2009 October
Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes
Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood
Legal | Anime producer and distributor Funimation Entertainment issued a Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown notice to the webhost of AnimesFree demanding that the fansub site remove more than 1,000 infringing episodes of more than 40 series. The site’s administrator complied, and then complained about the company enforcing its copyrights: “AnimesFree.com will continue just as STRONGLY as it has been these past three months. Meeting everyone new on the website was great and I don’t intend for it to stop anytime soon. So we’re not going to quit just because of a few dozen series. There’s two things that you can do when a bully pushes you down. You either stay down and cower, or you stand back up and fight until you can’t walk anymore. There are just some things that the ‘Anime’ corporate giants will never understand about how people rely on online Anime communities.” The commenters on the post aren’t particularly sympathetic to the administrator’s plight. [AnimesFree, via Deb Aoki]
Rich Hafstead
Retailing | Heidi MacDonald reports that Rich Hafstead, partner in the Jim Hanley’s Universe chain in New York City, passed away Oct. 9. He had been semi-retired since suffering a heart attack in 2006. [The Beat]
Retailing | A 10-year-old girl is in a coma after she was trapped Tuesday under shelves that collapsed in a bookstore in Sapporo, Japan. The girl’s 14-year-old sister also was injured. The store, Daily Books, sells secondhand manga and video games. [The Japan Times, The Mainichi Daily News]
Legal | In light of recent legal moves by the heirs of Jerry Siegel and Jack Kirby, Christopher Murray and Paul Iannicelli consider the termination provisions of the 1976 Copyright Act. [ Mondaq]
- October 14, 2009 @ 07:58 AM by Kevin Melrose
Box 13 debuts on the iPhone today
As I type this, my iPhone is downloading Box 13, the new made-for-the-iPhone comic by David Gallaher, who guest blogged with us not long ago, and his High Moon partner Steve Ellis. The comic itself is free via comiXology’s iPhone app, which costs 99 cents.
David Steinberger with comiXology, who I interviewed earlier this month for a story on Box 13 for the main CBR site, sent over some additional artwork from the comic:
You can check out the press release on it after the jump …
- October 13, 2009 @ 05:02 PM by JK Parkin
Sink your teeth into this week’s comics
With only a couple of weeks to go until Halloween, publishers are releasing several horror and holiday-related comics to read by the campfire on a foggy night, under the covers with a flashlight or next to a creaky door as the wind howls behind you. Or you could just read them during the day, I suppose, but where’s the fun in that?
This week Vertigo offers up a Halloween special featuring several of their character, including the first look you’ll get at the Mike Allred-drawn I, Zombie series. They’ve also finally collecting the vampire mini Blood and Water. Image has The Perhapanauts Halloween Spooktacular and a one-shot featuring supernatural hero Hector Plasm. IDW has a new Clive Barker book, Seduth 3-D, as well as the collection of the “little grey men” series Groom Lake. And Marvel collects the Mephisto Vs. miniseries, which features the Avengers, X-Men, Fantastic Four and X-Factor going toe-to-toe with Marvel’s version of the devil.
And there’s a lot of non-horror stuff this week, too — everything from the return of Magneto to the first issue of The Anchor to the American debut of Kodansha.
To see what Chris, Kevin and I are looking forward to conjuring up on Wednesday, read on …
- October 13, 2009 @ 03:18 PM by JK Parkin
Unbound: The webcomics that changed the world
The title is a bit of a stretch, but bear with me.
The folks behind the manga site ComiPress have just unveiled Inside Scanlation, an impressive website that chronicles the history of scanlation, that is, bootleg fan translations of Japanese manga (and later, Korean manhwa as well). It’s an amazingly detailed and textured history, complete with interviews with scanlators and industry figures, a glossary, and a timeline.
One of the things it chronicles is the way scanlation groups helped create and maintain the market for translated manga in this country. Licensed manga is just a bit behind the bootlegs—scanlation sites were doing a brisk business by 1998, while the bookstore boom in manga took off around 2000. Coincidence? I think not. Here’s Del Rey editor Dallas Middaugh reminiscing about his early days at Viz in an interview with Dirk Deppey of The Comics Journal:
To be honest, when I was at Viz back in 2001, 2002, we were following scanlations as a way of discovering new titles. [Deppey laughs.] Hey, I don’t read Japanese, and the people making scanlations were finding good manga.
