Tag: Top News

Millennials, can't live with 'em, can't get a vanilla soy macchiatto without 'em. Among the many charges levied against these lazy, disengaged kids is that they ever grow up and read too many comic books. BUT IS THAT TRUE? Commentator Kevin Drum—who I normally adore—does some back of the envelope calculations and concludes that only 2% of millennials are comics readers. For the numerically inclines out there (translation: Torsten) here are his envelope calculations:

The comics news website Broken Frontier has announced the winners of its annual awards, as chosen by readers and industry professionals. Image Comics was a winner, as you might expect, but female creators won in 5 of the 13 categories, suggesting that the arrival of talented and noteworthy women in comics is a thing that is here and now and not some hoped for future event. The winners are as follows:

It's a time of consolidation and retrenching, and some don't make the journey to the next phase. One such entity is the Detroit Fanfare convention, as announced on this Facebook post. A planned February is being cancelled, a Kickstarter cancelled (and pledges not charged) and the event is not going to be held again.

Every year cartoonist Kate Beaton returns to her parents house in the maritimes for the holidays, and the series of hilarious and touching comics...

It's an all too familiar story: an artist without a lot of funds, and no insurance, all of it wiped out following a sudden...

Whitney Taylor continues to be my favorite investigative comics journalist—well, maybe investigative is too strong a word, but if "talking to a lot of people and painting a picture" is the criterion, Whit is it, as her report on Comic Arts Brooklyn shows. This was a strong show but one that experienced an unexpected glitch: a lot of people thought it was a two day show and didn't come to the exhibits on Saturday. This resulted in a smaller crowd and, for some, lower sales. On the day there was a lot of anxiety—it's like basing your business plan on Christmas sales and then there's a big blizzard the day of the big sale—but everyone seems to have survived intact. And yet, is a financial model this precarious one that is "sustainable"? I predict sustainable will be THE word of 2015, as a the last few days of posts here have been exploring. Taylor talks about the model with many publishers and creators and key behind the scenes people like publishing rep Tony Shenton, and while everyone is optimistic, there is no real consensus on whether things are working, improving or just providing a false illusion of hope:

Do I really need to say any more? After more than a year, a new issue of Love and Rockets: New Stories is coming out in a few weeks. While everyone else is popping the champagne, I'll celebrate by running the nine page preview of new work by the incomparable Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez.

Update: Just to clarify, this book is published by Udon Entertainment under license from Capcom. I'm told that they've done four other books under...

On Friday New York City Mayor Bill deBlasio met with protestors to discuss their demands for police reform after the shocking death of Eric...

Actually, Julian Darius wrote the headline used in this KnB title, but it's the essential comics match up of all times, right? Also, Winsor McCay wasn't a very good letterer.

I imagine most of you reading this aren't reading this, but are already off on your holiday travels. While the team at Stately Beat Manor is going to remain vigilant for exciting, world changing breaking news, we're going into "holiday mode" for posting, which is about the same as the regular mode except we gave it a name. But to make the holidays bright, I have some previews, art, webcomic alerts and maybe a few other surprises lined up in case you get bored. In the meantime, safe travels and happy holidays to all.

There is a tower defense game I love to play on the iPad called Kingdom Rush. Not too long ago they released a new version called Kingdom Rush Frontiers which is the most imaginative and adorable version of the game yet. Like all fantasy games, it's completely tangled up in the vision of JRR Tolkien, with elves, dwarves, rangers and even in this version an ent. Each stage has many extras like little dragons, gnomes, fairies, magic mushrooms and even a game of Simon. It's adorable and a great way to pass the time. I found the first Hobbit movie two years ago to be similar to a tub of Cosy Shack rice pudding in that I never got sick of each and every bite, and I just liked watching people named Thorin and Elrond run around. Since then, while I have yet to tire of Cosy Shack, I have tired of Peter Jackson's Hobbit movies because they are nothing but a map in Kingdom Rsh blown up to IMAX size and length and noise. Maybe it's just me being 11 years older than when the Return of the King came out, or Peter Jackson being 11 years older, but The Battle of Five Armies seemed to take as much from Jackson's fanfic King Kong remake as it did the slim book it was based on. And that is not good.