Bil Keane, Family Circus Creator, Follows Dotted Trail into the Infinite

Today it was announced that Bil Keane, creator of the long running and enormously popular Family Circus comic strip, had passed at age 89.  Keane's strip appears in over 1500 papers and has been in publication for over 50 years.

As a somewhat shallow jerk with no children of his own, like literally dozens of other Americans, I quit enjoying daily newspaper strip The Family Circus's whimsical take on the gosh-darn cute things kids say and do some time back.  But circa 1984, I was all about The Family Circus.  Mostly because I'd found a huge treasury album on deep discount at Bookstop, but its also a fairly consistent (perhaps too consistent) strip, and sometimes it was sweet and amusing enough and inoffensive, in the way you might find yourself partially smiling at a rerun of Everybody Loves Raymond when its on in the waiting room of Jiffy Lube and you're stuck there for 45 minutes.*

Les Daniels Merges with the Infinite

I saw some noise on Twitter and am sad to confirm that Les Daniels, writer and comics historian, had passed.

I've read a few books by Les Daniels, now several years ago.  Daniels wrote the books that I still refer to for historical context on DC's Trinity (I pulled the Superman book off the shelf just last month for some fact checking).  I've always understood that he preceded current historians like Hajdu or Gerard Jones, and its certainly not the place where one earns glory in comics.

Likely Daniels' greatest exposure came in the creation of the DC Masterpiece box sets that came out a few years ago that you could pick up at Barnes & Noble or Borders.   Those things were actually pretty amazing, and if you're a comics fan, you missed out if you didn't grab them.  

Mostly, I appreciated Daniels' approach as an historian, not really shying away from some of the goofier or odder sides of the development of characters.  It was from him that I first read about Wonder Woman's origins derived from William Moulton Marston and Marston's particular proclivities.  Its not an approach 95% of the folks currently writing about comics seem to get (or want to get), that these characters we love do not spring whole cloth from the imagination, but from the forces of the time, the forces of personality of creators and the environment and culture that formed the minds of those creators.  

In the end, I don't have much to add about Daniels, other than that he opened my eyes to the sweeping history within the publication of superheroes, and I suspect that he helped build my fascination with Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman as more than characters on a page, but as icons of western culture in their own right.

Saturday Night Interactivity - Drunk Tweet "Big Trouble in Little China" with Signal Watch, @Placeslost, Comics Scribe @chris_roberson and the fabulous @allisontype

What the hell, ya'll?

So Saturday night, PaulT and I are joining comics writer Chris Roberson and his amazing better-half AllisonType, for a screening of Big Trouble in Little China.  And YOU can play along.

THE POWER OF THE INTERWEBS

We'll be having a cocktail or three and via the magic of Netflix Streaming, we'll be watching the John Carpenter directed classic Big Trouble in Little China.

Whilst watching, we'll be on Twitter using hashtag #BingeTrouble


As a reminder, our twitter handle is:  @melbotis

Follow along as PaulT, Jamie and I attempt to keep up with these veteran DrunkTweeters!

drunk tweeting: it's all in the reflexes

We3 Deluxe Edition Arrived in August (Morrison and Quitely)

I get nervous when I come home and Lucy, Scout and Jeff are all sitting around in their armor.

If you were to tell me that I would one day read a very Rated-R comic book about cyborg house pets armed to the teeth and on the run, written by Grant Morrison and drawn by Frank Quitely (the team behind All Star Superman and Flex Mentallo), I would start wondering exactly how long you'd been scanning my brain while I slept to learns all my hopes and dreams.

But after Morrison fled Marvel back in the mid-00's, he returned to DC/ Vertigo where he went into a creative tornado, spinning out stuff I absolutely loved like Vimanamara.  But more importantly, he and Quitely created We3, likely one of my top ten or so favorite comics.  

August saw the release of a new, Deluxe Edition of We3, which I recently read.  It has more pages than the original collection or issues, fills in a bit more of the story, and it made me cry a little bit again, even if this is at least the 12th time I've read that comic.

Not only is the story terribly heartbreaking, but to me, Quitely is one of the brilliant artists working in any medium right now.  We're just lucky to get him working in comics.  I don't know who designs these pages, but... man.

For such a great package, the We3 book is very reasonably priced.

 U R a Gud Dog

Today would be Jack Kirby's 94th Birthday

Did you enjoy the movie of Thor? Captain America? The Fantastic Four movies? The X-Men?

aw yeaaaah, Kirby!

