§ Hope Larson has a new website up for her more adult art: Personal Ho. (left)

§ We totally forgot that the Pittsburgh Comicon was held this weekend, but it is now apparently dubbed “Murder con.” Someone wrote about it to the Comics Reporter and from the sound of it, it was pretty desolate.

§ Laura Hudson suggests that the comics industry’s press relations in general could use a review:

Before I really get into this, it’s important to keep in mind here that approaching a publisher as a member of the press who wants to give them coverage or reviews is very different from poking around for stories and quotes that don’t necessarily point towards a positive angle on their product. Unsurprisingly, the latter is going to get fewer welcoming responses.

To a certain degree, that’s just how it works, and I don’t see anything particularly insidious in it. I would add, though, that because the comics press is less established (or respected) than press is in certain other fields, I think a lot of people in the industry are not as accustomed to the poking and prodding Tom describes, and consequently can get touchier in the course of journalistic inquiries. But really, I don’t see this as the primary problem. While it may not be optimal, I’m not surprised by this unresponsiveness to certain lines of inquiry.

What I don’t understand–what really blows my mind is that some companies can be just as unresponsive and unhelpful to people who want to give their books positive coverage, review them, or generally make them more visible. That’s what really resonated with me about Tom’s post, because I’ve seen it happen more than a few times and it never ceases to amaze me with its pointlessness.

§ Mark Evanier went to the LA Times Book fest.

§ Shaenon on The Boys of Shojo Manga :

The Tortured Genius
The heroine’s parents approve of this one. He’s a high-IQ achiever on the fast track to Tokyo University, and is often a Wealthy Playboy to boot. But his heart is as tiny as his brain is huge. An arrogant smartass, he delights in making the heroine feel stupid and insignificant. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t want to date her, of course; his strategy is to belittle, manipulate, and intellectually bulldoze her into falling in love with him. And it works, especially once the heroine realizes that he’s hurting inside and Just Needs Someone To Love Him. Extremely common in the works of Miki Aihara.
Signature Romantic Gestures: Intellectually abusing the heroine; emotionally abusing the heroine; physically abusing the heroine; helping her study.
In Real Life He’d Be: Exactly the same, but in his forties.

§ Catch-up 1: Indie Jones blogs the ICv2 conference.

§ Catch-up 2: Jeff Trexler on “How Siegel and Shuster created our world”:

This tension between past and present is equally evident in the Siegel case. On the one hand, for many within the comics community the ruling was a symbolic victory in the struggle for creators rights, vindicating not just Siegel and Shuster, but legions of comic book artists and writers whose genius was exploited by corporate greed.

Yet much to the surprise of longtime industry watchers, the judgment also provoked a strong negative response. Some critics focused on the fact that the winner was not Siegel himself but his heirs, who were said to have gained an unearned windfall. Other observers went a step further, questioning the wisdom of a law that voids otherwise valid contracts, and accusing the Siegels themselves of exploiting Superman for their own financial gain.

§ Jim Steranko copies himself

§ When we saw the headline “Comic Genius” in our RSS feed, we wondered “Who could it be this time???”

Surprise! It’s artist John Cassaday:

These days, Cassaday finds himself in the enviable position of being able to pick and choose which assignments he takes. “I’ve got specific goals in mind and don’t want to deviate just for a few bucks if I’m not interested,” he says. “The story must come first.” Though he won’t reveal what he makes, his page rate—the amount an artist charges per page drawn—is among the highest in the business. Given that an elite illustrator can command up to $1,000 a page for a 22-page comic book and that most popular titles are monthlies, a top talent like Cassaday can comfortably clear six figures annually. And that’s not counting potential back-end royalties for merchandise, trade paperbacks, and spin-offs, which are negotiated separately.

Big BIG report over at The Comics Reporter as Bart Beaty lays smack down on David Hajdu’s THE TEN CENT PLAGUE:

I read The Ten-Cent Plague with great avidity. Hajdu is a compelling storyteller, and his interviews with some of the key players at the time add important shadings to our understanding of the period. There are places where the book really excels, not the least of which is in the important research on the comic book burnings that began in the 1940s, an area that is often mentioned but seldom dealt with in the depth that Hajdu brings to the issue.

At the same time, however, the book has certain shortcomings, and I’d like to address these over a few posts.

Few posts indeed. Beaty is only up to number two, with more promised!

Related: Eddie Campbell comments, and Steve Bissette comments in the comments.

