John Totleben, an artist spotlight

One of my favorite comic book artists is John Totleben and anyone who has seen his work can understand why. John Totleben is mostly known for working with artist Steve Bissette and with writer Alan Moore on Swamp Thing and for penciling and inking the third book of Alan Moore's Miracleman. All of book three of Miracleman (titled Olympus) was amazing in every respect, but it wouldn't be anywhere as legendary as it is without the contributions of John Totleben's art. Unfortunately Miracleman is almost impossible (and expensive) to read as it's not in print because of all the legal complications surrounding the ownership of the character (enter "Miracleman" in Wikipedia and you'll see how convoluted the rights situation is).

This first page of art (above, click on image to see it larger in all its glory) is from Swamp Thing #29, titled Love and Death, which is one of the creepiest issues of any comic ever. John Totleben mostly worked with artist Steve Bissitte on Swamp Thing, but their working relationship was very different from the way most artists and inkers work, in that they would alternate what each of them actually contributed to the finished page. Steve Bissette is a great primal artist, who always had great innovative layouts, but anyone who is familiar with Totleben's art knows that with his fine ink lines, Totleben was the part of the equation that made the art really jump out (and Totleben is a great innovative layout artist as well). Even if you haven't read Love and Death, a person looking at this page of art can just see (and feel) the horror that Abby is experiencing (particularily in the last image on the bottom right). Totleben is one of the great masters of horror comic art, but he could also draw scenes of incredible beauty. My biggest gripe with the Swamp Thing collections is that they weren't re-colored because the coloring on this book was really loud (not in a good way) and pages such as this one lost a lot of their power because of the coloring process used at the time (in a perfect world I'd like to see all of the Alan Moore Swamp Things collected in black and white).
This page featuring Green Lantern, Superman, and Deadman was penciled and inked by John Totleben for a one shot book called Legend of The Green Flame, written by Neil Gaiman (various artists did the different chapters and Totleben was one of those artists). From this page, one can see Totleben's gorgeous page composition and his fine line brushwork is also superbly evident.

Sadly, John Totleben isn't a very prolific artist as he has a degenerative eye disease that has made him legally blind. He still draws, but it's very difficult for him to do so as from what I understand he has to have his eyes very close to the page he's working on and thus he has difficulty seeing the whole image he's working on. Today John Totleben's income from art he does is mostly from fan commissions and recreations of art he did over twenty years ago as he sold most of his original art before the ebay age in which his original art (the rare times one sees pages or covers of his pop up there) commands HUGE amounts of money. Before ebay opened up the original comic book art audience, people could pick up really nice Totleben covers and pages for just a couple of hundred dollars and now they go for one thousand dollars and up (mostly for the sheer amazement of Totleben's artistry, but also because there's not that much Totleben art out there).

So I saw The Spirit tonight...

...and I thought it was horrible! No spoilers following:

Tonight over at the Rave movie theater here in Las Vegas, the first advance screening of The Spirit, written and directed by Frank Miller, was held and Rob (a friend who's my new helper in processing the week's new books), had gotten two passes Saturday when he and his wife went to a movie there. I was pretty exited because The Spirit isn't set to open nationwide until December and I thought from seeing two trailers that it would be a fun movie ala Sin City or fun to goof on like that show Mystery Science Theatre did to bad movies.

After seeing the trailer I thought that Frank Miller's Spirit wouldn't have much to do with Will Eisner's creation which I thought was kind of odd as I know that Miller respects Eisner. I'm going to guess that Miller thought what he was doing was updating the character for today's audiences. I don't have a problem with movies based on comic books differing from the source work as long as the changes are entertaining and make sense unto themselves as I realize that movies and comics are two different mediums. Anyone who goes into Miller's movie Spirit expecting it to evoke what they like about Eisner's comic version will be seriously disappointed, because while I think the movie has some nudge nudge wink wink homages to Eisner's work and other comics, the movie felt nothing like any of the Spirit stories I've read. Again, if Miller's Spirit movie was entertaining, I wouldn't have minded, but...

Who is the intended audience for The Spirit? A good amount of the visual look of the movie does look like Sin City the movie, but it doesn't have the overall visual originality or stylistic flair that Sin City did. The dialogue and narration is embarrassingly bad (and I don't even think it would even be fun to make fun of). The fight scenes aren't even enjoyable in an over the top way like Kung Fu Hustle or even Sin City the movie. Actually Miller did nothing new with the fight choreography and you'd think with all of the great fight scenes he's written and drawn in comics (or even just watching Kill Bill or working on Sin City) that he'd bring something exciting to the screen. I can't see any amount of fine tuning going on after test screenings that could make the Spirit movie good and as is Miller's Spirit plays like a mix of Warren Beatty's Dick Tracy and Sin City the movie without the ingredients that made those movies good fun and visually exciting.

