Today's news
(Potpourri) Let's take one last look at what's happening in the world of comics and cartooning before signing off for the weekend:

• Following up on a story from yesterday: CNN has the Associated Press story on the death of longtime Mad Magazine cartoonist and illustrator George Woodbridge, who succumbed to emphysema Tuesday at the age of 73. I should note that I totally missed the New York Times obituary that Mark Evanier posted to his site shortly after I made my daily visit yesterday, or I'd have been able to authoritatively deal with this 24 hours ago rather than putting the good writer in a position where he had to explain that he didn't consider my first notice to be some kind of implied insult (which is wasn't). Sorry for all the confusion.

• Speak of the devil -- also not an implied insult -- Mark Evanier is reporting that legendary DC Comics editor Julius Schwartz is once again in the hospital. "He was in for pneumonia, then he went home, then he fell in his home and...well, let's just say he's not in great shape but he's still with us." Evanier has set up an email address for those wishing to send Schwartz their best wishes. Again, quoting Evanier, "every few days between now and the Super Bowl, I'm going to print all the messages you send to that address and FedEx them to wherever Julie is recuperating. I'll delete any messages that are rude or uncommonly long (say, if someone tries to upload articles they've written) but otherwise, I'll just print it out and ship it to Schwartz."

• The winners of the Prix d'Angoulême have been announced. The prize for Best Album went to Manu Larcenet for Le Combat Ordinaire; Neil Gaiman won the Best Writer award for the French-language edition of Sandman: The Season of Dreams; and Best Art went to Juan Diaz Canales and Juanjo Guarnido for Blacksad Volume II. (Link via Fumetti.org's Gianfranco Goria.)

• The Pulse's Heidi MacDonald notes that some of the best hotels in San Diego are already fully booked for the weekend of the SD Comic-Con, just one week after the convention's hotel reservation site went online.

• Here's good news: the artcomics magazine turned webzine Indy Magazine has been relaunched as a quarterly e-publication, this time under the editorial guidance of Egon's Bill Kartalopoulos. I'd post a list of highlights, but frankly I can't find anything in the new issue to which I don't want to link. Click here and take a look.

• Comixpedia is up and running again. Xaviar Xerxes offers a status report on the difficulties the site faced over the past week.

• Wayne State University newspaper The South End profiles minicomix' own Original Gangsta, Matt Feazell.

• Ellen Bauerle of the Lincoln Heights Literary Society interviews small-press publisher David Allen, the founder of Plan 9 Publishing.

• An upcoming issue of the comics magazine Hogan's Alley will feature an essay by Steve Greenberg about how political cartoonists have used the internet to get their messages out; they've graciously given editorial cartoonist and weblogger Daryl Cagle permission to post the full piece on his website. (Standard disclaimer: there are no permalinks. The item in question is currently the topmost item, dated "January 22, 2003.")

• "It doesn't hurt to have a nude woman on the cover, especially in this market." Thus speaks Adam Shaw, artist and co-writer of the new Image Comics series Bloodstream, in a GoMemphis.com story that doesn't necessarily do the "adult comics" movement a whole lot of good.

• Broken Frontier's Matt Maxwell (temporary link) does a funny, often caustic job of translating Marvel suitbots Joe Quesada and Dan Buckley's recent Newsarama interview from PRspeak to English.

• Writing for Ninth Art, Nich Maragos examines Alan Martin and Jamie Hewlett's wacky sci-fi pop fantasia Tank Girl.

• Critique the critic! Canadian comics news-site Sequential parses Chris Allen's recent comments about the publisher Drawn & Quartery in his column for Movie Poop Shoot.

• Alan David Doane parses the latest issue of Drawn & Quarterly's newsletter for interesting tidbits.

• Shawn Fumo salutes Massechusetts retailer Jim Crocker for taking manga to the people. Retailers: watch this man.

• In a nicely argued essay, Eve Tushnet compares Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen to Shakespeare. I don't mean that in the "as good as" sense, but in the "let's look at the similarities in strategy" sense, which makes for much more interesting reading.

