Countdown to the 2012 San Diego Comic-Con (Part II)

Like any exhibitor worth his or her salt, in addition to a new issue of Rob Hanes Adventures and the introduction of a new booth banner, we’ll also have a few other goodies available at the convention. First up are brand new t-shirts!  They feature the same design, but in black or white...

RHA T-shirts have always been available at the WCG Comics website, I’ve never really pushed them hard—in fact, they’ve been such a low priority, this is only the second new t-shirt design since 2005. I plan to have only a few on hand at the convention, so I welcome advance orders (be sure to tell me what size!) For the convention, each shirt is $20.

Other goodies will include newly re-designed pin buttons and the RHA bookmarks that debuted in 2010. Both are free to longtime fans or with any purchase!

At right: Yes, I have no shame--I even have my little boy promoting my comic-book!

Countdown to the 2012 San Diego Comic-Con (Part I)

Before each year’s San Diego Comic-Con, I like to provide a behind-the-scenes look at my preparations for the show. Below is my first entry for this year’s Comic-Con, scheduled July 12-15, 2012.

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For once, I’m ahead of the game in my preparations for this year’s San Diego Comic-Con. Like a lot of publishers, I often work until the very last moment preparing a book for release at the show, pushing my printer’s deadlines to the limits. But this year I shipped the book off to the printer with plenty of time to spare, which gave me time to focus on other plans for the show.

First on the agenda was a new booth banner for the show. Below is the one that’s been in use since 2008....


And the new one that will debut at this year’s Comic-Con....

I planned to update my banner last year, but time ran out before I had a chance to conceptualize, let alone execute, a new design. I was very happy with the earlier banner, but thought that the light-colored background of the banner got lost in the convention hall. I think that the straightforward solid black background of the new banner will pop out more.

Though I didn't have a specific design in mind when I began planning the new banner, since I liked the shot of Rob on the cover Rob Hanes Adventures #13 turned out well, I decided to develop the new banner around it. Below is the original digital image that was submitted to the printer.

I originally planned to use the figures from the Rob Hanes Adventures trade paperback (as seen on right) as the focus of the banner, but I found that the three figures made for a busy design. Bold and simple seemed the best way to go!

REVIEWS: Backing into Forward

The increased respect for comics and cartooning has resulted in a number of serious, in-depth biographies in recent years. I’ve previously reviewed several of them, focusing on Milton Caniff, Will Eisner, Noel Sickles, and Alex Toth. This is a review of Jules Feiffer’s autobiography, Backing into Forward: A Memoir (2010).

Jules Feiffer has been always proud and foremost to identify himself as a cartoonist, but he is of course much more than that: author, children’s book writer, comics historian, playwright, and screenwriter. His foray into other media—partly driven by a need for alternative artistic expression but also to make a living—has never been by design and often accidental. Hence the title of his book.

Though I’ve always been aware of Feiffer—particularly his long-running syndicated self-titled strip, Feiffer, in the Village Voice that was discontinued in 1997—his other work has also made it on my radar. These include his ground-breaking Great Comic Book Heroes which arguably helped renew interest in comics and introduced a new generation (myself included) to Will Eisner’s Spirit; and his film work, including Carnal Knowledge (which I saw in college) and Popeye. (He reportedly also wrote an unproduced script for Terry and the Pirates, which I’ve always been curious to track down and read.) As a young junior high school student who was an aspiring cartoonist, I especially enjoyed his personal anecdotes in the Great Comic Book Heroes about breaking into the comics biz as an assistant to Eisner and what was it like at the dawn of the comics age.

(I had the privilege to meet Feiffer at a talk he gave at the L.A. County Library in downtown Los Angeles many years ago. When I approached him to sign my copy of his book, The Man on the Ceiling, I mentioned to him a favorite anecdote from the above-mentioned Great Comic Book Heroes. He recounted that one of his first assignments as Will Eisner’s assistant on the Spirit was signing Eisner’s name on the stories, at which he claimed he was better than Eisner himself. So Feiffer chuckled when I asked him to sign in Eisner’s name—he inscribed my book as, “Will Eisner aka Jules Feiffer.”)

My initial interest in Backing into Forward was to read about his years in Eisner’s studio. Though this transformative experience got him into comics, it was just the beginning of what would be a productive and diverse career.

Especially fascinating are his stories of New York in the 1950s and ‘60s when he came of age professionally and the city was still the center of much of the art, entertainment and publishing world. Intellectuals, playwrights, actors, movie directors and, yes, cartoonists like Feiffer seemed to mingle and cross-pollinate easily. Feiffer’s anecdotes of working and interacting with people like actors Dustin Hoffman, Jack Nicholson and Alan Arkin (who was the first to successfully crack the code on one of his earliest plays), producer Robert Evans, and directors Mike Nichols and Robert Altman (on the ill-fated Popeye) make for fascinating and amusing reads.

