Gerard Whyman, Oddly, not, Distracted, at all.

Cartoons by Gerard Whyman

I'm putting the finishing touches to a post that I'm hoping Forbidden Planet International will run, it is about getting your cartoons, illustrations and books out there on new media. I mean, I don't know if you've noticed but newspapers are closing left right and centre, and some big titles have limited cash, and rely on firms that are going bust to fund their print editions through advertising. Many of these titles, some through choice and some through necessity, with publications like the Christian Science Monitor lighting the way, are going to appear only online. They can, of course appear on other media, and it might be a good idea if you know how to deliver your work on the same devices.

A Ger Whyman cartoon, from Oddly Distracted, on the iPhone

A Ger Whyman cartoon, from Oddly Distracted, being formatted for the PSP.

At the same time I'll be looking at Gerard Whyman's excellent book of cartoons, Oddly Distracted, so I'll be trying to illustrate why the Whyman way, is the best way to go, in the current economic climate, as it were, and we'll be looking at the best way to get Whyman's cartoons out to the modern reader..

Meanwhile, I'd recommend a good hard-copy of the book (click here to go to LULU) because it has nearly 200 cartoons and it represents excellent value for laughs delivered - click here to see a chart I made of the laughs per page ratio - kidding; but go buy it.

Skimming, the Surface.

My attention has been drawn to this thanks to Fantagraphics Dirk Deppey being ever vigilant and Drawn and Quarterley's Peggy Burns helping to spread the word. This is hopefully going to be just an oversight - I'm sure.

The odd thing is, this ties in with a piece I'm sending to Joe at Forbidden Planet about the importance of "some" illustrators, later tonight.

Okay, listen up, especially you, my Canuck chums, although every illustrator out there should be interested. This is very important because although it might be a simple oversight, a mistake, and I might have to eat my words, it could be, although I'm sure it is not, the written word-worshipping literati of Canada flexing their muscles and trying to regain primacy in the face of the increasing popularity of graphic novels (we are stuck with the term so suck it up). In what could be be, as I have just said, simply an oversight, Skim, the tale of Kimberly Keiko Cameron, a goth girl in an all-girls school in Toronto, is up for, at least the writer, Mariko Tamaki, is up for Canada's very prestigious Governor General’s Literary Awards. The thing is, and once again I'm sure it is simply a horrible oversight, the illustrator of the book, Mariko's cousin Jillian Tamaki, has not been included in the nomination.



Ridiculous, I know, fortunately two of Canada's most high profile illustrators, Chester Brown and Seth, have been moved to write a strongly worded letter to the awards committee asking them to reconsider for the following very, very, important reasons:



We're guessing that the jury who read SKIM saw it as an illustrated novel. It's not; it's a graphic novel. In illustrated novels, the words carry the burden of telling the story, and the illustrations serve as a form of visual reinforcement. But in graphic novels, the words and pictures BOTH tell the story, and there are often sequences (sometimes whole graphic novels) where the images alone convey the narrative. The text of a graphic novel cannot be separated from its illustrations because the words and the pictures together ARE the text. Try to imagine evaluating SKIM if you couldn't see the drawings. Jillian's contribution to the book goes beyond mere illustration: she was as responsible for telling the story as Mariko was.

Chester Brown (Author of Louis Riel)


Seth (Author of It's a Good Life, If You Don't Weaken)



Just to quickly illustrate this point, I've snaffled the following page from Dirk Deppey:

It's clear from this drawing that the words "Dear Diary...it's snowing." and the drawing above are working in consort to convey a mood and a meaning that is beyond what is written on the page. This is not a tacked-on drawing illustrating redundantly illustrating the obvious, in a way that one would find opposite a page of text in a picture book. The description of the scene is non-existent because that information is conveyed in the drawing, along with the hallow triumph of creating the pointless message in the lonely landscape. It is, at once, a beautiful, and sad, moment.

Blogging through a Codeine-inspired Mist-like Filter

I'm delusional. I have a really horrible flu and I'm stuffed to the gills with soluble painkillers. Oh, oh, did I imagine this? No way, I mean how would I know about Fake That?

Fake That, the Take That tribute band, were in trouble in Spain, where they were performing, after fake Robbie Williams ran across the room and started fighting with fake Gary Barlow. If it's true, there is no no need for cartoons.

Anyway, I think I made a post on the brilliant Manga Blog because there is a competition going on - or I may have imagined I did. If I didn't imagine the whole thing, you have the opportunity to win some Black Jack manga - go for it, or not, depending on whether or not it's all in my head.

It's a great prize and I realise that if lots of you do enter the competition it reduces my chances of winning, but honestly, it's such a great prize I can't keep it to myself.

The manga I mentioned on my post on the site is the manga that inspired the anime below, Soul Eater. It looks like a new sort of manga to me, one that appeals to a broad church. It's full of marvelous images.

Now here a thing; the last time I had flu this bad I was much younger, a teenager, and I was in bed, watching TV and I saw a TV show that nobody else I have ever met, ever saw. For years and years I searched for proof that the show wasn't the product of my fevered imagination; but I found no proof that the very surreal "live-action" Babar I remembered existed - until recently that is. So here it is, live-action Babar; I want you to imagine how weird it was looking at this spectacle through the misty, drugged up haze of a fluey-funk.

