meltblog

Jordan Raphael and Tom SPurgeon sign their new book, November 6th 7-9 PM

For those who missed our anniversary party, here’s a bit of Renfield for you..

Meltdown cordially invites you, Constant Reader, to join us for our 13th Anniversary Party on Saturday, October 21!

In honor of this triskadektauspicious occasion we shall hold a COSTUME CONTEST (7:30 p.m.) and a NERD WAR (8:00 p.m.)

What is a NERD WAR? A game show, friend, in which your skills and trivial knowledge are put to the test against your brethren resulting in the distribution of FABULOUS PRIZES worth many AMERICAN DOLLARS!

Our NERD WAR is hosted by those geek gods RENFIELD and the evening ends in a FREE SHOW from those fine fools! Free drinks, booze and delicacies for all. Registration for the Costume Contest and Nerd War begins at 6:30 p.m. Join us for an evening of fun and frolic, won’t you?

MELTDOWN’S 13TH ANNIVERSARY PARTY featuring RENFIELD SATURDAY, OCTOBER 21 - ALL AGES - CHEAP AS FREE!

(Zombie Mel artwork by Felipe Smith)

I traveled to Washington D.C. this past weekend to attend the 2006 Small Press Expo. This was my first year attending so I can’t comment on how the new venue compares to the old venue in Bethesda, but the Marriott was fine and seemed to be an adequate space for the expo. It was run smoothly and there was nary a Wookie or Stormtrooper Elvis in attendance. SPX also has the least amount of offensive body odor out of all the conventions I’ve been to. So there’s that.

And here’s the first thing you need to know: everybody is either from Brooklyn or Portland. Especially Brooklyn, it’s crazy. I imagine Brooklyn as a place where mini-comics are sold in vending machines and Brian Wood lives in an ivory castle reigning as a good king and providing the hipster commonfolk with free Photoshop CS2 cracks.

Here’s a rundown of the convention through my eyes…

1. In the middle of one of Tony Millionaire’s signings a fan smuggled him a beer in the guise of a rolled up t-shirt. Millionaire didn’t pay much attention to the fan, but no sooner was the beer in his hand than he took off one of his boots to crack open the brewskie. Hey, can you blame the guy?
2. I spoke for a while with GB Tran, the Xeric-award-winning creator “Content.” It turns out GB and I are old acquaintances from about 7 years ago. We were two of the five guys that were fucking around with comic books back in Tucson, Arizona (small, small world). We were both surprised to see one another, and I remembered that I had seen early pages for Content – which would go on to win the Xeric – 7 years back at the University of Arizona. I felt like I had one of those Lost flashbacks, triggered by the sound of a flying plane — whooooooosh. Anyway, it was good to reconnect with ‘ol GB. And yes, he now lives in Brooklyn.

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As you’ve probably heard by now, mid-level comic publisher Alias Enterprises has moved exclusively into the Christian market.

Alias executive director Mike S. Miller has moved his secular projects (and several other titles from Alias) to a new company: Abacus Comics. Abacus will be the new home for such titles as Ant, The Imaginaries, Lullaby, Kord and Harley, Sixgun Samurai and Soulless. The new company’s site went live last night.

I’ve put up several pages from my 24 hour comic on my personal blog. Click below to see:

This is the first comic I’ve ever drawn as well as written.

According to All The Rage, super-hero artist Steven Butler (Spider-Man, X-Men, Silver Sable) will begin drawing Archie and the gang in a more realistic style in stories that will start appearing in their digests and TPBs next year.

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Music as magic. Specifically pop music as magic. A simple enough conceit but more often than not with simplicity, complexities are found within the lining of the bare tapestry. Kieron Gillen and artist Jamie McKelvie have woven a tale of magic set inside the burnt remains of the great empire of Brit-pop. The lead character in the story, David Kohl, calls himself a phonomancer — think John Constantine by way of Greg Dulli (former lead singer of The Afghan Wigs who can now be found fronting the sweaty soul outfit called The Twilight Singers). Kohl incants his spells through lyrics of pop songs, but so far the only real display of his powers is to talk a lass into the sack – not a horrible way to use one’s Dark Arts, but certainly not the most likeable. A Goddess takes umbrage with his egotistically misogynistic use of his Kenickie spell (basically a music critic’s breakdown of the band which leads to a lowering of the girl’s pant line) and puts a curse on him. But only after she tasks him to stop an “interference” placed on an “aspect” of hers called Britannia. I got a bit lost there too, but it seems that the Goddess might be asking Kohl to investigate the death of brit-pop itself.

Into issue 2 as Kohl lead to a former club of his past, or “church” as he calls it, by his magic-clueless friend Kid-With-Knife. Inside, the phonomancer is disgusted by the “retromancer” spinning an old ditty by K.C. and the Sunshine Band. “I’m trying to sentimentalize a cultural Chernobyl”, he says and we get our first true feeling from Kohl. Far more than any human interaction, he longs for a place that he felt comfortable in, that he felt at home. He’s spent the first two issues pointlessly posturing (to use his own words), but what he’s really doing is protecting himself. Putting up walls of judgmental intellectualism he keeps out unwanted, or unworthy, zeitgeist travelers. KWK takes Kohl to see a “ghost” of a girl not yet dead – one who slept with KWK to make Kohl jealous, even though he had a thing for her. Personal interactions are at best superficial in the Phonogram world. Only one person in the first two issues is on par with Kohl and that’s his friend Emily. Near the end of issue 2, Kohl says to Emily, “I do care, she was a friend. I just didn’t like her very much.” And that about sums up the way one feels about Kohl — he’s about a million people I know, but fuck if I can’t stand a full night with them. And there lies the problem with the book. The Superman shirt that Kohl dons to head out to Lady Fest at the beginning is part of his costume – his indie uniform. His alter-ego is this magician who seduces naïve morsels into bed with his penetrating musings, but alter to what exactly? Who is the real David Kohl? Who was he before he was “made” what he is by Britannia? To be redeemed one has to be worth redeeming and after 2 issues, I’m left caring about KWK more than Kohl if only for KWK’s unguardedness. Maybe the point isn’t to redeem Kohl – but then what is the point? Going back to the Constantine comparison for a moment, why do we care about that character? One of the more unlikable ongoing characters in comics, but there’s something that keeps an audience with him and that’s his vulnerability. Sometimes knowing how to hurt someone (aside from the physical) is just as good as knowing how to help someone and in the case of Kohl, I haven’t found either…yet. I think there is hope though. I mainly wish that Gillen had opened up his lead character within the first two issues, made him a bit more accessible like the pop music talked about in all the diatribes. The beauty of a perfect pop song is that even to the uninitiated, it can make them care for those three minutes.

I do have high hopes for the series and many of those hopes come from the excellent supplemental writings contained in the back of each issue. Gillen talks about his purpose and goals for the book in such a way that you can’t not be enthralled by what he’s trying to accomplish. “Most traditional fantasy gives you another world to run and hide from. A modern fantasy allows you to reclaim yours. Reality remixed, expanded, made precious, made you,” he says. And he’s done that with this, no doubt. He’s a skilled wordsmith and knows what he’s going for – I just want to be there emotionally instead of philosophically.

I just wanted to mention a few words on McKelvie’s art. It’s been clean, precise, and I’m not sure there’s an emotion that Jamie can’t effectively bring out from the characters. Much like Pia Guerra’s work on Y: The Last Man, McKelvie can keep dialogues moving and fill them with such nuance that you’re not just seeing snapshots, but physically and honestly moving through a conversation.