Look, we all know that throughout the 20th century, the comics industry was dominated by white men. And largely because of that, the comics that were produced featured primarily white men. So it stands to reason that, now that we're in an era where old comic strips are getting handsome, bound collections that reprint an entire series, a lot of the collections we see also feature white men (or animal stand-ins) in the lead roles. Little Nemo in Slumberland, Peanuts, Archie, Beetle Bailey, Calvin & Hobbes...

But let me ask this: where are the comic strip collections from people of color? There aren't even trade paperbacks of Wee Pals or Curtis currently in print, nevermind Friday Foster or Torchy in Heartbeats. When was the last time you saw Gordo or Luther on a bookstore bookshelf? Has Speed Jaxon ever seen print outside of the original strips? Even Boondocks, argueably the most commercially successful American comic strip by a person of color, has never seen a good hardback collected edition.

Now, granted, publishers are going to focus on material that is likely to sell the best. That's where the Peanuts and Calvin & Hobbes collections come from. They're almost universally hailed as great strips, and they are fondly remembered. Totally makes sense to lead with those.

But now we're getting 1980s Hagar the Horrible. You're seriously trying to tell me that those strips are more worthy of hardcover reprints than Speed Jaxon? That they're more fondly remembered than Wee Pals? That they have more historical significance than Torchy in Heartbeats? That they were more creatively inspired than Gordo?

My answer to all those questions: that's bullshit.

If I want to really be cynical about this, I could guess that we aren't seeing nice collections of POC-driven comic strips because publishers are assuming that it would only be people of color who might be interested in those in the first place, and everybody "knows" they don't have as much disposable income as white folks. If I really to think cynically about this. The most positive spin I can put on why we haven't seen these collections is that it simply hasn't even occurred to the white people in charge that there are comic strips created by people of color.

I suspect that the truth lies somewhere in between. That one or two people have brought up the idea of a Gordo or Boondocks collection, but the bean-counters can't justify the costs because they don't figure the books would sell as well as half-century old Beetle Baileys as they dance around the racist undercurrents that kind of statement has.

And you know, even setting aside the high road arguements here about racial equity, I can get pissed over this just from the standpoint that there are comics out there that I can't read because they've never been reprinted. The only way I'm going to read Friday Foster is if I track down individual copies of the newspapers it ran in, and read four years of four-decade-old daily papers. I think I've got enough contacts that I could pull that off if I really wanted, but A) that's still a hell of a lot of work and B) how many people would be willing to go through even a quarter of that effort? No one but a very, very small handful of people will see these strips unless a publisher steps up and gets them reprinted.

And, sure, I know that they are rights issues involved and they would have to track down the copyright holders to get licensing agreements and such. And some of those rights issues might be complicated several decades removed from the strips' original publication. But that's still got to be more worthwhile than Hagar the frickin' Horrible!

NOTE: Today's links all point to Facebook posts, so I'm unsure if the individual settings are such that everyone can see all the different links. My apologies if I manage to get your hopes up and dash them with an error message.

• Richard Evans of the Bedrock City Comic Co. posted a few images of a comic that recently "walked into the store". It was All-Negro Comics #1, the first comic created and published by an all Black team and featuring a Black hero. Although he's got it pegged as a Fine- it's by far the best copy I've ever seen.
• Shaun Clancy digs up William Moulton Marston's own account of how he created Wonder Woman in Lancelot Hogben's 1949 book, "From Cave Painting to Comic Strip."
• Finally, Daniel Best provides some background on why Flash Gordon was renamed Speed Gordon in Australian reprints in 1930s newspaper strips.
  

In 1986, Marvel was celebrating its 25th anniversary. They managed to convince 20/20 to do this spotlight piece on them, which I just discovered on YouTube. (Clearly pulled from a VHS recording of the broadcast.) I don't think there's anything particularly revealing about the piece to anyone with a cursory knowledge of Marvel, but it does strike me as almost having been written by the folks at Marvel themselves! I'm sure the folks at 20/20 did the actual writing and editting, but I see very little evidence that there was any real research done. I didn't catch any obvious lies, other than ones of omission. There's zero mention at all, for example, of Jack Kirby or Steve Ditko (which is hardly surprising given that was in the midst of his art fight with Marvel). There's no mention of how Marvel was largely trying to cash in on the success DC was having with their superheroes in the late 1950s/early 1960s. There's no mention of how two of the most popular/genre-blowing comics in decades that were on the stands right then (Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns) were published by DC.

