Today's news
(Potpourri) Let's take one last look at what's happening behind the scenes at the funnies before shutting down for the weekend:

• With Marvel stock continuing to drop, the investors on Yahoo's Marvel board are starting to engage in conspiracy theories involving machinations by a certain hedge fund to explain the sudden downturn. Really, they've become obsessed with the notion.

• On the other hand, it looks like Marvel's hiring creators again. (Link courtesy of Graeme McMillan.)

• In the 1960s a Goodman Beaver parody by Harvey Kurtzman and Will Elder led to the threat of legal action by Archie Comics, which ultimately resulted in Archie being handed the copyright to the story -- when Kitchen Sink Press published a Goodman Beaver collection some years back, Archie only permitted a single panel from the story to illustrate an essay about the incident. A few years back, DC Comics refused to allow an academic journal to use four panels from Batman comics to illustrate an article about insinuations of homosexuality made by Fredric Wertham against the character's relationship with Robin. Increasingly, copyright law is interfering with our ability to manipulate and comment upon the culture around us. How bad has it gotten? This article from the Durham Independent doesn't specifically mention comics, but it's a good summary of the issues involved, using copious examples from the worlds of film, music and literature to make a case for the strengthening of both the public domain and our right to fair use of copyrighted properties. (Link via ArtsJournal.)

• Texas public-radio program Fanboy Radio recently interviewed a pair of Scotts (McCloud and Kurtz), which is available for download as a 14MB MP3 file for a limited time. (Link via Comixpedia.)

• Mark Evanier links to this detailed Adelaide Comics interview with veteran comic-book artist Mike Esposito, who generously shares stories and anecdotes from his long career in the field. If you're interested in Esposito's work, you might also want to check out his website.

• The Times of India profiles Garfield creator Jim Davis.

• Over at Newsarama, Daniel Robert Epstein interviews Rick Geary, whose latest volume in the Treasury of Victorian Murders series details the life and crimes of 19th century serial killer, H.H. Holmes.

• J. Torres chats with Andi Watson about his Marvel and indy work for Comic Book Resources.

• Virginia newspaper The Winchester Star checks in with cartoonist Mark Wheatley, as well as the comics shop where he'll be debuting his new book, Frankenstein Mobster.

• Ninth Art passes the mic to minicomics cartoonist Pam Bliss.

• Artnet traces painter Philip Guston's imagery back to pop culture and underground comix. I didn't know Guston's one-eyed critter was based on an R. Crumb drawing...

• Kevin Melrose doesn't worry about the state of comics criticism so much as the state of comics interviews. (Note: if the permalinks on Kevin's site don't work, just scroll down to the second item for Thursday, December 4th.)

• Finally, Alan David Doane explains why there's less to the upcoming revamp of Marvel's X-Men titles than meets the eye.

See you Monday.
Posted @ 5:35 AM by Dirk Deppey | permalink

Moroccan editor begins new hunger strike
(Censorship) Ali Lmrabet, the magazine editor sentenced back in May to four years in jail by a Moroccan judge for publishing cartoons and articles critical of Morocco's ruling establishment -- the sentence was reduced to three years on appeal -- is reported to have begun a new hunger strike on November 30th, his second since being arrested. The details are sketchy, and relatives seeking to speak to him have been turned away. IFEX has the Reporters Without Borders action alert:

"When the journalist's sisters went to Salé prison to visit him on 2 December, prison staff told them that Lmrabet had locked himself in his cell and was refusing to see them. Surprised by the news, his sisters asked for a signed message from their brother confirming his refusal to see them. The prison officers never brought the message, and Head Warden Abdelati Belghazi refused the sisters' request for a meeting with him to obtain news of their brother."

Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Robert Ménard is quoted as saying, "He suffers from worrying neurological problems, which have never been checked by a specialist. This new hunger strike could well worsen his state of health. We call for assurances about his condition and ask that his family be allowed to visit him as usual."
Posted @ 5:20 AM by Dirk Deppey | permalink

François Bourgeon's war
(Graphic Novels) Yesterday I asked for help in translating and analyzing a story found on French comics news-site BD Sélection, which detailed a legal battle between cartoonist François Bourgeon and the publisher Casterman. Several readers wrote in with assistance, but François Peneaud went above and beyond the call of duty by translating the article for us. It reads:

"François Bourgeon held a press conference during the Blois festival. During this, the author has told of the disagreement between him and Casterman and explained why he thinks authors' right seem to him to be in danger.

