Devin’s Comics NEWS Digest - September 13, 2024
Damfangle shout-abouts! Manga! Book bans! Publishing!
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
Last month started off strong, with a copyright case against “AI art” generators moving forward. This is a legal minefield because it’s such new territory and several cases of this kind, some of which we’ve covered here before, have been dismissed for not having the precise vocabulary needed for a legal filing, though some of that vocabulary is still being invented.
This is part of why legislators are so behind on addressing the concerns raised by such technology. For a step in the right direction,
recently devoted his newsletter, , to an “Anti-AI Manifesto,” which I recommend. Meanwhile, Jen Sorensen, formerly of The Nib, made this comic about genAI “eating itself,” inspired by a Rice University study that shows genAI creates a degrading feedback loop they termed Model Autophagy Disorder (MAD).Unfortunately, there’s another story about book bans to cover. An Oklahoma teacher provided access to banned books to her students and her license was revoked by the Oklahoma Board of Education, despite a judge advising them not to do that. It’s a shameful turn of events, even as the teacher has found a new job.
It’s not all bad news, though! Publishers and authors are suing the state of Florida over the book bans there, which could set a much better precedent for how this sort of thing shakes out in the future. As a reminder of the logical conclusion of book bans, please read this article about South Korean comic book burnings. This topic also ties into one of the comics we’re considering for the Comics Book Club (stay tuned for a new survey!).
Movie producer Eric Gitter is teaming up with former executives from comics publishers Boom! and IDW and comics creator Jeremy Haun (The Beauty and the Realm) to start a new comics publishing company. It will focus on crime, horror, science fiction, and fantasy, and will start publishing next year. It was unnamed at time of writing.
A couple of bits of news from IDW, as they posted another quarterly loss and laid off their publisher. This was their fourth person to hold the title of publisher in as many years, and both of those stories are from the same day. I really hope they’re able to get back on track soon.
In other publishing news, Mad Cave Studios is starting a manga imprint called Nakama Press. Kris Simon will be the Senior Editor and has a great breakdown of what they’ll be publishing over at her newsletter,
. Mad Cave is a great publisher and manga is a growing branch of comics, so I’m excited to learn more about what they’ll be putting out. (Just don’t pitch any stories with demons! Lol)For readers in New York City, publisher Kodansha is hosting a manga pop-up event featuring exhibits, artist Q&A’s, and more. I’m a big fan of Tsubasa Yamaguchi (Blue Period), and wish I’d be able to attend!
In other manga news, schools are using it to increase literacy rates among teenage boys. Nobody tell the Oklahoma Board of Education.
Interviews & Criticism
I’ve cited Reimana Yee’s blog here before, and she had another great post about comics education and how adults need to learn comics literacy more than children. I can concur that it’s not as intuitive as a lot of nerds would have you believe, as the Comics Book Club serves adults, some of whom never read comics before we started meeting.
wrote about loving comics in his newsletter and included a link to a study (from 2018!) about how comics help with learning.Anime NYC was last month and they held a Manga Lettering Round Table, a recording of which can be accessed here. If you’re interested in either of those topics (or both!), this is a great video that is both informative and entertaining.
For an in-depth look into comics history and comics about history, there’s this article about how comics have portrayed the Holocaust.
The CBC interviewed artist Johnnie Christmas recently. He’s a singular talent and very underrated. I had to include this here.
For a much longer read, there’s this scholarly article from the Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics about the Batman villain Poison Ivy and how her characterization has changed over the years, particularly in light of shifting attitudes toward feminism and environmentalism.
Finally (for this section), I wanted to link to a couple of SKTCHD articles. The first is a 2019 deep dive that recently became available for non-subscribers about the delightful Hellboy short comic “Pancakes.” The second is this more recent interview with Ram V and Evan Cagle about their relaunch of the New Gods over at DC. (For readers in Chicago, I recently saw a play at City Lit Theater about Stan Lee and Jack Kirby that also touched on the creation of the New Gods, The House of Ideas by Mark Pracht. It’s the conclusion of his “Four-Color Trilogy” about the history of comics in the United States and will be running until October 6. I highly recommend seeing it if you get the chance!)
Awards
The Small Press Expo (SPX) is being held this weekend on Saturday, September 14 and Sunday, September 15, where they’ll be announcing the winners of the Ignatz Awards! You can check out the full list of nominees here.
The Harvey Award nominees have also been released. The winners will be announced at New York Comic Con in October.
The graphic novel Global by Eoin Colfer, Andrew Donkin, and Giovanni Rigano was shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize for Children’s Writing. This is a prize given to books that “inspire readers to embrace nature and the outdoors and develop a respect for the environment.”
The 78th annual Reuben Awards were given out by the National Cartoonists Society last month. Annie Koyama won the fourth annual Tom Sturgeon Award at this year’s Cartoon Crossroads Columbus (CXC).
The Next Manga Awards for both print and web categories were chosen. And the first-ever American Manga Award winners were announced.
Obituaries
Last month, I somehow missed that Mary Wings had died at age 75 from lung cancer. She was a pioneer and a trailblazer, but she was also a great artist and a good friend to those who knew her. In 1974, she published the autobiographical Come Out Comix, the first of its kind.
More recently, Eisner award-winning artist John Cassaday passed away at the age of 52 after four days in the ICU. He was best known for work on Astonishing X-Men and Planetary. Writer Mark Waid shared a touching tribute that’s quoted in the article linked above.
Joyce Brabner, best known to comics fans as Harvey Pekar’s collaborator on Our Cancer Year, passed away at the age of 72. It was adapted along with other comics by Pekar for the movie American Splendor, in which she appeared and was also portrayed by actor Hope Davis.
Elena Salcedo, VP of Operations at comics publisher Top Cow Productions, has died. Cartoonist Bill Stott also has died.
Lastly, indie creator Bernie Mireault, a “cartoonist’s cartoonist” known for superhero-inspired comics, has tragically died at the age of 63. If you or someone you know is struggling with thoughts of suicide, there is help available.
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 September 18 to discuss Light Carries On, and you can expect another one of these on October 11. Thanks again for everything.
Thanks for including me in the roundup!
Thank you for the breakdown as always, very comprehensive and interesting!