- Marc Tyler Nobleman has posted a previously unpublished 2006 interview he conducted with Lew Sayre Schwartz. "It’s inconceivable to me that Bob [Kane] would’ve done anything by himself."
- Nobleman talked with Alvin Schwartz. He's got it posted in three parts: part one, part two, part three. "He [Bob Kane] would talk almost in monosyllables. He was really the kid with the dunce cap."
- Megan Byrd interviews Kate Leth about the "not cult" of female comic shop workers she's been getting together.
- Continuing with the interview theme this week, CBS Sacramento interviews Morrie Turner, who created the Wee Pals comic strip back in 1965.
You've seen this video highlighted over at Robot 6, yes?
Done processing? Good.
So here's my thing. This guy has a lot of comics, but he's also got a lot of statues, original art and general emphemera. He's clearly spent a lot money over the years and, with 115 new comics every month, continues to spend a good amount of money on comics. I don't know what this guy does for a living, or what else he might spend money on, but more power to him for amassing a collection that he seems to enjoy.
BUT!
He has the bulk of his collection stored in cheap long boxes in his garage? I understand that he's not interested in getting a pristine collection, and he's okay with "reader copies" but that just seems... odd to me. If he's got so much disposable income to spend on comics and comics material, why wouldn't he put some of that money towards a decent shelving system? I know that long boxes are the "classic" way to store books, but it doesn't take much to find other solutions out there. A quick Google search turned up this. And this. And this. And this. All commercially available with a 10 second search.
Now those are all admittedly pricey compared to a set of long boxes. Even compared to a set of drawer boxes. But crimenetly, can we just get past that cheap-ass cardboard crap? I know not all of us can afford to, but you'd think a guy who drops $500 on new comics every month could set a little aside so his collection isn't sitting in cardboard boxes with a plastic sheet over them in the garage!
Done processing? Good.
So here's my thing. This guy has a lot of comics, but he's also got a lot of statues, original art and general emphemera. He's clearly spent a lot money over the years and, with 115 new comics every month, continues to spend a good amount of money on comics. I don't know what this guy does for a living, or what else he might spend money on, but more power to him for amassing a collection that he seems to enjoy.
BUT!
He has the bulk of his collection stored in cheap long boxes in his garage? I understand that he's not interested in getting a pristine collection, and he's okay with "reader copies" but that just seems... odd to me. If he's got so much disposable income to spend on comics and comics material, why wouldn't he put some of that money towards a decent shelving system? I know that long boxes are the "classic" way to store books, but it doesn't take much to find other solutions out there. A quick Google search turned up this. And this. And this. And this. All commercially available with a 10 second search.
Now those are all admittedly pricey compared to a set of long boxes. Even compared to a set of drawer boxes. But crimenetly, can we just get past that cheap-ass cardboard crap? I know not all of us can afford to, but you'd think a guy who drops $500 on new comics every month could set a little aside so his collection isn't sitting in cardboard boxes with a plastic sheet over them in the garage!
What struck me as interesting, though, is the different types of comics each had. Powell's had a great selection of Fantagraphics books from the past decade, plus a variety of other indie and more art-related books. The bookstore before that had a heavier bias towards comic theory, and the books I got there included The Journal of Popular Culture and a biograhy of Mort Meskin. The shop before that had a more international flavor with several British books, including the 1953 Lone Ranger Annual! And before that was just a hodge podge of exceptionally cheap books, mostly from the late 1970s through the early 1990s.
But they all had graphic novel sections of some sort, and all with a decent enough selection for me to find several books that struck me as interesting. (At least, interesting enough for the price they were asking!) And they all exist within a two mile radius, which also included multiple comic shops. Now, granted, Chicago is a dense enough city that it can (apparently) support the relative proximity of all those shops; there's a large enough audience for each one to specialize in certain types of comics (either deliberately or incidentally) and still maintain whole sections devoted to the medium.