Death Returns from Holiday

A tip I got years ago, and which I stick rigidly to, is when you are working on a number of things, all at different times, lock them away from view until their turn comes around again. Then when you take the thing out to work on it again, if it still excites you and still looks like a good, workable, idea, it's a potential winner - you'll be surprised how many "live projects" look absolutely ghastly when they come back out into the cold light of day. On the plus side, you can really recommit to the work that still looks like a good idea.

I'm really pleased that Johnny Morte passed my self-editing test, because it's a bit of a favourite and it has to be a favourite of mine because at the moment all the changes I'm making are being done with the mouse; until my new graphics tablet arrives. It's challenging, especially when it comes to making curves, although that's easy to do with something large like the skull in "Morte" which I made with the Vector tool you have to be really creative to make little things like finger tips.

I was in two minds, but I've decided to go forward with a flat cartoony look because I enjoy comics that look like comics so that makes the redrawing much faster.

I'm also putting a colour version together, and again I'm going super-flat. Once again this is a reaction to the dreadful over colouring you see today in so many comics.

I've reworked a couple of pages already and with luck, when the pen comes, things will speed up and it'll be finished before the year is out.

Go Obama!

Happy Halloween Free Mini-comic

Happy Halloween, guys and ghouls.

My Halloween mini-comic, The Ballad of Jack Palance, A Halloween Tale, is a free download as a PDF (Acrobat) and a CBR (Comicbook Reader or GonVisor) file over at the Forbidden Planet International blog.

If anyone doesn't know how to put these things together, PDF or CBR, just email me and I'll give you the skinny.

Have a Frighteningly Good Time, Y'all.

Billy Bat and the Urasawa Morning Magazine MacGuffin Mystery.

A hat tip and many thanks to my photographers, Paradise and Mangascreener.

The Billy Bat Files

Outside, the rain pounded against the window like a crazy-mad dipso' trying to get into his favourite bar. I steeled myself against the wind, the boiler was on the fritz again - lousy Kraut engineering. I shifted uncomfortably in my chair, and perused the paperwork again - something about this case smelled bad. I looked at this character Urasawa's previous work again, Yawara, Pluto, Monster, 20th Century Boys, 21st Century Boys...

I couldn't make the mental leap that would add this Billy Bat to his oeuvre. I took another swig of Scotch.

Of course the hacks were out in force the moment it was announced that Kodansha's Morning magazine was launching Naoki Urasawa's new comic, Billy Bat, this October, there was always going to be a feeding frenzy. Details were scant; once again the famous Mangaka would be teemed with Takashi Nagasaki, and there was talk of a missing "great American hero-type comic book character of the 1940s", but that didn't square with the photo I was looking at, this looked retro okay, but it looked like a bad cross between Mighty Mouse and Black Sad.

What's more, it didn't tie in with what I knew about the magazine. It ran edgy stories like The Walking Man (the dude is calm, but often nude) and Devilman Lady (that's a year in analysis right there) and that kind of fag tale about wine-tasting and that cool slash 'em up, Vagabond. I didn't understand what was going on, but I knew I didn't like it.

Thankfully, Angel brought me the answers. The first episode was a MacGuffin. I should have known, the facts had been staring me in the face all along.

Angel's contact in the LA PD photography department had darkened the advert for Billy Bat and the facts were staring me in the face - I was looking at a Looney Toons bat swinging in front of typical Urasawa drawings of buildings and people. I hadn't noticed.

And there was more...I can't believe I hadn't noticed - I looked back at the logo, Billy Bat, the comic, was credited to some mug called "Kevin Yamagata", a made-up name if ever I heard one. That was the point in the story where these two dicks, call 'em Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum, burst into the story, grab the cartoonist, this so-called Kevin Yamagata, and reveal the move.

It was a set-up; suddenly I was back in familiar Urasawa territory, detailed buildings, expressive faces, non-cartoony cartoons. It felt right, it felt good. I opened the door and stepped out into the sunlight - it is 1949, it is a good year to be alive. Another epic begins here

Basil Wolverton in Glorious 3D

These Basil Wolverton drawings appeared in Ray Zone's The 3D Zone Presents The Weird Tales of Basil Wolverton, which was published in 1987.

As you might expect they are in 3D, and you really need the comic and a pair of paper glasses with a blue lens (right) and a red lens (left) to experience the full effect.

I always loved the 3D comics, they were strange and exotic, but I always strained to make them work better, peering in from a side angle, or lying on the couch and holding the comic book behind my head and leaning backwards to see if that added some depth - it never did.


Of course I've just ramped up the blue and red levels here, but I couldn't resist that; especially with the pages from Brain Bats of Venus (Karswell has posted the story in glorious colour on his excellent blog, click here), which is just about the most brilliant Basil Wolverton story ever. It strikes me that you can see in that story, how Wolverton managed to capture something of the same magic that Fletcher Hanks captured, but obviously with more technical drawing ability.

The Bee Man of Orn - Complete