Random Comics News Story Round-Up

* the writer Chris Mautner muses about the state of DC's Vertigo imprint in the post-synergy world as a way of getting into an old-fashioned line review. I would think that a line review would tell you little about the state of things as these books would have been planned long before the latest round of DC restructuring and related corporate tweaking; what they have planned for next summer is probably going to be key.

* Bill Griffith offers up a rare and awesome-looking cover he did for a literary publication in the early '70s.

* Chris Butcher asks you to vote for two graphic novel options in the Canada Reads promotion.

* Nicole Rudick quickly and deftly describes the abuse that Lynd Ward received from contemporary literary critics and Ward's elegant, pro-comics response in a Caldecott Award acceptance speech.

* USA Today profiles Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips' Incognito, which just launched a second series.

* the writer Peter David re-runs a column from the days when he used to go toe-to-toe with my former employer, The Comics Journal. I started working there about a half-year after that and temperature had not cooled.

* I've never taken all-the-way seriously the extremes to which the esteemed comics historian RC Harvey argues his visual-verbal blend theory -- it doesn't seem to me arguable for half a second that a well-executed comic of serious intent and humane sensibility would kick the shit out of some silly, clumsy trifle that embodies the blending principle in every measure of art that should matter -- but I appreciate his consistency and the force with which he argues it. He's at it again.

* Josh Flanagan on the Nerd Pride thing. Is there an age component to those kinds of issues? I find myself increasingly baffled by articles like these, unable to find purchase on any of the sides they describe. I couldn't even remember what Big Bang Theory was until the photo loaded.

* not comics: "hey, what's your name?" -- Fantagraphics associate publisher Eric Reynolds and his Eightball t-shirt at a peaceful political protest, 1992.

* Graeme McMillan reviews an issue of a Spider-Man comic book that he says serves as sort of a finale to the past few years of changing the baseline story and set-up on that character. He liked the issue, and liked the lengthy retrenching even more.

* Johnny Ryan on those prints he did for the Walking Dead series; it's very entertaining.

* the writer Timothy Hodler digs into Beetle Bailey like nobody's business, and because it's that particular industry-shaping juggernaut a lot of what he says resonates in terms of the entire newspaper strip medium over the last 50 years.

* genial TCJ veteran Rich Kreiner looks at more comics by Joseph Lambert, which is exactly the same course of action I took after I saw my first Joseph Lambert comic.

* Charlie Brown in the comic books was just like the Charlie Brown in the comic strips, except seedier.

* D+Q's Tom Devlin provides his own list of favorite D+Q titles, in part to bring attention to books he thinks didn't receive enough attention in last Friday's "Five For Friday" spotlighting the company's works.

* finally, if you're going to read one longer on-line piece today, make it Matthias Wivel's discussion of the Finnish comics scene, utilizing observations made by watching one of its societies make use of their space and time at the Helsinki Book Fair. I would love to see the same kind of forward-thinking made by North American groups at some of their shows.
 
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