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It's Tuesday, which means it's time for another edition of Joe McCulloch's This Week in Comics. In this installment, he starts things off with a mini-essay on a recent 2000 AD serial (in Judge Dredd Magazine, to be precise), Pat Mills and Clint Langley's American Reaper.

We also have a new webcomics column from Shaenon Garrity, an introduction to the works of longtime webcartoonist (and creator of Bruno, Little Dee, and Spacetrawler) Christopher Baldwin.

And Rob Clough reviews the comic book that's taken a lot of people by surprise this year, Ethan Rilly's Pope Hats #2.

Elsewhere on the internet:

1. Tom Spurgeon interviews Rich Tomasso, primarily about his (excellent) coloring for the new Carl Barks Library, but also covering his own recent cartooning.

2. In a terrific post, Paul Tumey and Frank Young gather a handful of examples of classic comic-book artists putting versions of themselves into their work, including Sheldon Mayer, Jack Cole, and Simon & Kirby.

3. Bob Layton announced on Facebook that the corporate atmosphere at Marvel has gotten so pervasive that he can no longer work for the company.

4. Evan Dorkin talks to the SF Weekly to promote his new Milk & Cheese collection.

5. Somehow I missed that Rick Altergott had started a new webcomic for Vice! As far as I am concerned, this is the big news of 2011 so far, folks.

6. Brad Mackay has an extensive obituary of Alvin Schwartz, the complicated man and comic-book writer who created Bizarro.

7. Book designer Peter Mendelsund has posted part two of his illustrated essay on the covers of Lolita that I linked to a while back.

8. Finally, I don't really know what this means, but since this recent bit of Occupy Wall Street-affiliated protest art features three cartoon characters, I figured I'd link to it and let you decide for yourselves.

As you may have read elsewhere, cartoonists Tom Hart and Leela Corman's young daughter, Rosalie Lightning, passed away last week. Tom and Leela's friends have created a fund for " to help with everything Tom and Leela are facing in this terrible situation.  Just to be clear, this is not an ongoing charitable foundation; it is a bunch of Tom and Leela’s friends passing the cup around to help them surmount the short-term challenges arising from this tragedy." Jon Lewis provides more context here. The link to the paypal link is here. Tim and I ask that you please consider donating to the fund.

Anyhow, on the site now:

Frank Santoro recruited Tom K. to write a scene report on Minneapolis

Jason Leivian reviews the roll playing game Cave Evil

Craig Fischer returns with a new installment of his column, this time focusing on... focus.

And elsewhere:

-A nifty profile of Spain Rodriguez.

-A memoir of Joel Beck by our frequent Roger Brand commenter, Tom Conroy.

-Oft-told but now with a new wrinkle: When Roy Lichtenstein "met" William Overgard.

-Ed Wood sleaze paperbacks!

Today we bring you Prajna Desai's fascinating review of Kashmir Pending, a graphic novel about the political unrest in that region by Naseer Ahmed and Saurabh Singh, published in New Delhi in 2007 by a now defunct company called Phantomville. Desai covers an enormous amount of ground in this one—from the history of the Kashmir independence movement to the effects of imprecise dating to Joe Sacco's narrative strategy.

Elsewhere on the internet, Journal stalwart Chris Mautner turns in an excellent interview with Annie Koyama, founder of Koyama Press, over at Comic Book Resources. If you aren't already familiar with the story behind the creation of her company, you really ought to read it.

Another Journal contributor, Matt Seneca, also takes to the pixels of Comic Book Resources to write about one of Frank King's most famous Sunday Gasoline Alley pages.

And over at Comixology, still another Journal contributor, Tucker Stone, interviews Mark Waid at length about his writing stint on Daredevil, a superhero book that (not for the first time in its history) has something of a cult following going on right now.

