Random Comics News Story Round-Up

* there's an excellent, short interview with Daniel Clowes here.

* one thing I hadn't noticed about the launch of the Image Comics title Viking is that it makes use of a slightly unorthodox format employed by Image Comics on its recent Golden Age-related concepts: slightly bigger size, different paper.

* today's reason to wish I had a real job. I don't have any idea what they're talking about, and I've read that post three times.

* one of the reasons I like the Cul De Sac blog is that Richard Thompson is one of the more insightful cartoonists working in terms of self-appraisal, like this post on a Sunday that didn't quite work in some ways. It's not uncommon for something to happen to an existing Sunday where a daily suddenly gets drafted into Sunday service.

* this NYT article about comic book price hikes is the usual NYT present a story idea reinforced by PR rather than present a story about the comics industry, an industry defined as two companies wide. I'm not sure I believe a word of what's put out there as explanations in this piece, let alone think much of the posturing about price increases as opposed to finding a next package up or however it's phrased. I wish someone would just say it's the big companies betting that they believe the devoted fan will pay the increased price point, and that the notable thing is that they're hedging by making it an effort limited to top books or value-added ones. It does underline my fear that what we're getting is a very short-term reaction to the market rather than the beginnings of a long-term strategy about that still-successful format. My guess is that Marvel is looking for ways to boost the bottom line during a fallow movie period and while things are fairly strong line-wide and that DC is following Marvel because that's what DC tends to do on a lot of these things. That's no better than a guess, though.

* egad, it's Cowboy Rorschach!

* not comics: I hope that part of the advice being doled out at this taped seminar to help book people deal with on-line publicity is "don't be a giant, patronizing asshole," but I'm not holding out a lot of hope.

* finally, I would disagree with Tim O'Neil that Alan Moore's "Burn" was the beginning of "momentism" (emphasis on instances of encapsulation) in super-hero comics. I'd go with this panel instead, although you might be able to argue that it's not the same thing. I think Moore was really good at it because he's good at most everything comics-wise and that Flash-era Mark Waid was probably its most important practitioner because he built stories around those moments rather than the other way around. You probably have to figure it as a story-reaction to Image's splash page approach, too. Mark Millar as its ultimate disciple is funny and probably very true. O'Neil's essays on Kingdom Come have been fun, although my own preference would be for more liberal use of the words "obvious," "awful" and "stupid."
 
posted 7:30 am PST | Permalink
 

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