Culture

ReedPop has just announced that this year's New York Comic-Con is expanding to four days. The show will run from October 13-16, with Thursday a day for academic programming, beginning at noon, and a "Preview Night" running from 4-7. Only 10,000 tickets will be sold for all four days -- nearly 100,000 people attended the 2010 show, according to show runner Lance Fensterman.

Just sayin'.

No wonder that creators are getting a little more vocal about the importance of creator-owned material. Eric Powell's controversial video got things going, but itself was a response to a week-long tweet storm by writer Steve Niles who blogged recently What’s all this Creator-Owned Talk?

If there's one thing comics bloggers love, it's those old B&W photos from Life Magazine showing kids reading comics--proof of a simpler time when children read things, bananas were a vegetable, and your real father dropped off a bottle of milk at your mom's house every day. Well, recently on the LA Times Southern California Moments feature of reader-submitted photos we came across what looks to be a contemporary example of the genre:

Just to send you off on your weekend, here's Eric Powell of THE GOON with a hilarious and yet sobering video on what is really going on in the comics industry.

When it was announced that Stan Lee would be "creating" a bunch of superheroes to represent the 30 NHL hockey teams, it kind of whizzed by in the blizzard of such announcements of projects Lee was working on this year -- he's surely the world's busiest octogenarian. However, as the characters are unveiled in anticipation of this weekend's NHL All-Star Game where they will "come to life" via some unholy method, it's becoming clear that these characters may in fact be his Clarinet Quintet, his Black Paintings -- a twilight exploration of the themes that have preoccupied his work for a lifetime.

With the Comics Code all but buried, what ever happened to the CMAA's priceless archives of historical documents?

An astonishing icepunk adventure by the great French cartoonist Jacques Tardi is coming in March from Fantagraphics. It looks incredible.

That's the original from "Silver #22" but the reimagining by Robert Goodin is even more disturbing -- please click on the link to enjoy! But we couldn't help wondering...what is this "Silver"? An early comic by Jim Woodring or Hans Rickheit? The work of an unknown cousin to Fletcher Hanks? Or a spin-off from KRAMERS ERGOT? Surely only the fecund imaginations of a contemporary indie cartoonist could imagine a calfskin giving birth to an Indian, face first, through a large vagina in its throat. Right?

Gabrielle Bell is cartooning about her experiences with bedbugs in a strip called "Nocturnal Guests" and it's funny and creepy. Here in NYC, the herpes of furniture is an ever present threat hanging over the heads of even decent folks. For a packrat like us, bedbugs would be the end of life itself. It's getting so you just cross the street when you see a mattress on the sidewalk.

Join us for a spin around the internet and dig into SEC filings that explain what Wizard's business plan is now.

In light of yesterday's announcement of James Kochalka being appointed "country's first ever" Cartoonist Laureate in Vermont, it appears that one other state has previously named a cartoonist laureate, Chad Carpenter. And what state would that be? Alaska. That's right, the 50th state in terms of population density per square mile named a Cartoonist Laureate before states like Oregon, Washington, California, New York and the ever-burgeoning Vermont. These states are pregnant with cartoonists, illustrators, animators and graphic novelists. When asked about the erroneous credit The Center For Cartoon Studies co-founder, James Sturm, stated, "I should have known. Alaska is the only state in the country that has a longer cartooning season than Vermont." For those down south, cartooning season lasts as long as there is snow on the ground and whiskey in your mug.