About the Meltdown Comics EXTRAS edition

Included in this pack will be a commemorative Meltdown Comics envelope and letterhead, Meltdown Comics sticker, vintage Baby Melt ribbon (yeah, we made this), a tiny 1:6 scale T-Shirt (Sized-to-Fit the DEATH RAY ACTION FIGURE, the Hi-Fashion Enid DOLL or to class-up your child’s BRATZ doll if you will), a little silkscreen print, a pin, plus other surprises. All using the Meltdown Comics Mel Mascot and logo designed last century for Meltdown, Inc. by Dan Clowes. That is like  back in the 1990s,man! ONLY 200 sets will be made. FUN! Will cost us more that 10 bux to make all of these bits but will only add 10 bux over the cover price if you buy the book from us.  Pre-order Meltdown Comics EXTRAS edition here

Throughout his 25-year career, alternative cartoonist/screenwriter Daniel Clowes has always been ahead of artistic and cultural movements. In the late 1980s his groundbreaking comic book series Eightball defined indie culture with wit, venom, and even a little sympathy. With each successive graphic novel (Ghost World, David Boring, Ice Haven, Wilson, Mister Wonderful ), Clowes has been praised for his emotionally compelling narratives that reimagine the ways that stories can be told in comics. The Art of Daniel Clowes: Modern Cartoonist is the first monograph on this award-winning, New York Times–bestselling creator, compiled with his complete cooperation. It includes all of Clowes’s best-known illustrations as well as rare and previously unpublished work, all reproduced from the original art, and also includes essays by noted contributors such as designer Chip Kidd and cartoonist Chris Ware.

Alvin Buenaventura recently started the publishing company Pigeon Press. He previously published artistic and insightful graphic novels, books, and prints under the imprint Buenaventura Press from 2003 to 2009. Buenaventura also edits the monthly comics section for McSweeney’s literary magazine, The Believer. He lives in Oakland, California.

Read the full story here: LA WEEKLY SQUIDINK

Courtesy of 20th Century Fox

​Just a few weeks ago Fox Studios and the voice actors and producers of Simpsons were engaged in a financial tug-of-war that threatened the existence of the long-running animated series. If you need to remind yourself why we should celebrate the resolution (two more years!), watch The Food Wife this Sunday at 8:00 p.m. on Fox.

Early in the episode, Marge, Bart and Lisa start a food blog called The Three Mouthketeers, an act then followed by a culinary reference tornado that is so unrelenting that to catch them all requires DVR slow-mo or, barring that, multiple viewings. If neither are possible, pay very close attention when Marge, Lisa and Bart’s blog profiles are revealed — (on Bart’s list of grossest foods eaten? “Blood Cheese”) — and for fleeting cameos by every food world celebrity from Paul Prud’homme to The Muppets’ Swedish chef as well as a pointed reference to our own Jonathan Gold’s Essential 99 L.A. restaurants.

If you want to sing along with the foodie rap belted out by Amuse Bruce and Fois Garth (Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim of Tim and Eric’s Awesome Show, Great Job), it is printed in its entirety on Grub Street. If you’d like to read our conversation with the writer of The Food Wife, Simpsons executive producer and food blog scourer Matt Selman, turn the page.

Courtesy of 20th Century Fox

​ Squid Ink: Food blogs take many forms – the eating diary blog, the recipe blog, the restaurant gossip blog, the “I’m-in-it-for-the-free-food” blog… What category does The Three Mouthketeers fall into?Matt Selman: The kind where people take pictures of everything and write non-professional reviews. But the show isn’t really about the content of the blog. It’s more about how Marge uses it as a way to bond with the kids emotionally. It’s more like a new activity for them to share and how Homer is excluded. For Homer, blogging about food is pointless because you’ve already eaten it and you’re full.