• Yesterday I bagged on Marvel for their frequent "superheroines=booty call" mentality. As Jason Kimble notes, however, Marvel can't hold a candle to Top Cow...

• John Firehammer thinks that Marvel bigwig Avi Arad is entirely right to make sure that his company's comics line maintains a kid-friendly face. My only question: has Avi seen Kitty Pryde lately?

• Rick Bradford links to Ellen Forney's latest cartoon for the L.A. Weekly, entitled "How To Be a Successful Call Girl!" Alas, when I clicked the link, the cartoon in question was still the Matt Madden piece from last week, even though the page itself was formatted for Forney's cartoon. Perhaps between the time I linked to it and the time you read it, they'll have fixed the bug -- or perhaps I'm just having some sort of weird browser-cache issue...

Finally, Jarett Kobek writes in to comment on the news (noted Wednesday) that Wal-Mart is now selling graphic novels online:

"I dunno if anyone else has gotten around to sending you mail on that Wal-mart/Diamond distro deal you posted, but I did a little digging around and it seems the vast majority of books are discounted at 37% (just above the magic 40% wholesaler discount) meaning that Wal-Mart is either purposely or inadvertantly doing the same thing they've done with so many other markets: super targeted cuts which absolutely no one else can match.

"These discounts seem to be based on the material having an initial starting price of over $12; below that, like in the case of say Chobits, it's only 10%-20%. (Although the boxed set of Chobits is at 37%.)

"There isn't really that huge of an established online market for Graphic Novels (other than Amazon, whose cuts stop at 30%) so I don't think this is going to have any profoundly negative effects on any established sellers, but the level of discounts Wal-Mart is so ridiculous (The Frank Book for $25? Jimmy Corrigan for $12? Ultimate Spider-Man for less than $10?) that one can easily see Wal-Mart turning into the defacto place to grab these suckers.

"Oh yeah, the highest discounts I could find were for Dave Sim's Cerebus, which actually went as high as 61% on a few volumes."

Welcome to the 21st century, kids. It's a whole new market.
Posted @ 5:00 AM by Dirk Deppey | permalink

Today's News
(Potpourri) Here's what's happening in the pen-and-ink world:

• Mark Evanier is reporting the death of longtime Mad Magazine illustrator George Woodbridge. No details were given, and I haven't been able to find anyone else to confirm the news or provide further information.

• Telecom company Sprint is rolling out a service that allows owners of select cellphones to download and display daily newspaper strips. Yahoo has a press release. I'm assuming this is the "new and improved" version of the service they launched in April of last year.

• Harvey Pekar's starting to get kinda sick of talking about the movie, and it hasn't really helped his career, as he explains in The Cleveland Free Times.

• I'm not sure if this is new or not, but Comic Reader's Chad Boudreau offers us this conversation with Phil Elliott, in which the artist reminisces on the glory days of the U.K. comics scene and compares them to the present-day model.

• J. Torres speaks with cartoonist and animator Scott Morse for Comic Book Resources.

• Over at Comic Book Bin, L.J. Douresseaux conducts a Q&A with Jennifer Daydreamer.

• Broken Frontier's Shawn Hoke (temporary link) interviews Jim Rugg, half of the team behind Slave Labor's sardonic new adventure comic Street Angel. (Bonus link: here's Alan David Doane with a review of the comic.) Incidentally, Broken Frontier is currently in the midst of an online fundraiser to upgrade their server. If you find yourself reading their stuff on a regular basis, consider throwing them a few bucks.

• In his now bi-weekly column for Movie Poop Shoot, Chris Allen offers the first of a two-part publisher's report card for 2003. Getting the grade this time out: Marvel, DC, Image, Top Shelf, Tokyopop, Drawn & Quarterly, Rebellion, Absence of Ink, Humanoids, Future, Alternative, Beckett and CrossGen.

• Guy Leshinski looks back on the work of Rodolphe Töpffer, and the comics heritage it spawned in Switzerland, for Toronto's Eye Weekly.

