Comics Media

So Darwyn Cooke got caught on video saying that superhero comics should "...stop catering to the perverted needs of forty-five-year-old men." He called out rape, children being forced to eat rats, explicit sex, foul language, and a lack of new characters. And now some people are getting upset. Oh come on, like you've never thought any of that. Unfortunately the whole thing got derailed by his swipe at turning Batwoman into a lesbian, which came off as rather homophobic to some. Personally, I have to admit, I read it more as the character continuity issue of a man who likes his Bronze and Silver Age comics, which is somewhat humorous, given that he's complaining about comics being ruled by the whims of forty-somethings, but he is large, he contains multitudes. (To which I say, Darwyn, it wasn't "overnight". She may have been around since 1956, but she hadn't made any significant appearances since Crisis on Infinite Earths which basically changed everything. SEE? I can be as big of a geek as you are.) So let's break this down from the point of view of someone who is not forty five or male -- me.

Daniel Raeburn has made the entire four-issue run of his 1997-2002 fanzine The Imp available for PDF download. Single topic issues on Dan Clowes, Jack Chick, Chris Ware and Mexican historietas generally defined the direction of all future scholarship on such topics and this is one of the finest and most influential bits of comics scholarship/criticism of the last 20 years. So go download for your iPad or whatever.

TRIPWIRE Magazine, the excellent comics magazine edited by Joel Meadows, will have a new issue out in time for you-know-what. PR Below. TRIPWIRE is back with another info-packed issue! The Eagle-nominated British-American magazine about comics...

News of two new comics-related web-sites, one featuring two veteran bloggers; the other a weekly newsmagazine.

Hey kids: If you're going to be at C2E2 tomorrow night, make sure you come to the obligatory comics blogging panel: Comics Media As the internet, mobile devices, and social networking continue to change how we...

Over at the Jewish Review of Books, Harvey Pekar teams with artist Tara Seibel to review Crumb's GENESIS in comics form. Seibel previously illustrated a conversation between Crumb and Pekar for The Pekar Project.

You may recall that a few days ago we cataloged a litany of multi-platform complaints about the new TCJ.com in terms of its editorial guidance and web design. Now, normally these days when the...

After a grace period of a few months, internet pundits are targeting the hapless TCJ.com for an old school internet beatdown. TCJ.com thought it knew its way around the 'net, but wandered up the...

It's been a great 3 1/2 (!) year run here at Publishers Weekly, but all good things must end, and in the very near future, The Beat will be moving to its own website:...

The proliferation of nerd-centric blogs on the internet continues. GeekWeek launched not ago, a sort of Huffington Post for topics ranging from nerd news to music to sports. It's spearheaded by Jeff Katz of...

A new place on the web to look at things! Namely Comic Twart a group art blog featuring Dan McDaid, Declan Shalvey, Tom Fowler, Andy Kuhn, Nathan Fairbairn, Evan "Doc" Shaner, Urban Barbarian, Ramón...

Critic Ng Suat Tong has assembled a steely-eyed line-up of critics—himself, Noah Berlatsky, Frank Santoro, Tucker Stone, and Matthias Wivel -- to assemble a list of the best online comics criticism of the year...