Some Comic Book Type Notes

If you missed Free Comic Book Day, Newsarama has the Scott Pilgrim story up right now. It was my first exposure to SP, and I quite liked it.

Gordon is celebrating his second blogiversary by giving stuff away! There’s still plenty of time to enter, so check out what you gotta do to win. (Don’t forget about Comic Book Galaxy’s First Second giveaway, while you’re at it!)

The scariest thing about Blockade Boy’s Letters from a Henchman is how closely the syntax, spelling, and grammar match those of most of the folks who post on comic book message boards!

Comics Reporter has a link to an interview with Gary Groth that’s well worth checking out. However, I do hope he’s wrong about one point:

But the question is always, Are there enough people to sustain that kind of activity? Plus, it becomes much, much more difficult to do when there are so many people doing it. The audience does not grow in proportion to the number of comics being published. So it's actually harder now, but there are probably more worthwhile comics being published than ever before. I suspect that there isn't a big enough readership for "literary" or "art" comics today to sustain the current bandwagon boom that so many New York houses are jumping on, and we'll see a contraction in another year or so.

I’m starting to get quite spoiled by my local independent bookseller and its ever-expanding shelf of good graphic novels. I sure would hate to lose any part of it. On the other hand, as good as they look, I do have to wonder about either the bookstore market or the comics shop market’s ability to absorb all the titles in the First Second initial launch.

About ten years ago, Keith and I were going to move to San Francisco. I had lost my job, and Louisville was starting to feel really small to us. For a lot of different reasons, we ended up staying put, but every now and then I’ll see something that makes me wish we’d taken the plunge. After all, no one ever gets smacked with trade paperbacks in my local comics shop! Wouldn’t you know that Mike started it! Folks in the big cities are so lucky, I guess!