The Four Color Media Monitor

KMYA-NBC reports there's a businessman in Nebraska who wants to auction his collection of Spider-Man issues to feed the hungry around the world. However, he does have fishy positions when it comes to comics he's produced himself:

A CEO from Omaha, Nebraska is ready to auction off a "Spider-Man" comic book collection worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to help educate people on how to feed the hungry around the world.

An NBC affiliate in Omaha first met Nate Blum, who is the CEO of Sorghum United Foundation, back in 2017. He was being fitted for an artificial eye, and he donated his glaucoma-damaged one to science, for medical research and education.

"I've always hoped that my experiences could somehow help educate," Blum expressed.

Eight years later, Blum continues to educate through comic books he's written, creating his own super heroes.

"It's a worldwide adventure. I say it's like Indiana Jones meet Captain Planet," Blum shared.

These books target young children around the world, focusing on very serious issues.

"We don't sugarcoat things...We talk about climate change in this book, and we talk about the fact that people don't have enough to eat in this book. In this book, we talk about how farmers can't grow a grain if they don't have a market to sell it," Blum explained.

The part about climate change is what's annoying here. That's been a rather petty issue for some time among leftists, and if that's what Mr. Blum believes is such a big deal, then he isn't being very creative, even with seemingly family-friendly subjects. As for the part about hunger, well let's hope he doesn't follow a leftist playbook on that subject, because areas run by Islamic jihadists are not those deserving of monetary relief so long as they follow the Religion of Peace. Either way, when climate change is what he believes a big deal, why say he doesn't sugarcoat things?

I also think it's laughable if the guy sees Capt. Planet as a great cartoon, because it really wasn't. It was just more environmental propaganda mishmash from its time, and don't see much point in adapting it comics, as it was of recent.

Also of interest, the Seattle Times wrote about a store that appears to be affiliated with Fantagraphics working in the Georgetown area, which also deals in collectibles:

Larry Reid, the manager of Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery in Georgetown, has “nothing but fondness” for Seattle’s many comic book shops. After all, the bookstore that Reid manages is owned by Fantagraphics, the Seattle-based publisher of some of the most critically acclaimed American comics to be published in the last half-century, including “Love and Rockets” and “Eightball.” You can find Fantagraphics titles on the shelves of every comic book shop in town.

But Reid claims there’s a big difference between a comic book store and a bookstore that focuses on comics as an art form. He’s devoted much of his life to the latter pursuit. Reid opened his first art gallery in Pioneer Square in 1978, and he almost immediately gravitated toward the burgeoning new generation of young cartoonists.

“I’ve always been interested in the intersection between fine art and pop culture,” Reid says, and he found that comics often “had a more immediate impact on culture than fine art.”

Pacific Northwest cartoonists like Lynda Barry and Matt Groening caught Reid’s attention, and he developed relationships with nationally celebrated cartoonists, including Gary Panter and Art Spiegelman. His idea of what an art gallery could be was evolving as well, and Reid started experimenting with hosting musical performances, video installations and readings.

I guess it's no surprise they'd align themselves with notable leftists like Spiegelman, and Groening, the latter who's creator of the Simpsons, which has had its share of leftist allusions. In the long run, what good has their influence been? Not much, if at all.

The amazing thing about comic books — and their more respectable siblings, graphic novels — is the way that they seamlessly blend high and low art. Until Spiegelman’s “Maus” was published, for instance, no one suspected it would be possible to produce a bracing and deeply moving account of the Holocaust using a cast of anthropomorphized mice and cats. More than any other medium, comics can evolve to encompass just about any idea imaginable. [...]

“There’s a local artist that I’m particularly fond of,” Reid says, pulling out an edition of Gina Siciliano’s “I Know What I Am: The Life and Times of Artemisia Gentileschi.” The book “tells the story of an overlooked high Renaissance master. Being a woman in Italy at the time, she was marginalized and sexually assaulted, and then she herself was put on trial for sexual assault.” Siciliano’s biography tells Gentileschi’s story and reclaims her art for modern audiences, finding some sort of justice for a woman who was largely forgotten by art historians.

Regrettably, it's unlikely they'd ever say soemthing similar about the subject of the war against Islamic terrorism, and in all the years since 911, comics that dealt honestly with the issues involved were minimal, if at all. And on the subject of the Italian artist, would they ever argue in favor of producing GNs about the terrible experiences of Betty Mahmoody in Iran during the mid-1980s, and her effort to make sure her daughter wouldn't remain prisoner of her abusive father there at the time? Sadly, that too is highly unlikely, and a terrible shame. So what's the use of talking about comics as an "art form" if and when nobody's willing to make use of it for serious topics as well, which can also be an art form in a way? If Fantagraphics turns out to be unwilling to take up truly challenging subjects, then they haven't accomplished much of anything either.

Labels: indie publishers, marvel comics, msm propaganda, politics, sales, science, Spider-Man