2009 November
Adam Prosser’s Kirby-meets-Archie mash-up
The Archon by Adam Prosser
Johanna Draper Carlson points out that Adam Prosser has posted his 24-Hour Comics Day comic on the web. It’s one part Kirby’s New Gods, one part Archie Comics and all parts awesome — heck, it’s likely the coolest thing you’ll see today.
- November 6, 2009 @ 01:00 PM by JK Parkin
Straight for the art | Cuaderno de Frases Encontradas
From Berrio's 'Conversations'
Even if you can’t read Spanish (and I totally can’t) this sketchblog by Juan Berrio, based on snatches of overheard conversations is still worth checking out. (via)
- November 6, 2009 @ 12:30 PM by Chris Mautner
Skottie Young guest draws The Abominable Charles Christopher
The Abominable Charles Christopher
Earlier this week artist Skottie Young filled in for his friend Karl Kerschl on The Abominable Charles Christopher, Kerschl’s webcomic about a a sweet but somewhat dim sasquatch-like creature and his forest friends.
This is the second time Young has filled in for his friend, as he explained on his own blog:
Karl reached out and asked me to do a guest strip for his webcomic while he was out on some giant world tour where people are worshiping him and what not. I was flattered and agreed instantly. Then I realized that his wasn’t the first time I would be there to help save Karl in a rough spot. (just kidding, he needed no saving, and i’m convinced he actually had enough strips to cover his time away and just posted my out of pitty…haha) Eons ago, when I was waiting tables at Ed Debevics in Chicago, I got my first phone call from Marvel asking me if I could do a fill in issue in the ICEMAN mini series. And artist named… you guessed it, Karl Kerschl had some life things going on and they needed someone to fill in. I had never drawn a comic book in my life and was about to do my first for Marvel. And the rest is history…or still happening, or something like that.
After seeing the strip, now I really just want to see Young doing a webcomic of his own.
- November 6, 2009 @ 12:09 PM by JK Parkin
Straight for the art | Jon Vermilyea’s He-Man
from Jon Vermilyea's He-Man and the 13 Trials of Eternia
He’s done comics with Frank Santoro, made videos with Animal Collective, and forever redefined the way we look at Kool-Aid and breakfast foods in his buoyantly bizarre comics for MOME, but now cartoonist Jon Vermilyea is tackling something near and dear to the hearts of nerds everywhere: The Masters of the Universe!
Behold He-Man and the 13 Trials of Eternia, a gorgeous silkscreened 11″ X 8″ booklet featuring the Herculean labors of the hero also known as Prince Adam and illustrated in Vermilyea’s inimitable day-glo style. Only 21 copies of the book were produced, and by god I’m getting my hands on one of them if I have to sell my soul to Skeletor.
(Via Sean Belcher.)
- November 6, 2009 @ 11:30 AM by Sean T. Collins
Straight for the art | Allan Sanders’ superheroes
Sanders' Superheroes
Get your weekend off to the right start by checking out this collage of superheroes by illustrator and animator Allan Sanders. (via)
- November 6, 2009 @ 11:00 AM by Chris Mautner
Future of troubled Spider-Man musical could be set today
Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark
The fate of the financially troubled Spider-Man Broadway musical could be decided today.
According to published reports, producers of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, whose budget has soared to $52 million, are meeting in Manhattan with director Julie Taymor and other members of the creative team to discuss the cash-flow problems that stalled production for nearly a month and cast doubt on the future of the production.
The musical had been set to preview in late February at a renovated Hilton Theatre, and then open sometime in March. But Patrick Healy of The New York Times writes that Taymor is expected to say rehearsals for the technically complex show won’t be able to begin before January, which could push the opening past April 29 — the cutoff date for Tony Award nominations.
Perhaps of more pressing concern is the $24 million needed to cover a proposed budget that ballooned to $52 million from an estimated $35 million, in part due to theater renovations and restorations. According to the Los Angeles Times, Spider-Man will cost about $1 million a week to produce — “hundreds of thousands dollars more than what some elaborate shows such as Mary Poppins or West Side Story cost — and require the 1,700-seat theater to sell out for every show for four years just to break even.
Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, which boasts a musical score by Bono and the Edge, has cast Evan Rachel Wood as Mary Jane, Alan Cumming as Green Goblin and, apparently, relative newcomer Reeve Carney as Peter Parker/Spider-Man. (Carney, who will appear in Taymor’s big-screen adaptation of The Tempest, long had been rumored for the role of Spider-Man but never confirmed.)
However, as the LA Times notes, with production delays the musical risks losing the cast to other projects. Cumming, for instance, was just added to the cast of Burlesque, which begins filming next week.
