Random Comics News Story Round-Up

* the town where Doug Wright lived the last 17 years of his life has named a street and park after the cartoonist.

* dear PR people: why it may be very exciting for you to have a book hit one of the still-new New York Times chart for comics and graphic novels, since there are 30 books so honored books every times the charts come out I need a little more than your excitement for me to be able to do anything with it.

* I very much like it when writers about comics interrupt what they usually do to enthuse over the content of a comic, in this case Gary Tyrrell and recent developments in Achewood.

* the great Eddie Campbell talks about movie pitches and comics.

* not comics: there is probably a good article to be written about the hyper-infantilization of entertainment product, but this isn't quite it. There's something there, though. I remain fascinated by people who are disinterested in certain kinds of entertainment product but either brood about or even experience them relentlessly -- Scott's essay gets me thinking about those people, I don't consider it an example -- and wonder if the idea of viewing movies as this kind of general cultural imperative the way it's presented to us in articles like this isn't a big part of why our biggest entertainments tend to be so dumb. I also suspect that money plays a bigger role than we think: movies like Public Enemies and the Pelham remake are starting to work with audiences according to the same expectations as a giant robot movie because they're made according to the dictates of the same culture of economic excess. The Hurt Locker stuff in Scott's essay is pretty fascinating, however, how this simply can't be viewed as a hit movie coming out of the gate. An even better example was brought up recently by I think Adam Corolla and Bill Simmons of all people where you compare the trailer to Fame and its forthcoming remake and the earlier movie looks less like the mainstream entertainment it was 25 years ago and more like some super-hardcore indy film. Comics has something similar -- in shops 30 years ago you could routinely find early indies like Love and Rockets and Elfquest on the stands, and now stores like my local consider something like Marvel's Hellcat mini-series from last year a bit too out there to stock.

* the writer Kevin Church discusses superheroes with guns as a way to talk himself out of a new Ultimate Avengers reboot. It's interesting to me primarily because Church looks at it -- at least in part -- from the perspective that guns seem ridiculous given the general power levels of the character. I think he's right. My memory is that back when characters like The Punisher were introduced, guns seemed like a Gordian Knot-type solution mostly because the power levels weren't quite that extreme. Guns were more extreme than Spider-Man. So "just shoot them; brilliant" has become "just try and shoot them, dumbass" in the 35 years, since. I'm not sure which way is better.

* the prominent blogger J. Caleb Mozzocco writes at some length about the This Is A Comic Book exhibit.

* I'm coming to this really late, and I haven't had a chance to delve into the specifics, but the TCJ Message Board is hosting a conversation about the best superhero comics of the decade. They frequently do a good job with those kinds of discussions.

* you should add The Daily Cross Hatch into your press releases about shows and the like so that they can update their calendars.

* finally, I'm always a little uncomfortable making supplementary references to stuff generated on this site, but damned if I'll ever look at Jim Starlin's Dreadstar character again and not think of him being played by Roy Scheider to some Bob Fosse choreography. Thanks for nothing, Five For Friday #175.
 
posted 7:30 am PST | Permalink
 

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