Cartoonist NW win!

Two years ago I mentioned that I had been thinking about "blogging-up" my ideas behind deeply emotional politics, I was not incendiary enough to unload ALL of my politics but I was toying with the idea of letting some of my ideas filter out.

Partly as a result of Milt Prigee making a big impression on me this month, and partly as a result of the discovery that people were able to "get" my do-it-yourself-Editorial Cartoon concept, I am going to let more out of the bag.

Do-it-yourself-Editorial Cartoons allow you to "cut out" the Editorial that you disagree with and keep the Editorial comment that you want. This technique may result in dramatic Editorial Cartoons that do not generate lawsuits. This would make a low-budget cartoonist lifestyle possible.

The idea here is also to generate understanding between people of incompatible political views.

I am cartoonist of the month for Cartoonists NW. Thank you for voting, you are a great encouragement CNW.

Jeff Hawley is Jeff Hamil

This week only.
Jeff Hawley is Jeff Hamill. Jeff Hamill is the correct name for the Jeff who wrote the gag for "Wasp Bait", the single-panel-adventure-winner of the Cartoonist-of-the-Month recognition for the Cartoonists Northwest cartoon club. Congratulations Jeff, and condolences to the other Jeff for not being Jeff Hamill. I may post a version of the cartoon with the correct name at some later date.

I will say more nice things about Jeff Hawley next week. Things that will swing the pendulum back into the "true" direction.

quick recap of the Emerald City Comicon

Erik Thompson who has a style that I love - sat across from me all weekend, sometimes making faces and sometimes giving me some good ideas on process. A good man.
Bruce Timm who saved Batman from obscurity in the 1990s - sat just a few feet away from the CNW booth both days
Stephen Silver is the great character designer who sat next to me, his booth was partially obscured by the huge line that was there to see Bruce Timm, so I was able to talk to him more than I would have otherwise. He is a great person as well as a great character designer, very dedicated to being a dad, I was a fan before the comicon and a bigger one after having him to myself at the comicon.
There was a crowd of people from the cartoon club (Cartoonist Northwest) there (many with their own booths) and I promoted the club with Donna, Elizabeth and Roberta.
His crowd was too large for me to talk to him, but at least I was able to see what Humberto Ramos looked like. I rabidly consume his early work with "Impulse".
Have to mention my other favorites Phil Foglio and Aaron Williams who were there and I have linked to for over a year at Girl Genius and Nodwick. Greatness in stories.

Tonight I Blog

Emerald City Comicon was very very good. I sold my first magazine. Published 2 days before the con, for the con. I feel very good about my first attempt.

Puget Sound Slug Trap

I have been doing some illustrations for my friends who are suddenly job hunting and the recession. Bubbles popping, flooding, crashing and such I can use. I cannot use the slug in the Beer, too obscure. Do people still put cans of beer out for slugs? I remember the slugs loving the stuff.

Comic Book movie wait ahead

Long wait for Marvel movies: Iron Man 2 (May 7, 2010), Thor (July 16, 2010), The First Avenger: Captain America (May 6, 2011), and The Avengers (July 15, 2011). The distribution agreement also includes Iron Man 3.

"Coming off of 'Iron Man's' incredible success this summer, we could not be more excited about extending our relationship with Marvel," - Rob Moore, Vice Chairman of Paramount Pictures

What you can expect from Monday

When I started this Blog I intended regular themes:

Biblical scaled epics, political salmon,
Video Game walkthroughs from a secret UFO defense bunker,
17th century pyrates, and dangerous animals.

I have decided to stay clear of politics excepting Darwin politics, which has generated the most comments, interestingly enough. I have been thinking about blogging-up the ideas behind the deeply emotional politics, I am not incendiary enough to unload all my politics, but I hope that everyone can agree on some things. I think that this is a very cool development for example: Obama and McCain.

My revised list of expectations after one year:
You can expect more of the same, these themes seem pretty good:

The 2 entertainment themes – “all ages” and “over-served immature adults”
Talk Like a Pirate Day of September 19th.
Dangerous Animals
Projects that I may start working on with greater diligence
That “fish to ape” evolution is harder to believe than “ape to man” and no one likes to admit it
Themes on my favorite storytellers like Aaron Williams, the Foglios, and other superior independent comics.
Cartoonists NW, Illustration Fridays and animation
Shakespeare
Random thoughts on life and culture
Sketches
Similar ideas to mine on other Blogs

For example; Khylov the storyboard artist. I have been meaning to reply to Khylov who left such good comments the other day. He seems much more professional than I and has a good style to his art. He has blogged far more effectively than I on the overall hard-to-believeness of fish-to-ape. (May 12th - the fish "fin" needs to dump the lepidotrichia)

I wonder if I will ever get around to blogging big epics… with sketch illustrations…

Batman of Bruce Timm and Lego Batman

Looking at my last post- I did not communicate the 2 “all ages” themes that I would like to come back to from time to time. The latest Dark Night gives a significant challenge to my proposition: the best comics/ stories are all ages.

Since I have been examining my own thoughts on this I have noticed that some “all ages” rating standards are awful, but some encourage creative people to streamline the story as they should and present a worthy story to the largest audience possible.

My other proposition is that an over-served small audience is unfairly over-catered to. The immature adults and older teens compose the group that is way over-targeted for comics and films.

To balance what may be misconstrued as prudish un-funism, I present Bruce Timm’s tribute to the censors of his 90’s Batman.

