What kind of a week has it been? In terms of quotes, a writer who is known for his ear for dialogue found himself explaining that what he had written on his own message board had to be taken within the context of smiley faces. Are you still a serious writer if your major line of defense is a smiley face? [note MY smiley face, please]

Oh Lord, will the future generations have to minor in emoticons, rather than semiotics, to be literary scholars? In all seriousness, kudos to Bendis for ultimately posting an apology and doing his best to move on in the most constructive manner. Is the whole dust-up worthy of quoting here? No. But many people were quoting the discussion this week, even after the initial message board thread was deleted. So this week’s collection of quotes may be stuff you missed while noticing the presence or lack thereof of smiley faces…

“A superhero costume is a concept, not a piece of clothing. As soon as you try to translate it into actual garments, no matter how well you do, it’s still a failure because there was nothing there, in a sense, to reproduce.”
- Michael Chabon, clearly thinking far more about superhero costumes than your average fellow, in an audio supplement to his original Secret Skin: An Essay in Unitard Theory essay for the March 8, 2008, issue of the New Yorker. Also worth a listen for Chabon’s admission that he consulted his five- and 10-year-old sons to confirm the Beast is a barefoot character.

“What I had to tell this poor guy – whose only dream was to work in comics – was that his portfolio was not good enough to get work in comics (or at least at DC) and that I suspected that it would probably never be good enough. I asked him how long he had tried to break in, and the answer was ’9 or 10 years.’”
- KC Carlson, imparting the quintessential dos and don’ts for folks looking to get an industry toehold.

“at the time I was kind of nerdy”
- Mike Benson, a witness for the prosecution (under cross-examination) in the trial of murder defendant/comic book store owner Michael George, clarifying how or why he was so cognizant of the store’s comic book inventory.

“I never read Batman, never read Superman, never read Flash. I didn’t read comic books. There was one time my mother was going to have to be gone, so she made me heat up a Swanson’s fried chicken TV dinner. I wanted to read something while I was eating, it was some cartoon, I can’t even tell you what the comic book was.”
- Rush Limbaugh, apologizing indirectly for a caller’s inappropriate characterization left unchallenged by Limbaugh because he had no idea who Curious George was (follow the link for full context). That fact and the above quote give a glimpse into part of little Rushie Limbaugh’s childhood. (Thanks to Chris Mautner for this link)

“The market is … well … I guess it’s the same as it’s always been. It’s up and it’s down. I just got my numbers on the first RASL and they’re like 20,000. … Honestly I cannot tell you if that’s good or bad or normal or anything. That’s one of the reasons why I am just saying what the numbers are, because … I don’t see the point in being secretive about all this stuff. I figure if I just start telling these numbers maybe somebody else will start talking about them, too, and we can kind of figure out together as a community what the hell’s going on. But I imagine 20 [thousand] is decent for a self-published book in this market.”
- Jeff Smith, aiming to foster some discussion with a refreshing level of candor, in an interview on Comixology’s It Came Out on Wednesday

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