The PopCulteer
April 28, 2017
Some readers have reported technical issues with this edition of The PopCulteer. To try and iron them out, we have moved the photo essay, Linda Vista review and the schedule for The AIR to separate posts and republished these as four different entries. Let’s hope that works. Now on with the PopCulteer:
Your PopCulteer has returned from a quick trip to The Windy City and has a bunch of cool stuff to talk about this week.
Chicago
Your faithful correspondent made the trip to Chicago to accompany his wife to see Linda Vista, the new play by her favorite playwright, Tracy Letts (August: Osage County, Bug, Killer Joe, Superior Donuts), and on this trip we managed to squeeze in visits to a few great record stores for Record Store Day as well as our first-time as a couple stops at The Art Institute of Chicago and Millenium Park. That’s the Crown Fountain you see at right.
We rode up via Amtrak, and it was one of the most fun train trips we’ve made. Rail travel is such a great alternative to flying that it’s pretty disheartening that there are political leaders in Washington who want to defund Amtrak and eliminate the freedom of choice that consumers who have to travel long distances now have.Rather than killing off the last vestige of long-distance passenger rail in this country, since Amtrak is a government-owned corporation, our country ought to be investing more in Amtrak, upgrading the equipment and increasing the service so that vital lines like The Cardinal could become every day trains.Ridership would go up and fewer people would have to forcibly removed from overbooked airplanes.
Charlton Arrow Kickstarter
Our friends at the Charlton Neo movement have a great new Kickstarter campaign for issue #6 of The Charlton Arrow that also includes a replica of the famed Charlton guide to making comics.
Let me quote from the Kickstarter campaign:
In just three years, Charlton Neo has released two dozen books with some of the world’s best and upcoming talent and our flagship title, The Charlton Arrow, is now up to it’s sixth issue! So far, we’ve only been available through mail order in select places, but now it’s time to hang with the big boys and, after this issue, get into the comic shops for increased exposure! It is our goal to raise enough from this Kickstarter for The Charlton Arrow #6 and The Comic Book Guide to afford printing of our next issue and get it into your friendly neighborhood comic shop! Check below for the sensational news of our line-up for our next, first direct issue.
This will be a big move for Charlton Neo, getting the book into comic shops via Diamond Distributors. Recently The Creeps Magazine and CARtoons made the jump into Diamond with great success, proving that great comics can be conceived outside the traditional comic book shop pipeline.
Also part of this campaign is a reproduction of a book that your PopCulteer wanted badly back in the 1970s, but never managed to get around to ordering, Charlton’s Comic Book Guide for the Artist • Writer • Letterer, Featuring a new introduction by writer Nick Cuti. Again, we quote from the campaign:
Nicola Cuti’s 1973 Comic Book Guide for the Artist • Writer • Letterer from Charlton Comics is an instructional look at the process of comics storytelling. It details a commonsense approach to constructing and drawing comic book stories, even if the tools have evolved since then. Despite changes in technology, the basics that are logically conveyed here remain the same. The Comic Book Guide for the Artist • Writer • Letterer is a rare, sought-after collectible produced by one of comicdom’s most gifted creators, and we at Charlton Neo are proud to re-present it. Take a step back and immerse yourself in the state-of-the-art tools and techniques of 1973, courtesy of Nicola Cuti and the Charlton artists!
This brief campaign has already hit its goal, and there’s still about a week left to go. I’ll be kicking in shortly, as should you. I would have told you about it sooner, but I was in Chicago when it started. Check out the widget:
Check the three other posts for this week’s full PopCulteer. PopCult will still be here every day. Keep checking back.
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