Good morning. We’re a day late this week, because yours truly has had some difficult times. Such is life. Onward.
First, let’s start with some goodbyes:
- After over 18 years of contributing to Newsarama, Chris Arrant is finally moving on. He has yet to announce his next splash in the industry, but we’re all waiting with bated breath to see what it is!
- In less happy news, Ian Kennedy has passed. Kennedy’s name is likely not well known to modern comics fans, but he has a storied legacy as an illustrator of war comics in the UK, and even after entering into a semi-retirement in 1997, continued to produce covers for Commando Comics until the time of his death.
- Another sad farewell, as Anne D. Bernstein has passed. Bernstein was a comics editor, artist, and an animation writer, whose credits include Nickelodeon Magazine and the Daria cartoon.
And now for the rest of the news:
In an extremely smart move, because the pandemic is nowhere near over, the Chicago Alt Comics Expo is continuing its postponement until 2023 rather than endanger creators and guests alike. Good on you folks.
Every few years a story like this comes around; a large trove of comics is stolen, and there often isn’t much that can be done to recover them. This one has a bit of a different spin: A man named Todd Peak, head of security at Florida State University’s Strozier Library, has been arrested for the theft of nearly 5,000 comics from the Robert M. Ervin Jr. Collection, which was donated to FSU over 40 years ago. Among the stolen items were long runs of early Superman, Batman, and X-Men issues, alongside treasures like Eerie and Creepy comics, horror titles that predate the implementation of the Comics Code Authority in the mid-50s. To date, 2,843 of the missing comics have been recovered.
Here’s an excellent article over at Anime Herald about Webtoon’s 2020 commitment to actively represent the Black community, and how well they’re living up to that promise, two years on.
Speaking of commitments to representing marginalized communities, Marvel came under fire from one of their own artists this past week. Greg Smallwood, after “correcting” some of his art to be “within tolerance for best representation of Asian characters.” It’s understandable that Marvel might be sensitive to such things, however, it’s also an example of the way that corporate hierarchy can actually inhibit accurate portrayals of marginalized communities. But I’m white, so I’ll defer to Jen Bartel’s explanation of it here:
For those who aren’t aware, there is a long history of Asians having our eyes described as “suspicious”, “untrustworthy”, etc—literally resulting in the invention of a Eurocentric double eyelid surgery that was then forced upon wounded Korean soldiers by American surgeons. pic.twitter.com/qKFiELR6lg
— Jen Bartel (@heyjenbartel) February 9, 2022
Essentially, by making this correction, Marvel has imitated in fiction what was done to actual Korean people in the ’50s; enforcing a Eurocentric ideal without consideration for what it might mean to Asian audiences (or even Asian creators currently working with Marvel).
The day readers have dreaded since Amazon’s acquisition of Comixology in 2014 is finally arriving; the site is being taken down, its services folded directly into Amazon itself, presumably because Bezos cannot help himself from making customer experiences worse for his own profit. Worse how, you might ask? Well, as part of the move, comics preorders and subscriptions on Comixology are being canceled, rather than transferred, with the onus on customers to then re-up these things manually on Amazon’s website. Additionally, as if that weren’t bad enough, customers outside of the US will have no option to subscribe to comics at all, despite that service previously existing on Comixology.
Thanks for nothing, Amazon!
That’s all I’ve got for now. Take care of yourselves, remind the important folks in your life that you love them, and go read some comics.
