2009 January
Watchmen legal battle could end today
Watchmen
The bitter legal feud over the Warner Bros. adaptation of Watchmen could be resolved as early as today.
Rodney Perkins of Film Esq. notes that attorneys for 20th Century Fox and Warner Bros. filed a request yesterday with U.S. District Judge Gary A. Feess for a hearing at 3:30 p.m. “to report on a final resolution or, alternatively, to discuss how to proceed on January 20, 2009.”
According to the document, the studios began settlement talks on Dec. 29, just five days after Feess ruled that Fox owns a copyright interest in Watchmen because of a tangled development history that dates back to the late 1980s.
Early last week the two sides agreed to allow Feess to decide in a planned Jan. 20 hearing whether Fox could block the release of the $130-million movie.
However, negotiations reportedly “got serious” last weekend after the judge postponed a settlement hearing so the studios could meet further.
If the studios come to an agreement, Watchmen will be released on March 6.
Developing …
- January 15, 2009 @ 03:40 AM by Kevin Melrose
Larsen feels “very betrayed” by Amazing Spider-Man #583
Savage Dragon #137
Most comic fans probably remember that President-Elect Barack Obama’s first comic book appearance didn’t come in this week’s Amazing Spider-Man #583. Last year IDW published their biography of Obama in October, and he appeared in Savage Dragon #137 last August.
It’s that second one that’s causing a stir over on the Comicon.com message boards, in a thread titled “The house of stolen ideas.” “Bendrix,” who started the thread, says that Marvel promotion ripped off The Savage Dragon’s “publicity stunt.”
A few pages in, creator Erik Larsen shows up in the thread to say he feels betrayed by Marvel:
As far as Marvel goes– I can’t help but feel very betrayed. They duplicated the incentive cover–and preempted my upcoming one–and even used the “terrorist fist jab.” Clearly those in the “house of ideas” looked at what I did and found inspiration.
I hear that they’re even doing a story similar to the one I did four years back, where an image-altering villain disguises himself as the President (in my story the Impostor replaced President Bush and took his place for a speech–in theirs the Chameleon, the shape-shifting villain, is going to spoil a speech being given by President-Elect Obama). The whole mess just feels really underhanded. I feel betrayed and, frankly, ripped off and in the real world–the one outside our funnybook bubble–Marvel will spin themselves as these great innovators who came up with this terrific publicity stunt–instead of the thieves they are.
And I know what they’re saying when they’re called on it–”Presidents have appeared in comics before” and “Erik didn’t create Barack Obama” and blah, blah, blah.
The thing that Marvel is attempting to do is to frame the argument. To say “we’ve featured presidents in the past–this is what we do–it’s part of a pattern.” But that’s a false argument. The “stunt” was an alternate cover featuring Obama– which was something no publisher had done with any president in the past and one that received a lot of press when I did it. If Marvel had done alternate covers with Bush and Clinton or any of the others– they could legitimately claim that they were following a pattern and doing what they’ve done in the past– but that wasn’t the case. And theirs is not simply the appearance of a president in a comic book but one on an alternate cover– and one concocted to try and get some of the same attention that got. I did not create Obama– I did, however, have a character endorse him, long before he was elected while Marvel played footsie with Stephen Colbert– a joke candidate.
- January 14, 2009 @ 10:10 PM by JK Parkin
NYCC ’09 | Counting down
With the New York Comic Con coming up in a few short weeks, we’ll be collecting and posting information on the various things you can do and see while at the show. So this will be the first of many.
If you’re a publisher, creator, retailer or otherwise exhibiting at the show, feel free to drop me an email with your booth schedule, any comics you might be debuting, giveaways or any other information on what you have planned for the show.
General information: Ticket info | Panels | Autographs | 2009 ICv2 Graphic Novel Conference | Blog
• Need some help organizing your show? Heidi at The Beat points out this widget you can use to plan your schedule. Very cool.
• The Hero Initiative, the non-profit that provides a financial “safety net” for creators, will have George Perez at the booth (#1762) all weekend long.
They’re also hosting an art auction Saturday from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. in room 1A14:
Join Hero Initiative Chairman George Pérez for a GREAT art auction benefiting The Hero Initiative! Over 40 killer pieces are up for auction, including works from Joe Quesada, George Pérez, Darwyn Cooke, Jae Lee, John Romita Sr. and Jr., Steve Rude, Jim Starlin and ALL the Image Comics founders! Not to be missed!
