The Big Old Mess

In this episode, Chris Mautner, Matt Seneca, Joe McCulloch and Tucker Stone get all twisted and torn up. First they talk about Manga Sagawa-San, then they talk about Shonen Jump. Then they talk about Humanoids new one, Eros Gone Wild. (This is a weird episode.) Then they talk about Lone Wolf and Cub for a minute or two. Then Chris pitches the Picturebox manga line to everybody. Then the episode goes off the rails completely. Please accept our strongest apologies!

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Comments

[sarah horrocks]

Oh god this episode was fantastic. I was laughing so hard in places...tears! tears in my eyes!

Thank you.

[Jeet Heer]

Yeah, those old Funnybook Roulette are great. I was trying to encourage Groth and Fiore to do a book collecting them but was told that too many of the columns deal with long forgotten superhero comics. I still think there's merit in doing a small book of Fiore's best essays (say his writings on Crumb, his 9/11 piece, he debates with Crumb/Pekar/Groth and a few other pieces). Here’s my ranking of the major Comics Journal critics: 1. Tim Kreider (he’d have this position even if he only wrote that great Cerebus essay in TCJ 301. 2. Carter Scholz 3. Gary Groth. 4. R. Fiore 5. Rob Rodi. R.C. Harvey I think of more as a historian than a critic.

[Jeet Heer]

I should add that since Tucker is writing up old issues of the journal, I'd like to see him tackle issues 120-130 -- the real highpoint of the magazine as far as I'm concerned.

[tucker stone]

I might jump to those then, it's kind of sloooow going down here in the 90's.

Also: Gary Groth, Carter Scholz, R. Fiore, Donald Phelps.

[Jeet Heer]

Yes, jump ahead, even though there are some good pieces on the period your looking at -- that Harvey Pekar issue (98? 99?) is very good.
You know, I thought about including Phelps in my list of great Journal critics but didn't because I don't think of him as a Journal critic. I know, I know, he's written a lot for the Journal. But his whole identity as a writer was formed long before the Journal came along in micro-literary magazines like Kulchur and For Now (see his great book Covering Ground for what I'm talking about). So I think of Phelps as his own thing. But if we did consider him a Journal writer my listing would then be: 1. Donald Phelps 2. Tim Kreider. 3. Carter Scholz 4. Gary Groth. 5. R. Fiore 6. Rob Rodi. Why has everyone forgotten Rodi? He was a very stylish, smart critic in his heyday.

[tucker stone]

I haven't read enough Rodi (yet) to form much of an opinion, honestly. Phelps for me is a huge Journal guy for two reasons: 1, because I came to him thru the Journal and 2, because he seems to have had a pretty strong influence over Groth, if I'm remembering that big conversation they had five or six years ago.

[Wabby]

Good episode. Enjoyed Tucker's rant about the right to feel unequivocal indignation towards D&Q paper ribbons.

[Kumar Sivasubramanian]

Hey, have you guys ever heard of golden age Australia comic book artist Len Lawson? He drew a western called The Lone Avenger.

In the 50s, he kidnapped and raped five models. He got the death sentence, but somehow that got commuted, and about 5 years later he GOT OUT.

Then he raped and killed another model, then took a girls' school hostage, and killed another girl. He died in prison in 2003.

Thinking about the comics the guy drew and even his own name -- talk about irony!

KS

[Martin]

Love the show, it’s been really helpful and entertaining. Good stuff.

Here is my take on the D&Q ribbon situation – all of them are meant to be taken off ... the beauty of the ribbon system is that it allows the designers to deal with the ugly bar codes, quotes, prices and synopsis text as a separate entity from the actual book design.

These imposed elements are often a pain in the ass and ugly to have to place in a nice design, specially the bar codes.

Chester Brown's Louis Riel has a ribbon, but when you take it off the back cover design ends up being slick, simple, clean. However if you take the D&Q Ed the Happy Clown book, they didn't go with the ribbon system and slapped a big sticker on the upper left corner ... I don't know about you but I think the back cover would have been nicer with the clean full Chester drawing, no?

And if anything (if you REALLY want to keep them) I carefully cut the ribbons at just the right size to slide in as bookmarks.

Design geek,
M.