Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art 6/6/2009

James Montgomery Flagg, creator of the famous, I Want You For the U.S. Army poster featuring Uncle Sam.

Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art 6/6/2009

I am going to the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art festival today, 6/6/2009 at the 69th Regimental Armory in Manhattan. The show starts at 11:00 a.m. so I can get up and relax for a bit before I go. I am looking forward to this. I have gone to every one of these shows. http://www.moccany.org/

When I got there, there was a long line to get in. The place was packed with people. I mostly walked around and looked at the different tables. I saw some interesting books and merchandise. Criterion is coming out with a new dvd for Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon.

I also saw a new paperback of edition of Marjane Satrapi's Chicken With Plums. There were a lot of really interesting new alternative press comics. A number which stood out were Skyscrapers of the Midwest by Joshua Cotter, I Saw You... Comics Inspired by Real Life Missed Connections by Julia Wertz, Bayou by Jeremy Love, Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow by Brian Fries, and About Dogs by George Booth. George Booth is a very excellent cartoonist.

David Berona is coming out with a book called Wordless Comics in around 2011. I reviewed David Berona's other book, Wordless Books a while ago. DC Vertigo is going to release its first DC novel. There have been novels produced by other publishers with DC characters, but this will be an in house novel. Bill Willingham is writing a novel based on his Fables graphic novels series called Peter and Max in October.

It was kind of fun wandering around looking at all the different independent publishers; Top Shelf, Fantagraphics, Bodega, Fanfare, DC Vertigo, Last Gasp, NBM Publishing, Pantheon, One Percent Press, and many others. I was surprised at the number of individual producers that had their own tables at the conference as well. There were a lot of people who were just producing a few comics on their own and selling them. I think this has become much more possible because of the internet and the easy ability to get things printed on demand.

There was also a Scandinavian and an Eastern European table for independent comics. The variety of comics was very nice. They even had the dinosaur comic I sometimes see on Wikipedia called Qwantz http://www.qwantz.com/archive/001479.html Ryan North has the comic printed as a full length book.

I went to the panel Selling Good Comics In A Bad Economy from 3:00-3:50 p.m. It featured a number of producers, Alvin Buenaventura from Buenaventura books, Mats Johnson from Gallago, Tom Neely, Brett Warnock from Top Shelf, Julia Wertz from www.fartparty.org, Dylan Williams from Sparkplug Comics, Chaired by Heidi McDonald of the Beat ( something produced by Publishers Weekly. A lot of the panel had come from Book Expo America the week before.

I am not going to write everything they said. I learned a few ideas from the panel. The first is that the independent comics industry is not that big, so the downturn in the economy has not affected them as much as larger industries. There was a general consensus that they had to find some other way than Diamond to distribute their comics because of the economic downturn.

The panelists pretty much agreed that if you want to be in comics you have to attend a lot of shows and be prolific and consistent. Brett Warnock wants his artists to produce a lot of work and go to shows to promote themselves. Julia Wertz said that she goes to a lot of shows, so did everyone else on the panel. They also say that they get a lot of their sales from the internet, it is important to have a website. Tom Neely says it is like the music industry. You go on tour if you are in a band. A few of them mentioned that they were helped by Tony Shenton one of the few independent sales representatives in the industry. http://www.snackhack.com/shenton/

There were a few mentions of blog reviews helping sell comics. Apparently, the internet has been very helpful for the independent comics industry.

What surprised me was that no one had figured out what to do about Kindles and Iphones for comics. The Kindle ereader is not conducive to comics art. Also the Iphone is a fast approaching thing which is on the radar but not figured out. There was a brief mention about almost all the old Marvel comics being scanned into bit torrent as pirated works.

I liked the panel. After the panel, I went across the street from the 25th street armory to a small vietnamese sandwich shop called Baogette which was pretty good.

I rarely buy anything for myself at these things. I might go back and order a few things for my library which I saw. I plan to ask DC Vertigo for a few advanced reading copies. They had them at their table. I got several free comics from DC Vertigo, and got a signed copy of Madame Xanadu. I also bought a poster from this years show for $5. It was an entertaining show.