• Writing for Australia's Sydney Morning Herald, Soumya Bhattacharya sings the praises of Herge's famous creation, Tintin.

• Daryl Cagle offers good advice on how to thrive as a syndicated editorial cartoonist: "figure out what is going to happen two or three days in the future, and draw it now." (Standard disclaimer: there are no permalinks. The item in question is currently the topmost item, dated "January 21, 2003.")

• Sean Collins went on a writing binge yesterday. He responds to reactions to his recent essay on comics-related interviews (bonus link: here's Steven Wintle on the subject), predicts that the next Expo anthology will be "predictable and inessential," and weighs in on whether artcomics should follow the lead of others and repackage books in the "tankoubon" (manga) format.

• Steven Wintle explains what he likes about Archie comics, and why he thinks Harry Lucey was a better Archie artist than Dan DeCarlo.

• Rodrigo Baeza presents Wallace Wood's shit list.

• Dara Naraghi has the beginnings of a list of anthology titles currently considering blind submissions, and is soliciting advice on further entries. The only such possibilities I can think of from Fantagraphics at the moment are a series of fetish anthology comics from our sister imprint, Eros Comix (Blowjob, Head, and the like). This may not exactly be what Mr. Naraghi had in mind, but there you are.

• Manga reviews! Marc Mason describes his first encounter with manga -- Battle Royale, to be precise -- at The Comics Waiting Room. Meanwhile, Pam Korda reviews the second volume of Tokyopop's gay-cop drama Fake. In all honesty, I have to note that I read the first volume of this series and resolved not to pick up the second. While fomulaic, it's nonetheless a decent enough example of the genre, I suppose. My problem is that I didn't buy the blossoming romance between the two leads for a second -- like most bishounen manga I've read so far, it reads very much like a Japanese woman's idea of a gay male relationship, I'm afraid. Maybe Pam's right about the characterization in this volume, and I should give it another chance. We'll see.

• Mike Kozlowski notes that in the back of the third hardcover volume of Brian Bendis et. al.’s Ultimate Spider-Man, there's a reprinted exchange between Bendis and former Marvel generalissimo Bill Jemas that casts Jemas in a decidedly unflattering light. A self-depreciating sense of humor on Jemas' part, or signs of regime change?

• You think I'm nasty towards the Direct Market? You should see Tim O'Neil's weblog. (It's a new Blogspot page, so naturally the permalinks don't work. Hint: scroll down to the part with the headline, "Let The Weak Die.")

• Here's a good one: Canada's Thunder Bay Post reports on a successful pilot program by a local library to introduce graphic novels as a way to get kids to read. Here's the money quote:

  "Spokeswoman Angela Meady says a novel called Manguh is huge among Thunder Bay teens. Because the response has been so good officials are looking to expand it to at least one other branch in the city."

  Say, how come I haven't seen any reviews of this book yet?

• It occurs to me that with the subsumption of Kitty Pryde, the transformation of women in the Marvel universe is now pretty close to complete: the majority of superheroines at The House That Jack Built now look like they'd give you a pretty good lapdance if you slipped a fifty into their g-strings.

Finally, a big "fuck you" to Google News, a site I rely upon to find comics-related news, for occasionally taking old news and marking it as recent. Example: yesterday it re-posted an Andi Watson interview from several weeks ago, claiming that the interview was only hours old. Not bothering to check my archives, I linked to it for a second time in two weeks. Gaah!
Posted @ 5:00 AM by Dirk Deppey | permalink

Today's News
(Potpourri) Short and sweet, here's what's happening:

• Maryland's Small Press Expo has released the submission guidelines for its 2004 anthology, which as always will serve as a fundraiser for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. This year's theme is "war."

• According to a press release at Japan Corporate News Network, telecom company DoCoMo has announced the upcoming launch of a new service that will allow Japanese customers to download and read manga on their cellphones and PDAs. The company has scured the rights to six unidentified titles for the rollout. (Link via Anime News Network.)

