Here’s a real Kickstarter based on a fake artist whose real work has been forged by Guy Adams and Jimmy Broxton, both of whom are real living people and are not figments of fiction, unlike the artist who didn’t draw this comic strip, because he never existed. Got that? This is GOLDTIGER.
I’ll explain it properly. The idea of the Kickstarter is that Adams and Broxton have restored a classic, controversial comic strip created in the 1960s by artist Antonio Barreti and writer Louis Shaeffer. The strip was commissioned run in a national newspaper, but was deemed too risque and scandalous for publication. The strip was locked out of circulation, Barreti had a breakdown and spent four years in a rehab clinic in Turin. Shaeffer continued to send him new scripts, however, and the team kept creating more stories for their characters. Shaeffer sadly died, and following his death, Barreti vanished.
The stories have just been collected together, however, and restored. The artwork is enhanced and lettering fixed, and the first volume of stories will be put out via Kickstarter.
— The thing is, Barreti and Shaeffer don’t exist, and never did. GOLDTIGER is an all-new creation from Adams and Broxton, which collects 128 pages of comics into a hardcover book. But not just the strips are collected in the book: the idea is that readers will also be able to trace the fictional life story of the two creators, and their journey whilst seeing that reflected in the story. While the strips progress in a 1960s style, you’ll also see how Barreti and Shaeffer’s personal lives affected GOLDTIGER itself. So in essence, you’re getting two stories – the comic strips, which tell spy action adventures with more than a hint of sex; and the assorted bits and pieces which tell the story of fictional GOLDTIGER creators Barreti and Shaeffer.
It’s a madcap idea for a comics project, and the Kickstarter is currently 3/4 funded, with only three days to go. Head on over to the Kickstarter, and have a read of the concept in more detail! Broxton is a fantastic artist, and Adams a great writer. This is a real high concept, but one which looks well worth trying out.
TweetMarvel recently announced their titles for Summer 2013. The list of titles is mostly Marvel Now titles, as the automatic schedule of new titles finally overlaps with last Fall’s launch/rearrangement of Marvel’s superhero titles. Also included are tie-ins to the blockbuster release of Iron Man 3 (as seen in the first title below), as well [...]
Woodrow Phoenix is one of the two editors who compiled Nelson, a 250-page anthology featuring work from over 50 different writers and artists. The idea of Rob Davis, the Blank Slate-published anthology tells a single tale, as told by a variety of different artists and writers. Amongst the incredible range of creators involved are people such as Roger Langridge, Paul Grist, Kate Brown, Posy Simmonds and Philip Bond.
I caught Woodrow by surprise and cornered him on the morning after he found out Nelson had won Best Book at the British Comic Awards, to ask him a few questions about the book and how it came together.
Steve: Last night Nelson won Best Book at the British Comic Awards!
Woodrow Phoenix: We’re very pleased and thrilled that people whose opinions we respect have seen fit to bestow this honour on us!
Steve: What first inspired yourself and Rob Davis to create Nelson?
Woodrow: Rob had this idea which I thought was a great concept I’ve never seen before. Nelson tells a complete story, as written and drawn by a series of gifted creators. It’s an anthology with just one story. It was such a great concept that I immediately thought ‘we have to do this’! I work as a designer as well as an illustrator, and I knew that something like this would need a strong sense of design, so I felt that was something I could bring to the project.
For example, I designed the cover for the anthology – we wanted something that would stand out and have something immediately compelling. Rob sketched the character, I did the type treatment, we put them together and we literally had the cover design in only a few hours.
Steve: How did you go about finding writers and artists to work on the anthology?
Woodrow: Between Rob and I we know a lot of people who we think are doing different, interesting things in comics, and we reached out to them. We also wrote a list of people who perhaps hadn’t done as much experimental, different stuff, and we wanted to challenge by inviting to work on Nelson. We picked people we wanted to see work, and then emailed everyone on our lists to see if they were interested. We thought it’d take a long time, but surprisingly, almost immediately everybody said “yes!”
Steve: With the now award-winning success of Nelson, are there perhaps now plans for a sequel project?
