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

<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?

Q: Has there ever been negative reaction to any of Garfield?

A: Garfield stomping on spiders. I scoop spiders up on a piece of paper and take them outside. I thought it would be funny if Garfield had something he stomped on. I heard from the Friends of Arachnids: “How dare you harm our arachnid brothers and sisters?” I responded by having Garfield reading a letter and he rolls it up to smack a spider.

Q: What do you hope your legacy and that of Garfield will be?

A: There’s no retirement plans until someone taps me on the shoulder and says, “Jim, you’re not funny anymore.” I know Sparky — Charles Schulz — didn’t want the strip to go on after he was done with it. I think Garfield brightens people’s day. If we can emulate that without me, I think it would be great for Garfield to go on. He’s out there for entertainment. He’s out there for laughs.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/08/arts/garfield-art-auction.html" link="null" target="_blank">The New York Times</a>.

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

Garfield art heads to auction

<h1>Avengers, assemble — and break a leg! Marvel’s mighty heroes are the stars of a new series of educational one-act stage plays intended for a high school audience. Called Marvel Spotlight, the plays focus on such themes as responsibility, self-image and reacting to change. Thor, Squirrel Girl and Ms. Marvel will be at the forefront of the inaugural set of plays, which will be offered for licensed performances and whose scripts will be available for retail purchase.</h1>

“Hammered: A Thor &amp; Loki Play,” by Christian Borle, depicts the squabbling brothers — the Norse gods of thunder and mischief — competing to impress their parents. “Squirrel Girl Goes to College: A Squirrel Girl Play,” by Karen Zacarías, has the title heroine, who has all the powers of a squirrel and a girl, trying to reinvent herself at a new school. “Mirror of Most Value: A Ms. Marvel Play,” by Masi Asare, is about accepting one’s imperfections.

Ms. Marvel is secretly Kamala Khan, a teenage Muslim girl living in Jersey City who often struggles with assimilation, her tradition-bound parents, completing homework and fighting for justice. “When I began working on the play, I had only a little knowledge about Kamala Khan as Ms. Marvel,” Asare wrote in an email. “I loved the idea of a superhero who is a brown girl from an immigrant background (like me), someone who wants to do good in the world, but isn’t always sure how to do it. So she’s kind of awkward and not-smooth and has her share of mishaps, but she still persists.”

Asare said her own roots helped her relate to the hero. Her father’s side of the family is from Ghana, while her mother comes from a white, working-class background and grew up in California. “It’s so exciting to see more and more of these kinds of stories show up in popular culture and on the stage, because when I was growing up they were few and hard to find,” she said.

One of the challenges of writing Ms. Marvel for the stage was thinking about how to convey her power to change her shape and shrink and grow. “In the pilot productions, the staging was really inventive in how different groups chose to show Kamala’s stretchy super powers: all kinds of things from shadow puppetry to inflatable boxing gloves, clown shoes and ribbon or fabric for long arms and legs,” Asare wrote. “That stuff is fun and hopefully provides opportunities for theatrical magic but what people are responding to the most is Kamala’s journey as a character in the play.”

Marvel Spotlight is a partnership between Marvel Entertainment and Samuel French, a publisher of American and British play scripts that was acquired last year by Concord Music to move into the theater business. The Marvel Spotlight plays were created with a focus on educational institutions and are priced accordingly: License fees are $75 per performance for one play or $125 per performance for two or more. Copies of the plays, with covers by Erica Henderson, will be available for $9.95 each.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/24/theater/marvel-theater-teenagers.html" link="null" target="_blank">The New York Times</a>.

“Hammered: A Thor &amp; Loki Play,” by Christian Borle, depicts the squabbling brothers — the Norse gods of thunder and mischief — competing to impress their parents.

Marvel's heroes take center stage

Readers will be able to decide for themselves where she ranks among their comic book favorites Wednesday when Issue No. 1 of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Freshman Force arrives in stores.

