As The Beatrix, on vacation up country, deals with the new server and its delusion that it’s an electronic bulletin board from 1982, I am performing caretaker duties here at Stately Beat Manor.

So, some links…

Over at The Comics Journal, Tom Crippen posts two reprints of Gahan Wilson’s Nuts comic strip, which originally ran in the National Lampoon way back in the 1970s.  Fantagraphics will publish a collection soon (SDCC 2011?), but if you can’t wait, there’s a previous collection available from 1979, and the DVD-ROM of the entire magazine is on sale at Amazon!

For comicologists, George Rohac, Jr., operations manager at Oni Press, publishes his Master’s thesis on webcomics and copyright.  Here’s the abstract:

In recent years there has been a growing debate on the impact of copyright and copyleft on the creative industries. Both the merits and importance of each have been raised by academics, lawyers, industry professionals, and creative people alike, and the debate has reached a near stalemate as each side fights to provide hard data to prove other arguments invalid. The purpose of this study is to contribute hard data and encourage further in depth quantitative and qualitative study into the effects of these decisions on profits and popularity. To do this we have singled out one particular creative online market – webcomics. By surveying and interviewing creators from the field we will examine how these decisions affect notoriety and earnings.

(Thanks to Comicbook Resources.)

Over at Beat advertiser CO2 Comics, two items of note:

1)  Comics Interview, Volume 1 is available to order in four different editions.  (Variant covers, yes, but only in the logo and the binding.)  I didn’t list this over on the Coming Attractions post, as they do not have ISBNs to link to.  This first volume has 680 pages of the first fourteen issues.  There’s a preview available, which includes the table of contents for each issue!  I ordered the hardcover special edition, and it arrived rather quickly for a print-on-demand edition.  Chock full of interviews of famous and/or forgotten individuals in the comics industry, starting way back in 1983!

2)  Here’s a rare gem…  advertising via comic book!  In 1987, Jordan Marsh, an upscale department store in New England, commissioned Comico, Gerry Giovinco, and Mitch O’Connell to produce a comicbook catalog to appeal to fashion-conscious young adults.  The comics are fun to read, the fashions are not as laughable as actual photographs, and O’Connell’s style is perfect for the project.  The only shocker?  The prices!  $65 for a pair of Odessa jeans?!

Bored with seeing the same old cartoon characters and toys as balloons in Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade?  Comics Alliance provides some suggestions for some more interesting balloons, designed by Anthony Clark, including a very inappropriate Garfield balloon.

And… for those who need a little bit of Hollywood news…  Adam West will be voicing a character in the Super Hero Squad cartoon.  A bit of stunt casting, as his character will be the Marvel Universe version of Batman: Nighthawk.