With his new, twice-yearly omnibus SUBLIFE, the young cartoonist John Pham attempts that most difficult of artistic achievements: recalibrating one's artistic voice after having already made an early, promising impression. Pham was one of a small group of exciting cartoonists to emerge at the beginning of this decade. Immediately noticed for his self-published work, he was in the original MOME line-up as well. The work in SUBLIFE can be difficult and challenging as Pham delves into cartooning influences far removed from the surface pleasures of his earliest comics. The major serial (or many serials that will come to share space in future volumes of SUBLIFE) in the debut issue, "221 Sycamore St," eases us into the lives of a handful of city residents bound by familial relationships or geographical proximity. What sounds like it could be a slog bounces along livened by a unique take on tiered comics pages and a loopy sense of humor that surfaces in various surprising ways. I was happy he agreed to talk to me. I hadn't heard from him in a while. -- Tom Spurgeon
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TOM SPURGEON: My first question would be the obvious one: where have you been and what have you been up to? I think there are a number of people familiar with your self-published work and the Epoxy Press stuff that maybe haven't followed you into the comics that have come since. How did the first part of your career come to a close, and what have you been doing in broad terms in the years between then and now?
JOHN PHAM: I've been here, in Los Angeles, still toiling away on comics. Just really slowly. I guess for the last few years I've been juggling the comics work -- most of which appeared in early issues of MOME -- with so-called commercial work. I also went through some serious, heavy personal stuff which kinda took the wind out of my sails for a while.
Once I was done with issue three of Epoxy, I sort of took some time off serious comics work in order to reexamine what I was doing. This was convenient because I was getting a lot of commercial jobs that provided a reasonable and consuming distraction. While doing those jobs, I worked in my sketchbook, made the Substitutelife, Mildred Lee, and the Gay mini's... I looked at the Epoxy issues and I was pretty unsatisfied with them. With the exception of maybe Modesto, I didn't feel like I could fully commit to continuing any of those stories. I didn't even like the title "Epoxy"; it sounded like the name of some dumb graphic design studio.
It was around this time that a Canadian graphic design studio called "Epoxy" contacted me, threatening to litigate for the trademark. I wanted to fight for it on principle, but I hated the name anyway, so fuck 'em. They can keep it if it means that much to them.
It actually kinda worked out well; it gave me a chance and excuse to start over with a new title, which got me excited about doing comics again. I was able to think about the Epoxy stuff as something that was effectively done, in the past, all wrapped up. I was approached by Eric and Gary to be in MOME, and I said sure. I thought I could contribute to the anthology while doing my own solo thing, but I soon figured out that wasn't really a possibility.
Which relates to my working slowly. For the years following Epoxy, I got used to working so slowly, approaching the real comics work as sort of low on the priority totem pole... The commercial and miscellaneous work had hard and fast deadlines, so those had to get done. On top of it all was the personal upheaval I was experiencing at the time, and it made for a bad mix, comics productivity-wise.
I was stoked to be in MOME, though, and happy to at least have some sort of outlet for my comics while I was working my way through some tough times. After I think the second issue, I drove up to Seattle with my good friend Jason Shiga and asked Eric [Reynolds] and Gary [Groth] if they would publish a solo book by me. I told them if they didn't I would let Jason loose on them. And that's how SUBLIFE came about.
SPURGEON: Talk about that initial conception of SUBLIFE. Did you see it as a longer work in a series of longer works -- ? I mean, I think it's a first volume. Did you see it as a book series or as a comics anthology? How crystallized was it when you brought it to Fanta and what changed between conception and execution?
PHAM: I originally wanted it to be a pamphlet series, 24 pages each, maybe three times a year. The idea of a regular deadline -- like what MOME provided -- was attractive to me. Gary suggested a 100-page, once-a-year annual format. Our compromise was to do maybe two issues a year, at about 48 pages each, squarebound. That would make them similar in size and format to Jason's books.
Unlike Jason's books, however, the series will be an anthology, with serialized longer work, standalone stories, and one-pagers rounding out each issue.
