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Jamie Coville has, as always, recorded the best of the panels from TCAF, including a shocking number in which I participated. YOU can hear the audio of the panels here and the DWAs here. The DWAs are notable for the extraordinary remembrance that Seth offered or Dawwyn Cooke and also the induction of James Simpkins into the Giants […]

Out of all the Vertigo titles that were announced as part of their line relaunch, The Twilight Children was one of the most mysterious yet most anticipated.  The series’ writer, Gilbert Hernandez, forms one-third of the team behind the incredible character driven stories that filled the pages of Love and Rockets.  Darwyn Cooke, the series’ illustrator, has become […]

Darwyn Cooke is another great cartoonist from Canada to grace the pages of mainstream comics. Cooke’s current career in comics began when he wrote, and drew the memorable DC Elseworlds special Batman: Ego. After a short stint in comics in the mid-late 80’s, he found success as an animator/storyboard artist for Batman: The Animated Series & Superman: The Animated Series in the 1990’s, including creating the main title design for Batman Beyond.

Notable works from Darwyn are DC: The New Frontier(which told the tale of DC Superheroes during the dormant period of the 1950’s), Catwoman’s reboot/redesign in 2001 with writer Ed Brubaker(this run of comics is proving to be ahead of it’s time since we’re seeing a new trend of rethinking/redesigning superhero style & character; i.e. Ms. Marvel, Batgirl, etc.) , the comics adaptations of Donald E. Westlake’s classic crime thriller series Parker, and a recent spate of cover art, including a whole month’s worth of variant covers for many of DC’s flagship titles, and the first issues of IDW’s King Features line.

You can keep up with all things Darwyn Cooke on his website here.

For more comics related art, you can follow me on my website comicstavern.com - Andy Yates

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DC’s Variant month themes this year have ranged from the intriguing—Steampunk—to the inevitable—BOmbshells—to the eye-rilling —selfies— but’s they’ve finally come up with an idea that should be hailed coast to coast: a month of Variant covers by the great Darwyn Cooke, whose design and conceptual skills are second to none. Kate Willaert come back! Set the “Has DC Done Something Smart Today?” Clock to 0!

The covers, as revealed at CBR, will be landscape. While the whole list of issues with variants can be read below, here’s what we have so far (Check back for updates.)

IF only all superhero comics looked this confident and likable. Our favess? Batman becuase it’s so damned cool and SUpergirl because Streaky and Krypto.

Action Comics #34

Grayson #5

Justice League United #37

Supergirl #37

Via IGN

“Batman & Robin” #37

“Catwoman” #37

“Green Lantern” #37

“Sinestro” #8

“Wonder Woman” #37

Via Hitfix

“Aquaman” #37

“Batgirl” #37

“Detective Comics” #37

“Justice League Dark” #37

“Superman/Wonder Woman” #14

And via Yahoo:

Batman #37

Batman /Superman #17

Green Lantern Corp. #37

Justice League #37

Flash #37

OH and from Newsarama:

HE-MAN: ETERNITY WAR #1

HARLEY QUINN #12

SUPERMAN #37

TEEN TITANS #5 — me NEW FAVORITE.

Artist Darwyn Cooke has created a new short from the Batman Beyond animated series. According to The Huffington Post, it first premiered during the Warner Bros. panel at WonderCon.

The video embedded above features a fight between Bruce Wayne’s successor Terry McGinnis and what looks to be a red-eyed version of the original Caped Crusader. Longtime Batman voice actor Kevin Conroy plays the elderly Wayne and Will Friedle reprises his role as McGinnis.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

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“I’m sorry I’m late with my book”, Jimmy Palmiotti said rather humbly, opening a “spotlight” panel on March 31^st 2013 at WonderCon, and asked the audience if he ought to put on some “background music”.  Amanda Conner, his co-spotlighter, and Palmiotti explained, tongue in cheek, that if the panel appeared “random”, months of deep thought had allowed them to “plan it to be random”. Attendees were already engaged by the humor, and probably by their avid fandom of both Conner and Palmiotti’s work, in this panel Conner and Palmiotti hoped would be “interactive”.

