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Okay, there's a lot to go through this morning.

First, you are no doubt aware of the sad news that the great comic book artist Gene Colan passed away last week. Yesterday, we posted a comprehensive obituary for Colan, written for the site by Tom Field, and covering all stages of his seven-decade career in comics:

Gene Colan never would be mistaken for anything less than what he was: One of comics’ unique stylists. He wielded his pencil like a brush to capture the toned subtleties of action, emotion and lighting. He brought a cinematographer’s vision to comics storytelling, and his stories were instantly recognized by fans, treasured by scholars and appreciated enviously by even his most accomplished peers.

We have also republished a 2001 interview with Colan, conducted by Larry Rodman. If you read nothing else on the site this week, those two articles are still well worth your attention.

In his column this weekend, Frank Santoro takes a break from his explorations of color to recap his recent involvement in the Pittsburgh Biennial.

New to the site this morning, ace interlocutor Nicole Rudick delivers one of the best interviews I have ever encountered with one of comics' most unique and essential creators, Jim Woodring.

When I was real little, I did drawings of the things I saw that scared me. I must have seen a mouse that got its head clawed off by a cat or something, because I had this recurring image of a headless animal, sometimes it was a big animal, like a bison. If I saw a bird or a bison I would imagine it with its head missing. Sometimes I would more than imagine it—I would see it and I would draw those things. I drew this little man made of electricity who was my persecutor. I would try to draw him in such a way that the drawing would have the intensity he had when I saw him. It was in his eyes. He had these blank eyes that scared me so much that I was almost sorry I when I captured them in a drawing. But then, at the same time, I was glad I did it, because it I felt like it showed that I was in control of the situation. I would just draw things that scared me. It upset my parents to no end. They really thought I was nuts, and it was the days before children were routinely sent off to psychologists or given drugs.. I’m sure if Ritalin and that stuff had been around, my folks would have gotten me on drugs as quickly as possible. Instead, they just despaired and withdrew from me.

Come to think of it, this is a must-read, too.

Finally, we have the second installment of Jeffrey Trexler's ongoing look at what happened to the Comics Code. Okay, it's all necessary material today. And we're just getting started, so set aside from reading time this week. You're going to need it.

Elsewhere on the internet:

The CBLDF has formed a coalition for the defense of an American comics reader facing criminal charges in Canada, because of various manga images found in the man's computer files. Chris Butcher has more.

Blake Bell and Bryan Munn have both posted nice tributes to the aforementioned Gene Colan. (Bell takes slight issue with Field's obituary, and it's worth reading him for an alternative view.)

Gary Panter salutes the Japanese poster artist Tadanori Yokoo on his seventy-fifth birthday.

The A.V. Club takes you inside Fantagraphics headquarters in Seattle.

And finally, our own sometime reviewer Chris Mautner selects six pop songs about comic-book characters.

The great cartoonist Gene Colan passed away last night. To read his 2001 conversation with Larry Rodman from The Comics Journal #231, click here. We'll have a full obituary online over the weekend. Robert Boyd has written a smart appreciation.

Do you feel the summer sun burning your neck? I do. It's burning my brain, too. That said, this is a quick one, folks, because... my lord, isn't there enough to read on this site already? C'mon!

Today we have A Dan Clowes Notebook by Mr. Jeet Heer:

From Lloyd Llewellyn to Mr. and Mrs. Ames, Clowes has often featured detectives in his stories, not to mention many amateur clue-hunters such as Clay Loudermilk  and David Boring. Another variation of this are the characters who are not quite detectives or clue-hunters but like to spy on other people: Random Walker, Violet, and Charles in Ice Haven are good examples.

And on the other end of the spectrum (well, sort of: A no-prize to the reader who can guess the link between Mike Allred and Dan Clowes without clicking through!) we have Nicholas Gazin on Mike Allred's latest effort.

Elsewhere in the universe, here's a nice profile of the great Canadian graphic artist Martin Vaughn-James.

And that's all. Go outside!

