Friday, January 15, 2010

Links Outside the Bottle 04

 Every Friday I bring your fresh links and some commentary in a feature I call, Links Outside the Bottle (clever, I know!), so here's your linkblogging for the week!

LINK - Typically when a company I like goes through a merger, gets bought out, new partnerships etc I cringe, because that means its probably going to change into something I don't like.  Luckily, the new partnership happening at Top Shelf sounds like a good one.  Top Shelf has published some of my favorite books of the last decade like Essex County  and The Surrogates. Good stuff!

LINK - So, you know, Buffygate is the story of the week (uhm, along with the Spider-man re-boot), but really, Marvel's slap in DC's face this week was the most interesting to me.  Marvel is offering retailers a SIEGE #3 variant in return for 50 of DC's Blackest Night tie-in covers (ripped from the books of course).  Those would be the tie-ins involved in the plastic ring promo, that retailers had to order high volumes of in order to get rings.  While this really doesn't offer any direct attack at DC, nor get any money directly back to retailers, it does offer them something that they might be more likely to sell.  I'm guessing turning a profit on this would be difficult at best, though.   So, not sure what the motive behind it was, other than to egg on the rivalry in a kind of active way.  People are calling this a bold move, but then what do you call DC's recent snatching up of exclusives of formerly-Marvel artists (even artists that are more in the eventually-will-be-formerly-Marvel artists).  Ha!

LINK - How about an Avatar Atari Game?  Not really much of a news story or art resource or anything useful like that, but a nifty piece of design none the less... 

LINK - The Beat posted the top ten of the best comics of 2009 meta-list.  Surprisingly, or not surprisingly, I've only read two books on there, Parker: The Hunter (Darwyn Cooke)and The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb (and technically, I'm still working my way through Genesis).  Both of which I've found to be excellent.  So, I definitely think I need to get in gear and try and read some of the other books on the list.  The full list can be found here.

 LINK - A really REALLY amazing post by the Beat about the Archie show at MoCCA (Museum of Comcis and Cartoon Art, Manhattan).  In brief, Archie comics has a long and rather controversial history of not crediting their creators, which in and of itself is unfortunate.  But, as if to add insult to injury, after all of this, apparently there were no wall cards crediting the creators of the art that was on display.  Both Archie and MoCCA assure that this was more of a snafu than anything else (the cards weren't ready yet), which was remedied with a handout.  Its one of those things where, when you read it, it almost makes you sick... but by the end, I was actually impressed by Archie's new CEO John Goldwater, who not only responded to the situation, but was adamant in a seemingly earnest way about doing everything he could to make sure Archie creators are credited wherever the work is displayed.  You don't see much of that... ever.  Anyhow, hats off to Heidi for a fantastic post, and reminding me why the Beat is probably the best and most important comics blog out there.

LINK - Matt (swell artist) at, one of my favorite blogs, Comic Tools posted some interesting stuff about brushes, and did a comparison, if you're interested in nifty stuff like that.  It was actually an a expansion on a previous post where he took back an even earlier post (just check his links, I'm not gonna bother) where he endorses Rosemary brushes.  Ha!  But he ends up doing a really good comparison of some various higher end brushes, which I enjoyed.  Interestingly enough, Rivkah (who also writes one of my favorite blogs and is a fantastic artist-- and that I discovered through Matt's blog) quickly wrote her own retort about the Rosemary brushes, an equally good read.  I dunno... I just love it when blogs interact.

Alright!  There's your links for the week.  You may have noticed I incorporated some links to amazon for teh books I discussed.  Yes those are affiliate links-- not hiding anything.  I only link books I've read, would recommend, and would be writing about whether or not I could post an affiliate link.  Just being on the level with you - half for your benefit, and half because I feel awkward doing it.  See you next week.

No comments:

Post a Comment