Living With Comics

Here's the Wikpedia article about Matt Baker, the first black cartoonist working in comics and creator of the costumed crimefighter Phantom Lady.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Baker_(artist)

Jeff Parker and Erika Moen finished their Portland love/lampoon, modern noir sex romp Bucko this week.  If you haven't read it, you should.  It's a lot like tapping directly into a hipster's fever dream.

http://www.buckocomic.com/

In other PNW-related comics news, the husband and wife team of Gabriel Hardman and Corinna Beckho spoke with Fictional Frontiers about their work on BOOM! Studios Planet of the Apes series.

http://www.fictionalfrontiers.podcastpeople.com/posts/45309

Yesterday was Hourly Comic Day and this French creator put this together.

http://english.bouletcorp.com/2012/02/ 

There is of course some question as to the validity of his claims to having done something this good in just a few hours, but who cares?  Most guys don't do something this good in a whole year.

The wonderfully reasoned (and incendiary) David Brothers posted a response to Newsarama's piece about Before Watchmen.  This quote sums up how I feel about Moore's position on the rights to his work and how it probably should have been handled all along.

"Once DC Comics realized that, though, I think they should have renegotiated with the creative team to keep it in print, give them some share of the rights, and then get together to take money baths down at the bank. Instead, they went for the short-term gain, and now the trail of destruction that sits between DC and Alan Moore is unforgivable. They had a chance to make good, to not pull all of the tricks the comics industry is known for pulling, and didn’t. Their short-term business sense said that taking the money and running was a good idea. Long-term thinking would’ve told them that giving Moore and Gibbons what they agreed on, and then nurturing that relationship over the next 25 years, would have let them make a ton of money. It’s a complicated situation and I’m (obviously) not an entertainment lawyer, but I genuinely believe that it should have gone down differently. There’s a moral aspect that should not have been ignored."

The whole piece can be found here.

http://4thletter.net/2012/02/newsarama-needs-to-do-better/

And for your daily dose of Bat-phemera, here's Batman Meets the Superking!