Good morning. First, Kim Deitch's amazing memoir-through-music continues today. If you skipped last week's because the name Dorsey scared you, you're missing out on something majorly entertaining, and enlightening. This time, he talks about his father (Gene Deitch), Alan Lomax, Jelly Roll Morton, and cowboy records.

My father’s interest in art had been long standing. He’d been a huge fan of Mickey Mouse growing up. By the time he was a teenager, he was putting out an amazing magazine called The Hollywood Star News. When I say amazing, I’m not kidding. It was produced on a hand cranked mimeograph machine. What’s that? Well, before photocopiers people could make cheap copies by typing onto wax sheets. Then you’d put the typed sheet onto a rotary mechanism filled with ink. Turn the barrel one revolution as you feed a piece of paper under it and you’d have a copy, in ink, of what was on the typed wax sheet. Keep turning as you feed more paper under the barrel and you’d get more copies. You could do at least quite a few hundred copies this way. You could also draw on the stencils and have crude illustrations, or not so crude in my father’s case. My old man, genius that he is, came up with a way to do four-color illustrations with good registration in The Hollywood Star News.

Elsewhere:

Eddie Campbell has republished an introductory essay he wrote about Batman and the Lew Sayre Schwartz on his blog, and added another afterthought here. (He of course wrote another tribute to Schwartz for this site earlier this week.)

Rob Clough has reposted his 2008 review of Bill Mauldin's Willie & Joe: The WWII Years. It's worth reading in conjunction with his recent piece on this site about that book's sequel.

Tom Spurgeon reports on Bud Plant's announced retirement. Above and beyond the many hours I am sure lots of readers of this site have spent browsing through his catalogs, Plant has had a major impact on the evolution of the comics business. Spurgeon talks about some of those reasons at his post. Also, I believe—and hope to be corrected if I am wrong—that by ordering large numbers of this magazine in its early days, Plant gave the Journal some important assistance when it was much needed.

I've been waiting for Charles Hatfield to weigh in on Chester Brown's Paying for It. And now he finally has. A must-read even if you've had your fill of prostitution talk.

Finally, occasional comics writer Paul Di Filippo has tracked down what he believes may be the very first review of a science fiction book in the New York Times, from 1943. It is fascinating for how closely the reviewer ties the genre to comic books (the best stories are "a good deal more than True Comics for adults", and the worst are "gibberish" which "may deserve a place in a volume like this as signs of an age that produced Superman").

Well. It's Wednesday and Dapper Dan still hasn't seen Green Lantern. It's not looking good, and Tim thus far has refused refused Dapper Dan's requests for a "man date" to go see it together, even though I've promised to buy him nachos. So, you readers may have to live without a Dapper Dan special on this one.

On the site:

Today we present part one of Jeff Trexler's investigation into what exactly became of the record of the Comics Magazine Association of America:

Understanding how the CMAA worked–and why it failed–can provide vital clues for helping today’s comics business adapt.

And Mike Dawson brings us TCJ Talkies focusing on four graduates from The Center for Cartoon Studies: Lucy Knisley, Melissa Mendes, Joe Lambert, and Steve Seck. Here's an aside: True story -- I've had to cancel three different trips to CCA for various stupid reasons, entirely my fault, but James Sturm still talks to me. That's what a nice man he is.

In the "man, they just don't get it" department: One Robert Greenberger cold lifted Eddie Campbell's heartfelt obituary yesterday, changed around a few words, added a quote, some sloppy analysis, and slapped his name in it. He even used the same art. There's no excuse for swiping, Robert! We're watching. Not all of you (we have limited resources). But some of you.

Anyhow, elsewhere:

Our fearless leader, Gary Groth, is interviewed over at CBR. He's very kind to us, and has fine things to say, like this, about the DC renumbering, which pretty much explains why we can't be bothered to cover it, though perversely I'd like to lock someone in a room and make them read it all and explain it to me:

I'm not even sure what that's supposed to accomplish. It seems like a pitiful attempt to con more people into buying the same old shit. I probably shouldn't be so cynical. I'm sure that some brilliant talent could breathe some life into this stuff. Like I said, I'm not one to talk. I haven't read this stuff, but it just seems so completely uninteresting to me, and in a way, it's idiomatically alien to me.