"Bourgeon and Lacroix (the writer) had a contract with Casterman for the series The Source and The Probe. The author says that agreement was partly motivated by the fact that Casterman was a family printing business. After problems with a previous publisher, Bourgeon wanted to make sure of the quality of the fabrication of the albums. The contract planned for a third album in the series, without any deadline clause.

"When Casterman was bought by someone else, the family business was split in three, separating among others the printing and the publishing business. The nature of the other contracting party having changed, the authors thought the contract wasn't valid anymore. The dispute was brought to trial, and the authors have been condemned in first judgement to hand over the album quickly to Casterman, with a penalty of 1000 Euros by day. They have appealed the judgement, Bourgeon has said that he wouldn't create with a 'rifle in his back.'

"The new judgement should be known this week.

"Bourgeon has explained that his legal fight is intended to protect authors' rights in a context of concentration and globalization of the publishing sector (Flammarion has been bought by an Italian group). He has said that other affairs similar to his own were being judged and that if authors didn't rally now, the European authors' right was in danger of becoming a simple copyright as in the USA. Works of creation and mind would become a mere merchandise upon which the author would lose all rights when he'd sold them. 'The author entrusts his rights to a publisher, but they don't belong to the publisher. An author catalogue can't be sold,' has said Bourgeon.

"Bourgeon, dignified but obviously very affected -- he hasn't published in six years -- has concluded that if he lost his trial, he would not work in BD anymore."

My thanks to Mr. Peneaud. Longtime Journal correspondent Bart Beaty has also posted a summary of the story on our message board, where discussion of the story has already begun.
Posted @ 5:20 AM by Dirk Deppey | permalink

In other news
(Potpourri) Here's what else is happening in the world of comics and cartooning at the moment:

• American Splendor, the film adaptation of Harvey Pekar's ground-breaking comics series, has earned five nominations in the Independent Spirit Awards, which reward indy filmmaking, according to an Associated Press story carried by The Baltimore Sun. The winners will be announced on February 28th.

• Former Marvel president Bill Jemas seems to be cashing out.

• Editor and Publisher's Dave Astor reports on a mammoth reader's poll being conducted by Michigan's Grand Rapids Press this Sunday to decide which new strips will take up space in their comics page.

• Central Park Media has released its 100th volume of manga, and Anime News Network has the press release.

• Florida TV station WCJB makes a brief note of Imagetext, a new online academic journal dedicated to comics which is set to debut next month.

• Dynamic Forces selling vaccum-sealed copies of new comics for $70? Ed Woods was right. "All you people of Earth... are... idiots!" (Link via Neilalien.)

• Silver Bullet Comics' Tim O'Shea interviews Calvin Reid, Publishers Weekly's staff comics expert and consulting editor for newly-minted graphic novel publisher Reed Graphica.

• Also at Silver Bullet Comics, Rik Offenberger speaks with Michael Silberkleit, chairman and co-publisher of Archie Comics. Strangest moment: Silberkleit's claim that his company was responsible for the success of Teenage Ninja Mutant Turtles. Missing question: "Don't you feel the slightest ounce of remorse for the way you fucked over Dan DeCarlo?"

• Congratulations to clip-art cartoonist David Rees on his eleventy-first interview linked by this weblog -- this time out it's conducted by Daniel Robert Epstein for Suicide Girls.

• Steven Grant's call for deeper comics critics seems to have elicited at least one reaction from someone who wishes to answer it -- Movie Poop Shoot's Chris Allen.

• Ampersand and Raznor debate the presence of anti-Semitism in the Dave Brown editorial panel that recently won Cartoon of the Year from the United Kingdom's Political Cartoon Society. Meanwhile, The Barnet Times speaks to Political Cartoon Society president Tim Benson, himself a Jew, who defends the award.

• While guest-blogging for Elayne Riggs, Laura Gjovaag posted an idiosyncratic two-part survey of good female characters in (mostly) genre comics -- here's part one and part two.

• Jim Henley wonders: if Marvel's comics sell better, why do DC's comics contain both more story pages and more ads?

• DC's extra ads clearly aren't funding an expanded trade-paperback collection -- Chris Puzak takes Dave Intermittent's bewilderment over the company's book program and runs with it.

