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The strange case of Michael Moorcock and Grant Morrison

Gideon Stargrave michael moorcock and grant morrisonThis link is to an epic response from Grant Morrison to Alan Moore, but I’m mostly interested in the part regarding Michael Moorcock.

I don’t dabble much in creator drama (and I find the Moore vs. Everyone drama especially droll), so I didn’t actually know Moorcock had such disdain for Morrison. It shocks me because if it wasn’t for Morrison I likely never would have picked up a book featuring Moorcock’s character Jerry Cornelius. Since Morrison led me to discover Cornelius I’ve read every single Moorcock story (as far as I know) that features the character. The devouring of those stories led me to Dancers at the End of Time which in turn resulted in digging deeper into Moorcock’s work including Elric, Corum, and more (even works like Fireclown and Gloriana). Likewise, I came to Jorge Luis Borges due to that author’s influence on Morrison’s Doom Patrol.

Reading Moorcock’s 2004 thread, where he continues to hold a grudge 25 years after 17-year-old Morrison first used Gideon Stargrave, it sounds like Morrison had spent the last two decades trying to hide the tribute he was paying to the author in his work. I don’t personally think that was the case as Morrison wasn’t shy in mid-90s interviews or the letters section of The Invisibles to mention how he was inspired by both Moorcock and J.G. Ballard in his youth (the latter he’s cited as being the larger influence on both Gideon Stargrave and King Mob). Moorcock seems to be fixated on the character of Gideon Stargrave while missing the more relevant influence of Cornelius on aspects of the character of King Mob.

Reading works by creators like Morrison is enhanced by figuring out how different pieces of the larger puzzle were informed. In many ways, it’s like dismantling the samples in a Beastie Boys album and visiting the source material. Kurtis Blow has often joked about how he could have sued the Beastie Boys for clipping his song “Party Time” in “Hey Ladies,” but instead accepts the sample with pride, because it’s led new listeners to his work.

I’m a fan of Moorcock because Morrison shared his exuberance for the character of Jerry Cornelius with Gideon Stargrave. Instead of being petty and spiteful Moorcock should instead be thanking creators like Morrison for keeping his legacy alive instead of collecting dust in the poorly organized sci-fi section of a used bookstore.

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Doctor Lollipop debuts on Cartoon Hangover

Doctor LollipopWhat happens when a raptor finds his way to the Fancy Forest and gets rumblies in his tumblies due to eating too many talking animals? He calls on the medical expertise of unicorn physician Doctor Lollipop, of course.

Doctor Lollipop is the creation of San Francisco’s Miss Kelly Martin.  On Thursday, Martin’s independently published and distributed comic made the leap to short animated film with it’s debut episode on Cartoon Hangover. Readers of Martin’s two issue comic will see some familiar faces in the first episode including Nurse Crackers the rabbit and surgical intern Rococo the raccoon (who has a chainsaw). The cartoon also introduces the “crazy handsome” Doctor Woodsman who Doctor Lollipop is forced to rely upon due to hooves not being “fashioned for the type of incision work needed.”

The second issue of Doctor Lollipop is available at Martin’s store envy shop.

Fun fact: Doctor Lollipop is voiced by Chris Diamantopoulos who recently played ostrich farmer Marky Bark in the fourth season of Arrested Development.

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Sarah Clark brings baseball to the Cartoon Art Museum

Panel from Sarah Clark's "Season Ticket Diaries"

Panel from Sarah Clark’s “Season Ticket Diaries”

At the start of this year’s baseball season Oakland-based illustrator Sarah Clark found herself with season tickets to the A’s. Seeing so many games in her future she decided to document her summer of baseball through short comic strips called “Season Ticket Diaries.” She’s currently up to her 18th game of the season which documents the August 4 showdown with the Texas Rangers. Clark has been tapped to be the next “Cartoonist-in-Residence” at the Comic Art Museum on September 21. Visitors to the museum will be able to view her illustrations, watch her work, and ask questions. She’ll be at the museum between 1 p.m. and 3 p.m., which also happens to be the same time the A’s will be playing the Minnesota Twins. Be sure to thank her for choosing to spend part of her day at the museum instead of at the ball park.

More information on Sarah Clark is available at sarahclarkart.net. You can follow her on Twitter @sjeanetteclark.

Comic Art Museum
655 Mission St.
San Francisco, CA 94105
415-CAR-TOON
Website: www.cartoonart.org
Twitter: @cartoonart
Facebook: cartoonartmuseum

APE 2013 exhibitor list now available

Alternative Press ExpoBadges officially went on sale for the Alternative Press Expo on Tuesday and this morning the exhibitors list was released. The Alternative Press Expo enters it’s 20th year of staying true to its mission of being focused on truly independent creators and publishers. This will be the last year for APE at the San Francisco Concourse Exhibition Center, a venue it’s called home since 2004, due to plans to raze the building. It’s not yet known if APE will remain in San Francisco in 2014. Special guests this year include Bill Griffith, Diane Noomin, Raina Telgemeier, and Dan Vado. More than 400 exhibitors are expected on the floor this year with a complete list available here. Over the two days of APE more than 5000 attendees are expected to meander through the aisles, watch panelists, and attend workshops. Additional programming and workshops are expected to be unveiled in the coming days.

