§ Mark Evanier followed up on his post about why audience questions aren’t always that great:

One other thing I oughta mention: I’ve done a couple of public interviews where the interviewee stipulated certain topics that could not be discussed. That happens. Years ago at a comic convention, I did a one-on-one with Harvey Kurtzman, who among his other achievements was the founding editor of Mad. An unannounced condition of Harvey’s appearance was the agreement that he would not be asked on stage why he’d left Mad or about any of the business-type aspects of his relationship there.

§ There should be more Manga 101 things like this concise profile of Arina Tanemura .

Arina Tanemura is a shoujo manga superstar, with hit series such as Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne and Full Moon wo Sagashite under her belt. Her current ongoing series is Gentleman’s Alliance†, which is being released in English by VIZ.

Tanemura’s debut work was a 1997 series called I-O-N, about a girl named Ion Tsubaragi who develops psychic powers. After that she charged ahead with a collection of shorts called Firecracker is Melancholy, and dove into her first big hit: Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne, a magical girl series about a high school girl who transforms to fight demons. Jeanne was followed up by the shorter Time Stranger Kyoko, which is a slightly sci-fi magical girl series set in the 30th century.

§ It’s been a long time since we checked in on John K’s blog. Here he analyses the humor of Don Martin:

My pal Eddie has a term he uses when he likes something funny. He calls it “Ignorant Humor”. I think that’s a funny term too, but hope he never uses it in front of a layman or cartoon executive, because it might give the impression that cartoons are stupid and easy to do.

§ David Hajdu author of THE TEN CENT PLAGUE is interviewed at Vulture:

Speaking of pictures, our only beef with the book is that there are only four pages of them! Why
so few? That was my decision. My editor wanted more. To me, I didn’t want people to pick up the book and mistake it for a coffee-table-ish thing about fun comics of the fifties. I wanted the seriousness of the issues involved to come across. I wanted the book to look kind of text-y and grayish; for a long time I also wanted a somber black-and-white photograph on the cover. That one I lost! And I’m really glad I lost it because the Charles Burns cover is great.

§ Oni’s June solicits. Issue 2 of Tek Jansen! Did you think you would live to see it?

§Whitney Matheson teams with Tim Sale for mischief at the ‘Tope [Via Matt Maxwell]

§ Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaardhas no regrets

“I would do it the same way (again) because I think that this cartoon crisis in a way is a catalyst which is intensifying the adaptation of Islam,” he said in an interview on Wednesday, speaking in English.

“Without a cartoon that provoked the Muslims, it would have been something else; a novel a play, a movie, this situation would have occurred sooner or later anyway.”

§ Two early silent anime cartoons have been found in Japan. They are the work of artists including Junichi Kouchi and Seitaro Kitayama and date from 1917. No word on whether they contained the popular “bloomer shots” of the era.

§ When the hell did this happen?

This has nothing directly to do with comics but this brilliant piece by Eric Alterman in The New Yorker is one of the best things we’ve ever read about the internet, and how internet news is changing not only how the publishing business is run, but how society processes information:

Taking its place, of course, is the Internet, which is about to pass newspapers as a source of political news for American readers. For young people, and for the most politically engaged, it has already done so. As early as May, 2004, newspapers had become the least preferred source for news among younger people. According to “Abandoning the News,” published by the Carnegie Corporation, thirty-nine per cent of respondents under the age of thirty-five told researchers that they expected to use the Internet in the future for news purposes; just eight per cent said that they would rely on a newspaper. It is a point of ironic injustice, perhaps, that when a reader surfs the Web in search of political news he frequently ends up at a site that is merely aggregating journalistic work that originated in a newspaper, but that fact is not likely to save any newspaper jobs or increase papers’ stock valuation.

We have a lot to say about it, but that should await a more suitable venue.

As economic morons, we were also interested in this piece by Peter Dreier in HuffPo which gives a longer historical context for the mortgage mess. We’d imagine a lot of people would disagree with his analysis. Like we said, we barely know how to put pennies in a jar, so it’s all voodoo to us.

Meanwhile, we had a nice time at the COMIC FOUNDRY party last night, and the new issues looks amaz-o! We didn’t take any pictures, but plenty o’ other folk did and hopefully they will be showing up online. Seen around, Yuku Shimizu, Ben Trinh of Rabid Rabbit, Rocketship’s Alex Cox, DC’s Alex Segura, Virgin Comics’ Michelle Gomes, Valerie D’Orazio, irrepressible Torsten Adair, and of course the stars of the night, Tim Leong and Laura Hudson. We surely are forgetting many people because our throat is sore from yapping too much.

