Random Comics News Story Round-Up

* April's Stumptown Comics Fest is now accepting submission for its awards program.

* Floating World Comics has posted its top comics for the year 2010. They suggest it might be an antidote for other lists of its type. I'm not sure about that, but it did make me wish that Floating World was one of my local comics shops.

* it looks like Armageddon of some sort might be on the menu at Cafe DC. This works through about 2012, right?

* a fine list of best comics of the year from Michael DeForge.

* not comics: this is a reasonably strong off-the-cuff (in style, I mean) analysis of the potential fade of the superhero film after 2011. I'm not sure I totally agree with the premise: it seems to me that at two or three per year, and only one of maybe six or seven needing to be successful for someone to stay interested, you could have superhero films for a half-dozen years yet. I think you could also argue that this wave of films doesn't totally die until a Batman film under-performs. But certainly the performance of those kinds of films over the next 24 months are going to be a lot of fun to watch, whether or not the movies are may indicated if we're still watching three or four attempts a year in 2016. The emerging generation could be game-changers in terms of entertainment media regardless of genre, too. We'll all see.

* Mark Siegel does more on comics' behalf before 8 AM than most cartoonists do all day. Plus: a look at his studio.

* the decline in reputation for Watchmen is a really fascinating thing to me, and I'll continue to track it. Not sure I have much to say about it, though. I didn't understand it when people called it the greatest work, and I don't understand when people mock it or call it not a great work.

* I agree with Jeet Heer that this isn't an ideal format for Sugar & Spike but I am so completely divorced from the type of consumer that would buy $50 hardcover comics reprints of anything, period, that I don't feel confident going as far as to suggest -- as I think this criticism does -- that that there's no audience for this material presented that way, or that a better audience might be had by skipping this endeavor entirely. I believe the reason that the material isn't outsourced, which would be wonderful, is that DC has invested in doing a lot of stuff in-house that other companies might send to specialists. I think it would take an in-house revolution for a different general strategy to emerge, and even a massive restructuring of the company didn't really change things that much within the publishing arena, at least as far as I can tell. In the meantime, I just hope this means they're going to try and do things with this material now, although I realize there's no guarantee that it won't be one and done. I still think given the inability to snap my fingers and change that company's culture that I prefer this stuff out on someone's desk than back in a closet somewhere.

* finally, how to get a hold of Crickets #3 now that Fantagraphics has run out. There's something very science fiction-y about these last few hardy alt-comics, like they're that much harder to find -- and to kill -- because their numbers are so limited now.
 
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