2009 May
Security is an Eye Patch, and other classic U.S. government comics
"Security is an Eye Patch," by Charles Schulz
Dave Carter points out that the University of Nebraska-Lincoln library has a digital archive of comics published by the U.S. government, dating back to the 1940s. The 167 titles include work by the likes of Scott Adams, Eduardo Barretto, Milton Caniff, Al Capp, Peter David, Will Eisner, Walt Kelly, Hank Ketcham, George Perez, Alex Raymond, Dr. Seuss, Marv Wolfman and Chic Young.
Yes, it includes the New Teen Titans drug-awareness comics released in 1983 — the ones with the generic Protector leading the team instead of Robin.
- May 8, 2009 @ 08:31 AM by Kevin Melrose
Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes
The Incredibles #1
Publishing | Disney’s Studio Fountain and Soda Store in Hollywood will carry the BOOM! Kids line of licensed Muppets and Disney/Pixar comics. They will be the only comics sold in the store. [BOOM! Kids]
Legal | A 28-year-old man in Wheaton, Ill., was sentenced Thursday to seven years in prison after pleading guilty to felony theft for using a bogus check in 2007 to buy a copy of The Amazing Spider-Man #2 from Graham Crackers Comics in Naperville. As part of his plea, Scott K. Meherg was ordered to pay $980.99 in restitution toward the comic, which was never recovered. [Naperville Sun]
Legal | In other Spider-Man-related crime news, a New York man suspected of stealing $78,000 worth of farm equipment reportedly told employees of the business that his name was Peter Parker before dropping his pants to reveal a blue-and-red leotard. Apparently, “Brand New Day” hasn’t gone as well as we were led to believe. [WNYT.com]
The Dark Tower: Treachery
Sales charts | The top of The New York Times’ Graphic Books Best Seller List looks just like last week’s edition, with The Dark Tower: Treachery, Watchmen and Naruto leading their respective categories. Star Trek: Countdown continues to perform well for IDW as it inches up to No. 2 in paperbacks. [ArtsBeat]
Publishing | Belgium, which produced some 4,000 new titles last year, is suffering from a lack of good writers. “Most Belgians who want a career in comics aspire to be illustrators, not wordsmiths,” writes Daniel Michaels. “At the country’s many comic fairs, it’s the artists around whom thousands swarm for autographs.” [Wall Street Journal]
- May 8, 2009 @ 07:18 AM by Kevin Melrose
Colleen Doran, other celebrities contribute doodles for charity
Colleen Doran's doodle
May is Neurofibromatosis Awareness month, and long list of celebrities, including A Distant Soil creator Colleen Doran, have contributed “doodles” for an auction that benefits Neurofibromatosis Inc. The auctions started yesterday on eBay and run through May 17; you can find the complete list here.
- May 8, 2009 @ 06:04 AM by JK Parkin
Robot reviews: LoEG Century: 1910
Century: 1910
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Vol III: Century: 1910
by Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill
Top Shelf, 80 pages, $7.95.
Hey kids! Like Bertolt Brecht? I mean, do you really, really like Bertolt Brecht? As in “I know the entire book and lyrics to Happy End by heart and can recite them at a moment’s notice and better stand back because I’m going to do so right now?” ‘Cause that’s the only way you’re going to be able to enjoy Alan Moore’s latest comic!
- May 7, 2009 @ 03:36 PM by Chris Mautner
Annotations for Trinity issue #49
Trinity #49
Off and on throughout this series, I have wondered how Busiek, Bagley, Nicieza, et al., would spend their last few issues. Would they go all-out right up to the very end, or would they wrap things up a little sooner in order to have some time for an epilogue? Like last issue, Trinity #49 concerns itself pretty much with one plot point; and with Krona trapped and Morgaine and Despero on the ropes, the issue was shaping up to be rather pivotal.
And it was — but not exactly how I imagined.
SPOILERS FOLLOW
* * *
LEAD STORY
“This Planet, These People…” 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.
Continue Reading »
- May 7, 2009 @ 02:29 PM by Tom Bondurant
Not comics: I Dream of Popeye
How many times has this happened to you? You’re getting ready to go to the local Popeye convention, but can’t find a thing to wear? Good thing this guy has his own genie. (Found via Flog)
- May 7, 2009 @ 01:32 PM by Chris Mautner
Straight for the art: Muppets Rawk
Muppets Rawk!
This has been making the rounds lately: A mash-up by Marc Palm of the Muppets and Robert Crumb’s famous Cheap Thrills record cover. Be sure to click on the link to see all the notes and YouTube links to the songs referenced.
