Cold Weather Blues – This Week’s Links

Well, we are a whole 17 days into the new year, a scant quarter of a century into this increasingly less-new millennium, and we’ve already hit 2025’s allocation of Too Much News in the span of about 4 days, as can be seen in this week’s links, below.

aaaaaall aboaaaard!

— Little Tunny (@littletunny.bsky.social) 2025-01-14T21:52:53.976Z

This week’s news.

• Starting off this week’s selection with news that likely isn’t entirely surprising, if you’ve been following the trials and travails of the comics distribution sector recently, as Diamond Comic Distributors this week announced that the company has filed a voluntary petition for chapter 11 bankruptcy, in order to reorganise the business. JP Morgan Chase will provide $41 million in financing to protect operations during this period, and Diamond UK will be acquired by Universal Distribution. Diamond cites loss of business due to the pandemic and subsequent fragmentation of the distribution market as drivers of the filing. Its biggest creditor is currently Penguin Random House, which is owed $9 million, according to court filings.

• NBC News reported this week that Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Darrin Bell has been arrested for alleged possession of child pornography and computer generated/AI child pornography - Bell was taken into custody on Wednesday, and has been booked into Sacramento County jail.

• More women this week came forward to accuse writer Neil Gaiman of sexual assault, as part of a Vulture article that also contains interviews with women who had previously made public their allegations against the author - Gaiman has publicly denied all allegations of nonconsensual sexual activity and abuse.

• Following recent wildfires in California, the Book Industry Charitable Foundation this week announced that Dav Pilkey, Forefront Books, Ingram Content Group, Macmillan Publishers, and Mad Cave Studios have provided a gift for match funding up to $45,000 to help support comic stores and employees affected by the fires and other natural disasters - a previous $10,000 matched gift from Bookshop.org has already been met - various crowdfunding programs, mutual aid pools, and emergency funds are currently open to applications and donations..

• Elsewhere, Inkstuds’ Robin McConnell shared that Moondog creator George Metzger has moved into residential care, due to declining health, and that Metzger’s son, Johnstone, is currently running a GoFundMe to cover costs supporting this move.

• News from the continent, as Marjane Satrapi this week announced a refusal to accept the Legion d’Honneur from France’s government, the highest French order of merit, due to the country’s stance on visa’s for Iranian nationals, posting on Instagram that “I can’t continue seeing the children of Iranian oligarchs come to spend their holidays in France, even become naturalised, while at the same time young dissidents have difficulty in obtaining a tourist visa to come to see what the country of the Enlightenment and human rights looks like.”

• Finally this week, Women Write About Comics’ Publisher Kate Tanski announced that the site will soon be temporarily shutting down, while WWAC restructures with an aim to relaunching as a nonprofit organisation - WWAC achieved the threepeat for the Eisner award in the Best Comics-Related Periodical/Journalism category between 2020 and 2022.

Used to do weird autobiographical comic strips back in the day...

— Roque Romero (@roqueromero.bsky.social) 2025-01-16T15:53:42.566Z

This week’s reviews.

TCJ

• Joe McCulloch reviews the focused worldview of Shirato Sanpei’s The Legend of Kamui, Volume 1, translated by Richard Rubinger, Noriko Rubinger, and Alexa Frank - “Few passages in this book are so wordy, although Shirato frequently addresses the reader directly though notes placed in the panel gutters or blocks of white space on the page. Sometimes he offers historical tidbits, sometimes he reflects on what the story means - sometimes he teases the reader with what's to come, like a proletarian Stan Lee.”

• Kevin Brown reviews the fitting tribute of Tim Bird’s Adrit on a Painted Sea - “In this book, art and loss are connected, not because Tim wants readers to see his mother as a brilliant artist and to mourn the loss of a creative genius, but because creating art was so much a part of who she was to him. When he talks about family vacations, her artwork takes up most of the page, not merely as background to the scene, but because her creation of that art so suffused her life that he is unable to think about the time he spent with her and their family without thinking of her paintings as well.”

