Spider-Woman In The Front Seat – This Week’s Links

1 week ago 5

“Gee willikers,” you mutter “I sure do wish that the sun would come out.” And beside you, on the desk, a single digit on the accursed monkey’s paw, of which you cannot be rid, curls down, Sol bursting forth from the clouds moments later, and shining down in all its heavenly brilliance right onto your computer monitor, rendering all of this week’s links, below, completely unreadable. You break down, sobbing, “That’s not fair at all, there was time now!” and lever yourself up to close the curtains, plunging the room back into the darkness in which it truly belongs.

soundcheck

— Ian McQue (@ianmcque.bsky.social) 2025-03-01T19:40:04.909Z

This week’s news.

• Starting this week’s selection with some comics prizes news, as it was announced that cartoonist Paul Noth is the winner of this year’s Thurber Prize in Cartoon Art.

• Elsewhere, the shortlists of nominees for this year’s Cartoonist Studio Prize were announced by the Center for Cartoon Studies, with winners to be announced next month; and submissions were opened to this year’s Dwayne McDuffie Award for Diversity in Comics, with a deadline of 1st May 2025, and winners to be announced in July 2025 at this year’s Comic-Con International.

• The family of Welsh cartoonist R.E. Burke, who had been held since late last month by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, shared the news of Burke’s release and repatriation to the UK after 19 days of detention at a facility in Tacoma.

• Checking in with the ongoing proceedings following Diamond Comic Distributors’ filing for bankruptcy, with ICv2 reporting that an increase of Diamond’s credit limit has been approved by court order, as the deadline for bids to be submitted for the company’s assets closed this week - The Beat rounds up the current predictions as to who may have thrown their hat/s in the ring as part of this process, ranging from the reasonable to the more fanciful.

• In memoriam, remembering those the world of comics has lost, as news was shared of the passing of writer and editor Margaret Clark, who died last weekend at the age of 69.

• News was also shared of the passing of Frank Marcucci III, comics specialist at Ohio’s Dark Star Books, who had worked at the store since 1986, and who died last weekend at the age of 59.

• Finally this week, news was shared of the passing of cartoonist and disc jockey John Peck a.k.a. The Mad Peck, graphic artist on Comix : A History of Comic Books in America, who died last weekend at the age of 83.

17/3/25 - nocturn

— Maxim Peter Griffin (@maximpetergriff.bsky.social) 2025-03-17T19:33:21.739Z

This week’s reviews.

TCJ

• Leonard Pierce reviews the sprawling construction of Anders Nilsen’s Tongues, Volume 1 - “There is so much happening in Tongues that cataloguing it all seems like an exercise in futility. But it never seems like too much; it’s not a cluttered event comic and it’s not an exercise in deliberate artsy obscurity. Nilsen lets the events of the story unfold at their own pace – and shockingly for a book so lengthy and jam-packed at over 350 pages, none of which are superfluous.”

• Tim Hayes reviews the wired cool of Mat Wakeham and Jamie Hewlett’s Phoo Action: Silver Jubilee - “And so it is that a short-lived, three-decade-old comics fandango and its never-commissioned TV spin-off are memorialized in this oversized hardback with 400 silver-edged pages, a cloth spine and a slipcase, a book which swapped publishers and slipped well past the actual silver jubilee of the thing it celebrates, a tome that could hospitalize a burglar.”

• Tegan O’Neil reviews the promising debut of Fell Hound’s S.I.R. - “It pleases me to reward creators who I see doing things differently and actively stretching on the page. The fifth issue of the comic is drawn better than the first, which tells me the experience was educational. I hope the book finds an audience because I’d like to see more in this setting, if the author is of a mind. If not, that’s fine too. But I’m enjoying watching her learn on the page and hope to see more soon.”

AIPT

• Colin Moon reviews the targeted nostalgia of Greg and Fake’s Santos Sisters, Volume 1.

• Rory Wilding reviews the repetitive thrills of Tony Fleecs, Trish Forstner, et al’s Feral, Volume 2.

• Kevin Clark reviews the deft blend of Jay Stephens and Fran Strukan’s Red Sonja Attacks Mars #1.

• Michael Guerrero reviews the different start of Jeff Lemire, Nick Robles, et al’s Absolute Flash #1.

• Collier Jennings reviews the tonal oscillations of Duane Murray, Ahmed Raafat, et al’s Who Are The Power Pals? #1; and the unique take of Dan Panosian, Alessio Avallone, et al’s The Last Boy #1.

• David Brooke reviews the vivid details of Scott Hampton’s adaptation of Gregory Maguire’s Wicked, and the historical action of Patrick Zircher’s Solomon Kane: The Serpent Ring #1.

The Beat

• Zack Quaintance reviews the seamless shifts of Ricardo Barreiro, Juan Giménez, et al’s Black Star #1.