Finally, Frank Smith points to this Captain America cover archive, which is fascinating just for the comprehensive look at how the publishers changed the book to keep sales up, if nothing else. Dare you read... Captain America's Weird Tales? How about Captain America... Commie Smasher?
Posted @ 5:20 AM by Dirk Deppey | permalink

Today's news
(Potpourri) There's a fair amount of news, but nothing I feel like writing about at length, really. That said, I'm sick of the whole "slow news day" schtick, so I'm retiring it until the next time circumstances actually warrant it. Here's the headlines and linkables for today:

• Canadian newspaper The National Post has that Barron's article that grabbed Marvel Comics stock by the shorts last week.

• Here's a single-line entry found recently in an e-newsletter circulated by library wholesaler Book Wholesalers, Inc.: "As of this date, all of CrossGen's spring 2004 titles have been postponed until fall 2004." (Thanks to Secret Santa for the tip.)

• Could someone in the comics blogosphere who reads French please blog a consise summary of this story? From the sound of it, comics creator François Bourgeon is in the legal fight of his life against publisher Casterman; he is apparently attempting to keep his publisher from wresting control of his graphic-novel series Les Passagers du Vent, and holding him to a production schedule with a €1000 fine imposed for every day past deadline that he fails to deliver the third volume of the series. I can't be reading that right -- the article refers to this as an "American" artist/publisher relationship, but I fail to recall a single instance where missing a deadline has led to such ridiculous punitive measures in American comics. So near as I can tell, the situation is uniquely French in its creation. (Link via Gianfranco Goria.)

• Always eager to slam a competitor, The New York Daily News notes that the NYC fire department is incensed over a cartoon that depicts a fireman "telling a dying comrade at Ground Zero: 'Goodbye dear friend. By the way, is your wife free Tuesday?' " Indeed, today's letters page in the Post is pretty blistering with anger over the Sean Delonas gag panel. Delonas' archives don't currently let you access December's cartoons, so the offending panel is so far as I can tell offline for the moment.

• Four months after the fact, The New Zealand Herald is still justifying the end of its relationship with cartoonist Malcolm Evans, who claims to have been let go for the pro-Palestinian stance of his editorial cartoons. Kiwi web-portal Stuff.co.nz tells us all about it.

• The guys behind the webcomic Penny Arcade are currently running a toy drive to benefit the Seattle Children's Hospital. Full details can be found here. (Link via Comixpedia.)

• Get Fuzzy creator Darby Conley is featuring another town in his daily strip, but this time the place in question -- Meat Cove, Nova Scotia -- is more bemused and flattered than offended. Canada's Halifax Herald has the story.

• The Montreal Gazette's Bill Brownstein looks at two local political cartoonists, Serge Chapleau and Terry "Aislin" Mosher, both the subjects of a new documentary scheduled to air on local television.

• CNN features a pair of cartoon sketches by the late Italian film director Federico Fellini, as part of an article on a gallery show of his drawings.

• Jamie Coville interviews Tokyopop editorial director Jeremy Ross for The Collector Times (temporary link). You could make a beer-drinking game out of this one -- for every time Ross gloats about sales, take a sip, and every time he states that he cannot give out exact sales figures, you have to finish the bottle. (Thanks to Steven Grant for the link.)

• Raymond Briggs reminisces about his childhood for The Scotsman.

• The Guardian reviews several new graphic novels, and takes a mildly snarky look at formalism in comics, as well. (Thanks to Bugpowder's Stephen Block for emailing me the link.)

• Ove at Jim Hill Media, Ian Westoff blows the lid off the latest comic book to be scheduled for a Hollywood movie -- Mike Kunkel's Herobear and the Kid.

• Also at Jim Hill Media, Monique Pryor begins a new column devoted to unearthing wacky moments in comic-book history.

• Weblogger David Allen Jones takes Grant Morrison to task for the criticisms he recently levelled against Alan Moore in general and Watchmen in particular. It's a good call, in my opinion. While Watchmen is by no means a perfect work (the fistfight/monologue towards the end is one of the clumsiest scenes Moore ever wrote), it's a far superior work to the highlights of Morrison's career from the same period: the self-conscious, derivative, and heavy-handed Arkham Asylum and the pretentious wankfest that was The Mystery Play. Moore's career output is certainly open to criticism, but Grant Morrison runs afoul of that whole "pot/kettle" dichotomy too quickly to really serve as one of Moore's critics.

