Jules Fieffer, more on Diamond’s Bankruptcy, Angoulême Pre-Reads, and More— The Comic Bookmarks January 26th, 2025
Your comic links for the last week of January

I’ve got a head cold so not in the headspace to ramble on here so lets’ just dive into the links for the week. Hopefully, I’ll be back next week with the usual rambling.
Previously on FC2C

Headlines

One of the truly great cartoonists of 20th century has passed left us.
I recently participated in this @fastcompany.com roundtable interview about political cartooning in a broken media landscape. I have to say, the sample art that they chose from my comic for the feature image is perfectly timed. (Paywalled, but you can view intro) www.fastcompany.com/91262247/i-w...
— Jen Sorensen (@jensorensen.bsky.social) January 21, 2025 at 2:56 PM
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A fantastic interview with Barry Blitt, Josh Ohman, and Jen Sorensen about the current state of the business of editorial cartooning.
Dark Horse takes seriously the allegations against Neil Gaiman and we are no longer publishing his works. Confirming that the Anansi Boys comic series and collected volume have been cancelled.
— Dark Horse Comics (@darkhorse.com) January 24, 2025 at 8:50 PM
That’s to be expected.



A trio of Angoulême stories, including the 3 finalists for this year’s Grand Prix. That festival kicks off this week.
Comic Sites on Comic Sites
Business

Never knew that there was another Diamond Comics in the distribution business.
And speaking of Diamond…

And I know that there’s any number of places I could go to get Brian Hibbs’ thoughts on this but to bring him into this piece at the end and have him drop a bomb like Diamond’s bankruptcy is “cataclysmic” and then not to into the whys and wherefores of that statement really feels like hit-and-run journalism.
Interviews

Considering that Mignola “retired” a number of years ago to paint and do whatever, I’m thrilled there’s a new and fresh book from him.

Honestly, Tokyopop isn’t on my radar right now— too much had history surrounding the brand. But I do like that Atanassova addresses that in this piece.
Reviews & Features

This piece is written by Ritesh Babu, not Joe McColloch (although McColloch is referenced so maybe there’s where this bookmark is picking up his name.
Here’s a tough read by Ritesh Babu. Not tough as in it’s not well written but tough because it‘s making us (particularly those of us in the United States, I think) examine the damage we’ve done in the world. And Babu brings that up because it has impacted his connection to comics in the past year.
I just reread the piece as I’m writing this. Trump talks a lot about how eduction is teaching kids not to like America. He’s wrong that it’s not the education system that’s doing it but it’s our actions that are doing it.

This has been a series I’ve been thinking of revisiting, only ever having read through the whole thing once in trades years after it concluded. My memory of Preacher is there is a lot of stuff I liked in it and a lot of stuff I didn’t care for. And I always felt like the stuff I didn’t care for was what other people really liked the series for.
I also like how Pellnat, a cartoonist himself, has traced Steve Dillon’s images on tracing paper instead of using images directly from the books. He talks about how he wanted to get a feel for Dillon’s line more than just a photocopy reference to it. This is something that I’ve thought about for a long time and wondered by there aren’t more critics trying to do something similar (myself included.) It’s one of the reasons that when time permits it, I like to use actual pictures of the books I’m reading than grabbing images off some digital preview of the books. It’s more tactile that way. Of course, sometimes it’s just easier to do a Google Image Search and find the preview images.

I think these Jack Kirby comics may read a bit differently now than they did 10 or 20 years ago. Maybe even differently than they did a month ago.

d. emerson eddy has been diving into DC’s Young Animal’s imprint. I don’t think I lasted much beyond the Milk Wars crossover (which I wrote about here) but have wanted to revisit Vissagio’s work in that line.

I’ve started this book and wow! I’m not too far in it but the storytelling in it is mesmerizing. And I don’t really think I’ve gotten to the main story yet— just still in set up for it.
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