For the first part of the panel, they followed a rough chronology of the story of their working and personal relationship together, but Q &A was welcome throughout. Palmiotti explained that the “magic started” between the couple when he inked a GARGOYLES cover for Conner and a friendship developed between them. This friendship allowed them to learn the “horrible, wonderful sides” of each other, Conner commented. Palmiotti added that they “knew each other insanely well” long before they started dating.

Their first big collaboration, where both provided their own input for a personally satisfying project, involved the VAMPIRELLA comic when Conner asked Palmiotti to create a script where she would be allowed to portray the title character “on the toilet”. Palmiotti, in gallant fashion, concocted a plot involving laxative-laced candy on Halloween, a child-eating demon, and a heroic devourer in Vampirella. Palmiotti encouraged writers to play to the desires of artists and “give them stuff they really want to draw” to produce great results. That’s been their “theme ever since”, he said. Comics have been their “career of choice”, Palmiotti reflected, even though their were “other choices” possible. Conner’s other choices, for instance, included working in advertising, and prior to that, owning a comic book store.

This chronological tour abruptly leapt to the present as both Palmiotti and Conner commented on keeping late hours, particularly at the con. The “number one rule”, Palmiotti shared sagely, is “never look at the clock. It ruins the night the next morning, worrying about it”. Then the “only indication”, he said, “is hearing birds. I don’t like that”. This commentary had the audience in uniform, vocal agreement. Conner and Palmiotti introduced another recurring topic in the panel, the sheer number of shoes Conner has managed to assemble. She insisted she had no more than 20 pairs of shoes, but Palmiotti remained dubious, putting the number at more like 600.

This speculation was interrupted by a question from the floor about the “timetable” on the planned collaboration CAPTAIN BROOKLYN. Conner explained that she’s working on a “glut of covers” at the moment, but when she’s finished those off, she’s going to stop other work and focus on BROOKLYN. Conner confirmed that they are “thinking about” the possibility of doing a Kickstarter for the project. CAPTAIN BROOKLYN, Palmiotti explained, is about a garbage man in Brooklyn, with a “house full of cats” and “Russian massage parlor girls next door” who has to devise a financial means of helping his sickly grandfather. On top of that, he comes to possess “superpowers that really don’t help his life”. Palmiotti says the book, as scripted, is “funny” but he trusts Conner to “bring it down to earth” and “ground it”, a power he feels is her particular strength as an artist. Her work “has a soul”, he said, “The eyes have a soul”, but he jokingly threatened her with finding a replacement if she doesn’t pick up the production pace.

Since the panel declared itself to be “interactive”, I asked Conner about her background studying comics art at the Kubert School in New Jersey, and whether she felt it was beneficial to study comics specifically in order to become a professional comics artist. The benefits, she said, of specialized study, is that she now knows how to “use a lot of other tools besides drawing specific to what I want to do”. At the time that she attended the Kubert School, she said, “most other art colleges frowned on comic art” and it was “not respected”. She feels things are “more open now”, but at  the time, she said, the Kubert School was “exactly what I needed”. Palmiotti commented that at that time, the Kubert School also had very few women, about 4 in her class, Conner recalled. Now comics are a “little more accepted”, Palmiotti said, and the word “geek” is on the rise.

“Now we’re the cool kids and can talk about stupid stuff”, Palmiotti commented, including channeling child-like behavior to geek out about things like films. Both Conner and Palmiotti revealed that they are avid film watchers, and particularly Palmiotti, who goes to the movies a couple of times a week. Conner focuses on particular films that catch her attention, which she watches “repeatedly”. As a kid, she was a huge fan of The Poseidon Adventure, then Star Wars, The Terminator, The Long Kiss Goodnight, and more recently, Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang.  Palmiotti’s most recent film enthusiasm is for the film Upside Down, particularly fascinated by this love story featuring reverse gravity fields and conflict between differing worlds.

