§ Mark Evanier followed up on his post about why audience questions aren’t always that great:

One other thing I oughta mention: I’ve done a couple of public interviews where the interviewee stipulated certain topics that could not be discussed. That happens. Years ago at a comic convention, I did a one-on-one with Harvey Kurtzman, who among his other achievements was the founding editor of Mad. An unannounced condition of Harvey’s appearance was the agreement that he would not be asked on stage why he’d left Mad or about any of the business-type aspects of his relationship there.

§ There should be more Manga 101 things like this concise profile of Arina Tanemura .

Arina Tanemura is a shoujo manga superstar, with hit series such as Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne and Full Moon wo Sagashite under her belt. Her current ongoing series is Gentleman’s Alliance†, which is being released in English by VIZ.

Tanemura’s debut work was a 1997 series called I-O-N, about a girl named Ion Tsubaragi who develops psychic powers. After that she charged ahead with a collection of shorts called Firecracker is Melancholy, and dove into her first big hit: Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne, a magical girl series about a high school girl who transforms to fight demons. Jeanne was followed up by the shorter Time Stranger Kyoko, which is a slightly sci-fi magical girl series set in the 30th century.

§ It’s been a long time since we checked in on John K’s blog. Here he analyses the humor of Don Martin:

My pal Eddie has a term he uses when he likes something funny. He calls it “Ignorant Humor”. I think that’s a funny term too, but hope he never uses it in front of a layman or cartoon executive, because it might give the impression that cartoons are stupid and easy to do.

§ David Hajdu author of THE TEN CENT PLAGUE is interviewed at Vulture:

Speaking of pictures, our only beef with the book is that there are only four pages of them! Why
so few? That was my decision. My editor wanted more. To me, I didn’t want people to pick up the book and mistake it for a coffee-table-ish thing about fun comics of the fifties. I wanted the seriousness of the issues involved to come across. I wanted the book to look kind of text-y and grayish; for a long time I also wanted a somber black-and-white photograph on the cover. That one I lost! And I’m really glad I lost it because the Charles Burns cover is great.

§ Oni’s June solicits. Issue 2 of Tek Jansen! Did you think you would live to see it?

§Whitney Matheson teams with Tim Sale for mischief at the ‘Tope [Via Matt Maxwell]

§ Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaardhas no regrets

“I would do it the same way (again) because I think that this cartoon crisis in a way is a catalyst which is intensifying the adaptation of Islam,” he said in an interview on Wednesday, speaking in English.

“Without a cartoon that provoked the Muslims, it would have been something else; a novel a play, a movie, this situation would have occurred sooner or later anyway.”

§ Two early silent anime cartoons have been found in Japan. They are the work of artists including Junichi Kouchi and Seitaro Kitayama and date from 1917. No word on whether they contained the popular “bloomer shots” of the era.

§ When the hell did this happen?