Finally, I don't think we've yet mentioned Joyce Brabner's Kickstarter project designed to raise money for a statue of Harvey Pekar at the Cleveland Heights Public Library. There are lots of things to read and videos to watch about it here, if you're interested.

Today on the site:

Chris Mautner talks to Art Spiegelman about MetaMaus.

Ryan Holmberg digs ever deeper and bring us a look at one strain of manga circa 1948-1957.

Elsewhere:

Not comics, but worth reading: Tucker Stone on Richard Stark (and The Bad News Bears).

An interview with Craig Thompson about orientalism and the critical reception of Habibi.

A fine comic by Louis Ferstadt, who was an early mentor to Harvey Kurtzman and a wonderfully elastic cartoonist himself.

This morning, we present R. C. Harvey's formal obituary of Bil Keane, the Family Circus creator who passed away last Tuesday. An excerpt:

Asked whether comics are “art,” Keane said: “The comic strip is a brilliant form of art developed in America and now imitated in every country. More people see and appreciate this art form daily than ever see the expensive paintings tucked away in museums. I’m proud to be exhibited regularly in over 1,500 newspapers, and to have my work hung on what I consider the world’s most prestigious art gallery: the refrigerator doors in homes across America.” But he’s never entirely serious for long: “Some cartoonists jot their ideas down on the back of an old envelope,” he once said. “Some talk into a tape recorder. I talk into the back of an old envelope.”

In a new episode of TCJ Talkies recorded live at the Minneapolis Indie Xpo, Mike Dawson interviews MariNaomi and Noah Van Sciver.

And Rob Clough reviewsMichael Kupperman's illustrated novel, Mark Twain's Autobiography 1910-2010.

Elsewhere, people are continuing to react to "the Frank Miller incident." David Barnett at the Guardian gathers some of the responses and takes a look at the politics of Miller's comics. One reaction not included there comes from Neal Adams. It's unfocused but relatively sane. Finally, Jim Rugg and Frank Santoro have their own take:

More pleasant things to contemplate: author and minor television personality John Hodgman's interview with Newsarama about the comics he's been reading, Paul Di Filippo's review of Daniel Clowes's The Death-Ray, and the release of Bruce Wayne's medical records.

I'm in LA again. This time for a schizophrenic week of first launching the Odd Future book, Golf Wang, and then opening the Destroy All Monsters exhibition, Return of the Repressed. The former is "just" a book, the latter a 150-piece show I've been working on with Mike Kelley for a while now. It's gonna be a busy week. The only comics I think I'll will be whatever Ben Jones has lying around his guest room, though DAM member Jim Shaw has made some fine ass comics in his time.

Anyhow, let's see... on the site today:

Joe McCulloch gives us a nice week in comics complete with a look at the Kirby strip in Someday Funnies.

And elsewhere:

Tom Spurgeon files the one and only in depth obituary of historian Les Daniels.

Short one today, folks!

Good morning, everyone. Today we are very proud to publish Zippy the Pinhead creator Bill Griffith's tribute to the late Bil Keane:

... I also remember Bil Keane’s talk to the assembled crowd. It was flavored by what his generation would call “pretty salty language.” For the creator of such a family-friendly strip, his comments were a surprise–and a pleasant one. I began to realize these “old-timers” were not at all like the characters in their G-rated comics; they were people like me. Well, sort of.

Also, Sean T. Collins turns in a review of Megan Kelso's re-released Queen of the Black Black.

And Frank Santoro recruits John Porcellino to contribute a scene report from South Beloit, Illinois.

Speaking of Keane, Jeet Heer passes along this short profile of the man from a 2006 issue of the Tucson Citizen, which is sad but well worth reading.

At Robot 6, Kevin Melrose highlights another heartbreaking story, an insurance magazine profile describing the late-life plight of longtime comic-book writer Bill Mantlo, now in a nursing home, and never really fully recovered from the hit-and-run that injured him two decades ago.

Kate Beaton was featured on a CTV news story last week. There's always something pleasantly surreal about seeing cartoonists on television.

