I'm liberally swiping this from The Comics Reporter, but Robert Beerbohm was at the forefront of the Direct Market during its fledgling days, and has remained a significant force in the industry since then. Somehow, I don't think either Robert or Tom will mind me repeating this verbatim...

Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide Advisor and Historian Robert L. Beerbohm, long-time compiler of the Victorian and Platinum Era comics sections, needs an assist from those in comics fandom who have enjoyed his work in documenting some of our long-forgotten early history of the origins of the American Comic Book.

After eleven years of building the most concise widely-read historical synopsis of the comic strips true roots in America dating more than 160 years ago, he finds himself in need very soon for dual hip replacement operations. He has been told by a doctor the joint sockets are deteriorating at an accelerating rate. If he does not get this accomplished this year, the operations might not be able to be successful.

Long story short, he has been told any where from $60 to 80,000 per side to be healed in America, but over in India, the quote is only $8000 per side plus air fare. This has turned into a no-brainer after he realized one in every seven Americans is without access to covered health care.

No charity is requested. If you like his comics history work, you can help him get back in the game simply by purchasing a few books from his list of 12,000 pre-1980 comic books and related items on his web site http://www.BLBcomics.com

Or, from his web site, you can also click to his eBay store BLB COMICS with a slew of high grade as well as mid grade comics collectibles.

If just 400 of you Scoop readers take heed of this plea, spending just $50 at his web site, he can reach his goal.

A BIT OF HISTORY

An insurance policy he was paying on to HMO Aetna was arbitrarily canceled by them, citing undisclosed pre-existing condition due to his having been a passenger in a 1974 comicon-bound van outside Houston, Texas pile up documented in Dark Horses anecdotal comics encyclopedia Between The Panels under the heading On The Road.

While also suffering a slightly cracked skull, broken nose, cracked shins and impacted teeth which all mostly healed back in the 70s, ultimately what is doing him in now was the impact points of his hip joints in that accident.Seems the impact point cartilage wore off at a faster rate over 30 years, leaving bone on bone at various points, which is quite painful at times.


Beerbohm's first comicon was Houstoncon June 1967 where he turned 15 at the show. He has sold comics at every San Diego Comicon since the first one in 1970, the same year he also began a yearly trek to Phil Seulings legendary July 4th weekend New York City shows. He lost count after 1000 shows some time ago.

He went from 30+ comicon shows around the country a year up through 2007 when his hip joints finally gave out at that years Chicago Wizard show. In 2006 eight shows, in 2007 just three, this year the jury is still out.

By August 1972, he co-founded what became Comics & Comix in the San Francisco Bay Area with the late, fondly missed John Barrett and Bud Plant. Robert joined in with them following a conversation he had one-on-one on an early Sunday morning with the late legendary Will Eisner had the geniuss second comicon appearance at Multicon in Oklahoma City June 1972.

Eisner told Beerbohm when the talk moved over to what steps could be taken to try to save the comic book, then undergoing horrendous cover price increases following the fallout of the glut brought on by the Batman TV craze of the late 60s, that one way was to plant comic book stores near college campuses, then an unheard-of idea.

With that first store at 2512 Telegraph Ave in Berkeley just a few blocks down from UC-Berkeley, they thought they could sell a lot of alternative creator-owned comix then known as underground.

Within six months they hosted the first Bay Area comicon Berkeleycon 73 in the Pauley Ballroom in the ASUC Building on campus, site of many earlier Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, etc concerts. Many thousands came thru to check out the new comix. The fabled Tom Reilly pedigree collection of some 4800 NM/M Golden Age comic books surfaced at this seminal show which Comics & Comix was blessed with acquiring almost 7/8s of the entire score. Robert is trying to finish up the chapter on this legendary collection for the upcoming pedigree book.

Bud and Robert were also housemates in San Jose in those years then when the phone call came in from Phil Seuling informing them he had just cut a deal to be able to ship Archie, DC, Marvel, Warren comic books from Sparta, Illinois. Phil offered the west coast to Bud at the time, but Bud turned him down, preferring then to concentrate on all the proliferating smaller press material, especially those comix containing Robert Crumb, Gilbert Shelton, Art Spiegelman, Richard Corben, Vaughn Bode and a host of other talented comix creators. Out of all this energy, the Direct Market had been birthing and Comics & Comix was right in the middle of it all.

