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I had planned a better post, but scanning problems are delaying things a bit, so here’s a few links to tide things over.

You know, there’s a prominent comics link-blogger who likes to go on and on about how hard it is to put these things together, but based on my limited experience, it actually seems like a great and incredibly easy way to post stuff online, even when you’re busy with a day job, a baby, election day, scanner foul-ups, early morning meetings, etc. If I was actually paid to do this every day, I bet I could get a routine going with my RSS feeds where it took me less than an hour to round up links to all of the “important” comics blogosphere blogonet sites every morning. Kind of fun!

1. Austin English is a great guy and all, but he has weird ideas about what’s ugly and what isn’t. (And seems to compare Denny O’Neil favorably to R. Crumb, an aesthetic crime that should not go unpunished. (Jk Austin! Sorta.))

2. I knew about Talking Lines, but didn’t realize there was another interesting looking new R.O. Blechman book out.

3. Birthday tributes to Steve Ditko weren’t even a dime a dozen yesterday, unless you pay way too much for your internet service, but this one, despite its brief length, was particularly provocative and original.

4. Naoki Urasawa talks process. [via]

5. A too-rare interview with Peter Blegvad appears in the new Believer. [via]

[UPDATE: And I didn’t realize it when I originally posted, but the issue includes a TON of good comics material that I should have mentioned.]

6. Almost every post Jog writes these days is worth linking to, but since everyone already reads him anyway, what’s the point? That said, this review of J.H. Williams III and Detective Comics is unusually thorough and well-wrought, even for him.

7. And here is an insightful appreciation of last week’s Chris Ware New Yorker work. Click on it; it’s not boring.

8. Finally (but not leastily), for those of you who didn’t notice, this weekend brought the grand debut of our newest online team member, the great Jason T. Miles. Please make him welcome and stay tuned for more. I don’t want to ruin his next post by giving anything away, but it sounds pretty awesome.

That’s it. I hope you found at least most of those worth reading. Nothing is more annoying than linkblogs full of garbage. On second thought, I have to admit that maybe this isn’t that easy to do exhaustively if you hope to maintain any kind of quality control. Maybe it’s just me, but I’m finding less and less of interest in the actual comics blogosphere blogonet these days. Writers outside it seem more thoughtful lately. Still, ninety minutes tops.

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Edward Penfield, 1906. Kelly Collection.

Very quick one in this case.

1) I really enjoyed this post at David Apatoff’s blog, Illustration Art. It’s an excellent explanation of what to look for in a Leonard Starr drawing. Even if the work itself is not to your liking, the flair for craft shines through. My friend Norman prefers early Neal Adams strip work, as well as Alex Kotzky. I don’t have an opinion on the matter, but I bet a lot of other people do, and that’s why I love comics

2) T. Hodler turned me on to John Crowley’s writing. Recently Crowley wrote about the lovely sub-genre of comics created within fictions. The discussion begins with his Oct. 16 post. [And continues Oct. 20.] Love Crowley’s header art, too.

N.C. Wyeth, 1917. Kelly Collection.

3) About 6 weeks ago, under the auspices of old pal and fearless comics collector/historian Warren Bernard, I visited the Kelly Collection of American Illustration in Virginia. I’ve seen some amazing collections and this really knocked me out. It’s a private museum of the great period of pre-WWII American illustration, 1890-1935, with deep holdings in Leyendecker, Harvey Dunn, N.C. Wyeth, Howard Pyle, among others. These paintings and drawing hold up remarkably well. I was particularly struck by the expressive hatchwork of Leyendecker and the nearly-sculptural attention to paint of Cornwell. Harvey Dunn was a revelation of me, as the paintings seemed more vibrant and energetic than anything in print. It’s all contained in a gorgeous museum setting, complete with extensive information and archives. I particularly liked the focus of it — no pulps, no pop — a tight look at one spectacular period of image-making. It’s not even the period of illustration that most resonates with me — but I can’t imagine this collection, so beautifully curated and hung, not being an affecting experience for anyone, no matter their aesthetic proclivities. In its dedication to an oft-neglected artform, the collection is a national treasure. For now, I believe it is open by appointment to scholars only. If you fall under this category, make the pilgrimage.

