RASL (played by our friend Mark) stopped by and I took some pics of him in his very first t-shirt!!!

These 100% cotton shirts come in small to XXL, and are made by American Apparel.

*Maya tattoo not included with purchase…sorry!

Thanks to our friend Bob Chapman and Graphitti Designs for producing these awesome t-shirts for us!!!  Get yours today!

Thanks again to the guys for having me on the show!

Last week The Newshour posted a podcast follow up to their interview about the Bone and Beyond exhibit. It’s a regular feature of their show and part of their website allowing viewers to ask questions. This interview is much more in depth than than the television piece.

You can find it here.

You can also see one of the people whose questions was picked here.

A video stream of the original Newshour piece is here.

Posted by Tom.

Hi everyone, Tom here. I just wanted to let you know that we received our reprints of Stupid, Stupid Rat-tails and ROSE. They are now available for purchase in the store.

Stupid, Stupid Rat-tails: The Adventures of Big Johnson BONE, Frontier Hero was written by Tom Sniegoski with art by Jeff Smith. There is also a second hilarious story of Riblet, a baby boar that runs into some rat creatures lookin for a pork lunch. Riblet is also written by Tom and illustrated by Stan Sakai, artist of Usagi Yojimbo.

ROSE was written by Jeff, with beautiful full color illustrations by award winning fantasy artist, Charles Vess.

Both editions are available in softcover only. You can get them by clicking here.

Still, it’s a nice, chunky interview, even if their readers are a bunch of dicks. The first Onion/AV Club Interview I did in May of 2000 is here.

Not too long ago, a team from PBS NEWSHOUR came out to Columbus to visit with me and check out the exhibit at The Wexner Center. The segment is going to air tonight, July 21, 2008 on The NEWSHOUR with Jim Lehrer.

There will also be a live on-line forum next week on Wednesday, July 30 @ 11:30 EST. Check local listings for times.

You can listen to an audio podcast of the segment here and you can watch a video stream here.

From the PBS Newshour site:

COMIC ARTIST

Jeffrey Brown profiles the work of cartoonist and graphic novelist Jeff Smith, best known for his "Bone" comics series.

Here’s a picture of Vijaya and I with our excellent staff - - Kathleen Glosan, Tom Gaadt, and Steve Hamaker, in front of the mural at The Wexner Center.

Vijaya and I were contacted a few days ago by the Columbus City Council to let us know about a resolution that was being introduced. We’re pretty excited. Here is the announcement that Maryellen O’Shaughnessy’s office posted in our comments section:

Announcement:

Columbus City Council member Maryellen O’Shaughnessy will introduce a resolution of expression recognizing Jeff’s remarkable career on Monday July 28 2008 at 5:00 PM in city council chambers at City Hall. We are looking forward to hosting Jeff, his friends and family, and Wexner Center for the Arts officials for this special event.

Please contact me with any questions,

Lelia Cady, Legislative Analyst to
Maryellen O’Shaughnessy, Member
Columbus City Council
614 327-3321
lecady@columbus.gov

Comicrelated took extensive pictures of the exhibit and you can see them here.

And artdaily.com has a great article here.

Don’t forget that you still have until August 3rd to see it yourself. You can get some more information from the Wexner Center here.

With the overwhelming success of the Before Bone book and its complete sell-out, I wanted to let everybody know that the Jeff Smith: Bone and Beyond exhibition catalog is still available. If you can’t make it to the exhibit (you still have a month left), you can see everything here, plus a lot more.

Published in conjunction with the Wexner Center and the Cartoon Research Library’s 2008 exhibition, this catalogue presents work featured in the show, including examples of Smith’s original drawings for Bone, plus the more recent Shazam and RASL.

Also featured are selected works by cartoonists who have influenced Smith, such as George Herriman, Charles Schulz and Walt Kelly, and essays by comic book and fantasy author Neil Gaiman, comic book artist and scholar Scott McCloud and Wexner Center film/video curator David Filipi, the exhibition’s co-curator. Cartoon Research Library curator Lucy Shelton Caswell, the exhibition’s other co-curator, provides an introduction. The size is 10.5 x 9.5 in. 

You can see some images of the book that were taken by a reader here.

You can purchase a copy from us in the store or at the Wexner shop site.

Comics on Comics video - - an interview I did with Blair Marnell at the BEA.