I originally wanted the first book to be about 72 pages. That got pared down to 64 due to technical printing stuff. So there's a bunch of material that was done for issue one that will end up in issue two. Mostly one pagers, short stories, gags. The one backup strip that did make it to the first issue, "Deep Space" was an afterthought. I wanted to do a strip that was different in tone and style to the "221 Sycamore St" serial, just to sort of balance the whole comic out. I did that strip in a bit of a fever in order to get it done in time to print, but it turned out okay I think. I'm actually really eager to continue it.
SPURGEON: Before I start hitting you with questions about the work, I was told you were about the happiest cartoonist anyone could recall seeing to have the unbound copies of SUBLIFE at San Diego. Or at least you were far happier than anyone has ever been to have unbound copies. Is it good to have this book out, to start this series? Are you excited about the prospect of doing regular comics work for a while?
PHAM: Yep, I was genuinely happy and relieved to finally see my book, unbound or not. I had been agonizing for months over how it would print and it was such a great thing to see that the printers hadn't majorly screwed anything up. In fact, all the fuck-ups in the book are mine alone, and they are very minor.
Specifically, I was concerned about how the colors would mix, whether this printer would be able to process the weird layout technique I employed to separate the two inks I was using. I was using new colors I hadn't used before, so I wasn't sure how those would print. Plus, I did really small, delicate foil stamping on the cover, which I wasn't sure would hold, or even look good. The binding wasn’t so much an issue or question mark for me.
But seeing all those other unknowns coalesce perfectly into this little object was a joy for me and represented the release of great, months-long pent up personal tension, which I guess sounds kind of gross, but yeah, it was happy times.
As far as doing more widely published comics work, I'm not sure if excited is the word...I'm definitely eager, and a little nervous. I'm concerned about being able to still juggle this commercial-work crap with producing SUBLIFE at a reasonable pace. I can only hope to do my best.
SPURGEON: Talk to me a bit about the "Sycamore St" serial. I guess the dopiest question is to ask after its conception and if it relates to any shared-living experiences you've had in the past. If so -- I guess also if not -- what is it about that kind of experience that made you want to work with it in a comics narrative?
PHAM: I have not had a shared living experience like the one in the story, no. There isn't a whole lot that is in the story that's been experienced by me first-hand, technically. But I did do a lot of research.
I don't want to get into the specifics of why this shared-living situation is in the story. I think I may have had some reasons when I came up with it, but they've either changed or have been forgotten by now. Or maybe they're too embarrassing to list. Who knows?
SPURGEON: Can I ask what the research entailed?
PHAM: Just the usual stuff. I read a bunch of books, interviewed some people. Drove around and took pictures. I interviewed some friends who were coke users, as well as a Southerner who was raised as a segregationist. I read a bunch of books about White Supremacists and their ilk. The story is set in Los Angeles so just living here can be seen as equal parts research and inspiration.
There's still a lot of research to be done, but I usually try to save it for right when it is about to be relevant to story.
SPURGEON: Let me ask you this, then. I just did a panel at the San Diego where Rutu Modan and Eddie Campbell talked about working with characters in their longer works. They indicated they didn't know the characters until they had done some pages about them, which meant that they were frequently different in later appearances in that comic than in their initial appearance. "221 Sycamore St" is presented to us as a series of character studies, or at least arranged that way. Have you experienced any change in your attitudes towards these characters as you work to put their stories in comics form. More generally, how has getting some work under your belt changed your plans for the work ahead, or do you adhere closely to original plans?
PHAM: The story is always changing. New themes and ideas present themselves all the time, the real challenge for me as a writer is to try to keep the whole work somewhat coherent while being flexible enough to work in the changes. I didn't even really know what the story was about when I began to write it. I thought I could get a handle on it in the prep stage; I wrote lots of outlines and notes and leaned on my research heavily. But of course most of that stuff went out the window once the story began to progress.
So I try not to keep too tight a reign on things as I work on it. It's interesting how the story reveals itself to you as you sort of flail blindly through the some parts of the process.
I have to say, it's really tough to talk about this sort of thing because the work is still incomplete.
One of the things I've always loved about long, serialized comics work like Jimmy Corrigan, Peanuts, even superhero stuff, is the perceptible growth and change you can chart from the early pages of the strips all the way to when they mature. Even a dumb strip like Garfield., which I loved as a kid. You can see how characters were drawn differently, how the rhythms of the story sort of fluctuate, or how the themes have yet to crystallize. And then the work blossoms and solidifies; it gains its own sort of momentum and coherence in theme and style. And the great thing is the process is transparent, you can sort of experience the artist's discovery as they experience it.
