Awesome artist Simon Gane, drawing awesomely: Check out his Batman, Batgirl and, um, these other characters. (Ganked from Comics Reporter)
If First Class comes first, what comes second?: Johanna Draper Carlson raises an interesting dilemma regarding the latest based-on-a-Marvel-comic film, X-Men: First Class. If you want to read the comics it’s based on, um, what do you read? The heart of the movie is the Charles Xavier/Erik Lehnsherr relationionship, but where is that in the comics? I think spread out all over, along with Hellfire Club and Emma Frost stuff, none of which is all that much like it was the movie anyway. Everything branded “First Class” in the comics, the Jeff Parker-written stuff, is fantastic, but doesn’t have anything at all to do with the movie, beyond the fact that Beast is in both. I’d recommend Marvel’s X-Men: First Class comics, but only for people looking for fun, accessible X-Men comics, not people specifically looking for something like the movie. (Besides, none of the comic book versions of Magneto and Professor X were ever as dreamy as Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy).
DC’s direct market sales for April: Marc-Oliver Frisch’s analysis on DC’s sales from April at The Beat should be of special interest this time, given how radically DC is changing their publishing game in September. Frisch calls the planned 52 new launches “a workable enough load for the market,” given DC’s April output. I’m sure that’s reassuring to some who see the move as a potential direct market apocalypse, but I still have some doubts. (It’s workable, but only if enough individual readers want to try to read a ton of new books; it looks like a very tempting jumping-off point, and, if anyone was ever considering moving from signles to trades, DC created the ideal time to do so—take four to six months off, then start collecting trades in spring of 2012). Speaking of, DC’s latest announcement of new titles, it seems like each and every one of those books would have a much better chance of flourishing if released over the course of a season or year, instead of in a single month.
Drawn and Quarterly to have an awesome fall: Actually, perhaps it’s more accurate to say comics fans are going to have an awesome fall.
Does DC have an Alan Moore created/recreated character hit list?: Gavok examines the evidence.
Congressman Anthony Weiner gives political cartoonist license to make dick jokes: Michael Cavna rounds up some of the most eye-catching, and Daryl Cagle has a Weinergate gallery.
