Random Comics News Story Round-Up

* I'm not seeing much that's new about this weekend's shocking story that a Somali man hacked his way into Kurt Westergaard's house with an axe, forcing the cartoonist and his granddaughter into a panic room, bringing police that shot the 28-year-old upon his departure from the house following his alleged failure to murder Westergaard for the Danish Cartoons Controversy of 2005-2006. Still, that's a hell of a sentence to write. The Times took the chance Sunday to spin around and kick Yale University Press in the nuts; like many in Europe when Westergaard was initially targeted, popular political blogger Andrew Sullivan re-posted the Danish Cartoons in support of the besieged cartoonist.

* the French-language comics news gathering site ActuaBD.com has reported the passing of Gilbert Gascard, who under the pseudonym Tibet became one of the artistic mainstays at Tintin Magazine. He was 78 years old. A proper obituary will appear on this site on or after January 10.

* not comics: here's a nice piece comparing the films of Hayao Miyazaki to this decade's output from Pixar. It's also reasonably "on-line brave" in that it's trying to make a more nuanced point than "this one = great"/"that one = sucks" on an Internet that doesn't do nuance very well and which is teeming with oversensitive Pixar fans. I had a similar feeling of being grateful for Miyazaki while watching Avatar, remembering how Princess Mononoke covered a lot of the same adventure story ground in weirder, more unsettling, less morally certain and more idiosyncratically beautiful ways.

* the comics business news and analysis site ICv2.com offers their take on the finalization of the Disney/Marvel deal that took place just before the New Year. They also report that Disney has taken this opportunity to clean up some of the Stan Lee contractual stuff in the way a skilled doctor might clean a knee of painful, debilitating cartilage. I think that's very encouraging that they'd do that. I have to wonder if we might hear something about the Kirby family.

* I read and then forgot to blog about this recent, big Alan Moore interview here. I had mixed feelings. I still look forward to reading Dodgem Logic, although the content as described in that interview interests me not at all. I am all for people plowing money back into their communities, so that's nice, and I admire Moore's passion for new and interesting projects. I'm happy not to be reading the comics Moore's apparently reading, and would dispute there being some now-past time when comics was stuffed with original ideas.

* not comics: hey, it's a teaser trailer for Luc Besson's Adele Blanc-Sec movie. I had completely forgotten about that.

* well-regarded comics critic Jog of Jog Likes Comics has released his top 10 for 2009. They are:

1. GoGo Monster, Taiyo Matsumoto (Viz)
2. Asterios Polyp, David Mazzucchelli (Pantheon)
3. Driven by Lemons, Josh Cotter (AdHouse)
4. Footnotes in Gaza, Joe Sacco (Metropolitan)
5. Prison Pit Book One, Johnny Ryan (Fantagraphics)
6. Cold Heat #5/6, Ben Jones and Frank Santoro (PictureBox)
7. Treehouse of Horror #15, Various (Bongo)
8. West Coast Blues, Jacques Tardi (Fantagraphics)
9. Cockbone, Josh Simmons (Self-Published)
10. The Color of Earth, Kim Dong Hwa (First Second)

The notes on each book and the process in putting together such a list are very entertaining, so I hope you'll look at Jog's entire post through that first link.

* finally, these are some of the things that certain people are excited to experience in 2010. Since I shared a work-related resolution on January 1, I'll share a personal one here. I pledge to eat between three and four pork tenderloin sandwiches sometime between now and December 31. I have seriously thought about finding some way to justify attending the last three GenCons in order to access some of the better versions out there.
 
posted 11:30 pm PST | Permalink
 

---

 
Daily Blog Archives
November 2019
October 2019
September 2019
August 2019
July 2019
 
Full Archives