They also plan to host a kickoff party Thursday night in conjunction with Reed Exhibits at Dave and Busters in Time Square, with additional details to be announced.
- January 14, 2009 @ 01:53 PM by JK Parkin
‘There hasn’t been any excitement like this … since they killed Superman’
Amazing Spider-Man #583 (Obama variant cover)
With all of the publicity leading up to today’s release of The Amazing Spider-Man #583, it’s no surprise that lines for the Barack Obama variant cover began forming well before many comic stores opened.
But who would’ve guessed the event would require a bouncer?
At FishbowlNY, Noah Davis passes along word that the Midtown Comics Times Square location has “a nightclub-like bouncer at the door and block-long line of (mostly) guys waiting to get inside that stretches from 40th and 7th to 40th and 8th.”
The New York Times’ City Desk blog identifies the bouncer as the awesomely named Bronko Spaleta, 38, who said he was “frostbitten, but otherwise good.” Spaleta was tasked with crowd control: Safety codes permit only about 20 customers at a time in the store.
The story appears to be pretty much the same at stores across the country — long lines and brisk sales:
- January 14, 2009 @ 11:51 AM by Kevin Melrose
Family fight erupts over the future of Asterix
Asterix and Obelix
The daughter of Asterix co-creator Albert Uderzo is publicly criticizing her father for selling his stake in the books’ publisher to Hachette Livre, and authorizing the company to continue the series after his death.
“Today, I’m rebelling,” Sylvie Uderzo wrote in the French newspaper Le Monde. “Why? Because Asterix is my paper brother. I find myself entering into battle against, perhaps, Asterix’s worst enemies — the men of industry and finance.”
Albert Uderzo, now 81, created the enormously popular Asterix in 1959 with the late writer Rene Goscinny. Editions Albert Rene was founded in 1979, two years after Goscinny’s death.
The sale last month to Hachette, approved by Goscinny’s daughter Anne, gives the French publishing giant a 60-percent stake in Asterix. The remaining 40 percent remains with Sylvie Uderzo, who claims her father previously had intended the comic to end once he dies.
She blames her father’s advisers for pushing him into a “180 degree turn.”
The Asterix albums have been translated into 107 languages, and have sold more than 300 million copies worldwide.
- January 14, 2009 @ 10:12 AM by Kevin Melrose
Food or comics | A roundup of economy-related items
Earth-2 Comics and Collectibles
• One of the owners of Earth-2 Comics and Collectibles in Sherman Oaks, Calif., says the economy hasn’t hit the store as hard as a Los Angeles Daily News article led us to believe. “There is no 20% drop in yearly revenue at Earth-2,” Carr D’Angelo said in the comments at The Beat. “2009 is actually up slightly from 2008. We’re not hurting. But that wouldn’t have fit into the series theme.”
D’Angelo said that while sales of many titles are down, the store is selling more trade paperbacks. [The Beat]
• In the wake of the layoff last week of Pantheon Books Publisher Janice Goldklang, Pat Johnson has been named executive vice president, publishing director, Alfred A. Knopf and Pantheon. Dan Frank remains as editorial director. [Publishers Weekly]
• Warner Bros. Entertainment, parent company of DC Comics, reportedly is asking all of its departments to cut their budgets by 10 percent — a move that could save Time Warner tens of millions of dollars, and result in layoffs of more than 100 employees.
According to The Associated Press, Warner Bros. executives have been looking at proposals from “all units,” including its theatrical, home vide0, television production, and consumer products divisions.
