2009 July
Straight for the art | Mike Allred’s Mesmo Delivery pin-up
Mike Allred draws Mesmo Delivery
Along with the news that Dark Horse Comics will publish Rafael Grampá’s next project, Furry Water, came word that they will reprint his Mesmo Delivery book, originally published by AdHouse Books. On his blog, Grampá reveals that the Dark Horse version will include 22 pages of extras, like sketches and pin-ups by other artists such as Mike Allred, shown above.
- July 27, 2009 @ 12:10 PM by JK Parkin
SDCC ’09 (Almost) | Warren Ellis working on King Arthur movie
Warren Ellis reports on his blog that there was one piece of news he was cleared to talk about but didn’t get a chance to in San Diego — a King Arthur movie:
I’m writing a film treatment for Hollywood Gang, who co-produced Frank Miller’s 300. Hollywood Gang have previously optioned my graphic novel (with Chris Sprouse) OCEAN.
On my desk, the treatment is called Untitled Arthurian Project.
On their desk, the project is called EXCALIBUR.
I’m working directly with Gianni Nunnari, Oliver Kramer and Craig Flores (whom I was delighted to bump into on the Warner’s lot the other day) and having a great time.
Ellis was at the con promoting his work on four anime series starring Iron Man, Wolverine, Blade and the X-Men. Check out the teaser trailers for the first two here.
- July 27, 2009 @ 11:12 AM by JK Parkin
SDCC ’09 | Batman has been lying to you about his age, health
Bruce Wayne, dead and roughing it
It’s probably a good thing that Batman was dispatched into pre-history and replaced by a younger man: Bruce Wayne didn’t have long to live, anyway.
So claims Dr. E. Paul Zehr, a professor of neuroscience and kinesiology, who appeared on a panel Saturday at Comic-Con.
First of all, Bruce Wayne is quite a bit older than we’ve been led to believe. Zehr, author of Becoming Batman: The Possibility of a Superhero, calculates the Dark Knight would have to train between 15 and 25 years — before he even hit the streets. That would put him, oh, anywhere from ages 33 to 43 (if not older), when he first donned the cape and cowl.
And once he did, he could only expect to be active for three years, tops. That’s because, like a boxer or a wrestler past his prime, Batman’s body would be subjected to repetitive stress, concussions, and injuries that never fully heal. His movements and reaction time would slow to the point that he could no longer defend himself, and one of his rogues — humiliatingly, probably a lesser one — would kill him.
So, really, a “rustic getaway” to the distant past might’ve been the best thing Ol’ Bruce could hope for.
- July 27, 2009 @ 09:45 AM by Kevin Melrose
SDCC ’09 | Random news and notes
Lewis Trondheim
Here are a few items of interest I managed to glean from various places on the Interwebs:
• Lewis Trondheim will be doing a 16-page comic for the iPhone that will be available in 18 languages. Not to be outdone, Stan Lee is releasing Stripperella for the iPhone too.
• Stripper’s Guide blogger Allan Holtz announced that his “Guide to U.S. Newspaper Comic Strips and Cartoon Panels” is now under contract to be published by University of Michigan Press. “The book is a compendium of the vital statistics about comic strip and panel series that have appeared in American newspapers.”
• Also according to Spurgeon: AdHouse will be working on an art book with Rafael Grampa, though it might not see the light of day until 2011 due to Grampa’s busy schedule.
• BOOM! will be releasing a hardcover version of Don Rosa’s The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck. Can a complete Carl Barks collection be too far away?
• Del Rey is going to publish a graphic novel version of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Um, yay?
- July 27, 2009 @ 09:00 AM by Chris Mautner
SDCC ’09 | Marvel costumes coming for LittleBigPlanet
Wolverine Sackboy
During yesterday’s “The Next Generation of Marvel Video Games” panel in San Diego, Marvel debuted three new costumes they’ve developed for the Playstation 3 hit LittleBigPlanet, the game that combines platform adventure with community gameplay, enabling gamers to create and share their own levels. In addition to Wolverine (above), they also have made Sackboys — as the game’s characters are called — of Iron Man and Captain America.
According to Kotaku, “Marvel showed off three concept renders of Sackboys that may be coming to the PlayStation 3 exclusive, but did not offer dates for the costumes, nor confirm that this would be the extent of the Marvel characters that would be licensed for LittleBigPlanet use.” Click over to see Cap and Iron Man.
- July 27, 2009 @ 08:33 AM by JK Parkin
SDCC ’09 | Fantagraphics to publish complete Nancy
Nancy!