If purchased in advance badges are $10 per day or $15 for the full weekend. APE will be held October 12 and 13 starting at 11 a.m. each day.

Comics by the Bay: Treasure Island in “Station-to-Station”

Station to Station cover

Headlines in May revealing “alarming radiation levels” on Treasure Island make it the perfect candidate for spawning inter-dimensional kaiju to stomp all over San Francisco. That isn’t exactly the premise of the Dark Horse Comics one-shot Station to Station, but it would fit. The one-shot released on August 28 collects a three-part serial by Corinna Bechko and Gabriel Hardman that ran earlier this year in Dark Horse Presents. It features an experiment going terribly wrong at a secret lab on the Bay’s historic man-made island resulting in the appearance of dinosaurs, laser guns, and a massive tentacle monster. The issue is receiving rave reviews around the Internet.

Talking Comics writes: “Bechko and Hardman’s work reads like a classic episode of The Twilight Zone: mysterious, character-driven, and filled with shock-and-awe psychodrama.”

Bloody Disgusting writes: “The result is a story that moves with incredible pace, and a casual approach to creatures from alternate dimensions. It’s fun, original, and awesome on the eyes.”

Borg.com writes: ” Unlike a lot that comes out of Dark Horse Presents that have grown into ongoing series, Station to Station doesn’t need a series because it does what it needs in a single issue.”

Comic Booked writes: “Every page, every panel runs like pure poetry in the way that it comes together. There’s a full sense of composition and dynamics that crackles and bristles with energy.”

Performance: Cartoonist Jim Woodring with Beautiful Dreamers Trio

Ignatz and Harvey Award winner Jim Woodringfrank will be joining Bill Frissell’s Beautiful Dreamers jazz trio onstage at the SFJazz Center on September 14. Woodring, who is best known for his surrealist comic book Frank, will be creating illustrations live while the trio perform music from their self-titled debut.  In 2006, Woodring and Frissell collaborated on Probability Cloud which resulted in the duo being among the first to be honored as United States Artist Fellows. Woodring and Frissell will be taking part in two performances on September 14. The first is a Family Matinee at 2 p.m. which is intended to provide an all-ages accessible window into the world of jazz for an affordable ticket price. The full performance with Frissell’s Beautiful Dreamers and Woodring will be at 7:30 p.m.

More information on the Family Matinee can be found here.
More information on the Beautiful Dreamers performance with Woodring can be found here.

Image from Jim Woodring’s Congress of the Animals.

 

 

Berkeley’s Madefire releases IDW motion books

madefire-logoIDW comics are on the move. On August 28, the company launched a first wave of motion comics on Madefire’s Motion Books platform. The platform brings new life to comic titles by allowing for partial animation and the inclusion of audio. IDW kicked off their adventure into motion with Transformers, My Little Pony, and Star Trek. IDW issued the following press release:

One of the most-buzzed about announcements the week of the San Diego Comic-Con was Madefire’s partnerships with 3rd party publishers and bringing the Motion Book treatment to their top properties. That day has come for the award winning and top 4 comics publisher IDW as they bring a trio of their most-popular titles-My Little Pony, Star Trek, and Transformers-to Madefire’s groundbreaking experience on August 28th.

“It has been fantastic to see our properties come to life as Motion Books – with just the right amount of animation and audio, it has truly created a new experience,” stated Jeff Webber, IDW’s VP of Digital Publishing. “Additionally, the partnership with deviantART exposes our comics to an incredibly broad network of illustration fans.”

Madefire spent the last year perfecting the Motion Book with their own acclaimed content on iOS mobile devices and the web. Their web-reading partner is social network and creative powerhouse deviantART.com, and the Madefire app has been 5-star rated since launch, even landing on the App Store’s “Best of 2012” list.

“The move to digital reading is about more than just scanning in print – we are at the start of a new grammar for books,” said Ben Wolstenholme, CEO of Madefire. “We are pleased to welcome IDW’s comic book properties to help continue to evolve the medium of Motion Books.”

With more content debuting as Motion Books in the coming months there’s no better time to familiarize yourself with the new grammar of the future of storytelling!

The Berkeley-based company announced the app in June of 2012 with a new comic created by Dave Gibbons. The new title, Treatment, is written specifically to take advantage of the unique style of sequential storytelling made possible by Madefire.

The motion comics are also available through a partnership between Madefire and deviantART. By partnering with deviantART the company gains access to a large community of illustrators who may be interested in applying the motion comics publishing platform to their own work.

IDW will soon be joined on Madefire by BOOM! and Top Cow.

 

 

Comic event: Dirt Candy authors to speak at Omnivore Books

dirtcandyComics delight me to my core and cooking soothes my soul. So I loved Dirt Candy, a graphic novel that serves as both accessible cookbook and charming memoir, before I even owned it.