- May 7, 2009 @ 12:30 PM by Chris Mautner
Straight for the art: Lilli Carre’s blog
Carre's Huck Finn
Lagoon and Tales of Woodsman Pete author Lilli Carre has a blog up now, where she’s posting, among other things, her cover for the new Penguin edition of Huckleberry Finn, and a page from an upcoming story she’s doing for Mome.
- May 7, 2009 @ 11:45 AM by Chris Mautner
More on that New Yorker issue
Chris Ware's New Yorker strip
I feel that I should mention that in addition to that swell cover by Daniel Clowes, the latest issue of the New Yorker also features a lovely one-page strip by Chris Ware, as well as a gag cartoon by Ward Sutton and an illustration by Michael Kupperman. Blog Flume also notes that Ware has a strip in the current issue of the Virginia Quarterly Review (Spring 2009) and the current issue of Wired.
- May 7, 2009 @ 10:45 AM by Chris Mautner
Strange Eggs Jumps the Shark not ‘Kid Friendly,’ despite Previews listing
Strange Eggs Jumps the Shark
Chris Reilly, co-editor of the SLG anthology Strange Eggs Jumps the Shark, sent us a note about the recently solicited book. In the latest issue of Previews, Diamond accidentally marked the book as “Kid Friendly,” which it isn’t.
“The book is not pornographic, but the Spike & Mike style of sick and twisted humor may not float with some parents, and retailers expecting an all-ages book will not be happy,” Reilly said in his email.
Here’s the note he’s been sending to retailers to warn them of the mistake:
Dear Retailers:
I’m sending you this quick note to let you know that the “Kid Friendly” label that Diamond assigned to the SLG title Strange Eggs Jumps the Shark (MAY090640) in the current issue of Previews is not correct. We don’t know how it ended up with that label, but we do know that Strange Eggs Jumps the Shark has material in it that is not what a lot of parents would call “appropriate” for their kids. We hope you’ll still order it, though — it has new stories by a lot of great creators, including Jhonen Vasquez (Johnny the Homicidal Maniac), Derf (The City), J. Marc Schmidt (Egg Story), Eisner-nominated and Eisner judge Ben Towle (Midnight Sun), Roger Langridge (Fred The Clown, The Muppets) and the now-oft-blogged-about James Turner (Rex Libris, Warlord of Io).”
The book is co edited by Harvey award nominee & Eisner judge Chris Reilly and Eisner Nominee and Judge Ben Towle.
- May 7, 2009 @ 09:58 AM by JK Parkin
Batman, talk to the hand
The flowing river of marvelous previews that is the DC Comics Source blog runneth over today, with a sneak at Frank Quitely’s cover to Batman and Robin #3:
Batman and Robin #3
They have a couple of interior pages, too, so be sure to follow the link to check them out.
- May 7, 2009 @ 09:15 AM by JK Parkin
The perils of real-life superheroes (and Craigslist)
Shadow Hare
The worst side effect of publicizing your superhero efforts apparently isn’t widespread mockery. No, it’s attracting the attention of potential arch-nemeses.
Case in point: Cincinnati’s self-appointed protector Shadow Hare, whose mission to patrol the mean streets of the Queen City received air time last week on CNN.
The masked defender and his teammates in the Allegiance of Heroes apparently weathered the laughter of television anchors, Cincinnati residents and the online minions. But can Shadow Hare survive … the Consortium of Evil?
Io9.com points out that the mysterious E, a member of the equally mysterious Consortium, is determined to learn Shadow Hare’s secret identity — at any cost!
Okay, not any cost. It’s more like $10.
On Tuesday E placed an ad on Craigslist offering the reward for the identity of Shadow Hare. (The ad since has been removed.) That’s right, Our Hero already has a bounty on his head.
So far, there’s no response from the Allegiance of Heroes, the World Superhero Registry, or the Guild of Calamitous Intent.
Developing …
- May 7, 2009 @ 08:32 AM by Kevin Melrose
Slash Print | Following the digital evolution
Kindle DX
e-Devices | Amazon.com this week announced a larger version of their Kindle device, called the Kindle DX. The e-book reader is two-and-a-half times the size of the current Kindle and will retail for almost $500. The New York Times, Washington Post, and Boston Globe, however, will offer “subsidized on-contract Kindles to customers who can’t get at-home delivery when the DX ships this summer.”
So, the natural question for comic fans — is it big enough to show a comics page? Kelson at the Speed Force blog has the same question: “Unless I’ve got my numbers wrong, that makes it larger than the standard manga page, though not quite as big as the standard American comic book page,” he said about the 9.7 inch screen. “And it’s only 1/3 of an inch thick, comparable to a typical trade paperback.” The BBC has more on the specs.
