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Comic Arts LA was a show to make you happy about comics and inspire you for the next 12 months.

The second annual Comics Arts LA festival was held yesterday, in its first year as a two-day show. It's the Los Angeles stop on the Premiere Indie Comics Circuit, and had a strong influence from the local animation community, as befits its founders, Jen Wang, Angie Wang. Iris Jong and Jake Mumm, several of whom have ties to that community. While I haven't found any detailed write-ups, it seems like everyone was up on their socials, with happy photos of comics and people all backlit with the warm, golden sun of early winter downtown LA.

It's one thing to read about censorship in a news article; it's another to become aware of the threat at a nearby library or school. For Banned Books Week this year, we reviewed hundreds of documented appeals to remove materials from a local public library, school library, or course curriculum. Below are 30 books that [...]

The filmmaking essay series "Every Frame A Painting" takes a trip into the wondrous, disciplined mind of legendary animation director Chuck Jones.

Colleagues and admirers are remembering the creative genius of the man who helped create "The Simpsons."

"Simpsons" creator Matt Groening will make a guest appearance on tonight's episode of the IFC series "Portlandia."

Movie Wars: Saturday Edition

*YAWN*

DC wins, barely.  They showed the new Wonder Woman costume, and what sounds like an awesome trailer.

Marvel?  More cast for “Antman”, the announcement of “GotG 2″, and a teaser peek for “Age of Ultron”.

DC didn’t announce anything from other movies (as rumored by Nikki Finke.  Here’s her analysis of CCI so far). Could be DCE still hasn’t quite figured out the production schedule, especially for what follows SvB.

Marvel didn’t discuss anything past Ant-Man.  So, “Untitled” is “unknown”.  Might there be something announced at NYCC?

Marvel did win the TV battle, with the possible appearance of Mockingbird on Agents of SHIELD.  Although Ra’s al Ghul will appear in the next season of Arrow.

Guess I’ll go see Scarlett Johansson star in a superhero movie instead… (with Morgan Freeman!)

Here’s the updated movie scorecard:

*Peter Potter?

He is best known for playing Harry Potter – who could use an invisibility cloak every time he wanted to go unnoticed.
And it seems Daniel Radcliffe has come up with his own way to mingle with the masses as he demonstrated at Comic-Con at the weekend.
The 25-year-old donned a full Spider-Man suit as he walked around the showroom floor at the pop-culture convention… even stopping for pictures with oblivious fans.

* Zombie Walk Turns Critical as Car Hits Bystander

Officials said the victim was taken to a local hospital with non-life threatening injuries. She’s expected to recover.

Two other people were also left with minor injuries.

The car’s driver has been cited, but he will not be criminally charged.

The incident remains under investigation.

This is not the first time something like this has happened.

Here in New York City, there are hundreds of police officers stationed along parade routes.  Sometimes, the parade will be stopped for traffic to cross.  How many of San Diego’s finest are on patrol downtown during Comic-Con?

* A struggling animator asks questions during the Family Guy panel.

 * Bleeding Cool shows the actual cease-and-desist letter from CCI to Salt Lake Comic Con.

I’ll let our legal eagle analyze this, but I always thought it was the hyphen that made the name.  There are a lot of “comic con” events out there, one run by a corporation which could easily fight CCI in court.

Here are the trademarks CCI owns/owned.  Myself, I look forward to the San Francisco Comic-Con.

* GoBankingRates.com calculates the cost of attending Comic-Con,

but makes too many mistakes to be link-worthy.  ($740 for airfare?)  Their total: $1,615.  Note that this does not include shopping, but does include cosplay.

And that’s it?!?

Okay… let’s see what the news services offer:

The Associated Press and AP Images

Getty Images

Reuters

Al Jazeera America

European Press Agency

(The source page.)

Want to filter out the celebrity photos?  Add “atmosphere” to the search.

—

Okay, that’s it for Saturday.  I’ll be back tomorrow to wrap up the news feed, and then there are some specific posts.

Margaret Groening, the mother of Simpsons creator Matt Groening, died in her sleep on April 22 at age 94, as reported in an obituary in The Oregonian.

Born Margaret Ruth Wiggum, to Norwegian-born parents in Everett, Washington, she went on to become high school valedictorian, May Queen of Linfield College and a high school English teacher. Her late husband, Homer Groening, whom she met in school and she “chose because he made her laugh the most,” passed away in 1996.

A spokesperson for The Simpsons confirmed the obituary in the LA Times and said that her son had declined any public comment. She is survived by her brother Arnold; her children, Mark, Matt, Lisa and Maggie; eight grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. Further confirmed by the obituary, Groening famously used names from his own family when creating Simpsons characters, with the exception of the name Bart, which is an anagram for “brat”.

