Gaiman vs Dean continues with more threats, cuts and cartoons
The contretemps over Neil Gaiman's $45,000 speaking fee and the Minnesota House majority leader who called him a "pencil-necked weasel" has continued, in the way that all matters of life and death have. Alex Pareene / at Salon has one side of it:
Gaiman vs Dean round 2 involves mom-decreed apology
You may recall that yesterday Minnesota House Majority Leader Matt Dean got his website crashed after he called Neil Gaiman "a pencil-necked weasel" and a hated thief over a reported $45,000 speaking see at a library.
Gaiman, naturally, fired the next round at his blog:
Minnesota pol calls Neil Gaiman a "pencil-necked little weasel"
A Minnesota budget battle has expanded into an attack on Neil Gaiman, as one fiscally-minded politician called the Newbery Award winning writer, whom he "hates," a "pencil-necked little weasel who stole $45,000 from the state of Minnesota."
Japan; The manga censor's day
This article from New Zealand goes into more detail on he thinking behind the current manga sales restrictions, and they are pretty much aimed at stopping young folks from doing anything stupid and fun, not stopping perverts. Take this from gynecologist Dr Tsuneo Akaeda, who thinks manga leads to STDs:
DC ditches Comics Code for video game-like rating system
Over on the various DC blogs, Jim Lee and Dan DiDio have announced that DC is pulling out of the Comics Code in favor of a multi-layer ratings system:
Don’t let this happen to comics…
Apparently some politician in Baltimore is using kids reading comic books as the result of a lack of teachers and money for education.
Perhaps she should be shown around the Baltimore Comic-Con to see...
School library votes to keep BONE on the shelves
After a Minnesota mother challenged her school library on keeping Jeff Smith's BONE on its shelves -- citing smoking, drinking gambling and sexy innuendo as reasons it wasn't fit for kids -- the library board voted 10-1 to keep Bone on the shelves. The mother still objected to the books, but brought her two sons to the meeting, explaining that "It's important for them to see the process of how books are chosen," she said. Removing the book from 12 of the the Rosemount-Apple Valley-Eagan school district's 18 libraries would have been a very rare step -- only 20 books have been challenged in the past 20 years, the last being "All But Alice," by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, which was removed in 1997.
Scandal: Portland Mercury disses comics! UPDATED WITH MORE OUTRAGE
Speaking of Stumptown, we were recently alerted to a local brouhaha, namely, last week's preview of Stumptown in The Portland Mercury. Shockingly, despite the mayor declaring Comics Month and Portland generally being Cartoon-town, USA,...
Super Nerd Mash-Up
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OclaRDU0fNg&feature=youtube_gdata&w=425&h=355]Yes, Mythbusters will try and build Captain James T. Kirk's cannon, with which he took on the deadly Gorn.Can the world handle this clash of geekery?
Evangelist: If Alan Moore isn’t porno, what is?
Even as our previous story on the Jessamine County Library LoEG controversy was getting Boing Boinged -- on Alan Moore's birthday no less -- and stirring up a whole new round of observations,...
Alan Moore, destroyer of library workers
Amy Wilson in the Lexington Herald-Leader has an in-depth story on just what went on when two Lexington, KY librarians library workers were fired for withholding a copy of THE LEAGUE OF...
