§ Nice Art: New Yorker Cartoonist Edward Steed is mostly known for his utterly hilarious, whimsical cartoons, but this week he drew sumo wrestlers.
§ The outstanding artist John Martz has secured a fulltime job at PRH Canada.
Some personal news I can finally share: I'm kicking off 2018 with a new job. I'm very excited to be joining Penguin Random House Canada Young Readers and @TundraBooks as Art Director.
— John Martz (@johnmartz) January 2, 2018
§ Best ofs, awards, POTY etc:
• The Comics Journal has a very wide-ranging list of people give their The Best Comics of 2017, and I guarantee there is something you never heard of on here. Vast continents of comics to be discovered.
• Broken Frontier has concluded the Broken Frontier Awards 2017: with many deserving winners, and most deserving of all, publisher Annie Koyama was the first inductee to the Broken Frontier Hall of Fame. There is no one in comics more loved or awesome than Annie Koyama. Maybe someday she’ll be among the GIANTS OF THE NORTH.
• And Rob McMonigal listed their Favorite Indie Books of 2017
• Another (snort) website has selected a Comics Person of the Year 2017 and it’s the very deserving Jay Edidin. However, unlike the Beat’s LONG running Person of the Year, it is not selected by industry peers!
Jay is still awesome though, and ranked high in this year’s Beat voting. How high? Check back Friday to see if he did a two-fer!
§ Some groundbreaking news from Marvel on TWO fronts. Thanos’s turned out to have a birth name, and it’s Diane, which is weird.
OOPS I heard that wrong. It’s DIONE. Because…his mother liked those songs The Wanderer and Runaround Sue? I don’t get this at all, but writer Donny Cates had a field day on Twitter with the outrage.
§ ALSO at Marvel I guess Deadpool and Wolverine have been fused into some horrible BrundleSeth things called Poolverine. Declan Shalvey was to blame. I’m just juvenile enough to wish that on letter had been dropped from this name, however.
Marvel.com: How did ‘Poolverine come about?
Declan Shalvey: ‘Poolverine is a little nickname for Deadpool’s current state at the beginning of issue #4…if you’ve read issue #3, then you know that Deadpool has escaped from his cell in a very unconventional way.
§ Via PR, Super Underwear Man books top 2017 Kindle list!
Author C.J. Walworth is overjoyed this holiday season with the performance of his new Super Underwear Man novel and comic books. His books are trending into the rarified air of the Amazon Kindle with a sub-one-percent category, which separate the authors by sales counts – the top 1% demarking the point at which profits are achieved or at least dreamt about.
Not sure what that meant. The threat is very real.
§ The Gifted is a TV show about…the X-Men? But it’s Fox so they can’t call it X-Men. But anyway, producer Derek Hoffman tweeted a prop from the show and gave props to artists Jim Lee and Barry Windsor-Smith for the inspo.
Solo Hound. Great work by @TheGiftedonFOX prop team. @JimLee & Barry Windsor-Smith inspired #thegifted pic.twitter.com/sVXOWBMM0S
— Derek Hoffman (@brghtidea) January 2, 2018
Lee’s time on the X-Men is well known, but Windsor-Smith drew many Weapon X comics.
§ Dept. of Teh Cray: Atomic Junk Shop is a blog that spun out of the diaspora of Robot 6, I believe, and contributor Travis Pelkie has embarked on a 365 Days of Cerebus, campaign, vowing to reread and blog about Dave Sim’s controversial (but genius) 300 issue comic all year long. Assuming the world doesn’t blow up befote then, it’s still an outside shot he’ll make it.