• A version of the United Kingdom's Disability Discrimination Bill, currently under parliamentary consideration, will be printed in cartoon form as an aid to people with learning disabilities, according to The Scotsman.

• Hiring news: ICv2 is reporting that Marvel Comics has hired David Maisel to serve as chief operating officer for its film division. Writer and reporter Jonathan Vankin has signed on as an editor for DC Comics' Vertigo imprint. The Pulse has the press release.

• Apparently webcomics news-site Comixpedia really is fucked good and solid. If any network administrators -- or hobbyists with enough skill to fake it convincingly -- care to offer assistance, consider shooting an email to "xerexes at burntdogradio dot com."

• Chester, Illinois, the hometown of Popeye creator E.C. Segar, has held an annual Popeye Picnic since the 1970s, but interest in the festival has been dying down in recent years, and the townsfolk are fighting over what to do about it. Pennsylvania's Centre Daily Times has the story (originally run in The Chicago Tribune).

• Silver Bullet Comics' Craig Lemon hijacks "Who Has The Clue?" -- err, sorry, that's "The Panel" -- to gether comments from various comics professionals on the 300th issue of Dave Sim and Gerhard's landmark series Cerebus. There are testimonials from Roger Langridge, Warren Ellis, Gary Spencer Millidge, Chris Staros, and many more... including Gerhard himself.

• The New Yorker’s cartoon editor, Robert Mankoff, discusses in a multimedia Flash program how he picked the winner of the magazine's 2003 cartoon-caption contest. (Link via Egon.)

• North Dakota's Grand Forks Herald profiles its own cartoonist, Steve Edwards, whose new collection of panels about small-town life is enjoying steady sales in the local market.

• Daniel Robert Epstein interviews Brian Vaughan, the writer behind the Vertigo sci-fi series Y: The Last Man, for the porn site Suicide Girls. (Link via Bookslut's Jessa Crispin.)

• Had enough Q&As with Andi Watson yet? Silver Bullet Comics' Mike Jozic presents another one.

• Steven Grant is asking comic-book freelancers to nominate their choices for worst comics editors, in a variety of interesting categories. This should be a fun one to watch...

• Simply Comics' Babar weighs in with two posts, one wrapping up the ongoing tracking of Diamond's sales to comics retailers in 2003, the other commenting on Sean Collins' recent essay on the need for better interviews in the comics press.

• In a recent edition of his email newsletter, Mile High Comics owner Chuck Rozanski made an appeal to comics buyers to shop at their local comics shop rather than their local bookstore, citing the wide diversity available in the former. Rodrigo Baeza explains why he disagrees with this logic.

• Rick Bradford notes:

  "Did you know Diamond is now distributing to Wal-Mart? Yes, you can now buy something like The Complete Crumb Comics through Wal-Mart (their site at least). Most of the comics seem to be under "Home & Garden" (go figure). [  thanks to Jeff Nicholson, whose Colonia is also available there  ]"

  Nobody tell Chuck Rozanski.

• David Fiore responds to my question from yesterday.

• Dara Naraghi spots a Newsarama interview with novelist Brad Meltzer that I had skipped past, in which he describes how with DC Comics' collusion he managed to sneak in a 28-city comics-shop tour in to promote his Green Arrow miniseries, all paid for as part of a 28-city book tour in support of his latest prose novel from Warner Books. The things you have to do to sell funnybooks, man, I swear. (Naraghi also answers the musical question, "TWELVE PANELS PER PAGE?! Where the hell do you fit the artwork?")

• All I'm going to tell you about this John Jakala post is the title: "Fan Confused, Threatened by Superhero Comic Lacking Slutty Heroine."

• The fans talk online comics piracy on the Newsarama message board. (Link via Graeme McMillan.)

