George Gene Gustines

Today, that team effort, which also includes an editor reviewing the work and mindful of deadlines, remains largely the same. But while the way writers and editors work is relatively unchanged, computers and technology have broadened the options for illustrators — some of whom have traded pencils and inks for styluses — and revolutionized the roles of letterers and colorists, in speed, output and artistry.

This technological evolution did not go exactly as some had imagined it might.

“I recall in the late ’80s, we were all so sure that every discipline of comics creation would switch over to being done with the aid of the personal computer,” said Mark Chiarello, a veteran of the comic book industry. “Well, 30 years later, people pencil and ink comics in relatively the same way that they have since the art form began,” he said. “But the job of colorist and letterer has changed and been completely taken over by the computer.”

Chiarello began as an assistant to an editor at Marvel Comics, worked as a colorist at Dark Horse Comics and later was the art director at DC Comics, where he worked for 26 years until this January. He is now a freelance artist and has witnessed many attempts to shift toward digitally produced comics.

When Shatter Special No. 1, published by First Comics, was released in 1985, its cover proclaimed it “the first computerized comic!” The entire issue — except for the coloring — was done on a Macintosh. The interior art had rigid word balloons and recalled the early days of video games, with pixelated, somewhat clunky images. But it was innovative and a bestseller.

In 1990, DC Comics published Batman: Digital Justice, which was produced on a newer Macintosh, this one with 3D renderings and color. Still, digital comics took years to blossom.

“It took a few years of stumbling around in the digital darkness and trying to invent custom-designed software before all comics companies embraced the creative software to end all softwares: Photoshop,” Chiarello said.

Today, we get lush images like those by Yanick Paquette, who has drawn many covers and comics for DC, including “Wonder Woman: Earth One,” a modern retelling of the Amazon’s origin, written by Grant Morrison.

Paquette’s first published work was “Harem Nights,” a hand-drawn erotic story published by Fantagraphics Books in 1994, and his first foray into digital was a 2000 cover for “Batman Inc.” Paquette said it was not an easy transition. “Working in Photoshop, I couldn’t do a circle,” he recalled. (They looked like eggs.)

He found his footing using a Cintiq, a tablet that allows the user to draw directly on the screen, which has increased in size and resolution. “I don’t buy erasers anymore. I don’t buy inks. But every time there is a new Cintiq, I kind of indulge,” he said.

In Paquette’s view, readers are wary of digital art; their minds may look for tricks or shortcuts. “When something is too perfect, too crisp, you lose the human sensibility,” he said. To draw an army of storm troopers, he could draw one and digitally create a battalion, but he does not. “If I spend all my time drawing all the storm troopers, they are humanized and your relationship to the art is different.”

The relationship between a penciler (who lays out the page and draws the initial images) and an inker (who gives proper weight to each line) has also changed. It “used to be a good inker was the best way to elevate a penciler’s work. Nowadays it’s a good colorist,” said Karl Kesel, an inker whose work was first published in 1984. “Technology has reversed the order of artistic importance in comics from penciler-inker-colorist to penciler-colorist-inker. As an inker, I hate to say that,” he said. “But it’s true.”

Kesel inks on paper, but he believes the biggest digital innovation is the computer’s undo function: “Don’t like that line? Click. Gone.”

Technology has certainly affected the role of the letterer, who adds the word balloons, editorial captions and sound effects to the page. “We get paid less but we can do more, thanks to Mr. Computer,” said Chris Eliopoulos, a letterer and cartoonist.

Eliopoulos got his start in the industry in 1989 as an intern in Marvel’s production department. The head letterer, Ken Lopez, taught him the craft, which Eliopoulos described as analog lettering. Later, he would show Lopez how to use a computer to letter.

Eliopoulos does not see the process as very different. “I still letter by hand. I just use a different tool,” he said. But whereas the old days of lettering had many accouterments — the art boards, adhesive tape to steady them, T-squares, lettering guides and pens — a computer now serves as nearly a one-stop shop. “The two disciplines, coloring and lettering, gravitated to two different programs,” he said. “Colorists flew to Photoshop and letterers to Adobe Illustrator.”

At his peak, Eliopoulos was hand-lettering 30 comics, each averaging 22 pages, per month. But working digitally is faster and more lucrative, he said. A penciler could make $100 per page, but typically finish only one per day. A letterer could earn less per page, but produce several and make more than an artist.

For the popular “I Am …” series of graphic novel biographies of historical figures, which he illustrates and which are written by Brad Meltzer, and for his own projects, like a forthcoming children’s book, “The Yawns Are Coming,” Eliopoulos uses a hybrid of freehand digital lettering, eschewing his library of fonts. “It takes more time, but I think anyone you talk to will say, if we could, we’d stick to hand lettering because it’s organic and it’s art.”

The artistry of coloring has improved by leaps and bounds. The variations of reproducible colors increased and — whether on paper or viewed digitally — the result was richer.

When Alex Sinclair began coloring in the early 1990s, the process was a true labor of love that required acetates, Dr. Ph. Martin dyes, color charts and codes for available hues written on guides for others to implement. Sinclair got his break through a talent search announced in “WildC.A.T.s,” an independent comic book series drawn by Jim Lee, one of the giants of the industry even then.

Lee, who is now the co-publisher and chief creative officer of DC Comics, was eager to push toward digital coloring and Sinclair had to get up to speed. He was familiar with Illustrator but using its tools to try to mimic those of Photoshop was difficult. “It was like coloring with the opposite hand,” Sinclair said. He read a “Photoshop Wow” book to teach himself the program one chapter at a time.

