Random Comics News Story Round-Up

* Marvel announced initial plans for the CrossGen titles previously acquired by Disney: two four-issue mini-series with the Ruse and Sigil titles. Ruse was one of the better-remembered titles the long-defunct company did; Sigil was one of the highest profile titles from the company. I'm not sure that a couple of mini-series are all that big a deal. Then again, I'm not sure what the hell else Marvel could be expected to do with these properties.

* this article has benign intentions, but it really just reminded me what a poor match the Fawcett characters are for just about anything the DC has been excited about publishing since, well, ever. Although I guess you could argue that the overwhelming skeevy feeling that emanated from their "bad girl Mary Marvel" spin on the character in and around their Final Crisis maxi-series shows that there's still a bit of juice in the character.

* the ComixTalk yearly roundtable is worth reading if only to open up in new tabs every comic mentioned and then to save all of those links into a folder for your later, more considered perusal. If anyone out there has some thoughts concerning approaches to covering that field more effectively, I'm all ears.

* Johnny Ryan asks way better questions than I ask.

* King Features' DailyINK digital effort is transmogrified into an application for portable devices -- the price point is likely to draw criticism from someone, because price points always do.

* the new proposed Transmetropolitan art book to benefit the CBLDF is being done through the Kickstarter fund-raising mechanism, a strategy and fact of life that's discussed here.

* David Welsh suggests Eisner-worthy manga titles.

* Seth Kushner reviews Scenes From An Impending Marriage; perhaps more importantly for some of you hoping to garner a look at this work, there's a page reprinted in the context of that piece.

* not comics: I have little to no interest in seeing the Thor movie, but if someone wants to add up how many times I have to see it to make up for business lost to racist dipshits, I'll do my best. I have a call in to Heimdall's publicist.

* here are whatever X-Mas related posts that crossed in front of my eyeballs this morning. Glen Weldon at NPR recommends a list of books for the holidays. Alan Gardner has a wide-ranging list up here. The great Larry Reid suggests gifts from the Fantagraphics store. Rob Ullman has more and more prints at more and more of a discount.

* Comics Alliance has an interview with Hank Kanalz on DC's digital initiatives. A lot of broadly defined adjectives get a workout, as you might guess.

* it's a well-established truth that Vietnam happened because the powerful DC superhero icons were too busy goofing around.

* not comics: I watched that Kick-Ass movie the other day, and thought the belle of the ball was Mark Strong. That's kind of a shit part, but he was funny and engaging. Also, I was fascinated by the peculiarity and specificity of the fantasy comics store in the movie.

* I'm glad that people are discovering Jack Kirby's Losers material. There's some really crisp cartooning in those comics, basically Kirby's The Big Red One. Speaking of older material that deserves to be rediscovered, Blake Bell has announced he'll be editing some Bill Everett books for Fantagraphics. A strand or two of Everett's creative DNA can be found in every single superhero movie of the last 30 years.

* I really like the looks of the sport they're playing in the latest installment of Supermutant Magic Academy.

* the hobby business news and analysis site ICv2.com makes a good point here -- when you're screening content as closely as Apple seems to, claiming you have no time to discover the provenance of the material doesn't really sound like you're telling the truth.

* nice photo set of the recent Fantagraphics 4th Anniversary Party here, and through the links available through that link.

* it's hard not to enjoy Richard Thompson's portrait of Beethoven. Other 12/16 birthdays are celebrated by William "Refrigerator" Perry and I believe the more furry-looking of the two ABBA guys.

* who redesigned Marvel's Ghost character? That's a pretty good redesign.

* finally, Robot 6 notes that five comics-centric creators made Whitney Matheson's Top 100 list over at her prominent pop culture blog Pop Candy. Given that two of them enjoyed major cross-media efforts this year, I wonder if in terms of pop culture crackle comics had kind of a down year?
 
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