§ Matthias Wivvel has his wrapup of Angoulême 2010 including an appreciation of Baru:

In this context, it seems auspicious that the Grand Prix winner (for his life’s work) is Baru (aka. Hervé Baruléa, b. 1947), in that he is one of the great proponents of a working class and immigrant perspective in Francophone comics. Best know to American readers for the gorgeous but comparatively minor Road to America (1995-97, Drawn and Quarterly ed. 2002), his first major work, Quéquette Blues (1984-1986) pretty much established the blueprint for his work — a gripping tale of youthful enthusiasm and rebelliousness set in a working class suburb. It remains an energetically humanist portrayal of youth with a strong socio-political undercurrent. The masterpiece is L’Autoroute du soleil (1996), first serialized in the early 90s in the Japanese weekly Morning, which adapts the expansive storytelling techniques and page count of manga to tell a road story of two young working class men on the run from a neo-Nazi group. It is simultaneously a portrait of post-industrial France and a moving coming-of-age-story. Of late, Baru has tended toward self-repetition to diminishing returns, but he is still a major voice in Francophone comics, presenting an important, rarely-seen point of view.

§ Geek-o-system has several of their geek-oriented Power Grid rankings, including Top 30 Geeky Writers, which includes many of the folks you’d think it would include.

§ USA Today blogger Whitney Matheson went to the SNL-powered fundraiser for the stage version of Phoebe Gloeckner’s The Diary of a Teenage Girl

Marielle Heller is adapting Gloeckner’s 2002 book as a play. It follows a teen girl in ’70s San Francisco who, among other things, has a sexual relationship with her mother’s boyfriend. It’s a pretty intense story but worth reading and beautifully drawn. (You can preview several pages on Amazon.)

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The announcement of BOOM!’s Samuel L. Jackson-penned comic, COLD SPACE, prompts Don MacPherson to point out that celebri-comics have a spotty track record:

Rapper and Transformers star Tyrese Gibson was noted for his public lament over a lack of retailer support for his Mayhem comic from Image last year. Stephen Baldwin barely made a splash with his The Remnant. The first issue of Clerks 2 and Men in Black 2 actress Rosario Dawson’s comic book, Occult Crimes Taskforce from Image, barely made a blip, and neither did Bad Planet, from Thomas Jane of HBO’s Hung. Nick Simmons’s Incarnate from Radical Publishing isn’t exactly lighting the sales charts on fire either, and his dad hasn’t moved many copies of his non-KISS comics when they were offered by IDW Publishing.

Of the five comic-book titles I mentioned in the previous paragraph, I had to do web searches to find/remember the names of three of them.

MacPherson points out that there are exceptions– Kevin Smith and Gerard Way, f’r instance. And that said, the above cover by Jeffrey Spokes is very sharp.

§ Bart Beaty’s Angoulême adventures continue.

§ Chris Mautner looks at Scholastic’s 2010 plans

§ Daniel Craig is taking over the lead role in COWBOYS AND ALIENS.

§ Charlie Jane Anders looks at The Worst Superhero Film Of All Time

§ Wired points out yet another example of a poorly named comic.

§ AND….we all know that AVATAR ripped off DANCES WITH WOLVES, POCAHONTAS, and FERNGULLY, but did it also rip off an obscure British comic?

§ This is more news, but CO2 comics, the new outfit launched by Gerry Giovinco and Co. is reliving the ’80s in style with a web-reprint of THE WORLD OF GINGER FOX by Mike Baron and Mitch O’Connell.

The World of Ginger Fox by Mike Baron and Mitch O’Connell, originally published by Comico in 1986 as a 64-page graphic novel, is nothing short of stylish eye candy derived from the exciting nineteen eighties’ era of high hair, shoulder pads, and excesses of wealth. Ginger Fox is presented anew beginning this week on the web pages of CO2 Comics produced by former Comico publishers Bill Cucinotta and Gerry Giovinco. The tale of romance, adventure and intrigue, set in the Hollywood of the mid-eighties featuring the smart, sexy and savvy Ginger Fox and a cast of strippers, martial artists, hit men, drug addicts, gat-toting bodyguards and celebrity cameos will be released in weekly installments and is available without fee or subscription as are all comics currently available at www.co2comics.com.

§ The Angoulême comics festival — the greatest comics event in the world — is kicking off — English-speaking guests include Joe Sacco, Ivan Brunetti and Dash Shaw — and Bart Beaty has a preview of all the events which will have you jumping on the next plane to attend. His rundown gives some idea of the way in which comics completely take over the town, a refined state that San Diego is nowhere near achieving.

