§ Ms Magazine marks its 40th anniversary with the return of its original cover girl: Wonder Woman as portrayed by Mike Allred. Over the past 40 years, Wonder Woman, Ms and feminism have had a lot of ups and downs, but clearly the symbolism is working again.
§ More Great Graphic Novels from Boing Boing Douglas Rushkoff on GODS’ MAN by Lynd Ward.
§ Cassandra Claire joins the graphic novel crowd with THE CITY OF BONES , a nine-issue adaptation of her trilogy The Mortal Instruments. Publisher Th3rd World Studios is releasing it digitally via comiXology. Mike Raicht does the adaptation while Nicole Virella, Jeremy Mohler and Steve Wands handle pictures and lettering.
§ NPR has found more audio from the vaults, with this 1965 speech by Jules Feiffer!
At a Books and Authors Luncheon featuring such literary establishment figures as the historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and the literary critic Alfred Kazin, a 36-year-old cartoonist gets up to speak. “In his book, Starting Out in the Thirties, Mr. Kazin cites some of the writers who influenced him as a boy. They include Blake, Lawrence, Emerson, Whitman. The writers who influenced me as a boy were Jerry Siegel, author of “Superman”; Bob Kane, author of “Batman”; Jack Cole, author of “Plastic Man”; and Will Eisner, author of “The Spirit.'”
§ DC is defending its Superman trademark against two Florida barbershops which are called Supermen Fades to Fros and Superman Pro Barbershop. DC objects to the names and the Superman-related trademarks used on signage. This is the kind of case a big company kind of has to take on to defend their trademarks. Same reason they had to take down Kryptonite Bike Locks back in the day.
§ This young fangirl was not captivated by the New 52:
Currently, the Justice League has been active for five years in comic-time.
That’s four Robins to fit into that short space of time, and considering one is a grown man at this point, that’s a little sketchy.
Then there’s the thing where one of the above-mentioned Robins may or may not have ever been Robin in the first place. Apparently, not even DC knows this little tidbit for itself.
§ Milton Griepp uncovers a 40-year-old column by the young Steven Grant that lays out the early years of what one might call “modern” comics fandom, where comics were put in a cultural framework. (And the Jules Ffeiffer speech above was obviously a forerunner to this.)
In the intro, Grant talked about what fans saw in comics. “A number of people, and the number increases daily, stay interested in comics long after they have reached the age of maturity…. [C]ollege age fans have put the comic books in perspective: as products of American Culture, and as art. Conversations that dominate do not include such things as ‘Is Thor Stronger Than The Hulk,’ but rather things like ‘The Harvey Kurtzman Approach to Story-Telling in the Comics.’”
§ Can you read webcomics on your Kindle? Sean Kleefeld can.
Interesting discovery with my Kindle recently is that it has a rudimentary web browser. It’s a little slow, and sometimes tricky to click on links if they’re small, BUT I found that I was able to read most of my webcomics on it really well. I use Google Reader to pull in RSS feeds of my favorite webcomics. I keep JUST my webcomics in there and don’t muck it up with any general news feeds or anything like that so, with a few odd exceptions that do NOT have handy RSS feeds (Seriously? It’s 2012 and your webcomic doesn’t have an RSS feed? Who does that?) I can go through my Google Reader account to keep up with my faves.