Paul Gravett profiles and interviews David B.

Matt Seneca interviewed Yuichi Yokoyama.

And of course, the big comics-related news going around the internet this weekend was the reaction to Frank Miller's pathetic commentary on the Occupy Wall Street movement. (A choice bit of Miller's wordplay: "HAH! Some 'movement', except if the word 'bowel' is attached.") In one of those rare moments where I strongly disagree with him, Tom Spurgeon wrote a brief post calling the whole thing "deeply silly" and basically seeming to imply that Miller's words were better left undiscussed. (Though it's possible I'm misreading him, and Spurgeon just finds the whole situation distasteful, a position it's hard to argue against.) In any case, all of this sort of thing is fair game in my book. And while individual cases of embarrassing statements from major creators might disappoint me (not this time—while a lot of his early work still holds up well, I gave up on Miller years ago), overall, it's good to know more about where they're coming from. Kim Thompson wrote Spurgeon a letter taking strident issue with him about a different matter, Tom's characterization of Miller's politics. And if you haven't yet had your fill of the matter, the writer David Brin has used this occasion to publish a long explanation of everything he thinks is wrong (historically and politically) with Miller's 300.

On the site today:

R. Fiore ponders Will Eisner and PS Magazine.

It seems to me what PS represented something Eisner pursued throughout his career, the opportunity to create comics for an adult readership. Indeed, during most of its run it must have been nearly the only such opportunity in the comic book format outside of Little Annie Fanny, and as such is another tribute to Eisner’s savvy.

Rob Clough reviews Kate Beaton's Hark! A Vagrant.

And elsewhere:

Alex Dueben offers a short but sweet interview with Seth.

Nick Gazin's comic review column at Vice takes on Carl Barks.

And over at D&Q there's news of Guy Delisle projects afoot.

Today Ken Parille stops by with the latest installment of his column, this time gathering some thoughts inspired by the recent republication of Dan Clowes's The Death-Ray.

A brief excerpt:

This comic displays Steve Ditko’s crucial influence on the young Clowes, who was fascinated by Ditko-drawn and plotted Spider-Man issues. This influence has been at work throughout Clowes’s career, though often buried in his current ‘aesthetic unconscious’ in ways not always instantly recognizable. Both artists share an obsession with heroic and un-heroic action, frailty and ugliness, revenge and violence. According to Clowes, he has even turned into a Ditko character!: “Now I resemble The Vulture from the early Steve Ditko Spider-Man comics” (from Ghost World: Special Edition).

As you no doubt have heard, it was announced yesterday that Bil Keane, the Family Circus creator, passed away Tuesday at the age of 89. Here's the New York Times obituary. Lynda Barry posted a brief tribute to the cartoonist on her website—and had already been outspoken about her feelings for his work in interviews and comics during the last few years. Mike Lynch gathers Keane-related art from the National Cartoonists Society here. We plan to publish more on Keane in the near future.

Elsewhere, the 2011 top ten lists are starting to appear. Here's one at Amazon, and another at Publishers Weekly. Both of them seem to be doing their best to spread the love around and make sure as many publishers and genres as possible are represented, a goal that some would argue can conflict with listing the actual best books. But who goes to those places for recommendations anyway? I hope Martí's The Cabbie starts showing up on some of the lists that haven't appeared yet, but that might be asking for too much...

Speaking of PW, they just published a James Romberger interview with Gary Groth about the new Carl Barks Library.

Al Jazeera filed a video report regarding the recent bombing of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo:

The perennially under-discussed Richard Sala presents and explains an outtake from The Hidden on his blog.

And plans are underway to turn Alison Bechdel's Fun Home into a stage musical. I really want to make a Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark joke, but some part of me would hate myself if I succumbed.