Some of that would have been almost self-evident just based on the interviews they conducted. I can't imagine the university professor here (Arthur Berger) not mentioning Kirby or Ditko, or the kids in that comic shop not mentioning Frank Miller. There's very clearly a certain story that's being told here, one that's being fed by Marvel. I can't begrudge them for wanting to spin their corporate story in a way that makes them look as good as possible, but I'm kind of wowed by how little anyone questioned it.z

Once upon a time (not all that long ago, frankly) I would look out at the comics industry and see all sorts of people making a living in and around comics. Not just the folks at Marvel and DC, but people who wrote about comics, or published magazines about comics... They were making, evidently, enough to earn a living. Now, of course, I couldn't speak to their quality of life, whether they were using food stamps or dining at the Savoy every night, but it was still a damn bit more than I've ever made since I certainly couldn't even pay the meager domain and hosting fees with what I earn on my writing. Nothing I'm bitter about, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little jealous.

But...

That's a jealousy that's not really warranted. At least, not for what I thought it was. The past few years -- whether by greater attention on my part or generally more open discussion or what, I don't know -- I've picked up bits and pieces that point me to a different conclusion. The people who I believed were making their living doing comics stuff aren't. Or, at least, not exclusively.

It's come in drips and drabs. A comment from a publisher that they actually run a small graphic design firm. A reference from a writer who's also working on advertising copy. A Tweet from a journalist asking about crowd-funding options. I've heard variations of, "So, what's you day job?" I-don't-know-how-many-times coming from or extended to comics folks.

That's not to say that you can't make a living doing comics or comic journalism, just that it's perhaps a little more rare than you might expect. The ones who are really successful at it often are successful, in part, because they're also doing additional freelance work that you don't really see.

I've talked before about how Dorothy Gambrell is very public with her earnings and, while I was mainly speaking above regarding people not actually doing comcis themselves, I thought checking in on a successful webcomiker might be worthwhile. Her latest update runs through March of this year...

You can see that, over the past two years, about 90% of her income came from freelance work not related to her webcomic, whereas in 2012, freelancing only up a quarter of her work. But look at her year-by-year comparison: prior to 2011, her annual income was mostly in the low $20,000 range. In 2011 and 2012, she hustled and managed to get that into the low $30,000. But in 2012, when she shifted to more freelance work, her income nearly doubled.

I came to the conclusion a few years ago that, individually, we all should try to establish multiple income sources so that, like webcomikers who always have their books/t-shirts/prints for sale, we can keep afloat and not solely rely on the day job. What I'm thinking now is that you can't rely on a single job for an income stream, even if that single job includes multiple income sources utilizing the long tail model. Following the webcomics model was my original idea; maybe it was more spot-on than I realized.

I recall in the late 1980s when a few comic book creators started toying with the notion of creating their work directly on a computer. Mike Saenz was probably one of the biggest experimenters in this regard, and his (still-heavily bit-mapped) Shatter book still holds fond memories for me. Batman: Digital Justice and Iron Man: Crash were also both well received in this era, although they evidently weren't successful enough to warrant continued efforts at the time.

The first instance I recall of a serial book utilizing a computer was in the early 1990s. I don't recall the title exactly, but I remember reading that John Byrne had a font created based on his hand lettering. He would then lay out his text on his Mac, print the dialogue on a laser printer, and paste everything onto his art boards. Doing typography and coloring became a regular thing in mainstream comics in the late 1990s, and now, of course, many comics are created start-to-finish on the computer.

But what about newspaper strips? When did comic strips finally get on the digital bus?

