2010 January
What Are You Reading?
The Troublemakers
Welcome to What Are You Reading. Our guest this week is the artist extraordinaire Jim Rugg, best known for books like Street Angel and The Plain Janes, and whose latest book, Afrodisiac (with writer Brian Maruca), arrived in comic stores this past Wednesday and has been winning raves everywhere it goes. (FYI look for an interview with Mr. Rugg courtesy of our own Mr. O’Shea sometime soon).
- January 31, 2010 @ 02:00 PM by Chris Mautner
Your Mileage May Vary: Human Target
Human Target just made his jump to TV recently and so far the reactions have been interesting.
Johnny from Fan Rants gave the series a positive review:
Human Target
Frankly the casting is spot on, all solid actors with their own strengths and they thus far have brought solid performances to the show. The main thing they have changed is the fact that Chance is no longer a master of disguise but rather a bodyguard. A highly skilled and connected bodyguard that is.
They have dropped many hints that he may have been a spy at one time, but nothing concrete. What we do know is, he speaks multiple languages, so far Japanese and Russian, knows martial arts, is a master shot and tactician.
I like the show for its action and humor. So far the writing has been very well done and as I said earlier, the casting is very good. They are actually using some quality comic book writers for the scripting, Carmine Infantino and Len Wein have writing credit on the first two episodes. Also they have had some excellent guest stars so far, Tricia Helfer (Battlestar Galactica), Danny Glover, Alessandro Juliani (BSG), Sean Maher (Firefly), and Emmanuelle Vaugier (CSI NY).
Graeme McMillan feels that the concept suffers in comparison to the comic:
- January 30, 2010 @ 08:54 PM by Melissa Krause
The Fifth Color – When U Were Mine
From where we stand today, the Avengers books are beginning the last leg of their full Phoenix Cycle. They have been reborn (a few different times in a few different styles), have ridden high in the skies of sales and acclaim and are now plummeting to Earth to burn out and die, if only to rise from their ashes once more. It’s beautiful, really, if I wasn’t so perturbed by having to file it all in the back room of the store. And don’t get me started on returning to previous numbering! Gah!
Anyhow, a lot has been made by far smarter folks than I on the new Heroic Age teaser image Marvel’s showing us all now at the dawn of Siege. Scroll down a bit here at Robot 6 and you’ll see it. Today, I decided to stop looking at the future and take a trip back to the past thanks to a reprinted Hardcover that came out this Wednesday. Yes, let’s all take a trip back to 2002! Who says my Distinguished Colleague gets to hog all the posts about Geoff Johns?
Continue Reading »
- January 29, 2010 @ 03:00 PM by Carla Hoffman
Straight for the art | Frank Miller’s new Sin City covers
Miho by Frank Miller
He’s only been on Twitter for five days, but already Frank Miller is making the most of his newfound outlet: This afternoon he posted a pair of new cover illustrations for what I assume are new versions of the Sin City trade paperbacks. That’s Miho above, for Family Values; click here to see Dwight from The Big Fat Kill.
Meanwhile, this is a bit on the cryptic side, but there appears to be more art to come: “ps. DINOSAUR is coming next week,” read Miller’s final pre-weekend tweet. That’s a callback to the “really cool dinosaur” he announced having drawn in his Twitter debut. Dare I hope for a full-length Cretaceous-Era Frank Miller thriller?
- January 29, 2010 @ 01:30 PM by Sean T. Collins
Cliff Chiang teams with actress Helen Slater for a Supergirl story
from Supergirl #50
You might remember from DC’s solicitations for February that Supergirl #50 will feature a back-up tale co-written by Helen Slater, who played Supergirl in the film of the same name. What you might not have known, though, (I didn’t) is that the art for that story is being done by one of my favs, artist Cliff Chiang.
DC’s The Source blog has more details and some really nice Chiang art.
- January 29, 2010 @ 01:00 PM by JK Parkin
Mark Siegel launches Sailor Twain online
From "Sailor Twain, or the Mermaid in the Hudson"
Mark Siegel, editorial director of First Second Books, has launched Sailor Twain, or the Mermaid in the Hudson, a beautiful charcoal-drawn webcomic set among the steamboat lines of late 19th-century New York City.