Tablets were the next revolution for colorists. “Once the tablets came out, it felt more like painting,” he said. The Photoshop brush tools had also become more sophisticated. In 2003, when Sinclair worked on “Batman: Hush,” he digitally colored the main characters and painted the watercolor backgrounds by hand.

The inspiration was Disney’s “Lilo &amp; Stitch” in 2002, which was hand-drawn, not computer animated. All the backgrounds were hand-painted and it was gorgeous,” he recalled. “You could totally tell it was organic.” For Hush, the watercolors gave Gotham City its own distinct look.

Analog or digital makes no difference to Maggie Thompson, a former senior editor of the “Comic Buyer’s Guide,” which covered the industry from 1971 to 2013. “I’m there for the story,” she said.

One’s views on the production changes are subjective, she said. “Comics went from flat color to toned color. There’s a nostalgic quality to flat color, but I bet colorists don’t like it,” she said. And while digital art is pristine, traditional art could be rife with blueline marks, smudges and erasures. But those imperfections show the human effort of the work and are catnip to original art collectors.

Thompson owns an unpublished comic book cover from 1972 by John Severin. It depicts Captain America and the Howling Commandos, an elite group of soldiers in the Marvel universe, and required some paste-up corrections, which are now slipping off.

“I wouldn’t have that problem with digital art,” she lamented. “But I also wouldn’t have the original art.”

This article originally appeared in

Superhero or Supervillain? Technology's Role Changes Comic Books

Comic books have been around since the 1930s, each story taking shape as it moves from its writer to its artists (usually a penciler and an inker) and then to its letterer and colorist.

The Brooklyn business is geared toward young and middle school readers and has a monthly subscription model that allows its clientele to binge on comics and take daily classes in writing and drawing their own stories. Think of Loot as less of a store and more of a book club and artistic retreat.

The space is the brainchild of Joseph Einhorn, a father of three and the founder of Fancy, a shopping and scrapbooking site. He had two goals: to get young readers interested in comics and to get them away from their screens.

“I felt that if we didn’t do this, there would be a whole generation of young people that would miss this medium completely,” Einhorn said. But he’s not anti-tech. His sons, he said, were into Fortnite, and he wanted to bring some of its comic-style art and social networking into the analog world. And so Loot surrounds its members with comics, drawing supplies and regular art classes seven days a week.

Loot, which opened in July, is above Frank’s Wine Bar on 457 Court St. in Carroll Gardens. “Only adults with children are allowed!” proclaims a sign next to its buzzer.

The space has a striking display of around 400 comics, perfectly aligned in multiple rows, which burst with color against the stark white walls. “It’s like Pinterest in real life,” Einhorn said.

The $30 monthly membership fee pays for the art materials and instruction and entitles the young subscribers to borrow one comic at a time. It costs $5 to keep one. The focus is currently on single issues, but the library will soon add graphic novels.

The collection, which began with Einhorn’s personal stash, has been growing with donations. Other contributions have come in the form of sponsorships. The online eyeglass retailer Warby Parker and Louis Leterrier, the French film director whose latest project is the “Dark Crystal” series on Netflix, and others have paid for 100 yearlong memberships, which have been earmarked for two local public schools and the Red Hook Initiative, a community nonprofit.

“Comics shaped my life and career,” wrote Leterrier in an email. “They taught me story and how to look at my life through various prisms.” He added: “Creativity is a real superpower, and I wanted to share this passion.”

Einhorn thinks of the space’s young audience in two groups: those interested in discovering comics and those who want to create their own. “We meet a lot of kids who already make their own comics at home,” he said.

During a visit last weekend, parents hovered around as their children were on the floor writing and drawing, looking at trading cards or reading.

Jennifer Gilbert was there with her son Jackson, 9, a seasoned fan of Star Wars and Marvel Comics. Gilbert discovered Loot over Labor Day weekend, and Jackson has become a once-a-week regular. She has seen the benefit of him finding peers with common interests. “It has built his confidence,” she said.

Long gone are the days when comic books were seen as a bad influence on young readers. Last year, annual sales of comics and graphic novels in the United States and Canada reached just over $1 billion, according to estimates by ICV2, an online publication that covers pop culture, and Comichron, an online resource for comics research. Part of the $80 million increase from 2017 was attributed to sales outside of comic stores, which includes chain bookstores and major online retailers, with sales of graphic novels for young readers the biggest factor.

“Graphix, the imprint from Scholastic, has really turbocharged that part of the market,” said Milton Griepp, the chief executive of ICV2. The Graphix library includes “Bone” by Jeff Smith, “Dog Man” by Dav Pilkey and the memoirs of Raina Telegemeier. Her latest, “Guts,” about tackling fourth grade and coping with anxiety, has an initial print run of 1 million copies.

Another significant factor, Griepp said, are libraries, which have added more graphic novels to their collections over the years. “We in the comics business owe a huge debt of thanks to the librarians who have helped make this possible.”

Paul Levitz, a former president of DC Comics, has seen the industry go through many changes. Last weekend, he happened to be dining downstairs at Frank’s when he learned about Loot and ventured to the second floor to take a look.

“Loot isn’t really a comic shop — at least not yet,” Levitz wrote in an email. “It’s more of a great art experience. With arts education in public schools fiscally challenged, it’s great to have folks like this stepping up to fill the gap.”

