Comics

The “Big Two” are dominant in the print world, but they’re also burdened by the weight of their respective (and convoluted) histories. They are both large, public companies with multiple layers of corporate management, plus sister companies with overlapping and/or competing interests. Because of their success and dominant positions, change is an understandably slow and costly process.

This weekend sees the Maine Comics Arts Festival in Portland, ME. In its second year the show has expanded to two days -- a day of FREE panels at the Portland Public Library this Saturday and then a exhibit on Sunday at the Ocean Gateway. There's also a comics art show on display at the Lewis Gallery at the Portland Public Library. Guest list is here, headlines by Brian Wood, Skottie Young and Jeff Lemire. The Portland Press HErald previews the show here and the organizer, Rick Lowell of Casablanca Comics.

Amulet/Abrams has just announced that the next Wimpy Kid book goes on sale November 9, 2010. The title has yet to be revealed, but creator Jeff Kinney promises changes for Greg and Rowley. The press release also reminds us that a second Wimpy Kid movie is also in the works.

The news that DC was shutting down its CMX manga line drew a surprisingly caustic reaction across the web, as summed up by Johanna Draper Carlson. Now, we're well aware that there is a very vocal bunch of online fans who love to bash DC no matter what they do -- if someone at DC used a firehose to put out a fire, these fans would complain DC was wasting precious water. However these complaints were from manga commenters and librarians, a usually less volcanic crowd. But they were near-universal in their disappointment that DC had shut down a line that seemed to be hanging in there despite rarely getting any attention or promotion

Dear lord, what is coming out of this woman's vajayjay? People, dogs, monster claws, golden light, frayed denim. This one has it all. The...

It's the 90s and the "Bad Girl" era of comics all over again, as Dynamite announces they have acquired the Chaos Comics library which in cluded such titles as Evil Ernie, Chastity, Purgatory, and so on. Lady Death, the best known character from Chaos, was not included in the deal. Chaos flourished in the 90s under publisher/chief creator Brian Pulido. Various characters from their library have been controlled in recent years by Tales of Wonder, Crossgen, Devil's Due and Avatar.

Manga's very bad month continues as it was revealed today that DC is shutting down its manga line, CMX. Rather than make any official...

This week's New Yorker has a familiar cover artist.

Morse's cover for THEM! in progress. And because you can never get enough Scott Morse, here is his cover for Strange Science Fantasy from...

We haven't quite been following this story but some other folks have. It seems that a bunch of "legacy" characters at DC who were...

The young people of today can hardly be expected to understand the impact that Tim Burton’s Batman had on movie-goers in the summer of 1989. The general audience of 1989 knew Batman only as the campy, self-conscious, broad-daylight superhero of the Adam West TV show. Nothing in movies prepared viewers for this radical re-thinking of the character, the weird darkness of the themes, the dense, oppressive production design or Jack Nicholson’s performance as The Joker. All of it was alarming, electrifying stuff back then. (Of course, it was all familiar territory for people who had read The Dark Knight Returns and The Killing Joke, but that’s another story.)

Jill Thompson's Scary Godnmother has become something of a Halloween classic, with two animated specials that are still shown on Caqrtoon Network, and a...