Hello again! Kate here for this week’s Previously On Comics. It’s been A Week, to say the least, and as I’m getting on a plane in 36 hours, I’m going to keep this short and sweet and mostly focused on suggestions of things to read that you might have missed.
Before we start, I have to take a brief moment to note that America Chavez is getting his awesome Hamilton-inspired variant cover, and as a huge America fangirl and a Hamilton fangirl, this is like, my worlds colliding in the best way.
.@HamiltonMusical variant for @QuirkyRican & my AMERICA series from @Marvel comics! Theres a million things she hasn't done. Just you wait.. https://t.co/BsoRQjqTEk
— Joe Quinones (@Joe_Quinones) January 31, 2017
Onto the good stuff, though! The Nib is killing it right now, with a few comics out this past week that have blown me away. I’ve always admired a few of their pieces, but this is the week that convinced me to subscribe.
- Sarah Winifred Searle’s The Price of Acceptance lays out the internal debate all fat people end up asking themselves about whether to pursue risky procedures or pharmaceutical drugs in pursuit of not being skinny.
- Sofie Louise Dam’s comics essay Being Transgender is No Longer Considered a Mental Disorder in Denmark. Here’s Why That’s Not Enough is not only beautifully illustrated but a poignant and informative treatise on the difference between a victory for classification, and a victory for how trans people are actually treated.
- Gemma Correll somehow manages to make art that pulls no punches when it comes to feminism or politics, and yet still makes you smile, and her Fashion Tips for the Apocalypse is no exception.
Other good reads and news of note:
- The quarterly results of the anonymous Fair Page Rates survey are out, and they are not good for Boom! Comics, among others.
- The Kickstarter for the Black Comix Returns anthology, a follow up to the 2010 anthology Black Comix, is now live.
- Marvel announced the cast for their Runaways adaptation on Hulu, which looks fairly good with the exception of Gertrude Yorkes, who is disappointingly skinny in contrast to her comics counterpart.
- Image Comics announced they will release variant covers for some of their series by women artists starting in March, and that the proceeds for these covers will be donated to Planned Parenthood.
- DC Comics released information about their revamped Hanna-Barbera titles, which includes Snagglepuss, no longer queer-coded but actually queer, as a playwright in the era of McCarthyism.
- There’s a very cool profile on Atlas Obscura about Marie Duval, the woman behind the incredibly popular and successful comic strip Ally Slooper back in the 19th century. More things like this, please.
- Brigid Alverson on Smash Pages published her first column in a new series which aims to spotlight comics related to issues in the news. In this, she interviews comics creator Sarah Glidden about Rolling Blackouts, which is her memoir of a trip she took with other journalists through Turkey, Syria, and Iraq, and which focused on refugees from that region.
- #HourlyComicsDay was February 1st, and many of your favorite indie comics creators likely participated. In case you want to catch up, the incredible Zainab Akhtar helpfully created a hyperlinked post and some examples of some of the best over at Comics and Cola.
- Sarah Winifred Searle (mentioned above) also had a comic published on Rewire about a visit to Planned Parenthood.
- Words Without Borders just published a special issue on comics and graphic narratives, featuring comics by incredibly talented creators from around the world.
- HuffPo did a profile on illustrator Shing Yin Khor, the woman responsible for this picture of Resistance Auntie you probably saw floating around on social media, and she is awesome.