2009 December
Introducing Monkey D. Luffy, supermodel
Men’s Non-No magazine
One Piece‘s Monkey D. Luffy is the protagonist of the bestselling manga ever and the star of a television series, nine feature films and 27 video games, plus light novels, art books and — well, the list goes on.
Is there anything he can’t do? Apparently not, as this week Luffy adds fashion model to his resume.
Anime Vice reports that he’ll appear on the cover of the new issue of Shueisha’s Men’s Non-No fashion magazine, illustrated by One Piece creator Eiichiro Oda. It’s the first time the 24-year-old publication has showcased a manga/anime character and the first time Oda has illustrated a cover for a non-manga magazine.
Other members of the Straw Hat Pirates, as portrayed by real models, will be featured inside.
Since One Piece debuted in 1997, the 55 volumes (and counting) of the comedy-adventure have sold a combined 176 million copies — 14.7 million this year alone. For a little perspective on that 2009 figure, I’ll turn you over to blogger David Brothers.
- December 8, 2009 @ 11:48 AM by Kevin Melrose
Straight for the art: Cameron Stewart’s iPhone paintings
I didn’t even know you could do this sort of thing on your iPhone. (via)
- December 8, 2009 @ 11:15 AM by Chris Mautner
Wonder Woman to mark milestone 600th issue (surprise?)
Wonder Woman #600, by George Perez
In announcement that should surprise no one, DC Comics Executive Editor Dan DiDio confirmed this morning that Wonder Woman will return to its original numbering next summer.
That means in June the series will mark its 600th issue, rather than its 45th under the current numbering system. George Perez provides the cover art for the occasion.
The decision comes after DiDio in September challenged Wonder Woman fans to send in 600 postcards by Oct. 31 to convince him to return the title to a numbering that would reflect its 68-year history. According to his post this morning on the DC Universe blog, readers sent 712 postcards by the deadline and nearly 800 in total.
“… As a man of my word, starting in June 2010, DC’s Wonder Woman series will celebrate its 600th issue and continue on from there,” DiDio wrote. “And we promise that Diana’s anniversary issue will be one to remember!”
Of course, a 600th issue was a fairly safe bet. After all, DC will kick off its yearlong 75th-anniversary celebration in January — and with Superman and Batman both hitting their 700th issues in 2010, it was unlikely the company would pass up a chance to honor the other third of its Trinity.
One of DC’s most consistently published titles, Wonder Woman debuted in 1942 before being relaunched in 1987 and again in 2006, each time with a new No. 1 issue.
- December 8, 2009 @ 10:44 AM by Kevin Melrose
Everyone’s A Critic: A roundup of comic book reviews and thinkpieces
Dark Reign: The List -- X-Men
• You’ve probably already seen it by now, but if you haven’t, let me point you towards Abhay Khosla’s rather Freudian review of Dark Reign: The List — X-Men #1:
The obvious conclusion to draw from DARK REIGN: THE LIST– X-MEN #1 is that at the close of 2009, a woman with an appetite for sex is apparently the very definition of fear and horror for Marvel comic creators and their audience.
I would diagnose such a belief as gynophobia.
• Tucker Stone and Joe McCulloch start talking about the week’s comics, realize they didn’t read anything that came out last week, and end up discussing how horrible it must be to be an ordinary citizen in Metropolis.
• Looking for a good graphic novel gift guide to get you through the holidays? Douglas Wolk has what you need.
- December 8, 2009 @ 10:05 AM by Chris Mautner
What a difference a bunch of plastic rings makes
Blackest Night #5
With the release this morning of ICv2.com’s estimates of direct-market sales for November comes this interesting tidbit: DC Comics’ “Blackest Night Promotional Rings” initiative gave a significant boost to the titles involved.
The ordering incentive allowed retailers who purchased a certain number of copies of seven titles — Adventure Comics #4, Blackest Night #5, Booster Gold #26, Doom Patrol #4, Justice League of America #39, Outsiders #24 and R.E.B.E.L.S. #10 – to buy bags of the corresponding color plastic rings.
Blackest Night #5, which as we noted last week led a Top 10 dominated by DC, saw a 5-percent increase, with estimated sales of 145,000.
The promotion also helped to nudge Justice League and Adventure Comics into the Top 10, but it was lower-tier books that received the most obvious benefit. Booster Gold, Doom Patrol, Outsiders and R.E.B.E.L.S., which previously had skulked along the far reaches of the Top 100 — and, in one case, well beyond — shot up the chart in November.
Booster Gold #26 and Doom Patrol #4, whose previous issues clocked in at No. 98 and No. 108, respectively, were propelled into the Top 25. For Booster Gold, that little orange ring meant a difference of about 35,525 copies.
November apparently was decent for monthly comics in general, with ICv2.com estimating a 12-percent increase over the same month in 2008. Graphic novels registered a 26-percent drop — its eight straight month of declines — due largely to the strong performance of Watchmen last year.
