2009 December
Rich Tommaso dumps print for Web
Fed up with trying to get his work published in more traditional American markets, cartoonist Rich Tommaso (Perverso, Miriam) has opted out of the whole book publishing thing and decided to join the Webcomic world and take his stuff online:
For the past two years I’ve been sending art via email to countless publishing houses only to receive in return nothing but “I dunno”s or “It’s not 300 pages”. However, a collected French editon of Miriam (collecting issue #1 and a new 65-page body of work) will be published and shall appear only in the bookshops of France (and on my website, of course). It will be a two-color, hardcover edition released by Editions Ca Et La in April of 2010. But no love for Tommaso here in the states, so I’m releasing ALL FIVE of the comics I’ve been working on for the past two years for FREE online. Every day a new page of one of my comics will be posted here on this website in color.
There’s some really nice looking material here, including Viking’s End, based on a Norse myth, so you may want to make this a daily stop on your Internet travels. (via)
- December 3, 2009 @ 11:10 AM by Chris Mautner
The ‘all-ages’ comics debate, Round 27
Franklin Richards: Dark Reigning Cats and Dogs
The fall 2009 edition of “there are no good comics for kids” chugged along this week as some of the central players took another stab at the topic.
Prominent retailer Buddy Saunders, whose Nov. 16 comments at ICv2.com added fuel to the current debate, returns to offer a hearty “Hear, hear!” to retailer Mary Alice Wilson’s support of his original assertion that “comics aren’t for kids anymore.”
Wilson points to the book industry’s ability to acquire and successfully market young-adult series like Harry Potter, Twilight and Percy Jackson & The Olympians, saying, “I just don’t understand how come if the publishers of books can figure it out, the publishers of comics apparently cannot.”
Saunders adds that, presumably unlike the comics industry, “the book industry isn’t content to marvel at the wonders of its own navel,” and seeks and sells “an incredible range of material aimed at every kind of reader, not just young males.” Who’s to blame for this shortcoming of the comics industry? Why, the fans who took over the business!
(Tom Spurgeon offers some amusing commentary on Saunders’ shifting argument.)
With that, retailer Christopher Butcher wades back in:
- December 3, 2009 @ 10:40 AM by Kevin Melrose
Tim Bradstreet covers Pantera tribute issue of Revolver Magazine
Revolver
Revolver sent out a press release this week about a special issue they’re putting together “celebrating guitarist Dimebag Darrell on the fifth anniversary of his death.” The cover, seen above, is by Hellblazer and Punisher cover artist Tim Bradstreet, who will also have another piece inside the magazine.
Darrell Abbott, who was more commonly known by his alias, played in the heavy metal bands Pantera and Damageplan, both of which he co-founded with his brother Vinnie. He was shot and killed on stage on Dec. 8, 2004. The issue will include interviews with the surviving members of Pantera, as well as Rob Zombie, Scott Ian, Rob Halford and many more.
- December 3, 2009 @ 10:11 AM by JK Parkin
Con Wars, meet Star Wars: Reed/Lucasfilm force Chicago Comic Con rescheduling
That’s no moon. That’s a Celebration.
The running battle between rival convention promoters Reed Exhibitions and Gareb Shamus’s Wizard Entertainment just saw a game-changer of Death Star proportions enter orbit: Reed has announced it’s partnering with Lucasfilm to become the exclusive producer of the Star Wars Celebration conventions. The relationship officially begins with the announcement of Star Wars Celebration V, to be held in Orlando, Florida, on Aug. 12-15.
Of course, those are the same dates for which Shamus’s Chicago Comic Con had been scheduled.
Until this morning, that is, when Shamus announced via press release that he is pushing the Chicago show back a week, to Aug. 19-22. In a statement that will no doubt raise some eyebrows given his past scheduling maneuvers, Shamus said:
We respect our 20 year relationship with LucasFilms [sic] and everything Star Wars has meant to the fan community. In deference to our attendees, guests and friends at Lucas, we are changing dates. We are all fans of the Star Wars films, and this slight change enables us to bring the type of presence the fans would expect at our annual Comic Con.
Shamus, apparently, has been doing some partnering-up of his own: According to this post at the message board for the horror magazine Rue Morgue, recent Wizard emails to potential exhibitors have touted coming partnerships with horror-con outfits Rock and Shock and Monster Mania. But can it compete with the firepower of a fully armed and operational alliance between Reed and Lucasfilm — one that’s apparently quite willing to take aim square at Shamus’s own schedule?