What books do you remember most fondly from childhood?

Over at the nostalgia section of Reddit, readers have been sharing the books that make them feel most nostalgic.

To help our readers rediscover these childhood classics, we’ve linked to free samples of the 15 Most Nostalgic Books below–ranked in order by the books’ popularity among Reddit readers.

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

By Todd Allen

Yes, the world is a little stunned by the announcement of Matt Groening quitting Life In Hell.  It isn’t like this hasn’t been threatened though.  Back in November of 2009, roughly two and a half years ago, the Chicago Humanities Festival had a panel on the declining market for Alt Weekly comics.  Groening was there.  Lynda Barry was there.  Chris Ware was there.  Jules Feiffer was even there.  And back then, Groening was already talking about quitting.

You think the comics market was getting scary before DC’s relaunch, that’s NOTHING compared to the state of the Alt Weekly market.  It’s coming out that Life In Hell was down to 38 papers from a peak of either 250 (according to Groening) or 379 (his syndicator).  The Alt Weeklies aren’t as strong as they used to be and one of the things that was getting cut early on was the comics.  I have some vague memories of Groening mentioning that the LA Weekly had cut Life In Hell, so it must not have been too long after it happened.

The funny thing was, the rest of the panel had already given up the Alt Weekly Market.  OK, Feiffer did it a long time ago, but Lynda Barry described at great length how she’d given up the ghost when her Ernie Pook strip dropped down to 4 papers.  Barry had for some time been bugging Groening to quit his strip.  Groening said this, and then said that he would think about quitting.  At the time, I could be sure he wasn’t teasing the audience, but his comments felt real.  Like it wasn’t the first time he’d thought about it, but maybe the first time he’d said it out loud in public.  He was also under some peer pressure on that stage.  Ware certainly wasn’t giving any love to the newspaper market.  For that matter, he was also upset that artists were getting taught how to promote themselves.  (Where I come from, we call that trying to keep artists from starving, but your mileage may vary.)

The economics of the Alt Weekly field got laid out in the retirement announcements.  We don’t know how much the syndicate was taking, but if the paper was pay $18/week then 38 papers would generate $35,568 per year before split ($17,784 if it was a 50-50 split with the syndicate).  If that price remained the same at the peak of syndication at 250 papers it would gross $234,00 or at 379 it would gross $354,744.  Even splitting that with a syndicate, it used to be you could make some decent money in the Alt Weekly Market.  Not so much anymore.

Actually, when he was starting out, Groening said he always charged for his comics as an illustrator, since they got paid a lot more than cartoonists.  Some thing don’t change it seems.

After the panel, Mike Miner, the media columnist for the Chicago Reader (he might be the soul of the Chicago Reader) and I had some words about the how bleak the future for the Alt Weekly comics looked.  He wasn’t happy about what he was seeing.  The Reader (and The Reader has passed through a number of owners in recent years) had recently emerged from a time period where there weren’t running any comics and was able to bring them back, but he was all too aware how fragile the bu

The ICON 7 Illustration Conference was held right here in RI this year, sponsored in part by good ol’ RISD. That was good news for Eric and I…we had our tickets reserved months ago, and it was finally held this week.

The weather was perfect, the city was looking’ good for the hundreds of illustrators that came to town. We didn’t manage to get to any of the workshops that occurred on previous days, beyond going to the RISD Icons art show opening at the Woods-Gerry Gallery (the show is up until June 24th, so you can still catch it).

Our first full day of stuff was Friday the 15th, and it started early. The darkly chipper Masters of Ceremonies were Jennifer Daniel and Nicholas Blechman.

Gregory DiBisceglie, creative manager for Campaign Planning and Special Projects at Macy’s, showed how he tries to raise the bar of creative experiences that Macy’s offers. Why, there’s one of his special projects now… art created by Chris Buzelli for Macy’s Flower Show.

Here’s the art powerhouse Bob Staake, with a page from one of his children’s books. He started off working in a well-regarded cartoony style, but has since morphed into more graphic looks. He says that since art is always subservient to something else, he likes to shake up his style depending on the need. He also like to surprise an art director with unique takes.

My favorite point he made was that art directors come to you because you’re a thinker. So true. Style and execution is less important than concept, so long as the art gets your point across effectively. I find this very true in product design, as well.

Christopher S. Neal, Josh Cochran, and Sam Weber came to talk about the importance of community and collaboration, as learned in the Pencil Factory studio space in Brooklyn. They not only collaborate with each other, but with lots of varied clients.

The importance of collaboration was a theme that kept popping up throughout the conference. Apparently sequestering oneself up in a studio all alone with no input is not the best way to achieve good art, or to get anything to happen with your art. Huh… go figure!

