It's a brand new year, and here at TCJ (Internet division) we have a brand new attitude. Dan and I are well-rested and have spent our web-free days meditating on how to provide better criticism and coverage of the art of comics. I think it's fair to say that 2014 will likely be the best year here yet. So prepare yourself.
To start things off, we have Joe "Jog" McCulloch, who has a recap of his own personal experiences with the last two weeks of comics. (This has been a trying fortnight for Joe, who has been e-mailing us regularly to see if he might be allowed to post during the holiday hiatus. I'm feeling a little guilty now, seeing what he Joe resorted to reading during his imposed vacation.)
Elsewhere:
—Comics websites and writers of all kinds have been posting end-of-the-year ruminations and summations of all kinds, including Robot 6's list of favorite 2013 comics, The Beat's annual comics-creator-survey, Tim Callahan's best-of-2013 list, Nick Gazin's top ten list, Abhay Khosla's best/worst-of-entertainment list, Jeff Smith's favorite comics, and Rob Clough's typically exhaustive list.
—News. Marvel has decided to stop selling individual issues of their comics in traditional bookstores. Columbia University's library has received the Kitchen Sink archives.
—Funnies. Kate Beaton went home for the holidays and posted a slew of comics about her visit. Joe Ollmann on the job. Sean T. Collins has started a new Tumblr called Comics Democracy reposting only the most popular webcomics, without commentary. He explains his reasons here.
—Interviews & Profiles. Paul Gravett on Leo Baxendale. Chris Mautner talks to Anna Bongiovanni. Emine Saner talked to G. Willow Wilson about the new Muslim Ms. Marvel. Chris Sims talks to Michel Fiffe. Tom Spurgeon interviewed many people, too many to link to, but you can figure out how to find them. The latest talk was with Ed Piskor.
—Reviews & Commentary. J. Hoberman reviews Peter Maresca's Society is Nix. Bob Heer reviews the Chris Duffy-edited Fairy Tale Comics. Becky Cloonan wrote an essay on self-publishing.
