2009 November
Ellen DeGeneres to get Female Force biography
Female Force: Ellen DeGeneres
Bluewater Productions, fresh off a mention on ABC’s The View for its Female Force: Barbara Walters comic, has announced another comic that virtually guarantees more daytime-television exposure: a biography of popular comedian/talk-show host Ellen DeGeneres.
Set for release in March, Female Force: Ellen DeGeneres aims to chronicle “the highest of highs and the lowest of lows” of her nearly 30-year career, during which time she’s been a comedy-club emcee, stand-up comic, television and movie actress and now, most successfully, the host of an award-winning talk show.
“Ellen DeGeneres is taking the world by storm!” the solicitation reads. “Emmys! Endless accolades! It all seems so easy, but Ellen’s journey to get where she is now was not always a smooth one. She’s felt the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. But through it all, she managed to stay true to herself and prove that she is a female force to be reckoned with!”
The DeGeneres comic, which joins biographies in the Female Force line devoted to figures like Sarah Palin, Princess Diana, JK Rowling and Stephenie Meyer, is written by Sandra C. Ruckdeschel and illustrated by Pedro Ponzo. The cover is by Vinnie Tartamella.
- November 30, 2009 @ 03:41 PM by Kevin Melrose
Talking Comics with Tim: Gary Phillips
Bicycle Cop Dave
Gary Phillips‘ new story on gentrification, Bicycle Cop Dave, which he is writing (with Manoel Magalhães as artist) is unlike any other webcomic I have read (and for those of you reading this interview at work, it is a mature webcomic [meaning not safe for work {NSFW}]). Phillips, a longtime community activist and successful mystery novelist, has teamed with FourStory (a housing advocacy site “supporting fair living conditions for everyone”) on this project. I interviewed Phillips a number of years ago in connection with Angeltown at Vertigo, so it was a pleasure to catch up with him through this email interview.
Tim O’Shea: Given the nature of Bicycle Cop Dave, would it be fair to say you are a community activist on some level?
Gary Phillips: Yes, as Sarah Palin tried to punk on last year, I was once a diligent and dreaded community organizers. I’ve also been a business rep for a union, the political director for an electoral campaign and the state director for a political action committee. Certainly in some of my prose work, from my first book Violent Spring, a mystery set after the ’92 riots (or civil unrest depending on where you are on the political spectrum) to my recent Freedom’s Fight, about black soldiers in WWII, a certain amount of social-political stuff infuses my work.
But, and this is a big, but as it were, there’s a reason I mostly write crime and mystery stories and not tired-ass, long-winded nonfiction polemics. I like my characters twisted, bent and strange doing all sorts of mischief, and not trotting out their soap boxes to jump on to give a spiel and harangue.
- November 30, 2009 @ 02:08 PM by Tim O'Shea
Strangeways: The Thirsty
Ha. Got ya.
New pages go up starting Monday. Recap page will go up Wednesday.
Or you can just read the archives instead.
See you then!
- November 30, 2009 @ 01:00 PM by Matt Maxwell
More details, titles on Sony’s PSP Digital Comics Reader
It’s been awhile since Sony announced their digital comics reader for the PlayStation Portable, or PSP. The reader, apparently, is already available as a part of a firmware update, and last week Pete Stott, one of the designers of the reader, posted more information on the European PlayStation blog.
“You’re maybe thinking, ‘How’s that going to work on the PSP’s beautiful, yet compact, screen?’” Stott said. “Well we think we’ve solved that with AutoFlow! With AutoFlow all you have to do is hit one button and the camera will float over the page to the next panel, panning and zooming automatically. We also let you move around manually if you want to get up close and personal with your comic.”
Stott also said that joining Marvel, IDW and iVerse (whose content will include comics from Archie, Image and many of the other companies they release content for on the iPhone) on the PSPS will be Disney, Insomnia, Titan and 2000AD. This means PSP owners will be able to purchase titles featuring Wallace & Gromit, Judge Dredd, Archie, Mickey Mouse, Transformers and Spider-Man, among many other characters.
Sony has also launched a website where they plan to list the entire catalog of comics once they officially launch and where you can download a sample Transformers comic to see how it will work. If you’re a PSP owner and you’ve checked out the reader, let us know what you think in the comments section.
