Happy Spoopy Season! The fact that it is the season of skelebones, candy skulls, and misery is genuinely the only thing sustaining my miserable existence. But enough of my trash, let’s get to the news you missed.
ShortBox Comics Fair 2022 is ALIVE…IT’S ALIVE!!
ShortBox Comics Fair 2022 is live!
100 brand-new digital comics by 100 independent artist from around the world! Available throughout October.
All proceeds go directly to artists ✨https://t.co/rAHcRXMc4P pic.twitter.com/zKSCTTJ1YT— ShortBox Comics Fair (@SBComicsFair) October 1, 2022
Lucky me, lucky you, we’ve got 100 new comics to get our grubby mitts on. We are so fortunate to have the chance to explore 100 independent artists in such a lovely way. Do you know how some folks like to talk about how they support independent creators but are, just like, glorified IP farms? That’s the opposite of what ShortBox is doing here.
Here’s how ShortBox explains why they conduct an online fair instead of a traditional convention-type situation:
ShortBox Comics Fair is an accessible, comics-focused event: artists and comics readers can participate from anywhere in the world (no travel, no con-crud, no lugging suitcases full of comics back and forth!).
We can all appreciate avoiding bad hotel coffee and intermingling with norovirus and coronavirus.
The creators retain full ownership and rights to their work. They also receive 100% of all sales (minus processing). What’s refreshing about all of this is the obvious transparency and commitment to supporting wildly creative, independent creators from all over. I’m biased because I don’t believe I’ve encountered a ShortBox comic I haven’t adored.
Unlike the fleeting glory of a Scholastic book fair, the ShortBox Comics Fair runs until October 31, 2022. Be sure to check out the fair and exhibitors.
Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute has a pretty nifty exhibition about comics and the coronavirus. It’s called “Drawing Us Together: Public Life and Public Health in Contemporary Comics.”
Unlike other exhibits, which, let’s face it, can be boring AF. This one is interactive; it encourages you to consider how to bring comics into more extensive discussions about health and democracy. Here’s some more information from the exhibition’s website:
The global pandemic and recent movements for racial justice have tested public and private institutions in this country; our sense of collective wellbeing; and familial, social, and civic lives. Drawing Us Together: Public Life and Public Health in Contemporary Comics explores these challenges and the interconnectedness of contemporary public life and public health through the medium of comics. Authors and artists share a range of stories across time, experience, and identity through the interplay among images and words.
The exhibit features some 80 comics in various forms and formats; yes, you can read them. If you follow this link, you’ll see a list of all the comics in the exhibit.
The exhibit goes until Saturday, December 17, 2022. Anyone wanna take a trip with me?
The Marvel Cinematic Universe is a Black Hole
Yeah. I said it.
Well, okay. Not JUST me. Journalist Luke Winkie — writing for Nieman Lab (part of the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard) — goes into the cottage industry that is covering every Marvel movie release. Pageviews still rule everything around us, and the people dictate they want Marvel content! They want it all day and night. They want it on Good Housekeeping. Heck, they want it wherever they can bloody-well get it.
“Even now, almost 15 years into the MCU’s existence, Marvel content in general — not just movie and TV trailers and reviews — still consistently overperforms, in terms of traffic, for a lot of the sites I’ve worked at over the past decade or so,” said Charles Pulliam-Moore, who covers film and TV for The Verge. “In the same way that Disney’s really learned how to capitalize on the fan hype that builds up around all of its projects, newsrooms have jumped onto Marvel releases as reliable sources of traffic because the eyeballs are just always there, and people are hungry for that content….[The] traffic’s so consistent, and covering the beat pretty much guarantees that people are going to click on a link just to see what’s up.”
Love that genre entertainment beat.
“It’s the brutal reality of an increasingly fallow, top-heavy box office: You either singularly dominate every conversation, or you effectively do not exist. So media companies will continue to ask their reporters to supply oxygen to the MCU, and make sure no post-credits scene is left uncovered. They couldn’t do their job any other way.”
Am I just playing into Marvel’s sick-sick game by covering this article? I’m sure I am. But like the snake eating its tail…I got nothing. The MCU will come for us all eventually. We may be part of the MCU already. Did you ever think about that? Maybe reality doesn’t exist, and we are part of a much larger cinematic universe.
Cripes. I need sleep.