This particular showdown has become one of the great myths of the comic book (I’m using myth correctly to mean ’sacred story’ rather than ‘falsehood,’ the usual debased meaning given to the word these days). I saw the same thing in Eisner/Miller (Dark Horse 2005)

§ MEANWHILE, Noah Berlatsky responds to some comments by ADD in the new Comics Journal about the state of the direct market:

I think Gary Groth has made a similar argument, and I thought it was silly then as well. The problem with super-hero comics isn’t that the quality is bad. I mean, there’s *lots* of dreadful stuff that have a huge fan base (things like, oh, Scooby-Doo cartoons…or Rolling Stone concerts….or Alicia Keys albums….) Quality isn’t objective, of course, but using any aesthetic criteria, you’re going to find that sometimes quality and popularity are directly related, sometimes they’re inversely related, and sometimes they don’t seem to have any relationship at all. The problem with super-hero comics isn’t that they’re “bad” (though I agree that many of them are bad); it’s that, bad or good, they’re aimed at an audience which is increasingly insular, and that, as a result, the genre doesn’t really look sustainable in the long, or even medium, term.

Tom Brevoort approaches the same thing from a different angle:

Here’s one of the things I’ve realized about this business: it’s all cyclic. The same patterns repeat themselves again and again, from generation to generation–not the specific instances, but the overall shape of people’ reactions.

I’m still reacting in part to some of the people I spoke to at the New York Comic Convention, as well as the e-mails that we’ve been getting. But it’s really driven home this idea of cycling.

For example: it’s not great secret that there are still people upset about the changes to Spider-Man. Fair enough, But in the space of a day or two, I got five-or-so comments lamenting the elimination of Spidey’s organic webbing, and the fact that there’s been no mention of the additional powers he gained during “The Other.”

Which comes as a bit of a shock, frankly, because the overwhelming majority of the reactions we saw at the time those two stories came out were decidedly negative! Nobody seemed to like the organic webbing, and people wrote long treatises about how Peter creating mechanical web-shooters was better, because this showcased his science skills. But just a couple short years later, we go back to the mechanical web-shooters, and it’s like we fire-bombed something.

Finally, Brian Hibbs sums up DC’s current output and it doesn’t look good:

The first real signs, for me, was “One Year Later”, which was about as unmanaged and poorly fitting of an idea as anything I can think of. Virtually every DCU book took a sharp downwards spike in the wake of OYL, as the readership didn’t understand what was going on in the books they followed, and given no real incentive to pick up new ones.

That could have been managed had it not been for COUNTDOWN, “the spine of the DC Universe” — a spine that virtually no one enjoyed, and that had what seemed to be a billion-jillion awful tie ins and crossovers and “spin outs” all predicated on branding and ideas that no one (not even, it seems) the creators were especially enthused by.

Word Balloons is a new blog which aims to be the daily morning read for kids comics. Tt’s edited by Brigid Alverson, so that’s a good start. She’s aided by Katherine Dacey, Lori Henderson, Esther Keller, Eva Volin and Snow Wildsmith, a merry band of writers and librarians whom we intend to read avidly. The blog kicks off with an interview with Jerzy Drozd of Sugary Serials.

“In Saturday morning cartoons, as well as in the ’60s comics, you had very limited space to tell the full story,” he says. “How are you going to communicate characters in an economical fashion while avoiding simplifying? You want them to feel like rich characters, but you don’t have much time. So you turn up the volume on the characters to 11.” That means making every word count. “You can’t write whimsical dialogue,” he says. “You have to ask yourself ‘How is it servicing the story and the character?’”

Book mark now!

§ Via the Scienteers: Zuda — ouchie.

Instead of forcing us to choke down the overly complex controls and key-strokes in order to get the comic to even be readable in the first place, why not do a fixed size version with the typical page-by-page navigation 99.9% of other webcomic sites offer? Once again, arrogance comes into play. Why would DC need to change their ways for webcomic readers who were around before they decided to toss their corporate-hat in? DC is sadly viewing webcomics as a new market, and a new market alone. While business is typically about innovation, Webcomics are not. Why do you think we have so many similar comics out there? Webcomics don’t reward innovation just yet, and are a poor thing to try and apply a business model to (this will be another rant for another time, I’m sure). DC’s attempt at doing so clashes so damn hard with the current environment, it’s putting people off. Not only from it being a disruptive and out of the norm technique, but from how cumbersome this new method is.

§ Dick Hyacinth discovers the secret message of Secret Invasion.

§ Blake Petit remembers Valiant.

§ This fake Stan Lee blog is quite the meta:

That’s quite a complicated question, Danster, but I won’t let that stop me from takin’ an ever lovin’ swing at it. It’s hard to talk about Vince “Crow Quill” Colletta without stirring up some kind of fuss, flak or fracas. Comic collectors, co-workers and even cannoli-consumers have always been clearly cleft on what to make of the Sicilian Scribbler. They either loved him or they hated him.