An audience member brought up the subject of the completion of Conner’s run on SILK SPECTRE from the BEFORE WATCHMEN series, a project that ran only four issues rather than a possible six. “It could have stretched to 6”, Conner said, but she found it wasn’t necessary to do so. She declared herself relieved to have finished the job, since it was “labor and research intensive” to make sure she “blended it into the original storyline” of the mid to late ‘60’s. Her goal, which made the job more difficult, was to present “not people’s perception of the 60’s, but actually the ‘60’s” in contrast to our current, commercial views of the time period. This quest led her to contact her mother and her aunts, the youngest of which was “Laurie’s age” during the same time period. Palmiotti, who witnessed Conner’s rather excruciating commitment to historical accuracy in her art, came to call SILK SPECTRE “that effin’ book’ (which was the PG-13 version of the phrase).

Palmiotti said that Conner “became obsessive with every building” she drew, as well as clothing. The “layout” for Laurie’s house, apparently, was drawn from a single panel featuring a single room in the house in WATCHMEN. Conner built an “entire house” around a living room contained in the original comic. Palmiotti reminded the audience, who then applauded, that Conner’s work on SILK SPECTRE has since been nominated for a Reuben Award in “good company” with Evan Dorkin, and Bernie Wrightson, two of their favorite creators.

I asked Conner and Palmiotti what, particularly, they are looking for that they find attractive in a project in terms of character and plot. Palmiotti replied that he’s looking for several things, including the “soul of a character”, “what they want”, “what they fear” and “something at stake”. He’s very drawn to idea of romance in comic books. “It’s there even in JONAH HEX”, he said. “I like the idea of two people who have something in common, a goal”, Palmiotti explained. Even if he’s writing “horrible people”, he’s “looking for a likeable trait”. His example prompted a lot of laughter from the audience, proving the maxim “It’s funny because it’s true”. He said that even “Hitler’s dog thought Hitler was awesome” because the dog, being fed and tended by his master, could find a likeable trait. You have to “find those things in the characters”, he said, and ask yourself, “Why would we care?”.

Conner’s particular take on character focuses on the idea of perfection and imperfection. “I try not to make the character so perfect”, she said, preferring to create a character who is “someone like you know”. She wants her comics audience to react by thinking, “I know somebody who’s just like that”. That’s one of the reasons Palmiotti finds Spielberg films compelling, he explained, since they “start with the hero screwing up” and “we relate”. If a hero is “too perfect, there’s push-back”. He doesn’t respond to films where there’s a “super handsome guy and a perfect girl”, finding them “boring”.

An audience member’s question about Conner’s work drawing BARBIE in the past led to an energetic discussion of Wonder Woman as a character and the possibilities of new directions for her books. “I would love to write WONDER WOMAN”, Palmiotti admitted; he sees her as “more down to earth, less superior” than some other creators since being “too perfect” is a turn-off, though he thinks some solid work has been done on WONDER WOMAN. He observed that in some WONDER WOMAN comics he’s read, the creators “make everyone else more interesting” than Wonder Woman and he can’t understand that approach. “She’s the most interesting person in the room”, he pointed out, not her surrounding characters. Of course, he added, he would only want to write WONDER WOMAN with Conner as the artist on the project.

The last few questions fielded by Palmiotti and Conner included their typical work schedules, which they revealed to be opposite, and therefore difficult in timing, Conner’s recollections about her work for indie magazines, which she described as “guerrilla comic book making”, and what comics they like to read right now. Conner cited Terry Moore, finding herself “rivetted” by every story. Palmiotti’s a big fan of Darwyn Cooke’s work, but also always comes home with a “stack” of comics from the shop on Wednesdays. He buys every #1 issue from every company, he revealed, and continues to “try everything… like it’s my job”.