Rob and his wife said they enjoyed the movie (and would see it again) and my friend Cristina thought it was on the plus side of okay. I really think that Miller's Spirit won't do that well at the box office (as it will not appeal to large cross audiences) and while I realize that a creator can't hit it out of the park every time at bat, I think it'll be awhile until Miller gets to work on such a big project. So I was saddened upon The Spirit ending (even though I was glad it did finally end) because I wanted to spread the word on how entertaining I'd hoped it would be, not be Mr. Negative.

Beijing Olympics - my overview

I didn't get to watch anywhere close to what I'd hoped to watch of the 2008 Olympics even though I watched some of them every day. The most exciting athlete of this years games for me was Usain Bolt from Jamaica (he's in the center in this photo). Bolt won the 100m and 200m in record times and also won gold in a relay. He made it look almost effortless and looked like he was having a great time.
On the flip side, the saddest moment of the games for me was seeing Lolo Jones (second from the left) hit the second to last hurdle in her run to go from what looked like a sure win by her, to end up in seventh place. One night last week I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn't get back to sleep and that's when I saw her event amd what ultimately happened.

Overall I enjoyed the Beijing Olympics, even though it seemed like the only events I saw were swimming, diving, track and field, and beach volleyball. I wished I'd seen some tabletop tennis and badminton, but I probably should have looked at the televison schedules and planned better. I thought the closing ceremonies were okay, but nowhere near as incredible as the opening ceremonies and I'm not nearly as optimistic about China as a country as the NBC announcers tried to make a case for. I'd feel differently in that respect if China had granted some permits for the people that applied for permits for protests (they had 77 permits, none of which they approved) and if they'd have brought that "ugly" girl (I hope she leaves China and becomes super successful) out at the closing ceremonies as an apology for using another prettier girl (who lip synched) at the opening ceremonies. I think we'll know within five years whether this new face (the Beijing Olympics) that China was trying to present to the world will alter the way they actually act in the world arena and or whether the rest of the world's perception of China has changed.

I Love...

...Little Baby Ducks http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixnCS-YpAJU. This song, by Tom T. Hall from the 1970's was playing in my head while I was thinking of the following entry (Tom T. Hall also wrote another great "simple" song called I Like Beer, but I think these songs speak volumes and are great happy songs).

So I'm doing my monthly order here at the store and someone dares to interrupt me by buying some great comics (Planetary, Me and the Devil Blues, House of Mystery, Walking Dead). Actually, of course I love interruptions like that because I love when good comics find good homes. I can't say the following enough, but I love my job selling comics, what's not to love!? While I lament that readership of almost all print media is down as there is so many other forms of entertainment that vie for people's attentions and attention spans are diminishing with the flood of information and stimulus that exists today, I love that there are people who still love this wonderful medium called comics. I also realize how fortunate I am to have as my occupation that which is one of my greatest passions in life (comics of course) as just the smallest percentage of people are able to have a scenario like this in their lives. I love turning people on to great comics and I love talking to people about comics that they've enjoyed. I love that the preview for Watchmen is turning a LOT of people on to one of Alan Moore's greatest works and I love that I've met so many great people here at my store.

All this love I'm feeling today is especially heightened today due to my only sleeping three hours last night - I "blame" that on the Drink & Draw and then meeting Cristina (newly back fom China nearly a week now) and some other friends at the Beauty Bar. The aforementioned somehow added up to how Tom T. Hall's I Love... popped into my head, so I thought that those of you reading this who haven't heard that song should give it a listen.

Important addition: I especially love those of you who read my silly little blog!

Millar & Harris Drink & Draw!

From right to left: Mark Millar (writer of War Heroes, Wanted, Kick Ass, Fantastic Four, Wolverine Old Man Logan, Ultimates, Superman Red Son, Authority and lots of other titles that make readers and comic store registers happy), Derrick of Comic Oasis here in Las Vegas, me, and Tony Harris (artist on War Heroes, Ex Machina, and Starman). After this photo was taken, Mark, Derrick, and Tony beat the crap out of me for not hamming it up in front of the camera like they did!
Todd, a friend of mine, with Mark and a little product placement. Kate and I call Todd, Happy Todd, because he's always happy when we see him (and it's a way to differentiate him from the other Todds we know).
On the left is a cool little illo that Mark did for Kate and myself (Kate had something else going on last night so she wasn't present). Then Tony did the great drawing on the right for us while he was telling a funny story of how a local paper where he lives (Macon, Georgia) was doing a local interest story on him and the Ex Machina that he was working on at the time was the gay marriage issue. Tony often works with models so two guys he knew (who weren't gay) were posing for him for the kissing page of that issue and they were all over each other trying to freak out the reporter / photographer from the newspaper.

