The Downsized

Years ago, my first taste of independent comics came via Matt Howarth‘s Those Annoying Post Bros. And since then, I’ve always found myself attracted to Howarth’s visual style. So when my pal, AdHouse big chief Chris Pitzer, offered me a chance to email interview Howarth, regarding his new book The Downsized (set to be released in March) I was borderline giddy. This is an interview where I went in thinking I had done an adequate amount of research about Howarth’s career, but I was pleasantly surprised to learn there was a hell of a lot I did not know about. After reading the interview, be sure to check out the seven-page preview of the 80-page book (described as “A parent’s 50th wedding anniversary gives old friends a reason to reunite and take stock of their lives.“). My thanks to Howarth for tolerating some of my ignorance to make for a solid examination of his creative interests.

Tim O’Shea: My first question is not uniquely about The Downsized, per se–but rather your work as a whole. How did you come upon the way you draw people’s hairstyles? No one else (with the possible exception of Art Adams) draw hair in quite the unique way that you do (and I mean that as a compliment).

Matt Howarth: Years ago a friend remarked how weird my characters’ hair was, forcing me to analyze why. I’m afraid the reason is more a limitation on my part than any stylistic choice. I’ve never been very adept with a brush; technical pens are my preferred instrument because they afford me more control over the lines. So instead of inking hair with supple brush strokes, I resort to dotted lines. As far as the overall shape of my characters’ hairdos, I don’t perceive hair as a collection of strands but as a mass, not unlike a piece of cloth draped atop someone’s head. All rationalization aside, I’m afraid I draw hair the way I do because that’s just the way it comes out.

O’Shea: I was really struck how the first panel of The Downsized took a point of view that features dialogue, yet with no characters shown. What promoted you to go with that shot–and did you hesitate to try it that way?

Howarth: That’s purely a cinematic thing. Set the scene first, then have the characters enter from the wings. It was a way to deal with someone answering a door. I fret over details more than over settings, the latter comes instinctively, leaving me to agonize over the little things…like the open suitcase sitting there–implying that we’re in a hotel room.

O’Shea: As you note yourself, this book is a departure from your typical work, in that it is a modern day, slice of life story. Has this been a story you’ve had developing in your mind over a number of years? Any interest in doing more slice of life tales, or are you satisfied with that genre after this one spin?

Howarth: Technically, this is my second slice of life tale; the first was “Magnesium Arc,” a oneshot comic back in the 90s that told the story of fledgling electronic musicians as they progressed from practicing in their basement to their ultimate career goals. There was one chapter that deviated from reality in that it depicted an episode of a sci-fi cartoon series for which the band did the soundtrack, but the rest of the story was totally conventional. The same holds true for “The Downsized,” with the exception of a subtle twist at the end, the entire story occurs in the real world.

My mind is prone to pursue strangeness when it comes to storylines, and in the real world there are strict guidelines (i.e.: laws of physics or social conventions) that act as limiting parameters. In storytelling, the writer is supposed to focus on an aspect of humanity as the crux of the tale…but my personal inclination is to get lost in the weird trappings that surround the characters, whether it be an alien world or a completely unrealistic scenario. I struggle to guide humanity back into the story, but often find myself constrained by the indigenous situations. Political or theological ramifications of our time have little bearing on a character’s motivations if they live on a gas giant planet halfway across the galaxy a few hundred years in the future.

“The Downsized” gave me the opportunity to explore a story where the characters were the central issue. While it’s a tale of people surviving off-the-books, the real focus is each character’s perspective–not how they survive, but how that survival has changed them.

Initially I was inspired by the 50th wedding anniversary gathering of the parents of a friend of mine. I was fascinated by the idea of a bunch of family members reunited for such an event and how it enabled them to catch up on each other’s lives, how people from a central unit could evolve in different directions, emotionally and careerwise, and how the economic crunch could crush those aspirations. Actually, there’s very little autobiographical about the story. All of the characters in the book are concoctions of my own mind created to illustrate various points. Any aspects that might have been derived from real life were scrambled and mutated to fit the story’s purposes.