• One of my biggest temptations during my tenure at Fantagraphics has been (A) stealing one of the two copies of the "music issue" of the long-defunct funny-animal anthology Critters that sit in the TCJ library, (B) stealing someone's record player, and (C) digitizing the b-side of the 45-RPM single it contains, "March of the Sinister Ducks," which was recorded by a band composed of Alex Green, David J. and one Mr. Alan Moore (singing under the pseudonym "Translucia Baboon"). It's because of this that I'd like to thank Neil Gaiman for saving me from a life of sin by posting an MP3 of the song to his website. Incidentally, here are the lyrics.

• I'm sure The Continuity Pages' Julian Darius means well in attempting to come up with another, less compromised word for comics, but I have to say that "sequart" ranks down there with "story rockets" for Dumbest One Yet. Really, it sounds like a rude synonym for some kind of bodily emission, doesn't it? (Link courtesy of Bugpowder.)

Finally, two corrections concerning what I wrote yesterday regarding Todd Murry's commentary for Four Color Hell, in which the writer noted the seeming parallels in point-of-view between Brian Hibbs and John Byrne. First, Hibbs has posted to the comments section of the entry in question, noting that he was referring to publishers, not retailers. Second, I am reliably informed that the writer's last name is spelled "Murry," not "Murray" as it's spelled in the "Posted by" tag at the bottom. All apologies for the errors.
Posted @ 4:10 AM by Dirk Deppey | permalink

Today's news
(Potpourri) Another day, another collection of news and links. Here we go:

• Diamond has released its pamphlet and book top-100 lists for 2003, which is available at Newsarama. How you interpret the lists depends upon your tastes, of course. If you're a superhero fan, you can scroll lazily down the column and see your favorite titles. If you're not, the lists can seem depressing and mildly depressing, respectively; the comics-pamphlets list is a dizzying study in monomania, while there are a few intriguing breaks in genre among the book collections. The most promising entry is 30 Days of Night, a straightforward horror novel, which clocks in at #4 on the booklist; indeed, non-superhero titles dot the top 100 graphic novels in such a way as to make one wonder if the potential might just exist for genre diversity in books even if comics pamphlets themselves are basically a lost cause. As Matt Brady notes in his commentary, Tokyopop actually managed to place five books on the list. Still, it's the topmost list on the page, the publisher rankings, which tell the real story: between them, Marvel, DC and Image earn 70.37% of the dollars generated by initial sales through Diamond to the direct market. The next three publishers on the list -- Dark Horse, CrossGen and Dreamwave -- account for 11.26%, leaving everyone else fighting it out for the crumbs.

  By contrast, check out the fourth item (currently) on French-language comics news-site BD Paradisio's news page, which offers a breakdown of 2003 comics sales in France. Glénat, the top-producing publisher in the Fifth Republic, is responsible for just 8.11% of the material released last year; you have to scroll down to the twentieth largest comics publisher to hit a market share of under 1%, compared to the tenth publisher among Diamond's clientele. Oh, there's a diverse array of American comics publishers, make no mistake, but with so much real estate claimed by the top three superhero publishers, they're forced to seek their fortunes elsewhere if they ever wish to grow as companies. Given all of this, the "mildly depressing" news to be found in the Diamond graphic-novel list is actually something of a step up. (That last link courtesy of Fumetti.org's Gianfranco Goria.)

• For a snapshot of entirely different comics scene, take a look at Anime On DVD's recap of the past year in manga. (Link via Shawn Fumo.)

• Rich Johnston looks at Marvel and DC's new conservatism (top item) and CrossGen's allegedly increasing mendacity in attempting to cajol art out of creators without paying them (middle of page).

• Mark Evanier notes that cartoonist Dave Cockrum is slowly recovering, and has been taken off the respirator that was helping him breathe during a serious battle with pneumonia.

• How popular a webcomic is Penny Arcade? Put it this way: the folks at Comixpedia suspect that a link from the webcomic to a review of same on their site was responsible for overwhelming it, forcing an unexpected upgrade to a new server. As Penny Arcade co-creator Tycho currently notes on his homepage, "I don't know how to feel about the position we occupy in the context of Webcomics, I honestly try not to think about it. The one thing I do know, we could kill another webcomic creator in cold blood and get away with it."

