Wednesday, September 10, 2003

A few things I've noted around the old Blogospheriverse that I'd like to comment on:

First, in response to Dirk Deppey's new op/ed piece on the direct market, I'll make it short and sweet: survival of the fittest. That's what it's all about. If comics shop retailers, and the people who make the decisions that affect them, can't come up with a way to compete, then they should go under. For what it's worth, I've felt this way for several years now about Major League Baseball teams.


Eve Tushnet has written reviews of several comics she's read lately, and I think she underrates Human Target and Top 10 a bit. But I understand, because as a relative novice (I think) to comics history, she's coming from a whole different perspective than I am on these titles. And this is both a blessing and a curse for mainstream floppies these days; the very thing- in this case prior knowledge of the character, in the Target's case, and appreciation for comics cliches and canon in the case of Top 10, delights comics junkies and completely goes over the head of those less versed in floppy history. She also weighs in on V for Vendetta, which I've been hearing nothing but praise about for decades now and still haven't read. When DC first published it over here in the 80s I wasn't too impressed with the artwork so I passed. Still, I'm thinking I really should track a collection down someday and read it.

Forager23 has mad love for the great Karloff/Lugosi film The Black Cat, a longtime top ten movie of mine. He also clarifies his position on Art vs. art, and I think he makes a good point.

Alan David Doane was kind enough to point out my JLA/Avengers review over at his place, and I return the favor: here's his, written with Chris Allen.

Everybody's talking about the upcoming Peanuts collections that Fantagraphics will be publishing soon; as someone who was of that age to love Peanuts when it was being published, and grew older with it, it's a good thing. Peanuts, along with Pogo, were arguably the two most important newspaper comics strips ever published, and it's good to know that they'll be available in this format. That being said, I probably won't buy because I'm sure it will be very expensive...and to be honest I'm a bit bored by the strip. I don't read the reprints now in the daily paper, and it got so bad toward the end that I sorta lost a lot of enthusiasm for it.

I sincerely wish someone would set commenter extraordinaire Shawn Fumo up with a blog. I'd read it every day!

Also, I'm considering signing up for the Comics Journal MessBoard...seems like a lot of interesting stuff gets posted there. I've always kinda worried about being in over my head among the regulars, but hey, I've never let that stop me before!

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