I'd like to thank Derrick (of Comic Oasis, of course) again for being a host store here in Vegas of the War Heroes tour and putting on a special Drink & Draw afterwards which Mark and Tony graciously attended. I wasn't able to get away from my store for the signing portion of Mark and Tony's visit at Derrick's store, but I heard from a few of my customers who were there that there was a HUGE turnout and it was good to see a good crowd show up for the Drink & Draw afterwards. This was Mark Millar's first time to Vegas (he's from Scotland) and it was cool that he and Tony spent time hanging out for a few hours at the bar (after doing a three hour signing!) chatting and drinking with some Vegas comic afficianadoes before they did some other late late night Vegas thangs. I'm sure they got no sleep and it should be interesting to hear how they hold up today at LA for their Golden Apple signing. Mark Millar's also got a lunch date today with Richard Donner (the first Superman movie director) and as he's a HUGE fan of that movie, I know he'll get his second, third, and fourth winds (plus he's Scottish so drinking and lack of sleep is something they get taught in school)!

Anyway I (and everyone else that was there last night) had a fantastic time chatting with Mark and Tony and friends and customers of my and Derrick's store at the Drink & Draw. Kate and I had a nice chat with Mark Millar one night at a bar in San Diego during one of the late 1990's conventions and I didn't think he'd remember me, so I was blown away when Mark first came up to the bar and said hello to me and asked about Kate! I'm not here to brag that I "knew" Mark Millar before Authority put him on the map and then shortly afterwards he started getting the fat Marvel money, but I do want to say that having followed his work for so long, it's great to see that over the last eight or so years he's gotten the audience he deserves. I was also happy to see that he's back in great health after a long illness he had - actually he looks just he did when I saw him back in the late 1990's!

Las Vegas Wetlands

Yesterday I went to Las Vegas' best kept secret, the Las vegas Wetlands, with my friends Camila, Evan, and Frankie. The Vegas Wetlands aren't completely done (I think they started in 2000), but they have the first phase open (free) from dawn until dusk (vistor center open from 10am-4pm) and it's located at the far east side of Tropicana, just past Boulder Highway.
This was only the second time that I'd been to the Vegas Wetlands and both times, without even trying, I saw wildlife that you don't see anywhere else within the city limits, like this desert cottontail rabbit in this photo (click photo to make larger and see the rabbit better). Leave the guns at home please!
When the whole Wetlands project is finished it'll encompass six miles, but seriously there's already a good amount of land with good trails where you can see environments that you wouldn't think would (or could) exist out here in the desert.










For more info about the Vegas wash project and the wetlands, visit www.lvwash.org as they have a great site that explains what and why the project exists accompanied with great photos. I'm sure at some point they'll start charging to go within the Wetlands, but as long as it's not as much as what the Springs Perserve charges, it'll be worth it if that's what it takes for this place to continue to be a great retreat from the big city that is Las Vegas.

Mark Millar interview and...

War Heroes is a new Mark Millar production (Authority, Ultimates, Wanted, Superman Red Son, Chosen, Kick Ass, 1985, and too many more to list) with artist Tony Harris (Ex Machina, Starman) published by Image. The scenario behind War Heroes is that the goverment is giving people who sign up for the military superpowers and we the readers get to watch the wackiness that ensues from there. The image accompanying this entry is by local artist Thomas Thomey who won the contest for an upcoming cover for War Heroes!

Mark Millar and Tony Harris will be at Comic Oasis this Thursday (details at the end of this post). Rumour is that Millar and Harris will be at a Drink & Draw event later that night at On The Rocks so call Comic Oasis for more info. Reprinted here with permission is an interview that Jarret Keene did with the crazy (but fun) Scottish writer, Mark Millar (this interview is in this week's CityLife coming out Wednesday evening):


Comics scribe Mark Millar envisions enhanced recruitment techniques

By Jarret Keene

Like the best literary writers — George Orwell to name one — comics author Mark Millar envisions a dark world nearly upon us. The Glaswegian is among today’s hottest writers, especially in light of summer blockbuster Wanted, starring Angelina Jolie and based on Millar’s 2003 graphic novel. Following a string of successes for Marvel Comics (The Ultimates) and DC Comics (Superman: Red Son), he now unveils War Heroes under the Image banner. The concept is simple: With America’s War on Terror growing bloodier, the U.S devises a new recruitment enhancer: injecting enlistees with super-soldier serum (shades of Captain America’s origin). Ad slogan: “Be the Weapon.”

