NYCC updates

Well folks id love to show you the awesome pictures I've been taking all weekend but I have just learned that the iPad is for playing video games not actually being able to digitally connect with the world around you. Ben Bishop seems stoked to be signing alongside Jim Krueger today at the Atlas booth for the relaunch of the Stand In that Jim has scribed. If you don't know Mr. Krueger he is the man behind JUSTICE, INVADERS and EARTH-X. Met an awesome artist from Boston who creates amazingly fantastical dreamlike creatures in a book called TOFUSQUIRREL. If you were around when we had our Indy Comic Book Week this past winter, you might recall an awesome book called AMERICAN TERROR put out by Alterna Press they have a radical booth made up like an army bunker to pimp their WWII comic about zombies, they want to come up and re create their bunker in the shop in Portland and I say hell yea! Rick Remender is a madman and Chad and I are stalking him, Phillip Tan is going to be the artist on a DC relaunch that some of you might be way into cant say anything he told me or maybe he cant say anything, just think feathers and magic metal, you mean that sounds more kinky then superhero fare? Just stay tuned. Jeff Lemire is the man and I caught him hanging out at theTop Shelf booth and got to just chat casually about how great Sweet Tooth continues to be and his excitement for the upcoming SUPERBOY title he will be penning. Day 2 of NY Comic-Con and Chad and I aren't even close to being done. Grant Morrisons documentary debuts in the city tonight and if we can survive anime weirdness and 12 foot swords we just might make it. I will be doing a recap blog post WITH pictures once I figure out how to find the 13th adapter that lets you hook up your digital camera to this glorified itouch. Oh and if anyone wants a leather jacket with the giant word EXCELSIOR emblazoned on it, their here!


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BISHOP TO KRUEGER'S CASTLE

Ok Ok that was a very desperate attempt at witty humor for a title that I stared at for over an hour. But there it is and I'm done apologizing when there's so much exciting stuff to share. Portland's own, Ben Bishop has recently shared some exciting news with all of us.

If you find yourself at the NY Comic-Con, go find Bishop who will be joining Jim Krueger ( writer of Earth-X, JUSTICE, AVENGERS/INVADERS) to pimp The Stand-In, a title introduced with a #0 issue at New York Comic Con 2009 in February of that year and first announced in November 2008, that will debut as an ongoing in 2011. The series, from Krueger and artist Ben Bishop, depicts an actor who survives an assassination attempt while hired to stand in for a senator. Krueger comments, “I think people are going to be amazed at the way Ben Bishop tells a story. He's going to be such a superstar, I just know he'll never work with me again.”

Bishop counters, “I feel very lucky that the guys over at Ardden and Jim Krueger, one of the best writers out there, have given me this opportunity. The story is great, it's going to be a lot of fun, and I think everyone is going to love it.

The great news is that I will be on hand to document Bishop's exciting new adventure. Everyone at Coast City wishes Ben the best and will share with you all the cool stuff from NY Comic-Con. Stay tuned....

KING OF THE KUPERS

Kupers are not the race of turtle-like creatures that co-exist with the toads that inhabit the Mushroom Kingdom, that would be the Koopas. But if there were a race of east coast hyper intelligent, political minded illustrators, then Peter Kuper would be King.

My Nostalgia September continues with one of my all time favorites, Peter Kuper! It was The System that I first found of his that fit in with my young, anarchistic minded restlessness that needed someone like Peter to put pictures to the thoughts in my head. If you're a fan of WW2 propaganda art then you'll love Kuper's dreamy, angular stoicism that resonates a hyper sense of reality though this isn't propaganda to keep you locked in this is art to set you free. The System was a mind blowing find in my twilight teenage years, the catalyst for a revolution I wanted desperately. This book contains all stencil art, a menagerie of the downtrodden and super rich fat cats, drug smugglers, the energy and class warfare of the big city all done without words. The kinetic flow of the System still holds up today against comics too wordy for their own good. I highly doubt you'll find Princess Peach in his clutches but Peter Kuper is still king in my book!

