Author Michael Chabon was the keynote speaker at this year's Eisner's Awards, the comic industry's presitigious award ceremony. Chabon's speech is well worth a read if you have any interest in comics. Chabon's speech is an appeal to the industry to take their eyes off adult 'legitimacy' for a moment and go back to doing really cool graphic literature, hell, comic books, for kids--the core audience which the medium increasingly has left behind as its market becomes ever more insular and smaller.
It's a position I most heartily agree with. (Indeed I have expressed similar sentiments in my own column on the death of the comic book editor Julius Schwartz). A couple of months ago I gave my 11 year-old Goddaughter, who loves Rowling and Pullman, a charming comic series from the eighties called Amethyst Princess of Gemworld. That I couldn't think of a modern equivalent to give her still depresses me.
Posted by Graeme Burk at August 4, 2004 06:20 AM