V for Vendetta
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by KC Carlson

Seeing myself on the New York Times bestseller list as the editor of V for Vendetta is sort of amusing. And not really entirely unexpected. More than a decade ago, when I first learned the concept of Googling oneself, I gave it a shot. Not much came up back then, except for my “editorial” credits for both the V for Vendetta collection and for the Sandman: The Doll’s House collection — both of which showed Amazon listing me as editor. Actually, the V for Vendetta book did offer me my first thrill of seeing my name in print while standing in a bookstore (the late, lamented Coliseum Books in NYC).

I don’t think my name is in the book at all anymore, since it has gone through a couple of design changes and lord knows how many printings since I first “packaged” the book for DC in 1990. There wasn’t much actual editing by me, but that was the title I was given for my role on the original collected edition.

It was certainly one of the most memorable Collected Books projects I worked on, as there were numerous production headaches for both myself and designer Dale Crain, including missing, mislabeled, and damaged film. Apparently, the U.S, was one of the last countries to produce a V For Vendetta collection, as the film had traveled around the world several times before DC did their version. By the time I got it, it had been reduced from the original 8-up film (8 pages of story per film flat x 4 for 4-color printing — black, red, yellow, and blue) and cut apart into each individual page. Unfortunately, whoever did the cutting had also cut off all of the identifying marks on the film (like issue and page numbers!), and the pieces were randomly stuffed into several unsorted envelopes. If you’ve never looked at 4-color film, only the black plate has any real identifying marks, since it is the only one to include the black outlines of the artwork as well as the word balloons. All of the film for the other colors basically looks like blobs of negative, which represents various percentages of the the base colors, but to the naked eye, pretty much unidentifiable as much of anything.

Since V for Vendetta includes well over 250 pages of artwork, and there were four individual pieces of film for each page, that meant I was dealing with over 1,000 pieces of cut-apart film — three-quarters of which were pretty much completely unidentifiable without first locating the black plate to use for matching reference. So first, I had to find all the black plates and put them in order, no small task without page numbers OR even issue numbers.

But even that was a problem because every page of black plate film had all the word balloons opaqued out — a common thing to happen when a book is printed in a foreign country where the English words are covered up and replaced with the host language. Most people who do this are polite enough to clean the film before returning it. Not this time.

I don’t recall if I did the cleaning or not. Probably not, as they had to be cleaned individually by hand, probably with some horrible turpentine-like solution of which the fumes would have eventually killed everybody in the already overcrowded environs of DC’s beloved 666 Fifth Ave. offices. When I eventually got the cleaned black plates back, I discovered a new problem. The film had been so well-travelled that the lettering was starting to break up. Most of the letter “E”s were breaking apart (so they looked like “F” or “L”), and the “A”s and “B”s and “P”s were beginning to block up solid.

Having no idea what it would cost (this was one of the first trades I worked on), I wondered if it would be easier to get new film struck, so I showed this to Production Manager Bob Rozakis, and I think we both went to see Publisher Paul Levitz. And the answer was — no new film. It was not in the budget, and moreover, there probably wasn’t enough time to get it done. So I asked how I should deal with the problem, and I believe that Paul said something like “use your best judgment and fix everything that looks bad.” Which meant carefully pouring over the book and circling hundreds (maybe thousands!) of broken letters with instructions to “clean out” or “fix”.

More on this later. Back to the film.

Once I had the black plates separated out, labeled (using the original comics as reference), and in order, I moved into the DC conference room and spread out my piles and piles of unlabeled film on the large conference table. Mostly I needed the room for its wall-mounted track lighting. I carefully taped each piece of black plate film to the lights, so I could see through it, like a doctor looking at an x-ray. Then I painstakingly took each piece of color film and held it up to each black plate to see if it matched. So, for about a week, all I did was walk around the room, holding each piece of film, muttering “Nope… Nope… Nope…” to myself, until I could find the match — and then quickly labeled it, by page and issue number!

(I first tried doing this on a light box but quickly abandoned it for two reasons: First, on a light box, I could only do one or two pages at a time. In the conference room, I could do two issues at a time, one on each side of the room. Second, DC had a limited number of light boxes available, and all were in high demand by production artists and visiting freelancers.)

Since the conference room was literarily across the the hall from Paul’s office, he would occasionally look in, shake his head a couple of times, and then move on. Once, early on in the procedure, he asked me, “Isn’t there somebody else who should be doing that?” Sadly, at that point in time, the answer was no, as the DC film library was in a major period of transition and a very long subway ride away from the office — way out in Brooklyn. It would be two office moves and several years later before the film library would be in the same building as the DC offices. (And after the floors were reinforced. Film is heavy!)

Earlier, just after I was made Collected Books Editor, I was struggling with dealing with the normally huge sheets of film on a desk that wasn’t large enough to accommodate them. Salvation came when cubicle dividers were installed in my three-person office. I quickly un-installed mine and propped it up on a short file cabinet to make a larger desk surface. (The dividers were unasked for and unwanted, because we had the happiest office at DC, cramped as it was). Weeks later, Paul finally noticed that I had “defaced” my new office furniture. He wasn’t happy about it and told me so, but the matter was largely forgotten when he realized that I needed a larger flat space for the film and the then very-crowded office could not accommodate me. Shortly afterwards, and after they got better organized, the film library dealt exclusively with film matters. Today, the collected book editors seldom ever touch film. And I have to wonder, in this digital age, if film even exists at all.

Later, while the book was being printed, artist and colorist David Lloyd traveled to Montreal (on his own dime) to join me at the press check for the printing of the book (in the middle of the night, when most comics are printed — or, at least, they were then). The print run on the first edition was relatively small, and therefore, each signature of the book was “on press” for only a short period of time. It was maybe only 10-20 minutes per signature for the high-speed presses, so adjustments for color had to be done quickly, while the presses were running. Unfortunately, bound contributor copies of the book were later sent to David from the front end of the print run (while the color was still being “fine-tuned” by David), and he was understandably quite upset at the time. All seems forgiven now, as David and I met up at the Baltimore Comic-Con a couple of years back, and we had a great chat about those crazy days.

There were other odd things about the book, most of which vexed designer Dale Crain, such as the slightly different sized interior pages (most of the original chapters were originally printed in the UK black and white magazine Warrior). The indicia and copyright page was done before DC had standardized their masthead for collected books, which meant I was inadvertently listed as Editor of the book over Karen Berger, the rightful Editor of the US version of the original series and over whoever actually edited it in Warrior (who wasn’t mentioned at all). These errors, I hope, have been corrected in subsequent editions of the book. Me, I still have my prized (and rare?) hardcover edition of the original printing given to me by my friend Phyllis Hume, longtime coordinator of DC’s international editions. I’m still not sure where this particular version of the book comes from, as the guts were from the original Printed in Canada First Printing, but the dust jacket was printed in the USA. Oddly, it doesn’t have a cover price either, so perhaps it’s a book club version.

