§ If you’re looking for a Beat April Fool’s Post…honestly I couldn’t think of anything that would strain incredulity that wasn’t just mean. I’ll work on one for next year.
§ Eric Orchard update: while no details have emerged regarding his injury on Monday, he is now safe and his family has asked for privacy. We wish him all the best and hope he continues to make a lot of awesome artwork. And he has a Patreon!
§ Several comics companies —DC and Dynamite — carry a certification from the Sustainable Forestry Initiative. Reed Beebe investigates this certification. It’s kind of technical, but it would be nice to know that the paper out comics are printed on come from swell managed forests.
§ I don’t agree with all of these 8 Reasons Why 2015 Is Already A Better Year for Comics Than 2014 but they aren’t bad.
§ International Women’s month is over so but the CBLDF has an archived page of their Women who changed free expression and it’s a gret list from the well known—Bechdel and Barry— to lesser known but notabe figures such as Caol Swain and Dori Seda. Check it out!
§ Paste Magazine also wraps up the month with 12 Women Who Have Helped Transform the Comic Book Industry and it’s a pretty good list. No spoilers!
§ CBR also wrapped up its Top 25 Women Writers and Artists lists, as chosen by readers. You can argue—no Posey Simmonds or Elaine Lee!—but both lists go way beyond The Usual Suspects.
§ The Supreme Court has turned down the latest Zombie Stan Lee Media appeal
The U.S. Supreme Court today declined to hear Stan Lee Media’s case against Stan Lee and POW! Entertainment, bringing to a definitive end at least one part of a legal battle that’s been waged for the better part of a decade. The action lets stand the 2012 dismissal of a lawsuit seeking million in profits and ownership of the Marvel characters co-created by Lee, co-founder of the failed dot-com. Stan Lee Media had argued in its petition to the justices that the Ninth Circuit erred in October when it upheld the lower court’s decision.
Zombie Stan Lee Media has never won a suit.
§ The NY Times profiles the French Robert Moses graphic novel by Pierre Christin and Olivier Balaz.
Wandering the city, “I discovered the world done by Moses,” Mr. Christin said. “And I thought, ‘It is so visual, I will treat it like a graphic novel, not an article, because there are so many places I can show.’ ” The book, illustrated by a French artist who lives in Chile, Olivier Balez, tells Moses’s story in lushly nostalgic sepia-toned colors: the bridges and beaches and pools and parkways, the clubby back rooms where deals were done, the Batman-worthy lair on Randalls Island where he plotted his campaigns. Mr. Christin originally wrote it in French and it was translated for the Nobrow edition by Leopold O’Shea.
A confession time: I saw this book at the Glenat stand at Angouleme last year and thought “I want to read this book! And Nobrow should publish it!” I laid it on thick with Nobrow’s publisher and voila! It came to pass.
§ I love George Miller. He’s a wackadoo visionary.
