Josh Lesnick [thanks jwz]

The poster for the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art’s MoCCA Festival 2009 brought a smile to my face this morning, festooned as it is with sea creatures and dapper hats. Running from June 6-9 at the famous 69th Regiment Armory in New York — scant blocks from my alma mater — the festival features an impressive list of comic book heavy hitters including Seth, Gary Panter, Al Jaffee, Molly Crabapple, David Mazzuchelli, and Adrian Tomine. Passes are $10.00 a day or $15.00 for the entire weekend. Definitely worth a look.

MoCCA Festival 2009 [MoCCA] : Super Punch

A comic from 1952 detailing wasteful government spending.

Fantastic Fact! The government reportedly has a $750,000 stockpile of photographs — including such poses as, “Fat Man Dosing.”

Alice in Blunderland [Comics With Problems] : Bibi’s Box

Having taken a short sabbatical from the tubes it is good to rediscover them. Often I have found that the internet becomes something of a perverse, personal litmus test for me, a private game of one-upmanship between me and myself comprising a back and forth of “You think that’s twisted, take a look at this!”; and while this game is fine for a while it gets old quickly. Before long your mind becomes one big callous, a mass of dead, scarred neurons impervious to all but the most horrid of visions, and by the time you realize what the sparse growth on your face signifies it’s too late and you’ve become Warren Ellis. At which point what else is there, really?

It was nice then to find this Flickr group whose sole purpose is to bring the world of Gary Larson to life. The Far Side was one of my favorite comic strips as a child. His surreal world was ceaselessly amusing to my young mind and, simultaneously, there was something about “getting” a Larson strip that made me feel wise beyond my years. It also ignited in me a passion for writing small, absurd vignettes for photographs, a device I often employ to help myself write and which I have subjected you poor Ectomites to on various occasions. All in all, a fitting way to come back.

The Far side Reenactments [Flickr] : C.O.D. uploaded by biomechanic

Years ago I successfully infiltrated the ranks of God’s own Weekend Warriors. The fine folk that travel from one stoop to the next, hoping against hope that the silence of the suburbs subsequent to the approach of the faithbound isn’t the first indication of having been overlooked during their savior’s final draft pick of piety.

As a Jane Goodall-esque figure in the realm of religious infiltration I’m here to warn you that the above is the future to which we can all look forward if the Good News contagion is allowed to spread.

Door to Door [Dustin Harbin : Drawn!]

Everything good about MTV lives in a world that exists, long since passed, in the memories of those who were there called “Remember When”. It’s a world where Music Television was actually music, on television and where the newest and craziest in modern animation was shown on something called Liquid Television accompanied by shows like Beavis and Butthead, Aeon Flux, The Head, and The Maxx. It is a place that many look back on with great fondness with good reason.

My relationship with MTV was not immediate. It was instead something that I had to acquire through a middleman, my family not having cable. It was something that I could only watch whilst visiting a friend or, in the case of The Maxx and Aeon Flux, by having it taped by my friend Will. It was a weekly ritual, the same VHS cassette exchanged back and forth, previous episodes taped over to make room for my fix. If I had more foresight, I would have no doubt bought extra cassettes so a to preserve the series but, alas, I was not the forward thinking in my youth.

The Maxx remains a show that, upon repeated viewings all these years later, has lost none of its impact. It still works, at least for me. Surely, it can be argued that, in its abbreviated form, it is lacking in comparison to the comic book that spawned it, and there is some truth there. The relationships that tie all of these wounded characters together are explored far less here, especially the relationship between Julie and the titular hero. This can be forgiven though, no television series could have really handled Sam Keith’s twisted, meandering story and psychological musings. The man himself could barely handle it, his panels cramped and scattered, requiring arrows to guide the reader’s eye.

The TV show is, then, The Maxx distilled and in that regard it succeeds brilliantly. Keith’s artwork animates beautifully and the voice work and music are some of the best in a cartoon. It is a starkly melancholy show, something I’m not sure everyone was expecting from a cartoon. Featuring none of the bombast of Aeon Flux or The Head it was instead an exploration of trauma, violence, and, ultimately, redemption. It is a show well deserving of your Saturday morning if you’ve not seen it before and well worth it for those who have; to sit down and look back to the world of “Remember When”.

Just a note: Take a look at this while you can for the YouTube Police’s wrath is swift and brutal.

