Rolling Comic Books 2020 Visions

to paraphrase the comments, just because it's not "wrong" doesn't mean it's not "funny."

I recently found a little community of people creating art and stories about sexy people with really big heads. Some people in this community like large exposed brains, some people like elongated domes and some people just like heads that are bigger as a whole.
Somebody posted (what I'm guessing was from early 60s) comic panels of Lois Lane losing her hair and the dome of her head growing longer. It brought to mind images from that era (early 60s?) of The Flash getting a big elongated head and I think it happened to him and other DC heroes multiple times? I remember an interview with Gilbert Hernandez where he asked what was with all the enlarged head stories in DC Comics at the time.

I know it was a staple in old science fiction to have characters (especially mastermind villains and super intelligent aliens) with huge heads but I'm wondering if this can be traced particularly to certain writers or artists in or out of comics.

It's way beyond my capabilities but I'd love to write an encyclopedia of everything that is fetishy or seems like it could be in science fiction and fantasy, while trying to be respectful and not presumptuous. Including how certain characters can become part of a fixation they were probably never intended for (the snake from Jungle Book and Midna from Zelda spring to mind).

Something entirely different.
https://blanddcheadcanons.tumblr.com/

kinda need a link to your big head kink friends deviantarts page

I don't know how much of this will be visible to non-members because most of it is NSFW
https://www.deviantart.com/bigbrainedbeauties/
Lois Lane
https://www.deviantart.com/maxgrowth/art/Who-likes-this-653544338

lol, i guessed right on deviantarts

always low-key assumed that the elongated-head thing came from Mort Weisinger being self-conscious about balding, but I don't know if I've ever seen a photo of him

Allow me to set your mind at ease:

https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/marvel_dc/images/2/27/Mort_Weisinger.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/350?cb=20110213063153

irl tee hee

https://www.instagram.com/p/CAn6ZGDB6h6/

I've been following this case closely for a number of reasons and was surprised to discover that Chris Cooper, the (unrelated) guy opposite Amy Cooper in the recent racially-motivated Central Park birding kerfuffle, happens to be an ex-Marvel editor who introduced the first openly gay characters to the canonical Star Trek universe back in the mid 90's

everything that is fetishy or seems like it could be in science fiction and fantasy

Fixed that for you.

Interesting thing about this stuff on deviantart and similar sites is that something really niche can flourish on one of them but can't be found at all on the others.

I had this really weird amazing dream that I was holding this Daredevil Annual from the 80s written by Frank Miller with artwork by Art Adams that of course does not really exist. In my minds eye memory it had this cool cover where Daredevil is swinging by on his billy club being chased both by Hand ninjas and Venom.

Been reading a bunch of horn head comics (to use the Stan vernacular) but not the Miller issues, the later part of the original run and the earliest issues, neither of which I read when I was a kid. Venom does show up in the 'Fall from Grace' story, so that must have been part of it.

http://i.imgur.com/Ze2Ratv.png

Gary Panter - https://www.instagram.com/p/CA9fbNHl0Ul/

i...don't get it?

it's offisa pup
https://artduckomagazine.wordpress.com/2016/02/24/krazy-kat-spotlight-by-erica-lambright/

nhex, ilxmail me and i will send you some Krazy Kat cbr
or just do this
https://joel.franusic.com/krazy_kat/

I don't really "get" this particular appropriation / recontextualization of Offisa Pupp, but whatevs

pupp represents control, structure for the sake of structure rather than truth and dumb power; he claims to protect but doesn't care what his constituents actually want and is fast to throw ignatz in jail for upending order
panter is a noted obsessive drawer and hand drawing waves of baton-raised lockstep pupps to cope struck me as pretty brilliant

yes

Seems kinda reductive, but ok

Panther has been posting these giant tapestries of classic comic characters on his Instagram for ages, you don't even have to see it as a political statement if that doesn't work for you.

Love the Panter, thanks for sharing forks

seems almost quaint now, since offisa pup never had a riot shield or helmet

good share, thanks forks

Been seeing quite a lot of cool drawing/painting and comics stuff appearing on my youtube recommendations (what taken so long?)

I don't know if I've ever seen Shinichi Sakamoto's work. I still find the idea of drawing digitally really disconcerting but I am impressed how well he works with his assistants and how seamlessly he can place on a bloody readymade wig onto a character. Maybe I'd notice the seams if I was reading. I often notice artists drawing over 3d models and I don't like it most of the time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDpn9fdsRbY
The channel is generally interviews with japanese creators in different mediums.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haaZ4X_hyeY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRqIYbg18sY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVKFvdHgc3s
Loving Ed Piskor and Jim Rugg's Cartoonist Kayfabe channel. The interviews are lengthy; they do interesting commentaries of Wizard and Comics Journal issues; I hadn't heard anything about Octobriana; they've got a Kaze Shinobu video; liked the videos about "outlaw" and bootleg comics.
Thing I enjoyed most was probably the Tim Vigil interview. Sad that there hasn't been collected editions but he wants to do one. I get a kick out of seeing 80s/90s/early 00s alternative comics getting collected even if I'm not into them but I'd probably get a Vigil collection. Sad that it pretty much always ends up being a crowdfunding thing that gets them going.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIVSjH-srqM

Below is the link to a Google doc list of all the titles suggested by members of the CSS Facebook Group in response to a request for comics/graphic novels addressing racism, policing, and social justice.

