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Love From the Shadows
Gilbert Hernandez
FantagraphicsLove From the Shadows is a pleasantly confusing new graphic novel by Gilbert Hernandez, celebrated talent monger and one of the celebrated Hernandez Brothers. Yes, those Hernandez Brothers. Love From the Shadows is the third comic he's made which is supposed to be one of the B movies that another of his characters, Fritzi, starred in. So it's a little odd from the get go. The world that Fritz lives in can be a little strange to begin with but we know going into this book that it's a fictional story set in a fictional story. To add to the weirdness of that is the idea that Fritz, the attention seeking perpetual victim, is supposed to be playing three of the roles. She plays a woman named Dolores, Dolores's Sonny Bono looking brother, and the father of the two siblings.

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Gilbert Hernandez: I've used "Lynchian" myself to describe a story I'm doing because it's an easy handle. If I said "it's like, you know, weird like a dream but it's not, or is it…?" it's not so easy to grasp. Love from the Shadows is Lynchian partly because that type of story isn't done too often these days, and I've always been drawn toward them. It's almost a child's view of adulthood except with hot chicks you get to touch.
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I've done the identity/gender switch before in Birdland and Hernandez Satyricon, but maybe the Lynch way is an unconscious influence. I never realized Lynch often uses a blonde and a brunette to tell his stories until I read it somewhere recently.This book is supposed to be a movie starring your character Fritz and co-starring her one-time husband. Are these stories intended to provide greater depth and insight into Fritz's character, or do you see these more as a way for you to tell different kinds of stories and still link them back to the L & R Lubaverse?
Fritz is a character that rarely shows who she really is inside, and the characters she plays reveal bits of her we can't normally see. She's not necessarily passive aggressive, but there's a lot of anger and viciousness that comes out in her roles. Fritz has become my favorite character to write and draw because she has no restrictions to where I can take her. And she's willing to go the distance. One theory on this is that she is secretly supremely jealous of the attention her better looking, one time much bustier sister Petra got when they were teens, and then when her prettier, bustier half-sister Luba showed up later, Fritz was determined to get that attention at any cost. Fritz never knows when to quit and will embarrass herself if necessary. She gets away with the over the top va va voom because otherwise she radiates so much class and intelligence. Of course, we won't see a lot of that in her films, but it's in her "real" life.
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I've done stories where a female character wears the same sexy clothes throughout changes of local in the story, but I tried to do it relatively realistically; the bikini in Love from the Shadows was because Fritz lost weight for the part and wanted everybody to appreciate her 40-ish, still sexy figure. Dude, she's nuts, I'm not shittin' you.Fritz has the last word on the exploitation of her body; the more men see her as a sexual goddess, the more she likes it. And you'll see as she gets older, she'll be upping the ante beyond any restraining. The trick is maintaining her gifted poise. Totally nuts, I'm tellin' you.How many more of these comics based on the non-existant film career of Fritz do you plan on making? I heard that you were planning on completing all of the films that have been mentioned.
Yes, actually the books I will eventually do are only a portion of her film/tv career—the subjects worthy of a graphic novel. I plan to do a book on her entire career as an actress, which will be an illustrated index.Is the order of the release of these books important?
Yeah, I'd prefer to do them in order, but Love from the Shadows is actually the 10th book in the series, not #3. I did it before the actual books 3 and 4 which are the MARIAM. books 1 and 2, but I wanted more time to work on them.
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My pet name for them is The Fritz Film Series.Do you see each book in this series as building on the themes of the previous ones?
Maybe a little bit, but they mostly reflect on the passage of time for Fritz and where importance lies in subjects according to her career's rise and fall; she started late for a sexy star—in her early 30's.The cover shows Fritz on the beach looking away in a way that allows male viewers to get a real eyeful, and then we see this invasive male shadow coming out of the corner. Is the idea to make the viewer feel like a creep? Was the intention to create a literal visual that related to the title?
The design was simply a classic image for a sleaze book. I try not to use such an obvious sleazy image on an L&R cover or on my other books because that's not the message I'm trying to send for my readers. The Fritz books are unapologetic sex/crime stories . They just tend to be the focus of my comics output these days. Guess I have to put out something non-sleazy soon before it's too late!And that's my mini-interview with Gilbert! Go check out his new book or his whole career.
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Take A Joke
Johnny Ryan
FantagraphicsJohnny Ryan's one of the best and only people making funny comics these days. Chris Onstad seems to have fled the comics world and I sincerely hope he's OK. Charles Addams died a few decades ago. It seems like most of the funny comics that are made these days are either intended for children or made by people who are only as smart as children. Unfortunately Johnny's funny days are mostly in the past now. With FUCUSSLE he wrapped up his run on Blecky Yuckerella and with this book he puts to bed any future releases containing his series Angry Youth Comics. Johnny is now thoroughly entrenched in continuing his series of Prison Pit graphic novels. Prison Pit is an amazing comic but I miss Johnny's old funny jazz with the same anticipation that I look forward to his grim prison jazz.
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Johnny Ryan: Yeah.Why'd your comics get so dark? Are you mad at people for thinking you're a one note joke?
Just mad.Are you ever going to do comics about Loady McGee again?
I dunno. Probably not.Why not? Are you sick of him?
No. Things just change, bro.And that's my mini-interview with Johnny Ryan!

