2010 April
Straight for the art | Ty Mattson’s Lost posters
"The Substitute" by Ty Mattson
The Island isn’t done with us yet! Only a few episodes remain for the much-loved series Lost, and that’s meant a veritable submarine-full of artistic tributes around the Internet. Artist and designer Ty Mattson has created some of the coolest I’ve seen so far.
The piece above is from Mattson’s series “Season 6 in Black and White,” featuring an image that sums up each episode, posted the day after it airs. The poster below is one of eight retro-tinged designs Mattson came up with for Season Six premiere party invitations. Keep them coming, artists of the world!
(via Shaggy Erwin)
- April 8, 2010 @ 02:00 PM by Sean T. Collins
First look: Eric Powell’s Buzzard #2 cover art
Buzzard #1
Courtesy of the good folks at Dark Horse Comics, here’s your first look at the cover to Buzzard #2, the upcoming miniseries by The Goon creator Eric Powell. The zombie-eating immortal is getting his own three-issue miniseries this June.
For more info the book, check out Shaun Manning’s story from today on CBR.
Update: this is actually issue #2, not #1.
- April 8, 2010 @ 01:30 PM by JK Parkin
Some scattered thoughts on the 2010 Eisner nominations
2010 Eisner Awards
Nine things that occurred to me while looking over the 2010 Eisner Award Nominations:
• It’s nice to see manga so fully integrated into categories that aren’t Best U.S. Edition of International Material-Japan/Asia: Best Continuing Series, Best Limited Series, Best Reality-Based Work, etc. That said, I feel a little sorry for anyone going up against Naoki Urasawa (20th Century Boys, Pluto).
• I’ve already turned to Google and Amazon to look up a handful of works I’d never heard of.
• Those noises you hear? Heads exploding after seeing James Robinson’s Best Writer nomination for the widely reviled (online, at least) Justice League: Cry for Justice, followed by the clickety-clack of smoking keyboards.
• I like the genre diversity represented in several of the categories. For instance, Best Continuing Series features one superhero comic, one science fiction, one horror and two contemporary fantasy.
• I’m not sure I understand the thinking behind splitting Best Writer/Artist into two categories.
• The nominees for Best Humor Publication strike me as exceptionally strong. Seriously, books by Tony Millionaire, Peter Bagge, Roger Langridge, Bryan Lee O’Malley, and John Stanley and Irving Tripp? Place your bets now.
• Four of the five nominees for Best Publication for Kids come from publishing houses. The odd title out is Marvel’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
• This is the second year in a row that 15-time Best Letterer winner Todd Klein has been absent from the nominations.
• After a six-year winning streak, this is the first time since 2002 that James Jean hasn’t been nominated for Best Cover Artist (he’s stepped away from comics). The five nominees are stellar, though: John Cassaday, Salvador Larocca, Sean Phillips, Alex Ross and J.H. Williams III. (My money’s on Williams for Detective Comics.)
- April 8, 2010 @ 01:00 PM by Kevin Melrose
John Romita Jr. confirms Shmuggy and Bimbo from Icon, Gray Area trade
The Grey Area
Last summer John Romita Jr. told CBR’s Jonah Weiland about a new creator-owned book he’s working on with Howard Chaykin called Shmuggy and Bimbo. iFanboy recently caught up with Romita on his press tour for the film Kick Ass, and Romita talked about the project as well as a reprint of his creator-owned series The Gray Area. He says that both projects will be published through Marvel’s Icon imprint.
“Grey Area is gonna be re-released by Marvel in a trade with new colors and new lettering, and a new scene added,” Romita said, noting that the series was getting some interest from Hollywood. “This is what Kick Ass is doing to me.” You can find the conversation about these books around the 21-minute mark.
He also talks about the Kick-Ass film (of course), his upcoming run on Avengers and the fact that he’d like to work on Doctor Strange at some point.
- April 8, 2010 @ 12:30 PM by JK Parkin
Comics Cavalcade | Coyotes, stupid jobs and Jaime Hernandez
Every day people post comics on the Internet. Here are some of the ones that caught our eyes.
“The Artist Statement” by Hector Casanova
- April 8, 2010 @ 12:00 PM by JK Parkin
MoCCA alternative: Kids Comic Con is this weekend too!
Kids make their own comics at Kids Comic Con 2009
I went to Kids Comic Con last year and it was amazing. This one event really captures what comics are all about — fun! There were big-name artists there as well as newcomers promoting their first projects, and the room was full of kids who were running around having the time of their lives. The con offers the opportunity to meet creators, take part in a hands-on workshop, or just sit and read and draw some comics; it’s as laid back as anything involving hundreds of kids can possibly be.
