Tag Archives: Pop Culture

B. is Dying (#5) by Tom Hart comics review

B. is Dying (#5). by Tom Hart. Sequential Artists Workshop. 2023. 24 pp. $8.

Tom Hart’s new comics series is about a man dying in a ditch. Well, ostensibly so. Yeah, there’s a lot more to it than that. Tom Hart’s work looks incredibly alive as if it is being created as he’s thinking it. But the end result, the actual content, has been refined in a million different ways. So, come take a look at one of the most alive comics about dying, or any subject.

Tom Hart speaks to the utter disconnection we all must confront as human beings. It’s an existential crisis on a personal and global level, even a cosmic one. The focus here is on the planet and how we interact with it. As a cartoonist, Hart gives it his all to express his dismay and heart-felt desire to find some answers. The reader is led on a journey atop the crust of Mother Earth. What does that mean? It’s a perfect metaphor for how we usually interact with nature, all superficial, never digging deeper.

With a gentle nudge, Hart gets me to thinking about how we routinely take our environment for granted: we exploit it, endanger it and rape it. We are more prone to tear it apart than we are to try to understand what we call home. How can we ever ignore our own home? And yet we do. This comic expresses the collective nightmare we are all having, whether we choose to accept it or deny it. If we’re being honest with ourselves, we’re all afraid. Hart leans into that fear with his comics: direct and simple, but not so simple, more elegant-simple. Ah, yes, Tom Hart, the master of the elegant-simple.

I appreciate these comics on many levels, not the least of which is on an entertainment level. I’m thinking of how I cherish any time I spend viewing the work of Buster Keaton or, say, Peter Sellers at their soulful best. I can only imagine what Peter or Buster would have done if they appeared in a Tom Hart comic.

There’s the main character to Tom’s story, a lanky Everyman with hair sticking straight up. He is self-aware enough to know that he’s merely walking on the crust of the Earth. If only all of us could reach that point! It troubles him. It frightens him. It gives him nightmares. He dreams that he’s a helpless/hapless parakeet somehow let loose from the home he’s known as a pet and sprung free into the wild. He is out of his element. He is clueless. He has no real notion of how to interact with nature, just like–you guessed it–the average human being.

Tom Hart’s Everyman is just self-aware enough to know that something’s wrong. He thinks he may have come from a great place but has lost his way. It’s all too easy to lose one’s way, especially if you’re on such an uncertain path. This is not new. This has been going on for a very long time, for as long as there have been humans. Tom Hart has been at his comics-making craft for a long time too, for decades. Tom even makes a reference in the introduction to this issue to a recurring theme in his comics of a lone man in a vague landscape in an existential crisis.  Tom’s experiments have led to masterful award-winning work year after year. And one thing is clear: Tom Hart has not lost his way. In fact, Tom has many followers who wish to create comics every bit as good as his comics. Learn more about Tom and his Sequential Artists Workshop where you too can learn the fine, subtle and rewarding art of making comics.

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Filed under Comics, Comics Reviews, Sequential Artists Workshop, Tom Hart

The Compleat Moscow Calling (Amatl Comix #5) review and interview

The Compleat Moscow Calling

A young American journalist had the time of his life chronicling the Yeltsin years in Russia. A heady, disruptive and chaotic time to say the least. There was Jose Alaniz, the first to plant his cartoonist flag: Moscow Calling, was the first daily English-language comic strip to be published in Russia. It ran in the Moscow Tribune for nine months beginning in the fall of 1993. Over the years, Alaniz kept adding to the initial story and that has led to this collection published by Amatl Comix, an imprint of San Diego State University Press.

If you’re a fan of Richard Linklater’s 1990 cult classic film, Slacker, then this could be for you. Imagine Austin, or Seattle, back in the grungy free-wheeling early ’90s and then drop that absurd hype and mayhem into the cauldron of dysfunction that was post-Soviet Russia under the less than steady leadership of Boris Yeltsin. Yes, anything goes until it all goes up in smoke.

Moscow Calling comic strip excerpts (1993)

That is the scene that a young Alaniz was privy to and navigated within as a newly-minted college graduate overstaying his last semester abroad in Moscow by a few years, with a spirit for adventure and a burning desire to avoid a daily grind back in the States. The comic strip that held these misadventures together is dutifully archived in this collection, given a deluxe treatment with added material and even an excerpt from a novella. Essentially, it’s a treasure trove of material to enhance the experience of reading the comic strip in question. All lots of fun for the academically inclined as well as the free spirit with a hopeless case of wanderlust.

Yeltsin gives way to Putin.

