Quote Of The Week
"SDCC is still a great convention for shopping for original comic art, or old comic books, or new comics, or meeting small press and mini-comic creators, or meeting old favorite creators or watching them talk, or seeing the trade show megaofferings of the big companies; it's still all those things it ever was, plus some more, and more people know about it and are trying to enjoy it. In some respects this is counterproductive, making it a little harder for all of us to enjoy what we came there for; but to condemn SDCC for its success is an unlovely, slam the door behind me mentality not worth endorsing." -- Brian Doherty
*****
today's cover is from the 1940s-1950s mainstream comics publisher Avon
Breaking: Judge In Gaiman/McFarlane Case Terms Dark Ages Spawn, Domina And Tiffany As Derivative
The linked-to article is a hoot. If you haven't been following this, it's basically the latest paragraph in the latest chapter in the long-running Todd McFarlane/Neil Gaiman dispute over characters Gaiman created and McFarlane made use of in his combination comics/toy empire. Gaiman won the initial dispute over the initial set of characters, but then McFarlane introduced characters that seemed a lot like those characters -- too much, the judge now says. There will likely be 18 billion more days in court before this is all done, but maybe McFarlane will surprise us.
Comics Reporter Hero: Anton Ego
Great pen name, impeccably dressed, and appropriately intimidating, Anton Ego inspires most for his great film moment where a taste of ratatouille launches him back in time. It's a scene that could belong to any comics critic holding in his hands the latest title in a series or featuring a character hardwired into his youth.
MEMRI On Erdogan-Era Turkish Comics The Middle East Media Research Institute has a lengthy yet mostly easy-to-follow article on the noxious practice of Turkish politicians using that country's courts to seek action against political cartoonists. They mention the most powerful person who has pursued (and won) legal action against cartoonists, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and his lawsuits because of the deep mental anguish he's felt after being portrayed as some sort of animal. Thankfully, none of the suits seems to have greatly reduced the flood of satirical and pointedly political material coming out in various Turkish publications. I can't say enough laudatory things about cartoonists who put themselves at risk for principle and to practice what should be a fundamental right to making one's opinion known.
Random Comics News Story Round-Up
* FPI sorts out the Guy Delisle blog situation. It's not a very dramatic situation, but you get to look at Guy Delisle art so it's all good.
* I would imagine that if you were to follow only one link today, you might want to make it to this post featuring a letter Charles Schulz sent to Walt Kelly in 1954. If you have time for a bunch of posts, all of the links that Chris Butcher provides today are to fresh, off-the-beaten-path web locations.
* the comics historian and pride of Champaign, Illinois RC Harvey talks about death in comic strips, bringing into the conversation Bill Blackbeard's argument that death made adventure strips possible.
* so apparently the Frank Miller Batman vs. Al Qaeda project Batman: Holy Terrorwill feature a Batman-like character and come out from another publisher. I don't mind what that does to the comic, but I know I'm going to be sick of reading analysis that focuses on that character really being Batman.
* I like industry super-veteran Eric Reynolds' post about Comic-Con International so much I'm pulling it out here as well as featuring it in the Collective Memory post. It's very calm, very rational, very Reynolds.
Random Comics News Story Round-Up
* sorry about the erratic posting recently; I've been on vacation. Okay, not really. That's an awesome-looking place, though.
* Johanna Draper Carlson is first out of the gate with an analysis of the difficulties facing the probably-about-to-be-euthanized Friends Of Lulu advocacy organization.
* not comics: the hobby business and news analysis site ICv2.com brings word of various licensing announcements for Phil Foglio's Girl Genius property, another seeming success story for the open initial release model made possible by the Internet.
* not comics: I think the language of this post about Top Cow teaming with a film company to develop a property will become commonplace as more and more comics companies contribute to the development end of things.
* I quite enjoyed the idea behind this essay from Michael Cavna, connecting John Callahan to Harvey Pekar as favorite-son cartoonists linked to specific places.
* the funny thing about Therese O'Neill's article on graphic novels for people who hate comics is that as much as I like the books she recommends, the one I want to read most is the imaginary bad one she describes in the first paragraph. It sounds awesome.
* finally, several of you sent along this Wil Wheaton essay about Comic-Con from over at Techland. He has more of an investment in nerd culture as its own thing than I do, but it's an intriguing point of view.
Turks Launch Handala Contest
I tell this story a lot and probably have on this blog as well: when I got my first job working for a newspaper, I was assigned to the sports department and given the stats page. My first night I ran the results of what the dropped-off letter told me was the state karate championships. I felt good about this choice until seven days when I got another list of results for that weekend's state karate championships. I soon found out there was an event carrying that name and claim just about every other weekend. I always think of the 27 Indiana State Karate Championships when I read about International Cartooning Contests, which baffle me for their frequency and for the fact they always honor cartoonists I've never heard of.
Kodansha Fined Modest Amount For Using Man's Image In MangaAcc According to a short report at Anime News Network, the Tokyo District Court ruled that the Zero-sen manga created by Atsushi Kase violated a man's wrights by using his likeness without permission. The publisher was fined a little over $6K. At issue was the use of a fashion magazine photograph featuring the plaintiff. That image will be replaced in any and all future publications featuring that story.
* here are my final thoughts on Comic-Con International 2010. I could stew on these for days and potentially come up with something a bit better, but in the spirit of the late Harvey Pekar I'm going to get it down on paper and deal with the consequences then.
* I think my lingering memory from Comic-Con International 2010 will be the cast of Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World on stage to present the first three Eisner Awards. The tiny men and women of that talented movie ensemble -- let's be honest, Brandon Routh was the only one who appeared as if he could ride all the rides at Disney World -- could not have looked less like they wanted to be there. Routh and a few cast members most people in the audience never heard of did the actual card reading and envelope opening. The rest of the actors stood there with blank stares on their faces -- most memorably the well-placed-for-video Jason Schwartzman. The actors left quickly, no doubt to parties of the kind popular mainstream comics writers have in recent years complained to me the Eisners kept them from attending. Now, I don't think I would have thought about it again, but afterward and for the next couple of days, about a dozen total comics people that were in attendance groused in my direction that the more popular cast members (basically Schwartzman and Michael Cera) ceding card-reading duties to others when the Eisner audience wanted to see them and not the lesser-known cast members was somehow disrespectful. That's an idea that even if true carries its own potentially ugly baggage about the way people should behave towards comics, people that don't have the same investment as the person shooting resentment their way. So it wasn't a flattering encounter on either side, although I think it was a telling one. No one needs to be automatically happy that a group of film actors are taking a moment to support a creator whose work they've interpreted (and have a PR moment besides); no one needs to be automatically upset if in doing so that group of performers doesn't act the way one imagines they should.
* CCI 2010 was a strange show. It was a pleasant one, with several surprises, but it was odd. I had a fantastic time, but I sense that others didn't, and that things are slipping in directions that may vastly reduce the value the show has for me and others like me.
* so what was the source of the show's underlying, odd feel? I know that blanket pronouncements are a dime a dozen with these events, so I apologize for what's about to happen, but I have to say that it simply felt to me like the energy shifted to the movie end of things to the point it permeated the show experience even if one has no interest in movies. I say this as a guy whose last movie panel was 10 years ago when I stopped to tie my shoes in one, and as someone who reports almost solely on comics stuff when he's on site. For the first time at Comic-Con in 16 years, I felt surrounded by the film and television industries. I felt like I was attending the comics portion of their show. When I left for the day I felt like the film and television tracks had set the agenda. If I were to casually communicate to anyone who might ask via e-mail how I spent my day, I explained it to them in terms of pushing away from the other end of the exhibition hall rather than embracing the one I love. There are a lot of reasons that film and TV has become so dominant there. It's not just proportion. So many comics companies are movie companies now, first and foremost; others act that way for a long weekend; articles speak solely in cinematic terms. The shift might be best seen in the comics coverage in mainstream sources, both in the pity fuck nature of a lot of it and the fact that most of the comics stories end up being movie and television stories, too. Chew isn't a surprise publishing hit, it's a surprise publishing hit with a fast-track option. The Walking Dead isn't the series that's kept a lot of serial comics buying alive in comics shops and has made a superstar comics writer of Robert Kirkman, it's AMC's The Walking Dead. And so on. Film and television has become the medium through which we understand and communicate the cultural potency of things that aren't film and television, and that can't be healthy.
* the tendency to think in terms of other media speaks to a recurring theme in many of my conversations with comics folk. A lot of people are worried about the comics industry's ongoing fade. I hear this even from those for whom comics is an industry that hasn't served them particularly well. One cartoonist told me that he wants more than anything in the world to be able to sell comics. Not an option on a comic. Not licensing based on a comic. He wants to sell enough comics to be able to make it an ongoing, respectable, self-sustaining concern. Another cartoonist put it even more strongly, saying that if you were using your comic to lead people to buy something else, you were selling that something else, not comics. He was sick of hearing from those who manage to sell t-shirts or prints based on a comic, or a movie option based on a comic's cinematic promise, extolling these admittedly very real achievements as if they were a direct reflection on the comic rather than the t-shirt itself or the value of the license. Now, I'm not sure that argument would hold if you examine it with the bug-eyed scowl of the Internet pseudo-lawyer, and I think there's always going to be some value in selling things near something you create that does reflect on the creation. I also imagine most people who find a mechanism to keep publishing simply don't care if it has two mostly divorced avenues. But you know what? I find making comics for the sake of selling comics a thrilling way to think. Whatever happened to a focus on being able to sell these things? Why have we given that up? Why in the midst of the greatest explosion of excellent comics the art form has ever seen have we been so quick to settle for modest returns and so desperate to look elsewhere for profit?
* that being said, the biggest comics news story of the show in my opinion was not any one individual piece of book news or anything to do directly with movies but the rash of new publishing announcements, new imprints and new lines. I like and respect many of the people involved, but this is a totally ludicrous trend. The existing comics business infrastructure simply can't handle as many more books as seem planned, and the digital market is so woefully under-developed there's almost no chance for something to flower there as of yet. More than ever this is publishing towards a movie deal, towards one hit justifying the industry-weakening and life-unsettling chaff of 100 failures by those whose investment maybe isn't full time and heartfelt, towards plotting an additional and successive goal of a career in mainstream comics where then you can maybe make some money that in reality is one of the world's toughest games of musical chairs. It's madness, and because the infrastructure is skewed due to obsolete Distributor War agreements, these moves don't just have dire consequences in and of themselves but punish everyone, industry-wide. It needs to stop.
* the floor of the show looked mostly the same to me, definitely so from about First Second all the way down to artist's alley. The biggest difference was right past the art comics publishers. There was no anchor area to send people. There was no Comic Relief at all. Bud Plant there at a reduced size from years past. I swear to God this is a true story: Someone walked up to me after the International Graphic Novels panel (Milo Manara, Moto Hagio, Emile Bravo, Stuart and Kathryn Immonen) and said they only had an hour left at the show -- was there one place they could go to buy the books talked about by the panelists, including their own? I had to direct them to a few publisher booths and hope they had time to find everything they wanted. Ugh. Until the digital world operates at a rate of sophistication where at the end of a panel moderators can direct people to a virtual place they can buy all of a panelist's books at a special price arranged for people at that panel, or when con-goers can sit at breakfast at Saturday morning and click a link whereby the books that interested them will be bundled and waiting on the floor, and I think barring economic setbacks that day or something like it will come, the con needs an anchor retailer or three. I hope they will consider finding one and make convincing them to exhibit a priority through any and all of the soft-influence means available to them. If that's not viable, maybe they would grant a temporary license to someone to do a only-exists-at-the-con store with all of the guests' books in it and all the Eisner nominees.
* the crowd never got as bad on the comics end of things as in past year, but people were buying stuff, at least according to my slightly-over-double-digits sample survey and what I've read since the show ended from people like Chuck Rozanski. The comics dealers to whom I spoke seemed a lot less worked up than in years past; there was much less of that feeling where you felt the dealers were hustling to maximize their profits in a way that makes you tense when you're shopping at those booths. I know a couple of people who bought comics early in the convention for what seemed like Sunday prices. One reported that the retailers seemed a lot more flexible in taking a counter-offer than in years past. I love having the convention experience of buying comics, so I hope that this represents a bounce-back year and the various exhibitors with old comics to sell have figured out a strategy to make that work on their behalf.
* on the other hand, three different people I know who buy original, older art complained in almost the exact same words that that particular market is a little overpriced right now. If you ever wanted to buy a Ditko or a Kirby or a Wood, you've hopefully already made this purchase. A couple of folks selling more modern comics art -- like classy Peter Birkemoe at The Beguiling -- reported decent although nowhere near record-breaking business from both new customers and yearly patrons (that may have changed given the floor hours since I asked them that question). I'm sure individual experience varied. I also heard that enough retailers were on hand to buy up remaining stock from a number of publishers who didn't wish to ship a lot of books home, which is always a worry considering how that element of convention business has changed since the days one or two gentlemen would seep through the publishers like someone on the grocery store game show where you keep dumping items into your cart.
* so in other words, between this and the daily reports a mostly positive image of sales floats to the surface: several book sell-outs, several almost book sell-outs, and so on. That's a good sign. As much as Comic-Con has changed in the last few years in a way that makes the marketing end of it difficult to gauge, companies still understand a bottom line, and as long as the trip is even slightly profitable, I can't imagine wholesale bailing out.
* I do feel there is definitely some tentativeness in how the marketing end of it works. I think the broader marketing implications of Comic-Con are easy to figure out and are very real, no matter how hard to measure. I strongly suspect it's good to have a presence at a big show if you can afford it, that it's a further good for relationships with certain talent, and that's it's even an overall positive to have cartoonists representing themselves on panels and meeting press and meeting other cartoonists. I had several people tell me they were reconsidering a cartoonist or making it a bigger point to check out their work after seeing them on a panel or running into them during a signing. Vanessa Davis was someone people kept asking me about, for instance. I don't think a lot of traditional comics fans followed the Tablet comics as closely as they might have a print work. But if you think about it for a second, who wouldn't want to at least try a Gene Yang comic after meeting Gene Yang? That guy's nicer than your memories of your kindergarten teacher. Who wouldn't treat a reading of Carol Tyler's latest with a sense of discovery and respect after hearing her talk in passionate, forthright and funny fashion? Who wouldn't want to pick up Iron Man or Casanova at least once after seeing Matt Fraction play a filthier-mouthed, comics-centric Spalding Gray?
* Fraction's performance piece -- apparently he also did in the same club where Snoop Dogg performed a day later, which is sort of nuts -- reminds me that one thing that was a positive at this show is that we've finally reached a saturation point where more people do something with visuals at their panels than don't. That's not to say that old-school panels can't be great -- Peter Bagge being interviewed by Jason T. Miles was as fun a panel as I saw all weekend, and I always enjoy when Pete swoops down from the Pacific Northwest to remind everyone he's one of the funniest men in comics -- but I think if you're going to have programming take place in the context of the tremendous leeway afforded other industries' panels where you get to routinely lock eyes with beautiful people, it's worth trying things like Seth's oft-performed visual essays from 2009 or Carol Tyler inviting people out on the balcony to talk after her panel or Craig Yoe's post-panel "tea party" or Fraction's performance piece or even the well-honed insult-throwing of the panelists sitting on the Best Of/Worst Of manga hour. I know after WonderCon I personally never want to see dudes in turned-around baseball caps going straight to audience questions ever again. Some people enjoy that kind of thing, of course, but I think panels can be more than a few publishing announcements and the audience being tolerated for the other 47 minutes. Social media is going to drive changes to a lot of panels as that reaches its own saturation point the next few years, but creative solutions between now and then have to be welcome. Comics is the best art form and should have the best panels.