- December 3, 2009 @ 09:35 AM by Sean T. Collins
Thin wallet, fat bookshelves: A publishing news round-up
• Ryan Sands reveals that Drawn and Quarterly will be publishing another book by Drifting Life author Yoshihiro Tatsumi in Spring of next year. The book, Black Blizzaard, is one of Tatsumi’s earlier works and is indeed referenced in Drifting Life. Here’s the plot:
Black Blizzard
Susumu Yamaji, a twenty-four-year-old pianist, is arrested formurder and ends up handcuffed to a career criminal on the train that will take them to prison. An avalanche derails the train and the criminal takes the opportunity to escape, dragging a reluctant Susumu with him into the blizzard raging outside. They flee into the mountains to an abandoned ranger station, where they take shelter from the storm. As they sit around the fire they built, Susumu relates how love drove him to become a murderer. A cinematic adventure story, Black Blizzard uncovers an unlikely love story and an even unlikelier friendship.
The book will cost $20 and be out in April.
• Ken Parile notes that the University Press of Mississippi is coming out with Daniel Clowes: Conversations, the latest book in their ongoing collection of interviews with prominent cartoonists.
• I knew that Jules Feiffer was working on his memoirs. Apparently he’s finished, as Random House plans on publishing the book in March.
• Kazu Kibushi drops some details on his upcoming Copper book and the third volume of Amulet.
• Mike Dawson (Freddie and Me) is apparently working on a comic about scouting.
• Austin English apparently has a new publishing venture titled Sweetheart Books. You now know as much as I do.
• In case you missed the news, naughty manga publisher Icarus Comics is canceling their Comics AG anthology.
- December 3, 2009 @ 09:05 AM by Chris Mautner
Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minute
The Pirate Bay
Legal | A Stockholm judge has refused to order a Swedish Internet provider to end service to a website that a movie-industry lobbying group claims is The Pirate Bay’s new torrent tracker.
Operators of the controversial filesharing site announced just two weeks ago that they were closing the tracker for good, as advances in peer-to-peer technology had made it obsolete. But the Motion Picture Association was quick to accuse The Pirate Bay of trying to pull a fast one by simply moving the tracker to OpenBitTorrent, and sued ISP Portlane to try to force the company to shut down the site. [TorrentFreak, Threat Level]
Awards | Submissions are open for the 2010 Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards. [Comic-Con]
Comics | Citing budgetary constraints, the British defense ministry has canceled plans to send comics to troops, forcing the Comic Book Alliance to search for other partners at the last minute. [Politics.co.uk]
- December 3, 2009 @ 08:04 AM by Kevin Melrose
Gorillas Riding Dinosaurs: Giant Monster Adventures!
Doris Danger Giant Monster Adventures
Doris Danger Giant Monster Adventures
Written and Illustrated by Chris Wisnia (with some inking by Dick Ayers!)
SLG; $9.95
This is kind of an appropriate book to be talking about just after Thanksgiving. Like that meal, there’s some pretty good stuff here, but what makes it great is the sheer quantity of it.
The concept is that it’s a collection of material from an old ‘50s comic called Doris Danger Seeks… Where Monsters Creep and Stomp. There aren’t just stories, but also letters pages, covers, pin-ups, and a couple of historical essays. According to the introduction by the fictional editor of this stuff, it was rounded up by “historians, archeologists, museum curators, a dental hygienist, and literature professors (who) have been painstakingly traveling the globe to recover the lost adventures of Doris Danger.” If DDSWMCAS had been a real comic, that endeavor and this collection would be disappointments. Out of the hundreds and hundreds of issues that “existed,” a little less than a dozen stories made it into this volume. That’s not really the point though.
If I lived in the crazy-ass world where Tabloia Weekly Magazine once existed and ran an ongoing, non-fiction feature called Where Monsters Creep and Stomp, I suppose I’d be sad that more stories didn’t survive, but I’d also be happy to get whatever I could. Since I don’t, the stories in Giant Monster Adventures are more than enough to satisfy. They’re enough to stuff me full and make me lie down for a contented nap.
Wait… non-fiction? Read on, after the break.
- December 2, 2009 @ 06:50 PM by Michael May
Send Us Your Shelf Porn!
Welcome to Shelf Porn. Our guest this week is blogger and manga fan Cathy Pajunen. Cathy had posted some pics of her collection on her blog, so I asked her if she’d be interested in doing an expanded tour of her collection for Robot 6. Thankfully, she said yes.