While my forte remains tales of the weird, I am not adverse to doing more slice of life works. In the old days, I tended to do whatever stories occurred to me; these days I find myself tailoring the work to fit the needs of potential publishers. If somebody approaches me to do more slice-of-life stuff, I’ll do it.

O’Shea: A cat plays prominently in the story. How early in the development of the plot did you arrive on the use of the cat as one of the story’s focuses?

Howarth: The wedding anniversary gathering was my first building block in constructing the story, but the sick cat was a close second tangent. This part does come from my own life. Back in the 90s, my wife’s cat had a stroke. Since Stasy had a 9-to-5 job, the task of caretaking the sick cat fell to me. I arranged a special spot in my studio where I could keep an eye on the cat while I worked. We didn’t do much socializing during this period, since we needed to be around to watch the cat and tend to her needs. Going to our friend’s parents’ anniversary gathering was one time we “dared” to leave the cat alone for a period longer than an hour. We set the cat up on some baby-pads on the bed and hoped for the best. When we returned home, we found the cat in the living room. Although paralyzed by the stroke, the cat had managed to climb off the bed, down a hallway, down a flight of steps (ouch!) and over to the middle of the living room. She not only survived this journey, she began to regain her capabilities. I was really impressed by the cat’s resolve to overcome adverse conditions and resume her normal existence. The synchronicity of this linked the anniversary gathering and the sick cat in my mind, so they became the central lynchpins of “The Downsized.”

A lot of times this is how I build stories: starting with a concept or aspect and concocting the story to accommodate the parts I feel like dealing with. It’s not a very professional way of going about crafting a story, but luckily my mind seems to go with the flow, devising connections and progressions as I move along.

O’Shea: In my mind, one of your greatest abilities is to create characters that stand out in a story and stick in readers’ minds long after the story is read. For The Downsized, one of those characters is Uncle Marty. I have to know, do you have someone like Uncle Marty in your family or in your life?

Howarth: Nope, sorry. Being a lifelong smoker, I’ve come into contact with a lot of people like Uncle Marty–those who disapprove of other people’s habits and those who feel compelled to force their own choices on others. I’m very intolerant of well-intentioned advice, especially when it’s just a reason for people to try to force their own beliefs on me. I’m very comfortable with my vices and if the time comes for me to shed them, it’ll be my choice.

O’Shea: Most of your work has been self-published, and yet in the case of the Downsized, it’s published by AdHouse, how did it land there?

Howarth: It’s a misnomer to think that the majority of my work is self-published. During the 70s, I started in self-publishing, but I swiftly spread out to working for a variety of publishers. This diversity has continued throughout my career, doing work for Fantagraphics, Dark Horse, Heavy Metal, DC Comics, TMNT, Aeon, Rip Off Press…ah, the list goes on and on, including a six year stint doing comics for a local newspaper during the late 80s. I even find time to squeeze in some commercial jobs. Yet all along I continued to self-publish things–mainly because my output is far more than any group of publishers could possibly handle. Since 2000, I’ve adapted my work to computer technology, which allows me to self-publish in digital form and avoid printing and warehousing costs. But during the last decade, I’ve still done numerous series and oneshots for a variety of publishers. I’m like a water faucet that’s stuck and can’t be turned off; things just keep on gushing out.

As to how “The Downsized” ended up with AdHouse…like so many things in my life, circumstances just come out of the blue and fall into place. Chris Pitzer had ordered some of my mail order stuff, and I noticed the company name on the envelope. I Googled AdHouse and then inquired if he might be interested in publishing something by me. Despite the plethora of material I produce that sees publication, there remains a wealth of unpublished work waiting to find a home. Interested publishers are welcome to inquire about this stuff.

O’Shea: A majority of your stories are black and white comics, is that a fiscal necessity or do you prefer working in b&w with most of your stories?

