Other Comics News Parade-O-Links 02052021

 (The Overwhelming Motörhead Rock Commando July 1980.)

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 weeks ending 02052021. 

• Hello sisters and brothers and undecided others and welcome to another episode of your Other Comics News Parade-O-Links.  My name is Shano and I'll be your host.  Remember over a month ago when fired up the file under other machine and I was going to start posting these things again?  Me either. 
• No one close to me died since our last episode so, progress. 
• Marvel and DC superheroes trend on the social meeds every day but it's rare when the comics trend and even rarer when a specific comic book trends so when it does you know it's either going to be misogyny or racism.  Immortal Hulk #43 decided to go with the racism this go round.  Everyone makes mistakes but racism is almost never a mistake and there are some mistakes you don't get to make if Disney is paying you. 
• In dumb comics movie click bait news: Nah, that's just stupid. 
• Speaking of things that are not comics, that HBO Max deal has finally added the greatest DC Comics based TV show of all time, Batman: The Brave and the Bold.  Check it out heathens. 
• I just got a phone call from my close personal friend Doctor Fauci and he gave me some great news.  America's most wholesome cartoonist, Josh Latta, has a new book out.  Suck on that 2019-nCoV acute respiratory disease.
• Well, it's finally happened.  Ashley Holt has finally gotten so sick of your bullshit he's left the country.  This country has two Carolinas and neither one of them were good enough for our man Ashley.  Good luck Germany! 
• Do you guys read the comics?  I read the comics.  What comics do you guys read?  Maybe respond in the comments.  LOL HAH HAH HAH no one is ever going to respond in the comments.  Maybe twitter though.  I've been reading a lot of oddball late 80s stuff lately like post-Crisis Suicide Squad and the pre-Grant Morrison* Doom Patrol.  (With the intention of going through the Morrison stuff again afterwards because I'm obsessed with that Doom Patrol TV show.)  Been reading lots of comics with characters in brown and orange costumes in stories where they go into cold war era made up jungle islands. That was a weird period in comics, before DC thought these things had value, before the movies, when they were just like, "well, all these non-primary color characters are never going to catch on so we may as well dump them in a team and kill one of them off every issue".  Fun stuff. I recommend you go to Ollie's and buy the first few trade paperbacks of both series for about $3 each.
• Speaking Doom Patrol, you guys have watched the first two seasons of the TV show now right?  It's the best right?  What do you want to see in the 3rd season?  I want Doom Force.  

• And speaking of other things that are not comic books, sure, yeah, I like WandaVision just fine.  I like it better when they don't explain things for the normies.  I don't want the normies to have anything else.  They have sports.  That's enough. I think showing us the MCU "real world" outside of Westview as a catastrophic mistake for the show.  Those scenes are poorly written and poorly acted and just look like low budget television.  The stuff of Wanda's creation inside Westview, which is supposed to be low budget television looks fantastic.  Just, spare us the MCU please.  
• My MCU ranking goes as follows 1) The ones where Iron Man plays AC/DC. 2) The ones where Captain America takes his shirt off. 3) WandaVision.
• That Vision "content" you really wanted. 

• If I hadn't been trapped in the Trump version of Westview for the past year I might have given you guys a list of my favorite comics from 2020 and I probably would have mentioned Jeremy Massie's Holler.  You can get on board with the 3rd issue now. 
• Current reigning defending best at drawing on Earth, Brad McGinty, recently did the cover of We Do What We Want 2. It's great and the magazine is a lot of fun.  The magazine has an article where Gerard Way talks about his The Real Ghostbusters toys.  I didn't make that up.  For real, if you like the things that are the good things then you will enjoy this magazine.  Also, if you like the things that are rad you will like this High on Fire t-shirt Brad did for the Holy Mountain Printing folks. 
• The great Annie Koyama is leaving escaping  changing her relationship with comics.  Our man Rob Clough weighed in on her impressive legacy. 
• Related, Ed Kanerva and RJ Case are also fleeing pursuing their future endeavors. 
• 24 Hour Comics Day went down again and I read a lot of the comics but when I think about it, most of what I saw were from the folks I follow on twitter and Instagram that are already posting comics weekly or more frequently in that format so, really, the day just felt like any other day in my social media feed.  A lot of folks have really mastered Instagram's 10 photo limit for posting comics in a reader friendly cell pad pod phone environment.  I'm thinking about folks like the world's most dangerous man Henry Eudy, your dad Mike Dawson, that lady at the petting zoo Lisa Hanawalt , your favorite teacher Mayday Trippe, that dude you used to work with Gabby Schulz, that dude on the bus Josh Bayer, that dude you know who has transcended flesh and draws with his mind now Patrick Dean and so many more just killing it every day.  I salute you doers of things. 

THE BEST NEW COMIC I READ THIS WEEK

Malarkey #5 by November Garcia available at Birdcage Bottom Books

This is a great looking minicomics sized collection of comics with bigfancycomics production.  These are mostly diary style comics with a few more ambitious art comics pages to mix it up.  Garcia's color stuff is really interesting.  Like that fantastic cover where it looks like it's raining what could be bubble gum or guts depending on how dark your day was. Thematically this issue is dealing with, well, kind of 2020 in a nutshell.  Death and the plague and how you just have to deal with it.  I think we call can relate.  Also, there are jokes. 

• Before we go we'd better check on our boy Francis and make sure he's okay.

• Remember pals, life is hard.  Never stop running unless it's to pick up a friend.  Read comics and chew Glorp every day and you'll keep on livin' until you're dead. 

Your best pal ever,

Shannon Smith

p.s. I write comics.  Do you make comics?  Maybe you should hire me to write comics. 
p.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.p.s.  Yeah, I do Instagram too.  Maybe if 100,000 of you follow me there I'll be as famous as the average Cambodian teenager with a milk ring collection.