- November 30, 2009 @ 12:30 PM by JK Parkin
Comics Cavalcade: Woodpeckers and ducks
Out West by Harvey Eisenberg
- November 30, 2009 @ 12:00 PM by Chris Mautner
Thin wallets, fat bookshelves: Fantagraphics’ spring catalog
Abandoned Cars
Fantagraphics sent their spring catalog in the mail the other day and, good-hearted soul that I am, I thought I’d take the time to run through it and share its secrets with the rest of the Internet, as it’s chock full of notable graphic novels, comic strip collections and other interesting material. That’s just how I roll.
- November 30, 2009 @ 11:30 AM by Chris Mautner
Mininova deletes all infringing torrents from database
Mininova
Amid the hustle and bustle of the U.S. holiday came word last week that BitTorrent-index site Mininova has purged all user-contributed torrents in an attempt to comply with an August order by a Dutch judge.
For now only approved users will be able to upload and share torrents through Mininova.
The announcement was made just a week after operators of The Pirate Bay shut down their site’s controversial BitTorrent tracker, saying advances in technology have made it unnecessary.
TorrentFreak calls the move by Mininova “the end of an era” for what was perhaps the most successful BitTorrent-index website — one founded in early 2005 by a group of Dutch teenagers. What began as a hobby quickly developed into a profitable business that earned almost $1.5 million in 2007 alone.
But the increasing popularity and revenue was accompanied by complaints from copyright holders. Although the site’s moderators routinely complied with requests to remove infringing files, a Dutch judge ruled in August that Mininova must remove all copyrighted material or pay up to $7.5 million in penalties.
“Unfortunately the court ruling leaves us no other option than to take our platform offline, except for the Content Distribution service,” Mininova’s administrators wrote last week. “According to the verdict we have to prevent uploads of torrents to Mininova that refer to certain titles or to similar-looking titles. We’ve been testing some filtering systems the last couple of months, but we found that it’s neither technically nor operationally possible to implement a 100% working filter system. Therefore, we decided that the only option is to limit Mininova to Content Distribution torrents from now on. We are still considering an appeal at this moment.”
(via Slashdot)
- November 30, 2009 @ 11:00 AM by Kevin Melrose
Dan DiDio vs. Joe Quesada on “event fatigue”
Blackest Night #5
Life in the Event Age has been tumultuous for superhero fans. Ever since Infinite Crisis and Civil War cemented a storytelling mode that had begun showing sparks of life during such proto-events as Avengers Disassembled, House of M, Identity Crisis and the pre-Infinite Crisis minis, the Big Two have been dominated by massive meta-stories that tie in, spin off, and otherwise control the direction of nearly every title in their respective lines.
On the one hand, sales levels have been tough to argue with, interest in the characters at the heart of the events has spiked (cf. the Avengers, Green Lantern), and fan-favorite writers from Brian Bendis and Mark Millar to Geoff Johns and Grant Morrison have had the opportunity to make their mark on their respective universes in a nearly unprecedented way. On the other hand, critical reaction has been mixed, reader complaints about the need to follow multiple books to make sense of a single storyline have been abundant, and one assumes individual creators have chafed under the need to tell stories dictated from the top down — a trio of factors leading to a sense of dissatisfaction with this method of superhero storytelling commonly referred to as “event fatigue.” As the era of the event nears its sixth birthday and the concept of “event fatigue” gains traction in the fan community, what does the future hold?
- November 30, 2009 @ 10:17 AM by Sean T. Collins
Your video of the day: Joe Sacco talks
Sacco talks about and reads from his new book, Footnotes in Gaza, in this news segment. (via)
- November 30, 2009 @ 09:47 AM by Chris Mautner
Paul Pope has seen the future, and it contains flying cars
Woosh!
Paul Pope provided some nifty illustrations for GQ’s It Will Come From Japan!, a look at futuristic concept cars from the land of the rising sun. (via)
- November 30, 2009 @ 09:00 AM by Chris Mautner
Cyber Monday sales-o-rama
Popeye, Vol. 4: Plunder Island
Thanksgiving ’09 is only a memory, Black Friday has come and gone, and here we are at Cyber Monday, which depending upon whom you ask is either the year’s biggest sales day for online retailers or a wonderful marketing gimmick for same. And sure enough, comics publishers and retailers are getting in on the act with one-day-only deals.
