Hello all, this is Kayleigh Hearn with the first Previously on Comics for April! I hope you all had a great weekend and no one pranked you with screaming zombie videos or fake Congressional runs. Onward!
- On March 31 it was abruptly announced that Comics Alliance would be shutting down. Since its founding in 2009, CA has been a popular and essential source for comic book and pop culture news, winning an Eisner Award for Best Comics Periodical/Journalism in 2015. Comics journalism is a colder and emptier place without Comics Alliance, and the WWAC team wishes their writers and editors the best in their future endeavors. Their final article, appropriately enough, is called “Why We Love Comics.”
- Marvel Comics announced the return of digital codes with print releases of new comics. The digital release program was changed in January, to many fans’ consternation. Marvel SVP of Sales and Marketing David Gabriel also announced readers would receive an additional bonus comic with their purchase.
- Controversy broke out when details of Marvel’s Retailer Summit were released. Many quotes from this summit sparked arguments and discussion online, including Axel Alonso’s assertion that “There are fewer artists that impact sales than there are writers,” and David Gabriel stating that readers were “turning their noses up against” new books with diverse and female leads. After the quotes went viral, David Gabriel issued a statement re-iterating that Marvel’s new heroes “are not going anywhere!”
- Ms. Marvel writer and co-creator G. Willow Wilson responded to the controversy and the successes of books like Ms. Marvel with her blog post “So About That Whole Thing:”
What I didn’t realize was that the anxieties felt by young Muslims are also felt by young Mormons, evangelicals, orthodox Jews, and others. A h-u-g-e reason Ms Marvel has struck the chord it has is because it deals with the role of traditionalist faith in the context of social justice, and there was–apparently–an untapped audience of people from a wide variety of faith backgrounds who were eager for a story like this. Nobody could have predicted or planned for that. That’s being in the right place at the right time with the right story burning a hole in your pocket.
- On Instagram, artist Tula Lotay shared her Mondo poster art for the Kristen Stewart film Personal Shopper, along with preliminary sketches:
- At WonderCon, IDW announced they would be publishing a complete hardcover collection of Mr. A, Steve Ditko’s suit-wearing Objectivist superhero (no, the other one.)
- Ramon Villalobos shared some awesome WonderCon art, including Superman and…Tom Cruise?
Did a sketch of jerry maguire. pic.twitter.com/wAKBIg1y18
— villalobos ?? (@RamonVillalobos) April 1, 2017
