Soooo … Gareb Shamus, who led the ever-contracting Megan Fox Tits Wolverine¹ empire, did two notable things last week:

1. He abruptly quit, effective immediately, on 1 December
2. On his way out the door, or possibly before leaving, or maybe after (the timing isn’t clear), he tried to get a webcomicker fired from his day job

Let’s examine that second item a little more closely, shall we? From today’s update of The Gutters, written by Ryan Sohmer and drawn by a rotating cast of artists:

Should you find yourself the subject matter of a Gutters page, and take offense to it, don’t go after my artists. Should you be so offended that you attempt to get someone fired from their day job, don’t be a coward.

Come after me.

My e-mail is Sohmer@blindferret.com, I will gladly provide you with my contact information, as well as that of our legal department.

I take sole responsibility for every comic and news post on this site.

Don’t you dare go after one of my artists.

Now let’s look at The Gutters #222 from last Monday, as drawn by Sohmer’s partner-in-crime² Lar DeSouza; the topic of this particular update is, by a peculiar coincidence, one Mister Gareb Shamus. Thing is, last Monday, #222 had originally been posted with art by another creator (since Sohmer implies strongly that said art was pulled at the artist’s request, I’ll forbear naming him at this time).

Boy, you sure showed Sohmer and an artist just trying to pick up a little work for hire, Mr Shamus! If your reputation was so very, very poor in the comics industry as to be made fun of previously, how much better it must be now. It’s a good thing we live a in a world where Google doesn’t exist, the original art for #222 can never be found again, you can simply bully DeSouza into being fired by his day job boss³, and the words Streisand Effect don’t have any particular meaning.

On to things with infinitely less jerky behavior.

• Per the Twitter account of Stripped, news that the end is in sight:
  

  This week: Final interviews with Guisewite, McDonnell, Feiffer, Munroe, Walker, Beaton ‘n Gran … then it’s full focus on post-production!

  The “Walker” referenced is ambiguous, but I’d guess probably represent cartooning stalwart Mort Walker. One might also note that Kate Beaton and Meredith Gran were already interviewed by Schroeder and Kellett at NEWW last year; of course, these past twelve months have been the Year of Beaton in the comics world, and Gran is doing the best work of her career, so it makes sense to go back for followups.

  Given that one of the challenges of any documentary (at least, one that doesn’t follow a single subject) is how to come up with a storyline to unite all the disparate elements, using one or two creators as representative of the growth and development of webcomics makes perfect sense. Put another way, the future of comics is going to be a lot more creator-owned, niche-topic-oriented, and female-created than it is right now, and Beaton/Gran look an awful lot like that future.

• Speaking of repeat visits, Saveur Magazine’s Recipe Comix have been revisiting some of their early contributors. Two weeks back, Dorothy Gambrell showed us all how to deal with Thanksgiving Alone (hint: bourbon), and today Carly Monardo brings us her grandmother’s lasagna recipe. My friends, if anybody knows what an amazing lasagna should taste like, I’m gonna guess it’s a lady named Monardo from Staten Island, who named her internet-based art collective after the dish. Dig in.

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¹ Also known as Wizard magazine and Wizard World; cf: here.

² Or possibly “hetero life-partner”, I can never keep it straight.

³ Ryan Sohmer.