgem Logic is a forty page full-colour spectacle that, in addition, has an eight-page local section in each issue, thus inviting other areas to publish regional editions by providing their own inserts.

As cheap and beautiful as a heartbreaking teenage prostitute, Dodgem Logic has a cover price of £2.50, with its content similarly tailored to the fiscal toilet-bowl that we are currently engaged in sliding down. Regular columnists provide delicious, inexpensive recipes, wide-ranging medical advice, simple instructions for creating stylish clothing and accessories from next to nothing, guides to growing your own dinner by becoming a guerrilla gardener, and, in the first of Dave (The Self-Sufficient-ish Bible) Hamilton’s environmental columns, a bold experiment in living with no money. The same approach to helping readers deal with socio-economic meltdown and a blitz of repossessions is there in upcoming features on the present-day resurgence of the squatters’ movement, or in our communiqués from the Steampunk/ Post-Civilisation gang on how to start rebuilding culture and society before those things have broken down completely and our children are reduced to battering each other to a bloody pulp with their now-useless X-Boxes in a dispute over the last tub of pot noodles.

Not only seeking to give practical advice on getting through a rough stretch, Dodgem Logic is also committed to alleviating the attendant sense of anguish and despair by brightening the world with the astonishing cartoon-work of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen’s sublime Kevin O’Neill or that of underground legend Savage Pencil; the musings of Father Ted, The IT Crowd and Black Book’s own Graham Linehan or of the nation’s sweetheart, the implacably positive Josie Long; even a delirious commemoration of the lunar landing’s anniversary by the masterful Steve Aylett. In addition to a variously-hosted women’s column launched by Lost Girls co-creator and erstwhile underground cartoon artist Melinda Gebbie, Mr. Moore will himself be contributing a lead feature on the history of underground subversive publishing from its origins in the thirteenth century, along with various illustrations and words of advice. All these and many other sterling features, including a free CD of magnificent home-grown Northampton music over fifty years, will be contained in the historic premiere issue, sporting an hallucinatory front cover by digital artist Tamara Rogers and debuting this November. Wake up and smell the fairground ozone! No ramming!

1. Genius, Isolated: The Life & Art Of Alex Toth
By Dean Mullaney and Bruce Canwell
IDW Publishing
Release Date: Fall 2010

In an interview at Westfield Comics Blog, Bruce Canwell says:

Almost exactly a year from now, we’re presenting Genius, Isolated: The Life & Art Of Alex Toth. Dean Mullaney and I are writing this together — Dean knew Alex, and back in the days of Eclipse Comics, he reprinted Toth’s much-beloved Zorro comics from the late 1950s/early ’60s. Most folks know about Toth from his work for Hanna-Barbera, where he created the look of Space Ghost, The Herculoids, and many other Saturday morning heroes. We’re working with Alex’s estate, as well as his many friends and fans, to create an in-depth biography that will be accompanied by plenty of rare images, plus a section that will reprint several complete Toth stories. Big companies are being very generous in allowing us to reprint Alex’s stories from their backlist, while individual collectors are giving us total access to their many Tothian treasures. Our goal is to make Genius, Isolated a fitting bookend to our 2008 Scorchy Smith and the Art of Noel Sickles (currently nominated for two Harvey Awards). Since Toth was the biggest Sickles fan ever, we like to think Alex would approve of that goal!

Even if Alex wouldn’t approve, I certainly do!

[Cover Unavailable]

2. Setting the Standard: Alex Toth at Standard Comics 1952-54
Edited by Greg Sadowski
Fantagraphics Books
Release Date: Fall 2010

“It’s hard to overstate the influence of Alex Toth on the art of comic books,” says Sadowski. “Toth was from that first generation who grew up reading comic books, and he came to the medium armed with enough discipline, talent, and sheer love and respect for the medium to create a technique free of condescension, artifice, or shortcuts. His work at Standard first established him as the ‘comic book artist’s artist.’” Learning his craft at Eastern and DC, Alex Toth arrived at Standard Comics in late 1951 with a fully formed, graphically impeccable technique perfectly suited to the comic book medium – honest, uncompromising, and free of condescension and artifice. Includes a biographical sketch and an essay on Toth’s approach to comic book storytelling, based heavily on his interviews and written correspondence.

Woo-hoo! Just in time for Christmas… next year…

BONUS LINKS:

Black and White Wednesday: Gerry Boudreau and Alex Toth’s “The Phantom of Pleasure Island”

Opinions by Alex Toth

If you are like me, and bought all of the softcover volumes of The Complete Crumb Comics, you will want about four of these:

From the Fantagraphics catalogue:

WAREHOUSE FIND! These handsome, sturdy clothbound slipcases are designed to hold 5 volumes of the softcover editions of The Complete Crumb Comics series. (Note: Hardcover volumes will not fit.) They are stamped in gold with a Crumb logo and art on the front and spine. Books not included. Supplies are limited, so order today!

I placed my order yesterday. How about you?

