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
"Kim was the brightest, smartest, most well-read man I'd ever met," Waid told CR "He was as familiar with Proust as he was with Englehart, he spoke many other languages fluently, and because of his upbringing and travels, he was truly a citizen of the world. That said, he loved living in America for many reasons, not the least of which was this one: 'It's the only country on Earth where you can order a pizza at three o'clock in the morning.'" - Mark Waid on Kim Thompson from Tom Spurgeon's Comics Reporter.
- Hello brothers and sisters. It has been a while since the Parade-O-Links has rolled down Intronet Boulevard. A lot of stuff has happened right? Here at file under other we talked about that new Superman movie Man of Steel. HeroesCon came and went and took our hearts with it but not before Henry Eudy could bite off a big chunk. I wrote a thing about David King's Crime World. The Heat and the Blackhawks won championships. Father's day happened. Mad Men wrapped up another season and smashed my brains to bits. Egypt overthrew it's leader... again. The 4th of July happened... again. Some dude revealed to the world that there are spies and unbelievably people over the age of four thought this was news. There were wars and rumors of wars. Babies were born. The Earth spun round and round.
- Some of you may have noticed that I have been relatively absent from the world of teh comics intronets lately. I've still been super involved in comics. I've read tons of comics. Actually, a lot of the comics I read were on my phone and weighed absolutely nothing. Look, I read a lot of comics. And, I worked on making some comics! But I've been away from teh intronets for the most part. There are a lot of reasons that I won't get into. Let's just go with the happiest of those many reasons and say that I'm on vacation. And, this return to link blogging will most likely be short lived. Or, at least I probably won't post one of these next week as I will be out of town. I don't even plan to to take a computer with me. But don't stop doing awesome things on my account. I'll still check in through the magic of the cell pad pod phone. The cell phone is gonna be covered in sunscreen but I'll try to make do.
- The comics community mourned the loss of Kim Thompson. He was a lot of things to a lot of people. Tom Spurgeon posted a lengthy piece on him here. You should go read that. It is very good. You should also read through these tributes. It's hard to imagine what comics in North America would look like right now without Thompson's hard work but I'm sure it wouldn't be as good. I met Thompson in person once at SPX and he was a lot nicer to me than he needed to have been. I spoke to him because I wanted to give him a copy of the Shiot Crock book I edited/published. It was a book that would not have existed without The Comics Journal Message Board. I always appreciated Thompson's interaction with that message board. He certainly went above and beyond. Having someone involved with the publishing side of things come in and just give you the matter of fact yes or no answer to shut down an argument... well, we don't see much of that anymore do we?
- Superman, Superman, Superman, Superman. Lots of talking and thinking about Jerry Seigel and Joe Shuster's Superman this summer. I guess it's just the movie being out. Or maybe I think a lot about Superman every summer. There are characters that just work better in one season than another. Batman is a Halloween guy but Superman is for summer. You look at that big blue sky and think that it needs a dude with a red cape in it. I've been on a big Superman reading kick for the past several weeks. Mostly on my phone but also in my beloved DC Showcase Presents books. Comixology had a big sale on Superman comics as the movie came out and there was a lot of great stuff in there. A lot of it for free! That new Scott Snyder and Jim Lee Superman Unchained book came out. It was a big yawn for me. Snyder's great but trying to make it read like Jim Lee was actually drawing a story made that thing super wordy. A Jim Lee comic is the exact opposite of everything I love about comics and even Snyder couldn't fix that for me. I literally had no memory of anything that happened in that comic ten seconds after I laid it down. I have been reading those cheap Adventures of Superman comics on Comixology though and I think they are mostly great. I also saved a bunch of random Superman links. Here's one on that time Lois Lane tried to marry Superman's dad. A look at some early Siegel and Shuster pitches for Superman. "I, Jerry Siegel, the co-originator of Superman, put a curse on the Superman movie! I hope it super-bombs." Kyle Baker made this little game thing that sums up the last 45 minutes of Man of Steel. Dale Earnhardt Jr. drove a Superman race car. (Sadly, the motor blew up.) Alan Moore wrote an essay. Here is a neat illustrated review of Man of Steel. Here are some neat movie reaction comics. This story about a huge Superman painting is fascinating. Mark Waid talked about how creator payments work for DC movies and TV shows (they don't). If you want to know what the real Zod thought about it, he's in the men's room. Tom Scioli talked about is favorite Superman. Tom Spurgeon mentioned one of my favorite Superman comics. Apparently Time Warner wanted to make sure that Preachers knew the movie was about Jesus. 566 Supermans.
