Random Comics News Story Round-Up

* all thoughts, prayers and love to Tom Hart and Leela Corman.

* Darryl Ayo argues that the construction of "the last great comic strip" is a canard. I disagree, although I admit there's always some exaggeration in such arguments and that there have been periods more dire than the one we're in now. Still, I believe that there were times when a typical newspaper carried strips that were as a group much stronger than a group a newspaper might carry right now, and that this isn't just a mental trick that focuses on great strips as if they all existed at the same time. I also don't think anyone really thinks of Krazy Kat and, say, Pogo as contemporaries in the way we typically think of contemporaries, not even employing the broad perspective Ayo criticizes (and many of the strips he mentions, many of the acknowledged great strips, did overlap -- Krazy Kat ran until the mid-'40s). In addition, you have to remember newspaper strips look stronger right now than they would have 50 years ago because a) the best work is all collected and offered in bookstores with a kind of routine, across-the-board saturation that didn't exist for past newspaper offerings, and b) there are almost no multi-newspaper towns, so the best strips tend to settle into each city's major publication rather than being divided between two to four. One of the things about some of the sites that carry brief runs from past strips is you can see how strong a lot of largely-forgotten strips were. You also can't discount contributing factors like a greater variety in the tone of offerings and the way strips are presented then and now.

* J. Caleb Mozzocco knows comics are different right now, and he's still a bit stunned by the casual level of extreme violence in the latest issue of the latest iteration of DC's Justice League property.

* Robin McConnell talks to Mike Dawson. John Siuntres talks to Rob Liefeld and Greg Rucka, Matt Fraction and Matt Singer, and Greg Rucka some more. Andy Burns speaks to Scott Tuft. Chris Mautner talks to Art Spiegelman. Nadim Damluji talks to Craig Thompson.

* Michel Fiffe draws a very Roy Crane-like John Carter. He'll be prettier in the forthcoming movie.

* Sean T. Collins draws special attention to Anne Koyama's cool story about how she started publishing comics. I think Koyama's story is important for comics as it begins to stake out different publishing models than "I want to get rich by investing no money and taking all the rights for what I publish to Hollywood." Comics is a place where you can spend a relatively small amount of money for a whole lot of artistic output and the pleasure of doing so, and I think more investors are going to wake up to that fact in the next ten years.

* Ew.

* Lauren Davis looks at two recent webcomics' treatment of depression.

* you will not read a more fascinating comics-related articled today than this one about an unnamed strain of Japanese visual storytelling that cropped up mid-20th Century.

* the various Cagle-affiliated cartoonists look at the Newt Bump.

* Kumar Sivasubramanian on Treehouse Of Horror #17. Charles Yoakum on Overkill. Prajna Desai on Kashmir Pending.

* Scott Adams is running for president, maybe.

* finally, Brian Hibbs is in good form at his CBR column, going through some of the specifics or ordering the New 52 comics and criticizing aspects of Marvel's digital strategy. Graeme McMillan suggests that perhaps Marvel's latest round of cancellation is just clearing things out for a major re-launch. I think we may see a major re-launch from Marvel, but I'm not sure it necessarily means their recent cost-cutting relates directly to such an endeavor.
 
posted 6:05 am PST | Permalink
 

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