Buried under all the Marvelman news was Fantagraphics revelation that they will publish the complete run of Ernie Bushmiller’s comic strip Nancy, which has developed a devoted audience with certain comic book connoisseurs over the years. Information on the series seems to be sketchy for the moment, but I was able to find this item from R. Fiore on the Comics Journal message board:
It’s going to be like Dennis the Menace in that they’re going to be thick little books, and it will begin with 1938, when the name was changed from Fritzi Ritz to Nancy. The first volume will appear next year some time. I wasn’t listening that closely because I’m not that interested, but I would assume the publishing schedule would be similar to Dennis.
I’ll try to get more info on the series as soon as it becomes available.
In other Fantagraphics news: Continue Reading »
- July 27, 2009 @ 08:00 AM by Chris Mautner
Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes
Conan
Publishing | Paradox Entertainment, which owns the rights to the Robert E. Howard library and is rebooting the Conan the Barbarian movie franchise, has signed a deal with Dark Horse to publish comics based on its slate of films. Dark Horse has been publishing Conan titles since 2003, and last year released miniseries based on Howard creations Solomon Kane and Kull. [Variety]
Publishing | Jeff Katz’s new entertainment company American Original has brought together a group of top-name comedians to write a comic-book series called Comedy Death Ray. Those already signed on include David Cross, Zach Galifianakis, Janeane Garofalo, B.J. Novak, Bob Odenkirk, Patton Oswalt, Paul Scheer and Sarah Silverman. Each comedian will write on issue of the anthology series, which will be released through American Original’s deal with Top Cow Productions. [Variety]
Publishing | Eric Reynolds, Fantagraphics Books’ longtime director of publicity, quietly has been promoted to associate publisher. [The Comics Reporter]
- July 27, 2009 @ 07:32 AM by Kevin Melrose
SDCC ’09 | The distant sound of T.H.U.N.D.E.R.
T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents
Being on the show floor and in panels all day at the San Diego Comic-Con means you sometimes miss the news from other panels being reported by your colleagues. For instance, I was surprised when I got home from San Diego today to find out that DC had acquired the rights to the “The Higher United Nations Defense Enforcement Reserves,” or the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, and will be integrating them into the DC Universe in the same way they have the Milestone and Red Circle characters.
From Kiel Phegley’s live coverage of the DC Universe panel on Saturday:
DC has finally acquired the rights to “T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents” and will incorporate the characters into the DC Universe much like the publisher has recently done with the Red Circle characters and the Milestone heroes. “I absolutely love the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents,” said Robinson. “The great art, the great stories, the fact that one of them was a traitor…this stuff was ahead of it’s time.” He added that he “couldn’t wait to be a part” of bringing them into the DCU proper. Didio later said that since the papers were signed “last week” there hadn’t been time to put together a full creative team, but the characters would first appear in other DC books.
“Noman and Dynamo you’ll see. You’ll see Lightning, Raven. Everything you love about these characters will make this book great,” Didio explained and teased that there was a reason Noman wasn’t in the preview art.
(Props, BTW, to Kiel for the nice work he did on his live coverage reports this weekend.)
The T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents were first published by Tower Comics in the 1960s, and since then have had a very odd history, to say the least. Created by Wally Wood, the Tower issues featured the works of Len Brown, Steve Skeates, Steve Ditko, Dick Ayers, Al Williamson, Gil Kane, Mike Esposito and many others.
In the 1980s, John Carbonaro bought the rights to the characters, and published a few issues under his company JC Comics. The first stories I remember reading about the group came out after that and were published by Deluxe Comics. They featured artwork by a lot of great creators, like George Perez, Dave Cockrum and Keith Giffen. Deluxe had claimed the characters had fallen into the public domain, and once Carbonaro re-established he owned the characters, that was it for them. But there was a short time in the 1980s when several other smaller companies, like Blackthorne, were announcing their own T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents series or guest appearances by the team in their books, attempting to take advantage of them supposedly being in the public domain. Later DC had the rights to publish a new series that never came about, though they did publish some archives of the older material.
Check out this site if you’d like to learn a little bit more about the characters.
- July 26, 2009 @ 05:31 PM by JK Parkin
SDCC ’09 | Jennifer Love Hewitt opens The Music Box for IDW
The Music Box
IDW Publishing announced today in San Diego that actress Jennifer Love Hewitt has created a new comic series called Jennifer Love Hewitt’s The Music Box, a ten-part anthology series about “a mysterious music box that causes strange occurrences for the people who possess it.”
