My friend Comics Professor Hatfield justifies his life...

...on YouTube no less! "Interesting Classes CSUN English 333 Comics and Graphic Novels with Prof. Charles Hatfield" - I'd take that.

Charles used to be in DC every year with ICAF and we'd hang around - the above is me, Claire, Charles and Spanish comics scholar Ana Merino, in October 2005, post-ICAF, lounging in my backyard.

Hatfield and Fischer - Siskel and Ebert? Nah.

My buddies Charles Hatfield and Craig Fischer are interviewed by Chris Mautner in "Everyone's A Critic: An interview with the Thought Balloonist guys," Sunday April 20, 2008.

Willie and Joe: The War Years by Mauldin out

This is the project that I went down to the Library of Congress a couple of times to try to make scans for. I don't think anything I got was ever used as the volumes were bound and a hand-scanner didn't work. K Stocker came with me and took photographs of some pages too, and we're both thanked in the acknowledgments as is Martha Kennedy of the Library who found the final image Fantagraphics needed. See Tom Spurgeon's review for more details and my buddy Charles Hatfield blogged about Mauldin and DePastino's biography of him today as well.

New Thought Balloonists blog born at Politics and Prose

My friends Craig Fischer and Charles Hatfield, two of the best academic writers on comics, have started a new blog, Thought Ballonists. So far they've taken indepth looks at Shaun Tan, Carol Tyler, Fraction's Iron Fist and Chester Brown. I hadn't paid any attention to the Iron Fist relaunch, even though Craig was pushing it at ICAF. Charles emailed me today, "The idea of TB was born while waiting in line at P&P to get Oliphant's signature, and Craig mentioned Iron Fist to me then as well!" So I just ordered it from Big Planet.

Anyway, check out the blog twice-weekly.