LOS ANGELES - DESTROYING THE FABRIC OF SOCIETY WITH FILM

When I was scanning the shelves in the video store two summers ago I was shocked to see that Transformers had made it to DVD so fast. It had come out in theaters like two days before, yet there it... ohhhh, shit. That's not Transformers. That's Transmorphers. Months passed, and more kept popping up. The Da Vinci Treasure. The Day The Earth Stopped. Snakes on a Train. The Terminators. AVH: Alien vs. Hunter. Sunday School Musical. Every big-ticket movie that comes out gets scooped by some fuckers who rush out a straight-to-DVD Weird Al version first.

NORWAY - A LITTLE MORE MARTIN SKAUEN

If you liked Norwegian artist Martin Skauen’s morbid photorealistic drawings in our No Photos issue, you’ll be pleased to hear that he recently finished a new nine-piece series of fictional comic covers called Times. He initially wanted to do a comic book but had too many dark ideas in his somber mind to narrow them down to that. If you can’t “just pop down” to Internasjonalen in Oslo to see them all nicely hung and framed, here’s a little sneak peek to ease your curiosity along with Martin’s thoughts on his work.

LITERARY - SWEET NICK'S COMIC PICKS #5

Comics are the most important creative medium. The idea of graphic visual storytelling is as old as humans, if you consider cave paintings and hieroglyphics a form of comics. Telling stories with recognizable images can cross all language barriers and instantly suck readers in. As the film world and the recognized high art gallery scene die under their own weight, comics will be fiddling and watching them pass. That said, half the comics I got since the last review column really sucked.

NEW YORK - I STARED INTO THE VADGE AND IT STARED BACK AT ME

 

You may have missed last Sunday's comic, what with all the smoked animals and beaches and not looking at the computer. Well, Ginette Lapalme made it. She's a quirky little Canadian with big glasses who made a big internet splash by drawing faces onto butts and boobs and giners and such. She's part of a neat little group of Canadians who are doing funny, pretty comics. We interrogated her.

NEW YORK - SOME WORDS FROM OUR COMICS GUY ABOUT THE DEATH OF MARVEL COMICS

It’s come to my attention that Disney just bought Marvel Comics, whole company and the characters and everything. I am sure that many folks are freaking out because they think Marvel will change. “Oh no,” dumbasses everywhere are probably crying. “Oh no, they’re going to dumb down the Punisher. There’s a sophistication to a psycho with a skull on his shirt, running around and killing people who he doesn’t like! And Wolverine, oh Wolverine, he’s an unstoppable rage-filled asshole who murders people with razors that pop out of his hands. There’s a delicate poetry to him. On the one hand he wants to kill people and on the other hand he does kill people.”

NEW YORK - HERE COMES ANOTHER SMOKE SIGNAL

Great, guess the summer's ending the same way it started. You're not going to the beach today, you've already given up on your seasonal reading list, and you can't handle another second of rehashed festival footage--but buck up because the second issue of Smoke Signal, Desert Island's free comics broadsheet, comes out today. This one's got 36 pieces, including a color cover by Dash Shaw and center spread by Frank Santoro. "Anybody can submit work for Smoke Signal, so we see a lot of weird shit," says big cheese Gabe Fowler. "Local neighborhood guy Jose Medina submitted a full-page, which is now his first published comic. He's in his late-40s and self-taught, so it's great to see his work right next to a guy like Marc Bell." All you have to do to get it is go have fun watching Antimagic, Skeleton Warrior, Driphouse, and Cat Chow at Death By Audio tonight (it only costs like $5, and there's a raffle too if you like softcore gambling), and then you can shuffle back to your pile of hamster shavings and read it for the rest of the weekend. Click below for three whole pages of preview.

NEW YORK - GIVE US OUR CASH BACK

You stupid, dumb, obnoxious pieces of shit. Johnny Cash's corpse does not need to be  exhumed via some kraut illustrator's pen to show us the "unpredictable life of a loner, patriot, outlaw, and music rebel." To the publicist who sent the press release to us: We guarantee you it won't be "a compelling read for multiple generations of graphic novel and music fans" because the company you work for is completely uninspired and seems A-OK with raping the soul of one of America's greatest cultural treasures. Even if you don't respect his music (which makes you a moron, by the way), at least have some reverence for someone who spent most of the last century writing great songs without having to compromise his work or life for anyone.

MEET THE NIERATKOS - DOG PEOPLE ARE WEIRD

My wife gave birth to our baby…and it was one of those hairy dog boys.

Kidding.  

But I am still half expecting the baby to be black. Those goddamn Verizon guys always waiting outside my house for their turn…

NEW YORK - HELLEN JO'S COMICS

Hellen Jo is a Korean-American cartoonist who lives out in San Francisco and is one of the few new great comic artists. Like the one you saw yesterday, her comics are usually about girls wasting time, and then, all of a sudden...an amazing fight scene. She gets around in the drawing world and did that great comic, Jin & Jam #1, which everyone loves and a videogame about herself, which few have seen. She recently did some special decoration for your iGoogle page. I had the pleasure of meeting her at MoCCA this year and can verify that she is almost as fun as her characters.

MOMENTS LIKE THESE ISSUE EXTRA - CREEPY TOUCHING

If reading Nick Gazin's weird, antagonistic, and latently homosexual interview with Johnny Ryan about his new graphic novel Prison Pit wasn't enough mustache for you, check out the latest episode of Nick's new(ish) show The Creepy Touch below.