Bart Beaty’s Twelve-Cent Archie resembles a grab bag of blog posts put under book covers. There are 100 capsule pieces, in no immediately obvious order, each lasting 2-4 pages and covering some aspect of Archie comics cover-dated from December 1961 through July 1969, when Archie publications sold for 12 cents. He’s read all the works the company put out in that time period, 17 different titles. In particular, he’s focusing on the work of artists Harry Lucey (Archie), Dan DeCarlo […]

I really like the guys behind TwoMorrows. They made a go of publishing historical magazines and books about comics at a time when few others were. However, their publications are aimed at a core, comic shop-based, male audience that is so clearly irrelevant to what I enjoy about the medium. Take, for instance, this latest volume, the 29th. (It’s labeled 30 because number 23 never came out.) As the series has progressed, the subjects have gone from well-known, acclaimed creators […]

Out next month is a fascinating novel by Martine Leavitt. Calvin is the story of a 17-year-old, born on the last day of the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip and coincidentally named to match, who’s convinced Bill Watterson can fix his life. Calvin has just been diagnosed with schizophrenia, and hearing the voice of an imaginary tiger is one of his symptoms. After his hospitalization, he finds a mission. “I just need Bill Watterson to make one more comic strip […]

Marvel seems to finally be realizing that there is an audience for works about their superhero women. There’s still no word on a much-desired Black Widow movie, even though she’s, due to her being part of The Avengers, their best known female character. Instead, she gets a book, one written by best-selling YA author Margaret Stohl. I didn’t think, going in, that I wanted to know more about the super-spy. I’m ok with her being a kind of female Wolverine […]

These days, a comic guidebook doesn’t get published without including business advice. That’s a good thing — artists should learn more than they were traditionally taught about how to make a living (just as businesspeople should learn more about valuing creativity, but that’s a different post) — but with so many different formats and industry paths available to people these days, a lot of books aren’t clear enough about their target audience. (See, for example, Brian Michael Bendis’ Words for […]

At the beginning of the year, I wrote about the planned launch of ACE magazine, a new publication from the editor of Comic Book Artist, Jon B. Cooke, and publisher/retailer Robert Yeremian. “ACE” stands for “All Comics Evaluated”, and the magazine promised both interviews and reviews of current material as well as a price guide. It debuted in March, and it was monthly after that — until May, when issue #3 was published. No issues have followed, although issue #4 […]

Mark Crilley has posted the below YouTube video announcing that Mastering Manga 3, a followup to Mastering Manga With Mark Crilley and Mastering Manga 2: Level Up With Mark Crilley, will be published next year (2016). He says in the video that he has plans for what he wants to cover, but he also wants to know what suggestions readers would like to see. He asks for ideas for what he hasn’t covered or what people think he didn’t cover […]

I finally got a chance to sample Batman: Murder at Wayne Manor, one of Quirk Books’ interactive mysteries that feature replica artifacts. It’s written by Duane Swierczynski, as was The Crimes of Dr. Watson, but as suits the main character, there are also comic-style illustrations by David Lapham. The plot here seems the best integrated with the licensed property of the three books in the series. (Along with the Holmes one, there’s also Dracula’s Heir, by another author.) Bruce Wayne […]