Devin’s Comics NEWS Digest - August 9, 2024
San Diego news! And other news, I promise!
Hello, everyone! This is the Comics NEWS digest, an aggregation of all the top comics and comics-related stories that caught my attention that I thought you might enjoy reading. I post these two weeks after every regular newsletter.
NEWS
The big news of the last few weeks has been San Diego Comic-Con, with lots of stuff happening from the sublime to the ridiculous. Most of the major rundowns, some of which you can read here, here, and here, involve non-comics news, which is part of why so many people were excited last year during the actors and writers strikes.
This isn’t directly comic-related, either, but video game actors used San Diego Comic-Con to announce their plans to go on strike. We support Labor here at the Comics Book Club, so I wanted to mention it as a show of solidarity.
wrote about his experience (his first time at San Diego Comic-Con!) over at SKTCHD. It made me miss the convention.One of the worst bits of news to come in the wake of San Diego Comic-Con was civil rights activist Colin Kaepernick announcing a genAI-based publishing platform, which is a truly awful combination of words. That article includes input from
and , two talented creators who deserve recognition and respect.Will this prove to have been the last Comic-Con to take place in San Diego? Doubtful, but that threat was levied after news broke of a price gouging scandal involving some of the city’s hotels.
Unfortunately, there’s more book ban news this month. In Utah, thirteen books were singled out, including Blankets by Craig Thompson, which we read for the Comics Book Club back in 2019. In a Texas school district, almost seven hundred books have been flagged for removal, including art spiegelman’s Maus and a comic book adaptation of The Diary of Anne Frank.
The news isn’t much better internationally, as Egyptian cartoonist Ashraf Omar was arrested for satirizing domestic politics. And France appears to be trying to catch up to publishing monopolies in the United States, as book publisher Editis is looking to acquire graphic novel publisher Delcourt.
On a lighter note, Marvel decided to add a QR code at the end of its X-Men comics, a move that was met mostly with bewilderment. It’s worth pointing out that much of the confusion was based on erroneous reporting about the nature of the material that was available via the QR code. Marvel didn’t remove the last pages of the comics; the QR code simply took readers to supplemental material. Even the headline of the article I linked to is misleading, but the “mystery page” is also included, which I find pretty hilarious if this whole effort was meant to protect it from potential piracy.
To briefly follow up on the biggest news from last month,
had an examination of the assault allegations against Neil Gaiman that I highly recommend. Especially as new allegations have surfaced.Interviews & Criticism
The trailer for a new Hellboy movie dropped to little fanfare, at least as far as I could see, but Scott Cederlund took a good look at the source material over at From Cover to Cover.
Rolling Stone published a look at the life of Steve Ditko, the creator of Spider-Man. This came to my attention thanks to
, who was interviewed for the article. It’s a good look at a complicated person.We read Charles Burns’ Black Hole for the Comics Book Club (also in 2019!) and it proved to be a divisive choice, but I’m looking forward to his new book, Final Cut. Chris Barsanti interviewed him for Publishers Weekly.
over at his newsletter first brought The Summer Hikaru Died to my attention and I’m glad he did! You can read an interview with the creator of that manga, Mokumokuren, here.Turning to European comics, Tom Shapira at SOLRAD looked at Torpedo 1936 and Torpedo 1972 by writer Enrique Sánchez Abulí and artists Eduardo Risso and Jordi Bernet, respectively.
I’ve been happy to see a lot of experimentation in format happening in American comics lately. Compact editions are becoming more popular, and one of my favorite current series, The Last Mermaid by Derek Kirk Kim, is published in an oversized format. David Harper noticed this, too, and wrote about it for SKTCHD.
was interviewed by the Los Angeles Times for their Book Club newsletter about Comic-Con and other topics. He has a great perspective on comics, having worked several jobs within and around comics and written two novels about comics publishing!Awards
Okay, one last thing about Comic-Con: The Eisners were given out. They’re the biggest awards in comics, I wasn’t going to not mention them. Lots of great and deserving comics and people, even if most of the names are familiar.
At the opposite end of the spectrum, the Chicago Alternative Comics Expo (CAKE) announced the winners of their 2024 CUPCAKE Awards! This is a great indie comics con and I’m looking forward to going at the end of the month.
The first-ever American Manga Awards announced their nominees. Winners will be announced on August 22 in New York City.
The Virginia Library Association announced the winners of their 2023 Graphic Novel Diversity Awards. Queenie: Godmother of Harlem by Elizabeth Colomba and Aurelie Levy was the winner in the Adult category and Brooms by Jasmine Walls and Teo DuVall was the winner in the Youth category.
Finally, cartoonist Bill Hinds was honored with the Gold T-Square Award by the National Cartoonists Society for fifty years of work on the daily comic strip Tank McNamara. That’s an incredible tenure for one person!
Obituaries
Sadly, there is reason to mourn this month as well. Artist Michael Zulli passed away at the age of 71 after a brief illness. I remember first encountering his work for The Sandman story “The Wake,” which was colored directly onto his pencils with no ink. It was the first time I’d seen comics work that made me think of fine art, and it expanded my conceptions of what the medium of comics could do. He will be missed.
French cartoonist André Juilliard has died at the age of 76. A celebrated artist known for supple lines, he won the Grand Prix de la ville d’Angoulême in 1996 and worked on the Belgian comic Blake & Mortimer for more than twenty years.
That’s all for this month. Did I miss anything? Comment below if I have. Feel free to subscribe if you haven’t already. The Comics Book Club will be meeting again on August 21 to discuss The Secret to Superhuman Strength, and you can expect another one of these on September 13. Thanks again for everything.
What a great collection of fascinating reads! Thanks for sharing this interview with Mokumokuren. Fingers crossed they win a couple at the Manga Awards in two weeks!