Random Comics News Story Round-Up

* the artist Alex Ross is the first guest of honor announced by Reed Exhibitions at its 2010 Chicago show that already sounds like a sequel: C2E2. It's worth noting how Reed approaches its first big show in the Chicago area because Wizard Entertainment previously had the only Chicago-area humongous show, that company's flagship show, and there should be some fun to be had for industry insiders by seeing the strategies unfold guest-wise and wondering after what each announcement means.

* the blogger Alan Gardner notes that Todd Clark's Lola has hit the ten-year mark and currently has 125 newspapers -- that may be clients instead of newspapers, you can never tell unless they make it explicit -- both of which are impressive achievements worth noting.

* not comics: some limited Cul-De-Sac animations on YouTube.

* there are a couple of floating news stories out there related to the economy that may not make for a full posting on same. The first concerns the implications of the bankruptcy of newsprint maker AbitibiBowater -- a company apparently named by Twiki from the Gil Gerard Buck Rogers television show -- should include some lower pricing in that market for a while and perhaps changes in regional pricing, suggests E&P. That bankruptcy seems to have been caused by a business outcome all-too-familiar to many of its clients: massive and unrealistic levels of debt placed on the company during earlier transactions with only a very debatable relationship to the effectiveness and success of their core business function.

* the second story is that newsroom employment is down to 1978 levels. This is astonishing to me because I can't imagine any scenario where with trends over the last few decades like the decline of newsroom-generated writing, the move towards casting newspapers into the role of service publications rather than news publications and the improvements in production employee to employee that should have come with the transition in wire services to computer systems and rise of the Internet, newsroom levels shouldn't have already been well under where they were in 1978. This hints at what I still feel are two little-discussed flip sides to certain lines of analysis about the tumble newspapers are taking: 1) the not nearly as effective as it should have been way that newspapers have employed the Internet and general computerization as tools, not just as a competing or perhaps cooperative publishing platform, and 2) the manner in which the years of double-digit profits allowed for bloat in newsrooms in addition to fueling the unrealistic expectations of owners and ownership groups which saddled many of those companies with unrealistic debt.

* the webcomics gathering point Girlamatic isn't dead, although one could argue that it's in more of a semi-animated state during this current transition than fully alive and active.

* this made me laugh.

* finally, Mr. Handsome McPerfect wants you to buy comics.
 
posted 7:30 am PST | Permalink
 

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