This year’s KCC takes place from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday at Bronx Community College in New York. Admission is free for kids, $5 for adults (17 and over), and you don’t have to preregister or stand on line. DC and Archie will be there, as well as Chris Giarrusso, creator of the Mini-Marvels and G-Man: Cape Crisis. The con is organized by Alex Simmons, a writer for Archie Comics, so you know a good time is guaranteed for all.
- April 8, 2010 @ 11:30 AM by Brigid Alverson
Straight for the art | Batwoman week at Project Rooftop
Batwoman
After the news broke at WonderCon last weekend that Greg Rucka was leaving DC and Batwoman, the art blog Project: Rooftop decided to host Batwoman week and spotlight various interpretations of the character. So far they’ve posted artwork by J. Estacado (above), Evan Shaner, John C. Worsley and Evan Bryce. Go check’em out.
- April 8, 2010 @ 11:00 AM by JK Parkin
Asterios Polyp, Urasawa, Irredeemable, Unwritten top the 2010 Eisner nominations
Eisner Awards
The 2010 Eisner Award nominations were announced today, with David Mazzucchelli’s Asterios Polyp receiving four nominations. Fanfare/Ponent Mon’s My mommy is in America and she met Buffalo Bill and The Photographer both received three nominations, while Naoki Urasawa received multiple nominations for 20th Century Boys and Pluto: Urasawa X Tezuka.
Other titles receiving multiple nominations include Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s A Drifting Life, Robert Crumb’s illustrated version of The Book of Genesis, Mike Carey and Peter Gross’s Vertigo series The Unwritten and Mark Waid and Peter Kraus’s series Irredeemable and DC’s Blackest Night event miniseries.
On the creator front, Urusawa, Mazzucchelli, Crumb, Jean Regnaud, Émile Bravo, Emmanuel , Carey, Waid, and Ed Brubaker all received multiple nominations.
Named for acclaimed comics creator the Will Eisner, the awards are in their 22nd year of highlighting the best publications and creators in comics and graphic novels. The 2010 judging panel consists of academic Craig Fischer (associate professor of English, Appalachian State University), librarian Francisca Goldsmith (staff development instructor/consultant, Infopeople), reviewer John Hogan (GraphicNovelReporter.com), writer James Hudnall (Harsh Realm, The Psycho), and retailer Wayne Winsett (Time Warp Comics, Boulder, Colorado).
Check out the complete list after the jump.
- April 8, 2010 @ 10:37 AM by JK Parkin
Kindle: It’s where the boys are
Delivery Cupid
I held off on posting about this at first because I wasn’t sure what was going on, but the mystery seems to have been cleared up, so here goes:
About a week ago, with little fanfare, a yaoi manga called Delivery Cupid showed up on Kindle. This caused a small flurry of excitement among yaoi fans, because the book had been licensed by Broccoli Books and then became unavailable when the publisher folded.
Then the buy feature was disabled, and Yamila Abraham, the publisher of Yaoi Press and someone who knows a great deal about the biz, speculated that was because whoever put the book up on Amazon didn’t actually own the rights to it (something that has happened before, most notoriously with George Orwell’s 1984). Abraham noted that the cover of the Kindle edition was the same as Broccoli’s, which was different from the original Japanese cover — in fact, Libre, the Japanese licensor, wouldn’t have had the rights to that cover.
The reality turns out to be less sinister. As Simon Jones notes on his cheerfully NSFW Icarus Comics blog, a company called Animate is publishing Libre books for the Kindle. They list four April releases and promise more to come. Interestingly, two of the April books, Delivery Cupid and Pet on Duty, were Broccoli books, and the other two, Golden Cain and Love a la Carte, were originally licensed here by Central Park Media’s BeBeautiful imprint — also now defunct. In the interest of research, Simon read Delivery Cupid on the Kindle and says that it looks pretty good both on the device itself and on his PC.
As for the mystery of the cover, former Broccoli editor Shizuki Yamashita comments at the Yaoi Press blog that Broccoli waived all the rights to the translations, design, etc. of its books when it folded, and it even gave the publishers digital files in case they wanted to publish the books in English themselves.
In the interest of full disclosure, I should say that I was contacted recently by someone from a large financial firm who was doing research into yaoi manga trends, with a particular interest in digital distribution. I know she talked to other folks in the biz as well, and I have no idea what specific project she was working on, but it’s interesting to think that I may have played a small part in this little drama — or perhaps in some future project.
- April 8, 2010 @ 10:30 AM by Brigid Alverson
Twitter teaser of the day: What is Metal? [Updated]
"Metal," from Vertigo
This morning, Vertigo Associate Editor Mark Doyle treated his Twitter followers with a look at “something incredibly cool” that just landed on his desk: what appears to be the cover for a new title called simply Metal. When questioned, Doyle would only say “Metal is coming.”
