"Act one, mustard. Act two, mayo. Act three, relish. Act four, corn relish."

But what the heck was Act Five? Oh, Ira Glass, I less-than-symbol-number-three you.

A few words on Top Chef All-Stars

Top Chef is the only “reality competition” show I’ve watched continuously since its launch, including both TC: Masters rounds. Admittedly, the most recent season in Washington DC was abysmal from the contestants to the terribly designed challenges (still fuming over “BipartiSandwich”), and I’m not entirely sold on the concept of TC: Just Desserts yet.

However, it’s a sure bet I’ll be watching Top Chef All-Stars when it starts in December. Not only will it feature some of the best chefs who choked at inopportune moments during their seasons, Anthony Bourdain is going to be a regular weekly judge. I am so looking forward to his acerbic observations and critiques. Bourdain is also a little more willing to accept less-delicate, messy, and simpler dishes than other judges, give his love of good, hearty street foods of the world.

Here’s the list of chefs for Top Chef All-Stars (which purposely excludes the winners of each cycle). My commentary follows each in brackets.

Season 1: San Francisco

• Stephen Asprinio [Of course they had to pick the Original Douche of the series, the one who would be the pattern for all future douches. Gah. Still an asshole.]
• Tiffani Faison [Or, “Tiff-a-bitch”.]

Season 2: Los Angeles

• Elia Aboumrad [What I remember most is her saying, “En my countree, we do not have thees Thanksgeeving...”.]
• Marcel Vigneron [See notation for “Aspirino, Stephen” above.]

Season 3: Miami

• Dale Levitski [Decent guy who fell into a depression a few years back. He’s got a new place open in Chicago, and is back in the kitchen. Hope he does well.]
• Casey Thompson [Notable for choking in the finale. Cute.]
• Tre Wilcox [I still long for a serving of the cheesy shrimp and grits he did for the “roach coach” challenge. Accepted elimination with grace and style.]

Season 4: Chicago

• Richard Blais [Although I’m not so keen on the whole molecular gastronomy thing, he was truly a nice guy, a skilled chef who choked in the finale. But he did win a car at least.]
• Antonia Lofaso [The very definition of “sweetheart”.]
• Spike Mendelsohn [Douchebag in a hat.]
• Dale Talde [Still remember Bourdain gagging on the butterscotch scallops he made for the restaurant wars episode. Butterscotch? Who would do that to an innocent scallop? While Dale does score points for finally telling off “larval” Lisa, he did turn douche in the end.]

Season 5: New York

• Carla Hall [Skilled when she can rein in her personality and focus on cooking.]
• Jamie Lauren [Often flustered by scallops, yet kept cooking them.]
• Fabio Viviani [What’s not to love? The accent, the mangled English, the dishes he turned out!]

Season 6: Las Vegas

• Jennifer Carroll [Hooray! TenJenn represents Philadelphia again! She deserves another shot, as she too fell to “the choke” at the finale.]
• Mike Isabella [Moderately douchey, but had the skills to back it up.]

Season 7: Washington DC

• Tiffany Derry [The nicest, most genuine chef in all of S7. Never said a harsh word about anybody. Still not sure why she didn’t make the final four. Glad she gets another shot.]
• Angelo Sosa [Why, oh why must we be subjected to this douche so soon? Hopefully he will stop using allusions to making love to the ingredients.]

Who I would have liked to see included in the All-Stars:

• Dave Martin (S1) [For providing the show’s first quotable line, “I’m not your bitch, bitch”. Would have been one of the two finalists if he hadn’t screwed up the next-to-last elimination and only made two dishes instead of three. Yummy looking lamb enchiladas in first episode.]
• Michael Midgley (S2) [Flounder! Okay, not the best chef, and cooked better while altered after dental work, but how about including him for some comic relief?]
• Lisa Fernandes (S4) [Larval Lisa! The show needs a *real* villian.]
• Jeff McInnis (S5) [Another choking victim. Plus, cute.]
• Stefan Richter (S5) [How could they *not* have Stefan back, especially since they included his crush, Jamie? Plus, they could have had him skin an eel again.]
• Kevin Gillespie (S6) [Being overshadowed by the brothers Voltaggio in the finale shook him. He and his beard deserve another chance. Plus, I don’t recall him ever trash-talking anyone during his season.]