NOTE: A post detailing the announcements made after the meeting can be found here.
- November 6, 2009 @ 10:25 AM by Kevin Melrose
Buenaventura does The Believer
He’s the man who helped bring us the sublime Kramers Ergot 7 and the ridiculous Boys Club. Now publisher Alvin Buenaventura is lending his Midas touch to stalwart literary magazine The Believer for its annual Art Issue.
At his Blog Flume group blog, Buenaventura reveals that In addition to an Acme Novelty Library/Jack Surives “crossover cover” by regular cover artist Charles Burns, the issue features an interview between Acme‘s Chris Ware and Jack‘s Jerry Moriarty, other interviews with Aline Kominsky-Crumb and Peter Blegvad, and a poster by Moriarty.
Finally, the issue sees the launch of a new monthly feature: a comics spread featuring new strips from Burns, Al Columbia, Matt Furie, Tom Gauld, Lisa Hanawalt, Tim Hensley and more, edited by Buenaventura himself.
Click over to Buenaventura’s blog for sample art, click the individual links for the respective features, and get ready to gorge on some great comics content.
Wow — between this and issue #33 of The Believer‘s sister publication McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, dubbed The San Francisco Panorama and featuring comics by Art Spiegelman, Chris Ware, Dan Clowes, Erik Larsen (!) and more, it’s a good time to be a fan of comics in high-end literary periodicals.
- November 6, 2009 @ 09:57 AM by Sean T. Collins
Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes
Green Lantern Corps #41
Publishing | Buoyed by its Blackest Night miniseries and tie-in books, DC Comics claimed the first six slots on Diamond Comic Distributors’ Top 300 list of books sold to the direct market in October.
It’s a rare occurrence, to be sure, but just how rare? Charts-watcher John Jackson Miller contends we have to travel back more than 40 years, to a time well before the direct market, to find when DC last had the six best-selling comics (as sold to retailers). Yes, 1968. The closest DC came in the direct-market era, according to Miller, was in April 1993, when the publisher held the top five positions.
But back to October 2009, when DC also narrowed the market gap with Marvel to the closest margin in some time: The competitors were separated by just 2.43 percent in unit share, and 2.68 percent in dollar share. [Diamond Comic Distributors, The Comics Chronicles]
Retailing | Borders Group announced Thursday it will close about 200 of its Waldenbooks, Borders Express and Borders Outlet stores in January. The retail chain has been steadily closing mall-based stores in its Waldenbooks Specialty Retail division since 2001. About 130 mall stores will remain once the downsizing is complete. [Publishers Weekly]
- November 6, 2009 @ 08:52 AM by Kevin Melrose
Ellis releases Shivering Sands as a print-on-demand book
Shivering Sands
Writer Warren Ellis has released a new book called Shivering Sands — “a book containing a selection of essays, articles, columns, rambles and jabberings that were written in various places on the internet over the last seven years or so” — as a print-on-demand book through Lulu.com.
“I’ve been talking about POD for months, and I thought it was time to try it out,” he wrote on his blog. “This work has not been collected in one place before, and I think pretty much none of it has ever been on paper.” You can check out a preview over on the Lulu.com site.
- November 6, 2009 @ 08:16 AM by JK Parkin
Magneto rounds out new Ultimate Alliance 2 content, which is available now
Magneto
Downloadable content for Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 became available in respective stores for the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 today, allowing fans of the game to purchase five new playable characters and other content. Joining the previously announced Black Panther, Psylocke, Carnage and Cable is Magneto.
The download pack costs $9.99 on PS3 or 800 Microsoft points on Xbox 360. And don’t forget you can now get the Juggernaut for $1.99; he was previously only available if you preordered the game from Gamestop.
- November 5, 2009 @ 03:21 PM by JK Parkin
Memento mori: An interview with Eddie Campbell
Sometime soon (hopefully next week) Diamond will be releasing Eddie Campbell‘s Alec: The Years Have Pants to a comic book store near you. In a year chock full of great, original work and important re-releases and rediscoveries, this has to be one of the most important books of 2009. I know that statement might come off to some as shallow hyperbole, but it’s a risk worth taking.
For the the unfamiliar, Pants collects all of Campbell’s autobiographical Alec stories (except for The Fate of the Artist, which was published by First Second) in one big (hardcover or softcover) volume. Since the early 1980s, the artist and writer has been chronicling his life’s adventures through his barely disguised alter ego, starting as a feckless young man in the King Canute Crowd to the successful cartoonist and family man in After the Snooter. It’s saying something to call these stories his most significant and stellar work, considering he also collaborated with Alan Moore on From Hell and created the elegant Bacchus series. One hopes this new collection (and the new material found therein) provides the opportunity for a re-examination and analysis of this impressive body of work.
