Alternative, and the mainstream: Also at Ninth Art, Chris Ekman joins the push to help out Alternative Comics by offering a list of some of his favorite titles. He also responds to Charles McGrath's New York Times Magazine article about comics:
 
"I don't mean to criticize McGrath just for writing as a layman for other laymen. It's true that there's much in his introductory section to make the well-versed comics reader's eyes roll. He breezily dismisses comic strips, manga, and anything put out by DC or Marvel; he pointedly includes the traditional objection of 'highbrows' that comics are intrinsically sub-literate; and he appropriates Topffer and Hogarth as 'lofty antecedents' of modern comics, in the mighty McCloudian manner.
 
"One could quibble, a lot, with all of the above – by pointing out, for instance, that highbrows nowadays seem to be much less bothered by the pulpy roots of comics than middlebrows are – but there would be no point. These introductory gestures are present just to assuage the scepticism of the audience, and to reassure them that 'graphic novel' doesn't just mean the same old junk in a fancier package."