2009 February
SLG hosting seminars for aspiring creators
SLG Publishing is bringing back their Creator’s Studio series, which cover topics of interest to aspiring comic creators.
The first one, scheduled for March 7, will include seminars on the realities of making a living in comics, an “imagining the page” seminar where writers and artists discuss the components of a comics page, and a drawing demonstration by Byron creator Karl Christian Krumpholz. The cost is $14.95.
In addition, a four-week series on writing comics with Serena Valentino (Gloomcookie, Nightmares & Fairy Tales) kicks off April 11. The cost is $60.
Both classes are held at SLG’s headquarters in San Jose, Calif. If you’d like to attend, you can register online. A complete class schedule is available at www.slgcomic.com/workshops. For more information, call SLG Publishing at 408-971-8929 or email Dan Vado at dvado@slgpubs.com.
Check out the entire press release after the jump.
- February 11, 2009 @ 07:40 AM by JK Parkin
Food or Comics | A roundup of money-related news
Watchmen
• In her regular column for PW Comics Week, SLG Publishing Editor-in-Chief Jennifer de Guzman reveals that her hours at the company have been cut by 40 percent “until business picks up.”
She strikes an upbeat chord by noting that the lowest economic points of the 20th century also were great times of creativity for the comics industry. (De Guzman has a little more on her personal blog.)
• Blogger Deb Aoki posts the first part of her two-part report from the “Selling Good Graphic Novels in a Bad Economy” panel at New York Comic Con.
It’s interesting to note that John Cunningham, DC’s vice president for marketing, believes Watchmen will serve as a gateway comic, with new readers moving on to other graphic novels. He discusses efforts that DC and distributor Random House are taking to get the collection into bookstores, but I’d love to hear their plans for shepherding those readers to other works.
Library Journal also has a short report from the panel.
• At Mania, Icarus Publishing’s Simon Jones explains how Diamond’s new threshold will affect his company: “It’s certainly going to affect our ability to relist titles again in Previews, but a lot of our backlist sales go through non-Diamond sources, so I’m not too worried about that. We may also one day decide to stop Comic AG altogether, and start publishing 2 or 3 trades a month. Some people might actually prefer it, but as I mentioned earlier, it depends on whether the market can absorb all that new material. I would also miss the joy of rubbing our 100+ issue count into other publishers’ faces.”
- February 11, 2009 @ 07:23 AM by Kevin Melrose
NYCC | Post-show round-up
Zatanna by Cliff Chiang
Reports from this past weekend’s New York Comic Con continue to roll out; Kevin’s covered some of them in his Comics A.M. and Food or Comics? posts, but here are a few more I found interesting …
• The Zatanna artwork up top is by Cliff Chiang, who shares several of the sketches he did at the con on his blog.
• Neil Kleid shares 25 random thoughts about the show:
5. While SCOTT PILGRIM 5 was, to me, the book of the weekend, I can’t urge you enough to find a copy of Chris Kirby’s Devils Due graphic novel, THE LOST SQUAD. It’s like Busiek’s ARROWSMITH had sex with BAND OF BROTHERS, and uses characters named after the old Chicago baseball triple-play Tinkers-to-Evers-to-Chance.
- February 11, 2009 @ 06:32 AM by JK Parkin
Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes
A power outage prevented me from posting yesterday’s edition, so let’s try this again.