Update: I should’ve guessed as much, but it looks as if “Metal” isn’t a new Vertigo series, but rather the next major arc of Brian Wood’s Viking drama Northlanders.
See the full image after the break.
- April 8, 2010 @ 10:00 AM by Kevin Melrose
Make Mine MoCCA: Big pictures edition
James Sturm's Market Day
Indy comics publisher Drawn & Quarterly is bringing Adrian Tomine, Gabrielle Bell, R. Sikoryak and James Sturm to MoCCA, and all four will be doing panels and signings at the D&Q booth; check the publisher’s blog for the schedule.
- April 8, 2010 @ 09:30 AM by Brigid Alverson
Straight for the tat | American Idol‘s Siobhan Magnus’ Edward Gorey tattoo
Siobhan Magnus & The Gashlycrumb Tinies
I was already fond of this season’s American Idol contestant Siobhan Magnus — she clearly marches to the beat of her own drum, she sings with nary a trace of the radio-diva vocal tics that plague so many other singers on the show over the years, and she wields her astonishing high notes like weapons. But the moment I realized she had an homage to the cover of The Gashlycrumb Tinies, cartoonist Edward Gorey’s infamous alphabetical gallows-humor guide to the death of small children, tattooed on her arm, I joined Team Siobhan for real.
Jason Kolnos of The Cape Cod Times penned a piece on the tattoo, noting that Cape Cod native Magnus grew up not far from the town where Gorey spent his autumn years, and where the Edward Gorey House, a museum dedicated to his life and work, is now located.
As far as I’m concerned, exposing Gorey’s black-comic masterpiece to Idol‘s terrifyingly huge audience is just another reason to vote Magnus early and often.
(Image via leon_)
- April 8, 2010 @ 09:00 AM by Sean T. Collins
Slash Print | Thoughts on comics and the iPad
The Marvel Comics App on the iPad
A roundup of commentary on what Apple’s newly released iPad may mean for comics:
• PvP creator Scott Kurtz: “… Everything I read online points to an entire industry either adamatly denying that the iPad will change things for comics or actively praying it doesn’t. Then there’s the truly astounding group of idiots just sitting there waiting to see if it does anything. Retailers want it to fail because they want to keep selling physical floppy comics. Diamond wants it to fail because they want to keep being a monopoly for physical floppy comics. Fans want it to fail because for them, comics is about collecting, bagging and boarding, not reading. Creators want it to fail because they’re artists, and they don’t understand new business models or how to make money, nor do they want to worry about it.”
• Marvel Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada: “… The iPad could be the new feeder system for brick and mortar stores. Ever since the newsstand really died for comics, that element has been missing in many ways. Trades in bookstores picked up some of the slack, but the newsstand used to be huge. I think the iPad will be that and more and will improve the sales of comics in all areas, especially at comic shops. That’s why we have the comic shop locator built into the app.”
- April 8, 2010 @ 08:33 AM by Kevin Melrose
Foreclosure auctions of the rich and famous (comics edition) [Updated]
Steve Geppi's Cliffholme (Baltimore Sun)
As many of us grapple with the recession, layoffs and a looming tax deadline, it may be difficult to muster much sympathy for the problems of millionaires, but we can try.
A historic 19th-century mansion owned by Diamond Comic Distributors CEO Steve Geppi will be sold today for $7.7 million at a foreclosure auction at the Baltimore County (Maryland) Courthouse. Cliffeholme — yes, it has a name! — has an outstanding mortgage debt of $3.25 million.
Geppi and wife Melinda paid $4.8 million in 2004 for the eight-bedroom, 13,000-square-foot mansion and nine-acre estate. The home features nine fireplaces, a 65-foot grand hall and a master bedroom suite with a gym. The couple moved to another home in the area before putting Cliffeholme on the market in January 2008.
As the Baltimore Sun notes, it’s not been a good year or so for Geppi: He’s been sued over investment properties and printing debts; his Gemstone Publishing closed its offices in White Plains, Missouri, laid off five employees, and failed to renew the Disney comics license; and Geppi’s Entertainment Museum has struggled to pay its bills. Diamond, meanwhile, has experienced its share of difficulties.
- April 8, 2010 @ 07:17 AM by Kevin Melrose
Send us your Shelf Porn!
Welcome once again to Shelf Porn, our weekly visit inside the walls of a fan’s collection. Today’s collection belongs to one Chaos McKenzie, who shows off his comics, trades, graphic novels, original art, action figures and stuffed animals. As you can see in the picture above, he’s agot a nice collection of Power Girl-related art and comics.
If you’d like to contribute to Shelf Porn, just send a write-up and pictures to jkparkin@yahoo.com.
Take it away, Chaos!
- April 7, 2010 @ 02:00 PM by JK Parkin