That was a long time ago in that galaxy far far away. He profusely thanks each and every one who responds to this.

Comic Book History in America is 166 years old now. Beerbohm is eager to get back on the road setting up at shows around the country while also continuing his on-going quest to learn and share with all collectors and scholars more Secrets Behind the Origins of The Comics Business in future Price Guides.

I've never met Robert personally, but I have communicated with him via email on a few occasions. He's genuinely a nice guy and knows a LOT about comics. He cares about the industry on the whole, and generally carries an incredible assortment of quality books.

Dark Horse recently put up on their web site a script-to-thumbnails-to-pencils-to-inks-to-colors-to-letters presentation of the first six pages of Serenity: Better Days #1. While the portions after the pencil stages are pretty common, and the script isn't that uncommon, I particularly like seeing the thumbnail sketches and how those change going to the pencil stage. (Pay close attention to page three.)

I was in my Local Comic Shop at lunch today, browsing the new selections. Being a Wednesday, it was (not surprisingly) crowded but, being a relatively small store, that was still only 8 or 10 people.

One of the regulars was talking geek (something about DC's current books -- I wasn't really paying attention) and finished his dissertation of fanboyishness to a largely disinterested crowd. He then fired up his next topic of conversation: the recent death of Dave Stevens, which he evidently learned about through Newsarama and, for the benefit of whomever might not know, provided a short biography of the man as it related to comicdom and how tragic it was following so closely on the heels of the death of Steve Gerber.

The thing that struck me was the patron's attitude. Now, he certainly wasn't disrespectful of Stevens or his work, but he wasn't particularly remorseful either. He presented the information not unlike a newscaster might -- factual, but emotionally removed. He was certainly informed about Stevens and his work, but largely (it seemed) through the relative commercial success of Rocketeer. Indeed, most the subsequent discussion centered around the movie and Jennifer Connolly's appearance in it. But, as Mark Evanier pointed out in his obituary of him, the movie did little for Stevens financially or creatively. The "success" which Stevens achieved with the movie was largely assumed and not realized. The population of this LCS was clearly pretty ignorant of Stevens, I suspect, in large part because he wasn't a creator that was associated with a DC or marvel property.

Further, the patron who brought up the subject was just as ignorant for, I'm sure, the same reason. He brought the subject up, not because he felt that comic community was dealt a tragedy in the loss of Stevens, but rather because he could laud himself into the spotlight as the local source for the most up-to-date news and information in comicdom. He was creating cultural capital for himself and trying to raise his perceived importance in fandom by being more knowledgeable than the next guy. [begin sarcasm] He is the guy who reads Newsarama almost daily! He is a man who knows his comic books! He is clearly the master of comic book knowledge in this store! [end sarcasm]

Now, granted, in some form, we're all trying to present ourselves in a more positive light and raise our social status. There's some part of my brain that says, "I can show myself as more important than I really am by blogging about comics." While that's not my primary motivation, I can recognize that it is a factor in what and how I write. But it bothered me in this instance because the patron's interest in Stevens' death was almost exclusively limited to raising his own importance. He didn't seem concerned about Stevens' work, the family and friends who lost a loved one, or even the business speculation that's bound to occur in this new time in which no new Stevens work will be produced. He viewed Stevens' death as simply a means to make himself look smarter than the rest of us.

Now I could've jumped in at any point to add any number of details. I could've said something about his work on the Tarzan newspaper strip, the costume designs he provided for The Flash TV show or the general helpfulness he provided to an aging Bettie Page. But that would've been just as disingenuous since I'm not that particularly well-versed in Stevens' work either, and those details are things I only picked up yesterday myself. I think Stevens' work is gorgeous, to be sure, but he was never a creator I followed or had much emotional attachment to. Any discussion of the man or his work from me really does nothing but show that I'm more knowledgeable about him than your typical comic book fan.

