The LA Times’ Geoff Boucher on Marvel’s digital comics archive.

a.i.

The NY Times profiles DC’s first ongoing woman writer for Wonder Woman - Gail Simone, who also started “Women in Refrigerators.”

This (Women in Refrigerators) is a list I made when it occurred to me that it’s not that healthy to be a female character in comics. I’m curious to find out if this list seems somewhat disproportionate, and if so, what it means, really.

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Which came first, the thong or the asshole?

Arguments for/against women being marketed for their looks are at least as old as Marisha Pessl. Second-wave feminism ebbed just in time for “computer technology” to give us “faceless egalitarianism.” So it should come as no surprise that there is a woman game programmer/producer who is being both parodied and praised for being hot.

Someone apparently made parodic digital-porn starring Jade Raymond (hot game programmer in question), but that someone (David Cheung) claims women bring it on themselves by marketing good looks in the first place (an advantage he thinks even Brad Pitt couldn’t take in the game industry). Though to be fair, from what I can gather, Jade Raymond isn’t exactly walking around in a thong.

“Jade Raymond,” argument courtesy Holly at La Feministe (the hottie) v. Horny otaku, as partially represented by David Cheung (the notties)

I’m not going to bother taking sides, because at the end of the day, I have more pity than disdain for otaku who troll for digital porn, and more envy than praise for successful hot ladies.

It’s just a shame the argument can’t really go anywhere. For starters, the “what if the tables were turned” argument made by Team Feminism doesn’t work because time machines and parallel universes have yet to be discovered. Conditional arguments (”If she were a man…” “If she were stupid…” “If she’d won the Nobel Prize…” “If gamers weren’t pigs…”), though extremely popular with feminists and affirmative activists rarely win because there is always someone ready to bust their tautological trump card statements:

I’m just being honest.
It just is what it is.
Hey, I’m not the one who created this industry.

If versus Is, folks. Who do you think wins that fight?

On the other hand, the porn-artist isn’t doing himself any favors antagonizing beautiful women and upstanding moral citizens (whom he refers to as “moralfags”)…in subliterate English. It’s too bad because I can almost sense a coherent statement in his rant until it just reads like spam. He’s no Mailer, I’ll say that much.

(Thanks for the heads up Heidi.)
a. ishii

The writers are still striking. Godspeed, o scribes! Nay the nectar of thine muse doth protest ill…

An oldie but goodie:

WIRED magazine blog points out the irony of WGA protest signs being so lame.

They may be able to pen some of the most riveting dramas and hilarious comedies this side of the Atlantic, but Writers Guild of America members can’t seem to be bothered to think up a witty slogan — and everyone’s a critic.

But that’s not all. They started a WGA Strike Slogan Contest. Below, arguably the best entrty:

We write, they wrong.

Hey y’all. It’s Anne Ishii, previously of Vertical, guest-blogging for the next few days alongside Mark. I hope you had wonderful Thanksgivings. i.e. Not the kind where you go to the movies alone and then get sick on popcorn and your flask of plasticky bourbon, come home, and watch ten hours of Law&Order. [Having done these things on holidays previous, I empathize and feel the immunity to ridicule.]

So…let’s start this baby right. First, this wouldn’t be a comics blog without mention of Neil Gaiman in a context other than his own writing.

Gaiman Pimps Amazon Kindle. [I couldn’t help but notice though, the footage is unusually long. Viz: “Director” cycling his fingers and nodding at Gaiman, gesturing to keep going because it’s great; yelling “cut!” only after he’s passed out.]

Second, this wouldn’t be a blog if I weren’t making fun of someone.

Canadian Choreographs Interpretive Dance Piece About Manga

Poor guy gets torn apart by this Toronto Star Dance Critic.

We didn’t get a chance to experience Black Friday first hand today (too much sleeping during the day).

Anyone want to share their expierences from shopping today, at the local comics store, big box retailer or online?

Thankfully, our latest Amazon order came on Wednesday, allowing us to spent much of Thanksgiving night watching Season Three of our all-time favorite TV show, Mission: Impossible.

Posted by Mark Coale

#22 - Most Viewed (Today) - Music
#92 - Most Discussed (Today) - Music
#87 - Top Favourites (Today) - Music

Frightening, isn’t it? And that’s in ENGLAND where they have GOOD music.