§ And yet we totally missed the news that Philadelphia is turning into Persepolis.

§ Zac Efron feels the road to manhood is via starring in a Brian Bendis story as he signs a deal to star in FIRE, adapted from the BMB graphic novel which he wrote and drew.

§ A lot of people have been alarmed by a lettering error in BATMAN & ROBIN #7. It is sad that time pressures make for such sloppy editing, but in looking at the panel in question, the artists drew the characters in the wrong order anyway. Where were the correct balloons going to go?

§ The Bridgewater PBA Local 174 is having a benefit art auction, organized by police officer and sometime comics writer Chris White. The all-star contributing lineup includes EVERYONE from Erik Larsen to Travis Charest to David Petersen. Check out all the art here. Abovem Dick Tracy by Joe Staton. [Via]

§ Fantagraphics seeks a publicity and marketing intern.

§ Editing is hard: Marvel and DC make many, many changes in their announced creative teams.

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§ ICv2 briefly interviews Chip Kidd on his STRANGE TALES cover for Marvel.

§ It seems that imagining sex lives for Disney characters just never gets old — even The New Yorker thinks this trope is funny. They did at least update the references. :

—When Mickey leers at Minnie in the waterfront bar, let’s have him squeak, “You know what they say, baby. Big ears . . .”

—In the “Brokeback Mickey” flashback, when Mickey makes tender love to Donald Duck, let’s have Mickey murmur, “Leave the little sailor hat on.”

§ Marvel hired 144 new talents in 2009 C.B. Cebulski reveals.

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Our web woes last week left the links stacked up like cordwood. So to keep you busy the rest of the week, here’s a bunch of things we clipped over the last while….

News:

§ Ada Price previews The Big Graphic Novels of 2010 some of which are periodicals, but, okay.

§ Writer Derek McCulloch (Stagger Lee, Pug, Gone to Amerikay) has a POD collection of his short stories available: Stories of a Callow Youth

§ Some folks were tweeting obliquely about MARVELMAN recently.

§ Marvel has made some promotions. Tom Brevoort is now a Vice President, Executive Editor, as has Axel Alonso, and Steve Wacker has been promoted to Senior Editor. Alonso and Wacker both got their first rise to prominence at DC, while Brevoort is a Marvel man all the way. Congrats to all three!

§ Congrats to Jennifer de Guzman on the arrival of Mateo Bernard de Guzman Belew.

§ Congrats also to Brian K. Vaughan and wife Ruth who just had a baby boy.

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3-day weekend reading edition:

§ Dan Nadel writes of the romance of Alex Raymond who knew how to draw, all right.

§ Brigid Alverson walks around the ALA (American Library Association) meeting and reports on graphic novel activity there. We were wondering what Tintin Pantoja was doing.

§ If you want to know what happened at the Golden Globes, Amanda Palmer has pictures from the ladies room on her Twitter feed. Plus, she totally picked the dress we thought she should pick.

§ We already twittered this, but Sir Paul McCartney’s writers had the best line at the Globes: “Animation is not just for children — it is also for adults who take drugs.” Schwarzenegger’s lauding of the groundbreaking film “Avadar” was the second best.
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§ We’ll have more on the month and year end sales charts in a bit, but in the meantime, let’s behold the fruits of comics shops adding POS systems, shall we? Jim Hanley’s Universe, one of Manhattan’s leading stores, added a POS system only midway through last year, and now they are blogging their 2009 best selling graphic novels. View the whole list in the link, but compiler Jeffrey O. Gustafson notes:

Most of our customer base at our primary retail location in midtown Manhattan is walk-in (tourists and the like), though that is not to say we don’t have a solid and adventurous Wednesday crowd willing to try new things. I think the list is more representative of our first-time customers looking to try a comic for the first time.

(Hint: Alan Moore figures heavily in the list.)

§ Artist Scott Hanna’s wife, Pamela Ptak, is a contestant on this season of Project Runway.

• Brian Heater’s interviews at Daily Cross Hatch are coming thick and fast:

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§ Not comics, but Mark Evanier has the BEST headline of any on the Tonight Show Disaster: Conan the Defiant

§ Warren Ellis’s Freakangels message board is hosting two “residencies” in which posters can question creators. One is with Paul Duffield, artist of the FREAKANGELS webcomic. The other is with renaissance man Brandon Graham who posted this above piece of amazing art by James Stokoe. Other amazing art in the link.

