2010 March
‘Like a graphic novel told in a single, 50-foot long panel’
MARCH 3 from Jake Lodwick on Vimeo.
Cartoonist Ira Marcks recently collaborated with Jake Lodwick, the founder of the video site Vimeo, on an experimental illustration/animation project.
“It’s sort of like a 45 minute music video with one sliding frame,” Marcks said. “But it’s also like a graphic novel told in a single, 50-foot long panel. I settled on the term ‘Illustrative Score’ to describe the project and it’s
method.”
- March 29, 2010 @ 02:00 PM by JK Parkin
Superman back on top as Action Comics #1 sells for record $1.5 million
Action Comics #1
Barely a month after Action Comics #1 and Detective Comics #27 sold for record prices, the first appearance of Superman has broken another barrier.
The Associated Press reports that a copy of the 1938 comic went for $1.5 million this morning on the auction website ComicConnect, jumping past the $1.075-million record price paid on Feb. 25 for a copy of Detective Comics #27. That issue broke a record $1 million paid just three days earlier for another copy of Action Comics #1.
Before last month, the top price paid for a comic was $317,000 in 2009 for — wait for it, wait for it — Action Comics #1.
About 100 copies of the issue are believed to exist, and only a handful of those are in good condition. It has a cover price of 10 cents.
- March 29, 2010 @ 01:30 PM by Kevin Melrose
Strangeways: The Thirsty – Page 126
Looking at getting an extra page up tomorrow to make up for the missing page from last week.
Art by Gervasio and Jok. Written by Matt Maxwell.
If all goes well, I’ll see you tomorrow.
- March 29, 2010 @ 01:00 PM by Matt Maxwell
‘Trailer effect’ gives Scott Pilgrim series an Amazon sales boost
Scott Pilgrim, Vol. 6
We saw last week how the release of the movie trailer led Scott Pilgrim to overtake Justin Bieber (if only briefly) on Twitter, but are we now getting the first indications of what effect Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World might have on sales of the graphic novels?
Just four days after the trailer’s online debut, all six volumes of the Bryan Lee O’Malley series — including the final installment, which won’t be released for another four months — rest comfortably in Amazon.com’s Top 20 Bestsellers in Graphic Novels.
The first volume, 2004′s Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life, checks in at No. 8, just behind five books in the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, Twilight: The Graphic Novel and Kick-Ass. Yes, they all share something in common: They’re titles with movie ties.
Subsequent volumes of Scott Pilgrim hold slots No. 9 through 12 and No. 14 on the Amazon chart, a chain interrupted only by the sixth volume of Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight, which checks in at No. 13.
I have no idea what this means in terms of hard numbers for the Oni Press series (my chart-fu isn’t that strong). Obviously, no one expects a Watchmen-sized “trailer effect,” but if this early chart climb is any indication, could the publisher see impressive sales spikes along the lines of those experienced by Dark Horse with Hellboy and Sin City?
Heck, when O’Malley’s fifth volume was released in February 2009, many retailers sold out quickly, leaving fans scrambling for copies. Now imagine the demand come July 20, when the sixth, and final, book debuts just weeks ahead of the movie.
- March 29, 2010 @ 12:30 PM by Kevin Melrose
Mark Millar to guest-edit Wizard‘s relaunch issue
Wizard magazine
Wizard magazine will relaunch in July with an issue guest-edited by writer Mark Millar.
Details are sparse; the press release is little more than a headline — “WANTED AND KICK-ASS WRITER MARK MILLAR GUEST EDITS OUR BEST ISSUE EVER!” — a quote, and mini-biographies for Millar and Wizard Entertainment CEO Gareb Shamus. So you’ll have to imagine for yourself what an issue of Wizard might look like under Millar’s guidance.
“This issue will be nothing less than spectacular,” Millar said in the oh-so-brief release. “Your brain will explode when you see what I have in store.”
The writer was equally, if perhaps uncharacteristically, tight-lipped on his message board, saying, “Bet you never saw THIS one coming …”
The Millar-edited Issue 228 will arrive in stores on June 30.