SPURGEON: The strip you mention... one of the striking things about your first issue is your use of elements of traditional cartoon shorthand: broken lines to indicate a line of sight, pictures rather than text in word balloons or thought balloons, floating imagery to indicate a state of mind, insets to draw attention to a specific element within a panel. How much thought do you give to the use of these elements? Is there a danger in overusing them? Are you cognizant of their effect on the narrative itself, the way they might communicate a kind of intrusion into the narrative by the author's voice? How do you view those techniques?
PHAM: If I get the opportunity, I'm pretty eager to use these devices. They usually have to come from a need in the story, like for instance when uncle A____ throws the house keys at Phineas, in the second half of the first issue. At their proper size in the panel, they are quite small and possibly unrecognizable as keys. So I almost had to draw that inset with the larger depiction. Dramatically speaking, I guess it makes the keys themselves more important too, which is true. And a lot of times using a cartooning device is just the most efficient way to depict something; it's shorthand, you’re right.
And I don't necessarily think of them as intrusions to the narrative. They're just storytelling tools. And if it reminds the reader that he/she is reading a cartoon, then even better!
I'm also trying to get away from the sort of filmic visual vocabulary that I used in my old stuff. At least with this strip, since I'd like it to feel more like it's got the texture and rhythms of a novel rather than a movie. But I do like the idea of presenting some of the situations in the story almost as a stage play. Instead of a roving camera and use of close-ups, just having a static background, with the characters entering stage left or right, full-figure. This way you can read a character's body language, and not just their faces. You get this sense of fixed distance from what's happening too, which is interesting. But I may be getting away from your original question here...
SPURGEON: No, that's cool. In fact, that seems like a natural jumping off point into the question most people have asked me to ask you, which is about the general look of your comics now as opposed to your earlier work. Your work now seems to me pared down, much more stylized than representational, and your line seems more delicate than it might have been once upon a time. Can you talk about how you've developed the look you're using now, and what you feel your current styles brings to your comics that might not have been achievable with what you were doing five to seven years ago?
PHAM: I wasn't really happy with much of what I did in Epoxy, but the drawing style stood out most to me as garish, generic, technically flawed, and worst of all, inconsistent. I just didn’t have the chops to draw the way I wanted to. It felt like I was pandering to an extent, drawing in an accessible way, when what I really wanted to do was develop an idiosyncratic, personal style. So when I did the Substitute Life strip -- the one that's in that cardboard mini -- I decided to throw everything I had stupidly learned about comics up until that point away. I just tried to be a bit more honest and pure with the cartooning and while I'm not completely happy with the results, it was still a breakthrough for me. And I guess you can see where the style for that grew into the cartooning style I'm using nowadays.
I think when I started I was definitely aware that I was trying out different styles and channeling whatever cartoonists I was into at the moment. Looking back at some of the stuff now -- and it's painful, believe me -- I can see the heavy [Dan] Clowes and [Adrian] Tomine influence in "Modesto," my dumb version of a soft sci-fi Akira-esque world in "Shiva," and maybe an attempt at a watered down Paul Pope- and Frank Miller-type story with "Elephantine." The obvious, fatal flaw with a process like this is that the work tends to end up being just a weak dilution of the stuff that originally inspired it.
SPURGEON: Is there anything to rebooting your style once you've been making comics for a while that's different than putting together influences early on? Are you perhaps more cognizant of overtly experimenting to get an effect, or is it perhaps even more subtle this time around, simply attempting to create in a certain way where the influences get pulled along in the attempt?
PHAM: Skimming over some of the Epoxy stuff now, it's like looking at my high school senior portrait.
And it's not so much experimenting so much as it is finding way of writing or drawing that I'm happy with, one that doesn't make me feel like a douche all the time. It's all terribly subjective and emotional, but that's okay, and I’d like to think that it is as simple as that. Right now I'm really happy with this thin line style that I'm using in SUBLIFE, at least in the latter half of that first issue. I really like how it helps accentuate the angularity and flatness of the drawing. Which may help with the panel to panel reading experience, whatever. So maybe I've finally found something that works for me, who knows?
