2010 April
WonderCon | Get your limited-edition Scott Pilgrim T-shirts
Limited-edition "Scott Pilgrim" tee at the Oni Press WonderCon booth
If you’re a fan of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Scott Pilgrim series who happens to be at WonderCon this weekend, you may want so swing by the Oni Press booth (#413) to grab a snazzy limited-edition Scott Pilgrim tee for $25. Judging from the photo, the shirt just may glow in the dark. (Can anyone from Oni verify?)
- April 2, 2010 @ 01:30 PM by Kevin Melrose
The Fifth Color | The first anniversary of your 29th birthday
and she'll do it too!
There are several ways to get to know your audience, some more literal than others. Isaac Asimov had his Dear Readers, The Man himself has his True Believers; both are ways to draw you personally into what they’re talking about and soften the edges of what might be a sales pitch or a book introduction. She-Hulk, on the other hand, would threaten your X-Men comics.
The Jade Giantess celebrates her “excuse for publishing anniversary issues” this month and I’ve been waiting for this one since I realized the date. A fantastic fixture of the Marvel Universe, her pedigree is is kind of surprising when you stop to remember it. Not only is she a snap to draw in for a Marvel Heroes group shot, a recognizable face and figure, but she’s had the distinct honor of being a member of the Fantastic Four, a roster a fraction of the size of the Avengers (and she’s been one of them too!). She’s had an ongoing title in every decade since her inception, but it’s a heck of a thing to get her to stay around. I’d almost say that she’s the Marvel version of Charo, this great vivacious character that guest stars on multiple shows and everybody knows but doesn’t have her own regular gig on TV.
So what’s so sensational about her? Why do people continue to use a character who’s basic being (a female analog of a male hero) isn’t very Marvel at all? Venture forth! Continue and read more!
Continue Reading »
- April 2, 2010 @ 01:00 PM by Carla Hoffman
I can’t blog right now, I’m playing The Losers shooter game
"The Losers" shooter game
I have minimal hand-eye coordination, and even less of an ability to remember complicated key combinations — Alt+Ctrl+what was that? — so I have a special appreciation for the shooter game on The Losers movie website from Warner Bros.
Aim with your mouse, click to fire, and use the space bar to duck and reload — it doesn’t get much easier than that. Better still, you get to choose which of the six Losers you want to play. And Jensen shoots with his fingers!
So there you have it. Go waste the rest of your afternoon.
- April 2, 2010 @ 12:33 PM by Kevin Melrose
Time is running out …
April 5 is the last day to donate to Joey Weiser’s Cavemen in Space fund-raiser, so if you have been mulling it over—or even if this is the first time you’re hearing about it—don’t delay. Weiser is looking to raise $3,500 to publish Cavemen through AdHouse books, and you can find links to previews and other info on the Flight blog. (Weiser’s other credits include several volumes of the Flight anthologies, as well as the webcomic Monster Isle and several other graphic novels, and he was the colorist for Eleanor Davis’s award-winning Secret Science Alliance.
Oh, and you don’t just get the satisfaction of being a patron of the arts—Weiser is also offering a wide variety of prizes, starting for donations as small as $8. So go, browse!
- April 2, 2010 @ 12:00 PM by Brigid Alverson
Land deal could pave way for expansion of San Diego Convention Center
Artist's rendering of the San Diego Convention Center expansion
A land deal has been brokered that could lay the groundwork for a $753-million expansion of the San Diego Convention Center and keep Comic-Con International from leaving the city.
The Union-Tribune reports this morning that officials with the Port of San Diego and the convention center will work together for the waterfront expansion and a hotel after they negotiated a deal with a private business group for a seven-acre plot. The Port Commission is expected to approve the deal on Tuesday.
The agreement would remove the major obstacle to a proposed expansion of the convention center that would provide an additional 200,000 square feet of exhibit space, 100,000 square feet of meeting rooms and a third ballroom. That would give the San Diego venue a total of 815,000 square feet of exhibit space, roughly the same as the Anaheim Convention Center — which, along with the Los Angeles Convention Center, is competing for Comic-Con.
- April 2, 2010 @ 11:30 AM by Kevin Melrose
Straight for the art | Old-school Sith lord by Dustin Weaver
by Dustin Weaver
Shield artist Dustin Weaver shares a recent commission he did of Darth Revan, the Jedi-turned-Sith-turned-Jedi from Knights of the Old Republic.
- April 2, 2010 @ 11:00 AM by JK Parkin
DramaQueen returns from near-death state
The Summit, spotted in the wild
Yaoi manga publisher DramaQueen burst onto the then-burgeoning manga scene in 2005 with ambitious plans for a line of yaoi manga, teen-friendly manhwa (Korean comics), and a quarterly anthology of global yaoi manga. They quickly became known for their excellent licenses and the high production quality of their books. “We treat it like art,” publisher Tran Nguyen told PWCW’s Kai-Ming Cha in 2006. “Our intent is to produce a quality product that is a collectors item.”
