2009 February
Strangeways: The Thirsty – Week of Feb. 9th.
Ah, so there is some sense of law and order in Cedar Creek after all. Or is there?
This week we get to mop up after the grisly episode in the bar and some hints at connections between the vampires, the blonde stranger and Cedar Creek’s relation to its unfortunate neighbor of Drytown.
- February 13, 2009 @ 11:18 AM by Matt Maxwell
D’Israeli: ‘…your mistakes are as public as your triumphs’
Pussyfoot Five
Here’s a great blog post by comic creator D’Israeli about why he stopped being a colorist for various 2000 A.D. stories. In the post, he describes the difficulties he encountered as he tried to color Pussyfoot Five (pictured above), which he considers a failure, and how it ultimately led to a change in his career.
- February 13, 2009 @ 11:09 AM by JK Parkin
Food or Comics | A roundup of money-related news
Amazing Spider-Man #583
• It comes as no surprise that Amazing Spider-Man #583, with its President Obama covers and five printing, topped Diamond’s sales list for January.
In what’s typically a slow month, charts-watcher John Jackson Miller estimates the issue sold somewhere in “the mid-300,000s” in specialty stores alone. (That translates to a little more than $1 million, quite a stimulus package for the direct market.) Blogger Corey Henson speculates that copies sold through other channels — supermarkets, pharmacies, toy stores — could push the total even higher, past the 400,000 mark.
Comics aren’t the only periodicals benefiting from the Obama bump. FishbowlNY reports that Ebony magazine’s “commemorative issue” sold more than 400,000 copies, “much higher than its usual amount.”
• Publishers Weekly reports that bookstore sales dropped 4.7 percent in December to $2.05 billion. They’re off 0.5 percent for the year.
• Strangeways writer Matt Maxwell questions the perception of Watchmen as a gateway comic that will bring more readers to the medium, and more money to the industry: “Using Watchmen as a gateway book seems to me to be a recipe for heartbreak. What do you point people at afterwards? Watchmen is accessible, wonderfully so, because it doesn’t lean on years of backstory. It’s a self-contained work with meaty characters and a beginning, middle and an end.”
• Stephen Schleicher considers what steps need to be taken by publishers, creators and retailers to make a successful transition to digital comics.
- February 13, 2009 @ 09:27 AM by Kevin Melrose
Strangeways: The Thirsty – Page 038
It’s….snowing outside my window. This is a big deal, since we’re at less than a thousand feet and it rarely gets cold enough to actually do this. But there it is, wet, fluffly flakes drifting lazily down.
Oh, right. Today’s page…
Written by Matt Maxwell. Art by Gervasio and Jok.
Head on over to the archives page to catch the story from the beginning.
See you all back here on Monday. Well, maybe later today for the weekly wrap-up.
- February 13, 2009 @ 09:20 AM by Matt Maxwell
With one last cover, James Jean says farewell to Fables
Jean's covers to "Fables" #81, Vol. 9, and #49
Vertigo’s Fables #81 hit shelves this week, marking the final issue for award-winning cover artist James Jean. On his blog, Jean breaks down the process for this last cover, a nod to the Pietà featuring Red Riding Hood and Boy Blue, with plenty of references to other covers he’s created for the series since 2002.
At Geekanerd, Degan bids farewell to Jean, whose “covers for Fables were easily the most beautiful, most poignant, and at times, the most sexy.” It’s a nice retrospective, with plenty of commentary on individual covers.
- February 13, 2009 @ 08:30 AM by Kevin Melrose
Freaky Friday: The Jim Woodring edition
Some Woodring sketches
ART
Jim Woodring has been posting some amazing drawings from his sketchbook over on his blog. Scroll down slowly to take them in fully. Continue Reading »
- February 13, 2009 @ 08:09 AM by Chris Mautner
Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes
Pluto, Vol. 1
Sales charts | Watchmen inches back up seven spots to No. 41 on USA Today’s list of Top 150 best-selling books. The collection of the 1986 miniseries by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons has been on the chart for 30 weeks.