* back to the floor. As far as the big display areas, Marvel's booth was one people talked about a bit. It featured the forthcoming Thor movie's throne of Odin. I guess this was the actual throne from the film set. If you measure booths solely on memorable visual impact, that one was a hit. I didn't know what the hell it was until almost 12 hours after I saw it, but I sure remembered the damn thing. At the same time, there was something slightly sad about it: the reduction of a culturally significant publishing movement into a novelty photo opportunity on the Atlantic City boardwalk. I think people liked it because it was big and gaudy and if you were so inclined you could indulge in the look-at-me self-regard of getting your photo taken on a hit convention set piece. But was it a Comic-Con booth for the ages? No. It doesn't even connect to anything significant from the comics. No one to my knowledge has ever looked back on their childhood and thought, "When I was a kid I dreamed of sitting on Odin's throne" and no kid without serious issues is going to think that leaving next year's movie. I'm leaning towards "it was stupid," even by the relative standards of an event that once offered "half-naked woman under glass." I look forward to DC's giant Sit-Behind Perry White Desk in 2011 and Archie's giant Stand-Behind Pop's Soda Shop counter in 2012.
* by the way, the only thing that keeps me alive when walking to the eastern end of the hall -- the non-comics end, or, as I heard it called, "the popular end" -- is the paralyzing tension between wanting to kill myself and not wanting to die until I kill everyone else in the room first. It can't be helped in the main. That's where the more popular booths are. Spreading out those booths would likely be a disaster on a lot of levels. In the end, there's just no way to screen guests in terms of what they're going to the convention to see. You know what would be nice, though? If the con forbade the use of video screens when the booth doesn't have a space within its borders to watch that screen. Any company that decides to extend its display space into where I have to walk, that's a company I want to see fail.
* speaking of companies I've wanted to see fail, CrossGen is apparently making a comeback. Some of the Disney-owned comics will see new publishing life at their funnybook division, aka the House That Jack Built. This was not the biggest announcement of the show, but it was sort of the funniest. Everything I've said about the cramming of more stuff into a comics market that's already over-saturated with product applies here. Still, I guess that's what's to be expected in this day of corporate synergy. Some days you see a flood of comics people being offered jobs in animation, which is great for those creators. Some days you get more Sigil. Also what struck me is that this counted as an announcement. Is it my imagination, or have the publishing announcements made by the Big Two since they made their big ownership and operation moves a while back been really lame? I don't know that I could pick a single maneuver by either company that seems like an exciting, brand-new direction that couldn't have happened under either old regime.
* a surprising amount of industry chatter within my limited range about the big companies. There's still worry expressed that the move to digital is going to discombobulate how people are paid to make comics, that a lower price point may gut page rates. There was a lot of talk about various big comics companies questioning their commitment to comics shows like CCI. This is something that came up at 2 AM one morning, but isn't the big worry if DC moves to Burbank that the company will start filling up with horrible Hollywood people, socially adept ladder-climbers with an eye on getting into or back into the film side of things and even less of a feel for publishing than the worst of the current crew?
* I don't know if I've mentioned this already, but the best theory I heard about the popularity of big bags is that they play into the desire by many con-goers to embrace the infantile. Being an adult and holding a giant bag is akin to being a child and holding a regular-sized bag: the Lily Tomlin school of embracing one's youth. Given the number of folks well over 40 that looked like they were dressed for recess -- I'm an unkempt slob, but I do manage to wear long pants away from water -- there may be something there.
* let's talk a bit about San Diego the city. First, I want to repeat my statement made during the show that I both appreciate the people of San Diego and the businesses that benefit from Comic-Con putting a best foot forward in order to maybe help keep the show and I also feel terribly, terribly sorry that it's come to that. I have something just short of withering contempt that such a significant portion of the comics community has such a self-confidence problem -- or a just plain mean problem -- that they're somehow delighting in this display of concern over future lost income on the behalf of local businesses. Seriously, does anyone who goes to a Pharma conference get pissy on their blogs for weeks afterwards if they feel the local service staff didn't show enough interest in off-site validation service trends or whatever? I still feel that San Diego hospitality workers are collectively a much better host than Comic-Con attendees are guests. One morning during breakfast I watched two groups of con-goers storm the buffet from which I was eating and inspect it closely, and, well, loudly, in terms of its suitability as a place for them to spend their money. They were acting in a way that should have been left behind in middle-school, just completely unsocialized and rude. Two different groups in the space of 20 minutes. If San Diego does lose the show, there's certainly going to be a lot of anecdotal Pepto-Bismol to soothe the economic sock in the gut.
* maybe I was just looking in the wrong places, but it seemed like there were a lot more homeless closer to the hotels than I've seen in ten years, and lot of storefronts abandoned that were filled just a year or two ago. There were also no cranes in the skyline as was the case five years ago when the city looked like the final wide shot of War Of The Worlds. All of this indicates to me that San Diego is on the 1:00 or 1:30 hand in relation to the high noon of urban renewal they've seen in the last 15 years. Just an observation, don't know if it's true.
* that said, I'm still astonished that con-goers treat 7th avenue like some sort of invisible force field. San Diego has developed a section of downtown that seems to repel convention-goers. I ate in two restaurants a bit east of the main Gaslamp action, both of which had walk-in and sit tables available at 8 PM, neither of which had entrees over $12, and neither of which had another table with what seemed like con-goers sitting at it. The mind boggles, especially when the third longest line I saw the entire weekend was at Richard Walker's Pancake House. Every morning when I walked down seventh and then over to sixth and then finally to fifth I saw multiple parking lots with plenty of places open at 9:30 to 10:00 AM. One parking lot on Sunday at 9:30 AM, located half the distance from the show my old and not very healthy self was walking, had one car in it. It seems to me that downtown San Diego can more than handle the outlying hotels and day-visit parking, and deal with the Comic-Con nighttime crowd, if people will just spread themselves out a bit.
* it may be that I'm just getting old and I'm taking extra delight in being able to sit down, but it seems like the last couple of years the programming has been consistently strong, and stuffed to the brim with watchable events. You can read about the panels I attended in the daily reports. I concluded this was an abundance of riches when I realized that on Saturday, you could spend three hours in the same chair and see talks with Jillian Tamaki, Peter Bagge, and Gabrielle Bell in rapid-fire fashion. That's a good day all by itself. I must have attended parts of 20 panels, no kidding, and I could create a full, awesome day out of ones I missed: Matt Fraction's Sunday spotlight with Bill Hader and his aforementioned performance piece, Keith Knight's spotlight panel, the comic strip reprint panel, the comics publishing panel, the comics criticism panel, the Milo Manara spotlight, the Jack Kirby panel, the ComicsPRO meet-and-greet, this year's Quick Draw with Bil Stout and the Scott McCloud moderated talk with James Sturm about the Center for Cartoon Studies. And that's working from memory.
* one thing that struck me in the panels is how serious so many of the panelists were about making art. Not glum-serious, but lack-of-bullshit, this-is-important-to-me serious. It was a good year for panelists across the comics spectrum that chewed on the questions asked and came up with honest answers. I've seen so many glib and smarmy panels over the years that the earnestness in the air at CCI 2010 was a more than welcome change. There was only one panel I saw that felt contrived and desultory to me, where the participants came across as if they saw the programming schedule and were like, "Ugh. A panel. Well, if I have to." It stuck out like a sore thumb.
* another thought about the convention: one thing I wish attendees and professionals would abandon is automatically blaming the con for things that are clearly the result of their mandate running wild. That's not to say the buck doesn't stop wherever their offices are, but I think there could be some sympathy for simply expanding what you do if people are interested. We're all victims in some way or another of this rapid growth in attendance and attention. I think it's best to keep in mind that the surge is a relatively recent and sudden phenomenon. There's going to be some scrambling. Every year brings with it a new group of solutions and a new set of problems. The shelf date on new ways of conducting business can be extremely limited. For instance, a press thing: a couple of years ago when companies started having events and PR opportunities off-site at hotels, this seemed like the greatest idea in the world to me and my small circle of Fourth Estate pals. You get to take a break from the main show and go to a place where the people you want to learn about have your full attention at the same time they have yours! And yet this year I know a number of my press buddies when asked to trudge off site treated it like an invitation to throw that whole day right in the toilet. There are so many small events to attend and small deadlines to hit that taking the time to go to the W or wherever for a single interview struck many as crazy. The point is, everyone is still adjusting. I know I am.
* by the way, James Sturm pointed this out to me and he's right. Is there any more amusing guest of Comic-Con than King Features' Brendan Burford? He's one of the ten most powerful guys in comics, one of maybe five guys in North America whose interest in you can all by itself make your career. There are people who would climb over their mothers to have five minutes of his time. Plus he's super-nice and smart and funny. But instead of being mobbed or constantly hassled, Burford wanders around the show chatting to people that he knows, picking up a couple of books here and there, seeming to all assembled like another young-looking comics fan with a bemused, tired half-smile on his face. He's like the Don Rosa of comics executives. It's hilarious.
* other than Berke Breathed being convinced that a lot of people adored Bloom County -- he told me that his spotlight panel's crowd was the easiest and most receptive audience he ever had; plus it was standing-room only -- I couldn't really track any strip news beyond Burford saying that Dustin continues to pick up paper and five or six people asking me if I've seen the new Jay Stephens-drawn, Bob Weber Jr.-written strip Oh, Brother. The traffic at the NCS table seemed pretty light, although maybe I stopped by during lean times.
* to take this back to comics, I thought there were a number of intriguing publishing announcements. As much as I'm depressed by the piling on of publishing initiatives to the relative detriment of distribution and sales issues, and as much as the movie-centric focus of so many comics announcements further sends me to bed early to have a good cry, there was good news for those of us that just want awesome comics to read. Fantagraphics winning the Floyd Gottfredson stakes is great news for a lot of reasons, but mostly because when Gottfredson was in his adventure-comics prime that strip killed it for weeks and weeks at a time. Both D+Q announcements they released here I think are promising: I've wanted to see more of that Mimi Pond work for a while now, and Shikeru Mizuki making it to North American shores is, as Chris Butcher points out, huge news. Top Shelf has this near-army of of quality books coming out. Marvel continues employing its deep writers' bench in a variety of ways. Fantagraphics isn't denying they may tackle Franquin after having some success with Jacques Tardi. Abrams is going to do that Someday Funnies book Bob Levin wrote about in the Journal, and is hanging in there with the Carter Family book. It looks like a lot of compelling work to come.
* one thing that may not be public knowledge and that I think is really telling about Comic-Con is that Fantagraphics was thinking about not announcing the Gottfredson books for fear of being lost in an assumed wave of publishing news at the show. Instead of being lost, the Mickey Mouse series was one of the showpiece news items, the kind about which you read supplementary interviews and post-acquisition analysis. It just goes to show you that everyone is still feeling out the way the show works best.
* I'm sure there are other, small memories I'll want to put in this paragraph. Sam Gross of all people came up three times in three different conversations over the weekend. It's not like I minded. I love Sam Gross. I Am Blind And My Dog Is Dead may be one of the greatest collection titles ever. I had two different conversations about there still not being a definitive Trots And Bonnie collection. During one of them a pair of young, talented cartoonists admitted they'd never heard of Shary Flenniken. Someone fix that, please. This was the year I started to be grateful just seeing guys near my own age still working in comics in some capacity. I checked off everyone on my See Them At CCI bingo sheet except Moritat and Paul Sloboda. That said, there was a frightening number I didn't see at all, and others I lost track of halfway through the show like they weren't ever there in the first place. Emile Bravo was gracious, funny, and a fascinating guy to watch hold court. I suspect that of the major international guests Bravo came closest to surviving the convention rather than enjoying it, but he's a total pro. CCI 2010 was the kind of show where a new Kevin Huizenga book is out and it doesn't get mentioned until 5000 words in. Having to take books on the airplane and being forced to pay for a second piece of luggage or an overweight/overstuffed first piece changed more buying habits than I think anyone would care to admit.
* so enough with the con. Bring on the post-con announcements: DC in Burbank, CCI's location starting in 2013, CR's studio move. It should be an intriguing August.
* my personal thanks to all those (including one person in particular) who were so nice and supportive -- a special shout-out to Team CA for being so gracious on Friday night -- and a thank you to my brother Whit for taking most of these photos and a ton of others, besides. The best encounters of the weekend were hearing from smart-seeming people that read and appreciate the site and wanted to tell me so. Thank you. You don't know what an encouragement that kind of thing can be.
* oh, yeah: a guy got stabbed in the face with a pen, too. And in the end, it wasn't all that big of a story. I told you it was an odd year.
*****
photos by Whit and Tom Spurgeon
*****
any additional thoughts on the show will be published in this site's "Four-Color Festival" column
Friends Of Lulu May Start To Dissolve Starting September 2010
I don't have any commentary right away and I think this deserves a full point-by-point examination, but Valerie D'Orazio has come forward on the diminished state of the outreach organization Friends Of Lulu, suggesting that if no one step up to the plate and take it off her hands by September that she will place a pillow over its head and gently apply pressure. I've never been all that big a fan of the organization, but certain folks for whom I have respect have been invested in it at various points in its history, and a last chapter bears watching.
* I don't know Jason Netter and I like both Jimmy Palmiotti and Larry Young, but this interview with Netter about his new, aggressively-scheduled line of graphic novels makes it sound pretty awful from where I sit. Those books are going to have to be super, super good in order to find a place in the currently over-saturated DM and book market, or to drive and then sustain a new market in places like Wal-Mart, but the articles about it keep leading with these broad plans instead of speaking to, you know, content. Does anyone not involved with such a venture really sense that there's this hidden reservoir of awesome graphic novels out there just waiting for a publishing opportunity? Does anyone not involved with such a venture think it likely the books won't look like those in the half of the Image pile that stay in the Quebecor box the longest? I'd love to be proven wrong.
* Michael Cavna profiles Steve Breen, making news for his BP oil cartoon efforts.
* the radio show Snap Judgment talks to a number of creators about the superheroes they created as children. You can do audio or video (or both) with that one. (thx, Jon Adams)
* the series on female literary figures Peter Bagge talked about in San Diego is off to a rousing start. Unless this is a second one, in which case it continues its momentum or something.
* finally, one of the more amusing feuds in comics continues, as Didier Pasamonik and the news clearinghouse ActuaBD.com take a ton of shots at L'Association and JC Menu through coverage of the publishing house's anniversary. Pasamonik uses such elliptical language that it's hard for me to follow him, but the snark comes through. I tend to side with Menu and L'Asso in this particular set of skirmishes, by which I mean every single time, but it's somehow satisfying to know these kinds of rhetorical battles happen in other comics industries.
Zunar Files Suit Against Comics Ban In news that broke across the wires yesterday, we learned that the Malaysian cartoonist Zunar -- the Malaysian citizen known as Zulkifli Anwar Ulhaque -- has sued to lift the ban on his comics publications that were banned under a public order ruling. Zunar claims, with the support of the international free speech communities, that this is an attempt to keep the political conversation those cartoons constitute out of the public eye. In his statement to the press he said he plans to challenge the public order logic on its face, asking the government to point out past riots caused by his cartoons. We wish all support to Zunar in his fight.
Random Comics News Story Round-Up
* Editor Mike Dean's introduction is distracting and silly -- it's not 1983, you can cover multiple stories on-line and many people do -- but an International Blog aggregating service or hosting service or whatever its final shape will be is an awesome idea and exactly the kind of service the Journal should be pursuing and providing. Congrats to the Journal on a ground-breaking venture. I hope it comes off half as good as the one I'm envisioning in my head. Very exciting.