Lose #3
Michael Deforge
Koyama Press
Back when Dan Clowes made Eightball he made each issue a beautiful and special object with zero wasted space. The covers would be beautiful, the letters column and indicia would be beautiful, and the comics themselves would be spell binding and mind bending. You got the sense that no part was a chore and that he wanted to make everything as beautiful and high quality as he could. Michael Deforge is doing a similar thing with his comic series, Lose.It's insane how much comic you get for five dollars. The cover is worth puzzling at for a while, It appears to be some sort of nightmare mountain hobo village. I'm staring at it a little more and thinking that it looks like Tokyo.
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Michael Deforge: I've been drawing a lot of settings with densely packed garbage and debris over the past year. I thought drawing this cover would help get it out of my system (it didn't).When did you become aware of Eagleman?
Holy crap, you know what—I didn't even make that connection until you just mentioned it. My buddy, Chris Eliopoulos, showed me that video a while ago, along with a bunch of other regional Chicago commercials he grew up with. He actually did some illustrations based on them, too.
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Thank you! The characters in that comic weren't specifically based on anyone. There are a lot of autobiographical elements to that story, but it's not like the family in the comic at all resembles my actual family.Have you been thinking about having kids lately?
Not really—I don't really think about it either way!Why is your comic called Lose?
I thought Lose was an appropriate fit for the tone of the stories I tend to draw, while still being vague enough to not limit the types of comics I might want to draw down the road.
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Drawings From the Gulag
Danzig Baldaev
Fuel
Taking a gander at the drawings in this book is like peering into hell. In many ways it's far more brutal than anything Bosch ever painted, because instead of demons torturing people, it's other people, and unlike the Dutch Master's Garden of Earthly Delights, the horrors in this book are all real.The book begins with a photo of a person I assume is the artist/author and this text underneath it:"Danzig Baldaev was born in 1925 in Ulan-Ude, Buryatiya, Russia. The son of an "enemy of the people," he was subject to repression in Communist Russia and sent to an orphanage for children of political prisoners. After serving in the army during the Second World War, he came to Leningrad in 1948 and was ordered by the NKVD to work as a warden in Kresty—an infamous prison—where he started drawing the the tattoos of the criminals. He was reported to the KGB, who unexpectedly supported him, realising the status of a criminal could be determined by deciphering the meaning of his tattoos. His work enabled him to visit different reformatory settlements across the former USSR, where he witnessed many of the scenes published in this book."
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Cat Rakham Loses It!
Steven Wolfhard
Koyama PressThis is a genuinely cute and funny little comic about a cat who lives by the shore with a lisping squirrel pal. One day a cat with a revolver attached to it's back with a belt shows up. Somehow this other cat is able to fire this gun, possibly by telekinesis, and he briefly assumes Cat Rackham's identity. This book is 30 pages of pure joy and goofery. The drawings are simple but more sophisticated than the cover might make you think.

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Alexandro Jodorowsky, Travis Charest, Zoran Janjetov
Humanoids
There are a lot of very "with it" people in America who have made screen grabs from Holy Mountain into their computer desktop images, but a lot of those same folks would reel in nerd revulsion to know that Jodorowsky is also a popular sci-fi comics writer. He and Moebius created a comic universe, referred to as the "Jodoverse," in a comic series called the Incal. Many of the concepts in the Fifth Element were taken from this comic series. There have been several spin-offs and mini-series set in this universe, all written by the venerated film maker.
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Jacob McMurray
Fantagraphics
There have been lots and lots of punk history books floating around for a while. You've got Please Kill Me focusing on late 70s New York and England's Dreaming about the British punk scene. There's also the lesser books like We've Got the Neutron Bomb and American Hardcore. There's We're Desperate, which is just photos of people in cool clothes, and there are a smattering of books focusing on specific bands. This one features some information about the New York and LA scenes, but it's pretty Seattle-centric and mostly about grunge.