However, the bigger story may be that four volumes of Masashi Kishimoto’s insanely popular Naruto — Vols. 34-37 — all debut on the list this week, at Nos. 57, 55, 53 and 52, respectively. [USA Today]
Creators | Collaborators Naoki Urasawa and Takashi Nagasaki discuss Billy Bat, and reaching the end of Pluto (which sees its North American debut next week from Viz Media). “For Japanese, Osamu Tezuka is known as the God of Manga. And for me, I wouldn’t be doing this job if it hadn’t been for him. To be given that major work to see through to the end–that’s a lot of pressure,” Urasawa says. “There was this one Tezuka fan that kept telling me his fans would hate what I was doing–and I realized only recently that Tezuka fan was actually me.” [Daily Yomiuri]
Creators | Crime novelist and comics writer Duane Swierczynski explains the appeal of The Punisher: “With the Punisher you’ve always got to ask who’s he going to punish and how much they deserve it. And who are the motherfuckers who really need to be punished? I don’t want to say I want to go around killing people, but wouldn’t you like to see the Punisher pop into the offices of the major banks where they’ve taken public money and paid each other these billion-dollar bonuses and say, ‘Hi, guys. What’s going on?’” [Philadelphia Weekly]
Creators | Ho Che Anderson talks at length about his early career, tools of the trade, process and inspiration. [Optimum Wound, via Rich Watson]
Creators | Congratulations to Michael Kupperman and Muire Dougherty on the birth of their son, Ulysses Kupperman Dougherty. [FLOG!]
Creators | Guy Davis answers 13 vague, horror-themed questions. [Mania]
Fandom | Ben Morse pens an ode to Wally West: “… Wally West is just a dude. He’s not super smart, but, again same as Nova, he’s not an idiot. He’s an average fella. He’s not a genius or a dummy. He can think on his feet, but he needs Jay to do his science stuff. In other words: I feel like he could be me.” [The Cool Kids Table]
Pop culture | MAD Magazine‘s cover tribute to Watchmen gives me the willies. [Slashfilm]
- February 13, 2009 @ 07:12 AM by Kevin Melrose
Actually, anime wasn’t that unexpected
Afro Samurai
Since writing for his own blog, Savage Critics, and respected magazines like Bookforum and The Comics Journal is clearly not enough, Joe “Jog” McCulloch has taken over the Watchman column (previously written by Kent Beeson) on comic-influenced movies and such over at Comixology. He spends the first column talking about Afro Samurai:
The creation of one Takashi “Bob” Okazaki, an illustrator & visual designer by trade and hip-hop nerd by pleasure, Afro Samurai began as a series of dōjinshi (amateur manga) and toys centered around a big-haired swordfighter wandering around a fantastical sci-fi Japan/America/Everywhere Else setting; things really took off after an animated promo reel was commissioned, which piqued the interest of Samuel L. Jackson. A five-episode television anime was completed in 2007, budgeted at a handsome one million or so dollars per episode; Jackson starred, RZA scored, Spike TV aired, blood spilled, East met West, and it was forever sealed in stone that Gonzo actually could produce a consistent-looking series, given a small dump truck of cash parked in the lobby.
Okazaki also drew a proper manga series around the same time; both of its two volumes should be out in English now from Tor/Seven Seas. It shared the same basic plot of the anime — brooding fighter Afro is after the villain that murdered his father and seized the world’s #1 fighting headband — but it didn’t particularly look like anime, or even a lot of manga (a much more varied thing). It mostly reminded me of some odd artifact from the ‘80s b&w comics boom you might pluck out of a back issue bin somewhere, heavy on style and illustrative flair, and armed with the awesome, completely metal decision to color all the blood red (didn’t Tim Tyler try that?), but almost totally lacking in storytelling aptitude, be it in terms of plotting or visual flow.
Joe goes on to review the new Resurrection series, and even sneaks in a comparison to Garth Ennis’ work on Punisher Max.