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§ The New Republic has launched an online book review section. A nice vote of confidence for the paper world. And so far, not a graphic novel in sight. Outlier!

§ Michigan English Teacher Allen Porter explains his graphic novels as literature course. It’s kind of the basic Comics 101 — Understanding Comics, Maus, Persepolis and V for Vendetta, but it’s a solid foundation.

§ Chris Butcher’s Manga Milestones continues with yaoi/shonen-ai/BL via Antique Bakery.

You may notice a bit of a chip on my shoulder about the definitions of yaoi, BL, shonen-ai, and what is or isn’t a representative of these genres, and that’s because the fans of these works tend to be the most intense and zealous out of any subgroup of fandom that I’ve ever personally run across. Yaoi is explicitly a fan-created culture, coming up out of the amateur-comics networks and meetings in the 1980s and in a very male-dominated society, and producers and proponents of this genre had to fight very hard to get taken seriously and treated fairly. I respect that, it’s hard not to, but considering its 2010 and the battles of yaoi and BL have been fought and won, here’s hoping that all involved can let their hair down a little.

§ Tim O’Shea chats with Dan Vado about the upcoming San Jose Comics Festival:

O’Shea: As the person who originally developed APE, what kind of aspects of the original APE do you hope to recapture with the new San Jose Comics Festival?

Vado: Well, definitely we want to capture the spirit we had at APE, with people who were doing their own comics as a focal point. Given the way these things tend to get started the people who are first in on a thing like this are usually self-published people or people being published by companies like ours.

But, I don’t want this to be JUST about Indy Comics, or JUST about any one genre. I want to see this become as big a tent as possible while keeping our focus on individual creators. I don’t want someone who draws or writes a super-hero comic to feel like they should nt be coming to one of our events.

§ Hollywood quickie: Robert Downey Jr. is out of the COWBOYS & ALIENS movie, apparently due to a scheduling conflict

Are you enjoying these binary dates? We are!

§ John Jackson Miller begins to unpack year-end chartsand has decade-long graphs and other points to ponder.

§ At the Savage Critic, David Uzumericatches DC with some of their last-minute creative changes again:

But DC? I’ve ranted about this before, but there’s a serious trend of total creative team changes on titles going completely unannounced. I don’t know the reasons behind this, but it leads to the impression that DC treats creators (and feels their readers do as well) interchangeably other than their frontline talent. Fabian Nicieza and Tony Bedard have both written stuff I’ve liked, for very different reasons, because they’re TWO DIFFERENT PEOPLE. To treat their involvement in a project as irrelevant to its market appeal is foolish and both underestimates the readers’ savvy and dehumanizes the creators’ effort. I’m sure that there aren’t any sinister motives behind this, but this is the effect it has.

§ Chris Butcher continues his look at manga milestones with Raijin Comics, showing that a milestone isn’t always all positive.

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§ Brian Heater begins a four-part interview with Frank Santoro, who always has something fresh to say:

But the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival was small enough—and I don’t mean in terms of it being curated, because that’s not what happened—it just was a small show, and it sold out fast. I thought that was an interesting take, because it was Williamsburg. There was a diverse enough crowd that it was an interesting cross-section, from my experiences, and that’s New York. So, yeah, you’ve got that embarrassment of riches, for sure, but I still didn’t see a lot of people that I would see at a Comic Con event, and that makes sense, because it was an alternative festival, but there were still some major names there. It was weird. New York’s funny that way. And I like it.

§ Sean was right. I totally geeked out over Matt Maxwell’s history of comics message boards, websites and blogs!!!

§ If you are not one of the millions of people haunted by terrifying flashbacks to GHOST RIDER, THE WEATHER MAN, or NATIONAL TREASURE, you will find the blog Nic Cage as Everyone funny. (Found via Comics Alliance.)

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Happy Epiphany, all!

§ Chris Butcher continues his looks at Manga Milestones of the ’00s, probably our favorite of all the decade retrospectives we’ve read. Picks #3 and #4 include Shonen Jump and Inu Yasha for format reasons:

In the first 3 months of the Viz revamp, Viz had re-released nearly 40 volumes in new editions, and changed over the vast majority of their line to the new Tokyopop format. The only hold-outs were series that would not be getting reprints, like Kia Asamiya’s Steam Detectives, or mature works and special projects like Vagabond by Takehiko Inoue. The writing was on the wall: the old format books were dead, and you were only hanging onto them until the new ones came out. If that long.

The satisfying chunk got a lot bigger.