* as I think everyone and their mother suspected, although with all respect to a moderately-sized publisher like Oni and the way one approaches giant print runs these days, the latest and last Scott Pilgrim comic sold out of its initial, 100K print run. I hope every attention is paid to SP as publishing success story, even as that success has become intertwined with anticipation of the movie.
* the comics business news and analysis site ICv2.com has an interview up with David Glanzer that's must reading for industry-heads even if you don't go anywhere near a "Collective Memory." I believe him when he says he thought there would be a decision on 2013 by now. It seems to me that it all comes down to whether or not San Diego steps to the plate, as that seems to me the only part of the story that could still be developing, if you see what I'm saying. I'm unabashedly pro-San Diego, even as I wonder if my opinion should mean anything at all.
* I've been enjoying this list-like series of appreciation posts over at 4thletter!, partly because they're disconnected from the right-now impulse that a lot of comics blogs suffer through, and partly because the opinions expressed are very different than my own -- both the topics selected and how they're analyzed. Here's the latest group of links on comics series: Winter Men, Children Of The Sea, Hellblazer, Battlefields and BPRD.
* finally, Steve Bell writes a very funny short post about all the young cartoonists waiting for him to die, and how he's using that impulse to take a holiday.
The following are notes and observations gathered on the floor of Comic-Con International 2010 in San Diego, California. For immediate reactions to what's going on from hundreds of people, I recommend an appropriate search or multiple such searches on Twitter. For mainstream comics and panel coverage in general -- this being a key event for publishing news announcements -- I recommend Comic Book Resources and then Newsarama. -- Tom Spurgeon
*****
* it's weird to think that there's actually news-cycle pressure to make this the final report on CCI instead of the last daily report; I'm not certain that's a good thing and I suspect that's a bigger shift in perception than anything Comic-Con seeks to do with its branding.
* if you disagree with anything I'm about to write, I may have to stab you in the eye.
* too soon?
* Sunday is kids day, which means a lot of programming focused on children's entertainment properties and a lot of parents holding hands with smaller versions of themselves. I saw a prominent retailer at the train station greeting his family and small child to sweep them over to the show, I'm guessing for the day. It was really adorable. It's not like I'm going to experience a bunch the bulk of the kids' programming, but there were a lot more kids visible at the show for sure, even in the funnybook sections.
* one thing I noticed for the first time is that the tags for kids had a last name or even more frequently a generic "kids pass" designation instead of a name, which I guess makes sense because you don't want kids clearly labeled in a way that might allow someone outside of their family to exert influence on what he or she is doing by employing their name. I guess there may be another reason for this, but that's the one that popped into my head.
* I saw the writer Joe Casey for a brief moment; he took several moments while we were talking to add his signature to various Ben 10-related comics that kids brought up. He had a new Godland hardcover out, which despite having a couple of interviews with the creators taken from this site is worth a look. He's still in his "disguise" from WonderCon, which I can only describe as "second series of Life On Mars, the BBC version." We talked a bit about comics and proportion, how there are all sorts of paths a creator can take in comics and that the danger may be more in assuming the value you place in a specific vocational goal is the value someone else should place in that something. One man's lifetime gig is another man's first step up the ladder. One editor's prize gig offering may be a lifeline to one creator and an insult to another.
* there wasn't really any Man of Action news that fits naturally into this site, although I guess they're assisting on production of a new animated iteration of Marvel's Spider-Man, which is sort of interesting if it becomes a trend. Given that Peter David is doing a bunch of Young Justice cartoon scripts, it looks like it might.
* one thing I completely forgot to mention is that Alvin Buenaventura was at the show, selling a bunch of Buenaventura Press prints and a ton of his personal art collection. I avoided Buenaventura Press' booth most of the weekend and didn't really say anything worth a damn when I visited because I just sort of felt sad that the business venture had folded and also felt guilty that I didn't do more to be supportive. So I mumbled a lot. It was just as stupid in person as it looks typed out here, believe me. I wish Alvin all the luck in the world, I'm thankful for his time as a full-bore comics and print publisher, and hopefully he'll keep a hand in with a project or two.
* another subject that kind of ended up sprinkled throughout the day was the desire that some of the younger creators had to be mentored in some fashion, and how despite the social media era in which we now live many creators felt like there were barriers between established creators and those starting out that simply didn't exist twenty years ago. Back then, you could mail a creator your work through an address in a publication and there was a chance you might develop a relationship with that creator based on their considering the work and perhaps finding it appealing; now it's one of 14 links they received that day, many of which just wish for a commercial endorsement.
* I don't know if I mentioned that Fantagraphics expected to sell out of their Moto Hagio books by the end of the day, and had very few on hand Sunday morning. That's good news. I'm told through secondary sources that the great cartoonist had a fine time at the show -- something that some people close to the effort of bringing her over worried after -- and I can give first-hand testimony to the fact that she was certainly funny and charming. What a delight to share a weekend with that creator, even in the smallest ways. Also, I can't emphasize this enough, she was kind of hilarious, pointing out on one panel that not only did she learn structure from watching The Patty Duke Show but she had given this a ton of thought and was willing to go into it in great detail if anyone wanted her to, pointing out on another that she got in trouble for some of her earlier stories for killing children characters but that once she found the right publisher she's been killing children ever since, and employing variations of a joke throughout that if she had known that a certain plot point had upset a reader years and years later she never would have made that creative choice.
* the new Vanessa Davis book with her strips from Tablet, which I believe not looking at 4 AM is called Make Me A Woman, looks pretty great on a first glance. I had two different creators walk up to me after taking a peek at the book and ask me "who the heck is that?" questions, which is always a good sign.
* Dylan Williams of Sparkplug told me that they had a really solid show, and that things improved once they adjusted their location on the floor.
* I ran into David Glanzer and when I asked him if he was surviving the onslaught of news about the eye-stabbing fight in the big hall I had to specifically bring up the subject matter of what I was referring to as "the big story." I don't think he was acting. Anyway, he was still in the mode of taking his clues from the police rather than placing a Comic-Con spin on things. He looked like a man on the fourth day of a four-day supershow. I have to imagine there's a certain amount of relief for all the Comic-Con staffers heading into the home stretch, although as I recall they have a lot of post-show work and analysis of the show just past to do even in those years that don't involve deciding on the show's future host city.
* one thing I want to write a bit about tomorrow is that I wish people were more careful in assigning maliciousness to things about the show that don't quite work. There are some bizarre structural issues in play right now with Comic-Con that I don't think get enough analysis.
* speaking of big issues, I caught a New York Times article about the pressure to move the show, which I can't find right this second but brought up the interesting point that the studios might like it in LA simply based on the cost of exhibiting in San Diego. I thought the article was kind of bullshit, frankly, in that it used an anonymous source that might easily be influenced by one of the cities bidding on the show, and more importantly made the huge assumption that ideally the show should grow until it can't grow no more, which I'm not sure should be the goal of Comic-Con.
* let me put this another way: when all is said and done with the decision on where to place the show, how many of those factors will grow out of the concern of the comics publishers? Because frankly, I'm not really upset if the film studios have to pay more money than they want to for the convention they only fully discovered a few years ago.
* I saw Jonathan Ross talking into his watch, but I can't tell if that was for effect or if he really has some sort of Dick Tracy-style device.
* I went to the Digital Piracy panel, but I didn't learn much I didn't already know. There was some interesting rhetoric about how those against scanlation are at a disadvantage because they're being forced to fight against an expression of love on behalf of the fans. There was another idea floated by one panelist a couple of time that it's arrogant for fans to assume they know better than editors and creators, which I don't think is as good an argument as ultimately creators and those to whom creators assign the job have the right to make bad decisions, or, really, any decision they want. Also, that whole group hilariously crushed some of the question-askers in a way you usually don't see at a show like that one.
* I took Amtrak to Los Angeles at 1 PM. I'm going to have to qualify my recommendation of Amtrak for future trips. It's kind of tough to get on the San Diego train during any of the busy days, as it involves a significant standing-up wait and potential delays that it seems are common to that short run. You sure don't want to count on making it back to LA by a certain time, that's for sure. My brother and I passed the time in line by playing a game of "Yep, That's The Line." It's where people leave the train station proper, look at the line with dawning horror, and then try to find ways to talk the Amtrak people to let them up front. Usually to no avail.
* a stab at a convention report tomorrow. I've run out of time for today.
*****
Comic-Con International is done for 2010; a broader, summary report will appear on CR tomorrow and a collective memory should appear tomorrow to run through the rest of the week
CR Shop Visit: Secret Headquarters In Los Angeles, California
By Tom Spurgeon Photos By Whit Spurgeon
I'd been looking forward to visiting Los Angeles' Secret Headquarters for some time. It had popped into existence after I was visiting Los Angeles on a more regular basis than I do now, so I have no history with the store the way I do Meltdown or even Golden Apple. Here are some brief and I'm afraid not-very-penetrating observations, accompanied by photos of the place by Whit Spurgeon.
*****
I think the unique feel that many ascribe to Secret Headquarters comes from multiple sources. The first is the lighting. The second is all the dark wood and personal library-type shelving that dominates the infrastructure of the store's main room. The third and probably most under-appreciated is the sweeping through-lines that the store offers door to back wall and then again from the business desk to the front of the store. I've talked to people that don't think much of the store's look, or that at least think people overstate its attractiveness. One person I spoke to at Comic-Con even called it a "dumpy room." I liked it, though I think there's a lesson in remembering that this is a local store. When I asked what the big seller was it wasn't some hand-stitched comic from Utah, it was The Walking Dead.
*****
While we were in the store, a parent and child used the leather chairs up front to look over a few potential purchases. I would imagine it's nice to have a seating area for the people that don't want to shop as much as for those that do. The table was stacked with an array of comics, one imagines to attract a reluctant, tag-along shopper, and the whole section was near the hardcore local 'zine material, another area that non-comics buyers tend to find attractive.
*****
A couple of the major shelving areas from a distance. In comic shops, books on a shelf provide atmosphere, are decorative and serve as a place for shopper to interact with individual books, all at the same time.
*****
Some of the shelving at a close-up, including a lot of what my brother and later referred to as "pull outs," or comics that are shelved in little groups and then scattered throughout the store. I got two completely different vibes from walking around. The first is that all the bookshelves reminded me of being in a very, very big personal library as opposed to a more formal retail establishment. The second is that looking at a variety of material displayed in a variety of ways reminded me of walking around a classic neighborhood used bookstore, the exact kind that are blinking out of existence right now.
*****
I liked how there was a bit of idiosyncratic weirdness going on up at the part of the store where customers bought their goods. (That is indeed one of the owner/operators sitting behind the cash register and desk. While I was there, a kid bought himself a couple of Transformers comics and something from one of David Petersen's Mouse Guard series, which shouldn't be notable but sadly is.
*****
Buried treasure in the form of original art and prints hung up in the store's small back room. There were two by Al Columbia: a color print of which apparently one copy was made, and a sublime black and white sketchbook-style drawing.
*****
I like inexplicable, stupid-looking decorations.
*****
Some unsold art still on the walls from cartoonist Vanessa Davis. That which has been sold has already come down, I'm told.
*****
Most shops have something to sell other than comics.
Best And Worst Manga As Selected By Experts' Casual Poll: For Your Potential Reading/Avoiding Means
On Thursday at Comic-Con, an all-star panel of manga critics met at the invitation of Manga: The Complete Guide author Jason Thompson to discuss the Best and Worst of Manga, 2010. The panelists were Thompson, Shaenon Garrity, Deb Aoki, Chris Butcher and Carlo Santos; I sat at the podium and hit the button that brought covers up on screen. It was a packed crowd, lots of younger people, and a ton of folks writing stuff down. I realized when I saw the people writing down the various choices that this was something that could maybe benefit people like me that have only heard of 33 percent of what was discussed and only read maybe one of four or one of five, if that. The "wish list" might also give some enterprising publisher out there an idea.
The discussion was broken down into several areas. There was a lot of back and forth. The last choices in the "best international" and "worst" categories were somewhat controversial, and individual panelists broke on about three or four of the best-of choices. Mostly it was nice to be on a panel so focused on the reading of comics.
The following are notes and observations gathered on the floor of Comic-Con International 2010 in San Diego, California. For immediate reactions to what's going on from hundreds of people, I recommend an appropriate search or multiple such searches on Twitter. For mainstream comics and panel coverage in general -- this being a key event for publishing news announcements -- I recommend Comic Book Resources and then Newsarama. -- Tom Spurgeon
*****
* best update on the Hall H eye-stabbing here. Kudos to the fates for having what was an inevitable violent outbreak regarding the high-pressure seat occupation strategies at Comic-Con be reminiscent of the famous junkie's needle to the eye that got Wertham all fired up. I'm not totally interested in the story as a story, but it bears tracking how it goes down over the next few days. It also goes without saying that or the rest of the con there should be a considerable amount of tension in the air regarding any potential second violent incident. A fistfight at 2 PM today, say, or a girl being pushed down the last seven stairs somewhere at 4 PM, they would make this more a trend story instead of an isolated incident one.
* maybe the greatest news of the con, made during a panel I was going to moderate, then didn't: Fantagraphics will be doing a Complete Floyd Gottfredson Mickey Mouse. The fascinating thing about this is that I can't think of a strip outside of Thimble TheatrePopeye that changed more in its history, and certainly not anothere one that changed so much under the same cartoonist. When that strip was on, it was a great, great adventure strip. The first volume will be out next year, and Gary Groth is spearheading the project.
* another one of interest because it's an odd project in certain ways as well is a planned Rocketeer comic series (and, one guesses, resulting trade) from IDW. The press release is unclear whether it's an anthology or a team-created book; the first approach would be more likely and reflect more common practice. They certainly name a slew of heavy-hitting mainstream talent. A portion of monies earned go to charity. It's weird only in that this kind of thing is usually described as a tribute book where this specific one announcement seems to hedge on that a bit, maybe to get some juice as simply more Rocketeer stories. I don't know, it seems like in everything but in rigorous tribute form that property has passed on.
* spoke to AnnaMaria White at IDW briefly; she's fired up about her summertime promotion, which I guess allows her to focus on press over a combination of press and retail. It's actually kind of nice to see the promotional/marketing teams at comics company expand and settle into place. You forget about this kind of thing sometimes, but the con for someone like Jacq Cohen at Fantagraphics is likely a big deal as she settles into a certain part of her PR duties and has to put on display the interpersonal part of it while hopefully benefiting from the planning aspects. We focus so much on the importance of Comic-Con to people making a one-hour presentation or a single appearance that we sometimes forget it can be a crucial show for a lot of people working in company infrastructures.
* spoke to a Hollywoodish person focused on the potential development of comics properties for a quarter hour or so. As long as I leave it a blind item, I don't think she'd mind me saying that the landscape from their viewpoint has become more difficult as companies sign various first-look proposals. Another person e-mailing in said that they wouldn't be surprise if you see a few companies employing more of a Dark Horse approach and doing initial stages of development themselves, maybe through a single employee.
* I stopped by the Boom! booth to congratulate newly-installed Editor In Chief Matt Gagnon, who was in informal portfolio review mode. I was curious to hear the other day that the company planned to work with sometimes-beleaguered cartoonist William Messner-Loebs, but it turns out they already had worked with the writer and I had just missed it. Discussed Messner-Loebs' Journey with a younger cartoonist the other day, who really loved the atmospheric art and strange narrative rhythms of the frontier project. I can't imagine IDW sold a lot of their collections, and would recommend those of you that love the romantically ambitious comics projects of the past put that one on their shelves.
* ran into Rantz Hoseley of Longbox on the convention floor. He could say much more than broad generalities, but he assures me that by the end of the con season his on-line comics reading enterprise will have at least one major league partnership in terms of embedding its technology. He also suggested there's a long way to go before the competition between various strategies gets settled.
