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Top new of the day: As you may know by now, the Kirby estate suffered quite a defeat yesterday, according to Deadline's Nikki Finke:

The federal judge not only granted the studio motions for summary judgment but also denied the Toberoff/Kirby's cross-motion for summary judgment. The ruling revolved around the fact that Kirby was a freelance writer and did work-for-hire and so didn't retain the copyright. "This is just the beginning," Toberoff just told me, noting that, after the Kirby Estate exercised their termination rights under the Copyright Act, Marvel (backed by Disney) was in the middle of settlement negotiations in December 2009 and sued the Kirbys on January 8, 2010 in NY to benefit from that state's more favorable work-for-hire case law.

Essentially, this means the judge decided the law was so clear that the case doesn't even need to go to trial.

The Beat has commentary from Jeff Trexler, the ruling itself, and Trexler has posted a number of links to depositions.

We'll have coverage on Monday from Michael Dean.

On the site today:

-Thanks to our Seattle ace Kristy Valenti, we begin a series of posts featuring videos of panels from this year's San Diego Comic-Con, starting with 50 Years of Fandom featuring

- Hayley Campbell reviews an Anders Nilsen mini-comic/object.

And elsewhere:

-Kim Thompson takes an incisive and witty leap into the gender/greatness-in-comics minefield.

-And from The Daily Cartoonist comes news that the Jay Stephens-drawn syndicated strip Oh Brother! is ending.

R.C. Harvey outdoes himself with a new article about Archie, John Goldwater, and the end of the Comics Code:

It is serenely fitting that Archie should be the last publisher to leave the dismal Code room, turning on the light as it left. John Goldwater, one of the trio of founders of MLJ Comics out of which Archie emerged, was, as he himself claimed, “the prime founder” of the CMAA, which invented the Code and enforced it with the Comics Code Authority. Hence, this seems an appropriate moment to consider the dubious record of John Goldwater, the man who claimed to have invented Archie Andrews as well as the CMAA. About the latter there is less dispute than about the former. Let’s see whether his claims can withstand close scrutiny and the conflicting testimony of contradictory witnesses.

Elsewhere:

Maurice Sendak has a new book coming out in September (the first he's both drawn and written in 30 years), and talks with Dave Eggers about it in Vanity Fair.

Matt Seneca reads a tribute to the late Gene Colan in an issue of Daredevil, and is moved to recite a timeline of his professional life.

In a not unrelated story, Clifford Meth draws attention to a small fundraiser for comics creators via the Hero Initiative.

Nick Gazin at Vice interviews the mysterious Jonny Negron, everyone's favorite new porn cartoonist.

Alan Moore talks to Wired.

The Center for Cartoon Studies has been awarded a $255,000 grant, which it plans to use building the Inky Solomon Center, a "state-of-the-art industry center designed to help CCS alumni launch projects, incubate start-up companies and create jobs."

Kevin Czap looks at comic-book sound effects in the work of Jordan Crane, Brandon Graham, and various manga artists.

Finally, that Grant Morrison documentary from a while back is apparently available for free online viewing now.

I'm just kidding, there's nothing special in here. Just some links and stuff.

On the site today:

Tucker Stone reviews Winterworld:

But lets be honest: coloring inside the lines of the post-apocalyptic genre isn’t a field anybody needs help finding average-to-great examples of; you could fake an epileptic seizure in a decently stocked Barnes & Noble and end up with a decent chunk of the stuff just by picking up whatever your flailing hands knocked to the floor.

And elsewhere:

Can I mention again how outrageous and sad it is that Bill Blackbeard didn't make it into the Hall of Fame? Thank you. Seriously. I know, I know, it's just an honorific, but... c'mon.

Thanks to Rob Stolzer, we have a little more information about Slim Jim cartoonist Raymond Crawford Ewer, whose spectacular work was featured in Art Out of Time. These postcards to a friend from the 20 year-old artist are pretty wonderful.

Young Sammy Harkham sent over this link to work by someone I'd never heard of, Tiger Tateishi. Exceptionally surreal manga and paintings.

