Culture

It has become legend.

Comic fans care about the character or than a particular story. Be true to the characters and fans (in general) will be pleased.

[Chris Sotomayor is a successful and well known colorist for Marvel and other publishers. Recently he began a series of interviews he called "The Dirty Dozen" where he asks industry figures questions about their careers from a business standpoint. The themes are among those that we've recently been exploring here at The Beat as the career paths for cartoonists become more tangled -- here is more opportunity than ever, but the way to get there is not always clear. Although the interviews appear first at his site, Chris has graciously allowed The Beat to reprint them. Up this time, writer/artist Jimmy Palmiotti.]

As everyone has probably already heard (just scroll down the page), Rob Granito is a plagiarizing conman. He claimed to have done work for DC and Marvel, been the secret hand behind Brian Stelfreeze and, hilariously, to have worked on Calvin and Hobbes, and sold direct copies of other people's work with a few scribbles on top for hundreds of dollars. Not the usual pose tracing for a different use or character, but direct copies, with perhaps an arm moved slightly. And he did it for years. Artists known to have been plagiarized includes Jan Duursema, Tim Sale, Bruce Timm, Mark Bagley and Ivan Reis among others. As a response to this, the website Legit-o-mite.com has been started as a clearinghouse for evidence of direct plagiarism and fraud like this, on the part of Granito or any other artist.

During C2E2, I discovered some old issues of Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld in the quarter bins.  I knew of this series, but had not read any comics of the character.  I have an eight-year-old niece who loves Wonder Woman, and thought she might enjoy another super-powered princess.

The comics community is an accepting one--perhaps the most accepting. The greatest masters feel a kinship with someone who makes mini-comics, and will make time for them. It's a giving, friendly group of people who share a passion for comics and a collegial sense of belonging. But then there's Rob Granito.

Comic-Con is now like the state fair, as events in Orlando, Memphis, Rockford, WI, and Kansas City took place over the weekend.

Scott Adams is the author of the very popular workplace comic strip Dilbert. Although its humor is very accurate for those trapped in cubicle hell, it has also been held up over the years as an example of, er, declining standards in comic strip art. Still, it is very popular, a frequent object of refrigerator adornment and the books sell very well. Scott Adams also has a blog. And one day he was asking what he should write about, and some men's rights activists suggested that as a topic, (do these guys have a name, like Man Firsters?) so he wrote about men's rights. After he'd posted his little piece, he didn't much like the comments he was getting, so he took it down. For some reason.

Last night on Jimmy Kimmel, they attempted alchemy by taking sound from Jersey Shore and playing it over the JLA cartoon. The results were eh. But it does reference this early internet classic "Superfriends Whassup" which came out more than a decade ago, before YouTube, even:

Speaking of WonderCon, although Marvel was a proud participant in the 1987 show, they haven't been an exhibitor at WonderCon in many a year-- a string that will be broken in 2011 -- presumably to promote their movie slate. To mark the occasion, they are releasing a show variant cover by Giuseppe Camuncoli:

Joe Field, inventor of Free Comic Book Day and owner of Flying Colors in Concord, has passed along a video called WonderCon 1988 Review, created as a promo tool to get more exhibitors and publishers to attend the '89 show -- then called the Wonderful World of Comics Convention. With next week's show being the 25th anniversary of the Bay Area confab, he's been posting several historical videos to his YouTube account, and this one will blow your mind with its vivid depiction of the primitive conditions our comics forefathers labored under. In addition to a younger version of Joe himself playing Anderson Cooper, you see younger Stan Lee, young Fabian Nicieza, young Tom De Falco, and several other young un's in local TV coverage of the 1987 event. Several interesting factoids emerge from the coverage.

Much to my surprise there was a comics meet up but further research proved there was an anime AND a furry meet up but I only had time for one. Noah Kuttler, local creator, moderated between aspiring cartoonists, publishers and one sassy-ass reader.