The comic blogosphere seems to grow larger every day and just like comics, sometimes it’s pretty easy to get a little lost. “Meanwhile …” will act as your map, pointing out what interesting discussions are happening out there while you’re reading Blog@Newsarama.

Now on with the links.

Meanwhile Part 2 of 2

Part 1

Days of the week…

There are still days left in the week. Tuesday, Wednesday, and Saturday seem to be open.

Dr.Doom’s Monday Affirmation

Thursday Night Thinking

Friday Night Fights. (Related blogs: Fist-A-Cuffs, “Where drawings are voted to the death and the streets run black with ink.” and Secret Wars on Infinite Earths.

Sunday Soliloquy

Four Years in the Biz

Matt Fraction looks back at his work over the last four years.

Four years ago today, I was in San Francisco with Kieron Dwyer for the release party of my first graphic novel, LAST OF THE INDEPENDENTS and, really, the launch party for what has become my career. Here, at the end of my first term as the President of Comics, I thought it a fine time to look back into the angry abyss to find that it gazes for thee, oh yes, it gazes for thee.

Xoetry

Jim Roeg discusses X-men: Endangered Species and The Poetry of Death and Difference.

This is pop profundity, to be sure—but it’s no less true nor is it any less affecting for that. It’s also a welcome qualification of the “endangered species” theme, which could very easily be played as a race war in which the theme of mutant “survival” becomes the excuse for reveling in a quasi-racialist discourse of “species survival” for its own sake. There’s a fine line between the metaphor of genetically different mutants as cool but embattled minorities (the reason many of us fell in love with the X-Men in the first place) and uncritical celebrations of group identity. In these paranoid times, I’d prefer my X-Men to be embattled but still alert to what might without too much embarrassment still be called “the universal.”

Last Time On…

Graphicontent discusses the usefullness of recap pages.

Recap pages should not merely give information, they should make the reader want to see what happens in this issue based on the description. A new reader should read the recap page and say “I must know what happens next!” the way a reader of the previous issues (supposedly) does.

Continuity Porn

The Legion Abstract discusses continuity it’s lack of resolution in the recent JSA/JLA/Legion crossover.

(Although I do want to say one thing. DC might not show us the solution to the two-Legions problem for quite a while yet. Know why? Because we may or may not keep buying comics to find out how the good guys beat the bad guys… but we’ll probably keep buying them to find out just how continuity is arranged these days. It is in DC’s financial interest to hold continuity resolutions over our heads. We won’t always pay for action, for fun, for good writing, for good art, for good characterization… but we’re suckers for continuity mechanics.)

Shadow of the Bat

My friends Anthony Tollin and Will Murray recently made an amazing and important discovery about a piece of comic book history. As we all know, Batman debuted in Detective Comics #27, in a story entitled “The Case of the Chemical Syndicate.” It was signed by Bob Kane and much of it may even have been drawn by him. It was written, sans credit, by Bill Finger, who later acknowledged a lot of inspiration from the pulp magazine character, The Shadow. As it turns out, “inspiration” was putting it mildly.

Mark Evanier digs up the dirt on Batman’s first appearance.

The Stanhattan Project

Power Word wonders whatever happen to the outreach project titled The Stanhattan Project which produced writers like Brian K. Vaughan.

Vaughn was a sophmore at NYU studying dramatic writing when he came across the Stanhattan Project. Basically, at the time, Marvel was introspective enough to realize that there was an unhealthy amount of overlap between the writing staff and editorial staff. And like all incestuous relationships, the product was suffering. So, from what I’ve gathered from a few lazy google searches, they assigned two Marvel editors to NYU, with the express goal of finding new young talent, trained in diverse areas. Vaughn was a direct outcome of this program (where they would initially just script already paneled and inked pages). And I’d say he’s one heck of a find.

Deep Thoughts by Calvin Pitt

I love when people like Calvin Pitt disect comic book panels to find deeper meanings.

In Amazing Spider-Man #541, page 17, the first panel shows Peter in regular clothes, swinging across the city on his way to confront the Kingpin. What caught my eye is that Garney only draws the outline of Peter, and then we a get a sort of psychedelic, watercolor looking thing within the outline. There are no other details within the outline, just colors: Reds and oranges near the feet, blues on the upper torso, getting lighter as you move towards the fingers and the head. It seems so odd, I figure it has to mean something. But what?

Quick Hits

A Public Service Announcement for internet users.

Tomer Hanuka’s cover to Un-Men #2

I haven’t heard any comment on Supergirl in this Zombie cover.

Sex in comics. Don’t worry it’s safe for work.

Sean Phillips on a new Vertigo project?

Bryan Lee O’malley makes some music.

Cool Frank Robbins Advertisements

Fred Sez needs permalinks.

More monster sketches.

Rate your blog. Near-Mint Heroes is PG-13. Your at an R rated blog now.

Geoff Klock’s issue by issue overview of Grant Morrison’s run on the X-men.

Golden Age Comic Book Stories

Lessons from the Golden Age

Golden Age ELEPHANT-MOUNTED MACHINE GUN!!!!!!!

38 Preview pages of Vasilis Lolos’ Last Call.

Enjoy! We’ll be back Tuesday!

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 28th, 2007 at 10:30 am and is filed under Meanwhile.... You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.