I'm not sure how I missed this before: A link (NSFW) to the Wrightson-Bode porn classics from Swank magazine. I remember seeing this work in a Wrightson compilation when I was a kid and being deeply confused. The combination of those two art styles becomes this gnarly bubble thing... and I like it. Dig those colors, too. Minor but impressive porn comics itching for a reprint. Now there's a business idea for parent company: "Eros Classics", in which the highest standards are applied to archiving the horniest porn. Wally Wood's complete Gang Bang on sumptuous acid free heavyweight paper. That one's free, boss! A money-loser from me to you.

And finally, a round-up from Sean T. Collins on a quote he posted and its aftermath.

Morning all. I'm back on the blog beat, and am raring to post links to various stories about comics across the internet.

First, on our site, Katie Haegele interviews Slow Wave cartoonist Jesse Reklaw.

Sean T. Collins reviews Mario and Gilbert Hernandez's sci-fi soap, Citizen Rex.

And Joe McCulloch previews This Week in Comics as only he can.

Elsewhere:

Our own Jeet Heer writes about the historical and ongoing political meanings of Captain America in the Globe and Mail. (Hey, where's Dapper Dan on this movie?)

A rare, short interview with Glamourpuss creator Dave Sim, who is now apparently peeved at Neil Gaiman for not being interested in reading Glamourpuss.

Supergods, Grant Morrison's very strange (at least in the parts that aren't just hastily joined-together filler) history of superhero comics, has come out. We will have more coverage of the book here at the site soon, but Paul Gravett has a take worth reading here. The best response I've read so far to one of the book's more troubling aspects comes from Abhay Khosla.

Rob Clough rounds up his thoughts on the recent Jacques Tardi reprints.

And should we keep linking to great Eddie Campbell blog posts, are all of you smart enough to be following him on your own by now?

I have promised much, and delivered little. But I swear (sort of) that Monday will bring some good pix and fun facts on this here blog. In the meantime, here's the best I can do.

Today on the site: Rob Clough reviews the latest Harvey Pekar book.

And if you haven't already read Sean Rogers’ epic Walt Simonson interview, you should. On that note, IDW has just announced its next "Artist's Edition": Wally Wood. It'll present the best of Wood's EC stories at their original size, in full color. That's good news, and those originals are truly spectacular. Which reminds me, if you haven't already, head over to Heritage Auctions to get a gander at the stunning original art for one of my favorite Wood stories, the vicious, scathing and sad "My Word", published in 1975. And on my final IDW tip, I greatly enjoyed Howard Chaykin's review of Genius, Isolated: The Life and Art of Alex Toth over at the Los Angeles Review of Books. Chaykin draws a solid parallel to Phil Spector in his review:

To convey the irony and contradiction of the place that Alex Toth commands in popular culture in general and comics in particular, we might step away from the Orson Welles-Citizen Kane metaphor, and go instead to Phil Spector and the three-minute miracles of early rock ‘n’ roll that are his artistic and creative legacy. No one — at least no one I know — would ever mistake the lyrics of Spector’s best known material for anything but teenaged pap and drivel, while his orchestration, presentation, and arrangement of this junky doggerel never fails to elevate it to the level of unequivocal genius. I still get a goose pimpling shudder of delight at the first notes of the Ronettes’ “Be My Baby” and The Crystals’s “Da Doo Ron Ron,” and it’s that same reflexive joy I experience at the sight of Alex Toth’s execution of the primitive, barely pulpy scripts that make up so huge a percentage of the work every cartoonist is asked to delineate.

The whole piece is worth reading, in the ever-worthwhile interest of reading one cartoonist on another.

And finally, I'd be remiss not to mention this, the latest from Frank Miller, now complete with an animated trailer. Should be interesting.

As Day 1 of Comic-Con passes (check your Twitter feeds for news, fans!) we celebrate here at TCJ with... comics.