• Jason Kimble wonders when "genre" came to mean "sci-fi/fantasy/horror." I can't speak for anyone else, of course, but I began using the term once I realized that the usual term for the Direct Market's prefered form of comics -- "mainstream" -- made absolutely no sense when discussing a marketplace frequented by less than one-fifth of one percent of the American population. It's like discussing "meanstream" pig-Latin haikus or something. No qualitative implication is meant by the use of the term.

• Actually, Laura, I had no idea whether you'd be offended or not, nor did I seriously think Alan was really stalking AK. It's all part of my cunning plan to alienate every last comics reader and professional in the English-speaking world, is all. Some day I, too, will be able to join Jim Shooter and John Byrne at that pinnacle of achievement and shout, "You hate me! You really do hate me!" Ahhh, I can dream...

Finally, congratulations to cartoonist/illustrator Tomer Hanuka, who won this year's Gold medal from the Society of Illustrators for a CD cover he created.
Posted @ 6:35M by Dirk Deppey | permalink

Slow news day
(Potpourri) Not a lot happening today, thank the Fates. Sunday was murder, I've got all-new deadlines to worry about, and I'm not exactly looking forward to writing until 8:30 AM again anytime soon. Also, Blogspot's been down since I started hunting for links, so the weblog coverage will be much lighter today. Here is the news:

• Faced with Wall Street's sudden skepticism over its future over the weekend, Marvel Comics issued a sales pitch press release yesterday, pointing to its toy division as a potent source of revenue. Whether it worked or not, something must have; the company's stock rallied today, gaining 85¢ back from the $1.87 per share lost over the last week or so.

• An Australian comic book being given away to teenagers in schools, which describes the effects and drawbacks of such common party drugs as ecstasy and ketamine, is drawing fire for promoting drug usage -- naturally, the graphic presentation is being used as a club with which to beat its creators. The Melbourne Herald Sun has the details.

• Despite their dispute with the folks running the Angoulême comics festival in France, the Association des Critiques et Journalistes de Bandes Dessinées are nonetheless going ahead with their "Critics Prize" award -- the nominations were just announced, and can be found at BDNews. (Link via Egon.)

• Jim Romanesko offered a brief round-up on various newspapers' treatment of their comics pages yesterday. The Oregonian received a good-sized reaction over their decision to replace Cathy and Hi and Lois' Sunday strips with Berkeley Brethed's new Opus strip. Sacramento Bee ombudsman Tony Marcano surveys some of the complaints his paper recieves over the funny-pages, including elderly readers objecting to such dirty words as "snot" and "booger." No, seriously. Finally, Boston Globe ombudsman Christine Chinlund (last item) swears that the Doonesbury Sunday strip wasn't moved off the main comics section due to political pressure. No, it was Opus what dunnit.

• Jason Kotecki, whose newspaper strip Kim and Jason has been in print for seven years now, is working with the National Adoption Center on their holiday greeting card -- which in turn gives Wisconsin's Capital Times an excellent excuse to profile the struggling young cartoonist. (Incidentally, look at the webpage and tell me that The Onion didn't swipe a bit of their design, I dare you.)

• On October 27th, 1989, Calvin and Hobbes creator Bill Watterson made a public appearance at Ohio State University's Festival of Cartoon Art. There he delivered a lengthy speech entitled "The Cheapening of the Comics", in which he railed against the various forces that he saw as degrading his chosen medium. The speech was reprinted in The Comics Journal's first "creators rights" issue (TCJ #137, September 1990), but for those of you who didn't manage to get your hands on a copy before it went out of print, Martijn Reemst has now put it online for your reading pleasure. Also available at the same site: a commencement address Watterson made at Kenyon College on May 20th, 1990. (Links via Ampersand.)

• Writing for Canadian webzine Exclaim, Sarrah Young has decidedly mixed feelings about what she views as the propaganda content in G.I. Joe comics.

• Tim O'Shea interviews indy cartoonist Robert Ullman for Silver Bullet Comics.

• Tony Isabella is waging a lonely war to get DC Comics to do right by his creation (and one of the company's few African-American characters), Black Lightning, who recently killed in cold blood in an issue of Green Arrow. Markisan Naso interviews Isabella for (again) Silver Bullet Comics.