Over at the Mindless Ones, the, uh, ones are beginning a discussion of bullshit and John Constantine. So far, so good. This I can read.

Speaking of reading, I'm currently immersed in Stephen Bissette's Teen Angels and New Mutants. It's a phenomenal read. Really great, and the kind of book I always hope will be written about comics. Bissette wisely does not separate art and commerce, and is no bullshit about the complicated life of a comic book. Grant Morrison's Supergods, on the other hand... let's just say it takes a very uncomplicated view. Time permitting I hope to write about the two books in a single essay. Why? Because the culture is still interesting, even if the product is not.

Incidentally, back 'round to that complicated view. Many have linked to Brian Chippendale's latest text, but my favorite bit is Brian questioning, via Twitter, various comics writers about the renumbering of X-Men. Jason Aaron, who Chippendale goes on to praise, says it's the contents that count, not the number. And that's fair, but I think Brian made a good point that the number does count -- that it signifies both a reader-publisher bond and a chain link back through history. It's also a kind of sign that the publisher doesn't think you're an idiot. Commerce and content are really inseparable, is one thing I think Brian drives home. That's comics for you -- and renumbering sends a signal to readers clear as day: Fuck you.

Lew Sayre Schwartz, most well-known in comics circles for the many pages of Batman he drew as a ghost artist in the "golden age," has passed away at the age of 84. In a tribute to his friend, Eddie Campbell writes: "Lew was my rainbow-bridge connection to the great age of American cartoonists, a world full of larger than life characters, who all seem much further away now that Lew has gone."

Also new to the site, another excerpt from the long awaited (and nearly mythical at this point) issue 301, this time Tim Kreider's essay on Dave Sim's Cerebus. That's right. Gary made him read the whole thing. This is really great stuff. Here's a taste:

Dave Sim is the single most passionate and outspoken advocate of his own work, and also its most reductive and unreliable interpreter. Having finished his magnum opus, he seems unable to let go of it, and continues to hand down authoritative misreadings of the work that do it a serious disservice. He tries to rationalize the kinds of inconsistencies and contradictions that are only inevitable in a work that was written month by month over 30 years; he issues contemptuous dismissals of (female) characters who might have seemed to the reader to have had some depth and complexity; and he sometimes makes assertions that are clearly contradicted by the text. It raises the troubling possibility that what seemed like Cerebus’s literary quality may only have been so much projection on the part of its readers. What’s more likely is that Sim, like a lot of artists, is less than fully conscious of what he’s doing and is the last person who should be consulted about the meaning of his own work.

And of course, Joe McCulloch is here with the latest installment of This Week in Comics—this time taking a detour to study José Ortiz and Bruce Bezaire (I've never heard of him either).

Elsewhere:

After a year's hiatus, Brian Chippendale returns with superhero comics analysis. This time, he's mostly worried about renumbering, and the X-Men.

Douglas Wolk writes about the iPad's possible threat to the print comics market's bottom line for Wired.

Journal reviewer Tucker Stone, Abhay Khosla, and a bunch of the other writers at the Savage Critics are discussing the big "summer events" at Marvel and DC.

Somewhere in your internet browsing recently, you probably came across the story about medical researchers counting the number of head injuries found in Asterix. And then, if you're anything like me, you probably thought, that's kind of a stupid thing to count for a medical study... could there possibly be a legitimate scientific reason to do that? Then you started thinking about what you'd get for lunch. Anyway, it turns out that me and you aren't the only ones to doubt that medical paper's importance. One guy's even angry about it.

Welcome back. It's summer, things are slow. My sleeping patterns are changing. And thus we bring you some fresh content.