A proud and unabashed old-school lefty, Feiffer also expounds at length on politics. (Nevertheless, Feiffer was not radical enough even for his sister, who was a self-declared communist.) He speaks at length of the upbringing that shaped his views and neuroses, which included a difficult mother who was slow to praise or encourage and a father who ceded all authority to his wife rather than risk challenging her.

As Feiffer mentions in his book, his success was often built on the ashes of some failure. Now in his 80s and looking back on a life and career that was sometimes more happenstance than by design, he remains as opinionated as ever, but has found happiness and comfort in his own skin as a parent, writer and artist, and now a college teacher.

PR: ROB HANES ADVENTURES RETURNS with ISSUE 13

Below is the official press release announcing the return of Rob Hanes Adventures in July! 

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Rob Hanes Adventures Returns with Issue 13

In keeping with the comic-book adventure series' tradition of connecting with real world current events, issue 13 will touch on the Arab Spring uprisings

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Randy Reynaldo, writer-artist of the long-running independent comic-book series, Rob Hanes Adventures, announced that the next issue of the title (#13) will be released July 2012 through his WCG Comics imprint. Images of the cover and selected interior pages are available at this link.

Inspired by classic globetrotting adventure comics like Terry and the Pirates and Buz Sawyer but set in the modern day—with frequent dashes of light-hearted humor reminiscent of The Spirit—Randy’s work on Rob Hanes Adventures has remained a standard-bearer for breezy, fast paced action-adventure along the lines of Indiana Jones and James Bond, and the work of cartoonists like Alex Toth and Darwyn Cooke.

Rob Hanes Adventures #13 will feature two complete stories: “Crime Takes a Holiday” and “Not Your Father’s Private Eye.”

In “Crime Takes a Holiday,” Justice International private investigator Rob Hanes goes on vacation in the French Riviera. However, when he discovers that an international crimelord named Nicolai Korda is also in the area, Rob interrupts his plans for some long-overdue R & R to investigate what his longtime nemesis is up to!

Then, in “Not Your Father’s Private Eye,” Rob gains notoriety when he is the subject of a print and online news magazine article about modern-day private investigators while on assignment in a Middle East country on the verge of regime change. Set in the fictional Middle East kingdom of Koman that has been frequently used in the series, the story echoes the real-life upheavals that have occurred in the Middle East over the past year.

As in all stories in the series, both adventures are complete and self-contained in the issue. While a cover price has not yet been announced, the issue is anticipated to be 28 black-and-white pages with a full-color cover.

“I know it’s been a long time since the last issue, but I’m glad to say I’m back on track,” said series creator Randy Reynaldo. “The time I spent preparing the recent trade paperback that collected the series’ early adventures took up more time and energy than I expected, but I’m excited to be working on all-new stories.”

Launched in 1991 as part of the era’s storied wave of small press black-and-white comics, Rob Hanes Adventures has developed a dedicated following for bringing a modern sensibility to the spirit of the classic adventure strip genre, while series creator Randy Reynaldo has developed a reputation for his continued long-running work on the series and his solid black and white art, reminiscent of Milton Caniff and Alex Toth.

In addition to the 12 issues of Rob Hanes Adventures that have been published to date, two trade paperback collections of earlier work from the series also remain available. This includes a 144-page trade paperback called the Rob Hanes Archives, funded by a Xeric Grant, which collected the series’ original zine run, and the more recent 140-page Rob Hanes Adventures, Volume 0, that collects four issues from the series’ earlier run under the title, Adventure Strip Digest.

Rob Hanes Adventures has been reviewed, spotlighted and featured in industry print publications like the Comic Buyer's Guide, Comics Retailer, Comic Book Marketplace, Diamond Dialogue, and Previews, and online at comicbookresources.com and Newsarama. Issue 10 was included in Tony Isabella’s 1000 Comic Books You Must Read (Krause Publications, 2009). For more information about the series, visit WCG Comics’s website at wcgcomics.com.

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Below: Large size scans of the cover and selected pages from Rob Hanes Adventures #13.

 

Remembering the Legacy of Will Eisner

Last week, I had an opportunity to attend a panel discussion about the legacy of cartoonist Will Eisner. The discussion was organized by the Cartoon Arts Professional Society (CAPS), a Southern California professional cartoonist’s organization that I belong to. As pictured above from left to right, the panelists included Mark Evanier, Batton Lash, Jackie Estrada, Charles Hatfield, Patrick McGreal, and Scott Shaw!