“It is 1887,” Siegel told Publishers Weekly, “and the depths of the Hudson River hold the unfathomable secrets of two men: the owner of a steamboat, who throws a bottled message overboard each morning, and the boat’s captain, who saves a wounded mermaid. Into this comes a famous writer whose love for one of them will keep both men from taking their secrets to a watery grave.”
Sailor Twain will update every Monday, Wednesday and Friday beginning next week, and eventually be published in a print collection by First Second.
- January 29, 2010 @ 12:30 PM by Kevin Melrose
Comics cavalcade: Sea creatures and cigar-smoking ducks
Myth Adventures, adapted by Phil Foglio and Tim Sale
- January 29, 2010 @ 12:00 PM by Chris Mautner
Quote of the Day
“[Bluewater Productions] has also informed MTV News that a portion of the proceeds from the comic will be donated to The Humane Society in DeGeneres’ name.”
– from a Splash Page preview of Freedom Force: Ellen DeGeneres, made somewhat amusing by recent online criticism of the publisher’s work-for-hire agreements in which creators get paid when, and if, a comic turns a profit
- January 29, 2010 @ 11:10 AM by Kevin Melrose
Straight for the ninjas | Jim Rugg’s ‘cut’ drawings from McSweeney’s
Jim Rugg's Ninjas
Artist Jim Rugg shares a couple of pieces he did for McSweeney’s that never saw the light of day, due to the article being cut. Above you’ll see a cornucopia of ninjas, from Elektra and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to Stormshadow and Zen. Click on over to his site to see another fun one, a Highlights for Children-like “Can you find all the hidden ninjas?” piece.
Man, I so want to read a McSweeney’s article about ninjas …
- January 29, 2010 @ 10:38 AM by JK Parkin
Straight for the WTF?! | Hellboy online slot machine
Three frog men in a row and you win the prize
This is either one of the best or worst licensing ideas I’ve ever seen. I’m tempted to go for the latter. Apparently this is not a hoax, dream or imaginary story, but an actual gambling game you can play at various Vegas casinos. How do you play it?
The Wild symbol of the game is the Hellboy logo, which substitutes for all other symbols except for the Scatter and all Wild wins are doubled. The Scatter symbol is none other than Hellboy’s red, boulderous Right Hand of Doom which pays any across the pay-lines. When the Right Hand of Doom thunders 3, 4 or 5 symbols across all the reels, the “Underworld” multi-level bonus game is triggered. Follow Hellboy as he travels down into the cavernous depths of Hades as he searches for his missing team members, traversing the four levels of the Underworld to reach the Chamber of Fire and retrieve the hidden, holy Relic of Power –kicking some serious monster-butt all the way!
Well that made no sense at all. I wonder if a BPRD game is in the works as well. (link and image via)
- January 29, 2010 @ 10:05 AM by Chris Mautner
LOL Cats creator holds Haiti benefit auction
Panel from the strip in question
Laugh Out Loud Cats creator Ape Lad is auctioning off one of his recent comic strips (the 130th to be exact) on eBay, with 100 percent of the profits going to Haiti relief efforts. Free shipping too! You can see a larger version of the comic over here. (via)
- January 29, 2010 @ 09:35 AM by Chris Mautner
‘My five-year-old could write that!’: Bow before the blade of Axe Cop
Malachai and Ethan Nicolle's Axe Cop
Twitter has given us some good things — breaking news from Iran, Tom Brevoort — and some bad things — celebrity death hoaxes, #nowthatsghetto. Yesterday, it served as the social-media equivalent of Paul Revere, spreading word of a new webcomic called Axe Cop to every nerd and geek village and farm.
What’s so special about Axe Cop, you ask? Well, it’s an action-adventure series about a superheroic cop armed with an axe, joined by his partner, a half-man/half-avocado who used to be a half-man/half-dinosaur who used to be a cop who used a flute for a weapon. It’s illustrated by Ethan Nicolle, the Eisner-nominated writer-artist of SLG’s Chumble Spuzz.