What about Thundarr the Barbarian, the 1980's kid's cartoon?

All originated by Jack "King" Kirby. Today would be Kirby's 94th Birthday.

You can visit the online museum dedicated to Jack Kirby right now.

In the future, Kirby will suffer from the same rumors that plague Shakespeare today. How could one man come up with so many ideas? Produce such a volume of work? How could one man have contributed so much to the story-telling mythology of America and the World? He makes Hans Christian Andersen seem like a slacker.

While the World Burns... even Morrison doesn't think this mode is sustainable

A frog in a pot will not notice when the heat around them begins to rise, and will get cooked alive.

I'll be honest with you, in a lot of ways I think this describes the bizarre culture that's grown up around comics and its resistance to facing down the hard numbers of the state of the industry.  Nathan C. today forwarded me an article from Rolling Stone in which comics writer Grant Morrison, arguably one of the more successful and definitely one of the smartest guys in comics, talks more bluntly than I can recall seeing from in an interview.

Morrison is making the rounds promoting his book Supergods (my copy shipped today from Amazon), and perhaps he's a bit tired out or punchy from too many interviews, but its the first I've seen of Morrison not being asked to play shaman and reinforce our own mystical beliefs in superheroes.  Instead, Hiatt asks Morrison some straight up questions about the flagging American comics industry, and Morrison answers from his own script rather than from the cheerleading script, no doubt his employers would prefer.

DC is relaunching its entire line – is there some desperation there?There's always going to be a bit of that because comics sales are so low, people are willing to try anything these days. It's just plummeting. It's really bad from month to month. May was the first time in a long time that no comic sold over 100,000 copies, so there's a decline.

So guess who just met comics scribe Mark Waid while seeing Captain America?

Wow! Fun night.

Me and Pal Kevin headed up north, had a lovely dinner and then ran over to the Gateway theater where Austin Books hosted a screening of Captain America with the Austin Chronicle. In attendance: Mark Waid.

Firstly, I am a big fan of Mark Waid's work on Flash, Captain America, Kingdom Come, Irredeemable and a whole lot of other books and characters. Secondly, of Marvel's roster of characters, Captain America is one of my three favorites (with Spidey and maybe Rocket Raccoon).

Waid (left) puts up with the unruly Austinites

So, this was kind of a big deal for me. Oh, and I also won a hat by answering a trivia question.

I actually had all the books that ABC had brought with them to purchase and get signed (like I said, I'm a Mark Waid fan), so I thought - ah, heck.  Why not?

yeah, I made him sign the hat, too

Mark Waid will be at Austin Books on Saturday from 4-7pm, if you have a chance to stop by.

My review of Cap is coming, but (spoilers) - I loved that thing.

A Brief Hiatus - Back Next Monday

Hi all!

At the risk of losing readership (both of you.  What up, Simon!), I'm going on hiatus for a week.

We sometimes go through these bits of manic writing, and when we come down from them, we need a break.  You probably would like a break from me, too, unless you were one of our many usual readers who started their break yesterday by avoiding reading Monday's post (and many of you did.  Probably all for the best.).

I bought a copy of this print a while back from artist Jill Thompson.

There is nothing I do not like about this picture.

While I'm away, I'll have Ms. Thompson's rendition of Wonder Woman watch over you, if that's okay.  She already took care of the Gorgon problem we had in the conservatory here at League HQ.


Anyhoo... we'll see you guys next Monday.   Of course the usual caveats about breaking news, etc... apply.

You guys watch out for each other, take care, and don't take any wooden nickels.

Signal Watch Reads: Power Lunch (by J. Torres and Dean Trippe)

Power Lunch
First Course
by J. Torres & Dean Trippe
lettered by Ed Brisson
designed by Keith Wood
edited by James Lucas Jones

So, one tough thing about running a comics blog is that sometimes we are asked to preview materials and write a review.  And sometimes we read something and we try to be as fair as possible, even when we know that the item we're reviewing isn't something we'd normally read because of genre, topic, etc...  or worse, sometimes its something we didn't like.

I'm happy to say that I just don't have that problem here in any way, shape or form. I just straight up dug this fun, well written, well designed/ drawn all-ages book. 

Here's that interview with Doug Mahnke I did a couple weeks ago at Austin Books

for more great videos from Austin Books and Comics, visit ABC's YouTube page/ channel/ internet page that makes with the tv pictures.

