Brooke A. Allen at Big Planet Comics Vienna

I hadn't heard of Brooke A. Allen before her appearance at Big Planet Comics Vienna - which turns out to be no surprise because she's still at student at SCAD, even though she's got her first graphic novel coming out now. I talked to her briefly, asking about her influences and was surprised to hear Walt Kelly, followed by Jeff Smith. After reading the book, I can definitely see Bone's influence. I enjoyed the story and will run a brief review at the City Paper soon, but here's some photos.




She made a nice drawing in each book - the people in front of me got the bad magician.


My daughter got Mr. Easter.


And I got a self-portrait.


There was a darn big crowd for both Ms. Allen and the 4th of July sale.


She kept cranking through the drawings for people and I think the store expected to sell out of the book.


BP had these nice posters on sale for $3. I got mine.

Shadow sketch from Heroes Con

Jim Amash did this sketch for me after seeing a painting of Lamont Cranston by Thomas Boatwright that I was carrying around. It turns out that we're both pulp hero fans. As Alex Toth said about doing a drawing of the Shadow for Jim "it had to be in the style of Ed Cartier" and so is this one.

Roger Langridge's Barney Google sketch

Roger Langridge did this drawing for me last weekend - I knew he was a big Barney Google fan so I asked him for this at Heroes Con.  I also bought two pages of an X-Men story in the style of Edward Gorey from him which are very cool. Professor X was a spooky kid.

 

 

Aug 14: Society of American Archivists on curating cartoons

Unfortunately you have to register for the whole Society of American Archivists conference and not individual sessions.

SESSION 508 - Perspectives on Cartoons: Art, Archival Objects, Assets
Aug 14, 2010
8:00 AM - 9:00 AM

Instructors/Speakers
Andrew Farago (Chair)
Curator/Gallery Manager
Cartoon Art Museum

Susan Kline
Assistant Librarian/Cartoonist Archivist
Syracuse University

Jon Michaud
The New Yorker

Description
Cartoons have been used to entertain, persuade, and provide political and social commentary. In the past decade, interest in cartoons has grown. Scholars have begun to use them to gain insight into American culture and this visual genre itself is the subject of inquiry. Each speaker offers a perspective on working with the visual form of cartoons that is unique to their institution, taking into account who their users are.

Did you know? Krazy Kat in Georgetown

Did you know that Georgetown University's Lauinger Library holds two original Krazy Kat Sunday pages by George Herriman? No, I didn't either. David Hagen showed them to me last week. They're in the Archives, of course, as is at least one large collection of political cartoons, from a politician who collected images of himself, I think. There's definitely a Clifford Berryman in there, and I saw a Gib Crockett on the University Archivist's wall. I'm afraid I can't figure out their website well enough to track down the collection though, but you could contact them to ask.

On finally seeing the first Spider-Man

After breaking the news almost exactly a year ago, I finally got around to seeing the first Spider-Man original art by Steve Ditko in Amazing Fantasy #15.



The art was lovely, but it was somewhat anti-climactic since I'd read the story literally hundreds of times. Foolish, I know. There's a small bit of new information to be gleaned from the artwork, where Stan Lee asked for changes, but Ditko followed his pencils very closely so there's not a lot of underlying drawing.

The entire comic book art is there, so there are three other stories with Ditko art that aren't seen nearly as often.



I really can't think of any better home for this than the Library. Lee and Ditko's creation has become an American icon over almost 50 years now. More pictures are here.