Random Comics News Story Round-Up
* if one is to believe this person speaking to that person about something another person said -- and that's always good enough for me -- Diamond won't hold Xeric winners to their minimum sales standard. That's good; in fact, I wish they would apply those kinds of standards instead of numbers in the first place.
* the latest content-driven comics page controversy: Mark Trail. I had Crock in the pool.
* not comics: Wim Lockefeer takes a look at Francois Schuiten's installation work in light of the artist being hired to design the Brussels railway museum. In doing so he digs up this video about the artist's Schuiten's Paris Arts et Metiers subway station project.
* hey, Chris Allen has a new review up, of various Captain America books. We hadn't even elected President Obama the last time Allen posted a review, let alone had the President on the cover of a best-selling Spider-Man comic. I'm glad Allen doesn't totally trash Frank Robbins in his review of Englehart-era Cap. Most people totally trash Robbins' work on that title, but I love his sweaty, spasmodic Captain America and his volcanically hot Deadly Nightshade.
* speaking of which, the fact that they can move 500,000 Obama/Spidey comics in the space of two months should give us an idea of how many comics they could move given the chance -- it's not like I heard of comic shops being shut down by this, although I'm sure some had a tough afternoon or two. One of the great ironies of the modern comics market is that comics by people like Chris Ware and Marjane Satrapi sell as many as you'd think if you were to sit down a decade ago and make a super-optimistic prediction over how you'd like to see things for those kinds of comics develop, while the comics starring internationally recognized franchises like Spider-Man seem to sell about a third or a quarter of what you'd optimistically but reasonably guess they could. I may be the only person that thinks this, though.
* not comics: this is the greatest comics tie-in product I've ever heard about.
* not comics: I suppose their wearing bowlers is preferable to either one attempting Tintin's hairdo.
* really not comics: I didn't know that there was a Law & Order: UK starring one of the Battlestar Galactica people. Do UK versions of American shows get better the same way recent American versions of UK television shows seem to get worse? Speaking of which, poor Ben Affleck looks like a contest-winner dropped into the State of Play trailer. State of Play was a perfectly enjoyable UK television series a lot of my beleaguered journalist friends have been snagging through Netflix for its positive although largely ridiculous portrayal of news reporting. Not only does it portray the job as thrilling and important, you get to imagine that your editor is Bill Nighy and that you might have an affair with Polly Walker. I can't imagine it will work as a movie, although Russell Crowe's hair is very impressive.
* I think the writer Matt Maxwell is onto something when he talks about the experience of coming to like comics because they were something you found on your own and consumed on your own. I know that while all my friends in high school and roommates in college liked reading my comics just fine, I never had a friend who bought comics on their own until I moved to Seattle in 1994. A lot of the pleasure I got from comics when I was a kid is that it was my own thing. I could go on about this for a long time and be very boring while doing so, but for now you should just read Maxwell's piece.
* this I assume will allow you to watch Neil Gaiman on The Colbert Report.
