Linkblogging: Dumbledore is a homosexual.

+ Let’s see what joys the internet can provide for us today, shall we?

“Fan Fiction is an Internet site where fans can speculate, converse and write on books, movies, shows, etc.
“One branch of the site is dedicated to Harry Potter, and explicit scenes with Dumbledore already appear there.”
– Christian Broadcasting Network News

Thanks to Mike for the link, we find that J.K. Rowling outted Dumbledore in a reading last week and that this move will likely have Christians more upset. As usual, they’ve made sure to get their facts straight before rushing to the internet. Oh, Christians, you’re the worst part about Christianity.

+ Meanwhile, the comics journalism debate was ended this week way before I threw Beaudelaire at it, by Tom Spurgeon. A rumour reverberated throughout the industry about long-running indy comics show APE, The Alternative Press Expo, moving from it’s “first show of the year” placement to pretty-close to the last show of the year in November. What would this mean? Why would they do this? Why didn’t anyone pick up the phone and actually just call and find out what was going on? Congrats to Tom Spurgeon who actually put the effort in to find out the how and why instead of just the ‘what’, in this interview with David Glanzer from Comic Con International (the folks behind APE as well as well as the big show in San Diego). If the blogosphere had put as much effort into actually doing comics journalism in the past few weeks as they’ve put into talking about why no one does comics journalism, the question itself would cease to be.

+ At MisterKitty.org, Dave uncovered a ‘plot’ by Archie to try and whitewash the actual creators out of their creative history. Archie comics re-uses stories from throughout their publishing history all the time, making small updates to the art or dialogue to try and make them more contemporary for today’s youth (although how they get away with those fashions is beyond me… I guess with the electro revival a few years back all their 80s reprints would’ve been cutting edge for a little while there).

Anyhow, one of the more recent reprints does a lot more than alter a pop-culture reference like “Burt Bobain” to “Bernard Bay” to make it relevant, it changes a breaking-the-fourth-wall moment with Betty acknowledging top-notch artist Dan DeCarlo as the creator of the story she’s in, to a general “The Archie Comics Staff”. I think that I can take it for granted that you, my audience, find this as gross as I do, but let’s talk about the reason why. Dan DeCarlo created the characters/properties of Sabrina, The Teenage Witch and Josie and the Pussycats, and aside from not acknowledging DeCarlo with any finanicial consideration considering the other-media successes of both properties, Archie Comics has steadfastly maintained that DeCarlo was just the artist, and that an employee of the company (and not a freelancer) really came up with the ideas when all evidence points at that as being a load of bull.

Poor guy got fucked over by a major corporation even WITHOUT signing a contract that effectively says “I didn’t create this thing I’m creating, AOL/Time-Warner did, or possibly Stu Levy.” Wait until they erase this generation’s names off of their own work in ten or fifteen years…

Anyway, if there’s a bright-side to all of this, it’s that when they re-lettered Betty’s word balloon they did it in what looks to be a computer-generated ‘lettering’ font without changing any of the other lovely hand-lettering, so the whole thing has the air of a creepy, computerized “Mis-terrr Ann-derrr-son…” voiceover. Maybe today’s young Betty & Veronica readers will see through Archie Comics’ attempts at erasing the human hands that built their empire? One can hope, until then, we can all linkblog the hell out of it.

– Christopher