Comic books embrace gay characters as readers hope it’s just the beginning
Amanda Holpuch, The Guardian, on gay characters in comics:
This year, finally, the industry embraced [gay] readers as mainstream publishers offered prominent gay plot lines. Archie Comics’ first gay character, Kevin Keller, was married in January; Marvel’s X-man Northstar was married in May; and DC Comics reintroduced the Green Lantern as gay in June.
Great piece.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfQsBTgoVuA
Speaking of comics, been very much enjoying watching the mid 90s Spider-Man cartoon. Tight, exciting tellings of some classic Spidey stories. The Venom arc in season 1 was fantastic — way better than Raimi’s Spider-Man 3. Here’s the intro. Memories~
Just finished reading the trade paperback version of Ratfist, a webcomic by neatotastic dude Doug TenNapel. It looks like a graphic novel, although it has the daily-payoff pacing of a webcomic. It’s fun! And it has the worst Spider-Man pun you’ve ever read, guaranteed.
Western canon to be rewritten as three-volume graphic novel
Alison Flood, The Guardian:
From The Epic of Gilgamesh to Infinite Jest via Dante, Dangerous Liaisons and Dubliners, the western canon is set to be turned into a 1,344-page, three-volume graphic novel.
The ambitious project from New York press Seven Stories is being hailed as the “graphic publishing literary event of the year”. Each of the 189 works of literature covered is being interpreted by a comics artist, with 130 illustrators contributing to the project including Robert Crumb, Will Eisner and Hunt Emerson. The first volume of The Graphic Canon – “From The Epic of Gilgamesh to Shakespeare to Dangerous Liaisons” – is out in April, to be followed by the second (“Kubla Khan to the Brontë Sisters to The Picture of Dorian Gray”) in July and the third (“From Heart of Darkness to Hemingway to Infinite Jest”) in October.
My original reaction to this was going to be “what the dickens,” but then I realized what I did there and shot myself.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2u4kNEvp7xA
So apparently Toei produced a live-action Spider-Man series in Japan in the ’70s.
Happy new year, everyone!
13 Fantastic Female Comics Creators of 2011
Kelly Thompson’s list of “13 fantastic female creators in comics that you should be watching, reading, and supporting.” Some really great looking stuff on this list — warm up your credit cards, everybody.
(Via Bryan Gyg Jebavy.)
Fantastic. Explains a lot about Generation Y in general. Also, now’s a good a time as any to remind people to whip out their copies of Generations and Millenials Rising.
I put this video up on Youtube over five years ago, and I haven’t learned much more about it since. What I do know is that there was an attempt to produce an animated feature film of The Incal, and that this attempt failed. What I think you see here is a reel put together to bait more financiers into the project. Curiously at the end, there is an animated Arzach sequence and what looks like a Starwatcher sequence. This thing is baffling. And gorgeous. As far as I’ve heard, both Moebius and Alejandro Jodorowsky were involved in the production, but I haven’t heard either of them mention it directly.
This looks absolutely incredible — I’d never heard of L’Incal before.
There seem to be a couple of different editions of the comic in English — if anyone can recommend a particular edition, chime in on Quora.
(Via Aaron Diaz.)
Here’s part of page 151 of Harley Quinn: Preludes and Knock-Knock Jokes, a collection of the first seven issues of DC’s Harley Quinn comic series. Check out that classic Mac OS action happening in the bottom panel. Some notes:
Sadly, there’s no Chicago in this panel.