Seq. Art: American, Eh?, Release the Bats!, Is it the Future Yet? (Or, the punctuated review edition.)

American, Eh? #4 and #5 by Heather Bryant
The continuing story of a Canadian who fell in love with an American and moved to the states is Heather Bryant’s American, Eh? Heather’s drawing and scripting techniques just keep getting better (and they were pretty damn good to begin with) - there’s quite an artistic difference between Issue #1 and the latest two. Issue #4 tells the story of working as a projectionist for a demanding film professor, and how much “H.” learned, even if it was a struggle to please him at times. The two-page spread that impressed me the most was her drawings of one of the most famous scenes from Hitchcock’s film Notorious.

From American, Eh? #4

Issue #5 of American, Eh involves a holiday trip back to Canada to see her family, with boyfriend Michael in tow. Besides the beautiful snowscapes (it’s a fairly rural town), Heather varies page layouts with different sized frames on each page. It keeps the action flowing well. I can’t wait for the next installment!

Heather also does the webcomic Cake Brat, the tales of bakers on the nightshift, lots of fun.

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Release the Bats! Ten Years of Comics by Liz Baillie
I’ve raved before about Liz’s comic My Brain Hurts (Vol. 1 and Vol. 2), and how I had previously misjudged her work as “crusty punk comics”, when they are not that at all. Well, they sort of are, but they are SO. MUCH. MORE. than that.

Release the Bats! collects Liz’s hard-to-find work from other anthologies (her great piece from Side B is in here), selections from her “Minicomics of the Month Club”, and a few unpublished pieces. I really enjoyed “Record Collecting and the Cartoonist Tradition”, “Grandma’s Song”, and “The Awkward Punky Teen’s Guide to Dating”. She’s truly one of the finest comic creators in the indie/mini culture, and you must check out her work.

Liz is also publishes the webcomic Freewheel, a story of a girl searching for her brother, and the people she finds along the way.

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Is it the Future Yet? by Corinne Mucha
Another SPX, another collection from the lovely Corinne Mucha. In Is It the Future Yet?, she ponders about deja vu, trying to change the future, superstitions, and having her hyperlineated palms read.

From Is it the Future Yet?

CfE: Syndicate Product: THE META-COMICS ISSUE

CALL for ENTIRES

Syndicate Product: 

THE META-COMICS ISSUE

The META-COMICS ISSUE will include comics and essays ABOUT comics and sequential art. You certainly DO NOT have to be an artist to contribute – essays are very much welcome and encouraged!

Some potential ideas:

• The creative process of drawing comics: Where do your ideas come from? Why do you draw comics?
• Comics-related disasters: From the cat knocking over the ink bottle to basement floods that resulted in floating longboxes.
•  __ broke my heart: As a comics reader, the most soul-crushing, genre-destroying, why-the-hell-am-I-still-reading this storylines you’ve endured in mainstream comics. Why did you stop reading some titles?
• Creative space: Where do you draw? What rituals do you perform? (E.g., Lynda Barry always begins a drawing session by writing out the alphabet a few times with a brush and ink.)
• Reading comics: Are there comics that left you so emotionally wrecked that you’re scared to read them again? Flipside: are there books you have to re-read every year?
• Collecting comics: Are you a Wednesday regular? Did your mom throw out your collection when you went to college? Have you ever sold off parts of your collection for rent, food, or more comics?
• Comics and relationships: Friendships and romances found or lost over comics.
• Memories of stores past and present: Good and bad stories from the comic shop. Did/do you work in a comic shop?
• Inspirations: Artists, teachers, storytellers?
• Tangentially related ideas: Terrible, little-seen comic book movie/TV adaptations. Tales from actual comic book conventions.
• Previously self-published comics (either print or web) are welcome if they relate to the topic.