Conner and Palmiotti certainly presented a fully interactive panel, so much so that when panel time ran out, it felt like an interrupted conversation with plenty more to say. Hearing stories from their daily life and their work suggested that the divide, especially for these collaborators, is artificial, with influences moving back and forth constantly. Maybe that’s the secret to their wide-ranging output in comics, and a glimpse of the reason behind the energy they continually bring to the industry. The panel illustrated well the benefits of the “spotlight” approach to con appearances giving enough time and focus on particular creators to generate a conversation with their audiences.

Photo Credits: All photos in this article were taken by semi-professional photographer and pop culture scholar Michele Brittany. She’s an avid photographer of pop culture events. You can learn more about her photography and pop culture scholarship here.

Hannah Means-Shannon writes and blogs about comics for TRIP CITY and Sequart.org and is currently working on books about Neil Gaiman and Alan Moore for Sequart. She is @hannahmenzies on Twitter and hannahmenziesblog on WordPress.

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Earlier this week, Jimmy Palmiotti announced that the noble experiment CREATOR OWNED HEROES would conclude after its 8^th issue. Over the course of the magazine’s publication, outreach on social media emphasized the need to raise awareness and increase solicitation from comic shops to keep the multi-contributor series in motion. Consistently strong reviews appeared on media, fan, and blog sites with each issue, and as COH developed, it continued to raise the bar on high-quality content. The ascent has been dizzying, and exhilarating for readers and comics creators alike in an era of increasing awareness about the ups and downs of self-publication. It has been like watching crucial surgery in a live operating theatre in the hands of celebrated practitioners where the audience has come to play an integral role. The life of the patient has depended on their rapt attention in increasing numbers. Depending on your perspective, issue #8 will represent the final bow of an effort exploratory and unique, or perhaps somber flat-lining during a risky procedure that practitioners will attempt to learn from for some time to come. But either way, COH won’t be concluding in obscurity. Ironically, there will be more people in the operating theatre than ever before to witness its final moments and draw their own conclusions.

CREATOR OWNED HEROES #7 represents a particular crescendo in the magazine’s development, a point at which even those who have been following the series closely lean forward, aware that something unprecedented is unfolding before their eyes. It expresses a remarkable energy and a confluence of its methods and its goals due, in part, to the team of contributors it brings together. As Justin Gray says introducing his Brandon Seifert interview, “When we started Creator Owned Heroes, it wasn’t just a desire to self-publish; it was a multilevel dedication to comics that were being produced outside the work for hire landscape”. Gray also cites “ a fundamental desire to tell stories” as a common feature among the creators chosen as contributors. Issue #7 is a tour de force illustration of those criteria.

The powerhouse comic in the anthology is clearly Darwyn Cooke’s irreverent, rapidly paced and verbally exuberant “The Deadly Book”. Cooke hits high notes across the board of comic storytelling elements, from a lush, contrasty color palette in sky-blue, blood-red, and ink-black, to unexpected vantage points, compressed action, and even a very indie take on relating past events in short form via substantial narrative blocks. The comic displays the best possible outcomes for a skilled creator taken off the leash to tell the kind of story that they want to tell in the way that they see fit to tell it.

Jimmy Palmiotti, Justin Gray, Jerry Lando, and Paul Mountis follow Cooke with “Killswitch” in its 3^rd installment of 4. They put the action back in indie in a big way and display a particular virtuosity in reversing a typical paradigm in espionage/hitman themed comics. Rather than telling the story with several panels, if not pages, of heavy exposition followed by the action sequences readers have been waiting for, they manage to reveal a wealth of exposition during an installment that, arguably, is one big action arc. They keep it interesting by demanding the reader put the pieces of information together for themselves, from Kill Switch’s complicated pseudo family life to the developing role of a nemesis. Rather than just telling a story well, which is a quite an achievement in itself, they manage to tell a story differently, once again illustrating the surprising results when creators have sufficient room for experimentation.