We lead off today with Warren Bernard's epic tale of a 1917 baseball game played in Chicago by some of the world's greatest cartoonists:

The “home team” for this game was deemed to be the Chicago Herald. Pitching for the home team was a young, raw talent (both baseball and cartoon-wise), 22-year-old Elsie Crisler Segar. Segar joined the Herald staff a few years prior to the game, following an introduction by the famed Richard Outcault. In March 1916, he began his run as the cartoonist for Charlie Chaplin’s Comic Capers, the strip by which the audience at the game would have recognized his name. In 1917, he was two years away from starting Thimble Theater and a dozen years out from creating his character masterpiece, Popeye.

There are a trillion amazing things about Warren's discovery (and, as far as we know, it really is his discovery -- this game has gone unmentioned): First, cartoonists once played baseball. Second, it says a lot about the lives these guys led in relation to the public -- they were actually celebrities in a sense. Third: Holy shit, Frank King and E.C. Segar played baseball together. Anyhow, besides this amazing bit of archeology, Warren is the co-author of the upcoming book Drawing Power: A Compendium of Cartoon Advertising, and Mail Order Geniuses, covering the old correspondence courses. He's also the executive director of SPX. That Warren: A man of many talents.

And Frank Santoro manages to squeeze in his third color workbook between traveling and exhibiting and everything else.

And elsewhere:

I, like everyone else, love these short self-interviews by Kim Thompson. Here's one on an upcoming Tardi book.

Finally, Myron Fass, the much maligned maniac behind some of our goriest, gnarliest horror comics, also made some pretty good ones himself.

First off, no Dapper Dan this morning. Sorry folks. I know a lot of you were hoping he would tell you whether or not the new cinematic superhero extravaganza was worth watching, but somehow the publicity department neglected to send him screening information. (I wonder why?) So you'll have to make up your own mind.

But here's another comics related film worth watching. I'd seen links to it going around all week, but didn't think the concept (Ken Burns meets the history of comics) sounded very promising—or at least I thought what it promised was not the kind of humor I'm interested in. But after Jeet e-mailed it to me last night, I finally took the plunge and watched it, and it's pretty funny. (TCJ.com columnist R.C. Harvey is a prominent figure.)

Today on the website, Kristy Valenti reviews Jess Fink's Chester 5000 XYV. It's an, um, erotic robot comic book.

Frank Santoro rules.

Jeet Heer reminded me of a quite nice short profile he wrote in 2004 about John Gallant, Seth's late father.

Not comics: For the Walrus, Jeet has also written an appreciation of media theorist Marshall McLuhan, with a special emphasis on the man's Catholicism.

I never would have guessed that Marjane Satrapi was such a big Sin City fan!

Patricia Mainardi writes about the transition between popular prints and early comics here. (via)

The New York Times is apparently planning to start publishing comics again soon.

And an argument that cartoonists write the best culture diaries. (Don't say it.)

Oh well, ok, it's Thursday.

On the site today:

The third and final part of Amy Poodle's epic study, Hauntology and the Invisibles. A taste:

Over the course of these essays I've talked about how The Invisibles returns time and time again to the metaphor of things lurking on the outside as a stand in for the denied and forgotten in our own lives and how these things, while alarming in the first instance, can't be ignored because they give shape to our world.

And elsewhere, internet fiends:

-In case you somehow missed it, Life Magazine has a photo history of Mad on its site. Awfully fun stuff.

-Here's a fine, slightly, but lovably, awkward Atom-age SF British comic strip. Those elements can only add up to something worth viewing.

-Over on my own PictureBox, Beth Kleber has posted a fine appreciation of West covers by the great James McMullan, an illustrator who, while not in comics, has taught many a cartoonist, and whose evocative sense of line and color should be an inspiration to anyone drawing.

-Can I ever have too much Steranko? No, I cannot.

-I don't entirely understand this, but this blog will chronicle one man's recreations of Miller/Janson Daredevil comics, along with commentary. I will check that out again for the sheer obsessiveness of it.

-I love reading comics gossip of bygone days and Greg Theakston's new blog is no exception.

-And finally, fans of Jacky's Diary (featured in Art Out of Time) should be sure to check out the new Alter Ego, which has the first part of an interview with Jack Mendelsohn, whose comics career has run the gamut from anonymous funny animal work to his own strip to... much more.