As Jose points out during our interview, the main character of Pepe serves as a bit of an alter ego, at least in the sense that his story loosely follows Jose’s own progress: going from an expat hanging out with other expats to making new friends among the natives. Of course, Pepe’s progress is spiked with larger-than-life mishaps most befitting the comic strip world. But there is that nagging feeling that both Pepe and Jose are privileged, finding ways to be plucked out of harm and discomfort. In the end, it is Jose’s insight and humility that adds another layer of charm to this engaging and inventive comic strip.

The Compleat Moscow Calling

Jose Alaniz is in a wonderful position to continue what he’s begun with Moscow Calling–and he has every intention of doing so. I know, for a fact, that the comics medium attracts all kinds of people for a multitude of reasons. The ones who stick around, I mean a lifetime of working at this craft, of genuinely exploring and growing, are people attracted to the uncanny power of words and pictures. The strongest connection tends to create auteur-cartoonists. I’m one of them. Jose is one of them. It’s not a boast. Some may say it’s a curse!

If you are a writer-cartoonist, then you will find yourself forever being tugged by the demands of prose and visual mastery. That said, I know it’s a gift too. It doesn’t come easily, all tied in a bow at your front door one crisp and bright morning–although many may think that will magically happen. No, it’s a balancing act and a juggling act. Ultimately, you need to figure it out on your own, work at it alone, but that’s how it needs to be. I know that Jose has the ability and the passion to pursue his comics narrative adventures. This collection is an exciting portal into one person’s creative journey byway of accepting the challenge of being a stranger in a strange land.

I hope you enjoy my interview with Jose Alaniz. I ask that you consider dropping by and leaving a Like and Comment. Likes and Comments are the lifeblood of any YouTube Channel and are always very much appreciated. Subscribe to my YouTube Channel too and I’ll be most grateful. Be sure to order your copy of The Compleat Moscow Calling by visiting Amatl Comix.

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George’s Run creator Henry Chamberlain on KPR

Today, I want to share with you an interview I did with Kansas Public Radio. We discuss George Clayton Johnson’s unique role in science fiction and pop culture in my new book , George’s Run, published by Rutgers University Press. The show is Conversations, hosted by Dan Skinner. Listen to it here.

As I proceed down this path of being interviewed and explaining my process to different people on various formats, I find I keep connecting new dots. One recent eureka moment for me was simply contemplating the fact that The Twilight Zone has long since established itself in the canon of pop culture, and given the fact that George Clayton Johnson wrote some of the most iconic episodes of the show, that alone secures his legacy. In George’s unique case, he also happened to have been involved in other huge pop culture phenomena, including Ocean’s Eleven, Star Trek, and Logan’s Run.

George’s Run: A Writer’s Journey Through The Twilight Zone is published by Rutgers University Press and is available now.

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Maximus Blade (#1) comic book review

Cover art by Franco Bevilacqua

Maximus Blade #1. w. Chris Warren a. Ken Lavin Chris Warren Media. $4.99

The first issue of a comic book, especially from an independent publisher, can be a very exciting thing and Maximus Blade does not disappoint. The writing is crisp and crackling with urgency and humor. The art is spot on, transporting the reader through time and space with a cast of engaging unlikely heroes up against a truly motley crew of villainous baddies.

Maximus Blade, a sentinel on a mission.

Our story takes places way into the future, 2480, enough to make my head spin. But that’s part of the fun, of course. Time enough for all sorts of mayhem to have happened leaving good ole planet Earth a mere shell of its former self. Time enough for the upper class to have gone even higher, all the way to an outpost on Earth’s moon. Everyone else stays behind back on Earth which has devolved into a Mad Max wasteland.

“When” the hell am I?

Despite all the dystopia, there is hope, or at least it seems that way. There’s no shortage of possibilities to this comic. Meet Steve, a guy from our own present who had it all, only to be swept up by a time portal. Meet Penelope, a member of the super elite who lives on the moon but not anymore. And meet Maximus Blade, the result of some heavy genetic mutations and not much for words. Between the three of them, you’ve got everything you need to keep the adventures rolling along quite nicely.

Maximus Blade and Steve.

My favorite scene in this issue is probably the first scene between Maximus Blade and Steve, who is no slouch back where he comes from but is totally out of his depth in the distant future he’s been teleported into. Maximus, in the few words he grunts, makes it pretty clear he needs a tech guy and fast. Steve hesitates, but not for long. Just as Maximus is walking away for good, abandoning the “stupid kid” to certain death, Steve chimes in to say he’s actually the best tech guy ever. It’s a funny moment and pivotal to what happens next. I’m not sure why Maximus was so easily convinced but maybe we’ll find out in the next issue. For now, Max, Steve and Penelope are up to their eyeballs in death-defying adventure. This comic does a fine job with balancing action and humor leaving the reader wanting more. Not bad at all for a first issue.