One last thing. Remember those lettering corrections? Several months after V For Vendetta: the Collected Edition was printed and distributed and eagerly snapped up by people who love great comics and I had moved on to other projects, one day Bob Rozakis appeared in my office. “Paul would like to see us.” he said in that wonderful half-sighing way that Bob has. Uh-oh, I thought. Rule of thumb in the DC offices: If Paul had good news for you, he delivered it in person. If you were summoned, it probably wasn’t good news.

When we got to Paul’s office, his face was red, and and he had what looked like an invoice held tightly in his hand. He said something like, “This is our printing bill for the V For Vendetta trade. It says here that there were hundreds of corrections made in the lettering for the trade.”

“Yes,” I said, which seemed to make him more upset.

“Why?” he asked, exasperated.

It was here that I first realized that Paul probably had to deal with thousands of things like this every day. And that what was a big deal to me — the conversation about whether or not to have new film struck for the book — was probably the 537th decision that he had to make that day — and had since forgotten since there were several thousand much more important decisions to be be made since that day. I struggled to figure out what to say.

Luckily, BobRo jumped in, a old hand at talking to Paul, and gently reminded him that the film was in very bad shape and that corrections were necessary.

“But this many? Why did you make so many corrections?” he asked me directly.

“Because there were that many things that looked bad. And you told me to correct anything that looked bad,” I said.

Paul looked like he wanted to yell but couldn’t. BobRo helpfully chimed in, “You did tell him that, Paul.” Which was not really all that helpful at all, now that I think about it.

Paul went on to explain to me that the cost for all the corrections was so high that the book was probably not going to be profitable for DC until sometime into its third printing, whenever that was. I’m fairly sure that by now DC has turned a nice profit on the multiple printings of the perennial bestseller, but back then, it really wasn’t all that clear-cut. Collections took awhile to gain their footing, especially in the early days when many Direct Market retailers were skeptical of items with relatively high cover prices, and the general populace audience (through bookstores) wasn’t as developed or even widely accepted like it is today.

These days when I see Paul at a convention or other social gathering and I see that his hair is a little more gray, I always think, “Part of that’s my fault.” But then again, since my hair turned gray virtually overnight while I was editing the Superman books during a particularly contentious period, I think we’re kinda even.

On Tuesday night, I was giving the rare pleasure of seeing two underground comix luminaries sit down and talk for an hour. The University of Richmond’s Modlin Center for the Arts hosted Genesis: A Conversation with R. Crumb and Franciose Mouly at the Richmond CenterStage Carpenter Theater.

The evening opened with a brief introduction to the two guests. Mouly founded Raw Books & Graphics in 1977. She is currently the art director for The New Yorker magazine and the editorial director of Toon Books. Crumb’s first job as an illustrator was for American Greeting cards in 1962. In 1967, Crumb moved to San Francisco and founded the underground comix movement. In 1991, he moved to France, where he still lives today. The Virginia Commonwealth University library has an excellent resource page on Crumb.

The setup and format for the evening was very basic. Two chairs were placed at the center of the stage. Behind them was a large projection screen. The two guests talked for an hour with Mouly acting as interviewer/moderator. At the end of their conversation, they opened it up to audience questions for a half-hour. There was no photography allowed of Mouly or Crumb. Crumb didn’t hold an autograph session, although Velocity Comics and Chop Suey Books had presigned copies of Crumb’s Genesis book for sale in the lobby.

After a brief introduction, both Mouly & Crumb walked on stage. Crumb began the evening with a pratfall. It was clear from the start that Mouly was hoping for an hour of serious discussion exploring some of the themes in Crumb’s work. Crumb, however, was in a more playful mood and wanted to crack jokes and keep it lighthearted. The most animated moments of the evening were when Crumb wasn’t talking about himself but instead talking about his wife, reactions to his work, or criticizing corporate America.

The conversation started with Crumb talking about the 1994 documentary of his life, titled Crumb. It was clear that he was unhappy with the film, but unclear as to why. I wasn’t sure if it was because he thought the film was biased in its presentation or because the film was too revealing. He said that he was glad that his family was living in France when the film was released in the US. He didn’t think that his daughter, Sophie, would have been able to attend public school after the film’s release. The film made him want to change his appearance and who he was.

Crumb’s biggest concern in moving to France was losing touch with American culture, since his work is based on cultural observations. He would never presume to make comments on French culture since he didn’t grow up in it and was still trying to understand it. He expanded on American culture during the audience Q&A section. The one thing that he despises is how corporations are really the driving force and shapers of US culture. There are layers and layers of chicanery and deception. We are so bombarded by PR that Americans don’t even realize how ubiquitous it is.

Mouly mentioned that Crumb’s wife, Aline, is an excellent artist in her own right. Crumb agreed and felt it was unfair that she had to compete against his fame/notoriety. Crumb met Aline in 1971 when she moved out to San Francisco to be part of the underground comix scene. She was the first women to do autobiographical underground comix. Currently, she is working on creating shrines. They showed pictures of her Barbie shrine and Virgin Mother shrine. A couple of times in the conversation Crumb mentioned how much they are still in love.

Next they focused on specific Crumb comix. Mouly commented on them and asked for his thoughts. One was “A Gurl” about a woman masturbating. She thought it showed a sensitivity toward women. Crumb was surprised since he said it all came out of his imagination. Next was a comix titled “Don’t Touch Me”. This was a multipage work that depicted a woman being raped. The first page is from the perspective of the woman. Mouly says that it’s not what it appears at first. Crumb was happy she got it. He’s frustrated that people just have a knee-jerk reaction without trying to understand the joke. Then he said that all women have rape fantasies. This was the only remark Crumb made that drew a negative reaction from Mouly and the audience. They quickly moved on.

Crumb’s love of music and the portraits he’s done of early blues and jazz musicians were briefly discussed. He said that music has a powerful effect on him and the portraits were a way of expressing appreciation to the musicians. Interestingly, he doesn’t listen to music while he draws; he prefers it to be silent. Crumb said he can either draw comix or listen to music but can’t do both. Also, he only listens to CDs if he can’t get the 78. Crumb and his daughter, Sophie, have been members of various bands. Aline can play an instrument but doesn’t share their passion.

