en tomspurgeon@yahoo.com 2010-03-17T18:00:00-08:00 http://www.comicsreporter.com/index.php/bundled_tossed_untied_and_stacked031710/ By Tom Spurgeon * the Amazon.com listings are starting to fill in through the 2010 holiday seasons, and some quick googling can reveal a cover or two -- mostly because of a combination of book distribution catalog requirements and artists active on-line. That's Ray Fenwick's initial shot at a cover for his December Fantagraphics release Mascots, which may or may not be what's actually used when the book comes out. He explains his thinking here. * the artist Tom Richmond reports that MAD will be bumping up from quarterly production to bi-monthly production, an increase of 50 percent in terms of published pages in a year. He extols nearly all the conceivable virtues of the move in his post, actually. * Michel Fiffe is spearheading a run of indie/alt cartoonists taking on Erik Larsen's Savage Dragon character, which will run in the comic book of the same name starting in issue #160. All the press material and statements can be found here. * a company I've never heard off is bringing back the Charmed property through comic book publication, I guess because there wasn't enough Charmed during its 33 seasons on the air. Although I'd buy it if Gilbert Hernandez were doing it. * it's always fun when people have fangasms over properties in which you're too old to have participated on any level, and thus it was with the announcement that Boom! is doing a Darkwing Duck comic book. * the series/property Hack/Slash is moving from Devil's Due to Image. It makes total sense for a book like that to make that move, I'd think -- it seems like an Image book already, the creators can control the publishing schedule to their liking, and they're unfettered on the Image end to make outside deals for the property if any come up. * I somehow missed this the first time around, but busy Dean Haspiel is putting together a comics section for the new, twice-yearly literary journal Cousin Corinne's Reminder. The first issue features a collaboration by Dean Haspiel with Jonathan Lethem. * if you follow mainstream comic books, you already knew this, but the team of Palmiotti, Gray and Conner is off of their Power Girl sort-of revamp. Conner moved first and the writing team followed. That title had a bit of traction with some fans, about as much as can be expected in this day and age, I'd guess. * here's a couple of nice editorial cartooning gigs announced: Drew Litton will be supplying cartoons to ESPN; Rob Tornoe is back in Editor & Publisher after their closing scare and ownership change. * just a bit more on the Matt Thorn-curated manga works at Fantagraphics, including expected print runs. * finally, Stan Saki has a cover image (below) and a few details about the next Usagi collection at his chat board. Daily Blog Tom Spurgeon 2010-03-17T18:00:00-08:00 http://www.comicsreporter.com/index.php/go_look_happy_monday/ Daily Blog Tom Spurgeon 2010-03-17T17:30:00-08:00 http://www.comicsreporter.com/index.php/your_danish_cartoons_hangover_update031710/ There's only major update today, but it's a huge one. It's been announced that David Coleman Headley is expected to plead guilty this week. Headley was one of two Chicago men arrested for conspiring to bring harm to Danish Cartoons Controversy stalwarts Flemming Rose, Kurt Westergaard and the newspaper Jyllands-Posten. While in custody, partly through Headley's cooperation, it became known that he did advance scouting on behalf of the 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai. It makes sense given how much Headley has cooperated with authorities both here and from other countries that a plea deal might follow, and if it's made public as expected there may be some salient information as to how serious their efforts were against the DCC targets. The other Chicago man arrested, Tahawwur Rana, has been much more strident about proclaiming his innocence. Daily Blog Tom Spurgeon 2010-03-17T17:00:00-08:00 http://www.comicsreporter.com/index.php/go_read_a_short_note_on_hal_foster/ Daily Blog Tom Spurgeon 2010-03-17T16:30:00-08:00 http://www.comicsreporter.com/index.php/aislin_cartoon_draws_criticism_aislin_turns_around_and_does_another_one/ The much-lauded cartoonist Terry Mosher, who works as Aislin, made news this week for a cartoon from last Friday depicting jail bars and a lock through the slit in a niqab. The cartoon refers to the case of Naima Atef Amed, a new immigrant to Canada, who filed charges related to what she believed was discrimination against her during her participation in a French-language class in Montreal. Mosher was not openly confessional in terms of opposing the woman, he followed through this week with another niqab-related drawing, seen at right, above. I don't have the ability to find out the particulars and understand the context of the incident involved, although just mentioning it here will likely result in an accusatory letter, but I did think Mosher's matter-of-fact stand and the paper's willingness to support him worth noting. Daily Blog Tom Spurgeon 2010-03-17T16:00:00-08:00 http://www.comicsreporter.com/index.php/go_read_lengthy_gabrielle_bell_piece/ Daily Blog Tom Spurgeon 2010-03-17T15:30:00-08:00 http://www.comicsreporter.com/index.php/your_quality_feature_news_round_up/ A few articles out there I'd suggest as either better than the average Internet posting, touching