"Greek Street" promo art, by Davide Gianfelice
Publishing | Uh-oh. Brace yourselves for another round of “Batwoman! She’s a smokin’-hot lesbian!” articles in the mainstream press. It’s been nearly three years, so I guess we’re due? [Telegraph, Daily Mail]
Publishing | Then-Sen. Hillary Clinton’s “people” allegedly had a hand in one of the two cover changes for Bluewater Productions’ Female Force: Hillary Clinton. According to Publisher Darren Davis, the company “heard through her people” that Clinton didn’t care for the image that depicted her, in the words of Roll Call, with “a chunky hourglass figure.” [Roll Call, via The Raw Story]
Creators | Writers G. Willow Wilson and Peter Milligan discuss Milligan’s newly announced Vertigo title Greek Street, the draw of comics, and a serious lack of “juicy gossip” from the time of his X-Statix run: “Apart from Axel Alonso’s predilection for split-crotch panties, I’m not sure I have anything for you. There was never what you might call head-butting with the editors, but I was disappointed with the people higher in the food chain when the uproar about the Princess Diana story broke, and we had to fuck around with it. I thought, you Americans had a revolution so you didn’t have to worry about what our insane and largely inbred bunch of Royals thought. And here you are genuflecting like crazy because they and some of their subjects are pissed off about a comic book.” (The above Greek Street promotional art is from Davide Gianfelice’s blog.) [Standard Attrition]
Creators | Cartoonist Howard Cruse recalls Barefootz, Gay Comix, and the inspiration for Stuck Rubber Baby. [Bookslut]
- February 11, 2009 @ 06:23 AM by Kevin Melrose
Food or Comics | A roundup of money-related news
Scott Pilgrim, Vol. 5
• PW Comics Week and Brigid Alverson provide overviews of last weekend’s New York Comic Con, which, as others have mentioned, showed few signs of the economic woes so apparent everywhere else. I liked Brigid’s opening paragraph, in particular: “If the theme of NYCC was ‘Recession? What Recession?’ then the subtitle was ‘webcomics are the new floppies.’ Digital distribution of comics is clearly going to be a hot topic in 2009.”
• As expected, Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Scott Pilgrim vs. the Universe was one of the top sellers of the convention. PW Comics Week notes that Oni Press sold 600 copies during the weekend, and the few vendors who got their hands on copies quickly sold out.
• At GalleyCat, Ron Hogan reports on the NYCC panel on selling good books in a bad economy.
• John Jackson Miller considers the allure of the collectible market even as digital publishing picks up steam.
• At ComiPress, Chloe Ferguson ponders what effects the global recession could have on the American market for Japanese comics. (via Brigid Alverson)
• Whenever someone on a message board longs for a return to newsstand distribution, point out that magazine sales fell 11 percent in 2008. Also, wholesaler Anderson News has “suspended normal business activity.”
• This io9.com article about the digital distributor UClick — “UClick For IPhone Will Make Comic Books Obsolete” — oversells things a bit, but it’s good to see that much enthusiasm for alternate-distribution platforms.
- February 10, 2009 @ 04:17 PM by Kevin Melrose
NYCC | Gone To Amerikay artwork
Gone to Amerikay
Last Friday Vertigo announced Gone To Amerikay, a new original graphic novel written by Derek McCulloch (Stagger Lee) with art by Colleen Doran (A Distant Soil, Orbiter, Sandman). Although the project is still in the early stages, Doran sent over some of her early artwork for the project.
“Derek is writing one of the best scripts I have ever read in my life,” Doran said. “We spent the day on Thursday in NYC taking reference photos and running about doing research, but I can’t really talk about it very much. DC is keeping it all very close, I think. The book will be out sometime next year. I guess it’s setting us up to say how good the story is, because people are going to expect the moon, but I have the feeling Derek can deliver the moon.”
The one up top was shown at the Vertigo panel at the New York Comic Con; check out additional artwork that wasn’t shown after the jump …
- February 10, 2009 @ 01:01 PM by JK Parkin
Robot reviews: The Big Skinny
The Big Skinny: How I Changed My Fattitude
by Carol Lay
Villard, $18.
I like Carol Lay’s work a lot. I’ve always enjoyed the clever, biting wit she employs in her weekly comic strip and her clean angular cartoon style that that seems oh so simple but you know requires a good deal of effort to achieve.
I’m kind of ambivalent about her latest graphic novel, The Big Skinny, however. It’s full of good common sense advice and the sort of graceful, funny cartooning I’ve come to expect from her, but it’s also a bit smug and self-righteous at times, so assured that it’s advice is the best that it doesn’t really attempt to win you over as much as it does knock you down.
