Author: Andrew Wheeler

(See the continuation for an explanation of our "Bob & Godzilla" photo today.)

Comics Links

Publishers Weekly Comics Week talks to Matt Fraction, writer of Casanova.

Steven Grant, at Comic Book Resources, thinks about Jack Kirby and the art of comic book covers, then and now.

Brian Michael Bendis was interviewed by CBR about the various flavors of Avengers currently available in the marketplace.

CBR also interviews Ryan Dunlavey, artist of Action Philosophers!

The Beat casts its beady eye on Platinum Studios’ plans to go public.

The Baltimore City Paper (motto: “Eh, who needs a fancy name. It’s only Baltimore.”) visits Steve Geppi’s museum.

The Edmonton Journal interviews Peter Kuper, author of Keep Forgetting to Remember.

The New York Daily News profiles Meredith Gran, creator of the webcomic Octopus Pie.

Washington Post Express interviews the creators of Black Metal.

Comics Reviews

Publishers Weekly reviews Robert C. Harvey’s biography of Milton Caniff.

Warren Peace Sings the Blues reviews the October issue of Shojo Beat, and finds an unexpected obsession with breasts.

Brian Cronin of Comics Should Be Good looks at this week’s Thor and realizes that editors should say no to J. Michael Straczynski more often.

All of Comics Should Be Good gang-review the first issue of Potter’s Field.

From The Savage Critics:

• Douglas Wolk reads Potter’s Field #1
• Graeme McMillan reviews a Countdown tie-in with a title so long it can be seen from space
• and Abhay starts a review of Runoff, and interviews its creator, Tom Manning.

Ain’t It Cool News reviews a pile of comics.

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Comics Links

The Washington Post Express interviews Percy Carey, who recently told his life story in the graphic novel Sentences. Carey, best known as an underground rapper, also appeared on Sesame Street as a seven-year-old.

Comic Book Resources interrogates Jonathan Hickman, writer/colorist of the upcoming A Red Mass for Mars.

Tom Spurgeon of Comics Reporter defends the humble comics shop.

Sequential Tart interviews Jesse Hamm, artist of Good As Lily.

Turning to the subjeect of For Better or For Worse: Lynn Johnston opens up a new front in her propaganda war to prove that Liz and Anthony are destined to be together. In other news, we have always been at war with Eastasia.

The Baltimore Sun visited the Baltimore Comic-Con.

Artist Jesse Hamm tells Comics Should Be Good about eight things he wants to see more of in comics.

Comics Reviews

Richard of Forbidden Planet International reviews The Plain Janes by Cecil Castelucci and Jim Rugg.

Dana of Comics Fodder reviews this week’s Marvels.

Warren Peace Sings the Blues reviews the first issue of Andi Watson’s new comic, Glister.

Occasional Superheroine is puzzled by the new Infinity, Inc. series.

The LA Times reviews Osamu Tezuka’s Apollo’s Song (and a Robert Silverberg short story collection from Subterranean – ha ha, SF readers! You can’t just skip over the comics links blithely, can you? It’s all good stuff, so sit back and check it all out.)

Living Between Wednesdays gets to last week’s comics just ahead of this week’s comics.

From The Savage Critics:

• Jeff Lester reviews a whole bunch of things
• Jog is surprised at Wolverine #57 and others
• and Brian Hibbs looks at a couple of Brian K. Vaughan comics.

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Comics Links

They’re sold out now, but for a brief, shining moment, the world had a chance to buy knitted Hellboy dolls. (Figures? Plushes? What do you call these things?) [via Newsarama]

This weekend, The New York Times dug through Stan Lee’s boxes of old photos for an article about the places he’s lived.

Comic Book Resources interviews Kent Williams.

The Friends of Lulu are looking for new board members, sayeth The Beat.

The Beat lists Diamond graphic novel sales charts from 2006 and 2007 (to date).

The Harlan Ellison/Fantagraphics legal matter just will not die…even after the supposedly final settlement, Ellison has now balked at posting the required-by-the-agreement 500-word rebuttal by Fantagraphics’s Gary Groth to three specific claims Ellison made about Groth. The unposted statement, and Ellison’s lawyer’s “not gonna do it” letter, are in the middle of this long post at The Beat.

Comics Reporter interviews Warren Craghead. (No, I didn’t know who he was, either. But CR likes him…)

The ComicBloc interviews Sean McKeever.

Some guy named Dan Stafford:

1)    wrote polite letters to various comics folks, like R. Crumb, Joe Matt, and James Kochalka, asking some questions.

2)    got letters back from same, with answers to those questions.

