Just got back and have a million things I wanna do here, so what better than to comment on the recently released documents of the settlement between writer Harlan Ellison and publisher Fantagraphics? (the document is available here) Well, I guess there’s lots, but here we go. While it is obviously the most practicable reason for all involved, and eminently understandable that both parties wished to settle – Fantagraphics not wanting to spend a fortune in legal fees and Ellison basically just wanting to obtain some kind of redress he could subsequently hang his Phrygian cap on, like he did with his settlement with AOL a few years back. Congratulations all round on putting this matter behind you.
 

However, it is nevertheless sad to see what is essentially bullying tactics on the part of self-styled free-speech champion Ellison have an effect, no matter how diffuse. The major concession here is that Fantagraphics have conceded to remove the offending parts of their upcoming 30th anniversary book and company history, Comics as Art – We Told You So, despite having maintained and gone far to prove that these allegedly libelous statements are substantially true. Ellison has produced nothing that refutes the clear evidence backing up their statements in the book, provided by Fantagraphics in their motion to dismiss, and while he naturally should not necessarily be expected to do so in public and should therefore perhaps be given the benefit of the doubt, the evidence against him is substantial.

As a long-time reader and fan of Bart Beaty’s Comics Journal column, “Euro-Comics for Beginners”, today continued as “Conversational Euro-Comics” at Tom Spurgeon’s Comics Reporter, I have been looking forward to Beaty’s book on the new wave of European comics since I first heard he was working on it, several years ago. Now it is here, it is called Unpopular Culture : Transforming the European Comic Book in the 1990s, and it does not disappoint, though it raises a number of interesting and somewhat problematic questions.

Only a few, if any, people besides Beaty could have written this panoramic survey of the development of the comics medium in Europe over the last decade-and-a-half. As someone who has followed the scene with great interest, and even published on it : and also experienced Beaty in the flesh on several occasions : I can whole-heartedly vouch for his commitment, knowledge and critical acumen in this area.