The tales in this anthology include the absurdist and the hopeful. In one, written by Nick Accardi and drawn by Travis Hymel, the world of politics is transferred to a wrestling ring — where Ocasio-Cortez participates in a “Senate Slam” against “diabolical special-interest groups.” She is visited the night before the match by someone who introduces themselves as “New York’s Greatest Senator.” When she guesses Hillary Clinton, there is an angry response: “No Dag Nabbit! It’s me Franklin Delano Roosevelt!”

Another story, “Dance Party USA” by cartoonist Peter Rostovsky, delves into the question of whether dancing and Democrats mix — in response to the dance video of Ocasio-Cortez that surfaced on the internet on the eve of her swearing-in. “Obama danced but was too smooth,” Rostovsky writes, while Hillary Clinton “seemed kind of awkward.” He also says that the key to a social movement is to make it enjoyable. “I suggested we look at AOC’s ‘infamous’ dance video as a promise of things to come,” he writes. “Maybe it’ll be a party if she really gets her way.”

The project, from Devil’s Due Comics, received a lot of media attention when it was announced in February. In his foreword, Josh Blaylock, the founder of the company, said he created the comic because he was inspired by Ocasio-Cortez and other newly elected members of Congress. The result is a 52-page book, priced at $5.99, which has pinups, games and stories. The common theme is the potential of the new members of Congress and their “finally bringing diversity to the legislative body that reflects us as a whole,” Blaylock wrote.

The Ocasio-Cortez comic is not the first or last foray into politics by Devil’s Due. Blaylock published “Barack the Barbarian” in 2009. And on July 3, the company will release an anthology dedicated to Sen. Bernie Sanders, “Talk Bernie To Me!” — which is being promoted as “another comic anthology for the 99 percent.”

Comic books and politics have a colorful past. President Ronald Reagan was the subject of a 2007 graphic-novel biography. The next year, Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain made an appearance in a Marvel comic, and IDW Publishing presented biographical comics about Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama a month before Election Day. TidalWave Productions has a regular “Female Force” series of comics that tell the life stories of Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin, Michelle Obama, Condoleezza Rice and others. The company also released “Donald Trump: The Graphic Novel” as part of its “Political Power” series and is publishing a biographical comic on Ocasio-Cortez in August.

President Donald Trump is a regular subject of the artist Jon McNaughton, who has been painting for about four decades but whose work turned to politics in 2008, when he painted John McCain. But it was “One Nation Under God” (2009), which showed Jesus Christ holding a copy of the Constitution, that brought him a lot of exposure. “This was when the internet was just starting to come on pretty strong, and it went viral because somebody was making fun of it,” Naughton said in a telephone interview. Then the tide turned. “I’ve come to kind of get used to the fact that half the country loves my paintings and the other half hates them.”

Similarly McNaughton’s paintings of the president tend to take a positive view of him. One painting, “National Emergency,” about the immigration debate, depicts Trump on one side opposed by Ocasio-Cortez and others. He normally would not paint such a new congresswoman, he said, but “she was an interesting enough character to put in.”

In February, when a reporter for TMZ asked Ocasio-Cortez about her comic book debut, she said she was appreciative that a portion of all sales will go to RaicesTexas.org, which provides free and low-cost legal services to immigrant children, families and refugees.

The reporter also asked Ocasio-Cortez what it felt like to be depicted as a superhero. "I’m just a normal person, doing her best,” she said. She added that her comic-book character might inspire young girls, showing them that "we all have a superhero inside of us."

This article originally appeared in <a id="712c28f8-c3a8-38c4-a044-735320b1925e" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/13/arts/design/aoc-comic-book-freshman-force.html">The New York Times</a>.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as a Super Hero? This Comic Book Thinks So

Is Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York the biggest comic book character of 2019? Her story has all the twists of a comic book origin: She’s a former bartender and activist turned congresswoman; she’s a confident public speaker and a social-media whiz (where she once quoted from the “Watchmen” graphic novel); and she’s a champion for progressive issues and the environment.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as a Superhero? This comic book thinks so

Each page of the comic will correlate to one year in Marvel history. Along the way, readers will see many of the marquee characters from the mighty Marvel universe like Captain America, Thor and Iron Man, and some less familiar ones, like Blue Marvel, Night Thrasher and the Three X’s.