Steve Niles and Scott Morse bring an even greater variation in style and content to COH #7, pushing the boundaries of typical narrative structures while giving a nod to still-rich veins of comics tradition. They break down confined panel layout, and do away with textboxes and speech balloons to tell a noirish private-eye tale with disturbing gusto. “Meatbag’s” full page-feel conjures up Eisner’s SPIRIT while the first-person narrator places the storytelling firmly in Raymond Chandler territory. Add to these elements the use of limited color palette, heavy brush-stroke illustration and moody lettering, and you’ve got a finely balanced combination of old and new, making this a 21^st century comic with a lot of room for innovation.

Then we have zombies. The subject-matter is in danger of being done into the ground in the TV, film, and comics medium, but in keeping with the challenges set by COH #7, Dean Haspiel and Jeffrey Burandt deliver something readers have simply never seen before, imploding any expectation of the familiar. Haspiel’s zombie artwork avoids the basic emphasis on blood and gore flooding zombie media these days and emphasizes, in a visceral way, the disjointedness of decomposition through trailing limbs and chunks of missing anatomy. This makes Haspiel and Burandt’s heroine seem all that much more solid, active, and vital as she spikes a zombie noggin and blasts through zombie brains. This is zombie-storytelling streamlined to basic psychological elements: loneliness, companionship, and, finally, the pulse-poundingly unexpected that makes the genre so popular. “Blood and Brains” retools zombie narrative by removing excess accretion and celebrating its potential in creator-owned style.

Photo-comic COMPLEX: “Luv_Underscore’s_U” by Seth Kushner, Chris Miskiewicz, and Dean Haspiel reminds us that the comics medium is expansive, varied, and should never feel too comfortable. Katelan Foisy and Miskiewicz star in this futuristic psychological landscape where the solid realities of the photo images help readers keep a grip on the otherwise shifting definitions of reality in the narrative. There’s a subtle ambiguity in the nature and future of technology, it’s use and misuse to contribute to human experience, and on the whole the photo-comic not only tells the reader but shows the reader the spell-like suspension of disbelief comics, in the right hands, are still capable of creating.

The prose content of COH #7 also contributes greatly to the purpose of the series, present from issue #1, of taking readers inside the world of creator-owned projects, an on the ground approach that not only educates but instructs. Justin Gray’s interview with Brandon Seifert allows the reader to hear straight from the horse’s mouth, “Want to be a writer? Start writing. It’s that simple, and that hard”. A “social media press conference” included in the issue also brings together advice and insight from creators and Steve Bunche concludes a full-on bootcamp for aspiring comics writers with plenty of solid advice that may seem counter-intuitive like “avoid topical subjects”. It’s clear that the meta-text of COH #7 is not there simply to sell books but to actually aid aspiring creators in avoiding the pitfalls that contributors have faced.

From issue #1, COH has given a strong impression of community among indie creators, and #7 continues to follow through in inclusiveness. A major profile of legendary tide-fighter Evan Dorkin, written by Christopher Irving, and photographed by Seth Kushner, only further illustrates the point. Creator-owned projects may seem like a new thing, maybe even a fad, but they aren’t. They’ve been breaking new ground for some time, and there’s plenty to be learned from observing the struggles of greats like Dorkin. Dorkin’s legacy in brief could be summed up in his statement: “I’ve come to hate when people say ‘Don’t get into comics’. I learned to say ‘Fuck that. If you want to get into comics, get into comics’”. But Dorkin, like many other creators, is also prepared to try to inform readers about what exactly they are getting into because a few tips a long the way can make all the difference.

The combined tone and attitude of the comics and prose in CREATOR OWNED HEROES #7 avoids even the faintest whiff of defeatism. The series’ message is still going strong, and the works it presents don’t even aspire to meet the professionalism of company-owned comics, they aspire to go beyond company-owned projects in terms of high-quality story-telling, artwork and design. After all, what’s the point in trying to keep up with the Joneses when you really want to set a new standard all your own? As an experiment, the COH series is winding down, but the data is being collected, the procedure is nearly complete, and no one doubts the skill of the team involved. The increasing momentum generated in the pages of COH #7 has, certainly, guaranteed that no one will stop reading until the experiment is complete.