Too bad the folks wishing to be transformed into WMDs are so messed up, physically and mentally. Take, for instance, wheelchair-bound Ohioan Sam Wollenberg, whose family berates him for earning his college education only to throw it away by … walking again. Oh, and risking his life as a soldier. It’s a powerful offer: If you were handicapped and could be transformed into a superhero by enlisting, would you?

“Fuck, yes,” says Millar during a recent interview. “Are you kidding me? I would pimp my sister for superpowers. Give me powers, Uncle Sam, and I’ll fight any war you want!”

Millar is no bloodthirsty neocon. Still, judging from the first issue of War Heroes, the story perpetuates the notion that Arabs armed with nukes and chemicals are dreaming of ways to kill Americans.

Millar shrugs off the criticism.

“All my previous work suggests I make Tim Robbins look like Dick Cheney,” he counters. “Do you really think I’d write a book like that? Re-read the opening, and you'll be able to see the subtext of what’s really going on here.”

He’s right. War Heroes chronicles an effort by seven friends to scam the government by signing up for superpowers — and then doing something awful. The political situation is background, the story itself simply entertaining.

“And what could be more entertaining than seeing superpowered Arabs slicing through fighter jets with their swords?”

Not much, which explains why Millar is a sought-after talent: He loves to write ripping-good yarns. Having cut his teeth on British comics, Millar admits he was inspired to enter the industry after meeting Alan Moore (V for Vendetta) at a convention in the ’80s. Pretty rad for a preteen.

“Insane, I know,” he says, looking back on it. “Sending a kid to a hotel filled with sweaty, single men in their 40s seemed like a bad move on paper, but I was mercifully unmolested.”

Millar says he was more into the American products, mainly because “Americans seem glamorous when you’re growing up in Scotland.”

“You people had cars, homes, jobs and all your own teeth,” he jokes. “But I did read a lot of British comics when I was very young. The stuff was weird in hindsight — a football strip called ‘Billy’s Boots,’ about a young lad possessed by a dead footballer whenever he tied up the laces on his old boots.”

It was British comics giant Grant Morrison (The Invisibles) who served as mentor. (Millar claims they spent much of the ’90s drunk.) Millar was just out of school and Morrison had just cemented his reputation at DC.

“My career pretty much didn’t start until 2000,” Millar admits with humility. “I wasted 10 years, but had a laugh.”

His work has always been considered extremely violent, but lately Millar’s stories border on the nihilistic with Wanted and Kick-Ass. Again, he makes no apologies.

“If I said it was a commentary on violence, I’d be sniggering at the same time because, let’s face it, when you write a scene about a bullet taking four panels to pass through a human head, you aren’t thinking about the social commentary. You just think it looks fucking cool. Real violence is obviously horrible, but these are comic characters or highly paid actors. It’s great watching bad shit happen to them.”

And if his old idol Moore still complains that superhero comics are too dark, Millar doesn’t care. Make them darker, he says.

“Moore said all that after finding his greatest success with Watchmen, one of the darkest books of his generation. There’s a certain guilt that seems to hit creators after taking these characters to the max, but the weird truth is that the greatest sales and greatest excitement comes from the dark stuff. My own experience is that the darker you make the material the more popular it is, both creatively and commercially. Who am I but a humble writer? I can’t argue with the readers.”

Millar is currently touring the U.S with War Heroes artist Tony Harris, making an Aug, 21 stop at Las Vegas specialty shop Comic Oasis, so you may want to have Millar sign a copy of another high-profile project he’s simultaneously toiling on: Old Man Logan, a post-apocalyptic take on X-Man character Wolverine. In it, supervillains have killed off the strongest superheroes, and Vegas, now controlled by Kingpin, has been re-named Hammer Falls, because, well, that’s where The Mighty Thor was vanquished.

“I am going to Vegas now for the first time in my life,” concedes Millar. “My only training for this is a lifetime of alcohol abuse. I can’t wait. This is how Catholics see Rome and Buddhists see Tibet. I am finally coming home.”

Mark Millar and Tony Harris sign War Heroes
Thu., Aug. 21, 4-7 p.m.
Comic Oasis
3121 N. Rainbow Blvd.
212-8885
Free