Today we introduce a new column, Mad About Music: My Life in Records, which is more or less what it sounds like. The surprising part is its author, one of the greatest working cartoonists alive, Kim Deitch. This should take some unexpected twists... First installment here.

Also, we have a review of Sam Kieth's Arkham Asylum: Madness, written by a new reviewer, Nicholas Gazin. You may know him from his regular comics column in Vice.

We have missed sending you to many, many links lately. Here are a few of them.

The Paris Review stole our concept! (Don't say it.)

Rob Clough supplements his TCJ 301 article on the Center for Cartoon Studies with a couple of online spinoff pieces on visiting artist Eddie Campbell, and some of the school's more offbeat advisors.

Marc Sobel makes a case for Emmanuel Guibert's The Photographer.

James Romberger makes a case for the really late Jack Kirby stuff. I love the man's late work, but this is around when I start to lose interest.

If you follow all the links in a typical Mindless Ones blog post, you can lose days of your life. So beware this one on Mark Millar.

They also have an interview with Chris Burnham, a new superhero artist whose work is actually worth seeking out.

Michel Fiffe is an under-appreciated comics blogger. This is funny.

I haven't read this whole Chris Claremont interview yet, but I like anecdotes that include Al Jaffee and Stan Lee.

We've barely begun to get good critical work done on Harvey Pekar.

The skeptic PZ Myers recaps a recent Alan Moore appearance at the Cheltenham Science Festival, in which Moore explained his views on magic to a group of scientists. Essential for Moorologists. (via)

Finally, two convention reports from this year's HeroesCon, one from Shannon Smith, and another from former organizer Dustin Harbin. I've only been to one of the HeroesCons, but it was one of my favorites, and I like keeping up with the event's evolution.

Finally, this doesn't sound like a good idea, but somehow I doubt it will happen. Dapper Dan is already contacting publicists.

Today on the site:

Richard Gehr returns with his third installment of Know Your New Yorker Cartoonists, this time with the great Roz Chast. If you haven't been following Richard's journeys into New Yorker country, you better catch up! It's best ride. Next up is Lee Lorenz.

And elsewhere, in case you missed it:

-Over on Daniel Best's blog he has the filing papers for a since-closed 2004 lawsuit by Carmine Infantino, claiming ownership over some characters. The most interesting aspect in the post is a letter from fellow old pro (and now deceased) Mike Esposito. All these lawsuits, all these claims. All the hoopla around the relaunched DC, in all its silliness, just makes me think about lawsuits.

-Speaking of which, Tom Spurgeon interviewed Archie's Jon Goldwater on Sunday about the publishing company's new initiatives.

-And finally, David Apatoff asks if it's OK to like pulp art. I'm going to give this one an enthusiastic yes.

Welcome to the working week. The rolling wave of previews from our long-awaited issue 301 continue this morning, with an excerpt from a conversation between the legendary Mad and Humbug artist Al Jaffee and the Tales to Thrizzle cartoonist and funniest man on Twitter Michael Kupperman. Gary Groth moderates.

Also on tap this morning, TCJ.com's Star Reporter Sean Rogers reviews the new Jim Woodring graphic novel, Congress of the Animals. Here's the first paragraph:

Have we ever been asked to actually root for Frank before? As the star attraction in Jim Woodring’s oddball menagerie, the purple-furred, minstrel-gloved naïf is usually just a little shit. Whether he’s stabbing the craven Manhog in the ear or apprenticing himself to the diabolical Whim, Frank is often little more than a dastard, a rogue, a loafer with a blank stare. Despite the occasional glimmer of fellow-feeling, Frank pursues his desires and exacts his revenge with few pangs of conscience and little concern for the future. Strange, then, that with Congress of the Animals, Frank has for once become our hero, our champion, our semblable.

If you were on the site this weekend, then you already saw Frank Santoro turned in one of his inimitable and highly entertaining travel reports, this time documenting his time visiting Kevin Huizenga, Dan Zettwoch, Ted May, and Sacha Mardou in St. Louis. As is Frank's wont, the piece also includes an elegy to the pre-internet minicomics world, a behind-the-scenes glimpse at art methods behind Huizenga's new Ganges issue, and a seemingly unending stream of recommendations for comics and art tools. In other words, it's a good one.

