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Joshua Baker blows away the Fro’s Squire Strat riffage with some mean air guitar action. 28 more shots are up on flickr now.

Among the witless speculation and fantasy being trolled out on what I imagine might still be called comics fandom concerning what the recent decision regarding ownership of Superman might mean in the long run, one shining beacon of reason drops the science on corporate comicbook publishing in spectacular fashion. Be very grateful that Tom Spurgeon is with us.

An industry where the caretakers of properties make far more money off of creations than the creators themselves due to legal circumstance and standard practices that greatly favor corporate ownership should be an intolerable one to every single person who has even a half-measure of interest in the comics they read beyond the initial thrill of looking at the ink on paper.

Read on, true believer!

Superman spotted hiding out in the Research Triangle In a BT box at a Hampton Inn in Cary, NC.

I’ve just started uploading and making notes on pictures I’ve taken of artist studios. The first batch, taken for Kitchen Sink Press’ Michael Kaluta Sketchbook, is up on flickr now.

It was amazing. Pere Ubu tore it up. I am in fucking awe. They did Sonic Reducer and I completely went fucking mental. It was all a million times better then I deserved to expect. Best damn Easter basket ever. See my choicest shots here.

Karen Ulrich, originally uploaded by Marc Arsenault - Wow Cool.

It’s starting to look like the more exciting Coney Island exhibit that the Brooklyn Museum is hosting right now is the one in the blog by curator Patrick Amsellem. And I’m not just saying that because they picked one of my photos to run in it. Yes, I am beyond flattered, but I’ve long made seasonal treks down to the boardwalk and am worried to see how they might be changing it. I just hope we’re left with more than a bunch of photos and our own Coney Islands of the mind.

See all my Brooklyn photos on flickr here, which are pretty heavy on the Coney action. I have a great roll or two somewhere of the summer that C.I. stayed open extra long because all the schools were closed for asbestos abatement. Gotta find those.

This has been a pretty big month for me for newsstand exposure. I’ve got photos of Cary, NC’s White Tiger Martial Arts in the latest TKD-TaeKwonDo Times and many of the shots of the Tiger Claw Elite Champions’ performance at last year’s Disney’s Martial Arts Festival that I posted about a couple months ago in the latest Kung Fu Tai Chi magazine. Less visible, I did a feature article (with even more photos) of White Tiger in the martial arts newsletter I co-edit - Tiger Claw’s Clawmarks (hey, I’ll still take a circulation of 17,000… sadly a lot better than most of the comicbooks I’ve worked on). If you’re into the martial arts, check these things out. If you’re here for the weird art and music, there’s more of that on the way.

At long last I’ve managed to go through some more of my shots from the intense photo-overload in Florida last month. Some of my favorites are these from the Disney Martial Arts Festival night-time show performance by the Tiger Claw Elite Champions. Now I’m off to Raleigh-Durham in the morning for more martial arts action and to hopefully catch a Bryan Lee O’Malley’s book signing.

See the full set.

You can also watch the whole thing on YouTube.

More info at TigerClawElite.com.

The Comics Journal #285 - front cover by Darwyn Cooke, originally uploaded by fantagraphics.

You may find yourself actually buying the Comics Journal again. Although it has become virtually impossible to find (I have not seen it in a bookstore or newsstand for several years… and I’ve looked) they are still plugging on. My local comic shop actually had a few, and the owner told me that a few people who never buy it picked it up this time. Why? Well, with Power Girl’s greatest power cleverly covered, it was probably the fact that there are over 40 pages of words and art from Darwyn Cooke, the man who gave us Absolute DC: The New Frontier. Why? From my point of view… The New Frontier is probably the one super hero comic book I want to hold on to for my kids to have and keep. That’s pretty damn big. He did it right and so very, very well. I’m still working through the interview. Pretty interesting stuff. A different perspective from what you may be used to. As is usual with the Journal, the copy editing is a sad joke… thus, Toronto is a province of Ontario… and this in the very first column. There’s a few (but not nearly enough) pieces of rare and sketchbook art. It seems like this interview was done at the 2007 Comicon in San Diego, so no mention of Mr. Cooke’s tale of his Eisner Awards experience. Anyway.

Also of note is an interview with Keith Knight, a compadre from back in the day. This was a little bit like the Journal back in the form it had a decade ago… oh yeah, the design on this is just about the best they’ve ever had. Sorry for the rambling review… just wanted to share for those who would really want to read this but might not stumble across it…

smiths, originally uploaded by oh my good gawd.

Yes

Medianeras - "Smog", originally uploaded by Marc Arsenault - Wow Cool | Deptex | Gritboy.

Missing rooms…