There are certainly any number of instances where computers are the subject of comic strips. They've shown up regularly in Dilbert and Foxtrot for decades. But even in that "How Garfield is Drawn" video I highlighted recently shows that most of the strip is still done with paper and ink. I know there are some comic strip creators out there who work all digitally these days, but does anyone know who/when/where that got started in comic strips?

Maybe not "who was first" (those questions are always more nebulous than they sound) but who were some of the early adopters? What were some of the early experiments? How did the syndicates and newspapers (notoriously technologically conservative) handle those people?

Does anyone have any insights into how that progression played out? Or could maybe point me to some resources where that information might be available?

I attended the 3rd annual Yetaversary bash last Friday at the excellent Challengers Comics. (Yetaversary = Yeti Press' anniversary.) I wound up talking for a while with a woman I'll call Lisa. She and the friend she came with are both into comics and various other aspects of pop culture. They hit various comic shops regularly and go to the various local conventions and such. Perfectly typical of comic fans.

Apparently, though, there was some discussion before they came to this particular event about the appropriateness of their wardrobe. Well, I say that like it was a one-time occurrence, but it was evidently a fairly regular point of discussion every time they went out to some comic-related event. And we're not talking about "who should I cosplay as?" or "do this top go with this skirt?" type of discussions either. They're broader discussions on what attire would generally be appropriate for this particular gathering.

See, they can't dress too nice when going to a comic shop because then they get comments questioning their fan status. The whole "fake geek girl" bullshit. They can't dress too slummy either because then they get mistaken for part of a bad crowd, and their fan status is questioned from the other direction. They also can't show too much skin because there's then the potential for being on the receiving end of generally sexist/misogynist behavior. They have to look pretty, but not too pretty, geeky but not too geeky, sexy but not too sexy... If they don't hit the sweet spot right in the middle of all these disparate directions, they run into problems from the men present.

And that's just for a regular trip to a comic shop. Heading out to publisher parties like this one, signings, smaller conventions... there's a whole new wardrobe discussion for each of those. They were actually a bit later to this particular party than the'd like because Lisa's friend had to change from the outfit she originally chose.

Yeti Press is very female friendly. A little less than half of their "regular" contributors are female, and many of their books feature strong women protagonists. Challengers Comics is also a very open and welcoming shop in general with a great many titles available beyond the usual superhero/sci-fi/fantasy line-ups. (I've visited a dozen comic shops in the Chicago area since I moved up here a year ago, and Challengers is by far my favorite. A fantastic mix of material, really well-presented in a comfortable environment.) Yet despite a crowd at this party that consisted of about half females, after normal business hours at a shop that does an especially good job at catering to a broad range of people, in honor of a publisher that is very progressive, Lisa and her friend still had to have this discussion on what to wear because they were still too uncomfortable just showing up in whatever.

And in case you couldn't guess, Lisa was quite clear that that sucked. That even in such a welcoming environment -- which she consciously recognzied as a welcoming environment -- she still felt the need to have the wardrobe discussion. Because she's gotten burned one too many times.

Despite being taught that it was what was inside that counts, I learned the hard way that, yes, people will absolutely judge you based on how you look and that, yes, what you wear conveys a message to everyone you meet about who you are. So, sure, spending some time choosing your wardrobe before heading out to a public gathering makes sense. But that anyone, let alone half the population, feels the need to have an extended discussion about it in order to walk a particularly narrow tightrope of assumptions and expectations is obscene. How about we just let women wear what they want without demanding that they fully explain their geek credentials on every occasion?

• Jian Ghomeshi talks with Charley's War author Pat Mills.
  
• Andrew Neal is selling his well-respected Chapel Hill Comics shop. Unlike some of the LCS sale announcements, this appears to be a done deal already and a new owner, Ryan Kulikowski, has already purchased the store.
• Jared Gardner and Robert Loss were starting to have difficulty keeping track of all the comics-related events in Columbus, Ohio. So they set up a website to do just that.
• Japan recently passed anti-child-pornography laws, but specifically went out of their way to exclude manga and anime from being subject to those rules.