* here's a bit of big-deal publishing news -- well, to me and people who like roughly the same kinds of comics I like -- that escaped my attention until Charlie Kochman mentioned it in passing, but I guess was covered by Calvin Reid earlier in the show: Abrams plans to publish a finished version of Michel Choquette's legendarily incomplete and slightly doomed anthology The Someday Funnies in the second half of 2011.
* you know what subject has come up unbidden about a half dozen times over the weekend? Robert Kirkman's new project where he plans on giving an opportunity and some direction to new creators in return for an (I think) unnamed level participation in their projects. As described, it seems like the opposite of how Image is set up and not really related with how Kirkman established and developed his career, either. I want to wait for some articles and interview from people who know mainstream American comic books better than I do before I comment in a loaded way, but it certainly caught my attention and that of some other folks.
* something that no one has talked to me about but has certainly caught my interest is the sheer number of different imprints and lines planned, with every reason to believe that they'll make good -- at least at first -- on their publishing goals. I'm not against new work, but it doesn't seem to me if you sat down with a team of problem-solver and set to work with the comics industry that anyone's solution would be to release a ton of new product through the current infrastructure.
* by the way, the Calvin Reid link from earlier also has a rough sketch of planned layoffs/cutbacks related to Del Rey Manga.
* my panels went really well. Gabrielle Bell seems incapable right now of giving an evasive, easy, canned answer to any question, no matter how dopey or ill-timed that question may be. I admired how honestly conflicted she seemed on issues, how none of the answers were trite. She says she's about two-three years away from seeing a graphic novel published, which she described as a series of short vignettes about a single person's life, but definitely interconnected in a more novelistic way than simply a collection of short stories might be. On the international graphic novels panel, Kathryn Immonen, Stuart Immonen, Milo Manara, Moto Hagio and a late-arriving Emile Bravo all spoke in broad strokes about the economic and personal ramifications of the long-form comics option, and what it's like to develop a readership outside of your borders. That Saturday afternoon all-star, generically-named panel is always a tough one because of the projected unfamiliarity most of those in the audience likely have with a portion if not all of the participants, but they were all funny and consistently humble. Plus Kathryn Immonen resisted throwing an ice water glass at my head when I asked not one but two impossible to answer, 15-ellipse questions that made no sense, for which I'm greatly appreciated. One fired-up person after the panel proclaimed that awesome talent like the assembled should be in Hall H. "People have no idea how great these cartoonists are!" he bellowed. I'd agree for sure. Thanks to everyone that participated or came out.
* Deb Aoki was nice enough to deliver back to me my convention watch. Thanks, Deb.
* in general, all the people at the panels were super-nice, and I think everyone with whom I sat on a panel was really appreciative of the attention. Milo Manara's translator told me that Manara never flies, so that coming to the convention was a big deal. The cartoonist was also apparently worried that no one would show up at his spotlight panel or have any interest in him at all, so when his panel was packed and people came up to him all weekend, those things constituted a very pleasing development. He also seemed touched to receive an Inkpot from the convention.
* one bit of publishing news that might have slipped through the cracks: Peter Bagge said during his panel that he's working for Reason again, and although he hasn't signed a contract for doing so he wants to do and plans on doing a series of biographies about popular female figures in the literary world in the first half of the 20th Century and how their lifestyle and professional choices either overtly or in backwards-fashion suggest a libertarian philosophy.
* one nice thing about Bagge's panel is that a lot of it was aimed backwards at the whole Newave/Weirdo component of the alt-comics revolution, and how much that whole group of cartoonists seems to be vastly underrated.
* more than a few people approached me to suggest the mood of the convention is subdued this year, with nothing yet jumping out at people in a unique and memorable way. I'm not yet sure how I'd characterize it, especially not on a Sunday morning where my every impulse is to stay and bed and skip going.
Stabbing In Movie Area Of Comic-Con?
Various sources are reporting a pen-to-eye stabbing in Hall H or a similar large space during Comic-Con International earlier today. I'm not hugely interested in the story, given this site's focus on comics, but it's bound to have repurcussions in terms of issues like the frustration felt by people that are desperate for seats at the show to certain big-time movie panels. Given the number of people at the show, the pressures felt, and the maturing of the show in terms of attention to issues like this; something was bound to happen sooner or later. Depending on how ugly the facts are when they form out of the stew of rumors and speculations and eyewitness accounts that exist right now, there could be structural implications for Comic-Con as well. A wait and see story rather than a get the facts out now now now story, so let's all pay attention to it.
The following are notes and observations gathered on the floor of Comic-Con International 2010 in San Diego, California. For immediate reactions to what's going on from hundreds of people, I recommend an appropriate search or multiple such searches on Twitter. For mainstream comics and panel coverage in general -- this being a key event for publishing news announcements -- I recommend Comic Book Resources and then Newsarama. -- Tom Spurgeon
*****
* CR was told this morning by Drawn and Quarterly Associate Publisher Peggy Burns that the publisher has acquired North American English rights to Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths and NonNonBa by the legendary Shigeru Mizuki. In the press release, Chris Oliveros called Mizuki "one of the greatest living cartoonists" and praised his range as a storyteller. A towering figure in the gekiga movement, Mizuki is nearly 90 years old. Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths is the author and veteran's autobiographically tinged account of a Japanese infantry unit during the closing days of World War 2. NonNonBa is sete in the period of the author's early 1930s childhood, when games of war dominated the Mizuki's neighborhood and dreams of creating his own worlds drove his personal creativity. Mizuki is a widely, internationally published figure -- the cartoonist's life is the subject of a television show -- and the two books fit right in line with D+Q's approach to translating manga.
* that news being said: what a strange, long day.
* I'm still sensing that odd mix of generally casual crowds, nothing ever super-packed on the comics end of the floor but definitely always people around, with sales ahead of what those crowds look like. There are huge exceptions, of course, and my sampling could not be less impressive. One thing that I heard from folks that I managed to corral into such a discussion is that some stuff sold out they didn't expect to sell out -- perennials in some cases, a random piece of merchandise among many such pieces in others.
* just for information's sake, one of the few places I received details on what was selling was the Fantagraphics table: the new Love & Rockets, piles of the new Moto Hagio book, and sell-outs on the second Prison Pit volume and two different shipments of the Blake Bell book about Bill Everett. That Prison Pit book is an awesome-looking thing, with a shiny cover the shiny part of which was I believe suggested to Johnny Ryan by Tim Hensley.
* speaking of Hensley, I spoke briefly to my old employer Gary Groth, whose news of son Conrad attending college next year -- a year early, which is awesome -- was the news of the show that made everyone in the 1990s Seattle scene at CCI feel older than Methuselah. I don't think Gary would mind if I mentioned that we talked at one point about the day to day grind of making comics when he suddenly waxed rhapsodic about a recent period in the office where a bunch of their recently well-received books came through the door, everything from Wally Gropius to the new Cathy Malkasian stand-alone work Temperance (they reprinted her fine Percy Gloom recently). It's always nice to see some recognition of the fact that no matter where you sit in relation to the work, there's an astonishing array of material coming out in a lot of comics' various forms of expression.
* one of the nice people in comics, Peter Birkemoe not only owns iconic North American retail establishment the Beguiling but runs a well-respected original art sales business from the store. At conventions, there's a road version of that business, this amazing pile of folders you can flip through featuring some of the best alternative comics artist going. Birkemoe said that sales were brisk and one solid performer at the show so far was Jeff Lemire, whose fan base he described as significant and enthusiastic.
* I asked representatives from about eight to ten comics organizations or rough equivalents (people on the floor representing themselves in two cases) about the level of interest in media in what they were doing, if they were able to set up interviews and if people were coming to them for stories. Most of them indicated opportunities to arrange supplementary media coverage like interviews, especially if they reached out to people that were going to be on hand, but that most of the media coverage of what they were doing took the form of media walking up to them during show hours. Gina Gagliano of First Second made the great point that it might not always be the goal of a publisher or related comics entity to be covered at such a show -- you might not have anything brand-new you want to talk about, and you might be focusing on the consumer/sales end of the show.
* Chris Staros is writing again. Every third installment will be related to his comics company. You may remember that the Top Shelf co-owner got his start with an annual about comics called The Staros Report.
* had a great discussion with Keith Knight about his recent trip to a school whose black students objected to one of his cartoons. While most of the media -- myself likely concluded -- were castigating the students for being satirically challenged, Knight took the generous view that something sounded suspicious and that there might be a wider context for the complaint that made the misinterpretation more understandable. And through his meetings with various groups and individuals on campus, that's exactly what he found out. The bloggy version of the store is here.
* I have to mention this: Shannon Wheeler has a magnificent beard. It's like someone put it on his face with magnets and a plastic wand. I think light bent around that beard. Wheeler was back in the small press area after taking some time away from CCI, which cost him access to devoted floor space. He said he was having a blast, though.
* watched a really strong run of panels. Moto Hagio was a delight; intelligent and funny, with fans that clearly adored her (there were about 125 total in attendance). She told a great story about wanting to kill off characters when writing for a magazine aimed at elementary school students and having that worked rejected. She finally found a publishing home for that material, about which she declared something along the lines of "And I've been killing people ever since." Carol Tyler was as amazing as you could imagine: hilarious, solicitous of audience members who asked some absolutely heavy questions, somewhat delightfully prickly at times. The thing I liked about her the most is that she seemed to think about every word Gary Groth asked her and tried to answer each one honestly. That's also the first panelist I can remember suggesting to the audience they all go outside and continue their discussion when the panel ended. Saw an inter-generational panel about putting yourself into your comics that was split reasonably evenly by gender and generation. Howard Cruse gave the fullest answers, Gabrielle Bell the most conflicted and Jillian Tamaki the big surprise only because I'd never seen her before -- she seemed smart, she was definitely funny and she gave forceful answers. Stuart and Kathryn Immonen focused on their new Top Shelf at their panels but were happy to answer superhero questions, too. Kathryn suggested more Hellcat in her future, which I don't think was news to anyone other than people like me that may read that material but not follow superhero publishing news super-closely.
* it wasn't until that group of panels were over that I realized I watched like four hours in a row of overlapping panels featuring great female cartoonists and comics makers.
* the Berke Breathed program was packed, one of the big rooms on the traditional end of the center, and it's wonderful to see Mr. Breathed wake up to the fact of just how many comics readers, specifically of a certain generation, really adore Bloom County. It seems like he was pretty defeated at one point regarding his own comics work, and the IDW books and resulting attention have helped counteract those feelings.
* I ended the my panel day with stop-in on the Sean Phillips panel -- who mentioned that if WildStorm had kept its Star Trek franchise when they had it a long time ago, he probably wouldn't have done Sleeper --
* the Eisners were a weird night for me in that CR won its category, which stunned me and for which I'm very grateful. I think I sat there with a shocked look on my face holding the award at just the point the awards program began to sag a tiny bit, so I was the only one at my table and the table next door that thought the program went quickly.
* the big news for me that I'm not sure a bunch of folks caught: that was the first Eisners Eric Reynolds could recall where Fantagraphics was shut out, and he's been going to these things for almost 20 years.
* as for what I remember of the show: Thomas Lennon, Chip Kidd and Peter Bagge were funny; Thomas Jane was odd and funny; big nights for Jill Thompson, David Mazzucchelli, JH Williams III and everything Scott Dunbier edits; the Scott Pilgrim cast looked like "Superman and His Various Tiny Children, All By Mothers Whose Names Begin With L's"; Peggy Burns gave a classy couple of speeches and displayed a touching amount of affection for winner Yoshihiro Tatsumi; there is still something of a reservoir of sadness regarding Dave Stevens' passing a couple of years ago; Tony Millionaire looks imposing as hell in a tuxedo. A significant portion of the audience and the VIPs left early, but that's been the case the last couple of years.
* the highlight of the evening may have been the Chris Claremont/Milo Manara presenting team, about which one can borrow the old joke: "One of them couldn't speak English and the other one was Milo Manara."
* finally, a whiff of publishing news: if I understood a couple of side comments at their table correctly, it seems to me as if Fantagraphics may take another shot at publishing Franquin.
The 2010 Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards were named last night in a lavish ceremony at the Hilton Bayfront in San Diego. The winners are as follows in bold.
The Eisners are selected by eligible voters, namely comics industry people and creators, after a juried nomination process. Congratulations to all the nominees and winners.
Comics Reporter Hero: Clark Kent
Clark Kent's ability to place himself in the center of every story makes him a fundamental inspiration to Generation Blogger, so much so we can forgive him making "reporter" the opposite of "being cool and awesome like Superman."
The following are notes and observations gathered on the floor of Comic-Con International 2010 in San Diego, California. For immediate reactions to what's going on from hundreds of people, I recommend an appropriate search or multiple such searches on Twitter. For mainstream comics and panel coverage in general -- this being a key event for publishing news announcements -- I recommend Comic Book Resources and then Newsarama. -- Tom Spurgeon
*****
* first, some personnel news that hasn’t made the sites: Jason T. Miles has a new position at Fantagraphics, moving over from a store liaison and inventory management role into editorial and production managing. Miles did assistant's work on the Humbug project Fantagraphics did in 2009, and shepherded the Jim Woodring FCBD effort through production as well.
* the comics area seemed really light traffic-wise to me, or, more to the point, it never seemed dangerously stuffed with people the way it had in past years at one time or another. That’s super-anecdotal, though, just my personal observation. I spoke with a small sampling of five publishers and four creators selling and six of them said they were doing pretty well sales wise. That’s going to vary wildly person to person, though.
* my new Comic-Con when you're over 40 mantra: "I'm not getting older, I'm getting weaker and less able to recover."
* Blake Bell sold his allotment of Bill Everett books today by the end of his signing period (Fantagraphics will have a few more on hand for the weekend) and had his photo taken at the Fantagraphics books with Lake Bell, who is disturbingly good-looking.
* only a couple of comics-related TV/Film deals pop to me, solely because of the implications for the publishing houses involved. Oni has signed a first look deal with CBS television studios, which seems to me the kind of thing that would benefit the comics partner if there's money involved and if talent looking to place work with the publisher wants to know their stuff will be looked at in that fashion. That latter consideration works in a much more open fashion at Image, where many of the creators can be nudged into admitting their projects make little to no money, so the success Chew has enjoyed as a surprise publishing hit and now soon-to-be television series has to be heartening for creators seeking to place work there.
* a couple of people asked me if I thought the security was any better. I think it's not so much a leap forward from last year as a gradual improvement over the last few. It's to be expected, too -- when the country experiences economic hardship, the quality improves in terms the people willing to work certain jobs. The comics industry has benefited from the disappearing editorial and art director jobs in the same way that I’m imagining security firms have a deeper talent panel from which to deploy event personnel.
* took in the last half-hour of the Jeff Smith panel, I'd say about 175-200 in attendance. Smith's always been great with his panels, and he was as laid-back and easy-going as ever. He predicted that next year Warner Brothers would have news concerning the Bone movie in development, and he had only seen a few seconds of animation amidst a number of character design sheets, all of which he liked. One person told me that watching Jeff Smith speak makes you wonder why anyone has ever been scared to speak before an audience, he's that confident.
* one thing that came out of the Smith panel that may make me reconsider Bone: I'd always stayed away from seeing Bone as having too many autobiographical elements; that just seemed too facile of an interpretation. But Smith actually described Kingdok as someone who gave himself over to "the system" in the form of the locusts. That makes me wonder if there's a vocational aspect of some sort throughout Bone.
* saw Brendan Burford on the floor of the show. I congratulated him on the strong launch for Dustin. I don't think he'd mind me passing along that the strip is in 150 papers now: a victory in any market and a miracle in this one (everything after the colon is me, not Burford). He called the artist Jeff Parker one of the hidden heroes of comic strips.