The conversation then focused on Crumb’s illustrated version of the book of Genesis. Originally, he had intended to do a satire of Adam and Eve. After studying the text, he decided to do a straightforward visual interpretation. Once he finished with the Adam and Eve story, he realized he felt compelled to do the entire book of Genesis. For visual reference, he visited the British Museum’s collection of Sumer and Assyrian art but found there wasn’t very much there. So he looked for other sources to help fill out the visual details. D.W. Griffith’s 1916 film Intolerance turned out to be the most useful. All the sets and costumes were based on Assyrian bas-reliefs. Crumb used stills from the movie as visual reference. In order to complete the book, Aline rented a secluded cabin in the mountains for him to use as a studio. He was left alone during the week; she visited him, and brought provisions, on the weekends.

Mouly confessed Crumb’s book was the first time she had actually read the book of Genesis. Crumb said he had heard that from many other people. He did a lot of research into the text while working on the illustrations. He was amazed to discover the amount of debate about the Biblical texts. Some word meanings have been lost to the ages, and scholars argue over how to translate them. Some words are ambiguous, and more than one meaning could be appropriate to the text. Sometimes the debate is how to best translate the text to communicate the original meaning to modern readers. He didn’t realize how difficult it would be to illustrate Genesis when he started. Now that he is finished, he won’t do any other Biblical books.

During the Q&A section, Crumb was asked about his first experience with LSD. He tried LSD back in June 1965, when it was still legal. It shattered reality for him. It shattered everything. He was so detached from reality that he threw up and didn’t realize it at the time. The next day when he went to work, the world seemed hollow and like cardboard to him. Later in San Francisco, he smoked pot and did so for eight years. But his advice is to stay sober. Today’s youth doesn’t value their own native intelligence. They don’t value their own natural ability for perception and awareness.

The evening ended with Mouy making the observation that Crumb’s Genesis is a modern Rorschach test. Most discussion is really about the reader’s reaction to his book and less about the book itself. Some find it too salacious, and others say it’s not salacious enough. Then they got up and exited the stage. Crumb ended the evening the way he began it, with a pratfall.

I enjoyed the conversation. I do wish that Crumb had been a bit more serious and willing to engage Mouly in discussions about themes in his works and how he intended readers to react to certain comix. That being said it was a captivating and entertaining hour and a half. Like all truly good programs, it felt like the time flew by. Hopefully, they will tape one of the other evenings to allow more fans to experience this event. I’m sure no one left disappointed. (A free ticket to the event was provided by the Modlin Center.)

Robert Crumb is a well-known aficionado of old-time American blues, jazz, and ragtime music, and this love of music has often found its way into his artwork. Among the many examples of this is the image Françoise showed next: one of Crumb’s portraits of a musician, the blues singer/guitarist Robert Johnson.

I’d seen a pen and ink version of this image before, but not this full-color version, which is apparently from an edition of prints. When the image appeared on-screen, Crumb remarked jokingly to Mouly, “The guy who owns (this photograph) is very litigious. I hope you don’t get sued!” I later found the print for sale on the official R. Crumb website and noted that it was listed with copyright indicia crediting the image to the “Delta Haze Corporation,” which made me wonder if Crumb’s comments stem from first-hand experience. Prompted for why he does so much music-related drawing, he said, “Music has such a profound effect on me, I just want to express my affection.” Crumb did mention, though, that he never listens to music while he works because he finds it too absorbing and that it demands his entire attention.

The Book of Genesis

The final — and most lengthy — topic of the Mouly/Crumb interview portion of the evening was a discussion of Genesis. In one of the more memorable moments of the interview, Françoise had brought along with her a stack of complaints The New Yorker had received after publishing an excerpt of the book, and she began reading them to Crumb. People’s grousing ranged from letters tersely complaining that the work was “salacious and adolescent” to a lengthy multi-page diatribe from a Hebrew scholar who was apparently quite upset about a single word in the text, which he felt had been inaccurately translated. On the general topic of translation minutiae, Crumb said, “The people who are into this stuff don’t even agree on what it all means. And people kill each other over this thing!”

Another letter complained that the Crumb Genesis excerpt “didn’t add anything” to the original text. Responded Crumb: “I didn’t want to add anything. I just wanted to illustrate it.” Responding both to this letter and to an older lewd parody-ish Crumb version of the story of Adam and Eve that’d been shown on-screen earlier, he said further, “I restrained myself from making little jokes — and there was plenty of opportunity to do so.”

Françoise mentioned that Crumb’s Genesis was the first time she’d ever actually read the Bible and recounted how she’d asked around the offices of The New Yorker how many of her co-workers had actually read anything from the Bible. No one had, apparently. In an amusing bit of “Manhattan myopia” reminiscent of Saul Steinberg’s “View of the World From 9th Avenue” which she’d showed only minutes before, Mouly then extrapolated this experience broadly, saying, “Very few people have read the Bible.”

Her general point, though, is astute: for many — if not most — of the people likely to run out and buy an R. Crumb-illustrated book of Genesis, this will probably be their first direct exposure to the text. It’s also an equally astute point that anyone who would complain about the published Genesis excerpts being “salacious” most certainly has not read the original text, which is plenty salacious in its own right.

Pointing out that this was hardly the first time Crumb had taken on illustrating weighty texts, Mouly showed a quick gallery of some of the cartoonist’s other adaptations, including his collaborations with Harvey Pekar, his illustrations of the journals of James Boswell, Sartre’s Nausea, and “The Religious Experience of Philip K. Dick” story. As pages from these works were shown, there was some oddly inappropriate laughter (I thought). I’m not sure why anyone coming to hear a cartoonist speak about his illustrated version of Genesis would find it particularly odd or funny that that same artist might have also illustrated, say, Satre’s Nausea. As the Philip Dick story appeared on-screen, Robert noted that he’d done that story with a brush rather than pens. He joked, “I probably should have done Genesis with a brush. All that cross-hatching is a pain in the ass.”

Returning to Genesis, Crumb discussed his working methods a bit. He mentioned that he’d visited a museum or two, looking for visual reference material, but that he mainly used screen captures from films to pin down period clothing and architecture. The two movies in particular he drew on most heavily were Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments and D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance. Mouly showed a number of the still images from both of these films that Crumb had used for reference. The cartoonist noted with some hilarity that all of the actors in Intolerance wore fake “hook noses” throughout. He said he hadn’t found any of the other comics versions of the Bible to be of much use visually, but praised some of Basil Wolverton’s design elements from his version of the Old Testament, begun in 1953 and completed in 1974.

Even the relative solace of the Crumb’s home in the undisclosed French village where they live was apparently not sufficiently distraction-free for the artist to concentrate on Genesis. Robert mentioned that Aline had found a place for him “up in the hills”, and he spent weeks there by himself just working on the book. Aline would periodically visit, bringing groceries. She was the only person who actually knew where he was and, said Crumb, he would not have finished the book without her. He noted that the book was, in fact, dedicated to her.

