Patrick Rosenkranz takes stock of the lot of today's comics business, by looking and talking to people at four prominent retailers: Meltdown in Hollywood, Desert Island in Brooklyn, Quimby's in Chicago, and CounterMedia in Portland, Oregon.
Frank Santoro recruits Gabby Gamboa for this week's "scene report," this time covering the San Francisco bay area.
And Comics Journal co-founder Mike Catron passes along word that he's just uploaded a four-part video featuring Jerry Robinson from San Diego in 2009:
Elsewhere:
Jordan Shrively has started a new Tumblr featuring cartoonist's studio spaces. So far profilees include Jim Woodring and Tom Neely.
Speaking of Woodring, last week he posted a video tutorial explaining how he draws Frank:
Series editors Jessica Abel and Matt Madden have released the full list of "notable comics" from The Best American Comics 2011. (Woodring is on it.)
Dean Haspiel has donated a huge number of minicomics to the Library of Congress.
Brandon Graham is interviewed over at Bookslut.
Tucker Stone begins a series of tournaments between comics old and new. His first entry puts a Michael DeForge story up against Tim Vigil's Faust. And based on his final judgment, I think Tucker's refereeing skills need work. This should be fun to follow.
Just so you know, a big internet-style king of the mountain-sized molehill fight is brewing in the part of the comics world that we tend to ignore here when we can: J. Michael Straczynski vs. Marvel editor Steve Wacker (with help on the sidelines from Mark Waid and Dan Slott). They are arguing about Spider-Man sales figures, in case you don't care to look into it further.
And finally, Jeff Newelt at Heeb magazine gets Al Jaffee to perform Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions live on stage.
