Other Comics News Parade-O-Links 12212013

(Masters of the Universe No. 46 (UK) .  Stolen from James Eatock.)

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 12212013:

"Cartoon Network gravy train is a bit closer to those little handcarts where you pump the handle up and down and roll down the track behind the gravy train. It's a cool replacement for a lame dayjob, but from what I've been told the pay's about the same. All things considered, I'd rather be back in the David Heatley days than wait for Adventure Time/Regular Show/Steven Universe to save us all." -Sean T. Collins.

• Merry Christmas everybody.  And if you don't celebrate Christmas then, Merry Christmas!  And I don't mean that to be antagonistic or as a way to try and convert you to my religion.  I mean it exactly for what it is.  A greeting in the tradition of the customs in which I was raised and live.  It means that I wish you and yours good health, good fortune, merriment and joy this season.  If you or anyone from any culture, language or faith would greet me with well wishes in your own custom I would accept it graciously and appreciate your kind thoughts.  Respecting the customs of another human being does not mean that you embrace those customs or that you have been submissive to them.  I just means that for about a half a second, you mustered up the human strength to be polite to someone that was trying to be polite to you.  It's pretty easy.  Shalom.  Merry Christmas. 
• Robert Newsome over at Second Period Industries has prepared some Christmas music for you to download and enjoy.  Also, he let The Robot host his most recent podcast and it is a little bit scary. 
• It is the holidays so that means the Holiday Spurge is rolling out his holiday interview series faster than I can read them.  So far I have very much enjoyed the Paul Pope and Sean Collins/Joe Mculloch interviews. 
• I don't know that I've ever read an Ed Luce comic but the stuff in this Rob Clough piece looks interesting. 
• Chip Zdarsky has a hilarious hobby and this Sex Criminals cover is magical. 
• Frank Santoro put together a list of best of lists from 2006 to 2012 because that is the kind of thing Frank Santoro does. 
• Sparkplug could use your patronage. 
• It is ridiculous how good Boulet is. 
• The great Sam Henderson talked to CBR. 
• This week, a great many comics folk learned how to spell LaBeouf. I think the guy stealing from a Picturebox about page is twice as strange as him stealing from a comic to make a movie.  We give people Academy Awards for stealing from a comic to make a movie.  (Seriously people, Diablo Cody straight up used the Dan Clowes/Terry Zwigoff screenplay from Ghost World to write Juno and they gave her a freaking Oscar!  Of course Shia LaBeouf would steal.  The Academy practically commands you to!  Jeez-Its people.)
• This is literally the first best of list I've read this year where I thought, yeah, some of that stuff is pretty good. 
• Fluke really is awesome and it will also be on April 19th at the 40 Watt next year. 
• I hope someone is keeping score.  I'm starting to lose track. 
• I'm hopeful that all of Pussy Riot will be freed and will be able to live normal quality lives. But the only way I'll watch the Olympics is if Pussy Riot plays the opening ceremonies.  (After which, I will immediately stop watching the Olympics.)
• And finally..."ones for guns, I know at one, and the other's for whenever you're shootin' off your guns you can say whatever you want". 

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.

Other Comics News Parade-O-Links 08262013

(Atari Force issue 2 from 1984.  Cover art by Jose Luis Garcia Lopez.  Image stolen from Comics Bronze Age.)

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 08262013:

"Despite this irrefutable evidence of longevity, I tend to think of DC as a young company.  The New DC is more than a slogan.  It describes a radical change in our company's operating philosophies and in the nature of our publishing ventures.  It started just two short years ago when DC Comics made a commitment to the creative community and the public that henceforth DC Comics wanted to publish comics that would make the creators proud and appeal to the readers."  Dick Giordano from his Meanwhile column in DC comic books showing a cover date of June '84.
   

