We all need a distraction — so today, I bring you a few links that can provide you some comic base enjoyment. These aren’t exclusive or unique links, they’ve been posted all over the place elsewhere, so you may have seen them already — but in case you haven’t, I hope you enjoy them. We’ve got mixed media here today:
Reading
Reason Magazine has an interesting piece on the challenges of combining success and art. Several comics creators are featured.
Listening
The audio from a 1992 interview with Todd McFarlane that appeared written in The Comics Journal #152 is now available and it is FASCINATING. Trust me.
UPDATE! The audio might be considered NSFW, so don’t blast it from your cube
Watching
Have a free hour? Watch the fantastic BBC Documentary with Jonathan Ross, In Search of Steve Ditko. It’s been removed from YouTube, but I’ve found parts 1-3 here and parts 4-7 here. Watch it while you can.
There, that should fill the rest of your afternoon…
Find us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter
Subscribe to our RSS Feed
Some rights reserved.
The Ditko doc is great! Best line: “Rorschach…oh yeah, he’s just like Mr. A…except he’s crazy…” Pure genius!
That Ditko documentary is fascinating. The Mr. A stuff that inspired Rorschach of Watchmen is in particular, a little scary and unsettling.
Objectivist thoroughly creep me out, man. Ayn Rand has a lot to answer for.
I love listening to Todd McFarlane talk.
Wow.
I just watched the whole Ditko piece.
It was incredible.
That Ditko documentary is awesome. Todd McFarlane not so much.
I’ll keep Jonathan Ross’ fabulous Ditko documentary online as long as his production company doesn’t cause me any grief.
Bless you, Ron, that documentary is simply sublime! Thank you so much for posting it.
I know it’s exactly what everyone else is saying but the Ditko documentary was Amazing. Makes me wanna read old Dr. Strange books or old Spiderman or anything else he did.
Neil Gaiman looked like he was about to cry. It shows the passion and emotional investment people have put into these “childish” things called comics
Ditko documentary is amazing – glad you finallyw atched it Ron If everyone wants somewhere to watch it http://www.spidermancrawlspace.com/interviews/ditko.htm has it all in one place – neither here nor there really but still. The Stan lee interview was amazing – no pun intended.
The mcfarlane interview is just mind boggling – some bizarre comments there. Especially the spiel about how if kids liked 22 pages with no dialogue and it sold hed do it – he doesnt care about what he produces as long as it makes money. to which the interviewer asks if he has any artistic integrity or is it just related entirely to sales.
Wow.
The link the Mike gives is for a page with YouTube videos that have all been pulled.
The Stan lee interview was amazing – no pun intended.
Agreed. Say what you want about Stan Lee as a glory hound or what have you. I think Lee has been more than gracious in sharing credit with Ditko for the creation of Spider-Man.
Lee isn’t even trying to hide it. He flat out says, “Yes, Ditko wrote those issues”.
Ditko’s stubbornness and pride is the real crime in all that business. It makes me terribly sad for the man. Judging from the tone of Lee’s voice in the interview, I suspect he feels sad for Ditko too.
Just for context sake, for those of you who don’t know, Jonathan Ross hosts a celebrity talk show in the UK, and I would say he’s sort of like a cross between Jon Stewart and David Letterman. But it’s not a direct comparison.
He’s a huge comic book fan. When I was in Ireland, I saw an episode where he had Simon Pegg on, and they were planning to come hang out with each other and go through their comic collections.
Todd McFarlane is a hell of an artist, but man, that dude loves making money.
In 1992, Todd McFarlane (who referred to himself in the third person at least once said this:
“Take away all my fame, and all my fortune, and just let me make comic books and sell 5000 copies to eek out a living, I’ll be happy, because I love making comic books.”
Or, y’know…not.
Ron! Thank you and Doug for posting the links. Of course I had heard about the Ditko documentary but I didn’t expect it to affect me so much. I have all the Ditko issues save Amazing Fantasy 15. But this doc made me remember the thrill of collecting. Of waiting a month for the next issue, discussing it with my friends. Those nine panel pages! Man, did you feel like you had read a comic after that. There was such a density to them. Seeing the splash of Spiderman and the Vulture, just damn cool. I don’t get excited over superhero battles these days. I want more to a comic so my favorites feature a different type of storytelling. But the early stuff at Marvel was such a unique blend and this doc brought it back. Really, really cool. BTW, I believe Ditko was the one who designed the signature red and gold Iron Man too. I get what Stan is saying about the guy with the idea. He makes his point well that without Ditko he would have created a less successful character. But that works for prose. Comics are a visual medium and the visuals are part of the whole creation. Cool stuff.
Yeah, I’m totally not in the position to afford it right now, but I immediately added the spider-man omnibus to my amazon wishlist.
I got back to reading Essential Amazing Spider-Man vol 1, which I started a while back, after watching it, haha.
The Ditko show was part of a whole month of comic related shows brodcast here last month. If you can find the third part of comics Britania it has an interview with Alan Moore about V and is just a great show.