Crime may or may not pay: Steve Duin of The Oregonian has read the first two Vertigo Crime books, and he despised Brian Azzarello and Victor Santos’ Filthy Rich, while having some kinder words for Ian Rankin and Werther Dell’Edera’s Dark Entries (which deals with a reality show? In 2009? Gah). Meanwhile, Sarah Weinman talks crime comics in general on her way to discussing Hannah Berry’s Britten and Brülightly in her Dark Passages blog for the Los Angeles Times.
Liberal media can’t stop talking about comics: NPR’s Glen Weldon reacts to Marvel.com’s streaming of the 1967 Spider-Man cartoons in this blog entry, and how he learned the word “origin” from it, while a Morning Edition story about diet books includes some quotes from cartoonist Carol Lay (An excerpt of Lay’s graphic novel The Big Skinny gets posted on NPR’s site to accompany the story).
Comic book readership and illiteracy are rising…coincidence?!: Oh no, Bomb Queen and Danger Girl are replacing Silas Marner in public schools’ curriculums! At least, this dude seems kinda worried about that for some reason. (Link stolen from Dirk Deppey, who advises “Relax, dude. Children haven’t read superhero comics for years.”)
Woo woo!: Noah Berlatsky has been blogging the hell out of Wonder Woman history lately, and now he’s decided to start blogging the original comics, issue by issue. He gave the first issue a kind of cursory going over, having covered it in his Only One Can Wear The Venus Girdle series, but here’s a nice long look at Wonder Woman #2. With all due respect to George Perez and Phil Jiminez and the many great writers and artists to tackle the character over the decades, these are by far the very best Wonder Woman comics, and I’m glad to see someone paying so much attention to them. (Confidential to DC: Hey guys, you should really do a Wonder Woman Chronicles reprint project like the one you’ve been doing for Batman and Superman. Archives are expensive).
“Think The Vagina Monologues, only with Lassos of Truth, mutant cat powers and galaxy-devouring side gigs”: Enjoy this article about The Superheroine Monologues, a co-production between a couple of Boston theater groups, complete with a trailer. If you’re in the Boston area (and/or are just curious) you can learn more about the show here.
Wow, I read that comic and I didn’t know he came up with the upside down kiss either: Here’s a nice little profile of the extremely gifted comics creator Kaare Andrews, focusing on his current work in film, by Province film critic Glen “The Reel Man” Schaefer. Apparently the very famous kiss between Kirsten Dunst’s Mary Jane and Tobey Maguire’s upside-down Spidey in the first movie was from a cover Andrews drew.