Last Friday, we invited 4CP's John "The Scan Master" Hilgart to provide our daily blog post—you read that, right?—and so it falls to me to make sure you didn't miss the fifth entry of Michael DeForge's Cartoonist's Diary, this time with Risograph images. Thanks, Michael!

Also on Friday, in easily one of the best essays I've read on Chester Brown's Paying for It written thus far—well worth checking out even if you're sick of hearing about that book—Ken Parille splits himself into three and argues amongst himselves. You kind of have to read it to understand.

Michael DeForge is back again this morning (or the Michael DeForge from March is, anyway), this time with a look at a Toronto-based psychoanalytic group, the kind they don't make 'em like anymore.

Also, the indefatigable Rob Clough reviews the latest volume of Joann Sfar and Louis Trondheim's Dungeon Monstres.

Elsewhere:

*When I saw who was involved with the Paying for It critical roundtable over at the Savage Critics (part one, part two), I got pretty excited. Up to this point, it's been a lot more dismissive of Brown's work than most reviews have been, and the participants are perhaps just a bit too in sync in their views (at least so far) for this to be quite as much fun as roundtables sometimes can be.

Based solely on the subject matter, I expected there to be a lot more angry denunciations of this book than have appeared so far. Responses have been unusually measured in general. I also expected at least a few reviews to be entirely positive, extolling Brown's politics as obviously correct, and so far I haven't read any at all. They've got to be somewhere right? On a libertarian blog somewhere, or a prostitution website?

*Seth's father, who wrote the memoir Bannock, Beans, and Black Tea, has passed away, and the cartoonist wrote a tribute to him on the D&Q site.

*You should really look at these excerpts from Roy Crane's scrapbook, which also includes working notes and layouts for a strip he was developing in 1977.

*The great Arnold Roth has started a blog.

*Kim Thompson and translator Jenna Allen talk Gil Jordan, Private Detective. I am very interested in reading this book.

*Via Tom Spurgeon, a pretty great message-board appearance from Walt Simonson, who shows up to respond to a poster's complaints about his Thor run.

*Matt Thorn does some tour-guide work regarding Takako Shimura’s new web comic.

*For lettering and design obsessives: D. B. Dowd talks wordmarks.

Michael DeForge returns, with another diary entry from back in March. This is his punishment for being punctual.

And Joe "Jog" McCulloch offers his usual Tuesday morning installment covering the week in new comics. This time around, he also takes the time to slaver over an obscure manga find he stole at a church-basement sale.

In our Archive section, we've resurrected Michael Dean's cogent 2002 report on the battle for Jack Kirby's Marvel art. This is important history, and important context for the interview we published a couple weeks ago.

*Elsewhere, since I indulged in a bit of doom n' gloom on the blog last week regarding DC's digital-strategy announcement, it probably behooves me to mention that DC has since announced the price point they will be setting for new comics. (The DCU Source site seems to be down for some reason this morning, but you can read about it secondhand here.) Basically, they plan to sell digital comics for $2 or $3, the same prices as their print comics. Last week, I suggested that same-day digital sales would likely cannibalize the direct market, but I doubt too much of that will go on at this price point. I also doubt that DC will maintain this price point forever, but until they change it, this isn't quite as apocalyptic a deal as I made it out to be.

*Fan favorite comics blog Dial B for Blog returned this week.

*Paging Joe "World's Biggest Smurfs Fan" McCulloch: Your little blue friends are being attacked by French academics for their political system.

[Antoine Buéno] points out that the Smurfs live in a world where private initiative is rarely rewarded, where meals are all taken together in a communal room, where there is one leader and where the Smurfs rarely leave their small country.

"Does that not remind you of anything? A political dictatorship, for example?" asks Buéno, going on to compare the Smurfs' world to a totalitarian utopia reminiscent of Stalinist communism (Papa wears a red outfit and resembles Stalin, while Brainy is similar to Trotsky) and nazism (the character of the Smurfs' enemy Gargamel is an antisemitic caricature of a Jew, he proposes).