Since stepping down from his role at DC, Levitz has been teaching graphic novel courses at colleges. He said he was impressed by some of the material on offer for Loot’s cartoonists in training, including a binder of instructions for drawing facial expressions. “I wish I had some of those tools for my college course on writing graphic novels,” he added.

Some of Loot’s budding cartoonists are putting the educational materials to good use.

Mae Lower, 8, wrote and drew a comic (with colors by Joan, 4, her sister) about a girl named Ekua who is being bullied in school. Ekua learns to adapt and prospers over 16 pages. Mae goes by the pen name Stella Rojo, and her story concludes with a note to readers: “If you have a question, I won’t be far to answer it.” (The young graphic novelists have the option of adding their work to the library of comics available to their fellow subscribers.)

Then there is Leo Hutchinson, 7, who stopped by with his mother, Kara Pfaffenbach. “I’m one of those kids who likes military and fighter jets,” he said. One of Leo’s comics is about a SWAT team. Another is about Ace, who is a spy.

“He wakes up on Saturdays and wonders if it is time to go to Loot,” Pfaffenbach said of Leo’s new fixation. “He always knows he’s going to get along with whoever is here,” she said. “They have a shared language.”

NEW YORK — Most comic book stores would frown upon their customers sitting on their floor and reading, but Loot is not like other shops. Here its young clientele — who would not qualify for most amusement park rides — was intently reading comics, discussing them or hard at work making their own.

A Comic Store Where the Children Create

The preceding pages of the book, “Becoming Superman: My Journey From Poverty to Hollywood,” out on Tuesday from Harper Voyager, make it clear why. Straczynski, a writer of screenplays and comic books best known for creating the television series “Babylon 5,” chronicles a life that in his childhood was dominated by dysfunction — his father was a physically abusive Nazi sympathizer, his mother was distant and frequently institutionalized — and as an adult by professional success that came with its own tensions and crises.

Superman, whom Straczynski discovers through the 1950s TV series starring George Reeves, shows him that life can be different. Unlike his father, Straczynski writes, Superman “was kind and honest and fair, and he never hit anybody who didn’t hit him first.”

The idea that people can escape their circumstances inspired Straczynski, 65, to write “Becoming Superman.” “For years I’ve been saying at conventions, if I can do it, anybody can do it,” he said during an interview this month. “But that doesn’t mean anything if you don’t know the context.”

The context that he describes in his book is upsetting. Straczynski was born in Paterson, New Jersey, but his family moved frequently (21 times in 19 years). His father beats him with a belt and his fists, at one point shredding his beloved comic book collection as punishment. His mother, who Straczynski writes was beaten and raped by his father, suffered from depression and was emotionally absent.

“Once when she was petting her cat, her hand accidentally brushed mine. It’s the only time I can remember her touching me with affection,” he writes. Both of his parents died years ago, but the book includes corroboration from relatives, including one of his sisters.

Straczynski said he had not previously discussed his past because he was afraid of what people would think of him. “It’s hard when you tell someone, yeah, I was conceived in a brothel. Where do you go from there in the conversation?” (His mother, he writes, was working there during one of her attempts to flee his father.) “I just got tired of running. I got tired of living a lie.”

As he has begun to promote the book at comic book conventions, Straczynski has discovered that his fraught upbringing strikes a chord with some fans. Adam-Troy Castro, who is reviewing the book for Sci Fi Magazine, emailed the author about his own father. “Clearly, if this is a terrible childhood contest, you ‘win.’ But nevertheless, there were enough things in your account that resonated with my memories.”

Straczynski develops a love of storytelling through comic books. As a boy, he reads each issue at least twice: once as a fan and again to study how the action and dialogue is presented. “It never occurred to me that I might one day want to write comics for a living,” he writes. “I just wanted to peek under the hood and figure out how the engine worked.”

He later discovers science fiction and meets Rod Serling, creator of “The Twilight Zone,” who advises him on his writing: “First, cut every third adjective. Second, never let them stop you from telling the story you want to tell.” He comes across and later befriends Harlan Ellison, who advises him on his writing in more colorful language.

When Straczynski recounts his career, each job seems to head toward a breaking point. In the 1980s, he wrote a spec script for the cartoon “He-Man and the Masters of the Universe,” which grabbed the attention of a producer and led to a staff job. Straczynski then worked on a spinoff series, “She-Ra: Princess of Power,” but quit when the animation studio didn’t credit him as a story editor.

He continued to land and quit jobs in television, including work on the cartoon “The Real Ghostbusters” and the live-action series “Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future” and “Jake and the Fatman,” repeatedly leaving over creative differences. Asked whether he regretted any of his career decisions, he answered, “Yes and no.”

“Would my life be easier if I didn’t do those things? Absolutely,” Straczynski said. As any kind of artist, he added, “you have to decide what you will stand for and what you will not.”

His TV credits include shows ranging from “Murder, She Wrote” to “Babylon 5” and the Netflix series “Sense8.” In comics, he worked on the Amazing Spider-Man for six years, including an issue responding to Sept. 11, as well as Superman: Earth One, which revisited the hero’s origin for modern times.

Now Straczynski, who lives in Los Angeles, is developing a pilot for a USA Networks fantasy series; writing the origin story for the superheroes of AWA, a new comics publisher; and working on a feature adaptation of his comic book series, Rising Stars, for MGM. He also has a novel coming from Simon &amp; Schuster.