“This is by far the most complex and complicated and difficult book I’ve ever had to assemble,” Tom Brevoort, Marvel’s executive editor and senior vice president of publishing, said in a conference call with C.B. Cebulski, Marvel’s editor-in-chief. While most comic books are created by one writer and one art team, Issue No. 1000 will have 80 — one team for each of its 80 pages.

The company began teasing the project in issues that arrived in stores this week: Comics on Wednesday featured advertisements with one, two or three names, along with the words “August 2019” against a background collage of historic Marvel covers. There was a lot of buzz among fans.

Those named in the ads are contributors to the anniversary anthology, a group that includes both industry veterans and some new to comic books, like filmmakers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller and rapper Taboo of the Black Eyed Peas.

Cebulski said the newcomers were recruited based on the fact they made Marvel references over the years that were noted in-house. “Our characters are mentioned in so many different ways and in so many different mediums, and we always keep track,” Cebulski said. “Now these distinguished individuals are able to contribute back to the comics they grew up on.”

Marvel’s publishing history started Aug. 31, 1939, with the arrival on newsstands of Marvel Comics No. 1. It was published by Timely Comics, a forerunner of Marvel. Namor, the Sub-Mariner, the android Human Torch (not to be confused with the 1961 Fantastic Four character with the same name) appeared for the first time — along with other characters, including a costumed detective named the Angel.

The first panel of the story in No. 1000, which has a painted cover by Alex Ross, comes from that 1939 issue. It’s fitting, because the story reveals the mystery that propelled the Marvel universe from its inception and involves an artifact known as the Eternity Mask.

Al Ewing, who is currently the writer of “The Immortal Hulk,” helped conceive the creative jigsaw puzzle that is Marvel 1000. His gift for intricacies can be seen in his “You Are Deadpool” comic, drawn by Salva Espin and Paco Diaz, which combined choose-your-own-adventure options and dice rolls to move readers through the story. He jumped at the chance to participate in the project. “This is the kind of honor that doesn’t really come that often,” Ewing said by phone.

Comic-book historians may wonder how this is No. 1000 of Marvel Comics, given the history of the title. It was called Marvel Comics for the first issue and then became Marvel Mystery Comics and later Marvel Tales, until it reached issue No. 159, when it was canceled in 1957.

While the industry sometimes engages in numerical gymnastics — with issues numbered zero or using decimal points — in this case, it is much simpler. Marvel wanted to give fans a tangible touch point for the 80th anniversary, Brevoort said. “More than anything, it was a symbolic thing.”

22 Movies? This Marvel Universe Has 1,000 Chapters

Marvel Comics turns 80 in August. To celebrate, the company is releasing Marvel Comics No. 1000, which follows its heroes from Day 1 in 1939, long before they became the global entertainment phenomenon they are today.

22 movies? This marvel universe has 1,000 chapters

Marvel Masterworks: Avengers, Vol. 1.

The Avengers were founded by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in 1963 when Ant-Man, the Hulk, Iron Man, Thor and the Wasp battled the evil Norse god Loki. This hardcover collected edition contains that story and the next nine issues of the original series as the team bounced from a close encounter with Namor, the Sub-Mariner, to the addition of Captain America and the formation of the Masters of Evil. In 2004, Joe Casey and Scott Kollins gave readers Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, which took a closer look at this formative era by expanding on moments between adventures.

Avengers: Kree/Skrull War

In this 1971 space saga, written by Roy Thomas with art by Neal Adams and brothers John Buscema and Sal Buscema, the team must defend Earth in the battle between two alien races. A ton happens here, but one scene in particular has stuck with fans: The heroes are attacked by three cows (!) that are actually the shape-changing Skrulls (who also wreak havoc by pretending to be Avengers). The villainy of Skrulls will be a shock to those who know them only from the recent “Captain Marvel” film, which presented them as peaceful refugees seeking asylum.