Finally, and this is only very tangentially related to comics, the novelist and occasional comic-book writer Jonathan Lethem has written a much-discussed critique of the New Yorker critic James Wood, arguing more or less that Wood is a poseur and a snob whose literary judgements can't be trusted when discussing any fiction that can't be placed within a narrow band of genre. In other words, and to put it extremely simply, Lethem thinks that one reason (and maybe the main reason) Wood doesn't like his books is because his characters read comic books and take them seriously. I haven't read Fortress of Solitude, and so can't speak to the particular subject of his essay, but based on the many other Wood reviews I have read, Lethem seems broadly correct in his analysis.

UPDATE: Oh, and I forgot this link! Robert Crumb talks to Vice about a rejected cover for The New Yorker, and his strained relationship with the magazine since.

Whoah, running late this morning so this'll be more or less a place holder. I'm cheating, I know. Sorry!

But! It's a good day at TCJ. We are debuting a new column by Charles Hatfield called KinderComics, all about comics for children. We're really happy to have Charles aboard and his ideas for upcoming topics are very exciting.

And the great Tom De Haven is back with a review of the first volume of the new Carl Barks Donald Duck reprint series.

Today we bring you the conclusion of Matthias Wivel's outstanding, confusion-clearing report on the crisis at L'Association. (Here's part one.) A few behind-the-web tech snags delayed us from posting this as early as we'd wanted, but I think you'll find that it's worth the wait.

Also, Joe McCulloch brings you his traditional weekly roundup of new comics, with a prefatory piece on religious propagandists Jack T. Chick and Fred Carter.

Oh, and the archives are picking up again. We've just posted Gary Groth's 1996 interview with Carmine Infantino.

Elsewhere:

Bhob Stewart on his old Topps colleague Art Spiegelman.

Paul Gravett on Battle of the Eyes.

And Daryl Cagle has continued to update his post from last week on the arrest of his daughter, the cartoonist Susie Cagle, at Occupy Oakland.

Here is Monday...

Yesterday brought Frank's latest scene report, this one guested by Kevin Czap of Cleveland.

Thanks to CCS and James Sturm we bring you Oliver Goodenough and Stephen Bissette in conversation on: “Marvel vs. Jack Kirby: Legal Rights and Ethical Might”. These are the conversations we should continue to have.

Also, thanks to James, we're proud to "publish" this fine work by CCS student and archivist Cole Closser: A comic strip essay on Charles Forbell's Naughty Pete (the whole run of which can be found in Pete Maresca's Forgotten Fantasy).

And finally, I was saddened to learn of the death of comics historian Les Daniels, whose 1971 book, Comix: A History of the Comic Book in America, was one of those library staples that indoctrinated many of us. He was also something of an official historian for Marvel and DC. I really know nothing more about him than what's on Wikipedia. I hope more details are pending, and I assume perhaps his editors at Abrams or Chronicle will chime in.

This morning, Rob Clough weighs in with a review of Craig Thompson's Habibi, which demonstrates that the range of possible opinions on the book is by no means restricted only to those found in last week's roundtable discussion of the book.

Thompson was also just interviewed over at the A.V. Club, and Abhay Khosla had a funny reaction to one of Thompson's more dubious claims featured in it.

One of the most frequent topics of discussion regarding Habibi is the question of its use of Orientalist tropes, and whether or not the book furthers racial and cultural stereotypes. Comics has been in the stereotype business for a long time of course, as the never-ending arguments over Hergé's early Tintin albums demonstrate. This week, a Belgian judge ruled that Tintin in the Congo (easily the most controversial of these books) is not racist. David Brothers had a funny reaction to some of the judge's more dubious claims.

The book designer Peter Mendelsund has an excellent post up regarding cover design choices, using various attempts at Lolita as examples, and in passing covers a lot of ground that will likely be interesting to any cartoonist.