“He’s the most versatile and complete writer I’ve ever worked with,” said Axel Alonso, chief creative officer of AWA, who began working with Straczynski nearly 20 years ago at Marvel. “His ability to find unexplored nooks and crannies in characters who have been around for decades and mine them is unparalleled.”

At some point, when he slows down enough to make room, Straczynski hopes to teach writing. “I think it is important, if you reach any level of success, to send the elevator down for the next guy,” he said. But he isn’t looking for an elite perch.

“If you can afford USC or UCLA, you don’t need me,” he said. “The guys at the junior college who can’t afford those resources — that’s where I can do the most good.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/20/books/becoming-superman-j-michael-straczynski.html" id="f26d85c9-00ef-313b-ae4a-7426f92ea221">The New York Times</a>.

If anything sums up J. Michael Straczynski’s memoir, it is “Doesn’t matter, get up, keep fighting,” a mantra that appears seven times in the epilogue.

'Tired of Running': A Sci-Fi Veteran Tells His Own (Earthling) Story

The spinoff was cocreated by Scott M. Gimple, chief content officer of The Walking Dead television universe, and Matt Negrete, a writer and producer on “The Walking Dead.”

The original TV series, which is based on the “Walking Dead” comic book created by Robert Kirkman and published by Image, had its debut in 2010 and completed its ninth season in March, and will return later this year. A spinoff, “Fear the Walking Dead,” began in 2015 and ended is fourth season in September last year. It is scheduled to return in June.

“Showing audiences an unseen pocket of ‘The Walking Dead’ universe steeped in a new mythology is a very cool way to celebrate a ‘Decade of the Dead’ on TV and over 15 years of Robert Kirkman’s brilliant comic,” Gimple said in a statement announcing the show.

The new series will focus on characters who are the first generation of survivors to come of age in a world overrun by zombies. The announcement promised: “Some will become heroes. Some will become villains. In the end, all of them will be changed forever.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/08/arts/television/walking-dead-new-spinoff.html" id="d56bbc13-627d-36db-a239-b96dd9b6e20b">The New York Times</a>.

Fans of AMC’s “The Walking Dead” will be meeting a new group of survivors next year in a new spinoff that will center on two young women.

The Future Is Female in New 'Walking Dead' Series

IDW Publishing is also planning a series of full-color collected editions of the complete Usagi saga, which began in 1984. The series had been at Dark Horse Comics since 1995 and was primarily printed in black and white.

Sakai, 65, said in a telephone interview Wednesday that the series is “mainly fantasy and action and adventure, but there’s a lot of teaching there, too,” as it is set in an anthropomorphic version of 17th-century Japan. “I draw from that history and culture and folklore to make my stories,” he said.

Previous installments have shown the craftsmanship of forging swords, the construction of massive paper kites and examined the role of Christian missionaries who went to Japan. The new series, which will be colored by Tom Luth, will begin with a three-part story involving bunraku, or Japanese puppetry.

Usagi Yojimbo has an avid following and is critically acclaimed. The site Comics Alliance ran an article, “What’s So Great About Usagi Yojimbo? Everything,” remarking on the consistency and craftsmanship of the series, down to characters’ deaths: their last breaths are expressed by showing a skull in their word balloons. (There have been ample opportunities to hone this motif thanks to a high occurrence of fatalities in the ongoing tale).

The series has also won five Eisner Awards, the industry equivalent of an Oscar, including three for best lettering. In 1996 Sakai was awarded an Eisner for Talent Deserving of Wider Recognition and, three years later, he received one for Best Serialized Story.

Sakai hopes to continue the adventures of Usagi for many more years. “I have no other job skills,” he said with a laugh. “If not for Usagi, I’m unemployed.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/22/arts/design/usagi-yojimbo-new-publisher.html" id="9cf3d8d4-ef97-359d-abf4-4a013a72a3a1">The New York Times</a>.

The cartoonist Stan Sakai and his 17th-century samurai rabbit, Usagi Yojimbo, are about to embark on new, colorful adventures, with a monthly series starting in June with a new publisher, IDW.

A Samurai Rabbit Comic Book Adventure Finds a New Home

They have offbeat superpowers — the Rumor can cause things to happen just by saying them aloud — and they were raised by an emotionally distant father, an android mother and a kind, talking chimpanzee.

Most of this is revealed in flashbacks: The series picks up when the team, which fractured under the weight of its crime-fighting responsibilities, reunites after the mysterious death of its adoptive father, Sir Reginald Hargreeves (Colm Feore). Across 10 episodes, viewers learn whether the family members can sufficiently get past their shared baggage in order to prevent an apocalypse foreseen by their time-traveling brother.

Readers of the comic book, written by Gerard Way and drawn by Gabriel Bá, may feel they have a head start, but this is only somewhat true. The Netflix series, the cast of which includes Tom Hopper, Ellen Page and Robert Sheehan as members of the gifted but quarrelsome clan, will include moments not yet covered in the comic, which began in 2007. (It won an Eisner award in 2008 for best finite series.)

“I wrote this 20-page document that explains kind of everybody and how their powers work and where the story’s heading,” said Way, who, like Bá, is an executive producer on the show. (They’ve weighed in on everything from the story to costumes to set design, Way said.)

Despite the success of the Umbrella Academy comic, Way is perhaps most popularly known as the former singer of the theatrical rock band My Chemical Romance — he recorded a cover of “Hazy Shade of Winter” for the show. In a recent telephone interview, Way discussed both versions of “The Umbrella Academy,” the comic books that have influenced him and, naturally, Liza Minnelli. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

Q: How did the Umbrella Academy comic originally come about?