Readers loved it. They loved it so much that when DramaQueen’s releases slowed to a trickle, and then stopped altogether, fans reacted with disappointment, dismay, and anger. Nguyen and her staff kept showing up at cons, selling their older releases and holding raucous panels for enthusiastic fans, and periodically they would announce that things were back on track (yeah, they got me with that one), but the books never arrived, and the whole thing took on a Lucy-and-the-football air, with yaoi fans playing the part of Charlie Brown.
Until now. In mid-March, librarian and yaoi blogger Snow Wildsmith spotted an announcement on the DramaQueen website that a new book vol. 1 of The Summit, was in the works. DQ also reset their forum, and an in-house poster is reassuring readers that at least one other title, Mandayuu and Me, will be out this year. But the proof of the pudding is in the eating, so the biggest news in years is simply this: Snow got her copy of The Summit! It seems to still only be available through the DQ site, but the same in-house poster says that it will be available through retail sites soon. Is this the beginning of a new era, or a last gasp before an overly ambitious company collapses? Stay tuned as the thrilling saga continues.
- April 2, 2010 @ 10:30 AM by Brigid Alverson
Straight for the art | Dan Hipp’s sketchblog
Hellboy
Over on his blog, Amazing Joy Buzzards artist Dan Hipp has been tearing it up recently with various sketches — from Hellboy (above) to Sin City, Batman Beyond and Conan. Go check’em out.
- April 2, 2010 @ 10:00 AM by JK Parkin
Marvel Comics App announcement sends tongues, and fingers, wagging
"Marvel Comics Arrive" Twitter trending topic
Spurred by Marvel’s official announcement of its iPad app, and early reviews of its performance on Apple’s new media slate, “Marvel Comics Arrive” briefly rocketed to the top of Twitter’s trending-topics list this morning.
But as some comics fans read the raves from the likes of the Chicago Sun-Times’ Andy Ihnatko, The New York Times’ David Pogue and BoingBoing’s Xeni Jardin, or grumbled over the $1.99-per-title price tag, author-blogger Cory Doctorow was busy taking a stand against the iPad — and the Marvel Comics App.
“I was a comic-book kid, and I’m a comic-book grownup, and the thing that made comics for me was sharing them,” Doctorow wrote this morning at BoingBoing. “If there was ever a medium that relied on kids swapping their purchases around to build an audience, it was comics. And the used market for comics! It was — and is — huge, and vital. I can’t even count how many times I’ve gone spelunking in the used comic-bins at a great and musty store to find back issues that I’d missed, or sample new titles on the cheap. [...] So what does Marvel do to ‘enhance’ its comics? They take away the right to give, sell or loan your comics. What an improvement. Way to take the joyous, marvellous sharing and bonding experience of comic reading and turn it into a passive, lonely undertaking that isolates, rather than unites. Nice one, Misney.”
In response, author and comics annotator Jess Nevins tweeted: “That whooshing sound you just heard was Cory Doctorow missing the point on digital comics.”
Meanwhile, on The New York Times’ ArtsBeat blog, David Itzkoff asks, “Can the iPad Do Whatever a Comics Store Can?” He doesn’t offer an answer, but Marvel’s Ira Rubenstein does. Unsurprisingly, given the number of egg shells scattered throughout any discussion of digital distribution and the direct market, the response is a firm no.
“I don’t think anything can replace the comic-book store experience,” Rubenstein, executive vice president of Marvel’s global digital media group, tells Itzkoff. “That Wednesday, when people go to the stores, I call it a mini Comic-Con. It’s where fans gather and talk about the books and they argue about the books and speculate about the books. That experience isn’t going to change.”
In other comics-related Twitter news, Dark Horse’s series of “April Fool’s Comics” tweets also broke onto the U.S. trending-topics list on Thursday.
- April 2, 2010 @ 09:24 AM by Kevin Melrose
Blood Rose launches today
Blood Rose
Blood Rose, a new webcomic slated to start its regular weekly run today, is a photo-based webcomic that has a different look from traditional fumetti and an interesting genesis in the theater community of Charleston, South Carolina.
The pilot episode, which is already online, introduces mild-mannered barista Rose Keller and her friends and co-workers, then heats up pretty fast when a couple of thugs try to hold the place up and Rose administers a martial arts-style beatdown. Apparently this is her first time, and the episode concludes with Rose reflecting on how good that felt.
