In addition to works by Mack and Sienkiewicz, many of Atlanta’s top artists – including Danny Simanjaya, Meg Golding, RyShu, Jean Baugnon, Chris Hamer and Kris Pilcher – will have work up for grabs. Linda Costa will be photographically documenting the creative festivities, which will also include hoop dancing by Rebecca DeShon and Sarah Radtke.

Stephanie Anderson and Erick Jara of Neon Armour will be painting willing bodies to look like characters from the comic books Mack and Sienkiewicz have illustrated, and drinks are included with the price of admission.

This is Wizard World’s Atlanta debut. Several members of the Happy Days cast were at Dragon*Con a few years ago, but this will be your first Atlanta convention appearance, right?

This will be my very first one. There are three good reasons to come to Atlanta. One, the people are amazing. Two, you’ve got one of the greatest Italian restaurants in the East – Antica Posta in Buckhead. And it is an amazing thing to spend two days in a city and meet so many people that you just wouldn’t normally meet being stuck on a sound stage or working on a set somewhere, or living in another state.

Is this the first time you’ve ever done a convention like this?

Yes, it is. Well, you know what? I have done them before, but they are usually associated with car shows. But I’ve been all over the United States and Canada and it just is an incredible way to say hello to people. I’ll have my children’s books with me and, depending on their age, people talk to me about my entire career.

Sure. You have people that know you as the Fonz from Happy Days all he way up to your more recent stuff like Arrested Development.

That’s right. And also now Royal Pains, which comes back on the air Jan. 20 on USA. And now there’s a new network called the Hub, which is for children, and they are showing Happy Days again. So, kids are finding it 33, 34 years later. It’s pretty amazing. Then, of course, there’s the Adam Sandler period, the Scream period, the Heroes and The One and Only period, the Night Shift period…

You definitely haven’t gone without work at any point.

No. But what is fabulous is to meet everybody and listen to why a particular project is there favorite. A lot of people talk to me about the Christmas Carol movie I did in 1979 and tell me that was the best Scrooge they’ve ever seen. It’s very rewarding, it’s gratifying. And now, Royal Pains is one of the most successful shows on all of cable. I’m unbelievably happy. I watched it the first year, I was on it the second year and now we’re coming back for a third.

One thing that’s interesting to me about this convention, and others like it, is that it’s called the Atlanta Comic Con. Even though comics are the main focus, there’s so much more to it and there are guests like you who don’t really have much to do with comic books at all. Why do you think there is so much crossover appeal there?

You know what has happened – especially at San Diego Comic-Con – is it is all of a sudden a place that has attracted people to come and launch their new projects. Every major star goes to the comic conventions in California in order to launch their new movies. Every major studio and television station is represented. We were doing a wonderful show with the creator of Arrested Development called Sit Down, Shut Up, which was an animated show for adults, and we launched it at a comic convention in San Francisco. So they have become very important in the entertainment world.

They almost should be relabeled as pop culture conventions.

You know what? It’s true, because that’s really what it is. Plus, everybody dresses up as their favorite character from some kind of graphic novel or Japanese cartoon or comic book. It’s amazing to see. It’s also really interesting to be at the beginning of something new like this and see what it’s like. I think that’s very exciting.

Aside from signing autographs and doing panels, what else will you be doing at this convention?

Just meeting everybody and walking around and seeing people I have never met before and meet everybody that lives in and around Atlanta that has come to see us. That is a great compliment. People have told me they’ve driven for hours to come and say hello because they never thought they’d be able to. What an amazing thing that is that you have a dream when you’re 7, you get to live your dream, then people are affected by what you’ve decided to do with your life. But my favorite thing is that I don’t sit behind my table. I stand in front of the table so I get to see everybody face to face. It is much more personal.

Tonight is The Flaming Lips, Explosions In The Sky, Stardeath and White Dwarfs at Chastain Park Amphitheatre. There’s a ton of tickets on Craigslist if you haven’t already scored yours.

[mp3] The Flaming Lips – Do You Realize??
[mp3] Explosions In The Sky – A Song For Our Fathers

After decades of ownership by the Eason clan, Creative Loafing has a new owner, Atalaya Capital Management. Check in with Thomas Wheatley who attended the auction hearing in Tampa yesterday on this audio interview.

The Atlanta Underground Film Festival kicks off tonight and runs through Sunday, August 30.

For eight bucks or less, viewers will have the option of over 100 underground films, documentaries and animated shorts that will be showcased at eight venues, including Midtown Art Cinema, Eyedrum, The Carter Center and Young Blood Gallery.

