This morning, we have the first entry from Tessa Brunton's week here at the helm of the Cartoonist's Diary column. Today, she rests up for (and worries about) a trip to Disneyland.
And we also have Paul Tumey's review of the new collection of WWII-era Superman newspaper strips. Here's an excerpt:
The Sunday newspaper comics collected in the handsome new IDW collection, Superman: The Golden Age Sundays 1943-1946, mostly deal with Superman’s involvement in World War Two, and chart not only the war years of the classic newspaper comic, but also the inevitable (and entertaining) trivializing of the Superman concept that would lead to a 1945 comic book cover in which the Man of Steel used his super breath to defrost Lois Lane’s refrigerator.
The problem was that, in the four-color world of the 1943 Sunday newspaper comic, Supes could conclude World War II in a single strip, but the war would still rage on in reality – and the fantasy would be broken. In fact, Superman did end the war in 1940 (fictionally speaking), in a two-page story that appeared in the February 27, 1940 issue of Look Magazine, in which he scooped up Hitler and Stalin and turned them over to the League of Nations. (This feature was created nearly two years before American entered the war and it shows Hitler and Stalin on the same side. Germany violated a pact with Russia in 1941 and Stalin joined the allies.) This Superman story, however, was only a hypothetical fantasy-within-a-fantasy story (the first of many to come) -- and therefore had no lasting impact on the actual Superman universe.
Elsewhere:
—News. Calvin Reid at Publishers Weekly has more on the Amazon/comiXology deal. Rob Salkowitz has more analysis.
Ulli Lust and Gene Luen Yang were the big comics-related winners at this year's Los Angeles Times Book Award.
—Interviews. Book designer Jacob Covey talks about the Popeye books. Comics Alliance talks to editor Spike Trotman about her extremely successful Kickstarter for the porn comics anthology Smut Peddler 2. CBR talks to Gene Luen Yang.
—Reviews & Commentary. Tom Spurgeon recommends ten old comics books that are cheap on eBay. Rob Clough reviews Vehlmann & Kerascoet's Beautiful Darkness.
Sean Michael Robinson details his own abortive attempt to create a graphic novel.
—Spending Opportunities. The Doug Wright Awards have launched a Kickstarter. Conundrum Press has announced its fall lineup. Ron Regé Jr. has a new online store.
