History

http://youtu.be/b443LL0vkT4 She Makes Comics, Marisa Stotter's documentary about women in comics, is now available. You can download it for $9.99 or pre-order a DVD...

The other day I mentioned how Dover Books is bringing back a bunch of out of print graphic novels including Puma Blues and A Sailor's Story. Well, you can add one more book to that list. I'm thrilled to be able to announce that Dover is reprinting a new edition of Secret Teachings of a Comic Book Master: The Art of Alfredo Alcala by myself and Philip Yeh

Yeah yeah, Walt Disney was a genius and a trailblazer and a visionary...but he was also a racist and a horrible sexist. The letter informing a woman applying for a job at the studio informing her that "Women do not do any of the creative work in connection with preparing the cartoons for the screen, as that work is performed entirely by young men. For this reason girls are not considered for the training school." has been floating around for years, but recently a newspaper story by Disney biographer Bob Thomas laying out his ideas of women's capabilities has been unearthed and it's even worse.

This gets a HYPE ALERT rating since I'm in it, but Marisa Stotter's documentary She Makes Comics will finally be available on December 9th—either...

As a kid, Dover Books was just about my favorite publisher, bringing out fine reprints of sheet music, fairy tales, art and all sorts...

Over the holiday I spotted something pretty eye-popping on Tumblr—this comics sales chart from Amazing Heroes #49, published in 1984 and posted by Sam Humphries. Your jaw will drop in amazement to see a world where American Flagg!, a daring SF comic by Howard Chaykin outsold Captain America, and Groo outsold Batman, Detective and Green Lantern.

Via Leonard Pederson's Facebook page here's a photo of me interviewing Frank Miller and Bill Sienkiewicz about Elektra Assassin at the Golden Apple in...

Lion Forge, the mostly digital but going to print comics company, picked up some nice 80s licenses like Punky Brewster and Miami Vice. In the modern era of licensing, it isn't about likenesses and wooden stories, but about reimagining things. So Lion Forge hired Joe Casey and artist Jim Mahfood to do Miami Vice. Bringing Crockett and TUbbs to the modern day. Since both Casey and Mahfood are certifiably bonkers*** this is awesome.

Jill Lepore, author of The Secret History of Wonder Woman, talks about how the Amazons origins are tied up with the history of suffrage and birth control and nicely sums up the history of women in comics in a couple of paragraphs:

I totally stole this from artist/producer Denys Cowan's FB page, but it's an interesting little sidenote, Back in the 90s people still read magazines, and liquor companies would purchase full page advertisements in these magazines. Man, history is SO WEIRD, right? Anyway, Dewars scotch ran a series of profiles of debonair achievers attempting to convince you that if you drank their scotch you would also be a debonair achiever. Cowan, then well known for his Batman and Question comics and about to co-found Milestone Media, was a fitting choice but it did seem like a win for comics at the time. This predated the Rob Liefeld Levis commercial, but both are a reminder that cartoonists as media figures is far from a recent phenomenon.

Here’s the sixth part of my interview with the late Steve Moore, with more to follow. The 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th parts...

This extraordinary book—surely one of the most beautiful picture books of the year— has a complicated history. It began with Mattotti's phenomenal illustrations, originally...