- December 8, 2009 @ 09:09 AM by Kevin Melrose
Shaw’s ‘Unclothed Man’ is finally unveiled
In addition to his new book, The Unclothed Man in the 35th Century A.D., Dash Shaw also produced a tie-in animated story for the IFC channel. That cartoon, about a spy who goes undercover as an android art model, is now available online in four parts, including an extra fifth video where Shaw and his co-creators talk about the project. The first episode is above. Enjoy. (Note: As someone pointed out in the comments, the video contains nudity and thus may be NSFW, depending upon where you W.)
For more on Shaw, see my interview with him from earlier this month.
- December 8, 2009 @ 08:40 AM by Chris Mautner
Tucker Stone sums up the decade in comics so you don’t have to
We’ve already linked to Tucker Stone’s decade-in-review piece for ComiXology. But I’m happy to do so again because of this elegantly simple three-graf summary of what the ’00s meant for the various strands of North American comics. Seriously, top this, pundits:
Civil War #1
Although it would be hard to look at the last ten years of comics and see much of the decade’s woes frankly expressed, it’s not hard to see the seams of conflict that float beneath them. Marvel spent its time messing around with the same sort of surface-y relevance that used to be the purview of the 70′s clunky DC Comics about race relations and drug abuse comics, with stories like Civil War that could be seen as an exaggerated version of Red Staters versus Blue Staters. (Or Secret Invasion‘s religious nuts are a-coming. Or Dark Reign, which was probably planned by a group who assumed America wasn’t gonna Choose Hopefully.)
DC went in a different direction, embracing the public’s love for nostalgia mixed with Will Ferrell’s adult man-child films, and started telling various kids’ Crisis stories with hard R plot twists. Manga publishers underestimated their audience, then overestimated it, and are now currently in the throes of figuring out how big, exactly, it is. Companies like Fantagraphics and Drawn & Quarterly kept their toes in the new, but found that the market for high-priced reprints of classic comics was strong enough to make a Comics Criterion Collection viable.
And down at the bottom, abandoned by a distribution center that didn’t care, tiny publishing houses carved out a business carrying unedited works of self-expression, depending on the Ignored Masterpiece rating doled out by the blogosphere to sell off their 200-count print-run. Webcomics became an actual opportunity for creators to make a living outside of the direct market.
Now, the meat of the piece ends up being, more or less, that critical discourse is irrelevant (this is a theme of Tucker’s), and that the real movers and shakers of comics in the ’00s were the readers who suddenly made a wide variety of modes of expression in this medium viable simply by buying and reading what they enjoyed. But if you ask me, Tucker’s deadly accurate encapsulations of Marvel, DC, manga, alternative comics, reprints, artcomix, and webcomics sorta invalidate the argument that arguments are invalid. (The Criterion Collection comparison is a killer.) Read the whole thing — including the rather glorious concluding list of good ol’ fashioned good comics — and see what you think.
- December 8, 2009 @ 07:52 AM by Sean T. Collins
DC Comics to unleash War of the Supermen in May
"War of the Supermen" #0
DC Comics continued its promised week of major news this morning by revealing the big Superman event for 2010: War of the Supermen, which launches in May with a Free Comic Book Day zero issue by James Robinson and Eddy Barrows.
The crossover, which builds on the “Brainiac” and “New Krypton” story arcs and the yearlong Superman: World of New Krypton miniseries, will center on rising tensions between Earth and New Krypton.
“The winds of war are stirring,” teases the DC Universe blog. But just how widespread will this war be?
- December 8, 2009 @ 06:51 AM by Kevin Melrose
Marvel Studios’ David Maisel to step down after Disney merger
Marvel Studios
David Maisel, who helped to secure the funds that allowed Marvel to finance and produce its own films, will step down as chairman of Marvel Studios once Disney’s purchase of the company wraps up on Dec. 31.
He will remain as an executive producer of Iron Man 2, The First Avenger: Captain America and Thor, and is poised to make $20 million when the Disney deal closes.
Maisel, who joined Marvel in 2003, helped to raise the $525 million that enabled the company to produce its own movies rather than simply license its characters to film studios. He also played a key role in early negotiations that led to Disney’s $4-billion acquisition of Marvel.
After the merger, Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige will report to Rich Ross, who was named chairman of Walt Disney Studios in October.
- December 8, 2009 @ 05:56 AM by Kevin Melrose
Google celebrates Popeye creator E.C. Segar
Popeye Google Doodle
Google celebrates comics again today with a Doodle on its homepage marking what would’ve been the 115th birthday of Popeye creator E.C. Segar.
Born on Dec. 8, 1894, in Chester, Illinois, Elzie Crisler Segar worked as a drummer and film projectionist at a local theater while taking a correspondence course in cartooning. He eventually moved to Chicago, and was hired by the Chicago Herlad, which in March 1916 published Segar’s first (but short-lived) comic strip, Charlie Chaplin’s Comedy Capers.