- February 10, 2009 @ 12:43 PM by Chris Mautner
Turning a corner on the eternal triangle
Grumpy Old Fan
It’s Looooove Week! here at Robot 6, so initially I felt a little obligated to offer a rundown of various DC power-couples (no pun intended) through the years. You know, something about the eternal pairing of Hawkman and Hawkgirl; maybe the notion that the Earth-2 Black Canary was comics’ first “cougar” (oh, how I hate that term); or, you know, anything about Terry Long. Because in our own ways, don’t we all love Terry Long? (As I understand it, we kid because we love.)
However, today I’m not going to do that. I got up to 12 couples without any Legionnaires or Infinitors, and it was just a big mess. Today, then, let’s focus simply on the king and queen of DC’s superhero prom, the couple so nice they got married twice (on Earth-2, at least), Clark Kent and Lois Lane. Their relationship works today thanks to a change in Superman’s perspective instituted in the 1986 revamp – - a change which, unlike so many other aspects of that revamp, might never be overturned.
- February 10, 2009 @ 11:22 AM by Tom Bondurant
Robot Love | I ♥ the Fellowship of Comics
Editor’s Note: With Valentine’s Day right around the corner, we’ve declared this the week of Robot Love and resurrected I ♥ Comics. In one of our favorite features, various comics creators, bloggers, retailers and fans discuss the things they love about the medium.
Today’s guest contributor is comics retailer James Sime, owner of Isotope Comics in San Francisco.
by James Sime
Hello, I’m James Sime. I sell comic books for a living.
Daredevil #154
My life-long love affair with funnybooks started way back in the ’70s with a second-hand issue of Daredevil #154 purchased at my friend Joel Patterson’s yard sale for a nickel. I’ll never forget the way Joel’s eyes sparkled or his sly car-dealer smile as he put it in my hand and said, “You know you want it!” And I will always remember sitting there on a park swing hunched over reading it for the first of thousands of times. I fell head over heels right then and there for Roger McKenzie’s writing and Gene Colan’s amazing art. That one moment of hucksterism has proven to be one of the most important moments in my life. It was then, sitting on that plastic park swing, that I first knew a strange, new, overwhelming passion I had never felt before. I didn’t understand the feeling at the time, but I do now. Baby… James Sime was in love. And I knew I had to get more comic books.
But more importantly, I knew I had to become better friends with Joel Patterson.
- February 10, 2009 @ 10:33 AM by JK Parkin
“Messing around with an idea for a Godzilla comic”
World War G
Comics creator Brandon Graham shares a few pages of a Godzilla comic by James Stokoe, called World War G. Graham says, “while we watched that James was messing around with an idea for a Godzilla comic,” which makes me think this isn’t being published by anyone yet. Which is simply wrong, because I want to read the whole thing. Who has the Godzilla license these days?
- February 10, 2009 @ 09:17 AM by JK Parkin
Let’s take a quick second look at Viz’s fall plans
What A Wonderful World
On Sunday Kevin revealed Viz’s plans for the fall, which included the release of Taiyo Matsumoto’s highly regarded GoGoMonster. Viz, of course, has a number of other titles in the pipeline, including one other book I felt warranted a bit more attention: What A Wonderful World by Inio Asano.
Asano is best known over here for the manga Solanin, a done-in-one collection about aimless twentysomethings that came out from Viz last year. That book won a number of accolades, though I found it to be a decent if rather flawed and at times awkwardly sentimental manga.
I’m excited for World, however, because from what I hear it’s more representative of Adano’s later, mature work, incorporating magical realism with a more . The manga has been available via scantillation for a few years now. it’s won a number of fans, including TCJ’s Dirk Deppey, who included it in his Best of 2007 round-up. I’m going to be a jerk and post Dirk’s entire comments on the series here:
- February 10, 2009 @ 05:53 AM by Chris Mautner
The United States of Awesome
Robot 6 would like to congratulate the Fanboy Rampager himself…the Eye-Oh-Niner… Graeme McMillan, himself… on becoming a U.S. citizen.