Part five takes on Tezuka with BUDDHA:

Buddha cemented the name of Tezuka in the minds of the denizens of the North American comics industry, but also the wider literary world, which was just beginning to dabble in reviewing and discussing these grown-up comic books. Buddha was irresistible in that regard, as the subject (Buddhism!) was hot! Buddha was touted as a great “way in” to understanding Buddhism, and with the review came the attendant praise and acclaim for Tezuka, further raising his profile. Best of all? North America loves memoir and biography, and looking at the graphic critical darlings of the last 10 years like Persepolis, Fun Home, Blankets, etc., it’s easy to see how something like Buddha would fit in nicely.

BTW, we’re Phoenix #4ers all the way — it’s our firm belief that all one needs to read is that single volume of Tezuka to grant him his seat in the Pantheon. Karma, baby, karma.

§ There are a lot of manga retrospectives out there, and Johanna links to all the key ones, even the clueless ones.

§ ICv2 sums up Top 10 Comics Business Events of 2009.

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§ A fond fare-the-well to John Jakala who is hanging up his blogging pants, at least for now.

After three and a half years of blogging here, I’ve decided it’s time to call it quits. My output was never prodigious: in 3.5 years I only managed just over 400 posts, which puts my blog’s developmental maturity much lower than its calendar age. The fact that I could only muster seven posts in the last five months of 2009 is pretty clear evidence that my heart just wasn’t in it anymore. One of my personal blogging benchmarks was that if I ever went a month without posting anything it was time to start thinking about shutting things down. And December 2009 came and went without a single post from me, so here we are.

Jakala was one of the early, must-read orange-rimmed Sand Dollar template blogs along with Kevin Melrose and Graeme McMillan, and he was great while he was at it. The latter two have gone on to fame and fortune as big-time bloggers, but Jakala has found…peace. Now if we could only find out what happened to Dick Hyacinth, we’d be happy.

§ Do you mean that now you have to watch four video interviews with Dan DiDio to find out what is going to happen next?

§ Meanwhile, here’s a video of the great Mort Drucker drawing things. Unfortunately, it is a trailer for some educational videos which must be purchased, but when viewed as a trailer should give some satisfaction .

§ Chris Butcher argues very persuasively for 10 manga that changed everything and #1 and #2 are Dragonball and Cardcaptor Sakura. We’re on the edge of our seat for the rest of the list!

There have been thousands of manga released in North America over the past 10 years, but I believe the following 10(-ish) manga were the milestones of the decade, the most important works to be released in English. Depending on how detailed (or long) I wanted this article to go, I could pick 25, 50, 100 manga that serve as milestones, indicative of the industry and the medium and what was and whats to come. But I think I’ve picked 10 manga that paint the most vivid picture of the medium so I’m going to go with those–part of the fun of making lists like these is seeing where opinions differ, and what’s important to the writer (me!)

§ Tim O’Shea talks with Chris Wisnia, whose Kirby monster pastiche comics have been charming us for a while now.

And I had a friend who was into comics, and Kirby got brought up, and I began doing my griping rant about how I couldn’t stand his work, and I gave all my reasons, and all the reasons I gave for thinking the art was awful, he was going, Yeah, and using it as a reason that he loved the art. And I began realizing that, after studying art in school, none of these reasons were really valid to me anymore. Because you realize that photo-realism and all that isn’t what makes art “art.” And I started looking at Kirby’s work with a whole new eye. And his work is so absolutely dynamic, and full of energy. Now, I find, anything he did, it’s just magical to me. I love nothing so much as reading Kirby comics.

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WOW, lots of reading to do to get yourself ready for the new year!

§ You will be dumbfounded with amazement at Douglas Wolk’s list of exciting books coming out in 2010 like (above) Dan Nadel’s Art in Time: Unknown Comic Book Adventures, 1940-1980, a follow-up to his Art Out of Time anthology.

§ Then you’ll gaze in awe at Shaenon Garrity’s rundown of candidates for Greatest American CartoonistPart One and Part Two, with more surely to come.

§ THRILL! as Sean T. Collins and Jog briefly debate Urasawa!

§ GASP! as Brian Hibbs of the the San Francisco comic shop Comix Experience uses his POS system to see what sold in his store in 2009. Overview

Books

Comics
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And so, we wave goodbye to the decade that everyone hated, that had no name, that changed the world much for the worse…here’s some reading while you wait to pop open the bubbly and pray for better times.

§ Chris Butcher finishes his Previews liveblogging for the month.

