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§ Matt Madden reports on the eerie fate of Sof’ Boy!!

§ Len Wein reacts to his nomination for the Eisner Awards Hall of Fame:

What fascinates (and, I must admit, terrifies) me most about my nomination is that I’m nominated for the Hall of Fame, which either means that I’m being recognized for my considerable body of work over the years, or my career is officially over. I’m frankly not sure which.

By what may or may not be an odd coincidence, my 40th anniversary as a professional writer is this Friday, March 28th. Four decades ago on that date, I sold my first story to DC‘s House of Mystery title, a still-(thankfully)-unpublished little opus called “The Final Day of Nicholas Toombs.”

§ Chris Butcher looks at Viz’s US edition of Umezu’s CAT-EYED BOY and interviews Viz VP of Publishing, Alvin Lu:

Looking at it from a North American publisher’s perspective, there are some problems. Having a naked little boy on a book cover doesn’t fly in North America, for the most part (even if he’s got creepy claw feet). The book also looks a little young… Though its original audience is likely that same “Shonen Sunday” crowd as Drifting Classroom, in North America these are quite clearly going to be intended for an adult audience that is equally as likely to appreciate these works as viscerally enjoy them. (Though I feel it’s important to note that these re-releases were probably intended for an adult audience in Japan, likely the same adults who bought the stories as children originally). I’d love to own these two book covers, and chances are I’ll just pick them up next time I’m in Japan, either that or a nice Umezu art book maybe? But on North American shelves, they’d be pretty unlikely at best.

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§ Over on the Hero Initiative blog, Jim McLauchlin posts some of the logos for FOOG, TOO, a benefit for the ailing writer planned before Steve Gerber’s death.

§ Over-enthusiastic cineaste imagines how applying Frank MIller-esque 300-treatment would liven up other movie genres.

§ You don’t say dept via NPR: Three Writers Feel the Lure of Comics. You don’t say!

§ Peter Sanderson has been writing about KIRBY: KING OF COMICS since December. He took a break, but he’s at it again. We may kid Peter from time to time, but no one goes in-depth on a subject like he does, as in this passage which not analyses the Kirby book, but Glen David Gold’s REVIEW of the Kirby book:

In his review Gold refers to David Michaelis’s recent biography Schulz and Peanuts that portrayed cartoonist Charles M. Schulz as a deeply troubled man (see “Comics in Context” #204: “Was It a Dark and Stormy Life?”). “Evanier, in contrast, presents Kirby as a decent and generous soul with some understandable fits of frustration. . . .but a reader”–by which Gold really means a specific reader, himself–”hungers for something deeper to explain his violent and angry imagery.”



§ The New Yorker reports on the Friars Club party for Drew Friedman’s More Old Jewish Comedians, book.

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2 COMMENTS

  1. I’m not impressed that neither NPR’s John Ridley nor Jodi Picoult know the difference between medium and genre.

    Jodi Picoult:
    “‘In all the years that I’ve been writing – 15 years now – there’s only one genre that’s really debuted in the ‘New York Times Book Review,’ and that’s the graphic novel.'”

    John Ridley:
    “‘Whedon says Dark Horse allowed him to “plumb the depths” of the Buffy story in a new genre, and also introduced him to what he calls “a different kind of fandom.'”

    Jodi Picoult’s been off Wonder Woman for how long? Writing comics just fell into the lap of a successful TV writer?

    My favorite stunning (by which I mean TIRED) revelation is that prose writers find out that their thinking, “Comics? How hard could they be?” is an invitation for a hubris ass-whippin’.

  2. My mantra when I present workshops and speak at library conferences is “It’s a FORMAT not a GENRE!” and make everyone repeat after me a few times. Yeah. I posted a comment about it at Ridley’s blog.

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