2009 March
Food or Comics | A roundup of money-related news
Diamond Comic Distributors
• Gary Tyrrell passes along word from cartoonist Box Brown that Xeric Grant winners supposedly won’t be subject to Diamond Comic Distributors’ new minimum-order policy.
• DJ’s Comics in Wallingford, Conn., may be going out of business. Owner Michael Cote, who’s about $18,000 behind on rent, blames the economy and rent increases.
• The Washington Post is cutting five strips from its comic pages: Judge Parker, Little Dog Lost, Piranha Club, Pooch Cafe and Zippy the Pinhead. They’ll continue to appear on the newspaper’s website. In addition, Dilbert will move to the business pages. (via Alan Gardner)
• Tokyopop is searching for an editor. (via Deb Aoki)
• “Trade waiter” Matt Ampersand runs down the various collection formats — hardcover, softcover, archives, etc. — and what effect they have on your wallet.
• Newly laid off from his comics-retailing job, Samuel Rules ponders the high cost of comics buying. (via Dirk Deppey)
- March 17, 2009 @ 08:48 AM by Kevin Melrose
Watch Gaiman and Colbert face off over The Graveyard Book
As JK noted yesterday, Neil Gaiman appeared on The Colbert Report last night to answer Stephen Colbert’s charges about Gaiman’s children’s book The Graveyard Book.
“Isn’t there a danger here that our children will stop being frightened of graveyards?” Colbert asked in the interview. “Because without that how are we supposed to get them to eat their vegetables?”
You can watch the full episode at the Colbert Nation website.
- March 17, 2009 @ 08:13 AM by Kevin Melrose
Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes
The Wright Awards
Awards | The finalists have been announced for the 2009 Doug Wright Awards, which recognize excellence in Canadian cartooning. The winners will be presented May 9 during the Toronto Comics Arts Festival. [The Doug Wright Awards]
Awards | The National Cartoonists Society has announced the nominees for the 63rd annual Reuben Awards, which honor excellence in comic books, comic strips, editorial cartoons, gag cartoons, animation and other fields. The winners will be announced Memorial Day Weekend. [National Cartoonists Society]
Creators | Gary Moskowitz profiles cartoonist Art Spiegelman, who admits he hates collaboration and gets little joy from drawing: “I don’t have the natural skills or patience to draw well. I take no pleasure in drawing a tree just for a tree’s sake. I only draw a tree when I absolutely need a tree.” [More Intelligent Life]
Webcomics | Kevin Church begins compiling a list of webcomics creators who use Twitter. [BeaucoupKevin]
Retailers | Bully the Little Stuffed Bull visits the newly opened Bergen Street Comics in Brooklyn, N.Y. [Bully Says]
Comics | The 20 graphic novels you should read … after Watchmen. [GQ, via Dirk Deppey]
Comics | Tim O’Neil explains the differences between “imaginary stories” and “alternate universes.” [The Hurting]
Art and design | Letterer Todd Klein begins his study of DC Comics’ Green Arrow logos over the years. [Todd's Blog]
Art | London’s Royal Academy of Arts expect a big turnout of manga fans for its exhibition of work by 19th century artist Utagawa Kuniyoshi, “a very strong candidate for being one of the forebears of manga.” [Evening Standard]
- March 17, 2009 @ 07:47 AM by Kevin Melrose
Sharing is caring: Stalkers, Sparky and Tubby
Stalker Pie
* K. Thor Jensen steps up to Smith’s Next Door Neighbor bat with a piece entitled Stalker Pie.
* It’s not really art-related, but I couldn’t find another place to sneak in a link to the new Quotes on Comics Web site.
- March 17, 2009 @ 07:00 AM by Chris Mautner
Obama and Spider-Man win again (But is it ‘unprecedented’?)
Amazing Spider-Man #583
The fourth and fifth printings of Amazing Spider-Man #583, with their Barack Obama covers, sold an estimated 148,805 copies in February, driving the issue to the top of Diamond’s sales list for the second month in a row.
ICv2.com calls this a first since the website began tracking direct-market sales in 2001; Diamond says it’s unprecedented.
However, John Jackson Miller pointed out last week that while it’s certainly rare for the same comic to be No. 1 two months in a row it’s probably not unheard of — at least if we’re counting later printings.
“One problem is that before February 2003, reorders did not appear in the sales charts — so a comic book would pointedly not appear twice,” Miller writes. “Were there comics that might have? I took a look at August and September 1991, when X-Men Vol. 2 #1 was cycling; readers may recall its release was staggered across multiple weeks with covers abbreviated A-E. (DC did the same thing with Legends #1.) The top book in September was Spider-Man #16, which Todd MacFarlane had returned to write — but would the reorder numbers for #1 have been enough to top its sales? Very possibly: Capital City sold 228,900 copies of Spider-Man #16, but 1.87 million copies of the five covers of #1. With today’s reporting, we might find that book topping the charts for both months, due to reorders.”
