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 October 10, 2006
COMIC BOOK BRAIN PREVIEW
IT'S SUPERMAN! By Tom De Haven
Ballantine Books 2006
Copyright DC Comics 2005
 I have always had difficulty mustering much attention toward the one perennial superhero that probably supercedes every other the world over: Superman. If you spend much time with hero comics, you can't much help but be aware of the broad outlines of the Superman story, and the idea that one could write a novel (no pictures!) that made any of that interesting seems a hard task indeed. De Haven writes well and with wit and an ambition to make the 1930s real to the reader, there are nice period touches that bring together a sense of an era. Beyond that De Haven also rounds out the cast of mainline Superman characters with enough backstory to have one foot in the comic book stories that are familiar and one foot in a particular novelist's telling of how a superhuman being interacts with American society. I have not quite finished the book, but I have not read a better written Superman story anywhere else, aside from the sheer pulpy power of the original Shuster and Siegel stories. Amazon has the hardback and the August 2006 paperback available at Amazon Purchase
September 30, 2006
COMIC BOOK BRAIN
Frank Robbins 1917 - 1994
 My page on Frank Robbins over at Art and Artifice has been updated with two pages from The Shadow #8 (DC Comics 1975). At the time, Robbins was two years from the end of his run on the comic strip he originated in 1944 called Johnny Hazard, and was producing pages for DC's mystery books. He had also had a long run writing and occasionally drawing pages for DC's Detective Comics. In a few years after the Shadow books, though, Robbins would be working for Marvel (i.e., The Invaders).
Robbin's drawing and inking have been a long fascination for comic book artists that particularly value brush work, and in Robbin's dynamic blacking and sense of quirky action there is something more than a Milton Caniff knock-off (the artist for whom Robbin's has often been connected) but instead a weird balance between juvenile action and a dark, noir sense of lighting. Robbin's used a great deal of "light subtraction" to heighten the forms in his stories, particularly in emphasizing some dramatic point. But even more unique are the "silent" panels Robbin's drew, where there is no dialogue, no narration, and no action, but a still image that fixes a point like a painting (for example, the first panel on page 17 from The Shadow #7, DC Comics 1974).
September 21, 2006
COMIC BOOK BRAIN
Your Art Are Belong To Us
This at the New York Times Art page (this and the item below spotted at Tom Spurgeon's Comic Reporter site):
Return of Auschwitz Art Sought
More than 450 artists sent a letter yesterday to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum in Poland demanding the release of seven paintings created by a California woman during her imprisonment there in 1944. “The fundamental principle that art belongs to the artist who create it is recognized everywhere except totalitarian countries,” said the letter, signed by Stan Lee, the creator of Spider-Man; Lynn Johnston, the cartoonist of the “For Better or For Worse” comic strip; and the Pulitzer Prize winners Art Spiegelman and Michael Chabon, among others. “One would hope that Poland, having been liberated from totalitarian rule, would not revert to the mentality that regards everything as the property of the state.” Museum officials have refused for more than 30 years to return the artwork to Dina Gottliebova Babbitt, 83, of Felton, Calif., a retired Hollywood animator. Mrs. Babbitt was unaware that her paintings had survived until the museum contacted her to authenticate them in 1973. Museum officials said last month that the paintings’ historical significance as Holocaust documentation was more important than Mrs. Babbitt’s claims of property rights.
ALSO:
Miriam Katin's graphic novel about she and her mother Esther's journey during WWII from Nazi occupation in Budapest, Hungary. We Are On Our Own is a diary of the struggle to escape the mass murder of the Jews in Europe. Review at Ha'aretz.com. (You can see the amazon.com page for the book here). It's interesting to note in the article at Ha'aretz how the author had no expeience with comic books, but after seeing Art Spiegelman's MAUS was able to see a way to tell the stories she wanted told, and because she could draw found a way to bypass the organizational problems of creating a written book. I think this says something about the innate ability of the comic book medium that seems obvious and simple to the visually and story minded - - not that it doesn't require a great deal of labor, but that the "how" is evident right in the medium itself.
September 13, 2006
COMIC BOOK BRAIN
"Hero Stamps"
 The United States Postal Service has released a new sheet of 39 cent "super hero" stamps, all DC comic characters (the bottom of the sheet says 'volume 1').  It's half "classic" covers and the other half hero portraits, with art by Jim Lee, Jim Aparo, and others. Over ten years ago the USPS released some comic book stamps - - on the side I have the 32 cent Superman stamp (click to enlarge). The penetration of comic book iconography into mainstream American society is probably no more obvious than in the issue of a postage stamp.
(One of the stamps from the 39 cent sheet I've got here features a Jim Aparo Aquaman image. I have a page on Jim Aparo and with the stamp (all by itself) here.
GO TO ARCHIVE PAGE 6
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