* Burford also talked up the Oh, Brother strip King Features is doing with Bob Weber, Jr. and Jay Stephens, an old alt-comics favorite for people near my age. What they're doing is apparently a devoted site launch for that strip, following the model of Wimpy Kid, which will feature the strip and a bunch of related games and activities. Anything with Stephens' visual imprimatur is bound to loo pretty great, and it's totally worth nothing that KFS is doing a kind of launch no other syndicate's ever done.
* had an interesting meeting with Jordan Verzar, the music promoter who helped put together this forthcoming event, and hopes to make it a continuing, yearly effort. We talked about comics a bit, and one thing he said I thought was fascinating was that as a group the Australian comics outlets have almost no back-issues stock; it's just not a part of the funnybook-buying experience down there as he's experienced it. So for him the west end of the con floor was a kind of pulpy nirvana even if it seems to some of us like an area in decline, and he admitted to buying a big stack of comics only a half day into the show.
* stopped by the Dumbrella panel, which was very well attended with what seemed like a number of hardcore fans. What came across to me from the five cartoonists on the panel is that there was very little overlap in terms of style, approach, or the business mechanisms by which they were trying to facilitate their comics. I think there's an assumption of a kind of monolithic standard for those cartoonists, like "they all sell t-shirts," and that just isn't true.
* caught a significant portion of the Tom Palmer panel. Mark Waid is an excellent panel moderator, but with his encyclopedic knowledge of comics and cartoonists like Tom Palmer, that makes sense. Palmer was an elegant-looking guy, like John Hurt with a fuller head of hair. None of his answers were rote answers. When he was questioned if he had any moral qualms about inking the violence in Kick-Ass he replied in a way that almost indicated that he couldn't have understood why anyone could have such an objection if the material were clearly marked and labeled and headed for an intended audience, which is not always what you get from guys who have worked in the American mainstream for as long as Palmer has. He also noted the camaraderie of people in the comic business, how there are easy relationships from people based on respect for the work being done and the shared experience of deadlines and creative pressures. Good, solid comics panel.
* the James Sturm panel was in the part of the convention that I hadn't been to since my backpack and all my stuff was stolen a few years back.
* James Sturm was surprised to win an Inkpot, the convention's award. That's a handsome little statue. I assured James of some of the big names who were given the award in years past and he lit up with surprise.
* Sturm is without surprise a really interesting speaker. He talked about getting back on-line recently after his off-line experiment for Slate Magazine, and how catching up with the vanity google searches for reaction to Market Day turned a kind of miserable everyday routine into 30 minutes of study and read, concentrated fun. Really great crowd, about twice the size I would have expected given the location of the room and the murderer's row of similar spotlights that same horror. Brendan Burford asked if Market Day and the Internet experiment indicated a distrust towards new technologies and how they discombobulate practicing artists, but Sturm stated that wasn't true at all.
* one thing Sturm said that intrigued me was that he was going to compress an old, failed graphic novel attempt about a year in the life of art students in to an effort for the NY Times Funny Pages when that was a going concern. He chose a Fall slot over a Spring one, and the feature was canceled in the Summer. Why I make note of that is that some folks assumed that they just ran their course in terms of cartoonists they wanted to work with, where it seems like it was much more of an overt cancellation, with work in the pipeline and everything.
* I don't have a link, but Marvel made its official Strange Tales Vol. 2 announcement. I'm glad all those cartoonists are getting a payday, and I hope they have a good time.
* the Best And Worst Of Manga 2010 panel was a blast, maybe more so because my moderating basically consisted of playing Vanna White with the powerpoint "next image" button. I've made a full post of their recommendations and please-avoids which will roll out on this site Monday. Very funny people and a very passionate audience -- I wish there were many more panels with as much excitement about the experience of reading comics as that one.
* I heard some complaints from fellow comics reporters that there wasn't more media coverage of comics from people at the show. I don't know, maybe this obnoxious to say out loud, but it seems to me if you're media and you don't think there's enough coverage of comics, maybe just do more coverage of comics? There are a few movie stories with a definite comics component, but a lot that aren't, and a story about a lack of coverage isn't the same thing as just doing some coverage. People like Chris Staros, Ross Richie, AnnaMaria White -- they're all dying to talk to you.
* finally, the OTBP recommendation of the day again comes from the Sparkplug row -- Livon Jihanian's mini-comic Danger Country Vol. 1, which fits nicely into the new school of fantasy comics that everyone's enthused about these days. Clean art, compellingly-paced cartooning, nice little character designs -- what more could you want in a convention mini?
OTBP: New Sam Henderson Minis i have five in front of me: Applesauce In Your Ears, Half-Eaten, In Other Countries They Consider It A Delicacy, School For Nerds and No, You Hang Up; $2 apiece; try mwhistle@aol.com for ordering information
Random Comics News Story Round-Up
* if you only follow one comics link today, make it this one to a Ben Schwartz article about Los Angeles as a one-time alt-weekly comics haven.
* via Daily Cartoonist, Garry Trudeau talks about 40 years of Doonesbury for the forthcoming 40. When is the surge of appreciation for Trudeau's career accomplishments going to start? I'm guessing soon, maybe with that book.
* I didn't know they let Tom Toles rant in prose like this.
* finally, the ramifications for Steve Breen's attempt to do BP oil cartoons in BP oil, should that kind of thing catch on, are slightly more disturbing than I'd like to think about on a summer Friday morning.
The following are notes and observations gathered on the floor of Comic-Con International 2010 in San Diego, California. For immediate reactions to what's going on from hundreds of people, I recommend an appropriate search or multiple such searches on Twitter. For mainstream comics and panel coverage in general -- this being a key event for publishing news announcements of the mainstream comics variety -- I recommend Comic Book Resources and then Newsarama. -- Tom Spurgeon
*****
* let's start our CCI coverage off with a formal publishing news announcement. Drawn and Quarterly through associate publisher Peggy Burns have informed CR they've acquired rights to a book from cartoonist Mimi Pond called Over Easy, which they describe as "a coming-of-age story of a young artist, set against the backdrop of the burgeoning punk-rock scene and moral disenchantment of the late 1970's in Oakland, California, an environment in which she must sort out the good and the bad in the people she comes to love." Tom Devlin found the book for the company.
Pond is probably better known for her television work -- The Simpsons, Designing Women, Pee Wee's Playhouse -- and her humor writing generally than she is for her cartooning, but the LA-based Pond is a full-blown, fully-realized cartooning talent. In fact, hardcore comics fans may recall the work that appeared in Best American Comics 2009 before any of her work in other fields. That's where I'd seen the name. Fine print: Paul Bresnick of the Bresnick Agency represented Pond. D+Q acquired worldwide rights which means FSG in the US, Raincoast in Canada and various international rights to be negotiated by their person at TLA.
There's nothing more exciting than news of forthcoming comics of interest, even at a big cross-media show. I'll dig around and see if I can post one or two more such announcements as the show grinds on; if anyone out there at the show or not at the show has such an announcement,
* I stopped by the Abrams booth for a check-up on the Young/Lasky Carter Family book. The folks working the booth say the book has been rescheduled for Fall 2011, and indicate that the song rights situation that delayed its printing from the original ballpark figure of I believe first half of 2010 haven't been all the way resolved -- or at least that's how I took their statement that they won't be publishing the book if the rights situation isn't rectified by then. If I hear anything else about this book, I'll let you know. I'm a huge Dave Lasky fan, and I'd really like to have a bunch of pages of his work under a nice big-publisher cover.
* saw Brian Ralph for the first time since Heroes Con 2008. His toy debuts on the floor of the show today. He was over at the First Second booth and amazingly, he and Gina Gagliano both swear that Ralph is still working on his First Second book and that First Second intends to publish it when it is done. I think without knowing for sure that Ralph's book is the only one from the official publishing line launch announcement that has yet to be released.
* a couple of cartoonists near the First Second booth enthused over a work called Anya's Ghost, from Vera Brosgol at First Second in Spring 2011.
* I think I disappointed Scott McCloud when I informed him that when I said Harvey Pekar looked drawn and inked when everyone else is sketched I was really referring to how he looked to me. It is a useful metaphor for talking about Harvey in a bunch of ways, now that I think of it, but at the time I was just thinking he was a striking guy visually.
* saw Chris Butcher and got to talk a bit. He says that not only do they believe that 2000 people showed up for the Scott Pilgrim midnight book launch festivities in Toronto, but that well over 800 bought a book and went through the line to get it signed.
* I saw Roger Langridge in the Pro Help line, who despite suffering problems with his flight out seemed as cheerful and unflappable as ever.
* talked to the CBLDF's Charles Brownstein on my way away from the lines, and he seemed fired up for the show. The Fund's announcement of an expansion in their educational efforts seems to me a key part of their growth from a wholly reactionary organization to one with a wider mandate and multiple ways to see that take effect in comics. That doesn't mean that every individual initiative will be successful, but it does indicate they'll be moving in that general, expansive direction for some time to come. Their board will be meeting I think this morning, so maybe some extra news will come of that.
* not comics: Kurt Busiek has signed a movie deal for Astro City: not its first apparently, but what sounds like a solidly-structured deal. I met and spoke briefly and casually with the guy who worked on that deal from Kurt's end, Nick Harris. I asked him if Comic-Con was more a place he made deal or a place he maintained relationships and he maybe not surprisingly said both. He cited the simple fact that he has so many clients in the same room as a wonderful advantage to doing what he does.
* the ubiquitous giveaway item of the night was a Burger King-style paper Galactus hat. I can't imagine wanting to see them all weekend, but I suppose we will. They're kind of cute.
* it too me all the way until the next morning to figure out that Marvel's floor display was Odin's throne from the Thor movie. So I guess you can have your picture taken as Odin. If I weren't so tired, I'd manage some sort of joke about poking one's eye out first.
* BOOM! announced a trio of Stan Lee-related projects, building on IDW's use of the pre-CCI time period to get a jump on the PR in the same way that first big box-office movie opening the first weekend in May seems to do pretty well. I like all of the talent involved, and maybe I'm just missing something, but this doesn't seem like a big deal to me. The characters seem as generic as any of the characters that Lee's been involved with in the last decade or so, and while just about any book can be well-executed to the point that's it's worth picking up, I don't see how this is an announcement worth covering until the books in question hit a certain level of quality and are worth talking about that way. At best, it's a clever way for BOOM! to expand its superhero offerings and work with some of those kinds of creators.
* Beguiling owner Peter Birkemoe made an interesting point about his store's successful TCAF show: one of the reasons you have it every year as they plan on doing for the immediate future is because it costs less in time, energy and money to keep the momentum going year to year than restarting it every other year. Makes sense to me.
* Preview Night's buzz book in the art comics set was the astonishing looking Norman Pettingill: Backwoods Humorist, from Fantagraphics. My God, that thing is odd-looking and wonderful.
* Alex Chun -- editor, writer, art collector; he's the one who did that series of slightly risque gag cartoon books with Fantagraphics a few years back -- made an interesting suggestion when we were talking about original art. Chun, who knows a thing or two about art himself, suggests that the current comics art market relies too much on a familiarity via nostalgia that's just not going to communicate once a specific generation dies off. I think I sort of agree with him. Where I'd break with him is that while I think something like a John Romita Spider-Man page might be priced the way it's priced right now because of the nostalgic impulse, but you don't know if his art might come back into favor or if he has a style that might see a renaissance, plus there's always going to be at least some interest in good-looking pages. It's hard to deny that there will be a decline in interest in a lot of art by artist when the original fans cycle out, though -- that's been the case in a lot of collectible art.
* lot of interesting talk about the con itself. I still get the sense that a lot of the comics publishers suffer through Preview Night rather than celebrate it, despite a best face forward. A lot of folks were very easy to talk to at their booths because they had relatively little going on, and for the kind of publisher that isn't doing item exclusives or maybe isn't even set up to try some comics news or product equivalent to an exclusive thing, it's basically another night of a draining show without a huge boost in terms of a unique audience. It was argued a couple of years ago that there are people on the floor Preview Night that are in panels or lines the rest of the weekend, but it doesn't seem to translate into big crowds on the comics end. It's here to stay, of course.
* I've heard three different rumors about different stories being held until after Comic-Con so as not to get crowded out, which is sort of a fascinating notion. Plus the stories could be pretty good if they come off.
* this is what I get for reading that Iron Man Mandarin annual instead of the LA Times on the bus yesterday: their profile of DC Comics includes the notion that they may move to Los Angeles -- which is one of the stories the person I e-mailed last night (upon hearing a rumor in a bar) believes will be announced after Comic-Con and is all but a done deal. That's one of those articles where comics folks are going to rush to get the announcement out -- and as you can see, I'm as guilty as anyone in projecting the possibility of said announcement -- but what's going to be fascinating is how that move would take place. I can't imagine too many people from New York not coming out to LA a) in this economy, b) for the chance to integrate themselves into wider entertainment opportunities just as their company will be doing, but I can also imagine a scenario where certain folks simply aren't invited.
* another tried-and-true con complaint that raised its head again from three different people is that the massive sell-outs favor an audience of obsessives that is not necessarily the audience for comic books, and certainly not art- indy- or alt-comics. The idea being that the kind of person who is able to plan for a show six months out is usually a TV show fan, or a superhero comics fan, and the kind of comics and art whose patrons are a couple of guys sitting in Silverlake who two weekends ago had a conversation along the lines of "Hey, Comic-Con's in a couple of weekends. We should go" are going to be less well-served as the show matures in that direction. I'm sympathetic, although I'm not sure what can be done other than to identify CCI as a certain kind of show with a certain kind of fan and adjust your exhibiting habits accordingly. Some day I'd like to see someone try an off-site comics show that shared rather than simply absconded with the patrons of the operating show, a kind of "if you can't get into comic-con you can see some of the best comics talents here" situation that also honored CCI badges. But I also like it when people drive off cliffs in old movies.
* one thing that irritated the crap out of me personally was the notion that seemed to be floated by a number of folks I talked to and read about enjoying the solicitousness of San Diego's citizens and business people a little bit more than usual -- that we as con goers should somehow extract some measure of satisfaction from the desire San Diego has to keep the show and that we're finally getting our due as a contributor to their culture and economy. This seems slightly ugly to me. San Diego people have always been hugely nice, in my opinion, much nicer as a whole behavior-wise as hosts than the con-goers I've seen over the years have acted as guests. I don't expect anyone who lives and works here to be excited about the exact nature of my visit, although the genuine well-wishes, the ones you imagine don't come from a manager's directive, are always nice. I have no idea what yawning chasm of self-worth exists in the comics community that we're now supposed to take special delight in worried people nervously kissing our ass.
* speaking of things that make people nervous, I'm hearing a lot of rumbling about troubled Direct Market retailers in a bunch of cities. This isn't exactly a stable group of businesses to begin with, and you always hear stories, especially at Comic-Con, but I don't remember this many about this many "name" establishments.
* ran into Michael Dooley, freshly into his new gig doing comics- and illustration-related blogging at Print. He recently attended an illustration show in Pasadena he promised broke down into controversy, so I'm looking forward to catching up with that.
* I think Jordan Crane told me it was okay if I mentioned Fantagraphics is bringing the comic book showcase for his work, Uptight, after the next issue. I love Crane's comics, and one can see them on-line now, but I thought that was a particularly potent package in comic book form. It's just not something that comics structurally encourages right now.
* every day should end with me on a shuttle bus listening to two guys with thick New Jersey accents talking loudly about their extravagant original art and sketchbook purchases. Not every Comic-Con day. Every day.
