Wow! Let's Go! A Kids Comics Studio Anthology is in the hands of our Kickstarter backers, and now it's available on Amazon!
www.amazon.com/Lets-Go-Comi...
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Let’s Go!: A Kids Comics Studio Anthology
Let’s Go!: A Kids Comics Studio Anthology [González, Alberto, Araujo, Alondra, Samuel, Annie, Steinberg, Sarah E, Giles, Sarah, Perks, Anne-Marie, Wagner, Ashlee, Zahnrei, Rowena, Lugo, Patrick, Tzeng, Bert] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Let’s Go!: A Kids Comics Studio Anthology
![You’ve probably heard some of these ol’ chestnuts:
You want to write for kids?
Don’t give up your day job!
Reading comics isn’t reading!
Studios and publishers only take projects they already know will sell. What’s the point sending your stories out?
Perusing the news these days, it can seem like the whole world’s become a plague pit of discouragement. The plight of print! Local bookstores replaced by gyms! Books banned, libraries and archives purged…and our reactions to it all somehow both dulled and exacerbated by overwhelm, ennui – the distraction of social media as attention spans continue to fracture and shrink.
[drawn image of a stack of books, their spines read out READ_BANNED-BOOKS]
Seriously, where would we be without Atticus Finch – or Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland!
Thing is, for writers, artists, playwrights, actors, vaudevillians, creatives of all kinds—
It’s kinda always been that way. Just ask Voltaire – he spent a month shy of a year locked up in the Bastille and later faced exile for his satire. Sure, his wit remained unblunted to the end. But we, here in the second quarter of the twenty-first century, may expect to boast a few demonstrable improvements over pre-revolutionary 1717.
[Image of Voltaire]
Here’s Voltaire looking smug with a book. 😊
Still, censorship and self-censorship remain an ongoing and growing concern. New works struggle to root, let alone sprout in the shadow of culturally-entrenched intellectual properties. Chasing trends is like entering a race after the fact, and pop fads get outdated quicker than slang.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:caojtzz4a56w667fm4zf6wrm/bafkreibozy45nd2ebqztm3i2ssb57g3xd3gwojyajhu5a4hj6wgrfdgrfy)
![Skibidi.
People say they want the new, the different, the cutting edge. But they buy the familiar, the popular, the nostalgia-bait husks of beloved cultural touchstones. So...
What’s the point?
Let me tell you a story…
Back in the Golden Age of Hollywood, studios polished and packaged celebrity like baubles to tantalize the paying public. Pigeon-holing talent simplified marketing, and Jimmy Cagney’s gleaming star reflected his tough-guy image as the galaxy’s favorite gangster.
[Black and white photo of James Cagney in tux and bow tie with caption: James Cagney: “Hollywood renegade.”]
Well, mine, at least. Edward G. Robinson was pretty snappy too.
[black and white photo of Cagney and Robinson in suits and fedoras with caption Cagney and Edward G. co-starred in Smart Money (1931).]
Anyway, Cagney was a dynamic guy, eager to learn and try new things. That’s great for a creative mind; not so much for a pre-packaged star. His dancing and singing skills didn’t quite fit the bullet-scarred box Hollywood provided, and his refusal to curl up and keep quiet in there led to several scraps with the studios. So, after he won the Oscar for the musical Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), James Cagney teamed up with his brother William to start an independent filmmaking venture.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:caojtzz4a56w667fm4zf6wrm/bafkreifz4dq4nugj3lwyttrkkvirnd53qaqqly6rccua5i2364lfwhzeqi)
![[Image of YANKEE DOODLE DANDEE movie poster]
I love the scene where Cagney tap-dances down the White House steps!
And from all this tumult, we were left my favorite Cagney movie…possibly tied with 1949’s White Heat. It’s pretty close.
Johnny Come Lately (1943) marked Cagney’s first film after Yankee Doodle Dandy, and his first chance to play a character he wanted to play in a story he wanted to tell without a studio head peering over his shoulder.
[Image of JOHNNY COME LATELY movie poster and a picture of a green book cover titled MCLEOD'S FOLEY]
It’s a period piece (and cinematic time capsule), set in 1906, based on the book McLeod’s Folly, by Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Louis Bromfield. And, despite a lukewarm reception and similarly critical subsequent descriptions, Cagney’s film, the characters in it, and the obstacles they face are anything but – as Cagney’s biographer characterized it – “mild” (Cagney, John McCabe).
Here’s the basic breakdown:
In the time of the robber barons, like Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, and Carnegie, Cagney’s discouraged, drifting reporter finds himself dragged out of a public park and into court on overblown vagrancy charges.
[black and white image still from the film with caption Is it a crime to read a book in a public park without a shave?]
At sentencing, he’s rescued and hired by the town’s lone surviving independent news publisher: a little old lady with a civic mind, a caring heart, and the fortitude and character of an Old West pioneer.
[black and white image still from the frame with the captionVinnie McLeod, played by Grace George, meets Tom Richards, played by James Cagney.]
Together, this unlikely pair risk assassins’ bullets and worse to fight censorship, expose graft, satirize corruption – only to face the town’s resigned indifference, while gaining very little support.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:caojtzz4a56w667fm4zf6wrm/bafkreicopvqjdq4nmpvzxp6y4jk4gvpkziqac4u2j6tcv7vw3zbd54xz7u)