• Egon points out that the Charles M. Schulz Museum is collecting the artist's pre-Peanuts comics work, including the early panel Li'l Folks, into a new archival volume, entitled Charles M. Schulz: Li'l Beginnings. The book is set to debut February 21st, and will be available both at the museum and its online store.

• Jesse Sunenblick details the difficulties faced by editorial cartoonists and illustrators for The Columbia Journalism Review.

• The Denver Post's Kyle MacMillan examines today's comics industry, and includes a few figures to put the competing markets of the 21st century in perspective. (Link via ArtsJournal.)

• Silver Bullet Comics' Tim O'Shea interviews Jennifer Daydreamer, whose second comic book for Top Shelf is set to be released soon.

• Also at Silver Bullet Comics: Darren Schroeder speaks with U.K self-publishing comics writer Sean Michael Wilson, who collaborated with Argentinean artist Jorge Heufemann on the forthcoming book Angel of the Woods.

• Writing for his weblog, Canadian op-ed pundit Colby Cosh (temporary link) takes an admiring look at Chester Brown's presentation of history in Louis Riel.

• In his column for Broken Frontier (also a temporary link), Graeme McMillan wonders if DC Comics' new "Focus" line isn't just Marvel's New Universe dressed up in different clothes -- actual clothes, mind you, not brightly-colored underwear -- then guesses from the size of the lettering that the line is destined for manga-volume format.

• Sean Collins highlights the lack of standards among the comics press by comparing how several recent interview fiascos would look if committed by the national news media.

• Four Color Hell's Todd Murray looks at that magical space where retailer-turned-columnist Brian Hibbs and cartoonist-turned-goofball John Byrne meet. I think there's an important distinction being missed here, actually: Hibbs is offering advice to retailers, whereas Byrne is chiding readers for what is largely a reader-driven phenomenon in the first place. In other words, Hibbs is merely telling his fellow professionals to exercise caution, while Byrne is telling the customer to order for his benefit, not their own.

• Mike Sterling offers "the comic book retailer's bill of rights."

• Eddie Mitchell finds himself torn between supporting his local comics retailer and supporting his local, graphic-novel minded, independent bookseller.

• For those of you looking for manga recommendations, Pam Korda's doing a yeoman's job of it right now. Click here and here for examples.

• Steven Berg explains in exact detail why Bill Jemas' never-used proposal for a Thor miniseries is so brain-bustingly stupid.

Finally, if someone could please explain to me just what the hell David Fiore is talking about, I'd be much obliged. Specifically:

"What we really need is for Grant Morrison to return to his Animal Man form (possibly with some help from Roy Thomas on letters pages/historiography and Stan Lee on bulletins... I know, I know -- this is starting to sound like the Public Enemy line-up: who gets to be media assassin?) The genre's greatest strength is its capacity to embed the 'Uncanny' (through recurrence) in a skewed 'continuity' that collapses an entire human life span into a zone of prime awareness... (we get to deal loss and memory -- unobscured by the tired narratives of aging and 'progressing toward wisdom' -- on a scale that no finite medium can approach) Every new monthly issue has the potential to add to the greatness of a series, and there's no reason ever to stop the cycle (because it never really gets started) -- it's a serial 'jam session'!"

Huh? How exactly does this statement describe superhero comics, but not, say, television series like Doctor Who or Northern Exposure, or Godzilla movies, or V.C. Andrews novels, or... you could go all day throwing examples out there. How is the ability to tell an endless series of stories limited by a group of restrictive tropes that can be maintained by an endless string of faceless hacks a "greatest strength" unique -- or even best performed -- by superhero comics? This sounds like pseudo-intellectual nonsense used to gussy up after-the-fact justifications of personal taste to me. Am I missing something here?