* finally, something OTBP to go see: I really like Shawn Cheng's artwork and prints; they're very beautiful. He's sharing a table with Tom Neely right around the corner from Drawn and Quarterly: 1630. You should at least go stare at the prints; even if they're largely out of your price range, they're something to see. He has some of the Partyka minis available as well, which should be very affordable and are of definite visual interest as well.
*****
the show runs from July 22nd through July 25th; photo of Mimi Pond by Wayne White
Random Comics News Story Round-Up
* I'm not certain how much news outside of Comic-Con International will be generated in the next couple of days, and I'm further suspicious of my ability to get on-line where I can find out about such stories, but let's assume there is and I can and see if we can have another couple of days of Random News.
* and here's another: Kevin Melrose on Alan Moore rejecting a deal to get Watchmen back if it allowed for prequel and sequel works. Huge kudos to Melrose for 1) choosing not to adopt the "Alan Moore is an ungrateful crank" line of logic that's hugely unfortunately seeped into way too much coverage of the writer's moves recently; 2) reminding us all that Moore was screwed by DC on the firewall promise with the ABC line, undergoing a number of hassles that he was promised he would not face in putting his stamp of approval on that already-shaky move. The thing that kills me is that a sequel and a prequel for Watchmen are being sought by people at DC in the first place. This doesn't seem to me like out of the box publishing thinking; this seems to me like sad, typical all the way in the box corporate media thinking. I don't want a prequel to Lawrence of Arabia, I don't want to see a sequel to To Kill A Mockingbird and I like Watchmen just the way it is as a singular expression of potent pop culture, thank you. I'm still waiting for something cool and unusual to be announced from the new DC regime.
* missed it: cartoonist, historian and all-around anchor for the potent comics scene scattered throughout the Philippines Gerry Alanguilan has a new site up devoted to his comic book series -- and soon to be SLG graphic novel -- Elmer. I liked Elmer for a lot of reasons, but I bring it up here quite a bit because I wish the art form and the industries that serve it generated more highly idiosyncratic works like that one.
* Johanna Draper Carlson writes about the potential move of "New Comics Day" from Wednesday to Tuesday ("New Comics Day" is the day that comic books are delivered to the Direct Market shops). She makes a good point that the moving the day to line up with DVD and book releases may be a bad idea branding-wise, but that anything that allows retailers to process their books in non-insane fashion, as they're doing right now, may be an overall good. I pretty much agree with that dichotomy, and find frustrating the inability of comic shops to get behind a practice that would generally improve their industry.
* the writers Kelly Sue DeConnick and Matt Fraction are suggesting that someone put a stopwatch on a famous group of hateful Christian protesters to find out how much time they're going to spend this weekend objecting to the idol worship of Comic-Con and then that as many folks as possible donate money to a non-hateful charity as if the haters were soliciting it by the minute like a little kid doing a walk-a-thon. The thought is that you make their appearance and all time spent during their appearance drive money going to a charity that they would likely not approve of. I'm going to make such a donation, and I'll post the time here so you can maybe do so. I'll also hope to find time and inspiration to pray for those people, because they seem very lost, and maybe you will, too.
* finally, three people have sent me slightly naughty pictures of Wonder Woman in the last few weeks, but this is the only one that's stuck around in my Inbox. I have no idea why.
Go, Look: Vanessa Davis On Harvey Pekar For Tablet Magazine this has been thoroughly linked, including here, but I wanted to draw special attention to it before the attention abyss that is CCI opens beneath our feet
This Isn't A Library: New And Notable Releases To The Comics Direct Market
*****
Here are the books that make an impression on me staring at this week's no-doubt largely accurate list of books shipping from Diamond Comic Distributors, Inc. to comic book and hobby shops across North America.
I might not buy all of the works listed here. I might not buy any. But since I was in a comic book shop this week, I took in the following.
*****
APR100039 GROO HOGS OF HORDER TP $17.99
I'm not even sure I know which Groo story it is, but Sergio Aragones' cartooning is of perpetual interest.
MAY100265 AIR #23 (MR) $2.99 MAY100576 ATLAS #3 $2.99
Two recently made redundant comics series, although the conventional wisdom should be marveling over both creative efforts making it as far as they did rather than their preparing to shuffle off the spinner rack coil.
APR100437 PUG GN (RES) $14.99
I'm not exactly sure what this is, but it's published in an odd book format and will therefore garner use of my pick up and look muscle groupings. I'm easy like that.
MAY100419 WALKING DEAD #75 (MR) $3.99 APR100438 WALKING DEAD TP VOL 12 LIFE AMONG THEM $14.99
Timing and maybe a little bit of television versus film will make the Walking Dead part of San Diego more mellow than the Scott Pilgrim part, but Robert Kirkman's zombie comics -- in singles and in trades -- represent one of the four or five finest engines churning on behalf of comics stores right now. The newest storyline should be shifting into uncomfortable places after a few issues of holding steady.
MAY100696 FANTASTIC FOUR BY JONATHAN HICKMAN TP VOL 01 $15.99
A subtitle consisting of one's name and one's own number count would seem to me a fine tribute to a mainstream comics run; Hickman's Fantastic Four is about as well-regarded and hidden away as mainstream comics get right now.
APR100706 CEREBUS GUIDE TO SELF PUBLISHING EXPANDED REG ED $18.00
The thought of how Dave Sim's advice book from 12-13 years ago might clash with modern conventional wisdom on same makes this a pick-it-up and look-at-it item; if it follows through on promises of a Sim update for on-line media, even more so.
APR100934 MOOMIN COMPLETE TOVE JANSSON COMIC STRIP HC VOL 05 $19.95
The final volume of Drawn and Quarterly's super-classy, super good-looking and super-revelatory reprinting of the comic strip version of Tove Jansson's beloved Moomins.
MAY101089 SCOTT PILGRIM GN VOL 06 FINEST HOUR $11.99
As a publishing event that touches as many comics bases as possible, this last in a series is a very big book coming out at exactly the right time.
MAY101235 ALTER EGO #95 $7.95
I can't tell if this or CA is going to win the Eisner; probably this. It depends more than usual on which groups voted this year.
APR101022 TREASURY 20TH CENTURY MURDER HC VOL 03 TERRIBLE AXE MAN $15.99
These Geary books are always of interest. That title kind of pops, doesn't it?
JUN100779 ALAN MOORE NEONOMICON #1 (OF 4) (MR) $3.99 MAR101104 MONDO URBANO GN (MR) $11.99 FEB101096 TROLL KING GN (MR) $14.95
Three great, very strange publishing-project reasons to love the Direct Market. A new Alan Moore comic book effort from Avatar, a collection of Brazilian self-published comics about rock-and-roll, and an intriguing-looking Swedish comic that's part of Top Shelf's wider "invasion" made up of books with a similar pedigree. This is also why the best way to interact with comics involves a comic book store, because you'd want to have your hands on all of these before deciding if you wanted to buy them.
MAY100912 RASL POCKET ED TP VOL 01 (MR) $17.95
Seven issues of Jeff Smith's giddy, portentous RASL get small.
*****
The full list of this week's releases, including some titles with multiple cover variations and a long, impressive list of toys and other stuff that isn't comics, can be found here. Despite this official list there's no guarantee a comic will show up in the stores as promised, or in all of the stores as opposed to just a few. Also, stores choose what they carry and don't carry so your shop may not carry a specific publication. There are a lot of comics out there.
To find your local comic book store, check this list; and for one I can personally recommend because I've shopped there, albeit a while back, try this.
The above titles are listed with their Diamond order code in the first field, which may assist you in finding comics at your shop or having them order something for you they don't have in-stock. Ordering through a direct market shop can be a frustrating experience, so if you have a direct line to something -- you know another shop has it, you know a bookstore has it -- I'd urge you to consider all of your options.
If I didn't list your comic here, I blame an early case of con crud.
* apparently one of the comics you'll be able to find this weekend at Comic-Con International is the latest from David King, a 40-pager called Lemon Styles. Information here. Dylan at Sparkplug should be able to hook you up, and the cartoonist will be on hand as well. King is really talented and vastly under-appreciated.
* Jason T. Miles' zine/minis distribution company Profanity Hill has added a bunch of new comics-related material including, their press release says, from the following: "Peter Bagge, Douglas Bagge, Ingaletta Basher, Philip T. Basher, Jim Blanchard, Bruce Carleton, Steve Cerio, Chris Cilla, Max Clotfelter, Crypts, Jeremy Eaton, Dennis P. Eichorn, Austin English, G. Fling, CansaFis Foote, Kelly Froh, Jim Goad, Marianne Goldin, Adam Grano, Stefan Gruber, Kailynn H., Gretta Harely, John Holstrom, J. Bradley Johnson, Josh Journey-Heinz, Chris Kegel, Kinoko, Emily Litjens, Jesse McManus, Donna Mathes, Jason T. Miles, Pat Moriarity, Jason Overby, Karn Piana, Rev. Ivan Stang, A Wood Storm, Ron Rege Jr., Tony Remple, Josh Simmons, R.K. Sloan, Matthew Thurber, Roy Tompkins, John Trubee, Nico Vassilakis, Ken Weiner, Dennis Worden and Gary Wray." Sounds worth a visit to me.
* Image partner and Walking Dead/Invincible writer Robert Kirkman has a new imprint, Skybound, which will hope to replicate the success Image has enjoyed through Kirkman's books by enabling new writers and artists to bring their similar dream projects to the field. The curious thing about the announcement is that Kirkman will participate profits-wise in what develops through the imprint, which is more of an "Image Classic" approach than it is a "Image Central" way of doing things.
* the comics business news and analysis site ICv2.com reports that the new Scott Pilgrim volume has a first printing of 100,000.
* also garnering some CCI buzz will be the formation of Jason Netter's Kickstart Comics, with editorial guidance from Larry Young and Jimmy Palmiotti. The comics business news and analysis site ICv2.com offers up a succinct write-up. I like Palmiotti and Young, and I'm not going to begrudge anyone's creative opportunities, but I'm skeptical in that I don't think anyone on planet earth woke up this morning and thought, "You know what the comics market really needs? Four more graphic novels a month, all with an eye towards becoming properties fit for screen and television set." While there's always room for exemplary work in any industry serving any art form, making their having to be awesome the de facto standard of a new company and its new works in order to simply function in a super-crowded market puts a lot of pressure on all those involved.
* I nearly missed this press release from Nat Gertler and About Comics: they'll have a collection of the Salimba comics by Paul Chadwick and the late Stephen Perry for sale in October.
* there should probably be a rule that in order to re-do some classic superhero storyline you should be old enough to have been alive when it came out, and I'm not sure Ben McCool qualifies when it comes to The Korvac Saga. Actually, I'm just kidding, those weren't even the best comics and I have no problem with corporations re-assigning work if they want to. Two things that story did very well, though. One was having these gigantic superhero battles take place in a quiet, suburban neighborhood, which I loved as the kid. A second was that the overall story gave us this sense of what it was like to be one of those superhero teams in terms of losing track of threats and events. Plus everybody died. Seriously.
* the CBLDF is doing another issue of its Liberty Comics, with contributions from various upstanding creators designed to raise money for and awareness of comics' First Amendment issues.
* it seems like it's been a while since there's been a John Carter comic, but I'm probably forgetting something. Anyway: here that is.
* I'm sad to hear that Jeff Parker's efforts with the Atlas-era superhero characters have come to an end. Or at least the primary title has and at least it has for now. It's amazing they continued on for as long as they did, given the market, but still, there haven't been so many readable superhero adventure comics in the last five years that you'd want to end one on some sort of abstract principle.
* finally, Sean Phillips provides a sneak peak at cover art for the forthcoming comics adaptation of Let Me In, the Americanized version of the fine film Let The Right One In.
Three Industry Issues To Launch CCI
With Comic-Con International getting its start tonight via the show's "Preview Night" festivities, there are a few stories worth noting in terms of general industry issues going into the calendar-defining show.
* it's been a crazy-enough week that I probably already linked to this in one of the Random News posts -- in fact, I'm sure of it -- but Johanna Draper Carlson's round-up of commentary and posts on the possibility of moving New Comics Day back a day or so for various reasons (more time to stock shelves, better coordination with video and book markets) is worth a review.
* Brian Hibbs attended a DC-run meeting with Direct Market retailers on their digital initiatives. I don't follow much of his analysis and don't agree with many of his proclamations, but it's an intriguing article from the standpoint of putting Hibbs' view out there.
* there's a just-out-of-the-spotlight discussion among retailers through ICv2.com on the issue of DC going ahead and throwing in with the $3.99 price point. I'd suggest that an equally important part of this story is that DC with its new leadership followed a very old pattern of letting Marvel stake out a business decision within the market and then eventually capitulating to the direction Marvel chooses. This would be a decent strategy if it somehow shielded DC from criticism, but it seemingly doesn't.
Haley Burqa Cartoon Raises Eyebrows An editorial cartoon posted to Robert Ariail's site depicting South Carolina gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley in a burqa has attracted some general political interest; the fascinating thing is that it's difficult to figure out who's exactly upset to what extent over what exact part of that cartoon. In fact, the way that article on the Fox site has been written, you don't even know how this might intersect with Nikki Haley's political profile more generally. It's more like the cartoon set of keyword signals on someone's google news search than that anyone has made a significant complaint, ironic in that a google search is exactly how the cartoon will be seen more widely in blog posts like this one. Ariail says the cartoon is about political revelations rather than anything to do with Muslim culture.
Random Comics News Story Round-Up
* the FPI blog pays tribute to comics industry survivor Tripwire. Serious, I think Hero Illustrated and some form of Amazing Heroes were still being published when Joel Meadows and the gang got started. They have a new issue out for Comic-Con.
* while I am on the floor of Preview Night trying to find a Supernatural bag for a friend of a friend, and likely failing miserably to make this happen, the smart comics people out there will hit the boutique toy section in search of Fort Thunder alumnus, educator and graphic novel maker Brian Ralph's first attempt at a toy. There's a process blog for the toy right here. The funny thing is, Brian doesn't know where it's being sold, so this sort of makes it Con Buried Treasure -- if you ask me.
* here's a list of Top Ten Walt Simonson Thor covers.
* another CR favorite in a day full of CR favorites, Darryl Cunningham writes in with this blog post where one of the writers at the Guardianpicks favorite medical-related graphic novels. That's a pretty good list.
* I received a bunch of links from Joe Keatinge: a summer reading list at Neon Monster (illustrated by Marian Churchland), and three reviews/profiles of recent comics material at the same site (Weathercraft, Black Jack, Wilson).
* finally, Timothy Callahan talks about working with non-comics readers on comics and what their impressions are when they dig into this material.
Several Notes On The Scott Pilgrim Volume Six Event At Meltdown Comics
By Tom Spurgeon Photos By Whit Spurgeon
Thanks to a fortuitous blend of circumstances, I was able to attend an hour or so of the publisher-promoted international book launch for Scott Pilgrim Vol. 6, by stopping by one of the participating stores: the mighty Meltdown Comics in Los Angeles. Scott Pilgrim seems like a perfect fit for the store, which actively cultivates a customer base more oriented towards the bulk of comic books by their place on the spectrum of choice rather than they are by the weight of what's being published in terms of overall sales. With high ceilings, a back room, and a small outdoor area, Meltdown also seems like it would be a nice place to have a comics-related event. Here are a dozen or so notes and observations on what I saw:
* the line was pretty big the whole time I was there. I arrived at the store right before the moment at midnight when the book was officially for sale. At that time the line was probably about 140-150 people long. When I left the line had cycled through at least once and was still about 60-70 people long. At its longest it went about two or three stores east down Sunset. At its smallest it still went well outside the doors. People were allowed in to shop or to attend to other Scott Pilgrim-related activities, but all the buying had to be done by getting in line.
* so yeah, I didn't buy anything. Hey, I'm old.