- October 13, 2009 @ 01:00 PM by Brigid Alverson
Robot reviews: Prison Pit & The Squirrel Machine
Prison Pit Book One
Prison Pit Book One
By Johnny Ryan
Fantagraphics Books, 120 pages, $12.99
The Squirrel Machine
by Hans Rickheit
Fantagraphics Books, 192 pages, $18.99.
These are not nice books. They are not for children. Or people with easily upset nerves. Or stomachs. Or are prone to nightmares. Or who hang paint-by-numbers pictures of kittens with big eyes on their walls.
You get the idea. These books do not want to be your friend. They do not seek your approval, or love. They do hope to entertain, though not at the expense of having to be friendly or pleasant. Mainly what they seek to do is freak you out. If you’re the sort of person who likes being freaked out (and I am, on occasion), or can admire craftsmanship and artistry despite the high proportion of freak-out material (and I can), then perfect. If not, oh well. You were warned.
- October 13, 2009 @ 11:45 AM by Chris Mautner
Straight for the art | Haspiel’s Bored to Death sketches
from Bored to Death
HBO’s new comedy Bored to Death features a lot of art by artist Dean Haspiel, from the opening sequence he illustrated to the sketches by the character Ray Hueston, played by Zach Galifianakis and inspired by Haspiel himself. Now HBO has a page where they’re collecting all of the artwork by Haspiel/Hueston.
- October 13, 2009 @ 10:15 AM by JK Parkin
Slash Print | Following the digital evolution
Zuda
Webcomics | Scott Kurtz, who hosted the Harvey Awards this past weekend, shares his thoughts on what he saw at the Zuda table over the weekend. Kurtz, the creator of the long-running and highly successful PvP webcomic, has been an outspoken critic of Zuda since they launched, but had a different take on DC’s monthly webcomics contest after this weekend.
“If companies like DC can enter the Webcomics world, and find a way to work with creators fairly and bring credibility and positive attention to this medium…that’s good,” Kurtz writes. “If Zuda can light a fire under the asses of talent that normally wouldn’t make progress, that’s awesome. We want that, don’t we? Doesn’t a rising tide lift all ships? I know I’m skeptical. I like being skeptical. But maybe I’ve witnessed so many Platinums in the past that I’m a little gun-shy. Maybe…maybe…Zuda isn’t going to fuck people over.”
Also worth reading on his blog, Kurtz talks about what it was like to host the Harveys.
Webcomics | In anticipation of the release of the ACT-I-VATE Primer from IDW, Graphic NYC has dubbed this ACT-I-VATE week and will run features all week about the webcomics collective and its contributors.
- October 13, 2009 @ 09:24 AM by JK Parkin
Straight for the art | Cliff Chiang’s Baltimore sketches
Zatanna and Batman
One of the fun things about comic conventions is checking out all the sketches that artists drew and post on their blogs afterward — such as Cliff Chiang, who posts not only this Batman and Zatanna sketch, but others featuring the Doom Patrol, Power Girl and more. Go check’em out.
- October 13, 2009 @ 08:45 AM by JK Parkin
Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes
Alaska flag
Legal | Alaska legislators are considering introducing a bill that would expand the state’s child-pornography laws to include cartoons and computer-generated images (anime is mentioned specifically in the article).
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2002 that cartoons depicting minors in sexually explicit situations are legal because real children are not involved. Congress responded the following year by expanding obscenity laws to include digital images and cartoons. In June, a federal appeals court upheld the conviction of Dwight Whorley, a Virginia man sentenced to 20 years in prison in part for possessing child pornography. However, the Justice Department also prosecuted him under the PROTECT Act for receiving cartoon (manga/anime) images via email depicting the sexual abuse of children. Whorley’s conviction was the first under the 2003 statute that was not based on photographs of children.
Simon Jones has commentary. [Anchorage Daily News, Icarus Publishing]
Creators | Todd Klein reports that longtime letterer Joe Rosen has passed away. He was 88. Rosen began his career at Harvey Comics, and later worked on countless titles for Marvel and DC Comics, including The Amazing Spider-Man, Daredevil, Fantastic Four and Power Pack. [Todd's Blog]
- October 13, 2009 @ 07:59 AM by Kevin Melrose
Marvel’s ‘Siege’ trailer from today’s retailer summit
It’s amazing what you can find on YouTube these days … according to the person who posted it, it is “Marvel’s Secret trailer that was shown to us at the Diamond Retailer Summit in Baltimore tonight.” Not sure how long this will be up or if it’s supposed to be out there yet, so check it out while you can:
Read more about Siege over on the main CBR site.
