Paul Rigg and Jamie Sichel shared a table at STAPLE! The Independent Media Expo in Austin. Jamie Sichel has published a book of drawings called "I've Created a …Monster!" Her drawings are beautifully composed, have linework that could best be described as sublime, and the monsters are darned cute. Her work can be found on http://thelegendofawesome.com/

Paul Rigg does bold sketches of characters. He has collected them into several sketchbooks. I particularly enjoy his Inktober sketchbooks which collect the sketches he painstakingly creates on a daily basis every year during the month of October. Here's where you can look at Paul's colorful creations -https://www.facebook.com/RiggerArt

This weekend I attended STAPLE! The Independent Media Expo in Austin. I had a great deal of success at my table, selling lots of copies of my comic books. I also had the opportunity to meet some cartoonists who are publishing terrific new books. I'll be writing about several of them the next few days.

First up is Chris Ruggia from Alpine, Texas. Chris has created a webcomic called Jack: Adventures in Texas' Big Bend. It is a webcomic which also ran in the Big Bend Gazette. This is a family friendly comic which, while visually reminiscent of Walt Kelly and Jeff Smith, is an original creation. I highly recommend the three volume collection that Chris has published. It is available through his website where previous comic strips are also archived.

Here's the link to Chris Ruggia's work - 

http://www.jackcomics.com/index.html

This is Fantastic Four #44 published in 1965. I bought it at Hunt's Supermarket (where comic books would sit on shelves for years) when I was seven years old. It was the first issue of FF I ever owned. In 1982 I had the good luck to get it signed by Jack Kirby at a small comic book convention. In the ensuing thirty years I tried repeatedly to get Stan's signature. He cancelled on a show in Dallas at the last minute. I went to a lecture he gave here in San Antonio in the mid-nineties and was primed to get my book signed when I learned that you needed a ticket to get his autograph, and all said tickets were already distributed. So I watched as a parade of mouth breathers got Stan Lee to sign a wide variety of comic books he wasn't even tangentially involved with. Remember, the guy hasn't really written anything on a regular basis for forty years. When I found out Stan was coming to Austin, I took no chances. I bought my special VIP ticket (which guaranteed me a photo op and autograph) back in June! So I'm finally in the autograph line and, sure enough, the people in front of me are having him sign stacks of books like Superman and the Flash that he never had anything to do with, comics that featured characters he created, but which he didn't write, and a wide assortment of bobble heads and other junk. My turn finally came and I gave Stan my comic book opened to the first page. He grinned and said, "Jack didn't leave me much room, did he?" He signed the page and announced triumphantly, "I squeezed it in!" I felt like Captain Ahab catching the White Whale.

Comic Books Suck!

Recently the success of the Batman, Spider-Man, Iron Man, Avengers Guardians of the Galaxy movies, as well as DC's decision to 'reboot' all their titles, has led to articles about the resurgence in sales for comic books. Out of curiosity I looked up recent sales figures and found that the best selling comics are a little over 100,000 copies per month. Lower selling comicsfrom the major publishers (Marvel and DC) are in the 15,000 copy range. Furthermore these 'sales' figures are mainly from retailers that use direct distribution, meaning they can't return unsold copies the way a supermarket or book store can return unsold copies of People or Sports Illustrated. In other words, many of those 'sales' may well be sitting in the back issue box or the storage room. In comparison, I looked up sales figures from the late 1960s when I was using my paper route money (Thank you Ames Advertiser) to buy every comic book I could get my hands on. The best selling comic of the year 1967 wasBatman averaging 900,000 copies per month. The best selling comic books of 2012 would have a difficult time cracking the top 100 list for 1967.

I recognize that all print media has suffered in the previous four decades, but I believe that comic books have done a lot to hasten their own demise. When I was a kid (Yes, I know this makes me sound like a cranky old man. That's only because I am a cranky old man.) every supermarket, pharmacy, book store, or newsstand in the country carried comic books. Even in the 1980s comic books were available in convenience stores. Now a kid looking for a comic book has to make a trip to a specialty store, push his way past role-playing gamers rolling 19 sided dice while they argue about wizards and demonic powers, navigate through the action figures and other toys, and find the comic book shelf. Once the kid finds a comic book which doesn't picture a graphic decapitation or half naked woman on the cover, he makes his purchase and goes home to read it. If he can decipher the busy scratchy art obscured by layers of muddy computer colors, he'll be dismayed to discover that he has just purchased part five of a twelve part story which will unfold over the course of a year, and, by the way, there are a number of minor subplots that leak into about five or six other books. I don't particularly want to wait that long for the conclusion to a story, and I like to believe I have more patience than an eight year old.

Despite the efforts of comic book publishers to alienate them - kids still like comics. The success of comic strip collections, manga paperbacks, and children's books featuring Captain Underpants and The Diary of a Wimpy Kid are evidence of this. I am aware of Marvel Adventures and the DC books based on the animated tv shows, but these are too childlike. Parents might buy them for their toddlers, but no self respecting eight year old would buy it for himself or herself.

