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§ Warren Ellis is running one of his periodic Three-Panel features in which artists—such as Fabio Moon, above—submit a three-panel story.

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§ Julia Wertz is running a good-sized preview of her next book on her website.

§ The very quotable world of Howard Chaykin, here gabbing with our very own Marc-Oliver Frisch.

For example, when I did Power & Glory, I had the President of the United States tell an incredibly offensive joke, which I had heard from a friend of mine, and I was excoriated for this. And the fact is, the function of the telling of the joke was to confirm and convey the character of the president. And I was trying to use the joke to explain the fact that the character is a shitbird. And I find it astonishing that the… I do find occasionally the tenderness, sensitivity and pussiness of many comic-book readers has scared me. It’s like, you know, be a man. Except, I mean, it took me a while. I mean, I was a prudish kind of guy as a younger man, but I gave up my prudishness, you know.


§ ICv2 gabbed with DC’s Bob Wayne and John Cunningham on the significance of July’s sales numbers, which saw DC eke out a win over Marvel. Overall, the DC duo are bullish on comics right now, as is most everyone else. In News, more books post “Zero month” will be returnable:

Wayne:  I think that in our case it was one of the ways we used to incentivize people to try the “New 52” titles, and take a deeper position on them for retail.  So we didn’t really have a lot of variants a year ago because we hadn’t started the “New 52” rollout yet.  But this is a tool that I think kind of runs in cycles, so we are currently figuring out what we are going to have for variants over the next couple of months.  We just got through deciding in the last day or so that we are going to add four variants for September.  We are going to have them for Phantom Stranger, Sword and Sorcery, Talon, and Team 7, the books that are debuting as “Zero” issues, and we are going to add returnability for retailers on that as well. Instead of doing the variants and returnability with issue #1, we are going to begin with the “Zero issues” to encourage more people to stock up on those books.  We will be announcing that later today or on Monday.


§ Long read: a history of Sailor Moon and the feminist theories it offers.

The manga is the original, created by Naoko Takeuchi. The strengths of the manga are best illustrated by the words of Takeuchi herself, it is by a woman, for girls and about girls. The plot of the manga is very tight and generally provides more backstory and thematic focus than the anime. The main character herself develops very quickly and consistently, growing as an independent, capable and confident young woman, and is treated as such. Her boyfriend and the character Chibiusa are also given a lot of consistent development, and her boyfriend unflinchingly acts as her support, making his respect for her clear in all of his actions. Usagi’s friends get less story focus compared to other continuities, but more backstory and some clear and positive character development. The bond between the girls is strong. However, the villains are a lot less developed than other continuities, sometimes not lasting more than a single page.

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§ Nice art: Paolo Rivera’s study for a Hulk painting, part of a longer process post about painting Hulk: Mythos in guache greyscale and coloring it in Photoshop.