2009 January
LEGO Batman game up for inaugural TOADY award
LEGO Batman
The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, “the only national organization devoted to limiting the impact of commercial culture on children,” has created a new award for “Toys Oppressive And Destructive to Young Children,” or the TOADYs. And joining Mattel’s Barbie Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader Doll and Fisher Price’s Power Wheels Cadillac Escalade in the list of nominees is the LEGO Batman video game:
How do you turn the ultimate creative toy into a symbol of commercialized childhood? Begin by partnering with media companies to sell that toy in branded kits designed for recreating movies like Star Wars, rather than creative construction. Then, dispense with hands-on building altogether by turning your toy into a video game so that instead of deciding what to build next, children choose which cyber weapons to use to beat up their opponent. Finally, ignore the fact it was rated suitable for ages 10 & up and partner with McDonald’s for a Happy Meal toy giveaway to simultaneously promote the video game, junk food, and the violent Dark Knight movie series to preschoolers.
Um, congrats?
- January 23, 2009 @ 09:45 AM by JK Parkin
Food or Comics | A roundup of money-related items
Previews #4
• Retailer-oriented website ICv2.com catches up with Diamond’s Bill Schanes to talk about the new order minimum. The Q&A doesn’t cover any new ground, but this quote jumped out at me: “One of the things that I think it’s important to point out is that for the small press especially, Diamond wants to be there for them and do a good job and support them and support the industry, but we are a for profit company and our obligation is to make sure that we’re around in the future to service our publishers and our retailer base. We’re going to be more flexible for those publishers that have marketing plans and sales plans, but I’d say that for 85% of the small press that sends us solicitations once they hit that send button to us, or put that stamp on their mail solicitation, that was their entire marketing budget; and it’s hard to support folks that aren’t doing much to support themselves, especially when those sales aren’t profitable in the first place.”
• Stephen Robson of Fanfare/Ponent Mon tells blogger David Welsh that while he isn’t “too concerned” about his company’s books meeting the new threshold, he wonders about the policy’s affect on relists.
• At Den of Geek, columnist Robert McLaughlin decides that collecting serialized comics has become too expensive of a hobby. So, he’s saying good-bye to monthlies, and looking to trade paperbacks and digital comics.
- January 23, 2009 @ 08:14 AM by Kevin Melrose
Toronto Comic Arts Festival announces guests of honor
TCAF
The Toronto Comic Arts Festival has announced the guests of honor for the May 9-10 event: Ivan Brunetti, Anke Feuchtenberger, Emmanuel Guibert, Bryan Lee O’Malley, Paul Pope, Seth, Yoshihiro Tatsumi and Adrian Tomine.
The fourth annual festival, held at the Toronto Reference Library, will feature gallery showings, workshops, panel discussions, lectures, and the presentation of the 2009 Doug Wright Awards for Canadian Cartooning.
The free event presented by the Toronto Public Library and The Beguiling Books & Art.
The complete list of guests can be found here. (The list will be updated as more guests confirm.) Read the full press release after the break:
- January 23, 2009 @ 07:10 AM by Kevin Melrose
Strangeways: The Thirsty – Page 029
Week one of Strangeways at Robot 6 comes to a close.
Written by Matt Maxwell. Art by Gervasio and Jok.
Come on back Monday for more. I know I’ll be here.
At least I think I will be. Going into San Francisco today to catch the Mysterius the Unfathomable premiere gig over at the Isotope. Those parties get pretty wild, so I might not make it back in one piece. Maybe I should set up automated posting just in case…
- January 23, 2009 @ 06:45 AM by Matt Maxwell
Freaky Friday: The T.S. Sullivant edition
Because we don’t want you to spend all of today working …
ART
Kicking off this week’s Freaky Friday, we turn to the ASIFA, which offers a plethora of cartoons by the turn of the century artist T. S. Sullivant.
Want to see a Bryan Lee O’Malley version of Kitty Pryde? Of course you do.