* the line was split pretty evenly between male and female patrons, and, as it was pointed out to me right before I left, people that were over 30 and people that were under 30.
* they had more than enough books. When I said, jokingly, "I hope you have enough books" it was met with the icy stare of the etiquette officer after one tries to fist bump the queen. They expect to sell a ton at the event and throughout the weeks ahead. Meltdown's done extremely well recently with Wilson; ongoing best-sellers in trade form include The Walking Dead and Scalped. I kept hearing "Scout" when they said "Scalped," which I have to admit was really confusing for a few moments there. Although they do well with single-issues of ongoing series like that, it was indicated to me that the bigger audience is for the trades, that the audiences switch over to a trades strategy almost as a group.
* I did not make it in time for the costume contest, but there were a dozen -- maybe more -- young women dressed up as characters from the comic. There were probably just as many young men but they didn't leap out at me, perhaps for working with the more subtly-designed characters. I believe that the above person was the winner and that the poster was a prize.
* the back room area included a live streamcast that apparently had thousands of people checking in, a stage where I saw only one guy perform, several posters, a chalkboard, and a door opened into a backyard area.
* the most attractive thing for a lot of folks about the backyard area was that they were selling food -- there was also a food truck out front, now that I think of it, but I don't remember it being mobbed. CR contributing editor and photographer Whit Spurgeon liked the food so much he made me eat a bit of something delicious and spicy wrapped in a tortilla. It was a nice enough night a lot of patrons were out chatting, shooting the breeze. There was a definite pleasant quality to the event.
* spoke to owner Gaston Dominguez-Letelier, whose time I greatly appreciated because he looked extremely busy. Most of what we talked about was unrepeatable industry chatter, at which I sort of stink, but I don't think he'd mind if I shared that he said at one point that he thought the country's general economic woes may have hit comics shops across the board a little harder than some owners let on. "If anyone tells you things are going great, they're probably lying," he summed up. The state of Meltdown he characterized as extremely solid, though, which is good news. If there was anything different about the store it was that it looked even more open as there are no longer glass cases breaking up space in the northeast quadrant of the store. Plus there's some gaming material now. I love some of the boutique stores that have sprung up, but Meltdown is still an obvious national flagship contender for its generally snappy appearance and impressively broad range of comics for sale. I go every time I'm in LA.
* one guy off the street sidled up to me and asked what the line was for. I told him the last Scott Pilgrim book, and he said he knew what that was and immediately left.
* I didn't know a soul there past Gaston and one or two members of the staff I sort-of recognized, which when I thought about it, is as it should be. One of the hardest things for people in comics to do is to conceive of a comics culture or industry in which they have no part whatsoever. Nearly everyone at some point or another uses "comics" to describe their part of the funnybook elephant. It's always good to be reminded there are worlds of experience outside one's own. It's not a scene, it's an art form.
* I spoke to one of the Meltcomics podcast (the Meltcast) guys -- I'm 99.99 percent sure it was Chris Rosa (Sorry, Chris!). Nice-seeming, smart-seeming guy. He said the funniest thing about a store like Meltdown: that because of their particular audience and the types of books the staff champions, they're hugely surprised when a lot of books get canceled because they sold very well at their store. He cited the Paul Cornell Captain Britain series as one they sold by the ton that didn't seem to catch on with too many other shops, and spoke highly of Jonathan Hickman's Marvel books (Fantastic Four, S.H.I.E.L.D.) and the Brubaker/Phillipshttp://www.comics.org/series/29795/covers/Criminal as serial comics that he suspects do as well there as in any shop in North America. Anyway, I just like the thought of a store confused when something goes under because they sell a ton of it.
* the Meltcomics podcast will be set up in the Marriott lobby to try to get some recording time in during Comic-Con, so keep an eye out for them. I am entering the world of comics podcasts the same way my mother used to enter the water from a beach -- inches at a time -- so I'm no expert on who's good and who isn't, but I thought they did a nice job with Hope Larson the other week. You know, you'd think that CCI might think of setting up a podcaster's/broadcaster's alley in one of the pavilions or something for that kind of pre-Super Bowl media tour experience. This is sort of what Jonah Weiland and CBR accomplish with their boat rental, and while that has a fancy element to it -- and a leaving the show for a moment element to it -- you'd think a ramshackle area where you could do like ten recordings in a row would work for a lot of PR people and the media folk involved. Just a thought.
* because someone I know will ask: yes, Meltdown still has cartoonists working in their studio space -- four of them, to be exact.
* to sum up, I was expecting half the crowd and half the energy, so I was pleasantly surprised in all ways but one: I wanted to buy some other comics but the line was too daunting and now I have to go back. And actually, that's not bad news at all. I love visiting shops like Meltdown. It's great after the news about Rocketship last week and the kind of unsettling nature of that shop's abrupt closure -- I think there was a shop closure out here in LA as well -- to see one of the big-name stores doing well, selling a book that a group of people obviously cherish.
Pre-CCI Personnel Moves: BOOM!, Marvel
Two companies announced key personnel moves heading into Comic-Con International, although both are of the "name existing people to new positions" variety as opposed to the "new person joining the company in a way that might have an effect on that company's entire culture" variety. At BOOM! Studios, Mark Waid has been promoted from Editor-in-Chief to Chief Creative Officer, with Matt Gagnon taking the Editor-In-Chief position. Gagnon is credited in the BOOM! press release with finding some of the new talent they've put to work on their line of comics. Over at Marvel, CB Cebulski has been promoted to the position of Senior Vice President, Creator & Content Development at Marvel Entertainment. He will report to Publishing COO Jim Sokolowski. Cebulski has been working for a few years on talent development and from the sounds of the PR this promotion increases the scope of his influence in this areas within Marvel.
Your 2010 Will Eisner Spirit of Comics Retailer Award Nominees List The ComicsPRO blog has a list up of nominees for this year’s Will Eisner Spirit of Comics Retailer Award. Past winners aren’t eligible. The multiple-step process by which stores are nominated and the winners are selected is described through the link. The nominees are:
Random Comics News Story Round-Up
* there's always a chance I'm misreading a news story in France, but if I have this one right, the youngest son of Peyo is appearing on a reality show. He looks exactly like someone who should be appearing on a reality show.
* in case you missed it, there was a bunch of Comic-Con related coverage in this Sunday's LA Times. I only gave it a read-through once on the commuter train from Claremont, but I was disappointed in that it seemed more a set of talking points than an actually article. The main talking point, of course, is the "Hollywoodization of Comic-Con," which I generally think is kind of a canard. It was a little bit sad, because I usually like the Times Hollywood coverage and I'm down with their comics coverage more often than not, too. I'm still waiting for that one writer to really grab that whole Hollywood side of Comic-Con by the throat and write the revelatory article. I don't even have a firm grasp as to how that side of the show operates, let alone the backstage stuff that seems to me like it could be fascinating.
* speaking of Comic-Con, here's six announcements the Robot6 guys would like to hear. I'd like to hear four of them. The other two? Eh.
* Geoff Grogan has announced a sale in order to try and replace a roof on his barn.
* here's a link that will take you to the recent Denis Kitchen talk with Charles Brownstein.
* Diana Tamblyn swears by this recent Jules Feiffer interview, although I'm only 80 percent sure this link she provided takes you there.
* finally, Douglas Wolk thinks out loud about digital comics and some of the nuances to the display space provided through that avenue of distribution.
CCI Putting Off Future Host City Decision Until After The 2010 Show
An intriguing article appeared on the San Diego Union-Tribune site last Friday: Comic-Con International officials have put off until after the 2010 show their decision as to what city will host the event for the next group of years after 2012. What intrigues me is that officials cite a reason -- the potentially and, if so, inexplicably recalcitrant behavior on the part of San Diego hotel officials to say whether or not they'll comply with a request to cap hotel room rates offered to Comic-Con guests at a certain price point. This is a tricky area, since I don't begrudge certain hotel rooms to charge a lot of money at certain points in the process as much as I regret things like their keeping rooms off the grid entirely. At the same time, I think it's totally bizarre that there would be any delay on any request at this particular juncture in negotiations. My personal preference remains San Diego for the qualities it provides the show that can't be duplicated elsewhere, let alone improved. I also guess that a weekend of shameless tipping by Comic-Con attendees would be the biggest way they could sway the town, although I'm not certain most con-goers care or if they do care aren't backing another city. Also, and let's be honest, "shameless tipping" isn't in the con-goers' collective utility belt.
HRW Slams Malaysia Over Press-Related Issues Including Zunar Ban
I'm never certain these things mean a whole lot in the grander scheme of things, but it's heartening to see the organization Human Rights Watch include the bans of cartoonist Zunar's books and magazines as part of an ongoing series of rights violations that must be stopped. I had no idea Malaysia had just been re-elected to the UN's Human Rights Council, and I encourage groups like HRW to keep the pressure on.
Alt-Comics: A Pekarian Drabness? These articles are dumb when comics bloggers who barely have two adjectives to rub together write them and they're dumb when writers for the Guardian with a full armory of verbiage at their disposal write them. Despite the fact that a number of examples in his own article repeatedly counter the notion that there's a narrowing of tone or theme in non-mainstream US comic books -- it made me smile to see Cerebus sneak in there -- there's all sorts of convenient examples out there of the range of alt-comics that get passed over that I think it's very fair for him to know about. While I wouldn't expect the writer to be familiar with publishing houses like PictureBox and AdHouse, it's worth noting that his primary examples come from cartoonists associated with Drawn and Quarterly and the big hit for D+Q before its big hit with Dan Clowes' Wilson was Lynda Barry's exuberant and entirely cheerful What It Is. Fantagraphics' big release of the moment is from Jim Woodring, whose work doesn't have much in common at all with Adrian Tomine. I personally think Seth's George Sprott exists in a land far, far away from what, say, Jordan Crane is doing in Uptight, but if you don't, that doesn't mean that in making your point you should get to drop the comics that provided a cleaner break with the "mopey" stereotype.
Sometimes Cartoonists Surprise You
1) This is a lovely little story that has very little to do with the fact that Doug MacGregor is an editorial cartoonist, but I'm not certain I care.
2) When I clicked on this interview with Gene Weingarten of Barney and Clyde, I expected a lot of jokes -- he's a humor writer -- but I didn't expect him to be able to get an "inside Natalie Portman" joke past the newspaper's good-taste sensors. Fine work, that. I also love how not same-age appropriate using Portman is.
* Ed Piskor sent along a couple of fascinating posts in the last week worth sharing. Here's a much linked-to piece about comics action where the cause and result take place withing a single panel and much less-traveled one about Dick Tracy: The Space Years.
* if I'm understanding the PR and PR-driven news postings correctly, Dirk Wood has joined IDW in a newly-christened marketing position and AnnaMaria White has received a promotion. Congratulations to both.
* Rich Johnston suggests that there were tweaks to a reprinted Arthur Suydam comic that cloud sexual orientation issues in a way unflattering to the tweakers.
* not comics: two of the remaining comics films of interest coming out in the months ahead are European in origin: Luc Besson's adaptation of the Adele Blanc-Sec books and Stephen Frears' take on Posy Simmonds' Tamara Drewe. Here are twoarticles about the latter I have yet to read.
* finally, from the depths of my recovered e-mail comes some buried treasure:
1) an interview with the artist Dan McDaid.
2) a note about Marvel's move in the 1950s to ride out the wave of anti-comic book sentiment.
3) a link to the Copenhagen comics festival site where you can read the festival's thank you and perhaps figure out how to score the boss Chris Ware poster they used to promote the show.
4) a report from Matthias Wivel about that same show.
5) an initial post about Ryan Claytor's forthcoming tour, individual dates for which I'm going to put up on the site after posting this note.
6) an interview at Graphic Novel Reporter with Matthew Dembicki and Michael Thompson.
7) an advance item that's probably not so advance anymore on Hive #4.
8) that Vince Colletta HOF historical curiosity letter that everyone else gave to you immediately but I have let age like fine wine.
9) a Michel Fiffe post on some Gary Panter album art.
10) a profile of Jules Feiffer by John Seven.
11) a review of the latest Kim Deitch from the same source.
12) apair of reviews for Dave Lapp's Children Of The Atom.
13) a contest/game offering by a site in conjunction with Comic-Con International, I think for those who aren't going.
14) photos of creepy semi-related-to-Marvel cakes.
15) a preview of the new Tripwire, hearty survivors of recent comic book industry history.
I'd say wait until next time for this lively CR feature, but I'm horribly embarrassed to have all this material hidden in my e-mail and am desperately hoping there won't be a next time. To that end, I'd like to mention I switched the base account for my primary tomatcomicsrepoterdotcom e-mail address from tomspurgeon010atmsndotcom to comicsreporterathotmaildotcom -- just in case you were using the MSN address for some strange reason. My apologies to all concerned for the past transgressions and future snafus.
Thursday, 3:30-4:30 Spotlight on James Sturm -- Comic-Con special guest James Sturm has created award-winning graphic novels for early readers (Adventures in Cartooning), young adults (Satchel Paige: Striking Out Jim Crow, Fantastic Four: Unstable Molecules), and grownups (The Golem's Mighty Swing, Market Day) and co-founded the country's finest cartooning school (The Center for Cartoon Studies). Come join James during this rare Comic-Con appearance! Room 26AB
Please note: I'm not listed here but James asked me to do it and I'm showing up. I'd e-mail James to double-check but he's off-line until, you know, whenever.
if you have a question you'd like me to ask James,
*****
Thursday, 4:30-5:30 The Best and Worst of Manga 2010 -- It's been a wild year for manga, with new publishers springing up while old ones fade away, and sometimes it seems like the one constant in life is that One Piece will go on forever. Join our five panelists -- Deb Aoki (manga.about.com), Jason Thompson (Manga: The Complete Guide), Christopher Butcher (The Beguiling), Tom Spurgeon (comicsreporter.com), Shaenon Garrity (Skin Horse) and Carlo Santos (Right Turn Only) -- as they talk about the best and worst manga of the last year, the manga they want to see translated, and the most anticipated upcoming releases. Room 3
if you have a question you'd like me to ask any of these panelists,
*****
Saturday, 1:00-2:00 Spotlight on Gabrielle Bell -- Join Comic-Con special guest Gabrielle Bell (Cecil and Jordan in New York, Lucky). Gabrielle Bell has been featured in McSweeneys, Vice and The Believer. The title story of her most recent book, Cecil and Jordan in New York has been adapted for the screen by Michel Gondry in the triptych Tokyo! She is currently serializing her Ignatz award-winning autobiographcal comics Lucky online. Gabrielle Bell will present a slideshow and discuss her work with Tom Spurgeon (www.thecomicsreporter) Room 3
if you have a question you'd like me to ask Gabrielle,
*****
Saturday, 3:30-4:30 International Comics and Graphic Novels -- Comics are popular the world over and Comic-Con always includes an impressive gathering of worldwide talent. Journalist Tom Spurgeon talks with special guests Moto Hagio (Japan: Drunken Dreams), Emile Bravo (France: My Mommy is in America and She Met Buffalo Bill), Milo Manara (Italy: Click!), and Kathryn and Stuart Immonen (Canada: Moving Pictures, Russian Olive to Red King) about graphic novels with a more international flavor.