Mouly’s final question for Crumb was what his reaction was to being labeled a “genius”. After a bit of circuitous discussion, Crumb declared flatly, “Genius is a myth.” On that note, Françoise concluded the interview portion of the evening, and Robert took a few questions from the crowd.

Questions From the Crowd

By his own admission, Crumb was deliberately calling mainly on the women in the audience, but Mouly would intervene occasionally to give a few of the men opportunities to ask questions of the artist. After the obligatory LSD question, one audience member asked about Crumb’s experience with writer Charles Bukowski, several of whose stories Crumb had illustrated. Crumb sad he’d only met Bukowski once, early on at a party, and when he was introduced to him, Bukowski said only, “Your stuff’s good, kid. Just stay away from the cocktail parties.” Said Crumb: “He was right!”

Asked about the differences he found between life in the U.S. and life in France, the artist said the most striking difference between the two is the near-total integration of corporate interests into everyday life in the U.S., which he said is not nearly as prevalent in France. “You’re really in the belly of the beast here with this corporate stuff.”

Finally, a (male) audience member asked about his controversial attitudes about women. The cartoonist’s reply was vintage Crumb: “Any man, if he’s honest (and you can’t be honest around women), fears and hates women to some degree. I just happen to blurt it out in my work like diarrhea.”

And on that note, I’ll conclude.

If you have the opportunity to attend any of the remaining Crumb/Mouly appearances, I highly recommend doing so. I’ll never quite figure out why, along with New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, Richmond of all places was a part of this tour, but to whomever pulled this off, I say thanks — and recommend that the next time Chicago’s in the running for the Olympics that this person be put in charge of the international lobbying efforts.

Ben Towle is an Eisner-nominated cartoonist known primarily for his work with SLG Publishing, including the recent historical fiction graphic novel Midnight Sun as well as his earlier volume of comics folk tales, Farewell, Georgia. He’s recently illustrated Amelia Earhart: This Broad Ocean, a graphic novel for young adults forthcoming from Hyperion Books, and he’s currently hard at work on a creator-owned fantasy story about turn of the century Chesapeake Bay oystermen. Visit him online at www.benzilla.com. And many thanks to him for this extensive appearance review.

Comics Worth Reading is happy to feature a two-part guest column by the talented Ben Towle, author of Midnight Sun and Farewell, Georgia. Part two will run shortly, as will additional coverage of this event by Ed Sizemore.

If you’re a cartoonist and you hear that Robert Crumb will be making a rare stateside appearance a few short hours drive from your hometown, you don’t ask “How much?” you just get thee to Ticketmaster.com as quickly as possible and buy tickets. And that’s exactly what I did a few weeks back when (after a Bob Clampett-style double take) I saw this very announcement posted online. R. Crumb, godfather of underground comics (and more circuitously, pretty much everything else you’ve read since the late sixties that doesn’t involve guys in tights fighting crime) would be appearing along with Françoise Mouly at Richmond’s Carpenter Center to discuss his most recent book, a fully illustrated version of Genesis, based largely on Robert Alter’s 2004 translation.

If you’re interested in comics, you already know who Robert Crumb is. Françoise Mouly, who would be interviewing him at this event, might not have the same name recognition as her more controversial subject, but her contribution to the world of comics is substantial. Jeet Heer does a far better job singing her praises that I could in this essay, in which he asks (rhetorically), “Is there anyone in the cartooning world who is more underrated than Françoise Mouly?” Mouly’s career, just to touch on a few points, involves publishing the highly influential RAW anthology series; founding the RAW Junior, Little Lit, and TOON Books imprints; and serving as the art editor for The New Yorker for over fifteen years. Together, after a brief introduction, these two giants of comics took the stage at the Carpenter Center on a rainy Tuesday night to discuss Genesis and all things Crumb.

The Venue

The Carpenter Center is a peculiar venue. It’s apparently been recently restored at some expense to the city, and as such is a matter of contention among Richmond folk, according to fellow cartoonist and Richmond local Rob Ullman, with whom I attended the event. Unlike the staid “plaster and gold leaf” of most restored downtown theaters I’ve been in, the Carpenter Center’s interior was a mix of ornate medieval flourishes and an odd super-saturated color scheme. I half-expected to be served a turkey leg whilst observing a reenacted joust. The stage setup itself, once the lights went down, revealed itself to be quite tasteful, though: two wing-back chairs at center stage, with a large screen directly behind for projecting images of Crumb’s work. Photography was strictly forbidden in the theater, so unfortunately I don’t have any pictures of the event to share. Here, though, is a picture of my dog dressed as Robert Crumb. Just pretend she’s on a stage next to the art director of The New Yorker:

When I say Crumb “took the stage” I could more accurately say “hit the stage,” as he made his entrance with a perfectly-executed pratfall — a trick he’s apparently been working on of late. Crumb is not someone who’s known to be particularly interested in interviews, book tours, etc. so there was certainly some discussion before-hand as to how engaged he might be in the discussion to come. He addressed this head-on, semi-sarcastically remarking, “It’s an ordeal, but I’m a nice guy! It’ll help sell books….” Françoise began by suggesting that she’d be attempting, through the interview, to disabuse the audience of what she feels are some inaccurate perceptions that people generally have about R. Crumb: “People think they know you.” Largely responsible for most comics-folk’s perception of Crumb is of course, Terry Zwigoff’s 1994 documentary, Crumb.

Life in France

Mouly showed a New Yorker two-pager that Robert and his wife Aline had produced together, commenting on their reactions to the film. In the strip, Robert is seen throwing his signature straw boater away. After the film, he said, “I wanted to change into somebody else.” Boater or no boater, though, “I can’t change who I really am,” he decided. Fortunately, the Crumbs had already moved to the French countryside by the time the film was released, he said, as things would have no doubt been really difficult for daughter Sophie at school if they’d been in the U.S. at the time.

The topic of the Crumbs’ move to France now in the air, he mentioned, at Françoise’s questioning, that the move was initially entirely Aline’s idea and that he’d been afraid of losing touch with his favorite subject matter: skewering modern life in the U.S. “I wouldn’t presume to comment on the French,” he said, “So I do stuff like the Bible. I feel protected (in France). It’s like a fortress. They leave me alone.” His further comment that he, “hate(s) Americans much more than he hates the French” elicited a predictable round of hearty applause from the audience composed in substantial part by university students and faculty. Amidst this discussion of things French, Robert casually mentioned that he was a new grandfather (!) and that Sophie, at age 28, had just given birth to her first child. Congratulations, Sophie! Get that baby a Rapidograph ASAP.

