Saturday, July 14, 2012

Even at a Comics Event, You Can’t Defy Gravitas; New York Times, 7/13/12

Michael Cieply, New York Times; Even at a Comics Event, You Can’t Defy Gravitas:

"Topics for panels at this year’s conference at the San Diego Convention Center include comics and the plight of indigenous peoples, feminist writers and censorship, progressive politics in comics and of course the many financial and copyright issues created by the explosion in Hollywood’s interest.

As a certain archvillain might ask: Why so serious?

“It’s frightening,” said Lisa Vizcarra, a science teacher at Carquinez Middle School in Crockett, Calif. Ms. Vizcarra, who seemed to set the day’s tone, was speaking to a Comic-Con audience about a looming pedagogical crisis: Students, distracted by video, are no longer responding to comics as an educational tool, even as schools increasingly use them in their curriculums...

On the opposite end of the sprawling convention hall, at a seminar called “The Comic Book Law School,” Michael L. Lovitz, a copyright lawyer, was hammering away on another serious matter: the ins and outs of work for hire, the employment term that has become a critical legal issue in multimillion-dollar battles over the ownership of characters like Superman and the Fantastic Four."

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