Woodrow: When we first finished, I vowed to never do something like this again! It was complicated and tiring, but enough time has passed that I’m thinking maybe there is something we could do. Something which would have some of the same features to it. It’s exciting to do something as ambitious and wide-ranging, and I’m considering trying it again.
Steve: Do you have anything else coming up on a personal level? Any other projects on the horizon?
Woodrow: I’m working on something else – a silent comic, where each page is a metre wide. I won’t be finishing it for a while!
I’ve reached a point now where I feel I’ve got all these crazy ideas, and it’s time to start trying them.
I think it’s important for the comics medium that we don’t keep doing the same things all the time. If you think about what we could do, you realise that there are a million subjects and styles we can work in. Rather than confining ourselves to capes we can do whatever we want, and I think we have to start taking that freedom to make work which isn’t predictable, doesn’t rely on old concepts, and isn’t always the same thing. We’ve got nothing to lose! We can afford to just try things out and be different.
Many thanks to Woodrow for his time! You can find more from him on his website, or on his twitter @mrphoenix. Also, if you google his name, you’ll see a picture which reveals he has the most suggestive eyebrows since Roger Moore. True!
___________________________________________________________________________
Andrews McM
eel is the publishing division of what was once known as the Universal Press Syndicate. If one ignores the various archival publishers of comicstrips, then AMU is the predominant publisher of comicstrip collections in the United States.
This Fall, AMU launches a line aimed at kids, known as AMP!. Diary of a Wimpy Kid encouraged Lincoln Peirce to publish a hybrid book of Big Nate (which pioneered the cartoon diary in that comicstrip back in the 1990s). Based on the success of those prose novels, AMU is using Big Nate as a foundation to launch a series of large reprint paperbacks featuring Big Nate, Fox Trot, and Lio. (Old school comics fans will recall the old Holt, Rinehart and Winston Peanuts collections. These are similar, except each page features one strip, instead of the two-per-page of Peanuts.) 224 pages for $9.99 is quite affordable, and all three strips are quite enjoyable. (Although Lio can be a bit dark at times.)
Covers have not yet been set yet for the Spring titles. All information is tentative. If you’re not familiar with these strips, they can be read for free over at their Uclick website, along with a lot of other great strips!
___________________________________________________________________________
AAAA!: A FoxTrot Kids Edition
Bill Amend
FRONTLIST
On Sale Date: October 2, 2012
Ages 8 to 12
$9.99/$11.99 Can.
224 pages
Paperback / softback / Trade paperback (US)
Juvenile Fiction / Comics & Graphic Novels
9781449423056, 1449423051
Summary:
AAAA! That’s the sound heard often from the the Fox siblings as only sister Paige discovers Quincy the iguana has eaten her homework, older brother Peter applies permanent marker on his face drawing a fake goatee, and younger brother and expert video gamer Jason loses to Paige. Throw in the AAAAs as mother Andy exclaims while dodging thrown balls in the house and backyard-grilling disaster dad Roger blows up another grill, and you have the perfect equation for a family that every kid can relate to.
Including cartoons from previously published books, this kid-targeted book portrays a not so typical look at how a year unfolds in the Fox family.
—
By:
Heidi MacDonald,
on 4/24/2012
Blog:
PW -The Beat
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BY JEN VAUGHN – Read it and weep! Go have yourself a good cry (probably at a Disney movie). In the tradition of occasionally free newsprint tabloid comics like the one-shot Caboose and quarterly Smoke Signal, a collaborative comic will be available this weekend at MoCCA! Official press release below:
The word “comic” has always been a bit of misnomer and The Cartoon Crier hopes to set the record straight. Sorrow and woe is the focus of this free 36-page newspaper tabloid that highlights the work of members of The National Cartoonists Society and of The Center for Cartoon Studies’ community.
The Cartoon Crier will premiere on Saturday, April 28 at The Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art Festival (MoCCA) in New York City.
The Cartoon Crier features the saddest strips from iconic comics like Family Circus, Beetle Bailey, Dennis the Menace, B.C., and For Better and For Worse. The Cartoon Crier also includes comics by Ivan Brunetti, Mell Lazarus, Melissa Mendes, Joe Lambert, Tom Gammill, Hilary Price, Laura Park, Richard Thompson, and Mo Willems as well as new work from the paper’s editors Cole Closser, R. Sikoryak, and James Sturm.