We made it! And so did graphic novels! This morning’s “Think Future” graphic novel panel seemed to have been a success — as one of the participants, I’ll have to let others decide the final verdict but from where I sat, it was worth getting up early for, and that’s the highest praise I can give. Mucho kudos to co-moderator and man about town Calvin Reid and everyone else here at PW who got it set up.

Of course, when you have five super smart people as panelists, the odds of success are greatly enhanced. John Cunningham, Dan Frank, Joe Quesada, Bill Schanes and Rich Johnson spoke on a variety of topics, touching on the traditional comics shop environment, digital delivery systems, the continued need for strong material, the changing creative demographic, and so on. Nothing that hadn’t been spoken of before, but the panelists and the audience were engaged with each other and a good dialog got going.

A couple of interesting notes did emerge. One of the audience members is putting together a collection of graphic novels at Columbia University, and revealed that NYU has just started collecting comics, as well. Reaching the academic audience was discussed, and , revealingly, Johnson related how 10 years ago, that audience was deeply suspicious of comics — now they were begging for more information.
The reasons for comics being taken seriously suddenly? Reviews in the NY Times book review, awards, Fun Home being Time magazine’s book of the year…this stuff is really adding up.

The other thing that caught our ear was Schanes’s response to a question on the health of “indie comics shops.”

“Business is as good as its ever been,” he said, referring to the fact that Diamond accounts are paying in a timely fashion, expanding at a reasonable rate, and showing economic health all around. That may sound like an obvious point, but it gives a good snapshot of where the retail environment is at. Many retailers view everything from manga to MySpace to chain bookstores as a threat to their business. Despite all the NEW sources for graphic literature, comics shops are responding to the challenge by bettering themselves and becoming more successful. That’s a healthy sign for the entire industry.

From an attendance standpoint, it was fascinating to see a room full of people from (primarily) the book business who profiting from — or hoping to profit from — the new world of graphic novels on all levels. Familiar faces, and new ones…from Del Rey’s Betsy Mitchell to Greg Topalian of the New York Comic-Con to the editor at a major house who told me of her ideas for a line of graphic novels. It was a nice little chapter break in the ongoing saga of the “mainstreaming” of comics, a good place reached but many many more hurdles to be cleared.

But just for today, I can nap in peace.

For all the writer/artist types out there, this might be a cool diversion.

A website devoted to pencils of all shapes, sizes and colors.

If you’re a striking writer, stock up on writing utensils while you have the chance.

Posted by Mark Coale

One more hype filled post, as Collen Doran and Stuart Moore will be signing THE NIGHTMARE FACTORY tonight at the McNally bookstore in Soho as part of their “Literary Halloween party.” Come down dressed as your favorite literary character, meaning cosplay IS allowed.

6:00 - 7:30 Party
Join us for McNally Robinson’s first-ever Halloween party!
* Literary Costume Contest: dress as your favorite character, author, or literary idea
* Silent projections from horror comic anthology Nightmare Factory (HarperCollins/Fox Atomic) and signings by contributors: artist Colleen Doran and author Stuart Moore
* Refreshments (drinks, candy, and snacks)
* 6:30 Ouija board session to contact local (dead) authors, including Edgar Allan Poe, by Mitchell Horowitz, author of Occult America (forthcoming from Bantam)
* Ghost Puppet Party for kids in the children’s section, with stories, crafts, and activities hosted by resident storyteller Yvonne Brooks
* book signings by all authors

7:30 - 8:30 Readings
* Brenda Coultas, author of The Marvelous Bones of Time (Coffee House), poetry replete with ghost stories and haunted house tales
* Jonathan Maberry, author of Ghost Road Blues (Penguin/Kensington), about a haunted small town which won the Bram Stoker Award for best first horror novel
* Todd Robinson, short story writer and editor of Thuglit
* Jonathan Santlofer, artist and author of Anatomy of Fear: A Novel of Visual Suspense (HarperCollins), about an uncanny forensic sketch artist
* Kimberly Warner-Cohen, author of Sex, Blood, and Rock’n’Roll (Ig Publishing), a novel of a murderous dominatrix in the East Village


8:30ish Wrap up
* Costume Contest Awards, with prizes including books, audiobooks, t-shirts, and more courtesy of publishers HarperCollins, Penguin, and Random House

We all know that there are plenty of comics-reading athletes, from noted Superman fan Shaquille O’Neal to dozens and dozens of pro wrestlers. But, if we had to pick the scariest comic book fan of them all, it could easily be UFC Middleweight Champion Anderson Silva.

