Dave Schreiner dies
(Comic Books) A late-breaking update: longtime Kitchen Sink Press editor Dave Schreiner died yesterday after a long bout with cancer. Co-worker and longtime friend Denis Kitchen emailed the Journal with the news:

"Dave edited a good number of important graphic novels and collections and was the single person most responsible (for better or worse, as I always kidded him) for me becoming a professional cartoonist and publisher. Dave was my oldest friend, a sweet and wonderful guy and an outstanding editor."

Dave Schreiner was 56.
Posted @ 10:55 PM by Dirk Deppey | permalink

Harvey Pekar speaks
(The Comics Journal) It's the last Friday of the month, and that means it's time for September's edition of the TCJ Audio Archives! This month's installment originally ran in The Comics Journal #97 (April 1985). Editor Gary Groth conducted this interview via telephone with pioneering autobiographical cartoonist and self-publisher Harvey Pekar, the author of the landmark series American Splendor. Pekar discussed his work in considerable detail, touching upon the origin of the series, the nature of his art, his friendship with R. Crumb, the reason why he's content to portray himself in a less-than-flattering light, and much more.

Friday also brings another installment of TCJ.com's review column, Dogsbody. This week, critic Daniel Holloway takes a long-overdue look at the state of the Small Press Expo's moribund SPX anthology, and offers some suggestions as to how it can be revived. Enjoy!
Posted @ 3:45 AM by Dirk Deppey | permalink

Jiffrey Yunoos dies
(Editorial Cartoons) Funeral services will be held today for one of Sri Lanka's most celebrated cartoonists, Jiffrey Yunoos. The Daily News of Sri Lanka reports that Yunoos died yesterday at the Sri Jayawardhanapura Hospital -- the article gives no details, and only briefly touches upon his accomplishments as an artist. For a more complete picture of Yunoos' works, we turn now to this profile of the man in his home country's Sunday Observer:

"Merely consider the credentials of the man. A Muslim, he forsook the beaten path and did his best cartoons for the communist Aththa at a time when this newspaper, begun in the mid 1960's, was almost single-handedly waging war against the Goliath of the monopoly press. To join the Aththa Yoonous had chucked up a well-paid job as the staff cartoonist of the Thinakaran where he was counterpart to Colette of the Daily News. [...]

"Yoonous went through his moments of suffering as well. At the height of the Premadasa Presidency thugs invaded his home at Borella and slashed his face with a razor blade, an action which prompted a spontaneous demonstration by journalists at Lipton Circus and a public meeting the same evening at the New Town Hall. Also, rarely for a Muslim, Yoonous gave one of his sons to the Army. The boy who had just married was killed in Action. Only the young widow is left. and, of course, the ageing cartoonist."

Last June the Editors Guild of Sri Lanka honored Yunoos with the Long and Distinguished Service Gold Medal award; he also served on the board of the Cartoonists Rights Network.

(Before anyone asks: Yunoos' name is spelled differently on literally every page about the man that I visited -- in the end I chose to go with the spelling used in his obituary. I was unable to ascertain how old he was when he died.)
Posted @ 3:45 AM by Dirk Deppey | permalink

In other news
(Potpourri) Let's take one last look at the news stories and interesting links circulating throughout the internet before closing up for the weekend:

• Four months ago I noted that the Japanese electronics firm Matsushita had developed a small, handheld e-book reader with a resolution capacity similar to high-definition television, closing with the line, "Downloadable comics, anyone?" Now, CNET Asia is reporting that Matsushita has teamed up with the New Tokyo International Airport Authority to test the device, called the Sigma book, at the Narita International Airport, where it will be loaded up with "Japanese comics, novels and how-to books" and loaned to travelers on round-trip tickets. Told you so. For those of you just catching up on this technology, the BBC recently ran a story on the latest developments in e-book technology (That last link courtesy of ArtsJournal.)