on an important issue, or both: * if there's one historical/soft news/feature piece you need to be reading right now, it's Steve Bissette's ongoing look at the censorship wars of the 1980s -- so far in parts one, two, three, four and five. I've long thought this important, too, not only for the issues raised by the schism that resulted between various camps over how they negotiate the mainstream comics culture of their time period. I'm in full absorption mode right now on this, although I'll express an opinion on this material at some point, but that doesn't mean you should fall behind in keeping up with what Steve is putting out there. * Johanna Draper Carlson brings our attention to Tyler Page's breakdown of how much self-publishing has cost him under a certain strategy that involves a lot of con appearances to drive publicity. I think the thing that's interesting here in an historical sense is that while it's funny to say, "Don't go to so many conventions, dude!" I think there was definitely a point at which some sort of direct outreach was absolutely crucial to small- and self-publishers that wanted their work to reach readers, and that this wasn't always the case. When people make relative different ways of getting work out there, they're missing the boat that some methods are far more costly than others, and that all of these methods shape the kind of work readers get to see and how they view them. * Ada Price of Publishers Weekly talks to a small sample of working retailers about Life During Recession. Direct Market retailers and prominent indy book stores do so much to shape their individual markets that it's hard to find agreement between them and even harder to make much of any shared threads you might discover, but the range of solutions and strategies on display in this piece sure is fascinating. One seeming area of agreement: it was a good year for top-end sellers in terms of books from the regular book publishers, which is something that not all comics shops are set up to sell, and which was an under-reported new story from people like me that if certain books hadn't hit between summer and Christmas last year I have a hunch the commitment from such publishers might have changed. That Yen Press Twilight book should do very well, although I wonder if that isn't a completely different subset retailer-wise from the kind of stores that sell things like Genesis. Daily Blog Tom Spurgeon 2010-03-17T15:00:00-08:00 http://www.comicsreporter.com/index.php/go_look_mort_walker_cartoons/ Daily Blog Tom Spurgeon 2010-03-17T14:30:00-08:00 http://www.comicsreporter.com/index.php/collective_memory_eccc_2010/ Links to stories, eyewitness accounts and resources concerning Emerald City Comic Con, held March 13 and March 14, 2010 at the Washington State Convention Center in the city of Seattle. This entry will continue to be updated for as long as people ***** Institutional * Convention Site * Physical Location * Host City Audio Stumptown Trade Review: Jeff Lemire Stumptown Trade Review: Terry Moore Blog Entries * A Comic Book Blog * ComicBookMovie * Greetings From Nowhere * Laura Gjovaag 01 * Michaeloeming.com * Pop Culture Zoo: Darkwing Duck * Pop Culture Zoo: 7 Psychopaths * Pop Culture Zoo: DC Nation * Robot 6 01 * Robot 6 02 * Robot 6 03 * Robot 6 04 * Stumptown Trade Review * The American Culture * The Beat 01 * The Beat 02 * The Beat 03 * The Beat 04 * The Beat 05 * The Beat 06 * Trek Today Miscellaneous News Stories and Columns * BSC Kids * CBR: 7 Psychopaths * CBR: Armory Wars * CBR: Marvel Cup O' Joe Panel * CBR: WildStorm Panel * CBR: DC Nation * CBR: The Image Comics Show * CBR: Mondo Marvel * CBR: Green Lantern * CBR: Top Cow * CBR: Hack/Slash * CBR: Darkwing Duck * ComicsAlliance: The Male Slave Leia Cosplayer * ComicsAlliance: Oni * ComicsAlliance: Kate Beaton * ComicsAlliance: DC Nation * ComicsAlliance: Mondo Marvel * ComicsAlliance: Coverage And Contests * ComicsAlliance: Dark Horse Contest * Geekosystem * Geeks Of Doom * KOMO * Miami Herald * Newsarama: Hack/Slash * Newsarama: Darkwing Duck * Oregon Live * Seattle Times 01 * Seattle Times 02 * TCJ Photos * Charlie Chu * Cliff Nordman * don't wake me I plan on sleeping in * elvinemeloe * Gilbert Hernandez Signing * heath bar * jlh lunasea * Mourgos Pix * Oakwright * seattlegeekly * Seattle Weekly * Socal Photography * studio jfish * William Doran * Speedforce 01 * Speedforce 02 * Speedforce 03 * Stumptown Trade Review * TCJ * ToFuGuns Twitter * #ECCC Video * Aaron Douglas Does Impressions * Chris at emerald city comic con * ECCC 2010 day one 178.AVI * ECCC (Emerald City Comic Con) 2010 Stan Lee Panel * ECCC (Emerald City Comic Con) 2010 Stan Lee Panel: Influences * Emerald city comic con (Corey Lewis) * EMERALD CITY COMIC CON 2010 ECCC STAN LEE * EMERALD CITY COMIC CON 2010 ECCC STAN LEE * IMGP0046.AVI * Leonard Nimoy at Emerald City Comic Con in Seattle 2010 * Leonard Nimoy at Emerald City Comic Con in Seattle 2010 II * Leonard Nimoy at Emerald City Comic Con in Seattle 2010 III * Leonard Nimoy's Closing from Emerald City Comic Con 2010 * Nerds head to emerald city comic con * Stan Lee at Emerald City Comic Con in Seattle 2010 * Wil Wheaton Emerald City Comic Con * Wil Wheaton F#$%ing Idiot ***** ***** ***** ***** Daily Blog Tom Spurgeon 2010-03-17T14:00:00-08:00 http://www.comicsreporter.com/index.php/go_look_heat_lightning/ Daily Blog Tom Spurgeon 2010-03-17T13:30:00-08:00