Creators | Market Day creator James Sturm explains he'll be boycotting The Avengers movie because he believes Jack Kirby, co-creator of many of Marvel's longest-lasting characters,  "got a raw deal": "What makes this situation especially hard to stomach is that Marvel’s media empire was built on the backs of characters whose defining trait as superheroes is the willingness to fight for what is right. It takes a lot of corporate moxie to put Thor and Captain America on the big screen and have them battle for honor and justice when behind the scenes the parent company acts like a cold-blooded supervillain. As Stan Lee famously wrote, 'With great power comes great responsibility.'” Tom Spurgeon notes the position seems to mark a shift for Sturm, who wrote the Eisner-winning 2003 miniseries Fantastic Four: Unstable Molecules for Marvel. [Slate, The Comics Reporter]



Creators | The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay author Michael Chabon discusses a recent short story he wrote for The New Yorker about a comic book writer and artist who had a falling out, noting who they may or may not be based on: "Well, the obvious answer is Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. Stan and Jack met in the forties, began collaborating during lean times in the fifties, jointly revived the fortunes of Marvel Comics in the sixties, and then underwent a creative divorce that seems to have resulted in a certain amount of acrimony on Kirby’s side. So the outlines of the story are similar. But Feather and Conn are not Stan and Jack; their fates, their experiences, their biographies, and their personalities are quite different. Jack Kirby died in 1994, still idolized by fans, surrounded by his loving family, as far from the embittered loneliness of Mort Feather as you can be. And Stan Lee is still going strong, a potent creative force who seems to bear up under the tribulations and triumphs of a long and interesting life with the élan for which he has always been famous." [The New Yorker]

Comic strips | The Chicago Tribune has spoken: Editors pulled last Friday's Doonesbury strip because it “broke from its satirical mission in order to deliver a direct fundraising appeal for a specific charity that the author favors. The Tribune’s editorial practices do not allow individuals to promote their self-interests.” [The Daily Cartoonist]



Creators | Robot 6 contributor Brigid Alverson talks to Jimmy Gownley, creator of the all-ages Amelia Rules series, about his experiences from self-publishing to signing a multi-book deal with Simon & Schuster. During the interview, Gownley dropped a bombshell: His next Amelia book, the eighth in the series, will be his last—at least for a while: "Amelia was a huge learning experience for me. I came out the other side a very different person and artist. I want to take all those lessons and put them into one book that combines all of that." [Publishers Weekly]

Editorial cartoons | Times are tough for editorial cartoonists, but The New York Times cattle call for artists to provide work on spec for their Sunday Review section — and the measly fee of $250 per cartoon for the winners — is raising a hackles in the cartooning community. [Comic Riffs]

Creators | Ao Meng chats with French artist Boulet a.k.a. Gilles Roussel, about his recent webcomic Darkness, among other topics. [NOVI Magazine]



Creators | Erica Friedman interviews artist Marguerite Dabaie, creator of The Hookah Girl, a memoir of growing up in the Palestinian Christian community in the U.S. [The Hooded Utilitarian]

Commentary | Librarian Robin Brenner and the contributors to the Good Comics for Kids blog discuss whether the inclusion of dialogue in graphic novel biographies makes them fiction. [Good Comics for Kids]

Commentary | Joe "Jog" McCulloch pays a visit to Dredd Reckoning to discuss Vol. 17 of Judge Dredd: The Complete Case Files with host Douglas Wolk. [Dredd Reckoning]

Copyright | Mike Lynch calls out MSNBC's Up with Chris Hayes show for displaying a cartoon by Lian Amaris without asking her permission, let alone compensating her. To his credit, Hayes responded on Twitter, saying "we absolutely should have credited it and will rectify." [Mike Lynch Cartoons]

Academia | Columbia University librarian Karen Green lays out a possible typology of comics, discussing the different ways they can be broken up for teachers who want to use them in a variety of different academic settings. [comiXology]