- January 23, 2009 @ 06:30 AM by Chris Mautner
Male Seeking Female: Must Love Comics
Brave New World Comics in Newhall, Calif. shows why they were chosen as last year’s recipient of the Will Eisner Spirit of Comics Retailing Award by hosting another singles night for comics fans. The event, held in conjunction with the dating site SweetonGeeks.com, will feature games, prizes and live music Feb. 6. Here’s a picture of what one of these events looks like, from last August:
Brave New World singles night
They have more pictures from the event up on flickr.
- January 23, 2009 @ 06:25 AM by JK Parkin
The five most criminally ignored books of 2008: No. 1, Optical Allusions
Optical Allusions
I sometimes think that because his books have an “educational” bent, Jay Hosler tends to get short shrift in the comics community. Sure, his books are filled with interesting facts and figures and are largely aimed at a younger audience, but they often have a wider emotional resonance that move them beyond mere textbook value. Beyond providing bon mots about the lives of honeybees, Clan Apis offered some bittersweet truths about the cycle of life and death. Beyond providing a 101 lesson in evolution, The Sandwalk Adventures offered a rather pointed rejoinder to the Creationist movement as well as a meditation on how new ideas can upset culture and tradition.
Optical Allusions, Hosler’s newest work, isn’t quite as good as those two books — it leans a bit more toward the educational side of things — but it’s smart, imaginative, hilarious and in terms of plot and structure, his tightest book yet.
- January 23, 2009 @ 06:00 AM by Chris Mautner
Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes
"Hero," by Perry Moore
Milestones | The famed Louvre in Paris finally has embraced comic strips with an exhibit of new works by such cartoonists as Nicolas de Crécy, Marc-Antoine Mathieu, Éric Liberge and Bernard Yslaire. In each of the comics, the Louvre serves as the principal location. [The Associated Press]
History | Marc Tyler Nobleman, author of the award-winning children’s book Boys of Steel: The Creators of Superman, discusses Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster and their most famous creation: “The overwhelming success of Superman probably did doom them in this regard. If there had been no litigation, no bad blood, perhaps their creativity potential would not have been dampened and they would have come up with another lasting character. There is Jerry Siegel’s Spectre, but he, of course, doesn’t come within a galaxy of the iconic status of Superman.”
Nobleman also reveals plans for a book devoted to Bill Finger. [Comix 411]
Pop culture | Hero author Perry Moore talks about faith, his gay superhero, and the Showtime adaptation he’s producing with Stan Lee: “Look at these tent-pole gay movies like Milk and Brokeback that straight people get behind. The heroes die terrible deaths or endure terrible tragedies. And the characters like us that we see on TV are often the gay version of the Stepin Fetchit stereotype. Mine will be the first show where the gay character is a true hero and he isn’t doomed.” [Religion Dispatches]
Webcomics | Taking a cue from AFI’s “100 Years … 100 Movies,” Xaviar Xerexes begins to compile “ComixTALK’s 100 Greatest Webcomics.” He’s looking for nominations. [ComixTALK]
Webcomics | Blogger Sean Kleefeld examines a clever marketing idea: the call from G.L. Nelson, creator of The Sergeant and Professor Skeary Winslow, for people to appear in his comic’s crowd scenes. [Kleefeld on Comics]
Comic strips | The seldom-timely Hi and Lois comments on superhero morality. [Comics Worth Reading]
- January 23, 2009 @ 05:52 AM by Kevin Melrose
Derek Kirk Kim on The Last Airbender‘s cast
Comics creator Derek Kirk Kim comments on the casting choices for the The Last Airbender movie. While the setting of the cartoon the movie is based on is “wholly and inarguably built around Asian (and Inuit) culture,” white actors have been cast in the roles of the four main characters:
Avatar
Before I go any further, it behooves me to spill some information on “Avatar, the Last Airbender” for those people who have no idea what it is. 1) It’s the greatest, most ambitious animated action adventure TV series ever hatched in the U.S. A cartoon series for kids in which one epic story actually spans 3 entire seasons. A kid’s show in which the characters actually grow and change and evolve! A cartoon which actually respects a kid’s intelligence and vast imagination. Imagine that! 2) It’s wholly and inarguably built around Asian (and Inuit) culture. Everything from to the costume designs, to the written language, to the landscapes, to martial arts, to philosophy, to spirituality, to eating utensils!—it’s all an evocative, but thinly veiled, re-imagining of ancient Asia. (In one episode, a region is shown where everyone is garbed in Korean hanboks—traditional Korean clothing—the design of which wasn’t even altered at all.) It would take a willful disregard of the show’s intentions and origins to think this wouldn’t extend to the race of the characters as well. You certainly don’t see any blonde people running around in “Avatar.” (I’m not saying that would have necessarily been a bad thing, I’m just stating the facts of the show and the world in which it is set.)