SPECIFICATIONS

Comic artists: Final art size should reduce to around 4.5 x 7.5 inches. Four pages maximum (but if it’s really good, this can be negotiated). B&W only. Send art as 300dpi TIF files if grayscale scans, 600dpi TIF if bitmap scans. Also, once entries are in, I may be looking for small illustrations to accompany some of the essays.

Writers: Between 400-1200 words is acceptable. If you need to go longer, please do. If the writing is good enough, people will want to read it to the end. I'll let you know if a piece is simply too huge, rambling, unwieldy, or needs editing. Send essays as OpenOffice, MS Word, or plain text files, or paste the text into an e-mail.

Contributors will receive a copy of the final project.

Due date and where to submit: First deadline is JANUARY 7, 2011*. FEBRUARY 4, 2011. Submit your entries to syndprod@gmail.com. If you want to mail them, send them to: A.j. Michel, PO Box 877, Lansdowne, PA 19050.

* Due date subject to extension if needed, as it usually is.

Seq. Art: Americus, Troop 142, Kevin Days a Week

Americus by MK Reed (script) and Jonathan Hill (art)

Americus is a graphic novel scripted by MK Reed and drawn by Jonathan Hill set for release in fall of 2011 by First Second. However, you don’t have to wait to read it! Under special arrangement with the publisher, Americus is being released page by page (updated three times a week) online! It’s the story of book censorship (“The Chronicles of Apathea Ravenchilde” series) in a small town in Oklahoma, and I eagerly await each page.

If you don’t usually read webcomics (and admittedly, I do prefer hardcopy to digital), no worries. Americus flows well and is updated frequently so you don’t forget the story (of course, you can always flip back as needed). The creators also annotate selected pages, with details of their writing and drawing processes, and there are guest consultant bloggers on Fridays, too. And even though I’m reading it online for free, I still plan on buying a physical copy when it prints.

(From Americus by MK Reed and Jonathan Hill.)

_____________________________________________

Troop 142 by Mike Dawson

Mike Dawson wrote one of my favorite autobiographical comics, Freddie & Me: A Coming of Age (Bohemian) Rhapsody from 2008. I admire his clean, sharp drawing style and tight scripts.

Troop 142 is the fictional story (although Dawson was a Scout) of a week at Boy Scout camp circa 1995. It’s a seven-part minicomic, with each day of the week comprising an issue. Issues #1 to #5 are currently available.

I’m finding Troop 142 to be a compelling read because there don’t seem to be many stories about the friendships in a boy’s life between the ages of approximately 13 to 17. Sure, there are plenty of science fiction and fantasy novels (e.g. Harry Potter series, the Knife of Never Letting Go series, much of Heinlein’s YA fiction), and other novels that focus on the development of one young male character, but I can’t think of too many examples that involve groups of boys of this age as characters who get equal time. The only examples I can think of are somewhat dated: Gordie, Chris, Teddy, and Vern in Stephen King’s novella “The Body” (on screen as Stand By Me); Kevin Arnold and Paul Pfeiffer in The Wonder Years; Sam Weir, Bill Haverchuck, and Neil Schweiber in Freaks and Geeks; and even Doogie and Vinny Delpino in Doogie Howser, MD. (If you can cite any more recent examples, put them in the comments.)

Troop 142 features Dawson’s crisp artwork, pacing, and dialogue, with multiple storylines intertwined, but never confusingly so. It won a well-deserved Ignatz Award at SPX 2010 for “Outstanding Online Comics”, and was also nominated for Outstanding Artist, Series, and Mini-Comics. Troop 142 is an excellent novel, and I eagerly look forward to the conclusion.

Troop 142 is available for free online. If you do enjoy it, consider buying it in hard copy or tossing Mike Dawson a few bucks. (Not sure if it’s found a publisher yet, or there will be problems actually getting it published due to the use of the Boy Scouts.)

