By Justin Leiter

July 13th, 2007- Hello true believers! JL's Comics Shop Stop is back once again. I've managed to swindle a few hours out of my busy week to settle down with a few of the cooler items available in the shops these last couple of weeks to bring to you, the comics consumer, the lowdown on what you should be buying! Or, at least, checking out . . . so, without further ado, this week's reviews . . .

BLACK GHOST APPLE FACTORY
(Top Shelf, 2006, 48 pp of b/w-toned art, $5)

Art and Story by Jeremy Tinder

Author of some 23 or so mini comics and the graphic novel, Cry Yourself To Sleep, Jeremy Tinder’s new anthology comic (a collection of stories from 2004 -2006 with some new material) from Top Shelf, mixes both the bizarre and the autobiographical in a melancholy set of dream-like episodes. The stories all involve relationships, such as that between a black ghost and the never seen girl that prompts him to think “she kissed me,” as he flys around to the tops of apple trees with other black ghosts (à la the bad guys from Pac-Man) to drop their precious apple cargo onto the branches; to the man who unearths a log cabin in the woods and inside finds a hibernating bear that becomes his roommate; to the unrequited homosexual love an elephant feels for his human friend, with the elephant watching from afar as his friend goes home to his human girlfriend.

Though some of the stories are certainly strange, they’re also fresh and unexpected. There’s some cute humor here as well, with bits and pieces that certainly ring true if you replace the weird characters with human equivalents. The art, while on the surface seemingly simple and naïve, is drawn in a clean and delicate ink line, with a loose but confident quality. There’s a bit of a disconnect with some of the characters because of their white eyes, which ratchets up the strangeness factor a bit. Even though the characters are talking about their innermost emotional feelings, there’s almost a soulless quality to the figures, most especially in the drawings of Jeremy Tinder himself in the story “It’s Spring and Jeremy Tinder Is in Love with You.” A little pricey at $5 for a black and white, smaller sized book, it’s still a recommended pick-up for its whimsical art and its personal, emo-touched tales.

JL's COMIC SHOP STOP: 8
ART: 7+
STORY: 9

THE ARTIST WITHIN - PORTRAITS OF CARTOONISTS, COMIC BOOK ARTISTS, ANIMATORS, AND OTHERS
(Dark Horse Books, April 2007, 208 pp b/w, HC, clothbound w/ dust jacket, $39.95)

Photographs by Greg Preston
Introduction by Scott Shaw!

One of two featured coffee table books this week, this is a truly sumptuous volume of beautiful black and white photographs of dozens of greats from the fields of cartooning, comics, and animation. The collection spans almost two decades of photography, so we're grateful to be able to have photos of such disparate legends as the late Jack Kirby, Ed "Big Daddy" Roth, and Al Hirschfeld. Along with many additional greats from the past are more contemporary artists like Michael Allred, Craig Thompson, and Adrian Tomine.. Though the book’s byline mentions that the photos are of cartoonists, comic book artists, animators, and others, the majority of the artists represented come from the world of comic book art. With 101 individuals represented in total, many of the top classic comics artists are portrayed There are great shots of everyone from Bernie Wrightson to John Romita Sr., to The Hernandez Bros and Victor Moscoso. These are photos to pore over, all but one of them of artists in their home studios or office, surrounded by their collections and accumulations of artwork, toys, books, CD's, etc. Ironically, the sole photo not inside somewhere – of Jean “Moebius” Giraud on the beach in France – was the first one taken for the book.Each creator is given a two-page spread, with the photo on the right side and a short bio and example of their work on the left. This is a truly fascinating set of portraits and almost all of them make you want to see more and to enter these creation-tinged worlds and explore the room, pulling down the books, and looking in the drawers to find whatever treasures might be found there, which would mainly be the hundreds of pages of artwork, doodles, and sketches by the artists themselves! By looking into the personal environments of these artists you can learn something more about them; the photos lend an insight into the person behind the art. What are the books on their shelves? What figures, toys, and artifacts do they have around that are important to them? Almost all of these studio rooms are so jam packed with stuff you can wind up getting lost in the pictures, gazing with your nose close to the page and scanning the backgrounds.