Nice work, Citizen.
- February 9, 2009 @ 03:53 PM by Larry Young
High Moon kicks off its third season
"High Moon," Season 3
I very nearly missed this: High Moon, the engrossing supernatural Western by David Gallaher and Steve Ellis, kicked off its third season today at DC’s Zuda Comics. (I named the webcomic as one of my favorite titles of 2008.) DC will release a printed collection of High Moon in October.
- February 9, 2009 @ 02:55 PM by Kevin Melrose
Robot Love | I ♥ Anticipating Comics
The War at Ellsmere
Editor’s Note: With Valentine’s Day coming up on Saturday, we’ve declared this the week of Robot Love and resurrected I ♥ Comics. In one of our favorite features, various comics creators, bloggers, retailers and fans discuss the things they love about the medium.
Today’s special guest contributor is Faith Erin Hicks, creator of two fun graphic novels published by SLG, The War at Ellsmere and Zombies Calling. She also has a webcomic called Ice on her website, whch she just so happened to update yesterday.
by Faith Erin Hicks
I’m fairly new to comics. This was not my choice. As a kid I was deeply in love with comics, and taught myself to read on Asterix and Tintin, both of which were readily available at my local library. When I was really little I had a comic book Bible, where a very white looking Jesus preached the word to some equally white looking followers. I memorized that Bible, and it wasn’t because I found the stories particularly enamouring: I just liked reading comics.
However, other than Tintin, Asterix and white Jesus Bible comics, little else was available to me. I grew up in a tiny suburban town, and the only comic shop was a dank, terrifying place that I was scared to death of. When I was a teenager I would walk by the store entrance five times before summoning the courage to go in (my occasional purchase: X-Men comics). I didn’t have any friends who read comics, so there was no one around to say “try this,” and hand me a copy of Jeff Smith’s Bone. Which was really what I wanted to read, not Joe Mad X-Men.
Eventually I moved out of that town for university, into a city, and found Bone. It was right at the end of the first amazing black and white run that I discovered a tattered copy of Volume 3 (The Eyes of the Storm) at a local bookstore. I bought it and devoured it, thrilling at the world and artwork of Jeff Smith, although I really had no idea what was going on. Let it be known that Volume 3 is a very bad place to start reading Bone. But it didn’t matter. I’d found an amazing comic that seemed to be just what I was looking for, an entry way into the bizarre universe of comics themselves. There WERE things beyond superheroes, and I wanted to know what those things were. I bought the remaining Bone volumes, read them in order, and collapsed in delight that there were such things as this comic in the world.
- February 9, 2009 @ 12:48 PM by JK Parkin
Talking Comics with Tim: Todd Klein
Comic Book Dreams Print
Todd Klein is a letterer with a level of talent, success and acclaim that is only exceeded by his modesty. That’s the perspective I took away from an email interview I recently conducted with him. I’m not even going to bother offering some concise bio blurb on the man–he has such a rich history, it’s just best that you go here to read up on him. On with the fun.
Tim O’Shea: As of 2006, you noted the following metrics: “From beginning freelance work in 1977 through the end of 2006 I’ve lettered over 48,000 pages of comics, as well as over 5,400 covers and designed over 820 logos.” Have you tried to keep track of your pace since 2006?
Todd Klein: In 2007 I added 2013 pages, no covers and 8 logos. In 2008 I added 2102 pages, 12 covers and 10 logos. That kind of information, for those who want it, is available on my website’s Klein Lettering Archives pages.
O’Shea: In the case of long-term collaborators, like Neil Gaiman and Alan Moore, in what ways do they utilize your unique skills to elevate their narrative?
Klein: Kind of a hard question for me, asking them would probably give a more accurate answer. From my end, I can say they know my work well and what I can do, know that I don’t shy away from a challenge, so I think they pretty much trust that I will give them something that works no matter what they ask for.
- February 9, 2009 @ 11:18 AM by Tim O'Shea