Otherwise, we’re kinda tuckered out again and it’s a quiet week. In other news we’ve upgraded to the beta of Firefox 3, but it’s in beta and bookmarks behave oddly. Plus no “Copy as a Link.” We also started a Tumblog, but its not ready for public unveiling yet.

Plus, we decided we really like Hugo Montenegro.

David Hajdu’s The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America has been getting a great deal of press. The story of how the government investigated then all but destroyed comics, spurred by the pronouncements of psychologist Dr. Fredric Wertham, is an incredible story that needs to be told. In this weeks issue, the suddenly comics loving New Yorker presents a superb essay by Louis Menand that not only recounts the main points of the congressional witch hunt, but analyses the views in Bart Beaty’s Fredric Wertham and the Critique of Mass Culture, which paints a more favorable picture of Dr. Wertham — if not for his views on comics than for his other writings, which were pioneering efforts towards the well-being of children, the end of racial segregation and even the benefits of fandom subculture.

The fall of the comic book in the ’50s has a much larger social context given what else was going on in the US, as Menand writes:

If it makes sense to speak of a Cold War culture in the United States—and it’s a concept that would have to accommodate a pretty wide assortment of artifacts, from Partisan Review to the transistor radio—then one of its classic moments was the comic-book inquisition. The event took place on April 21, 1954, at the Foley Square U.S. Courthouse (now the Thurgood Marshall Courthouse), in New York City, where a subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee charged with investigating the causes of juvenile delinquency took on an imminent danger within: the comic-book industry. The hearings were televised.

At a guess, most of the people reading this blog know the name Wertham; not as many, surely, know exactly what happened in 1954. For those who don’t, Menand’s piece offers a brisk summary:

The hearings went on for another two days, and some experts questioned Wertham’s methods and conclusions, but the industry was badly wounded. According to a Gallup poll taken in November, 1954, seventy per cent of Americans believed that comic books were a cause of juvenile crime. From the fall of 1954 through the summer of 1955, laws restricting the sale of comic books were passed in more than a dozen states, and there were also public comic-book burnings.

The article is online, everyone should read it. Understanding the effects of Dr. Wertham and his book Seduction of the Innocent is key to understanding much of the subsequent history of comics. While the obvious effects — the establishment of the Comics Code and the end of dozens of publishers and the ends of hundreds of careers — would cast a pall over comics for a long time, some other effects were more self-inflicted; Dr. Wertham would act as a boogieman who scared comics out of doing anything groundbreaking for years to come.
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Must reading: Brave Kristy Valenti starts a methodology-based (or as much as it can be based) series entitled Gender and Reading Habits . In Part One. she looks at the well-known factoid that bys stop reading at a certain age, and looks at how this demographic is affected by superhero comics:

If one visits ERIC, the Education Resources Information Center, on the Internet, he or she will find scores of articles on why, in the U.S., boys lag behind girls in reading. Many of these articles suggest using graphic novels as a lure for boys, [2] but it is Christine Welldon’s popular “Addressing the Gender Gap in Boys’ Reading,”[3] that’s of particular relevance. Welldon’s “school literacy initiative was to help close the gender gap in reading,” so she invented a club aimed at the older elementary school grades.

Valenti marshals as much statistical evidence as she can and talks to librarians to explore the topic, which shows that for teen boys, books are as great a marketing wasteland as superhero comics have been for adult women.

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UPDATE: You can read the first 12 pages of SECRET INVASION at EW’s website. PLUS, Nisha Gopalaninterviews Brian Bendis:

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: How much input did you have in this event, and what kind of directives did Marvel give you? BRIAN MICHAEL BENDIS: I was writing both Avengers books [the New Avengers] and [Mighty Avengers], so I was pretty much there for everything…. I’m also part of that room [in a Marvel retreat that takes place in New York City each year] that decides those things. Me and Jeph Loeb [DC's Batman: Hush] and Ed Brubaker [Captain America] and Mark Millar [Civil War] are there. We scream and yell at each other — it’s hilarious. You’d literally think that real political agendas that affect the world were being [debated]. In fact, me and Loeb were having at it just at the last retreat.

As we mentioned yesterday, purported disgruntled Marvel staffer Marvel_b0y is blogging again and he has learned nothing from all the misery he has caused.