“The chance to create my very own comic, and a horror/thriller at that, is like a very fun nightmare come true,” said the star of the CBS series The Ghost Whisperer. “I’ve always been fascinated by the notion that an inanimate object can hold as much malevolent energy as a human being can. And when they two meet, or are at cross purposes, very bad things can happen. I’m so proud of The Music Box and can’t wait for people to read it… with the lights on, of course!”
Hewitt isn’t actually writing the book, as former X-Men writer Scott Lobdell will team with various artists on the stories, including Michel Gaydos, Casey Maloney, Adam Archer and the team of George Tuska and Joe Rubenstein.
“The Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, Tales of the Crypt, Eerie, Creepy, Alfred Hitchcock Presents and even Boris Karloff’s Tales of Mystery — classic scary page turners one and all! Jennifer Love Hewitt’s The Music Box is a horror/mystery/thriller anthology series in that grand tradition,” said Lobell. “Tasked with the responsibility of turning Love’s vision into reality has been a total thrill. And without giving anything away I can tell you that no one comes away from their encounter with the music box unscathed!”
The series kicks off in November.
- July 26, 2009 @ 04:43 PM by JK Parkin
SDCC ’09 | Quote of the day
Dan DiDio
“I think new readers can come into comics reading Blackest Night as much as they can come into comics reading Wednesday Comics as much as they could come in reading all the relaunches on all the new Batman books. As long as we tell something that feels exciting, something that feels compelling, something that makes you want to pick up the next month’s books, I think that’s how you get new readers, that’s how you get more readers, and just as importantly, hold onto the readers that you’ve got.”
– DC Comics Executive Editor Dan DiDio, on accessibility and attracting new readers
- July 26, 2009 @ 04:22 PM by Kevin Melrose
What are you reading?
Modern Masters: Kyle Baker
Comic-con or no comic-con, gods or no gods, we aim to keep What Are You Reading up and running every Sunday regardless. Our special guest this week is none other than the one, the only Abhay Khosla. Abhay’s a regular contributor to Brian Hibbs’ Savage Critics Web site, but can also usually be found lurking about here.
To see what Abhay and everyone else is reading, click the little linky …
- July 26, 2009 @ 02:00 PM by Chris Mautner
SDCC ’09 | The annual Fables one-page tale
Every year at Comic-Con, the creators of Vertigo’s Fables hands out an original one-page comic to the attendees of their Fables Forum panel. You can check it out below, thanks to the always delightful Pamela Mullin, who posted it on the Vertigo Graphic Content blog.
”In the past two years we’ve handed out one-page Fables comics at the San Diego show that were basically throwaway gag pages. For the first time we decided to go the other way and do a serious, very dramatic Fables story, one that has far-reaching consequences for the series to follow. This one-page comic hints at what the second hundred issues of Fables will all be about,” Willingham said.
- July 26, 2009 @ 10:11 AM by JK Parkin
SDCC ’09 | Watch the Season 2 trailer for Star Wars: The Clone Wars
Lucasfilm and Cartoon Network have released the Season 2 trailer for Star Wars: The Clone Wars — one that’s apparently slightly different from what was shown yesterday at Comic-Con.
(via The Live Feed)
- July 25, 2009 @ 05:50 PM by Kevin Melrose
SDCC ’09 | Quote of the day
Gerard Way
“I knew these guys who had boxes and boxes of the worst shit, polybagged with some kind of fucking sticker, and they were the most horrible comics you’ve ever read. That’s what gets the flack, and I think deservedly so, but I think amidst all that was things like [Grant Morrison's] Invisibles, and basically that whole stable at Vertigo in the ’90s. Anything Garth Ennis was doing. Every single issue of Preacher was phenomenal. He’s a big influence, too, and he doesn’t come up as much because I have a personal relationship with Grant. Garth Ennis not only influenced me with my comics, but with my music writing and lyric writing. Especially on [the MCR album] Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge, I was reading a lot of Preacher and Ennis at the time. And obviously Gaiman, too. All those Vertigo guys in the ’90s, I thought that was the best stuff.”
– Gerard Way, on ’90s comics and his writing influences
- July 25, 2009 @ 04:20 PM by Kevin Melrose
SDCC ’09 | When Matt Fraction teamed up with the littlest Vision
Matt Fraction and Christian (aka The Vision)
Brian Michael Bendis pretty much sums up this photo of Matt Fraction and a boy named Christian taken this morning at Marvel’s Dark Reign panel: “This is an insanely weird image.”
According to Shaun Manning’s article for CBR, Christian — in full Vision attire — asked a question of the panel, and Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada invited him to the dais. He even got a hand-scrawled placard.
- July 25, 2009 @ 01:39 PM by Kevin Melrose