Crumb on Women

Mouly then began showing some Crumb drawings and comics about women, nudging the conversation into a more contentious area. The first illustration was a truly beautiful pen and ink drawing of tennis player Serena Williams. If you know the kind of women Crumb likes to draw and you’re familiar with Williams’s physique, it’s no surprise that she is is one of his chosen subjects. “She’s really it,” he remarked. “She’s really got it!” The next image was an older two-pager showing a woman masturbating in her apartment. In a pattern that would emerge more than once during the evening’s discussion, Françoise attempted to take the high road and engage Crumb in a discussion of how this piece really reveals a “sensitivity” toward women. Crumb: “I had no idea. It’s a fantasy!”

Next on the screen was Crumb’s two-pager, “Don’t Touch Me” (from Snatch #3) which depicts an apparent rape, followed by the “punch line” in the last panel: “I never get to come!” In a rare bit of almost-regret (maybe? almost?), Crumb recalled showing this strip to a woman he knew and being genuinely surprised by her horrified reaction. Mouly wondered though if it wasn’t his intention to shock. “I intend to shock–but I don’t want them to run away in horror!” he replied. The discomfort in the room became almost palpable when he glibly remarked about “all women having rape fantasies, right?” and mentioned that “even Freud said all women were masochistic.” Then, after a moment, “Let’s move on…”

No escape was in sight, though, as the next strip up for discussion was Crumb’s infamous, “The Family that Lays Together Stays Together.” Crumb, though, did a deft job of cutting this one off at the pass: “It’s ironic, kids! I don’t advocate dogs having sex with little girls.”

At this point, Françoise moved on to other topics and tried to draw a connection between Crumb’s “A Short History of America” strip and post-modern architectural interest in “indigenous signage.” Crumb seemed lukewarm at best to this comparison, and her following attempt to draw a direct connection between Crumb’s work and the later work of Saul Steinberg likewise elicited basically an “I don’t really see it” from Crumb.

Up next, in part two: Music and Genesis

Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary
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Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary, credited as the first autobiographical underground comic, is coming back into print 35+ years after its original publication. A hardcover reprint edition is due out next month from McSweeney’s. It’s described as

… Justin Green’s autobiographical portrayal of his struggle with religion and his own neuroses. Binky Brown is a young Catholic battling all the usual problems of adolescence — puberty, parents, and the fear that the strange ray of energy emanating from his private parts will strike a picture of the Virgin Mary. Deeply confessional, with artwork that veers wildly between formalist and hallucinogenic.

It turns out that he’s suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder. Seminal creators, including R. Crumb and Art Spiegelman, have credited this work as influential to their art.

If the hardcover with gold inlay seems a bit much for this bit of comic history, there was a mid-90s paperback collection from Last Gasp that also contains the story.

First, The Losers is going to be a movie in April 2010, so DC is reprinting the first two volumes as one bigger, 12-issue collection at a customer-friendly price of $19.99. It’s due out January 2010, and the thicker book should given interested readers more to dive into. I’m not particularly interested in the plot — Special Forces seek revenge after being betrayed — but the cast is good, with Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Chris Evans being highlights for me.

More my speed is the FOX TV series Human Target starring Mark Valley (Boston Legal, Swingtown, Fringe). (I’ve always though he should play Captain America, myself.) It’s starting in January, so DC’s releasing a new collection then. Peter Milligan’s four-issue miniseries (illustrated by Edvin Biukovic) will be reprinted along with his Final Cut graphic novel (art by Javier Pulido). The new title is Human Target: Chance Meetings. (Cause the character’s name is Christopher Chance!)

This is the kind of smart marketing I like to see, putting out books that make it easy for interested viewers to read more.

Beginning with on-sale 9/23 books, some collections will no longer have UPC/bar codes as Marvel makes the transition to all collections no longer carrying UPC/bar codes, which should be in effect on all titles within the next three months.

Why would Marvel do that?

Two years ago, Diamond announced that all products they carried must have barcodes. I know Marvel is a premier publisher, so they can set their own rules, but this seems like a pretty big reversal.

I’m especially confused because collections are products that work better in the bookstore market, and I can’t imagine a Barnes & Noble or Borders carrying items without a UPC, which every other consumer product (even fruit!) now has. Is Marvel giving up on selling through bookstores?

I can’t fathom any reason for this decision. I know UPC codes cost money, but they’re a basic cost of doing business, especially for such a large publisher. They also have a price encoded in them, so I’m wondering if Marvel wants more flexibility that way, but I have to imagine that there are better ways to do that, especially given how quickly Marvel books go out of print. Reprints would allow for price changes.

Does anyone have any idea what’s going on with this decision?

Look! It’s KC Carlson’s name! (Even though it shouldn’t have dots in it.) My husband is on the New York Times bestseller list!

Totally erroneously, of course. He edited the collected edition of V for Vendetta, and his name appearing in the credits, which should only be writer and artist, is likely some kind of data entry glitch. But boy, it’s a fun one!

Out October 20 from Titan Books is the James Bond Omnibus, a 300-page book collecting 11 comic strip adaptations of the novels the movies were based on.

Sir Roger Moore provides an introduction. Stories include Casino Royale, Live and Let Die, Moonraker, Diamonds Are Forever, From Russia With Love, Dr. No, Goldfinger, Risico, From a View to a Kill, For Your Eyes Only, and Thunderball. They’re numbering it as “Volume 001″ — cute, and with promise that there might be more. It’s a great price for a product that will appeal to Bond fans who want something a little different, or comic fans who love spy adventure.

It’s about a girl named Maggie, who has three brothers (as I do), who was home-schooled (as I was), and is now entering her first year of public high school (as I did). She also is stalked by a ghost (that has yet to happen to me). She gets mixed up in High School Drama, makes friends with the wrong people, and because the story is written by me, it will contain two things: 1) Zombies. And 2) Someone will, eventually, get punched in the face.

She tells the story of how she came to work with the publisher and got a agent as part of the background on this story (which was originally intended for DC’s defunct Minx imprint). There are also art examples posted at her site. Go check it out! She does great work with young women characters, and I’m already eager to read this next book.

When The Surrogates was first being published, did you envision it in another medium as well?

ROBERT VENDITTI: Not in a serious way. The most I ever hoped to achieve was to get the book published — no small feat for a first-time comic book writer — so that I could show the finished product to editors and hopefully get more writing work. The feature adaptation was completely unexpected.

How did the movie deal come about?

ROBERT VENDITTI: It started with a producer named Max Handelman, who contacted me about the film rights for The Surrogates back in 2006. Both I and Chris Staros at Top Shelf liked Max, and so we decided to let him shop it around. Max ended up bringing in Todd Lieberman and David Hoberman at Mandeville Films, a production company that has its first-look deal at Disney. They put a package together that included the screenwriters and Jonathan Mostow as director, and then made their pitch to Disney. Disney liked what they heard and decided to move forward under their Touchstone label.