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The Incredibly Fantastic Adventures of Maureen Dowd
Benjamin Marra
Traditional Comics
Ben Marra passed me this at MoCCA. My roommate saw this in the bathroom and seemed like he couldn't decide if he was amused or offended. It blew his mind.This comic is an action thriller about New York Times columnist, Maurreen Dowd. She is attacked by government assassins who want to silence her, and she has to balance an action-packed life with her career. She also mentions that she's going on a date with George Clooney on almost every page. I love Benjamin Marra's stiff art, shiny shading, and intentionally stilted dialogue. Gangsta Rap Posse is still my favorite of his comics. Night Business is pretty great too. Why Maurreen Dowd, though? Why? I asked Ben myself.
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Benjamin Marra: Tough question. I guess I was compelled to make the comic because of my deep appreciation for Ms. Dowd. It all started when I saw her photo on the NY Times website back in the early 00s. I started reading her column regularly, and I read her book, Are Men Necessary. I drew a couple illustrations in my sketchbook of her and a friend of mine suggested I do a comic about Ms. Dowd. The story started striking my brain like small lightning bolts in an electrical storm around my head, the elements falling into place like blocks in a deft round of Tetris. I just started working on it and then it was done and I published it.Has she seen this?
I think she has. She ordered a copy and some friends of hers ordered copies with the intention of giving her one. But her public comment on CNN's Reliable Sources was that she doesn't read anything written about her, which she feels can be debilitating like kryptonite. So, she made a comic book joke about it.And that was my mini-interview with Benjamin Marra!
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Deconstruction For Dummy-Heads: And Other Cartoons You Could Have Drawn
By Sam Henderson
Self Published
Sam Henderson quoted me on the back of one his comics again! That rules! I love being quoted on the back of Sammy's comics. Lately Henderson's comic output has been pretty much just these mini comics with covers that he may be printing on a computer printer. I miss his longer stories like Party Bot, the guy who always forgets his keys and then tries to sneak in the pet door and gets stuck every time. I like his longer comics more than these gags. These gags? Good gags. Good enough for me. But I miss the old comics. I am eagerly awaiting the upcoming collection of all of his Scene But Not Heard comics that used to appear in Nickelodeon magazine.
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The Arctic Marauder
Jacques Tardi
Fantagraphics
In this book Tardi goes and draws his own version of 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea. Tardi's a drawing and storytelling genius and a quote of me saying as much is quoted in the press release for this book. It's fun to see Tardi draw highly technical fantasy machines, but I think this book had too much text and the wood cut drawing style that Tardi uses here turns me off. Tardi's still great but this book didn't grab me the way his other books have.


Katie Turner
Parsons Katie Turner is a Parsons student who made an illustrated travelogue about her journey. It's a great little 12 page color zine and is a cute little read. I met Katie at MoCCA a few weeks back and she handed this to me. It's got immediate appeal and her style could be employed in ads or book design or pretty much anything. She's got a Souther Salazar or Ines Estrada-ish style.

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Creepy #5
Various
Dark Horse Comics
In the 50s there were great comics published by EC called Tales From the Crypt, Vault of Horror and the Haunt of Fear. They all began with a pun-spouting happy creep introducing the story and then there would be some nonsensical but beautifully drawn horror story. People loved the fuck out of those comics right up until the government decided they were pornography and forced them to stop. People have loved EC's horror comics forever. Other artists have been attempting to recreate their distinctive flavor now and then for the past few decades.
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Colour Me Busy
Keith Jones
Koyama Press
Keith Jones is quite a cartoonist, but for some reason he keeps making other stuff. He made stickers of stuck up animals and now he's made a coloring book of stuck up animals surrounded by garbage. Most pages show off some animal wearing people clothes and all the available negative space is full of junk. Some of it's recognizable and some is just weird shapes. I like Keith's drawings but not so much that I would buy a comic of random object drawings.


R.I.P. Best of 1985 - 2004
Thomas Ott
Fantagraphics
This book of scratchboard drawn comics goes from one short and predictable tale of the macabre to the next. Each comic looks nice, but it's just the same damn rhythm every time and it's too predictable to be affecting. We see a scratchy and unhappy looking guy spend three pages putting on his clown outfit before shooting himself in the mouth. We see zombies get out of the ground and go to their jobs at a factory.

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Little Willy Gets A Lickin'
Penelope Gazin
Self Published
My younger sister made this. The plot of this 11 page mini comic is that a kid dreams he is eaten by a door that is like a face and goes through a digestive tract, ending up in an underground cave world. There he meets a person named Queen Nicholas, probably named after me, who has a sexy lady body and a scary man face. Queen Nicholas eats the main character and then the kid wakes up.

Here's one that was a quick assignment but I like it.
And here's a music video she made for her boyfriend's band.