-Jeffrey Trexler continues his work on the end of the comics code with his latest piece, which looks at recent rulings:

Just a few months after the Comics Code met its less than grisly fate, the U.S. Supreme Court cited the anti-comics crusade of the 1950s as an example of misguided censorship. The Court's citation of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund in its decision to strike down a statute banning violent video games was a signal moment in the history of the organization and the wider comics community, as the country's highest legal authority acknowledged that the movement giving rise to the Comics Code was a historic mistake.

And elsewhere:

-Favorite thing I missed (and from which I stole the featured image): Craig Fischer on versions of Moebius' career at The Panelists. Great to read Craig poking at the mythology surrounding the man.

-Matt Seneca builds up a loooong piece on Geoff Johns and manages to throws in a Henry Darger comparison for good measure.

-And speaking of which, here's Eddie Campbell on the literalism prevalent in today's comics. It's so nice to see the man blogging again. Such a welcome presence.

I'm back from Tokyo. It took 22 hours, but I'm back. I'll have photos, facts, and amusing anecdotes tomorrow. I will say this: It was hot. And I know from hot. It was like Arizona sun combined with swamp humidity. It was so not that I lost enough weight in one week to drop a belt size, despite nightly consumption of beer to kill the aforementioned heat. That's hot. Other than that, and no wi-fi reception on my laptop (mysterious, but true!) the trip was amazing. I met manga and design legends. I asked King Terry about his portrayal of testicles and I browbeat a 75-year-old man about precisely when in 1967 he designed a specific poster. Good times, my friends. Good times.

Anyhow, I understand there's some kind of comic book convention opening today! Must be a big deal or something.

In our little corner of the world we have:

-Mike Dawson interviewing Jason Lutes on Berlin and his career in general.

-A re-publication of Gary Groth's 1990 interview with Joe Simon, since there's a certain movie coming out... also look out for Simon's new autobiography, which contains my favorite appraisal by one cartoonist of another, ever. It's towards the end and about Bob Powell.

And that's all for now. Substantial posting to return and continue throughout the week!

Sean Rogers, who conducted our recent interview with Chester Brown, has now sat down with the artist Walt Simonson for a wide ranging discussion covering everything from Manhunter to the new Thor Artist's Editions (not to mention his thoughts on his contemporaries, what it's like to work on movie tie-ins, and Michael Moorcock).

As you all know, Dan is traveling right now, which prevents him from blogging. Joe McCulloch is traveling, too, but it hasn't stopped him from bringing you the latest installment of This Week in Comics.

The biggest news in comics this week is probably Peter Laird's announcement that he plans to end the Xeric grant, ostensibly due to the ease in which new cartoonists can self-publish on the web, or using web-based fundraisers.

Nicole Rudick interviews Paul Hornschemeier for the Paris Review website.

Don McGregor is selling art to fund the payment of some necessary medical bills.

Michael Dooley interviews the historian and cartoonist Trina Robbins.

And this bodes well: the critic James Wolcott will be attending Comic-Con this year. Which is no surprise, really -- he's a comic-book reader from way back.

We've got a real treat for you this morning, an advance preview of what looks like a strong contender to be the manga reprint of the year: Gajo Sakamoto's Tank Tankuro. Check it out.

Rob Clough reviews Gene Luen Yang and Thien Pham's Level Up.

And in his latest column, Frank Santoro wonders if the art of cartooning is going to go the way of jazz.

Finally, for those of you interested in continuing to debate Sean T. Collins's recent review: Black Eye editor Ryan Standfest and anthology contributors Jeet Heer and Onsmith appeared on the latest episode of Inkstuds to discuss the book, and black humor in general.

Dan is lost in Japan without internet access, apparently, and can't contribute to the blog while he's there—or so he told me in an e-mail very late last night. Hey, wait a minute! That doesn't make sense. I think I'm getting played... Anyway, once more into the breach.

Ryan Holmberg does it again, turning in another essential entry in his "What Was Alternative Manga?" series. Everything you never knew you wanted to know about Japanese mid-century crime and pulp fiction—and their relation to manga.

Elsewhere:

Ken Quattro at the Comics Detective used a Freedom of Information Act request to obtain FBI material regarding their investigation of Lev Gleason, and his possible ties to the Communist party. And he lays it all out for us here. (Thanks, RB.)