Two newish review sites offering solid crticisms: Occasional comics writer John Mitchell, who works with wife Jana, has some lengthy reviews at Shuffleboil such as this one, on INCOGNEGRO:

Though not sold as part of this genre, Mat Johnson and Warren Pleece’s “Incognegro” is very ingrained in it. Essentially, this tale of 1930s newspaper reporter — a black man who passes for white in undercover stories — is a throwback to pulp fiction heroes like The Shadow and newspaper sleuth heroes like The Spirit. Icognegro is his secret identity, white skin is his mask and he fights crime via his journalistic crusade. Icognegro is no different from so many old style heroes, except that his adventures are steep in history and politics in a meaningful and powerful way.

AND a new group review blog: Mindless Ones, e.g. KICK-ASS:

I was uncertain after reading the first instalment, but this confirms it. There’s a very bad smell around this comic. The smell of unwashed boy. The smell of socks encrusted with… well, let’s just say “encrusted” and leave it at that, shall we? Sure, Mark Millar’s wannabe superhero (a kid from the really real world who loves to talk about the things you the reader love to talk about) had the shit kicked out of him last issue, but this time - tres excite! - he’s back and KICKING the bad guys ASSES.

With his truncheon.

Jeet Heer explains why Francoise Mouly is Underappreciated and Essential. We agree. Strongly.

Is there anyone in the cartooning world who is more underrated than Francoise Mouly? She has strong claims to be the most important comics editor of the last 30 years, but I suspect that if you asked your average comics fan or even cartoonists to name influential editors, Mouly wouldn’t come trippingly off their tongues. Part of the problem is that she’s done some of her most important work alongside her husband Art Spiegelman. Mouly is very much her own woman and not one to hide in the shadow of her famous mate; nor is her husband the type to keep his wife away from the limelight; still, it is all too easy for journalists, a habitually lazy lot, to do quick profiles of Spiegelman’s life, touch on his editorship of Raw, and ignore Mouly’s contribution. (God knows, I myself have been guilty of doing that).

Meanwhile, Dick Hyacinth lays the snark down on Paul Fridays at Blogorama

However, my worship, I do have some grave concerns about the venue you have chosen for this interrogative feature. I am but a lowly wretch in your magisterial presence, and I do not mean to question your decisions. But I cannot help but notice your majesty bristled at the thought that Vertigo-brand periodicals are published on paper fit for protecting a bird’s cage from its occupant’s leavings. This is a most unseemly way of asking a question, most unfit for the solemn occasion of a question and answer session with the overlord of DC Comics! If I had been present, my grace, I surely would have beaten the impudent whelp within an inch of his life for daring to suggest that any DC-published title should rest anywhere other than a snug mylar bag, nestled safely in an acid-free box, in the most secure part of one’s parents’ basement.

Excellent Wormtongue imitation, Dick.

§ Kristy Valenti has the second part of her Gender and Reading Habits examination up, this time the girls are scrutinized, although more is known of their reading habits in general than comics reading habits specifically:

Additionally, women read more, maintained USA Today while discussing a 2007 poll: “the median figure — with half reading more, half fewer — was nine books for women and five for men [per year]. The figures also indicated that those with college degrees read the most, and people aged 50 and up read more than those who are younger. […] More women than men read every major category of books except for history and biography. Industry experts said that confirms their observation that men tend to prefer non-fiction.” (It doesn’t look like graphic novels were included as a category in that poll.)[3]
Apparently, girls don’t stop reading at a certain age in the same way that boys are said to do: empirically, many of the girls I spoke to at a 2005 manga-and-anime con said they loved to read already, and were supplementing their regular reading with manga[4]. So if women buy more stuff and read more,[5] why aren’t they buying more comics than men?

§ Jennifer de Guzman has her second column up for PW Comics Week and goes shopping at a variety of venues:

I left without buying All-Star Superman and decided to see if I could get a look inside of it at Border’s. No such luck. In the prominent graphic novel section at the local Borders were several shelves dedicated to comics, most of them manga. Scattered around on the floor were several young adolescent boys reading volumes drawn from the ample stock. (Plenty of Naruto here!) It was a bit difficult getting to the nonmanga shelves, since I had to squeeze around these boys, who seemed oblivious to their surroundings. The graphic novels were organized by title rather than author. The superhero comics were lined up neatly, but the “everything else” shelves were a jumble, the many different sizes of the graphic novels making the shelf difficult to scan. I found none of the books I was looking for, but the computer where customers can search for titles informed me that I could special order them.

