BOOKSLUT weighs in with a bunch of comic-themed content;
A review of Tom DeHaven’s novel It’s Superman!:

Serving as a corollary to the Man of Steel’s popular iconography, It’s Superman by Tom De Haven could just as well be subtitled The Lost Years. Detailing the life of a young Clark Kent just after high school graduation in Smallville and just after his arrival in the Big City, (i.e., Metropolis), where his real superhero adventures begin, this is a true bildungsroman.

Able to instill in his version of Clark the inner doubts and angst one not only expects from any main character, De Haven literally has an out-of-this-world character that’s brimming with Sturm und Drang. Awkward and shy, he’s the adopted child of an elderly couple, Jonathan and Martha Kent; he knows he’s different somehow from boys his age because he’s “giftedâ€? with unexplainable powers. Just after his adopted mother’s death, his adopted father tells him the remarkable tale of how one day he was found among the debris of a rocket ship. Not long after, having never felt at home in Smallville, he takes to the road with a newfound friend who has his own worries.


Then, Today’s Marjane Satrapi interview:

Then in Chicken with Plums I made these [four-column] pages, which you never do in this format. I wanted the book to look like eight days of life, which is extremely short. But it’s extremely dense at the same time. I could have made much bigger pictures and a much bigger book, but this is not the purpose. I want my book to look like what I’m talking about. You have the images that are there, but then you have the whole layout, the whole way of constructing a book. In Persepolis I couldn’t make a complex construction because that was not the purpose, It was too educational for that, and in Embroideries I wanted something light. But here I had the opportunity of doing it, and to tell you the truth, I spoke with a friend of mine about the scenario of Chicken with Plums, and he told me, “But this is a script for a movie. It is impossible to make it as a comic.” And that is where I said, “I am going to make it as a comic,” because that was where the intellectual challenge was for me.


AND, a review of BEST AMERICAN COMICS that segues into an interview with RABITHEAD’s Rebecca Dart:

To what extent did you intend RabbitHead to be horrific as opposed to darkly humorous? What has reader response been like? I try to do cute, happy things, I really do, [but] everything just ends up being dark and horrific. It’s as if my brightness knob is turned down. However, I think it’s always important to have a comedy with a little bit of drama or a drama with a little bit of comedy. It helps prevent stories from taking themselves too seriously. Reader response to RabbitHead has been very positive, which is great and makes me feel good. One of the great things about doing comics is the one-on-one relationship you have with the reader, compared to animation, which is collaborative. Which is rewarding in its own way, but they are two very different beasts.


In non-BOOKSLUT related links, Variety notes that the “Death Note 2” movie is slaying at the Japanese box office:

[It] scored Â¥1.2 billion ($10.2 million) in its first three days in release through Sunday. This boffo B.O. puts the pic on track to surpass the $24.1 million gross for the first “Death Note” and opens the possibility that the two pics together might hit the Â¥10 billion ($84.7 million) mark. Opening was the best of the year for a local pic after “Umizaru 2 — Test of Trust.”


AND Brian Cronin reports on a panel on comics adaptations at MOCCA:

Saylor asked engaging questions of each panelist, and the audience participation yielded some interesting thoughts on the idea of adapting other works into comic books. It was especially interesting to hear about the unique perspective each individual panelist brought to the idea of adaptations.

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