Over at the Comics Reporter, Tom Spurgeon has done quite a service by compiling the thoughts of a huge (HUGE) number of comics creators on the controversial cartoon gracing the latest issue of the New Yorker.
You can see the image at right. It shows a Muslim, militant Obama and his wife in the Oval Office, giving a fist bump as the flag burns in the fire and a picture of Osama bin Laden hangs on the wall.
Paul Pope is one of the respondents:
I wonder if you are somehow sensing a connection to the Dutch cartoonist case. If anything, this again reconfirms the power of the pen, and how this ancient tool of protest and satire can be used to such controversial and potent ends. I applaud The New Yorker for this.
There’s tons more, and it’s all worth a read. Personally, I’m an Obama supporter, and I really like the cover. I’ve read so much about the stupid mistaken "facts" being perpetrated about Obama (like this story in the Washington Post by my pal Eli Saslow) that it’s a relief to see them so effectively caricatured.
Camden New Journalreports on a “market trader” (is that like a day trader, or does it mean a professional?) whose graphic novel Brodie’s Law has been bought by Hollywood for the proverbial pile of money.
Comic Book Resourcestalks to Daniel Way about the Origins of Wolverine…well, this year’s version, anyway.
A high school teacher in Connecticut has been forced to resign after giving a female first-year student a copy of Eightball #22, which her parents found inappropriate (to put it mildly).
Comics Reporterlists all of the recent firings at Wizard, among other comings and goings at various comics-publishing outfits.
R. Sikoryak’s Dostoyevsky Comics, an adaptation of Crime and Punishment staring a Dick Sprang Batman and originally published in Drawn & Quarterly #3 in 2000, has been posted on the web.
Amazon Dailyinterviews Nick Abadzis, author of Laika.
The New York Times Magazine last weekend started its serialization of Dan Clowes’s comic Mister Wonderful, in its “Funny Pages” section.
AnimationInsiderinterviews manga expert and popularizer Fred Schodt.
The Fresno Beetalks to local broadcaster Dale Berry, who creates graphic novels in his spare time.
New York Magazine has a ten-page excerpt from Gipi’s Notes for a War Story.
Publishers Weeklychatted with David Michaelis about his upcoming biography of Charles Schulz, Schulz and Peanuts.
Publishers Weekly has a preview ofLegend of the Dark Crystal, Col. 1: The Garthim Wars.
PW also interviews Jonathan Hickman, author of The Nightly News.
Comic Book Resourceschats with Mark Guggenheim about his Oni Press series Resurrection.
To celebrate the publication of their collection Dr. Thirteen: Architecture and Morality, creators Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chang have done thirteen separate interviews, all published the same day. Links to all of them are on Cliff Chang’s blog.
South Carolina’s The State rounds up recent reader reaction to Tom Batuik’s deeply depressing current storyline in Funky Winkerbean. [via Comics Reporter]
Journalista!takes aim at comics’ poster-boy for getting out of the house more often, Dave Sim. (And what is Sim doing these days? Didn’t Cerebus end several years ago now?)
A truck ran into Oni Press’s wall/window, but everyone there is fine.
Wizardinterviews Gerald Way, who writes Umbrella Academy (and also has a band or something).
Eye on Comicswonders what happened to the promised Adam Hughes All Star Wonder Woman.
Arowette’s Diarypresents the Dan Didio Advisory & Warning System. Is your comic at risk of Rape, Death, or Emo?
The Icarus Comics blog notes that some manga categories (for adults, even!) previously little known here are starting to come out in the US market. The possibly not-so-good news is that they’re having to be in Diamond’s “Adult” section since they actually have sexual content.
Comics Reviews
BookgasmreviewsThe Architect, by Mike Baron and Andie Tong.
Los Angeles City Beatreviews Tom Neely’s The Blot.
Marvel Comics is having a costume contest on their website, to be judged by fans. The winner (who gets a Handbook-style page in some random comic) will be announced, appropriately, on Halloween. And the guy to beat this year is…pipsqueak Wolverine!
Scripps News talked to Mike Carey about his “real” novels, like The Devil You Know, and his graphic novels, like Re-Gifters.