- 1978 seems to be my sweet spot for superhero comics. Check out all these great DC Covers. Especially that Wonder Woman at the bottom.
- If you don't understand that Wonder Woman is box office gold then please find me and let me
punch your face inrelieve you of any decision making position you have and the income that goes along with it . Wonder Woman is science fiction, magic, mythology, super powers, sexy time, warfare, monsters, gods... her world is everything we see in a summer's worth of blockbusters rolled into one story. Just hand her a lighstsaber and let her fight a shark and she would be every summer blockbuster ever made. Don't mistake your lack of imagination for being clever. - You guys listened to this Herb Trimpe panel right? Oh man it is so great. Fascinating stuff about the Marvel "bullpen". Some great stuff on Mary Severin. I had no idea that Trimpe was more of a Disney funny animal guy before the started at Marvel but it makes perfect sense when you think about the way he drew The Hulk. I was also very interested in hearing Trimpe talk about going to The School of Visual Arts. Great stuff. Go listen to it now.
- Comics titans Jack Kirby and Carmine Infantino interviewed together.
- Right now at this moment, Marvel and DC combined might have 5 writers as good as Paul Jenkins.
- Yes. Batman sits.
- Look, there was a lot of hubbub about that Jenkins interview and the Batman not sitting down thing. But I don't think anyone actually named the editors that all that venom was going toward. We tend to blame things on "the editors" or "editorial". Or we just blame "DC" or "Marvel". Look, the editors have names. Their names are right there in the damned books. In that Jenkins story, he's talking about his work on the Dark Knight comic. The editors on that book were Mike Marts and Rickey Purdin. See. How hard was that? It's okay to say their names. Their not working for a charity. Time Warner paid them to edit those comics.
- Speaking of naming names, we all need to do this whenever we can.
- This is what DC Comics looked like while I was inside my mommy's belly.
- DragonCon finally did the right thing. I know family of one of the main players in all of this and I have a lot of friends for whom DragonCon is an important part of their year so I'm happy steps have been taken in the right direction. A lot more could be done though. DragonCon is a FOR-profit event ran almost entirely on the backs of volunteers. I'm not saying they need to change their business model but there are positive things that can be done with those profits. The very least of which might be, for example, donating and investing in resources and organizations that work to fight against and prevent the kinds of atrocities of which Ed Kramer has been accused.
- Above is a picture of Jenna-Louise Coleman in a rubber outfit standing in front of a bar. Those are things that I enjoy.
- Did you know that Julia Wertz, potographer of old gross abandoned decrepit things, used to make comics? It's true.
- Early Jack Kirby war comic.
- The Beat pieced together the history of Zenith. I doubt I make any effort to get that big collection but all the recent talk about that title has inspired me to get in the basement to dig through boxes to figure out just how many of those comics have.
- A great post on Fabio and Gabriel Ba's blog about Brasil.
- This is only half as weird as time I was watching TV with my kids and Bieber was on some kids dance contest show and he came out to meet the contestants on a segway. He never got off the segway. Never took the sun glasses off. Never touched any of the contestants. The contestants were children.
- No intentional blood without prior approval from the Alabama Athletic Commission.
- That time that dude dropped comic book character Glenn Danzig with one punch.
- That time Jim Steranko "bitch slapped" Bob Kane.
- Hey, hey, hey. Did I mention that I wrote a thing for this new The Atomic Elbow book that's coming out? Oh man, you need to pre-order 10 copies of that thing so hard right now, like, oh my gawd, like RIGHT NOW!
- Eleanor Davis paper Regular Show toys y'all. Whooaaaaaaaa!
- We are all going to die.
- How is it not called Excelsior?
- Tom Spurgeon did some talking and thinking and writing about the New 52 now that we are far enough into the thing make better sense of it. I've got stacks of those things lying around that I've been meaning to write about but here my short take; The only good comics of the New 52 are those that ignore it and those that are character driven. Specifically the Batman and Green Lantern books suffered absolutely no impact from the New 52 because they totally ignored it. The strong character driven books that first come to mind are Animal Man, Demon Knights and Earth 2. The last two of that combo being really the only comics of the New 52 where things were shaken up in any kind of imaginative way. I've enjoyed a lot of individual issues of Action Comics and Superman but there is absolutely zero consistency from one book to the next or often even from one page to the next. Right now, at this moment, my favorite DC Comic is Ame-Comi Girls. Another title that has absolutely nothing to do with the New 52.
- And finally...this is the first step on a long road to redemption.
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
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.
p.p.p.p.p.s. Yeah, I do Instagram too now. I guess it's a law or something.
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