Retailing | Sacramento, Calif.-area retailers are relatively unconcerned about DC Comics' newly launched digital initiative or an immediate threat to their bottom lines from digital comics. “I just see it as another way of kind of expanding the whole readership,” says Dave Downey, who runs World’s Best Comics. “If you missed an issue of Spider-Man, and you can’t find it anywhere, you can always go online and read it that way.” However, Kenny Russell of Big Brother Comics sees a time, "years off," when that will all change: “It’s inevitable, and this is kind of the first step. In no time, iPads are going to be good enough, and it’s going to be easy enough, and it’s going to come out the same day where people are going to just read their comics on their iPads.” [Sacramento News & Review]
Comics | Gene Luen Yang explores the tangled history of comics and Christianity, both of which, he points out, were started by a bunch of Jewish guys who loved a good story. (Good-sized excerpt at the link; full article requires free registration.) [Sojourners]
Comics | Johanna Draper Carlson is unimpressed by DC's New 52 relaunch, and she's not afraid to say why: "Maybe because I remember buying the first and best of these 'it’s all different now' events, Crisis on Infinite Earths, off the spinner rack at the newsstand. Maybe because the death and destruction of Flashpoint made me cringe. But really, I suspect it’s because it’s the same old guys in charge now as were before, and they really don’t seem to get it." She also has been reading a lot of other people's work, so her essay doubles as a good link roundup of what folks have been saying lately. [Comics Worth Reading]
Creators | Craig Thompson discusses the creation and themes of his new graphic novel Habibi: "It was born out of 9/11 in the sense that Islam was being vilified in the media, and I wanted to humanise it a bit and understand it, and focus on the beauty of Arabic and Islamic culture. My experience of speaking to Muslims was that they weren't any different to the Christian communities I grew up in -- they had the same morals and the same lifestyles, and the same stories that shaped their religions. Then also I got really inspired by the Islamic arts -- Arabic calligraphy, geometric pattern and design, architecture, and a lot of those details infused the book." [New Statesman]
Creators | Collaborators Greg Rucka and Rick Burchett discuss their new steampunk-adventure webcomic Lady Sabre & the Pirates of the Ineffable Aether. [The Long & Shortbox of It]
Creators | Shawn Martinbrough is profiled in the New York Daily News, pegged to his upcoming work with Robert Kirkman, Nick Spencer and others on Skybound's Thief of Thieves. [New York Daily News]
Creators | James Kochalka sits down for an interview with The A.V. Club Philadelphia. [The A.V. Club]
Creators | David Hahn talks briefly abut his Image Comics miniseries All Nighter: "I have always liked writing female characters, usually because I like to draw them, but also because women in general are not physically confrontational. It makes me make the character smarter, because brute force wouldn't be an acceptable or realistic way for a female character to solve a problem or deal with an enemy. One thing that helps me in this is when I see what not to do, usually when I watch movies or TV. I hate seeing writing done on auto pilot, where a writer is making a character speak or act in a way that is congruent with how the writer has seen other similar characters act, and not thinking about how this particular character would behave." [The Daily Blam]
Creators | Esther Keller talks to Carla Jablonski, creator of the graphic novel trilogy Resistance, which follows the adventures of several young people in Nazi-occupied France. [Good Comics for Kids]