2009 November
Brad Meltzer provides the first look at the cover to Buffy #32
From the cover to "Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight" #32
On his blog, bestselling author and comics writer Brad Meltzer offers the first look at Georges Jeanty’s cover for Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight #32 — an homage to Action Comics #1, naturally — the first issue in Meltzer’s story arc. The issue is set for release in February.
Follow the link to see the full cover image.
- November 9, 2009 @ 12:11 PM by Kevin Melrose
Dick Giordano ‘truly sorry’ for grim-and-gritty comics trend
Batman: The Dark Knight Returns
Legendary artist and editor Dick Giordano says he regrets his role in popularizing “grim-and-gritty” storytelling in mainstream comics.
Giordano, 77, was vice president/executive editor of DC Comics from 1983 to 1993, during which time the company published Frank Miller and Lynn Varley’s Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen.
“The Dark Knight Returns … helped start the ‘grim and gritty’ trends in comic storytelling that still exist today,” Giordano said in a brief exchange with the Toronto Star about Disney’s planned makeover of Mickey Mouse. “That was an unintended result, and I am truly sorry it happened. Comics are much too dark today. Er – in my opinion.”
When asked why we are “suddenly” so enthralled with good guys turned bad, Giordano responded: “Who’s ‘we’? Not me! I miss the heroes of yesteryear. Maybe that’s why I don’t get much work. … I think readers have become inured to the mindless violence on TV, the movies, and are comfortable with the anti-hero … and the fact that there are so few heroes on our planet, the concept seems kinda silly to them.”
- November 9, 2009 @ 12:02 PM by Kevin Melrose
Straight for the art | We’re all mad here, Grodd …
Gorillas!
Artist J. Bone teases an upcoming project he’ll be drawing with a series of sketches of DC’s various mad geniuses, including the Sivanas, Hugo Strange, Gorilla Grodd and Ultra-Humanite.
“These guys are all scientists in the DC Universe? No wonder it’s all screwed up,” he quips.
- November 9, 2009 @ 11:48 AM by JK Parkin
Comics Time: Murder ballads and invisibility
This is the start of what will hopefully be a regular (or, more likely, semi-regular) feature where I round up any and all interesting sequential art stories, both old and new, that I happened to come across on my Internet adventures. Let me know if this is the sort of thing you’d like to see more regularly here, or if you have any comics or links you’d like to share.
On the Banks of the Ohio by Rebecca Dart
- November 9, 2009 @ 11:00 AM by Chris Mautner
Straight for the art: Alt-comix trading cards
Jay Stephens tradiing card
AdHouse publisher Chris Pitzer has put up a Flickr set of his Alternative Artist Trading Card Series. What exactly is that you ask? I’ll let Pitzer explain:
Back in the mid-90′s, before AdHouse, I was a grade-A fanboy. As such, I thought up a project where I would send my favorite artists a blank trading card for them to illustrate. I created the back, which had a brief bio, sample art, and more than likely typos. There were three volumes of these cards. And by “volumes” what I would do is make a mini-book of each series that I would then send out to each participant of that volume.
It’s an impressive who’s who of the then-burgeoning alt-comics scene, including folks like Joe Matt, Xaime Hernandez, Jim Woodring, Evan Dorkin, Jeff Smith and many, many more. The art’s rather spiffy too. Chris Ware’s in particular is rather eloquent. (via Tom)
- November 9, 2009 @ 10:30 AM by Chris Mautner
Straight for the art: Tintin sketchbook
O'Malley's Tintin
One of the highlights for me at this year’s SPX was having Top Shelf’s Leigh Walton show me his impressive Tintin-themed sketchbook featuring art by folks like Bryan Lee O’Malley, Jeff Lemire, Kate Beaton, Jeffrey Brown and many others. Thankfully, Walton has put up a Flickr set of the sketchbook, so that all from near and far can revel in it. Great snakes, what fun!
- November 9, 2009 @ 10:00 AM by Chris Mautner
Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes
Female Force: Princess Diana
Publishing | Just days after one U.K. newspaper devoted a lot of ink to a preview of Female Force: Princess Diana, another reports that the Bluewater Productions biography has been labeled as “disgusting” by a co-founder of a group dedicated to preserving Diana’s memory. “Comic means something to laugh at,” says Margaret Funnell of Diana Circle UK. “I don’t find it at all comical and I wish they hadn’t done it. Anyone with half a brain who had a love for Diana will hate it.” [Daily Express]
Publishing | Following the success of its adaptation of James Patterson’s Maximum Ride, Yen Press has announced it will tackle the author’s bestselling young-adult series Daniel X. The first volume will be released in summer 2010. [About.com]
Education | It seems like every year around this time an article makes the rounds about comic books improving early literacy. Here’s the 2009 edition, courtesy of University of Illinois professor Carol L. Tilley, whose research on the subject was recently published in School Library Monthly. [News Bureau, Canwest News Service]
- November 9, 2009 @ 09:57 AM by Kevin Melrose
Video of the day: Matt Groening and Lynda Barry
Groening and Barry recite a rather amusing Life in Hell cartoon in this clip (via Mike Lynch).
