It wasn’t too long ago that everyone said the emailed newsletter was dead because people got too much email and social media was where it’s at. Now that social media is part toxic tar pit, part 1 million monkeys banging on 1 million untuned pianos, friendly little targeted newsletter seem awesome and cahrming again. Just to prove that time is a circle and life is a circle and people get sick of one thing and go back to another.

Anyway, even comics newsletters are making a comeback!

§ Zainab Akhtar is coming back! An Eisner nominee for her Comics and Cola blog, a keen critic and most recently the curator of Short Box, she’s coming back with a monthly newsletter:

https://twitter.com/comicsandcola/status/823437472550055937

https://twitter.com/comicsandcola/status/823579444455636993

You can subscribe to the newsletter at her Patreon:

Each month, Patreon backers will be the first to receive a PDF newsletter with reviews, features, essays, previews and general interesting titbits on comics. The newsletter will be broken up into a series of posts and published on the blog over the weeks following its release. 

I don’t want to set myself unrealistic goals or promise people something I can’t deliver. The newsletter is something I’ll be putting out in some format, no matter what, because I’m a weird lump who *really* likes writing about comics. But I do want anybody who pledges to the Patreon to get something back for it.

§ And the teaser for “MNT” has been revealed to be….a mothly newsletter. In fact MNT stands for “Monthly Newsletter Thingy” – dear lord! As Malfurion from Hearthstone might say, “Astounding!”
MNT is the work of Steve Morris (Comics Alliance, CBR), Megan Purdy (Women Write about Comics) and Christian Hoffer (Comicbook.com) and it too has a Patreon! As these are three of the smartest people wrting about comics, this should be good!

The first issue comes out February 1 and will contain news by Hoffer, a review of Decelerate Blue,  a guest essay from Rosie Knight and an interview with Ariell Johnson of Amalgam Comics in Phily. This debut is free for all, but future issues are available for the $1 Patreon sub.

 

Morris gave a sneak peek on the tweets:

http://twitter.com/stevewmorris/status/823570146010796033

http://twitter.com/stevewmorris/status/823570361233117184

http://twitter.com/stevewmorris/status/823570574886731776

https://twitter.com/stevewmorris/status/823570864079835141

https://twitter.com/stevewmorris/status/823571182331002885

https://twitter.com/stevewmorris/status/823571322655612928

 

And Hoffer explained his desire to nail down some news:

And from the Patreon page:

The MNT doesn’t promise to revolutionise writing about comics, but it will be a place where you can get trusted, considered coverage on a regular basis. And hey, if enough people subscribe, we’ll be able to expand substantially – and we have a lot of plans for where this newsletter thingy could go. Our stretch goals are just the tip of an iceberg, here.

Your Patreon subscriptions are going to be used in the best way possible: they’re going to be paid to our guest essayists, ensuring that quality thinking about comics is rewarded and paid for in a fair manner. Until we hit our first goals, we’ll be subsidising those costs ourselves, but after that your monthly contribution will go directly towards funding compelling comics criticism. That sounds pretty great to us!

So there you have it! Comics journalism is alive! And in your email inbox every month. (In the spirit of disclosure, Morris and Akhtar are former (and much loved) Beat contributors, and Knight is a current contributor.)

We’re actually supposed to do a Beat newsletter as part of our own Patreon…and  I actually fiddled around with Mail Chimp for about 15 minutes the other night but….don’t hold your breath. But someday you can accuse us of being copycats.

 

 

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1 COMMENT

  1. Very excited for these. I have my weird paper archive of Savant, and these initiatives remind me a lot of that.

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