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George’s Run Chronicles The Rise of Genre

It begins with a little hook . . .

Then a question . . .

An initial response, and quick answer . . .

Then your concise answer!

That’s the magic and power of graphic storytelling.

Yes, the gang, or The Group, is all here!

I was just minding my own business when I stumbled upon a delightful review on Amazon of my new book, George’s Run. This was from I Forgive Heathcliff (depending upon your browser, you may need to do a separate search) and it gets to the heart of what my graphic novel is all about. All I can say to any fellow creative, no one will love and understand your work as much as you do until, all of a sudden, it does click and people do get it! This review made me think and gave me pause. It helped me to better appreciate my own efforts. One of the goals of my graphic novel is to connect the dots and make the subject at hand accessible. That is what graphic novels do best. Here’s an excerpt from I Forgive Heathcliff’s review:

The best thing about this graphic novel, spurred on by the brief, blossoming friendship between George Clayton Johnson and Henry Chamberlain which describes George’s life and adventures as a writer, is the sweet and straightforward artwork combined with a sort of stream of consciousness storytelling that picks you up and floats you along, moving forward through years, events, and situations. I particularly loved the author’s humorous, respectful nod toward the entire group of sci-fi, fantasy, and horror writers by depicting them as shambling zombies.

So, yeah, this review got me to thinking. I did hit the nail on the head. I have George as our guide, our main character, who connects us with a significant movement in contemporary writing. It doesn’t get much better than that, folks. You’ve got one of the most colorful and engaging of individuals, George Clayton Johnson, who acts as a main character in a novel about his own life and times while also taking on the role of tour guide into the inner workings of much of what we take for granted today in entertainment, both high and low culture. The members of what came to be known as The Group were fully aware of what they were doing: along with a wide variety of offshoots and variants, they were primarily engaged with reshaping genre writing for a contemporary audience.

Well, what can I say? I can and will keep saying more and more! For now, if you’re looking for one of those kind of books that helps make sense of it all while also being a fun read, then George’s Run is the book for you. You can buy it directly from the publisher, Rutgers University Press, or any number of other platforms and outlets, including Amazon.

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Johnny Carson Farewell Show: May 22, 1992

I remember well Johnny Carson’s final show on The Tonight Show. I fondly recall the show having a mellow yet spontaneous vibe to it. I happen to have been watching it with a pal of mine and he said that Johnny should have been doing more casual and “unplugged” type of shows all along. In fact, I believe he actually did let loose more often than some may think. Of course, all in all, Johnny kept to the brand he created and it came natural to him. He was definitely the cool cat for a cool medium.

I notice a lot of mention being made today of this farewell show, May 22, 1992, but the first-ever show, October 1, 1962, is just as worthy of celebrating. It was mentioned on the final show and for good reason. It was still the dawn of television. We went in laughing only to wake up a few days later to the Cuban Missile Crisis (October 16-29, 1962). There was no particular reverence placed on this new show as demonstrated by the fact there is no preserved video of the first few years. For the first few years, the network was still relying on recording on kinescope which was of poor quality and not particularly archival. That’s why you only have photo stills in the above example to document the first broadcast.

On that first broadcast, Johnny quipped that he had already been knighted as the new king of late-night television (a nod to the out-going Jack Parr) but he was okay with settling for the title of prince. After a monumental 30-year run on the show, it was undisputed that Johnny was king. It is reported that he conducted around 22,000 interviews and was seen by more people on more occasions than anyone else in U.S. television history. It is no mistake to say that Johnny Carson ruled TV, set the gold standard for late-night, and, oddly enough, remains something of an enigma. Such is the life of a king. Set the gold standard, he did. You see the influence everywhere on late-night.

The Larry Sanders Show

It was Garry Shandling’s The Larry Sanders Show (1992-1998), his satirical version of The Tonight Show, that best articulates the delicate balance, the lonely existence, of being known by all while also being understood by few. Garry Shandling would have known as he was set to take over The Tonight Show when the time came but he turned it down. He preferred to do his take on the show for HBO. I can’t help but think of both men when I see the work of each and maybe that’s a testament to the uncanny quality of what both men had to bring to television.