• Clyde Hall reviews the skillful storytelling of Christopher Cantwell and Tyler Crook’s Out of Alcatraz #1.

• Jared Bird reviews the methodical pacing of DB Andry, Tim Daniel, Alex Sanchez, et al’s Crush Depth #1.

• Jordan Jennings reviews the effective opening of Duane Murray, Ahmed Raafat, et al’s Who Are The Power Pals #1.

• Joe Grunenwald reviews the smart approach of Jeff Lemire, Nick Robles, et al’s Absolute Flash #1.

• Sean reviews the historical implications of Will Eisner and Gary Chaloner’s The Collected Will Eisner’s John Law, and the stolid solidity of Carol Lay’s Murderburg.

• D. Morris reviews the gleeful brilliance of Greg and Fake’s Santos Sisters, Volume 1.

• Merve Giray reviews the worldbuilding focus of Modomu Akagawara’s adaptation of Natsu Hyuuga’s The Failure at God School, Volume 1, translated by Yumi Tanaka.

• Hayame Kawachi reviews the intriguing plot of Komo Ushino’s Victoria of Many Faces, Volume 1, translated by Andria McKnight.

Broken Frontier

• Gary Usher reviews the wonderful vibrancy of Powerpaola’s La Poderosa #1: Come With Me.

• Andy Oliver reviews the cathartic spectacle of Patrick Horvath’s Free For All #1.

• Lydia Turner reviews the lithe sensuality of Paige Hender’s The Confessional.

Four Color Apocalypse

Ryan Carey reviews the austere presentation of nuie’s Nuie, and the versatile cartooning of Ash H.G.’s East District.

The Hindu

Menaka Raman reviews the striking details of Perumal Murugan and Appupen’s adaptation of C.S. Chellappa’s Vaadivaasal.

House to Astonish

Paul O’Brien has capsule reviews of Marvel Comics’ Astonishing X-Men Infinity Comic #13, X-Men #13, X-Factor #8, Phoenix #9, Hellverine #4, and Sabretooth: The Dead Don’t Talk #4.

Library Journal

Emilia Packard has a starred capsule review of the rapturous triumph of Peter Kuper’s Insectopolis: A Natural History.

Publisher’s Weekly

Have starred capsule reviews of

• The exhilarating lines of Jaime Hernandez’s Life Drawing.

• The spectacular revelation of Paul Karasik, Lorenzo Mattotti, and David Mazzuchelli’s adaptation of Paul Auster’s The New York Trilogy.

• The expressive contemplations of David Rubín’s El Fuego, translated by Andrea Rosenberg.

• The diverting delights of Matt Kindt and Margie Kraft Kindt’s Gilt Frame.

• The sharp hilarity of Alison Bechdel’s Spent.

for the nyt abt similarities/differences between 1918 epidemic and covid

— Katherine Lam (@katherinelam.bsky.social) 2025-03-11T11:45:17.670Z

Solrad

Hagai Palevsky reviews the changing texture of Anna Haifisch’s Ready America.

This week’s interviews.

TCJ

• Jason Bergman interviews Anders Nilsen about Tongues, the draw of the Promethean myth, pats to publishing, and ‘chosen one’ tropes - “At this point, it's almost all scripted through to the end. Like 90%. And then I thumbnail everything – so I do a super sketched out rough version just to block out each panel basically. And then I take the thumbnails and do super, super loose penciling. But from pretty early on, I had a basic outline in my head. For the first several issues, I would just script that issue and then draw it and go on to the next. But I had a general idea of where it was gonna go and the arcs of the main characters.”

• Jake Zawlacki interviews Mat Wakeham about Phoo Action: Silver Jubilee, comic book origins, working across different mediums, and the problems with lore - “I wear a lot of hats. We’ve talked about all my experience, interests, and work history, and one of those things is that I’m a trained graphic designer, that’s where it all started, and an ex-advertising art director. So yeah, this is Jamie’s art, but my art is how you present it, how you photograph it, how you scale it up, how it sits on the page, frame it, retouch it. That’s all part of the storytelling.”

AIPT

• David Brooke speaks with Jay Stephens about Red Sonja Attacks Mars, source material focusing the writing, and weaving science fiction and fantasy into a seamless story.

• Chris Hassan talks to Alex Paknadel and Tim Seeley about Astonishing X-Men, keeping the stakes intimate, and featuring a protagonist whose experience of recent mutant continuity was less than rosy.

The Beat

Adam Wescott interviews Haaris Naqvi about the Marvel Age of Comics series of books, celebrating the cultural impact of the House of Ideas, and authors who may be featured down the line.

Bring Me the News

Christine Schuster speaks with Story Arc Comics and Collectibles’ Lee Amrine about the road to retail, and stocking up the store.

Broken Frontier

Mure and Kit Anderson chat about Ismyre and Second Shift, dog appreciations, creative influences, changing working patterns in the COVID age, and the joys of sad stories.