The Cartoon Crier will be available as a free download on May 1 from cartoonstudies.org.
—
Jen Vaughn is ready to weep tears in four colors: CMYK.
[We're cleaning off our desk, and finding all these comics we meant to write about but never did, so maybe we'll just group 'em up.]
THE SHARK KING by R. Kikuo Johnson (out now).
XOC by Matt Dembicki (out in July).
What are the odds that TWO books about sharks from TWO indie cartoonists would come out in one year?
Johnson’s tale is a parable based on Hawaiian folklore, featuring a mythic Shark King and his illegitimate child.
Dembicki’s tale is more of a “Real Life Adventure” about sharks, great reefs, and so on.
Shark Week comes but once a year, but it can last all year long with one of these fine books.
.
![GROO artists Coming Attractions: IDW: Sergio Aragonés Groo the Wanderer: Artists Edition [UPDATE!]](http://www.comicsbeat.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/GROO-artists.jpg "Coming Attractions: IDW: Sergio Aragonés Groo the Wanderer: Artists Edition [UPDATE!]")
Okay, I was a bit late on noticing the Daredevil edition, but IDW’s site says
New This Week
so I’m ahead of the curve on this one! This was announced back in 2011, but here it is!
Which issues are being collected?
IDW says “This Artist’s Edition measures 12 x 17 inches and features four oversized issues, including extras. Added bonus: the very first Groo story by Sergio (in redrawn form) will also be in this book.” No statement on which four issues will be shown. Since it’s a four-part story, it is probably from the Dark Horse era (1998- ). The very first appearance of Groo was in Destroyer Duck #1, which was reprinted in:
- The Groo Chronicles (Marvel, 1989 series) #2
- Groo Special (Eclipse, 1984 series) #1
The cover shown above is from… I don’t know. It’s not from the Pacific or Marvel/Epic runs. The Grand Comics Database didn’t show it. It’s possible it is an image from an interior page, as the covers are usually somewhat sedate and illustrative. The logo is from 1991, although it has been modified with a curl at the bottom (near the sword). Was it designed by Stan Sakai?
Here’s the text from IDW themselves:
Sergio Aragonés’ Groo the Wanderer: Artist’s Edition PRE-ORDER
Availability: In stock
$100.00
Quick Overview
This item is available for PRE-ORDER ONLY. It will not ship until it becomes available in July 2012.
IDW proudly presents SERGIO ARAGONÉS’ GROO THE WANDERER: ARTIST’S EDITION, collecting a classic four-part story in its entirety by the Mad, Manic, and Marvellous SERGIO ARAGONÉS! Sergio began his career at Mad Magazine in the early 1960s and has been drawing comics ever since.
In 1982 Sergio, with his frequent collaborator Mark Evanier, launched Groo the Wanderer. Groo has since become one of the most memorable and loveable characters of the last 30 years. This Artist’s Edition measures 12 x 17 inches and features four oversized issues, including extras. Added bonus: the very first Groo story by Sergio (in redrawn form) will also be in this book. This Artist’s Edition is shipped in a custom cardboard box for maximum protection. Available in July.
Brought to you by the same team responsible for the Eisner Award-winning Dave Stevens’ The Rocketeer: The Artist’s Edition, as well as Wally Wood’s EC Stories: Artist’s Edition.
WHAT IS AN ARTIST’S EDITION?
AN ARTIST’S EDITION PRESENTS COMPLETE STORIES WITH EACH PAGE SCANNED FROM THE ACTUAL ORIGINAL ART.
Whil
Wow that sounds like a brilliant concept. Ideas like this are why I will never stop reading comics. Even Alan Moore would have to give a nod of approval for such innovation!
This looks so damn awesome.
Happily this got funded but if you haven’t secured your copy yet what are you waiting for!
[...] was mentioned only a few days ago! This is a hardcover book collecting together a collection of new comic strips created by Guy Adams [...]