Rigmarole:
This week's Auction is at $20 (US) from Jeff Seiler, and ends NEXT Saturday at noon!
COMIC LINK AUCTIONS!!! Seven days left...
Wanna give Team Cerebus In Hell? the monies, but don't wanna deal with the hassle of going to a comicbook store and tracking down a copy of the latest Cerebus in Hell? One-Shot (The LGBTQetc. People is out now, it's funny, but it's no League of Extraordinary Cerebi...)? Well, we've got you covered They're even having a sale right now...
If you're in the market to dress like Dave Sim, you can buy a "Matt D's A Moment of Cerebus" t-shirt right here. Or, if you're one of those nostalgia buffs who likes the earlier funnier A Moment Of Cerebus posts, the Tim W. Logo is available too.
The remastered Volume 1 is available digitally for $9.99.
If you got a couple of extra bucks and want to do a fellow Cerebus fan a solid, Friend of the Blog Mike Battaglia has a go fund me here.
If you're looking for Cerebus the Barbarian Messiah, or Conversations. You got more than one way to behead a Borelean, Conversations, and Cerebus the Barbarian Messiah
And Dave and Carson are planning a roadtrip.
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So Travis Pelkie dropped in to the Ol' AMOC Mailbag:
Hey Matt!
https://www.previewsworld.com/Article/230903-Todd-McFarlane-Interview-SPAWN-300
I didn't get a chance to watch this but it might be good.
I also intend (really!) to catch up with all those Previews posts I should have done, but life has gotten in the way. I'll do what I can.
One that I do want to point out is
https://www.previewsworld.com/Catalog/MAY190040
by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips. Apparently, this is about an older comics creator and the death of Alex Raymond figures in as a plot point. FYI
Travis Pelkie
I watched Todd
 |
| Yeah, him... |
Anyway, I watched Todd's interview, and he says he's gonna set the record for longest running creator owned book...ON THE PLANET.
Which isn't REALLY the record Dave has:
Todd also says he's been thinking of putting two numbers on the cover of Spawn, the ongoing number (306, 350, what have you,) and #1. And then the next issue would have the ongoing number, and #1.
Which sounds an awful lot like:
Just sayin'...
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And remember: KHANNA. IS. COMING!
If you got something you wanna ask Eddie, sound off in the comments...
Next Time: A "Special" treat...
6 comments:
I wrote to Dave to tell him about that Criminal issue back in February, but heard nothing back. The fax service I used at a local shop didn't seem very reliable, though, so perhaps my letter never reached him.
Here's part of what I said:
"The story in this issue (Criminal #2) is narrated by a young man called Jacob, who’s babysitting a famous veteran artist during his visit to a comics convention. The artist’s a cynical, bad-tempered old bastard called Hal Crane, who seems to have been turned sour by a 1955 car crash. Jacob was once one of his assistants.
"The crash itself is never depicted in the comic, but simply described in a series of Jacob’s captions. These describe Hal working as an assistant to the cartoonist Archie Lewis, inking backgrounds on Lewis’s Star King strip. Phillips provides “samples” of both Lewis’s and Crane’s work, the first looking like Alex Raymond and the second Alex Toth.
"Lewis and Crane were driving somewhere together when 'Lewis drove into a wall and derailed his whole life'. (That’s Crane’s life he’s referring to there.) We see a newspaper headline reading 'CRASH KILLS STAR KING CARTOONIST' and then another Jacob caption: 'The police ruled it an accident but the rumours that Lewis was suicidal have never gone away.' A few panels later, Jacob tells us he’s only ever heard Hal 'talk about it one time… That day in the in the car when his idol died and he walked awy with barely a scratch'.
"This is all entirely peripheral to the story’s main events, and Brubaker points out in the issue’s text page that his plot 'isn’t based on anyone or anything in particular. It’s got bits and pieces of reality and history sprinkled in among the fictional ‘comics world’ of Criminal […] but it isn’t meant to be an expose of the comics industry'. Even so, his inspiration for the car crash in Hal Crane’s background is pretty clear.
"I don’t think there are any great conclusions to be drawn from any of this, as it’s really just a writer of fiction giving one of his characters a bit of back story drawn from real life. Like most such characters, Crane is actually an amalgam of many different people’s characteristics and experiences – certainly not just Stan Drake’s alone."
I'm happy to scan in a few relevant pages and send them to AMOC if that's helpful. Just let me know, Matt.
Hey Paul. Dave forwarded your fax to me and at the same time Carson let me know about it as well. I’ve sent Dave the 2 issues with the storyline along with my thoughts about it and did a Patreon post about it. So he does have them, but may not have had a chance to look at them yet.
-Eddie
Thanks for letting me know, Eddie. I've enjoyed all the books you've done with Sean Phillips, but Criminal most of all.
Sorry this is Eddie Khanna not Ed Brubaker (I guess I should have put my last name. First there’s multiple Daves, now multiple Eddies).
Whoops - I feel a fool now. I did wonder if it might be another Eddie, but given the context I decided to take a punt at it being Mr B.
No worries! Here's what I sent to Dave after reading the first issue:
"Paul’s take on it sums the whole thing up succinctly. As I said to Carson after reading it, Brubaker made a composite character of the several old time comic strip artists with Hal Crane; e.g. the name is Hal Foster and Roy Crane combined, the personality of the character is mostly based on Alex Toth, I think, as well as the reference to doing character designs for an animated kids show back in the day. The reference to being the passenger in a 1955 car crash and being at a con later in his career and being mostly forgotten is Stan Drake (probably based on Drake's later interview/appearance in 1986 at the con where Anthony Kraft interviewed him), as well as the part about Hal Crane having all these bills to pay. The story takes place in 1997, and there’s reference to a well known art dealer named ‘Scott’, who I assume is Scott Dunbier.
He does mention real people by name, like Al Williamson, but one of the drawings by Crane that Paul mentioned looks more like a Williamson copy to me. There’s a part about Hal Crane deliberately signing his name to animation cells which he knows are fakes, in exchange for money, which makes me wonder if that's also based on a true story or industry rumours about someone. Crane also has a daughter with whom he’s got a strained relationship. Not sure if that’s also based on a true story."
-Eddie Khanna
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