• Writing for ICv2, Texas comics retailer David Seigler argues that anthologies are the way to go for genre comics.

• On the same tip, weblogger Jason Kimble wonders if genre publishers could use graphic novels for spinoffs of their comics pamphlets, thus avoiding the dreaded Waiting For The Trade Syndrome.

• Despite being a big fan of AK's former Movie Poop Shoot column Title Bout, I try not to follow its pseudonymous author around message boards waiting for quotable stuff to which I can link. It just makes me feel like some sort of weird-ass stalker -- and besides, that's Alan David Doane's job (this was Cheap Shot at a Weblogger #1 for the day, thankyouverymuch). That said, AK recently took the time to drag message-board readers on a lushly-illustrated layman's tour of French comics, and it's good enough that I really have no choice in the matter. I promise not to make a habit of it. Really.

• While I'm following in the wake of others, Sean Collins points to the single funniest takedown of an X-Men comic I've ever read. Ouch.

• Send Alternative Press publisher Jeff Mason free stuff! Name three other people in the comics industry who could get away with this.

Finally, please don't show this link to Aquaman blogger Laura Gjovaag. This was Cheap Shot at a Weblogger #2 for the day, thankyouverymuch. (Thanks to Comixpedia for the link. I regret nothing. Nothing!)
Posted @ 4:40 AM by Dirk Deppey | permalink

TCJ Audio Archives: R. Crumb speaks
(The Comics Journal) Our Holiday present to you: an hour's worth of excerpts from Gary Groth's marathon interview with underground comix master Robert Crumb, originally printed in The Comics Journal #121 (April 1988). Crumb discusses the legal fiasco over "Keep On Truckin'," his IRS nightmare, the Cheap Suit Serenaders, how fame has impacted his life, his development as a cartoonist, and much more. Enjoy!

(Incidentally, please excuse the crappy banner ad -- I need to make a proper one, which won't happen until I get into the office later this afternoon.)
Posted @ 8:25 AM by Dirk Deppey | permalink

Rue Britania
(Editorial Cartoons) A political cartoon by Dave Brown, cartoonist for U.K. newspaper The Independent, has been declared Political Cartoon of the Year, igniting yet another firestorm of controversy. The Independent offers details of the award:

"In the cartoon, published on 27 January, Sharon says 'What's wrong? You never seen a politician kissing babies before?' as a loudspeaker from a helicopter gunship chants 'Vote Sharon, Vote Sharon' overhead. The cartoon was based on Goya's Saturn Devouring His Children and was penned after a pre-election raid by Israeli missiles on Gaza City. The prize was presented after a vote by the members of the Political Cartoon Society and national newspaper cartoonists. It was presented by the former cabinet minister Clare Short on Tuesday night at the headquarters of The Economist in London."

Reaction was swift and furious. The American Jewish Committee angrily denounced the award, calling the cartoon anti-Semitic. British newspaper rival The Telegraph likewise took a harsh view of the award:

"Up-to-date anti-Semitism awards the British cartoon-of-the-year prize to an illustration from The Independent that could happily have graced the pages of Der Sturmer: a vicious caricature of the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, naked, eating a Palestinian infant. One cannot imagine a British newspaper running a similar caricature of Yasser Arafat or, indeed, his supporter, European Commission president Romano Prodi, even though their money funds some of today's most murderous terrorists."

Reaction in Israel was unanimous in its revulsion. The Israeli embassy in London protested the award, while newspapers from The Jerusalem Post to Israel Insider attributed the award to a general tone of anti-Semitism among Britain's professional classes.

The outrage over the award spread across the internet fairly quickly, of course; the most eloquent response, perhaps, being novelist and screenwriter Roger L. Simon's open letter to the Political Cartoon Society:

"I am a secular Jew who is a lifelong believer in a negotiated settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict as well as a supporter of Peace Now. But when I saw you have given the annual award of your organization to the most blatantly racist trash, it drove me straight into the arms of its target Ariel Sharon, giving me tremendous sympathy for the Israeli Prime Minister. So not only have you shown yourselves to be anti-Semites on the level of the late despicable Lord Haw-Haw, at least in my case, your award has had exactly the reverse result from what it intended. I suspect I am not the only one."