How much have you been involved in the filming? Did you get to visit the set or offer any input?

ROBERT VENDITTI: I was a consultant on the film, and I visited the set on a couple of occasions, but mostly I tried to stay out of everyone’s way and give them the freedom to do what they wanted. I understood from the beginning that directors, screenwriters, and actors are all creative minds in their own right, so if they’re inspired by something I had a hand in, then I’m going to take it as a compliment and not try to inject myself into the process.

Have you seen the final film? What did you think?

ROBERT VENDITTI: I haven’t seen the finished film, but I’ve read the screenplay and seen enough of the footage to feel like I have a good understanding of what they’ve done. They made some changes, of course, but that’s to be expected. What’s always been important to me is that the themes and the subtext of the book were retained in the film, and I’m pleased to say that has been the case.

What is the biggest thing you thought they got right in translating the graphic novel to film?

The Surrogates
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ROBERT VENDITTI: The strained relationship between Greer and his wife, which I’ve always felt was the most important part of the book because it really humanizes the effects that surrogate technology could have. Bruce Willis and Rosamund Pike do an amazing job translating this to the screen.

What one thing would you have changed about the movie?

ROBERT VENDITTI: I would’ve liked for the film to be set in Georgia, as is the case with the books. I live in the Atlanta area, and I find the South to be a fascinating and culturally complex place. Ultimately that’s a cosmetic change, though, so it doesn’t really have much bearing on the story.

What would you tell moviegoers to interest them in the graphic novel?

ROBERT VENDITTI: That it gives them a deeper background on the future world they saw on screen. The book and the film complement each other very well.

What’s currently on your plate in comics?

ROBERT VENDITTI: We just released The Surrogates: Flesh and Bone, the prequel to the original story. My next book for Top Shelf will be the political/medical thriller The Homeland Directive, which should be released sometime next year. Other than that, I have an Iron Man one-shot coming out in October, and I’m adapting the popular young-adult novel The Lightning Thief to graphic novel format.

I’ve done all the Magic Trixie books that Harper Collins is interested in, so I’ve got a trilogy, and that’s cool. I’d like to do more stories eventually, but right now I’m focusing on Beasts of Burden and looking forward to get Scary Godmother started back up.

While I’m glad to hear that there will be more Scary Godmother coming, I’m disappointed that the three Magic Trixie books are all we’re going to get. It was one of my top ten graphic novels of 2008, because it’s a gorgeous, funny all ages work.

Regardless, you should check out the interview for much much more about Thompson’s projects and working process.

When Whiteout was first being published, did you envision it in another medium as well?

STEVE LIEBER: Back when I first read the comics script, Whiteout struck me as very likely to get other-media interest. It works as a movie, obviously. It could work as a prose novel — it would even work well on stage. It’s a really compelling story, and it has such an unusual setting.

How did the movie deal come about?

STEVE LIEBER: My understanding is that both Joel Silver and Dominic Sena had been interested in the GN since they first read it, back when it originally came out. After Reese Witherspoon’s option on it lapsed, Silver’s company contacted Greg Rucka’s representatives, and it moved very quickly from there.

How much have you been involved in the filming? Did you get to visit the set or offer any input?

STEVE LIEBER: I visited the set, but that was way, way too far into the production for me to be pulling out a pencil. The filmmakers had 200 pages of my artwork — something like 1500 panels — to comb through for visual ideas. For a movie this size, that was plenty. There’s going to be a feature on the dvd that does lots of panel to screen comparisons.

Have you seen the final film? What did you think?

STEVE LIEBER: I haven’t seen it yet. My first viewing is going to be at the red-carpet premiere in LA.

What is the biggest thing you thought they got right in translating the graphic novel to film?

STEVE LIEBER: Since I haven’t seen a final cut, that’s hard to say definitively, but I adore the look of the movie. The environments that Graham “Grace” Walker created are incredible. His envisioning of Amundsen-Scott South Pole station and the Russian base have to be seen to be believed. And what I’ve seen of the relationship between Carrie and the Doc has been perfect. Everything about them I tried to draw in the graphic novel was up there on the screen.

What one thing would you have changed about the movie?

Whiteout
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STEVE LIEBER: I’m a cartoonist, not a filmmaker, so honestly, I hesitate to second-guess someone else’s choices. It wasn’t my 50 million dollars they were spending. That said, I’d have liked to see Lily Sharpe in the movie. I think Gabriel Macht is terrific, but the tension we built between Carrie and Lily was one of my favorite things about the original graphic novel and I’m sorry to have lost that. Maybe if someone decides to do Whiteout on stage, they can put it back. (laughs)

What would you tell moviegoers to interest them in the graphic novel?

STEVE LIEBER: Whiteout (the graphic novel) is a smart, atmospheric crime story. It’s gotten a ton of acclaim and the story means a lot to me and Greg. I put everything I had into drawing it, and I think it shows on every page. You can see for yourself by reading the entire first issue for free on my website.

What’s currently on your plate in comics?

STEVE LIEBER: UNDERGROUND: a thriller set in a Kentucky cave system, written by Jeff Parker, the writer behind great Marvel comics like Agents of Atlas and X-Men First Class, published by Image Comics. It’s fast-moving and tense — a conflict between a couple of park rangers and some locals spirals out of control, and what should’ve been an argument turns into a life-or-death chase through the dark. It’s a beautiful, creepy, claustrophobic environment, and the chemistry between our two park rangers is great. (One’s a gal, one’s a guy.) Parker’s the best new writer in comics and I’m having a blast drawing it. There’s a free preview at http://www.undergroundthecomic.com.

My thanks to Steve for his answers. I’m going to see the movie on Sunday, so I’ll be telling you what I thought then.

I neglected to ask Steve about progress on the final Whiteout book: Originally called Thaw, a four-issue miniseries was planned to start in Fall 2007, but in December 2008, Rucka posted that the title would be Night, and it would be coming out around now. According to an FAQ on Lieber’s site, however, while one issue has been completed, “Greg has had to put the script for issue two on hold for a while.” In the meantime, everyone should be reading Underground!

You Have Killed Me
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Jamie Rich’s most recent graphic novel is You Have Killed Me. Here, we discussed how the noir genre is a departure from his previous romance stories, his influences, how the graphic novel fits in with other detective tales yet could only have been done as a comic, his working relationship with Joelle Jones, and what they’re doing next.

You’re best known, in comics, for writing modern romances. How does You Have Killed Me relate to that genre? Or were you trying to get away from it?

