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About a year ago, Ng Suat Tong invited me to help judge his annual online comics criticism event. Not seeing a good reason against it at the time, I agreed. (As you may remember, Frank participated last time around.) It was definitely an imperfect exercise, but I knew that going in. More on that later.

First, the winners, as listed by Suat here. (He also provided commentary on the panel as a whole and some of the runners up.)

1. “The Other Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name”, by Jason Thompson (6 votes)

I was apparently the only judge who didn’t vote for this article, which surprises me. Not because Thompson’s article is poor—in fact, I think it is a fine overview of an exotic (to Americans) cultural subject—but because it doesn’t seem to me to be criticism at all. The closest thing to a critical judgment that I can find in the essay comes in the summing-up statement: “In short, although a few artists like Moto Hagio write serious stories about the consequences of incest and child abuse, most manga and anime creators flirt with incest for kink, comedy and emotional effect.” Not exactly an electrifying insight.

Still and all, if this had been a competition designed simply to identify 2010’s best writing about comics on the internet, I may well have voted for this. But it wasn’t, and I didn’t.
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Okay, now that Jog has thoroughly exposed me as a lazy fool (by the way, Joe: you’re fired)—and now that I’ve read the second issue of Neonomicon myself (which I liked, but hooboy), I really have to get this CCCBC thing moving. In my defense I got sidetracked by various super-important historical issues, and only Joe’s post derailed me from my planned 50,000-word essay contemplating the aesthetic and political influence of R.F. Outcault on 1980s phenomenon Shirt Tales. So you’ve been spared that at least.

For now, I’ll finish up The Courtyard tonight, and then on Monday we can discuss the first two issues of Neonomicon. If you want to participate, your required reading includes the aforementioned comics, Jog’s post, and the videos Jog linked to within his post (which I found unconvincing, but feature a lot of good ideas all the same). Future posts will be closer to a discussion than a lecture, I hope, though it’s possible I have already irrevocably ruined the whole thing. Anyway, until tonight.

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From "Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour" (vol. 6); color by Dylan McCrae

On October 4, 2008, I had the pleasure of conducting a live q&a session with Bryan Lee O’Malley as part of the programming slate for the 2008 Small Press Expo. O’Malley is the creator of the popular Scott Pilgrim series of bookshelf-format comics, soon to see its sixth and final volume released on July 20, 2010, along with a motion picture adaptation directed by Edgar Wright, set to premiere in North America on August 13, 2010.

Moreover, O’Malley is perhaps the most visible face of a young comics-making generation liable to draw considerable influence from international comics art, and pursue means of distribution outside of the classical comic book format – his background is in webcomics, and his print-format career, est. 2001, traces the meteoric growth of manga as a presence in English-language North American comics reading. Even if we set visual qualities aside, it is striking that so many of O’Malley’s cited influences are comics and animation material targeted at women and girls; just one reading generation prior, this would have been almost unthinkable, as American comics had by and large abandoned that demographic as insignificant.

Yet O’Malley also keenly distinguishes between manga traditions — boys’ comics, girls’ comics, ’70s Golden Age traits, anime-adapted tropes — and applies them to a grander, evolutionary metaphor in Scott Pilgrim, a romance comic (and so much more!) about leveling yourself up by understanding your lover’s (possibly storied) romantic history, and confronting the negative traits “evil” ex-boyfriends might represent. Gaming action hangs over everything as a looser, atmospheric metaphor for personal myth-making; video games don’t function as ‘literature,’ not like books, but they are eminently applicable in their social role-playing capacity.

What follows is a record of our live q&a, transcribed by me, and edited to remove ums and ahs and hanging sentences. Keep in mind, this was 2008, so the currently most-recent book of the series, Scott Pilgrim vs. the Universe, had not yet been released. Many thanks to Chris Mautner, aka “Audience #8,” for recording the panel (his own thoughts on Scott Pilgrim are hereby commended to your attention), and Bill Kartalopoulos, for shepherding the event into reality.