Howarth: For the first thirty years of my career I concentrated on the B&W medium for a variety of reasons, the strongest being that most independent publishers weren’t interested in wrangling with color expenditures. I’m completely self-taught, so I never really had an art teacher to urge me to expand my techniques. I dabbled in color, mostly with magic markers for covers, but frankly I was never pleased with what I did. My work tends to be very precise, and markers are just too bleeding hard to control. The introduction of digital technology to my studio changed all that; it afforded me the ability to work in color in a means I could more effectively control. Since then, a lot of my self-published material has been full color (among them four Keif Llama graphic novels). Color has drastically altered the way I ink things, too, for all that dotwork and those thousands of tiny lines can get buried by color, so I’ve stopped wasting my time and now I rely on color effects to compensate for those missing elements. Which doesn’t mean that I’ve stopped doing all the detailed inking for B&W work–it all depends on how the thing’s going to be reproduced. An example would be the “Stalking Arr” strip which was done in B&W, but Heavy Metal wanted the art colored–so I colored it. Doing so was somewhat problematic since the inking was quite dense in parts and all that detailing got buried by the colors. Fortunately my color sense is somewhat garish, so the bright colors didn’t entirely swamp the details.

O’Shea: I would be remiss if I did not ask, do you listen to music as you work? If so, what was in heavy rotation while you worked on The Downsized? On the other hand, is there any music that you would recommend folks listen to while reading the story?

Howarth: Music has always been an integral part of my work process. And it often creeps out of the inspiration department and right into the stories, like with all the musicians who appeared in my Savage Henry series. It’s pretty obvious that I’m obsessed with fusing music and comics.

Alas, I did “The Downsized” back in the mid-90s…so I’m afraid I can’t recall whatever was used as my sonic fuel. My tastes in music tend to be somewhat eccentric. Let’s see…mid-90s, I was pretty immersed in the techno scene, so it might have been: Orbital, the Future Sound of London, Spicelab, a lot of stuff on the (now defunct) Harthouse label. But my choices tend to switch according to mood or whatever I’ve just gotten, so who can say for sure. Some of my mainstays are: Tangerine Dream, Hawkwind, the Cure, Heldon, Bill Nelson, Frank Zappa, Wire, Magma, Gong, Miles Davis, Frontline Assembly, King Crimson, Can, Cocteau Twins, Front 242. As an audiophile can tell, my tastes are all over the place and not really centrally confined to any one genre.

As to a recommended soundtrack to read the story…I would suggest something nostalgic to the reader, for that might capture some of the tale’s reminiscent nature.

O’Shea: Without giving aspects of the story away, there is an element of the narrative that goes on another plane of existence to a certain extent toward the end. I was struck at how you conveyed that with a shift in tones for the pages. Was that a look you arrived upon after trying it other ways, or was that always the way you had planned?

Howarth: What you see is how I saw it. By dealing in tones, certain aspects are immediately separated from the reality of the tale–an easy visual cue for the reader. There are a variety of ways to achieve this forced difference. In the Doctor Thirteen oneshot I did for Vertigo, I used different panel borders to mark different types of scenes. This time, gray tones seemed to better fit what I wanted to convey.

O’Shea: I know you had a new strip (“Stalking Arr”) in the January 2011 issue of Heavy Metal, but what else do you creatively have coming up in 2011?

Howarth: As I mentioned before, I’m obsessed with combining comics and music, so let’s return to that fixation as a lead-in to answering that question…

Most artists with strong musical interests would have been happy doing album covers, and I’ve done my share of them–but for a looong time I’ve wanted to take it further and do stories that would come as part of an album and the music would be a soundtrack for the story. All through the 80s and 90s, I continually pitched these type of projects to labels and publishers, only to be shot down. Publishers would tell me, “This is an album, you need to talk to a record label,” while labels would say “This is a comic book, you should be talking to a book publisher, not us.” The advent of digital technology abolished those restrictive parameters. Suddenly the comic could be put on the CD as a digital file, avoiding any printing costs. Consequently labels were more receptive to the idea.

A percentage of my work during the last decade has pursued this life-long ambition, and as a result this stuff has gone unnoticed by the comics field. I’ve done several of these collaborations (with Klaus Schulze, Hugh Hopper, Quarkspace, Radio Massacre International, Conrad Schnitzler, Galactic Anthems, Mental Anguish, Michael Chocholak, Syndromeda, Heuristics Inc, Bill Nelson, Arthur Brown, and more bands).

