I will be on my way to St. Louis as your read this. I'm lecturing and doing critiques, etc., at my alma mater, Washington University, and also spending some time at The Modern Graphic History Library looking at Al Parker, Robert Weaver, and other greats of 20th century illustration. Plus, Kevin Huizenga and I will be embarking on a secret historical mission deep in the county. Exciting!
But you don't care about me. What you care about is that I remind you again (until we get our FAQ page online) about our spiffy new comments policy. We realize there is no right fit for everyone, but we're reading your comments and discussing it all -- we'd like to maintain what we have, with these rules in place, for a little while. If we need to make changes, we certainly will. Thank you all for your interest.
And you also care about links. Glorious, highlighted links!
At the top of my list is Tom Spurgeon's eloquent case for voting Bill Blackbeard into the Eisner Hall of Fame. Without Blackbeard, comic strip history as we know it would be greatly impoverished. He pioneered the collecting and archiving of newspaper strips by literally driving a truck around North America and grabbing newspapers before libraries threw them out. His holdings supplied the bulk of the material we all now write about (and as Spurgeon noted, his generosity was unparalleled). Plus, his Smithsonian Anthology remains a cornerstone not just of comic strip culture but of visual culture in general. So, this is one time when it really matters. Give the man his due.
Via Jeet comes this blog post about the discovery of a previously unknown George Herriman strip that may well be his very first.
Some historical treasures to imbibe courtesy of Ger Apeldoorn: Mort Meskin's Vigilante and the always amazing Italian cartoonist Jaccovetti.
Sean T. Collins reports on a good ol' fashioned DC vs. Marvel war of words.
Here's a semi-revealing post on Comets Comets from the fake CF twitter guy, recounting his travails somewhat obliquely. Ironically, this matches nicely with a New Yorker article this week on a guy named Dan Bejar who imitated the musician Dan Bejar. Fake CF didn't share CF's name, but... well, fakery and imitations -- always more enlightening for the imitator than the subject of the "experiment".
And finally, TCJ contributors Tucker Stone and Joe McCulloch present: Black Swan. Not comics, unless you count Darren Aranofsky's love of the medium and his killer collection of Hernandez Bros. art.