• Pacific News Service has your weekly story on the influx of manga and anime into the American market. Meanwhile, ICv2 brings word of the latest manga acquisitions by Del Rey through their partnership with Japanese publisher Kodansha -- two titles produced by the women's manga collective Clamp, which feature characters from other series, such as the monstrously popular Chobits. If you were Tokyopop, wouldn't you be concerned by this?

• An unexpected side-effect of the whole Crossgen thing -- the Yahoo Inkers' Discussion Group, where the story first broke, experienced some explosive growing pains (exacerbated by a suddenly missing moderator) and eventually had to be moved to a new list. Elayne Riggs explains.

• Mark Evanier commemorates the posthumous birthdays of Jack Kirby and Western Publishing editor Chase Craig.

• Sean Collins notes how comics writer Grant Morrison has followed the template set by David Bowie, and wonders if Chris Ware isn't doing the same. Sorry Sean, but it's not a schtick. I've heard too many testimonies that Ware really does have an outsized sense of self-loathing not to believe it.

• Jim Henley offers a progress report of his recent attempt to goad the Comics Blogosphere into talking about Gaiman and Kubert's new Marvel series 1602.

• Finally, Forager23 got shitty service at a Burlington, Vermont comic-book shop, and wants you to know all about it. Hey, it's not like it's a problem unique to Vermont; over at Ninth Art, Brent Keane returns to Australian comics shops after a year and a half, and discovers that while service has improved in some locations, not all retailers have worked to make the shopping experience better for customers.

And that's ¡Journalista! for this week. See you Monday, when we'll take it up all over again.
Posted @ 3:45 AM by Dirk Deppey | permalink

Tom Feelings dies
(Comic Strips) Illustrator Tom Feelings died Monday at the age of 70, while seeking treatment for cancer in Mexico. Feelings, an accomplished African-American artist, served as an art professor at the University of South Carolina for seven years. Thoough best known for the book The Middle Passage: White Ships/Black Cargo, his career briefly touched into cartooning as well. South Carolina newspaper The Columbia State has the Associated Press report:

"Feelings was born and raised in the Bedford-Stuyevesant section of Brooklyn, N.Y. He graduated from George Westinghouse Vocational High School and attended the Cartoonists and Illustrators School. He joined the U.S. Air Force in 1953 and was a staff artist in the graphic division of the 3rd Air Force, station in London.

"He returned to the United States in 1957 and began studying at the School of the Visual Arts. In 1958, he created a weekly comic strip series, Tommy Traveler in the World of Negro History, that ran in the now-defunt New York Age."

You can learn more about Feelings by visiting his website; a softcover collection of his Tommy Traveler strips is listed for sale at Barnes & Noble. The number of children surviving him seems to be disputed by various sources; the AP report credits him as the father of four children, while his website lists him as having two sons, Zamani and Kamili.
Posted @ 3:30 AM by Dirk Deppey | permalink

In other news
(Potpourri) Here's a list of the other stories and links to make themselves known in the last day:

• Japan Corporate News Network is reporting that the Toshiba Corporation is set to begin testing a digital rights management (DRM) system for tracking the downloading of comics at the Japanese website Manga Town. Publishers in a wide variety of media regard DRM, which in theory can prevent the unauthorized copying of legally purchased works, as a prerequisite to posting intellectual properties online.

• According to New Mexico's KOB Television, that state is re-examining the status of all released sex offenders after learning that 32-year-old Michael Delia, convicted three years ago of sexual contact with a 16-year-old girl, is now managing a comics shop in Nob Hill. It should be noted that Delia protests his innocence, and that the television news story doesn't cite an example of a law actually being broken in this instance.

• Over at Editor and Publisher, features reporter Dave Astor offers an interesting and informative round-up on the state of the Sunday comics section in American newspapers.

• The top item on Daryl Cagle's weblog at the moment is a letter from the Australian Cartoonists' Association seeking clarification on the reason The New Zealand Herald fired Malcolm Evans (no permalinks available, alas -- it's the "Wednesday August 27th" entry).

