(via Arthur)

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(via Arthur)

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Grant Morrison’s web site has been updated for the first time in years.

grantmorrison.com

There’s also a new column he’s running there (you’re supposed to register to be able to see it, but direct links there seem to work fine):

The mental, magical immersion in the DC Universe of superheroes that’s consumed all my time these five years past is finally, and quite literally, drawing to its apocalyptic conclusion and I can’t concentrate on much else until the dust settles.

[…]

What else? It’s been hectic but I’m having a good time doing these ‘Final’ storylines for Superman, Batman and the DC Universe itself. I want to end on a couple of big, definitive stories before I take a break from superheroes for a little while and I’m really happy with the way all of these are turning out.

Full Story: grantmorrison.com

I hope this means new creator-owned work in the next year or so.

(Thanks Brenden!)

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It’s like when you’ve got people like Angela Carter who, in her book The Sadeian Women, she admitted that there was the possibility she could imagine a form of pornography that was benign, that was imaginative, was beautiful, and which didn’t have the problems that she saw in a lot of other pornography. I think even Andrea Dworkin said the same thing. She said it a bit more grudgingly, but she said that conceivably there was, there could be, a benign form of pornography but she didn’t personally believe that it would ever happen. So that’s what we’ve tried to do. We’ve tried to say, yes, good pornography can exist, and I think that possibly the fact that we called it pornography wrong-footed a lot of the people who, if we’d have come out and said, “well, this is a work of art,” they would have probably all said, “no it’s not, it’s pornography.” So because we’re saying, “this is pornography,” they’re saying, “no it’s not, it’s art,” and people don’t realise quite what they’ve said.

Interview Part 1 Interview Part 2 (Probably not safe for work)

(via Tomorrow Museum)

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Older interview by Arthur’s Jay Babcock:

“Although we have a core group of characters, anyone can belong to or oppose the Invisibles,”; Morrison explained in an introductory outline of the series. “Various ordinary and extraordinary folks [will be] drawn into a web of conspiracy that extends from the back streets of your hometown to the dark blue-green planet circling Alpha Centauri and beyond, out past the horizon of the spacetime supersphere itself, giving me the opportunity to tell stories ranging across time and genre, stories that will eventually come together and be revealed as one large-scale, shimmering holographic tapestry. This is the comic I’ve wanted to write all my life-a comic about everything: action, philosophy, paranoia, sex, magic, biography, travel, drugs,religion, UFOs … you can make your own list. And when it reaches its conclusion, somewhere down the line, I promise to reveal who runs the world, why our lives are the way they are and exactly what happens to us when we die.”

Full Story: Arthur Magazine

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You know, I have this sort of philosophy called “It’s not my job” and I apply it to everything I do in life. Basically I view myself as on permanent vacation and everything is a side project. You know, when you get to be about mid-life you start to realize that if your not having fun with your life now, then you might never figure it out. So, to me, playing in the park in the grass is something I take as seriously as drawing a book or as doing an interview like this - which is to say that I take drawing a book very lightly, but at the same time give it my whole heart. It’s a little hard to explain. Its gotta be fun or I cant do it for very long.

[…]

So, one day I discovered in the corner of my room the word tasukete (save me) scratched into the wall, like with a sharp object. Tasukete is the word you would say when you need someone to rescue you, like if you were kidnapped or being murdered. I’m kinda slow I guess, because the first time I saw it I laughed. I figured someone had a black sense of humour but when I showed it to my Japanese friends they freaked out. Its like, imagine if found in the back of your closet the words “help me” scratched the wall with fingernails, and the house was really old and creepy to begin with.

[…]

I never did, like, a real investigation. Believe it or not, stuff like this happens to me fairly regularly, so it’s not such a landmark. Just an interesting thing.

Full Story: Meanwhile

(Thanks Ian!)

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Warren Ellis’s free online post-apocalyptic steampunk comic is still running strong.

