Random Comics News Story Round-Up

* here's something that's been out there but not here at CR yet: Northern Kentucky University is assigning David Mack's Kabuki: The Alchemy to its Freshman class. I've seen this kind of thing before, but only featuring work from Art Spiegelman and Marjane Satrapi, whose comics are different than Mack's. I'm sure I'm forgetting a billion other comics that have been assigned this way.

* did you know that you could go to this page and find out what comics were on the stands the month you were born? This seems like the kind of thing that I would have known about 10 years ago, but if I did, I've forgotten about it. I have no idea how it ended up in my bookmarks folder, but it's sort of fun. My month of birth was not exactly one for the ages.

* it's good to see that Shaenon Garrity will be writing about webcomics for the new TCJ, even though I'm one of about 50 targets to receive a rhetorical whipped-cream pie in the face in the inaugural edition. She's a fun writer, and she knows enough about the print and webcomics worlds not to fall prey to false distinctions between them. Without quite knowing why, it feels to me like we're in the midst of some kind of in-between point for webcomics, a period similar to that which directly preceded a move away from formally inventive webcomics to a more widespread adoption of a standard strip-format equivalent by a lot of the top practitioners. My take could be totally wrong, of course, and there are no clean breaks in art. Mostly, I look forward to what Garrity has to say about what's out there right now.

* speaking of TCJ, Dan Nadel reviews Thor.

* I had meant at some point to do a round-up of reactions and features stories generated by Mike Keefe wining the Pulitzer on April 18. I thought that was a nice story in addition to its obvious newsworthiness because Keefe is slightly older than some of the recent winners, so I had to imagine it came as that much extra and welcome of a surprise to the cartooning veteran. Keefe is also -- unless I'm missing out on some aspect of his career -- pretty much a meat-and-potatoes kind of editorial cartoonist; I'm not aware of a YouTube cartoon series with name on it, for example. Here is the home newspaper article, which points out that he follows Paul Conrad and Pat Oliphant as Post winners in the editorial cartooning category. Here is Cagle's re-presentation in slideshow form of the winning submission packet (Keefe is syndicated by Cagle). Here is Michael Cavna's profile. Here's an article that lauds the Post for keeping a staff cartoonist.

* it's my understanding that this essay on The Filth is a part of a long series; I've bookmarked it so I can go back and explore at a later date.

* this is a reminder that the artist Chris Wozniak could probably still use your help.

* finally, James Kochalka sent along this letter from Harry Bliss about e-readers vs. printed material published in I think a Vermont weekly: the gist is that an over-reliance on print is contributing to the ecological death of Planet Earth, so switching over to e-readers is a good thing. Also, he threatens to vomit on people.
 
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