The Bill Nelson project is due to be released soon–that’s definitely the most ambitious of them. “The Last of the Neon Cynics” will include an entire graphic novel, over 100 pages and in color. The process involved a lot of back and forth between me and Bill, coming up with a story we both liked and incorporating Bill’s suggestions into the work. There’s a scene in which the hero serenades the girl over an electric campfire–that part was left undone in the initial run-through. So Bill wrote a song for the hero to sing featuring some psychedelic guitar alongside some twangy cowboy riffs. Then I added a scene in which the hero plugs in a computer program to teach him to play guitar. This program offers the hero different guitar styles he could use, and avatars of Jimi Hendrix and Chet Atkins try to convince the hero to pick them because their music will give him more of a romantic edge. (Laughs.) “May you never hear surf music again.”

Another example of collaborative interaction happened with the Radio Massacre International project. I came up with the story which was then approved by the band. While I was working on the comic, RMI came over from England and played a radio concert on Star’s End on WXPN in Philly. I got to sit in my studio, working on the comic while listening to the concert on the radio. When the comic was done, the band did songs directly inspired by the story. When it came time to hand off the album to a label, the band wanted to include part of that radio gig as a second disc–did I have a problem with that? Ha–of course not. They had no idea that the gig had already been integral in the story’s creation. Adding the concert to the project was just collecting all the diverse influences together.

Effectively these music collab projects are simply a revival of concept albums from the 70s, this time providing visual stories to back up the thematic music. One must keep in mind that most of these collab projects have involved instrumental music, so the connections between the story and the music rely heavily on the emotional content of the songs. And the song titles.

Other up-coming music collabs include albums with Ozone Player (a musician from Finland) and another with UK synthesist David Wright (for this one I wrote a text story instead of a comic strip).

I’ve also been doing a lot of writing and have produced over fifteen prose novels since 2000, most of which were self-published in digital form and are available as digital downloads or print-on-demand volumes via my online catalog (www.bugtownmall.com). Currently I have a few novels being considered by a variety of book publishers. And there’s a stack of other novels waiting to find homes.

My production rate is remarkably fast. I could get killed tomorrow by a meteorite and there’d be enough finished previously unpublished stuff to keep fans entertained for another decade.

It also helped shape the manga industry as we know it today. A few years ago I talked to manga translator and scholar Matt Thorn, who was a freelance translator for Viz in their early days. Thorn described the atmosphere as “laid-back” and the company itself as having only three employees, including the president, Seiji Horibuchi. “For [parent company] Shogakukan, it was almost a vanity project,” he said. “They didn’t expect it to make money.”

And then Pokémon came along. Recalls Matt,

One day, I got a call from Shogakukan Productions. They said, “We’re going to try to promote Pokemon in the U.S., and we’d like you to help.” I said, “I’d love to, but I’m really busy these days, so I’m afraid I can’t. And to be honest, I don’t think Pokemon will fly in America.”

Despite Matt’s misgivings, of course, Pokémon went on to become a media phenomenon in the States, and Viz is now the largest manga publisher in the business, thanks at least in part to that initial burst of energy from Pikachu and his pals.

Neilalien, the pseudonymous/palindromic blogger behind the Doctor Strange-centric site of the same name, celebrated his eleventh anniversary of blogging on Friday. He did so by announcing he wouldn’t be blogging anymore, at least not for the immediate future and not with anywhere near the regularity and intensity he’d previously maintained if and when he returns.

To call this the end of an era would be a considerable understatement. Neilalien was the very first comics blogger, launching his blog on the unthinkable date of February 25, 2000 — long before most of us had even heard of blogging, much less started doing it ourselves. It was roughly another three years before enough comics readers started blogging about the medium and the industry, and engaging one another in the process, that the “comics blogosphere” could even be said to exist. Neilalien became a vital part of that community largely through remaining partially apart from it — quick to swipe at perceived groupthink, content to go his own way in terms of what he was reading and writing and why. While the heterodox linkblogging and no-holds-barred industry commentary of Dirk Deppey’s early ¡Journalista¡ blog for The Comics Journal helped link comics blogs to one another and make the existing comics-internet infrastructure of major news sites and message boards aware of the blogosphere as a source of news and commentary, Neilalien’s more personal approach led by example, if you will. Here was a guy who didn’t work in the biz and had no aspirations of doing so, a guy who just really liked Doctor Strange and wanted to get his thoughts on and discoveries about the character and his goings-on out there, a guy who in the process would champion worthwhile non-Doc comics everywhere from the Big Two to the tables at MoCCA, a guy whose blog was nothing more or less than what interested him and what he felt like saying about it. The model blogger, basically. And his carefully maintained anonymity — I’ve had lunch with the man and still don’t know his real name — lent him an aura of mystery in this put-it-all-out-there-for-all-to-see medium.