Blood Rose is the work of writer/film producer Nick Smith and photographer/actor Charlie Thiel, and the models are all actors from the Charleston theater community. The pilot episode was even photographed in a well-known local hangout, The Lost Dog Cafe, on Folly Beach. Thiel says he is consciously mimicking comic-book techniques as he photographs the scenes, and he uses Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop to doctor the photographs and turn them into a comic. The result is artier than fumetti and more obviously photo-based than most traditional comics, and thanks to a good cast and a good eye, it’s fun to look at.
- April 2, 2010 @ 08:30 AM by Brigid Alverson
Your video of the day | Trailer for Shades of Grey
Jay Irani has posted a trailer for an hour-long documentary he’s producing called Shades of Grey — An Examination of Race Relations in Comic Books.
- April 2, 2010 @ 07:59 AM by Kevin Melrose
More details emerge about Marvel’s iPad app
Marvel Comics App for iPad
Marvel Entertainment has confirmed details of its app for the Apple iPad, saying it will give fans “unrivaled access to Marvel’s rich library of comics.”
The Marvel Comics App, developed with ComiXology, will launch on Saturday with more than 500 classic and modern stories priced at $1.99 each. New content will arrive each week.
According to the Marvel press release, launch titles will include such “modern classics” as Jonathan Hickman and Dale Eaglesham’s Fantastic Four, and Joss Whedon and John Cassaday’s Astonishing X-Men. At launch, a handful of newer titles will be available for free — among them, the first issues of Captain America, The Invincible Iron Man, New Avengers, Super Hero Squad and Thor.
It’s unclear from the press release just how recent the titles offered via the Marvel Comics App will be. The Hickman-Eaglesham run on Fantastic Four is obviously fairly recent; their tenure began in October 2009. Likewise, Super Hero Squad #1 was released in September 2009. But there’s no word yet on how much of a lag we should expect between the release of a print comic and its availability on the iPad, or how the publisher will decide what titles will be sold through the app.
The Marvel Comics App is available for free from the iPad and iTunes app stores. It comes equipped with a comic-store locator.
BoingBoing‘s Xeni Jardin posts a video walk-through of The Invincible Iron Man #1, by Warren Ellis and Adi Granov, and provides a “hands-on review.”
- April 2, 2010 @ 05:52 AM by Kevin Melrose
Brightest Day: ‘They’re back for a reason’
SPOILERS after the jump for Blackest Night #8 … don’t say I didn’t warn you …
- April 2, 2010 @ 05:00 AM by JK Parkin
WonderCon | Hero Initiative’s Ed Hannigan print
The Hero Initiative has several things planned to raise money for comics creator Ed Hannigan, not the least of which is this limited edition print of the cover to Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man #64. It is a limited edition of only 150 pieces signed by Hannigan, and can be bought for $25, first come-first served, at the Hero Initiative booth at WonderCon.
- April 2, 2010 @ 04:30 AM by JK Parkin
Rich Koslowski remixes the Three Little Pigs
Not since Green Jellö headbanged their way into our hearts* has the story of the Three Little Pigs and the Big Bad Wolf gotten this kind of makeover: Writer-artist Rich Koslowski (Three Fingers, The King, The 3 Geeks) has teamed up with writer-retailer J.D. Arnold for the new Top Shelf graphic novel BB Wolf and the 3 LPs. (What can I say — Koslowski likes threes.) The book reimagines the venerable fairy tale through the lens of the blues. The duo talk to Alex Dueben about the project at CBR. I liked this bit from Arnold about how he hooked up with Koslowski:
I wrote this particular story about 5 years ago. I then sat on it for about a year, maybe a little less, searching for the right artist. It was in San Diego, at Comic-Con, in 2007 I think, that I met Rich Koslowski. I’d just finished reading “Three Fingers.” I have to say that I had not been that impressed by a graphic novel in a long time. I was instantly a huge fan. I knew right away, upon reading “Three Fingers,” that Rich’s style would be perfect for BB Wolf. But if not for my wife Katie, I doubt I would have ever screwed up the courage to approach him. Practically dragged by the hand, she led me to his booth. I’m sure I seemed the typical, sweaty-palmed fan boy. “Hi Mr. Koslowski. I’m a big fan. Will you sign my book for me?” Gah. I’m embarrassed just writing about it. And I don’t even think I had the nerve to ask him to look at my work then and there. It was many weeks later, after constant nudging from Katie, that I finally sent an email to Rich, asking him to look at the script. For some reason, maybe he was bored, maybe he remembered the pitiful stuttering fan and took pity, I don’t know, but he did agree to read it. The rest is history, I suppose.
Go, read the whole thing.
* Okay, so there’s Fables too, but I really wanted to link to that Green Jellö video.
- April 1, 2010 @ 04:48 PM by Sean T. Collins