Hello and welcome again to another edition of Previously on Comics! If you’re like me, you haven’t been paying attention to much of anything in the world of comics, because the U.S. election, #NoDAPL, American Thanksgiving, and of course, the Gilmore Girls Netflix revival, among other distractions. Luckily, there have been some great news posts by our WWAC writers:
Alenka wrote about Allison Bechdel’s new Dykes To Watch Out For comic.
Ray asked the question we were all thinking: Rat Queens to Reboot in March, but why?
As for the rest, let’s get caught up together, shall we?
In case you missed it, March: Book Three, the final book in the incredible comics adaptation/collaboration between Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell with Representative John Lewis, won the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature on November 16th. There’s been a bunch of articles and tweets about it and how important this is for comics, which have never won the National Book Award before, but for me–ignore all that, and watch Rep. Lewis’s acceptance speech.This is about so much more than just comics.
Moving on, I’m extremely happy to see this interview on Refinery29 with Gabby Rivera about her upcoming America Chavez solo series. A queer Latina writing about a queer Latina? Is this real life?? Also, I am all about these variant covers:
We also got this announcement that Saladin Ahmed is going to be writing the new Black Bolt solo ongoing series, which also sounds cool. I know very little about Black Bolt except that he doesn’t speak, which is one reason that I’m really looking forward to seeing how Ahmed approaches storytelling with this character. While Marvel continues to be good (though by no means perfect) about having people from marginalized communities write (and sometimes draw) solo series starring characters who are from those same marginalized communities, I have commented before that I’ve wondered when creators from marginalized communities will be offered say, Spider-Man.
And finally, Comics Arts Los Angeles is happening this weekend and it sounds like there will be a ton of cool things happening, including this debut of sketches, comics, and poetry by Steven Universe creator (and one of my personal heroes) Rebecca Silver. I went to CALA last year, and had the opportunity to meet awesome people. I would go back this year, but the venue is kind of a dealbreaker for me, as I wrote about last year. In addition to the too-small space and lack of accessibility, I just think that bathrooms shouldn’t be open-ceiling stalls when you only have one open loft floor.
More Cool Stuff:
- It’s that time of year when the “Best Of 2016” posts begin to show up. Here’s the Washington Post’s Best Graphic Novels of 2016. Here’s Amazon’s.
- Fantagraphics will begin distributing UK comics small press Breakdown Press. Its first titles, available in the November Diamond catalog, are Red Red Rock and other stories 1967-1970 by Hayashi Seiichi, edited by Ryan Holmberg and The Artist by Anna Haifisch, which was recently reviewed by Claire.
- This write-up on Vulture of one journalist’s attempt to connect with Steve Ditko makes for fascinating reading.
- Did you ever wonder how much money manga artists make on anime adaptations? I know that sounds clickbait-y but it’s definitely worth the click.