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Dean Haspiel Talks Comics and COVID COP

Dean Haspiel is one of the great cartoonists, both as an artist and writer. You may know him from Billy Dogma or The Red Hook on Webtoon. We enjoyed a spirited comix talk and got to connect the dots on his intriguing new comic book series, Covid Cop. If you’re familiar with Dean’s work, then you know he leans into surreal and satirical work. Please refer to my recent review. We discuss the exciting and evolving ecosystem of independent cartoonists and how Dean is bringing his comics to you, the reader. You can always find him at his Substack and he’ll connect directly with you on purchasing his work.
Once you dive in, you’ll see that this is a fully-realized dystopian world, one that allows us to entertain some distance from a pandemic we are still processing. When we go through such a big event crisis, we turn to great storytelling. Thusly, we can rely upon Dean Haspiel to provide an intoxicating mix of levity and pathos. And there’s even a romance to be found embedded within this work!
What is Covid Cop about? In Haspiel’s dystopian story, Covid is beyond being unstoppable and the government concludes the only solution is to eliminate humans. We follow one lone police officer, Lincoln Bio, as he resists his marching orders and seeks another path out of hell. That is the cut-and-dry description. There’s plenty going on, including how Lincoln manages to survive and what motivates him to somehow rise above all the muck and mire. Did you know that the pandemic is officially over with? Well, until it returns in some other noteworthy variant. Alright kids, there is no chance that Covid Cop is going to go gentle into the night.

People who know me personally, from this blog, or from my comics, know that I enjoy offbeat humor and exploring a topic down to as fine a distillation as possible. That’s not idle crowing at all. It’s just part of what I do. Anyway, Dean and I engage in a bit of that in this conversation. I think we really hit our stride discussing the phrase, “knows where the bodies are buried.” The phrase is what I used to describe Dean to a friend. And, oddly enough, the phrase appears on the first panel of his new comic, Covid Cop!
So, who “knows where the bodies are buried?” The art of conversation is such that it’s easy to lose the thread unless you’re willing to make adjustments along the way. I had meant to segue into something else when I brought up this curious phrase but we proceeded down an interesting, and entertaining, line of thought. What makes for a good conversation? Keep to an agile and nimble mind. Work at it and just be a good egg. A confluence of factors leads to becoming a good cartoonist or cook or conversationalist. You don’t even need to be a “talker,” per se, but it helps. So, I invite you to check out our conversation.

Dean Haspiel’s THE RED HOOK

Dean Haspiel’s BILLY DOGMA

The main point is that we had a good talk. We discuss the creative process at length and that alone is worthwhile. If you’re an indie creator, I’m sure there will be some food for thought. We cover such topics as how to jump start a project and regain your creative flow as well as share some tips and tricks on what it’s like to get your work out into the world.

Seek out Dean Haspiel:
Find him at various events, including the upcoming Awesome Con in DC (June 16-18, 2023). Awesome Con’s Film Festival will include Dean’s short film, THERE IS NO TRY as well as a short film by Dean creative cohort Whitney Matheson, CONTINUITY ERRORS. Great to see these films in a theater!

THERE IS NO TRY by Dean Haspiel

Connect directly with Dean here. Keep up with him on Instagram here. And keep up with him on Twitter here.

Long Live Covid Cop!

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BLAB! comics anthology (2023) review

Cover: art by Ryan Heshka

BLAB! Editor: Monte Beauchamp, Dark Horse Books, pp 112, $19.99

Guest Review by Paul Buhle

BLAB!, a creation of the pleasingly twisted mind of Monte Beauchamp and his artists, has been around for quite some time. In fact, the first two issues (1986–87) were published by Beauchamp’s own imprint, Monte Comix. A genius at low-brow art anthologies, Beauchamp began this venture back in the transition or ditch between underground comix and alternative (what might later be called “art”) comics. But art, for Beauchamp, of an almost inexplicable kind.

The title has bounced from his own personal operation, Monte Comix, to Kitchen Sink Press to Fantagraphics and Last Gasp to Dark Horse, where it has become, for reasons known only to Beauchamp, “Blab World!” It was always a planet by itself, and the suspiciously camp rocket-firing goddess on the cover, by Hershka, is clearly interplanetary proof.

Excerpt from “The Death of Comics,” by Noah Van Sciver

Oh, yes, there is some truly understandable stuff here, a lot of it pages by Noah Van Sciver, at 38, the book’s youngest contributor. Louis Wain, a mad artist of cat images in  Victorian Age Britain,  could be a precursive Beauchamp, obsessed with images until he loses his mind. Van Sciver comes back again with a whopper, “The Death of Comics,” aka the story of the best-selling Crime Does Not Pay series. The genius money-making series created by leftwing publisher Ralph Gleason, it encompassed the noir sentiment of the later, disillusioned 1940s as the dreams of antifascist democracy melted into individualism and war-wounded minds that could not be healed.