Believe me, I understand the desire to develop your own cultural capital and become a big fish even in the relatively small pond of a LCS. But I also think it ought to stem from a genuine interest in the subject at hand, rather than a tangental interest that only serves your ego. I try to blog about things I care about, not whatever the current hot topic happens to be. Sure, sometimes I'm going to become excited about something topical, but the fact that it happens to be topical is irrelevant compared to my interest in it. Not only does using Dave Stevens' death as cultural capital make the person using that information seem shallow, but it's disrespectful to the man who devoted so much of his time to being the best artist he could be.

If you're a Browncoat, don't even bother reading this review. Serenity: Better Days #1 has everything you loved about Firefly and Serenity including a very-much-alive Hoban Washburne and Shepherd Book. Stop right now, and go pick up a copy.

Now, for those of you who aren't already fans of "the Verse" I'll start with the introduction for the TV show and this comic...

After the Earth was used up, we found a new solar system and hundreds of new Earths were terra formed and colonized. The central planets formed the Alliance and decided all the planets had to join under their rule. There was some disagreement on that point. After the War, many of the Independents who had fought and lost drifted to the edges of the system, far from Alliance control. Out here, people struggled to get by with the most basic technologies; a ship would bring you work, a gun would help you keep it. A captain's goal was simple: find a crew, find a job, keep flying.

As is implied, the book's protagonists aren't always exactly on the right side of the law and the story starts with them robbing an art exhibit. The run afoul of a security robot that's not unreminiscent of RoboCop's ED-209s. They're able to not only elude the robot, but capture and deliver it to a buyer who points them to a hidden cache of money as payment, which turns out to be quite a bit more than they were expecting.

The first thing I'd like to point out is the artwork. Will Conrad handles those chores here, much as he did for Serenity: Those Left Behind. Early in my blogging career, I pointed to Conrad's work on that book in highlighting the difficulty in moving TV and movie properties to an illustrated medium like comics. I can't say if he got used to drawing the actors that brought Joss Whedon's creation to life, or if he simply improved his drawing ability, but the likenesses of the actors here in Better Days is remarkable. (I was particularly struck by the close-ups of Gina Torres on page 5 and Jewel Staite on page 18.) Conrad was able to convey the actors' likenesses very effectively throughout the book, often using a surprisingly limited amount of detailing.

As far as the story goes, I think just about everything a new reader needs to know is included in the issue. While not every character relationship is fully explored here (an almost impossible feat, given the size of the cast and relatively few number of pages to work with) there's enough for a reader unfamiliar with them to understand the basics. There's also the use of Chinese for various exclamations and cursing that, like in the show, probably adds a lot of color when properly translated, but is unnecessary to get the basic meaning across.

There's also several nods to the show's continuity with references to Simon Tam's first boarding of Mal's ship, Jayne's status as a legend in Jaynestown, and the like. These don't have enough of an impact on the story to really impact the story or distract from it for the uninformed, but they act as nods to long-time fans who are well-versed (pun intended) in the continuity of the property.

If there's any real fault to be had in the book, it's that there seemed to be a few lines of dialogue that might not read easily to newcomers. The overall language structure in the show relied fairly heavily on inflection, dialect and the overall delivery. Since comics have no sound, that portion of the story is absent and readers need to fill that in mentally. Those who have seen the show will have no problem "hearing" how every bit of dialogue was intended to be spoken. Malcolm Reynolds "sounds" like Nathan Fillon here. Jayne Cobb "sounds" like Adam Baldwin. But without those audible reference points, new-comers might have to re-read some of the dialogue to really understand how it's supposed to be read. There're only a few lines like that, but it might be distracting enough for some people to rate the book a notch or two lower than they otherwise might.

For me, though, having been a fan since the airing of the very first show, the book was immensely satisfying. Not only does it allow me to visit the Verse once again, but it does so with the same eye towards good, solid storytelling that Whedon had in the original.