And even though I just moved from an area that had used bookstores and comic shops, but just not that many of them, it's still difficult for me to process that there are still areas in the U.S. that have nothing of the sort for an hour or more in any direction. (Tom Spurgeon has noted this of his own home on more than one occasion.) I once started a map to try to pinpoint just what areas have that problem, but I gave up on it because A) the list I was working from was really sketchy and probably dated in the first place, B) I couldn't figure out a non-manual way of entering a couple thousands shops, and C) I could only pinpoint the actual shops themselves and not a radius of a potential customer base. What I'd like to see is a color-coded map that shows the density of comic shops and/or the density of comic shops relative to the population density.
I'm pretty sure I could figure something like that out if I really put my mind to it, but that's not my forte and I'm sure I don't have the best tools at my disposal for sorting through all that data. But somebody who does, I'd appreciate it if you got on that. Thanks!
In the past several months, I've been doing a lot more air travel than in the past, and I've been paying a bit more attention to a decidedly under-recognized instance of comics. Namely, airline safety cards. You know the ones I'm talking about...
Each one shows a series of pictograms trying to explain how your seat cushion can also be used as a floatation device, and everything else the stewards and stewardesses talk about at the beginning of each flight. But all the ones I've seen thus far (which, admittedly, is not too many compared to the number that are out there) are phenomenally badly done. They're often illustrated poorly, and do an even worse job of communicating whatever ideas they're trying to convey. They only make sense at all if you actually listen to that spiel before take-off.
Anyway, with the aforementioned travel, I've been picking up a few of these cards on my trips, and I'm trying to sort out exactly where they go wrong. Is it the "requirement" that they don't use words? Are the concepts too difficult to express visually? Are they just done by people unfamiliar and/or untrained with comics or infographics? I don't have too many samples to go through yet, and they're primarily from one airline, but I think it's another fascinatingly under-examined form of comics.
Something to think about the next time you find yourself in an airplane.
Anyway, with the aforementioned travel, I've been picking up a few of these cards on my trips, and I'm trying to sort out exactly where they go wrong. Is it the "requirement" that they don't use words? Are the concepts too difficult to express visually? Are they just done by people unfamiliar and/or untrained with comics or infographics? I don't have too many samples to go through yet, and they're primarily from one airline, but I think it's another fascinatingly under-examined form of comics.
Something to think about the next time you find yourself in an airplane.
If you haven't been keeping track (and there's no reason why you should have been) the vast majority of my comic collection has been in storage for about a year now. I packed it all away while I was selling my house, which took about six months, and I haven't landed a new permanent residence yet. So I've got this storage unit with all my long boxes, my drum set, some furniture, boxes of toys, etc.
Today, the S.O. and I swang by to box up some of the still-loose stuff for when we have movers haul it all out, plus take a quick check of how many boxes are actually in there. I wound up pulling out a bunch of stuff in front to get to the stuff in the back and was genuinely surprised by just how much of it was comics related. On top of my long boxes, I kept pulling out boxes labeled "comics", "manga", "graphic novels", "books about comics", "comics magazines", "comics reference material", and so on. I mean, I know I've got a lot of comics stuff, but I was still kind of surprised to see so much of it in storage.
It probably hasn't helped matters that I've continued accumulating comics and such while all that has been in storage, and I think I've added another five or six boxes of books in the past 3-4 months. Two more went in tonight.
I should note that "accumulate" doesn't necessarily mean "purchase." While I have indeed bought quite a few comics, that doesn't account for everything. I've received a few books as review copies, a buddy of mine sent a stack of late Silver Age comics he found in his mom's attic (thanks again, Matt!), there was the stuff from Free Comic Book Day, I've won a few in contests, etc. Tonight, I walked past a used bookstore that was closed for the evening, but left out a box of books on the stoop free to anyone passing by; there was a Dilbert collection sitting right on top!