• Poynter Online introduces "Persuasive Art", a new column devoted to editorial cartooning. (Thanks to Mason Adams for the link.)

• Silver Bullet Comics' Tim O'Shea has an interview with Nick Bertozzi, the Harvey and Ignatz Award-winning cartoonist behind the acclaimed comic Rubber Necker.

• ICv2 is headlining a two-part interview with DC Comics' vice-president for direct sales, Bob Wayne (part one, part two), which focuses on such retailer-targeted themes as sell-out trends, cut-off dates for orders, and retailer discounts.

• The Toronto Star interviews Neil Gaiman about his recent return to the comics medium.

• Egon points to The Speakeasy, a literature-themed program New Jersey radio station WFMU, which recently featured an interview with cartoonist Peter Kuper concerning his adaptation of the Franz Kafka story The Metamorphosis. The interview can be streamed via RealAudio for the next month from this link.

• Speaking of radio interviews, a conversation with Tom Spurgeon about the new Stan Lee biography, recorded by Alan David Doane for radio station WAMC's Midday Magazine, is now available for download (in two formats, no less) from Spurgeon and Raphael's website -- scroll to the bottom for the links.

• Back at ICv2, New York comics retailer Anthony Furfferi reacts to the Free Comic Book Survey conducted by Diamond.

• Steven Grant weighs in on the recent Crossgen clusterfuck with an extended professional-wrestling metaphor. Comics reviewer Chris Allen gets a few licks in as well.

• Comixpedia's David Wright has a few web-design tips for cartoonists interested in showcasing their work on the web. My only quibble with Wright's article is that he gets the "microwave burrito" rule wrong. It should be "There is no such thing as a microwave burrito -- they should all be oven-cooked." (Link via Alan David Doane, because I missed it the first time around.)

• Newspaperman and weblogger James Lileks finds the bizarrest entry possible in the Minnesota State Fair Seed Art Exhibition -- a "Free Dirty Danny" logo made of seeds. (Link via Jim Treacher.)

Finally, it's time for another Jess Lemon review! This time out, the pseudonymous Lemon eviscerates Crossgen comic The First #34. As always, the review is on-target and the comments from outraged nerds are hilarious in a "laugh at them not with them" sort of way. Hell hath no fury like a fanboy whose whims and prejudices aren't slavishly catered to, of course, and this time out the Howling Chorus Of Outrage seems to be going further and further into their bucket of excuses for reasons to hate Lemon's take on their favorite comics. This one from Mark "Join the Conspiracy" Masterman has to take the cake:

"I am convinced that the pulse only operates as a breeding ground for 'fodder' that the ladies at the tart can use to further demonize and belittle the 'stifling' male presence in comics."

Explains everything, doesn't it?
Posted @ 3:30 AM by Dirk Deppey | permalink

Free Comic Book Day by the numbers
(Comics Retailing) A week ago we took a look at the advance planning for next year's Free Comic Book Day, an annual opportunity for comic-book stores to promote themselves by giving away copies of comics to (presumably) new and lapsed comics readers. The current question on the table is whether next year's event will be timed to coincide with a comic-book themed movie, or whether to stay on the same day as previous events and attempt to plug comics on their own turns.

Well, ICv2 is now reporting the results of a survey conducted by Diamond Comic Distributors of retailers who participated in this year's events, providing a little more information on which to mull the decision:

"The results on the Day itself were good. About 52% of respondents reported better traffic than last year, and 56% reported better sales. Only 14% had worse traffic, and 18% worse sales than on FCBD 2002.

"And the traffic had a great composition. On average, retailers reported that over 30% of the customers on FCBD were new, and nearly 15% were returning (hadn't been in a comic store for a long time). The mean traffic was 332 customers per location, with a range of 20 to 4,500 customers per location."

