What’s been happening in comics?
Our Kat Overland, editor of small press reviews here at WWAC, is quoted in the NYT’s report on America Chavez; a Zora Neal Hurston biography upset (which our Brenda reviewed here) comes quick on the heels of Island #15 (who should draw who, and how? This should be asked, and opportunities shared with a mind to history); Death Note‘s Netflix adaptation has us asking all of that all over again, not to mention “how come Death Note is a cultural phenomenon already if white people are necessary for widespread enjoyment?”; Jay Lynch and Bernie Wrightson leave their bodies of work behind with us as they move forward to whatever each believed might follow after death. We have cancer to thank for that. Go US healthcare!
Elsewhere, manga is calling from both inside and outside the house, being (and being recognised as) of course simply a mode of communication and a method of sharing ideas, feelings, stories. Comics are a cultural tool — which is why we at WWAC bother with any of this, of course.
And that’s why it’s such a bother when cartoonists hear “denied!” for no good reason, as Dale Lazarov has several years in a row from C2E2:
ReedPop/C2E2 wrote to confirm that they do not book me to exhibit or panel because of "family-friendly" sensitivity. But they book THIS: pic.twitter.com/uS7Jdidq8v
— Dale Lazarov — now by mail order! (@dalelazarov) March 27, 2017
Now I know what you’re thinking. “Scheduling in an anime titty wank festival but not Lazarov’s expressly positive, mutually-defined man-on-man erotica? That sounds pretty homophobic, Claire!” And you’re right, my sweet friend. It does. ReedPop, who run C2E2, are yet to respond.