Read the full story here: LA WEEKLY SQUIDINK 

From Meltdown’s Simpson’s Exhibit:

Bart Simpson’s Treehouse of Horror #15
Edited by Sammy Harkham
$4.99
48 pages/standard format/color/humor
UPC: 01511 (7-98342-02851-5)

Guest edited by Sammy Harkham, the award-winning creator of the popular Kramers Ergot anthology, this year’s issue is a jam-packed with some of the most idiosyncratic (and weirdest) takes on “The Simpsons ” universe ever. Among Halloween-inspired short strips by such visionary cartoonists as Jordan Crane (Uptight), C.F. (Powr Mastrs), Will Sweeney (Tales from Greenfuzz), Tim Hensley (MOME), and John Kerschbaum (Petey & Pussy), are four featured tales of inspired Simpsons lunacy: heralded artists Kevin Huizenga (Ganges, Or Else) and Matthew Thurber (1-800 Mice, Kramers Ergot) collaborate on a weird and wild story equal parts Lovecraftian eco-horror and Philip K. Dick identity comedy. Jeffrey Brown (Incredible Change-Bots, Clumsy) does a creepy and suitably pathetic story featuring Milhouse in a “Bad Ronald”-inspired tale of murder and crawl space living. Harkham and Ted May (INJURY) pull out all the stops for a tragic monster tale of unrequited love, bad karaoke, and body snatching at Moe’s Bar. Ben Jones (Paper Rad) does the comic of his life with an epic tale of how bootleg candy being sold at the Kwik-E-Mart rapidly spirals out of control into an Invasion of The Body Snatchers-like nightmare of a Springfield filled with cheap bootleg versions of familiar characters. And nobody does squishy, sweaty, and gross like up and coming cartoonist Jon Vermilyea (MOME), who outdoes himself with “C.H.U.M.M.,” a C.H.U.D.-inspired parody featuring everybody’s favorite senior citizen, Hans Moleman!

With a cover by Dan Zettwoch, Bart Simpson’s Treehouse of Horror #15 is like nothing you’ve ever seen, and is sure to be one of the most talked about comics of the year by alternative comic readers and Simpsons fans of all ages!

Sammy 1st solo show held at Meltdown. Vintage image found around the web!

75,000 Copies of First ‘LOEG 3′
‘Century Part 1′
Published: 02/12/2009 01:04am

Top Shelf plans a first print run of 75,000 copies of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen 3: Century Part 1, the first of three 80-page books that will make up LOEG Vol. 3 (see “League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Vol. 3). The book is planned for release in April, and if even a fraction of the people that will have bought the Watchmen graphic novel by then seek out this new work from Moore, that print run won’t last long.

The comic-sized work will be written by Alan Moore with art by Kevin O’Neill; lettered by Todd Klein, colors by Ben Dimagmaliw. The three parts of Volume 3 each take place in different eras, with an apocalyptic finish in the present.

Clipping found here.

Image found here.

N.M.E. text found here.
Alan Moore Knows The Score

NME Feature 04.02.89 (Writer: Andrew Collins)

Can U Dig It? asks the new single from Pop Will Eat Itself. But before you get a chance to answer, the lads steam in with a catalogue of the things they hold dear. It’s an HM disco fantasy shopping list!

EXCERPT:

ALAN MOORE KNOWS
THE SCORE

The first great line of
’89, in my mind; Alan Moore is the man who virtually kickstarted
the Great Brit Comix Renaissance with Swamp Thing and Watchmen
and the recently revived V For Vendetta (specifically
name-checked in verse two.)

“He makes quite a few
appearances on the LP. He looks like an absolute rampaging
hippie! Massive beard! I wonder if Ben Elton’s against him?”

Elton’s book is an
ecological disaster story – since Moore’s Swamp Thing is about us
lot screwing up our world, I wonder if Clint is eco-minded?

“It’s not something I
spend a great deal of time thinking about. But what Alan Moore’s
done, he’s made CARING hip again. He shouldn’t have to try, but
people don’t care.

