November
20
Comics are Big News
As if it wasn't hard enough to keep up with reading all the cool comicbooks, graphic novels and collected editions that come out all the time, dozens of articles about comics and comics creators have been so plentiful the past week or so that it's hard to keep track of it all.
Los Angeles-area media has been especially comics crazy with the opening of the Masters of American Comics exhibit at the UCLA Hammer Museum and Museum of Contemporary Art. The exhibit opens today (Nov. 20) and runs through March 12; press previews were held last week but I had to beg off due to a pesky cold that kept me from doing little but work and sleep.
The Los Angeles Times was the big local booster, with a cover story in Thursday's Calendar Weekend section on where to find the best comics and recommendations from Chip Kidd, Brad Meltzer and Adrian Tomine, and a short primer on area comics shops. L.A. Weekly chimed in with 10 Comics that Shook the World, and a much better tour of the best places to buy comics.
That was followed by a cover-featured review in the L.A. Times Book Review of Will Eisner's "A Contract with God Trilogy" and "The Quitter," by Harvey Pekar and Dean Haspiel. And if you blinked, you might have missed a profile of "Persepolis" and "Embroideries" author Marjane Satrapi on the cover the Sunday Calendar section. Not to be outdone, the New York Times Book Review digs into “Absolute Watchmen.”
What makes all this attention even more interesting is the way it's coming just as the holiday shopping season kicks into high gear. That means lots of people are going to give and receive graphic novels as gifts this year — and is a great sign for the future of the medium and its ability to find the new audiences that seemed so elusive a mere decade ago.
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Hiya- can anyone tell me if there are any plans for a Power Girl toy in the works?
Posted by: MrNil | November 21, 2005 at 04:35 PM