Personally, I'm not generally partial to long-form, serial comics online. I think the extended stories are too involved for the short snippets that get posted at whatever given interval. That said, I have run across a few that I do enjoy when I can sit down and read a large block of it at once. Templar, Arizona has now been added to my short list of said webcomics.

I actually stumbled across it the other day and began reading for the most unusual (for me) of reasons: I found the design of Reagan (at right) to be downright sexy. Yeah, a bit trashy, but Charlie "Spike" Trotman does a phenomenal job, I think, of depicting Reagan in a way that exudes her self-confidence and femininity through only a few elegant brush strokes. It didn't take me long, either, to realize that Trotman's skill in depicting characters was not limited to Reagan's sexiness. Ben's insecurity, Gene's obliviousness, Thutmose's self-acknowledging caveman attitudes, Ra's anger... each character is extremely expressive, thanks to Trotman's deceptively simple linework. But that's only what caught my attention initially.

The story of Templar, Arizona is essentially a slice-of-life piece centered loosely around Ben, a young and inexperienced writer who's a recent transplant to the city. He lives in a run-down apartment building with some neighbors who've managed, thanks largely to Reagan, to barrel their way into his life. The city and much of the culture there are fictional, but not so far removed from reality that they might not be mistaken for one another.

Clearly, I found the artwork is eye-catching, but a few things about the story really stand out for me as well. First, this alternate culture and its subcultures within the story are fascinating. They seem very real and organic; it's hardly surprising that some readers have assumed that they really did/do exist. In fact, it's almost surprising that they don't. (I mean, a pottery place that doubles as a coffee bar? Why hasn't anyone actually started one of these?) It showcases, I think, what an excellent grasp Trotman has of American society.

Her dialogue is equally telling. All of the characters have a very natural language, and speak as much to their character as to telling the story. On several occasions, she drops us into a conversation already in progress and, like any real conversation we might step into, it takes a little while to catch on to the topic but, once having done so, puts the earlier portions of the conversation into an understanding perspective. Trotman doesn't force readers the story, but lets it unfold in an extremely organic way. We see this world of Templar, Arizona in almost the exact same way that Ben sees it. I think it's difficult to pull that off convincingly, but Trotman repeatedly does so with apparent ease.

I'm glad to see that the first chapter of this story has gone into print, and it's clear that Trotman's earned every award her comic's been given. I don't know if she's able to make a living exclusively off Templar, Arizona yet, but I highly recommend throwing some love -- if not some cash -- her way to encourage her to do more of this. Brilliant stuff!

(Oh, and for the record, I still think Reagan looks sexy despite her being loud, obnoxious, boorish, crude, argumentative, nosy, and generally intolerable.)

So I'm looking around in Second Life for some avatar skins. Nothing elaborate, mind you, just a kind of generic male body that'll provide a little more definition to my avatar. A little arm and leg hair, decent fingernails, that sort of thing. And here's what I find...
It's a conventionally attractive male body, sure, but that's just about all I found. Almost every body had a shaved chest and six-pack abs, and basically looked like they stepped right out of a comic book.

Now I don't think I look bad with my shirt off -- I've got a little definition in my obliques and my pecs -- but certainly not the type of body that gets drawn in your typical superhero comic. But looking for an avatar skin that even vaguely resembles my body has proved difficult, to say the least. And that gets me wondering.

A lot has been made of how women are portrayed in comics. All tits and ass. Thighs bigger than their stomachs. Breasts that simply defy gravity. And I'm not about to deny that that form of sexist thinking exists in comics. But, you know, the men are generally portrayed in a more idealized concept too. Look at Mr. Fantastic -- he spends ALL of his free time conducting science experiments in the lab, and yet he somehow still has time to do enough crunches to wash clothes on his stomach? Even with incredible genes, he's more likely to be built like Dr. Octopus.

So the question is: how much of the characters we see in comics is sexism, and how much is simply catering to a socially accepted ideal of perfection? Granted, women are portrayed more uniformly than men in comics -- we have documented proof of that. What I'm trying to bring attention to is that that might not all be sexism.