Please Note: that I'm doing this panel and not doing the comics reprints panel, as they overlap. Andrew Farago will do a far better job with the reprints panel that I could hope to.
if you have a question you'd like me to ask any of the stupendously talented cartoonists on the panel,
1. Marty Nodell
2. Carl Burgos
3. Steve Gerber
4. Dick Giordano
5. Yoshihiro Tatsumi
*****
Kian Ross
1. Chris Ware
2. Alan Moore
3. Harvey Pekar
4. Scott McCloud
5. Chris Claremont
*****
Justin J. Major
1. Mark Evanier
2. Dirk Deppey
3. Tom Spurgeon
4. Mike Sterling
5. Bully The Little Bull
(If you can get a Pulitzer for criticism)
*****
Scott Dunbier
1) Kyle Baker
2) Bill Watterson
3) Dave Stevens
4) Michael Golden
5) Mike Mignola
*****
Jude Killlory
1. Jessica Abel
2. Klaus Janson
3. Jim Woodring
4. Charles Burns
5. Jacques Tardi
*****
Johnny Bacardi
1. Harvey Pekar
2. Walt Simonson
3. J.H. Williams III
4. Mike Mignola
5. Jerry Grandenetti (well, if I had anything to do with it...)
*****
Gary Usher
1. Gary Groth (not a chance, but should be in there)
2. Jenette Kahn (Is MW Nicholson really a more important executive? He's in)
3. Dave Sim (should already be in, but may take awhile)
4. Carol Tyler (her work will eventually win over voters)
5. Kim Deitch (big block of underground cartoonists may hit in one year! Like the EC guys)
*****
Fabrice Stroun
- Matt Brinkman (for works 2010 - the future)
- C.F. (for works 2010 - the future)
- Igor Kordey (for his 2001-2003 Marvel stuff)
- Klaus Janson (as an inker, for having made so many mediocre artists from the last 35 years look fucking awesome)
- Gary Panter (for having taken over Kirby's title as the only true KING OF COMICS)
*****
Mark Robert Bourne
1. Mark Gruenwald
2. Jodorowski
3. Mark Waid
4. Alan Moore (Accepted by Sacheen Littlefeather)
5. Sal Buscema
*****
Sean T. Collins
1. Frank Miller
2. Alan Moore
3. Brian Michael Bendis
4. Paul Levitz
5. Joe Quesada
*****
Greg McElhatton
1. Rumiko Takahashi
2. Scott McCloud
3. Eric Shanower
4. P. Craig Russell
5. Lynn Johnston
*****
Scott Cederlund
* Walt Simonson
* Joe Sacco
* Dave Sim
* Kyle Baker
* Eddie Campbell
*****
please note: I deleted two entries with Ogden Whitney and Art Spiegelman, respectively, as they are already in the Eisner HOF
Comics Reporter Hero: Chris Hitchens
The writer, essayist and Joe Sacco fan Christopher Hitchens sports admirable hair and a laudable reporter's British-Character-Actor type fleshiness, but he's inspirational for comics bloggers everywhere when it comes to crafting an entire career around one article, which he writes over and over again: "I Hate This." He blames God, we blame Marvel Comics.
Shahid Mahmood, Air Canada Settle
It's one of those news items that was around just as comics blogs of all shapes and sizes began to proliferate on the Internet in a way where stories would flash across several sites at once: editorial cartoonist Shahid Mahmood's quest for justice after being denied travel on Air Canada for reasons they couldn't explain. Because of the settlement, we may never know if it was a case of mistaken identity, some sort of horrible post-9/11 profiling gone wrong, or even outright concern for the content of his cartoons. Still, if after this many years Mahmood is satisfied, perhaps we should be as well.
I have yet to dig into Paul Slade's bigger-than-usual article on the recent legal travails surrounding key, core superhero titles at the big mainstream companies. So I can't recommend it to you other than for the serious of its intent and what looks like a lot of attention to source material. Still, a totally worthy topic and one suited for a long Friday afternoon.
Missed It: AdHouse Starts AdDistro An article from the comics business news and analysis site ICv2.com sent me scrambling for the appropriate blog posting on AdHouse's own site whereby the company has announced it's become a small distributor in terms of carrying like-minded stuff. In AdHouse's case this is work from Nobrow Press, Koyama Press and the artist Malachi Ward.
AdHouse owner Chris Pitzer is smart to tie this news up into a PR bow and putting it out for people to unwrap, and it's certainly a move novel to his company, a boutique comics publisher to reckon with any out there. On the other hand carrying of fellow travelers by comics publishers is a tradition in alt-comics stretching back to the last day of the undergrounds. Why it's important now is 1) the aforementioned development of Pitzer's company, 2) alt-comics suffers from a perception that there's not enough worthwhile work to fill up sections of stores or, more importantly, the bottom of shopping bags on each and every Wednesday, and thus as many hands as you can present on deck for retailers to inspect is a beneficial things, 3) the fact that a partnership like takes place in a variety of places -- on-line, directly between shops and publishers, at conventions hand-selling -- as opposed to the day when publishers banded together mostly around the most beneficial catalog listing.
Your Danish Cartoons Hangover Update
* G. Willow Wilson writes about Molly Norris, the cartoonist targeted for execution by extremists for coming up with the idea of "Draw Muhammed Day." I agree with a lot of what she has to say about the way certain kinds of rhetoric work, but the way she describes Norris it's as if Norris really planned out the event and then backed away from it as opposed to having made a crack that to my ear has more in common with some sort of folksy sentiment along the lines of "Wouldn't it be better if the Air Force had to have a bake sale and the schools got all those billions...?" than a serious suggestion or creation.
* India's officials are now openly accusing their Pakistani counterparts of helping to coordinate the 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai, according to intelligence they've gathered from apparent Mumbai location scout David Coleman Headley. Headley plead guilty after being linked to Mumbai, but was arrested primarly for a plot to blow up the Jyllands-Posten newspaper that published the original Danish Muhammad cartoons. Maybe I've watched too many spy movies, but it seems to me someone whose job it was to foment chaos in a specific region would be a dubious source of testimony in terms of sensitive political information that could throw that area of the globe into chaos.
The Beat: Rocketship Closes Doors
Heidi MacDonald follows up nicely on New York comics scene gossip to report that the well-regarded Brooklyn-based Rocketship has closed its doors -- whether temporarily or for good is as yet up in the air. Its owner says the shop is at the end of an initial, five-year lease and the owners haven't decided whether to press forward or not. It's pretty much all there in Heidi's post; I don't need to play parrot.
One thing that interests me, though, is that notion that five years of a retail establishment -- or any comics business -- may be all that the owners or managers or those otherwise involved want out of that specific endeavor. That may seem like fast-talk to some people, but something about it appeals to me and I think speaks to the way people tend to shift careers in the 21st Century. While one hopes for a model of countdown retail that involves something other than an ending with the doors locked and a lot of inventory inside you can see from the outside windows, I think the general idea could be pursued. The model whereby you need huge amounts of money and half a person's life before you even consider pursuing selling something seems to me horribly restrictive. My town wouldn't have a single bookstore, only one of its ten restaurants, a third of its coffee shops and half its mechanics if a similar restriction on retail existed in those industries. It reminds me when Kitchen Sink went under and Fantagraphics nearly collapsed, and there were people in the comics world that suggested that a multiple-decade run doing something as eclectic and odd as making art comics or underground comix was somehow a failure because it didn't go on forever. It may just be something in our superheroic DNA to expect this of our industry's businesses.
On a less abstract note, I hope things work out positively for those involved according to whatever it is they want to do.
* Chris Butcher has a nice piece up about the new Vertical series Twin Spica and the disconnect between its natural audience and the audience towards which the cover seems to be aiming. I kind of almost don't look at covers at this point -- I do very little buying in shops, for instance, an activity that employs a significant amount of cover examination -- but taking a second gander at this one, I think he's right. I wasn't completely sold on the first volume, but I found the second one intriguing and I hope it finds an audience. Of course, one depressing thing that gets masked by an earnest retailer making the complaint is that in most place the cover will have to do all the selling.
* Dylan Williams praises CC Beck's writing, and links to some of it on the Internet. I concur that some gathering-up of his work should be a priority, although I'm not certain how much there is.
* I do appreciate that comics is a big enough tent that people can construct all sorts of meaning in terms of what's important to how they see comics, even when I don't understand what they're getting at.
* Wizard sent out a press release this morning saying they're starting a Spring-season New York convention, May 6-8. I don't have any idea off the top of my head what this means for the ongoing convention war, which hasn't been much of a fight on their side, anyway. If I can figure something out, it will be in the next "Four-Color Festival" column installment.
* finally, Robot 6 has a metric ton of Batman-related news. That's probably too much Batman-related news, in the sense that such a big icon should ostensibly be a steadying influence on a line (or the way you expect bad NFL franchises to make a lot of midweek news but the successful teams to run silent and run deep), but there it is. Of interest to me is that Grant Morrison will leave Batman And Robin at issue #18... I suppose they'll continue the title although I'm not sure it has much of an identity beyond the creators that have worked on it already, all under Morrison's direction.
The Never-Ending, Four-Color Festival: News On Cons, Shows & Major Events By Tom Spurgeon
* Douglas Wolk at Techland offers up a concise guide to enjoying Comic-Con International. Basically, he suggests focusing on a few, achievable things you want to do and just going with the flow for the rest of the time. That's pretty good advice.
* Robert Trate at Mania.com also offers a CCI survival guide. The best feature of this one is a breakdown of how you might pack a backpack. Trate and his readers look like they enjoy different things at the show than I do, so I found those parts fascinating as well.
* I have to admit, I think it's nice that Robert Kirkman and Bryan Lee O'Malley are due big, crazy weekends at CCI tied into comics work they own and control; I think a weekend-long display of the virtues of that arrangement is a positive for comics. I mean, it's nice when a big corporation has a big corporate movie for you to enjoy, but I like those projects where if you stare back you can see the primary creator fully invested -- figuratively and literally -- as opposed to perhaps the latest caretaker who may even be paid for those "handling" duties more than original creator was rewarded.
* speaking of corporate movies, the Green Lantern film is the cover subject of the annual Entertainment Weekly Comic-Con issue. I assume a trailer is in store. I would assume that if there is a trailer, the relative buzz it creates will be compared to the fan enthusiasm generated by whatever Marvel-related properties bring to the show, which will include the casting announcement for the Bruce Banner part in their Avengers film. That's right: dueling hype-perception spun by giant corporations. Man, I would hate working in the movie business.
* all that said, if the Tron footage is any good, that one could steal the weekend.
* here's an article that appeared last week on Travel Planners and the unpopular switch in reservation schemes. I think the article makes note of what really pissed people off, although they don't emphasize it: that people felt the system was executed in unfair ways, granting some people better rooms than some folks who submitted earlier. Comics fans hate unfair things more than just about any other subset of people. The article also underlines some structural problems, such as the fact that no one wants to stay anywhere but in the downtown area (which makes sense), but fails to mention something we all know to be true: that a lot of people feel entitled to stay within a couple of blocks of the show (which doesn't make sense) and see their inability to make this happen as a shot at their status either within the community or as a person in x-industry covering a comic book show. Having no status, I've stayed all over the county, from 200 feet away from th
The Middle East Media Research Institute has 
* Craig Thompson and Fabio Moon 
* Johanna Draper Carlson 
* the floor of the show looked mostly the same to me, definitely so from about First Second all the way down to artist's alley. The biggest difference was right past the art comics publishers. There was no anchor area to send people. There was no Comic Relief at all. Bud Plant there at a reduced size from years past. I swear to God this is a true story: Someone walked up to me after the International Graphic Novels panel (Milo Manara, Moto Hagio, Emile Bravo, Stuart and Kathryn Immonen) and said they only had an hour left at the show -- was there one place they could go to buy the books talked about by the panelists, including their own? I had to direct them to a few publisher booths and hope they had time to find everything they wanted. Ugh. Until the digital world operates at a rate of sophistication where at the end of a panel moderators can direct people to a virtual place they can buy all of a panelist's books at a special price arranged for people at that panel, or when con-goers can sit at breakfast at Saturday morning and click a link whereby the books that interested them will be bundled and waiting on the floor, and I think barring economic setbacks that day or something like it will come, the con needs an anchor retailer or three. I hope they will consider finding one and make convincing them to exhibit a priority through any and all of the soft-influence means available to them. If that's not viable, maybe they would grant a temporary license to someone to do a only-exists-at-the-con store with all of the guests' books in it and all the Eisner nominees.
* I'm sure there are other, small memories I'll want to put in this paragraph. Sam Gross of all people came up three times in three different conversations over the weekend. It's not like I minded. I love Sam Gross. I Am Blind And My Dog Is Dead may be one of the greatest collection titles ever. I had two different conversations about there still not being a definitive Trots And Bonnie collection. During one of them a pair of young, talented cartoonists admitted they'd never heard of Shary Flenniken. Someone fix that, please. This was the year I started to be grateful just seeing guys near my own age still working in comics in some capacity. I checked off everyone on my See Them At CCI bingo sheet except Moritat and Paul Sloboda. That said, there was a frightening number I didn't see at all, and others I lost track of halfway through the show like they weren't ever there in the first place. Emile Bravo was gracious, funny, and a fascinating guy to watch hold court. I suspect that of the major international guests Bravo came closest to surviving the convention rather than enjoying it, but he's a total pro. CCI 2010 was the kind of show where a new Kevin Huizenga book is out and it doesn't get mentioned until 5000 words in. Having to take books on the airplane and being forced to pay for a second piece of luggage or an overweight/overstuffed first piece changed more buying habits than I think anyone would care to admit.
* Michael Cavna 
* as I think everyone and their mother suspected, although with all respect to a moderately-sized publisher like Oni and the way one approaches giant print runs these days, the latest and last Scott Pilgrim comic 
Pond is probably better known for her television work -- The Simpsons, Designing Women, Pee Wee's Playhouse -- and her humor writing generally than she is for her cartooning, but the LA-based Pond is a full-blown, fully-realized cartooning talent. In fact, hardcore comics fans may recall the work that appeared in Best American Comics 2009 before any of her work in other fields. That's where I'd seen the name. Fine print: Paul Bresnick of the Bresnick Agency represented Pond. D+Q acquired worldwide rights which means FSG in the US, Raincoast in Canada and various international rights to be negotiated by their person at TLA.
* missed it: cartoonist, historian and all-around anchor for the potent comics scene scattered throughout the Philippines Gerry Alanguilan 
* Jason T. Miles' zine/minis distribution company Profanity Hill has added a bunch of new comics-related material including, their press release says, from the following: "Peter Bagge, Douglas Bagge, Ingaletta Basher, Philip T. Basher, Jim Blanchard, Bruce Carleton, Steve Cerio, Chris Cilla, Max Clotfelter, Crypts, Jeremy Eaton, Dennis P. Eichorn, Austin English, G. Fling, CansaFis Foote, Kelly Froh, Jim Goad, Marianne Goldin, Adam Grano, Stefan Gruber, Kailynn H., Gretta Harely, John Holstrom, J. Bradley Johnson, Josh Journey-Heinz, Chris Kegel, Kinoko, Emily Litjens, Jesse McManus, Donna Mathes, Jason T. Miles, Pat Moriarity, Jason Overby, Karn Piana, Rev. Ivan Stang, A Wood Storm, Ron Rege Jr., Tony Remple, Josh Simmons, R.K. Sloan, Matthew Thurber, Roy Tompkins, John Trubee, Nico Vassilakis, Ken Weiner, Dennis Worden and Gary Wray." 
* while I am on the floor of Preview Night trying to find a Supernatural bag for a friend of a friend, and likely failing miserably to make this happen, the smart comics people out there will hit the boutique toy section in search of Fort Thunder alumnus, educator and graphic novel maker Brian Ralph's first attempt at a toy. There's a process blog for the toy 
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* I spoke to one of the Meltcomics podcast (
The ComicsPRO blog 
* this should probably go in the "Bundled" column, but Fantagraphics posted 
* Ed Piskor sent along a couple of fascinating posts in the last week worth sharing. 
* Chris Butcher 
By Tom Spurgeon