The Obama overflow seems to have helped overall comics sales, which declined just 2 percent in February. However, graphic-novel sales tumbled 9 percent — the first decline in that category since May 2008.
Unsurprisingly, Watchmen led the graphic-novel list again with an estimated 12,466 copies — almost twice that of the No. 2 book, the Batman R.I.P. Deluxe Edition hardcover.
Top 300 comics, February 2009
Top 300 graphic novels, February 2009
- March 17, 2009 @ 05:43 AM by Kevin Melrose
Fox Atomic to turn upcoming Blacklight game into comic, movie
Blacklight
Brier Dudley with The Seattle Times reports that Zombie Studios, creator of the as-yet-unreleased game Blacklight, has signed a deal with Fox Atomic to turn the game into a movie and a comic series. Interestingly enough, the game itself does not have a distributor yet.
According to studio co-founder Mark Long, the game features a “covert ops team that is sent after an American CIA colonel gone rogue who has lost all sense of restraint in his pursuit of the enemy — you’re to either capture or kill him.”
At WonderCon a couple of weeks ago, Fox Atomic and BOOM! Studios announced a partnership where BOOM! would publish three titles this summer by the movie unit, which has previously published its own comics based on its 28 Days Later movie, among others. Whether Blacklight is one of these titles wasn’t clear in the article; I’ve emailed BOOM! to find out and will update this post once they respond.
- March 16, 2009 @ 11:34 PM by JK Parkin
Marvel teams with startup for online gaming worlds
Super Hero Squad
Back in 2006, Marvel Entertainment, Cryptic Studios (makers of the City of Heroes games) and Microsoft announced that they were working on a massive multiplayer online game featuring the Marvel Universe. Then in 2008, we found out development of the game had been shut down. But recognizing that only Phoenix and Bucky actually stay dead in the Marvel Universe, it was only a matter of time before we heard the news that Marvel was back in the MMO game, right?
According to VentureBeat.com, online game company Gazillion Entertainment and Marvel have reached a 10-year agreement whereby the startup will “build a series of online game worlds with Marvel’s comic book characters.” Oddly enough, the first one out the gate won’t be a big online Marvel Universe game, but will instead be a kids-oriented one featuring their Super Hero Squad property. It’s due in 2010, and the company has been working on the game for a year.
A giant Marvel game, dubbed Marvel Universe, for both the PC and video game consoles, is planned for the future, the article says. The company also has the license to make an MMO called LEGO Universe.
- March 16, 2009 @ 10:27 PM by JK Parkin
IDW’s first Bloom County cover takes flight
Bloom County: The Complete Collection, Vol. 1
On his blog, IDW Publisher and Editor-in-Chief Chris Ryall has uveiled the Dean Mullaney-designed cover for Bloom County: The Complete Collection, Vol. 1, due out in October.
Announced in February, the five-volume Bloom County Library will collect Berkeley Breathed’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1980s comic strip.
- March 16, 2009 @ 03:49 PM by Kevin Melrose
Ellison ‘bare-fangs-of-Adamantium’ about Star Trek lawsuit
from City on the Edge of Forever
With what is probably the greatest press release I’ve ever read, Harlan Ellison, who wrote the Star Trek episode “City on the Edge of Forever,” announces he is suing Paramount “for failing to account to, or pay, Mr. Ellison for the merchandising, publishing, or any other exploitations, of the famous teleplay, from inception to date. The suit also names the Writers Guild of America and alleges the WGA failed to act on Ellison’s behalf after numerous requests.”
For those of you who can’t instantly recall the plot of a Star Trek episode based on the name alone, “City on the Edge of Forever” was the one that featured Kirk and Spock going back in time to the Great Depression and guest starred Joan Collins as a war protestor and Kirk’s lover. Spock wore a hat to hide his ears.
Per the release, Ellison and his attorney have set their phasers to “burn” because they say Ellison is entitled to 25 percent of revenues from “the licensing of publication rights.” They say Paramount hasn’t paid him anything for a series of books that spun out of that episode or for one of those talking Hallmark ornaments that used lines from his script.
Ellison says, ““And please make sure to remember, at the moment some Studio mouthpiece calls me a mooch, and says I’m only pursuing this legal retribution to get into their ‘deep pockets,’ tell’m Ellison snarled back, ‘F- – - -in’-A damn skippy!’ I’m no hypocrite. It ain’t about the ‘principle,’ friend, its about the MONEY! Pay Me! Am I doing this for other writers, for Mom (still dead), and apple pie? Hell no! I’m doing it for the 35-year-long disrespect and the money!”
How much would it cost to have Ellison write all press releases?
- March 16, 2009 @ 03:47 PM by JK Parkin
Gaiman defends controversial child-raising techniques on The Colbert Report
Neil Gaiman, writer of Sandman and The Graveyard Book, will appear on The Colbert Report tonight.
As you can see in the video below, the popular conservative talk show host called Gaiman out on his latest book, where a young orphan escapes his family’s killer by wandering into a graveyard:
The program starts at 11:30 p.m. Eastern on Comedy Central.
- March 16, 2009 @ 01:32 PM by JK Parkin
Free the PIXU Four: A chat with Bá, Cloonan, Lolos, and Moon
The cover to the hardcover edition of PIXU, coming July 2009 from Dark Horse Comics
Dark Horse recently revealed it will publish a hardcover collection of PIXU, a unique four-way collaboration between award-winning creators Gabriel Bá, Becky Cloonan, Vasilis Lolos and Fábio Moon. Previously released as two self-published issues, PIXU is a horror comic book that tells the story of an apartment building full of haunted individuals, and the PIXU itself, a supernatural mark that portends great evil.
The four PIXU creators are scattered across the globe — with Cloonan living in Brooklyn, twin brothers Moon and Bá in São Paulo, Brazil, and Lolos splitting his time between Brooklyn and Athens, Greece. The book is at once a story, an experiment and a reflection of their tight friendship — four disparate, distant and visionary mad scientists becoming one through the magical act of creating comics together. Best of all, the book is creepy as all hell.
The original issues of PIXU were printed at a limited run of 1,000 copies each — but you can still find these handcrafted soon-to-be-eBay-bait comics at Khepri.com.
To celebrate the July release of the hardcover edition, we reached out to the PIXU quartet to find out the secret history of the book, and their own origins in the world of horror.
- March 16, 2009 @ 12:53 PM by Sam Humphries
Talking Comics with Tim: Anders Nilsen
Monologues for Calculating the Density of Black Holes
Anders Nilsen makes improvisational storytelling entertaining, I’m happy to say. Nowhere is this more evident than his most recent Fantagraphics release (the second part in a trilogy and the follow up to Monologues for the Coming Plague), Monologues for Calculating the Density of Black Holes. I was fortunate enough to recently email interview Nilsen about his creative efforts.
Tim O’Shea: Monologues for Calculating the Density of Black Holes is the second in what will eventually be a trilogy, as you noted at your blog. Did you set out wanting to create a trilogy when you embarked on Monologues for the Coming Plague?
Anders Nilsen: When I started the first book I just thought I was doing some experiments in my sketchbook. Playing around. But once I had finished the material that comprises the first book I had started to see the potential for a more expanded form–the narrative had started to come together, characters develop, etc. I started thinking about it as a trilogy then.
O’Shea: In lettering the stories, you cross out text at certain points.What freedom do you enjoy by approaching these books as improvisational sketchbooks?
- March 16, 2009 @ 12:16 PM by Tim O'Shea
Collect this now! The complete Help magazine
Help! No. 24
With the release of the new Humbug two-volume set, the upcoming biography by Denis Kitchen and Dark Horse’s Trump collection, 2009 is surely the year of Harvey Kurtzman.
I’m going to be reviewing Humbug tomorrow, but for today’s purposes, I wanted to talk about one of the few remaining holes in Kurtzman’s ouevre, namely Help! magazine.
Spanning 1960-65 — the time period between the close of Humbug and the creation of Little Annie Fanny for Playboy, Help! is not as well-regarded as the former or as slick and risque as the latter, but it’s notable for more than being Kurtzman’s longest running stint on a magazine after his departure from EC and Mad.
- March 16, 2009 @ 11:15 AM by Chris Mautner
Strangeways: The Thirsty – Page 051
Written by Matt Maxwell. Art by Gervasio and Jok.
But but but…vampires are only from Transylvania!
Hit the archives to catch the story from the beginning.
- March 16, 2009 @ 10:38 AM by Matt Maxwell
‘I don’t know that Amethyst could come out fresh today’
Amethyst: Princess of Gemworld #6
I’ve long hoped that DC Comics should collect and repackage, or relaunch, its early ’80s fantasy-adventure miniseries Amethyst: Princess of Gemworld. But after reading this interview at Tangonat with co-creators Gary Cohn and Dan Mishkin, I’m having second thoughts.
“I don’t know that Amethyst could come out fresh today,” Cohn says. “It was a product of its time. Still, I think it’s a product DC has mismanaged from the start. It should have been huge. There was a toy line planned early on, but it was dithered with forever, and by the time anyone was ready to move on it, Mattel had introduced She-Ra, and that was the end of that. I do think that Amethyst should be collected, digitally recolored, and packaged for the Manga market. But given the many bad things DC has done with Amethyst, I doubt they’d be able to manage that or do anything with her that I’d approve of.”
It’s a nice Q&A, with Cohn and Mishkin admitting to their own missteps, and discussing how the concept developed.
Their comments about the inappropriateness of a romance between Amethyst and Prince Topaz are rather timely, given this revelation from the Raiders of the Lost Ark story-conference transcripts.
- March 16, 2009 @ 09:25 AM by Kevin Melrose