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Reflecting on The Beat’s comics journalism ethics panel tonight at San Diego Comic-Con, my thoughts keep going back to the comics community – who we are, where we’re going, and what can keep us all connected however much we grow.

For all the online conversation, the panel went without incident. I ended up reluctantly having to cut off someone who I learned afterward was from the Gamergate perspective after his second or third point, but that was due to the program’s time limits and not any issue with his questions, which were thoughtful and well-received by the panel — the discussion of how Agent Carter makes a woman’s agency its central them was quite illuminating.

Jamie Coville will no doubt post the whole audio, so it’s only a matter of time before you too can hear the panelists’ brilliant insights, interrupted on occasion by my not-so-brilliant calling out their names: Heidi MacDonald, our intrepid leader; Donna Dickens, James Viscardi, Casey Gilley, Joe Illidge, and Brett Schenker.

One of the things that was great about this panel was that the speakers grounded their discussion of ethics in the comics community, and in so doing they expressed the essence of ethics itself. A lot of folks think of ethics primarily in terms of rules or abstract decision making principles, such as avoiding conflicts of interest or protecting the environment. Those can be important, but ethics is fundamentally an extension of ethos – it’s about who we are as individuals and groups.

And as becomes more than evident at conventions, comics people — and gamers, genre film & theater folks, and everyone else in this extended happy network of geeks, nerds, and dorks – are more than just faceless consumers. We’re a community connected by shared interests and values, and we’re all part of the conversation, not just the people who self-identify as journalists or scribble online. We don’t agree on everything, of course, but as the panel emphasized, by following the fundamental ethical principles of understanding and mutual respect, we can talk about our differences in ways that only strengthen our bonds.

However, as the panel also noted, our community of communities is growing to scale — our little niche interests have gone truly global, and even as we engage each other over whether various items and actions truly reflect our communal values, millions of people are coming to the stuff we like without a thorough grounding in our up ’til now shared experience, let alone the unassailable arguments as to why Crisis on Infinite Earths was the greatest crossover of all time. The influx of fans has tremendous potential for extending our community’s influence, but it also brings with it a heightened risk of fragmentation to the point of dissolving, or at best reducing to a network of shared interests that doesn’t go beyond what we see on a screen.

So we talk and write, explain and argue, with neutral just-the-facts articles when they help us gather useful knowledge and principled arguments for what we believe is right. That’s what we’ll all keep doing online and ultimately, that’s what makes comic-cons so important. Just as they gave us a chance to talk about what we talk about when we talk about ethics, they provide a forum of all of us, old and new, to learn about each other and ourselves.

Written by: Bryan Hill, Matt Hawkins

Art by: Isaac Goodhart

Colorist and Editor: Betsy Gonia

Letterer: Troy Peteri

Publisher: Top Cow

Strange small towns commanded by dogmatic despots have long been a staple of post-apocalyptic fare like The Walking Dead. So when Postal #1 opens on a church sermon delivered by a preacher waving a gun at a man who is bound at the foot of the altar, it seems a familiar scenario. Perhaps this is what the comic wants us to think, lulling us into a false sense of narrative security to contrast with it’s intriguing final pages.

The sermon is cut short by a turn of the page and text that reads: 24 hours earlier. We are in the town of Eden, Wyoming and at it’s post office we meet Mark: a mail carrier who takes his job very seriously, with ritualistic attention to detail. He leads us through his day, which apparently includes transcribing letters that are damaged at his mother’s behest, calling it “policy.” Somehow I don’t think the USPS would agree. In this case, Mark transcribes a damaged letter that implicates a shady Eden resident in a drug operation. Wanting to “help” the man, Mark ends up stumbling right into the middle of his meth lab.

As the issue unfolds we meet a host of characters that border on cliches: A tall, “injun” man who speaks in an accent straight out of a John Ford western; the beautiful, sad, yet caring waitress who Mark yearns for; a cantankerous chef who only speaks French. Those cliche’s grind to a halt when we meet Mayor Shiffron, who also happens to be Mark’s mother. The Mayor lays out some of the rules of Eden to an overly muscled white-power newcomer and they aren’t exactly what you’d expect. This piqued my interest. The Mayors tense, cold relationship with her son was also a surprise. By the time I reached the books’ ending which recalls the strange, small town of Twin Peaks, I found myself wondering what the next issue would bring.

Postal #1 offers well-rendered characters, different in their build, height and affect which are colored nicely. The gray and pastel palate gives the effect of isolating the town, making it feel as if it exists outside of the world we know. The end of the book includes a dossier on the important characters we’ve met so far and provides some further clarity while also expanding the mystery of Eden. If Postal #2 avoids the pitfall of piling too many mysteries on top of each other, it could prove to be a solid new series.