Well, if Julie Andrews can reel off a few of her favourite things, then why not Pop Will Eat Itself? I’m talking to mainman Clint in a sedate lounge of the PopCeleb Hotel in West London, and he’s defending his every line. The song’s a “cross between S’Express and Zodiac Mindwarp,” he says. “I saw The Warriors again, and it’s got this guy in it saying `Can you dig it?` and then I saw American Grafitti as well, and there’s a piece of Wolfman Jack going `Can you dig it?` and I thought, this is really good – I can fit them together”.

A message from God, no
less! OK, that’s the title and the lead samples dealt with, let’s
tick off the groceries…

WE DIG TV/ WE DIG
REMOTE CONTROL

What TV do you currently
rate?

“Hill Street Blues and
Brookside, that’s about it.”

THE FURRY FREAK
BROTHERS

Seminal 60′s hippie comic.
Is there a place for hippies in the 80′s?

“Everything’s so
hi-tech now, fast moving, commercially viable or whatever -
living a pastoral lifestyle doesn’t seem to be the in thing at
the moment. But the Freak brothers are hilarious – three hippies
who don’t do any work, smoking dope all the time!”

THE TWILIGHT ZONE

“I sound like a
nostalgia freak! The original series is a bit ham, but it had its
own style. Me and Miles out of the Wonder Stuff used to live in a
flat just outside Stourbridge on the 19th floor, about three
years ago when Twilight Zone was on TV in the Central region. Me
and him used to hate the f-ing lift, a real clapped out lift it
was – it’d take about a minute and a half to get up to the 19th
floor. Sheer terror!”

“He got stuck in it
once, with eight people; two weeks later I got stuck in it on my
own! Horrifying experience. Every time we’d get in the lift he
used to say `Rod Sterling’s gonna appear now and start saying
things like, these young men have been down to the pub and they
think they’re going home to bed, but we know that they’re going
to… The Twilight Zone. We used to shit ourselves.”

WE DIG MARVEL AND
DC/WE DIG RUN DMC

Run DMC? Those old
has-beens? Why not Public Enemy?

 "It fits in

better; it rhymes! I could’ve gone `Marvel and DC/Public
En-em-ee!` `Raising Hell’s` a great album, but Public
Enemy released two albums – the first one was different
to anything that’s gone before, and `Nation of Millions`
was far out, basically – and Run DMC hadn’t even noticed.
Hip hop is such a fast-mutating thing – if you stand
still for a minute you’re just going to be left behind.”

BRUCE WAYNE

Batman's mild-mannered alter-ego, in case you're stupid.

“DC said `You can’t use
the name Bruce Wayne`, but it isn’t! It’s “Bruce
(comma) Wayne” – it’s two people!”

Bruce Forsyth and Wayne
from Auf Wiedersehen Pet, I bet.

“There’s this great
shot of me in the video – it wasn’t me that was making it look
good – I’ve got this gun and they’ve superimposed this shot of
Batman behind me. It looks really smart, but they said you can’t
use the Batman image; Batman is now owned by Warner Brothers or
someone, because of this film they’re doing.”

AUF WIEDERSEHEN PET

“That’s one of the few
series that’s been good from British TV in the past few years. It
appeals to my type of humour.” (Barry is Clint’s favourite
character – I’ll go for Ally Fraser.)

DIRTY HARRY MAKE MY
DAY

“They guy’s a total
fascist, but it works, because he gets the bad guy in the end -
although sometimes the end doesn’t justify the means if you put
it in the real world. His one-liners are just great. My
girlfriend doesn’t think you should give guns to kids, and I know
what she’s saying, but to a certain degree it’s part of the
learning process – somehow, you’ve got to control it. Because
we’ve got this gun in the video, RCA want to do an edit with the
gun out of it because they don’t think children’s TV are going to
go for it, which is a bit of a drag. It look good for all the
wrong reasons – it’s like, naughty!”

TERMINATOR

Top selling
futureshock guns`n`robo movie.

“It’s got a lot of
human emotions in it, even though it’s just an exciting
film about this robot guy. Arnold Schwarzenegger is the
worst actor in the world but when he’s playing a robot
he’s brilliant at it! He gets $10 million a film!