3)    Posted the results here.

The Bookseller (the UK’s magazine of bookselling) recently reported that UK manga publishers have had to beg the big chains over there to expand the space devoted to manga. Either the UK market is vastly different from the US, or Waterstone’s just isn’t that interested in making great piles of money…

Comics Reviews

The Joplin Independent reviews the Marvel comics adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book.

The Globe and Mail reviews a bunch of graphic novels and comics, starting with Sara Varon’s Robot Dreams.

Hannibal Tabu of Comic Book Resources lists his “buy pile” for this week.

Brian Cronin of Comics Should Be Good reviews Nick Abadzis’s Laika.

Greg Burgas of Comics Should Be Good reviews this week’s comics, starting with Action Philosophers! #9.

Greg Hatcher of CSBG reviews a pile of stuff he got for free.

From The Savage Critics:

• Graeme McMillan reviews Black Canary Wedding Planner
• McMillan also reviews Amazing Spider-Man #544
• Diana Kingston-Gabai reviews Captain America: The Chosen #1
• Jeff Lester reviews Rutu Modan’s graphic novel Exit Wounds
• McMillan is back with a look at Iron Man: Enter the Mandarin #1
• Jog looks back at an old miniseries, Batman: The Cult
• and McMillan comes back again for a review of Captain America: The Chosen #1. of his own.

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Comics Links

Comic Book Resources talks to producer Tony Panaccio about the recent Heroes Initiative DVD, featuring a conversation among Stan Lee, Joe Quesada, and Kevin Smith.

CBR’s Mayo Report crunches the numbers on comics and trade paperback sales in July. Bottom line? Marvel is selling a hell of a lot of TPs collecting series that barely ended.

The Wall Street Journal thinks that women might buy more comics if given more of the stuff they’d like.

The Bookseller – the magazine of bookselling in the UK – points out that manga is huge over there, too.

Comics Reviews

Bookgasm reviews DC Comics Covergirls.

Forbidden Planet International reviews Marvel’s Secret War.

PLAYBACK:stl reviews Immortal Iron Fist #1.

Seibertron reviews two upcoming Transformers comics: Devastation #1 and Beast Wars Ascending #1.

Comics Reporter reviews The Mice Templar #1.

Blogcritics reviews Graphic Classics: Bram Stoker.

Comics Worth Reading looks at the Carey/Liew/Hempel Minx original graphic novel Re-Gifters.

Panels and Pixels investigates Fletcher Hanks’s I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets.

Chris’s Invincible Super-Blog reviews this week’s comics, starting with The All-New Atom #15.

Brian Cronin of Comics Should Be Good reviews She-Hulk #21, writer Dan Slott’s last issue.

Cronin also reviews the first part of the latest everything-will-change-forever storyline, “One More Day,” in Amazing Spider-Man #544. (And does anyone else start singing Les Miserables songs every time he hears that title?)

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Comics Links

Wired has a long article about the creators of Penny Arcade, Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik.

Rick Geary presents: The Comic Con Murder Case, a short online comic.

Comics Reporter interviews Nick Abadzis, cartoonist of Laika.

Greg Hatcher of Comics Should Be Good thinks about history and comics and ends up daring DC Comics to just reboot their entire line already.

Comics Reviews

The Toronto Star reviews Scott Chantler’s The Annotated Northwest Passage.

The LA Times reviews Adrian Tomine’s upcoming graphic novel Shortcomings.

Brad Curran of Comics Should Be Good reviews Countdown to Adventure #1.

From The Savage Critics:

• Graeme McMillan on Local #10
• McMillan on The Last Fantastic Four Story
• Diana Kingston-Gabai on World War Hulk: X-Men #3
• and Jog on Batman Annual #26

Cory Doctorow of Boing Boing reviews DMZ: Public Works.

Edward Champion reviews Warren Ellis’s novel Crooked Little Vein in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

SF/Fantasy Links

The 2009 World Science Fiction Convention will be held in Montreal, Canada. Neil Gaiman will be the author Guest of Honor.

SF Site has indexed the contents of the first twenty-four annual volumes of Gardner Dozois’s annual Year’s Best Science Fiction anthology, by author, title and volume.

Reports from Worldcon:

• Alma Alexander: Friday/Saturday, Sunday
• K.J. Bishop (note: contains no reference to the Worldcon or SF, but she is in Japan, which would be a huge coincidence)
• Jay Lake

And reports from Dragon*Con:

• Peter David
• Justine Larbalestier

Neil Gaiman visits the Great Wall of China and learns that giraffes are forbidden to drive cars there.

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