ANDY’S PICK :: BAZOOKA JOE AND HIS GANG HC: Quickie Quiz– what was the first mini-comic? If you said The Tijuana Bibles, then you sir or madam have entered the wrong site. If you said Bazooka Joe and his Gang, well then you are most likely suffering from the same dental issues and gingivitis that have plagued me for decades. For those of you who don’t know, Bazooka Joe comics were the inside wrapper of every twin(!) piece of Bazooka Bubble Gum. This was in the years before the Bubble Yum Revolution and, I swear, I still get residual TMJ pains just thinking about  gnawing that rock hard 1 cent piece of “gum” into a soft enough mass to effectively blow bubbles.  But it was the comics with the corny jokes along with the Foreboding Fortune (Don’t look behind you!!) located below each punch line panel that made each jaw dropping (ouch!) experience so memorable. BAZOOKA JOE AND HIS GANG HC is a beautiful new book that provides the history of both the Comic and the Gum and collects several hundred of the ‘best’ of the Bazooka Joe Oeuvre. Now I know comic folks who collect everything comic-related. In fact, I know one guy who saves and bags the entire run of Comic Shop News in MINT!; but I don’t know anyone who collected the Bazooka Joe comics. It was rather difficult to keep them for any length of time, since they were usually carried away by ants if left out in the open for any length of time. So this book  is a true 20th Century artifact–a testament to taste over, well…taste. BAZOOKA JOE AND HIS GANG HC is a collector’s dream. The only thing missing is that glorious bright pink sweet smell.

We all know that HeroesCon is a great annual event–But did you know there is much more to HeroesCon than the Comic Vendors and the Artist Alley?  Just above the convention floor there is additional world of fun, excitement and informative discussion.  Each year we offer over 50 Panel events up in the 2^nd floor Meeting Rooms.

The 2^nd Floor is a great place to take a short break from the hustle and bustle. It is an oasis where a weary conventioneer can have a seat, lay down those bulging shopping bags down for an hour or two, rest those weary feet & shoulders and sample some great comics’ conversations.

The majority of these Panel Events fall into four categories: Contests, The SCAD Workshops, Presentations and Panels .

Contests: Have you been to the QuickDraw?  If so, you know what all the fuss is about.  If not, boy, are you missing out.  Amateur artists are given pencil, Bristol board and exactly 20 minutes to create their masterpiece.  The submissions are reviewed and judged by the Faculty of SCAD and the winners receive art supplies! You can actually feel the excitement in the room.  And here is the best part—we have a Quick Draw every day of the convention and anyone of any age can participate!!

SCAD Workshops: Each year, the faculty from SCAD hosts 3 classrooms per day where any HeroesCon Convention goer is welcome to sit in and see what kind of curriculum SCAD offers. They have held classes in Storytelling, Animation, Inking, Comic Sculpture and Coloring.  Every year SCAD provides an exciting mix of instruction and enlightenment (and they’re a lot of fun too!).

Presentations: HeroesCon hosts The Annual Inkblot Awards for excellence in the art of Inking.  We have an annual Cosplay Costume Show.  We’ve shown short films—The Irwin Hasen Documentary and The Joe Simon Story. We’ve had Frank Cho Draws Sexy Women, How to Create a Comic with Adam Withers and Comfort Love, Laura Martin’s Coloring Forum.  We’ve had Live Podcasts.  Mark Waid and George Perez discussed Brave and The Bold—Panel by Panel. (We didn’t get very far, but it was great!) The variety is endless, a few years ago, we had a band called Kirby Krackle perform their music live!!

Panel Discussions and Interviews:  When it comes to the Panels, our goal is to provide something for everyone regardless of their taste in comics.  The All-ages Panel, The Humor in Comics Panel and The Newspaper Strip Panel are annual main-stays.  Each year we have an Inking Panel featuring some of the top inkers in the field.  We’ve also had numerous group interviews that focused on The Art of the Comic Book Cover. We’ve had one-on-one interviews with Stan Lee, Warren Ellis, Mike Mignola and Matt Fraction. We’ve had Comic Discussion Groups where we’ve sat down with a creator to discuss—in detail—their favorite books: Bill Willingham on Fables: 1001 Nights of Snowfall, Darwyn Cooke on Parker: The Outfit.  Jaime Hernandez on Love and Rockets: New Stories, Scott Snyder on Batman: Dark Mirror, Skottie Young on OZ and many others including a panel of nine (9!!!) of the creators from Wednesday Comics together for one epic talk.

So what it comes down to is this–What do you want to see? Take a look at the list of Scheduled Artists and let us know whom you’d like to see interviewed.  What books would you like to discuss?  What Panels would you like to see? This is YOUR convention.  We want you to get as much out of it as possible!!

Feel free to respond on this site.  As the weeks fly by and additions to the guest-list are announced, don’t hesitate to make a suggestion or two to me, Andy Mansell.  I can be reached at [email protected].  We can’t make any guarantees, but every suggestion will be considered.

And thanks again for being part of HeroesCon 2013—I can’t wait!!!!

ANDY’S PICK :: COMPLETE PEANUTS HC VOL 19 1987-1988: When I was a kid–years before the proliferation of VCRs but sometime after the advent of indoor plumbing– my comic reading holy grail was any Peanuts Paperback reprint book like He’s Your Dog Charlie Brown and Slide, Charlie Brown, Slide! I’d read them and trace the drawings until they fell apart. They were never enough to satiate my Peanuts fanaticism. I wanted more!. If only Fantagraphics Complete reprint series was around during the the Nixon Administration. But lucky us!!– Volume 19 (of a projected 25) of this landmark series is out this week and contains every daily and Sunday strip from 1987-1988.

