Comics (Mostly), Poetry (Partly), plus Edward Champion and Mark Sarvas

COMICS
First, something that I saved from last week. Here is the brief exchange of letters I mentioned between Douglas Wolk (of whom more presently) and David Hajdu in The New Republic, regarding the latter's book, The Ten-Cent Plague. The controversy that it recounts was a defining moment in the history of the medium: the brouhaha resulted in the creation of the Comics Code Authority, which cast a long shadow over the comics industry up through the late 80s. Read their restrictions, and you'll understand the main reason that superhero stories became so thoroughly married to the medium. The organization continues to operate today from the state of Irrelevance.

Also! The 2008 Eisner Awards just published their shortlist. The winners will be announced on July 25th at Comic Con. Most of the nominees are completely unknown to me, but I can personally vouch for the following:

• Mr. Wonderful by Dan Clowes (which I read as it came out in the New York Times);
  The Best American Comics 2007;
  
• MOME (I assume they're nominating all four issues of 2007?);
  
• Postcards: True Stories that Never Happened;
  
• The Complete Dream of the Rarebit Fiend (NB: This is already a rare book.);
  
• The totally unwieldly Sundays with Walt and Skeezix (which I was only able to inspect thanks to the display copy at Powell's Books);
  
• I Killed Adolf Hitler by Jason (who currently has the NYT Comics slot);
  
• Exit Wounds by Rutu Modan;
  
• Chris Ware's ACME Novelty Library #18;
  
• Comic Art #9 and The Comics Journal (which just changed format); and
  
• needless to say, Reading Comics by Douglas Wolk, which I intend to review in this space sometime in the next month.
  

POETRY
Today is "Poem in Your Pocket" day. Got a poem in yours? It's still not too late!

Mine was given to me. One of the things I found in my mail haul yesterday was a tiny envelope from Ninth Letter, stamped with the words DO NOT OPEN UNTIL APRIL 17 PIYP DAY. It turned out to contain an excerpt from Sara Pennington's "Primer: an abecedarian," first published in Ninth Letter vol. 4 no. 1.

And here is an excellent piece by Stephen Burt on John Ashberry, in the Times Literary Supplement.

CHAMPION V. SARVAS
Two entertaining book bloggers in conversation: Edward Champion interviews Mark Sarvas about his forthcoming novel for the 201st episode of the Bat Segundo Show (48 minutes).