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Welcome to the first link round-up of 2016! Good god, it’s an exciting moment. I hope you’re ready.

§ The Society of Illustrators has announced the M. Prize, a financial award that will be part of their Comic and Cartoon Art Annual. Gold medalists will each receive $200 and silver medalists will receive $100. The prize is named after Timothy Patrick Moynihan, who worked under the names Mendl and Gus Murphy, and created the comic strip “New Thermos” for The Mountain Eagle and Phoenicia Times in the Catskills.  

The third annual Comic and Cartoon Art Annual competitions is now open, and the deadline for printed submissions is January 5, 2016 – AS IN TUESDAY. Meaning the books must reach the Society by that dateline. Subway or bus it, people. Online deadline is February 12, 2016. The competitions is chaired this year by R. Sikoryak, and co-chaired by Lauren Weinstein.
 
More info on how to enter here. Above illo by Leslie Stein.

§ in one of DC’s year end blog posts, Tim Beedle writes about how social media helped the publisher makes some of their decisions, such as the twitter campaign for the Poison Ivyt book, and keeping Omega Men going:

But in addition to helping to bring about a new comic, 2015 was the year that we also saw fans help save an existing one. In September, DC announced that they were cancelling The Omega Men, the sci-fi thriller with deeply political undertones written by Tom King and drawn primarily by Barnaby Bagenda. The definition of underrated, Omega Men may not have as many readers as Batman or Justice League, but the ones it has are dedicated and weren’t shy about sharing that dedication on Twitter and Facebook. The outcry was instantaneous and loud, and when DC later reversed the decision and said they’d be giving The Omega Men the full twelve issues that were originally promised, so was the celebration.


So keep those cards and letters coming, folks.

§ Bustle magazine offers 25 Graphic Novels Written By Women, A Guide For Beginners , and it’s okay but NO RUTU MODAN????

§ Johanna Draper Calrson doesn’t blog as much as she used to but here’s a sharp one on how TwoMorrows is repurposing articles intended for the cancelled ACE magazine for Comic Book Creator.

§ Jeremy Thomas offers a list of Top 8 Hopes For 2016 which is pretty good for the major weak points of mainstream comics. In particular his #1 hope: #1: A New A-List Character Rises. IT seems to take a lounge time for major characters to catch on. Deadpool and Poison Ivy took a decade to get big, and arguably 20 years to reach the pinnacle. I’d say Kamala Khan Ms Marvel and the Unbeatable Squirrel Girl are popular but not quite A-list. A lot of things mitigate against this at the big two. At DC it will ALWAYs be the Big Three, except when a Green Lantern movie is coming out and Wonder Woman is briefly pushed aside But that didn’t last long. Will Gambit and Doctor Strange be household names after their movies come out this year? Who am I missing? Send off in the comments.

2 COMMENTS

  1. I’m kind of shocked to learn that Poison Ivy is now considered a top-grade, A-list character, while Kamala Khan isn’t quite there yet, but then I’ve not really been paying attention. Is this because Poison Ivy now has a mini-series (in which case, is Swamp Thing now A-list, too?), or are we talking the animated Poison Ivy of Harley and Ivy fame, or some other media spin-off, or what?

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