§ As the “year of the Symposium” continues, PW blogger Barbara Vey reports that graphic novels were even discussed at a soap opera conference:

Next up was Graphic Novels. This was a wonderful insight into the fascinating world of graphic novels, Manga, anime and comic books. GB Tran is an artist who is developing his own graphic novel by writing the story and drawing the illustrations. Alisa Kwitney is an author, Editor, DC comics and is writing a Young Adult story that will be illustrated. [Tricia Narwani] is an associate publisher with Del Rey Books/Random House and she picks what’s to be written. She said Del Rey went from publishing 14 books a year to over 100 a year. A fast growing trend that could mean a whole different market for authors.

That last post about Ric Flair illustrated something we’ve been noticing for a long time: how the disappearance of the “fan page” is resulting in increasing constriction of some kinds of information easily available on the internet.

Google Ric Flair, or Evil Dead, or anything nerdy really…Morty Gunty.

The first result will be Wikipedia or IMDb followed by a bunch of wanna-be IMDb sites that present meaningless, warmed over information. Official, corporate sites with a plethora of informatin but not necessarily knowledge follow.

Gone are all the lovingly manitained “fan pages” “fan sites” “web rings” and so on that we used to happily crib from.

Take Flair as an example. The greatest wrestler of all time, we found a handful of non-professional sites devoted to Flair, but most of the link pages are nothing but a Sargasso Sea of Geocities-era cobwebs.

In theory, the corporate web era should offer more and better information, but is one Wikipedia page a substitute for a living community of fans, all dedicated to making THEIR site the best? Look at the “Ric Flair” Google image search result. Mostly recent pictures from his run in the WWE, official links, some mug shots, some fan shots…disappointing! Where are all those great photos of him in his PRIME, stylin’ and profilin? We did find one very extensive Ric Flair site, but right clicking was disabled to the point where we couldn’t even copy the site name. Understandable in the era of IP-theft, but still saddening. The Wrestling Museum was once, long ago, our favorite site for downloads, and now look what you get.

Or here’s another topic that much interested us in the olden days of the Internet Wild West: The Evil Dead Trilogy and Bruce Campbell!

Technorati Tags: 90s Nostalgia, puppy

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Hey it’s Paul Fridays! as DC head honcho Paul Levitz begins blogging at Blogorama.

Another interesting phenomenon is the difference in concentration between three types of graphic novels; manga, the strongest category in bookstores, seems increasingly dominated by a handful of properties; literary graphic novels (about 5% of bookstore sales and less in comic shops), by a couple of authors’ backlists with no major new hits in ‘07; and genre graphic novels (the strongest in comic shops) seem to spread the readers around to the most titles. This is an evolving situation, and as the number of literary titles being published expands, it’ll be particularly interesting to see how the pattern shifts. And the definitions of these categories are all highly debatable.

Debatable they are, as John Jakala picks up the gauntlet:

So if “genre graphic novels” “spread the readers around to the most titles,” I guess we can expect to see significantly more than 140 properties represented on the Bookscan list, right? Well, that would be tough considering that DC only placed 58 books on the top 750 and Marvel only 37. (”Everything else” accounts for another 72 books, but many of those appear to fall into Levitz’s third category of “literary comics.”) Even if we count each book from Marvel and DC as its own property, that’s only 95 spots.

MySpace’s comic book page has just been revamped, with a new look and new mottos, such as the one at left, and a new commitment to daily updates and previews. Most of MySpace’s comics initiatives are spearheaded by Sam Humphries, a longtime comics insider who has been doing much behind the scenes. MySpace is an increasingly important promotional tool for many comics companies, from Dark Horse’s DARK HORSE PRESENTS comics to Boom’s controversial previews. The blog post announcing the upgrade could serve as a comics stump speech:

Anyone who says comic books are not cool, vital, and popular forms of entertainment today only has to type myspace.com/comicbooks into their browser to see that it simply isn’t true. Whether you love comics, manga, graphic novels, or all of the above: YOU prove the haters and the doubters wrong, every day, just by being who you are.

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UPDATE: You can read the first 12 pages of SECRET INVASION at EW’s website. PLUS, Nisha Gopalaninterviews Brian Bendis:

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: How much input did you have in this event, and what kind of directives did Marvel give you? BRIAN MICHAEL BENDIS: I was writing both Avengers books [the New Avengers] and [Mighty Avengers], so I was pretty much there for everything…. I’m also part of that room [in a Marvel retreat that takes place in New York City each year] that decides those things. Me and Jeph Loeb [DC’s Batman: Hush] and Ed Brubaker [Captain America] and Mark Millar [Civil War] are there. We scream and yell at each other — it’s hilarious. You’d literally think that real political agendas that affect the world were being [debated]. In fact, me and Loeb were having at it just at the last retreat.