Saturday Morning Cartoons XLVIII [YouTube]

Bertha’s father is not one to let just any boy marry his lovely, buxom daughter, and he is certainly not willing to entertain the idea of giving her to some lazy, ne’er-do-well artist. No, he must prove that he is worthy; that he is a man. Witness, then, the trials of Bertha’s would-be husband and read on in wonder a story of moustaches, drum solos, and motorcycles.

Phil McAndrew Illustration & Comics [Artist’s Site] : Thanks to everyone who sent this in!

They should have just let Romero’s glorious moustache shine through, untouched. Running around made up like a clown is one kind of crazy, but running around made up like a clown with a moustache is a whole, different level of batshit insane.

Any commenter who posts “Why so serious?” gets fed to the weasels. You’ve been warned.

You’ll excuse me for a moment if this post seems a bit gushy. In my last year of attendance at the School of Visual Arts I was lucky enough to have a class taught by Gary Panter — perhaps best known for designing the sets for PeeWee’s Playhouse — and it remains one of the stand-out classes of my entire tenure in art school. The course was a typical, vague art school course, the purpose of which was ostensibly to help one compile a portfolio but which was really just three hours of conversation and drawing and Gary was probably the perfect person to teach such a class.

Each class would start out with 45 minutes or so of Gary just meandering his way through a lecture of sorts about his career and art in general and the rest of the time he would sit up front and let us do our thing. You could bring your work up to discuss with him or sometimes he would just roam around the room, stopping to talk to the students.

This all sounds pretty standard, on the face of it, but Gary had one, particular trait that made the class work as well as it did: unequivocal enthusiasm. Gary just loved art. He loved making it and he loved to see other people make it and it always seemed to me, that as long as someone was being an artist, Gary Panter would be a happy man, which in many ways was what kids who were going to be thrust into a cutthroat art world needed; someone to remind them that they should always enjoy themselves.

Vice has a five part interview with Panter meandering in his hippie tinged drawl about his career on VBS.TV. Part one is above; hit the jump for part two and a link to the last three.

Continue Reading…

This is the logo for the Diabol Industrial Chemical Company of Paris, France. The logo, in use by 1931, may seem familiar to you. This may be because it bears a striking resemblance to certain masked vigilante. Rich Johnston, in his column for Comic Book Resources, lays out this daisy-chain of relationships:

Bob Kane worked at Max Fleischer Studios from 1934. Max’s brother, Dave Fleischer, was a director at the studio and had previously worked at the French film studio, Pathe.

Obviously, no mention of this logo has been mentioned in the official history of Batman’s creation. In his 1989 autobiography Kane presented the following recollection of how the character was designed, with the help of Bill Finger:

One day I called Bill and said, ‘I have a new character called the Bat-Man and I’ve made some crude, elementary sketches I’d like you to look at’. He came over and I showed him the drawings. At the time, I only had a small domino mask, like the one Robin later wore, on Batman’s face. Bill said, ‘Why not make him look more like a bat and put a hood on him, and take the eyeballs out and just put slits for eyes to make him look more mysterious?’ At this point, the Bat-Man wore a red union suit; the wings, trunks, and mask were black. I thought that red and black would be a good combination. Bill said that the costume was too bright: ‘Color it dark gray to make it look more ominous’. The cape looked like two stiff bat wings attached to his arms. As Bill and I talked, we realized that these wings would get cumbersome when Bat-Man was in action, and changed them into a cape, scalloped to look like bat wings when he was fighting or swinging down on a rope. Also, he didn’t have any gloves on, and we added them so that he wouldn’t leave fingerprints.

So there you have it. Does this game of Six Degrees of Bob Kane ring true, or is this a crazed conspiracy theory? Did the Dark Knight actually start out as a corporate shill? We may never know. However, it is interesting to note that Batsy’s first appearance in Detective Comics #27 is entitled “The Case of the Chemical Syndicate”.

Lying in the Gutters [Comic Book Resources] : Super Punch

I think some credits are in order to James Turner, Creator of Beaver and Steve where that image is from.

Comment by Ben — June 24, 2008 @ 3:29 am

I had heard of Beaver and Steve but never read it, until clicking Ben’s link; and I’m glad I did as it is pure, insane brilliance. Make sure to click the image to see the full comic. Oh Weevil Kneevil, you are sorely missed.

