Comics Still Wonderful In Spite Of It All

Is there a comics canon? Do we want a comics canon? Do we need a comics canon?

My mother used to roll her eyes every time I started talking about comics. My intricate and inane knowledge of the history and process of this strange thing (that seemed almost to come from another world compared to anything she could comprehend) was a constant mystery to her as I grew up. I was a precocious child. I couldn't just read a book that I liked. I would have to read everything by that author, books on that author's process, and books by that author's favourite author. I would completely immerse myself in anything I loved.

You have to breathe out before you can breathe in.

Cleveland is getting a park dedicated to its comics laureate, Harvey Pekar, whose long running American Splendor comic captured the quotidian lives of Clevelanders. The celebration will run all afternoon with music and a...

Reflecting on The Beat's comics journalism ethics panel tonight at San Diego Comic-Con, my thoughts keep going back to the comics community - who we are, where we're going, and what can keep us...

Everyone remembers their first.  Comic.  Whether it was a Peanuts strip, an X-Men floppy, or the collected run of Watchmen, we were all introduced to the wonderful world of sequential art in one way or another. We...

Ellie Evangelista is a four-year-old Spider-Man fan. She wears the pajamas. She plays with the toys. She watches the cartoons with her mother. She wants to be Spider-Man. But that changed when the boys at...

Jim Zub kicked it off. And then the hashtag spread like wildfire. What four comics would you pick as the ones that influenced you? While I'm often preoccupied with the business machinations of the industry it is, in the end, something we read that moves us, entertains us. Or sometimes we simply to sit back and enjoy the beauty. The hashtag didn't really spread to the indie cartoonists I follow, so while there's a lot of Love & Rockets, there's also a lot of Swamp Thing, a lot of Frank Miller, a lot of X-Men and Spidey, and a lot of Love & Rockets, but in the end, all that really matters is that comics are so cool. That's why I'm here and you're here. A selection:

Brought to you by Publishers Weekly, it's More To Come, the weekly podcast of comics news, interviews and discussion with Calvin Reid, Kate Fitzsimons and The Beat’s own Heidi MacDonald! In this week's podcast...

You can read my official SPC report at PW, with news and notes, but I'm guessing that everyone who was at SPX is probably, like me, realizing that the magic is over and we have a whole year to go, or maybe a few weeks if you count APE, but in the meantime, I can keep the magic going a few moments more by rounding up some of the magical, mystical memories of SPX. I said there were a few people who didn't have a good time, and you can find one of two on Tumblr who sat outside hotel rooms sadly waiting for the person with the key to come back. But if you could open your heart, SPX would make you love it. As the above picture shows, SPX is the only con where you can find Julia Wertz and Renee French just sitting and smiling with each other. It's also the only place where someone would leave their computer just sitting out on a table (as one prominent comics personage di don Friday)and feel pretty secure that it would be just fine. There is a reason why people puts up so many pics and blog so much about this show—it's a full on love affair.

http://youtu.be/oIRUJ6-Frpg At SPX, following the Ignatz awards, a very special wedding took place, as cartoonist Simon Hanselmann, author of Megahex, wed comics in a ceremony presided over by SPX Executive Director Michael Thomas. Michel DeForge,...

Okay this isn't "The Comics Diversity Times" but, issues of diversity and identity seem to be the most pressing ones these days. And so to cleanse the palette, here's a transcript of Gene Luen Yang’s speech at the 2014 National Book Festival this weekend. With American Born Chinese, Boxers & Saints and now The Shadow Hero, Yang has become one of the best selling and most important graphic novelists and he's also one of those heroes I was alluding to earlier, standing up for people who don't have as big a voice.