More significantly: of the retailers who responded to the survey, roughly two-thirds reported promoting the event more aggressively than they did last year; of those, some 43% reported that tie-ins with movie theaters (presumably showing X-Men II) were the most effective means of promotion.

Does this mean that retailers should therefore vote for a movie date for next year's Free Comic Book Day? Certainly the evidence for doing so would seem to be stronger. That said, the argument that I used last week still holds some weight -- the notion that comics are best promoted through movies is self-defeating in the long run, as it promotes the notion that there's no other real draw possible for the medium. Furthermore, retailers should beware tying themselves to an untrustworthy engine; as today's issue of USA Today notes, Hollywood had considerably less success with superhero-themed films than they bargained upon, and the notion that the superhero fad will always be there to drive customers into the shops for the event is dubious at best. To the event that comics shops need a better hook with which to draw in new people for Free Comic Book Day than, you know, free comics, I would argue that in the current market it actually makes more sense to attempt to align the event with manga products and televised anime -- of course, this would be a self-defeating move for shops who don't cater to such tastes to begin with.
Posted @ 3:40 AM by Dirk Deppey | permalink

In other news
(Potpourri) Here's what else surfaced in the last twenty-four hours:

• ICv2 is also quoting a spokesperson for Pantheon Books as stating that Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi's graphic-novel memoir of growing up in revolutionary Iran, has now sold over 35,000 copies, making it one of the few such books capable of going toe-to-toe with manga in bookstore sales. Clearly there's good word-of-mouth on this book, but you just can't escape the near-constant press this volume has received since publication, either -- and as this Chicago Sun-Times story demonstrates, the media's fascination for Persepolis has yet to abate.

• Weeks after editorial cartoonist Malcolm Evans was fired by The New Zealand Herald for his strong pro-Palestinian views, the Palestine Human Rights Campaign is still protesting the dismissal. MSN New Zealand has the details.

• In an age of shrinking comics sections in American newspapers, Editor and Publisher is reporting that Florida's St. Petersburg Times is bucking the trend and beefing up its daily and Sunday comics pages.

• The New York Times carries no less than three comics-related stories in today's edition. First comes news that editorial cartoonist J. Arthur Wood Jr. has donated a collection of original cartoons and caricatures valued at between $20-30 million to the Library of Congress. Next, film critic Elvis Mitchell uses the upcoming occasion of what would have been Jack Kirby's 86th birthday to reflect on the gigantic shadow his creative output casts upon American pop-culture. Finally, it wouldn't be newspaper coverage of the comics medium without a mostly dismissive look at today's comics and graphic novels.

• Talking to the Direct Market players, part one: This week's episode of Fanboy Radio, an hour-long program for superhero fans aired on North Texas radio station KTCU, featured a live call-in discussion with Marvel editor-in-chief Joe Quesada, who answered listeners' questions on everything from bookstore distribution and trade-paperback strategy to whether or not he really engaged in a fight with Grant Morrison at this year's San Diego Comic-Con. I'm certainly no fan of Quesada's partner in crime, Bill Jemas, but Quesada himself always struck me as a fairly forthright guy -- an impression only strengthened by this off-the-cuff interview.

• Talking to the Direct Market players, part two: On the other side of the fence, Comic Book Resources has an extensive interview with DC Comics executives Bob Wayne and Dan Didio about that company's strategies for success in the coming year, with plenty of talk about exclusives, media tie-ins, bookstore sales and selling comics to kids. One caveat -- given the vast gulf in tastes between the bookstores and the Direct Market, Wayne's notion that "we're not really seeing, for the most part, a substantial difference in the sales of collected editions between one direct market outlet and another direct market outlet" is not exactly something I'd be bragging about if I were him, as this suggests a failure to tailor the sale to the customer more than anything else.

• Over at Newsarama, Stuart Moore offers an insightful survey of Howard Chaykin's legendary American Flagg! series for First Comics (two more days, hint hint).

