Random Comics News Story Round-Up

* Paul Karasik is among the many comics creators having an auction with the proceeds to go to Haiti relief efforts.

* the retailer and blogger Mike Sterling unearths his copy of Rudy In Hollywood, the collection of William Overgard's short-running, deeply weird and occasionally wonderful comic strip Rudy. Rudy was a joke in my family growing up because it was the third of three strips that we kids strongly recommended to our newspaperman father, along with Calvin and Hobbes and The Far Side. Rudy failed to find the same audience, to say the least. Whenever my dad brought home new strip packets that the salespeople were flogging, he'd proclaim "Find me another Rudy" just to get our goats.

* Keil Phegley looks at the ins and outs of the recent Marvel offer to give any retailer that over-ordered various DC Blackest Night books in search of a plastic ring premium to turn in unsold copies for a variant issue of a forthcoming Marvel event comic. My hunch is that people are over-thinking this one, but Phegley is a welcome guide to the intricacies of the move, such as they are.

* the TCAF site is a go. I'm looking forward to the show, and so should you if you're anywhere you're able to get there.

* this is like one of those Brian Bendis comics where Mephisto, Loki, Doctor Doom, Magneto, the Leader and the Green Goblin all get together to have coffees and beignets and with their collective evilness force current Marvel artists to re-draw classic panels with 20 percent more evil in them, right?

* I quite liked this review of Footnotes In Gaza by Matthew Brady. It's a massive, troubling, and at-times awesome book, with several moments that just laid me out while reading it, like the person talking about a child trying to pull up their pants without the use of a second hand.

* Don MacPherson talks about one of those baffling mainstream company announcements where they seem to be plowing ahead on a book with absolutely no support and no chance for developing any. It's funny in that 20 years ago you talked about a mainstream doing something like that because of a nefarious goal, like increasing market share with book that were individually unprofitable, or holding talent in place: now it just like another bizarre circumstance in an increasingly parched market.

* a lot has changed in comics over the last 15 years. One thing that hasn't? Everyone still loves Schoolly D. (thanks, Chris)

* Dan Nadel pulls a fine Jesse Marsh interview out of that posting of old ERB fanzine pages.

* not comics: the Fake AP Stylebook team has scored a book deal.

* finally, Johanna Draper Carlson takes a look at something I burned right past, which was Jellaby selling out of a first print right when the second volume of the serial is coming out. That's a bad thing to hear if you're an author, because you want the audience that picks up #2 and then seek out #1, and you want the audience that makes sure #1 is there before they buy #2. One great thing about comics publishers of varying size and scale that rarely gets mentioned is how many of them do a wonderful job of keeping a lot of material in print for years and years that a book publisher would let fade.
 
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