As we mentioned yesterday, purported disgruntled Marvel staffer Marvel_b0y is blogging again and he has learned nothing from all the misery he has caused.

To all of you haters out there that keep calling me a hater, let me spell this out for you. I do not hate Marvel comics, I do not hate Marvel. I do not want to bring the entire company down. I am not doing this because I am an attention whore. I just don’t like some of the things that they have done and I am trying to use this as a forum to get Marvel to rethink some of these editorial decisions, starting at the top. I actually DO like some books!

He then goes on to plug some books. This, coupled with the fact that he’s posting during the day, when supposedly computer activity and whatnot could be monitored, indicates to us that this Marvel–b0y is indeed a Skrull plant. Is this the same MB as the first bitter, disenchanted blogger? Forensics seem to say yes.

But now a new copy-cat career killer is on the prowl. Another Marvel “insider” is leaking even juicier spoilers to a blog that we won’t link to. Is the blogger in question being played? Is this disinfo being leaked? Do you really care? From our honest viewpoint, SECRET INVASION looks like a fairly entertaining Marvel mini, and if it’s a good story, all the spoilers in the world won’t ruin it entirely. If you want to get even more into the Skrullduggery, marvel has made the entire Secret Invasion Prologue available via its digital comics site. (You’ll need to register to read the whole thing, True Believer!)

Even more importantly, a Marvel_b0y look-a-like has struck BLOG! the Fantagraphics blog! Is this the first in a series of indie/Marvel crossover>

Find Marvel_b0y if you can, which you can’t. I’m squatting where there’s an audience besides the Skrulls and their wannabe minions. Props to DB for slipping his way into this blog (thanks for the easy pickings, Blogger). The tight tshirt crowd at Fantagraphics won’t mind the traffic and besides that Gilbert Hernandez knows how to draw a real superheroine.

Conclusion: NO ONE IS SAFE.

(Above graphic created by Dorian and you must hit that link to get ALL the good shit. Thanks, amigo!)

Over the weekend the Marvel-b0Y Live Journal was taken down, meaning you can’t read the very mild spoilers he posted about Secret Invasion which we read and have already forgotten — spoiler: a character will die! Was it for real? The industry was abuzz with speculation this weekend, and even some people at Marvel weren’t sure what was going on. While Occam’s Razor suggests that it really was just a dumb intern, the idea of Marvel planting a blog by a supposed insider while their big event was about trusted sources turning out to have been alien plants all along is so cool, you almost wish they had done it. One of our own correspondents point out a past blog posting by Tem Brevoort again

In the meantime, watch the skies for some of the bizarre and probably ill-considered new concepts we’ll be throwing out in the weeks and months to come. They may be stupid, or childish, or idiotic–but they won’t be boring!

PS: I’m staying out of the other blogosphere brou-ha-ha. It’s pretty obvious that the people stirring the pot just want to see their names in bold, and I’m not much inclined to go along with the plan.

The Wisdom of Steven Grant continued: This week he reveals the secret truth no one wants you to know about!

The American comics industry has lived for a long time on its own relatively isolated little island, where things have developed under fairly unique circumstances. But the medium’s no longer an island; only the business is. And now only if we choose to be. Because comics are mainstream now, as mainstream as anything. They’re acceptable. They’re accepted.

Repeat that until it sinks in. They’re accepted. Comics are accepted. We’re accepted. We’re not lionized, for the most part, but why should we be? But we’re not freaks anymore, or outsiders. The island is no longer a necessity. Great as it’s been living on coconuts all these years, there’s steak out there to be had. There’s a whole world a hell of a lot bigger and more diverse and more interesting than our island.

And I suspect that’s what a lot of people in American comics are secretly worried about.

This idea was tangentially discussed at the “State of the Industry” panel we took part in the other night, ably reported on by Laura Hudson:

When the panel discussed ways to expand the audience for comics and graphic novels, Phegley said that the medium would never truly go mainstream until it was embraced by middle America, and suggested that it would be beneficial if a graphic novel were promoted by Oprah’s book club, for example. MacDonald agreed that “passing the Oprah test” was something she often came across in her work at Publishers Weekly, and an important factor for mainstream acceptance.

Actually what interested us the most about this panel is that when asked to mention comics they liked, Bully said Dark Horse’s Little Lulu reprints and Kiel Phegley mentioned Dark Horse’s Casper collection, books the very little Beat was reading all those years ago.