Avengers: Under Siege

Written by Roger Stern, drawn by John Buscema and published in 1986, this has the heroes attacked at home (a mansion on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan) by the Masters of Evil, led by Baron Zemo, a longtime adversary of Captain America. The baddies come incredibly close to winning — they brutalize Jarvis, the team’s faithful aide, and leave a hero in a coma — which makes the eventual victory bittersweet. One powerful moment amid the mansion’s post-battle wreckage finds Captain America in tears, but resolved to rebuild.

The Avengers Omnibus Vol. 1

In 1997, after a failed reboot of many of Marvel’s heroes, writer Kurt Busiek and artist George Pérez brought the classic versions back. This collection has more than 40 issues, and includes a fight with the medieval sorceress Morgan Le Fay, who gives the heroes Renaissance Faire-like names and costumes. (For instance, Captain America becomes Yeoman America.) There’s also a devastating battle against Ultron, and the time-travel tale Avengers Forever, drawn by Carlos Pacheco, sheds light on the past and teases the future. (Songbird, a former Master of Evil, becomes a trusted Avenger.)

Ultimates, Vols. 1 and 2

Would the Marvel Cinematic Universe be the same without Nick Fury as played by Samuel L. Jackson? We will never know, but the Ultimates, which began in 2002, six years before the actor would start appearing in the role, was the first story to depict Jackson as Fury, offering Avengers for modern times. Mark Miller and Bryan Hitch gave readers summer blockbusters in comic-book form. Take Issue No. 12, which has cinematic double-page spreads of Thor battling an alien armada, as well as a scene in which a baddie asks Captain America to surrender. Cap points to the “A” on his mask and yells, “You think this letter on my head stands for France?”

Avengers Disassembled

This collection, by Brian Michael Bendis and David Finch, ripped the team apart (sometimes literally, as a rampaging She-Hulk tore Vision in half), but there was a method to the carnage. Bendis rebuilt the Avengers, adding Wolverine and the normally solitary Spider-Man to the roster. He also raised the profile of Spider-Woman, Captain Marvel and Luke Cage, who ends up becoming a leader, a husband and a father. Bendis wrote the Avengers from 2004 to 2012 and made them Marvel’s No. 1 franchise, dethroning the X-Men after many years on top.

Young Avengers: The Complete Collection

In 2005, writer Allan Heinberg and artist Jim Cheung introduced a charming cast of new heroes (including some with familial connections to senior Avengers) who band together in the wake of the events of Disassembled. The collection has sprightly dialogue and stunning visuals. The less said about the plot, the less spoiled. After this, read Avengers: The Children’s Crusade, in which two heroes search for their mother, and then the Young Avengers Omnibus, by Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie, which further develops the team.

This article originally appeared in <a id="8000a7b3-4af0-3283-adf7-f38628ae73b0" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/05/movies/avengers-comics-endgame.html">The New York Times</a>.

Did 'Avengers: Endgame' leave you wanting more? Try these Marvel tales

Experiencing Avengers withdrawal in the wake of “Endgame”? Then consider classic comic-book stories featuring Marvel’s mightiest heroes. These tales — from the team’s earliest days to more recent times — are chock-full of superheroes and adversaries that you may not yet know. Avengers epics assemble!

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

In comic books, there are two main publishing models. One emphasizes flagship characters — like Batman and Spider-Man — whose success largely benefits their companies, DC and Marvel Comics. The other is creator-focused, where hits like “The Walking Dead,” by Robert Kirkman and published by Image Comics, can mean a financial windfall for its creators. AWA is aiming for something between the two: It will have interconnected superhero comics like DC and Marvel as well as stand-alone series like Image. And all of its creators will have a financial stake.

It’s an approach reminiscent of old Hollywood. “The model here really is the old United Artists model, where people who are actually doing the creative have ownership, control and decision-making power over the work that they’re doing,” said Bill Jemas, a former vice president of Marvel who is chief executive and publisher of AWA. Joining him at the helm are Axel Alonso, a former editor-in-chief at Marvel, as chief creative officer and Jonathan F. Miller as chairman. Miller helped broker a deal in 2017 between comic book writer Mark Millar and Netflix, which bought his library of characters for development on the streaming service. Jemas and Alonso say the first of AWA’s titles will arrive some time this fall.

