Random Comics News Story Round-Up

* Dez Skinn is apparently writing a great deal of material about early UK conventions and the fandom that supported them.

* the writer and reviewer Matthew Brady reminds us all that Colleen Frakes is doing another entire graphic novel for the month, running on a path parallel to all the writers out there attempting to do a prose novel in 30 days' time.

* in a lovely, lengthy post, Dan Nadel talks about Moebius and the act of musing on Moebius. He talks about this web site, which I suggest you join me in bookmarking.

* best Kirk Vs. The Gorn drawing ever.

* "This shit just doesn't do it for me": a fan (I think) of modern serial superhero comics reads Crisis On Infinite Earths.

* not comics: today's article that will make you want to kill yourself -- or at least retire to an island somewhere where you can imagine enterprises like this don't exist -- is this take on James Frey's fiction factory and the terrible contracts that all-but-demand the average person describe the effort in terms of product manufacturing. I decided Frey's big book wasn't anything that interested me before the extended public display of nincompoopism that followed, so it's hard for me to care one way or another how this ties into that guy's personal story. The strange thing is, while there are obvious lessons in this whole affair in terms of comparing this endeavor to the outright predatory nature of the comics business right now, what reading about Frey really reminds me of is a lot of similar, narcissistic, successful comics figures out there -- the kind that delight in being called "controversial" -- and their own desperate ploys to draw as much attention towards themselves as possible. Life's too short to play ball with people like that, on any level, mostly because the one thing that unites people of that kind across all media is that their art tends to be super, super boring.

* speaking of super-classy projects, no surprise to learn that the Cowboys & Aliens film effort has antecedents and the whole thing has to go to arbitration for final credits.

* start here for a series of short interviews with various cartoonists shot during this year's Reubens weekend. Included but in now way constituting the entirety of the effort are Michael Fry, Mark Tatulli and Bob Mankoff. Via Scoop Thompson.

* you should never read a comic you're ashamed of, but Chris Mautner suggests a half-dozen porno comics that you might like to read and probably wouldn't have to defend reading to someone nearby that was upset by it. Although I like a lot of sex comics, for the purposes of this list I think I might only suggest the works of Molly Kiely; she would make the most natural fit for the approach Mautner chooses.

* Sean T. Collins puts together one of those lists that suggests an order in which you might read a series of recent serial superhero comics in order to draw out a wider but still coherent plotline. I don't have the gene required to enjoy something like that, but I'm not critical of those who do: I'm jealous.

* not comics: advance footage doesn't mean anything -- Pixar would be batting about .200 if it did -- but the random images in this Green Lantern footage being employed by Entertainment Tonight do allow me to imagine a final version of this movie failing, which wasn't something I thought possible before of "Space Cop With A Magic Ring." Not that you can read too much into the quality of the images. For one thing, I can't imagine at this point any of the important special effects shots are anywhere near completion.

* finally, Graphic Novel interviews the typographer Friedrich Forssmann. That may be a little out there, but they ask the question I always wanted to ask a typographer about the way comics are done.
 
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