On the superhero-y end of things, Marvel is offering 30% off annual Digital Comics Unlimited subscriptions today only to those who enter the promo code CYBER09. Over in indie-land, Fantagraphics has similarly discounted nearly all its 2009 releases — over 75 titles in all. And of course retailers like Midtown Comics are offering major discounts in honor of the holiday and its attendant shopping sprees.
My advice to you would be to consult Tom Spurgeon’s epic Black Friday Shopper’s Guide — a deliciously deep annual advice column for comics-interested holiday shoppers, featuring tips on fully 100 books and bargains both off- and on-line — and get cracking!
I’d also advise you to share any sales or deals you’ve spotted with your fellow shoppers in the comments …
- November 30, 2009 @ 08:47 AM by Sean T. Collins
Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes
One Piece, Vol. 56
Publishing | Japanese publisher Shueisha will print 2.85 million copies of the 56th volume of Eiichiro Oda’s popular pirate adventure One Piece, making it the largest-ever first printing for any manga. The previous volumes reportedly have sold a combined 176 million copies since the series debuted in 1997. The latest volume will be released on Dec. 4 in Japan. [Anime News Network]
Legal | Metro cartoonist Magdy el Shafee talks about his conviction in Egypt last week, with publisher Mohammed el Sharqawi, on charges of infringing “public decency,” and the official banning of his graphic novel: “The political and business figures in this book, they are easily recognisable to the Egyptian public. … These are very corrupt and disgusting people who rule Egypt, who are in the pockets of the regime, and it is the ordinary people who love Cairo who are suffering.” [The Sydney Morning Herald]
Passings | More than 3,000 mourners attended the funeral in Tokyo for Crayon Shin-chan creator Yoshito Usui, who died in September while on a mountain hike. [My Sinchew]
- November 30, 2009 @ 08:21 AM by Kevin Melrose
What Are You Reading?
Criminal: The Sinners #2
Here at What Are You Reading, we don’t let a little thing like a holiday weekend keep us from our comics, no sir. Nor do we stop blogging about them.
Our guest this week is David Brothers, who can be found saying interesting things about comics at 4th Letter. Want to find out what he’s reading this week? Me too!
- November 29, 2009 @ 12:00 PM by Chris Mautner
Your Mileage May Vary: On Power Girl’s Costume
This week we’ve seen some interesting discussion stemming from a scene in the JSA: 80 Page Giant comic, in which Power Girl and Cyclone address Power Girl’s costume.
Esther Inglis-Arkell starts things off:
Power Girl
And I heard the justification about how Canary’s outfit was in tribute to her mother, even when that means she’s in panties and a jacket in the First Wave books. And I’ve heard the one about Poison Ivy being a plant and therefore unconcerned about human modesty. Oh, and I’ve heard the one about Supergirl being invulnerable and therefore not needing pants. There are a few about how Huntress wanted to show off the fact that she was shot, and she lived, and that’s why she fought in a bikini. And then there’s the one about Batman and Superman . . . oh. Wait. There aren’t that many excuses for how Batman and Superman dress because, golly, for some reason, the male heroes in this mostly male-controlled medium put their fucking clothes on when they’re going to fight someone.
Are you kidding me? I’m getting an ‘I choose my choice’ speech from a fictional character? Feminist fans are getting a slap because they won’t accept one bullshit excuse after another for why male heroes are mostly fully-clothed and female heroes mostly walk around in their underwear?
- November 28, 2009 @ 09:04 PM by Melissa Krause
Comics, Covered | The best covers of the week
Criminal: The Sinners #2, by Sean Phillips
I’m running a little late on a Thanksgiving weekend populated by visiting relatives, but I bring my selections for the five best covers to grace comic-book store shelves on Wednesday.
If that weren’t enough, I’ve rounded up links to interesting discussion and analysis of cover design, and to Amazon.com’s Best Covers of the Year (which includes some comics and comics folk).
This week’s list is populated by one title each from Dark Horse, Vertigo and Marvel proper, plus two from Marvel’s Icon imprint.
To find out what made the cut, read on.
- November 28, 2009 @ 04:00 PM by Kevin Melrose