The Weekly Debrief- May 17th, 2024
A Cake fundraiser, musings on comic culture, thinking about Don Perlin and cooking comic books.
I’m on vacation this week so this is the last week of the soft launch of this link post test. I think next week we’ll just dive into this whole thing, including possibly a name change when this becomes a regular column.
Next weekend is an art auction fundraiser for Chicago’s CAKE show. You can find more details on it here.
I didn’t get a chance to read the new issue of L&R before I left on vacation. Need to get to that once I get home this weekend.
On Comics Journalism
Heidi MacDonald
Promotions at The Beat. I don’t know of Heidi MacDonald gets enough credit for just how smoothly that place is run or how she has set up the place to run. She’s still the primary voice of the site but the site has so many strong writers and editors. I wonder if we should pay attention to these editors and the kind of stories that they publish the same way that we used to pay attention to who was editing The Comic’s Journal?
More sad news on the review site front. Know what would really help all of us in comics coverage? REPOSTING/RETWEETING REVIEW POSTS. If you like something you've read for free then spread the word and share it. Otherwise the community is going to lose even more review outlets. https://t.co/8S8by9jLNl
— Broken Frontier (@brokenfrontier) May 16, 2024
I’m really not familiar with Comic Book Yeti but that Broken Frontier retweeted this caught my eye. Is CBY saying that they will no longer accept submissions for books to be reviewed? And is that because reviews just don’t generate the traffic? I kind of get that as FC2C is primarily a review site. It’s interesting how the basic audience for these kind of sites is so scattered right now and so unfocused. That’s part of the evolution of the comic culture over the last 10 or so years (is there even a comics culture anymore?) as it is just the breakdown of social media as the primary traffic driver.
Speaking of comic culture, there’s a lot to chew on in Kieron Gillen’s latest newsletter. I’m book marking this here but will probably return to it next week with more thoughts.
The stuff Kieron is saying in this about hashtags and building communities and online marketing being broken resonated: I think the pop polls ended up being directly responsible for more music buying than anything else I’ve done because they were a community, but good communities don’t often scale
— Tom Ewing (@tomewing.bsky.social) May 16, 2024 at 4:12 AM
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Hey, look. There’s a comics journalism category after all. And there’s some great nominees there. Glad to see that the category survived another year. And waiting for all of the think pieces about what it means that the Eisner Awards are recognizing comic journalism in 2024.
Manga
Humberto Saabedra
This is a whole side of comics that I’m just oblivious to. I probably should pay attention to it.
The Funny Pages
This is from a month or two ago but I just saw this book is available again. Pick it up. It’s great.
Reviews & Features
Don Perlin has passed away. Don was a wonderful collaborator, passionate about the work, enthusiastic, always willing to learn and grow. And, more important, he was an incredibly nice man. Doing DEFENDERS with Don was a highlight of my early days at Marvel. Heartfelt condolences to Don's family.
— J.M. DeMatteis (@jmdematteis.bsky.social) May 16, 2024 at 7:10 AM
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I don’t know if Don Perlin was ever anyone’s favorite artist but he sure did a lot of work that had a huge impact on me. This run from Defenders with J.M. DeMatteis is a personal favorite run. I know all of the cool kids dig on the Steve Gerber stuff (and don’t get me wrong- that’s also great) but I loved this run between issues #90 to 100. Perrin was just a solid storyteller.
Heidi MacDonald
Heidi’s followup on the piece linked to last week about why isn’t anyone talking about new Miracleman.
Rob Clough
Rob Clough is one of my personal fave critics. Always love to see him putting more stuff out there.
George Marston
Am I the only one weirded out about how DC is trying to reclaim and recycle Warren Ellis’s work? The Outsiders is pretty interesting but I’m still not convinced that there’s anything there as it retreads Ellis and John Cassaday’s Planetary. And plenty of creators have taken on The Authority over the years but Jenny Sparks is such an Ellis character and concept that I’m not too sure what Tom King would have to say about here.
Chris Arrant
Am I the only person who doesn’t get Chip Zdarsky and his popularity? Probably.
I’m also not to sure that “Chip Zdarsky doesn’t write Ultimate Spider-Man” is really all that much of a story.
Henry Chamberlain
I need to catch up on these Sarah Becan books. I love that cooking comic books is a thing right now.
Current Mood
I can’t lie— this cover makes me want to check out that JLA/Godzilla/King Kong book. The greatest Green Lantern?
— Scott Cederlund (@scottcederlund.bsky.social) May 16, 2024 at 6:38 AM
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