I just call them “Wednesdays”: Kevin Huizenga proposes a new holiday, “Read Comics All Day…Day.”
It’s not like there aren’t ten million Tezuka pages available: Comics adapting movies (or cartoons) that are themselves adaptations of comics are usually kinda hinky, but when the original source material is the work of one of the greatest cartoonists of all time, well, it just seems weird. It’s definitely cool for IDW and the creators involved that USA Today is promoting their adaptation of the Astro Boy movie, but it sort of bums me out a little that an Astro Boy comic by someone other than Tezuka is getting pushed by USA Today.
Two super-film notes from New York Magazine‘s Vulture blog: There’s some news of a casting change in the animated Ooberman, the plot of which makes me want to reread Mark Waid and Barry Kitson’s Empire, as the synopsis sounds kind of familiar (although I suppose it’s always the details and the execution that makes or breaks a riff on a familiar idea), and word on Spider-Man 5 and Spider-Man 6. Man, if they don’t put the Sinister Six in Spider-Man 6….
“Strapless and In Spandex, Models Strut Their Superhero-Inspired Looks at the Rivoli”: Only one of outfits in this blog post about a fashion show struck me as particularly superhero-esque, and the mask (kind of a sexy Grifter look) was probably meant to be more evocative of a criminal than a hero (the title of the show was “Bandits in Bows”), but using the word “superhero” in the headline did successfully get me to take a look and link to it.
“Actually, it is such a faceless profession that unless a creator has an obviously ethnic last name, a reader has no idea what nationality the writer or artist is”: I don’t really see the appeal of Marvel’s newer Noir books, which seem to focus not on straight-up superhero characters like Spider-Man and the X-people so much as characters who already have one foot or more in the world of regular old crime fiction (Daredevil, Wolverine, Luke Cage). One good thing about the Cage series though? It lead to a nice feature article and interview with Shawn Martinborough here. The quote above is in answer to a question regarding whether he’s frustrated by there being too few African American illustrators in comics. He’s certainly right about the facelessness of the profession, where in all readers really know about the creators is their byline and their work. (I remember, when I first started reading comics, for example, being surprised to learn than Kelley Jones and Cam Kennedy were men). Come to think of it, a creators byline and their work is probably all you need to know about a creator, isn’t it?
August 19th, 2009 at 10:21 am
I’ve found the facelessness a problem when looking for artists or writers at conventions. Unless I’ve met someone before, or seen photos, or seen him/her on a panel, I generally have *no idea* what they look like, so I’ll wander up and down Artist’s Alley looking for signs with names on them. And then I’ll try to discreetly look at people’s badges because I don’t know if the person sitting there is actually the artist I’m looking for or their friend/assistant/etc. and I feel like it’s kind of rude of me to say, “Are you so-and-so?” Though I probably should just ask and get it over with.
I got really confused once when an artist had a badge with his name on it, and someone else at his table had a badge with…the artist’s name on it. Once one of them started sketching for someone else I figured it out.