Random Comics News Story Round-Up

* the cartoonist Jeff Smith returns to blogging with praise for Bear Creek Apartments.

* the politician Hillary Clinton didn't get the Democratic presidential nomination, but she will get her own comic book, complete with art direction eerily reminiscent of the new Barack Obama/John McCain funnybooks from IDW.

* it's going to take a more knowledgeable writer about manga than I am -- that would be all the writers about manga -- to figure out if there's anything new of substance in the comics business news and analysis site ICv2.com's four-part major interview with Viz executive Gonzalo Ferreyra. It seems to me a lot if not all of what's discussed, like their publishing some of Oshinbo, has already been put out there. It's always useful to have someone take the temperature of a company like that, though, and at the very least the piece provides a useful summary of various initiatives.

* newspaper industry bible E&P takes note of Daryl Cagle on the future of editorial cartooning. It's not animation, suggests Cagle.

* the publishing industry newsletter PWCW interviews the actress Mia Kirshner on her forthcoming I Live Here, which will include greatly anticipated work from Joe Sacco and Phoebe Gloeckner. As I recall, Kirshner attended McGill University at either roughly or exactly the same time as mainstream comics writer and playwright Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, which is the very definition of useless trivia but this site bows to no other in comics news relating to the Harvard of the North.

* the prominent comics reviewer Paul O'Brien may be shifting to doing reviews bloggy style. That'd be too bad; I like the site.

* basically not comics: I probably shouldn't be as amazed as I am, but I find it sublimely odd that there's still so much passion by nerds that movie and television shows not make fun of their favorite comics/tv/radio characters, or do them "properly," and yet there's so little sympathy for the upset feelings of the actual creators who have legitimate claims to feelings of ownership over those characters.

* finally, the writer Tom Crippen disagrees with my view on recent work done by Pat Oliphant. Okay. First, I really don't presume to know if Oliphant is connecting with people or not; I would guess that he's alienating as many people as he's delighting. Probably more. Probably many, many more. However, I'd disagree with Crippen on whether an editorial cartoonist or any cartoonist needs to connect in order to be good, let alone admirable. Their effectiveness might be in question, and I make that clear from the start of the post in question, but sometimes good work or work that we admire doesn't connect with as many people as another approach might. People becoming disenchanted with Bill Mauldin was practically the overriding theme of that cartoonist's later career. I admire a lot of Oliphant's recent work in large part because it's angry and blunt and risks alienating people.

Second, I would disagree that Oliphant's attack on Sarah Palin speaking in tongues is just "making fun of people" let alone doing so "for being different," and I say this as someone with plenty of pew time in charismatic churches where a lot of speaking in tongues is done. That's the first image of the cartoon, not the whole cartoon. The bigger argument, it seems clear to me looking at the cartoon, is that Oliphant is savaging the presumption of a political candidate having a direct line to God because they speak in tongues. There is plenty of that criticism in evangelical churches I've attended. As I thought I made clear, I don't expect most people to get past the gleeful meanness of the initial salvo, but I have to admit I didn't expect one of those people to be a Comics Journal critic. I do admire the point Crippen makes about the random, scattered quality of Oliphant's work, which isn't something I addressed.

Here's a profile of Mr. Oliphant.
 
posted 7:30 am PST | Permalink
 

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