With Deppey (who incidentally was sort of Neilalien’s Baron Mordo) already gone and many other figures in the early comics blogosphere either dormant or enmeshed in other fields, Neilalien’s retirement leaves the scene nearly unrecognizable from what it once was. Major comics news sites, even corporately owned offshoots of major media conglomerates, have adopted the blog model (you’re looking at one such effort right now). And in today’s hit-obsessed climate, the idea that a site like Neilalien’s, blissfully unconcerned with anything that didn’t concern its creator, could have played a central role in the comics blogosphere is difficult to comprehend. That’s what makes his departure such a loss. And if nothing else, his passionately and frequently articulated conviction that there’s nothing wrong with Doctor Strange that smarter, better, more imaginative writing on the part of Marvel’s creators couldn’t cure will remain advice worth heeding, even if he’s no longer around to dole it out with the conclusion of each fresh Bendis New Avengers arc.

Vaya con Agamotto, my friend. I’ll miss you.

SPOILER ALERT: This Hulk-themed parody of Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan by the merry miscreants of Marvel Super Heroes: What The–?! contains no scenes of hot Hulk-on-Hulk action, and Bruce Banner does not attempt to activate his potential inner Red Hulk by feverishly masturbating without realizing that the Maestro is asleep in the corner of the room. That said, it’s a pretty damn funny video anyway, with the Hulk in the Natalie Portman role and the Red Hulk as her doppelganger and/or Mila Kunis. (Man, now that’s a sentence I never thought I’d write.) I just keep mentally circling back to the Leader, who is somehow even sleazier than Vincent Cassell’s French-stereotype choreographer, telling the Hulk that the Red Hulk’s smashing is superior because “He’s not faking it!”, and cracking up all over again.

Click here to see the full version of the video, which also features a parody of 127 Hours with Deadpool as James Franco (I’m sure viewers of last night’s Oscar broadcast can only ruefully wish the Merc with a Mouth had replaced Franco there, too) and a True Grit riff starring M.O.D.O.K. as Jeff Bridges and Gremlin as Hailee Steinfeld. (Sometimes I love this job.)

Liberty Trading Cards

Cryptozoic Entertainment is working with The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund to create a set of 70 trading cards that chronicle the history of comic book censorship. The cards will be released in July, no doubt just in time for Comic-Con International in San Diego.

In addition to the base set, special sketch and autograph cards will also be available. Already signed on to participate are Geoff Johns, Neil Gaiman, Darwyn Cooke, Gail Simone, Mark Waid, Brian Azzarello, Paul Levitz, Denny O’Neil, Frank Quitely, Phil Hester and many more. You can see some of the sketch cards that have already been created on the CBLDF site.

“The generous response from the creative community has been overwhelming,” said CBLDF Board President Larry Marder. “The most impressive gesture has been how many creators are briefly lending CBLDF their Intellectual Property for this project only. Creators letting us borrow their characters for these artists to sketch include Jeff Smith, Marc Silvestri, Erik Larsen, John Layman, Jim Valentino, Matt Wagner, Rob Liefeld, Stan Sakai, Eric Powell, Mike Richardson, and many others.”

You can find the complete press release after the jump.

*****

Irvine, CA—February 28, 2011: Cryptozoic Entertainment™ and the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund™ have joined forces to protect creativity by collaborating on a new trading card set. The Liberty Trading Cards set tells the story of the fight to defend the First Amendment and includes chase cards from the greatest creators in comics and entertainment. The set will be released in July 2011, with proceeds from the sales benefiting the Fund.