My only qualm would be the lack of information on the portraits, including where they were taken and when, especially since these were shot over such a relatively long period of time. A page or two of information with a small thumbnail of the corresponding photo would be welcome. Though the examples of artwork shown are fairly small and there's still quite a bit of room on the pages to show more, I can understand keeping the art to a minimum, in order to focus the majority of interest on the photos. For the few artists here who may not be that familiar, a quick Web search should bring up more samples of their work. Overall, this is a gorgeous and truly important book that would make an impressive addition to any comic book art fan’s collection.

JL's COMIC SHOP STOP: 9+
PHOTOS: 10
TEXT: 9

THE ART OF BONE
(Dark Horse Books, 2007, 200 pp, HC, clothbound w/ dust jacket, $39.95)

By Jeff Smith
Introduction by Lucy Shelton Caswell

A lavish, beautifully, and lovingly produced book on the art of Jeff Smith's modern classic fairy tale, The Art Of Bone is filled with page after page of exquisite black and white and color art.

From the slightly embossed dust jacket cover art (along with an embossed cloth cover) to the newly rendered map of The Valley - where the action of Bone takes place - printed on the inside front and back covers, to the ten-page lead-in title and credit sequence (with new art by Jeff Smith), you can see a lot of time, thought, and care went into the production of this most welcome volume of art and story.

The book traces the history of Bone, from Smith's seminal cartoons of the three main Bone characters dating back to 1970 (!) through to his college newspaper strip, “Thorn,” which ran in OSU's The Lantern in the early 1980's, to some preliminary Bone drawings done prior to the actual first issue of Bone, and all the way to the end of the saga, after 55 issues in 2004.

It truly is amazing when you think that the story of Bone was almost all in place from at least Smith's college days and that the characters themselves were already developed when he was only in the fourth grade. These very early strips are given a few pages of coverage and we can see how some of the early gags made it virtually unchanged to scenes within the Bone comic many years later. Only a handful of the “Thorn” strips are reproduced; I'd love to see more, as Smith's draftsmanship was already very proficient. The smoother, cleaner lines of the Bone comic, though, were still to come. While much of the page art has actually been published before, within the context of the Bone series, it's usually presented in a novel way here. For example, some black and white pages are shown with their original underlying blue line pencil lines intact and the shadows of paste-ups to the art page visible. Other pages are shown in color, from the Scholastic Books version of Bone. Classic Bone covers (Cartoon Books first printings and later Image reprints, with new cover art) are also represented, without cover copy, devoting a full bleed page to them. A nice addition would have been a complete Bone cover gallery, showing them as they were first printed, with a bunch of covers per page.

What usually excites me the most with these types of books are the rough sketches and ideas for characters that are customarily displayed. Some of those here are actually quite rough, literally just a few strokes on the page, with dialogue scribbled in, sometimes on loose leaf paper. What's incredible is how exact the translation is from these ultra-simple, almost shorthand drawing notes to the beautifully rendered finished art. Smith is able to follow through on the looseness that he gets into his rough sketches to the finished inks, and it seems effortless. Most dialogue also remains intact. At least it's that way for the pages shown. There are also some rarely seen Bone short strips and various other little seen or previously unpublished Bone-related artwork, as well as photos of locations and elements that influenced scenes in the series. The text, aside from the Introduction and Preface by the editors, is limited but insightful, illuminating key points of the story, and detailing the origins of ideas used throughout the saga. It almost works as a companion volume to the Bone comics. A sort of Cliff Note's on the epic tale.

What's most evident after reading and gazing at the art in this book is the brilliance of Jeff Smith's vision for Bone and how well the entire story was planned out and progressed as the tale unfolded.

This is a definite must for the Bone enthusiast or anyone who wants to enjoy a gorgeously produced art book.

JL's COMIC SHOP STOP: 10
DESIGN: 10
TEXT: 10