Fandom | Rachel Edidin attends a gathering of the Carol Corps, the group of mostly female Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel fans that has built a community around a shared interest. “It is not a formal organization,” says Captain Marvel writer Kelly Sue DeConnick. “There are no rules. People write and ask me all the time, ‘How do I join the Carol Corps?’ You join Carol Corps by saying you are Carol Corps. There is no test. You don’t have to buy anything. You don’t need to sign up anywhere. If you decide you are a part of this community, bam, you are. The other part of that is that if you decide you are a part of this community, you will be embraced and welcome.” [Wired]
Piracy | The Japanese government will consider several measures to fight online piracy of anime and manga in the next few months, while publishers are taking a if-you-can't-beat-'em-join-'em approach by launching two free digital manga services, ComicWalker and Manga Box, to lure readers away from bootleg scanlation sites. [The Japan News]
Manga | Apoorva Dutt looks at the popularity of manga in India, which started, as is so often the case, with anime on broadcast television. Now there are manga clubs in many big cities, and India even has its own manga, Stupid Guy Goes to India, which is drawn by a Japanese artist and published locally. The book sold about 6,000 copies with minimal marketing. Viz Media is about to enter the market as well, bringing over about 125 series, some of which have done well already as imported books. [Hindustan Times]
Publishing | Lisa Brown profiles the digital-first comics publisher Lion Forge Comics, which is producing licensed comics based on 1980s TV shows such as Miami Vice, Punky Brewster and Saved by the Bell; its biggest seller so far is Knight Rider. The company also publishes original comics and has introduced a new imprint, Roar, for children and teens. [St. Louis Post-Dispatch]
Publishing | Former DC Comics editor Janelle Asselin has been in the news lately after her column critiquing a comics cover drew a lot of attention online; in this interview, which was apparently done before all that, she talks about her work at DC, marketing comics to women, and why there are so few women creators in superhero comics. [13th Dimension]
Creators | Paul Gravett profiles Oscar Zarate, the creator of The Park, and includes samples of some of the comics Zarate read in his native Argentina and the comics he made after he moved to England, including collaborations with comedian Alexei Sayle and writer Alan Moore. [Paul Gravett]
Comics | Noah Berlatsky pens an appreciation of Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol: "Comics aren't necessarily about reinforcing the status quo or overturning the status quo, but about opening up a space to imagine somewhere else —a place where even the police get to take LSD trips and the ugly and the weird and the other don't need to be fixed. As the last line of Morrison's run says, 'There is another world. There is a better world. Well, there must be.'" [The Atlantic]
Comics | As Flash Gordon turns 80, Brian Truitt looks back at the sci-fi hero's history, from his 1934 comic-strip debut and radio and movie serials to the 1980 feature film and Dynamite Entertainment's new comic series. [USA Today]
Cartoons | While he was a soldier in the Pacific during World War II, Harry Chrisman sent home hundreds of cartoons to his family depicting everyday life and sometimes lampooning his superiors as well; now his daughter has collected them into three volumes, the first of which has just been published. [The Brownsville Herald]
Awards | Jen Sorenson and Angelo Lopez have won the Society of Professional Journalists awards for editorial cartooning, Sorenson in the category of newspapers with a circulation of over 100,000 and Lopez for newspapers with a circulation under 100,000. [The Daily Cartoonist]