SPURGEON: John, before we get too far away from it, and to make more explicit something we kicked around earlier in slightly obtuse fashion, how do you write? I get that you do research, but how do you take what you have to the page? For that matter, how much do you take to the page and how much develops on the page?
PHAM: It depends on the strip. With "Sycamore St," I try to keep it relatively structured. I'll generally write a few notes down as to where I want a particular section to go, then move to thumbnails, pencils, inks, etc. It's kind of an iterative process, so the final colored version of a page can sometimes differ entirely from the thumbnailed one, and the changes could have happened anywhere between the penciling stage to the lettering one.
With "Deep Space," it's pretty much made up as it goes along, section by section. Those pages were done in sequence, from one cluster of panels to another, without much planning or scripting in the traditional sense. It's a much more inconsistent way of working, as you'll notice that the tone of the strip changes drastically throughout. Which I guess can work for that particular story, since it's about two spacemen driven to near-insanity whose fortunes change by the end of the second page. The direction for that strip is pretty open ended, as opposed to the "Sycamore St" strip, where I'm attempting to present a much more crafted and structured narrative.
SPURGEON: I'd also be interested in hearing a little bit about how you structured certain pages in "Sycamore Street." You open with a sequence featuring a cat avoiding some dogs. I thought it compelling that you're sort of working with a grid pattern, but at the same time you're breaking it up with bigger, single panels, and the panels aren't exactly even or uniform between rows. Can you talk about the pacing of that sequence and the effect you get with the single panels and the way the panels don't correspond tier-to-tier the way they might on a traditional comics page?
PHAM: "Sycamore St" is set on a baseline three-tier structure. I did it for reasons that relate to the story, and it's a template I try not to deviate from too much. I know the book will be end up being long, maybe a few hundred pages long, and I want the reading experience to be as plain and uncomplicated as possible, since maybe the plot itself may end up being a bit convoluted. I don't want the reader to have to decipher what's going on in each individual page, they'll never make it to the end.
So I try to approach each tier as its own unit or sentence, which I guess makes each complete page like a paragraph. You'll also notice this prose-like conceit at the end of some of the sequences where the tier finishes short, like at the end of "The Sheet."
I try to keep the size of the panels within the tiers flexible, so it doesn't look like a grid, which I think would be distracting from the whole each-tier-is-a-unit idea. On the other hand, I'm not averse to breaking up the rows every once in a while, with title panels and such.
SPURGEON: What are you trying to achieve, then, on those rare occasions you break the tiered effect?
PHAM: It's a good way to slow the reader down and break up the monotony of the constant three tiers. And it's generally for important panels like the titles, the dream sequence, the isometric view of Terence's room, etc. Sometimes, however, I just need vertical space to show something, like when the cat gets blocked in the alleyway by that high wall.
SPURGEON: The last scene in this issue, with the dog: it's slightly terrifying but at the same time it's also funny. And there's a lot of that in this first issue: the fact the Captain Joe Ho is doing his shift pantless, the catalog of smells that make Vrej happy, the relentlessly pathetic fantasy in which Hubie Winters indulges. There's a lot of humor here. What is it about that tension between pathos and humor that appeals to you? Are you cognizant of working that territory between our feeling for your characters and our laughing at them? Are there any risks to building characters that way?
PHAM: The humor usually comes as a logical outgrowth of some of the scenes. Sometimes it's shoehorned. Overall I guess its a modal way of telling a story that I think works well in some situations. I guess humor can be disarming on the surface level -- it entertains -- which makes it a good delivery system for anything you’d like to communicate, even if it’s a horribly offensive idea. Or even a really serious, profound one. Of course, this is hardly an original thought, as much older, deader guys have been using this mode in discourse since time immemorial. Plus, shitting, pissing and farting is always funny.
There is a danger in working this territory, and I recognize it. I'm really conscious of playing the racist MacDonald brothers for laughs too much, which I think would trivialize them, or worse, imply some sort of ironic stance I am taking with their portrayal. I don't necessarily want to distance myself from the white supremacists any more than I would any of my other characters since I'm extremely curious about exploring what makes them tick. And humor can be a good tool in this, but again, I don't want to lean on it too much.