Read Kim’s entire statement at his site.
- January 22, 2009 @ 09:57 AM by JK Parkin
Annotations for Trinity issue #34
Trinity #34
Overall, this issue didn’t shy away from exposition, but it still advanced the main plots. The narration cleared up some things about the rifts, justified all the Arcana-talk without making the underlying theory sound too goofy, and started stitching together the events on Earth and the Genesis Planet. And no, I don’t have any complaints about Kellel’s story the way I did about Dinanna’s.
SPOILERS FOLLOW
* * *
LEAD STORY
“The Depths Beyond The Depths” was written by Kurt Busiek, pencilled by Mark Bagley, inked by Art Thibert, colored by Pete Pantazis, and lettered by Pat Brosseau; Rachel Gluckstern, associate editor; Mike Carlin, editor.
In Brief: The Dark Arcana gains on the Justice Arcana while Kellel’s story begins.
Continue Reading »
- January 22, 2009 @ 09:10 AM by Tom Bondurant
Process: Jock’s cover layouts for Hellblazer graphic novel
Cover layout for "Hellblazer: Pandemonium," by Jock
At Standard Attrition, artist Jock rolls out some of his cover layouts for Hellblazer: Pandemonium, the upcoming graphic novel by he and original series writer Jamie Delano. (The book was supposed to be released last year to celebrate the 20th anniversay of the title; now it seems scheduled for later this year.)
Pandemonium is set during the Iraq war, as Constantine is hired to root out the cause of demonic possessions among insurgents.
- January 22, 2009 @ 08:59 AM by Kevin Melrose
Food or Comics | A roundup of money-related items
Diamond Comic Distributors
• Bill Schanes, Diamond’s vice president of purchasing, says the change in the distributor’s order threshold may result in 20 to 30 of the distributor’s 600 publishers being dropped outright. Others, he tells Newsarama, will be approached about cutting titles, “repackaging or reformatting,” raising cover prices, or changing frequency of publication.
“Those who are creative can figure out how to continue to exist out there, at least through Diamond,” Schanes says.
The new policy takes effect with Previews #3, which goes on sale Feb. 25.
• John Jackson Miller casts a spotlight on Schanes’ comments about variant covers falling under the new threshold, and wonders how this could affect Diamond’s Top 300.
• At Comic Book Resources, Steven Grant declares “game over” for the current distribution model, but adds, “That doesn’t mean game over for comics, though.”
• Moving away from the new Diamond threshold, Tor.com‘s Heather Massey points to rising cover prices and a migration of readers to trade paperbacks, and asks, “Are comics as we know them on a death march?” It’s sort of an odd piece that ends with Massey wondering whether comics should just go digital, then release printed collections later.
• At Fleen.com, Gary Tyrrell sees signs that auction-based online-advertising network Project Wonderful is expanding its pool of advertisers.
