Will Eisner's 'The Spirit' makes an appearance on CBS's 'The Big Bang Theory'

Look carefully in the lower right corner of the screen and you can see a recent issue of DC's "The Spirit" comic book, captured in this still from the Monday, April 12, 2010 episode of "The Big Bang Theory" on CBS. (Thanks for the picture, Mimi!)

LISTEN! Mr. Media Radio interview with "Big Bang Theory" co-creator and producer Bill Prady!

Related articles by Zemanta

• "The Big Bang Theory" Goes To The Roller Rink (franklinavenue.blogspot.com)
• 'Big Bang Theory' Cast Spotted In Superhero Drag, Wil Wheaton to Blame? (splashpage.mtv.com)
• Nerds Rule: CTV's THE BIG BANG THEORY Wins Monday Over HOUSE With 2.5 Million Viewers (newswire.ca)
• Finally! (thechrysalis.blogspot.com)
• Evil Wil Wheaton returns to The Big Bang Theory (wilwheaton.typepad.com)
• Maxim-um Penny as 'Big Bang Theory' Star Does Photo Shoot (tvsquad.com)

ARTISTS: Stop Tracing. Start Cartooning Again. (Comic Book Resources)

Image via Wikipedia

Excerpt from column by by Augie De Blieck Jr.:

"The best cartoonists know exaggeration. That's true of animation, where stretch and squash is the term given to how an object or character moves in an exaggerated style to better sell a motion. In comics, that exaggeration keeps the pages looking natural and fluid. Redrawing stock poses exactly as they are in a photo is not just lazy (or, perhaps, self-defeating), but also results in a final page that looks stiff. Will Eisner drew characters who had their joints and muscles in the right place, but who would overact, stand with a slight bend in their knees, and have a more iconic look that didn't try to convince you they were real. They were only real in your heads because Eisner told the story so well, through both words and pen-and-ink. It looked natural on the page because Eisner's lines were loose enough to throw enough energy on the page to make you feel that way. If Eisner chained himself to the drawing board and didn't quit until every possible line in every drawing he ever did looked exactly lifelike and realistic, we wouldn't have had half his graphic novels, and they would all look stale, anyway."

Click HERE to Keep Reading!

Related articles by Zemanta

• Graphic NYC Honors Will Eisner Week (aspiritedlife.com)
• Will Eisner: The Spirit of Comics (NYCGraphicsNovelists.com) (aspiritedlife.com)
• 'Rhymes With Orange' cartoonist Hilary Price remembers Will Eisner (aspiritedlife.com)
• Will Eisner Week 2010 (WillEisner.com) (aspiritedlife.com)
• First Amherst, Then Main Street (Loose Cruse; Howard Cruse) (aspiritedlife.com)
• Will Eisner: Photo-illustration by Seth Kushner (aspiritedlife.com)
• GeekDad Interviews Comic Book Artist and Writer Dave Beaty (Wired) (aspiritedlife.com)

The Spirit: Fiction House comics covers (Pop Culture Safari)

JFire writes on his/her blog: "I discovered Will Eisner's marvelous Spirit strips when Kitchen Sink was reprinting them in black-and-white magazine form back in the 1980s. But I like seeing covers from earlier reprints of the series, such as this one from Fiction House in the 1950s. Some nice covers here. Were they created by Eisner and staff or the publisher, I wonder?"

Click HERE to see mpre of these amazing Spirit covers!

Related articles by Zemanta

• The Secret Files of Dr. Drew: A fascinating Will Eisner side project, 1949/50 (TrickCoin.net) (aspiritedlife.com)
• an Evening With Jules Feiffer Moderated by Danny Fingeroth (aspiritedlife.com)
• 1958 Will Eisner "Spaceman Discovers Christmas" Comic (Andertoons.com) (aspiritedlife.com)
• Shaped by the city (boston.com)
• Free Comics!: Will Eisner's Complete Run of PS Magazine (Comix 411) (aspiritedlife.com)
• Azzarello Pulps Up DCU With "First Wave" (Comic Book Resources) (aspiritedlife.com)
• Will Eisner Week Educational Materials: Notes on Will Eisner's The Contract With God Trilogy (aspiritedlife.com)

AN EVENING WITH JULES FEIFFER MODERATED BY DANNY FINGEROTH

Jules Feiffer, image via Wikipedia

THURSDAY APRIL 15th, 8:00 PM
501 SCHERMERHORN HALL
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
AMSTERDAM AVE. & 116TH STREET
NEW YORK CITY

FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
NO RESERVATIONS REQUIRED

Learn how an angst-ridden, impoverished Jewish guy from the Bronx became an acclaimed cartoonist, playwright, animator, screenwriter, novelist, and author of children's books, earning himself a Pulitzer Prize, an Obie, and an Oscar along the way. Join us as he discusses his life and his work as chronicled in his acclaimed new memoir, BACKING INTO FORWARD with comics historian and scholar DANNY FINGEROTH. Q&A to follow.