• Weblogger J.M. Tuffley attempts to piece together a timeline and figure out what happened to creators at Crossgen (scroll down just a bit -- it starts halfway into the linked entry).

• Big Sunny David offers some insights into the works of Daniel Clowes, and shares his thoughts on Milligan and Pulido's new Human Target series for Vertigo.

• Mark Evanier gives a big thumbs-up to Spurgeon and Raphael's new Stan Lee biography.

Finally, last June's Comica Comics Festival in London saw the debut of a giant, multidirectional wall comic, with contributions from the likes of Roger Langridge, Nick Abadzis and many others. That comic is now online with a Flash Animation interface allowing you to zoom in and pull back on various sections of the strip -- which actually makes for a pleasant reading experience. Check it out. (Link via Bugpowder.)
Posted @ 3:40 AM by Dirk Deppey | permalink

Comics and religious rivalry in the Philippines
(Comic Books) A comic book has become the latest bone of contention between two rival religious organizations in the Philippines, the Bayan ng Katotohanan Inc. and the powerful Iglesia ni Cristo. The two organizations have traded barbs on their respective gospel programs for many months, which had already caused them to sue one another for libel. Now, the BNKI's charismatic leader, televangelist Eliseo "Brother Eli" Soriano, has accused the INC of publishing and distributing a comic book which makes a number of accusations against him -- in turn prompting two representatives of the INC, Leopoldo Guevarra and Michael Sandoval, to file additional libel charges against Brother Eli in Quezon City yesterday afternoon. ABS-CBN News has the story:

"The magazine also had the subtitle 'Ang Buhay at Pag-ibig, Part 1' which shows illustrations of Soriano having sex with another man.

"The man who was allegedly having an affair with Soriano was identified as a certain 'Uly.' The reading material also accused Soriano of engaging in money-making activities using the Church.

"The comic book did not identify any publishing company or any illustrator or artist yet it is now widely circulated in Metro Manila."

The Bayan ng Katotohanan Inc. is something of an upstart David to the Iglesia ni Cristo's Goliath in this fight. The INC has long played a powerful role in Filipino social life; their support (mainly among the nation's poor) is enhanced by the infallability claimed by its leaders, and the organization has a history of carefully cultivating relationships with people in high places. The INC had the blessing of former dictator Ferdinand Marcos back when he held power, and served as a pillar of support for recently-disgraced president Joseph Estrada. The secretive group has no English-language website that Google can find, but you can learn more about the Iglesia ni Cristo and the power it holds in this report by the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism. The BNKI present their side of the long-running dispute on their website, although as of this writing it has yet to be updated to reflect the latest charges against the group.
Posted @ 3:00 AM by Dirk Deppey | permalink

In other news
(Potpourri) Here's what else is happening in the world of comics this morning:

• The Palestine Chronicle notes that An-Najah National University is offering a collection of propaganda cartoons for download which celebrates the Palestinian intifada against the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip by the nation of Israel. The collection, available in PDF format, can be downloaded from this link (29 MB, connection may crap out halfway through).

• The 2003 Canadian National Comic Book Expo took place in Toronto over the weekend, and both Newsarama and cartoonist Jason Marcy have scene reports.

• Also at Newsarama: Arkansas comic-book retailer Michael Tierney makes the case for an industry-wide ratings system, to aid shopowners in knowing the risks each individual title carry in bringing the wrath of the blue-noses.

• Silver Bullet Comics' Tim O’Shea has an interview with San Francisco cartoonist Lark Pien.

• British small-press comics news-site Bugpowder is launching an ambitious new project to catalog that country's comics heritage with an "Encyclopedia of British Comics Creators".

• Weblogger Eve Tushnet offers a layman's reaction to Scott McCloud's Reinventing Comics, and takes issue with his definition of art in Understanding Comics.

• In a related vein, Simply Comics reviews Will Eisner's pioneering book Comics and Sequential Art.

