Some of the biggest names in indie cartooning are sounding alarms over various alt-weeklies shedding their comics (I recently wrote about how we were, sadly, ahead of the curve on that one). Max Cannon of "Red Meat" calls it a "comics apocalypse" and says that if the "humble $10 to $20 that I generally get paid for a...strip is going to bring the whole operation tumbling down, then the alt-weekly industry is already dead on its feet."

Lloyd Dangle, who draws "Troubletown," says he was "shit-canned" from the Seattle Stranger and Metro Silicon Valley. The papers, he says, "said that they might bring Troubletown back when things get better, but for newspapers, I don't know anybody who thinks it's going to get better."

Derf, author of "The City," who we dropped last year, is very kind to the "desperate" editors he's worked with over the years. Still, he doesn't buy the wisdom of such cuts: "I believe Weeklies should be ADDING features and content, especially cartoons, which are both popular and inexpensive. Instead the strategy seems to be "let's give our readers LESS to read!" Yeah. Wonder how that will work out?"

He also has some choice words about our situation:

Read More "Artists Fear “Comics Apocalypse”" »

In which Erik gushes over the latest issue of Bash (a new-to-the-scene alternative-comics monthly) and takes the Examiner to task for a listings misfire.

The whole shebang, including some signature comic strip exegesis, below the jump.

Read More "Fuego/Frio: Dracula’s Testicles!" »

You may have seen the bright yellow boxes around town: Bash, a new alternative-comics monthly, will debut Friday. "We're in the air, dropping," says Publisher John B. Van Meter.

The D.C. publication's Web site has information for potential advertisers, a PDF of its prototype issue, and, somewhat less expectedly, a mailing address in Lexington, Ky., a city roughly 500 miles from the neighborhoods Van Meter says he's targeting first: Adams Morgan, Georgetown, Bethesda.

Van Meter divides his time between Georgetown (he has family in this area) and Lexington, where he was an investor in Nougat, an arts monthly that folded in June. "You lose money in one magazine, you'll jump into another," says Van Meter.

Bash has a Lexington address, Van Meter says, because its "computer guy" (Managing Editor Jonathan T. Hampton) is there, but notes that Bash's sales staff is "all Washington."

"Last month I was in D.C. for three months," says Van Meter. He says he's been "up and down Connecticut knocking on doors" trying to sell ads, which he says is "one of the toughest things in advertising for a magazine that's never been put out."

Bash's prototype features strips such as "Tiny Sepuku" and Van Meter's own "Womb Wompers," which stars talking fetuses. Van Meter was a cartoonist for Nougat before he put money into it. He says, laughing: "I'm not a businessman, I'm a cartoonist. Likely, that's starting to show."