Finally, three quick links: 1) Chris Mautner interviews Kevin Huizenga, 2) Chris Butcher talks about non-superhero comics, and 3) Chris Duffy and comics-editing colleagues from the late, lamented Nickelodeon magazine have launched a comics iPad app aimed at kids and featuring several of their cartoonists they used to work with in print.

Today, because our aim is to distract you from your troubles by gazing at those of others we bring you part one of Matthias Wivel's epic telling of the recent doings at L'Association.

L’Association, which has helped rewrite the rules of comics over the last twenty years, has been in an existential crisis over the last eight months or so, a crisis that went from a widely publicized strike by the employees and the election of a new editorial board consisting of six of the seven original co-founders—most of whom had been estranged from the publisher for years—to the departure of Jean-Christophe Menu, the controversial sole and de facto director of L’Association since 2006.

Elsewhere:

I guess because he's just awesome, Jim Rugg has compiled the Top Ten Greatest Vein Artists in Comics History (for, uh, November).

Anders Nilsen is interviewed at The Onion and inadvertently reviews the new Tintin movie. Score.

This latest Kickstarter project is news to me, but th
e irony of raising money to pay tribute to an aesthetic that made tons of money is not lost on me, or, I bet, the creators.

I like getting updates on past employees of Drawn & Quarterly because after so many years they're like long lost cousins or something. (I know, I know, add emoticons here).

We're halfway through the week now, and it's time to put the Halloween decorations away.

First, for your listening while undecorating pleasure, Mike Dawson interviews Julia Wertz for the TCJ Talkies podcast.

Also, for her regular webcomics column, Shaenon Garrity has invited T Campbell to write a guest entry on the perils of researching internet comics.

MetaFilter brings renewed attention to the double career of New Yorker cartoonist Syd Hoff, who moonlighted as a radical artist for The Daily Worker and New Masses. (via)

Matthias Wivel has an interesting theory about the villain from the new Tintin movie. (It's more plausible than the one in Anonymous, anyway.)

As many have been noting, Ng Suat Tong has done yeoman's work putting together scans and moments from throughout Jaime Hernandez's Locas stories that are referenced or otherwise alluded to in Jaime's most recent story, "The Love Bunglers". A good reference once you've read the book (but don't spoil it for yourself if you haven't).

A publication called School Libraries in Canada got a very good interview out of Dave Collier, regarding everything from his military enlistment to reading on airplanes. (Regular readers of this site get one guess who sent this link my way.)

Frederik Pohl remembers the longtime DC editor Julius Schwartz. I think some longtime Journal readers might be somewhat surprised at the piece's conclusion, but I guess Pohl's old enough now to be entitled to his own opinion.

I can't keep linking to every post on Eddie Campbell's blog (just bookmark it already), but this latest entry, with video of Gerald Early (who is really an extraordinary essayist), can't go without notice. Read and watch.

UPDATE: I forgot to link to this sad news: Steve Rude has been arrested after an apparent altercation with his neighbors.

Good halloween? Good.

So, today Matt Seneca brings us an essay about Yuichi Yokoyama's most recent books.

and Joe McCulloch did not let the candy go to his head. His week in comics is here.

Elsewhere:

A fine review of Gary Panter's current exhibition by TCJ-contributor Nicole Rudick.

Because no one (or dozen) web sites can contain him, Joe McCulloch has a killer piece up at the Los Angeles Review of Books.

And finally, Mimi Pond has a nice new comic in the LA Times.

LA and TCJ: Together working as one.

Okay, we've got a big-time treat for all of you today: a 13,000-word interview of Robert Crumb conducted by Gary Groth. Topics include Crumb's aborted trip to Australia, the Meese Commission, the Republican primaries, and corporate fraud. That's just in the beginning section, before Groth and Crumb more or less reenact the canceled Australian live appearance, with Groth passing along questions from a select group of inquisitors including Tony Millionaire, Kim Deitch, Megan Kelso, the Hernandez Bros., Trina Robbins(!), among others. A must-read, folks. All your friends will be tweetering about it.

