There's only one Comics Journal. It's an important magazine and about the only "intellectual" look at the medium that is out there covering current comics. You've got Comic Book Artist, and its "new" focus is good, but the magazine's late shipping schedule has put me off, even with great material on a variety of subjects. (Editor Jon B. Cooke reported in the lastest issue that he's had a bad year - I sympathize, man, but please, you gotta get back on the stick!) Back Issue gets a fair number of things right, even if it seems to pander to the superhero fanboy more than I'd like. And don't even get me started on Alter Ego, which is getting more and more unreadable as fewer and fewer Golden and Silver Age writers artists are left that will let Roy Thomas give them analingus for an interview. I finally dropped it in the middle of last year, and I really don't miss it.
Anyway, back to the Journal. It does a lot of things I really like - the two most recent issues have had interviews and articles focusing on Alex Toth, Ed Brubaker, the Eisners, great reprints of out-of-copyright comics, and a great look at Marvel's X-Men franchise under Morrison. But then there's the vast amount of stuff I don't care about. Reviews of art comics that really don't appeal to me because of my immature tastes or my strange desire for actual storytelling or the fact I have no real interest in somebody's diary or poorly-constructucted rant. (Ironic comments can be left below.) Tiny minicomics that six people get to see that are, at best, amateurish. Slamming on Drawn And Quarterly in a really...infantile manner that leads into my next point. They really, really make their bias towards their own publishing concern known.
In their collective mind, Fantagraphics seems to publish the only truly great comics nowadays, while everyone else, even other publishers working in the same niche, seems incapable of ever even hoping to gaze upon the ivory tower that is Gary Groth publishing concern. It's annoying, to say the least. I'm not going to act like Fantagraphics hasn't printed many great comics. You just need to look at Love and Rockets and Hate and certainly The Complete Peanuts, which is probably the best reprint project that's not related to me getting more comics drawn by Kirby. But Jesus, guys. Giving Steve Brodner a 20-page color interview section the month before his Freedom Fries book comes out? I thought Wizard had balls when they kept interviewing Mark Waid and Garth Ennis for their Black Bull line of comics. Such a well-done magazine, but I really don't know if the latest issue was worth the $10 price tag for me.
In happier news, here's our next president taking a break.