Remember that we’re also on the lookout for holiday-themed shelf porn this month. If you’ve got some swell DC or Marvel tree ornaments, or a Naruto-themed creche, take a pic or two and send them to cmautnerATcomcastDOTnet and we’ll post them here in the coming weeks.
And now, on with the tour:
- December 2, 2009 @ 02:00 PM by Chris Mautner
Let it smash, let it smash, let it smash …
Last week Marvel sent over one of two interlocking variant covers for Hulk #18 and Fall of the Hulks Gamma by Ed McGuinness. Above you’ll see that we now have both covers, featuring Big Green and Big Red having a massive snowball fight, with a couple of She-Hulks serving as collateral damage.
Solicitation info for both books can be found after the jump …
- December 2, 2009 @ 01:32 PM by JK Parkin
Strangeways: The Thirsty – Chapter 4 in a minute.
If you missed any of chapter 4 of THE THIRSTY, here’s what you need to know so as not to be too confused when chapter 5 starts this Monday.
Right. See you then!
Oh, and the archives are all updated as well. Or at least they should be by the end of the afternoon.
- December 2, 2009 @ 01:00 PM by Matt Maxwell
Comics Cavalcade: Bob and … Swab??
Alexander by George Herriman
- December 2, 2009 @ 12:00 PM by Chris Mautner
Your video of the day: Wolk + Wolverine = Kant?
Writer and critic Douglas Wolk uses superheroes to explain Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Aesthetic Judgment in this video taken at the Ignite Portland 7 conference. (via)
- December 2, 2009 @ 11:39 AM by Chris Mautner
Straight for the art | Ape Lad’s Twitter avatars
Wolverine by Ape Lad
Adam Koford, a.k.a. Ape Lad, creates really cool Twitter avatars shaped like the standard bird one you get when you create your account. His library includes Wolverine, Linus, the Flash, Zelda, Buzz Lightyear and many more … go check them out.
- December 2, 2009 @ 10:07 AM by JK Parkin
Everyone’s A Critic: A round-up of comic book reviews and thinkpieces
Detective Comics
• As Kevin pointed out yesterday, the new Comics Journal Web site is up and running — at least the beta version of it anyway. There’s lots of good stuff to pick through, but if you’ve got the time, let me point you towards Gavin Lees’ review of Ball Peen Hammer, Noah Berlatsky’s review of Little Fluffy Gigolo Pelu, Marc Sobel’s two part (of five) essay on Gilbert Hernandez’s Birdland, and R. Fiore’s riff on life in Metropolis pre-Superman.
• Joe McCulloch offers an amazing examination of an obscure manga anthology, titled, appropriately enough, Manga, and ends up critiquing the Western perception of the art form and how’s it’s altered over time. (read the first part here)
• Charles Hatfield, meanwhile, provides one of the best examinations of the work J.H. Williams I’ve seen yet.
• Think the AV Club’s “best of the decade” list was too mainstream-heavy? Check out Paste Magazine’s list.
• Forbidden Planet reviews and intriguing looking book entitled Badger: Then and Now.
• Tim Hodler reviewed a new biography of Herge for Bookforum magazine: “[It] fails to arrange the facts into a convincing, rounded portrait.”
• Sandy Bilus didn’t care for All and Sundry: “There simply wasn’t enough meaty comics content to really sink my teeth into.”
• Johanna Draper Carlson raves about the sixth volume of Oishinbo: “I’m loving this series about the wonders of food, cooking, and eating, and this installment is the best yet.”
• J. Caleb Mozzocco reviews the first issue of The Order of Dagonet: “While it’s a great concept, and it’s laid out quite effectively in the first issue of what’s to be an ongoing series, I have some reservations about the execution.”
• Finally, both Jason Green and Richard Cook have a go at Image United.
- December 2, 2009 @ 09:00 AM by Chris Mautner
The Maxx cartoon coming to DVD
The Maxx
If you’ve been watching The Maxx cartoons over on MTV.com and were thinking, “Boy, wouldn’t it be nice if I could buy these on DVD?” then have I got some news for you … Heidi over at The Beat points out that Amazon has a listing for The Maxx: The Complete Series. No release date is listed yet.
The cartoon adapted the comics by Sam Kieth, which were published by Image Comics back in the 1990s. The Maxx lived in two worlds — our world, where he was a bum, and in a surreal Australian outback, where he was a hero. If you’ve never seen it before and wanna check something out that’s a bit off the beaten path, it’s worth watching the streams on MTV.com.
(Fans of MTV’s crazy 90s cartoons may also want to know that The Head will also be available via Amazon).
- December 2, 2009 @ 08:06 AM by JK Parkin