Elsewhere:

Ray Davis has some notes after reading Eddie Campbell's Alec: "The Years Have Pants". He also reproduces (with EC's apparent permission) three pages from How To Be an Artist that were cut from the larger anthology.

Mike Lynch found an old YouTube clip of a 1988 Lynda Barry appearance on David Letterman.

Jessica Abel and Matt Madden are interviewed at length about the Best American Comics series. They talk a lot about the selection process, too. Worth reading before going off on your big rant about the book doesn't include this or that.

Robert Boyd reviews some recent graphic novels.

Dan Wagstaff has a short but sweet Q&A with Jason over at the Casual Optimist.

Finally, novelist Tom McCarthy (author of Tintin and the Secret of Literature) really hates the new Tintin movie. Here's a sample:

Perhaps this movie will be studied, in years to come, as a Žižekian example of a dominant ideology's capacity to recuperate its own negation, or something along those lines. For now, we just have to wonder how Spielberg went so wrong, or if he was in fact involved at all: so badly put together is this film that it's easier, and perhaps more comforting, to imagine a semi-simian marketing committee writing and producing it under the banner of his name. If your children love the Tintin books – or, more to the point, if they have an ounce of intelligence or imagination in their bodies – don't take them to see this truly execrable offering.

Well well, on the site today we have Casey Burchby's review of Gene Colan's Batman stories.

And elsewhere:

Our own Kristy Valenti offers some fine professional tips.

Lynda Barry is profiled in the NY Times Magazine.

As if glancing off our Habibi roundtable, here's an interview with Frank Miller about Holy Terror.

The Beat has a kinda amazing list of Stan Lee's various adventures in... ventures.

Evan Dorkin blogs about horror movies just in time. His Milk and Cheese book is also on its way out from Dark Horse and sounds like it's a doozy.

David Apatoff looks at a Lynd Ward image.

Finally, and this is only germaine to California, but here's an interesting piece about artists' "royalties" on resold artwork.

Today we have a big one for you. (And in the coming weeks, we have several more big ones in store.) Charles Hatfield has graciously agreed to moderate a critical discussion of Craig Thompson's Habibi (which you may have noticed has already generated a fair share of online debate). Now, for your reading pleasure, we present the results. The discussion's participants include Hatfield himself, Hayley Campbell, Chris Mautner, Tom Hart, Katie Haegele, and Joe McCulloch. As you can imagine, their viewpoints diverge. Read and weigh in. (This was all Hart's idea, by the way. Thanks, Tom!) A more formal review of the book by Rob Clough is forthcoming.

Elsewhere:

Bhob Stewart takes inspiration from Kim Deitch's recent essay on Roger Brand (& don't miss the growing comments thread beneath it if you haven't looked in a while) to repost one of his own collaborations with Brand.

Peggy Burns offers a lengthy & characteristically funny photo tour of her experiences at the recent Iowa Comics Conference. (That's the same conference Jeet wrote about here.)

The Warner Bros. lawsuit against Siegel & Shuster attorney Marc Toberoff continues.

Bill Kartalopolous writes about King-Cat creator John Porcellino for Print.

I am sure every single one of you is already familiar with this photo of a famous athlete reading a famous comic book, but it was new to me.

Somewhat similarly, I believe that I did once know that Seth was involved in the world of women's roller derby (a secret point of connection with Frank Santoro!), but somehow I repressed that knowledge.

The Financial Times has another profile of Hergé linked to the new Tintin movie. I am somewhat interested to see how the inevitable wave of similar profiles here in the United States will compare to what has been written in Europe.

Finally, Michel Fiffe interviews Paul Duncan and Phil Elliott, the writer/artist combo behind the 1980s independent sci-fi mystery series, Second City.

On the site:

Chris Mautner goes there. I thought about going there, but wasn't brave enough. Chris was brave. Oh, what? No, I'm just talking about the first month of 52. That's where Chris went. What did you think I was talking about?

