2009 September
Strangeways: The Thirsty – Page 084
It’s 84, right? There’s so much going down in comics now its impossible for me to keep things straight.
Looks like someone’s getting a-whammyin’!
Oh, as for the contest. On Monday, the Sheriff called the vampire de Medina a pretty nasty mouthful of a name. What was it? Mail the answer to strangeways@highway-62.com by Thursday at midnight to get entered into this week’s drawing. And if you entered previously but haven’t won, then you’re already in the running. All ten of you…
See you on Friday to reveal the winner! That is, if the Internet hasn’t burned down by then.
- September 9, 2009 @ 01:00 PM by Matt Maxwell
Send Us Your Shelf Porn!
Is it time once again for shelf porn? You better believe it is!
Our guest of the week is John Kovaleski, who is not only a collector but also a fine cartoonist in his own right, having authored the (now sadly defunct) Bo Nanas comic strip for a number of years, as well as been a regular contributor to Mad magazine. He’s also got a new comic out, Great Scott, which you can learn more about here (he’s also going to be selling it at SPX if you happen to be down that way and feel like sending some money his way).
With that introduction out of the way, let’s get right to it and have John take us on a tour of his shelves …
- September 9, 2009 @ 12:15 PM by Chris Mautner
After Meyer biography, Bluewater will conjure Rowling (and her unicorn)
Female Force: J.K. Rowling
Bluewater Productions isn’t all about biographies of politicians, dead celebrities, dead politicians and presidential pets.
Just two months ago the publisher announced a comic detailing the life of Twilight author Stephenie Meyer. And now comes news the Vancouver, Washington-based company is setting its sights on one of the biggest names in modern fiction: Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling.
Like the Meyer comic, the Rowling one-shot will be released under the “Female Force” banner, which has been home to biographies of such public figures as Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama, Sarah Palin and Princess Diana.
It’s unclear, though, whether, like Meyer’s title, Rowling’s will be narrated by a fictional character. (In Meyer’s case, it’s “the most famous vampire of them all.” For Rowling, I vote for a house-elf.)
“She is a remarkable and multi-dimensional woman,” writer Adam Gragg said in a press release. “Learning about who she is and how she struggled to become a success was a truly enlightening experience. Twelve publishers turned her down. If it weren’t for the daughter of a British publisher who liked Rowling’s first chapter of Philosopher’s Stone, we might never have met Harry Potter.”
The comic’s cover, as Rowling devotees are well aware, depicts a pivotal moment from the author’s life previously only seen air-brushed on the side of a van: When an aged unicorn-physician tended to Rowling’s dislocated shoulder.
Female Force: J.K. Rowling is set for release in December.
- September 9, 2009 @ 11:34 AM by Kevin Melrose
‘Covered’ covered by Wired
Captain America No. 2 by Danny Hellman
One of my favorite comics art blogs, Covered, received a nice write-up this week on Wired’s Underwire blog. If you haven’t seen it before, Covered features new takes on old comics covers by a variety of artists.
In addition to showcasing some of blogger/artist Robert Goodin’s favorite submissions, Underwire also featured commentary from Goodin on each of his favorites (including Danny Hellman’s Captain America cover, above.)
- September 9, 2009 @ 11:13 AM by JK Parkin
DC Comics becomes DC Entertainment; Nelson replaces Levitz as president
DC Comics
Warner Bros. moments ago ended a rumor-filled morning with the official announcement that DC Comics will become DC Entertainment, headed by division president Diane Nelson.
Paul Levitz will resign as president and publisher of DC Comics, a position he’s held since 2002, “to return to his roots as a writer for DC and become a contributing editor and overall consultant to DCE.”
Nelson, former president of Warner Premiere, will report to Jeff Robinov, president of Warner Bros. Pictures Group. (Levitz had reported to Alan Horn, president and COO of Warner Bros. Entertainment.) Nelson will continue to oversee Warner Home Video’s direct-to-DVD arm, and supervise the management of the lucrative Harry Potter film franchise.
The restructuring will position DC Entertainment as a separate division of Warner Bros. Entertainment “charged with strategically integrating the DC Comics business, brand and characters deeply into Warner Bros. Entertainment and all its content and distribution businesses.”
According to the press release: “DC Entertainment, which will work with each of the Warner Bros. divisions, will also tap into the tremendous expertise the Studio has in building and sustaining franchises and prioritize DC properties as key titles and growth drivers across all of the Studio, including feature films, television, interactive entertainment, direct-to-consumer platforms and consumer products. The DC Comics publishing business will remain the cornerstone of DC Entertainment, releasing approximately 90 comic books through its various imprints and 30 graphic novels a month and continuing to build on its creative leadership in the comic book industry.”