Weblogger Sean Collins was more pointed in his condemnation:

"[...] I know, I know, we go through this little two-step every time some hack shits out a sledgehammer-subtle indictment of Ariel Sharon & Israel -- 'he's criticizing a man/a government, not being an anti-Semite!' And as usual, I call bullshit: Anti-Semitism has always presented 'legitimate' political concerns as a false face (anti-capitalism, anti-Communism, pacifism, protectionism, and on and on). Moreover, such cartoons inevitably tap into a centuries-deep resevoir of anti-Jew imagery (hook noses, money-grubbing, puppet-mastery, the blood libel), or compare the Jewish state to the anti-Jewish state, namely Nazi Germany, or indeed swipe ideas directly from the Nazis themselves. And this one, in which Ariel Sharon is show devouring a Palestinian baby, is no exception. However noxious you happen to find Sharon or his policies, this is the equivalent of, say, drawing Colin Powell in a loincloth, chucking a spear at Iraq while raping a white woman. It's anti-Semitism in its new, more respectable outfit: anti-Israelism. So much classier than brown shirts and armbands, isn't it?"

I'm still on the fence as to whether this cartoon fits a strict definition of anti-Semitism, myself -- I know from all too many arguments with knee-jerk dogmatists that ironclad political views can lead such people to noxious statements and beliefs that they themselves would find reprehensible in other contexts. That said, it's a spectacularly witless and offensive cartoon, and the fact that Brown's fellow cartoonists voted to give this cartoon their highest honor calls the state of British political cartooning into serious doubt. This pathetic piece of shit is the best that they can do? They can't be serious, can they?
Posted @ 8:25 AM by Dirk Deppey | permalink

Marvel gets shorted
(Comic Books) After an impressive rise, last week saw a rush of sales in Marvel stock, leading to a weeklong decline in the price per share. The events were significant enough to attract the notice of financial newsweekly Barron's, which in turn prompted a report by the Reuters news service:

"About 7.6 million of Marvel's 72 million shares outstanding have been sold short, according to the article in the latest edition of Barron's.

"Earnings per share are expected to be $1.46 next year, according to research firm Thomson First Call. But EPS is likely to fall to 98 cents in 2005, said Mark Roberts, director of research at Off Wall Street Consulting Group of Cambridge, Massachusetts, who was quoted by Barron's.

"Next year's release of the movie Spider-Man 2 might not generate as much interest as the original, according to analysts and others who are bearish on Marvel's prospects, Barron's said."

It remains to be seen whether or not this signifies a deeper trend; Marvel's stock has wobbled like this several times in the past year, and the general movement of share prices has invariably resumed its upward course. Still, it's significant in that the initial aura of invincibility may be gone now for The House That Jack Built, which would mean that future advances on Wall Street will be tied to genuine signs of growth in Marvel's movie-licensing program. Ummm, good luck with that one, guys.
Posted @ 8:25 AM by Dirk Deppey | permalink

In other news
(Potpourri) It's been, what, five days since this weblog was last updated? Needless to say, a fair amount of stuff turned up in my absence. For example:

• Missouri's Jefferson City News Tribune offers the Associated Press take on the recent briefs filed in the Supreme Court on behalf of Todd McFarlane, who'd like the Supremes to uphold his right to parody such public figures as litigious hockey player Tony Twist.

• Reporters Without Borders is urging U.S. secretary of state Colin Powell to ask the king of Morocco to grant clemency to newspaper editor Ali Lmrabet, currently in prison for printing cartoons and articles critical of the government. IFEX has the story.

• U.K. newspaper The Richmond and Twickenham Times eulogizes Hampton Hill cartoonist and illustrator Gordon Stowell, who died just weeks before his seventy-fifth birthday on October 11th.

• Hey cartoonists -- want to win €7000 (paid partly in cash and partly in Port wine), a trophy, and an all-expense trip to Portugal? The PortoCartoon World Festival, organized each year by the Portuguese Printing Press Museum, is holding their sixth annual PortoCartoon international caricature competition. For a complete list of the rules for entry, click here -- this year's theme is "Sports and Society". The deadline is February 16th, 2004, and given that you'll be shipping your entry overseas, I'd recommend wasting no time if you wish to participate. The festival itself takes place May/June 2004.

• Hey, webcartoonists -- The Associated Press' Brian Bergstein posted a feature on the current crop of companies looking to produce a model for micropayments that works. The Seattle Times is one of the many papers carrying the story.