- November 9, 2009 @ 09:00 AM by Chris Mautner
Library worker’s battle with Black Dossier began a year ago
Black Dossier -- The Absolute Edition
More than a month after two Kentucky public-library employees were fired after refusing to allow a child to check out The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier, details surrounding their dismissal finally are emerging.
In a lengthy article in the Lexington Herald-Leader, we learn the story didn’t begin on Sept. 22, when Jessamine County Library circulation-desk attendants Beth Bovaire and Sharon Cook decided the graphic novel was inappropriate for the 11-year-old girl who had reserved it.
Instead, events date back almost a year, when the 57-year-old Cook, appalled that children had access to the Alan Moore-Kevin O’Neill book, challenged its inclusion in the graphic-novel section, which apparently is tantalizingly close to Young Adult Fiction. When that didn’t work, she checked the book out of the library — and kept renewing it, effectively removing it from circulation, until Sept. 21. That’s when Cook tried to renew Black Dossier again, only to discover the computer wouldn’t permit her to do so because the book had been placed on hold … by a child, no less.
According to reporter Amy Wilson, on Sept. 22 Cook spoke to two of her colleagues about the problem, and Beth Boisvert, a part-time employee, decided to remove the hold, prohibiting the child from checking out the book. The next day, Cook and Boisvert were fired.
Cook still has the library’s copy of Black Dossier, and is being charged 10 cents a day in late fees.
Wilson’s article includes plenty of background on the library’s policies, and Cook’s efforts to challenge the book according procedure, which required her to, y’know, actually read it: “People prayed over me while I was reading it because I did not want those images in my head.”
Cook and Boisvert contend the graphic novel amounts to pornography, and that the library could be committing a felony by making it available to minors. They want the citizens of Jessamine County — “we are a conservative community,” Boisvert says — to determine whether Black Dossier, and presumably other works, meet community standards for obscenity, and to decide what books their children have access to.
In short, they want county taxpayers to select what appears on library shelves, and where.
- November 9, 2009 @ 07:24 AM by Kevin Melrose
Bendis reveals new projects, plot points in weekend Twitter-thon
Siege #1 by Brian Michael Bendis and Olivier Coipel
Very busy writer Brian Michael Bendis became an even busier writer this weekend. With little fanfare — it “happened by accident” — Bendis spent over an hour on Saturday answering reader questions via his Twitter account.
The 125-message micro-interview cost him some followers, irritated Warren Ellis (not really), and was eventually cut off by Twitter, but by the time all was said and done some interesting info had hit the Internet courtesy of his tweets.
First up, Bendis spilled the beans on a trio of upcoming projects with familiar collaborators:
* Bendis and his Daredevil: Wake Up partner David Mack will reunite for a new Hornhead project, Daredevil: End of Days, next summer. The project was first announced in February 2007, with Bendis and Mack as co-writers and art from Alex Maleev, Bill Sienkewicz, and Klaus Janson. (Daredevil will also appear in New Avengers #60.)
* “If the stars allow,” Bendis and artist Michael Gaydos will reunite for a new Alias miniseries next year. It could be a MAX series “if the content needs it.
* Look for a creator-owned crime project from Bendis and his Daredevil and Spider-Woman collaborator Alex Maleev next summer.
- November 8, 2009 @ 08:50 PM by Sean T. Collins
What Are You Reading?
Cat Burglar Black
Welcome to another edition of What Are You Reading. Our guest this week is scholar and critic par excellance Craig Fischer, whose musings on comics can be regularly read on Thought Balloonists, the blog he shares with Charles Hatfield.
To see what Craig and everyone else is currently reading, click on the link. And don’t forget to let us know what you’re reading this week as well.
- November 8, 2009 @ 10:00 AM by Chris Mautner
Spider-Man musical gets new producers — and a Peter Parker
Reeve Carney
The creative team behind Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark emerged from today’s meeting with an announcement about new producers and official word on the musical’s lead actor.
