Fandom

It seems there is a new sheriff in DC's digital town, and she goes by the name Molly Merrell. This new member of DC Online has just delivered a smackdown on rowdy posters at DC's Source blog:

As tweeted by Dave Gibbons, Pat Curley recounts the very beginnings of comics fandom -- a historic confluence of Julius Schwartz, Jerry Bails and Roy Thomas -- and shows that even then the feedback loops of fandom and editorial were closely aligned:

Comedian/actor/sometime comics writer Patton Oswalt expresses clearly the vague feeling we've often haphazardly batted about here: as Geek Culture becomes the norm, it is...

I see Saruman was at the Fantagraphics Bookstore Anniversary party on Saturday. It's good to see him getting out of Isengard more. [Via twitter but lost the link!]

This profile of the Seattle Fantagraphics store in a college newspaper gives us all a chance to admire their gold leaf signage, but it also presents yet another example of the eternal conflict of art and people with mustard in their goatees as they argue the merits of graphic novels in bookstores and what that means for bathroom privileges.

It happened at Dragon*Con. Need we say more? Someone please add music, pronto, so this can become the greatest video of all times for today.

So Darwyn Cooke got caught on video saying that superhero comics should "...stop catering to the perverted needs of forty-five-year-old men." He called out rape, children being forced to eat rats, explicit sex, foul language, and a lack of new characters. And now some people are getting upset. Oh come on, like you've never thought any of that. Unfortunately the whole thing got derailed by his swipe at turning Batwoman into a lesbian, which came off as rather homophobic to some. Personally, I have to admit, I read it more as the character continuity issue of a man who likes his Bronze and Silver Age comics, which is somewhat humorous, given that he's complaining about comics being ruled by the whims of forty-somethings, but he is large, he contains multitudes. (To which I say, Darwyn, it wasn't "overnight". She may have been around since 1956, but she hadn't made any significant appearances since Crisis on Infinite Earths which basically changed everything. SEE? I can be as big of a geek as you are.) So let's break this down from the point of view of someone who is not forty five or male -- me.

If you read ONE local paper story about a comic-con/nerdlerbrity fest/back issue bonanza, it should be this one by Micaela Hood in the Miami Herald on this weekend's Supercon, because it nicely captures the peaceful intermingling of the fans in their homemade costumes, the dealers selling stickers, and the aging stars with nowhere else to go. As "Comic-Con" has become a brand name for an entrainment event where you can expect all this and MORE, the various strata of con-world must learn to live with one another. Just what IS going through Richard "Shaft" Roundtree's mind, anyway?

This has a distinct revenge of the nerds feel to it. Ghyslain Raza known to the world as "The Star Wars Kid"...

Can you imagine how long the line for the restroom was?

With Comic-Con's rise in the popular imaginaion over the last decade, we've heard many folks mutter over the years "I need to write a screenplay about Comic-con!" If you have been working on such a script, it is time to quietly set it aside and start working on that oil spill comedy you had been pondering. In keeping with the times, Comic-Con will be the subject of a geekumentary by Morgan Spurlock (Super-Size Me) following the fan's journey of seven con attendees. But Spurlock's not going it alone, because that would be too much for any man.

We got this open letter from Patrick Brower of Challengers Comics + Conversation in Chicago, and it's a little hypeish, but it sounds like...