A: My initial inspiration was a few different things. I had been such a fan of the Marvel Silver Age, and I grew up reading Chris Claremont’s X-Men. Marvel characters had a lot of issues and problems, but I wanted to give them deeper, more complex problems. I was also reading Hellboy by Mike Mignola, and to me that was a postmodern horror comic. There was nothing like that for superheroes. I usually try to make things that I wish existed that I would want to listen to or read.

Q: When did you sense that it was connecting with readers?

A: It connected really early. The first issue came out, and I think a lot of people expected it to be pretty bad. I mean, I came from a rock band. Not a lot of people knew my history of having written a comic at 15, going to the School of Visual Arts for cartooning and illustration, studying comics for many years, then interning at DC Comics. A lot of people just expected some sort of vanity project. I don’t fault them for that.

Q: Is it weird to have someone else steering the Umbrella Academy now, at least on TV?

A: I never felt like I lost control so much as I relinquished a bit of control. At the beginning, I was asked how closely I wanted to work with a showrunner, if I wanted to be on set every day. I was really focused on the book and creating the mythology that the show would pull from. I also started an imprint with DC Comics, so I had quite a lot of things going on. When I go in on something, I go all in. I would have been sleeping on the set. I didn’t think it was the right time for me to dive into TV that way. That may change in the future. But at that stage I kind of relinquished control to Steve Blackman (the showrunner) and all the people making the show. I never felt like we were not heard.

Q: The TV family is much more diverse than in the comic. Did you have an influence on that?

A: I did, and the greatest change is that the casting was so much more inclusive and diverse than the source material. I thought that was a massive improvement. It was something we all talked about really early on. We have this really great opportunity because these kids are adopted from all over the world, and they could really be from anywhere.

Q: Why didn’t you take that approach in the comic?

A: I wasn’t a very good listener. I spent a lot of years just shouting and being on stage and being in control of things. I didn’t understand other people’s stories, and what I learned to do over the years is kind of shut my mouth and listen to people of different ethnicities and take a look at their struggles. Diversity is something we’re addressing in the Umbrella Academy comic. It’s something Gabriel and I actively work on.

Q: How involved were you with the music choices in the show?

A: I didn’t have a lot of say in the soundtrack. Steve has a very distinct vision of the songs he wants in the show. He actually writes the songs in the script. So I didn’t get to weigh in much on music, though I am a fan of Queen, obviously, and I really like that Tiffany song. I tend to skew toward things that are maybe a little more underground or things that maybe people haven’t heard before.

Q: You’ve shifted from music and performing to writing comics to giving notes on a TV show. Do the different skills inform one another?

A: I’ve always considered myself a visual thinker. I’ve always seen Umbrella Academy as a comic, but in my head I saw it play out like a film. But all these jobs feed into each other, and I learn from all of them. It’s interesting to, let’s say, give notes on screenplays and TV and apply that to the notes you give yourself on the comic, and vice versa.

Q: What comic creators have influenced you? Grant Morrison was in one of your videos.

A: He was gracious enough to play the villain in the story of the last My Chemical Romance record, “The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys.” I’m dear friends with Grant. I consider him to be not only a friend but a mentor. The biggest thing I borrow from what he does is, when you read a Grant Morrison comic, per page you get more ideas than sometimes in a whole issue or graphic novel. One of the best pieces of advice he ever gave me is “Don’t save up your ideas, just use them all because you’ll just come up with more.” I’ve kind of always stuck with that. And his wild imagination has inspired me to kind of try and tap into my own imagination.

Q: What’s the biggest obstacle for your various creative pursuits?

A: It’s the time to get there. That’s the biggest obstacle. My family is also important to me, and one of the really big positives of getting to write comics is I’ve been able to spend a lot of time with them and watch Bandit (his daughter) grow and be there for her as a father. That made me shy away from touring. But I’m really focused on comics because I’m home. Hopefully, I’ll have the time to finish the series out properly.

Q: This is off-topic but I have to ask: How did you end up working with Liza Minnelli on the “Black Parade” album?

A: I love Liza Minnelli. “Black Parade” was very theatrical, and we had this song “Mama,” and I said, “You know, it would be really great in this one part to get Liza.” Rob Cavallo, the producer, made a couple of calls and she said she would love to do it. We recorded that remotely — we were in Los Angeles, at Capitol, and she was in New York with a different engineer. It was really cool. The first time I got to speak to her was through the mixing board.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/08/arts/television/netflix-the-umbrella-academy-gerard-way-my-chemical-romance.html" id="5bb3444e-3af4-3d9b-ad1e-124329f6c87d">The New York Times</a>.

The adopted siblings of “The Umbrella Academy,” which debuted Friday on Netflix, are not your typical superheroes.

Life Under an Expanding Umbrella

How the X-Men and X-Women Celebrate

The “Merry X-Men Holiday Special” (Marvel Entertainment), an anthology from Marvel Comics with 22 stories (most of them a single page each), presents the first 25 days of December in the lives of the X-Men and X-Women: Jubilee plans a Hawaiian vacation with her son, Shogo, and is thwarted by a villain; a little girl plays with Deadpool and Jean Grey action figures; and Beast tries to find the perfect “Star Wars” gift for his love interest.

Two somber pages, in particular, resonate: Those of Dec. 2 and Dec. 9.