"Power Lunch" coming from J.Torres and Dean Trippe!

I don't know if you went to Free Comic Book Day this year, or if you picked up the All-Ages offering from Oni Press, but you should have done both.

Oni Press has been killing it recently with books I've loved like Stumptown (modern detective noir) and Sixth Gun (western/ horror/ fantasy).  And, of course, they're the publishers of Scott Pilgrim.  They've also put out Frenemy of the State, which is co-created by Rashida Jones, who I will now pause to consider while Berlin's "Take My Breath Away" plays in my head.

Watching every motion in my foolish lover's game...

And we're back.

Right. POWER LUNCH.

So, the Oni Press FCBD offering gave a preview of what's to come in an upcoming 40 page book about a young boy who gains amazing super powers based upon whatever he last had to eat (except for white foods. Which is pretty clever.)

Written by J.Torres, who has done lots of stuff I've liked (but especially Days Like This),and drawn by the indomitable Dean Trippe, Power Lunch looks to be a promising book that those of us in the room who dig all-ages stuff, and for the parents out there, I think this one is going to be a lot of fun.

Now, I happen to know Dean Trippe and I share a love of old school Superman shenanigans, and just today I tweeted J. Torres to find out when the book is actually hitting the shelves.  He said:

Volume 1: First Course, full color, 40-page hardcover hits comic shops on October 12! Everywhere else October 25.

 And then followed later with:

By the way, the first volume of #PowerLunch has a Superman theme to it.

I think Mr. Torres may have seen my site.  Or my Krypto-themed Twitter icon.  But I thought I'd also share a preview image by Dean Trippe to give you a feel for how this thing is going to look, and my early clue that Trippe and Torres might be working in some Superman theming.

So, yes.

Anyway, look for it this October!

Comics Legend and Great Gene Colan Merges with the Infinite

Artist Gene Colan did so much exceptional work over so many years, its hard to believe it was one guy.  He was also always much beloved within the industry.

I won't spend too much time eulogizing, but I will point you to this post pulling together thoughts from those working in comics, and this one from the AV Club which discusses Gene's career.

When I think of Gene, I think Marvel, which is funny because I know he did stuff all over the place.  But he's in there with Buscema, Romita, etc..  one of the people who created modern comics. 

We'll miss you, Mr. Colan. 

Here's a link to Mr. Colan's official site.

Kickstart a Horror Movie - become a producer, just like that!

Philly based comic guy Johnny Zito is trying to get his indie horror film Alpha Girls up and running. And I think you people can help.  But, no, you won't get a producer credit, so forget that dream right now.

Learn about the movie here or watch this video:



If you've never heard of Kickstarter, its a web-based service that helps artists crowd-fund their projects. Probably the most famous of these projects was the Robocop Statue that we all decided was a great idea for the city of Detroit.

If you'd like to Kickstart a movie and try your hand at being listed as a supporter/ producer/ whatever... sign up here.

Berkeley Breathed art on "Mars Needs Moms"

I am a fan of cartoonist Berkeley Breathed. His strip, Bloom County, was a favorite when I was hitting an age when I was scanning the page for more than just Slylock Fox, and I still enjoy the occasional Bloom County collection.

A while back, I picked up Breathed's children's book Mars Needs Moms, and it was a fun read, if a bit off-beat for a story aimed at kids. And then I heard it was being adapted to a feature film by Robert "I Sucked the Soul Out of The Polar Express" Zemeckis.

The thing is - Breathed's character style and sentiment is distinctly Breathed's. And, somewhat shockingly, unlike Polar Express, Zemeckis didn't seem to feel any attachment to Breathed's artistic style.

Its hard to really explain that Breathed's character design is part of the story, and so abandoning that design for the movie's humanoid, motion-capture friendly designs....  missing the point.

Look, Breathed's story may be a little scary for kids: its about a kid who sees his mom getting kidnapped by aliens after he's decided his mom is mean during a typical kid/ parent spat.  But the point of the story is to teach kids about sacrifice and explain to them exactly how much their parents love them.  Frankly, its not a bad thing to share with kids, and nobody is going to walk away scarred from either a picture book or movie about the depths of a parent's love.  Its called putting a conflict into a story.

