Comics Media

As announced on Twitter and expanded on via Tumblr Andy Khouri is stepping down as editor in chief at Comics Alliance, and the dynamic duo of Andrew Wheeler and Janelle Asselin-Moore will shares duties.

We're looking for a few writers around here and near here.

§ Jason Enright is moving on from the Marvel monthly sales charts due to some exciting but unannounced news. I know a bunch of you apply for this every time, but please reapply -- previous experience with databases and a glee for number crunching required. Jason is graciously doing this month's chart but after that, we are on our own. Email me at comicsbeat at gmail.com if interested. This is a volunteer position.

Bookmark! Bookmark! Bookmark! Darling Sleeper is a new comics magazine hosted on medium.com. It's run by cartoonist Jesse Lucas, who has put out books including Colloquial and works at Forest Giant when he isn't cartooning. The site is billed as "a publication focusing on comics, art and other independent thought" and has already featured interviews with Box Brown, Aisha Taylor and Sam Alden, a comics excerpt from Whitney Taylor, new comics from J. Jonny and Keiler Roberts and Lucas's own Guide to Self Publishing.

If Marvel was hoping Agent Carter would improve on its ratings from last week’s 2-episode season premiere, they must be somewhat disappointed this morning. While Agent Carter still snagged second place behind NBC’s Parks and Recreation, it’s ratings are still down 21 percent from last week. Marvel should be interested in more than just ratings, as the show has received considerable critical acclaim.

The other day, Tom Spurgeon linked to a Facebook post by cartoonist T Edward Bak in which he frets about the "money vs art vs oh god what the hell am I doing" feeling that many in the indie world are having, and which we've written about many times. In response I was about to go link to a fantastic FB post by Derf Backderf in which he talks about being a cancer survivor and what he's done since—delivered the great book My Friend Dahmer, continued to cartoon, enjoyed life with his family, travelled the world. It was a wonderful life affirming post that puts a lot of things into perspective. But....it was gone.

Former retailer and current CBLDF director Alex Cox pens a piece called How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Ignore the Internet with a quick look back at the last ten years of online...

Did I get tricked into running this somewhat non-slick infographic because The Beat is ranked #8 in a list of the top 100 comics blogs? You bet. But I did like that The Nib is #1. I think the chart went by Alexa rankings and it includes webcomics among the blogs, which doesn't really make any sense. But anyway, talking points.

On Friday, the long running—22 years!—Brian Bendis message board shut down with the above message, and al of its archives went with it. The Bendis Board was especially busy in the golden age of the...

We here at The Beat have long been a fan of Tim Beyer's analysis of comics and comics-based entertainment trends at The Motley Fool and he's just launched his own site to expand on that called The Full Bleed:

Via many media yesterday came news of USA Today laying off a bunch of folks, including Pop Candy's Whitney Matheson, following a 15 year run. A few may remember in the VERY VERY early days of this site, Whitney was a blogging nemesis, bearing in mind that when we both started there were only four blogs. The pretend "feud" lasted about five minutes, and ended as soon as I met Whit and found out what an awesomely kind, smart and talented person she was. Seriously there is not a person on earth who is nicer than Whitney.

Here's a good idea: Small Press Previews, a new site that I was informed of by Jared Smith. They have 46 publishers signed up to create a single spot to see previews of small press comics coming out each month. For instance I didn't know there was a new Derf coming from Alternative Press!

Is the Beat obsessed with The View liking comics? Why, yes, because it represents the farthest encroachment of comics culture into the fortress of coffee klatch culture. Of course with Whoopi Goldberg on board,...