There was the usual collection of knick knacks, a catalog from Fanfare, several postcards, a catalog from Zudu comics, and several business cards. I am a paper magnet sometimes.

Daily Thoughts

Domenico Feti (1589-1623)Portrait of a ScholarOil on canvas

Daily Thoughts

The Louvre museum is hosting its first comic book exhibition.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap_travel/20090122/ap_tr_ge/eu_travel_brief_france_comics_in_the_louvre

Today has been another steady day. I filled in a few books for the current events display that were taken out yesterday. I also put in some law inserts for the law books. I also started weeding the 621s the section on computer hardware and peripherals.

I ordered a bunch of accounting titles as well as new test book titles for open job positions listed in the county job listings. So, it is a smooth, quiet predictable day.

Today ended quietly without hassle. Nothing unexpected happened. No momentous events. No meetings. It was perfect.

I finished reading the The Devil's Eye by Jack McDevitt. I am digesting it in my mind right now. I want to think about it for a little bit before I start writing a review about it. It was a very good book, surprising in its ending. I also began reading The Breath of God by Harry Turtledove, a fantasy novel in a unique setting. I like Harry Turtledove's fantasy better than his alternate history novels. I have both books sitting in front of me next to my computer.

Thoughts for The Day.

Stan Lee's Soapbox. This is from playcole. The voice is Stan Lee's. It is kind of interesting to listen to.


I spent a little bit of time looking through the Comic Values Annual 2007. I like to look through the price guides before I visit a comic book stores. The prices are often not what I am looking for. The titles are what I am looking for. I make a list of titles I have not read or seen so I can look at them when I visit the shop.

For example, when I next visit a comic book shop, I will probably take a look at Aliens, Earth War, Usagi Yojimbo (one of my favorite comics), Cosmic Heros, Prince Valiant Monthly, and Spirit The Origin Years.

There are so many different comics which the Comics Value Annual reminded me about. Some of my favorite comic artists are Richard Corben, who created Den from Heavy Metal, Vaughn Bode creator of Junkwaffel, Alan Moore creator of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Stan Sakai creator of Usagi Yojimbo, The Brothers Hernandez creators of Love and Rockets, and Larry Gonick creator of the Cartoon History of the Universe. All of them had comics listed in the Comics Values Annual.

Also, I found some of the newer science fiction titles that are still affordable, Alien Worlds from 1982, Alien Encoutners printed between 1985-1987.

It was fun looking at the Comics Value Annual to see if there was anything which I might be interested in looking at. They even had a few humorous titles which I like Milk and Cheese, and Reid Fleming World's Toughest Milkman.

It was a nice day out so I didn't spend my whole day inside. I took a walk earlier for several blocks to stretch out my legs and also went to the produce market to buy some watermelon.

I went for another walk. It was a very nice day out. There was a parade through the neighborhood by the Catholic Church, today is Corpus Christi a day celebrated by the Italians in the neighborhood. It was a bit surprising to see a police car slowly wending through the neighborhood in front of the procession to clear the streets. I also saw one of the tiny little smart cars zipping through the neighborhood with a bald guy driving behind the wheel.

Tomorrow we will have the big parade on the main thoroughfare. The mayor was here on the last Memorial Day parade. It is kind of interesting watching the marching bands.

I spent a little bit of time fooling around with social networking. I am playing around with Twitter today. I am currently following six people on my twitter account. This is my account: http://www.twitter.com/bookcalendar . Apparently there is a search engine which searches members on twitter and adds a bunch of functionality to twitter, http://www.twhirl.org/ . I don't like having to download programs to my desktop so I am taking a pass. Sometimes, people go overboard with these things. A few minutes ago, I looked at a website called The Wall Tweet Journal, a blog about twitter. Apparently someone is turning on and off their lights using twitter... http://www.walltweetjournal.com/

Morning Thoughts, Writing and Reading

The famous Waterman Fountain Pen, a pen that feels good in the hand.

Hello, good morning. Things are not bad today. I requested an interesting title, Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie. I think Salman Rushdie is still under the threat of death. This book is on order at a couple of libraries. There are no copies in the system yet. I will be looking forward to when it comes in.