2:22pm: Did not get a Christmas Card from Boom this year, so I can only assume I was annoying when I called them out last month for doing $25 hardcovers of 112 pages of Uncle scrooge comics (seriously.). This month they go back to the well on that a couple of times with a Valentine’s Day book and another Uncle Scrooge Book, but on the Uncle Scrooge at least (The Hunt for Old Number One, by Erik Hedman and Wanda Gattino, p210) they’re also offering a simultaneously released $9.99 SC edition, which is really excellent. A big part of the criticism of the Gladstone books is that they were unattractive as children’s entertainment because of the price, at $8 for a slim volume. $25 for a volume double-the-size isn’t any better, and I’m glad to see them doing something about it. We’ll be supporting the soft cover in a big way, to show our preference as a retailer (and put our money where our mouths are).

§ Best of’s: Omaha.com - The Omaha World-Herald best books list includes a graphic novel rider.

§ Bryan Lee O’Malley mentions some books he read in 2009.

§ Jeff Smith has his best books of the decade, which is a good spot to mention Paul Pope, who despite his controversy in academic circles, was definitely one of the decade’s most influential cartoonists, if only in keeping the classic European adventure style current among younger artists.

§ NPR’s Glen Weldon amusingly looks at the year’s best.

§ Rich Johnston has Bleeding Cool’s Top Ten British Comics Of The Decade . which is a good place for us to stump for best of decade inclusion for Posy Simmonds and her dynamic duo of Gemma Bovary and Tamara Drewe, literary comics that showed a depth and breadth of emotion and context far beyond the average graphic novel.

§ For those who have been complaining all these lists lack evidence of process, Tim Callahan explains his.

§ Not end-of. Steven Grant pops up over at TCJ.COM and spikes The Spirit – A Pop-Up Graphic Novel. Which is a little harsh because it was, y’know, a pop-up book but agree on the $35 price tag thing. So overall…fail on the Spirit Pop-Up.

§ Speaking of spiking, to end the year, Sean T. Collins rebuffs two critical darlings, You’ll Never Know Book One: A Good and Decent Man and The Photographer.

§ Not-end-of-[something]: Congrats to Jason Lutes and family on the recent arrival of Maximilian Pepper Warren-Lutes.

• Long pieces suitable for free-time reading: Abhay Khosla uses Blue Beetle as a launching point for…something.

• Jog’s Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival musings, transcribings, and dialogs.

§ Brigid Alverson looks at The year in manga, which was far more positive than expected.

§ David Brothers looks back at the year in comics, and manga had a hand in that, as well.

§ Jim Shelley begins a look at The Decade Comics Went Digital — this could be a long one.

§ CBR begins its rollout of the Top 100 Comics of 2009.

§ Likewise, a CBR Decade In Review.

§ Not comics, but The Hollywood Reporter has a bunch of Top Ten lists for the decade. You’ll find some familiar faces in Top 10 Movie Flops of the Decade AND in Top 10 Biggest TV Biz Blunders of the Decade.

§ Via Rich Johnston, a heartbreaking story with photos of a man’s life’s work left out in the rain on the street. Angoulême co-founder Claude Moliterni died last year, and apparently his possessions were given to a used book dealer who took the good stuff and left the rest out on the garbage. Sickening.

§ Chris Butcher is liveblogging the December 2009 Previews:

p57 I still can’t believe they killed The Punisher and replaced him with Frankenstein. But hey, sales are up. Not quite as high as when they killed The Punisher and turned him into an angel with holy weaponry, drawn by Pat Lee, but, you know. Up.

§ TIm O’Shea spotlights Indy Comic Book Week, the skip week event for the ADVENTUROUS:

As you may have heard, Diamond’s not shipping comics this week. Hopefully you may have also heard that some independent creators banded together to help fill the void this week with Indy Comic Book Week (ICBW). As defined at the website: “Diamond Comic Distributors announced they will not ship any new comics for the last week of December. This company is the primary distributor of comic books in North America. What some would call a sad week without our favorite mainstream titles, we are calling an opportunity. This vacancy allows independent and small press comic book creators to claim this week as their own.

Kristy Valenti makes comics history.

§ R. Fiore looks back on 30 years of comics with a Funnybook Roulette that was obviously meant for print rather than online since it is so well written:

A peculiarity of this revolution in content is that, unlike in other art forms, the weight of talent is on the commercial rather than fine-art side. It is as if Vladimir Nabokov approached his subject matter with the verbal resources of C.S. Forester, and vice versa. An art comic can have an impact beyond the experience of comics it provides because of its deeper subject matter, whereas a comic with trivial subject matter can provide a deeper experience of comics.