Kitty Pryde lights a menorah Dec. 2 and remembers her father and 12 million others who were massacred by anti-mutant forces in Genosha, an island nation that was supposed to be a haven for mutants. “Their lives, their dreams, their futures, were stolen from them by hate,” she thinks.

On Dec. 9, two young boys in Warsaw, Poland, remind a dejected Magneto what Hanukkah is about — a small band of Jewish people who faced an impossible enemy and won.

Kitty’s story is by Chris Claremont, Terry Dodson, Rachel Dodson, Chris Sotomayor and Travis Lanham, and Magneto’s is by Cullen Bunn, Roland Boschi, Dan Brown and Travis Lanham.

A Snowman Finds Redemption

Oh Santa, how you’ve let yourself go over the years! “Klaus and the Crying Snowman” (Boom! Studios), is a retelling of the early years of Santa Claus, when he was hunky and burly and looked like a lumberjack. In this story, Klaus joins forces with a cursed snowman against Norse gods, with the universe at stake.

There is time travel and bold action, but at the core is a tragic tale of how the snowman came to be. The drawings of Dan Mora do a fantastic job of imbuing this sad creature — with coal eyes and a carrot nose — with recognizably human expressions.

By Grant Morrison, Dan Mora and Ed Dukeshire.

New Intergalactic Dynamic Duos Unite

The “DC Comics Nuclear Winter Special (DC Entertainment) offers 10 new stories. Two are especially emotional. One, “Memory Hearth,” depicts an encounter between a future version of Superman (from the 853rd century) and the Martian Manhunter. “You thought you had no one,” the Man of Steel of the future tells the other alien hero, but “you’ve never truly been alone.”

In the other, “Last Daughters,” Supergirl and an orphan named Lucy are in a not-too-distant future when Earth’s environment is close to inhospitable. Supergirl resolves to get Lucy off the planet to a new world, where she will have a chance at a better life. It nicely echoes — with a twist — the journeys of Superman and Supergirl and the sacrifice their parents made for them in the wake of Krypton’s destruction.

“Memory Hearth” is by Steve Orlando, Brad Walker, Andrew Hennessy, Nathan Fairbairn and Clayton Cowles, and “Last Daughters” is by Tom Taylor, Yasmine Putri, Tom Derenick and Deron Bennett.

Planting the Seeds of Optimism

“All We Ever Wanted: Stories of a Better World” (A Wave Blue World), another anthology, edited by Matt Miner, Eric Palicki and Tyler Chin-Tanner, is for anyone who likes a dose of good news to balance out the frequent bad.

"We felt so strongly the best gift right now, in these times, is a bit of hope,” Miner said of the project, which has 24 short stories loaded with hope. (More “Star Trek” and less “Mad Max,” the editors promised.)

One highlight is “The Weight of Time,” about a well-meaning scientist who builds a time-travel device and hopes to use it to correct some of history’s wrongs. Another is “Day at the Park,” about a robot trying to fly a kite that is nearly dialogue free but for a couple of words and beeps.

“The Weight of Time” is by Jarrett Melendez, Danica Brine and Taylor Esposito, and “Day at the Park” is by Eliot Rahal, Jason Copland, Josh Jensen and Zakk Saam.

A Different Type of Exodus

In January, “Passover Haggadah Graphic Novel” (Koren Publishers Jerusalem) makes its debut. The tone of the book, which Jews have been reading for centuries at Seders (the festival meal), is respectful yet playful. “We’re connecting a new generation to our loving history, by illustrating the fully unabridged, authentic text in the sequential storytelling style of comics — a Jewish innovation, you know,” the narrator says.

The narrator’s pose — legs astride, puffed chest and hands along his waist — recalls Superman, whose creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were Jewish. But even before the debut of the Man of Steel in 1938, innovation came from Max Gaines, who was also Jewish, in 1933, when he had the idea to reprint newspaper comic strips, which proved popular for sales and inspired the creation of original comic books.

As with all Haggadot, this one gives instructions for the order of the ritual retelling of the Exodus story, from slavery to freedom.

By Jordan B. Gorfinkel and Erez Zadok.

A Hero for a Homeless Man

Starman is a tale of a legacy — a son carrying on the heroic persona established by his father, finding his own path, starting his own family — told over more than 80 issues by James Robinson. But “Starman 25” (DC Entertainment, 1996) is a stand-alone story with Jack Knight, the title hero, encountering a down-on-his-luck homeless man (Pete) dressed as Santa.

A locket with a picture of Pete’s wife and son, who died in a car accident, has been stolen, and Jack finds him crying on a park bench. Jack spends the evening helping Pete, despite having family and friends waiting at home for a holiday meal.

Jack, who starts out in the series as a bit self-centered, radiates compassion in this issue.

By James Robinson, Steve Yeowell, Wade von Grawbadger, Pat Garrahy and Bill Oakley.

Hitting Rock Bottom — in a Bar

Matt Murdock is feeling a bit down on his luck in “Daredevil 266” (Marvel Entertainment, 1989) when he wanders into a Manhattan bar on Christmas, intending to soak his sorrows in beer. Clad in his costume, the vigilante hero meets a mixed bag of people. Ann Nocenti based the story on her own experience of Christmas Day in 1987, at a bar where she “met other unfortunate souls like myself that had nowhere to go.”

“I was planning a story arc that was going to blow up Matt Murdock’s life,” she recalled in an article for the 13th Dimension, a comics blog. “I thought, ‘Damn, he could end up here at the end of that arc.’ ”

By Ann Nocenti, John Romita Jr., Al Williamson, Gregory Wright.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/21/arts/design/comic-books-holidays.html" id="4ef800dd-f475-3ad4-afc0-cd3d93c2238d">The New York Times</a>.