What they didn’t reveal, however, was a specific date for the troubled Broadway musical, only saying that it will open in 2010 at the Hilton Theatre in Manhattan. The show, whose proposed budget has ballooned to $52 million, initially was set to bow in late March, but the most recent rumors had it opening past April 29 — the cutoff for Tony Award nominations.
The creative team confirmed relative newcomer Reeve Carney, long rumored for the role, has been cast as Peter Parker/Spider-Man. The casting initially had been reported this morning in the Los Angeles Times. The 26-year-old Carney, lead singer of the rock band of the same name, also will appear in Spider-Man director Julie Taymor’s big-screen adaptation of The Tempest.
In Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, Carney joins Evan Rachel Wood as Mary Jane and Alan Cumming as Green Goblin in a production scored by Bono and the Edge.
This afternoon’s press release also included the announcement that Michael Cohl has replaced Chicago lawyer David Garfinkle as lead producer, with Jeremiah J. Harris becoming second producer. The full producing team is Cohl, Harris, Hello Entertainment/Garfinkle, Marvel Entertainment/David Maisel, and Sony Pictures Entertainment.
- November 6, 2009 @ 05:15 PM by Kevin Melrose
The Fifth Color – What About Bob?
The Sentry has come a long way, baby. Bob Reynolds’s story is no longer a man struggling with an addiction who was close to his dog, he’s just about as far from that as possible. The original April Fool’s Prank for The Golden Guardian of Good turned out to be a larger tale of a man with the greatest amount of power having the greatest amount of responsibility. That when you create the equal and opposite reaction to the power of a thousand exploding suns, the only way to win was to do nothing at all. At his first introduction, we are left with a very quiet and beautiful study of the greatest good and the worst evil residing in an everyday man and the world that had forgotten him.
When Bendis puled him out of the Vault for his New Avengers, the stakes had already been changed. The balance of good an evil was gone, just an implanted a virus from Mastermind and possible delusion villain The General that created psychological problems and the existence of the Void, which was just another extension of Reynolds himself. We lost our philosophical battle and our more peacable idea of wrong and right to be able to tear Carnage in half in space.
Okay, there’s nothing wrong with that. Bendis even brought in Paul Jenkins as a character in the book to explain everything, kind of having him sign off on the project. Despite his immense power and complexity, the Sentry was going to be an Avenger. Hey, they’ve worked with gods and demi-gods before, what’s the difference?
- November 6, 2009 @ 05:00 PM by Carla Hoffman
Huizenga does Holmes
Elementary, my dear Ganges! Wildly acclaimed, prodigiously talented cartoonist Kevin Huizenga has taken a break from chronicling the vagaries of our daily existence in his series Ganges and (the late, lamented) Or Else to take on the greatest detective in literary history and his arch-nemesis. (No, not Batman and the Joker, but I like the way you think.)
At his blog, Huizenga has posted a two-page comic featuring the first and final face-to-face confrontations between none other than Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty. The strip is part of the Famous Fictional Villains show at St. Louis’s Mad Art Gallery, curated by Huizenga’s friend, fellow cartoonist, and occasional collaborator Dan Zettwoch. The opening reception for the show — which features baddies ranging from Macbeth‘s witches to Alien‘s facehugger, interpreted by Zettwoch, Huizenga and over a dozen other artists — takes place tonight from 7pm to 11pm.
- November 6, 2009 @ 03:06 PM by Sean T. Collins
Robot reviews: Another kids’ comics round-up
Nancy Vol. One
by John Stanley
Drawn and Quarterly, 128 pages, $24.95.
When faced with the challenge of adapting Ernie Bushmiller’s classic comic strip to longer comic book format, John Stanley’s response was simple and economical: Turn her into Little Lulu.
That’s the only conclusion I can come to after reading this collection of stories in D&Q’s ongoing “John Stanley Library” project. Nancy is pretty much Lulu with frizzier hair, Sluggo is a thinner and slightly more benign Tubby. There’s even a snotty rich kid and bratty little boy similar to Wilbur and Alvin. Stanley even repeats one of his Tubby stories involving a burglar almost note for note.
That doesn’t make Nancy a bad book by any stretch of the imagination. Mediocre Stanley is still miles above most people’s best work. The best stories here though are the ones involving Oona Goosepimple, an odd, Wednesday Addams-type girl who supernatural antics cause no end of anxiety for poor Nancy. It’s those stories where Stanley — freed of the Bushmiller formula — really gets inventive and inspired. If the ratio of Oona stories increases as the volumes do, then I’ll keep buying these books as long as D&Q are able to get them out.
Reviews of Moomin, Amulet and more can be found after the jump …
- November 6, 2009 @ 02:00 PM by Chris Mautner