The new TCJ.com continues to be an embarrassingly badly organized website with excellent content.

§ Tom Spurgeons’s one-critic/one-symbolic-book series of interviews continues with Jeet Heer On Louis Riel. Previously:

Sean T. Collins on Blankets
Frank Santoro on Multiforce
Bart Beaty on Persepolis
Kristy Valenti on So Many Splendid Sundays
Shaenon Garrity on Achewood
Christopher Allen on Powers
David P. Welsh on MW
Robert Clough on ACME Novelty Library

§ Henry Chamberlain interviews Chris Ureta Casos, the buyer for Comics Dungeon in Seattle, on the year in comics.

§ Holiday bonus: How The Warlord got his tiny little costume.

§ First off, Happy 10th Blogiversary to Johanna Draper Carlson and Comics Worth Reading. Consistently one of the sharpest, most independent voices out there, Johanna is on my must read list, and to think that she’s been at this for 10 years makes me feel tired.

§ Is every column by Tucker Stone a must read? Kinda — but this time we mean it! In this episode, Stone looks at the recent kerfuffles over Earth One and GIRL COMICS:

But why? After all, it isn’t as if DC had said “we’re going to do a bunch of new Batman and Superman stories” and then added “and we’re going to print them on the skin of your lover”, and it wasn’t as if Marvel said “we’re doing a comic with a bunch of female creators, and after that, we’re going to stop publishing comics where Wolverine gets to have a bewildering amount of sex with women who are completely out of his league.” All that happened was that two companies–both of which are in the business of making money and are somewhat responsible to their shareholders–announced that they were going to add more items to their product line. There’s more drama to be found in NBC’s decision to replace all of their 10:00PM programming with the mental toilet that is the Jay Leno Show, because that meant an actual reduction in scheduled programming. There’s no evidence that the Girl Comics mini-series or the Earth One graphic novels are replacing anything, and common sense indicates that both items are being designed to appeal to people who aren’t currently purchasing other products, as well as their regular customers.

§ Hype alert: Ada Price wrote a terrific, lengthy piece on comics literary adaptations from Classics Illustrated to today’s explosion of titles.

The Berkley and First Comics “were 20 years too early,” Salicrup claims. The publisher ran into a problem faced by other early publishers of adaptations and graphic novels in general: getting the books into general bookstores. Diamond Comics, the dominant distributor in the comics shop market, did not distribute to the general book market until recently, and trade bookstores chafed at buying on a nonreturnable wholesale basis as comics shops did. “Marketing the books proved difficult at first,” says Tom Pomplun, who started the Graphic Classics series of adaptations in 2001. Graphic Classics has published 18 books, “[concentrating] on presenting shorter pieces. The print run for Graphic Classics ranges from 3,000 to 10,000, he adds, and they are “never [selling] as much as I would like them to.

§ Deb Aoki rounds up critic’s best manga of 2009 and the only sane conclusion to draw is that reminds us that 2009 was a freaking SENSATIONAL year for manga in the US!

§ Chris Butcher is doing some serious Christmas blogging, starting with a look at POD. Most of the post is taken up with the technical objections to POD and a look at how some projects — notably Dave Sim’s recent works — will be available mostly as print-on-demand when the initial printings sell out. The whole post is worth reading, so just go read the whole thing.

§ Kiel Phegley talks to Dan DiDio about DC’s ongoing co-feature program. Basically, books priced at $3.99 will continue to feature a back-up strip, $2.99 books won’t. Also, the backup lineup will be shifting:
“

Green Arrow,” “Booster Gold” and “Doom Patrol” will all lose their co-features moving forward and will return to a $2.99 price point.

“Action Comics,” “Adventure Comics” and “Batman: Streets of Gotham” will swap out their currently running co-features for serials starring different heroes from the DC Universe.

Moving forward, “Teen Titans,” “Justice League of America” and “JSA All-Stars” will include co-features where, rather than focusing on one character over a long story, readers will see different cast members related to the main team embark on their own, limited run adventures. On occasion, a co-feature will be dropped for a month if the main story needs to expand out to 30-pages.

Much more in link.

§ Rich Johnston updates the Dynamite/Dabel Bros. story with more information on what kind of back payments will be made.

§ A nice story on the AYA series (published in English by D&Q) which presents a more rounded look at life in one African country than most people are used to seeing:

“With ‘Aya’ the aim is that after four pages you no longer think you’re in Africa but in a story which could be anywhere in the world,” says 38-year-old Abouet, who lives in Paris but often returns to the Ivory Coast.