Social media | Ypulse, a teen marketing blog, wonders if teens would follow Twitter feeds for characters from young adult novels. Apparently teens haven’t embraced Twitter (which surprises me … I figured they’d been using it and dropped it when all the old people showed up, kind of like Facebook), and the post wonders if they’d start using it if, say, the sparkling vampires from Twilight had their own feeds.
“Protagonists, antagonists and supporting characters (the latter might be especially intriguing) would continue to gain depth and dimension in the intermittent period between books and meanwhile, readers would feel more connected to the world that the author created,” writes Meredith, who blogs for the site. “Or, as connected to them as they choose to be depending on whether they simply read the tweets or actually respond to them and engage in dialogue.” She also notes that characters from Mad Men showed up on Twitter last year, which everyone assumed was a marketing ploy for the show, but turned out to be more along the lines of fan fiction.
BOOM! Studios recently launched a Twitter feed for one of their fictional characters, the talking teddy bear who thinks he’s James Bond, Mister Stuffins. Is it a marketing ploy, an extension of the story, or maybe both? And would comic fans follow the Twitter feed for, say, Batman, Luke Cage or Scott Pilgrim, if their tweets were written by Grant Morrison, Brian Michael Bendis or Bryan Lee O’Malley, respectively?
- May 7, 2009 @ 08:05 AM by JK Parkin
Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes
Star Trek: Countdown
Passings | Prominent manga creator and essayist Murasaki Yamada died Tuesday in a hospital in Kyoto, Japan. She was 60. [Anime News Network]
Sales charts | Watchmen barely clings to USA Today’s bestseller list, falling 37 places to No. 147. However, the Alan Moore-Dave Gibbons collection again tops Bookscan’s graphic novel chart for April, followed by lots and lots of Naruto.
It’s perhaps interesting to note that Watchmen is the only superhero title in the Bookscan Top 20, and that it, Star Trek: Countdown (No. 10) and V for Vendetta (No. 18) are the only non-manga. [USA Today, ICv2.com]
King City #1
Publishing | Simon Jones considers the big picture in the news of a co-publishing arrangement between Tokyopop and Image Comics for the release of Brandon Graham’s King City. [Icarus Publishing]
Publishing | Bluewater Productions President Darren G. Davis talks about the company’s Female Force line of books. [Graphic Novel Reporter]
Publishing | Arcana Studio founder Sean O’Reilly speaks briefly about submissions and working with creators. [ComicsCareer.com]
Publishing | A handy roundup of links to publishers’ upcoming books listings on Amazon.com. [I Love Rob Liefeld]
- May 7, 2009 @ 07:02 AM by Kevin Melrose
Gorillas Riding Dinosaurs: What Looks Good for July
Artesia Besieged #3
Time once again for our monthly trip through Previews searching for the most fun-looking graphic novels, collections, and new series. As always, let me know in the comments what you’re looking forward to.
Arcana
Don Bluth’s Space Ace #1 – I never played the video game this is based on, but Robert Kirkman writing space pulp is enough for me. I’m assuming that the art will be in Don Bluth’s style, but really, unless the art’s just downright ugly I’ll be checking this out.
Archaia
Mouse Guard, Vol. 2: Winter 1152 - I’ll usually wait for the paperback version instead of immediately springing for an expensive hardcover, but David Petersen’s work deserves the deluxe treatment. I can’t wait for this.
Artesia: Besieged #3/Okko: The Cycle of Earth #3 – I’m breaking a rule by mentioning books that aren’t starting new series, but I’m just too excited that these are starting up again after long hiatuses. Both of them are huge, lavish fantasies; the best of their genre.
Boom!
Poe #1 – I love historical mysteries almost as much as I love Poe.
Okay, that’s totally not true. I love Poe more than just about anything. But I do really like historical mysteries and making them about Poe is a great way to snag that hook right into my cheek. Ouch.
Incredibles: Family Matters – Do you know who wants to read this even more than I do? My seven-year-old son. Ever since he saw the preview pages in the FCBD Cars comic he’s been bugging me about when we can get this. I know it’s been less than a week; it feels much longer. I mean seriously: Tigerceratops and Hipposaurus Rex? Nicely played, Boom.
Incredibles #0 – Here’s hoping that the second volume gets off to as awesome a start as the first one did.
The Muppet Show – I don’t know if I would’ve picked this up on my own. I’m very skeptical that the humor of the original series will translate well to comics form. But the reviews have been universally positive, so now I just have to see for myself.
- May 6, 2009 @ 06:02 PM by Michael May