Random Comics News Story Round-Up

* the New Yorker cartoons blog is still trying to find its feet a bit creative direction-wise, at least in my summary-style judgment, but you have to like a cartoonist of the month feature that gives you this kind of posting frequency featuring the work of a fun artist like Charles Barsotti.

* the designer, author and graphic novel editor Chip Kidd interviewed.

* I did something Monday I hadn't done since 1984 -- went to the comic book shop with my mother. From the JLA mural painted on the side of the building she was able to identify Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Superman and Batman. She thought Red Tornado might be Daredevil, she made fun of Black Canary's fishnet stockings ("that's practical") but didn't know who she was even when provided the name and her only comment on Hawkgirl was "Who on God's green earth is that above Superman?" Mom's favorite superhero as a kid was Plastic Man, although she admits to buying most comics that featured some sort of Lois Lane/Superman domestic situation or fake wedding on the cover.

* Dustin Harbin reports on FLUKE. Here's his flickr page devoted to the report.

* the newspaper strip-focused blogger Alan Gardner has a rundown of various papers' changes to deal with the current, brief hiatus of Doonesbury (it'll be back before the political conventions). A lot of papers are running strips in the slot to try them out. There had been some thought as to how many papers might do this. On the one hand, no one expects Doonesbury itself to shed a lot of clients, so what you'd have to do is run a strip as a tryout knowing that it wouldn't run when Doonesbury came back or that it would be taking the place of another strip. On the other hand, newspapers strips are exponentially more fluid in terms of running and dropping strips than they were 25 years ago, so it makes sense that many would take this opportunity to do something with the space. Doonesbury invented the creator hiatus; its first and much longer absence in the early '80s helped the rise of some of that decade's bigger hits, like Bloom County.

* a report on the How Manga Took Over The World show at Overspill and downthetubes.net.

* the writer Will Pfeifer confirms that Catwoman will end with issue #82. This iteration of DC's popular but not really super-popular character was the vehicle for solid, career-boosting runs from creators like Ed Brubaker, Darwyn Cooke and Cameron Stewart. It was also occasionally a battleground between certain factions in comics where one side preferred the title revolve around the strength of the lead's personality and the other preferred a title that could revolve around whatever the hell it wanted as long as it provided a steady diet of cartoon T&A. At one point it was even heavily rumored that different creators working on the book at the same time disagreed over the title's basic purpose. As I recall it was Pfeifer's only book as recently as a few months ago, so I hope he finds purchase elsewhere.

* finally, the new Incredible Hulk movie will apparently attempt to bring back the all-denim look.
 
posted 7:30 am PST | Permalink
 

---

 
Daily Blog Archives
November 2019
October 2019
September 2019
August 2019
July 2019
 
Full Archives