Random Comics News Story Round-Up

* I'd say the must-read of the morning thus far is this Comics Alliance piece with Mike Richardson of Dark Horse. A couple of things popped into my head reading the piece. The first is that Richardson is right: Dark Horse is a very heavily-staffed company, particularly in comparison to how other comics companies are staffed right now. I would have to imagine that personnel changes are going to be on the table for Dark Horse for the foreseeable future, even when everything is firing on all cylinders. The second is that while Richardson proves reasonably convincing when driving a wedge between the overprinting of an prose author-driven project and the success of a project related to classic characters handled by Jim Shooter and the company's recent firings, those projects don't exactly come across as positive experiences. A huge hit on overprinting a specific project for the bookstore market doesn't seem like a 2010 error; it seems more like the kind of thing an established publisher like Dark Horse might have done in 2002.

* the second must-read is probably Matt Blind going knives out on Stuart Levy. Among other criticisms, Blind asks why Levy didn't sell the company as opposed to shutting it down with all the red tape and publishing delays that entails.

* I have nothing important to say about the story -- perhaps that should be the "story" -- that Scott Adams spends time defending himself on the Internet using fake names and then spent some more time defending this practice using his real name. I sure envy him the time to do this, though.

* Colin Smith looks at a single drawing of Dr. Mid-Nite.

* this is fascinating: Kevin Czap profiles every comics-buying source in the greater Cleveland area. It's both wonderful that so many outlets exist, if you think about it, and maybe slightly distressing that they look so much the same.

* not comics: several of you were nice enough to e-mail me a link to this short article about book publishing a generation ago.

* hey, the 20th Century ended.

* Drawn + Quarterly is apparently doing manga wrong, but on a subliminal level, and not in a disrespectful way to the artists, and maybe not with all of their books. I'm always open to hearing criticism of a publishing method, but I really need someone to sit down and explain to me through analysis of a work or two how the decision being criticized has a crucial, direct impact, or how one technique is clearly better than the other, rather than just reading declarations that this is so. Simply stating with confidence that something isn't ideal doesn't work for me because I don't know anyone who reads/regards translated anything that presumes they're getting the ideal.

* Johanna Draper Carlson has updates on the mechanics of Tokyopop's shutdown.

* finally, Philip Nel not only discusses the Barnaby stageplay adaptation, he produces pages of script! He also reminds us that one year from now Fantagraphics will begin its Barnaby project.
 
posted 3:00 am PST | Permalink
 

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