We are bombarded every day with images of the "idealized" male and female bodies. We're told by the media what we're supposed to look like. Now there is some scientific evidence that suggests that there is some genetic predisposition to certain physical attributes; that "conventional" attractiveness is in part encoded into our genetic makeup. Most people can recognize that at least at some instinctual level, and who is or is not attractive can generally be agreed upon by large groups of people regardless of race or background. (No one, for example, finds Alfred E. Newman attractive -- none of his features are symmetrical.) TV, movies, print ads, etc. all want to make their product(s) more attractive and they often do so by associating themselves with people who can also be generally be recognized as attractive as well. "Our product is desirable in the same way this attractive person is."

I think, to some degree, that holds true for comics as well. Publishers want to make people find their characters attractive and they therefore often use facial and body types that are readily identifiable as attractive. Without their superhero costumes, how different do Bruce Wayne, Hal Jordan and Ray Palmer really look? Prior to the Silver Age, how many of any male heroes differed visually beyond the color of their hair or the individual style of the artist doing the illustration?

Don't get me wrong. I don't want to dismiss the sexism that does pretty clearly exist in comics and the comic industry. That's certainly an issue that should be addressed, and I applaud the intentions (if not always the methodology) of the women who vocalize their displeasure at the situation. And I'm definitely not saying that men should stand up and holler from the rooftops about how unrealistically men are portrayed in comics.

What I am saying is that maybe the primary issue isn't so much that women and/or minorities are portrayed in a limited manner, but maybe the central issue is that publishers are catering too much to an idealization of the human body, and aren't really taking the time, or putting forth the effort, to consider anything beyond that culturally accepted ideal. Maybe it's that comic book creators should stop reflecting what's on their movie and TV screens, and should start looking out their window to reflect what's out in the real world. And maybe if they start doing that, the additional sexism would start to take of itself.

Of course, I might be totally off-base here, but it sure as heck wouldn't hurt if we could convince more comic creators to be a little more diverse in all of their work, right?

I'm sure you've seen at least a couple stories in recent years in which new super teams were created using either historical figures and/or characters from the public domain. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Five Fists of Science are probably the most well-known in comic circles. Personally, I kind of enjoy these types of stories if for nothing else than the twists and interpretations of the originals. So I was pleased to track down a copy of the Necronauts trade paperback recently.

The book collects the story originally serialized in 2000 AD from around 2001. The team brought together for this story includes Harry Houdini, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, H. P. Lovecraft, and Charles Fort. The story revolves around a collection of "Sleepers in the Void" who thrive on the souls of the recently deceased and, through Houdini's unintentional actions, are bent on taking over Earth. Not surprisingly, the good guys win in the end, but at the expense of Houdini's life (allegedly the real reason he died) and Lovecraft's sanity (which then led to his writing his Cthulhu mythos).

What is initially, and perhaps most significantly, striking about the book is Frazer Irving's art. He puts a lot of emphasis on light and shadow but, interestingly, he does so with a great deal of linework. The results frequently seem very stark and highly contrasting, but a second glance reveals the large amount of intricate linear approach he actually takes. It's somewhat similar to the horror work of Bernie Wrightson, but with less emphasis on edge lines.

What's also note-worthy about the art is that Irving maintains excellent likenesses of the four major characters throughout the story. They're all immediately recognizable as the historical figures from virtually every image of them in the book. A tough feat under most circumstances, and that Irving was able to capture their likenesses using this particular style is doubly impressive.

While the artwork alone is extremely well done, the story too is well crafted. The plot flows along very smoothly, and the dialogue works very well. Each character has his own voice and is uniquely tied to the story -- it would not be the same story if, for example, Lovercraft was replaced by H. G. Wells or Houdini by Howard Thurston. It's a very tight story, and holds together exceedingly well. I don't know how much editing was done in the collecting process, but it also reads very smoothly as a single story for having been originally written in a serialized format so it does not at all force the reader to stop and start with recaps or abrupt cliffhangers.

All in all, I was extremely pleased with the book. It easily falls in the same category as League and Fists both in terms of concept as well as quality. It's a shame this hasn't received more attention, as it's something I'd be eager to see more of.