To all of you haters out there that keep calling me a hater, let me spell this out for you. I do not hate Marvel comics, I do not hate Marvel. I do not want to bring the entire company down. I am not doing this because I am an attention whore. I just don’t like some of the things that they have done and I am trying to use this as a forum to get Marvel to rethink some of these editorial decisions, starting at the top. I actually DO like some books!

He then goes on to plug some books. This, coupled with the fact that he’s posting during the day, when supposedly computer activity and whatnot could be monitored, indicates to us that this Marvel–b0y is indeed a Skrull plant. Is this the same MB as the first bitter, disenchanted blogger? Forensics seem to say yes.

But now a new copy-cat career killer is on the prowl. Another Marvel “insider” is leaking even juicier spoilers to a blog that we won’t link to. Is the blogger in question being played? Is this disinfo being leaked? Do you really care? From our honest viewpoint, SECRET INVASION looks like a fairly entertaining Marvel mini, and if it’s a good story, all the spoilers in the world won’t ruin it entirely. If you want to get even more into the Skrullduggery, marvel has made the entire Secret Invasion Prologue available via its digital comics site. (You’ll need to register to read the whole thing, True Believer!)

Even more importantly, a Marvel_b0y look-a-like has struck BLOG! the Fantagraphics blog! Is this the first in a series of indie/Marvel crossover>

Find Marvel_b0y if you can, which you can’t. I’m squatting where there’s an audience besides the Skrulls and their wannabe minions. Props to DB for slipping his way into this blog (thanks for the easy pickings, Blogger). The tight tshirt crowd at Fantagraphics won’t mind the traffic and besides that Gilbert Hernandez knows how to draw a real superheroine.

Conclusion: NO ONE IS SAFE.

(Above graphic created by Dorian and you must hit that link to get ALL the good shit. Thanks, amigo!)

This has been up for a while, but we’ve never linked to it. Reknowned fantasy artist Charles Vess has been designing a fountain themed “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” for Abingdon, VA. In this post on his blog he offers tons of photos of the design and construction process of what will be an incredibly lovely piece of public art.

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More big media love for the comics! Newsweek gushes over Papercutz’s revamped Classic line:

Along with Lincoln Logs and chemistry sets, Classics Illustrated was part of that goofy but well-intentioned trend in the mid-20th century that sought both to educate and entertain America’s youth. Each issue contained a retelling of a well-known novel, supplied facts about the author and also included—I am not making this up—a biography of a scientist or inventor and the stirring tale of a brave dog. There were also issues on science and history and fairy tales. If that sounds dreadful—it wasn’t. I should know. That was where I first discovered just how good stories could be.

Now bound in hardcovers, and selling for $15—a hundred times the original cover price—the new Classics Illustrated books don’t closely resemble their predecessors, whose style was generally uniform, more or less like Prince Valiant in the funny papers. (Note to purists: if it’s the old versions you hanker for, they’re still being published by Jack Lake Productions.) The new series will use a different artist with every book, and the styles will vary radically. If the first two, “Great Expectations” and “The Wind in the Willows,” are any indication, Papercutz, the company now licensing the brand, has set very high standards for its new series.

We’ve been too busy to get as excited about this as we should, bit it looks like Dynamic Forces’ long long delayed (it was first announced in 2004) AMERICAN FLAGG collection will finally be out this July. Howard Chaykin’s run ‘n’ gun, media saturated vision of the US ’s future was great fun when it came out over 20 years ago, and we suspect it will still be fun now: Why all the delays? Chaykin explains in an interview.

Howard Chaykin: It was a jumping of the gun in the first place, which held the assumption that the material was more ready than it was. The situation really boiled down to the fact that the reproduction of stuff at that time is very different than it is today. The assumption was that it would be a mistake to publish, cold, that is, without doing a lot of clean-up work on it, to create a more beautiful facsimile, if you will. The assumption was that it would be easier to do that than it turned out to be.

Flog alerts us to a couble of appearances by Drew Friedman. They may not become as famed as his Friar’s bash, but should provide good fun:

THURSDAY NIGHT IN SEATTLE:

DREW FRIEDMAN: THE FUN NEVER STOPS!
March 27 – May 6, 2008.
Opening Reception and Book signing
Thursday, March 27, 5:00 – 8:00 PM
Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery
1201 S. Vale St. (at Airport Way S.)
Seattle, WA 206.658.0110

SATURDAY NIGHT IN LOS ANGELES:

WHO: Drew Friedman & SPECIAL GUESTS!
WHAT: Discussion, Q&A and book signing
WHERE: Skylight Books
1818 N. Vermont Ave. • Los Angeles, CA 90027 • 323.660.1175 tel.
WHEN: Saturday, March 29, 5PM

At Skylight, Drew will be joined by several very special surprise guests, as well as discussion moderator Ben Schwartz and comedian Andy Kindler (whose father, Larry Kindler, was good friends with comic book legends Harry Chester and Harvey Kurtzman).

