Ending and Beginning
Strangers in Paradise to end with issue #90 in May of next year. Brett Warnock, of Top Shelf Productions, launches a blog.
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Category: Comic News
Speakeasy Blog Shut Down?
While taking cheap shots at Speakeasy in my previews writeup (coming soon), I tried to visit Jonathan Martin’s Speakeasy update blog only to discover that it no longer existed. Wikipedia reports Jonathan Martin’s “Speakeasy Comics Archive” (a blog dedicated to Speakeasy-related news) was shut down, presumably under “trademark infringement” litigation. Does anyone know anything more about this? Jonathan, are you out there to comment? If it’s true that Speakeasy legally pressured someone who was exercising free speech in commenting on […]
Read moreSexual Harassment Reactions
Laura Gjovaag has a powerful emotional response to recent stories of sexual harassment. She comes to the conclusion that Superheroes are constrained by their own success. And it’s a dubious success at that. As long as superheroes dominate the market, the stories will continue to pander to the fanboys… the lowest common denominator of the fanboys. They will continue to be the kind of stories that embarrass the casual reader and drive people away. And they will continue to be […]
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How to Deflect Criticism
In a Howling Curmudgeons post that tries to understand outrage over Frank Miller’s butt shot (as drawn by Jim Lee, it’s beginning to look like the shot heard round the blogosphere) by pretending that such things are common in fine art, Marc Singer posts a hilarious checklist that made me laugh out loud. Checklist for deflecting criticism of a comic: – Claim it’s actually a parody. – Claim that it’s all a big joke on the mundanes/fanboys/idiots who don’t get […]
Read moreSexual Harassment in Comics
I’ve only been dancing around the fringes of Ronée Garcia Bourgeois’ columns on sexual harassment in the comics industry. Her latest (link no longer available), though, puts it all on the table, as Colleen Doran and Lea Hernandez go on the record with some of the outrageous and atrocious sexism they’ve faced. These two women are incredibly talented, so no one can scream “sour grapes”. They’ve established long careers on their own terms, so no one can say “they’re just […]
Read moreLander Quits
Goodbye, Randy. You’ll be missed. Randy was one of the few old-timers left from when we were both writing on Usenet ten years ago. I can sympathize with his feelings, especially when it comes to being motivated by guilt and writing for the right reasons: Truthfully, I’ve considered quitting before, and one of the factors that always kept me in was a sense of duty to the folks who sent me comp copies for review. I figured that I should […]
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Speakeasy Cancels Titles
From the Riot blog, posted by a retailer (link no longer available): every single Speakeasy title that I ordered over the past two months has been cancelled…. it’s obvious to me that the publisher is going the way of Dreamwave, CrossGen, and all the other “hey, let’s try something NEW and DIFFERENT” dodo publishers. Speakeasy tried to do too much too soon. Instead of building an audience for four or five titles over the course of a year and then […]
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Retail Strip Debuts
The New York Times reports that the new comic strip Retail will launch tomorrow. His aim for the comic strip … is to do for the mall what Dilbert did for the office, revealing the dysfunctional world of bickering employees, spineless managers, and cruel shoppers that lurks behind the cheery sales slogans. It’s a good topic, with lots of possibilities, and one most people can relate to. Everyone’s been shopping, even if they haven’t had the life-changing opportunity of working […]
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