CTV News

Daniel J. Rowe talks to Andy Belanger and April Petchsri about comics-focused endeavours based out of Montreal, and the importance of a city with low overheads and arts communities to support creators.

ICv2

Brigid Alverson interviews Dark Horse’s Carl Horn about the publisher’s line of deluxe edition manga volumes, and the design considerations behind such collections.

OrilliaMatters

Kevin Lamb talks to Big B Comics’ Marc Sims about the pricing and selling of collector’s item comics, and the changes to the collectors market over the last few decades.

Scroll.in

Diya Isha speaks with Zeina Abirached about A Game for Swallows, the decision to focus the book’s narrative on a single day and night, and the catharsis of telling the story.

Yatta-tachi

Wendeego interviews Peow2’s Patrick Crotty about licensing Hisashi Eguchi’s Stop!! Hibari-kun!, and (from last year) Glacier Bay’s Emuh Ruh about the running of the publisher.

pickituppickituppickituppickittup#scifi #cyberpunk #ska

— Drew Shields (commissions open) (@gnarlyghost.bsky.social) 2025-03-04T16:13:51.815Z

This week’s features and longreads.

• Here at TCJ, RJ Casey welcomes back some returning Arrivals and Departures, this month taking a look at Elias Gonzalez’s Kill For You, Dave Ortega’s Hacienda #3, James Collier’s Ballpark, and Smoke Signal #43 (edited by Gabe Fowler) - “For the last year and half I’ve prided myself in covering as many different artists as I could in these hallowed halls of “Arrivals and Departures.” But not this month! This month I stow away that pride and do a little double-dipping. Yes, I’m going to review artists that I’ve already written about. Will they live up to the hype I’ve potentially burdened them with or will they put out some real sophomore stinkers?”

• Also for TCJ, Sean McCarthy reports from The Drawing Center’s recent exhibition The Way I See It: Selections from the KAWS Collection, sampling the pieces that were on display, and appreciating the alternate timelines they suggested - “Whereas most art history tells the story of art as a series of successive foreclosures of possibility in an increasingly exhausted set of mediums, KAWS’s openhearted collection presents another view—a vision of art history from the point of view of the artist, not the art historian or curator.”

• A pair of reports from this year’s edition of the MoCCA Arts Fest, as Heidi MacDonald visited for The Beat and Meg Lemke attended for Publisher’s Weekly, gauging busyness and business at the Metropolitan Pavilion.

• Over at Forbes, Rob Salkowitz crunches the numbers on another ‘nyuk nyuk’ Bad Ideas press release, asking what six figure orders for a comic really means from a publisher with priors.

• For Shelfdust, Steve Morris writes on Arnold Drake and Bruno Premiani’s My Greatest Adventure and the origins of the Doom Patrol, and how the interior explorations present in subsequent iterations of the team were there from the jump.

• Autobiographix’s Nora Hickey looks back on Charles Burns’ Black Hole, revisiting the book during pregnancy and finding parallels between the book and the changes a body encounters while carrying a child to term.

• From the world of open-access academia, in Visual Studies, Shefali and Preeti Puri present a study on Nate Powell’s Swallow Me Whole and Ravi Thornton’s HOAX Psychosis Blues, examining the link between graphic medicine and visual studies, and the way in which both books depict symptoms of schizophrenia and the subjective nature of experiencing these.

• For The European Journal of Aesthetics, Nicolas Greliche approaches the storied question of what it is that makes a comic a comic, and presents a selection of images that, while not necessarily comics themselves, nonetheless read like a comic.

• From Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, Ruihao Li presents a study investigating the development of art and culture during the Beiyang Government period through the lens of Republican-era comics, and the disruption of art and culture brought about by the upheaval of the time.

• Over at House to Astonish, Paul O’Brien’s census of the villains of Daredevil and 1976 brings with it a certain Bullseye, actualised on the silver screen a mere 27 years later by one Colin Farrell.

• Mike Peterson rounds up the week’s editorial beat, for The Daily Cartoonist, as we close out month two of the (second) President Donald Trump cavalcade.

Introducing the First Annual COMIC CON NEBRASKA!It will be held at the CHI Health Arena & Convention Center in Omaha, Nebraska on August 2-3, 2025More details on our website: comicconnebraska.com

— (@comicconnebraska.com) 2025-03-20T02:42:08.679Z

This week’s audio/visual delights.

A small sample of listening from an otherwise busy week, as Off Panel’s David Harper spoke with Daniel Warren Johnson about Transformers and The Moon is Following Us; the More to Come team presented their annual feature on the comics retail landscape for Publisher’s Weekly; and The Final Straw Radio spoke with Isabella Rotman, Sage Coffey, and Marnie Galloway about Abortion Pill Zine: A Community Guide to Misoprostol and Mifepristone, and the importance of local, focused abortion organising in the current political climate.