How brilliant of Chef Amanda Cohen, co-author Grady Hendrix, and artist Ryan Dunlavey to combine the two arts of cookery and comics! Illustrated recipes and techniques can be far more effective with images than in text alone—when Cohen explains how to easily smoke vegetables on my stovetop without fancy equipment, the set-up and technique feels within my grasp. And the apparent magic of a fast-moving chef’s knife translates perfectly to the bam!pow! excitement of a comic book layout. (I’m not alone in this belief—check out Anthony Bourdain’s graphic novel Get Jiro in which a sushi chef turns action hero.)

Dirt Candy made a zealot out of me. Not only was I on a mission to make my vegetables more interesting, I was a comics/cookery proselytizer. “The market is ripe for practical non-fiction in my comic shop!” I cried far and wide. “Let there be graphic novels for cocktails next! Try this spring pea flan I made!” Dirt Candy occupies such a tremendously unique niche that I fervently hope similar works follow.

Fans of good food (creative vegetable-based cuisine in particular) and good comics have the chance to hear Cohen and Hendrix talk on Sunday, Sept. 22 from 3-4pm at Omnivore Books in San Francisco. In her blog, Cohen calls it “the East Coast/West Coast Peace and Harmony Let’s Stop Hating Each Other And Eat Vegetables Instead Tour” and promises “I’ll be talking about cooking vegetables, eating vegetables, running a restaurant, graphic novels, why no one can find a line cook in Manhattan anymore, AND there will be free food for everyone.”

DC’s editorial department back in spotlight as Batwoman’s creators step down

Batwoman proposal from issue 17.

Batwoman proposal from issue 17.

Last night J. H. Williams III and W. Haden Blackman announced that they’re leaving Batwoman after 26 issues due to editorial interference that included being “prohibited from ever showing Kate and Maggie actually getting married.” Williams followed up the posting of his letter on Twitter with the comment “But must clarify- was never put to us as being anti-gay marriage.”

No one except those who were in the editorial board room knows if this decision was based on a company policy against DC’s LGBT characters getting hitched. It would seem odd in light of the company’s increasing comfort with prominent LGBT characters including Batwoman, Midnighter, Apollo, Sarah Rainmaker, Alysia Yeoh, and Alan Scott. What we do know is that DC erased every major character marriage — most notably the marriage between Superman and Lois Lane — when they relaunched the DC Universe in 2011. That suggests DC may have a policy to limit the marriage of title characters — no matter their sexual orientation. DC has never declared that limiting marriages is a policy.

No matter the justification for denying the marriage, the departure of Blackman and Williams once again brings negative attention to DC’s editorial department, who seem to have an increasing problem of not trusting some creators while putting too much faith in others.

The story Williams and Blackman have been telling is unique in the DC Universe, as they’ve had the freedom to tell it in a bubble without needing to shape their arcs around pesky multiple-title event storylines. Batwoman and Batman, Inc. were the only Bat-books given the luxury to sit out both “The Court of Owls” and “Death of the Family.” The result, free of crossover interruptions, is a complete story that can be read straight through from the first issue. Its lead character is also one of the best developed characters in the new 52. Read More »

Launch Party: Isotope to launch “East of West” trade with Nick Dragotta themed cocktails

Nick Dragotta's Death from "East of West"

Nick Dragotta’s Death from “East of West”

When 2013 comes to a close there’s little doubt Jonathan Hickman and Nick Dragotta’s East of West will be on many “best of” lists. There have been many versions of the age old Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse story, but what’s unfolding in East of West is unlike any that have come before. In only the first handful of issues Hickman and Dragotta laid the groundwork for a future Earth that’s rich with storytelling possibilities. The title smashes genre barriers and becomes at once original and familiar. While at the core is a sci-fi western, a reader may taste a bit of Alphaville on one page, but three pages later the flavor of Lady Snowblood.

The title will see its first trade paperback hit the shelves later this month. To celebrate, Isotope has invited Dragotta for a launch party on September 21. Per Isotope tradition,  mixologist Kirsten Baldock will serve up thematic cocktails based on Dragotta’s work. The full announcement from Isotope is below:

Our favorite new series of 2013 is definitely the post-apocalyptic western EAST OF WEST and we couldn’t be more excited to get to celebrate the launch of the collection with the book’s amazing artist… Nick Dragotta!

Nick’s art has dazzled us for a few years now with mystic arts and high mutant weirdness on X-STATIX PRESENTS: DEAD GIRL (with Isotope favorite Peter Milligan), explored the uncomfortable underbelly of the Marvel Universe on VENGEANCE (with another IsoFave Joe Casey), dazzled our poor little minds on FF (with yet another favorite ’round these parts Jonathan Hickman), transported us back to yesteryear on CAPTAIN AMERICA: FOREVER ALLIES (with comics legend Roger Stern), and always always brings a smile to our faces with his awesome site HOWTOONS.

Come celebrate with us! Our beloved Kirsten Baldock is crafting up a palette-stunning cocktail list based on Nick’s work in honor of the evening. Mister Dragotta promises a sketchbook-filling Four Horsemen styled evening… and we’re hoping he’ll bring in some original art for us to buy as well!

Isotope Presents: Nick Dragotta
EAST OF WEST Vol. 1 Launch Party
Saturday, September 21st 2013
8pm – Midnight

Are you ready for the Post-Apocalypse Now? We are!