Over at the Guardian, six big-name cartoonists—Peter Kuper, Bryan Talbot, Posy Simmonds, Ariel Schrag, Martin Rowson, and Lynda Barry—name and discuss their own personal favorite comics artists. Their comments are brief, but sometimes surprising. Rowson and Barry's commentary in particular might be considered fighting words in some households.

Rob Clough writes a ginormous survey covering the entire range of Swedish comics published by Top Shelf a few years ago.

Finally, Matt Seneca attempts his version of a Tucker Stone special, writing rapid-fire on the latest superhero shenanigans.

Apologies, but it's 6 pm here in Tokyo, and I've just arrived. Now I must eat and sleep. So all you will get today is a promise of good pix on Thursday and the following notes on today's content:

-Sean Michael Robinson brings us an interview with the artist Mahendra Singh.

-And even if Jog (or Frank!) was in my position, they'd turn in a piece of writing. But they are better men than I. So here's is Jog's week in comics!

Later!

Hayley Campbell starts the week off with a review of David Hahn's All Nighter.

Even when Frank's taking it easy with his column, he manages to drop some knowledge about Gray Morrow and Carl Barks you couldn't get from anyone else.

Sean T. Collins returned with the second installment of his "Say Hello" column on Friday, this time featuring the popular illustrator and web cartoonist Emily Carroll.

And Rob Clough reviewed the latest anthology in the Sunday series, which grew out of its editors' time at the Center for Cartoon Studies.

Recent Journal interview subject Jim Woodring gives a young aspiring cartoonist some advice in a letter from 1993. (via)

So far, July has been a very good month for reading Gabrielle Bell's comics online. (She's going for one a day all month.)

Jeet Heer, take note: The Panelists dig up a fascinating quote from Walt Kelly regarding the use of racial caricature by cartoonists of his time.

Some people have trouble understanding the humor in New Yorker cartoons, others, well ... have you ever had trouble getting the jokes in Beetle Bailey? Mort Walker explains what's funny about selected strips in a series of videos.

The New York Times talks to Jules Feiffer and others regarding The Dancer Films, an adaptation of selected strips from Feiffer's long-running strip in the Voice. Will this movie break the Green Lantern box office curse, and make the world safe for comic book movies again?

And finally, one of the CEOs of Archie has made the news on the seedier side of the internet.

Finally, Drew Friedman art pirated by Chinese snake-oil peddlers! Would you buy a sex aide with this man's face on it?

Well ok, it's Friday. So here we are

Kim Deitch weighs in with Part 4 of his memoir, this one focusing on rock 'n roll.

And elsewhere:

-Pal Mike Reddy is posting nifty daily drawings on Annals of Americus. The link will take you to the index -- click on each entry to read a short story based on one of Mike's humorous dystopian images.

-Eddie Campbell continues his explorations into definitions and Spanish comics.

-It's always good to see new work from Frank Young and David Lasky -- they've announced a new graphic novel called Oregon Trail: The Road of Destiny, coming out this Fall.

-And TCJ-contributor Matt Seneca has a fun link dump, including scans of a rare English-language interview with Liberatore.

R. Fiore's Funnybook Roulette returns, with a classic-style roundup of reviews of recent-ish comics by Winshluss, Jean-Claude Carrierre, Pascal Girard, Jason Shiga, and Jeffrey Brown, among others. A sample:

No fair observer would deny that it takes more than one book to fully explore the absurdity of the Transformers concept.

We also bring you Katie Haegele's review of It Is Almost That, an anthology of text-driven artworks (& art-driven texts) created by female artists. It begins:

It Is Almost That is not an anthology of comics. In fact, most of the work in the collection has no narrative in any traditional sense. But the 26 works collected here all use words and visual art and combine them, in some way, to tell a story. As editor Lisa Pearson writes in her afterword, “…texts do not always appear on pristine white fields; images are not illustrative and language does not explain; stories do not unfold in predictable ways—and yet every page is meant to be read.”