• ICv2 reports anecdotal evidence that American comics retailers had robust sales over the Thanksgiving Day weekend. The folks at Adbusters will be so pissed...

• Rich Johnston offers a comprehensive essay (seventh item down) on why so many comics packaging studios have been rethinking alliances with Image Comics, lately. There's also a short item about manga below it, but I don't think it'll really be news to readers of this weblog.

• The slow public execution of Epic Comics continues.

• While CrossGen's slow-motion implosion seems all the louder for the company's current bunker mentality, at least one Mark Alessi-founded enterprise is still working to keep an active profile: ACTOR, the assistance fund for cartoonists facing hard times, put in appearances at conventions in New York City and Columbus, Ohio last weekend.

• Rituparna Biswas, a six-year-old girl living near Kolkata, India, accidentally killed herself while attempting to imitate Spider-Man, after putting a rope around her neck and jumping off her bed. Indian news-portal Sify has the specifics.

• What will happen to printed material as it makes the transition to the online world? Speaking at Egypt's Bibliotheca Alexandrina recently, author and scholar Umberto Eco attempted to provide some possible answers to the question, and the folks at P2P.net have posted a copy.

• Singapore newspaper The Straits Times profiles one-time political prisoner Lim Li Kok, who used comics to turn around her publishing company's fortunes after her release. Learn more about the political drama that landed her in jail in this companion article.

• Ohio alt-weekly Cleveland Scene sent writer James Renner in search of truly elusive quarry: Calvin & Hobbes creator Bill Watterson. (Thanks to Mason Adams for emailing me the link.)

• The Boston Globe's Robin Dougherty sat down for a chat recently with cartoonist and illustrator Maurice Sendak.

• The ink has barely dried on the first printing of Joe Sacco's new book, The Fixer, but he's already working on his next book, which is based on a recent two-month stay in the Gaza Strip. The Portland Tribune caught up with Sacco recently, to find out how things were going. While we're on the subject, a recent issue of Publishers Weekly featured a long interview with Sacco about his new book as well. PW now protects its content behind a subscription firewall, but Drawn & Quarterly has reprinted the interview on their website. (Link via Egon.)

• While we're looking at press generated for Drawn & Quarterly books, here's a profile of Chester Brown, in honor of his finally-completed book Louis Riel, courtesy of Canadian radio station CJAD.

• Mike Whybark's Ellen Forney interview is now fully online (here's the previously-linked first part, and here are parts two, three, four and five).

• LinuxWorld's James Turner sat down for a chat with J.D. Frazer, better known to his audience of technogeeks as Illiad, creator of the daily webstrip User Friendly.

• Ladies and Gentlemen, Jennifer Contino and The Pulse present Grant Morrison:

  "I must admit I have no time for the '80s style 'serious superheroes' books riding the retro wave; never resisting any chance to gratuitously stick the boot in, I thought Watchmen was self-conscious, derivative, and heavy-handed when it first appeared and time hasn't mellowed my opinion of this vastly overrated series - so the comics I dislike most of all at the moment are filled with unsexy '80s retro 'superheroes-in-the-real-world' type stories. All these soldiers-in-tights comics seem miserly and lacking in wonder, surrealism or novelty. Even Alan Moore himself ran screaming from this kind of story and began an ungainly, 15-year long attempt to reinvent himself as me. So why anyone would look to the awkward pomposity of mid-'80s comics for inspiration is baffling.

  "Come the end of 2004, everything will be different but I don't think future generations of comics readers and historians will be very kind to the low-achieving nostalgianauts who've been steering this ship for the last few years."

• The Oregonian's Inara Verzemnieks interviews Portland writer and superhero-comics scripter Greg Rucka, and also presents a guide to both his work and that of wife Jennifer Van Meter.

• Eric Greenberg of New York's The Jewish Week profiles Joe Kubert on the release of his new graphic novel, Yossel.

• Hank Stuever interviews Alex Ross for The Washington Post (registration required). Bonus points for describing Wizard Magazine as "sort of like the Women's Wear Daily of the comics trade." I think Adult Video News would be a better metaphor, of course...

• The Boston Phoenix profiles David Rees, creator of My New Fighting Technique is Unstoppable and Get Your War On. (Link via Jessa Crispin.)

