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Films at SPX 2012 include Spotlight on Old Cartoonists and the Center for Cartoon Studies

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Small Press ExpoThe Small Press Expo (SPX), the preeminent showcase for the exhibition of independent comics, graphic novels, and alternative political cartoons, is pleased to offer a small film festival at this years show.

Mark Newgarden will show a series of shorts from the 1920’s to 1960’s about the old time comic strips and their cartoonist creators. You’ll be able to see rare film footage from Newgarden’s personal collection with Rube Goldberg, Otto Soglow, Al Capp and Fontaine Fox and others, as well as cartoons based on the comics strips Nancy, Krazy Kat and Popeye. This will be a once in a lifetime chance to see this series of extraordinary films that are not otherwise available, with half the shorts to be shown Saturday September 15, and the other half Sunday September 16.

Cartoon College is a documentary by Tara Wray and Josh Melrod about a dozen students working their way through the MFA program at the Center for Cartoon Studies, one of the top schools in the country focusing on creating comics and cartoons. Besides following the students through their academic paces, the film features cameos by such comic creator luminaries as Lynda Barry, Art Spiegelman, Chris Ware, Jules Feiffer and Charles Burns. The film will be shown once on Saturday, September 15.

For details about showtimes and additional information, go to the SPX 2012 Programming page at http://www.spxpo.com/programming.

A Big Book For A Little King!

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Official Press Release

A BIG BOOK FOR A LITTLE KING! 

[Cartoon Monarch Cover]San Diego, CA (October 11, 2011)- Cartoon Monarch: Otto Soglow and The Little King is a long-overdue examination of the unique pantomime cartoons of Otto Soglow, who entertained millions for more than fifty years and whose influence remains current in the works of Chris Ware, Daniel Clowes, Ivan Brunetti, and others. To be published in February by IDW’s Library of American Comics, this compendium features 432 pages of Soglow’s most famous creation, The Little King—plus the complete run of The Ambassador, the strip that preceded the King in the comics pages.

Soglow began experimenting with eliminating unnecessary lines while at The New Yorker, where he created The Little King in 1931. Lured by William Randolph Hearst, Soglow moved to the Sunday comics section with The Ambassador until his contract with The New Yorker ended in 1934. The Little King remained a Sunday funnies mainstay until Soglow’s death in 1975.

“After reading more than 2,000 of his comics in researching this book,” says Dean Mullaney, the book’s Eisner Award-winning editor and designer, “I have a greater than ever respect for Soglow’s ability to convey a tremendous amount with very few words and in deceptively simple lines.”

Ohio State University professor Jared Gardner, who serves as contributing editor and has written the Introduction, notes that Soglow “began his career as a radical artist publishing in The New Masses and The Liberator; a decade later he was working for William Randolph Hearst and creating advertisements for Pepsi Cola and oil companies. The Little King, Soglow‘s most famous creation, is born out of the tension between his political idealism and his professional ambitions.”

Much of the humor in The Little King is aimed at puncturing pomposity and, as Ivan Brunetti points out in his Afterword, Soglow accomplishes it with drawings that are tightly composed, exquisitely timed, carefully structured pieces of machinery. “His process of streamlining is at the root of why his cartoons have a timeless sophistication and elegance, and continue to entice new readers and cartoonists. It’s high time for such a fitting tribute to this cartoon monarch.”