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Michael Keaton’s Batman costume from Batman Returns is up for auction and it’s expected to fetch $60-80K :

The impressive outfit from the 1992 sequel, directed by Tim Burton, includes Batman’s black rubber body suit, boots and gauntlet gloves with serrated fins.

It also comes with Batman’s rubberised cape and iconic cowl, which Bruce Wayne wears to mask his true identity.

A spokesman for auctioneers Profiles In History said: “This is a complete costume, from head-to-toe, with the zipper in the back to allow entry for Keaton.

Chris O’Donnell’s Robin suit from Batman & Robin is also up, with an expected price of a mere $8-10,000.

§ Does giving things away for free work? Neil Gaiman reports on AMERICAN GODS download stats. The novel has been made available for download for the month of March.

It’s worth drawing people’s attention to the fact that the free online reading copy of American Gods is now in its last six days online (it ends 31 March 08). I learned this from an email from Harper Collins, which also told me the latest batch of statistics.

For American Gods:

68,000 unique visitors to the book pages of American Gods

3,000,000 book pages viewed in aggregate



And that the weekly book sales of American Gods have apparently gone up by 300%, rather than tumbling into the abyss. (Which is — the rise, not the tumble — what I thought would happen. Or at least, what I devoutly hoped would happen.)

300% eh? This free sampling thing may have legs.

§ Jennifer de Guzman’s “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now column” returns at Blog@Newsarama.

§ Detective Johanna Draper Carlson of Toontown yard has many unanswered questions about this year’s Free Comic Book Day. We’re not quite so sure why she’s so darned suspicious of the event, which has become a huge PR event for retailers savvy enough to jump on board, but it is reasonable to ask some of the questions. Our 2¢: Making the comics offered be All-ages is not such a big deal. We’ve got the adult nerd demographic covered pretty well, let’s try to open things up.

§ Canadian retailer strives to recommend comics for kids

Comic books are known for their fantastical characters, dynamic artwork and controversy, but are they useful mediums to get fickle teenagers and kids to turn the page?



George Zotti, manager of the Silver Snail, a Toronto comic book retailer, seems to think so, but adds it can be difficult to pick up a title and immediately follow the story.



“The only problem with buying the standard comic book is that the stories continue from one issue to the next — they’re serialized,” he says, adding that some story arcs span months, which can make it difficult for new readers to follow.



His solution is to get parents to buy trade paperbacks — including anime and from the ever-adapting publishers Marvel and DC — which include entire story arcs in one book.

§ ‘Wimpy’ author entrances tots with visit

§ Actor James Sturgess tells more of his involevement with the SPIDER-MAN musical

Director Julie Taymor was so pleased with Sturgess’s work in Across The Universe that she asked him to become involved in preliminary development on her projected Broadway musical version of Spider-Man.

“It’s there and Julie’s definitely going to make it,” Sturgess says. “Whether I’ll be in it or not, I don’t know.”

What he does know is that his input during a two-week workshop in New York helped shape the show that will eventually hit the stage. Taymor phoned him to ask if he and Evan Rachel Wood would come to New York and “help out” with her new musical.

“I love Julie. She’s kind of a mentor for me. Evan is one of my best friends, so it was a chance for us all to get together and we just saw it as a fun thing to do for two weeks in New York City – writing songs with Bono and The Edge about Spider-Man.”

Confession: We’re mighty anxious to see this musical.

§ Georges Jeanty, artist on the Buffy comics, is rarely given the spotlight so so it’s nice to see an interview with him at horroryearbook.com

HORROR YEARBOOK: What were your feelings on Buffy sleeping with another female slayer, Satsu? Was it hard or easy for you to draw?

GEORGES JEANTY: This was the thing that I thought was going to be the climax. I mean how do you come back from that? And we’re only in the 12th issue! I knew how important this was going to become so I was thinking about this issue months before I was to draw it. When I did start to draw it I thought that first page of Buffy and Satsu in bed was something we were going to have to handle very delicately so there would be a lot of back and forth about what should be seen—or so I thought. I read the script from Drew, who is an absolute joy to work with, and sat down and drew out the page. I expected lots of changes when Joss, Drew and Scott saw it, but they thought it was perfect. Rarely do I hit something on the first try. I was on a high the whole day after that!