review: BIG FUNNY, for those who like their comics man-sized
Big Funny
(a co-production of Altered Esthetics, The International Cartoonist Conspiracy and Big Time Attic)
I was pleased to find this giant newsprint comics anthology in the mail a couple of days ago (and the post office was pleased that I was taking it off their hands). Big Funny is sort of a celebration of (and eulogy for) newspaper comic strips. The front page features editorials about such, the back cover's got a couple of (attractive) ads and the inside back cover consists of contributor bios (cleverly designed as a Classified Ads section). But inbetween are 45 big-ass, one-page comics, 13 of which are in full color.
The comics are a bit of a mixed bag (naturally) but there's a lot of fun work and a high enough percentage of particularly fine pages (especially at that size) that the less appealing pages likely won't bother you. My only disappointment is the number of cartoonists who didn't really maximize the space or do something extraordinary with such freedom. It seems a few, not the majority but more than expected, simply drew much larger than usual (they would probably be perfectly readable if reduced down for a digest-sized mini-comic so maybe they were being practical). But this is only a minor complaint. Jesse Gillespie's panels are rather tall (although varying in width) but his page is a beautifully done homage to "Little Nemo in Slumberland" that I have no complaints about so what do I know?
Other contributors include Terry Beatty, Kevin Cannon, Ken Avidor, Jason Sandberg, B. Sabo, Roger Lootine, Kevin McCarthy, Henry Chamberlain, Hawk Krall, D.C. McNamara, David Steinlicht, Steven Stwalley, David Paleo, Paul Fricke and many others.
Did I mention the size? 16 × 23", about the size of your daily newspaper or maybe even a bit larger. It's a really fun project and the cover price is five bucks which seems like a heck of a deal to me.
Big Funny is set to premiere on August 7th at this art show of the same name. I can't seem to find any information regarding mail order or distribution but I'd imagine that info will be released by the time the premiere rolls around. In the meantime, you can take the extra time to work on clearing out a space for its impending arrival.
Tags: anthologies, reviews
Comment
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Comment by Rick Bradford on July 19, 2009 at 8:29pm -
Hi, Henry, thanks for your post. I think, due to several oversized projects lately, I've just been excited about seeing how a large amount of space like that might be utilized. Personally, even if I wasn't so rusty, I can't imagine trying to fill a page that large. Daunting!
Nice review over at Newsarama too. And it's great to see the sample pages there as well. I think your own strip works fine but I do think the color version works better, thanks for including it.
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Comment by Henry Chamberlain on July 19, 2009 at 8:07pm -
Great review, Rick. I have to agree with you that there are some comic strips in Big Funny that would have done just fine if they had not been printed as big as they were. I think that may have something to do with us being so conditioned to expect little to minimal space given over to comic strips in our daily newspapers. All of a sudden, a cartoonist has a huge page to fill, and maybe he or she doesn't quite realize the enormity of the situation. For me, I normally draw big whether it's simple or detailed and don't think too much about the actual print size beyond a certain point. But, in this case, I probably should have taken the space more into account than I did. I've done comic strips before and I was pretty much keeping to a simple format. An elaborate approach would have been best here. I was also expecting the color to add to my contribution too but my final comic strip did not end up being published in color. All in all, I think everyone did well. Big Funny really is quite a special platform for cartoonists working in the comic strip art form so I really can't find too much fault with it.
For more commentary, I've just posted by review over at Newsarama.
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Comment by Rick Bradford on July 19, 2009 at 1:19pm
- Absolutely, it's a lovely page. Plus, "Honkalicious" just sort of resonates...
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Comment by Jesse Gillespie on July 19, 2009 at 6:48am - Rick, thank you soooo much for the props!
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Comment by Rick Bradford on July 16, 2009 at 5:12pm
- FYI, pre-orders now being taken at http://www.cartoonistconspiracy.com/bigfunny/ (near the bottom of the page).
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