- March 29, 2010 @ 12:00 PM by Kevin Melrose
Saul Bass’s Lost opening credits
Lost vs. Saul Bass from Hexagonall on Vimeo.
If there are two things on this Internet I never get tired of, it’s fan-made tributes to Lost and fan-made tributes to opening-credits design god Saul Bass. So a tip of the hat to designer Hexagonall, whose video above combines these two wonderful things. His Tron/Bass mash-up is a killer, too.
(via Todd VanDerWerff)
- March 29, 2010 @ 11:30 AM by Sean T. Collins
Not your daughter’s Ginger Fox
The World of Ginger Fox
When life gives you lemons, the saying goes, make lemonade. In the case of CO2 Comics, it’s more like sparkling ginger ale.
CO2 is a small comics publisher that, I confess, I never paid much attention to until a rather confusing e-mail landed in my in-box. Turns out they are serializing a 1980s graphic novel, The World of Ginger Fox, online, and suddenly they were getting lots of hits. The reason? Apparently there is a real Ginger Fox:
Nickelodeon’s Ginger Fox, played by actress Ginger Rosselin Cynthia Fox, is a washed-up pop star trying to make a comeback. Her exploits were featured in an episode titled “iFix A Popstar” on the popular television show iCarly that stars Miranda Cosgrove as Carly.
There’s a video, too, a parody of Britney Spears, and youngsters searching for that online have been running into the other, earlier Ginger Fox. Who actually seems like a pretty good role model, if the 12 pages of her comic that are up on the site are any indication; within a couple of pages, she has terrified the executives of a major movie studio, issued scathing critiques of all the work in progress, and taken on a killer kung fu cult, all without dislodging a hair from her exuberant 80s bouffant. The ostensible purpose of the press release is to advise parents of the potential for error — Ginger Fox is listed as an adult comic, although it looks pretty PG to me. It’s hard to imagine the teeny-boppers sticking around to be corrupted, but for those of us who are old enough to remember the ’80s, it’s kind of awesome. Well played, CO2!
- March 29, 2010 @ 11:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
Straight for the art | Yildiray Cinar’s Dawnstar is out of this world
Dawnstar
Yildiray Cinar, artist on the upcoming Legion of Super-Heroes relaunch from DC Comics, has been sharing all sorts of Legion-related artwork on his blog, including this really nice Dawnstar piece. He’s got a lot of other cool stuff up there, too, such as Cloak & Dagger, Adam Strange and a Legion vs. Trigon piece, so go check’em out.
- March 29, 2010 @ 10:30 AM by JK Parkin
Lively Internet debate: Bloody pirates!
One Piece, Vol. 1
The manga boom in this country started out with a handful of enthusiasts who, when they couldn’t find the books they wanted in English, learned Japanese, translated the books, scanned them in, and pasted in the English text, then shared them with their friends via the Internet. Basically, these fans became mini-publishers, except for one important thing: They didn’t have the rights to the works they were reproducing.
Back in the day, though, most people shared their scanlations via IRC (Internet Relay Chat), which is clunky and requires a bit of technical know-how, so there was enough of a barrier to entry that you had to be at least a bit motivated to get your free manga. In the past few years, though, a number of sites have sprung up that basically pirate the pirates, downloading scanlations and posting them on a website so anyone can read them in their browser. What’s more, these sites are also posting scans of English-language manga for all to read — a far more violation of copyright than anything scans_daily ever tried. I recently spoke with an industry watcher who said that traffic on these sites is increasing sharply, and the publishers are worried.
Manga fans resurrect the scanlation debate periodically, and it started up again last week when Kate Dacey, a.k.a. The Manga Critic, addressed the issues of pirate sites and provided her readers with a primer on copyright. At Comics Worth Reading, Johanna Draper Carlson responded that the way things are now, there are plenty of incentives for readers to use pirate sites and pretty much no disincentives. Simon Jones argues (facetiously, I think) that digital rights have become worthless and obeying the law is for chumps.