Breathed's Mars Needs Moms is a slim picturebook, light on text and full of imaginative imagery.  Simply covering that scaffolding in typical "family movie" hoo-hah is going to do little but distract from and muddle a pretty straightforward story, and the only time I've seen it truly work was with Where the Wild Things Are.    Unfortunately we all know studios have a certainly saccharine version of reality they deal with when putting together family films, and it may be that adding spunky teenage Martians or whatever the hell the movie chose to do from the Hollywood Plot-o-Tron merely diluted the film to a nonsensical mess.

I'd guess Zemeckis and Co.'s insistence on the motion-capture technology took precedence over the exaggerated and intentionally absurd visual style that's been Breathed's trademark since his days on The Academia Waltz.  Trying to make the characters move and look "lifelike" was never the intention of Breathed's style, and its hard to imagine exactly why a decision was made to stray from what would have been a pretty unique and fun adaptation of Breathed's work.

I'm hoping to read Breathed's reaction in The Hollywood Reporter, even if I have my doubts that we'd get the full story or what it feels like to watch your much-loved book turned into something completely different on the screen and then watch that movie flop.  Or... we might.

I guess if there's any point to this post, its that a massive flop of a movie shouldn't reflect poorly on the source material, especially if the source is more or less ignored in favor of whatever the heck the producers feel is more fun to play around with.

Chris Onstad offers the reason for the multi-month hiatus on "Achewood"

This should probably get posted at our links sister site, but I'm posting it here.  Chris Onstad, sole creator and creative force behind the popular online strip, Achewood, has offered up a bit of an explanation as to why the series slowed to a drip and then went on hiatus, which seemed to start in earnest last October.

You can read his explanation here.

Some will say Onstad owed no explanation, but I'm not sure that's accurate. We can make a guess as to what happened and theorize, but part of having an audience does, in fact, mean that one has a responsibility to at least let people know what's happening.   Not knowing is a bit like if your waiter goes back in the kitchen and never returns (I actually did have that happen once, and its totally freaky.  I waited half an hour before flagging down another waiter and figuring out what happened.  Apparently my waiter's shift was over and he forgot he'd never closed out the tab at table 5.)

Achewood's tone and poise is not set to the same audience as that of "Marmaduke"

Onstad's response is more than adequate, but will confuse the howling masses who have been trained to expect their every whim to be catered to if they believe a penny can be made from such a whim.

His explanation is, by the way, basically:  I got burnt out.  It's been ten years, and with all the stuff associated with that sort of production, maintaining quality and challenging myself became a bit of a drag.  And the constant two-way feed of communication with the public seemed to be getting him down.

In some small way, I can relate on an infinitely smaller scale.  When I shut down League of Melbotis for several months and brought it back up under The Signal Watch, it was the best thing I could have done for myself and for my willingness to continue blogging.  Those months away retrained me that I was more than the work I did to get paid and a race each evening to post lest my readership numbers dwindle (for which I did not get paid).

Back in the blogging day, we attempted a sort of collaborative pop-culture blogging experiment called "Nanostalgia" that didn't really get off the tarmac before we settled gently back into the sea and I found myself on a metaphorical yellow rubber raft paddling back to shore and unnecessarily eating the ration packs.  But at that site I did a column about how hard it was going to be for webcomics because they aren't set up with all the niceties of the corporate structure, and its all on the shoulders of the single creator.  And that meant, man, you'd best be ready to give over your life to nigh-daily content production.

That all got a tough response from a webcomic guru, but six years later, I can see I was mostly right.  Making money and getting support is hard to begin with.  And once you do self-build that empire, its not unlike being successful at, say, owning a hardware store that becomes the size of a box store.  Suddenly you have all these new duties that aren't just "man, I have to get the new hammers out for the spring hammering season".  You got staff, deals to close, etc...  and its a much bigger thing than selling bolts or whatever reason you got into the hardware business to begin with.

And, I think, people do not get into the business of comics to feel like they're on an assembly line, cranking out comics that meet exactly the same criteria every panel, every episode lest the readership get nervous when the artist tries something new.

And, in my own small way, I wrestled a bit with the expectations of the readership, as it were.  I have enjoyed the freedom of the sandbox that I've staked out as The Signal Watch, and in many ways, its easier having a much smaller readership of friends, family, strange Canadians, etc...  who aren't much more invested than sort of checking in and do not think of the content as a product to be delivered to their RSS feed daily.  And while it had little to do with why I quit (however briefly), man...  its much easier to get the "hey, is everything okay?  You haven't posted in a while" emails than the "where are you?  what's your problem?" comments showing up because you decided to do something else for three or four days.  And I never had to deal with the entitlement of a readership that one could see in the sprawling comment sections beneath each and every strip.