About JULES FEIFFER:
In 1956, FEIFFER, who began his career working as an assistant to the legendary Will Eisner, creator of The Spirit and father of the modern Graphic Novel, created the eponymous, satirical cartoon strip that would run in the Village Voice for 42 years. A multitalented man who's also enjoyed success as a novelist (HARRY THE RAT WITH WOMEN), playwright (LITTLE MURDERS), and screenwriter (CARNAL KNOWLEDGE), he has in recent years turned to writing and illustrating children's books, including THE MAN IN THE CEILING. The first volume of the “Feiffer” strip compilation EXPLAINERS: THE COMPLETE VILLAGE VOICE STRIPS (1956-1966) was published by Fantagraphics in 2008. His memoir, BACKING INTO FORWARD, was published to rave reviews in March, 2010 by Doubleday/Random House.

Visit IIJS.columbia.edu, email IIJS@columbia.edu, or call (212)854-2581 for more information on the FEIFFER event.

LISTEN! Mr. Media Radio interview with Jules Feiffer!

Related articles by Zemanta

• Shaped by the city (boston.com)
• Book Review | 'Backing Into Forward: A Memoir,' by Jules Feiffer (nytimes.com)
• Drawn From Life (NYTimes.com) (aspiritedlife.com)
• Books of The Times: 'Backing Into Forward': Jules Feiffer's Ink-Stained Memoir (nytimes.com)

Will Eisner: Portrait of a Sequential Artist on DVD (Scoop)

The acclaimed documentary Will Eisner: Portrait of a Sequential Artist is finally coming to DVD. Written by Comic Book Artist editor Jon B. Cooke, directed by Andrew Cooke, and released by Montilla Pictures, the film explores the life and art of “the godfather of the American comic book.”  

The documentary premiered at the prestigious Tribeca Film Festival and went on to win numerous awards. 

It includes includes interviews with Kurt Vonnegut, Michael Chabon, Jules Feiffer, Art Spiegelman, Frank Miller, Stan Lee, Gil Kane as well as the never-before-heard “Shop Talk” audio tapes featuring Jack Kirby, Harvey Kurtzman, Milton Caniff, Neal Adams, Joe Kubert and others.



Click HERE to Keep Reading!

Related articles by Zemanta

• Will Eisner - The True Master of Comic Stroytelling (Inside Jeff Overturf's Head) (aspiritedlife.com)
• Shaped by the city (boston.com)
• Committed: Comics without Capes (goodcomics.comicbookresources.com)
• The Secret Files of Dr. Drew: A fascinating Will Eisner side project, 1949/50 (TrickCoin.net) (aspiritedlife.com)

GeekDad Interviews Comic Book Artist and Writer Dave Beaty (Wired)

Cover via Amazon

By Jenny Williams

March 22, 2010

Read More http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2010/03/dave-beaty/#ixzz0jDKacHaK

By Jenny Williams

March 22, 2010

Read More http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2010/03/dave-beaty/#ixzz0jDKacHaK

By Jenny Williams
March 22, 2010


GD: Since you write and draw Bushi Tales: What are your writing & artistic influences?

DB: I consider myself a storyteller more than a writer. But Writer / Artist is the commonly accepted vernacular. I have really enjoyed Alan Moore’s writing for years. Specifically his Miracleman run from the 1980’s. I also love Len Wein’s stuff. Specifically that Batman vs. Hulk comic I keep mentioning. But my main storytelling influence is Will Eisner. My favorite of his graphic novels is The Dreamer. It’s about a young man who dreams about working in the world of comic books in the 1930’s.

Click HERE to Keep Reading!