“What we’re offering creators is an opportunity to bet on themselves without putting it all on the line,” Alonso said during a recent conference-call interview with Jemas. Their stable of writers and artists includes both veterans and newcomers, Alonso said. They would be paid to produce the work as well as own their stories and characters, a percentage of the company or both.

Besides AWA — whose team also includes Frank Cho, writers Peter Milligan and Christa Faust and the artist known as ACO — there are other newcomers to the field trying to rupture the mold of comic books publishing. TKO Studios, which announced itself in December, plans to binge-release its miniseries, simultaneously selling collected editions of those stories and offering the first issue of each comic free. AHOY Comics, which began publishing in September, is more old school, but it is trying new things: It includes extra material — prose stories, cartoons, even a crossword — in its issues, and is also publishing “Second Coming,” a comic book featuring Jesus Christ, in July.

AWA has its own biblical title, “Archangel 8,” which is written by Michael Moreci and is about one of God’s angels who goes rogue.

To help shape the comics, the publisher has a creative council, which includes screenwriter and director Reginald Hudlin, novelists Margaret Stohl and Gregg Hurwitz, comic book writer Garth Ennis, and J. Michael Straczynski, a screenwriter and co-creator of Netflix’s “Sense8.”

Straczynski took a sabbatical from comics about three years ago, but kept busy working on multiple projects: an autobiography, a novel and a screenplay, adapting his “Rising Stars” comic book series for MGM. “I was open to returning to comics if the project was something challenging, so when Bill and Axel approached me about creating an entirely new, cohesive, shared comic-book universe, the prospect was too much fun to resist,” he wrote in an email. Straczynski has developed the origin point of AWA’s superheroes.

He has worked for comic companies with different publishing models. At DC and Marvel, “you always kind of know where the guard rails are,” he noted, including an obligation to bend, but not break the characters. With creator-owned work, “you can go as far as you want, since only you bear the consequences if you mess it up,” he wrote. Straczynski was drawn to the blended approach of AWA. “You get to create a new universe for what has every opportunity to become a major company, while taking real chances.”

In developing AWA’s superhero universe, Straczynski and Alonso took a broad look at others. Straczynski postulated that DC’s heroes, which generally emerged out of the postwar ‘40s, were largely authority figures, while Marvel’s, which mostly emerged from the ‘60s, were anti-establishment. “Who are we writing our stories about, and for, and what are we trying to say that’s relevant to a contemporary audience?” he wrote.

AWA has big ambitions and hopes to create a library of material like that of Marvel. “I think it’s fairly safe to say that Marvel is the most valuable entertainment franchise in the world,” Miller said. After the Netflix deal, he wondered if there were similar opportunities. He and Jemas got together, and Alonso soon joined them. “One of the great things about doing things this way is that you get to try a lot. Some things will hit, you never know when and where, but that’s part of the idea,” he said. “As long as you keep getting your turns at bat, then you’ll get some hits.”

This article originally appeared in <a id="05aaec23-674c-4fe7-ad84-c9a9d7f780d4" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/20/arts/awa-comic-books-publisher.html">The New York Times</a>.

A comic book publisher creates its own origin story

American Ronin, about highly trained corporate operatives; Fight Girls, about warriors vying to be queen of the galaxy; and Bad Mother, about a parent searching for her missing daughter: These are some of the stories that are coming from a new comics publisher, Artists, Writers &amp; Artisans, one that is posing the question, what stories could we develop if we begin with a blank slate?

<h1>Second Coming, a comic-book series with Jesus Christ as a character, is getting a second chance after DC Comics canceled it last month before its release. The series, written by Mark Russell and drawn by Richard Pace, will be published by AHOY Comics this summer. In the satirical comic, Jesus has a superhero roommate named Sunstar and learns what has become of his Gospel on earth.</h1>

Russell said his inspiration for Second Coming was to tell a story about power, in particular about how society “has fetishized physical violence and force as being the solution to every problem.” During a recent telephone interview, Russell said his goal was to examine that notion “by having a superhero who’s bought into this ideology being forced to confront somebody who has a completely different approach to human dynamics. Christ seemed like the natural standard-bearer for that nonviolent approach.”

