The week in links, April 2-6

Damn, you get sick and a week is gone and you have a whole week’s worth of cool stuff you meant to share a long time ago. We’re not even going to try to organize this.

§ First off, 2012’s zeitgeist was nailed to the wall with the Sunday Times Arts section which featured Nicki Minaj and Daniel Clowes. That’s the world we live in and we couldn’t be happier than a truffle-hunting pig!

§ Speaking of that Clowes profile:

Judging from his work one might expect Mr. Clowes to be a dyspeptic misfit himself, hunched over a drawing table in some squalid cartoonist’s lair. Instead he lives in a spacious California Craftsman house with Erika, his wife of nearly 17 years, their adorable 7-year-old son, Charlie, and an equally winning beagle, Ella. And though his studio is crammed with vintage comic books, pulp magazines, comics encyclopedias and Mad magazine memorabilia, everything is neatly organized and artfully decorated with Arts and Crafts furniture.

§ Have we linked to the cool Where They Draw blog yet? So many joyfully cluttered artist’s spaces.

§ Kevin Czap went to the Chicago Zine Fest 2012 and found it good:

Unlike other comics shows I’ve been to, the Zine Fest was split in such a way that the majority of the programming was held on Friday and we exhibited on Saturday only. This had the obvious benefit of not forcing the zinesters to choose between manning their table to make a buck or have their minds blown by the stellar readings and other events. Seriously, from noon til midnight, I was in DIY heaven. Most of the day was devoted to readings (including a Youth Reading featuring a bunch of teens and preteens too precious for words), great for the audience but also a great tactic for exhibitors because afterwards my list of tables to check out had grown several times longer.

§ Domino Books has some cool new arrivals such as Weird Magazine edited by Noel Freibert.

§ Comics College reaches Scott McCloud, and no, you do now have to read THE NEW ADVENTURES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

§ Kevin Eastman tried to auction off a copy of TMNT #1, First Printing, 1984 signed by Kevin Eastman and the IDW original cover art, but the reserve was not met.

§ Art Spiegelman recalls the Garbage Pail Kids:

I recall sitting in a meeting one day with Len Brown, Topps’ creative director, and Stan Hart, who worked in new product development. We were trying to figure out whether it was worth pursuing a Cabbage Patch Kids license, when Stan said, “Well, let’s just do a parody.” I’m sure Len and I looked at each other, our lives flashing before our eyes, and one of us asked, “But how do you do more than one sticker?” “I don’t know,” Stan said, “but we’ll figure it out.” And by “we” he meant me and Len.

§ A nice profile of Carol Thompsonwho went from CCS to working at BOOM!

After SPX I made my way across the country by myself, stopping in and visiting CCS friends along the way. I made extra time to get some reference for my comic while in Reno and Vegas and eventually made my way up to Seattle for a month. I went to Puget Sound University for undergrad so I have a lot of friends in the area and was hoping to find work. I ended up applying for a job down in LA and asked Adam for job reference who instead asked if I was available to do intern work. December 5th, my birthday of all days, I started interning at Boom! and because one of their designers was leaving by the end of the year I was hired at the end of my first week there. To say it’s been a whirlwind of change since graduation is putting it mildly. Considering during this time I’ve been on the road, trying to manage an online comic, getting caught up in projects that have started and stopped, there’s been no time to rest.

BOOM! editor Adam Staffaroni is also a CCS alum, and it’s nice to see them infiltrating mainstream companies!

§ Speaking of CCS, the worst thing about being sick was having to miss my scheduled trip to White River Junction for Industry Day. It really bothers me to let people down, although I know they were able to get the even more qualified Chris Duffy to cover for me. I’ve never had to miss an engagement because of illness before but…you know, I just don’t bounce back like I used to. Sad but true.

§ Gabby Schulz went to Europe and wrote a fabulous blog post about it. Including the great, sequential inspired municipal instructions of Belgium.

§ Ng Suat Tong looks at the state of comics criticism:

What is missing however is any concentration of this talent to rival a single website like TCJ.com. Without this, and despite the efforts of a dedicated pool of link bloggers, many of these articles will remain unread and unloved. More significantly, it suggests a level of homogeneity seldom seen in other artforms (at least at this end of the spectrum). That no other site or community of critics has come close to challenging TCJ.com in attracting writers of note is a testament to the lack of depth (in numbers and intellectual concerns), diversity, and vision of purveyors of criticism; a problem exacerbated by a shrinking or stagnant comics readership.

§ Chip Kidd did a TED talk about book design and such.

§ All you need is cats.

§ Graeme McMillan on The 10 Most Glaring EISNER Nomination Omissions Nine of them should be “The Love Bunglers.”

§ Every one else has already linked to this story by Stephen Totilo about how he’s switching to digital and won’t be going to the comics shop any more, but he misses the ones he went to.

I’ve told myself that I’ll keep going to Midtown Comics to buy graphic novels and to buy collections of comics that I’ve read digitally and loved enough to want to be able to own in print. In other words, I’ll use my iPad to buy comic book issues. I’ll use Midtown for my purchases of thicker and better work. I’ll go to Midtown to shop only for excellence and, awkwardly, for the catalog to the next month’s comics, since no one has yet made a good online catalog that covers what every big and small, mainstream and artsy, publisher is publishing. Midtown Comics, I’m pretty sure, will be my last regular comics shop.

Maybe I am speaking as a woman here—statistically women LOVE to shop—but I will never find fiddling on my iPad a COMPLETE replacement for going into a store and touching and feeling things.

§ Stumptown’s party scene this year will apparently be enlivened by increased sponsorship, which we’re hoping is a euphemism for “more drinks.”

SPECIAL EMERALD CITY LINK SECTION

Man, oh man, oh man, this year’s Emerald City con sounds like the hippest, youngest funnest place to be of the year. Molly McIsaac has a photo set full of half-naked people but they all seem to blend right in.

Rachel Edidin has more on that panel that I misquoted:

Here’s what I recall** being said about superheroes: Bill insisted at some length that the superhero genre was dead because none of them stand for anything anymore; it’s worth noting, I think, that this is a drum he’s been beating enthusiastically for several years. (He’s wrong, but that’s a whole other, mostly irrelevant, conversation.) Other panelists, Matt in particular, talked about feeling initially like they had to work within the superhero genre—and, accordingly, outfitting their early works of mythic fiction in superhero drag—and agreed that publishers and the market at large had since grown more receptive to mythic fiction and other non-superhero genres. Someone (Bill again, I think, but might have been Matt) brought up that most myth is tied directly to the era and place of its creation, and that to remain relevant with the passage of time requires continual revision; and that this is a place where superhero comics have often foundered. I think Chris mentioned no longer working on big-two superhero books but don’t recall whether he gave context for that, or, if so, what; nor whether he was describing the current state of things for him or a long-term decision.

Robin McConnell has what sounds like the best con EVER. sojealous

And finally, David Brothers also had a great con after experiencing the healing power of the comic community, which pound for pound is still the nicest and most creative bunch of folks I’ve ever been around.