From Troop 142 by Mike Dawson

_____________________________________________

Kevin Days a Week: Year Three (2008 to 2009) by Kevin Burkhalter

Another year, another brick of diary comics from Kevin Burkhalter! Kevin Days a Week is one of my favorite annual purchases, in all its chunky goodness. A cool feature of this year’s installment is that Kevin allowed different comic artists to draw the strips for February 2009, which coincided with recovery from an emergency operation to remove scar tissue blocking his intestine. Yeouch! (But still a lot of fun to read!)

From Kevin Days a Week! by Kevin Burkhalter

Syndicate Product Zine Shop FALL SALE

SPX 2010 Haul

Another year, another SPX haul, and another few weeks of eating ramen with rooster sauce and from the enormous tub o’ hummus from the warehouse store.

I get better at doing the Small Press Expo every year. It was was my second year as a volunteer, which was a lot of fun, and I met a lot of interesting artists. Unfortunately, I missed the Ignatz Awards because the five minute laydown I planned turned into five hours. Oops. I also forgot my camera, so the only picture I took was on my phone of a package of creamed herring at Ize’s Deli nearby.

Here’s my haul from SPX 2010. Almost all of what I picked up this year isn’t easily available in average comic stores, so there are links throughout the list to the artists or publishers. Look for reviews in the upcoming weeks. And all I plan to do this upcoming weekend is read!

• Kevin Days a Week: Year Three by Kevin Burkhalter
• American, Eh? #4 and #5 by Heather Bryant
• Is it the Future Yet: Stories by Corinne Mucha 
• Troop 142 #4 and #5 by Mike Dawson
• Release the Bats by Liz Baillie
• Ha Ha Constance Planck: A Selection and Sandcastle Syndrome by Hilary Allison
• Ten Thousand Things to Do #6 by Jesse Reklaw
• Owe Apostrope by O’Shell
• Yes, Let’s by Galen Goodwin Longstreth & Maris Wicks
• Invincible Summer 19 / Clutch 22 by Nicole G and Clutch McB (Note: Papercutter #14 from Tugboat Press also debuted at the show.)
• It’s Dream Time Snoop Doggy Dogg by JT Yost
• Caboose (compilation)
• Radio: Truly Crucial Rock and Roll
• Your Disease Spread Quick by Tom Neely
• Henry and Glenn Forever
• Diary and L.A. Diary by Gabrielle Bell
• Phase 7 #014 and Transition by Alec Longstreth (and his amazing beard)
• Germs by Adam Bomb and Ray Decay
• Adventures in Stereo by Aaron DeLaRosa
• Coal by Jeff Sharp
• Diary Comics by Dustin Harbin
• Four Squares by Joe Quinones, Maris Wicks, Liz Prince, and Tim Finn.
• Square Dance by Colin Tedford
• Play and Time anthologies from the Trees & Hills Comic Group
• Anyone but Virginia #4 by Zac Crockett and Josh Eiserike
• Assholes #3 by Josh Eiserike and Mitch Roth
• Hive Four (Anthology)
• Afrodisiac and Mixed Up by Jim Rugg
• WIZZYWIG 3: Fugitive by Ed Piskor
• Dad: A Documentary Graphic Novel by Scott King
• Cavalcade of Boys Collection by Tim Fish

Cul de Sac Calendar by Richard Thompson - One of the things I did as an SPX volunteer was assist at the SPX guest signing table, helping artists with sales and and such during their signing times. I helped out Richard Thompson, who does the daily syndicated strip Cul de Sac and the political cartoon Richard’s Poor Almanac for the Washington Post (sorry, can’t link, behind registration wall). It was really amazing to watch people come to the table in awe of his work. One young woman was so excited she could barely speak as she told him how much of an influence he was on her life and work as he drew a sketch for her. He is an incredibly nice man and personalized one of his calendars for me. (And I have no doubt that my friends would endorse "International Tease Anita Day".

I missed out on getting a copy of Octopus Pie by Meredith Gran, so I’ll be ordering one soon.