SPURGEON: One more, then, just because I'm afraid if I don't ask I won't see you again for another five years: when is the next book due? What are the serials planned for it and how much should we see of each?
PHAM: Fantagraphics and I are trying to figure out whether a Spring '09 release would be feasible. I'm working on a four-month long commercial project right now that's sort of forced me to put issue #2 on the back burner -- what else is new? The good thing is I already have a bunch of stuff done for it, with the rest of it more or less mapped out. There will definitely be more self-contained smaller strips. There's a two-page memoir about my parochial school alma mater, a one-pager about the world's greatest baseball player, another one-pager about warring bloggers, a small installment of the "Sycamore St" serial, as well as another episode of "Deep Space." There will also be a medium length, self-contained post-apocalyptic story that's a bit of an experiment.
In all, it should total about 48 pages, squarebound. I'm excited about this issue because of the sheer variety of strips that will be included. Oh, and if I can plug a few of my other upcoming projects: my girlfriend Raina [Lee] and I are gearing up to publish 1-UP #4 -- a journal/zine about weird video game culture -- and we're rounding up submissions. I've also got a strip in the upcoming Kramers Ergot Vol. 7 that sort of relates to some of the events in the "Sycamore St" serial. And if you live in the LA area, please come to my mom's nail salon, it's called Linda's Nail Care, it's located on 8322 Wilshire Blvd, call 310-657-6078 for appointments.
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Sublife Vol. 1, John Pham, Fantagraphics, softcover, 64 pages, 9781560979463 (ISBN13), August 2008, $8.99
First Thought Of The Day
I don't think we've given the term "fumetto" the consideration it deserves as a possible international, borders-crossing word for comics, BD and manga.
The top comics-related news stories from August 30 to September 3, 2008:
1. New calls to boycott Danish food products based on offenses relating to the Muhammed caricatures published in 2005 and republished since.
2. Lynn Johnston moves into the "new-run" phase of her For Better or For Worse, basically doing new material from old storylines featuring the Patterson family.
3. Mark Siegel casually drops mention of rough First Second sales figures for recent books, bucking an industry-wide trend going back to Moses and his Canaan Comics line.
Quote Of The Week
"Mandarake's shares soared by 17 percent at one stage, prompting one Nomura analyst to declare the stock 'an obvious short for when the market starts thinking rationally again.'" -- Leo Lewis
this week's imagery comes from pioneering comic book house Quality
Five For Friday Special -- Answer One of the Questions From Each of The Following Five Groups
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Favorites
1. What is your favorite stand-alone publication of the last five years?
2. What is your favorite ongoing serial comic that's published an installment in the last three months?
3. What is your favorite webcomic?
4. What is your favorite ongoing newspaper strip?
5. What is your favorite comics web site that is not a link- or commentary-blog?
Comic Shops
6. What's the best experience you've ever had in a comics shop?
7. What's the worst experience you've ever had in a comics shop?
8. List the names of the comics shops that have been your shop in your lifetime of buying comics.
9. If a comic shop has opened within 50 miles in the last two years, what exactly makes you think it will or won't survive until a fifth anniversary?
10. What is something you've done in a comics shop you're sorry happened?
Greats
11. Who is the Greatest Living Cartoonist?
12. Name the female cartoonist highest up in your personal pantheon.
13. Name the cartoonist with a non-white South American or African heritage highest up in your personal pantheon.
14. Who is the world's most under-appreciated cartoonist?
15. Name a cartoonist you know is great but whose work you find hard to enjoy.
Nostalgia
16. What was the first comic that you remember buying after the last time you stopped buying comics?
17. What comic do you plan to revisit one day?
18. Name a comic that was even better when you tracked it down than you remember it being the first time.
19. What is the worst comic in your collection that you keep for reasons other than its quality?
20. One word only: what is your primary non-comic association with comics?
Self-Improvement
21. What one site not your own or a friend's does CR not in your opinion cover near enough?
22. Name a comics figure this site has never interviewed you'd like to see interviewed.
23. Name a comics figure this site has interviewed you'd like to see interviewed again.
24. Name an under- or unreported news story from your perspective.
25. Name a resource this site could house that would be valuable to you.
Bonus Section: Not Comics
1. What is your favorite sandwich?
2. Name three US vice-presidents in the order that they occur to you.
3. Name a movie that shouldn't have been remade and a movie that should be.
4. Otto Graham, Joe Montana or Tom Brady?
5. If you could have any middle name in the world not "Bronislaw," what would it be?
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The results will appear in this space next Friday.