“Cryptozoic is one of the most exciting new companies in pop culture, and we’re thrilled to work with them on this dynamic card project,” says CBLDF Executive Director Charles Brownstein. “Together we’ll be showing how the CBLDF has advanced Free Expression in comics and gathering one of the coolest collections of incentive cards ever assembled.”

The Liberty Trading Cards set will feature a base set of seventy cards representing the history of comics censorship, from the Seduction of the Innocent era in the 1950s to the modern day. In addition to the base set, special hand drawn sketches and autograph cards by some of the top talent in the comic book world will be featured in this release!

Already signed on to collaborate are Geoff Johns, Neil Gaiman, Darwyn Cooke, Gail Simone, Mark Waid, Brian Azzarello, Paul Levitz, Denny O’Neil, Frank Quitely, Phil Hester, and many more. “The generous response from the creative community has been overwhelming,” said CBLDF Board President Larry Marder. “The most impressive gesture has been how many creators are briefly lending CBLDF their Intellectual Property for this project only. Creators letting us borrow their characters for these artists to sketch include Jeff Smith, Marc Silvestri, Erik Larsen, John Layman, Jim Valentino, Matt Wagner, Rob Liefeld, Stan Sakai, Eric Powell, Mike Richardson, and many others.”

Go to www.cbldf.org for a complete up-to-date list of all sketchers and signers.

“I can’t tell you how proud we are to partner with the CBLDF,” said Cory Jones, President of Cryptozoic Entertainment. “The Fund has been one of my favorite charities for years, and to be able to support it on this scale is incredible.”

The Comic Book Legal Defense fund is a nonprofit organization that was created in 1986 with a mission to protect the most basic right: freedom of speech. The organization exists to protect the First Amendment rights of the creators, retailers, publishers, and readers of comics.

Defend creativity and own a piece of comics history with the CBLDF Liberty Trading Cards, coming this July from Cryptozoic!

Oni Press Mixtape

Oni Press and nerdcore rapper Adam WarRock have teamed up to create The Oni Press Mixtape, which features musical tracks by WarRock inspired by Stumptown, Queen & Country, The Sixth Gun, Hopeless Savages and several other Oni titles.

In addition, it features “interlude” tracks with creators such as Greg Rucka, Cullen Bunn, Jen Van Meter and Jarrett Williams, who created the artwork for the album. It can be downloaded for free from Adam WarRock’s website. And if you’re in Seattle this weekend, Adam WarRock will perform tracks from his new album at Kracklefest during the Emerald City ComiCon. The concert also features Kirby Krackle and H2Awesome.

Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark

Broadway | The New York Times reports the producers of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark are considering delaying the $65 million musical for a sixth time, until as late as June, a move that would make the show ineligible for this year’s Tony Awards. Speculation about another possible postponement follows a wave of scathing reviews, reports that comics writer and playwright Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa had been approached to rewrite the book, and the hiring of veteran conductor and musical supervisor Paul Bogaev to help improve the production. A spokesman for the show would only say that, “Opening night remains scheduled for March 15.” [ArtsBeat]

Comic-Con | Hotel reservations for Comic-Con International will open at 9 a.m. PT on March 9. A preliminary list of hotels included in the Comic-Con block is available on the convention website. [Comic-Con International]

Passings | Robert Samsel, a comics retailer and an early writer and editor at Wizard magazine, died unexpectedly on Feb. 18 at MidState Medical Center in Meridan, Connecticut. He was 46. Mark Seifert has a remembrance. [The Record-Journal]

The Beano

Publishing | Alan Digby, editor-in-chief of The Beano and BeanoMax, is retiring from DC Thomson after 40 years. He’ll be replaced by Michael Stirling, the publisher’s deputy head of children’s entertainment. Digby was only the fourth editor of The Beano since its debut in 1938, stepping into the role in 2006. [The Drum]

Organizations | Calvin Reid briefly spotlights the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. [Publishers Weekly]

Creators | Patti Martinson interviews brothers Ethan and Malachai Nicolle, creators of Axe Cop. [Sequential Tart]

Creators | Crime novelist Ian Rankin, who previously wrote the graphic novel Dark Entries for Vertigo, confirms he’ll pen a comic strip for Mark Millar’s CLiNT magazine. [The Guardian]

Creators | Entertainment Weekly‘s Jeff Jensen sings the praises of a Marcos Martin-drawn page from The Amazing Spider-Man #655. [Shelf Life]

Australian creator Shaun Tan’s wordless graphic novels have brought him considerable acclaim, including the 2010 Hugo Award for Best Professional Artist, and the French edition of his graphic novel The Arrival won the Angoulême International Comics Festival Prize for Best Comic Book.

