Comics Lowdown: My Favorite Thing Is Comics

Awards, best of the year, comics journalism comics, and how the shift in retail channels is changing the industry.

The Best of the Year lists are starting to roll out. Katie Green’s Lighter Than My Shadow tops Amazon’s list, which also includes Jeff Lemire and Dean Ormston’s Black Hammer and Emil Ferris’s My Favorite Thing Is Monsters. That book shows up on Publisher’s Weekly’s list as well, but the similarities end there.

A recent cartoon by KAL

So Nice He Won It Twice: Kevin “KAL” Kallaugher, the editorial cartoonist for the Baltimore Sun and The Economist, says he spends more time looking at Donald Trump’s face than his own, and his suffering has paid off: He is the first person ever to win the National Press Foundation’s Clifford K. and James T. Berryman Award for Editorial Cartoons twice.

Comics Journalism 101: The journalism site Poynter has a great article about comics journalism—that’s journalism in comics form, not journalism about comics—with insights from Joe Sacco, Jen Sorenson, Ronald Wimberly, and others.

Interviews and Profiles

Ali Fitzgerald

Ali Fitzgerald, currently the artist in residence at the Center for Cartoon Studies in Vermont, talks about her work in progress, Fraktur: Drawn Escapes in Berlin, which, in her words, “explores Berlin’s historic and contemporary relationship to refugees and bohemia.”

Reviews, Roundups, and Commentary

Celebrity Comix: The Guardian interviews Zadie Smith, Ethan Hawke, Amanda Palmer, and Nick Hornby about their tastes in comics and graphic novels.

Comics History: Devin Whitlock writes up a presentation by Valentino L. Zullo on the history of queer comix.

The Biz

Festival News: Comic Arts Brooklyn, which happens tomorrow, has expanded and moved to a bigger venue.

Retail Tales: Oregon Public Radio has a wide-ranging look at how the popularity of graphic novels is changing the entire structure of the comics industry. Portland, Oregon, is fertile territory for this story, which looks at Powell’s books and a local retailer as well as the three publishers that are headquartered in the area—Oni Press, Dark Horse, and Image.

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