Developing, obviously …
- September 9, 2009 @ 10:13 AM by Kevin Melrose
Report: Warner Bros. to announce DC Comics restructuring [Updated]
DC Comics
Nikki Finke reports an announcement is expected, possibly as soon as today, that Warner Bros. will restructure DC Comics, moving in two top Warner executives to oversee the division.
The reshuffling, whose rumors were reported two weeks ago by Rich Johnston, would have DC President and Publisher Paul Levitz reporting to Warner Bros. Picture Group President Jeff Robinov and Warner Premiere President Diane Nelson. Currently Levitz reports directly to Alan Horn, president and COO of Warner Bros. Entertainment.
Update [9:48 a.m.]: Finke and Johnston both now say they’re told by DC Comics “insiders” that Levitz is expected to step down as president and publisher. Levitz has worked for DC for 35 years, becoming president in 2002.
Finke also reports that Robinov has “called back” several in-development movie projects, like The Flash and Wonder Woman, as part of a strategy “to severely limit the number of gross participants on the projects.” Producers reportedly could get some of the titles back under deals that would better benefit Warner Bros.
Nelson has headed Warner Home Video’s direct-to-DVD division since it was established in August 2006, during which time Warner Premiere produced DC Universe Original Animated Movies such as Batman: Gotham Knight, Justice League: The New Frontier and Superman: Doomsday. Before that Nelson was executive vice president of domestic marketing for Warner Bros. Pictures.
- September 9, 2009 @ 09:22 AM by Kevin Melrose
Becky Cloonan and Hwan Cho introduce K.G.B.
K.G.B.
Becky Cloonan and Hwan Cho this morning debuted K.G.B., their weekly webcomic chronicling the adventures of a mid-’90s boy band. You can find character profiles and other goodies here.
- September 9, 2009 @ 07:57 AM by Kevin Melrose
Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes
Disney Interactive Studios
Business | Disney has followed its announced $4-billion purchase of Marvel Entertainment with the hiring of Bungie Software founder, and Halo co-creator, Alex Seropian as the head of creative for its video-game division. As part of the deal, Disney Interactive Studios acquired Chicago-based Wideload Games, the studio Seropian founded in 2003 after leaving Bungie. [CNBC.com]
Business | Not only will Marvel CEO Isaac Perlmutter become $4.3 million richer on the day the Disney merger closes, he’ll become Disney’s second-largest stockholder behind Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. [Orlando Sentinel]
Comic strips | Tom Tomorrow’s This Modern World has returned to the Village Voice after a seven-month absence. Parent company Village Voice Media announced in late January it had suspended publication of syndicated comics in its 15 newspapers as part of company-wide cost-cutting measures. [This Modern World, via The Daily Cartoonist]
- September 9, 2009 @ 07:28 AM by Kevin Melrose
Collect This Now! Cromartie High School
The slow, sad beak-up/implosion of ADV depressed me to no end, since it meant that two of my favorite manga series were going the way of the dodo, possibly never to be in print or completed again (yes, it is in fact all about me and my sense of entitlement).
Yen Press picked up the ball with one of those series, the charming Yotsuba, which I believe hits stores this week.
But there’s another great manga that Yen or some other still thriving publisher would do well to get the North American publishing rights for. I’m speaking, of course, about Cromartie High School.
- September 8, 2009 @ 02:30 PM by Chris Mautner
Flash’s Rogues are no match for Johns and Manapul
"Reverse Flash" by Francis Manapul
In one of those good news/bad news types of announcements, DC Comics announced today that Geoff Johns and Francis Manapul‘s run on Adventure Comics would end with January’s issue #6 — which is too bad, as I’ve really enjoyed the book so far — as they prepare to work together on The Flash.
According to Alex Segura over at The Source, their first “high-octane and mysterious” storyline is titled “The Dastardly Death of the Rogues.” He added to stay tuned for word on the new creative team for Adventure Comics.
(Picture above is from Manapul’s deviantART page. Here’s a look at a Flash sketch by Manapul that he shared on Twitter last month).
Update, Sept. 9: And the new Adventure Comics writer is Paul Levitz. Details here.
- September 8, 2009 @ 02:20 PM by JK Parkin
Hey there, there tweets the Spider-Man
"OMFG! Did I really tweet that?!"
It’s easy enough, I suppose, to slip up using Twitter: You realize — too late! — that you probably shouldn’t have divulged something or, like John Hodgman, you accidentally tweet your telephone number to all of your followers.
However, if you’re a superhero who’s fought tirelessly, with one minor exception, to keep your identity a secret, you can’t really afford such missteps.