The series was originally announced in July 2018 at San Diego Comic-Con. The next month, Russell discussed his plans in an interview with Bleeding Cool, a website devoted to pop culture. “The conceit is that God was so upset with Jesus’s performance the first time he came to Earth, since he was arrested so soon and crucified shortly after, that he has kept him locked up since then,” he said.

There was no adverse reaction until January, when news about the comic was reported by outlets like the Christian Broadcasting Network, Christian Headlines and Fox News. The Christian Broadcasting article described Second Coming as “closer to blasphemous than biblical” and noted the comic’s plans to present Jesus as a failure. A Citizen Go online petition asking DC to pull the series from its publication schedule garnered more than 235,000 signatures. The petition described the comic as inappropriate, and asked, “Can you imagine the media and political uproar if DC Comics was altering and poking fun at the story of Muhammad … or Buddha?” DC canceled the title on Feb. 13.

Russell said that Second Coming, which will run for at least six issues starting July 10, is respectful of what Christians “profess to believe.” He added, “It’s not as respectful as to what they actually do. It’s not a satire of Christ so much as it is a satire on how his followers of the last 2,000 years have turned his message of forgiveness and empathy into one of power and domination, which is as un-Christlike as one can possibly imagine.”

This is not the first time the writer has taken on God. In 2013, Russell wrote “God Is Disappointed in You,” with illustrations by Shannon Wheeler, which promised to strip the Bible of its arcane language to get to its core message.

Artist Richard Pace was recruited by the original editor of Second Coming when it was planned for Vertigo, an imprint of DC Comics, and he said he was intrigued by the mix of religion and satire. “I’m not afraid of that, so I said sure,” Pace recalled. He said he has received death threats since the project was announced.

“No one has read the book other than the people who are working on it,” Pace said. “I know full well that the only person coming out of it looking good is Jesus.”

Pace will lay out each issue and draw the scenes in heaven and in biblical times, while a second artist, who has not yet been named, will handle the scenes set on earth. “It gives us a chance to have a really visual indication of where the reader is in a story,” he said.

Another interpretation of Jesus can be found in a hardcover graphic novel to be released on March 20 by Image Comics. “Jesusfreak,” by Joe Casey and Benjamin Marra, is described on the publisher’s website as telling a violent story of the Messiah as “a kung fu demon slayer” who is “grappling with his station in life, the politics of the era, and divine martial art energies.” The book was discussed in a segment on “Fox &amp; Friends” last week, and a Change.org petition to stop it had about 2,800 signatures.

Both Russell and Pace said that the delay in publication and the move from DC to AHOY has given them time to improve Second Coming. The first issue will include six extra pages that recount Christ’s memories of a childhood friend during his first visit to earth. And DC had requested some changes — like less coarse language and adding fig leaves to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden — that are no longer necessary. While Russell was ready to make them, he knew more would be coming, he said.

“That’s what made me realize that this was going to slowly turn into a more watered-down version of what I had originally envisioned,” he said. When he asked for the rights of the project to be returned, DC agreed.

Tom Peyer, editor-in-chief of AHOY Comics, was happy to welcome Second Coming into its flock of series, all of which have an element of comedy or satire. The company began publishing last September.

Peyer said he was not worried about the strong prepublication reaction to the series. “I don’t think a comic book is anything to get that upset about,” he said. “I just think it’s a really good story that people have a right to read.”

This article originally appeared in <a id="138db12b-b515-4730-84a6-2978a4adac4f" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/12/arts/second-coming-jesus-comic-book.html">The New York Times</a>.

Comic book focusing on Jesus finds a new publisher

Russell said his inspiration for Second Coming was to tell a story about power, in particular about how society “has fetishized physical violence and force as being the solution to every problem.”