For more information and a schedule of the flicks, check out www.festivalleague.com.

This year’s offerings include an all-new Avengers story by Brian Bendis and Jim Cheung; Resurrection #0, a sci-fi story by The Amazing Spider-Man scribe Marc Guggenheim that also includes a preview of Stephen Colbert’s Tek Jansen; and Star Wars: The Clone Wars, based on the popular Cartoon Network series. Blackest Night #0 is an introductory story to one of the DC Universe’s biggest events of the year and Mirage Studios offers a reprint of the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (originally published in 1984), a much grittier version than has been represented in movies and cartoons.

From kid-friendly titles like Disney’s Cars to adult cult favorites like Love & Rockets, Free Comic Book Day offers a little something for almost any type of comic fan. IDW Publishing offers a book that includes a Transformers Animated tale as well as two separate G.I. Joe stories. And among the many offering from Dark Horse is a flipbook re-launch of its two biggest franchises, Aliens and Predator.

Local shops taking parting Free Comic Book Day include Criminal Records, Oxford Comics, Book Nook and Titan Games & Comics.

My alma mater, and longtime friend, Super Deluxe was officially taken offline today. Turner laid us all off back in May and has been working down the site since then. A selection of edited videos from Brad Neely, Y’all So Stupid, Tim & Eric, Poundcast, and Bob Odenkirk are available on AdultSwim.com. The rest of the Super Deluxe library was eliminated — FOR SHAME.

In memory of Super Deluxe today, I give you one of my personal favorites and thank acdcguy6294 (among others) for hacking this video, so it may live on. Though for the record, it was created by Olde English. I will continue to post hacked videos of Super Deluxe in their memory throughout the rest of the year in honor of the good times. Link me your favorites!

[mp3] Olde English – Akon Calls T-Pain

Dream on:
Super Deluxe – Wikipedia
“Super Deluxe” on AdultSwim

In spirit of my zombie-like state, I give you a video (and mp3) of Brad Neely’s The Professor Brothers entitled “JFK”… “fake man, great stats.” Can you really asking for more from me right now? I give you a laugh. Enjoy your not-quite-almost-weekend afternoon at work.

[mp3] The Professor Brothers – JFK

In other news Vertigo Comics seems to be finally acknowledging that not all of their readers look (or want to look) like Sandman or John Constantine. That’s right, Vertigo has discovered black people besides -Agent 355. Their first few forays into the worlds of lead negro-dom have been (pardon the pun) mixed. There are now at least four count them four whole graphic novels available from DC/Vertigo that feature a black (male) lead. 2004′s Angeltown, Hellblazer: Papa Midnight, M.F. Grimm: Sentences, and most recently, Incognegro.

Incognegro (written by Mat Johnson ) is a fair read, with solid art throughout most of the book (Warren Fleece). Think O Brother Where Art Thou merged with a network tv quality detective story. There are twists, and there is action but all in all a pretty predictable and formulaic but competent read. For a real surprise though you MUST read M.F. Grimm: Sentences. This is an Eisner quality work. If you want to know some of the back story of hip-hop, want to be entertained by a moving narrative, or if you want to feel the power of truly emotive sequential art (Ronald Wimberly), read this book!

Okay, Black History Month is now officially over as far as I’m concerned. I’ve got some lovely Latinos coming in to clean up after the party and then I’m running out to the suburbs to play “Jungle Fever”. Before that though check out the interview I conducted a few weeks ago with Rich Tommaso. We talk about Satchel Paige: S.OJ.C., inking techniques, and why Adrian Tomine shouldn’t draw fight scenes.

Rich Tomasso Speaks with DaFC about Satchel Paige, inking and the Kubert Style.

DaFC: Satchel Paige was actually finished two summers ago?

Rich: It was September 2006.

DaFC: Satchel Paige seems to have come out on James Sturm’s imprint the Center For Cartoon Studies.

Rich: What happened, is that he and Jason Lutes were at a Mocha convention and an agent who works in New York City – Judy Hansen, saw both of their comics and she knew someone at Hyperion, that’s owned by Walt Disney – they do children’s books. She knew that they were going to be starting a graphic novel line. She knew they were going to start doing historical biographies. So at that time she asked both Jason Lutes and Jim Sturm if they would be interested in doing something. And what happened was Hyperion chose the subject of Satchel Paige, because they knew that he, (Sturm) had done Golem’s Mighty Swing and because of Jason Lutes. He had done stuff about Houdini, so they asked him to do a book on Houdini. They also knew about the school, so they wanted to work it in a way that a percentage of the profits went back to the school.