Related articles by Zemanta

• Will Eisner Week Educational Materials: Notes on Will Eisner's The Contract With God Trilogy (aspiritedlife.com)
• Graphic NYC Honors Will Eisner Week (aspiritedlife.com)

Will Eisner's "Humans" (johnglenntaylor.blogspot.com)

Posted by John Glenn Taylor
Will Eisner, a gifted observer of the human condition, wrote and illustrated this fable for Will Eisner's Quarterly #7 (Dec. 1985). We tend to believe, as humans, that we have come a long way from our primitive beginnings. Will speculates, eh, not so much. And he's right!

Click HERE to Keep Reading!

Drawn From Life (NYTimes.com)

By DAVID CARR 

Published: March 18, 2010 

 

Truth in the matter of memoir has always seemed evanescent and, more often lately, either elusive or absent. Memories of the self are often in service of other agendas, including the settling of scores and the creation of a hero where a mere man once stood.

Enlarge This Image

From “Backing Into Forward”

BACKING INTO FORWARD

A Memoir

By Jules Feiffer

Illustrated. 444 pp. Nan A. Talese/Doubleday. $30.

Enlarge This Image

Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times

Jules Feiffer in 2003.

 

Those questions, and the recent travails of the genre, seem at great remove to the reader of “Backing Into Forward,” by Jules Feiffer. Reading Feiffer, you know where the truth lies because it is there on every page — resonant, self-­lacerating and frequently hilarious. How else to explain Feif­fer’s frank admissions that he could not stand his mother, even dead; that he coveted the success of peers; that he reflexively courted fame and the famous; and that the mysterious Woody Allen was not really so mysterious to him?

Ostensibly the memoir of an acclaimed cartoonist, “Backing Into Forward” is a portrait of a certain kind of New York during a specific era: the cultural and political foment of the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s. In that sense, “Backing Into Forward” is a prequel to “Just Kids,” Patti Smith’s memoir, which concurrently serves as a prism on New York’s artistic class.


Click HERE to Keep Reading!

DO ANYTHING by Warren Ellis

Warren Ellis, image via Wikipedia

March 18th, 2010  From the website of Warren Ellis:

DO ANYTHING: Jack Kirby Ripped My Flesh, collecting the first run of the eponymous column at bleedingcool.com, will be on sale from 28 April. In the first instance, you’re probably only going to find it in comics stores, so call your local and ask if they’ve ordered it. If they don’t, I believe you’ll find it available for pre-order by the usual online suspects.

This is the solicitation text:

From Warren Ellis, the award-winning author, comics creator and popular columnist (and who is currently writing the screenplay for the film adaptation of the comics series GRAVEL, also published by Avatar Press), comes a collection of the most mind-bending columns you’ve ever read: DO ANYTHING.
DO ANYTHING VOLUME ONE: JACK KIRBY RIPPED MY FLESH collects the first 26 chapters of Ellis’ text masterpiece and is a grand tour through comics & culture as seen through a burgled robot head. The robot head of Jack Kirby lives on Warren Ellis’ desk. It knows everything and is connected to everything. You must obey the robot head of Jack Kirby.
There are many ways to look at comics. In this book, we see the medium through the hazy android eyes of Jack Kirby (actually the stolen and repurposed head of the missing Philip K Dick robot, which Mr. Ellis confesses to swiping off the back of a plane), taking a rattling ghost-train ride through the history of comics.
David Bowie, the CIA, mad architects, Will Eisner, Frank Zappa, Tintin, the designer of Skylab, a train station in Paris, Arthur C. Clarke, the circus, the Black Panther Party and William S. Burroughs: all of these things are connected by Jack Kirby, all part of the secret history of comics, and all illustrating the special nature of the medium as the place where you can do anything.

And this is what it looks like, as designed by Ariana and complete with robot head by Jacen Burrows:

For print, the book has been corrected and tweaked a little bit to flow better.

Related articles by Zemanta

• March MODOK Madness (drawn.ca)
• Jack Kirby's Estate Sues Marvel For Copyright Control (cinematical.com)
• Is Hollywood big enough for two Spideys? (guardian.co.uk)
• Will Eisner: The Spirit of Comics (NYCGraphicsNovelists.com) (aspiritedlife.com)
• Marvel Sues Comic Book Author Jack Kirby's Heirs Over Rights to Spider-Man, X-Men (inquisitr.com)
• Warren Ellis alarm clock (boingboing.net)
• Do Anything: 022 (warrenellis.com)
• House of Ideas Sued by Guy Who Came Up With Them (nymag.com)

The Biography of Ebony White (TheCulturalGutter.com)

Malcolm X via last.fm

by Carol Borden

 

"People don't realize how a man's whole life can be changed by one book."