(A side note: game designer Bruce Baugh offers some advice to David Fiore: get used to change.)
Posted @ 4:40 AM by Dirk Deppey | permalink

Today's news
(Potpourri) Due to a variety of projects, I'm going to be pressed for time for the next few weeks, so apologies in advance for the coming lack of essays and extended commentary. To the other half of my reading audience: you're welcome. Here's the round-up of last weekend's news and links:

• In Algeria, editorial cartoonist Ali Dilem of the French-language newspaper Liberté was summoned by the police for questioning Saturday, along with Mohamed Benchicou, the executive editor for independent Algerian newspaper Le Matin, over cartoons and/or articles critical of that nation's president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika. The two men were released after questioning, according to an Associated Press report posted to CNN's website. As noted here previously, this is by no means the first time Dilem has found himself facing down government intimidation; back in May of last year Dilem was given a suspended six-month sentence and a fine of 20,000 dinars (just under $300) for "attacks on the army involving abuse, insult or defamation," which is to say criticising the Algerian army's commanders in print, under a law so widely believed to have been passed specifically to muzzle him that it's commonly referred to as "the Dilem amendment." The intimidation has continued ever since.

• Yesterday's episode of Johnny Hart's strip B.C. (not archived on the site as of this writing) was pulled from a number of newspapers yesterday, including The Washington Post and The Dallas Morning News. At issue is the punchline of the strip's aeronautical joke: "Two Wongs don't make a Wright." The Morning News' Mike Peters explains why his paper pulled the strip.

• The Young Adult Library Services Association has announced its 2004 list of best books for young adults. Among the 84 selected titles are four graphic novels: Craig Thompson's Blankets, Jason Little's Shutterbug Follies, Jeff Parker's The Interman and Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis. Comics also featured in several related lists released at the same time by the organization. Among their "quick picks for reluctant young adult readers" are Simpsons Comics Madness, Brian Michael Bendis et. al.'s Ultimate Spider-Man Vol. 2, Ron Marz et. al.'s The Path: Crisis of Faith, two books from the Bill Willingham'written series Fables, as well as the aforementioned Shutterbug Follies. Finally, the group announced several themed lists of "popular paperbacks", and comics fared well in the "If It Weren’t For Them: Heroes" category, with showings by Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Bagley's Ultimate Spider-Man: Double Trouble, Jules Feiffer's The Great Comic Book Heroes, Mike Kunkel's Herobear and the Kid: The Inheritance, Mark Millar and Brian Hitch's The Ultimates: Super-Human, James Robinson and Tony Harris' Starman: Sins of the Father and Stan Sakai's Usagi Yojimbo: Duel at Kitanoji. (First link via Newsarama.)

• Digital-rights management watchdog site DRM Watch presents its round-up of 2003. E-publishing is mentioned only briefly -- there were simply too many setbacks for such content-protection schemes in other media last year which needed reporting -- but the report does note that "The e-book market suffered from flat overall growth, but Adobe began to emerge as the prevailing platform in that niche, with MobiPocket appearing poised for momentum in the coming year as more reading-friendly mobile devices appear." Oddly, no mention was made of the Japanese initiative we've been tracking for over a year now. (Link via Slashdot.)

• Newsarama's Matt Brady offers his analysis for Direct Market sales through Diamond Distributors in December.

• Aardwolf Publishing is in the process of assembling a benefit book, The Uncanny Dave Cockrum Tribute, to help raise money for the ailing illustrator. Check it out.

• Kyle Buchanan chats with minicomics wunderkind Souther Salazar for Ostrich Ink. (Link via Rick Bradford.)

• Ninth Art's Alex Dueben interviews Kurt Wolfgang, creator of Where Hats Go and editor of the minicomix anthology Lo-Jinx.

• Writing for Oregon's Portland Tribune, Michaela Bancud profiles cartoonist Arnold Pander about his latest project: black velvet paintings.

• A recent online chat at The Washington Post (registration required) featured Denis Lebrun, the artist currently drawing the legacy comic strip Blondie.

• Lorrie Cohen of Arizona newspaper The Tucson Citizen sits down for a chat with Sandra Bell-Lundy, the creator of the daily comic strip Between Friends.

