Kibbles ‘n’ Bits 12/15/16: Another comics shop has turned to crowdfunding to stay open

§ Here’s a little bonus comics history for you, courtesy of Bob Foster, a cartoonist who goes back to the olden days of the dawn of SoCal fandom. Thos photo was unearthed following Richard Kyle’s passing and it shows a meeting of Fanclave #3 on 12/20/65, so 51 years ago. Pictured are Rick Durell, Glen Johnson, Richard Kyle, Mike Royer, Eugene Henderson, Bob Foster, John McGeehan, Chuck McCleary. Bill Spicer’s arm is in the lower right corner. The photo was taken at Durell’s home.

Kyle we’ve already spoken of. Spicer would go on to publish Graphic Story Magazine, the first fanzine that took comics seriously. Foster has had a long career as cartoonist and editor. Royer was most famously an inker for Jack Kirby but also a distinguished artist in his own right. I don’t know of the deeds of the others in this picture, or even what Fanclave was, but this here is your fathers of fandom.

§ Speaking of olden days, here’s a scan of THE AMERICAN CARTOONIST Volume 1 Number 1 September, 1977 courtesy of Mike Lynch.

§ Uh oh: Whatever…a comics shop in the Castro district of SF has started a
GoFundMe to raise money to stay open.

Whatever… needs some help. It’s been a slow couple of months on the Castro and we need some financial assistance. We need to collect $8000 in the next 5 days or Whatever… will be closed for good. What the heck?? you say! Yes, sadly we are behind on some bills and without a quick influx of cash we will be forced to shut down.

Why not just let the store close? I have thought about this a lot. I opened this store over 1o years ago and we were doing great. Every year our sales went up. We hit a wall and haven’t yet recovered. The Castro is in a weird transition and we just need to make it through. This has been my dream, my own comic store and dammit, it’s a great store. I don’t want to give up on my dream.

The store has already raised more than the $8000 asked for so…Whatever…will stay open for now. But this is getting to be a little too much of a trend for my liking.

§ BEST OFS! LazyGamer chimes in

VOTING is open for the IGN Best of 2016 Awards – only YOU can cast these votes!

Comics Alliance also requests your votes for their Comics Alliance’s Best Of 2016

and The A.V. Club – Maybe I linked to this already? Jamie Coville, where is your master list?

And Multiversity’s 2016 in Review

Andy Oliver

Mental Floss is above the “best” label so they go with The 31 Most Interesting Comics of 2016

§ A thing happened the other day where a writer complained about Manthreading, which is where you write an essay in the form of 25 tweets and link them all. This was called Manthreading because men tend to do things in an annoying way to express dominance over other groups and other men. However, it was quickly pointed out (and has actually been my experience) that …everyone links tweets. It was revealed that it is actually WOC (women of color) who have adapted tweet threading the most, to develop their thoughts in a fresh and spontaneous way.

She ignores that women made threading poplar and that Black women have used threading to curate our work as we develop ideas in real time

— FJ The REAL Racist (@FeministaJones) December 13, 2016

So the big question became…WAS THE ORIGINAL STORY IRONY? I’m not sure we can tell any more. But few questioned why tweeting is a better way to write deep thought than essays or articles or whatnot. No one has time for that but dashing off half formed notions gets your opinion out there without having to be held accountable for writing something that you meant to be organized. Not throwing shade… I do this myself. Call it…notionthreading.

BTW, when I was looking for tweets on this subject this was the best one about manthreading that I could find:

Not sure I want to know ANY more about that story.

§ Incredibly, the above headline from The Hollywood Reporter may not be ironic. I repeat, it is not a sly satire by an Onion-loving intern who sees through the hypocrisy of allowing middle aged rich white men to explain how tricky it is to make stories about non rich white middle aged white men. It is not the journalistic equivalent of spitting in the soup of a particularly obnoxious diner who will never ever be aware that they are being mocked.

OR IS IT?????

I tried to check THRs’s twitter to see if they had commented on this unintentional hilarity, but everything was like this

These were the ten most Googled Oscars dresses from 2016: https://t.co/ZyDJZOsjlj pic.twitter.com/WiKfT2KGzd

— Hollywood Reporter Style (@thrstyle) December 15, 2016

and I had to give up.

Rogen, whose presence on the roundtable was the most problematic as he doesn’t even direct animation, and Sausage Party was super problematic for many reasons, did display a teensy bit of wokeness though:

Finally, you can see the white male take on ethnic stereotypes and sexism! Proud to break new ground. https://t.co/Pji1GWodm8

— Seth Rogen (@Sethrogen) December 14, 2016

§ BACK TO COMICS! Every year Rob Clough analyses the output of graduate cartoonists from the Center for Cartoon Studies and by God he is doing it again. This is yeoman work. And also CCS alums form a solid backbone of young cartoonists who are transforming the medium with better and better stories, so good on that.

§ Young Justice cartoon producer Greg Weissman would like to write more Young Justice comics and urges fan action to get it going.

Brandon Vietti and I are hard at work on Season Three of the Young Justice television series. But (a) we just got started and (2) making animated episodes takes a LONG time. (Ten months minimum. MINIMUM.) So, if you want more new YJ stories sooner, the answer is pretty simple. Artist Christopher Jones and I are chomping at the bit to make more YOUNG JUSTICE stories in comic book form. Producing a comic book takes considerably less time than producing television episodes,so if we got a green light on a comic book series now, you could theoretically have new stories in a matter of months. So the question is how do we get the green light for more YJ comic?. And the answer to that is pretty simple too. We just need to convince DC Comics that there’s a market for YJ comics even before the third season premieres. Which begs the next question: How do we convince DC of that? And the answer is again simple. BUY THE COMICS THAT ALREADY EXIST!

§ This has nothing to do with comics, but it is my headline of the day: Jury in San Diego Pride loincloth case reach a verdict