The News Blog of Comics Culture
In my last post, we looked at the attorney-client privilege question addressed by yesterday’s Ninth Circuit ruling in favor of DC. But does a clear victory for DC in a this rather technical legal issue signal a greater loss for the Siegel and Shuster heirs?
Hawkeye is an odd character, if you look at his publishing history. He’s been a staple of the Avengers since the title’s earliest days. In fact, you could probably argue that the core of the Avengers were the Vision and Hawkeye. Characters that you read in Avengers and not solo books.
When they wanted to spin-off West Coast Avengers, Hawkeye was the centerpiece of the spin-off. When they launched Solo Avengers, Hawkeye was the regular feature. You had Hawkeye mini-series in ’83, ’94 and ’03. More recently, you had Hawkeye & Mockingbird and Hawkeye: Blindspot. You even had an Ultimate Hawkeye mini-series.
Hawkeye is similar to Doctor Strange. Whereas Doctor Strange limped along in a lower selling cult title for several years, with occasional team book stops (usually variations on The Defenders, Hawkeye has been a staple of several popular team books (Avengers, West Coast Avengers, Secret Avengers… and an early stop over in The Defenders), but his solo efforts just haven’t gotten much traction.
The late Harvey Pekar left behind several projects in various stages of composition, but none was as close to him as CLEVELAND, a love letter and social history of the city that was his muse—an everyman town of ordinary people and the mundane swirl of life that is nonetheless extraordinary. For Cleveland, Pekar’s script found an artist among the greatest of his collaborators: Joseph Remnant, whose dense cross hatched naturalism recalls Crumb (who we meet in these pages) but finds its own voice with expansive staging and research.
DC Entertainment has confirmed that VP of Publicity David Hyde is leaving that job at the end of the week.
Syrian cartoonist Ali Ferzat has been picked by Time Magazine as one of the world’s 100 most influential people—along with folks like Lionel Messi, Rihanna and Pippa, but you get the picture. Ferzat made headlines when he was brutally beaten and his hands broken by the Bashar Assad regime he was criticizing—but he’s still drawing, as new Pulitzer winner Matt Wuerker writes in the tribute:
Mark Waid has posted the audio of his Thrillbent announcement panel from C2E2. He has more general comments here.
INK is a digital comics magazine put out by the kids at the School of Visual Arts—New York’s all-purpose art school that’s a hotbed of cartooning talent. We told you about the fall issue when it came out, and the new spring edition is now here, with comics and features. Although you can read the entire contents in PDF form, it’s been optimized for the new retina display iPad. It’s also a free download for all iOS devices.
Oh man! We thought the epic Con Wars of the Aughts were settled? But it seems Canada’s Hobby Star is not happy with how Wizard has used the phrase Toronto Comicon. Hobby Star throws the huge Fan Expo in Toronto every year, and, as CBR reports, had been engaged in a feud with the former Paradise Comic-Con…which was eventually acquired by Wizard and morphed into the Toronto Comicon…while things had been peaceful for many a moon, the fight is on again!
Pop culture writer John Tebbel passed away yesterday. An occasional contributor to ComicMix and frequent commenter here and at other comics sites, John was probably most familiar to the comics world as the husband of Martha Thomases, herself a comics writer and DC’s publicity manager for most of the ’90s. He was also an expert on animation and you can find some of his articles on the subject scattered about the internet. He and Martha also co-founded Comedy Magazine.
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