Your Danish Cartoons Hangover Update
* new calls rise up during Ramadan to boycott Danish food products because of the Muhammed caricatures.
* a Danish publisher is in negotiations to buy Jewel of Medina, the novel dropped by Random House when some predicted violence as a result that would remind folks of the Danish Cartoons Controversy of early 2006.
* one lecturer on a college campus is accused of stating that Flemming Rose, the editor of Jyllands-Posten involved of the original publication of the Muhammed caricatures, is Jewish.
* discussion of that Sheikh Said interview from earlier this summer where he talked about the Danish Cartoons.
That Fresh New Comic Shop Smell... By Tom Spurgeon
So I'm walking down the street the other day from Northwestern's Ryan Field to the place I'm staying in the Edgewater neighborhood of Chicago, when what do I come across but a new comic book shop in the neighborhood. Third Coast Comics opened up three weeks earlier than the time of my visit, meaning four weeks ago now, in the 6200 block of North Broadway. This is an unassuming part of a major north-south thoroughfare about four blocks west of Lake Michigan and three blocks south of Loyola University. I used to live two streets over.
I love comic book shops. Although I'm happy to criticize their excesses, argue against what I might feel are delusional statements from their owners and hammer the system that encourages both, my simple standard for why comic book shops are terrific is that if they didn't exist and then suddenly existed, I'm pretty sure the day they sprung into being would be considered the greatest day ever for comic book fans. Comic book shops have the comic books in them. I like the stinky ones and the awesome ones, the successful ones and the clubhouses, the ones where I can send my Mom and the ones I'm sort of scared to go into. I want an industry that encourages the great shops but a culture that allows for the ones that are less than great. I try to give individual shops the same leeway I give individual comics creators. I wish I had one in my town.
What I never get to see anymore is a brand new comic book shop, all pink-faced and stubby arms flailing in the air. It may be as long as ten years now since I entered a shop whose past history was marked in days rather than months or years. Here are a few pictures of the new Chicago retail establishment taken by my brother Whit, accompanied by some notes from my visit. I hope if you're in the area you'll consider stopping by.
These are two of the owner-operators: Thad Doria and Terrence Gant. (A third partner, Joey Gerharz, wasn't at the store the day CR stopped by.) I dealt with Gant. I liked him because he had the gift of gab, which I appreciate in a comic shop owner; he seems to be working his ass off while enjoying the experience, which some of my retailing friends tell me is key; and he knew local retailing history, such as this shop's location around the corner from the legendary Larry's on Devon space, now closed, which delights me as a industry wonk. He made me laugh with a couple of stories about Larry's, a shop he used to travel across town to visit as a kid. He talked about how grumpy Larry (at least I assume the owner's name was Larry) could be with his customers and claimed that when Larry's was split into two retail locations side by side, with separate front doors and the two fronts not connected inside as far as anyone could tell, local fans compared the set-up to something Batman villain Two Face would run because one side was light and airy and mostly clean; the other was dark and cramped and seemed sort of dirty.
Another thing that was interesting about Gant is that he said he moved into this location after a few years of selling comic books on-line as a virtual retailer. This is the second time I was made aware of a new Chicago retailer had come into opening a brick and mortar store. Could that be a trend in the making? Could this be a way for retailers-to-be to gain experience and test demand in an under-serviced area? And to be honest, I don't think I'd ever met a comic shop co-owner that was black, so I imagine that has to be a good thing, too.
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This is the storefront, with pen and ink (I think) drawings of various cartoon characters around the glass portion of a space Gant described as "falling into our lap" when I asked him why Third Coast set up in this exact location. To the question itself he responded they wanted something north, but not as north as the Evanston-bordering Rogers Park (distance and parking issues) and not right on Loyola's campus, either (too great a dependency on student traffic). North Broadway in Edgewater is an interesting area in that the neighborhood has gentrified since the early 1990s, but hasn't thrived in the way you might expect for the number of people choosing to live here. So while things have steadily improved, for example a lot of the restaurants have cycled out two or three times and many of the services-type places have changed hands. Still, there's parking all around, a number of livable blocks within biking and walking distance, and it'd be easy to access the shop from the Granville stop on the El (in fact, it's probably a little shorter distance than you have to walk from the Belmont stop to Chicago Comics). So I can understand Gant's satisfaction.