Actually, as that link in Jog's name will indicate, some of this analysis is old news, but you've got to generate media hype for a new movie somehow...

*Finally, Grant Morrison obsessives will garner much material for future comic-book annotations in this genuinely fascinating biography of his late political activist father, Walter Morrison. [via]

That's right, I'm continuing my pointless quest to see every super hero movie this summer. So no links today. And anyway, what would you want to know? The sky is falling, so let's go watch the real reason Marvel and DC keep publishing comics. Tuesday night I made Tim come with me to see a preview of X-Men: First Class because Dapper Dan sees these movies so you won't have to!

As you may know, this installment in the X saga is a prequel. Or a pre-boot. Whatever, it takes places in the early 1960s and shows us young Magneto and Professor X becoming the mutants that they are later on. It also introduces a ton of characters for, I assume, future sequels. What at first seems like it might be a kinda cute movie about two opposing mutants set in the groovy 1960s (by the way, the '60s stuff is done so badly that you gotta wonder if anyone even bothered to try google images or something. It's all mini-skirts and turtlenecks, but none of the visual inspiration, which is kind of a shame. In other words, there's no style in this thing.) just expands and expands like a checklist: The Holocaust, the Cuban Missile Crisis; go-go dancing; the CIA; The origin of Cerebro; the origin of the fancy plane; the origin of the Mansion; the origin of Magneto's helmet; the origin of the costumes. I'm almost surprised they didn't throw in a quick lesson on human reproduction ... wait, they basically do! And then all around these bits there are submarines and planes and missiles and Russian hideouts and even a scene in a bar in Argentina that seems like a direct homage (too soon?) to Inglourious Basterds. Oh man, it's endless.

It balloons so much that we even get an A-Team-esque (lord of prose forgive me for that) split screens of mutants training and high-fiving, frequent cuts to an enormous map of the world with cute little missile and tank symbols assembled to show the Cold War positions, and even this scene, which reminds me of the 1960s Batman TV show:

Yes, that's a guy in red make-up named Azazel, a la the TV show Angel, and poor January Jones, absolutely wooden as Emma Frost, steering a submarine. There are lots of shots of them steering a submarine. Hilarious. Couldn't Sebastian Shaw hire qualified submarine people? Like so much of the movie, it's incredibly goofy, but not intentionally. I mean, I wish it had been goofy and fun, but there's too much "Mutant and proud" talk and all together too much on the "tragic" bro-mance between Professor X and Magneto to really make it all together tongue-in-cheek.

There are some requisite crises, but there's no time to actually focus on anything because the director, Matthew Vaughn, keeps moving us from origin/set-piece/set-up to another. For example, the three images below, all shot the same way, recur throughout the film: Two people talking earnestly to each other. This gets old, since the dialogue is so cheesy.

Matthew Vaughn and co. just couldn't decide where to focus, and so the focus is nil. Couch talking to missile launching to beer drinking, all played the same, with no sense hierarchy. Just endless stuff thrown at us.

It's funny, at least the Iron Man-model films, including Thor, as well as the first two X-Men films, have a clear dramatic arc and a central narrative, but here there's just factoids. X-Men: First Class might be fun for trivia buffs, or if you have a macabre interest in "spot the swipes" but for the rest of us it's a bit of a chore. But, I will say I was relieved to note that I didn't spot a Stan Lee appearance. Tim says he will probably pop up in Green Lantern. Here's hoping! See you next time, faithful readers.

Good morning, boys and girls. I'm filling in for Dapper Dan this morning, as he's busy prepping a review of the latest superhero movie extravaganza. I guess he's doing to do this all summer...

Today on the site, Chris Mautner interviews Leslie Stein, the young cartoonist behind the recently released Eye of the Majestic Creature.

In other news, I don't think I can bear to read or write any more about the DC renumbering/digital announcement, but it's probably worth noting that Dark Horse has released a few details of their new digital strategy, which is clearly intended to appear more direct-market-friendly.