Although DC Comics isn’t mentioned in the article, it is a subsidiary of Warner Bros. Entertainment, alongside Warner Bros. Pictures, Warner Bros. Television, Warner Home Video and others. [The Associated Press]
• Veteran retailer Ilan Strasser takes a grim look at the economy, the output from Marvel and DC, and the looming specter of the $4 monthly: “Marvel and DC have done everything possible over the years to reduce the number of customers walking into our stores. They have raised prices far too much far too often; I have heard some recent scuttlebutt that they are currently considering raising all their regular books to the $3.99 price point their annuals and specials — and doing this during a terrible time for consumers across the board. I cannot imagine a scenario where mass numbers of people don’t stop buying new, monthly comics if Marvel does this and DC (as they always do) follows suit.” [ICv2.com]
• Blogger Heidi Meeley puts comics prices into jolting perspective by comparing them to the costs of everyday necessities, such as clothes and water. The cost of the average monthly is equivalent of three cans of generic vegetable-beef soup? Food or comics, indeed. [Comics Fairplay, via 4thletter]
• A dealer in Bakersfield, Calif., is putting his 175,000-comic collection in a yard sale this weekend to get word out that he’s open for business. [KGET.com]
- January 14, 2009 @ 08:48 AM by Kevin Melrose
Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes
Farenheit 451
Legal | A Colombian coffee-growers group has decided it won’t sue Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Mike Peters over a Mother Goose and Grimm strip that jokingly linked Colombian coffee to the country’s crime syndicates. The association apparently has accepted Peters’ apology, and has invited the cartoonist to visit Colombia. [Colombia Reports]
Legal | A planned Tuesday court conference between attorneys for Warner Bros. and 20th Century Fox has been canceled, fueling further speculation that a settlement is near in the Watchmen movie lawsuit. [The Hollywood Reporter]
Publishing | DC Thomson, the Dundee, Scotland-based publisher of The Beano, The Dandy, Commando and several newspapers and magazines, actually posted higher profits for the year that ended in March 2008 compared with the year before. [The Herald]
Publishing | Cartoonist Tim Hamilton, creator of the webcomic The Adventures of the Floating Elephant, has announced Hill and Wang will release his graphic-novel adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s Farenheit 451, with a foreword by Bradbury. [ACT-I-VATE blog]
Creators | In the first part of a two-part interview, Grant Morrison talks at length about his tenure on Batman, and how writing that title and All-Star Superman has affected him: “All Star Superman was a very classically-composed story which drew its inspiration from folk tales and fables and it taught me a new kind of simplicity and clarity which has made my recent work much better and more focused, I think. Batman is rooted in a fierce, trashy pulp tradition and has taught me most about the magical intersection where preparation meets spontaneity and improvisation.” [PW Comics Week]
The year in review | Blogger David Welsh surveys manga publishing-house staff about their favorite books of 2008. [The Comics Reporter]
The year in review | Contributors to Digital Strips consider the best webcomics, and most important story, of 2008. [Digital Strips]
The year ahead | Blogger Alan David Doane rounds up a group of creators, commentators and the like to discuss what comics they’re looking forward to this year. [The ADD Blog]
Creators | A Distant Soil creator Colleen Doran has launched a new website, and has moved her blog. [A Distant Soil]
Art and design | Letterer Todd Klein begins a multi-part study of the logos of Marvel’s Fantastic Four. [Todd's Blog]
- January 14, 2009 @ 06:31 AM by Kevin Melrose
Gorillas Riding Dinosaurs: What looks good for March
BPRD, Vol. 10: The Warning
I wish you could’ve been there for the battle in my head over whether or not to cover March releases in this week’s post. It was a loud and heated discussion. On one side was Previews Came Out Weeks Ago It’s Not Timely Anymore. On the other was Yeah But Promoting Cool New Comics Is What This Column’s All About So What If It’s a Couple Weeks Late? I hid behind a chair and let them duke it out. I’ll save you the gory details, but in the end Previews Came Out Weeks Ago was storming off muttering something about, “This ain’t over yet,” while Cool New Comics stood there with a smug look on its face.
Before we get into the releases though, I should make clear my criteria for what makes it into my list.
1. For 99% of the comics I buy, I’m a wait-for-the-trade kind of guy. It’s cheaper and I’d much rather have something I can easily pull from a bookshelf than something I have to dig through boxes for and pull out of a mylar bag. So my lists will heavily favor graphic novels and collections. I guess that’s not really a criterion as much as an explanation of why I won’t mention every issue of BPRD (for example) as it comes out.
2. Having said that, I’ll still mention new series that look especially exciting. I may not buy them until they come out in a collection, but I’ll certainly point out that they sound cool. So, if BPRD is starting a new arc, it could get mentioned, but probably not with as much enthusiasm as a new BPRD collection.
3. This is mostly subjective. As much as I like to think that my opinions are always informed by rational, objective factors, I’m not kidding myself. I have biases and prejudices just like anyone else and of course there will be perfectly fine comics coming out that I won’t mention for some lousy reason. But that’s why I’m begging you to point those out in the comments. Please let everyone know what I missed. My hope is for this list to be a discussion starter.
And now, on with the cool, new comics.