Yet look at Spider-Man who, in just two days on Twitter, already has made references to Aunt May, Mary Jane, Harry, and Dr. Connors’ class.
Surely at least some of the wall-crawler’s enemies use Twitter. Oh, probably not the Vulture or the Rhino, but certainly Doctor Octopus does. Mysterio? Please. Just try to keep him from tweeting during Gossip Girl.
And never underestimate the universe- and Dumpster-spanning reach of Hobo Darkseid.
Heck, Spider-Man might as well just hand out maps to his house while he’s at it.
- September 8, 2009 @ 01:14 PM by Kevin Melrose
‘Not all cancellations are made the same’
After sparking online discussion last week, Marvel Executive Editor Tom Brevoort returns to tackle a somewhat less-dicey topic: how the decision is made to cancel a title:
Agents of Atlas #10
There are numerous factors that can keep a given title afloat when these [direct-market sales] estimates make it seem like a sure fatality: strength in another marketplace, or through subscriptions, or as collected editions. Or the characters or project in question may tap into a specific demographic or audience that we believe needs to be served in some way. But in the overall, a cancellation almost always comes down to sales.
But not all cancellations are made the same. In the case of War Machine and Agents of Atlas, we’re pulling back from immediate monthly publication in order to retool and relaunch those series in a specific way in the hopes of being able to attract a greater audience to those characters, much as we’ve done with She-Hulk and Runaways and a number of other books successfully in the past. In the case of Atlas, while the monthly is going away for the moment, it’s being replaced by the X-Men vs Agents of Atlas project for a time (no idea how we think that might attract some people who’ve overlooked Atlas), and the expectation is that we’ll be relaunching Atlas as an ongoing shortly thereafter. And with War Machine, there are larger plans afoot for Jim Rhodes that make it make sense to conclude his ongoing series right this moment — I can’t get into just what those are right this moment for a number of reasons.
- September 8, 2009 @ 12:45 PM by Kevin Melrose
Unbound Reviews: Skin Horse
Skin Horse, print edition
By Shaenon K. Garrity and Jeffrey C. Wells
Couscous Collective, $14.00
Skin Horse is laugh-out-loud funny, in the way that the Marx Brothers were funny: It starts with something that is just barely plausible and then piles up incongruities into a massive, complicated structure built entirely of crazy.
This print edition covers the first year or so of the webcomic, collecting the daily strips in an attractive square format that makes for easy reading. Skin Horse is one of those webcomics that tries to do two things at once—deliver a gag every day and also build up a larger storyline. It succeeds admirably at both, but the collected edition allows the reader to focus more on the longer story and less on individual punchlines.
Skin Horse is a government agency whose job is to provide social services to non-human sapients—animals, zombies, killer robots, and the like that have been endowed, usually in sinister ways, with human intelligence.
- September 8, 2009 @ 12:00 PM by Brigid Alverson
Straight for the art | Sean Phillips’ Animal artwork
Animal
Criminal artist Sean Phillips posted on his blog last week that he did some paintings and comics for a range of body-building supplements called Animal. The paintings are appearing in ads in body-building magazines, while the comics will be posted on the web. You can check out the first comic here, and he says there are more to come.
- September 8, 2009 @ 11:31 AM by JK Parkin
Everyone’s A Critic: A round-up of comic book reviews and thinkpieces
• Ng Suat Tong time again! This time he’s over at the Comics Reporter, talking about how mainstream (i.e. DC and Marvel) comics tend to mostly be writer-driven these days, and how few of these big-name writers fail to utilize the medium well, using Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli’s Born Again saga as a comparison point.
From Miller and Mazzucchelli's 'Born Again
If Bendis and Maleev’s take on Daredevil falters at times in its disregard for the formal properties of comics, it is also guilty of rolling out age old tropes for the “revival” of superhero titles. One is left with the impression that mainstream comics writing has not only stagnated but in all likelihood regressed in the last decade becoming competent yet mediocre.
Lots more good stuff at the link.
• Abhay Khosla declares the “3 Jacks” story from Daredevil #500 “pretty much the best Marvel comic of the year so far, right?”
• Jog looks at Jacques Tardi’s West Coast Blues and compares/contrasts its noirist tendencies to Darwyn Cooke’s recent Parker adaptation: “Both books contain framing images of Our Man on the road, a socio-economic subtext, and a dénouement that nod toward the inscrutability of these hard men and their achievements. You’d swear this was a response to Cooke’s book, if you didn’t know it was an English translation of a French album from 2005.”
- September 8, 2009 @ 10:31 AM by Chris Mautner