Random Comics News Story Round-Up

* Johanna Draper Carlson is worried like I am how it's all going to end.

* Drawn And Quarterly previews work from Amber Albrecht.

* Josh Fialkov wrote an anti-piracy post, and David Brothers disagreed with that post. That's a strange thing for me to read, because while I agree with Brothers that piracy isn't solely responsible for eating away at the comics infrastructure, I think a smart person could make an argument that it's crucially responsible for putting the current model into a specific state of distress that may -- like it or not -- lead to greater exploitation and even risks the eventual abandonment of certain markets by key players. If we're asked to be realistic about the behavior of certain consumers and the necessity of new models, we also have to be realistic about the devastating costs of a sea change for an entire class of creators not necessarily ready to have that change forced upon them on someone else's time schedule. Also, I have a hard time processing any discussion of piracy that ropes in financial reward as a standard, as I think the creators rights element supersedes those concerns. I don't see most piracy issues in terms of a broader analysis of economic reward; I tend to see them as a very specific usurpation of a creator's right to choose how to sell her product or enter into contracts to have the work sold on her behalf. It's wrong no matter what the financial cost may be.

* Thomas Deignan puts Thomas Nast's anti-Irish, anti-Catholic views in the context of his era.

* Marvel is releasing digital collected editions and their pricing is crazy. Not crazy-low, like a used car sale, but crazy as in generally all over the place and lacking any sense of cohesion and/or logic.

* Melissa Bull talks to Chester Brown.

* the original art for one of Adrian Tomine's most memorable stories is up for auction.

* I'm not a big fan of making Norman Osborn a line-wide super-villain. I've written about this before, but I think Osborn's "my good friend's asshole dad" thing works really well in Spider-Man's comic books but loses something when you take the character outside of that very specific context. Then again, I'm pretty sure as far as all the Spider-Man comic books I'll ever need to read, Norman Osborn dies somewhere in the last third of them.

* how Kate Beaton reads.

* Greg McElhatton on Whispers #1 and Ray #1-2. Grant Goggans on Love And Rockets: New Stories #4. Matthias Wivel on Lost In The Andes.

* finally, Austin English endorses the Retrofit line.
 
posted 11:00 am PST | Permalink
 

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