Those of you who aren't American may not know that the United States has a day set aside every year for its citizens to celebrate "the Presidents." That national holiday was yesterday, and Dan and I spent it in the approved fashion. (I visited the portraits gallery in the new American wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and inspected the Gilbert Stuarts, and Dan set out his collection of memorial plates from the Franklin Mint.) This is why there was no new content up. But everything is back on track now.
Today, as every Tuesday, Joe McCulloch shares his thoughts on the most interesting-sounding new comics of the week.
Frank Santoro has the final installment of his West Coast tour diary—this time hitting Fantagraphics home territory and including cameos from many Journal fan favorites, as well as a stop in Vancouver to visit Brandon Graham and Inkstuds host Robin McConnell. By the way, this is the final week to sign up for Frank's upcoming cartoonists' correspondence course—head this way if you're interested.
Speaking of Journal contributors, Sean T. Collins has recent reviews of Optic Nerve 12 and Onward to Our Noble Deaths. And Tucker Stone has his usual round-up of comics reviews. I like how he's been including more older titles in his column recently—this time, he features Plastic Man and Lone Wolf & Cub.
Eddie Campbell was interviewed on video at Angoulême, and, later on his blog, discovered a couple secret "drawing references" used by Sheldon Modoff for his Batman comics.
Tom Spurgeon worries about the long-term (and short-term) financial health of the comics field and its participants, and Bryan Munn ponders previous attempts at unionization within comics, and the possibility of starting a new union now. (Those are the two must-read non-TCJ posts of today, I'd say, if you're going to pick and choose.)
At the fairly new website Weird Fiction Review, Edward Gauvin compares David B.'s Littlest Pirate King with the prose story that inspired it, Pierre Mac Orlan’s “Roi Rose”.
Finally, Robert Crumb is in India, and Rodrigo Baeza has gathered links to local news coverage worth reading.
