Rustle the Leaf is a cute environmentally themed strip about a talking leaf and his friends the acorn and the raindrop. I know, it sounds drippy, but the presentation is well-done and I appreciate its sense of humor. I like the way the characters are drawn floating fairy-like through the settings even as they take slaps at stupid human behavior. It has the potential to please both the already self-satisfied environmentally aware and the iconoclast who takes pride in not […]

I’m not familiar with the work of Jonathan Baylis, a new comic creator, but he’s sent along the following announcement, which sounds pretty cool: I’m happy to announce that my 3rd comix story, “So… Only Nixon Could’ve Gone to China“, has been published in the literary anthology The Florida Review. It’s the first comix story they’ve published in their 30-year history. It’s probably a rare thing to find in a magazine shop, unless you really scour the specialty magazine stores. […]

Publishers Weekly has posted their list of the Best Comics of 2005 (link no longer available). Overall, it’s a pretty accurate portrait of the year’s trends and what was talked about. Here’s my groupings of the items on their list (and I apologize for overusing the word “good”): Read It, Loved It Scott Pilgrim vs. The World by Bryan Lee O’Malley (Oni Press) — Took me a while to get it, then I was smitten. Gemma Bovery by Posey Simmonds […]

Fantagraphics has sent out this update: Diamond Comics goofed big time. They dropped the solicitation for The Comics Journal #273 from the January-shipping Previews [JDC: that’s the November catalog]. Why or how this happened, they could not explain (mmm-hmmm). They’ve tried to make up for it by soliciting issue #273 and #274 together in the February Previews [JDC: that’s the one out now] — but a lot of good that’ll do. We’re still printing and shipping it on time in […]

Mark Andrew at Comics Should Be Good complains about the lack of news on Beanworld. I appreciate his reminder. Beanworld is very hard to explain but wonderful to experience. It is very much like a fable, simple on the surface but with more depth the more you think about it. It’s disheartening to think that we may never see more of this charming story. I’m sure Larry Marder meant his statements about always working on Beanworld at the time, but […]