A new batch of graphic novels and comic books lands in this season of celebrations, with nods to holidays past and those to come. Crack open these comics — including some classics that are always nice to come back to — and enjoy.

Seven Super Comics for This Season and the Next

Superior Spider-Man: Heroes have swapped minds with their enemies before, but this ingenious plot twist, which ran for nearly three years, was something new: Doctor Octopus, the villainous scientist with extra mechanical limbs, seemingly murders Peter Parker and sets out to prove he can be a better hero. Thus Superior Spider-Man was born.

Spider-Woman I: Jessica Drew has two of the greatest costumes in comics and a rich back story: She worked undercover to bring down Hydra, a Nazi-like organization, and was an agent of the intelligence agency S.H.I.E.L.D. as well as an Avenger. Now she’s also a private eye and a single mother who fought crime while visibly pregnant. And she’s dating Roger Gocking, a divorced father and former supervillain.

Spider-Girl: Mayday Parker is the alternate-universe teenage daughter of Peter and Mary Jane Watson who adopts her father’s fight for justice. She struck a chord with readers and graduated from one appearance in an anthology to her own series, which fans later saved from cancellation after a passionate outcry of support. She’s part of Spider-Geddon, a new comic book series involving Spider-people from alternate worlds and a sequel to Spider-Verse.

Spider-Punk: Spiked mask. Shredded jacket. Leather collar. Guitar with spider web for strings. OK, that last part isn’t true, but Spider-Punk (Hobart “Hobie” Brown) is a visually stunning character. A recent Marvel handbook described him as “an excellent guitarist, capable drummer and terrible singer,” though he claims terrible is intentional and the definition of punk.

Spider-Man: India: Meet Pavitr Prabhakar, an orphan living with his Aunt Maya and Uncle Bhim in Mumbai. He’s shunned by his classmates except for the popular Meera Jain. Like the original, this Spider-Man loses his uncle and learns a lesson about responsibility, but his powers are more mystic than scientific: they are granted by an ancient yogi to help better the world.

Scarlet Spider: Is Ben Reilly a clone of Peter Parker or it is the other way around? A 1994 story made fans’ heads spin when it was revealed that after a battle shown in a 1970s issue, it was the clone who took over the series. Things were eventually set right, but Ben still has his devoted fans. And we got another excellent addition to the spider-wardrobe.

Spider-Woman II: Julia Carpenter made a splashy debut in Secret Wars, with her snazzy blue, black and white costume, but the next issue introduced Spider-Man’s black costume (that later tried to kill him) and stole some of her thunder. In addition to the customary suite of spider-abilities, she is also clairvoyant and can spin electric webs. Other aliases include Madame Web and Arachne.

Silk: Cindy Moon is a young Korean-American woman who was bitten by the same spider that bit Peter Parker. To protect her from the Inheritors, who are out to destroy all spider-beings, she is locked in a bunker, separated from her family, for a number of years. She emerges as an ally of Spider-Man and may have her own big-screen adventure soon.

Mangaverse: Spider-Man: This version of Peter Parker is a ninja member of the Spider Clan who loses his uncle (yet again!), in this instance to Venom — not Tom Hardy’s, alas, but a monstrous warrior clad in samurai armor. In this world, Mary Jane Watson fights alongside him as Spider-Woman.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/19/movies/spider-verse-alternates.html" id="cf849459-fd14-3d9c-afdd-d1f1a0575539">The New York Times</a>.

Standard-Issue Spidey and His Many Iterations

The new animated movie “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” introduces men and women who have taken on the mantle of the arachnid and the credo “with great power there must also come — great responsibility!” Given how successful “Spider-Verse” is already — a Golden Globe nomination for best animated picture, unbridled enthusiasm on Rotten Tomatoes, a new appreciation of Spider-Ham — plans for turning it into a franchise were inevitable. Luckily, comic books have featured more than 100 Spideys ...

In an industry where buying monthly, serialized stories is the norm, TKO is presenting an alternative: binge releasing its miniseries; simultaneously selling collected editions of those stories; and offering the first issue of each comic free. TKO is also selling directly to readers and retailers from its website, not through normal distribution channels.

TKO’s comics are also slightly taller and wider than usual, and its six-issue bundle for $14.99 works out to about $2.50 per issue, which is less than the $3.99 price per issue of most comic book series today.

“I understand why they want to try something different because it is very tough for a new comics publisher,” Milton Griepp, chief executive of ICv2, an online trade publication that covers the comic-book industry, said of the move by TKO.

But a new stand-alone publisher would add some burdens to comic store owners. “Comic retailers are the busiest retailers in the world,” Griepp said. “One more account to open, one more shipment to place, one more bill to pay — that’s an area that causes friction and will slow down the rate of retailers stocking the product.”

The traditional mode of operation is for stores and publishers to work through Diamond Comic Distributors, which centralizes orders and shipments. Six-issue series, like those that TKO is offering, typically arrive in installments in stores weekly (on occasion) or monthly (which is the norm), with collected editions following months later.

