Random Comics News Story Round-Up

* when the retailer and industry advocate Brian Hibbs is good, he can be very good: here he is with notice that the publishers serving the comics direct market are overproducing and leaving tons of sales on the table if not killing sales outright.

* Brigid Alverson has a bunch more on the availability of Toon Books material on various digital devices. It's another pencil poke in the lampshade of what's to come in that arena.

* Chris Mautner names six noteworthy debut comics. I actually wouldn't include Craig Thompson on this list. While most people discovered his work with Goodbye, Chunky Rice, enough people had seen his mini-comics to not be surprised in the least by anything in Chunky Rice. The "way more people saw this work than saw that one" is a tough, tough game to play in comics, where practically no one sees anything, so I'd look for at least a clean break from previous work. I'd swap in Persepolis or even that Duncan, The Wonder Dog for the Thompson. One not-exactly-technically debut work I remember that was completely different than previous work to the degree that no one could have conceivably expected what we were seeing in front of us was the Antarctic Press edition of Schizo, revelatory and astonishing even if you knew and liked Misery Loves Comedy. Night Fisher is a great choice by Mautner.

* Paul Gravett offers up one of his valuable survey, this time on current adaptation projects in comics.

* Laura Terry presents her four-page story from Quattro Monstro an anthology whipped up by CCS-related cartoonists for sale at the Maine comics festival just past.

* here's a list of political comics that makes me wonder how political Maus is, really.

* Michael Cavna has not one, not two, but three super-solid follow-ups to this weekend's big WaPo magazine profile of the great Richard Thompson, all at his Comic Riffs blog: an interview with cartoonist Peter Dunlap-Shohl about his life and career with Parkinson's, a short talk with Bill Watterson about that portrait of Petey Otterloop he did for the forthcoming Team Cul De Sac fundraising efforts, and a post about those Cul De Sac animated shorts you might have seen floating around.

* Jared Gardner has unearthed a self-analytical Frank Miller document from his fanzine days.

* I can't think of any series of article's I'm enjoying more than these Ryan Holmberg pieces on the origins of alt-manga, although I have to admit a lot of what I'm reading could be totally made up and I'd have no idea which parts were fanciful.

* speaking of TCJ, a reading assignment from Professor Santoro.

* Chris Marshall tells people how to find new comics they'd like. I find trial and error is pretty effective, too.

* finally, another day, another unfortunate act of insensitivity on the part of a mainstream comics publisher. DC labeling a map of Africa "ape-controlled" instead of "Grodd-controlled" will likely fall prey to the usual comics thing of becoming a referendum on the amount of racism DC has in its company heart, when really it's just an example of bad editorial gate-keeping and general cluelessness. The thing is, both things should engender apologies.
 
posted 3:00 am PST | Permalink
 

---

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