Kudos to Pennydreadful Press and Fantagraphics for putting ads in Bitch magazine. It may seem odd to applaud ads, but putting an ad in a low circulation magazine is more than many comics publishers are doing for outreach. Seeing an ad for XXXlivenudegirls (which is actually just a comic about girls who do too many drugs and have too much sex, not about hoes who been having mad sex yo!) or La Perdida, which is about a girl rediscovering her heritage, won't make comics be as big as they were in the '40's, but certainly, it gives comics a better image.

What comics seems to need is a good PR team. Not more crappy superhero movies or more people knowing about Spider man, they need someone to come and say "Hey, dudes, sorry about those skanky superhero shops, here is comics as they really are" and showcase some of the actually good work out there. Yes, I said good work. Maybe poorly written work for hire superheroes do outnumber really well written and incisive work, but then again, there are tons of bad books on shelves, and you don't see bookstores going out of business, do you?

And by showcasing good work, I don't mean just to the same people who already read a zillion comics, I mean to people who have never read a comic in their life. Some people may be like well, Entertainment Weekly is starting a column. A step in the right direction, but it seems to be mostly reviewing spandex books, so basically it's squandering the opportunity that could be afforded. Millions of readers could learn about great work, but NOOOO, we have to hear about Daredevil or whatever.

Dudes, noone besides your own geeky ass selves and maybe a lot of teen boys care about spandex. Get it- people simply don't care about that much about some radioactively enhanced guy to justify spending $3 for twenty-two pages of it! Get that through your heads!

On other comic book related fronts-some guy from Savant wants YOU to read a comic in public. A fairly OK idea, if I do say so myself. I think the pamphlets idea is a bit silly, a lot of comics readers read only graphic novels. They are just so much cheaper and efficient, you can buy them where you buy books, and everyone has a Borders or a Barnes and Nobles in their community, even if they don't have a comic book store. So go out, read a comic in public today. In fact here is a site devoted to the idea.