--Malcolm X / Malik El-Shabazz, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (As Told To Alex Haley)

Running from 1940-1952, Will Eisner's The Spirit was a newspaper insert back when publishers could afford to do such awesome things. It features Denny Colt, a detective who comes back to life to fight crime from his secret hide-out in Wildwood Cemetery. The Spirit is indeed everything good anyone has ever written about it—all the joyful adventure, groundbreaking art and genre play. But then there's Ebony White, the Spirit's African-American sidekick and driver, all eyes and lips and minstrel show dialect. And I can barely look at him, even though I know I should.

But who is Ebony White?

Click HERE to Keep Reading!

Will Eisner: Photo-illustration by Seth Kushner

Seth Kushner writes: "This past Tuesday, we posted a GRAPHIC NYC profile on the great Will Eisner. Unfortunately, Mr. Eisner died long before I started this project, so I never had the opportunity to photograph him. So, to illustrated the piece I came up with the photo-illustration below."

See more of Seth Kushner's work!

Related articles by Zemanta

• Graphic NYC Honors Will Eisner Week (aspiritedlife.com)
• Will Eisner Memorial Portrait (Cassandra Poulson) (aspiritedlife.com)
• Will Eisner Week Events (aspiritedlife.com)
• "The pressure of creating comics isn't enough..." - an interview with Alex Robinson (KZET.pl) (aspiritedlife.com)
• First Amherst, Then Main Street (Loose Cruse; Howard Cruse) (aspiritedlife.com)

Will Eisner: The Spirit of Comics (NYCGraphicsNovelists.com)

Will Eisner, image via Wikipedia

Words: Christopher Irving 

When Will Eisner spoke on the comics page, it was in a language that was distinctly no one else’s but his own. What Jack Kirby did with visual power, Will did for the art form and language of comics, bringing them on par with film and pushing (sometimes gently, others with force) for the medium to go beyond it’s juvenile beginnings and grow into an actual –
    Art.
    Form.

    Not bad for a kid who grew up poor in the Depression, a kid who grew into a self-made young man who managed to reinvent himself as an older man.


Click HERE to Keep Reading!

'Rhymes With Orange' cartoonist Hilary Price remembers Will Eisner

I had a great time interviewing "Rhymes With Orange" syndicated cartoonist Hilary Price on Mr. Media Radio yesterday (March 11, 2010). When it was over, I sent her a note of thanks and, as an afterthought, added the URL to this site, with no explanation.

With Hilary's permission, here's what she wrote back:

"Thanks for the Will Eisner link.  When I went to my first National Cartoonists Society awards dinner in 1997, I knew one person.  There were things you could sign up for during the day time, so I signed up for tennis. I played doubles with a bunch of nice old guys, one of whom took us all out for a drink after.  That was Will Eisner. 

"So I got to know his forehand before I ever got to know his drawing hand."

I shared this anecdote with Will's widow, Ann Eisner, who said, "I can't tell you how pleased Will would have been that someone remembered his tennis playing.  He was almost as excited about that as his work."

We didn't talk about Will during the show, but you're welcome to listen below anyway!

Why So Many Superheroes Are Drawn to New York (NYTimes.com)

By PETER GUTIERREZ
March 8, 2010

Gotham City, of course, was always a thinly veiled version of New York. So was Central City, stomping grounds of The Spirit, a non-superpowered but influential character created by a native Brooklynite, Will Eisner. Indeed, in their earliest appearances, both Batman (1939) and The Spirit (1940) were set in New York. Later, the locations were fictionalized to court a wider audience, but when the Caped Crusader or Denny Colt scrambled over rooftops or stalked shadowy alleyways, it was with a decidedly New York flair, romantic and hard-boiled at the same time.


Click HERE to Keep Reading!

Graphic NYC Honors Will Eisner Week

Friday, March 5, 2010

This week, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, The Will and Ann Eisner Family Foundation, and seven locations throughout the country celebrate the life and works of the late, great Will Eisner! This second annual celebration encourages a widespread knowledge of the graphic novel and comic book, in honor of the trailblazing Eisner. Graphic NYC celebrates the father of the graphic novel in our own inimitable way: with a profile on March 9, in honor of the father of the graphic novels' birthday.
Click HERE to Keep Reading!