ITEM! Kingdom Come: Superman supplants Jesus as icon for rappers returning from retirement wilderness, or in Jay-Z’s case, retirement wonderland.
ITEM! Colleen Doran plans to turn long out of print GN into webcomic:
A Distant Soil: Seasons of Spring has been out of print for some 15 years and I am going to be running the pages right here. I considered going straight to trade with it, but I decided to see how running it here might go over first. I have a yearâs worth of one-page-a-week inventory, most of it reprints. However, considering the fact that no one has seen much of it, it will be new to many who come here.
ITEM! The Beat salutes Peter Sanderson and his column at Quick Stop Entertainment. It has been nearly two months since San Diego and Peter is still writing about it and only up to Saturday. Honest to god, how much can anyone take? Peter’s second by second account of lines, crowd control issues, panel discussions and convention doings is the closest thing to being there without being there. Bonus: The Beat makes a guest apperance in Epidose IX.
SATURDAY 10:00 AM
On Saturday I was to appear on a Comic Arts conference panel and do two book signings, so I wanted to look good. I felt I had put together an outfit that struck the right balance between professionalism and casualness. Having disembarked from my morning water taxi ride across the bay, I was heading towards the Convention Center when a female fan, whom I had never seen before, asked, âWhy are you wearing a jacket on such a hot day?â?So maybe this is why Paul Levitz wisely dresses casually for Comic-Con: so he wonât get his fashion choices criticized to his face by strangers on the street.
When I went to my first event in Hall H on Friday, there was only a short line, and it moved quickly. This morning, there was not only no line for Hall H, but I was able to sit further down front than I ever had before. So why does Hall H have such a reputation for being hard to get into? Little did I then know.
ITEM! End times division: the august Wall Street Journal looks at…FAN FIC:
One sign of the growing influence of these authors and stories is that media companies, usually quick to go after people who use their copyrighted material, are increasingly leaving fan fiction writers alone. Mindful of the large, loyal audience the writers represent, many companies are adopting an attitude one media professor describes as “benign neglect.” While most professional writers say their lawyers advise them not to read fan fiction to protect themselves against charges of plagiarism, some say they check the numbers of fan fiction stories posted about their work regularly as a measure of their success.
[snip]”Shippers” (the term is believed to be derived from “relationship”) are writers that explore — and often invent — relationships between characters. A subgenre of this is “slash,” which creates gay relationships between characters such as Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock from “Star Trek.” Slash fiction is often sexually graphic, and fan fiction’s association with slash has made some mainstream authors and TV networks wary of it.
Increasingly, however, media companies, undeterred by the stigma of slash, are looking for ways to capitalize on fan fiction and its large audience. A company called FanLib is working with networks and publishers to create fan-fiction promotions and contests for books and TV shows.