With more than 300,000 copies sold, translations into 12 languages including English, an array of prizes and a film on the way, the adventures of young Aya and her friends and family have been a hit.

§ If you’re waiting on pins and needles for SCOTT PILGRIM movie news, you will enjoy director Edgar Wright’s BBC DJ stint which includes fine tunes and some hints about the soundtrack:

During which we learnt that tracks on the soundtrack to Scott Pilgrim Vs the World includes Frank Black’s I Hear Ramona Sing, Dan “The Automator” Nakamura’s The Truth, as well as tracks by Beck and Cornelius (who will be battling it out in the movie.)

§ Geek Dad’s list of comics that children would read.

Things are slowing down…and so are we.

§Joe Sacco’s amazing FOOTNOTES IN GAZA, one of the most important books of the year, is out tomorrow, and the AP runs one of the first of many talking about the book’s The Matter of the Day

Sacco said in doing so he is trying to create a balance to what he calls the United States’ pro-Israeli bias.

A scene in “Palestine” shows an Israeli woman asking: “Shouldn’t you be seeing our side of the story?” Sacco’s cartoon self replies: “I’ve heard nothing but the Israeli side most of my life.”

§ The Daily Cross Hatch surveys several comics types like Tom Hart and Robin McConnell on the best comics of the decade. Even familiarity with only half of the named books would show what an amazing 10-year-period this was for comics.

§ AND YET, Comics Alliance continues its stinging 15 Worst Comics of the Decade list, moving into the Crisis Era and all that was blechhhh inducing.

As an artist, Deodato Jr.’s hands are clean when it comes to the horrific events of the story, but there’s no arguing that his realistic linework served as a magnifying glass to the slash-fiction horror that is imagining Norman Osborn in flagrante delicto.

§ Lev Grossman looks at the best characters of the decade and a couple of them are from comics. The Venture Bros. and Firefly are faring well in these kinds of roundups.

§ Of all of these roundups, the most spectacularly masochistic must be Graeme McMillan’s The Most Important Events Of 2000-2009, Comic Style which shows that it was a horrible, horrible decade of trauma for the Earth in these parlous times.

§ Dan Kois at NY Mag has his best comics of 2009 list.

§ You may be sick of all the talk about GIRL COMICS, but howabout Kelly Thompson talking to editor Mariah Huehner.

§ Sad news regarding Cesar Feliciano: his young daughter has passed away.

§ But happy news from Kelly Sue DeConnick and Matt Fraction.

§

The art becomes blocky, ugly computer generated stuff, and within four pages the characters have met God. God takes them skinny-dipping at the dawn of time, and then the rest of the series is devoted to Jemas’ creationist-lite beliefs about the dawn of man, which involve Wolverine, the first human.

It is hard to know which sentence from Comics Alliance’s description of MARVILLE in their The 15 Worst Comics of the Decade, Part 1 is the most mighty. Truly, there were some great moments in infamy in the ’00s. Can’t wait for part 2!

§ The folks at The Hooded Utilitarian are holding a Ghost World Roundtable You’ll find links to posts by kinukitty, Charles Reece, Richard Cook, and Noah Berlatsky in the above link. BUT ALSO SEE
Shaenon Garrity’s take.

§ We did not know that A WIZARD’S TALE by Kurt Busiek and David T. Wenzel was coming back into print.

§ Marvel’s destruction of a Chicago landmark in a comic book draws local media attention. BUt even in fiction there are limits:

“My first choice was to blow up Wrigley Field,” he says. “[Marvel Comics Editor in Chief] Joe Quesada is so in love with baseball, he couldn’t imagine blowing it up.”

MORE BEST OFS:
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§ Headline of the day! Cartoonist to Perform With Human Woman in Festival, Okay now, before you think this is a great day for cartoonists as they graduate from holding hands with a Cabbage Patch Kid, to maybe sitting side by side with an American Girl, to practicing small talk and saying “I’ll hit you with a text later, okay?” with a Real Doll, a cartoonist has made it to the final plateau…but, no, Human Woman is the name of an Icelandic band, and controversial, taboo busting cartoonist Hugleikur Dagsson will be collaborating with them. A seasonal sample of Dagsson’s art above.

§ Comixtalk presents its annual roundtable on webcomics, this time with Gary Tyrrell, Delos Woodruff, Shaenon Garrity, Fesworks, Derik A. Badman, Brigid Alverson, Larry “El Santo” Cruz, and Johanna Draper Carlson, Among other important topics, they really, really seriously talk about the impending death of the floppy.