• Leonard Pierce reviews the expert hilarity of Edward Steed’s Forces of Nature - “Just as relevant are his faces. Steed doesn’t so much draw people as he does malevolent gremlins in human form; they maintain the appearance of normality, but their mad eyes and leering, sinister grins give them away. It is this, combined with his attraction to the grotesque and violent couched in ordinary social interactions and banal occurrences, that makes for comparison to the great Charles Addams.”

AIPT

• Colin Moon reviews the character history of Marvel Comics’ Blade Epic Collection: Nightstalkers.

• Michael Guerrero reviews the dynamic intrigue of Mark Waid, Adrián Gutiérrez, et al’s Batman/Superman: World’s Finest #35.

• David Brooke reviews the thrilling tension of Christopher Cantwell and Tyler Crook’s Out of Alcatraz #1.

• Collier Jennings reviews the apocalyptic imagery of Grant Sputore, Ryan Engle, Jay Martin, et al’s Behemoth #1.

ArtReview

Jamie Sutcliffe reviews the intense experimentation of CF’s Distant Ruptures.

The Beat

• Zack Quaintance reviews the shining designs of Brian K. Vaughan and Nico Henrichon’s Spectators.

• Matt Ledger reviews the compelling beats of Jeremy Adams, V Ken Marion, et al’s Green Lantern: Fractured Spectrum #1.

• D. Morris reviews the kinetic fluidity of Chris Condon, Alessandro Cappuccio, et al’s Ultimate Wolverine #1.

• Khalid Johnson reviews the interesting angle of Vita Ayala, Skylar Patridge, et al’s The Horizon Experiment – Finders // Keepers #1.

• Clyde Hall reviews the wry nostalgia of Alisa Kwitney, Mauricet, et al’s Howl #1.

• Jared Bird reviews the satisfying finale of John Harris Dunning, Ricardo Cabral, et al’s Summer Shadows #4.

• Merve Giray reviews the promising start of Chihiro Yuzuki’s With You, Our Love Will Make It Through Volume 1, translated by Alethea Nibley and Athena Nibley.

• Arpad Okay reviews the dreamy sweetness of Tsuchika Nishimura’s The Concierge at Hokkyoku Department Store, translated by Jan Cash.

Broken Frontier

Andy Oliver has reviews of:

• The beautiful nostalgia of Luke Pearson’s Hilda and Twig Hide from the Rain.

• The thoughtful juxtapositions of Julian Payne’s Women’s Work (Colossive Cartographies #61).

• The unexpected goodbye of Rebellion’s Monster Fun #26.

• The triumphant experimentation of Dave Baker’s Mary Tyler MooreHawk.

• The dream-like world of Edward Taylor’s 2 Stories (Both Involving an Egg).

• The warming celebration of DC Thomson’s Jackie: 60 Years of Magic.

• The intriguing discussions of Nick Merdasi’s Condoms: Part One.

Four Color Apocalypse

Ryan Carey reviews the revolutionary structuring of Tana Oshima’s Before After.

House to Astonish

Paul O’Brien has capsule reviews of Marvel Comics’ Astonishing X-Men Infinity Comic #6, Uncanny X-Men #8, Wolverine #5, NYX #7, Magik #1, and Sentinels #4.

Solrad

Elias Rosner reviews the biting satire of Evan Dahm’s The Last Delivery.

play to win #art #dorohedoro

— Rii Abrego (@riibrego.bsky.social) 2025-01-14T17:11:58.636Z

This week’s interviews.

TCJ

Jim Falcone interviews Corinne Halbert about Acid Nun, childhood creativity, cartooning evolutions, and where you draw the line when it comes to dark subject matter - “There definitely was a lot of American Horror that you could point to that also had these types of characters, but Europeans have always been far ahead of America in terms of being comfortable with sex, sexuality, nudity, all that stuff. And so you have so much off the chain, Euro Horror stuff that’s really sexy and fun.”