- February 13, 2009 @ 05:48 AM by Chris Mautner
Annotations for Trinity issue #37
Trinity #37
I thought this issue was particularly strong all around. There’s still a bit of setup to take care of, but it all serves the needs of the larger story. Plot threads are tying together, Act Three’s engines are revving, and if we can see where the story’s headed, at least the journey looks fun.
SPOILERS FOLLOW
* * *
LEAD STORY
“And They Fought” 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 God War, and what came of it.
Continue Reading »
- February 12, 2009 @ 02:19 PM by Tom Bondurant
The Fifth Color | The Little Things
Secret Invasion: Requiem
How do you want to be remembered?
Seriously, take a moment. It doesn’t have to get all maudlin, just think about what you want others to be thinking about when you’ve gone where all the Jean Greys go. You don’t even have to dwell on it, though it sort of puts things in perspective for a moment. Whether that’s wanting to be remembered for some great accomplishment or boon to society or just that you had a great .sig file in your email, people will remember you.
When the House of Ideas recently splattered the winsome Wasp on the windshield of Big Event Comics (in two universes, no less!), they published Secret Invasion: Requiem for fans to remember her by. This over-sized issue has a story weaving two reprints together as a something of a memorial to the now kind-of-deceased-mostly-tornado-ed founding Avenger. This is the legacy all heroes should leave behind, the idea that what you did and who you are can live on through the ages as a requiem, a prayer in your honor for the Great Beyond.
Man, that sounds so pretty, and it would have been awesome if that’s what we got for the fallen Janet Van Dyne. Looking at how the House of Ideas chose to pull all that off, it’s the worst titling of a story since Dark Reign – Avengers: the Initiative Disassembled #20. This has nothing to do with the Wasp and everything to say about … the Wasp?
- February 12, 2009 @ 01:15 PM by Carla Hoffman
Robot Review: Throwing My Arms Around Paris
Paris
Paris
Written by Andi Watson; Illustrated by Simon Gane.
SLG; $10.95
I blame my love for Paris – a city I’ve never physically been to – on Alexandre Dumas, Victor Hugo, and Gaston Leroux. Any city so full of swashbuckling musketeers, romantic revolutionaries, cathedral-dwelling hunchbacks, and catacomb-inhabiting phantoms is bound to be fascinating. When you figure in Bouguereau and éclairs, Paris tops the short list of cities on the Eventual Michael May World Tour.
My great hope for Paris the graphic novel was that it would come somewhere near capturing everything that I imagine I love about Paris the place. Not musketeers and hunchbacks necessarily, but art, architecture, bistros, coffee, and – oh yes – especially love. I was not disappointed.
Watson and Gane tell the story of a young, American art student named Juliet who’s come to Paris to study at an atelier. The back cover says that the story takes place in the early ‘50s. I don’t know enough about Paris’ cultural history to know why that’s significant – the details of the plot could’ve taken place yesterday as easily as fifty-something years ago – but the style of the thing is certainly nostalgic and romantic; like an Audrey Hepburn movie. Hepburn would’ve been out of place in this particular story, but right at home in the setting.
- February 12, 2009 @ 12:42 PM by Michael May
Robot Love | I ♥ learning from comics
Agents of Atlas
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 we welcome our guest Jeff Parker, creator of The Interman, co-creator of Mysterius: The Unfathomable and writer of a lot of Marvel’s comics — Agents of Atlas, Age of the Sentry, X-Men First Class: Finals and Exiles.
by Jeff Parker
These comics we read can make us smart. Or at least, able to kill Seat 28D during the InFlight Trivia Challenge.
