Smorgasbord #46:
A Valiant Effort
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Shawn & Tom talk about Valiant’s unexpected takeover of the Harvey Awards, Ron Wimberly vs. Erik Larsen, the latest round of casting news, and the wasted potential of Tom Felton.
On the review side, it’s a double dose of Black Mask Studious with the 1st issues of Jade Street Protection Services and Kim & Kim, as well as the mandatory Image #1 with Throwaways. To top it all off, we end with a discussion of the recently completed mini-series The Spire, with our love of Jeff Stokely and our problems with Simon Spurrier.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tom Shapira is a carbon-based life from the planet earth. He was formed in the year 1985 AD by two loving parents. He is also an MA student of English Lit. at Tel-Aviv University, Israel, where he feels proud to be the first student to graduate with a BA by writing a paper about the works of Grant Morison. In his native tongue, Tom is a staff writer for Israel's leading comics blog Alilon.net and an occasional participant in the blog's bi-weekly podcast. He spends too much time, money and thought on Comics (especially the works of Grant Morison, Alan Moore, Warren Ellis and Garth Ennis) and his friends and family wish he would stop. He is not going to.
See more, including free online content, on Tom Shapira's author page.
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what a bunch of whiny dorks on the podcast.
Gotta agree with Tom 100% on the payment issue. If publishers don’t want to pay artists for spec work to determine whether they’re the right fit for a specific book, they need to find art directors/editors/whoever handles hiring who have a better eye for talent based on their portfolios and previous work. DC especially is currently run by people who are proven to be creatively bankrupt or limited in vision because they’re mostly carryovers from creatively and literally bankrupt 90s Marvel. Post-Crisis DC instead relied on seeming-risk-takers like Karen Berger and actual experienced artists like the late Dick Giordano, who understood other artists’ potential from inking over numerous professionals over his long and storied career. Plus, instead of needing to see an artist actually draw a Harley Quinn page to see whether their style “worked” for the Harley Quinn title, they encouraged writers to pick artists they either worked well with before or envisioned for their latest project, such as Dennis O’Neil with Denys Cowan or Grant Morrison with Steve Yeowell.