Did I get tricked into running this somewhat non-slick infographic because The Beat is ranked #8 in a list of the top 100 comics blogs? You bet. But I did like that The Nib is #1. I think the chart went by Alexa rankings and it includes webcomics among the blogs, which doesn’t really make any sense. And essential sites like Comics Reporter, Robot 6, Comics Alliance, and about 800 more are missing. But anyway, talking points.

What do YOU think are the top comics sites? Besides the obvious—CBR, BC, Comicbook.com? Talk about it in the comments.

Speaking of manga, as we just were, and Tezuka and Kickstarter as we were yesterday, here is another Tezuka Kickstarter project that has kind of gone into the “Kickstarter failure” file. Last June something called Kansai Club Publishing raised more than $52,000 to publish an English language version of Tezuka’s The Crater. This is a…

And oops, a Tezuka Kickstarter that ran into problems was originally published on The Beat

Manga isn’t all awkward schoolgirls and giant robots. There has long been a very strong alternative and literary thread of manga, and two recent articles give you some perspective on it.

I would call Ryan Holmberg’s Proto-Gekiga: Matsumoto Masahiko’s Komaga a must read, but I have to confess, it is very long and involved, and I have set it aside for weekend reading. BUT the important thing is that he compares and contrasts Yoshihiro Tatsumi, who is kind of credited as the father of “gekiga” or realistic manga, with Matsumoto Masahiko, a figure who appears in Tatsumi’s autobiographical A Drifting Life under another name. Masahiko’s work went down a slightly different path than Tatsumi’s but Holmberg shows that it was equally important:

The secret history of alternative manga was originally published on The Beat

Here’s a new movie about cartoonists and comic book making: Comic Book Artists: The Next Generation, which spotlights creators Raid Studios in Toronto, including Ramon Perez, Francis Manapul, Kalman Andrasofsky and Marcus Antony To. Some promising up and comers named Stan Lee and Jim Lee also appear—I believe they are unrelated. It’s a nice look at the artist’s studio and the collegial spirit that evolves from it.

Watch Comic Book Artists: The Next Generation for free was originally published on The Beat

A lot of cartoonists—and many blogs, ahem—have taken to PAtreon as a means to finance the creation of comics. There are quite a few (a round up post is called for, maybe later this week) and Patreon doesn’t make it clear who makes the most, the way Kickstarter does, but Jason Shiga recently hit $1000 a month for his Ignatz winning webcomic Demon. Given his analytic background, there’s much of that in the post, but here’s an excerpt:

Jason Shiga’s Patreon for Demon reaches $1000 a month was originally published on The Beat

It’s a rite of autumn —The Walking Dead’s new season debuts on AMC, and Walking Dead graphic novels start selling like crack again. Here’s the feed from the Amazon graphic novels best seller’s list. Note that The Oatmeal has sold a gazillion copies, and Roz Chast is back in the top ten following her National Book Award shortlisting.

Per the usual pattern, Walking Dead GN sales will slow when the 8 episode season ends, and pick right back up when it returns next year. I know Robert Kirkman has made a buttload of money from the hit TV series, but he, Charlie Adlard and Tony Moore have also made a buttload from the books alone, given the Image deal.

(BTW, for long term Amazon trend analysis I refer you to Beat contributor David Carter’s weekly blog on the topic, which someday I will feature here every week. Lots of other interesting things on his site, as well.)

The Walking Dead graphic novels sales are up again was originally published on The Beat

Ever wonder what categories are the most popular in graphic novels? Think it’s all manga and superheroes? Well, as you can see on the chart to the left, it’s fairly diverse. How did I come up with these percentages? Simple… First, there’s this group called BISG.  They make sure all the standards that booksellers and…

Just the Facts, Ma’am: Which Graphic Novel Categories are the Biggest? was originally published on The Beat

By Alexander Ané

For those who don’t know, the Bleeding Alliance of Beat Reporters is four of the biggest names in comic book journalism in one panel held during Thursday evening of San Diego Comic-Con and moderated by another big name in comics journalism, Douglas Wolk. Andy Khouri of Comics Alliance, Rich Johnston of Bleeding Cool, Heidi MacDonald of The Beat, and Tom Spurgeon of The Comics Reporter filed into the panel for an evening of talking about their publications and beliefs about other side of the comics industry most people don’t consider often: reporting about it.

Most of the time, if you look behind the curtain, you might hear about those individuals pecking at each other over various stories and events, but the level of professionalism shown among those panelists was something to be admired. Their job that evening was to inform us about comics journalism and the what life becomes when you follow that profession.

There was a great discussion about readership and how each publication handles their own followers. It clearly reflected each of their aims toward journalism and writing in general. In the end while all the panelists agreed that journalists write for themselves and writing news for the sake of numbers was a secondary priority there is a fine line where good quality reporting does become news or ratings worthy.

When asked about how each of them would make a living on journalism alone, it was mentioned that there has to be a sort of diversifaction in writing professions to be able to stay afloat. The fact that they emphasized being able to maintain a varied skill set was interesting because that seems to be a common topic in the comics industry when acquiring work.