Business | Marvel parent The Walt Disney Co., which just purchased Lucasfilm for $4.05 billion, reportedly has begun an internal cost-cutting review that could include layoffs in its studio and other divisions. The cutbacks are believed to focus on jobs that are no longer needed because of technological advancements and redundancies created by the acquisition of Pixar in 2006, Marvel in 2009 and Lucasfilm in 2012. Disney has made a series of staff cutbacks over the past couple of years, beginning in January 2011 with 200 jobs in its interactive division; Marvel trimmed about a dozen positions in October 2011. [Yahoo! Finance]
Publishing | Robert Stanley Martin takes a new look at Jim Shooter's tenure as editor-in-chief of Marvel. [The Hooded Utilitarian]
Publishing | Mark Frauenfender interviews underground comics publisher Jay Kinney on his Gweek podcast; Kinney was the publisher of Young Lust comics and later of Anarchy Comics, which have recently been collected into an anthology. [Boing Boing]
Webcomics | The statistics show that the number of rage comics on Reddit is dropping rapidly, perhaps as people find better things to do than cobble together bad comics from other people's scrawls. [Daily Dot]
Creators | Jeff Lemire discusses the hopeful ending of Sweet Tooth, which arrives in stores Wednesday: "You put those characters through so much and so many hard situations and quite a bit of pain, and the reader's there with them the whole time. f I didn't provide some kind of closure and optimism at the end, I feel like I'd just be a cruel person. And I don't think that I am." [USA Today]
Creators | Charles Webb talks to X-O Manowar writer Robert Venditti about the upcoming "Planet Death" arc, which begins with Issue 9, out later this month. [MTV Geek]
Creators | Tom Spurgeon talks to Tom Hart about his comics and his involvement in the Sequential Artists Workshop (SAW). [The Comics Reporter]
Creators | Artist Rob Guillory chats about Chew, the planned Showtime adaptation, the future of the Image Comics series, and more. [Mancave Daily]
Creators | Collaborators Kurtis J. Wiebe and Tyler Jenkins talk about the big introduction of Captain Hook, aka Kapitan Haken, in Peter Panzerfaust #8, out this week. [USA Today]
Creators | Howard Shapiro discusses his young-adult graphic novel The Stereotypical Freaks and offers an important insight: "I was lucky in that I had three guys in the business helping and advising me. The advice they gave me is the best advice I could give anyone with an idea and starting out to write a graphic novel. Find an “A” level type of artist. If you can find that person then the road will be a lot less bumpy. You can have the greatest story but without the artwork to match it, you’re sunk. So, step one is to find a great artist." [CultureMob]
Creators | Ron Rege Jr. talks about Cartoon Utopia. [The Comics Journal]
Comics | Daniel Kalder looks at the increasing popularity of books about comics. [Publishing Perspectives]