I hope Onstad finds his way out of whatever creative qicksand he's been caught in.  I salute the guy.  He created a fantastic strip for about a decade, producing hundreds of times better content in that time than some strips that run 365 days a year, have hit every day for decades and have become the ugly, comfy slippers of the newspaper strip world.  I'll be sure to try to follow him wherever he goes, and I am certain that whatever he does next will be better than even Achewood die-hards would expect.

"The Rack" is Back?

Looks like our friends at webcomic The Rack might not have shut down after all, and that they may have just been on break.  Good news!

You may recall we eulogized the abrupt end to the series here a few weeks back.

Looks like the characters are set up in a new shop with a new focus.  Now may be a great time to jump on board.

Welcome back, Church and Birdie!

Dwayne McDuffie RIP

I am completely shocked and cannot believe the reports, but it seems that television and comics writer Dwayne McDuffie has passed.

Details are sketchy, but reports are appearing in comics media that McDuffie has died the same week that his animated adaptation of All Star Superman was hitting wide release on home video. 

Since I learned of his past and current work in the mid00's, I've felt that McDuffie was an extraordinary talent.  He was only middle-aged, at best, and I was unaware of any health issues McDuffie may have suffered. 

he was the creator of the Milestone imprint and a key contributor to that universe, his most famous creation likely was Static (aka:  Static Shock).  I absolutely loved his work on the superlative Justice League Unlimited, his run on JLA when editorial wasn't mucking about, and other bits of his work.

I am very deeply saddened to hear this news. 

Animated Superman Fan Film is Huge Retro Fun

You'll note I broke the borders of the blog to show this video.  I thought it was totally worth it.

CanadianSimon sent along the link to this video, and I highly recommend you give it a whirl.  It includes the cartoon, plus a quick behind the scenes. 

I don't know director Robb Pratt from the online Superman world, but it seems that he completely "gets" the Golden Age of Superman and what made the character fun, and he's obviously a fan.  If you have a couple of minutes, give the video a whirl (and then hope WB notices the cartoon, because it would be great to see WB consider this style for a show).



Also, bonus points to Pratt for landing John Newton from the Superboy TV show. His voice totally works (which shouldn't be a surprise)b.

If you've never seen "The Mechanical Monsters", the inspiration for this cartoon, I recommend you check it out.

Article on Austinite Chris Roberson - the guy taking over writing duties on Superman!

Chris Roberson is taking over writing duties on Superman comics with issue 707.  The issue comes out next week on Wednesday.

Roberson is a local Austinite, and, I have from very reliable sources in the Austin comic community, a HUGE Superman fan.  There's an article on Roberson in our local paper, The Statesman.

Roberson will be signing his issue at Austin Books on 1/12/2011 from 4-7.  Yes, I am definitely going.

Why I think Roberson is the right guy for the job?

From the article:

"The standard knock on Superman is that he is so powerful, what can you give him to do that is interesting?" Roberson said. "Well, that's the writer's job — give him something to do. If he's having to stop muggers, it's going to get old fast. If he's having to travel outside of space and time and sing a certain note to restart the universe, that is really cool to me."

me, too, man.

The Power of Muscle Mystery!

DC will finally reprint Flex Mentallo, a mid-90's Morrison/ Quitely collaboration.  

I haven't read this series since 1996.  Color me excited.

Read about Flex here.

Vertigo, DC's comic line aimed at not-kids, kept me in comics during the crucial period of high school and college when I might have walked away from the medium.  Shade, Sandman, Swamp Thing, Hellblazer, Kid Eternity, Sandman Mystery Theatre (an undervalued and terrific book)...  I didn't get into Animal Man or Morrison's Doom Patrol until far, far later.  But I got to know Grant Morrison via The Invisibles,but his JLA and my growing interest in Superman brought me back to the DCU (with no small help from Waid and Ross's Kingdom Come).  Flex was a part of that, but its been forever since I read this series.

Mentallo first appeared in Doom Patrol before the mini-series hit.  Mentallo is loosely based upon the old ads for Charles Atlas, with a huge helping of Morrison.  The series is most famous now for the law-suit tossed at DC by the Charles Atlas Corporation.

Anyway, good news!