The Brazilian Silva, who scored a lopsided TKO win over Rich Franklin last night at UFC 77 in Cincinnati, is a long-time Spider-Man fan and derived his nickname, “The Spider,” from everyone’s favorite wall-crawler.

He told this to the Daily Star last week:

I love comic books and I have every Spider-Man comic book series since 1984. I listed him as my hero as he is the only superhero that had bills to pay.

“You can mention Batman but he was rich while Superman was from another planet. But Spider-Man had to make ends pay here on earth!

Posted by Mark Coale

§ Warren Ellis wrote a short story for Forbes!

§ TV writers find writing comics freeing says the Dallas Morning News:

But most writers working in both fields started out in TV. Mr. Guggenheim says the lure of comic books for such writers is simple. “When you write for TV, you really have to write in some very tight budgetary constraints,” he said in a phone interview. “When you write for comic books, you’re only limited by your imagination, or the artist’s ability to draw it.”

Javier Grillo-Marxuach, a producer for Medium, made his comics debut in 2005 with The Middleman, a series published by Irving-based Viper Comics. He says the temptation of comic books goes beyond the issue of special effects.

“I had an idea about a quirky set of characters that spoke with a verbose rhyme and meter unlike what I was writing at the time, about a series with a truly off-center sensibility,” he said in an e-mail interview. “Comics gave me the opportunity to explore a kind of writing that I could not do on a [TV] series staff, where you are always being steered to write in the voice established by the show’s creator.”

§ DC marketing exec Gayley Carillo wedding made society pages! Congrats on both!

§ Kanye West to team with Takashi Murakami. I can has coolness.

§ Brian Pulido’s movie aspirations.

§ Lufkin, TX bookseller has gotten an education where comics are concerned:

“We sell quite a few comic books but I think mainly what we sell is a lot of graphic novels, which is a compilation of certain runs of comics,” Waldenbooks manager Gary Makries said. No matter what form they come in, comic books have become so popular, that kids aren’t the only ones reading them. You’d be surprised. There’s adults my age buying comics, there’s people in their mid twenties. You’ve got lots of little kids discovering comics for the first time,” Makries added.

§ Nothing to do with comics, but it’s still interesting: the biggest websites of 2001 and where are they now!

Tonight at Hanley’s on 33rd St, 6-8 pm.

In a scene out of a biblical epic or perhaps crazed supervillain attack, the bugs descended last night on Cleveland’s Jacobs field during the playoff game between the Yankees and Indians. The bugs are apparently called “Canadian Soldiers.” Cleveland won the game in extra innings.

posted by Mark Coale

§ The Scripps News syndicate profiles Gene Yang

Wang knew early on that he wanted to make his living as an artist. At first, he was fixated on the idea of becoming an animator and, as a child, he had a poster of Walt Disney over his bed. Then, in fifth grade, Wang read his first comic: “Superman and the Atomic Kingdom.” “It really freaked me out — I stayed up nights, thinking about the atomic bomb,” Wang says. “That really demonstrated to me how powerful the combination of words and pictures could be, and it really got comics under my skin.”

§ The Forward, “the Jewish daily”, looks at the character of Alter in Y the Last Man from an Israeli perspective:

It’s a Zionist plot, all right, but not a particularly invidious one, since nearly everyone else — including the Australians, the Russians and an outlaw band of man-hating Amazons — is in hot pursuit of the same fellow. The Israeli commander is one tough cookie. But as cast by Vaughan and artist Pia Guerra, Alter is rationally motivated, devoted to her country and, as the series progresses, endowed with hidden layers of complexity, humanity and even vulnerability. If she has a flaw, Vaughan declared in a telephone interview from the Burbank, Calif., studio where he now writes for the TV series “Lost,” it is that “she’s a little overzealous — to say the least.”

§ People who have followed the saga of Von Allan and his still-unpublished graphic novel “The Road to God Knows…” may enjoy this interview in CBR

You’ve been out promoting the book at cons even before it was finished, which is a little unusual. Why go that road, no pun intended?