- January 22, 2009 @ 08:34 AM by Kevin Melrose
Robot Reviews: Age of Bronze, Volume 1
Age of Bronze, Vol. 1: A Thousand Ships
Age of Bronze, Volume 1: A Thousand Ships
Written and Illustrated by Eric Shanower
Image Comics; $19.95
The first time someone told me there was a comic book about the Trojan War, I fell asleep before they finished the sentence. I’m not really sure why that is. I like history – especially making connections that I’ve never noticed between events – and I even sort of like The Iliad. Homer’s poem does spend a lot of time with people arguing on the beach, but there’s some very cool battle stuff in there too. I’m also one of the few people who enjoyed Troy.
I think my initial reaction to hearing about Age of Bronze was due to my thinking that I’ve already heard this story a million times. And as cool as some parts of the story are (the death of Hector; any scene with Ajax), I really, really hate how the war starts: the idea of a thousand ships going to war over one woman; Priam’s stupid refusal to just give Helen back. I’ve never bought the premise and it spoils my enjoyment of the rest of the story. It’s like having to accept the concept of “Green Goblin: National Hero” in order to hopefully read a story in which Doctor Doom and Namor try to take over world and split it between the two of them.
But a while ago I started getting comp comics from Image and ended up with a few issues of Age of Bronze. I was amazed first at how detailed and realistic the art is. I can’t speak to its accuracy – though I have no doubt that it’s excellent – because I haven’t done the research, but even if Shanower had pulled the architecture and fashion out of his butt, his version of the ancient Mediterranean world absolutely looks and feels like a real, historical place.
- January 22, 2009 @ 06:46 AM by Michael May
Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes
Action Comics #1
Legal | The case of Christopher Handley, an Iowa man who faces up to 20 years in prison for possessing manga the U.S. government calls obscene, goes to trial on Feb. 2. The government asserts that parts of Handley’s collection constitute child pornography. The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund is serving as special consultant in Handley’s defense. [ICv2.com]
Legal | Rodney Perkins examines the “alter ego claims” in Siegel v. Time Warner that will be addressed in a Feb. 3 bench trial. At issue is whether the heirs of Jerry Siegel are entitled to an accounting of profits made by Warner Bros. Entertainment as the exclusive TV and movie licensee of Superman. [Film Esq.]
Sales charts | After falling 10 places last week, Watchmen regains its place at No. 29 on USA Today’s list of the Top 150 books. The 33rd volume of Masashi Kishimoto’s Naruto inched up three spot to No. 140.
Meanwhile, Jeff Kinney’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last Straw leaps atop the chart at No. 1. Previous volumes are at No. 34 and No. 40. [USA Today]
Creators | Boondocks creator Aaron McGruder denies a published report that claimed he said President Obama isn’t black because he’s not descended from a slave. [The Daily Cartoonist, via Dirk Deppey]
Retailers | Greensboro, N.C.’s Yes! Weekly highlights the region’s best comic-book stores. [Yes! Weekly]
Publishing | Obama-mania continues as IDW Publishing’s Presidential Material: Barack Obama goes back for a fourth printing, complete with new cover and a transcript of the inaugural address. [Chris Ryall]
Art | The Flint Institute of Arts in Michigan will play host to Comics, Heroes and American Visual Culture, an exhibit of original drawings and paintings from comics creators from Milton Caniff and George Herriman to C.C. Beck and Alex Ross. [The Flint Journal]
Webcomics | A spotlight on John Allison’s Scary Go Round. [Gather]
- January 22, 2009 @ 06:14 AM by Kevin Melrose
The five most criminally ignored books of 2008: No. 3, Inkweed
Inkweed
I really like Chris Wright‘s art style. I like his not quite-abstract, not-quite cubist characters, and the way they’re knocked down to basic geometric shapes that intersect at odd and slightly uncomfortable angles. I like the way his line squiggles, harking back to classic strip artists like E.C. Segar while at the same time suggesting a nervious, barely containable energy. I like that his dialogue frequently sounds as though it walked out of the second act of an Ibsen play to knock back a few at the pub across the street. I like that he frequently goes crazy with the cross-hatching.
- January 22, 2009 @ 06:00 AM by Chris Mautner