DaFC: Now were you at the school during this time?

Rich: Yes, I was at the school for the first two years that they were open.

DaFC: Were you teaching there?

Rich: I was teaching with Steve Bissette (we did some workshops together), and I did some teaching on my own.

DaFC: What were you teaching?

Rich: I was teaching mostly like what the Joseph Kubert school taught me. Which a lot of students told me that they just weren’t getting elsewhere. Old school fundamentals and stuff, like shading, human anatomy, some courses on lettering, and how to use the Ames guide.

DaFC: Now I hope I’m not getting ahead of myself, but do you remember Milestone Comics? They were distributed briefly by DC. They had a lot of so called “multi-ethnic” characters and story lines.

Rich: Yes.

DaFC: Their big claim to fame, was that they had a revolutionary new way of inking flesh tones. They were able to color in a way where everyone was not just beige or pink. Now to be honest, some of it looked like ass, because you had what looked like an unrealized marriage between old school inking and the emerging computer coloring techniques. Now in Satchel Paige, your mainly dealing with people of color. I noticed that you made some very interesting inking choices. You seem to use the background inking wash with shading.

Rich: Yeah, I used a lot of dry brush. It’s a technique I introduced a few years ago.

DAFC: I thought that was a filter.

Rich: The color is actually an addition made by myself James Sturm and a guy named Joe Lambert. We all worked on adding that extra tone to it. Basically, we each did a third of the book.

DaFC: So there was no real colorist?

Rich: The inking was mainly the dry brush techniques that I was using. I had to use so much photo reference on every single panel, so when you see these heavy shadows, that’s what I was going off of. I used the dry brush where I saw those heavy shadows in those old photographs.

DaFC: And the green? Is that a wash? How did you decide when to use it?

Rich: We added that in on computer.

DaFC: The combination of dry brush and that filter are one of the better ways I’ve ever seen people of color inked. It’s a true blend of artistry. I also noticed a lot of wide angled scenes (that seem to come from photo references). As an artist do you find those scenes a pain in the ass to draw?

Rich: The thing I liked about most of those panels, is that James had all of these thumbnails, he had laid out for me. He wanted to give it a little bit of air, instead of just plot, plot, plot.

DaFC: I can see that. Like the part at the beginning, where the main character is going to the train station. It’s almost manga like in its pacing. It’s only a few panels, and yet it feels so much longer.

So with the lay outs and everything, did you feel just like a hired gun? How much editorial input did you have? You do happen to be, a writer in your own right.

Rich: there were a few times when I would change layouts just according to how I felt about the pacing. There were a couple of times where there were medium shots or close-up shots, and I would say, “Well, we might as well stay with the whole figure for the whole sequence.” But most of it was tightly plotted. He (James) would sometimes even do the thumbnails twice before I got to it. He was writing the script and rewriting it a bunch of times, but the thumbnails were pretty tight. There were a few pages here and there that were added in afterwards just to kind of space things out a little more.

DaFC: You’re trained in the old style, the “Kubert Style”, that means that you’re familiar with the old “in house” tradition of “work horses”. Were you pretty much the workhorse on this book?

Rich: Yeah, pretty much. He had asked me to pencil two pages a day, if I could, but he didn’t think, that I was actually going to (be able) to do it, but I actually did. I tightly penciled two pages a day, and when I had to ink it, because of the deadline, I had to ink at least a page everyday to get it done. That includes lettering and all that stuff too. So yeah, all I did was work on this thing. That whole ten month time. Plus I never had to work so much off of photo references and stuff, but just reading that story, I could tell, that this was something that he had really put his heart into, that it was really important to him. So I made sure, everything was referenced, even the kids’ clothing, the hairstyles of the children. For everything, I would go off of photos.

DaFC: Not to mince words, but I’ve read my share of both white authors and black authors, and to be blunt, I’ve rarely read a white author that could convey that they understood the pervasive viciousness of the Jim Crow South. Reading this book, I feel that James completely “got it”. I was about to jump online and see if I could find a picture of him, just to make sure that Sturm was actually a white guy.

Rich: It was extremely well researched. For like a whole year, he just read books about the whole Jim Crow period, and then Satchel Paige and what was going on in the baseball leagues. Lots of things that weren’t even pertinent to the book. Things that weren’t about baseball, he read all about Satchel Paige and his life and that period.

