Culture

A Fox News report on how sexy, violent comics are corrupting our youth is ruffling some feather today. The piece originally aired on Fox's Washington DC outlet and found reporter Sherri Ly tut tutting over RED HOOD AND THE OUTLAWS #1 and CATWOMAN #1 as if they just came out and were still on sale. JESUS, WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN FOR THE LAST FIVE MONTHS?

Artist Sean G. Murphy (Joe the Barbarian) has posted a piece on his DA page called 5 Year Plan -- it's about planning for the future -- something very few young cartoonists seems to have the courage to do. I recently told a talented young cartoonist "Keep doing what you love until someone pays you for it" -- which is pretty basic "follow your bliss" advice. Murphy's is a little more practical:

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.

The past year has seen an unusually large number of Sherlock Holmes adaptations, both in comics and on the screen, but not all Holmeses are created equal. Last night, British viewers got to see the last episode of Season 2 of the BBC's wildly popular starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, and Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows starring Robert Downey Junior and Jude Law is still doing well in theaters a month after it opened. So if you're in a Holmesian mood and wondering what to read next, here's run down on the Holmes adaptations which have come out or had new installments in the past year. Varying from inspiredly odd to unreadably awful, don't go to the comic store without reading this first!

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.

In the spirit of the holiday, here are some pages from AFRICAN-AMERICAN CLASSICS, an anthology of stories and poem by early African-American writers, famed and obscure, into comics by a similarly talented range of cartoonists. A few sample pages:

Channel 4 has managed a video of Alan Moore walking around town and chatting with some Occupy protesters in V for Vendetta masks, who tell him his work was an inspiration for their actions. And what does he think?

We've been a bit out of the news for a few days due to crushing deadlines on another project, and while scanning the news for catch-up purposes we noticed that Google was offering comicbook headlines of the past like this ons from May 12, 1955. The story from the Oxnard Press-Courier relates the story of a vigilante group of concerned citizens who have vowed to make sure that comics on the newsstands were carrying the Comics Code seal and that the "comic book situation" provided proper reading for the kids.

Even if you feel Big Barda does not speak for you, it's hard to dislike that sweet Bruce Timm cover.

ICV2 has their December 2011 Diamond sales estimates up and the downward correction would appear to be continuing. The big debating point here would be DC returnability. IIRC, Diamond's been adjusting the numbers to allow for returns (10%?), but relatively few people believe that retailers are returning that much, when taken across the industry. So anything returnable is probably a little under-reported.

What is indie and what is small? Anyone? Bueller?