Now he has another award to add to his growing collection: The Lost Thing, co-directed by Tan and based on his book of the same name, won this year’s Oscar for Best Short Film (Animated). In an interview before the awards ceremony, Tan told School Library Journal’s Chelsey Philpot that Australian producer Sophie Bryne approached him after The Lost Thing won an award at the Bologna Children’s Book Fair and proposed making it into a short film. After a bit of persuasion, Tan agreed, and he started what would become a nine-year process: The film was begun in 2001 and finally finished in 2010.

And he’s already thinking ahead to the next film: Tan told SLJ that while he was in LA for the Oscar ceremony, he would be meeting with some people about making a feature-length film of another of his books, The Arrival.

2000 AD Prog #1722

Hello and welcome to What Are You Reading? Our special guest this week is Mark Kardwell, who can be found blogging regularly over at Bad Librarianship Now or rocking out with the Klams.

To find out what Mark and the Robot 6 crew have been reading, click below …

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Carla Hoffman

This was a good week for comics, at least for me. I’ve been reading Amazing Spider-Man and feel like they turned on the THX sound system in the story and artwork. The last couple issues have been dramatic and full of characterization and depth that I am going to wave my Spider-Man flag high, despite haters hating and fans who can’t let go of the past missing out on some truly beautiful storytelling.

Fantastic Four #588

I also liked Fantastic Four #588 and have indeed enjoyed the “Four” storyline leading up to this historic moment (PS: Marvel, don’t make me look like a fool by believing in you and rebooting the Fantastic Four in six months with a brand new #1). But I think you know all this and me waxing poetic on the above might get a little redundant.

Also redundant is my great and glowing adoration for Matt Fraction’s Thor, a fierce and powerful admiration that you can see from the blackest of infinite space. Thor #620 came out on Wednesday and my heart was full by reading the first sentence on the page. There is so much glory to this great and sweeping divine epic that Fraction weaves so well with the dreamlike and fantastic art of Pasqual Ferry, I know when I pick an issue, I am receiving the finest nectar of the Marvel gods. Nothing is going to sway me from my true and perfect trust that Asgardian Blood Colossus magic is older than the nine hills. That battle will be joined, and heroes will be be born and raised in a blood and bone brilliance of myth and power.

Now, all of the above might be telling as to why I did not enjoy Morning Glories vol. 1. Being rather cool and popular, not to mention well received, that doesn’t normally hit my pull list, I bought the extremely well presented first TP for a song and was looking forward to it. I read my way into this web of intrigue and social experimentation with the sharpest young minds on the planet with healthy helping of mystery and suspense to propel me through the book. And promptly get me struck about three-fourths of the way through. Keep in mind I never watched Lost either, so maybe it’s me. Maybe I prefer to have my protagonists to shout the the heavens in a rage that ecplises the moon against foes from another realm of thought rather that fight the system against an administration that can kill with a casual thought and some spectral presence in the basement. But on the other hand, I rather love Sweet Tooth, Jeff Lemire’s mysterious tale of a deer child and the complete unknowns he lives in, so maybe it’s not me. Maybe the high school setting? The lack of fantasy? The rather cheapness of death presented by hollow and stereotypical children in a cartoonishly oppressive environment? Disappointment wanes in the face Thor and a promised blade that could slice through time and space itself. Somethings are just not for me and others seem tailor-made.

It is a good week for comics.

Brigid Alverson

I idly picked up Julia Wertz‘s Drinking at the Movies this weekend and quickly fell into it. I read it once before, and I had forgotten how much I enjoyed it. Drinking at the Movies is an autobiographical comic about the author’s move from San Francisco to Brooklyn, told in single-page vignettes about different aspects of her life—her friends, her drinking, her terrible jobs. It’s absolutely the opposite of the self-indulgent indy comic; Wertz takes a clear-eyed look at her own failings but she makes you laugh when she describes them. She has been posting pages from it at her website, and they’re well worth a look. This was one of the best books of 2010, and it’s criminal that it didn’t get more attention.