Courtesy of Tor.com, an original graphic story by a talented young artist, Ms. Wesley Allsbrook:

I had pretty much the same feeling reading this piece as I had when I first read Jillian Tamaki’s City of Champions mini-comic and the shorter “comic book” edition of Skim a few years ago, i.e., this is someone to watch!

P.S. If you buy the superb Skim graphic novel from this Amazon.com link, you’ll be doing yourself a favour and Jillian herself will receive a little extra in her Amazon Associates account!

Bonus Links:

Wesley Allsbrook Illustration

Wesley’s Wallsblog

Fresh Paint: Wesley Allsbrook (interview)

Volume 1 (of 2) of the collected Journey by William Messner-Loebs is available for pre-order at an online bookstore near you. Here’s the cover:

From the publisher: “A realistic and absorbing account of life in the 19th century frontier wilderness finds Wolverine McAlistaire enduring tornadoes, Indians and even the walking dead, all in Messner-Loebs’ unique neo-Eisnerian style. A classic adventure series from Eisner nominee William Messner-Loebs, Journey introduced the world to Joshua ‘Wolverine’ McAlistaire and the Fort Miami settlement populated by both real-life and fictional characters. Now, IDW is re-presenting this acclaimed work in two comprehensive volumes, the first of which collects issues #1-13.”

I would post my own comment on Journey, but it has been a long, long time since I read the comics, which were originally published first by Aardvark-Vanaheim, then by Renegade Press, and finally by Fantagraphics Books, and I simply can’t be bothered to dig them out of storage (I do own them). Anyway, suffice to say, I have fond memories of Messner-Loebs’ work — if memory serves, the series opened with a virtuoso first issue that consisted entirely of Wolverine McAlistaire being chased by a bear — and I look forward to owning the collections, which I know from experience will be so much easier to store and read than the original comics.

Here’s how the publisher describes this forthcoming book: “Noel Sickles drew comics for three brief years, yet his groundbreaking work on the 1930s aviation adventure series Scorchy Smith is a milestone in the history of newspaper comic strips. Over the past 70 years, however, readers have seen only occasional excerpts of this seminal work. Now, IDW’s Library of American Comics presents Scorchy Smith and the Art of Noel Sickles, a comprehensive, oversized volume that collects, for the first time, every Sickles Scorchy strip, from December 1933 through November 1936.”

That’s over 300 pages of some of the most beautifully drawn adventure strips ever created. Although Sickles wasn’t in comic strips anywhere near long enough to become a household name — after he left Scorchy Smith, he spent the next forty years in magazine illustration and (later in life) Western painting — he has long been revered among the small group of aficionados who know their comic-strip history as an “artist’s artist,” i.e., an artist whose work other artists — greats like Milton Caniff, Alex Toth, John Romita, and Frank Robbins, as well as scores of other, lesser lights — have looked to for inspiration, instruction… and swipes! Marvel stalwart John Romita has remarked that, during the 1950s, when he was in his 20s, “the whole industry was copying from photostats of the Scorchy Smith dailies by Noel Sickles.” And now, with the publication of this book, you have an opportunity to see what all the fuss was about.

Bonus Links:

Leif Peng’s Noel Sickles Flickr Set

Scorchy Smith and the Art of Noel Sickles by Leif Peng, Today’s Inspiration – introducing a week devoted to the art of Noel Sickles, with highlights from the new book.

Noel Sickles: Early Years by Leif Peng

Noel Sickles and the Art of War by Leif Peng

Alex Toth on Noel Sickles by Leif Peng

Noel Sickles: an “inquisitive, restless genius” by Leif Peng

Noel Sickles: Interviewed by Gil Kane, Ron Goulart and Dick Hodgins – excerpted from The Comics Journal #242

Two books, actually: Strength Training Anatomy (2nd ed.) and Women’s Strength Training Anatomy. Both are written and illustrated by Frédéric Delavier, and both have received terrific reviews from people involved in fitness and strength training. Now, although I myself am not terribly interested in strength training, I am interested in artistic anatomy, and I have to say, I am very impressed with the crystal clarity and precision of Delavier’s anatomical drawings as well as with the variety of poses on view. No, they’re not “classic studio poses,” but that, to me, is a good thing, as classic studio poses, which were typically designed to be held comfortably for long periods of time by live models, tend to convey little if anything in the way of dynamic movement or muscular tension. (Also, they have simply been done to death.) Although I would have preferred if Delavier had not drawn so many of his models with socks and running shoes on, thereby obscuring the connections between the lower leg and the foot, that’s a small caveat since Delavier not only has kept the socks mercifully short but also has, I think, provided enough drawings of figures without shoes for moderately intrepid artists to figure that bit out for themselves where need be. And, anyway, in my experience, there is no single, perfect, one-size-fits-all text on artistic anatomy; there are only various more or less enlightening/frustrating volumes, and these two, IMHO, are more enlightening–and less frustrating–than most of those written specifically for artists.