Two Chester Brown Panels That Always Make Me Laugh

There are certain comics panels that sometimes appear in my memory out of the blue and make me laugh, and a lot of them are from the early work of Chester Brown. This one pops up most frequently (it's the third panel from Chester Brown's Ed the Happy Clown saga; Ed is on his way to entertain the kids at a children's hospital):The doctor's pipe is the coup de grâce.

As a teacher, I have to confess that this next panel (from a short comic reprinted in The Little Man) sometimes tempts to me to laugh outloud--or at least smirk like the "young man" below--at inappropriate moments in the classroom:
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Spotted: Marco Corona! (Napoli photos, part 2)

Looking through my photo files I discovered that I did have a photo of Marco Corona after all, hiding in the background of this shot of me and a surprised-looking Igort at the opening reception (Igort had lots of original art up on the walls, which he wasn't too thrilled about--being, sensibly, of the comics-are-meant-to-be-read-in-books school--but I was very pleased to look at all those beautiful ink washes up close):
Ladies and Gentlemen, Signori e Signore, Marco Corona!
(Meanwhile, Marco has taken matters into his own hands on his blog...)

Elsewhere, outside the castle, Italian fanboys cluster around Go Nagai decals on an official Comicon car:
What they were shooting (Mazinger G?):
Massive Anke Feuchtenberger silkscreens at her show with Stefano Ricci:
And massive Stefano Ricci silkscreens, too. In his case, the solid blacks, were flocked!
The famous blue-themed meal at Umberto:Me drawing the sketch of Joann Sfar (in the previous post) at the "cena cyan":
A thumbnail by the maddeningly talented Joann Sfar, (from The Rabbi's Cat). Note the use of multi-colored inks to build up the images, like art spiegelman did in Maus. I don't know many other artists who work this way:
... and the inked final page.Here we are with artist and Futuropolis co-founder, Florence Cestac. She just finished a comics history of Futuropolis that Dargaud will be publishing soon. I don't know how dishy it's going to be but I hope it will help raise the profile and appreciation of this short-lived but very important French publisher, the predecessor to L'Association and much of what is good in contemporary French comics (and yes, that is Moebius behind Florence):
Turns out I also had a nice photo of me and Giacomo Nanni to end with: Read more...

This Once-Disparaging Term

Kudos to Ned Vizzini, writing in the New York Times Book Review, for being one of the first non-cartoonists I have seen publicly defending the word "comics" (well, he says "comic book," which isn't exactly the same, but it's close enough):

...it is easy to forget that "American Born Chinese" also functions well as a comic book. (Many graphic novelists are taking back this once-disparaging term.)

(from his review of American Born Chinese and the forthcoming anthology Stuck in the Middle, p. 24 of the NYTBR of Sunday May 13, 2007)
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Napoli Comicon 2007 photos

The Napoli Comicon has probably the most spectacular location of any comics convention in the world, it's an old castle, Castel Sant'Elmo at the top of a hill overlooking the city, the bay, and Mount Vesuvius. I didn't really get a good overall shot of the whole thing, but here's the entrance:
...and here's a view of one corner of the pentagonal (I think) building:
The cavernous hallways were lined with booths selling the usual comicon wares. The only noticeably Italian aspect of the con was the strong presence of homegrown weekly pulp comics like Diabolik and Dylan Dog:
Jessica with Omar Martini, our Italian publisher, at the Black Velvet booth.
Omar took the night train down from Bologna the night before the con bearing hot-off-the -press, ink-smelly copies of La Perdida and Esercizi di Stile. Here's the cover design, it's based on Charlie Orr's UK edition cover:
Wares on sale at the Black Velvet booth:The wall facing the Black Velvet booth featured a small exhibit of original pages from our two books:The Italian rock magazine XL sponsored a diversion-packed room of "underground" comics, painted dolls, and large cut-outs by the cutting edge of Italian comics. Here is Jessica getting her butt kicked by a Francesca Ghermandi drawing:
And here is the charming creator of said butt-kicking drawing:Here's Jessica with up-and-coming comics star Andrea Bruno [now red eye corrected! --MM], whose excellent new book Brodo de Niente ("Nothing Broth") was debuted at the show by Canicola and will surely be making waves here soon (it's one of their innovative "subtitled" editions):
I also caught up with the rest of the Canicola gang--Liliana and Edo and Giacomo Nanni, mainly. I didn't meet all that many new artists but I did meet the one artist I was hoping to meet: Marco Corona, who does the excellent Reflections in the Ignatz series. (No photo, sorry. It's too bad because he's a very colorful character, the class clown of the Italian indie scene. He accepted an award wearing a fake beard and speaking in a falsetto.) Reflections ends with issue three and Marco is considering what he will do next in between traveling, tattooing and doing illustration gigs.

I didn't get photos of many of the bigger stars who were there, although Go Nagai had his assistant take a picture of us with him at the opening reception. Jean Giraud was charming and very approachable; we chatted a few times but I never got a good photo op. Jacques de Loustal was there but I never got around to meeting him--there will be another opportunity. We were reunited with some of our friends and acquaintances from Angoulême, including Joann Sfar, who I sketched sketching in his diary:
By way of explanation of the drawing: on Friday night we had a big artists/editors dinner at a famous Neapolitan restaurant called Umberto. They had prepared a menu inspired by the "Blu" theme of this year's con (see the Bilal poster below). The oddest bit was a portion of extruded blue paste that looked like Play-Doh or AquaFresh (it turned out to be dyed mashed potato). Someone at the table--I think it was Joann--decided it must be pâte à schtroumpf: smurf paste.

Incidentally, while researching links for this post I found a photo-packed comicon blog of uncertain origin (it's not clear to me if it's an official con blog or if it was done independently). In any case it has lots of photos (including an odd photo of me and Jessica taken at least a year ago--does anybody recognize where (in the US) we are?) and descriptions of the panel discussions (titled "Mumble, Mumble" this year, to the confusion of much of the Italian audience), exhibits, and award winners. Check it out to get a broader view of the comicon. Read more...

Los Otros

I'm still recovering and catching up from our trip to Italy, but I plan to put up some photos from Napoli Comicon when I get a chance. Meanwhile, here's a page from a comic I just finished for a publication called Los Otros, a themed anthology (the theme this year being "others") that will be published and distributed at La Semana Negra, my third European convention of the year, coming up in July.

I will have a minicomic version of this story on sale at MoCCA Art Fair, June 23-4. Read more...