- October 12, 2009 @ 06:59 PM by JK Parkin
DC gives details on hardcover Wednesday Comics collection
Wednesday Comics
Over at the Source blog, DC’s Alex Segura posts some info that was released at the Baltimore Retailer Summit today on the upcoming hardcover edition of Wednesday Comics.
“The hardcover collection of the series, which will retail at $49.99, will clock in at 11 x 17 inches, which will present the series in a deluxe, big-screen format befitting the series, which was originally printed on broadsheet newspaper pages,” Segura writes.
This great news for anyone who was waiting for the collection or just wants a more permanent means of keeping it around. Now when does it come out?
- October 12, 2009 @ 06:43 PM by JK Parkin
Talking Comics with Tim | Nevin Martell
Looking for Calvin and Hobbes
Over the past few months, I’ve been introducing my son to the wonder of Calvin and Hobbes, the nationally syndicated comic strip that ran from 1985 to 1995. So creator Bill Watterson was already on my mind, when I gained access to a preview of Nevin Martell’s Looking for Calvin and Hobbes: The Unconventional Story of Bill Watterson and His Revolutionary Comic Strip. The book aims to trace “the life and career of the extraordinary, influential, and intensely private man behind Calvin and Hobbes”. In this new email interview, Martell and I get a chance to discuss the ground he covers in the book and the folks he got to interview in his pursuit.
Tim O’Shea: You did some advanced marketing of the book a few months back by releasing the first chapter of the book for free upon request. Did you find that helped generate buzz for the project?
Nevin Martell: The free chapter giveaway turned into an insane bonanza of buzz, which, frankly, I was totally unprepared for. My publishers told me that super successful versions of this kind of promotion in the past had garnered a couple of hundred requests. But then the offer got written up by BoingBoing and NPR, not to mention a slew of comic-related blogs and the Twittersphere, so suddenly I had hundreds of requests pouring in. Since I was initially answering all these requests individually, it turned into three days of hitting reply, attaching a file, writing a quick note, and then repeating. Ultimately over 4,000 people requested the chapter, which just blew my mind. Actually, my mind is still blown.
- October 12, 2009 @ 02:30 PM by Tim O'Shea
Bloomingdale’s to offer DC Comics merchandise
Bloomingdale's Batman shirt
Bloomingdale’s is teaming up with DC Comics to offer high-end clothing and accessories in its stores nationwide this holiday season. Bloomingdale’s will launch the line with a series of customer events on Oct. 14, including the one in San Francisco with James Robinson I mentioned last week.
Items they plan to carry include T-shirts, socks, scarves, tote bags, wallets, ties, cuff links and pocket squares. Per the press release, the DC Comics collection will range in price from $30 for a pair of Psycho Bunny socks to $225 for a JACK SPADE tote. The above Batman shirt retails for $62. That’s more than I’d probably pay for a T-shirt, but I’m guessing I’m not the target audience here.
You can find more shirts here. And I’ve posted pics of some of the other items after the jump …
- October 12, 2009 @ 01:30 PM by JK Parkin
Strangeways: The Thirsty – Page 093
Written by Matt Maxwell. Art by Gervasio and Jok.
No funny caption today, though I can think of a few.
Getting ready for the upcoming APE show in SF in five short days from now. Hopefully the inbound torrential rain won’t wash the town away. Be sure to stop by and say hello, and maybe get yourself a fancy Five Minute Story for your trouble. Oh, and a look at upcoming chapters of THE THIRSTY, should that tickle your fancy. See you then!
- October 12, 2009 @ 01:00 PM by Matt Maxwell
Crime and Communism: An interview with Rick Geary
Famous Players
Rick Geary has been regarded as an “underrated” cartoonist for so long now that it’s almost a cliché at this point to label him as such. But in the many years he’s been making comics, he’s produced an impressive body of work that seems to escape a lot of folks notice. His stellar Victorian Murder series, now bumped up a few decades to encompass the 20th century, alone show such a high and consistent degree of quality that most cartoonists would give their eye teeth to have on their resume.
Having made his name with true crime, he’s recently attempted to tackle the biography genre, producing two books for Hill and Wang’s graphic line, one on J. Edgar Hoover, and most recently, one on Leon Trotsky.
I talked to him recently from his home in Kansas City, Missouri, about his new Trotsky bio as well as the latest book for NBM in his Murder series, Famous Players, about the mysterious and currently unsolved slaying of silent movie director William Desmond Taylor. Here’s what he had to say:
- October 12, 2009 @ 11:30 AM by Chris Mautner