Today at TCJ, a week of absence begins: the absence of Tim Hodler, that is! He's off on vacation somewhere with his family, worshipping Satan or whatever, I wasn't actually paying attention. It's you and me all week. Traditionally, Tim going out of town and leaving Dan the reins all week meant chaos reigned--amongst other examples, Dan on his own resulted in "sell your boots", which, if you're old enough to remember what that means...well, you should probably get a life. So should I! I doubt the same thing will happen this week, but I'll give it a shot.
Our opener piece today is a six thousand word doozy: and it actually features Tim, so consider it your methadone. You may remember that a recent announcement regarding Amazon's latest move into original comics content was met with derision by Fantagraphics associate publisher Eric Reynolds via Twitter--well, Tim got ahold of Eric and unpacked that derision. There's a lot to chew on:
But what that’s hiding in your view is an attempt to take over the market and become a monopoly. Am I right about that’s what you’re saying basically?
I guess so, basically! For the last twenty years people have been complaining about Diamond having a monopoly on the direct market, and what we’re looking at here is Amazon having a monopoly on the entire retail economy of our country [laughter], if not globally. So it’s like, you know, let’s have some perspective about that, right?
At least know what you’re doing.
Yeah, at least just know what you’re dealing with. I think I am approaching it from a moral point of view, but I’m not even necessarily advocating smash the state or whatever, I’m just saying let’s just be up front about this and acknowledge that I can’t just compliment comiXology for publishing a couple of comic books when I know that there are these broader ramifications. And I feel like I have a semi-unique vantage point on it, by being a publisher that has worked with Amazon literally from day one, in the city of Seattle.
Today's review comes to you from Tegan O'Neil, who is here with a look at David B's latest, Hasib & the Queen of Serpents, from nbm. As Tegan puts it, it's another exercise in perfection:
You could blow up a page of Hasib and the Queen of Serpents – any page, it really doesn’t matter – on an overhead projector and conduct a line-by-line audit if you so desired. What does this line do? Is everything in order? Ah, I see, it is precisely this width for exactly this length, everything appears to be in order. What a wonderful index finger!
Over at Inkstuds, there's a fine episode up featuring Sloane Leong, who you may know from right here, but are as likely, if not more so, to know her from her excellent comics.
This brief piece about Elfquest shout-outs by Claire Napier is a solid piece of theorizing, as well as a startling reminder that there was more than one issue of Norm Breyfogle's Prime.
There's only one way to celebrate Bob McLeod's birthday, which is to look at pictures of old super-hero comics he inked over at Diversions of the Groovy Kind.