Broken Frontier

Ellie Egleton Speaks with Jeremy Whitley about Navigating with You, creating characters with distinct voices, the rarity of love stories focused on disabled characters, and stories within stories.

The Lantern

Olivia Hoffman talks to the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum’s Jenny Robb about the "See Anyone You Know? The New Yorker Cartoons and Covers of Edward Koren" exhibition.

Off Panel

David Harper chats with Charles Soule and Ryan Browne about The Lucky Devils, lessons learned from previous collaborations and the excitement of a new book going to print.

Print

• Amelie Nash interviews Paul Peart-Smith about adapting Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz’s Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States and the challenges inherent in making the book.

• Steven Heller speaks with Frank Viva about The New Yorker work that did and did not make it to print, depictions of the President-elect, and attempting to provide a detached perspective.

Publisher’s Weekly

Brigid Alverson talks to Maria van Lieshout about Song of a Blackbird, the family history behind the book, and the editorial process of bringing the story to print.

My B.ENO strip is done. You can read the whole thing and a steaming pile of other goodies on my Patreon. Patreon.com/frasergeesin

— Fraser Geesin (@frasergeesin.bsky.social) 2025-01-04T16:55:13.577Z

This week’s features and longreads.

• Here at TCJ, as the U.S. prepares for the incoming Trump administration, Gina Gagliano writes on the potential impact that wide-ranging tariffs may have on the comic book industry, speaking with publishers about the realities of printing books overseas - “Tariffs are one of the many factors that are affecting printing costs today. Over the past several years, costs on shipping have also gone up, leading publishing to become more and more expensive. So adding an increased tariff cost to already-strained supply chain budgets could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back on printing in China for some publishers.”

• Also for TCJ, Zach Rabiroff charts the impending return of Donald Trump to the Oval Office, from the perspective of political cartoonists, as they prepare for four more years of one of the most cartooned individuals in America - “Paradoxically, then, the very system of technological innovation that enabled Trump’s rise also opens the ultimate opportunity for his fall: because communication is infinitely democratic, and because reality, at the end of the day, can and must assert its own existence, there is yet some cause for eventual hope. There are limits to this optimism, especially considering the sheer scale of media consolidation in the hands of Trump’s richest supporters.”

• Over at Shelfdust, Steve Morris makes an admission regarding enjoyment (or not) of Charles Schulz’s Peanuts, admiring the contribution that Schulz made to the canon, and interrogating the subjective nature of comics appreciation.

• For The Conversation, Anna Walker compares and contrasts Richard McGuire’s Here, in graphic novel and strip form, with Robert Zemeckis’ filmic adaptation, which released last year to less than stellar reviews.

• Over at ICv2, Rob Salkowitz charts the path that led to Diamond Distribution’s filing for chapter 11 bankruptcy this week, looking back on the company’s shift from functional monopoly to small(er) fish in a much bigger pond, and examining where things may go from here.

• From the world of open access academia, out of the University of Torino, comes Visual Narratives and Global Journeys: Unveiling Contemporary Arab Cultures, edited by Claudia Maria Tresso, Jolanda Guardi, and Sarah L. Nesti Willard, which seeks to highlight Arab visual arts and highlight the means of identity they convey.

• For Humanities, Jessica Caravaggio writes on Maggie Tokuda-Hall and Lisa Sterle’s Squad, analysing the way in which the book critiques the hierarchical nature of individualistic Western/liberal feminism.

• For the Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, Fadhlan Muchlas Abrori, Zsolt Lavicza, and Adi Nur Cahyono present a scoping literature review identifying trends in the relatively new field of comics developed to address socioscientific issues.

• BMC Public Health presents a trial out of Burkina Faso to evaluate the effectiveness of comic book interventions to enhance mental health literacy in individuals aged 10-24 years.

• Mike Peterson rounds up the week’s editorial beat, over at The Daily Cartoonist, as the U.S. prepares to meet the new boss(es), same as the old boss(es).