While Eisner’s life is well documented now and I’ve written extensively about him myself, the discussion nevertheless found fresh ways to look at the cartoonist. Significant time was particularly spent on Eisner’s years outside the mainstream comics industry—from the early 1950s to the 1970s—when he headed the American Visuals Corporation to produce education comics for the U.S. military (where he produced the training manual, P.S. Magazine).

This interest came out of curiosity about why Eisner, whose work in his later years showed a passion for telling personal stories, spent so much time on education and military training manuals. (The evening included a slideshow of his P.S. Magazine work by Scott Shaw!) While no one came up with a definitive reason, various answers included the fact that Eisner found the work important and wished to demonstrate the ability of comics to serve a wide range of needs, not just tell superhero stories; the desire to break away from the restricted bonds of the mainstream comics industry; and, of course, the simple need to make a living for his family.

Though he was given many opportunities by the major comic-book companies, including DC and Marvel, to work for them, Eisner never looked back. He had little interest in either the business model or the kind of comics the companies published at the time. Eisner also craved mainstream legitimacy. Finding a “real” book publisher to release his first graphic novel—A Contract with God—was important to him. (A Contract with God and the rediscovery of the Spirit set the groundwork for Eisner’s subsequent personal comics work that lasted until his death in 2005, as well as for the graphic novel market.) The name of Eisner contemporary Harvey Kurtzman, who similarly found escape from the comics industry by working for Playboy magazine where he produced Little Annie Fannie for Hugh Hefner, was often invoked and provided comparison to Eisner’s goals.

It was a wonderful reminiscence, not just of the man but also of the artist’s continued impact and influence on the industry.

A Preview of Things to Come...

I'm happy to announce that work on a new issue of Rob Hanes Adventures—lucky issue 13—is nearly complete!

More formal announcements about the issue will be coming out shortly, but in the meantime I thought I'd share a mockup of the cover to the issue. You'll see that part of it is still in pencil format, so the cover is subject to some change, particularly in the color schemes.

Hopefully, this whets everyone's appetite for the new issue—more to come!

The Legacy of Jean Girard (aka Gir aka Moebius)

I couldn’t let the March 10 passing of French cartoonist/artist Jean Girard—who also drew under the pen names of Gir and Moebius—go by without commenting on his legacy.

While it’s easy to overuse the word “visionary” when speaking about even the greatest of artists, it’s a very deserving description of Girard’s work. His science fiction/fantasy work offered windows into universes and realities that seemed complete in the artist’s mind and, more importantly, infused with the artist’s soul and personal sensibilities. He successfully presaged New Age styles and sensibilities and merged them with an earthy punk rock and, at times, Mad Magazine rock-and-roll sense of humor.

Without exaggeration, he is perhaps one of the most visionary, versatile and technically gifted artists to work in comics. For those not familiar with his range of work, he began as a cartoonist of Westerns—for which he created the epic Lt. Blueberry series—and under his other pen name, Moebius, drew and wrote sf/fantasy comics and art illustrations, virtually polar opposite genres.

Like many of the most admired cartoonists, he was an “artist’s artist.” However, Girard differed, I think, from other “artist’s artists”—although other artists certainly admired and were inspired by him, few emulated him because he worked at a level and plane of talent few could dream to reach. He was a real one of a kind.

Like a lot of European artists, he first became familiar to U.S. audiences through the pages of Heavy Metal, the American spin-off of the French anthology comics magazine, Metal Hurlant. It was there I discovered Girard when he first began making inroads in the U.S.

Shortly after being “discovered” in North America, he became more visible in the U.S., most famously through Marvel Comics’ alternative comics imprint, Epic Comics, which published much of his Lt. Blueberry work in a 9-volume collection and his science fiction/fantasy work in 10 Moebius volumes. To Marvel’s credit, they are beautiful, full-color editions in album format and high-end glossy paper—to date, they remain rare, definitive collections of his work and fetch high prices in the collector’s market. (I personally own the whole collection.)

 I sometimes found his SF work a bit surreal and inscrutable (they could often be stream-of-consciousness), but being the action-and-adventure fan that I am, was blown away by the maturity and authenticity of his western work in Blueberry. The stories that Girard and his writer/co-creator, scriptwriter Jean-Michel Charlier, did on that series easily compare in quality with iconic film western classics like Unforgiven and the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

While Moebius did not do American work on a regular basis, he nevertheless was fairly visible back in the day, most notably doing a two-issue limited series of the Silver Surfer.

His contributions and influence can also be seen in the conceptual work he’s done for Hollywood like Alien, Tron and the Fifth Element.

In the last decade or so, Girard became less prolific, partly due to health issues. But his art remains timeless and represent a unique and visionary outlook.