Here are the folks from the Children’s Book panel: Cecily Kaiser (Abrams), Chad Beckerman (Abrams), and Elizabeth Parisi (Scholastic), with Rachael Cole (Schwartz & Wade/Random House) as

Bongo is the successful comics publishing company that nobody knows about. Although it will celebrate its 17th anniversary this year, and has mastered the periodical-to-trade business model, and has been happily plugging along publishing essentially creator-driven comics for all that time….no one in the comics industry EVER talks about Bongo. Sure, publishing Simpsons comics seems like a no-brainer…but do you think the books would have lasted this long as a licensed title at DC or Marvel?

Well, now there have been some changes. And some new branding. It has a new logo to start with —three’s a trend! And long-time art director Nathan Kane has been promoted to Creative Director, replacing Bill Morrison, who, we’re told, has joined Simpsons creator (and Bongo owner) Matt Groening to work on new projects.

They’ve also released a 16-page insert for retailers to explain where the company is and where it’s going.

Bongo’s titles include:

SIMPSONS COMICS
FUTURAMA COMICS,
BART SIMPSON
SERGIO ARAGONES FUNNIES
BONGO ONE-SHOT WONDERS
SIMPSONS ILLUSTRATED
TREEHOUSE OF HORROR
SUMMER SHINDIG
WINTER WINDING
SIMPSONS SUPER SPECTACULAR

and distributes SPONGEBOB COMICS. With SERGIO ARAGONES FUNNIES, Bongo has gone back to publishing creator-owned comics…and they deserve lots of props for that.

Although long the silent star of the comics biz, we suspect you might just be hearing more about Bongo in the near future. If nothing else, when successful comics company are discussed—one with worldwide distribution models and a highly successful trade publishing program—Bongo should definitely be included.

Here’s the retailer marketing insert in total:

Neil Gaiman on The Simpsons This Weekend

Last year, The Simpsons commissioned an opening couch gag from British street artist Banksy that contained a cockeyed look at the working conditions of overseas animators. This year, which marks the show’s remarkable 23rd season, the producers of the mustard-family went a step further and debuted a new couch gag last night by Ren and Stimpy creator John Kricfalusi.

Banksy mocked the idea of mass-produced corporate art, but his message was muddled because it was made using the same system he was satirizing. There’s no such confusion in John’s approach, which he produced on his own. John’s opening is, in fact, far more subversive because he focuses almost exclusively on making a pictorial statement, relegating the show’s dominant literary elements to the back seat. In 35 short and sweet seconds, he liberates the animation of The Simpsons from years of graphic banality. The visual look of the show, which has been so carefully controlled by its producers, becomes a giddy and unrestrained playground for graphic play, and the balance of creative authority is shifted from the writers’ room to the animators in one fell swoop. Now that’s revolutionary.

On a personal note, I worked on the revival of Ren and Stimpy nearly ten years ago, and artistically, this is not the same John Kricfalusi that I remember from that time. Like any painter or filmmaker worth their salt, John doesn’t stay still, constantly evolving, growing, experimenting, and challenging audiences with new graphic concepts. He continues to be, in my book, one of the most exciting and influential artists working in animation today. Whether everything works perfectly in this opening is besides the point. As John says in our interview, “The day I make a perfect cartoon is the day I’ve run out of creativity.”

In our interview, we talk about how the opening came about, Matt Groening’s reaction to it, how his style has evolved in recent years, and his switch from Flash to Toon Boom. (Note: This is an edited version of an interview that was conducted via email this past weekend. Click on any of the images for a larger version.)

Question: First things first, how did you end up animating an opening for The Simpsons?

John Kricfalusi: Matt Groening and Al Jean [executive producer] asked me to do it. They showed me an opening that Banksy did that satirized the animation production assembly line system in Korea and told me it was really popular, so they wanted to do something similar with me.

At first they just wanted me to do a storyboard and have their regular crew animate it. If we had done it that way, no one would even have known that I had anything to do with it because it would have ended up on model and all pose to pose. I showed them the Adult Swim shorts I had been doing and pointed out that the way things happened was even more important than what was happening in my work. You can’t write visual performance. You have to actually draw it.

This project was the most fun I’ve had in years. It has really hammered home (to me) the importance of animation in animation. I think it’s possible to bring animation back to this country and make the core of it fun again, not be a mere tertiary addition to some high concept or executive’s “vision.” The pure act of animating is the most fun part of animation. I am so grateful to Matt for letting me have some real fun this summer.

Slideshow: Simpsons Stamps Unveiled

Past Simpson opening blackboards: "No one cares what my definition of 'is' is," "Spitwads are not free speech." (from the-simpsons-mocks-the-ban)

Election Day Problems?