After media mogul William Randolph Hearst bought and closed the Herald, Segar was sent to King Feature Syndicate in New York City, where he created Thimble Theatre, a strip starring a coy flapper named Olive Oyl, her fiance Harold Hamgravy and various members of the Oyl family.
- December 8, 2009 @ 05:03 AM by Kevin Melrose
Talking Comics with Tim: Alex Robinson
A Kidnapped Santa Claus
Late last year, at my pop culture blog, I interviewed Alex Robinson about Too Cool to Be Forgotten. It was a really enjoyable interview (a fellow XTC fan is always a welcome addition to any discussion), so when I found out his new project was adapting L. Frank Baum’s Christmas tale, A Kidnapped Santa Claus, I decided it was time to catch up with him for another discussion.
Tim O’Shea: What was the biggest challenge to expanding the original Baum 10 prose pages to your adaptation’s 60 pages?
Alex Robinson: At first I was thinking that I was going to have to add a lot of material, and since the original story mostly focused on the plot I figured I could beef up the characterizations and try to give the characters a little more depth. It turned out I didn’t really need to add that much, since there’s relatively a lot of plot for such a short story.
The other challenge was deciding how closely I wanted to stick with Baum’s original dialogue and ideas. I wanted to stay true to the source material but I also felt like I had to update it a bit if it was going to resonate with children today.
O’Shea: How much fun and creative freedom did you gain in expanding the story?
Robinson: Since the book is part of a series in which cartoonists adapt classic stories Harper really wanted it to be fairly close to the original, but they also gave me a lot of freedom within that framework. Does make any sense? Aside from beefing up the characterization of the supporting cast (they’re little more than names in the original story) I tinkered around with the ending. I explained to my editor what I was doing and why I thought it should be changed and they were okay with it.
It was actually a lot of fun taking someone else’s story and adapting it. It’s kind of like covering a song in music, I imagine. Without having to worry about the basic structure there wasn’t as much pressure.
- December 7, 2009 @ 03:00 PM by Tim O'Shea
Straight for the art: Iron Man sketch cards
Artist Eric Merced has a swell bunch of Iron Man-themed sketch cards up at his Deviant Art site. (via)
- December 7, 2009 @ 02:15 PM by Chris Mautner
Northstar to officially get a boyfriend (plus a little somethin’-somethin’)
Sketches of Northstar, Kyle and Aurora, by Tim Fish
Although I was vaguely aware the second issue of the X-Men anthology miniseries Nation X will feature a Northstar story by Young Bottoms in Love creator Tim Fish, I had no idea until today it could mark a milestone in the history of Marvel’s most prominent gay character.
Since his ham-fisted outing in 1992, Northstar has been given a mystery illness, revealed as a half-elf, ignored by writers for long periods and, in what’s certainly some sort of record, killed off in three timelines in the span of a month.
What he hasn’t been, at least not officially, is one-half of a romantic couple.
Sure, we were introduced in April’s Uncanny X-Men #508 to Kyle, whose presence implied he was Northstar’s boyfriend. It was a significant leap for the Marvel Universe version of the character — in the Ultimate Universe, Northstar dated Colossus — who, when not getting killed, has been depicted as either asexual or (at least briefly) crushing on a fiercely heterosexual Iceman. But readers were left to make the connection themselves between Jean-Paul and his smiling companion.
That’s set to change in Nation X #2, which promises to clear up any ambiguity about their relationship. What’s more, Jean-Paul may finally — finally! — be shown getting a little lovin’.
The four-issue anthology, which debuts this week, focuses on how the X-Men are adjusting to their new island home off the coast of California. In his eight-page story in Issue 2, Fish focuses on how living on the island is affecting Northstar’s relationship with Kyle. Y’know, his boyfriend.
“This story might be a first,” Fish wrote recently on his blog. “Northstar introduces Kyle as his BF and they have implied sex (no, nothing like the Hank Pym/Wasp thing!).”
That “Hank Pym/Wasp thing” is, of course, a reference to the infamous, and cringe-inducing, 2003 sex scene from The Avengers #71, by Geoff Johns and Steve Sadowski. You may not want to click that link.
Nation X #2 is set for release either Jan. 6 or Jan . 13, depending upon whom you believe.
(via Pink Kryptonite)
- December 7, 2009 @ 01:38 PM by Kevin Melrose
Strangeways: The Thirsty – Page 103
Almost snow delayed over here. We’re supposed to get snow once a decade where I live, and this morning I woke up to six inches of the stuff. Makes driving around a treat. Putting up today’s page before the half-melted snow here freezes overnight and ices us all in.
Written by Matt Maxwell. Art by Gervasio and Jok.
See you all on Wednesday.
- December 7, 2009 @ 01:00 PM by Matt Maxwell