I'm not sure I have a point here, other than to say that I am really looking forward to having access to my full collection all at one time once again, and building up my own library where I can get some actual work done on this stuff. I know I've mentioned this many times already, but I swear I will make this library happen! And then--AND THEN!--I'll be able to get some real research and writing done, instead of this half-assed crap I've been filling my blog with for the past several months!
Today, the S.O. and I swang by to box up some of the still-loose stuff for when we have movers haul it all out, plus take a quick check of how many boxes are actually in there. I wound up pulling out a bunch of stuff in front to get to the stuff in the back and was genuinely surprised by just how much of it was comics related. On top of my long boxes, I kept pulling out boxes labeled "comics", "manga", "graphic novels", "books about comics", "comics magazines", "comics reference material", and so on. I mean, I know I've got a lot of comics stuff, but I was still kind of surprised to see so much of it in storage.
I should note that "accumulate" doesn't necessarily mean "purchase." While I have indeed bought quite a few comics, that doesn't account for everything. I've received a few books as review copies, a buddy of mine sent a stack of late Silver Age comics he found in his mom's attic (thanks again, Matt!), there was the stuff from Free Comic Book Day, I've won a few in contests, etc. Tonight, I walked past a used bookstore that was closed for the evening, but left out a box of books on the stoop free to anyone passing by; there was a Dilbert collection sitting right on top!
I'm not sure I have a point here, other than to say that I am really looking forward to having access to my full collection all at one time once again, and building up my own library where I can get some actual work done on this stuff. I know I've mentioned this many times already, but I swear I will make this library happen! And then--AND THEN!--I'll be able to get some real research and writing done, instead of this half-assed crap I've been filling my blog with for the past several months!
She ran into a co-worker she sort of knows in the elevator. They don't work together much at all, but she did know that he was interested in comics from a conversation a few years ago. She mentioned that she had just been reading Fatale and how it was really good. He didn't recognize the title or the creators (Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips). She stumbled a bit at one point and said that they were a series of graphic novels, but then corrected herself by saying that it was actually just a monthly series that she had read in collected form. And then the questions started...
Him: "Those are graphic novels."
Her: "I'm pretty sure the convention is that they're called trade paperbacks when they've been printed as comics first."
Him: "No, those are graphic novels. Is this a legitimate book, or just some print-on-demand thing? Who's the publisher?"
She was done at that point and shut down the conversation.
Now, I'll concede that there are a LOT of comic creators out there, and no one is going to recognize each and every name or title. And from her description, it sounds like this guy was pretty exclusive to superheroes and didn't mess with anything that wasn't in that genre. But Ed Brubaker is a multiple Eisner and Harvey winner... for comics he wrote about Daredevil and Captain America! Philips only has one Eisner himself, and worked on WildC.A.T.s, Batman and Hellblazer.
Admittedly, the S.O. didn't know all that either, but clearly this jackass was trying to showcase his
Can we just be done with this bullshit already?
Here's a Hingees' Dick Tracy figure circa 1945...
It's paper and you have to put it together yourself, but it looks to be a pretty good approximation of the famous character from the comic strip.
Here's the same character realized in plastic form from Playmates circa 1990...
Now, you don't have to put him together yourself, and he'll certainly last a lot longer than the paper version but... would you want him to?
If these were any indication, you'd get the impression that figure licensing -- or at least toys -- got worse over the half century instead of better. I wouldn't at all mind having a set of Hingees figures for all sorts of characters. And if electronic copies of the files, I could print more out any time they fell apart. If I had plastic versions like this one, I'm pretty sure I'd wind up slipping them in a Goodwill bag after an unsuccessful attempt to sell them on ebay!
Here's the same character realized in plastic form from Playmates circa 1990...
If these were any indication, you'd get the impression that figure licensing -- or at least toys -- got worse over the half century instead of better. I wouldn't at all mind having a set of Hingees figures for all sorts of characters. And if electronic copies of the files, I could print more out any time they fell apart. If I had plastic versions like this one, I'm pretty sure I'd wind up slipping them in a Goodwill bag after an unsuccessful attempt to sell them on ebay!
