Throwing a Curve Thursday
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Here at TDC we mostly deal with newspaper comics and cartoons, but every once in a while we wander from the beaten path and check out comic books and animated film.
Matt Bors on leaving political cartooning for Justice Warriors and Toxic Avenger
Bors [founder of The Nib] is ready to move on, and the direction he’s picked is not in niche magazine publishing but through the direct market, where he’s creating fun, absurdist comics with a unique political bent that eschews a strong connection to daily headlines.
Now, Bors currently writes the comics Justice Warriors, an over-the-top action-satire reminiscent of comics such as Transmetropolitan and Judge Dredd, and a revamp of the cult classic The Toxic Avenger for the publisher Ahoy Comics, a small, progressive-slanted direct market publisher.
At The Comics Journal Matt Petras interviews Matt Bors, along with comic book artists Ben Clarkson and Fred Harper, on the political cartoonist’s new comic book direction.
“I have X-Men ideas out the ass. I actually have documents where I’ve written out ideas. So, I mean, I’ve got pitches almost ready to go for stuff like X-Men and Batman, even Spawn. I’m known as a little bit of a Spawn-head. I’d love to write Spawn. I’ve got no qualms about wanting to only wanting to write stuff that I own or stuff that is considered highbrow, man. Put me on Spawn. I can write 24 issues like that.”
When Did Animated Shorts Get So Long? An Investigation Into The Uncomfortable Rise Of Long Shorts
In recent years, the landscape of short animated films has undergone a significant shift. Short animated films are increasingly stretching beyond the 20-minute mark. In fact, three of this year’s five Oscar-nominated shorts are 19-minutes or longer. This shift could be attributed to filmmakers responding to evolving audience expectations or exploring new storytelling possibilities that require more time to unfold.
The day of the six to eight minute animated short is over.
[Chris Robinson for] Cartoon Brew interviewed leading producers, distributors, educators, programmers, and filmmakers to gain a better understanding of this complex and potentially problematic trend.
Or maybe not.
In ‘Freelance,’ A Weary Knight Deals With A Fickle Client
Freelance is a hilarious and sharp take on the frustrations of freelance work.
In this biting comic short, an ambitious yet weary knight is hired to slay a dragon for the king. Unfortunately, the king doesn’t seem to know what he wants, forcing the exhausted — and increasingly unhinged —knight to kill dragon after dragon to no avail. It soon becomes clear that the real problem isn’t the dragons; it’s the fickle king.
Chris Robinson reviews Freelance, about “the maddening and exhausting nature of indecisive clients.”
The film was made by Tumblehead Studios based on an original idea by Luciano A. Muñoz Sessarego, a Chilean cg animator based in Vancouver … Muñoz Sessarego co-directed the film with Tumblehead partners Magnus Igland Møller and Peter Smith, who co-founded the Danish studio in 2011.
A beautiful new book compiling Sergio Aragonés comic book “Space Circus”
Dark Horse Comics has just released a hardcover book compiling the four-issue run of “Space Circus,” a comic book that legendary cartoonist Sergio Aragonés created with writer Mark Evanier in 2000.
Ruben Bolling at Boing Boing reviews the collected Space Circus by Sergio Aragonés and Mark Evanier.
[Sergio is] universally revered as a Hall of Fame cartoonist, often specializing in hilarious figures and gags that can be tiny enough to fit into the margins of a Mad page, or to fit into huge, complex mural-like pages with a cast of thousands.
“Space Circus” does not disappoint on that count…
Dog Man Is a Sweetly Silly Cartoon That Knows Itself
Ironically, the star of the aggressively silly Dog Man is its cat villain
There are plenty of obvious reasons why Dav Pilkey’s Dog Man graphic novels – cartoon books, really, in the parlance of the 1980s newspaper-strip compilations they sometimes resemble despite an overarching plot – are so popular with kids. They’re deeply silly, colorful, easy to read, and have some built-in branding as a spinoff from the popular Captain Underpants books.
Now the movie version of Dog Man makes not so much as a reference to its Captain Underpants origins or its supposed child authors; no explanation is required for its scribbly, appealingly blocky form of CG animation. It has achieved escape velocity and runs off-leash.
This lends Dog Man, the movie version, a form of bizarre purity.
From Paste Magazine is Jesse Hassenger’s review of Dog Man, the animated movie of the Dav Pilkey character.
Meanwhile Andy Crump is at AV Club reviewing the same.
Movies like this, marketed to and made for theaters packed with gleeful kids, tend not to confront the worst of life; put aside the glory days of Pixar, and most contemporary CGI-animated family films wrap up their plots with bows, in an avalanche of feel-good balm to soothe residual prickles felt by such storytelling necessities as “stakes” and “tension.” Dog Man doesn’t do that…
Comic Book Publisher Drops Neil Gaiman Amid Sexual Misconduct Allegations
Comic strips aren’t the only genre airing dirty laundry.
The comic book company that publishes the graphic novels and comics of Neil Gaiman announced this weekend that it would no longer work with him after a storm of sexual misconduct allegations and that it would halt the publication of his forthcoming “Anansi Boys” series.
The company, Dark Horse Comics, wrote on X on Saturday: “Dark Horse takes seriously the allegations against Neil Gaiman and we are no longer publishing his works.”
The announcement followed a New York magazine article this month that contained allegations that Mr. Gaiman sexually abused and assaulted multiple women over several years. Mr. Gaiman has emphatically denied the allegations and said in a statement on Jan. 14: “I have never engaged in non-consensual sexual activity with anyone. Ever.”
The New York Times’ Ali Watkins covers the story.
In his native England downthetubes’ John Freeman covers the Gaiman story.
“Dark Horse takes seriously the allegations against Neil Gaiman, and we are no longer publishing his works,” the company said in social media posts, “Confirming that the Anansi Boys comic series and collected volume have been cancelled.”
Seven issues of the eight-issue Anansi Boys comic series have been released, so far; #7 was released earlier this month. #8 is still being solicited.
Several publishers of his work, including HarperCollins and WW Norton, have no new books by Gaiman scheduled. Other publishers such as Bloomsbury, DC Comics, Penguin and Titan Comics, have not made any statements about their future publishing plans.
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