Random Comics News Story Round-Up

* if the main outcome publishing-wise with the new ownership/management teams at the Big Mainstream Companies is a bunch of exclusivity signings, I'm going to be super-disappointed. They make for nice press releases, though.

* eat it, Robert Crumb.

* kidding aside, and concerning these year-end lists more generally: did Larry Gonick pull a Tiger Woods in 2007 and I just missed it or something? When did people stop loving that guy? Seriously, Gonick used to be the free square on the "Enthusiasm For Cartoonists" bingo card. Now he can't slip into a top 60?

* the retailer and industry advocate Brian Hibbs speaks the truth about many of all the short-term, sideways or otherwise detrimental moves taken by publishers in the Direct Market: they're supported by the retailers that have the power to stop them.

* as I understand it, casual comics fan Curt Purcell attempted to follow one of the mainstream company mini-series from first page to last and it nearly drove him mad. Or, looking at it another way, buying over $100 of tangential tie-ins and spending $4 a pop throughout may have nudged him into more rational behavior from now on.

* Jog points the way to a 2006 interview with Kiyohiko Azuma.

* not comics: goodbye, Standee's. You were a horrible-looking, throwback diner with a killer sign out front, and your low, low prices supported my getting out of the apartment to eat breakfast in public once a week during graduate school, a time in my life when I needed the company.

* not exactly comics: the Gareb Shamus folks have announced one of their comics and pop culture conventions for Austin, Texas. Austin's a great town, and Texas at one point in time was a top five enclave for active, intelligent comics fandom. I have no idea if that means anything, and it's not as if you'll be able to stumble across Ken Smith and Pat Boyette holding court next to Ernie Hudson's booth or whatever, but I figure there's no harm tipping one's hat in the direction of funnybook history.

* this is another one of those publishing flourishes I don't understand: a $4 comic with the abysmally unappealing word "Uranian" in the title spun off of a series that doesn't sell very well even though it should. It's one of those things that if it does sell well, it's probably not for a good reason, it's probably because of some strange hiccup that protects #1 and early-numbered issues. It's like they're aiming books at the market's broken parts now. Maybe I'm completely wrong about that kind of stuff, I don't know.

* finally, the writer and critic Douglas Wolk lists the books he's looking forward to seeing in 2010. Looks like a solid year. Off the top of my head I would add Jack Kent's King Aroo (IDW) and Roy Crane's Wash Tubbs and Captain Easy (Fantagraphics), both of which will see major reprint projects at least begin this calendar year.
 
posted 11:30 pm PST | Permalink
 

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