Hannah Means-Shannon writes and blogs about comics for TRIP CITY and Sequart.org and is currently working on books about Neil Gaiman and Alan Moore for Sequart. She is @hannahmenzies on Twitter and hannahmenziesblog on WordPress.

IDW swept the best writer and best writer/artist category at the 2011 Eisner Awards at Comic-Con International in San Diego this weekend. Follow the links below for free samples of books by some of the winners.

Joe Hill won Best Writer for Locke & Key and Darwyn Cooke won Best Writer/Artist for Richard Stark’s Parker: The Outfit (IDW). In addition, 75 Years of DC Comics: The Art of Modern Mythmaking by Paul Levitz won Best Comics-Related Book and Abominable Charles Christopher by Karl Kerschl won the Best Digital Comic award.

Here’s more about the ceremony: “[The awards] ended on an unusual note Friday night with the Best Graphic Album-New category going to two winners: Jim McCann and Janet Lee‘s Return of the Dapper Men (published by Archaia) and Daniel Clowes‘s Wilson [PDF preview] (published by Drawn & Quarterly).”

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

chrisarrant:

I wish they had this when *I* was a little kid. #oldmanrant

Wow, this is going to be a VERY crowded schedule! There are a ton of things to do throughout New York Comic-Con and no matter what you choose, you’re sure to get a little cultural edification, whether it’s comics of Kirby Krackle. There are so many events and parties we had to slit this into two. We’ll have Saturday’s line-up later on.

THURSDAY – 10/7

• Darwyn Cooke signing

October 07, 2010 7:00 PM

Borders 2 Penn Plaza New York, NY 10121

What: RETURN OF THE DAPPER MEN Launch Party & Art Showing

Come celebrate the launch of RETURN OF THE DAPPER MEN by Jim McCann & Janet Lee, published by Archaia.

The original artwrok will be on display and available for purchase as will advance copies of the book.

Where: Alice’s Tea Cup:

http://alicesteacup.com/

102 West 73rd St (73rd & Columbus)

NY, NY, 10023 (212) 799-3006

When: Thurs, Oct 7, 7:00 pm – 10:00 pm

Food: scones, cake & tea (wine after 8:00 pm courtesy of Bluebird Wines: http://www.drinkbluebird.com)

WHAT: Illustration House and Eva Ink Artist Group will be hosting an open house in honor of artists Michael Golden, Mark Texeira and Steve Scott, this Thursday.

Food and drink provided, and all artwork is for sale for the duration of the exhibition. Here are the details:

Who: Event hosted by Illustration House and Eva Ink Artist Group

What: Illustration House Gallery Show Reception When: Oct. 7th, 6-8 pm

Where: 110 West 25th Street, Manhattan Why: In honor of Michael Golden, Mark Texeira and Steve Scott

How: Subway, cab, you name it. Illustration House is easy to find! And if you can’t be there in person, check out their website!

What: Best American Comics Signing with Neil Gaiman, Bryan Lee O’Malley, Matt Madden and Jessica Abel.

CBLDF welcome party, sponsored

Last night I got invited along for a night on the town with some of Canada's very best cartoonists. Along with the usual guys we had Jay Stephens, J Bone and Darwyn Cooke out last night. Jay is the two time Emmy winning cartoonist responsible for such classics as Tutenstein and The Land Of Nod. J Bone is the incredible artistic talent behind comics like Super Friends and The Brave And The Bold. And Darwyn is one of Canada's best known and highly regarded comics writers and artists. He's the Eisner Award winning artist behind books like The New Frontier, Catwoman and The Spirit. It was a really fun night rambling around the city with all these guys from the Canadian comics community.They are all in town for thew Toronto Fan Expo which everyone in town should go to...