Comic Book Resourcesinterviews Amy Kim Ganter, who creates American Manga.
Now you have no excuse not to hang up your super-suit…
Comics Links
Eddie Campbell writes about speech balloons (including his differences of opinion with Bryan Talbot).
Yann Martel, author of the Booker Prize-winning novel The Life of Pi, has been sending a book and cover letter to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper every week for the past three months. This week, the book he sent and wrote about was Art Spiegelman’s Maus.
Viper Comics, not content with making comics I’ve never heard of, is branching out into clothes I won’t wear.
Comic Book Resourcestalks to Andy Smith, artist of Stormwatch PHD.
Fantagraphics Books has a regular Shoot-Out party, in which they run out into the woods, dump a pile of old monitors, lawn mowers, and TVs, and then blow them to pieces with assorted firearms. Apparently, this is not precisely legal. Wow, if you’d told me there was a comics publisher that shot up electronics regularly, Fantagraphics would not be the one I guessed…
Comics Worth Readingisn’t sure if there’s any market for comics mini-series any more.
Associated ContentinterviewsDesert Peach creator Donna Barr.
They’re sold out now, but for a brief, shining moment, the world had a chance to buy knitted Hellboy dolls. (Figures? Plushes? What do you call these things?) [via Newsarama]
The Beat lists Diamond graphic novel sales charts from 2006 and 2007 (to date).
The Harlan Ellison/Fantagraphics legal matter just will not die…even after the supposedly final settlement, Ellison has now balked at posting the required-by-the-agreement 500-word rebuttal by Fantagraphics’s Gary Groth to three specific claims Ellison made about Groth. The unposted statement, and Ellison’s lawyer’s “not gonna do it” letter, are in the middle of this long post at The Beat.
Comics Reporterinterviews Warren Craghead. (No, I didn’t know who he was, either. But CR likes him…)
The Bookseller (the UK’s magazine of bookselling) recently reported that UK manga publishers have had to beg the big chains over there to expand the space devoted to manga. Either the UK market is vastly different from the US, or Waterstone’s just isn’t that interested in making great piles of money…
Comics Reviews
The Joplin Independentreviews the Marvel comics adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book.
Comic Book Resourcestalks to producer Tony Panaccio about the recent Heroes Initiative DVD, featuring a conversation among Stan Lee, Joe Quesada, and Kevin Smith.
CBR’s Mayo Report crunches the numbers on comics and trade paperback sales in July. Bottom line? Marvel is selling a hell of a lot of TPs collecting series that barely ended.
The Wall Street Journalthinks that women might buy more comics if given more of the stuff they’d like.
The Bookseller – the magazine of bookselling in the UK – points out that manga is huge over there, too.
Comics Worth Readinglooks at the Carey/Liew/Hempel Minx original graphic novel Re-Gifters.
Panels and Pixelsinvestigates Fletcher Hanks’s I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets.
Chris’s Invincible Super-Blogreviews this week’s comics, starting with The All-New Atom #15.
Brian Cronin of Comics Should Be GoodreviewsShe-Hulk #21, writer Dan Slott’s last issue.
Cronin also reviews the first part of the latest everything-will-change-forever storyline, “One More Day,” in Amazing Spider-Man #544. (And does anyone else start singing Les Miserables songs every time he hears that title?)
The New York Timesdeclares that Britain is finally embracing the graphic novel. Well, good for them!
Inside Pulse apparently has a story about comics, but some kind of SQL error is preventing me from actually reading it. Perhaps simply knowing it exists will give some readers a tiny bit of pleasure.
Costumes? Check. Vigilante activities? Check. The KKK were always closer to mainstream superheroes than we’d probably like, but it took Craig Yoe to dig up the bizarre ‘20s newspaper comic strips in which a flying KKK squad do good deeds.
SF Site has indexed the contents of the first twenty-four annual volumes of Gardner Dozois’s annual Year’s Best Science Fiction anthology, by author, title and volume.
Over at the Comics Reporter, Tom Spurgeon has done quite a service by compiling the thoughts of a huge (HUGE) number of comics creators on the controversial cartoon gracing the latest issue of the New Yorker.