Sean T. Collins, another hardy soul, went somewhere else, somewhere only Ben Marra could take him, with this review of Gangsta Rap Posse #2.

Elsewhere:

-Frank Santoro's cartoon correspondence course begins next week. Deadline to enroll is this Friday. You need this in your life.

-While my head is in Pittsburgh (even if FS is not), I gotta link to the second installment of Ed Piskor's web comic. It's gooood.

-Here's a NSFW Playboy cover by Michael Deforge. Er, sorta.

-Kim Thompson sends us links dept:

-Looks like Hugo Pratt's Corto Maltese is making a long awaited comeback to these shores. Now we can only hope it's not colorized and it's well translated and lettered. Please. Rizzoli, which occasionally dips into comics, is the house, so we shall see. No word on if this is a series or not.

-Marjane Satrapi and Persepolis co-director Vincent Paronnaud have a new movie coming out based on Chicken with Plums. This time it includes live action. Why, there's already a review! (via KT)

-TCJ contributor dept:

-Congrats to the aforementioned Sean T. Collins on his work for the annotated Game of Thrones. Sounds like his dream project come true.

-Matt Seneca has a whole host of links over on his blog, including one about an abandoned blog of Frank's (I think Tim and I were supposed to post, too, but we never did). The name was chosen for reasons related to other subjects in Matt's very post. It's easy math.

Weird dept:

So everyone's already read about that check used to buy Superman. It's being auctioned off next year. In my fantasies Alan Moore buys it, turns his camera on, performs a magical rite on it, sets it aflame, and then posts the clip to youtube, resulting in some kind of metaphysical tidal wave that... I dunno. Use your imagination. But! Other precious items are being auctioned off this year, worth mentioning just for the pix. Like Jerry Siegel's typewriter, his favorite tie (the grimmest "favorite tie" I've ever seen), and, of course, some locks of his hair. The entire description is worth your time. The auction house notes, in what I hope is a jokey aside:

Many collectors have speculated that Kirby's hair might be worth more, but we disagree. With genetic technology heading in the direction it is, one day you could make your very own Jerry Siegel clone.

And, yes, here's the hair, grabbed from Comic Connect:

Oh, comics. Comics comics comics. When will you ever learn?

Today on the site, something I didn't even realize how much I wanted to read before this morning: Joe McCulloch writes about Yuichi Yokoyama in his column this week, as well as his normal roundup of upcoming comics.

Elsewhere:

Eddie Campbell continues his excellent series of casual posts about romance comics, this time focusing on the men who introduced the category: Simon and Kirby.

Justin Green's blog is something else (as you'd expect from his comics, of course). Here's a post in which he reproduces a drawing done for a friend, ponders shifting public morality using Upton Sinclair's The Jungle as a landmark, and wonders about the future of intimate communication.

Speaking of Green, somehow I missed that last month he started a new site, and is posting comics on a weekly basis.

Tom Spurgeon interviews T. Edward Bak about his recent stay in Russia.

The Guardian runs an obituary for Francisco Solan López.

And oh yeah: this. I don't think there's been a project quite this promising since the publication of Alexandra Ripley's Scarlett.

On the site:

Yesterday Frank presented another scene report, this time written by Adhouse Books' Chris Pitzer, and guest starring two mentors of mine from my teenage years: Greg Bennett and Joel Pollack. Frank's just picking up steam on these reports, compositing an informal and analog portrait of lives and cities in and around comics.

Today we bring you Matt Seneca's interview with Gary Panter. A taste:

Well, Kirby is actually, he’s like Mayan glyphs and cubism and Fauve, he’s really kind of transcendent. And Ditko too is kind of transcendent, just in his portrayal of karmic waves, wave shapes. Indefinable stuff, he would make it completely concrete and work out a shape system for it. But most people, it’s about the guys yelling at each other. [Laughs.] Which is what’s great about Johnny Ryan’s Prison Pit comic. Just reduce it to the essentials!

