The Sunday Spotlight: The Recognising An Intrinsically Dynamic Narrative Artform Before It Smacks You In The Face Edition
by Richard Bruton
Time once more for our weekly spin around the comics news that caught my eye this week – it’s Sunday Spotlight time!
Happy 35th Anniversary Comix Experience…
Three and a half decades in the comics biz is always worth celebrating. Even more so when you’ve spent that three and a half decades being one of the finest comic shops in North America – Comix Experience.
So of course there’s going to be some sort of party happening – Brian Hibbs and the gang have organised a taco truck and much more fun to be had on Saturday 30th March. No doubt more details here.
Terry Moore’s REALLY Complete Paradise Too blows through its target and then some…
Terry Moore’s Kickstarter for the collected Paradise Too, all the material the artist made before coming out with the magnificent Strangers in Paradise, launched and absolutely destroyed its Kickstarter target of $35k – by the time you read this it will be way, way past the $100k mark. Originally published in 2010 with a tiny print run, this is an expanded version of the book with plenty of extra pages to enjoy.
Eisner Awards Hall Of Fame 2024 announced…
San Diego Comic-Con has announced that the Eisner Awards judges have selected 19 individuals to automatically be inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Awards Hall of Fame for 2024. These inductees include 12 deceased comics pioneers and 7 living creators.
The deceased greats are Creig Flessel, A. B. Frost, Billy Graham, Albert Kanter, Warren Kremer, Oscar Lebeck, Frans Masereel, Keiji Nakaszawa, Noel Sickles, Cliff Sterrett, Elmer C. Stoner, and George Tuska.
The judges’ living choices are Kim Deitch, Gary Groth, Don McGregor, Bryan Talbot, Ron Turner, Lynn Varley, and James Warren. In April, there will be more nominees announced for online voting to add another four inductees into the Hall of Fame.
Plenty of good choices on there of course, and you can read all about the nominees here, but as a Brit comics fan I have to highlight the great news that the incredible Bryan Talbot gets a nod this year. Whether it’s the saga of Luther Arkwright, A Tale of One Bad Rat, Alice in Sunderland, his quite beautiful work on Nemesis The Warlock in 2000 AD, or many, many more incredible works, the Hall of Fame induction is truly well deserved.
Fleischer Cartoons: The Art and Inventions of Max Fleischer at MoMA…
Coming next week and running for seven days, the Museum of Modern Art in New York presents a film series celebrating the brilliance of the Fleischer Brothers, masters of 20th Century animation and creators of the likes of creations Betty Boop and Koko the Clown as well as their wildly popular screen adaptations of E.C. Segar’s Popeye and DC Comics’ Superman.
Fleischer Cartoons: The Art and Inventions of Max Fleischer – 7-13 March 2024.
The events include classic cartoons by the Fleischer Brothers, including:
‘family-friendly matinees, but also programs historical (spotlighting Max Fleischer’s very early Koko the Clown silents, which famously combined live-action hijinks with hand-drawn animation) and thematic, all too appropriate given the Fleischers’ merciless sense of humor and profound eye for anything phantasmagorical and transgressive – including sound-era triumphs like the Betty Boop headliner Minnie the Moocher, featuring a ferocious rotoscoped performance from Cab Calloway, or the Technicolor two-reeler masterpiece Popeye The Sailor Man Meets Sindbad the Sailor Man.’
‘Much of the material in Fleischer Cartoons draws from a wealth of new 4K restorations supervised by Max Fleischer’s granddaughter Jane Fleischer Reid, many of which will be making their world premieres at MoMA.’
And finally, sadly, we say farewell to Ramona Fradon, 1926-2004…
Another sad day as we say a fond farewell to Ramona Fradon who passed away last Sunday aged 97. Sadly, this was mere weeks into her recently announced retirement.
An absolute legendary comics artist, Fradon was born in 1926, with her comics career beginning in 1950. Her beautiful, clean, deceptively simple work appeared in many, many comics over the last 70 years. She’s worked on a series of characters and comics throughout the decades, including memorable runs on Aquaman, where she co-created Aqualad. She left comics for a while in the ’60s for the birth of her first child, but returned in 1965 to co-create Metamorpho, before returning full-time in the ’70s with work at Marvel and on Plastic Man and Super Friends at DC amongst others. In the ’80s, she moved from comics to newspaper strips, replacing creator Dale Messick on Brenda Starr.
She first retired from comics in 1995, but it was retirement in name only, as she still found herself undertaking commissions, covers, and the rest since then before retiring again just sex weeks ago.
An iconic and hugely important artist in a medium and an era where she was one of very few, Fradon’s work lives on. Our sympathies go out to Ms Fradon’s family and friends.
This from her representative at Catskill Comics…
“It comes with great sadness to announce that Ramona Fradon has passed away just a few moments ago. Ramona was 97 and had a long career in the comic book industry and was still drawing just a few days ago. She was a remarkable person in so many ways. I will miss all the great conversations and laughs we had. I am blessed that I was able to work with her on a professional level, but also able to call her my friend.
If anyone who wishes to send a card to the family, Please feel free to send them to Catskill Comics and I’ll be happy to pass them along. You can send cards to Catskill Comics ” Fradon Family”, Po Box 264, Glasco,NY 12432″
This sums her up pretty well… A Comic Book Creator tribute cover with art by Robert Sikoryak and Stephan DeStefano (you can read a great piece on her in Comic Book Creator #13 [2016]), available to download here.