DaFC: I loved you’re rendering of the Jenkins Boys on horses. It was very reminiscent of the black literary traditions of overseers. An ugly traditions from the servant’s quarters of Southern Gothic. They were the horse-riding, monstrous, slave drivers and whip-crackers on the plantations.

Rich: All that was in the thumbnails, but then again, I also read a lot of the first hand accounts about Satchel Paige and that era. It really helped.

DaFC: Now the story is told from the perspective of Emmit, was he a real person, or is he a character used strictly for the sake of narration?

Rich: I had asked James about that, I asked him besides Satchel Paige, who else is an actual historical figure he said, “Nobody, its all fictional”. Because I had actually been searching through all these books on the Negro Leagues players, and I had found that there was no picture of him (Emmit). There was someone who had the same name, but our Emmit was totally a fictional character.

DaFC: Was it hard going from a storyteller, to a workhorse?

Rich: The hardest thing about it, where James was a harsh taskmaster, was just the baseball. He’s a total baseball geek! There were times, where he would be like “I think the foot should be more in this position…” It was really helpful, because like the first thing that our editor said when he met us was “The thing that I’m so impressed with, is the poses are just so right on.” That’s James. (Thankfully) he was real picky, about having those poses down.

DaFC: “Striking Out Jim Crow” is a great title, but I want to know why didn’t you go more with a title, like “The Negroes Mighty Swing”?

Rich: Actually, a student and I made a joke about that, the next book is going to be like “The Golem: Part III”.

DaFC: On your other works, I find it easy to tell the difference between you, Seth, and Dan Clowes, but I feel, that a lot of untrained eyes might have trouble making the distinctions. Do you get accused of aping other artists’ style a lot?

Rich: On the Miriam book, a lot of people that reviewed it were like “This looks so much like Dan Clowes”. There was even this one guy, that basically said that I could probably be sued for it.”

DaFC: Well, Clowes is the most famous from that style. He had a movie and all, but it’s a pretty common style. People will quickly assume it all looks like Clowes, but they probably aren’t even aware of who Mitch O’Connel is.

Rich: It seems that they leave Adrienne Tomine alone about it, and his stuff is amazingly similar. Every time I see him on a New Yorker cover, I’m like, “Oh, Dan Clowes got a cover of… oh, wait”. I got the Clowes comparison so heavily on this book. I kind of saw that coming though even while I was drawing the book.

DaFC: Well, this scene here, with the girl fight to me looks more like the Hernandez Brothers than anything else. Honestly, Tomine doesn’t impress me much as a visual storyteller. For example, his little story “Pink Frosting” seems to be like Romper Stomper, in that its one of those skinhead stories written by someone too gentile to really know much about skinheads. He just comes off as an art school pretty boy. (Unlike Evan Dorkin) he seems like someone who did the rock club circuit, but never lived through the really seedy stuff. His work shows a lack of “authenticity of the streets”.

Rich: It does always sort of show through. There’s this Hernandez story that I love, It’s Ray and Doyle…”

DaFC: Yeah!

Rich: “..and they go to hang out with this crazy guy they knew from high school, and he’s still like that. He’s getting drunk as Hell, and he gets in a fight. (Reading it, your like,) you know, that the Hernandez Brothers actually know these guys.”

DaFC: Do you think integrity and experience helps personal cartooning?

Rich: I think so. I definitely think so. Especially, because it helps so much in film, and the other arts like that, and comics is so related to that.

DaFC: To me you come off with more authenticity when you write what you really know, like Jeffery Brown. He doesn’t seem to write about relationships that he couldn’t have actually been in. Now, I doubt that you or James have ever played for the Negro Leagues, but you (guys) at least did your research.

Rich: In New Jersey, in my high school, there were always fights like that. There was once this real bad one between two girls like that one. It’s like a memory that is still so vivid still.

DaFC: Speaking of Jersey, the hair in those drawings!!! If you’ve never seen hair like that up close and personal-

Rich: That’s true. Like, when I drew that I was like, “This isn’t one of those cheesey 80′s things, I knew girls like that. I knew girls that really had that hair. At times it may feel like a caricature, or like I’m drawing something real cartoony, but it’s not. I remember this girl, and she did look like that.

DaFC: Have you ever heard of the tradition of “taxing” like you tax someone for their boots, or their jacket, because they “haven’t earned it yet”?

Rich: Yeah!