I hold up the Bruce Timm Batman as the best example of all-ages story well told. The image above shows some of the reasonable and unreasonable limits to Batman the Animated Series. From Upper Left to Lower Right: child endangerment, open wounds, gun violence, strangle/ neck grab, religion, alcohol, nudity, and smoking. This is one of the many good reason’s to check out the Bruce Timm Art of Batman book.

The commentary for the DVD seasons are interesting too. I cracked up at how Batman had to restrain himself for the sensors while fighting people, but could literally rip the head off of a robot human.

Lego Batman is the next big thing that my capture my ideal all-ages:

Collider has Lego Batman images.
Traveler’s Tales Lego games make the fun happen.

The superherohype.com / comingsoon.net link to the best image of the game’s cover to date. Apparently from the San Diego wish-I-were there fest.

Looking forward to Lego Batman

Records were broken this weekend. This has been a good summer for superheroes.
I saw many kids at all the movies this summer.
My rating from most “all ages” to least:

Kung Fu Panda – Most “all ages”
Hancock
Hulk
Iron Man
Batman - Least “all ages”

The huge numbers of kids at all these films says to me that the parent’s current standard “all ages” in for my area includes the racy bits in Iron Man and the Murderous bits in Batman. I have to think about this sometime.
Lego toys seem to be aimed at the least kid-friendly kid movie of the summer.
The Batman Lego game is less tied to the look of “Dark Night”. At the lego Batman site- many new things can be found including several fun short films of the Batman.

As a result of villain choices in the Batman relaunch, I have revisited my favorite Chuck Dixon Ras Al Ghul / Joker story. If anyone knows of a better Batman storyline from Chuck Dixon (or anyone in the last 10 years), I would like to see it! I doubt that Bruce Timm and Paul Dini will make any new Batman soon, so it would seem that all the good new comics are going to come from Mr. Dixon? The Demon Laughs was inspired.

More Good Shakespeare

Here Pease-Blossom addresses Puck in Midsummer Night's Dream. "you are that shrewd and knavish sprite Call’d Robin Goodfellow: are you not he That frights the maidens of the villagery;... sweet Puck?"

My Niece played an excellent Pease-Blossom, and I have been reminded that when High School aged actors run a play, they truly play. It was great fun, and this was teens at play as well as good greek-toga Shakespeare.

I went right after an excellent Comic Convention, I met Aaron William's (PS238) very cool spouse. Bought some, said "hi", convinced 3 really good artists to sign some comic boards. No Baldwin appearance, but this Emerald City Comicon gets better each year.

Emerald City Comicon

Busy week ahead.
WIL WHEATON has been added, as has ADAM BALDWIN, to the Emerald City Comicon. I have tickets to the early show for Iron Man and Aomic Robo has a free comic coming out. Cartoonist Northwest will be well represented as well. Good times.
shortly after that:
Iron Man, May 2nd in theatres
Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, May 16th in theatres
Incredible Hulk, June 13th in theatres
WALL·E June 27th in theatres
Dark Knight, July 18th in theatres

However Lego Batman is still pretty far away - September 2008
New trailer

Red 5 Comics

Red 5 is a great example of a publisher making comics - they are a part of a very cool trend: Creative people who made a pile of cash that they could retire on and decide to spend their time making really good comic books.

Red 5 had movie deals before they put their first comic up for sale. I followed this company out of interest- "how did they do that"
The answer is found in the creators past. Heavily connected with success and Lucas Arts.

Abyss conclusion comes out 4/30.

Atomic Robo will next appear on Free Comic Book Day with Neozoic

Red5 Comics are people who have kid- hearts (adventure, humor, great stories and heroes) but put out comics that a parent would think 2x about giving to children. I do not think that they dropped the F bomb yet but ... maybe they have. The current comic world makes all ages comics with occasional dialogue that should have read like !!$&* instead of ...

Maybe I am off here, but these great stories deserve a bigger audience, they have cut themselves off from a good chunk of it, I am not sure why.

Enough angst- I really like Kevin Rubio, and Atomic Robo, and dinosaur herds attacking cities.

Abyss especially is fun. It was made by the same team that created Tag and Bink. I have a couple copies of the Tag and Bink collection on order that I intend to hold for gifts. If you work for the distributors, get more.

Just look at the cover art for a summary of the Tag and Bink coolness: here

PS 238 Aaron Williams

One of the best all-ages comics for me lately has been PS238 by Aaron Williams. I have about a dozen of his collections and single issues - more than half have a great sketch and signature. His blog is a great source of amusement for hero/adventure people too.
He seems proud to be the writer for one of the new Spider-Man Unlimited issue #13 stories. I like his work.

Kids Love Comics

My cartoonist group, Cartoonists NW. has a large number of projects going on that are not intended for kids at all. (they are very original and amazing) And I have been reading a lot of Scott McCloud lately who considers the kid-comics mental association to be a very bad thing for comics. Scott goes on to say that he is not happy with current trend to only cater to males aged 25 to 40.
This has started me thinking more about the state of me, and what I want for comics.
I recently came across a kid’s comics site aimed at educators, and it reminded me of how kid’s comics are a very very good thing:

Because Kids Love Comics like no one else.

Kids Love Comics-- Promoting literacy (and fun!) through Graphic Novels & Comics! KLC aims to promote quality, age-appropriate comic books available to kids through awareness campaigns, and creator tours & signings that tie in with local education and business communities.
Comic books are a valuable resource for kids' entertainment & education!

My wife is a Public School teacher (which is an influence on me) and I always have kid sketches in my sketchbook alongside of my pirates, characters and heroes. So that obviously is one thing that I want for my comics. Kid participation.