June evokes feelings of tranquil, great outdoor weather for me but this year it looks to be hovering around 100 degrees. Great webcomic weather I guess. Before we get to the news check out Mason Landon's ill portraits of historical figures, including the above 5 Dollar Abe.
NCS, REUBENS and THE WEB: A contingent of independent, web-minded cartoonists descended on this year's National Cartoonists Society event, including the Reubens awards. Robot6 covers some commentary by the Half Pixelites on their attendence at the events and the Daily Cartoonist starts to round up reports on it here. This seems like a crossing one of those famous river type moments.
DC COMICS RESETS FOR DIGITAL. The other big story comes out of comic superhero land where DC Comics announced that it was hitting the reset button on its entire universe of characters. Woven into the announcement was the fact that DC will also now release its comics digitally at the same time as print. Details on the revamped line-up of titles are seeping out. Not that anyone who makes these decisions listens to me but let me offer up my latest thoughts on this anyhow. The biggest potential growth route for comics (let's not confuse it with superheroes which have a dandy growth path in movies) is digital. Especially as generational change continues, comics' natural home is going to be digital. So this is a good move by DC, especially if it makes it convenient and reasonably priced for readers to get digital comics legally.
The other part of it is potentially interesting although there's too many details unknown yet. Most of us want good stories. DC and Marvel seem to be built more on telling a story than whether it's a good story or not. Think about television — American television has moved from more open-ended, keep it running as long as possible series to shows with a definite end (even if the ending kind of sucks). British television seems to always take the shorter is better approach to seasons and entire series of shows. Comics could learn a lot from this. Give seasons of DC comics an arc and pay-off. Plan for their natural endings. Don't call it a 2011 comic – call it DC Season 1. If it's done really well, it can have an everlasting life of sales online.
The other thing is writing these iconic comics for kids again but I don't see much about that in the recent news. I think it's a missed opportunity, but it's probably not in the cards.
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