• I guess it's been a few years since I've done one of these.  Where should I start...
• Let's star with me.  I've been having an original art sale. You are welcome to get on board with that.  The prices are super great and as of this moment I am still doing free shipping.  For pals that have already made purchases.  I hope to wrap up all of the commissioned/requested/bonus art this weekend and ship early next week.  Sorry it took so long.  I love you like cancer loves a prostate gland. 
• I went to RobCon.  That was cool.  I bought some Atari Force comics.  All that matters to me now is Atari Force. 
• Atari Force update:  I'm only about one issue short of the complete run.  Follow me on twitter for instant updates on my Atari Force collection.
• Batfleck happened. When I first heard the Batfleck news I wondered why Ben Affleck would wish all that fanboy hater bullshiz on himself.  And then I remembered that when someone asks you if you want to play Batman in a movie you say yes.  It's really the only option.  Buy sure, the "fans" freak out.  I'm a Star Wars nerd so it reminds me of the early days of teh intronets when "fans" lost their damned minds at the thought that Leonardo DiCaprio might play Anakin Skywalker.  Oh the horror of the thought that a talented actor that is the exact right height, build and look as the character be cast in the role.  DiCaprio turned out to be one of the most successful and praised actors of his generation.  I'm not saying Affleck is his generation's greatest actor or anything but I'm pretty sure a two time Oscar winner that is the exact right height, build and look as Bruce Wayne can put on a rubber suit and punch out another guy in a rubber suit.  It's gonna be okay. The "fans" have successfully cast about zero movies ever.  Leave this stuff to the professionals. 
• I'd like to take a moment to speak specifically to the youngs.  Pay attention to this Affleck thing because this is how it is going to be.  For the rest of your life, there is nothing my generation is not going to ruin for you.  Every single thing that means anything to you, we are going to destroy.  One day, you will thank us for it.
• Speaking of Batman, because that's all thousands of years of western civilization had prepared us to do;  I don't want to sound like some fuddy-duddy Silver Age apologist but I've noticed recently that a of people saying Batman should kill the Joker and that Superman should kill.  I hear people justify this by saying that it should be realistic and that they should have to make those tough moral decisions.  Now, maybe fictional guys in rubber suits should kill the bad guys but please don't call it realism.  I don't know about you, but the last moral decision I made didn't have anything to do with killing people. And I don't think many of us ever have to make the decision whether or not to kill. In fact, the more you think about it, unless you're in doing it in self defense or in the line of duty in you job in the police or military, killing is always illegal and immoral. Why would we want our superheroes to do that?  You want realism in your comics and entertainment?  Realism sucks.  Realism is a life where the hardest moral decision you make each day is what to have for lunch. 

(Brad McGinty drawn Regular Show page stolen from Comics Alliance.)

• Comics Alliance has a preview of the next issue of Regular Show.  I mention this for a couple of reasons.  For one, I really like Regular Show and the first two comics were good.  But mostly I mention this because my pal Brad McGinty has a story in issue 3 and it looks amazing.  Brad McGinty is one of the best drawers of comics that there is but holy snot y'all just look at those colors.  I truly believe that Brad McGinty is the future of comics.  In that future, the main thing I hope people start stealing from Brad is his coloring style.  It is the correct way to color comics.  Now, you may have thought that there are all kinds of different ways to color comics.  Nope, you are wrong.  Just one.  When you color comics, it is supposed to look like this. 
• Also on Comics Alliance, Chris Sims talked to some of the creators behind the greatest TV show that has ever been made. 
• Lucy Knisley posted this nice comic.  She's a bit to McCloudy for my tastes but the sentiment is lovely. 
• Chris Schweizer explained how to make minicomics and it was rad. 
• Secret Acres explains Autoptic to the youngs.
• Ya know, I hate the youngs.  Seriously. F all you guys.  Listing things is the worst.  This blog you are reading now with everything in a list and bullet points.  It is the worst.  We used to have these things called paragraphs and they were great.  It's all your fault the youngs.  I hate you.  Come at me.  Seriously, I will fight you all at once and kill you all.  What you don't know about my generation, "Gen X", is that every one of us, every single ehFing one of us, got together at a cough syrup fueled rave orgy during the 90s and every damned one of us are totally riddled with a disease that we are all immune to but will kill you dead just by being on the internet at the same time as us.  Seriously.  We will kill all of you.
• Soon.
• Get well, be well and stay well Mike Grell. 
• Have you been sitting around thinking, oh man, oh man, if only, if only there was one more place I could post my drawings and art?  Boom hears you.  Boom loves you.  Boom wants you. 
• "He had this idea that the world would be better if men would just submit to women's complete instruction. But he took it all the way – not just submit to instruction but get collars on, and get down on all fours, and just admit that's where you belong, guys." 
• Tom Scioli writes about Silver Surfer and I wish that everyone that writes about comics would read the piece so that they would experience the exact way that Shannon Smith prefers people write about comics. 
• It's also okay for you to write about comics the way Joe McCulloch writes about them here in this piece about Jae Lee. 
• Jeff Trexler works through the larger legal ramifications that could be at stake in Kirby vs. Marvel.
• There should be a Kirby vs. Marvel comic book.  K vs M!   Hundreds of pages of Jack Kirby punching out Marvel executives and lackeys  working his way through all the appeals court judges and eventually slapping the entire Supreme Court in the face with the constitution.  
• Speaking of the King, this Jack Kirby birthday celebration comic looks like it's gonna be really nice. 
• Have I told you about Patrick Dean's comic The Grizzly that you can go read over on Study Group?  Damn, I probably should have told you about Patrick Dean's comic The Grizzly that you can go read over on Study Group. 
• Some cartoonists make dick and fart jokes.  Others go to Gitmo. 
• Do you like comics?  Do you like small things that fit in your shirt pocket?  Here ya go. 
• Let's all go over to Frank Santoro's house and read his minicomics. 
• If someone wants to buy all these Steve Lafler comics and mail them to me free of charge that would be super okay with me.
• If you kids don't stop being bullies I'm going to punch your faces in.  Now get back in the trashcan!
• But hey look, we've got a new Doctor Who coming that I think all the fans will agree on and be totally happy with.
• A magazine that existed just because Mark Millar wanted to make people think they were seeing the word "cunt" on a magazine cover failed to find an audience.  What a surprise. 
• Tom Spurgeon had some thoughts on Before Watchmen.  My local comic book shop video game store that sells comics has multiple copies of what I believe is the complete run of those Before Watchmen monthlies mixed in with boxes of comics they sell at 75% off.  A few feet away they have all those new hardcover collection things selling for, what, twenty or thirty dollars each.  I don't know what that means.  Here is what I think Before Watchmen means; DC won, we all lost.  As always, DC gives the customer want they want the customer to have, not what the customer wants and for some reason the customer keeps buying it. 
• Marvel on the other hand, gives you what you want over and over and over and over until you never want it again.  (But the customer still buys it.)
• But that's okay as long as what they give us is Howard the Duck in a video game. 
• Howard also got his name dropped in that Disney/Marvel crossover cartoon thing. 
• I've looked at the map and, even though I live in the south, I'm pretty sure I can live the rest of my life without ever stepping foot in or driving through South Carolina again.  
• And finally...  Francis has had enough of your superhero movie bullshit. 