This is the bookstore guy in me. That and the pragmatist. Most books fail. By fail I mean that they sell less than 1000 copies in a typical year. By most I mean around 90%+ of what’s published in a given year, at least in English. First books by unknown authors will generally fair extremely poorly in both the book trade and the Direct Market. So, one of the things I’ve struggled with in putting the book together was trying to avoid having it fall completely on it’s face when it finally hits store shelves. Going out and trying to build some awareness for it before it was available was (and is) a good thing to do. How will people know to order a book if they don’t know it exists until it ships? And for an unknown author it’s even trickier. This ain’t “Frank Miller’s road to god knows…,” after all. Page from “the road to god knows…”

§ History major dissects #)), quotes Montaigne

Both the movie and the comic-book novel on which it is based appeared in times of deteriorating US diplomatic relations in the Middle East, and 300 opened as the extended American military presence in Iraq was increasingly testing the patience of both the American populace and the international political community. In this context, both Miller’s graphic novel and Snyder’s film may contribute to an American Orientalist xenophobia, seamlessly bridging the divide between ancient Persia and the present-day Middle East in the popular imagination. Both the film and the book took their place in an American political, social, and cultural climate which initially supported a passive acquiescence regarding the unjust transgressions of Guantanamo Bay and the Patriot Act, and which has subsequently become bitterly divided concerning East/West relations and their domestic ramifications.

A round up of some interesting stuff from over the weekend:

§ John Jakala investigates the “failed” manga efforts of Westerners :

I thought this was an interesting quote for a couple reasons. For one, it could be seen as a reason why Pope produced hundreds of pages of material during his association with Kodansha but only a handful saw print. (For an example of a page that was published in Japan, see below.) Secondly, it paints a different picture of the Japanese manga market than I’d imagined. I’ve always assumed the breadth of material in Japan is fairly wide and diverse, but Pope suggests it’s much more narrow and limited. If others have a take on this (Matt Thorn, I’m looking at you!), I’d be interested to hear it: Is the readership in Japan really “maddeningly conservative”? (Or put another way, is it any more maddeningly conservative than the U.S.’s extreme antipathy to anything not adorned in spandex?)

We’d like to throw in here that manga styles at major publishers like Kodansha may look a certain way, but there’s much variety in the managa tradition. For instance, crack open TEKKON KINKREET and it could be drawn by an indie cartooner.

§ The Daily Cross Hatch continues an epic interview with Evan Dorkin:

Someone must have attempted to option the rights for Milk and Cheese at some point.

Sure. Even now I still get a business card tossed my way, at a show, but it’s died down since I haven’t put out an issue in…ten years. The characters don’t really support a tremendous amount of issues. But there will be an eighth issue, if I have my way—if I have my druthers, whatever that means. I don’t really know if I want druthers, but if I have them, I will do another issue. I have various bits collected from various sources. I used to have people ask me to do them more often.

§ Manga: The Complete Guide author Jason Thompson is interviewed at TCJ.com

I have a lot of sympathy for people who have negative first impressions of manga, because I was kind of a snob about what I read in those days, and my first impression of manga was that, you know, the eyes were big! And it was sexist! And furthermore, there were a lot of giant robots, which I wasn’t into either. Giant robots are probably the part of Japanese pop culture I’m least interested in.

§ An art exhibit in Chicago provides the occasion to examine LJ and other online communities and how they support artists

For Chicago illustrator and graphic artist Mike Segawa, joining a blogging community afforded the opportunity for immediate feedback and recognition. “I used to draw in a void,” says Segawa, who started freelancing in 2003. “It wasn’t until I joined a blog community that I got the affirmation and validation I needed.” The blog community he joined was LiveJournal, where he connected with other artists, many of whom joined his “friends list.” Through his online group of friends, Segawa promoted his own work, which led to work and continual exposure. “I’ve personally networked with people I otherwise never would have known,” he says.

Local culture paper LA CityBeat has a nice, far better written than usual section on comics with:

§ An examination of Popeye
§ A look at The Blot’s Tom Neely
§ Mad Magazine is profiled
§ An interview with Brian K. Vaughan.
§ A profile of Top Cow

VIA PR:

It’s the most powerful team-up of the year—the nation’s most popular sport meets the world’s most popular comic company! Tonight on ESPN’s Monday Night Countdown, the popular sports channel examines Philadelphia Eagles record-breaking free safety Brian Dawkins’ love of Wolverine and how he’s integrated the X-man into his football life. Watch as Marvel Comics Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada speaks about how Wolverine and Dawkins may not be that different, while industry legend John Romita Jr re-imagines two of Dawkins’ memorable moments. You’ll see the process of Romita sketching Dawkins as Wolverine from blank page to finished pencils right before your eyes, in this special segment filmed on location at the Marvel Comics offices!

