Cartoonists

The great and hilarious Emily Flake is doing a cartoonist's diary for TCJ, and the first episode includes much on the Freelancer's Dilemma (pants or no pants) as well as scenes where the cartoonist works on New Yorker submissions at the laundromat while hoping a little girl will come throw her giraffe at her. Yes, it's like that. BOOKMARK!

We've been meaning to write up the disgusting legal maneuver that has left 69-year-old Gary Friedrich owing Marvel $17,000 after a failed attempt to get some ownership of Ghost Rider, a character he co-created back in the '70s. In a story first reported here by Torsten, Marvel/Disney filed a countersuit for copyright infringement based on Friedrich's convention appearances selling Ghost Rider-related merchandise. As Daniel Best wrote:

Read it all here.

Given that she was the Person of the Year for 2011, and enjoyed a bestseller with her Hark! A Vagrant collection, it's no surprise that Kate Beaton has been getting lots of offers lately, ranging from children's books to television work. Thus it will also come as no surprise that she's going to be spending less time on her webcomics to work on some of these opportunities:

Soon after posting yesterday's fret fest over the state of the cartoonist, we had to hurry off to the world premiere of JOANN SFAR: DRAWING FROM LIFE, a documentary by Sam Ball about the French comics superstar. A mellow, thoughtful 46 minute film, it captures Sfar a few years ago when THE RABBI'S CAT was on its way to selling 600,000 copies in France and his work was being published here in the US by First Second...but BEFORE he became more renowned in his homeland for directing.

In a world where every comics-to-movie project gets endlessly covered, SAVE THE DATE has pretty much flown under the radar -- but then it's an indie movie created by an indie cartoonist and not based specifically on a comics property. The film, based on ideas from indie cartoonist stalwart Jeffrey Brown, follows two sisters -- one about to get married, the other just broken up with her boyfriend, and how they approach love and commitment. Directed by Mike Mohan ("One Too Many Mornings") from a script by Mohan, Jeffrey Brown and Egan Reich, the movie debuts this weekend at Sundance and has already gotten some buzz behind it. It stars Lizzy Caplan (True Blood, 127 Hours), as the single sister (who happens to be a cartoonist), Alison Brie (Mad Men, Scream 4) as the sister about to get married, Martin Starr (Mad Love, Adventureland) and Geoffrey Arend.

Artist Jimmy Broxton/James Hodgkins has broken his silence about the ASHES split.

When six of today's finest, funniest cartoonists created a studio together it was news; that all of them were women somehow made it a "thing". Thus it is with some sadness but a sense of inevitability that the disbanding of the Pizza Island studio has been noted on its blog. Gathering together Kate Beaton, Sarah Glidden, Domitille Collardey, Julia Wertz, Lisa Hanawalt, Meredith Gran and most recently Deana Sobel, this kind of talent put in one room would have been noteworthy under any circumstances.

Last year the Beat inaugurated the Person of the Year award. In an industry where changing the status quo isn't always greeted with joy, this is our way of recognizing the people who either move the needle and shake things up or exemplify a level of excellence that others can aspire to. This year, votes were much more across the board. One person clearly got the most votes as a single person. However, a different executive team had more votes overall when both parts were added up. So, we used our executive power to declare both a Person of the Year and a Team of the Year. Who moved the comics industry in 2011 and will continue to be heard in 2012? Read on.

Comics are a business that is relatively insulated from the ups and downs of the economy: things are ALWAYS marginal. While there's no doubt but that the global recession has impacted the comics industry — especially with customers dealing with price increases — quite frankly, there wasn't a lot to cut back. There's a good living to be made in comics, and many people do, but no one is buying a yacht — or not very many anyway. And maybe comics are a survival industry because it seems like everyone is just one or two issues away from square one.

Today marks Charles Addams' 100th birthday, so we, along with Google, celebrate this influential cartoonist!

The Romanian webcomic Fredo and Pid'jin, has been a big success for its creators Eugen Erhan and Tudor Muscalu, this piece at Next Web tells us, if by success you mean lots of links on Reddit and Digg. What emerges is the story of two guy with a dream and a webcomic about two evil pigeons out to conquer the world. Things looked low, but then a guy who works on the Simpsons came and told them they were on the right track, energizing them to carry on. But...questions remain: