2009 April
Help rebuild Len Wein’s comic book collection
Comics by Len Wein
As previously reported, Mark Evanier is helping Len Wein rebuild his collection of his own work after losing it in a house fire a few weeks ago. Evanier has set up a page on his website that details how you can help by donating your comics to Wein, and provides an update this morning based on the emails he’s already receiving.
The site includes a list of books they’re looking for, as well as contact information if you want to donate. So go look at the list and look through your collection to see if you happen to have any duplicates of Wein’s work, or start checking your retailer’s bargain bins for any of them; he’s pretty much worked on everything, so it’s likely you’ll find something either way.
- April 20, 2009 @ 05:50 AM by JK Parkin
What Are You Reading?
Swallow Me Whole
Welcome to this week’s edition of What Are You Reading? Today our special guest is blogger and critic Matthew J. Brady (not to be confused with the other Matt Brady). He and everyone else at Robot 6 have been reading some really interesting stuff, so click on the link to find out what …
- April 19, 2009 @ 01:00 PM by Chris Mautner
Six by 6 | Six ‘retired’ artists we’d like to see return to comics
Tales of the Great Unspoken
Making comics, as we all know, is hard work. And — particularly if you work in the “indie” side of the aisle — it’s not always good-paying work.
Small wonder then that many talented individuals leave the medium to find a career in illustration, animation, sales, or hell, anything that paid better than comics.
Still, while I understand the financial necessity, there’s a number of artists I wish would come back to the fold, if just for old time’s sake. For example:
1. Aaron Augenblick. In 1999 Augenblick created a charming little mini-comic, Tales of the Great Unspoken. It was inventive, clever, superbly crafted and very funny. It won a Xeric. It was, all in all, a great debut that showed enough promise to suggest that Augenblick had a great career ahead of him in comics. Then he decided to chuck it all and make animated cartoons for Adult Swim and MTV.
It’s a shame. The kid really could have really made a name for himself. Still, it’s not too late Aaron. You could give up all that sweet, sweet Nickelodeon money and come back to comics anytime …
- April 19, 2009 @ 11:00 AM by Chris Mautner
Strangeways: The Thirsty – Week of 4/12
This week:
Joe and Penny’s tender re-uniting is rudely broken up by a foreigner. (This recap in the spirit of Postmodern Barney’s Uncomfortable Plot Summaries–read ‘em all!)
Free comics after the jump!
- April 19, 2009 @ 09:00 AM by Matt Maxwell
Paul Pope draws butt-kicking, panther-fighting young Spock
From "When Worlds Collide" Star Trek comic, illustrated by Paul Pope
The only thing better than a teen-aged Spock taking down an alien panther with an old-fashioned Vulcan nerve pinch is having the whole thing illustrated by Paul Pope.
The May issue of Wired magazine is guest-edited J.J. Abrams and, unsurprisingly, contains a healthy dose of Star Trek-related content — including a six-page Spock comic called “When Worlds Collide,” penned by screenwriters Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman and drawn by Pope.
According to TrekMovie.com, the comic features an aged Spock remembering the years his youth, from his panther-fighting days to his early time aboard the Enterprise.
TrekMovie and io9.com both have excerpts from the comic.
(Thanks, Tom)
- April 18, 2009 @ 08:47 AM by Kevin Melrose
Talking Comics with Tim: Park Cooper
Gun Street Girl
Yesterday Wicker Man Studios (WMS) announced the launch of a new website specifically for its flagship title Gun Street Girl “from which WMS is already offering its latest Gun Street Girl story, The Jealous Dead, on the iPhone App Store. According to WMS, “The Jealous Dead will cost 99 cents to download (in the US and Canada–other stores may vary), and can easily be read on the iPhone and the iPod touch with WMS’ own brand-new application, a comics reader which will allow readers using these devices to easily read stories panel-by-panel, simply by touching the screen and dragging the panels from right to left; tapping the screen will show thumbnails of all panels in a story so that one can, for example, easily pick up where one left off during a previous interrupted session.”
Prior to the launch of the new website and WMS’ new comics reader, I caught up with WMS’ Park Cooper for an email interview. Barbara Lien-Cooper and Park are the creators of Gun Street Girl and owners of Wicker Man Studios. Park is also the Editor-in-Chief of indie comics company Septagon Studios, and of the website MangaLife. My thanks to Cooper for his time. Enjoy this special weekend version of Talking Comics with Tim and come back Monday for my regular weekly installment.
Tim O’Shea: How did you arrange the ITunes distribution for GSG?
Park Cooper: We had to submit the application and a story to Apple to get their approval. Actually, there was one panel in the first sample story which bothered them — Liz’s girlfriend Prana was, we shall say, just barely covered up top. Ryan drew an additional garment on top of what she was already wearing, and the resubmission was approved just fine. If it was what Apple needed to feel good about it, then what the heck. The original version is still in the archives, since this was the origin story we’re talking about…
- April 18, 2009 @ 06:00 AM by Tim O'Shea
Straight for the art: Wizzywig Vol. 3
From Wizzywig Vol. 3
Ed Piskor has put up the first half of Vol. 3 of his ongoing hacker story, Wizzywig, online for everyone to enjoy, free of charge.
- April 17, 2009 @ 12:00 PM by Chris Mautner
F.F.C.B.D.F.E.
Jon Adams FCBD flyer
Truth Serum creator Jon Adams asked us to help spread the word about his latest charity project, “Free Free Comic Book Day For Everyone.”
(And yes, it’s a parody site, much like his Lunchballz and Fornidate sites. Man, I could go for a Dairy Delight Lunchballz right about now …).
- April 17, 2009 @ 10:59 AM by JK Parkin
Bestseller befuddlement: ‘The Times list is what it is’
The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger Born
Just in time for this week’s installment of the Graphic Books Best Seller List, Heidi MacDonald rounds up discussion of the mysterious mechanics that power The New York Times charts.
I, for better or worse, kicked off things last Friday when I was left scratching my head by the seemingly miraculous appearance, and disappearance, of Marvel’s two-year-old collection of The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger Born from the hardcover list.
Retailer Christopher Butcher quickly offered a possible answer: that The Times may be relying on orders from Diamond Comic Distributors, rather than sales to customers, for its data from direct-market stores — and that a deep discount on remaindered copies of The Gunslinger Born triggered the one-week spike.
Since Butcher’s initial response, retailer and ComicsPRO board member Brian Hibbs has joined the discussion at both Butcher and MacDonald’s blogs, revealing that “something close to a quarter of ComicsPRO’s membership has put their names in to report” sales information to The Times.
So, the newspaper is receiving sell-through data from at least some comic shops. How that’s added into The Times’ arcane bestseller formula is anybody’s guess.
And that brings us to Todd Allen, who attempts to “reverse engineer” the Graphic Books list by comparing The Times positions with Diamond ranks and ICv2.com estimates.
His conclusions pretty much bring us full circle, with more questions than answers about how the newspaper compiles its bestseller information.
“The Times list is what it is,” Allen writes, “and some indication of sell-through is better than none.”
- April 17, 2009 @ 10:10 AM by Kevin Melrose
Everyone’s A Critic: A roundup of comic-related reviews and thinkpieces
Violence Jack
• How have I blathered on all this time without calling attention to Derik Badman’s great volume by volume analysis of Osamu Tezuka’s Phoenix series? Obviously I need my head examined. (In backwards order, Karma, Yamato, Space, Future and Dawn).
• Craig Fischer has nice things to say about Patsy Walker: Hellcat : “It’s not designed to be immortal art–in other words, it’s not Raw or Love and Rockets–but as far as mainstream comics go, it’s clever and fun, virtues that are too easy to take for granted.”
• Takekuma Kentaro, co-author of Even a Monkey can Draw Manga wonders why the manga version of Hayao Miyazaki’s Naussica is so hard to read: “Each individual panel is too complete, and the characters and background are drawn with lines of equal thickness. This leads to the characters not standing out.”
• Awesome Engine is doing a series of posts on Go Nagai’s Violence Jack who lives up to his name rather well (link is so NSFW by the way).
• Paul Gravett provides an interesting look at the work of Italian comics artist Gianna DeLucca.
• Andrew Wheeler didn’t care much for Joseph Patrick Larkin’s Arcade of Cruelty. He does, however, have nice things to say about Jimmy Gownley’s Amelia Rules!
• Noah Berlatsky doesn’t care much for Alan Moore’s proposal for the Wonder Woman rip-off Glory, but he did like the first volume of Fruits Basket, though it took two readings.
• Stripper’s Guide’s Allan Holtz offers some capsule reviews of recent comic strip-related releases.
- April 17, 2009 @ 10:00 AM by Chris Mautner
Strangeways: The Thirsty – Page 059
Thank goodness for scheduling posts, else this wouldn’t be up now. I’m probably on the plane to the Stumptown Comics Festival in Portland, OR (not ME). Look for me…somewhere there, sitting down with a stack of books in front of me. Bring along your Rock Band setup and I’ll sing “Maps” for ya.
Maybe.
At any rate, here’s today’s page:
Written by Matt Maxwell. Art by Gervasio and Jok.
Missed it by > < that much.
See you folks Monday for another pre-scheduled piece of wonderment. Remember to follow me on Twitter for updates from the floor. The news! As it happens!
- April 17, 2009 @ 09:29 AM by Matt Maxwell
Straight for the art: Ed Stein’s Columbine cartoons
Ed Stein editorial cartoon
Former Rocky Mountain News cartoonist Ed Stine has gathered all the editorial cartoons and comic strips from his Denver Square series he did following the aftermath of the Columbine High School shooting under one virtual roof.
- April 17, 2009 @ 09:00 AM by Chris Mautner
More from Wednesday Comics: Kamandi and Metamorpho
Kamandi from "Wednesday Comics," by Dave Gibbons and Ryan Sook
At the risk of going overboard on posts about DC Comics’ Wednesday Comics miniseries, I’m compelled to link to these two latest samples — revealed this morning — because they’re just stunning: Metamorpho, by Neil Gaiman and Michael Allred, and Kamandi, by Dave Gibbons and Ryan Sook.
While I’m a fan of all four creators, I give special attention to that Kamandi page which, with its art, coloring and lettering, evokes Hal Foster’s classic Prince Valiant. That’s especially appropriate for a title designed to mimic the Sunday comics page.
The Jack Kirby credit at the bottom of the page is a nice touch, too.
- April 17, 2009 @ 08:03 AM by Kevin Melrose
If only these pages were earning frequent flyer miles
At the San Diego Comic-Con last year, Image announced a huge crossover title, Image United, written by Robert Kirkman and featuring artwork by Rob Liefeld, Todd McFarlane, Jim Valentino, Erik Larsen, Marc Silvestri and Whilce Portacio. What’s interesting is that each artist is drawing his own characters throughout the series — so if Spawn, Savage Dragon and Shaft appear in a panel together, then that panel will feature the work of McFarlane, Larsen and Liefeld.
“The pages where we are all interacting are by far the hardest to pull off but the most satisfying,” Liefeld said yesterday on Twitter. He also posted two “in process” images from the book. The first, from the layout stage:
Image United
- April 17, 2009 @ 07:40 AM by JK Parkin
Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes
The Pirate Bay
Legal | A Swedish court has found four men behind the file-sharing site The Pirate Bay guilty of contributory copyright infringement. Carl Lundström, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg and Peter Sunde were sentenced to one year in prison and ordered to pay $3.6 million in damages to several entertainment companies for infringing on 33 specific movie and music properties. The defendants will appeal the ruling. [Threat Level, TorrentFreak]
Legal | Matt Bradley provides some background on the trial of Egyptian cartoonist Magdy al Shafee and publisher Mohammed al Sharqawi, who are accused of offending public morals with Metro, called the country’s first graphic novel. The two were arrested in April 2008 after police raided the publisher’s offices and confiscated all copies of the book; retailers were ordered to remove the book from their shelves. The trial begins tomorrow. The men could face up to two years in prison. A translated excerpt of Metro can be read here. [The National]
Young Liars, Vol. 2
Publishing | David Lapham announced yesterday that his Vertigo crime series Young Liars has been canceled with August’s Issue 18: “I’m mostly bummed because YL was so much Goddamn FUN to work on, and it’s not the kind of story that you can just go into from the start. It evolved into what it was and creatively, that was kind of magical and I never took it for granted.” [Standard Attrition]
Publishing | Unhappy with the profit-sharing setup of traditional manga publishing, Japanese cartoonist Satou Shuuhou will make his comics available on his own website — for a small fee — a month after they appear in print. Simon Jones wonders whether this could be the beginning of a new online model for manga. [Canned Dogs, Icarus Publishing]
- April 17, 2009 @ 06:57 AM by Kevin Melrose