I know the Book Expo America was weeks ago, but I’ve been slammed and haven’t had a chance to put up my photos until now…

BEA was all about graphic novels this year. Above is the Scholastic booth at the Book Expo America, where hundreds of bookbuyers and librarians lined up to get their advanced copies of BONE volume 8: Treasure Hunters signed. It was the kind of signing line I’m only used to seeing in San Diego at the Comic-Con international!

On Saturday morning, I was moderating the first ever BEA Graphic Novel Authors Breakfast, so I met early with Art Spiegelman and Janna Morishima to prepare.

Janna, who works with Diamond Book Distributors, organized the event and chose the panelists: Art Spiegelman, Mike Mignola, Jeph Loeb, and me. Four artists with very different styles and areas of expertise, ranging from the Underground to Mainstream, All ages to Hollywood. The thing we all had in common was an early desire to explore long form comics; comics that people now refer to almost off handedly as graphic novels.

In the days leading up to the breakfast, Art told me he had a power point presentation that briefly covered the history of comics and the things that led him to the art form. Sounded perfect, so we worked it into the panel.

Here we are going over the order of events and making sure I could follow his power point during my introductions.

People began to crowd into the room, and at one point, Mike Mignola wandered up to the podium and cracked us up as we fumbled with our technology.

The panel begins and Janna introduces us to the audience.

I start by stating my theory that 1986 was the Big Bang of graphic novels, a year that saw the release of MAUS by art spiegelman, THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS by Frank Miller, and WATCHMEN by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. Also, I turned to the other guys and asked if any of them used the term graphic novel to describe what they do, or if they just call them comic books. Not sursprisingly (to me, anyway), they all answered "comic books."

Then I introduced Art’s power point.

Art’s talk was funny, personal and really informative. It included some historical background as well as some breakdowns on how the art form itself works. Art’s really good at this, and the audience, mostly made up of bookstore people and librarians who have never heard of Dr. Wertham or Basil Wolverton, were eating it up. And as Spiegelman interwove his own formative experiences with comics, you could see the whole thing was going over really well.

Next we heard from Mike Mignola who talked about the joy of working in his studio at his desk, weaving folklore into his Hellboy tales, and his less than compelling (for him) experiences working with Hollywood.

Jeph Loeb on the other hand came from Hollywood and was delighted when he was first given the chance to work on comic books. His work with long time collaborator Tim Sale on Batman: The Long Halloween was one of the turning points in the Direct Market’s interest in mainstream graphic novels.

At one point, as the moderator, I was trying to bridge the gap between Hollywood and comics, and I mentioned the similarity between the visual techniques of comics and film, the developement of camera angles and even saying that I disagreed with people who don’t believe you should use film terms to describe comics techniques. I was thinking of Alan Moore, but Art jumped in saying he was getting aggravated - - he pointed out that comics didn’t need films in order to innovate; Rudolf Toeffler was doing cross-cutting before D.W. Griffith was a gleam in his father’s eye! Or something like that.

(I mention this because it gets a lot of play in almost every article written about the event. I think it was a really interesting and memorable moment - - in my defense, Art actually makes my point for me by using the term "cross-cutting" - - a word that comes from the movie industry and refers to the physical cutting of the film during editing - - but I let it go, because his larger point that comics are not a derivative or lesser art form was a good one for a broader non-comics audience. Also, Art and I argue like that just for fun even when we’re not on a panel!)

Anyway, the breakfast was a huge success. You can read more indepth coverage by clicking on the links at the end of this blog.

Afterwards, folks lined up to get some of their books signed to chat up the panelists. That’s PW’s Calvin Reid talking to Jeph Loeb.

During my signing at the Scholastic booth, Dick Robinson, President, Chairman and CEO of Scholastic stopped by.

Above, I’m recording a podcast for Ingram Book Group, the world’s largest wholesale book distributors. Once I get a link to the podcast, I’ll post it for anyone interested. Below, one of my favorite interviews of the weekend was this one for younger readers, but I’ve lost my notes on who this little girl was - - doesn’t matter, she was adorable. Again, if I get some more info, I’ll pass it on.

And last, but not least, signing right next to me during the official BEA autograph session was master guitarist Slash. Only at Book Expo…or, well, maybe Comic-Con International in San Diego, now that I think about it.

This ain’t the old days, that’s for sure.

Some related industry links:

Icv2: First Evr BEA Graphic Novel Breakfast a Sold-Out Success

Publishers Weekly: An Early Morning Lovefest for Comics

The Beat: Graphic Novels Not Just for Breakfast Anymore

An attendee’s view:

The Written Nerd: BEA Recap Part II, The Graphic Novel Scene