ESPN’s Monday Night Countdown, with special guests John Romita Jr and Joe Quesada, is scheduled to air at 8pm EST. Check your local listings for time and channel.

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§ Perhaps the ultimate sign of the acceptance of graphic novels as a form of literature is when they are not spotlighted in a dog-on-legs way but merely as another example of the treatment of a theme as this NYT story on THE HOMELESS CHANNEL does:

“The Homeless Channel” assumes a similar inside-television perspective, taking the point of view of a producer named Darcy, who creates a 24-hour channel and turns cameras on the homeless. The stark visuals in the graphic novel, written and drawn by Matt Silady, disguise its subtlety. Darcy sees her channel as a form of activism, a way to give the homeless a voice and visibility. But the novel engages an essential question: Is she also exploiting them, as her critics charge? Like “Great World of Sound,” the book goes beyond the basic issue of who’s exploiting whom and acknowledges the hardest fact about reality television: The genre is an ethical mess, and we like to watch anyway. No one gets out quite clean, on either side of the camera.

§ Spidey poised for blitz with promotional partners :

Sony cast a wide net out to brands whose demographics were as broad as the film’s. All partners are new to the DVD launch except for Pringles, which also paired with Sony for Spider-Man 3’s theatrical re-lease in May. Total efforts from the studio and partners to promote the DVD will comprise several million dollars in marketing.

“Because the Spider-Man franchise spans a wide age and psychographic demographic, we had a lot of promotional partners to consider,” said Lexine Wong, senior-evp Worldwide Marketing at Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, Culver City, Calif. “We chose those brands that could encapsulate Spider-Man 3’s brand essence while promoting its availability on DVD/Blu-ray at our DVD retailers as well as directly to consumers in other channels of distribution.”

§ Japan’s otaku politico Taro Aso is not expected to win a run-off election but he’s still down with the kids:

Aso also commands a following among youth who relate to his his love for Japanese “manga” comic books.

“He has a great personality,” said Yoshiyuki Yamada, 28. “I like how he’s trying to get young people interested in politics by speaking about manga.”

§ Hype Alert: John Higgins profiled for work on Beat-edited project:

It’s just as well Higgins wasn’t bogged down: “The deadline for Hills was so tight, we had no time to pussy around with the direction or changes, which made it a joy (except for the deadline) for me to work on. This meant we had to get it right first time, which suited me as I hate being directed too much, the editor should: either hire you for your expertise and trust you to do the job, or they should get someone else.”

§ CBR interviews artist Andrea Offerman, whose work appears in FLIGHTS #4

I went to Med school in Lubeck, Germany. When I graduated High School I wanted to get an education in art, but was afraid of the reality of making a living as an artist. I was afraid that I would struggle and loose interest in making art if I “had” to do it every day to pay the bills. So I enrolled in Med school because I was always very interested in the subject matter. Studying the subject was really cool, but the two years were also terrifying partly because I was confronted with exams in many subjects I was terrible in, such as Chemistry and Physics. The subject that took up the most time was Anatomy, which actually was my favorite. But studying for that subject involved dissecting bodies every day for hours on end. It was very interesting, but also tore on the nerves to be one of 10 people huddled around one body cutting and tearing and pushing each other aside to find muscles and nerves. I remember many macabre moments.

§ Spurge interviews indie comics documantarian Chris Brandt

BRANDT: There were some people there. Terry Moore… Ron Turner. Then there were people I couldn’t even get in the extras. Jennifer Daydreamer, and Sam Henderson. I really like Sam a lot and some of the things he said were genius and weren’t covered by any other people. But they didn’t come out in a fluid enough manner, and he wasn’t comfortable enough in front of the camera. I really wanted to have a film where someone who wasn’t into comics at all, and came into it looking for an uncomfortable person to label as a geek, wouldn’t be able to say: “I knew that’s what this was about. I don’t have to listen to that.” I was very conscious of thwarting preconceptions an audience might have. It was a propaganda piece in that way.

