Random Comics News Story Round-Up
* Marvel's promotion to trade retailers their DC comics covers for a variant Marvel comic is fairly lame because a) they've done it before and b) it assumes a clear creative and market leader position that Marvel has less claim to right now than they might have a few years back, but this article at Wired that compares it to destroying literature or buying books to burn them is so insanely silly I have to wonder if it's a parody.
* Paul Gravett talks up a forthcoming Comica event by discussing its subject matter and some of the creators that will be in attendance. It's all about war.
* this Giant Robot interview with Anders Nilsen is very short, but I can't imagine getting two words out that would make sense doing an interview at Comic-Con, so I'm suitably impressed.
* I totally missed this article on Ben Katchor and temporal palimpsests. Ditto this long post from Bully on various artistic interpretations of the Fantastic Four origin that have been published over the years. It's funny how important that moment is in Marvel's overall narrative and every telling of it kind of stinks. Speaking of Marvel's first modern superhero team, Martin Wisse backs me up on my not caring for placing those characters in the 1960s.
* I remember there was a time when calling a book Wolverine And The X-Men was a way to crack on Uncanny X-Men for featuring too much Wolverine. In other mainstream comics news, Milo George reminds us that the best Red Skull was Frank Robbins' batshit Red Skull with the head that looked like a child made it from red clay.
* three interviews worth reading: James Romberger talks to Anders Nilsen for PW; Kristy Valenti chats with Jim Rugg for TCJ; Thea Liberty Nichols discusses art-type things with Lilli Carre for art:21. (The last one via Robert Boyd.)
* here's an older comic from Eddie Campbell. It's intriguing to me how quickly a lot of cartoonists settle into a version of their current style that's recognizable as their current style, and it's also a treat to see work that's not quite there to see all the directions they could have gone. Update: Eddie Campbell has since written me e-mail to say that he was drawing a specific way and his style wasn't still in development. I withdraw the point!
* 