DaFC: I think Tomine needs to be taxed for his pens if he ever tries to draw another fight scene. Why did you come back to Atlanta?

Rich: I’ve got a lot of friends and family here. Vermont, it was great to be up there, and I do miss the students, but it was really hard to live there. White River Junction VT, is like the middle of nowhere. There’s like only three restaurants and a stationary store. It used to be a railroad town. Now it just sort of survives because its only about 15 miles from Dartmouth.

DaFC: I guess it’s not a great time to have a rail-based economy, unless you’re hauling auto parts.

Rich: If you’ve read any of James’ last four books, you know that he romanticizes the trains. He came down here a few years ago, and he loved it. Seth loved it too.

Out now is the new graphic novel by Jim Sturm and Rich Tommaso, Satchel Paige: Striking Out Jim Crow. It’s a well crafted book with an excellent narrative and intensely emotive art. James Sturm, who sometimes worries about being pigeonholed as “the baseball guy” of comics blends together elements of history and fiction into a masterful narrative that is intensely engrossing and involving. Sturm breathes life into the brutal methodology of the pre-civil rights South, while at the same time showing an innate human understanding of what it meant to swallow your dignity in order to protect your life and your loved ones.

Using painstaking attention to detail and reference upon reference Rich Tommaso showed his skill as not merely an illustrator, but a true visual interpreter. Rich’s mastery of dry brush inking techniques married with an honest understanding of form and line give a weight to his storytelling. With only a three color palate Rich, James and Joe (Lambert) manage to demonstrate an effect richer than sepia-tones yet more subtle than a mere four color substitute.

Satchel Paige will almost definitely win awards this year, if not from the Harvey, Eisner, and Ignatz set, then at least from the Black or educational literature cliques. I recommend that you do yourself a favor and read this book before everyone else beats you to it. Satchel Paige is a beautiful example of comics’ literature, and a fine example of the potential of what the moniker of Indy comics should aspire to. This is a graphic novel that overshadows the fleeting trends and clichés of the genre, more Pekar than Clowes.

Starting this Friday at Landmark Theaters in Midtown is the new film Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud. Persepolis is based on Marjane Satrapi’s auto-biographical graphic novel, about growing up in pre-revolutionary Iran. The story takes a darker after the deposition of the Shah, as being a young girl with youthful, bourgeois ideals becomes an increasingly high-risk lifestyle. Persepolis is a beautiful work that is at times, both disturbing and inspiring, while also entertaining and informative. Not only does it give a history of Iran’s Islamic revolution, but it also tells of the external pressures that helped to shape the nation into what it is today. Satrapi’s narrative weaves phrases like “CIA trained” and “let us have the petroleum” into an intensely personal, and modern, historical drama.

Marjane’s story is a powerful one, and the stunning animation flows seamlessly between the vibrant and the stark. You feel the violence and the fear of: life under oppressive regimes, heartbreak, and cultural displacement. You also fall in love with: strong grandmothers, deities, Marxist uncles, and irrepressible little girls. There are not many tales that can go trans-medium, with integrity; however Persepolis is one such story.

95min. Fr. Sub.

If you need a sound bite quote, say, “All the cool animated scenes from Pink Floyd’s The Wall filtered through a black and white version of Schulz’s Peanuts’.” “Post-apocalypse Peppermint Patty”

For show times, check out the Landmark Theatres site.

The Atlanta Comic Expo is in town (and inside the perimeter) this year, from February 8th through the 10th. Think of it as a mini-Dragon-con with a Haunted Luau, hotel parties, and industry guests: Sket One, Mark Brooks, Eric Powell, Dan Yaniger, and the legendary Bob Schreck – to name a few.

Geeklandia friend Dosa Kim is busy designing the new issue of False magazine. I did get a chance to see a private viewing of the “Wire Pop” comic / art show (by Saint) at Mint Gallery. As usual the boy’s work is just stunning, and even more so given a large open format. I hear that there are still a few prints and mini-comics available for sale by the artist.

I’m more than a little excited about Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis finally opening in Atlanta this Friday. Call Midtown Art Cinema to check the engagement run. BTW, I know the Joker (Heath Ledger) is dead. It’s sad when a young life ends, but this guy was an actor, and not Kofi Annan.

Two last items of note from the world of film:
1. Walt Disney has a 40th Anniversary Platinum Edition of The Jungle Book out that I’m lusting after.
2. I’ve seen Pan’s Labyrinth DVDs around town on the super-cheap!