Famous Artists Cartoon Course at Comicrazys

Continuing the series of lessons from the Famous Artists Cartoon Course over at Comicrazys comes lesson 15 – Props and backgrounds.

Crime and Noir Stories

Laura Hudson at Comics Alliance introduces a history of crime and noir comics. If this is your cup of tea, why not splash out on Paul Gravett’s superb ‘Mammoth Book of Best Crime Comics‘, which features the Jack Cole story ‘Murder Morphine and Me’ by Plasticman Creator Jack Cole, from which the panel below is taken. Paul also writes a particularly insightful article on Art Spiegelman’s book on Cole, ‘Jack Cole & Plastic Man: Forms Stretched To Their Limits‘ that explores the connections between his work and suicide.

Once you have your crime-whistle suitably whetted, head on over to goldenagecomics.co.uk, register and download some gloriously copyright-free titles such as ‘Crime Must Pay The Penalty‘, ‘Men Against Crime‘ and ‘Crime Clinic‘.

Mark Beyer

I really love Mark Beyer‘s work. Check out Amy & Jordan. I love Amy & Jordan. I can’t enough good things about what is on the face of it seems to be a fairly unappealing strip. Looking at his work, you can see a definite influence from 70’s underground comix artist Rory Hayes.

You can see examples of both Beyer and Hayes and make the comparison for yourself in Ivan Brunetti’s fantastic ‘Anthology of Graphic Fiction, Cartoons and True Stories’.

Beyer also collaborated with Alan Moore on ‘The Bowing Machine‘

Stitches

David Small talks to Sasha Watson at Publishers Weekly about his graphic memoir ‘Stitches’.

You can also have a look at a preview of the book here.

David’s site is also quite good – have a look through his sketchbooks.

Kirby story of the month

Love The Line have a new Jack Kirby story all scanned in and ready to read. This is an odd tale. I won’t ruin the ending, but I really didn’t see that coming.