I’m happy to help spread the word that Jon B. Cooke, a familiar name to folks who enjoy reading about the stories behind the comics, is helming a new magazine called ACE — All Comics Evaluated set to launch in March. The moniker is meant to indicate both that each issue will include a price guide and that stuff from across the incredibly wide spectrum of today's comics scene will be covered. I wrote a retro-spective on Robin the Boy Wonder for the first issue, as his 75th anniversary is nigh.
I prefer to keep the blog light, but the Charlie Hebdo executions cannot go unmentioned.
The juxtaposition between this subject and the frivolity of things that surround it is absurd. You’ll mostly find any sociopolitical discussion here prompted by examination of a given piece of entertainment. Writers and editorial cartoonists being killed for doing their jobs, however, for provoking thought, for challenging doctrine and indoctrination, for calling bullshit on armed thugs whose perversions of spiritual belief are so counter to the better angels of human nature that they can only impose their points of view through physical intimidation, well, although I know that it’s not inherently more vile than other episodes of violence or injustice visited upon people around the world daily, be they splashed across the media or unconscionably overlooked, it simply hits so close to home that in this instance I can’t not stand up, virtually speaking.
