Legal | Iranian cartoonist Mahmoud Shokraiyeh has been sentenced to 25 lashes for a cartoon he drew that depicted Arak Member of Parliament Ahmad Lotfi Ashtiani in a soccer jersey. [The Daily Cartoonist]
Publishing | In a wide-ranging interview, Dynamite CEO Nick Barrucci talks about the comics market, the demise of Borders, digital comics and the slump in book sales: "[T]here are more and more trade paperbacks and hard covers coming out, so there’s less chance of getting as much attention as you’re used to, and reorders are down because of it. As the number of trade paperbacks and graphic novels increases, the number of SKUs increases, the number of units sold per SKU is decreasing. There are very few exceptions to this. I remember looking at the Diamond chart from a month or two ago and the bestselling trade paperback that month was 7,000 units. It might even have been a Walking Dead trade paperback, and as much as two years ago the bestselling trade paperback sold 12-15,000 units." [ICv2]
Comics | John Jakala details how Marvel edited a scene in its Free Comic Book Day offering, Avengers: Age of Ultron Point One, to remove the nudity that was in the original version, and he wonders why the nudity was there to begin with. (FCBD comics are supposed to be all-ages friendly, but in this comic, as in the Censored Howard Cruse comic, just taking out the naughty bits doesn't really do it.) [Overdue Panels]
Creators | Pioneering underground cartoonist Diane Noomin talks about her experiences as a collaborator on Wimmins Comix and co-creator of Twisted Sister, with Aline Kominsky-Crumb, as well as the genesis of her character DiDi Glitz: "She started as a costume for a Halloween party at Gilbert Shelton and Lora Fountain’s house and quickly took over... In 1974, I did a full-fledged DiDi story for Wimmen’s Comix. It was four pages and was called “She Chose Crime”, and when I was putting this book together I realized that DiDi came out almost fully developed. She hasn’t changed, she hasn’t grown or anything like that. If I look at that first story, the drawing has changed and I’d like to think that certain things have gotten better, but in that story, DiDi’s persona is it. I don’t think I’d realized that." [The Comics Journal]
Creators | Writer Nate Bowden and artist Doug Dabbs discuss their graphic novel Holliday, out soon from Oni Press, which retells the story of the legendary Doc Holliday in a modern, urban setting. "We talked about bringing in some Wild West elements, but I think most readers have been saturated by so many stories based during that historical period," Dabbs said. "One interesting element of the Holliday story is that so many of the events that happened back then could still happen today. On the other hand, some of the events were so unbelievable, that it could be hard to relate to in present day. In general, people tend to dismiss amazing events because they happened so long ago and have little to no relatable characteristics. Putting this story in the present really reinforces the idea that this actually happened, and if it happened today, it would still be legendary." [Broken Frontier]
Conventions | Murfreesboro, Tennessee, will get its first-ever comics and pop-culture convention May 19-20, when ShowCon comes to town. [The Huntsville Times]