Comics have an inordinately facile ability to get information into the reader’s head. A few years ago I was in Washington, D.C. running around looking at monuments and the like, and I took the once-a-week tour of the Federal Reserve building. It’s surprisingly cool, do it when you’re there on a Thursday sometime. At the end of the tour they gave out a COMIC BOOK that attempted to explain how the Fed works. It was badly drawn, weakly colored, and yet- it actually got across to me some understanding of the mysterious process by which the Fed sets interest rates and influences economic growth or tries to thwart inflation. I was impressed that they took the steps to make a comics giveaway, and it made me happy to retrace the steps they must have gone through. As the guide of the day had explained, one of the big hurdles the people in the Federal Reserve have is trying to explain to the public how they do what they do. The job description requires some understanding of economic theory and process to even get to the nuts and bolts. They obviously spent a lot of time trying to figure out what delivery system could get the curious up to speed, and they arrived at a flimsy newsprint comic with no coated stock cover. And I still have it. They also showed a film about the Fed, but the comic still did a better job distilling the information.
- February 12, 2009 @ 11:10 AM by JK Parkin
Food or Comics | A roundup for money-related news
Washington City Paper
• Chicago Reader reports that Washington, D.C.’s alternative weekly, City Paper, has dropped its syndicated comics so it can save $8,000 amid budget cuts by parent company Creative Loafing, which filed for bankruptcy in September.
The news comes less than three weeks after alternative-weekly chain Village Voice Media announced its 15 papers would suspend comics.
Dirtfarm is the only strip to survive the City Paper cuts because cartoonist Ben Claassen, who got his start at the weekly, has agreed not to charge. “City Paper feels like family to me,” Claassen explained to the Reader. “I called the publisher and told her that I would rather have it run for free than to not have it run at all.” (Via Daryl Cagle)
• Dirk Deppey wonders what effect the restructuring at HarperCollins, which includes the closing of the Collins division, will have on the planned graphic-novel line for children.
• Under the headline “Why we starve,” artist Mark Brooks relates an encounter he had at New York Comic Con with a fan who had made his own prints for Brooks to sign; he declined: “So now you’re probably asking, ‘what’s the big deal? sign the damn prints!’. Well, for many years I did and about 70% of the time the prints would end up on ebay. A lot of the work you see on my page is done just for myself so I can have original lithographs to sell at shows and appearances so I was never paid to produce the work. My pay comes when I take the artwork to shows and people buy the lithographs. If someone prints something from the web, has me sign it, and then sells it on ebay he has now profited off my hard work as well as taken away a small percentage of me making a living. Contrary to popular belief, most comic artists are far from rich and most of us are just trying to scrape a living a get by so protecting our artwork becomes extremely important for us to continue making a living.”
- February 12, 2009 @ 10:27 AM by Kevin Melrose
Thin wallets, fat bookshelves: The final (for now) round-up
Jin & Jan
I thought I’d wind down our look at the year ahead in comic books and graphic novels with a look at indie/small press publishers Secret Acres and Sparkplug Books, and the manga publisher Seven Seas who is now under the Tor Books umbrella.
Don’t worry, this feature isn’t going away permanently. As the months pass and new preview catalogs come in the mail I’ll get back to typing these run-downs.
- February 12, 2009 @ 09:59 AM by Chris Mautner
‘Back when I wrote Watchmen I still trusted the viperous bastards’
Alan Moore
Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill, collaborators on The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, in separate interviews share the horrors of their experiences with Hollywood. And, in Moore’s case, with American comics publishers.
Moore, to Total Film: “We had one particularly dense Hollywood producer say, ‘You don’t even have to do the book, just stick your name on this idea and I’ll make the film and you’ll get a lot of money -– it’s… The League Of Extraordinary Animals! It’ll be like Puss In Boots!’ And I just said, ‘No, no, no. Never mention this to me again.’”
O’Neill, on the LOEG movie script, to Times Online: “They sent me a screenplay. I read the first few pages and I thought, ‘I’ve got the wrong one. I don’t recognise any of this — the Bank of England, Venice.’ The character names were similar, but they added Tom Sawyer. It was a bit of an odd thing.”
Moore, of course, reserves some of his sharpest words for American superhero comics:
- February 12, 2009 @ 09:16 AM by Kevin Melrose