Not pictured: several issues of Smile Hon, You're in Baltimore, delivered in person by the publishers.

And finally, an organic catnip mousie from Hey Pais for Mooch. Man, did he pounce on that when I got it home. He’s been alternating between running around at full speed, staring at his paw, and eating enormous amounts of kibble. They will be available soon in Pais' Etsy shop, so you too can enable your kitty!

100 Katts!

(To paraphrase Jonathan Coulton: "IKEA, IKEA, just some oak and some pine, and a handful of kittehs...")

Zine Picks: 09.07.2010

You Don’t Get There From Here #15 by Carrie McNinch
The latest installment of Carrie’s diary comics covers the beginning of 2010 to her trip to Japan (to be covered in another issue). She’s still dealing with the loss of her much loved cat Jesse, and feelings of loneliness and disconnect. But then there are the art shows, runs in the hills, friends, rutting tortoises, travel, food, and great books to balance it all out. I realize that I write about just about every issue of YDGTFH, but it deserves the attention. It’s a solid daily diary comic that is not self centered and sniveling. And as I wrote in my 24 hour zine (Syndicate Product 16: Golden State), Carrie’s depictions of Los Angeles are partly to blame for my move-to-California dreams.

Available for $2 from Carrie McNinch, PO Box 49403, Los Angeles CA 90049, or through Microcosm Publishing.

(From You Don't Get There From Here #15)

________________________________

The Ken Chronicles #16 by Ken Bausert
Ken always provides a good read with his stories about everyday life (which, as we know from Harvey Pekar, is pretty complex stuff), from what he’s listening to and reading, to gardening and trips to the beach. I particularly enjoyed “It’s all about the iMac” in this issue, where he writes about upgrading his computer, because it helped me understand some of the frustration my own father experiences while working on his computer. While I can (usually) easily adapt to new versions of software, having worked on computers for 20+ years, it’s often difficult for older folks to adjust so easily, although they usually catch on eventually. (My father still complains to me every time Google tweaks Gmail. Last time they modified it, he wrote me: “Well, some stupid ass had to justify their salary so that changed the email again.”)

Ken puts it much more eloquently: “Now, you have to understand, I am no expert or authority on anything to do with computers. I just know what works well for me and I learn what I must do to utilize it. However, I can tell you why I love certain applications and what I don’t like about their replacements. But, since all new applications have a certain learning curve, I could be missing something that I just haven’t been able to figure out. Mostly, though, it’s first impressions that count.”

Available for $2, a fair trade, or a letter of comment from Ken Bausert, 2140 Erma Drive, East Meadow NY 11554-1120.

Seq. Art: You’ll Never Know by C. Tyler

Sometimes I think I know everything there is to know about my father. I’ve heard his stories hundreds (maybe thousands) of times by now, and can even finish some of them when he starts. A playlist of “Joe’s Greatest Hits” would include these classics:

1. “When I was working in the barroom that Baba and Zeddo owned (Note: his parents; those are Slovak terms for grandparents), one night after closing I decided to try a shot from every bottle. I got through two or three and woke up on the bar the next morning. I’m not a drinker.”

2. “We ordered a new refrigerator in 1943, but it wasn’t delivered until 1946. Everything went toward the war in those days. You kids will never know what it was like. Your Baba worked third shift at a clothing factory snipping threads off of long underwear when they came off the machines. Everybody worked for the war.”

3. “I used an outhouse until I was about 10 years old. For toilet paper, we used old Sears catalogs. But only the dull pages, not the shiny, color pages. You crumpled up the dull pages so they would be soft.”

4. “Before we built the barroom as a separate building, it was in the basement of our house. (Note: this was not uncommon in rural PA in the 1950s.) The women would use the bathroom in the house and them men would go outside.”

5. “I won the shop prize in high school. Five dollars. I still have the envelope it came in.”

However, Dad keeps surprising me with new and interesting stories about his life. This last weekend I visited, on the way back from the diner we passed a house being systematically deconstructed as opposed to randomly demolished.