Other than that, there are a lot of artist interviews and profiles this week.

First, a Gary Panter video interview with French Vogue!

TCJ.com contributor Matthias Wivel has posted a 2004 Louis Riel-era interview with Chester Brown, which has never previously appeared in English.

There are two recent Ivan Brunetti pieces going around, one an excellent profile from the Chicago Tribune, the other an audio interview with someone named "Mr. Media."

I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but Tom Spurgeon posted a long, sure-to-be-worthwhile conversation with Ed Brubaker on Sunday.

Also, in big news that didn't make as much of a splash as I would have expected (maybe some magic spell fogged the public consciousness): The real life alter ego of Doctor Strange was revealed last week.

Finally, the 2011 Reuben Award winners were announced this weekend. Congratulations to TCJ.com diarist Joyce Farmer for winning the graphic novel award. Alan Gardner rounds up info on the event here.

This morning we have an exclusive preview of Joe Simon and Jack Kirby's Fighting American. As Dan writes in his introduction to the excerpt, Fighting American was "Simon and Kirby’s Cold War parody of their own Captain America, in which they still had some stake—though how much, and when they realized that, is a little unclear."

And Joe McCulloch has his report on the week in comics, as always. Despite the Memorial Day holiday, comics shops should be selling new titles today, but some stores may be waiting until tomorrow.

This is potentially a very big deal, and all of the usual suspects have commentary on the announcement. Tom Spurgeon's initial reaction: "This sounds completely idiotic." The prominent retailer (and one of Spurgeon's frequent debate opponents) Brian Hibbs, on the other hand, believes that it is "FUCKING insane." Hibbs doubts that the market can handle a move of this magnitude in the current economy. Fellow retailer Mike Sterling is similarly worried about the impact, but cautions that it is "a bit early to enter panic mode." Tim O'Neil is organizing drinking games.

And there's a lot more of course. I'll just point out a few landmarks of possible interest. JK Parkin at Robot 6 wraps things up here. TCJ columnist Sean T. Collins writes about the pros and cons, and says that "the most important question to [him] is 'Will this yield more good comics?'" [My guess: not likely.] Jim Smith ponders the same question. The Beat collects various creators' reactions on Twitter here, and an updated roundup of media speculation here. Elsewhere, Graeme McMillan catches a particularly pointed tweet from Brian Michael Bendis. That's probably enough to get you started. I am sure there will be further updates and discussion in all of the normal places, so if you want to spend a lot of time thinking and arguing about the comic book business, the next few days are going to be heaven for you.

I don't make any claims for myself as an industry analyst, but to my thinking, the "historic renumbering" of DC's superhero titles (which seems to have garnered the lion's share of commentary) isn't nearly as big a deal in the long run as the announcement that DC will be selling all of the titles digitally on the same date as their print publication. It is hard to believe that this isn't going to be a huge blow to the direct market's sales. On the other hand, this development has seemed more or less inevitable for a few years now, and while people may not have expected the switch to day-and-date digital to happen this summer, everyone knew it was coming eventually. I guess I'd say to you that if you really like your local comic store, now is the time to frequent it -- before it goes the way of your favorite local record shop.

But I'd like to be wrong.

This morning on the site we have Jeet Heer's interview with the important animator and cartoonist, R. O. Blechman.

But before you get to that, there's some important news on the print front for the Journal, namely, that the legendarily elusive issue 301 is finally about to ship, and is available for pre-order now. As I've actually held a copy in my own hands, I can vouch for the physical existence of the issue. Very soon, you will see for yourself. Here's a video with more proof:

And here's some interior photos.

Elsewhere:

The late, great Bill Blackbeard wrote a memoir of his experiences with comic-strip preservation in 2003 for the International Journal of Comic Art, which has just republished it.

In a much-linked piece for the Guardian, the political cartoonist Steve Bell reflects on his own thirty-year career with the paper.

And here's a video for that:

In response to to Frank Santoro's many writings on color, Ed Piskor posts an old-school color chart.