I could not find that many interesting books to read in the review sources today, so I went to a few blogs. After looking through, The Thin Redline, I put Untapped The Scramble for Africa's Oil by John H. Ghazvinian which looked interesting. The other book which I put on hold was The Big Switch by Nicholas Carr which I found on Joe Wikert's Publishing 2020 Blog. I have links to both of these blogs in my side bar.

Writing And Reading:

I am just thinking conceptually today. One of the reasons that I write is to improve my reading. There is a point in reading where no matter how many vocabulary books you read, speed reading books, concentration courses, and other attempts to improve your reading it does not help.

Writing and reading about how to write have improved my reading comprehension considerably. After reading On Writing Well and The Elements of Style, I have a much better sense of what good writing is. Good writing can make even the most boring subjects interesting in my experience. Also learning grammar, punctuation, and style has helped me recognize it in other peoples writing.

This blog has also given me a chance to write reviews on books; something which I had never done before. I read a tremendous amount of reviews. Today I read Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly, and a copy of the New York Times Book Reviews. It is a very different experience writing a review than reading one. Blog reviews are much more informal and longer than standard book reviews in magazines.

I am really enjoying the process of writing on a blog. I try and write every day. I think the more I write the easier it becomes for me to write. This is very much a truism. At this point, I am not writing for money, but to improve my skills.

It also seems that what I am reading has changed considerably. I am reading more nonfiction, especially nonfiction that has to do with the writing or creative process, as well as design books. I think that design books have a lot to do with the writing medium. Templates, column widths, fonts, borders, and other design features can make blog easier to read. The proper term is readability which combines easily with a similar term usability.

This is my short thought for today. Nothing new has come in for me to read yet. I have seven books on hold. Maybe, if I search around for a bit, I will find something else to read.

I found a book called Kirby: King of Comics by Mark Evanier. There is a short introduction by Neil Gaiman. I am enjoying it so far. The book is oversize, quarto, or what you might consider a coffee table book. It is fully illustrated in color. The book is c2008.

I read it on the train home and during lunch. It was a really interesting book. I am going to work on writing a short review for it tomorrow. Mark Evanier, the biographer, has a blog called http://www.povonline.com

Thoughts for the Day

I am looking at a new series called Best American Comics, it is c2007, the series is in its second year. The editor is Chris Ware. Last year in 2006, the editor was Harvey Pekar. This is a comics lit book collecting high quality samples of works by alternative comic artists. Some of the artists are Chris Ware, Daniel Clowes, Adriane Tomine, Kim Deitch, Charles Burns and others. The books is very colorful.

I also have a copy of Richard Matheson, I Am Legend, the vampire novel which the new film starring Wil Smith is based on. I noticed that Richard Matheson renewed the copyright in 1995, the original copyright is 1954. The book which is a trade paperback is perma-bound, coated in plastic to make it last longer.

I am Legend is also printed on acid free paper so the paper will not brown. It looks like the glue holding in the pages will dry out before the paper and the cover goes. This is what seems to happen with trade paperbacks with acid free paper and high quality covers. The pages come undone fairly quickly, but the cover and the paper stay in perfect shape.

Anyways, SCORE Service Corps of Retired Executive did a free sales and marketing seminar last night at the library. I went and got groceries for light refreshments, mini-muffins, a vegetable platter, apple cider, and a jug of water for the attendees. We had ten people attend. These kinds of things are always kind of hard to do. I did the rough draft for the flier and the press release to the local papers. The lady in the office did the final editing for release to the public. It is impossible to know how many people will attend these kind of workshops.

I am going to prepare a film today, something out of copyright, The Postman Always Rings Twice, starring Lana Turner. I'll end up getting individual bags of popcorn, they have big bags with little bags of popcorn inside them, and juice. We have a projector for presentations that can be rigged up to a dvd player and a fold up movie screen so we can show films.

I am still thinking of Rumi. Some of the poems are very short stories. My favorite of these is the story of the Ocean Frog. The Ocean Frog lives in the wide ocean while the ditch frog lives in a small ditch. The ditch frog tells how huge his home is which is two feet by three feet while the ocean frog listens. The ocean is seen as a metaphor for living in the presence of god or the universe having wide vistas of perception.