• Sean Collins takes down a critic from the New York Review of Books, and responds to reactions to his recent essay on manga. Speaking of which, Bill Sherman and Johnny Bacardi both continue the debate.

Finally, The Crossgen story continues to generate heat. Newsarama finally weighs in on the subject, with quite possibly the most comprehensive and insightful report yet presented on the ongoing fiasco. Over at ICv2, meanwhile, publisher Mark Alessi continues playing the spin game. There's nothing here that we haven't heard before, but I wanted to highlight this bit -- Alessi speaks:

"[...] 95% of independents or freelancers who do work for us on the fill-in issues have been unbelievably supportive. I've spoken to at least 25 of them personally and their primary statements have been almost universally that, 'This is incredible, I can't believe you're actually calling me ahead of time to tell me my check's going to be late. I can't imagine this happening with publishers from other companies.' For guys or gals who could afford it, they said, 'Don't worry about it, you paid us so rapidly in the past, I'm with you for the long haul.' A few have been in financial trouble and we've expedited payments to them with the knowledge and permission of others in their support. So we haven't lost a single independent outside of those which were planned attrition."

Note that the last sentence, filtered of its spin, basically amounts to "We were going to fire those guys anyway, so they don't count." Clearly, Alessi is every bit as charming as the photo which illustrates the article implies. More interesting to me, however, are the words that he puts in the mouths of his employees. I never noticed it until Alessi made it one of his talking points, but: have you seen a single example of a Crossgen-related creator saying nice things about the company in public lately? I haven't. Curiously enough, the only place that I can find such sentiments expressed are in statements made by Mark Alessi on their behalf. Surely the non-disclosure agreements aren't that restrictive -- are Crossgen's writers and artists somehow under the impression that they're contractually forbidden to say nice things about the company for which they work, do you think?
Posted @ 3:00 AM by Dirk Deppey | permalink

Slow news day
(Potpourri) Yes, one of these again. The weekend either delivers slam dunks or a vast sea of white noise, I've come to conclude.

The closest thing to an actual news story at the moment: ICv2 is reporting that the Media Coalition, which is challenging a new Arkansas law which would literally mandate all "material which is harmful to minors in such a way that minors, as a part of the invited general public, will be exposed to view such material" to be covered so that minors cannot see it, has struck a temporary deal with the Arkansas Attorney General's office not to attempt to enforce the law until its legitimacy is determined by a judge. In return, Arkansas' Governor and Attorney General are to be dropped from the lawsuit. There's not really much more to the story as of this writing, so there's not much more to say except the obvious: this is a stopgap measure that doesn't so much settle the matter as postpone it.

In any event, here's what else I found over the weekend:

• Daryl Cagle is reporting in his weblog that a cartoon that he posted online by Sandy Huffaker has landed both he and the artist in hot water with The Council on American-Islamic Relations, resulting in a flood of co-ordinated emails calling on Cagle to apologize and remove the offending image. Both the cartoon and a sampling of the resulting emails can be found at the above link -- there are no permalinks on Cagle's site so scroll down to the "Friday, August 22nd" entry.

• Local police have raided the Manboo comics cafe in Nagoya, Japan -- yes, they have comics cafes in Japan -- after warning its proprietors that sexual activity could be taking place within the cafe's thirty-six private rooms. Boy, there's a story you would never hear taking place in American comics-related establishments, isn't it? The Mainichi Daily News has the story.

• In what seems to have become our daily Harvey Pekar report, ICv2 looks at the possibility that the American Splendor movie will duplicate the Ghost World film adaptation's success in selling copies of the original comics to a new audience. Elsewhere, Time.com's Andrew Arnold conducts what must be Pekar's eleventy-billionth film-related interview, while the folks at Film Jerk spoke to members of the movie's cast an crew. Finally, Warren Ellis reports on the Harvey Pekar panel at an Edinburgh comics convention.