• I suppose it's my job to link to things like this Arizona Republic interview with Zits creators Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman, but it's definitely my duty to warn you what a dull, all-surface piece of writing it is as well.

• Slate's komissar for editorial cartoons, Daryl Cagle, has posted a whole bunch of new panels on his site, all aranged by topic.

• Comixpedia's Ericka Crouse takes a good long look at the history of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. (Hint hint.)

• The Guardian's religious affairs correspondent, Stephen Bates, describes a new exhibition of 15th-century book illustrations, including works that he identifies as comic strips. (Link via Bugpowder.)

• The December issue of Sequential Tart is now online. Highlights include interviews with everyone from Singaporean cartoonist Foo Swee Chin to "girlie" cartoonist Colleen Coover, plus a short Q&A with Jane Irwin, a look at the disastrous attempt at a comics convention that was Las Vegas' Extrosion, and too much more to list here. It's a good issue -- check it out.

• The folks at Ninth Art have several new goodies available for your perusal. Marcos Castrillón looks at Swiss cartoonist Philippe Chapuis's bestselling children's comic Titeuf, John Parker interviews Hawaiian Dick co-creators B. Clay Moore and Steven Griffin, Antony Johnston suggests splitting the Diamond Previews catalog in two (one for retailers, one for customers), and Brent Keane reviews Peter Milligan and Jamie Hewlett's delightfully nutso graphic novel Hewligan's Haircut.

• GMTplus9 went link-beserk for Little Lulu yesterday. Here's Michele's Little Lulu Page, a collection of LL covers to comic books courtesy of Cover to Cover, Lulu shilling for Kimberly-Clark in a magazine ad, and a postcard image of Times Square, which contains a billboard with Lulu still hawking Kleenex.

• Mark Evanier revisits Captain Victory and the Galactic Warriors, a creator-owned comic-book series that Jack Kirby released through Pacific Comics some two decades ago, which is now being restored from Xeroxes of its original pencil art.

• Benjamin Russell of PopImage sings the praises of works by Derek Kirk Kim, Kyle Baker, Adrian Tomine and Jessica Abel.

• Michelle Catalano offers up a withering assault on blatant lameness in the newspaper comics page. What a shame that there isn't a collective blog where such occasional comics-related posts could be collected...

• On a related note: Paul Musgrave, writing for Indiana University student newspaper The Indiana Digital Student, surveys the vast wasteland that is the daily comics page, finds a few gems, then concludes that the real action is happening online these days.

• Writing for Broken Frontier (temporary link), Graeme McMillan breaks down the main theme of Grant Morrison's joyous run on New X-Men: the children.

• Matt Fraction notes that comics-review site Artbomb.net now has a blog.

• Dave Intermittent reflects upon Steven Grant's recent call for a list of actual comics critics (as opposed to comics reviewers). Dave also notes that DC Comics has no apparent plans to collect Morrison & Weston's The Filth or the recent string of Vertigo Pop miniseries into book form. Hey, why try appealing to new readers when there are more goddamn Batman books to resell to Direct Market customers?

• Derek Martinez posts a hilarious "best of 2003" list.

• Bill Sherman performs a short, sarcastic autopsy upon Epic Comics' five-issue trainwreck, Trouble.

• Can weblogs lead to comics creativity? Jim Henley is busy scripting a graphic novel. here's a recent post describing his progress.

• John Pierce of The Comics Burrito thinks that Johnny Hart's recent B.C. strip with the outhouse joke really was a slam against Islam. I think otherwise, but given that neither of us has a direct line into Mr. Hart's head, it strikes me as the sort of thing on which reasonable people can disagree.

• An anonymous samaritan has posted Tristan Farnon's hilarious tenth episode of Leisuretown, "A Comedy Crisis," which parodied Scott Adams' Dilbert aqnd drew a cease-and-desist letter from the syndicated cartoonist, online for a few days. This is a temporary link, so see it while you can. (Link via MetaFilter.)

• Who'd win in a fight: Batman or Tintin? (Link also via Metafilter.)

Finally, Movie Poop Shoot's Terrence Brady returns with more tales of fanboys paying wa-a-a-ay too much for comics on eBay. $1120 for a slabbed copy of Uncanny X-Men #266? Sucker.
Posted @ 8:25 AM by Dirk Deppey | permalink

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