I'd like to build this list with member and comics community input, so if you have more suggestions please add them and include a link, and then we can share it more widely as well.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1a6RYz3NkT_SOhMr_GKfdYv0SmgHWstYPGGUPhHDFCRg/edit?usp=sharing

RE: Octobriana - Bryan Talbot incorporated her into his Luther Arkwright strip, I believe (the link above may mention that, haven't watched it yet)

I also have that Octobriana and the Russian Underground book - 1971 UK h/c £3.90 - there isn't much actual comic strip content, but the big stylistic influence appears to be Barbarella.

Yeah they did mention the Arkwright thing and a few other comics even did that.

Gary Groth interview was good. He's publishing Barry Windsor Smith's Monster soon, which I assumed died many years ago but he was working on it for something like 3 decades. A story about living with Jim Sternako. And talking about a couple of really impressive sounding upcoming graphic novels by first timers.

Man, DC really wants to kill print comics.

Black history
https://www.yoebooks.com/upcoming-books/215-invisible-men-by-ken-quattro.html

Man, DC really wants to kill print comics.

^^ Pulled out of Diamond altogether, switching all their periodical distribution to two mail-order companies, no international distribution to comic shops.

In normal times, this would definitely be a case of pointing and laughing when, like Heroes World, the plan flops. This seems so much more speedily doomed to failure that the only thing that makes sense is that it's intended as a strongarm move to get better terms out of Diamond.

However, decisions from DC that make sense have not been a core business strategy for about the last 15 years.

If it's all just feeder content for the eventually digital content mill of whatever the final Frankenstein's monster of HBO Max, CBS All Access, and DC Universe will be in a couple of years... comics are a pretty cheap loss in comparison.

Yeah, I think they'd genuinely be happy if print died and they could just farm content for TV and movies until the superhero boom is completely over.

DC can exist as an imprint that keeps Watchmen in print just to fuck with Alan Moore.

Also of note in the Groth interview: Eisner, Joe Kubert and Gil Kane being unable to do "serious" work well, and funny story about Mark Waid.

Tbf Diamond looks like an absolute basket case of a company to be associated with

tfw you intentionally create a monopoly for your exclusive trading partner and then get confused when they act like a monopoly for 25 years

Diamond should be tarred and feathered just for forcing owners to put up with the ordering software. It's clunky as hell and decades out of date.

I am a bit concerned that shops are going to be hurt since their shipping costs will effectively double, but that's the price of losing a monopoly.

Shops will be destroyed - what's the incentive for the two retailers who have been handed the new distribution duo-exclusive to make terms favourable to the competition?

To say nothing of English-language shops in Canada, the UK, Australia et al

Didn't realize - DC's preferred distributors are also direct-to-consumer retailers - DCBS and Midtown Comics. Leading to fears of Amazon-style behavior where they use order data to give themselves a competitive advantage.

(Normal bookstores will go with Penguin/Random House.)

There's still a monopoly, really. There's no competition between DC's two distributors, they're not going to offer better discounts to get your business.

They figured out, I think that they couldn't mandate regional exclusives but they strongly suggest one or the other. Also points to how little thought/effort was put into this, DCBS is shipping from either Indiana or Mississippi so everyone on the West Coast is going to get all their DC books from there. Should be no problem at all!

If by no other means, you can tell this year is a swirling miasma of shit by the fact that the impending death of the direct market is like fifteenth in my list of pressing concerns.

I've never really understood why comics completely quit the same distribution system that magazines and other periodicals use. I'm guessing it's too low volume, but the way the comic book dealers ship, it's no returns. There appears to be plenty of esoteric magazines out there that have to have fairly low sales numbers, why are comics different? I'd figure that would be great for whoever distributes magazines.

don't remember the exact reason but i don't think it made much sense
specifically talking about the no-return system, but pre-order-in-almost-exactly-three-months system is also awful

Again Cartoonist Kayfabe, the David Choe interview was nuts but I didn't know much about him before. He hasn't done much comics but he has a lot of stories about comics people he knows.

Comic shops have to handle subscriptions and special orders week in and week out, customers demand books be all but mint conditions, anything past like Spider-Man and Batman requires salesmanship. Shops need a hub where they can special order that book from three months ago for someone - not an issue for a store that carries Time.

Periodicals are just there, it's a different model.

The ordering in advance is also how they're unlike other periodicals - like, one issue of Teen Vogue isn't going to be a blockbuster because they revealed something on page 47. Batman will be. So orders go in to set print runs, then are adjusted again a few weeks before actual shipment.