• Craig Thompson's graphic novel Blankets has sold out of its 10,000-copy first printing, and publisher Top Shelf is rushing to release a second printing while the buzz is still on. ICv2 (them again?) has a nice story on the subject, while Newsarama has the official press release, which you really shouldn't bother with -- I've just told you everything the press release tells you -- unless you want to see a picture of Craig Thompson getting a $20,000 royalty check from Chris Staros. Meanwhile over at The Pulse, ace reviewer and fictional construct Jess Lemon gives the book what appears to be its first mixed review since its release. (Hopping subjects a bit, weblogger Jason Kimble wonders at Jess Lemon's Charles Dickens fixation.)

• Comixpedia has the transcript of an online chat between Chris Crosby, Joey Manley, Mark Mekkes, Chris Morrisson, BoxJam, and Scott McCloud, on the necessity and utility of awards for online comics.

• The New York Times (registration required) profiles Takashi Murakami, a fine artist whose work uses manga imagery to blur the line between high and low culture, with an otaku aesthetic figuring prominently in the discussion.

• Bob Weber, Jr., creator of the Washington Post Sunday comic strip Slylock Fox, chats with WaPo readers (again, registration required).

• Over at Ninth Art, Marcos Castrillón looks at the tragic life of popular Argentinean comics writer H.G. Oesterheld, who was "disappeared" during the political upheavals that nation endured during the mid-1970s.

• Also at Ninth Art: Andrew Wheeler, Alasdair Watson and Antony Johnston discuss whether we truly are "on the cusp of a Golden Age of Comics", as Neil Gaiman stated during this year's Eisner Awards ceremony in San Diego.

• Rodrigo Baeza reproduces a letter sent by Cat Yronwode to the Kirby/Ditko mailing list, concerning research she gathered for a never-completed Steve Ditko biography, which contains no shortage of fascinating material about the reclusive cartoonist's early life.

• Writer Julie Burchill rails in British newspaper The Guardian against the alleged stupidity (and lurking homophobia) of anti-war comic strips, with special emphasis on a new anthology edited by Metaphrog. (Thanks to Egon for emailing me the link.)

• Over at Silver Bullet Comics, Buddy Scalera makes a nominally persuasive argument that retailers and publishers should stop trying to sell comics and graphic novels to children, and concentrate on selling them to adults instead.

• Webloggers Johnny Bacardi and J.M. Tuffley weigh in on the controversy that recently engulfed Crossgen comics. (Observation: The Pulse, which has long labored under the perception that it's bought and paid for by Crossgen, has covered the story from both the publishers' and freelancers' sides. Newsarama, by contrast, hasn't touched it in a week. So much for all the innuendo...)

• Bill Sherman casts a skeptical eye on Sean Collins' recent essay about how the format in which manga volumes are packaged aids in their success in the marketplace.

• Spike Magazine's weblog discusses the pitfalls inherent in Peter Kuper's new adaptation of Kafka's The Metamorphisis. (Thanks to Adam Stephanides for the link.)

• Time.com's Andrew Arnold (him again?) review two new books by Chris Ware.

• Alan David Doane gives his "comics masterworks" picks.

• Stan Horzepa of the American Radio Relay League investigates the connection between comics and HAM radio (part one, part two), and discovers that there is in fact a connection between comics and HAM radio. Who knew?

• Massachusetts newspaper The Stoughton Journal ran a sweet little puff piece on a class of children being taught how to make their own comic books by comic book artist James Brown. Awwwww...

• See Fantagraphics' various comic books rated the way they were supposed to be rated -- by their fat-woman content. (Thanks to Secret Santa for the link.)

Finally, contratulations to Amy and James Kochalka on the birth of their son, Eli Ray, last Thursday at 11:11 PM. Everybody's reportedly doing fine, with the possible exception of the family cat.
Posted @ 3:10 AM by Dirk Deppey | permalink

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