And oh, yeah, it’s written by Nicolle’s five-year-old kid brother Malachai.
One look at its genuinely childlike imagination, action and sense of humor — my favorite bit is when a guitar-wielding supervillain called Bad Santa is defeated when another character gains his powers and becomes Good Bad Santa — seems to have been all it took for the twitterati to get hooked, no doubt recalling all their own afternoons spent making up stories and playing hero in backyards and basements. Indeed, the site has been fairly groaning under the collective interest of the Internet; it was completely down last night, and the strip’s image loading has slowed to a crawl as of this writing.
The elder Nicolle has been blogging about the strip’s literally overnight, Twitter-driven success, providing a unique in-the-moment document of a webcomic “making it.” (I did my part by reviewing it on my other blog.) Hopefully he’ll be able to shore up the infrastructure so that you too can thrill to the adventures of the coolest mustachioed hero since pre-goatee Tony Stark.
- January 29, 2010 @ 09:05 AM by Sean T. Collins
Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes
Diamond Gem Awards
Awards | DC Comics, BOOM! Studios and Viz Media were named publishers of the year in their respective categories in Diamond Comic Distributors’ annual Gem Awards. DC received 10 awards in all, including those for backlist publisher, comic book under $3 (Batman and Robin #1), comic book over $3 (Blackest Night #1) and reprint (Watchmen). Marvel, curiously, is absent from the list.
The awards are selected based on quality, creativity and overall sales impact. Nominees are made by “a panel of Diamond industry professionals,” and voted on by direct-market retailers. [Diamond News]
Retailing | The financially troubled Borders Group has laid off 124 corporate — about 10 percent of its corporate staff — plus 40 workers in two warehouses in Nashville, Tennessee, and Mira Loma, California. Eighty-eight of the corporate positions came from the bookstore chain’s Ann Arbor, Michigan, headquarters. [Media Decoder]
- January 29, 2010 @ 08:28 AM by Kevin Melrose
Robot 6 Q&A | Rafael Grampá discusses Mesmo Delivery
Mesmo Delivery
Brazilian artist Rafael Grampá first attracted widespread attention in North America in 2007 with his work on the Eisner Award-winning anthology 5, a collaboration with Gabriel Bá, Becky Cloonan, Vasilos Lolos and Fabio Moon.
Grampá, a former art director for the respected motion-graphics studio Lobo, followed that in 2008 with Mesmo Delivery, his first full-length comics work.
Initially published in the United States by AdHouse Books, the graphic novella is a beautifully illustrated, energetic and bloody story about two delivery men — Rufo, a brawny ex-boxer, and Sangrecco, an Elvis impersonator who views violence as performance art — who are hired to deliver a mysterious cargo. Everything appears to be going fine, at least until they encounter a group of drunken locals at a rest stop.
Next week Dark Horse will release a new edition of the critically acclaimed Mesmo Delivery with a new cover, an extended sketchbook, an introduction by writer Brian Azzarello (who collaborated with Grampá on a story for Hellblazer #250), and pin-ups by Eduardo Risso, Mike Allred, Craig Thompson and Fabio Moon.
Grampá took time over the weekend to discuss Mesmo, his influences, graphic design and his next Dark Horse release, Furry Water and the Sons of the Insurrection.
- January 28, 2010 @ 03:00 PM by Kevin Melrose
Slash Print | An iPad roundup, naturally, plus more
Echo on the iPad -- that was quick!
Tablets | Hey, guess what? Apple’s making headlines with a new product. On the heels of yesterday’s iPad announcement, Comic Book Resources and Newsarama both reach out to members of the comics industry to get their thoughts on the new device, from traditional publishers to digital comics companies. Rich Johnston has a collection of reactions from Twitter. Meanwhile, we heard from Dark Horse directly:
“We, like all publishers, are excited about this new format, and all of the possibilities which come along with it. We have already experienced great success with our existing iTunes program, and are excited to see just how this new interface will fit into our company’s overall digital strategy,” said Neil Hankerson, executive vice president of Dark Horse Comics.
Other links of note …
- January 28, 2010 @ 02:38 PM by JK Parkin