Thursday, August 06, 2009
LJ down again.
Livejournal is down again?! The withdrawal symptoms I'm feeling right now are depressing. I guess we're all junkies at heart.
Tuesday, June 02, 2009
Wednesday, January 07, 2009
oh noes!
Crap, Livejournal is gone! Am I gonna have to use this blog for real now just to express myself to the world on a daily basis? How will I get my daily fix of random snapshots of the lives of dozens of people with whom I have widely varying degrees of aquaintance?
Monday, September 01, 2008
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Sunday, March 09, 2008
whatever happened to...? (90s zine edition)
So my question today is whatever happened to Dave Mitchell? This Florida-based cartoonist, SubGenius zinester, Stooges fan, and closet Japanese cartoon nerd spent the 90s cranking out fun comics.
His strip "Barefoot & Pregnant" today sounds like some kind of crazy adults-only site, but it was a hicksploitation comedy about two Florida cracker gals who have adventures drinkin' beer and racin' cars, one of whom has a bun in the oven.
Mitchell had a natural brush inking style that was lush and easy on the eye (my fave is the cover for #2) and he had an ear for comedy Southern dialog that achieves "funny" without "making fun of". He did four issues of "B&P" and I wanna say four issues of short-story comics with titles named after Iggy Pop songs ("No Fun Comics", "Neighborhood Threat Comics", etc). He did comics about how Captain Harlock was really William Lee Harlock from Arcadia, Florida, about the printing industry, Bumper Sticker Theater, "Bob", you name it.
Mitchell, along with "Rev. Dr. Atomic Boy", also published HEADLINES, a dada collage magazine concerning the SubGenius ritual of "The Launching Of The Bleeding Head of Arnold Palmer".
In the late 90s he started doing a regular strip for the free music monthly INK 19, but after 2001 he vanished from the newspaper and from the world at large. What happened? Did he get married and get a career and quit cartooning? Was his drawing hand maimed in an industrial accident? Did he find Jesus and forswear his former sinful ways? Was he in Tower 2 on Sept. 11? Inquiring minds want to know! Come back Dave Mitchell! The world needs more Daves!
His strip "Barefoot & Pregnant" today sounds like some kind of crazy adults-only site, but it was a hicksploitation comedy about two Florida cracker gals who have adventures drinkin' beer and racin' cars, one of whom has a bun in the oven.
Mitchell had a natural brush inking style that was lush and easy on the eye (my fave is the cover for #2) and he had an ear for comedy Southern dialog that achieves "funny" without "making fun of". He did four issues of "B&P" and I wanna say four issues of short-story comics with titles named after Iggy Pop songs ("No Fun Comics", "Neighborhood Threat Comics", etc). He did comics about how Captain Harlock was really William Lee Harlock from Arcadia, Florida, about the printing industry, Bumper Sticker Theater, "Bob", you name it.
Mitchell, along with "Rev. Dr. Atomic Boy", also published HEADLINES, a dada collage magazine concerning the SubGenius ritual of "The Launching Of The Bleeding Head of Arnold Palmer".
In the late 90s he started doing a regular strip for the free music monthly INK 19, but after 2001 he vanished from the newspaper and from the world at large. What happened? Did he get married and get a career and quit cartooning? Was his drawing hand maimed in an industrial accident? Did he find Jesus and forswear his former sinful ways? Was he in Tower 2 on Sept. 11? Inquiring minds want to know! Come back Dave Mitchell! The world needs more Daves!
Thursday, June 07, 2007
marvel stan lee tezuka star nagai wars !!11!!
As threatened, here are some pix from the issue of "Foom" I mentioned previously somewhere, I think on Anime Jump... "Foom" was Marvel Comics' in-house fan magazine, and in the late 1970s they were making deals in Japan for things like the crazy Japanese Spiderman TV show, stuff like that.
Here's Stan Lee meeting Osamu Tezuka:
Here's Stan Lee meeting Go Nagai:
Best of all, they got Go Nagai (or Ken Ishikawa, or SOMEBODY at Dynamic Pro) to do some Star Wars artwork:
The best part about that Star Wars pic is thinking how Marvel fans would react, how Star Wars fans would react, and how anime fans would react. The article is more or less a hook to hang some publicity photos on, but Marvel's guy in Tokyo mentions how widespread the Japanese comics industry is, how the storytelling pace is a lot slower and more cinematic, how American style comics simply won't sell in Japan, and more or less demonstrates a firm understanding of the Japanese pop culture industry, which is interesting for 1978, because it took thirty years for anybody to actually put any of this understanding into practice in the US (and it wasn't Marvel). Also neat is the mention of all the other fantastic co-productions that were in the works for Japan, including a Japanese Silver Surfer. Don't hold your breath waiting for that one, 1978.
Also fun is the consistent use of the word "oriental", which is bar none still the cheesiest way to refer to anything Asian.
Here's Stan Lee meeting Osamu Tezuka:
Here's Stan Lee meeting Go Nagai:
Best of all, they got Go Nagai (or Ken Ishikawa, or SOMEBODY at Dynamic Pro) to do some Star Wars artwork:
The best part about that Star Wars pic is thinking how Marvel fans would react, how Star Wars fans would react, and how anime fans would react. The article is more or less a hook to hang some publicity photos on, but Marvel's guy in Tokyo mentions how widespread the Japanese comics industry is, how the storytelling pace is a lot slower and more cinematic, how American style comics simply won't sell in Japan, and more or less demonstrates a firm understanding of the Japanese pop culture industry, which is interesting for 1978, because it took thirty years for anybody to actually put any of this understanding into practice in the US (and it wasn't Marvel). Also neat is the mention of all the other fantastic co-productions that were in the works for Japan, including a Japanese Silver Surfer. Don't hold your breath waiting for that one, 1978.
Also fun is the consistent use of the word "oriental", which is bar none still the cheesiest way to refer to anything Asian.
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