To be honest, I was thinking it was starting to be time to get away from some of the romance stuff and start to show my ability to do other things, but it wasn’t a hard mandate or anything. Part of that was Joëlle’s suggestion, she wanted to do a crime book, but she’s also very perceptive and saw that in some ways I was getting boxed in. There’s been a natural evolution in my work, it’s been getting darker, so there was, I think, a natural move here. Romantic issues are still central to the case Antonio Mercer undertakes in You Have Killed Me, so it’s not so radical a shift, but I think there is a little bit of my journey as a writer wrapped up in the idea that a private detective is often a noble man whose eyes are growing more jaded. It was an aspect of the genre Raymond Chandler was a pioneer in, and he set the way for the kind of man who takes this job. And for me, as my themes grow darker, I think it serves the material to have an outlet of this kind.

How is this book something only the two of you together could do?

Creative chemistry is just so important. There are just certain things that happen when two particular people get together to make art. You know, like I’m Martin Scorsese and Joëlle is Robert De Niro. Or maybe I’m Paul McCartney and she’s John Lennon–or would that be the other way around? It’s hard to say what exactly happens, but it has to do with point of view, the philosophies we share and the ways we differ, and how those things intersect to make something unique. It’s also that level of respect for and excitement about the other person’s work. I know people think I am being facetious or self-deprecating when I say these things, but it’s true. I adore Joëlle’s drawing, and I want to write to meet her level of craft. It’s not a competition, but it definitely is a mutual challenge.

There’s a strong film noir flavor. Were there any particular movies that influenced you?

I like all the Bogart ones, particularly with Bogart and Bacall–so, The Big Sleep, Dark Passage. There is a little bit of Laura in there, and I actually was watching a lot of Gene Tierney movies when the story was percolating. Night and the City, Where the Sidewalk Ends, Leave Her to Heaven, Whirlpool.  I also really like the French post-noir movies like Rififi, Touchez pas au grisbi, and Le Samourai immediately spring to mind.

I know one of the movies I gave Joëlle to watch was Out of the Past, that’s a real favorite, and she really liked the look of Robert Mitchum. I think a little of him ended up in Mercer. It’s ironic, though, that my background for this genre is more the film side of things, and for her, she was more schooled in the literature. You’d think it would be the other way around, the writer would have read the books and the artist was the movie buff, but no dice.

What does the detective character type tell a reader today?

I think the thing about a private eye of the hardboiled variety is that they are the guys who are always looking, always wanting to see more, and often to their detriment. They draw a line in the sand and say, “This is as far as I will let the tide come in.” It’s like that speech at the end of No Country for Old Men, when the two sheriffs are talking, and one of them calls it “the dismal tide.” They know they are losing, they know people are their own worst enemies, but someone has to say enough. It’s that classic end to The Maltese Falcon. I may love you, but you did a thing you never should have done, and I have to make sure you pay for that.

Men like Mercer are always going to be the same regardless of the era, because there will always be a tendency for others to turn a blind eye. We hear a lot of talk about people not taking personal responsibility anymore, and the primary function of a gumshoe in a story like You Have Killed Me is to make sure those who did wrong accept the consequences of their actions.

You’ve worked with Joelle before. How was your work together different this time?

Well, for one, we started You Have Killed Me from her suggestion that we do this kind of story, and as I was writing, I was always talking to her, telling her what I was doing, getting feedback. There was a lot more give and take. There was also a lot more trust, I knew what she was capable of, and I could leave things open for her to play with. At the same time, she was more confident and understood that she could say, “This isn’t working, so I am going to take it in another direction.” We have a pretty conflict-free relationship. We very rarely get frustrated with one another, and it’s never anything a little drink and a little karaoke can’t solve.

12 Reasons Why I Love Her
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How did you start working together?

It’s a very Portland story. This town is too small, too many comic book people, we can’t avoid one another. David Mack had seen Joëlle’s work at one of the local comic book shows, and he made Joëlle show it to Diana Schutz at Dark Horse, and that lead to Joëlle drawing the story in the Sexy Chix anthology that my good friend Sarah Grace McCandless wrote. I was in the market for a 12 Reasons Why I Love Her artist at that point, and so Diana put me in touch with Joëlle. As it turned out, we only live two blocks apart on the same street. I was working at the neighborhood video store at the time, and had signed her up for her account there, but we had no idea that either was in comics. A friend of mine had even seen her drawing in a coffee shop and told her she should get in touch with me. It was like this grand conspiracy of fate. She and I met, and we sat and looked at her work and talked for maybe twenty minutes, and then spent the rest of the day goofing off. It was like kismet for screw-ups.

You and Joelle are currently working on another project, Spell Checkers, correct? Can you tell me about it?

It started with a sketch. She had a drawing of three girls, and they all had different styles, one was drinking, one was smoking, and she said, “We should do something with them. I like them.” Then she promptly forgot until I showed up with the script for the first chapter. It’s essentially a rude high school comedy about a trio of scary gals who have magical powers and rule the school through dastardly spells. It’s been wickedly fun to write. Joëlle is doing the covers and flashback sequences, while a French artist named Nicolas Hitori de is drawing the body of the book. It’s going to be an original graphic novel from Oni next year. We’re all having a lot of fun with it, and I’ve got two more volumes mapped out. We hope to make a series out of it.

Spell Checkers is what I like to call a shower idea. I get these vivid ideas when I am in the shower, I don’t know why. I think it’s some curse, like I am doomed to have my best ideas at times I can’t write them down. When I’m exercising, too. A lot of You Have Killed Me arrived as inspiration on the exercise bike. For Spell Checkers, it was like the day after we had that conversation about the sketch that I was in the shower and saw the first three pages in full detail, and those are still the first three pages of the book. Same thing happened in You Have Killed Me, there is a scene at a horse race where Mercer thinks he has seen something, and the page where that happens, I had an image appear in my brain — which is not that different to what happens to Mercer on that page, when you think about it. It’s an important moment, a turning point in the story and definitely a turning point during the writing, where the book started to really come alive. Usually I thumbnail visions of those kind, I sketch them out, as it’s the fastest way to get them out of my head and stop thinking about them. I did it with Spell Checkers, I did it with the first page of “The Jailhouse Swing,” our story in Popgun volume 3. I never show those thumbnails to Joëlle, the most I’ll do is try to type up how I see it, explain the layout, and it amazes me, but every time it’s one of those scenes, what she draws is exactly what I saw. It’s uncanny.

What do you like best about working with her? What do you think she likes best about working with you?

We probably both appreciate each other’s willingness to stare at strangers and say mean things about them. It’s quite a skill.

No, I’m kidding. Kind of.