WE’re not sure we can articulate the connection right now, except that the idea of acceptance for comics is scary because Oprah might not like YOUR comic, and then where would we all be?

Thanks to every who voted in our little poll yesterday. The results were pretty much what we expected, although everyone who wants gossip, please be prepared to buy us lunch because if we did that, we’d never ever get invited anywhere cool ever again. Very few of you wanted guests or columnists, which is interesting. The Beat, Comics Reporter and Journalista are very rare among successful blogs these days in that they are still solo nearly solo outings. Almost all the big time blogs — Boing Boing, Gizmodo, Huffington Post — are group efforts. Blog@Newsarama is the top comics group blog, with the best line-up of bloggers, but is somewhat hampered by the fact that it can’t compete with the front page of the “mothership.”

What that does show is that the “cult of personality” blog still cuts through the fog of RSS war. The reality, as we alluded to yesterday, is that no one person can do it alone any more, unless — apparently– you live in the desert like Tom and Dirk. We’re not willing to go that extra mile, sadly. We are willing to get an intern to help us out one of these days, however.

EDIT: Both the Beat and Comics Reporter do have guest posts and columnists, and of course we do have Mark Coale lending a much needed helping hand here and there (and esp. on Thursdays.)

Do you miss Jennifer de Guzman’s always well-observed and trenchant column at now-definct Comics World News? SO DO WE! Luckily we were able to do something about it, and de Guzman’s NEW column “Life in Comics” will run the first monday of every Month in PW Comics Week henceforth. In her first column she discusses where the greatest hopes for comics lie:

Considering the present political climate, it probably is no surprise that the word hope has been on my mind a lot lately. Hope is a tricky concept because while it seems to indicate a positive outlook, it carries the underlying assumption that all is not presently as good as it could be. I’ve come to realize that this is perhaps what is behind some of the reactions to my last column at the now-closed site Comic World News, in which I asserted that more rigorous comics criticism will attract more literary-minded creators to the medium, thus setting the stage for a richer comics canon. In response, I was called to task for “complaining,” being “pessimistic” and having a “bleak” view of the state of comics.

De Guzman’s is one of several new columns that will be debuting this month in PWCW. You have signed up already, right?

Dick Hyacinth is still mulling over his meta list compiling the comics best of lists from numerous sources but his latest — and last — post on the subject is, to us anyway, the most fascinating.

In it, he assays to break down the differences between comics-focused lists and general-interest lists. In other words, while comics insiders– whom we’ll call “the Monks” just to be naughty — have their own accepted, er. canons and schools, based on a certain “comics 101″ esthetic, or as Dick puts it, they are “immersed in the language and traditions of comics.” Meanwhile, the “Moles” at places like, The Onion, Time Magazine, mainstream newspapers and so on, have a more “comics enthusiast” slant, and read comics because they like them, and not because of any intensive study or devotion to a particular school. Are there differences? A few.

Technorati Tags: Comics Criticism

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We ADORE Graeme but this is a bit puzzling. Apparently at WonderCon, Bill Willingham revealed some spoiler stuff on a panel but asked it not be quoted, and Graeme McMillan, who was covering the Panel for Newsarama, obliged. J.K. parkin picks up the story at Blog@Newsarama:

Well, ironically, Graeme, who our regular readers know has on occasion pissed off creators with his posts both here and on Fanboy Rampage, complied with Willingham’s wishes. Yes, Graeme McMillan did as he was told. I was kind of amused by that, too.

Some of the folks who read the story on Newsarama weren’t pleased with Graeme for keeping the secret, and they let him know. Here’s one of the comments:

What kind of shoddy reporting is this. Hey.. im going to talk about a panel, but not give you the interesting tidbits.

So much for newsarama bring us the news for those people that couldnt be here.

Yeah, I’m sure I will find the information out. And I will do it on another website.

Ouch.

Well we’ve run out of room and time yet again today, so we’ll leave you with the link to the most excellent new art blog of Roarin’ Rick Veitch which we’re told has enough material to run for YEARS. Above, the one and only Miracleman.

Technorati Tags: puppy, Rick Veitch

Jennifer de Guzman looks at the ongoing literary debate and calls for higher criticism.