Manga-wise, I’m reading Countdown 7 Days on Digital Manga’s eManga website. It’s set in the grey area between life and death, and it features just a handful of characters—Hanasuke, a young man who has just died but wants to go back to life, Mitamura, a cold-blooded teacher who is disliked by everyone for his emotionlessness, and Tsuru, a crazy girl who goes on a field trip to the world of the living and then escapes. Mitamura and Hanasuke team up to find Tsuru, but the clock is ticking—if they don’t locate her within seven days, she becomes an evil spirit. This is a fairly standard plot but it’s handled in a unique way, with real attention to the emotional conflicts of the characters and a polished, linear style, so it’s better than your average afterlife manga.

Mark Kardwell

There’s something of a rebirth going on in comics publishing kicking off in the UK at the moment, at both periodical and graphic novel levels. I’ve been reading three stalwarts of the UK’s comics industry, 2000AD, The Dandy and Doctor Who Magazine. All three are magazines which, at one time or another, I probably thought I’d never read again.

2000AD remains like a religion for UK comics readers and creators. And, like Catholicism, even those lapsed from reading it still harbour strong opinions about it. I do occasionally see the odd sycophant online saying that 2000AD has never been better, but that’s far from the truth. It’s hardly the creative hothouse it was during the Steve McManus-era, and it probably isn’t even as consistent as it was under the recent Andy Diggle-era, but it is still damned good, a national treasure, current-Tharg Matt Smith is capable of pleasing me greatly with some inspired commissioning choices, and (like Diggle) has proven adept at enticing classic 2000AD creators back into the fold.

Speaking of national treasures, The Dandy is probably the classic UK comic for all sorts of reasons (even if Eric Clapton was reading its stablemate The Beano on the front cover of that Bluesbreakers LP). It is also most people over here’s first regularly read comic, and it’s also the first comic people have the experience of growing out of. In the last few months, however, it has staged a rather miraculous turnaround in fortunes. For decades creatively moribund, rehashing the styles and creations of artists either deceased or long departed (US readers: think if DC still published Superman by an endless line of uncredited Al Plastino ghosts), it has recently been re-energised by the hiring of a new generation of web cartoonists (Jamie Smart, Nigel Auchterlounie, Andy Fanton, amongst others), often producing new career-highs as they in turn are re-energised by the prospect of a whole new (and considerably younger) audience. I’d hate to jinx the magic that’s going on over there right now, but in many ways, I’d compare what is going on over there to when Kurtzman was running Help! In the Sixties, bringing lots of underground artists to prominence.

Doctor Who Magazine proudly announced itself on its latest front cover as “the world’s number one top-selling sci-fi monthly magazine”, and this isn’t terribly surprising. As any fule know, print magazines are dying on their ass, and the DWM is lucky in these times to be piggy-backing on the seemingly unfailing success of the reborn Doctor Who franchise. This success means that it is an extraordinary forum for comics, and the magazine has a hell of a history with the artform. It has published work over the years by the biggest and best creators of the last three decades (from Alan Moore and Grant Morrison to Dave Gibbons and Mick McMahon), and has tempted me back to buying it regularly for the first time in about twenty years by featuring work by creators of the calibre of Roger Langridge, Rob Davis and Dan McDaid. Whoever (arf!) is commissioning work over there is a man of good taste.

On a non-UK-tip, I got a big box of stuff from my regular comic shop recently, and the stand-out was easily the Daytripper trade paperback. I’ll just add my voice to the chorus of pundits raving about it. It held my interest on so many levels: a book about death that succeeds in being positively life-affirming (probably why I kept thinking about the Flaming Lips as I was reading it); a grown-up work in a market that steadfastly refuses to grow up; a great book about writing by two men commonly regarded as artists; and a work I’d recommend (like Asterios Polyp) to anyone who derisively thinks the term “graphic novel” usually applies to books that barely qualify as novelistic.