OK, so for those of you who aren't reading the New York Post's business pages or hanging on every word of my few revelatory posts, the American tabloid industry is in a State of Upheaval.
The biggest change is that the flagship paper, the National Enquirer, has left its traditional home in South Florida and gone up to New York City, where it is being taken over by a British tab guy.
That has nothing to do with comics.
But the Weekly World News, it's making some sort of publishing history. The paper is staying here in South Florida... but it too has gotten a new editor, who lives in New York. And will continue to do so. It's an insane state of affairs that has most other tabloid empire employees boggled -- he's running the place by remote control.
Thing is, he's got a lot of connections at the *other* NYC publishers of popular pulp... and is bringing some new talent to the WWN.
For a while now (before most of the Great Upheaval), Peter Bagge has been doing a weekly strip, "The Continuing Adventures of Bat Boy." He captured Osama Bin Laden, bit off several of Donald Rumsfeld's body parts, became president and has been trying to marry Secretary of State Lindsey Lohan.
But on the second week of May, Bagge's strip will be joined by one from Ernie Colon called "SpyCat" (based on a lesser known figure from the WWN stable of regular characters), and a puzzle feature done by Sergio Aragones, at least for the first few weeks.
There will also be a fourth page, which is especially dramatic. It will, WWN staffers reveal, consist of a feature done by either Bob Burden (which would be like a dream come true) or John Byrne (which would be, in a word, insaaaaane).
So I thought y'all might like to know.
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Who are these people?
Peter Bagge did Hate, probably the funniest and most accurate social satire of the 1990s, and Yeah!, which was a ginchy title about a girl band who played proms in New Jersey but packed stadiums in outer space, and Sweatshop, which was about a cranky cartoonist and his lackeys.
Sergio Aragones does Mad Magazine cartoons and Groo, the Wanderer.
Ernie Colon did Richie Rich, Casper the Friendly Ghost and the other Harvey titles, as well as horror comics Vampirella, Creepy, Eerie and a host of other stuff for DC and Marvel.
Bob Burden did Flaming Carrot and Mysterymen, and if you do a search here you'll find he's one of my favoritest writers ever.
and John Byrne is, well, this guy. He wrote Superman and X-men and Captain America and is as good a personification of the mainstream comics industry as anyone alive. |