- January 14, 2009 @ 06:15 AM by Michael May
Thin wallets, fat bookshelves: Viz’s 2009 plans
Pluto, Vol. 1
Well, actually, it’s only Viz’s plans for 2009 up through May, and I’m only going to be looking at new manga series, since, let’s face it, is there any real doubt as to whether subsequent volumes of Naruto or Nana will be coming out?
And with that, let’s soldier on …
- January 14, 2009 @ 06:00 AM by Chris Mautner
And now it’s time for ‘Traffic and Weather’
Robert Ullman's "Traffic and Weather"
Robert Ullman (Atomic Bomb Bikini and Lunch Hour Comics) has been doing a weekly four-panel strip about life in Virginia for Richmond Magazine, entitled “Traffic and Weather,” for several weeks now. If more local media hopped on this sort of bandwagon perhaps the headlines about the state of the industry wouldn’t be so dire. Probably not, but I can always hope.
- January 14, 2009 @ 05:05 AM by Chris Mautner
Now I have a name for my new band
Tarot #53
I’ve seen references to this one popping up around the ‘net, especially on Twitter. So blogger and comic writer Chris Sims has regularly reviewed Jim Balent’s Tarot: Witch of the Black Rose over the last few years . Usually he’ll include a humorous overview of the comic in his weekly reviews, but the latest issue, #53, turned out to be a very special issue that deserved its own post. It’s probably not safe for work and not safe for the kids, so consider yourself warned. But it is very funny. The best part is … well, you need to go read it for yourself. But I’m sure someone will turn it into a T-shirt soon.
I did notice over the course of the review that Chris had some questions about some of the plot elements; Holly Golightly, Balent’s wife, is now blogging over at Newsarama, so maybe she can help him out.
- January 14, 2009 @ 03:32 AM by JK Parkin
Don’t send me 12 pages of a 6 issue series
Well, what you’ve sent is fine, but a publisher can’t determine what they’re getting from this sort of package. Surely you know how hard it is to break in to comics, and, yet, how easy it is at the same time. Do the work, put it out, and people may not like your work; they may not buy it, but at least they know you can do it. Which is important.
I never go through the whole steps of the process for folks who send me stuff blind, but I feel a bit badly we had some crossed signals over the holidays, so I’m going to outline how REDACTED might be the next WATCHMEN but I would never know it based on your email and 12 page pdf.
Firstly, in your cover letter, you say you think the story might be best served by a six issue miniseries. If each issue is a color cover with B&W interiors and, say, a 24 page count and, optimistically, a 3000 copy print run (based on the current climate and the fact that you are unknowns), you’re looking at a publisher committing $30,000 to your printing bill alone. Six full-page PREVIEWS ads will top $7000, and throw in another three grand to round it off for production costs and shipping charges and whatnot, and that’s an outlay of forty grand. Just ballpark, but close enough. If the cover price is $2.95 a unit, and you sell to Diamond at 60% off, you get $1.18 a unit. That means you have to sell an average of around 5600 copies an issue just to break even on expenses before the creators start making money. That’s just unrealistic in this economic environment, where Marvel, Dark Horse, DC, and Image account for 92% of the sales of comics and every single other publisher in the back of PREVIEWS carves up that 8%. It’s just not going to happen.
So.
What do you do now? You can keep soliciting the thoughts of other publishers; you can have a few beers and curse my name. You can believe me or not; me… I didn’t believe all the rejection slips I got from people telling me ASTRONAUTS IN TROUBLE: LIVE FROM THE MOON wouldn’t sell and that there was no audience for that sort of thing, and we’ve got Year’s Best Science Fiction and Best Publisher and real-world press up the wazoo for it. Does that mean those other folks were wrong? Well, no. They were right for how they saw it at the time. But I had a completed work, ready to go, and I thought I could entertain folks and market it to those under-served, and everyone who told me no made me more resolved that I was right.
And, you know, it turned out I was and there were some folks wanting to read science fiction graphic novels and some creators wanting to do whatever they wanted and I was only too happy to point out to those paying attention the quality work. And I ended up not being Kurt Vonnegut like I intended but Stan Lee or Roger Corman. And, you know; I’m fine with that.
But the way I see it, you’re going to have to do the same thing. If you have a story to tell, and a burning desire to have an audience see your work, you’re either going to have to be related to Paul Levitz, or you’re going to have to do it yourself until they offer you a chance to write KAMANDI based on the strength of your indie-darling reputation.