Freak Angels

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Read more at Serializer.net

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More Info: Watchmen YouTube channel

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References to The Prisoner in comics are many, but to my knowledge only two licensed Prisoner comics have been attempted: one, a four-part sequel by Dean Motter and Mark Askwith, published by DC in 1988-89; the other, an unpublished adaptation from Marvel Comics, written and drawn by none other than Jack Kirby! This unfinished, seventeen-page story, what was to have been the first in a series, was created by Kirby and partially inked and lettered by Mike Royer in the Summer of 1976 (to be published in Nov. ‘76, with a Feb. ‘77 cover date). Since Marvel scrapped the project, this single episode is all that remains of Kirby’s plans for the series.

Full Story: TwoMorrows

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Remember me writing about the art of Fletcher Hanks? It’s been out since last November, but Trevor just pointed it out to me: Mike Allred drew a an all new Stardust the Wizard story for Fantastic Comics #24.

Sample images and interview at Newsarama

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As Scott Atran points out, these kids dream of fighting for some meaningful cause that will make them heroes in their communities. Bin Laden and Al-Zawahiri—and Arab satellite television and in some cases their own experiences—have convinced them that fighting against the most powerful country in the world and its allies is the most heroic thing they can do.

No, “The 99″ comic books are not going to solve that problem. Their circulation is in the tens of thousands at this point, while bin Laden’s violent message gets out to billions. But comic books are “likely to be a lot more helpful than our bullets and bombs in attracting young people away from jihadi cool,” says Atran. They might even help convince Washington that “knowledge is the true base of power.” But maybe that’s hoping for too much.

Full Story: Newsweek.

(via Lupa)

What sort of message does this comic book send?

(Update/clarification The image above is not from The 99, it’s from Chuck Dixon’s aborted American Power series. I presented it along with the question of what message it for sarcastic rather illustrative purposes.)

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Full Comic.

(Thanks Honky Tonk Dragon)

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The New Yorker has a long article about the 1950s comic book crack down, including some interesting information about the man who started it all, Seduction of the Innocent author Fredric Wertham:

He did not want to censor comic books, only to restrict their sale so that kids could not buy them without a parent present. He wanted to give them the equivalent of an R rating. Bart Beaty’s “Fredric Wertham and the Critique of Mass Culture” ($22, paper; University Press of Mississippi) makes a strong case for the revisionist position. As Beaty points out, Wertham was not a philistine; he was a progressive intellectual. His Harlem clinic was named for Paul Lafargue, Marx’s son-in-law. He collected modern art, helped produce an anthology of modernist writers, and opposed censorship. He believed that people’s behavior was partly determined by their environment, in this respect dissenting from orthodox Freudianism, and some of his work, on the psychological effects of segregation on African-Americans, was used in the Supreme Court case of Brown v. Board of Education.

Wertham thought that representations make a difference—that how people see themselves and others reflected in the media affects the way they think and behave. As Beaty says, racist (particularly concerning Asians) and sexist images and remarks can be found on almost every page of crime and horror comics. What especially strikes a reader today is the fantastic proliferation of images of violence against women, almost always depicted in highly sexualized forms. If one believes that pervasive negative images of black people are harmful, why would one not believe the same thing about images of men beating, torturing, and killing women?

Full Story: New Yorker.

(via Mind Hacks).

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“As Zack Snyder states on the official blog - here we are, one year from the theatrical release of Watchmen on March 6th, 2009. To ease the pain of waiting another 12 months to finally see the film, Snyder has released complete costumed photos of five of the main characters: The Comedian, Nite Owl, Ozymandias, Rorschach, and Silk Spectre. These may be the most downright incredible photos I’ve seen in the last six months from any comic book movie. It’s time to begin the 12 month process of showing you how amazing Zack Snyder’s Watchmen is actually going to be!”

(via First Showing)

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“So how does Superman do it! He can see through buildings and clothing (he checks out Lois Lane’s underwear in Superman 1 - more on this later). Many have attempted to answer this question of the ages yet few have explored this in as much depth as J.B. Pittenger who published a study in the journal Perception back in the stone ages (1983) entitled “On the plausibility of superman’s x-ray vision”. But first, before we get into the meat of the paper, lets see what others around the InterWebs have said about Superman’s amazing seeing through underwear powers.”

(via Of Two Minds)

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More: Mightygodking.com.

(via Zenarchery).

