Posted in: Comics, Recent Updates, Speculator Corner | Tagged: amazon, comic, fantagraphics, glitch, journal

Mini-Glitch: Comics Journal #301

Published Wed, 02 Mar 2011 13:07:06 -0600

The Comics Journal has changed from a monthly title to a more occasional massive volume. And issue 301, 624 pages in length is charged at a very reasonable $30 when it comes out in June.

But for some reason, Amazon.com are accepting orders for $11.93, that's 61% off the cover price. Not only is it less than retailers would pay from Diamond, but it is less than Diamond, and indeed Amazon, pay to Fantagraphics.

Normally this would be called a loss leader. But what's it leading to?

Don;t ask questions. Jump on. The volume promises;

a focus on R. Crumb's most commercially successful project of his career, his comics adaptation of Genesis, including the most extensive interview he's given on the subject as well as a long critical roundtable among six comics critics reviewing the book and debating each other over its merits; plus:

• An interview with Joe Sacco about his recent journalistic masterpiece, Footnotes in Gaza;
• A peek into the private sketchbooks of (and accompanying interviews with) Jim Woodring, Tim Hensley, and the novelist Stephen Dixon;
• A conversation between Mad Fold-Out creator Al Jaffee and Thrizzle auteur Michael Kupperman;
• A complete full-color reprinting of the 1950s Gerald McBoing Boing comic;
• The first significant biographical essay charting the turn-of-the-century cartoonist and illustrator John T. McCutcheon;