To find out more about Peter Kuper check out his website:
http://www.peterkuper.com/index.htm

LIVING LA VIDA LOCAS

No I'm not the worlds worst speller. LOCAS is the ongoing serial narrative which follows the tangled lives of Margarita Luisa "Maggie" Chascarrillo and Esperanza Leticia "Hopey" Glass, whose on-again, off-again, open romance takes center stage in a mostly Latino community during California's punk days.
Locas is Jaime Hernandez's main contribution to this week's indie spotlight- LOVE & ROCKETS. As part of My Nostalgia September, no one can deny the generation spanning influence of the Hernandez Brothers who picked up where Crumb, Pekar, Shelton and Griffith left off. I hadn't been hip enough to catch the first release of their self published debut in 1981, I was 6 years old for god's sake reading Sad Sack & Richie Rich. In 1982 Fantagraphics picked up Love & Rockets and unlike some publishing companies, they let Los Hernandez Bros. do what they do best. Taking real life settings and putting in fictional characters that grow up with us, that mix sci-fi, sex, aging, community, love, break ups and let us in fully so that what was started as fiction becomes seemingly real, Like milestones in our own post adolescence. I didn't grow up in Oxnard California during the early days of punk but when I found Love & Rockets during the 90's in Santa Cruz, California Its fantastical realism had the same effect on me that it did when it was first hitting the scene. I had already been deep into my new found love of Adrian Tomine & Daniel Clowes so it was only natural to get to the root of the matter and see who started this whole thing. Los Hernandez Bros. like Love & Rockets are timeless so whether its early 80's Oxnard, Mid 90's Santa Cruz or 21st century Portland, Maine catch on now before Maggie & Hopey break a hip and pass into the great void to become legendary mirrors to our own human-ness.

BEHIND THE EIGHTBALL

Daniel Clowes needs no real introduction does he? Well In case you're too busy still wondering who the Red Hulk is let me fill you in on one of the most prolific comic creators of my generation. As part of My Nostalgia September I couldn't leave Clowes out in the cold. From EIGHTBALL, (the first dozen or so issues containing a number of short comedic stories featuring absurd characters such as Shamrock Squid and Grip Glutz and introduced us to Art School Confidential and Ghost World) to WILSON to ICE HAVEN. Clowes is regularly compared to David Lynch, mixing macabre surrealism with intelligent satire mixed with a modernist style.
LIKE A VELVET GLOVE CAST IN IRON, which was a storyline in EIGHTBALL, became an obsession of mine so much that my band ELKBLOOD has used it regularly for inspiration in both lyrics and the imagery. To know Clowes characters is maybe to know a little about the man himself.
You might find some familiar pessimism of Pekar in characters like WILSON but with Clowes you get a unhealthy dose of dark humor that might make you uncomfortable to the point where you'll either love it or hate it. Call me sick but I get it and praise Clowes for giving me something to identify with, I find it cathartic, comforting even. I relate reading a Clowes comic to falling asleep in a thunderstorm while listening to Metallica's Master of Puppets without a sleeping bag buried in the dirt, right? If you're a fan of ADRIAN TOMINE CRAIG THOMPSON, TOM NEELY or even JOHNNY RYAN then you owe it to yourself and your neighbors to check out Daniel Clowes in case you haven't. If you dont, DAVID BORING might be knocking on your door soon dont say we didn't warn you!

check out this great article with Daniel found at L'autre bande dessinée
http://www.du9.org/Daniel-Clowes,1109
and here's a preview of WILSON in case you haven't checked this out yet http://www.drawnandquarterly.com/imagesPreview/a4b4b5cebd9151.pdf

HITTING AN OPTIC NERVE

Art school...(yea yea yea so I'm getting nostalgic today so what!) You remember, standing in a circle smoking hand rolled cigarettes, acting out scenes from My Own Private Idaho as if Gus van Sant might be around the corner rolling film. It was the 90's, manic panic, grunge making way to British invasion part 2 and the return of how cool vinyl is. It was during this adolescent maelstrom of intellectualism and pretending I understood Sartre that I found myself moving away from just comic book mutants and space aliens into a whole new world of visual storytelling in comics. As I was discovering Hal Hartley and hanging out on the Santa Cruz cliffs I feverishly read everything I could find on Adrian Tomine, mainly all the OPTIC NERVE'S my young sad bastard heart could stand!

It was in 32 Stories:The Complete OPTIC NERVE mini comics that I drowned myself in. Tomine's work showed me a whole new world of self reflection using comics as part journal, part surreal commentary with humor and a literalness that defied what I thought comics could be. It was a time of great exploration and breaking barriers and what may seem commonplace now was a brave new world to me. I wasn't hip to Clowes and the Hernandez Brothers, It was Tomine that broke my indie comic cherry and I'm forever grateful. It only fueled my desire to know something you didn't but alas those days are over and I want you to know ADRIAN TOMINE the way that I know Tomine. Check out his website at: http://www.adrian-tomine.com

BOUND & GAGGED

Just wanted to repost a link to Tom Neely's blog to announce a new book he's involved with. In case you dont know who Tom Neely is visit his website for more info. I WILL DESTROY YOU He's an amazing artist out of Los Angeles and one of our favorites here at Coast City Comics, check it out:

http://iwilldestroyyounews.blogspot.com/2010/08/bound-gagged.html