§ The Baltimore Sun interviews photocollage comics artist Steven Parke on his new graphic novel MEDUSA’S DAUGHTER:

Even in the ever-morphing world of the graphic novel, Steven Parke’s illustrations stand out. Instead of drawing, he uses photographs to tell a story. But he doesn’t just point his camera and shoot. Parke manipulates his images digitally, lifting pieces from different shoots, tinkering with the lighting. The results duplicate reality, but with a twist.

After a day of rest, we’re back to everyone’s favorite topic. Sales Charts! Crazy ass mofo that we are, we prefer to get nuts with actual data as opposed to making snide remarks to back up our own biases, so let’s begin! We had actually meant to dig up Diamond’s graphic novel bestseller list from 2006, but one of our correspondents helpfully dug it up for us. We’ve taken the top 25 books and highlighted the superhero titles, as before. (Click for larger version.)

8 of the top 25 books are superhero. (V for Vendetta is in a grey area, but we’re going with dystopic sci-fi.) The rest are genre heavy, but basically dominated by popular writers: Brian K. Vaughan, Robert Kirkman, Joss Whedon, Alan Moore. People can’t get enough of these guys! Sign them up! The complete lack of manga speaks for itself, of course, but that’s an entirely different matter.

We linked to a post on Tom Brevoort’s blog a while ago where he looked at Marvel sales charts from 1990 (when the average comic sold a more than they do now in the direct sales market) and was surprised to see the diversity in titles. John Jackson Miller’s Comichron site has US mail sales figures and other data for comics, and CBG has more data, but but regrettably sales from the 70s and 80s are still not readily available.

Not here’s where we speculate to back up our own biases: It’s a given that comics sales dipped to all time lows in the period of about 1996-1999 following the distributor war debacle. This is also the period in which sueprhero comics dominated the market as never before.

It would be interesting to plot comics sales against the diversity of the titles available for the last few decades, if such a thing could be done. We think a decent case could be made that years when the comics industry becomes superhero centric are the years in which the fewest comics sell, and the sales and diversity graph would coincide vairly closely.

To us it seems like a no brainer…but what do YOU think?

Even though THE BEAT and her helper monkey have been talking about Chris Benoit’s brain, that’s not the wrestling talk we have for you today.

As everyone knows, there are a multitude of similarities between the two popular culture whipping boys: brightly-colored outfits, supersized muscles, and so on.

Today, we shine a line on one of our favorite wrestling companies, CHIKARA PRO, and their love of comics. You may have seen them references on MTV recently, talking about wrestling and video games (CHIKARA has a Nintendo-loving garppler on their crew called Player Uno).

CHIKARA’S DVD releases have, for the last couple years, been homages to famous comic book covers. You undoubtedly recognize the originals that inspired these discs.

More after the break
(more…)

For you folks surfing The Beat late tonight, check out tonight’s “Superhero” themed episode of MYTHBUSTERS, another favorite of the nerderotti out there.

As we type this (9 PM ET), the first showing has just started. It repeats again overnight at 1 AM and again tomorrow night at 7 ET.

Topics include:

Building a Batman-like grappling hook
Can a Phantom-like punch like an imprint on your face?
How fast can you change in a phone booth?
will a hook fired from a Batmobile-style vehicle allow for 90 degree turns?

Posted by Mark Coale

The Beat has been unavoidably detained in a remote location, and will return later in the day.

Brian Hibbs writes to remind us that Douglas Wolk gathers with several of his Savage Critic compatriots at Comix Experience:

This Friday, August 17th, from 4 to 7 PM, Comix Experience is very happy to host DOUGLAS WOLK, international bon vivant, Savage Critic, and author of the most excellent Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels Work and What They Mean

Join us for an afternoon of book signing, comics theory, continuity debate, and, unless I miss my guess, beer.

Plus, since we’re in San Francisco, I’d say odds are frankly terrific that we’ll also have Jeff Lester and Graeme McMillan on hand (well, after they get off work), so four, count them four Savage Critics to pontificate!

Be there or miss the most insider comics afternoon of the summer!!

You boys play nice now.

Here you go. At long last the Ellison/Fantagraphics settlement agreement. Basically everyone agrees not to say nasty things about each other any more, Ellison’s interview is removed from future printings of THE WRITERS, the offending paragraphs are removed from the upcoming history of Fantagraphics while they get to post a rebuttal on the internet. Also, everyone is responsible for their own legal bills. Fantagraphics can’t solicit any more defense fund contributions, but can continue to sell those that have already been donated.

And then, everyone goes home.