“Look at those old, wide boards. You can’t find wide boards like that so easy anymore,” he said. “They’re probably going to use that lumber for something else.”

He paused, carefully driving around a deep pothole.

“Our house in Freeland was built from the old elementary school in Jeddo. Zeddo bought it for $100 when it went up for sale, and he hired some guys to take it down piece by piece and haul the lumber and whatever else they could salvage over to the lot. He paid them $3 a day and Baba gave them lunch each day.”

Who knew Zeddo was so eco-conscious in the 1940s! (Truthfully, he was just cheap.)

If I had the courage, I’d quit my job and chronicle my father’s life in audio and video, get all those stories down, all those secrets out. There’s an epic “This American Life” episode in there. If I were any kind of artist, I would have started a comic series about him.

Does Dad have stories that shouldn’t be told at all? In his older age that he’s let some things slip that probably shouldn’t have. Maybe he thinks that I’m old enough to hear the entire “truth” about everything in his life, maybe he just doesn’t care anymore, but there are some details I just don’t want to know. There are some secrets no one ever needs to know.

During SPX 2009, I purchased a copy of Carol Tyler’s You’ll Never Know - Book One: A Good and Decent Man (Fantagraphics), a biography about her father (Charles “Chuck” Tyler), who served in Europe during WWII, but never willing to talk about his service. However, as he got older, he began talking to Carol about the terrible experiences, the horrors that men were just supposed to suppress and forget about when they returned to the U.S. after the war. (See the movie The Best Years of Our Lives for an excellent portrayal of three men trying to re-adjust after coming home.) Carol at first started to build his stories and old photos into a series of new scrapbooks for him, but then expanded to include stories about her life, and her parents’ lives before and after the war.

You’ll Never Know sat on my shelf for nearly a year before I finally opened and fell into it.

There are a few possible reasons that You’ll Never Know sat unread for so long before reading.

1. It is an intimidatingly beautiful book. Huge, scrapbook-sized, landscape format (12” wide x 10.5” high), hardcover, beautiful paper, colors, and printing. Fantagraphics always produces beautiful books, but this is one of my favorites they have ever published. I didn’t feel “ready” to read it for the longest time, because it just looked like an important, privileged read that required the correct moment. (I can’t be alone in saving certain books for “perfect” times or moods, am I?)

2. I also hesitated reading You’ll Never Know because I knew it would remind me of my own shortcomings in recording my father’s own stories, and my failed promises to organize all of his historical “stuff” (old coal mine company records and such). I also feel I’ve disappointed him by never really figuring out what I’m supposed to be doing with my life.

A few weeks ago, I carefully slid You’ll Never Know off the shelf. I was ready for it. It was time.

It was a deeply emotional read.

You’ll Never Know is the story of many lives: Chuck, his wife Hannah, Carol, Carol’s daughter Julia, and Carol’s estranged husband Justin. All their stories are told in the past and the present, in Carol’s drawings of Chuck’s old photographs, contrasted with events in Carol’s life like raising a teenage daughter while estranged from her husband. Their stories span from Chuck’s birth (1919) to the beginning of the 2000s and are held together by the Tyler family fortitude.

The art and lettering is stellar in You’ll Never Know, filled with little details that make every page - especially full page panels. Here’s one of my favorite panels. (Click to enlarge.)

And this is a sample page from the scrapbook Carol is drawing for Chuck.

By the end of You’ll Never Know: Book One, the reader knows that “something” happened during Chuck’s service in Europe that he has repressed for years. Carol is eking it out of him, slowly, bit by bit. It will take time.

You’ll Never Know is excellent example of autobiographical/biographical non-fiction sequential art, and has made my short list of favorite graphic non-fiction, which also includes Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, Harvey Pekar’s American Splendor, the Syncopated collections, and Ken Dahl’s Monsters.

I shouldn’t have delayed reading it.

However, the upside about waiting so long to read it is that I don’t have to wait so long for the next book. Book Two: Collateral Damage, is set to ship in September. (Oh, I hope it’s ready for the SPX!)