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Above is a walk around the store's main racks. Generally, going clockwise and starting to the left as you walk in: books about comics, manga, high-end alternative, two big periodicals racks, a smaller periodicals rack, alternative and superhero trades, the main desk and then I think maybe kids books or other accessible titles. There are also two stand-alone shelves in the middle. That's not exactly everything the store offers, and I might have goofed up a rack or two, but that should give you a rough idea of what they have on hand. The key to place can be summed up as follows: it's a full-service comic book shop in terms of breadth of coverage, perhaps not depth. Heck, there's one full row devoted to the Ignatz books. I probably wouldn't make the trip from if Chicago Comics were closer, but I'd kill for this in my hometown.
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This is going to sound silly, but if you live in a town without a comic book shop, as I do, you can forget how powerfully appealing certain items can be when you see them in person. I spent an entire day last week looking slack-jawed at art books on the shelves at Chicago Comics. In Third Coast, I was struck by the Marvel Omnibus editions once I saw them on the shelves here, and nearly bought one. Gant says that sales thus far have been split between periodicals and books about 50/50, and that he plans to expand both manga and collectibles offerings to reflect what's being asked for by his potential customer base.
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This is the back wall above a little sitting area where, among other things, the store apparently hosts its own podcast.
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Finally, stepping through the back, here's a physical plant advantage the shop plans to exploit: a courtyard in which to hold meetings of the monthly club as weather allows (they've done one so far) and to expand the space with which Third Coast can better host various in-store events. They haven't done a signing yet, but Gant says they plan to work their way into doing so as they're able to bring in local and visiting cartoonists and comic book makers. I have to imagine you'd be treated well if you did one here and it couldn't hurt to give them a ring if you want another Chicago location.
I don't know if this shop will make it. Running a comic book store is rough even when everything goes right. Chicago has one of the great destination stores (Chicago Comics) and one of the great alt-focused stores (Quimby's), while Evanston has Comix Revolution about five miles away; there's also a sign in the window of an empty retail location about eight blocks south of Third Coast that indicates a location of the Graham Crackers chain may opening there before too long.
Still, Chicago used to be maybe the great market for comics and as such I think has the potential to carry a lot more retail. There's a store about five blocks down from Chicago Comics on Clark that seems to do just fine (it's been there a while), so readers are happy to support stores other than a single-destination shop. I personally can't imagine anything better than walking past a comic book shop of interest on a Saturday when you've nothing better to do except a bit of around-the-neighborhood shopping. I hope it all works out and hopefully some of you out there will include this shop in your general plans regarding Chicago as a comics destination. I think you'll like it, and I wish the new owners the best of luck with establishing their own place in Comics Chicago.
Random Comics News Story Round-Up
* there is apparently a DVD of all the Star Trek comics coming out -- does anyone know if there's a rights payment on any of this, if even a rights payment expectation is ludicrous given the nature of the project, or if this gets handled under the "historical page by page scanning" exception or whatever it's called?
* ask a question on the Internet and ye shall receive an answer in your e-mail dept.: after wondering out loud if there was enough of Pat Mills and Kevin O'Neill's Death Race 2020 to make a collection, the old Corman line's editor Robert Boyd passed along a short note. "There were only three issues of this featuring the classic team of O'Neill and Mills. Pretty thin for a book," wrote Boyd. "Obviously, though, it should have been reprinted to accompany the movie. But the movie is a big flop, as far as I can tell. So perhaps this wouldn't be the best time to reprint." Another thing that was cool about the comic series from the short-lived Roger Corman's Cosmic Comics is that there were one-pagers in the back from alt-comics talents about celebrities that died in auto crashes -- I always thought that was a terrifically well-conceived back-up feature, and some of the results were pretty great, too. I think someone needs to bring back quality back-up features.
