Culture

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?

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.

Right. My turn for the annual forward looking column. 2011 saw DC bet the house (and possibly the entire Direct Market) on a massive relaunch -- and win. It also saw the emergence of digital downloads as a multi-platform trend that seems to be gaining momentum. What should we be looking at in 2012?

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

Richard Alf, one of the co-founders of the San Diego Comic-Con and a busy comics dealer of the early 70s, has died of pancreatic cancer at age 59, it is being reported. While only a teenager, Alf provided financing and transportation for early con founders, as well as inspiring Shel Dorf with their shared love of comics.

We don't know HOW we missed this story when it originally broke as we're such huge fans of The Brick Testament at Stately Beat Manor. Lest you forget, this is one man's crazy 10-year quest to retell the Bible using Legos a gargantuan task of posing and photographing, not to mention compression. When the book came out in November, we were all over that shit, and so, originally, was massive ass market retailer Sam's Club and religious bookstores, who thought that a version of the Bible told in colorful brick would appeal to children.

By Todd Allen You may have heard some good buzz floating around about the relaunch of the old Liefeld-verse title Prophet.  Believe the hype.  And...