§ Must read: The Daily Cross Hatch polled cartoonists for their Best of 2009 lists and more than 40 replied.

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§ Douglas Wolk posts The Best Graphic Novels of 2009 for Barnes and Noble.

§ Fantagraphics/TCJ honcho Gary Groth steps onto the balcony of his stronghold to to address the throng and gives a very cogent history of comics criticism while he’s at it:

You know why you’re here: You’re looking for honest, intelligent, robust criticism and commentary on comics and related media and, hell, maybe even a dollop of philosophical discourse because you’re the kind of gal or guy who isn’t discomfited with a little straying from the thematic farm. But in the course of mulling over what tcj.com means in the greater scheme of things, I began reflecting on the history of comics criticism and concluded that it may be worth reciting, especially for those of you who don’t even know that there’s such a shaggy and ramshackle series of events that could even remotely comprise a history of comics criticism.


§ Newly installed TCJ blogger Noah Berlatsky risks punishment in his very first blog post by commenting on the new TCJ.com’s rather spotty rollout. See also the comment thread. Our opinion? Good content eventually wins out, but you gotta be able to find it.

§ Related and this is a serious question: Why would ANYONE ever choose numeric post titles over SEO-friendly title-based post titles in WordPress?

§ The Sardinian Connection interviews JH WILLIAMS III . Is Williams Sardinian? Is this how rumors get started?

§ There is a blog devoted to all things Hernandez Brothers called Love & Maggie — we strongly recommend bookmarks!

§ Mark Millar is profiled in The Scotsman:

And this is Mark Millar: A short, unremarkable-looking man who’ll turn 40 soon, taking two miniature King Charles spaniels for their nightly constitutional. He pauses at his front gate to divest them of the garish costumes his wife (“Glasgow’s Paris Hilton for dogs”) and daughter insist on – super heroes, Robin Hood, a bridal outfit – stuffing them behind a bush for the duration of their excursion.

Mark Millar, the author of violent, expletive-laden comics is also Mark Millar, devout Catholic, devoted father, loving husband to Gill, and a man who never – ever – curses.


§ The LA Times reviews ‘The Toon Treasury of Classic Children’s Comics’ .

§ Alex De Campi examines more ways to get your comic online and how to negotiate Amazon’s author and file naming requirements.

1 COMMENT

  1. If you’re going to be indexed by Google News, one of the more common configurations requires you to have a few numbers (3 digits?) in your URL. That’s the short version of the explanation.

  2. What happened to Journalista? I used to read The Beat and Journalista every morning and now the latter is just part of that TCJ mess. Every now and then Ill go look at pictures on Spurgeon’s blog.

  3. I can’t believe that none of the cartoonists polled from the Daily Cross Hatch included as one of the best graphic novels, Logicomix, on their list of the best of the year. Oh well, Time Magazine, this week, in their year end best of issue, included Logicomix in their top ten nonfiction books (not a list of graphic novels, all books).

    And any best of list for the end of the year that only has five items on it is, im my opinion, really lazy, because how can anyone not find at least ten great graphic novels / comics from this year?