Random Comics News Story Round-Up

* there should be an entire channel devoted to nothing but Stan Lee reading poems. Via Mark Evanier.

* it may be that we were a big New Yorker household when I was a kid -- I had to be the only second grader in Muncie, Indiana who knew who William Shawn was -- but seeing the Drawn & Quarterly ad at left that recently ran in that magazine's pages has to be one of the bigger "wow, comics are different now" moments I've had in a while. I think it's the first one, but I could be completely wrong about that. It's talked about here. Update: I've been informed by a few of you that they ran a similar ad last year for Adrian Tomine's Shortcomings.

* all hail David Astor!

* mixed signals from Marvel and no signals at all from DC regarding the future of Canadian pricing on comic books, Don MacPherson says. Other potential effects that a weakening Canadian dollar may have on comics are discussed as well.

* if I'm reading this article correctly, the cartoonist Marjane Satrapi is going to receive an honorary doctorate specifically targeted to those advancing the cause of multi-cultural values.

* this review of recent format changes at a pair of Boston newspapers sounds a bit more like Statler and Waldorf than it does Ebert and Roeper when it comes to the comics section. I think there's a point to be made, though, about how newspaper reformatting is going to have an impact on comics and how they're perceived. For example, I found the Chicago Tribune's new Sunday comics page almost unreadable, and actually bought the Sun-Times the next week.

* this is a cool story about a cool-sounding collection.

* the cartoonist Colleen Doran is compiling the names of agents that handle comics-related properties.

* this story about an 18-year-old comic book shop closing its doors is interesting for a couple of reasons: it leaves another town of 35,000-plus without any kind of comics retail whatsoever, and it looks like the shop was actually critically wounded in 2003 rather than in this current, relatively positive period.

* finally, the writer Steven Grant takes a sensible approach to the issue of price in comics. I think my one major quibble would be that a lot of the argument takes place as if some comic books are mainstream entertainment and others are specialty items. I think they're all specialty items. But the thing I like about Steven's take on thing is that it really underlines how difficult it is to track this issue. In some cases, you can take a look at figures on a specific comic book issue; in others, you're talking a buyer class that separated from the final purchasers by a step, so for that and other reasons things get confusing quickly. I remain committed to the idea of comic books not out of nostalgia but because relatively low-entry point comics purchases play a vital role in creating hardcore readers and sustaining an economic model that allows a lot of folks to make a living at comics. I think when not abused it promotes a nice, diverse reading experience, too. If it's suddenly become more difficult to provide this to readers, I think it's worth trying a bit harder in order to keep something so uniquely useful in so many ways.
 
posted 7:30 am PST | Permalink
 

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