* Calling all Lost commenters: This week’s thread is right here. Sorry for the mental hiccup!
* Congratulations to Matt Maxwell, Gervasio, and Jok on the completion of Strangeways: The Thirsty. This comic was a pleasure to read.
* Matt’s almost always worth reading when he’s writing about comics-related issues at length, and over the past day or so he’s served up a couple of doozies. First, here he is on comics and the iPad. Among many other things he, like many other folks I’ve read, take Joe Quesada to task over his claim that the increased accessibility of digital comics via Marvel’s iPad app will drive more people to comic stores. To me it’s pretty clear that Quesada’s saying this because he has to in order to placate his understandably nervous retailers. Direct Market retailers are vital to comics, don’t get me wrong, and I want them to weather the storm. But with the exceptions we all know and love, they are a reactionary group at the best of times, and I’m sure this vocal constituency has equally strong advocates within Marvel. They have to be the only thing that’s kept Marvel and the rest of the comics companies from jumping into the digital world with the same totality as, say, music companies and iTunes. He’s gotta make the right noises.
* And here’s Matt on Greg Rucka’s departure from DC and Batwoman. I’m positive Rucka’s being honest when he says he’s fired up and ready to go vis a vis getting back into creator-owned work again, and that’s awesome. But as Matt puts it:
Looking at this, it’s clear that Batwoman was his baby (if you’ll pardon the double entendre) and for him to simply walk away, drama or no drama, is not a small deal (even if [he’s] insisting that it’s not a big one).
*Anyway, over at Comics Alliance you can read the entire transcript of Rucka’s WonderCon panel, where this bomb was dropped, to get it straight from the horse’s mouth.
* My Robot 6 colleague Brigid Alverson is all over all the MoCCA announcements and debuts and panels and parties and whatnot. Just click the MoCCA tag and keep scrolling. In terms of stuff that’s caught mine eye, Fantagraphics is packing in a lot of guests and new books.
* Speaking of conventions, it seems pretty clear that the plan behind Wizard’s relentless con expansion is to piggyback off the goodwill and audience interest generated by larger, better comic cons (the rebranding from “Wizard World” to “Comic Con” wasn’t a coincidence), and then to piggyback again off the press generated by those shows among reporters who don’t know any better (this LA Times article being a case in point), all through a series of local con-promoter proxies at minimal cost to Wizard proper. You, dedicated comics fans, are not the target, unless you’re in a market that doesn’t have recourse to those other shows, in which case the hope is that you’ll grin and bear it.
* Kiel Phegley talks to Mike Mignola about the next two Hellboy stories, The Storm and The Fury, which will apparently be to Hellboy what King of Fear is to the B.P.R.D.
* Dan Nadel’s Art in Time is out! Yay!
* Tom Brevoort’s X-Men preferences strike me as eminently reasonable.
* Real-Life Horror: We murdered Iraqis and reporters and Rob Humanick picking up the “Links for the Day” torch that The House Next Door appears to have permanently and regrettably dropped.
* Speaking of THND, founder emeritus Matt Zoller Seitz serves up another of his trademark video essays, this one a 25-minute pondering of Dennis Hopper. Click the link for Seitz’s introduction, then take a little time to watch the video. What are they gonna say about him? What are they gonna say–he was a kind man? He was a wise man? He had plans? He had wisdom? Bull-SHIT, man!
* Your quote of the day:
We are born into structures of law and tradition which were invented by men who were dead long before we were born. All our lives, we struggle against their vast, ubiquitous and posthumous powers.
—Zak Smith, Playing D&D with Porn Stars
* Your entire post of the day: “Proud of Being Ignorant” by Ta-Nehisi Coates. I am linking to that post as hard as I possibly can.
Thanks much for the props, Sean. Always appreciated.