This caused manga veteran Jake Forbes (editor of Fruits Basket and writer of the Return to Labyrinth manga, among many other fine series) to ask if he could post a guest editorial at my home blog, MangaBlog. It’s long but very informed, and Jake addresses the deficiencies of the American and Japanese publishers as well as approaching the fan entitlement issues from the point of view of someone whose own introduction to otakudom came through those primitive tools I mentioned up top.
All of these posts have lengthy comments threads that are worth reading in their own right, and I expect that the discussion will continue this week with more commentary from people inside and outside the industry.
- March 29, 2010 @ 09:50 AM by Brigid Alverson
Straight for the ‘shop | Dean Trippe’s “Barack Obama Looking at Awesome Things”
President Obama gains sight beyond sight
You know him best as the mastermind of Project Rooftop, but apparently cartoonist Dean Trippe has a sideline gig as Barack Obama’s presidential photographer. How else to explain the photo series “Barack Obama Looking at Awesome Things” Trippe is hosting on his tumblr, featuring our chief executive getting up close and personal with Lion-O’s Sword of Omens, Green Lantern’s Power Ring, Speed Racer’s Mach 5, Luke Skywalker’s Lightsaber, Batman’s batarangs, Captain America’s shield and many more objects of geekery? (Oh man, if you thought the debate over whether Red Hulk would be able to pick up Mjolnir was divisive….)
(via Ryan “Agent M” Penagos)
- March 29, 2010 @ 09:15 AM by Sean T. Collins
Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes
Light Yagami, from "Death Note"
Manga | A 14-year-old middle-schooler in Owosso, Michigan, has been suspended indefinitely after a classmate found a Death Note-inspired note containing the names of two students and times, and turned it over to a teacher. In Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata’s Death Note, the hit manga turned anime and live-action movie franchise, a high school student sets out to rid the world of evil using a supernatural notebook that kills anyone whose name is written in it.
Although the incident with the Owosso student was turned over to police, who forwarded the case to the prosecutor’s office. Police and school officials say they don’t believe the teen intended to harm anyone, and that no one was in danger.
This is at least the sixth incident in the United States in the past few years in which a student was disciplined for possessing a “death note.” [Argus-Press, Anime News Network]
- March 29, 2010 @ 08:53 AM by Kevin Melrose
Spanish ‘Alan Moore’ discusses his work, eats Page 214 of From Hell
I’ve already lost track of how many times I’ve watched this video this morning. It’s a Spanish-speaking Alan Moore impersonator, holding court on Watchmen, From Hell, fans — “You all have the head full of stupidities” — his first marriage, traveling to Andorra to buy a radio cassette player, and rolling a joint with a Green Arrow comic. It’s … mesmerizing (and subtitled, fear not).
(via Neil Gaiman)
- March 29, 2010 @ 07:15 AM by Kevin Melrose
A closer look at the trailer for Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World
This may be what Scott Pilgrim creator Bryan Lee O’Malley was looking for: a not-quite frame-by-frame analysis of the first trailer for Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, comparing it with the source material (courtesy of Gamervision).
- March 29, 2010 @ 06:29 AM by Kevin Melrose
Photo of the day | Tommy Lee Edwards and Jonathan Ross, roll out!
Tommy Lee Edwards and Jonathan Ross
Turf collaborators Tommy Lee Edwards and Jonathan Ross, armed and on the move in North Carolina. “Here’s how we roll,” Ross wrote this afternoon on Twitter.
- March 28, 2010 @ 05:00 PM by Kevin Melrose
What Are You Reading?
Barefoot Gen Vol. 7
Welcome to another edition of What Are You Reading?, our weekly look into the reading habits of your friendly neighborhood bloggers. As I mentioned on Wednesday, Chris Mautner has stepped back to concentrate on stuff like Comics College and won’t be doing What Are You Reading? anymore, so I’ll be playing the role of host every week.
Our guest this week is Raina Telgemeier, creator of the graphic novel Smile. She’s also worked on the Baby-sitters Club graphic novels, Flight, Bizarro World, X-Men: Misfits and Agnes Quill: An Anthology of Mystery.
To see what Raina and the rest of the Robot 6 crew have been reading, click on the link below …
- March 28, 2010 @ 02:00 PM by JK Parkin