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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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The indefatigable Sean Collins has posted the audio for two panels from SPX that may be of interest to Comics Comics readers: the “New Action” panel featuring our own Frank Santoro (as well as Benjamin Marra, Kazimir Strzepek, and Shawn Cheng), and the criticism panel, which includes CC contributors Joe “Jog” McCulloch and Bill Kartalopolous, as well as about a million more worthy names than I feel like typing out.

[UPDATE: STC has posted a transcription of the “New Action” panel here.]

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1. I reviewed Amanda Vähämäki’s The Bun Field for the April/May issue of Bookforum, which is impressively packed with comics-related material in general, including Ben Schwartz on Harvey Kurtzman, CC contributor Joe McCulloch on Yoshihiro Tatsumi, and Nicole Rudick on Beasts!

2. Gary Panter animated, kinda.

3. Pretty awesome Milt Gross-created book reviews in comics form. I’ve never seen or heard of these before.

4. Not comics: The only review of Watchmen (the movie) you need. (The author of that also said some other stuff worth reading.)

5. Oh, and various prominent comics bloggers have weighed in on the new Cold Heat: here, here, here, and here.

UPDATE: I forgot one.

6. An interview with Ted May, partly re Injury 3. I’m pretty excited to see that issue, not only because I really liked the first two, but because CC designer Mike Reddy drew one of the stories in it. Mike showed me a few of the pages, and they were great, and I can’t wait to see the whole thing. Ok, I’m done now.

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Dan wrote a review of the first two Herbie Archives in the latest Bookforum, and it’s now available online. (Good ol’ Joe McCulloch wrote a review there, too.)

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Yes, that’s right, you can now download our third issue for free over on the right sidebar. (And the print version of it is currently available on sale for over half off at the PictureBox site.)

If you forgot, this is the issue that includes:

*Sammy Harkham‘s interview with Guy Davis (and their collaboration on the cover)

*The legendary Kim Deitch explaining the Meaning of Life

*Dan picking bones with the Masters of American Comics show

*David Heatley and Lauren R. Weinstein in conversation (they also collaborated on a brand-new oversize drawing)

*The long-awaited (by me) conclusion to my article on Steve Gerber

*The beloved Joe McCulloch on Mutt and Jeff

*An illustrated list from Renée French

*An amazing back cover by Marc Bell

*Plus about a million other things. At the time, Tom Spurgeon called it our best issue. All your friends have been reading this over and over again for more than a year! Don’t miss out!

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It’s going to be a challenge, but I’m going to try and keep the hype for Lauren R. Weinstein‘s amazing new The Goddess of War to a minimum on this blog, even though it’s clearly the best adventure/science fantasy/romance/Western comic book released in years, if not ever. (I’m not biased.)

But just this once, here’s some TGoW-related news:

1. New York magazine presents a special preview excerpt!

2. Lauren has started a blog. (We’ll see how long that lasts. Enjoy it while you can.)

3. There will be a signing/release party for the book from 4 to 7 pm this Sunday, at Desert Island in Brooklyn, which will also feature the debut of a brand-new silkscreen print and a new window installation Lauren (& friends) created for the store.

4. There will be an even bigger signing/reading/performance on Tuesday night at Manhattan’s legendary Strand Bookstore, starting at 7.

5. And if you’re still not convinced, here are some good recent reviews of the book from Jog and Alex Cox.

6. And finally, as mentioned once before, the PictureBox site is currently featuring a photographic tour of her studio.

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Just to fill out some of the details of Dan’s announcement and get more people psyched, here’s more info on what you’ll get with the latest issue of Comics Comics, debuting at San Diego this week:

* A cover story and interview with the mysterious Shaky Kane

* A package on legendary Topps man (and not-so-secret comics guru) Woody Gelman, drawing on research from Patrick Rosenkranz and featuring Art Spiegelman

* An editorial on the declining profile of traditional comic books by Sammy Harkham

* Giant comics and illustrations from Dan Zettwoch, Mike Reddy, and Jon Vermilyea

* Brian Chippendale on all the latest superhero comics

* Joe “Jog” McCulloch on Gerald Jablonski

* Aragones-style marginal comics from PShaw!

* An exploration of Kentaro Miura‘s totally bonkers manga Berserk

* A list from an anonymous but highly regarded cartoonist

* Contributions from Eamon Espey and Benjamin Marra

* More!