The unfeasible adventures of Beaver and Steve [James Turner]

Welcome to Ectomo’s 33rd Mostly-Weekly Saturday Morning Cartoons Show. Today we present to you a smorgasbord of delectable animated dishes; a smattering of drama, horror, humor, and vintage erotica served up steaming hot for your enjoyment. So sit back, relax, and prepare to have you senses assaulted with ‘toonage!.

• Don Hertzfeldt. welcomes you to the show!

• Transformers: “”More Than Meets the Eye Parts 1-3″. Over an hour of thinly veiled toy commercials masquerading as a children’s cartoon. Learn how the Autobots and the Decepticons came to Earth and which plastic and die-cast metal action figure to beg for! Seriously though, while the cartoon doesn’t hold up particularly well and while it is just a glorified toy commercial, I still can’t shake my love for Transformers.

• Comedian Louis C.K. uses animation to explore some of his father issues.

• Eveready Harton in Buried Treasure: A piece of animation history; the first pornographic cartoon. Rumor is that it was made for a private party in honor of the great Windsor McKay and that such visionaries as Max Fleischer and the Mutt and Jeff studio were involved.

• The Real Ghostbusters: “The Boogieman Cometh”. One of my favorite episodes of this show, the design for the Boogieman is just brilliant, his oversized head, replete with glass-shard like teeth, and cloven hooves makes for a great image.

• Intermission, by Don Hertzfeldt.

• Welcome To Eltingville: “Bring me the Head of Boba Fett”. The first and only episode of this cartoon based on Evan Dorkin’s Eisner-Award-winning “Eltingville Comic-Book, Science-Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, and Role-Playing Club” published in the pages of Dork. Featuring four gentleman — Bill Dickey, Josh Levy, Pete DiNunzio, and Jerry Stokes — who are friends of a fashion, but geeks to the fullest. In this episode a battle erupts over the ownership of a Boba Fett figurine and hilarity thus ensues. Cameo by MC Chris, which I’m pretty sure was a prerequisite for [adult swim] cartoons for a while.

• Paranoia Agent: “The Holy Warrior”. Detectives Ikari and Maniwa interrogate Lil’ Slugger who confuses his realities and believes that the world around him is a medieval-style RPG while his quest is to defeat the evil Gouma who possesses other people to fight. Ikari and Maniwa follows Lil’ Slugger through his “journey” and see that it does coincide with all of the attacks — all except for Tsukiko Sagi. However, Lil’ Slugger points the detectives to where the old lady is who may posses the truth.

• The end of the show, by Don Hertzfeldt.

Saturday Morning Cartoons XXXIII: Action Figures And Porn Edition [YouTube]

Wendy and Richard Pini, creators of long-running indy comic series Elfquest, are making the whole caboodle available free of charge at their website. New issues will be posted weekly until 30 years’ worth is online.

Comment from BoingBoing and Metafilter remind us why this is one of the best comics you’ve never heard of, but here’s a quick primer on why it rules.

• With Dave Sim’s Cerebus, it was among the first self-published comics to make it big, booting down the door for new talent the nation over. Its success as a graphic novel in mainstream bookstores helped infect the American mainstream with a European-esque appreciation for comics. Women actually read this. Women.

• Wendy Pini’s art is a melting pot of comics, manga and classical illustration. And she’s been at it since before most people had even heard of manga…

• The feral, omnisexual, hallucinogen-guzzling protagonists aren’t Tolkien-derived clichés, but a freakish medley of european lore, native american myth and hippy free love.

• No superheroes, magic wands or other arbitrary magics. It’s consistently plotted to tight rules of engagement and expertly crafted by the same wife-and-husband team thats been doing little else since 1977.

• It’s a neat blend of high fantasy and science fiction: the “elves” are aliens who wanted to impress us by appearing as angels, but got stuck in a genetic disguise by their slaves’ violent rebellion.

• All the fashions in it are either from the 1970s or the 1930s: everyone is either a pimp in furs and leather or something sculpted by Erté. They just don’t make ‘em like this any more.

• Winnowill is the best arch-villainess since Maleficent Cthulhu.

• It’s not over: the story’s final showdown, the creators write, has been written but not yet published.

• 6,000 pages of full-color classic indy brilliance free of charge. Precedent set.

• Issue #17’s Elf Orgy. If nothing else, a great name for a punk band. (Brownlee has already demanded scans, but I don’t have a copy to hand — any fans out there who can do the honors?)