I like working with her just because I know that, as a writer, there is nothing she can’t give me. In particular, she is so good at character work, at the acting and all that entails, the body language and the facial expressions, I know that whatever emotion I need, she can do. I think with You Have Killed Me, people will also see how good she is at action and environments, as well.

As for me, gosh, I don’t know. I would assume she likes my work ethic and my ability to keep things organized, as well as my openness to try different things and to give her freedom to roam. I’m not a “do it my way” kind of writer. In fact, by the time it’s drawn, I’ve forgotten the specifics of what is in the script, so when I see the art, it’s practically brand new. There is no, “But I asked for a pink giraffe, and this is purple.” Someone has asked me if I have found the thing she can’t draw yet, and I said no. I found some things she won’t draw, but that’s different, and it’s usually things where she says I’m insane for even expecting it, complicated layouts or pretentious concepts and the like.

Why do you keep making graphic novels? What draws you to the format?

Part of it is the collaboration, part of it is that’s just the way I see whatever story as being. I don’t want to say comics are more simplistic, but there is an element of short hand to them, of working within a confined space and thinking more in terms of frozen moments, of images, rather than the much more broad requirements of prose. It provides a different kind of satisfaction for me, a different experience. It’s less solitary, has a bunch more toys, and it often feels more like I am building something, like real hammer and nails building, rather than the more self-involved birthing process of a prose novel. And don’t get me wrong, I am not saying it’s easier to do comics, it’s not about easy or hard. I actually think the single cartoonist, a guy like Craig Thompson, and a novelist have a lot more in common in terms of process, and definite that “the loneliness of the long distance runner” aspect of doing it all by yourself.

How do you decide which story becomes a comic and which a novel? Is it purely based on the content, or do market concerns also become a factor?

That is one of those questions that I have never found an adequate answer for, at least not one that makes sense to anyone else, because in terms of process, I never really have to think about it. Once I have an idea for something — and it happens a lot less than people might think, I’m not an idea guy with piles of untouched brilliance — I pretty much always know right away what it is. There is never a sense of weighing this or weighing that, and I don’t think I could transform a comic idea into a novel or vice versa. I recently tried it, I have been tinkering with a Young Adult novel that is a sequel to Love the Way You Love, and it took a lot of mental work on my part, a lot of wrapping my head around the material in a different way and having to try to understand it for a different format.

I couldn’t do You Have Killed Me the same way in prose. The narration, for instance, wouldn’t work. The free-form philosophizing would have to be interrupted for descriptions of what is happening, and so it would never be separate. In a comic, I can have the words work on one level and let the pictures do something else. Or the playing with light and darkness, the whole visual design of the climax, that’s something a comic book can do that a novel never can. It’s something I need a Joëlle Jones for, because a Jamie Rich won’t be enough. Then again, a Jamie Rich is always simultaneously too much and never enough. I am maddening!

How have recent changes in the comic industry affected your feelings toward or work in the format?

Unfortunately, I think it means a lot less opportunity to work in any serialized format. I enjoyed doing Love the Way You Love in chunks, of thinking of it as an ongoing serial, and I think that’s going to be harder and harder to do on this side of the Diamond pie chart. That’s about the only thing I can see as being that different, and the writing has been on that wall for many years. I think there is a lot more noise about supposed change than there is real change. When it’s all said and done, as long as some of us are crazy enough to want to do comics, there will be comics of some kind.

What else do you have coming up?

Not a lot. I am a slower, more methodical worker, so I tend to focus on something until it’s done. Spell Checkers is the only thing that is scheduled, and Joëlle and I have a couple of other things we’d like to do. She’s got a variety of other projects to complete in the meantime, though, she’s very much in demand. As I write this, our story for Madman Atomic Comics #16 is going to be out in a couple of weeks, and we did a short comics story in Portland Noir, a crime anthology that Akashic Books published. It’s part of a series of books featuring crime stories in specific cities, and I think we’re only the second comics work to appear in one of the volumes.

I’ve got a project in the works with Mike Holmes, another crime/romance hybrid, actually, and in addition to the Love the Way You Love novel I mentioned, I also have a new, stand-alone novel completely finished and in search of a venue, and another one halfway done. So, I’ve been busy.

This is just a taste of her new book, Relish, which she describes as “stories, histories and recipes of food, all inspired by growing up with a chef for a mom. I signed it with First Second, and it’ll be in full color, out in a couple years.” (I can’t wait!) Plus, in the comments, she and others discuss reasons to get a Cintiq drawing tablet and model recommendations.

To promote his Book of Genesis Illustrated (due out October 19), Robert Crumb will be appearing in Richmond, Virginia, on October 27. “A Conversation with R. Crumb and Françoise Mouly”, sponsored by the University of Richmond and local shop Velocity Comics, is one of only five appearances nationwide.

If you will be attending and are available to report on the event for this site, please let me know. Note that an earlier version of this post got the school wrong. My apologies.

Captain Action
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The revised second edition of this full-color hardcover includes behind-the-scenes material covering Captain Action’s triumphant 2008 return to comics shelves in his new series from Moonstone Books.

To promote its release, the book will be debuting at Geppi’s Entertainment Museum (GEM) in Baltimore a week from this Saturday. Author Michael Eury will be signing copies on August 15, 2009, from noon to 3 PM. The current owners of Captain Action, Ed Catto and Joe Ahearn, will also be present to kick off an exhibit on the history of Captain Action, “from the first action figures in the 1960s to the latest merchandise”. The exhibit will run until October 13.

Captain Action, originally a doll, was released in 1966 with costumes that let him become such other heroes as Superman, Batman, Captain America, Spider-Man, the Lone Ranger, Flash Gordon, the Phantom, and the Green Hornet. The production run on the action figure only lasted through 1968, but fans have been fascinated ever since.

The first thing I noticed was that the #1 seller isn’t really a comic, by my definition, but at this point, I doubt I can redirect the Wimpy Kid bandwagon.

More significantly, it takes until #39 before you see a Marvel comic, and that’s a Stephen King tie-in, so it barely counts. There is no Marvel superhero title on this list, while DC has *15*. (And that’s only the superhero books they put out; they have additional Vertigo titles listed.) Let’s say that again: there is no Marvel superhero collection or graphic novel in the top 50 Amazon sellers.

Are all of Marvel’s audience picking the periodical format as their preference? Do Marvel’s collections sell better in the comic shop direct market? Have readers gotten tired of Marvel not keeping their books in print and so don’t bother? I’m stumped.

Also, Tumor, a Kindle-only release, shows up very high for something with a restricted audience. In an earlier post, Dave discusses why manga doesn’t rank as highly as you might expect — he speculates (and I agree these reasons sound plausible) that it’s a combination of younger audience and lack of discount.