Welcome back to The Rundown, our daily breakdown on comic news stories we missed from the previous day. Have a link to share? Email our team at rundown@multiversitycomics.com.
– On Saturday evening, the Hugo Awards were finally given out. “Ms. Marvel” from G. Willow Wilson, Adrian Alphona, and Jake Wyatt took home Best Graphic Story while Guardians of the Galaxy walked away with Best Dramatic Presentation. You might remember the controversy surrounding the nominations from earlier this year, when certain groups essentially hijacked the nomination process to combat a “liberal bias” and flood the ceremony with their own cherry picked selections. The group, led by Sad Puppies, said that good storytelling was going away in favor of more diversity (this is assuming any of the Sad Puppies nominees were telling good stories to begin with) and they wanted to make sure their ideals were upheld in a public platform. Well, as it happened, their plan backfired, and for the first time in the Hugo’s history, the categories the Sad Puppies put nominations up for came home with nothing. There was a NO REWARD given. Naturally, the Sad Puppies reacted against this (again claiming, with supreme prejudice, that their stories had value to begin with), but if anything, the 2015 Hugos are a pretty clear indicator that the climate is changing. The winners were not only a diverse group of people, but they were a diverse group of people who told strong stories.
– Although marriage between their heroes might not be something DC is interested in, the company still thinks it’s all right if one of them officiates a wedding. And who better than the great Wonder Woman? In this week’s digital version of “Sensation Comics” (because we know the Finches wouldn’t have anything to do with this in their ongoing slander of the Amazing Amazon) writer and artist Jason Badower has Princess Diana oversee the marriage of two women. Jokes about DC Marriage Policy aside, this is a huge deal, because even the fictional heroes we look up to help lead the way toward a better world and let other people know it’s okay if they’re not part of the definitive norm. There’s even a line where Wonder Woman says not to call it gay marriage, but just marriage. DC has also been amping up their LGBT representation across the board and I think that speaks a lot to them acknowledging a wider world out there than your traditional hero dude.
– SPX, the Small Press Expo, has announced the nominees for their Ignatz Awards! Named after a “Krazy Kat” character and devoted to recognizing “outstanding achievement in comics and cartooning,” the program is a pretty interesting overview of comics that don’t always get the spotlight. If you’re trying to balance out your superhero reading load or looking to broaden your horizons beyond the corporately-controlled comics, the 2015 Ignatz Awards offers a pretty sweet entry point. I’m totally rooting for Emily Carroll by the way.
– While walking his dog, Ryan North decided to snap some cool pictures from inside a skate bowl and ended up getting stuck. Then it started raining. Unable to climb out without abandoning his dog, North turned to the best resource out there: Twitter. It’s a fairly hysterical ordeal and exactly what you would expect to happen to the guy who wrote “Adventure Time” and made “Dinosaur Comics.”
– Van Jensen’s been running this super interesting series of articles over at Paste where he talks to creators about their work, the industry, and whatever else the conversation leads them toward. In the latest installment, he chats with Jeff Parker about having to keep up with the monthly comics schedule and balancing multiple titles.
– There’s been rumors circulating that cartoonist Joann Sfar would be taking over a new Carto Maltese project with Christopher Blain. In fact, publisher Casterman had approached them about rebooting the title, though unbeknownst to them, the heirs of the Hugo Pratt estate already hired Juan Diaz Canales (“Blacksad”) and Ruben Pellejero to launch a new Corto book as well. Zainab Akhtar explores the discrepancies and developments at Comics & Cola. With either Sfar and Blain or Canales and Pellejero, we know that Corto Maltese’s next adventure will be a doozy anyway.
Continued below– All right, I’m going to be honest here: I’m not the biggest fan of the Marvel movies. But, despite Kevin Feige’s meddling, they have produced some legit gems, most notably 2014’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Following the bloated and boring Avengers: Age of Ultron and the silly Ant-Man, Marvel will see Captain America: Civil War hitting theaters May 6, 2016, featuring pretty much the same production crew as Winter Soldier. So it might be interesting! Also, Martin Freeman’s in it. Production wrapped on Friday, so now it’s time for the post-production work for the next eight months. Also, this.
– Finally, in Webcomics Worth Clicking: in honor of her Ignatz nomination, what better time than now to point you out to Emily Carroll’s latest comic, ‘The Groom.’ Chilling and surreal, it shows Carroll doing what Carroll does best.