You know, I remember when comics cost 12 cents, and floppies were the only format. (*Reaches for cane to beat some sense into the young’uns.*) That model worked because comics were a mass-market medium. Now comics cost $4 and can only be bought in special, inconveniently located stores. That’s fine if you’re marketing to the base, but you can’t bring in new readers if no one knows your product exists. That’s why I’m intrigued by Boom! Studios’ move back to the newsstand, which seems to be doing well. Put comics in front of the kids and they will buy them, especially if they are already familiar with the property (i.e. Toy Story, Wall-E, etc.). It’s not really an issue of technology, it’s distribution and marketing. I really think serendipity drives a lot of leisure purchases, especially where kids are concerned.

Cruz: I’m surprised it’s lasted in this format as long as it has. Paying close to $4 for what’s essentially something that’s Part 1 of a, say, 6 part story? Which you end up having to wait for the payoff over 8-10 months or so? That’s ridiculous. This is why everyone’s gravitating to the trade paperbacks: you get the entire story without the waiting period and its costs less. I think the death of the “floppy” comic is not only inevitable, but it’s also a good thing.

§ ICv2 continues its newsmakers interview series with Dark Horse’s Mike Richardson, Part One and Part Two:

Some people have said it’s bringing new people in. Let me say something. In 1988 when we did Aliens and it sold a bazillion copies we were told that’s bringing new readers in. You can jump forward to when the Sin City film came out and we sold a bazillion copies of Sin City and they said that’s bringing new readers in. And then 300 which I’m told has generated more income than any graphic novel ever, where we sold hundreds of thousands at thirty bucks a pop. We’re told it’s books like that that bring new readers in. How long they last I can’t tell you. There are books that almost act as phenomena in the comic business and they bring readers in. Then it’s the job of the publishers and retailers to create material that continues to bring them in.

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§ Must read: The Daily Cross Hatch polled cartoonists for their Best of 2009 lists and more than 40 replied.

§ Douglas Wolk posts The Best Graphic Novels of 2009 for Barnes and Noble.

§ Fantagraphics/TCJ honcho Gary Groth steps onto the balcony of his stronghold to to address the throng and gives a very cogent history of comics criticism while he’s at it:

You know why you’re here: You’re looking for honest, intelligent, robust criticism and commentary on comics and related media and, hell, maybe even a dollop of philosophical discourse because you’re the kind of gal or guy who isn’t discomfited with a little straying from the thematic farm. But in the course of mulling over what tcj.com means in the greater scheme of things, I began reflecting on the history of comics criticism and concluded that it may be worth reciting, especially for those of you who don’t even know that there’s such a shaggy and ramshackle series of events that could even remotely comprise a history of comics criticism.

§ Newly installed TCJ blogger Noah Berlatsky risks punishment in his very first blog post by commenting on the new TCJ.com’s rather spotty rollout. See also the comment thread. Our opinion? Good content eventually wins out, but you gotta be able to find it.

§ Related and this is a serious question: Why would ANYONE ever choose numeric post titles over SEO-friendly title-based post titles in WordPress?
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News from around yesterday:

§ DC announced LEGACIES, a 10-issue trip through the Five Ages of DC written by Len Wein with art by a rotating cast, including various Kuberts.

DiDio explained that while the series would touch upon all the marquee superheroes expected in a universe-spanning DC event, the crux of the story will have a very personal, ground-level feel. “We’re seeing the Flashes change. We see the Green Lanterns change. And we see how the world evolves around them by seeing it through the point of view of two characters and how their lives change and how their families’ lives change in watching the DC Universe grow. It has a bit of a ‘Marvels’ feel, which I still think is a wonderful book, and I think it’s wonderful to tell the history of the DC Universe in this manner. We tell stories, and it makes more sense to tell this info in a story than in text.”

Yet, despite that last sentence, it was also announced that DC is finally updating THE HISTORY OF THE DC UNIVERSE and WHO’S WHO IN THE DC UNIVERSE, the latter in 15 issues. The last WHO’S WHO came out in 1993, and there have been subtle changes to the DCU since then, so a new look might be warranted.

§ Geoff Johns is writing the FLASH like it was CSI.

§ Valerie D’Orazio is writing PUNISHER MAX

§ Matt Fraction is writing THOR, probably.

§ Now that’s more like it! At TCJ.com, Kent Worcester delivers just the kind of slapdown we need TCJ for.

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