But either way, keep at it. If you love comics as much as I do, you’ll always find a way to make your own.
- January 13, 2009 @ 05:03 PM by Larry Young
Radar | Daisy Owl, by Ben Driscoll
Daisy and Cooper, from "Daisy Owl," by Ben Driscoll
“Radar” is an occasional spotlight on interesting and entertaining comics and creators that have, until now, escaped our notice.
Ben Driscoll’s webcomic Daisy Owl is, at its core, about family. And bears. And bear families. Oh, and a big experimental honey laboratory that houses an enormous, talking queen bee.
Yeah, Daisy Owl is about a lot of things. A lot of hilarious things.
Driscoll, a web programmer who lives outside of Boston, debuted the comic last July in the Cracked.com forums, before he’d even registered the Daisy Owl website.
“It was the amazing response I got there that kept me going beyond the first few strips,” he said. “I guess it sort of turned into a thing around there. Anthony Clark drew fan art of Steve and sent a bunch of traffic my way. A couple months later, David Wong contacted me about running Daisy Owl on the Cracked front page. For the uninitiated, David Wong is the author of John Dies at the End, and a bit of a dragon on a mountain. It’s a strange thing to have your favorite author give you your big break, but that’s how it happened.”
Kevin Melrose: I ran a Google search to find whether you’d done any other interviews, but all I could come up with is this. It’s terrible yet hypnotizing.
Ben Driscoll: Terrible? It looks fairly awesome to me. I’ve seen several things like that online. The phrase “Daisy Owl” brings up a lot of plush toys and things people knitted, completely independent of the comic. The words Daisy and Owl must have some kind of mystical power. I don’t know.
- January 13, 2009 @ 02:24 PM by Kevin Melrose
Quesada talks about 2009 plans in latest MyCup ‘O Joe
Fantastic Force
Marvel Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada chats with the Hero Initiative’s Jim McLauchlin about Marvel’s 2009 plans in his latest MyCup ‘o Joe column. The chat includes a laundry list of several of their major storylines and initiatives, including digital comics:
The digital world is the great unknown. It could be the promised land, it could be nothing at all. We’ll see. We’re testing the waters, and I will tell you this: I think we’re taking a leadership position in this.
I may be wrong, but I certainly don’t see another comics publisher producing the volume of new material with well-known and established characters for digital first that we are.
So many people seem afraid of it. But I do see it as being an enhancement to our core monthly comic business, much the way I saw trade paperbacks back in the day.
Remember, so many people were just dead-set sure that paperbacks were gonna kill monthly comics.
But it’s really helped monthly comics; it’s provided a new avenue for people to discover them, and get in to these adventures.
In many ways—and think about this—trade paperbacks really replaced the newsstand system, which was the old feeder system to the comic book stores. I certainly see the digital world as very much the same thing, a way of introducing fans to the material who might not be familiar with it, or are lapsed readers, or who might not live anywhere near a comic store. So for those people who might be fearful, I say again: This will not replace the monthly comic. This will accentuate the monthly comic.
The ultimate goal is…man, I tell you, I still hear people who say, “Comic books? I thought they didn’t make those anymore.” The ultimate goal is to make sure no one…ever…utters those effing words again.
He also shares a few pages of script for the upcoming Fantastic Force comic, starring the future heroes introduced in the pages of Fantastic Four (and who you can see in the artwork up top).
I haven’t been following Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch’s run on Fantastic Four, and I also haven’t seen a lot of people talking about it … at least not at the level that you’d expect to see for a book being done by the guys who brought you Ultimates. I guess it isn’t just me, as Tom McLean mentions it in his review of the latest issue (which he really liked). So who out there is reading Fantastic Four? Is it worth picking up in trade form?
- January 13, 2009 @ 11:36 AM by JK Parkin
Towards a modern superhero canon: JLA/Avengers
Grumpy Old Fan
[This is my third installment of a periodic series of posts. Background on the series is here; and the second installment is here.]
What do you do when handed the Holy Grail of mainstream superhero comics? How should you manage the scores of characters and decades of fictional history which it involves? Most importantly, how will you ensure that what makes it into print actually satisfies readers, from easily-overwhelmed rookies to expectation-stuffed fanatics?
Writer Kurt Busiek and artist George Perez made JLA/Avengers a love story.
SPOILERS FOLLOW…
- January 13, 2009 @ 09:05 AM by Tom Bondurant