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.

Other Comics News Parade-O-Links 04222013

(Superman #423 cover by Curt Swan stolen from wikipedia.)

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 0422013:

"One of the interesting things about the development of the Internet as a tool to have conversations is that the possibility of something taking place is often seen as the same thing as something that actually takes place. It's mistaking the abstraction of an argument as a direct correlative event to something in the real world. If we can argue something is possible, that's all we need to do: a potential bias = a bias, a potential construction by which something might happen = it could have happened and might as well have. It's very multiverse friendly. We should probably stop."  -Tom Spurgeon.

• Hello brothers and sisters.  Welcome to another late special weekday edition of the Parade-O-Links.  I sort of talked around this last week but I'm still trying to find the best way to do this thing.  Ideally, a new installment would be up every Sunday morning but my weekends have been booked solid lately.  I'm still not sold on the idea of this being a weekday thing but maybe it will have to be.  Look, there is almost no stability in my life right now so I'd better not make any promises.  Things will happen when they happen.  Hang in there. 
• Last week, April 18th to be exact, marked the 75th anniversary of the debut of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster's Superman and Lois Lane characters and arguably the birth of the comics industry in the USA, one of the main brands upon which the company currently called Time Warner Inc. would be built and decades of profits in toys, clothes, cartoons, theme park rides, TV shows and movies.  In light of all that success I was curious to see how the owner of Superman would acknowledge this historic day.  They didn't.  DC Comics, DC Entertainment and Time Warner Inc. made absolutely no mention of the event.  At least not on any of their websites.  And, curiously, it was one of the few weeks of the year where there was not any new Superman comics.  You could say that what Time Warner did to Superman last week was the opposite of celebrating his creation.   I was disappointed.  Superman is kind of a big deal and you only get one 75th anniversary.  Actually, most things never get a 75th anniversary.  Just think of the magnitude of the idea of Superman.  How many ideas do you have in your life?  How many good ideas?  How many of those ideas to you act on?  How many of them actually happen?  How many of them succeed?  How many of them are remembered or make any impact at all?  Just in entertainment alone think of all the ideas that have come and gone in the last 75 years.  All the comic books, comic strips, radio shows, TV shows, movies, toys, games, electronics, appliances, automobiles, fashion trends, food brands, retail chains, governments, countries... everything.  Just think of everything that has come and gone.  And there is still Superman.  One of the most successful ideas of all time.  And how did we treat the guys that gave birth to it?
• Superman's "birthday" was celebrated though.  At least in Cleveland.  And here is an older article about the house where it all happened.  Comics Alliance posted some nice Superman art.  
• Mark Waid and other folks talked on twitter about favorite Superman moments.
• Kurt Busiek says that Superman should be in the public domain.  I agree.
• Steve Bissette gives and example of how trying to do the right thing is actually a thing that is possible and has been done in the past and surprisingly did not bring DC or Marvel to their knees.
• Whenever people that actually make money in comics talk about money it is either super encouraging or absolutely soul crushing.  Never in between. 
• The creepy adventures of creepy DragonCon founder creepy Ed Kramer continue to be creepy. 
• Amazon is making it easier for the indie creator to get her/his work on the Kindle. 
• Here is a look at some of Carmine Infantino's early Timely work. 
• I'm excited about this news of new Alternative Comics works by some of my favorite creators. 
• Here is a look at the cover from Patrick Dean's next comic.  Dean all but has this season's Minicomic MVP wrapped up.  Let's hope he stays injury free through the playoffs. 
• Adam Casey exhibited some music themed art. 
• You can't tie down a banjo man. 
• "i wrote ithat movie a while back. hard to remember what its about."
• Haters just be jealous of Santoro's hair. 
• It's always a good time to check in on what Eleanor Davis has been drawing. 
• Ben Towle's Oyster War at io9.
• Jim Starlin interviewed at CBR. 
• The 30th episode of Robert Newsome's talking and music thing. 
• And finally... contrary to belief, Colt Cobana didn't create Five Dollar Wrestling.  I know you all think because he has a "podcast" coming from "live from the studio"... apartment!

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

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.