Random Comics News Story Round-Up

* I haven't linked to a lot of the individual posts about Tokyopop gathered together in this Collective Memory, but as someone who struggles to figure out that part of the market I found Matt Thorn's post here as helpful as any in getting a general grasp on things.

* Jeet Heer gives notes on the great and crucially important underground comix artist S. Clay Wilson.

* Scott Edelman revisits the 1970s Jack Kirby run Captain America he didn't like then and likes less now. It's strange to read him write with such confidence that these are terrible comics, as I not only think those comics have a tremendous amount of value, I believe that Edelman's entire generation of mainstream comics creators made only two or three works that even punch in those comics' same weight class.

* I'm not always interested in the subject matter, but Tom Brevoort is really good at these informal, behind-the-scenes chats and at 13 years old I would have faked an illness in Algebra class to read a new one.

* the writer and critic Chris Mautner picks six favorite Tokyopop titles. They're good choices, although it's probably worth noting that Mautner arrives at a couple of them through a combination of logic and memory rather than having them close at hand. It just wasn't the natural comics company for wide swathes of comics' readership.

* to twist an old Archie Goodwin joke around, I don't see what the problem is: when I was 12 years old, I loved pictures of women grabbing other women's breasts.

* missed it: Gail Simone's Brutal Tips On Breaking Into Comics. This is very much targeted towards mainstream comics, to the point where the possibility of other kinds of comics existing doesn't really enter the equation.

* congratulations, David and Val.

* Robert Boyd has a nice exhibition report up from his Jim Woodring/Marc Bell show in Houston over the weekend, including many photos of Jim Woodring and his giant pen.

* I'm not sure that I agree with the thrust of this editorial about DC Comics, in that I'm not sure that developing and building audiences in the general way suggested isn't plugging the holes in a dam with one's thumbs, but I was interested in that this solution for DC Comics basically sounds like what Marvel did for a lot of its line in the '00 -- rehabilitating features brand by brand until such unlikely warhorses as Thor and Captain America could compete for top spots.

* I hate to say it, but I think the last time I cared what universe John Constantine lived in, he was still living in the DC Universe. I mean, I've enjoyed some Hellblazer comics over the years, but none of them were written with the universe in mind, at least not that I can recall. It never occurred to me that he had left the capes-and-cowls building.

* Jillian Tamaki would like you to read Supermutant Magic Academy and tells you where to do so. Editor Alison Bechdel endorses Tamaki's recent cover for the Best American Comics series.

* finally, the writer Tom Bondurant describes the odyssey of a recent, well-liked Jimmy Olsen feature in terms of certain developments being good and others bad. From my vantage point as a more disinterested reader the whole thing seems super-baffling to me, and I'm not sure why getting comics that people respond to into as many hands as possible isn't a more straight-forward activity.
 
posted 9:10 am PST | Permalink
 

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