* festivals extra: I didn't see Heidi MacDonald's extended think piece on SDCC 2019 until just now. It did feel like there were a bunch of reductions across the board, especially in flourishes brought in by other industries. That thing where they announced like four years of movie and TV shows at Marvel was a focused follow-up that matched the heyday of the Twilight movie in its own way. A lot of things that were still there were smaller than the last time I saw them. There are ascendant things: toy culture is still a hot thing there; that X-Men relaunch received a lot of attention and not in a consolation prize way, and the all-age book publishers seemed to have as much institutional strength as the mainstream comics people. Chris Ware was giving away books and posters, received an inkpot and seemed generally pleased to be there. I had a good time.
* Rachel Cooke on 
