March 01, 2005

The Code of the Comic (plus some trivia)

by Alan Beatts

There is a change you may notice at the end of the book listings in this issue.  One of the suggestions made in the recent survey was that it would be nice to have a list of upcoming titles so that one could place pre-orders.  At the end of the book listings you'll find a short list of upcoming titles.  For now we've kept to small presses but in the future we may expand it to include more mainstream publishers.  If you have time, let me know what you think of the addition.

Recently I've been thinking about comics, in part because of going to WonderCon for the first time last month and in part due to two comics I've read recently: (GRIMJACK, which is reviewed later in this newsletter, and Y: THE LAST MAN, which I'll review next month).  It's really fascinating how they have changed in my lifetime.  I started reading comics in the 70s and continued, off and on, until the mid 90s.  I still read them occasionally, usually when prompted by my 12-year-old daughter, but it's an infrequent thing.  But, during the time that I was reading them, there were some profound changes in the style, content, and quality.