And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention (again) that the comments under Kim Deitch's Roger Brand piece just keep expanding, as more old friends are found. Now it's starting to take on a broader portrait of the fan/collector comic book culture of the early 1960s in New York. Just scroll down and dive in.

Elsewhere:

Speaking of which, I've been pretty into Paul Kirchner's Dope Rider, mentioned in the Brand comments by occasional collaborator Tom Conroy. The site Kirchner's created has the full run of the character with commentary and photos. I gotta say, the comic is good fun with Steranko-meets-Wood visuals and the sharp end of the marijuana stick.

And, gee, I don't often think of cartoonist Chad Grothkopf, but Bhob Stewart just did.

Brian Ralph gives his current comic book reading list to Robot 6.

Today, R.C. Harvey returns to the site with a new installment of his column, this time a profile of editor/reporter/cartoonist Jud Hurd, who published Cartoonist PROfiles for decades:

Jud’s voice was probably the most well-known sound in the world of cartooning after the sound of a pen scratching a line on paper.

And Sean T. Collins weighs in on Kevin Huizenga's recently released Ganges 4.

Elsewhere, there have been several cartoonist interviews making the rounds: Ron Regé in Vice, Dan Clowes at the A.V. Club, Art Spiegelman at the L.A. Times, and Tom Gauld at the Rumpus.

Poet, novelist, and Madame Bovary translator Adam Thorpe was asked by the Guardian to list his ten favorite literary translations into English, and chose a comics series as one of his answers.

Eddie Campbell talks Alex Toth and romance comics.

Tucker Stone went to the New York Comic Con.

Finally, and this isn't really comics at all, except in the wider what's-going-to-happen-to-print sense, but I just have to say I've really been dismayed at how many ostensibly intelligent people have been taken in by this stupid video, which supposedly shows a young baby unable to understand why magazines "don't work" after using an iPad. What it actually shows, of course, is a young baby unable to understand either magazines or iPads—which is nothing to get excited about, because young babies aren't supposed to understand much of anything. (I bet the kid has trouble with the concept of doorknobs, too. Ooh, wooden doors must be doomed!) Whatever your feelings about the prospects for publishing, it's funny how desperate some people are for a dose of future shock, even when it ain't really there.

Today on the site:

-Hayley Campbell reviews Richard Sala's The Hidden.

-And I want to direct you, dear readers, to the comments on Kim Deitch's Roger Brand article. They form a remarkable partial composite image of Brand, and expand on Kim's memoir. We hope to gather these up in some digital form, with additional images, when time permits.  Scroll down.

Elsewhere:

-I'm pleased to see a new comic from Ed Piskor, this one looking like some kinda cultural overview. Intriguing.

-Tonight in NYC: Our man Jesse Pearson interviews Gahan Wilson on his amazing new book, Nuts.

-The venerable comic book letterer has a new print/game called "Go Freelance", beautifully illustrated by Shawn McManus. It's tragi-comic!

-The cartoonist Lilli Carre wrote in to tell us about the Eyeworks Festival of Experimental Animation, which she co-runs. It's in Chicago, Nov. 5-6, and sounds pretty awesome. There'll be work by lots of cartoonists and comics-related people, including Florent Ruppert & Jerome Mulot, Julie Doucet, Bendik Kaltenborn, Lori Damiano, Jesse McManus, Peter Larsson, and Nicolas Mahler. Sounds good to me.

-Old people dept:

-I always enjoy looking at work by the illustrator Bernie Fuchs. Here are some fine sketches and commentary.

-There's some controversy over late-period Jack Kirby work, summarized over at Bleeding Cool, with various sides represented, and put forth initially, based on Greg Theakston's new book, over at 20th Century Danny Boy.

-Sometimes the imitation is more fun than the original.