Random Comics News Story Round-Up

* Heidi MacDonald dug up a fun article from the San Diego Reader where one of their columnists cuffs to the floor recent calls for convention center expansion -- or at least calls into question the figures being used. The first half of the thread that follows is interesting reading as well. A bit of news in that article is that the W is in trouble, but I can't imagine this is surprising to CCI-goers: that hotel almost always has rooms available, and no one I know that's stayed there has liked it much. There's discussion at MacDonald's original posting, too.

* it's not comics, but the complete Topps Mars Attacks Trading Cards set is one of the standbys of pleasurable visual pulp culture, last century edition.

* Shaenon Garrity on samurai manga.

* go to D&Q's site through here and tell them about your local comics shop.

* one thing that's great about the non English language sites is that you get interviews with professionals and discussion of material out of the comfortable North American release schedule expectations, if that make sense. Case in point: an interview with Miriam Katin.

* not comics: a bookstore closes via twitter (via someone I forgot; sorry).

* I've added a pair of quotes from the great writer about comics Bob Levin to yesterday's obit for BN Duncan. Duncan was a unique cartoonist, and I wish we could find more ways to talk about the legacy of someone like that over whatever passes for the latest flash-paper comics controversy.

* not comics: I'm personally all over the place regarding issues of digital pricing -- for example I think the book publishing industry's resistance to $9.99 books is more about preserving an infrastructure than anything else -- but I think Malcolm Gladwell does a pretty good job in terms of the constraints a mainstream article has of throwing water on some of the goofier arguments made by technological enthusiasts. It's not a complete brief, so I imagine it will be dismantled in a bunch of fussy little nerd courts over the next several days, but even then there's a lot of room to expand his arguments as well as dig into and discredit them. One thing I never see people bring up is when you're extolling the virtues of selling something for free over selling something for 14 cents, this means someone has to be selling it for 14 cents despite the pressure of a competitor selling their stuff for free. I frequently wonder about the long-term applicability of these principles and if they're not just a staked position that only works against standard ways of doing things, and sometimes not even then.

* finally, I bought this originally just for the cover. I think there was either a poster of this or someone at Fantagraphics had put up one of the cover proofs as a poster.
 
posted 7:30 am PST | Permalink
 

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