Of course the later years of the strip were not quite in the same league as the Prime Peanuts era from 1960-1976..but then again, what is??? By 1987, with world wide fame, fortune and renown, Schulz could have just hired assistants and began coasting– but instead, he kept pushing himself as an artist. When it first appeared in papers, the main selling point for Peanuts was that it was available every single day in a four panel grid that a subscribing paper could publish vertically, horizontally or even stacked. It was the all-purpose comic–built for any comic page! Here in the 38th(!) year of the strip, the Master cartoonist threw caution to the wind and altered that familiar grid by using one-two-three or even five panels to tell his daily story. The results invigorated the strip. Rerun Van Pelt continues to step into the spotlight more. The enigmatic “Lydia” makes Linus’ life a veritable hell. Snoopy injures his knee playing hockey and later writes a “kiss-and-tell” memoir. Even the much maligned Spike gets a really enjoyable storyline as he joins brother Snoopy in the trenches of WWI France.
Buy this volume– or any other volume of The Complete Peanuts that Ms. Shelley keeps in stock on the Heroes shelves. Enjoy one of the great works of comic art and be a kid again!

ALL HAIL (a FILM without) DOROTHY

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion,  and those opinions are valid, but let me be crystal clear here… in the case of OZ, the Great and Powerful, those great and powerful movie critics are (for the most part) wrong, wrong, wrong.  This is a film that delivers pure movie magic and provides some much needed myth-remaking for the next generation of film aficionados.

Now there is not a snowballs chance in the Impassable Desert that anyone over a certain age can watch the film without comparing it to the 1939 classic musical, The Wizard of Oz.  Instead of creating a pastiche or homage to that Technicolor treasure, director Sam Raimi and his writers take Victor Fleming’s vision of L. Frank Baum’s magical world and infuse it with a new vitality.  Apparently, there are many viewers out there who believe strongly that there are some things that should never be tampered with.

And here is where I disagree.  I grew up watching the WoO and loving it, but the older I got, the weirder the experience became.  The Munchkins made me extremely uncomfortable. The poppies/snow business was always more than a bit strange.  Dorothy was not a little girl no matter how hard MGM tried to corset the great Judy Garland down to size.  What gave Dorothy the right to the ruby slippers?  Did the Wicked witch of the East die intestate?  And Glinda—what was her deal—and the helium she used to float her bubble really affected her speaking voice.  A classic is a classic, but times change.  To younger eyes the MGM Oz looks old fashioned and really fake.  My daughter feigned any interest in the original and today, whenever I catch the film,  I see the tragic fate of Judy Garland unfold in front of our eyes.

I can’t help thinking that most critics did not give the new movie a fair shake for the following reasons… (more…)

ANDY’S PICK :: HAND DRYING IN AMERICA: Ben Katchor is one of the greatest cartooning talents working today.  I would highly recommend any of his books– Julius Knipl Real Estate Photographer, The Cardboard Valise, The Jew in New York or his new book Hand-drying In America and Other Stories which is a collection of weekly strips from Metropolitan Magazine.  The main focus of each strip is supposed to be New York architecture, but with Katchor at the helm, the strips quickly veer off into a world all their own.  Katchor’s world is a nostalgic love-letter to a NYC that never quite existed.   The disposable, the mundane– old catalogs, stand-alone coat racks, used door bells– become intrinsically important because some grown-up makes his living by selling them or managing a plant that manufactures them.  It is the adult world from our collective childhood based on old movies and Black & White sitcoms– a downtown business district so alien to a child’s view-point that it may as well reside in another dimension. Take the world of Saul Bellow and Phillip Roth’s fiction and siphon it through the minds-eye of an absurdest comedian like Steven Wright. That is Katchor’s universe, but as hard as I try, I am still not doing Katchor justice. And the artwork– Katchor has named Bill Griffith, R. Crumb, Poussin and Rembrandt as four of his biggest influences. Quite an odd mix and what exquisite execution. Treat yourself and pick up any of his books.  You will be amazed, tickled and just a bit sad throughout. And then you will be back for more.

ANDY’S PICK :: HELLBLAZER #300: Ah, Johnny, we hardly knew ye! It’s the end of an era and (coming as no surprise to the world of monthly comics) the start of yet another new era. Writer Peter Milligan and artists Giuseppe Camuncoli & Stefano Landini along with cover artist extraordinaire Simon Bisley bid farewell to everyone’s favorite neer-do-well occultist in the dirty haunted trench coat. John Constantine was created by Alan Moore and
during the classic American Gothic storyline in Swamp Thing over 30(!) years ago. Since then, ol’ JC has been a Vertigo Universe stand-by. This landmark issue is the third and final part of the last storyline aptly titled “DEATH and Cigarettes”. Hellblazer has been a terrific series and it has proven to be the true flagship title of Vertigo Comics. You owe it to yourselves to give this issue a try. If you love it (and if you are a horror fan, I know you will!) then you will want to go back to the beginning and devour the trade paperbacks. They are legion and they are terrific. And for the love of comics forget that god forsaken movie!