Did you celebrate Free comic book day on Saturday (May 5th)? If you aren’t lucky enough to live near-by to a comic book store, fret not: you can download a free PDF of Comics Festival! 2005. Also reports wise, The Daily Cross Hatch, Jog and Gary Esposito (for The Comics Reporter) have it covered. The CR also have a Collective Memory post for the day. + Grumpy Old Bookman reviews Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie’s Lost Girls: “It is, in fact, rather hard to identify the natural audience for this book. It will appeal most, I think, to those with an odd combination of eccentric tastes — tastes in art, literature, popular culture, and erotica (if we must use that shop-soiled term). Despite its exclusivity, however, I believe that this book will still be read in many years’ time.” + Neil Gaiman’s pictures from Moore and Gebbie’s wedding (via CR) + The pilot episode of Tony Millionaire’s Drinky Crow Show, plus interviews with Millionaire in the City Paper, Newsarama and the NY Times (via Flog!) + Nick Bertozzi’s Book Notes for The Salon and an interview in The Daily Cross Hatch: “A couple of editors have asked me to do pitches at Marvel and DC. I’ve done a lot of pitching, and nothing’s really stuck to the walls. There’s a real formula to it—it’s like writing an episode of Friends. I might not enjoy the show, but I still appreciate the craft that goes into creating a joke that a million people can laugh at. It’s the same with superhero comics. I don’t have that talent.”
[Image: Fletcher Hanks]
The Cross Hatch also talk to Craig Thompson. And: Doot Doot Garden Blog, Thompson’s blog. + John Porcellino interviewed by The AV Club: ” Punk rock was the first thing I found in my life that made me feel acceptable. The thing that got me into punk rock was the idea, “You’re fine just the way you are.” It sounds kind of dorky, and the bands wouldn’t have put it like that, but you don’t have to make excuses for who you are or what you do. I was probably kind of a weirdo.” Check out John Porcellino’s top 5 songs on 3:AM. + The Guardian look at Breaking Free, the anarchist pastiche of Tintin. + Jonathan Lethem is to pen a story for Marvel’s Omega the Unknown, not much of a surprise considering his best novel is named after Superman’s retreat. More here. Perhaps more surprising, Ian Rankin is to write a John Constantine graphic novel. + Tom Spurgeon interviews Jordan Crane: ” Oh, God, reading modern superhero comics, none of it makes any fucking sense. It’s not a language. It’s just a bunch of drawings where you can read the words and string it together narratively and get through it. But there’s no language, there’s no punctuation, there’s nothing that makes formal sense about it. I suppose you could argue that that sort of intuition on the part of the reader is the leap that art can make, and all that sort of thing. But I really don’t buy it.” + 3:AM’s David Thompson on Fletcher Hanks, the “Ed Wood of comics”. + Plenty of cos-play (and Jeffrey Brown) at the Bristol Comics Expo. + Lastly, Comic Geek Speak, a comics podcast (via LHB)