We don’t see more literary quality in comics being published today because too few critics treat comics as serious literature and art, critically reading and judging them without reference to non-literary works who happen to share the same format. I’m disappointed when I see “cultural critics” like Jeff Jensen, who recently wrote an essay in Entertainment Weekly about his love of comics, elevating the very genre that keeps comics from being taken seriously: superhero comics. (I know, I know, we don’t look to EW for high culture, but, really, was that the best they could give comics?) True comics advocates are not glorified fanboys. If the image of comics in society is that of source material for the latest summer blockbuster, why would anyone who wants to produce something of literary and artistic merit turn to comics as their medium? We’re lucky to get the few creators we have who have looked for and recognize literary merit in comics and endeavor to emulate it. If we’re going to get more of them, we need comics critics who treat the medium seriously, who, instead of glorifying the comics of their childhood and adolescence, know how to read comics and write about from as real literary critics.

Actually, I think this is beginning to be remedied a bit, with regular, consistent and higher-level online comics criticism from the Savage Critic Gang, the ongoing explorations at Comics Comics, Tom’s regular reviews, and so on. Blog Flume has posted some very good in-depth looks at craft, and there are other voices beginning to emerge—I’ll refrain from making a list because I’m sure to leave someone out. As more and more comics come out, more and more people want reliable, informed judgments on these huge piles of comics. It seems the next step is for more trusted authorities to collate these views — or what we used to call editorial supervision.

On a related note, Mark Andrews analyses Dick Hyacinth’s Top 10 over at the CBR blog, and wonders why EXIT WOUNDS topped so many lists:

Well, it’s a great book, don’t get me wrong. But it’s not the one I would have guessed would be received as THE GREATEST WORK OF THE YEAR by the critical hive-mind. It’s a different kind of good than the labyrinthian narrative wizardry of Fun Home, or the jaw dropping art of Black Hole. A quiet, distanced story like this one about the small battles played out against the sweeping tide of history feels like a completely different kettle o’ chowdah.

Tell you the truth, I’m kinda stumped why this book is so well received. Ask me again in ten years, when I’ve got some historical background. But, heck, it’s always nice to see really good books being celebrated.

My own guess would be that it’s because the book so clearly embodies the kind of literary qualities that so many seem to be calling for. Everyone more or less reached that conclusion on their own, as opposed to comparing it to some canonical chart, which isn’t a bad thing.

At any rate, this yearning for good criticism that de Guzman exemplifies seems to be one of the major streams bubbling around the water cooler-sphere these days. And many web sites seem to be joining the fray to become new collators of thought. No one has quite broken from the pack yet.

Technorati Tags: Comics Criticism

Dick Hyacinth has posted the top ten books in his admirable campaign to tote up many varied top ten comics lists from all over. It will surprise no one that EXIT WOUNDS is #1, but you can see the rest of the list in the link.

BTW, speaking of 2007, we’ve been TRYING and TRYING to write up

a) our own Best Comics of 07 list
b) our big stories of 07 list
c) our big stories of 08 list

but make no progress day after day although it’s all written up in our head. Is it still worth putting out there?

NYC blogging circles have been abuzz for months with all the upheavals and woes at Gawker, but honestly, this lame ass post called Jonatham Lethem’s Comic-Book Woes is more pointless than poking a dead woodchuck with a sharp stick:

Jonathan “novelist-hot” Lethem’s Omega the Unknown is a project that you might not know about unless you’re a geeky comics reader. Then again, even if you are a comics reader, sales figures indicate that you might not know about it

If you’re going to write about a scandal, make sure there’s an actual scandal, kids.

PS: Mick Stevens blog about cartooning at the New Yorker is quite funny!

Frequent comics critic Noah Berlatsky has launched a site called The Gay Utopia a symposium of writing and comics about a theoretical bias and inhibition-free world:

The term “the gay utopia” is at least slightly ironic; I’m too much of a pessimist to believe that sexual freedom will actually bring about the millennium. At the same time, an interest in, or use of, the gay utopia unites much of the art and thought that has meant the most to me over the past few years. So, partially out of my own ambivalence, I wanted to put together a forum in which folks with various backgrounds, perspectives, and interests could respond to the gay utopia with enthusiasm, skepticism, both, or neither.

Comics contributors include Ariel Shrag and Johnny Ryan.

§ THOUGHT BALLOONISTS is a new blog of comics criticism by by Charles Hatfield and Craig Fischer.
In their inaugural post they analyze just what makes Shaun Tan’s THE ARRIVAL so great.

[Hatfield] One reason it’s more complex is because it sends mixed messages, and works to reconcile them. On the one hand, the book approaches themes of alienation, using potent graphic devices (and wordlessness) to evoke the confusion and loneliness of an immigrant in an overwhelming and cold environment. The Arrival’s abstracted urban world tends toward industrialization, massification, and anonymity, the very picture of a soulless metropolis. Yet, on the other hand, The Arrival’s world does not purely consist of these things, and that’s where the story digs deeper.

