The Ephemerist

It happened. i-merge transmogrified into Boondoggle.

Hulk Returns ! Grammatically correct, and in French, nonetheless !

(via This is Pop Culture)

The newest in a series of companies who are giving away free digital comics, is none other than Vertigo. In an attempt to promote the trade paperbacks to their major series, the DC imprint has made available the first issues of those books in pdf format. Available books include fan favorites like The Sandman, The Swamp Thing, Doom Patrol, Fables and Transmetropolitan, but also more recent series, like American Virgin, Loveless and the quite amazing Testament.

Over at the Hotel Fred, Roger Langridge has unveiled the cover he’s made for Comics Journal 284. It’s been there a while, but I only found out about his blog today. There’s more cool art and doodles aplenty there, so check it out.

I was reading some old Angel And The Ape issues (I just love those zany comics from the sixties), and my eye fell on these advertisements for toys and clothing.  What struck me is that, even now I know that the toys they try to sell probably are crap, they still make me want them (especially the Action Highway). Current toy adverts don’t really do that for me.  I guess kids just got too jaded these days.

Over at The Comics Reporter, Tom Spurgeon gives the Ephemerist a nice plug. Coming from that guy, “Comics stuff I haven’t seen before” is about the biggest compliment you can get…

He was a star in his days, but now he seems to be largely forgotten, along with all the other heroes of the pop art movement. Still, Guy Peellaert made some pretty impressive paintings (the Rock Dreams series literally rocked), and the quintessential pop art comic, Pravda. And he was a Belgian, potferdekke !

(thanks to The Cartoonist for reminding me)

This is the final post in my 40th anniversary marathon. And at the same time, it is a look back at how it all began. I had heard that Chris Ware had been doing a promotional strip for Amsterdam comic store Lambiek, that was not available for the public at large. After begging and groveling for a while, I managed to convince the Lambiek people that I was totally unable to come to Amsterdam, but still would very much like a copy. And they gave in (perhaps to get rid of me, perhaps because I’m such a nice bloke - hm).

When I discussed this book with some online friends, we came to the conclusion that we needed a platform to share stuff like this - cartoonists’ work that appeared in magazines, in advertisments and in other places other than traditional comic books. And The Comics Ephemerist was born.

And so, to celebrate all this, here is the Lambiek Avontuur Strip in all its glory.

Read the rest of this entry »

New Year’s cards are always a good source for nice illustrative work. These cards were commissioned respectively by Humo Magazine in 2005, and comic store Het Besloten Land in Leuven, Belgium in 2006(the best comic store on the continent, let me tell you). The art is by Ever Meulen (obviously) and Ilah, one of the few women cartoonists in Belgium, but also one of the finest. Cartoonists, that is.

What ? Is this year gone already as well ?

The late nineties were a golden time for magazines, especially magazines that were combining technology and business subjects. Red Herring, Business 2.0, Fast Company, they kept on bulking on until they were as heavy as a phone directory. And then the bubble burst, and the magazines either disappeared (and, let’s face it, today’s Wired is only Wired by name) or slimmed down considerably.

Still, it was cool while it lasted, and it gave illustrators nice new outlets for their work. Such as the illustration above, which was published in Business 2.0 in 2000 and came with an article on small business promotion on the web. I particularly like the contrast between the glitz of that subject, and Seth’s trademark toned-down colors.