TKO, which is also eschewing superheroes — the bread and butter of the industry — has recruited top talent for the comics. Stars like Garth Ennis and Steve Epting have collaborated on “Sara,” about Russian snipers battling Nazis during World War II. “Goodnight Paradise,” a murder mystery set in a poor community in California, is by Joshua Dysart and Alberto Ponticelli. Future releases include “The Banks” by Roxane Gay and Ming Doyle, about three generations of black women pulling off a revenge heist, and “Sentient” by Jeff Lemire and Gabriel Hernández Walta, about a colony ship in space where an artificial-intelligence being looks after young passengers when all the adults die.

Lemire said in an email that he was happy to finally work with Walta, one of his favorite artists, and that he was “really drawn to TKO’s unique and ambitious release strategy.” Dysart said by email that “the most obvious reason I chose TKO is because they chose me.” He noted that he had pitched “Goodnight Paradise” to other companies, but most were turned off by the idea of a homeless protagonist. But the new publishers leaned into it, he said.

TKO Studios is the creation of Salvatore Simeone, chief executive and co-publisher, who comes from the tech industry, and co-publisher Tze Chun, who is also a film and television writer, director and producer.

They are committed to TKO full time. Chun has wanted to create comics since he was young: “It’s the way I learned to tell stories,” he said. Rounding out the TKO team is Sebastian Girner, editor-in-chief, and Cara McKenney, who is married to Chun, and who handles talent recruitment.

There is a belief, Chun noted, about the industry: “The pie is a certain size and we all get a slice of this finite pie.”

“We want to expand that pie,” he said.

Another goal: for the books to be as successful as any adaptations — which have become popular for film, television and streaming series, whose viewing audience is larger than the readership of the comics. “We are not opposed to our comics being adapted,” Chun said. “Anything that drives people to the medium is great.” He added that the guiding principle was: “What’s best for readers?”

Griepp, chief executive of ICv2, noted that there were ups and downs to forgoing the usual distribution methods. While there may be benefits from direct communication between publishers and buyers, there are higher costs.

“Both the publisher and the retailer are spending more to get the books in the store than they would if the comics moved through a distributor,” he said.

The TKO publishers want to do everything to make the effort worth it for retailers, Simeone said, adding, “We can accommodate big stores and discounts,” similar to Diamond, sole distributor of comics in North America.

Smaller stores with limited resources can point their customers to TKO’s website and receive a sales commission. “We want everyone in the smallest town, in the smallest country, to have access to our books,” Simeone said.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/19/arts/tko-studios-comics-publisher.html" id="8519a84d-1e0b-3520-ab61-8fefe3ab6e44">The New York Times</a>.

A new comics publisher, TKO Studios, burst onto Twitter last week with an unusual mission statement: “We’ll be doing things a bit differently.”

A New Comics Publisher Aims to Shake Things Up

<h1>How much will be bid for a cat who loves lasagna and hates Mondays?</h1>

A series of auctions that will feature artwork from the Garfield comic strip created by Jim Davis in 1978 will provide some answers.

Opportunities to buy pieces from “The Jim Davis Collection,” at Heritage Auctions, begin Tuesday, with individual daily and Sunday installments as well as sequences of strips featuring Garfield the cat, Odie the dog and Jon the human. Also available will be artwork from U.S. Acres, the strip about barnyard animals that ran from 1986 to 1989, which Davis produced with Brett Koth.

Garfield is the most widely syndicated feature in the world and generates more than 20 million page views annually, said John Glynn, the president and editorial director of Andrews McMeel Syndication, which runs the portal gocomics.com.

The catalyst for the auctions is the downsizing of the headquarters of Paws Inc., the company in Muncie, Indiana, founded in 1981 by Davis, to oversee Garfield licensing. Since then, the product approvals and creative sessions have all become virtual. “The last strip I did on paper was in 2011,” Davis, 73, said in a phone interview last week.

Davis answered more questions about Garfield in the interview. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

Q: What was the initial inspiration for Garfield?

A: I had worked for nine years with Tom Ryan on the Tumbleweeds strip. I was trying to come up with something unique. I tried a bug strip, Gnorm Gnat. After two years of receiving rejection slips, an editor said, You know, nobody can relate to bugs. I took a long, hard look at the comics. And I saw dogs doing really well — Snoopy, Marmaduke — but no cats. I had never seen Heathcliff. I thought I had the first cat idea.

Q: Was there ever a rivalry between Garfield and Heathcliff, who debuted in 1973?

A: No, we were so different. There’s no rivalry between cartoonists anyway. As for the characters, they are very different and the humor comes from different places. Heathcliff is very broad. He’s more vaudevillian. I dialed up the reality factor for Garfield. He operates in a cat’s body in a cat’s world and physically has those limitations.

Q: When did you start using assistants on the strip?

A: The first year I did it all myself. Then things got crazy with the licensing. By virtue of the limits of the number of hours in a day, I started relying more on assistants for the artwork because there are a lot of great artists out there. I would say there are four of us that could draw Garfield and you couldn’t tell the difference. But because I do all the writing, Garfield has one voice.

Q: Was there a pivotal moment when you knew the strip was a hit?

A: I started in 41 newspapers and the big one was the Chicago Sun-Times. The strip started in June and in August, they notified the syndicate that they were dropping the feature for budgetary reasons. Within a week, they had 1,300 replies, phone calls and letters, to put Garfield back in. At that moment I thought: “Wow. Garfield has some staying power.”

Q: What is the most unusual piece of merchandise that has Garfield on it?

A: Toilet seat. I thought, “What?” It turned out to be a great product. It was real colorful. And Garfield checks. I thought why would people want a cartoon on something that is associated with such an unhappy experience?

George Gene Gustines

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