HIT THE NORTH

Are you a Fall fan?

“I’m not a big Fall fan. I’ve got `Bingo Masters Breakout`, `Rouche Rumble`, `Elastic Man` – they’re real good singles. Mark Smith was in here the other night giving adam a hard time. He’s such a dry and intense bloke. He says to Adam, `where d’you live?` and Adam goes `I live in Stourbridge with

me mum and dad` and Mark E
E Smith’s got all these people with him and he’s going to them
`Listen to this- this guy lives with his mum and dad` and all
these guys are laughing. Then Mark goes `What’s wrong with that?
There’s nothing the matter with that!` Really strange bloke.
Respect is due, as they say.”

ALAN MOORE KNOWS
THE SCORE

The first great line of
’89, in my mind; Alan Moore is the man who virtually kickstarted
the Great Brit Comix Renaissance with Swamp Thing and Watchmen
and the recently revived V For Vendetta (specifically
name-checked in verse two.)

“He makes quite a few
appearances on the LP. He looks like an absolute rampaging
hippie! Massive beard! I wonder if Ben Elton’s against him?”

Elton’s book is an
ecological disaster story – since Moore’s Swamp Thing is about us
lot screwing up our world, I wonder if Clint is eco-minded?

“It’s not something I
spend a great deal of time thinking about. But what Alan Moore’s
done, he’s made CARING hip again. He shouldn’t have to try, but
people don’t care.”

LEADER OF THE PACK/
DA DO RON RON

Earlier, Clint described
Can U Dig It? as “throwaway Pop, a dumb song with dumb
lyrics. It’s gonna be replaced by something, even if it’s only
our next single. Singles are a product of today.”

And yet these two songs are
exceptions to this rule – they’re still remembered and revived.
Why them?

“They’re classics that
stick out from Jimmy Saville’s Old Record Club; they seem more
sussed, if you like”.

SPINDERELLA/ BRUCE
LEE

“I originally wanted
`Coca Cola Not Pepsi` because I don’t like Pepsi Cola. Coca Cola
is brilliant. But we had trouble with `Big Mac, fries to go` on
`Def Con One` because Radio One said it was advertising – so I
was stuck with a line to rhyme with The Bad and The Ugly!”

“But Bruce Lee’s okay.
He was a megahero at the time, now he’s relegated to the bottom
of the video shop.”

THE BAD AND THE
UGLY

"Actually, For A Few Dollars More is the best!"

INTO THE GROOVEY

Ciccone Youth’s white
hip-hop hash of Madonna culture.

“They’re a strange
bunch – I’m not really a fan.”

So who were you a `fan` of,
when you were a teenager?

“The Banshees… The
Psychedelic Furs….”

I’m glad he said that. The
Furs, in their heyday, recorded a song called `We Love You` in
which they namecheck a few of their digs (Frank Sinatra, Bridget
Bardot, the Twist, The Supremes, th nuclear bomb etc.) It seems I
have an ally – Clint has this very fact written in his notepad.

“Brilliant record,
that is. The first abum’s great – so noisy, and their last single
was a return to form.”

Clint enthuses on and it
seems we’ve uncovered a reference not crossed on the Poppies’
list. So I ask him for any other names he’s missed off, in order
for me to compile the exclusive, unofficial NME third verse to
Can U Dig It? And here it is!

“We dig Bomb Jack/
which is a video game/ We dig The Loveless, The Furs and The Man
With No Name/ We dig Robocop/ We dig `We Love You`/ We dig Dead
Of Night, an old British film/ and Spiderman, too.”
(Copyright A. Collins, based on omissions by C. Poppie)

Can U Dig It? is the first
song to namecheck Alan Moore, Mark Smith, AC/DC and Barry. Maybe,
just maybe, Pop will treat itself – and it’ll be the first Top 40
hit to do so. Dig for victory!

Image found here.

More info here.