<h1>Brie Larson is bringing Captain Marvel to the big screen in the latest film from Marvel Studios. Her adventure is set in the 1990s, but the exploits of Captain Marvel date to 1939, when Billy Batson followed a stranger into a subway and was granted powers by a wizard to transform himself into the mighty hero. Since then, many men and women have borne the name Captain Marvel, as well as a sexually fluid alien. Here is a colorful selection.</h1>

In 1939, Billy Batson, an orphaned newspaper boy, turned into the Fawcett Comics hero Captain Marvel with one magic word — Shazam! No villains could stop him, but a later lawsuit nearly did. National Comics (the forerunner of DC Comics) thought Captain Marvel, who was strong and could fly and sometimes outsold “Superman,” was too close to the Man of Steel and cried copyright infringement. Fawcett retired the character in 1953, but nearly 20 years later, DC licensed him for new comics. Still, the series could not be called Captain Marvel, because Marvel had grabbed the trademark for its own hero in 1966. These days, Batson goes by Shazam (he cannot say his own name lest he transform) and will get his own film, starring Zachary Levi, in April.

Bursting on to the scene in 1966, Mar-Vell started out as a spy for the alien Kree race before siding with Earth. This version of the hero was originally a silver-haired hunk, but editors feared his hair color made him look old. He was given a spiffy new costume and later a dye job, leaving him with his better-known golden tresses. Sadly, he lost his battle with cancer in 1982. More shockingly, Mar-Vell has remained dead, despite comics’ love of resurrections. His genetically engineered son, Genis-Vell, burst onto the scene as Legacy but later took the name Captain Marvel, bearing it until he was killed in 2006. Spoiler: Mar-Vell has an unexpected role in the new film.

— Carol Danvers

In 1967, Carol Danvers was introduced as an Air Force officer who encountered the alien Captain Marvel. In 1976, Danvers became Ms. Marvel, whose costume was a variation of Mar-Vell’s, albeit more revealing. She later lost her memories and powers, and alien experiments transformed her to Binary, who gets in a spectacular revenge punch against the woman behind her earlier woes. Danvers then became Warbird, joined the Avengers and struggled with alcoholism, before finally taking on the mantle of Captain Marvel (with an appropriate military-inspired uniform).

— Monica Rambeau

Introduced in 1982, Monica Rambeau worked for the New Orleans harbor patrol. An encounter with cosmic energy infused her with the ability to convert her body into any form of energy. She joined the Avengers to better understand her abilities and excelled, eventually mastering her powers and becoming chairwoman of the team for a time. Rambeau was Captain Marvel for 14 years. She ceded the name to Mar-Vell’s son and became Photon (and, later, Pulsar and Spectrum). The “Captain Marvel” film includes a character named Maria Rambeau (played by Lashana Lynch), an Air Force pilot whose call sign is Photon and who has a young daughter named Monica.

This alien hero crash-landed on Earth in 2000 and quickly found himself at odds with Doctor Midas, who was obsessed with the energy that gave the Fantastic Four their powers, and Hexus, a corporation that became sentient (and evil). Noh-Varr joined the Avengers as Captain Marvel and later became known as the Protector. As a space-faring Kree, the triple-jointed Nor-Varr has a fluid view of sexuality. “We consider these things carefully,” he once told his Young Avengers teammates. “I was aboard an exploratory vessel, after all. Exploratory does have multiple meanings. The Kree are efficient like that.”

When her series began in 2014, Kamala Khan was a Muslim teenager living in Jersey City and a big fan of the Carol Danvers version of Captain Marvel. When Khan’s powers activated, she became the local hero Ms. Marvel, telling her idol in a feverish dream: “I want to be you. Except I would wear the classic, politically incorrect costume and kick butt in giant wedge heels.” Since then, Khan has expanded her reach globally with the Champions, a squad of teenage superheroes, and seems likely to be promoted to Captain one day. In the meantime, maybe fans will get a big-screen cameo? At a news conference in January, Larson was asked which hero she would like to meet in a sequel. “My dream would be that Ms. Marvel gets to come into play,” she said.

This article originally appeared in <a id="6713386b-65e3-4583-9236-5b331367db7a" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/05/movies/captain-marvel-history.html">The New York Times</a>.

In 1939, Billy Batson, an orphaned newspaper boy, turned into the Fawcett Comics hero Captain Marvel with one magic word — Shazam!

It has certainly been an age of Marvels

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.

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.

George Gene Gustines

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