[Fischer] I don’t agree with Brunetti that stylistic devices have any sort of inherent power to bring characters to “life” or to “deaden” a page, and The Arrival reminds us that artists should be as cinematic or uncinematic as they want in their search for devices that create emotions in a reader. I trust Tan–who can draw better than just about anyone else in comics, and whose storytelling has taken a quantum leap in quality from his early picture books to The Arrival–more than I trust prescriptive rules for what makes good and bad comics. I hope Tan decides to do another graphic novel as his next project; I hope he keeps stretching our definitions of what comics can do.

§Comics Comics is rapidly becoming the go-to spot for meta discussion of what works and what doesn’t in comics, especially when Frank Santoro posts.

Comics have a similar trajectory. All the talk that comics artists today can draw BETTER than their forebears is meaningless. The point is that this common language I’m describing IS NO LONGER IN USAGE. It’s all but dead because the people who were formed by it, who passed it on, are gone. Toth was an innovator; he was more forward-thinking than Caniff, yet he was still a “Caniffer.” Darwyn Cooke can attempt to evoke Toth in some of his Batman stories, but he will never be Toth because he was not formed in the same 1950s cauldron. So subtly, step by step, each generation puts its own spin on the dominant style. Any attempt to resurrect these “house styles” is seen as retro and somewhat conservative. The bland illustration style that ruled ’50s and early ’60s comics was part Caniff, part advertising, part hackwork. The practitioners of this style, though, knew how to construct a page that read clearly, much like directors of the ’50s films knew how to stage action.

§ Finally, John Jakala is raising a super-child who will conquer the world.

Jeff Lester and Ian Brill rap about what it takes to read comics in the “No Fun” era:

IB: Let me ask you, do you feel the effect of this climate of sensationalism affecting what you still read? My purchasing habits are similar to yours and I’m in constant fear that the books I dig are headed for the chopping block because no one gives a damn about a self-contained book that his its own stories to tell. Real stories, not just a series of “explosive” events tethered together ever so slightly amongst various books. That’s another thing I worry about. The skill to write a real thorough story is losing its value when the interconnectedness of a shared universe can be used as a crutch.

JL: What worries me is almost the opposite: as sad as I’d be to see a book like Blue Beetle get the chopping block, I think it’d be worse if someone at DC thought the best way to “help” the book is inextricably tie its storyline to Countdown. An example might be something like Punisher: War Journal, which had a pretty great first issue, and then got incredibly blah for me: I can’t tell if that’s because I really don’t like the current team’s take on the book, or if the book never got a chance to develop a take that wasn’t tied to whatever big event was happening in the Marvel Universe. And now that (if I remember correctly) sales are going down, and the tie-ins to Civil War and the Death of Cap are over, how hard is going to be for the team to avoid tying the book into Secret Invasion or whatever big event Marvel’s got coming down the pike?

The Spurge–or at least his website–is up and at ‘em again! His holiday interview series continues today with Eric Reynolds, publicity maven and so much more at Fantagraphics. (And Tom is right; Eric is just about the most universally liked guy in indie comics.)

I think there’s tons of stuff I could do better. I know there is. I’m 36, I’m not quite willing to go to the extremes I would have 10 years ago. I think about what I and we can do better all the time. Sometimes it’s hard to see the forest for the trees. Time and money are the biggest concerns, if we were rich we could do all sorts of awesome things, but because we’re not, we all here spend a lot of time covering a lot of bases that in a bigger company would be entire departments of people. Jacob [Covey] and Adam [Grano] would have a team of assistants and not have to stop everything several times a day to create a simple PDF for me to send to a magazine on deadline. Jason [Miles] would have a fleet of sales reps to pound the pavement. Gary would have an assistant — tell me Gary doesn’t need an assistant! But anyway, there’s always room for growth. It does get hard to tell sometimes, but I know I’m way better at my job now than I was in my first year.

Next up, Chris Pitzer of AdHouse

PITZER: I forget who came up with “whimsy” to describe AdHouse. It was probably Joel Priddy. He’s good at that type of stuff. So, while we publish what some consider one of the most depressing comics created — Skyscrapers — I think there are still elements of whimsy to be found within its pages. When people ask me to describe why I publish certain books, I usually fall back to what Jeff Mason said to me once: “Publish what you love.” So, first I have to love the book, since it will take time, money, stress, etc. to make it all happen. That said, I like bringing new voices to the people when possible. Other buttons of mine that can be pressed: smart, funny, designy, original. The sad part is that I’m interested in many more books than I can publish. At some points, I’ve had to pass on certain things that I’ll see published elsewhere, which is one of those sad/happy moments. It’s probably in their best interest, though.