* finally, here are 60 things Brad Curran hates about comics. I've been trying to make a similar list but the first one went to 14,357 and the second one was merely "1. Me" after which I cried for 11 hours.
This Isn't A Library: New And Notable Releases To The Comics Direct Market
*****
Here are the books that jump out at me from this week's probably mostly accurate list of books shipping from Diamond Comic Distributors, Inc. to comic book and hobby shops across North America.
I might not buy all of the works listed here -- I might not buy any -- but were I in a comic book shop I would likely pick up the following and look them over, and as a result, my retailer and I might throw hands.
*****
JUL082182 MIXTAPE HC VOL 02 JIM MAHFOOD ART $24.99
I didn't know there was a first volume of these, but I like Jim Mahfood's art so it's practically the definition of something I'd want to look over in a comic book shop.
JUL082414 ESSENTIAL THOR TP VOL 02 NEW PTG $16.99
Some prime time brute and loot Kirby punch-'em-up comic books. Best monsters ever.
JUN083900 BERLIN TP BOOK 02 CITY OF SMOKE (MR) $19.95
Jason Lutes gets deeper into the life of the pre-WWII hotbed for 20th century isms, using the time-honored literary techniques of bringing in an entirely different storyline for an additional exploration of the wider work's themes and having a couple of the characters switch dance partners maybe before the reader expected them to.
JUN084319 DR SLUMP TP VOL 16 $7.99
MAY080072 KUROSAGI CORPSE DELIVERY SERVICE TP VOL 07 $10.95
Two manga series I'm following... at somewhat of a distance in terms of where I am in each one, but I'm still following them.
JUN084326 SLAM DUNK GN VOL 01 $7.99
One manga series I will be following, at a nice price point. I love the idea of sports comics. Actually, I've read enough of them now I know I like sports comics.
MAY083864 DEITCHS PICTORAMA SC $18.99
MAY083866 LOVE & ROCKETS NEW STORIES #1 $14.99
JUN083954 PORTABLE FRANK SC $16.99
Fantagraphics' super-strong line-up of summer jump-on books for three groupings of their major, major talents.
The full list of this week's releases, including some titles with multiple cover variations and a long, impressive list of toys and other stuff that isn't comics, can be found here. Despite this official list there's no guarantee a comic will show up in the stores as promised, or in all of the stores as opposed to just a few. Also, stores choose what they carry and don't carry.
To find your local comic book store, check this list; and for one I can personally recommend because I've shopped there, albeit a while back and probably a bit high, try this.
The above titles are listed with their Diamond order code in the first field, which may assist you in finding comics at your shop or having them order something for you they don't have in-stock.
(For the record, I once wrote an essay about something else entirely and titled it "Martin Wagner Owes Me Fifty Bucks," because, if I remember correctly, I'm a dick. Martin recently wrote and inquired about it; I shared with him the story behind the claim and told him if he wanted to pay me back at this late date he should direct that amount to the CBLDF with my best wishes.)
SPURGEON: I'd also be interested in hearing a little bit about how you structured certain pages in "Sycamore Street." You open with a sequence featuring a cat avoiding some dogs. I thought it compelling that you're sort of working with a grid pattern, but at the same time you're breaking it up with bigger, single panels, and the panels aren't exactly even or uniform between rows. Can you talk about the pacing of that sequence and the effect you get with the single panels and the way the panels don't correspond tier-to-tier the way they might on a traditional comics page?
* ask a question on the Internet and ye shall receive an answer in your e-mail dept.: after wondering out loud if there was enough of Pat Mills and Kevin O'Neill's Death Race 2020 to make a collection, the old Corman line's editor Robert Boyd passed along a short note. "There were only three issues of this featuring the classic team of O'Neill and Mills. Pretty thin for a book," wrote Boyd. "Obviously, though, it should have been reprinted to accompany the movie. But the movie is a big flop, as far as I can tell. So perhaps this wouldn't be the best time to reprint." Another thing that was cool about the comic series from the short-lived Roger Corman's Cosmic Comics is that there were one-pagers in the back from alt-comics talents about celebrities that died in auto crashes -- I always thought that was a terrifically well-conceived back-up feature, and some of the results were pretty great, too. I think someone needs to bring back quality back-up features.