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The second chapter of Freak Angels is up, and if my memory serves that makes it the longest running Ellis online comic ever:

Freak Angels.

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“We’re thrilled to have interviewed Alan Moore – creator of benchmark comics Watchmen and V For Vendetta and longtime WORD hero – in FACE TIME this month. Alan is one of the planet’s great conversationalists and we could fit only a part of our 90 minute discussion in the magazine. So, in the spirit of the Extended Deluxe Double CD edition, here’s some more of Mr Moore discussing his new work of “literary pornography” Lost Girls, his century-spanning supersaga The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen… and why Heroes is rubbish.”

(via The Word)

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Full Strip: Something Positive.

(via Grimnir).

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“20th Century Fox has initiated a legal battle against Warner Bros. over the rights to develop, produce and distribute a film based on the graphic novel “Watchmen.” On Friday, the studio sued Warners, claiming it holds the exclusive copyrights and contract rights to “Watchmen.” Warners plans to release next year a big-screen version of the popular comic book written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Dave Gibbons. The cast includes Jackie Earle Haley, Billy Crudup, Patrick Wilson, Carla Gugino and Malin Akerman. It is the studio’s policy to not comment on pending litigation.

But Fox seeks to enjoin Warners from going forward with the project, saying in the lawsuit that it seeks to “restrain (Warner Bros. Pictures) from taking actions that violate Fox’s copyrights and which stand to forever impair Fox’s rights to control the distribution and development of this unique work.” Fox claims that between 1986 and 1990, it acquired all movie rights to the 12-issue DC Comics series and screenplays by Charles McKeown and Sam Hamm. In 1991, Fox assigned some rights via a quitclaim to Largo International with the understanding that the studio held exclusive rights to distribute the first motion picture based on “Watchmen,” according to the lawsuit.”

(via The Hollywood Reporter)

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Stephen Ross Gerber was born in St. Louis on September 20, 1947. A longtime fan of comic books, he was involved in the ditto/mimeo days of fanzine publishing in the sixties, publishing one called Headline at age 14. He had a by-mail friendship with Roy Thomas, who was responsible for the most noteworthy fanzine of that era, Alter Ego. Years later when Roy was the editor at Marvel Comics, he rescued Steve from a crippling career writing advertising copy, bringing him into Marvel as a writer and assistant editor. Steve soon distinguished himself as one of the firm’s best writers, handling many of their major titles at one time or another but especially shining on The Defenders, Man-Thing, Omega the Unknown, Morbius the Living Vampire, a special publication about the rock group Kiss…and of course, Howard the Duck.

Full Story: New From Me.

(via Trevor Blake).

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I’ve recently become obsessed - more accurately, haunted - by the comics of Fletcher Hanks. His surreal, paranoid, racist, and xenophobic comics have literally been giving me nightmares. Even R. Crumb says “Fletcher Hanks was a twisted dude.”

After reading several comics online, I bought the collection I Shall Destroy All The Civilized Planets, mostly for the comic the editor, Paul Karasik, drew about his search for biographic information about Hanks. Little is known about his personal life other than that he was good looking, athletic, an alcoholic, and an abusive parent and father. His son didn’t even know he drew comic books. After he abandoned his family, nothing is known about him except that he froze to death on a New York City park bench in 1970, around the age of 90.

I don’t know Hanks was mentally ill, but I’m reminded of Louis Wain and Daniel Johnston when reading his stuff.

Monster Brains has links to several Fletcher Hanks comics online.

Fantnomah vs. the Giant Spiders is probably my favorite so far.

Official site for the collection.

Wikipedia: Fletcher Hanks.

(Thanks to Bill Whitcomb for turning me on to the guy).

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As part of DC’s “free first issues” promotion, they’re offering a free PDF download of the first issue of Swamp Thing written by Alan Moore.

Download from DC.

(via Boing Boing).

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I think this is the original Channel 4 Disinfo show segment. There doesn’t appear to be any Morrison here that doesn’t appear on The Disinformation: Complete Series DVD, but it is a different edit. There is an interview at the end with artist Howard Hallis about his Picture of Everything that doesn’t appear on the DVD.

(via Phase II).

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