• Staying with my home state for a moment: The Arizona Republic's Michael Senft pays a visit to Phoenix shop Samurai Comics, where manga and anime has become big business for store-owners Mike and Moryha Banks.

• The Honolulu Star Bulletin's Burl Burlingame reviews Jack Jackson's graphic novel, Commanche Moon.

• Retailer Brian Hibbs is writing his "Tilting at Windmills" column again, this time for Newsarama. If you have an interest in following the Direct Market as a business, this is the best news you've heard in the last six months. It's already spawning commentary -- here's Jim Henley's take on the new column.

• Heading back to Ninth Art for a moment: Paul O'Brien takes a look at the last Tuesday's conviction of Japanese publisher Motonori Kishi on obscenity charges.

• Comic Book Resources' James Sime offers independent publishers advice on sending mailers and freebies to Direct Market retailers, and why they should consider doing so. Added bonus: a 75% reduction in those godawful "pimp" metaphors!

• Modern Tales (temporary link) impressario Joey Manley compares videogame culture of the past to webcomics culture of the present day, and states his belief that online cartoons have a similar upward arc ahead of them.

• You know, if you ignore the self-aggrandizing bullshit, Beau Smith's latest column for Silver Bullet Comics, which argues for greater diversity in the marketplace, makes some pretty good points.

• Last Friday I was so taken with weblogger John Jakala's take on Shonen Jump circulation figures that I completely forgot to also link to this piece, which compares the differing definitions of "genre diversity" at Marvel and DC.

• Allen Berrebbi speculates upon what Diamond Distributors could be doing to further the reach and selling power of the Direct Market. (Note: it's a new Blogspot site, so the permalinks don't work; look for the top entry under "Saturday, January 17.")

• Monitor Duty's Michael Hutchison offers the "They Read Comics" promo ad that Rich Johnston forgot to write.

• Four Color Hell's Michele Catalano imagines Popeye's life at 75 years of age. Ah Guh Guh Guh!

• Scaryduck reminisces about the first issue of British comics institution 2000 AD. (Link via Darren Shrubsole.)

• Jason Marcy wonders why comics webloggers haven't been updating their sites lately. I've been wondering about Alan David Doane (who just updated after almost a week's absence) and Sean Collins myself, and Matt Fraction's blog has been removed altogether. On the other hand, Marcy also mentions this weblog, which maintained its regular schedule all last week. This leads me to believe that Mr. Marcy might need to clear his browser cache.

• Writing for Continuity Pages, Bryan Miller reviews superhero comics that range from very bad to merely treading water, and in quite entertaining fashion -- the reviews, that is, not the comics.

• I've seen this before, but never reproduced publicly: an unnamed member of The Comics Waiting Room has posted Bill Jemas' proposal for a never-published miniseries, The People's Thor. Gosh, that Jemas sure was a wellspring of creativity, wasn't he? (Note: Blogspot, permalinks -- you know the drill. It's the top entry under "Friday, January 16.")

• From March 1942 in all its cheesy glory, here's Planet Comics #17. (Link via Boing Boing's Mark Frauenfelder.)

Finally, remember last Friday, when Brian Hibbs wrote:

""According to the 12/21 Bookscan #s (The market penetration of which can certainly be argued, but it is the only data point we have) the ACTUAL SALES of the newly manga-formatted Elfquest: Wolfrider V.1 into 'real' bookstores was 846 copies. [...]"

-- and my response:

"Let's begin with a question. My understanding is that DC Comics is re-releasing the Elfquest saga in at least two seperate formats: a regular trade-paperback series targetted to the Direct Market, and a line of smaller, manga-sized volumes for the bookstores. Which variety is this? [...]"

Remember that? Man, I kill me. Writing a weblog half-awake at 3 AM, I frequently pull little goof-ups like this. Don't get me wrong, I like writing this thing, but I often find myself hating having written it...
Posted @ 3:15 AM by Dirk Deppey | permalink

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