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All right, Dan’s in France, and I haven’t read any comics that have inspired me to write in what seems like forever. Which means it’s half-assed quiz time. My high-school German is extremely rusty. Have any of you ever heard of this book? Because if this description is correct (“a pseudo-art-historical treatise on the paintings found in the backgrounds of Donald Duck comics”), then I am curious.

In other Euro news, many of you are probably already aware of it, but I’ve really been enjoying the Danish metabunker blog. The long interviews with rappers and the like I mostly skip, but Matthias Wivel writes very intelligently about comics.

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As you may remember, I love letters pages. So, in that great comic book tradition, we plan to institute a “letters to the editor” section in future issues of Comics Comics.

Were you angered by Paper Rad’s attack on art comics in the first issue? Impressed by Dan’s thoughts on the Wally Wood/Ogden Whitney connection? Do you feel compelled to defend Spider-Man from Peter Bagge in issue two? Do you have a bone to pick with one of our reviews, or an interview you’d like to praise? Whatever your thoughts, positive or otherwise, about anything related to Comics Comics, we’d love to hear them.

Thanks! If you submit a letter, please include your name, location, and phone number, and be aware that we may publish it (meaning the letter, not the phone number), either in the magazine or potentially on this site. Letters may be edited for space or clarity.

E-mail:

thodlerATgmailDOTcom

Mailing address:

Comics Comics Letters
PictureBox
121 Third Street
Ground Floor
Brooklyn, NY 11231

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After posting yesterday and then emailing a bit with Tom Spurgeon, I got an email from Peggy Burns (see, this is why it takes forever to publish stuff–we’re all just talking to each other all the time) and two things occurred to me: one, if we want the NYCC to be different, we should set up there and participate. As Heidi/Beat pointed out, the only way to make a change is to participate. So, what if PictureBox and Fantagraphics and D&Q, etc etc set up as a block and invited interesting guests? Change? Maybe. On the other hand, I’m not sure that anyone other than the mainstream comics fanatics will pay $20-$40 to get into a comic-con–not with the far easier and cheaper MoCCA just a few months away. But then, as I mentioned in the comments section, the fact is, the comics read by many of the artists I publish are NYCC-fare–Chippendale’s Berserk and Daredevil, etc….maybe it would be an interesting meshing of sensibilities. But then, the environment of the NYCC is just pretty hostile to anything not insanely loud and fannish. So, to be continued, I suppose, in more distracting conversations.

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I spent a few hours at the Comic-Con last weekend. It’s a pretty easy target, but I guess I was struck by the huge divide between my culture and theirs. With the parades of costumes heroes and oddballs, down-at-the-heels superhero artists, and just plain oddities, like Neal Adams, I wondered what all of this had to do with the medium of comics rather than the business and nostalgia of comics. The answer, of course, is that, historically, they’re one in the same. Comics, even in these pseudo-sophisticated days, are as trashy as ever. I can’t decide if I cynically like that or detest it. But as I sat at the Abrams booth signing my book, I kinda thought, “wow, I have nothing in common with these people.” Which makes me wonder, of course, who our (tiny) audience really is for Comics Comics and other PictureBox publication. Who knows. It’s a funny thing, selling these kind of books in that sort of venue, but it’s one among many, and when you’re marginal to start with, you have to try for as many little corners as possible. Eventually it adds up. But man, what a place. What a thing.