Random Comics News Story Round-Up

* mega-giant distributor Diamond has released the list of next year's Free Comics that will be distributed by shops participating in Free Comic Book Day. I guess you can sort of "read" the titles listed: DC is getting behind its Green Lantern event series, Marvel is supporting the Wolverine movie, D&Q is releasing a Nancy/Melvin the Monster two-fer and Fantagraphics is going with Los Bros. And so on.

* curator of things lost to the collective closets of forgotten America Devlin Thompson writes in over my amazement that there was ever a comic starring characters named Foodini and Pinhead with a web site devoted to the marionettes turned licensing stars and this story: "On my first vacation trip with my future wife in the fall of 1995, I went into an ancient mom-and-pop store in Gatlinburg, and found a dusty, forgotten rack of greeting cards that included a batch of 45-year-old Foodini birthday cards. I bought them all, of course, to add to my collection of 'beloved childhood memories that I am at least 20 years too young to actually have.'"

* deleting bookmarks one: looking over a collection of links I may not have used, I notice I never linked to this extended Neil Gaiman statement on the Christopher Handley trial. He makes the point as strongly as anyone can: the CBLDF fights this and many other fights not as an endorsement of anyone's relationship to art or personal conduct, and not in spite of some personal judgment against anyone's relationship to art of personal conduct. They take cases based on bad law, many of which bring with them an element of prosecutorial bullying or malfeasance. And the implications of this law and this case are very bad indeed. I also skipped this funny rant for some strange reason. Ditto this agitation by a world congress.

* deleting bookmarks two: one of the underappreciated aspects of the late Forrest Ackerman's is that to little kids living all over the country who saw Ackerman's kitschy house or his junk-filled, fun magazines, this was a guy who got to live in the place we all wanted to visit. The possibility you could make a life of your hobbies never seemed more real than holding those magazines or seeing one of those TV appearances. Maybe I'm projecting, but I flashed back on that stuff when I heard the news he passed away. My gut feeling is that it was somehow strangely important that way.

* deleting bookmarks three: I must have never used this one about a manga- and anime-obsessed child-killer because it's so depressing. Actually, I think I may have been waiting to see if the connections were over-sensationalized. I guess this one sort of balances it out, but there's still a dead child.

* deleting bookmarks four: I'm not certain why I bookmarked this site, but comics versions of junk movies and TV shows that in no way require comics versions always crack me up.

* deleting bookmarks five: I don't think I ran a whole lot of linkage to Broccoli Books folding; I'm not sure that I saw it as a "worsening economy" story given how precarious a lot of the non-major manga companies have been for a while.

* finally, a bunch of you were nice enough to use my recent writing on general industry questions to pen essays of your own. David Welsh and Matt Blind offered up really comprehensive responses that should be read in that order. Professor Fury and Sean Kleefeld look at the issue of issue of $3.99 Marvel comic books. Kiel Phegley wrote in to suggest I should add Terry Moore and his Echo to my list of traditional self-publishers; I imagine I should add Dave Sim with Glamourpuss. Nat Gertler, Stephen Weiner, Kyle Garret, Joe Field and Todd Allen all answer different questions via letters to this site. I appreciate them all, and anyone else that attempted the same.
 
posted 6:30 am PST | Permalink
 

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