Elsewhere:

Hairy Green Eyeball brings jpegs of Wally Wood parodies of comic strips from Mad.

Finally, Darryl Ayo voices a frequently heard complaint about the unsatisfactory nature of many comics when read as individual issues. It's difficult not to sympathize.

Two things come to mind in reaction to this. 1: DC recently (sort of) announced that they were going to start addressing the issue, by no longer padding out stories with filler to bring them up to collection-length. We'll see if that actually happens. Padding may be a hard habit to break.

And 2: In an interview conducted by Matt Zoller Seitz, David Simon (co-creator of The Wire and Treme) responds to similar complaints about the perceived unsatisfactoriness of Treme episodes, and how that show's writing staff writes with the eventual DVD set in mind, not weekly viewers:

The measure that I care about is not the episodic. I just don't care about evaluating these things by episodes. It's like I'm building a house, and you're telling me, "I really like the stairwell, but I don't like the balustrade." Well, great, thanks, y'know? What do you think of the house? When you get to the end [of a season], did it feel like she got where she was supposed to go, and that she really experienced these eight months as an ordinary human being would? That's the real challenge, because film is a shorthand for everything.

[...] I don't care about the thrills you get in every episode. I want it to be resonant at the end, in a cumulative way. Eric feels the same way. We feel we're writing a singular, elemental thing.

[...]

[We're] writing the show for people who have a complete season DVD set in front of them, or who are watching the show via HBO On Demand, or who can otherwise absorb it all as a piece, and watch [the episodes] all in a row.

That being said, every Treme episode I've seen contains an enormous amount of narrative detail in comparison to your average issue of Flashpoint, so keep in mind that by bringing these two together, I'm comparing apples to ham sandwiches.

Today on the site:

Mike Dawson's TCJ Talkies with Bob Fingerman.

-Chris Mautner reviews Lucille.

And around the spinning internet globe:

-Hayley Campbell wrote in to note that the great London comic book store Gosh! is moving after 25 years in the same spot, and too a bigger location, to boot, which the store is celebrating with some killer sounding events.

-Cartoonist Tim Hensley is putting elderly videos and music on his Tumblr. This is a must.

-Evan Dorkin discusses the process of securing a film version of his and Jill Thompson's Beasts of Burden.

-I'm not sure what this is, but it seems intriguing.

We're salving our fireworks wounds and recovering from a very long day in traffic this morning, so time is tight, but we've got some new content for you, too.

Chris Randle interviews the illustrator and Skim artist, Jillian Tamaki.

Frank Santoro gets a bit more informal in his latest column on color.

Joe McCulloch delivers his always invaluable column on the week in new comics.

Elsewhere:

Chris Mautner's written another solid entry in his recurring Comics College feature, this time on the most essential cartoonist of them all, George Herriman. I endorse Mautner's recommendations on this one.

The New York Times came up with the bright idea of commissioning the famous activist and former sex worker Annie Sprinkles to review Paying for It. It's a fun, short read, but more interesting for sociological reasons than as a piece of criticism.

And finally, the nominations for this year's Harvey Awards have been announced.

In our ongoing attempt to shut down your brains with the sheer force of our content, we bring you yet more STUFF.

*Kim Deitch checks in with Part 3 of his memoir, this time covering the advent of television, some of his favorite programs, and a bit about music. If you aren't reading this you are seriously missing out. Living legend, this guy.

*And Rob Clough delivers a thoughtful take on the work of Dave Kiersh.

On a personal note, kind readers, thanks to Tim (thanks meaning he once sold me the book for a buck) I have begun reading Michael Moorcock's Elric saga in the order Moorcock arranged the stories a decade ago. I'm into it, people. I feel I might be going in deep on this one. The quantity of ideas and images he's tossing out is pretty wonderful, as is the implicit meta-narrative of satire and the decline of the 20th century. I hit upon the stuff after years of reading it referenced by Moore, Simonson, etc. And it's been a total treat. Reading it after my recent Moebius jag is also satisfying, as Moebius has a similarly fevered psychedelic imagination rooted in late 1960s counterculture and straight-up pulps.