Excerpt from “The Death of Comics,” by Noah Van Sciver

Van Sciver focuses in on the lives of the Crime Does Not Pay artists, and in particular the genius of graphic sex-and-sadism, Charles Biro. His triumph leads him and the rest of comics into the hands of would-be censors and especially best-selling author Dr. Frederick Wertham. It’s a familiar story to comics devotees, and involves a wider plot of horror comics, MAD’s publisher William M. Gaines, and Congressional hearings that mirrored the hearings held on the purported Communist threat,with near-identical warnings of dangerous Jews poisoning the minds of young Christians. Van Sciver allows himself only a glimpse of the larger picture, because he is following Biro to his own private doom.

Excerpt from “The Death of Comics,” by Noah Van Sciver

A considerable amount of the rest of BLAB! takes us to other strange places in the pulp past, comic book back pages of the 1940s-50s selling miracle hair-replacement liquids, pocket-size miniature monkeys, and other far-fetched hustles aimed at young (or low-capacity) minds. Or to the pulp treatments of great apes, “discovered” only in the mid-19th century, treated as fantastic King Kong types with their hands around near-nude (white) women, or as a link to the link of the “missing link” to the human race, a link that has never been found.  Beauchamp is asking the unasked question, why the obsession, and answering not in prose but by throwing the question back at the reader. Another section offers pages and pages of 19th century attacks on Catholicism, the dangerous threat to everything truly American. Great flying saucer illustrations by Ryan Heshka take us back to the late 1940s and 1950s, the golden era of interplanetary visitations and expectations.

There’s more: Heshka and Beauchamp’s story on Superman’s inventors Siegel and Schuster, taken from Beauchamp’s own anthology Masterful Marks (on great comic artists) is wonderfully weird. He has created no iconic comic figures, neither prompted the empire of capital in comics or been cheated out of it, but he is so much a part of the history, one way or another, that one can hardly tell the larger story without him.

Paul Buhle’s latest comic is an adaptation of W.E.B. Du Bois’s classic Souls of Black Folk, by artist Paul Peart Smith (Rutgers University Press).

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Filed under Anthologies, Blab! Magazine, Comics

SIFF: MY LOVE AFFAIR WITH MARRIAGE by Signe Baumane

Signe Baumane is a significant animator, right up there with Bill Plympton. I’m so happy to see her film at Seattle International Film Festival this year. And, if you are in Seattle, you must go! Details on this funny and frank flick follow including how to seek it out in Seattle:

My Love Affair With Marriage uses music and science to examine the biological chemistry of love and gender, as well as the societal pressures on an individual to conform to social mores.

Go to the official movie website here.

Seattle International Film Festival takes place Thu, May 11, 2023 thru Sun, May 21, 2023.

My Love Affair With Marriage at SIFF takes place May 20th and May 21st. Details are right here.

A battle between Zelma’s prefrontal cortex and her nucleus accumbens.

Signe Baumane’s work has been accepted in over 300 film festivals around the world and received many awards. She was also awarded a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship in 2017.

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COVID COP by Dean Haspiel review

COVID COP. Art & script by Dean Haspiel. Dean Haspiel Deep Cuts. 28 pp. $15.

Dean Haspiel is in fine form with this short work in comics that transforms the Covid pandemic into a surreal parody of a sci-fi/horror story. In this scenario, the virus has completely taken over to the point that the government has clamped down hard on anyone disobeying protocol. It’s a take-no-prisoners battle plan and one police officer, Lincoln Bio, is doing his best to follow orders. If you’re a fan of Dean Haspiel, then you can expect that kooky sense of humor, bathed in pathos, made famous in the Billy Dogma comics series.

Our anti-hero Lincoln Bio is aware that he’s living in very strange times making very strange demands on him. How he comes to terms with his marching orders and how he confronts an insurgent group out to kill everyone makes up a good part of this dark comedy. Drawn in the mock heroic style that Haspiel is known for, this comic book will deliver a weird and entertaining jolt right to the jugular and then some. You probably won’t have nightmares from reading this but I can’t guarantee it. And, if there’s a sequel, all bets are off. This comic, by the way, is the first in the developing line of indie comics, Dean Haspiel Deep Cuts.

This comic will defy your expectations, especially if you don’t really know what to expect, and offers up the most recent example of a cartoonist at the top of his game. The winner of a recent Kickstarter campaign, this comic book is making its way to its backers and will make its way to you. Keep up with Dean Haspiel for more details.

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Filed under Comics, Comics Reviews, Dean Haspiel