The top comics-related news stories from June 15 to June 21, 2013:1. Iconic alt-comics industry figure, legendary editor and translator Kim Thompson passes away from complications due to cancer at age 56.
2. CAKE in Chicago may have grown to the point in its second year where it has solved the longstanding question of putting a show with appeal to the arts- and alt-comics factions in one of the great cities for comics -- a place where that kind of comics-making hasn't had a significance presence since before Wizard bought the Rosemont show.
3. A bunch of people thinking out loud about Superman in an avalanche of feature articles on the occasion of a new, hit movie out puts on display just how much that traditional comic-book character exists as a character wholly outside of comics. The most interesting article to me was this one on how a "super-soldier" concept appealed to the National Guard as an advertiser.
Winner Of The Week
Kim Thompson. Thank you, Kim.
Loser Of The Week
North American newspapers, for a couple of reasons, but the comics one that springs to mind is that we have about a half-dozen cartoonists as able to drive thinking on major issues as Zapiro does here; they're just not as valued.
Quote Of The Week
"On the chore-to-fun scale it's definitely on the 'fun' side, on the profitable-to-indulgence scale 'indulgence.' If we were really hurting financially and/or I had to pick and choose projects based on the degree to which each could help the company's bottom line, most of the foreign work would have to go: Sibyl-Anne is utterly unjustifiable as a wise expenditure of my time or Fantagraphics' printing dollars from a corporate viewpoint. But Eric [Reynolds] and Gary [Groth] have a similar set of judgments to make on their projects, as I guess any publisher does. And of course it's great when 'fun' and 'profitable' sync up: It's hard to imagine a more fun project than doing the definitive repackaging of Peanuts or Barks, and it's definitely profitable." -- Kim Thompson in 2011, on publishing mid-20th Century Franco-Belgian Kids Comics
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cover by Franquin
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