Cartoonists

The final round of Xeric Grant winners have been announced, and as usual it's a great line-up. Nothing like going out with a bang. $74,510 was awarded to these cartoonists to publish and market their work.

Although this "quest for Seve Ditko" story calls him the JD Salinger of comics, he's actually pretty easy to find—like many other pilgrims, the Post reporter just rang the door on his studio.

Whoosh! HeroesCon just raced on by! We arrived late on Thursday, hit BarCon and the rest was just WHOOSH! So much fun, we barely had time to type about it at all. That isn't to say there weren't some snafus—all on our own part—but they came and went so quickly.

I'll make it short and sweet: creators have to create. Marvel and DC no longer allow them to do that, except within rigidly proscribed guidelines. And the Paolo Riveras of the world are going to have to move on. It might not be too long before the Big Two are just steppingstones to get your name out there for even bigger things.

Yes, the world is a little stunned by the announcement of Matt Groening quitting Life In Hell. It isn't like this hasn't been threatened though. Back in November of 2009, roughly two and a half years ago, the Chicago Humanities Festival had a panel on the declining market for Alt Weekly comics. Groening was there. Lynda Barry was there. Chris Ware was there. Jules Feiffer was even there. And back then, Groening was already talking about quitting.

Meanwhile, what is going on over at the Billy Ireland collection of comics and cartoon art? Oh just some doodles by Playboy/New Yorker cartoonistEldon Dedini like this one of painter Diego Rivera. Dedini donated his art archives to the collection before his death.

As we previously noted, and as this sales chart shows, and The B&N chart from last night confirmed, Jeffrey Brown's DARTH VADER AND SON is doing very well, especially in advance of Father's Day this Sunday. The Tribune interviews Brown with a classic cartoonist profile description:

Note to Europeans: I am available to go to your comics festivals. Cry cry cry....

The seemingly tireless WOMANTHOLOGY organizer and artist Renae De Liz is in the hospital with a serious infection, her husband Ray Dillon reports:

Ruben Bolling, aka Ken Fisher, is much loved in most quarters for Tom the Dancing Bug, his long running, surgical strike weekly political comic. Of course, the field for weekly political comics is not exactly busting at the seams with dough. So recently Bolling came up with a new idea, called The Inner Hive which would offer a subscription model for goodies to readers:

Creator/publisher Zak Sally weighs in on the Kirby Matter, and the actions he suggests are more proactive:

actually, over the course of writing this, i think i DO have an answer– not THE answer, but an idea anyway: it’s somewhat presumptive on my part, and it is NOT what “should” happen, but it falls under the category of “the least you could do”.