Also: A no-prize to anyone who can actually describe what's in (like "all drawings, no text" or "super long comic in French" or "a retelling of the Gospel of Mark") the Moebius books Jog mentioned on Tuesday. Help us try to understand!

And, as we say, "elsewhere":

-I am bummed that Tom Spurgeon is taking some time off from The Comics Reporter, but wish him a happy and relaxing time away from the world of the comics internet.

-Craig Fischer has an excellent piece up at The Panelists about his own shifting views of Gene Colan's artwork.

-For Frank: The story of one man's Trevor Von Eeden commission.

-And from pal Joshua Glenn comes this announcement:

HiLobrow is running a five-part series by Rob Steibel (who writes the Kirby Dynamics blog for the Jack Kirby Museum and Research Center). The series takes a close look at the original artwork — and the margin notes by Kirby and Lee — from a single June 1967 Fantastic Four page. It's a lot of fun to read these panels over Rob's shoulder, and to compare them with the published panels. This exercise offers deep insights into the Kirby-Lee collaboration, and Rob is scrupulously fair to both parties.

The series thus far has been excellent. Go check it out.

Today, we present our final preview for the upcoming issue 301 of The Comics Journal, a brief excerpt from Gary Groth's interview with Robert Crumb, mostly concerned with his Genesis.

We also have Sean Michael Robinson's review of Shigeru Mizuki's Onward to Our Noble Deaths. I really liked this book.

Elsewhere:

Jeet Heer reviews Ben Katchor's latest for the new Los Angeles Review of Books. Recommended all around.

In lieu of Dapper Dan's missing Green Lantern review, I point you towards another critique of the film written by our own Joe McCulloch—and, uh, he seems less than impressed!

Two creator podcast interviews possibly worth noting: one with the inimitable Eddie Cambpell, and the other with Grant Morrison. I haven't listened to either of these yet, but plan to do so over the holiday weekend. Campbell is on any thinking person's short list of great comics talkers, and would probably be fun to listen to even if interviewed about his thoughts on dog grooming. Grant Morrison, on the other hand, is not entirely my cup of Kool-Aid, but in this one, he's interviewed by the Mindless Ones, whose enthusiasm for the man and his work is dangerously contagious.

We don't comment too often on DC and Marvel scheduling mishaps in this space (mostly because 95% of the rest of the comics internet seems devoted to nothing else), but every once in a while one of them makes a mistake so funny it's impossible to look away. Chris Butcher explains.

Douglas Wolk has launched a new blog in which he promises to review every Judge Dredd book ever released. That's too much Dredd for me.

Missed it: On Sunday, The New York Times ran an editorial by Brent Staples supporting Jack Kirby in his family's ongoing copyright case with Marvel. Very little information in it will be new to readers of this site, but the fact that awareness of Kirby's contributions has finally spread as far as the Times is somewhat heartening.

I spent my weekend editing articles about Garfield, Gene Colan, and the Reuben Awards. That's right, I work for The Comics Journal. I'm in comics. Teen me would have been excited. Adult me whines.

You know who else is? R.C. Harvey. Today we bring you a lengthy profile by the Harv of Garf's owner, Jim Davis. Not something you see so often, and I'm pleased to have it.

We also have Jog reporting on this week's comic book store offerings, with a special focus on some recent and upcoming Moebius releases...

And the redoubtable Rob Clough brings in a review of a new book I also enjoyed, and which I hope gets a foothold in this crowded marketplace, The Next Day.

Elsewhere:

-Eddie Campbell writes on, and takes issue with parts of, the Spanish Wiki definition of the graphic novel.

-Tucker Stone reads a stack of comics so you don't have to! Well, I kinda want to read Green Arrow now, but I'll use my imagination.

-Dan Zettwoch can diagram anything, including how to grill a filet. He's the ideal artist-dinner guest: cooking, drawing, and inevitably, telling a very good joke.

-And finally, in random but kinda awesome news, Ione Skye has made a short film called David Goldberg, based on a slice of Dan Clowes' Ice Haven.