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The Comics Journal, as I noted in an earlier posting, needs to re-invent itself to make it relevant for the new era we’re in, a period where there is a much greater public interest in comics combined with a much more fragmented discourse about comics (found mostly these days the internet). It looks like the editors of the Journal were thinking along the same lines as I was, because they’ve decided to radically change the magazine by upgrading its web-presence while transforming the Journal itself into a twice-yearly upscale publication.

These are promising changes, although much will depend on the execution. I think one way to guide the magazine forward is to look at what it does right. Here is a list of highlights from the most recent incarnation of the magazine (the more compact, literary magazine format they started with issue #288 in February of 2008).

The Deitch family issue (292) was the stand-out interview. By conducting separate interviews with Gene Deitch and his three sons, Gary Groth created almost a new genre: a family saga in the form of oral history. With each Deitch offering conflicting accounts of their family life, we got a rounded image of their careers, one that read like a novel. This was one of the best issues ever. There have been other strong interviews (like the ones with Trevor Von Eeden, S. Clay Wilson, and Jason) but the Deitch interviews stood out for telling a cohesive story.

As for the critical essays, I think the Journal was strongest when its stalwart critics wrote long think pieces. Gary Groth’s novella-length, keen-eyed piece about the relationship between Hunter S. Thompson and Ralph Steadman was superb as both portraiture and analysis. It gave a much livelier sense of what Thompson was like than the recent documentary Gonzo, or any of the other films about the notorious journalist.

Although many found it too long, I though the symposium on the Michaelis’ Schulz biography was important and necessary (full disclosure: I participated in the symposium). There were serious problems with that much-praised book, and it was good to get Monte Schulz’s objection to it in print for the record, so that future students of Peanuts won’t treat Michaelis as gospel.

Other strong pieces of writing were R. Fiore on Hajdu’s The Ten Cent Plague and Tim Kreider on Bill Mauldin. In general, Donald Phelps is the magazine’s most genial and idiosyncratic voice, although he often writes about things other than comics. I know many people have a hard time with Phelps’ rambling, quirky, allusive prose but his essays always give me a new way to look at art, something few critics can achieve. I have to confess though that I’ve never developed a taste for another dense Journal stylist, Ken Smith.

The strength of the magazine is in presenting essays that have a depth of analysis that can’t be found elsewhere. Most writing on comics tends to suffer from a shortness of breath: small reviews and bite-size blog postings. The Journal, at its best, doesn’t settle for such small snacks but offers a full-course meal.

Among its reviewers the Journal has a contingent of solid, trust-worthy writers: Kent Worcester, Rich Kreiner, Shaenon Garrity, and Kristian Williams, but they tend to get drowned out by crankier and less-informed critics, writers who mistake abrasiveness for insight. The magazine’s review section does seem too diffuse and scattershot. I’m never quite sure why some books get reviewed and others don’t. There’s a lot of good critics on the web now – Rob Clough comes to mind right way. The most promising prospect for the next incarnation of the Journal is to recruit these writers (I know Clough has already signed on).

Visually as well, the magazine has improved greatly in recent years. But if it comes out less frequently, there is more room for growth and experiment. Fantagraphics has a great design team which consistently puts together wonderful looking books. A Comics Journal that looks more like a book would be really exciting.

In terms of the print magazine, my strong sense is that the Comics Journal has always been strongest when Gary Groth has been most involved with it: his interviews with cartoonists have always set the gold standard in terms of being informed by the deepest research and asking the most searching questions. I’m thinking here of the classic and memorable conversations Groth has had with Chaykin, Crumb, Gil Kane, Jules Feiffer and many other creators. Now Groth is of course a very busy many with many broths to attend to, so the amount of time he gives to the Journal has wavered. But with two issues a year to put out, he should be able to reshape the magazine into something more closely resembling his own sensibility.

The Journal has often been accused of being just a mouthpiece for Groth’s opinions. To my mind, it’s regrettable that the Journal hasn’t often enough been Grothian enough.