Wild Apricot says you should be blogging.

Obviously, I have a certain interest here, as I am blogging, but I’m still skeptical. I think you should be connecting somehow, but I also think you should pick the best way to connect with that audience. No one, but no one, comments on my organization’s blog, and I used to update it every day. Facebook on the other hand…now that’s some busy stuff. I’d rather focus on Facebook and update the blog semi-regularly. There’s only so much time in the day.

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Stephen Colbert and farm work

A great post on Stephen Colbert’s recent political activism. I don’t think anyone in an urban area can realize just how hard farm work is, and how unsecure life is for farmers on the margins, much less migrant workers.

This kind of bizarre essay on the Tunbridge World’s Fair touches on it a bit– how romantic life with cows and chickens and horses look on the surface– but it’s not the whole of it. (I’m still working on my response to it, in fact!)

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Politics for a Monday morning.

Blue Corn Comics gets to the heart of the current “Kenyan tribesman” smear of Obama. Money quote: As I said before, today’s conservatives believe illegal immigrants = Mexicans = Latinos = Indians. Add in blacks, Muslims, and anyone else who isn’t a white Christian and you’ve got the whole picture.

The Arizona Republic discusses how the feds and tribal police screwed up a serial rape investigation so badly that as many as 17 victims never saw justice and probably never will. Pretty Bird Woman House is an excellent resource if you want to start learning more.

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Comics and insularity.

There’s a recent rather acrimonious debate about a book called “The Best American Comics Criticism,” which is actually about what one editor thought was the most interesting criticism from 2000-2009, and mostly contained pretty conventional assessments of pretty conventional stuff– with only one article written by a woman.

This is no real surprise, and perhaps the biggest surprise is that it raised controversy even within the ‘mainstream’ comics crowd. Last night Steve Bissette pointed out that there’d never been significant assessment (or indeed any real assessment at all) in The Comics Journal about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which was the best-selling indie comic for years and years and years (not to mention the larger pop-culture phenomenon).

I’m not sure in any other industry but comics would you have so few words written about Tundra Publishing, which burned through about $15 million in three years (at least!), brought out The Crow and, infamously, failed to bring out Big Numbers, and about which I have been googling maniacally trying to find more information since last night when my friend L linked me to this great interview with Kevin Eastman– warning, it’s a pdf, but it’s really great– and I remembered another, older interview that seems to have disappeared from the web.

Now it’s got me digging. But it’s interesting to see how much of ‘mainstream’ comics criticism and blogging focus on a very narrow (to me!) field of interest.

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Steve Bissette at the Center for Cartoon Studies

Tonight I had the pleasure of attending a gallery talk by Steven R. Bissette, at the opening of his new exhibition at the Center for Cartoon Studies.

It was an absolute blast– Bissette is as wonderful a speaker as he is an artist, and his tremendous enthusiasm for the subject shone through the whole time. His collection is amazing, and the stories were great too. If you’re in the Upper Valley, the artwork and a small catalog with Bissette’s descriptions of each page are on display through October 16.

(Why yes, I was the one who had the Tales of the TMNT cover he showed the inks for, why do you ask?)

At any rate, not only am I half-inspired to write comics again (and maybe even– eek!– draw), I was inspired to open up this blog, and maybe I’ll keep up with it this time!