Random Comics News Story Round-Up

* PW profiles comiXology's presence at SXSW. I just like typing all those letters.

* Charles Brownstein profiles Shary Flenniken. Jesse Lucas talks to Virginia Paine.

* Todd Klein on Justice League #38 and Aquaman #38. Abhay Khosla on two recent superhero comics. Marykate Jasper on The Surface #1. Doug Zawisza on Captain Marvel #13.

* I keep forgetting to mention that Elijah Brubaker is selling pages from Reich. I bet those are attractive.

* not comics: I enjoyed this article on single-newspaper sales, which I read because of the implications for comics but I bet a lot of people with comics on the mind will read for the idea of charging fewer customers more money and where that gets you over time.

* Joseph Illidge revisits a recent controversy of reader pushback against a Batgirl variant cover that uses the character's violent past in a way that many find exploitative. I don't have opinions of substance about comic-book covers because I just lack that gene that seems necessary to engage with those comics on that level at this point in my life -- I also detest violence-as-solution art so thoroughly it's hard for me to accept 80 percent of mainstream comics covers -- but it does look like a tone-deaf, dumb-in-this-context cover with potentially creepy implications. I get why the artist would make it, for sure; don't get why the editorial framework failed to flag it. It also sounds just... kind of vastly unappealing on this fundamental level. It's interesting art that Alan Moore and Brian Bolland made once upon a time that it can produce such ugly echoes even today. It's hard for me to follow the Internet arguments, for sure, though, on something like this, because they seem to be couched in people offering up entirely valid opinions and then arguing their validity against some nebulous force that they feel is denying them the right to make the argument in question. To me, arguments like this one seem the natural outcome of encouraging the level of fan engagment these big companies appear to prefer, and we should all want people to be engaged with their favorite art on a moral level.

* wait, there's been movement on that one. The artist of the cover, Rafael Albuquerque, has asked the cover be withdrawn and DC complied. With that comes news that some dopes threatened some of the original complainers, which is deplorable. The idea of art that gets run through that particular filter in that way and how desirable that is might have some legs, but that's a difficult conversation to have -- I can see the dopey-ass, alarmist conservative site article someone will run right in my head, clear-as-day. Mostly, I think if you have commodified art to the extent DC and other companies have, it makes perfect sense they react to the perceived marketplace. And if you're an artist going after a considered effect, and that turns out to be impossible, it's perfectly rational to not want to publish.

* new owners, new location, new spin on St. Louis' Star Clipper store. I hope it serves that community well.

* finally, Sean Kleefeld writes about the notion that freelancers need to make enough money per time spent that they also have time to get better, and what that implies for that lifestyle.
 
posted 5:05 pm PST | Permalink
 

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