I had the opportunity to talk with Campbell late last August over email about the book. This was my second time talking to him and he proved to be as gracious and thoughtful over the computer as the phone, if not more so.
- November 5, 2009 @ 02:00 PM by Chris Mautner
The (boring?) business of The Brave and the Bold
Grumpy Old Fan
In a fractured, niche-oriented environment, it can be hard to justify one’s existence, let alone one’s relevance. When the tastes of your audience have changed, you are naturally prompted to change as well. Thus, MTV cultivates youth-oriented reality shows, VH-1 spotlights fading celebrities (and their desperate hangers-on), and The Weather Channel now plays meteorologically-minded movies like The Perfect Storm and The Wizard Of Oz.
To be sure, there must be scads of people who think AMC’s shift towards showing Catwoman edited-for-TV is a step up from those all-weekend marathons of uncut Hitchcock films. Why shouldn’t a channel try to keep as many eyes glued to it as possible? If you don’t care what kind of elements Jim Cantore is braving, you can get your local radar instantly from the Internet. (And then you can watch Cantore highlights on YouTube.) Only those who remember how these channels began now lament what they have become — and may envy their successes.
- November 5, 2009 @ 01:00 PM by Tom Bondurant
SPX ’09 | The Critics Roundtable, transcribed
Here’s what we talk about when we talk about comics.
In front of a packed house at September’s Small Press Expo in Bethesda, Maryland, a group of critics from around the comics Internet and beyond talked shop at the annual Critics Roundtable panel. Moderated by Bill Kartalopolous, the panel featured Comics Journal founder Gary Groth, New York Times critic Douglas Wolk, bloggers Joe “Jog” McCulloch, Tucker Stone, and Rob Clough, and a pair of Robot 6ers, Chris Mautner and myself. I’m happy to present a transcript of the panel below.
Sure, I’m a little biased, but I think it’s a fascinating discussion. The topics include the differences between print and online criticism, the notion of “the critical discourse,” negative critiques and much more. For some panelists, things have already changed since the panel took place: Groth, who gets quizzed on why he isn’t a bigger contributor to the comics Internet, is getting ready to jump in with both feet with the relaunched Comics Journal, of which Clough is going to be a part; while my membership in Robot 6 wasn’t even a glimmer in JK Parkin’s eye yet. And with a good deal of familiarity between the critics — I believe seven out of eight have written for the Journal and half write for The Savage Critic(s) — the back-and-forth was fluid.
If you’d like to listen along, you can download this mp3 recording of the panel. It’s worth it just to hear the chaos surrounding Tucker’s bathroom break.
Click the jump to read the transcript. Now, without further ado…
- November 5, 2009 @ 12:30 PM by Sean T. Collins
More Con War skirmishes and Con Love treaties
(Yes, I’m enjoying the metaphors. Why do you ask?)
Full-scale warfare between convention promoters isn’t universal, believe it or not — some are giving peace a chance. In addition to the recent arrangement worked out by Heroes Con and Supercon to avoid a date conflict, Emerald City ComiCon‘s Jim Demonakos tells Robot 6 that following an unavoidable conflict with Orlando’s MegaCon the weekend of March 13, 2010, he and MegaCon’s Beth Widera collaborated on choosing dates for 2011 so that future overlap could be avoided. “We ended up on the same dates for 2010 and neither of us could move, but we’ve talked and coordinated and our mutual 2011 dates will not be on each other’s dates at all,” says Demonakos. “Con planning, always an adventure.”
- November 5, 2009 @ 12:00 PM by Sean T. Collins
Milestone Forever brings much-needed closure, finally … maybe?
Milestone Forever
According to this post over at DC’s The Source blog, original Milestone Comics editor-in-chief Dwayne McDuffie is teaming with several artists who worked on the original Milestone Comics line back in the 1990s to wrap up the stories that were being told in those books before the line was canceled. It also sounds like it’ll somehow transition the characters from their separate Milestone-verse to the DCU proper, where we’ve already seen them show up in the pages Justice League and Teen Titans.
McDuffie will team with John Paul Leon, Mark Bright, Chris Cross and Denys Cowan to wrap up the stories from Hardware, Icon, Shadow Cabinet, Blood Syndicate and Static. I figured we were well past ever seeing these characters again in their original environment, so this is welcome news, even if it is “a bittersweet tale that chronicles the literal end of a universe.”
- November 5, 2009 @ 11:33 AM by JK Parkin