See & Read: Comic Book Comics!

March 31, 2008 on 7:09 pm | In Art Stuff, Interviews

I know that the phrases “Indie Jones” and “Exclusive Content” go together about as well as “Balanced Diet” and “Processed Cheese,” but the very cool Fred Van Lente was kind enough to let us debut the cover to the second issue of he and artist Ryan Dunlevy’s Comic Book Comics. If you haven’t heard of the book yet, it’s a humorous telling of the history of the comics medium done in the same style as Van Lente and Dunlevy’s Action Philosophers!, and you can read all about it in my interview with Van Lente at the Big WU. My favorite part is this, where he talks about why the comic is both funny and informative:

VAN LENTE: Some of it—and I’m being totally up front about this—is to not get sued. One of the ways to refer to this stuff, because we’re using trademarked characters—one of the things people said when I told them this idea years ago was, “How are you gonna be able to do that and not be sued? Because you’re talking about Superman, you’re talking about Blue Beetle, you’re talking about all these trademarked characters, aren’t people going to come after you?” And the way you protect yourself from that is—there’s an educational component to this that’s covered under copyright law as fair use, but there’s ways to make fun of them. It’s parody, and it’s protected. Sometimes it becomes, I gotta tell some jokes here, or I’m gonna get sued! You’ll see when you get the comic, the entire inside front cover is taken up by legalese. Humorous legalese, of course, but all accurate nonetheless.

There’s plenty more cool stuff in the link, and you can read plenty of free pages from Comic Book Comics #1 at the Evil Twin website, so check it out!

- KP