This is not to suggest that the comic book medium (I can't bring myself to type 'graphic novel') shouldn't feature continuing stories or adult themes, but if comic books continue to market themselves primarily to a rapidly shrinking audience of arrested adolescents and ignore children, it won't be long before they have no audience at all.
"The Superman-Batman Revenge Squads" - what kid would be able to resist this cover. I know I couldn't!

Usually I rant and rail about Pop culture, but I'm a middle school teacher and coach, so today I wanted to write about a group of athletes who are very important to me.

The Burbank Bulldogs' season came to an end last night, but not before they had a successful district season and made it out of the bi-district round of the playoffs. The seniors on this team were the last group of eighth grade students I taught at Harris Middle School, and I've always had a soft spot for them. Coach Herrera and I had those boys for seventh grade basketball. There were thirty boys on the team, and we didn't cut anyone. Coach Herrera knew the boys from football season, I had taught most of them when they were in sixth grade, and Coach Roden, their PE teacher, had told us what good athletes they were, so on the first day of practice, we knew they were capable of having a special season. We used the first few games to tinker with our line ups, figure out who was on the A Team and who was on the B Team, and establish discipline and rules. In the first game we benched two of the best A Team players for missing practice. After that we didn't have any problems getting the boys to listen to us. The truth is, we wouldn't have had much trouble anyway. This was a great group of kids. The boys were enthusiastic and cheerful, even at 6:30 AM practices. Most of them were excellent students in the classroom. A few of the boys could give their teachers headaches, but it was never mean-spirited behavior. These were just active middle school boys. Sometimes one of the seventh grade teachers would come to my classroom with a basketball player in tow. "Coach, you have to do something about this boy!" Herrera and I would mete out a punishment ranging from extra horses or time on the bench, and the problem would be solved (temporarily, at least). There were a few boys (who shall remain nameless) that got some special treatment on a couple of occasions. I would pick them up in the morning, and we'd go from class to class getting their books and their day's assignments from their teachers. Then they would spend that day in my room. Sitting in the famous "Desk of Discipline" they would complete their assignments with the understanding that they'd better not disturb my classes, and they'd better learn to control themselves in their regular classes. This was a technique I picked up from the legendary Coach Sapenter, and it worked. 

We had a great time. Practices were fun. With so many boys, we had to be organized, and keep everyone busy. We were very deep and wanted balance on both teams, so a couple of boys who were really talented enough to play on the A Team accepted their roles on the B Team. Somehow Coach Herrera and I found minutes for all the boys. We wanted everyone to contribute in some way. Once Zone Play began our A Team went undefeated, our B Team only lost one game, and we brought home a district championship. 

When the boys went to high school, I followed their progress. Since I was coaching basketball and track at Little Flower School now, I could only make it to the games that Burbank played during Thanksgiving and Christmas breaks and the playoffs. Of course not all thirty of the boys could make the team at the high school level, but I was glad to see how many of our Harris Hawks stuck it out every year. It was especially great to see some of our B Team boys move up to the varsity team, sometimes even getting a starting nod. A couple of Lowell Middle School boys were on the team, and there were three younger Harris Hawks, but the majority of the varsity was made up of that group I had such fond memories of. When I couldn't make it to games, I'd check out the results in the newspaper. It was fun to see how different players would step up each game. One night Juan would go off for twenty points. Another night it would be Moses. Even though it wasn't showing up in the box score, I knew that Jordan and Gabriel were running the press and taking care of the ball, and Matthew was playing tough defense every night.

Obviously a lot of credit for Burbank's success has to go to Coach Herbert Jackson. When I was at Harris I worked a couple of Jackson's summer camps, sat in on some of his practices, and scouted plenty of games for him. I liked his style and way of working with young athletes, and I learned a lot about coaching from him. He rarely has the kind of blue chip athletes that show up every season at the big north side schools, but his teams are always competitive. He and his staff have created a culture of success at Burbank, and although I'm sure he and his team are disappointed about the way the season ended, I hope they'll be able to look back at their accomplishments with pride. I'm really going to miss watching Moses, Jordan, Juan, Matthew, Gabriel, and Daniel, but I've enjoyed seeing those little boys mature into young men. I know that they will all have bright futures after graduation.

I was rereading the first appearance of one of Howard Chaykin's early creations - Dominic Fortune. He appeared as a back up story in the otherwise ridiculous Marvel Preview presents The Punisher from 1975. I bought this back in the day because it reminded me of Chaykin's earlier The Scorpion, a short-lived (weren't they all) series from Atlas Comics. The artwork is excellent, particularly Chaykin's use of wash.  The character sets the template for future Chaykin heroes. Fortune operates during the 1930s, a time period that Chaykin has a great fondness for as well as a great facility for rendering. He is a cynical, tongue-in-cheek mercenary whose pulpy adventures are like a cross between The Shadow and Doc Savage. Fortune's appearances were scattered throughout several magazine-sized comics. The first few stories were in gray wash and several later stories were in full color. Working with writers Len Wein and later Denny O'Neil, Chaykin created a nice little series that deserves a trade paperback collection.

"Outlaw life is hard, Dewey Crowe."