Scoop talked with Tom Heintjes, editor of Hogan's Alley, to see what's up in the current issue and what's lurking around the corner. Here's what Tom had to say:

In some ways, issue #10 is more idiosyncratic than other ones. There's no "centerpiece" interview with a big-name cartoonist. Rather, we took an approach that is the flip side of the coin: we profiled two dozen of today's most interesting comic strips that run in fewer than 100 newspapers (which makes them "small" strips by syndication standards). The overall effect of the profiles, I think, is encouraging. It's easy to form the impression that very few people are doing interesting work on the comics page, but the truth is that newspapers are much more interested in continuing to publish worn-out chestnuts like "Blondie" instead of an innovative strip like, say, "Rhymes With Orange." This feature, I hope, gives people reason to think that the comic strip will continue to survive as a creative form.

The issue also has a story on the rise and fall of Johnstone and Cushing, the company that produced comics-style advertisements from the '30s into the '60s. Many top cartoonists passed through Johnstone and Cushing during their careers: Dik Browne, Neal Adams, Stan Drake, Leonard Starr and Creig Flessel, just to name a few. Johnstone and Cushing has been mentioned often in interviews with these cartoonists, but not much was known about the company-what gave rise to it and what killed it. Hogan's Alley fills in the historical record in a way that has not been done previously.

In a more contemporary vein, we also explore the bumpy transition that the Simpsons made when they developed a Sunday-only newspaper vehicle for the characters. Taking a cutting-edge property and adapting it to the more sedate newspaper medium presented some real challenges, and it's interesting going behind the scenes to see how they confronted these obstacles.

And fans of Ernie Bushmiller won't want to miss the reprinting of his never-reprinted strip, "Mac the Manager." Bushmiller did the strip for a disreputable New York newspaper, the Evening Graphic (referred to popularly as the "Evening Pornographic") in the 1920s, and this part of his career has been forgotten until now. (He never mentioned working for the Graphic, which is understandable, given the low repute the paper was held in. Bushmiller biographies also omit this period of his career.)

We'll put our next one out at the end of the year or the very first part of 2003, but among the usual eclectic material will be: an examination of The Spirit's existence as a daily comic strip, along with new commentary from Will Eisner; a sampling of Jefferson Machamer's Gags and Gals Sunday tabloid page; an interview with J.J. Sedelmaier of TV Funhouse, the Ambiguously Gay Duo, the retro Speed Racer commercials for Volkswagen; a look at how Jaime Hernandez constructs his Love and Rockets stories, with step-by-step illustrations; a sample of Carol Burnett's cartoon drawing; and more 'stuff.'