Other Comics News Parade-O-Links 09302012

(Mike Allred's cover for the 40th anniversary issue of Ms. magazine stolen from Ms. magazine.)

Here are some things I found interesting in the world of minicomics, comic books, graphic novels, small press, self publishing, zines, webcomics, cartoons, digital comics, other, etc. during the week ending 09302012:

“No fiction is worth reading except for entertainment. If it entertains and is clean, it is good literature, or its kind. If it forms the habit of reading, in people who might not read otherwise, it is the best literature.”  Edgar Rice Burroughs.

• Former WWII US Army Signal Corps Cartoonist Stan Lee (real name Victor von Doom) announced this week that he has acquired and implemented the technology to live for another 90 years.  This triggered the UN to hold a special session where Benjamin Netanyahu used a cartoon bomb to illustrate the the danger an immortal Stan Lee presents to the world.  One time Lee collaborator Steve Ditko declined to comment on the matter but asked reporters if any of them would be kind enough as to fill his ice bucket.  (The man lives in a hotel.)
• As you read this, Grant Morrison MBE and friends are either in the last throes of Morrisoncon or knocking down another Red Bull and unleashing themselves upon Las Vegas.  It has been very popular with the current class of young snotbag haters* to try and build themselves up by tearing down the image Grant Morrison has crafted for himself over the past couple of decades. Go ahead and and tear apart his interviews.  Tear down the man.  Death to all heroes before they disagree with you or let you down.  It's good fun and you snotbags crack me up for sure.  But I like Grant Morrison's comics a lot.  Grant Morrison's Batman, Superman, JLA, X-Men, Doom Patrol, Animal Man, Seaguy, The Invisibles, The Filth, Flex Mentalo, Arkham Asylum, Sebastian O, Kill Your Boyfriend, Marvel Boy, Seven Soldiers and WE3 are good comic books.  Damn good comic books.  I like 'em.  High five Grant Morrison.  
• Speaking of class prejudices, former school teacher turned creator of the world's most expensive small print run minicomic/zine J.K. Rowling just can't shut up about class either.  
• The alt comics Mount Rushmore stood up and posed for a picture for Rolling Stone and mustered up about three quarters of a smile between the four of them.  Apparently some of the youngs had their feelings hurt by some of the things Gilbert Hernandez said.  Look on the bright side youngs, any minute now your youth will be squandered and gone.  People younger and better looking than you will think you are a joke.  It's gonna be great!
• Howard Chaykin.  Matt Fraction.   Satellite Same.  Tumblr.  Go. 
• If you have not already then you are going to wanna go ahead and read this Wild Dog comic.  
• Daryl Ayo wants you to think about the things that he thinks about before you go crazy and end up in a very dark and gross place.  Don't worry.  It's not hard.  He will walk you through it. 
• Carter Scholz tells us all about Dal Tokyo. 
• Whooo hooo weeeeee!  Just go look at that Toth art. 
• A new Josh Simmons minicomic?  Yes please. 

• Spandexless on The End of the Fucking World. 
• Lots of SPX videos are showing up.  I liked this one with Adam Casey.  Don't ya just want to take Henry Eudy home and hug him and squeeze him until he dies?  And here is a post SPX exit interview with our man Eudy and Rich Barrett. 
• Chris Schweizer cares about his comic shop experience.  So do I. 
• Amulet and the Legion of Super Heroes are burning in hell. 
• The Ink Panthers finally ran out of things to talk about.  So they talked about comics. 
• Don't mess with the Libertarian party.
• You can read Kid Mafia right now for free.  It's fun. 
• This is what the inside of my brain looked like from about 1977 to 1985...

• The 70s got kinda of rough. 
• Seth Peagler took an advanced look at the huge crazy Chris Ware Building Stories thing. 
• Oh man this DC comics New 52 timeline.  Yeesh.  So, Batman trained and ruined three Robins in about 4 years?  Well okay. 
• "Dan DiDio has gone on record, and this is the same man that said Gotham Central would never be cancelled as long as he was there, telling people what a great book Gotham Central was, but it never made any money.  Well, take a look at your trade sales! That book has made nothing but money as a trade. What I’m now being told is, ”lt was never worth anything to us anyway.”So, you know what? They can stop selling the Batwoman: Elegy trade and stop selling the Wonder Woman trades and everything else I’ve done, because clearly I’ve not done anything of service and those guys aren’t making any money off me."
• Cheers was not a comic book.  It was a sitcom but much of what drew people to it was the heavy presence of nostalgia and sentimentality.  Kinda like comics.  Anyway, it was great and this is a very interesting oral history about it. 
• I wrote a few hundred thousand words about Batman comics from the 90s. 

• For those of you keeping score at home, I listened to Robert Newsome's latest podcast while typing this blog post. 
• People, people, people.  I've had a challenging week.  It is not your fault but I'm afraid you are going to be collateral damage.  I know this is going to break your little black hearts but I just don't have a link haiku or Best Single Print Comic I Read Last Week in me for this week.  I'll try to make it up to you next week.  Speaking of next week, my birthday is Saturday, October 6th. Here are some things you can do for me for my birthday.  Spread the word.  Share, like, tweet, re-tweet, tumble etc. this blog or any of the other nonsense I'm involved with.  I appreciate it.  
• And finally... Good?  Bad?  Grant Morrison is on the side that gets the butter.

Oh, and one more last thing!  Did you know you can leave comments on these posts here at file under other?  It's true!  And, I'll probably respond.  Twitter and facebook killed the message boards but that's no reason why you can't argue with me, praise me or leave me recipes.  It's your intronet.  Have fun!

And that's just a taste of some of the interesting things going out there in the wonderful world of comics and things. I can't keep up with it all but I do keep up with a lot of it on twitter and I try to re-tweet the good stuff. You should probably follow me there. If you did something to make comics better this week then high-five!

Your best pal ever,

Shannon Smith

*"Snotbag haters" is TM Tom Spurgeon.  Used without permission. 

p.s. Say you want a leader but you can't seem to make up your mind. I think you'd better close it and let me guide you to my twitter feed.

p.p.s. Let's pretend we went to high school together on facebook.

p.p.p.s. Google + is another place you can read the same thing I posted here.

p.p.p.p.s. I'll tumblr for ya.