Tucker Stone and Abhay Khosla are here with their Comics of the Weak column. Tucker got a fan letter with advice, and duly turned over a new leaf; Abhay's serving up the same stale negative attitude as always. Maybe they need to get together and talk about this.
And today is the final day of Joe Ollmann's week running A Cartoonist's Diary. There was a whole complicated schedule around this last entry, based on what Joe promised was going to be an incredibly exciting trip to New York City. As you'll see, things didn't go that way exactly. Anyway, this has been a great week for the feature, so thanks, Joe!
Elsewhere:
—Interviews. James Romberger talks to Michael DeForge. Rugg, Lex, & Piskor talk to Jeff Smith. SCPR talks to Gilbert Hernandez, and so does KNPR. In advance of TCAF, Forbidden Planet talks to reps from three companies, SelfMadeHero, Fantagraphics, and Blank Slate.
—Criticism. Ng Suat Tong reviews Fraction & Aja's Hawkeye. Charles-Adam Foster-Simard reviews the Art Spiegelman "Co-Mix" exhibition in Vancouver. Chris Randle reviews Gilbert Hernandez's Marble Season.
—News. Sports Illustrated writes about the influence of the manga Slam Dunk on the popularity of basketball in Japan. P. Craig Russell remembers Dan Adkins. (via) Tom Tomorrow delivered his Herblock acceptance speech:
—Misc. Miriam Katin went to Canada and drew comics. I learned that ulta-hard-boiled crime novelist Peter Rabe also wrote and drew an illustrated humor book about motherhood! Apparently the Man of Steel soundtrack is a little downbeat and a writer at The Guardian is complaining about it. I continue to be amused at the way the complaints of comics nerddom from a decade or more ago become the complaints of everybody else as the entire world of popular culture slowly devolves. I also continue to be amused at pictures of old celebrities clearly not enjoying comic books.
